Reviews by callimar

Whether it’s called “Derek & The Dominos” or whatever else says on the cover: “Layla...” is a typical Eric Clapton album. And that’s exactly the problem. This is supposed to be my kind of music, but Clapton never really comes across as authentic to me. Of course, the guitar playing is great (Duane Allman is on the album!), but aside from the title track, everything sounds—well, how should I put it? Generic? Clichéd?
His version of “Little Wing” really opened my eyes: it just sounds strange when Clapton plays it because the micro-timing is too precise. It’s like a folk musician covering Hendrix: technically flawless, but it just lacks that blues feeling.
And I think that’s exactly why I rarely listen to Eric Clapton: he plays the blues without the blues feeling. His success proves him right in a way, but his secret is probably precisely that he gives the blues a mainstream sound. That’s where I draw the line, though.

I remembered that TLC was crazy, sexy, and cool back in 1994. What I hadn’t remembered was that they had a pretty good funk band backing them up, which shaped their soul-hip-hop sound.
When I saw the cover, I expected that “CrazySexyCool” would have aged pretty badly, but the opposite is true. The only thing I find a bit unnecessary are the intros that were common in the ’90s; from today’s perspective, it’s a bit jarring that TLC apparently needed a male colleague for that. It’s not really my kind of music, but it’s still an album that, in retrospect, turns out to be a milestone.

Of course, I’d heard of Kendrick Lamar, but I hadn’t really listened to him yet. Time to give him a chance.
Oh, damn... I didn't have high expectations, but “Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City” is even worse than I had imagined - surely one of the worst albums I've ever heard. I don't even know where to start, because there really aren't any positive aspects at all. A waste of time.

I don't think I was familiar with Country Joe & The Fish before, so “Electric Music For The Mind And Body” is a really nice new discovery for me. Basically, the guys play a jazzy kind of blues rock - and as the album progresses, the psychedelic elements become more prominent. In that regard, I find the last track, “Grace,” very impressive (and at the same time comical).
So, in that sense: yes, Country Joe & The Fish is definitely worth checking out.

Of the “Big Four” of thrash metal, Slayer is probably the most iconic, but at the same time also the least talented band. While Dave Mustaine and his various sidekicks (including Marty Friedman), Scott Ian, and - to a lesser extent - Kirk Hammett display the highest level of virtuosity, Jeff Hannemann and, in particular, Kerry King are all about sheer chaos and raw power. The latter once described his soloing approach as “torturing the instruments,” and that’s exactly what it sounds like. What I was less aware of was that Tom Araya did something very similar to his voice on “Reign In Blood”: those high-pitched screams don’t sound healthy at all.
In summary, this album has become iconic due to its sheer brutality. That deserves respect, but for me, it doesn’t warrant a perfect score.

Mudhoney describe their (guitar) sound very aptly as “Superfuzz Bigmuff,” and they were definitely ahead of their time - or far behind it, since, of course, these pedals had already been on the market for nearly 20 years by the time the Mudhoney album was released. In any case, I remember trying both of them out in the late ’90s and finding them (and thus the typical ’70s sound) too undifferentiated for my purposes.
Be that as it may, Mudhoney apparently wanted that muddy sound that just didn’t fit in with the ’80s at all. And of course, they were pioneers of a movement that - three years later - didn’t actually begin with Nirvana’s “Nevermind,” but rather came to an end with it. Grunge was, after all, really just grunge before it went mainstream.
But the real question is: is the album any good? And as with many groundbreaking albums, the answer is: it depends. If you like grunge, it’s one of perhaps a handful of records you absolutely have to know. If not, you won’t like Mudhoney either. So, in summary, it falls into the second-highest category.

The expectable bullsh*t.

Robert Christgau wrote that La Soul’s “3 Feet High And Rising” stands out from all other hip-hop albums. I don’t agree with that: To me, it sounds just like any other hip-hop album. In fact, the beats and the overall swag are above average for a hip-hop group. But that doesn’t mean it’s a good album by any means. For its genre, however, it’s perfectly tolerable.

This is a story of the depths of human depravity - and by that I don’t mean the mental health issues Alexander “Skip” Spence was apparently suffering from at the time. Those are, of course, very evident in the recordings, but what truly horrifies me is the behavior of producer David Rubinson. It wasn’t enough that he left the recordings entirely in the hands of his engineer. No, he simply had this demo - in the artist’s view - released unfiltered.
This kind of forced emotional exhibitionism would certainly lead to a major public controversy today, and this blatant abuse of Spence’s privacy rights would be called out as such.
Needless to say, the album was a commercial flop, but: what on earth was Robert Dimery thinking when he included “Oar” in his book?

The Sonics are one of those bands that you have to evaluate in the context of their time. If a band sounded like that today, it wouldn’t be worth mentioning. But recording a song like “The Witch” in 1965 is certainly remarkable. At that time, popular music was still largely stuck in the folk genre, and bands like The Who sounded accordingly.
Sure, “Here Are The Sonics” otherwise consists mainly of unspectacular cover versions, but I do see the disruptive power of their original songs as a key factor in how we evaluate them in retrospect.

Much like with Radiohead (whom I had the pleasure of reviewing yesterday), I’m also surprised by the hype surrounding Depeche Mode beyond their big hits. “Music For The Masses” is certainly not a bad album, but at some point you’ve already heard the beat and all the signature effects—and then there just isn’t much left to offer.
To me, Depeche Mode remains a moderately good British band from the ’80s that had a few big hits in 1990.

According to my stats (which, after 400 albums, should be starting to mean something), I like Radiohead less than most people do, and I’m not particularly fond of music from the 2000s either. It’s not that I have anything against this band or that decade - I’d love to rate them differently, but then Radiohead comes along with “In Rainbows” and confirms all my reservations. The album isn’t bad at all, but like everything this band has released since “Creep,” it’s simply uninspired and monotonous. You can’t help but think of Coldplay, but at least with them, individual songs stand out. Radiohead, on the other hand, deliver more of a continuum of mediocre songs with a wide range of sound effects but little substance.
If you’re already familiar with Radiohead, you don’t really need to listen to this album.

I suspect The Louvin Brothers are included here as representatives of traditional country/bluegrass music. In any case, I can’t find anything on *Tragic Songs Of Life* that would justify its inclusion on this list. Sixteen mind-numbingly boring songs that not only sound the same but were also all arranged and produced using the same formula - even the vocal harmonies are always the same. At least the sound is clean...
I could have recorded this album this morning before breakfast. I don’t see anything noteworthy here.

The Sugarcubes? That rings a bell... Oh, right - Björk’s old band.
What sounds pretty cool on paper is, for the most part, just that: I really like Thór Eldon’s guitar sound, and the song structures suit Björk quite well - especially when compared to her later solo work. The songs fall somewhere between new wave/post-punk, dark wave/EBM, and the alternative experiments we’ve all come to expect from Björk.
Unfortunately, there are also passages that are uncomfortably reminiscent of the B-52s. On top of that, Einar Örn Benediktsson’s vocals have the potential to really get on your nerves. This makes “Life’s Too Good” an interesting discovery, but one that’s only good in parts. It was probably more fun back in 1988.

As for The Byrds, there’s good news and bad news when compared to their debut album, which I recently reviewed. The good news: On “Sweetheart of the Rodeo", they’re no longer trying to sound like The Beatles. The bad news: While their own sound is unmistakable, it’s nowhere near as exciting as what they released in 1965.
Instead, we get relatively smooth country/folk rock. It’s a valid approach, but it clearly doesn’t come close to “Mr. Tambourine Man".

In my opinion, this album doesn't fit neatly into the “Britpop” category. Technically, Ash is a British '90s band, but to me, their sound is clearly post-grunge - quite comparable to the Foo Fighters.
Since I’ve reviewed a few similar albums recently, I find it difficult to write anything substantially new here. “1977” is a good listen; whether it’s essential, though, isn’t entirely clear to me.
3.5 stars. Since my reviews of ’90s albums tend to be on the low side, I’m rounding up in this case.

It's been a while since I listened to “My Generation” with a few friends, but I remember that we laughed a lot. Especially if you’re familiar with The Who’s later work, it’s actually kind of cute to hear Roger Daltrey trying to find his voice. Sometimes it’s a transatlantic accent (“Much Too Much”), then back to Cockney (“My Geeeneration”), sometimes he wants to be a blues singer (“I’m A Man”), and then he sounds perfectly well-behaved again (“The Kids Are Alright”). And of course, some of the songs could be by any British ’60s band.
You certainly have to put this into perspective, because rock music simply hadn’t evolved any further by 1965. But neither had The Who - and especially Roger Daltrey - so this is a promising debut album rather than an undisputed milestone in rock history.

According to Wikipedia, around the time of the release of “Back to Basics", Christina Aguilera stated that she was dissatisfied with current pop music and wanted to draw more inspiration from the jazz, soul, and blues of the 1920s through the 1950s.
That sounds promising, but when you listen to the album, you quickly realize that it’s just turned out to be another pop album. It’s not that the influences she mentioned aren’t audible - they’re simply too subtle to really break through the polished mainstream sound.
I like Christina’s voice, but you can safely ignore this album.

When you listen to old Simon & Garfunkel recordings, it’s easy to wonder what role Art Garfunkel actually plays - he seems more like Paul Simon’s backup singer than a full-fledged band member. Now that I’ve been asked to review a second Simon album in such a short time, I’m starting to see a slightly different division of roles.
On “Graceland,” he combines his still-masterful songwriting and his unmistakable voice with various styles from all over the world: in addition to rhythm & blues, the album features Afropop, world beats, and more; I also think I detect Delta blues and Caribbean influences. The problem, however, is that - apart from “You Can Call Me Al” - he pulls off this combination in a way that’s anything but elegant; I’d even go so far as to say that almost all the songs are marked by a remarkable lack of taste.
And that’s why I’ve come to believe that while Paul Simon was a gifted singer-songwriter, he was also a thoroughly uncritical person - at least when it came to himself. And suddenly, a counterpart who finds perhaps three-quarters of his ideas silly becomes very valuable. Art Garfunkel apparently filled this role well, but none of the later producers did. I think this explains quite well how such a talented musician could have recorded such a mediocre album.

I’d come across the Manic Street Preachers every now and then and had generally filed them away as “worth a listen.” Now that I’ve listened to one of their albums in its entirety for the first time, I can confirm that impression.
The first song, “Elvis Impersonator,” is still a bit clunky, but after that they mostly strike a pretty good balance between Britpop - which can sometimes be too poppy on its own - and alternative rock - which can sometimes be hard to get into.
The result is a somewhat unremarkable but very pleasant-sounding album with a subtle sense of originality in a niche rock genre that sets itself apart just enough from the mainstream. I like it.