Reviews by galway_rat

April 15th again

HL: “A Year”, “Paper Plane”, the Doors cover

I remember seeing a documentary on Status Quo years ago, about how big they are in the UK, only to be underwhelmed by the actual music.
This is decent, but amidst the T-Rexes, Stones, Deep Purples, Mott the Hooples and Eric Claptons already crowding the scene, it just registers as a bit of dumb fun.
I guess there’s nothin’ wrong with that

There IS a British, boogie rock outfit that’s sorely missing from the OG list. Their name: Foghat

April 13, 2025

HL: “It’s a Motherfucker”, title track, “I Like Birds”, “Grace Kelly Blues”

Eels #2!
A pleasant listen, and one that strays enough from Beautiful Freak’s glummer atmosphere for me to understand it being here.
I wasn’t immediately in love, despite a lot of the individual elements in it- the sweet brass in track 1, the melodies, the humour- seemingly being perfect for a nice April afternoon.
“It’s a Motherfucker” may have unseated “Flower” as my favourite Eels song, though.

3.5

April 12, 2025

HL: “Hanging Out With Halo Jones”, “Sister Moon”, “I Want Your Love”

I can’t believe this is how I find out that Andy Warhol is dead ;(

Decent mix of ‘70s rock n’ roll with ‘80s production. The robotic monologue that kicks off “Trash City” sets a level of camp that nothing else here can live up to

April 10, 2025

wa wa wee wa

April 8, 2025

I knew a LITTLE Jellyfish before today, just from letting the Algorithm guide me. Spotify gave me “Russian Hill”, and Apple Music has an “Inspired By Queen” playlist that features “Joining a Fan Club”. Both are from this album, so it’s no surprise that I enjoy this.

I’ll have to ponder on this further, but it may be genius. *May*

If I was in a band and released this 4 years after forming, I’d also maybe think ‘where do you even go from here’

April 7, 2025

HL: “Rapture”, “Penetration”, “Indian Summer”, “Rehearsal”

Today’s AOTD is from David Bazan, of Seattle!

I had misgivings about the opener “Options”, thinking I was about to go down a muddy road towards beige, 2000s post-grunge. Then the ironically upbeat “Rapture” immediately shatters that expectation.
What could have been a simple morality play about the sin of infidelity is complicated by the dejected final couple of tracks- seeming neither sympathetic nor damning to the “protagonist”.
Though it’s not an easy listen, it is a pretty impressive concept album from a time and genre (90s/00s slowcore) I haven’t been particularly interested in.
4* for now

Melbourne yesterday, Indianapolis today with Margot & the Nuclear So and So's!

"I wanna gouge out your eyes"- least psychopathic indie band

A couple great songs- see below- but a lot more okay ones in my eyes(ears). It helps that I'm already drawn to this sort of semi-acoustic indie rock.

If you enjoy this I recommend Harlequin Dream by Boy & Bear (2013).

HL: "Pages Written on a Wall", "Broadripple Is Burning", "German Motor Car"

April 2, 2025

Another Australian band I am not familiar with!

This would be great pairing with a contemporary album: Don’t Throw Stones -> Glass Houses (Billy Joel, 1980)

I enjoyed the first few songs the best, though it's pretty consistent throughout. The comparisons to other 70s bands started to enter my mind, uninvited, around side 2. Although based on the quality of the musicianship and lead singer, I prefer it to a few of the prior entries, for instance the Stranglers & Blockheads

3.5

HL: title track, "Thru the Window", "Suspicious Minds", "Tired of Me", "Big Sleep"

April 1, 2025

Definitely the album I know the least about so far, after commercial smashes from the Weeknd & Shania Twain. Thought of Gang of Four & Young Marble Giants (Colossal Youth) from the name, but so far it’s closer in sound to Arcade Fire and Bleachers.
I guess Australian rock hasn’t broken into the Canadian mainstream as much as I thought, though they sure tried in the 80s (INXS, Crowded House)

The man can sing- the partly-screamed vocals in “Atlas Drowned” sound like a different person than the baritone of “Achilles”

I’m wishy-washy on music that is custom fit for a stadium, but as with Arcade Fire & U2, I find this very enjoyable. The emotional hills and valleys make the almost 80-min run time worth it
HL: “Fear and Trembling”, "What Can I Do If the Fire Goes Out?", “Achilles Come Down”, "The Heart is a Muscle", "Le réel", "Say Yes to Life"
later on March 31

March 31st 2025

HL: "Man! I Feel Like a Woman", title track, "From This Moment On", "That Don't Impress Me Much"

I feel like I'm not as enthusiastic for this one for reasons beside the music. There's a reason many of these songs still endure after almost thirty years (at least in Canada), but much of the time that I'm listening to this I imagine a darkened community centre, floor sticky from all the spilled booze, where everyone does the boot scoot n' boogie because that's the only socially acceptable dance.

Shania opens this album with an all-time banger though, so can't complain about that

Not 1st listen! “Oh my god… I get it now”

My curiosity about this album/musical led me to seek it out last year, as well as some Bonny Light Horseman music, a group Anaïs Mitchell is part of.
It’s a particularly odd case, where I felt it was caught between its various genres and influences at first listen. Too cleanly produced for rootsy folk, too dry & deadpan for the theatrics, plus the only voice I was familiar with was Vernon/Bon Iver, which kept distracting me from the story.
But today, somehow, all the threads came together.
The added context of financial woes to the Orpheus & Eurydice story goes a long way in making it contemporary, where the rattles of cello and musical saw keep the songs planted in this eerie, Tom Waits-esque world of Hadestown without overwhelming the lyrics and story.

March 29, 2025

HL: "Table For Glasses", "Lucky Denver Mint", "Your New Aesthetic", "Ten", "Just Watch the Fireworks", title track

They have more songs besides "The Middle"?
While listening to this, my brain drew comparisons to post-Britpop like Coldplay, Travis & Doves, but that's more the fault of the 1001 for not really giving heed to the emo subgenre, or my fault for not listening to much emo on my own.
Initially I didn't think it had the chops to wow me over 70 minutes, but take out the 2 bonus tracks, and after realizing that "Goodbye Sky Harbor" is just a really long coda, I concluded it's pretty standard length for a CD release.
Clarity has a really great 3 song run at the beginning, but doesn't lose too much momentum after that. It does the sugary, strings + glockenspiel stuff as well as the power-chord-chugging tunes. Perhaps credit is due to Trombino, the producer who also worked on the Drive Like Jehu & Rocket From the Crypt from the OG list, for making it all flow so nicely.

In sum- lots to enjoy about the more melodic side of emo.

I promised myself I'd give some space between the end of the main list and the start but
Ladies and gentlemen... the Weeknd

March 27, 2025
(5 years of this album holay)

I'm of the opinion that the trilogy, including this, Dawn FM and Hurry Up Tomorrow are solid as fuck- though my favourite is Dawn FM :)
The thick, hazy, cinematic synths present in this one provide a template for those other two albums, so this would be the logical choice.

What can I say about “Blinding Lights”? That song follows me everywhere I go, up to and including my dreams.
I can’t really complain though, because one of my favourite pop songs from lockdown was “Save Your Tears”, which like “Blinding Lights” was co-written with Max Martin/Oscar Holter 🇸🇪

I could nitpick on which Weeknd should be on the 1001, but this one works just fine. Just wish it started and ended in a more concise manner

HL: "Hardest to Love", "Scared to Live", “Faith”, "Save Your Tears", “Until I Bleed Out”

1089/1089, and wot an album to end on

Amidst the heightened interest of Kate Bush’s music in 2022/23, I ended up listening to this one summer night while watching the stars. What began as a tranquil moment, with songs like the title track and "Cloudbusting", became more eerie when "Waking the Witch" and "Hello Earth" came on.
I briskly packed up my lawnchair and returned inside. I guess what I'm trying to say is, who needs drugs when Hounds of Love is right here.

Though it isn’t exactly relaxing material, the “Ninth Wave” is incredibly dreamlike, tapdancing on the border between 80s pop and avant-garde electronic. Oh and who could forget those beautiful pipes 🇮🇪

Highlights: “Cloudbusting”, “Running Up That Hill”, “Jig of Life”, 80s synthpop, 60s psychedelia, Cuban jazz, Senegalese mbalax, the shoegaze scene, millennial folk rock, the Soulquarians, east coast hiphop, west coast hiphop, thirty random bands from the early 2000s, all twelve Beatles albums, all the bottom 20 ranked albums on this website (even the ones I hated), all the Canadian albums on this list, all the Irish albums, theatre kids, two-hour long live albums
Not as crazy about: only being able to experience this for the first time once

January 2021 to March 26, 2025

also March 25, 2025

HL: "Girlfriend in a Coma", "Stop Me If You Think You've Heard This Before", "Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me", "I Won't Share You"

Morrissey 7/7. I'm tired, boss

March 25, 2025

The last 70s album belongs to… Stevie Wonder!

It’s been so long since a Stevie album, I almost forgot there was more to the list besides Songs, Innervisions and Talking Book (all were brought to me here by 2022, though I had heard Talking Book earlier in life)

Perhaps I was a little biased from this album before, just because there was no song from this as ubiquitous as “Higher Ground” or “Sir Duke”. I actually only knew the marching band stop of “You Haven’t Done Nothin’”.
Yet learning 9 new Stevie Wonder songs has never been an issue in the past.

The fact that “It Ain’t No Use” and “Smile Please”might be my least favourite tracks speaks volumes to the consistency of FFF. Only thing wrong with em is that they’re next to even better songs.

The fact that the 4 Wonder albums featured here were all released 4 years apart, one after each other, blows my mind. Absolutely legendary run

HL: “Heaven is 10 Zillion Light Years Away”, “Boogie On Reggae Woman”, “Creepin’”, “You Haven’t Done Nothing”, “They Won’t Go When I Go”

March 23, 2025

HL: “Satisfaction”, “Jocko Homo”, “Gut Feeling”

Maybe not their BEST work, but a satisfying intro to Devo & their balance of poppy consonance and wacky dissonance

March 21, 2025

HL: “That Lady”, “Sunshine”, “Summer Breeze”

The Isleys conduct a study entitled: How Smooth is Too Smooth

Results: inconclusive

This is a gentle ride all the way through but also provides some unique takes on songs like “Listen to the Music” & “Sunshine Go Away Today”

💾
#notallelectronicais90sbigbeat
#maybeitis
#idkanymore

Fatboy Slim has some great singles ("Right Here Right Now", "Praise You", "Weapon of Choice") but I've struggled to get through both of his full-length albums on this list. "10th and Crenshaw" could have been designed in a lab to annoy me personally; the repetition, the lack of dynamics, the basic synth sequencers, the stupid vocal cuts.

Wikipedia states the genre of big beat had a shelf life of around 5 years, "sharply declining after 2001". Why does this list have, like, 10 albums representing it

"Santa Cruz" is kinda pretty, though? And hypnotic?

HL: "Santa Cruz", "Going Out of My Head"

earlier on March 20, 2025

Listened to on vinyl until it started skipping on "Date Stamp", then switched to Apple Music ;)

More absolute plastic from producer Trevor Horn, and with a singer that is very reminiscent of other 80s English bands. I am outraged that this is on the list, and may God have mercy on the editors' souls...

On the other hand, it's fun and I can see myself liking it more over time.
3.5 out of 5

HL: "Tears Are Not Enough", "Valentine's Day", "All of My Heart", "4 Ever 2 Gether"

later on March 20, 2025