Reviews by declaniom

I really love this album. It’s not really one to listen to in one sitting. Dip into over the course of a day and by the end you’ll of the day it feels like you’ve arrived at a destination.

It’s always felt like an album about music. One where the narrator feels a crisis of confidence but emerges with his love of music reinforced. It does seem pivotal in the history of Wilco like Jeff’s setting aside the alt-country of Uncle Tupelo and early Wilco and moving to the stadium indie of the later years.

Apart from the Woody Guthrie albums I don’t really like anything after this, many do but not for me.

The album was quite important for me. I bought it at the same time as If You’re Feeling Sinister and the first Fountains of Wayne LP. Which kind of brought me back to early indie, power pop, and paisley underground I’d been listening to 10 years before. A focus more on the songs than the attitude. So Wilco lead to The Handsome Family and Golden Smog.

Happy Valentines Day! You know how Phil Spector's Xmas lp is everyone's generated lp on their first 25th December. I thought we'd get 69 Love Songs today. Or maybe Barry White. Instead I got Anthrax, which is frankly a wreckless soundtrack choice for lovemaking for a man of my age. Still everyone in A&E has been smiling at me in sympathy and it least it got me out of the house.

Despite not containing any romantic ballads, there is a breadth of subject matter in the lyrics that was surprising. I especially liked the pop culture references. At the moment the top review for the lp complains that I Am The Law, a song about 2000AD lawman Judge Dread lacks Joni Mitchell's subtlety, but I always thought Joni was always more into Stronteum Dog. The reviewer is kind of right there isn't a lot of room to tackle the moral ambiguity resulting from dispatching of summary justice, especially when you have to fit in a guitar solo. On the other hand the the album does tackle the environment and colonialism and find room to be quite funny.

Overall this is better than I expected. It's a good album. There's rhytmic light and shade and overall sense of urgency. Shame the metal vocal style and guitar solos get in the way.

Kind Reagards, Evan

There’s nowt wrong with this lp. I’m sure it soundtracked many a West Sussex dinner party where 90’s ex-ravers congratulated each other on being multi-cultural and ate fajitas for the first time.

The performances and musicianship are fine but I feel this has been toned down for the International market. I bet if you were a connoisseur of Cuban music you could reel of twenty or more better lore exciting records and I rather wish this list picked them instead.

00’s Indie began with bands old genres and Strokesifying them in a modern studio. That was followed by a hipster period of earnest Americans playing with harmony. Then towards the middle teens the Anglo-Celtic islands wrestled control of the indie zeitgeist back with prog post punk and indie went through its best period since the 90s.

Grizzly Bear belongs to the hipster beardo era. This lp is one of the best from that time but in 2026 it suffers from being the old fashioned without being retro. Give it a few years and a critical reappraisal it may well belong on this list, but at the moment it’s a bit ordinary. Nice. Carefully constructed. Pleasant background music.

This is the worst Tom Waits album I’ve ever heard by a long way and I own 15.

Tom plays backed by an half-arsed lounge band. He intersperses some of his weaker songs with humourous monologues that occasionally include a sharply turned phrase, but mostly revolve around the shops in the Hollywood neighbourhood the record was taped, industry insiders find hilarious.

It’s like when you go to a local punk in a strange town and all the bands know each other and the crowd is all someone’s mate. You find yourself listening to a series of local in-jokes and feel excluded. Except here you aren’t excluded by youthful obliviousness or because they didn’t consider there might be outsiders. But because you’re not part of this 70’s Hollywood elite who laugh uproariously whenever that restaurant they went to with Joni Mitchell is mentioned.

At this point in his career Tom can’t rise above the cesspit around him or inject life into the moribund band.

This is quite a good album. There are some great moments when they break away from their core sound.

Why anyone would want to hear this album ahead of Toxicity defeats me. That’s a 4 or 5 star album - and I hate my metal. Admittedly SOAD have more about them than their genre peers. Broader subject matter, a sense of humour, light and shade.

Probably the album with the most fretwankery that I’ll give five stars to!

Defined a new way that records could sound.

Pleasant dream pop. Beginning to sound dated

I had this when I was a kid and alt rock types thought Jim Morrison was cool. Turns out he was s bit of a knob with an over-self-aware singing voice.

Fantastic organ sound throughout, strong rhythm section. Some good tunes, including Rider on the Storm, let down by too many white mam pretends to sing the blues.

My recollection of LL Cool J is that he was better than this. Pretty ordinary beats, flow and subject matter. Spotify went on to an earlier track that was much better.

Begins and I thought it’s got a nice smooth sound. By the end the absence of sharp edges meant I barely noticed it was on. I guess it has succeeded on its own terms.

There's much to marvel att the way her words put pictures of places, charachters and situations in your mind. Unfortunately, they're not people, places or situations that interest me. But if you are an wealthy American with nothing to do I'm sure it resonates. Music and vocals OK.

Generic

Ahh man Sparks are so good. Intelligent, funny, and extravagant.

Maybe if the list had been published later their reappraisal by the zeitgeist may have seen more than one album on the list.

I like many of their albums more than this one but it’s still 5 stars. Suggest Lil Beethoven, Exotic Creatures From the Deep and the Girl is Crying in her Latte. There can’t be many bands from the seventies who’ve peaked in the 2010’s and 2020’s

I suppose because many of the tropes of hip hop were invented on this album that is why this album sounds a bit ordinary.

The curse of the American self-titled debut album strikes again! Tom can’t think of title - didn’t matter to nomarks like Boston Van Halen and The Cars so why should Tom try any harder. That attitude permeates the whole album. Feels cheap and quickly put together - who signed off that cover?

Pretty ordinary backing band, can’t be the same guys that played with Johnny Thunders. (Subsequent research tells me they’re the guys who played on Johnny Cash’s American Recordings - must have impressed with experience). I’d rather listen to Nick Lowe than this and that explores similar territory but this is lacking focus. American Girl is good though.

I’m sure I’ve heard better Petty LPs, but this is dull.

All Cash’s late life American Recordings are fantastic, not sure this is the best but it’s the most universal one.

One of the reviews on here describes this as “Americana Easy Listening”. I’m not really sure that this counts as country, the close production and song choice feels more rock, but it’s certainly not an easy listening. Mortality pondered by a man at the end of his life, murder, self-harm, questioning faith does makes for very uneasy listening.

Johnny Cash (and ABBA) was one of the few concessions made by the Goths I grew up with to wider music world of the people around us. And Rick Rubin must have tapped into the same thing when he put Nick Cave and Nine I nch Nails song in front of him.

What emerges is evidence that Johnny Cash is a Sinatra level interpreter of songs. He adds the weight of years lived to Hurt and Personal Jesus. Adding the perspective of age to what were previously adolescent songs.

On In My Life Johnny makes me think of the time I was living in “mainland” Britain but returned to my island and was pondering a return. And riding the bus listening to a tape of mid period Beatles. Then it reminded me of feeling detached from home, Johnny makes me think of people I’ve lost touch with due to my decision to return home. And those I’ve lost to death since. Cos death is never far away on this lp.

The album ends with We’ll Meet Again. This is a poignant song in the British Isles. It was a big hit during the war and became a symbol of the separation from loved ones in the services. My Nan who died in the 80’s and Mum who’s 90 love it. So for Johnny to make me listen to this song with fresh ears is an achievement and here the perspective is of someone about to be separated from loved ones through death and gaining comfort in their belief in the afterlife. And that was the last song on his last album.

Pretty bog standard American Pop of the Eighties. Elevated by a good and distinctive singer and great single.

Let down by rancid production and backing music. It’s as if corporate America looked across the Atlantic and thought how can we do what they’re doing more profitably and don’t worry if it sounds shit. I’ll kiss you is especially rotten.

This list is stuffed to the gills with grim American pop’s half-arsed attempts attempts to keep up with the rest of the world - The Cars, Boston, Van Halen, this is marginally better but only because Cyndi personality lifts it out of the mire.

But on reflection Girls … & Time After Time are worth a point extra

Bit difficult to locate this lp on streaming services. It’s not one of the American Music Club albums I own a physical copy of. I found it to stream on bandcamp.

This is a perfectly fine AMC / Mark Eitzel lp. I’d have preferred San Francisco, East or Love Songs For Patriots. But the difference in quality between any of their albums is small.

I think AMC’s standing might have declined since the book was
published. Part of the problem is Mark Kozeliek seems to fill the space that Mark Eitzel used to dominate. Perhaps his the more obviously personal songs fit this cathartic century better. Wiki tells me that MK’s first band Red House Painters were signed by 4AD upon recommendation from Eitzel.

Good work!