Reviews by anoriginalcliche

A towering, one-of-a-kind masterpiece, never to be repeated

The Doors’ influence on generations of musicians is unquestionable. Patti Smith, Iggy Pop, Joy Division, Echo & the Bunnymen, The Stranglers, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Tame Impala and Stone Temple Pilots all grew, to varying degrees, from the soil they helped cultivate. And, as any tenured gardener will tell you, shit makes excellent fertiliser.

Can I be honest? Michael no es in heaven.

I like this. With time, maybe we could even have a thing.

Is this the best album ever made? Ask me as a teenager and I’d have said yes without hesitation — the first Beatles album that felt unburdened by overfamiliar singles, the first that made me see the forest for the trees. The first that felt like mine.

A couple decades later and it’s hard to name one album the best when my tastes have expanded out in so many different directions, but this is still the album to which I’m measuring all the rest, and the only one that doesn’t make me wince to see named the best.

It may have been a break through internally, but this is seemingly the last time ever Tom sounded uninspired

Don’t judge this until it really kicks in. The first few are just a warm up, then Duane Allman comes alive.

Love this, have returned to it at a regular clip since the songs first leaked. Nothing else scratches the itch the same

They keep asking me to kick out the jams. How do I kick out the jams. What does that mean. Where do I start

I’d only pretend to like this to impress honky tonk women.

Man, they’re boring. Uninspired production, 80s flow. Kool Keith shows up for an interlude and you’re reminded what talent sounds like.

The cover is so striking and inviting it makes you think this will be just as accessible as Ziggy but it’s a far weirder album. Lady Grinning Soul, a song Bowie never played live, is the highlight for me here — strange, unknowable and transcendent.

When they do rock, it’s the peak of the form, a singer-guitarist pairing so electric they’ve rightfully cast a shadow over the entire genre ever since, inspiring pale imitators who can never hit their heights.

But when they do blues, they’re boring. I always feel like I don’t like blues listening to bands like this do it, but then I put on muddy waters and realize it’s only boring when rock bands do it — however technically impressive they may be.

I enjoy enjoy the silence but I enjoy the silence after more.

it’s got a great clean sound, is consistent and adventurous, and is also bold and confessional — what’s not to love? Also hugely influential on artists like Courtney Barnett and Phoebe Bridgers.

Melt and 21st Century Poem worth hearing, the rest has aged like egg salad

Perfect pop broadcasting from another dimension

No song better defines the appeal of Kanye West than Through the Wire, written and recorded in 2002 with his jaw wired shut after a car accident. He’s a force of will — rejected by the establishment and his peers, but fighting through until he was the rap star he envisioned himself to be. And while he may not have the poetic prowess of his forebears, his plain delivery and honest, messy lyricism have the rare effect of exposing a man’s heart and soul. His layered and intricate production here changed hip-hop at the time, but it was the intimacy he offered that changed it more in the long-term — and the naked humanity he offers is why, even as his worst impulses have taken him places impossible to defend, I still can’t quit him.

With every album, prog moves closer to the heart.

No one on this earth needs to hear a sitar cover of the doors at any point in their life, but side 2 made me a believer