Reviews by gromit

They are way better when they have bass! And it's not bad at all but definitely not my thing

Love that more soulful dance style of Britpop on display here. Some really cool stuff throughout and gotta be a solid 7/10 record

Just not very enjoyable unfortunately

Solid enough :)

She is the greatest of all time tbh, this is probably a 5 but after first listen I was feeling her other record in the list a bit more

Exactly the kind of album I want to hear doing this challenge! An example of an album at the top of its style, this is an all killer no filler record with excellent musicianship and songwriting and deserves to be here for sure

So so sick

This starts off so sick and then goes on for way too long. Like I loved the first ten minutes but I feel obliged to go 2 on the basis that I was desperate for it to be over for like 25 minutes straight

Album is a bit mediocre, but tell me how did they get Hero of the War to sound like evil Mumford and Sons in 1969??

Has very high highs, shows what Elton is good at - unfortunately as a double it also has some pastiches and some of these (the reggae track lol) are quite low. I think it's still a 4 but a 7/10 album overall

First half is a 5/5, second half is a 3 or maybe even slightly less, it feels like a 3 overall even with such good stuff in the first half. If Congratulations comes up I'll give it a 5 tho

Honestly kind of a weird record. Sounds like if The Strokes had the singer from Drive-By Truckers. Lyrically not great and the vocals don't always gel but the big hits work for a reason. Shocked to say I quite like it

I think if I were to hear this for the first time at 25 I'd give it 4* and say it's a really cool record but the worst songs are a little too long and the best songs have a bit of pastiche feel to them (and if I were to go back to the last album which has their BEST songs I'd also feel the same way moreso because the lows are way lower there). However I'm listening to this for like the twentieth time and I feel the same way I did when I was 16, that this is a record that has no limits to where it wants to go, continues to blow my mind and has at minimum 4 perfect songs, so it's got to be 5*

It's also aged really well no? It feels quite timeless now compared to all the other bands that tried their hand at doing a post-punk thing in the 2000s, it has like a real effortlessness and charm. Hoping this gets revived again in the nostalgia cycle, I can see some of it with the 'indie sleaze' stuff but none of it really compares to this imo.

Edit: it's actually a 4* :(

Songwriting is good still but the album is too long, the production feels off and the theming of the record just doesn't do much for me in the big 2026

Huge step up from first album imo, I like how it has a lot of Springsteen in the sound and it ends at just the right time for me so justifies the length (although on first listen Sprawl feels a little unnecessary even if good)

Solid prog pop record, full of hits really

I thought this was cool for sure but nothing really really exceptional

It's pretty sick but it does have that like slightly inaccessible element that you get when you have a double live album, like this is basically a jam record for the fans and I can't say I'm a devoted fan of Deep Purple or anything so it's more of a 3

The first half is an all timer but this feels a little too short to have as many troll songs as it does, would be curious to listen to a longer record from them or one where they don't have like 4 sound collage tracks

Big step up on the last Rush record especially on the middle stretch, they bring in kind of a new wave esque sound in places which really helps and I liked this a lot