Reviews by pops

I have a friend who hates the Pixies on principle because they were her ex’s favourite band. It’s a shame he was a dick, because he had good taste in girlfriends and music.

Maybe it's the 90s teen nostalgia (a friend at school copied this album on cassette for me) but I think I might like Dookie more now than I did at the time. It's a tad same-y, but there's less filler than I remembered.

Default is on my running playlist but I haven’t been running for a couple of weeks, so listening to that while sitting down made me feel oddly guilty. Other than that, I enjoyed this - it’s such an interesting-sounding album.

When this began, I thought I was going to hate it, but around There's Always Room on the Broom, I started to get on Liars' wavelength. Congrats 1001 Albums Generator, you've turned me from a noise-rock avoider to a noise-rock agnostic.

This probably sounded futuristic at the time, but now sounds dated, which I think makes it more charming - like watching an old sci-fi B-movie.

Although Sinead O'Connor was done dirty by the media, if I'm completely honest, there is a part of me that's always thought that if she hadn't been such a controversial and charismatic figure, she might have been put in the one-hit wonder file. Anyway, it turns out I've been doing her dirty too, as I liked this album a lot and there's definitely more to it than Nothing Compares 2 U.

I quite liked it in a background music kind of way, but if I'm ever on Strictly Come Dancing, I still want to do my tango to A View To a Kill by Duran Duran.

I really like Steely Dan, but surely even the people who don’t have to admit that Peg is a straight-up banger?

I’m partial to a bit of glam and I liked this a lot.

This just seemed to go on and on.

I like a couple of Jon Spencer Blues Explosions singles but I think this probably works better in short bursts (or explosions if you will).

As a teenager who loved this album, I assumed songs like National Front Disco were Morrissey exploring different characters and not voicing his own opinions. Unfortunately, it seems I was wrong about that, but I wasn’t entirely wrong about the album - shout out to producer Mick Ronson because I still love the beefed up, glam sound on some of these songs.

For my money, Rod Stewart has one of the all-time great rock voices, but he hasn't always been one of the all-time great pickers of material, to put it mildly. This finds him close to his best though.

Good if you like this kind of thing, and I clearly do - it was very obviously an influence on Wild Wood by Paul Weller, and that's getting at least four stars when it comes up too.

I really like Skin’s voice, but this could have done with a couple more stand-out tunes.

I’ve heard the legend of the Jesus and Mary Chain (they were the loudest thing anyone had ever heard! Their gigs were literal riots!) but not a lot of their music. This was a lot more melodic than I was expecting - if someone had said they had tunes as well as feedback, I might have checked them out earlier.

There’s some filler but this was fun. Glamour Boys is a bop.

Tim Buckley was very handsome and this was his seventh album, so I'm guessing he'd encountered amorous fans before. So why does Greetings From LA sound like the work of a man who's only just lost his virginity and is a bit too keen to let you know about it? If you can overlook the slightly awkward 'have I ever mentioned I really like having sex?' aspects of it though (and the noises he is making on Devil Eyes), there's some good music here.

I could live without Ramble Tamble and the 11-minute version of I Heard It Through the Grapevine, but when John Fogerty puts his gift for writing a short, hook-filled song to good use, this is great.

There's nothing like reading the Wikipedia description and seeing that the album was unfinished partly due to the band's own lack of interest to get you excited about listening - and I say that as someone who likes Big Star. There are some tracks here that make it a bit too clear that this was a band in the process of falling apart, but there are enough woozy bangers and moments of loveliness to make me glad someone tried to salvage it.