Reviews by jlazerus

This is SO much different from the Pink Floyd you know and love as to really make it a different band entirely. It's more of an art experiment than anything else.

Rick Wright and Syd Barret create an otherworldly sound that upends your normal cognitive order, no drugs needed. Their long, extended whirling and chaotic jams are quite unlike anything else, echoing and reverberating in disharmonious miasma. Engilfed by the sound, you suddenly find that you don't know where yopu came from and you have no idea where you're going. Then Barretts' voice and little childlike vocals come in, creating a grounding, a safer place, like coming home to loved ones.

This whole thing is like walking around in a funhouse, you don't know wether the next thing is scary, hilarious, or just plain weird.

But as a prototype Pink FLoyd album, it is a religious artifact. Roger Waters actually plays along, and his bass lines are QUITE good! Nick Mason brings some free playing to the bizarreness of this orchestration with Waters holding down the time. The music succeeds because of the grounding elements. Waters keeping time inside the chaos. Barrett's sing-song melodies and kindly, folksy vocal style while he sinks more and more into madness. Shades of the blues-rock roots all 60s British bands share, forming the basis for the often difficult improvisational sections.

Without going off about the Pan symbolism, Pink Floyd later tames their wilder/improvisation instincts without leaving behind the more creative aspects of composition, in no small part thanks to the addition of GIlmour and Syd Barrett's dismissal. It's interesting that the band survived this period. Like they say, from the ashes...

I’m so ambivalent about this that it hurts. As much as I love Bowie, this album is just a wee bit below his usual greatness. On the other hand, what a huge risk as n artist to just shift into an entirely different genre, and not only that, but pull off this perfectly executed album. Definitely the primordial soup for the later and more brilliant life forms.

Even so, Young Americans is primordial. It feels like Bowie and company are sort of playing with a style rather than feeling it. On the other hand, there’s a very heartfelt appreciation for that style. But in this case, Bowie isn’t creating anything new or using the R&B he emulates as a jumping off point to something better. It’s more of a tribute. Which is respectable. It just doesn’t feel genuine. With a few exceptions, the title track and Fame among them, of course. An important transitional work.

Curtis Mayfield’s distinctive voice is outstanding as usual. Really strong message that resonates across time in America. Will there ever be a time when black artists DONT need to keep telling us about what’s going on? Aretha Franklin, Gil Scott-Heron, Stevie, Public Enemy and every hip-hop and rap act that came after (except Eminem, named after a type of candy), UB40, Solange … it just never stops.

That being said, interesting music that didn’t really stick with me. Classic soul, well done but not very memorable for me.

Never understood the hype. KIND OF novel (for its time), sure, but still just run of the mill teenage love pop. Not even really well executed, Big Star are low-energy. That 70's Show theme is on here, interestingly.

Perfect voice for this modern bossa nova set.They keep it interesting while never straying from the form. Has a Thievery Corporation feel: loungey, laid-back, smooth, and entertaining.

Love the One You're With is a great pop-rock song of course, very much of its time. Stephen Stills probably shouldn't be left alone, as he wanders around, noodling a bit much. If you like a singer-songwriter with a blues-based hippy vibe, this will work.

Loved this record. really exciting, tons of genre-bending variety, heavy latin influence obviously but not shoving it down your throat. Wholesome adn love the message.

Pretty good old school stuff. Sorry to hear about Africa Bambaataa 😑

Unexpectedly deep and artistic. Trying to think of a reason NOT to give this a five and I can’t. Cool, influential, and has the perfect amount of high-energy apathetic disdain that you look for in a punk band.

Actually psychedelic 😵‍💫
Love how garage-y this sounds. And they’re very passionate about what they’re doing, very sincere. Unique and heavy. Influential.

In an earlier era you would get an album and listen to it front to back, paying attention to the lyrics maybe, paying attention to the music and melodies on the second pass. Kind of sad that those days are gone (for me mostly). But this album absolutely requires a full listen at least once through because of the storyline that plays out across it. The big wall of sound production does two things that I think are really interesting here. First, it gives the whole thing a big cinematic feel. Second, there’s a fun irony having such a huge sweeping sound underpinning the pedestrian, sad sack pop tunes.

It’s a good record. Entertaining. You could cherry-pick “Common People” out, that one song can live on its own, definitely defines this whole thing, brilliant stuff. The rest requires the context of the album for it to make sense.

Wow.

Did not expect this to be as excruciatingly beautiful as it is.

Artists who expose the deepest feelings are telling us secrets about themselves at great risk. Maybe the urge to get shit off your chest is the same urge that makes you say f it all. The same sensitivity that makes your art touch people is the same sensitivity that exposes something you didn’t mean to, or allows you to get hurt without knowing the pain isn’t permanent.

Really amazing work. Be nice to someone today.

Listened to this on Juneteenth. Unique, with a message everyone needs to hear, still, almost 40 years later. Delivered with a heaviness befitting the substance. Massive. Intelligent. Heartfelt. And Vernon Reid rules, I think we can all agree.

A personal top 5, and all these musicians are schooled. Will Calhoun is easily in my top 3 favorite drummers. An amazing unequaled feat in rock.

Not even the best Yardbirds album... not the best British blues guitar rock of the era, albeit an early example (man, I've been itching to use 'albeit' today for some reason, and THERE IT IS). Jeff Beck is without equal however, and when the band hits it right, there's an undeniable spontaneity and fun bubbling up. There's an identity crisis going on, and it gets a bit silly. Like Cream's uncool little brother.

Kenya is a fantastic example of my favorite genre of late, the Afro-Cuban big band jazz. Like Dizzy Gillespie but faster, louder and more authentic. Superb!

One of those albums that I know every note, every vocal inflection, every sound. It was a good time to come back to it again.

Bollocks still feels edgy and a wee bit scary, which is the whole appeal of Punk I think. There's a thrill in not knowing what might happen next, and Johnny Rotten will for SURE say something provocative, or absurd, or obnoxious. In the few years right after it came out, this was absolutely an attack on mainstream middle-class sensibilities (even in my mid-size middle American religion dominated town). This ended up being a huge influence on me, not neccessarily a good one, but in the grand tradition of questioning authority, this is a bellwether.

Lyrically and musically, angrily challenging the status quo, transgressive just to shake things up, biting the hand that feeds you, all while (kind of ) inadvertently inventing a subculture. Or helping to do that, depending on which poser you talk to.

The template for almost all the Punk that came after it. There are a few bands where SO MANY other bands said "I saw them, and I knew I wanted to make music after that." Along with The Beatles and The Velvet Underground you have The Sex Pistols.

Changed my life, my thinking as a musician, and Rock and Roll itself. And catchy as hell.

Really odd, and I love it for that. The genre ascribed to this by Wikipedia is "Acid Folk," and that pretty much sums it up. Just... odd. Good for them.

Swaths of intensity with shadows and highlights that give the album vastness and depth. We have lust, love, pain, doubt: but it's the humanist in Springsteen that frames this and completes it, runs through it. Intensely sincere, very "American" sounding (whatever that means to you, that's what this sounds like) with some surprising moments ("World's Apart") alongside perfectly rendered classic Springsteen ("Mary's Place").

One of my least favorite Stones songs (Wild Horses, featuring Mick's annoying phony drawl) followed by one of my favorites, Can't You Hear Me Knockin', featuring one of the best guitar riffs in all rock music, along with the incredibly satisfying jazz breakdown/jam session at the end.

Lots of drugs on this one, and Brown Sugar is simply disgusting - gotta try to ignore the lyrics. You Gotta Move is great, as is Bitch, but the Stones get kind of lazy now and then when they lie down in a druggy haze and toss off some country or blues tropes. It's really pretty sloppy, but the guitars are always great, as is the superb Charlie Watts.

Oh my God. That was rough. A touching and beautiful masterpiece, but rough. Man, what a voice.