Reviews by meemesker

Electronica you can really sink your teeth into. Meaty, beaty, big and bouncy (with just the right amount of noise and glitch).

The most direct route from punk to post-punk. I actually enjoy this much more than The Sex Pistols. It has a nice balance of loose experimentation and sharp hypnotic focus. Fodderstompf is a bit of an obnoxious way to go out, but I suppose that was their point.

I prefer his other album GP. The fake live stuff is a bit of an odd choice. Why was that necessary? I do enjoy the constant presence of Emmylou Harris supporting him, especially on "Love Hurts." They sound really natural together.

This album can't seem to make up its mind about what it wants to be. Although the field recordings of NYC people are an interesting thread, when it got to the James Bond theme, it completely fell apart for me.

I'm from Southwest Ohio so this is a big one for me. In my opinion GBV is Ohio''s greatest musical export of all time. They are basically Robert Pollard, and anyone he feels like playing with at the time, but this album is the "classic lineup" at their peak. Many people claim "Bee Thousand" to be their masterpiece, and I love that one too, but I feel like this one is a far more consistent album (no "Kicker of Elves" here).

Robert Pollard is a melodic genius, pure and simple. He is so naturally talented that he is constantly overflowing with musical ideas. He is so unbelievably prolific, his discography is staggering. Not only with GBV, but all his solo stuff and side projects as well. He seems to live in a state of constant creative inspiration, and it's largely very consistent in quality. But it's definitely an acquired taste. I was first introduced to them on a mixtape from an older friend who was in college while I was still in high school. I found their truly DIY aesthetic inspiring. It's like there were so many ideas spilling out of him, they had to record them in the quickest, most immediate way possible, without the technical delays of studios. They were able to capture pure, raw creativity as it happened. It showed you what was possible with a four track and seemingly boundless creativity. This album could never have been made in a studio. It would have snuffed out all the energy. Sort of like what happened on their later TVT records.

There are many songs I love on this album, that mean a great deal to me personally, but perhaps my favorite GBV track of all time is "Motor Away." It's one of the very few songs that has ever made me cry. And not just a little tear rolling down my cheek either. That song encapsulates a very particular feeling of making a big change in your life, to have it turn out wrong, and then trying to carry on, and convince yourself that you're fine, but you're not. It's a feeling many of us have experienced, but no one has ever articulated it in a more concentrated and potent way than on that song. I have had that feeling more than once in my life, and this song was there for me in a way that at once devastated and comforted me. It would definitely be used in the soundtrack to my life.

More of a hybrid of hardcore punk and metal than I realized. I don't think they have the right balance though. If they just sang the lead in more of a punk style, rather than just the backing vocals, I'd be way more into this.

I think I respect this on some level, but I certainly don't enjoy listening to it.

This is labeled as glam metal on Wikipedia, but it's so goofy and all over the place I'm not sure that's an accurate way to pigeonhole it. There's almost a punk energy to their irreverence, but it mostly sounds like some bizarre strain of sarcastic power pop. If this is hair metal, I enjoy it a helluva lot more than almost any of the other big names of the genre. This went from 3 to 4 stars on second listen. I appreciate that they don't take themselves too seriously. Fun stuff.

Never took the time to listen to these guys back in the day, but I think I should have. The main thing that keeps going through my head when listening to this is how good it would sound in a small to medium sized club. Production is perfectly stripped down. Feels genuinely soulful - which is a relatively rare quality in indie rock.

Okay, I listened to some of their bigger hits which came later, not from this album, and now I know why I passed on them way back when: they have that melodramatic, overproduced sound that movie soundtracks and TV commercials love, and which I hate. But on this album at least, they got it right.

Gotta stick up for The Beach Boys here. Yes, this has some downright embarrassing material on it, with things like "Take A Load Off Your Feet" and "Student Demonstration Time," but it also contains some of their most significant post-Pet Sounds output with songs like "A Day In The Life of A Tree" and "'Til I Die." Those songs really capture Brian Wilson's depressed, and almost completely defeated mindset at the time of the recording, and they are things of devastating beauty. Not to mention the title track, which is one of the most exquisite leftovers from the SMiLE sessions. I always interpreted it as Brian's way of saying goodbye to the surf music of their youth. Carl's two contributions "Long Promised Road" and "Feel Flows" hold up really well, even alongside Brian's material. Their last truly great album. A mixed bag for sure, but ultimately I think the power of the strong tracks outweigh the weaker ones.

Shoegaze always starts at a 3, and then inevitably drops in rating as it whines on and on.

The last great Elvis Costello album. It's his only 80s album that I think holds up with the energy of his late 70s output. "I Want You" is stunning.

At the very least, this album is 10-12 years ahead of its time. It was a breakthrough step in the way samples were used, and it also exposed more people to a wider variety of world music. It sounds incredibly modern compared to much of the music of its era, and yet, it also sounds like a sort of musical fanfiction. It's a noble experiment, and one which significantly broadened the possibilities for the musical palette, but it largely comes across like demo tracks for Talking Heads songs with samples of speech put in place of where lyrics might be. There's the core of a song there, but somehow it's not satisfying in the same way. It's like ordering the appetizer combo and just eating that for dinner instead of an entree. I do still enjoy this record, just as I would enjoy eating an appetizer combo for dinner, but, despite being a big fan of both Brian Eno and David Byrne, this is not one I come back to often.

Aptly titled.

What can I say about an album like this? Just sheer raw talent. Though it's comprised largely of covers, his performance is everything. It takes guts to cover Sam Cooke, but he manages to pull it off, and even make those songs his own. This absolute powerhouse of a record was basically recorded in 24 hours. 24 hours! Simply astonishing. He was a force of nature.

When this came out I pretty much completely disregarded it. I'd long stopped listening to Top 40 radio by that point. I heard the singles without trying to of course, but I never listened to the album. Never crossed my mind. I was pretty far from the target audience. If you'd confronted me with having an opinion on it back then, I probably would have decried it as total shit. Now, twenty some years later, it's nothing that really causes any sort of emotional reaction one way or the other. A carefully crafted pop record if anything. The singles are the standouts for sure. Otherwise, it sounds like she is throwing everything against the wall to see what sticks. It's kind of all over the place. She hadn't quite dialed in the personality/image she wanted to project yet, and I guess she had to segue out the Disney thing as well. Not sure this belongs on the list as much as her followup does, but I suppose it was a big deal in mass culture.

yawn...

I don't dislike this, but it doesn't feel like a consistent album. Though I'd imagine any band that recorded the majority of an album whilst partying in Ibiza, who then went straight to a rural hideaway to record the rest, would have similarly schizophrenic results.

I appreciate the concept and the experimentation, but it is marred by recording/mixing flaws and absolutely wonky stereo panning. Otherwise solid psychedelia.

You've gotta start somewhere.