Reviews by suspiciousnumber

This is a much more interesting band than I would have given them credit for based on Come On Eileen. I watched a YouTube video about their history, and it was pretty cool what they were trying to do. I liked the album after Too-Rye-Ay, so it's cool to get to hear the album before it

Overall it's a neat album. I didn't have a lot of time to make notes while I was listening, but the variety of instrumentation was great

4/5

What can you say about Ice Cube during this era? His lyrics were intense and on point. He's great both when he's attacking the beat and when he's following it. The samples he uses are definitely of their time, but are also uniformly excellent. The singles off of this album are all timers.

The misogyny and homophobia are a bit much at times, but certainly not as bad as some of his contemporaries and those that would follow him.

Overall, his is a can't miss album from the early gangsta rap era

4/5

I'm not 100% sure why this album is on the list, since it doesn't seem to be considered as even Air's best album, nor was it a particularly significant soundtrack at the time. However, it's a good listen. The production is excellent, there are lots of little sounds that come through well. The somewhat sparse style Air employs works great as a soundtrack, but works well as a standalone album too.

4/5

Listening to hip-hop albums that were part of the golden age of sampling is such an interesting experience. Hearing snippets from extremely famous songs melded into the idiosyncratic rap style of QTip is cool; this album could only have been made in this era.

I really enjoy Tribe, but I sort of forget about them when I'm not listening to them. It's nice to have their albums put in front of me through this list. Their style is so relaxed, which separates them from the more intense rap style and lyrical content that became more popular in this era. Q-Tip does great work throughout the album. The fact that this was their first album shows how quickly everything came together for this group.

It's also crazy that the aspect of this album that has aged most poorly is their stance on cholesterol in eggs

5/5

Honestly, this is a cool album. I didn't know what to think of it at first, but for a country album from the mid-50s that I've never heard of, it's a fuckin toe-tapper.

4/5

This album was pleasant enough, but didn't really hold my interest. It was hard to understand why it was on this list, though perhaps there is some context that I am missing

3/5

I don't like live albums and I don't like live Bob Dylan albums and I don't like double albums and I really don't like live Bob Dylan double albums. It's like he's trying to make his voice sound annoying on purpose. Like, he's a groundbreaking musician and an excellent poet, but when he's live he sounds like he's singing directly through his nose and blowing snot into my ears.

I like a lot of these songs, but even some of those are...strange. I'm all for artists reinterpreting their work, but it feels like this version of Mr. Tambourine Man is just him being weird on purpose, and then it lasts for 9 GODDAMNED MINUTES. What kills me is that there are some greats songs on here, but I keep finding myself pausing this album to listen to other things. Like, this was probably an amazing concert to attend, but I'm just sitting here at work.

The electric half of the set is a saving grace (I was going to give 2/5 stars for the acoustic part of the set). It brings of a lot of sorely needed energy to the performance. It's fucking hilarious that many people at the show felt the complete opposite about it and heckled Dylan between songs

3/5 stars

I had heard the name of this artist but wasn't familiar with the music. Seeing that it was a British artist from the early 2000s didn't exactly fill me with hope, but I really liked it. Folky, but with a lot of variation in the instruments and musical styles. The production is very good. I could see myself buying this record

4/5

Well, this was not what I was expecting. I grew up with the pop UB40 of the 90s. It's weird to hear them as an actual reggae band, not doing uninspired covers of Elvis songs. I've never disliked this band, but this album gave me newfound respect for them. There's much more authenticity about this album than the later stuff that I was aware of. I'm not much of a reggae fan, but it's enjoyable when it's done well, instead of being the same handful of Bob Marley songs being blasted out the window of some frat boy's car.

3/5 It's a fine listen, but ultimately uninspiring.

Great. This fucking asshole. Luckily I was already in a shitty mood, which is perfect for listening to this album.

Two years after The Downward Spiral, Marilyn Manson comes along and does essentially the same thing, except not as good. "I wasn't born with enough middle fingers" is exactly the type of on-the-nose bullshit that makes this album feel like a cheap ripoff of any good industrial album.

The album is not devoid of merit, though. The production is really good in parts. There are some good songs too, though I mostly have to ignore the lyrics, which largely seem like a teenager's impression of Trent Reznor lyrics. I honestly think I would really enjoy an instrumental version of this album. Musically it works pretty well. It somehow manages to sound both gritty and clean at the same time. The instruments are mixed really well with the vocals so that nothing feels like it is left out in the avalanche of sound that most songs build to.

After reading about the making of this album on Wikipedia 1) it makes sense that I hear so much Trent Reznor here, since he produced the album and wrote multiple songs along with other members of NIN, and 2) everyone involved in the production of this album sounds like a fucking asshole. Also, this is a concept album? Could have fooled me.

2/5 I was originally going to give this 3/5 because I do really enjoy the music, but this album becomes increasingly self-indulgent and crucifying to listen to as it goes. The lyrics are universally juvenile, and the neat musical moments are not enough to overcome the chore that this album becomes as it progresses.
Also fuck Marilyn Manson as a person. It takes a special kind of prick to take being a bad boyfriend to the level of criminal charges

This album started out really good, but it feels a bit samey by the end. Overall I think that it's worth a listen, hence 4 stars, but it's definitely on the low end of 4 stars for me. There are a lot of hidden gems in the postpunk genre, and I think this is one of them

I think I've heard every song on this album prior to this, but I'd never listened to it as an album. One of the things that stood out to me is that Dre's production style, which would emerge fully-formed when he started putting out solo records fro Death Row, is not well-developed here. It sounds more like an 808 with a bunch of samples layered over it. I think it's interesting because the addition of those samples makes this sound much less dated than Run DMC's work in the mid 80s.

The approach to rapping is much more full formed with this album, which I think accounts for a lot of its appeal. This album delivers lyrically, and all of the participants appear to be at the top of their game here, though several of the artists achieved greater heights as solo artists. A deserved classic that has aged really well, perhaps because the misogyny that would be so pervasive in later gangsta rap albums is much less prominent here

4/5

The world seems to want me to listen to Neil Young so badly, and I want just as badly to never listen to Neil Young ever again. It's not bad. In fact, in a lot of ways its good music. It's just that Neil Young is a fucking bummer, and I don't need it. Neil Young is the type of person who goes to the beach to complain about the sand.

3/5 (again, it's not bad, it just makes me feel like life is not worth living)

Suite Judy Blue Eyes is such a great way to start off an album. It's like multiple songs in one, each beautiful with brilliant harmonies. Marrakesh Express is a great song to follow up after an all time great. After that, the music starts to feel more generic. This is not any fault of CSN, but more the fact that many musicians aped this style after this album, and CSN had a pretty consistent style over their career. It's not bad, but it doesn't rise to the heights of the beginning of the album. It's all pleasant enough, and this album is well worth a listen.

Overall, this must have sounded revolutionary in 1969. The harmonies are a nice successor to what the Beach Boys had been doing, but with a much different musical approach

4/5

I was introduced to shoegaze as a subgenre in the last year, and I really enjoy it. This album is one of my favorite examples. It's more lyrical than Loveless by My Bloody Valentine, which is my other favorite showgaze album (extremely obvious picks, I know). The lyrics blend into the music well. The instrumentals and production are excellent. This is also one of the few albums that I feel like listening to the songs added with the reissues benefited the album. A really solid album all the way through

4/5

This album seems so straightforward when you start listening to it, and then it keeps surprising you as it goes. It sounds like a normal punk album, right down to the starkly plain lyrics. Underneath that lies so much more. The songs are well-crafted and leave a lot of room for the instrumentals to shine. Intense, but subtle. This album is a powerhouse of a debut

4/5

What a weird and cool album. It's a bit slow-paced, but overall it was really interesting

4/5

It's a much different experience listening to Little Richard once I found out the original lyrics to Tutti Frutti. Not a worse experience by any means, just much different. I like thinking about the role of dancing in the formation of early rock n roll. All the songs on this album are good, though they all sound a bit similar to each other. I think that's probably an artifact of approaching this album more than 60 years after its release. Regardless, the music is fun and Little Richard's voice brings so much flavor to this album. It's easy to see why this album was a stand out of early rock.

4/5

I bought this album earlier this year, so it's an easy review for me. If you told me that this album was made a decade after it was released, I would believe you. I would also still think that the album was really good. It's so far ahead of its time that it's hard to talk about this album in isolation from all of the music in the 90s that it directly spawned. A lot of the formula for Nirvana's success is well developed already in Surfer Rosa. The songs are fun and well crafted. The combination of Frank Black and Kim Deal is excellent; they sound so good when they harmonize. It's actually a shame that Where Is My Mind will be forever associated with Fight Club, because this album has aged much better than that movie has

It's the quintessential 90s album released in 1988.

5/5

This album is a bit of an anacronism in 1958, especially with all of the landmark jazz albums that would come out the following year. It's a big band album made after the height of the big band era. However, it's a really fun album that somehow lives up to the boldness of its cover and title. I don't usually enjoy big band music, but I thought this one was well worth the listen

4/5