Reviews by dohej

It's amazing to think how far the peopel following in the path Run DMC forged got and how far the genre eclipses it's origins. This is hard to hear this as anything other than a fossil, an indicataive artifact of a moment in the evolution of sound and style where the core features are all there in elemental form that would be iterate and florish as it proliferates. The rigid staccato quarter note flow gets very grating quickly and the scatchy casio keyboard beats are iconic but repetitive. The corny metal samples on Rock Box and the synth sounds on 30 Days and lots of other tracks are great though. But still, there's an unmissable charisma to it, all playful bravado and lyrical charisma - and their relentless abuse of that sorriest of species, sucka MCs, is very funny.

Warm and dreamy mix of soft rock and surprisingly heavy bluesy soul tracks. A great album for when you have it all but are miserable anyway, for staring at the sea and thinking it sucks, for the self-indulgent depressive pleasure of knowing you're missing out, for listening to when you've pushed people away and are mad they're not around.

Store brand britpop from the freezer section. The best bits sound like the verve with big swirling psychedelic feel and wah wah guitars, sometimes they lean more oasis with fizzy overdriven guitars and a snarling vocal, some of it has a bit of left over warmed up baggy swagger. It's all pretty decent but non descript, great filler if you're trying to pad out side b of a too long 90s 90s UK mix tape.

I went in crossbows blazing ready to hate on some annoying ren-faire bullshit, but it gradually won me over with the gentle power of the interlinked acoustic guitar parts, sitar drones, and surprisingly intricate percussion. It's basically acoustic prog. The vocals - where the bulk of the dragons and maidens larping folk stuff is dominant - are very annoying, but the instrumental sections are warm and relaxed and lively. You can imagine these songs being really great performed in the right environment like an grand old cathedral or an abandoned abbey. It's not fair to judge them based on the 2025 stench of real ale that it gives off, though. It's cool that there was a scene around revisiting and enliving musical traditions going back centuries and pairing them with blues based guitar playing, and this is a nice document of that that moment that pairs well with folk horror from the era like Wicker Man, Blood on Satan's Claw and Witchfinder General.

Favorites: Train Song, Once I had a Sweetheart

Not the best of the explosion of post punk / new wave bands in the early 80s UK, but they merge a lot of the elements of that scene (especially bands like Echo & the Bunnymen, The Jesus & Mary Chain, Siouxsie & the Banshees) plus a bit more Bowie/Mott the Hoople glam influence, into a sound that's swirling and atmospheric, darkly moody, dissonant and textural guitarsm, reverby drums, bouncey driving bass, and snarling hoarse vocals, all with a thick murky layer muffling it somewhat. But they also leans into a cleaner jangle style for some at times surprisingly poppy bright and melodic stuff - especially on the brilliant stand out Pretty in Pink - or, even more strangely, into louche loungey sax rock like No Tears.

Favorites: Pretty in Pink, All of This and Nothing, She is Mine

Mike... Mike, Mike, Mike! Mike? Mike. Mike! Mike?! Mike! MIKE!! Yeah, ok hi Mike, I think we got it, the bells, they're tubular, yeah, no I get it, tubular, Mike, yeah. Thanks.

Tense, taught, and explosive songs from the guys who perfected hardcore and invented emo. By taking their foot off the accelerator they found a way to make the music more intense, to capture a wider range of feelings, to reproduce more moods, to express something even more angry, frustrated, agonized, and charged. They shifted from the guys lashing out wildly to harnessing a latent, seething, aggression with a purity of focus. The rhythm section is the key - locked in grooves with surprising funk play against the dissonant thrashing from the guitars and anguished screams of the vocals. The best thing to ever come out of Washington DC.

Slow cinematic and moody, this combines pre-rock loungey jazz with big orchestral production and post-rock atmospherics with emphasis on texture and tension - these two moments are merged through the filter of late 90s ambient electronica and downtempo trip hop beats.

Warm relaxed neo-soul jams with organic lush instrumentation and deep RnB grooves paired with some high tech production and computer drum tracks. Horns, guitars, keyboards, and lots of backup singers - it all has a chilled out hanging out feel to it. Nice features from Q Tip and Lil Wayne add to this feel. Solange's vocals are fluttering falsettos and altos, whispered and sung in fleeting lines that float on the beats. Ephemeral and ethereal, it's all vibes and no hooks - there's nothing as good as the amazing 'Losing You' on here, but it's a jazzy laid back time. Interludes are annoying, trite vox pop rambling cliches.

The last gasp of the second wave of hip hop - lots of the basic nursery rhyme cadence in the raps but with seeds of the soul & funk sample heavy dj scratching boom bap /proto g-funk style, the wordy flow and interplay of Native Tongues, and the sing songy pop choruses and dance breaks that would soon blow up mc hammer, naughty by nature and vanilla ice. Dumb concept album stuff, but hey at least it's not another rock opera about a sci fi dystopia where it's illegal to rock.

Favorites: freaks of the industry, underwater rimes

Bluesy, funky, silksy smooth, warmly easy going jazz that brings together fusion sounds, cuban rhythms, big band song structures and brass harmonies in the heads, and soulful playing in the solos. The electric piano and rhodes tones and playing is especially great both in the lead or comping under the sax/horn parts. They settle into some great deep grooves on several tracks with spacious bass parts that leave tons of room for the soloists to go off. It's a fairly accessible jazz record that easily fades to background, but is worth paying close attention to for all the interplay and improvisational expressivity.

Favorites: Maesha, Maseru, Inner Crisis

Since the Beatles went from teeny bopper love songs to hokey novelty songs about Polythene Pam and Mean Mr Mustard they never had much scope to explore more mature themes, so their first wave of solo albums saw an explosion of more personal reflexive confessional material. It's a great album about a guy looking to find his peace and realizing he can't because of his mum, religion, childhood, class and career and that he has a lot of shit to work out. The best part is his voice: raw, broken up, hoarse screams that really push the raw, broken, emotive content of the songs to a higher level. I loved this album as an annoying teenage atheist but am less into it as a slightly less annoying adult atheist.

It's so funny how good France is at all culture except for music. Art, philosophy, film, literature, architecture, photography, fashion, food: they're up there with the greats - the course of 20th c culture passes through Paris and its colonies. But Daft Punk/Air aside, they're total duds musically - so much so that their best guy, French Sinatra, is Belgian! Maybe they're too addicted to their own language to really let music do it's thing. That's why Chanson and Hip Hop have been their preferred genres, poems set to music. Anyway, this album is a pretty fun one - a great expressive voice full of drama delivering the verses with full force, accompanied by loungey piano, cafe-ass accordion, some light bass touches. It has a very cartoony animated feel to it contrasting the lyrics' dark take on modern life and love.

Some nifty guitar playing on some bland as hell pop rock. The talk box is a fun gimmic for a few minutes. Everything about this was done better by better bands, but it was SO commercially dominant and culturally ubiquitous so you get why it gets included in lists like this (especially by guitar rock biased critics who treat this more seriously than other disposable bubblegum pop just because there's a Les Paul involved) even if it doesn't really stand up.

Vintage Americana with a couple of incredible hooks and guitars that have jangled on the radio and movies for 50 years. Crispy clean production that just sounds amazing. High highs that are overfamiliar but still rip and then a lot of pretty boilerplate 70s rock. He's definitely a Greatest Hits artist - has a lot of them, but they're spread out over a ton of albums over several decades...

Warm relaxed folksy country with an acoustic guitar and EH's beautiful voice at the heart of arrangements fleshed out atmospherically with echoey dirty electric guitars, droning baritone parts, textural piano/organs,.and some perfect vocal harmonies. Dark sombre and contemplative songs, full of grief and loneliness.

A bridge between the post hardcore indie rock of the 80s and the slacker post grunge alt rock of the 90s, Dinosaur Jr combine hard driving aggressive sound with shy introspective vocals. The album's sound is all sludgy noise, shaggy riffs, muffled production, explosive dynamics, off the wall guitar parts. It's a thick impenetrable noise that obscures lots of surprisingly catchy hooks and big choruses that stumble out of the feedback and fuzz. On paper they should be a favorite band, but I've never liked them quite as much as I feel I should - but even so, this album rips.

Favorites: Budge, they always come, freak scene,

Twin guitar glam rock bordering on hair metal (but a very soft metal, like aluminum). Pretty generic mid-tempo beats, no real riffs or gnarly solos or any of the sheer absurd excess that would make this fun, instead it’s random harmonicas, reverse delay effects, and chugging nothingness. An 80s Finnish Cheap Trick that’s barely a weak copy of the Scorpions. “Until I get You” is pretty good TBH

He's very effective at creating this cinematic film noire mood musically to convey the style and atmosphere to go with his dark storytelling songs. Dark bass grooves, clinking piano hooks, huge echoey drums, tremolo guitars and light orchestral touches. He's also very effective at using his voice to create the main character/narrator: a wretched debauched staggering low life inhabiting a nasty urban underbelly. Wierd mismatch between the album and the cover though. His voice is less grating than Tom Waits, but it's the same deal basically. This is the best of his I've heard so far.

A glacier of an album. Icey cold and geologically slow moving, creaking cracking and glitching rhythms, an ethereal whispered falsetto blizzard blowing across the surface while a deep timeless calm melts under intense pressure within, bluer and bluer the further you listen down the cracks.