Reviews by jboles

Clapton sucks. Most of this is ponderous trash. Only reason it’s not 1/5 is Duane Allman.

Opens really great with The Man Comes Around and Hurt. He’s at his best in the songs that fit with the grizzly-voiced rebel aesthetic he’s known for. In My Life doesn’t work for me and some of the other curve balls don’t always hit. Great arrangements and performances by Tom Petty backers Mike Campbell and Belmont Tench.

Like a lost early U2 album where they had listened to some Joy Division. I had listened to Ocean Rain before, but never any of these songs. Really enjoyed it!

Great vocals and instrumentals. Wild I’ve never heard of her before

Fully expected to be giving this one a 4 or 5 based on the 4-5 songs I knew from it, but most of the rest of the (overlong) album felt like filler.

Loved this one for 25ish years. Great for engaged or background listening. Insanely influential.

A few classics, not really my thing though.

A few undeniable pop classics surrounded by bland and/or saccharine songs.

The highs (Debaser, Monkey Goes to Heaven, Hey, Goige Away…) are incredibly high and it was insanely ahead of its time and influential. A few duds sprinkled in (Crackity Jones, Mr Grieves, There Goes My Gun)

4.5/5 (will round up for official rating)

I got this in the Columbia House cd club not too long after it came out. My only knock on this album would be Mista Mista which I’ve never loved, but I guess that was an addition to later versions of the album.

5/5, favorites: Zealots, Ready or Not

There was a kid on my bus in middle school who I didn't particularly like. Did I hang out with him sometimes? Yeah. But something about him rubbed me the wrong way. I think he was going through some shit and I guess I wasn't very empathetic at the time. Anyway, he loved Pink Floyd and Black Sabbath and that kinda put me off of both for years and years. I've come around on both here and there since. I already basically knew that I was missing out on great stuff with Black Sabbath.

War Pigs into Paranoid: What a 1-2 punch!

Many classics here and the sound is a little more varied than I was anticipating.

Not all the songs hit like the classics, but most are great. Not exactly my normal cup of tea, but will definitely be listening again.

My rating: 4.5/5

This was a Bjork album. Homogenic was a favorite in high school and I still put it on every once in while and it feels raw and fresh nearly 30 years on. On one listen (maybe not enough), Vulnicura feels like a retread. Lush and beautiful, but no real new territory explored sonically.

Postscript: Joanna Newsom's "Baby Birch" auto-played after this album. And with Bjork and Newsom sharing a similar space (unique voice with lush orchestration), I'm struck with how incredible "Baby Birch", compared to anything on the Bjork album I just listened to.

My rating: 3/5

Somewhere in the nexus of punk and the emerging alternative /grunge wave.

Pretty, pretty good. Complete blindspot for me.

Lays a foundation for southern rock and alt country. But a lot of it is schlocky and lame. A couple of bangers though

Joplin’s voice is occasionally great, but the band never is. The band either sounds like a really bad jam band or a mediocre blues band.

A couple of really good ones. Interesting to hear what I know as a Bangles riff in its original (acoustic!) form. Not all the songs were great. 3.5/5

“New York, New York” being hyped up in the wake of 9/11 is what turned me off of Ryan Adams. And then him skipping NC on tour for subsequent 5(? 10?) years. But listening to that song now reminds me of the Jason Isbell song “Relatively Easy”, except unlike Isbell’s heartfelt and gut wrenching lyrics, Adams’ song makes me feel nothing.

Just dreck. Makes me want to listen to the superior artists he’s imitating (current candidate Van Morrison on “Answering Bell”, later, The Faces on “The Rescue Blues”)

The fact that David Rawlings and Gillian Welch’s genius get smeared by the association with this is too bad.

The recording preserves the rawness of the songs while also feeling immaculate. The image in my mind of this era of Nirvana is the Unplugged performance and to hear these songs again in their album form brings back that they weren’t that far removed from many of the other grunge /alt rocks acts of the time. I think without the unplugged performance Nirvana wouldn’t have reached the legend status that they have attained in the past 30 years. But, I think this is their best studio release.

Some good instrumentation and lyrics. Hard R n-word loses a star.