Reviews by ryzgee

I'm of course familiar with the name Sinead O'Connor but I can't say that familiarity extends to any of her music. Even the big single "Nothing Compares 2 U" didn't ring any bells, so all of this was fresh on me.

I've thoroughly enjoyed being served this album today. There's a gentle acoustic intimacy and deep vulnerability entwined with some genuinely interesting rhythmic patterns and instrumentation, where her Irish heritage really shines through. I can absolutely see how this would have appealed on release, touching upon difficult but relatable personal subjects and laying O'Connor's soul searching journey bare for all to see, whilst retaining a strong sense of authenticity and raw unfiltered energy. O'Connor had a wonderful voice packed with character, and she had a great knack for restraint and release between a soft whisper and an almost primal roar.

Kind of slacker Americana for the most part with frequent bouts of pretentiousness. It often attempts to pull off post rock -esque grandeur but ultimately there's very rarely any kind of meaningful pay off. Bored me to tears.

There was a time in my life, around when this was released that I had a brief dalliance with UK grime, as it began exploding in popularity. I don't listen to the style much, if at all now as it's not really "me" these days, but this album and Skepta's brother JME's Integrity soundtracked my summer of 2016.

Skepta is the lesser of the two siblings in my view as a lyricist and as an MC, although he's no slouch, but this undoubtedly benefits from a superb production job, which is the primary reason I do revisit this once in a while. The low end on here is absolutely filthy. There's also a sense of defiance and rejection of commerciality running through this album which continues to appeal to me, as well as the gritty British-tinged urban themes.

"Hmmm, been going on a little while has this, surely it's nearly over?"
*checks Spotify*
Track 6.
In fairness it's not that bad, just fairly unremarkable punk with a pound shop Lou Reed droning and whining over the top of it, which probably makes it feel much longer than it actually is. I managed to push on through to the end, but there wasn't a great deal which really perked up my ears.

I've zero interest in sickly sweet sanitised pop music like this. Exactly the sort of music you'd hear in H&M. Also her carbon footprint is ridiculous.

Not a patch on the three albums which preceded it IMHO, but it still has "Wheels of Confusion / The Straightener", "Supernaut" and "Snowblind" among its ranks, so it earns four stars for those alone. It's a sprawling and wildly varied record, perhaps lacking the same strength of hooks as previous efforts but taking on a much more expansive direction, where arguably some of Iommi's most incendiary lead work on the aforementioned tracks and the crushing closer "Under the Sun" is contrasted by surprising passages of vulnerability. It doesn't all land for me but it's more than commendable.

"Cinnamon Girl" is excellent. Much of the rest is Neil Young doing Neil Young things. Don't really need this in my ears or on my shelves.

Found this incredibly dated stylistically and sonically - there's absolutely no way it could belong to any other era than the early-to-mid '90s. It's a predictable, fairly safe and largely joyless rap-rock fusion which grew rather tedious beyond the first couple of tracks. Nothing of interest to me here. Next.

This has taken a bit of a beating on the 1001 site, and I seem to be in the minority of users who enjoyed this enough to want to listen again in future. Supposedly an inspiration for the likes of Guns N' Roses, Motley Crüe and Skid Row, although the choruses didn't feel overly memorable on first listen, and although there were undoubtedly a handful of weaker offerings towards the album's tail end, it broadly gave off the impression of being greater than the sum of its parts.

It sounds like a halfway house between the DIY energy of punk rock and arena-hair metal, whilst remaining slightly off-kilter and somewhat eccentric the whole way through. It also attempts, and largely manages to pull off more expansive songwriting on the likes of "Lick Summer Love".

Definitely enough of a curiosity to warrant further spins.

This disappears up its own arse fairly quickly and doesn't manage to sustain my attention consistently enough. Shame as there are some very capable musicians making up this band.

Seriously I haven't got the slightest clue why the fuck this made the list. It sounds like quasi-inspirational, psuedo-"deep" royalty free AI generated YouTube background music. Like something that would soundtrack a weight loss journey slideshow. It offers absolutely nothing remotely compelling or different to other country albums already in the book.

I wasn't expecting to like this at all beyond "Good Times", which was the only song I was familiar with. More often than not with these sorts of albums, I find you have a banger hit or two and the rest is lift music-esque, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that wasn't the case here, even if there are a handful of tracks which are clearly a cut above.

The rhythm section throughout is really good and consistently engaging, finding just the right balance of groove, tension and release, meaning that even some of the lesser tracks on here are able to get your foot tapping. The production is also noteworthy here – a bit on the clinical side perhaps, but there's no excess and there's also an understanding that the space left between notes is almost as, if not equally important to the notes that you actually play.

I absolutely love this album and band. They are, by some distance, my favourite band ever grouped in with the Britpop movement. I had largely been very sneery of the scene for a number of years, mainly down to the exploits of Oasis and Blur and my grievances with the whole "lad culture" associated with those two figureheads in particular. It took a while for me to explore the era beyond my surface dislike, and I'm glad I did as it revealed this band to me.

I wasn't knocking around when this was properly making waves, but I can only imagine how this would have been just the tonic from the American grunge which was taking the world by storm at the time, and it still sounds dangerous today. It's jam-packed with swagger, oozing with glamorous theatricality and, impressively for a debut, completely unafraid to just go for it. However, it manages to balance this brashness with a shattering melancholy and sense of dread to carve out a truly unique mood and atmosphere, which is sustained to a relentlessly high standard.

I could go on, but there are so many glowing aspects of this album and of Suede's 90s sound. Bernard Butler's style, whilst invoking the melodic jangle of Johnny Marr and glam of Mick Ronson, is fantastic and enduring. You then have Brett Anderson who is easily my favourite Britpop frontman, howling and crooning tales of council estate romance, drug-taking escapism and of wrestling with his sexual identity, providing an interesting and deeply personal layer to the music. Vocally, David Bowie and Morrissey are probably the obvious reference points for Anderson where his voice cracks and soars with a desperate intensity to elevate the humdrum of everyday British life into something genuinely tragic sounding.

I'll be seeing them in an arena in a few weeks. I know they've largely been playing newer material lately but I hope to hear a few oldies.

I must have heard this before at some point as it's saved into my Spotify library, though nothing felt familiar on this listen.

I like The Fall and this very much establishes their blueprint at an early juncture, though it's a very skeletal blueprint at this stage. There's already a deliberate rejection of classic punk's more orthodox tendencies going on here, whilst still remaining indebted to the sound, and the spiky, sneery intellect showcased throughout isn't lost on me. There's plenty to admire about this album, from its anxious energy, scratching guitar tones and some oddly compelling piano on the likes of "Rebellious Jukebox".

However, as a front to back offering, whilst I will return to this I'm not sure how quickly as the production is rather thin and it deprives the songs of the sonic tenacity that they demand. It also just feels a touch primitive and not fully realised, lacking the sonic density of later albums and the craft to make the relentless repetition feel consistently engaging rather than merely intriguing.

Knew exactly what I was going to get from the title and the artwork. Not the worst country I've ever heard, nothing wrong with it particularly for what it is, but that's damning with faint praise as I can't stand what it is.

I wasn't expecting to like this at all given some of the reviews, but I actually very much enjoyed it. It's a sharp turn from the abrasive, droning experimentation of The Velvet Underground into vibrant and cinematic baroque/chamber pop. It gives off a strange vibe of being deceptively polite and warm sonically to mask some of Cale's eccentric musings, and it's that juxtaposition which appeals to me. The whole thing felt quite surreal and borderline unsettling at times, almost like a haunted photo album lost to time.

It's David Bowie so of course I'm giving this five stars. In fact, I think it might be my favourite material of his. It's a very different type of record to those which immediately preceded it in his catalogue, stripping away the theatricality and sonic excess of his previous eras to effectively lay the groundwork for the likes of post punk, synthpop, ambient and industrial music. It's an incredibly dense, fragmented and robust album across side one, and a brooding cinematic experience across the other in collaboration with Brian Eno. It only continues to reveal more of itself to me on each listen.

One of my favourite things about the album is that proto-industrial mechanical drum beat courtesy of Tony Visconti, sounding like a factory press clamping down all of the time. It's easy to hear how the sound shifted the trajectory of multiple of my favourite genres and provided a vital blueprint for others to draw upon. It mimics the aesthetic of exactly where it was recorded – Cold War Berlin.

Meanwhile, the second side is simply phenomenal. How it manages to sound simultaneously beautiful but alienating in equal measure is a work of genius. Throughout there is such a uniquely unsettling yet engaging atmosphere to wrap yourself around.

I also love how each song is structured entirely differently to one another in a thoroughly unconventional manner. You simply never know what twists the songs are going to take next, but they're all executed with aplomb.

I tried, really I did, because I know this album is often regarded as a hip hop classic, and whilst I can recognise that, I just don't like it or indeed the genre.

I woke up with a raging migraine this morning, and listening to this didn't help in the slightest. Like Disney Channel-ified call holding R&B-funk music and I couldn't stand it. It's like it's trying so hard to be quirky and a bit experimental but it's actually incredibly boring at its core and all just a bit daft, particularly lyrically.

This was somewhat more palatable when it leaned more closely into folk than country, and for what it's worth it's probably well performed, but my ears just do not agree with this sort of stuff whatsoever. It's my musical equivalent of being stuck on a bus with a crying baby. Also I really don't see what this contributes to the list that earlier country/folk offerings hadn't already expressed.