Reviews by dutch-point-pro

I have so many questions. Starting with “I Kissed the Teacher” … whoa, Lady, I’m a mandated reporter. The ‘Dancing Queen’s’ only 17’? Why is she in a club? Is this a school night? There’s a trend of underage inappropriateness showing up. ‘Dum Dum Diddle’? Hmmm …Skipping this one based on the word ‘diddle’ and the emerging theme, just to be safe. Look, people of a certain age have a soft spot for ABBA. I am not one of them. This soft core disco is just not good. Gimme Donna Summer all day.

Tech-nope.

This is pretty boring jazz, with extended and unimaginative runs. The rhythms are not unique or surprising and overall the album left me feeling rather empty and underwhelmed. There are much better Afro-Carribean Jazz examples, but this was an early entry, so maybe that’s why it is included here? No need to revisit this one again.

I have grown to understand what an incredible vocalist Chris Cornell was. Truly one of the best to ever sing rock. This is an iconic 90s album littered with hits.

Pasty-white soul music for the Margaritaville crowd. Full of bravado and self-importance, this live album is littered with more vocal ‘styling’ than a finals epudode of The Voice. Some songs are delivered with barely more than the affect of spoken word and others feel forcefully lstuck in vocal tics for indulgent amounts of time. Not to say that Van Morrison doesn’t any soulful connection, but it remains ‘shallow’ at best. Let’s just leave it there. This is not enjoyable.

Audacious in its reach, especially for 1980, but ultimately not quite getting there for me.

This gives off the vibe of a failed musical theater kid who wrote songs inspired by his hidden private browser history. Normally, I can separate the art from the artist in my review, but Manson refuses to do so in his songs, so I’m pleased to say, ‘fuck this rapey creep and his talentless bullshit’. 🖕🏼

I got to introduce Dave Brubeck to the crowd at a concert once. Despite this, I still hate jazz. At least this sounds less like large birds being murdered than most jazz.

Throwing together a bunch of seemingly disparate genres without much rhyme or reason does not make an innovative “fusion “. It just means you threw a lot of different shit at the wall and, In this case, none of it stuck. This is bad all over the place.

The idea of tracing the incubation of the atomic bomb is interesting fodder, but if you want to see an exploration of this that actually works, look to Picasso and Dalí's abstract expressionism in visual art, butoh in dance or lots of 70s and 80s heavy metal and industrial music, where the goal is to sound like a thrashing and mechanical destruction of the normal world.

This is essentially an N.W.A album that Ice Cube recorded solo once he left the group. It wasn’t until his next album (or maybe the one after) that we start to see his lyrical style turn away from blatant and obvious thug-speak into the more intricate, thoughtful rhymes that made Cube the legend that he is. There are flashes of that here hidden amongst less developed themes and an awful lot of references to gats and bitches … not that any of those words will go away, they’ll just be more carefully delivered and placed for effect as Cube matures and understands how better to tell his stories with his unique sense of humor. One thing that is undeniable here is that this is one of the first important records in rap where a solo voice is featured over a group dynamic, inviting a trend that will become very important to 90s and 00s hip-hop. This is not a great album, it has not aged well, but it is a good throwback to pre-riots LA, to a simpler time before there was anyone named Biggie, Tupac, Wu-Tang or Quest.

It’s a straightforward, unadorned blues rock album with a Southern style, nothing more, nothing less. A solid 3.5 for the way it made me play air guitar at stop lights.

The offspring spawn of an unholy union between Steve Urkell and a bad Stevie Wonder cover band …

There are many people who love and appreciate Kate Bush‘s music. I am not one of them. This is the soundtrack to White privilege.

I am growing weary of white people with organs and brass sections… music for older couples to scrapbook by …

Such a great groove. A definitive sound with great instrumentals and vivid lyrics. Enjoyable all the way through.

Fine, very clearly Traffic at work here. Dated but unmistakable.

Not sure what to do with this one. Interesting in places, boring in others, liked it in places, skipped it in others. Nothing I’d come back for, but I’ll round up from my 2.5 because it kept me engaged.

There is no point writing about this album. It’s universally applauded as one of the greatest of all time. But, no, I’ve got to read Larry from Toledo’s in-depth, song-by-song breakdown trying to convince me that it’s actually a two-star record and everybody has been wrong for the last 50 years.
If this album is not immediately a four or a five for you, just stop reviewing albums - something is horribly wrong with your understanding of how this is supposed to work. Shut the door to your basement or your bunker, or your kill room or wherever, go back to your Throbbing Gristle albums, and leave the rest of us alone.

Hard to hate on an album with some of the most legendary folk rock songs ever recorded. The musical arrangements are lush and layered and the harmonies, while perhaps too effusive, are also tight AF. Yes, it gets repetitive and indulgent, but you can’t hate on something that’s this good.

I’m not well versed in superhero movies but a common trope seems to be that the villain is a very intelligent or talented misfit that somehow went wrong and converted to the darkside.
I feel like that is an appropriate backstory for this band. They have talent but they use their powers for evil. Their good chops make terrible music. I’m struck by their flexibility. Give them any genre and they can deliver a horrible song. 80s ballad? ✅ 00s new wave pop? ✅ Unforgivable cover of a classic rock song? ✅✅✅ I’m giving 1 bonus point for the genius lyric “you can’t see tits on the radio”. - oooph.