Reviews by simonh

The problem for me is the voice. I find it grating anyway, and all the reverb just seems to make it worse. Half the time I can’t work out whether he’s actually singing slightly flat or whether the production just makes him sound that way. There are bits where the vocal just sounds plain out of tune to me.

There’s plenty going on musically, and some great guitar work. Maybe lose the violin? But personally, I just can’t get past that voice.

1½

My third Byrds album, and this one sits neatly between the jangly, altogether OK 'Mr. Tambourine Man' and the wet turd that was 'Sweetheart of the Rodeo'. So was it a gradual decline, or did they fall off a cliff somewhere along the way? I suspect Gram Parsons may have had something to do with that cliff.

'Fifth Dimension' still has plenty of jangle, but you can hear the psychedelia starting to creep in. Or perhaps this was the point where The Byrds were helping invent it?

Overall, I’m about 50:50 on this album. 'Eight Miles High' is great. 'The Lear Jet Song' is fucking terrible. And there’s a fair amount of filler in between.

Now I’m going to show my musical ignorance. I’d heard of Buffalo Springfield, but had absolutely no idea who or what they were. I thought Buffalo Springfield was a person, for starters. My second guess would probably have been a reggae band — perhaps I was subconsciously thinking of 'Buffalo Soldier'?

But now I know what they were.

A wedding band. Clearly.

Because virtually every track sounds like a cover by a different band. I know they’re not covers, but there seems to be almost no connection between one song and the next. It’s as though each was written and recorded with no thought whatsoever for whatever came before it.

This might as well be an old K-Tel or 'Now That’s What I Call Music' compilation. There are some perfectly decent songs on it, but as an album it doesn’t flow at all.

2½

In the days of yore, composers wrote great symphonies. Then orchestras all over the world played them, and broadly speaking, they all sounded much the same.

The Suburbs feels a little like that. It’s a collection of very good, very listenable songs, but the performance could be anyone. There’s no unique selling point. No quirky voice, no virtuoso guitar solos, no signature guitar sound, no unusual instrumentation. A bloke sings some songs. A woman sings some songs. Everyone involved is clearly a very accomplished musician.

And yet it all feels strangely anonymous. Polished, tasteful, sanitised and just a bit vanilla.

Not a bad album at all. In fact, probably a very good one. But nothing about it made me notice.

R.E.M. are one of those bands that seem to have been around forever, even though they didn't arrive until the '80s and had largely faded from view by the end of the noughties.

I've always appreciated R.E.M. without ever feeling the need to follow them, and this album hasn't changed that, damn good though it is as a debut. You can already hear what was to come. The songs are tuneful, well written and varied. There's plenty to like here, and they were always interesting to watch.

I imagine it won't be long before they jump on the stadium reunion bandwagon. Good luck to them.

3½

Yes there is some filler on here. But there is also 3 of the greatest 80s synth pop tracks of all time on this, a debut album. If you don’t already know what they are, I’m not going to waste my time telling you. You weren’t there. We’ll leave it at that.

And Sex Dwarf is pretty good too.

My, my, my. What a unique and unfamiliar sound. So experimental! So original! I wonder who it could be?

Nah, I’m fuckin’ wid ya. It sounds exactly like every other Bruce Springsteen album I’ve ever heard.

That familiar bombastic E Street sound is present, but I was surprised by how tinny the production feels. For an album renowned for its sound, it strikes me as strangely thin, with almost no bottom end.

And a lot of the tracks — *Born to Run* in particular — sound as though the band are playing at 33⅓ rpm while Bruce is singing at 30. He consistently sounds like he’s struggling to keep up. I definitely prefer *Born to Run* when Bruce Springsteen isn’t singing it.

Yes, there are some great songs here, but I came away more impressed by the songwriting than the record itself.

Fine electro-dance-punk music. Gets a little repetitive in places, but got me moving and I enjoyed it enough to listen a second time.

Like Joni Mitchell with a sore throat.

And I mean that as the greatest compliment. Similar open-tuned guitar, thoughtful melodic songs, but even more intimate — just him, a guitar and a slightly fragile voice. I'd never heard of this fella, but this is a super album. Quiet, understated and lovely.

He should have gone on to do great things.

My heart sank a little when this album popped up. The Carpenters are exactly the sort of music that gave me PTSD about turning on Radio 2 for years. It’s the music my mum listened to. The music Jimmy Young played. Though I think even then I knew that, sickly sweet as it was, these were good songs. And even the ones on this album that I didn’t know fit the brief perfectly.

What isn’t in doubt is Karen Carpenter’s voice, especially when it isn’t drowned in harmonies. It’s like a velvet wank.

I’ve mellowed in my 60s. I even found myself singing along in places. But then I’m listening in an empty house. I wouldn’t want anyone to know.

This is the fifth Led Zep album I've had in this collection and, more than with any other band, I've agonised over every one.

Every time, I feel like I ought to love them, yet somehow there's always something about that particular album that isn't quite right. This one's too waily. That one's too bluesy. The other one I'm just a bit tired of.

Well, Physical Graffiti is like the last bowl of porridge. Not too hot. Not too cold. No, this one's just right.

The right amount of blues. Some hard-hitting bits. Some melodic bits. Even some experiments. And not too much wailing about Plant's cock.

This is the album where they finally got everything absolutely right. And I'm going to eat it all up.

I seem to have forgotten how to objectively review an album.
But I still know what I like.
And I like this.
Sounds just like everything I've ever heard by The Cult but I don't think that's a bad thing.
Plus they're from Bradford.

I don’t know why, but I’ve always got The Smashing Pumpkins confused with The Lightning Seeds. Chalk and cheese or what? For that reason I’ve never really listened to any Smashing Pumpkins, and perhaps in hindsight I’ve been missing out.

Strong opener, and it pretty much carried on in that vein. The extended distortion at the end of Silverfuck got on my nerves a little, but overall I really enjoyed this on first listen.

Definitely one I’ll come back to.

Laid back, soothing, melodic, sweet, chilled, dreamy, pleasant.
Yes I could very much listen to this again.

A smooth listen for a late-night drive. No idea what any of the lyrics are. Martyn’s largely indecipherable voice acts more like another instrument than a messenger.

I was once asked by a mate to go to a John Martyn gig. I declined. Probably a good decision, as I may not have stayed awake.

“Scratching” sounds exactly the same wherever it’s used, and consequently anyone who leaned heavily on it during that three-year window when it was de rigueur now sounds instantly dated and stuck in that moment.

Beyond that I found the album a little bit repetitive and over long.
2½

A bit of a din but not totally unlistenable

Three listens on three separate days and I can't say I can remember much about it at all. And I tried really hard as I know it's one of the most recent albums on this list.

I didn't hate it. But I can't rave about it either. Bang average.

Probably the most 'English' music I’ve ever heard. It has everything from a brass band to baroque and Tudor influences, even throwing a bit of Scottish and Irish into the mix to spread the love.

And then there are the voices — so unmistakably English folk. Although there’s a bit of chicken and egg here. Do they sound so typically folky because they genuinely are, or because I’ve heard voices like these somewhere in my subconscious for the last 50 years?

The whole thing sounds like a glorious mash-up of Fairport Convention, Lindisfarne and even Fiddler’s Dram — music that probably drifted over me from the radio throughout the 1970s without me ever really noticing.

Fabulous. 4½

All I can picture when I listen to this is Mick Fleetwood grinning away at the back thinking, how could I have been so fucking lucky to have a band named after me while contributing fuck all? Some of the drum parts — particularly on What Makes You Think You’re the One — sound like they could have been played by a toddler.

I suppose this is the sort of album you get as the follow-up to something as massively successful as Rumours: a huge budget, no constraints, self-obsessed, introspective wallow.

You could lose most of the slow, plodding Christine McVie and Stevie Nicks FM-radio tracks — maybe keep one from each for variety — because the real interest here is in the Buckingham songs. They’re the bits where this album sounds like it’s trying to do something other than being Rumours II.

It was OK, but it really didn’t need to be a double album.

Maybe they felt guilty.