Reviews by declaniom

Ahh the Gen X output of the EMI / Abbey Road posh boy band cookie cutter. At least unlike their Boomer predecessors (Pink Floyd) and Millennial successors (Coldplay) Radiohead at least approach their music with some spirit of adventure.

So here there’s a bit of dub step and electric trickery, and Thom Yorke tries to channel late period Scott Walker. However it would be far more fulfilling to listen to Burial or Tilt.

Good album. Pleasant trip hop sounds with Indian fulourishes for your late 90’s dinner party.

Need more grist in my mill.

Don’t get me wrong I quite like Kate Bush. I even own this LP on vinyl. But it’s rubbish.

She’s done the late 80’s thing of getting big name musicians in - Alan Stivel, Mick Karn, the Bulgarian Voices. And some of the performances are good. But it results in an incoherent mush with Kate wailing above.

Good fun album

One of the greatest lps of all time? 7 tracks padded out by unnecessarily soloing. Could have been an ep or 12” single.

Surely there are better albums by this band? It’s got Gillan, Lord, Glover, Paige FFS. Lyrically, half arsed. The best song Highway Star is about going to a gig. Smoke on the Water about waiting to record this album.

Highway Star is pretty good especially Gillan vocals, even Ritchie’s urgent solo contributes to the prosody for once. Smoke has that killer riff. Space Truckin is fun. Lord’s keyboards in Lazy are cool - loop part for two minutes and you’d have a good 4 track ep.

1.5 stars don’t know which way to jump. It’s not as bad as Private Dancer but it’s not as good as any of the two star LPs.

Enjoyable album of laid back soul. Where contempories like Whitney caterwall Anita purrs. Still 80's RnB had crummy backing music tat hampered even the best singers and songs.

Such a great lp! And it’s their debut.

This album does for Northern Soul what the first Specials record did for Ska. Lyrically it is intelligent with street culture and literature combining in a dazzling hotpotch. There isn’t really another lp quite like it because Dexys went into their Come on Eileen phase after this.

I’m not sure why this is on the list. It’s not a bad album and it’s got John’s voice and the harmonies and some nice originals. But there’s a lot of filler and the producers have softened their sound from the debut. The remaster on streaming services and current pressings as softened it further. I like more oomph in my early Beatles.

Great album. Start of a run of four four star LPs by the Jam. Which is pretty good going for what was a singles band.

There’s a tradition in the British & Irish Isles of bands that make men of a particular age go misty eyed - the Faces, Dr Feelgood, The Jam, The Libertines. People who live in other countries or weren’t 13 at the right moment can love them but it’s different. For me it’s the Jam. Objectively I rarely listen to them now, they’re probably not in my top 50 bands but when I do hear them they’re still damn fine.

If you are getting interested in them I’d start with the compilation Snap! Before any of the LPs

Cool lp I’d not heard in full. Singer and lyrics are excellent. I like how he’s playing an exaggerated character called Slim Shady complete with cartoon violence. The word play is elegant and ingenious, you feel every word has earned its place.

Backing music is a bit pedestrian and the lp is a bit too long.

Good album lots Southern English pastoral whimsy. Far better than the pap his erstwhile colleagues pumped out.

It’s easy to see how this album influenced greats like the Television Personalities. But you’d be better buying a TVP lp than this. The songs are good but much of it is Demo-y. Basic minor chords strummed on an acoustic with minimal overdubs. His next lp showed what he was capable of better.

Good album. Stevie is so talented and at the top of his game at this point in the 70’s that even in second gear, as he is here, it sounds beautiful. It’s laid back and almost easy listening music but it consistently sounds warm, pleasant and interesting.

Good album. Competant jazz with African flourishes. The African bits are the most impassioned and interesting. The jazz is pretty ordinary though.

Last track the best.

Probably was groundbreaking for jazz listeners at the time but so kuedos for that but modern jazz listeners will have heard this territory explored more adventurously with better results

Superb album

I must admit I’m more likely to play KUKL, the Sugarcubes or her 2010s lps than this but hearing this back I’m struck by how her voice and lyrics feel so personal on this lp.

The production makes it feel like it was recorded on the way home from a nineties club. Its remarkable that an avant-garde artist from a remote island was album to capture the mid 90s zeitgeist but this record catapulted her into the mainstream and despite sounding of its time it probably remains the best entry point for someone new to her vision.

Better than expected. I'm giving double the amount of stars I thought I would - two.

After the malaise of the Unforgettale Joshua Tree Fire years U2 stumbled into the 90s and into a career high by trying to sound like Jesus Jones.

The gutars are fantastic it could almost be Andy Gill and the electronic atmospherics are cool.

But Bono is far too high in the mix. He can't let an instrumental passage go by without vocalising unneccessarily. Even in the verses and choruses he's too damn loud and delivers every bloody line with ernest passion forcing you to pay attention to lyrics, which are gibberish. A clique is still a clique and nonesense is still nonesense if you sound like you mean it man.

But the guitar sound is marvelous and that's earned an extra star. Pity you can't hear them!

Oh dear the 80’s weren’t kind to legends from earlier decades were they?

Awful production. Splashy Phil Collins style drums, hideous rubber band bass lines, unnecessary sax solos, and synths being manipulated by people who don’t know what they’re doing.

Poor Tina gamely tries to power through but the song choice does her no favours. Anne Peebles’s understated triumph I Can’t Stand The Rain gets blasted away like it’s Nutbush City Limits. It doesn’t work. The Beatles Help - which probably could have survived a big eighties arrangement with Tina going full throttle gets the soul piano ballad treatment.

The best effort here is Al Green’s Let Stay Together. That’s because it’s producers - Heaven 17 know how to make a synth pop record.

Still it sold well and gave Tina a comfortable old age so every cloud …

Middling good lp. Two towering tracks surrounded by disco slop.

Their 50’s rnb & mid 60’s Motown eras were better.

Some days this is my favourite REM album. Not today, but generally.

Professional intriguing mainstream rock.

Good album but all Jimmy’s albums are good The Cat and Peter and the Wolf excite me more

Not bad