Reviews by guggmo

It’s an electric 4.5, and I'm gonna bump it up to a 5, though not without a few "flaws".

I’ve heard of Dead Kennedys, but I’ve never actually HEARD Dead Kennedys – I vaguely knew about their status in punk rock before listening, but it really only hit me right before listening about just insanely bold it is to make that the name of your band in the late 70s / early 80s. It set a tone that immediately got matched by the first track, and never really looked back.

I can compare this pretty handily to The Clash’s debut album in terms of pacing and instrumental energy – both of them jump right out of the gate, and have pretty long stretches of just breakneck speed, covering a variety of topics. This album goes even fucking faster though, and that energy is hard to put into words. However, I think this album does suffer from chasing that energetic high a little too much – it’s not that it can’t maintain it, because it definitely does, and to a more consistent and arguably more satisfying degree than The Clash’s album (still not over “Police & Thieves” railroading the pace of that album). It maintains it, but at the sacrifice of the lyrical quality.

This is an album full of biting political satire, most of which is certainly based in real anger, and a general desire to actually do something about it instead of sitting around on one’s ass. However, at varying points in the album, I think that satire loses some of that fire & that bite, and turns into more of a gripe-filled chomp, or something so over the top that it just feels cheesy to the point where the song loses its focus (most disappointingly done by “I Kill Children” – not a bad track, though!).

There’s other moments throughout the album that add up to ALMOST knock this down to a 4 for me – a few tracks honestly go TOO fast vocally for my tastes, some of them don’t feel as cohesive instrumentally (but it’s never on the guitar, though), and that hard-R N-word on “Holiday in Cambodia”, for as much as I understand the intent and impact of its usage in the song (and that censoring it in any way would be a disgrace to the idea of “punk” in the late 70s/early 80s), simply cannot be overlooked or excused. That track still slaps though, sue me.

As a whole, this is an electric 33 minutes – there’s a few too many things that add up for me to give this a pure, flat 5, but make no mistake; I highly recommend this. Its lyricism, for the most part, still rings pretty true in 2024 (Let’s Lynch the Landlord is ESPECIALLY timely with the CEO thing, but “fascist California” never really came to pass like that), the instrumentals are insanely energetic, and it’s just a rollercoaster of an album. No problems with bumping it up to a 5.

I’m at a 4 right now, but I get the album’s hype, and I really think this could be a 5 in the future for me.

I’m trying to place myself in the year 2004, because I really think this album is a little bit of a prisoner of the moment. To have graduated high school in 2004 means to be born in 1986 – to have lived mainly through the Clinton years, with parents living mostly in perceived economic prosperity, seemingly no major wars, and the illusion of harmony. By the time you get up to that age though, where it all starts to crack a little bit by 2000, before completely shattering by 9/11 and the subsequent fallout… that’s where this album lies. The point where the illusion of prosperity cracks, and the grim reality of adulthood sets in. This is not a politically driven album, but it is a coming of age album, and all of those events feel crucial to understanding the mindset of listeners and critics at the time, and at the end of the decade.

My closest analogue is saying “this album feels like American Idiot if Green Day had played it straight,” and that might sound weird, but it just feels that way to me. What’s here is done with a bit more… not necessarily “sincerity”, but it’s more easily digestible (& arguably more relatable) when it’s wrapped up in the vibes of a 1980s coming of age ensemble film full of realistic introspection than Green Day’s take on a rock opera concept album full of imagination & indignation. Does that make it better? Eh, taste is subjective at that point – I preferred American Idiot to this, but I understand the appeal here.

All of that said, these reviews are supposed to be about the music, and that’s where this album currently lands at a 4 for me – I have been agonizing trying to figure out exactly why this album isn’t at a 5 for me right now, because it really does click on a lot of my musical sensibilities. The writing is great, the instrumentals are usually pretty good, and ultimately I think the ambition and bombast here is incredibly admirable, especially for an indie rock band’s first ever album. This has 5 written all over it, but I’m just not there.

The only explanation I can come up with is that I don’t feel like I grew up with the sense of broken adventure and shattered innocence this album tries so deeply to invoke. In the most basic sense of the word, no matter how hard I’m trying to step into those shoes, I simply cannot relate to the core of the lyricism at hand here. Without that connection, the album doesn’t work as well – sure, sometimes there are production choices in the mixing I disagree with, and some songs fall kinda flat at times for me, but none of that is an indictment on the album’s quality. This is a good album. Like, really good. But it’s tailor-made for a generation I’m not a part of, and experiences I simply missed out on, perhaps caused by too much cheery bright-eyed optimism when I was younger. It kills me that I feel like I missed the boat here.

Like I said, this could (& probably will) be a 5 for me in the future, but I have to feel all of this firsthand before it gets there. For now, this is at a 4, but it’s a highly, highly recommended 4.

It’s a 5, without hesitation.

It does take a little bit for this album to really get going, but once it hits that point, it’s impossible to look back. It’s very easy to question this album’s inclusion in the book, given its recent status, but I’m so, so glad it’s here. I cannot believe I’ve never heard of this album. This escaped my radar in 2020, during the absolute height of the public visibility of the BLM movement & the George Floyd riots, and while this album feels tailormade for that moment, it still connected incredibly well for me in December of 2024.

This is an album about black positivity, black excellence, and black affirmation. I am a half-Filipino, white-passing male. I fully acknowledge that I can’t ever fully relate to this album, or the black experience, but I can continue to listen and do my part to make this world a better place, and that includes lifting up albums like this that so deeply acknowledges what it is to be black, both in the positives & the negatives, and share a better understanding of that experience. This album’s messaging, mainly in the lyricism, but sometimes celebrated in the instrumentals themselves, is really well done.

As far as the music itself goes, which is the core part of the album here, it’s usually pretty good – the biggest knock I can have on it is that there are a few tracks that overstay their repetitive parts, and while I sort of acknowledge the artistic merit to the repetition in the vocals, it does get a little grating, and a few tracks fell a little flatter because of it. My other knock is that the album really should’ve ended on “Miracles”, because the two tracks after that pale in comparison and don’t feel like a satisfying way to end the album.

All of that said, I really can’t recommend this enough – no words I could type that gush over the lyrics, vocals, instrumentation & messaging could compare to listening to this album in full, and really, truly digesting it for what it is as a piece of art. If nothing else, the transition from “Us” into “Eternal Life” and the subsequent tracks that follow, all the way up until “Miracles” are truly, truly magical. That sequence, by itself, catapults this album right into a 5, but the whole thing is worth a listen, & this is very, VERY deserving to be on the list.

I’m at a 4.5 that I’ll bump up to a 5, and I refuse to be shamed for it.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again; I’m a sucker for old country music like this. I’m also fully biased, and I’ll admit that every single time. I feel justified in bumping this up to a 5 though – I thought this was a really well done blend of country music with a bit of rock/psychedelic rock-driven influence that blended the best of both worlds, while still feeling distinctly like a country album. It sticks pretty closely to the country side, and I suspect that’s why this album has such a low average rating on the site, but when this album chooses to let loose (especially so on “Hot Burrito #2”) and lean into the rock side, it really opens up.

That’s not to say the country side of this is bad at all – the lovely sound of the steel guitar behind some more rock-driven instrumentation is like, almost heaven for me. Lyrically, I can see the complaint that some of this is rather basic, but like… what country music isn’t basic at a pure surface level? It’s about the imagery, and this album does a pretty solid job of setting the imagery throughout, enhanced further by the despair in the vocals (which thankfully, get less nasally as the album moves along). I thought every instrumental did a pretty good job of setting an emotional tone as well, even if it did enter a sort of homogeny on a few tracks.

I don’t know how many more times I’ll have to justify giving old country music such high ratings, but for my money’s worth, this album earned it – I thought it had a nice energy, some good variance in the subject matter, and the soundscapes are right down my alley. I can totally understand someone else giving this a 3, or even a 2 if they despise country music to hell… but I’m at a 5, and I do not care. Send all complaints to the people who raised me on this type of music.

I’m at a 3.

I’m really not quite sure what to make of this album. This is my first time hearing anything by the Bee Gees that isn’t How Deep is Your Love or Stayin’ Alive, so my brain was certainly more predisposed to expect a poppier, brighter record – not necessarily even disco, but just more… fun, you know? I don’t know if my struggles with this album are a result of misplaced expectations, or if it’s truly on the band for stretching out into a genre that they just don’t feel comfortable in.

This really is a technically sound record – I think the lyrics & the instrumentation are pretty good here, and when their vocals click, the tracks do work really well, defying expectations in a positive way. However, I can’t help but think that the general tone of the album, in terms of the front to back experience, is just too somber for a band like the Bee Gees, at least in terms of how I perceive them. There’s so many tracks that are just sad orchestrally-driven breakup songs, and that lack of variance becomes more apparent the longer the album goes. Even past that, there’s just a lot of love songs in general, and it really wore me down to not get anything poppier or brighter or more energetic for the vast majority of the album – even Led Zeppelin knew to put Black Dog before Stairway to Heaven, you know what I mean?

I guess this album just suffers from impostor syndrome to me – it’s not that the Bee Gees can’t pull off this style of rock, because they technically did. They just didn’t do it in a way that feels like their own style, and while I don’t really have a better sense of what “the Bee Gees” musically are, past my limited exposure… I dunno, it just feels like they’re trying to take the best of other people’s styles while trying to pass it off as their own. It’s kind of like stolen identity, and when I was listening to most of these tracks, I just couldn’t shake the feeling of “this song would be hitting much better with me if it were someone else performing it”.

It’s really in the vocals, and I don’t want to disparage the Gibbs like that, but… man, it just didn’t sound right for most of the album. It’s really apparent on “Dearest” – you get Michael Jackson or some other highly accomplished vocalist who can hit those notes, you’ve got a hit. When it’s Robin Gibb doing it, sounding like a mix between Billy Crystal & John Mulaney, it just feels off, and it’s a feeling this album never really shakes off of itself.

I want to like this more than I do, and I want to give this more than a 3, but I just can’t justify it. It’s an album with well written and well composed songs that just seem sung by the wrong band for the job – it’s like when other artists do the vocals on a demo as a placeholder. It suffers from a lack of variance that really affects the album experience, even if there’s not a bad track here. It’s not a bad set of songs though, and I’m sure someone will enjoy this more than I did. I dunno, there’s just too many things that add up to make this really click for me, and that’s why I’m stuck at a 3.

I’m at an emphatic 5. I loved that.

This is the second time we’ve gotten Arcade Fire – I thought The Suburbs was a good album, but for my tastes, it relied really heavily on the “vibes” of the instrumentation and a sort of nostalgic feeling that I don’t know is necessarily cultivated well throughout the course of that album. Going into this one, my biggest hope was for an album that managed to blend the dense lyricism of The Suburbs with a more engaging soundscape, and a more fruitful “narrative” hook that would balance my tastes a bit more.

This absolutely nailed what I was looking for – I wasn’t necessarily prepared for a more somber and bitter tone, but this is exactly the type of album that clicks for me. Right from the rumbling tones of the intro in “Black Mirror”, all the way to the desperate plea that ends “My Body Is a Cage”, I just felt captivated and attentive throughout. Whether it was in the instrumental choices (lots of Springsteen influence here, but a bit of ELO-esque bombast as well), the emotion in the vocals (both happy and sad, sometimes painfully so), or the storytelling in the lyrics (big shout to “(Antichrist Television Blues”), I just don’t think this album has a dull moment. There’s always something to pay attention to, and I think it enrichens and rewards me as the listener for caring.

I can’t fully explain the nitty-gritty of why this album’s lyricism clicked with me so well, but let’s just say that the way this album tackles religion, and the concept of “God-given justified self righteousness”, really aligns with my take on it. That’s not to say there’s no place for religion that gives someone such confidence, especially if they can turn it into a positive, but this album really deals with the fall from grace and the despair that follows from most people who have that mindset. My favorite moment in the album is the ending to “(Antichrist Television Blues)”, if only because that abrupt cutoff, and the subsequent hanging onto the pure silence gave me chills. That silence is God himself, responding for the first & only time on this album, with nothing but unspoken contempt, and that silence speaks volumes. It’s a brilliant production choice in an album full of them.

So, yeah, I thought this was spectacular. Maybe it just hit closer to home, but I think even without that connection, there’s just a great rock soundscape here, and it really shines throughout the album. Some people might dismiss this as preachy, and that’s a bit fair – if it doesn’t click, it doesn’t click, and I can easily see how this could fall on deaf ears (or ears that simply hate indie rock). For my tastes, I loved it. One of the easiest 5’s I’ve given yet.

I’m at a 3.5 that will get bumped up to a very begrudging 4.

I simply don’t have a link to Morrissey’s stuff in a more personal sense to feel like the art is inseparable from the artist here like it is for other problematic performers (looking at you, Mr. West) – I know the guy’s kind of a shithead (I’m being very generous with “kind of”), and I’ve got to reckon with that, but I think I can live with it, for one reason or another.

I’ll say this; because I know he is who he is, I paid a whole lot of attention to the lyrics on this album, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I think I like Morrissey when he’s not fucking complaining. The best tracks on this album are the ones that avoid overt bitching about society or ones that avoid when he goes “woe is me” and gets all self-referential and whiny. When he's fucking complaining, I despise the man, but at least he complains to some good instrumentals.

There are 6 tracks I really liked on a first pass; “Irish Blood, English Heart”, “I Have Forgiven Jesus”, “Come Back to Camden”, “First of the Gang to Die”, “Let Me Kiss You”, & “All the Lazy Dykes”. That last one is probably the most controversial pick up there (especially with that title), but I think it’s a genuinely progressive track for the time, even with the chance that it’s just Morrissey trying to court controversy of some kind. He still performs it, so he has to believe in its message to some degree.

The other 6 tracks are at least technically sound, and none of them are necessarily bad, they’re just either not super engaging or lyrically rather annoying. There are times where I thought another singer or band (namely Oasis, who he really tries to ape at certain points on this album) would’ve killed it on some of the more average tracks. It’s never in the soundscape, even if most of the tracks rarely feel like they’re from 2004. They all sound good, but instrumentally, this really feels like it’s jumping around from the late 80s to the late 90s to me, in a way that’s noticeable, but passable.

Ultimately, I did like the album, and I like it enough to bump it up to a 4, begrudgingly. It trims the awkwardness of Viva Hate down, has much more concise songwriting and energy in the tracks, and when he’s not bitching and moaning, this album really works for me. Of course, he moans and bitches a lot, but at least he’s moaning and bitching in a better way than he did on Viva Hate. I could (and probably will) come to regret the 4, but for now, it just feels kinda right. At the very least, I think it’s no less than 3 (or a 2 if you REALLY fucking hate this guy, which is fair).

It’s a 3, but a strangely compelling & oddly entrancing 3.

This feels like I’m listening to music itself go through a midlife crisis. I know that’s incredibly weird to say, but hear me out. The album starts off with the big wall of noise that drones on and overwhelms in “Krautrock” for an excruciating 7 minutes before the drums finally pop in to give some semblance of a crutch, before also blending into the soundscape like everything else. I’m stretching, but it feels like a journey through a brain going through a total mental breakdown. The Sad Skinhead feels almost like a slight bargaining stage of grief, what with the xylophone solo of all the things and the more comedic tone.

Based on the lyrics in Jennifer (“your red hair’s burning, yellow jokes come out your mind”), it kind of reads to me like her death (or some other traumatic event involving her) is the reason why “Krautrock” feels so empty, hence the reprise of the wall of noise at the end of the track. Hell, maybe the traumatic event is that “Picnic on a Frozen River” that makes up part of Track 4.

The last 3 tracks, mostly instrumental with lyrics thrown in every now & then, feel like his attempt to finally rebound from whatever happened, exploring a wide variety of styles that sort of jump around a lot of the late 60s and early 70s, and hell, it feels the album jumps ahead to a Moby track by Track 6, with a sort of electronica/dance structure reminiscent of the 90s.

The last track kinda sells my theory; every time he says “yes, it’s all right” on “It’s a Bit of a Pain”, his vocals get covered up by an incredibly harsh sound, and once this other person he’s talking to presumably leaves, that harsh sound takes over as the primary lead instrumental, scattered and kinda riffing awkwardly like an electric guitar, all while a nice bubbly happy acoustic plays behind it. He’s not over Jennifer, he’s not happy, and with how abruptly the album ends, it feels like he’s doomed to fall back into that emptiness again. I’d say there’s honestly a semblance of a narrative close to my interpretation here – I’m probably stretching by calling it “music going through a midlife crisis”, but it feels like there’s something to it.

With all of that said, you can have a compelling and entrancing narrative, but I don’t think the execution of it is that strong here – it’s not a bad album, but this does suffer from settling for way too long on some of its least compelling melodies or rhythms without properly evolving or changing (or taking too long to do so, killing the vibe a bit). The tracks themselves have no reason to go for 7 or 8 or even 11 minutes – at times, it feels like the album is trying to justify its own existence, and that’s never really a vibe you want to get out of an album. When it all clicks, and it finds its entertaining melodies, this album does work for me. It doesn’t work that often, but it worked just enough that I felt compelled to pay attention, even in its flatter moments. It’s not an album I think I can go back to, but I like it enough to give it a 3. If nothing else, it’s interesting, and being interesting is way better than being boring.

I’m at a 5.

That’s 35 minutes of really fucking good punk rock, man. I can hear a lot of U.S. new wave inspiration on here, but they turned up the energy and really channeled it in a good way here; there’s not much filler, a lot of fast tempos, and some great lyricism that gets its point across through the really nice grit in Joe Strummer’s vocals.

My single complaint is pretty minimal, and entirely subjective: I think Police & Thieves should’ve been the last track on the album. There’s an absolute breakneck speed on those first 11 tracks, most of which are around or under 2 minutes, & they cover such a variety of topics that it keeps the sound fresh on all of those tracks. However, when Police & Thieves comes in, and takes up 6 minutes doing its reggae cover (which is really well done, by the way), it just kind of stops the album’s momentum in a way that I think turns the album downward for me. Not that much, but enough to sort of feel jarring once the next track goes right back to being under 2 minutes. It feels awkward, and I think the album would’ve greatly benefited if it had been the last track.

Regardless, what a fun album. Guitar work is on point throughout, the percussion is punchy, the tempo is great, the lyrics have a deserved anger to them & make some pretty decent points (some of which still ring true in 2024), and Joe Strummer’s vocals bring it all together to make this work. I do sort of wish a few tracks were just a little longer, if only because I selfishly think 35 minutes of this soundscape feels criminally short compared to how much I enjoyed it. Pretty easy 5.

I’m at a 3.5, and I wish I could leave it there, but I think I’m going to barely bump this up to a 4, even with some hesitations in doing so.

I mean, I’ve been sitting here for about 68 minutes of total music, and I just sort of feel… strange. This is not a bad album at all; it’s incredibly technically sound, and in terms of the actual soundscape, production, melodies, and appeal, what’s here is a marked improvement over the sort of dreadfully bland “A Northern Soul” from 290 albums ago. As a whole, I really did enjoy most of the tracks here. Bitter Sweet Symphony is still pretty damn good, and most of the other 12 tracks are enjoyable.

However, this album falls into the same trap and pit that “A Northern Soul” did – it takes a while for it to fall into that pit, but it gets there. I wasn’t able to put this into words 290 albums ago, but I’ve figured out what it is now: this album treats every single track like it’s the closing track of the album, and it creates a homogenous sort of effect where all the luster of the orchestral arrangements, and the big epic swirling soundscapes sort of become… mundane. It doesn’t ruin the album experience as much as it did on “A Northern Soul”, mainly because they managed to figure out how to make most of the tracks compelling while sustaining me as a listener for the most part… but it does really start to creep in the longer the album goes on. This could easily be avoided if they just threw in some “lesser” tracks, but… I dunno, hearing what ELO did on “Out of The Blue”, which does a pretty similar thing with giving every track a level of bombastic importance, but to a much more successful degree, makes this album feel like it sort of failed in comparison.

Don’t get me wrong, what’s here still sounds great across the board, and I’m sure most of, if not all of these tracks will likely feel better individually, separated from the 68 minutes that turn the album experience into a bit of a slog. The strength of that individuality is, oddly enough, what’s giving me the leeway to bump this up from a 3.5 to a 4, if only because I feel like this deserves higher than a 3. I vibed so much more with the tone and soundscapes and the general energy of this album compared to “A Northern Soul”, and I fully acknowledge that most of these tracks, if they pop up on shuffle, are gonna feel fucking great to listen to. As an entire album experience, front to back, it starts strong, and then really settles into a flatline around the middle, with occasional little peaks back upward, but… man, when it settles, it settles in a weird way that doesn’t feel as engaging as it could have or should have. This is full of individually good to great tracks that simply don’t mesh super well as an album – when you’re deep in the trenches, it just feels too similar to really feel good as an album. They just sound so damn good though. I feel OK with bumping this up to a 4 – I could easily regret it in the future, but it feels correct right now.

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

I’ve learned it before, I should learn it again; never judge a late-90s/early 2000s album by its strange, strange cover. Everyone was collectively on one back then. I thought for sure, going into this, it would be some indie rock art album that got a little overrated at the time, aged sort of awkwardly in its avantgarde-ness, met with too much critical acclaim, and only ended up on the list with a bit of bias adjacent to that time period. I feel like it’s happened before.

This, however, was just a great album. There’s a really strong variety of styles here, some great production, some good vocals and lyrics throughout, and it just clicked extremely well for me. It wears a lot of inspirations on its sleeve, but it does so without ever sounding like a ripoff or a pastiche; the influence from the 60s & 70s is prevalent in spades here, but it blends it so well with 90s instrumentation that it just sort of morphs into that era. Even past that, though, you can hear the future of late 2000s / early 2010s indie rock here – Cause a Rockslide, even if it becomes a bit directionless and flat around the middle, starts off sounding like a mix of Cage the Elephant & Tame Impala. The entire 63 minutes is full of flavor like this that consistently kept me engaged and on my toes as a listener, and I don’t think there’s ever a dull moment or a part that feels like a repeated track. It’s extremely well done for the time.

It certainly helps that there’s a semblance of a front to back narrative throughout the album, but it’s not an extremely clear one to me – that’s not necessarily a negative, because it just means I was really entranced in the general soundscapes to fully invest in the lyrics to that extent of finding winding plots, though it’s not like I wasn’t paying attention. When this album hits on its more emotional tracks though, whether in a happy or sad way, it hits incredibly well. His vocals do a great job of finding the tone of the song and just getting it across, enhanced by some great lyrics on those tracks. When this album wants to go full rock, it nails it too – Disillusion feels like it could’ve fit right into Persona 5 or one of its many spinoffs.

Look, I could keep gushing, but I’m just surprised that this album managed to exceed my expectations that much for a guy I’ve never heard of, with an album cover like that, in a time period where it does feel like people were really glazing everything (no offense to Limp Bizkit) to try and make a new star in a sort of stagnant genre. This does feel like an album that should have at least one award under its belt, and I’m glad it does. It’s probably the reason why it’s on this list, and I’m also glad about that too. I thought this was really good, and I have no problems bumping it up to a 5.

I’m at a 4.

Well, it’s definitely a much more engaging album than “Younger than Yesterday” was, mainly because this album finds a more distinct musical identity (early prototype psychedelic rock) and really plays around with it in a variety of ways. It doesn’t always succeed, but it does take some pretty good swings, and when it clicks, it really clicks. The album only ever lost me on one track, which was “I See You”. Past that, everything else ranged from good to great, but it never really reaches an upper echelon of making me drop my jaw or anything.

The biggest flaw this album suffers from, is that even with its experimentation of a relatively “new” genre, it tends to just… settle. Too many tracks find their rhythm or their melodic hook, and then go stagnant. The worst offender here, and I hate to say it, is the ode against the atomic bomb “I Come and Stand at Every Door”, which has a great message settled in front of an ultimately really flat melody that pretty much undermined my desire to listen to it. The other issue is simply in the track order, and I only say this because 2-4-2 Fox Trot not being immediately before Eight Miles High is criminal from a synergy standpoint – it’s a decent track that’s sorely misplaced as the final track, and it makes the album end on a flatter note than if it had finished on literally any other track on the second side.

I did enjoy this though – it’s under 30 minutes, so it flies by, and most of the tracks are at least an interesting listen, mostly in the instrumentals, but sometimes the lyrics hit really nicely. I liked it a lot, save for a few perceived flaws, but those are easily adjustable, and partially limited by the mid-1960s. It’s a pretty darn good 4.

I’m at a 5.

It is getting a little hard to praise Simon & Garfunkel after listening to three albums of theirs, but this is a pretty damn good album. The big highlight is obviously the first 7 tracks and the mini-narrative of the fragility of life at all ages, whether it’s at your youngest or your oldest. “Voices of Old People”, while less of a track and more of a documentary-esque look at the elderly, is a genuine standout to me here, if only for being a really strong example of a track built for “serving the narrative”, especially so for 1968. The way that leads right into Old Friends and the subsequent reprise of Bookends flows perfectly, and it really solidifies those first 7 tracks as something kinda special.

If I have any “complaint” about the album, I guess I just wasn’t as engaged by everything else. None of the last 5 tracks are bad; Fakin’ It is pretty fun, with a great tempo and a good hook. Punky’s Dilemma is a goofy sort of Sesame Street-esque cut about avoiding the draft. Mrs. Robinson is obviously the big commercial standout of the back half, and it’s pretty catchy, even though I’ve never seen the movie it’s based on. A Hazy Shade of Winter is probably my favorite one there; it feels distinctly like Simon & Garfunkel’s style and production, even with the rock & roll stylizations thrown in. It could’ve totally fit into the “Bookends” part of the album without a hitch. At the Zoo is charming, if a bit cheesy, and a slightly odd choice to end the album on. They’re all great tracks, but as their own side, they just weren’t as compelling to me as their own set of songs as the Bookends half was.

Either way though, it’s a great 30 minutes; Paul Simon’s songwriting chops are on full display here, and there’s really not a missed beat throughout. I do wish the “Bookends” portion of the album had a little more to it. Hell, it could’ve taken up the entire album and I wouldn’t have complained one bit. As it stands, I just enjoyed this a lot, and it’s another damn good Simon & Garfunkel album. No complaints giving this a 5.

I’m at a 5, and I’m glad I get to say a little more than “it’s just good jazz”.

It’s good jazz with a little bit of a rock flair to it, and that distinction adds a bit of depth. It’s not an overwhelming rock flair – you’re not gonna get an extreme hybrid with like, a sick guitar solo in here, but the instrumentation of traditional jazz mixed with the electric guitar and synth-driven keyboards is blended together really well, in such a way that neither overpowers the other too much to be a distraction.

Shhh / Peaceful does feel like the “lesser” of the two songs here, but it’s like picking between two different slices of pizza – at the end of the day, it’s still pizza. There’s not a wrong pick, one just might feel more flavorful. In this case, “In A Silent Way” is the more flavorful for me. Starting with the almost Eno-esque droning tones, before going into a really fun trumpet & keyboard driven riff held together by a super catchy bassline, then finishing back on the Eno-esque tones with a little more of the middle part involved, just caught my ear more.

Ultimately, this album really succeeds through its simplicity; there are ways this could’ve gone wrong, but it never does. It doesn’t go too risky, and I think that’s the correct choice. It plays itself super safe, so it’s not as engaging as Birth of the Cool or Kind of Blue, but the different style of production makes the comparison feel a little weird. I can honestly boil it down to “I just liked it.” If Bitches Brew is indeed this but even better, I cannot wait for that to pop up on the list. As far as this album goes though, it’s a 5.

That’s obviously a 5.

This is my first time listening to this album in full – obviously, I know Mr. Blue Sky, but that’s about it, really. My experience with ELO as a whole is super minimal – maybe an occasional thing heard on the radio, but the big thing, other than Mr. Blue Sky, is reading once that John Lennon reportedly said the Beatles, had they stayed together, would’ve likely sounded like ELO.

That sentiment rings pretty damn true here: this feels like a Beatles album, in a very good way. Perhaps there’s a bit more bombast and synth, but in terms of the overall compositions, vocal styles, and just the underlining intangibles… yeah, this feels like where they all could’ve gone.

Admittedly, I’m not quite sure how to describe my overall thoughts here – I think this is just fantastic across the board, from top to bottom, but I wonder how much of it is simply a factor getting really into the zone with this general style. This clicked extremely well with me; just about everything I like in this album can be traced back to every style present in the genre around this time. There’s some jukebox U.S. rock influence ala Boston or Kansas, there’s obviously the Beatles, there’s occasionally a dip into some Zeppelin/Stones style stuff, the piano feels sort of Elton John-esque at times, and the synth/vocoder work blends in part of what was making disco, pop, and R&B work incredibly well at the time. I do wish there were a few more chances to have me, as the listener, breathe a bit within the songs themselves, as some of these go at a breakneck speed without much of a pause, but I kinda love the rollercoaster feel. It’s an album that feels tailor-made to me, which makes it all the more baffling that I’ve never really interacted with it until now.

It also makes it sort of baffling that, once the experience of the album wore off, it almost felt like the cracks started to pop up, oddly enough. Again, this is a great album, it’s easily deserving of a 5, and I loved everything here, but… I couldn’t help but get a lingering sense that maybe, just maybe, the album’s bombast overstays its welcome and creates just a bit of a homogeneity that stops some of the tracks at an individual level from feeling as memorable. That is to say, I kind of found it hard to remember why I was super into stuff like Turn to Stone, Sweet Talkin’ Woman, Across the Border, Night in the City, etc – those feel incredible in the moment, and they work cohesively and brilliantly within the album, but until I went back to listen to them again, I couldn’t really place why I had liked them after I was done listening to the album. Perhaps it’s just a “first time listening” thing.

Ultimately, though, this is just too damn good to let little cracks or perceived imperfections get in the way of what this is, at its core: 70 minutes of blistering rock, that maybe sometimes goes a little too fast for its own good, but it more than makes up for it with the orchestral instrumentation, the huge variety of influences, and a very distinct style that clicks extremely well with my tastes. Someone else can write about the nitty gritty of the compositions and really break down why this has all those intangibles that just work, but for my ears, good music is good music, and this is fantastic music. It’s an absolute highlight of the 1970s, and a crime that I haven’t heard it until now. Very, very easy 5.

I’m at a 5.

Well, that felt a lot less like Funkadelic and more like… I dunno, Led Zeppelin meets Hendrix meets Eno, or something like that. That was an eclectic blend of every type of rock & ambience & funk there was. I've seen the album cover plenty of times, but I've never heard anything from this album. I enjoyed all 37 minutes of that, save for a few minor things: the mix in Hit It and Quit It wasn’t as friendly as the rest of the album felt, Back in Our Minds felt a little too short and perhaps a little empty, and Wars of Armageddon goes on just a little too long – could’ve trimmed down some of those final 2 minutes where it started to feel endless and directionless at the same time.

Regardless of any minor complaints I have, this is just good fucking music. It’s not as funky as some of their other stuff, and I think my ear is still slightly more attuned to the Parliament side of the George Clinton coin, but… damn, this stands up pretty well to a lot of its rock contemporaries of the time. The guitar solo on Super Stupid blew me away, and I think everyone deserves to hear that at least once. There’s smaller moments like that throughout the album, where the soundscape just overwhelms in the same hypnotic way that “One Nation Under A Groove” did some 326 days ago, but with a higher success rate; sometimes, that album knocked me out of the zone, but I was in it for almost the entire way through here. I really liked this, and it’s a pretty easy 5.

I’m at a 3.5 that I’ll bump up to a 4.

This is a great 70 minutes to *listen* to, save for a few tracks. Very key wording on “listen” – a lot of the time, these tracks do match really well with their lyrical content and their instrumentation. When the album makes sense, it’s rolling, it’s flowing, and it’s providing some great examples of the early 2000s rock scene – basically, everyone trying to mix the Stones with Nirvana, and a hint of rap flair (or at least, that’s how my brain kinda hears it now). I would probably give the very best parts of this album a 5.

The big falldown of an entire point and a half then, comes when the lyrics and the soundscape don’t quite match, which unfortunately happens a little too often – it’s bound to happen at some point with 16 songs, but when I can point out 6 of them that didn’t click, something’s definitely consistent, in a bad way. Nobody Girl is the most key offender of this – the glorification of someone being called a “nobody” and sort of glamorizing a lonely lifestyle should be met with a moodier tone and some slightly somber instrumentation, not a big Britpop-sounding extravaganza reminiscent of Champagne Supernova in its structure that lasts for 9 minutes. There’s other disconnects on the album, and a few soundscapes that really don’t mesh with their lyrics, but that’s by far the worst one to me.

With that said, it is still a great listen – the band is excellent throughout, his voice has a great variety to it, and when everything does click, this album really, really rolls. It just hits too many potholes to really stay consistently good; whether it’s the track order feeling a little chaotic in its tone, the lyricism and the instrumentals not matching, or just some really icky songs in general (who let him fucking record “Harder Now That It’s Over”??), this album just stumbles a few too many times for its own good.

I still enjoyed it, and I think it’s a recommended listen, but when put under scrutiny, it just manages to crumple a bit after a pretty hot start. It’s a 3.5 that I’ll bump up to a 4, but I truly cannot imagine this thing having another 5 tracks laid on top of it.

I am strangely at a 4.5 that I’ll bump up to a 5.

I can’t explain it; I had some serious doubts, because I’ve been pretty mixed on the Pixies in the past, and a solo album from their lead singer led me to one of two conclusions: either a more cleaned up, commercialized sound that would be palatable and distinctly different from the Pixies, or leaning even harder into the more avantgarde and loose parts of their hard rock sound, so much so that it somehow would loop around into art. By some miracle, this album manages to hit on both of those, and it weaves in and out of those paths so often that they end up blending together.

I can give an immense amount of praise to most of the instrumentals here; they’re never really stale until maybe 3/4ths of the way through the album, and even then, there’s a very intentional choice to explore different genres in an effort to try and stay fresh. The effort sort of fails, but also sort of works at the same time; I can’t really describe it, if only because there was some general fatigue due to this album’s length that had me start to falter out by the end. I can give some good praise to his vocals too – he really does come across as a strong vocalist on a lot of these tracks, and it’s distinctly different from his Pixies style, which leaned a lot more into a slower, surfer-y vibe. These feel good to listen to throughout.

The only thing I can kinda knock are the lyrics, but even with those, I sort of admire how off-the-wall some of the tracks are in their subject matter; spacecraft being sent to Mars, people who made water more available in California, a hard rock ballad about the 3 Stooges… there’s a lot here. It’s sort of Sufjan Stevens-esque in how varied it all is, and I like how big of a swing it takes.

The biggest issue is the runtime and the amount of tracks; for as entertaining and as fast of an hour as this is, it could’ve been cut down by a bit – a few too many tracks start to tread on the same tone and subject matter, even with the experimental genre shifts towards the end. Get this down to like, 18 or even 15 of the best tracks, and you’ve got a pure winner here. As it stands, it’s still good, but it overstays its welcome just a little too long. That’s why I’m at a 4.5, but I enjoyed this too much to knock it down; it deserves a 5, and I’m kinda stunned that it does. It’s a fun album.

Once again, it’s a 4.5 that I’ll bump up to a 5. I just want one fucking day without feeling a “.5”, you know?

This is a very good album; it’s regarded as Neil Young’s best album, and I did enjoy a lot of this. There’s great lyricism, and I deeply dig the country-esque soundscape mixed with rock sensibilities here. I think it’s super well produced, and its storytelling is done really well. There’s not a bad track here, and it’s ultimately a pretty strong 37 minutes, that doesn’t overstay its welcome, though it does start to come a little close.

Really, the only complaint I have, and this might just be a general fatigue talking here, but like… this just felt really same-y after a bit, you know? You can only take so many slow paced, guitar driven, rock/country soundscapes contemplating the intricacies of life. This really needed some levity at some point – I’m not punishing the album for taking itself seriously, because I think it carries a lot of emotional weight and heft, and carries it incredibly well for 1972. But, like, goddamn man, just throw at least one fun song in there, would you?

All that said, this album clicked super well for me; there’s a few lulls in some extended instrumentals, and an occasional “first minute is the whole track” issue, but I think it more than makes up for it in everything else, especially in the lyrics. I’d recommend it to anyone, unless you’re looking for a more upbeat album. This is not that, even with some great guitar riffs throughout. I enjoyed it, even with the lack of levity, and I think it deserves the bump up to a 5.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go listen to like, MJ or something.

I’m at a 4.5 that I’m gonna round up to a 5.

The only reason I’m not at a flat 5 is simply because of the shorter tracks here – I get that they’re meant to be solo tracks, made as partial filler and a partial showcase of their individual talents, but they don’t have a really cohesive bend to them that makes the concept work – those tracks are no Speakerboxx / The Love Below, to put it one way. There are great tracks within those solo tracks though – Long Distance Runaround is a treat, and for some reason, Mood for a Day really fucking clicked with me. The rest are just sort of there, though.

The main tracks on this album, which I would consider to be Roundabout, South Side of the Sky, & Heart of the Sunrise are all spectacular, and they’re the reason this gets a bump up to a 5. Roundabout is obviously the huge one, and I loved hearing it again, but I genuinely preferred South Side of the Sky more in terms of the storytelling, sound design, and atmosphere. Heart of the Sunrise is the longest one, and the most “epic” but the reprise of “We Have Heaven” closing out the album feels like a really staggering mistake to me. The track listing in general didn’t feel as coherent as the stuff on “The Yes Album”.

I guess now’s a good time to point out the near-bookending of all this – we did get their last album on January 5th, and it’s now November 18th. That’s 10 months; I have heard so much fucking music this year, that this didn’t quite blow me away in the same way as The Yes Album did, but that’s less a fault of the album and more a consequence of going through this project, and just hearing so much music. It’s still great prog rock, it’s a great Yes album, and I really hope there’s more – it’s a pretty enjoyable 40 minutes, even with a few flat spots in there. It deserves to be bumped up to a 5, and everyone in the world should hear the main 3 tracks on this album at least once.