Reviews by apollo

The Velvet Underground & Nico is an album that suffers from the exact opposite problem of The Fall's The Infotainment Scan (an album i did earlier in this project) whilst the latter album was pretty good musically (with the occasional hiccups) but lacking when it came to vocals. This album is pretty good vocally throughout the majority of the album but is lacking musically. The instruments have the issue of sounding very poorly recorded and that often tends to make them get annoying after a while. This album deserves a 2.5.
Best Song: Sunday Morning
Worst Song: European Son
Side note: I do think the album art having the banana be peelable is a pretty neat idea.

Harvest is quite the good album if i do say so myself. The album mostly either had songs that heavily utilized a soft acoustic guitar, ones that used a somewhat heavier guitar (those ones were my favorites by the way), and ones with a more whimsical sounding style. Young's vocals were solid as well, with me remembering the vocals from Old Man being sampled in a Redlight King song with the same name (even if they aren't sampled there, they still sound eerily similar). The album also never really had a bad song which is a major plus. This is a pretty solid album that's well worth a listen.
Best Song: Alabama
Worst Song: There's a World

Wild Wood is an album that's pretty solid for what it is but doesn't seem to noteworthy. The album did start off with it's fairly weird moments but then transitioned into a far more normal album. Weller's singing is fairly good and the actual music also had its good moments but sometimes, the songs felt like they were dragging on and not adding much onto themselves especially when you consider that this album is a fairly long one. The album is pretty decent but i just feel like i don't really have mush else to add to this review other than that.
Best Song: Can You Heal Us (Holy Man)
Worst Song: Has My Fire Really Gone Out?

Machine Head was definitely a fun album. The album had remained good throughout the whole thing but i think the album shined the brightest during the last 3 songs. Smoke On The Water was initially that one song i knew from that old arcade game Primal Rage where it played a lot but it was a really good song due to that great guitar hook. Lazy was also a really good one with that really cool sounding intro and had the ideas of that intro spread throughout the entire song. Space Truckin' was also cool too with it's hooks as well. The first 4 songs are good too but i still stan by what i said in the second sentence. The album is still great throughout the whole thing though.
Best Song: Lazy
Worst Song: Highway Star

Adele is an artist that i am very familiar with since a lot of her stuff played on the radio when i was a kid but i still wasn't expecting 25 to be this good. I have heard all the singles quite a lot on the radio and they are all good songs but here i found that even the regular album tracks were fantastic. Adele's singing combined with the instrumentals were absolutely great and could even be enough to nearly bring me to tears especially with the sadder lyrics. Even Send My Love (To Your New Lover) while feeling distracting at first, is a pretty nice break from the sadder stuff. The album may have dipped in quality a bit with the last 3 songs but other than that, this is an absolutely great album.
Best Song: River Lea
Worst Song: All I Ask

I gotta say, I was legitimately not expecting A Girl Called Dusty to be this good. When i was first exposed to Dusty Springfield with Dusty In Memphis, she seemed pretty good but this album truly brought out what she is capable of. The music was very good for a lot of these tracks and of course, the vocals and lyrics were incredibly top notch, the album also ran at a good pace so it never got tedious at all. I guess some of the ideas that Dusty tried didn't always pay off but for the most part, the album succeeded in what it was trying to do.
Best Song: Twenty Four Hours From Tulsa
Worst Song: Wishin' And Hopin'

Dexys Midnight Runners is just one of those bands that has some pretty good musicians but a not very good singer and Searching For The Young Soul Rebels shows this. The music for the most part was pretty solid with some good work on the trumpets, that is when they weren't doing the whole sudden instrument introduction thing (seriously, i hate when songs do that). The first track had a pretty cool intro though. But the vocals just weren't really something i liked. The singer just doesn't really sound like he's hitting notes right and his voice got a little bit grating at times. He did sound good in the Poem near the end of the album which really makes me think he should be something like a comedian or a motivational speaker as opposed to a singer. All in all, this album is okay, just kinda ruined by the vocals.
Best Song: The Teams That Meet In Caffs
Worst Song: I'm Just Looking

Stevie Wonder does it again and this time with Innervisions. This album is just really great. The instrumentals are great and all but the main thing that steals the show is Stevie's voice. His voice has so much range, is like heaven to the ears and also tried tons of unique things. I also did think that part in Living For The City where it was basically an audiolog from a crime taking place alongside that one n-bomb really caught me off guard since i really was not expecting that from an album like this. I think this album beats out Fulfillingness' First Finale due to this one just being far more unique and interesting but they are both great albums.
Best Song: Living For The City
Worst Song: All In Love Is Fair
Side note: I also think that its crazy that this was his 16th album and he wasn't even 25 yet.

Raw Power is an instance of an album which is great but suffers from poor production. Writing-wise and instrumentally, this album is great, The guitars are really cool sounding in a lot of the tracks and Iggy's singing, while silly at times, was actually pretty well done and provided something new for every track. This albums only real problem is the production, David Bowie's production sounded really poorly done and kinda feels like this album was being recorded in a dumpster. It also just doesn't really sound like a studio album. If you added crowd cheers and some pre-song banter, you could probably trick me into thinking this is a live album. I still really like this album, it just needed a better production job which is why it gets a 3.5
Best Song: Search And Destroy
Worst Song: I Need Somebody

Idlewild is just like a lot of the other albums i have looked at for this project when it comes to quality, Its not a very remarkable album but it is still fairly solid for what it is. The songs were all generally good sounding and never really felt annoying or super boring but there isn't really anything interesting i can really say about the majority of them. The saxophone and trumpet solos were cool and some of the songs did have that Super Nintendo sounding keyboard which i just like about it. This album is a fine listen, especially on valentines day with your significant other but it doesn't really do anything that other new wave albums from this time period haven't done.
Best Song: Goodbye Sunday
Worst Song: I Don't Want To Talk About It

Parsley, Sage, Rosemary And Thyme is a pretty decent album for what it is. The songs had that generally relaxing yet somewhat energetic feel that Simon And Garfunkel were known for. Some of the songs also had some genuinely really unique ideas like a cover of Silent Night being played right next to a news broadcast which is an idea i genuinely love. This album unfortunately does sound rough in some spots which the duo's later albums would rectify. I also did find the vocals in one track to be a little creepy but that wasn't really a huge issue or anything. This album is good, just not very refined.
Best Song: A Simple Desultory Philippic
Worst Song: The 59th Street Bridge Song

Pearl is quite a good album that i feel i won't have too much to say about. The songs had that bluesy sound i like in a lot of these albums and Joplin's raspy voice was something i really liked in this album. The lyrics were also cool throughout all the songs. I don't really like the fact that there is a song without any actual music in this album since I'm not a fan of those types of songs because they just feel so uninteresting, at least the lyrics were interesting. This album is fairly solid even if it isn't too much to write home about
Best Song: Trust Me
Worst Song: Mercedes Benz

Microshift feels like a mix of The War On Drugs' indie sound mixed with an organ and some arcade/slot machine sounding sound effects. And boy do i love it for that. While this might be considered a noise album which a lot of people don't seem to like very much, this album managed to find a way to make the noise come together extremely well and make it sound absolutely beautiful at times. It also does help that the album is on the longer side when it comes to most of it songs which allows the album to grow on you a lot. Tracks 7 and 8 might have dropped the ball a bit when it comes to quality but they were the shortest songs making that not much of an issue. I think that this is a really great album that is really underrated.
Best Song: Negative Space
Worst Song: Boxing Day

...Baby One More Time feels like an album which is capable of doing something good but does it so much that it starts to become not so good. The vocals and guitar segments were solid as well as the lyrics but it does tend to feel like the songs were overusing the same formula at points. A majority of the songs used the same drum beat over and over again and the songs that did deviate from it were some of the worse ones as they could be repetitive in their own way. This album is alright (the songs that use the same formula all were of the title track and that is a good song so it doesn't affect me too bad) but there is no doubt that it can become a repetitive and boring one.
Best Song: ...Baby One More Time
Worst Song: Soda Pop

Contrary to it's name, Bad is not a bad album, in fact its a really darn good one. This one had quite a lot of energy just like Off The Wall did but this one feels like it just has a little bit more magic than that one. The Sega Genesis sounding guitars and bass were also great and gave this album a whole lot of personality. Jackson's vocals also were great here too. It was also cool how this album could go from a somber soul album, to a dance banger, all the way to a rock-out style. Not every song here was great but the songs that were really were. This is definitely one of Michael Jackson's best works.
Best Song: Smooth Criminal
Worst Song: The Way You Make Me Feel

Shake Your Money Maker was quite the fun album if i do say so myself. The best part of this album to me was easily the melodies, Chris Robinson really brought them all to life with his singing as did all the music but it was mostly the vocal melodies that stole the show. The album also did not have a bad song or get boring like most other albums did. I'm honestly unsure of what else I'm supposed to say about this album so all i will say about it is that it is a great fun album that i really enjoyed the whole way through.
Best Song: Could I've Been So Blind
Worst Song: She Talks To Angels

Me Against The World was actually a very good album. The production here was legitimately amazing with the instrumentals incorporating quite a bit of R&B elements which i really do like. 2Pac's rapping was also really smart and also really fit well with the flow of every song. None of the songs here were bad either even if the album was around 1 hour long. This is definitely a really great album.
Best Song: Me Against The World
Worst Song: So Many Tears

The Soft Bulletin isn't the greatest album in the world but what it does, it does well. Most of the first half of the album, while fine, wasn't all too interesting with that part probably being the most forgettable one but the second half did one-up it with more interesting songs. The music could actually be pretty sad sounding at times as it fit with some of the lyrics and that i can appreciate in an album like this. There also are not any egregiously bad songs in this album so that's cool. I don't really know what else to say about this album so all I'll say is its good.
Best Song: What Is The Light?
Worst Song: The Spark That Bled

Terence Trent D'Arby (or his real name Sananda Maitryea) definitely shows that he has a lot of talent with Introducing The Hardline According To Terence Trent D'Arby. The music here is super relaxing and soothing but can get more energetic when the time calls for it. I also liked Terence's singing which kinda gave me Michael Jackson vibes (they look pretty similar too so that probably adds to it). My only real gripe with this album is the second to last song which has no real music which would be fine if it was a short song but it was 5 and a half minutes long. Other than that though, this was a pretty good album.
Best Song: If You All Get To Heaven
Worst Song: As Yet Untitled

Wow, so we go from a sad ballad album with Sea Change to a more sample heavy album with Guero, Beck has quite a lot of range. And yes, i do love this album. The samples here give this album an unbelievable amount of personality but that's not to undermine Beck's singing and his work on the regular instruments because those are all great too. Its just the sampling and the great use of it that really steal the show for me. This really is the best Beck album i have done so far beating out Sea Change.
Best Song: Rental Car
Worst Song: Missing
Side note: The music videos are also incredibly surreal and I love it.