Reviews by meowmeow

Meh.

Peter Gabriel going way over the top with his creative vision. I don't find it particularly appealing - I enjoy the Phil Collins version of Genesis way more - but maaaaaaaaaan, the sheer effort that was poured into this. No wonder Gabriel split from the band after this.

Okay, this is 28 tracks long. Let's see how much of Billy Corgan's BS I can slog my way through.

... four and a half tracks before I noped out.

I'm not great at separating the art from the artist, so it's genuinely more difficult for me to hear the artistic merit in Smashing Pumpkins music with my extremely low opinion of Billy Corgan as a person. It is a pretty significant part of the 90s music scene, and very influential on later artists in multiple genres. Three stars, I guess?

Damn, somehow I made it into my early forties before listening to this album. It's right up my alley - energetic, experimenting with stylistic differences between tracks while remaining recognizably coherent as the same band. The production is excellent.

Some albums I can't finish before I react to them. This album got added to my Tidal library after four tracks. Album and listener were perfectly matched today.

You need to be in a very specific mood to appreciate big beat. The Prodigy has the biggest nostalgia factor for me - elder millennial here - so The Chemical Brothers are already at a bit of a disadvantage. This sounds like playing a racing game on the original PlayStation feels: it was cool when I was a teenager but hasn't aged well at all.

Yeah, sorry, this is just as much a snapshot of the 90s as Donovan's Sunshine Superman is a snapshot of the 60s, but with a lot less heart. I'd rather leave this in the late 90s with my sequined spaghetti strap tank top where it belongs.

Pleasant yet forgettable; good background music. I don't think this really merits inclusion on the list. It's almost like LCD Soundsystem trying to perform while sleep deprived.

I've been putting off a few albums I either know nothing about, or know I'm not going to enjoy. This is the last remaining "I know nothing" album to get me caught up.

Hmmm. Okay, first impression was not great - indie rock/Britpop isn't my favorite - but I kept going, and then the South Asian elements really kicked in and it got good.

I sat on this one for over a month after it was generated, because I suspected I was going to hate the listening experience, but have successfully isolated myself from pop music for so long that I wasn't certain.

There's also a certain reluctance to contaminate my music recommendation algorithms, you know?

Anyway. Thirty three days later, I finally sucked it up and gave Taylor Swift a listen.

Shallow. Hollow. Overproduced. Prepackaged and sanitized for popular consumption.

I know I haven't quite made it through 10% of the albums on this project yet, and a few of my all time favorites are still in the future - so I'm going to go clean my ears by listening to one of those. Todd Rundgren, save me!

Neil Young is one of those artists I've absolutely, utterly failed to connect with or appreciate on any level. We're talking about four decades of me going "ugh" every time I hear one of his songs.

So I tried to go into this with an open mind, I really did, but... Ugh. Too slow, too melancholy, too folk/country.

I just don't like Neil Young.

I love it when a band gives itself an accurate name.

R.I.P. Rick Buckler

Fantastic background music when you're hanging out with a bunch of people over 40. As active listening goes, meh. I'm unimpressed.

A fine example... of a genre I don't care for.

I put off listening to this for over a week after it was generated, waiting until I was in a sufficiently open minded state to give it a fair chance. It's decent for country, but, you know... it's country. Sorry.

Damn, this somehow manages to sound the way a combination of patchouli and dollar store incense smells. If you're the sort of person who likes this music, I'm probably questioning your life choices.

Flower power folk, almost painfully earnest in its presentation. Any discussion of 60s music would be incomplete without mentioning Donovan.

For me, there's definitely a distinct sort of mood I have to be in to appreciate mellow folk like this... I had this album generated a couple weeks ago, actually, but I put it off until I finally entered one of those contemplative, under caffeinated states. It's a snow day, I've lost my voice, it's a good time to get a little wistful about the way the hippie dream got crushed by an avalanche of late stage capitalism.

I found this tedious the first time I listened. February 1, 2025: I was still carrying around a lot of prejudices against the various music styles I associated with Other People.

Now I've given it a second chance. It's September 24, 2026, and this is a beautiful listening experience. I'm glad I pushed through with the project and opened my mind.

It's great that this exists - it helped Leonard Cohen process the rapidly approaching end of his life, perhaps it can continue to help others who are grappling with the concept of death.

It's also slow, depressing, a bit too much of a reminder of how harsh life is. No escaping the senseless brutality of existence here.

Short of developing a terminal illness myself, I can't see this album in my future.

Sometimes three stars indicates mediocrity, sometimes it's uneven albums with a mix of tracks that might have gotten fives or ones on their own, and sometimes it's for good art I just don't mesh with.

Three stars. No meshing.

While I wasn't angry to be listening to this (that's my threshold for giving out a one star rating, those are all albums that pissed me off) it's not exactly anything I want to ever listen to again. Wispy tenor with acoustic guitar? Pass.

Playful, fun rhyming to infectious beats.

This is very good music... for someone else's taste.

Chester, I hope you have the peace now that you never had in life.

That said... listening to an entire album of "mental health crisis" is painful in multiple ways. Hybrid Theory wouldn't exist in a world with accessible, decent, affordable psychiatric care.