Reviews by kuvien

All of Ben Folds' fun-loving sarcasm is on brilliant display on this live album. From his beloved hits to his audience-favorite "Rock This Bitch" digression, Folds truly rocks the concert hall with his energy.

This is an impressive debut. He’s already a dad, and he’s already got his life going, so he already knows his voice, highlighted on songs like “Still Fighting It”. He’s down to earth with nothing to prove. Just him and his life reflections, and of course his acerbic wit. After all, y’all don’t know what it’s like being male, middle-class, and white. So let’s take a vote: Ben Folds, William Shatner, or Michael Jackson?

These guys rock, and it would’ve been fun to have caught one of their live shows. They have a lot of positive energy and are able to rock out and soothe with equal proficiency. And then we get to the title suite, the concerto itself, a magnificent twenty-minute opus wherein you hear all the maturity and passion Focus is able to muster. Some strong Floyd-esque guitar licks on display here, too. Everything before this is appetizers—damn good appetizers, though.

What a weird but wonderful beginning to an album! Quasi-yodeling and other vocal nonsense…and that harmonium. I guess the first track is aptly named “Hocus Pocus”, like they’re casting some kind of silly spell.

This might sound weird, but outside of the pure jam sections, this album is dreamy to me. Not like soft and smooth dreamy and lalala, but dreamy as in its full of imagination. It’s even got fantastic moments, fantastic as in being of the stuff of fantasy.

Not sure how avant-garde this is, unless the categorization refers to the sparing use of electronic and ambient elements. A pleasant listen but not at all envelope pushing.

If your friend likes this music, take his girlfriend aside and tell her to stop cheating on him.

Literature, philosophy, theater, poetry, and current events all meet in Flynn's songwriting, here in his debut, the moment his voice transforms from a mere player on the stage to the maker of the music off-stage that draws everyone's attention. Albeit briefly? Well, we fans of Flynn hope not! We hope this "alarum" of his debut musical expression impressed the ear of people who like a bit of wistful, melodic folk with their morning coffee. Let the sunshine in, and don't be afraid of a dramatic entrance.

Satori comes in five stages.
Stage 1: Hearkening to the distant yelling on the mountaintops.
Stage 2: Understanding through the music and words that the universe is a snake eating its own tail.
Stage 3: Knowing and accepting the above frees one to rock out, to expand.
Stage 4: Don't forget where you came from, and pay your respects at the Altar of the Blues.
Stage 5: A return to the mountain, where we all yell along with our bearded, big-earlobed guides.

I don't have much time, none of us really do
So I'm fucked if I'll be spending it with you

This whole album is a slow swirl of the ghosts of a dull pain, a pain that issues forth from loss and fear. Fear of a mountain he is climbing alone. He'd like to have a companion, but he'll go it alone if he has to. This is a beautifully lonely meditation.

I love this album. It’s dreamy and clear at the same time, happy yet also sad. I just feel like going up and hugging a stranger. Those beautiful, lazy, indie horns… those half-broken carousel synths…

An album without a compass, except the great outdoors is nothing more than the singer's bedroom, her universe an orrery.

It's all window dressing. It's cosplaying. It's a neverending barrage of discrete "country" images trying to convince the listener that this is country music. Cold beer after a hard day's work! That's country, right? Mama's cooking after church! Am I doing this country thing correctly? This album shits out every stereotype of, cheaply imitates, and thus disrespects all the country that came before. I actually said "kill me" several times out loud while listening to this disgrace. This duo is so bad at songwriting, so artistically bereft that they cannot even bring their shitty ideas to a proper end. Half the songs just abruptly stop, like the bros just nod at each other and arbitrarily decide that they've spent enough time on one crime against music. Time to move on to the next cliche-ridden track! Shotgun, meet mouth.

Like most obnoxious Americans, I claim a partial Irish heritage, so music like this hits me in my reconstructed memories. If every dog has its day the way every women gets her own way, then not every dog has its day. Also whiskey > gin. Debate over.

This album contains much of the wild Irish swagger and spirit, at once so beautiful and so distinctive. Something like this should be noted, and this band does their Celtic Punk in a way that makes you want to dance. Unlike, this isn't drinking music, despite how much they talk about booze.

Fleetwood blues rock before the arrival of Nicks and Buckingham. Quite a different sound from those beautiful harmonies we’re all used to from the radio hits. Very bluesy and guitary, like early Stones. You can smell the soil from the roots present here.

A1, A2, A3, and B1 are kick-ass classics. Everything else is forgettable.

"What you need is some of them easy-listening classics!" Yeah, this shit might be able to get me through a war zone in one piece, even if I'm in over my head. It sure feels nice. The first two songs on side B are my favorite Fleetwood Mac moment. It's like this blast of love-sunshine, and then the rug is pulled out from under you, and your heart is ripped from your chest. They are two opposite responses to the same situation, like manic depression.

Made for Record Store Day that year, this is an intimate live session of four excellent Foxes tunes. More folk from the mountaintop.

I'm not a Fleet Foxes expert. I know literally nothing about the band's biography, not even their names or how many members there are in the band. (Checks RYM... okay they're American. That's all I know.) But just going on the songs here, Hamlet's line, "the time is out of joint", keeps popping into my head as I listen. An unsettled meditation on the passage of time, of beginnings and endings, and of being held in the sway of the seasons, unable to escape time's grip. Rain makes rust; nothing can stop the decay. Sunlight fades; nothing can stop the sunset. Out of joint. As in, disordered. Disordered death of all the artists who have gone to their early graves. The title itself, Shore, reminds me once again of death, an almost Tennysonian allusion to crossing the bar, that is, crossing over into the ocean-infinity of death.