Reviews by mitch058

Despite Van Morrison's personal failings, this is still one of my favorite albums. It seems like nearly every song on this album got and to some degree still gets airtime, and it's always a pleasure to listen to the album in its entirety. I can't say that about too many albums that *aren't* a greatest hits album or a compilation. I do wish it was easy (or even possible) to respect the artist as much as the album, but we take what we can get.

I didn't think I'd heard The Verve before, but then as soon as "Bitter Sweet Symphony" started playing, I realized I *had* heard them (at least that song, many many many times), and I always enjoyed hearing it on the radio. The video is weirdly misanthropic, though, and makes me like the song less, sadly. (Likewise, the Wikipedia article for this album only seems to reinforce that Richard Ashcroft is a selfish, arrogant jerk, sadly.)

I'm pretty sure I haven't ever heard most of the rest of the album, and for all of the hook to "Bitter Sweet Symphony", the rest of the album doesn't really deliver on that promise. The album seems just sort of average overall. Nothing great, nothing horrible (except maybe that video...). It's a bit shocking that "Urban Hymns" is #19 on the list of best-selling albums in UK chart history, as I feel like I could list a lot more than 19 UK albums that are much better than this (and yes, I know that's not the same thing).

I'm also *super* bummed that the track "Velvet Morning" wasn't a cover or adaptation of that bizarre Lee Hazlewood/Nancy Sinatra song.

I'm not sure you could get more synthy-pop than this album, to be honest. But I'm also not sure you'd want to. I enjoyed the video for "Take me on" a lot more than the song, and am really impressed at the pseudo-animation style given when the video was made. (And I now discovered through the Wikipedia entry for this album that the animation was done by a couple who also worked on "Altered States", which makes total sense.)

I never really listened to a-ha beyond whatever the radio imposed, but I'll admit I'm totally baffled to learn that this was a Norwegian band--I would have bet anything they were British (and English to be specific). Shows how much I know. Still doesn't do it for me, though, but it's hard to give it lower than three stars given it's legacy and influence.

I'll admit that I've never really found my groove with Neil Young, so it's harder to embrace an album like this, which seems pretty obscure even for Neil Young fans. (As for my ambivalence, I think Robert Christgau's quote (in the Wikipedia page for this album) puts it far better than I ever could: "Something in [Young's] obsessive self-examination is easy to dislike and something in his whiny thinness hard to enjoy.")

As with every Neil Young album (and song), though, there's some interesting stuff going on, and it's funny that the "primitive" production/recording of this album seems to be a theme he keeps revisiting (I think one of his most recent albums he recorded solo at Jack White's house in an ancient disc-recording booth). And the stories behind "Revolution Blues" (and Charles Manson) and "Ambulance Blues" make them far more intriguing to listen to than I initially gave them credit for. I'm also incredibly impressed that they were able to produce anything after subsisting on the "Honey Slides" concoction, a truly foul-sounding substance.

Ugh. Too bad this isn't Michael Cera's George Michael (Bluth, that is)... :) It's hard to not just pass by this album, having heard too many of the songs on the radio back in the day, but I guess even this album is worth listening to, and hearing songs that didn't make it on the radio. (I guess.)

I hadn't realized until now that he actually wrote and produced nearly all of the album, nor that he actually *did* play multiple instruments on most of the songs (although his guitar "work" in the "Faith" video is supremely annoying, as he's not even trying to pretend that he's strumming anything like what the music is playing). That said, the music is so...blah...and was even then (to me), and some of the songs are just painful to listen to ("I want your sex" is a prime example, as it always seemed like he tried so hard to be manly in a very hetero way). But given its massive popularity, then and even now, that's a very minority opinion.

I feel a little guilty giving this a 2-star rating, as it's not really fair to George Michael's legacy, but I really didn't enjoy listening to this album. And I really enjoyed reading somewhat recently that he and Andrew Ridgeley were avid Scrabble players, but it still doesn't make this album easier to listen to. Sorry, George Michael!

I'm not sure if I be embarrassed to admit it, but I have three Basement Jaxx albums (including this one), and I'm always impressed with how fun and positive (optimistic?) their music is, sort of a guilty pleasure I guess? I'm not sure I'd rank this as their best album, but for a debut album I can see how it took the music (dance) scene by storm, and it has a number of very solid songs on it.

I've never seen their music videos before, and all of the videos for their singles on this album are fun to watch, and uniformly odd. (Most of the videos remind me of a much more recent Brazilian movie, "Bacarau") I also love it that they did the soundtrack to the best pothead aliens movie you'll likely see, "Attack the Block", and while I didn't know it at the time, it totally makes sense.

I *still* want to like Radiohead more than I do, sadly. This is probably one of their better if not their best album, I know, but I still have a hard time enjoying the songs, even though they're well done and have interesting arrangements and odd lyrics in a good way. I'm not sure why they don't do it for me (although I think part of it is Thom Yorke's voice/style, sadly), but I likely won't listen to this album again. Sorry Radiohead!

I *will* say that the music video for "Paranoid Android" is truly bizarre, and I couldn't stop watching the entire 6+ minute video (although I'll admit that I probably wouldn't have done so if they'd left it at the original 14-minute runtime). And I also have *zero* idea what I just saw, or what the song is about (and I don't think the animation really had anything to do with the song, oddly (correction: apparently the animator based the video on how the song felt, and wasn't provided the lyrics ahead of time)), but I love it that the song's title is inspired by "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy".

And a few other things that I liked from the Wikipedia article on the album: Brian Eno is once again everywhere; apparently they took a break from this album by touring and opening for Alanis Morisette (not the most logical pairing, I would think); and I can definitely see why Yorke credits Philip K. Dick's VALIS as an influence (although I now realize I was thinking of Dick's "Ubik" when I read "VALIS").

I've never heard of the band, or this album, or even the lone single from the album ("The State I Am In"), so that's always a nice surprise. And it's a fine album, with a much stronger/together band-sound than apparently they were when they recorded nearly all the album in three days. The album also has the great backstory of getting created as part of a music business course (and getting noticed by John Peel and Mark Radcliffe).

I enjoyed listening to it, but as much as I always have a soft spot for Scottish bands, it wasn't particularly distinctive or engaging (for me).

It's nice to see Echo & The Bunnymen in this collection, but then I cheated and looked to see just how many albums we'd be getting, and was disappointed that there are three (3!) Echo & The Bunnymen albums, which seems like one (or maybe two?) too many. And while "Crocodiles" is a fun debut album for a band, with a decent range of styles on it, it's definitely not their best, so kind of a bummer that this is the selection of the day.

Although I suspect true fans of either band would be annoyed to hear me compare them, but I've always felt that Echo & The Bunnymen and The Cure (and somewhat The Smiths, and by extension Morrissey's solo work) are kindred spirit bands in many ways. Unfortunately, I'm not much of a Cure fan (nor much of a fan of The Smiths and particularly Morrissey), so that's not the biggest compliment, but it's an in interesting overlap to me.

It's always seemed like too many 1980s albums and bands suffered from...something...maybe a sort of musical malaise? Too many songs and albums just seem to blend together into a sort of synthy, poppy, sax-heavy generic-sounding music-light. And this is a perfect example of this. I'm not sure if they're all just missing some sort of soul, or distinctiveness, or message, or what, but it's painfully insipid and watery, certainly listening to it in 2024 (but I wasn't much of a fan of much of this kind of music even when it first came out). However, it's not poorly produced or anything, and they definitely tried to be a little more funky than some others, so it seems like a 3-star rating is fair.

I've never heard of them before, but it's really nice to hear a band in this collection that's (a) not from North America or Europe and (b) doesn't sound like a sort of genericized world-music band (at least for much of the album). And they've got a great (and also tough) backstory both for the title of the album and their journey from the Timbuktu region to the capital of Mali (and beyond). (A bit of a bummer that so many Malians (and apparently many West Africans) have the same last name Touré, as it's hard to know what sort of connections the band members had to each other, although interesting to know that Garba Touré is "the son of Ali Farka Touré's long-time percussionist".)

I'm not sure I've ever heard "[Sahara] desert blues" before, but I like their version of it, and most of the songs have great guitar and rhythm work to them; it's also amazing to read that Malian blues long (long long) predates American blues. Admittedly, I have no idea what the song titles or lyrics mean, so I can't really judge whether their songs are more formulaic or story-driven, but I like the energy and sound nonetheless.

Well, I guess the string of great albums in this collection had to come to an end, and Pet Shop Boys seems like an appropriate way to move from great to meh-ness. And I would challenge their first track assertion that they were never being boring, as this is kind of a snooze-fest of an album, even for them. (Speaking of that, why Pet Shop Boys at all, and not Depeche Mode or Tears for Fears?)

As with so many albums in this collection, it's a bit of a mystery why this particular Pet Shop Boys album made the cut, as this doesn't seem like their best stuff, nor a particularly notable new direction for them. Ah well; it doesn't really suck, so I give it the wishy-washy award of three stars, although it's hard not to downgrade to two stars simply because I (irrationally) *really* don't like this band.

I'm embarrassed to admit that while I've heard many songs from this album, this is the first time I've listened to the album outright. So, *now* I can say I'm experienced, I suppose. And what a great experience! Not every song can be as contagious or definitive as "Purple Haze" or "Foxey Lady", but even today it's not all that hard to understand how revolutionary the whole album was (or why it was so immediately popular).

The Wikipedia entry for the album is a great read too (even if it's a little too long in the tooth at times). And now I know why Jimi Hendrix's sound is so distinctive on the album, given that he was literally blasting everyone out in the studio (and even causing computers above one of the studios to mess up). I'm really glad to know that Chas Chandler played a significant role in helping Jimi Hendrix bring his genius to the world.

Finally listening to this album in its entirety only makes me even more baffled that the high school in Seattle I went to, and where he (briefly) attended much earlier than I did, had only a small, unlabeled bronze bust of Hendrix buried deep in the high school library, and nothing else to celebrate a brilliant musical artist.

Now *this* is the White Stripes album that should be in this collection--so much better than "White Blood Cells", and so much better than a lot of albums out there, frankly. I own this album, and I enjoy it every time I hear it, even if Jack White's voice can sometimes be a bit grating.

I feel like they achieved a really nice balance in this album, and nearly every song is both fun and (fairly) distinctive. I'm not sure it deserves a full five stars, but they're getting it nonetheless. :)

While I'd heard some of this album's songs (thanks to "Chronicles"), I haven't heard this album as an album before, and it sounds like it's really meant to be a whole album/concept experience. I'll admit that without reading the Wikipedia entry for this album, I would never have realized this was either a musical or that there's a whole storyline involved (although knowing it now makes the whole Shangri-La/Australia thing a lot more understandable). It's odd that it got a fairly tepid reception in the UK, but a glowing one in the US, and in some ways probably doesn't belong as one of their best albums (despite favorable comparisons to "Tommy" at the time). But a fun listen nonetheless.

I listened to this album so many times when it first came out, and loved it every time. I can't really tell if it's aged well or not, but it's very fun to listen to it again. It's probably easier to list the songs that weren't my favorites--"Freddie's Dead", "Deep Inside", and "Change"--as the rest all competed for favorite song (although the political/racial aspect of "Slow Bus Movin'" and "One Day" might rank them just a bit higher than the others).

It's kind of a bummer that their subsequent albums, at least the ones I bought, weren't as compelling (with the exception of "The Reality of My Surroundings"), but that's maybe to be expected, since I probably wanted them to just churn out more albums just like "Truth and Soul", and to their credit they clearly wanted to experiment with other styles and sounds. And the show I saw them at in LA--Primus and Fishbone--was a lot of fun, even with their newer material. I don't think I've ever seen so much energy from a surprisingly large band. (And what a bizarre combination of bands, although I loved them both. And I think it was at the Hollywood Palladium, an odd venue too.)

I'm a long-time Nick Cave fan, so a nice selection for today. And this is a solid album for him, thankfully, so a double-bonus! (Although probably not one of his best, oddly, so I'm not sure why this one was chosen.) A bummer, though, that making this album was such a painful and unhappy process; thankfully the conflicts with the producer don't show too badly (although I guess I'll have to listen to "Live Seeds" to get many of these songs the way Nick Cave was envisioning).

It's kind of hard to imagine that Nick Cave sang a variant of "Papa won't leave you, Henry" to his young son (and then admitted that it's a "kind of a nasty fucked-up lullaby").... "Brother, my cup is empty" is a great classic-Cave-sounding song (to me, at least).

A great selection for this project! Given how long the tracks are on this album, I doubt I've ever heard any of these songs before, at least in their original format, so it's really nice to hear an early release of an iconic artist. (Sadly, the YouTube Music link for this album includes the much shorter single/radio-friendly version of "Walk on By". The 12-minute version is so much more interesting, I'd say.)

It's fascinating to read that if not for Atlantic splitting with Stax, he probably wouldn't have even made this album, which would have been a shame for everyone. And not just Henry Rollins. :)

Despite having heard the song "American Pie" a zillion times, I'm not sure I've ever heard the rest of the album, so this is great. It's of course hard *not* to think of Don McLean as a one-hit wonder, given the well-deserved immortality of "American Pie", but his other hits on this album don't really compare, at least to me. But then again, I've never really warmed to most of the folk/ballad-style/easy-listening hits that seem to permeate 70s albums. (I did enjoy the sort of Dylanesque "Everybody loves me, baby," though, and I also enjoyed "The Grave".)

It's fun to read a little bit about the recording of "American Pie" (the song), and it makes me appreciate the backing band style and execution. And very cool that he (likely) got Pete Seeger, James Taylor, Carly Simon and others for the backup refrain towards the end of the song.

It's hard to know the best rating for this album. It's so much like "Alice's Restaurant", where there's just one (great) song that's stood the test of time, and the rest of the album kind of drags that song down in some ways. (Although "American Pie" is *so* much better than "Alice's Restaurant," I know.) So I'll settle for a wishy-washy 3 rating.

I feel like I've heard of Kings of Leon for a long time now, but have no idea what they sound like or even what genre they fit into. So it's nice to have an excuse to listen to an album by them (even if it is their debut album and likely *not* their best). I wasn't expecting a sort of retro-infused punk-lite/southern rock style (with a few other styles thrown in), but it's not bad, and certainly different than a lot of what was getting produced back then. It's amazing how *young* they were when this album got released, and how utterly homegrown their band and early albums were. It's also intriguing how much more popular the band has been outside the US (at least sales- and chart-wise ).

Although the overall sound is generally not like him or his band, the lead singer's voice occasionally strongly reminds me of Jonathan Richman, which probably isn't the Kings of Leon's intention, I suspect....