Reviews by bee-york

Had to break from working on my reviews one by one when I saw this come up. A better full package than his San Quentin album and maybe my favorite live album of all time.
Johnny is very entertaining between tracks and the balance between his humourous and more showtuney tracks and the more serious and somber tracks is much better here.

Never has one album blended together into one single track more than this one.

Crude group name notwithstanding I thought this was some pretty solid turn of the century poppy/disco nonsense. I may have even been comfortable giving this a 4 if not for that Comfortably Numb, I genuinely felt offended by that cover

Definitely more of a novel listen for the time period than something I could see myself coming back to regularly. I appreciated how goofy their tone was but was definitely thinking to myself 'ok I think I get it' after about 15 or so minutes

Very much up its own ass and not very good or even amusingly bad. A 1 feels harsh but I really can't think of anything of merit to praise this with

Generational work, both in the sense of its influence and in the fact that if just a few things went wrong or with the wrong timing I could see this being seen as woefully uncool. Who gives a shit about all that when you cap things off with Scenario

Always feels a little odd to give an Eric Clapton effort considering he treats being a shit person like an Olympic sport but I'll be damned if he can't carry a tune.
Fairly all killer and no filler here which partly comes down to a slim runtime of 33 minutes. I guess some artists just really want people to feel they got their moneys worth back when you pretty much had to buy everything on physical media

Kudos for what feels like more of an individual approach compared to the other Beatles solo projects but purely on enjoyment factor I didn't gel with this one anywhere near as much

My first solo Morrissey Album on this list and a revival album at that, being made 7 years after Maladjusted. There are several degrees of separation here from what I am used to but Morrissey's lyricism still has the angst of a teenage social media user and the subtlety of a hydrogen bomb. He's really quite a twat but I think part of that endears me towards his music a little.

For the music itself, Morrissey's voice has matured quite a bit in the near 2 decades between this album and his work with The Smiths and I reckon he sounds better here. The instrumentation feels right at place with the early 2000's in terms of pop rock which will date it to some but as someone who grew up around the time I quite enjoyed it and thought it complimented Morrissey quite well.
I think a lack of truly standout songs is the only thing holding me back from giving this a 5. I loved 'The First of the Gang to Die' and think it may be one of my new favourites from Moz but there aren't enough tracks here that reach that height.

78 - Kollaps (Einsturzende Neubuaten) ***
I feel insane for rating this so high but the absurd amount of entertainment I got out of this has to be worth something.
Sounding like something between your work foreman screaming at you on a drill site in Dresden (wouldn’t be the only reports of drilling in that city according to this website) and what you would get ordering a vinyl of The Downward Spiral off of Aliexpress. Kollaps’ usage of industrial sound to its rawest extent was for me, enjoyable experimental. Between all of the screaming and ‘instruments’ at play here there is what feels like an imitation or semblance of music amidst the sharp edges of it all, something which I think had to be an inspiration to some more traditionally informed but open-minded artists to work with (Pretty Hate Machine came out just shy of a decade after this).
The chaos on display is not going to be something I’ll ever slot into a playlist any time soon, but it’s also something I can’t see myself forgetting about and certainly a welcome distraction from a lot of the downright boring and mediocre albums that paraded their way onto this list.
Track #3 Negativ Nein was my favourite because it reminded me of the toilet music in Cruelty Squad

🔊🔊 IT'S OCCASIONALLY GROOVY 🔊🔊
🎯🎯 IT'S THROWING AROUND CRAP AND SEEING WHAT STICKS🎯🎯
🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️ IT'S COMPETENTLY MADE BUT OTHERWISE UNREMARKABLE 🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️
🅱️🅱️ IT'S BECK 🅱️🅱️

Thought I was going to be disappointed after hearing such rave reviews for this guy when I was not really vibing with the first track. Thankfully I was able to get into things by the 2nd song and was along for the ride (although with this albums pace its maybe more of a melancholic cruise).

Perhaps it's due to the title song and the albums focus on it but I really didn't expect the concentrated amount of hits included here. these solo Beatles albums have been a real treat

Have I spent too much time in the musical deprivation chamber that is Britpop or was this actually kinda good

Quite a catchy if not very memorable album, may have overstayed itself if it was very long

The fact this is roughly 2 hours, flagrantly British while its creator is deeply steeped in Indian Exoticism and it was a total breeze to listen to from start to finish makes me fucking despise that Cornershop album being on this list tenfold

For how much this group is lauded I suppose I was expecting a little more. I didn't hate the vibe and definitely felt it was fitting the cover but it really did feel like a good chunk of this was just a jam session where they were just throwing out whatever their mood ring was suggesting

I dug the vibe of this one much more than their previous album I received on this list (Soft Bulletin). Still don't really vibe with the singers over-enunciation but I don't think it was as pronounced on some tracks as it was in the previous album. While there I felt it actively detract from my appreciation of the rest of the album, here it was more or less a non-factor which was neither a benefit nor a detriment.

Listening to this was very much like its successor in the 'want' duology in which I could liken it to getting an injection. I dreaded it far more than what I ended up feeling about it afterwards (I would like to think this album didn't have anything to do with me taking a long hiatus from this website and that it was just me being lazy but who knows). This didn't really provide me with any health benefits though it just left me pondering once again how Wainwright has a mixture of the zesty queer posturing of Robbie Williams as well as the snobbiness of Thom Yorke. From memory I enjoyed this a lot more than Want Two though I can't comfortably say that I liked it enough to give it a 4.

Really not the most standout affair not would it rate among some of my favorite Country tracks. But it was still perfectly listenable. Goodness, if I had to note anything as a standout/pro I suppose it had a good placement of tracks. The shifts in tone and tempo kept things fresh and from melding together.