Reviews by suspiciousnumber

Fuck, finally.

I've been waiting for far too long for a John Coltrane album on this list, and this is my favorite John Coltrane album (at among his albums as a band leader). It's a masterpiece from beginning to end; the product of a truly beautiful soul. Coltrane's virtuosity is on display often on the album, but he's also restrained in service of making a more cohesive piece of music

Frankly, I don't know what else to say about this album. It gives me goosebumps when I hear it. Go experience it for yourself

5/5

I experience a moment of dread every time a British band that I've never heard of from the 90s-00s comes up on this list, because the author of the list seems to have a particular weakness for dogshit of that vintage. This album was a nice surprise. I don't know that it's something I'm ever going to listen to again, but I can at least understand why someone would point me to this album and tell me that I should listen to it.

The music isn't unique, but it's a blend of a couple genres and it's well executed. There is also some kind of alchemy present when female vocalists front metal bands. It just works and I'm not sure why. There's a decent amount of variety in the album as well

4/5

I've tried with this album, I really have. I've owned it on vinyl since the since 2005, and every few years I hear people talking about how great it is, and I decide that this is the time that I'm finally going to "get" this album.

Except, I never do. I find this album boring, even for a prog rock album. It's not bad, the compositions can be quite intricate, but ultimately it doesn't inspire anything in me. I think the last song on the album is the best, though even that song has a fake ending that really takes the steam out of the track

3/5

It is fucking baffling to me that this band began the decade as the dour post-punk band Joy Division and ended it with this album, which starts out like a fucking acid house album and then settles down into a very solid early alternative rock album. It's good that they continued on after Ian Curtis's death and the end of Joy Division, because having a band with punk rock bona fides helping to pioneer the origins of electronic music.

It's a very strange experience hearing an album that fits pretty well into the alternative rock of the late 80s but has little bursts of electronic dance music embedded in it. It's something that has the potential to be very cheesy, but the band executes it well. It's a really cool album that merges two genres that were on very different trajectories in the late 80s, but that were both about to come to the forefront in the 90s

4/5

I vaguely remember this band from when the song Scooby Snacks was popular in the 90s. Not only is that song not as good as I remember it being, I am completely baffled by why this album is on this list. As fun as it was getting to reminisce about 90s haircuts while watching the videos, I can see literally no other redeeming qualities about this music. It's not fun or interesting or groundbreaking. The rap-rock thing was still pretty new at that point, but it's hard to give them credit for it since they are such bad rappers. I'm struggling to get through a single song on this album because there is nothing about any of them that I enjoy. Also, the Wikipedia page for this album doesn't even mention being on this list.

It's like the most notable thing about this album is that it existed and there's nothing else to say about it

2/5

Iron Maiden fucking kicks ass, and there's not a lot else to say about it. If you like their style, then you will love this album

4/5

This album is interesting in its construction, but for the most part it's not very fun, which is what I come to Ray Charles for. It's definitely not bad, and there's clear musical significance to the approach he took to this album, but it doesn't really make you tap your toes until you get to the last song

3/5

I didn't have a lot to say about this one, but it was consistently good

4/5

Honestly, this is just a cool album. I'm not sure if it was groundbreaking at the time because I lack a lot of context for what was happening in the sort of straightforward rock groups at this time. Certainly, this sound is present in a lot of 70s groups, but I'm not sure if it originated before Bad Company (it's blues rock, so...probably). However, it's a groovy album with a bunch of hits

4/5

Here's another artist that I have to separate my feeling about them personally from my feelings about them as an artist. I really like Cee-Lo as an artist. I've seen him live, and he was really good (in Sioux City, Iowa no less. It's no small feet to get those people dancing). One the other hand, his sexual battery accusation and statements about consent are fucking reprehensible.

Setting all of that aside, this album is really cool. It's a lot of fun and featured more of Cee-Lo rapping than I was expecting. The music compliments perfectly. It's hard to call this a hidden gem, since Cee-Lo is so well known, but his work before Gnarls Barkley is well worth exploring

4/5

So, I did my best with this one. YouTube didn't have the full album, and the one thing I could find was several of the songs together with a bunch of other Rufus Wainwright songs that are not on the album. I simply don't care enough to seek out another version, so here we are.

This is not particularly my genre, as the music is driven entirely by Wainwright's voice, with little focus on anything else. There's nothing wrong with that, it's just not to my taste. On the other hand, his voice is fucking spectacular. It's sort of like if Thom Yorke from Radiohead didn't want to make fucking weirdo music. It's incredibly beautiful and the songs are constructed well around his voice. Again, it's not my thing, but it's well worth a listen

4/5

Perhaps the craziest thing about Wu-Tang was the number of incredible rappers and producers who were part of the crew from it's outset. Ghostface is a great example of that. He's one of the greatest rappers of all time, and yet when you list of the members of Wu-Tang who were most important to rap history, Ghostface barely sneaks into the top 5 (I'd put Rza, Method Man, ODB, and perhaps Gza in over him). Despite that, Ghostface clearly shows how well his style ages here. More than 10 years after 36 chambers, Ghostface comes in hot with Fishscale.

It helps a lot that this album features some of the greatest producers of all time at the height of their careers. One of the coolest things about this album is getting to hear some of my favorite songs off of Donuts by J Dilla employed by a rapper whose style meshes well with Dilla's. I can't think of another rapper who can tell a story in verse the way that Ghostface can. His flow is incredible, but the way that he paints a picture while he does it is his true skill.

I can't believe that I'm going to give another Wu-Tang rapper a 5/5 album, but here we are. This album is undeniable

5/5

I find this album a bit tough to rate. It's a fun album to be sure, with several radio hits, and a collection of lesser songs that hold up pretty well. I think it's also possible that this album is culturally significant, in that it was one of the earliest works that made the metal genre palatable to the mainstream, though there were also many steps in that process. I don't know how actually groundbreaking this album is, in that it presented a more mainstream version of a genre that was already well on its way, but I also don't think that pop music should be scored more poorly just because it is easier for lots of people to enjoy. It's fun, it's worth a listen. You're probably not going to learn anything about the metal genre from listening to it, but that's also probably not why you are listening to Def Leppard in the first place

4/5

We meet again, Neil Young. I've lost count of how many Neil Young albums I've been subjected to on this list, but it's at least 4 now, plus a couple of CSNY albums. It's hard to keep finding creative ways to describe how much I deeply dislike Neil Young's music, but here we go.

This album sounds like a fucking Neil Young cover band. It sounds like someone loved Neil Young but thought that his lyrics weren't obvious enough. "Should I develop an insightful metaphor for the kind of vulnerability needed to to truly allow a romantic relationship to thrive? No, people won't understand what I'm talking about. Better just say 'Take a chance on love' that way everyone will understand what I'm saying."

Neil Young has aged like a fine bottle of Boone's Farm, which is to say that he hasn't declined all that much, but that's because he was never that great to begin with. Everything about this fucking album is generic, right down to the name.

I still haven't gotten a John Coltrane album on this list, but here I am. listening to not only another Neil Young album, but the fucking sixth album with Neil Young on it (I counted). Did Neil Young blackmail the creator of this list? Is this some kind of performance art? A psychological experiment? I didn't consent to this. I just wanted to be introduced to new music, not be subjected to the endless Neil Young Experience.

Fuck Crazy Horse too. They're complicit in all this

2/5

Well, what we can say is that Pink Floyd found it's sound eventually. This album isn't bad, but it is pretty uninteresting for a band that would put out so many iconic albums over the coming decades. It's also easy to see how the work being done here forms a bridge between the psychedelic movement of the 60s and the music that Pink Floyd would release in the 70s once Syd Barrett departed the band. It's a neat signpost in musical history, and the band was definitely experimenting with a lot here, but ultimately this album is not that interesting to listen to

3/5

This album fucking takes me back. I remember really liking it when I was younger, and then in my typical oppositional defiant disorder way, I became much less interested in it when I found out that a lot of other people liked it. As a result, I didn't listen to this album nearly so much as a lot of its contemporaries that were slightly less popular.

Now I get to listen to this album fresh after many years. One of the things that stands out now is the influence of the shoegaze genre on this band. I wasn't familiar with bands like My Bloody Valentine in the 90s, and it's cool to hear some of the influences of those works on the Smashing Pumpkins. It's also interesting to see little bits of Industrial and Electronica in the music, especially since those influences would become more prominent in their future works.

Overall I like the album, it feels a bit long as a double album, but at the same time it's not easy to pick out songs that I would cut from it to make it tighter. There's so many different flavors here, and the album wouldn't feel as complete if it focused more around fewer sonic ideas. Some of the lyrics are a bit on-the-nose, which I think also contributed to my abandoning the album as I got older in high school. Overall, it's a really good album

4/5

Now seems like a good time to point out that Elvis didn't write songs, so while he may have been the greatest cover artist of all time, he was a cover artist nonetheless. At least the songs on this album weren't huge hits like some of Elvis's earlier albums.

This album is pleasant enough. The production is great. It has a live feel while still sounding very clean. Elvis's voice was still holding up great at this point in his career, though it's a bit quiet on some of the songs. There aren't a lot of what I would consider to be standout tracks on this album, other than In The Ghetto, but all of the songs are good. It's a solid album to play in the background

4/5

The last concert that I saw before the pandemic was Gza doing Liquid Swords. He was performing at a venue that is endearing, but far too shitty to host a hip-hop legend. Regardless of the circumstances, when Gza showed up, he brought the fucking energy.

This album is interesting. It's not my favorite of the Wu-Tang solo albums (Only 4 Cuban Linx has that honor), but it's an incredible work. Lyrically deep, with Rza's characteristic sampling style that never seems like it should work, and yet always sounds amazing. The cinematic approach to making albums worked so well for Wu-Tang, and this album may be the pinnacle of that

5/5

This is a somewhat strange album to be reviewing now after the resurgence of Running Up That Hill as a result of its use in Stranger Things. While I don't particularly get everyone's fascination with that song (it's good, but I don't think of it as a hidden gem from the past), this album is really cool. It's distinctively 80s in its musical composition and production, but the style of it is really cool. It doesn't feel as boxy and restricted as a lot of synth pop music is. The songs have a lot of life and organic elements to them. Bush's voice is a key component of the alchemy. It's hard to identify why this works so well with her voice in particular, but I don't think this album would sound as good with someone else in front of it

4/5

I genuinely find this album's inclusion on this list baffling. This album seems like super standard 90s techno released after the 90s had finally shuffled off. After reading a bit more about UK Garage techno, I understand a little bit more, but continue to be confused.

This is one of the few albums on this list that I won't make it even close to the whole way through. It's just uninspired and uninspiring.

2/5