Reviews by cmhess98

A bandmate recommendation that paid off. Moon Safari sits in electronic music territory that has been consistently difficult throughout this project, and it works where so many others haven’t — because Air built this record around warmth rather than coldness, melody rather than texture, and vintage analog keyboard sounds rather than synthetic distance.
The Rhodes and Wurlitzer-style parts are the heart of it — warm, slightly worn, and immediately inviting in a way that most electronic production never manages. There’s a cinematic quality here that connects to the Shuggie Otis warmth that landed so well earlier in the project, a sense that these sounds belong to a specific and appealing world rather than just existing as production choices. The horns that surface on one track deepen that impression considerably, briefly making the whole thing feel like a lost 70s film score.
The atmospheric quality that tends to push electronic records into background listening territory is present here too, and a closer listen would probably reveal more. But even at a moderate level of attention the melodic content and keyboard textures give it enough to hold onto — which is more than most records in this genre manage.
A genuine four — warm, melodic, and the electronic record that finally delivers what the format keeps promising.

The Yardbirds’ historical importance is almost entirely about who passed through the band — Clapton, Beck, and Page forming one of the more remarkable guitarist lineages in rock history. Roger the Engineer is the best argument for the recorded output, and it still doesn’t make a convincing case.
Jeff Beck’s guitar work is genuinely impressive — inventive, playful, and pointing toward things that would define a generation of players. “Jeff’s Boogie” in particular shows a technical and musical imagination that was clearly ahead of its time. The playing earns its reputation.
The songs surrounding it don’t. Too much of the album leans on novelty and experimentation rather than fully realized songwriting, and Keith Relf’s vocals are unremarkable at best — a significant liability when the guitar work is doing this much heavy lifting. When the voice feels like an afterthought over impressive playing, the songs themselves start to feel like showcases rather than music with something real to say.
The Yardbirds matter because of what they launched. This record is more interesting as a historical document than as a listening experience — and at this stage of the project, that distinction is worth making clearly.
A 2 that respects the guitar work without pretending the album around it justifies the listen.

The self-titled debut earned a five for its commitment to extremity and danger — a record so singular it still feels strange and slightly unhinged decades later. L.A. Woman is a different proposition entirely, and the comparison is useful rather than unfair. This is The Doors pulling back from theatrical psychedelia and planting themselves in the blues, and the result is their most musically grounded record and arguably their most human one.
Ray Manzarek’s organ is the consistent highlight — blues-influenced and in service of the songs rather than creating atmosphere for Morrison to inhabit. It’s Ray at his most musical rather than his most theatrical, and given the Hammond development happening in parallel to this listening project, hearing him work in that blues-soul idiom hits with a specific and welcome resonance. The addition of Jerry Scheff on bass guitar gives several tracks a physical low-end weight that the earlier records, where Manzarek covered bass duty with his left hand, couldn’t quite match.
“Riders on the Storm” closes the record with one of the great atmospheric statements in rock history — that rain sound, the electric piano, Morrison’s voice floating over everything like a ghost already halfway out the door. It earns every bit of its reputation.
The limitation is that the blues foundation occasionally becomes a blues exercise. Some mid-album tracks feel derivative rather than transcendent, working closer to genre template than singular statement. The highs are very high. The distance between them and the surrounding material is real.
A strong four — warmer and more musical than the debut, and slightly less irreplaceable for exactly that reason.

Context worth naming: seeing The Waterboys live at Bourbon and Beyond — the Hammond organ player in particular looking like he was having the time of his life — gave this record a warmer entry point than it might otherwise have had. That experience is real and worth acknowledging. It just doesn't change what the studio record actually delivers.
Fisherman's Blues sits at a genuinely appealing intersection — Irish and Celtic folk tradition, Van Morrison-influenced spiritual urgency, and acoustic warmth that connects to the Americana lineage. When it hits those marks the results are undeniable. The title track is joyful, driving, and fiddle-forward in a way that's almost impossible not to respond to physically, and the best moments on disc one show a band fully inhabiting a sound with real conviction and personality.
The problem is consistency. Hit or miss is the honest description — genuine peaks surrounded by stretches where the record coasts on atmosphere rather than delivering the same energy. The unevenness that keeps so many folk-adjacent records in the three-star tier is present here too, and the record player test came back clean: not something you'd reach for by choice despite the affection for the live show.
The Hammond player was clearly having a helluva time. The album, taken front to back, earns a respectful three.

"If all of this was Clint Eastwood it would be a five, but it is not." That's the most honest summary of this record — a debut that contains one of the great opening statements of the 2000s and then spends the rest of its runtime operating in that track's considerable shadow. Del the Funky Homosapien rapping over that ghostly, slightly sinister groove is immediately distinctive and completely alive in a way that makes everything else work harder to match it.
The groove is real across most of the record, which is ultimately what pushes this to a four. Damon Albarn assembled something genuinely eclectic here — hip-hop, dub, electronic, and indie rock blending with a lightness of touch that most genre-crossing records can't manage — and when it locks in the results are consistently enjoyable. "19-2000" has the kind of physical bass momentum that pulls you in immediately. The collaborators tend to focus and energize whichever track they're on, giving the record more personality than Albarn's more diffuse vocal approach alone would generate.
The experimental detours are the cost of doing business. Some of the odder moments sit awkwardly between the stronger material, and the record occasionally disappears into its own concept rather than staying grounded in the groove that makes it work. These aren't dealbreakers — just the places where the ambition slightly outruns the execution.
A genuine four — catchy, groovy, and more alive than most records attempting this kind of genre collision. Worth noting that a platform licensing dispute required switching from Amazon to Spotify mid-listen to hear the full record, which says something about the ongoing messiness of catalog rights in the streaming era.

Richard Thompson is one of the great underappreciated guitarists in any genre, and this record makes that case quietly and consistently. The playing is inventive and expressive without ever drawing attention to itself — exactly the kind of musicianship that rewards close listening without demanding it. The Celtic instrumentation gives the record a specific texture that distinguishes it from more conventional folk-rock, and the horns that surface on one track are a welcome surprise, the kind of unexpected touch that briefly suggests a broader sonic palette.
Linda Thompson’s voice is lovely without being transcendent — warm, authentic, and completely unaffected, but lacking the kind of commanding presence that makes you stop what you’re doing. It suits the material without overwhelming it, which is either a strength or a limitation depending on what you’re looking for. Here it lands somewhere in between.
The darkness and emotional weight running through the record sit in a lineage that connects British folk-rock to the Americana tradition — you can hear the thread that runs toward music you love most, even if this particular expression of it doesn’t fully claim you. The influences are right, the execution is consistently solid, and the whole thing passes by pleasantly without quite reaching the emotional temperature that earns a four.
A genuine three that sits toward the higher end of that tier — liked at times, respected throughout, not quite compelling enough for regular rotation.

The bass is missing. Not subtly buried or tastefully restrained — genuinely, almost completely absent from a record that has more kick drum than almost anything else in the catalog. Whether the production decision was intentional or accidental, the result is a record that sounds like it’s missing a limb. For someone who has spent this entire project paying close attention to what great bass players do — Jamerson, Entwistle, Jaco, Squire — the hollow low end is impossible to unhear once you notice it.
Which is a shame, because the ambition is real. This is Metallica at their most compositionally complex — long, shifting, prog-influenced arrangements that move through time signatures and dynamics in ways that show genuine craft. “One” remains a remarkable piece of songwriting, building from acoustic fragility into full thrash assault with a narrative and emotional arc that most metal never attempts. It earns its reputation completely.
The problem is that “One” towers over everything surrounding it in a way that makes the rest of the record feel like supporting material rather than a cohesive album. Coming to this as someone whose primary Metallica relationship is with the Black Album — stripped down, riff-focused, and immediately accessible — the density and complexity here creates distance rather than reward.
Same landing as Megadeth, same honest reason. A three for the craft, the ambition, and one genuinely great song.

DJ Muggs' production is the star of this record, and it's genuinely exceptional — dark, hazy, cinematic beats built from deep low-end and carefully chosen samples that create an atmosphere so complete it could function as a full listening experience without a word being rapped over it. In a genre where production often serves the vocals, this record almost reverses the equation.
Which is also the limitation. B-Real's nasal, stylized delivery is immediately recognizable and completely distinctive, but it disappears into the mix as texture rather than asserting itself as a voice saying things that demand attention. At times the vocals function less like a rapper and more like another sample — present, purposeful, and ultimately absorbed into the atmosphere Muggs built around them. The lyrics become wallpaper over extraordinary furniture.
The adolescent hip-hop connection that made NWA land with real personal weight doesn't quite activate here in the same way. The production pulls you in completely while the lyrical content adds limited resonance — similar to the Common experience earlier in this project, where the music underneath was doing more work than the performance on top. The beats deserve a four. The record as a whole lands at three.
A genuinely impressive sonic achievement that stops just short of full connection. The production alone makes it worth knowing — just don't expect the vocals to match it.

The packaging arrives as a prescription medication blister pack with the instruction “1 tablet 70 min” — an invitation to take the whole thing as a single immersive dose rather than a collection of songs. It’s either the most pretentious or most committed album concept of 1997 depending on your perspective, and the music inside takes that instruction seriously.
Jason Pierce builds something genuinely atmospheric here — space rock, gospel, drone, and orchestral ambition layered into a record that asks for complete surrender. The gospel influences are present but submerged in texture rather than front and center, which means they register as color rather than conviction. “Broken Heart” in particular creates such a complete atmosphere of stillness and calm that it becomes genuinely nap-inducing — and not entirely in a bad way. There’s a real distinction between music that puts you to sleep because it’s boring and music that puts you to sleep because your nervous system simply lets go. This is closer to the latter.
The problem is the same one that landed Lazer Guided Melodies at a 3 earlier in this project — the atmosphere is carefully constructed and occasionally beautiful, but it rarely asserts itself emotionally in a way that demands full attention and rewards it. Playing it in the background while working felt entirely appropriate, which is probably not what the prescription packaging intended. “Cop Shoot Cop,” the album’s seventeen-minute centerpiece, tested that patience further with a noise section that required editorial intervention — a reminder that commitment to atmosphere and commitment to the listener’s time are different things.
Two Spiritualized records, two honest threes. Well crafted, occasionally lovely, and best experienced horizontal with nowhere urgent to be.

The opening riff of "E-Pro" landed with an immediate and specific reaction — a strong desire to sit at the Hammond and add organ underneath it. That's not a critical observation, it's a musician's instinct, and it's one of the more honest signals a record can send. When a track makes you want to play rather than just listen, it's doing something right.
Guero is Beck returning to the playful, genre-hopping, sample-heavy territory of his Odelay era after the quiet vulnerability of Sea Change, and the Dust Brothers production gives the whole thing a physical momentum that keeps the eclecticism feeling grounded rather than scattered. The beats are consistently strong — the foundation that makes the meandering feel like a feature rather than a flaw. A lot of the critical dismissal of this record penalizes it for exactly the quality that makes it work: the willingness to move freely between ideas without apologizing for the transitions.
That said, "great but not something that sets a new standard" is the honest assessment. This doesn't rewrite anything or arrive with the kind of inevitability that earns a five. It's a joyful, well-produced, consistently engaging record that rewards attention without demanding it — which is its own legitimate achievement.
A genuinely enthusiastic four. Different from the patient, mood-dependent four that Sea Change earned — this one just works.

Muse are a band whose ambition is impossible to question and whose maximalism is an acquired taste. Black Holes and Revelations is their most accessible record, which is a relative term — this is still a grandiose, apocalyptic, stadium-filling statement about government conspiracy and environmental collapse delivered with complete conviction and considerable technical firepower.
The record takes a few tracks to find its footing. When “Supermassive Black Hole” arrives at track three it’s a genuine surprise — a funk-influenced, Prince-adjacent groove that sounds unlike anything else in their catalog and briefly suggests a different and more interesting version of this album might have been possible. It’s the moment where the production steps back from bombast into something more physical and alive.
Then the maximalism reasserts itself, and the middle stretch settles into capable but unremarkable territory. The unexpected highlight arrives in “Soldier’s Poem” — a quiet, hymn-like a cappella piece that opens a window in the middle of all the grand gesturing. When Muse stops being Muse for three minutes and just sings, something genuinely human comes through. That it’s the most affecting moment on the record says something about where the emotional center actually lives versus where the band thinks it does.
The back half offers “Hoodoo” and “Knights of Cydonia” — the latter with actual horns, a welcome addition — as genuine bright spots. Not enough to push it to four, but enough to keep it as an honest three rather than a charitable one.

Stankonia makes a stronger case for itself than Speakerboxxx/The Love Below — the single album format keeps Big Boi and André 3000 operating as a unit rather than pulling in separate directions, and the production has a kinetic, genre-blending energy that feels genuinely unified rather than divided. The talent is never in question.
The opening argument is almost overwhelming. "B.O.B." arrives like a freight train and remains one of the most propulsive tracks in hip-hop history — punk energy, gospel choir, and Atlanta funk colliding at a speed that shouldn't work and absolutely does. "Ms. Jackson" is a stone cold classic that earns every bit of its cultural staying power. Erykah Badu's presence elevates everything she touches, as it always does.
The problem is consistency. The interludes derail momentum in exactly the same way they did on the double album — OutKast clearly love the format and this particular listener consistently doesn't, which is a stable and honest critical position rather than a snap judgment. The material between the peaks is a genuine mixed bag, and the highs are high enough that the valleys feel more pronounced by contrast.
Two OutKast records, two honest threes. The ambition is real, the highlights are real, and the format choices keep pulling the rug out from under both. A record that contains some of the best moments in their catalog without quite being one of their best albums.

Fun House arrives with more grit and raw energy than expected, and for a stretch it makes a compelling case for itself. The early tracks have a physical, confrontational momentum that feels genuinely alive — Iggy Pop before the image was calculated, before Bowie smoothed the edges, just pure animal energy over a band playing like the walls are coming down. The high moments are real and worth acknowledging.
Then the record starts deliberately dismantling itself. The saxophone work of Steve Mackay enters on the back half and takes things progressively further into free jazz and noise territory, the songs loosening their grip on structure until the final stretch is essentially organized chaos. That arc is clearly intentional — The Stooges weren’t losing the plot, they were abandoning it on purpose. Whether that reads as liberation or just noise depends entirely on your relationship with that aesthetic. Here it lands closer to the latter.
The third Iggy Pop adjacent record in this project and the third to land at the same place — respected, occasionally impressive, and ultimately not something that generates any pull toward return listens. The consistency across Lust for Life, The Idiot, and now Fun House suggests a stable and honest assessment rather than a snap judgment. This is simply not a musical world that claims this particular listener, even when the entry point is the source rather than the derivative.
A fair three — gritty, historically essential, and best appreciated from a respectful distance

RCA recorded this in 1963 and shelved it for over twenty years, deciding it was too raw and too far outside the crossover image they’d built around Sam Cooke. That decision tells you everything about what’s on this record and nothing good about the people who made it. What they were hiding was one of the great live soul performances ever captured on tape.
This is not the smooth, polished Sam Cooke of the radio hits. This is Cooke unleashed in front of a Miami audience that’s completely with him, preaching and sweating and giving everything he has to a room that’s giving it right back. “Chain Gang” in this context becomes something the studio version only gestures toward — the call and response unlocking a communal energy that makes you feel the social pressure of the room even sixty years removed. “Bring It On Home to Me” carries the same rawness and power you hear in the videos of Otis Redding tearing through “Try a Little Tenderness” with Booker T and the MGs on the Stax/Volt European tour. That’s not a coincidence — Cooke is the bridge between the gospel-trained polish of the crooner tradition and the physically urgent soul that Otis and Sam and Dave would carry forward.
Is it perfect? No. But what music is? The fives on this list have never required perfection — they’ve required something irreplaceable and alive. This record has both in abundance.
Sitting at a desk working through JIRA tickets while this plays is a genuine injustice. The highest compliment a live record can receive is wishing you’d been in the room. Consider it paid.

Third is clearly the work of serious artists making uncompromising choices, and the eleven-year gap before its release only deepened the commitment to difficulty. This is not the smoky trip-hop of Portishead’s earlier records — it’s industrial, abrasive, and deliberately unsettling in ways that reward listeners who want to be challenged and alienate those who don’t. Falling firmly in the latter camp is not a judgment about the record’s ambition. It’s just honest.
“Deep Water” is the exception and the accidental argument against everything surrounding it. Gibbons’ voice over a ukulele, stripped of every production layer that makes the rest of the record so hard to inhabit — it’s genuinely moving, a brief window into what this album might have been with more moments of that kind of human directness. It lands as the highlight precisely because it gets out of its own way.
Then “Machine Gun” arrives. That motorik drum pattern hammering relentlessly underneath Gibbons’ fractured vocals creates a disconnect that’s clearly intentional — the voice barely holding on over something completely indifferent to her distress. For some listeners that contrast is devastating. Here it just creates distance rather than tension, and the record never quite recovers from it as a listening experience.
Respected, not enjoyed. A 2 that fully acknowledges the craft while being honest about the complete absence of personal connection.

The second Paul Simon five in this project, and the one he’d been building toward. Where the 1972 debut felt effortless and warm — a songwriter wandering through genres with natural curiosity — Graceland feels like a full artistic commitment. Simon didn’t dip into South African music. He went there, lived inside it, and came back with something that sounds completely inevitable in retrospect and was genuinely courageous in context.
The apartheid-era controversy around the recording is worth acknowledging honestly. At the time, cultural boycotts of South Africa were the political consensus, and Simon’s decision to record there with Black South African musicians was genuinely contested. In hindsight the integration argument holds — these collaborations brought Ladysmith Black Mambazo and the township jive musicians of Johannesburg to a global audience in a way that honored rather than exploited the source. Courage in art doesn’t always look obvious while it’s happening.
The music makes the case beyond any political argument. “The Boy in the Bubble,” “You Can Call Me Al,” “Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes” — each one a different entry point into the same joyful, rhythmically alive world Simon had discovered. “Homeless” with Ladysmith Black Mambazo carries the album to its emotional peak without quite being the peak itself — because the record stays remarkably high throughout, which is its defining quality.

Following Marvin Gaye’s orchestral soul masterpiece with full-throttle thrash metal is possibly the most dramatic single-step pivot this project has served up, and the context didn’t help. A long work day and a Marvin Gaye hangover are not ideal conditions for Among the Living — though in fairness, it’s hard to imagine conditions where this would land as personally essential.
The talent is real and worth naming honestly. Anthrax are the most playful and groove-aware of the Big Four thrash acts, and Scott Ian’s rhythm guitar work gives the record a propulsive backbone that’s genuinely impressive. The humor and self-awareness that led them to collaborate with Public Enemy and write songs about Stephen King novels distinguishes them from the pure aggression of their peers. These are musicians who clearly love what they do.
The problem is simple exhaustion. The relentlessness that defines thrash metal’s appeal to its devotees is exactly what makes it difficult for this particular listener — the same diagnosis that landed Rust in Peace at a barely-there three a few records back. The craft is undeniable. The personal connection is nonexistent. Would never choose to listen to it, would never call it bad.
A three for the talent. Honestly earned, honestly limited.

The record announces itself immediately as something different — orchestral in ambition, sophisticated in execution, and emotionally generous in a way that disarms you before you’ve fully settled in. Where so much protest music arrives as accusation, What’s Going On arrives as invitation. That’s Marvin Gaye’s central artistic achievement, and it’s rarer than it sounds.
David Van De Pitte’s arrangements are the consistent technical marvel. Strings deployed as emotional texture rather than decoration, horn voicings chosen for mournful beauty rather than punch, woodwinds as delicate color on “Right On” and “Flyin’ High.” The brass on “Inner City Blues” finally unleash in something closer to protest voice — punchy and confrontational in a way Van De Pitte had carefully withheld throughout — and the contrast makes the closing feel genuinely earned rather than merely dramatic.
James Jamerson’s bass is melodic without being self-indulgent, which is the highest possible compliment. On “Wholy Holy” he plays with a quality of reverence distinct from everything else on the record. On “Inner City Blues” he sounds almost angry. The range within a single album, always in service of something larger than himself, puts him in a category of his own.
The sequencing is the boldest artistic choice. Ending on “Inner City Blues” rather than the spiritual elevation of “Wholy Holy” creates the gap between what’s possible and what actually is — which is exactly where the real protest lives. Marvin could have closed on beauty and resolution. He chose devastation instead, and the record is permanently greater for it.
A journey more than an album. An easy five.

Myths of the Near Future starts with a reasonable argument for itself. The energy is real, the musicianship is clear, and the early variability suggests a band with genuine chops operating at the center of a specific cultural moment — the brief nu-rave intersection of indie rock and rave culture that briefly made Klaxons the most talked-about band in Britain. For a stretch, the craft keeps it in respectable territory.
Then “Magick” arrives, and the case starts collapsing. What some listeners find anthemic and hypnotic lands here as actively annoying — the chanted repetition and processed vocals crossing from atmospheric into grating without warning. The track that follows doubles down with a synth texture that seems purposefully engineered to increase anxiety rather than create momentum. The intent is clear. The payoff isn’t there.
The closing track delivers the final verdict — a metal-adjacent section with distorted vocals that feels more ridiculous than dangerous, the kind of swing that needs to land perfectly to work and doesn’t. By the end the variability and chops that initially kept this above the 2 threshold have been outweighed by a record that spent its second half actively wearing out its welcome.
A 2 that reflects a genuine listen rather than a snap judgment — the craft is real, the moment was real, and the music still isn’t remotely for this particular listener. Sometimes that’s just the honest answer.

The word that keeps coming back is effortless — and that’s the real achievement, because none of this was. Simon spent months recording in Jamaica with reggae musicians, in Brazil with South American folk players, in studios across multiple continents piecing together a record that sounds like it arrived fully formed on a warm afternoon. The labor is completely invisible. The joy is completely audible.
“Mother and Child Reunion” and “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard” are institutions, the kind of songs that feel like they always existed. “Me and Julio” in particular passes the highest possible melodic test — it’s the kind of tune that colonizes your brain on first listen and sets up camp for the rest of the day. That’s not something you can engineer. It’s either there or it isn’t, and here it absolutely is.
What elevates the record beyond a strong collection of songs is how naturally the genre-blending sits. The reggae influences, the gospel touches, the Latin rhythms — none of it sounds like a musician trying on someone else’s clothes. It sounds like a songwriter who simply hears music that way, for whom these traditions are as natural as breathing. Years before Graceland made this approach famous, Simon was already doing it with complete ease.
Knowing Still Crazy After All These Years and Graceland exist doesn’t punish this record for not being them. It just means Simon has more than one five-star record in him — which is rare, accurate, and worth saying plainly.
A joyful, effortless, melodically masterful five.