Reviews by benc

Pretty cool! Maybe too cool for me? It definitely puts the easy in easy listening.

A pretty disappointing set of Oasis b-sides. The Charlatans are at their best when they're working a funky Madchester organ groove, so I guess it makes sense this is their first album after their keyboardist died. Take it off the list, add Some Friendly.

Damn I really disliked listening to this. One long noodly electric blues-rock guitar solo drilling into my brain. I felt like I was sitting in a gentrified BBQ restaurant for 75 minutes. I'm assured this is an important/influential album for many later improv-based bands -- sure, fine.

Another largely forgettable bit of 90s Britpop ephemera. I like the psychedelic vibe, but I can't imagine ever getting the urge to listen to this again.

-this record is not for me, but shout out to all the yearning twink English majors out there.

-he really puts the baroque in baroque pop, powdered wigs and all.

-there's an irritating affectation you can hear on some songs (most audibly on "The Art Teacher") where he inhales through his teeth. it drove me nuts.

-RW reminds me of working at the local public library when I was in high school. The library ladies loved RW. It's definitely librarian music.

5 singers at their peak strength, drawing on what they do best while also pushing the boundaries of psychedelic soul. What more could you want?

An outrageously good album and solid proof there should be more Motown on this list. (Although, most of the iconic 60s Motown recordings were released as singles, yet again revealing a problem with the album-focused list.)

MTV has committed countless crimes against our society and this recording alone is almost enough to make up for it.

When I was in 5th grade my brother got a new stereo for his birthday, so I inherited his old CD boombox. I only had a few CDs laying around my bedroom, whatever my brothers weren't listening to at the time. This album was one of the first "repeat listens" of my life. I would listen to this maybe 3 or 4 times in a row almost every day for months on end. I had heard some Nirvana songs on the radio, but this was the first time I heard any of their lesser known songs -- every single song instantly hooked me in.

A lot has been said about how this performance showed "another side" of Nirvana, or how they revealed a different kind of depth underneath the trashy noisiness of their studio albums. I think Kurt was a more complete and thoughtful artist than even his devotees gave him credit for, and he struggled to reveal the depth of his aesthetic taste without being tacky. If anything, this Unplugged performance allowed him to do just that and made a direct link between Kurt's songwriting and the blues tradition. It also gave him space to show off the immense control he had over his voice -- it is truly shocking to hear how he was able to channel such a wild, noisy, passionate singing voice into this instrument that was so widely admired.

Even though Nirvana are perennially loved by teens and adolescents, I find more to love as I get older. This performance hits me right in the center of my heart and I expect I'll listen to it for the rest of my life.

I'd never heard Blue Nile before -- pleasantly surprised! Each song is a weird little sound collage. I will definitely listen to this again.

Reminds me of guys who play an hour long set at the basement show and then ask "can I play one more" and nobody really responds but he does it anyway and that last song is 20 minutes long.

I don't usually love jazz-ish singer-songwriters, but honestly this wasn't too bad. On most songs, I could settle nicely into the band's groove. However, I cannot abide the dumb exoticist corniness of "Gypsy Woman."

In my memory, Let It Bleed was kinda so-so and a bit overrated. I was wrong. This was a great listen. The Stones had impeccable musical instincts at this point. Every groove, every instrument, every vocal line is exactly right. For a bunch of British dudes playing American blues music, their sense of musical feel is astounding.

Jerry Lee Lewis was not a good guy. Unfortunately, many (or most) of the 50s rock n roll icons were terrible people who did terrible things. I suppose it's important to remember this was dangerous music made by absolute weirdos -- conservative, mainstream culture was afraid it would turn their children into psychos. So it makes sense this record sounds absolutely *wild*. This style of rock n roll was already pretty old by 1964 -- of course, the Star Club was where the Beatles cut their teeth and Beatlemania was already in full force when JLL recorded this concert. Nevertheless, you can tell rock n roll's full power to radicalize kids was still in its early stages at this point. I've obviously heard Jerry Lee Lewis and I thought I knew what to expect, but this is a good document to explain how/why this music drove people nuts. I don't respect the guy at all and I wouldn't wanna get dinner with him, but I can't deny the absolute over-the-top musical carnage in this performance.

I can't stand Aerosmith. It's like Zeppelin, but somehow dumber, screechier, and more perverted. No thank you!

Is Pet Sounds a "concept album"? That can mean a lot of different thing, so it's a bit hard to say. (Thankfully) it doesn't feature the overwrought world-building and character lore of the classic 70s concept album. Instead, it focuses on the subtle transformations and overlapping contradictions you feel when you're completely preoccupied with love and fixated on loss. At its broadest and deepest level, I do think Brian is reflecting on the general "hero's journey" he probably experienced emerging from a garage in Hawthorn, escaping the clutches of his overbearing father, finding a powerful musical voice, and then feeling his own sanity slip away -- in this tragedy, Brian can never go home again. It's all there, obliquely, and masked by puppy love and angsty torch songs. Maybe Brian is telling a "story," or maybe not, but it doesn't totally matter because he's unlocked such a deep connection between the musical and emotional contents of what he's produced that every moment of Pet Sounds feels "whole." Nothing feels out of place, even the brief flashes of ugliness and uncouthness; remember, "baroque" is a term for an irregular, misshapen pearl.

I love ambient music and hadn't listened to this in a very long time so this was great to hear again. Some genuinely interesting formal and timbral experiments for electronic music at that time.

-I had an ex in college who was obsessed with Britpop, so I think I'm relatively familiar with the genre (for an American). I've liked quite a bit of Britpop, but still the most celebrated, iconic albums of the genre are pretty so-so.

-This definitely sounds like an "homage" to a bunch of quintessentially British bands. There is a musical nationalism here I find quite frustrating and unappealing.

-the vocal harmonies sound pretty nice.

-I rarely say this, but the album is too long. If they cut 5-6 songs, it would improve significantly.

I adore 70s Bowie, so it may be sacrilegious to say this is not my favorite of his from this era. It's an interesting transitional record, and he's arrived at a great sound, but the songwriting (especially on Side A) can be a bit unfocused. Still, Bowie on a bad day is unbelievably excellent.

It's practically impossible to evaluate the title track of this album on its own terms. "Imagine" has been re-performed and re-contextualized endlessly and it's either the "greatest song ever written" (if you're a Boomer) or absolutely cringe naive nonsense if you're younger than 35. For what it's worth, and for better or worse, it's an elegy for the New Left -- by 1971, the 60s were "over" but the US and the UK were still embroiled in Cold War imperial adventures and Nixon was building his political kingship off hippie bashing. The Summer of Love ideals the Beatles represented were no longer popular, but the social/political problems these ideals were meant to address were alive and well (and, more importantly, the backlash against these ideals was gaining strength). Throughout the 1968 protests across Europe, one of the most popular slogans was "Die Phantasie an die Macht," or "All Power to the Imagination!" Lennon (who previously shrugged off the '68 rebellions) was now free to make political claims in his own name so he rushed to plant his flag with the New Left by paling around with the Panthers and throwing money at a bunch of radical underground publications. But it was probably too little too late, so "Imagine" fails to project "what could be" because it's so hung up in "what could have been." This nostalgia (for a time only a few years prior!) is partly why the Boomers are obsessed with its message -- it makes them feel like "we almost had a revolution" (which may or may not actually be true, depending on what they mean). And like so many New Left icons, its message was completely diluted and appropriated by libertarians and gets dragged back into the limelight every few years by the ruling class as an anti-activist "can't we all just get along" sleeping pill (exhibit A is Gal Gadot). To Lennon's credit, "He'S rIcH aNd He'S tElLiNg Us To ImAgInE nO pOsSeSsIoNs!" is an incredibly shallow critique. Yeah dawg, that's why the song is called "Imagine" and not "I'm a perfect role model and you should live exactly like me." In fact, that's the absolute *strength* of this album -- Lennon is brimming with both ego and humility, hypocrisy and sincerity, condemnation and self-effacement, imperfections and redemption. The 2 songs immediately following "Imagine" directly address Lennon's grossest qualities: his history of violence against women, and his nasty tendency to mock people with disabilities. The former is something he's had to account for endlessly (especially after his death), the latter is something he's rarely criticized for but he nevertheless felt the need to apologize for. Elsewhere on the album, he continues to poke holes in the soft utopianism of "Imagine" by addressing his own feelings of hopelessness, uncertainty, depression, anger, pettiness, mania, neediness, etc. He would probably be the first person to acknowledge the worrisome self-righteousness of "Imagine" because the rest of the album is one long apologia for that ego trip. It's almost a shame how strong of a shadow this song casts -- there are so many other killer tracks here: "Jealous Guy," "Gimme Some Truth," and "How" are among the best he ever wrote, and there's no filler anywhere else on the album. If he left off track 1 and gave it a new name it would be, undoubtedly, celebrated (even by younger generations) as one of the best albums of the 1970s. Nevertheless, despite, or because of, its flaws, I think it is.

I don't know why I'd been avoiding Dr. John for so long, but this was an excellently weird listen.

I'm really searching for something nice to say about Steely Dan. The only thing I can think of is that I disliked this album less than Pretzel Logic and that the first 2 tracks are decently good pop songs. Otherwise, listening to this felt like sitting in a dentist's chair.

Damn. One brutally powerful song after another. Nina Simone fakes nothing.