Reviews by dohej

Hippy Americana. It must eco friendly since everything is recycled: second hand blues riffs, reheated country twang, leftover honky-tonk, thrift shop boogie, and a tired Elvis impression. Pretty basic bar band stuff done competently but it's hard to think this was imaginative even at the time and it certainly has little to offer 50+ years later.

Futuristic soul. Big on ambience, this is full of lush RnB and glitchy electronic notes that make a deep sombre introspective but also bombastic atmosphere. Emphasis on vibes, feel and groove over hooks. The Björk influence is clear in the moody tension and cold spacey production. Her voice is powerful and expressive, but used more as another textural element than as a pop diva lead. Overlong and samey.

High energy, dumb as hell, relentlessly chasing new thrills - like the labrador of bands. Halfway between hair metal and grunge, this is hard rock in party mode, full of wah wah guitar shredding, huge vocals that are more charismatic for being pretty technically limited, and some 80s LA surf punk funk (ala social distortion) from the bass and drums. The recording sounds awful, super muddy and sludgy, doesn't make the most of the cool rhythm guitar sounds. A 35 minute best of combining this and Ritual with the love version of Jane Says would suffice for Jane's Addiction.

Ripping garage psych with a prominent organ and a weird approach. Lots of people did the same thing not too long after so it's kind of a tired sound, but credit for being ahead of the pack.

It opens with piercing feedback in one ear and chuck berry riffs in the other and proceeds in an equally eclectic stapled together style. Punk deconstructed and reassemble in pieces, it's sparse and tense, twitchy, nervously kinetic, alternating between thrashing squall, angry free jazz chaos, and hushed reflective hungover meditation. It's not the best post punk album, but they take an early stab at most of the sounds the genre would develop, planting seeds that bloom on dozens of great albums.

Explosive drumming, punchy riffs, bratty vocals, concise writing, teenage rage and LAlienation, cheap and crappy sounding DIY style. They pretty much perfected the genre on their first attempt.

Too much of an ok thing. Sprawling beyond the confines of Beatles pop songs this is a loose jammy pastoral album with lots of psych, spiritual searching, and bucolic atmospheres. Tender vocals, unhurried pacing, maximalist wall of sound instrumentation but a relatively murky reverby production style, and a clean/acoustic core give it a gentle relaxed soothing but melancholy feel. Bluesy slide and twangy country lapsteels guitar over loads of it for an additional layer of pathos. The melodic style and harmonies are so classic and familiar from the Beatles, but it has a very Big Pink aesthetic that's a big departure. I have a lot of patience for bluesy jams, these are just fine, nothing remarkable, like blind faith or traffic outtakes, or just want a bar band noodles on to warm up. The longest one is best though as it evolves through a few phases in an interesting way, the rest are just 12 bar progressions with solos.

A wild dream: full of free associations, digressions and changes of direction. Incredible drumming anchors montaged flights of fancy, playful synth parts, audio samples and crystal clear guitar leads. It has a prog feel to it, but more patient and willing to settle in a groove and let the drums work their trance magic, opening your mind to the collage piled on top. Extremely cool by the pool.

I still just can't get excited about Stevie Wonder. The funk brings amazing energy, I recognize the subtlty and complexity of the song-writing, there are some nice melodies and there's a lot of talent on display, but it always leaves me flat. It's fine, nice to have on, but really just does nothing for me and cannot understand the hype.

Half an hour of tipsy lullabies, tropical hold music, and the soundtrack to a cutesy wes anderson montage. Sleepy, swishy, swinging subdued jazz and a hushed intimate vocal. Kind of a snoozefest

TFW Unknown Pleasures isn't bleak enough.

One of the more coked up novelty records in the history of coked up novelty records. Decently fun, but it gets old fast.

I was in a foul mood when I put this on and it kind of helped to be honest.

Even when I was a big LeZ-head I thought this album was bloated and pretty uninspired. Boring riffs, generic solos, annoying wailing vocals. Lacks the raw power of their first albums or the cool exploratory mood of Houses of the Holy (except for the songs included here cut from that one) - it's just tired and phoned in. All the songs, even the good ones, are too long like warm versions of better ones they've already done.

It's a shame we can't run the electric grid on tedious 70s rock since it since it seems there are bottomless wells of the stuff.

DB must've heard Stevie Wonder and thought he'd have a peice of that. It's all funky clavinet, gospel backup singers, smooth jazz horns and wailing RnB sax. Fame is an all time great song the rest is just a pretty fun genre tribute .

There's a fine line between whimsical and goofy and they fell off it within 2 minutes. Extremely annoying.

Another pretty over-rated classic. Hugely influential in orienting 60s rock towards a folksy Americana sound, this album is full of traditional melodies, soul crooning, gospel tinged RnB arrangements and rootsy instrumentation, capturing a bucolic hippy mood. Some good songs, some nice guitar playing, too much organ vamping and a thin voice that I've never felt properly occupies the space created for it. There's also a lot more going on here than the stripped down barn-core aestheics suggest, the proto synth sounding keyboard stuff in particular.

It's never a good sign when you find yourself reflexively reaching for the lower volume button. The vocals are so grating they're almost unbearable. The guitarmonies are cool, the riffs are decent and even the funk metal bass has a fun novelty to it, but the the singing is noxious and then he starts sort of rapping. Oof, brutal. The War Pigs cover is good, but the thing about covering an all time great song is that it just throws into relief how bad all your originals are!

Gorgeous 3-part vocal harmonies, acoustic bluegrass backing from fiddles and banjo/mandolin/flat picking guitars plus a bit of extra juice from drums and soaring lapsteels, classic folksy country songs about wayward lovers, broken hearts, wandering minds and better days ahead/behind: immaculate vibes. The sappy piano ballad drowning in schmaltzy strings (I've Had Enough) kills the energy out of what's an otherwise well paced and uptempo bittersweet album.