Reviews by dohej

Idyllic folksy country tunes turned into a platforms for gnarly distorted blues rock guitar that descend into some slow, heavy, hard hitting freak outs. Damn, this rips so hard.

This isn't that good ultimately, but there's something deeply sad about the loss of this kind of truly bizarre edge to pop music. The world is smooth and polished all the worse for the absence of a bit crap but at least going for something weird stuff - like spooky African surf new wave shanties - in the mainstream. Sure, it's a novelty act, but remember novelty?

Psychadelic blues funk with a fronted by a cartoonishily swampy Cajun persona. Slow and groove based, lots of space to it but with a thick smokey fog settling over it.

Extremely overrated - people write about him like he was the first rapper to ever have a feeling, but he's overserious, self-absorbed and despite the credit he gets, it's more self-pitying than actually reflexive. The songs are all a verse and a minute too lond and the album could be great at 20 minutes shorter. He has a very compelling flow though, a distinctive voice, and the beats are high-end g-funk with 90s RnB touches and its makes for some great fun at times, the reggae toasting on Heavy in the Game especially.

This style was indelibly imprinted on me by kids' movies of the 1990s as the soundtrack of dark and terrifying nightclubs in steamy abandoned factories turned rave skatepark where bad guys congregate. Maybe I'm just thinking specifically of the Foot Clan hangout in TMNT? Anyway...

Really fun confluence of post-disco soul, funk, and hip hop merging into a pure pop confection. All the synthetic wizardry that high budget 80s studio magic can conjure are dialed up to 11- delightfully dated. The beats are hyperkinetic and strikingly staccato. It's like the party parts of a Prince album. But like other albums in this tradition, is concerned with surfacing social issues and the ills of American life via pop in a way that never really works, The ballads drag it down, but there's only a couple. Because she doesn't have the full range of the other 80s pop RnB divas, her albums are much more about groove and melody rather than pure vocal virtuosity, and much the better for it.

Trancey drones, shifting rhythms, powerful vocals - meditative and relaxing, but comes to a intense high often enough to keep it interesting.

Bowie meets Talking Heads in an artful pop explosion of taught Cold war paranoid funk and exuberant techno optimistic synth pop.

Ominous dark and anxious. Nervous strings, drums like tapping your fingers in stress, ratcheting dissonance with rare relief, a singer like a voice in your head telling you things you don't want to hear, panic barely held back. The soundtrack to act 3 as everything falls apart.

I've tried so many times with this album but just can not get past the piercing voice, a tattoo gun on your ear drum. There are some blitzing guitar parts and explosive riffs combining the best of post-hardcore energy, indie tone, post-rock metal dynamics, and prog songwriting, but they're all ruined by the shrill whinge. A 4* instrumental album spoiled by a 1* singer.

Part of the boom of pastoral indie rock in the late 00s, this is gentle auteur Americana, lo-fi roots grown into grandiose ambition: long multi-part songs and big pillowy arrangements combining a slow paced rock low end, soaring strings, folksy acoustic guitars, and dreamy organs. His voice is simple and direct, limited in range but rich in timbre and very expressive. It makes for a warm nostalgic sound, familiar but reaching for more. Orchestral but not bloated. Peaceful but not boring.

Opens with a sitcom theme tune and transitions into smooth supermarket jazz. I like the corny synths, the goofy rubbery fretless bass tone, cheese dialled up to 11 production, and even the overwrought sultry sax parts but put all together and in the service of these disco ballads and pop funk jingles it just sucks. Loads of talent, but they're pissing into a quiet storm.

Stoner/doom metal paired with post grunge alt rock radio song writing not shy to throw in a hook. Heavy shades of Dinosaur Jr and Mudhoney: thick riffs chug along at a medium pace, loud and heavy, pushing amps into a rich warm overdrive, droning and looping to occupy the back of your mind and let the front roam. The lead guitar tone is a gnarly distorted squall; this is a band who've sold a billion fuzz pedals. One trick ponies with a great trick, but they do it for an hour solid.

Piano-based songs with strings fleshing out the harmonies and a drummer kicking it all along. The emphasis is on the lyrics and vocals - breathy, hushed, dynamic, and extremely indebted to Kate Bush.

An odious moron, but he has an ear for a hit and a kind of idiot savant charisma that really works on the pissed off sons of suburban car dealers. Music for people whose favorite rap song is the Run DMC/Aerosmith crossover. At best it's like an artless Beck, the beastie boys if they got hit on the head with rocks, or an even stupider Limp Bizkit. The metal elements are awful, the country ones are even worse, and he is a terrible rapper. Even if bullgod and bawitdaba are certified dumbass banger, the rest is so egregious and there's so much of it that it's unredeemable. Unbelievable that he's still a public figure in 2026, the avatar of rich dickhead fake populism.

Smooth polished reggae with a relaxed floaty feel. Deep heavy bass holds it down. They keyboard sounds are really crappy sounding and the sax really smoothes it out - it's extremely generic and flat. But the last few tracks of thick smokey dub are solid.

Loud, sloppy, fast, and abrasive - an album that sounds like a cartoon brawl - a dirty cloud with fists and hammers spraying around wildly.

Gentle and playful, artfully written and arranged, full of melodic twists and dynamic turns, funny and bittersweet - pure indie pop perfection.

Spiritual, horny, despairing, existentially and sonically sparse but intense. A whirlwind of emotions from a guy, his guitar, and some powerful backing vocals.

The latent darkness of the 90s disavowed by liberal hegemony, britpop, and the .com bubble returns from the repressed for a glorious wallow. An album that glimpses, presages & captures the glitchy, fractured, alienated depressing mess of the computer world, completely realizes its creative possibilities, and deconstructs them all at once. Totally absorbing.

The solo album of the bass player from the guy from the Sex Pistol's solo project. The fixation of British music critics with niche aracana offshoots of one summer in the late 70s needs to be studied. That said, this is a pretty fun album that epitomizes a gloriously eclectic early 90s approach: a bit of trippy pyschedelic dub new age multicultural optimist post punk electronica Bollywood sophistipop that is truly all over the place - like taking e and wandering around WOMAD.