Rated 4/10
Am I going to play this again? No. But do I think listening to it on my headphones, sober, while doing legal research, is the optimal setting to give it a fair shake? Obviously not. Goldie didn’t write this while simultaneously blue-booking; how can I expect to enjoy it when I am?
Rated 8/10
Tough to beat tracks 2-4.
Rated 4/10
I genuinely liked Tower of Song. Laughed out loud at “THEN WE TAKE BERLIN.” He’s so fucking self-serious, I hate it. And I wonder who thought Jazz Police was a good idea. No one thought to stop that? But again, I do think I like the last song enough to save this from a 1.
Rated 8/10
I’m pretty sure I saw them at Lollapalooza when this album was big. Genesis, DANCE, and Phantom Pt 2 are favorites. IIRC, second half of the album kinda falls off a bit. Time to see if I remember correctly.
Later: It is as I recall, although DVNO is fun.
Rated 4/10
I liked “Blues Deluxe.” If this album had been 7 minutes long, and just that song, that would have been great.
Rated 6/10
Honestly this felt like banger after banger for this genre. I knew most of these just from cultural osmosis. It is also the case that while I was thinking “oh another incredible jazz standard delivered with impeccable skill by the best guy ever at this,” I was also thinking “3…3…3.” So I think we’ve determined what the highest possible rating is, for me, for this type of music: 3/5.
Rated 6/10
I’m never mad about some LBM, but I also never feel like I need to hear 45 straight minutes of it, either.
Boy, I sure hope no washed-up singer songwriters exploit this group and somehow also end up on this list! (Foreshadowing!)
I’m glad Alex Turner has an outlet for … whatever this is. Just leave me out of it.
Rated 6/10
In college I was in the habit of making mix cds that included the songs I was enjoying at the moment. One month that included “this year’s love.” Cut to a week later. My girlfriend, her two roommates, and I are taking a road trip to help her find an apartment in the city she’s moving to after graduation. She puts on my mix cd. Second song: this year’s love. One of the roommates starts bawling. I learn it had been her “song” with her boyfriend, and they had just broken up like a week prior. Oops. We skip that song. That is my enduring memory of the song now, how I inadvertently emotionally sandbagged an unsuspecting young woman. Still a good song, though.
Babylon and Sail Away are also good. The rest, meh.
Rated 8/10
Like the first four songs (especially keep the car running), like the last three songs (especially my body is a cage—I hope somebody got to be surprised by the drop today), despise the stuff between.
Rated 6/10
Probably a 3.5. We’ll see how I feel when it’s time to put in the rating.
Rated 6/10
26 years of trying to figure out what the hype is all about on this album. “Red Alert” works for me sometimes and sometimes it sounds incredibly cheesy. Once again I am asking someone to tell me why this is so revered.
Rated 6/10
Neither of these Elvis albums has been bad, but I’m still disappointed there’s a third one in our future
Rated 6/10
Always feel like I should like them more—I love basically every band they influenced—but they never quite hit.
Rated 4/10
The top review on this site states that “everyone over 35 knows” who this artist is and knows at least one song off this album: “pt. 4, obviously.” What circles do you guys run in? Never heard of this before, never need to hear it again.
Rated 8/10
I usually just listen to “two states” and “trigger cut,” so it was nice to listen to the whole thing. Can’t be a 5 because there’s too many things that aren’t even really songs and are annoying to boot, but the songs that fit traditional notions of songwriting are great.
Rated 2/10
This is a 1/2 borderline that I didn’t finish. Some of it felt meh, which is maybe 2-ish, but I was actively repelled by some of it, which is more 1. With apologies to the band, sometimes it’s just more fun to take an extreme stance, so I’m going 1.
A little disappointed in this one. Just ok
Rated 6/10
I like them so this was probably never going below a 3, but I think this is too long and not up to their usual standards. “I used to” and “American Dream” were favorites. A lot of the rest could have been cut.
Rated 8/10
“Less than zero” and especially “Alison” were my jams in college. Haven’t been impressed by any Costello album on this list yet, but this is my favorite of his.
