Reviews by dohej

This is the glam rock Dr John tribute act you never knew you needed, because you didn't. Somebody nuke the swamps of the Glasgow Cajun Quarter before this abomination breaches containment.

Bright and energetic, overflowing with melodic ideas and alt-rock guitar sounds. A bit power-pop and a bit psych, it's all extremely 90s and extremely English.

Jazzy orchestral music with alternating leads from violin, xylophone, and that accordion type instrument. Complex melodies and dynamic composition with changing parts at top speed, discordant harmonies, angular rhythms, and abrasive tones keep it edgy and tense, building to intense moments of release. You'd twist your ankle if you tried to actually Tango to this, surely. An outlier in lots of ways, Zappa and gotham project being the closest comps I've come across so far.

Chill instrumental trip hop electronica with hip hop, dub, electronica, acid house, indie rock and WOMAD influences combined for a cinematic feel. Nice and relaxed background music - the lynchpin of many a 'music to study to' playlist.

Part of a wave of mid 90s hip hop albums that really brought the genre to a commercial peak and changed the sound and style of pop music across the board. The slowed down and spaced out beats with a sultry RnB feel, emphasis on hooky grooves, and the big choruses made this THE production template for the next decade plus. Laid back delivery of sharp rhymes paired with sung lines, overall Missy Elliott's verses are still central but less out front and more part of an ensemble funk performance.

Jazzy samples and wordy verses - like a West coast Native Tongues: upbeat, funny, and wide ranging.

This is the music that bugs bunny in a dress puts on while making some strong cocktails. Raunchy horns, goofy vocals, wildly energetic performances - all good fun.

How dare she criticize Peter Gabriel, with her little screw me hair cut and all so 'neh neh neh' - doesn't she know he single handedly created WOMAD?!

This is peak of 80s production - he just gloriously embraces synth, compression, rubbery bass, cheesy keyboard patches, and gated drums from top to bottom, and pairs it with a full on afro funk rhythm section, backup singers, great songs with a range of emotional tones and his own searching oddly alienated earnest vocals.

Buttery toast, mac and cheese, vanilla ice cream, scrambled eggs, corn on the cob - things can be boring and family friendly, corny and cheesy and still good. Embrace the cringe, succumb to the acoustic sincerity, let go of the sneer and just let the earnestness wash over you.

Funk punk band with classic rock ambitions with a charismatic but annoying singer for high energy, bloated thrusting. They have a very unique sound - the distinctive combination of vocal style and effects paired with the wash of guitar creates a huge expansive feel. The last third is the best. Exactly what the band of the host of a reality tv show about tattoos should sound like.

Aggressive riffs, snarling vocals, heavy hitting drums. It all sounds the same, but what a sound!

Raw and jazzy, a singer finding her voice and building up the sound she'd fully realize on Back to Black. This is less poppy and more rooted in neo-soul and jazz, with lots of blue notes, extended chords in complicated voicings, and more stripped down arrangements focusing on clean guitars and keys with deep electric bass and more sparing use of horns. Moody's Mood has some cool dub production. All of that puts her voice really front and center, highlighting her gritty timbre and remarkable control.

An unlikely combination of post punk angularity, country twang, and prog complexity with a vibe that presages much of the 90s slacker alt rock feel.

Dark crooner jazz infused barroom blues from a bourbon- soaked cookie monster. The whole album reeks of fedora. A weird boomer affection of pretending to be a depression era drifter. Sparse rough arrangements put the emphasis on the upright bass, plinky plonk piano and bare bones percussion. Some aching lap steel & violin playing adds a nice country twang and high range harmony to a the best tracks. A top 5 'nobody actually likes this, they just like the idea of being a guy who likes this' band.

Favorites: who are you this time, a little rain, goin out west

A film noir freak out, this is THE album to listen to while tailing some dame and slipping into a hallucinatory mental breakdown.

Just a man and a guitar singing bluesy folk songs and ripping through some pretty incredible fingerstyle parts. A bit Nick Drake, a bit Led Zeppelin III, but not as melodic and bitter sweet as former and lacking the hard rock edge of the latter. His playing is really incredible, open string drones and moving pass notes, while picking out complicated chords and lead lines - hard to fathom how he pulls it all off. Technically impressive while also being gentle and soulful, but it’s not the most dynamic stuff and very solidly in its lane genre-wise. He’s just doing folk music (extremely capably) rather than doing something with the folk style/palette.

A desperately sad story told desperately. An album that feels like trying, and failing, to drag yourself out of bed with a hangover. Heavy, grim, dark, full of anger and self-loathing. Very effectively captures and recreates that mood. Big ambitions semi-coherently articulated, some tender intimate moments and beautiful passages emerge from the struggle. Seems like a sketchbook full of ideas taken into a fully loaded studio prematurely, so kind of a bloated mess, but again, that fits the mood pretty perfectly.

I got this as a teenager and always felt like I'd bought the wrong Blur album because it just didn't connect at all. A couple decades letter, I can appreciate it a bit more, though primarily as a historical touchstone. It's a foundational bit of Britpop that draws on tradition of UK powerpop for tight melodic songwriting and some of the sounds of the era's alt/indie rock for its fuzzy energy. Rejected by America, they delve deep into Briticana with ironic art-school eccentricity and authentic ecclecticism. It's well crafted and put together, sounds great, cool use of effects, lots of clever song-writing tricks and catchy melodies. It's wry and whimsical, serious about musicality but uninterested in the dark gloomy depression of grunge, instead creating the definitive Britpop mood of optimistic nostalgia. But it's also got too much annoying stuff and none of it is as good as their next two albums. The foundation rather than the pinnacle of this 60s-yearning brand of 90s guitar pop. Can't help but feel Blur would be better represented as a Best Of band not an albums band.

Whoever keeps making these double-length special issues the default on Spotify is not doing anyone a favor - just give me the original tracklist FFS! Not some bloated monstrosity full of unwanted extras and bonus tracks and remixes and outtakes.

Favorites: For Tomorrow, Colin Zeal, Oily Water

Finally getting the hype with this one on the 25th attempt. It's always been somewhat alienating to me and hard to connect with, despite lots of people insisting I'd like it. Not sure why, maybe it's having listened to lots of 80s/90s UK indie pop and shoegaze over the last year for whatever reason, or that this is a remaster that's a bit easier on the ears, but this is way more accessible, the hazy high-end that always pushed me away isn't there and the songs themselves come through way more than ever before and the individual instruments' contributions stand out more clearly. There's a nice combination of Cure-esque basslines driving the songs, jangly shimmering guitars washed in an ethereal bath of reverb delay and modulation effects, big echoey 80s drums, some synth tones, and hushed alto vocals that start with a whisper and resonate, echo, double up and harmonize into something huge. Slow and spacious, mopey and hopeful, dreamily malingering in misery, this is almost as good as everyone's been saying!

The best 60s psych album by miles. It combines deep roots in American electric blues & RnB, British flower-power aesthetics, genius pop rock songwriting, casually revolutionary guitar playing, high energy fuzz, trippy studio recording effects, and a dangerous dose of pure charisma.