Reviews by dohej

The phrase 'tedious wank' gets thrown around gratuitously nowadays, but sometimes it's the only one that fits. Grating vocals, over thought compositions, technically skilled musicians who can't stop flexing, d-grade Tolkein mythology. The interesting moments are all immediately subsumed by a new idea and tone shift, just totally scattered whiplash songs more concerned with being clever than good.

The official soundtrack of hating middle school dances. Inescapable 90s mega pop pairing RnB diva vocals with hip hop production and latching it to the mtv rocketship. Lots of talent but the songs seem mostly like vehicles to show off the incredible vocal range, like the Steve Vai of singing. Just because you can hold that note doesn't mean you should, or do it every single time. After a couple of interminable ballads, the sultry slow jams are a welcome relief, but it all makes you miss Honey's higher energy hip hop pop. Then that comes back with Breakdown and it's not that good either actually.

Glossy but empty millennial synth pop, bright and breezy upbeat stuff that draws heavily on 80s New Wave and disco styles, sounds and rhythms. Sounds mostly like corny sitcom theme song music in the end. Gets very bad when the dancey synths dial back and they turn into sincere guitar crooners like indie Ed Sheeran (look at where we are) or into an ersatz neosoul space jazz Odyssey (now there is nothing) - awful. A byproduct of accelerating cycles of nostalgia, at its best this is fun dance music that's a great artifact of the late peak hipster moment, because of how affected, winkingly unoriginal and ultimately disposable it is.

Eclectic album combining britpop guitar, trip hop drumming and EDM chill beats, Punjabi melodies and instruments, light shoegaze atmospheres, funky soul grooves, Beck-style slacker rapping, and a magpie approach to sampling aesthetics, styles and sounds. Can't say I feel the mid 90s hype on this one - they're one hit wonders buoyed by a remix of the overly long 'Brimful of Asha' and a few ad placements. It's not obnoxious to have on, but leaves little impression and is pretty forgettable.

Really wonderful interplay between the organic and synthetic. Warm lush strings work with cool synth and keyboard tones to create a vibrant, gently thrumming, peice of neo-classical music with shades of ambient experimentalism and jazzy psychedelia. Weird and whimsical, but expertly composed and crafted.

Not only is he a pop star, right, he's got a pilot's licence. Imagine that! Gorgeous synth tones, lots of catchy riffs and hooks, and a robotic but charismatic vocal style that fits with the drum machine rhythms. If I was a glammed up business guy I'd also be suspiciously intrigued by the glowing triangle on my desk.

Busier and more attention grabbbing than other ambient albums and less hypnotically driving and psych than Krautrock, this is is a bright and poppy super melodic take on spacey synth electronica.

Pretty straight down the middle 90s alt rock. Heavy punk influence tempered by radio play ambitions, post-grunge production with big dirty guitars, loud-quiet dynamics, personal is political feminist lyrics delivered by an alternatingly whispered intimate / screamed guttural vocal.

Time to don my novelty bucket cap and the most ludicrous jeans ever made, down a handful of pills, and pop in a pacifier to bliss out to the ultimate rave rock album.

Synthy sounding guitar riffs and loads of actual synths combine with a thick fuzzy bass to create a big dense sound with lots going on. The drumming is really cool - relaxed and spacious but always up to something interesting. The vocals are an intense falsetto. There’s a lot of it that’s all very consistent and coherent. The two stand out tracks are Starring at the Sun, their big single that has a compelling ‘round’ style hook sung over a dark and ominous 1234 synth beat and Dreams another catchy vocal led song with a dark dark synth, fuzzy bass and interpol-sounding droning guitar.

Goddamn this album rules. An explosive release of nervous energy. This was the coolest band to rip off among all the cool bands I grew up seeing in the DC area back in 2000 (Q and not U, Rapture, Black Eyes etc). It makes sense as it's a perfect formula - driving funk bass, slashing wild guitars, extremely kinetic drums, and yelped vocals that are basically another percussion instrument - for high energy, danceable, and unrelentingly hip party punk. Damaged Goods is the perfect post-punk song.

Dramatic cinematic music and baritone crooning. Opens with a fun noir cowboy jazz track but then gets bogged down in a bunch of tedious slow-paced orchestral schmaltz. But the only way out is through: when the schmaltzy strings really slow down it becomes something interesting again, an ambient textural bedding for the vocals' existential anguish.

Favorites: Seventh Seal, Old Man's Back

Since Minor Threat was my first love in punk everything before always struck me as hokey and underpowered, this included. And Jello Biafra's voice was an immediate turn off so I really never gave this a chance. Big. Mistake. Like lots of early punk stuff this IS just basic rock-n-roll played harder faster and louder, they keep the surf rock style and guitar solos and everything, but it's blistering paced on the verge of chaos at all times, sped up so much that there's a qualitative transformation: it distorts into deforms itself something else entirely: like a band trying to reach escape velocity. Amazing to hear zero subtlety political satire that still feels super relevant - probably because it's full of righteous rage but also funny and direct and not milquetoast indie liberalism full of vague universals.

A Häagen-Dazs® ad's idea of horny music. Smooth and sweet, sensual but vanilla, mass-produced and bland, but with an unstoppable rubbery bass tone.

It's so funny how 45 years of retrospect makes this kind of punk sound so essentially like 50s rock-n-roll just a notch faster and slightly more distorted, but the chord progressions and harmonies and hooks are basically the same. It works, though, hey, it's a good formula for having a bopping good time with your (leather jacket wearing and safety pin pierced) best girl!

Anti war anti corporate politics appropriated by the band's teenage audience as adolescent rebellion. Fuck you (mom) I won't do what you tell me! But if rock-n-roll isn't for pubescent catharsis what is it for? When that was my demographic this was the gnarliest, hardest, dirtiest, fastest thing imaginable (ie in the radio) and I was first scared of it the loved it. In retrospect it's much cleaner (the guitar is distorted but very tightly), the riffs are slower and have more of a groove, and the extreme vocals are a much more focused rap-scream delivery than I remembered. Far from wild and flailing it's precisely controlled fury and it fucking rips hard. A comp with the best tracks off this and evil empire and 2 from their 3rd album would be the best hour of 90s metal hands down, but they all have some filler.

Auww, you did such an amazing job picking out your 90s alt rock coloring book and you're so good at staying inside the lines and picking the right color crayons for every area!

Proto hard rock that's basically blues with fuzz and wah wah. This was released alongside Cream's Wheels of Fire and Hendrix's Electric Ladyland, the year before Led Zeppelin I and 2 years before Black Sabbath's debut. All these bands are basically doing the same thing - a hard charging rock trio with a great bass player and a guitar dude shredding over top + some sort of vocalist that's kind of an afterthought even though it takes up a ton of the album. Jeff Beck's leads are great, but not especially original here. Rod Steward is tolerable. Ronnie Wood's basslines really kick it on. It's one of the ultimate dad-core albums, I'd have picked the wierder and more original Blow By Blow instead.

Chilled out funk with jazzy horns, busy percussion, gospel vocal harmonies and an deep groove to it. Though it presages a lot of very annoying and smooth jazz funk it's dynamic and soulful enough to avoid being easy listening. At the very least the contrast between the urgent social commentary of the lyrics/titles and the upbeat fun of the music is pretty striking.

I like everything about this, but somehow despite trying a few times it never really clicks - I haven't found the right setting to really absorb and let it work on me. It's full of plaintive, urgent, angry vocals. Grungy distorted guitars altenate with violently strummed acoustics. It's dark and despairing. There's lots of space in the music with big chords in line with drum hits rather than constant strumming. Other songs have guitars drop out/in and a more propulsive bass/drum groove underpinning it. It plays with quite loud dynamics, and gradually building/removing layers of guitar parts: overdriven riffs, cleaner kind of whiny sounding guitar leads. I enjoy it while it's on, but nothing lingers.