Reviews by syrinx

Maybe it's just my mood while listening to this but I just found it boring. It was well put together and orchestrated but it didn't grab my attention at all. And it was much too long. I didn't really connect with any part of this record and was ready for it to be over about halfway through. I think that's probably unfair because I feel like it is better than my impression of it today but after one listen this is not something I would ever come back to. 2.5/5 and will round up.

I like Portishead a lot but this is not their best effort. Dummy is fantastic as is Roseland Live. This album being more than 10 years after their best work really shows. There are good parts to this but it isn't as great an album as they had done in the past. The high spot for me is Threads, the rest I could do without. 3/5

I love some good 70s punk. This is a good album, not a great one. It is a little more varied maybe than some of the other records at the time. For not exactly being well versed in all the chords needed to make an album, they did a great job putting this together. One Chord Wonders is a hilarious play. This record isn't as angry or angsty as a lot of the other punk from this time and I can't decide if that's a good thing or a bad thing. But the songs are actually built really well and played well. And kudos to Gaye Advert for being (one of?) the first female punk star. I would imagine she's the reason this album is on the list so thanks again to her for that. Overall a good album I would totally buy at the record shop, not the best punk record out there but it'll do. 4/5

Oh wow I'm kind of surprised to see Elvis on this list. I mean I know I shouldn't be, he's one of the most popular entertainers of all time. But I just never gave him that much of a thought. And I have, of course, heard my share of Elvis music but have never listened to a whole album all the way through.
I mean, it's Elvis. It's just what you think it is. But I had no idea he had a version of Fever, I've even hear this version a bunch of times and never realized it was Elvis. The production on this album is fantastic though. Everything is recorded and mixed really well. Everything stands out but none of it takes over, if that makes sense. I love the bass throughout and there's some great sax too. But at the end of the day, it's Elvis and it is so Elvis it's almost stereotypical. The guy was a great performer and vocalist but not at all a musician, more of a singer for hire. Does that make the album worse? Not really, tons of the most famous entertainers are the same. After having listened to my first Elvis record all the way through, it did nothing to change my opinion of Elvis. 3/5

So I listened to this whole album on a Saturday while driving and now come Monday I can't remember a single song from it. I vaguely remember some parts here and there and the overall vibe of the album but nothing stuck out enough for me to catch on and keep it with me. I saved a couple songs but even those I can't recall now. But I do remember thinking that it was one of the most middle of the road albums I'd heard in a while and that I wouldn't image people reacting strongly one way or the other. 2.5/5

This is a great album. A little slow in parts. But man could this woman sing. And write a song. Nothing Compares 2 U is great and deserving of being the best know of her songs but there is a lot of great stuff on this record.
Poor Sinead O'Connor, she was dealt a terrible hand and the way the industry treated her is so sad. She should have been a much bigger name and known for her music more than (rightly) ripping up a picture of the pope on SNL. Like Yoko Ono, the way that everyone treated her should be seen as one of the times that everyone got it wrong. 4/5

I love finding records like this that are unashamedly weird and different. From the absolute shit photo on the cover to the odd vocal style and odd arrangements, it all comes together to make something brilliant. A lot of kids that formed bands and became famous in the later 80s and 90s definitely played this record on repeat. Even the start of grunge can be heard in this one. This is a record that I have seen a bunch of times but never actually listened to. I'm glad to have remedied that today and will definitely look for this one at the record shop. It's also one of those albums where I almost don't want to look up anything else by Adam and the Ants because I don't think it would be as good and if the rest of the catalogue is mediocre it will cast a shadow over this record. Or maybe just as bad, it might be exactly the same as this one. 5/5

Is it just this album cover or did Marty Robbins always look like Nick Cage?
I'm surprised at all the five star reviews of this album. I mean it's fine and certainly better than the pop country garbage that comes out now but it's still just like campfire sing-a-longs for an hour. Fun fact - one of the first songs I learned to play on guitar was El Paso. So there's that. If someone was browsing though my record collection and found this I wouldn't be embarrassed, but if someone walked in the front door and this was playing I'd have to do some explaining. But I can't imagine a time when I would play this even if I did have it in the collection. At least it's tolerable and good for one listen. 2.5/5

Is this a good album? Yes I think it is. But it's not one I would listen to again. I like that you can see a lot of what's to come in this record but it just isn't something that really holds my attention. It does deserve its place on the list but it would fall into the "rightfully here, but not my thing" column for me. 3/5

Man I haven't heard this album in a long time. My dad used to play this all the time when we would go on road trips. Actually it was likely more of a mix tape with a few songs from this album on it but I do remember that like it was yesterday. I feel like because of that, this record will have some pretty strong nostalgia that comes with it.
I have always really liked Willie Nelson's voice. I typically hate country music these days, but sometimes a record here and there gets a pass. This is one of those records. It's about as stripped down and simple as it gets, lots of it is just Willie and his guitar. And when there are other instruments they are often buried in the mix and so quiet you really need to listen to even pick them out. I suppose this counts as a concept album, right? That's a pretty cool thing - I can't think of another country concept album. I don't think this is an album that I would really listen to much but I would definitely buy it at the record shop and maybe listen to it every few years. So credit to this record for being one of the only country albums I would spend money on. 4/5

Ah, what many consider the ultimate Britpop album. Does that mean I get to move on to other genres now? 700 records in and sometimes this list feels like 900 Britpop And 101 Other Random Albums To Hear Before You Die.
Growing up in the US Blur wasn't ever really very popular. At least not where I lived. Everyone loved Song 2 but I don't think I even really listened to Blur at all until I was an adult. The whole Blur/Oasis debate is pretty funny because it's not like either band is some luminary, once in a generation group. Just look at this list for proof of that. This album is fine, but it really just fades into the background after a while. It is interesting to a point but I feel like there isn't anything that really grabs me and makes me want to listen to it louder. Maybe I just need to give it another shot but I've kind of felt that with all the Blur records I've heard. Or maybe it's because there are so many albums that sound exactly like this and I'm not super familiar with any of them. 3/5

Who doesn't love Blister In The Sun? This is one of those albums where the parts don't really work with each other very well but that's why they all work together. The vocals are strange and semi-off key a lot of the time but it makes the music that much better for some reason. Kind of like how Neil Young is always a little flat. Or sharp. But it works. And you don't hear an acoustic bass guitar that often so that's kind of cool. And name another rock song with a xylophone solo. I feel like this album was ahead of its time by about ten years. It's got a lot of punk in it, a lot of early alt, a lot of what would become grunge. It's a good album and certainly deserves its spot on the list. I can hear any number of bands from the 90s in this record. 3.75/5

So when you pull up the Wikipedia page for an album before listening and pretty much all it says is "This album was made on (xxx date). It is featured in the book 1001 Albums..." and then goes straight to the song list, you can bet it is going to be a Britpop album that for whatever reason was nostalgic to the author of the book but nobody else really cared about it. Is that the case here? We shall see...
Yeah kind of. It's sparkly early/mid 90s sounding Britpop, though maybe not the most Britpop-y Britpop out there. It actually kind of takes a turn toward folk towards the end which is not all that unwelcome I guess. But it is extremely dated, and oddly dated for like 5-7 years before it actually came out. I think they were a bit behind the times on this one. It's not bad but not groundbreaking or innovative in any way. I find it hard to justify including this on the list. I think I would rate this higher if I just randomly came across it somewhere but it being one of the 1001 seems a little much. 2.5/5 but rounding down because there's no way this belongs here.

I suppose it's refreshing to hear a hip hop album that is not just rampant misogyny, violence, and homophobia. But I still just don't like hip hop. I mean this one sort of replaces all of that stuff with cheesy lyrics and bad samples. And it is a little preachy which is almost as bad. I could see this being a record that 'real hip hop fans' would dismiss. Maybe that's not true but I'm not exactly a real hip hop fan. I appreciate the messages of peace and acceptance and love and respect that are on this record, I just don't like this music. 2/5

I'm glad there is so much from The Stooges/Iggy Pop on this list. I do feel like he was probably one of the most influential artists from the past 70 years or so. The things that he and his various bands did had such a huge impact on entire genres that followed. And he's like 80 years old, looks like a crooked old boot, and is still performing and giving it all he has. What a legend.
This album, like the other early Stooges stuff, is raw, driving, and exciting. Some people hate Iggy Pop's voice on these early records, I get that but it fits the music so well. This record manages to be loose and really tight at the same time. You can just imagine this being played live and the amount of energy pouring out and to me, that's one of the marks of a great album. There aren't a lot of records where every song is a banger, this is one of them. LA Blues gets a pass because it's basically an extended outro for Fun House. 5/5

I've never really got the appeal of electronic music. I get that there is a huge market for it but I am certainly not one of those people. Especially these days literally anyone who has a laptop and a cheap software bundle can make this. You don't have to know any music theory, how to play any instruments, be able to keep a beat, etc. It's all done for you. Kind of like AI artwork - literally anyone can produce a painting that looks like (insert your favorite artist here). And electronic music just sounds so fake. I wonder why we don't judge electronically created music like we do AI artwork. Maybe that's not a direct comparison as I know that there is a lot of derision for AI music, and rightly so. Comparing it to digital artwork is not really the same either - a digital artist still has to be able to draw to some degree, know anatomy and color theory, composition, etc. But electronic music like this can be created without any prior knowledge of music as long as you have the right software. I don't know, maybe that's the 'get off my lawn' part of me coming out. But regardless, this album is repetitive, grating, and plastic. It's the music that would have been played during a chase scene in a shitty early 2000s futuristic sci fi movie. I hate this kind of artificial music that these days is mass produced and indistinguishable from the rest. 1/5

This is definitely more of a punk record than a grunge record. I would say that this has more in common with later pop punk like Offspring, Green Day, Blink 182 than it does with Nirvana or Soundgarden. I suppose that I could see this branching off towards grunge in one direction and pop punk in the other. It's a decent record, though I don't think there is anything on it that really stands out. I liked a few songs here and there but only saved one or two. I would have loved to have seen Mudhoney live back in the day, I bet they put on a great performance.
Overall, I think this is a good record and one that deserves to be on the list. I wouldn't seek it out but definitely wouldn't say no if someone wanted to throw it on. 3.5/5

People here really tend to hate punk and post punk, don't they? I suppose I get it, but sometimes don't you just want something angry and energetic? John Lydon's current situation aside, he was definitely a pioneer. Kind of ironic and unfortunate that he went from a pioneering punk artist to a Trump supporter; those two things seem so at odds.
Opening an album like this with a 9+ minute rant is a pretty bold move. The groove on that song is fantastic though. Then you come to Religion I and Religion II which are the same song but one without music and one with. That's kind of an odd choice too. It's a good song, but Religion I seems a little superfluous. One thing I really like about this album is how different it is from the Sex Pistols. It would have been so easy to get a new band and make basically the same record and I'm glad that's not what this is. It is perhaps not as good as Never Mind The Bollocks but it is clearly broken off in a different direction. Cleaner, more well rounded, tighter. Although I do feel like they kind of ran out of ideas and had to just throw in some filler, hence Religion I and half of Fodderstompf. A good record, though not a great one. I prefer Metal Box. 3.5/5 but I'm going to round down.

Oh hell yeah! Absolutely one of the best albums of all time. And one of Bowie's best for sure, his most important I would say if not necessarily my favorite. But in my book Bowie can do no wrong and I can't fathom the person that would listen to this record and not enjoy it. I feel like this is one of those albums that is objectively outstanding. I know music is subjective (to some degree) but there are a few things that just can't be argued against. This album deserves to be discussed in the same conversation as Beethoven's 5th or pretty much anything by Mozart. I truly believe this is one of the best pieces of music that humanity has ever produced. There is no way to overstate how good this record is and the more I listen to it the more I think it may be the best record ever. The only bad thing about this album is that when it's over, whatever you play next isn't even going to come close and will be a little disappointing. 5/5

My first thought when I saw this pop up was 'this is gonna be awesome' and then I saw that it's actually from 1971 and not from like 2017 and for some reason I think it will be less awesome now. A modern return to 70s rock would be better than a lot of the actual 70s rock, at least for what's on this list. But a Dan Armstrong guitar and a Rickenbacker bass on the cover (not to mention the boots) - there has to be some great stuff on this record, right?
Apparently this gets compared to Sticky Fingers all the time. That's interesting to me because I've always felt like Sticky Fingers is an album that started with a lot of promise but ended up being kind of plain and boring. But yeah I definitely get some Stones vibes from this. Maybe some Iggy Pop thrown in here and there. I think I do like this record better than Sticky Fingers. It's just a better album all around. 3.75/5