Reviews by socksonfire

At the end of a drunken night out with old cronies, I found myself a couple of slices and threw this into my headphones. As familiar and comfortable as an old pair of slippers, I was fully in the pocket.

‘Zippy ripper with highlights’ makes for a bad haircut, but a good album.

One surprise during this project: I didn’t mind this. I was expecting to be lukewarm at best. It will never be a top favourite, but a good time for a spin. I could have used a break halfway.

This never-ending album seemed like something a 14-yr-old would make on a new iOS app before abandoning the app forever.

The time I’ve spent with this album has been fine, and there was still a lot to enjoy listening today. It’s not peak Paul Simon by a long shot.

Bowie goes funky soul. A couple clunkers on this one, but the good ones sound SO GOOD and more than make up for it. I was head-bobbin hard. YA and Fame are all-timers.

Hey, you Iickle witty bitty baby stones, you’re so cute koothchie kootchie koo.

Sounded good for what it was.

Perfect album to play in the background when you’re killin’ folks. It’s actually great Nick Cave has an outlet in music to keep him from hopping around the countryside doing heaps of murders of his own.

These work so well because the Bad Seeds are equally locked in on the vision. They don’t come much more delightfully demented than this.

This album appeals to a certain kinds of people.

Awesome people.

Except Lovers of Today. I can’t get fully behind that song.

When I was a kid my dad had Chicago’s Greatest Hits on vinyl. I was quite taken by this record because the COVER looked like it was made of WOOD. It stood out even from the side in his little pile of records. Content-wise I didn’t really like it, but I remembered WANTING to like it. That said, There was one song I did like. Questions 67 and 68. The mercurial title. The blaring horns off the hop. The in media res nature of the singing when it kicked in. I was obsessed as only a 10-yr-old can be. That track made it on many a personal mixtape, let me tell you.

Second story: when I was, ohhh, about 20 or 21 a very close friend came to visit me in the rental house I shared with 3 other people. Most importantly, my friend was bringing his new girlfriend, with whom he was head-over-heels. In preparation for the visit I shrouded the light in the spare room in red crepe paper, plastered the walls with words like “LOVE” and “PASSION” alongside numerous sketches of human butts, and I had “You’re The Inspiration” playing on a loop. When I showed them in she was rattled. They broke up within the year, but she became the standard in his mind against whom all future women were unfavourably compared.

So, what about this album, you wonder? The sheer chutzpah to deliver a 76-minute double album as your debut demands applause. And it delivers a fun low-consequence listen. Hey! What’s that there? Questions 67 and 68!

Remember getting super high on shrooms and going to the planetarium to see the Dark Side of the Moon lazer show? Do you? I do.

I like me a talented genre masher. Santana makes a unique gumbo for sure.
In spite of all that, just not my favourite musician. Fine but never really brings me to my feet.

Weirdly, when I listen to it as highly accessible jazz I like it more than when I think of it as rock.

Jesus, I forgot how much I like this album. JM is as distinctive as they come. I’m not on board with everything, but this one I am all in.

This probably plays a lot better live in a small, smoky late-night bar than it does in the morning in my sunny living room. Not my favourite spin, but far from a hate-listen.

I’ll always be curious about a super niche band with a cult following where a large number of the cult-members go on to form their own bands, citing the OG as an influence. While goth metal has never formed a cornerstone of my listening, I’ve dabbled. Yes, I have dabbled. Unfortunately my demeanour was always too clownish to enable my full acceptance, as the best photobomb I ever executed proves.

When a band can pack 15 stupidly wicked tracks into 38 golden minutes we must pay strict attention. Look, here’s a banger, now we’ll have another one, on to the next one, now here’s the next one, how about the next one, over to another one, and now here’s another one, now it’s another one, listen to another one, now it’s the next one….

I don’t know how to feel about this one. Medium-ighs and medium-lows all over the place. I appreciated the whole album certainly creates a single vibe and works as a single thing, but I’m not sure what that vibe really is. I love the ridiculous album cover, especially the bespoke puffy little white cloud around the mouth hole. Also the album ended so out of the blue I had to double check, so certainly didn’t feel too long. But I didn’t end with a nice satisfied feeling either. I’m going to have to settle in the middle on the one; perhaps I’d like it better with another listen. But do I even want to give it another listen? I don’t even know.

Of the culture wars, Stones versus Beatles has to be the dumbest. The overlap area on the venn diagram contains piss-all. The answer is “both”.
Beggars Banquet is top three Stones for me.

This project is ferreting out so many little musical blind spots. Such as the entire Steve Winwood oeuvre.i gotta say, this album wormed its way in through my earholes and burrowed straight to my heart. Perhaps a bit on the long side, but these are some beautiful little melodies. Hard to say what direction this will grow in my esteem over time, but I’ll start it off at a very solid 4.

It’s easy to hear why people love this album so much. It feels good to listen to it. The harmonies and instrumentation are so locked in I was genuinely surprised to read how disconnected the recording was, and that the four of them were almost never in the same room together once.