Reviews by suspiciousnumber

Lots of times with electronic albums from this period, it's hard for me to evaluate the album because it's hard to know how groundbreaking something was without researching it. The novelty of the sounds fade over time and are lost in a wash of imitators.

This is not one of those albums. It's not just that it's obviously groundbreaking for the time, it's that it still sounds novel. It's just a great album all the way through. The execution is incredible, which is a real achievement given the technology it was made with and the number of samples involved. Just incredibly fun, innovative dance music from down under

5/5

This is one of those albums that's fine, a fun listen even, but I don't understand why it's special enough to be on this list. I suppose that it represents a transitional album from the sound of the 60s to the sound of the 70s, but nothing on here feels all that groundbreaking. It just feels very straightforward. There's nothing wrong with that, and I enjoyed this album, but it's hard to analyze something that is competent but unspectacular. He does have some synthesizer stuff on here that is relatively early. Maybe it gets really good on the second disc of the album, but I'm definitely not going to make it there because I have things to do today

3/5

You know, it's rare that I encounter an album that I instantly dislike as much as this album. I'm generally not a folk person, and I'm especially not a this-kind-of-folk person. A lot of these songs sound like Monty Python songs that were cut when they realized they forgot to put jokes in.

I will say that the album starts to pick up around A Very Cellular Song, though that only lasts for a few tracks, and then we're back in the doldrums

Reading about it, I guess I can understand why this album is significant, but listening to it, I just don't understand at all. Looking at the other reviews of this album, it seems like lots of other people felt the same. It's either 5 stars or 1.

2/5 There were moments that I thought this was okay, but otherwise this is the type of album that we should probably destroy every copy of for the advancement of the human species

This was an album that I didn't think I was going to like as I listened to the start of the first song. However, he really won me over as the album went on. I don't have a huge amount to say about it, other than that it's cool that he was able to keep putting out consistently good work for this many years

4/5

This is my favorite Thelonious Monk album. It has his characteristic style of being elegant and beautiful while bringing weird tension when he chooses to. I love the exuberance of Bemsha Swing

5/5

I've complained a lot of times on here about not getting any Kendrick Lamar albums. Well, we finally made it here

I love this album. It's perfect. It's so deeply personal, yet looking outward at all these social issues. His rapping and lyrics are sublime. The music is so far beyond what most of hip-hop was doing at the time, yet it still feels like hip-hop.

This is the greatest rap album of all time. It's everything I ever wanted in hip-hop. In a weird way, I didn't want to put this album on today because I knew it would eventually end, and then I would never get to review it for this list again.

This is one of the top 5 albums made since 2000

5/5

This album took me a little while to review, which was good because it grew on me a bit as I tried to sit down and listen to the whole thing. As an album, it's a bit more frenetic than a lot of early synth pop (e.g. stuff like Human League and Gary Numan). This both gives the album a very distinct style and makes it a bit more fun to dance to. I also like that political/social ideas were a little more at the fore than with other early synth groups. This band feels a lot more like a punk band that sold their guitars for magic synthsizers than a lot of their contemporaries

4/5

I think a lot of folks get down on this album for being dated, which it is, but so is a lot of the music on this list. I don't think that dated hip-hop is any worse inherently than dated rock or dated jazz. What's more, this album comes from a singular moment in hip-hop when sampling was wide open and DJs had the equipment to take large samples from popular music. Not all of the rapping on this album has aged well, but Queen Latifah has unquestionable skill on the mike, and its on full display here. The early synthesis of rap with house music is also really cool. This is certainly not the best rap album I've gotten on this list, but it has a case as the most underrated rap album that I've gotten.

4/5

God, I've been loathing this moment. This is one of those albums that I'm supposed to like because I'm weird and I like weird things, and this is a landmark album in the history of weirdness.

I've tried with this album, I really have. Multiple times .Every time I put it on, I want nothing so much as for it to end. This album is the equivalent to a person who confuses having an unusual pet for having a personality. "I'm glad you were able to buy a kimono dragon, Captain Beefheart. Can I get the fuck out of here now?"

If I'm being serious, I can see why people were influenced by this album. There's little bits and pieces of things that would become much more prominent in music in the decades to follow. That's my problem with it, though. It's all just bits and pieces of things, with no actual coherent expression of a whole idea. Every time I find something that I like, it ends quickly, and moves on to something else that is the musical analogy of someone putting their finger and inch from your face and saying "I'm not touching you"

Anyway, I've been dreading this moment. I'm going to give this album a bad grade because I don't like it, but I have to actually listen to it to see how bad of a grade it will be. And, of course, it's a double album because they couldn't shovel this much garbage onto just one disk.

I feel the same way about this album that I feel about all of David Lynch's movies. I know that I'm supposed to like it. Tons of people whose opinions I really respect love this album and think it's brilliant (also, it's David Lynch's favorite album because of course it is). However, when I listen to it, I don't enjoy it, and then I feel stupid because I'm supposed to enjoy it, and maybe I'm just too stupid to understand it. Fuck you, Captain Beefheart. I'm not stupid, you are. If you're so much smarter than me, how come I'm alive and you're dead?

2/5 This album has an incredible legacy, but so does Michael Jackson's dad. Legacy isn't everything

I feel like The Roots are one of the groups that have never really received the credit that they deserved. Playing live music for hip-hop is an amazing idea, and they've always executed it incredibly. Especially in this era, they kept pushing the envelope of what they could do musically to keep up with the work of producers like Dilla who were creating music that was difficult to emulate with live instruments.

The incredible talent of Black Thought is on full display here. Again, he's one of the greatest rappers of all time, but never get sufficient credit. I think that The Roots are one of those groups that a lot of people find challenging, despite the fact that their music sounds great and isn't hard on the ears at all. They've always done their own thing and sought to push the boundaries of that genre, and Phrenology is another milestone in that journey. The fusion of hip-hop and neo-soul reaches what might be its apex here

4/5

Pearl Jam was one of those bands that I didn't really "get" when I was younger. I was much more of a Nirvana fan, and it was easy to reject other bands that I viewed as lesser than. So, this is the first time that I've actually listened to this as an album. It's easy to see why it's had such an enduring legacy. Nearly half of the album is hit songs, some of them mega-hits, and the rest is consistently good. The second half of the album is not as good as the first, but it's solid all the way through

4/5

Honestly, I wasn't super excited when I say this album, since I've given Bee Thousand a shot a couple of times and don't really find it to my taste. I like the lofi style, it's just that the songs go by so fast that it feels like you don't get any time to sit with them. This album felt a lot more digestible. It still gets through a wide variety of songs, and each song feels like it has a good amount of room to breathe

4/5

I didn't like this album quite as much as Back to Black, but it's still a very good album. There's just something so undeniable about her voice. It feels timeless. There's a lot of variety in the music as well, with some songs sounding modern and others have more of a classic sound

4/5

It's pretty hard to think of an artist who was done dirtier in their time that Sinead O'Connor. Her career was destroyed because she ripped up a picture of the pope to protest the Catholic Church protecting pedophiles, and yet she herself was a victim of the church, as were thousands and thousands of other people world wide. She was 100% right and had so much shit talked about her.

So anyway, the album. It's good. Not particularly my style of music, but her voice is great, and there's a lot of gravity to her songs. Nothing Compares 2 U is a fucking banger for such a depressing song. It's also nice that she can mix things up with more upbeat songs like Jump in the River. Using a loop from James Brown's Funky Drummer was a nice touch (I also hadn't realized before this that the same loop was used in Scarlett Begonias by Sublime). Overall a really good listen from an artists who should have had a much bigger career

4/5

Perhaps I'm missing a lot of nuance here, but this sounds a lot like the Moody Blues to me. I don't think it's bad at all, but it doesn't sound unique to my ear. This could be because folk isn't really my genre and I have the ears of a cretin. Or it could be because a lot of late 60s folks sounds the same because they were all zonked out of their minds on amazing acid, bad pot, and dirty speed. Perhaps we'll never know

3/5

Roxy music is such a bizarre situation for me. I don't care for Bryan Ferry at all (nothing wrong with the guy, I just don't like his music), but I fucking love Brian Eno. On their albums, it seems like I half enjoy a lot of the songs, and this album is a great example of that. Unfortunately, this makes for a dull listening experience. I really thought I was going to like this album, but at least I can comfort myself with everything Brian Eno did after this

3/5

Willie Nelson is one of those artists that I keep meaning to see before he dies, just so I can say that I saw him. But then I keep not seeing him, which makes me feel bad. And he keeps on living and giving me more opportunities to see him, which makes me feel worse. Anyway, the reason that I'm not buying tickets is probably because I don't really like country all that much. I like this, though. The production is very good, featuring the guitar and bass very nicely at appropriate times. The songs are beautiful, and so is his voice, which cuts through everything else on the album to help you really feel it

4/5

This album is cool, but I wish I would have heard it before Loveless, since I absolutely love that album, while this one pales in comparison a bit for me. It's still good, and goes in different directions than Loveless, it just would have been nice to hear how much I like this album if I didn't have Loveless as a standard of comparison

4/5

One of the great deficiencies in my knowledge of pop music is female rock artists. Part of this is because they tended to be pushed into the background by the music ecosystem, and part of it is because I wasn't seeking them out. One of the really cool things I've learned from this list is just how many ground breaking albums were produced by women and then largely ignored. PJ Harvey got a fair bit of attention for her work, but I'd never listened to her until I encountered a couple of her albums on this list.

This album definitely deserves its accolades. It's beautifully written, and her voice and lyrics are great throughout. Bringing in Thom Yorke for a song was a great move, and I love how his voice sounds when paired with a female vocalist

4/5

It's an odd coincidence that I was just watching a documentary about the history of industrial music the other day and get treated to an industrial album today.

This album has a lot of the elements that would be featured in the industrial music of the 90s. It develops a little bit slowly, which is fine, but I'm more used to industrial in the mold of NIN or Ministry. Overall, it's a really cool album that serves as a nice transition from the early industrial stuff that was pretty hard to listen to and the really popular industrial stuff from the 90s and 00s.

4/5