Reviews by berl1nchair

These guys were the kings of the early 80s, all fringes and makeup and synthesisers. I’m actually amazed how well these tracks stack up over 40 years later. Title track and Hungry Like The Wolf are the obvious standouts, but the rest is all pretty good, too.

Yes, this is the sound of being in a hostel at 2am whilst trying to sleep and the guys in your dorm are having a party and talking in Spanish. Mildly interesting for 5 minutes but soon gets a bit boring.

The Boos mostly passed me by when this came out, but going back to the early/mid-90s, this is a bit of an understated gem. A couple of nice, noisy tunes that really grabbed me, and the album as a whole is a good listen. Perhaps overly long, but it never felt like a chore.

Bohemian Rhapsody.

That is all.

Well, actually, it’s not, but by God, what a song. I could listen to it all day. It’s raucous, it’s operatic, it’s ridiculous, and it has endured and prospered over many years - more than 50 now!!! May its legacy live on for many more years.

Oh, and the rest of the album is pretty great, too.

Any album that has ‘God Only Knows’ must be very highly rated, in my opinion. It’s just a fantastic pop song, hands down. And plenty of other fabulous tunes here, too - ‘Wouldn’t It Be Nice’, ‘Sloop John B’, ‘Caroline, No’ and Brian Wilson’s elegy, ‘I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times’. I’m finding it hard to find fault with this collection of songs, so I guess it has to be 5 stars.

What an unremarkable collection of mid-80s pop. Whilst there is nothing terrible on here, there is nothing that jumps out at me as actually good and worthy of adding to a playlist or coming back to. Utterly forgettable.

This is interminably long. And not much of any interest happens. Lots of ridiculously fast breakbeats over relatively chill synths and singing. I actually didn’t mind the first track (which goes for more than 20mins) but by about the 1 hour mark I was bored out of my brain. Maybe I would have fared better with the single CD version but couldn’t be bothered figuring out the track listing to reproduce it.

Not bad as far as Southern Fried Rock goes. Some good guitar licks and reasonable tunes, although the lyrics didn’t always do it for me, and things tended to drag a bit towards the end……..

Always one of the better bands that got lumped in with ‘Britpop’. Lots of cool stuff here, including ‘Richard III’, ‘Sun Hits The Sky, ‘Going Out’ and a slew of lesser known tracks. Worth a second look, for sure.

Psychedelic blues, yes please!!
Sure, Clapton turned out to be a shithead, but the combo here of him, Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce is absolutely stellar. Sunshine of Your Love is the riff all 12 year olds learn on guitar (sorry, Smoke On The Water), SWLABR manages to be weird yet still compelling, and then you’ve still got Tales of Brave Ulysses, Outside Woman Blues and Strange Brew. Loses a point for Mother’s Lament which is terrible, but otherwise top notch.

Bored. I knew a couple of his tracks from the previous album which got played on radio, but a whole album of this twee, folksy stuff is too much for me.

The sound of British 90’s angry youth. It stands up reasonably well, although not any of their major hits on this album. Most interesting as the last musical document of Richey before he fell off the earth somewhere.

Not really that punk, but I quite like bits of this. Gloria is a cracker, the rest tends to drag on a bit. I’ll probably go back to give it another listen at some stage, but not that highly rated for me right now.

Look, there’s some very good stuff here, but some of it veers a bit too close to Cash Karaoke for me. The version of ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ an example. ‘Hurt’ is fantastic, as is ‘I Hung My Head’ and ‘Personal Jesus’. ‘Danny Boy’ and ‘In My Life’ can definitely pass. A great document but perhaps could have been better.

Eh, 2 reggae albums in a row, really, Generator??
Anyway, this is by far the better of the two. Reggae is not really my thing, but old Bob was quite the cream of the crop in that regard. Highlights here are 'Exodus', 'Three Little Birds' (I never knew that was the actual title) and 'One Love'. Honourable mention to 'Jamming'.
Torn between a 3 and a 4 here, so I'll be generous and go with a 4 stars.

Yeah, this didn't really do it for me. It was all a bit samey, and the lyrics weren't really interesting enough for me to take much notice. The musicians are probably really good, and they can hold a groove fine, but it really did seem to be the same song several times by the end. Sorry, Peter!!

Sweet vocals, lush arrangements. A lot to like here, with the crowning glory of ‘Son of a Preacher Man’.

I wouldn't have thought PSB had many boring albums in their discography, but I did find myself a bit bored with this one. It's perfectly fine, just lacking for a couple of proper big hits that make you want to put it back on again. Being Boring is fine, and Face The Truth and The End of The World are probably the best of the rest, but overall left me a bit flat. I'm sure they have better albums, will see if their other 2 on the generator are any better.

Whilst Marshall does an amazing job of being as offensive as he possibly can, this was a hard slog to get through. Lots of dodgy lyrics with themes of murdering girlfriends and trying to shag anything that moves undoubtedly appeals to rabid teenagers, but I find it tiring now I’m in my 50s.

Still not sure if I’d call this punk (probably more akin to art rock, similar to Talking Heads although they are quite different in a lot of ways), but I do call it bloody good. The centerpiece, Marquee Moon, is a great way to get lost for 10 minutes or so, and the central instrumental section is heaven on tape to me. The remainder is all good, particularly See No Evil, Venus and the closer, Torn Curtain. Torn between 4 and 5 stars but going to err on the side on generosity and go with a big 5.