Reviews by lancia037

Frank Zappa is one of those artists where you can love his albums and hate other ones at the same time. Hot Rats and Freak Out are the greats of his 60's period, this one the stinker. I like when Frank Zappa combines his experimental approach with his excellent playing and songcraft, not when the album is composed of sped up and looped throwaway tapes with the occasional bit of enjoyable music in them. There was half of a fun song on Flower Punk, but the listening experience bounces between background noise and 7 layers of irony deep Chipmunks chatter and noodling. The Mothers can do so much better.

Hard one to rate, bonus point for being very unique at least. This is some halfway between muzak, music hall and musicals, inhabiting both the best and worst of said styles. The songs are all over the place, some parts I actually quite liked but most of it was really drab and unpleasant. I will most likely never listen to this again, but it's commendable to make a pop album as hard to listen to as this.

Imagine how good this would be if it wasn't tied to a being a movie soundtrack. Full of great songs here, even the instrumentals make for a pleasant listen. High points are Pusherman, , Freddie's Dead, Little Child Runnin' Wild and the title track for me. Curtis Mayfield is an excellent song craftsman and he elevated this random blacksploitation movie to something still listened to half a century later. Super warm and groovy.

While not really being that impressive, it's a decent album from an era where country went really pop. It's halfway between Vince Gill and Willie Nelson, just polished and pop enough to fit in the 80's, but lacking the rougher edge I like in a country album. The Buck Owens duet was pretty nice and I dug every song on here to some extent. All his other albums from the era are a much better showcase of his compositional talents though.

I'm a sucker for transformative and sample heavy albums, and this is probably the very best example. Avalanches really managed to create beauty out of heaps of (probably landfill) records. Frontier Psychiatrist is a standout for me, but the entire album is a nice experience. It all blends into each other really well.

Muzak for the new generation. How can you blend so many up and coming musical styles together in such a boring package. Nothing sticks, the album cover is boring and the cover on streaming services is ever less interesting. It's not revolting to listen to, but being barely noticable noise is all it's really good for.

They manage to sound pretty unique by sounding like the most unoriginal band ever, somehow. It's energetic and Brian Johnson is a great vocalist for the band. The album gets quite repititious and there's very little to differentiate the songs. Not that the band was trying to make anything other than that, but it doesn't give me much reason to listen to the album instead of individual songs. You won't find anything better here than Back in Black or Hells Bells.

Surprised to find some songs on here that I already knew. An album centered around the idea of boring suburbia is pretty interesting as the disdain towards American suburbia wasn't as big in 2010. There's some nice songs but I'm just not that big of a fan of Arcade Fire. Maybe it'll grow on me someday. The Mercedes on the front cover is cool at least.

Naming a Psychedelic track Mary Jane well after the 1960's should be a crime. Rest of the album is fine enough modern Rock. Not quite car commercial 2000's Rock, but it's much more sanitised than more interesting albums from the likes of the Brian Jonestown Massacre and BRMC. Probably fun if you grew up with it but not the most interesting thing otherwise.

It's somewhat a product of it's era, but it has some real gems to it. I find myself digging a lot of the songs and they blend Jazz and Psychedelic really well with their own bland of rock. This is probably the best album they made even though their other albums are great too. This one feels most complete and refined.

Surprisingly enjoyable. It's a pop album, but there is clearly a lot more going on here than just a few pop hits. I really love all the small touches throughout, the background choir, the bass blurts, the weird animal noises she makes at the end. Really pleasant surprise of an album.

A very middling 80's synth-pop album. They are from Norway, they have the one really popular song, that's about it. Not really a fan of Take on me but I did enjoy it this time around. Rest of the album isn't bad but isn't what you couldn't find elsewhere.

The album still sounds very modern for a 35 year old album. Their albums seem to get more refined with every new installment, drums and bass I really enjoyed here. It doesn't really offer much that other Sonic Youth albums don't do, it's just more of what you're used to. Some of Kim Gordon's vocals here feel a little excessive. A shame, because there's some of her best songs on here as well.

First listen around I wasn't impressed, but this time around I really enjoyed it more by taking it for what it is. It's rough and the beats are comparatively basic to what we have now, but once you get past that it's a really fun album. Equal parts Parliament and Run-DMC, I really dig the Afrofuturism vibe going on here. Dope album cover and some simple and hard beats here. Other artists took this style and massively improved it, but this isn't a bad album by any means. Point extra to compensate for it's low rating here.

Really influential and it's very meditative and almost transcending to listen to. A lot had of music had been 'discovered' by the early 70's, but Tangerine Dream and other German artists managed to create some entirely new soundscapes around this time. However, as an album it's a bit of a hard listen. Not because it's unpleasant, but being a long Berlin-School album requires a different form of listening than a conventional album. You don't really pay attention, you just half tune in and ascend to some other place. I don't though. One man's crack is another man's wack or something.

Out of all the old Blues legends, B.B. King seems to be the most famous. Could partially be because of his longevity, but still. He doesn't really play that fast, but there's a lot of feel in his guitar playing. The entire band is infectious and energetic and the entire thing is quite nice to listen to. It's not the most extreme live Blues album, but it's one of the earliest and still a fun listen.

Not really my favorite, as far as Krautrock goes. A lot of it is noisy and abrasive, but I don't really hear much more than that. Doesn't have the groovy jams of Can or the vibes of Ash Ra. The Wiki states it's more experimental than actual music, but I don't really see it's experimental nature as being that much more ahead of the curve compared to other early 70's experimental work. Picnic On A Frozen river makes a great song for the Garfield Kart soundtrack though.

Good to see Frans Bauer made it onto this list. Fine album, bit long but pretty enjoyable. The songs don't really rise above what the Pixies did though. It's all good, but it doesn't really feel great to me. Just a bit CD of alternative rock songs.

I was kind of looking forward to listening to this one and the first song was pretty nice. This album got boring real quick though, I really had to fight falling asleep. 50 minutes isn't long but there's almost no variety and every song is about 1 or 2 minutes longer than it needs to be. There was an applause somewhere in the middle, the rest of the album is really forgettable. Perhaps I would've liked it more another time, but this wasn't it. I guess it's nice that it's an old school country album.

Very typical Alternative Rock album of the era. Sound is very reminiscent of Dinosaur Jr., and almost feels derivative at times. Songs are good, most of them quite short and there's a lot of variation. It balances nicely between soft, loud, acoustic and feeback driven. Maybe not the most imporant album of 1993, but a good album.