Reviews by dohej

Funky organ-led jazz with a strong footing in blues. Goes down smooth.

Comes and goes without leaving much of an impression. Sounds a lot like the Beck I remember from the 90s: shaggy alt-rock guitars combined with hip hop beats, slacker vocals sliding between singing and rapping in his signature playful drowsy delivery, some cool production (sounds like Outkast sometimes) and lots of ideas including some fun riffs and lots of swirling sounds. But none of it really stands out, seems like mostly filler and doesn't advance much on the what he'd already accomplished on earlier albums. Not bad, but not essential listening.

Favorites: Que' Onda Guero, Girl

Ska, soul & pub rock. Fun horns, uptempo bass and lively drums, pretty crappy if animated charismatic thin nasal lead vocals fleshed out with some backing singers. High energy but easy going. More interesting as an artifact of a place/time in UK pop culture than as an album I want to listen to.

Fast, fun and extremely over the top. Relentless galloping rhythms, nonstop riffing, harmonized dual guitar attack, shredding solos, wailing vocals, songs that veer wildly between proto-thrash/hardcore and pop- prog. Time has taken the edge off and made this seem somewhat kitschy, but it's still a good headbanging time 🤘

Film Noire plots with an Appalachain setting relayed via bluegrass tunes. Amazing brotherly harmonies, cool mandolin parts, and some nearly Hawaiian twang. A truly American album that pairs sweet and innocent gospel music paired with dark themes of murder and abuse, a classic folk tale/music tradition.

The worst of the three big y2k 'guitars are back' indie rock garage revival bands. The vocals are so grating. The riffs are very high energy and can be fun, but its super frenetic, unfocused and there is way too much treble. I like the garage punk sound, but it's really just an incredibly annoying album and the whole visual marketing thing with them made them just made them seem like an industry hype band.

Hardcore in it's purest form: loud, fast, perfectly controlled riffs and screamed-yelped vocals. An incredible artifact of the do it yourself + anyone can do it ethos.

Extremely mid: middle of the road, mid-brow, mid-tempo, middling. Strummy acoustic guitar driven pop rock, with an 80s indie sensibility. Some pretty & melodically phrases electric guitar parts with chorus/delay tones on the leads. Too many gratuitous harmonicas and string parts. A bit like a lot of other stuff that's way better: a thousand UK twee indie bands did it better the 80s and then the one hit wonder post-grunge alt pop rock bands of the 90s refined this formula. It's like a 0% gin Gin Blossoms.

Favorites: clouds, streets of your town

Lyric-centric music delivered by a wide ranging and subtle, but kind of a-melodic voice accompanied by gentle folksy jazzy band. Nice relaxed feel to it, especially the hippy country stuff, spacious and expansive, slow, easy going tasteful and adult. These are polite words for boring.

Everything is so busy but ultimately kind of boring. High energy low reward. Some cool guitar parts and synth tones though. The best song is Prairie Rose, it sounds just like Talking Heads.

As bad as the label folk-jazz would make you assume. Tuneless but talented vocals and dangerous levels of xylophone. Really dreary stuff. It's a hot guy moping around for attention, don't give it to him, you're falling for his trap!

I first heard this band on TV ads for one of those MEGAHITS OF THE 80s compilation CDs and though that 'Shout, shout, let it all out, these are the things I could do without' was a hilarious thing to say in a song. But you know what, there are things I could do without and if I could just shout to let them all out, I would love to. Everybody Wants to Rule the World rules. That little guitar intro thing that's pushed aside by the two synth chords, ooh baby! So simple, so effective, just pure pop perfection. Head Over Heels has an incredible piano riff that builds tension and releases into a floaty verse and propulsively off kilter chorus and some totally unique vocal delivery. The rest is full of cool tones and textures, angsty vocals, smooth sax, glossy simmering synth surfaces and rubbery bass and some of THE definitive 80s drum sounds. Drags a bit on the slow stuff in the middle. It's like if Splenda was an album.

This guy stopped being one of the Byrds because he was afraid to fly lol. This album has extremely divorced energy. It's relaxed country-rock with intertwined acoustic guitars, a touch of bass, and barely a drum, it puts the emphasis on the lonely vocals and mournful harmonica. It's all sad, bitter, and longing lyrics and gentle strumming. Sometimes it sounds like a mediocre Dylan rip off, but the best bits are like a folksier version of the Eagles. Cold beer on a hot porch kind of music. I actually like it a lot, but wouldn't really consider it essential listening at all - he has better work elsewhere and other people do this genre better...

Holy shit I'd forgotten how much fun this album is. I mean, I KNEW it was good, but damn, it's just non-stop.

Hands down the second best Strokes album.

Come on Eileen isn't even a good song, but I've heard it 1000s of times for some unknown reason. The horns are good but everything else is really annoying. This guy's voice is unbearable, thin, nasal, and weak but not in an endearing way. They're not fun enough to be a ska band, too schmaltzy and sentimental to be post-punk, too slow and old-fashioned to be new-wave, too over-produced to be soul, it's just a big mash of nothing. If there's a quota of 1980s Birmingham to fill, replace this with the Au Pairs' Playing with a Different Sex.

Fun pomo stuff: an original blend of big boomy beats, hipster interpolations, slacker rapping, sewn together sound collage production and revolutionary posturing. Paper planes is A+ the rest more of a B/B+...

The best stuff on here is like Credence doing astral weeks covers. Those songs are great, but the live performance doesn't bring much to them. The majority of it sounds like Van Morrison doing Credence covers though, and it's god awful. The choogle levels are through the roof.

I'm curious what the case for including this one is - some live albums are definitive releases either from bands that weren't great in the studio or where live improvisation is central to the music (grateful dead, Allman brothers, lots of jazz), or canonical recordings that're essentially high energy greatest hits collections from singles artists that capture their live talent and charisma in a unique way (James Brown, Al Green), or breakout commercial hits (cheap trick, Peter Frampton)
but this is just worse versions of songs that at best show he could sing well.

Music for guys who say 'broads'. It does make me want to plan a heist in an art deco hotel lobby.

Fraile vocals, shoegaze guitars, big orchestral arrangements - it's very cinematic but like a movie with cool cinematography that's extremely boring and goes on way to long probably staring Ethan Hawke. Yet again, after many attempts upon lots of recommendations, I just cannot get with this band.

Favorites: Goddess on the Highway