Reviews by therealab

I like this more than I would have thought going into it. It sounds very much of its time. Razz is the first real miss. The back half of the album is not as good.

Sam Cooke, good. Too much crowd noise on a live album, not good. I bet this was a hell of a show though. He's got such a distinctive voice. After listening to 70s Marvin Gaye albums in this project, something might be said for 60s R&B. Cupid is a great R&B song. Advising your audience not to hit their wives is a solid move. Twistin' The Night Away was one of his bigger hits...I prefer Cupid or A Change is Gonna Come. Bring It On Home to Me is another great song. A good album by a legend.

Tom Waits is just not my cup of tea. I'm guessing Tom Waits' favorite writer is Hunter S. Thompson. I just don't get all the circus organ music in these experimental albums, it's not a popular instrument for a reason. The old hobo music act wears thin pretty quickly. The spoken word Frank's Wild Years is the best song so far. The album gets better as it goes on but not by much.

To paraphrase Nuke LaLoosh, War Pigs announces this album's presence with authority. War Pigs and Paranoid are so insistent that Planet Caravan is a real shock. Iron Man is a great song...and Busta Rhymes turned it into This Means War which is also good. I could do without British people pissing and moaning about Vietnam. You didn't have to fight, you didn't lose loved ones there. I don't see the British writing a bunch of antiwar songs about the Falklands War.

The discordant piano on D. Original is very prominent. He's got a really cool flow, I'm liking the lyrics a lot. I would have believed it if someone told me this was a Cannibal Ox album. Wu Tang beat this guy to the Kung Fu references though, this guy is not straight from the slums of Shaolin. Da Bichez is a great song, if a little dated lyrically. It's almost unbelievable now that at one point this would have been one of the more respectful songs in hip hop related to women. This guy is a great lyricist and the beats are definitely unique, but the marital arts references definitely seem like he wanted to cash in on Wu Tang's vibe. I'm sure there's a million posts online about how he predicted 9/11 with the album cover and the line, "'Cause I blow up spots like the World Trade Center," but it was bombed in 1993. This album is very much of its time and place. It feels a little bit Wu Tang, very Tribe Called Quest. It's good though, the execution is good because he's got a great flow. He also reminds me of Pete Rock.

Damon Albarn with the Gorillaz is better than Damon Albarn with Blur. He has four albums on this list, that's insane. This is a long album. And four songs in it's starting to feel long. Clint Eastwood was the hit and their big break. I remember liking it when it came out but it felt like it was overplayed very quickly. Man Research (Clapper) was cool for about three minutes. Unfortunately it went on for four and a half minutes. Every song seems very internally repetitive. The vocal affectation Albarn is putting on is getting really annoying as the album progresses. Double Bass without the singing is probably the best track on the album. The poorly played flute is not a positive addition to Rock the House. Del The Funky Homosapien is so tied to the Gorillaz that I think of his songs with them first. 19-2000 was the other big hit with the girl from Cibo Matto singing about cool shoeshines. It's still the best song on the album. Followed by a song with the Buena Vista Social Club guy that is easily the worst song on the album. Starshine has Albarn's weird voice on full display and then Slow Country is the same four words over and over again....needless to say the album is continuing to go downhill. And then M1 A1 is some clip of a guy yelling, "Is anyone there?" for almost two minutes. This album is too long. Bong noises, found sound recording of an Asian woman talking about playing an instrument, it all adds up to a terrible song. And ending with a remix of the album's first single. Jamaican guy talking, sped up, stripped down music, dance hall rapping...I don't love the original but this is worse.

New Wave music sucks. As bad as the first song was, the hit off the album, the second one is worse. The album sounds like the soundtrack to John Cusak's 80s movies...all of them. Oh my god, this is awful. This is like an 80s Bowie cover band that decided to play originals. Every song, somehow, keeps getting worse. I will give this album credit for being actual music and a normal length. Those are all the "nice" things I can say about it though. A truly terrible album. And now the drummer gets in on the act with a song in a foreign language. This is the United Colors of Benetton of bands.

Wilco is an underrated band. I wonder why the Old 97s aren't more famous, they have a definite Wilco vibe. I like Wilco better too though so I guess I'm part of the problem. Good first album of a double album set. It's a lot of Wilco and it's probably a little unfair that I took a break in the middle. Sunken Treasure is a great way to kick off the second album.

This feels like an album that would have been sold on late night television at one point. This music did not age well, I bet it sounded old six months after it came out. Billy The Kid is super corny. I would have thought El Paso was the big hit but apparently Big Iron is the more popular song from this album. Never mind, it was in Fallout so its got a bunch of listens due to gamers. This album was the definition of meh.

Krautrock...it's more than just a notification that what you're about to listen to is terrible for Faust...it's also the name of the opening track. I won't lie, this isn't that different from a number of other, non-German, art rock acts, maybe it's even better (for art rock, not in general). 12 minutes of a "sonic landscape" to kick things off, it manages to be both annoyingly repetitive and annoyingly surprising at the same time. The good news is now that it's over I'm a quarter of the way through the album. The only Krautrock I'm interested in is Autobahn. They are really playing with stereo on The Sad Skinhead. Krautrock is apparently just the German word for psychedelic music with found sound and industrial noises. Giggy Smile is the best song so far. The song with the really long German title sucks. This is an awful album. What is a bit of a pain is the random annoying noise over the middle of a song. And a second go at it.

I don't like Leonard Cohen as much as I thought I did going into this. Everyone talks about is songwriting but I'll take Dylan or Lennon/McCartney or Paul Simon or Carole King over him any day. The Butcher is one of the better songs on the album but that's not much of a hurdle to clear. Tonight Will Be Fine is the best song to close out a not so good album.

I normally love blue-eyed soul but this isn't doing it for me. Her voice is just someone imitating Nina Simone. I'm not surprised that music critics had to put this in their list though. The lyrics are more like a lecture than song lyrics. I'm sure they are very personal and meaningful, but there's no depth to the words, everything is on the surface. I'm looking forward to this being over. It's like depressing John Legend. Or depressing Boy George. Fistful of Love is good, there's potential here.

Guarantee you The Doors loved Booker T. & the M.G.'s. I like The Doors more than I thought. Love Her Madly is good. L.A. Woman has its moments too. Mr Mojo Risin is the coolest acronym of anyone's name, I will give Morrison that. I would make everyone call me that instead of the Lizard King. Not loving every song on this album though. The WASP (Texas Radio and the Big Beat) is awful. It highlights all of the things I hate about The Doors. Jim Morrison sounding overly serious while he spouts nonsense lyrics and overuse of the organ. Overuse of the Organ sounds like a Limp Bizkit album. Many people love Riders on the Storm. I am not one of them. It's fine.

The quintessential British punk album. Sex Pistols are as famous (more famous?) for their behavior than for their music. I like the Ramones much better. This feels like an album that people liked to own but no one liked to listen to. God Save the Queen and Anarchy in the U.K. are the hits. God Save the Queen is better. These dudes are mad as hell and aren't going to take it anymore. At least they lived their principles because they could have behaved well enough to make a ton of money and instead decided to just keep being who they were. Billie Joe Armstrong heard this and began affecting his terrible punk accent.

I could do without the stupid Morrisey argument at the start of the album. It's a shame too because it keeps To Be Young (Is to Be Sad, Is to Be High) off best first track on a debut album consideration. Maybe that's a technical disqualification, but rules are rules. Dylan, Wilco, Elliott Smith...you can hear all of them in this. It's a good start. The Head and The Heart should send him royalty checks the way Robin Thicke and Pharrell have to send Marvin Gaye's no talent kids a check for Blurred Lines because for a minute I thought they might be a side project of Ryan Adams. Damien Rice for that matter too. How is he not more well known? This album is great. Iron and Wine and Ray LaMontagne have a similar sound too.

This sounds very much like RJD2. This could have also been the Mad Men theme music. The first song was the best. I'm not disliking this as something that's on over the speaker system at a local bookstore...I'm not sure this is an album I'd put on to just listen to regularly. Ok, I'll give them credit, this would definitely be appropriate music for the bedroom...no lyrics as distraction and a sexy vibe. I'm liking it more and more for what it is. This could be the score to a Bond movie, and I mean that as a compliment. Reminds me of The xx. I could do without all the robot voice singing. I bet these guys are best friends with Daft Punk. A lot of Beth Hirsh guest spots. I'm guessing she's the girlfriend of one of the members of the "band". Honestly though, the songs she's on aren't bad. New Star in the Sky is terrible. Le voyage de Penelope is like a bad Kool and the Gang cover, a terrible homage to Summer Madness.

One of the all-time great hip hop acts. If anything highlights the stupidity of the Grammys it is that these guys have zero and Will Smith has four. This is the perfect blending of lyrics, delivery, beats and production. Rap came about after the era of the album was already past, it's definitely a singles driven genre. This is an album though and a great one at that. It has a vibe and style that holds the album together without everything sounding exactly the same. Vibes and Stuff has the same beat as Cypress Hill's Stoned is the Way of the Walk and I am here for it. Check the Rhime is a great song, great beat, great lyrics...perfect. It all builds to Scenario...introducing Busta Rhymes to a major label audience.

African Blues is worse than American Blues, one song is all it takes for me to know that is true. This is truly like if blues and traditional African/Middle Eastern music had a baby. This is the kind of music you'd find on in a West African restaurant where only rich white people who are looking for "authenticity" eat. There's nothing wrong with the music, it's just more like something decent to have on in the background rather than an album I want to listen to all the way through. The mores blues driven songs are much better. That's not a very high bar to cross though. N'jarou is probably the best song on the album.

From the first notes I can tell this is like another Randy Newman album. Apparently all of these songs are going to be about hating having a regular life...it's like a whole album of Ants Marching. Without You is the hit and it's a cover. It is a good song though. Coconut is so goofy, but I do like it. Goofy is probably the best way to describe this album...still better than Randy Newman. Oh come on now, he did a collaboration album with Randy Newman. Of course they did. Let The Good Times Roll is very Good Old Boys-esque. It's Henry's hallucination music from Goodfellas! Jump Into the Fire is good or does it only seem that way because I associate it with an all time great gangster film?

Get Ready for Love sounds like post-punk if I was going to define it in one song. This is a million times better than The Birthday Party. Hiding All Away is good. I'm liking this so far. He's channeling Elvis a little bit too hard at some spots. I'd say that generally the first album of this double album (why?) is pretty good. Right up until Fable of the Brown Ape. This is an album that appeals to music critics and pretentious college students. While I could do without the random flute, Breathless is the best song on the album. He sounds like Neil Diamond on some of these songs. Neil Diamond, Elvis, Tom Waits...it's all here. Some good songs, some not so good songs.