Rated 6/10
Blur just can't help themselves, overloaded album with selective good to great songs weighted down by a large number of absolute dross. For every "Girls & Boys" style bangers theres a dull a fuck "Tracy Jacks" chaser but then it's followed up by the likes of "End Of A Century" and "Parklife", maddening really..
It's got nothing to do with your "Vorsprung durch Technik", you know
Billy Bragg goes a little jangly and remains political and the political side is still as relevant today as ever.
Peak dirty rock and roll.... Rod Stewart being super fucking sleazy, Ronnie Wood found a fuzz pedal and went into overdrive with crunchy guitar licks everywhere. Ronnie Lane's driving bass filling the space alongside Ian McLagan organs and Kenney Jones drums. Everyone is absolutely on point here and it comes to a, frankly, orgasming crescendo at the end of side 1's "Stay With Me".
Should come with a pack of smokes for afterwards
Rated 6/10
Pretty middle of the road really, nothing stood out, nothing excited me, it all blended together into a dull mix.
Rated 8/10
RIP Brian Wilson, composer of teenage symphonies to god.
An astonishingly good live album, smashing together the metal and the symphony, perhaps a little too good as each note is perfect... I've seen bands become a little loose with playing songs for the 1000th time but everything is studio quality here. Its almost the uncanny valley of live albums.
Anyways, songs are great, "No Leaf Clover", "Hero Of The Day", and "Nothing Else Matters" are the highlight for me
Rated 8/10
Just a powerful distinctive voice, and this is real country and really beautiful.
Rated 10/10
Much like her eventual contemporaries like Fiona Apple, Alanis Morissette, Ani DiFranco, and PJ Harvey (all of whom I adore), Tori Amos came out the gate absolutely fully formed and has only gotten better with age. This album is absolute ass kicking, deeply personal, and thoroughly exquisite all at the same time.
Rated 8/10
Starts off all dreamy ambient stuff in the first half, then "Hero" comes on and jolts you awake and it becomes a whole different album.
Rated 4/10
Jazzy sound of that particular era, probably fueled a thousand early 80s dinner parties where people schmoozed, did cocaine, shared partners, and laughed about new fangled things like how do they set the clock on the VCR?
Rated 6/10
Experimental improvisational jazz man, just a bunch of cats sitting about and jamming freeform and exploring riffs endlessly... One piece clocked in at 4 minutes and change and I almost fell over with shock.
Rated 4/10
In fact it's not timeless, it's very much of its time, and that time has long since gone... But it takes balls to release a double album as your first, and have the opening song be 21 minutes long. I was never a fan of the jungle/drum and bass genre before but after 21 minutes of "Inner City Life/Pressure" I'm absolutely still not.
Rated 6/10
Some funk early on, some motown soul later, something for everyone. Their version of "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" lags far behind Marvin Gaye, Gladys Knight & The Pips and even Creedence Clearwater Revivals versions though.
Rated 6/10
Nowadays this would just be EDM, but streets never forget the days of House music. There's a slew hard trancey bangers here, way too hard and trancey for an average Tuesday morning though....
Rated 4/10
It's all been done before by better people, one song sounds like a Sigur Ros ripoff, one sounds like generic indie band sample #8 in GarageBand. It's not bad per se, it's just so bland overall apart from the abrupt ending, that caught me off guard.
Surprisingly chill and feels like a Spiritualized vibe when it gets really orchestral, but you can tell its got Brian Eno's fingerprints on it
Rated 8/10
New Wave Psychedelic Surf is a genre right? This is a whole ass party on a record, everything you need is here
Rated 4/10
There's moments during "This Is Music", "On Your Own", and "Drive You Home" where Richard Ashcroft just can't hit or sustain the notes he's looking for, and it's just sad... Sad he'd even attempt it. He seemingly thinks he's a big time singer/frontman with chops and swagger when really he's a warlber of bad teenage poetry (at best) to mediocroe music.
Now, again, I'm of the age where I could appreciate The Verve when they broke out but now I'm merely thinking I had their albums at the time just to have them, because I increasingly don't even like them, I don't even remember if I listened to this one really outwith a couple of songs... They're all so fucking long, like does this album require 3 songs that are over 6 minutes long? Fuck. No. Length does not equal epicness and volume does not ensure quality.
Rated 8/10
The funky clavinet in "Superstition" is god tier, the whole song is god tier... A song so good he performed it on god damn Sesame Street (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ul7X5js1vE) and went tour with the Rolling Stones. But, most importantly, he finally shed the "Little Stevie Wonder" era off and became a serious artist, and was launching into a whole new atmosphere.
Rated 8/10
It's 1997, Britpop was sweeping the nation and old men Primal Scream are still in their twisted psychedelic phase making an alternative soundtrack to a movie no one really remembered. A dark road trip with a bleak ending...
There goes the challenger being chased by the blue, blue meanies on wheels. The vicious traffic squad cars are after our lone driver. The last American hero, the electric centaur, the demi-God. The super driver of the golden west...
