Reviews by gregorsmith

"Stop Me If You Think You've Heard This One Before"

Urgh, Morrissey. The original incel?

I had to find this album, the digital equivalent of digging through crates of vinyl, simply because it's nowhere to be found. Not on Spotify, not on Apple Music, not on YouTube Music, only available as a YouTube video of the whole album.

And it's weird as fuck, fuzzy everything, Doors-like keyboards, seemingly random lyrics, basic beats that Meg White would be proud of. Actually, this is the birth of The White Stripes 30 years early.

Honestly, only really heard their Breakfast In America album before, and the lonesome harmonica this opened with really belies the shit you're about to get into. Yes, its MOR Prog Rock, but it is very well produced MOR Prog Rock, its not pulling itself at the seams like some Prog Rock of the 70s was doing, nothing overstays its welcome, its quite punchy in comparison to the 10 minute+ sweeping epic songs Pink Floyd and Rush were doing

"Street Fighting Man" and "Sympathy For The Devil" aren't enough to lift this mediocre Stones album up to the pantheon of later releases. Brian Jones would be cycled out before his unfortunate death, so in many ways it's the end of one era and the start on a new...

War? What is it good for? The funk apparently...

Slow and melodic for the most part. The Spotify version was incomplete so that might go against it, only real standout for me was the cover of "Nature Boy"

Electronic bossa nova? Not quite as good as I hoped it would be. Alright background music but nothing you'd seek out to listen to.

Very much of its time, this was the sounds of the summer of 1998 for me, but 25 years later (almost) I was fully expecting it to have aged badly, but by the time I got to the fourth track, "Gangster Trippin", I was fully invested and chair boogying...

It's a layered cake of repetitive banging beats, pitched sequenced sounds, repetitive sampled vocals, I can certainly appreciate the craft that went into it, moreso that it was done without the modern tools people take for granted, I mean he produced it using C-Lab Creator on an Atari ST that was already pretty old by 1998 standards (watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLjgXPDzeZo to see how homebrewed his studio was).

Nostalgia ain't what it used to be, but I enjoyed this trip down memory lane, though it does get a little weak in the back end aside from "Praise You".

Bad, and not in the 80s "bad meaning good" way, just.... Questioning how this made it onto this listing.

Doesn't even have the version of "Tainted Love" that segues into "Where Did Our Love Go?", and the rest is pretty down and dirty sleaziness... Minimal beeps and boops make up the soundtrack to a thousand nights in gay clubs across the land.

Dylan met the Beatles in late 1964, decided to turn electric, then proceeded to record this album in the space of 2 days (TWO FUCKING DAYS) in early 1965 and released it months later, to call it a seismic shift in the musical landscape is an understatement.

Shame so many people just go "oh shit, another Dylan album" and proceed to downvote each subsequent iteration, but fuck, this has "Subterranean Homesick Blues" with its proto-rap lyrical flow (Dylan was an OG MC not Kurtis Blow) AND "Maggie's Farm" that set Newport aflame, its a great album.

Anther artist I had previously enjoyed through their greatest hits release, and more than a few appear on here. This felt absolutely stripped back, just one man and his guitar, everything else melts away. Every song hits just right, warm feelings, even in the sad songs.

Honestly, this album offers up infectious rhythms and breezy guitar, a welcome break from the Anglo-American biasness of this list. Though the dated synths and repetitive arrangements make it a demanding listen. While the artist’s history adds baggage, it remains a high energy, sunny curiosity perfect for breaking up a standard playlist.

Your favourite rock band's favourite rock band... Soaring guitar solos, epic drum fills, driving bass and organ, and a falsetto voice to die for. Speaking of Rock Band, Foreplay/Long Time was so much fun to play on that game

My one abiding memory of Kasey Musgraves was her killer Coachella 2019 performance that included this great bit of banter during the live rendition of "Velvet Elvis"

"When I say 'yee,' you say 'haw.' Yee! (Haw!) Yee! (Haw!)"
"When I say 'yee,' you say 'haw.' Yee! (Haw!) Yee! (Haw!)"
"When I say 'yee,' you say 'haw.' .....! (Haw!) ... I didn't say fuckin' Yee!"

Played them like a fiddle...

Started real, ended weird, par for the course when you used to do shrooms at Bonnaroo I guess.

Urgh, my second Kate Bush album, both either side of the excellent Hounds of Love, both unmitigated shite...

I love the lore behind some the albums on the list, like this one. Willie was tired of the overproduced Nashville sound, holes up in a new studio in Texas and laid this down in under a week, including mixing. Like, how? More talent in his pinkie finger...

4 all time songs in "Candle In The Wind", "Benny And The Jets", "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" and "Saturday Night's Alright (For Fighting)" amd, frankly, I've given other album 5 stars for much, much less...

Cyndi either has a voice you love or hate, but how you can hear "Time After Time" and say you hate that voice is beyond me. Classic mid 80s pop, hits all the right notes, ticks all the right boxes.

Proto-Flaming Lips and about 100 songs long, but rarely going over 2 minutes per track, quite a trip. LoFi taken to the absolute lengths of low fidelity as it sounds it was recorded on a handheld tape recorder.