Reviews by dohej

This is less irritating than I expected it to be, but it's still just barroom blues with the mildest hint of psychadelia. It's like the Pigpen songs from a 60s Dead show, just with a smoother vocalist. There's some ok blues rock guitar and psych organ stuff - the instrumental breaks have a cool feel to them. But really, it's pretty dull. I don't even like the Doors but this doesn't have any of the stuff that makes them unique, even if that uniqueness is hugely overrated and what I feared would be irritating. They're a greatest hits band at best, and this album doesn't have any of the hits!

At its best when it's doing a Supremes kind of Motown thing with a horn section, backing singers and some lively bass. At its worst when it verges into Broadway territory with story-telling ballad style, or when it goes all schmaltzy slow and sparse and flutey. An incredible, if kind of nasal, voice with a huge range, but that includes a very annoying piercing high-range she spends lots of time in.

Relaxed and warm jazz ambience from the piano, with a touch of 70s funk from the keys and electric organs. Woodwinds add a classic 40s element both tonally and to the harmonies - but god I hate flute noodling. The jazz crooning vocals get pretty grating at times. Higher tempo songs with a strong bass parts popping along and melodically connecting the changes are much stronger than the slow ones that just dwell in washy unresolved chords. They're playing with the contrast between the form/content: loungey vibes and funky fusion are the delivery mechanism for GSH's angry portraits of the persistent injuries to Black life post Civil Rights era and poetic condemnations of the failures of the imperial American state. The point of the contrast being that the backing music is drawing from and adding to the deep well of Black creative tradition that expresses that and transforms it to something sustains and inspires nonetheless. A poetry album that paves the way for the wordy native tongues school of 90s hip hop and backpack rap to follow (lets not talk about the thousands of cringe slam sessions too).

Favorites: The Bottle, Peace Go With You, Rivers, H20 gate blues

The Police fall wierdly between being a cool post-punk/new wave and and a massive classic rock arena jugernaut. They're too dorky (smooth, bright, poppy, and jazzy/prog sounding) to be cool, but draw on the same reggae and punk influences as the other British late 70s acts. They fit in better with the synth pop and new wave stuff, even though they have the very classic power-trio instrumentation. The musicianship is through the roof from all three, the light-touch drumming, the melodic Jamaican inflected bass, the gorgeous chorus effect-maxing shimmering guitar hitting those crystalline chords, and the unmimstakable voice and delivery. I guess like U2, they're the post-punk outliers who've become ensconsed in the classic rock radio cannon - though they had the decency to break up on a high note. Walking on the Moon is possibly their best song and Message in a Bottle is great, the rest has some good moments (the radiohead-sounding arpegios on Bring on the Night, the dub bass on Bed too Big), but is less inspired overall. I'd have chosen Outlandos or Zenyatta over this one and Synchornicity, personally. I guess that indicates that they're probably a greatest hits band in the end. Distilling those 5 albums down into 80 minutes of their highest highs would give you a compilation that can stand up next to anyone's with massive hits, a totally distinctive sound, genius songwriting, and pristine recordings of top performances.

If you thought Keane was too 'out-there', if Coldplay gets you too excited, if you love listening to people whinge about the weather, if you can't get enough of that OK Computer thing where Radiohead combined acoustic guitars and ethereal electric ones and electronic textures but for some reason don't have access to the real thing, if you'd like to hear a band beside Oasis explore the idea of a wonderwall, if you wish the Verve had more harmonica, or if you're running a hospice experimenting with new techniques for lulling people to a soft lovely boredom-induced death, then boy, is this is the album for you. Otherwise, stay well clear. Awful.

A voice that makes the speakers in your trunk rattle like a trap hit. Paired with sparse instrumentation from across genres (gospel blues, country, jazz, industrial), the voice is front and centre, sultry slow and steady, so low and heavy that it barely raises itself into song. Urgent but not rushed. Weary, but willing to try a near final gasp - an affirmation of the art that made a life. The violins and lap steels and choir all hint at what's next, morbidly uplifting the music soars while the voice remains tethered to the body.

Favorites: traveling light, leaving the table

Gentle acoustic guitar and a soft breathy voice calmly delivering the guaranteed chillest 28 minutes of any day you put it on, Pink Moon is the aural equivalent of an overpowered boulevardier on a shitty Thursday after work. Sweetly smokey, it really takes the edge off. Perfect.

Opens with a song about having a rash, bold move. Loads of that huge 80s whoompy bass sound, possibly the whoompiest. The next song is more familiar: gentle acoustic guitar with a pitter-patter bongo percussion part and jazzy electric piano chords for a dash of schmaltz - his soft light vocals floating warmly over the mix. The rest of the songs settle somewhere between these 80s disco inflected synth pop and 70s folk singer sounds. It's all smooth and tasteful and pretty dull in a distinctly upper middle class upper middle brow way. Impossible to listen to this without picturing an arena full of Larry Davids vibing out to the musical equivalent of hotel art.

On paper I like all the elements of Depeche Mode - the dark and brooding synths, the deep booming vocals, the goth electro-new wave beats, massive reverby drums, the lush arrangements, the whole miserable gloomy post-pop vibe - and yet somehow they've never really connected with me beyond the really big anthemic songs, none of which are on this album. It's very frustrating, knowing I ought to like it, respecting the craft and performances, wanting to enjoy it and delve in deeply, but just remaining kind of unmoved.

Love the funky clavinet tracks, hate the schmaltzy piano ones. His voice is so weird: he has such control and range and subtlety with it, but he loves these unresolved jazzy minor11th or whatever melodies that mean he always sounds off key. Music theory heads love to figure out all the little modulations and chord voicings and stuff he does, and that's neat and everything, but fails to ask the basic question of it slaps, and too often, this does not. Especially when you have Superstition just sitting there demonstrating how hard he can rock its very annoying wading through all this over-thought wishy washy stuff. That said, there's some really fun synth noodling thrown in there.

80 minutes of this guy?! On a Monday?! "The Lyre of Orpheus"!? Come on man, give me a fucking break. This album has the frantic energy of a mega-church band trying to whip the congregation into a frenzy with an overwhelming deluge of keyboards and big reverby drums and wailing. Sometimes that's pretty fun. The bass is really good throughout - melodic, driving and high in the mix. There's also some nice atmospheric/textural stuff and some cool guitar parts. I just find the songwriting to be very conventional big bland rock but with grand pretensions to it. And I don't like Tom Waits enough to want to listen to a pale imitator. Every song seems like it should be wrapping up, but then there's another verse/chorus, and bou does it start to drag in the moodier slower second half. It has a cool film-noir feel to it, but the whole thing really overstays its welcome.

Favorites: Messiah Ward, Let the Bells Ring, Easy Money

Oh cool another rock opera. All these dudes with mountains of drugs convinced that albums need a plot and that writing musicals is some kind of high concept achievement. This one at least has a few good chunks, like the 30 they hit three chords in a fast chugga chugga way that the Ramones would spend their career copying, and some of the sax stuff. But overall, this is pretty annoying and one of the most overrated albums.

I'm not mad, you're mad! I'm just bitterly seething and telling anyone who'll listen I don't even care. His best album by miles. Great combo of 60s pop song writing and new wave sounds, of swirly organ and funky synth. The bass parts are so good, really the load-bearing element here, carrying the groove and ripping lines all over the neck. He'd be way more popular if he'd quit here instead of sticking around being an incredibly boring VH1-style loser for 4 decades

Slow, heavy, and enveloped in a thick fuzz, but enough about me! Badoomtish. A bit disappointing since I love the first three Sabbath albums. This one has never stood out to me even though I know it has a big reputation, so I was eager to give it a close listen. But, I was right. Vol 4 is a bit samey and the production isn't great. It sounds a flat and doesn't have the huge sound you'd want from a stoner metal album or the high energy you'd get from metal later in 70s/80s. This album also doesn't have the terrifying sense of dread and foreboding they captured on their debut. There are some great riffs though, Iommi rips some sick solos, and Ozzy wails all over it...but still, kind of Sabbath-by-numbers. It's like they woke up from a binge and forgot how to play Master of Reality, heard it once, and then had to recreate it. I'd take that album over this one 100% of the time.

One trick ponies with a pretty fun trick - blending high energy electroclash with a chilled out psychedelic sensibly. Some of the best hooks of the decade to go with some fun beats and synth sounds and top tier melodic bass work. The drop on electric feel is so damn good. Kids is destined to be on every millennial nostalgia playlist for eternity. Starts to drag on the 2nd half when they switch from synths to guitars and become a Bowie tribute act - of moons has a cool freakout solo bit and post rock outro though.

Safe to say, there's a lot going on. This is basically radio-pop from the post-genre hip hop hegemony era. But it's also a concept album that asks an important question: what if an extremely famous guy was also extremely horny? The defining feature here is the maximalist production. There's some incredibly lush gospel stuff, some funny appropriations of black sabbath and king crimson, some dumb skits, some annoying choruses, some tiresome mediations on fame and celebrity (yawn), some attention grabbing verses, some spaced out deep beats, a lot of propulsive forward energy, and oh shit, is that RZA?! Nicki?! Raekwon!? Kanye is a tedious bore and a mid rapper, but also a masterful producer, beat-maker, hook-writer and creator of interesting audio-collages.

Tried and true americana songwriting with hokey as hell lyrics and I love it. Inject that bittersweet lapsteel sound straight into my veins. Her voice is great, and the way the other instruments and vocalists float around her melodies, harmonizing and passing the lead back and forth brings an exciting choreographed energy to the arrangements. The little mandolin fills pop in once in a while to kick it up a notch, then the fiddles ease is back down. Very pretty very soothing and a relaxed if melancholy feel. It's extremely faux-rustic tasteful BnB in a converted Vermont cheese barn, but god damn if it doesn't hit you right there in those folksy autumnal feelings.

The king of the wah-wah pedal and the master of the ultimate falsetto, Curtis Mayfield delivers a set of slow-burning funk soul. The bass makes this work - spare and efficient, hitting a few clustered notes to keep the deep groove going and creating a vast opening for the other instruments to gather in and build up the harmonies and rhythms. It's the classic CM combo of a a very laid back and gentle album musically with deep themes. The lyrics alternate between romance and sociology, delving into violence, inequality, and the endurance of hard times in post-Civil Rights America - drawing the two strands together in the end, uplifting loving brotherhood as the way of making it through. So in Love is the only really stand out track though. The entire album is WAY slowed down and relaxed without much variety, like turning on a tap for 35 minutes of pure Mayfield,

It’s club night at the fairy-glen. This album is at its best in techno-mode with big house grooves and driving uptempo beats (Big Time Sensuality, Crying) where Bjork plays the role of the disco diva-vocalist over the top, taking that role into spritely and unpredictable elfin directions. The vocal performance is amazing, lines that start as guttural growls rise and rise to soprano fluttering climaxes. The darker slower tracks (One Day) combine moody synth beats with more layered rhythms moving slightly away from the 4 on the floor sound to achieve a kind of bleak trance effect. There’s some cool jazz borrowing (Human Behavior, Aeroplane) with organic horns sounds to cut through the synthetic textures. As wide ranging as this is, it pretty much all hits, the only one that doesn’t work is the really sparse harp+vocal track (Like Someone in Love). Totally unclassifiable, but probably the best electronica with an experimental rock sensibility hybrid stuff to come out of the 1990s.

The VU's twee indiepop album, they depart from the hard-edge dissonance and dark psychadelic explorations of noise of white light/white heat and instead deliver a of couple brooding and bittersweet love songs, a couple of classic singalongs, some proto-punk spirituals, and an experimental sound-collage story. It's not as a great in total as their other albums I don't think, but the highs are so high. Pale Blue Eyes & Candy Says are as simple and poignant as it gets, while What Goes On and Begining to See the Light are surprisingly upbeat rockers. A great less is more album - there's nothing flashy or complex here in terms of musicianship, performance, or even songwriting, just a stripped back simplicity of vision and commitment to melody and a mood.