Reviews by galway_rat

January 16, 2025

One of the most famous jazz albums and a glaring blind spot in my own musical knowledge

Edit: I’ve heard at least the first three tracks before

HL: “So What”, “Blue in Green”, “All Blues”

Neato

January 14, 2025

HL: "Slave Driver", "400 Years", "Stir it Up", "Kinky Reggae", "High Tide or Low Tide" (bonus track)

Marley 3/3

starting the day off right

decided to immediately follow it up with Burnin' (1973), a somewhat darker affair recorded around the same time. Yet it has its share of uplifting-sounding songs, like "Small Axe"

January 15, 2025

HL: “Dry and Dusty”, “Triangle Walks”, “Now’s the Only Time I Know”, “Coconut”

Odd and spooky, not everyday listening, but nonetheless really enjoyed the mix of cold synths and more organic marimbas/xylophones.
Either a 3 or a 4 but I’m feelin generous

January 12, 2025

HL: "Garbageman", "Teenage Werewolf", "Fever"

An album I will perhaps appreciate more over time, although the ghoulish lyrics grabbed me from the get-go.
Some nice Duane Eddy/Venture-like guitar in the middle of the album

January 13, 2025

The last Deep Purple I listened to were albums #70 and #78, so I'm less fazed about hearing a live album featuring songs from both those albums. Don't call the redundancy police just yet :(

- "Highway Star" is everything I want in a live rendition, even if it is pretty similar to the studio cut
- we've reached the first big drum solo, with "Mule"
- I think side 3 is the weakest, but it does provide some relief from the aural assault of the first two sides
-I needed something to make the time commitment of this album worth it, and luckily side 4 delivers with a balls-to-the-wall rendition of "Space Truckin'", a highlight from Machine Head.
- I shouldn't be surprised that my enjoyment level of Made in Japan falls somewhere between Machine Head and In Rock, since it contains both the pinnacle of early 70s metal as well as noodling that would make ELP blush.
"Highway Star", "Space Truckin'" and "Child in Time" carry this to a 4-star.

January 9th, 2024

G. Love walked so G Eazy could walk

HL: "Blues Music", "This Ain't Living", "Town to Town"

still January 12, 2025

HL: “Karma Chameleon”, “Miss Me Blind”, “It’s a Miracle”, “Stormkeeper”

3.5

I didn’t go into this a huge Culture Club fan, and two full listens later I’m still not in da club but I do appreciate its hooks & general cheesiness.
“Karma Chameleon” is one of the best songs of its time though, I’ll give Boy George that.
“Miss Me Blind” is a song I wasn’t keen on, but I somehow never noticed that synth/guitar break 3 mins in before today. It makes the whole song, imo

Still Jan 8th, 2025

HL: "Change is Gonna Come", "Respect", "Wonderful World", "Rock Me Baby", "I've Been Loving You For Too Long", "Satisfaction"

️‍🔥

January 11th

HL: “Elevate Me Later”, “Cut Your Hair”, “Gold Soundz”, “Unfair”, “Range Life”

Slanted and Enchanted was the first Pavement I heard, and between its rough-edged, lofi production and Malkmus’s talk singing, I didn’t really feel a pull to go deeper into their catalogue. Actually I DID put on American Water by Silver Jews last year, which has Malkmus’s involvement, but that’s about it.
But holay shit
This is an album so consistent, it makes me wonder if I was wrong about their earlier album. (I’ll have to revisit at a later date)
Amidst some unholy screeching (“Unfair”), we have a jazz interlude (“5-4=Unity”), the country-esque (“Stop Breathin’”, “Range Life”), and a monkey-esque wordless chorus (“Cut Your Hair”), all in a pretty efficient 40 minutes.

Basically, I get it now

January 6th, 2025

Goshdarnit, I rolled my eyes about 10 seconds into this album (boy, more straight-laced country) and those same eyes were getting misty after the 3rd song, so...

Nanci Griffith, this singer I know nothing about, won me over easier than country stars on my radar like Steve Earle, Cowboy Junkies or Bonnie Raitt.

One of the very few albums from '86 that doesn't sound like it. (Don't get me wrong, I like my mid 80s plastic)

HL: "St Olav's Gate", "Banks of the Pontchartrain", "Goin' Gone"

January 7th, 2025

The line between 80s rave music and 90s video game music is nonexistent
Does that sound like a complaint? It certainly is NOT -_-
I basically took it as one ~30-minute long song. One long, noisy dumb fun song

Maybe because the album/artist name is almost all numbers, was expecting something generic and impersonal- but with the bird sounds(?) in "Pacific" and the dark fantasy synth-bells in "Sunrise", there is enough here to override my ambivalence to techno/house music.

January 8th, 2025

HL: "Desafinado", "The Girl from Ipanema", "Corvocado", "Vivo Sonhando"

Maybe it's time to admit I have a hoity-toity attitude towards some samba/bossa nova. It's:
a) hold line music
b) jazz for people who don't like jazz
c) surface-level exotica for white Americans
...but I don't REALLY believe that. Yes, it didn't help to hear bossa nova for several hours trying to claim worker's comp over the phone last year, but that's no reason to dismiss an entire genre!

I had an entirely different gripe with Jazz Samba, the last Stan Getz all the way back at #67, which was that it's not what I want to hear on the highway at night after working several hours (I gave it 3*). Now that I've played it a few times in the morning, I find it much more uplifting and stimulating. A 2nd playthrough before rating would have gone a long way in that case.

Now about Getz/Gilberto: ironically, the more subdued, small room atmosphere would work just as well late at night as it did this afternoon. Despite some great guitar and sax work, it stays pretty quiet throughout the run time. I didn't really get the solo Astrud Gilberto album on this list, but her vocals are a definite highlight here. Her husband-at-the-time João has a very calming timbre to his voice as well.

As far as my favourite bossa nova goes, this has stiff competition with The Sims 1 menu music

Evening of January 5, 2025 (first album of the year was technically An Evening With Silk Sonic [2021])

HL: "Randy Scouse Git", "Shades of Gray", "Mr. Webster", "Forget That Girl", "I'll Spend My Life With You"

I'm sure there are more vital examples of 60s pop here, but I've always liked what I knew from the Monkees, and these 12 tracks (and 2 examples of pissing around with the mic) don't disappoint. Even though it isn't one of the OG Monkee songs, the Weil/Mann composition "Shades of Gray" was my favourite song this time around

N.Y.E. 2024

HL: title track, “Bootylicious”, “Dance With Me”, that acapella gospel ting

Some of the best 2000s pop ever mixed with some of the most boring

December 30th, 2024

I may preface this with some earlier Hüsker Dü, as Bob Mould’s other band, Sugar, was so long ago on the generator & I don’t have much context for this sound besides other contemporaries like Minutemen and Black Flag.
Edit: dear me, I picked Zen Arcade & I realize now that both that and Warehouse are double albums. 💿 💿 💿 💿
Guess I’ll be hearing a lot from them today

Edit 2: I admit this is a reductive take, but Zen Arcade is like the missing link between Tommy and American Idiot

Edit 3: okay, halfway through the actual AOTD, and there are some key differences from Zen Arcade. The vocals are easier to hear in the mix, & the guitar is overall glossier and crisper. Despite the inclusion of a- I want to say glockenspiel- in the mix, the instrumentation is more conventional and akin to the 90s power pop that I remember from Sugar.
Edit 4: There aren't many surprises in the back half, even though "Turn it Around" might be the best of these more melodic tunes. I don't want to fault the band for sticking with this sound, as it's often easier on the ears than the earlier Du I was listening to.
What Zen Arcade has on this, though, is shape. Warehouse is not a concept album/rock opera, so a 14-minute-long song would be especially punishing here, but side 4 + the coda of “You Can Live At Home” didn’t feel like much of an ending. But then nobody forced me to listen to them 2 hrs straight, either

HL: “Standing in the Rain”, “Ice Cold Ice”, “She Floated Away”, "Turn It Around"

3.5

December 29th, 2024

HL: the title track, “The Invasion”, “Live Good”, “Jordan River”

The amount of mental somersaults I need to remind myself this is not an album called Burning Spear by Marcus Garvey

I still don’t have a ton of experience with reggae, and I’m not going to get it with the remainder of this list; sorta like yesterday’s album, this is a really consistent album rooted in spiritual music.

I’m guessing the sunny brass & flute are what makes this the international version for “white” consumption, as per the book’s mention of studio interference. Can’t really find the original, and without it for reference I don’t have much objection to how this version sounds.

Paired this with the Maytals’ Funky Kingston, another 70’s reggae album, for a little extra immersion. It’s interesting how it & Marcus Garvey show very different sides of the genre; celebration & positivity in the face of current issues with the former, and indignation and fury at said issues with the latter.

December 28, 2024

HL: “Dear Someone”, “April 14th”, “I Want to Sing Rock and Roll”, title track

Gillian Welch (& David Rawlings) will be #1001! If the list ended here, I’d feel pretty darn satisfied- with some exceptions. Kate Bush’s only album is The Sensual World? Bebel Gilberto there, but no João?

Time (the Revelator), more like Timeless (the Revelation). I may need more time yet to process this album, but as far as “dark and hymnal country” goes this is up there with the best. I have never heard another song with the phrase “staggers and jags”, besides “Barrett’s Privateers”, until today. The closer is a pretty remarkable ending, with some repeats of earlier poetry and imagery, though its 15 minutes does get a bit monotonous.

Only five albums left that I’ve already heard: (Led Zeppelin I, In Rainbows, Tubular Bells, Hounds of Love, & Veckatimest) so I really only have 83 left to get through! Out of 1089 🤯

December 27, 2024

HL: “Sixteen”, “Autonomy”, “I Need”

Another Music in a Different Kitchen by the Buzzcocks is the 61st punk album so far

Boxing Day 2024

HL: the Lark Medley, “Come All Ye”, “Matty Groves”, “Farewell, Farewell”, “Quiet Joys” (bonus track)

Much prefer this to Unhalfbrcking, or just feel more inclined towards British folk on this particular day. A few longer, denser songs that got better on a repeat listen (and the guitars in “Matty Groves” reminding me that this is still very much a rock album)

Also happened to revisit the Pentangle, and concluded that I underrated them last year.

December 25, 2024

Thanks, Santa- I’ve already got two of these though…

-The vocals in “I’m Just Looking” are strange even for Kevin Rowland

-Generally the more upbeat tunes work the best, but “I couldn’t help it if I tried” is a ballad that stands out

-“Seven Days Too Long” is a neat cover version

-I could wax poetic on the insanity of including 3 Dexys on the list, as others have; it would only delay me admitting I really like the sound of this record. Sometimes all I need is a peppy horn section and I’m sold :)

HL: “Light Turns Green”, “I Couldn’t Help It”, “Geno”, “There There My Dear”