Reviews by thelastbaron

Immaculate album from the music down to the album art.

Iconic: 5.0/5.0

This album has exactly zero interesting or catchy melodies, a rambling half-hearted rhythm section, and no creative ideas apart from a random sitar passage. They had about four minutes worth of music and somehow stretched it into 58 minutes.

0.5/5.0: Unlistenable

Throw-away early ‘00s rock offering nothing new except for the inexplicable choice to have a dying chipmunk on vocals.

1.5/5.0: Bad

The album begins with a solid rock track, then cuts to some (jazzy?) folk, before finishing off with a slew of pretty good jazz numbers. However, those folk songs (tracks 2 – 5) are truly brutal and should have been cut from the album.

Mixed: 2.5/5.0

This is the direction country music should have taken. Great songwriting with interesting musical ideas and zero stupid lyrics.

4.0/5.0: Great

This album contains at least the best bossa nova song, and several other contenders. It's impossible to do anything else when listening to this record other than pay complete attention. Absolutely iconic.

5.0/5.0: Iconic

A great mix of aggression and emotion, with great songwriting, cool vocal melodies and a slew of really enjoyable moments.

4.5/5.0: Excellent

Hit or miss, but mostly miss. While most songs have their moments, the album is plagued by two issues. First, the production has this really annoying, almost wheezing sound that's constantly there. Second, every song is 90% a repetitive refrain that consists of Elvis repeating the song title over and over until any chance of the song not being irritating is completely pulverized into nothing.

2.5/5.0: Mixed

4.0/5.0: Great

An almost progressive approach to bluesy/psych rock yields a lot a variety and very few, if any, dull moments.

4.0/5.0: Great

In an utterly predictable outcome, the heavy-handed 80s influence added absolutely nothing to the music and made most of the songs a complete drag. There are some interesting ideas and (of course) some fantastic guitar parts, even if they are sparsely populated throughout the album.

2.5/5.0: Mixed

This is about when Jack White really started to make weird music, and the oddness feels fresh. And, while the record is a bit all over the place, it works as a whole.

4.0/5.0: Great

I don't know why anyone would listen to a full album of PJ Harvey when Kate Bush, Patti Smith, and Joni Mitchell did what she does much earlier, and much better. Still, there are good individual tracks to be found, but this album isn't great as a whole.

2.0/5.0: Disappointing

Jeez, some of the lyrics really haven't aged well, but musically this album is quite an achievement. Catchy songwriting, unique instrumentation (for the time), lots of variety, and a gritty, dark feel to the music. An unnecessarily long closing track brings this down a notch.

4.5/5.0: Excellent

Almost textbook rock songwriting with nothing unusual on the surface but a few weird moments on closer inspection. Enjoyable throughout. Only real complaint is it was too short - but maybe that's just right.

4.0/5.0: Great

Interesting album with a lot of variety and some cool instrumentation choices.

3.5/5: Very Good

Some fun songs but also the usual grating glam sound.

Interesting album, but not as good as the later album of theirs I've gotten on this list.

This wasn't as good as I remember it being, but points for being monumentally influential.

I liked the other Love album on this list better, but this is serviceable psych rock.