Reviews by mibbiesaye

Scott Walker if he smirked more.

I too find I often need the funk. You should really give it up.

Groovy

First time listening to this since my Springsteen conversion. It was always the one I had a bit of a soft spot for because of the Suicide influnced yelps on State Trooper.

I really like it but I think I now prefer overblown full fat Bruce with the E Street Band blasting behind him.

Just amazing. Everything about it. The songs, the lyrics, the performance, the production, the cover photo.

In recent years I've had a major Blue Öyster Cult obsession and I already knew the link via her relationship with Allen Lanier, lyrical contributions and friendship with Sandy Pearlman, but it hadn't really registered with me how much of a sound they shared at times if not an image. But even the scifi lyrics of Birdland, the furthest away musically, sound like a theme BÖC could have warmed to.

Most Talking Heads albums share the same problem that they are neither Remain In Light or Stop Making Sense.

My first band did a cover of April Skies and I gave our perma offkey lead singer my double gatefold picture sleeve 7" of it to learn the lyrics. Never got it back. Still raging.

Speaking of the singles, I sometimes wonder if the album would be even more perfect if they swapped out Down On Me, Fall and Cherry Came Too for the b-sides Kill Surf City, Everything Is Alright When You're Down and Happy Place? Maybe not, it might unbalance the feel of the thing and those songs made the first two singles feel like treasures of their own. Hence, my rage.

Not something I would seek out to listen to but kinda fun. The lyrics to Email My Heart are hilarious and date the whole thing perfectly.

Whoever claimed Britney is a soprano on her Wikipedia page hasn't heard her sing the words "ooh baby baby".

Way more enjoyable than the laughable grumpy antics of Metallica and especially Megadeath but not quite as much fun as Slayer.

Interesting reading how they were so excited to work with veteran producer Eddie Kramer and then he was initially a bit nonplussed about what they were doing. And then the disagreement over the final mix. I think you can hear all that. The guitars are weirdly muted/buried just a little bit in certain places for a thrash album. The vocals sometimes seem like they are floating above the mix and sometimes overwhelming the guitars. None of that particularly bothered me as I thought it added to the scrappy feel of the thing. But I was surprised at how much time it took them to get that scrappy sound. It does sound very live which is cool .

A bit bland and cheesy for me. The harmonies are too much. That cover of Do You Wanna Dance? is truly awful. But there is California Dreamin' with its strange ambiguous lyrics.

The cover is cruelly amusing with Michele Phillips sitting in the lap of her new lover while literally giving her miserable looking husband the boot.

An early example of EDM being nostalgic? Eighties sounds, nineties production but with an inevitable seventies disco and funk root. Whatever, it works. The cover art represents it perfectly.

I love the confidence with which people throw around genre names in their reviews. Apparently this is both Britpop and new wave synth. Maybe for some folk anything with a guitar and a synth on it after 1978 is new wave synth :D

I have a real soft spot for this album. I like how improvised and unified it sounds compared to Screamadelica even though it lacks its BIG tunes. I also prefer it to the 'put on' aggression of XTRMNTR.

I'm such a Dead Kennedys lightweight I only really know the compilation Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death.

It's a weird cultural kink that UK punk found its strongest and best adherents on the US west coast, especially given the primacy of New York punk. I suppose that's the geographical rivalries and differences I can't fathom.

Jello Biafra's voice is so instantly recognisable but it was only with this listen that I realised how much it is a perfect distillation together of Joe Strummer and Johnny Rotten. Lyrically he also has Strummer's earnestness and Rotten's snark.

I've always meant to have a proper Japan/David Sylvian phase. Maybe the time has come. They were definitely the connective tissue between Roxy/Bowie and lots of 80s groups that took notes, especially the New Romantics.

I was obsessed with this record. It is still fantastic. The lyrics and the interplay of the three musicians. She was the kind of musician who needed to move on to different arrangements but this was a cracking band.

Early 00s thirty something dinner party music.

Has anyone covered as much ground over so relatively few records over such a long time? I think this transitional one might be my favourite of the four 60s solo albums. It does tail off a bit in terms of song choice and arrangements but there are plenty wonderful tracks.

He's probably a little young and baby faced for singing Brel at this point but the songs and the Mort Schuman translations are so good it barely matters. Plastic Palace People might be his first masterpiece as songwriter.

I sort of wish one of his late avant garde albums had made it to the list. That would really confuse folk.

When underbites stalked the earth. I agree with the band about the reverb but you sort of accept it as the album rumbles and grunts along.

I hated them at the time because I did feel it was sort of an insult for them to be marketed as 'alternative' and in the same breath as Nirvana. Listening now I can set aside all that and accept them as a continuation of American classic rock. I'll never love it but at least they have a wide eyed sincerity lacking in plenty grunge and post-grunge opportunists.

Pictures of Me wasn't a single?

There are some really good lines on this but there are also clunky poor me stinking thinking lines about being shit left after the street is cleaned.

There's a weird thing with numetal where the vocals don't have much variety. There's the standard shouty vocal and there's the higher pitched melodic vocal. Sometimes there's a whispered bit and sometimes there's a grunty bit.

The funniest bit is where they sling Vanilla Ice as an insult with zero self awareness.