Reviews by stevey_

If you’re looking for cheesy 80s stadium rock, this album should be at the top of your list. I was not looking for it, but here we are anyway.

I vaguely remember my step cousin, who was a huge Metallica fan, having this tape in his car as the token non-Metallica option. So I guess there’s that too.

This was pretty interesting... Certainly some certified bangers here, but there's also "some real stinkers", as my grandpa would have said. Looking at the track list, I feel like the second half of the record is where it really falls apart. "We'll Meet Again" feels like a very 'not on brand' final song for Johnny Cash to publish during his life. The message is fitting, but nothing about it feels like a Johnny Cash song and that's a shame. I respect Johnny, but I'm going to struggle with my rating on this one.

I think this is my second MSP record from the list, and this one left a slightly larger impression than the last. Notably, I feel like I can hear the roots of other bands here. Vocally, Foo Fighters is one example that popped up in my head a few time. I'm still not sure I care, but maybe!

New Wave inspired by Elvis Costello, Sting, a little Pink Floyd… that’s a lot of reasons to feel some type of way about this one. Nevertheless, I do not. Tomorrow, I will not be able to tell you the name of this band.

When she sang "This is not good, it's not good."... I really felt that.

Maybe this works in the original German, but the translation makes the lyrics pretty clunky and adds piles of campiness to listening experience. The version I listened to on YouTube had a few tracks that were in German and I preferred those to any of the English songs.

It sounds exactly like a Paul Simon record, so I think he nailed the title.

Finally, after 300 albums, Led Zeppelin makes an appearance. There’s almost nothing I could say here that will be new or interesting. As a teen, Led Zeppelin was my Beatles; and even though the Beatles have become my Beatles, I will always have places for Robert, Jimmy, John, and John Paul on my Mount Rockmore.

My big new takeaway today has to do with “Out On The Tiles” and how Glam Rock it is. It’s an obscure album track for Zeppelin, but feels like it could be a ‘Best Of’ track for a band like Slade. Maybe that speaks to the power of Zeppelin’s output.

This record hasn’t aged very well and that’s probably why you haven’t heard it for twenty years unless you’ve happened to hear “Scooby Snacks” during a ‘way back’ radio block along the way.

But here’s my thesis: it wasn’t all that outlandish in 1996. Some of the top reviews reference Beck, Everlast (House Of Pain), and Beastie Boys, and I hear those elements in addition to things like Sublime, Cypress Hill, TLC (compare the guitars on “Passive/Aggressive” to TLC’s “Waterfalls), Kris Kross, and plenty others. My main thought during the album opener, “The Fun Lovin’ Criminal”, was about Sheryl Crow and how much pop music was dabbling in country crossovers in the mid-90s. My point is, this isn’t/wasn’t super weird if you consider the broader music landscape of the time. Sadly, a lot of the mid-90s experimentation feels a little cringy now.

This is the first record that I don't feel like I need to revisit, so I won't… I owned it as a teenager and listened to it plenty. It was a seminal record for me, so I think I agree with it being on this list. My recollection is that it’s pretty dark and I don’t need that today.

If you're a huge John Lennon fan, is it fun that so many artists want to sound just like him? That was my main takeaway for the new Cut Worms album (Transmitter) when I listened recently, now it's my lead-off note here. Maybe I'm just more sensitive to it lately, but that doesn't make it less true!

This album is all over the place. There's no way I would have guessed this was made in 2004 because it all feels like it's from much earlier times. Where it's fun, it's really fun... Where it isn't, it isn't.

Notables:
"Laura" starts the album on a very Dolly Parton "9 To 5" riff which immediately triggers your brain into dance mode.
"Comfortably Numb" is actually kind of a low point for me. Maybe I like the original too much to embrace this disco version.
"Mary" proves 'the sisters' are actual musicians; very Elton John.
"Tits On The Radio" is an instant classic for me
"Filthy/Gorgeous" is too much. If there's one song that breaks the retro hypnosis, this is probably it for me.

David Bowie produced this record, which won’t surprise any listeners who are familiar with Bowie’s productions. Bowie’s influence on the 70s is unmatched, what didn’t that guy have his hands in?

I struggle to think about this as Glam Rock because "Perfect Day" and "Walk On the Wild Side" don't have the presence I associate with Glam acts like Slade, Kiss, Queen, Bowie, Elton John, etc etc etc... but I guess Glam was more aesthetic than musical, so I have to let that go. The album cover is giving a certain "Liza Minelli as a vampire" vibe that qualifies Lou for the genre.

This era of hip hop is hard not to like. I could probably listen to this on repeat all day, but I've never found myself drawn to it like I might be drawn to A Tribe Called Quest records.

One Gram is the correct amount of Parsons.

Disclaimer: Dosage recommendations vary based on body weight, tolerance, and several additional factors. Please consult a professional before starting Parsons.

I was worried at first that this wasn’t going to work for me at all, but it improved over time. I got some elements of Prodigy, and some vaguely industrial moments that reminded me of my highschool CD collection. I really enjoyed “Stagger”, but didn’t need it to be 7+ minutes long.

I haven’t done this one yet?

If you know any Velvet Underground albums, it’s probably this one. Its he quintessential VU record. It’s not as spicy as White Light / White Heat will be, but it’s a little more interesting than the third, self titled, record.

I don’t have a dog in the Metallica vs Dave Mustaine fight, it’s a shame we live in the timeline where they had to part ways and we ended up with both Metallica and Megadeth on our radios. If you put a gun to my head (I know, 2nd time this week!) and made me pick one, I might just let you shoot me.

This record is definitely more 80’s Thrash than what Metallica was doing by 1990. There’s a lot of fiddly guitar work that hasn’t aged very well, and I get some prog-rock influences that I wasn’t really expecting (that part might be worth exploring if I were even vaguely interested in anything else here). Overall, a pretty abrasive way to start my morning.

Is it Country? Is it Pop? Is it a little corny either way? Yes.

There are songs here that I genuinely enjoy ("Slow Burn", "Golden Hour") and there are moments that make me sad the same way all predictable/obvious contemporary country lyrics make me sad. As a kid, I used to play a game in the backseat of my mom's car where I tried to guess the next line of a country song before the singer spit it out and I was right far too often. But there's certainly some experimentation going on here that pulls it outside of the usual country guardrails. It's neat that you can throw anything else at country music - no matter how old the idea may be in the rock/pop/hiphop/etc world and it's treated like a wildly novel new idea. Who knew you could use that metaphoric rear-view mirror to be a visionary?

I don't think I'll ever own this record, but I have a few songs on playlists. If I'm going to listen to contemporary country, I'll take this "not like other girls" version over the regular stuff any day.

I am now the age Madonna was when she made this, and that feels kinda wild. I still remember when the "Ray Of Light" and "Frozen" music videos were crushing on TRL, but it feels like a lifetime ago. Based on "Ray Of Light", I went into this expecting a very upbeat and dancey record and was surprised by how much it isn't really that. It's much more ambient and downtempo than I would have guessed so, in hindsight, "Frozen" was probably the more accurate indicator of what this album would be like. Whoops.

This list has given me a sampling of where electronic music was in the 90s, but prior to that I might not have considered how much this really was a crossover record in 1998. I know she wasn't the first woman to sing over electronic music (by 1998 we had Massive Attack, Portishead, and plenty others) but this wasn't a new act trying to break-through, it was Madonna - the icon - testing the fences from the inside. They didn't hold.

I love that the album whose title evokes images of sunshine ends with:

"I ran to the forest, I ran to the trees
I ran and I ran, I was looking for me
I ran to the lakes, and up to the hill
I ran and I ran, I'm looking there still

And I smelled her burning flesh
Her rotting bones
Her decay
I ran and I ran
I'm still running away"

I’m new to Nick Drake and it always take me a second to process that I’m hearing this guy, not Nick Cave.

I like Nick Drake. After I listened to Five Leaves Left, I made a discography playlist of all of his records. I intentionally haven't listened all the way through because I knew his other records would be on this list and I didn't want to spoil the surprise for myself. I'm 2/3 of the way there now!

My chief complaint here might be that it takes me a little bit to get into the right mood for this kind of folk music, and the 27min runtime is just not long enough for me to get onto this level... in a practical sense, that means I'd either have to be in this mood already to listen to it. If I'm listening to vinyl, every record flip is a chance to decide to listen to something else and I might choose to give up on this record before I ever get into the mood to listen to it.

But, gun to my head, I’ll take Nick Drake over Elliott Smith if I‘m forced to have mega-sadboy music time.