Reviews by londonhawkredux

I can smell this album

Interesting (as one would expect from Neil) without being instantly loveable. I definitely feel like a better person for having listened to it, so I will be able to nod along should it ever come up in conversation in future.

Wouldn't make it onto my 1001 list though.

"Call me good, Call me bad, Call me anything you want to baby"

Sadly not included here.

Man oh man Radiohead are boring

Very very popular on release and I for one purchased the CD (look it up kids). Looking back now, it feels kinda silly, like they were trying TOO hard to puncture the earnestness of The Strokes / White Stripes etc. Justin Hawkins could easily be a total helmet, but appears to be a genuinely lovely guy and it was certainly a refreshing homage to the sheer BALLS OUT fun of hair metal.

There's something joyful about the Monkees. I think I'd prefer the hits of course, because those are a glorious slice of bubblegum pop. Enjoyable album yes, 1001-worthy no.

Not dissimilar to Mellon Collie in that, it's all largely "solid-to-good" and then there's a single track that absolute flies ("Disarm" here, "Tonight, Tonight" there). When they're at their peak, they're very VERY good indeed.

Not being an.............. 'merican, I don't have quite the same cultural reference points for American Pie (song) but I'm pretty certain there are nomadic tribes in the Kalahari desert that will have heard the track at some point. Vincent was one of my Dad's absolutely favourite songs ever so was a near constant on the Ford Orion mixtape. I don't LOVE this album, so can't give it 5 stars, but for the sheer undenable impact it's a damn solid 4 from me.

Absolutely glorious. No need for it to be in this list of course, but for it's ability to transport me back to a house-party, buying alcohol as an under-age teen and standily moodily in a kitchen tortured by why girls didn't like me, this is right up there.

Crank up the volume and blast it out.

(side note - girls don't like self-loathing miserable bastards. It is not, repeat not, "being mysterious and elusive")

Groovy baby. Another reminder of how nuanced hip-hop can be when you actually take the time to listen to it.

Psych blues rock which I do very much enjoy. But a genre that feels like it's has plenty of (better) representation on this list already.

Enjoyable, will not make a beeline for again.

I really really really love industrial. I completely appreciate the counter-point that it's just noise, or very silly. But there's something about it that just feels.................... powerful to me. Like there's something inside them and they just have to let is loose via the medium of smashing scaffolding poles together or something.

Good grief no. Weirdly hailed as some kind of "saviour of rock" for a generation that came marginally after The Strokes etc. when it was just a less good version with an electro hint.

Stop it Robert, you're being silly.

No. No no no no.

Was dreadful reggae-lite on it's release, and brings out the same utter loathing in me now. Sometime I can only assume Dimery is completely fucking with us.

This is glorious. I can't imagine Neil is a lot of fun to sit and have a beer with the curmudgeonly old bastard, but you can't deny his songwriting chops.

After the Gold Rush > Only Love Can Break Your Heart > Southern Man is a frakly staggering 3 song run.

Orbital have had some absolutely monster tracks haven't they. Reminds me of a time when the UK (OK, the world) wasn't a fucking disaster zone and everything we touched was brilliant.

Very much torn between giving a reasonably good mark for (a) some decent psych-rock and (b) being a genuinely genre changing creation.

However, (c) it allowed the birth of a LOT of shit concept albums.

No hate for Taytay here at all - clearly one of the most influential artists of recent times but not sure this is worthy of "the list". Probably around a 3.5 with The National & Bon Iver helping pull it up from the merely OK

I fail to see how a genre (that I don't particularly enjoy anyway) is improved by adding Brummie-influenced.

Did I even listen to this yesterday? Zero recollection at all.