Reviews by suspiciousnumber

I enjoyed this album, like I've enjoyed all of the riot grrrl albums that I've gotten on this list. I wish I would have listened to more of this music when I was younger, since I was lamenting the death of all the alternative bands while there was a still a ton of great stuff out there if I would have been, you know, willing to listen to women making music.

Overall just a really fun, energetic album. Nice little vocal harmonies, though very much led by Carrie Brownstein. Lots of gritty distorted guitars. Really cool listen

4/5

I, for one, was fascinated to learn that the pointless inter-song hip-hop skit actually originates with this album and their pointless skit Voices of Old People. Fascinating!

This album starts off kinda slow, and then gets bogged down in the middle with that horrible skit or whatever you want to call it, but god damn does it finish strong. Mrs. Robinson, Hazy Shade of Winter, and At the Zoo are all bangers. That, along with the good songs scattered earlier in the album make this a very strong album overall. Not my favorite S&G album on this list, but well worth a listen

4/5

I don't really know what to think about this album. There's no Wikipedia page for the album to give it context, and I know very little about Congolese music. Given that, it's hard to know how to judge it. It's pleasant music to listen to, but I don't understand its significance. That's too bad, because I've enjoyed all of the African music that I've gotten previously on this list. Ultimately, I think this was okay, but it didn't seem revolutionary in the way that music like Songhoy Blues or Fela Kuti did

3/5

I feel like my review of this album suffers a bit from getting a Justin Timberlake album from the same era in the last week. While I enjoy this album overall, I don't think it's as good as the Timberlake album, and I find it impossible not to compare the two because they very much existed in the same musical space. This is a better pop album than I would have given it credit for at the time. I still hate the complete lack of self awareness that the song Beautiful shows, but it's a solid album overall that features her voice well. The music could have been better, but that's true for most of the albums that came from the graveyard of the early 2000s

3/5

I'm not sure why I was surprised that an album from a former Beach Boy had such exquisite vocal harmonies. Maybe it's because the true crime-rot in my brain has me associating Dennis Wilson more with Charles Manson than with the Beach Boys. I will say that the vocal harmonies also start off strong, and then the album starts to feature his voice a lot more. Some parts of this album were really stunning in their beauty and soulfulness, though some of them sounded more like normal 70s soft rock.

3/5, though this one was very close to being a 4

This was an interesting album to get right after Porcupine by Echo and the Bunnymen. In some ways, more of the same, but also a much different approach to the post-punk genre (not that there is all that much that unites that genre together). Like Porcupine, I would not have pegged this album for being as early as it is. You could tell me that this was mid-90s, and I would have easily believed it. Throwing Muses were well ahead of their times with this album. Like a lot of female-led albums, it didn't get the recognition it deserved in its time (and continues not to). Clearly a very influential album, given how many artists would later incorporate its sound

4/5

One of the things I've been struck by while going through this list is that there was this entire hidden world of music waiting just under the surface of pop music. I can understand how this album was made in 1983 (it shares some similarities with U2 albums from later in the decade), but I wouldn't have picked a date that early listening to this album.

This is another one of those bands that the bands I was listening to when I was young was listening to (what?). Just a really cool post-punk album that makes really good use of guitar effects on the music to create a really big sound. The production is excellent and really lets you hear all the different textures built into the music

4/5

Lost my review, but Elvis Costello is always pretty cool

4/5

Buried pretty far below the lede on the Wikipedia article for this album is the fact that most of these songs were intended for Michael Jackson and subsequently rejected by him. That makes this album make a hell of a lot of sense, since several of the songs sound very much like MJ songs, especially Rock Your Body. I don't think this is a bad thing in any way, since Timberlake did a great job with these songs and has the voice and charisma to pull them off, but it also undercuts the narrative that features more prominently in the Wikipedia article, which is that Timberlake was writing these songs while on hiatus from N'Sync. Both can be true, but it feels weird to emphasize one so much over the other

I wasn't excited to listen to this album, but the fact that it's produced by the Neptunes makes everything better. It's good that they are represented on this list, since they formed such an integral part of the sound of the early 2000s, along with Timbaland, who is also on this album. I don't know that there's much to say about the actual songs. They are all at least fine, with some of them being great. It's a pop album, but I think it would be fair to say that it was also THE pop album of this period

3/5

This album was cool overall, kind of a time capsule of the type of pop music that was en vogue when I was first starting to become aware of popular music. It's also a nice harbinger of how house music would increasingly become a part of pop music. However, I'm not really sure how significant this album is overall. It's pleasant enough to listen to, though

3/4

What an incredible album. Black Sabbath came out hot with their first album, and this album takes them to the next level. It feels like so many great metal albums could not have been made if this album was not made first. It works well both as a standalone artwork and a harbinger of things to come. And it fucking kicks ass

5/5

Well, I guess we're just going to review every Blur album on this list. This one was okay. It's getting hard to have anything to say about these Brit Pop albums, since they all start to blend together after a while. Still, the music is really solid throughout

3/5

I'll say that I did not like this album at first, since the opening song is a bit grating. However, it won me over as it went. There's so many elements here that would be present in later rock operas and concept albums. It also has that 60s psychedelic sound, which makes it feel very much transitional as an album. Definitely of its time, but previewing some musical movements to come. Somewhere between the late Beatles period and the prog period of Pink Floyd sits this album

4/5

As usual, it's hard to get too excited about live albums, since the inferior sound quality generally outstrips the gain in energy from the live performance. I would compare this to the James Brown live album that I got previously on this list, in the sense that the energy from the crowd and the intensity of the performance really do make a huge difference here. This seems like it would have been an incredible show to be at, and I'm not sure that a studio recording would sell the impact of these songs nearly so well. Really high energy, and you can just hear how much he feeds off the crowd

4/5

This album is okay, but means absolutely nothing musically because it came out in 2004. This is not breaking any new ground, and is frankly not very interesting to listen to after the first song. It's fine for pop electronica, but I absolutely could have live my entire life and died peacefully without ever hearing this album

2/5

Y'all, I just don't fucking get Janis Joplin. I owned this album for like a decade and never actually listened to it. Now that I am in the process of listening to it, I see that I made the correct decision all those years. There are plenty of bands with singers whose voices I don't enjoy, but usually I'm interested in what they're saying. Not the case here. I actually enjoy the music, and her voice works on some of the songs where there are other voices present. However, too much of it relies only on her voice, and her voice just leaves me cold. What's sad is that I think this is at least partially a production issue. I think if her voice was EQed better, there would be some richness in her tone that would be easier to appreciate

2/5

I really don't know what to say about this album. Musically, there's not much here. However, the album isn't trying to do anything innovative musically, it's trying to feature her voice. That it does well. Her voice is ethereal on this album. The music compliments perfectly and gives it a timeless quality. I rarely give good ratings to albums just for being beautiful, but it would be dishonest to give this album a mediocre rating simply because it wasn't pushing the boundaries. I really enjoy listening to her

4/5

I feel like I always enjoy the metal albums on this list. I'm not really sure why that that is, though I suspect it's because (just like jazz) there are not a lot of metal albums on this list relative to, say, 90s alternative rock. The end result is that there is a much better crop of metal albums than genres that are more represented. This album really feels like an inflection point between the metal of the 70s and the metal of the 80s. Likely, that's because all of the 80s metal was influenced by this album. That makes sense, because this album kicks fucking ass. It's consistently good, with some absolutely classic metal songs

4/5

I was honestly hoping for a little more energy out of this album. Thundercat is a great musician, and he did significant work on To Pimp a Butterfly, which is one of my favorite albums of the 2010s. This music was all good, but it was also mostly really slow and mellow. Not necessarily bad, but generally when I listen to an album by a bassist, I expect more upbeat numbers.

3/5

I was a bit disappointed in this album relative to his debut album. It's still good, and Freedom 90 is a fucking banger with a great video (why yes, I am a heterosexual male, how did you know?), but it felt a bit dull, whereas I remember really liking his previous album

2/5