Reviews by suspiciousnumber

After reading the Wikipedia page for this album/band, I'm still not entirely sure who made this, but it's great. Just tons of dope latin-inspired grooves

4/5

This is a cool, high energy indie album. I'm not sure that the music is particularly advanced or standout for the time when it was made, but the production is excellent, and the band really put a lot of care into crafting this album

4/5

I thought this album was cool overall. I didn't know what to think at first, but it grew on me. I feel like it would be a lot better if I spoke French, but I'm also determined never to learn anything useful

4/5

I don't know about this one. The music is cool, but I cannot get into this dude's voice

3/5

Definitely fell down a bit of a rabbit hole reading about this album and Roky Erickson (much of the material for this album was smuggled out of the insane asylum Roky was stuck in after getting busted with a joint in Texas). This album certainly provides an interesting contrast with the 13th Floor Elevators, which I remembered liking when I heard it. This album is interesting, since it came out as punk was emerging as a genre, and it has some sonic ties to punk, but is very much it's own thing. Really cool album with a lot of different moods.

4/5

This album was really cool. Kind of a neat mix of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Siouxsie and the Banshees. I hadn't heard of them before, but I'm definitely going to come back to this album

4/5

God, the 2000s were a hellscape of things that aged badly because their creators confused edginess with intellectual depth. This album is another solid example to throw on the pile

I don't hate it. His voice is fine, and the music is good overall. But there's no way you can expect me to listen to this Howdy Doody mother fucker sing about being in a crack house and enjoy it. It's stupid and shitty. It's fine, a lot of us were stupid and shitty in this period, but we don't need to revisit this era nearly as often as we are

2/5

This is sort of a weird one to review, since it's not so much an album as a compilation of songs recorded overall several years with different bands that Armstrong assembled. It's great, because Louie Armstrong was great, and the influence that these works had on future generations of jazz musicians was undeniable. It's just weird to think about it the way I've been thinking about other albums that I've gotten on this list because it doesn't represent a coherent unit in any sense.

Whatever, though, it's Louie fucking Armstrong, and anything less than 5/5 is disrespectful. Also, I'm not going to listen to this whole thing because there's more than 80s songs, and I've got places to be today

I was excited about this one, since I've heard a lot of good things about Type O Negative, but this album didn't really speak to me. I like goth, I like metal, but I don't know if goth metal is my genre because I kept waiting for this one to pick up a bit, but it just kept playing in the background without really drawing my attention

3/5

Well, Sleaze Rock is definitely an appropriate name for this genre. It really captures the feeling of the 80s hair metal bands, but with a slightly more modern feel. It's not particularly what I was looking for, but they execute it well, and it's a fun album overall that feels like a throwback to no year in particular

4/5

This is the kind of punk album that lots of my friends were into that I could never understand. I think I understand better now, having some of the context for how hardcore punk evolved into a lot of the 90s punk that I heard. However, music like this is just never quite enough for me. Not melodic enough, not progressive (in a musical sense) enough, not well produced enough, etc. It's fine, I don't hate it, but it's hard to fine much about it that I really like, other than the horns. The horns are great when you can hear them through the mix

3/5

I listened to a version of this that had remixes that followed all the original songs. It was a bit distracting, since it made it harder to evaluate the album, but I was struck by how well all these songs transformed into modern dance music.

Her voice is beautiful, and it's a great recording as well. I have no idea what she's saying, but the emotion comes through so well. I don't even know how I would describe this, but it fucking works.

Upon looking at Wikipedia, it turns out this is a Malian singer. That figures. Some of the best guitar music in the work has been coming out of Africa, and I've liked basically everything I've heard on this list that involves African guitarists

4/5

I don't usually go in for prog rock, but something about this album just works for me. You can hear why he was recruited to produce Dark Side of the Moon, since there is a lot of that sound in here despite this album not sounding much like Pink Floyd. He does a great job of building slowly but keeping it interesting the whole time

4/5

This album is a fun blast from the past, but I don't really understand the significance overall. It sounds like a lot of other teeny pop from this era. Some fun songs, some hits, but ultimately a forgettable pop album from a pretty forgettable pop era

3/5

Most live albums are bad, but some are great and this is definitely the later. Inevitably, the music on this album will be affected by the concert movie shot by Johnathon Demme. However, listening to it on it's own, it's really solid with a ton of great versions of songs from their incredibly deep catalogue

4/5

I don't really know what to think of this album, since it seems to change a lot from song to song, but it's certainly interesting. The lyrics are fun and well-written. The music never blows your mind, but it's variable and all well-done

4/5

This was a fun 70s rock album. I liked that the production focused on getting a live sound by using a lot of first takes. It definitely adds a bit of that late 70s grit to the album that helps set it apart from some of the cleaner, more overwrought work being done in this period. This sounds like Elvis Costello at times, though I'm not sure in what direction that influence goes. The reggae influence is definitely here as well, and I tend to find that a very pleasant touch to add to rock from this era

4/5

I liked this album overall. The major issue that I see with it is that every time I stop thinking about it while I'm listening, my brain becomes convinced that I'm listening to REM. That's not necessarily a bad thing, and it's mainly the sound of the lead singer's voice that gets me, but I thought that was kind of funny.

3/5 Cool album, but I don't particularly grasp its signficance

Much like how I felt about the first Sparks album I was introduced to on the original list, I found this album charming as fuck. Just a super solid early synth pop album with tons of Giorgio Moroder goodness.

4/5

I'm not huge into prog rock, so neo-prog wasn't high on my list of genres to check out. While I would describe this album as being a bit overwrought the way most prog albums are, it's a cool album overall. I like the 80s vibe on the album (though 80s nostalgia was much less popular in 95 than it is now)

3/5