Reviews by mondo-kun

Liam Gallagher, Damon Albarn's sworn friend, called this record "music for twelve-year-olds." There's some truth to that — I'll never give this album a low rating, not least because it was the one my parents gave me for my ninth birthday, along with my first CD player.

And how wonderful that it still sounds great to me now! Albarn, no matter how you look at it, is a genius and a visionary; what else could you call the man who, in the early 2000s, decided to create a hodgepodge of rock, hip-hop, reggae, trip-hop, and Latin music? And then he added to it an entire story about a virtual band, drawn by Jamie Hewlett, that those same nine- and twelve-year-olds absolutely latched onto.

They still latched onto it perfectly today, and this Gorillaz-invented "storyline" band trope works just as well for modern bands (hello, Twenty One Pilots). Thanks to them for this!

A legend of a generation: almost no one my age hasn't heard this album, and those who have are unlikely to ever forget it.

This record made rappers embrace riffs and metalheads embrace hip-hop. A colossus of nu-metal, which is surprising, as it lacks the genre's usual swearing, downtuned guitars, and any showing off — it's a completely honest album.

Three people create the magic here; the rest are craftsmen. The band's brains, Mike Shinoda, with his raps and Chester Bennington's unique voice, are understandable, but it wasn't until one of my recent listens that I realized Linkin Park would have remained a bland alternative act if not for DJ Joe Hahn's turntables and effects, which create half the atmosphere. If you remove one pillar from this trinity, the whole thing wouldn't crumble, of course, but it would lose its edge. Which, unfortunately, is what the current state of the group proves.

The saddest thing about innovative ideas is that they remain innovative only for their time.

And so it is with this album. Another collection of cover versions, typical of the '60s, yet unusual: Ray Charles took American country standards (white music) and rewrote them as rhythm and blues (black music), thereby greatly expanding his audience and showing other artists that this was actually possible.

What does this mean to us now? Basically, nothing. What matters is that this is clearly not the album with which to get acquainted with Ray Charles's work. Not only did he seem to have deliberately chosen the most mournful love ballads, but his signature piano passages are also absent. Furthermore, the keyboards are completely lost against the waltz-like strings and choir; only the artist's voice remains.

In short, Maestro Ray has gone down the wrong path, but it will do as a background music.

Overall, there's nothing to write about here. If anyone hasn't heard this album, they've definitely seen the iconic cover. Many consider The Dark Side of the Moon the best rock album ever made. Is there any reason for that?

While Pink Floyd is considered legendary in prog, this album is far removed from the genre. The lyrics are incredibly straightforward, the performance is quite simple, even primitive in places, with the riff in "Money" standing out. All the components are simply placed in the right places, and this could have been a simply good album.

If it weren't for the way it's mixed! It's no wonder audiophiles still use it to test their equipment — the sound is what makes this record so great. All the instruments sound vibrant, as do the fragments of phrases, the beating of a heart, the clink of coins, the wild laughter, the roar of an airplane...

And the best rock album in history is too subjective a concept; it doesn't exist, just as there is no dark side of the Moon really (as a matter of fact it’s all dark).

I certainly don't think Bono became less concerned about the fate of poor African children in the early 90s, but believe it or not, this is a U2 album without the political slogans. Yes, that happens!

And that's not the only innovation; compared to the sound of their previous works, it's like we're hearing a completely different band here. I think fans who listened to this album for the first time felt the same way the average English fangirl of The 1975 heard the song "People."

No blasphemy, it's just that U2 became danceable on this album for the first time, so much so that George Michael would envy it, without forgetting their post-punk roots: The Edge's riffs are still jagged and crumbling, the rhythms are still pumping, though Bono's voice gets a bit tiresome by the end.

I generally like the country sound of previous Rattle and Hum, but it’s a good thing it failed in the charts, thereby forcing the band to reinvent themselves and release this album.

Frank Sinatra can be criticized for many things, but one thing he certainly did well was sense the industry's currents.

It was the late 1960s, and in the US, blues, rock, and psychedelic music were taking popularity from jazz and swing, and then the "British Invasion" arrived. The artist knew he was at risk of being sidelined and decided it was time to look elsewhere — not to England, but to Brazil, the birthplace of bossa nova.

The new album was bound to be a success: it featured a sound no less fashionable at the time, accompaniment by one of the genre's creators, Antônio Carlos Jobim, his songs translated into English, and several jazz standards. Everything was in keeping with Sinatra's style, although one senses that bossa nova is too calm for him: the artist sometimes has to rein in his voice.

The perfect background for dinner, just like the last album I came across here by old Frank.

Beyoncé is the most overrated artist in history.

I don't understand how, other than a successful marriage to a billionaire rapper, her popularity is due. Take this album, for example. What's the most important thing in pop music? For a song to stick in your head after listening, for you to hum it automatically. There's not a single song like that here. Not a single memorable line, not a single melody, no interesting arrangements, no strong vocals — nothing! The only noteworthy aspect of this album is its promotional campaign, or rather, the lack thereof; the album was released without prior announcement, plus a music video was shot for each song. They say this was a first, which is debatable.

After the album's release, it was raved about by journalists everywhere, and Rolling Stone recently ranked it the sixteenth best album of the 21st century. Well, if Beyoncé was bringing me as much money as them, I'd put it there too — but as it is...

If you asked a random person, say, from the crowd at a concert, to name a funk song, what do you think they'd remember? Maybe Michael Jackson's "Smooth Criminal," maybe Daft Punk's "Get Lucky," or at the very least, something by Jamiroquai.

But none of this would have happened without Sly Stone, who arguably invented the genre. Everything on this album sounds much harsher than that of the aforementioned artists — it's more a blend of black soul and white psychedelic rock, taking the best of both worlds: piercing vocals, rich bass, acidic keyboards, a wah pedal, and, most importantly, a wild, danceable energy. Sly himself worked in the same way, and despite the socially charged lyrics, there was no segregation within the band; both blacks and whites played there.

I'd never listened to this album before, but on this warm day it hit the spot.

Have the authors shoved a soundtrack into the best albums list again!? Okay, we'll forgive them this time, since the story is unusual.

Prince was so elated by the albeit modest success of his previous album that he brought a script to Warner Music, confronting their bosses with the following fait accompli: "Either you get me a movie for which I'll write the music, or another label will help me do it."

The film starring Prince was more or less made, but it turned out to be a passing one, which can't be said about the album! This is Prince's most pop-oriented record, but he sparkles here — from the hedonistic opening track, the music flows through rich, lustful funk (the "Parental Advisory" sign owes its existence to the lyrics of "Darling Nikki") and screeching synthesizers to the monumental ballad of the same name.

Do you think an album can simultaneously contain classic of synth-pop and hair-metal? It can!

Ali Farka Touré heard blues as a child, figured it sounded very similar to the music of his people, and decided to make that kind of music. He did it for fun, because in Mali, music is made by the lower castes, and he was from the upper castes, the farmers.

So, during the first four songs of the album, I thought Ali simply couldn't play, because the guitar sounded like a Chinese toy — the kind some of you might have had as a child. It got a little better later on; these African motifs really do resemble blues, and it even works as background music, but it's all so repetitive.

There are music lovers and music journalists who sometimes say things like, "Yeah, Led Zeppelin are great, of course, but they borrowed all their ideas from Jimmy Ankubo, a black musician who in 1875 attached a string to a stick and thus invented the blues." It's people like these who boosted this album's average rating to 94 out of 100. God be their judge.

When Karin Dreijer, the driving force behind Fever Ray, released her debut album, I missed it. And when she released her second album eight years later and toured with it, her shocking image so repulsed me that I didn't really want to listen to the music anymore. Time to make amends.

The very first song here will be familiar to many from the opening theme of the TV series "Vikings." Overall, the choice is logical — despite the album being primarily electronic, with elements of trip-hop, everything here sounds very ethnic, cold, and minimalistic; a northern feel, in fact. The deep, trance-inducing vocals, so heavily processed with various effects that it's sometimes hard to tell whether the singer is a woman, a man, a child, or some mythical creature, also add a touch of fairytale.

Björk used to do something like this, and Aurora would later occasionally do something similar. Not a bad album, need to listen to it again on a foggy, chill morning.

I understand that the authors of the "1001 Albums..." list included pieces that, to varying degrees, influenced music as a whole, but some of the entries baffle me.

For example, this record. Why does the band have such a strange name? Because they don't need a proper name; they're a house band for Stax, they've backed many of their artists, Booker T. is their lead pianist, and M.G. is short for "Memphis Group." Can you imagine a record by The Late Show Band making it onto a list of the best albums? Neither can I.

Although the album overall is decent, reasonably short, the organ and blues guitar duet works, and the title track has been used in so many different films and TV series that it automatically feels like a soundtrack. Did it need to be on the original list? Probably it did; it clearly inspired southern rock. Should it still be on there? The big question...

I'm a simple person: when I listen to a song sometimes I read lyrics, but I don't get too caught up in them. Music is my priority, and since hip-hop is not about it, the most important thing in a genre for me is a pumping beat.

On Missy Elliott's fourth and most popular album, it pumps. The rhythm is varied, with a strong old-school influence sometimes, all the guests are in their right places and don't make the tracks worse (even Beyoncé). Timbaland's (who was the main producer of the album) signature pulsating sound is also present here. Returning to the lyrical theme, the 2010s are still a long way off, and most female rap hasn't yet devolved into pornographic fan fiction, so there are only two more or less obscene songs here, the lyrics mostly about women's plight. Well, considering the realities of Virginia's black neighborhoods.

It's a decent album, not boring, kinda listenable. Compared to modern efforts in the genre, it's actually excellent.

Looking at the genres of Tim Buckley's second album, it seems to be in keeping with the canons of the late '60s: psychedelia, folk, and medieval-inspired minstrelsy; we've heard it all before, nothing new. However, there is a nuance.

The main thing that sets Tim apart from the crowd of hippies of his era is his soaring voice. Here, it truly is a musical instrument, which the artist skillfully applies to jazz rhythms, pompous baroque, ballads, and acid melodies. Above all, this album is a pleasure to listen to thanks to the vocals.

At times melancholy, but overall a positive record, Tim's look at us from the cover is equally positive. However, this positive outlook is slightly clouded when you learn that the artist separated from his wife a month before the birth of his son, who would also record a good album a couple of decades later... But we'll get to that next time.

Bob Dylan is an astonishing artist: all the covers of his songs I've heard seem better than the originals to me.

Dylan's lyrics are paramount, with the music coming second. But firstly, even native speakers don't always understand the lyrics, and secondly, are we listening to music here? It's incredibly monotonous: a semi-acoustic verse, a chorus, a harmonica solo, and we repeat.

Blonde on Blonde is considered Dylan's best album (the more devout consider it one of the best albums of all time). Why? How does it differ from his other works? Nothing, really, except that it's a double album.

And I'd give it a three if it weren't for the last song, which features the artist reading his poem for eleven minutes and then fading out. Now let's wait for the ∞-minute AI version, where Dylan's nasal voice simply combines all the existing words.

In the early 1990s, Johnny Cash, who was experiencing the decline of his career, was approached by Rick Rubin, the producer of many rap and rock artists of the era, to collaborate. Cash accepted, and the American series brought him back into the charts and into the public eye.

The fourth album in this series was the artist's last, and, as with Bowie's Blackstar, it's palpable: Johnny understands that the breath of death is drawing nearer, and all the songs here feel like flipping through an old photo album from the vantage point of his years. Most of them are covers, some of Cash's old songs, others of other artists' works, but none of them are blindly re-played acoustically, but rather stripped of unnecessary bells and whistles for an elderly man and seasoned with his wisdom (this version of "Hurt" many still consider original).

The artist left behind enough songs to fill five more albums, but no one will ever say his signature "Hello, I'm Johnny Cash" again.

It feels like journalists lumped Girls Against Boys into indie rock simply because they didn't know where else to place them.

There are no upbeat or even slightly cheerful melodies typical of the genre here; the music is completely dark and icy, a feeling heightened by the sudden addition of two bassists. The vocals are muted to the point where you can hear something being sung, but you can't quite make out what it is. The riffs blend into each other during the transitions between songs and quickly become tiresome; I understand that during the grunge era, artists decided to make their music even messier, but this is too much.

It's not exactly a bad album; there have been worse ones, and a couple of songs even sparkle a little; but I'm sure it only made it into the book because one of the writers was an edgy "not an ordinary" schoolboy in the mid-nineties. If you want some high-quality, old-school post-hardcore, try Refused.

Much to my surprise, I've listened to Belle and Sebastian's entire discography, but I don't remember it at all. Moreover, judging by last.fm, I listened to them before their festival performance I attended back in 2018, which I also don't remember! Given these memory gaps, it's logical to assume the band wasn't particularly interesting to me.

So, today I listened to their second album with a clean slate, and it was incredible. It's a virtually entirely acoustic record, the upbeat instrumentals of which almost always contrast with melancholic, sometimes even cynical, lyrics about ordinary people and their shortcomings.

I suppose something similar would have happened if you mixed The Kinks and The Smiths — two seemingly different eras, but that's precisely why the album still sounds fresh. It's a bit introverted and won't appeal to everyone, but for me, it reinvented the band.

I caught myself listening to MGMT's debut album in its entirety for the first time. The impressions are mixed.

A triptych of "Time to Pretend," "Electric Feel," and "Kids" — an absolutely bulletproof, neon-dance-infused collection of singles that any young band would envy. The problem is, these are the main strongest points of album.

It's immediately obvious that the band is more drawn to 60s psychedelic rock, and MGMT aren't quite there: the result is either a strange, rhythmically tom-pounding primalism or downright boring acoustic hippie fare. The label also knew these songs weren't worth promoting the album with, and they didn't reach the masses. Instead, the band dug in their heels and made their next two albums in a similar style. The result is predictable.

But the singles are fantastic! How could I give anything less than a four stars?

Most albums try to be unified by a common theme or at least a similar sound, but not 10cc's second album.

It's hard for me to even generalize here; everything is so different, both musically and lyrically. A seven-minute piano ballad sits alongside a bongo-driven song about voodoo, and a seemingly serious guitar attack on Wall Street traders is followed by self-indulgent jabs at the level of "we're the worst band in the world, we've never done a days work in our life".

And yet, the melodies are complex, the rhythms are jagged, but it's hard to call it prog. However, it seems the band themselves wanted to craft their music in a more sophisticated way: the homophone of the album's title speaks for itself.

It's a very overloaded album, but I didn't get any negative emotions from listening to it, so it gets a light three.