Reviews by tedgar18

This is the second Joni Mitchell album I’ve been given in the last month. I’m not complaining though, I just think it’s a strange coincidence. Her albums are pretty far away from what I’d choose to listen to normally, but they just seem to work for me. I had more fun with this one than Blue!

As far as songwriting goes, it doesn’t get much better than this.

I’m a fan of quite a few REM songs but I’ve never listened to a whole album before, and what a great place to start. I really enjoyed this one, and it’s hard to believe it was their first album.

I’m in the minority of people who just aren’t impressed by Queen. It’s undeniable that Freddie is one of the best vocalists of all time, and the rest are decent players as well, and at one point I did consider myself a Queen fan. I don’t really know what happened, maybe I’ve just been inundated by their biggest hits for too long that I’m turned off by the rest of it. This album was exactly fine in my opinion. My favorite song of theirs has always been Killer Queen, so for me that was the peak of this album.

I had assumed this album would be similar to the Cocteau Twins I listened to previously, and in many ways it was, but I enjoyed this one much more. I feel like the songs here felt more intentional and while it also struggled to keep me fully engaged with its all-the-sameness, there were some songs I really enjoyed.

I enjoyed only two tracks on this album and they sit pretty far apart in the sequence. They also happen to be the only two songs with any noticeable percussion. I feel like more percussion would have been a nice distraction from Rufus singing primarily in whole notes.

I’ve always enjoyed Neil’s songwriting, though I’ve never listened to a full album before and I’m not sure a live album counts. I enjoyed this, and I'm aware he’s got other albums on this list so I look forward to listening when they come up.

5/5 every song on this one is fantastic, any time someone tells me they don’t like country I point them in this direction.

This album has everything that I love about Prog, and none of the things I hate about Prog.

This album is a bit long in my opinion, I think 3-5 songs could’ve easily been trimmed. It’s easy to forget how inspired by blues music the Stones are if your knowledge of them extend only to their radio hits. I enjoyed quite a few songs, but I kept finding myself tuning out from time to time.

I had a good time with this one! The music is pretty typical 90’s Americana, and the lyrics were just fine. I enjoyed the more political songs, you could’ve told me they were written yesterday and I would’ve believed you. My favorite song might be the one where he fucks a ghost.

If we’re not counting the three hour Etta James album I narrowed down to roughly 41 minutes, this is the first album on the list I didn’t finish. I made all the way to track 8 before I tapped out because it’s all just the same format: One dude chooses a preset on his drum machine, the other dude finds 2 chords to strum, and the vocalist layers nonsense on top of nonsense. They add as much reverb as possible and boom, you’ve got this album.

I could’ve vibes with 2-3 songs layering the vocals like this during the last chorus or something but every song? No thanks. Perhaps if one of the fellas took over background vocals just to add some tonal difference it would’ve worked better. I don’t know. I’m not sure who this is for, but I know it ain’t me.

These boys sure do love reverb! I might’ve been in a poor headspace when I listened to this album, but I kept finding myself getting bored and distracted. If I had heard this album in high school I would’ve either loved it or pretended to in order to impress some hipster girl.

This isn’t the first time I’ve tried delving into The Smiths but unless they’ve got other albums on this list it’s likely my last. I wasn’t impressed by much here, but I guess it’s cool that so many people love it.

Of all the 80’s albums, this is definitely one of them. There really isn’t much to write home about here, it’s inoffensive, but I feel like it just misses the mark.

This album has some excellent guitar parts, and Taylor’s voice was pleasing to listen to. The more blues focused songs were a little weird to me, but overall it wasn’t bad.

I wasn’t in love with the instrumentation, a lot of it was very plain. However, I loved her voice, and each song was so well written. I feel like this is the kind of album I’ll love more upon release each listen. My favorites were California, This Flight Tonight, River, and The Last Time I Saw Richard.

I expect someone paid big money to have this album included. I’ll give it one star because at least they knew how to play instruments, and I give myself five stars for finishing the whole thing.

ZZ Top was created in a lab to write songs for your stepdad. When it comes to their albums it’s easy to predict what you’re gonna get: white people blues rock about having sex with beautiful women. All of the music is performed well, and occasionally the songs are good! I wasn’t psyched about this one, but it wasn’t as bad as I expected, and that might be because I found it so easy to tune out. Until one of them began singing about 69ing.

I’m really familiar with the singles on this album, but I’ve been meaning to listen to the whole thing for seemingly decades, and I knew I wouldn’t be disappointed. Everybody Wants to Rule the World just might be the best song of the 1980’s, but I particularly love the way the last four songs on the album fade into one another and share similar motifs. Of all the albums I’ve gotten up to this point this by far the one that excited me to get.