Reviews by theblanderman

Can't get much softer "soft rock" than this. As inoffensive as listening to a small cup of yogurt. 2/5

This was a pleasant enough and nostalgic listen. Good for warming the air on a rainy night. 3.5/5 - > 4/5

Damn.

I got a rap/rock album from NERD yesterday and not only did I hate it, it made me weary of the rap/rock genre as a whole. Come Find Yourself made up for that in a major way.

An interesting blend of hip-hop, jazz, rock, ska - I found myself excited for what was next. The album was extremely well sequenced, alternating track styles to keep it entertaining (We Have All the Time in the World into Bear Hug being the most striking) and ending with the excellent closer Methadonia.

The biggest blemish on the album is the song Scooby Snacks, which totally breaks the vibe with tacky Pulp Fiction Snippets and a cheesy popraprock chorus.

All around an impressive listen. 4/5

Three of the worst genres of the early 2000s: pop-rock, pop-rap and Rock-rap. this album is all three, and was doomed to fade away as irrelevant as soon as the popraprock fad ended.

Here is my list of grievances with this album. 1) the cover is egregious. I'm someone who enjoys a album art, but this is on another level 2) the songs are incredibly repetitive 3) there is no attempt to sequence the album, it's like a mix of bad standalone singles 4) while Pharrell's voice is pretty good, all of the other features are not well used 5) four hidden tracks do NOT make for an interesting album, it's just tedious 6) again, popraprock is an awful genre.

1/5

A pretty plain, singer/songwriter album. Not horrible but shouldn't be on this list. 2.5/5 -> 3/5

OK, I thought I was going to hate this based off the description but was pleasantly surprised! It sounds a bit like discount Alice in Chains, but would rather listen to some sick riffs than some of the other UK shit on this list. 3/5

Medieval diddling in the 20th century does not make for a timeless album. The few sparse moments of nice instrumentation improves a bit but not by much. 1.5/5 - > 2/5

I have learned I really don't like Lou Reed going through this list, but this was better than many of his other works. It was more refined and subtle than his other works. 3/5

Though it's not as impressive as Dummy and Portishead, Third is beautiful in it's own way. It masters the art of subtlety across the track list. The sequencing is also top notch. Knocking it down a tad because several of the songs are closer to a 3 or 4, but a great listen nonetheless. 4.3/5 - > 4/5

Also, if you're a fan of Portishead's work and are reading this, do yourself a favor and listen to their Roseland NYC Live album. It's filled with swelling strings, deep bass, and of course Beth's haunting voice over trip-hop record scratches. It's something to behold.

I'm not a huge punk guy but this was pretty good. A very Jim Morrison-esque voice and some catchy songs. Not groundbreaking but better than I expected. 3/5

This album reminds me of the time my Serbian friend Milos drove me to a Death Grips concert in San Francisco.

We pile into his old, brown Mercedes-Benz with a orange leather interior. The ignition sputters on and the car grumbles to life, opening the vents and blasting hot air into the car (Milos always kept the car a hellish temperature, for whatever reason). As I settle in to the soft leather seat, I hear chanting mixed in with the hum of the engine and fsssh of the forced air. It's an album of Hare Krishna chants. He raises the volume with a twist of a cracked knob and we roll into the darkening streets of Palo Alto. We drive in moderate silence for about an hour, only occasionally reflecting on the work day before, a movie we were interested in seeing (he made me watch "A Serbian Film" at one point, would not recommend), but were mostly silent under the mantra: "Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare" endlessly looping.

I remember being taken aback initially. Milos was most certainly not any form of Buddhist, and at the time I felt that the music was mellowing out the vibes I wanted to feel before the DG show. But in the end we were both transfixed. We park downtown and attend the concert which was fast-paced, phenomenal and LOUD.

I left the show mostly unscathed (just a fall or two in the mosh). Milos developed a diagnosis of tinnitus, expected to be lifelong.

We drove home in a dark silence. In the subsequent weeks we saw each other less and less, then inevitably both moved away and never spoke again.

This album elicited those memories in a palpable way. While the context, culture and music is different than the Hare Krishna album above, the goal is to be enveloped by the music to be taken to a place of thought and reflection. Nusrat Fateg Ali Khan certainly did that. And while it's not a perfect album, his voice is beautiful and impactful and I believe he achieved his purpose. 4/5

An absolute banger from front to back. Life's a Bitch is one of the most quotable songs of all time. 5/5

A pretty meh album. Some songs were strongish and others entirely forgettable. The little vocal snippets throughout didn't have much impact. 2.6/5 - > 3/5

Not horrible. I liked their vocals and beats, but the album dragged on about 20 mins too long. By the end I had lost interest. Pretty good at the beginning though. 2.7/5 - > 3/5

A pleasant enough listen. A pretty understated album. Good opener, pretty weak closer. Bit bad. 3/5

My god, thrash jazz is something I didn't expect to hear on this list.
Such exciting chaos, it's like a jazz fever dream. A constant barrage of noise that was pretty ahead of it's time.
5/5

Some tracks were pretty dated and uninteresting, and some were super lyrically complex and continued to be relevant. Not a bad listen overall. 3/5

A very solid early metal album. Not cheesy, great instrumentals and Ozzy had a great voice 😥 enjoyed a fair bit. 4/5

My two takeaways from this album:

1) Maxwell has sex
2) Maxwell wants me to have sex

2/5

One or two interesting songs cannot redeem this bloated, uninspired slog of an album. Tedious samples, very forgettable songs. Not for me. 1.4/5 - > 1/5