Reviews by dohej

It's fine. Chilled out, lots of layers to the sound, cool textures. A compelling mix of indie and electronic approaches in the songwriting and arrangements. But it comes and goes without leaving much impression.

There are already 7 Bowie albums on this list, no need to include a low-grade photocopy made of cast of ideas from his most annoying era as well. There are some ok moments on here (mostly the harmonizing guitars and the country excursion on 'Ballad of Mott'), but it's peak 70s bloat and not even in a particularly fun way. It's just so god damn boring. Like the soundtrack to a TV movie musical based on a movie based on a jukebox musical that couldn't get the rights for the real songs.

Bright and bouncy synth that's pure pop like a glass of champagne on a speedboat hottub, but wait, what's that? dark themes and gloomy undercurrents behind the glossy surfaces. Makes me want to get my Patrick Bateman on.

Incredible vocal harmonies and some great songs. Mostly acoustic guitar accompaniment, but some light psych touches from the bass and sitars (?) and the occasional electric guitar that all adds dynamism. But the real action is in the singing. Very high highs, but kind of dull lows. I thought this was wimpy and boring for the longest time, but lately have really come to appreciate this subgenre of chilled out hippy country rock more and more.

Favorites: helplessly hoping, wooden ships, suite Judy blue eyes, everybody's talking

Exhibit A in the case for going electric. This is really a quite tedious album despite a few good songs. He demonstrates his knowledge and mastery of the solo guitar-singer folk song format (A+ on your Americana homework, Bob) but also the limits of that genre. Good songs to cover and arrange with more interesting instrumentation, but they feel like demos here. Albums like this are always going to end up on lists like this out of historical significance, but they don't always hold up that well.

Favorites: girl from noth country, hard rain, don't think twice, Corrina Corrina

Love the beats and the overall production even if it does get a bit repetitive after a few songs. Relentless high octane delivery, very distinctive voice, with loads of long verses and only short hooks/choruses. Strong brew of anti-cop politics, violent self affirmation, and wild sexism. Hilarious that 35 years later this is still the paradigm of what rap is in the heads of American conservatives. It was self aggrandizing myth making but it came true, even if Ice Cube himself outgrew this persona into his acting career...

1st generation UK punk that has a real "bunch of kids fucking around having a good time making some noise together" feel to it. There’re the basic guitar/bass/drum punk chugga chugga boom riffs but on top you have wild sax and harmonized guitar parts taking turns playing big hooks over/inbetween Poly Styrene’s distinctive singing: forceful and nasal and charismatic in its "who cares if I’m on key, I’m here to rock" energy - the OG brat. Some great lines: “my mind is like a plastic bag, it sucks up all the rubbish fed in through my ear!”. A punk circus.

So buttery smooth I felt my cholesterol rising.

More expansive and ecclectic than I was expected (I think I was expecting Supergrass) - this brings elements of trip hop, shoegaze, and 90s alt/indie rock for a spacey album of beat-driven extended instrumental passages, and zonked out psychedelia. It's a mix of Portishead and Beta Band, but not as good as either. The slower orchestra backed tracks are really plodding and bloated, like the worst aspects of a 70s concept album. Mostly woozy, floaty, and kind of boring.

Spare stripped down Americana folk - just an acoustic guitar and a singer working their way through some deep songs and deeply familiar sounds. Welch & Rawlings are both amazing musicians who get so much out these really simple bare bones arrangements - there's loads of space, patient pauses, quiet intimate moments and subtle intensity. They're probably the best at what they do even if what they do isn't my favorite kind of Americana - give me a full band electric alt country treatment of these songs and I'd be thrilled.

Infusing post disco funk with jazz for a set of deceptively smooth, incredibly intricate compositions performed expertly and dark sardonic stuff going on lyrically. Aging is liking this more and more...

Jangly 60s power pop with a bit of Dylan and a bit of psychedelia and a lot of Beatles. Mostly bright and uptempo with short songs and pitchy lightly fuzzy guitar but some tracks with drones and slower folkier sound

Story-telling country songs across a range of genres/moods, all twangy and made with high-polish Nashville production, from poignant folk to pop bluegrass to piano ballads to high energy country rock. Her vocals in particular are the highlight with memorable phrasing, pauses, and overall a really charismatic delivery. The soaring lap steel soars the close harmonies are really affecting in the way they always are.

Country, Blues and Jazz had a lot more interesting stuff going on in 1960, even though the seeds of something big are sown in albums like this, it's like the throat clearing before rock really got started. It's influential and important and all that, but 64 years later it's just so familiar (even never hearing this album before) that it makes very little impression. There's blues rhythms and country twang and pop harmonies and it all sounds good, but it's basically bubblegum that's been polished by hindsight.

British folk songs re-arranged for the psych rock era. The guitars are cool, a bit of combined drone/lead/rhythm playing going on that sounds oddly like Sahel desert rock. The lilting vocal melodies are all straight out of the king arthur. Some surprisingly deep grooves and heavy riffing at times. It's got a bit of Led Zeppelin and a bit of Velvet Ungerground to it and you can hear the early roots of UK prog in the tight complex combination instrumental playing and the interest in folklore as source material/inspiration.

The two mega-hits are incredible and even though the rest isn't (couldn't be) at that level, it's a solid 40 minutes of pure synth pop magic full of catcy melodies, awesomely cheesy tones, tense moody post-punk guitar parts, a bass that won't stop popping, and coked out energy.

Sits somewhere between Talking Heads style New Wave/post-punk, King Crimson prog, the glam of Roxy Music and Bowie, and the spaced out trippy textural ambience of krautrock. Loads of amazing synth tones, propulsive rhythms, gentle melody. There's a mix of high-energy stuff and some very patient, languid, verging on ambient stuff.

Favorites: Here he comes, King's Lead Hat, No One Receiving, By the River

One of the definitive bands of 90s indie, this is the opening of a near perfect run of three albums in a row for B&S. The seeds of this are sown by the bands on the C86 compilation, but this is the cream of that crop of quiet British indie pop, making them the heirs to the Smiths. The melodic phrasing in the vocals is full of surprises, like a familiar nursey rhyme that goes off in unexpected directions. The horns bring such a bright energy and harmonic complement, the jangly clean/acoustic sound and simple but lively rhythm playing gives it an infectious joy. I'm sucker for this combination of bright poppy upbeat music paired with wry melancholy lyrics, for the disco flourishes, the tremelo guitar, the sing-along choruses and intimately observed and self-depreciating verses. It's gorgeous autumnal music, bittersweet and wistful, relaxing and uplifting.

Tightly wired spring coiled punk rock with a lofi electro new wave synth sound and a high energy post punk dancing beat: it's the death disco formula, with a 90s art school feminist sensibility and DIY aesthetic. There is more of a 60s garage psych rock back to basics rock&roll feel to it than I expected on a few tracks. Powerful and fun, touchingly earnest and sweetly melodic, distorted as scuzzy but always under precise control, pissed off and jarring- it's a pretty wide ranging creative album that goes hard from start to finish.

Favorites: deceptacon, the the empty, eau de bedroom dancing

Intricate jangly guitars chiming away under dense cryptic lyrics, all with a kind of country tinge to it. Some of it sounds like the logical culmination of the 80s new wave sound, other parts like an experimental folk act, sometimes like an Americana Smiths, at best they're sweeping and epic like War-era U2. I've tried many times but really can't connect with 80s REM beyond the singles, there's something weirdly inaccessible or uninteresting about so many tracks on these albums, so I never got why they were such a big fixture of the alt/college rock scene. I just like them better as 90s major label sell outs and in radio dominating greatest hits mode I guess...

Favorites: World leader pretend, orange crush, I remember California