Reviews by nirutam2

I liked this a lot and was tempted to give it a 5 just to stick it to the haters. Yes, it’s an avant garde kinda folk kinda electronic art project rooted in English sensibilities. But so are Pink Floyd and Radiohead. It’s just not that far out there, people.

Anyway, more relatable than the other Wyatt album in the list, possibly due to Brian Eno, and it feels as if there are portals between this and many of his other worlds. There’s Talking Heads and Bowie’s Low in there if you want to hear it… with all the jazz going on I was also reminded of Blackstar.

Amidst all that, though, I didn’t hear that one song that would make me say “wow; I’ll listen to this forever” … so not quite a 5.

I’m of the “Aerosmith = Armageddon soundtrack” generation, so it’s kind of fun to hear when they were… just a band. I enjoy this and wouldn’t skip any of the hits when they come on the radio, but at the same time it all seems a little silly. Glad they get to do their thing, glad there are people who love them, but I’m on to the next.

I’m sure metalhead will have more profound things to say about this than me, but I’ll add my bit. I got the first Black Sabbath album earlier in the project and thought that as enjoyable as it was, my main reaction was, “Wow, I wonder what it was like to hear this in 1970?” Its main value was creating the genre.

“Paranoid” is something else entirely. Every time I hear it, I think how urgently people need to hear “War Pigs” and the way Ozzy throws the accusation of Satanism back at the warmongers who truly deserve it. They deserve it now just as much as they did then. And every moment of the rest of the album feels just as urgent. I have no doubt it deserves its place as one of the best albums of all time.

I had a teacher in high school who was the ideal mix of stodgy traditionalist and laid-back dude. He was a moderate Republican (we still made them in those days) with approximately the same personality as Woody from Toy Story. He had high moral standards, yet you could also never quite guess when he would come down on you for something or when he would let his slide.

A club I was a part of met in his room and that sort of became my substitute locker and hangout area through the day. I would often show up early, put on music, and finish music before the day began. One day he came in and asked what was playing and I absent-mindedly replied, “Bitches Brew.” I looked up and I think we realized at the same time that I had said “bitches” around a teacher. His mouth hung open for a moment and then he smiled, nodded his head, and said, “All right!” Turned out he mostly listened to jazz at home, though more in the “Kind of Blue” mode. So that became a place we usually played jazz in the morning.

One day one of the other kids walked in when I had Dave Brubeck on. He was definitely more of a metalhead and he heard was playing and he said, “Um, is this a MIDI?” I’m still not sure if it was sarcastic or not. Anyway, I just turned it off… today, I might have turned it up higher and asked him to listen for the undeniably organic elements of Brubeck and his band, even if I get that the melodies can be a little tinkle-tinkle.

I had kind of the same reaction to this record. Too smooth, too clean. I preferred the Getz/Gilberto where the voices (though also very smooth) ground the sound in some particular time and place. I ended up giving that one a four, but I probably talked it down from a five — I just didn’t enjoy it quite enough. This is a three I talked up to a four because of how much I liked the guitar parts and especially the”Bahia.” Still not my preferred kind of jazz, but certainly not a MIDI.

Wings feels like a machine designed to generate ratings somewhere between 4 and 4.5. It's one part Beatles-level compositions and one part McCartney and friends just messing around, and you never quite know what you are going to get with any given album or track. I really can't imagine ranking it up there with the Beatles, but damn if Paul doesn't make me doubt it every time, plus have a lot of fun.

For the good of the order, could everyone read a few reviews before you submit yours? Everybody uses the same Big Lebowski quote in their Eagles reviews.

I could never bring myself to hate the Eagles, even if I don’t love them. I think the formula makes sense and brings happiness to a lot of people who drift somewhere out there between country, rock, and easy listening. I sing along with the hits like everyone else. . My one knock on them is that they can seem somewhat insincere. I just don’t believe there was a girl my lord in a flatbed Ford, even if we all like the image.

That’s my take on Eagles the band, what about Eagles the album? Honestly I don’t think it should be in the book. As much as I enjoyed the hits and the harmonies, the songwriting overall just wasn’t there yet on this debut album. There were moments I thought I might give it as high as a 4, but in ending with 2. Hotel California is probably sufficient — I’d like to see this dropped in favor of some young upstart with an album full of ideas, not just a few hits

A favorite artist and a favorite album. I’m not sure whether I would have picked this one or Revival for the list, but I’m so glad she’s here. And as usual I’m cranky about the down-voting of a female singer-songwriter. The usual critiques are that she’s depressing or inauthentic. “Depressing” doesn’t hold up in the context of her whole oeuvre, and even this album has plenty of levity if you pay attention.

The authenticity thing is more complicated and I can’t say I’ve figured it out yet. I have considered pitching a book about this album (or Revival) to the 33 1/3 folks, aiming at that theme of authenticity and what the heck it does or doesn’t mean. Gillian became well known because of the O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack, which in some ways was a dissertation defense of authenticity and in some ways a parody of it — what exactly are the Soggy Bottom Boys? And some have criticized her sound as a “simulation” (Robert Christgau) of Depression-era music, I guess because she grew up in Southern California and not Appalachia.

Whatever — if this kind of music is to remain alive, it has to be reinvented each time, not just preserved under glass. Gillian and her partner David Rawlings always find subtle ways to make the sound speak to this century. The best example on this album is “Everything is Free,” a subtle critique of music piracy that is possibly an even better fit for the streaming era. Or look at her Blackstar EP, where she covers Radiohead, Townes Van Zandt, and Neil Young. Her work is better thought of as a triangulation of those artists than some kind of folk pageant.

I’d also say that like John Prine and Iris DeMent and Dolly Parton, Gillian also provides a kind of salve to those of us who love the weird old American traditions but have also in some sense walked away from them. “Revelator” is a word that’s associated with the Biblical Apocalypse (or if you grew up Mormon, the Church President). By asserting that TIME is the revelator, Gillian reframes all that noise in the context of nature’s cycles but also her own story:

“Leaving the valley
Fucking out of sight
I'll go back to Cali
Where I can sleep out every night
And watch the waves and move the fader
Time's the revelator
The revelator
Queen of fakes and imitators
Time's the revelator!”

You see, she knows it’s a simulation and always was, yet she still seeks truth in it. And whether she’s singing about murder or Elvis or the weird feeling you get hearing the Steve Miller song you first had sex to… she finds it.

Smoothly epic, epically smooth. Authentic social critique that dances. Exactly the sort of thing that makes me happy I took this journey. Reminds me of the first time I heard "What's Going On," but I knew that by reputation ahead of time. For War, all I knew was "Low Rider" and "Why Can't We Be Friends?" This went way deeper and funkier while still being the same dudes. Great experience on Friday morning and playing it again Friday night.

Interesting and strange. Didn't sound like an album at all, but instead a selection of songs the algorithm might have chosen after playing a psychedelic country rock crossover landmark like Sweetheart of the Rodeo. I was open to this being better than Sweetheart, even, which has never quite lived up to its legend or its cover art in my mind. So I thought, "Cool, here we have a collection of songs in similar style but without the Dylan covers or Gospel songs."

Thing is, I never would have imagined they were all by the same band, though I might have guessed one of the bands was the crew behind "Get Together." I might have imagined some of these songs were by the Beegees or the Monkees or the Zombies or any number of bands ending in an E sound from the 60s and 70s. So in the end I liked some of the songs a lot but felt kind of meh about the album.

And after I finished the algorithm went straight into "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere," the first track of Sweetheart of the Rodeo...

A good album and a good contemporary choice for the book. I've come across a few tracks by Kelela when listening to some of various electronic indie and dream pop artists I have on rotation. I knew I liked it but as an old married white guy the sexy cover art may have unconsciously made me slot it into the category of "interesting but not for me."

Giving it a proper listen, though, it reminds me a lot of an artist I listen to regularly, Empress Of. Maybe slightly further into the R&B side of the spectrum, but honestly not by all that much. So I hear her as another powerhouse woman blending hip-hop, electronic, indie, and her own narrative however she wishes. Power to her.

I hate leaving reviews like this but this album really just felt like meaningless noise to me. I love all sorts of “noise” albums but the difference is that I can usually tell what the artist was trying to express. In this case I just felt completely lost and didn’t enjoy myself.

A lot of the music I like now would be characterized as "psychedelic" and so I can't completely dislike this. But there were just so many moments when it veered into cliche. I guess I value it as a period piece, but not much more beyond that.

This all seemed kind of opaque to me… like half of it didn’t even connect with my brain as songs. There were a few riffs I liked here and there but overall felt disappointed.

Probably time I gave these fellas a chance. I still have them pegged as the flavor of the month when it turns out this record is 20 years old. And it turns out I really liked it, the immediacy of the sound and the authenticity of their point of view. I knew I would enjoy the hits but I even liked the quirkier stuff like “Riot Van” and the vampires song. I don’t know that I fell in love with it enough for a 5 but I am going to check out their other stuff.

This had plenty of fun moments... at times it felt like a 3.5 or a 4. But overall the album didn't hang together enough to move me. Much more likely to return to individual songs than the record as a whole.

I enjoyed the novelty of this but didn’t connect with it on a much deeper level than that.

This was so much frickin fun and also totally incomprehensible to me until I read more about its place in the history of studios, session musicians, and hip hop. Until then I felt like I could have been listening to anything from the world's greatest session musicians messing around smoking a joint to an alternate universe where all muzak was made by Santana. Anyway, a great example of why we are all in this project -- helped me better understand where a lot of my favorite music comes from.

I have fond memories of passing this album around with friends in college and recognize all the elements of genius in it, but I also have to admit that for some reason it doesn't come together for me in a way that makes it a favorite album.

I had imagined this as a 3 that gets bumped up to 4 by nostalgia, but I think it may have really earned the 4.

The nostalgia case: For me The Offspring are a good symbol of all the different sounds that 90s alternative could embrace. Somehow after “Smells Like Teen Spirit” we got not just grunge but disaffected balladeers (Smashing Pumpkins) and power punk class clowns (Green Day) and meditative weirdos (Radiohead) and on and on and on. The Offspring were never my favorite band but I love that they fit right in with the rest of the group.

After listening though I appreciate their distinctive guitar sound and songwriting style. “Come Out and Play” is catchy but it’s also pretty unconventional. Everybody knew you had to keep ‘em separated even though no one quite knew what they were. I had fun hanging out with the brains that produced that even though the next time I hear them it will probablyi be in yet another “I miss the 90s” mix.

When I was in college I had a beloved journalism professor who was also a big Dylan fan. He worked quotes from his lyrics into everything. His favorite was “The words that are used for to get the ship confused will not be understood as they’re spoken.” But number two is a more acerbic line from this album: “When you asked me how I was doing, was that some kind of joke?”

As a gift for this guy I created a magnetic poetry kit of Dylan lyrics (full of lots of his weird phrases like “carpenters’ wives” and proper nouns like Hollis Brown and the Grand Coulee Dam). A friend of mine, kind of a Dylan hater, observed that this mixing and matching must be the way Dylan writes his songs. I don’t think she was entirely wrong. The Dylan we know now is such a cloud of oblique images and references that you often have no idea what he’s talking about.

I think that starts here. I think of Highway 61 as the album where Dylan becomes Dylan, not just because he went electric, but because he fully embraced the sounds and lyrics of a crazed run-down carnival. I think it’s easiest to see on “Desolation Row,” where various boldfaced names of the 20th century become aliases for street people and the repetition eventually makes you forget what the difference is. Similarly, you can trace the indignation of “Like a Rolling Stone” or “Ballad of a Thin Man” to conflicts with fans or the press, but Bob’s lyrical style makes them into existential disputes. As a small-time newspaper editor I had a poster by my desk that said “Don’t be Mister Jones” because I thought the song did such a great job of capturing the painfully detached worldview of some reporters and some people. This type of stuff isn’t hard to find in a Dylan song if you’re looking for it.

Do I think Dylan’s style eventually became a kind of self-parody? Yeah, I do. Even though I enjoyed, say, “Love and Theft,” I think by then Bobby was mostly golfing around. But for all its obscurantism Highway 61 is still painfully sincere in a way the straight-ahead folk albums never were. The best Dylan anti-war song was never “Blowin’ in the Wind” or “Masters of War” but “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall,” which like the songs of Highway 61, may not be about any specific subject at all. But it became about nuclear war when that’s what people needed it to be about.

Anyway, I still need this album in that way. I don’t listen to it nearly as often as I did in school and less often than “Blonde on Blonde,” but when you need to summon an electric Old Testament prophet for any reason, head down that way to Highway 61.