Reviews by jaileer5

I'll never forget the night I saw the Firestarter video for the first time. Dark, mysterious, confusing, and a little bit dangerous. There had never been anything like it. Unapologetically hardcore, it was electronic music not for geeks, but for hip hop heads, ravers, metal lovers and those with punk sensibilities and a perpetual Johnny Rotten sneer.

In short, this album had it all.

I think this stands the test of time. Diesel Power with the inimitable Kool Keith is a highlight, but songs like Breathe, Smack My Bitch Up, and the aforementioned Firestarter will go down in history as some of the most famous and influential electronic songs of all time.

I don't know much about Nick cave and the Bad Seeds, but this album sounds like a guy who is a frontman for another genre of music trying to be a singer. His voice isn't *awful*, but it's definitely not great. In fact, his voice - and the album - is just boring. It's not bad, per se, but it's boring, and repetitive, and just plain bland. When the primary backing is a piano, the voice better be otherworldly. Nick Cave's voice is *not* otherworldly.

It’s very good, surprisingly so. It’s not really my kind of music, but it’s undeniably catchy. I’m going to say it starts to get a bit old. Y the last couple songs, but I won’t sing it to hard because it has the decency to clock in at an excellently paced 35 minutes.

One of the relatively rare albums that lives up to the hype.

Part Polyphinic Spree, part Arcade Fire.

It’s not bad. It’s like that early 90s mixup of funky punk and folk. Reminds me of, like, The Lemonheads, or Dinosaur Jr, or The Replacements. It doesn’t really *sound* like those bands, per se, but they’d definitely tour together.

There’s a certain stereotype of a Lynyrd Skynyrd fan that, as someone who grew up in Missouri, I have had the extreme misfortune of verifying many times over. So I never really sat down and listened to the band.

Turns out I wasn’t missing anything. This band is what a confederate flag sounds like.

It sounds like a Simpsons skit with Marge Simpson singing the most cookie cutter 70s rock music.

It’s not awful.

Pretty ok

Pretty ok.

This is a tough one - because I liked it A LOT more than I thought I would. It’s a 3.5 at least, but is it a 4? I don’t know. But I’ll say this much: I don’t know why they thought they needed to add Neil Young. I had a Neil Young and Crazy Horse album a couple days ago and this is miles better than that. Since I think I gave that one a 3, I guess I’ll give this one a 4.

For years I've had issues with Linking Park being lumped in with the testosterone-fueled Limp Bizkit bros of "nu-metal." In my mind, although there is anger and aggression at times, there is much, much more o this band. The Apple Music blurb for this album reads, in part:

When Hybrid Theory came out in late 2000, it was easy to lump LINKIN PARK in with other so-called nu-metal bands. The difference was in how they processed their anger. If anything, part of what made Chester Bennington so compelling as a frontman was his ability to explore trauma without ever trying to avenge or place blame for it—a huge feat, considering how deep his trauma seemed to run. So, while the rap/rock/industrial blend of tracks like “Papercut,” “Crawling,” and “In the End” redefined modern rock, they also called back to bands like The Cure and Depeche Mode: sensitive young men looking for a break from pain.

As one of those sensitive young men during those years, one who felt and feels a very acute connection with the lyrics and the pain of Chester Bennington, I feel seen and understood.

This is much better than I expected. On one hand, it very much has the mid 2000s sound, but it kind of does it in a unique and interesting way. Overall, I'd give this a 3.5 if we had half stars. I'll give this a 4 because it's better than yesterday's Liz Phair by quite a distance.

Very 90s, and not in the best way. It’s not a bad album, but for all the love it gets, I’m not seeing it.

I didn't like this as much as I had hoped I would. It strays dangerously close to country in a couple places. That said, Down by the River is pretty awesome, of not a bit overly long.

Overall, this is a three star album. Mostly fine, even pretty good in parts.

I was afraid I was going to hate this but I didn’t. I don’t know if this is in any way accurate, since I don’t listen to much Billy Joel, but this reminded me of Billy Joel.

I like electronic music. As a relatively new art form, know that there is a certain degree of “you have to walk before you can run.“ This, however, is less “walk before you can run,“ and more “crawl out of the primordial ooze.”

Although I greatly appreciate the pioneers that paved the way for the great electronic music that I’m able to listen to today, That appreciation does not make this weird, early German electronic noise easier to listen to.

Not really a whole lot to say. This is the quintessential sound of the mid 2000s. Not bad, but not that interesting either.

Most mornings, when my album pops up, I'll send a screenshot to my wife. This morning I sent a screenshot of this album with a crying emoji and a puke gif. Because I do not tend to like 50s and 70s music, and since this project seems to LOVE those two decades I feel like I have a constant onslaught of 60s and 70s albums.

To say I was not excited is an understatement.

But I have to tell you, it was much better than I expected. The first three songs were terrific! it loses a bit of steam after that, but there isn't really a "bad" song in the bunch. This is a solid 3 trending to 3.5.

It's OK. I mean, it's pretty good in spots, damn good in others, and a little reductive in others. I was really into it the first half of the album, but it feels like he really leaned into the harmonica and folksiness at times, and it stopped sounding fresh and started sounding very cliche, repetitive, and boring. I think a 3.5 is about right for this one, as the songs that hit are fantastic. But it's really hard to give this a 4 because I just didn't enjoy the last half of the album nearly as much as I did the first half.

Randy Newman just sounds like Toy Story to me. This was like an hour of that family guy skit where he "sits there night and day, just singing about what he sees."

it's funny for 30 seconds, it's a nightmare for an hour.