Reviews by owen

This is hard to rate, because about twenty minutes of this is great, lots of fun, relatively easy four stars. But two hours; come on. Nobody needs that much bluegrass.

This is where i got into Arcade Fire, only retroactively liking (and ultimately preferring?) Funeral, which for some reason didn't resonate with me at first. I don't quite love Arcade Fire as much as I once did, perhaps subconsciously because of Butler's behavior, but also because I think they fell off around Reflektor. This is still a five though.

God Of Thunder sounds like Spinal Tap's Big Bottom. In fact the whole thing is Spinal Tap without the charm.

Aerosmith and Leppard on consecutive days; what did I do to deserve this?

Ehh, about the same as other Aerosmith stuff, which is to say not my kind of thing. Low two.

This was a bit of a mixed bag for me. I liked it when it started, but there were some later tracks that didn't work for me and it got a little tiresome. Low three.

I've only ever heard the title track of this before, which is a classic. I liked the afrobeat-sounding second track. The remainder isn't quite as good, unfortunately, though I liked "I Can't Help Myself" and "Hoyoka" a fair bit.

This feels like a step up from the other Yes albums on this list. Some great keyboard playing from Wakeman. I think this might just edge into five star for me.

I think I have this CD in my garage somewhere. I still like it OK but I don't think it's held up as well as some of their contemporaries (like Underworld for example). Still think "In Sides" is the Orbital album that should be here instead.

Although she's a fine singer, I prefer the rap tracks on here to the sung ones. It's also a little too long, though I did enjoy it.

A little more than a week since I was last subjected to CCR; I wasn't ready for another round. Not my thing, although I didn't object to it as much as the last one.

Cheesy as anything, but you'd have to be a bit of a curmudgeon not to recognize the catchiness of More Than a Feeling, and the others are inoffensive.

This is just brilliant. Such a great debut. Not a dud on it.

This was pretty good; similarly to the much earlier one from Emmylou Harris, I liked her voice. A solidly high three.

I still don't love Geddy Lee's voice, which is a bit too high-pitched and screamy for me most of the time. But the instrumentals here were pretty great, and technically excellent. I enjoyed it a fair bit despite the singing. And I'm not going to knock Peart too hard for loving Ayn Rand; we all did stupid stuff when we were in our twenties :P. High three, close to four.

"Let Me Entertain You" and "Angels" are, well, entertaining, but the rest is pretty filler-ish. It all feels a little soulless, too.

I'm feeling bad about giving the Style Council one star now, because this is clearly worse by some quite large measure. I hate the weedy vocals on it so much.

Not even Tracey Thorn could save this. Such a huge step down from The Jam.

I liked this a decent amount too, although it dragged a little in the second half; perhaps 15 minutes shaved off would make this a better album. The Seed (2.0) was the standout track for me. Solid three.

I rather liked this. So many people here clutching their pearls here over language, lol. A strong three.