Reviews by guggmo

This album makes that Bill Evans album look like a fucking preschool recital, holy shit. What an instant 5.

The layering on every instrumental is perfectly done, the mixing is fabulous, and the avant garde composition of the piano, the brass, and the percussion — good lord, the percussion — is a masterclass in jazz. For 1963, this is experimental as hell, but it’s aged beautifully well. The quickest 40 minutes of an album experience I think I’ve had so far, but in a really pleasing way that had me encapsulated the entire time. I’m really deeply impressed by how much this sort of touched me, and I’m glad I listened to it. Fantastic album, easy 5.

I mean, it’s obviously a 5.

I have some level of bias since I heard this in August 2022 for the first time and basically fell in love with the album there, but I’ve heard songs from it pretty sparsely, so to come back to it about a year and a half later with a more critical ear just tells me I was justified in liking the album the first time. A masterclass in lyricism and in flow with some genuine all-time beats here; I do think the latter half of the album relies a bit more on basslines to carry the beats than any substantial sampling, but Nas overshadows that incredibly well with his honesty and his enigmatic lyrics, even when he makes up shit like “magmatize”.

It really is just a fantastic debut album, and I still feel like I need to listen to more Nas. Super easy 5.

Incredibly, it’s a 5.

Yes, the last 7 tracks of this album are a sort of stereotypical doo-wop affair reminiscent of “My Girl” more than the funk-infused and experimental first 3 tracks, but I love both sides of it equally. I think the doo-wop is just incredibly smooth, and even though it’s all just love songs, it manages to blend in that sort of late 50s/early 60s feel with a lot of their contemporaries of the era in a way that makes it feel kinda fresh and nostalgic at the same time for 1969, when Beatlemania was surely still in full swing.

Those first 3 tracks are still really cool; namely Cloud Nine & the 10-minute centerpiece that is Runaway Child, Running Wild; yes, it doesn’t need to be 10 minutes, but it fills its soundscape pretty well and it stays pretty engaging throughout, even if it plays it pretty safe the whole way through.

I can’t really explain why it’s a 5, but I think there’s just something about this sound that clicked with me super well; I don’t think there’s a miss on this album in terms of easy listening, and everything here is just catchy as hell to me. I feel pretty good with a 5.

Feeling a 4 here.

There’s no bad tracks here; as far as the soundscape goes, this is super cool for 1987, with some great synth work, cool percussion, and just some pretty captivating melodies. Sometimes, they don’t work or they’re a little repetitive, but when this album clicks, it clicks really well. I’ve never heard the Pet Shop Boys before this, but I get the feeling I’ve been missing out.

I think my biggest nitpick with this album is that sometimes the outros are just too long in a way that doesn’t really enhance the song. Music just can’t overstay its welcome, because it runs the risk of growing boring. I say that with the irony of having listened to 2 hours of orchestral Metallica yesterday, but that album worked because it was live and the energy never quite dwindled for me. On this album… yeah, the energy dwindled a little on those outros. Regardless, this is a really good album, definitely worth the listen, and definitely worth a 4; maybe a 5 if a few songs hit differently.

I’m not sure quite how I should rate this, given my unfamiliarity with most of the source material, the fact that I sort of zoned in and out while listening to it given its runtime, and that unfamiliarity making me sort of unsure how much the orchestra added to the actual weight of the original songs. There were points where these sort of just felt like studio recordings to me.

With that said, it’s definitely somewhere between a 4 and 5. What a enriching album in terms of that soundscape and that orchestra blended with Metallica’s style. Seriously, seriously incredible stuff here. In some sense, I think my lack of familiarity with the band is a bit of a positive; even if some songs sort of blended together, and even if my focus was a little lost at times, something about either the orchestra’s ability to keep up with them or Metallica’s inherent charm and appeal kept pulling my ear back in pretty quickly.

Are there lulls and periods of this album where you can feel a sort of rest break built in? Yes, but they don’t take away from the experience for me because they blend it super well to a point where those rest breaks are just as needed for the listener to catch their breath. I might need to give this concert at least one more listen to really lock this in, but I’m super comfortable with the idea of a 5 just on vibes, execution, and energy alone. I can’t wait to get more Metallica, mainly so I can come back to this album someday with a very fresh sense of how much the orchestra added and how well these songs were adapted to incorporate them. Either way, I’ll go for a 5. Great stuff.

Surprisingly, I’m gonna go with a 5.

This album feels way way ahead of schedule for 1968 in terms of the general folksy sound that would come to pass by the mid-70s and early 80s; I think the percussion and guitar work are off the charts here. There’s not a single “bad” track on this album either; there are a few that go a little long, but they’re all great listens as far as catching the ear and keeping it engaged.

In general, despite being Bob Dylan’s backing band for a bit, it speaks to the talent that Bob Dylan surrounded himself with for them to produce something that feels this sort of influential and groundbreaking with only a small (but still sizable) portion of his musical DNA scattered throughout the record. There’s just some incredibly cool soundscapes here that have aged fabulously for the 55 years since this album came out, and I think that’ll give it a 5 from me.

That’s a solid 3.

When this album clicks well, it really clicks well; I think tracks 3-6 are strong reggae tracks, and I think Till Your Well Runs Dry has super fun vibes and a great mix between a typical reggae feel and sort of traditional 70s pop/rock. When this album doesn’t click, it’s a bit too long, a bit too repetitive, and the vibes just don’t fully click with my sensibilities, and I think that happens a bit too much. There’s definitely not a bad track here, but it’s just harder to get lost in the soundscape on this than it was for Exodus. Hence, just a 3.

Legalize weed, though.

I mean, they really blew their load in the first 7 tracks here, huh?

This is a fantastic album that goes on just a little too long for its own good; those first 7 tracks could stand up with any 7-track stretch on any album like this, and I'll stand by that. The energy and the luster of the sound really started to fade away by Tracks 9 and 10, and it felt especially bad by Tracks 13 and 14 where it just felt like they were rehashing stuff from earlier in the album.

Road Trippin’ is a great closer, but I think that stretch of Tracks 9-14 where the energy starts to fade and the album simply loses its steam is gonna drop this down to a 4 for me. It’s a 4.5 that I just can’t bring myself to round up all the way; it could hit a 5 if one or two of those tracks in the back half of the album click for me better, but it’s a really strong album that’s worth listening to regardless. Think of it this way; it’s a 9/10 for me.

It’s a 4.5 that I’ll round up to a 5.

Other than the extreme dissonance of Hit the Plane Down, I really don’t think there’s a bad track on this album; there’s a lot of Nirvana to this at the start, but it slowly blends in a bit of R.E.M. as well, and that general soundscape just worked really well for me. I think this album shines best in its guitar and percussion work, but the vocals hold up pretty well against them, as do the lyrics for a good chunk of the album.

Just a really strong listen for me; glad we got this one, and I feel good with a 5.

That’s a 3.5 that I’m really begrudgingly rounding up to a 4.

I think the first half of this album fires on all cylinders; great variance in the production, some fun soundscapes, good lyrics, great vocals, and it’s all really fun stuff through Track 7.

Tracks 8, 9, 10, and 11 all blend together in a way that really, really slows down the pace of the album for me. They’re all guitar-heavy songs that sound great to listen to, but they all sound the same to me, and the lyrics just weren’t as good to justify having such a similar sound. You can literally tell they lost steam. Track 12 was pretty nice, though. You just can’t have that much of an album feel like filler though; if this had been the first 7 tracks, it would probably be a really nice 5. It just kinda sticks around too long for its own good, and drags itself down in the process.

I don’t want to give this a 4, but I also just can’t in good faith give this a 3 knowing the quality of those first 7 tracks, so, uh… yeah, I guess it’s a 4, but just know I’m stuck at a hard 3.5.

I feel like I got hypnotized.

Seriously, I really don’t quite know what the fuck to make of that. There’s two ways to listen to this album: by sitting down and trying to actually give a sort of critique on the soundscape of everything, the mixing, etc., and go from there. There’s also the approach I took by “Thriller!” which was to just stand up, walk in place, and let the music simply drag me around. The latter worked for me; I don’t know why, but “Thriller!”, “Drinking Wine Spodyody,” and “Codex” were hypnotically pleasing despite being objectively terrible soundscapes, solely from just walking in place. That hypnotism made me realize this album feels like a Talking Heads album one might create in their sleep (with a really bad hangover).

The first half of this album doesn’t work for me at all; I think it’s too noisy to be a walk in place sort of mood, but the back half works for me. I don’t think I can ever revisit this album except to experience that sort of hypnotic feeling again, because as far as an actual structured album, in the traditional sense, it’s absolutely a 2. However, in terms of just how I felt… I dunno, that feeling and the sort of otherworldly escape I felt seems 4-ish. I’ll split the difference and say a 3. What a strange, strange, almost alien album that doesn’t feel like anything else from 1978 whatsoever.

A resounding 3.

Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t hate the album, but like… it just never clicked. There’s great energy on here, and one all-timer in Where Is My Mind?, but past that, for my tastes, I think what’s here is a cacophonic, unwieldy, jumbled up mess of an album that occasionally shines through in a way that clicks. More often than not though, even with my newfound level of patience to an album with this sound, I just felt like I was listening to glorified noise.

To be more succinct: the guitar gets too harsh sometimes, the percussion is mixed way in the front where it overpowers the vocals, the vocals themselves are sometimes studio quality and sometimes sound like they were recorded off of a microphone hanging from a string 25 feet away in the air in a wind tunnel. When all of those things aren’t happening, and they take a more traditional sound, the album works well for me. It just felt like those moments were more rare than I’d like. Still though, I can hear part of why Kurt Cobain took at least some inspo from this album. It’s not that bad, it’s just not my thing. Hence, the 3.

It’s a 3.5 that I’ll round up to a 4.

I think about half of this album just didn’t fully click for me, but maybe it’s because I was still in a sort of “analyst” mode as opposed to just listening and feeling the vibe. We’ve had a lot of vibe albums lately, but this is very much a vibes album. What’s here sounds excellent; there’s not a single bad track on here, and in terms of super relaxing electronica, this is an album you can both study to and fall asleep to on a dime.

For my tastes, some of the songs felt a bit too empty at times or a bit too long, and I was still expecting at least one sort of Daft Punk-esque energy-filled song given the genre, but like… that’s an unfair expectation. This is a good listen, it’s well-recommended, and I’m perfectly ok with a 4 here. Good soundscapes, great vibes.

It’s a really nice 4.

This album gives a really bad first impression through its first 4 or 5 tracks, but the stretch from Better to Truth or Dare presents the actual mood of the album so much better. LMK should have been the opening track, because the trap-hop beat on Frontline just gives the wrong impression for this album overall. Relistening to those first 4 tracks after finishing the album the first time gave me a really strong appreciation for this album overall.

Kelela’s vocals on this entire album are fantastic, and this album is at its very best when just she flows on the electronica-infused beats. I can understand some of the complaints about this album, but when it all finally starts to click, the little details in the production become more apparent as the album goes on, and the sort of dullness that the first 4 tracks give gets washed away (at least, it did for me). It’s crazy how much this album improves by Better, seriously.

There are some filler interlude tracks, some of the songs do go a bit long, but what ends up being here is some really cool R&B tracks with a clear Janet Jackson influence in the vocals, and a sort of “lo-fi Timbaland” feel to the production, and it just clicked incredibly well for me. I feel comfy with a 4, and it might even bump up to a 5 the more I listen. Glad to get this one.

I’m vacillating between giving this a 3 or 4, and I think I’ve ended up on a 4, but a very strange 4.

I don’t think I paid that much attention to the lyrics on this album, which is kinda crazy, given that it’s so lyrically dense. I also wasn’t feeling the album at first at all; I thought there wasn’t really a specific genre, I didn’t get a sense of variety, and perhaps worst of all, I didn’t get a sense of direction for the album. I don’t know when it clicked for me exactly, but I think at about the halfway point of the album, I just threw out the lyrics entirely, focused on the general mood of the songs, and I tried to catch what I could.

That mood is what’s carrying the album to a 4 for me. Before I threw out the lyrics, I didn’t think there was necessarily a bad song, but I didn’t think there were any standouts either; once I kind of let the “analyst” side of me go away for this album, I just felt a deep, deep nostalgia for oddly, the late 2000s & early 2010s.

For an album made in 2010, talking about nostalgia, it seems clear enough to me that they’re longing for the pre-9/11 vibes of innocence, hope, safety, and just a general brightness to everything. In 2024, to listen to this after the social media era, the Trump years, the COVID pandemic, the BLM movement… it just makes me feel nostalgic for the now underrated brightness of what I can now officially call my youth, as all of that shit just weighs down upon me like an anchor I’m not sure I can drag off of me.

I need to give this album another listen or two to decide what the really good tracks are as opposed to just feeling the vibes, but I know this; I’m definitely listening to it in a car next time. This album feels like it was desperately designed for a car ride. Regardless, I feel good with a 4.

That’s a much better Apocalypse Dudes, to the point where I’ll even go from a 3 to a 4, just because I liked it that much.

My biggest problem with Apocalypse Dudes is that it never really gave me a chance to breathe, and that it never really felt like there was that much variance in its sound; both of them came out in the same year, so I feel confident in saying this album does the heavy hard rock thing so much better.

In terms of both the actual instrumental performance, the actual variance of tracks (i.e., that nothing blended together endlessly), and just the general passion for each track (Apocalypse Dudes felt sort of plastic and fake by comparison), this album just does everything way better, way catchier, and way more memorably. Top notch guitar and percussion work; my only knock is that the vocals felt a little too sharp at times, and that the lyrics (save for the last track and a handful of others) just didn’t add too much depth. Still though, really fun 3 that I enjoyed enough to bump up to a 4.

I think I’m at a 4.

The weird part is that I would usually round up and give an album like this a 5, but for this one, I just… don’t feel that way. It never really connected to me in that way some of the other albums I’ve given a 5 to, but it’s absolutely no less than a 4. Changes & Life on Mars are all-time classics, and I think this album supplements them with really strong stuff that just never quite hit those heights for me (save for Quicksand & Queen Bitch). It could bump up to a 5 later, but I feel pretty good with a 4.

That’s a really good 4.

When this album clicks, it clicks; those are some high-energy tracks with the 80s written all over them to me, in a good way. When I think of the 80s, this is part of the sound my brain goes to: heavy synth work, deep drum pads for percussion, a whole slew of instruments that somehow work together in harmony, plus really fun vocal work that can run the range of “basically screaming” to “really smooth” in a heartbeat.

The slower tracks are what drag this album down to a 4 for me; they’re not bad songs at all, and I think they’re great to listen to, but they just didn’t keep me engaged in the way the higher paced and frenetic songs did. Some of them were a bit boring for me, even.

I’ll admit, a lot of this album can be called “generic,” but I’m a sucker for this type of sound and this type of earworm stuff. If you’re listening to this and not grooving on at least one track, then I think you’re too deep into the “artsy” side of music to enjoy a good time when you hear one.

I have an annoyingly deep connection to this album. In every sense of the word, I do find it to be a timeless classic. I think that THIS version of Kanye West, before every single disgraceful and disgusting thing he's done and said in the 20 years since this album has dropped, is Kanye at his best, and this is his best album of the College Trilogy. It's a genuine 5, and I'm gonna keep it there.

It would be incredibly easy for me to rate this a 1 based on who he is now, in the year 2024, and move on, and give myself the moral brownie points. I just cannot bring myself to do it; I still basically know every line to every song on here, I still think the production is off the charts, and... to be completely honest, THIS version of Kanye West on this album just resonates with me still. Family Business, Jesus Walks, All Falls Down, Through The Wire... these are all obnoxiously good, and they all remind me of why the guy became a superstar to begin with. I miss that guy, not the anti-semitic Nazi-apologizing Trump supporter he's become.

Let me be extra clear: I did not stream the album when I wrote this review. I'm not giving him another cent. I wrote all of this without re-listening, because I know this album that deeply. I still believe it to be a 5, even if the man himself has dropped into the negatives.

So, uh... yeah, I listened to Desire, I Want To Turn Into You by Caroline Polachek today instead. Super cool album with a lot of 2000s influence clearly present throughout; definitely worth a listen, and worth all the hype it got in 2023. I'd probably give it like a 4.5, that I'd likely round up after another listen or two.

It’s a 3.5 and I wish I could leave it there.

This is a really good record that gets dragged down by one thing, and I’d be a hypocrite to call it out on the last album and to not call it out here: it’s the repetition. Instrumental repetition is obviously fine, but lyrically, these songs drag on and on most of the time in a way that just doesn’t click right for me. That’s not to say they’re bad; what’s here is absolutely fabulous and super funky. Super cool basslines, guitar work, and percussion throughout this album, and even the vocals sound great with super good melodies that compliment the instruments.

I just feel like this album deeply suffers from the “first minute is the whole song” problem that occasionally rears its ugly head, but I have to reconcile that with stellar production. That’s why I wish I could leave it at a 3.5, because I cannot in good conscience give it a 4 as an album experience. So, uhh… I guess it’s a 3. Dang.