Reviews by avoidperil

This is the first album that I know reasonably well and feel is pleasant enough - that I am absolutely going to pan. There is nothing special here. This is off-brand Taylor Swift with a country twang.

I personally love pop music and have come to accept that some syrupy music is actually lovely when the mood strikes. This is not it. The lyrics are trite, the production is limp, the songwriting is pedestrian.

I don't hate it for what it is, I despise it for what it tries to do and fails to be.

I have their one song, Marquee Moon on a playlist somewhere and for a hot minute I enjoyed it. Now it's a hard skip whenever it comes on. That's some bands - for one bright moment they enter a point of becoming somewhat interesting but then the honeymoon is over.

And that's this album. It's fine, it exists, but it just feels a little under-produced and strained. Oh and it commits the all too common sin of having perfunctory, obfuscated lyrics. Just such an aggressively mid album all around.

I don't really know electronic music too well, but this has been rendered fairly obsolete by modern computers. Perhaps it inspired some later indie French/German electronic music I listened too, but generally nothing too deep or interesting is explored here.

I thought perhaps "From Disco to Disco" and "Sometimes" stood out a little on first listen. Other tracks just fall back on tired chord progressions, or directly uplift samples and lyrics - probably why this can't be found anywhere online, because it's largely plagiarised? Anyway - not an essential album, though fine to listen to.

I immediately thought this was strange and didn't like it. And then "Couldn't Love You More" came on and I started to listen. A few listens later, I'm finding something really intriguing about "Small Hours", "One World", and "Dancing."

The more I listen to this, the more excited I get. Nothing else I've been served in over 100 albums has felt like this.

I probably should like Springsteen but this really feels like it's not going to penetrate my brain. Nothing at all really stands out or grips me at all.

I'm coming into this one absolutely cold. It immediately feels like very storybook country to me, sung in an unsurprising style. Very little has deviated from expectation.

I would call it pleasant, but entirely forgettable.

A trip down memory lane. And one that I honestly thought would garner a solid 4/5 from me. But then I remembered how plainly gorgeous It's Summertime is, and the now anthemic Do You Realise? really did become a staple for turn of the century indie kids. It's still a beautiful song.

It's a monolith on the mostly featureless landscape of music. More than worthy of a perfect score.

I don't have time to spare to start giving a damn about this album.

This album immediately hits home with the initial track - a really interesting take on a soul/funk artist doing socially aware lyrics. I can see the influence on the soul revivalists with the stripped back instrumentation and falsetto vocals.

By the end of the album it was getting a little monotonous and repetitive. It's a shame that the lyrics also fell away, losing their punchiness by the end as well.

This feels incredibly cynical. Let's wheel out some old and tired classic guitar player and team them up with other heavyweights and some "it" names right now. The result is paint-by-numbers blues/soul guitar songs from 70 years ago, produced in the style of a 35 years ago, being piped into my eardrums today.

I kept turning the volume down so it didn't keep interrupting my thoughts. Really not the sign of a gripping listening experience.

Initial thoughts: This is some poorly recorded psychedelia. The pans between left and right are so harsh and the instrumentation filling those hard pans is so reedy and light that it actually induces nausea. Getting everything hard left with a single snare on the right with vocals dead centre is an abomination.

These are not enjoyable songs, at all.

I was born in '83 and this album was 14 years old. Anyone would have said this was antiquated then, even when it was released it was tired. Now it's 2024 and this sounds more tired and irrelevant than ever. I've never heard this album before and every track felt familar, like it was a rip-off. And the obnoxious fade-outs on every track drove me crazy.

Not ashamed to say I skipped my way through this album.

This is fine. I've listened a couple times and just can't seem to find much to really enjoy. I'm not saying there isn't something here, it's just not holding my interest enough to actively find.

Jarvis is like if Morrissey wasn't allergic of sex. He's like David Bowie if he could write interesting lyrics and music. I never really looked much past Help The Aged on this one in the past, but I should have. The same wry humour that was present on Different Class is sprinkled throughout this album.

This also made me remember the absolute madness of Jarvis Cocker on Ali G singing Help The Aged in the most unhinged way. Core memory unlocked.

What a remarkable album. This one is not perfect, but it has an eclectic charm to it. A lot of the lyrics and vocal melodies are downright clumsy and trite, but then it'll swing wildly and connect.

What is consistent throughout is the backing provided by Midlake. I centainly hope one of their albums made it onto the list (they didn't).

This is just different enough, crazy enough, bold enough for me to take an interest.

I don't really think this is punk? It's more like Metallica lite. A few vague, empty lyrics about some kind of amorphous entity that pulls the strings, some vague anger about that. The assumption I'm listening on a CD is hilarious. But strangely it's not bad.

This is a treasure. I'm not going to go so far as to proclaim it good, but there's something wonderful about the terrible instruments being employed here. Is that some kind of midi syth being tracked directly into this thing? It's like 8-bit Nine Inch Nails in German.

I'm glad I got to hear this and I'll be glad to never hear it again.

This actually isn't terrible. It's what you expect, mostly, but there are a few surprises in there. If you get over yourself for a minute, the first three tracks are actually really well constructed.

It's not giving some deep philosophy, but that's not what the cover promises me. Very much the definition of mid.

So front loaded you forget it's not a greatest hits album. There are some serious duds in this line-up though, and the songs that I like are just on the good side of great. A strong 3 from me.

It's fine. I know this album and it's story, and there are some interesting tracks. But it's telling that I haven't found cause to listen to it over the intervening 20 or so years.