Reviews by mibbiesaye

*sigh* The top review for this thinks it is Britpop. About 15 years too early for that particular marketing scheme.

The other misconception I'm spotting is that the Teardrops were obscure. They were regular Smash Hits fodder, pored over by 500,000+ teenagers in that magazine's heyday. They were like an acid addled Duran Duran. Julian Cope's posh kid cheek bones counted for a lot.

The album is full of great tunes and arrangements, even Second Head which got dropped on some reissues is fantastic.

Tony Wilson and Factory Records has had its movie but someone should really do a film or TV series on the impossibly productive scene centred around Eric's in Liverpool. The Teardrops and slightly peripheral figures OMD were the first to bother the charts but they were followed over the next fifteen years by the Bunnymen, Holly Johnson and Paul Rutherford in Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Dead Or Alive, The Wild Swans, The Mighty Wah!, guitarist turned manager turned artist Bill Drummond in The KLF and arguably the most consistent chart presence over the period being Budgie as a member of mostly southerners Siouxsie and the Banshees.

And yeah we eventually get to Britpop with producer turned singer Ian Broudie in The Lightning Seeds (Euro 96 and all that).

I dunno some of these reviews. Just cos they were two black guys with guitars round their necks doesn't mean Kravitz and Prince have much in common. Kravitz, at this point, was committed to making music that whole heartedly referenced/recreated the 60s and 70s. He said it in interviews and followed through even as far as the studio gear he used.

Prince of course had influences from the past but he was very much an 80s act in his sound pallette and how he used the studio.

Kravitz music was Beatles, 70s rock and classic soul. Prince was way more about the funk, modern pop and a bit of gospel with sure some classic soul in the ballads, and plenty other genre blending aside.

Kravitz is lyrically obvious and SINCERE! Prince had loads of different lyrical modes including obscure, freaky and funny.

Anyway, I have some fond memories of my university room mate enjoying this. It was good for soundtracking a sunny day dangling my legs out of our window when I was supposed to be studying.

In Scotland when we say something is murder we're saying it is crap. e.g. That film we watched last night was murder. These are all Murder Ballads but these Ballads are not all Murder.

I was deep in my Nick Cave fandom when this album came out. So much so that I was almost in denial that it was the first thing by him that disappointed me a bit.

There are plenty great moments. Song of Joy is a brilliant concoction with the full power of the Bad Seeds allied to a fine creepy tale with a classic unreliable narrator.

Stagger Lee unearths an interim horror version of this venerable lyric to amusing effect. It's a white boy joining the dots between 90s Gangsta rap and the real life Stag O Lee Shelton who was a 19th century peacocking pimp who served time for shooting Billy Lyons dead. By the time he was released there were already versions of the song where he was executed for the crime but went to hell and murdered the devil because he was such a bad motherfucker. If this interests you I recommend Cecil Brown's incredible book Stagolee Shot Billy which charts the song's storied history and context.

The album, for me, as a whole struggles under the weight of its concept. Too many of these songs feel like a grim academic exercise in fulfilling the stated brief of providing a suitable setting for O'Malley's Bar, a song that doesn't really warrant the effort and could have been consigned to a CD single extra.

On the other hand I have a soft spot for the album because it is the last ride of their producer Tony Cohen and therefore the last outting for that big crowded layered Bad Seeds sound.

Green Onions is ever green, ho ho. In the 80s I always loved when DJs at youth club discos and later in the decade at the student union were still fitting it in alongside hits by New Romantics and disco, and then indie tracks and early EDM.

When I saw the 70s film American Graffiti in 1990/91 I felt like I got an extra insight into why this worked. The film follows teenage life in small town America over the course of a single night in the early 1960s. It is soundtracked throughout by the pop and rock & roll of the era. Characters are mostly in their cars with the radio playing. Aurally you are swimming in the music of the era. At one point there is a drag race and the film cuts to the road and Green Onions hits. I felt like I was hearing it for the first time. Having been immersed in early 60s pop up to that point in the film Green Onions suddenly sounded so alien and futuristic and exciting. Back in 62 it was from the future so of course it still filled dancefloors 20+ years later.

The rest of the album doesn't quite hit the same heights but who cares, really?

I have never understood the hype around this guy to the point of being a little embarrassed for Gillian Welch and David Rawlings that they hung out with him so much. They are head and shoulders above him.

The three star review describing him as like a smooth Springsteen not as intelligent as Neil Young made me chuckle. The definition of faint praise.

I hadn't listened to this in an age. Even better than I remember. Reminds me of a DIY punk scene I was briefly and tangentially connected to. They lived the ideal doing their own thing with little reference to the 'industry' and they turned me on to Black Flag. I salute them wherever they all are now.

Bit of a dafty.

A mad wee gift from Scotland for you: search Limmy Tina Turner on YouTube.

It's sort of weird that the most 80s thing here was recorded by a 60s star but perhaps not that surprising. A lot of the old guard thoroughly embraced the new production techniques and technology. They just did it in such an artless way that it feels extra 80s.

As a teen at the time, towards the end of the decade Tina Turner was a byword for pure cheese. I'm certain I cringed more than once hearing sweaty middle aged men in too tight suits at weddings lustily proclaiming to one another that she "was still an attractive woman".

But with distance I quite like some of this. Let's Stay Together is the best thing here and it's a shame Heaven 17 didn't do the whole album. The title track is pretty awful though. Lyrically a massive overreach from Knopfler. They had it dead right keeping the version of Help! off the US edition.

This process has extended my taste to appreciate more middle of the road stuff like this. Previously I would have turned my nose up at anything like this that probably fits under the easy listening umbrella. A lot of the five star reviews value its utility as music that you can half ignore but I think that's a bit of a shame. The playing and the sound are largely softer than my usual jazz heroes but there is still passion, beauty and ingenuity in there. Mind you I'd still swap one of the bosses nova records in here for some Sun Ra or another Mingus album or a Miles 70s live fusion album.

It's funny how you can know you like a lot of the things a particular group likes but not really like their take on it. I wanted to like Stereolab in the 90s for the shared reference points and the peer pressure from people cooler than me, who were never done telling you how amazing they were. But they've just always sounded a bit joyless and dull to me.

I bought a cheap copy of this on vinyl when it came out on the strength of reviews and was utterly disappointed. I liked some of the sounds but I thought the songs were pretty dreary on the whole. They're a bit better than I remember if I listen to this as a lavishly produced example of middling 80s style indie rather than the earth shattering groundbreaking work of genius it was billed as in 1993. I still find the vocals a bit charmless and off putting. And it outstays its welcome by about fifteen minutes.

Lush jumped the rails from shoegaze to britpop but these guys were like the intersection of the two.

People really don't like anything out of the ordinary. Crazed Neil Diamond sounds like a great idea to me. I hear Neil Diamond crossed with Jacques Brel.

It feels a bit glib scoring someone's almost unimaginable grief out of five but I guess that's the task.

It's easy to connect with the human suffering and emotions that drive this record while not necessarily loving the music that carries them. The problem I have with much of Nick Cave's latter-day output is that he and Warren Ellis have struck on a mode of composition that I don't think is anywhere as impressive as they think it is. Everything has a relatively pedestrian synth drone and/or loop, Nick intones his lyrics on top in a predictable way and often some tasteful backing vocals are added. For me it just isn't enough to carry the weight of what they're trying to express on this album and on the songs from previous albums written before Arthur Cave's death. It feels a bit mean writing this but yeah that's the task.

I liked the change in intensity from the synths halfway through Hollywood.

In 1998 it seemed such a big deal people making innovative electronic music that wasn't frenetic and/or hard edged. It's funny how something that can be allowed to be so unobtrusive seems to provoke so many 1 star reviews.

The soundtrack of my final teenage year. I loved everything about them. I was thinking nailed on 5 but actually there are a few filler tracks on here.

I was in a bit of a state when this album came out. It resonated. I still can't decide if it was a solace or a bad influence. Maybe a bit of both.

I managed to cobble together a version from various compilations on Tidal. Really great stuff. I remember being amazed when he turned up in the TV show Tremé. If you want to hear a cool tribute to him check out Guided By Voices' The Unsinkable Fats Domino referencing his survival of Hurricane Katrina.

What are these reviews dismissing The Kinks as not standing out from the Beatles and the Stones? Have you listened to the lyrics, to the weird nasal tones of Ray Davies, to the economy of their arrangements? Whenever I hear them I always think I should be listening to them more often.

Kind of mad the main dude was doing Drive Like Jehu around the same time. They are like the polar opposite ends of the 90s punk rock spectrum. This does wear a bit as it goes on.

I've always liked their second and third albums but couldn't be bothered with the rest. I enjoyed this more than I expected to. Mark E Smith claimed them as Fall plagiarists but I hear melodic Thurston Moore led Sonic Youth a whole lot more.