Reviews by applaud01

At this point in her career, Joan Armatrading had more critical respect than hits. The big hits - Drop the Pilot and I Love it When You Call me Names- didn't come along for another four or five albums. (The Key is probably the album that should be here.)

But this is fine. Sharp, observant songs, with a great, Glyn John's produced backing. An enjoyable time.

A joyously chaotic, resolutely bizarre half hour of an anarchist, dadaist middle finger to normal.

They take everything you think you know about pop music and warp it, turn it inside out, cut it up and reassemble it into strange music that could almost pass for songs.

The number of bands that wouldn't exist without the Residents opening the door - Ween, They Might Be Giants, Primus, for starters; TISM here in Australia - is a measure of their importance.

When the theme song from South Park, a sort of Duck Stab and soda, plays regularly on TV, and no-one turns a hair, then this really isn't that hard.

It's hilarious, it's ear opening, it's glorious.

That this sits as the fourth lowest ranking album on this website is a sad indication of how run of the mill audience tastes are. This is, it seems "caviar to the general".

Okay, so rap and hip hop are still a blind spot, but this is pretty good.

Nice production; great beats; inventive, fluent rhyming; there are certainly worse ways to spend some time.

When you've influenced bands like The Beatles, The Monkees, R.E.M., Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and the Smith's as well as just about any other band that's played "Country-Rock" then obviously, you belong on this list.

Do they need FIVE albums on this list? Well......

The sound of a woman who isn't taking your shit any more.

It's very much of its time with lots of 90s post grundge guitars and production.

But it is extraordinarily angry and crank about a woman dealing with breakup or even just living her life.

Glad I heard it.

Certainly the guy has a fine set of vocal chords, but that's about where it ends.

The songs are that self-important, deadly serious rambling that passed for poetic in the sixties. And it's artistic - or at least pretentious. The music is sort of drifting light jazz jams, complete with vibraphone. One of the songs riffs on a Miles Davis track, while another is a multi-movement suite. When the conga player also gets a credit as the Band Conductor, you know it's serious.

It's certainly distinctive and Tim Buckley is very much one of a kind. Whether he's the kind anyone wants to hear these days is a moot point.

Perfect song after perfect song.

There are no low spots, but You've got a Friend, Far Away, It's Too Late and Natural Woman are heart stopping standouts.

And Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow, her slowed down, stripped back version of the song she wrote for the Shirelles, will take the top of your head off. With Joni Mitchell and James Taylor on backup vocals, it's a revelation.

A great album.

Restrained to the point of minimalism this cool, sparse record is about as seductive as records are allowed to be.

Probably some people will see it as superior elevator music, but the beauty of the arrangements and the delicacy of the performances make this very special. The elevator music they have in Heaven.

Let me say at the outset that I have never found myself joining those - Nick Cave amongst them - who worship at the shrine of Nick Cave.

There are certainly Bad Seeds songs that I like, but I bought the Greatest Hits compilation and that seems to have me covered.

To be honest I think that Cave's songwriting is stuffed full of good ideas, but - and we'll whisper it, so the worshippers don't hear - he does tend to overwrite his lyrics. He stuffs them full of ideas, then stuffs them full of images and then finds a spare pack of metaphors and subtext that he tosses in as well, all the while with a rhyming dictionary in hand.

He'd benefit from having someone willing to say, "Nick, just calm down!"

Solid Musicianship from the band and Cave sings like a lounge crooner with anger issues who's seen Robert Mitchum in Night of the Hunter a few too many times.

Your appreciation may vary with the whole theatrical "Prince of Darkness," Gothic horror schtick, but it certainly grabs your attention, probably by the balls, and doesn't let go. It dares you not to admire it.

But perhaps it's time Nick switches to decaf.

Remember when you asked for the new Prince album for Christmas?

And Nanna gave you this, "because the man in the shop said it was just as good"?

By their third album The Who had ascended to their rightful place as one of the Holy Trinity of British Bands - Beatles, Stones and The Who.

Any album that contains Tattoo and I Can See For Miles has to be staking a claim and Mary Anne with the Shaky Hand is a filthy minded little ditty while Armenia City in the Sky is a perfect bit of effect laden Psychedelia (can we say "drugs" boys and girls?)
It does fall apart in the second half.
Rael is one of Townsend's attempts at writing a story through song that he'd lean into with Tommy. It's completely weird, but it does have the first appearance of several musical themes that would turn up in Tommy.

Silas Stingy is Entwhistle indulging his odd sense of humour.

Sunshine seems to be Townsend being deep and meaningful and ends up sounding like The Who sing Simon and Garfunkel.

The adverts, which many will just find annoying I guess, are, to anyone who listened to commercial radio in the sixties, deadpan accurate parodies of what radio actually sounded like.

The master pieces were still to come, but this is just about there.

Absolute peak funk filled with great riffs and amazing guitar.

Listening to this I'm reminded of what Tchaikovsky said about Brahms.

"What a giftless bastard!"

Lenny Kravitz seems to be one of those artists who was "about to be the biggest act in the world" then went straight from that to "he used to be the biggest act in the world" without ever actually having been the biggest act in the world.

This first album is about as dull and generic as it gets for someone who seemed to want to take on the James Brown/Hendrix/Prince mantle.

Meh....

Yes please, sir, can I have some more of this?

Brilliant use of samples to build.. well.. perhaps not dance music, but certainly jazz inflected, hip hop adjacent material that's not as chilled as Massive Attack but not as energetic as Fat Boy Slim.

Really good.

After several albums that left him as a respected niche performer, this is the moment when Gabriel launched into the stratosphere.

Every song on here is an absolute winner, from the radio friendly Sledgehammer right through to the experimental (We do what we're told) and the Kate Bush and Laurie Anderson collaborations.

Mercy Street and In Your Eyes are very beautiful and Big Time is just plain funny.

A bit of everything and all of it good.

There seems to be more than enough Smiths and Morrisey albums on this list and every time one comes up I think it might explain the hype.

Still none the wiser after this.

This is perfectly fine stuff except that the lyrics are so annoyingly, self consciously clever, that they just become annoyingly artificial.

There's an element of style over substance.

Not really sure why you'd listen to a Fats Domino album.

His natural habitat was the 45rpm single. He put nearly 50 of them up the charts over the years.

They deserve to be listened to in a stack of singles on a picnic gramophone with an automatic changer.

However you hear him, Fats is a one man party. The rollicking piano triplets, the straight ahead rocking beat. The songs are simple, the performances belting.

You can smell the gumbo, you're so deep in New Orleans.

This is the real stuff.

15 minutes of ferocious chaos.

It's not pretty - we're not talking Enya here - but it's a lot of fun.

A bunch of angry young men being angry about having the world up their ass. And if that's not punk then I don't know what is.