Reviews by henry-winchester

This isn't on Spotify, so I had to buy it via Bandcamp (you can also listen to the album there):
https://americanmusicclub1.bandcamp.com/album/california-digi-only-release

And it was worth it! Reminds me of Radiohead and Talk Talk, and a little Elliot Smith. Digging those chord progressions.

Solid but unexceptional folk. The music is OK too.

I hated this when it came out because it didn't have enough guitars on it. Now I love it because it doesn't have enough guitars on it.
I think Radiohead's best album exists in the gray space between this and Kid A; they're both a little patchy but some really good songs do the heavy lifting. Here, it's "Pyramid Song," which breaks my heart a little more every time I hear it.

Never quite got this, but I do now.

My son listens to this all the time, so I was expecting to be sick of most of the songs. But it's testament to AC/DC that I wasn't. They're probably the only band that managed to make each of their songs completely unique structurally, while being utterly catchy and accessible to a mainstream audience.
However, the Dandy Warhols cover of Hell's Bells is better. There, I said it.

You can literally just hear however many millions they spent on this. The production is incredible, and it hides some of the cracks on the weaker tracks. "Music" is just so perfectly arranged, "Don't Tell Me" is, I think, my favorite Madonna song, and the cover of "American Pie" is just hilariously weird and doing its own thing, such a brilliant little oddity.

Not too folky, not too 80s-cheesy, just right.

The more psychy bits of this are so good. The rest isn't that good, but the psych bits make up for it.

Halfway between Mogwai and Boards of Canada, but with its own jazz thing going on. Another one I should have been listening to at the time.

This was probably the only era of this album that me and my dad could agree on. He loved the film "Vanishing Point" and it was great to see him engage with the album.
And it's still just great, really unlike anything else at the time, and Primal Scream finding the confidence to do whatever the hell they wanted.
Thanks, Bobby.

Better than "Transformer." Sweeps from cabaret act to soaring orchestral movements without dropping the ball.

Delightfully dirty and trashy and sleazy; an oily puddle in a back alley. Must have been nothing short of revolutionary at the time.

They obviously had a unique sound, but this is just so basic, like someone took The Strokes and aged them by about 30 years and made them much more boring. And The Strokes were already pretty boring.

I couldn't hate this as much as I wanted to. A natural progression from the Beastie Boys merging of punk and hip-hop, but this time with country-tinted grunge. The lyrics are absolutely horrible in some places but very sharp in others.

Comedown folk-rock. I like the way they did their own distinctive thing when there was so much bad music in this era.

I'm not sure how an album can sound at once ahead of its time and before its time, but this manages it. Not a bad thing in itself, but it feels like it influenced any number of bland country-tinged alt-rock bands of the 90s. At least this has a backbone though.

Great production, and that sound is so evocative. Just a shame most of the lyrics seem to have been written and performed by a 14-year-old boy.

Brilliantly weird and slightly silly industrial rock that doesn't focus on guitars. A little annoying in places and a bit too long, but you can feel how it influenced bands like NIN and Metallica.

The boost I needed on a crappy Monday. Prince-like funky soul with a shot of hip-hop and a slick electronica layer of polish.

Sounded so Australian!