Reviews by mondo-kun

If any of you were planning to get into progressive rock, Yes's Fragile is practically the perfect choice.

This album is easy to listen to and not overly complicated. It sounds beautiful, if a bit heavy in places. However, if you start to analyze it in more detail, you realize that none of the parts are easy to play, and yet the musicians have managed to juxtapose them without degenerating into cacophony.

Are there any downsides? Of course there are. Of the nine songs on the album, only four are full-length; the rest are short vignettes from each musician, a sort of "talent showcase". Here's a keyboardist arranging a piece from Brahms. Here's a short drum fill. Here's an acoustic guitar number with a medieval sound, and so on... They're all skilled guys, they've proven themselves, there's no denying it, but these performances could have been reserved for live performances only.

What else can I say?
⬅️To Be Continued

Fela Kuti is known as the father of Afrobeat, a genre that blends jazz, funk, and African folk rhythms. The genre is generally quite enjoyable, both for dancing and as a background track; this album is no exception, but the story behind its creation reads like an episode of "Parts Unknown".

Kuti declared his own microstate in Nigeria, consisting of a commune and a recording studio. The government became agitated and told him to stop acting up. Kuti got angry and recorded this album, which consists of just two songs (a reissue is available online, adding two more). In my opinion, the lyrics are simple and rather toothless, but the government was overly receptive to this ragebait and sent the army to burn down the rebel's house. During the process, the soldiers beat the artist and threw his mother out of a window, killing her. Kuti responded by sending the coffin containing his mother's body to the then-president's residence.

Basically, this scene (https://youtu.be/UajTvU3sjrY) from "The Boondocks" perfectly describes the whole situation.

Is Peter Frampton's name familiar to many? If not, don't be embarrassed. There's a reason for that — his first four albums weren't exactly stellar, enjoying neither critical nor popular success.

But then something magical happened: his live album, featuring the same songs performed, was released and hit the jackpot. Critics praised it, radio stations played it, and most importantly, it sold incredibly well and remains one of the most popular live albums in history. The artist has never been able to replicate this triumph.

It remains a magic until you compare the studio and live versions of the songs head-to-head. The songs remain fairly average, but as flat and trivial as they sound on the recordings, they are just as energetic and expansive in concert (the sound of his signature talk-box helps in some places).

This is where the stage truly became a place of power for the artist.

By now this site gave me the pleasure of listening to excellent debut albums by The Killers and The Doors, but the opening from Lynyrd Skynyrd is something else entirely.

The record is steeped in the spirit of the American South, instantly making you want to listen to it while driving a muscle car with a Confederate flag flying out the window. It's hard to pick a single song; every single one is worth its weight in gold. The brisk opening with I Ain't the One, the keyboard solo in Tuesday's Gone, the lyrics in Simple Man... But the epochal Free Bird, with its four-minute guitar solo, is still unrivaled.

The band's star would set as quickly as it had risen: four years later, a plane crash would take the lives of frontman Ronnie Van Zant, two other musicians and their manager, and leave the remaining members physically and emotionally scarred. Lynyrd Skynyrd is now the Ship of Theseus; none of the original lineup remains. However, the artists' decision is clear: these great songs must live on.

An opinion that will incur the wrath of Pitchfork magazine readers and others alike: Radiohead as a band ended with OK Computer.

Then Radiohead as an art object began, because, in my opinion, almost all of their subsequent work can be described with the phrase "experiments for the sake of experiments," and that began with this album. Guitars are minimal here (quite unexpectedly after the previous album), but there's an abundance of ambient, IDM, techno, and other "smart" electronica, sometimes bordering on white noise. Overall, the album can be roughly divided into two parts: music for a German club and music for floating. The faces of everyone who expected the band to cement their status as the new kings of intellectual rock here are beyond imagination.

Many critics may consider Kid A practically the most important album of the 2000s, but I'd rather listen to The Bends several times over.

Johnny Cash loved performing in prisons, despite never having served time.

Cash's most iconic performance is considered to be his concert at Folsom Prison, released a year earlier. He hadn't originally planned to record this show, but an English crew filming a documentary about prison life came to film it. The label accepted the bonus, and they were right – thanks to the San Quentin concert, Cash was nominated for three Grammys, one of which he won.

The cover photo of the artist became one of his signature images, but this album gave us (and the owners of bootleg merch stands) an even more iconic shot, where Johnny clearly expresses his feelings about the cameramen (https://www.nme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/SnapGalleries180311.jpg) blocking the prisoners' view of the stage.

A fine record, one of the pillars of country music. But whether a list of essential albums really needs two Johnny Cash prison concerts is an open question.

Despite several Siouxsie and the Banshees songs in my favorites, I listened to this album for the first time — and it was a success.

The entire record jumps between energetic punk rock and calmer post-punk, yet you're never free of tension throughout the songs. This dark atmosphere is primarily supported by the vocals and guitar. We'd later hear sharp, slightly jagged riffs in the works of Johnny Marr, Dave Navarro, and John Frusciante, but it was John McGeouch who first dabbled in them.

Siouxsie Sioux's voice will be familiar to fans of Florence + the Machine. Siouxsie's image, however, is the complete opposite — it's exactly what every '80s alt-girl wanted to be, and Tim Burton clearly modeled Lydia from Beetlejuice on her.

It's rare that a studio album can rival a greatest hits collection in terms of density. A very pleasant surprise and a record that is truly worth to hear before you die!

Neil Young is one of those artists whose cult status on the west I don't understand at all.

These days, he mostly grumbles about everything: Spotify (where he once managed to delete his entire discography), social media, Americans who voted incorrectly... Okay, old man yells at cloud, but what did he do in his youth, at his peak? He played pretty standard country-folk, which, while not bad musically, relies heavily on the lyrics, which dramatically raises the barrier to entry for me.

The lyrics, by the way, are so full of negativity and melancholy that Neil Young himself later decided he'd overreacted and didn't allow the album to be released on CD until 2003. He wouldn't let it be released, and he pulled the music from streaming services... Grandpa, do you even want people to listen to your songs or not?

As they used to say at university: "You're great, of course, but I wouldn't give you anything higher than a C."

Thurston Moore and Michael Gira gave Devendra Banhart his start in big-time music. With such "godfathers," you'd expect everything here to sound, shall we say, noisy.

In reality, this is a beautiful acoustic album. Short guitar sketches are close to both psychedelic America and the folksy England of the 1960s, and surprisingly, just as far removed. There's also a certain southern sound — Banhart lived in Venezuela until he was fourteen. And overall, he's something of a citizen of the world: not only did his parents name him on the advice of an Indian guru, but he also has the middle name Obi. Yes, after Obi-Wan Kenobi. With a biography like that, you can't write "flat" music.

Critics have compared Devendra to early Marc Bolan. I agree with them on some aspects of the guitar sound, but his vocal style is very much an acquired taste — it sounds a bit like alt-J. Keep that in mind; you'll either love it or your ears will wilt.

Sampling is a delicate matter; make a single mistake and you'll have to hand over all the profits from your song to other guys. Richard Ashcroft, Vanilla Ice, and the late Juice Wrld will tell you that.

If there's just one sample on an album, negotiating its use isn't a problem. But what if there are, say, nine hundred? Or even more than three thousand? That's exactly the number used on this record, according to its creators. Moreover, there are no new sounds here; it's all samples.

A horse's neighing, some Indian melody, something Rasta-esque, dialogue from a movie... The description sounds like cacophony, but in reality, The Avalanches managed to make a truly amazing dance album. Cutting it all up in the right order and getting permission to use the sounds is an incredible amount of work.

If you're too lazy to prepare a playlist for a party, feel free to just put this album on — everyone will appreciate it.

Now, it would seem, a true legend! Who hasn't heard of Frank Sinatra? Everyone's mind immediately conjures up images of him in his signature trilby hat at the mention of his name. However, even here, things aren't so simple.

Yes, this is a pleasant collection of upbeat love songs written by other songwriters and by then almost classics, performed by Sinatra's velvety voice, unmistakable. Arranger Nelson Riddle also did a superb job with the instrumental section. But just remember, if you've heard one song on this album, you've heard them all; even AC/DC would be outdone in terms of monotony.

However, there's nothing wrong with that, and the record is perfect as a leisurely backdrop for dinner. Then you can smoothly go from dinner to dancing, if you have someone to join you.

In 1994 Blur invented Britpop, and a year later Oasis turned it into music for a completely different audience — let's say, the English working class. Blur struggled a bit more with their next album, but ultimately realized there was nothing to be gained from it and moved on.

They arrived at the American indie sound. More precisely, they were introduced there by guitarist Graham Coxon, who had been listening to the music of Beck and Pavement. The label, journalists, and fans were shocked, but the album still took off. Blur proved that sometimes you need to change things up.

At the same time, the band openly mocked Americans at times, and "Song 2," which became a major hit in the US, was intended as a parody of grunge. In this regard, Blur still hold their own: they recently openly stated that their Coachella show was completely off-the-charts, as it's the only festival where audience members film themselves on their phones, not the stage. Well, they aren't wrong.

You can often tell an album by its cover. For example, what do we see here? A view from below of a roadside pole entangled in a multitude of wires. When a wire fails, they simply throw in a new one. Anyone who's been to Asia has witnessed this scene firsthand many times.

But the thing is, in Asia itself, I quickly stop noticing these wires, even though these "nests" are practically everywhere — my eye gets numb and takes them for granted.

That's the same with this album — its sound evokes the synthetic future of a sci-fi dystopia. The hip-hop here, like that pole, is woven with bits of post-rock and jazz, yet everything sounds uncluttered and even minimalist. It would be perfect as a soundtrack for, say, Mirror's Edge.

It's surprising that this little-known record appeared in the first edition of the book and is still there. It's probably worth a listen.

Many respect Syd Barrett as the founder of Pink Floyd and one of the pioneers of psychedelic music in general. Even more are grateful that he left Pink Floyd soon afterward; this is understandable.

Barrett spent almost two years making his first solo album, and not because it was technically complex — far from it. On the contrary, almost the entire album is built on the most sloppy acoustic guitar strumming and singing (if you can call it that) over it. Sometimes session musicians, completely clueless about how and what was supposed to be played, would overdub these parts. In the end, Syd's wildness scared off two producers, and Gilmour and Waters, who had worked with him in his previous band, had to be called in to finish the recording.

All in all, it's certainly listenable, but it sounds like the ravings of a madman, which, by all appearances, is precisely what it is.

Looking back, it seems like every Blur album has always been a cult classic, but in the early '90s, few thought so. I'll go further, "thanks" to their first two albums, the band managed to make a tidy fortune and live practically hand-to-mouth for a while.

Perhaps when you're angry and hungry and have nothing left to lose, things like "Parklife" are born. It's a genre-defining record, without exaggeration, that, while it didn't feature any fundamentally new moves, executed them in such an order and proportion that it gave birth to Britpop. There's a little bit of everything here — ballads, punk rock thrillers, electronic dance hits, and even some orchestral pieces, sometimes serious, sometimes silly.

I once saw someone say that Blur was a band that planned to sound like The Kinks, but ended up sounding like The Jam. There is something to this.

"Santa-Barbara" by The Mamas & The Papas is certainly impressive. A quartet, two members of which are husband and wife, and the wife sleeps with the third member, who is in love with the fourth singer. Fleetwood Mac, if not envious, will certainly sigh with understanding.

But all will be revealed only after the recording of this debut album, which is very good. Sunny, positive folk rock, sung by four different but perfectly complementary voices. The quintessential sound of the sixties, it's no surprise that Tarantino used one of the songs for his "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood."

And, of course, the cover, the toilet on which horrified major US retailers who refused to stock the album. Band had to urgently cover it with an advertising sticker, and later they removed even the bathtub. And you say: "Arabs paint over women in albums"...

I have no idea who Bill Callahan is, even though he's been in the industry for almost forty years, but on this album, at least, he reminded me of both Leonard Cohen and The National. The former has a "reading a poem to music" style, while the latter features rich arrangements featuring strings and keyboards. The mood of the songs is sometimes light, sometimes dark, and sometimes the lyrics are dissonant with the music; everything is in keeping with the genre's canons.

It's a decent, laid-back album, but I won't be adding it to my library. Perhaps to truly resonate with this kind of music, you have to live in the American Midwest, although it was pleasant to listen to even with a snow globe outside.

From the very first song, you can tell that Flamin' Groovies loves old blues and The Rolling Stones, who adapted it for their time. Mick Jagger himself is said to have praised this album after hearing it, even saying it was more interesting than Sticky Fingers, released the same year.

It really turned out well, blending blues-rock with a dirty garage sound, similar to that of The Stooges. Unfortunately, in the band's native California this kind of music proved unpopular, the singer left, and the band refocused on British power pop, but that's another story.

Jagger's praise impressed the band so much that in the reissue of the album, which is now available on all streaming services, they added a whole second part of covers of rock 'n' roll classics. You can listen to that part, but it's not necessary.

When I saw the cover, I initially thought it was Khalid. He does look alike, especially from a distance, though his cheeks are a bit bigger.

But the music turned out to be completely different — classic Southern soul with a sweeping tempo that makes you want to stroll down a sunny street, chest out, and an abundance of brass instruments. The lyrics are mostly about the opposite sex, in keeping with the genre's traditions. Returning to contemporary artists: while Khalid took Al Green's hair and left it at that, Justin Timberlake and Seal have clearly drawn heavily from his music.

It's a pleasant album, but I can't give it more than three stars because the soul music is a bit monotonous and background for me. If you feel differently, you can give it an extra star or two.

The album cover already hints at the kind of music we're in for — pretentiously but rather stylishly dressed, the moustachioed, hairy guys immediately suggest classic rock from the late 1960s. When you learn that the hairy guys are English, their sound is completely shaped in your head.

In fact, the album isn't quite that simple. It begins with a decidedly un-British "southern" rock sound, then gradually transitions into psychedelia, all the while maintaining its acoustic core. This is where they stumbled, overcomplicating things.

In some songs, you get the feeling that each member is trying to steal the show, trying to make their part the focal point; as a result, the ear doesn't know what to listen to. When you learn that half the songs were written by the guitarist and the other half by the keyboardist, the reasons for this discrepancy become clear.

It's a decent record, a pleasure to listen to, but the musicians didn't realize their full potential.