Reviews by littlestlassloves

At the moment this would be tying for my second favourite Dear Hunter album, though sometimes it's my favourite. It was the first one I ever listened to though, after falling in love with a cover of the track Smiling Swine by Bear Ghost.

At points prog, at points Hadestown, at points rock, just a wonderful collection of ways to hear Casey's voice (which remains the biggest draw to me for Dear Hunter albums).

I flip backwards and forwards between which Dear Hunter album is my favourite, but Act IV is always in the running. It's such a varied album, with beautiful vocals, varying genres and a great story to tell.

I am a bit indifferent to Kings of Leon. I like them fine enough, but they just don't grab me like some similar bands do. It's perfectly acceptable, but as soon as it's done I have no real eagerness to listen to it again.

I do really like the breakdown part of Be Somebody though.

A perfectly respectable:

3/5

First few songs, I'm thinking "I really like this, it's definitely on for a 4, maybe even a 5!". I'm hearing bits that remind me of lots of bands I love (Terrorvision, REM, Soul Asylum etc) and all is going well.

But it just carried on... and on.... and on....

It was two similar over too long a period of time. I think a shorter version of this album is a better score from me, but being over an hour long really highlights it's similarities from track to track. I still like it, don't get me wrong, but I don't love it.

3/5

God I found this boring. I kept tuning out and thinking about the food shopping for tonight, what I needed to get done when I arrived at work, what was going to happen in the US midterm elections (and I don't even live there and am not American). Basically anything other than listening to his schmaltzy warbling.

This is just fundamentally not my kinda music. Maxwell might be the greatest neo-soul artist in history and I'd struggle to stay engaged. I think the worst point was when Till The Cops Come Knocking stopped, and then started again DESPITE ALREADY BEING SIX MINUTES LONG! He was heading for a grudging 2 before that became the final nail in the coffin.

1/5

Oh! An album from the new version of the book! Equal parts exciting and baffling because how can you really decide an album is going to have an influential legacy, when its been out for less than 2 years?*

This album features one of my personal 'most hated' features: a song at the beginning that does nothing much at all for well over a minute. Just get on with it!

When track 1 finally did get going it was like being in a rainforest but with space lazer pew pew noises going on in the background. I started liking it a lot more when the vocals started on track 2.

"I'd love to shave you, but you've got to shave yourself" is quite the lyric.

I actually didn't mind this. Didn't love it, didn't (mostly) hate it. So It's getting a 2.5 that's turning into a:

3/5

*STILL NO THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS, DIMERY?! FOR SHAME!

I knew so many of these songs, despite never having listened to it in full and it not being a greatest hits. Crowded House were pretty big in the UK in the late 80s/early 90s - nowhere near as big as in Australia obviously, but big.

High point of this album for me is Weather With You because I've always loved it, but I actually pretty much enjoyed it all.

I found that even on the songs I wasn't bothered about during the verses (She Goes On for example), the moment the backing vocals kicked in, I was on board. I think their vocals sound beautiful in harmony with each other - benefit of siblings who can sing, I guess. Italian Plastic, as sung not by the brothers is not as good, but it does seem to feature a melodica, so there's that.

And this album is from the era of putting something stupid as your secret track at the end. I miss stupid tracks at the end of albums.

I think this is a 3.5 for me, but I like it enough to round up.

4/5

Nothing Compares 2 U and 9 other songs.

No, that's mean..... but there's certainly an element of truth to it. NC2U is such a difficult song to top.

I loved the orchestration in Feel So Different - it was beautiful as it continued to build over the length of the song. I wish the length of the song wasn't nearly 7 minutes though. Unfortunately, that was followed by I Was Stretched On Your Grave, that was sonically extremely dated (lyrically too, but that's a lot more understandable given it's a 17th century poem).

Three Babies had a really pretty melody. The Emperor's New Clothes reminded me of Belinda Carlisle which wasn't a comparison I expected to make (liked it though). Black Boys On Mopeds was great.

And then NC2U... It turns out I don't like Prince albums. They're long and overly indulgent and too jam-based for me. But dear god, he wrote a good song here. Then gave it away (and subsequently regretted it, recording his own version). It's great, despite also sounding a little dated.

Jump In The River was fairly dull. You Cause as Much Sorrow also not my favourite, and Last Day Of Our Acquaintance was much the same although at least it has a bit of umph to it. I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got, as the final track, just focusing on Sinead's voice makes logical sense... But it's also my least favourite type of her songs, so a low point for me.

Overall, this is is a 3.5, but there's not enough for me to round up.

3/5

Oh jazz... But rock! But jazz....

I quite enjoyed the singing. I did not really enjoy that much else, although it was not bad enough to justify a 1.

So a short and sweet:

2/5

There's been three previous Leonard Cohen albums on the list and I gave all of them 2/5.

I still don't really enjoy his voice.

I'm finding it very hard to articulate why, despite thinking they're generally filling the same niche, I think Nick Cave fills the "very low voiced man sings song of woe" far better. So I'm not even going to try.

2/5

Not really something I'd ever choose to put on, but I tapped my foot a bit. Also, it didn't hang around too long. I have very little to say about it though.

2.5 really but getting a 2.

2/5

Ah, finally the (to me) most famous White Stripes album has turned up. I think this completes the full set of Jack White/White Stripes albums on the generator?

The screeching guitar in There's No Home For You Here sounded exactly like a dial up modem from the 1990s at one point, but I loved the vocals so I'll forgive it.

In The Cold Cold Night: I liked Meg singing! In fact I liked the whole thing being stripped down and sweet.

The Hardest Button To Button is a better song than Seven Nation Army as far as I'm concerned, and I don't think it's just the overplaying of the latter than makes me think that.

Also, more albums should involve squirrel metaphors.

I think I've settled into a pattern where I pretty much like all White Stripes albums, but I don't love any of them and the same thing applies here. I think this is a 3.5 for me, but on this occasion I am going to round up, as I think I liked this album the best so far.

4/5

Don't dislike the music at all. Hate the vocal.... So pretty much as expected and weirdly, not a dissimilar position to the one I hold about Dexys Midnight Runners.

It's so bloody long though.

2/5

I like some of the sampling. There, I said something nice about it!

1/5

It's so much easier when I have a consistent feeling about a whole album, rather than veering between 'like a lot' and 'absolutely despise'.

In the latter camp, listening to someone mutter over the riff to Werewolves Of London for nearly 6 minutes during One Of Those Things made me actually angry. Especially with Dexys, of all people, having the actual gall to complain all the songs on Radio 1 sound the same.

But the instrumental I often liked, or at least didn't dislike. The Occasional Flicker for example, I probably would have loved had it not have Kevin Roland warbling over the top of it. And then they go and really spoil it all by having a 1:15 second pointless chat at the beginning of the next song (which goes on to once again have an instrumental I quite like).

This is probably a 3.5/4 for the music, a 1/1.5 for the singing and a -5 for the random conversations.

2/5

My biggest revelation during this project has been Elliot Smith. Figure 8 remains the only album I regretted giving a 4 to and a few days later upgraded to a 5. In fact it's the only album (at around 50% complete) I have remarked at all.

His voice is lovely - it's such a mix of indie rocker and so fragile you think he might breakdown in tears at any minute. The music is beautiful. The lyrics are gorgeous but frequently heartbreaking.

Lyrically, I particularly enjoyed the chorus to Alameda ("For your own protection over their affection nobody broke your heart, you broke your own 'cause you can't finish what you start") and all of 2:45AM which is just painfully sad. He was such a great lyricist.

I'm not going to make the same mistake as last time, given that I listened to this, then immediately listened to it again (and then had another run through of the, intermittently Beatlesy, Pictures Of Me).

5/5

Pretty background music, that would be fairly unobjectionable if you weren't paying attention and just wanted some floaty folk to not really listen to. Unfortunately, the moment you start focusing on it, it becomes pretty but a bit dull.

This is another one of those albums where I'd really like to read the book to understand why it was held in such high regard. She's got a nice voice, but it all feels very one note.

2/5

A surprise second Verve album on the list - I genuinely wasn't expecting another after Urban Hymns. Last time I got gradually worn down by the aural assault of Richard Ashcroft's voice over the full length of the album, and this is over an hour long again, so I'm buckling in.

I could definitely have done without hearing him panting on A New Decade...

I like the single I already know (History). I'm not sure I really liked anything else that much, and the cumulative effect was that I just found it really dull?

Just not exciting for me.

2/5

I really enjoyed this. I feel like I've got into a terrible habit writing these reviews where I just immediately start talking about the vocals, but in this case it's the thing that really gives it's identity, so talk about them once again, I will.

Typically I can get a bit frustrated by breathy floaty vocals, but not here. I think the folky twang in her voice is lovely. I was walking along to the train station wondering is she'd ever sung with R.E.M. because I imagine that her voice would be lovely meshed with Micheal Stipe (the moment the album finished it autoplayed Find The River, so Amazon Music's algorithm is mind reading again).

The varied instrumentation I also enjoyed, with strings and orchestral parts. Couldn't Cause Me No Harm's plinky glockenspiel (?) sound is so familiar to me I ended up checking WhoSampled.com to see if it did originate somewhere else (or had been sampled by someone else) but no luck.

I also appreciated how central and forward her vocals are in the production. One of my favourite bands purposefully buried the vocals in the instrumentation in their last album, and I'm not a fan of that style of production at all. I like the focus to be on the singer with the instrumental hugging the words, and this has a perfect balance for me.

I don't know that it fully held my intention all the way to the end, but I did really like a lot of this. It's more a 3.5, but I enjoyed it too much for a 3, so:

4/5

I wanted to like this, and the music I was mostly ok with, but the vocals? Yeah, not for me. I don't mind a kind of slurring vocal sometimes, but I couldn't tell what he was saying about 50% of the time and that was a deal-breaker given that I didn't like the music quite enough to make up for it.

It's going to scrape a 2, because I didn't hate it, but didn't really like it either.

2/5