Reviews by dohej

Halfway between Black Flag and the Spiders from Mars, this is loud and fast and dumb as hell. Its got the high energy and directness of a punk band paired with the hooky bombast of a classic rock arena band. The thing is, Guns N Roses already perfected this formula. They're an early entry in the turn of the millennium back to basics 1234! Rock and Roll! sound alongside the Hives and White Stripes - just ok backwards looking revival party music harkening back to the garage. They're good at it and I see how'd they could be band to see live (for 25 minutes opening for a better act) but it's all incredibly familiar sounding and so unoriginal and the album goes on forever and ever and it's all the same. Pretty much the definition of disposable rock and as far from essential listening as you can get.

The soundtrack to a village feast in Redwall, this should come with mice and badgers and shrews and voles dancing around in the shadow of a dry stone wall. I always though this was one of the more boring bands of the 00s indie world and dismissed them as an annoying acoustic guitar open mic band with grand pretensions who failed to rock. 15 years later, I have more patience for it than I did then and appreciate the autumnal harmonies, the diverse pallette they're working in terms of sounds, instruments, and genres, and the chill rustic vibe a lot more. It's got it's feet in 70s country-rock, but there's plent of psych prog 60s 'Canterbury' flair to a lot of it, and a lot of references to medieval music and older folk traditions, but without going in too deep or too far afield from the big acoustic indie sound of their own era. The problem there is that it seeds some of the awful 'stomp and clap' Obama era music, urgh. Great voice, pretty arrangements, and sophisticated song-writing. But still, it doesn't rock and it is a bit pretensious.

Brian Eno seems to have had the same frustration with the limitaitons of 60s/70s pop rock sound as the prog guys, but had the opposite response - instead of cramming every song full of as many instruments and notes and time signatures and mythology as possible, he stripped it apart and slowed it down - opening up the expanses within glam rock in a way made possible by the synths and new recording technology and some very talented (prog) musicians to support him. Robert Fripp really lets loose on some of these songs in such a distinctive wierd way. Much more chilled than Here Come the Warm Jets, but not yet as fully ambient as Music for Airports, on Another Green World Eno has the patience to get wierd make textural music that shimmers and glistens and ebbs and flows and washes around, gently filling up the space that comes when you take away structuring devices like verse/chorus/bridge. It's spacious music that conjures a world, a wierd alien world that's just familiar enough to invite you in. It's tenderly melancholy, pensive and delicately optimistic.

This hits that rock-country sweet spot perfectly and turns the smooth vibes dial up to 11. There are heavenly slide guitars all over the place, gorgeous close harmonies, barroom piano, and a laid back feel. He wears the country style naturally and without affectation, fitting right into the twangy sound on True One. Life's Greatest Fool and Silver Phial ad a lush gospel sound with a backing choir. Silver Raven is a stunning minor key acoustic driven song with an tender swelling guitar lead woven between the lyrics and CSNY sounding dark harmonies. No Other, Lady of the North and Strength of Strings have a more ecclectic prog/psych feel to them with synths, organs and wah-wah guitars playing vibey riffs in harmony.

It's a huge mystery how this guy came to be such a big figure in rock. He's a nothing song-writer who relies on covers for anything interesting and then approaches them with pretty familiar arrangements that don't offer anything new. Totally flacid singing and profficient but basically replacement level blues rock guitar, which is meant to be his whole thing? His tone and playing just sounds like a competent JJ Cale rip off on this album. The middle few songs are like bad CSNY/Eagles offcuts, but he's late to the country rock bandwagon. There's a kind of loose jammy feel to the album and it sounds like a group of very capable musicians having fun playing together. But that doesn't mean I want to listen to it - keep the dad rock in the garage! Bland 0 risk pablum that's too dull to be unpleasant.

This was the first album I ever bought so these songs have all worn some very deep grooves into my brain. It holds up insanely well for such a juvenile album because it's captures the frustrated ennui and idle horniness of bored suburban adolescence so perfectly. It's a coming of age album without the mandatory growth narrative, instead Dookie dwells in the aimless feelings of listless youth, disenchantment, laziness, wasting time, and thwarted progress - but it takes pleasure in the wallow. A perfect artifact of 90s loserdom. The fact that all the songs rip helps too. Fast and energetic, with an awesomely cheap tight dry distorted guitar sound, some of the best hyperactive bass playing of pop punk, and wall to wall all action drumming. The melodies take it over the edge though, hugely memorable instant sing-along classics delivered in a wholly appropriate snotty nasal brat sneer. Pop punk peaks here, there's no competition.

The youth may think Stevie Nicks is witchy, but little do they know about the dark magic and gothic spells of Siouxsie, rock's best Susan. This album sounds like a decomissioned barbed wire factory cursed for being built on a druidic ceremonial site and haunted by centuries of ghouls.

Only 2 years into the 70s you get all these suburban American kids raised on British Invasion, California Psych, and jangly country/folk rock forming their own bands to relive it all for themselves. Because it's a half generation later there's a degree of pastiche along with the bright earnest try hard optimism. You can hear the whole 60s thing refracted back through itself in this album full of hooks and harmonies and some really incredible crunchy guitar sound. Somehow this is both extremely derivative and foundational of its own style of unabashed song-oriented good vibes rock that would become power pop, college rock, indie pop whatever... I'm late to this band despite always knowing about them, and they endear themselves more with every listen. The acoustic final few songs let it down a bit though as the infectious energy dissipates.

An all-time favorite I slightly ruined for myself by overplaying it as a teenager obsessed with David Gilmour. He is absolutely thrilling on this album. There's nothing pyrotechnic or as singularly epic as the Comfortably Numb solo, but his phrasing, that compressed strat tone, the fuzz sustain, the control in his vibrato, everything about it is just unbelievable. Those piercing but tenderly tentative first notes when he comes in on Shine On are set the mood for the entire album. This is a very strange album to be such a huge commercial hit: 5 tracks, two stretching out to nearly a quarter of an hour of meandering guitar, synth and sax, a very personal and loving tribute to a lost friend and original creative heart of the band blown up the maximalist scale of arena rock. The 70s were a wierd time. My favorite PF is the Echoes/Ummagumma era of long explortatory psychadelia, but this album (and Animals, which I maybe slightly prefer) have a nice dose of that but with added high-budget studio recording polish and a more composed prog rock feel. Try as they might, even 40 million buskers can't ruin Wish You Were Here.

A melancholy joy. It's Nick Drake's distinctive breathy warm voice, gentle melodic phrasing and cadences, and his jazzy folk chord progressions with a full soul backing band bringing uplifting horns, searching sax, gospel back up singers, reflexive piano, electrifying guitars, swelling strings, and (unfortunately) flittering flute to the party. The upbeat uptempo songs contrast with the sombre dark lyrics for a powerful effect, but the arrangements are sometimes too much on the slower songs, overwhelming them with too much mood. When it hits it hits so good though.

Favourites: Hazey Jane II, Poor Boy, Northern Sky

Too much exposure to Irish-American nonsense has ruined the possibility of ever enjoying this actually pretty decent album of Irish folk music (reels, waltzes, jigs, ballads, heavy use of accordian, penny whistle, mandolin, and basic snare drum kits) with modern lyrics and a sped up punk approach.

Eno style ambient synth textures combined with a psychadelic jazz musical approach encompassing sax and trumpet blasts, squidgy basslines, organ vamps, piano tinkling, and an experimental poetry approach to lyrics conveyed by Wyatt's fragile voice. It builds and builds through slow repetition and layering that brings more dissonance and disorder and polyrhythmic tension that all creates a sense of anxiety and anticipation. With a watery theme, it conveys the feeling of being overwhelmed and giving yourself over to the force of the sea, not thrashing against it, letting waves wash over and push you around, succumbing to a blissful dark sense of dread disorientation and powerlessness.

Combines the massive pop sensibility of an arena rock band with the dorky approach of a New Wave band overflowing with catchy melody and bright sounds. There's a fantastic dynamic between the synth parts and the guitar, a classic garage rock/power pop Vox AC30 sound: tight, dry, compressed, lightly overdriven for big midrange crunchy chords and quick and dirty leads. The synths give a bit of quirky flair and silliness, an at the time modern sound that now dates it (in a good way) - while the guitars ground it solidly back in radio rock. I've heard so many of these songs so many times, but never listened to the album through so never realized how tightly they all fit together and what a punchy and polished set it is.

Another being on hold simulator! Instrumental electronic neo-soul with a vague funky hip hop feel that's the official soundtrack of every douchey bar that calls itself a lounge. It's relaxing and unobtrusive but impossible to mask the scent of hookah and despair on this album. Thus is a great example of a genre (Gen x muzak) worth including in a survey of pop, but it's boring to start with and way too long.

So much in the con column: rock opera, piano based rock, pompous but slight themes, kitsch without camp, show tunes with 0 sense of fun, slow ass over composed songs that last for ever, nothing musically interesting, it's very long
So little in the pro column: impressive vocals, sometimes it fleetingly sounds like some better (if only slightly) 70s band (Bruce, Elton, Queen), the cover would be great for a thrash band, the odd raging sax solo

From the first note it's pure unbridled 80s pop - massive synths, gated drums pounding out a big slow beat you can still dance to, a bit of dirty guitar, a huge hook. An extremely fun album totally lacking in self seriousness but certainly more than just a bit of disposable bubblegum pop. I thought I was only familiar with Girls Just Want to Have Fun as a one off from 80s pop compilations but there are so many hits I recognize that were just floating around the 90s cultural detritus. It takes some guts to think, "yeah, Prince is pretty good, but I know what If You Were Mine really mine needs is to slow down and make room for a bit of mall-core." Heard a whole, there's a lot more akin to new wave and teh quirky synthy side of post-punk than I expected. Other than the visuals, this (Money Changes Everything especially) really isn't that different to Born in the USA era Bruce Springsteen, just branded as suburban pop instead of heartland rock.

Every country cliche in the book and its glorious. Twangy guitars duelling, that lap steel slide sound, honky tonk barroom piano, close harmonies, simple cowboy chords and a basic oompa doompa bass, all performed and captured perfectly. It's an amazing collection snarky "I'm so goddamn sick of your bullshit" songs sung with an incredible combination pissed off verve and oh so sweet charm.

An amazing combination of the two dominant early 90s New York hip hop sounds - the emphatically lyrical wordy and insistently clever delivery of Tribe Called Quest or Digable Planets paired with production style of Wu-Tang, with dead simple looped piano/drum machine beats that serve as perfect platforms for the delivery. More than any individual contribution, the interplay between the voices swapping verses, picking up and continuing each others ideas, speaking back and forth, extending the rhyme schemes and cadences is the real magic here. The hits were inescapable but remain fresh and exciting, some of the best hop hop singles of the 90s. Overall it's is very consistent in terms of sound/style and quality - so a bit samey, but lots of good stuff, though the Bob Marley cover is very corny. The whole thing has a very cinematic feel, from the movie-poster style cover and the silly skits, to the atmospheric beats, and scene-setting, character-establishing, story-telling style in the lyrics.

Smooth delivery of very wordy but laid back verses over jazzy rock beats. It all works nicely in the extremely 90s alt/underground hip hop style. It makes sense that had a way bigger impact in the UK than the US as this was so out of step with the mainstream of 90s US rap in the mid 90s, but fits in perfectly with the downtempo, trip-hop and late madchester sound and generally fun-seeking ladish attitude of British pop of the time. The beats are really nicely constructed with soul samples for cool horn sounds, chilled out synth parts, and mesmerizing drum loops. The hard rock choruses & riffs really let the songs down though, they just whack on the distortion and hit some big chords to raise the energy, really jarring and ultimately flat/dull despite the aim.

Cartman's In the Ghetto will always be the cannonical one, but its cool Elvis did a version too. This must've sounded very backwards looking in 1969, but in retrospect has that timeless classic feel to it. The band sounds great - a lively bass that keeps everything ticking along, some gentle soulful twang on the guitar, gorgeous backing vocals, surprisingly tasteful arrangements for the horns and strings that are lush but not (too) schmaltzy, and a crisp clear recording give this that essential soul sound for these pretty straightforward country and blues songs. Polished and slowed down compared to the raw energy of his early career, Elvis is in emerging as a full blown crooner here, demonstrating an impressive low range, that signature warble, and a flair for phrasing.