Reviews by guggmo

I’m at a 5.

This is my first of the Johnny Cash prison albums, and by a weird sort of extension, my first proper Johnny Cash album as well – the man simply exudes charisma, and this is the concert where the famous middle finger photo comes from. Just a fucking legend, really.

This is a good setlist too – I haven’t heard most of these tracks, save for I Walk The Line. This is my first time hearing A Boy Named Sue. That’s a really fun song, and honestly, I feel like it’s aged well enough into today’s standards of LGBTQ+ related issues, gender equality, and how much more personal and attached names feel. There’s some fun stuff here, namely the story about him getting arrested for picking flowers and then writing a whole song about it.

I haven’t heard the Folsom album; I know it’s more acclaimed, and I can’t wait to get there now, but I just really enjoyed this. I think Johnny Cash shines in an environment like this. Even if he seems “bored” at times, like some critics have written, he’s still engaged enough to put on a damn fine show. It’s a really tight 34 minutes, and the crowd brings a great energy that Johnny perfectly plays into. I’m being generous by not bumping it down to a 4 for the San Quentin reprise, but I can always just skip over it on a future relisten. I liked it a lot, and I think it’s worth giving a 5.

I’m at a 5.

I’ve sort of just sat here in silence trying to really digest the album, and I think my current inability to put my feelings into truly coherent thought speak more to the quality of the album and its emotional impact more than my words could.

This is the third time we’ve gotten a Radiohead album, and it’s the 3rd time it’s lived up to the acclaim, and this time, I think it went above and beyond – OK Computer was great, In Rainbows was fantastic, and I knew this album would probably get another big adjective to mark its quality, but I really can’t think of one right now. The only thing that even remotely comes to mind is “overwhelming,” and I guess that applies best to both my brain and this album as a whole.

It really is overwhelming, in the best way possible – the closest analog I have to any of the albums we’ve gotten so far is David Bowie’s “Low,” but that’s only in terms of production and stylization. There is something in the general emotion evoked by Thom Yorke and the rest of the band here that takes this album over the top, but it’s something that I seriously just don’t have the words for. I’ve never been left this… stunted by an album.

I recognize its grandeur, I recognize its emotional pull, I recognize the incredible instrumentation and production here, I recognize its ability to use a minimalism in words to try to convey feeling as effectively as possible – every core tenet of praise I have about the album is there, but I just can’t figure out how to say it. All I know is that I thought it was beautiful. There’s not a skip here, save for maybe Treefingers, but this album is a front to back journey – close your eyes, find a focus, and just let it take over. At some point, that zen state will kick in, and there will be nothing like it. It’s a fast, fast 47 minutes, but it sticks for a long time afterward. It’s a highly recommended 5.

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

This is the second time we’ve gotten Bjork, and this is a much, much different album than Vulnicura. I’m not entirely sure what to make of it. This is a really ballsy album to try and pull off, and frankly, she succeeded entirely at what she set out to do – every instrument here is a voice. Some of it processed to hell and back, but impressive all the same. It gives every track a uniform sound, but not a uniform style, and the versatility that she explores throughout this album is kind of remarkable given its general somber and almost spiritually driven tone.

I could be misreading the album as somber though – I’m just going off the vibe of most of the tracks, a lot of which feel slow, intentional, breathy, and a bit held, as if to give everything its own space to shine. The exception to this is obviously Triumph of a Heart, and in a way, I’m glad she reserved herself from making more tracks like that – it makes that one stand out, feel special, and connect really well as the final track of the overall experience.

I definitely hit the zen state a few times while listening here, but I think the album didn’t do a great job of keeping me in it – for as ambitious as this is, it does fall apart under its own weight a few times. There’s some production choices I disagree with, and there’s a number of times where the melodic structure is lost (albeit intentionally) in favor of a slightly off-beat rhythm that never quite found the balance between musically pleasing and captivating for me.

Make no mistake, though – this is a captivating album. It’s 45 minutes that’ll sort of take you every which way, but you have to be willing to go along with the journey. I don’t necessarily blame anyone who could give this a 2, because it is abrasive, unnatural, and discomforting, but if you’re willing to accept that, it’s an enjoyable enough listen on the strength of its ambition. Anyone giving this a 1 is just too afraid to be challenged by music.

For me, it’s a 3.5 that I’ll bump up to a 4, if only because I respect its ambition so much, and I was genuinely really captivated by the album. It’s not strong enough to carry its own weight and its own concepts for the full 45 minutes, but when this album is rolling, it’s a beautifully layered mess that’s a treat to listen to. Even when it’s not rolling, it’s just a layered mess that’s technically sound, and that’s still an interesting listen in its own right. I liked it, what can I say?

I’m… I’m somewhere. When I wrote my little review for Safe as Milk, there’s one sentence I threw in there: “If you’re gonna try to be this innovative for 1967, then go all in.” This album is them going all in, and I feel like the genie took my wish and bastardized it beyond my wildest dreams. Is that a bad thing? Is that a good thing?

Well, it was 79 minutes of something, alright, but you can’t say it wasn’t captivating or intriguing. You can certainly call it bad, but I don’t know that it is bad. Does it deserve to have an average rating of 2.27? No, I wouldn’t go that low. I think I’m at a 3, somehow.

I know what this album is trying to do, or at least, I think I do – it’s simply trying to exist. There is an incredible complexity behind the actual compositions and melodies and everything here, and that complexity is entirely grounded and almost canceled out by the most nonsensical lyrics and the most grating vocal performance that any album has ever had. Grating doesn’t necessarily mean bad in this case, it just means… divisive.

This album’s gonna be divisive. I don’t think it’s bad, I don’t think it’s THAT good either, but it’s a journey. It’s music that fundamentally challenges the entire structure of the genre, of Beatlemania, and of an artist’s obligation to make music that’s actively commercially appealing. It’s batshit insane, but it’s technically sound, even if it feels entirely wrong or completely uncomfortable at times. There may truly never be anything produced like this, with such little commercial appeal, and yet so meticulously produced to evoke such a reaction that it somehow loops around to having appeal again.

I would say it’s like listening to a band trying to perform over Zoom, with each instrument on an individual call, but that’s a disservice to just how brilliantly scattered these compositions tend to be. It’s more equivalent to say, the awful “rival” art present in Pokemon Art Academy on the 3DS – just go look at that shit. It’s designed perfectly to evoke poor artistry, and yet there’s a brilliance within that.

The only issue that this album has, besides its obnoxiously long run time, is its obnoxiously self-centered lead vocalist, who honestly drags this album down tremendously for me. It’s not that his vocals are ever bad, but they overpower the compositions and their complexity so much that it genuinely ruins the spirit of the musicality for me. His presence is not only awkward, it’s unneeded, and yet at the same time, his presence is entirely necessary to make the album’s overall tone work. It’s a conundrum, but it’s easily solved by just lowering his voice in the mix, and minimizing his presence, as well as his overly preachy poetry that sounds like a Brennan Lee Mulligan monologue fed through Google Translate 28 times over.

With all of that said, it is an enjoyable experience, but an excruciating one – the album did lose me at several points, but it also always managed to pull me back in just by doing some completely goofy bullshit that just happened to win me over more often than not. It’s not an album I’ll ever return to, but it’s one where I think I can genuinely appreciate how ballsy and avant-garde it feels for 1969. It’s an oddly recommended 3.

I’m at a 5.

My experience with Oasis is still relatively untainted and fresh – yes, everyone knows Wonderwall, and a lot of people know Champagne Supernova, and I’m guilty of knowing (and loving) both. This was always gonna get at least a 3 on the strength of those 2 tracks alone. Past that though, I’m still fresh as a daisy on pretty much all of their stuff; I know Noel and Liam can be pretentious as hell, always at odds, and their confidence is their biggest flaw as much as it is their biggest strength.

It’s a good thing this album uses it as an incredible strength – they shot their shot with the most stadium-friendly rock one could ever produce, without any guarantee that they could really fill out stadiums like that, and they absolutely fucking nailed it. I’m leaning fully into guilty pleasure mode on a lot of these tracks, and I don’t really care. The melodies are fun, the vocals are great, and when the bombast and showmanship matches the quality like this, it just comes across as a sort of victory lap to me, rather than corporate or manufactured. It feels like an indie band that “made it” their way, in their own style, without selling out or sacrificing, even if it probably leans closer to “selling out”.

I just loved this album from front to back. I think Hello’s immediate foreshadowing of Wonderwall kinda eased me in, and I never really looked back – these are energetic tracks, and while a few go a bit too long, or lean into a bit of repetition, I don’t think there’s ever really a dull moment on here. The lyrics are probably the weakest part here, but the vocals and instrumentation shoot this album up pretty damn high for me – when the lyrics do match the quality of the instrumentals, though, it leads to something excellent. If the lyrics, vocals, and instrumentals all click at the same time, it leads to something spectacular. This album only ever hits on “spectacular” a few times for me, at varying points throughout some of the songs, but it clicks on “excellent” a lot of the time. Big shoutout to “Cast No Shadow”, by the way.

I’m sure some people will be absolutely snobbish about an album like this, and I’d be remiss to not recognize my own hypocrisy with how much I tore into Fuzzy Logic by Super Furry Animals for what I perceived as trying to achieve this type of success on a different, more commercialized “Hollywood soundtrack” scale. Maybe it’s because of my own bias with Wonderwall and Champagne Supernova prior to listening to the album in full, but I never felt like I was listening to something inauthentic throughout the album like I did with Fuzzy Logic. There is a fully realized style here that gets pretty adhered to, and while the variety of the album itself is admittedly weaker because of it, it doesn’t make the experience feel lesser to me. This feels like a proper setlist, cohesive, earning its stripes as a 50 minute piece with a beginning and ending, all concocted by Liam and Noel and the rest of the band with the express purpose of selling out stadiums and realizing their dreams.

Is that a bad thing? I dunno, maybe. Maybe I’m the snob for adoring one type of commercial appeal and ripping into the other, but regardless of my own introspections, this album just clicked perfectly for me. This does feel like the inflection point that shifted Britpop for the last half of the 90s, for better or for worse. Its legacy will likely stand as Oasis’ magnum opus, a seminal album of the 1990s, and for unfortunately (and lovingly) giving us Wonderwall. It’s a lot of different things, arguably dated being among them, but for my tastes, I just deeply, deeply enjoyed it. Rather easy 5 for me.

I’m at a disappointed 2.

It’s just soulless music to me. It’s never technically bad in terms of music theory or production, nor does it hit any egregiously low points, but as an album experience from front to back, it starts off bland, peaks around tracks 3-6, and then just stumbles straight into “movie soundtrack bait” from Track 7 all the way to the end, even egregiously daring to finish on a Beatles-esque “repeat the same line for 2 minutes to increasingly complex instrumentation” ending track, which is really the nail in the coffin.

The only reason I’m feeling so nice is because of that stretch of Tracks 3-6 – they still feel corporate and manufactured to some degree, but it’s at least hidden well enough by some fun instrumentation and some decent song structures. Something 4 the Weekend is clearly the best track here, and the momentum of that track carried for a bit. As a front to back album experience though, it is an excruciating 41 minutes that never really finds an identity of its own – the first track starting right off with that instrumentation should’ve been a sign that this wasn’t gonna have a great structure as an entire album.

I’m just disappointed, because I think there is the framework for a decent album in here, but it can’t stop chasing commercially successful sounds and aping other people’s styles for long enough to find its own identity. With just a bit more time, and a little more room for the tone and substance of each track to breathe, this could be far better than it is. Instead, it just kind of sits there, with a listener waiting for a breakthrough that never comes to fruition. Hence, the 2, because at least it’s not bad to listen to, just sort of dull, but with an occasional burst of energy.

Maybe I just didn't get it, I dunno.

I’m at a pretty darn good 4.

This album has a few too many lulls and experimental points for me to really push it near a 5, but what’s here is still pretty captivating in its own weird way. Its experimental nature keeps it from hitting a 5 for me, but it also does enough that I think it pushes it up nicely into a 4, just for trying all of this in 1973, and succeeding, for the most part.

A lot of this album is instrumental, which is fine enough – it’s broken up by 3 normal tracks, and the only one I really wasn’t feeling at all was “Easy Money”; just a little too simple and a bit too boring for my tastes. Felt like there was never a big payoff. The same applies to The Talking Drum, but that at least has the benefit of transitioning perfectly into the absolute stunner that is Part 2 of Larks’ Tongues in Aspic – just an absolutely captivating 7 minutes of a progressive rock instrumental that never really hits a lull point, and just clicked on all my tastes.

So, yeah, I’m at a 4 – it’s an interesting 48 minutes, but it doesn’t do enough to hold my attention throughout the whole thing. It’s a little vague, and occasionally too experimental for its own good, but when it clicks, it clicks, and it clicked enough for me to enjoy it. It’s a very recommended 4, because I can see someone vibing throughout this whole thing and giving it a 5 (or absolutely despising it and giving it a 2).

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

I think the most famous Paul Simon solo album is Graceland, and “You Can Call Me Al” is effectively the extent of my knowledge for Paul Simon as a solo artist. This is still pretty far away from the mid-80s though – this is pretty fresh after the breakup of Simon & Garfunkel as a duo. I don’t know how much of that is necessarily reflected in these songs, but this does feel like the start of a natural evolution and experimentation past their work.

It’s not too different, obviously – a lot of this is steeped in the slower acoustics and storytelling that made Simon & Garfunkel work as a duo, but when he steps out of the box just a bit, whether it’s the reggae influenced opening track, or the more upbeat tempo of “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard”, something pops just a little bit that makes most of these tracks work.

However, I do think a lot of this album suffers from one continuous quirk that I just don’t vibe with – I think the album is just a little too ambiguous. There’s great storytelling here, but so much of it is made for the listener to fill in too many blanks, and it sort of makes the effort fall apart. There’s nothing wrong with ambiguity, but when it’s done this many times, it sort of loses the mystique and just starts to feel half-baked. You can only ask a listener to think so critically for so long without losing some of the focus on the music. It’s probably how Simon & Garfunkel functioned as a duo, cleaning up the ambiguity to find the perfect balance between intellectualism and airy prose.

That’s not enough to drag it down to a 3.5 by itself though – I think there’s just a few too many acoustic only tracks here for my tastes, but they’re also so well done that I’d be remiss not to bump it up to a 4 overall. This is definitely a good album, and a rather fast 34 minutes, but it did leave me scratching your head a few too many times. Someone else will click with a bit more, but for me, I think it’s a solid album plagued by a few too many faults to really hit its highest potential. Hence, a 3.5 up to a 4.

I’m at a 4, and I’m sort of annoyed that I am.

This is not a bad album at all, and it’s certainly no lower than a 4. I’m just annoyed that I haven’t been able to give either Bob Marley album we’ve gotten so far a 5.

This one hits on the same thing that Exodus did, where once you exit the flow state, the album’s cohesion and melodic substance falls apart just enough to bring the album down a bit as a full experience. I thought the first track wasn’t a great tonesetter in terms of mood and atmosphere, but Tracks 2-5 got me into that flow state, and Tracks 6 and 7 were still pretty good, if a bit of a step down. Tracks 8 and 9 certainly aren’t bad, but they sacrifice the melodic depth for lyrical depth, and while they tell good stories, I think they require a deeper context of the sociopolitical climate of the time that I just don’t have, and so I can’t connect to them like that.

Once again, though, this is not a bad album – what’s here is full of the same vibrance and confidence present on Exodus, and its sound feels just as polished despite being 3 years younger. I just don’t think the entire thing hangs on as a front to back experience – there are certainly lulls in the music, and a few tracks fall for the “first minute is the whole song” trap, but usually it’s done so well that it’s easy to ignore. It just has too many of those moments pop up over the course of the album for me to give it a 5, but make no mistake – this is certainly one of the 1,001 albums one should listen to before they die. I just wish it had a little more cohesion to bump up to a 5, but I’m not quite there. Still a great album, though.

Well, that’s a rather strong 5, ain’t it?

I’m a sucker for this style of country music, what can I say? These are the sorts of soundscapes and storytelling I so desperately want to make a comeback – they’re intellectual, they’re honest, and they provide a storytelling bend that fulfills a different sort of thing other than the “drink beer and make love all day” that modern country tries to hit on.

I’m simply realizing over the course of the several good to great country albums we’ve gotten is that it’s all rooted in Americana and folk music, just with its own style of instrumentation and a rather distinct vocal twang. I’m sure there are modern country singers out there that hit on this exact style, but I’m just too afraid to try to jump back in.

Anyway, I’ve never heard a Merle Haggard album in full before now. I know the name. I probably know a hit or two in my subconscious. I figured this would at least be good, but I wasn’t expecting it to be this damn great. His vocals are fabulous throughout, and the steel guitar has never sounded better to me. There’s not a miss here – maybe a track or two that’s a little too quaint and instrumentally simplistic for my tastes, but everything here is rather good. It’s not perfect, but if it makes you feel something, it’s doing something right. House of Memories in particular got me pretty damn good.

So, yeah, I’m at a 5. Super enjoyable album, from top to bottom, and a very brisk 30 minutes. I really wish people would bring this style back – I know I’m a broken record with each country album we get, but it just fucking kills me.

I’m at a 4.

I can see why Kurt Cobain liked these guys. They’re just kind of honest. That is to say, this album isn’t overly produced to hide any flaws – it actively welcomes them at times. There are moments where the vocals are hanging onto the beat by a thread, and to hear something like that in 1984, when everyone is trying to hit on masterpieces to compete with Thriller or any of the other stiff competition of the era, is rather welcomed.

It’s also just a really fun blend of genres with a bit of variety – this album kinda bounces back and forth in time and goes all over the place. There’s some 70s rock tropes in here, the punchiness of 80s drums, a bit of garage/grunge influence that would be more present in the 90s, and even an occasional soundscape reminiscent of late-2000s indie rock. It’s not necessarily ahead of its time or anything, or super innovative, but it sounds pretty damn good.

I can’t say this ever got into 5 territory for me – it certainly flirts with it a few times, namely on the tracks that are perhaps more well known as part of the MTV Unplugged performance, but it never keeps a consistently high mark on the other songs. There’s not any bad tracks here, though. It’s a fun album, and it’s a rather quick 30 minutes, even with about a quarter of it taken up by instrumentals. Obviously, this album’s influence on Kurt Cobain may be its legacy in the long run, but it’s rather good in its own right. Pretty solid 4.

That’s a pretty easy 5.

I’ve always meant to dig a little deeper into Duran Duran – Hungry Like the Wolf is one of those all-timer 80s hits, instantly recognizable by the laugh in the intro and the immediate guitar riff, but I figured there was more beyond that. A View to a Kill, for example, is a deeply, deeply underrated Bond theme.

I’m very glad I was proven right – this is a deep album. Even past the singles on here, this is full of bangers across the board, and it’s incredibly layered and well produced for 1982. I get it, same year as Thriller, but at the same time, like… same year as Thriller, you know? Two totally tonally different albums in substance and style, both existing within the same space and genre (well, if you consider synthpop as pop, anyway).

I mean, even from the opening of Rio, this thing never really stops going – it’s a constantly captivating soundscape, whether it’s the synth work, the punchy drums, Simon Le Bon’s vocals, or the basslines (which are KILLER throughout this album), and even with each track being at least 4 minutes on average, the whole thing flies by without ever really hitting a lull point or a repetitive spot.

It’s just damn good synthpop, and I do wonder how much of a catalyst this was for bands like Tears for Fears or Eurythmics or Depeche Mode, or even solo artists like Cyndi Lauper to really go balls to the wall with this style and unlock everything further. I enjoyed it a lot – not a single skip here, and just a really fun listen. Very easy 5.

I’m at a 5 – that might just be the best rap album of the 1980s.

I mean, there’s some competition in there, but I don’t know if anyone can listen to that and definitively say it’s worse than either Beastie Boys album of the decade, anything from N.W.A., or Run-DMC. For my money’s worth, it’s certainly the most complete 80s rap album we’ve gotten yet – Paul’s Boutique didn’t quite click for me, and I thought Straight Outta Compton kinda stumbled its way to the finish line.

There’s some all-timers on here, and not a single miss throughout most of the 16 tracks (ok, the interludes kinda suck) but the one that specifically caught my ear is “Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos”, because it so distinctly shows to me just how badly Tricky botched that damn track on Maxinquaye with “Black Steel”. Public Enemy’s version here is a masterclass in storytelling about a jailbreak, behind an all-time beat with some great flow and lyricism. Tricky’s version mainly takes from the first verse, and turns it into a sort of psychedelic rock take that removes all the storytelling and soul from the original track – it’s technically sound, and probably the best track on that dogshit album, but when you hear this version of the track, and realize just how much got cut and mutilated by Tricky… ugh, it just makes me mad, man.

I could keep going with the praise for the production (excellent sampling work throughout), the flow, the vocals (Chuck D is on fire throughout this whole thing), and the lyricism, but I feel like listening to the album gets that across better than anything I could say. It’s a super fast hour, a tightly produced album, a very enjoyable one, and it probably culminates in the best rap album of the 1980s. Stellar effort across the board here, and a rather easy 5.

They brought the noise.

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

That’s just a great album. I don’t really know quite what to say – it’s not the most technically sound, even though the band is on fire for most of it (save for the rather dull Been Down So Long). It’s not the most well written, even though there’s some great lines on here. It’s just an album that oozes charisma from top to bottom, and that charisma creates an undeniable confidence that makes for a pretty damn good 48 minutes.

I do think a few tracks are a little too long, and a few tracks aren’t super captivating, but when the album hits those points, it’s still a really smooth listen that eventually pulls you back in. I will say this – I genuinely don’t think I liked it as much as Morrison Hotel. I don’t know if that’s sacrilege, but I think that album just had a greater variance of styles and slightly tighter composition for my tastes.

Seriously, I got nothing. It’s got good blues, good rock, some strong vocals, and it’s 48 minutes that fly by (save for a few longer spots). I’m at a 4.5 that I’ll bump up to a 5 because I just enjoyed it that much. Sometimes, you don’t have to justify it. I liked it.

I’m up to a 4.

The extent of my Moby Grape knowledge is that they were an answer once on Jeopardy. Normally, that means you had at least some cultural impact.

After hearing the album, I can kinda see why – this is just really good rock. Little bit of psychedelic, a little bit of prog, certainly a bit of influence from The Beatles in here, but more than anything else, it’s just a really tight 30 minutes with some strong variety that never seems to hit a snag. I think the guitar’s on fire for most of this, with the vocals finding a bit of Elvis’ aggressive swagger and a bit of Freddie Mercury’s stylization to just make a really strong combo. The lyrics are a little more broad than I’d like, but the vocal melodies are strong enough to get the emotion across, so it balances out.

I just really liked it, what else can I say? I don't think it does quite enough to get up into 5 territory, but it comes close a few times. It stakes itself right at a 4 and never really goes back down. Pretty darn good rock. Certainly not a bad one to get after Rumours.

You know, this is my first time actually listening to this album in full. Trust me, I was aware of a few of the songs, and I know where this lands in the pantheon of music – this album is to Fleetwood Mac what Thriller was for MJ, Abbey Road for the Beatles, and Nevermind for Nirvana. It’s that big timeless record that will live on forever; its lyricism, production, vocals, and overall creation studied for years and decades to come, in this case, made more potent by just how heavily the band itself was imploding and hurting while making this. I know all of that. I just didn’t know what I would end up thinking after listening through it.

After finally listening through it, I’m at a 10. Hell, I might be at like, a 15. I might just be overreacting a little while I'm in the moment, but… man, it is exactly that album. It feels like more than that. It feels like whatever I type here will echo whatever people have written for the past 47 years about this album. I don’t know that I can add anything to the praise, and I certainly don’t want to add anything to the discourse.

I keep mentioning this metaphor about thinking of music as art in the classical sense. It’s what I tend to fall back on when my brain is struggling to find the words to praise the compositions on, or the lyrics, or the vocals, or any part of the actual production. When an album has been this good, or touched me this deeply, I lean on it to help me find the words to say.

This album isn’t the Mona Lisa, even though it deserves every bit of praise and acclaim. This album feels like a timelapse of a rage room, captured in slow motion – one where you can appreciate its finest details while recognizing the pain, loss, hurt, hatred, anger, and attempted solace of the whole thing. It’s beautiful in just how raw it feels. It’s beautiful in how relatable it feels. It’s beautiful in just how human it is.

I do have to add some level of objectivity and critique here, and the only knock I could really have is that Tracks 1 and 3 feel rather out of place -- they are sort of left behind under the weight of "Dreams" and everything from Track 4 onwards. They're good tracks, and this album would be sort of incomplete without their presence. They just don't click as well with the rest of the album as a whole.

Anyway, I would truly love to wax poetic about the moments of bliss I felt during Stevie Nicks or Christine McVie’s finest vocal moments, or the pure catharsis of some utterly pained lines, or the instrumentals hitting arguably the climax of 70s rock as a whole, or all 3 of those things somehow happening at the same time to leave me speechless… but like I said, someone else has probably said it better than I ever could. I can’t believe it took me this long to finally listen to it. It’s that damn good. It lived up to every single line of praise that’s ever been written about any individual track here, or the album as a whole. It’s a very easy 10, and it’s probably my new favorite album throughout this entire thing.

How the hell do you follow this up?

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

It’s a solid album. It’s certainly worth being on the list. It’s just not a great album experience, or at least one that’s not as cohesive as it could’ve been.

This album has two distinct issues for me – they’re not big issues, but they’re enough to really mess with the flow of the album. The first involves the pacing – some of these tracks wander on a bit too long in their instrumentals, and they sort of dissipate the vocal moments in favor of letting the instrumentals shine. It’s not a bad approach, but it makes the album run much longer than it needs to. This is 66 minutes that could’ve been trimmed down.

The other issue is simply finding a more proper balance between vocal presence and the instrumentals themselves – there are really good tracks here, but some of them have the vocals get drowned out by the instrumentals so much that the vocals don’t have any presence on them, or at least, not as much as they should. When this album finds the right balance between the two (see: I Love You & Whipping Tree), it hits really well and completely nails what it’s going for. It just doesn’t strike on it as much as I’d like.

Regardless, I still thought this was pretty good – there’s a few tracks that aren’t as captivating as others, but this is just a really good blend of a lot of 90s stuff – sort of a “Pearl Jam meets indie rock” with a bit of Britpop influence as well. It’s a strong album, but it’s dragged down by its track length, its pacing, and arguably its track order – closing out on 15 minutes of instrumentals without one big encore payoff is a little too bold for my tastes. There’s a few tracks that feel too similar, too close to one another. Either way, I liked it. It’s a 3.5 that I’ll bump up to a 4 because I enjoyed it enough.

I’m at a 4, but for a while, I think I was honestly pretty close to a 5.

It’s just a very, very British album. I’ve seen enough Taskmaster over the course of the past 3 and a half years to find a charm in this sort of thing, though. People are giving this 1’s and 2’s, and I genuinely don’t hear it at all – maybe if you really fucking hate his vocals and his British-isms, but at that point, you’re sort of just not having any fun at all.

I thought the instrumentation here was pretty good – great variance of styles, switching around from Disco tones, to straight rock, to punk rock, a bit of pop, and it blends itself together in a pretty sincere way. The lyricism is the part that’ll split this album in two, but for my money’s worth, it reminded me a whole lot of “Thank Goodness You’re Here!” – that extremely British indie game that’s making great headway for YouTubers in need of a cozy comedy game.

Yes, sometimes, the insults go a bit too far (namely Blockheads, where it gets just a bit too mean spirited, & Blackmail Man, where he gets so into character he starts using actual slurs), but for the most part, a lot of this just strikes me as extremely British banter that hits a certain comedy niche that was probably prevalent to pubgoers & the Monty Python crowd at the time.

I dunno, I just had a lot of fun with it. It’s charming, it’s well-written (save for those two tracks), and it’s very melodically and compositionally sound. The instrumentals are great, his vocals have a fun flow that switches to whatever the soundscape calls for, and when this album hits its stride, it feels about as confident as any other album of its era, despite how goofy it is, straight from the title and beyond. I liked it, sue me. I’m fine giving it a 4.

I’m at a 3.5, and I think I have to bump it down to a 3.

I think this album has an identity crisis. I thought about it a lot while listening to it, but the core style of this album is split between “composition” vs “feel” for me. I don’t think the album ever really comes to a decision on which way it fully leans, and that sort of indecision is what’s driving me down towards a 3.

I think in terms of the actual compositions, these are sort of thoughtfully lazy – that is to say, each added instrument on top of the many samples, as well as the ongoing layering of instruments that occurs throughout the album is intentionally and thoughtfully produced. Sure, not all of it is sonically and tonally as energetic as one might hope, but there is not one “mistake” in terms of Moby’s composition. It’s very deliberate. The question that arises from those choices is simply “does it make you feel the way he intended?”

I don’t know if every track made me feel the way he intended. I think it leans that way most of the time, but when it hits on feel, it sacrifices part of the actual musicality of everything. I don’t think the composition is particularly as interesting or as captivating as Moby intended it to be. I think the feeling of each track is nailed pretty well, and when it clicks, it clicks. The question that arises from that choice is simply “does it make for a coherent album experience?”

No. No, it doesn’t. At least, not for me. This album never quite finds its true balance between composition and feel, and it suffers from not picking a proper direction. There’s not any bad tracks (ok, save for the painfully boring stretch of Tracks 12-13), but I can’t really say that this album ends up sticking out after listening to it. There’s definitely good tracks, don’t get me wrong, but as an entire experience front to back, things just feel like they come and go – nothing truly sticks in the long term in terms of feel or composition, and it makes for an album with an identity crisis.

I did like most of it, and there are worse ways to use up 63 minutes, but there are also much better ways. I’m not gonna say it doesn’t deserve to be on the list, because this will click with someone much more than it did for me, but I just feel like it had to commit to a more concrete style to really click for me. Hence, the 3.5 that I’ll bump down to a 3.

I am at a 5. I am also in bliss.

Is it too late to make that Trio we got way earlier into a Quartet? I know Dolly, Emmylou & Linda don’t need a 4th, but if they ever wanted one, I’d immediately vouch for Nanci Griffith – what a beautiful, beautiful voice. Her vocals add so much emotional depth to what’s already an album full of incredibly well written songs. I know I’m a sucker for country, and this album pretty much hits on every country trope I like, but even if I could remove my biases, I just think there’s something beautiful to the whole thing here.

When I think of country music, I continue to curse the name of Toby Keith and all the other motherfuckers who took this style of country far away and made it into sucking off the troops, drinking beer, sexualizing girls in bikinis, and a bunch of other platitudinal bullshit that doesn’t really represent what country was always made to capture. It’s this type of sound, and these types of stories. It’s the slice of life Americana with good storytelling that calls back to younger days full of starry-eyed hope and wonder. It’s exactly what this album captures so well, and so beautifully.

It certainly helps that there’s a real variety to these tracks – this goes all over the place tonally and even geographically in the lyrics, but it stays pretty grounded and anchored by the core instrumentation of the acoustic guitar, the steel guitar, the fiddle, and the really light percussion. No two tracks feel quite the same, especially if you actually bother to read the lyrics. Her voice just glides on top of everything else though, the little missing puzzle piece that makes these songs totally pop. Even when the choruses get a little repetitive, her voice is just so damn good that it’s easy to get lost in it without a care.

I could keep going, but I just really, really, really enjoyed this. I know there’s a disposition against modern country, and it’s well deserved, but this is the type of album that makes me pray that this style can come back into the forefront someday. Intelligent writing, great storytelling, simple soundscapes, and great vocals. That’s all it takes, and while it’s easier said than done, I really think we can get there if people just put in the damn effort, just like Nanci Griffith did here. Just a stellar 5.