Reviews by mikey_nc

Music both wild and stormy yet soothing and wistful. It somehow sounds very of-the-time for the 60s and yet decades ahead of its time, as any good experimental album should. It’s obviously weird, but I’m pretty impressed and plan to return.

Lmao who is working on this list that they’re putting geriatric era Stones albums on the latest revision?

Loud and raucous. It’s certainly got energy, but that doesn’t mean it’s good.

What a strange album to deal with, and a strange artist. Parts of this (Kim?!?!) do make me genuinely shocked this guy was once one of the biggest artists in America. Other parts are just juvenile and idiotic rather than intimidating as he intended. Parts of this force me to respect his massive chops as a rapper, while others make me suspect he’s always been wildly overrated as the Great White Hope of hip-hop.

And then there is Stan, which I do genuinely believe is one of the greatest songs of all time. The ironic thing about it is that the song doesn’t really work at all without the surrounding album, which I like much less. How can Eminem’s confrontation with his own image and negative influence have any impact if the rest of the album isn’t full of his signature murder fantasies and petty dickery? So tl;dr: I don’t know how to feel about Eminem. He’s a clear talent who I think has spent 90%+ of his career wasting that talent, but who am I to say what’s a waste and what’s not? Either way, this album will almost certainly be his lasting monument through music history.

A pop star’s take on nu metal/metalcore. I have mixed feelings about both of those genres, and this whole project feels a bit too commercial, electronic, and influenced by nu metal’s artificial revival, but there are some great riffs and grooves here.

A laid-back acoustic album with some Mexican influence. Not too impactful but very decent.

I’m good, no thanks. This made me feel like a dog being rhythmically attacked by one of those high-pitched plastic beepers.

My God what a dreary album. Many of these songs are almost suggesting a melody more than they’re actually playing one, and while the production is pretty good, that doesn’t move the needle much when the atmosphere on every song is “sad, with strings and shiny guitars.” This is everything people dislike about Coldplay with none of their upside.

A mild and inoffensive Paul Simon album. His whispery singing and quirky story songs do have their charm, though they can also be very boring if you’re not invested.

John Lennon’s legacy has become complicated. Revered by the Boomers and reviled by Gen Z, he was neither a creative genius nor a psychopathic wife beater. He was just a guy, a guy with countless flaws and considerable talents. He unspools himself completely here, putting all his best and worst tendencies on display. It’s far from perfect, but it’s an extremely raw, honest, and human album that I find pretty compelling.

Yeah I’m not going against the grain here. If Thriller “solved” pop music, this album kind of “solved” rock music. Kurt’s ability to fuse his incredibly weird and dissonant punk tastes with gleaming pop melodies was unbelievable. His short and tragic career is, at least, immortal.

Based on my past ratings, “dance-punk” sounds like something I would reject. But that’s not really a good genre label for this album, which certainly takes influence from both genres, but fuses them with the increasingly alienated mood of the 21st century for a new digitalized take on rock. Chilly yet passionate, repetitive yet epic, this is an all-time great album.

Light and airy psychedelic rock that still manages to shred. A very unique sound here, flowery and experimental, but still approachable due to its pop and blues roots. I dig it!

Intense and furious music, bringing punk to new and, well, more hardcore heights. I think I’ve discovered over the course of this project that I’m not really a fan of punk/hardcore as a blanket genre, but I can appreciate its best and this is certainly somewhere up there.

Following the bar “I was raised in the city, real shitty, as a kiddy, sucking liquor out my mama’s tiddy,” my wife said, “Shakespeare who?”

I’ve had 3 of their albums now and I can determine officially that Roxy Music does not click for me. I guess they’re supposed to sound sophisticated, or even “sexy,” but all their music sounds like some rich guy who’s thrown a bunch of money into making some country club-ass “experimental” rock music. I know that’s not what they are, but that is their vibe nonetheless.

Me on minute 3: lol what are they doing

Me on minute 18: fun fun fun of da autobahn 😃

The production of this is overly busy and corny, and Anita’s voice breaks down into incomprehensible wailing too often. That said, this has some pretty immaculate night-time driving vibes, and the musicians are killing it.

My feelings on Brian Eno are hard to parse. He’s clearly a musical genius whose ideas about production and composition have made him one of rock’s (and pop’s) most important historical figures. But I just don’t know how much of the music he makes that I actually like.

And that’s not a polite way of saying I don’t like it, I’m saying I really don’t know. Some moments on this album are brilliant; the minimalist concept creates an amount of space that’s eerie yet calming, and the instrumental work is mostly excellent. But other moments are just banal and weird, and they make me think the whole album was nothing but a slightly exhausting intellectual experiment. So I come away from this interested in re-listening to some of Eno’s other projects, even if I don’t know for sure whether I liked or disliked this one.

Weird sultry songs delivered in a mood grim yet jolly, somehow. Her voice is really great and the production is pretty tasteful. The lyrics, while rarely sensical, are often evocative. Count me a fan.