Reviews by apollo

I gotta say, Dig Me Out is a super enjoyable album. I guess i probably should have expected that seeing as this is a punk rock album and i enjoy that type of music but i will still keep saying that this is a super fun album. Of course, the main stars of the show here are the guitars. They have that nice amount of heaviness and grit but still have enough energy to them that always makes them fun to hear no matter what song they are in. Now the vocals though, i'm a little mixed on, for the most part they sounded good but did have some parts where i just wasn't a huge fan of them. That does unfortunately dock this album a star but this is still an absolutely great album.
Best Song: Jenny
Worst Song: Little Babies

I am kinda mixed when it comes to Music From The Penguin Cafe. This album has a very unique sound, probably something that i would hear in Animal Crossing or something that feels like it would go on to influence Sufjan Stevens. In terms of the music it's basically music with a very relaxing feel and probably would have worked much better on me if i didn't have the day off work when reviewing this but i still appreciate the sound nonetheless. My problem with the album though is that sometimes it can get annoying. It has a bit of a tendency to pick some odd instrument choices in some songs that really don't sound good. But when i consider that was mostly just for two songs, the good outweighs the bad here so it's an alright album.
Best Song: The Sound of Someone You Love Who's Going Away and It Doesn't Matter
Worst Song: Zopf: Milk

I thought Country Life was a very enjoyable album. Apparently this was the only Roxy Music album on this list that Brian Eno didn't work on. Overall i liked the glam rock vibe as it gave me that feeling that most of David Bowie's albums did with that extravagant jazzy feel which i can be a sucker for in a lot of cases. I honestly was expecting this to be overly self-indulgent especially with that album cover but this album managed to not do that so thankfully that never got to be an issue. I guess if i can think of one issue, it would be that the album could get a bit forgettable especially with the starting songs sounding a bit samey but i really enjoyed this one.
Best Song: Bitter-Sweet
Worst Song: The Thrill Of It All

I quite liked Daydream Nation a fair bit. This album has more of the sound that i was expecting from Sonic Youth, not the more noisy stuff from Evol and Sister. Instead it just has this somewhat hard indie rock sound and i like it since i'm a fan of a lot of indie rock especially when it's the harder, faster, heavier kind. Granted this album is still far from perfect, the noisy parts are still there despite not being nearly as prevalent and the lyrics are a bit on the stupid side but i don't think that those two things were enough to completely detract from the parts of the album that i did like. I was expecting this to be like the other two Sonic Youth albums i heard but this one is actually a fair bit better.
Best Song: Rain King
Worst Song: Silver Rocket

Rust Never Sleeps is one of those albums that takes time to start getting really good. It already is pretty interesting that this album was part live album and part studio album but the main difference between the songs is what styles they took on. The first half was a soft country rock album and the second half was more hard rock. And considering my history with these albums, i bet you know which style i prefer. The country rock portion was kinda meh and is a bit inferior to Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere but the hard rock part was where this album shines as i enjoyed each song there. It really is a case of an album being simultaneously a 3 and 4 star album so combining the scores gets me a 3.5.
Best Song: Powderfinger
Worst Song: Ride My Llama

I really liked Hunting High And Low. I'm not super well versed in this band since all i really knew them for is Take On Me but i found so many songs on this album that are great alongside that song. This is mainly an album that lives and dies on it's singles which are all great listens. I really enjoy how synthy and melodic a lot of them are and just how well they capture the spirit of the 80s. They may not be the most timeless thing ever but i still enjoyed them even though i never grew up with this album (It did come out 19 years before i was born after all). No matter what time i listen to this, it will always be a great listen.
Best Song: Take On Me
Worst Song: And You Tell Me

Rock Bottom was a bit of a difficult album for me to really enjoy. This album was made by Robert Wyatt so it makes sense that it's gonna be a bit crazy due to Wyatt's unique writing style but this one kinda goes overboard. This album wasn't super abrasive which is a big problem when it comes to albums that just throw everything they can at the wall and just hope that it will stick but the fact that the songs seem to lack proper structures makes them real hard to enjoy as songs. Maybe there is something that I'm just not getting with this album due to the fact that it's even on this list but regardless, this album isn't one that I'm willing to go back to.
Best Song: Little Red Riding Hood Hit The Road
Worst Song: Alife

I enjoyed Surrealistic Pillow quite a bit more than i thought i would have. It has that typical sound of a 60s Psychedelic rock album like The Beatles or The Beach Boys but i think i would compare this most to The Mamas And The Papas due to the addition of a female singer. This easily is some of the more enjoyable psych-rock sounds i have ever heard with it being good ear candy without getting too weird. I thought that the vocals here were good too with each of the singers all giving some really good performances. I also think this went at the perfect pace, enough to give me my fill but not too long. This is easily among the better psych-rock albums on this list.
Best Song: Comin' Back To Me
Worst Song: White Rabbit

Hypocrisy Is The Greatest Luxury along with being one of the biggest mouthfuls of an album to say (especially if you include the group's name too) is a pretty good hip-hop album. It apparently appears to be industrial hip-hop which is a genre i haven't heard much of together but quite a lot of separately. And i see it with some of the electronic vibes in some of the instrumentals which are pretty good sounding by the way and i also like that the lyrics aren't terribly shallow which is a problem which plagues a lot of hip-hop records. My only issue with this album is the length of some of the songs which in some cases, go on for far longer than they need to. It is still a pretty solid album despite this blunder.
Best Song: California Uber Alles
Worst Song: The Winter of the Long Hot Summer

Whatever is an album i thought was pretty enjoyable. Judging by the album cover photo, I honestly thought that this was gonna be a more punkish album but even though while the album had some punkish elements, it was very much a pop rock album. This honestly kind of disappointed me since i like the former genre way more than the latter but i didn't think that this sounded bad at all. There were some pretty enjoyable songs on offer and Mann's vocals were honestly the best part about this album having a wide range with them which gave them kind of a country feel which i rarely like, but i like it here. It's not great indie rock but it is good indie rock and i enjoy indie rock so i enjoyed this album.
Best Song: I Should've Known
Worst Song: Way Back When

Caetano Veloso is an okay album. I have never heard of this guy prior to hearing this album but it did seem pretty obvious what this would be just looking at the album art. It is another Tropicália album and while that seemed like that was gonna make this album really bad due to me having some less than favorable experiences with the genre in the past (cough cough Os Mutantes), This album wasn't that bad. There wasn't really a bad song here despite some of the songs having some pretty bad parts with them being overly abrasive. However, a good majority of the album was pleasant enough. Not great but not overly bad either.
Best Song: Clarice
Worst Song: Tropicalia

I'm not joking when i say this, S&M is not only my favorite Metallica album but also my favorite live album period. I always knew going into this album that it was going to be something really special since i love the combination of metal and orchestral music but this album managed to surpass even those lofty standards. This is a show that starts explosive and remains explosive throughout all of it's 2 hour runtime. I genuinely can't think of anything that this album does wrong as it executes everything so perfectly. This is definitely a huge favorite of mine and is 100% going into the top ten of the albums i have done here.
Best Song: No Leaf Clover
Worst Song: Hero Of The Day
Side note: Last Metallica album, here are the rankings:
1. S&M
2. Metallica (Black album)
3. ...And Justice For All
4. Master Of Puppets

For my last Beatles adjacent album (until i get to the user albums at least), All Things Must Pass certainly helped them go out with a fair bang. I wouldn't say it's amazing but probably the best Beatles adjacent album i have heard. This is probably some of the better psychedelic rock i have heard with it having enough weirdness and energy to it but also being very pleasant to the ears too. The one thing that is probably gonna put people off this album is the length as it does go on for an hour and 46 minutes and a lot of it does feel like filler but it wasn't ever too terrible. I definitely think this album could have benefitted from being shorter but all in all, pretty good album.
Best Song: My Sweet Lord
Worst Song: Wah-Wah

Wish You Were Here is an album i liked quite a lot. The most i really knew of this album prior to listening to it was the cover photo, more accurately, the Barbenheimer edit but i can say that this album is very good. The main star of the show for this album was the music as the vocals were not particularly special but the music sure was. The guitars here were very pleasing, as were the electronic sounds and there was that one cool saxophone solo in Shine On You Crazy Diamonds (Pts. 1-5). I was pretty split on whether to give this album a 3 or a 4 but after some thinking i decided to give it a 4 since its clearly a labor of love and i can really respect that.
Best Song: Welcome to the Machine
Worst Song: Have a Cigar

God, I genuinely was not expecting to like Speakerboxxx/The Love Below as much as i did but here we are. I did hear Stankonia way before hearing this and while i did like it, it was still overly weird at points. This album though, managed to be extremely great throughout. There are some dumb lyrics alongside some really genius ones. The vocals are also incredibly good always managing to complement these songs perfectly. But the real star of the show, is easily the production. It was so catchy and fun to listen to and it never felt annoying or overly bloated despite going on for two hours. I don't think i can think of a bad thing to say here, its just an absolutely amazing album.
Best Song: Unhappy
Worst Song: Where Are My Panties

I was surprised with how much i liked Phaedra. This was a pretty early player in the electronic music so i thought it was just gonna be your typical bleepy-bloopy electronic album that was so prevalent around this time. But what i ended up getting was something that was hauntingly beautiful. Each of the four songs on offer had an absolutely beautiful sound to them which made them nearly dream-like if they weren't so haunting. This is some absolutely perfect music to put in the background especially while you are reading because music like this really can add to whatever story is being read. This may just be simple background music but it is really good background music.
Best Song: Phaedra
Worst Song: Sequent "C"

Spiderland was certainly an interesting album. I have read that it got barely any promotion due to the fact that Slint had already broken up prior to this album releasing. However, it certainly did get some very positive reviews with Melody Maker going as far as to give it "Ten fucking stars". After hearing this album i do not think i will give it ten fucking stars, I'm only gonna give it three fucking stars. I definitely did enjoy the guitars as they had that right amount of heaviness to make them really fun to listen to as i love heavy guitars. However, this album was very quiet to the point where i had trouble hearing it at points. I guess it could be the fact that Will Oldham put his name on this album(despite only taking the photo for the cover) but this quietness really holds this album back from greatness.
Best Song: Washer
Worst Song: For Dinner...

Frampton Comes Alive is a really enjoyable album. The only song i ever remember hearing that played in this show was Baby, I Love Your Way which i remember hearing on classic rock stations. I like that song and all the others are really good ones too. The songs all sounded pretty good live with that typical sound you would expect from live hard rock. The guitars here are particular standouts when they are there, I also feel like this is an album that needs time to really sink in which it does by having a lot of the songs being pretty long and it works for this album. The songs here are very similar to each other but i still had an enjoyable time with this album.
Best Song: Jumping Jack Flash
Worst Song: Penny For Your Thoughts

I thought The Visitors was a pretty good album. I was initially thinking that i wouldn't enjoy this album due to it not really having any of the ABBA songs that i know and due to that, would lose a lot of it's accessibility in my eyes. But as i listened, I started to appreciate the direction that this album took. It takes a far more mature direction than a lot of ABBA's prior works. And i thought that it sounded pretty good as it still had quite a fair bit of the good stuff about their earlier works combined with the more mature sound which makes it quite enjoyable to listen to. I did think that this album started to drag towards the end, which prevented me from giving this 4 stars but still, all in all, i enjoyed this one.
Best Song: The Visitors
Worst Song: Slipping Through My Fingers

As this site has made me quite a big doors fan. It shouldn't be any surprise that i loved The Doors. Even though i am quite aware of The Doors' stuff now, the most i heard from this one is that one set of lyrics from The End which was also used in the Bloodsimple song "Ride With Me", it was awesome there and it is pretty awesome here too. But the other songs on offer are also fantastic, each having that organ which i absolutely love about this band and just having an incredibly fun energy to them which makes this album an absolute joy to go through. Again, i can't think of a single issue this album has, it's just a really good album.
Best Song: Light My Fire
Worst Song: Break On Through (to the Other Side)
Side Note: Since this is my last Doors album, here are the rankings:
1. Morrison Hotel
2. The Doors
3. L.A. Woman