Reviews by stevey_

I’m not sure I truly believe this is a 1 Star record. People use words like “unlistenable”, but I struggle to fully understand that because half of this record isn’t even music! “Uninteresting” perhaps, but it’s not as aggressively obnoxious as The Residents or Lightning Bolt.
In my rating system, 3 Stars is the baseline, 2 Stars are albums I thought were bad/boring/not worth talking about, and 1 Star is for ‘notably bad’ records - records that are bad enough that they’re actually worth talking about. This is very barely the latter category. If other people didn’t have strong feelings about this, I don’t know that I’d think it worth talking about either… but here we are.

It’s like The Who had a fit of creativity and then unloaded a bunch of forever classics all onto one record.

An express train through EDM history

Maybe I’ve never listened to K.D. Lang before? There was a lot more jazz and even bossa nova on this album than I expected. I’m still not sure it’s my thing, on the whole, but it was a lot more eclectic than I expected it to be.

There’s a world in which I became a Wilco fan in college and love this record dearly, but we’re in a slightly adjacent timeline where that didn’t happen.

What could be more hardcore than an album that's shorter than an EP from a band with a dismissible sex joke name? Yes, it's juvenile and intentionally (desperately?) trying to be provocative, but kids need attainable heroes or they'll never try. If I thought I had to be Jimi Hendrix to play guitar in a band, I wouldn't have kept playing guitar at all. Punk lets kids know that they can be objectively bad at playing instruments and writing songs but still try to do both.

14 songs in 15 minutes is the kind of set you put on when you're last on the bill for your highschool battle of the bands and every awful band before you took too long setting up and tearing down so now you only have enough time to spit-n-shove-it-in before they kick everyone out for curfew. I'll always love punk for things like this.

I like Neil Young, but this record isn't totally memorable. You'll get 'em next time, buddy!

I didn’t know anything about Roxy Music until I went on a glam rock dive recently. I’m sure this record deserves more than I’m giving it, but it’s a busy day and I couldn’t give it my full attention.

Of the three Joni Mitchell albums I've heard in this project, this is my 2nd favorite? I enjoyed it more than Blue, but less than Court And Spark. That doesn't totally map to the average ratings for these three albums, but I am who I am. No real standout tracks, but a solid overall vibe. Great house cleaning music.

The album cover could easily be a 2010's indie band, so it's also got that going for it too.

Another soundtrack for something that doesn't actually exist. I didn't know this was such a popular format, but this list seems to love this stuff. I... do not.

This was a tough listen.

I’m kinda torn here. The dripping nostalgia of this record is pretty compelling to me, but I also get why people dislike Lenny Kravitz and/or this record.

I'm sorry, who? What? This seems like someone I should already know about because my parents listen to him. Maybe I'll recommend this record to them.

I was pretty unenthusiastic about this one when it popped up. So much so that I forgot to listen to it all day.
I’m always suspicious when someone puts out a self titled album that isn’t their first album, so this already had that working against it. It’s a big pop album, and these reviews absolutely want you to remember that there was an army of people behind it, so there’s that too. Idk.

Of the R.E.M. albums I've listened to for this project, I might like this one the most?

Sure, it’s fine. Much better than M.I.7., which was released earlier this year.

I liked the parts I liked and didn’t like the other parts.

This is good. Definitely in the top tier of Psych Rock on this list, so it's interesting that they're relatively unknown. I do love that thin (but still searing?) guitar tone of 60's psych rock like on "Changes"; I wouldn't even call it overdriven, just kinda on the edge of break-up. If the mix wasn't biased towards guitar anyway, it would still chop right through and is so era specific.
I wish this record was easier to listen to, then I might revisit more often.

I didn't feel the need to re-listen to the last Eminem album, and I'm wondering if I need to do it for this one. As a white kid who was really into hip hop in the late 90s, I know this record pretty well. I don't have to hear it again to know that the lyrics don't hold up at all, A QUARTER CENTURY LATER?!? (Jesus, where did that time go?)

At the time, he was doing some wordsmithing that nobody else was doing (see other reviews for more on that), and it's regrettable that he chose to be the most provocative edgelord that he could possibly be with that talent. It worked though, he managed to get attention for something other than the novelty of being a white rapper. I'm sure there's some privilege to unpack there, but I won't turn this into a thinkpiece.

I can't, in good conscience, give this any more thank 3 stars but I also can't ignore the technical skill or my personal history with this record and give it less than 3 stars. So here we are.

What a chore!