Reviews by james_mir

Not on my favorite list, but I should give it a 5 due to the lack of more recent heavy metal on the original 1001 list. Especially more melodic stuff

Maybe it's my mood, but I found it quite annoying, repetitive, and irrelevant.

This is my pick for the challenge, so it's obvious a 5-star.

I chose this album because, while the original list offers a somewhat decent introduction to Brazilian music, it lacks recent releases and artists. That omission makes some sense given the list's UK/USA-centric lens, but it also leaves a huge gap. So I wanted to bring something from the 2020s to the table, especially for those who aren’t specialists in Brazilian music but want to know more about it.

Particularly, this is not my favorite Emicida's album (probably it is his debut "O Glorioso Retorno de Quem Nunca Esteve Aqui"). However, his most recent release "AmarElo" is quite interesting and appropriate to show the quality of Brazilian music, especially the hip-hop of the last 2 decades in the country.

At the same time that he does not leave the "classic" Brazilian hip-hop/rap in his songs, "AmarElo" brought some new layers to his work. Just looking at the feats and special participation and even ignoring the content, it's evident that it's respectful to the tradition of Brazilian music (songs with Zeca Pagodinho and Marcos Valle), without losing the wave of new talents (Pablo Vitar, MC Tha), also inviting internacional people that talks a lot with brazilian history (Papillon and Ibeye).

Looking at the lyrics, it's clear that he didn't lose his initial anger (almost essential to Brazilian hip-hop as an essential protest kind of song), but he also assumes a more mature way to look at things. There’s protest, yes, but there’s also hope, healing, and celebration.

I could go on about this album, but for the purposes of a list like 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, AmarElo offers an essential snapshot of modern Brazil (musically, politically, and emotionally). It deserves a place.

For those really interested in learn more, Emicida released a documentary-like movie on Netflix with the same name where he explains a lot about the process of creating the album ;-) .

It was hard to find it online for listening, but I enjoyed the pieces I got (songs from a remastered version of a re-release) a lot. It would be great to have all of it.

Good ambient music, but nothing to highlight.

This is the type of thing I would love to have discovered during my teenage years. Now, it's just fun and nothing more.

I got it just after an album by "The Sound". This one is better, but I'm tired. In another day, I can try it again, but today I'm annoyed by 80s goth guys.

These guys can breathe now!!

It's not my favorite style, but I enjoyed it a lot, and I believe that the original list is full of many worse pieces of jazz, so this one deserves some credit.

It's something that I usually enjoy, but this one didn't catch me.

I truly believe that Vulfpeck is a great band, but a live album is really bad for identifying it. To me, live recordings (with a few exceptions) are much more for fans and greatest hits collections.

It's far from my preferred hardcore albums, but it was a nice discovery, and indeed the original list misses a lot of hardcore.

I can see some qualities, but it is generally annoying and hard to finish.

Good enough for what it intends to be.

The missing R.E.M. album on the original list. It's the best one for me

To listen to a mix of Coldplay and Imagine Dragons, I prefer these 2 rather than Manchester Orchestra, but it's not an awful album, and it's nice to know a new band.

Modern-ish prog-rock is not something easy to evaluate. I guess I'll enjoy this one much more if I got it in the 90s or early 2000s. For today, I didn't dislike it totally, but I found it a bit hard to get to the end.

Although I learned to respect electronic musicians much more during the last 3 years, listening to new albums every day, it's still a style that I dislike too much. It needs to shine to catch me. Fortunately, this was the case here.

It's not an absolutely incredible album. Sometimes it still sounds like a mix of the background of an advertisement and a child playing with an electronic drum, but I found it interesting.

It didn't start so well, looking like a copy of something good, but ended up being quite banging to me. Apparently, the band is still active following the River of Rock history. I'm unsure if the album caught me so much to start to follow them, but I'll sure go back to this album!

Mixed feelings about this one. At the same time, it's a nice cover band of successful classic rock, and they also released it in 1979, so they are (?) a classic rock band. I'll go on the easy and rate it neutrally. Nice songs, but I won't remember them for such a long time.

Really? I can understand experimental stuff, but really?