Rated 4/10
Kind of an offcut of 90s alt rock. Novocaine was a favorite when it was in the radio. I enjoyed the overall slacker feel of it, the sparse relaxed arrangements, the guitars' bright overdriven sound, and the high end slide/key parts, but it comes and goes without leaving much of an impression.
Favorites: novocaine, guest list
Rated 4/10
Sincere borrows and reworks RnB and disco, combining it with Drum and Bass to make a new chilled out jazzy sound that moves away from the intense 4 on the floor dance music for something more laid back. This is a solid represtantive for a major and influential genre (UK garage) that has had a big inpact on neo-soul and pop production. It's not bad to put on and zone out with, but it's pretty boring after a bit and suffers from by association from being the soundtrack of douchey bars with uncomfortable plastic furniture and expensive redbull drinks that call themselves lounges.
Rated 10/10
More richly produced and fully arranged than his more bare bones early 90s albums, AFT reaps the rewards of his breakthrough into the world music genre on this album. It's a more fully realized, if slightly more generic sound as a result. His guitar work is great, all mesmerizing drones and melodic fills, working with and against the kora GOAT Toumani Diabate to weave together a complex call and response, polyrhythmic, relaxed but super energetic sound. The sokou single string violin adds an awesome lead element and extra melodic voice on a few songs, really bringing that wild trancey velvet underground sound. I might've picked In the Heart of the Moon over this one, but this is a great representation of Malian music at its moment of peak global recognition.
Rated 6/10
Silly smooth and billowy soft - leans hard into 80s production, pushing the sound as far as possible through perfectionist performance and recording, elaborate harmonies and complicated jazzy composition. My taste was formed valuing raw, direct and aggressive music - so polished convoluted and mellow sounds have been a challenge to learn to love. There's a detached wet irony and indulgent technophilia you have to respect if it ends up sounding like supermarket music.
Rated 6/10
Top tier musicians playing a nice amalgam of 50s popular genres encompassing country, RnB, soul, blues, doo wop and jazz. The vocals are great: warm and hugely charismatic. The guitar is twangy and tight. But none of the songs or performances really stand out as anything more than well crafted genre pieces.
Rated 8/10
Shaggy lo-fi post-hardcore indie rock played at an ambling pace with lots of space for the fuzzy guitars to blossom, for the overdrive to warm up, and the riffs to grow and weave around. A nice amalgam of the sounds of the pre-grunge DIY underground - a bit of the slacker energy of Pavement, the nervouse energy of Missions of Burma, some of the dynamimcs of the Pixies, and the heavy crunchy distortion of the Melvins, the driving energy of the Minutemen, the thick chugging riffs of Dino Jr, and the sprawling dissonance of Sonic youth. The vocals are thin and introspective, mumbled and screamed and somewhat buried in the mix - none of the songs have have the hooks or big catchy melodies of Pixies/Dino.
Rated 6/10
I love the way the sitar uses drones that create a contrast between on the one hand the continutiy of that sound which works amazingly along with the rhythms to create a deep trance like state while, on the other hand, and the changing melodic phrases and intensification of speed/tone create a layer of tension and release through each song. This album works up sitar arrangements of familiar 60s rock classics - kind of corny, but makes sense as familiarizing bridging element introducing western listeners to a set of sounds they'd known for a couple of years as a means to give rock an exotic twist.
Rated 6/10
Lots of great guitar parts from the folly acoustic finger work to the heavier electric leads. The way all the voices sync up in the riffs is cool, but an an overused trick by the 4th time. Vocals are a bit grating. They just about pull off the flute, but it's dicey.
Rated 10/10
Chaotic fuzzy drones, wild guitar parts that dissolve into squals of feedback, dark intense bass riffs, frenzied drumming, lo-fi production and wild expressive performances all combine create a hypnotic hallucinogenic atmosphere. Extremely cathartic noise. Sister Ray is the star of the album, but the title track is a great garage rock track that basically invents pop punk. Lady Godiva and Here She Comes now features more of their gentle darkly pretty songwriting. The Gift is kind of annoying though.
Rated 2/10
Laurel Canyon flute nonsense. Just about OK in garage rock mode, tedious in airey medieval folk mode. Revelation is a pretty good Grateful Dead jugband era style jam until the Jim Morrison impression starts and it turns into an aimless blues rave up, the jazzy sax bit with a trance feel and wandering bass brings it back to life.
Rated 4/10
A cool guitar album: raw fuzz tones mixed with bright and energetic acoustics. Uneven set of songs though with a pastoral country folk sound that gets a bit sleepy.
Rated 10/10
A great album I never need to hear again since the radio and I played it to death in the 90s. The hits are amazing but there's a lot of sludgy chugging but decidedly not thrashing filler to go with them. This and, even more so Appetite for Destruction, are the pinnacle of hard rock and it's been radically diminishing returns ever since.
Rated 4/10
A classic appreciate it but don't really like it album. Combines jazzy crooning piano ballads, South Africa choral church music, Calypso sweetness. Great vocal performances and a historical touchstone but it's very slow and gentle and kinda boring.
Rated 6/10
An extremely Grand Theft Auto album: swaggering funky beats, comedically violent lyrics, casually derogatory, gangster posturing loved by suburban stoners. Best use of a 'booyah' on the list so far.
Rated 6/10
A band I whose name I'd heard before, maybe as a punchline to a joke I didn't get, but never listened to. An album where you picture the music video for every song - all kooky animations and billowing curtains and neon moods. It sounds great, bearing all the hallmarks of its time. The guitar sound especially is so good, bell-like hypercompressed and so clean it cuts. The bass has an awesome pop to it and the synths are cornier than a road trip in Iowa. Jazzy funk straight from the supermarket radio paired with new wave art pop, the songwriting is full of yearning instropection and heartache juxtaposed to upbeat music. It fades in the final third and Horsin Around is a hard pass.
Favorites: Bonny, Goodbye Lucille 1
Rated 8/10
There's a 5-star 45 minute album's worth of material distributed across this, Workingman's Dead and the first Garcia and Weir solo albums representing the pinnacle of the Dead's Americana era. Alongside CSNY, the Byrds, the Band etc - other bands who're better songwriters and recording artists - this is a major album in the hippy turn towards country and folk. Even though it's a favorite band's best (or 2nd best after Workingman's Dead?) studio album, I never listen to as none of what I listen to the Dead for is here - the dark intensity of their psychadelic blues, the bright exploratory improv of their jazzy jams. It's their slow twangy Americana era, fairly conventional songs (arranged interestingly, and performed expertly) with some cool - albeit saccharine - harmonies and lots of pretty guitar parts - it's gentle easy going feel good, sometimes plodding, music - perfectly stoned and relaxed, but lacking the audience heat and high-wire risk that animates their live performances.
Rated 2/10
The bass parts rip on the fast songs, the gritty slide guitars are pretty on the ballads, the mandolins are a fun twist, and his raspy voice brings it a weary world-worn aura, but the songs are just pretty boring blues rock with way too much annoying honky tonk piano and an overall phony Americana feel.
Rated 2/10
Hendrix : Kravitz :: OutKast : NERD
Incredibly repetitive songs that get boring 1 minute in. Smug eclecticism that dabbles in a lot of genres without going beyond the surface of their sound, so you get lots of boring fuzzy guitar riffs, generic jazziness, bland RnB horns, corny rap bravura, perky charmless britpop jangle, and annoying emo melodies. A good argument for keeping the producers behind the boards.
Rated 8/10
I like all the components - the dark atmospheric sound, the modulated guitars and cutting bass tone, the slow brooding feel, the 60s psych and 70s punk influences, the detached booming vocals - but it doesn't all come together as much as it should into great songs.
Favorites: rescue, all that jazz, crocodiles,
Rated 4/10
Uptempo but chilled out electronica designed for a montage, or creating the feeling of living inside one.
