Reviews by nirutam2

Perfectly entertaining but never quite profound. And I’m just fine with that.

I'm kind of enraged that the average ranking of this album is below 3. Aimee Mann deserves better than that. Her songwriting is among the best not just musically, not just lyrically, but *thematically* -- she explores topics and angles that occur to no one else. The guitar, harmonies, and production here are excellent. The only reason I might give it a 4 instead of a 5 is that I'm not sure it's the one best album to represent her. But it's still a great one, and it represents the beginning of her lifelong dissent from what the record industry thinks artists and especially women artists should be.

Yet the misogyny is ever-present. The reviews here rattle on about ex-girlfriends and Lilith Fair as if the discourse hasn't moved on a bit from the 90s, and hell, maybe it hasn't. I don't want to waste more time on it, because if you investigate for five minutes, you'll find that Aimee is one of the favorite songwriters of your favorite songwriter -- male, female, or otherwise.

A friend of a friend loaned me this album in the late 90s because he said I seemed like the sort of person who liked stoner music without actually being a stoner. I can't recall what musical choices led him to believe that, but 20+ years later, I think it checks out. Yet I haven't listened to the whole album since then. In 2026, I find it mellow, reassuring, yet still alive to possibility. The closest analogue is the observational songwriting of Fountains of Wayne... these guys feel like their more excitable cousins. Nothing earth-shattering, but music I could enjoy any given day either sitting by myself or at a party. Might have been a 3.5, but the fact that they wrote the Veronica Mars theme will always put them over the top.

I suppose I’m in the perplexed camp on this one. Like other people, I enjoy some parts of it musically, but find the attempt at a coherent story pretty burdensome. I also keep thinking about how the story steals oxygen from actual people who are “deaf dumb and blind” psychosomatically or otherwise. I want to respect the attempt at a theatrical work, even a failed attempt, but in the end I just can’t.

Like many others, j enjoyed the overall sound but the vocal delivery eventually proved grating to me.

Stones at their stoniest. I love all the hits but “Dead Flowers” is the one that puts it over the top for me.

This was interesting. It’s not my opinion that an album needs hits to be great, but when it’s Stevie Wonder, you kind of expect to encounter a few. Without them, this gave the impression of being an amazing compilation of B sides, “another side” of Stevie, and mostly a darker side. I enjoyed it a lot but also didn’t encounter that moment that made me say “wow I will listen to this album until the end of time.” But my opinion might change as I better understand Stevie in the context of the whole project.

I’m about 135 albums in and I would say this is my favorite record I’ve encountered from an artist I never heard before. They feel like a missing link between like six of my favorite bands, some before their time and some after. But at the same time, the covers make clear that it’s just some guys noodling around. On some level all our favorite bands are that, even The Beatles and Radiohead. This album feels like they didn’t mind sharing that secret and it wasn’t even that big a deal to them, the same way Tom Bombadil isn’t all that impressed by the ring. I’ll definitely listen again and seek out their other stuff.

This is a tough one. I can see why this is a beloved album and an era-defining artistic statement. I agree that it holds up decades later. But in its era and now; it just doesn’t move me emotionally for some reason. I had a playlist for years called “inspiration station” which was uplifting gospel-adjacent stuff … far from who I am but stuff I enjoy. I had “Zion” on it but eventually took it off because it doesn’t make me feel the way that, say, “No One” by Alicia Keys does.

So yes it deserves all the accolades. But if I’m honest listening to the album as a whole has always made me kind of sad. I’m sure it’s because it never had a follow-up. But I think it is also something about the end of the 90s and the transition to our present culture of constant surveillance and repackaging of the self. In the time just before, Lauryn Hill made this statement of who she was, and the record itself was the place to do it. Not the social media feed or the podcast or the photo op, but the *record.* I know may other folks are still doing that, but damn it’s hard best this album in that respect

I laughed when this came up because I think of Boy George as more of a pop cultural figure than a musician that would show up on a list like this. But once I got into it I realized how much I liked it all: the warmth, the harmonies, and yes even the 80s production. I was too young to be there but it was all still floating through the ether when I came of age musically so I still get a sense of nostalgia. Anyway, not something I will probably listen to again any time soon but perhaps less likely to skip it when it shows up on the radio or a playlist.

What a party! Listened to it all day long. I speak decent Spanish so I can understand some of the Portuguese lyrics and they are equally trippy. I love dancing around my house thinking about Hermes Trismagistus.

I was pretty shocked by how much I disliked this. I got the later album Country Life the other day and almost gave it a 5 because its sound was so appealing to me… I held back because I couldn’t really say what the point of the record was, and I think I need that story to make ir all work for me. But anyway, I said to myself, “Wow, if this is Roxy Music after Eno, I wonder how much I’ll like it when I get an album from when he’s in the band

Nope. Did not compute. I can hear Eno’s contributions and get the ideas behind some of the songs. But the sound is then opposite of the well-integrated Country Life for me. It felt like a junk drawer with a lot of elements I didn’t want in there (like the sax). It felt like David Bowie outtakes. I couldn’t process it as prog or glam or whatever, it just felt like a mess.

They’ve got one more album coming up on the list and of course we have plenty of Eno in other contexts. Here’s hoping I had a moment of temporary insanity and I’ll come back to this album one day and love it too.

This one is hard. In my last review I wrote about the difference between a 4 and a 5 for me, and it comes down to whether it speaks to me personally. When I got Dre’s Chronic (which might as well be a Snoop album) I rated it a 4 because the misogyny and violence was prominent enough that I couldn’t completely connect with it (as opposed to Nas’s Illmatic where I connected with the larger story he’s telling). Okay, so by those standards this would be a 4.

But… it’s just too damn good to be a 4. When you let Snoop loose, he is just so inventive, so sly, so funny. And every guest appearance on the record is a classic too. I guess I am following my own standards because I am just so enthralled by his technique that I hear the pimps and hoes shit and I JUST DONT CARE.

Which disturbs me a bit, to be honest, because I do care, I don’t want anyone to talk about women this way. I hate that even recently he’s talked about LGBT identities as if they were a bad thing. I want there to be some kind of accountability somewhere… but… at the same time I want it BECAUSE the music is so good, not in spite of it.

Anyway, like I said, conflicted. But I can’t pretend it’s not brilliant.

Once again in that tough spot between a four and a five. The case for a five is this album’s influence and how ahead of its time it was. That all depends on you liking glam rock and new wave, which I very much do. Indeed, I enjoyed the *sound* of this album even more than anticipated… I played it even more times than my typical 1001 pick just to have nice background noise all day long.

But I become to realize that to hit five stars for me an album had to speak to me emotionally, and I never quite found the message or feeling in Country Life that does that. But it did make me want to listen to more Roxy Music to see if it’s there elsewhere.

A few years ago I read a memoir by a major figure in American history that really moved me. It made me feel as if I should have read it in school, and actually that my life was less than it should have been because I hadn’t encountered it sooner.

Though not quite as profound, I got the same feeling today listening to LCD Soundsystem, which really surprised me. I know the band, the story, the most popular songs, but when they were gaining popularity I was in grad school and mostly checked out of new music. I figured they were a band for other, younger folks.

But going through this album today I immediately felt the connection with lots of music that is central to who I am, like Bowie’s Low and Let’s Dance. I didn’t hear any of that until listening in album form. Even the songs I had heard before felt different, which I’ve experienced a few times. Anyway, it feels like something that went wrong in the past has now been set right, and I’m a fan as I should have been in the past

It doesn’t need to make your ears bleed to be pink. Love these guys and this record — every track has a moment that reminds you that rock and roll was alive and well in 1981 and also today. I think maybe my favorite thing about it is how it’s a love record without exactly being a record about love. By the end you feel like you were in a relationship in a dream and you only remember the afterglow. Just so happy I got this one today and that I get to listen to it for many more years

Lately I've had no ability to summon sophisticated musical opinions. I like this a lot, but not as much as I Should Coco. I'd never heard them before and got it in my first few weeks on the generator, fell head over heels and gave it a 5. In hindsight it might have been more like a 4.5, so this is more like a 4. All the things I love about Britpop while also feeling like it's not a part of anyone else's movement.

I enjoyed this, kind of like an earthier Joni Mitchell. Will listen again

Perfectly pleasant but didn’t stay with me.

This is my least favorite kind of rating decision to make, the cusp between a 4 and a 5. On the one hand, there are so many great songs on this album and I think the effort to make the Pixies sound more accessible really works. If we were rating songs, “Velouria” is one of my favs Pixies or otherwise.

But I just don’t think the album is anything near the bold artistic statement of Doolittle. Doolittle is its own sick world with its own sick aesthetic. Surfer Rosa isn’t as good, but there is so much in it that points the way — plus Where Is My Mind — that I gave it a 5 too.

Bossanova tho… it feels a lot like most Frank Black albums, an enjoyable collection of songs by a clever guy. Really good, but not essential in the way I imagine a 5 album to be.