Reviews by guggmo

Alright, fine. It’s a 5.

Yeah, I’m just as surprised at myself at this point. When we got “Highway 61 Revisited” as the 68th album in this whole thing, I wrote down that “there’s just something about Bob Dylan’s music that’ll probably stop me from giving him a 5, maybe ever”, and yet, here I am, giving the guy his third 5 in a row. I guess I’ve learned to appreciate Bob Dylan, although I do think there’s a pretty clear reason I said that back then, and it’s a reason that this album thankfully doesn’t lean into very often.

It’s not confusingly verbose purple prose half the time. Much like “Time Out of Mind”, I’d say a lot of these are surprisingly straightforward, just with a little more of a flowery language meant to evoke clearer imagery, as opposed to the more enigmatic riddles of “Highway 61 Revisited” or “Bringing It All Back Home”. I don’t wanna go track by track, but there’s a great blend of progressive social commentary mixed in with some genuinely witty / biting lines for the era, in a way that makes the whole “voice of a generation” thing feel a lot more earned. He was, what, 21 or 22 when he wrote most of this album? It’s not that he’s espousing anything new, he’s just putting it into words in a way that probably felt more contemporary for the era, especially with the conversational tone he takes on a lot of these tracks. There’s a lot of great verses here, and frankly, it’s too many to note. I think it’s all very digestible though, and certainly far more understandable on a first pass than whatever the fuck “Ballad of a Thin Man” & "Desolation Row" are supposed to be about.

It also helps that Bob Dylan’s presence here really is stripped down to its bare essentials: you get him, his voice (which feels shockingly controlled, melodic & genuinely good on a strong number of tracks), his guitar, and his harmonica. He can rip some damn good harmonica solos. It makes me sort of understand why the shift to a more electric soundscape on his later albums was met with some level of backlash. The conciseness of these tracks, & how present Bob Dylan feels as a narrator in them, letting the music act as more of a backing soundtrack for his delivery, all adds up to create a super effective style that lets the lyricism breathe out more. Going electric took away some of the focus on that lyricism, and I’m sure some people would’ve preferred for Bob to stay as a folksy, singing narrator as opposed to… well, a singer.

Again, I don’t really wanna go track-by-track here; I think the lyricism is what sells the album decently well (though the instrumentals are pretty damn good), so a lot of this album’s enjoyment will boil down to how much you can digest those lines / the humor in some of them, as well as dealing with Bob’s vocals, which are thankfully, nowhere near as nasally here as I thought they’d be. He still can’t really hold a note, though. It is a product of its time and there are definitely some dated references that will go over a less informed head (specifically for some actresses / name brands / other singers & whatnot), but I’m lucky enough to have a big trivia base in my head that I understood a good chunk of it. To my ears, I still don’t think it’s as good as “Time Out of Mind”; I think the last 3 tracks lose a little bit of steam, with 2/3rds being covers, and the last one being just a little too silly to close out what had been a mostly serious album to that point. They’re all good tracks, mind you, they just feel out of place in the track order. It is close to being in the conversation though, which I’m surprised by. All of that said, it’s a 5. A well-earned 5 too. Good job, Bob.

P.S.: “Blowin’ in the Wind” really is THAT good of a track. No wonder this is the album that made him famous.

I’m at a 5.

Not too much to say on that really; just a totally intimate nightclub performance of some wonderfully sung standards. A slight bit of PTSD for those who experienced the full 3-hour version of the Ella Fitzgerald album, perhaps, but since I listened to an abridged version, I don’t think I encountered any of these. Sarah Vaughan has a truly lovely voice, and the chances she gets on this album to show her natural charisma are well-appreciated. It’s obviously got a few little flaws, but I like that they’re kept in; no live performance, no matter how rehearsed, ever goes 100% well, and keeping them in makes it feels much more authentic. The audio quality is great for 1957 too, and while I do wish the band / crowd had just a little more of a presence like some of the other live albums on this list, they still have enough of one that this does still feel like I’m sitting in the crowd for it.

It’s a great live album, simple as that. The floor here is probably a 3 if you’re not big on standards, or a 4 if the mic falling over during “Willow Weep For Me” is a big enough issue for some reason. There’s a few little lull moments here and there on some tracks, but nothing that ever seriously took me out of the immersion. I enjoyed it a lot, and I think it’s a pretty darn good 5.

Honestly, I’m at a 5.

You look at the top reviews for this thing on the site, and there’s a whole lot of disdain & vitriol for what essentially boils down to… lo-fi music. This is just modern lo-fi music, but from 2002, recorded by 2 guys in a little shed for a recording studio, in a quaint garden, somewhere on the Isle of Wight. Treating this thing like self-pretentious indie pop when it’s literally just 2 dudes making songs in a shed is wild to me. You can hear the makeshift nature of this album through most of its tracks, and it’s kind of a miracle it comes out as cleanly & as well-produced as it does. The vocals are solid, but really hypnotizing whenever they hit a harmony. The lyricism is super abstract, presumably related to little slices of life on the island. The production / instrumental work is where this thing shines. It really is about as chill as it could possibly be, with the piano & guitar providing sort of a summer-y vibe to it throughout, with clear influences from 1960s psychedelic rock, a little bit of reggae, and mild hints of trip-hop & electronica. You know, lo-fi music. This is a very mellow album, and while it doesn’t necessarily do anything that special, it just creates a sort of vibe that feels really nice to sit in.

It might be the slight dichotomy of getting such a boldly produced cinematic album yesterday written by a cavalcade of artists, followed by possibly the most casual album on the list so far, coming from 2 dudes in a shed, striking my ears in just the right way, but I happened to really enjoy this. Don’t get me wrong, I understand the low scores & the claims that this doesn’t really deserve a place on the list over some other, well-deserving albums – believe me, I’d probably trade this for “Demon Days”, “Yourself Or Someone Like You”, “Ten Summoner’s Tales” or a number of other albums in a heartbeat, but I’m not necessarily mad that it’s here. If anything, I’m glad it is, because I never would’ve stumbled upon it otherwise. It is one of the most relaxing albums we’ve hit upon on the list, and it just caught me on a good day for it. The floor is definitely a 3, but I just think it’s my type of vibe, hence a 5. To be clear, not all 5s are created equal; it’s not like this is as good as Van Halen’s “1984” or anything. It’s just a vote of confidence, really.

I’m at a 3.5 that I’ll bump up to a 4, but I was struggling with this album for a while.

I do think she could do a better job of projecting more of her own voice onto these tracks, as opposed to settling for following some of the guides that it seems like she was given on the vast major– hold on, sorry, I think I started without some extra context. Let me rewind a little bit so you can try to figure out where I’m coming from.

This is an album with a cavalcade of contributions from other artists on the list, mostly with instrumentation from the Divine Comedy (who do a great job throughout), and tracks submitted by themselves, Elvis Costello, Nick Cave, Tom Waits, & Scott Walker, among others. It’s lead by German singer / actress Ute Lemper, who I have never heard of, and yet has a pretty darn good voice & a pretty darn good resume, namely in musicals. She didn't help to write *anything* here though, which is surprising; she's mostly here as a vocal catalyst for the tracks, and given the "cinematic" nature of the album, the fit works. This album is a set of 11 tracks (and then one utterly avantgarde piece by Scott Walker) that all feel like they’re taken from musicals / operas, and some of them are! “Tango Ballad” is from the Threepenny Opera, & “Streets of Berlin” is from a play called Bent, about the persecution of homosexual men in Nazi Germany. Of course, you’d never know any of this unless you actively looked up some of these tracks, and… yeah, that’s my immediate major issue with this album. A lot of these songs exist in their own space, without any leading context.

It is really noticeable throughout this album, straight from the beginning – “Little Water Song” is meant to be a contrasting track, showing a sort of wondrous beauty to the underwater scenery this lady is going through… as she’s being drowned to death by her lover, slowly losing consciousness. That dichotomy makes for a very good track, if you can get the context. I had to listen to it twice to fully get there, and I came out of it thinking the track should have opened with some kind of audio design to note a struggle, and really set up the track more fruitfully. This is my big issue with the album, and one that it takes a while to overcome, arguably never really doing so, given that it's all in slightly better writing. For the vast majority of tracks here, I think even just 30 seconds of sound design to add well-needed context would make a lot of these tracks click better.

My other issue with the album comes in the disconnect between tracks, and that’s part of the risk of having this many cooks in the kitchen, especially with such a broad style between them, and without any real "authorship" from Ute Lemper. Since this isn’t a concept album where all of the tracks connect, it feels more like jumping from scene to scene in a bunch of random different musicals, and I immediately felt that disconnect once “The Case Continues” happened; at first, I thought it might’ve been a continuation of the same drowning murder from the opening track, but instead it’s a track about a clingy heartbroken lady desperate to keep a boyfriend who broke up with her over the phone, with the worst (but also funniest) lines on the album: “My only crime was passion, wild and uncontrolled / If sex were an Olympic sport, we'd've won the gold”. How do you go from a lovely orchestrated track about the dichotomy of seeing beauty as you’re drowning to “but we should be having SEX right now, damn it!” to a (very good, mind you) James Bond-esque instrumental?

Granted, that issue becomes far less prevalent after “Streets of Berlin” (and trust me, the whole album improves exponentially by “Streets of Berlin”), but the first 5 tracks here don’t feel like they fit together at all. “Passionate Fight” is fine; it needs more work, but it’s a decent song about a guy who’ll never be satisfied by any one night stand he’ll get. “Tango Ballad” is really roughly structured, probably from being an English translation of German lyrics, & I could not get a single thing out of the lyrically incoherent “Couldn’t You Keep That To Yourself”. Elvis Costello, you’ve done better, man. The only thing that acted as a saving grace through the first 5 tracks is that the Divine Comedy do a great job with the instrumentals, and that Ute Lemper has a great voice. Seriously; she does a great job of keeping this album from falling apart. I do think she could do a better job of projecting more of her own voice onto these tracks, as opposed to settling for following some of the guides that it seems like she was given on the vast majority of these tracks (literally, stealing Elvis Costello’s inflections on most of the ones he wrote), but it’s not a big deal. The instrumentals & her vocals combined made each track still feel like a good listen, at the very least.

Thankfully (and I do mean *thankfully*), those vocals / instrumentals are finally met with some songwriting chops & just the tiniest extra hint of context / setup in each track that makes the whole album click much better starting with Tom Waits’ “The Part You Throw Away”. “Streets of Berlin” is good, by the way, it’s just desperately in need of the context I mentioned earlier. Tom Waits’ songwriting style does wonders here, for a track about relationship advice after a breakup with some good imagery & an Italian instrumental, and it’s the spark for a back half of the album that’s good enough to that’s good enough to pull this thing from a 3.5 (that I likely would've bumped down) up to a 4. “Split” just rocks; super fun back & forth. “Punishing Kiss” is probably the most ‘eh’ track in the back half; the first two verses really needed to be flipped to set up the context of a woman using a TV show as escapism for her life, but it’s explained decently enough, with a damn good instrumental to it. “Purple Avenue” is just lovely, and thanks again to Tom Waits for some vivid imagery. “You Were Meant For Me” feels like a “Defying Gravity”-esque climax, and while it still desperately needs some opening context, her vocals are stunning & the way the instrumentation swirls around her as the centerpiece of the “scene” makes for a fantastic listen. I was genuinely stunned it didn’t end the album.

“Scope J” is… strange. 11 minutes where I have almost no idea what’s going on, fully avantgarde, and Scott Walker’s production work here feels like a far cry from the Disney-esque baroque tones of “Scott 2”. Yet, I found myself kinda sold on the avant-garde nature of it all, as if the desperate thoughts of someone trapped in Russian captivity (from some war, I dunno when) & the lack of peace that comes with it were all brought to life in audio form. That was my interpretation, anyway. It’s a fascinating listen, and far, far removed from the rest of the album, yet I think that disconnect makes it stand out in a way that works as a closing track. It doesn’t fit at all, and yet, it worked for me.

If this had stayed at the same quality level as the first 5 tracks throughout, I probably would be at a flat 3. As it stands, it's a 3.5 that will go up to a 4 based on how much I liked the back half. Frankly, it's kind of a miracle. I'm not even wholly sure it’s earned it, given that it's effectively a mishmash of tracks from a bunch of different artists to help up prop up Ute Lemper as opposed to an album where she has any kind of an actual, established "authorship". It's definitely bothersome, but other artists have made whole careers out of being ghostwritten (like a certain Canadian rapper), so I can't fault it too badly here. It does, however, make me wonder if she has any actual writing talent of her own. I don't really know if I need to find out. Ultimately, something about the album from “Streets of Berlin” onward clicked for me far more – maybe it’s better instrumentation / lyricism across the board, maybe it’s the smallest amount of context helping the tracks lyrically, and maybe it’s just the more energetic nature of the back half covering up more of the flaws. I can’t really figure it out, but I don’t think I want to. I just know that it was more enjoyable, and that’s all I need to justify it. There’s really not an actively bad track here (OK, “Couldn't You Keep That to Yourself” kinda sucks, but shh), just some baffling early flow between tracks that doesn’t work, but it ended up winning me over on account of its musical strength. Nowhere near enough to get a 5, but I think it's an earned bump up to a 4 regardless, and I am genuinely glad it's on the list.

I cannot believe this album made me write my longest review.

I’m at a 10.

No flaws there. Not a single one. Just a CCR masterclass, really. John Fogerty’s vocals are on point here, the writing is about as sharp as it could possibly be, and the band is firing on all cylinders, especially in the guitar / percussion work. That is a stellar 42 minutes. The only track I knew going in was “Up Around The Bend” (all timer, obviously) – of course, “Lookin’ Out My Back Door” gave me a classic “this is that song” moment, & “Who’ll Stop The Rain” did as well. The cover of “I Heard It Through The Grapevine” here is electric; maybe just a tad long, but the way it builds & evolves around the melody for the final 7 minutes or so after playing it perfectly straight in the beginning is just super cool to hear.

“Ramble Tamble” is a great opener, & I liked the blues tones of “Before You Accuse Me” a lot. I’m surprised at the 1-2 punch of Little Richard inspired tracks for “Travelin’ Band” & “Ooby Dooby”, both of which gave me really big “Tutti Frutti” vibes, especially the latter. It just makes me think we need more upbeat, purely energetic tracks like that nowadays; make it go viral on TikTok next year or something. “Run Through The Jungle” is immediately striking with the intro & outro effect, and despite John Fogerty’s protests, that is a perfect anti-Vietnam track. “My Baby Left Me” has huge Ray Charles energy, in a good way, and I love the way the instrumentation layers itself throughout “Long As I Can See The Light”, which is a really strong capper on an album that’s loosely centered around traveling & leaving to escape some sort of hardship on a vast majority of the tracks, given that he finally finds a desire to return home, according to the lyrics.

I really, truly don’t have any complaints. That’s as close to perfect as you can get, I think. Stop reading this & just go listen to it, if you somehow haven’t; a foot-stomping banger of a time, elevated by John Fogerty’s voice and his pen, capturing the very frustrated essence of 1969 / 1970, in a way that just rocks like a motherfucker. I loved that – an easy, easy 10. I can only hope “Green River” is just as good.

I’m at a 4.5 that I’ll bump down to a 4, but I’ll be damned if I don’t want to give this a 5 just to reward its highest highs. Can’t justify it though.

It sure is 73 minutes of afrobeat-influenced jazz, with a little more of a lean towards the “jazz” than the “afrobeat” the longer the album goes along. I think it’s a delightful listen regardless, since it’s usually pretty rich in instrumentation, with melodies galore & some keyboard / percussion work that feels electric. However, there’s so, so many little paper cuts this thing has where I struggled to decide if it was a 4 or a 5.

The length is… yeah, it’s too long. A lot of these tracks do have a good structure to them, and at their best, they can make some of these 10 minute tracks sound more compelling (especially so on “Maesha”, what a track). Whenever these tracks lose their structure, or get far too loose, the album hits a stale point that sounds good, but just sort of blends together in a deeply unsatisfying way. Disappointingly, Miriam Makema’s track “Unhome” is an example of this, as is the closing track, “Ingoo Pow-Pow”. They’re not bad listens at all, but they both go absolutely nowhere the whole time, just feeling like a bit of a slog in the long run of an already long album. For “Ingoo Pow-Pow”, it’s even worse, because it just doesn’t feel like it deserves to close the album out over “Maesha”, at least not to my ears.

I also think this album just consistently misses the mark about when to end tracks; a lot of these build up to a really nice point, progressing in a way that feels like it’s the climax to end on… and then reverts back to the opening minute or so, just going along for another minute or two, like a YouTube video left on loop. It’s frustrating because there ARE tracks here that hit the fun, satisfying big-band finish, and do it spectacularly. That’s part of the “structure” issues I have here, which stops the album from having a more natural flow.

I really do want to give this a 5, but I can’t justify it to myself – the instrumentation feels great in the moment, but the compositions themselves aren’t as disciplined as they could be. Their technical skills are incredible, and when they can hit on an electrifying sort of moment, the album feels like it’s soaring. Whenever it hits a stale point though, it just feels like it’s stuck in a traffic jam, and those moments are too persistent to keep the album’s momentum as fruitful as it could be. It is still a deeply, deeply enjoyable jazz album, but I do wish there were more of the Afrobeat elements of the first few tracks retained throughout the majority of the album, as opposed to small scatterings of it in the back half, when it mostly becomes a straight jazz / blues album. It’s a bunch of smaller paper cuts, but it’s enough where I think I have to give this a 4; granted, a 4.5 bumped down to a 4 that I still really recommend as an album, but one that just doesn’t feel as complete as some of the other jazz albums we’ve gotten. Still though, pretty good stuff.

I’m at a 5. Hell, I’m actually probably higher. Hell froze over a while ago; this is a full tundra at this point.

When we got Tom Waits’ “Swordfishtrombones” in March of this year, I wrote down that “some of the lyrics on the tracks feel like a sort of contemporary, mildly buzzed Bob Dylan for the 1980s”. Bob Dylan, on this album, feels like the 1980s Tom Waits of the 1990s, which is basically to say that… well, he sounds a lot like Tom Waits here, telling some stories in the same little dirty dive bar that a group member imagined when they reviewed “Swordfishtrombones”. That imagery permeated into my head throughout the album, and I think it really makes the whole thing click that much more.

For 1997, this is no longer the voice of a generation writing protest songs, asking people how they feel, or writing endless amounts of vaguely confusing purple prose that felt like a novel to decipher. This is, surprisingly, the most straightforward Bob Dylan album we’ve gotten so far, helped by the fact that a lot of these are just tracks about being an older, heartbroken man sort of lamenting his mortality, his shattered relationships, the futile chase to retain them & the feelings of lost time that come with it. It’s an extremely grounded album, enhanced by Bob Dylan’s more gravely 56-year-old voice. Yes, it’s still kinda goofy, but he’s aged into a sort of old gunslinger of an artist who’s allowed to express these regrets in a way that feels very genuine. In a weird way, this is the most control I’ve heard Bob Dylan have in his voice, which is more than passable on a majority of these tracks. I hesitate to say he finally became a good singer, especially given what Adele did for “Make You Feel My Love” a decade later, but there are moments here where Bob Dylan really does sound confidently strong, and it gives the tracks an added sense of conviction.

Daniel Lanois’ production work is what truly, fully makes this album work. Bob Dylan provides a great foundation, but the moodier tones of the backing band, as well as the slight filtering on Dylan’s vocals throughout the album, add the contemporary touch that’s desperately needed to make this album feel like it’s from 1997 as opposed to 1967. In the same way that “Tanto Tempo” subtly infused its extra instrumentation into a bossa nova base, Daniel Lanois adds just the right amount of light grunge / trip-hop elements into Dylan’s style, where it adds to each track in a way that captures the same emotion & conviction that Bob Dylan put into writing & singing each of these tracks. It also helps that there’s a decent variety of genres explored here, perhaps most surprisingly the reggae / blues-inspired energy of “Can’t Wait”.

If there’s any one singular all-timer highlight here, it’s “Not Dark Yet”, which is one of the best-written tracks I’ve heard from any artist, ever. The sunset-driven imagery, building with past regrets & eventually culminating in this character on his death bed, felt like a man preparing for a funeral, in a way that reminded me deeply of “You Want It Darker”, with the instrumentation growing more intense in a way that felt reminiscent of Johnny Cash’s cover of “Hurt”. Granted, Bob Dylan is still alive, 28 years later, so that same emotional impact of his actual death is not there yet (and I hope it’s not there for a while longer), but the fact that the track feels so viscerally indicative of death is impressive all the same.

If there’s a lowlight here, well… yeah, it’s “Highlands”, but only because it’s 16 minutes. I actually didn’t mind it at all though; when I was listening, my brain went back to the old dive bar imagery that permeates the album – the stream of consciousness style, while sort of undermined by the repetition in the instrumental, slowly started to come around to work for me. In a way, I’m vaguely reminded of Weird Al’s “Trapped in the Drive-Thru”, where a lot of the dialogue is sort of uselessly conversational, and yet vaguely compelling, for seemingly no reason. (I refuse to give R. Kelly any credit.) Yeah, there’s a whole aside about some waitress in Boston that Bob Dylan barely indulged in drawing a picture of, but it serves to sell the bigger point of the track: Bob Dylan just wants to be a fucking hermit, but he’s in too deep at this point as an artist, and he just has to settle for mentally living in the highlands. Could’ve gotten to the point way faster than 16 minutes, but again, the dive bar imagery in my head made the track work more fruitfully.

Overall, it’s a remarkably strong album, and one that I wouldn’t possibly have expected from Bob Dylan, especially 3 decades after his most relevant period. He basically disappeared for the vast majority of the 1990s, only to come out with something that still holds up really well 28 years later. The writing is on point, his vocals have finally caught up, the production meshes perfectly, and I think the slight Tony Bennett-esque career renaissance that emerged from it was probably well deserved. Granted, I’m not sure if it’s “win the Grammy for Album of the Year over OK Computer” levels of deserved, but I’m surprised at the fact that it’s even slightly justifiable in my head. This is a damn good one, and I think it’s the best Bob Dylan album we’ve gotten, and probably the best one we’ll get. We have 3 more of these damn things to go, all from the 1960s. I can only hope at least one of them matches the quality of this one (and hopefully, that’s “Blonde On Blonde”) – to my ears, this is a 5, if not a little higher. It’s that good. Hell of a job, Bob.

I’m at a 4.5 that I’ll bump up to a 5. Forgive me, perhaps.

I’ve never listened to “folklore”, and I don’t know if that would enhance my enjoyment of this album or not, but I do think this album came in at just the right time. This is definitely a winter album, and with Daylight Savings Time having just happened, and all of the November / December-y vibes this gives off, I think the imagery present in these lyrics feels that much more vivid. Instrumentally, that mood is enhanced a lot more, given how many of these tracks are rooted in more simple, piano/guitar-driven melodies, straying far from her poppier influences on 1989, grounding everything in a way that just feels more authentic. Taylor Swift’s vocals are great here, evolving much more from the country twangs of her earlier albums, leaning into her contemporaries of the time (i.e., Lana Del Rey, Lorde, the rest of the Jack Antonoff girlies, etc). She’s sort of biting their style, but adapting it to her own strengths. Lyrically, I think this is the strongest album I’ve heard from her, collabing with a lot of more “indie”-centered artists (HAIM, The National, & Bon Iver) to hone her songwriting to her biggest strength: her storytelling.

I don’t give a shit about Travis Kelce’s dick or whatever the hell she apparently sang about on that one track from “The Life of a Showgirl” (which I also haven’t listened to, at least in full) – I do, however, give a shit about a well told story, and while a lot of these are still rooted in topics of love & heartbreak (most of which are thankfully, seemingly, not about herself), there’s a solid maturity to them that keeps them grounded, as well as an idealism to all of them that, while wholly unrealistic at points, at least feels hopeful in a way that clicks with my sensibilities. At one point during this album, specifically on “happiness”, I wrote down the words “these lyrics feel very Sorkin-esque” – you know, Aaron Sorkin, of “The West Wing” & “A Few Good Men” fame. If you’ve seen The West Wing at all, or any of the films / shows he’s done, then you have to be at least partially aware of the long, “inspired” soliloquies he writes for his characters, with a starry-eyed vision that strives to capture the very best of us, or something like that. Taylor Swift’s lyricism here occasionally feels Sorkin-esque, creating unrealistic expectations of amicable splits & ways to cope with heartbreak & trauma that you can just fly out of like an angel, and while it usually doesn’t bother me in the moments it pops up, I can sense an abrasion stemming from that, & it’s a trap that she’s fallen into more and more ever since “Midnights” (her first album after the “mores”) dropped.

When her lyricism is on point though, you get some truly great tracks like “champagne problems”, “‘tis the damn season”, “ivy” & “marjorie”, which are my 4 really big standouts from this album. They are some of the best Taylor Swift tracks I’ve ever heard. “Ivy” in particular feels like it’s pulling from a sort of Jane Eyre vibe that just appealed to me, with her poetic license shining through on that track in a really vivid way. Out of the 15 tracks here, I liked 12 of them, with only 3 not quite clicking for me, for one reason or another: “dorothea”, “cowboy like me”, & “closure”. I wish I could go more into depth about more of the tracks here, but I’m strapped for time, and I’m just not sure how to really describe them without just re-telling them. “marjorie”, however, I think deserves just a bit more: I know a lot of people who lost close ones during the pandemic, and something about those lyrics brought in one hell of an emotional wave.

Overall, I enjoyed this a lot. It’s far from perfect, but I do think this album has much higher highs than 1989, at least on a first pass. I’m not entirely sure if it’s a better overall album, given that this does end up feeling slightly bloated & a little bit too samey in the long run (hence the 4.5), but they’re very different albums at very different times at VERY different points in her career, so the comparison is a bit moot. I also just don’t have a nostalgia for this album that’s clouding my judgement, so do with that what you will. If I’ve gathered anything from this, it’s that I need to listen to “folklore”, preferably around the springtime, if the seasonal aspects of both albums are meant to be followed. I think it’s a damn good album, and whether or not it deserves to be on the list (especially for a 2021 edition, VERY soon after release) can be debated by those who wish to engage in that conversation. I’m glad it’s here, if only to give me an excuse to listen to it. I think it’s a 4.5 that I’ll very easily bump up to a 5. Sorry, maybe.

I’m at a 5. A little higher, though not quite a 10 like their debut.

Everyone knows “Jump”. That’s their big one. This album basically starts at that point (though “1984” is a cool synthy open), and then it rides the high of that track & Panama, hitting one more extremely high point on "Hot for Teacher", before just cruising all the way to a really nice, if slightly flat finish. It may sound like I’m a little down on this album, but that’s just because their debut was insanely good, and this one is only really, really good. Eddie Van Halen’s guitar is still a deadly weapon, atoning big time for the “Beat It” solo he ripped without the band’s permission by killing it on every track here. David Lee Roth’s vocals still rip, even if they’re just a little more subdued / poppier here compared to the sort of “American Ozzy Osbourne” comparison I gave for their debut. Alex Van Halen’s percussion is on point throughout this album, and I feel like he gets even more room to shine here than on the debut, or at least more noticeably given some of the percussive solos on this thing.

Obviously, the big difference between this & their debut is the heavy use of the synthesizer, which permeates this album in a way that makes it feel more specifically dated to 1984 than the timeless sort of sound to their self-titled, but in a way, I kind of like that you can place this album so specifically to its time. “Jagged Little Pill” certainly doesn’t suffer from sounding like 1995 at every turn. To my ears, it means you’ve made something stand out so uniquely and yet so ubiquitously that people associate your sound as a core memory of the decade, and that’s gotta feel cool, to some degree.

I do wish this ended on a more definitive note than “House of Pain” – it does make the album feel like more of a collection of tracks as opposed to a fully flowing energy, but regardless, it’s still 33 minutes that kick ass. It’s worth hearing it over me describing it, so I’ll stop here, but I will say one thing: “Jump”, by itself, feels like an anthem that would’ve lifted this album to a 4, bare minimum. The whole thing is really, really good, and while it’s not as good as their debut, it all still just rips. It’s a 5, and probably higher, though not a 10.

I’m at a 4.5 that I’ll easily bump up to a 5.

Sometimes you just catch a vibe, you know? This definitely caught a vibe for me; it’s bossa nova updated with some of the ambient, trip-hop sensibilities of the 1990s, with occasional hints of jazz fusion & big band in there. It’s a great fit, at least in the way it’s done on this album. Unlike the Gotan Project album we got back in September, this album feels a lot more subtle about infusing its extra instrumentation, more akin to how a 90s remixer might take on a 60s album instead of making something that feels different & new. It never overwhelms the bossa nova / jazz base that each track is built on, and only enhances it in a way that feels pretty contemporary for 2000. Suba, the producer for this album, died due to smoke complications after successfully recovering this album from a fire. He has an album on this list, “Sao Paulo Confessions”, which we’ll get later on down the line, and I really hope that album retains a lot of the style he set forth here. He did a damn good job.

Bebel Gilberto certainly carried on her father’s legacy here; her vocals are really good on this album, and remarkably calming too. A track like “Mais Feliz” reminded me a little bit of Janet Jackson’s slower songs, and that’s a really positive comparison in my book. When she enters her faster, rap-influenced tempos, she glides on it all the same, especially so on “Bananeira”, which might be the highlight of the album. Her English vocals are really nice too; “So Nice (Summer Samba)”, besides showing me that Nintendo blatantly ripped off the melody for the track for StreetPass on the 3DS, showed me that she has sort of a natural Sinatra-y swinger voice to her, and one that could totally do a duet with anyone. I feel like I need to check out more of her stuff beyond this, especially any collaborations.

So, why the 4.5 if I enjoyed this so much? The only nagging issue I have with this album is that most of the tracks loop halfway through, or simply repeat lyricism in a way that makes each track just feel a little bit unfinished. They’re clearly not, and it’s intentionally done. I don’t mind it, but it is something that feels more & more noticeable as the album goes on – really, this could have been easily fixed if they had just written a few more lyrics to make the loops feel less noticeable, or tweaked some of the instrumentals appropriately so that they could disguise it with a better sense of progression. It’s not a big enough deal for me to bump this down to a 4 though; it’s an easy bump up to a 5, and ultimately, just a deeply relaxing (whilst energetic) bossa nova album. I can easily hear how this crossed over into mainstream appeal (apparently over 1 million copies sold worldwide by 2004), and I’m glad it’s here on the list. Pretty damn good stuff.

I’m at a 5. Perhaps slightly higher.

I’m not sure how to describe that, really. At its core, it’s essentially an early version of the foundation that Nine Inch Nails would take to a more industrial extreme on “The Downward Spiral”, but here, because it’s still rooted mostly in calmer instrumentals & with a spoken word approach for the vast majority of the album, I found this to be oddly poetic, with a tension building over the course of the album. A great poet knows how to build suspense, letting each line paint more & more of a picture until it finally bursts into life in front of you, with the ability to imagine far beyond just the words you’re presented with.

This album fits the bill on all ends; the spoken word / singing / screaming dynamic that acts as a sort of push/pull throughout the album is very effective, used in combination with the intensity of the guitar & the instrumentation to accurately capture a sense of tension & or a changing mood. It certainly helps that the lyricism here paints really, REALLY great pictures; whether it’s the coming-of-age pleasantry behind “Breadcrumb Trail”, the insecurities of love on “Nosferatu Man”, the social anxiety of “Don, Aman”, the suicide note that is “Washer”, or the lamentation of leaving your childhood behind on “Good Morning, Captain”, each track tells its own story very, very well, enhanced further by the vocal / instrumental shifts at play. Even without the lyrics, I think just the tone of his voice & the ways the instrumentals move captures an energy to each track that tells the story all the same.

I really want to focus on the last 3 tracks in particular, because I think they’re the highlights of the album. “Washer” is one of the best audio journeys I think we’ve gotten throughout the 673 albums we’ve done so far (counting this one), and the way that track slowly layers its despair with the passing realization that this guy is gonna kill himself is done incredibly well. It just sort of stunlocked me, and while I might be able to kind of understand someone bouncing off of that track, I think the fact that I didn’t even really notice the last 3 minutes of somber guitar work fly by as I just sat and digested it says a lot about how effective that track is.

The next track, “For Dinner…” being an instrumental afterwards, allowing the listener to just sit & reflect on it further, is a very good choice as well. While listening to it, I noticed that the track always tries to lift into something bigger, and yet never really gets there itself, eventually paralyzing itself into one note, almost as if the track itself is mourning the suicide from the last one, unable to move on. Even the title implies to me that it’s a routine that simply can’t be finished as normal, since it just trails off.

“Good Morning, Captain” is super effective, in a way that I’m not sure that I can really describe accurately. The entire buildup of this captain & this boy (who is either his son, himself, or some other childlike representation of his youth) is really well done in the storytelling, and it’s paid off brilliantly in the vocal / instrumental outro, especially when Brian McMahan belts out those last lines with a visceral ferocity that feels like it came deep from within his soul. It needs to be heard & experienced to truly feel, and I certainly felt it. I think it’s a great closing track that solidifies the whole thing as a truly great album.

So, yes, I’m at a 5. It might be a little higher, even. This thing came out of left field with its post-rock, math rock, whatever the hell mish-mash of genres it has on Wikipedia & surprised me by being as brilliantly designed, thought out & effective as it is. It feels like it’s pioneering, to some degree, even if the tree of influence this album might’ve spawned took a while to sprout. I’m very glad it’s on the list, as I never would have found it otherwise. Not bad for a 6-track album made from some Kentucky boys.

Yeah, fuck it, I’m at a 3.5 that I’ll bump to a 4.

No, this is not “better” than Husker Du’s “Warehouse”, or any of the other albums I’ve given a 3 in the past. If anything, this 4 is a vague protest vote over this album becoming the lowest rated album on the site for whatever reason. This is… utterly fine. Certainly an experiment in sound, with a few heavily abrasive moments, but I found myself kinda drawn to the weird, eerie atmosphere of this thing, and with a few tracks I genuinely liked.

“I.B.M.” is a weirdly atmospheric starter track, directly sampling actual old tape used in computers before hard drives became the norm. “Hit By a Rock” is probably the most middling attempt at a “real” track here, anchored by a sort of “train” percussion that at least keeps the whole thing from feeling like a mediocre tedium. It’s not good, but it’s fine. “United” is a good joke; take your first real single & then speed it up to hell. Little pitchy though.

“Valley of the Shadow of Death” feels like sitting in a pub, with a buzz in the brain after you get drunk, vaguely eavesdropping in on conversations your brain can’t understand. The only crime of this track is that it’s 4 minutes long. Same thing applies to “Dead on Arrival”, which feels like a Kraftwerk track corrupted by a glitch; lots of buzzy, abrasive synth work in this one, but at least it’s anchored by a competent beat. The only crime is that it’s 6 minutes long and feels like it goes nowhere, so it ends up being a little boring in the long run.

“Weeping” & “Hamburger Lady” are the two highlights of the album for me, honestly; the former feels like a very open & honest confession about a spiral of heartbreak & depression, with the sound design & lyricism being soberingly brutal. It did give me a sort of Nine Inch Nails vibe. The latter just has really cool sound design, with an engine noise adjacent to the accident that inspired the (probably not true, but still) story of the Hamburger Lady, who feels like she’s constantly fading in & out of consciousness with the slightly echoed vocals.

“Hometime” is just FNAF ambience set over the noise of a child telling you about her day, which you can go recreate on YouTube right now, if you want. Again, the biggest crime is in the length. “AB/7A” is fun, and I did like it – I just wish the lead synth progressed a little more, but the entirety of the background instrumentation going through a little bit of chaos is pretty cool regardless. “E-Coli” is a fascinating experiment in sound; the ambience itself is sort of mediocre, but the dichotomy of the two lectures from each scientist, with one excited to experiment & the other concerned with tainting nature, each in their own channel, is pretty well done for 1978. Again, it’s just too long.

“Death Threats” is ballsy, especially with putting one from your husband’s ex in there. Imagine if Kendrick put on a voicemail from one of Drake’s exes at any point in that beef; it would’ve gone nuclear levels of viral. Immediately following up those death threats is “Walls of Noise”, which frankly, should have ended the album. It’s the worst soundscape, by far, but as a transition to basically say “go fuck yourselves” with, I think it’s kind of hilarious. It also does contain actual sound design within; it felt like a tornado destroying everything except for my house, being forced to listen to the suffering of everything around me. “Blood on the Floor” is… well, it’s there. Probably didn’t need to be.

Honestly, the biggest issue with this album is that most of its tracks just linger / meander for too long past the point of being interesting. If this were a tighter experiment in sound, acting as more of a rapidfire push (like, 2 minutes for the longer tracks I mentioned at most), I think this album might be a little more warmly received, at least not to the point of being the lowest one on the site. It’s nowhere near as abrasive as I thought it would be; that horrendously loud “jazz” album we got from John Zorn was much, much noisy / abrasive / “worse” than this. Calling this “nothing but noise” undermines the effort & time it took to actually design this thing – I would challenge anyone who says so to try and recreate some of these tracks, to see if you can do it. Granted, “Hometime” is probably really easy to recreate, but still.

All of that in mind, I’m at a 3.5 that I will bump up to a 4, as a vote of confidence for what the album tries to do (and succeeds at doing! just in a “too long” way), as a sort of a protest vote against this having the lowest rating on the site, and as an acknowledgment that this genuinely deserves to be on the list, even as just as an experiment in sound. It is not better than most of the albums I’ve given a 3, but I do think it’s more sonically interesting & compelling than most of the albums I’ve given a 1 or a 2. It’s certainly way fucking better than Haute de gamme or Kid Rock, that’s for sure. I genuinely liked it.

I’m at a 3.5 that I’ll bump down to a 3, though if Grant Hart had chosen to end “You Can Live at Home” after 2:30 or so, I’d probably be willing to barely bump this album up to a 4.

This is a strange, strange project. It’s bloated like a motherfucker, for one. The first half of this album all feel like leftovers, which is weird to not exactly start on your best stuff. Out of the first 11 tracks, I only liked about 6 of them, and even of the 6 I liked, there are criticisms noted as a “little repetitive” (These Important Years), “the outro needed some more work” (Standing in the Rain), “vocals very nasally” (Back from Somewhere), “not a fan of the one-chord fakeout ending” (Ice Cold Ice), & “outro VERY repetitive” (Too Much Spice). No notes on “Friend, You’ve Got to Fall” though. This album really, really does not find an identity through its first 11 tracks, and while they’re all decent to listen to with a good energy to the instrumental every time, the lack of a more focused / thought-out structure (the lack of bridges on most of these tracks is astounding, as is the repetitive / long / overplayed outros & every track starting with guitar/drums) really makes the album feel like it’s going absolutely nowhere for the first half, in what I would categorize as a competent, yet unsatisfying 3.

For whatever reason though, the back half of the album (the last 9 tracks) suddenly find most of that; the structure to the tracks feels more thought out, the lyricism feels like it has more of a point, and the instrumentals kicks up in a way that just feels way more satisfying, turning the repetition into a positive as opposed to a sort of dry negative. Genuinely, if this album were just the last 9 tracks by themselves, I’d be at a 3.5 that I might be persuaded to bump up to a 4. I genuinely think either “Turn It Around” or “Up in the Air” would’ve made for great closing tracks, and if the album had ended there, I’d feel pretty satisfied with them.

“You Can Live at Home” is one of the worst closing tracks I’ve ever heard for any album in my life. It is the culmination of an album-long frustration that I had with one Grant Hart. His penmanship is fine, and his instrumental work on the tracks he’s not singing on is generally good. However, I fully believe he cannot sing worth a damn, even though his vocals occasionally work at points on this album under really specific soundscapes. Bob Mould might be a diet Michael Stipe, yes, but at least he sounds close enough at points that it’s easy to just vibe along with it, as if this really were an R.E.M. album, and I think his tracks are generally better structured throughout the album. Grant Hart is the opposite. Grant Hart sounds like a bad Elvis Costello impersonator with an even more nasally voice, like a Muppet parody, and even then, I think a Muppet parody could do a better job. My issue with “You Can Live at Home”, however, is not from his vocals; it’s the fact that the entire last 2:30 of the track goes absolutely fucking nowhere, and with the inaudible lyrics (seriously horrible mixing) themselves already seemingly acting as a subliminal diss to Mould, given their internal issues and the break-up of the band afterward, I find it to be nothing more than a fully petty 5:24 of boring inaudible nothingness, capping off an album that should’ve ended on his partner’s tracks.

It is singlehandedly dragging this album down to a 3, but make no mistake; this album isn’t that bad. The 20 tracks here all generally sound fine (save for the last one), and I’d say the very best ones are probably worthy of being a 4, if they had been able to pick them out and really flesh them out. The mediocre ones are what pull this down, especially that last one. Past that, the length of this album & the repetition of the intros / outros is too much to ignore. This was probably always going to get a 3 once the sort of “diet R.E.M. with a Green Day lean” thing came into my head, but at least it fought back during that second half to be a respectably good 3.5 that almost became a 4. Hell, it'd probably be a 4 if you cut out like, 80% of Grant Hart’s tracks. Ultimately, it’s just a 3 though, and it definitely didn’t need to be a double album.

I’m at a 5.

A lot of my general notes on Christina Aguilera that I wrote down from “Back to Basics” apply here – a remarkable vocal showcase, an operatic power that feels a little unparalleled at points (not as potent here, but still very strong), and much in the same way that album was hard-coded to 2006, this is hard-coded to 2002, still pulling from some of the Neo-soul of the late ‘90s but with a lot of the hiphop / R&B production tricks that Justin Timberlake & Destiny’s Child were using at the time. This album sounds a lot like both at times, with a track like “Dirrty” feeling like it’s more so made for “Justified” than this album, and with “Can’t Hold Us Down” feeling remarkably close to “Survivor”’s general style. There’s plenty more, but I never saw it as a negative or as a ripoff / bite; hell, Christina and Justin toured their albums together, so they clearly knew their styles were similar. I’m a sucker for it, as has been established, and while mileage may vary, I found myself enjoying a lot of these tracks. As far as her vocals go & the production work here, I have little to no complaints, save for a few jarring left turns that don’t feel super cohesive (and I’ll get to that soon enough).

Where this album differs from “Back to Basics” comes in a sense of confidence – she’s a made woman by that album, but here, she’s trying to actively make herself, and convince herself along the course of this album that she can break free of all the Disney Channel cookie cutter bullshit as a kid that she disparages about on “Make Over” & other tracks to be a more seriously taken artist, and ultimately, a more seriously taken woman. I would say she really succeeds. A lot of these tracks are worth taking seriously, especially towards the back end (“I’m OK” by itself practically made me cry), and the big hits here are deserving of being big hits. For a 77 minute project, a lot of these are very strong tracks; they’re well-written, well-produced, and there’s an honesty & an earnestness that underlines the album in the mature way she’s looking for. I wouldn’t be at a 5 if I didn’t think she succeeded at that job. There is, however, one nagging thing about this album that I have to point out, because it cannot go unnoticed.

The track order is a little messy around in the back half of the album; I think it’s not a big issue until after “Beautiful”, since it feels like the peak of the album (although that’s the 23 years of hearing that track talking), because “Make Over” & “Cruz” feel like extreme left turns, especially the former. Granted, if you flip those tracks, I think “Cruz”’s softer, ‘70s rock inspired style would transition well into the sort of grunginess of “Make Over”, or at least, not feel as jarring after “Beautiful”. “Soar” feels very misplaced afterwards; it’s a soaring ballad that I really like, but its subject matter feels like it could’ve totally ended the album at that point. Hell, it could’ve probably ended the album for real. The 1-2 punch of “Get Mine, Get Yours” & “Dirrty” stick out like sore thumbs afterward; they’re both fun tracks, but they just feel weird after “Soar”. If they had come in right after “Cruz”, it might’ve flowed better. They would've felt weird as hell after most of the previous tracks. "Stripped Pt. 2" feels like it was thrown in as an afterthought, and it barely works as a transition to the final 3 tracks.

All that said, I have no notes on the 1-2-3 punch that ends the album; “The Voice Within” feels like it could’ve closed the album, and yet, I think the heartbreak of “I’m OK” adds such a deep context to the self-assurance & self-confidence she’s seeking throughout this album, that it pulls the entire album together wonderfully. Ending on that sad note wouldn’t work, so “Keep On Singin’ My Song” works well as a closer, even if it doesn’t quite end on the bombast I wish it had (seriously, a breakbeat?). I do wish it was a 1-2-3-4 punch though, as the themes of “Soar” would transition wonderfully into “The Voice Within”.

Realistically, the track order doesn’t matter that much, but it does keep the album from feeling as fully cohesive as it could have been. Regardless, even if a few tracks didn’t click for me on a first pass because of that shaky cohesion, I think this is a hell of an album for 2002. Honestly, I think it does a way better job than “Justified” did in terms of truly establishing a solo career, given that Justin got a lot of Michael Jackson-rejected Neptunes-written scraps on that one to work from, whereas Christina wrote a lot of these herself, to my understanding. I think it’s even better than “Back to Basics” was, which I already was a total sucker for. I also hear a lot of the modern artists this album influenced, which is a pretty damn strong list according to Wikipedia, so clearly, she did something right. I think this is pretty easily a 5. I think it more than earns it & I’m very glad it’s on the list.

P.S.: She sneaks in The Lick™ on "Get Mine, Get Yours", and when my ears caught it, I got mildly annoyed and laughed. I just want anyone in the future to also know this happens as a warning of sorts.

I’m at a 10.

Fucking hell. That was worth a 500 day wait between albums; I thought “Rum Sodomy & The Lash” was a damn good album, almost solely on account of the Celtic rock energy, but this is *excellent.* Certainly one of my favorite ‘80s albums we’ve gotten so far in this thing, and we’ve gotten 122 of them so far. I hesitate to say “top 10”, but probably within the top 20.

Unlike “Rum Sodomy & The Lash”, a lot of these songs fit into a more contemporary bubble, less about the escapades of the past (or whatever half the songs were about on the last album, since most were traditional / riffing on traditionals), and more of a socially conscious one, not only to the issues of Ireland at the time (lots of vaguely nationalist viewpoints here, but decently justified ones), but also some lovely tracks set around the world. “Turkish Song of the Damned” is a very adventurous track, “Fairytale of New York” is a super fun Christmas track, “Fiesta” is a Polka-infused Spanish delight, and “Thousands Are Sailing” (my personal favorite here) might be one of the most brilliantly written tracks in regard to the impact of immigration to America, leaving your roots, and finding success that wasn’t possible back home, even if you miss it dearly.

Since I felt totally locked in & in-sync with the infectious energy of this album, reading along with the lyrics on its faster paced tracks (especially “Bottle of Smoke”, which is fucking awesome), I don’t have as many notes as I’d like to write a deeper, longer review; that, and I just don’t really have the words that can capture that energy as effectively as it deserves. Someone else can cover for me on this one in terms of the individual tracks (which are all so, so good, save for “Worms”, but it’s practically a bonus track), but just know that the soundscape of this album, which feels like an Irish version of Streetlight Manifesto at full blast, blew me away. It’s not that much different from “Rum Sodomy & The Lash”, but the grit in his vocals combined with a lot more technical skill in the percussion (deeply underrated), just elevates everything to another level. Past that, on this album’s softer moments (namely the first part to “Streets of Sorrow” & “Lullaby of London”), they just feel earnest, with a little bit of a wistful gravitas that matches the moment & imagery the lyrics are allowing for.

I’ll give a single nitpick; the album probably didn’t need “Worms”. I understand that “The Broad Majestic Shannon”, for as good as it is, isn’t the most energetic closer, especially after everything else, but “Worms” feels just a little weird to end on. It’d be like if the post-credits scene in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off had been… well, the actual final scene of the movie. I’m not sure what else could’ve ended the album (maybe the 3-track medley?), but I do think the ending feels just a little flat as a capper to the whole project.

Regardless, it doesn’t matter that much. This is an album that needs to be heard rather than read about, and frankly, it blew me away. I knew the wait for this one would be worth it, and it exceeded all of my expectations. I don’t know if other Pogues albums hit a downward slope after these two, but I need to hear more of these guys before I die, and that’s a testament to just how good of an impact 2 albums can have if they’re done right. This is an excellent album, a 10 for me, and probably a top 20 album of the 1980s (hell, maybe 15 or higher?) that we’ve gotten so far, at least to my ears.

I’m at a 4. More like a 4.25, I guess.

When we got “Screamadelica” in July, I couldn’t really place why I had enjoyed that album, eventually boiling it down to “pretty good in the moment”. This album feels a bit more substantial, with a little more weight behind it. This is not the House-inspired psychedelica ambience of “Screamdelica” – this is a 1997 album much more rooted in trip-hop, Britpop, techno, & sort of an industrial-driven ambience, slightly reminiscent of the Madchester we just got on “Bummed” by Happy Mondays, though with a lot more polish to it that keeps the whole thing from feeling too saturated.

I really am stunned this is the same band, by the way; I know they tend to jump around & explore genres on each of their various albums, but given that they wholesale ripped off “Freedom! ‘90” by George Michael the last time I heard them, I’m just more surprised at how effectively they’ve done this style. It’s got elements of a bunch of different genres, staying within the same general instrument bank, whilst exploring a bunch of different paths on it, including a Motorhead cover (with an explosion that’s WAY too loud), straight Britpop on “Medication”, some Sonic Adventure-esque stuff on “If They Move, Kill ‘Em”, and a David Holmes sort of track via “Trainspotting”, used in the movie itself. Granted, I’m at a 4 because the moments where they sort of lose focus & lose a sense of progression feel a little underwhelming compared to the rest of the album (scattered throughout, but namely around Tracks 5-7, though they’re still good to listen to).

I do think it’s a little harder to describe the energy of this album, since a lot of these are more rooted in the instrumentals as an audio journey of sorts, as opposed to big vocal structures or witty one-liners; the most ‘lyrical’ track here is probably “Star,” which ironically enough, made me wish it had a little more of a George Michael energy to the instrumental. Beyond that though, a track like “Kowalski” is that audio journey I’m talking about; certainly abrasive (& yes, this whole thing is far too loud at times), but well-intentioned, well-designed, and ultimately, it just has a good sense of progression that keeps the track fresh throughout, especially with the synths & vocal samples.

It is a little long at 53 minutes; as with a lot of these instrumentally-driven albums of the ‘90s, there’s a lot of little trimming that could be done around the edges to give everything a better flow, but that’s just a personal nitpick. I really liked this one; I do think it deserves higher than a 4, but it doesn’t really justify going all the way up to a 5, given that I hit plenty of minor lull points throughout. I guess it’s sort of a 4.25, but I obviously can’t do that. Either way, this is right down my sort of alley, and I’m glad it’s on the list. I gotta listen to some more of their albums in my own time, since this is the last one we’ll get.

I’m at a 4. Well, OK, more of a 3.75 bumped up to a 4, but you’ll understand in a moment.

Well, it’s a long fucking album, that’s for sure. This could’ve definitely been trimmed down a bit, especially to help with some of the pacing issues this thing has. I did like it, though. I do not have the time nor the energy to go into any kind of long Lynyrd Skynyrd-adjacent soliloquy – lord only knows this album mentions them enough. Their impact on the Drive-By Truckers is very apparent throughout, especially with the second half acting as an album version of a made-for-TV biographical movie, retelling various life events of the band, culminating in the plane crash that took the lives of some of the original lineup. I’m not huge on the second half of the album, mainly because I think the track order / pacing / length all feel kind of off… but let’s not put the cart before the horse here.

I really liked the first half of this album; that is to say, most of the first 11 tracks. I think it’s got really strong instrumentals & pretty good storytelling, with just the vocals occasionally sticking for me as a “not twangy enough” thorn of sorts. Despite my initial fears with the concept, I was pleasantly surprised. To draw a comparison, it reminded me much more of Sufjan Stevens’ Illinois, acting as a retrospective on Alabama & most of the U.S. southwest. It’s less of a hopeful album & more of a reminiscence on the reckoning of the “Southern Thing”, as this album tends to call it.

I do think it toes a line rather well; there’s only a few tracks in the first half that I think could be easily misconstrued, and an occasionally privileged lyric here and there, but as someone who’s grown up in a deeply red state, but with people who never seem to actually portray all the stereotypes of the typical Republican voter… gosh, something about the first half of the album was speaking to me. I’m careful to praise it, since there are certain flags thrown up (namely the George Wallace stuff, even if he’s 100% called a racist in hell), but given that it’s from 2001, they’re mildly understandable flags from a political era that somehow feels bygone at this point. I do think there’s something here, made for only the people who have really lived in something adjacent to it to truly understand. If it were me, I’d give that first half a flat 4, and honestly, it would stand up by itself as a really strong album.

The second half… well, it’s not bad, but they go full “did you know about this band called Lynyrd Skynyrd?” mode, in a way that feels endearing at some points & irritating at others, but ultimately, it all comes together in a way that just doesn’t feel as compelling as they want it to be. “Let There Be Rock” is fun, but “Road Cases” is genuinely useless here; probably the least necessary track on the album. “Women Without Whiskey” is totally fine; very bro-country for my tastes, but I didn’t mind it. “Plastic Flowers on the Highway” is easily the highlight of the second half; genuinely, a fantastic track. “Cassie’s Brother” is fine; I think the tempo is a little slow, & the funk aspects don’t really work for me, but the storytelling is fine enough. I think putting “Life in the Factory” as an oral history of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s formation as the *6th track* of a 9-track narrative is a mistake. Start with that one!.

“Shut Up and Get on the Plane” is a fun listen, but it just never hooked me (and that may be a defining issue of the whole second half, really). ”Greenville to Baton Rouge” rips an absolute fireball of a guitar solo 3 minutes in that won me over. “Angels & Fuselage” has a glacially slow pace through the first half of the track, with his raspier vocals acting as a genuine detriment, but something about the back half, where it all sits in a guitar-driven ambient silence worked well for the atmosphere & intent of the track.

I think my biggest issue with the back half is that there’s just no suspense / emotional hook whatsoever, due to basically the entire history / impact of the band still being told in piecemeal throughout the first half of the album. For the final 3 tracks acting as a retelling of the plane crash that effectively killed Lynyrd Skynyrd, there’s no tension in the air (pun unintended), and I just don’t think they did a great job of capturing something deeper from the moment. Instead, they just try to recapture the emotions Lynyrd Skynyrd might have felt. Contrast that to a track like “Plastic Flowers on the Highway”, which is a tribute track to their real friend who died in a car accident, and the difference is night & day. I feel compelled to learn more about their friend, and how it directly impacted them, especially with the lead singer having to see more accidents on that same highway afterward. I feel less compelled to look up stuff about the aftermath & eventual revival of Lynyrd Skynyrd following the plane crash.

It’s not necessarily a failure as storytellers, since they do a good job of capturing the mythos & impact & overall legacy of Lynyrd Skynyrd throughout the entirety of the album, but the concept getting narrower & narrower as the album moves along makes the tracks suffer. Combine that with some long outros, a little too much emphasis on guitar work as opposed to vocal structures, and lyricism that doesn’t feel as strong / sincere as the first half, it just piles up, despite being wholly competent. The back half of this album is a 3.5, and one that I’ll let stick there, though I’d probably bump it down to a 3 by itself.

So, a strong first half that’s a 4, and a shaky second half that’s a 3.5 – balance that out, and you get a 3.75, and it’s one that I feel compelled to bump up to a 4. This album is at its best when Lynyrd Skynyrd are used as a framing device to talk about how the band has impacted culture & personal lives, and not when they’re the main characters. I think there’s enough tracks that do that, as well as a strong enough overall package (or at least, a fun enough listen if you’re already predisposed to country / rock soundscapes like I am), that I’m comfortable in giving this a 4. It’s a very American-centric album, and even more so to the American southeast (& parts of the midwest), so in a current time where it’s very, very understandable to hate that part of the country, I can’t blame anyone for giving this a low rating out of pure disdain. I also can’t blame anyone for giving this a low rating because it’s way too fucking long. I’ll stick with a 4.

I’m at a 3.

Definitely a step down after “Pills 'n' Thrills And Bellyaches” clicked so nicely, but make no mistake; I didn’t hate this album. This is just not as good, plain and simple, and it’s because of one very loud & very obvious decision in the production / recording process. This thing is utterly drenched in reverb. There’s a gag on the SiivaGunner channel (video game music with comedic bait & switch changed melodies / mashups) where a certain subset of uploads of Kingdom Hearts songs are heavy on the reverb, to sell part of the joke, but for this album, it feels like a very defined & intentional choice to center the album around it. It *deeply* makes the album suffer.

It’s not in the compositions; these are well composed songs, occasionally bringing to mind bands like Tears for Fears, U2, and to some degree, Joy Division & Talking Heads. It’s not in Shaun Ryder’s vocals; as muffled & buried in the mix as they are, I think he generally tends to bring a decent gravitas to the emotions he’s trying to pull off on the tracks, though there are a few dry vocal structures. It is partially in the writing; you can tell the verses were an afterthought here, given that so many of the second verses are just minor rewrites of the first verse to fit the same syllabic structure, & a lot of the lyrics here are just kinda crass for the sake of it to some degree.

It is solely in the mixing / production process where this album buries itself to a totally fine 3 – the synth work gets the most reverb, creating a cavernous effect that acts as almost a reverse wall of sound, opening up far too much. The percussion / guitar are generally more unfazed by it, but the synths overwhelm them, and in turn, Shaun Ryder’s vocals get it the worst, already buried under both the guitar & percussion, before the synths just run them all over. To its credit, the album at least tries to find a balance in the compositions where the synths are played down, to let the other aspects get a bit of shine, but those moments are fleeting. Once the synths come back in, the mild annoyance just resurfaces with them.

Overall, it’s a fully competent 3; not a bad album, per se, and I do genuinely hear a sort of appeal for this grittier, Shoegaze-ier, post-punk influenced form of Madchester, before ‘90s house music gave Shaun Ryder the chance to enter a much more commercially appealing soundscape… but it’s not the sort of Madchester that works for my tastes. If someone wants to give this a 4 or even a 5, if they made a compelling enough case, I could maybe understand it. I do think the people giving this a 2 are justified, though. I’m at a 3 just because I found it to be utterly fine, and not much more than that. It probably did leave some type of influence though, so… good on Shaun & friends, I guess. I’ll take “Pills 'n' Thrills And Bellyaches” every time, though.

I’m at a 5. Probably higher, though not quite a 10. To answer that top comment, yes, you did, & I think I also just had sex with Prince.

Well, I asked for a fun pop album at the end of that last review & I got a damn good one. I thought Prince was already horny as a motherfucker on Sign O’ The Times, but… no, this is the album where he just lusts for sex the whole time. He gets it a lot too! “Little Red Corvette” is that, “Let’s Pretend We’re Married” is that, “Automatic” is that (the whispered panning is weirdly intimate), “Lady Cab Driver” is that, and… yeah. I mean, that is what “International Lover” is, right? I don’t even think I need to describe the details on that; he let it all hang out there. God, no wonder there was such an obvious contrast back then between him and Michael. I know, I know, someday we’ll get Thriller, but once again, “The Lady in My Life” as a comparative closing track feels wild.

OK, OK, it’s also unfair to characterize this as nothing but “the horny album” – that would take away from the production work here, which is sort of a prototype for what would eventually emerge & grow into a behemoth by Purple Rain, but… man, this is a masterclass in funky synthwork. I can’t really even describe it; it’s not as layered as Purple Rain, but the general groove / rhythm of this thing feels like a natural bridge between the Earth, Wind & Fire R&B style of the late 70s & the new wave synthpop of the 1980s, blended with a healthy mix of Kraftwerk-esque electronica & Journey / Boston-esque soft rock. There isn’t full blown heavy metal ala “Let’s Go Crazy” or anything, but there are certainly moments that feel like foreshadowing of the bigger things that would come in just 2 years.

I don’t think I can really write a paragraph on every track here (lord only knows everyone else has), but I do want to quickly point at two tracks; “D.M.S.R.” feels far ahead of pace for 1982, and honestly, it feels like a prototype French house track, ala Justice or Daft Punk. It doesn’t really have all the same elements to it, but the repetition & rhythmic buildup are there, as is the obvious hook of “dance, music, sex, romance”, which I’m sure has been sampled at some point. “Lady Cab Driver”, much in the same vein, reminds me of “Lady (Hear Me Tonight)” by Modjo, to the point where I’m convinced they just sort of took it and never really mentioned this track’s influence. He says “lady” in basically the same way! I know the latter uses a different sample for its base, but the overall energy / rhythm / layering is all there. They’re two of my favorite cuts on the album; the whole thing is a delight to listen to, even if I only knew the first two tracks coming into it (which, to be fair, were huge singles).

If I have any complaints holding me back from a 10, it’s simply the length of this thing; there are definitely parts where tracks could’ve been trimmed around the edges to make it feel more concise & just a little tighter, but regardless, it’s an easy, easy 5, and certainly higher. This is the last Prince album we’ll get on the list, but I definitely need to hunt down more of them. As I’ve said in the past, I’ve been an MJ guy & not a Prince guy (reverence to Prince’s singles as opposed to the albums), but I’ll be damned if getting arguably his 3 best albums hasn’t made me appreciate him far, far more. He’s an icon, truly, and finally listening to these feels long overdue. A perfect 15/15 for Prince (or, in another sense, a 20+/15), and that just feels right. Hell of a run.

I’m at a 5.

I think this album is an acquired taste of sorts; for its time, it’s a slightly unnatural blend of the shoegaze that was, the heavy metal there is, and the grunge that soon would be. It leans into a lot of heavier guitar tones, focusing on the “sonic” side of Sonic Youth, much like “Goo” did, and while it’s not complimented as nicely by some more sophisticated buildups & chords, this album overwhelms that issue by just creating a more concrete atmosphere that carries over from track to track. It feels like a heavy album, even with a lot of these tracks just being generalized teenage-y first-world shit (frustration with politics, love life issues, lost marijuana, LSD trips, ego trips, etc), and I just think the soundscape itself is super cool to sit in.

Much like “Goo”, you have to be a little more present in the moment with these tracks, since the instrumental shifts really sell the ebb & flow of the album – vocals & lyrics have a presence here, but half of the time, I found the lyrics nonsensical & the vocals (mostly from Thurston Moore as opposed to Kim Gordon, who honestly has some weaker stuff here) sound like Bob Dylan got kinda trapped in there with them & went along with it. “Rain King” in particular feels like a direct rip on his flowery, verbose lyrical style, and it has far more of a vocal twang that just screams parody to me. They don’t matter as much here, though they do occasionally have their moments.

Unlike “Goo”, I can’t say there’s a dropoff here – a slight homogenization boils up by the second half, due to the first half having really long tracks & since this is a 70 minute album as opposed to a 49 minute one (though the pacing feels better, somehow). I only found one track to really hit a stale point by itself, and that was “Kissability”. Past that, I just found myself pretty damn satisfied for the whole thing, especially through the first 10 tracks.

As I said though, it’s an acquired taste; if you’re not into the shoegaze of the era, or the heavy metal, or if the grunge aspects are underbaked here, combined with a long runtime that can occasionally feel like it’s going nowhere or getting too same-y, then the floor here is a very understandable 3, and I wouldn’t blame that. Hell, I could even forgive a 2 under the right explanations. For me, this just worked; I think the intensity & the energy for most of the album glides really nicely, and the vocals, for as Dylan-y and non-melodic as they occasionally feel, tend to work for the more frustrated & grumpy tone this album usually takes.

I do think I would’ve given this a 3 or a 4 if it had popped up earlier in the list (or hell, if it had been our first Sonic Youth album), but hearing some of their other stuff, as well as a lot of surrounding albums within this space certainly helped a bit. I don’t think it meets the critical acclaim as a top 10 album of the 1980s like that (though it’s pretty damn good for a rock album), but I generally see where the critics are coming from. I enjoyed it, and while there are probably flaws I could’ve touched on (especially in shaving down the runtime here and there), I think those are for other people who disliked this more to amplify. I’m personally at a 5; I just liked it a lot.

P.S.: I now do feel fatigued from hearing a shit ton of overdriven guitar at high tempos for the last few weeks. Enough with the damn “Atomizer”s & the “Double Nickels on the Dime”s & now this – I just want some nice, happy, fun pop music tomorrow, or anything chill.