Reviews by cmhess98

Going into The Wall, I assumed reputation alone would carry this straight into four- or five-star territory. It’s one of those albums that gets treated like holy scripture, the kind of thing people insist you must experience front to back. And sure — the high points absolutely earn their place in the canon. “Comfortably Numb,” “Hey You,” “Run Like Hell,” and, yeah, “Another Brick in the Wall Part 2” are as good as advertised. When this band locks in, the combination of atmosphere, melody, and sheer emotional weight is undeniable.

But living inside the full double album is a different story. The talky interludes, theatrical detours, and narrative filler start to feel less like essential storytelling and more like Roger Waters workshopping his rock opera ambitions in real time. I respect the scope and the craft, but it doesn’t always translate into something I want to sit with. I kept waiting for it to grow on me beyond the big tracks — it never really did.

There’s a lot to admire here, but admiration isn’t the same as love. The hits remain untouchable; the rest reminds me why actually listening matters more than buying into reputation. A solid, sometimes brilliant record that ultimately just isn’t my classic.

Dance Mania turned out to be a blast. I had it spinning in the background on Thanksgiving, and it immediately pulled me back to that feeling I had the first time I heard the Buena Vista Social Club record—music so alive and locked-in that it stops you in your tracks. Tito Puente’s version of that world is different, though. Where Buena Vista hits with depth and soul, Puente is all forward motion: high-energy, hyper-tight, and built to get bodies moving.
The playing is outrageous. The horns snap, the percussion sprints, and the whole band feels like it’s operating on some higher rhythmic plane. But the emotional weight isn’t really the point here. This record is about joy, movement, and pure rhythmic adrenaline. It’s infectious, it’s impeccably executed, and it’s a lot of fun—just not something that lingers with the same emotional resonance as those Cuban masters.
Still, in the right moment, it absolutely shines. As holiday-week background music, it was perfect.

There are albums that demand your attention, and then there are albums that politely ask if you wouldn’t mind sitting down for a moment while they smooth the wrinkles out of your soul. Trio is firmly in the second camp. It’s gorgeous, gentle, and completely uninterested in proving anything to anyone.
The harmonies are as immaculate as advertised, and the whole thing drifts by like sunlight through a kitchen window. Nothing here challenges you, and frankly, that’s the point. This isn’t a record you wrestle with. It’s a record you allow—the musical equivalent of a deep breath after hosting too many relatives for too many hours.
And in that setting, it shines. Listening to it while the world around you settles—a fire pit outside, a new puppy asleep on your chest, the post-Thanksgiving haze still hanging in the air—feels about as on-brand as this album can get. It’s serenity in harmony form, a soft landing pad when you didn’t know you needed one.
Beautiful? Absolutely. Essential? Probably not. But sometimes “pleasant and nice” is exactly the right medicine.

This one lands squarely in the “glad it exists, don’t need to evangelize it” zone for me. Billion Dollar Babies is undeniably well-made, and it’s impossible not to respect the ambition behind Alice Cooper’s glam-horror pageantry. You can hear the money, the polish, and the full commitment to the bit. But even with all that, I didn’t find myself falling in love with the record.

“Elected” is a highlight—a sharp, swaggering satire that still works—and “No More Mr. Nice Guy” earns its long-term spot in the classic-rock rotation. The band is tight, the production is crisp, and the theatricality, for better or worse, is fully dialed in.

The rest of the album, though, sits in a space where I appreciate the craft more than the content. It’s not weak enough to drop it to a two, but it never gives me the emotional or musical punch that would push it to a four. It’s a solid, competent, culturally important rock record that I’m glad to have heard… and I’m equally glad I don’t have to pretend it changed my life.

Odessey and Oracle – Review

There’s no denying the charm baked into Odessey and Oracle. The Zombies were clearly reaching for the same kaleidoscopic universe their peers were exploring in the late sixties, and you can hear the ambition in the harmonies, the baroque touches, and the whole pastel-psychedelic glow of the record. But for all its color, it never hits that upper stratosphere of songwriting or invention that the era’s greats managed to bottle.

Most of the album drifts by as pleasant, slightly blurry sunshine pop. It’s enjoyable, sometimes even lovely, but rarely gripping. The melodies are nice; the ideas are there; the execution just doesn’t quite push hard enough to make the songs stick in the long run.

Then comes “Time of the Season,” which frankly operates on a different level. That hypnotic bass line, the air and space in the production, the call-and-response—it’s a moment of pure lightning. The problem is that the rest of the album never gets within shouting distance of that magic.

In the end, I respect the record more than I love it. It’s a fascinating artifact from the psychedelic era, and it has its charms, but outside of its one undeniable classic, it doesn’t leave a deep imprint. A solid, perfectly fine listen… just not a life-changer.

Rating: 3

I wouldn’t call myself an alt-rock zealot. I don’t carry the torch for every jangly guitar and murky lyric from the early 90s. But Automatic for the People has hit the mark for me for close to thirty years now, and at this point it’s pretty clear that isn’t nostalgia talking. It’s just a genuinely great record.

What floors me is how confidently it leans into quiet, reflective spaces without ever turning dull. “Try Not to Breathe,” “Sweetness Follows,” “Nightswimming,” “Everybody Hurts”—these songs go straight for something human and vulnerable without slipping into melodrama. There’s a sincerity at the core of this album that most bands would break trying to reach.

Even the bigger moments, like “Man on the Moon,” feel earned rather than showy. The whole album radiates that strange little R.E.M. magic trick: they sound completely relaxed and somehow world-weary, but they never lose their footing. It’s gentle, melodic, and deeply emotional without ever begging for attention.

For me, this is one of those rare records that becomes part of the internal landscape. Sunday night reflection, long drives, quiet mornings—you drop it in, and suddenly you’ve got a companion that doesn’t demand anything but gives you a lot in return. That’s the territory of a five.

Madonna’s Ray of Light has a reputation as The Great Reinvention, a forward-looking electronic pivot that supposedly reset her artistic compass in the late 90s. Listening now, it’s easier to hear the ambition than the impact. The production is sleek, global-club-ready, and unmistakably tied to its era; you can practically feel the glow sticks and hear the lingering echoes of big-room trance. It’s polished, confident, and perfectly engineered for the kind of nightlife where you shout-sing your feelings at 1 a.m. on a sticky dance floor.

But stacked against her earlier work, the emotional core is thinner. It doesn’t have the melodic punch of her prime, nor the raw pop instincts that made her a generational force. The record aims for transcendence but often lands closer to “pleasant vibe,” which is fine—just not the kind of thing that defines a career.

Still, there are flashes of something deeper: moments where the electronics, the vocals, and the shift in attitude click. It’s a thoughtful and well-executed reinvention, even if it doesn’t reach the highs of the records that made Madonna Madonna.

A solid listen, and a respectable artistic turn—but not peak-era material.

This is one of those albums where the historical weight is impossible to miss. Fats Domino isn’t just playing songs here—he’s inventing a whole vocabulary. The left-hand feel on “Blueberry Hill” alone became the blueprint for decades of New Orleans piano players, and the easy swing of his band shows how ahead of the curve he really was.

And yet, despite all the brilliance and lineage on display, the album didn’t hit me as hard as I expected. I love so many artists who built directly on Fats’s foundation, so I assumed I’d fall head over heels for the source material. Instead, I found myself respecting it more than loving it. The ideas are groundbreaking, the playing is rock-solid, and you can hear the future taking shape—but the emotional connection didn’t fully land for me.

It’s still essential listening, both as a snapshot of a key moment in American music and as a masterclass in feel and groove. But for me, the legacy shines brighter than the experience of the record itself.

This one sits squarely in the “solid background groove” category for me. Connected opens with its strongest hand: the title track, which is instantly recognizable and still ridiculously fun. That first hit sets expectations for a certain kind of ’90s UK trip-hop/breakbeat experience, and the rest of the album mostly delivers that… just without ever climbing to the same height again.

There’s a clear musical lineage here that overlaps with what Gorillaz pulled off a decade later. You get the same blend of hip-hop, dance beats, dub-ish bass lines, and laid-back spoken vocals. The difference is that Gorillaz sharpened it into something more hooky and atmospheric, while Stereo MC’s stay closer to their acid-jazz/club roots. It’s eclectic, it’s loose, and it’s almost always groove-first.

As background music? Totally enjoyable. It keeps a vibe going without asking much of you. As an album I’d deliberately sit with? Probably not. Nothing is outright bad, but very little reaches beyond “cool track, nice beat.”

A good listen, not an essential one. Solid 3.

A strange inclusion in the 1001 list, and one I just couldn’t warm up to. Punishing Kiss is clearly crafted by talented people, and Ute Lemper’s theatrical delivery isn’t without charm, but the whole thing feels like it’s aimed at an audience I’m simply not part of. The art-cabaret vibe has moments of intrigue, yet they’re buried under melodrama that never quite earns its weight.

Some tracks drift into outright weird territory (“If sex were an Olympic sport, we’d have won the gold…” over marching drums and strings?), and the emotional tone swings between overwrought and unintentionally humorous. It’s not poorly made. It’s not unmusical. It’s just… not likable, at least not to my ears.

A respectable swing at something distinctive, but not something I’d ever revisit. Solid musicianship, no connection. 2/5.

Nanci Griffith delivers a warm, gentle slice of mid-80s folk-country that’s easy on the ears and light on surprises. Her voice is graceful, the pedal steel glistens in all the right places, and the whole record has that soft-focus sincerity that made her beloved in songwriter circles. The problem, at least for me, is that it never really rises above “nice.” The melodies float by, the stories sit politely in the corner, and before long the album blends into a kind of pleasant haze. Solid craftsmanship, zero fireworks. A respectable listen, but not one that’s likely to stick to the ribs.

This one is a classic case of sky-high peaks surrounded by a whole lot of pretty forgettable scenery. When We Are Family kicks in, it’s obvious why the song became immortal. That bass line really is one of the greats: bouncy, confident, and just showy enough without slipping into the “look at me” trap that plagues plenty of disco-era players. It’s the sort of line that feels like it’s levitating the whole arrangement.

He’s the Greatest Dancer keeps the magic going—a slick, stylish groove with enough personality to stand on its own. Between those two tracks, you get a great reminder of what the Chic/Nile Rodgers machine could do when it was firing.

The rest of the album, though… it’s hard not to hear it as padded. The charm dips, the songwriting blurs together, and it ends up feeling like the singles are doing all the heavy lifting. There’s nothing offensively bad here, just a lot of material you forget as soon as it ends.

In the end, it’s an album carried by two absolute killers surrounded by filler that keeps it squarely in “good, not great” territory. A solid 3—worth knowing, worth revisiting for the hits, but not something I can bump up in good conscience.

Keith Jarrett – The Köln Concert
Rating: 5/5

It’s hard to overstate what Keith Jarrett pulls off on The Köln Concert. Improvised solo piano albums aren’t exactly rare, but nothing else in the genre feels this alive, this inevitable, this impossibly whole. Jarrett walked onstage exhausted, annoyed, and saddled with a subpar piano… then delivered an hour of music so coherent and emotionally rich that it feels like it must have existed long before he touched the keys.

The opening section alone is a bit of a miracle. It’s mesmerizing, full of looping vamps that bloom into long, lyrical arcs. Jarrett stretches ideas until they glow, then lets them melt into something completely new without ever losing the thread. What should sound like an improvised maze instead comes across as a fully realized composition unfolding in real time.

As the concert moves through its later movements, the emotional colors shift—sometimes meditative, sometimes earthy and rhythmic, sometimes weightlessly melodic. The whole performance somehow balances vulnerability and command. It’s spiritual without being precious, virtuosic without showing off. Just a guy at a piano, channeling something bigger than technical skill.

I put this in the rare category of music that feels like it rewires your brain a little. It’s both maddeningly inspiring and completely humbling. And it earns its reputation: this is one of the greatest solo piano records ever made, full stop. A stone-cold five.

Lana Del Rey – Chemtrails Over the Country Club
Rating: ★★★★☆

Lana Del Rey has always lived in that liminal space between dream and memory, and Chemtrails Over the Country Club might be her most weightless drift through that world. This isn’t an album that grabs you by the collar. It’s more like someone opening a window on a warm evening and letting the curtains breathe—soft, slow, unhurried. And somehow, the melodies stick anyway.

What struck me most is how beautiful this record is without trying to be monumental. These songs don’t go for the jugular; they don’t even pretend to. Instead they shimmer at the edges, setting a mood that sneaks under your skin only after you’ve stopped paying attention. Her vocals sit like fog over a quiet landscape, and the whole thing floats in this hazy, late-afternoon light. It’s perfect for focused work or a calm walk when you need your brain to downshift.

Is it a deep, soul-stirring, life-reorienting album? No. And that’s fine. Not every record needs to be a revelation to earn its keep. This one excels at atmosphere: calming, cohesive, borderline hypnotic. It’s an album I’ll keep close for the times when I need something steady and beautiful in the background—when I want the world to feel just a little softer.

A four feels exactly right: lovely, absorbing, memorable in its own quiet way… but not quite a five, which is reserved for the rare records that shake something loose inside you. This one doesn’t shake. It glides. And it glides beautifully.

This one lands right in that sweet spot where weird, clever, and stylish all overlap. Lou Reed has never been what you’d call a “good” singer in any traditional sense, but somehow his talk-sing, half-shrug delivery works better here than it has any right to. It’s like he bends the entire album around his voice instead of trying to bend himself to the songs, and the whole thing ends up feeling intentional, even cool.

The big tracks are undeniable. “Walk on the Wild Side” is one of those songs that feels like it’s always existed, and “Perfect Day” hits that strange emotional tension only Reed can summon: tender, ironic, and unsettling all at once. But what really surprised me were the deep cuts. The tuba drop on “Make Up” is the kind of off-kilter choice Tom Waits might pull — grimy, theatrical, oddly perfect — and “Goodnight Ladies” is a fantastic closer, all horns and late-night swagger, like the band is sweeping the floor around you as the lights come up.

It’s not a flawless album, but it’s a fascinating one, full of personality and sharp writing. Reed commits to every eccentric choice, and Bowie and Ronson’s glam production somehow ties it all together without sanding down the edges.

Not quite a five for me, but a rock-solid classic that I’m glad to have fully absorbed.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This one was a bit of a mixed bag for me. I respect Jazmine Sullivan’s talent — she can clearly sing, and there are moments on this album where the production and vocal performances really click. But the album’s structure and framing ultimately pulled me out more than it drew me in.

The spoken-word interludes are the biggest hurdle. They’re meant to tie the themes together, but for my ears they broke the musical flow and leaned too hard into shock value. Tracks like “Donna’s Tale” — complete with churchy organ underscoring a monologue about sleeping with husbands — were more distracting than illuminating. And songs like “Price Tags” just didn’t land for me stylistically.

There’s good work here, and I can appreciate what Sullivan was aiming for, but the combination of the interludes and the subject matter pushed this one outside what I genuinely enjoy. It didn’t quite work as a complete listening experience.

Rating: 2/5

This one surprised me in the best way. I don’t mind pop when it’s done well, and Melodrama is pop that’s built with intention instead of cheap thrills. The production is stellar — Jack Antonoff gives everything this strange neon glow — and Lorde’s voice, while never a showstopper in the traditional sense, fits the emotional landscape perfectly. She cracks, she murmurs, she pulls back when most singers would push forward. It all feels deliberate.

What really stands out is how thoughtful the writing is, especially for someone as young as she was. These songs aren’t disposable; they’re self-aware without being pretentious, emotional without turning into melodramatic sludge. “Supercut” is ridiculously catchy, the kind of track that feels like heartbreak in motion, and “Liability” hits harder than it has any right to, especially with those layered vocals unraveling at the end.

I don’t think it hits that rare air of a five-star record for me, but it’s a very solid listen from front to back — cohesive, smart, and full of moments that linger. This is pop with a pulse.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I wanted to like this more than I did. There are flashes of something real — clever lyrics, interesting keyboard ideas, and that unmistakable sense of 1967 energy — but the whole thing never quite gels. The mix is rough, the tambourine and organ dominate everything, and the songs often sound more like good demos than finished work.

I can see how this would’ve felt revolutionary at the time, but compared to other San Francisco records of the era — especially Jefferson Airplane — the contrast is stark. It’s a fascinating listen historically, just not one I’ll come back to.

⭐️⭐️

Fleetwood Mac – Tusk (1979)

It’s hard not to judge Tusk through the lens of Rumours. That record is so tight, so perfectly sculpted, that anything following it was bound to feel a little unmoored. Tusk isn’t trying to recreate that magic—it’s what happens when a band at the top of the world decides to dismantle the machine just to see what makes it tick.

There’s brilliance in the chaos. The title track is wild and unhinged in the best way—marching drums, manic vocals, the feeling that the whole thing could fall apart at any second but somehow doesn’t. It’s a reminder that Lindsey Buckingham was chasing something raw and alive, even if it wasn’t always pretty. Sara, on the other hand, is Stevie Nicks at her most hypnotic—hazy, poetic, and wistful. You don’t understand the song so much as drift through it. It’s the emotional heartbeat of the album.

The rest of Tusk meanders between the inspired and the indulgent. There are great moments scattered throughout, but the record doesn’t hit the same emotional through-line as Rumours. It’s a fascinating, ambitious work, just not a cohesive one. Still, you can’t help but admire the audacity—it’s Fleetwood Mac refusing to become a museum piece, choosing restlessness over repetition.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

You can hear the blueprint for a lot of future sounds in here — post-punk, alt, even riot grrrl — but the record itself is more fascinating than it is enjoyable. The rhythm section has real drive and imagination, but the vocals and overall execution feel raw in a way that sometimes undercuts the songs instead of elevating them.

It’s one of those albums that’s easier to admire than to love, more important than essential for repeat listening.
⭐️⭐️⭐️