Reviews by lostizalith

first listen had me a bit underwhelmed ("i guess you had to be there?") but it grew on me. walk on the wild side in particular is dated but a genuine classic.

highlights: vicious, andy's chest, perfect day, hangin' round, walk on the wild side, make up, satellite of love, i'm so free, goodnight ladies. so most of it.

falling into the lake drowning submerged and buried under sediment hit by a rock floating in the dark washing up onto the sand dancing in the light rain destroying and rebuilding yourself mourning and moving on

just incredibly gorgeous. ingenious production and arrangement. had my jaw on the floor on multiple occasions. bjorks vocal performance is beautiful and powerful and versatile as always. lyrics raw and intimate and complex in their simplicity. a beautiful interlocking living mechanism of an album. it's really just that good

the most truly perfect 5 so far. i want to go back and rate everything else lower

#first time listening

-cinnamon girl sounds like a parody of a classic rock song

-title track is forgettable

-round & round is lovely

-really goofy little riff/guitar solo on down by the river. like it's giving middle schooler's first guitar solo at the school talent show. i would be proud of that middle schooler but this is an adult professional musician. song is otherwise forgettable and goes on forever

-the losing end is forgettable

-running dry starts with nice strings but now why are you singing directly into my ear neil. back up from the mic a bit. recording quality is just weirdly quite bad on this track. maybe it's a streaming issue? the violin is still lovely though.

-cowgirl in the sand sounds like a child wrote the lyrics but the music is good

some people have always been old and neil young (ha) is one of them. he sounds about 74 years old on this record. not a negative or a positive just a fact.

i guess neil young is a Culturally Important musician and i respect that but i dont know if i needed to listen to this album. i probably won't listen to it again. it's pleasant background music but there's a lot of that in the world.

#first time listening

it's good!

highlights: aladdin sane, panic in detroit, cracked actor, time, let's spend the night together, lady grinning soul

#first time listening

i want to be a hater but this album is undeniably pretty good. it's yet another mid-century white guy rock band appropriating the blues, but a pretty good one of those. jim morrison calling himself "mr. mojo risin'" because it's an anagram of his own name is genuinely insufferable. but the song he does it in is still pretty good.

highlights: love her madly, been down so long, cars hiss by my window, l.a. woman, hyacinth house, riders on the storm

could easily bump this up to a 4 or down to a 2 depending on my mood.

#previously listened (partial)

they called it U2 because "U" had to get "2" ribs removed to suck your own dick to be a member.

they do get some brownie points from me for having a vaguely homoerotic song about judas (until the end of the world). mysterious ways is a pretty good car commercial song. quite like the guitars on acrobat. love is blindness is genuinely great.

songs i didn't skip before they ended:
zoo station
until the end of the world
the fly
mysterious ways
acrobat
love is blindness

i've loved a lot of tracks off this album since high school but haven't given the full thing a proper listen since then. there's some preachiness and a relatively conservative streak to some of the lyrics (the both sides-ism in doo-wop [that thing] in particular) that i've never cared for but the music, her voice, her lyrical craft is good enough i can look past it. some guys really are only about that thing though.

no bad songs here but some are more memorable than others and the runtime is pushed a bit far. doo-wop, when it hurts so bad, i used to love him, everything is everything, tell him, are long-time favorites. lost ones, ex-factor, to zion, superstar, forgive them father, can't take my eyes off of you (fantastic cover of a song i've always loved) stood out on this listen.

this album is so firmly a 4.5 to me but i can't do that here. i was going to give it a 4 but i've been listening to it all day and added it back to my library and i'm sitting here vibing to can't take my eyes off of you as i write this and i think i'm going to have to go 5. love.

#previously listened

really?

in a vacuum i would give this a respectable if unremarkable and sometimes irritating 3. (i can only be made to hear about jack white's problems with women for so long before i start to resent it.)

but because it has been presented to me as one of the most important albums of all time i have to give it a 2. presumably it was removed from the book once the contributor(s) recovered from mid white guy blues-rock fever

first time listening

maggot brain: haunting, gorgeous, lovely, dreadful

can you get to that: spooky little intro bit perfectly transitions the vibe from the title track into the main riff which sounds like a cat napping in a sunbeam. love the beat, love those real low vocals, love a little lyrical dissonance

hit it and quit it: organ goes crazy, love how loud the vocalist gets when he goes high

you and your folks, me and my folks: yeah this album is an all-timer. there's some sort of reverb/echo(?) effect on the bass/drums(?) that i can't decide if i like or not

super stupid: goes CRAZY

back in our minds: WHAT is that instrument. all i can find is one youtube comment saying it's a flexatone and that seems to be it. love it

wars of armageddon: BOLD USE OF FART NOISES #RESPECT. chaotic angry manic fat and funky

EASY 5