Reviews by thelofistorm

FUCK YES FUCK YOU FUCK EVERYTHING THIS ALBUM IS SO FUCKING GOOD HOLY FUCK. I just got back from a weekend over at my dear grandparents’ house, and they’re real huge Simon and Garfunkel fans. And it’s easy to see why. I mean, two Jewish guys, an amazing mind and an amazing voice, met in grammar school, come together to create some of the most incredible music ever put to tape. And this is, believe me, some of the most incredible music ever put to tape. I know most people love “Mrs. Robinson,” and while that song’s so good it makes me want to double over and sob, “America” is the clear favorite for me. How many times I must have listened to this song, played this song, sung this song… it’s a song of my childhood, of my adolescence, of every fragment of my life. It’s a mindblowing, breathtaking piece of music, perhaps S&G’s best. But this album itself is also a wonderful work of art.

Bookends is, strangely, timeless in a way: it is a musical portrait of a transition of times, seen in “Mrs. Robinson” and its topic having been originally that exact feeling, of the changing of times, but it’s also present in songs such as “Hazy Shade of Winter,” in which the seasons of real life blend with the “seasons of life,” the idea of stages of life as you get older and all that. Of course, the most obvious instance of this is the sequence of “Voices of Old People” into “Old Friends,” the idea of always being meant to be an old man, and comparing yourself and your friend to two older friends, in a later stage of life. But then, in that same breath, the album is reminiscent of a time previous to now, which makes the experience of listening to this album, dealing in the passing of time and aging of others, at almost sixty years of age, incredibly fascinating. Suuuuuuch an interesting, strange, and beautiful album, and easily S&G’s best.
10/10
DOES IT BELONG ON THE LIST: YES
REASON: Influence, quality, overall experience, and cultural relevance

This book must fucking hate Judas Priest. A legendary metal band, and their turn-of-the-80s album makes it on the list is the ONLY album that makes it on? I mean it’s not a bad album, but what about Painkiller? Screaming For Vengeance? They’re so much more famous and up to par than this album, which is really only noteworthy for “Breaking The Law,” which DOES unimpeachably rip, and, more genuinely, being the album where Judas Priest made it really big. So there’s that I guess. Also, not for nothing, but a lot of this is pretty unimaginative and basic metal. “Grinder” rips, but it’s also so basic. The chorus of “Metal G-ds” is simply bad. I don’t really know what they were going for on “United,” but that song’s wack as fuck. “Living After Midnight” is also a little too hedonistic for my tastes (YES I gave Slippery When Wet a 9/10, that doesn’t mean I’ll just eat up whatever hedonistic crap is thrown my way), and even though the intro to “The Rage” is dope, the song it eventually becomes is a bit more subpar than I would like. Idk. Maybe I was too tired for this, but it feels incredibly unimpressive to me.
5.4/10

On one hand, it reasonably contends for one of the most interesting, vaguely influential, ahead-of-its-time, transgressive, and radical albums ever made. On the other hand, it’s annoying, painfully imposing at times, and all the previous things said but in a pretty awful way. It’s kind of like if Philosophy of the World by The Shaggs was released in 1983 as a proto-alt-dance/plunderphonics joint. Each song is so strange, and at times seems like a satire of itself. That being said, it is also an utterly fascinating, interesting, and spellbinding listen all the same; it’s inconsistent, but interesting. Songs like “Double Dutch” sound stupid and ARE stupid, but at the same time it’s impossible not to hear glimmers of something greater further down the line, something like “Endtroducing…..” or “Donuts” that simply does not exist without this. I’m conflicted. But I’m also a bit enraptured.
6.5/10
DOES IT BELONG ON THE LIST: YES
REASON: Influence and eclecticism

Now this is one I really need to get on CD. As opposed to the noisy, blasé, drugged out, sometimes even militant disposition of the velvets’ previous works, this is a more toned-down, introspective, friendly album. Rather than yelling at you, it commiserates with you, until it all comes crashing down in “Murder Mystery” (whose intensity at such a key point was probably only partially intentional; as awesome as that song is it was made as a parody of former member John Cale’s style after he was unceremoniously booted from the outfit), and you’re left with “Afterhours,” with a beautiful performance by drummer Moe Tucker, and that’s it.

This is a really incredible album. A prerequisite to modern forms of Twee, indie, pop, rock, and folk, and also a pretty great album in its own right. “Candy Says” is a wonderful song, and especially for me as a trans girl myself. Songs like “What Goes On” and “Beginning to See the Light” add some energy, and the slower songs add some melancholy and thoughtfulness, which combined with the last two songs, the storm and the calm afterward respectively, work all together to make a genuinely memorable album experience. Must-listen.
10/10
DOES IT BELONG ON THE LIST: YES
REASON: Insane quality, influence, everything just this album is SO GOOD

Out of the 90+ CDs in my collection currently, this is the only one that is completely in the Spanish language. Granted, for all of the Hispanic communities I run in, I do not myself claim any fluency to the language, much less any origin to those who do. I am simply an external admirer, a lover of music, and someone who believes strongly in connecting to the music in which one’s roots draw from. And these players are masters at this kind of music. Now, also, this is an interesting case of “‘world/ethnic music’ songs that the edges of the mainstream enjoyed,” making it probably the perfect album in that vein for this book to put on the list.

But the music! The music is incredible too. “Chan Chan” is an obviously important song on this album, being the opener, the single, and easily the biggest song the band has made. And on top of all that, it’s absolutely incredible. A vision of delirious, heat-induced lust over this absolutely beautiful, lush, incredible instrumental, something that will become a commonality across this whole album. It’s suspenseful, it’s well-played, it’s beautiful. Same thing with the next song, which is just this jubilant little tune, at least musically. The lyrics less so, but I get the feeling that that doesn’t matter much in the grand scheme of things. It has several moments of wonderful vocal performances, moments that are even more plentiful on track three, “El Cuarto Del Tula,” whose fiery lyrics match the song’s drawn-out, fast-paced playing. The chorus of “Ay Mama, ¿Que Paso?” (Oh mama, what happened?) really communicate some sort of urgency, that the song’s topic of a burning building would imply. The next song is a piano-led instrumental played prominently by 90-year-old Rubén González, one of the many skilled, old collaborators who took part in this project. His name, along with Ry Cooder’s, Ibrahim Ferrer’s, and a few other notable collaborators, is listed on the album’s cover. There are a few other notable songs on here, such as the romantic “Dos Gardenias,” the intense “Candela,” and the album’s instrumental title track. Overall, while it can sometimes seem a bit overlong, this is a furiously incredible album that I cannot recommend highly enough, and frequent often.
10/10
DOES IT BELONG ON THE LIST: YES
REASON: Quality and undeniable cultural relevance

The idea of a deserter, someone who abandons, is a really great one to central album like this around. It’s dark, it’s sad, it’s almost derivative but the concept justifies its existence enough to just evade that label. It’s not a masterpiece but it’s easy to love. And unlike a lot of more subpar albums in this same vein, its ambient tracks not only exist as an actual space, but justify their own placement on the album. Each song occupies a feeling of leaving something behind, or being left behind in some way. Either way, no matter how happy the songs sound, they all carry a sense of isolation brought on by this aesthetic of desertion, and they really consistently capture the feeling of desertion so well. Sometimes it’s happy, as seen in the closer, but more often than not it’s painful, and bittersweet, leaving someone, being left, allowing yourself to be alone for what you know will be a long time. Though I was skeptical at first of single “Holes,” it blew me away with its melancholy drums and atmosphere. It continues to do this, with songs like “G-dess on a Hiway” and the excellent closer. Overall just really excellent record.
9.3/10
DOES IT BELONG ON THE LIST: NO
WHY: NOT RELEVANT ENOUGH
WHAT WOULD I PUT HERE INSTEAD: Songs About Leaving by Carissa’s Wierd

A real doozy. Influential, but more importantly a bridge over the gap of “Rock and Roll” and “Punk.” Takes the structure of rhythm and blues and makes it FUCKING RIP. I mean, we both see those 3 exclamation points after the title. They’re not “The Sonics,” they’re THE SONICS!!! The lead singer frequently will scream over lo-fi, thin, garagey instrumentals, in a way that often sounds like Jerry Lee Lewis, but cooler and better. Songs like “Psycho” really accentuate this, with its simple phrasing, but intense performance, and the howling of the song’s title. Additionally, the various insane guitar solos will not irregularly tear through the song itself, only for the song to recover just in time for another verse. Only big gripe is that it really stuck to the structure of this kind of song, and didn’t venture far outside of the sonic elements, but it really wouldn’t be so original without that. I don’t know. The 50s style is a double edged sword. Incredible album though.
9.0/10
DOES IT BELONG ON THE LIST: YES
WHY: Quality, influence, and originality

A masterpiece, obviously. And an easy classic. I would even go so far as to say that this is to the genre of hip hop as Miles Davis’s Kind Of Blue is to the genre of jazz, in that to the uninitiated, it’s real good, but nothing special, and yet, to trained ears, it’s everything. “The Genesis” is easily top 5 hip hop introludes, showcasing all the drive, passion, and personality that a hip hop audience could want. And immediately, that attitude is delivered upon IMMEDIATELY. “N.Y. State Of Mind” is one of the greatest hip hop performances ever, every single word strung together to create an absolute masterclass in the genre. And to get one thing straight, it’s important to stress the fact that this was the one of the best hip hop albums ever made the second it was released. People didn’t really do this before a certain time, and few had made an album this consistent in the genre. The only others are Tribe’s latest joint at the time and 36 chambers, and neither of them were nearly as intricate as Nas’s flow and rhyme scheme, or at times his sheer artistry, in the case of “Life’s A Bitch,” which fantastically blends rnb, jazz, and a hundred different kinds of rap, from pop, to gangsta, to hardcore, to jazz. It’s an excellent song to hear, and not even counting the actual genre mastery, it’s an incredibly iconic and well-rapped track. The other song that I really favor is “Memory Lane,” which is one of the few times that I feel connected to New York as it is. The wistful, soulful, yet vaguely menacing sample works perfectly with Nas’s performance, which blows me away every time I hear it. It’s not strictly a 10 simply because some songs don’t really pique my interest in the same way others do (most notably “One Time 4 Your Mind”), and the kayfabe gets to be pretty tiring after “One Love.” That being said, it’s an incredible album. Highly recommend.
9.8/10
DOES IT BELONG ON THE LIST: YES
REASON: INCREDIBLE QUALITY AND INFLUENCE

What a curious album. What an absolutely scintillating blend of genres. I was skeptical when I got this, but it’s such an interesting fucking album that I can’t deny its placement here, regardless of its quality. At any given moment, you could hear a sound influenced by funk, rock, soul, psychedelia, noise, drone, jazz, electronic, I could go on. Even though each song sounds noticeably different from the next - surely the obvious indie hook of “Staring At The Sun” is completely alien to the funky, noisy, repetitive dance-rock of “King Eternal,” but both function under a strange, artsy, indie umbrella that brings the whole album together. And unlike many other artists who experiment through genre combination, the album has a clear point outside of just sounding interesting and strange - it is a clear compound of genres that the band loves, and knows exactly how to display their affection of, while sounding so different than anything I’ve heard elsewhere. Every song is a revelation in some way, and each one is one way or another worth the time it takes out of your day to listen to it. A truly inspiring album.
9.8/10
DOES IT BELONG ON THE LIST: YES
REASON: EXTREME GENRE VERSATILITY AND MUSICAL QUALITY

A fantastic album with a hearty bit of lore to it. Released a couple of months after Parsons’ untimely death due to a morphine overdose, this album is the accidental swansong of the man who made some of the more acclaimed country-psych of the late 60s, with The Byrds and Flying Burrito Bros, and the introductory work for fledgling Emmylou Harris, who would go on to have her own beautiful and illustrious career in the genre. The slower, sadder songs on here, such as opener “Return of the Grievous Angel,” “Hearts On Fire,” “Brass Buttons,” “$1000 Wedding,” the list goes on, are all incredible. Harris provides frequent harmonies, all of which add a lot to the songs, and Parson’s vocals are quite great, with a wonderful range of passion and sensitivity. The songs are frequently multi-parted, in a way that feels like every single section is the chorus in some way. “In My Hour Of Darkness” is a beautiful send-off to Parsons, even if no one knew it was that. Awesome album.
8.6/10
DOES IT BELONG ON THE LIST: YES
REASON: send-off to a minor legend of country, as well as introduction to another legend, as well as immense quality.

Fuck yeah. That jangly American bullshit. Let’s fucking go. This album was incredibly urban, with some downright incredible songs, and some insane moments. “Drive” is a great opener, and songs like “The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite” and “Everybody Hurts” help make the first leg of this album incredible. “New Orleans Instrumental” is a great palette cleanser into the much worse second leg (still of quality of course but the songs stick less and are less interesting). The last 3 songs are some of the best on the album, especially “Man On The Moon” and “Nightswimming.” It’s a well-rounded but not too long album, and I absolutely love it.
9.6/10
DOES IT BELONG ON THE LIST: YES
REASON: Incredible musical quality and cultural impact

Not bad really. Nothing here really blows me away, but this brand of orchestral, theatrical, suspenseful indie music is an interesting concept that I appreciate across a whole album. It’s interesting and does enough that it sustains interest and justifies itself. “Black Plant” is a great song, and a few other songs are above average too. Idk. It’s an original album, but it’s no masterpiece.
7.0/10
DOES IT BELONG ON THE LIST: NO.

Three Kings of Leon albums? And no Florence and The Machine by the way, though I think of the latter as significantly better and more impactful , as well as in the same time frame as KOL. I’ve not heard a single song off of this album. I know “Sex On Fire.” I know “Use Somebody.” Those are both pretty good songs. This… uhhh… is its placement necessary? The first two songs are alright, though “Taper Jean Girl” blows, and so does “Milk.” It becomes apparent quickly that this band would be better if literally anyone else was singing. Well, not literally anyone else. If Brian Johnson hopped on this it would suck. And this doesn’t suck, not at all! It’s just… the singing sucks! And it’s a very unimaginative album. Very fragile instrumentals. They feel like they could be completely dismantled if you tried hard enough. “The Bucket” has a couple of great melodies to latch on to, and is probably one of my favorite songs on the album, if not my favorite. The singing is still indulgent, but then the concept of the song is pretty indulgent in and of itself, and the storytelling and imagery is actually really great. Really I can’t say I have a great amount of qualms with this album, when it’s slower and less dancey it’s a really pleasant album. The more dancey parts recall its betters too much to enjoy, such as Arctic Monkeys, and The Strokes, and even Modest Mouse at times. Oh, and the singing SUCKS. Honestly though, at the end of the day I can’t really hate this at all. Well, maybe I can.
5.0/10

Strangely likeable. I enjoy this a lot because through the at times questionable sentiment and obviously dated sound, Mr. Buddy Holly is a real likeable personality! Just real low-key tunes, with no real high point, and not at all impressive, but surely foundational, and important to hear because of that. It’s not the most enjoyable album on this list, far from it, but I appreciate and respect its place on this list.
6.9/10

Just such a beautiful album. I could get into the details of it, but really I don’t need to. It’s just a really nice, incredible bit of jazz-samba, headed by the man who would one day not too long after this make the premiere jazz-samba album, that being the legendary Getz/Gilberto, which, in all its greatness, I cannot say is even that much better than this work. Every single song here is beautiful, and it doesn’t overstay its welcome at all. Surely, the 1964 rendition of “Desafinado” is superior, but this album is not far behind its partners. There is little better than to play this album and just listen for a nice bit of time. The sequel’s great too!
9.5/10

A bit disappointing. Not necessarily bad, but it’s kind of mythologized as a great album, and nothing really stuck out to me. Part of it is that it very much signals to a lifestyle that I’ve never known, but also because that lifestyle is one I’ve always seen through. It’s the lifestyle that is much more accurately portrayed, in my opinion, on MJ Lenderman’s landmark 2024 album Manning Fireworks, which tells various stories of various people (or one person, idk actually), all being jerks, fuck-ups, just lonely lonely men in the rural areas of America. It’s a fantastic album that portrays depression, loneliness, boredness, and how crushing all that can be in a really incredible way. And that is what I see when I look at a story like that of “Racing in the Street,” or “Factory.” It’s a glorification of a lifestyle and life that generally doesn’t deserve that, at least that kind of blind portrayal of complete beauty. It needs nuance. This album needs nuance and more interesting songs.
7.4/10

A pretty awesome album that leaves a smaller impression upon me than I would prefer. The title track is AWESOME, to be sure, and each song is pretty cool and altogether enjoyable. I think the big problem is that it feels like an ever-so-slightly watered down version of its former and obvious superior, that being Ram, which is generally better in every way. This is pretty, and sometimes attractive in its ideas, especially as the album progresses, with some simply wonderful McCartney moments, and some moments that do some obviously awesome shit, and that’s mainly what this album does. It’s obviously good. It’s of obvious quality. At the same time. It’s not great, and it’s not worth expending much energy for.
8.3/10

Ohhhh. Audible reaction to getting this. Leonard Cohen’s last album released in his lifetime, and a quite interesting development. Much more spiritual than anything else he’d previously put out, much darker (heh), and much more thoughtful in a way. He is no longer talking to one person when he talks to “You,” or at least not to a human. He is no longer talking about life and death in a sense of dramatized brooding, as he did in Songs Of Love And Hate; no, this is all real now. Where previously, each song would be a staircase, one that you would climb up until you reached the apex of the song, and that would build until you reached the peak of the album. In Songs, the peak was the niggun at the end of “One Of Us Cannot Be Wrong,” and in Love and Hate, it was the niggun in “Joan of Arc.” Here, the songs are not stairs but pillars, pillars that Cohen stares at for some time before walking away, forfeiting each fight he still has, and surrendering himself to G-d.

And that is in fact what he does here, even if it’s not completely evident; G-d is all around us, in us, and is us. G-d is everything, and everything is G-d. When we die we do not stop being G-d and G-d does not leave us, in fact, we only leave the sight of others. We are merely converted in our forced submission to nature. Leonard Cohen knows this, and so instead of fighting against it, instead of even going with it, he recognizes that he must accept it. He lets go of everything he still holds onto, and musters up the strength to send out one last work out into the world, literally staring into the darkness (which can be interpreted as death, the past, or the darkness of the living world) on the cover, before submitting, and fulfilling his life.
10/10

I thought this was Eric Clapton and it’s not. That doesn’t shield it from my hatred, but I’m going in now with less prejudice than I would previously have. By the way, I get to have prejudice against Eric Clapton. He sucks. I hate him. Anyway, this album. I don’t necessarily hate it. I don’t even necessarily dislike it. I also… I don’t love it too much. It has its moments though.

In the spare moments when the album turns to the psychedelic influences more than the blues influences, it shines as a work that can actually contain some good pieces of music, for example, “Turn Into Earth,” or, to a lesser extent, “He’s Always There.” These psychedelic touches, though frankly still largely unimpressive, at least make me feel safe in taking this seriously, unlike some of the other, much more ridiculous-sounding blues tracks, such as “Rack My Mind” or “Over Under Sideways Down.” That’s not to say that there’s no good blues here; opener “Lost Woman” is at least worth listening to, and “Jeff’s Boogie” is a good ol’ really fun blues song. There’s remnants of what The Beatles had been doing, but it’s a little different, a little bit more conventional, but still interesting. I can absolutely see why it’s considered an album you must listen to, even if I don’t love it. And the closer sucks. Forgot to mention that. I hate the closer. Fuck that shit.
5.5/10

Oh, well FUCK ME. If this isn’t one of the best albums of all time I don’t know what is. EASILY Kast’s best. A tapestry of songs, each building on the already legendary catelogue of the band at this point, experimental, flagrant, sexual, sensual, and at so many turns an appreciation of revolutionary Black art forms, most notably hip hop, with songs such as B.O.B. and Gasoline Dreams dealing in the overtly political side of things, songs like the legendary “Ms. Jackson” and the less legendary “Toilet Tisha” are more sensitive, and conscious. Much of the rest of the album is either tributes to poppier rap music (“We Love Deez Hoez,” “So Fresh So Clean”), wild experiments (“Spaghetti Junction,” “?”), a combination of those two (“I’ll Call Before I Come,” “Snappin’ & Trappin’”), soulful joints (“Humble Mumble,” “Stankonia (Stanklove)”), as well as some of the best skits in any rap album you’ll ever hear. It’s sprawling in a way very few albums can be, and while it’s hard for some to appreciate fully, it’s an incredible experience, and if you have the capacity to appreciate it, then it’s in many ways incomparable.
10/10 HIGHLY RECOMMENDED