Reviews by declaniom

A genius 90’s Beach Boys.

Bit epic for Brit Pop. I imagine this is what Muse listened to.

Umm... Sonic Youth's pop album. There were only few concessions made to the mainstream but they're enough to make the whole thing a bit uniform. Meanwhile it seems a funny time for the band to dial back on the melody. There's some Youth classics on here and the lyrics are strong with Kim's influence to the fore.

If you drop into this almost anywhere there's some cool sounds going on. But as a whole it's pretty wishy washy after that initial novelty.

Additionally the backing band are shit hot create a lovely base for the soloists - Davis, Shorter, McLaughlin - who contribute little.

This is an assured and relaxed lp.

Lyrically and structurally strong. Terrible vocal production.

So beautiful.

Maybe this is one of the Costello albums that could be swapped for another album to show the breadth of his work or allow space for later artists. But … it’s still a 5 star lp.

In the 80’s there was a new genre of album - 60s Guy’s Midlife Crisis with Synths.

The apex of this genre are McCartney II and Trans by Neil Young. After that you have Peter Gabriel’s So followed by a long trail of shite. Arc of a Diver is near the top of the shit tip because of Winward’s talent but it’s still stinks.

Later generations learned the lesson from the sixties guys. They knew what made them great in the first place and tried to refine and improve upon that sound as their career progressed they didn’t chase the latest sounds desperately hoping to remain relevant.

There’s some cool arrangements and playing around the fringes of the record - the intros, the outros, the middle 8s. But when they really get going, really hit their stride it’s all a bit naff.

Better music have followed if they ditched the metal cliches. Perhaps they did.

I probably didn’t need to hear this again before I died. But it’s a five star album unfortunately.

This is his best album.Not unrelated to it being mostly instrumental.

Pretty cool music.

It’s amazing that old music that would still have seemed important in 2000 has aged so badly in the last quarter century. I used to quite like this album. But me Nan used to like The Black and White Ministral Show and this isn’t that far removed. White Englishmen pretending to be black Americans. If you can look past that the self indulgent solos and grotesque sexist lyrics no longer cut the mustard either.

Theme From Top of The Pops is still good. Everything else boring and a bit icky

The Brits Di punk better. Some Americans also do Punk better. But this is ok, a little fast at times.

He's been a good artist over the years. Don't think any albums stand out though.

I tend to just play the 7" singles nowadays, but its great to hear the album in total again.

Let's face it Reward is one of the greatest songs in history, so lets pretend it was always on the album. Bouncing Babies and Treason are classics also. Read It In Books is one of my favourite Echo and the Bunnymen songs and the Teardrops version is cool too because it's sung by Cope.

In the morass of 70's and 80's American mainstream rock that pollutes this list it's nice to have something from the post-punk era this side of the the Atlantic pop up on the generator.

It's very good. But is this the point that the slow decline in Nick Cave's career began? There's 11 lps (not counting the ones with the Birthday Party) that are better than this and none following. Just about still a 5 star record but the compilers should have chosen better.

I prefer their later albums, which have a more coherent vision.

Across Bonnie "Prince" Billy, Palace and under his own name, Will Oldham's are consistently 4 star.