Reviews by pops

I liked this a lot. It did dip slightly in the middle but SZA pulled it back with the last two tracks.

As someone who bought Siamese Dream when it came out but thought it could stand to lose a couple of tracks, I've always been a bit daunted by the idea of a Smashing Pumpkins double album. Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness was pretty much what I expected - there are some good songs here, but it would have just worked better for me if it wasn't so very, very long.

As a teenager in the 1990s, I did my own mini version of this project by borrowing classic albums from the CD section in my local library. That's how I first heard Pet Sounds - and I've loved it ever since. So, I would have given it five stars whenever it came up on the generator, but the fact that Brian Wilson died yesterday made this listen even more poignant.

Blimey, this was tedious. As it's a live album, I'd say maybe you had to be there, but I'm pretty sure that if I had been there, I'd have got bored and left.

I feel like this is supposed to be one of those albums that provokes an extreme reaction, but I thought it was… ok?

For an iconic band fronted by someone nicknamed 'the Lizard King', a lot of this is pretty generic.

I saw Goldfrapp live circa 2003/2004, and she played a theremin with her crotch, which may be why I was expecting this to be more exciting than it was,

It’s like if you asked AI to make you a psychedelic 1960s album - all the expected ingredients are there, but there’s something a little bit off about it, creating an uncanny valley effect. But, you know, in a good way.

The cover has it right - Four Women is unforgettable, and the stand-out track here.

It turns out the Beatles influence was even stronger with Big Star than I realised - I knew they had two main lead-singer songwriters, but I didn't know they also let their bandmate have one token song about India. The Alex Chilton-sung tracks are my favourites (and the ones I knew best before this listen - I'm a sucker for a bit of wistful jangling), but this is a solid album all-round.

I loved this album as an angsty teen - 14-year-old me really thought she'd been silent all these years. I hadn't listened to Little Earthquakes in a long time, and while I found a couple of tracks a bit overwrought this time around, angsty 40something me really enjoyed revisiting it.

I didn’t dislike this, but even assuming the title is tongue in cheek, calling an album Destroy Rock & Roll raises your expectations for something more exciting than “all back to mine” post-club background music.

So many disco bangers, but I’m deducting a star for the pure sap that is She’s Out of My Life. (I accept there are other, stronger reasons for marking down a Michael Jackson album.)

I like a couple of Sleater-Kinney songs (I even bought Little Babies as a single) but have never listened to a whole album, and if I’m honest it’s because I thought the vocals might work best in I small doses. I should have put that misgiving aside earlier - I enjoyed this.

My rating system isn’t very scientific but, as a rule of thumb, three stars means I feel like I got something out of listening to an album but am unlikely to revisit it. Rock Bottom fits into that category - I don’t think it’ll be turning up in my Spotify Wrapped, but I am glad I heard this fascinating, challenging and haunting album.

I knew Somebody to Love and White Rabbit, but they are the outliers here - some of the other tracks felt more folky than psychedelic.

One of the tracks is called Last Bongo in Belgium, so you know that this is going to be a good time. And have a lot of bongos.

Maybe it’s the shadow cast by his death or maybe it’s because the two Elliott Smith songs I know best are Waltz No 2 and Needle in the Hay (aka the one from the most intense scene in The Royal Tenenbaums) but I was expecting this to be bleak and instead it’s very Beatle-y. In some ways that was a relief but it’s also not that distinctive.

So far, the generator has largely re-enforced my anti-prog prejudices, so I was not looking forward to this one, but it wasn’t as much of a chore as I was expecting. In fact, if it had just been a single album, it might have got a “surprisingly enjoyable” four stars, instead of an “alright but it goes on a bit” three.

I was on the fence about the first Cocteau Twins album I got (Treasure), and when I saw that one of the tracks on this is called Frou-Frou Foxes in Midsummer Fires, I was expecting it to double down on the irritating aspects of that album. Instead, I liked it - I thought it was still atmospheric but had stronger tunes and was less cloying.