Reviews by stevey_

I respect The Kinks for being SO CLOSE to accidentally inventing punk rock in the early 60s, but I’ll be really honest… I've died a little bit inside hearing how bland and psych-rock they became. And how much they were trying to be The Beatles here, especially by “Tin Soldier Man” or “Situation Vacant”, they aren’t even trying to hide it anymore. Sure, this was probably just ‘the sound’ in 1967 - kinda like how every female pop singer tries to write breakup songs with oddly specific but universal lyrics like Taylor Swift right now. Nobody thinks about it, it’s just what you have to do. I guess I can forgive them some degree of mimicry. This carries over into their next album but at least that one shows signs that they're trying to fight it.

Anyway, I guess my overall critique of The Kinks is that I want more of 1964’s Kinks and less of this softer, lamer, late 60s psych rock band they turned into. Vanilla ain't the brand, guys!

I don't even have to hit play on this today to know how I feel about it, but I'm absolutely going to do it anyway. I could write a bunch of shitty prose about Eddie's smokey searing guitar tone, how polarizing DLR is/was/always will be, or how this is probably the best album KISS ever made (and all they had to do was discover a new band to make it)... but nobody's going to read a novel length review buried halfway down the page. My fault for showing up 5 years after this site went live and people started upvoting reviews.

Van Halen (Van Hagar) was the first concert I ever went to (July 22, 1995 at Riverport Amphitheater in St. Louis. I was ten). My dad was a big VH fan so, as far as I was concerned, they were the greatest band to ever exist. I've moderated that opinion a bit in the last 30 years, but this record will always be in the pantheon of all time greatest debut albums. It's the absolute pinnacle of late-stage glam rock before the genre yielded to (created?) hair metal.

"Ice Cream Man" is a clear outlier here, but who cares? I love that VH stuck one weird blues song at the back of all their early albums.

I was initially nervous when I got a record I'd never heard of, by a band I'd never heard of, that was released during my peak late-teen music consumption years. Surely, if this album was truly important and influential, it would have remained in the zeitgeist for several years and I would have stumbled across it at some point, right? Like, Scrubs (the TV show) would have used one of these songs and I would have ended up with this record during the phase where I was mining the scrubs music catalog for new records. RIGHT?! Well, none of that happened and that's a shame because, based on my pre-2003 adoration of Pete Yorn's "musicforthemorningafter" and Beulah's "The Coast Is Never Clear" and my post-2003 adoration of all the folk-pop/indie rock music featured in Scrubs, I think I might have really embraced this album/band. By the time the harmonicas really start wailing in "'Til The Tide Creeps In", I'm absolutely sure I would have replayed this album an unquantifiable number of times in the late 00s.

I think I like Nick Cave, but I was pretty fatigued by the end of this record. It's even more high drama than the other Nick Cave albums I've heard, and perhaps we've found my tipping point.

Even if he didn’t have shitty politics, I’d still be annoyed by his stupid voice. When this album ended, I let yesterday's New York Dolls record play through just to cleanse my palate (I keep my whole project on a big running playlist).

Nothing gets me more enthusiastic than hearing glam rock build towards punk, or post-punk turn into new wave (à la Talking Heads, not the synth pop version). 1967-1977 might be the best decade in rock & roll history, and this period when glam rock was really peaking on the early 70s might have been the most fun part.
There's a lot of post-punk in the world, but I kinda wish we had more pre-punk. The Stooges and The Dolls were really cooking in this era and, while I'd sure there are bands still making music that's nostalgic for this era, it's a shame there's no specific "pre-punk" sub-genre I can mine for bands that are doing this niche thing I like.

Me writing a bunch of words to support a mediocre review here would be exactly the same bland waste of time as it would be to listen intently to this record. For best results, put Steely Dan on in the background while you’re doing something, anything, more exciting/entertaining.

Calling this the first indie rock album feels… gross. There are certainly earlier examples of people self funding records, but they didn’t have Paul McCartney’s connections to distribute those records to the pre-internet world. I guess that’s what I find gross: that wealth/privilege feels like it violates the spirit of what “indie rock” is supposed to be about.
As for the music, Paul really knows what he’s doing. After, what, thirteen or so Beatles albums? He’s a seasoned pro. I think the instrumental jams are my favorite: "Momma Miss America" and "Kreen-Akrore", though I could do with less prominent heavy breathing on the latter.

I reviewed Celebrity Skin early in my project and, reading back, I was pretty generous and willing to look past my personal opinions about Courtney Love. Maybe I'm crabby today, or jaded by time, but I don't feel like I have the same tolerance for this record. The album is a ripper of a grunge record, but I still struggle with Courtney, even if I wish I didn't. IDK, fam.

Track one feels like an SNL parody of a Cat Stevens song, which maybe says a lot about the influence of Cat Stevens on pop culture in the last 50 years.

Objectively, it deserves more than 3 stars but I can't make myself pretend to care about singer-songwriter albums anymore

This is pretty low energy for an album of "club classics", right? Did we not know how to fast dance yet in 1989?

I kinda love the album cover and, if referencing JLL didn’t feel so gross, I’d be tempted to steal it as a template. So it goes.

I owned this record in highschool and I remember being enthusiastic about it when I first got it, but then quickly moving on. I’ve always been a little surprised by how many people seemed (still seem) to absolutely adore Linkin Park. There seemed to be a big cohort that was like 1 year younger than me, so maybe they just barely missed the initial wave of nu metal acts in the late 90s. Linkin Park are in a group I think of as ‘2nd wave nu metal’ with Papa Roach and others who were clearly signed to record deals after nu metal found large audiences in the late 90s. Linkin Park showed up with this album that sounded very polished and well produced, which isn’t something I love in debut records. It makes a band feel a bit like an industry plant, or like they’re being manufactured for mainstream success. That’s kryptonite to me.

The Jam sound like they were heavily influenced by Elvis Costello and all the parts of new wave I don’t particularly care for. Or maybe, I just don’t get it.

I previously gave the Sound Affects album two stars, but Paul Weller’s other projects (a solo album and The Style Council’s Cafe Bleu) both got three stars. On paper, I would have guessed the opposite, but here we are.

Like Sound Affects, this sounds more like their influences to me than something new - notice how many of the reviews of this record talk about The Who, The Clash, The Police, or other influences. Unlike my review of Sound Affects, I have a better understanding of Paul Weller’s perceived importance to British music and why so many of his projects are on this list. I’m still not sure I agree, but I’m glad to have more context now.

I’m plenty familiar with the singles from this record, thanks to modern rock radio in the 90s and early 00s… the album tracks feel a little more metal to me, or less polished. Or maybe they’re just less good?

I’ll just order from the menu.

Do you have kids? Were you once a kid? Either way, you probably can know an example of a kid who always seems to bring out the worst in other kids - that kid who shows up and somehow every other kid forgets everything they ever knew about how to behave. Maybe you can even think of an adult example. Anyway, "Live Recording" is that kid for Progressive Rock. These two should never be allowed together.

Is this a fun and silly idea? Absolutely! I'd even go so far as to say it was absolutely great that they performed it... but they didn't need to commit to the bit this hard. Let this be one of those legendary things your band did while it gallivanted around the world in the heyday of rock & roll.

If this list were extended to be the 1,111 AYMHBYD, I'm sure we'd get at least 3 more Elvis Costello albums. We certainly don't need all SIX we already have on the list, but I don't think that would stop Dimery & Company from packing a few more into the list if they could - extra impressive since Costello isn't even British.

This is my fourth attempt at connecting with an Elvis Costello record, and it's gone about as well as the other three. In theory, I should like his music. In reality, his vocal delivery is annoying, bordering on obnoxious, and I cannot get past that to enjoy anything else going on. I was briefly excited about the blues guitar work on "All The Rage" but it was too little too late for this record; my opinion was already set.

a more 'sophisticated' (read: theatrical) version of synth-pop new wave... Sweet, a more [reason a specific genre exhausts me] version of [a specific genre that exhausts me], can’t wait!

This is an interestingly diverse record that dabbles in a lot of things I like. That said, I can't recall many specific moments or songs so.... maybe not that interesting after all?

Giving it 4 stars feels over-generous, given that lack of memorability, so I feel like I have to stick to 3 stars here. I may update after a re-listen.