Reviews by mkaddour2001

I'm of the firm belief that Ella Fitzgerald has one of the most perfect voices in the history of popular music. It's round, luscious, vibrant, and above all else, warm and welcoming. Her melodic patterns are instantly recognizable and easy to fall into and trace along with. The moments on this album where the backing Big Band breaks through these mixes to lightly contrast Fitzgerald's vocals (like on the song 'I Can't Be Bothered Now') are undeniably visceral. There's subtle variety in the instrumentation here; primarily in the many ways they're used to complement the lead vocals. The Gershwin brothers are notably talented songwriters, with a majority of these songs being charmingly witty and quaint takes on the ideas of hopeless, driven, or contemplative love. There are some truly great moments on this album, like the rhumba and flute-driven musical interlude in the aptly named 'Just Another Rhumba' that eventually transforms into this wall of horns. Or the serene strings driving the slower 'Embraceable You' and a lot of the other slower songs here. I also love the scat singing (something I admittedly wish Ella did more of on this album) on 'I Got Rhythm' which is maybe my favorite song here. The final classical-influenced instrumental disc here elegantly closes this odyssean album.

When I listen to these super old albums, they either sound irritatingly antiquated or they successfully take me back to their time. This album undeniably facilitates the latter effect; one that is only amplified by the clean mix that gives each element of this album adequate space to flourish. Considering its length, it's a feat that this much good music exists here (not even considering Fitzgerald covers the entire American Songbook throughout the rest of this saga). It just seem like there's an endless stream of ideas and talent on display on this consistent monster of a vocal jazz record.

It's hard to tackle specific songs here but within this giant tracklist, my favorites are 'Let's Call The Whole Thing Off', ‘By Strauss, ‘The Real American Folk Song’, 'Boy Wanted', ‘Of Thee I Sing’, 'Slap That Bass', 'Embraceable You', 'Oh So Nice', and 'I Got Rhythm'.

This is my first time listening to Sepultura, but I've heard only good things about them. The entire album is structured and presented in this very monochromatic and skeletal way where it wasn't any particular riff that hooked me, but rather the general harsh, distorted, and fuzzy blend of sounds. As a result, I found the sonic palette to be very reserved and restrictive here but luckily, the motif followed is still largely enjoyable. The variance on this album comes from the occasional interjections that stray from this album's locked-in course. This is seen in the second half of 'Desperate Cry', the spikes of noise on 'Subtraction', and the ethereal and almost tribal opening to 'Altered State'. Variation also comes in terms of the lyrical themes tackled here. While the general theme of human suffering, nature, and greed (with a religious focus) are persistent, 'Altered State' has Max tackling the theme of hallucinogenics, again showing some interesting variance. I particularly love the way these general themes are tackled in songs like 'Dead Embryonic Cells' and especially the closer 'Infected Voice'. They present a very bleak outlook for humanity that perfectly complements this album's dismal vibe.

Overall, I enjoyed this album and I think it really benefits from its very consistent and restrictive approach. It makes it all feel very organized, calculated, and raw, all without sacrificing its troubled presentation and skull-crushing thrash metal sound.

Bizarre Ride is correct. I remember listening to this The Pharcyde album way back (must've been like 4 years now). I vaguely had this idea of just how out there, cartoony, and overtly lude it was, and upon revisiting I was expecting a watered-down version of those memories. That certainly wasn't the case.

One thing I love about this album is just how focused each of the four MCs is. Each song here has a single motif, established by the title of the song, and each member throws either a comedic twist or a grounded take relating to the motif. 'Oh Shit', the opener, has each MC telling a story that would result in those "Oh Shit" moments (some being questionable). '4 better or 4 worse' has four parts with each MC reaching different ethical conclusions relating to their respective relationships, with Fatlip's verse being particularly eccentric. 'Officer' tackles different run-ins with the police while "Ya Mama" is just as absurd as its title makes it out to be. 'Passin' Me By' shows the four tackling lost love at various levels. The best part of this album is its lyrical personality. There's so much character coming out of all the vocals and soulful refrains here. Each MC brings their fair share of witty one-liners and fitting anecdotes, all of which are delivered with these varied and smooth flows. It's even more impressive considering this came out back in 1992; it sounds years ahead of a lot of the jazz rap that was coming out at the time (lyrically speaking).

While The Pharcyde are from the West Coast, the sounds here are undeniably influenced by the jazz-rap sounds coming out of the East Coast at the time. Production-wise, you get what you'd expect here. While not every beat here is standout (for example, I'm not a fan of the more skeletal 'Pack The Pipe'), everything here is undeniable smooth and easy on the ears. I love the strange backing vocal snippets on 'Soul Flower', it's one of those small things that still adds a lot of flavor to an otherwise straightforward track. Simplicity is the key here, there are so many perfect loops like on 'Passin' me By', 'Otha Fish', and 'Oh Shit'. I love when the band harmonizes on certain refrains here, especially on the outro of 'Otha Fish'. Even though these beats are repetitive, the constant interjections and adlibs from the members of the group and the DJ scratching here ensure these songs never get boring. The skits here are generally hilarious and fun and it helps that they're not strictly skits and are typically backed with solid beats as well.

I think the second half of this album is a bit less impactful than the first, but I genuinely think this is one of the most unique hip-hop albums of its time on a conceptual level. Considering its release date, I feel like this album was some sort of demonstration that hip-hop can be delivered in this tongue-and-cheek , colorful, and comedic way. It shows that there's room in hip-hop for less serious ideas, all the while still respecting the foundational aspects and ethos of the genre. It also just sounds really really good.

While I enjoyed most this album's very surreal, psychedelic, and mostly tranquil presentation, I do wish it was more varied in its overall presentation. Donovan was an artist whom I was quite unfamiliar with but I effectively got what I expected given the scattered album art and genre descriptors attached to this album. With hypnotic sounds and Eastern influences in quite a few of its songs, it all feels very much like an LSD trip which was something Donovan was all too familiar with around this time. His writing is as abstract as it could get, with fantastical imagery populating most of the lyrics on the tracks here. It's a neat effect, especially early on, but it was also lulling in a way, and without many strong nor evident lyrical concepts to latch onto, I felt almost lost. Maybe this was the artistic intention, but it didn't work wonders for me.

There were a few exceptions to this. For one, I love the opening title track. Reading into it more, it seems the song is about his future wife and it's really sweet in its depiction of love, if a bit forward. I enjoyed "Bert's Blues" only because of how punchy it was after the series of much slower tracks. It's the most musically ambitious track here, even exploding into a jazz classical piece near the end. The closer "Celeste" is one of the most immaculately produced songs here, with gorgeous synths and a sonic space that's filled to the brim with these atmospheric noises. I read it as another love song, possibly directed at the same person from the first song, bookending this album nicely.

Donovan's LSD-filled Los Angeles trip which supposedly inspired the record certainly gives a lot of weight to the themes and ideas presented here. And while I appreciate that, I couldn't fully enjoy the aimlessness of some of the slower tracks here. It's a record that requires some digesting, and considering this is only a first listen, I expect my opinions would change on subsequent listens. But for now, I'm only lukewarm on this.

I heard this album quite a long time ago so I was very much excited to revisit the other songs from here that weren't 'Lazarus'. This album is famously legend David Bowie's final album before his unfortunate passing just a few days later, and its themes and atmosphere certainly reflect that.

Despite its unfortunate context, listening to this album never really made me sad. I hope that doesn't come off the wrong way, but to me, it seemed like Bowie had this firm grasp on the idea of his life and death. It's certainly dark in many of its themes, but also enigmatic in what exactly Bowie was trying to say in a lot of these songs relating to himself, his relationships, and his legacy. I for one, always had trouble trying to decypher some of the lyrics on the title track. The imagery of something eternal, unknown, and looming is ever-present in the lyrics, but the idea of
a "black star" I feel is overly ambigous and left up to the interpretation of the listener.

This album's jazz fusions are its standout, mainly with the saxophone cropping up all over these tracks. There's a very unique sound being adapted here, one that's clean, calculated, and electronic, but also orchestral and larger than life in its presentation. The title track for instance feels like you're floating in an endless vacuum, especially with Bowie's echoey and distant howls and cries over these spacious synths fluttering the background. The following "Tis' Was a Pity She Was a Whore" is more direct in its potency and contains one of my favorite vocal performances by Bowie.

"Lazarus" is my undeniable favorite track here. An existentially horrifying depiction of falling into an unknown plane, not knowing what you've left behind nor what's in store for you. His screams of "Look up here man, I'm in danger" under these crashing guitar hits always harrowed me. The saxophone sending off the song is great too.

The first three tracks are utterly perfect and all the following ones are still pretty great. I especially love "Girl Loves Me", it's another more abstract track that's harder to understand but the refrain further reinforces some of this album's existentially harrowing themes. I love the airy synths on the closer "I Can't Give Everything Away", Bowie's Swan song, and one that never fails to make me misty-eyed. Its lyrics are partially regretful but also show Bowie accepting the inevitable.

While not every song here lands for me, this album is *truly* one of a kind. It tells the story of a legend who kept giving to his last moments, through a medium that he's always been undoubtedly passionate about. David Bowie's legacy will continue to live on through his music, but this album in particular is an intricate snapshot of the star's final moments, wrapped in something truly other-worldly and beautiful.

This was an alright album but definitely not one that I'll revisit. I was sort of surprised that this album was released in 1990 as it's drenched in many of the hard-rock tropes that were seen in the late 70s, some that I'm not really a fan of. The playing is good, yeah, but it didn't stop most songs from boring me due to how boilerplate and unmemorable they feel. I know this is only a first-listen thing, but the flows of these songs just sound so mundane and run-of-the-mill. Ironically enough, the slower jams like "Jealous Again" and especially "Seeing Things" were my favorites here. The latter of which is an organ-driven and heart-wrenching ballad with some of the better writing. "She Talks to Angels" is another slower track about a heroin-addicted girl and one of the more insightful tracks here. I think lead vocalist and writer Chris Robinson's ability to paint a sympathetic image of the protagonist here goes over very well. This is my favorite song here.

The tracks that grooved harder had some powerful and noisy moments (like the short solos on "Struttin' Blues") but as entire songs, none worked for me. Doesn't help that I'm not a fan of the vocals on these types of songs to being with. They're certainly a talented band and I almost feel bad acting so dismissive after just one listen, but this sound is just not for me.

Elvis Costella is another artist that I've been meaning to check out for a while after hearing that he brings out the more artsy elements of New Wave. In a lot of ways, it sounds sort of like an Eno production, with these very colorful flourishes of organ, piano, and bass with a lot of baroque influence, especially on a song like "You Little Fool". The instrumentation paints something sort of abstract, similar to the vocals, it all feels very sporadic and linear in its progression. I love the string and horn combination on the closer track "Town Cryer".

Lyrically speaking, Elvis delves into themes of love throughout this album in interesting ways, especially on a song like "Pidgin English". I found the song "Human Hands" to be an almost comedic spin on this album's themes. I can give Elvis a lot of credit on the songwriting front, but his dynamic vocal style doesn't work for me, especially in the middle part of this album. I'm not sure why though, he's not a bad singer, just very derivative to an almost parodical degree. I'm not a fan of the general direction a lot of the vocal melodies go in here either. There are some exceptions like "Human Hands", "Little Fool", "Man Out of Time" and "Shabby Doll", some of my favorite songs here and great new wave songs in general.

In the end, while I found this to be a very pleasant listen, I felt like it was held back but relatively uninteresting song structures. All the pieces needed to make this a great album are there, it's just that they don't come together in a way that works for me specifically. For new-wave though, I admire its ambitious nature and cross-genre sensibilities.

As a ginormous ATCQ fan, I've always, regrettably, dismissed their debut album. But I was always aware of its undeniable influence in the Jazz rap genre, ironing out many of the cluttered and eclectic jazz-sampling styles of late 80s groups like De La Soul. If I recall, I always found this album too long and repetitive, and I couldn't enjoy the more simplistic rhyming when compared to their two impeccable follow-ups "Low-End Theory" and "Midnight Marauders". With that said, I've scarcely revisited this one recently aside from a few songs, so I was super excited to dig in again.

I used to listen to this album a lot back in school during my 7 AM commutes to campus, and it always had this sleepy and hypnotizing effect on me, especially during those bleak mornings. I used to listen to ATCQ a lot back then. I feel like everything I initially didn't like about this album miraculously turned into the reasons I now love it. It's very well produced, and the cleanliness of the jazz beats here was a feat at the time. They're fuzzy and crackly, but undeniably cohesive, driving, and heavy. Their repetitiveness, and repetitiveness in hip-hop in general, is an acquired taste. It becomes less about looking for something new within each song, and more about letting already-established grooves and rhythms latch onto you. This album does that very well.

I love the triumphant horns on "Luck of Lucien". "I Left My Wallet in El Segundo" is one of the most fun beats to listen to here because of that driving drum beat that's filled with so much character. "Bonita Applebum" has a dirty guitar sample interjecting a more typical jazz groove resulting in an almost dissonant effect that still manages to work very well. I love the ethereal opening to "Rhythm" and the looped vocal sample across "Mr. Muhammad" sounds ahead of its time in a weird way, almost EDM-esque as well. I love the fat, bassy groove of "Go Ahead in Rain"

So yeah, the beats are great. But another thing that made me apathetic towards this album was its rapping. For one, Q-tip is very much at the forefront. He's an incredibly smooth MC, but Phife's yelpy, loud, and comedic rapping was something I always loved in these tribe albums. He is on quite a few songs here, but most of the songs here are purely Q-tip songs. The rapping here is fun, easy-going, and (for the most part) wholesome. With the exception of a song like "Pubic Enemy", a deconstruction of the prevailing spread of STDs, many of these songs are admittedly meandering. Simple punch lines and simpler premises are what you get here. "I Left My Wallet in El Segundo" is an aimless story of Q forgetting his wallet in a pub, yet it's still fun to listen to every time. "Ham N' Eggs" promotes healthy eating and "Bonita Applebum" is a nice little love song. This wholesome and easy-to-digest style of writing is very love-or-hate and your enjoyment of it can vary based on your current mood. Aside from Phife and Q, you have Jarobi doing the little interludes and Ali Shaheed Muhammad on DJ duty. Despite being more in the "background" upon initial listening, their presence is still very much felt.

I have to mention the song "Can I Kick It" as a whole because it's largely important to me. I love the bass loop that this beat primarily consists of, it's so warm and welcoming. I know it's sampled from a Lou Reed song, but to me, the bass works wonders over Q-tip and Phife's rapping here. It's a song that promotes a steady loosening of impeding stressors and worries through a love for music. I don't find it hard to call this one of the greatest rap songs of all time.

I don't think it's a surprise that I liked this way more than I remember from years back, I almost knew that would be the case. Tribe still stand as one of the most important groups to me in my early music discovery journey. While I do think this record is a tad bit bloated, it still contains that soul, emotion, wholesomeness, and life that I yearn for in jazz-rap records.

Because I've only ever heard "You Really Got Me" by the Kinks before (a song that I'm admittedly not a big fan of), I was expecting something sort of hard rocky out of this album. Boy, how wrong I was.

There's an undeniable charm to the simplicity of both the lyrics and instrumentals here, something common among pop-rock groups in the 60s; it reminded me a lot of earlier Beatles records. My enjoyability here varied from song to song, I'll start with the ones I really liked. Early on, I love the song "Death of a Clown" with this almost surreal backing vocal melody over Ray's metaphorical depictions of the soul-sucking aspects of show business, likening it to the shallow one-trick routines of a clown. The following "Two Sisters" might be the most striking song here, I wish more songs sounded like it. For one, I like the hypnotic harpsichord paired with one of the most haunting vocal melodies on the album. I'd say it's unsettling if it weren't for the wholesome message here; a story of two sisters (paralleling Dave and Ray's brother dynamic) learning to be content with themselves and their differences. I also really liked the song "Situation Vacant". Over a more straightforward rock groove, this song tells the story of a man handicapping himself to keep his mother-in-law satisfied, digging himself into a deep, irredeemable hole after a divorce by the end. I love the fact that this otherwise depressing song sounds super cheerful.

Quite a few songs near the beginning are quite enjoyable, like "Harry Rag" and "Tin Foil Man". It's really in the second half where this album begins to lose me. I found the more straightforward production on a song like "End of the Season" for example to be very drab. For how short it is, I do feel like this album's ideas and variance is limited. Not to say the songs are bad, it's just that I won't be revisiting the more conventional pop-rock songs in the second half of this album. The very obvious exception to this is "Waterloo Sunset", a serene closer and maybe one of the best 60s pop-rock songs I've ever heard.

I'm eager to check out more The Kinks records because I'm sure they still have a lot more of these infectious and ambition-sounding songs in their catalog. And while I do enjoy the psychedelic edge and insightful lyrics here, I can't say everything I heard on this album blew me away.

I'll be honest, I wasn't too keen on listening to Def Leppard primarily because I had this image in my head of an 80s glam rock band that made irritatingly antiquated and streamlined hard rock music. And, in a way, I was right, but the album won me over purely based on its more ambitious and interesting execution of that cheesier hair metal sound.

With longer songs here, Def Leppard is capable of fleshing out the mood of each one of these songs quite well, establishing unique sounds, riffs, patterns, and ideas that, even if you don't like them at the beginning, will force themselves into your head by the end. I can't recall the number of times a song started up and I was like "This one's not for me" and then by the time it got to the end, I was banging my head along to the chorus. The choruses are typically the highlights, with anthemic explosions of sheer catchiness not unlike many songs by Iron Maiden for example. My favorite choruses had to be "Women", "Rocket" (probably my favorite), and "Pour Some Sugar on Me". Instrumentally, the songs range from psychedelic to balladesque, to more typical throwback 70s hard rock-type sounds. I'll say the latter approach comes off as my least favorite, especially when those group, yelpy, chorus vocals come in; those genuinely sound terrible to me. I think the worst offender is "Excitable".

Lyrically, there's not much to digest here. Not to say the lyrics aren't substantive, it's just that they take a back seat when compared to the rest of this album's parts. The song "Gods of War" stood out as the overtly political and anti-war song here, even stitching in a Reagen sample near the end. Aside from that, blood-pumping and magnetic themes of love are what you'll expect across most of these songs.

I enjoy the songs near the beginning way more. As the album went on, I just found a lot of the vocal lines tended to bog the songs down. I will say, the first few songs won me over like nothing else. I even loved the slow ballad "Love Bites" which is such an unexpected left turn from the previous songs. Despite its many blaring flaws, there's still a charm to this album that I can't deny, so I still really enjoyed my time with it.

I've heard of Buck Owens and was relatively excited to check him out, but I have to admit I got very little out of this album. I'll still say it's somewhat enjoyable but it certainly doesn't benefit from its simplicity. Everything about this album is simple and boilerplate; the lyrics, the themes of the lyrics, the singing, and especially the backing instrumentation.

There are some alright moments here, like the title track and I like the sparkling guitar that opens up "Let the Sad Times Roll". The deeper vocal delivery on "Streets of Laredo" was something as well. When it comes down to it though, I was bored and was in a perpetual state of "waiting for something to happen". It didn't even have that effect older albums typically do where they shoot me back to their time. I will compliment it by saying that emits this very somber, longing, yet simultaneously minimal and monotonous "satisfaction with what's here" kind of vibe. It's the reason why I found this album, as a whole, to still be decent listening.

I'm sure its significance is there in the honky tonk genre; it's just a significance I wasn't capable of appreciating due to how drab it all felt. Again though, I didn't flat-out hate it.

This was a very sweet listen. I feel ashamed to say that I've never tapped into the albums of legendary Reggae artist Bob Marley. He was given the unfortunate fate of being stuck in my endless backlog. Now that I think about it, I don't think I've dived into Reggae too heavily in general.

I've certainly heard Reggae before, and this album fits the exact image I had of the genre in my head. Most of these tracks contain pretty "generic" Raggae-type grooves with thick basslines, a slow and varied set of stuttering drums, and skank guitar strumming. It's really what's on top of those pieces that sort of "fill in the blanks" and adds a discernable texture to these songs. I love the electric guitar on the song "Baby We've Got a Date" for instance, it's psychedelic-esque and ends the track off beautifully; it feels like sailing into a sunset. I love the synth closing up the following "Stir it Up". The clav and organ add a subtle dramatic edge to the song "No More Trouble", one of my favorites here. The common theme between all these instruments is how easy-going they are. They're textured, wide, and filling. I sort of dismissively mentioned the other instruments earlier but that wasn't my intention; the backing band does exactly what it needs to do. The bass is incredible, comprising entirely of the lower end, it sounds so clean in the mix and is incredibly melodic. It's what drives the heart of all these songs. I also enjoy those little drum fills which are, again, a pretty common Reggae staple.

Marley himself is an incredible vocalist. He's a powerful but lowkey singer, saying so much with a relatively restrained and held-back style. He's also accompanied by backing vocalists on quite a few of these songs that help fill the large gaps left by the sparse instruments. This album is dubbed "Roots Reggae" due to its focus on political messaging. I'd say that's surely the case on the first few tracks, especially on "400 Years", one of the many songs referencing Marley's Rastafarian alignments. I interpret "No More Trouble" as a yearning for something simple, or a return to form and a call for passiveness. With that said, a few of these songs take on topics of love and playful intimacy, like "Stir it Up" and "Kinky Reggae".

I think more than anything, I love how chill this album is. Maybe that sounds stereotypical and shallow, but there's something so satisfying about the way the instruments groove so patiently and calmly. It feels like a breath of fresh air.

Metallica as a band has always been sort of foreign to me. I'd say I'm a casual metal fan, I've heard my fair share of albums in the genre and its many subgenres (especially the "essential" listens), but oddly enough, I've never tuned into this album specifically. I listened to Metallica's previous album "Ride the Lightning" and enjoyed it quite a bit, especially "Fade to Black" which I listen to very often still. I can't say I remember much about that album, but after my initial listen to "Master of Puppets", it feels like just an extension of the sounds on that album.

The riffs are incredible here, as you'd expect, it's Metallica. The opening distorted and muffled guitar tone on "Master of Puppets" stands as iconic and utterly mesmerizing. I love the stuttering nature of this song, it sounds like it never finds its footing and is always ready to break at any moment like in the strange, yet ethereal break in the middle. I do tend to love these gorgeous, atmospheric moments in metal music, they always sound so colossal, ethereal, and mystical. "Welcome Home" does this, it sounds very tranquil near the start before the drums slowly start to get louder and it transforms into its true headbanging form. It still retains that ethereal foundation throughout its entire duration, but just layers on top of it to the point where it feels like you're listening to two completely different songs on top of one another. The instrumental "Orion" was another highlight, I especially love the part near the halfway mark with the prominent bassline and the fuzzy guitar layering, this might be the most progressive-sounding song here. It's also just very melodic.

This album has heavy rhythm guitar riffs and machine-gun, rapid drumming for days, to the point where there's no point in me talking about them, they speak for themselves. The real hooks here are whenever Kirk Hammet comes in with one of his many eclectic shredding solos. They're flurries of unadulterated energy that never overstay their welcome or stray from the narrow path they carve out for themselves sonically. Guitar solos like this are usually the highlights of metal albums for me and this album is no exception. They're rapid, firey, and sharp, and send a rush of joy through me each time they crop up. My favorite has to be on "Disposable Heroes".

While I do like this album, I do have a few problems in general. While this doesn't apply to all the songs, I'd say there's a general lack of substance when looking at some of these songs holistically. The parts themselves are very well done, but the sum of those parts comes off blander than what the components make it out to be. I'd say the main reason for my feeling this way is James Hetfield's vocals. They're super one-note here and, at their worst, completely rigid and skeletal. He's not a bad vocalist, and I wouldn't say he takes away from any of the songs, but he certainly does little to add to (most) them. Vocally that is, lyrically his depictions of torture, control, and dark religious themes are interesting to listen to, although I'll admit I didn't pay them too much attention this listen. The title track is an exception because of its hooky nature and also because I like the way Hetfield depicts addiction and submission to drugs.

With all that said, I'd be lying to myself if I said I didn't enjoy this. In fact, I knew I was going to enjoy it no matter what when I got into it. While not mind-blowing, this album still feels like that low-hanging fruit that's super easy to grasp and equally as easy to enjoy.

This is my first foray into Tango, let alone "New Tango" that this album is dubbed as, both in the title and with its genre label. I guess "New Tango" sorta emphasizes the jazz fusion aspects of the genre. Bandoneon player and composer Astor Piazzolla seems to be a prominent (if not the most prominent) figure in this genre from what I've read. He's joined here by Gary Burton, the vibraphone player alongside Fernando Suárez Paz on violin. There's also a slew of other players on bass and piano; there is a very diverse set of instruments and players here.

Bass and drum aside, these tracks are entirely composed of piano, violin, vibraphone, and bandoneon and the best part of it is that there's no real instrument that sticks out, it's almost like a large time-share between all the instruments. I know this is typical in jazz but this effect was only amplified here because each instrument gives off such a unique vibe. Astor's bandneon for example gives off an unsettling, looming aura, while the violin portrays something epic, clean, and elegant. Sometimes one instrument is at the forefront for a certain period, and other times, a bunch of instruments are blending in with one another. The vibraphone is the most consistently present here, being layered on top of a lot of "solos" here. I love how most tracks follow this sort of wave pattern, reaching peaks and troughs in pace and energy. While the speedier moments, especially when the violins come in, paint a more classical, baroque-era image, the slower segments of this album feel mysterious as if something's lurking or building up. I love the way the pace picks up near the middle of the song "Milonga Is Coming" and how it slowly fades into ambiance near the end, it's very subtle. I have to mention the fact that this is a live recording; aside from the clapping, it's difficult to tell. It's all recorded so well but still, the typical live energy is certainly there.

After the slow, almost improvisational vibraphone-exclusive opening, I love the way the violin, piano, and bandoneon drive the second half of the song "Vibraphoneissimo". The titular track may be the most visceral song here. I'd attribute that to the violin primarily, but the way the instruments take turns stating their presence while also blending seamlessly with one another was incredible. I like the screeching violin noise that crops up occasionally as almost a transition to the next part of the song. This is an incredible song. "Laura's Dream" sounds like its title, it's a dreamlike, very slow, and long track, that I admittedly didn't find very interesting when listening to it actively, but it had a strange, lulling effect on me which I assume was at least somewhat intentional. "Operation Tango" may be the most cinematic-sounding song when considering the song name and the lead violin melody; it almost feels like the climax of the album.

Maybe as the album grew on, I started to grow tired of the limited instrumental palette and formula established on this live recording, but it never really became sour or unenjoyable. I think it speaks volumes to the amazing musicianship of all those involved in this when I say that this thing kept twisting, turning, and fighting until the very end. Even though I may not revisit this one super often, it was certainly a great experience and an even better introduction to this style of music.

Despite having technically "heard" this album before, I never truly listened to it. I can say that for certain because I sort of dismissed it initially. On this re-listen though, I was utterly blown away. Fiona Apple has always been an artist who sort of intimidated me, maybe it's because I started with her contemporary releases that were more puzzling and difficult to digest for me back when I heard them, lyrically and instrumentally."Tidal", to me, is the perfect blend of enjoyability, depth, and personality that I was hoping from an artist like Fiona Apple.

I'll start by tackling this album instrumentally. Although a majority of these tracks have strong piano-driven instrumentals, the rest of the sounds that fill the remainder of the sonic space here help diversify this album. I love the strings on the song "Never Is a Promise", adding a baroque twist to this song; it's the most gorgeous track here. The heavy drum and bassy intro to "Criminal" makes it sound almost like a trip-hop track. The album can be divided into two categories, you have the warmer and softer songs and ones that are more crunchy, visceral, and driving. The direction the music takes tends to match the lyrical angle tackled by Fiona in the particular song as well. For example, the tragic, slow, and almost lost depiction of the song "Sullen Girl" nicely matches the very vast, almost larger-than-life, and elegant instrumental direction the song goes in.

A lot of the songs on this album are more than easy to enjoy. Fiona draws from the many areas of the vast world of popular music when composing these songs, resulting in something very eclectic. But that's not to say the songs are watered down in any way; there's something wholly unique about the spin Fiona and her producers put on these songs.

Fiona's a subtle singer, I think that's obvious, but her range is evident and never overpowers the rest of the music and is never buried in the mix here. I enjoy her voice here. Lyrically speaking, this album tackles many different themes relating to Fiona's personal experiences with intimacy and self-growth. Fiona's wariness when entering a new relationship is tackled in a song like "Shadowboxer" while her desire to grow past a stifling relationship is put on display in a song like "Sleep to Dream". "The Child is Gone" may be the most tragic song here, depicting a loss of innocence which very much parallels Fiona's personal experience.

I don't think I've fully digested this album after one listen but everything about it comes off very personally driven and I'd attribute that primarily to Fiona's writing. This album has everything, the more directly enjoyable tracks on the front of the album, and the mellower, gorgeous, and melancholic tracks that slowly send it off. There seems to be a subtle progression with this album's lyrical themes, and by extension, its sonic depiction of those themes. It seems to be one of personal growth and acceptance, relating to herself and her relationships with others. Maybe my interpretation of these themes is shallow upon first listen, but I think that's the general idea here. This is such a well-rounded and meaningful album that I'm super glad I re-visited.

What a strange album. I've never heard of this group so I had very few expectations going into it, I'll say it was certainly an interesting listen.

It's a very weird album. I think I can easily categorize it as industrial, but sonically it jumps around all over the place (which I guess is common within the genre already). The vocals were pretty over the top, raspy, spoken word, and sung all in French. There were moments where he flat-out reminded me of a French Tom Waits (especially on the song "Charlotte" which sounds like "Rain Dogs" era Waits).

It's a cacophonous album and it's filled to the brim with seemingly abrupt switch-ups instrumentally. The opener "La fille de la mort" is the most evident of these, starting with a very light, almost waltz-type sound, before exploding into a sea of chaotic, dissonant strings as a wall of noise. My favorite part of the song is right after that when the strings brighten up and synchronize to form this gorgeous atmospheric melody over these spaced-out drum hits. The vocals are equally as spaced out in this part, I love it. I think this opener is easily the best song here. "Les Enfants" may be the most unsettling song here, especially the weird frantic string section with the simple drum pattern closing the track out. It sounded like something that would soundtrack a very old monster flick. I love the noiser layering on the closing parts of "L'Amourir", it's probably the most overtly industrial-punk moment on this album.

I think that's really what I mainly got out of this album; quite a few of these songs have some standout moments that are noisy, crushing, and enjoyable to that degree, but only when looking at them in isolation. As an album though, I only got mild enjoyment out of it and don't see myself revisiting it very often. This was more of a one-and-done "wow" type deal. One thing I can say is that it's surely ahead of its time in many ways and I can see how it could've been influential in the more direct and in-your-face facets of the industrial-punk scene.

Another first for me, I've never heard of David Gray before this listen. I have to say though, this may be one of the most uneventful listens so far. There were some decent songs here and I was pretty excited after the initial folk and electronic fusion opener "Please Forgive Me". Unfortunately, a lot of the album isn't anywhere near as interesting as that opener, instrumentally at least.

With that said, I still largely enjoyed this album, I just don't think it did anything special for me. The acoustic-driven singer-songwriter songs may not have been my favorite here, but there were some highlights. I enjoyed the song "Nightblindness" quite a lot, it has one of the more intriguing choruses here, which paints a dreadful image of the uncertain future of a diminishing relationship. Oddly enough, I don't think it's a part of the actual tracklisting, but still thought I should mention it. The song "The Year's Love" is a great piano ballad. I'm not sure why, but the vocal performance on this song sounds very much ahead of its time, it feels like something that's been replicated by many poppier singer-songwriters in the 2010s and 2020s. Maybe it's the mildly guttural and raspy vocal performance or the nature of the melody itself. Still really loved it though. My favorite song on this album has to be "Sail Away". It's a more straightforward track structurally speaking, with a piano driving the song here, but it's David's vocal performance that sells this one for me. It's a very strong performance with a killer lead melody.

Not much to say for this one, was pretty easy listening. David Gray's a solid writer and a really good singer, but I think a lot of the songs, especially near the middle, left a lot to be desired as just songs. With that said, I'll admit that this album may very well grow on me in the future, maybe I'll grow to appreciate and understand its more straightforward and subtle approach. I do think there are some incredible songs here.

David Bowie is a generational artist, his music is revered by so many and I'd say for good reason, the guy's constantly switching it up and has been ahead of the curve when it comes to revolutionizing all aspects of art rock in the 70s and 80s. I haven't heard all of Bowie's albums but I've always considered "Station to Station" to be my favorite of his.

I genuinely think the opening title track is one of the greatest art rock songs; period. It so perfectly packs everything that makes this album so incredible into a sick 10-minute, multi-faceted epic. That means those deep, crunchy basslines, the tight and punchy drums, the very overt Krautrock influence, and all those fantastic funk rock elements. If I had to pick my favorite part of this song, it'd be the middle part with the little synth melody leading into the verses. I love Bowie's singing voice, especially when he's singing a bit deeper in his register. I know everyone dubs this Bowie's "cocaine phase" album, and this song sheds light on that lyrically at least. It's always painted this image of someone wandering around aimlessly while being lost in a subway station or a large city; it's surreal in that sense.

I do pretty much love most of the rest of this album as well, they all follow suit with the formula laid out by the opener. "Stay" probably has the funkiest closer but I'd still say the big single "Golden Years" is the most overtly funk rock song here, especially in those opening seconds. "Word on a Wing" is probably the most gorgeous track here. A piano-driven ballad with these subtle electric guitar tones hanging in the background. Bowie admitted this song's about cocaine (again) but I love its more blatant love-song guise. It also has one of my favorite vocal performances by him. I think the closing "Wild is the Wind" cover (which I've always considered to be a Nina Simone song) is very tasteful too, I particularly like the softer approach to the instrumentation here. Bowie does this iconic song more than justice.

I like this album, I especially love the fact that it doesn't overstay its welcome coming in at under 40 minutes in length. Each song packs its punch here and carries its weight. Maybe I'm not as much a fan of it (and Bowie in general) as most people but the incredible moments here are just that, incredible.

This is my second listen to this album, although I'll admit it's been a while. I've gone through most of "The White Stripes" catalog once before and I'll admit, I was never a fan of them. There are certainly some standout songs like "Fell in Love with a Girl" and "Hotel Yorba" being my favorites, but in general, I was never a fan of the more skeletal alt style that the band pursued.

I mean there are certainly some alright songs on this album, I love the dirty distortion of "Instinct Blues", it sounds like an incredible spin on new-era blues and alternative rock. The guitar playing is great in this song. I do like the more eerie nature of the song "The Nurse" as well. I do think Jack and Meg White are talented and creative musicians, and if there's something I can compliment this album on endlessly, it's the interesting songwriting. Vocally though, aside from a few songs, I was never a fan of Jack's higher-pitched, shacky, and slurred style of singing. At its very worst, it flat-out annoys me.

There are little glimpses of interesting moments in these songs, but as a whole, there's no song here that sticks with me as great. An example is the little transitional keyboard and guitar interlude on "Take, Take, Take", I like it but the rest of the song bores me. Most of the acoustic cuts here, like the following "As Ugly, As I Seem" I find very one note and dry. The more distorted alt cuts are what hold this thing together. I already mentioned "Instinct Blues" but the opener "Blue Orchid" is quite a decent cut. I think "Blue Orchid" is one of the examples where this bands skeletal and simple style works at least somewhat in their favor. "My Doorbell" is fun but grows tiresome after the halfway mark for me.

I think my biggest issue with this thing is it all feels so one-note and hollow, not in a way that benefits the album, but more in a way that yields bland results. It's like the band took a set of rudimentary, yet diverse sounds and sort of molded them together. I can see why some may enjoy it but to me, it all comes off as very inconsistent, messy, and empty. The guitar playing and writing are good enough, but when it comes to enjoying the songs here, I don't find much.

I recently listened to the album "Dust" by Screaming Trees on this 1001 album thing. I had a strange experience with it, it was an album from a band I hadn't heard about ever and when it started, I was convinced it wasn't for me. But over the span of its relatively short runtime, the album grew on me tremendously. I say all that because I feel almost the exact same way about this Sugar album: "Copper Blue"

The first four tracks I'd say sort of mesh together into this fuzzy amalgam of generally very enjoyable alternative cuts. I love the vocals here, they're deep and almost drowned and muffled by the droney nature of the guitars here. It's after these first tracks that the album sort of starts to diversify itself quite a bit.

"Hoover Dam" is the most instrumentally diverse song here, with soaring guitar solos and nice quaint synth solos. There's something so brisk and open about this song's refrain, almost like a fresh of breath air in a large open field. "The Slim" has a very subtle build-up; by the time the track ends, it's evolved into something beyond life. The lyrics are generally abstract but they help contribute to this epic imagery. I like the poppier "If I Can't Change Your Mind" quite a bit too, it sounds very different than anything else here; it's striking in that way.

I will say the final leg of this album is maybe a bit more generic in its sound, and I don't enjoy it as much as the songs that come before it (although I like the catchy closer "Man on the Moon"), but overall really enjoyed my time with this album. Good stuff.