Reviews by jf01

Overall meh, but an understandable meh. You just lost your best friend and your band and you can still write “maybe I’m amazed”? Pretty good

I have this album saved as one of my favorites from 2019, but I haven’t returned to it, so I’m excited to do so.

Update: still liked it!

Love Disco Bowie

Because it’s so long, I probably haven’t listened to this all the way through in 20 years. I have about nine favorites that I play occasionally, and I remember the rest being mediocre. Let’s see if this listen bears that out.

I think it’s a soft 4. There’s a lot I love (Bowtie, A Life in the Day…, Take Off Your Cool, Prototype), plenty more I like, and then way too many interludes. But very little is ill-conceived (my favorite things) or boring. I’m going to weigh the stuff I like more than the rest and round up to 4.

Tough to imagine an album cover making a worse first impression. Let’s see how this goes.

Very funny to me that this week we’ve had Revolver (two songwriting geniuses at the height of their powers), Axis: Bold as Love (innovative guitar god), and now this album that seems to have been made by a group of enterprising high school students? With the help of their band teacher, they snuck into the studio and recorded their little songs. (Looked at Wikipedia: they were all like 23, so it kinda tracks.)

I was singing along to “I’m So Happy Now,” so I have to give it some credit, but wow, what a difference in the caliber of songwriting and the originality of playing from other albums this week. And I was familiar with “groovin,” but still don’t like it. This was a pretty boring, generic album. Probably a 2 but I could maybe talk myself into a 1 yet.

A perfect album.

I’ve listened to this before but never gotten into it, so I had in my mind that it was a 2/3 album. After listening the first time, I thought it was a 3/4 album. By the end of second listen, I was persuaded to give 4. Very enjoyable.

As it happens, I’ve listened to every Beatles album in the past 2 or 3 months. This is my least favorite. I like the title track and I really like “can’t buy me love.” Other than that, some songs are ok and some are bad. Oh god, are the Beatles about to be a “controversial artist” for me? It’s like the opposite of Neil Young (a couple bangers, a lot of dreck) with this album being the one “miss” in the Beatles catalog.

Honestly, I didn’t finish. Ran out of time today. It was feeling like a 3, though.

Growing up, a Genesis live album (the way we walk vol 1) got a lot of play in our house. I have not listened to them since, you know, maybe 1996, but I thought I got it: cheesy 80s pop.

Turns out the truth is far, far worse.

More than that, though: I assumed this was an unpopular, critically acclaimed cult classic. Not so! This charted in the UK and US! Top 3 in the UK! A hit single! I’m baffled. People of 1973, you know you can listen to older stuff too, right? If the current stuff in 1973 isn’t doing it for you, don’t force it! Look back to the 60s or just sit a year or two out. Help is on the way.

I like the title track and enough of “down by the river” to add it to my playlist, but the rest of this was pretty boring.

In fifth or sixth grade, I bought this and the Beatles’ Let it Be together, and those were my first “good” CDs I bought. When I bought this one, I don’t think I’d heard more than Heart of Gold, but, I mean, come on, it’s an incredible song.

Random thoughts on an album I’ve listened to so many times it’s etched in my brain:

-Angeles, Cupids Trick, 2:45 am, and Say Yes is a murderer’s row to close an album.

-Angeles is guitar goals. I think Elliott remains an underrated player.

-In college and law school I had a job teaching test prep classes. One class was an hour’s commute to MSU and I distinctly recall being obsessed with 2:45 am and Built to Spill’s “I would hurt a fly” during that time period, so I would play those two songs repeatedly for the month or two I was commuting to teach that class a couple times a week.

-“the trumpet’s obviously been drinking, because he’s fucking up even the simplest lines” is such a good line, so specific and so biting, but it still feels like it says more about the narrator’s worldview

-I have a least favorite song (no name no. 5), but picking a favorite is nearly impossible. At various times it has been between the bars, rose parade, Angeles, 2:45 am, and say yes.

I knew The Message (the song) was good, but I was surprised how much I enjoyed the rest of this too

Definitely one of the albums of all time

I listened enough to be intrigued and I liked it. I think I still need to give it a deeper listen. Maybe the 2-hour anniversary edition. For now, a 3

Parts I didn’t like:

-boring songs
-inscrutable songs
-feeling like I needed an MFA in poetry to even begin to care about the songs
-no melody to the songs
-asking myself “is a pop album supposed to be fun or memorable?” roughly half a million times
-wanting to kill myself both from the songs’ content and their existence themselves, as songs
-that one song where he fingerpicks an arpeggio while he kinda talk-sings? You know the one

Parts I did like:
-only 41 minutes!
-based on that cover photo, Leonard cohen can totally get it
-feeling like a saucy medieval boy
-feeling like if I write some total pompous bs and also strum my guitar a little bit, I too can be a celebrated troubadour
-“hey, that’s no way to say goodbye” and also like a half point for “so long, Marianne”

Her voice is great and I’ll never listen to this again.

The linked album and the listed tracks do not line up. The linked album is 3 hours long with the final two tracks seeming to be the full album duplicated in one continuous, trackless set. That’s a lot of nonsense for a genre I already hate. I listened to a few snippets and got the gist. One star.

Maybe a 3.5 rounded up. But a lot of fun songs here and some good ballads too