Reviews by suspiciousnumber

Honestly, I was way more impressed with this album than I thought I would be. I remember some of these songs being hits in 2004, but I wasn't terribly into pop music at that point, and a lot of these songs work much better in the context of this album. Green Day certainly came a long way in the 10 years between Dookie and American Idiot (though I still love the former). I would not have predicted that they had a concept album with emotional depth in them.

4/5

Really cool alternative rock album from the late 80s. It presages a lot of musical ideas that will come to fruition in the 90s. Well worth a listen

4/5

This was never really a band that I got into when they were popular, and I think now that I understand why. I find them boring and every song sounds the same to me. Like, I'm 4 songs in and I just want to give up because its so dull

Also they have a terrible name. It's like the Dead Kennedys, except it's not funny. Same

2/5

This album was very difficult for me to rate. On one hand, it didn't keep my attention very well. On the other hand, it's clearly a landmark album in the history of what would become heavy metal, and it influenced a lot of other music that came after it as well. I think it's a decent album, but it didn't appeal to me all that much

3/5

Well, I can say for sure that the song Find Somebody was not meant to be listened to on headphones, because the complete switch between left and right ear for the guitar is super unpleasant. Like, it feels like my headphones are breaking in time with the music

Setting that monstrosity aside, this is an interesting album. The famous songs don't really start until halfway through. The hits off of this album are great. Most of the rest of the songs are a bit dull. They are in the process of becoming a psychedelic band here, but it doesn't feel full formed yet. Perhaps that's appropriate since this is their last album as the Young Rascals before they dropped the "Young"

3/5 Fun at times, but also annoying at times and uninteresting at other times

There's nothing quite like when a skilled songwriter and sensitive artist is blessed with a voice so warm and smooth that can melt butter. I don't listen to Marvin Gaye a lot, but every time I do there is this incredible richness evident in his music. This album portrays the struggle of a love that has failed beautifully, traipsing through the sadness, anger, rejection, defiance, reminiscence, and acceptance with a style of music that is probably best described as sad disco.

4/5 I'd prefer that this were not a double album, because I have shit to do, but they didn't have the internet in the 70s, so I can understand why artists placed less emphasis on valuing people's time

It would be hard to put a number on just how many times I've listened to this album. When I was a teenager, I used to just play it on repeat, no need to hear anything else when I've got the perfect album already in the CD player.

This album is so much more than the sum of its parts. I think a lot of that comes down to Cobain's songwriting and Butch Vig's production. The songs thrash between quiet and full-throated explosions of anger. Vig's production brings coherence to the madness. I know Kurt disliked the way this album sounded and felt that it didn't represent the band, but it certainly represented something that the world needed.

This album rewrote all the rules. Music hasn't been the same since. In some ways that's good, in some ways that's bad. It's the culmination of decades of struggling indie and alternative bands trying to break through with Nirvana becoming the biggest band in the world. It's well deserved. This album is incredible. Every song is good. This album definitely has a sound, but it never begins to feel samey.

It feels weird reviewing an album that everyone already knows about, but if you haven't listened to Nevermind, go ahead and listen to it. It's amazing. Also, I was reading on the YouTube page about how this album came out 30 years ago, and all of my bones turned to dust.

5/5

It's buck wild how much great music the Beatles put out in the 60s. This album is stellar, and it isn't even close to my top five Beatles albums. There's not much else to say about this album. It's good from the very first note. It would be nice if they wrote fewer love songs, but that's the early Beatles for you. Well worth a listen

4/5

I thought this was a cool album for the time. I got a little more bored with it as it went, but the style if very distinctive. I've always heard good things about the Kinks, but I've never listened to one of their albums until now. The sound quality of the album isn't amazing, but that certainly happened sometimes in this period

4/5

I think I might have liked this album a lot in the 90s, but I don't feel like it has aged well. It might be that there was a lot of music that was influenced by this album that mimicked the sound and style, but this album sounds a bit generic. It's fine, but it kinda just played through without making much of an impression on me

3/5

This is one of those 90s bands that I never really got into when they were actually around. The sound of this album certainly takes me back. The Screaming Trees are definitely a gentler sort of alternative rock band than many of their more popular counterparts. It's a shame they didn't get more attention. The songs are well-composed, and the lyrics were good as of my first pass. Definitely worth a listen, particularly for those of us who came of age during the 90s

4/5

I liked this album okay. I think that Missy Elliot makes excellent music with Timbaland. The features on the album are good. It makes for great dance music. I think, in some ways, not enough time has passed for me to critically evaluate this album, since it now sounds old, but not old enough that it's easy for me to place it in the history of hip-hop. It's at that in-between age when a lot of good albums feel like they have aged poorly, like a lot of early 2000s music. I felt the same way about 80s music when I was younger, but eventually came to really appreciate it.

4/5

It's very strange going from growing up thinking that the 1970s was a wasteland for music to it being perhaps my favorite decade for music bar none. There was just so much happening, and everything was changing so quickly. Case in point, this album is a nice pop and punk in the post-punk era that doesn't really get talked about much. I think the success that Blondie experienced just prior to this album's release. This album is a lot of fun, well worth a listen

4/5

I don't have a lot of notes about this album. It's great to put on and just let it play in the background. Very fun and upbeat, and it seems like it would be fun to dance to, as the title suggests.

4/5

I fucking love this album. It's music that you can really dance to that somehow feels more meaningful. It's also an absolutely stellar debut album. I think that Dig Your Own Hole is better overall, but this is one not to be missed. Every song works in the context of the album. Big Beat is one of those musical movements that I would have loved to be able to be around when it was in its early days.

I'm not sure that Big Beat gets its due with regard to its influence on modern music. So much of what has happened in EDM and hip-hop is using this style as its skeleton. The Chemical Brothers are the best part of that, turning out banger after absolute banger

4/5

I struggled with this album a bit. It sounds fine, both the music and the vocal are good and they blend well together. Listening to this album without context, I felt that it was a bit generic. Not bad at all, but it didn't sound particularly revolutionary for 2017. The Wikipedia entry shed a little more light on it, noting it's fusion of R&B and EDM, as well as other musical styles. I feel like EDM has been a part of R&B for a long time, but I don't know enough about the genre to say that definitively. In the end, I like this album, but I don't know that it's super groundbreaking. I think that the years since its release have altered my perception of it. At the same time, this album was released after FKA Twig's EP, which was much more experiemental in terms of electronic music in R&B. In the end I think it's good enough to give 4/5, but it's definitely close to 3/5

4/5

Well I, for one, had no idea that There She Goes was a cover song. That's cool, and the original sounds good (though it makes me feel less kindly about the cover, since it's virtually the same as the original).

This album has a fun energy to it. A lot of the songs are upbeat. Other songs inexplicably sound as if The Who were fronted by the lead singer of Smashmouth. Those songs are less good. Still, this is a good album overall and one that I'd like to come back to

4/5

Joni Mitchell usually doesn't work for me. I think that she is good, but I don't generally enjoy her albums that much. Blue is a notable exception. It's so beautiful and painful all the way through. Both her songwriting and her voice are on full display on this album. It's a very accessible entry point for her music

4/5

This was the album that got me into the Beatles. It was my favorite album of all time for a long while, until I'd listened to it too many times and I couldn't really "hear" it anymore when I put it on. It's something so different than what came before, and it had such a clear and incredible influence on what came after it. It's hard to find words to describe this album. Every song is good. Most of the songs are all time greats. It's hard to even compare it to other albums, because it's the standard that you compare other albums to.

As time goes by, I've started to think that Abbey Road is the superior album, but I'd still recommend that someone looking to get into the Beatles listen to this album first. It's so relatable and so alien at the same time.

5/5

This is . . . not a very good hip-hop album. I was really excited to hear it after reading the Wikipedia entry. There are samples from a bunch of songs that I really like. It's from a cool era of hip-hop that has a bunch of hidden gem albums I haven't heard yet. It's politically conscious.

The execution is lacking, however. Michael Franti provides a very superficial analysis of the world. The lyrics just aren't good, and he doesn't rhyme very well. Rapping without rhyming is just talking in a weird cadence. This album leaves me feeling flat in much the same way I felt when I saw Michael Franti and Spearhead live. It feels like it could be good, but it's not. It feels lazy. Every song feels like he was inspired to try and make a Public Enemy song, but then he got tired halfway through and gave up.

3/5 The political content and music are pulling a lot of weight in this score. He is talking about a lot of issues that were not common points of discussion at the time. He's just talking about them without much insight