Reviews by owen

There are aspects to this that I really enjoy, yet at the same time I find it incredibly irritating. Strange. I suspect if I listened to this a bunch more times I might grow to love it, but I'm also not sure I want to put in that work. Low 3.

I went into this being pretty sure I would hate it and indeed the first couple of tracks didn't do a lot for me. But I persevered and somewhere around the middle of "A Sailor s Life" something clicked and I started to like it; there was something krautrock-y to that track. Good Dylan songs here too.

This was a fun listen; clearly a good time was had making it and the band were great. A little too much scatting for my liking. A strong 3.

If this album were just 35 minutes of an extended mix of The Forest I think I'd be happy; it's such a great track. The rest of the album is really good too, but The Forest is the clear standout.

I got to this a couple of years late, but some time around 2010 i loved this album and listened to it a lot. Perhaps too much, or maybe my tastes have changed a bit, because although I still like it, it doesn't quite connect with me in the same way it used to.

The opening bars of the first track told me I was going to enjoy this, and that turned out to be true; right up my street - not sure how I haven't listened to it before.

Sorry, I couldn't get past the vocals here, which are very much not to my liking. I got four or five tracks in and felt compelled to bail.

Not every song on here is a five star song, but there are enough of them to earn this five stars as an album. Standouts are Needle and the Damage Done, Old Man, and of course Heart of Gold.

A strong three; I enjoyed this quite a lot, though maybe not quite as much as Ritual de lo Habitual. Only song I was familiar with was Jane Says; that's the strongest on the album.

The album cover is terrible. The music is incredibly bland. Some of it sounds like it's trying to be Massive Attack, but nowhere near successfully. Also pretentious.

The strongest songs on here (Personal Jesus, Enjoy the Silence, a few others) are good enough to lift the album into 4 territory. Some of the other tracks are good but not at the same level. But overall an enjoyable listen.

The slower tracks on here (e.g. It Couldn't Happen Here) aren't nearly as enjoyable as the more upbeat ones. The singles are a lot of fun.

I'm not super keen on reggae in general, but this was pretty decent. I liked the front half of the album more than the latter half, but maybe that's because I can only take so much reggae in one go. Maybe I'll have a listen to the dub version of the album at some point.

I remember listening to this in 2004 and thinking I should have liked it, but could never get into it. Relistening now confirmed that its not really my thing. It's not bad - there are several aspects of it I liked (Don't Love You was good). I didn't particularly like the falsetto. A low three.

Well I see now who Neil Hannon and Alex Kapranos have been listening to.

I wanted to like this but it wore on me more the more I listened to it, and by the end I was thoroughly sick of it.

This feels like as much a Bowie album as an Iggy Pop one, but that's not a bad thing at all. I liked Iggy's stuff with the Stooges, and while this is quite different, it's also very much to my taste. I liked his version of China Girl as much as Bowie's. A strong four.

This loses its way significantly after the first five minutes or so, and just becomes rather generic and unexceptional prog rock. And what's with the caveman on side 2?

Fairly run of the mill 60's rock. This didn't stand out to me in any way. The Monkees version of Stepping Stone is better.

When autoplay continued after this album completed, and played Missing from Guero. I didn't realise it had changed albums and thought "ah, I like this one more than the other tracks.". So yeah, I prefer Guero (and Odelay). This is good, but not great. I prefer slightly livelier Beck.

Second time in a couple of weeks where I start the review with "I don't like country, but ...". Willie Nelson has a great voice; very listenable, and the material is suitably simple. This works pretty well for me.