Reviews by suspiciousnumber

Just when I thought I had the Byrds pegged (in the sense that I think their music is fine but ultimately uninteresting to me), I get tossed yet another one of their albums (is every one of their albums on this list), and it turns out that it's actually good and I like it. What the hell, Byrds?

It's a bit weird to me that the two Byrds albums that I enjoyed the most were the ones without David Crosby, despite the fact that I like his work with CSNY. It just feels like they are more willing to experiment in these albums, rather than trying to be psychedelic Bob Dylan. There was apparently a ton of songwriting talent in this band just waiting to get out of it's folk rock cage and explore other styles

4/5

I wavered back and forth on this album a bit because I didn't like his voice at first, but it really grew on me. I can't think of anything else that this really sounds like. His poetry is beautiful, and the simplicity of the music really helps set it off. I think I'm going to have to buy this one

4/5

I have a complex set of feelings about this album. I heard it around the time that it came out, and liked it but didn't love it. I still feel about the same, but my appreciation for synth pop has greatly increased during the intervening years. I think one of the reasons that I don't like this more is that I've heard lots of great synth albums since 2013, like Jubilee by Japanese Breakfast, that I like more than this. However, those albums benefit from the existence of this album.

Anyway, this is solid synth pop. It leaves me a bit uninspired at times, but overall it's really good

4/5

I got excited about this album when I heard that it was heavily influenced by Siouxsie and the Banshee's early career. I was all set to hate on some sad boy rock, but I really enjoyed this album, most likely because I really enjoy the early 80s work by Siouxsie. This album doesn't reach the heights of, say, Juju, which the Banshees released the year after this, but it's really solid all the way through. The production is also excellent and brings everything together with a really rich sound

4/5

Hardcore punk is one of those weird genres that I don't particularly enjoy, but can still appreciate because it seems to have spawned so many great artists. This is an early hardcore album, which hasn't yet reached the fever pitch that most hardcore albums live in, and I appreciate that fact. This album has an important legacy, but it's also hard to give it a super high rating, since I don't really enjoy listening to it very much

3/5

This was an album I loved the first time I heard it. It just has something, I don't even know how to describe it. The production is incredible and really lets her voice shine while keeping it well supported by the music. The lyrics are great and they feel accessible without being trite

4/5

I had never heard of this album before, but it's consistently great. At times it feels like straight-ahead rock, but they include so many other little elements that just blend together perfectly. It feels like they were influenced by the jam band movement, but managed to keep their sound from becoming generic

4/5

I'm always deeply skeptical of music from the years 2001-2010, since it formed an unholy confluence of the tail end of popular music on the radio with the commercialization of everything in this goddamned world.

This album, however, this album kicks fucking ass. I don't even know how to describe it because there are so many styles employed. Sometimes this feels like a rock back, sometimes it feels like a hip-hop group, and yet somehow it never sounds the slightest bit like Kid Rock or Limp Bizkit. Just incredibly creative and well-crafted music. The production is also stellar

4/5

Well, I'll admit that I'm a sucker for vocal harmonies, so this is an album that I'm predisposed to like. Listening to it, I feel like it's about what I expected. The hits are fucking spectacular songs that I love. The other songs are fine, though unspectacular. I feel like the mix is a bit off on these tracks (though that could be the combination of YouTube quality and my speakers), since the vocals feel a little less prominent than they should be. They are the only thing about this music that is truly interesting, and yet they feel buried in some of the songs when they should be leading the way.

On the other hand, this album sounds pretty advanced for 1966
4/5

This album took me until about halfway through to really start to get it, and at that point I started it again and listened with fresh ears. I think this one is easy to miss, since it sounds generic at first, like a less poppy version of The Strokes. However, there's a lot more progression in these songs than in Strokes songs (also, these songs are not blatantly ripped off of very famous songs the way most of the Stokes big hits were).

4/5 This album definitely sounds like it was made in the mid 00s, but there's a lot more depth to the music than I initially perceived. Sort of a hidden gem in an incredibly bleak period for rock

The experience of listening to this album was not worth the amount of effort I had to put in just to hear it, since it's a bit hard to search for a self titled album by a band that put out like 50 fucking albums over the course of human history. I went to all the trouble to download it, just to hear them doing a bunch of mediocre covers of popular songs.

This album isn't bad, but the Rolling Stones were pretty half-baked as a band at this point. You can see some little bits of what they would become here, and Mick's charisma has apparently always been securely in place. Rating this becomes a bit of a challenge, because I think this is a 2 star album if I don't know what this band is going to become, but it's a 3 star album if I think about the band getting the elements in place to become truly great.

2/5 I'm sorry, Rolling Stones, but your debut was not very good

Okay, before I even listen to this album, I'm going to toss down a plug for a YouTube account named Bobby Fingers. I don't even know how to describe it, but it's fucking incredible. He makes dioramas, but incredible ones. Here's the video for his diorama about Michael Jackson getting his hair lit on fire in 1984, an event that occurred between the release of Thriller and this album (there's your relevance if you've read this far and somehow still need me to tie this to the album I should be reviewing by now)

Well, like every Michael Jackson album, this one is pretty much wall to wall bangers. Except for Liberian Girl, of course, that song brings the album to a crashing halt. Every other song is really good, though, and several of them are great. It's really too bad Micheal Jackson ended up being such a fucking monster, cuz he sure could write a tune

4/5

Well, I'll confess myself surprised at the number of Rod Stewart albums that showed up on this list. I will also confess my surprise on how much I've enjoyed these albums overall. There are some moments on this one that could be better, especially his version of Amazing Grace, which is wildly unnecessary, but overall he won me over again. His voice is great; iconic might be a better word. The music is really cool throughout as well. The songs sound pretty different from one another and do a great job of sharing the limelight with him. I think the album could have had a bit more in the way of original compositions, especially for a 3rd album, but I can't fault him for the songs he chose either

4/5

Month after month, year after year, this list keeps serving me up Byrds albums and daring me not to like them, and I just keep rising to that challenge. This album is fine, just like all the others, but just like all the others, it leaves me feeling pretty flat. This is especially true after seeing what Bob Dylan had been doing with folk for years at this point.

I will say that this album takes on more of a country feel, which works for it, since it gives it more character than a lot of 60s folk albums. I can dig some slide guitar

3/5

Wow, you know how sometimes you just immediately click with a band or a singer? This was the exact opposite of that. The opening riff of the album was cool, and I was starting to get excited, and then this dude started singing, and I just hated it immediately. I don't even know what it is. Yes, I do, it's everything. I hate his voice, I hate the way he chooses to use his voice, and I hate the words that he is singing. It just feels so weirdly generic. Blech.

Weirdly, I kinda like the music 2/5, though

Well, the cover of this album gives us a very strong new candidate for the most unfuckable band ever. That unibrow could scrape the ice off of my windshield in a Minnesota winter, and that guy's the MOST handsome one here

Another thing that this album has working against it is that old villain, Eric Clapton. He's used well here, which is to say that he's keeping his mouth shut most of the time and not choosing any of the songs.

Overall, this album is okay. It's definitely got its moments, but other parts of it are just baffling. Who the fuck called for an extended drum solo in the middle of What I Say? It stops that song dead, and then it never really gets a chance to get going again. The same could be said for my level of interest in this album

3/5, leaning very close to 2

I saw that this was an early 2000s hip hop album that I'd never heard of, and I got a bit worried that it would be another shitty British rap album. I was wrong, and I was glad of that fact.

This album fucking kicks ass. Some of the lyrical delivery is a bit out dated, but then again so is this album. The synths on it are really cool (often sounds similar to the Moog used on Virgin Suicides by Air), and the samples are great too. Not overwhelming, not overdone, a light touch. A really solid album that I'm surprised I haven't heard more about

4/5

This is my second country album in a row, and much like that Dwight Yoakam opus, I find this reasonbly pleasant to listen to, but I don't really find myself able to appreciate its significance. Some of this is just not having the context for that was happening in country at the time. It's possible that a lot of country that I've listened to is aping this sound, and that's why it doesn't mean much to me. Either way, it's nice enough, but I'm never planning on coming back to this album

3/5

I never have much to say about afrobeat albums, but I have liked all of them that I've gotten on this list. This is a really great live album, which is the opposite of what I normally write about live albums.

4/5

You know, one of the things that this list has given me a greater appreciation for is country, exposing me to artists like Buck Owens and early KD Lang. But they can't all be winners, and the way that I feel about this is much more about how I've felt about most country that I've heard, which is to say that I think the voices are nice, and pretty much every thing else is boring. I think that this album was pretty influential on modern country, so I can give it credit for its influence, despite the fact that if modern country music were one of my fingers, I'd cut my whole hand off and cauterize the stump so that it could never grow back

3/5, I guess. It's really not that bad, I just don't like country music, and I fucking hate hearing people talk about dixie