Reviews by suspiciousnumber

This album was fine. He has a good voice and the lyrics work well enough. It's not my thing, but I could see why people like it. For me, though, it was hard to understand how this album was innovative or significant. It seemed like another late era Brit Pop album that made it to this list because it was popular, not because it was particularly meaningful or groundbreaking. Also, this album just keeps fucking going without really changing or doing anything interesting

3/5

This album was a super cool listen. It's crazy that Iggy was so far ahead of his time that he had already moved onto his second act as a musician the same year that punk was beginning to break in the US and UK. The title track on this album is a titanic way to kick the album off, but it doesn't disappoint from there. The Passenger is an awesome song, but really all of the songs on this album are good.

4/5

I wanted to like this album, I really did. However, the good about it doesn't outweigh the fact that basically every song sounds the same. Steamroller blues should never have been included, since it sounds like Taylor took a class class called "How to play white guy blues for dummies." Oh Suzanna is similarly bad.

Fire and Rain is a notable high point. The production is excellent as well. The character of his guitar really shines through. It just doesn't make up for the fact that this album is boring

I wasn't expecting much from this album. I've liked the Springsteen albums that I've listened to in the past, but a 2002 Springsteen album made as a response to 9/11 in light of everything that's happened since then sounds like the exact opposite of what I need right now.

This album, however, is solid all the way through. Bruce's music doesn't sound dated for 2002, and the lyrics aren't the type of heart-on-my-sleeve rah rah bullshit that I associate with this period. Every song on this album is good, if not spectacular. More importantly, he found a way to capture the feeling of hope really well with this album. Totally worth coming back to in the future

4/5

While this album isn't nearly so polished and forward thinking as what Massive Attack would accomplish with Mezzanine, Blue Lines works as its own thing. The soul/R&B influence shines through in a really cool way; very different from what I've heard in previous electronica movements. Not their best work, but still really worth the listen

4/5

I feel the same way about this Deep Purple album that I did about the other Deep Purple album I got on this list, which is that when the lead singer hits his high notes, all I hear is Dennis Reynolds from IASIP singing Day Man. Add to that that it's a double live album, and there isn't much for me to get into here. Their music is fine, but there's so much about this album that biased me against it going in. Not bad, but I was ready to be done after two songs. After the high water point of Smoke On The Water, every song is at least 9.5 minutes long.

3/5

There are a lot of ways in which I detest Eric Clapton as a person, since he has the audacity to be a racist while ripping his entire career off of Black American blues musicians. Listening to this album provided a unique opportunity to see how empty his skill set really is. He is an excellent guitar player. This is a cover album that rarely features his skills as an instrumentalist because I guess he wanted to show off his skills as doing uninspired cover versions of popular songs. His version of Hand Jive is most appropriate for a funeral, since I don't see how anyone could enjoy dancing to it. I Shot The Sheriff is a cover I had to hear constantly in my youth, and now I spend hours trying to explain to my therapist why I harbor so much anger towards an over-rated artist being covered badly by an even more over-rated artist. Listening to Clapton try and fail to do anything interesting with a song that already didn't have much going for it is the audio equivalent of watching a scrambled porn channel back in the 90s only to realize that the show you were trying to watch was a scrambled cooking show the whole time.

Eric Clapton is proof that heroin doesn't turn every musician into a brilliant artist.

Well, clearly I made an error when I put this album off until after Christmas, since I sure as fuck don't want to listen to Christmas music in January. On the other hand, despite the fact that he is mentally unhinged murderer, Phil Spector could produce the hell out of an album. Even with slightly subpar recording quality, the strength of the music is undeniable. There's a reason why several songs off this album are among the most popular version

5/5

One of the cool things about this list is that it has given me a greater appreciation for Bob Dylan. I liked him before, but never really understood why people regarded him so highly. While I still find his voice grating at times, listening to this album gave me a better appreciation for how innovative Dylan was. This album came out before all of the Beatles' most enduring works, and really stands out from what other artists were doing in 1965. The fact that he put so much work into experimenting with adding electric backing tracks to existing folk songs before recording it was neat to read about, and clearly it paid off in this album. That you could mix folk and electric rock was one of those things that I would have taken for granted, but someone had to be the first one to bring them together, and this represents Dylan's realization of that fusion.

The songs are uniformly good on this album, with some of them being all time greats. The album kept my interest the whole way through, even as he transitions to more acoustic stuff in the back half. This is one that I can see myself picking up on vinyl

4/5 (really wanted to give it 5, but that voice does not hold up all the way through. It's a shame that one of the greatest rock poets was restricted to singing entirely through his nose)

This album has some really nice moments on it, and despite the fact that this type of music sounds stereotypically southern now, it only became that way because of this band

At the same time, the album sags in places. I've never been a huge fan of Free Bird, perhaps because I grew up in the Beavis and Butthead era when this song was already a meme. Trying to listen to it with fresh ears is hard as a result. I think that it's a pretty enough song, but not the all time great the way it tends to be portrayed by people who really like it.

Fuck it, 4/5 by the skin of it's teeth. Maybe I like Free Bird after all. Or at least, I like 4/5ths of Free Bird. That song could have been shut down a full minute earlier with no negative impact

This album was new by me. It's not really something I can see myself coming back to, but it was a good listen. The music faded into the background a bit, but it was still good

4/5

Part of me wants to like the Black Keys, but I feel the same way about them that I felt about Cheap Trick. They do generic rock'n'roll. They do it well, but it feels too safe, like they are writing songs that they know that people will like because other people have already written these songs slightly differently

3/5

Well, this is definitely a Bjork album. Like every other Bjork album I've ever heard, I enjoyed it. However, there's not a lot that I can say about this album that I wouldn't say about any other Bjork album. It's challenging at times, experimental in a way that often hits home, carried by her voice despite the fact that her voice isn't particularly incredible (it's good, just not super notable).

The layering of different voices in this album works really well and is the biggest strength of Medulla.

4/5

I had never listened to this band before, but I really liked this album. I love pop music that manages to be a bit challenging in terms of its lyrics. Musically, it works great and the production is excellent

4/5

I thought this was an interesting album, though I feel like I'm going to have to listen to it a few more times before I give an informed opinion. It kept my interest, though (which is good because it's a short album). The sound quality could be better, but apart from that it's an album that feels ahead of its time based on when it was released

I thought this album was good. Usually I don't connect well with Sonic Youth's albums, despite the fact that I loved seeing them live. However, this album was very consistent all the way through, and it kept my attention

4/5

It's tough to know what to say about this album, or about Miles Davis in general. In every era in which he played, he always seemed to have a different and exciting place to take Jazz. After he stopped, no one stepped up to take his place. In some ways, it feels like Jazz is frozen in time, right where Miles left it.

The album is a masterpiece. It's a swirling, groovy exhibition of both Davis's virtuosity and his brilliant composition. I can't think of a single other artist that was this bold and groundbreaking on his 27th album. I don't know what else to say about it. It's great, go listen to it

5/5

I like the Pixies in general, but I didn't find much in this album that really grabbed me. Both Surfer Rosa and Doolittle had songs that I really liked, but none of the songs here really stood out to me. It sounds like the Pixies, it was really consistent without being boring, but it never really seemed to reach the heights of the other two albums for me

3/5

Musically, this album is good, but it just didn't make much of an impression on me. Any time I tuned it, it was pleasant enough, but then I would just tune out again because it didn't hold my interest. It's another one of those cases where this list contains a recent British album that doesn't seem particularly ground-breaking or influential to me

3/5

Honestly, this album is not as good as I remember it being. The first half is amazing, which is the half of this album that I remember. The second half is great sleepy-time music, but I kept checking to see if YouTube had switched to a different album, since nothing interesting was happening. It's not that I don't like Moby's ambient stuff. It's good. It just doesn't fit with what he was doing in the first half of the album

3/5