Reviews by apollo

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

Private Dancer was quite the enjoyable album. I am pretty familiar with a fair bit of Tina Turner's discography with seeing Proud Mary in Just Dance 2 and also hearing an additional five songs from her from using Spotify's AI DJ feature a bit after she had died but i don't think any of those songs from what i remember were from this album. It is a shame since this album is a really good one. It is a very 80s album (which makes sense, its from 1984 after all) with a lot of that 80s bass, synths galore but Tina's voice did give it some uniqueness. A few of the songs were pretty unmemorable but overall, I really enjoyed this album.
Best Song: 1984
Worst Song: Better Be Good To Me

Marcus Garvey is a very middle of the road reggae album. There is just not much i can really say about it's quality. I guess one interesting thing i can say about this is i thought that the album was called Burning Spear and the artist was called Marcus Garvey but when i did a bit more reading, it turned out that i got them mixed up. I think that is the most interesting thing about this album since musically and lyrically, it's just nothing special to me. There just really isn't anything here that this album does any differently than Bob Marley or his band, The Wailers do. I wouldn't say it was bad or intolerable just very forgettable is all.
Best Song: Tradition
Worst Song: Slavery Days

More Songs About Buildings And Food was a huge surprise coming from the Talking Heads seeing as its significantly better than the last album i looked at by then and actually manages to be a really good album. The main reason this album is so much better than Fear Of Music is just the simple fact that it is mixed far better than that album was which makes no sense considering this album came first so I'm left wondering how did Brian Eno manage to drop the ball that hard on that album. The music itself is still really solid being super catchy while having a certain 80s sound to it that i enjoy. It may not be the best album ever but it is leagues ahead Fear Of Music.
Best Song: Take Me to the River
Worst Song: Stay Hungry

I've Got a Tiger By the Tail was honestly not as bad as i was expecting it to be. I haven't exactly heard the greatest things about this album from this site as many people aren't huge fans of what it does so i expected to hate it too. But in actuality, it wasn't much worse than most other contemporary country music albums. Sure, it's nothing special and pretty cheesy and the songs do have same face syndrome but the music still sounded fine enough, it was pretty well produced and it did breeze by at just 31 minutes so it never got super tedious. I also thought Owens' voice was decent even if he did sound like Goofy at times. This album isn't great but i was expecting quite a lot worse.
Best Song: Memphis
Worst Song: A Maiden's Prayer

I thought Pelican West was pretty decent. I was honestly expecting my 700th album to be a bit more of a big, well known one but this one was still one that I'm alright with getting even if it does feel anticlimactic. As for the album itself, it's more or less just your typical 80s new wave album with everything you would come to expect from the genre, it has the synths, the bass, the vocals and even the saxophones. I thought it sounded pretty decent and catchy but i still felt that this album felt a bit weak and could also get pretty repetitive. Even still, i didn't really hate this album even if it was an odd way to celebrate myself hitting 700 albums.
Best Song: Lemon Firebrigade
Worst Song: Baked Beans

Sunshine Hit Me was a surprisingly very enjoyable album. This is one of those albums i absolutely think belongs on this list due to just how influential it is, it does feel like a precursor to the lo-fi girl with the incredibly smooth jazzy sound with a hint of electronic rhythms to it. I think it meshes together very well and creates a super relaxing, sort of coffee shop vibe which is just really enjoyable to listen to while you are doing homework (like i was when i listened to this). Granted, due to the nature of this album, it does get pretty repetitive which is a shame but it is understandable since it's tough to not make repetitive lo-fi music. I still really liked this album for what it was.
Best Song: Punchbag
Worst Song: Binnel Bay

Berlin is an album that i just have some really weird opinions on. There are things going for it like the guitars here are pretty good sounding in each song they appear in, Lou's voice is enjoyable and the lyrics are pretty decent too. But with all the things going for it, there are also things going against it. These include the odd sleazy nature of Transformer returning (it sounds even more apparent due to the somewhat lackluster production), the aforementioned poor production which makes some parts not sound right, and there are just some audio choices that I'm not a huge fan of. This album doesn't sound bad but i'm still not the biggest fan of it.
Best Song: Oh Jim
Worst Song: The Kids

Infected is an album that i enjoyed quite a fair bit, quite a bit more than i expected to. 80s new wave can be pretty hit or miss as sometimes it can sound cool and can transcend being simple 80s music or it can be super cheesy and sound like a product of it's time. This album kinda falls into both and i enjoyed it for being both of them. The synths are super 80s sounding and i enjoy that but my favorite part of this album were the vocals. There is just something that i find so satisfying about Matt Johnson's voice with the way of it sounding deep but having it's own identity from other singers with deep voices. It can be a bit cheesy at points but its still a good listen.
Best Song: Twilight of a Champion
Worst Song: Heartland

I quite enjoyed Close To The Edge. It certainly has been a while since i last listened to Yes seeing as they were one of the very first bands i listened to on this whole project (In fact, The Yes Albums was only my 5th album on this journey) but i am still aware of how their albums are structured. They are typically these sort-of mini songs which are combined into one big song. I thought that this sort of structure still worked here and the songs themselves are all pretty enjoyable. Granted, they can get forgettable especially seeing as they can get lost in the shuffle with the other songs but i still enjoyed my time with this album, even more so than The Yes Album.
Best Song: Close to the Edge
Worst Song: And You and I

I thought Everything Must Go was a really good album. 90s alternative rock will always just have that sound i totally vibe with and this album has that sound in spades. I was surprised with how well the lyrics turned out and how similar they could be in style to their last album even without their old lyricist (who disappeared without a trace one year before this album came out). But of course, the main star of the show of this album is the music, especially the guitars. They were just so heavy and loud and still managed to have such a melodic slant to them which made them absolute heaven for my ears. I'm not sure i can justify a 5 star rating here but i can do a really high 4 star rating.
Best Song: No Surface All Feeling
Worst Song: A Design for Life

Five Leaves Left is an absolutely great album. Nick Drake was never an artist i was really aware of prior to doing both this and Pink Moon but those two albums have taught me that the music he makes is hauntingly beautiful. A lot of this music really invokes some of Leonard Cohen's stuff with a lot of the stylings you would expect from an album by him. Of course, the music here is great like i said, each instrument from the violin, the guitars and the cello among many others were executed brilliantly here. Drake's voice, which is the main reason why i brought the Leonard Cohen comparison here is also great. The production here is also great, better than Pink Moon. This album certainly is a really good one.
Best Song: Cello Song
Worst Song: Time Has Told Me

I always am a fan of grunge but Superfuzz Bigmuff still managed to take me by surprise with how good it really was. I already have heard Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge by these guys and i like this album a lot more due to how much more heavy it is. The main highlight is obviously the guitars, they absolutely rip here and give the songs some really cool melodies alongside some of the other instruments and the vocals. And since this is just an EP, this EP just manages to breeze through which makes this album an absolute joy to listen to, not that i would have minded having more though. I am just absolutely shocked by how amazing this album is.
Best Song: No One Has
Worst Song: Chain That Door

Step In The Arena is a rather great hip-hop album. I'm not familiar with this group per se but i am definitely familiar with one of it's members, DJ Premier, primarily because he produced for some other albums on this list. And just like he does a great job on those albums, he does a great job here too with some rather catchy samples even if some of them are a bit hollow. The rapping is also cool with both Premier and Guru doing a pretty good job even if some of these lyrics are a bit dumb and cheesy. It does make sense as this was a hip-hop album from the early 90s and has all the cheesiness you would expect from that. I liked this one a bit more than i thought i would have.
Best Song: Check The Technique
Worst Song: Game Plan

Closer is an album that is kinda in the middle for me. I always thought of Joy Division as a band that i had never heard much of but one that i would enjoy because i like indie rock and i thought their name was pretty cool too. Though, from what i have listened to, it's not something that i have a lot to say about. Most of it sounds kinda like video game music like what you would probably hear in the dungeon of an RPG from the late 90s to early 2000s. It definitely wasn't bad, the album definitely did have it's moments and it is one of those albums where the longer songs shine more but it's just not very special. Its not bad, just not great either.
Best Song: The Eternal
Worst Song: Isolation

A Hard Day's Night is certainly a fitting end for my Beatles journey on this list (minus that one George Harrison album i have yet to do) not because it's a great album but because it is more or less exemplary of The Beatles' early career. It's really boring, samey, repetitive and pretty much does nothing unique or special or that hasn't already been done. It also might be the worst of the Beatles albums i have listened to thus far because even the other Beatles albums i gave a 2 at least had one standout track, this one doesn't really have any. This album was not unbearable which is why i can't justify giving this 1 star but it just reinforces the fact (to me, at least) that the Beatles were a band that never really hit their stride until 1966.
Best Song: You Can't Do That
Worst Song: If I Fell
Side Note: Since this is my last Beatles album (by the whole band of course) here is the rankings of them:
1. The Beatles (The White Album)
2. Revolver
3. Abbey Road
4. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
5. Rubber Soul
6. With The Beatles
7. A Hard Day's Night

Walking Wounded was a pretty good album. This one definitely feels quite a lot more electronic than the last Everything But The Girl album i heard as it really does go hard on it's electronica tag. It does remind me a lot of Madonna's Ray Of Light in quite a bit of ways. Both albums feel rather electronic and the songs in both feel as if they have rather similar structures too. Granted, this one uses less styles of music than the former and because of that, gets repetitive faster but i still never hated my time with this album. I also liked it quite a bit more than Idlewild as it just feels like it is more of my style of music. Pretty good album if i say so myself.
Best Song: Wrong
Worst Song: Good Cop, Bad Cop

I honestly didn't really like Bubble And Scrape and i hate the fact that i didn't because this album definitely seems like something right up my alley. There are some moments of really solid musicianship with cool guitars, crunchy basslines, energetic drumming and quite a bit of other things that should make me like this album. But the issue is, this album just has a severe laziness factor to it. Every element of this album has this lazy, sleazy feel. Everything from the vocals, the lyrics (probably the worst offender of this) and even the music all are guilty of this. I can't in good faith give this a one (due to the aforementioned solid instrumentation) but even at 46 minutes, it felt like it was dragging along.
Best Song: Sacred Attention
Worst Song: Sister

I thought If I Could Only Remember My Name was a pretty solid album. At this point, i am pretty well versed in David Crosby's music seeing i have listened to 4 of the 7 albums he's involved in on this list. I thought that the general folk rock sound of this album was pretty nice to listen to as it did bring back some Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young vibes especially seeing as that would make sense, since both Neil Young and Graham Nash worked on a couple of the songs on this album. Honestly, beyond all of that, this isn't really an album i have that much to say about seeing as it is a pretty typical folk rock album but it is still a pretty solid one.
Best Song: Music Is Love
Worst Song: I'd Swear There Was Somebody Here

I'm honestly pretty surprised that i enjoyed Here Come The Warm Jets as much as i did. In this album, i really could see a lot of the experimentation that Brian Eno is particularly known for but this time with a much more glam rock style in same vein as someone like David Bowie which makes sense since the band that Brian Eno was in (Roxy Music) was also a glam rock band. I did expect that some of the experimental elements would fall flat on their face and while i was correct with some parts, there were other parts that worked shockingly well and didn't get annoying at all. I think that overall, this album is definitely one of the more solid experimental albums on this list.
Best Song: Driving Me Backwards
Worst Song: Here Come The Warm Jets