Reviews by bow_doubt

It's easy to like Dolly and all that, but ... did not like this album. Found it boring and repeatedly skipped ahead to the next track when a song dragged and became tedious. Disappointing.

My prior experience with John Zorn, 30 years ago, left me with the idea of his music that it is noisy, aggressive, interesting, and .... just not something I'm going to listen to for pleasure much (meaning, realistically, at all). Sometime, just not right now.
This album fulfills that expectation. The musicians are skillful, there are moments here and there that I like, but ... I just don't want to listen to this. It is, in fact, an ordeal to be faced rather than something to be be enjoyed.
I did try. I got through about 30 of its 40 minutes. But kind of waiting for it to be over the whole time.
Watching it on YouTube increased the avant-garde surrealism as the ads would break in and disrupt the flow of the album. An inadvertent outbreak of John Cage.

Cool album. I was familiar with the first song, and really like it. Never listened to any of her albums. I don't know that it's an amazing album, but it's very good, and I'm glad I was directed to listen to it.

Great fondness for this album and this band, who made a lot of good music over the years and were a very fun live show. In their initial form, on this album and the next, they were so distinctive -- goofy, silly, seriously funky, offbeat and creative, with a huge cast of characters, half of whom were singers. Great vibe.
I always forget how good the other songs are -- it's not true, as I tend to think, that this album is Wordy Rappinghood, Genius of Love, and a bunch of silly, fun filler. Side Two (As Above through Booming Zoomin) is actually really good.
Even Under the Boardwalk, which was a bonus track that would show up in various places before there were deluxe edition cd resissues, is actually pretty good. Not to overstate its merirs, but it's better than I remembered.
No one bought Close to the Bone, their second album, because it had no single to get people interested in it. But it's really good, in many ways better than this album. If you like this album, you really should -- quick, before you die! -- listen to Close to the Bone.

Any time over the last 35 years I could have listened to this album. I never did. Because I thought it would be ... more or less like this. Yuck.
So much talent, such well produced musical settings ... misallocated to the creation of this juvenile twaddle.
The Slick Rick pastiche demonstrates real imagination. But, like the music of Slick Rick, tremendous creative ingenuity is deployed in the service of a vision that is at best problematic.

When this popped up as the album of the day, I thought I didn't want to listen to it. I was right.
Some capable guitar work, but .... yeah.
When I was 15, I would have been willing to sit through this, and even find it somewhat interesting. It reminds me of when I was 15 and bought a used copy of Steppenwolf's greatest hits ... this album is like listening to the other songs on that album besides Magic Carpet Ride and Born to Be Wild.
Docked one star for my having aged substantially since 1985.
Famously (in some corners of the internet) Tony Iommi briefly joined Jethro Tull as the replacement for Mick Abrahams when Mick left Tull because it wasn't going to continue being a blues band. The fit between Tull and Iommi wasn't good, and it lasted, like, a few weeks.
Mick Abrahams formed a band called Blodwyn Pig, featuring a saxophone player who modeled himself on Roland Kirk. Their first album, Ahead Rings Out (1969), had a cover photo of a pig's head with sunglasses, headphones, a ring through its nose, and a cigarette in its mouth. That obscure, unimportant album was markedly better than this album.

I listened to this very famous album a while back because I understood it to be a big deal in the history of jazz, particularly cool jazz, and ... I'm an insufficiently sophisticated listener to really get what's so great about it.
To me, it sounds like something that falls somewhere between swing and the radically modernist upstart that pushed swing out of its central position, bebop.
Recorded in 1949-50, with nine piece ensembles, that tracks, even if it oversimplifies.
To me, it doesn't sound very much like cool jazz as I understand it from the late 50s and 60s. The presence of Gil Evans and Gunther Schuller seems significant to me -- this to my ears has more to do with the more composed forms of jazz that I associate with those two. Soundtrack-style music rather than improvisation-based playing.
I've kept the album going on repeat all morning, listening but not closely ... it's enjoyable; the excellent musicians who play on it sound excellent. I like the lyrical, extended lines I hear at points. But I'm just not equipped to appreciate what's so amazing about this album. .

It never occurred to me that there was more than one Hole album anyone would be interested in. Evidently I was wrong.
According to Wikipedia, "The band sought to use Los Angeles and the state of California as a unifying theme, and began writing what they conceived as a "California album" in 1997." Amazing! When inspiration strikes, run with it. Mind blowing ingenuity. Where do you get your ideas?
Anyway ... I don't know whether this album is good or bad. All I know is that I don't want to listen to it. Not for me.

I only know Thin Lizzy superficially. I've never listened to a whole album. I have the impression that they are one of these bands that had great stage presence but struggled to translate that excitement and energy to studio recordings. The Phil Lynott story is a sad one.
Very 70s rock, in a good way. Very solid album. Strong finish, lots of good rock guitar playing. Guest appearance by Huey Lewis, blues harmonica player -- !! Whaa -- ?!?
In the words of Phil Lynott's fellow Hibernian Shane MacGowan (Across the Broad Atlantic): Big hand for the lads. A bit too loud for me.

As the Smiths' breakthrough album in the US, this title has historical significance. It is not, however, an especially good album.
For me, there are two standout tracks -- That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore and Nowhere Fast (a good example of how very memorable songs by the Smiths can be hard to remember by name, owing to their idiosyncratic titling habits).
There are a lot of songs that are perfectly functional Smiths songs, but were destined by nature to complete albums, not anchor them. Lots of these are overlong -- I never really focused before on how Joke Isn't Funny goes on and on for a long time, fades out, then comes back (!) for a little bonus.-- move on, chaps! -- and in the past, I have found theis album's tendency to drag compounded by the poor sound quality. That seems to have been fixed, because it sounded good -- clear,clean, dynamic -- when I listened to it this time.
One of its signature features -- that it includes their best song, How Soon Is Now -- is yet another of those "US vs UK version of the album" things. In the US, they added non-album single How Soon. If we exclude that song from consideration, we are left with two excellent songs and a lot of ok ones. Listening to this album from start to finish is not the best way to experience the Smiths.

I have only good things to say about the Count -- huge figure in jazz history, very successful bandleader, highly likable, very accomplished musician.
Big band sessions are tough ... it's hard to hear anything beyond the spectacle of A Lot of musicians playing together. I tend to prefer his small combo albums, of which he did many late in his career (in part, I think, because of changes in the market; big bands are expensive). His album And the Kansas City 7 (Impulse, 1962) is one I know well and have great fondness for. In the more intimate settings, you can hear more clearly that he is not just a bandleader, but a legit excellent pianist.
This album is quite good, though ... one of the things that's tough with the Count is that his catalog is bewildering. So many albums, so many repackages of sessions, often drawn from various decades. Hard to sort it all out. I don't know that this stands out so far from a bunch of his other albums. Maybe it does. I'm no expert. It's not amazing, but it's good.
Fantail is really nice. To me, that's how the big band format works best: a very punchy, lively theme, with everyone knocking it out in tight coordination, then clearing out to let a strong soloist shine.
Always nice to spend a bit of time with Mr. Basie!

This is not going to make the restive Commonwealth nations happy.
Yet another mystery UK inclusion. And a reminder that it's utterly random as to which electronic albums are commercially successful.
It's ok. This is a style of music that's easy to make by the yard if your want to churn out competent filler. Challenging to make a killer track, though. You need an idea. You need to do some real writing. A solid album of this kind -- whether it's Something Or Other House or Some Version of Electronica-Dub (they're all swimming around in the same pond) generally has 1-3 really, really good tracks and a bunch of ok ones.
This album is all ok filler, no killers.
From Wikipedia: "The album was described as progressive house, although some journalists found that label too limiting, suggesting the album incorporated many genres."
The fact that one could go track by track and find another artist working at the same time making tracks rather like this one, but better ... the variety just is not the strength someone thinks it is.
Rootsman's International Language of Dub; the Guerilla In Dub compilation; No Smoke, International Smoke Signal; many albums from Adrian Sherwood's On-U Sound System (Dub Syndicate, Echomania; the first Audio Active album -- the debut of the Tokyo Space Cowboys -- as two examples); most Thievery Corporation albums; the best Badawi or Dr. Israel albums; the Crooklyn Dub Consortium compilations; many acid jazz compilations .... there are So Many more interesting albums released around the same time working the same general aesthetic. What are we doing here?
Docked one star for failing to successfully realize a single idea. Even the best track, Inspection (Check One) ... much more dynamic, much livelier, and yet -- at several points, when you want it to go -- There; instead, it goes .... over Here, for some reason ... ? Whaaa--?? Are you sure you guys know what you're doing?
Also from Wikipedia: "After completing the album, the duo initially were not pleased with it."

Never really listened to this before, though I did actually give it a quick run through like a month ago.
It's good. Better than I realized. It has the rough drafts of songs approach of his work on The Beatles / White Album, his back to basics spirit on Let It Be, and a bit of his "fragments that make a suite or tapestry" on Abbey Road.
It's interesting. Kind of easy, mellow, background listeny feel to it.
Definitely good, but also definitely not better than good.

Pleasant enough, kind of boring.
Reminds me of how burned I felt when I let the Rolling Stone Record Guide talk me into buying a Bread album, despite the obvious reasons to be wary about doing so. That is a mistake that Time can never wash away.
This is ok, but ... so forgettable.

I wasn't committed to listening to this in its entirety, but in the end, I did listen to most of this boring, shitty album. I never listened to this jackass before starting this project, and now I am freshly dumbfounded by the world I live in. .
I have to take the internet's word for it that he's a great producer. When it comes to his rapping, "Who are you gonna believe? Me or your ears?" I'm going with my own ears. Not buying it. His ability to achieve flow that works with the music is somewhere between rudimentary and absent. In short, he stinks.
Plus, awful person and hopeless narcissist.
So much of this sounds like What would happen if one walked around dictating the events of one's life into a portable recording device, then set it to music as the first draft of a hip hop Broadway musical. Just saw Prom at the local high school ... trust me. This analogy Holds Up.
(I just tried it for a couple of minutes. It's surprisingly easy. But I didn't want to push it with my spouse, so I stopped.)
If we're going to do this, "He's a terrible person, but that is set aside because of his amazing talent" thing ... I mean, Kanye can't hold a candle to Slick Rick. How do we live in a world where this guy is a star of this magnitude?
By far to my mind the most compelling track is Who Will Survive In America. If you read anything about this album, you will learn that it was "one of the most expensive albums to produce ever" and that it features performances by an astounding array of stars. Yet, its best track is due entirely to the extensive use of a Gil Scott Heron recording, and GSH himself is never mentioned by the Enablers. (The Kanyes of the world always talk about the Haters ... what about the other people, who Enable people like him? That part remains absent!)
Awarded one star for its unexpected and skillful sampling of King Crimson. Docked one star for excessive use of profanity -- such a crutch for the lazy writer.

I hated their sound when Dookie came out, and I hate it now. That clean, 90s production style, the guitar sound, the way the drums are miked ... everything about this causes waves of hostility to be unleashed within me.
They are good at what they do, which explains their successful careers. But I hate what they do.

Unfathomably dull

The name is familiar; never heard them before. They come advertised as the prototype of jangly college pop rock of the 80s.
They sound to me like just another 80s band. Likable, solid ... eh. Sort of like The Call and The Alarm, but those bands had big singles to hang their hats on. There's nothing here I'm excited about. It's fine.

Exquisitely mediocre

This album comes billed as a collaboration with David Bowie, and it sounds like it fits in with the albums Bowie made in the period following Young Americans, up to Tonight. I know Bowie much better than Iggy, so it's interesting to hear songs that I know from Bowie albums in their original recordings.
Overall, it's ... good, I guess. Not that interested, but it's solid. Glad I finally listened to this famous album, but I don't expect to come back to it.