Reviews by ninexnineteen

Not necessarily as an album in its entirety, but most of the songs here have played important parts in my life. Almost everything on the album has a specific memory or name attached to me.

For example, one of my daughter's favorite songs is Vienna, which I found out when she was probably 15. I don't know how she encountered it, but she put it on a playlist of "songs your dad listens to" and sent the list to me. I'd never even heard the song before! But now, it's one of my favorites too because it makes me think of my little buddy.

Don't Go Changing makes me think of my wife. I wish I could have written it for her. Only the Good Die young has been a staple of pop for me for the last 45 years, and my aunt Virginia likes to make jokes about it. Movin' out carries a message I understood too late, but I'm working on incorporating into my life.

This is a very special album to me. And it spite of the weaker last two songs, it gets a hard ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ from me.

I do quite enjoy 80s New Wave, and this wasn't an exception. I do think the vocals get in the way of good music occasionally, and I think Sunrise was a straight rip-off of The Cure.

The second half of the album actually was worse with the vocals/lyrics and brought this album down from ⭐⭐⭐.5 to ⭐⭐.5. Bummer

⭐⭐.5

Billy Corgan wanted to make The Wall for GenX? Unfuckingbelievable, the stones on this guy. First of all, The Wall was The Wall for GenX. Secondly, this album isn't any better than all the other albums in the mainstream that year. In fact, pretty sure The Bends came out that year. Get over yourself, bro.

Ok, now that's out of the way...

This is actually a decent album, but it definitely should have been two. I don't see why making it a double was necessary when there is no unifying theme or narrative. Two hours is a long time to listen to unrelated songs.

I like pretty much everything about this album, but I'm having trouble articulating why. I'll just rate this ⭐⭐⭐⭐ and go make sure I have it in my personal collection

I think I like the slow, liquidy jams here. Very chill, but also very easy to let this one drop into the background and not pay attention while it's playing.

I tend not to like much punk, but when I do, I really do. What I like about this is it's punk with polish. Great vocals, cool bass work, and great punk/rockabilly guitar. I'm surprised about this one.

I can almost hear June Carter and Johnny
Cash covering In This House That I Call Home.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

As an instrumental, I would have liked this album much more. The vocals are grating to me. Since they're in a language I don't speak and that hits my ear in an assaulting way, I just can't get by it.

Things picked up for me in the last 3rd of the album

⭐⭐.5

This is fine

⭐⭐⭐

Initial impression: this is an insane cacophony. Terrorism with musical instruments

Impression after reading the Wikipedia article: "[Beefheart] once told drummer John French that he had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia." Oh, this makes complete sense now.

This is absolutely what I imagine schizophrenia would sound like. I have dealt with numerous severely mentally ill, manic, and people in crisis, and this word salad nonsense is exactly what they sound like. It's impossible to replicate for someone who isn't in one of these states, but an instantly recognizable hallmark of the condition. Now, apply the word salad concept to musical instruments and you get this garbled nonsense with actual word salad stacked on top. This is more an accidental distress signal than it is music.

I made it halfway without skipping a song, but I gave up at Pena. This album was an assault.

⭐

The first track would have been better as an instrumental, and did not make me look forward to the rest of the album. Everything after was a pleasant surprise

I now know why I have only ever heard one song from the album

I was prepared to rate this album 3 stars, but the back half of this album really changed my mind. I'm sure it wasn't the first diss track ever, but a roast of Bob Dylan (who I would similarly roast, were I clever enough) kicked off what I think are some really fantastic songs.

This isn't my favorite S&G album, but it's an S&G album, so it's pretty damned good

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Many more astute, qualified, and eloquent people have reviewed this album before me, and I think they've done a great job. Nothing I say here will add any value, with the possible exception of my very simple review:

I listened twice in a row. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

There's something about Talking Heads that just clicks with me, and it always has. This is no exception. Thanks for a great album, you weirdos.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

The social and political commentary on this album is so ahead of its time that most Americans STILL aren't ready to hear it. It's not like other people weren't saying similar things at the time; it's more they talked about the effects, rather than the roots. This guy went to class, took notes, analyzed the material, and extrapolated more significance than the lecturer gave, and threw his thesis into this album. "Music and Politics" was a superb bit of introspection you'd be surprised to hear from anyone today, let alone someone on a hip-hop album from 30 years ago. That took courage.

The beats were and samples were on par with the rest of late 80s to early 90s hip-hop; nothing special. The flows were standard and don't stand out as better (but possibly slightly worse). Overall, not a great musical experience nor necessarily a showcase of great talent (though I do appreciate some of Franti's current works from a musical perspective).

Ultimately, this gets 4 stars from me for the disturbingly prescient political and social commentary and the bit of introspection I surmise most of us could use to better ourselves.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

This is, by far, my favorite Who album. I listened twice in a row this morning. These guys can put together a rock song of epic proportion, a lonely ballad, and a universal tale of human experience. We are all the character in Behind Blue Eyes. Baba O'Riley was without peer in its time, and it is still fucking incredible. Keith's drumming is huge, exact, and in the perfect quantity. Pianos, organs, synths, violins, monster guitar riffs with fuzzy amps, harmonies, and Roger's perfect frontman vocals combine for a diverse, huge sounding but occasionally perfectly sparse album.

While I'm sad for The Who for how they must have felt when mod culture began to wane, as did their audience as a result, I'm so very grateful they went this direction. Fucking stellar album

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

I came to this album pretty late in my life at 40 or so. I always wanted to like jazz, but I couldn't ever acquire the taste for it, and the bulk of the advice I got was "you wanna get into jazz? Start with Miles Davis." I did, and I was like "I hate jazz."

At some point, I watched LaLa Land, and listening to Ryan Gosling's nerd out about jazz, something rusty inside me was finally able to turn free a little. Soon after, I was separately pursuing audiophile headphones, and this album was recommended as a test. Oh shit, I like jazz now? Turns out, the screechy horns of Miles Davis (and the like) are what I don't like.

So, thank you LaLa Land and Dave Brubeck for finally getting me started. Without those influences, I might still claim to hate jazz.

Every track on this album is a standout great, but if I had to pick a favorite, it would be Blue Rondo

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

As a teen in 90s, I had a certain subset of friends listening to Sonic Youth's albums released in the mid 90s. For some reason, those never hit my ear right, and I just thought "I don't like Sonic Youth." Simple as that.

Here we are, a whole lot of years later, rocking the fuck out to this album, missing all the years I could have been listening to this.

I absolutely cannot believe this came out in 1988. It sounds fresh today, and is undeniably a major influence on the staples of my music diet. For context of how different this was in 88, MJ's Bad, The Joshua Tree, and Luka by Suzanne Vega won Grammys that year. Incredible. I can't imagine what it was like to hear this when it came out. After 400some albums I have listened to from this list, this is the first that has changed my preconceived ideas about a band.

I think what I'm so interested here is that the album has basically all the things I complain about on other albums, especially discordance and limited vocal talent. However, they take all the things I don't like and make them very palatable for me.

This would have been alright if it was by a rapper with something to say and knew how to deliver it. Tired "I'm so tough and women like me" bullshit we all left behind more than a decade earlier should not land a rapper on this list. With such a shit flow and even worse rhyme scheme, it's hard to understand why any critic liked this album.

⭐⭐

This was interesting. Like listening to early Stones, kind of?

⭐⭐⭐