Reviews by dohej

Upbeat and dreamy, triumphant and bittersweet, anthemic and intimate - this album is pure joy. Tied for the best Manchester album (with Queen is Dead, Unknown Pleasures, and Definitley Maybe). John Squire's guitar playing is sublime, the grooves are undeniable, Ian Brown's singing is blissfully naive and direct, a perfomance that demands you belt out the hooks at the top of your lungs along with him. I Am the Resurrection is the best break up song of all time - so good it almost makes you want to get dumped just to really feel it. Noone could ever make an album that captures this energy again, even them.

A bit of strummy jangle, a bit of brit pop swagger, a bit of shoegazey swirling noisey atmosphere, a bit of psych modulated drone, a bit of warm shaggy fuzz, a bit of college rock goofiness, a bit of winking throwback garage rock nostalgia, a bit of power pop harmony, a very stupid band name. Hey, they're out there having fun being a pretty decent guitar band, not hurting anyone (except themselves it seems), but not a whole going on. They have great taste in music and in cool vintage guitars to go with their a classic PNW hipster aesthetic - but a good example of how taste doesn't necesarily transmute into inspiration. The mythos outstrips the music. Would anyone care about this band if it wasn't for Dig! and the drama around their friendship/feud with another band with a very stupid name?

Favorites: Orange, Every Day Should Be A Holiday, Good Morning, The Creep Out

Don't get the hype with this one. Artsy power pop with chamber arrangements, acoustic guitars, some slide, and lots of frail vulnerable vocals. It's slow and plaintive, reflexive and tender, but definitely does not rock at all. People seem enchanted by the backstory, but the album itself doesn’t do anything.

One of the canonical albums of this decade of indie rock, but I think I wasn’t really paying attention when it hit, so it kind of passed me by. This is uptempo and driving, with the synth playing a dominant role and the bass delivering a kicking beat. It’s hard to pick out what the guitar is doing as it kind of disappears into the richly textural and layered sound - like Animal Collective but more structured and funky. A masterful studio production with lots of elements coming together in every section. The songs don’t linger in one place too long, peaking into big lush choruses transitioning into contemplative instrumental breaks, verses coming and going. It risks veering into the irritating prog zone, but stays safely away in the end.

Bass driven riffs with a jazzy funky hoping style and gritty tone, propulsive energy from the drums, slashing chords and gnarly leads from the guitar, all surprisingly clean and bright. Eclectic influences distilled into a truly unique blend of visionary big hearted explosive and emotive outside art post punk. A singular band that left a huge mark from their sound to their ethos. It's a tough album to sink your teeth into since it's so big and sprawling but all the pieces are so small and elusive - it takes a few listens to sink into the mood and to latch onto a few highlight tracks and let the whole thing grow on you.

Elvis revivalists with punk rock energy, swampy twang, spooky horny vibes, and a decent sense of humor. The guitar sounds are great, they nail the tremelo/reverb surf style. A few songs make for a fun addition to a playlist but listening to a full album starts to feel like wearing your halloween costume into November.

Have tried many times but never got the hype with this album. Dense layering of synth textures and rhythms echoing around a big reverby space with all the digital bells and whistles thrown into the mix, combined with breathy multi tracked vocals weaving in and out of each other among the synth leads. It's a trippy sound that floats and jangles and pulses in a bright sunny haze through a set of meandering strangely baggy seemingly (but not actually) structureless songs. There some cool sounding stuff in here, but they remain an emperor's new clothes band for me.

Fun high-energy high tempo big band dance music with some amazingly raunchy sax solos, swinging beats, walking bass, playful back and forth between the parts of the band, and, in the slower moments, some mellow moods. I can't be the only one that kept expecting to hear the Family Guy song half the time.

Beautiful Day was so ubiquitous on radio, tv, ads, public space when this came out I almost have a nostalgic fondness for it just from sheer pavlovian force of repetition. The rest of doesn't benefit from this. Lots of great guitar sounds, but they're all wasted on an album composed almost entirely of insipid therapy platitudes, self help affirmations and car commercial anthems. The formula of minor chord -> major chord plus lots of delay and a big sound is the cheap spirituality of megachurch worship music, creating an ultimately empty sense of oneness and catharsis. In the 80s U2 used to be able to pull this off, bits it's so hollow here. It's so blandly uplifting it's not just grating, but insulting - it's music to cheer up people who are so simple they can actually be cheered up by saying, 'hey cheer up mate'. Oh ok!

Some nice twangy touches and soaring lapsteels parts dress up a slow set of songs. Some samba, some accordion, some noir, some warm relaxing moments, some schmaltzy annoying bits.

Favorite: save me

An English guy rapping over acid house sounds like a nightmare but it weirdly works. An artifact of an optimistic experimental time in music as the quirky strangeness of rave culture blossomed and seeped into the UK mainstream . It's full of uplifting rhythms, pulsating beats, fun sounds, and hooky anthemic lines. Surprisingly great.

Dark and moody but having a good time, surprisingly funky at times, snarling and aggressive at others - a land of contrasts pairing miserable despairing vocals and angry disco drum machines.

Favorites: kick in the eye, x-ray eyes, passion

Easy to mock, harder to admit they're actually extremely good at writing overwrought anthems that work on you despite yourself. After an incredible run in the 80s this is a re-invention for a new era, but since they reinvented themselves to be the omnipresent bland wallpaper of a slowly fading genre (radio friendly pop rock), it's their last good album. Three huge hits are great, most of the rest is decent unobjectionable stuff, but there's a lot of it to get through - they really are a greatest hits band. The less said about the Fly the better though - a vehicle to launch Bono's new persona as 'guy with a big pair of sunglasses', what a twat.

Like the much better War album, this bears the marks of its time and place, 1990 Berlin; it's the soundtrack of an earnest optimisitc post-coldwar liberalism anticipating the end of history, celebrating universalism, unification one-ness. One especially - the rest has a bit more ambient darkness and introspection to it.

Daniel Lanois has them sounding great - huge, sweeping, polished - pure bombast. The rhythms nod toward acid house as they're starting to adopt some electronica elements here they'd soon dive way deeper into. The guitars are bright and chiming with a bit of break up scuzziness, some wah wah wildness, all echoing through the mix with that distinctive Edge AC30 tone and melodic phrasing.

They're jackhammering the road outside my window and this is the perfect thing to have on my headphones to drown it out. Pantera takes the speed and aggressiveness of thrash metal and puts a bit of southern stank on it with riffs that have a sludgy heavy swing to them. You can see why the Nu Metal guys stole this formula and just popped it up a bit to make it a touch more accessible. Fun guitar and bass playing from the full blast high octane solos that never overstay their welcome to the full bore downtuned chugging. Punishing drumming, he's kicking the shit out of the kit. The vocals range from agonized wretching screams to horrifying guttural growls, spewing out mad at the world dumb guy lyrics - good stuff, shame he's a shithead nazi. Ending with a terrible ballad is a hilarious move - who is that for?! lol

Synth and drum machine based dreamy whimsical psychedelia with acoustic guitars, cellos, flutes and other organic instruments added to the mix to bring a natural sound for the nature theme. The main musical aspiration is creating ambience and modulating mood, layering shifting textures harmonies and effects to maintain a pleasant woozy vibe to float around on melodically. Extremely coffee shop coded electrofolk, this is from just before the Spotify driven rise of ambient playlist indie neo-muzak, but really anticipates the core of that style: breathy vocals, washed out synths, gentle acoustics, sleepy tempos, mellow unobtrusive calming vibes.

I'd have chosen the more politically strident and musically progressive Equal Rights which offers a more unique sound than Legalize It but, dubious medical claims aside, Tosh's debut solo record is still a solid roots reggae album from the genre's golden era. Tosh has a great vocal style: an immediately identifiable voice, cadence and phrasing paired with a charismatic delivery. The funky clavinet is amazing, the bass grooves deep as hell, the guitars are right in the pocket, really the whole band so dialed in it's joyous. A few corny keyboard sounds on a couple of tracks only slightly spoil the fun, and while warm and chill, the album lacks the driving energy and fierce urgency Tosh brings to his next one.

Favorites: Brand New Second Hand, Burial, No Sympathy

Ok, we get, you're drunk, wallowing in self-pity, and mad at everyone the world - get a grip, loser. His whole persona is meant to be this romanticized self destructive heart on his sleeve lovelorn guy, but in reality he'd be the most tedious bitter self involved dipshit you'd get stuck sitting next to on a Greyhound. He's the tragic figure in a movie where you know there's no hope of turning his arc around and you're just waiting to see how he gets put out of his misery and stops torturing everyone around him. He's good at writing songs painting this one specific, and wildly overdone, literary figure. The thing about making your lyrics the main thing but having a ludicrous kermit the frog on ludes sounding voice is that it's impossible to listen past how you're singing to hear what you're saying. There's no point having the genius mind of a poet and a silly voice deep into self-parody. Jersey Girl is a perfect example of how this album fails: it starts good, has a very cool feel to it and the clear cutting guitar sound is really pretty, and even the strings are well done, but it's ruined as soon as the vocals come in. If you can get past the voice there's a pretty good blues band playing on most of these songs, some decent atmospheric grooves, cool organ parts, and tasteful guitar work.

Common is only a B- rapper in terms of flow and style, he has a monotone delivery and pretty repetitive cadence, but is a good story teller and expressive writer on the conscious/intellectual side of the spectrum, though that’s all still pretty basic as far as it goes. The stars here are the producers who’ve put together an incredible set of beats, J Dilla especially, who has that warm soul/gospel forward style with a bit of vintage crackle, funky bass parts, and nostalgic feel good atmosphere. Others bring a jazzier feel or an old school boom bap + scratching style to it so there’s some variety across the (long!) album.

Ska punk straight out of a Tony Hawk game. Expensively produced with lots of overdubs and a very polished 90s alt rock radio friendly sound that leans a bit Springsteen anthemic at times, but mostly stays in the nightmare venn diagram overlap of green day and the bosstones. Decent guitars parts, horns complementing the bass parts and adding harmonies, very whiney vocals, big drums. The songs are over-written with lots of changing parts and stop start style. It's really pretty annoying.

One of a million bands from the 60s psych wave, but on the trippier acid jams side more than the garage rock side. This all starts with a basic blues groove on the Bo Diddley beat and a chugging choogle from the rhythm guitar backing a heap of noodle from the lead guitar, who has the classic psych sound: sticking to blues scales but delivering a deliciously nasty tone from a fuzzy SG through a loud amp, modulated with wammy, wah wah and a whirling Wurlitzer. The bass is the best bit though, ripping jazzy walking lines with a rock swagger. The jams rise and fall and move through a few segments with tonal and stylistic shifts until it disintegrates into a sparse feedback and noise jam before coming back as a rave up. I'm as predisposed as can be to enjoy this sort of thing and only found it only fine. Maybe more accessible but way less exciting than the same year's Live/Dead which does the dark spacey psych and the rave blues both way better. Mainstays of the San Francisco scene, I think they're very much a you had to be there kind of band, eclipse by their contemporaries.

Favorite: Cavalry