Reviews by dohej

The raw noise and scuzzed out riffs of the Stooges but slowed down and dirtied up even more - thick sludge but full of energy. A masterpeice of making a fucking racket.

Pretty slides and twangy guitars paired with earnest indie vocals, alt rock distorted riffing, and college rock jangly acoustics and pop song-writing. A pretty obscure album in the scheme of things, but a document of another moment in the articulation of country and American rock over decades.

Alternatingly dark and uplifting. Somber and joyous. Mesmerizing, a constant motion via repetition held at a steady pace. Synthetic, robotic, exploratory. The darkest element is the naive faith in technology the album exhibits, the playful probing of the human-droid boundary as almost pure possibility doesn't foresee the descent of the surveillance nightmare.

Not much beats belting out WHAT'S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT?! Peak 80s production paired with some incredible vocal rizz. Corny but magical.

Spacey woozy genre bending pop with cool chamber pop sounds, pretty keyboard parts, some rap verses, some RnB/neo-soul singing, some hip hop beats. Great vocal performance, very accomplished but intimate. It’s cool to see pop with this level of authorial flair to it, full of playful sounds and an overall eclectic lo-fi bedroom feel. It’s just fine, well done but not really engaging. Lots of it sounds like it’s the intro/transitional bit of a song that never really gets going. Hard to imagine how this gets anyone excited - maybe you have to get into the lyrics.

Psychedelic post grunge with heaps of wah wah guitars and a very rock radio orientation. Like if the Verve was from Seattle. A few tracks with jangle, strings and sitars and a bit of a nag champa style eastern influence. The metal/punk edge of grunge fades into a more generic hard rock sound. File with Live, Filter etc in the 'decent but bland 90s alt rock from just before the Creed wave of shit broke' folder.

A foundational album in the 2010s indie synth revival - cool and dark, moody textured computer music with loads of tension that threatens to release itself into a euphoric dance breaks, but is too slow to really trigger the catharsis. Perfect soundtrack for a post-financial crisis historical era where the internet is really settling in as the monoculture.

Another wildly overrated album that's always inexplicably at the top of the all time great lists. Brian Wilson is a composer applying his talents to pop, and it's more complicated (and thus impressive?) than when just regular guitar guys write/arrange songs. Ok, it represents a significant shift in the Beach Boys sound, from bubblegum surf pop about cruising to the burger stand with your best girl (actually pretty good) to something more mature with lush orchestral arrangements and more staid songwriting. But so what? Who cares? There are some great hooks and harmonies, but it's mostly boring, schmaltzy, and overworked. I guess it represents a milestone in the adoption of emergent studio/recording/production technologies in pop. Ok, fine. I guess it's influential and inspired a whole bunch of other 60s bands to try their hand at bloated concept albums - great, thanks guys.

Huge glow up front their boring adult contemporary 80s sophistipop album. Ripping off Portishead was a great move for them - this is has great loungey easy going drum and bass rhythms, downtempo atmosphere, and a moody sultry trip hop feel. Mellow and laid back lazy morning, come down late night, focus on the computer style stuff. Extremely dated but in an endearing way.

Everyone keeps calling it dad rock, but this is peak uncle new wave. Songs like a Geordie Springsteen and the crispiest guitar leads of the 80s. Kind of sags in the middle.

Opens with an 'oh this is them?!' classic - the catchy guitar line and idm drum machine creating a spacey ambiguous atmosphere, instantly recognizable but doomed to play on loop behind annoying short form videos forever. The rest adds a pair of singers trading whispered lines to the sparse reverby synth+guitars indie dance pop arrangement, dark and moody, light tension/release dynamics, easy listening - pleasant enough but pretty dull. The guitar leads are a huge Modest Mouse rip off: sad slow melodic messing with major 3rds/4ths and reverb. It's the epitome of post-hipster millenial retail music.

One of the biggest surprises of working through the list is how much I actually like this band. Smooth and easy going on the surface, but complex harmonies/arrangements, polished production, and lots of surprising melodic twists and turns.

When you're a natural you can churn out material like this pretty effortlessly, at least that's the feeling of this - lo fi.production, like a reel of demos, a grab bag of 65% worked out ideas. It's laid back and shaggy, sprawling, with lots of room in the recordings and an engaging lack of intensity that makes it quite intimate. Soft rock with lots of bluesy jamming, but he's literally just playing with himself. Surely he could've hired a better guitar player? He's fine but really conventional.

Sounds like, and very much is, an album by a guitarist with an axe to grind. Super technical, constantly changing hyperactive songs full of high tempo.riffs and squealing shredding solos.

The corniest bits of synthy new wave, smooth jazz, funk soul, and disco brought together into a 80s pop Frankenstein. Holding Back the Years is an amazing bit of pop balladry, slow, tense, emotive.

Whompy af 80s bass, synths, Soukous guitars and rhythms, Southern African gospel harmonies, Cajun accordions, a touch of country twang, jazzy sax, and a gentle mellow conversational vocal tying it all together - a wild mix that all comes together perfectly for an easy listening masterpiece. Turns out it's the logic of assembly rather than the nature of the elements that makes something coherent.

A deconstructed psychedelic cabaret from a wild showman having a demented trip - it's annoying on purpose, disjointed, choatic, dissonant, lo-fi, funny and full of life. Settles into some surprisingly deep grooves to jam out, but they succumb to the centripital forces pulling it all apart.

Laconic and laid back alt country with rustic sounds and sad lovelorn songs. Ambling shambling and gently miserable. Great lapsteel parts.

English guys doing an impression of The Band's already second degree Americana.

Exhilaratingly stupid hard rock full of wailing dramatic vocals, harmonized guitar parts, power riffing, and driving bass. 🤘