Reviews by john

I don’t have a ton to say about the details of this album, as it’s so far out of my depth. But I really enjoyed it and wish we had more unique instrumental genres to listen to. What I do know is that there seems to be some artistic liberty in the solos of different instruments peppered throughout this record (it’s jazz, so duh I shouldn’t be surprised by that. By 1957, was this a radical composition and performance? Surely to jazz heads at least, it must’ve been.
My highlight here is probably the most notable mood switch on the album, Pannonica.
Alternative name for this group:
THEL and the MONKey homosapiens

Yay! Our last Marvin Gaye album was just a week or so ago, so we get to think comparatively! My favorite way to form thoughts around music!!!
This does share many similarities on sonics with What's Going On, but where it differs is that most songs here are really in the pocket - theres just a bit more groove to provide some backbone to the songs. That's not true for everything though, which allows me to talk about my favorite song on here. "If I should die tonight" is just so beautiful in it's sentiment and execution. The swelling strings and horns, the light, plucky guitars fading in and out, and Marvin putting his whole heart and soul into the vocal performance. Wow, such a pretty pretty pretty song! Another highlight, "You sure love to ball" gets back into the more groovy (and almost bossanova) territory - and I think its a nice microcosm of the other change this album sees in comparison to Whats Going On; there's no social outcrying here. It's just one smooth love song after another. Love proclamations and grapplings with ones feelings surrounding a lover, these are what we get treated to on this record.

This album makes me wonder who else from her generation was just as good at lyrically placing you right in the midst of a story or setting. Maybe Billy Joel, Elton John, and…? Surely the list is short. Vintage easy listening that doesn’t tug on the heartstrings as much as it instead functions like a personal favorite fiction novel. Also with a bit of subtle electronic production here and there? I noticed it on “The Jungle Line” song. Loved the horns on “Harry’s House/Centerpiece.” My favorite is probably the closer “Shadows and Light.”
Pleasant music to listen to while lounging around

How rare and exciting it is to get an album past the year 2000 that I know nothing about! What’s more exciting is how *not* post-2000 it sounds. This music is honest and simple in structure, allowing the listener to pay more attention to when Gillian Welch accentuates a word or repeats a phrase. The songs are good at either painting a character, or ask you to think back on a different time in one’s life.
My highlight on here is “Everything Is Free” for it’s straightforward but super effective guitar melody

(written like an angry Facebook post) Album title very misleading!

We let this guy get away with too much, and the passage of time lets me say that with certainty. I think the biggest gripe I have with this album is that some fantastic Pharrell and Timbaland production is wasted on some just ok JT falsetto singing.
My second biggest gripe with this album is that I’m not sure how seriously JT wants us to take him. Making a song like “Cry Me A River” and then proceeding to cry himself a river on the closing “Never Again”, all the while peppering the track list with various “hey girl I like your body” type of tracks. Mixed messaging, which I suppose I could look past if I was a JT stan…but I am not. And I think that’s where the barrier of entry lies with this Justified - if you are invested in the man then this is an album do substance for you. Otherwise, all this album is good for is a poorly-aged single about a Britney Spears breakup. And some solid pop production. Both Timbaland and Pharrell are so good at making sounds that sparkle and add flavor to a track. I have lots of good to say about the production, not much to say about the man behind the microphone. Sadly, “Cry Me a River” is my only worthwhile highlight, the album takes a noticeable nosedive from “Right For Me” and beyond.
More mature than his boyband days? Sure, but not by much.

Potentially the closest an album from the early 2010’s will come to being “timeless.”
Everyone, quick, remember what pop music sounded like in 2012. There was almost always some gimmick (a mandolin) or angle or hyper-emphasized genre (pop going EDM) about each hit song.
Channel Orange, on the other hand, has songs that could’ve come out in the year 2001, 2012, or 2025, and I genuinely wouldn’t know which decade to pin it down to. This record is both generational, and generation-defying!
On the whole, something I appreciate most about Channel Orange is how it’s kinda like the GTA V of albums (aside from the fact that they both came out within a year or so of each other). Both the album and the game are fantastical portraits/caricatures of aimless, impulsive, glitzy west coast life. Both explore the false promises, hard realities, and various methods of escapism used to deal with it all. And, holy shit, both the game and the album are masterclasses in world-building and defining an atmosphere. I can hear the pastel sunsets in the warmth of Franks crooning.
A small nitpick I have with this album is the song Pyramids, whose first half is maybe the only time it sounds a little like it’s for sure from 2012. That synth line is cool, just a bit dated now. The second half of Pyramids switches into the simplest, coolest beat you could hope for though!
Catching John Mayer in the midst of his best musical era and just throwing him in there for a little smooth guitar interlude, pulling a clever-as-ever Andre3000 feature, and getting a rising Earl Sweatshirt as the only named collabs on here too??? Incredible.
I have to give this album all 5 stars. Frank Ocean doesn’t just present you with a great album, he pulls you into it’s decadent, hazy, hedonistic world.

Never has a band been so sweet and perfect in the recording booth, and so toxic off the mic. So rarely do you get a group that checks off boxes for drug addiction, alcohol abuse, sexual abuse, a love quadrangle, and various misdemeanor arrests. The love quadrangle and cheating in particular makes the juxtaposition of smooth harmonies and the lyrics of a song like “Got a Feelin” seem almost agonizing. This album has challenged my preconception that The Eagles were the greatest vocal harmonizers of all time.
Now, the record does take a bit of a dip after California Dreamin, where it starts feeling a bit repetitive, but I can’t sing it too much - because the final song “The In Crowd” was a nice pickup in energy and confidence.
I can totally see this being a pop music revolution for its time, it even stands up to the impossible gold standard that is the Beatles/Beach Boys in the early 60’s (speaking of the beach boys, this version of Do You Wanna Dance is arguably better than the beach boys for me, its more intimate). Candy-sweet anthems that took the yearning of teenybopper music and elevated it to something slightly more mature with spectacular, tight vocal arrangements. Soft 4/5 stars!

Im always so interested when its an album form the 60's that has like 1 million plays per song or less. Like, did this just get added, or is it really a deep pick? Anyways, I had to wait until the weekend to listen to this, because in true 60's fashion the vocals and some instruments were panned completely to one ear. Can't one-ear listen at work.
As for the album itself, it sadly fades into 60's pastiche around song 8ish.
There's even an indian-psych-inspired track! Truly the complete late 60's rock package. For this, I must reluctantly give it a 2 out of 5, there isnt much that's very distinct about this album that isnt already done many times over or many times better by many other groups.
My highlight is probably "Bracelets of Fingers"

2025 is here and I am being tested. I wish to be less immediately-cynical about artists I have relative knowledge of, but haven’t listened to a majority of their discography’s.
I believe I accomplished that by stumbling into the correct circumstances to appreciate what this album has to offer.
It’s been a cold, grey day so I went to the gym to run on the treadmill. I think this was a great backing track to that setting. It also made me realize that the smiths/morrisey are functionally similar to Lana Del Rey but for gen X white male teens/20 somethings. Both are very whistful and often sing with a sense of yearning for something ephemeral.
As for this album specifically, it was still what I would expect from a Smiths project. Maybe a bit more based in reality, which I could appreciate, considering the albums topics about war, unnecessary human suffering, vegetarianism, and ethical consumption. My favorite track is probably Well I Wonder, I liked that slightly surfer guitar riff. The final track, the title track, is interesting to me. It had the best instrumentation, cutting edge production, but felt a little on the nose and melodramatic, lyrically.
All in all, I honor the in-depth experience I had with this album, one I could’ve very easily half-assed and passed over easily. Soft 3/5.

Just because i said Lou Reed is one of the few artists so great he can exceed my theoretical 2 album per artist limit doesn’t mean you get to go crazy with it and add any project Lou Reed touches.
That was my knee jerk reaction.
Then I listened to the album! Lou Reed, man. Great album intro as always. A simple concept album done beautifully. Men Of Good Fortune showcasing his amazing, personable storytelling ability. Some great horn arrangements on How Do You Think It Feels.
Then one of the best album closers I’ve ever heard - one of the best songs to come from this list so far - Sad Song. I immediately ran it back on this one. What a fantastic, charming, soaring melody executed to perfection. The middle of this album began to lull just a tiny bit, but Sad Song brought it all home with such a firm finish.
As a little context, reading about this album reveals that rolling stone initially said it was a disaster, but 50-some-odd years later it’s a top 500 album of all time. Very funny. If you like something that much, never listen to critics about how it should be perceived

2024 ends in a day, and something I want to do in 2025 is listen to music with no preconceptions or sense of jadedness.
This album is really testing those personal goals. I hear Chris Cornell’s one in a million singing voice here, I hear a very well-recorded band, I hear songs that mean a lot to a lot of people…
this album just doesn’t do it for me. I ran it back too! I listened to it twice! I think this album, much like Nirvanas nevermind, is a bit front-loaded. I also think that this is just a rock album as much as it is a grunge album. I really want more for my enjoyment of Superunknown, it just isn’t hitting for me

swanky and fun. the musical pop definition of "cool" would soon evolve very rapidly huh.

This was especially good to practice melee to

If your goal is to travel from 80’s rick to 90’s grunge/rock, this album makes it clear that you must last the Pixies checkpoint. You might even take a long detour or have yourself a long stay. This album is full of sweet hooks covered in hazy instrumental melodies, often singing whistfully about some unattainable girl or situation. Definitely not bossanova though.

Not to be a Scrooge on this Christmas 2024 but this is a near-inexcusable placement on this 1001 albums list thats only barely redeemed by the energized live instrumentation. Because, respectfully, the vocals aren’t there. At all.

Is this the best radiohead album? probably. The masses may say OK Computer, I'm not so sure I agree with that.
Is this album fantastic? In many ways, yes. Almost every song creates an amazing sense of space and atmosphere by demonstrating restraint on when to let the blend of electronics + real instruments go crazy vs. when to keep things nice and quiet. All I Need is my sleeper highlight on this one, using an updated version of that late 90's breakbeat percussion rhythm so well.
Is/was this album also the bible for people who are beginning to think their music taste can cure cancer? maybe a little, yeah. My little mini-theory on that is this album came out during a time where personal music blogs were widely accessible and in-fashion, and many people were creating their own blogs, heightening the sense of personal pride on what music taste meant to oneself.

Al Green yesterday Marvin Gaye today. Gaye's falsetto crooning is perhaps the defining sound of this album - backed by grooves that weave between heavy pockets and lighter passages with ease. It seemed like this album was a big leap for him thematically, moving away from the overtly clean suit and tie doowop love songs, to something more existential, open-ended, and funky all the same. Not the most surprising pick, but Mercy Mercy Me is my highlight here -- What's Going on is so culturally significant that I'm sure most everyone already knows it.

Good RnB/soul music is where the vent diagram of honest lyricism/singing crosses with bits of the pop format. I really respect Al Greens ability to do that with such ease on this record. Just little treats of authenticity coming at you left and right every single song. Like someone handing you assorted homemade baked goods for an hour straight

I saw her in concert about two months ago! I went into it with very few preconceptions or specific expectations and I left very impressed. She’s a performer through and through, it was dramatic from start to finish, very few words were said until a break towards the last few songs. I greatly appreciated it.
Anyways, as for this album here, it is a great balance of delicate and guttural. I suppose you can say that about all of her best stuff. Uninhibited vocals and raw instrumentals to back it up. A very very strong 4 outta 5.

I have not had harder lyrical whiplash than my listening experience with “Oliver’s Army” on this album. And upon further digging it looks like Mr. Costello has a big issue with his views and choice of words - but that he’s also very actively pro-Palestine???
Anyways, nothing on here is bad, but nothing is very new or unique. “Party Girl” is probably my highlight. I’m sure I’m the last person on earth to hear Elvis and think that Prince was doing it better.
I wish this album wasn’t given a spot on here, considering there are other more deserving ones not dropping hard R’s!

I’m so glad I was an impressionable age when this album came out. I think these days I would’ve more easily written it off as 80’s revivalist pop pastiche. But no, this was peak tumblr, Porter-Robinson-adjacent, on the drive to my first job, good from front to back. Wistful lead vocals packed with a nice balance of angst and catharsis, often dancey, AMAZING hooks. If you are new to liking this, I suggest The Naked And Famous as a similar listen.

“Tether” is my highlight and it has a great house remix from Junior Sanchez that should be listened to as well