Reviews by suspiciousnumber

Boy, I thought when I get a Bee Gees album that it was going to be a fun dancey romp, and I was 100% wrong. This is a dour album about endless sadness, and now I can't even remember what it feels like to dance. The music is pretty good, though, so if I still had the ability to experience joy, I would be happy about that

GOD, THIS ALBUM JUST KEEPS GOING, DOESN'T IT? This is the same band that wrote Stayin Alive, right? Did they accidentally take a bunch of ecstasy before recording that album? You know what, I was going to give this album a 3, but they talked me into a 2 by being absolutely crucifying for the entire runtime of the album

2/5

Led Zeppelin provides crucial evidence in the age old debate about what would happen if the greatest cock rock band of all time was made up of a bunch of Tolkien nerds. Turns out it's pretty cool.

This album is excellent the whole way through, and it finishes even stronger than it starts. Stairway to Heaven gets a lot of the attention for this album, but When the Levee Breaks is my nomination for the best Zeppelin song of all time.

5/5

Well, I feel similarly to this album that I feel about the majority of live albums, in that listening to the live recording doesn't simulate the live experience for me. This album has more character than a lot of the live rock albums that I've heard because of the amount of character that Sam brings to the show and the audience participating in the show.

Given that the original songs weren't recorded in tremendous quality in the first place, it's hard to fault the live recording quality. Given that, this is a cool listening experience. The recording being done in a club rather than a stadium just feels more intimate. It adds a lot to this recording. Somehow I feel more like I'm there than a normal recording.

With that being said, some of Cooke's banter would be best left in the 60s, like the casual reference to domestic violence (though in his defense, he said not to hit your wife), and his odd reference to leukemia in the middle of Somebody have mercy

4/5

The temptations made the album that they wanted to make, even though they were sure that it would be a commercial failure. The process was right, but their expectation was wrong because this album was a huge success.

The funky version of the Temptations is the best version. Their earlier hits were great songs, but this album has so much going on in it. It's incredibly innovative and well-suited to the era in which it was made. This album is like a poppier version of Maggot Brain by Funkadelic

4/5

I don't love a lot of reggae albums, but I love this one. Lively Up Yourself is a perfect song to start the album with because it works so well on its own, but it also gives them somewhere to go. Them Belly Full might be my favorite Bob Marley song. I think I like the original version of No Woman, No Cry better than the more famous version on Legend. I don't love every song on this album, but it goes by really quick and keeps my interest pretty well

4/5

This is another album that I've always intended to listen to, based on it's reviews, but never quite managed to sit down with. The samples are transcendent, even when paired by bizarre lyrics. Egg man is a great example of this: a song all about throwing eggs is paired with samples from Pusher Man and Psycho in a way that completely works.

What's amazing about this album is how much you will recognize when you start to focus on the different sounds you hear. While I wish sometimes that their rapping was a bit more interesting, it's good enough, and it fits with a lot of the rap of the time. The samples, and their chemistry as a group, make this album work incredibly well. The fact that this was among the first hip-hop albums that could be considered as an album rather than a collection of individual songs packaged together adds to its significance (though I would give more credit to It Takes a Nation of Millions by Public Enemy on that front)

4/5

Elvis Costello is one of those musicians that I've never really listened to, but that I've always been curious about. This was certainly the right album for me to listen to to get into him. It's poppy, but still innovative. You can tell right away from listening to this album that it influenced a lot of music that came after it.

Solid 4/5, and I could see this being 5/5 with repeated listens

I wanted to like this album, but like most live albums, this one falls a bit flat for me. I think the sound quality is better than a lot of live albums from preceding eras. However, a lot of the songs sound the same, and they have a very generic approach to rock. Outside of the two hit songs that Cheap Trick produced, every song on this album could be on a compilation called Generic Cock Rock.

I'm glad Japan liked this band, because I sure as hell don't give a shit about them

3/5

I was really excited to get this album, since I became acquainted with the band through their song "Oh Bondage, Up Yours" earlier this year and really liked it.
This whole album is filled with a similar energy and approach to that song. There is something weirdly fun about the combination of punk and saxophones. It's really too bad that this band doesn't get more recognition as a pioneer. The title track stands out a lot as being a sort of proto-post-punk song (whatever that means)

4/5

Lou Reed certainly has an odd sensibility, but he manages to pull it off somehow. His desire to pull you into some of the darkest corners of the world and force you to look directly at it mixes in an interesting way with his desire to play beautiful music.

4/5

Not much to say about this album, but it's pretty good. Starts off really strong, and while it slows down a bit after the first two songs, it's pretty consistent throughout

4/5

Me: I don't know if I'm going to be able to get into this Aretha Franklin album

Aretha: I'm going to start this album off at 1000 mph with Respect

And that's why she's the queen of soul and I'm just some schmuck at a keyboard. On the other hand, this album really has no where to go after the first song because it's one of the greatest songs of all time. The album is good the whole way through, but man it starts off hot

4/5

I haven't listened to the rest of the Berlin trilogy yet, but I really like it's first album, Low. The influence from the Krautrock artists was a perfect fit for Bowie's evolving style as he transitioned away from the fascist cocaine monster called the Thin White Duke.

The mythology around Bowie and his personas could only really be meaningful if he backed it up with his music, which he does in spades here. Working with Brian Eno and hanging out with Iggy Pop brought a feel to this album that's hard to describe. Just like Kid A, it seems to come out of no where and go back there after we are allowed to enjoy it.

The first half of this album is super cool, the second half is why its one of my favorite Bowie albums

5/5

Listening to this album, it hit me that there is a distinct lack of country music on this list. I can only really think of one other straight-up country album that I've gotten.

Regardless, this album is everything that's good about country. Harris has a beautiful voice full of emotion, and the accompanying music is good without distracting from from her as the focus. I'm not in love with her cover of For No One by the Beatles, but at least it's more tasteful than most Beatles covers

4/5

This isn't particularly my style of music, but Bragg is certainly engaging as a performer. This isn't an album I see myself coming back to, but it's certainly much more of an interesting listen than it would be in the hands of a less charismatic performer

4/5

Fuck. It's weird seeing one of the albums that actually changed me as a person here. Obviously this is a 5/5 album for me. It's one of the albums that I would have given as an example of what a 5/5 album looks like. For me, it felt like rock n' roll was on a linear path until this album, and then it could no longer go on that path, for better or for worse. While the radio was trying to shove Puddle of Mudd down my throat, I had this masterpiece to listen to.

It just feels special, right from those first notes. Then these alien samples start to accompany the tones. Then Thom's voice pierces through. "Everything in its right place"

This album manages to be so strange and so familiar at the same time. The only real problem I have with it is that I've listened to it so many times that it's hard to actively savor it. Every time I notice the album, another song has gone by. Still, every time I tune in, there are amazing things happening

5/5

I like this album a lot in terms of its composition and sound, but it's hard for me to give it the score I feel like it deserves because most of the songs on the album appear to be covers. This wouldn't be so bad if they weren't covers of very popular songs. The Isley Brothers do a great job of making the songs sound good and fit into the context of the album (Sunshine is a good example of this), but either including more original work or highlighting less popular songs by other groups would have been better

3/5

A day after getting Rumours by Fleetwood Mac I get Abbey Road. Two albums I didn't need to listen to again to rank as 5 star albums. Just what I needed to wash the taste of that shitty Lenny Kravitz album out of my mouth

This album captures a massive range of moods, but somehow makes them all fit. More importantly, just just keeps getting better as it goes.

And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make. The Beatles always had an incredible way to state the profound with the simplest words

5/5

What can you say about this album. It's the perfect storm in its conception, context, and execution. As everything is falling apart for the band, they produce this cocaine-fueled miracle. The album is a greatest hits collection interspersed with other songs that fit perfectly. The harmonies, the lyrics, the instruments, the arrangements, the production, everything just works on this album

5/5

I should not be this combination of angry and bored two songs into an album. What is the point of this album? Lenny Kravitz seems to have mastered the art of making vacuous music that manages to convince people that it's deep despite all of the intellectual content of the album being spread thinner than a pat of butter on a 6 foot sub.

JUST REPEATING THE WORDS "FREEDOM TRAIN" OVER AND OVER AGAIN IS NOT A FUCKING SONG. Wait, nevermind, he said "Uh-huh" a couple times too, so I guess that it technically is a song

Every song is just him repeating the name of the song over and over again, which makes me wish that he had named one of these "I'm going to shut the fuck up and stop recording now"

2/5