Reviews by amanda

Is this our first Billy Bragger? I think so. I know he's very popular, both among the hipsters of yesteryear and my students today. Can't go two weeks without hearing 'There Is Power in a Union', not that I've ever been in a union (not that I've ever had the chance to, I should say). I do like that his (English) accent is noticeable to an extent that is rare in songs. And the lyrics are good and the music is mostly unobjectionable. But I don't really like his voice that much. It's like a less interesting Bob Dylan-Robert Smith hybrid.

Highlights: 'There is Power in a Union', 'Help Save the Youth of America' (except the unnecessary gendering in lines like "Help save the boys in uniform / Their mothers and their faithful girls" tyvm)

Don't mind me, I'm just yearning for the Magnetic Fields: another HDH shoutout here - "Holland and Holland and Lamont Dozier too"

I do like a Microsoft Paint lookin' album cover.

I would have sworn I've never heard any of this, but I actually have heard 'The Concept' before, because I watched the movie "Young Adult" where it is a plot point. I gave the movie 3/5, but this album is getting a "too much guitar" 2/5, even though the last couple of songs are 3/5s. It is nice that they share singing and songwriting time among themselves.

Lol: According to Wiki, this "was voted 'album of the year' by American music magazine Spin; [who] both apologized for and defended the selection." As they should.

(Swiss) French industrial? 👀

Turns out I wasn't really a fan (vocals too gruff for me), but at least it was interesting. I like the background music sometimes, when it's more drum-centric than guitar-centric, but at other times (like in 'Longue route') it just feels like Scandinavian heavy metal, albeit with some sort of old timey fair/cabaret theme. Though I do think it's nice for diversity's sake to have some ugly music en français!

Now I will listen to Indochine's 'Pink Water' to cleanse the palate.

Miscellany: it's a bonus track that I didn't even listen to, but the title 'l'amourir' reminded me of the Magnetic Fields' lyric "La mort c'est la mort, mais l'amour c'est l'amour". Making me think Whorfian thoughts!

This album might be critically acclaimed, but it definitely wasn't popular, 'cause I've never heard of it. Rightfully so. It's generic noisy 2000s rock if you ask me, right down to the color scheme. Idiot Walk, Icky Thump, Penance Soiree. Zzz.

Slur count = 1.

Mass/count intrigue: "You take too much pills"

Ladies and Gentlemen, we are little woobly lava lamp people.

The album is also full of woobly lava lamp music. To me, it is sadly mid. Would be better with less vocals, maybe. The 2nd half is better than the first half.

Highlights: 'Sway', '200 Bars'

Because there are multiple Peter Gabriel albums named "Peter Gabriel", this one is sometimes called "Peter Gabriel 1: Car". He's in a car on the cover you see. That's very good. Almost as good as the Wilco song title 'Jesus, Etc'.

Unfortunately, these songs still sound exactly like the single Peter Gabriel song I know, from Wall-E ('Down to Earth'), which is probably on Peter Gabriel 20: Earth. He's doing some fun and funny things here, but they are essentially lost to me because they sound like Wall-E song. What could have been, I guess.

Highlight: 'Solsbury Hill'

Exciting! Sufjan Stevens is one of those super popular hipster artists that I always scorned, but I did like when our college acapella group did 'Chicago'. Now if he had actually followed through with the 50 albums for 50 states gimmick, I would have been way more interested. Anyway, I do like that there's a goat on the cover, and they made a musical out of this album, so maybe it's not so bad.

Well, it does have a lot of features I like:
-thematic
-lots of nice instruments (+ not electric guitar)
-interesting lyrics

So, I guess I do like the components, but maybe just because I spent so long being contrary about it, I don't feel too excited about the composite. It's just so darn hipster. An equal to piano jazz in many ways.

Highlight: 'Chicago'

Don't be Stinkubus! (as my dad would say)

I *almost* have this album, but I don't really - my mom does, and I just liberated it temporarily. (I did, however, buy their later album 'A Crow Left of the Murder...'). This one has a charmingly nostalgic 1999 radio rock sound, so, similar to the Linkin Park album we had, I like hearing it now, but I don't actually like it-like it. Brandon Boyd's voice will always be inexorably linked to Spider Solitaire for me because I first got a PC in my room (which had this brand-new-to-Windows game on it) when Incubus was the only album I had saved to my computer, and I spent like a solid week playing both. Ah, memories. Also, I've skimmed pretty much every wiki page for this project so far, and this is the first one to tell me when a video "premiered on The Box" ('Pardon Me', January 16, 2000). I miss that channel even more than Sega Channel.

Language observation: Early use of "try and" in 'Make Yourself' ("Why not try and make yourself?")

Historical reminiscence: At this time, before anyone had smartphones (but after they had mp3 downloads), there were a lot more arguments about what songs were called. I got in soo many arguments with people who insisted 'Drive' was called "I'll be there".

There were moments listening to this when I thought "could it be a 4?" but ultimately I didn't add any of the songs to a playlist, so perhaps not. A smiley 3.5 though.

Highlights: 'Stellar' (space rock??), 'I Miss You'

I like Pulp! This is a good album from a good era. Not quite as good as Different Class, but maybe I've just listened to it less.

If I had the same initials as Jesus I would definitely also do a song about it.

Highlights: 'This Is Hardcore' (They said the album name!), 'Glory Days' (which is a re-skin of 'Cocaine Socialism' and always made me want a mashup of both)

Lowlights: 'Seductive Barry', the last 9 minutes of 'The Day after the Revolution' (byeeee)

Cute horse pic. Too bad about the album.

Just kidding, the album is fine. Indeed, lotta bird talk. The music is pretty, actually, I just wish the singing matched it instead of being some guy talking. (If I recorded an album this is how my vocals would be, too. But I didn't record an album, did I?) A great opportunity for some covers (which I searched for and didn't find!)

Intriguing horror-movie album cover from... Hannibal records. (D:)

Never heard of either of these people, but I like it! It's like the non-Celtic Pogues. Pretty, mopey, folksy.

Highlight: 'We Sing Hallelujah' (been a minute since I've said this, but it reminds me of, you guessed it, "Children's Favorites"! (the sad ones, you know, like Clementine, This Old Man, and Grandfather's Clock))

Another album from this band? Boooo. They aren't really boo-worthy, I guess, but this album isn't bringing anything that their other album didn't. At least the songs are very short. 'Casbah Rock' made me look up if a casbah is something other than a Middle Eastern city, and it apparently was the name of the first music club they ever played at (in Derry). That makes more sense.

Why Köln, Keith Jarrett? Is it the Budokan of piano jazz?

Cute backstory on Wiki about how KJ was hungry and had back pain and they set up the wrong piano and so that's why he did so much jazz. If you say so, Wiki. This was very pleasant, but to be fair, I expect I'd say the same of most any piano album.

A 24 tracker, huh? Buckle up, me.

On the plus side, I just realised that the common use (or at least, common use by me when talking about covers) of OG for "original" is probably an extension of the "original gangster" meaning, and wiki backs me up! Ice-T probably helped to popularize it, although I think it was common parlance in LA already. Pretty cool... pretty cool.

He actually has 2 Grammys.

Themes here are not totally terrible. Mostly about being a gangster, but some lamenting violence to balance the glorifying it. However, I have no nostalgia for this album, and so even though I can take it more seriously than your Public Enemy & Run DMCs, I still find it mostly offensive and mostly boring. Lyrics aren't funny unintentionally, but also not really funny intentionally. (OK, I did give a mild smile at 'Body Count' being a random rock song.) Performance isn't bad, but isn't especially impressive either. Plus, did we need an entire song of shoutouts ('M.V.P.')? What is this, Koffi Olomide? Kind of interesting as a historical snapshot, I guess, but 1985-1995 is so deeply inferior to 1996-2006 musicwise.

Slur count = 126.

(Lyrical) highlight: Ice-T doesn't care if you're gay! Pretty rare sentiment for 1991 rap.

(Lyrical) lowlight (ironically, musical highlight): 'Bitches 2' 😮‍💨 (even if you aren't asserting something about ladies, you're still presupposing it, Ice-T!!!!)

From Byrne to Byrne! The algorithm's on one!

'My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts' is a fun album title* because it seems like there's a typo, but which one? Annoying wordless album cover, unless it's a Magic Eye situation, which would be even more annoying.

*Originally a book title, apparently, which "seemed to encapsulate what this record was about". Did it??

Is this.. proto-hip hop? What is happening? I hope we avoid the elusive triple-Byrne tomorrow, there might be diminishing rebyrnes. Not quite bad enough for a 2 but it's on thin ice!

The album cover looks like a tire, but apparently it is a floor. My subconscious's album is called Fear of Flat Tire.

Some more nonsense lyrics here on 'I Zimbra'; what a thematic week we've had. But those lyrics are from a (bad, imo) poem, so although they might be nonsense, they aren't mysterious. Good lyrics on the rest of the tracks.

'Cities' would make for a good college decision theme song. 'Air' would make a good everyday theme song.
2nd iteration of 'Heaven' on this list, following Simply Red's cover. (The OG is better.) It would make a bad "The Good Place" theme song.

This album feels funk-adjacent at points. I most like the points where it isn't.

Words to live by: "Never listen to electric guitar" :)

Very weird to hear the xx with vocals! Two vocalists, even! They're both competent; the lyrics are kinda grade schooly, but they're clear! and the music is good. Nice album. Very chill electropop; maybe a bit too chill, but I suppose it has its place.

Highlights: 'On Hold', 'I Dare You' (apparently they sang these both on SNL, which I have exactly 0 memory of. November 2016... what a time)

Lowlights: 'Performance', 'Test Me' (zzz)

The whole "nonsense lyrics" thing kinda bugs me (shoegaze-adjacent?!) but I like the music here a lot. Some people seem to see the lack of coherent lyrics as a point in their favor ("so unique! the voice... as instrument!"), which makes no sense to me. Anyone can write dumb lyrics and refuse to release them! The voice is always an instrument!! I guess the technique got them on this list (twice so far), but I'd say that if they even just released the actual lyrics it'd be 25% better. Like, Grimes has a very similar vibe, but she owned the banality of those lyrics (even if other things, not so much).
Anyway, it's a 4 for me, but a bit of a heartbreaking silver medal situation where it's like "you could be truly great if you were just a little different!!"

In a natural class with Johnny Cash & Leonard Cohen's final albums, I think, although this is much more musically interesting. A lot of instrumental interludes, but happily (for me) they aren't guitar-based, rather drums/strings/winds. Also a cool album cover. ★(★★★)

Obviously it is sad that Bowie made this album during cancer treatment & died 2 days after its release, but it is cool that he got to make a critically acclaimed "legacy" album before going. I admit that when 'Lazarus' came out in 2015 people were way higher on it than I was (me: "this is boring"), but as an album I think it's pretty cool and cohesive, especially having already heard a bunch of earlier & very different Bowie albums on here.
Something else sad is that 'Blackstar' (the song) was originally longer, but was cut to its current 9:57 because "iTunes would not post singles over ten minutes in length" (per Wiki). I guess that's not so different from an artist accommodating physical album/CD/etc limits, but it feels very corpo-dystopia.

Slur count = 7! (Blame John Ford)

Highlights: 'I Can't Give Everything Away', the NIN-esque percussion, the Broadway-esque sax, the A Clockwork Orange references, the vibes

I posted online one time about how shocked I was to learn that Norah Jones is Ravi Shankar's daughter (yes, in addition to the multiple reviews here where I've said that -- but it's not MY fault they have the whole family on this list, just saying), and some dude replied to tell me that "Anoushka Shankar is also his daughter". That response was almost as disturbing to me as the fact about Norah Jones. Like... yes, obviously. Was it a joke?? Was he mocking me?? Anyway, it would have been more informative if he'd said that Ananda (cool name btw) was Ravi Shankar's nephew. I wonder how many other relatives are on this list. Probably a lot of husband-wife duos and siblings in the same band, but the Ravi/Norah/Ananda(/?Anoushka?) cluster's got to be hard to beat.

Moving on! Starting off with yet another Rolling Stones cover isn't selling me, although the sitar is an upgrade, and it's definitely better than Norah Jones. 'Light My Fire' is fun though.