Reviews by dutch-point-pro

I take back every time I said an album sounded repetitive in every other review I’ve ever written.

If I wanted a man yelling at me over electronic beats all day, I would have kept my high school job at Radio Shack.

This album changed music. Not just rap music, but music overall. What we hear, what we expect from an album, how we experience it. David Bowie was listening to it a lot when it came out and tried to make Blackstar, his final album, sound like it. And that’s David-fucking-Bowie.
Packed with moments of profound, deep thought delivered through funky, in your face rhyme, this album was a big step forward in rap being seen as a more intellectual voice in music.
And Kendrick will always be next level with his lyrics. He is ready to throw down with anyone and it won’t end well for them … just ask Drake.
This is not M.A.A.D. City and it’s not Damn., although both of those albums are also outstanding (in purposefully different ways) and are filled with better tracks for most folks, but neither is as important musically and culturally as To Pimp a Butterfly was.

This is the kind of album that plays on the overhead speakers while you get a root canal. 🦷

Yeah sure, it’s a solid 5.
But it’s not a 7. It’s not the best album of all time. It’s not “no skips”. It may be the most popular album on this list, but that doesn’t make it the best, now does it - or did high school teach you nothing? Save all of your hyperbolic bullshit.
It is quintessential 70s and filled with songs that everyone knows and loves. Overall , it’s great and soars in places, filled with moments that make you feel good. So, yeah. 5 it up.
But, really, why are Mick’s balls hanging out on the album cover?

This keeps to the predictable patterns of 90s alternative. I like Juliana Hatfield’s other work fine, but there’s really nothing exciting or exceptional here.
And, for the love of whatever you consider holy, why give us multiple versions of the same songs? I know it’s the ‘deluxe edition’, but do I really need multiple shots at a song like My Drug Buddy? Was there a deeper level to the story about waking up and calling your dealer to get the same drugs you got yesterday that I missed the first time? I didn’t think so. I would humbly offer that, no, we didn’t need multiple versions of that song on this album and probably not the other eight either.
It’s a shame about ego.

How can the inclusion of this album be anything other than cultural tokenism? Let’s put in a middle eastern album to make the list more global? Distasteful at best.
Who am I to say if this is any good? What do I know about music of this culture? I may as well be ranking Mongolian Throat Singing or a Scottish Bagpipe album. If I knew anything at all, I’d chime in. But I’m just a tourist in these parts and I’m not going to apply my musical standards and tastes to a something from a place with completely different expectations, styles or standards.
I’ll stay in my lane here, keeping right down the middle because I don’t know any better and neither do you, if you’re being honest. I also won’t award points, overpraise or grade on a curve because it “sounds different”.
I doubt that this is an album I needed to hear before I died. At least it’s not another Nico album.

Nothing I write in this review is going to change your mind on the music you just heard. Radiohead is one of the most polarizing bands in modern memory and this album in particular makes it easy to take sides. I have no interest in trying to convince you one way or the other. I’d simply like to tell you why I think this is one of the best albums ever made.
From start to finish, OK Computer creates something sonically that shaped the kind of music I wanted to listen to for the next 30 years. There is a palpable energy and a power pushing against the melody and lyricism. As far as I was concerned, this was the first ‘rock’ album to do this well and that’s why it’s an important snapshot in time to me.
Now, to be clear, yes, Thom Yorke is a pretentious prick and way too full of himself and yes, there are plenty of failed Radiohead musical experiments soon to follow, but this album is a group of desperate, searching songs which invite me to dig into them. What brings me back so often is the depth and layering that exists on each carefully crafted track. Maybe I’m full of shit, as all critics are, but when I listen to this album, I hear 12 attempts at trying to create something unique or beautiful musically, but then each attempt is overwhelmed or distorted by the drone or din of the world around us, of automation and the forces that control us. The simple melodies and phrases, signifying this attempt at individuality, return in each track, sometimes only as catches or distorted versions of themselves, but are never able to fully reorganize in this world of homogeneity and conformity. Ultimately, every song devolves and ends up sounding incredibly similar to all of the others on the album, but I think that’s the point. It is definitely not because the band can only play in one style, or doesn’t have chops. It is a conscious artistic choice to make a statement through the arrangement and composition of forced monotony in the face of individuality. It’s also why the last song, The Tourist, sounds and feels so different - they’re not real - they’re just a visitor, someone passing through, outside of the usual order of things.
Understanding that the organizing principle in the songs was part of the overall meaning invited me to look at things in a different light.
Going further along these lines, the overall sound is distorted by the use of traditional instruments in nontraditional ways (for example, the main guitar part of Lucky is purposefully played on the strings above the fret nut, near the tuning pegs) and all of the little bits of distortion and layering of tracks, which create abrasive sound clashes and mechanize the natural sounds. The attention to detail on the whole album is truly an operatic undertaking that still has me hearing new things in the complex arrangements to this day.
This mix is still what I’m drawn to - a tension between melodic vocal phrasing or perhaps the lyrics themselves being poetic (not that Yorke’s lyrics are all that well crafted) and a palpable tension building through the instrumentation. I’ve enjoyed the same dynamics in rock, rap, alternative and folk over the last 30 years. I can point to this album, second only to perhaps Public Enemy’s Fear of a Black Planet, as that which helped me best understand how the relationship and interplay of music and instrmentation can help shape a song’s gravity.
Interesting final note - this is definitely not my favorite Radiohead album. But it’s still hot fire.

Let me tell you why I like Arby’s. When you go to the Arby’s, you know exactly why you’re there. Their slogan tells you everything you need to know. A cool guy with a deep voice says, “We’ve got the meats!” So, you go to the Arby’s, you’re gonna get meat. Roast beef, French dip, a chicken, whatever. Now, do you know what you can’t get at the Arby’s? A fucking salad - because salads got lettuce and lettuce ain’t meats.
Just like at Arby’s, this album says what it is and then unapologetically over-delivers. When you title something Bayou Country with a fuzzy psychedelic cover photo of a band in the woods, you are promising something very specific - Swamp Rock at its finest - and this delivers. The massive hits carry this noticeably short album. This sweaty, dirty, bluesy classic rock is precisely what it should be - no gimmicks, no synthesizers, and no fat-free champagne vinaigrettes to be found in Bayou Country.

This feels more psychedelic than rock for most of the tracks. Seems they put way too much patchouli in the peace pipe on this one. The two singles (aka the Grace Slick songs) still slap and stand out as anomalies on an otherwise rather dated album.

The album of choice for CIA black sites when it comes to blaring music all night at an unreasonable volume until the enemy breaks and gives up the information. “Make the man with the creepy pedo-stache stop singing like an Asian chick and I’ll tell you whatever you want.”
The scariest part is that this clusterfuck of an album is nowhere near the list of the 10 worst in this project, according to those who have finished. What the hell did I get myself into?

Forget about Layla - who wants to listen to some heroin addicts play the ‘classic rock’ that will one day make fans of Phish and other jam bands bounce around the room? Everyone, apparently.
Well, not me. I hear unimaginative blues covers and formulaic rock structures existing just to unleash indulgent, extended solos that do nothing but make the album boring and repetitious.
Some say this album is “hit after hit.” I’d agree - if they were talking about the skip button.

Ahh, Tori … how I’ve missed you. Listening to this was like opening an old love letter to look back at something special from so long ago. I’m still struck by the brilliant songwriting, the piano-tinged edginess which landed perfectly between my love of Billy Joel and Ben Folds and the fierce independence of her voice.
Admitting this bias, the album is full of powerful songs to me, which seem to have gotten better with time. Crucify, Girl, Silent All These Years, Winter, Happy Phantom, China, Leather - I’ve known and loved these songs for decades. I’m fine without the final third of the album, which drones and gets self indulgent, as Tori does, but the opening run is so solid I can forgive it.
This is a great debut and core to the explosion of 90s folk rock and the wave of female singer/songwriters.

Music for the 30-somethings in the bachelorette party while they drive between their cosmo-fueled lunch and the Chippies Strip Club on the outskirts of Birmingham.

Great punk album with variety that kept it funky and fun without that usual drone that makes you need to stop listening to most punk after one or two songs. Really felt exploratory and timeless in nature. Great listen.

It’s been a long time since I listened to this album … now I remember why. This is soulless, white boy blues. It’s a miss from an otherwise good band.
The musicianship is tight and the clean blues hooks mixed with rock bravado catch the ear, but the lyrics here are my trouble; in fact, they are laughably poor; a collection of simplistic rhymes - “My next girl will be nothing like my ex girl” - littered amongst a pointless dribble of ideas - Howlin’ for You has a first ‘verse’ about actors, the next one talking to a bird and the third one about baseball. I mean, Bob Dylan is rolling over in his soon-to-be grave.
I’d much rather listen to them lean into a full-on rock out, like on their next album (El Camino). I’ll flush this album.

This might be the worst album we have encountered in our journey, hidden beneath the umbrella of a ‘concept’ and the melodic hooks of 1960s pop. “Oh, how innovative,” say the critics. But, this is really just a banal collection of utterly forgettable songs. How the hell did this come out in the same month as Hendrix’s Electric Ladyland?

More like, “So Dated with The Everly Brothers”! But, spectacular Dad jokes aside, I kept waiting for Patti Smith to bust into the middle of the man-splaining in these songs and kick these whitebread bitches right out of their cardigans.
I would have been fine dying without hearing this album actually.

Great guitar driven sound that blends 70s classic rock with a tunefulness that makes it sound new and progressive, truly ahead of its time. Collectively, these tracks shows off real range and I can hear many other bands drawing influence from the music here: The Talking Heads, The Pixies, Echo and the Bunnymen, R.E.M. So glad I got to hear this … not sure how I had missed it for so long.

This is not good. Bowie is far too heavy-handed with production and overall control, cramping Iggy to shirk away from what makes him great. The result is the tepid vocals, which lack all of the melodic runs you want from Bowie and virtually none of the rasp and edge you want from Iggy. It sounds like either a boring Bowie or a toothless Iggy, neither of which works. All of this layered on top of overindulgent instrumentals.
Then I discovered that they recorded this in the Paris studio that popped out the classic Bee Gee’s tracks from the Saturday Night Fever album directly after this album. So, to sum up, although I’m glad they ended up Stayin Alive’, I definitely will not be getting out my Boogie Shoes for this airball.

Sounds like a club DJ and an Oasis cover band were both hired to play the same wedding by mistake, but instead of sending one away, they forced them to play together on the same stage at the same time. Atrocious.
Also, what the fuck is with “Bob’s Yer Uncle”? That is a blatant sex crime and I someone needs to be arrested for recording that.