Reviews by similartie

There is nothing about this album that appeals to me in any way. I’d rather listen to a constipated capybara perform the complete works of Edgar Winter on harmonica than listen to this again.

It's not that bad if you can get past the ridiculous vocals; which, admittedly, is difficult to do. I feel like this album is daring me to like it in spite of all the dissonance.

Ultimately forgettable but I thought the production was good.

Great album except for the composition, the singing, and the lyrics.

Nostalgia trip. I listened to this album a lot back when the options were seemingly much more limited, but as I aged and my tastes firmed up (and you could find anything under the sun on the internet), I left this one far behind. It was fun to revisit and my younger self would have given this album four stars, but present-day me is pretty ambivalent.

A fun little album, nothing too crazy. The two songs I liked the most were Alison and Watching the Detectives.

This album probably wouldn’t have been anything without the production, but also I hate the production.

David Rawlings is one of my favorite guitar players and I could listen to these two sing the Internal Revenue Code, 26 U.S. Code Subtitle B on an endless loop and thoroughly enjoy it. This album also features perhaps one of the first and best songs about the rise of file sharing in the early 2000s (Everything Is Free).

This album has several drawbacks for me: it’s too busy, it’s too upbeat, and it’s too long. Is it objectively worse than some albums I have given four stars? Probably not, but we’re not doing objectivity here. The man deserves his own eponymous genre label, but this is not for me.

Terrible.

I took a chance on this album in a record store bin over 20 years ago, back when it was easy to pick up a stack of great or interesting albums on vinyl for about $3-4 each. I've loved it ever since. It sits happily on the shelf among other old-school favorites like Bryter Layter, Desire, Led Zeppelin IV, and Let It Bleed.

Seven songs, all great; each one distinct: some long, some short, some electric, some acoustic, some hard, some soft. And still the album is incredibly cohesive. Not easily done.

I don't like glam or punk or sleaze so this is a no from me.

Pretty intense album. I liked it mostly except for The Old Castle. Didn't need that part.

I feel like multiple listens could benefit here, but I feel safe giving this one a four. Love the vibe.

The 80s are my least favorite decade for music and this is VERY 80s, but it has some charm and I can appreciate the effort. If I were to attend an 80s themed party, I would gladly don my skinny tie, get out the hairspray and the eyeliner, and hope this comes on the stereo.

As an edgy, grungy, pre-teen who liked Stone Temple Pilots, I was always aghast when my friend Greg's dad would put this kind of stuff on. (Greg liked Rage Against the Machine and Phish among many other things.) Not ten years would go by and I would be eating crow. Not just because the music was good, but because it led me to so many other things as well— actual folk music like field recordings and old-timey stuff, ragtime piano, fiddle tunes, close harmony ballads, spirituals. Then you can go the other direction and explore folk-rock and plug in to stuff by the Band, or the Grateful Dead, or Neil Young. Bring it forward in time and you have a trove of modern Alt-Rock and Americana. Like a Queen on a chess board.

I didn’t care for this at all. This album is all vocals and bass guitar with a bit of skritchy guitar around the edges and dude can barely sing. The songs are structurally weak with what sounds like endless verses with no choruses and few hooks.

The first track was pretty terrible but the rest was fine.

The strings and chorus are a bit much, but it’s still a pretty good album. Ray Charles was a very charismatic singer.