Reviews by mark-bionix

Formative album. I saw Elliott Smith in a tiny club right after his weird Oscars performance, and it's a cherished memory.

I've been converted to a big Joan Armatrading fan recently. Great stuff, this.

I was once a hipster doofus who would have given this one star out of spite. I am not that doofus anymore; this is fine.

This is a great record with strong contributions by all six band members. Should have been a classic in it's day. Also a reminder of a time when MIke Love wasn't a total fucking dickhead.

I dig it.

I'd like this band if they had a different singer.

It's good. Dre is good at producing. Some of the non-singles are more musically interesting than the hits.

Knew "Cult of Personality," obviously, but I forgot "Glamour Boy" was also in pretty constant MTV rotation way back when. I thought this was a pretty good listen, and Vernon Reid is very talented. Was kind of blindsided by the Talking Heads cover, but it's good. Don't think this will hit my regular rotation, but I liked it.

Why yes, I do like to rock.

It's not total dog shit, but I will just never get this band.

Thanks to Studio 54 for not letting Nile Rogers in. It gave us this.

My hot take is that I do not like "You Are the Sunshine of My Life." So how can this album be perfect if it has an imperfection on it? Don't ask me I don't make the rules here but this is another perfect 5 for Steveland.

Lovely stuff, this.

This has a lot of the big tunes, but Deja Vu is better.

Big melodies, big noise.

I like the idea of rockabilly punk in theory, but these songs don't do much for me.

Robert Smith at the peak of his powers. This is a great fucking album.

I once bought a Mark Eitzel CD that I discovered in one of those listening booths Tower Records used to have. I remember almost nothing about that album, but I did learn that he was from AMC, and made a mental note to check the band out. Now I have (I guess it just took me ~20 years to do so). I quite liked it. It came out pretty hot; "Firefly" is definitely my favorite song on here. Lots of different styles and very much in my wheelhouse. If their stuff was on Spotify it probably would have hit my algorithm a lot sooner. Let's call this a 3 1/2 that I'm rounding up.

It's great, but Prince gives into a lot of his hokier instincts on some of these songs. Then again, his hokey instincts gave us "Starfish and Coffee," so you do you Mr. Nelson.

The first in a three record run of Heads at the peak of their powers. Nice job by ol' sourpuss Brian Eno on this one.