Reviews by stevey_

I like this kind of jazz, but nothing blew me away here. Maybe I'm jaded but I just thought it was fine.

The Stones were always cooler than The Beatles but they're really making a statement here. "Let It Bleed" vs "Let It Be", and the album cover's subversive nod to Sgt. Pepper's on the cake seem like direct call-outs for the Fab Four. I'm sure there are additional layers involved in the tire, clock, and film can stacked on the cake plate as well, but I'm not smart enough to unpack those on my own. by November 1969 when this was released, The Beatles had already done most of the recording for what would end up being "Let It Be" and filmed the process for a made-for-television documentary that still hadn't seen daylight yet. The legendary, and very public, rooftop concert had also already happened. While The Beatles as a group seemed to be stalling out, The Stones were firing on all cylinders here! "Gimme Shelter" and "You Can't Always Get What You Want" are all-timers and the rest of the album doesn't feel too far off, even if there aren't any other hits.

I didn’t expect to like this very much but it’s actually pretty good.

NOTE: This site links to the Deluxe/Remastered version on Spotify, but there's also just a regular remastered version of the original album available if you look in their album listings. It's only seven tracks and I think that's a better experience. Your life will not be greatly enhanced by listening to three different version of "Black Night" or two versions of "Speed King". I encourage you to always look for the original album whenever this site links you to a deluxe/bonus/extended edition of an album.

Anyways...

"Child In Time" is one of the best examples of early 70s (late 60s) rock & roll out there. Period. The vocals, the organ, all of it. It should get talked about a lot more than it does. Even the studio version sounds like it should be live, so it's important that the live version deliver on that promise... and it does. The rest of the album also proves that Deep Purple was a powerhouse live band in this era and should get more accolades for their work beyond "Smoke On The Water".
If I have a complaint it's that the jamming gets a little carried away - specifically I'm thinking about "Space Truckin'". Twenty minutes is unnecessary. If I knew that was the show closer, I would have packed up my blanket and started heading to the parking lot before it was over. Avoiding traffic is an important part of truckin' anywhere.

Oh, so THAT’s where The Strokes got their inspiration.

Weird uncanny valley album art aside, this record feels like the cliche album you would get if you said "I would like one country music, please" any time in the last sixty years.

An existential crisis at a Parisian cafe.

The swan dress!
The more Bjork I listen to, the more concerned I am that I only like her in theory, and I’m not actually a fan of her music.

When I think of Funkadelic I picture something way more bombast and flamboyant than this. Maybe that’s just the character George Clinton became later? Either way, this was a lot better than I expected and, as a guitar player, I should have known about this record way sooner.

I can't look at this album cover with out thinking "this is what Darth Vader would have looked like if Anakin didn't lay on that volcanic beach so long."
The music seems far less sinister, but it's pretty wild work to start this with "Red Rain" (downtempo) and then hit us with "Sledgehammer"(uptempo)( pun intended) right away. That's a big swing in energy and I might have chosen to flip those two tracks.

Not totally sure THIS is the alt hip hop record I'd pick for a list like this, but maybe I'm missing some context. I might pick something by MF DOOM, or maybe El-P's I'll Sleep When You're Dead instead. The latter of which also contains some futuristic concepts that compare to this record.

I think this album does come together and figure itself out in the back half, but the early tracks felt a little disjointed. I'll give it another listen and see if I change my mind.

I still can’t believe this came out in 1992. While grunge was ascending to the pop culture throne, we get this absolute ripper of a rap-rock rap-metal record too? Incredible. I think this record could hold it's own even if it were released later in the 90s, so it should get even more credit for coming out when it did.

This record is great for a slow weekend morning. I’m not a singer-songwriter person at all, but Neil tiptoes the line for me, and I appreciate that he doesn’t make us sit through a full album of just him and an acoustic guitar. You can tell he has the ability to create robust arrangements for any of his songs and just sometimes decides not to.

I had more fun before it settled into standard prog rock.

I didn’t know there was anything out there that approximated “avant-garde rockabilly”... or maybe "avant-garde gothabilly"? Either way, now that I know it, I can never un-know it. It's going to be off-putting for A LOT of people, but it fills a void in the music landscape that I hadn't fully realized was there for me.
I probably can't listen to this all the time, but I know I will listen to it again, and more often than most people would. It's a perfect mid-October record to jumpstart spooky season stuff.
I have pretty indifferent feelings about Nick Cave, but I'm thrilled to 'discover' this band/album and have it in my life now. My opinion of Nick is now marginally higher for having been a part of this.

After the first track, I didn’t expect there to be any vocals, but track 3 upended that thought. “The Sound Of Someone You Love Who’s Going Away And It Doesn’t Matter” feels like the crown jewel of the record and worth coming back to when you have an extra 12 minutes.
Overall, it’s a strange record that goes pretty much every direction possible and, I’m sure, loses most of the popular audience in the process. Certainly one I’ll need to sit with again.

I'm confident that there are 1001 albums worth listening to, but I'm not confident that it's a universal 1001 for everyone. Maybe there's a sweet spot in the 500-750 range, but I know that doesn't make for a catchy book title. This album feels like it's comfortably in the "supplementary listen" appendix, outside of that core collection of 500-750.

It sounds like Sade and Kenny Loggins got together to make a record of synth-pop and jazz in the late 80s. The whole thing might just be a "we have Sade at home" record, except that we also get "The Night I Heard Caruso Sing", the one inexplicable male vocal piano ballad, in the middle of the record and the duet, "Tears All Over Town".

Several of these tracks sound like they should have been in a turn of the century vampire movie, like Underworld or Queen Of The Damned, so I’m kinda shocked to have never heard of did this group before. I guess their first two albums technically came out in the gap between The Crow (1994) and the movies mentioned above, and maybe they were just unlucky to miss the boat. Crazy, because I’m sure if my highschool girlfriend had heard this band she would have made them at least 33% of her personality.
And had that happened and Skunk Anansie was in regular rotation in her car during highschool/college, I’d probably hate hearing it today. Fortunately, things didn't go that way and I'm able to enjoy this a lot. It's simultaneously new and nostalgic in a way that isn't weighed down by any specific associations. Certainly going to go down a bit of a rabbit-hole and check out other works.

"Charlie Big Potato" feels so huge, it's hard to believe it's not the genesis of bands like Evanescence. I think I really get into it when the sound shifts punkier later in the record.

During the height of post-punk, when new wave was not yet ruined by synth-pop, one band said: "Hey remember like 10 years ago, when psych rock was a really big deal? What if we did that?"

I read a few reviews before starting this and basically expected this to be a duplicate version of Coldplay. So I was a little taken off guard by "N.Y.", because Coldplay could never go that hard. I think I would have preferred that alternate universe where these guys made it big instead of Coldplay, but I'm sure I would have treated them with the same contempt anyway. What are the later records like, do they end up doubling down on being desperately melancholic and boring too? Either way, this is a solid record in one of my favorite niche subgeners: vaguely-indie, post-Oasis, post-Radiohead, rock & roll.