Reviews by simonh

I prefer 'Unknown Pleasures' and had never listened to 'Closer' as a collection. Took 3 listens to get into it, a luxury I might not have given a band I wasn't so familiar with. But this is the legendary Joy Division...they who begat New Order.
Don't listen if you're depressed.
Eerie and gloomy. Obviously.
Wavering between a 4 and a 3. Finally swayed by the fact that if I do listen to a complete Joy Division album again then it will be Unknown Pleasures.

I was 12 when Arrival came out and since I already had the rather prematurely released 1975 ‘Greatest Hits’. I trotted down to Woolies and gave them my £2.99.
It was a great album and I loved it.
But I was only 12. As I got older I was laughed at by my older step-brothers who were into hard rock and metal. I learned to hide my love for ABBA. I got into rock and metal.

I’ve not listened to this album in 45 years (though I've abviously heard the mega-hits off it endlessly). And it’s still as good as I knew it was. So 12 year old me was right all along.

Dancing Queen might be in my top 10 favourite songs of all time. And any other track on the album could have been a worthy single. I'm glad Fernando wasn't on the 1976 album at purchased by me, because I've always thought it was a bit duff. 'Arrival' is a perfect closing track so I would hope they didnt just tack Fernando onto the end of side 2 on the Aussie version like they have done on the Spotify stream.
Do youself a favour and stop listening after 'Arrival' ends. Don't sully perfection.

(edit. I managed to get through that review without once fawning over Agnetha. I'm so proud of myself)

I’m sure there are going to be people who give this a 5.

People who are the music equivalent to art-wankers. Those who think that if you put a 12 foot square frame around an emulsion wall, or place an unmade bed with a steaming turd in the corner of an art gallery then it must be art.
Those that would then write a 10 thousand word thesis on the feelings that the painter and decorator was having and the traumas they were going through when they created it.

In the same way that the shitty bed isn't art, this album is not music (in the sense that everyone else understands music). It’s not melodic and meaningful. It doesn’t have a rhythm that inspires movement or a melody that might implant itself into your unconsciousness so that when you hear it again - maybe decades later - it inspires you to remember what you were doing or who you were with.
No, pretentious art-wanker-music-equivalents would rather perpetuate an illusion that they (and the performer) were trying to express some deeper meaning to life the universe and everything that us mere mortals couldn’t hope to understand. And so they are somehow smarter than the rest of us. In short - they can see the emperors clothes. And it’s all bullshit. It’s just a bloke who can’t play the right notes and has no real sense of rhythm.

It does get a 2 though. The reason being that, unlike Eno’s ‘Ambient’ horseshit, it was never boring. I just wouldn’t ever listen to it again.

I defy anyone to listen to this without moving along with it. It's like bathing in a bath of chill. Fantastic playing. Definitely not "background" music - anything can be background music if you're not listening to it!
But still great to have on in the background.
Marvelous

Creepy album cover, but the guy is a great songwriter.

God this hurts.
It’s taken 4 sessions to get through this. A lot of rhyming couplets I would expect to read if I was marking a 12 year old’s homework.
“When we began her hairstyle was neat/But when I left the next morning it looked like shredded wheat”. Pathetic.
“And I can't make you/I sure wouldn't rape you”. Well that’s SO kind of you. And you've got a detention.

Lame lyrics, Boring repetitive tunes.

Got 1 star written all over it. But I feel I have to upgrade to 2 for shoehorning in a bit of Northern England slang “Big juicy legs/And a nice pair of kegs”. Sound.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3OjfK0t1XM

Have you ever seen Snakes v Iguanas? Sad that these Iguanas were totally screwed over by their manager. But the last laugh went to the band since, based on this album, they were't that good anyway.

A couple of good songs (Karma Chameleon not being one). Some obvious filler. Not dreadfully bad considering they were a bunch of clubbers who thought they'd have a go at creating a band. And credit to George for being so ahead of his time (though not musically).

But somebody please shoot the backing singer.

I really didn’t expect this
First listen was in the car on a long journey. Ok but not really the environment to concentrate on a ‘new’ album. All I can recall about that listen is that there weren't many words. Which I thought was odd since my only real solid experience of FZ is “Joe’s Garage”, which is FULL of words.

Second listen on headphones.
This is what I imagine the Muppet Show band, y’know the one with Dr. Teeth, Zoot, Animal, Floyd, Lips and Janice would release if they made an album. An excellent accompished jam, with all sorts of unusual instrument sounds coming through. Really liked it. But I did miss the studenty lyrics. I think there are more FZ albums on the list I haven’t heard yet. I look forward to them.

I can't decide whether I prefer Back In Black or Highway to Hell. But since I gave H2H a 5...

To me these blues tunes all sound exactly the same. In fact 2 of the tracks on this album WERE exactly the same - I checked.

But I accept Muddy Waters has been a huge influence on popular music. A lot if which I like. So I cannot give it a 1.

Possibly one of the best albums I bought in the 80s. Still brilliant. AND you get Kate Bush.
Stands up 40 years on. Gabriel's solo masterpiece.

I didn't like country as a youth but have grown to respect, nay even quite like some of the more modern stuff. (I admit Shania Twain also changed my outlook a lot too!).
But this is the old school twangy honky tonk, shoot my woman tripe that made me dislike it in the first place. The squeaky thing he does with the vocal is annoying and if I'm going to call out the 'rape my hoe' lyrics of gangster rap then I have to call out shooting his girlfriend in the head as she's sleeping just because she shagged his mate. What is the beef Americans seem to have with women?

Music for good ol' MAGA boys.

This is REM, right?
A bad REM.
Jangle balls

Boring repetitive soundtrack of single bar repetition, with violent racist angry foul-mouthed poetry being shouted over the top. Sums it up perfectly.

Brilliant rave album. The illegitimate love child of dance-electronica and metal. I get the controversy about Smack My Bitch Up and that some people take music and lyrics too seriously (the video has a great twist at the end), but for well adjusted, normal people this is just a great dance album. Nearly a 5.

Good toons and a good beat. Some amusing rhymes (Ya Mama) but mostly the lyrics resonate a standard hip-hop victimised persecution complex which I hate.

Hadn't heard of them before but I assume they probably got gunned down somewhere a few years later

Similar sounding songs, over-reverbed lyrics, differentiated only by the different type of feedback in the background. Just noise. I can't see how it has influenced anyone (though some of the vocal sound did remind me of Stone Roses a few years later)

I complain that I don't get enough 1 star albums, and then I get 2 over the course of a long weekend. Careful what you wish for.

Enjoyed some of the CSN songs. The Y songs not so much. Harmonies were good.
For an album full of "hits" I only knew 'Our House' from some lame uncool adverts.

I'm already wound up by the album cover not being lined up properly. Not a great start if this album is designed to be chilling me out.

It is a just a bunch of random sounds grouped into 4 tracks. I didn't find it ambient at all because there was no rhythmic structure to it. Every random note kept interrupting my train of thought. If you gave 1001 baboons a keyboard and a chorus pedal each, they could each knock out one of these in about 40 minutes. So would they all be indespensible?
No.
So why the fuck is this one?

This album is a crock of shite.