Reviews by giddy

k.d. lang confirms to me that she has perhaps one of the most underrated singing voices in all music. Sure, this record has far too many country music sound effects (you know the ones) and is generally not my thing, but she doesn't care and makes me really enjoy my time any way. Everything feels genuine and I, for the first time in my life, feel the bittersweet sorrow of country music, and I highly doubt I'll suddenly love country music now. I just seem to really enjoy k.d. lang, and of course that means big ups for the tracks here that are more vocal jazz-esque. It stumbles near the end, with perhaps the two worst songs on the album closing it out, but it is just short enough to not really hurt too much. I hope to explore more of her catalog soon, because she seems to have transcended barriers for me, even if it is only by the tiniest of bits, and that is truly impressive.

Jazz is always a daunting genre for me, as I find myself either bored, hating it, or very rarely, in love. However, I feel like I've not gotten to encounter a lot of piano-focused jazz, let alone solely piano. I know how to play piano, or at least I like to think I do, so listening to this album, I was just in awe the entire time by the moments packed here. Many, MANY fantastic little ambient interpolations among chord progressions and passages of pure euphoria among Keith Jarrett's playing, and you can tell he is certainly into it as well, with his moaning and the such, which reminds me a little of Robert Wyatt. The first track, despite its length, has a ton of stuff to love, and is worth the price of admission, so the next three tracks are just cool bonuses. They capture the concert hall feeling perfectly, where you are solely focused on the playing, and very little else, and it can be entrancing. It is pretty long, and because of that parts of songs can feel unnecessary, but whenever a moment pops up I truly adore it all feels worthwhile. This may be a bit different of a jazz record, but it is pretty far up my alley, and I'm glad to have enjoyed it.

This album was full of ups and downs, but by the end I was pretty annoyed with this album because of the sheer amount of cheese oozing from its grooves. Yeah, some of the instrumentation is impressive, and at times the vocals and melodies were pretty, but that stretch of gospel funk on the entire B-side felt all too goofy to ever be taken seriously, and that final track just felt preachy and sanctimonious. There was hope in the beginning, as even I know Shining Star and enjoy it, but I cannot really seem to look past my flaws with it. If you're looking for something incredibly easy for everyone you know to enjoy, but not much above that, this is that.

Lyrically, this album is incredibly stereotypical, and perhaps one of the last instancies of an album I would describe as vulgar for the sake of being vulgar. It feels stuck in the 90s, berating women, slinging drugs, murdering fools, all with the same guests seemingly on all the Wu-Tang albums. I know they were all in a group together, but jeez, find new people. However, the production on this album is fantastic, with appearances from some of the greats like J Dilla and MF DOOM (unfortunately, only producing, no raps from the mad villain here) and it really sells the entire album. I mean, there are whole songs here that purely live off their beats, and it really elevates the whole experience into something pretty enjoyable. It's too long, not a single joke hits, and it's just relatively icky, but if you wanted to show the powerhouse of production going around in the mid-2000s, this album exemplifies that fantastically. That being said, it's a sick joke that this the closest the 1001 Albums gets to, again, MF DOOM or J Dilla. That's an entire sin of its own, albeit not one that is this album's fault.

Y'know, this used to be the only Radiohead album I understood the hype for. As someone who was always more of a Muse fan (still am a Muse fan, fight me) at the time of listening, I got this one pretty quickly because it was definitively alt-rock. No gimmicks, no weird electronic stuff, and feeling like death was around every corner is more "subtle" in this one, perhaps not lyrically, but tonally. I love all those things about Radiohead now, and I'm obviously simplifying what makes them great, but nevertheless I was curious if returning to this album after all this time would make it hit different, or if I still consider it one of their best. After doing so, I can still confirm for myself that this is one of their best works, in my opinion. Sure, it is very straightforward, but because of that it feels like a perfected statement. Sure, there are lesser tracks here, but everything is at least solid, and oddly I didn't notice it before, but you start to get more of that stereotypical Radiohead vibe the longer the album goes on. Things get more dreary, more exhausting (in a good way), and overall I think it really wraps the package up into something that perfectly defines this era of their career. Sure, Fake Plastic Trees is great, but the melancholia of tracks like (Nice Dream) is far more what I'm looking for with an album like this, and it nails it. Guitar work is fantastic, as is Thom's singing, which feels less like trying to chase the coattails of his contemporaries, unlike the prior album. I think if you like pure 90s rock you will find yourself enjoying this above the others, as I did at one point, and no matter what it is a great gateway into something more, and while I don't consider this their best anywhere (not enough emotions stir within me, y'know) this is still a fantastic record with plenty of amazing songs to make it well worth the listen.

Going in, I already know that blues is something I do not vibe with at all, so just going with the flow of the music is hardly an option for me. Flow, to me, feels like something to groove to, perhaps even dance a little, but this album suffers heavily from seemingly having nothing going on. Perhaps lyrically it is more investible, or maybe I should be blown away by the guitar picking, which I can admit is technically quality, but is incredibly dull, and the appearance of minimal percussion as well as rarely a brass or woodwind instrument, just leaves the album feeling barren. Not in a personal nor gripping way, but rather something to understand as its bare minimum the moment you hear it. Once you hear the first track, that't it, you are not getting something deeper here. It won't have a shocking twist track, it won't courtesy you and change to something more interesting, and even if you are a person only here for the "vibe," its hour long runtime only aims to make every track even more repetitive. I was sick of the songs here, ten minutes in, so another forty-five only lead to pure annoyance. It never dives into something offensive, and maybe you'll find yourself getting it more than me and be pleased by the overloaded tracks, but I find this to be a pretty obvious case of an album receiving more praise due to its creator sadly passing away before it release, and while that is a shame, and I mean that, I do not see anything truly remarkable about the music. Add in the fact that this from 2006, and I fail to see why this would be any more essential than any other blues record, and the genre crossover of Songhai music does nothing to the blues presented other than making something more dry a little more humid, and that isn't really a good thing, I feel. Tedious, and due to its length, annoying.

This album has both similar and completely different problems from 2Pac's Me Against the World, which only makes sense. Despite the media pitting these two against each other, there's a reason the same general group now adore them, and while that may be some amount of nostalgia, they still hit similar beats of gang life in their area, and take time to both bring down and rise up women, as well as various other day-to-day activities for them. However, I think what this album lacks lyrically compared to 2Pac's introspection is its flows and beats, which are great. Biggie seems to never stop talking, and that is all the more impressive by its runtime being over an hour. Sure, some topics are touched on a couple of times, but it is always a pleasure to just listen to, and the beats, while minimalistic to a degree, are notorious for a reason. There are some deeper topics covered, such as the final track's heavy, destructive closing statements that just make you sit there and wonder if the whole rest of the album was a cover, but what makes it fall apart for me is that the rest of the album doesn't seem to reflect this idea. Rather, you get guns, sex, and drugs, and man is there A LOT of each. Really don't need to hear this man get sloppy toppy nor rigorous, greasy sex, I could live without hearing that, and while the songs discussing these topics sound good, often times tuning in lyrically leads to a few eyebrow raises. Nothing crazy, but it took me out of the flow more than once, and was aggravating even. It's an album with a ton of potential, but I feel like that's lost in its coat of 90s sleaze. I understand the bravado was admirable at the time, but now it just feels goofy, and can really hurt this album for a listener ill prepared. Tons to enjoy, and for this to be someone's only album while alive is impressive to say the least, but you will not be finding something new to enjoy if you didn't like gangsta rap before this album.

I cannot comment on how its quality as a film soundtrack would be, as I'm not an aficionado on a medium, but I know that as music to listen to, this stinks. It starts out harmless enough, with a mix of creepy but nevertheless intriguing ambient tracks and stereotypical film noir jazz that feels a touch outdated due to the late 80s production. However, once you get to the halfway point or so, it becomes just noise for the sake of being noise, with a lot of industrial sounding guitars to muddle the mix and make my ears bleed. Not helping is that there is very little going on beside these noises, as it lacks texture, or even some solid samples to keep things driving. It just gets lost in being shocking, as if it were to be paired with a scene meant to be overwhelming to the senses, but once you strip away those scenes that never existed, and just view this as music, it completely and utterly gets on my nerves. Once we finally return to something more musical on the closing track, even that bugs me with its macho brass and complete lack of intrigue other than just being loud. There's no emotion behind it, just a volume that bugs the Hell out of me, and I was sick of it nearly an hour after it started. It has moments that possibly could be appreciated, but it had exhausted any intrigue by the end of it all.

The voice effects on this album make or break an album for many, I can only assume, as the electronic backing, while often minimal, as a sinister yet smooth blend that compliments that era and cryptic lyrics nicely. Unfortunately, I am one of those who finds the effects annoying rather than haunting. I imagine this album's core audience would fall under the same one as that of Bjork's, who I am a fan of, but the lack of a real singing voice throughout nearly the whole runtime, or least one that felt real, was really a turn-off for me. An album that feels like I'm traveling in a dark and SppoooOOkkyy forest slowly becomes repetitive and cheesy. There are hints of something better, but I tend to find myself just wishing the album was an instrumental, more ambient one.

Despite being called "Haunted Dancehall," this album had very little going on to be worth that relatively interesting title. I understand that IDM is supposed to be something to ingest more subconsciously than anything, but this album does very little to ever stand out in a crowd, and one has to wonder if this is included in the 1001 albums list purely due to the Portishead inclusion. Otherwise, it is the same song and dance, over an hour long, electronic, and its from the mid-90s. I know the scene was truly blossoming at the time, but that does not make every album vital. It's sleepy, it's forgettable, and it's just that tad bit of corny so that you can just sit there and wait for it to be over. Otherwise, it's inoffensive to the ears, which I suppose you could argue is a plus compared to some other works from the time. Tedious.

Like a combination of Robert Wyatt's (who appears on this album) Rock Bottom and Sparks' song My Baby's Taking Me Home, Medulla is perhaps my favorite of the Bjork albums I've had the pleasure of listening to, because while its gimmick is just that, a gimmick, it does that gimmick so incredibly well that for 99% of the album I am entranced. Obviously the human voice is easy to manipulate into any form or context you'd like, but to be able to make an album where I struggle to discern the genre, yet have me totally invested from start to finish, with impressive melodies, a great amount of experiences I would only describe as "out of body," all the while Bjork has gathered some of the best voices I've heard to synchronize with and within herself to make something so (ironically) breathtaking is remarkable. I'm actually at a loss for words because it's hard to describe the feeling this album puts me in, but it is not one unfamiliar to that of other Bjork albums. She can make you feel frigid yet cozy with a single note, and that atop having a pretty solid hook among each of the songs makes it, in my eyes, something worth savoring every moment of.

I am highly disappointed with this album, and I'm unsure as to why. I know nothing of the band, the music inside, or even why it had a mini-Renaissance as something popular enough to make the rounds, but there was some part of me that was intrigued by that elusiveness, and wanted to see what this was all about. So, finding out it's a half-baked, very commercial impression of indie acts from the 2010s such as MGMT, Tame Impala, and any other act you may hear in a hybrid car commercial was really a bummer. The real crime here is that it sounds like it was made purely to be commercial, rather than just finding unexpected success, and that rubs me the wrong way. There are glimmers of something promising, as they have decent build-ups that promise something greater, and even a few tracks here worth checking out, but once you hit the six-minute mark and nothing of great importance has happened still, or you've sifted through thirty minutes of songs to find that one track, you tend to just feel there a tad defeated. It is completely competent music making, and I feel the mix of LCD Soundsystem and Can is an intriguing one, but it rarely works here. If anything, the standout to me was the short interlude Boxing Day because it is unlike anything else on the album. It's loud, it's quick, and it stops in the middle of its build-up to go fuck off somewhere else, and I really appreciate that, because it defies every expectation so far. I can see this being a lot of people's cup of tea, just because it is so accessible due to its bubbly, sugar-coated take on psych-rock, but acts like Stereolab were doing that exact style twenty years earlier, and they did it far better. Again, technically good, but I wanted more.

After the first song, I was sort of expecting a Cranberries-adjacent singer over bland acoustic rock for an hour, but luckily the rest of the album was a lot more downtempo and folksy, leading to my genuine enjoyment of a lot of these songs. It isn't anything I'm over the moon for, but it has the just right amount of 90s edge to make some songs go in a direction you don't expect, and considering the appearance of trip hop beats at some points, the rest of the album mostly feels like an analogue take on that style of songwriting. It is still far too long, and a lot of the songs can come in one ear and out the other, but there's a consistency here that's solid and kept me surprisingly entertained. I think stronger instrumentation would've taken this much farther, and I hope one of her other albums does just that.

This thing is a rough listen, despite its clean production and great vocalists, as the whole thing is impeccably fake sounding. The instrumentation varies from smooth jazz lounge guitar playing to drum machines that would make the biggest pop stars from the time look away in fear, and the singing, while technically impressive, is a dime a dozen, and does nothing to stand above contemporaries. Perhaps it is to be celebrated for its safe textures in an era of unknowing, as if there is one thing this album is sure of, it's itself, but the whole thing is sleep inducing, and that can get aggravating even forty minutes later. An interesting juxtaposition to the music they would go on to make, but certainly not something to enjoy, as there are far smoother albums from the era in the same general genre as this one that go down far better.

I have mixed feelings while exploring such an important part of hip hop. You see waves of 2Pac fans wearing t-shirts, streaming his music, and generally just sharing the word of 2Pac at least once a week, and even if you manage to escape that, chances are your mind jumps to him when discussing almost anything 90s related. He and his brand are together a cultural phenomenon, one that you wouldn't expect to still last nearly thirty years after his death, but that very death probably only heightened his notoriety. I understand the success to some extent too. Conscious rap and gangster rap were at the top of their game in this decade, and to combine them could only lead to success. There had been crossover success stories like that in the past, you could argue it's Public Enemy's very brand, but something about 2Pac's take on the genre seems so... commercial, and that is both a blessing and a curse. The beats are repetitive, the lyrics predictable, and just the overall tone reeks of a bygone era, but it also makes the lyrics extremely digestible and relatable. Sure, you probably weren't slinging drugs in the hood, but you probably have felt bad for silly altercations with your mom that you only wish to apologize for. That at its core makes 2Pac unique, as there is very obviously something for everyone. There's some hardcore stuff, some softer stuff, some gangster shit, and some introspective meditations, and while it doesn't do any of these things remarkably well, it's that influence that drives so many of today's rappers to who they are today. There most likely wouldn't be acts all the way from the likes of Kendrick Lamar, to more cheesy pop stuff like acts like Alicia Keys and even Ed Sheeran. His reach was insane, and when you then think of all the new artists inspired by those acts, it shows how big of a web 2Pac created. Maybe that is a negative to you, maybe it isn't, but it is certainly something to look upon with a certain fondness and appreciation. I don't find myself loving most of the songs here, and, of course, it is far too long to be enjoyable as an album, but there is certainly stuff here to like, and I can't look down upon that, even if the album isn't for me.

Ray Charles assuredly deserves his notoriety within the American lexicon, and his seamless bridging of R&B, soul, pop, folk and country music into one solid sound is certainly to be praised. However, over sixty years later, the album gives off an unintended side effect of being too homogenized to sound like anything remotely worth talking about. It has its hits, it has his voice, and it has a swinging production not unlike Sinatra's best, but something just feels bland. Music's ability to vary and shift is one of its best features, and to mold it into one blob does wonders for bringing people and taste together, but only damages the songs inside. It is an album with tons of passion, but nothing to truly call remarkable, and I can only imagine this issue worsens with each passing decade. Good music of the past, but still definitively music of the past, and I can't help but think this rang true only a couple of years after this release.

I'm absolutely sure that this album, as well as the rest of Can's catalog, clicks instantly with certain people, but I've only discovered Can's album is a sonic groove that goes over my head with every initial listen. To combat this, I've basically tuned myself so that I can expect to listen to any of their releases multiple times before I fully form any opinion. Yes, Tago Mago's length does scare me with this ruleset, and yes, I realize I should be doing that with most albums, that's a flaw I'm willing to acknowledge, but I will do very little to fix it, and for that I apologize. But I digress, once I get over this first listen hurdle, that's when I know the fun is truly about to begin, and this album does not disappoint. In fact, I would say in general that it absolutely blew my expectations out of the water, with that repetitive yet hypnotizing beat sucking me in almost instantly once I had accepted my fate, and under that spell I was album to see this album for its subdued attempts of making sure the listener is just having a good time. Yes, it may be niche in its exterior presentation, but on the inside you discover a perfect blend of the naturalistic sounds of the jungle with the robotic discotheque found on every street in the year 3000. You may have to sift around a little for those truly magnificent nuggets, until you realize you've been panning for gold on a river of the stuff. Every note, every decision, the correct one. An album to make you dance, an album to make you lay in bed and contemplate, and maybe an album to make you (awkwardly) do both. What I'm saying is this may not be the near perfect psych-pop showcase that is their Ege Bamyası project, but it still goes somewhere beyond that. I'm entranced, and I'm loving every second of it.

Far more Eno-inspired than I was expecting, this album's synths are exactly why many modern takes on the synthpop experience just don't grip me in the same way as releases from the late 70s. The technology wasn't new, nor was it perfected, so you get a good mix of experimentation that may not always work perfectly, but has so much variety behind each note, each layer, that you can't help but be entranced by little intricacies. Whether it be the low bass that grips onto your ear drums, or the bloop-y high notes that feel like they're from the same future as the film Alien's computers. It is all so charming, yes, but it has some serious merit in its crafting of a good pop hook with so little; Cars was a minor hit for a reason. It isn't overproduced, and it also isn't lacking in substance to keep the listener entertained at every miniscule change-up from song to song. Sure, Observer is just proto-Cars, but admiring the small differences is what brings be joy from this era of music. Just pure musical experimentation, and being able to make it onto the airwaves with that experimentation? That's when you know you have something cooking.

I know this album isn't niche, as it is probably one of the more famous indie releases of the 90s, but this album could've only ever been heard by three people and a dog and I still think it would have this vagueness coating its outer layer that would drive away additional listeners. Once again, not saying this is hard to listen to for the common person either, as it is surprisingly listenable, catchy, and has a good driving tempo throughout that actually most reminds me of Nirvana's MTV appearance in its sound and structure. It is just so fast past that things fly by, and you realize three songs have been played for you, and you thought it was one. It actually makes me most surprised that the band isn't brought up more, because Guided By Voices' seemingly disdain for the three-minute pop/rock tune feels so very 90s anti-establishment in its own, melancholic way that I can't help but really dig it. Each song is fresh and unique, with my earlier confusion on the fusing of songs instead coming to realize the whole project is like one big song, with an overall theming that I can't quite pin down, but the feeling is just there. That is all to say, I love the low fidelity: the fuzzy guitars, the offbeat production, the unique lyrics, all of it. Sure, there are definitive "better" songs (there's a reason Game of Pricks ended up on the IT Crowd and not Cigarette Tricks) but there is never an obvious song to pick out and say "this was made to be the best," it just feels like an album jammed out in a couple of days, with the best of only being discovered in post, and that feels like the best way to make an album. It has some pacing issues, as it does feel like the idea becomes a little tired in the last ten minutes, and as I said, not every song is one you're going to be putting on over, and over, and over... but this whole thing is just extremely well-made, despite its coarse exterior, and I quite enjoyed my time with it.

I'm one of those sickos who doesn't mind the song Sex on Fire, but I completely understand why it seems to be the bane of those listening to rock radio in the mid-2000s. However, this seems to be a bit more bluesy, and while that isn't usually my cup of tea, this has a similarity to other garage rock acts of the 2000s such as the Strokes where I actually enjoy it a little bit. His voice takes some adjusting, but the grooves are all accounted for, and while it can be repetitive, no song is ever with you for more than four minutes, so it flies by. This is an album I can appreciate just for its respect of the listeners time and energy level. I wouldn't say it has something for everyone, but it seems just safe enough to be cool, Summer vibes, and I can vibe along with it.