Reviews by kuvien

This, in my opinion, is a ridiculous prog album, but in a good way, because it’s a double album with only four tracks. That means every side of the two vinyl records is one song each. Four about-20-minute tracks. Silly. And the tracks are all so wonderfully different that I think of them as individual EPs. You got jazz, you got weird and experimental, you got soft and soothing with flutes and sax, you got harder psychedelia. It’s all here, wrapped up in a present.

This is basically ambient rock--layers building upon layers, like a parfait. No, an onion. Is that even a touch of modern classical I hear there? It goes from warm, round tones to razor-thin scratches. Soothing throughout.

A lot of madness explored and rage expressed on this thrash metal album wrapped up in melodies smooth as butter. You bang your head too much and take too many drugs, you're going to come face to face with whatever crawls out of the depths, and when you do, the only place for you is the looney bin. This classic album, considered by many in the horde to be one of the best thrash albums of all time, also criticizes the low-hanging fruits of war and religion, calling for its listeners to question authority and rebel against the government and the hypocrite. These four headbangers stomp their way through the graveyard, trampling all we vainly held sacred. The riffs, the melody, the shredding, the lyrics, the message, the accessibility of the whole package: this album is a solar system of metal, each track so powerful it has its own orbit.

One of those albums where it’s a delight to sing along or whistle along to. This is a weird one for me, because I never thought it would become a five-star album for me, but it has. I mean, the dude sings like a muppet. I’m kinda sitting here scratching my thick monkey cranium and trying to figure out why I like Neil Young but dislike Bruce Springsteen.

👍

What an absolute piece of shit record! Cringey in its shallow edginess, awkward tempo changes, horribly off-key singing (and clearly not trying to be). There is nothing avant-garde about this. The barked, faux-theatrical vocals "Sugar" is a real low point. This is the first time I've ever heard this band, but I've known the name of the band for a long time, and I've always just assumed it was a band of down syndrome members. Fuck. Please stop squeaking. "Shake your spear at Shakespeare." What an idiotic lyric! This is beta metal. Really awkward phrasings and lyrics throughout. IIRC, this band headlined Cringefest 1998.

This album has so many great songs, led by “Mother and Child Reunion” and “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard”, the two tracks that’ll have you singing them for days afterwards. The lead single lays the blueprint for where Simon will later go with Graceland and The Rhythm of the Saints, which some critics say is nothing more than an exploitation or appropriation of music beyond America’s borders.

"Visions of Johanna" is everything I have ever wanted a song to sound like, what I've wanted a song to say to me. It is my favorite song of all time, across all artists, time periods, and genres. "Visions of Johanna" is a masterpiece of symmetry, returning to its main theme just when it's supposed to, neither a moment too soon nor too late. It is a song wherein the present wrestles with the past, where mundane life struggles against (and ultimately loses to) shining memory. It possesses some of Dylan's most unforgettable and most poetic lyrics, simultaneously clear and inscrutable, such as "Mona Lisa must have had the highway blues, you can tell by the way she smiles" and "Little boy lost, he takes himself so seriously." It's like Dylan is talking about something particular and universal at the same time. And then there is the pure word painting, where the music comes to life in frightening clarity: "the ghost of electricity howls in the bones of her face" or "the harmonica plays skeleton keys in the rain". And through it all, the visions of Johanna haunt him. He cannot be free of her, no matter what he does, no matter where he runs, no matter whom he fucks. Every day the sun sets, the world quiets, and he is left alone with his thoughts, full of visions of Johanna. All night long. I don't know a more perfect song. If "Desolation Row" is a world unto itself, "Johanna" is the world of one man's mind, and that is just as vast.

There are three musical gravity wells on this album: "Visions of Johanna", "Just Like a Woman", and "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands". For me, the whole album revolves around these three masterpiece tracks.

Like Johanna in the song about her, the woman in "Just Like a Woman" is both specific and general, showcasing the personal heartbreak a man might feel when faced with a messy breakup as well as the lashing out he might do against the entire opposite sex. But more than this, it's clear he is criticizing a certain type of woman, not because she is a woman but rather because she is vapid and vain, like a socialite or a debutante. The lyrics "just like a woman" are like some kind of beautiful triple spondee, where each word is stressed, driving home the message in what looks on paper to be overkill but in reality turns out to be just what the brain wants to hear. Like the last word in an argument. This is Dylan sneering, and his sneer can pull anyone down from his (or her) horse. As Bowie sings, "a line from your old scrapbook could send her home again." Words are weapons, and Dylan is a master smith.

Dylan sculpts a woman out of words on "SAd eyed lAdy of the LOWlaNDS", a beautiful, epic meditation--almost religious in music and song construction--on the effect Sara Lownds is having and going to have on his life, how her footsteps toward him are the footsteps of doom, woman...come to tear down the pride and riches of a world-famous musician. The way to her is barred, however, as long as his warehouses are laden with silver, gold, and every trinket embodying the vanity of man. Shall he leave it all by her gate? Like the other two anchors on this album, "Sad Eyed Lady" feels at once intensely personal (autobiographical) and generally philosophical, as if--if you were but to crush it a little--you can apply this song to any woman you might know intimately.

How can an album be so familiar yet remain so strange? All the album is a beautiful prologue to “Gypsy Woman”.

For a long time, this was my favorite Bowie album (and of course it's still up there in the Top 3). The first time I heard "Oh! You Pretty Things", I was floored. That beautiful, bopping, bare-bones piano and that anthemic chorus, a call to action and to awareness. Every moment of this album is perfect, even "Eight Line Poem", which is actually a kind of snapshot eight-line poem comparing the city to a wart. The piano just reigns on this album, from the opening right on through the incomparable "Life on Mars?", ending with full symphonic, orchestral strings just giving us our altitude. This album will break your heart one moment and make you dance the next. While you're sinking in the quicksand of your thoughts, remember in that moment of powerlessness that "knowledge comes with death's release."

Holy shit! I randomly listened to this album for the first time the day before it popped up in my 1001 album challenge.

Since this is obviously Fela Kuti’s most well-known and revered album, it makes sense that it was my gateway to his music. All I know is that you don’t necessarily have to be a zombie to be a soldier, but it seems to be the way it works out for most people. Whereas Shakespeare once wrote, “the tongues of mocking wenches are as keen as is the razor's edge invisible,” in this case, it’s the tongue (and saxophone) of a different kind of bard that cut and thus infuriated an entire army.

I wish music could be uninvented.

This album opens sounding like a bone machine, as if the percussion is being pounded out on the bones of people, the earth screaming like a mother forced to swallow her own increase, her children unable to escape the devouring dirt because we're all chained to her--all because one brother slew another, and the dust cried out for vengeance. Yet this is our home. For all its ugliness, it's beautiful. For all its grit and grime, it's smooth and clean. So sing a grimy gospel tune and keep your eyes open. Stand in the rain and open your mouth to soothe your sandpaper crooning. If you think of Earth as a hotel, you're gonna wanna complain to the manager. But if you think of Earth as a prison, it's pretty damn nice. Hey, you know what's east of Eden? West.

This album won the Grammy for Best Alternative Album, and when Waits found out, he said to his friend, the filmmaker Jim Jarmusch, "Alternative to what?" Good question, Tom. Waits' wife co-wrote half the songs on this album, demonstrating Brennan's growing influence in the creative evolution of her husband.

The multi-sectional feel of the title track pushes this album just the tiniest bit into prog metal. It’s still thrash, of course, but there’s a lot more going on creatively and expressively than just thrash. Also, the themes, like the music, are complex, with a lot of pessimism, political and war commentary, and explorations of death. This all weaves through the album and holds it together as a masterpiece, but “One” is the track that exemplifies the message of this studio document.

This album doesn’t fit in with the whole Summer of Love image, does it? It’s covered in grit, got spots all over it, and flies under the radar, the kind of music you’d find outside the green where everyone is making daisy chains and dancing in circles and just generally engaging in a “love” fest (all paid for by the parents, by the way). Funny thing about the album title, though: Vliet wanted to name the album after his favorite candy bar but couldn’t get permission, so he changed the name to “Safe as Milk”. Safe, as in not getting sued? Though not the intent of Vliet, I always think of this album as referencing future TMR...compared to that album, this their debut certainly is safe.

Now this is what should be playing on the radio when speeding around the GTA sandbox! Big guns, big cocks, big engines, big tits!! Turn the women on the way you start a car. Yeah...start that business, baby. Territorial pissing at its best.

Gotta let this one go.

I can’t think of a stronger hard rock opener than the classic mega-hit “Tom Sawyer”, and 80s Rush is all right sometimes, but you know what, for me nothing touches the duo of A Farewell to Kings and Hemispheres. I guess I’m bringing this up because whenever you mention Rush, someone immediately mentions “Tom Sawyer”. Yeah, ok. That’s a great song. But if when I say Rush you don’t immediately think “Cygnus”, you and I are hearing different things.

Take an unshaven shuffle through the neon rain, with nothing but a pack of dirty playing cards and a lonely heart. Follow the slow parade drumming down some empty town street, remembering all the dirty details of the neighborhood. Dip into the desert a couple times while you’re at it and take in the snapshots of tragic lives, and if you’re thirsty, drink water from a swordfishtrombone. What the hell is it anyway, and is the water any good? Count the number of parties playing in the heads of people you pass every damn day.

In Waits' real life, this is his big artistic break from the past, both creatively and professionally. He'd completed his Asylum contract, and this was as good a time as any to move away not only from his producer but his (swindling) manager. Waits and his wife took over managerial responsibilities themselves, and they seem to have done a better job with that side of the business as well. Brennan--his wife--also brings her influences to bear, including giants like Captain Beefheart. Asylum rejected this record, as it was a departure from his previous sound, so Waits took up Island's offer to release it.

I kinda hate this Toy Story asshole.