Reviews by socksonfire

A nice carbon-dated hip hop journey I never heard before. Like De la Soul minus the sentimental connection. I now know that sentimental connections are worth exactly one star.

Insufferably funky soul. I’ve never seen this movie, which may be why I slightly favour the earlier studio albums over Superfly. But that slight favouring amounts to minor percentages of stars, not full stars.

If I saw this band busking I probably would give them a full 15 minutes and then talk about it later. Instead I read all about how much I am required to respect this album and I was locked in for the full 40.

A kind of peaceful album, certainly unique. I just had to listen a little longer than I would have in the wild. Marks for interestingness.

Fun boppy little album, if a bit samey throughout. I had a decent time but wasn’t mind blown.

Down by the River is not a favourite track. In fact, on occasion I’ve called it a track I hate. Reason? Boring and long.

But otherwise I liked listening to this album a lot.

Joy Division is a band I came to later in life, and never listened to this one. I was very into Closer across two listens today. Head banging hard. Main issue? It was too short!

Ohhhh, I see. Only nine tracks. One song too few.

While I’ll take Prince over MJ 15 times out of 10, and Bad has always been a very (very) distant third when it comes to MJ overall, this particular listen has probably been my favourite time through the album for some reason. Just in a receptive mood I guess.

Metallica started out with three classic all-timers, then one 4-star decent album, and then followed up those four with about 12 total duds.

The Clash is more of a proto-new wave band than punk in my book, especially London Calling and onwards. Reviewing them as punk rockers makes them seem like hopeless posers. If I leave that linkage out of the equation they seem prescient, and in a nod to my project partner, make U2 look pretty boring.

For me, London Calling is one of the double-album masterpieces

A very pleasant listen. Just nice and pleasant. Unfortunately ‘nice and pleasant’ can never ever get 5 stars. Too pleasant.

I don’t fully trust The National. The tunes kind of slap, yet whenever I let my ears tune into the lyrics... Just consider the opener. “It’s a terrible love and I’m walking with spiders…it takes an ocean not to break…” This is poetry unbecoming a grown up. This is the poetry where self-pity is just self-aggrandizement in disguise. It makes me recoil in my spirit. But the tunes kind of slap. I am conflicted in my ranking, but have historically been generous when waffling. That said, The National should consider itself on notice if they pop up again: be better.

I’ve been a long time fan, and also think that one AC/DC album is pretty much interchangeable from any other. I’ve heard this album 100 times before, but this 101st listen was half-ass. Bonus star for history enjoyment.

This marks the first assigned album almost wholly unavailable on my regular music streamers. It forced me to seek out a YouTube playlist, which enabled YouTube to merrily implement it's advertising policy, peppering ads after every single song throughout my listening experience. Obviously, I would never blame the band Madness or the album Madness Presents The Rise & Fall for this sorry state of affairs, but I kind of do.

For one of the missus’s top all-time music makers I’ve spent remarkably little time listening to Adele in any meaningful way. Adele mostly reminds me that love hurts. While these songs aren’t so great individually, one thing I appreciated about this listen is that the album as a whole exceeded the sum of its parts. This is a rare, valuable and overlooked trait of albumness. I’m giving that trait an extra star.

Ugh. That Wilbury I never really listened to that much. And an hour-ten? Ohhh, what a day.

Luckily it was sort of delightful.

A couple middling bangers interspersed with some limp filler. No, I’m not talking about an old-school English brunch.

I’m more into Rust in Peace, but love the way Megadeth loves peace.

My only experience with Hugh Masekela was through Paul Simon’s Graceland, and based on that mini-glimpse, this could not have been further from what I expected. Where I was expecting some African fusion, I was a bit deflated by what seemed very much like an American jazz record. Not bad by any means, and perhaps it will grow on me over time, but today, not all there.

The Police’s 5-year run is something special. Regatta sometimes gets a rough ride, but I play it pretty loud and proud, and few albums I airband bass then drums then bass then drums back and forth more than this one. That said, I’m not too proud to acknowledge, grudgingly, that there a couple clunkers in the mix. It’s real damn fun though. Those drum lines are 5-stars, even if the album only gets four (effing clunkers).

Takes me to a very specific time and place: no deadlines, no dependents, candles lit, relaxed and fun. The vocals make this album a lot more engaging than the average electronic music from this era.