Reviews by littlestlassloves

My parents love/loved Fairport Convention. I saw them live as a kid multiple times (my Mum still goes to see the current incarnation whenever they come to town - a knee replacement is potentially getting in the way of October's gig). One of my first ever crushes was on multi instrumentalist, Maart, a man who proclaimed that all stringed instruments were basically the same and was therefore pretty accomplished at all of them. I am not old enough to have seen the Sandy Denny years of Fairport, but I was told from a young age that she was one of the best vocalist of her generation by my Mum, who adores her.

All of which makes it impossible for me to be truly unbiased about this album.

That being said, I really enjoyed this, and have always specifically loved the medley of traditional jigs and reels (with The Lark In The Morning (the first part) and Toss The Feathers (the last part) being my favourites). Of the tracks with lyrics, I appreciate this version of Matty Groves as I find Sandy Denny's voice really draws me into the story. I also really like Come All Ye and The Deserter.

Happily an album I could listen to from start to finish and then go right back to the start again, my only real low point is Reynardine, which I am not a fan of. Overall though:

4/5

Were each of these tracks a nice trim 4 minutes, this could have got a really good score from me as I really enjoyed the funky rhythms. But everything just drags due to the live average of 12 minute extended jaminess of it all. Fela had a very engaging voice too, but no one needs a 15 minute drum battle on a live album.

Nice to know Ginger Baker didn't really smell though.

Really a 2.5, but getting a

3/5

I still think Kanye West is an absolute fucking arsehole and this could be the best album ever made but, after this 1001 album listen, I am never listening to it again as I'm not willing to give him my 0.00000002p streaming revenue for repeated listens. Anyway....

This is, by far the best of the three Kanye albums this project has made me listen to. As is standard for me, I remain incensed by artists who make albums over an hour long and fill it full of fucking skits/random talky bits, but otherwise this is mostly fine. I have never had an issue with his production, but I don't even don't hate his singing on this.

However, Last Call... fucking hell, Kanye. I don't care! Just shut the hell up! It was so annoying I debated taking a star off.

3/5

Forgettable country(ish) music from a woman who sounds a bit like Sheryl Crow, but if she's had too many glasses of prosecco. She upped the slurring on Drunken Angel which was a choice.

I found the Wikipedia page about making the album more interesting than the album itself. I think the only song I really could say I actively liked was Can't Let Go... which it turns out, she didn't write. Also I do enjoy an accordion.

2/5

Firstly I want to praise "I Walk On Guilded Splinters" as a genuinely great title for a song. Love it. And now to the music....

Bloody hell that was odd! I like the New Orleans style jazz bits and dislike everything else. A 1.5 which is getting a

1/5

There are a ton of absolutely classics on this album, though as someone who loves weird cover versions with big genre-shifts, it did mean I spent a decent amount of time thinking about bluegrass and brass bands during listening.

War Pigs is possibly my favourite on the album (shoutout for The Big Push's cover) because I love the sharp jabs of instrumental cutting out completely with Ozzy's vocal just taking attention. Paranoid is probably the standout track though (whatever the opposite of a shoutout is for Weezer's cover) as it's probably the definitive Black Sabbath song for most people.

I've never listened to this album before so it was interesting to me how willing to slow things down they were. It's far from the (now almost cartoonish) heavy metal legacy of the band.

Ultimately this is a genre of music that's not something I'll regularly want to listen to (ridiculously long drum solos outside of an actual gig make me want to break stuff), but I did enjoy the majority of this.

3/5

This feels like a pretty middling album for me, but with two standout tracks that I love - Golden Skans and It's Not Over Yet. The former has been used by the BBC for festival coverage loads of times so the ooo-wee-ooos are firmly wedged in my subconscious. The later was a big single when released and I've always liked it.

The rest of the album I enjoyed, but it is far less instantly catchy for me. I wouldn't turn it off, but wouldn't rush to put it on either. It fair belts along as a record though, at a trim 36 minutes.

Ultimately a perfectly acceptable:

3/5

Once again I am struggling with post-punk.

There are parts of this I like - some of the actual music is appealing to me, for example the bassline on Stand Up - but 90% of the time I can't stand the vocal and don't find most of the tracks particularly interesting.

I don't have a lot to say about it either. It's just not for me. Better than a 1 because it doesn't inspire hatred, just indifference.

2/5

I had a surprisingly decent time with this album, went to look up some more info about the band and erm... yes... Makes me wonder quite what proportion of the artists on this lists are wrong 'uns?

Anyway, Negative Space started in a way that made me think I was going to despise it, but it kept building and building and I ended up really enjoying it. So it really won me round, despite being nearly 7 minutes long. I enjoyed Static Resistance too - I liked the keyboards and the harmonies. Ullswater just didn't grab me until the chorus and started a trend where I was a little less enthusiastic about what I was hearing.

The Soft Season made me think of The Flaming Lips for some reason. Opener is far too long. Each Time We Pass was forgettable. Boxing Day was odd, with it's monotonous lyrical delivery, screeching instrumentation and such a sudden ending I thought I'd accidentally pressed skip - I think I liked it? I didn't see the point in Reunion and the final track Surroundings had a very enjoyable funky bassline.

I didn't write a review on my first listen, so I relistened later in the day to remind myself of each track. I ended up enjoying it a bit less second time round, but it's still getting a solid:

3/5

Oh how I wish this wasn't a double album.

Were this a sensible length, this would have been getting a very high mark. I really enjoyed Abattoir Blues with the exception of a couple of the tracks - for me it's hit rate was far in excess of The Lyre of Orpheus.

That being said the actual song The Lyre of Orpheus was great - it made me laugh multiple times, particularly the fake-out 'fuck' in the lyric "Orpheus looked at his instrument, And he gave the wire a pluck, He heard a sound so beautiful, He gasped and said "Oh my God"".

I have said before that while doing this that Nick Cave has joined my list of people who objectively can't sing yet it doesn't matter to me for some reason, and this double album cements that. The gospel choir juxtaposed with his voice was hugely enjoyable for me.

If I were just rating the first disc it'd be a 4, but the second disc (and honestly the fact it's so long it requires a second disc at all) drags that down. It's just far more moody and plodding, which I don't enjoy as much as the energetic first disc. As a result this is getting the same mark as the two previous Nick Cave albums on the list despite me feeling like that's possibly not a fair result.

3/5

I listened to this after waking up at 4am and being unable to get back to sleep. I went to sleep while listening to it. Now, I think it was lack of sleep as an issue, rather that the quality of the album, because I didn't entirely hate it.

Satanic Reverses did feel a bit like a lecture (despite my politics meaning I agree with the sentiment) but it was ok musically, if too long. And that was a bit of a theme: alright but almost every track was too long, mostly because of the skit-adjacent intros. It all feels a bit preachy/worthy, rather than empowering, in terms of its politics and I'm not sure why I felt that way to be honest given I like a lot of other 'political' artists. It's sort of disturbing how similar the themes are from this 1992 album to current events though.

I have to admit, the Dead Kennedys track turning up was a surprise to say the least. I would absolutely prefer the original.

2/5

They just sound like they're having a great time, so I also end up having fun. I'm not going to say that it's the most accomplished or complex of records, but it scratches an itch in my brain. Sixteen is the most enjoyable track and stands out from the crowd for me. The beepy boops that finish Pulsebeat/the album are weird though.

Really a 3.5 but I'm rounding up.

4/5

I was expecting to hate this. But I quite enjoyed the first half of track 1 because of the stacked vocals. Second half not so much. And then I settled into a pattern of thinking it was fine.

I liked the piano on Helpless. Woodstock was good too (again it was mostly the vocals I was enjoying). And it may be one of the most twee songs ever written, but I do like Our House. Still not the biggest Neil Young on lead vocals fan (something that's come up before on the generator) but the others' voices I enjoyed.

This is getting a 2.5, generously rounded up.

3/5

Urgh. I don't like Bob Dylan and I don't really enjoy live albums unless I really love the artist.

Also I'm not even 50% of the way through the generator, and have been given 86% of the too many Bob Dylan albums on the list. I realise that it's better than the other way round, and having 86% of Bob Dylan albums lying in wait to jump scare me in the second half of the project, but still.

I will say, as a general thing about the concert itself, I love that he chose to play the first half entirely acoustic, as expected by the audience, and then pulled the rull with an electric second half. Very funny.

Still don't really want to listen to either version of Dylan live however.

1/5

I own some live albums because I enjoy the artist and therefore a live album is a great addition. But listening to a live album over a studio version when trying to do this project is often a way to really not understand why the artist is held in such regard.

I will say this is clearly a "good" live album, just not really something I want to listen to. It's very long, very guitar noodly, very samey over the full runtime. But it also seems mixed pretty well for a live album so you can hear the crowd but aren't overwhelmed by it and I understand there wasn't much overdubbing to fix issues.

Unfortunately for Frampton, as a 1990s teenager, Baby I Love Your Way is entirely the Big Mountain version for me.

Should be a 1.5, but

2/5

He has a great voice, but it really is fighting with the immense 80sness of the production. It genuinely is interesting to me how instantly recognisable the 80s are in musical form. The synths in Rain? Dear lord...

The shoo do wop wops in Sign Your Name are so loud in the mix. Not sure I noticed that before, despite remembering that song from it's original release.

I liked Seven More Days. I liked Who's Loving You because it was very 80s does 50s. But it's all so dated and just not the type of thing I gravitate towards.

Overall, definitely better than a 1 but not good enough to me for a 3:

2/5

I don't think I ever knew the name of track 1, or who wrote it, despite liking it quite a lot, so that was a surprise when it started. I like how it swells and builds over the length of the song despite being a very simple repetition. It does have a slight 'destined to be on movie soundtracks' air about it though. In fact, that persisted through the whole album - it was very late 90s, early 2000s film soundtrack.

I really liked Soul Auctioneer, thought the beginning of Death Threat was a bit pointless and could have been chopped off to cut down the running time. Flying was similarly too long (although the bassline was annoyingly reminding me of The Fun Lovin Criminals, so my brain kept trying to rap over it). At this point I realised that I was really missing a vocalist. I think I need lyrics and a voice to fully engage with an record, so Iggy Pop appeared at exactly the right time - I enjoyed him telling me about being a murderer, well at least until his post-vibrating muffled mumbling. Lever Street had an upright bass and an organ sound to the keyboards, so I enjoyed that.

For the most part enjoyably menacing, this definitely felt like a night-time album to be listened to with headphones on. I have no desire to ever listen to it as a full album again, and so it can never get top marks as a result, but it surprised me how much I liked it.

Probably a 3.5 in reality, but my foot was a-tappin' throughout so it's getting a:

4/5

Starting an album with a track called Mother and ending it with My Mummy's Dead is quite the choice. My that man had issues (and that's not even taking into account the lyrics in the rest of the album).

I think working class hero is a great song, and the raw, stripped back recording really adds to the effect (including hearing the fingers lift off the guitar strings at the end).

I'm not sure the rest of the album reaches that level, but I did enjoy it for the most part. It's interesting how simple the instrumental is most of the time.

On the negative side, I found Well Well Well pretty bloody annoying because I don't need to hear John Lennon sing/scream the word 'well' 88 times in 6 minutes. I was not a massive fan of God either.

Ultimately I think this gets a 3 for me, but not quite enough for a 4. I like the Beatles as a collective better than in isolation. Sorry John.

3/5

While I must applaud them for the immensely creepy album name, yesterday's album (that I hated) was only 30 minutes. This is an hour and 11 minutes! I wish people would embrace brevity with album run times...

Telephasic Workshop was REALLY annoying. I sort of enjoyed Turquoise Hexagon Sun. Ditto Rue The Whirl.

If I was just sat listening to this with the intent of focusing entirely on the music, I'd be having a bad time. As I listened to it while scrolling music posts on Reddit and drinking a cuppa it allowed me to tune it in and out. And I honestly started to enjoy it a little. At least enough that it easily avoids the indignity of a 1 star rating. I think this might be a 2.5 star album in a half star world, but I'm being generous and giving a 3 (which means I expect I will drag up my group's score significantly):

3/5

So it has been established that I am a fan of cover versions that sound significantly different to the original. In the case of this Summertime Blues cover, I perhaps need to clarify 'but not like that'. And then following it up with another cover, which was better, but only by a fraction, was not a great start to an album for me.

All of these psychedelic rock albums are starting to sound pretty much the same to me and the annoying noodly guitar solos infuriate me.

1/5