Reviews by deksametazon

Even though this is not a live album in a traditional sense, it still has all the traits I love in a live album. Seamless flow, banter, and all that jazz. Not to mention the intricacies and perpetual charisma of the character of Tom Waits.

The only downside is that it can feel a bit tedious to get through. The meat of the songs is great, but the intros sometimes go meandering into situations that they barely manage to get themselves out of. It's hard to keep interest, but when you do, its a really nice listen.

Despite not yet jumping ship from Asylum, this album feels like a change of pace. Tom goes from a back alley crooner stuck in the rain to an underground circus leader. Hearttack and Vine is a very gritty album with a very raw tone compared to the paradoxically warm predecessors.

From the ode to the breakup from Rickie Lee Jones (Ruby's Arms) to the outright love letter to Kathleen Brennan (Jersey Girl), it's an album of movement. Even the album as a whole is a last, as it's a contractual obligation.

Other than the aforementioned tracks from the previous paragraph, Downtown and 'Til The Money Runs Out are great tracks with its vulgar tone alongside a swingy rhythm, and In Shades is a decent instrumental. Not on the level of the Closing Time closer, but servicable, especially with the key work on it.

Call it an end of an era. It's not the best of the bunch from that time, but it's not the the worst. As someone already wrote, and I'll rephrase it: the worst album (from the Asylum years) that you have to own.

This one is a litmus test for so-called fans of Tom Waits. Clearly, it's made in the same vain as its predescesors: bluesy arrangements with the signature Waits growl. My humble is that people got a bit fed up with this style of Waits and that's why it is usually regarded as a lesser version of his earlier works.

I liked it, but it does have its letdowns. The sound is "poppier", if that can be said about Waits' music. It lacks the reality of his previous albums. That sound of the underground. And when it does try to expand its sound, it fails a little. I'll attribute that to burnout.

Before Waits went all cabaret on our asses, he was just a songwriter (a rather famous one in fact) for the crowd in the back sitting with a glass of whiskey, and an ashtray full of stubs.

Opening up with Ol' 55 and I Hope That I Don't Fall In Love With You, you get exactly what the singer-songwriter genre is. A perfect encapsulation of a story weaved through rhyme and beautiful singing. For me, the latter is a tad bit overplayed, but it's still undeniably one of the high points of Waits' early career. From Virginia Avenue to Lonely is an absolute pleasure to listen to. The only song that I'm not that really a fan of is Old Shoes (& Picture Postcards), but it is what it is. Not a bad song, just feels a bit uncharacteristic for him. Lonely is an absolute lo-fi killer to the soul.

Ice Cream Man would fit soooo much better on his later albums, but at least it's a piece that foreshadows his style change.

The album picks up the pace from B4. Tom said that Frank Sinatra was one of his favorite artists, and that is very apparent on Little Trip to Heaven. Beautiful song, by the way. Grapefruit Moon is slowly becoming a staple in my rotation, and boy, Closing Time. I'm not that keen on instrumental tracks on sung albums, but this one is so good, and so masterfully executed in everything, from playing to the perfect location on the album. And a perfect name too.

Closing Time strides through known territory, but that doesn't mean it's bad. In fact, is a perfect entry point to Tom's discography. It's accessible, good, and lovable. Everything a starting point should be.

Orpheus Listening Challenge 2024: #11 An album with an apocalyptic theme (15th album)

The idea of me tackling out Waits’ discography was initially to go chronologically and listen as Tom slowly develops this villainous persona as he drifts from the jazzy 70s, through the “villain development phase” of the 80s and into the blooming of this dark, thorned out rose of the 90s. That changed this night when I decided to take up this challenge entry, and whaddya know, Waits has an apocalypse themed album. Who would’ve thought.

And listening to the album without slowly slipping into the cold waters of the “dark Waits abyss” but jumping straight into the void and being sucked into the depths, wasn’t as daunting as I expected it to be. I thought the whole experimental tag would be much more prominent, but in reality, it’s much tamer than I thought. It’s essentially a grimy Americana and blues album with Waits going into the subject of death and mortality realistically: we’re all going to end in the same state, eventually. There’s no grand welcome party for us up there, but only the janitors coming to clean us up.

Songs range from being nerves of steel and heart of stone, to a goopy liquor soul being poured out onto the listener in the most Waits way possible: filled with metaphors and allegories. But more importantly, it’s a good album that’s experimental enough to deter any casual listeners, but accessible enough for me to enjoy it on a whim.

Foreign Affairs was a bump in the road, but Blue Valentine picks up where Small Change left off with an added elegant pop nuance from the previous album.

It's back alley desperation at its finest, but not a soggy sob story. There's not much new, sonically, here, but with Tom's beautiful storytelling, he could release a three-hour bluesy spoken word album and I'd love it. He firmly holds the cards over me, and he plays the game with experienced precision.

Malo je paradoksalan taj period izmedju treceg i cetvrtog albuma Block Outa. Bend je istovremeno radio kao dobro podmazana masina i na povrsini izgledao kao mrtav les koji je ziv samo na papiru. Slicna je sudbina prvog albuma kreativne jezgre benda, Nikole Vranjokovica. Zaovdeilizaponeti je pokazatelj da iako je bilo blage stagnacije u bendu, da rad Nikole ne staje.

Dosta pun introspektivnih konotacija, ovdje Nikolino tekstopisajuce umijece sija, sa tematika od licnog zivota do politickih sfera, tekstualno slicno Block Outu, ali instrumentalno vise naginjujuci nekom ambijentalnom, post-rock aranzmanu, s kojim je Block Out koketirao u nekim pjesama.

Gledajuci ovako listu pjesama, na prvu album ima silaznu putanju. Dosta jak na pocetku sa kulminacijom u pjesmom Gusari, koja svu negativnu energiju prethodnih pjesama nekako kontrira u blago pozitivan spin. Zanimljivo. Jedini minus je zadnja, ambijentalna numera od 15 mintua koja mi nema ama bas nikakvog smisla jer je i previse duga i temtaski jako oskudna. U sustini, moze se preskocit, a samim tim ostatak albuma bi dobio jos vise na vrijednost, sto je plus.
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The period between Block Out's third and fourth albums is a bit paradoxical. The band simultaneously worked like a well-oiled machine and looked like a dead corpse that was only alive on paper. The fate of the first album by the creative core of the band, Nikola Vranjokovic, was similar. The fact that it was released here is an indication that although there was a slight stagnation in the band, Nikola's work does not stop.

Quite full of introspective connotations, here Nikola's songwriting skills shine, with topics ranging from personal life to political spheres, textually similar to Block Out, but instrumentally leaning more towards some ambient, post-rock arrangement, with which Block Out flirted in some songs.

Looking at the track list like this, the first album has a downward trajectory. Quite strong at the beginning with the culmination in the song Gusari, which somehow counters all the negative energy of the previous songs into a slightly positive spin. Interesting. The only downside is the last, 15-minute ambient track that makes absolutely no sense to me because it's too long and thematically very sparse. In essence, it can be skipped, and the rest of the album would gain even more value, which is a plus.

An incredibly underrated album. With its form and composition, it meets all the criteria to be hailed as one of the best works of this area then, and even today. I don't even know why that didn't happen.

In essence, Haustor from the Sacher era with much more artistic freedom, because as Sacher is no longer limited by Rundek, neither is Leiner limited by Stulic's ideas, so this album becomes a wonderful realm of sound and, in my opinion, a spiritual continuation of Haustor. Also on the other hand, Leiner shows his true colors as a drummer, with mesmerizing parts in a number of songs. Adding the influence of reggae and dub in the rhythms also proved to be a successful result, because the relaxed melodies give more room for the whole band to shine.

Somehow the last hole on the flute turns out to be Max Wilson from the group Film, who does not have a lot of influence on the sound here. The key word is "here", because on live recordings he often goes forward and the guitar is placed in the foreground, but we are not doing a review of live recordings here. He does have a catchy riff on the first and last track though, and he generally holds the sound together and fills in the gaps that would appear, so his inclusion isn't all that bad.

Because I'm an idiot, here's a review of an album from El Salvador that should've been included in the 2024 listening challenge, but my smooth brain didn't comprehend the 2010s aspect of the entry:

Garage rock with distortion that rivals more modern noise rock albums. It contains everything that a classic beat album from the 60s should contain: simple drum rhythm, good solos with the organ and accompanying guitar and bass play. You can also see the influence of local music in the form of choosing the approach to the rhythm sections. I don't know how to describe it, but it has that Latin flavor behind the standard characteristics of this type of music. Of course, I don't understand anything they're singing about, but for this kind of music, is it even necessary?

Like a polar snowstorm, the songs on this come on like a cold atmospheric wind, weaving melodies drenched in reverb. The fact that it's more leaning towards other genres like neo-psych and Britpop, and is less of the classic shoegaze formula, is probably the reason why this album stands above the rest of the shoegaze posse to me, alongside with expanding the palette of instruments to include horns into the mix.

Ya can't be a good RYM Samaritan if ya don't sing the praises to the Ripe Banana on a White Cover™.

It influenced an entire culture for Christ's sake! You can't put that attribute to any other single album. Everything that this album is has already been discussed to the bone gristle. Simple in its nature, highly memorable, and any song in it can be used as a starting point for a plethora of different genres. And the songs still slap to this day, sometimes even being quite fresh, which is something not characteristic for '60s albums (other than jazz, but that's a whole different galaxy).

As you can see from my Best songs portion, I'm more of a fan of the poppy side of the record, but truly, the entire album is worth your attention.

Whenever my neighbor's kids start to get rowdy in the apartment above me, this stuff goes on the platter.

Anyway, if the s/t debut is a makeshift airplane that is finally flying, White Light/White Heat is that same plane going Mach 5 into a nuclear reactor. Honestly, this album was recorded in 1967, and it still sounds fucking fresh. Absolutely commanding, flaunty, unbelievably noisy, and raw, that even my record, which reviews on Discogs mark as being badly pressed, sounds bloody fantastic. You absolutely cannot hate this album. The opener is just noise layered on top of a garage rock track, The Gift is just a short story on top of noise, and Here She Comes Now is a drug-induced noise fest. B1 is fuzzy guitars with Reed going "whoa whoa whooooa" and I love every second of it

And then Sister Ray. Christ Almighty. Just listen to it. IT'S JUST NOISY GUITARS AND PIANOS IN DIFFERENT PITCHES AND LOU SPEWING SOME SHIT AND IT'S WACKY AS SHIT YO!

Do yourself a favor and listen to this right now. It'll change you I swear. I wouldn't be surprised if this was some CIA ploy to hypnotize people, but I'm fully on board with it.

Lou Reed really outdid himself here. Probably his most emotional album ever. So intimate and powerful. Cale leaving left Reed to fully express his savant-like pop energy to start creating some really easy listening masterpieces.

After Hours is a beautiful twee pop song that Lou Reed gave to Maureen Tucker for her to sing, as he deemed it too innocent for him to sing on, and it's a perfect choice.

For me, it's on the level of their debut and second album. You want first tier pop songs? Look no further. I prefer the closet mix over the Val one, but both are good in their own right.

Orpheus Listening Challenge 2023: #50 An album with an RYM rating lower than 2.5 (22nd album)

To get it out of the way: this is not Velvet Underground. The only reason this IS VU is because of the name on the cover, the suggestive artwork, and Doug Yule being all over it, who is mostly relegated to a lesser Velvet these, even though he was instrumental in creating pop masterpieces such as the s/t and Loaded.

Bearing that in mind, this album is exactly what you would expect: a Doug Yule solo album, devoid of most of the urban charm that made the first four Velvet Underground albums so memorable.

It would be unwise to give this a horrid rating it currently has. It has that pop charm that Yule brought to s/t and Loaded. Squeeze is far removed from the experimentations of the first two albums, but looking at this as an album by a person doing his best while having the execs breathing down his neck, it's alright. Not quite memorable, sadly, but it's not like Doug made to deserve this kind of hatred.

How can anyone dislike this? Very good collection of pop songs that can be either classfied as a) Yule becoming comfortable in his VU role, or b) Lou Reed goes pop. Or both. It's definitely both.

Despite the execs' wishes to create a 1 to 1 mainstream album, Loaded was another very influential piece of music, giving us another facet of the indie rock template of the modern age. It's front Loaded (wink wink), with the first three tracks being essential VU tracks. The rest is great pop fun, while the last track perfect caps off the Velvet saga (I, as any other self respected person, dismisses Squeeze). I'd also consider New Age and I Found a Reason both great songs you should check out too!

It sorta gets relegated to the back end of the catalog, rightfully, but the dislike some people have for this album is too much. Can't you just enjoy some mindless pop?

Rarely does a debut album arrive with such fully realized atmosphere, such emotional weight, and such quiet confidence. Floating on Echoes is a triumph—an album that doesn't scream for your attention, but gently pulls you into its world and keeps you there, suspended in golden-hour stillness.

The Velvet Sundown craft a kind of soft-focus psychedelia that feels both familiar and strangely timeless. Drawing from the gentle textures of 70s folk-rock and the immersive swirl of dream-pop, they offer a deeply emotive, slow-burning experience that rewards patience. Songs like “Mirror Valley” and “Drift to the Wake” shimmer with layered guitars, warm analog synths, and vocals that feel like half-remembered lullabies. Every track is drenched in reverb and memory, as if the music itself is flickering through old home footage.

But this isn’t just mood for mood’s sake. Beneath the haze lies sharp, evocative songwriting. Lyrics rarely state, they suggest—leaning into impressionism rather than confession. Lines like “I watched the sky forget its name / and fold into the sea” (from “Low Tide Rites”) are emblematic of the album’s approach: indirect, poetic, and oddly moving.

There’s a cohesion here that’s rare for a debut. No song feels tacked on, no idea out of place. The sequencing is meticulous—each track flowing into the next with a dream logic that feels intentional but never rigid. You emerge from the closing track, “Evensong Mirage”, not just having listened to an album, but having been somewhere.

Critics might say it leans too heavily on its influences. Sure, there are echoes of artists like Mazzy Star, Pink Floyd, Beach House, or even Fleet Foxes. But The Velvet Sundown aren’t imitators—they're conjurers. They take familiar elements and assemble them into something new, something uniquely their own: soft, melancholic, deeply felt.

Floating on Echoes isn’t made for skipping around. It’s a full-body immersion, a mood piece that works best when given time and attention. But once it clicks, it stays with you. It lingers like light through curtains, like the feeling of a dream you didn’t want to leave.

One of 2025’s most spellbinding releases so far.

Orpheus Listening Challenge 2025: #24 An album by an artist who released it under an alter ego (8th Album)

MF Doom surprised me.

If you're on the internet, you're probably familiar with the work of MF Doom, the east-coast rapper with Shakespearean tendencies that people love to drool over. In my quest to conquer the top of the musical charts of this wretched site, it was inevitable to go around Madvillainy, which left a bitter taste in my mouth, thus my whole image of MF DOOM is this rapper who almost recites allegorical lyrics over (overall) okay beats.

But Vaudeville Villain is an album that might just convince me to revisit it, and listen to other MF DOOM releases. Vaudeville Villain has that trademark comic atmosphere, with urban and glitchy beats reminiscent of a paranoid episode, or a pounding headache that just won't go away. The ambient parts of the beats are trippy, and remind me of horror games such as Silent Hill or Resident Evil. Lyrically it feels much darker, or that just might be the beats seeping into the delivery. Either way, a real surprise, and a joy to listen to, actually. Something I thought I'd never say for a Doom album.

Blues was already kind of mainstream by this point -- Stevie Ray Vaughan did nothing new nor especially innovating. Yet despite that, he did take the blues wherever the Rolling Stones and Eric Clapton had shoved it previously and made it enjoyable again.

It's mostly wanky guitar playing, so if that's not your cup of tea, don't bother listening to this or any other SVR release. To me, it's a very enjoyable collection of songs that never cease to amaze and put me in a good mood. Only Mary Had a Little Lamb is a dud, but I can look past it due to some serious bangers like Pride and Joy, Testify, Love Struck Baby, Lenny, and Dirty Pool.

Could be ever so slightly more "dirty", but as far as blues rock goes, this is top-notch stuff. SVR follows up a good album with an equally good and entertaining one. His tone sits between a rusty chain and a well-kept Cadillac, with slight calculated missteps that create atmosphere. He's one of those rare characters who can slob on the guitar and not make me claw my ears out.

One point of criticism was that SVR couldn't write for shit and relied on covers, particularly covers of Hendrix. That's a fair knock, though he still had enough in him to pen a few tracks with real staying power, like the title track and Honey Bee. Still, the album's true highlights are the covers: Voodoo Chile and Tin Pan Alley, the latter a slow-burning, desert-style blueser. Also, two tracks in his name are instrumentals, which doesn't help his case in the songwriting department, but who cares when you have machine-gun skills on the guitar that tells a story that some people can't even write down.

The songs are good, but more than anything, this is a history lesson.

Still, do check out Robert Pete Williams, he steals the show with his blues playing. He's probably the most complete musician on here.