Reviews by dohej

A mix of big brash joyful rockers with fizzy guitars and a power pop harmonies and oceanic feeling blissful spacey tracks with a floaty sprawling feel. Though they have lots of overlaps with the other big britpop bands - blur's whimsy, the verve's chill psychedelia, pulp's drama, Oasis's catchy hooks - they're carving out their own shoegaze but upbeat glam rock lane. Somehow I missed this the first time around (they really never made it to the US radio) but this is a consistently strong but nicely varied, and great sounding album.

A minor drop in the wave of millennial garage rock revival. Howling vocals, amazingly scuzzy guitars, big banging drums, driving riffs and touch of electronica. Good fun but pretty generic. A bunch of LA dudes had the brilliant idea of being the Stooges.

Generic RnB pop with bland hyper commercial production and an only ok vocal performance at best (harmonies are good, but Beyonce's voice is so bad on this, so nasal and thin - really piercing). There was way better, more fun, more soulful, more interesting sounding RnB in the late 90s than this. If your whole album is constantly returning to a theme you're ripping off from Gloria Gaynor, you really have to do better than this. Opens with three ubiquitous singles that have wormed their way into the collective unconscious through sheer repetition, the rest is pretty boring filler - it just gets worse and worse as it goes on, and it goes on for a while. The most interesting thing is the incoherent psuedo feminist messaging pairing anthemic odes to independence via commodifying your body with demands to put some clothes on to please men. A telling artifact of it's time, but musically there's just nothing to it - this is mostly notable as a footnote in the Beyonce story arc.

Peak 2002: a TRL video star, expensive production aiming for lush but ultimately kind of chintzy crappy digital sounding, ubiquitous hip hop elements, RnB slow jams, psuedo heavy guitar riffs for no reason with the worst tone imaginable, pop discovering Latinos, horniness as feminism and generic empowerment, ultra low rise jeans and terrible haircuts, all stuffed into a sprawling 78 minutes. Her voice is powerful, she's good at going real low into a growl to gather force for an alto explosion, hitting those glass shattering high notes; it's a strong and pretty varied vocal performance - the ballads are too much though. A couple of good songs but sooo much garbage to wade through - lots just bland and boring but some aggressively bad (Fighter, Cruz, voice within).

Favorites: Get Mine Get Yours, Walk Away, Dirrty

Explosive, catchy, furiously fun. It's a perfect blends of the heaviness, speed and dynamics of post-hardcore DIY indie rock with power pop hooks, surf bass + light hearted mood, and post-punk guitar textures + abstract lyrics. Just an unbelievable debut that right from the jump establishes a formula a million other bands have tried to do a million times.

Heavy menacing riffs, hard hitting industrial drums, growling guttural throat shredding vocals, some mathy proggy bits. The bits where it all comes together really rip, but there's a lot of it that doesn't that's kind of dull, not enough tension or dynamism, all the menace but without the threat - ruins the suspension of disbelief and it all becomes a bit rediculous and laughable (les enfants, lol).

Favorites: Crier les Chiens

A huge sound surrounds the frail lead vocal which is left alone and raw, overwhelmed and struggling to persist in the turbulence. Quiet pauses and maximalist noise flow beautifully into each other. They do this thing where they're grooving along with as full a sound as you can imagine - a loud space rock band with gospel singers and horns and strings - and then a descending bassline drops in and reveals an entire abyss you've been floating above the entire time and it's pure magic.

It's so funny how music originally meant for getting off your tits on e at rave is also so good for drowning out the world to really zoom in on a couple of fuck off spreadsheets.

Thick fuzz, heavy reverb, slow tempos and grinding churning rhythms, ethereal vocals and lead guitar melodies struggling to escape the event horizon of the dense sound. Good at what it is - noisy textural psych best played loud on a gloomy evening. A welcome new album from a cult band whose reputation grew lots during a long time away, but not one I'd call essential in any way. A few highlights but also a couple of real torpid stinkers that just draaaaaaag onnnnnnnn and the whole thing is pretty monotonous.

Kind of a cool combination of acoustic and electric guitar sounds for a bit of jangle and a dose of fuzz. Has more of a country folk feel to it than a lot of other 90s alt rock, without going full alt-country. Definitely has the gen x angsty melancholic overwrought emotional range nailed down, an album made for Ethan Hawke to make annoying faces over.

Favorites: Grace, Fuzzy

Funky afrobeat rhythms and jazzy Brazilian melodies, it's a very natural combination for high energy psychedelic dance music that goes hard. Hands down my favorite of the Brazilian albums on the list so far (no coincidence as it's as much Lagos as Rio sounding). Even though this is as good as it gets I still don't like Portugese singing - something always feels off key and off kilter about the harmonies and phrasing. But this just has so much percussive force, infectious groove, soul delivery, and sheer charisma to the performance it's undeniable. A highwater mark of global funk.

I tried getting into this when it came out but had no interest - found it boring and sappy, but it hits different 20 years later. In the words of philosopher Mark Hoppus, 'I guess this is growin up'. Post-Britpop indie rock crooning is really not a genre that should work, but this wierdly does. Lush orchestral instrumentation and tasteful arrangements for big atmospheric sounds set the stage for tender gentle vocals that stay comfortably within their limited range and warm timbre. The clean guitars are bright and clear as a bell, shimmering with tremelo and echo for a beautiful surf rock effect, picking out pretty counter-melodies. It's all very affected, going for a vintage noire aesthetic and dated grand old big band wall of sound nashville schmaltzy style, but because it's not flashy or pompous like Nick Cave or Tom Waits it doesn't come across as iritating, just someone using a specific set of sounds and styles to realize a project. It still gets a bit boring after a while though, but a great relaxing album.

Favorites: Hotel Room, Wait for Me, I Sleep Alone

Jazzy samples and DJ scratching with boom bap drums make for classic 90s beats - a driving propulsive rhythm paired with relaxed warm sounds. Nas's verses are relentless: non stop rhymes within and between lines, story telling, image conjuring, world building. With an even cadence at just above conversational speed, he barely leaves any space to think and absorb what he's said before he's into the next thing.

Spent the morning getting the house ready for a Eurovision party and this seems randomly like the only occasion this album is the perfect one to have on. Eurotrash errands music.

Tedious hard rocking guitar rock with loads of attitude but barely a hook. It's loud and aggressive, but lacking the dynamics or memorbale riffs or artistry to make that interesting. Just mid-tempo, mid-level, noisey but not challenging, angsty, annoying and stressful. Really a slog - have never understood how this band got as big as they did, despite trying a few times!

Sometimes the most metal thing you can do it makes a new wave album.

Fun psychedlia with lots of zany stuff going on, crazy compositions, great fuzz guitar, and a wild atmosphere. I always find this band incredibly stressful to listen to though, it really puts me on edge - as much as I like this in principle I have yet to find the right context in which to actually enjoy it. Guess you had to be there...

Easy going electronic background music that combines chill beats to study to with heist movie soundtrack. Apt title - it's like a DJ booth came to life and needed to make music to calm itself down.

Extremely uneven - 3 all time greats, pure fun bangers (Bad, Smooth Criminal, The Way You Make me Feel) and then a heaping pile of schmaltzy saccharine bullshit. Noone cares about the ballads, MJ, we're here for the dance hits so cut out the crooning, it's truly awful. The 80s guitar shredding is kind of good and really funny.

Gorgeous acoustic guitar and a sweetly expressive if limited and nasal voice. The song that sound like Nick Drake is great, the ones that sound like Fairport Convention or Cat Stevens aren't. Some nice funky jazzy moments from the electric piano and electric guitar/sax interplay that goes from poppy Stevie Wonder to dark fusion groove. Get that flute out of here though! Slow and relaxed, warm feeling but pretty sombre thematically.

Favorites: over the hill, rather be the devil, dreams by the sea, man in the station