Reviews by cmhess98

Matt Johnson's dark, confessional synth-pop is nicer than the genre usually allows. Harmonica, piano, accordion, and sax give it real organic warmth under the Fairlight textures, and "This Is the Day" is a genuinely lovely, bittersweet anthem that has aged well. The piano work from Jools Holland on "Uncertain Smile" is the highlight for any keyboard player.

It's a pleasant listen that creates no pull. Nothing here is something you'd reach for on your own, and the introspective, downbeat register keeps it at a polite distance, the same ceiling that held Sade and Scritti Politti.

A respectful three: well made, easy to like, easy to leave on the shelf.

A genuine feat. Oldfield was 19 when he recorded most of it himself, playing over twenty instruments and layering them through multitrack overdubbing, and the record became the first release on Virgin and the foundation of that whole empire. Two side-long instrumental pieces build from repeating minimalist figures that slowly accumulate and transform. The opening piano motif is famous for good reason, and the Hammond and Farfisa lines threaded through the piece are worth hearing for any organ player.

The respect is real, and so is the distance. This is layered repetition rather than groove, with no vocals and no rhythm section in the funk or soul sense, so it never generates the pull that earns a return visit. It lands in the same place as The Yes Album and Can: admired, not reached for. The one-man-band achievement and the warmth of the instrumentation keep it from feeling sterile, but not enough to move it up.

A respectful three for a landmark that is easier to admire than to love.

The band's final studio album, and the warmest and most song-driven of their run. Mark Lanegan's whiskey-and-gravel baritone is the main event, and George Drakoulias's roots-rock production adds acoustic guitars, strings, and organ under the amplifiers, with some Neil Young and 60s psych DNA showing through. It's a long way from the abrasion that sank Mudhoney, and "All I Know" and "Dying Days" are the kind of songs that make the case for the band.

It's fine without being grabbing. The craft and Lanegan's voice are real, but nothing here generates enough pull to earn a return visit, and the 90s alt-rock frame sits a little outside where your listening lives now. Lanegan's death in 2022 adds some weight to hearing him sing, but not enough to change the rating.

A respectful three: well made, nicely sung, and easy to leave on the shelf.

A Pacific Northwest garage-pop band in Revolutionary War costumes, famous from their TV work and fronted by Mark Lindsay, with Terry Melcher producing. “Kicks” is the reason to hear it: a snarling, confident anti-drug single that still holds up, with enough Northwest R&B grit to show there was more to the band than the costumes.
The rest reads as a hybrid Beatles/Beach Boys wannabe. It isn’t bad, but it sits in the shadow of the 1966 icons it’s imitating. The pop polish is there without the depth, and it’s the same pattern as Face to Face: a strong single surrounded by period material.
A respectful three. Fun for what it is, but not nearly as good as the bands it was chasing.

A sprawling double album from Stills's band Manassas, organized in four thematic sides that move through different styles. Chris Hillman and Al Perkins bring the country and bluegrass connection, Paul Harris is on keys, and Joe Lala's percussion runs through the whole record. The best description is a melting pot rather than any single genre. The percussion adds rhythmic texture across the styles but doesn't make it a Latin record.

The musicianship and harmonies are the strength. The band plays loose and tight at once, and the vocal blends are great throughout. The country and bluegrass side lands softer than the rest, and the record is at its best when it returns to the blues, where Stills's guitar and the band's chemistry are most alive.

There are no major hits here. That's the honest limitation: a band record rather than a singles record, and one where the double album length asks for some forgiveness, like Something/Anything? and Electric Ladyland before it. The four-side structure helps, since each side has its own mood and can be taken in pieces.

A four that the playing, the harmonies, and the blues earn, held just short of five by the lack of standout moments and the stretches that didn't connect.

The live album that turned a modest American act into stars, thanks to Japanese crowds who had embraced them early and a recording electric enough that US radio finally took notice. “I Want You to Want Me” became the hit, and the screaming audience is practically a band member here. Rick Nielsen’s goofy, brilliant riffs, Robin Zander’s powerhouse tenor, and the Beatles-style melodies run through hard rock volume make it mostly fun from start to finish.
Seeing Cheap Trick at Bourbon and Beyond added useful context. Nielsen, spiked bracelet snagged on one of his absurd guitars (the one with a full human figure for a body), is exactly what the band is about: ridiculous, committed, and good at it. That showmanship is the reason to like them.
The problem is that a live album has one job, which is to make you feel like you were in the room, and the production here is mediocre enough to undercut it. Live records like Cooke and Cash earned fives by making you wish you’d been there. This one makes you wish you’d had a better mix. Fun without love, and a recording that doesn’t fully capture what the band does on stage.
A three: enjoyable, not essential, and better seen than heard.

The deliberate anti-pop record, and the music is impressive on its own terms. Kanye stripped everything back to abrasive industrial beats and distorted electronics, with Daft Punk, Rick Rubin, and Hudson Mohawke helping push the minimalism to its limit. The sampling jumps from Nina Simone to dancehall, and the harshness is a choice rather than an accident. “Black Skinhead” is the most immediate track, a pounding, tribal stomp, and “Bound 2” is the soul-sample outlier that sounds like it escaped from a different record.
Impressive isn’t the same as engaging, though. The craft is audible, but it generates respect rather than pull, the same ceiling that has held electronic and abrasive records at three or below throughout this project. The lyrics are the other problem: cringe-worthy enough that they work against the production rather than with it, and that is a fair criticism of the record itself, separate from anything about the artist.
A respectful three for a record that is bold and well made and not one to return to. The beliefs of the man behind it make for a complicated listen too, but the rating stands on the music: admired, not enjoyed.

Respect, not love. Slanted and Enchanted is the template for 90s lo-fi indie: cheap Stockton recordings, jagged and off-kilter guitars, hooks buried under tape hiss, and Stephen Malkmus delivering lyrics that are either brilliant non sequiturs or elaborate shrugs. Gary Young's eccentric drumming adds to the feeling of a record that is barely holding together on purpose.

There is real songwriting underneath the haze. "Summer Babe" and "Trigger Cut" are the landmarks, and "Here" is the quiet, gorgeous one that makes the best case for Malkmus as more than a slacker pose. The influence on everything that followed is easy to hear.

None of that generates any pull toward return visits. The deliberate sloppiness and wobbly vocals keep it at arm's length, the same ceiling that held Mudhoney and Throwing Muses down, though Pavement's melodies are stronger than most of that company. A respectful three for a landmark that is better admired than reached for.

Cash was at his commercial lowest when Columbia agreed to record a concert inside a California prison, a last shot at relevance that became one of the defining moments in American music. The audience is the other performer here. Convicted felons hearing songs about murder, trains, and hard luck respond with a recognition no concert hall could replicate, and when the room erupts at “I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die,” something genuinely electric is happening on tape.
“Folsom Prison Blues” opens with that guitar figure and never looks back. “Jackson” with June Carter Cash is the warmth in the middle of the darkness. “25 Minutes to Go” shows his gift for inhabiting a character completely, gallows humor and all. “Cocaine Blues” closes the set with the crowd losing their minds.
Cash wasn’t a virtuoso, and that is the point. He could write a hell of a song and he knew how to make people feel something as well as anyone who ever stood at a microphone. Tough but tender, the real deal. At San Quentin earned a five here, and the two are companion pieces. Folsom is the one that saved his career and started the whole conversation.
Not even a debate. The only regret is never seeing him live.

The Sade comparison writes itself — same beautiful voice operating within a consistent emotional temperature that never quite shifts enough to generate peaks, same lush production that seduces initially and eventually numbs, same verdict of accomplished without generating pull. Lang’s voice is genuinely extraordinary throughout, the torch song tradition absorbed completely and executed with total conviction.
“Constant Craving” is the signature and the record’s best case for itself — and even that lands as fine rather than essential, which tells you everything about the ceiling here. A record that can’t make its most famous song feel transcendent to a willing listener has honestly earned its three.
Shadowland got a four for the Owen Bradley production giving the voice a specific historic context that elevated it. Ingénue is the more fully realized artistic statement and the lower rating, which is its own honest outcome — craft and cohesion without the emotional spark that earns return visits. A respectful three, delivered without ambiguity.

Marc Bolan distilling Chuck Berry, Eddie Cochran, and Howlin’ Wolf into something that felt simultaneously ancient and completely new — the boogie riff as cosmic mythology, glam rock as a disguise for pure rock and roll pleasure. Electric Warrior is one of the most purely fun records the project has served up, and fun delivered with this much conviction earns its rating without apology.
“Bang a Gong (Get It On)” is the reason — one of the great singles of the decade, the riff so simple and so right it sounds like it was always there waiting to be found. Simple enough to lock in immediately, distinctive enough that the room knows it within two bars, and built for exactly the kind of setlist addition that makes a band’s night. “Jeepster” and “Mambo Sun” sustain the boogie energy throughout the first half without the record ever feeling like it’s repeating itself.
Tony Visconti’s production gives everything a warmth and spaciousness that suits the material — the strings on “Life’s a Gas” arriving as genuine surprise, the whole record sounding bigger than its parts without ever feeling overproduced. Bolan’s arch, slightly androgynous voice is completely committed to the mythology he was constructing around himself, which is the only way this kind of record works.
A four that the boogie and the classic earn honestly — and a reminder that pure rock and roll pleasure is its own category of achievement.

The record that introduced Indian classical music to a generation of Western listeners — Shankar’s spoken introductions explaining raga structure and rhythmic cycles a deliberate bridge across a genuine cultural distance. George Harrison heard it and went to study with Shankar, which tells you what it did to people encountering it fresh and open. The sitar playing and the tabla dialogue are extraordinary on their own terms, the improvisation within the raga framework operating with an internal logic that rewards the listener who can find the entry point.
The honest limitation is that the entry point takes time to develop, and a tradition this far outside the musical world that shaped everything else in this project creates a distance that respect alone can’t close. Not a failure of the record — a fair description of where the listening ear currently lives. A three that acknowledges genuine importance without pretending to a love that isn’t there yet.

The Sgt. Pepper parody that's also a genuine artistic statement — Zappa using the Beatles' format against itself, the satire aimed at hippie culture, the music industry, censorship, and everything else within range. The intent is clear and the historical importance is real. None of which makes it enjoyable to listen to.

Where Hot Rats earned a three for genuine craft underneath the indulgence, this one's deliberately confrontational chaos works against the listener rather than with them — the satire landing as exhausting rather than funny, the abrasion purposeful without being pleasurable. A two for a record that didn't connect on any level, delivered without ambiguity.

"Afro-Appalachian" is Mon Rovîa's preferred term for what he does, and it earns the designation completely — Liberian roots meeting Chattanooga and Montana, acoustic folk tradition meeting R&B and African music sensibilities in a synthesis that feels genuinely lived rather than constructed. The Grand Ole Opry to TikTok range makes sense once you hear it: this is music that belongs to multiple traditions simultaneously without being reducible to any of them.

The whispering, unhurried vocal approach invites the Nick Drake comparison — the same intimacy, the same quality of someone singing close rather than projecting outward. But where Drake's radical sparseness was the whole point, Bloodline has an ensemble warmth that changes the experience entirely. The background vocals are a genuine highlight throughout — not decoration but conversation, the record feeling more like a band finding something together than a singer-songwriter working alone. That distinction matters for the rating: the same-same ceiling that Drake bumped against doesn't apply here because the dynamic range is real.

The political and social honesty running underneath the beautiful textures is the other distinguishing quality — "Running Boy," "Oh Wide World," and "Heavy Foot" carrying genuine weight without disrupting the lullaby quality of the whole. An artist unwilling to sacrifice honesty for the sake of a vibe, which is the hardest thing to maintain when the vibe is this lovely.

A genuinely beautiful four — one of the more unexpected discoveries the project has delivered.

The Faces at their peak — Rod Stewart, Ronnie Wood, Ian McLagan, Ronnie Lane, and Kenney Jones operating with a loose, boozy swagger that no amount of studio polish could have manufactured and no amount of money could have bought. This is what a great bar band sounds like when the bar band happens to be one of the finest rock and roll ensembles of its era, and the distinction matters.

"Stay with Me" opens the record with complete confidence — the riff arriving and the whole band falling in behind it with the kind of collective momentum that sounds effortless and has clearly been earned through years of playing together in rooms where nobody cared who they were. That quality of a band playing for each other rather than for an audience runs through everything here, which is the hardest thing to fake and the most valuable thing a rock record can have.

Ian McLagan's Hammond and piano are the secret weapon throughout — ensemble-first, serving the groove rather than showcasing, the keyboard work doing exactly what keyboards should do in this context. "Debris" is the Ronnie Lane ballad counterweight, gentle and nostalgic, showing the range the band had when they stepped back from the swagger without losing what made the swagger worth anything.

Film scores are a genuinely underappreciated listening format — music that was built to serve a specific emotional world and succeeds well enough to stand completely apart from it. The Virgin Suicides is the clearest argument for that proposition in Air’s catalog, Sofia Coppola’s debut giving Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel a narrative framework that their pure pop records don’t always have, and the music rising to meet it with genuine grace.
The sonic palette is the same one that earned Moon Safari a four — Rhodes and Wurlitzer warmth, lush analog synthesis, everything slightly melancholic and beautiful simultaneously. What the film score context adds is coherence and purpose, the atmospheric drift that can feel aimless on a pure electronic record given somewhere specific to go. “Playground Love” is the vocal anchor, Gordon Tracks’s voice giving the most conventionally song-shaped moment a warmth that the instrumentals earn differently. The groovy moments that surface throughout give the record more dynamic range than a pure mood piece would have — Air finding the pocket within the atmosphere rather than staying in one emotional register throughout.
Moon Safari delivered where electronic records usually don’t. The Virgin Suicides delivers in a slightly different way — less immediate, more patient, the film score DNA giving it a unity that rewards the full listen rather than individual tracks. A four that the warmth and the occasional groove earn honestly, and a reminder that some of the best listening exists in formats that don’t always get treated as serious music.

The deliberate anti-Nevermind — Cobain hiring Steve Albini specifically to undo the polish that made them famous, the result raw and abrasive and uncomfortable in ways that major label rock wasn’t supposed to be. Where MTV Unplugged stripped everything back to let the songs stand alone, In Utero buries them in noise and distortion as a philosophical statement about what fame and success had done to the band. Both approaches earn their place; they just earn different ratings.
The songs are strong enough to survive the production, which is the real argument for the four. “Heart-Shaped Box” is the opening statement and one of the great Cobain compositions — the quiet-loud dynamic deployed with genuine emotional purpose, the melody underneath the distortion as beautiful as anything on Unplugged. “All Apologies” closes the record with the same stripped vulnerability, the aggression burned off to reveal something that sounds like exhaustion and acceptance simultaneously. “Rape Me” and “Dumb” fill out a landmark track count that carries the rating honestly.
The honest ceiling is that the Albini rawness creates distance that the production on Unplugged deliberately removed — very good and very raw is the accurate verdict, the abrasion intentional without always being essential. A four that the hits earn and the production philosophy honestly limits.
The Unplugged five set the bar for what Cobain’s songwriting could do when nothing was in the way. This is the same gift wearing different clothes, and the clothes matter.

The jazz-hip-hop DNA connects directly to A Tribe Called Quest — same warm sample aesthetic, same groove-forward approach, same sense of MCs who actually liked music rather than just rap. J-Swift's production has the same quality of finding something genuinely beautiful in a looped jazz fragment and building a world around it. "Passin' Me By" is the peak, a Quincy Jones sample turned into one of the most melodically lovely hip-hop songs of the era, the longing and the humor coexisting in ways that shouldn't work and do completely.

The honest limitations are two: the craft doesn't quite reach the level that earned Low End Theory its four, and some of the lyrical content hasn't aged gracefully — material that felt transgressive or playful in 1992 landing differently from the distance of three decades. Both things can be true simultaneously without canceling out the genuine pleasures.

A respectful three that acknowledges the warmth and the jazz foundation without pretending the whole record holds up as well as its best moments suggest it might.

Quite solid and not my thing — the cleanest three verdict available and the honest one. Kelela's voice does detailed emotional work over electronic production that gives everything room to breathe, the atmospheric intimacy genuine rather than manufactured. The craft is real and the artistic intent is serious.

The ceiling is the same one that has held electronic R&B consistently in this project — pleasant, accomplished, and generating no pull toward return visits. A respectful three, delivered without ambiguity.

The debut double album that announced seven musicians blending rock, jazz, and classical influences with a horn section as the primary voice — rawer and more politically engaged than the polished pop the band would eventually become, the protest era energy audible throughout in ways the later catalog quietly retired. This is Chicago before Chicago became a soft rock institution, and the difference is significant.

The horn section is the central achievement — Peter Cetera's bass and Terry Kath's guitar anchoring a brass lineup that gives the whole thing a texture rock bands weren't attempting in 1969. Kath's playing throughout is the surprise, the extended improvisation showing a guitarist operating at a level that the band's later commercial success obscured completely. "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?" and "Beginnings" make the case for what the band could do when the jazz influence and the songwriting found each other most convincingly.

The honest limitation is the free guitar — seven minutes of improvisation that earns its place for a specific kind of listener and tests the patience of everyone else. The double album format that allows the best moments their full ambition also allows the self-indulgent ones to run unchecked, which is the occupational hazard of 1969 rock ambition and the reason this lands at four rather than five.