Reviews by littlestlassloves

His falsetto is lovely. Otherwise I have very little to say. It was fine.

Would have been a 2.5, but I'm rounding up

3/5

This ended up very middle of the road to me. I love Ant Music and everything else sounded pretty much like Ant Music, just not quite as catchy. I certainly wouldn't turn it off if it showed up on shuffle, but probably won't ever choose to listen to it.

3/5

I found this so astonishingly dull. But it wasn't painful to listen to. But it was incredibly boring. What to do, what to do.....

Thanks to the whole star rating system this is getting a 2, because I can't give it a 1.5, and I have listened to far worse 1s.

2/5

I enjoyed a lot of the music but I apparently do not have the patience to listen to Greg Dulli's whinging. It's not even that he has a particularly bad voice, I just cannot stand his delivery.

2/5

I had a couple of listens through of this record because the first time it lost me a bit in the middle. I really liked the synths in Let The Good Times Roll and the backing vocals were pretty Queen adjacent at points (which continued throughout the album), which is never a bad thing. A little bit too long though.

My Best Friends Girl is sort of cheesy but it didn't matter at all and I still really enjoyed it. I'm In Touch With Your World was sort of weird but I also still really enjoyed that.

This took the bits of Talking Heads that I like and removed David Byrne. Which I'm guessing for a lot of people might be a downgrade, but for me improved matters.

It still lost me a bit in the middle the second time around but I loved the last track. I think this might be a 3.5 album, but in the absence of half stars and because I gave two Talking Heads albums 3/5, this is getting a:

4/5

This was a very confusing listening experience. Definitive Gaze for some reason made me think it should have been used for the theme tune for a Tomorrow's World rival in the early 80's. My Tulpa was ska-ish. Burst was sort of Rocky Horror but rubbish.

There was a lot of this album that, on paper, meant I should have really enjoyed it. Dear reader, I did not really enjoy it. The Goldfinger cover from the bonus tracks sealed its fate.

2/5

Elton sweetly singing about a guy called Razor Face over the top of someone playing a bitchin' accordion solo? Yes thank you very much, sign me up.

I love piano-based songs and I love Elton John's voice. I listened to this album once, then immediately listened to it again, all the way through. It made me not hate a sitar (which I believe to be a first). Given Wikipedia says this is Prog Rock, it also made me not hate Prog Rock, which is at least a rarity.

My only negatives are:
- I'd prefer snappier running times (which is entirely a personal preference for sub 6 minute songs);
- the lyrics to Indian Sunset have not aged particularly well (who'd have thought a white English bloke in the 70s writing about the lives of Native Americans might not be the best?!); and
- when the choral ladies appeared at 37 seconds on All The Nasties I had to stifle a laugh (tone it down ladies).

Parts of this really reminded me of the Symphony Orchestra version of Tommy (which I bang on about all the time) sort of crossed with Tim Minchin when he's feeling particularly dramatic.

I think this is going to be controversial, but I loved this and even with my quibbles, it's getting:

5/5

I only knew Closer (which has the unfortunate problem of my brain wanting to turn it into the Weird Al Alternative Polka version) and Hurt going into this.

Hated the first track. Found the second track kinda interesting. By the third track, when Trent started yelling "God is dead and no one cares" and playing a very satisfying guitar riff, I came to the conclusion this was going to be a wild ride.

I think I would need to listen to this album again to really form a proper opinion on it, but that's juxtaposed with the issue that I'm not sure I really want to do either. It's one of those occasions where I think the artist is talented but it's not enjoyable for me to listen to a good chunk of the time.

Trent Reznor's later career has genuinely been fascinating though - who would have expected that the man who wrote the lyric "I wanna fuck you like an animal" would later go on to win multiple Academy Awards for his soundtrack work, one of which was for a kids film about a jazz musician in a coma.

2/5

Firstly, the album artwork is hysterical. I can't decide if the designer realised that the four Beatles heads in a row would be the wrong proportions for the vinyl, so skwished Ringo down there at the bottom, or they accurately predicted which Beatles would have the most influence on musical culture and acted accordingly. I'd have been pissed if I was Mr Starr though.

I like early Beatles, honestly possibly more than most later Beatles (which I'm aware is probably considered sacrilege). To me it just conjures up a particular era than I have a massive affection for in terms of the music, fashion and interior design (but not the general intolerance or misogyny). I would have firmly been an overexcited teenage girl screaming at them, had I been born in the 50s rather than the 80s.

It's interesting to hear some flat/sharp notes on this in places. I assume a combination of the expense of recording records and the sheer rate of knots they were churning out albums, meant a little bit lower quality control.

I really enjoy Beatles covers so Mr Postman, Roll Over Beethoven (entertainingly, very much sung with a Liverpudlian twang) and You Really Got A Hold On Me, being on this album made me happy. Especially the latter song, which I think is one of the best songs of it's generation.

I think this would be a 4.5 but I'm going to round down, at least partially to stop me giving 5 stars to every Beatles album the Generator throws at me.

4/5

I was quite excited to see this turn up. I really loved Cut Your Hair as a teenager in the 90s but never listened to anything else (despite being a big fan of early Weezer - in reading about this album, I saw someone describe Weezer as Pavement for people who like Elton John instead of David Bowie and this is disturbingly accurate in my case).

I really liked Trigger Cut/Wounded Kite At :17, Conduit For Sale! (the spoken word parts reminding me of a weird combination of REM and Will Wood), Here and In The Mouth A Dessert.

I think this is another artist where I like the music more than the vocals though - it just feels too raw and unpolished for me most of the time. I realise that's probably a big draw for their fans, but I think I'd enjoy that far more live than listening to a record in my own home.

All in all, I like a lot of but I didn't love it, so...

3/5

I was starting to think Dolly would never arrive, but she's finally turned up and brought friends! They all have beautiful voices and they meld together really well, though I think I'd always plump for Dolly's voice as the lead if given the choice.

Some of these songs have such a history (To Know Him Is To Love him, written by Phil Spector has been covered/interpolated by The Beatles,
Pink Floyd, Amy Winehouse and - urgh! - Gary Glitter, amongst others), and then there are the originals - Wildflowers has such lovely lyrics.

I sometimes felt the 80s-ness of this (Telling Me Lies for example, feels very 'of it's time' due to the keyboards) which stands out a bit on the otherwise fairly timeless album. It's not much for rip-roaring, yee-haw country music though - more melancholy/bittersweet songs about death is the order of the day here.

I think this might be a 3.5 if there were half stars, but in the absence of them, this will get:

3/5

I was a bit surprised that this was the first Pixies album to turn up, mostly because I'm no Pixies expert, but the songs I know and love are from their debut album.

I liked this but possibly less than I thought I might. The Pixies influence on the music that came later cannot be underestimated, but that genre has never really been my favourite, so I don't have quite the reverence for it than many grunge fans likely would.

An album I certainly wouldn't turn off if it started playing, but one I may not return to on purpose.

3/5

That was dull. Even Layla is more boring for about 50% of it's runtime than I remember it being.

I feel like I can't give an album 1 for just being boring, and they're clearly very skilled musicians but it just wasn't my thing at all.

2/5

To set out my stall early here, I hated Trout Mask Replica. To date, it is the second worst thing this Generator has subjected me to. So I was dreading this.

It's sort of normal? Of all the things I could have expected, it sounding like The Doors or someone of that ilk was not ever going to be my guess. I'm Glad feels like it should be playing at a school dance in the early 60's and the the idea of playing anything from Trout Mask Replica at a school dance suggests a *very* different kind of event (maybe one run by a psychopath).

I quite enjoyed this (though I did stop at Autumn's Child where the original album ended and ignored the bonus tracks). Clearly my tastes are too pedestrian for where Captain Beefheart was going to take his music in later albums.

2.5 would be my rating with half stars, but its going to get a 3. It's been bumped up due to all the theremin.

3/5

Side note: I discovered today that every time I mentioned Captain Beefheart to my child previously, they thought I was saying his name was Captain Bee Fart, so that's nice.

I assumed this was going to be Money plus 37ish minutes of nonsense, but no!

It's Money and Brain Damage plus 33ish minutes of nonsense!

Would get a 2.5, but...

2/5

This is a weird review, as I have virtually nothing to say about it other than the fact I really, really enjoyed it. And just to add to the weirdness of the review, I'm going to call out the female backing vocalists for really adding to the greatness everywhere else.

Loved it. That is all.

5/5

It's a bit like listening to someone with multiple personalities, and about 20% of them have a perfectly acceptable voice and the other 80% are just not my thing. I like the heaviness of the album, which occasionally turns into circus music with no warning, but just can't get on board completely with the vocals, especially the growling, so... it's fine I guess.

3/5

This surprised me. Not really the album: it's Radiohead of a certain era and it sounds like what I'd imagine Radiohead of a certain era would sound like. My reaction to it was the surprise.

When we previously had In Rainbows on the generator, I liked the vast majority of the music but found Thom's mumbled vocals absolutely infuriating. But on Amnesiac, I'm weirdly sort of fine with it - I even relistened to a bit of In Rainbows to check I wasn't just having a bad day when I heard it, but nope still not a fan.

"I'm a reasonable man, get off my case" is a very funny line to have as a repeated phrase/chorus, so bonus points for that. It immediately loses those points for the terrible spelling in the name of the same track.

Pyramid Song I like a lot. Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors is just too indistinguishabily weird for me, but I'm back to enjoying it by You And Whose Army and I like I Might Be Wrong even more due to the guitars.

I got a chunk if the way into Morning Bell/Amnesiac before realising they seemed to be playing a kids xylophone and rather than be annoyed by it, I found it really endearing. It was at that point I decided I actively liked this record.

I have no idea if I would ever sit down and listen to this again (I absolutely have no idea what the right mood for playing this is) but I can't deny I mostly really enjoyed the experience. I think this would be a 3.5, but I'm rounding up.

It's a (confusingly surprised):

4/5

My parents had the London Symphony Orchestra version of Tommy when I was a kid and I used to listen to it all the time. I was too young to really get some of the implications (Fiddle About - *shudder*).

It may just be familiarity or nostalgia, but I like that version so much better than the original (or the film version despite Elton and Tina Turner making an appearance). I think the story fairs better with different vocalists doing the various roles and the richness of the fuller orchestral accompaniment.

That being said, I still like Tommy. It's probably my favourite individual concept album (as a series, the many albums that make up twenty one pilots Dema storyline, would be my favourite concept overall).

The orchestral version would have got a 5 from me, and knowing it exists means this can never score as highly. I would say 3.5, but in a world with no half stars:

4/5

I had no idea what anyone was saying through a good chunk of this album. I like paying attention to lyrics, so it would be lovely to be able to hear them. They aren't even on Genius because it turns out someone (the band?) got grumpy they were incorrect. You know how you fix that, Cocteau Twins? Enunciate!

The vocals annoyed me so much, this is getting a 1, even though it would probably have got a mid-table obscurity 2 or 3 otherwise.