Reviews by henry-winchester

I'd never heard of this guy, but it's a good album. Interesting and inventive.

Actually pretty good, the songs sounded a bit samey though.

Funky jazz.

Good to start with, but ultimately became a bit numbing and boring.

Maybe a little too whimsical in places, but I enjoyed this overall.

Imagine hearing this for the first time in 1979. There would have been nothing like it. Utterly kitsch and slightly debauched, it feels like it set the tone for the 80s.

"Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)" will be the last song I ever listen to via this project. What a triumphant way to end it.

One of the last bands I'll listen to on here is also one of the first bands I ever saw live, with my cousin and his then girlfriend in London. They were great!
I've always thought of this of the kind of music Primal Scream pastiched in Give Out but Don't Give Up, but Black Crowes have a heartfelt sincerity that Primal Scream could never. They're kind of the Aerosmith it's OK to like.

HOW THE FUCK did a band with at most two good songs, who ran out of ideas ON THEIR DEBUT ALBUM, become one of the biggest bands on the planet. HOW.

I thought this was a Madonna album about her daughter. Turns out those online IQ tests I've been taking might have been telling the truth after all!

Reminded me of Sparklehorse a little bit, but I'm not sure if I like this kind of lo-fi melancholic music overall, apart from Grandaddy, who managed to at least make it feel like it wasn't made by someone about to have their life-support machine turned off.

Very much a Swedish take on the White Stripes/Strokes-style rock of the time: maybe not quite getting it, but making up for it with immaculate production and catchy songwriting and an injection of pop-punk.
They're also amazingly fun live: they were the first band I saw at Glastonbury 2013 and they knocked my socks off.

Completely forgot how much I completely love this.

"Big Sur" certainly brings back some memories of 2003, even if it does seem to be a rip-off of Robert Lester Folsom's "April Suzanne." But the bigger question here is why some middle-class guys from Dublin are pretending to be some drooly middle-American band?

An intelligent combination of hip-hop and Black history with those playful, choppy samples that dominated music of this era. Put a smile on my face.

There really are some moments of absolute genius on here, but some of it just really sucks as well.

One revelation from this project, which may seem utterly obvious, is that albums aren't standalone things, but part of a miasma of a band or artists' output, and it's interesting to listen to them out of chronilogical order. "Highway 61 Revisited" isn't just a good Dylan album, but a phase of his evolution.
This sounded a lot more clever in my head.

I love the way that it's saying it's OK to feel sad and lonely sometimes. Michael Stipe is as good a therapist as he is a singer.

The watershed moment between clean-cut, pop Stones and scraggy, drug-addled blues Stones. It feels like they're awkwardly groping in the dark to find themselves in places, but those moments when it comes together (Jigsaw Puzzle) are spiritual experiences.

Most of this is amazing, setting the template for post-prog electro-tinged 80s rock. A little bit of it sucks, but let's not talk about that.