Reviews by littlestlassloves

The title track, which I'd never knowingly heard before, is great. The backstory is also fascinating: I'm no ABBA expert, but I'd certainly never considered them a political band.

Given that I was 1 at the time, I don't remember the documentary Let Poland Be Poland (which apparently got ABBA banned from the USSR) but the idea that so many world leaders would speak to a country's people direct, in a film broadcast to 185 million people in 50 countries around the world feels incomprehensible now. Admittedly Poland didn't show the whole documentary until 2011, but countries at least tried to act as a bloc to push back against martial law being installed. Not sure the world is capable of that anymore.

Anyway, back to the album: I Let The Music Speak is enjoyably theatrical and Two for the Price of One is very funny (and I love rhyming "trivial occupation" with "local railway station"). Their voices are still great. I think I'd prefer a greatest hits though.

I think this should get a 2.5, but I'm being generous.

3/5

I'm off on another tangent. An artist I really like, The Dear Hunter, announced a new album yesterday which is the next part of a story they are telling over short films, LPs, an EP and an augmented reality game. The last LP has very funky Earth Wind and Fire vibes in places and I'd been meaning to listen to some EW&F as a result, so this was lovely timing.

I really like funk. I've said this a few times now, but I genuinely didn't know before starting this project that that was the case. 300 albums in, the Generator has provided some utterly terrible records (in my opinion) but it has shown me the way of the funk, so for that I am grateful.

That being said, this album is a bit variable for me. Shining Star, That's the Way of the World and Yearnin' Learnin' are all great. For my taste, the other tracks vary from pretty good (Africano) to "no, absolutely not" (All About Love).

So it's getting a middling mark.

3/5

This entire album was spent with me going "who does this sound like" and reaching the end with no satisfactory answer. I had to start googling, and at that point realised it was a Sheffield singer called Mark Stoney.

This has nothing to do with an album review, but it does go some way to explaining why this album is getting a so-so mark: it's generally not a great sign that I'm so distracted with other stuff that the music is secondary.

I appreciate all the xylophone(?) and found the album perfectly pleasant to listen to, if not particularly exciting. I think this would have been a 2.5, but I'm going to round down on this occasion.

2/5

I am still sceptical about the general principle of live albums appearing on this project, no matter how great sounding that live album is. And it's not even that I'm against the idea of live albums in general as I own some (of bands I adore). But *seeing* a band live before you die makes more sense to me than listening to a record of a band live before you die.

This specific album was fine, but I'd much rather have heard some of these songs for the first time in the way they were originally intended to be heard.

2(.5)/5

Move Any Mountain makes me think of Top Of The Pops. This came out when I was 10 years old and when TOTPs was becoming a weekly must see, and where it stayed until my late teens. The 1990s TOTPs had such a massive impact on my musical taste, introducing me to a lot of bands that stayed with me my whole life (Green Day playing Welcome To Paradise in 1994 changed everything).

The Shamen I know solely through this opening track and Ebenezer Goode (sadly not on this album), so most of this is new to me. And my word it sounds "of it's time" - it's so astonishingly early 90s. Sort of slower than I expected, and not particularly exciting. None of the new tracks really stood out, though I did sort of like Evil Is Even.

It's not for me.

2/5

Oh we're back to "albums that got played a lot in the house when I was little". Both parents were fans of Paul McCartney (my mother's favourite Beatle, though not my father's: he was a George Harrison man) so this was in regular rotation. Unlike most of those albums however, this did not leave much of an impression and I've never listened to the album as an adult.

I take after my Mum Beatles-wise, so really like Paul's vocals and Paul's writing. I really like Jet, Mrs Vanderbilt, Let Me Roll It, No Words (love the Bee Gees vocals!), Picasso's Last Words (Drink To Me), Nineteen Hundred And Eighty Five... it's probably easier to list the songs I'm not so fussed about to be honest. I like the instrumental choices on this album a lot - lots brass and woodwind and strings.

I will say that, I'm not sure a solo Beatle album can ever really surpass an actual Beatles album, but also it feels wrong to judge them in that way. In it's own right, this is a really inventive, interesting album that doesn't outstay it's welcome. And Paul's voice remains beautiful.

I'm not sure why this didn't grab me as a kid, but I love it as an adult.

5/5

What this singer lacked in skill he made up for in sheer enthusiasm. The whaaaaahhh's were loud and extremely frequent, like he was constantly being stabbed with a needle. I wonder if Gerry Roslie was pleased with the Paste review which described his singing as "deranged squawking"?

Away from the... distinctive... vocals we got a lot of fairly standard rock and roll covers plus a small number of original songs. I enjoyed the covers because I like this era of rock, but it was disappointing just how many there are. It's fascinating to me that this kinda thing was seen as completely standard in the 50s and 60s, but an artist trying to do that today would get absolutely torn to shreds for not putting the effort in. I liked the original songs as well.

I feel like I should hate this album, but I kinda enjoyed it against my best judgement. It reminded me a little bit of The Hives, just with terrible production quality.

Its a surprising:

3/5

I passionately hated the previous Grateful Dead album the Generator provided. This wasn't that bad, but it wasn't good either.

It just didn't seem that interesting - songs came and went without leaving much of an impression at all. I think my high point was liking the backing vocals in a few songs, like Till The Morning Comes. Bits of the vocals were a bit Beach Boys in places too.

All in all, I cannot see me listening to this again.

2/5

I was really interested to hear this for a fairly odd reason: I always watch Mic The Snare videos on Nebula/YouTube and he mentions Sufjan Stevens on an extremely regular basis. I'd heard the name enough to think, I really should listen to that, but I'd never got around to it.

I am an appreciator of long song names which I will subsequently be unable to ever remember (I'm looking at you, "The Song with Five Names, a.k.a. Soapbox Tao, a.k.a. Checkmate Atheists! a.k.a. Neospace Government, a.k.a. You Can Never Know"), but "The Black Hawk War, or, How to Demolish an Entire Civilization and Still Feel Good About Yourself in the Morning, or, We Apologize for the Inconvenience but You're Going to Have to Leave Now, or, 'I Have Fought the Big Knives and Will Continue to Fight Them Until They Are Off Our Lands!'" might be the finest example I've ever seen. I also liked the song.

On yesterday's album I complained at the existence of at 15 second track, and Sufjan decided to one up The Youngbloods with "One Last 'Whoo-Hoo!' for the Pullman!!" - 6 seconds is not a track! Tack it onto the start or end of another song!

Favourite songs: "Jacksonville", "Decatur, or, Round of Applause for Your Stepmother!", "Chicago", "They Are Night Zombies!! They Are Neighbors!! They Have Come Back from the Dead!! Ahhhh!".

There is a lot about this album that should make me dislike it, not least the length of the whole thing, and the individual lengths of some of the tracks. But I don't dislike it. I actually really, really enjoyed this and fully intend to listen to a lot more Sufjan Stevens in the future.

4/5

Sometimes the Generator provides an album which makes me wish I owned a copy of the book just so I could read the justification for its inclusion.

Darkness, Darkness's weird echoy vocal choice in verse 2 was it's most notable moment. Otherwise it was entirely forgettable. The nearly 7 minutes of instrumental in On Sir Francis Drake was annoyingly twee for half it's running time then suddenly turned into a bog-standard blues track.

At the other end of the spectrum, 15 seconds, including a fade out, where nothing happens, is not a song (I'm looking at you Turn It Over). I appreciate it was the last "song" on the a side of the album, and therefore more of an instruction, but I don't need you to warn me to turn the vinyl over.

It may just be because I'm listening to this in February in the UK, a time of traditionally unsettled weather (and currently over 40 days of rain in some parts of the country), but I took against Rain Song (Don't Let the Rain Bring You Down). The weird echoy backing vocals were back in places too.

Then the b side continued in much the same way as the a side. With not a lot interesting happening. And the last song sounding like elevator music was the cherry on the cake. I'm not mad at it, it was just a very forgettable album.

2/5

Leonard Cohen is so depressing. That doesn't mean an album can't be good obviously, but there's a time and a place for this record. And that's not when you are in a great mood, because this would instantly reverse it.

He can't sing. At all. And, you know, there are some artists who objectively have terrible singing voices and despite all the odds I still enjoy them (see both Johns from They Might Be Giants, and John Darnielle from The Mountain Goats... so weirdly, mostly people called John). But not Leonard.

He is, I will admit, a great storyteller. And that's a plus point. But it's all so... dour.

This is not for me. I don't have a high point, because it essentially all sounded the same to me, and it made me sad.

2/5

The second of the Generator's "Big 2" albums that are continually vying for the top spot on the Global list of top albums. I gave Rumours a 5, so what will The White Album get...

Firstly, it's The Beatles, and I like The Beatles. Secondly, it's really fucking long, and I get annoyed when albums are really fucking long.

It's clearly a great album but for me, there is just too much of it to feel like a coherent (double) album. It was The Beatles at the height of their powers, but also at the near height of their "actually we think we might hate each other" phase. They were too big and powerful to really say no to, and too competitive to feel like one of the other members was "winning", and the result is a two album epic with songs I would definitely consider filler.

But then it also has some stone cold classic Beatles tunes, that are among their greatest ever songs. I love Back In The USSR (because The Beatles pretending to be The Beach Boys is always going to go down well with me), My Guitar Gently Weeps is incredible, Happiness Is A Warm Gun is one of my favourites, Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da is one of the catchiest songs ever written.

But like, did you really need Piggies and Don't Pass Me By (sorry Ringo) on this record? Especially as you left off Hey Jude, which was recorded in the same sessions! Madness.

This is so difficult to rate, because it's a cultural icon from perhaps THE cultural icons. But I've always been clear about my favourite Beatles album, and it's not The White Album. This is a 4.5 for me, but the lack of a ruthless editor means I'm marking it down rather than up.

4/5

I love Kate Bush's voice. And parts of this album are astonishingly weird; honestly some of the weirdest things the Generator has provided (and I've already heard Trout Mask Replica). Waking the Witch might be the peak weirdness, but I did enjoy finding out one of the random voices on it was old Hagrid himself, Robbie Coltrane.

The "conceptual" side of the album is, for me, a little weaker than the other, though having said that, I still liked parts a lot (like Jig of Life, where I loved her vocals). The singles though? The singles are universally great.

After my second run through of this record which was needed for me to really make up my mind, I listened to The Futureheads version of Hounds of Love and China Drum's version of Wuthering Heights, the later because I need no excuse to listen to it, not because it features on this album. Both are great covers - well worth a listen, despite (or maybe because?) they all very different to the original compositions.

I think this would have been a 3.5, but it's worth a 4 for her voice alone, so I'm rounding up.

4/5

Anecdote time: My one and only time seeing The Chemical Brothers live, was at the first ever Leeds Festival in 1999, so very much this era of their music. They infuriated the crowd by mixing tiny bits of Setting Sun into the music, but never actually playing it properly. It was a fun time.

I still love Setting Sun. I really like all the singles from this album to be fair. I just am not sure I like anything quite enough to entirely justify the length of the album. It's extremely catchy and danceable though, and certainly fun if you're a teenager stood in a field in park with your mates and some smuggled in vodka. It's a bit odd listening to it as a middle aged lady while washing up the dishes.

I like this better than the previous Chemical Brothers album the generator threw at me, and that got a 3. So, length niggles aside, this is getting:

4/5

It was always a concern it would happen one day. I hoped it wouldn't, but it really did feel inevitable after all this time. I didn't want it to be true, but I have to admit: I may be turning into my mother.

This was just noise. So much noise you could barely hear the vocal. Seriously, the vocal was so low in the mix, I have no idea why they would choose to do that on purpose.

The weird noise that sounded a bit like a squeaky duck getting further and further away from the microphone at the end of Meatmaker might have been my high point.

I thought this was shite.

1/5

1999 (the song) is fantastic, although once again during one if these 1001 album listens, it gave me a new appreciation for the single version (though for the first time because the single version doesn't have a creepy childlike voice saying "Mommy, why does everybody have a bomb?" at the end).

The album as a whole though? I was disappointed. It's a bit samey. It's very long. It's could have been half the length and been more enjoyable for me. Prince might end up another one of those artists where a greatest hits would do me just fine.

I would want a 2.5 but I'm not in a generous mood so:

2/5

I like the vast majority of punk and therefore I unsurprisingly liked the vast majority of this.

I knew this album as "the one Elastica completely ripped off for Connected" but hadn't listened to it before. And yep, Elastica very much ripped off Three Girl Rhumba and because I'm a 90s kid at heart, my brain kept adding the "nee-naa, nee-naa" bit in.

It's a funny experience listening to this, because I kept thinking it sounded like one band or another, and then realising it predated all of them. It was really influential in it's own quiet way.

I cannot tell what he's singing approximately 80% of the time, which would normally drive me nuts, but it was somehow charming. I did pick up "Take your fucking money and shove it up your arse" as a lyric though.

I really liked Ex Lion Tamer, 1 2 X U, Champs, Mr Suit, and Strange.

Should really be a 3.5 but I liked it enough that I'm rounding up.

4/5

I am irrationally annoyed by the band being called The XX and the album being called XX yet the album cover being singular X. There better be a second X on the reverse of the physical copies, I swear...

I saw the name and assumed I didn't know them (this was released during my wilderness years - it's amazing how having a tiny human who refused to let me sleep impacted my desire to listen to anything new). Then I pressed play and instantly recognised the opening track.

I wasn't sure how to feel about this album. I listened to it twice to try and work it out. I kept starting tracks, instantly disliking the vocal, then during the song it would start to win me over, and by the end I'd think it was alright. And then cycle would start again. My first run through was on my walk to work and the second was lying in bed in the dark - it definitely worked better at night.

I liked Intro, Crystallised and Basic Space quite a lot but overall I think this is a 3 for me.

3/5

So many 1970s prog rock synths. Sigh.

To me, this sounds like a bunch of disparate notes thrown together with little to no concern for musicality (or repeatability - there's no way they ever managed to duplicate all the notes played on this album).

I would say, at least it's short, but it REALLY doesn't feel short while you're listening to it. I don't think that's at all helped by the a-side being a singular track in 7 parts.

Also, the lyrics! Good god, the lyrics!

"Can you believe god makes you breathe?
Why did he lose six million Jews?"

Also, when he sang "Sleep in a dream of butter milk cream, You dance on a beam, dancing on a beam" I genuinely thought he was singing dancing on a "bean".

How the first track and last ended up on the same album is baffling.

The album cover is genuinely astonishing though.

1/5

It's only two weeks since the last Bruce album where I said I didn't really like his voice. I stand by that comment.

Its alright. I think I liked it better than the last Bruce album but I still don't really get the big deal. I like the majority of the instrumental parts just fine (there's some lovely piano, I particularly like Tenth Avenue Freeze Out for the piano and brass) and I enjoy him as a person, but the singing just doesn't grab me.

I'm plumping for a 3 this time as I think both albums were closer to a 2.5, so I'm averaging out.

3/5