Rated 6/10
Starts off with some nice ambient dance but then the later half of this record sounds like a deep sci-fi soundtrack meant to put you to sleep. It’s okay to listen to when your day is just starting, but that’s it.
Rated 6/10
What a quintessential early 2010s album.
It’s like her own “Back to Black”. A lot of the hit singles here are very sentimental ballads (Someone Like You, Set Fire to the Rain) I find overproduced in casual listening but enough to get someone to karaoke to (3.5).
Rated 6/10
It's like halfway between accessible and experimental. I get both Public Image Ltd. and Pixies vibes from this band because of the singer's vocal rambling and atmospheric production. The record does start well with a nice instrumental track.
An aside, but is this what post-punk is? Taking the simple, DIY principles of punk and adding a more experimental edge to it (i.e. making songs longer or incorporating instrumental sections)?
Rated 6/10
Songs flow well but it's quite a mixed bag of similar country, folk, and blues rock. It's like an amalgamation of all the styles that were really popular in the late sixties and early seventies: CSNY, Buffalo Springfield, CCR, and the like.
I'm at that point in this challenge where I'm noticing how similar a lot of these albums sound. Manassas is an example made worse through it being a double album.
Rated 8/10
Another reggae album! This one felt more expansive and just did more with the genre. This was also my first Bob Marley album so I'm super excited to have heard his popular songs with fresh ears (3.5-4)!
Rated 6/10
Another thing I've learned through this challenge is that my bias leans towards 2-4 minute songs with a verse-chorus-verse structure. You'd have to make a song that can catch my attention with key changes, instrument solos, hypnotic (not repetitive) musical sections, and/or catchy pop choruses.
But sometimes, I don't need pop-adjacent tracks to keep me interested, and it's this album from Wilco that sounds good in theory when I want to immerse myself in the vibes. It sounds a bit like the debut from Dire Straits with less melody and more filler. I'd much prefer if they made it concise as there are only some songs that really stood out to me (i.e. Kingpin, Sunken Treasure, Say You Miss Me, etc.). Thankfully by the second disc I started to like it (3-3.5).
Rated 6/10
Like the previous album before this, the album is really good at not sounding too long. It's a very jubilant record on the surface but discusses a lot of political and social issues in Nigeria and Africa as a whole (3.5).
A lot of short songs showcasing different styles of music packaged under Jimi's singing guitar. Genres range from soul to experimental to straight-up heavy psychedelic. The end result is that it doesn't sound as tight as his debut, which I found more cohesive (3.5).
Rated 8/10
He's not tuff bad here, he's down bad. But I can't fault him because 80s pop is my guilty pleasure. The funky drum tracks and the melodies are pretty catchy, but they're not as strong as Thriller. If we're really talking "bad", the ballads are not my kind of thing here. (3.5-4)
Rated 4/10
Mi(n)d-lessly repetitive dance instead of being psychedelic and hypnotic. This kind of dance definitely didn't age well. It was quite underwhelming like they were repeating the same motifs and beats from one song, and calling that an album??
Go guys give us nothing 👏 (2.5)
Rated 8/10
A welcome evolution from their pop-punk sound in Dookie! Sad that I was born too late to really enjoy this album in its heyday.
Really interesting to hear Green Day try out operatic-punk, which goes well with the heavy-handed topics it addresses.
Rated 6/10
Sounds like punk paying homage to its roots (rock). It was an interesting blend of singing and talk-singing, but the vocalist is out of tune, which took away from my listening experience (2.5-3).
Rated 6/10
House music, but you used things in an actual house as instruments. This record sounds chaotic and all over the place; I could see this being played in a dance party when it's loud and people care more about dancing to a beat than listening to it in their spare times.
"Yo Yo" made me chuckle, it's bad 🥀. But most of the songs are pretty tolerable... then I got to "Same Old Show" 😭. Thankfully "Bingo Bango", which sounds like the name to some new brain rot, was much better (2.5-3).
Rated 10/10
Reminds me of D'Angelo's Voodoo and the Roots. And just like those albums, I like the sound that Erykah expanded on from Baduizm. Those drum beats are hypnotic and her vocals give it a certain "ASMR" quality. I know I say retro a lot but this is the right adjective to describe this record.
Rated 8/10
Looking back it’s so funny how the 808s contrasted the subject manner. This album really set the popular blueprint for the next two decades. (4-4.5)
Ok so I literally thought of this album cover this evening. what...
You could draw a line from blues to hip hop and this record does its best to merge two of these forms together. I like the result; as if 60s blues rock was sampled. Lyrics are 🌽 but at least G. Love’s committed to the vibe. (3.5-4)
Rated 6/10
It wanders and drags a lot. Probably because melodies are replaced by "stream-of-consciousness" stylings. Van Morrison's soulful vocals combined with folk doesn't really work here for me. (2.5-3)
Rated 8/10
From my first listen two years ago: Don't have much to say about it. Very against my current musical tastes
Now: Bob, I'm slowly tolerating the harmonica... but I still don't like some specific drum beats (i.e. in Tombstone Blues, From A Buick 6) 😭. The bluesy/soul tracks are probably my "favourites".
I think why Bob Dylan doesn't really click for me before because his early folk music was a vehicle for his poetry. This meant his reliance on verses were like "musical stanzas". That was totally out of my comfort zone, listening to someone sing in the same cadence and tone for 5+ minutes, especially since I don't really focus on the lyrics.
But nevertheless I think this album might be the one I enjoyed the most from him. Personally, out of all the other Bob Dylan records, this was the one that was the most "catchy" and "soulful". It helps that the record is quite concise too. (3.5-4)
Rated 6/10
Dolly sounds so sweet and wholesome here. And I like the Joseph metaphor in the first song. She definitely has a knack for storytelling, but this album does sound a little basic to my ears.
Rated 8/10
Oh, the last album from the Cure already?? We haven't even hit 200 albums yet...
That aside, I'm loving the Cure more and more because they do such a great job creating and maintaining the atmosphere for their albums. Case in point, the first song sets the stage for a morose vibe. And overall, this record sounds like Seventeen Seconds but with more emphasis on the reverberated drums.
