Reviews by therealab

More goddamned Damon Albarn, 3 Blur albums, a Gorillaz album and this. Give me another Dylan album or more rap albums (not UK rap). This is the best Damon Albarn album. It's losing me. The Bunting Song is dreadful.

Jesus, I'm going to cry listening to the title track. Dolly has made it so long because she is the genuine article. When the whole world is searching for authenticity, she has it without trying. She's never anything she isn't. I've never listened to a ton of her music, but this is great.

This came out in 1982, I would have thought later. Does Rio sound exactly like Hungry Like the Wolf or am I an idiot? Why did they put the zebra stripes all over the girls in the Rio video? Or was that the Hungry Like the Wolf video? New Wave music is terrible. They could have added one hit of the Bond theme and no one would be able to tell the difference between Rio and A View to a Kill. Hungry Like the Wolf is their biggest hit. Every song sounds exactly the same. I've heard electronica that sounds more different from song to song. This could be a Stranger Things soundtrack and kids (and adults who should know better sadly) would go crazy for. Save a Prayer has more plays than Rio and I've never heard it before this moment.

There are too many obscure 60s albums/bands on this list. I wonder if the list in twenty years will have too many obscure 80s albums/bands...like LCD Soundsystem's Losing My Edge. This is just another psychedelica/folk/rock album...that trio is deadly...it's not enough of anything and all sounds like someone wanted to do updated takes on all ye olde ballads. I just read the Wikipedia page...Parliament passed a resolution calling this the greatest album of all time. This is without a doubt the most overrated album of all time. The lyrics to The Red Telephone are silly as hell. I keep coming back to the fact that I don't like folk rock, I just like Bob Dylan. I guess Bummer in the Summer is the best song on the album but I am just not able to get into this. The singer reminds me of Rodriguez.

This has a Tom Waits/Leonard Cohen feel to it. Stagger Lee's lyrics must have been written by a 15 year old boy...the thought of Nick Cave shooting anyone is beyond hilarious. Lonely Creature is the best song so far. Nick Cave is hit-or-miss with me. Where the Wild Roses Grow is another good song. The murder lyrics are definitely all in line with the theme. Bob Dylan cover with Kylie Minogue and the guy from the Pogues is a solid close.

I think Arcade Fire is one of the most overrated bands but I do like the title track. This album is better than Neon Bible. Do I maybe like Arcade Fire? This album is about the lead singer's childhood in The Woodlands...rich kid complains about being rich. There's like a modern Cure feel to this album. In thirty years when they reboot Stranger Things for the 2000s, Arcade Fire is going to be all over the soundtrack. Month of May is as punk as a post punk band is going to get. We Used to Wait is good. This album threads the needle on continuity and variation across the songs.

This has to be Bjork's side project. Wrong...Bjork's first band. The Icelandic guy talking throughout the album sounds like the inspiration for Gagnam Style. The Pet Shop Boys should probably get royalties from these guys. The songs where Bjork sings are fine...the songs where the guy talks over the whole song are awful, Sick for Toys is the worst of them. Those songs are Nada Surf's favorites though.

This reminds me of something I can't place. As far as turn of the century pop rock goes, this isn't bad. This could have gone on one of those early 2000s teen comedy soundtracks. It's like The Strokes lite. I like it so far. The political songs, Arbeit Mach Frei and Campaign of Hate, have some of the most ham-fisted lyrics I've ever heard...they make Tracy Chapman seem subtle.

It's in Portuguese so it's starting off on the wrong foot...but aside from the language barrier, it's pretty good. It starts leaning into its Brazilian-ness pretty quickly. Taj Mahal is like samba and funk and disco had a three way and no one knows who the real father is. This feels like an untapped gold mine for a DJ.

This album is less than 16 minutes long...there's something to be said for that. Not enough to be said to make this a great album. As far as hardcore punk goes though, I like it better than most.

Purple Haze immediately jumps to one of the main contenders for best first track off a debut album, it might be his best song. May This Be Love is good, feels like a different brand of Jimi Hendrix. I bet the Allman's loved it. My only complaint is some of these 60s bands playing with the stereo recording too much. The album tracks are great. Stevie Ray Vaughn owes Hendrix a career, two legends lost before their time. Third Stone From the Sun loses me a little bit, I like the jazzy feel, but the altered vocals, I wonder if Yello got the idea for Oh Yeah from this song, guitar distortion and silly Hendrix poem lose me. The Allman's definitely lifted part of this song though, maybe just in Mountain Jam, but it's like note for note. I never really loved Foxey Lady, it is a little corny. Are You Experienced? on the other hand is my favorite Hendrix song.

I've now listened to and erased two full sets of notes. I'm not doing it again. This is a great pop album, the Paul McCartney duet sucks and Thriller, Beat It, Billie Jean, Human Nature and P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing) is one of the greatest stretches of songs in music history.

If Darkness, Darkness is any indication of what I'm in store for, I think I just found an awesome new band! That didn't last long. It's like cornier Byrds. Recording booth chatter is less annoying than most found sound for some reason. Then On Sir Francis Drake is a good instrumental track. I can't decide what's what with this album. I'm liking it so far for the most part, a little uneven, but good.

This is the best Pixies album. It has to be hard to come out with a great album on your first try. Living up to that must drive some bands crazy. Grunge owes a lot to these guys. Gigantic...tremendous song. River Euphrates is just yelling noises. Where Is My Mind? is an all-time great song. I can't not think about Fight Club when I hear it though. Perfect song for a perfect movie. I bet these guys love Lou Reed. Kind of a mixed bag of an album. I can do without the studio banter. The discussion of banging field hockey players is completely unnecessary. Everything on this album really is dwarfed by Gigantic and Where Is My Mind? but there are more good songs than bad.

This Is a Call is in the running for best first track off a debut album. Big Me was the big hit. People's minds must have been blown when the drummer from Nirvana became the guitarist of Foo Fighters. I was never really got into Foo Fighters but I'm kind of regretting that. This is pretty good. Good album tracks, I really like For All the Cows. Surprisingly good, Exhausted is a great finish.

I have never really liked the title track. They're from Houston though so I'll cut them some slack. I like My Lady better than Street Life. It sounds like black Kenny G. Or high quality porno music. This album is the soundtrack to 80s Richard Pryor movies, all of them.

All I Want seemed like a promising start...and then My Old Man dashed them. I just found Fiona Apple's favorite album. This is, by a HUGE margin, the best Joni Mitchell album I've heard so far. River is a good song, but that Butterfly Kisses asshole totally ripped it off. And he won a Grammy! I don't like Joni Mitchell, but she's 1000x the artist that clown is. Rolling Stone ranked this as the third best album of all time in 2020 proving that their list is equally stupid as this project.

Oh my god, this is like a Giorgio Moroder score with robot voices singing silly lyrics. And in Russian too. These German cats were interested in making music that bridged the sides of the Cold War. Warsaw Pact or NATO, you can listen to this crappy electronic music. This is far from the worst album I've heard though which I think tells you everything you need to know about this project. It wears on you though. I guess I have to give them a pass for the lyrics since their primary language is German, but the repetitive electronic music is mind numbing. The Man Machine feels more like something someone made so that 80s rappers would sample it rather than an actual song anyone wanted to listen to.

This album is 1,001 times better than Ogden's Nut Gone Flake. This album rocks. Every song has been good so far, underrated band. Debris is a fantastic song. I actually really like the Memphis cover too.

This sounds very much of it's time. It's like shoegaze Elliott Smith. An hour of distorted guitars...awesome. I think I'm starting to hate 90s music too. This album goes on forever. This is not the most awful album I've ever heard, maybe I don't hate shoegaze as much as Cocteau Twins would have me believe. Run My Way Runway is just noise. I just want this to be over. This list has too many 90s Britpop acts. British bands love ska. There's nothing like some annoying noises at the end of a song to improve an album. This isn't terrible, but it sounds like 100 other albums that came out in the mid 90s. Oasis, Pulp, Blur...a bunch of bands that came out around that time or immediately after just sound the same and so much of it is just "meh". British bands love to weigh in on American politics. This album sounds like 1993. In the 90s, America gave us grunge and gangsta rap...great Britain gave us Britpop and it apparently won based on the albums on this list. Ridiculous. It doesn't help that this album is over an hour long. It just keeps spiraling down. This is too much music for an album for anyone except the really great artists. You don't have 17 good ideas for an album. I bet Ludwig Goransson listened to Spun Around before he started writing the music for the Mandalorian. Some backwards talking, sweet. The album swings between generic 90s British pop-rock and terrible 90s British pop-rock. This is one of the least interesting albums on the list so far. God, this album drags. Run My Way Runway is just a jumble of stupid sounds and stupid lyrics. The repetitiveness of The White Noise Revisited is grating.