Reviews by nevele

It's funk. It's soul. It swings. It's good.

A real interesting album where the (sometimes a little simple) satire takes a front seat over the music, but where you certainly hear some amazing pieces of brilliance shine through.

How has this album almost been lost in musical history, but so many of its peers are still revered.
This is absolutely amazing and should be a standard of the style of the time.
Before listening to this album I honestly only knew the single, and that's by far the worst song on the album.

This was really good. Great songs, great voice. And an album I'll put back on when the weather gets colder and the fire goes up.

I think I already knew all these songs in one format or another by many different artists. It's swinging, and I can see how this would've been popular in its time.

The Flaming Lips are definitely at their best when they balance on the tight line between art and kitsch.

I'm quite the fan of the Mali music scene and have listened to quite a few albums over the last decades.
And even though I like this album and listen to it with much pleasure, I don't think this one rises high above that of its peers. It's really quite good, but never reaches greatness

It feels like there's a party in my ears, and everyone's invited

In incredibly fun mixture of rock, punk, ska, funk and metal.

It was a solid 3* pop album, with good uptempo songs and some lesser ballads.

That's until the Gospel Medley and the outtro. That's when it crumbled down.

Classic.
Maybe not all songs are of the highest quality, but it's chockfull of energy. Short and ast times messy songs. Here's the blueprint for Punk. Right here.

I really enjoyed the bass on 'Mannenberg,' but songs like 'The Mountain' just make me feel like I'm listening to background music in a high-end restaurant.

On first listen, I heard two outstanding tracks ('Darkness, Darkness' & 'Quicksand') but decidedly average 60's psychedelica for the rest.

On second listen, more of the mediocre songs actually started to annoy me.
Sir Francis Drake has an interesting start but mounts into a blues shuffle that really no-one needs. Many other songs feel like they're experimenting with sounds they don't fully understand.

I heard someone say on this album: "They just sound like the best band from a tiny town," and that's indeed basically it. Nothing special except for the two songs mentioned at the start

I didn't think all the songs are as outstanding as others, but with Dirge, Flying and Aisha, there's much greatness to behold

Almost unbelievable that this is already over 30 years old and still sounds fresh.
Relaxed and Jazzy HipHop, where the flow of the songs into each other is only rivaled by the flow of Q-Tip himself.

Nowhere does it get bad, but it's such a bland 90's pop-rock album, done so much better by legions of others in this genre, that I really don't know why this was an album I needed to listen to before I die.
I can't think of any part of this that sets it apart, on equal footing or even above the rest.

When I listened to this album a second time, on my headphones instead of over my speakers, this album kept my full and undivided attention and I recommend anyone that found the sound collages a bit dull to do exactly that.
It opened up the album.

There really are not a lot of songs on here that would be classified as hit potential.
Good and thoughtful songs? Yes, there are enough of those, like 'Haunted,' 'Partition' and 'XO.'
Not just musically, but lyrically does Beyonce tell us a few thing from her mind and heart. It's not all the prettiest, but it seems at least honest.

BEYONCE is a pop album with substance and never becomes superficial and Mrs. Knowles knows how to use her vocal acrobatics this time not unnervingly with those long stretches, but rather with a lot of emotion and control.

The minimalist productions work very well with the vocals. And the album made a lot bigger impact on me when I listened to it though headphones. There's a lot of sonic experiences happening in the background.

It's too bad that the guest appearances are of a very different quality. Where Jay-Z and Beyonce together make "Drunk In Love" maybe the best song on the album, Drake does the opposite on "Mine." It's such a lacklustre performance and song it even makes the songs around it less fun, that's how bad it is. Also 'Blue' (with Blue Ivy) and Rocket are just up to the standard that a lot of the rest of the album brings.

All in all just a really good pop album with a few deep depths that bring the album down. Remove them and you would have an almost perfect diamond.

After the first three songs (Rock Rock, Stagefright, Photograph) I was about to start several paragraphs on here about why in the world this generic 13-in-a-dozen rock by numbers pop-rock was on the 1001 Album list.

Luckily I persisted with the album and from 'Too Late For Love' onwards it really does get a little better. Not great, but not terrible. They play a bit more with the standard chorus-refrain-bridge and even the riffs seem a bit more thought out.

I guess I just really like a different kind of rock. This isn't it.

When they came out the country loving people in my surroundings said this was the bees knees and still call it the best alt-country album of the last 2 decades. It must've delivered something in that time that was realy needed.

Because when listening to it now, I still don't see the appeal as to why this is such a standout album. Some songs remind me indeed a bit of the alternative 90's scene, others really go back into country territory; and you know when that happens, it's when her accent gets dialed up to 10 southern, where that seems to be lacking on some other songs.

It's not a bad album, but I really seem to be missing the greatness of it all. It's distinctly flat, in songwriting and production.