Reviews by deksametazon

Orpheus Listening Challenge 2024: #24 An album where the artist died in the middle of recording it (22nd album)

I haven't listened to Pacific Ocean Blue in quite some time, but I feel like this album would've been a worthy successor even in the state it was released 40ish years later.

But as it stands, this album is all over the place with a sound that's quite a bit uneven, unfocused, and downright uninspired at moments. Some songs go a bit contemporary, sunshine, sometimes with a poppy blues sound, and even a song that's clearly inspired by the spacy Pink Floyd sound. Trim it down and remove some unnecessary moments or build upon them, which I'm sure someone would've remembered to do had circumstances gone differently, and you got a good pop album.

Dennis has a good singing voice, sounding sometimes like Lou Reed and John Martyn, or like an inspiration to Elvis Costello, with a beautiful gruff to distance himself from the sunshine of the Beach Boys while still maintaining that lovely California sound, but hollowed-out and gaunt.

Orpheus Listening Challenge 2025: #5 A double album (1st Album)

Oh, this one is boring. What a great start to the year.

To me, this has nothing amazing, and only a few real standouts. Tommy is a double LP rock opera with a story about a kid gone blind and his life and challenges he faces. The story is a weird way of getting Pete's thoughts on enlightenment and youthful alienation, and ultimately, like a bad movie, it's full of something that's mostly nothing.

The songs are also really inoffensive, which is the Who's studio motto. They're cut from a different cloth than their hard rock colleagues, obviously, but everything here is far from good, other than maybe Pinball Wizard. No song has that oomph or fire that makes me want to return to the album. It also doesn't help that, being a rock opera, having good standalone tracks is a hard task in itself. The instrumental -tures are a showcase of their ability to play, which are good, but what is their ultimate purpose?

Overall, anemic and bleak, despite its size.

If you asked me what a person should have from The Who catalog, I'd say a good compilation with all their hits, and Live At Leeds. This album is just absolutely splendid and is exactly what I want a live album to sound like: nothing too long, songs that are vastly different from their studio counterparts (just listen to My Generation), and songs that are not available on other recordings by the band.

Side A is good, but the entire side B showcases why Keith Moon and Pete Townshend (who are front and center throughout most of the album, but Roger and John do shine here and there too) are regarded as one-of-a-kind musicians, and why I like The Who much more as a live act than a studio one. As much as they were a good studio band, the live performance on this album is nothing short of amazing, grandiose, and full of electrifying energy that begs to be let out through speakers on max volume.

Eminence Front.

That's it.

That's the whole review.

Wacky and all over the place. Musically it's really well put together, with amazing solos flying everywhere, giving this cosmic feel all throughout. Sonically though, it's really not my thing. Good nonetheless, amazing even, in the right crowd and setting.

Orpheus Listening Challenge 2026: #37. A surprise release album (13th Album)

An album released rather unexpectedly, and without any real expectation, No Name is a return to roots for Jack White, in which he channels The White Stripes energy from two decades ago (yeesh), but also adds a bit more Zeppelin-esque hard rock energy to the mix. Jack doesn't exactly reinvent the wheel here, but the songs sound fresh, varied, and like a homage to his influences without become a slog like most modern hard rock albums. A sight for sore eyes for lovers of modern rock.

Orpheus Listening Challenge 2024: #10 An album you've heard the single(s) from (37th album)

Now this is a perfect candidate for this category. If RYM is a metric to judge anything by (and it's not, by the way), this album is Careless Whisperer filled with pop schlock, which is a fair assessment if you've never heard the album.

What Make It Big is, is an urban statement. This is the sound of the big city, the flashing lights, the glitz and the glamour, and everything in between, good or bad. "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" is a bombastic feel-good track that kicks off an album that you can't help but at least sway your shoulders to, followed by tracks like "Everything She Wants", "Heartbeat", "If You Were There", and ending with the nocturnal masterpiece in "Careless Whisper", which is an amazing song, especially once you get into it, then it becomes ethereal.

Wham needed an album like Make It Big in their career. It's a collection of songs proving both George and Andrew had what it takes to, well, Make It Big. More so for George, whose swagger and image needed something to back it up, and here it shows, but will be more artistically refined as his career matures.

Nothing too special if you ask me. "It's Not Just Me, It's Everybody" is really good, but going deeper into the album it just feels like a rehash of the same ideas and melodies that are heard in the opener, until "Twin Flame" which, while not on the level of the opener, is still good and a competent song.

"The Worst Is Done" funnily reminds me of a local artist who got pissed when a journalist asked him why he hasn't put a COVID song on his latest album. The trope is getting stale if you ask me, but at least this one opens the possibility of interpretation. Also, the instrumental isn't the same, soggy, hazy one we've heard in the first 20-25 minutes of the album, which is a sight for sore eyes.

Overall? This album is a trope we've come to be accustomed to in the last few years. Songwriting chops heavily inspired (dare I say copied) from the 70s a la Carole King and Joni Mitchell filtered through some modern indie folk filters. That being said, 1, and 7 are songs I could listen to, 10 is bordering on it, and the rest is filler garbaggio plastered with copy-paste ideas.

Sometimes good, most of the time forgettable, and sometimes questionable, but let's face it, what isn't with Kayne since Yeezus and Pablo.

At moments it feels like he didn't know what to add to it, so he stretches out some of the most nonsensical stuff (Paperwork) so the project looks fuller, but it actually feels watered down once listened to, but with what Kayne dropped these past years, this feels like a solid brick of gold. Burn is a particular song that really feels like a return-to-form Kanye, and the beats are on the favorable side of the coin.

Ty Dolla feels redundant most of time though, and most of the features feel absolutely forced and mixed wrong compared to Ye's verses.

Time (the Revelator) is the fan favorite album from Gillian Welch. For good reason. It's 10 Americana songs of simple poetry that's easy to understand, with an interplay between Welch and Rawlings on guitar that's very easy on the ears. It exudes easy seriousness: from the bitter remark on Revelator, and the theme of the 14th of April across two songs, and the events that transpired on said date.

And that "easy" feeling is why I love it. Goes to show that simplicity can go a long way.

On a bit of a tangential note, "Everything Is Free" talks about piracy, which is funny to me to see on a country album. Goes to show how much artists, far and wide, were pissed off about Napster and the sort.

At first, I hated how a perfectly executed solo gets ruined by "HAVE YOU EVER SEEN A WHALE WITH A POLKA DOT TAIL" or a moody song that's just about being high and watching a fucking eel, but then I realized: does every song need to have some profound, deeply philosophical message hidden between the lines? Absolutely not.

Ween created a great album that tethers between profound and absurd. It shows the band's ability to go to great lengths to create a very sonically deep album while still retaining the slacker energy that gives Ween their charm. They experimented with serious themes on "It's Gonna Be Alright", only to follow it with a song about a golden eel, or have "Cold Blows The Wind" be followed by a weird-ass instrumental and a song about pissing. But they make the transitions sound so effortless that you feel there's some deeper meaning behind them all. I guess it's the hazy, aquatic feeling that ties them together.

So, yeah... The Mollusk is an album that masks genius with vague silliness. But at the same time, it does a poor job of that, so we're left with a collection of great songs that we all collectively believe are poppycock, whilst, in reality, they're some of the best from the late 90s.

This just might be my favorite jazz release of all time. Structurally it leans on the ambient side more than anything. lays down the foundation on the opener, and Eberhard gives us a taste of the characteristic double bass that simillarly continues onto the next one, The Colours of Chloë, which is a much more clearer composition than the mysterious More Colours

An Evening With Vincent Van Ritz is the weak link here. With its flugelhorn, it's mostly akin to some early 60s classics than to the subdued and hazy nature of the rest of the album that really attracts me.

No Motion Picture is a 20-minute composition that for some is the best thing on here. Employing inspiration from the Hindustani musical heritage for a moment, sometimes it goes far above it, entering minimalism, chamber music, and psychedelia, it goes below it with the deep bass, and sometimes it employs ECM-style pianos. There's a lot for everyone here, and I can't properly convey how much of a spiritual level it reaches for me. You'll have to trust me and try it for yourself.

This album made me an Eberhardist, maybe even a full-blown Weberist.

(Also, listen to this on some bigger speakers and crank the volume high. It does magic)

Orpheus Listening Challenge 2025: #14. An album from the year of your birth (2nd Album)

Usually I steer away from extreme metal subgenres, as they either make me laugh due to how forced these albums feel, or how much their excessive repetitiveness dulls any moment present.

But things went a different road across the pond. The production is slightly better and more clear compared to their oversea "brothers", and while the 90s wave of black metal is characterized by deep fuzz and a cold atmosphere, Dead As Dreams feels like a polar (no pun intended) opposite. The album paints an image of an apocalyptic, infernal hellscape, and the screeching vocals feel like the souls of the damned trapped underneath the flaming tar.

This metal album sounds different, and I like it because of that. It's emotional and creative without the bullshit that's a "must" for a good metal album. Real shit, so to say.

I will probably be the only person in my circle to defend this album. I simply cannot resist that fragile and uncertain voice together with the acoustic guitar and keyboard, which sound rich in this arrangement. All songs are simple, and have emotional energy

All the songs are simple, and have the emotional energy of youth who can't wait to grow up, not knowing what awaits them in the tangled and confused world of adults, something that most of them realize late.

Considering Rog's huge resume of reasons people hate him, this album was bound to be considered one of the worst albums of 2023 from the moment he announced it.

It's a good idea, badly executed. I love the idea of Roger babbling on about stuff with some minimalistic arrangements behind him, but this is just bad decision after bad decision. It could've been good, but Roger deletes all the solos that made the original memorable and adds spoken word passages instead, making the album even more boring than it already was, and reinforcing ideas that the beef between Roger and Gilmy is far from over.

As previously mentioned, a good idea, but only a good idea if Roger fully embraced the style he was clearly going for and made it an original, fully of self-penned masterpieces he is clearly capable of making. As it stands, it's a sad failure, in a multitude of aspects.

It starts off pretty lacking. The first three songs are budget-level combinations of ABBA and Donna Summers.
"Hello Love" is good. It reminds me of a female version of Marvin Gaye in its slower tempo and sensual vocals. "Begin Again" has its merits, combining progressive pop with dream elements, which in my opinion is where most of the beauty is hidden. After that... we're back to Walmart levels of mediocrity. The rest of the album is packaged to be this feel-good, empowering, TikTok-core musing I'm not a fan of.

It's just above commercial-level background music. It's definitely above some of the garbagio that floats around, but I just can't shake the feeling of this being a modern mix of ABBA and Donna Summers directed at young people. "Begin Again" and "Free Yourself" are obvious standouts, the rest is... weak.

Orpheus Listening Challenge 2026: #50. An OrpheusCore album. (28th Album)

Runaljod – gap var Ginnunga is maybe good if I'm playing Skyrim, The Witcher, or some tabletop RPG. On its own, it sounds like one of those 2-hour videos with copyright free music for studying: bland and lacking grip.

But hey, I DID put this one on while playing those snowy mountain levels on Kingdom Rush, and it fits seamlessly, so I guess it does the job sort of well.

The album starts off with Cisco Kid's energetic funky vibe and quickly throws that sound out the window and into the dumpster and instead goes in a Funkadelic groove and jams through the rest of the record with full-blown psychedelia.

It feels so down the earth with its conscious and simple execution that it's hard to find something that doesn't work here. Bonus points added because of the blues songs in the expanded version. They're all fire.

The four-year period between Heartattack and Vine and Swordfishtrombones needs to be studied. Or better yet, Kathleen Brennan needs to be studied. I’ve never seen someone reignite an artist’s fire and be such a pillar of support across all fronts in life. Before the recording of Swordfishtrombones, Brennan told Waits to “mix the unmixable, take whatever you have, and create something meaningful out of it.” And lo and behold, Swordfishtrombones was born.

I think this album is... meaningful. It marks a sprawling shift from a relatively mainstream modus operandi into a cacophonous, sewer-water stew of bizarre and primitive-sounding passages, with lyrics that moved from heartbreak to surreal explorations of the lives of misfits. “Underground” kicks the door open with its pounding, carnival-like rhythm, while “Soldier’s Things” slows everything down into something tender and haunting. Together, they show the range of this new Waits: grotesque but beautiful, abrasive yet deeply human, which is, I think, most apparent in the "Rainbird" closer.

While I think Tom was fine with what he sang before this album, with Swordfishtrombones he found his true niche—a troubadour of night. It’s a very hard album to pinpoint or to jump into through a single track, but once you’re in, you get the full ordeal.

I wish I had a Kathleen B. in my life.

Tom is back on track, and continues to churn out great, alcohol laced, piano blues and songs for the downtrodden.

This one is a tale of two sides. Side A is a more straightforward piano blues foray, while on the turn of Invitation to the Blues it turns into an intimate mess which, oddly, makes sense once you listen to it. Tom Waits is a master of atmosphere and turning an album into a theatric work of art without going overboard, and it shows here.

It's a perfect blend of cabaret and his early blues period. It caps off a great four album run that gave us memorable songs, and an even more memorable persona which would build on itself fruitfully.