Reviews by lukazimir_

5/5. For my money, Dead Kennedys are the best punk band. As a sign of how much I love their music, I gave this album a 5 and it’s not even my favorite Dead Kennedys record (for me it’s their second album “Plastic Surgery Disasters.”) Of course, frontman Jello Biafra is a good lyricist and great satirist, which you can see on opener “Kill the Poor” where he plays the part of a policy-maker proposing the idea of just nuking poor neighborhoods so the wealthy can have more space.

But what really puts the Dead Kennedys above other punk bands for me is their rhythm section, where many punk bands are (albeit intentionally) loose and sloppy players, Dead Kennedys has a tight and precise style of playing where the members are always locked the hell in. There are a lot of great little bass riffs or short guitar solos to find here.

As for the tracklist, it’s all killer no filler. Whether that be the big songs “Holiday in Cambodia” and “California Über Alles” or Greta deep cuts like “Chemical Warfare” or “when ya get drafted.” There just isn’t a dull moment to be found here, and it’s also paced extremely well so it glides by very quick.

Also regarding California Über Alles, the version on this album is actually not my favorite version of this song. That honor goes to “we’ve got a bigger problem now” off of their “In God We Trust Inc.” EP which reworks the song to be about Ronald Reagan and is even more intense/angry.

4/5. I previously only really knew of Thin Lizzy for their big radio hits like “The Boys are Back in Town” so I was very surprised at how much I enjoyed this live record. The real highlight of the whole thing for me is the guitar playing which is fantastic all the way through. From what I gathered with the little research I did this was the last Thin Lizzy album to feature Brian Robertson on guitar, and what a send off this is on that front in terms of showcasing his skills. Beyond the guitar though, the rest of this is also pretty great, lots of catchy songs and solid band chemistry in terms of playing.

3.5/5. Solid jazz record. The way it’s produced and played makes it feel quite smooth and easy on the ears, without sacrificing the power of Hugh’s horn playing which is consistently pretty great. I also enjoyed a lot of the piano playing throughout. I will say though, it picks up significantly for me in the second half, some of the tracks early on in the album drag on just a bit too long. But once you get to the chaotic drumming of “Blues for Huey” or the catchier and faster paced “Maseru” things become real good.

4/5. My favorite REM I’ve had on the generator so far. Of course “it’s the end of the world as we know it” is an all time banger, but a lot of the deep cuts were also great. I loved the intro track “finest work song” and “fireplace” especially. Takes their college rock sound of the first few albums and adds some more muscle to it. And in the strangest twist of all I can actually understand Michael Stipe here! And on this album he tackles a lot of the political anger and anxiety around the Reagan years of U.S. politics (unrelated to the review, but the one good thing Reagan did for the world was die.) But yeah, it makes sense that this was the album that started their launch to mainstream stardom because it’s a great listen.

3/5. I personally just vastly prefer prog Pink Floyd to psych Pink Floyd. that being said, Piper is still a fascinating album sound wise. A lot of 60’s psych is super bland but Syd Barrett as a frontman feels like he was built for this style and he gives it the flavor and texture that it often lacks. However in terms of the swings the album takes, it does have a few misses, I’m not the biggest fan of tracks like “gnome” or “Pow R. Toc H.” But when it works, it is very engrossing.

5/5. The first, and best of Bowies Berlin trilogy where he teamed up with legendary producer Brian Eno. And starting with the producer, Low contains some of my favorite production on any album period. The way the bass sounds on songs like “Breaking Glass” is perfection. And the songs themselves have this infectious energy to them, where you could tell they had a ton of fun messing around in the studio to craft the songs, the whole album feels very adventurous in that way.

Low is split in two halves across its relatively lean run-time. The first half containing the harder hitting rock songs, like the previously mentioned “breaking glass” or the chaotic “what in the world”, but then the back half becomes a lot more slow-paced and atmospheric, forgoing vocals almost entirely, and this is where you can really feel the Eno touch. And I vastly prefer the instrumental portion of this album to the one seen on sister album “Heroes.” Songs here like “Warzawa” or “art decade” are just some genuinely great ambient pieces.

When it comes to Bowie this is in a three-sides headlock with Station to Station and Blackstar as my favorite of his. It’s an album bursting with so much creativity, so many ideas, that it feels almost inspirational.

2/5. One of the most reused lazy lines in music criticism is “this music sounds like it came out in [insert year]” which is usually just a long-winded way to say it sounds dated. However, this Nenah Cherry album REALLY sounds like it came from the late 80’s in terms of its approach to pop-rap. Which is for me to its detriment as I’m not the biggest fan of this era/sound. The opener “Buffalo Stance” was pretty good though. Another album that I can appreciate in the sense that it clearly influenced a number of artists to come after, but I personally got very little out of.

2.5/5. For the sake of clarification, I listened to the directors cut version of this album. It is very of-it’s-time, an album I can appreciate in a historical sense but don’t really care for musically all that much. There’s just a lot of 90’s electronic that I prefer over this KLF record.

5/5. This album being rated as low on here as it is just proves that the median 1001 album generator user is a coward. Lightning Bolt are peak noise rock and this album may very well be their best (though I also really love their follow up to this record “Hypermagic Mountain.”)

It is an album that pummels you for 42 minutes straight with some LOUD bass and drum playing. which begins with the all out assault of “Assassins.” Which then leads into my favorite on the album “Dracula Mountain”, when the bass fully kicks in near the end of the song I ascend. And the whole album keeps at that pace, the closes thing to a reprieve from the harshness is the opening stretch of “Longstockings.”

The most insane thing to me about this band though is that they are just a duo and yet are able to make music that sounds this full and intense. they’re also quite famous for their live shows where if you look at any images you’ll see they often play in the middle of the crowd instead of on stage.

4/5. It’s a songwriter tradition to eventually have a breakup/divorce album. Whether that be Bob Dylan’s “Blood on the Tracks”, Marvin Gaye’s “Here my Dear” or Björks “Vulnicura.” Sea Change is Becks breakup album, seeing him tackle feelings of grief and loneliness after his decade-ish long relationship. And in being that, it’s the Beck album that feels the most emotionally sincere and honest, there’s none of that 90’s gen-X irony to be seen here. It also sounds much different than you’d expect for a Beck album with a much greater focus on live instrumentation, acoustics and orchestration. It was also produced by Nigel Godrich, most famous for producing a ton of Radioheads stuff and you can definitely feel his influence all over the moody sound of this album, and the production here is fantastic.

I also took note of some Nick Drake influence here, especially on the song “Round the Bend” where the strings really reminded me of Nicks song “River Man.” Great album and I could honestly see a solid argument that this is Becks best.

2/5. This album is the musical equivalent of eating unseasoned boiled chicken and rice. Like sure it will sustain you, it functions as music, but it’s still pretty god damn bland. For an album that’s supposed to be about “insanity and deception” I really didn’t feel that at any point. I don’t really have anything interesting to say for this one because the album is so uninteresting.

3/5. Very solid live album, they take several songs and expand them out into massive jams. Best shown on the set closer which is a 20 minute long version of “Space Truckin” which goes through a ton of different solo passages and is a great listen. Their biggest hits “highway star” and “smoke on the water” are played more straightforwardly though. One of those live album cases though where outside of Space Truckin I do simply prefer most of the studio versions of these songs. But that’s not to discount how much of a powerhouse these guys seemed like they were live.

5/5. In the late 60’s Miles Davis went electric and it nearly ended the world. jazz purists were enraged, they almost caused a nuclear apocalypse over it. But it was worth it, because fusion era Miles Davis put out some of the best records of all time, and among those is this hour-fourty-six behemoth, Bitches Brew. The songs here are large, expansive jams (the title track being 26 minutes long) which are demanding listens but also deeply rewarding with all the detail underneath. This is one of those albums where every listen I find something new. And Davis’s trumpet playing on this record is fantastic, there is so much power behind basically every note he plays on here, same goes for the rest of the ensemble that worked on this album. And as a bonus, this has one of the best album covers of all time as well which fits perfectly with the surreal, psychedelic vibe of the album.

5/5. This album has always made me feel like I’m in a big city at night in a neo-noir movie. And when it comes to Trip Hop, this is what I’d point to as one of the two peaks of the genre (the other being Massive Attack’s Mezzanine.) the production is fantastic throughout, especially on the percussion side of things. And Beth Gibbons is a great vocalist who really sells the dreamy atmosphere of the whole record.

4/5. Psych rock and psych folk were both very overexposed genres in the late 60’s, so how did the band “Love” manage to stand out with this album? Simple, by actually writing good songs. which a lot of bands from that scene kinda forgot to do at the time. whether that be folk rock bangers like “Maybe the people would be the times…” or slower but equally catchy songs like the album closer “You set the scene.” This was a relisten for me, but enjoyed it just as much as I always have.

4/5. With this I have now had all 3 Jimi Hendrix Experience albums on the generator. And with all three albums being fresh on my mind, I actually think “Are You Experienced” is overall the weakest one. That being said all three of his albums are great, so it’s still leagues above many other records. And with hits like “Purple Haze”, “Fire” or “Foxey Lady” it’s some of the best psych rock of the 60’s.

4/5. some good ass synth-pop/goth music, which sits in the middle of what I’d consider to be a trilogy of classics (Black Celebration, This album, Violator.) the production has a very atmospheric quality to it, I can easily get lost in many of these songs like the opener “Never Let me Down Again” or “To Have and Hold.” Only knock I have against it is that the lyrics are sometimes very clunky, but the musics good enough for me to forgive that.

2.5/5. The 1980’s were really not a good decade for the folk artists of the 60’s/70’s. Though I will at least give Leonard Cohen this, he fares better on a synthesizer-heavy album than Bob Dylan or Neil Young did, this is nowhere near as bad as an “Empire Burlesque.” But it’s still not great, it is almost entirely carried by the fact that Cohen is still a good storyteller. The fact that this is his highest selling studio album is kinda insane, he has so many better albums.

5/5. Though I tend to be more of a Station to Station and Berlin era Bowie enjoyer, Ziggy Stardust is still Ziggy Stardust, it’s pretty damn close to perfect. Opener “Five Years” is one of Bowies best, he absolutely sells the emotion of the people realizing the world only has a few years left. Same goes for the album closer “Rock and Roll Suicide.” And the album is filled with classics like “Moonage Daydream “starman” or “Ziggy Stardust” which is to say this tracklist is stacked, and runs a tight 39 minutes so it really doesn’t waste a second.

4.5/5. This is one of those albums that makes me really appreciate sampling as an art form. DJ Shadow flips so many bits and pieces from songs and movies and other things to create an hour of fantastic, dense and atmospheric instrumental hip-hop. And despite all of the sources being pulled from it’s still extremely cohesive. Great album overall that’s brimming with creativity.