Roadhouse 01

Roadhouse 01 by Allan Rayman was a pleasant surprise to me. I never heard of the album or the artist and it was also not what I expected after reading the wikipedia and looking at the album cover. It's a nice collection of dark themed/sounding bluesy, soul and rock tracks. Allans vocal style is an acquired taste switching from spoken word to rap to singing, but it fits the music and adds another layer.

Enjoyed this very distinctive vocals.

There is a genre of white dude with flowy shirt trying to be like a cool hip hop R&B guy and it ain't my thing

I didn't really like this. The music just give bad vibes to me. Like if it came out this dude had a problematic past it wouldn't surprise me. I'm sure he doesn't but that's just what I get from it. My personal rating: 2/5 My rating relative to the list: 2/5 Should this have been included on the original list? No.

Not my preferred genre, but I kind of dug it. Liked the sound of "13".

Odd vibes on this one. The vocal style is a particular one that I have... mixed feelings about. It definitely has its share of practioners in the alternative set, I associate it more with UK performers, I don't exactly know how to describe it wvwn. A kind of fey crooning. A little too much affectation for my tastes. But I liked the music and the lyrics were interesting.

Alternative R&B, hip hop, grunge, alternative rock. Ni fu ni fa.

I quite liked this- sufficiently different to make me want to listen. Not the most original - reminds me of Finley Quaye (who I like).

This was alright

Whiteboy whiteboy

This guy's vocal quality is almost kinda sorta like the Scatman, and so I expected him to start scatting and HE NEVER SCUTTED ONE SCAT

Hate that voice

Didn't much care for this.

These spoken-word meets rap LPs are either game-changers or DOA for me. This is one is definitely the latter –repetitive, mumbled lyricism over default Ableton beats doesn’t push boundaries or say much artistically, it’s just insufferable to listen to. Even if Rayman was writing on a Pulitzer-level here, his flat and lifeless delivery would kill any impact on the spot.

Chet Faker, James Vincent McMorrow, Elliot Moss, Harrison Brome... There are already too many clones with the same sort of streamlined, overaffected voices garnering millions of streams with such tired electro-bluesy-lo-fi-mumble-rap-chillout dross -- music whose actual artistry often reaches the one of a desk lamp. Whoever suggested this, what happened here? I can already see some of you other users raising an eyebrow at my words... How do you know so much about this "genre"?, I hear you asking. Actually I don't. All the names up there where suggestions of my streaming service after Allan Rayman's *Roadhouse 01* ended. And those suggestions all sounded equally irrelevant. Ten, fifteen years from now, some people are gonna look back on that -- inexplicably popular -- music style and have a good laugh. Or maybe they'll have a good cry instead, but not in the manner the people who released this album intended it. So no, I don't think we need any example of this particular sadboy / troubled-boy shtick in this list. Let me elaborate a little: this here is the idea of a "tortured artist" only a shallow fashion magazine could praise. Just read a laudatory article about Rayman on a half-fashionista, half-cultural website online, where the author painfully tries to compare his music to the one of... Portishead. What. A. Joke. Iran once had a blind man in charge of assessing the contents of movies shot in the country, and see if they should be censored or not. Reminds me of that online English-speaking website promoting Allan Rayman's releases, which seems to pay a deaf person to write music reviews. Very inclusive on both counts. To be fair, parts of the instrumentation of the very dark-sounding opener "Wolf" could warrant this sort of Portishead comparison, at least. But not the rest... Some other tracks try hard to create a Lynchian ambience, helped by lyrics where the artist impersonates some sort of suspicious freak, but most attempts fail, because of the lack of organic features in the music (essential for that sort of Lynchian endeavor). At some point, genuine jazz lounge tones -- a bit cheesy, but at least exploring different turf -- woke me up from my slumber. But that hairpin curve was only a short interlude, unfortunately. Then we were back to the same routine again... Apart from that, I admit that the vocals are very competently performed. Too bad that Allan Rayman's "strangled" timbre has been heard countless times before, and that quite a few inflexions of his quickly ended up annoying me. Finally, Rayman writes his songs as part of a "committee" for this record. So if you add the whole "I'm adopting a persona" thing to that last detail, what you get sounds rather insincere and calculated anyway, no matter what your personal mileage on the sounds is. This artist really ticks most of the wrong boxes for me, sorry. So I'm not gonna stay in this roadhouse to eat tonight. Bought myself a cup of coffee there, and now I'm gonna head towards the next establishment on the highway. What does the map say? Oh... "*Twin Peaks* Roadhouse". Sounds good... Reeeeaal good. See you on the road. 1/5 for the purposes of this list dedicated to essential albums. 6/10 for more general purposes (5 + 1) ---- Number of albums from the original list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 465 Albums from the original list I *might* include in mine later on: 288 Albums from the original list I won't include in mine: 336 ---- Number of albums from the users list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 81 Albums from the users list I *might* select for mine later on: 104 Albums from the users list I won't select for mine: 211 (including this one) ---- Émile, j'ai vu ta dernière réponse. J'essaie de trouver le temps de te laisser la mienne dans les jours qui viennent. Désolé, ça fait longtemps que je te dis ça, mais la situation est un peu compliquée par chez moi en ce moment... Rien de grave, mais je trouve pas beaucoup de temps pour moi. Porte-toi bien.