Reviews by gregorsmith

Polarising Metallica album, to some they sold out, to some it was the gateway to metal. It was my gateway to metal, so my judgement is pretty clouded. I loved this as an early teenager, they wouldn't sell out till Load in my eyes, but this was epic, brash, loud, deep, meaningful, meaningless. As soon as "Enter Sandman" kicked in, I knew loud guitars was that which I desired (not fuel not fire), not the indie dance and acid house rave scene that was sweeping the nation. Grunge hadn't come around yet, Britpop was years away, so metal was my jam, much to my parents derision.

The aforementioned "Enter Sandman" lets you in to what this album is all about, it gently lures you in before Lars bass drum kicks you in the gut, Kirk and James guitar play is a shock to the system and they let Jason be heard... Bob Rock's production can be problematic but he's in his element here.

It's a fucking monster of an album in every sense...

The funk gonna get you, whitey.... Just a masterclass in grooves and vibes.

This is just bad (not 1 star bad, but pretty bad), probably why I hadn't heard of Cee Lo before Gnarls Barkley.

Buffalo Springfield would go on to arguably greater things via Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and this album is just kinda here... Folksy rock and down tempo is the order of the day here, and it can be pleasant at time, great at others but overall it feels like its less than the sum of its part.

Hey, it's got "Tom Sawyer" and "YYZ", it's great!

As others have mentioned, beautiful music by a reprehensible human. And, like other case, you're supposed to separate the art from the artists but....

5 stars for Phoebe Bridgers (and boygenius), and Mandy Moore, and everyone else this monster tried to destroy.

0 stars for him, 3 stars to split the difference

Psychedelic Blues is apparently the way to my heart, "Roadhouse Blues" goes without saying, but the rest of this album was just a straight up groove on my frequency. Very little of the greatest hits appear here, but in some ways it was The Doors at their tightest.

I liked "Black Hole Sun", always have, but Soundgarden as a whole was always difficult for me to really get into and this is no exception. It's long and meandering at times, and you really need to be in a particular mood to appreciate it fully.

I often wonder how recency bias feeds into the whole "1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die" schtick, because we've come across more than a few 2000s era album that have, unfortunately stank like shit. This one doesn't, thankfully, but it's also nothing close to a must listen, its just a lot of mid 00s angst over mid beats...

That was the Partridge Family's "Doesn't Somebody Want To Be Wanted?" followed by Edison Lighthouse's "Love Grows Where My Rosemary Goes", as K-Billy's Super Sounds of the '70's weekend just keeps on truckin'

Name an instrument, any instrument.... Go ahead... Chances are this album contains it. I realised this during the Marimba infused "Clap Hands". It's really an eclectic mix of weird as fuck songs, hard to get into but harder to put down. Like riding the Alice in Wonderland ride at Disneyland while tripping.

Ubiquitous barely begins to describe this album as basically every track appeared in an advertisement or movie trailer of some description over the years. People hate this because of that overexposure, but it's a solid album, some tracks hit with a vengeance but it's the more chilled guitar instrumentals that resonate with me.

Mostly mid beats over funky basslines, surprisingly bouncy for 9am when I choose to listen to it

Sparks doing Sparks things, influential and years ahead of the rest.

Goodbye And Hello is a mixed bag for me, on one hand, you’ve got Tim Buckley’s incredible vocals and genuine emotional depth on tracks like "Pleasant Street" and "Once I Was", which honestly makes it easy to see where his son Jeff eventually got his talent from. But then there’s the rest of it with the dense baroque production can get pretty heavy. Sometimes the songs lean so hard into this theatrical Renaissance faire vibe that they just feel a bit dated and overdone. It’s definitely a bit of a meandering, uneven listen.

A musical and cultural renaissance for Simon here, some may call it appropriation of South African street music but I feel like it was shining a light on artists like Ladysmith Black Mambazo who would have never seen the light of day due to apartheid and the cultural boycott on South Africa.

It's a good to great album, it passes time effortlessly, I wouldn't argue if you gave it 5 stars, on another day I might have too. I just found most of it semi-forgettable as I went about my day while listening to it, like a half-remembered daydream.

Yoshimi was my gateway into the Flaming Lips discography, and this is just a lush sound that really ended the 90s on a high. I hate that I never got to hear it when it came out as summer 1999 was a transition for me from college to "working adult" and this really captures my vibe perfectly.

I don't really know what this is, or tries to be, but it ain't it...

Ethereal, sad, post-60s-hippy folk music perfection. Nick Drake really was built differently, this is everything Cat Stevens wished he could be, instead Drake makes it all sound so effortless.

Debuting Pavement sounded a lot like an electric Violent Femmes, definitely not a bad thing. A solid opening album, and fulfills the early 90s criteria of fitting on one side of a 90 minute cassette with plenty of time to spare.