Reviews by dohej

Cliche americana, corny piano rock, cheesy sax solos, a big anthemic sound rises and falls over mid-tempo beats - not a promising recipe, but it works. Despite his limited range and wierd stuffy-nose timbre, the raw energy in his voice cuts through and gives this a compelling charisma that draws you in to the stories and mood of the album. Opens strong but drags in the middle.

Taking the mdma rock of Madchester out of the Hacienda and into a dingy dive bar, keeping some of the groove, but mostly slowing everything down and adding layers of swirling shoegaze guitars covered in wah wah and reverb, this album is full of big sounds and spacious songs that spiral and sprawl out. It does that trippy pyschadelic thing of using drone notes and warm overdriven repetition of melodic loops to draw you in hypnotically, allowing the rest of the sound to work on the rest of your mind and body - the high-register loping basslines create a loose floaty feel, the gutiar leads introduce little phrases that repeat and interate and transform into fuzzy feedback and fade away. Blissed out music and depressing lyrics, the classic combo!

Psych revival with droning swirling guitars and mesmeric synth parts over locked in krautrock grooves, lead by big vocals that are doubled and tripped for self-harmonies, soaked in reverb and delay, and bounced around the stereo for a being inside a kaleidoscope effect. Stereolab is the biggest comparison, but elements of Velvet Underground, Bjork, Portishead, Can and Pavement to go with it.

A deeply meditative album: the repetition draws you into to a drance, the warm tones make it feel comfortable and relaxed, the subtle shifts in texture and timbre keep you engaged albeit passively, the ebbs and flows build and release tension gently, the bass resonantes throughout your body while the lead lines distract your mind.

Folksy alt-country, twangy Americana, swampy blues. A huge contrast to the bombastic mega-pop country of the era (Twain, Brooks), this is a return to a rootsy style and dark, angry, melancholy themes of Southern abjection. The production is very radio-ready though, the big clean drums setting a propulsive groove that kicks it out of singer-songwriter gear into almost a heartland rock sound. The bright chiming surf guitars on a few tracks are so good! Less a fan of the cajun elements though, the corny accadian accordian sound really takes away from a couple of otherwise great songs.

Favorites: Greenville, Metal Firecracker, 2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten, Right in Time, Joy

Whimsical lo-fi folk psychedelia that's mostly famous for the mythology surrounding it, as a haunting document of a psyche on the cusp of descent. Even so, it stands up as a singular expression of his creative impulse, and an exploration of the singer songwriter genre, drawing on the dark drones and fuzz of the velvet underground, the sing songy melodies of kids music, the jangly guitars of the 60s and the eccentricity of English acid psych. His voice is frail and fragile, pushed beyond itself into adolescent cracking but open and earnest and incredibly charismatic. This is a key precursor of the shaggy slacker rock, bedroom lofi, and outsider art that would flourish in the 90s.

Perfect A side. VM delivers an all time great vocal performance - introspective, melancholic, tender and delicate, forceful and reaching. The music is autumnal and folksy, mellow and jazzy, warm and familiar - tied together by great bass playing that underpins lush and deeply textured arrangements. The B side isn't as good, but even so is basically is a sneak preview of the rambling gospel country Americana that the Rolling Stones would do shortly afterwards on Exile. So good the flute is forgiveable.

Perfect embodiment of the Muscle Shoals RnB sound, harnessed in support of an incredible vocal performance - not just an amazing voice, but impassioned singing capturing a big emotional range. Deep gospel roots, uptempo funk on the bass, mellow jazzy piano to cool down the heat from the horns - it sounds amazing: rich, warm, lush. The whole album is a joyful comfort.

A band that has weirdly grown on me over the years as I've come to enjoy the unabashed big dumb sound and kitschy debauched style. Incredible guitar tone, epic anthems you can really pump a fist to, arena filling drums, and crazy charismatic vocals. Sometimes it's just time for uncut puro braindead fun. Ice Cream Man is an embarrassment though, wild.

An amazing range of synth sounds combined with a powerful vocal performance. The arpeggiator freak outs are cool as hell and the drum machine parts have a nice robotic groove to them. A bit uneven

Favorites: Jennifer, sweet dreams, love is a stranger.

Feels like being in a small boat in a big storm. The music is sparse and dark, swelling strings and washed out synths, scattered with bursts of electronic noise, it creates a feeling of a vast windswept encompasing expanse battering and moving you, hinting at but not reveal an abyss below. But the voice is intimate and intense - itself highly manipulated and textured, filtered through effects to distort and chop and rework itself, but still direct and inescapable, extremely proximate.

Brimming with enthusiastic energy, propulsive high energy songs, Brit Pop whimsy, and kitchen sink instrumentation, this is a small band making a grandiose album. Cheapskate has an acid post-Madchester dance feel to it. The rest is floating on the 3rd wave (?) of the mod rock/power pop guitar band revival cycle. It's bright and optimistic, but full of nostalgia, they do it well and it's a fun album, but nothing really stands out.

They're so good at building tension, letting an atmosphere develop, creating an enveloping mood and then doing that dew point drop thing where it all releases, shifting on a single beat. The heavy new-wave post-punk influence on the bass and drums gives them a hard edged tone and a driving beat. The soaring guitars are a thrill - glassy crunchy and direct - simple parts crafted perflectly to echo and bounce and create a huge space for the vocals to fill. It's so big and bombastic and ambitiously produced it's really an achievement, and not even they're best.There are three of the best songs of the 80s on here that still hold up however overplayed they are. The rest isn't as good, but never drops to being mere filler, they're probably both a Greatest Hits and an albums band.
This is probably the first album I was ever really into even before I had my own music, I remember the CD and asking to always put it on in the car as a like 9 or 10 year old, so 0 bias here...

Big band jazz with loads of horns blasting out huge riffs and taking turns stepping out to rip quick solos, rumba grooves for some swing, seven layers of percussion for hypnotic complex rhythms and an endless reserve of energy. Music that makes it worth driving your big long car out to the casino.

Americana for big fans of The OC. It's a swagless Byrds and Beach Boys California tribute that they sometimes pull off. The best bits are the slow spacious parts with loping melodic bass, big reverby atmosphere, gentle piano, soaring slides and clean echoey guitars (Deckchairs & Cigarettes, Hollywood Kids), very pretty, if ultimately empty. But then as soon as they try to high energy and that constant annoying banjo sounding arpeggio kicks in it becomes unbearably cloying. "It's such a shame when old friends fall out" - and actual lyric they repeat multiple times! good lord that's embarrassing.

Successfully replicates that annoying feeling of driving somewhere confusing where you need to pay attention but the passenger keeps changing the radio station constantly except instead of pop country and car dealer ads it's South African choral pop, Cuban dance music, DJ blathering, and old school hip hop scratching, but they switch channel before you can get into it at all. Infuriating, fun, stressful, distracting, a waste of a great cover. Barely any ducks.

Forged by 80s New Wave and art school post punk but embracing the exuberance of 90s pop, this is peak Pulp: archly dramatic, full of wit, whimsy and irony, but earnestly bombastic. Overflowing with catchy lines, huge hooks, and anthemic energy.

What a voice! Sad sentimental songs sung so sweetly, with aching swelling pedal steel guitars, crystal clear twangy reverb soaked telecaster solos, just the right amount of honky tonk piano, a touch of fiddle, and a bouncy cowboy bass carrying it all along. I love this old addicted to heartbreak country stuff that's all about what a big loser you are, how everyone is so cruel to you all the time since you're a pathetic drunk failure, how you'll always be lonely and you deserve it for being a stupid miserable little shit nobody could or should ever love, and how the only pleasure in life is the anguish of seeing other people have a good time that you're not invited to and the only thing you can do is project onto them your own fantasy that they're not actually enjoying themselves.

Jangly guitars, warbly vocals, shimmering synths, poppy bass, cheesy strings, upbeat songs with a bit of snap to them and bittersweet melancholy lyrics. A kind of pop rock that they just don't make anymore. Like a British post New Wave version of heartland rock - a bit phonier, less bombastic, but hitting the same adult contemporary notes. Drags a bit on the slower tracks, but when they're in full on bright jangly mode its so good.

Love the bare bones boom boom bap beats made of scratching and samples looped on repeat but they get a bit samey after a few tracks. Their song w Anthrax kicks the shit out of Aerosmith & RunDMC, even if they accidentally invented Nu Metal.