Reviews by jf01

But do they like rock and roll? So many unanswered questions posed by the lyrics on this one. I’ll be thinking about it for days.

Yes

Maybe it’s just that Enter Sandman is overplayed, but on this listen I felt strongly that Nothing Else Matters is the best song here.

I’d cut 3-4 songs, or I’d make all the songs about a minute shorter. Not sure how many songs need two or three guitar solos. Not sure how many 7-minute epics I need on one album, especially when a song has only minor shifts in dynamics (looking at you, uh, every song except NEM). I didn’t hate anything, and in fact saved several songs to my playlist, but it’s doubtful I’m going to seek out this album in whole again. It’s a collection of songs I like that somehow doesn’t work for me as an album. So, like a 3.5?

I have tried to get this album for many years and never been quite successful. It’s interesting we got it the same week as a Leonard Cohen one since (a) he’s maybe the subject of this album and (b) I hear similarities between the two. A lot of speak-singing and nothing super memorable on the guitar (shots fired!).

That isn’t to say I hate it. I just don’t hear “greatest album by a woman” or “top three album of all time” when I listen to it.

So, some of this hasn’t aged well. And what are the odds that 2/3 of the NBA players name checked on a song called “infamous date rape” are infamous for sexual indiscretions that came to light after the song’s release?

But apart from problematic sexual politics, this is such a fun album. I feel like you could put this on at any party and it would work. It’s on point (phife) all the time (tip).

😍

Pre listening: “oh great, the album with the cheesy synths and the creepy lyrics”

2 minutes later: “BORN IN THE USA, I WAS BORN IN THE USA”

-okay the daddy in “I’m on fire” is her partner, not her actual father. So it’s just about infidelity, not pedophilia. TMYK 💫

Except for psycho killer, this all went in one ear and out the next

I owned a Bob Marley record in high school, but it wasn’t this one. And reggae mostly sounds the same to me. Tough to imagine giving a reggae record anything other than a 3: it’s pleasant but I don’t find myself returning to it.

We got off to a rough start, with one of my least favorite genres: “white person in the 80s discovers rapping” (cc Debbie Harry). But after that, I liked this.

Am I going to write this review … by myself?

Another album I loved as a kid. I will always remember the track teammate who would listen to this on the bus before meets. To get himself hyped? To mellow himself out? I never asked and now I’ll never know.

The Nirvana tracks on this are good and several of them improve in this setting (About a Girl, Dumb, Something in the Way), but the covers are the standouts, especially the final track. If you’ve never seen Cobain’s eyes widen before that final “night through,” you need to. I was between a 4 and a 5 coming in, but after I “liked” every song from SITW to the end, I think the nostalgia boost is getting it to a 5.

After finishing the album, I watched this video of a trained singer analyzing his vocal performance on where did you sleep last night, and her shock is palpable at the moment with about two minutes left when he shifts his style:
https://youtu.be/wSxWhsWnP6o?si=5QCfyzMYvRsOudUn

It’s cool to know someone who knows her stuff is also wowed by this.

I ignored all non-Paranoid Sabbath albums for a while, but then gave the first five or six albums a listen not that long ago, and really liked them. This is maybe my second or third listen to Volume 4 and I keep finding stuff to like. It certainly doesn’t top Paranoid and I’d have to listen to Master of Reality again to compare them, but, standing on its own separate from one of the best discographies in rock, this is a great album. Maybe someone will correct me but I think of these first Sabbath albums as essentially creating the genre of heavy metal and establishing some of its earliest and most enduring tropes. It blows my mind.

Okay, not *everything* on this sounded the same, but I was nervous for maybe the first four or five songs, and “Mr. Pleasant” both sounds like a kinks song and has the perfect name for a kinks song. Entirely pleasant, 3.5, couldn’t bring myself to give it a 4.

Not for me

Every B&S album is a grower. This one didn’t hit me on first listen, but I might return to it.

I listened to this when it came out and then set it aside. Now, as then, I really like Lazarus and don’t care for much else on it.

Pre listen: In college, I think my Pavement album of choice was Brighten the Corners. For the last few years, it’s been Slanted and Enchanted. This one, despite having perhaps my two favorite Pavement songs (cut your hair and gold soundz—Pitchfork’s best song of the 90s) has never been tops in the rotation. So, I am generally unfamiliar and look forward to it.

A widely acclaimed album I’ve never been able to get into. It’s a little too long and I don’t think it’s quite as deep as it thinks it is.

Two songs in, contemplating quitting.

Four songs in, quitting.

The two people in this group, but not every potential reader of this review, will know that I just embarked on a “Summer of Taylor” last year and am therefore well acquainted with her oeuvre. I thought then, and continue to believe upon re-listen, that this is a weaker entry in her catalog. And I submit that “welcome to New York” is one of her worst songs, period.

Highlights: style, shake it off (for at least a couple more weddings before I get sick of it), and bad blood