Reviews by dohej

Live fast, have a mid-life identity crisis young. A rocker's experiment with smooth jazz ballads, this is a genre crossing set of songs that sets a mellow mood with careful production and rich instrumentation. His voice isn't built for crooning, and feels like a sodden blanket drapped over the delicate music. Sometimes you can be so open-minded that your brain falls out, A Gospel is the sound of that happening. It kicks up a notch in the final stretch with a more high energy synth pop sound. Hard to imagine who in mid 80s Britain was the audience for this, but speaks to an interesting eclecticism (or lack of direction) in popular music burning out after half a decade of post-punk and new wave.

Such an annoying type of guy - an 80s LA dude pretending to be a beat poet roadhouse bluesman, a middle class Bukowski-wannabe fixated on the down-and-out figures of a previous generation. It's pastiche all the way down. The music is pretty decent though, slow moody and stripped down to drums and a bassline with either jazz horns, bagpipes, or guitars filling it out along with the barroom piano/organ. His vocals though, not so much; he croaks the lyrics like a strung out hermit, he has a voice like a crapped out speaker, but even that seems like part of the affectation.

Though they wear their influences conspicuously with classic RnB and rock and roll covers and a brash surf sound, you can start to see the emergence of their more complex pop song writing to come. But this is them still in full teenybopper mode, jangly and sweet upbeat love songs with a funny playful side. They mastered the genre though, these songs are nearly all pretty perfectly crafted little gems and the recordings are brimming with energy.

Ace of Spades is a 5-star album that rips from start to finish and I'm sure it was a hell of thing to see Motorhead live, but I don't really see what's added by listening to a live recording of these songs - a bit faster and messier, even more energy, but a muddy sound that turns it all to mush.

Fela Kuti and Austin Powers go to Bollywood for a funky jazzy set of show tunes. All sorts of 60s pop psychedelic sounds combined with Indian instruments and harmonies, driving rhythms and a swinging 70s internationalism all in service of big musical motifs. Some of it sounds like it's from a noir, some for a james bond, some for a.big dance number, and some like a spaghetti western. The songs are pretty overlong, there's plenty of schmaltz, and it's all pretty cheesy - but a fun album. Not really something I'd plan to listen again, but it piques interest in what was going on in South Asian popular culture around this time and why this soundtrack in particular is featured.

The most overrated album in rock history. It's an interesting document of growing experimentation with recording technology and the art of production as part of music composition. It's the beatles, so there are lots of interesting melodic phrases, great sounding little guitar fills, and good basslines (doing a funny tuba oompa boompa thing all over the place), but the lyrics are all pretty insipid and the whole brass band concept album thing is pretty stupid. There are so many joke songs for an album always held up as the pinnacle of serious rock artistry. And somehow Ringo has the 3rd best song and the 2nd best one is George's psychadelic raga. It's just way too much of a Paul cartoon brain album. A Day in the Life is great though, like the wrapped up the concept album thing and realized they forgot to include any actually good tracks so stuck a bonus one on the end.

Not what I was expecting at all. Surf's Up means Surf's time is up. Much looser, darker, and weirder than the classic Beach Boys stuff, this album still has the signature emphasis on thick harmonies and lush production, but it doesn't come at you with the big hooks and 2 minute concentrated blasts of pure pop. Instead, it has a washed out acid hangover feel to it, woozily easing you into a slightly formless psychedelic daze punctuated by fuzzy guitar leads, some bleeps and bloops that sound like kraut-rock before it had been invented, and all sorts of different random instruments sounds.

Favorites: Disney Girls, Feel Flows

California Stars and Way Over Yonder in the Minor Key are two of the best contributions to the alt-country cannon and At My Window Sad and Lonely, Hesitating Beauty, and One by One are just a tier below. The arrangements and performances really sparkle, in different ways they're all sing-along songs with a poignant sense of missing out on a better life going on elsewhere without you, accompanied by a woozy slide guitar. The rest doesn't hit nearly the same level though - competant mid tempo acoustic rock that just chugs along unobtrusively. The idea of turning Woody Guthrie's old lyrics notebooks into 20th century songs is a cool project and this is a very logical pairing to carry out, but I can't help thinking I'd like it more if it was just a Wilco project. The Jeff Tweedy sung songs are the strongest, his voice conveying the tender lonely country feeling works much better than Bragg's more rigid delivery of the propaganda songs.

Fundamentally pretty boring 70s classic- straightforward arena filling pop rock with familiar chords, predictable structures, and melodies you've basically heard before. Good enough unchallenging music that certainly goes down easy. The only really good bit is how hard they lean into the gimmic of twin guitars harmonizing on the leads - yeah, it's corny as hell, but my god it rips. The sax stuff and new wave-sound tracks (dancing in the moonlight) are pretty fun too. Has there ever been a cover that more succinctly illustrates the idea of cock rock?

An all-timer, this album has such a distinctive sound and compelling irrepressible energy. Simple but totally captivating beats with a smooth laid back funky jazz flavor keep your head bobbing along gently. The production is clear and crisp and balanced and everything comes through just right, like a live jazz trio perfectly captured laying it down. The vocals are the really stand out part though. Keeping the choruses to a minimum, Q-tip, Phife Dawg, and Busta Rhymes swap verses relentlessly and joyfully, they each have a unique flow, playing around with cadences, going off on wordy excursions, spinning out elaborate stories, bantering, conjuring images, and having fun with the language. It starts and ends on a high and never lets up in between.

A playful romp through the genres, they do a bit of blues soul RnB psych pop surf garage and more - bringing an off kilter but charismatic vocal and a sardonic sensibility to it all. Not as intentionally alienating as their other stuff, it ends up being a kind of fun tongue in cheek 60s tribute act by a talented troll.

Lush genre defying pop with a deep slow groove and insistent rhythm. Draws on jazz and rock and RnB and trip hop to create a sultry lounge cabaret sound that rises and falls like a deep breathing exercise interspersed with sprints. Her low pitched voice delivers the reflective personal lyrics, ranging confidently from a hushed whisper to a charismatic storytelling, to an almost diva-like whirlwind. Way more musically interesting than her 90s folk singer songwriter contemporaries, the arrangements are so rich: piano driven, drum machines, ethereal slide guitar, xylophones, some sort of overdriven sitar thing? I've heard criminal a million times and it still holds up, the rest I've only rarely listened to, but it's very consistent in sound and quality, though the slower stuff drags a bit.

Favorites: sullen girl, shadowboxer, criminal, child is gone

The singing here is much more polished compared to the wildness of her BB&HC era, but still a full throated, impassioned and characteristically hoarse vocal performance that steals the show. The songs are all pretty standard California psych blues numbers, apart from the stand out cowboy-country of Me and Bobby McGee, the best one of all.

A mellow album with an original combination of elements from funk, afro-pop, dub, blues and ambient genres. It's extremely laid back even at its most high energy, like JJ Cale in slow motion, like Funkadelic curling up to take a nap, like Steely Dan letting it all hang out. The guitar playing is the highlight, messing around with delays and reverbs to play notes that fade in and swell and fade, doing lots of cool textural stuff, and experimenting with tone. His voice was jarring, almost unnerving, at first but you get used to it. Not one I'd heard before, glad to know it, but unlikely to revisit anytime soon.

If you don't think mid-career Oasis is bloated and bland enough you'll love this album. I always thought he was more of a post boy band ballad singer and didn't realize he had this much of a rock sound, but this is basically a low effort brit pop album with a touch of blink 182 and smashmouth. Angels is laboratory engineered to manipulate the mawkish sentimentality English people confuse with emotion.

Lush arrangements combining rich orchestral string & piano sounds with pure 80s whoompy bass, industrial synth, gnarly guitar, and big echoey gated drums tones. She's in Depeche Mode mode here, taking a bit of the edge off her earlier more challenging work for a glossier sound that still retains the darkness and operatic flair. A few songs have a propulsive driving beat pushing verse to chorus to big a climax, building layers and layers of texture and pulsating rhythmic intensity. Others linger in a more structureless slow swelling ambient zone - a bit aimless, but they're effective platforms for her distinctive singing. Alternatingly frail and booming, smokey and piercing, whispered and wailed, the album is all about the vocal performance. It doesn't depend on deliving a central melody, but floating around a mood, rising and falling in and out of the instruments, adorning the songs with short bursts of intensity and signaling shifts in the feeling of the songs. The incredible This Woman's Work is the obvious stand out: the initial sigh is disarming, stripping back the arrangement to piano and some sparkly synth swells lets puts the full spotlight on the forcefully tender vocal and the most memorable combination lyrics/melody on the album.

Favorites: Sensual World, Love and Anger, Heads We're Dancing, Deeper Understanding, This Woman's Work

A transition from the epic melodic thrash of Master of Puppets to the all-conquering hard rock of the Black Album, this album has elements of both but isn't as a good as either. Still, it goes very hard - some huge riffs, some gnarly shredding, some awesome harmonic leads, some quiet somber moments that build anticipation, and tight tight playing throughout. One is really the only stand out song but the whole thing rips.

boring post-grunge midtempo 90s alt rock that never made it to the radio. Imagine a really muddy recording of stone temple pilots' filler tracks with the hooks taken out. A real dirge. Some good guitar parts here and there, and when the vocals veer into screamo territory it's more compelling, same when it slows down and spaces out into a more shoegaze sound.

Favorites: be sweet, when we two parted

A movie needledrop classic that immediately indicates the 60s are happening. It's a great example of the early psych formula: pulsating bass and droning open strings to induce a trance, some swirly whirly organ and very reverby guitars, a bit of fuzz to break from reality and some vaguely heady lyrics to suggest you open your mind and head out there. The songs borrow heavily from surf rock and chuck berry style blues rock, but arranged in the new trippy style. Play it loud and freak out the squares, man! Very funny that Zappa's debut album came out the same year and was already basically a parody of the California psych scene within months of it starting.

It's basically the same song on repeat, but what a song. From the first boo bap a doo wah to the final yeah! it's an incredible performance - an incindiary singer, Little Richard burns through these jumped up blues tracks with a level of intensity, charisma, control and pure heat that you can literally hear pushing recording technology beyond its capacity to capture. The guy's out here basically inventing rocking the fuck out.