Reviews by jlazerus

Brilliant. Brings up a lot of thoughts about genre.

When you're a very young child and you listen to music, you don't have any preconceived notions about "what kind of music" you're listening to. Rock, pop, jazz, whatever, you know it all simply as music. I'm leaving out "children's music", which is a thing, but not relevant and typically isn't really in the same world as, say, Aretha Franklin or The Beatles - both of which could be enjoyed by a child, whereas "children's music" is not for a general audience the same way. Likewise, nearly all the world's humans experience melody, rhythm, and the patterns in music in a similar way. I can listen to indigenous music from Africa and "get" it, or Asia, or British Folk... I can even play or sing along with music that doesn't come from my own cultural background, at least in a basic way.

WHAT IS YOUR POINT?

Penguin Cafe Orchestra brings my head to that place. It's just enjoyable music. When I was a kid I enjoyed Henry Mancini, Elton John, and Antonio Carlos Jobim equally. I still do! And I could put PCO in the same category, child or adult. It's all music.

PCO has a surreal quality that all great music does, separating you from the rest of the (sometimes stupid, annoying) regular day-to-day world. There's a quality to the album that is playfully creative, layering instruments in unexpected but perfectly comfortable ways, degrading the simple droning riff then returning to it, abandoning rhythm altogether. The interplay between musicians, as a concept, is another thing PCO works with to expand their scope, beyond the everyday. Playing tightly together is a given in most music, letting the players explore the spaces between the notes or the space around those notes creates a humanistic atmosphere that is really rare. It's a bit more of a challenge to listen to. Worth investing what little of my mind is left in that challenge.

Apparently I do like this type of "progressive" hip-hop. This album has some intriguing sonic atmospheres, it's funky, and the themes are more life-affirming than hardcore or gangsta, so a nice antidote to all that. I had never heard this before, but I dig the energy and the attitude, good stuff. Easy to listen to, didn't make me want to murder anyone!

One of the rare albums that "disrupts" music, to borrow from Dimery himself.

I learned that they recorded this beast in one day, mostly single takes. And it sounds like it. Fresh and spontaneous, very stripped down, not a lot of production - just four dudes playing music. That said, there is some complexity and innovation going on. The guitar and bass tone, the heavy handed drumming, Ozzy's off-kilter raspiness, all coalesce around a sense of foreboding and pain.

Like the fact that it was made in a day or two, everything about the album is strange, from the guitar sound to the jazzy interludes to Ozzy's weird vocals. Somehow this all worked to produce a heavy metal masterpiece.

If you’re into gangsta rap as a musical style you will love this. Aggressive, crazy, anti-everything. Not for me and at almost two hours, way too much of something I don’t even like in the first place. Then Kanye is on here like wtf was this loser on EVERYTHING released between 2000 and 2010? Grr. DNF

I love the Hives more than is actually necessary. Punk rock the way god intended - fast, loud, snotty, ironically dumb, fun. The band can PLAY, and they hold nothing back. Another old favorite.

Pure genius. Groundbreaking sounds. Catchy as all hell. Beautiful vocal tone, pulling in the twang from rockabilly but not excessively. Just pure joy to listen to top to bottom. Masterful genre defining work.

Repetitive, annoying, violent, and somewhat stupid. Same exact thing every gangsta rapper has been doing for the decade before this, probably longer. 50 Cent's marble mouthed overconfidence has no irony or deprecation whatsoever. Like most stuff in this genre it's all bad all the way down, everything sucks all the time, the only way out is to die. Or kill someone I guess. THe lowest of the low, congratulations.

Beatles coming into their own. Another important album, but more than that, excellent pop music. The compositions are flawless in context, and there's a surprising variety of vocal and instrumental sounds. "Hard Day's Night" has that iconic opening chord, a story of its own, one of the best intros in rock. It is astonoshing to me how much material these guys put out inm such a short period, almost all of it the quality work, songs that were covered by countless other artists, to say nothing of the influence they had. Which is perhaps their greatest legacy. Bridging early vocal group rock with later exporations, and in doing so, inventing the genre. At least for me, this album, Rubber Soul, and Revolver are the Beatles high point and some of the best rock ever to be recorded. I can't get enough.

One more vote for EmmyLou Harris. "Love Hurts" is indeed a killer track. "I Can't Dance" is amusing. Gram Parsons (no relation to Alan Parsons?) writes compelling songs, just needs a little more... passion, I guess is the word. Some good stuff on here, nothing that really made me want to go back and listen again except for the two I mentioned. And interesting that the first album I've ever heard from Gram Parsons is also his last album.

Another live fast die young guy, what is the issue? Too much pressure at too young an age?

RIP Brian WIlson. Respect to you.

The compositions and vocals elevate this far above the sappy subject matter of the tunes. Important to the history of Rock music, but it lacks edge, the second half is especially soft. Catchy as hell though, and so many of these songs are memorable 60 years on. The distinctive vocals are also important. Not my favorite style, fascinating to listen to nonetheless. I want to give it a higher rating than a 3 but side two loses me.

I believe the term you're looking for is "kickass."

This is a "nice" album. "Love at the Five and Dime" is a good song, highly nostalgic, not for anyone under the age of 50.

Nanci Griffith has an interesting unique singing voice. Kind of light, not quite "twee" but could go there, but still powerful.

Great country instrumentation - mandolins, pedal steel, dobro, fiddle - and this was my favorite thing about this album. Used to emphasize the emotion in the song instead of decorate. In fact, the music is at the service of the song on the whole album, no one is overplaying.

With a couple exceptions early on, nothing here is too moving or exciting. Pleasant though it is.

Poetic and sublime. 'Sublime' is one of those vagaries that a truly good writer would do well to avoid, so I allow myself to use it. But here I use it to express the feel, mood, attitude... something below the surface, outside of your five senses.

Joni Mitchell floats in, doesn't force her way, you can go with her or not, up to you. If you do go, you are rewarded with that (struggling again to expel the word I want from my tight chest) transcendent place that you want music to take you. Joni Mitchell is extremely generous with that reward, bringing in surprises and poetry and characters and stories like nothing I've heard elsewhere.

There's Bernard Edwards and there's everyone else. Nile Rodgers and Tony Thompson are no slouches either. Top shelf funk - transcends the disco label. Good Times!

Impeccable. Important. Too much religion for me and “Save the Children “ is a bit much for the modern ear. But still , a masterpiece nonetheless.

I want to like Def Leppard, I really do.

I love this album. Bjork makes me uncomfortable sometimes. Like when she sings about sensuality. Weird and beautiful. Art pop.

Nearly unlistenable cliched low effort garbage. Sleepier than a teenage boy at 9 in the morning.

Hell yeah! 'Murica! ...oh wait...
Springsteen's most popular work. Good times, bad times, high quality musicianship, a little formulaic but a Classic Rock essential. The last half is exceptional.

Kraftwerk ultimately forces the listener to confront their own relationship with technology, and the anxiety provoking duality of both depending on it for your very life, and our abhorrance of just that dependency. Bit of an existential crisis that the music reflects very well, creating natural sounds mechanistically, or mechanical sounds that are shallow renditions of the actual. There is some cognitive dissonance that is not unentertaining.

Philosophy aside: the compositions (I think) owe more to classical than pop. There is a complexity and intelligence at the core of this music. Kraftwerk almost completely abandons traditional instrumentation and essentially invents a genre. Prior to this, electronioc music was novelty ("Switched On Bach") or used as sound effects in other formats ("Good Vibrations", "Baba O'Reilly"). Here though we can take all-electronic compositions seriously for the first time, at least in the mainstream. There are earlier examples but Kraftwerk makes it eminently listenable, even catchy, and breaks into the mainstream in a small but highly influential way. Important album.