Reviews by amanda

Nice, a Prince album! Oh.

Actually, this is not bad. It's chill emotional folksy indie. Some of the songs are a little too baleful wail-y for my preference, but it's got the emo spirit.

Word mysteries: what is "hosing" in 'Death to Everyone'? ("Death to everyone / Is gonna come / And it makes hosing / Much more fun") Many internetters also wondered. Many internetters concluded it's a sex thing, but although that's often the answer with such mysteries, I'm not fully convinced in this case. One person proclaimed it's like the gerund version of the Canadian "hoser" ("hosering"?), but Prince is from Kentucky, so that doesn't seem super likely. However, I have limited time to spend investigating, so I will leave it for future researchers.

I don't get the title. It seems like it should be a funny name, but -- oh my god, it's "A Lad Insane"! It IS a funny name! Maybe it's in the vein of drag names. Anyway, a promising start.

Sadly for me, the songs don't live up to the funny-name title. There's a lot of guitar, and Wiki says it was an intentional pivot to sound more like the Rolling Stones et al. In fact there's even a Rolling Stones cover here ('Let's Spend the Night Together'). No thanks!! Overall it sounds more generic than the Bowie songs I know/like. Lotta phone talk.

I guess these songs aren't from a room. They're from a Fun House.

Well, I can see why people would like this album. It seems "good" within the genre of songs with guitars. Sounds a little bit 60s to me. But I have no interest in it personally.

Wait, hold the phone. I have one interest in it personally! I only know 'Dirt' as a Depeche Mode song, but apparently it's a cover! I like Depeche Mode but that was always one of my least favorite songs of theirs, ha. Now I understand why. However, on this album it is definitely the -

Highlight: 'Dirt'

Huh, how 'bout that: Apparently, CBS reality journo Dalton Ross reviewed The Stooges' 2007 album for EW. He gave it a B, saying that it wasn't as good as this album. Unfortunately, he also said that the lead singer covered himself with peanut butter one time. That's 2 behavior.

A lot of these albums seem named by a random word generator, which I guess I support. Very 80s vocals. I dunno, it's not really working for me.

Notably, this album includes a version of the Hungarian Suicide Song ('Gloomy Sunday'), and the lead singer later committed suicide. Good thing I didn't start keeping track of how many tragic deaths are on this list, because it's probably more than the "the"-less bands or backwards words songs or albums I own...

Lowlight: 'Nude Spoons'

Sure wasn't expecting a band called Turbonegro to be white Norwegians from the 80s. Giving a mild squint to the whole thing. The lyrics are particularly inexplicable, which I, unfortunately, like because it reminds me of Eurovision. Lotta butt talk.

Slur count = 1.

Now,here's a boring album. Shoegaze is definitely in competition (with Prog and Blues rock) for my least favorite genre. Are there even vocals? Who can tell over all this tedious guitar.

Wowee wow wow, I was just listening to 'Pretty in Pink' right before this popped up! Magic! That song is pretty good, but the rest of the tracks kinda feel like inferior versions of it. I didn't know the movie was based on the song and not the other way around.

I enjoyed the 'Pretty in Pink' remix collection and would give it a 3.5, but one song does not an album make!

Highlights: 'Pretty in Pink', 'No Tears'

Most songs are probably from a room, if you think about it.

'Bird on the Wire' is the only song from this one I knew, although apparently I had one of the lyrics wrong: "Like a baby, stillborn" does make more sense than "like a baby, still born", but I stand by my incorrect parse.

Unfortunately, a little too sparse for my preference.

Who's this? This is Fats Domino. Glad we cleared that up. According to Wiki, the original album has an exclamation point: "This Is Fats Domino!". Some of his other albums are: "This Is Fats", "Here Stands Fats Domino", "Rock and Rollin' with Fats Domino", and "Fats Domino Rock and Rollin'". Frankly, that's delightful. Much better than the Led Zeppelin album naming scheme, which lacked followthrough.

The songs aren't quite as good as the album titles, but they're pretty good. Short and snappy and the kind of "R&B" that is actually just "oldies".

Could do with an oxford comma in this title. Hello, this is my daughter, Rum Sodomy, and her little dog, The Lash. Or maybe superheroes.

Anyway, whatever genre this is ("Celtic punk"?), I wish there was more of it. Very nostalgic. Lotta war talk.

Slur count = 0-2 (unclear due to cultural differences).

Highlight: not just one, but TWO funny little voices in 'The Gentleman Soldier'.

Hm. Country!Bruce. It's no 'Thunder Road', I must say. I do have vague memories of the singles, but again I find myself surprised at how many 9/11-themed albums there were.

Still counting...

This isn't offensive or anything, but it definitely still makes me feel like I'm getting dental work. I'm less patient than I was for Steely Dans #1-2. Stop noodling and let me get out of here!

More country covers. Not my thing, even though Emmylou seems likeable. The only song I actually knew was 'Coat of Many Colors', and "know" is a strong word since I had heard it exactly once before (on this list). Even so, I think the original was better. (I didn't even know the Beatles song, which means I bet we still have one more Beatles album coming up.) Stuck between a 2 and a 3 for this - it got better in the second half, but ultimately I don't think I'd ever listen to it again.

Anyway, enough about that. I'm intrigued by this Bluebird wine. Is Bluebird a vineyard? A grape? My research turned up nothing conclusive.

Highlight: 'Boulder to Birmingham' (the only non-cover! and it has the fun line "would rock my soul in the bosom of Abraham", which is like, whoa, 'Boulder to Birmingham' kinda sounds like 'Bosom of Abraham', and a boulder is a rock, there's layers here)

Dire straits* is right. Sigh!! Starting to think this week was not auspicious after all.

*They do have several songs about water.

There are a lot of bands with brothers in. Maybe too many?

This album is like an extended cut of The Eagles' 'Peaceful Easy Feeling'. All told, very boring. Not even a "microwave oven" to save it.

I guess so.

Good album cover. British rap, though. Hard to get into (probably because I'm absent the relevant cultural context?). As far as I can tell, "grime" is like rap + EDM, which seems good, but the lyrics are almost more vacuous than Cocteau Twins'. Though I did like -

Highlight: "Screw face means I'm not happy right now / That's why no smile was used" (:'D)

Lowlight: the alarmy beeps in 'Live O'

Slur count = 4. Not too bad.

From reading about Dizzee I learned that pepper spray is illegal in the UK!

Happy Mondays? Ha! One of my students told me that when they imagine my voice in their head I am saying "Happy Tuesday", which I said only ironically, so maybe that's what's happening here.

The album is pretty boring. A lot of lot of lot of repetition in the lyrics, too. I didn't like it, but I guess I didn't dislike it enough for a 3.

We meet again, Radiohead. An auspicious start to the week? This is a very familiar album cover, even though I don't have this album. 'There, There' was on the countdown for so long - it's one of the few (~50?) music videos I remember clearly, mostly because I hated it and thought it was creepy and boring.

Memory aside, the vocals here are so ... thin? high? which is probably why I never got into this "middle era" of Radiohead. Bring back 'Thinking About You'! Bring on 'Weird Fishes'!

Still comforting background noise though.

Highlight: 'Myxomatosis'

Haha oh no, I'm in danger. Luckily I got this QUADRUPLE* album on a weekend! I do find the concept appealing, as a completionist and fan of themes, even if I'm not an especial fan of Ella Fitzgerald or The Gershwins™ (honestly, I didn't even know there were two of 'em... only know about the airplane song).
Now that I meditate on it, my dad might have a (?blue, cardboard?) Gershwin(s?) album, but I must have found it very boring since I am not quite sure it exists. Will get back to you. [Update: he does have one, but it's neither blue nor cardboard; that was a different instrumental album ("Slaughter On Tenth Avenue"). It sure is easy to mix things up! In fact, I might have mixed up both albums with a large paperback book of baby names that had storks on it ("The Best Baby Name Book in the Whole Wide World"). I could probably read that whole book and listen to both albums and this would still be playing.]

*or SEXTUPLE? There's a lot of versions floating around out there; I tried my best to listen to the original release, which is described on ellafitzgerald.com as both a "5LP Box Set" and a "six LP collection" - further text goes on to clarify that it is "5 LPs and a 10" LP", which I think adds up to.... six LPs. Even if one is just a little guy. Imagine telling someone you have five cats and one very small cat. What an outrageous thing to say. Do you have 5 cats? Or 6?? Well, isn't every 6-disc collection also a 5-disc collection? No!! Are we living in a Mitch Hedberg joke?! Anyway, I listened to the 6 album version with the tiny 6th album.

It's pleasant and a cool project, but I don't know that many of the songs... even though a lot of them are from 1920s-30s (film) musicals, which is neat. Maybe these guys were the Rogers + Hammerstein of their time. Or the Sondheim of their time. Is the current Sondheim Sondheim? Maybe if Lin-Manuel Miranda does more stuff it'll be him. Where are all the lady musical composers?? >:(

The singing is obviously good, but it's not a style I'm that into. It's like... vocal jazz. (Update: wow the wiki genre is "vocal jazz"! I'm getting better at this!) So slow... no choruses... no variety!

I did learn the idiom "the worm has turned", though.

other Linguistic Intrigue: "I'm biding my time/'cause that's the kinda girl I'm" is surely ungrammatical; "Have a crush on" apparently dates to at least 1903; "lovelight" is a word you only hear in 100-year old songs; "All the sexes from Maine to Texas / Have never known such love before" is a wild line for 1931 (assuming a societal presupposition that the # of sexes = 2)

Highlights: 'Let's Call the Whole Thing Off' (because it's a language-related song, even though it probably entrenched some toxic ide-"ɑ"-logy), "When you said you care, imagine my emosh / I swore then and there, permanent devosh" (feels very early to have those clippings!), 'Slap That Bass' (for some reason this is one of the songs I knew, even though I have no idea how. [Update: Nick Cave sings it in the movie 'Joker: Folie à Deux'. Culture!]), 'Fascinating Rhythm' (especially fascinating: it's a song about an earworm that isn't an earworm! and it has the word "flivver" in it (=janky old car), which is another word you only hear in 100-year-old songs)

Lowlight: 'Strike up the Band' is a UCLA song. Boooo.

Have I heard of this band before or have I just read To Kill a Mockingbird? It's unclear*. Well, anyway, they don't infuriate me, so that's something, but the sound is pretty snoozy and noisy all at once. Snoisey. Just when you think you're listening to a pleasant-if-boring lullaby, the blasting kazoos and dissonant horns crash in. I will round up to a 3 because it's at least better than the last few albums we had.

*Aha - Steve Hewitt from Placebo used to be a member (prior to this album)! I bet I had heard of them 'cause of that.

Highlight: 'The White Noise Revisited'

Backwords Lortap: There's a reversed 1-2-3-4 in 'Spun Around'.

I don't support duck violence. Also, what the dickens is this? Wiki says they're "approaching commercial elements", but it must be in the same way (.001, .002, .003....) is approaching infinity.
Interesting titles and lyrics, but the sound is like... if you put a bunch of traffic jammed robot cars into a metal pipe and bent it in half.

'Weight-Lifting Lulu' kinda sounds like 'Rock Lobster'. Or maybe by this point in the album I've gotten complacent.

Highlight: Big Brother's Zingbot has a verse in 'Blue Rosebuds'. So I'll give it a 2 just for that.