Reviews by avoidperil

It's easy to get sucked in by the popular consensus on an album and only see it as an unassailable monolith. Is it possible to separate the legend from the music?

On its face, this album isn't really saying anything either emotively or literally. Any psychedelic insights it provides are obvious and accessible, which is probably why it flourished with the general public. It's a group of love-song writers throwing together some loose ideas.

When people say you can't recreate the Beatles, or lament that there's no music like this today, it's because at it's core this isn't as striking or brilliant as it's made out to be - it was just one of the first to do it. It's One Direction for the 60s.

I'm only vaguely familiar with their work. I see what they were going for with their proto-grunge sound, with a bit of experimentation thrown in the mix.

I'm just not a fan of psychedelia or rock music that doesn't have anything to say. This is overwhelmingly of the era. I don't like this era.

Not what I want to listen to the day after Christmas. Maybe if this had been put before me on Christmas Eve or earlier, it would have been appreciated. Being given this as exactly the wrong time, I must give it a 2.

It's Christmas. I genuinely don't care about this awful album. So it spawned a whole lot of dad rock classics? Don't care. I don't like them either.

The Silent Night song at the end is funny considering I got this album for Christmas Eve.

It's a solid album, but not perfect.

This is an easy 5 for me. Listening to this as a teenager when it first came out was formative for me.

The best parts of this album are the parts when Kanye shuts up and lets other people carry it for him. I don't know why people go on about the production. Is it because there's nothing else to latch onto here? Anyway, the production is awful.

I'm only giving this a 2 because there are some fun guest appearances.

I try to confront everything this list sends to me with an open mind. This is immediately trash and I hate it. I don't need to hear an already dated auto-tune heavy trap album that has a three note variation talking about the various levels of self abuse you endured to get some dick.

I don't really like this kind of blues music. This is fine though. Unremarkable. It's music that was at least two decades old in 1970. Noodley guitar work. It settles quickly into by-the-numbers blues chords and beats you down until Layla comes in (too late) with some genuine passion and clever playing.

I rolled my eyes when I saw this come up. I prepared my 3 stars. Then I listened to the album again for the hundredth time. It's the most music shaped music. It's the most album shaped album. It has charisma, and a desire to get you in the feels if you're not careful.

How can such a familiar and cliche album deliver a gut punch? On 'Go Your Own Way' no less?

Go on and take your 5 stars and get out of here, you monster.

Not good, not terrible. First track is decent, but the next couple of tracks were just not very good. Strangely reminiscent of NIN ambient tracks or Holy Fuck analog electronica from the mid 00's. Or even MBV in the '90s. It's not something I want or need to listen to, but I can appreciate where it's coming from.

There are some notes here that I enjoy, but then general cacophany and lack of theme or meaning really strip this album of any relevance to me. It feels less planned out than just being a vehicle for improvisations. Entirely uninteresting to me.

When I put aside that voice that says "I am supposed to like this" and consider this on its own terms, this album is fine. I don't think the album sells itself on its own merits. It's a little too jazzy and doesn't offer enough beauty for me to want to listen to it outside of this experiment. But I get why it's here.

This is just really bad poetry over really uninspired musicianship. There's no reason to listen to this in the first place. This has no place being on this list. There's literally an Australian album that was released in 1987 that is so much more important: Midnight Oil's Diesel and Dust.

This is some of the most boring, derivative, uninspired, forgettable music to come out of the 1960s. Even if I was hearing it in 1967, I'd think it was awful. The recording quality is naturally abysmal, but so are the riffs and the lyrics. Sappy, soul-styled romantic lyrics that are missing the key element of soul music - the soul. This crap is taking a place that could be given to an actually decent album.

This one comes out the gates swinging with a funk-metal sound that's very reminiscent of the couple of years either side of the millenium. It has a feeling that it's trying to reach for the 'next-big-thing' status of the new era of music to come.

What we end up with is a flimsy set of complain-rock tracks that try to replace hooks with simply beating the listener over the head with thrashy guitars. Very pedestrian, and not something I'll ever listen to again willingly, or think is deserving to be on any list (even a bad one).

Just because it's old doesn't mean it's good. This thing is barely holding together sonically. The mixing is offensive. The stereo split to hard left and right is disgusting.
(Turns out there is a mono version that immediately doesn't drive me nuts, though it does peak and hiss like crazy.)

This has so many Beatles moments (not a good thing) and the Spanish Harlem cover doesn't really improve on the original. California Dreaming is just shy of 3 minutes, and while great, doesn't justify the syrupy sickly nature of the rest of the album.

Decent, but a bit forgettable. An interesting concept. The best part about the album is when it ended because it started the best 'related to' playlist on Spotify that I've ever heard.

Yeah, this is an album that has existed and I could have listened to it at any point in the 33 years that it has existed. George Michael is hardly a secret. I just don't think it has all that much to offer. It's telling that the most well known song on the album is nothing like the rest of it. He's not a ballad writer.