Reviews by henry-winchester

I was fully expecting this to be cringey and non-essential, but it still holds up, and you can feel the way it helped UK hip-hop move on from its slightly cheesy 2-step phase.

Amazing. Feels like a huge influence on Nirvana, especially, in a weird way. "Life on Mars" is such a heartbreakingly relatable song. Falters ever-so-slightly on the annoying final track, but the imperfection just makes it all the more perfect.

It's telling that Britpop's most muscular, aggressive, and downright grunty album was recorded be a predominantly female band. Is there something the other bands weren't telling us?

Obviously afflicted by the same early-00s hip-hop shirt drought that hit Outkast on the Stankonia album cover.
Casual sexism aside, this is pretty good, just three guys goofing around and having fun with beats and guitars.

Madness, and Suggs, were always firmly in that 80s irritating camp, but this record is surprisingly amazing. Their sound is dense and layered and you never know what's coming next, and Suggs' lyrics paint a colourful picture of London in the early 80s.

I spent a lot of my childhood thinking this guy was a singing cat called Steven.

Weird to think that this was pretty revolutionary in its time. All the songs sound the same, but there's a certain charm and romance to them.

Oasis if they listened to Dylan instead of The Beatles. And actually still pretty good.

Every track here hits the spot.

This reaches absolutely incredible heights in places, paving the way for Spiritualized and The Verve. Still no idea which version I should have listened to.

The saxophone solo on "Marine Boy" is the most perfectly joyful moment ever recorded.

Another band that I wish I'd got into sooner. Quite grungey, but subtler and more varied.

Böring.

Big Star, little revelation. Had never heard of this band before, but this sounds like it could have been recorded any time between 1972 and 2022. A lot like Led Zep's more chilled tunes, but still decent in its own right.

Radiohead's ADHD kid brother. There are occasional flashes of genius, but the way it can't ever settle down to one thing becomes grating and irritating after a while.

The annoying thing about Morrissey is that as his music got better, he turned into a worse human being. Pretty sure there was some kind of demonic pact involved here.

I should really like the KLF. I read Bill Drummond's 17, and even took part in a piece of performance art with the man himself.
But I just don't really like the way their music sounds? It's washy and spineless. And I kind of realised that this is a lot like Malcolm McLaren's Duck Rock in that it's taking black voices and making them say words written by a white record producer.
Sorry, Bill. I love you, but not your band. x

The intersection of the Venn diagram of "Me" and "Liking Tom Waits." This is a depiction of Waits as both a comedian and a musician; it's ridiculously entertaining and the songs are bitingly funny. Not sure what happened with his later work, it's like he spent two years alone in a padded cell with some percussive instruments.

Why has Paul McCartney always sung like a 70-year-old man

I love "Fascist Groove Thang" so much, but this album was kinda patchy too.