Reviews by gregorsmith

Painful plain 80s British New Wave band playing painfully plain music for the masses. The 80s was a dark time, you can't tell me otherwise...

Classic singer songwriter doing classic songs shit, loaded with songs you know/knew but couldn't put your finger on. Also it's the emphasis for the "Beautiful" Broadway show, how many albums can say that?

Never really got into Motorhead, everyone knows that one song "Ace of Spades" (I knew it from an episode of The Young Ones, dating myself a bit) but I couldn't name another by them, so a long ass live album probably isn't the best way to ease yourself in... Hard rock but hard listening too.

This sucked, not a one star level of sucking, but it sucked all the same

I like Queen, but... Confession time.... I've been alive for 46 years nearly, and never actually listened to one of their albums. I grew up on the Greatest Hits albums, and some of those appear here, but the rest are just kinda meh?

Breezy british pop rockers with a surprisingly long album that never outstayed its welcome. 15 songs crammed into a pacy 40 minutes means most are sub 3 minutes, perfect song length. Otherwise it's a wholly unremarkable album, it just is, it feels super cozy and warm but I'd not consider it a *must listen to* album.

Trip Hop, but not quite... Not quite Massive Attack, not quite Portishead, Not quite Sneaker Pimps, somewhere in between but not quite.

Now, I grew up in the West of Scotland and I've heard 1,001 names for Irish catholics that would make your blood boil and your toes curl, and the N word WAS NEVER ONE OF THEM.

"Accidents Will Happen" is a bop though, as is "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding"...

On the Beach features moody, atmospheric tracks like "Walk On" and "See The Sky About To Rain", but the pacing sags significantly in the second half, becoming sluggish and meandering. While it makes for a solid background listen, it lacks the consistent hooks to be considered a masterpiece, resulting in a middle-of-the-road experience.

The end of The Attractions, Elvis would ditch them for a solo life of being an international art thief... Says it all really.

Good to great, you can't deny its impact.

They'd get better in the second album with songs like "Dream Baby Dream", but this... this ain't it. Basic, monotonous, beats straight from a Casio keyboard and the blown out screaming in "Frankie Teardrops" is enough to plunge this into the depths for me.

Not Beck at his best, but not at his worst either. A few stand out tracks like the Rock Band video game banger "E-Pro" (that glomps on Beastie Boys "So What'cha Want") makes it rise above plenty of other releases, but we're far from peak Beck here, but thats ok.

One good song, and a lot of jangly guitars. Worse bands that this have done a lot more with less...

I've already had Low and rated it 3 stars in the past so it's time to have a day of reckoning about David Bowie in Berlin. It wasn't all that great... Don't get me wrong, the first half is stupendous but, like Low, the second half falls apart as Brian Eno gets a little too involved and it's all new agey ambient instrumentals all over again.

If you took the first half of Low and the first half of this and smooshed them together it would be a top 5 all time album.

Bowie in Berlin was more than the sum of its parts.

This is a trip, the story behind it and the aftermath of it is wild, critique of military juntas and politically motivated deaths aside, this album is a straight up party groove. It's a strange juxtapose to be reading the wikipedia entries on the album and, indeed, Fela Kuti's life while chair boogieing to the beats they laid down.

Starts off strong with "My Sweet Lord" and "Wah Wah" inside the first few tracks but then it just gets drawn out, like does track 4's "Isn't It A Pity" need to be 7 minutes long with an album ending-style coda? And then the actual album ends on a series of instrumentals that play like 12 bar blues...

It could have been 5 stars, but it just keeps dragging itself down

Opens with "I Wanna Destroy You" that sounds like it's a cross between The Byrds and Cheap Trick and not a million miles away from Gigolo Aunts, and all I could think of was how good it would be for an odd throuple 2 camera BBC Two 90s sitcom starring two hideous guys and a blonde bombshell. It would run for 3 series, so around 18 episodes, and then a christmas special reunion episode years later when one of the guys has a huge tax bill to pay after his bid to transition to America failed spectacularly...

But I digress.

Without this there would be no Run-D.M.C., and without Run-D.M.C. there would be no Beastie Boys (seriously, Rock Box was basically proto-Licence To Ill), and no Beastie Boys would make me sad... THis whole album hits hard and is wheelin', dealin', got a funny feelin', and rocks from the floor up to the ceilin'

And it's like that, and that's the way it is...

This is, by far and away, the glamorous indie rock and roll Brandon Flowers croons about...