Reviews by krill_42

Most unexpected lyric: “[…] die in ecstasy.”
Not too unexpected lyric: “[… ] feelin’ the same way all over again.”

The latter very aptly explains my emotions toward this collection of songs, because I would have wished for more of the former. Not dying, of course, but some more ecstasy would have been nice. While the album flows (occasionally) quite beautifully, an occasional upping of the BPM would have provided some much-needed variation. Regrettably, the record sometimes sounds like expensive session musicians making music for rich people to dine to. Yeah, I know this is unfair and maybe incorrect.

However, I will gladly acknowledge this: the minds involved knew how to write intriguing melodies, and Norah’s voice is incredible - incredibly smooth, with pitch that is just… wow. Oh, to have a voice like this.

Unfortunately, it's the steady mid-tempo mélange of jazz and soft rock/pop, country, and blues-y figures that doesn’t do much for me. Those marketing jerks would probably label "Come Away With Me" as “music like a warm blanket to wrap around you on a rainy autumn day.” Now, it’s incredibly cold in Europe these days, and I actually do want to hide under my sheets and call it a day - so that blanket-ness earns a bonus point today.

What a brilliant, what a powerful, what a life-affirming record, what a soulful perfomance. Also, there are amazing openers and then there is another category, in which the title track falls... How to classify it? "Transcendental first songs"? Yeah, sounds about right. And what's even more remarkble is that the rest of the album lives up to the promise made within the first minutes.

As a passionate hater of all things hard rock–related, I’m finding it difficult not to have fun with this. Seeing that Hysteria clocks in at 60+ minutes, I initially considered skipping it altogether. Glad I didn’t give in to that impulse, because I found myself having a genuinely good time - and even laughing out loud on more than one occasion.

One thing that puzzles me, though, is this: how can you spend three (!) years recording an album and then completely forget to amp up your lyrics, which tend to read like the diary excerpts of a horny fourteen-year-old with access to a multi-million-dollar studio? Still, if you normally couldn’t give a damn about glam or hard rock and then, one fine day, wake up feeling that your record collection could tolerate a single album from this divisive genre, make it this one (aside from maybe Appetite for Destruction).

And I’m probably about to completely overrrate this thing…

From the iconic cover to the songs: a unique and highly entertaining offering from Bowie at the absolute top of his game. Masterful. Bowie’s cocaine rattled brain struck gold in LA. A bit ironic that a Brit - kilometers away from Düsseldorf - wrote one of the most infectious Krautrock influenced backbeats on Station to Station and that he cannot even recall much of the recording sessions.

If you position The Fall by Camus so prominently on the cover of your indie band’s sophomore recording, you had better serve us some (pardon me…) killer lyrics.

I never once (in person) crossed paths with a single passionate fan and frequent listener of music - of any genre - who genuinely likes this album. And I worked in a record store for nearly a decade. This persistent absence has led me to a simple conclusion: This record is for those who prioritize spectacle over music, and who possess both the patience and the willingness to endure The Wall’s visual bombast long enough to wait for the two decent songs by the „other genius,” rewarding themselves, at last, with something to tap a foot or hum along to.

The concept of The Wall is… well, in principle, it is always good to call out authoritarianism. Yet the album’s immense success; both as a record and as a stage show; appears to have done nothing to prevent the very dynamics it claims to criticize. Beyond its concept, however, the album is very difficult to sit through. For the most part, the lyrics and music are utterly boring.

This is one of those rare moments where critical consensus deserves to be taken at face value: Pink Floyd were past their apex. What a massive letdown after Animals.

The world, it seems, wanted The Wall - but I have yet to encounter anyone who wholeheartedly says, “I dig The Wall.”

I have long not enjoyed an album that I didn’t know before as much as I enjoyed this one. Never was a big Elvis fan, and this won’t change much overall, but man, From Elvis in Memphis is 90% nothing short of stunning. The performances and the arrangements are absolutely ace. All of the musicians are brilliant; Elvis’ singing is super expressive; the selection of songs makes for an impeccable flow. I fully understand why this is seen as a classic. It has stood the test of time - and it has a great cover. Where the country influences take over too much (“I’ll Hold You in My Heart,” “It Keeps Right On A-Hurtin’”), those are the songs which I’m not particularly crazy about. But overall, this was an incredible listen (or rather, three listens). The melody in “Long Black Limousine” - ah, it just hits the right spots. I can’t stop listening to it for now.

One of the genre-defining psychedelic records, this one. Starting from the cover art to the music itself. The performance is inherently experimental: it’s bubbling, it’s warbling, it’s spellbinding, it’s hypnotic, it’s sprawling, and it’s constantly shape-shifting. Roky Erickson does an amazing job of bringing in an additional odd element. A far cry from the similarly groundbreaking Piper at the Gates of Dawn’s academic approach, the 13th Floor Elevators primarily draw from rock ’n’ roll’s primal intensity and passion. As a result, it’s one of the rawest staples of the genre. Occasionally the band ventures into more melodic and laid-back territory on the third track, which invites comparisons to the later released Jefferson debut. Thhe 13th Floor Elevators were truly ahead of their time.

My entry point into Tom Petty’s work was his late-career masterpiece Wildflowers, ironically the most heartbreak-infused album he made under his own name, without officially billing the Heartbreakers. And honestly, I more or less stopped there (of course I know the hits). To this day, Wildflowers is the only album of his that I regularly spin.

Tom Petty came a long way from his early output. On Wildflowers, you can clearly hear how much his songwriting had refined itself and how confidently his own creative voice had settled in - less indebted to his early influences and more comfortable with restraint, space, and emotional ambiguity. The debut, at least to my ignorant ears, sounds like just another Americana- and country-tinged rock’n’roll record, heavily informed by the Byrds, Dylan and the Stones - which is perfectly fine, but ultimately makes it little more than a solid debut. As far as I can tell, there is even a broad consensus that this self-titled album with the Heartbreakers is far from his best, despite containing staples like “American Girl” (I mean come on, the man made Damn the Torpedoes, Full Moon Fever, and Into the Great Wide Open afterwards…). So why include this one here?

This is one of the greatest post-punk albums ever released. It is brilliant mainly because of John Lydon’s near-manic and unpredictable performance. He sounds as if he is constantly on the tipping point of sanity, shifting from bellowing to whispering, from stammering to screaming. The band (especially Wobble's hypnotic bass) creates the perfect, repetitive backdrop, sounding like Can performing from inside a metal box (forgive the comparison), with the dissonance turned up to eleven. It is a staggering document of its time: a smudged version of post-punk, fronted by a genius "actor" who tries to tame the chaos just enough for the songs to remain discernible beneath all the misery. A true piece of art. Inimitable, astounding and unique.

A very good two-star record! If that makes any sense…

It's hard to believe that this list wasn't just compiled a few weeks ago. Given the selections that I have had so far (about one fifth in), you could come to the conclusion that Britpop must be the greatest and most influential genre of all. I've had so many Britpop records over the previous month (and the “obvious” genre highlights were not even among them) that you could be forgiven for assuming that the editors were riding high on the ongoing (and mainly nostalgic) Britpop revival wave.

A whole bunch of the 1001 list was apparently assembled in the early 2000s - a fact which itself only partly helps to explain the number of Britpop artists included here. At that time, British music on continental Europe was a massive phenomenon (Arctic Monkeys, Franz Ferdinand, Bloc Party, …). But then again, these bands were primarily drawing from post-punk and less so from Britpop. Britpop was, if my memory serves me well, as dead as a doornail at the time. I saw Oasis touring Europe around 2008/2009 in a medium-sized concert venue (give or take 4,000 people), and the only thing that I can recall is that Liam left the stage after a handful of songs.

So there must be another reason for the disproportionate amount of Britpop records in this 1001 pile. And the more I think about it, the more I come to the conclusion that the love for Britpop depends on your understanding of - and listening habits towards - music. To me, Britpop is not so much a clearly defined genre category, but rather a kaleidoscopic excursion into music history. Britpop has always been about nostalgia, and if that is your thing, you probably enjoy a good Britpop record too.

For one, every Britpop band unabashedly and unashamedly borrowed from their predecessors (certainly, most - if not all - artists do that, but not as openly as, say, Oasis). Second, they did not take one influence, but a whole bunch of artists and, like a prism, channeled their sound. Oftentimes it was ’60s psychedelic pop mixed with the recent resurgence of heavy guitar-based music (grunge, shoegaze). Combined with charismatic (and occasionally obnoxious) frontmen and the ability to write irresistible pop hooks, Britpop managed to serve as a bridge between generations and music genres that, before Britpop, existed more in (separate) niches. And by combining them into an arena-suited sound, they blew everything up.

Not a small feat by itself, especially considering how cohesive the results tended to sound. Now that’s my understanding of the enduring success of Britpop - and, to be honest, the reason why I enjoy a lot of Britpop records myself.

But… influential and groundbreaking? I don’t know. I have difficulty pinning Britpop albums down as such. Because as much as I love Britpop, I have to say that it feels - and has always felt - like a dead end to me. As you can see when looking at the Oasis reunion, people needed their heroes to return because the well had run dry. No one is doing Britpop anymore (at least not successfully), because as it stands now, the story has been told. That is the fate of a genre that was always busy looking in the rear-view mirror.

In the early ’90s, it must have been great to have one good-to-amazing album after another on the market. But is it justified to put more than, let’s say, five Britpop records on a list like this? Nah; don’t think so. And Supergrass are a great example for discussing this question. I think that with their first two records, they were the ones who managed to merge punk/mod energy with the psychedelic sound aesthetic of the ’60s most successfully. They were great songwriters with a real talent for writing choruses and hooks.

Take In It for the Money, which is not only versatile; it also manages to even out the duds from their debut. Unfortunately, though, the highs are not as high anymore, lacking truly standout tracks that elevate the album to another level. I think you would be just fine if you had never listened to this record. But if you do, you will probably have a good 40-plus minutes of solid songwriting ahead of you.

A word of warning, though: the initial excitement may slow down in parallel with the decreasing BPM of the tunes towards the end of the record - that is, unless you like your psychedelic pop smoldering rather than igniting. And then, unfortunately, comes the closer. Urgh. That one hurt.

I went in expecting to hate the record. Why? Because I usually don’t care for albums whose sound deliberately evokes a bygone era - one that is often heavily romanticised. And that certainly seems to be the case with Sinatra’s swing and jazz vignettes.

Well, I didn’t exactly become a believer, but it was far more entertaining than I had anticipated. Of course, Frank Sinatra was an entertainer - that’s not what I’m questioning. What I mean is that, musically speaking, the record turned out to be quite engaging and compositionally interesting… at least at first. I still struggle, however, with the apparent similarity between the tracks. With each passing tune, they tend to blend and blur into one another. That said, You Are Getting to Be a Habit with Me stood out for its great interplay between flutes and bass. Very nice.

It’s staggering how influential the sound of The Jam has been – and still is. To get a sense of just how far their reach extends, listen to Set the House Ablaze and then switch to Helicopter, the second track on Bloc Party’s seminal debut. The lineage is impossible to miss. Then again, in Start! The Jam heavily borrowed from the Beatles (Taxman). Well, tit for tat.

Usually, I am critical of “hit singles”, because they are often overplayed, but not That’s Entertainment – I will never get tired of this beautiful tune. It’s one of those rare tracks that never seems to lose its glow.

With Sound Affects, The Jam delivered their most lasting output and – at least in my books – their career-defining highlight. What strikes me most about the album is how you can hear their influences (Wire, Joy Division, Gang of Four) everywhere, and yet The Jam somehow managed to make the album sound distinctly their own: timeless and, of course, impeccably punchy.

The psychedelic and funk flourishes (apparently, Michael Jackson’s Off the Wall was a huge inspiration too… OK, I wouldn’t have guessed, to be honest, except for maybe the drums) blend in seamlessly and elevate the already great songwriting to greater heights. Also, the cover is just great. A true staple of (post-)(mod-)punk.

For a second I was shocked by the thought that, if I had been around and old enough in 1984, I could have been into this record, too. But then I sighed in relief… thankfully it’s 2026 (there must be some kind of silver lining to living in these times), and I can wholeheartedly say: I would have known better — this record is (and always was) absolutely terrible! Hot Teacher might just be one of the single most insufferable songs I’ve ever heard (to the point of almost causing physical pain), making the lyrics of Def Leppard sound like an advanced master’s class in poetry by comparison.

By the opening seconds, you know this is a Wilson/Beach Boys–related recording. The Wilsons’ angelic voices never fail to touch your heartstrings. However, Dennis Wilson can sound like a fallen angel (akin to Robbie Roberston of The Band), when his voice is on the verge of breaking (esp. in the middle section of the album comprising Thought of You & Time). What was surprising to me when I heard this album for the first time was how often one stumbles upon straightforward Rock elements (see What's Wrong, second half of Time). Dennis Wilson took the formula of the main band and opened it to more conventional structures here and there, which, as it turns out, was a smart move. Sometimes, the sound is extremely punchy, and that fits Dennis’ voice just great. As one can expect, the songwriting is versatile and - in the most positive sense - unpredictable. The (reissue) opener, The River, shape-shifts so much that it takes a few listens to get a hold of it. Regardless, you can simply approach Pacific Ocean Blue for a quick dopamine rush, too, because the hooks and choruses are simply beautiful. Also, the sprawling, opulent Thoughts of You caught me completely off guard: the way the whimsical, fragile piano led ballad transitions to the psychedelic, nearly drone-like arrangement is nothing short of stunning. Released eleven years after Pet Sounds, this ranks among the finest works in the Beach Boys cosmos - even if the slow-paced tracks in the second half do not manage to hold up the initial excitement one feels when listening to the A-side.

I liked this better than I thought I would (read about it often but I never gave it a full spin before, it seems). It's a surprisingly versatile and highly infectious debut. I came to think of labeling it a very ambitious garage rock record. Supergrass have the ferocious energy that made a lot of their predecessors landmarks of the British Music Scene (oftentimes, the Jam and Buzzcocks come to mind). But there is also a psychedelic side to things on the flipside: “Sofa of my Lethargy” is such a nice little meandering suite of swirling guitar and a beautifully fuzzy build-up that I even get Elephant 6 vibes. I Should Coco doesn’t waste time — the four musicians let you know their ambition right out of the gate with their mod- and punk-infused opening triplet “I’d Like to Know”, “Caught by the Fuzz” (what an apt title) and “Mansize Rooster.” What makes the record stand out for me, however, is Supergrass’ ability to write instantly memorable choruses, which they perfected in the mid-section of the record — “Strange Ones” and “Sitting Up Straight.” There, their influences come together seamlessly and complement each other the best; the blend just works perfectly. A minus point for the utterly obnoxious “We’re Not Supposed To” (is it supposed to be an interlude?) Oh man… and it's not even a hidden track or sth. Just placed smack in the middle of the second half.

I love the manic, bratty energy of this album. It's the rightly lauded precursor for so many incredible (and important) riot grrrl–affiliated records that broke onto the scene in the 80s and 90s. The lyrics are occasionally funny - also: what a brilliant title for an album - but mostly incredibly smart. And so are the hooks and riffs. The whole thing is infectious as hell, never slows down, and has killer sax melodies on it. Plus, the songs are all bangers. Singer Poly Styrene delivers one stunning performance after another. A true classic and one of the holy grails of punk music.

While always an immaculate lyricist, able to build the most stunning narrative arcs, I have to admit that Leonard Cohen, in his primary folk streak, did not manage to replicate the magic he conjured up on his debut. Mostly because his debut came across as a poet’s humble excursion into music, and the understated nature of the recording only added to the fascinating world his characters live in. The slight embellishments of the songs on his subsequent albums, including his sophomore record cannot cover the fact that he still pretty much relies on the same songwriting formula. Which, mind you, is not a bad thing when your first record was Songs of Leonard Cohen. But he just doesn’t deliver the same goods; the songs feel reheated. Also, I really don’t like the sound of the Jew’s harp that accompanies him on the first songs (the soft organ touches on “Story of Isaac,” on the other hand, are amazing). “The Partisan” is, of course, masterclass. But unfortunaley it is the only song on this collection that meets the "masterclass"-threshold.

I love the theatrics of this (“too emotional?” Nah, just about perfect). Its percussion focus, the rolling guitar. The songwriting is dense, surprisingly versatile, and always a handful to digest - but never too much. A careful act of balance on the tightrope. Adam's voice is great because he has swagger while still sounding grounded, fitting perfectly into his band's sound. Even if, in retrospect, some of the new-wave-y art-punk touches feel a bit goofy (the baritone “hey ho” shanty-style chorus in Feed Me to the Lions, the bullet sounds in the intentionally silly Los Rancheros, or the seaman-like whistle in Jolly Roger).

The Ants Invasion is a nice little mood piece in the middle of the record and showcases much of the collection’s strength. Shame that the B-side Press Darlings wasn’t included - I think it's a superb blend of punk and distinctly individual “antsyness.”

Does anyone still talk about Adam & the Ants? Not sure… Haven’t heard the name in ages. Too bad… this animal-themed sophomore outing is, while never truly brilliant, highly entertaining. You can practically hear the mark he left on the British music landscape for years to come.

I wouldn’t have listened to it were it not for this generator (glad I gave it a spin). Not entirely sure it belongs on this list, though; this spot should absolutely belong to Siouxsie.

Mixed Bag… A somewhat uneven, dare I say Prog-Pop (?), collection by Mr. Simon. Mixed in terms of sonics as well as quality. Let's start with the obvious: there are serious duds on here. The first of these, unfortunately, is the opener, largely due to its silly lyrics (same flaw goes for Cars Are Cars (aaaaargh!), which is luckily buried in the second half). But then we can witness some of Paul Simon's finest compositions. Take the marvellous title track with its elegant Bossa touches, the refined phrasing, and the stunning chord progressions. And whoa, Rene and Georgette Magritte with Their Dog After the War makes you simply stop in your tracks: what a marvel (I melted when he sang "après la guerre" so nonchalantly).

But then some songs simply don’t really stick - though not for lack of ambition. In When Numbers Get Serious Paul throws in so many ideas that the song seems overstuffed with ideas: the slap bass and the synth in the first part of the song don’t really match the backing vox/the choir. All in all, while showing remarkable songwriting craft, the result sounds forced.

Elsewhere, the ambition somewhat drains the fun from other tunes: the laconically stomping Song About the Moon is bookended by the themselves (over-)ambitious Think Too Much (b and a). In contrast, Song About the Moon pulls such a “simple” effect (melodic changes towards the chorus(es)) that it stands out as somewhat understated. Even though, taken for itself, this would probably be a fan favorite were it included in his earlier output. Elsewhere songs foreshadow his Graceland era; Train in the Distance and Think Too Much (a) would probably count as bona fide outtakes from his magnum opus, if we didn’t know better.

For all my criticism, I have to admit that I enjoy the hell out of the album, simply for Paul Simon's overwhelmingly beautiful harmonics and in general because of the strikingly “experimental” character of the record with all the LinnDrum elements as well as killer musical contributions (Anthony Jackson, Marcus Miller, Philip Glass among others … crazy). There are so many bits in pieces to pay attention to (Think Too Much (b) would be my favorite in this regard). Sadly, his undeniable ability as a songwriter jangling with all kinds of styles and seamlessly blending them together wasn’t (yet) on full display on Hearts and Bones. I'd call it a great prequel to Graceland, but for it being so transitional, I would not include it in a list such as this.

Edit: Does anyone else think of Warren Zevon's Night Time in the Switching Yard when listening to Think Too Much (a)?