Reviews by mkaddour2001

For as much as this list pisses me off (sometimes), there are still those times when you get underground gems like this that would've gone completely under my radar otherwise. This nearly 50-minute experience was filled with filth, fuzz, industrial tendencies, anger, and a subtly amateurish edge. 'Rockets Are Red' goes unbelievably hard and I'd say 'Stain Down' is when the vocals on here really clicked for me - a song that leans into its grunge influences. 'Learned It' has the meanest riff on here, diabolically slick. The closing 'Bughouse' has some of the album's most disturbing lyrics - they're enigmatic but my interpretation is that these "men in white" are taking the protag to some sort of asylum. I also love the mix here, everything sounds so muffled...like you're listening to the music through a tin can communication line where the other side's at the planet's core.

This album conjures up this image of a bunch of underground vigil antes playing as loud as possible as they're trapped in some monoxide-leaking basement. It's kind of like watching a snuff film, except less gross and way more enjoyable.

Hypnotic and tenaciously consistent, this was my first Cohen album and I disliked it for those exact reasons. But something just clicked this time around - listening to this in my room on this gloomy Saturday morning probably had something to do with it. I loved it all...the raspy, brooding vocal delivery, the flamenco-inspired, crisp guitar arpeggios that are nothing short of ominous, the enigmatic songwriting peering into the worlds of love and religion - everything about this album screams authenticity and all its elements feel soulfully weighty. I gave up trying to dig into the meanings of these songs relatively early on...if there's anything I've learned from listening to Cohen's albums, for me at least, it's that its alliteration-heavy and non-linear nature is best absorbed emotionally rather than cerebrally, on the first go-around at least. Y'know with an emphasis on how each song and its corresponding imagery makes you feel. I could've paused the album between each song and tried to dig into some of its meanings by running back through the lyrics, but the vividness of the ideas and almost dreamlike images were effective enough so that I didn't need to do that. And I think that's the mark of truly incredible songwriting. The song 'Master Song' especially felt like being dragged through some intangible dream state while a song like 'So Long, Marianne' has its meaning painted on its face which makes sense given it's the catchiest thing here. Instrumentally, it's all very consistent with every song being acoustic guitar-driven and fiery without a single drum in sight - my favorite being the playing on 'Teachers'.

This is the musical equivalent of sitting in a dimly lit inn, with a single candle casting a faint light from across the room. It's so meditative and warm, yet undeniably unsettling and evocative.

It's about damn time I give Pink Floyd's seminal concept album 'The Wall' a second try - given I wasn't so big on it on the first go.

I'll start by tackling the concept of this thing - seeing as I've always found it fascinating more than anything. The first half is certainly more linear and easy to follow than the second. It follows the protagonist Pink growing up in WW2 time without a father, an oppressive schooling system, and a hover mother; with all these factors contributing to the fortification of the metaphorical wall the album bases its ideas around. I honestly like the idea of the wall because, to me, it doesn't represent any single feeling, rather, it just sort of takes on whatever form the band sees fit. In the first half, for example, I see it as representing a disconnection from human emotion - given Pink's rock n roll lifestyle and infidelity to his wife. In the second half, it seems to represent a sort of isolation from the real world, as the album goes into this drug-induced fever dream after 'Comfortably Numb' where Pink larps as a genocidal fascist - discovering his own worst fear. Pink, like the wall, is not a very cohesive character - his story, while fascinating, is very cluttered and messy. Rather he's just a means for the band to explore the various themes presented on this album. And I think that's my biggest issue with it all, it feels like it's trying to cover far too much ground with its concepts without really building on any of them - the final, overly animated 'The Trial' brings back many of Pink's character, but I find little to no resolution being provided. I know there's a film that goes along with this, and I'm eager to watch it one day - maybe it'll shed some light on some of the themes here that I didn't really get a good grasp on.

Alright, the songs. 'Another Brick in the Wall, Pt.2' is a frustrating listen—those child vocals are grating to my ears. The first verse-chorus was good enough when it was sung by Gilmour and Waters - I didn't need all the gimmicks. 'Mother' is a super cool song that subverts the listener's expectations - the mother is painted as another brick-placer in Pink's wall by obsessively coddling the child; even rejecting the child's romantic interests. It might be my favorite song from a lyrical POV - songs about mothers usually paint these warm, comforting images and this one does the same but evokes the opposite feeling, with this idea of being imprisoned by the one who loves you the most. It's honestly frightening and the atmospheric instrumentation complements it very well. 'Hey You' is a fiery way to kick off the second disc, as a whole, it might be the best song here - I love the second acoustic portion with Waters on vocals. It comes at a point where Pink is at, pretty much, rock bottom, and this song feels like this subtle glimmer of hope in the Wall's abyss. The lush strings on 'Nobody Home' and the guitar solo of 'Comfortably Numb' are a couple of other highlights for me. Everything else is decent sounding, my biggest issue with the production on here is just how clean and shiny it feels at times, you wouldn't have to tell me that this thing came out at the turn of the decade into the '80s, it sure as hell fits that soft-rocky and new-wavey sound, especially when you get to a song like 'Run Like Hell' - a low point for me. Also, I'm never a fan of the shorter, more interlude-type tracks here - in fact, I have a similar issue with 'Dark Side of the Moon'. Also 'The Trial' I actually can't stand - I know it's supposed to sound the way it does, sort of climactic and cartoony, bringing back various characters of Pink's life. But just because it sounds that way intentionally, doesn't mean it sounds good, not at all. The orchestral backing is cool enough, maybe the most ambitious moment on here instrumentally. I was never a fan of the final few songs with Pink's fascist turn in general, and this one track is the nail in that particular coffin.

So yeah, my opinion hasn't really changed at all. A cool and important album that I just can't get behind. But I'm sure it'll be due for yet another relisten in another couple of years or so and hey maybe it'll grow on me then...who knows.

Good ass post-punk - it's been a while since I've heard post-punk as good as this! It's not special or anything, it strips the genre's generally varied sounds down to their most rudimentary, which might be exactly what draws me to it. It's not barebones by any means, but fundamentally strong and punchy. There are still some experimental genre fusion moments here, especially on the song 'Positive Vibrations', which gives off this particular '60s psychedelic and pop-rock vibe...reminds me of The Who in that sense.

I'm not a fan of describing albums as "cool," but this album just feels like the people who made it are way fucking cool. Like how a song like 'Insanely Jealous of You' stutters its way through its bitter spoken-word passage with that tightly picked bassline egging it on. 'Tonight', for as catchy as it is, is quite unsettling lyrically—I didn't take it too seriously though; the album does an exceptional job at setting itself up to NOT be taken seriously on the lyrical front. 'Old Pervert' gives off very subtle 'Big Black' vibes with that cacophonous and twisted guitar riff - the subject matter too is very...ominous and quite disturbing.

This is the kind of cheeky post-punk from the early '80s that I can always get behind. This album cover rules too and 'I Wanna Destroy You' is a great ass song!

'Tiny Dancer' is a great song, but listening to this album felt like repeatedly listening to 'Tiny Dancer', for better or worse. Many of these songs sort of groove the same way, with those light piano keys and the subtle touches of string that build alongside the tracks. 'Madman Across The Water' was a nice change of pace and 'Indian Sunset' was epic in stature, and has John shedding light on American atrocities towards the natives. 'All The Nasties' had a nice gospel passage closing it out - might be my favorite moment on the album.

I do wish more songs stuck out, songs like 'Holiday Inn' and 'Razor Face', while nice on the ears, just tread the same water as many other songs here. I definitely enjoyed the diversity of an album like 'Goodbye Yellow Brick Road' more.

One of those albums where I have no idea what was going through the list composer's head when they decided I needed to hear this before I died. Is there some significance behind this particular soundtrack that I'm missing? Oh yeah, it's a soundtrack, which is primarily what rubbed me the wrong way.

Either way, it's not that bad or anything - it was honestly a nice change of pace from everything here, I love how grainy and lo-fi everything sounds - it's a loveable yet slightly unsettling aesthetic. Feels like an album that can be easily sampled too which is pretty neat, at least that's where my mind went while listening to this - thinking of all the potential sample opportunities.

I don't think I needed to hear this before I die, but for what it is - at least it didn't bore me to tears.

What a fun little listen! This is my first Willie Nelson album, and given his popularity, I was initially caught off guard by how minimalistic and rudimentary everything sounded here. Obviously, that didn't last long, you get a song like 'Down Yonder' deep into this album that sounds like something you'd hear in a saloon. I'd say the music and instrumentation open up and become more varied as the album progresses, which feels intentional given the story progression.

Willie Nelson is a great singer, but this album's obvious draw is its overarching story about the "stranger" protagonist. I mean it certainly lives up to its "outlaw country" genre tag, that guy kills his spouse for cheating and then kills a lady for touching his horse? Only to get to Denver and fall in love again. The love songs closing out the record, I assume targeted at this new love interest, were the highlights for me - specifically 'Hands on the Wheel' and 'Can I Sleep in Your Arms'. Given the guy is a borderline psychopath, the song 'Hands on the Wheel' detailing his aging and getting a family with this new girl was still very heartfelt and warm somehow. Speaks to Nelsons' talents I suppose.

Something about this album just feels really authentic. No unnecessarily long runtime and no posturing - just a nice little sonic journey through the country that's performed and written exceptionally well.

I'll never have any qualms or complaints about music that sounds like this. I mean, this Anita Baker album has it all - the vocals, the bubbly basslines, the blissful synths, and those lyrics that deeply capture the hot and cold feelings of love. Well, nothing here is particularly "cold" sounding per se, this might literally be the warmest, coziest, and heartiest an album can possibly sound - but a song like 'Been so Long' still manages to evoke the feeling that something is gravely missing.

'80s RnB and Soul was a weird time for the genre, fusing those overtly synthetic '80s sounds with the vocal style that dominated the genre in the previous decades. I mean after this, mainstream RnB would only grow more accustomed to the sounds of electronic music and only stray further away from those jazzier elements that encompassed the genre's roots. This liminal era of the genre can risk coming off as outdated, but that's not the case here by any means - Anita's vocal talents alongside the talents of the production crew are undeniable. It's lush, powerful, and emotive - a nice, clean listen if there ever was one.

I've never been a huge fan of a lot of these sample-based electronic albums from the mid-'90s - I find the sound it inherently builds upon can risk coming off as tacky or dated. Obviously, there are many exceptions - 'Endtroducing' exists and I'd say various releases by Massive Attack and the Chemical Brothers also hold their own. While I've heard of Fatboy Slim before, I've neglected to check out his work for this exact reason. After listening to this though, maybe it wasn't as bad as I thought it'd be. I mean you still have a song like 'The Weekend Starts Here' which I never want to listen to again, but there's also the incredible 'Santa Cruz' which coasts gorgeously into that guitar section in its more ambient-leaning closing minutes.

I'd say my biggest issue here, odd musical choices aside, is it just doesn't have any sort of distinctive musical identity. Not always a bad thing... after all, part of the the appeal of this genre is feeling like you're sifting through hundreds of records at a time, looking for one particular phrase to loop. But here everything feels particularly bland - there's no overarching mood established. The samples are here but they're almost always paired with these dated electronic sounds that can be borderline irritating. Also, the music sounds "big beat", but doesn't really feel big beat; the impeccable 'Dig Your Own Hole' by the Chemical Brothers would be released only a year later, and that's an album more committed to hammering that punchy, aggressive sound into the listener. I'd even say the song 'Everybody Needs a 303' off of this record sort of predicts the opening track of that CB album but the punch just isn't there.

When it's not annoying me to bits, it's a perfectly fine album in this vein. I'm willing to be a bit more generous on this album because there ARE some genuinely cool moments here; aside from 'Santa Cruz' I liked 'First Down' and 'The Sound of Milwaukee' a fair bit. Plus I was never one to be dismissive of genuine creativity, even when it's occasionally surrounded by stuff I find just okay.

I think I liked this one more than '...And Justice for All', but like many of Metallica's albums and due to its hour-plus runtime, my mind was numbed by the time I got to those last four songs. I think I was more conscious of that mind-numbing here though - I sort of enjoyed it. But all my general problems with Metallica, like my impartialness towards Hetfield's vocals, and the very cut-and-dry sound palate, are all present here - but they're sort of well masked behind the elements of this band's music that I DO enjoy. The ballads are still the highlights, obviously 'Nothing Else Matters' is great but I also really liked 'The Unforgiven' with its criticisms of oppressive religious organizations' stifling of free thought. The story behind this song is quite sad as well. The harder moments are solid too - I was never a big 'Enter Sandman' enjoyer myself but I get the song's appeal. The best moment for me was the entirety of 'My Friend of Misery', it came at a point in the album where I was already sort of tired - but it felt like an electric shock with just how varied, sharp, and twisted the guitar tones were alongside that ever-changing song structure. The wall of guitars of 'Hollier Than Thou' and Hammett's noisy solo on 'That God That Failed' are two other highlights that stuck with me.

Once again, it's the album's length that got me. Some genuinely good music here nevertheless, and maybe I'm finally growing more accustomed to Metallica's music - 4 albums in.

This is probably one of the few "super popular" and "super critically acclaimed" albums that I've never actually listened to. I hear so much about Amy Winehouse and how the tragedy surrounding her final years was so heavily reflected in her music. Having finally listened to this thing, the circumstances surrounding Winehouse's substance abuse and relationship turmoil are made very apparent. Right off the bat, you have a song called 'Rehab', where Amy talks about how she's NOT going to rehab. 'Some Unholy War', I feel, also delves into this apathetic and hedonistic lifestyle that Amy indulged in around this time. I don't claim to know much about her life or her struggles with drugs and alcohol, but this album sheds light on at least a bit of it. Many songs here tackle her turbulent relationships as well, be it with Nas on 'Me and Mr. Jones' or Blake Fielder-Civil with the big song off this album 'Back to Black'. 'Tears Dry on Their Own' may be my favorite song here, lyrically it shows Amy trying her best to move on despite the man "taking the day" - it's one of the more optimistic moments on the album. Another sort of light-hearted moment is the closer 'Addicted' - the vocal melody here resembles that of a classic vocal jazz record from the '50s. It's a seemingly "fun" way to close out the album as she tells some dude to go get his own weed instead of taking hers. But the title and context of the song still imply something very sad underneath the surface.

While I did like the lyrics, I'm maybe not so won over by the actual music here. Amy Winehouse is one hell of a vocalist with this deep, booming, and soulful timbre that's still very much flexible. But it's the production that drives these songs that made me enjoy this experience less than I expected to - and with many of these songs running under 3 minutes, I was left musically unsatisfied like there was still more to build on. The great songs are great, 'Back To Black' and 'Tears Dry On Their Own' stand their own in the track listing here. The monstrous and ominous piano driving the title track is nothing short of iconic and I love the breathy big-band and backing harmonies of 'Tears Dry On Their Own'. There are a lot of elements of the production here that have similarities to the sounds of late '90s east-coast hip hop and RnB, but even then, there's something about it that sounded unlike anything popular in the mid-2000s. I just wish it did more for me, something just didn't click.

As much as I hate to be "that guy", after just one listen (again ONE listen), I find this is an album I respect more than I enjoyed. It felt like an intricate dive into a struggling woman's psyche, a woman who I still know very little about. I'll give it another shot eventually but as of today, I'm still lukewarm on the actual music presented here.

These guys are part of the same genre as Blur and Oasis, as one of the \"big three\" Britpop bands, they sure sound more musically ambitious. It's still all a bit too sanitized for me - and kind of long-winded. I like my sub-pop genres to be immediate, but this album feels like the opposite.

My three favorite songs 'Sylvia', 'Glory Days' and 'Help The Aged' are the stickiest songs here - everything else leans into this "art pop" sound that was never doing anything that blew me away. Not to say any of it is bad, it's just that the layer of polish on the more ambitious cuts here like 'This Is Hardcore' and especially 'The Day After the Revolution' with its long outro makes everything a bit too artificial. I didn't really care for 'Seductive Barry' either, not until its final minutes at least where those strings come in.

At times, it reminds me of Lloyd Cole the commotions' jangle-pop sounds with just how all over the place it can be. The vocals and music are still solid, I suppose.

Probably Tom Waits' artistic masterpiece - it's been a while since I've sifted through his discography but 'Bone Machine' has always stood out to me as his experimental magnum opus. At its dirtiest, it's the harshest he's ever sounded, significantly less accessible than say 'Rain Dogs'. The production at times is filthy, tribal, and non-sensical, fitting the album title 'Bone Machine' quite well. The "bone" part, I'd say, fits the more skeletal-sounding moments here, like on the unpredictable percussive barrages of 'Such A Scream' or the overblown metallic clanging of "In The Colosseum" - a song melodically driven by a sole low-mixed double-bass line. The "Machine" part plays into this album's industrial tendencies, like with the almost dark-ambient-sounding 'The Ocean Doesn't Want Me'. But that's only half of the story, like many of Waits' previous works, you still have these gorgeous ballads that break up the at-times exhaustingly oppressive production with songs like the twinkling arpeggiated-guitar driven 'Who Are You', the steel-pedal kissed dreary piano-ballad 'A Little Rain', and the warm horn-driven 'Dirt In The Ground'. Some upbeat bangers here as well - 'Goin' Out West' did not need to go this hard and 'Black Wings' might have the best guitar work on the entire album.

I'm not going to talk about Tom Waits' vocals because it's not something that needs not be talked about - it makes its brilliance known almost immediately. And like on many of his records, it sort of takes on many different forms. 'The Earth Died Screaming' alone shows both of Tom's "extremes" with the dirty blues affectation in the verses, and the howling and slurred cries in the chorus. One thing's for certain though, no matter what direction he goes in vocally, you can rest assured knowing that this growly, smoky, "Are you holding in a cough?" vocal delivery is going to be there. It's the mark of Tom Waits' music, NOBODY sounds like him.

Lyrically, this one's a masterwork. Right off the bat, you get two relatively pessimistic songs, featuring the oh-so-gleeful topics of apocalypse and morality. The twisted narratives of 'Black Wings' and 'Murder In The Red Barn' sort of reinforce this album's morbid themes, and they're so beautifully contrasted by 'Whistle Down the Wind' which has similar messaging, following a man at the end of his life, but it presents itself more peacefully. While 'Whistle Down the Wind' deals with acceptance, the following (incredibly catchy) folksy 'I Don't Wanna Grow Up' almost goes in the opposite direction - sounding like a man realizing the horrors of life's mundanity as an adult and going crazy.

The back-and-forth between easily digestible, and harsh sounds is the main attraction here. Regardless of which clump of songs you may prefer, the constant change-ups make for a perfectly balanced listen, one where you don't feel like you're hearing the same thing over and over again. A kickass album with so many kickass moments, there is just no one like Tom Waits.

We are gathered here today to get through this thing called "life"

You need to listen no further than the third song, 'The Beautiful Ones,' to understand why many consider this to be one of the most forward-thinking pop-rock albums of the '80s. This is one of those albums where it feels like you've heard every song before, even if you've never heard any of them. While I do think the production can be a bit "much" at times, especially on the sci-fi funk monster that is 'Computer Blue', I don't mind it all that much - it adds to this colorful fictional world aesthetic Prince paints on this record. I've never seen the movie associated with this album and I kind of don't want to - I prefer using my imagination to piece together my own strange abstract film when listening to this, one filled with hopeless romance, robots, sex, sex robots, and a lot of purple. And while kind of clunky at times, there are some undoubtedly smooth moments in the more electronic-leaning side of the production here, like on 'I Would Die 4 U'. Also it's always a treat whenever you get one of Prince's guitar solos on here...more on that later.

And Prince's voice, with all its finesse and vigor, is one of the best in this lane of pop-rock, with one of the standout performances being on the raunchy and groovy 'Darling Nikki' where he rolls with this smoky and slurred delivery that perfectly fits the vibe of the song. It's a voice with a lot of character, especially when he's hitting the listener with these aggressive, voice-straining shrieks in the latter part of 'Darling Nikki' and especially 'The Beautiful Ones' where my throat hurts just listening to him.

While I can casually enjoy most of this album's songs, it also contains two of my favorite rock songs ever. 'When Doves Cry' on here has Prince dialing it back vocally a bit with this deeper inflection - but my god it has the most ear-wormy set of vocals driving its chorus. The sort of sparse instrumentation that drives the first half of this song, with just those keys and the booming drum machine makes the instrumental explosion in its closing minutes so much more impactful. You can probably guess but the second one of these songs is 'Purple Rain' - a song that is relentlessly '80s in nature but timeless at the same time. A string-backed slow-ballad turned explosive, sentimental guitar solo, with gorgeous vocal cries, and building instrumentation - there is nothing quite like it. No pretension, no posturing, just pure beauty for 8 and a half minutes. For me, this is THE best of the popular "long" rock songs that have been released throughout history - it's not even close.

I really dig this thing if you couldn't tell, it's an album that's just beaming with life, texture, and personality and it's the music only an eccentric superstar like Prince could make.

I remember hearing this album a few years back but don't remember much about it aside from the fact that I didn't find it very memorable. Funnily enough, it sounds like something I would've dug back then, only to have it grow off me over the years...but with this most recent listen, it seems to have had the opposite effect. That's to say...I really enjoyed my time with it this time around.

I've always been a sucker for music that sounds genuinely unique and this album fits that bill - I mean just the genre "Math-pop" is not one I see thrown around all that often. Calling it incohesive would be an understatement - at times it sounds like various patches of sound being swirled around some hipster's room, clashing seemingly at random. It almost feels incomplete, like the various tracks on each song are actually from very different songs. The at-times incomprehensible mix of wayward percussive patterns and fidgety vocal harmonies makes everything feel very tribal. But it didn't take very long for the stuttering nature of the music and backing harmonies to latch itself onto my pattern-recognition sensors or whatever. I'd say I enjoyed most of what this "cerebral" sound had to offer but I found the best songs to be the two more "streamlined" ones featuring the artists on this album cover. 'Stillness Is The Move' with Amber Coffman still maintains that strange indietronica sound, but it sounds infinitely more cohesive than anything that came before it. It's like the perfect 2000s indie-pop song fusing the sounds of guys like LCD Soundsystem and Animal Collective. The following 'Two Doves' with Deradoorian goes in a baroque direction with these mesmerizing sweeping string sections - and snuggly fitting vocals.

So you have these two perfect indie-folk and pop songs and then everything else is just...kind of hit or miss. I mean there are plenty of interesting sounds to gawk at here in a "Wow that sounds cool!" kind of way, but in terms of actual songs I see myself returning to? There aren't too many. But eh, I'd still say the sum of those milder parts just sounds way too cool for me to care.

Some solid late-80s RnB-pop, not unlike the sounds of superstars like Prince and Michael Jackson - though it hasn't aged quite as well as the music from those artists. I liked certain songs, like 'Wishing Well', and especially 'I'll Never Turn My Back On You', with its sentimental messaging, and Sananda is a great vocalist in this lane, but my biggest gripe remains - this album is just too derivative and all over the place. 'Dance Little Sister' tries to go in a Wonder-esque funk direction - which I didn't particularly enjoy, given how clean and one-not it all felt. 'Seven More Days' was pretty interesting - like a few other songs here, it's religiously themed and gospel-inspired but, mainly, I found the inclusion of a steel-pedal guitar in this song made the whole thing stand out. The instrumentation here is nothing to cry home about either, though I appreciated the acapella song 'As Yet Untitled', showcasing Sananda's vocal chops in this echoey, sparse, environment - though maybe it didn't need to be 5 minutes.

None of this music is bad or anything (I think the closing 'Who's Loving You' is as perfect as RnB can get), it's just that if someone were to ask me "What makes Sananda Maitreya's music special in terms of '80s RnB" I wouldn't know how to answer - at least not after this first listen. If anything, It just made me want to listen to Prince.

This might be my favorite Cohen album. Released shortly before his passing, this record beautifully captures what made his 'Songs For Love and Hate' so powerful to me, its subtle beauty. Say for maybe the choir-backed opening and 'Travelling Light', all the music here is subdued, sparse, and minimalistic (even by Cohen's standards), allowing for Cohen's voice to shine through like on no other album he's ever recorded. Lyrically speaking, themes of religion and love are dominant, and while I failed to catch it all, I had the internet to help guide me on some of these meanings. 'It Seemed the Better Way' stuck out to me as a particularly striking track as Leonard writes about his past relationship with a zen master, who years later would be accused of sexual misconduct. The opening title track has Cohen talking to god directly in a sort of confrontational matter. The song 'Treat' may be my favorite Cohen song - melodically and instrumentally it's utterly gorgeous with Cohen yearning for some sort of satisfying resolution to a waning relationship.

I think I can get frustrated when I'm thrown a set of lyrics, and poems that I'm unable to fully "get" upon first listen - I felt that with this album about three tracks in. For my own sake though, I decided to stop caring so much about catching every little detail, and I ended up enjoying this thing much more. I still tacked on my interpretations to many of these songs, but I wasn't so much concerned with understanding Cohen's intent for writing every single line, rather I decided to just enjoy the writing, metaphors, singing, and flow of the songs at face value. Maybe I'll deep dive into this thing's core thematic elements more in the future, but as of today, my enjoyment of this album came from just how at peace it made me feel.

I've always found that Sonic Youth's talents lie primarily in their ability to combine these raw, twisted, industrial, yet consistently interesting sound pieces to form these transportive abstract soundscapes - at least that's what I liked about them on previous albums, my favorite being EVOL. Here, everything seems deliberately ironed out which makes for a more visceral and cohesive experience - to the point where you get a banging straight-forward alternative cut with 'Kool Thing' - a song that oozes swagger. I'd say the same applies to the following 'Mote', which may be the catchiest tune here, barring, of course, that wall of distortion and noise that encompasses the track in its final minutes. More than anything, this is just such a finely curated noise-rock experience, I can't express how much I appreciate Sonic Youth's knack for evenly balancing noise and melody - it's always been what made them so special. I'd say 'Cinderella's Big Score' is the perfect example of this - especially in the segment where Kim comes in and her reverb vocals backdrop this melodic bassline and fast-picked distorted guitar section - it's borderline suffocating, but the way the guitar sounds ring and pierce through the mix is nothing short of heavenly. The Gordon-fronted 'Tunic (Song For Karen)' has a euphoric flurry of guitar melodies driving the verses. I love Kim's talk delivery here as she details the struggles and eventual passing of Karen Carpenter at the hands of anorexia. The melodic tendencies of this album also carry over to the consistently melodic hooks and vocal passages that, regardless of how buzzingly noisy the instrumental is, maintain a level of accessibility and ear-worminess - 'Titanium Expose' being the best example of this.

This balance between noise and beauty is something very few musicians can pull off, with many tending towards one direction, often at the expense of the other. But many of Sonic Youth's albums strike this balance - giving you so many different "sounds" to chew on. It's something I've always appreciated about them and it's always made their music very easy to enjoy for me.

Post-hardcore is a strange genre. While commonly associated with emo-leaning sounds nowadays, an album like this exhibits the genre at its most primal - and sounds, at times, like a long-lost Fugazi album. Yet I can see how a band like this influenced 'At The Drive-In', a band that was crucial in the more emotional-hardcore direction the genre went into in the 2000s. It's a nice bridge between those two distinctive, yet interrelated sounds.

Well given my affinity for Fugazi (them being one of my favorite, if not my favorite band of all time), I felt right at home listening to this. The twisted, noisy guitar passages, the mind-pummelling riffs - paired with the occasional shimmering arpeggio to brighten things up from time to time, it's all here - in spades. I mean it when I say, for 50 or so minutes, you're getting the absolute peak of what this sound had to offer in the '90s - though admittedly no one song stood out to me upon first listen. Instead, I just found myself lost in the long, puzzling, winding song structures of songs like 'Luau' that never seem to revisit the same motif more than once. That song, 'Luau', also has some of the wildest sets of aggressively pitched, feedback-looped, and plucked guitar tones I've heard out of this genre in those final couple minutes - it's sick. The weird noises this group manages to squeeze out of these guitars all across this thing kept me wondering what bizarre noise I was going to be hit with next - I loved the fast picking and strange, yet genuinely gorgeous bridge of the song 'Super Unison' for example. There's also that fluttering and blisteringly animalistic chirping tone near the halfway mark of the closing 'Sinews'. By the time I was done with this thing, I felt like I had just woken up from a fever dream - nothing on here seemed to make any sense, yet it all came together seamlessly.

Y'know this is one of those albums that I know for an absolute FACT will continue growing on me with subsequent listens - there's just so much to chew on here, especially lyrically (which I didn't get much into on my first listen - I was too enamored by the NOISE). And I think, in general, 'Drive Like Jehu' is pretty underrated when it comes to discussing influential alternative rock groups from the '90s. Pure ecstasy in noise.

Ah yes, Grateful Dead. A band I've heard so much about but have never actually listened to. And by the sounds of it, this live 'Live/Dead' album was a great place to start. For as much as I enjoyed this though, I don't have much to say about the songs individually. They were fun to space out to, starting from the very jammy, improvisational, jazzy, and sparkling cut 'Dark Start'. The song 'The Eleven' was probably the best fusion of relentless jamming and catchiness - I love the vocals that come in alongside that killer riff 3/4th of the way through. The bass tone here also sounds super fat, likely as a result of the live nature of the recording, which goes over fairly well for the majority of this album. The best bassline though has to be the jovial one driving the following 'Turn on Your Love Light', it's so fun and familial. I love the way this particular track ramps up in its final couple minutes with the riffy-vocals coming to a head alongside these building drums patterns. I don't know how to feel about the closing 'Feedback' - it certainly lives up to the title and there are some hints of direction and melody here, but ultimately you are just getting a bunch of noise for like...7 minutes. Hey, I guess it's ahead of its time, even proto-done in its final minutes or so.

I really had no idea what to expect from this band - but this long, satisfying, jammy live album was exactly what I needed to unwind tonight. I think I really like this band, though maybe I'll need to listen to some of their studio records before reaching that conclusion.