Reviews by amanda

Weird that there is a song called 'Somebody I Used to Know' that isn't the Gotye one! This is OK. Kind of a whinier, more modern Nick Drake. I think it's better than his other album, which really didn't impress me. This also didn't impress me, but at least it didn't make me think "ew, really?". I find it very weird that the genre is supposedly chamber pop, a genre I love. If you ask me, this is indie emo. Sorry Elliott. The end of 'The Gondola Man' sounds a bit like Norwegian Wood. That part is fine. And I like that the song titles tumble into each other. I like that the last song is called 'Bye', but it'd be better if the first song were called 'Hi' or some such. Hardly a figure 8 under these conditions.

This band is not reaaally my thing, being a rap-metal(?) fusion, but they kinda remind me of System of a Down, mainly because of the lyrics, so I actually don't hate them that much. Even though their sound is in reality more like the Beastie Boys. But they don't use any slurs! So this is one of those rare cases where I like the band, it's just not a genre I like (i.e. very loud). I only listen to Slow Melodic Complaints Against the Machine, thanks.

Highlights: 'Killing in the Name' (gets stuck in my head a lot), the part MJK sings on 'Know Your Enemy' (Machine Jun Kelly? is that anything? haha no, but seriously, I really hope Tool or APC are on this list)

Lowlights: 'Settle for Nothing' (extra screamy), 'Fistful of Steel' (extra noisy)

More logic problems: "If ignorance is bliss / Then knock the smile off my face!"

Good golly, is every single Arcade Fire album on this thing? Surely no song on here will surpass 'No Cars Go', though.

Overall this did feel like a better album than their earlier ones; pretty solid throughout. More poppy and less sprawly. I think they performed some of these songs on shows I've seen. But indeed, no No Cars Gos. Another 3.5, maybe.

Highlight: 'Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)'

This is a fun album cover. I think I may have heard some of these songs before (yes!! per Wiki: "In October 2010, Ozomatli performed at the USC Presidential Rally with Barack Obama". It was so crowded all my photos from this event are just people's heads!!), but I guess they didn't make a huge impression. Still, nice to see a little Spanish language representation! The second half of the album was definitely better for me, maybe debido al idioma. Like a mildly funky Angeleno Linkin Park in the first half though. It's OK. Pleasant enough but no interest in a second listen. Like a 3.5.

Highlight: Actually, I did like 'Déjame en Paz' for the sentiment, maybe I'd return to that one.

Merle Haggard is a fun name. I probably would mix him up with Milton Berle if I ever heard of him before. I like when they put the song titles right on the album cover.

Two albums in a row that mention a "rolling stone"! I wonder if we'd use that expression more if it weren't for the band. Probably.

Well, this was fine. I don't like country music or these songs in particular, but the vocals are nice and clear, the songs are short, and there's no loud or annoying noises. Is that what passes for a 3 these days?! I guess so.

Do nine men interpret? "Nine men," I nod.

Was Bob Dylan ever so young?! I'm impressed by this crisp album cover. This is probably one of his most famous albums. It's good. There are a lot of Dylan references in Watchmen (both the book and the (bad) movie), so bonus points for that. But not that many bonus points, because this is still a 3 (it's a bit samey, all told).

Highlight: 'Like a Rolling Stone'

Lowlight: loud harmonica :(

Yahoo! I'm almost through my album backlog (thanks, grading). Did you know Mott the Hoople is a band and not a dude?! Anyway, this was fun and I enjoyed it. And it had a Jacques Brel reference, who I now know about thanks to this list!

Highlights: 'Five Years' (long been one of my favorite songs, thanks to the very loyal Placebo cover), 'Starman' (where he says "boogie" the same funny way some people say "Bowie"; no wonder Wiki tells me the song "is often linked to Hopemaxxing", which, [insert "I'm like the Cryptkeeper" gif here]), 'Ziggy Stardust', 'Rock 'n' Roll Suicide'

Bono must like languages. Me too, Bono. This is very mellow. Actually liked it more than I expected. Pleasant background stuff. No rip-roaring highlights, but no complaints.

This sure is Nirvana. Some very loud songs, some very good songs. On a different day I might rate it higher!

Highlights: 'Heart-Shaped Box' (mainly because of Jordis Unga, who sang this as one of many formative Rockstar INXS tracks, but secondarily for the very useful line "hey/wait/i've got a new complaint"), 'All Apologies' (I've been fuming about the line "What else could I say?/Everyone is gay" for almost 30 years, which people twist themselves in knots to defend, but it is still a good song)

No "the"?! Welcome to being the 11th member of my list, after Carpenters, Beastie Boys, Pretenders, Pet Shop Boys, Beatles, Talking Heads, Eagles, Pixies, Cocteau Twins, & Fugees!

Anyway, ∅ Wu-Tang Clan are so famous that when there's a Jeopardy question about them, people get it right. But they're a little too early for me to have listened to them, and so the slur count = 98 is a fatal flaw. Also a lot of gun talk (expected) and a lot of poop talk (unexpected). But on the plus side, at least two Voltron mentions! The bleeping decisions in 'Protect Ya Neck' are fascinating.

Highlights: the lyric "Rappinin' is what's happenin'", the concept of a concluding reprise track ('Wu-Tang: 7th Chamber - Part II')

Top tier album title. They DO like buildings and food! But most of these songs are about girls and landscapes instead, which is fine, but less good in my opinion.

Highlight: 'The Big Country' (the most building-focused track!)

Syntactically interesting lyric: "All my pictures are confused/And now I'm going to take me to you"

They get points for The Band name. Otherwise, I was sad that the one song I know by them wasn't on here - 'A Horse with No Name' - until I learned that's actually a different Band, named "America". Not sure how I screwed that one up.

I got very garden-pathed by the title 'When You Awake'. 'The Unfaithful Servant' is kind of giving Counting Crows vibes.

These guys might be Canadian, but it's not enough to save them from the terrible 2s. Canadian country-folk-oldies, right in the bin.

Highlight: 'Up on Cripple Creek'

Well, er, I'm not crazy about this one either. Enough Britrock, I want Britpop! Wildwood was where all the annoying people in my high school went when they skipped class. No relation, I assume.

I actually have heard 'Has My Fire Really Gone Out' before (it's fine), and when looking it up I learned that this is the guy from "The Jam" and "The Style Council"! Two other artists I had never heard of, mind you, but which were on this list. List maker really loves Paul Weller. And I liked the Jam, but this album is making me question past-me. It's just so sleepy! Hardly wild at all!

Despite the charming double epistemic adverb title, I'm not that excited about another Oasis album. I feel I've already heard Oasis and therefore this album, being very similar (yet somehow louder and worse) to the last one, isn't anything I need to hear. Then again, if I were making this list, it'd be like: 10 Magnetic Fields albums, 5 Tool, 5 Placebo*, 25 musical cast recordings, 5 beethovens, and then a frantic panic to think up 950 other albums. So I guess I shouldn't be too judgmental until I make my own list of 1001 albums I like better (which will happen on its own if both I and the user album list persist long enough, anyway). Long story short I definitely maybe am not excited by this. 'Cigarettes & Alcohol' just made me want to hear 'Cigarettes & Chocolate Milk' by Rufus instead. I considered giving this a 2 because it made my ears ring, but the title saved it.

*Placebo have a song called 'Plasticine', and 'Shakermaker' from this album mentions plasticine, so I finally looked it up. It's a British brand of kids' modelling clay. Never would have guessed that in a million years. Sounds like an adjective!! Anthrocene... plasticine... langoustine...

These guys came to USC when I was there! I had never heard of them so it was a real surprise to find out they were actually famous after the fact. Anyway, I'm not gonna be mad at Zulu acapella (or technically, isicathamiya, which is a little more overlap heavy I think), but I also have no idea what they're singing about (though, probably religious stuff if Jesu means what I think it does) and I don't have time to investigate, so there's a certain non-English ceiling. If it's anything like the English lyrics, maybe that's for the best. Well, I say, that, but,

Highlight: when "hello my baby" and "i love my baby" merge into sounding the same as they're repeated enough (like my childhood favorite "it's eleven men/eleven minutes") :)

Me, about to listen to an album called "Live and Dangerous": omg this is a live album!?

Ew though. I'm already way behind on my ratings, and you're giving me a live 70s rock double album? ;_;

I listened to the whole thing. It did a good job at what it is, sure, but it didn't change my perceptions of live albums, 70s rock, or double albums. They hardly even sound Irish!

1999 is probably the year I paid the most attention to music. Maybe it's when I first got a radio in my room. Anyway, this album cover is very nostalgic. I hated Moby at the time, I think, although I assume that was based on very little -- probably the cultural conversation I was exposed to ("Moby is a vegan loser!!") or, apparently, the fact that my mom liked this album (thus, it was inherently uncool). But it's 90s electro/triphop, so I should like it!

Well, I actually don't like it that much. Maybe I only like Euro-electro. I don't hate it, but the sampling of gospel & other older tracks annoys me in the same way that covers often annoy me.

Highlights: 'Porcelain' (it's giving Pure Moods), 'Southside' (the single has Gwen Stefani on it! I like that version better but they're honestly pretty similar), 'Inside' (feels like it's about to ramp up to something good -- unfortunately it does not, but at least there's no singing)

Lowlight: 'Natural Blues' (I take back everything I said before, this song is the real reason why I hated Moby. I hate it so much. I do not want a "blues lyrics-meets-electronic pastiche"!!! I also hated this music video, it's so schmaltzy. And it was on The Box (my beloved) ALL THE TIME. Ugh, Moby.)

This Bowie guy sure has a lot of albums. Even though he has a unique voice (which I usually like), I kind of... don't love his voice? I feel like I'd like these songs more if they were sung by someone else. Maybe I'm just in a mood. Good energy, though, and interesting lyrics. I thought 'The Stars (Are Out Tonight)' was gonna be space rock but it was just celebrity rock. Overall I enjoyed it, maybe could be a 4 if I listened a few more times.

Highlights: 'Valentine's Day' (supposedly about a school shooter, but I assumed it was about a lil squirrelfriend), 'I'd Rather Be High', "remember the dead / they were so great / some of them"

Lowlight: rhyming "road" with "Road" and "night" with "tonight"!!

I don't know if I've ever heard this version of 'What's Going On' before, which seems insane, but it's not familiar to me! I've definitely heard something other than the A Perfect Circle cover, though.... maybe one of the charity ones? This version is way more peppy and wispy than what I'm used to. It's a good song, but not what I expected!

'God Is Love' has a weirdly abrupt ending.

I like that this album is so lyrically different (broadly: "global issues") from the other Marvin Gaye album we had (broadly: "getting it on"). Sometimes it's hard to tell if you're dealing with a concept album if you've only ever heard one album from an artist! Musically it's still, like, christian jazz(?), which is mellow and pleasant (modulo occasional weird percussion), but nothing all that revelatory.

Highlights: 'Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)', the title 'Wholy holy'

Good album cover; I'd read your 'zine, Ice Cube. But I won't listen to your album again, even though the tracks are perfectly serviceable... minus the lyrics, which to be fair, is at least half of this whole rap thing, surely? Not just the form (slur count = 113) but also the content is pretty offensive. It's too bad that all the "America is racist" tracks are so often combined with what feels like mandatory misogyny. The genre has evolved on this front (a little bit) since 1990, at least. The track with Yo-Yo ('It's a Man's World') almost makes things worse because it's like, yes, Cube is self-aware and happy about it. Apropos of nothing, he really like S-P-E-L-L-I-N-G things!

Non-slur lowlight: the high frequency hearing test noises throughout 'Endangered Species (Tales from the Darkside)' !!

Linguistic intrigue: the line "if I look and see another brother/On the video trying to out-dance each other"; I always wondered where "mack" came from so I finally looked it up after hearing 'Who's the mack?', and it's a clipping of "mackerel" (meaning "pimp", not "fish")!

Vocal intrigue: the outro of 'AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted' (the song) and the Ricky Harris(?) bit on 'Turn Off the Radio' (which was supposed to be an "obvious imitation of Arsenio Hall" per some guy online) sound so much like the "Invocation For Judgement Against And Destruction of Rock Music"! Code-switching to the "laughable white declaration" voice??