Reviews by mikey_nc

Me and my girlfriend did interesting things in the back of my car to this

Best song: The Girl from Ipanema

Grunge’s leaner, louder, messier predecessor. Honestly kind of disappointing. Lots of thrashing and screaming without much melody or purpose.

Best song: No One Has

You know it’s good when you immediately start it over when it’s done. So fun and vibrant and sharp. Loved it start to finish.

Best song: Just a Gigolo / I Ain’t Got Nobody

Psychedelic pop in its heyday. This does drag in a couple places, and it’s one of the few examples of a band where I think a label/manager really should have stepped in and meddled by just making Grace Slick the full time lead singer, but it’s fun and hazy and creative.

Best song: Somebody to Love

Whoa. Now that rocks. It does bash and crash a little longer than needed in some spots, but yeah. It rocks.

Best song: Search and Destroy

I feel almost bad for this take but this album is boring. I can't explain why but nothing here jumps out to me because it's just a soup of boring. Comfortable boring, but boring nonetheless. I'd be interested to hear her with a more spare backing; a solo coffee house set type of thing.

Best song: Somebody Who Loves You

Well that was pretty strange, sometimes unsettling, and mostly interesting. Some of the more abstract stuff and orchestral sections got on my nerves, but this is more or less a weird listen in a fun way. Rock on ya nerds.

Best song: Larks' Tongues in Aspic, Pt. 2

I'm not really a reggae connoisseur but I know what I like and I love this. Expansively produced with Marley wailing triumphantly over everything; music of love and joy. The type of album you can listen to over and over.

Best song: One Love / People Get Ready

An intensely 90s album. Not really what I would choose to listen to most days, but I also get dance tracks are meant for, yknow, dancing, so I can live with how crazily long some of the songs are. Lots of cool bass and wobbles.

Best song: Firestarter

A pretty quaint and humble singer-songwriter album despite the synths and backing vocals. Leonard Cohen has his clear limitations, and I almost didn't make it through Take This Waltz, but there's some decent songs in a well-defined mood here.

Best song: Tower of Song

A very creepy crawly album with a lot of interesting samples and structures. Not very enjoyable, but worth experiencing once I would say.

Best song: La fille de la mort?

Psychedelic rock peaked hard and early, this album being one of the key examples. It’s interesting bc it’s not particularly “psychedelic”; it’s much less trippy than something like early Pink Floyd; but it fuses dark blues rock with poppy color in all the right ways.

Best song: Tales of Brave Ulysses

Yeah it’s REM. I like REM. It’s good. Yeah.

Best song: Orange Crush

Starts off really strong and has some great tracks, but then I don't know what it is with Green Day. It might be the monotony of their sound or just how extremely overplayed they were when I was a kid, but I have a hard time doing a whole album of this. Funnily enough for a punk band, there's also a consistent problem of songs being dragged on longer than necessary; Wake Me Up When September Ends would probably be twice as impactful if they just cut it to 3 minutes max. Then there's the "message"/protest element of it and in the end that just feels a little shallow. But there's no question it's a classic album with a couple classic songs.

Best song: American Idiot

Equal turns brooding and cheesy. The lead singer throws me because he always maintains that very light and airy English dandy voice, which gives everything a definite tone but also makes the boring saccharine stuff even worse. Some good beats and nice melodies, though.

Best song: To Face the Truth

I've heard some hype for this one over the years and yeah that's a great album. Interesting that it's always connected with punk, because it's not really punk at all yet it definitely *feels* like punk for some reason. The singer's kinda bad, which is an issue, but the music is really something and often sounds years ahead of its time.

Best song: Marquee Moon

Not super impressive but perfectly solid. A little weird, pretty jangly, interesting atmosphere. Would try it out again.

Best song: Happy Death Men

A very solid but only modestly interesting soul album. Really well-crafted and thoughtfully written. Think I could have stood for a little more variety, or maybe a little more melody to go with the atmosphere.

Best song: Final Days

Kinda corny with a self-indulgent final song but not gonna lie, pretty damn good. Almost makes me believe in the Springsteen mythos.

Best song: Thunder Road

Certainly not bad but pretty unexciting. It all just kind of chugs at one of two speeds (mid-tempo or slow) without much melody or variety. The random injections of "YEAH! GUITAR TIME" are more strange than anything. Didn't do much for me.

Best song: Firefly?