gingerninja155

Personally, I find the story behind why this album exists in the first place more interesting than the album itself, but I don’t hate the album either, despite how dark and depressing it is. To make a very long story short, this guy was drugged out of his mind and tried to axe murder his band. He later gets given a studio and a shitty tape recorder and makes this, an album that’s not only over an hour long, but also sold abysmally at the time of release. It’s also, maybe unsurprisingly, his only album. He was in mental care facilities pretty much the rest of his life after his axe incident. If I was a betting man I would also say that’s why critics love this album. Much like the former frontman for Pink Floyd, Syd Barrett, both of them were in the process of legitimately losing their minds when they released their albums. It’s fascinating, it’s sad, and at times it’s somewhat incomprehensible. But it’s not terrible. I can’t decide if it’s a 2 or a 3. But if it’s a 3, it’s a very low 3. I can tolerate it, but I don’t love it. My favorite song was “War In Peace”, and my second favorite was “Grey/Afro”. Definitely wouldn’t return to this album, but I am surprisingly happy that I listened to it, if not only to listen to what someone who’s not quite there would make. It’s quite a weird trip. You know what, I keep flip flopping between a 2 and a 3. For the interesting story behind the album, and for not aggravating me as much as I was expecting it to, I’ll give it a 3. That seems fair. It might at times be incomprehensible, and he might say very strange nonsensical things, but it was at least weird enough to keep listening the entire way through. So yeah, I feel pretty good about giving this one a 3 actually. But the fact that it’s over an hour long and was never supposed to see the light of day for a release just blows my mind. I don’t know how you feel good about releasing this album, knowing how far gone the guy was at this point. He’s not an amazing singer, but he can admittedly play the guitar pretty well, so that makes the whole album bearable. But yeah. His story?? Much more interesting than the album itself.

As a Prog enthusiast, I am very familiar with Emerson, Lake & Palmer. This is the type of music that for sure isn't going to be for most people, but it fits my specific brand of autism perfectly. In fact, I understand why Prog works far better than I do Jazz. One is uniform and fun but still gets very crazy, and the other is simply unorganized chaos where everyone is trying to take over as the leader. With how many people still to this day love Jazz, it bugs me that Prog clearly hasn’t achieved the same level of love and understanding, as is evident by the criminally low rating for this album. I prefer Prog, and this album is no exception. It takes a little while to get going, but once you hit “The Old Castle”, it starts picking up steam and blesses your ears with some synthy bangers, then you get to my favorite song right after, “Blues Variation”, which is even trippier, and has an awesome sound to it. My one and biggest complaint with this album is that I don’t understand why it had to be live?? You really aren’t getting anything with the audience but a slight irritation that they’re as present as they are. They also take up a bit too much time with cheering and ruin the flow a bit. Not a lot but it’s a tad obnoxious and worth mentioning at least. Being live, the audio quality also isn’t as good as it could be. That last one’s not a huge issue, but Prog is meant to be enjoyed sounding the best it possibly can. Quite frankly, Tarkus is on the list as well as Pictures At An Exhibition, so it’s a little weird that the ladder is on here at all. I’m not complaining because this is the exact kind of sound that I love, but with all the glaring omissions not included on the list to begin with, I’m pleasantly surprised this one made the cut at all. It is also my first of the 2 E,L&P albums on the list, with my beloved 5 star Tarkus being reviewed some time later, whenever the site lets me listen to it. But for now, I love this album as well, even if I wish it wasn’t live. A 4 out of 5, and I will be returning to it. This might not be everyone’s style of music, but it’s my all time favorite for a reason. It’s fun to listen to and easy to get lost in the music no matter the situation.

I will admit, this is another one of those albums that I grew up with, so I’m a bit biased here. That being said, “E-Pro” and “Go It Alone” are worth the price of admission alone and by themselves are enough to push this album to a 5. I rolled Sea Change earlier, and I still gave it a 4 because I love Beck and his unique voice, but that album just has an overwhelmingly sad tone. It matches with what he was going through at the time, but Guero is at the bare minimum a little more hopeful and fun. This above anything else is what I know Beck for, and in my opinion this is his magnum opus. It’s weird and verbose, every song is different from the one before it, and it absolutely bops. 13 songs and 49 minutes that feel like they’re over in the blink of an eye, with some iconic album art to match. This one is a 5 for me and I don’t even have to think about it. Odelay is pretty great and weird as well, but this album is peak. Speaking of, this is the second of 3 albums by Beck I have rolled for the project, with only Odelay now remaining. I’m expecting to give it a 4 or a 5 as well. Beck is pretty damn good, and it’s never easy to pin down his genre of music, which is what makes it so good. You never know what you’re going to get with him, but you can be sure it will be good. Sure, it’s all Rock and maybe just a little bit of Pop thrown in, but listen to just how different the first 5 songs on this album are from each other and you’ll get it. There’s going to be something specially made for you somewhere in this album. Or in my instance, the entire album was made for me. It effortlessly shows the growth Beck went through in his career up to this point, and keeps the signature weirdness, but eliminates the depressing tone of his more recent albums around that time. “E-Pro” is my favorite song on this album, and I don’t know how it couldn’t be. It simply rocks, and every part about it from the lyrics to the beat are simply iconic. It’s my favorite Beck song in general and one of the ones I always find myself coming back to. And there are quite a few I come back to frequently. This album rocks, it’s a 5 star album for me and that’s all I need to say about it. I’d excitedly been waiting to roll this one, and now I’m going to be bummed I’ve already done so. Beck is a great musician and I’m always very happy hearing him in whatever he’s in.

This album grew on me so quickly and immediately that I can actually completely overlook the singer and his voice. My main takeaway from this album is that the guitar playing is phenomenal in places. I added 3 songs from this album to my frequent rotation playlist. But I just don’t love the singer. He irritates me so badly that I have to take a full star off. Without him, this album is a 4, but with him it’s a 3. Luckily, I am able to drown him out easily and focus on the killer riffs. Favorite songs on this one were “Animal Lover”, “Pantomime Horse”, and my favorite song on the album, “Moving”. For a singer with a voice I don’t like, the baseline for an album starts at 2. It’s rare, but this one just doesn’t do it for me. It’s also exceptionally rare that I can look past the voice so much to the extent that I considered giving this one a 4 star rating. Also interesting to note is that this band apparently wasn’t allowed to call themselves Suede here in the United States, so they’ve got 2 separate pages on Spotify. One called Suede, and then the North American version, The London Suede. Don’t think I’ve experienced a band having to change its name like that before, but it was worth mentioning. Anyway, the riffs and vibes on this album are amazing. At 55 minutes long it pushes it a little bit but not too much. It gives you plenty to love and perhaps even leaves me wanting a bit more. A surprisingly great album to be sure. It’s a very high 3 out of 5. Any gripes I have with the singer and his voice are drowned out by the crazy good guitar playing. Also completely unrelated to anything on the album whatsoever, but the Midterm Elections were today with a historic outcome heavily in favor of the Democratic Party. So this album is going to be on my mind for a little while, forever associated with politics. Think of that what you will. I’ve never heard of Suede before, but they’re notable enough to warrant having 2 albums on here. This was my first of the 2, and my first impressions are pretty good. I look forward to the next one, whenever that may be.

The Byrds are back on my timeline once again I see. Each album that passes, I remark how unbelievably sick of this band I am. My last encounter with them was about 2 weeks ago, and once again I was thoroughly unimpressed with it. This album is the highest rated from them on the site, not only for just The Byrds, but also for the associated acts consisting of solo albums of multiple The Byrds members. After listening to it, sure. It’s not terrible. I’ve probably enjoyed this one considerably more than their other albums. In fact, I managed to listen to it all day. How about that?? The band that I’m almost as sick of as Elvis Costello managed to put out a pretty good one here. The funniest part about the whole thing though is that chronologically, this is their first album on the list. Actually, it’s their first studio album, which means that for The Byrds, each album just gets progressively worse. But this one actually was somewhat catchy throughout, and some of the guitar riffs were surprisingly good. My favorite song here is “I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better”, but weirdly enough it’s for a personal reason that I won’t get into. Let’s just say that today was pretty tough to get through, and that song spoke to me in a way that only music can. It’s not often I get THAT sentimental about a song, an entire album really, but I think I really needed to listen to this album today. Of course, this album is credited as being the inspiration for a whole lot of talented musicians that came after, and having listened to it all day, I can confidently tell you that this is The Byrds at their absolute best, and I really didn’t mind listening to this today at all. That being said, it’s still not exactly my cup of tea, and it’s not something I would really need to return to. It’s a 3 out of 5, but I’m very glad I got to spend some time with it. Of all the albums that haven’t aged particularly well but are only on this list because they inspired the people who came after, this really is not one of them. I believe this album has a very good reason to be here, unlike the 4 other Byrds albums. This one not only didn’t bother me, I even rather enjoyed it. You probably won’t find me saying that about this band again, so enjoy it while it lasts, The Byrds. Still a few more of your albums to go, and I don’t see any of them topping this one. We’ll see though. We will see.