Reviews by therealab

Time to Pretend is a great song, it deserves to be a hit. I think the lyrics also do a great job of capturing the zeitgeist too, #YOLO. These guys sound like the group LCD Soundsystem was talking about in Losing My Edge. There's a Rick and Morty music vibe about these guys, maybe it's just both are of the same era. Seriously, The Youth sounds like it was lifted out of a Rick and Morty episode...has anyone checked to see if this album syncs with the show? Electric Feel was the other big hit. Jamiroquai definitely influenced these guys, dance electronic funk. LCD Soundsystem probably as well. This album is catchy. I remember liking this album when it came out, I think it might have just come out at the right time. It feels like an album that is speaking to its generation, probably in the same way albums often talk to their generation and say the same thing but think they are only talking to their peers. I bet these guys love Beck. Not sure if I love or hate The Handshake. Future Reflections has a familiar sound but I can't place it.

A double album, lots of ambient noise, spoken word...this is not getting off to a great start. In my mind, I like Tom Waits...but this is just him talking...it's closer to a Mitch Hedberg album. Finally some singing on Better Without A Wife. There is just so much album. And now an eleven-and-a-half minute song. This is not a relaxing listen. I'm counting down the minutes until this album is over. Warm Beer and Cold Women is the best song to this point, not a hard bar to cross, but it's good. Each "song" is mostly the same. Nobody is an improvement. I like jazz trios but there's something pretentious and phony about this album.

Cyndi Lauper's voice is annoying, but her singing voice is 1000x better than her speaking voice. The beginning of Money Changes Everything sounds like INXS' Don't Change. RIP Captain Lou Albano. Girls Just Want to Have Fun makes me think of the Goonies because it sounds so much like the song she did for the movie. It's a catchy song. This sounds like the music that would be playing at the prom in an 80s movie. Time After Time is a good song. Definitely Cyndi Lauper's best and maybe the best New Wave song ever. Followed up by one of the worst songs ever, She Bop. All Through the Night is another single you hear in things. If this is some of the best New Wave has to offer, I'll pass. And now some ska inspired crap! I'll Kiss You is bad. And now some Betty Boop inspired nonsense. That should have been the title of the album.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T! Great song to kick off the album. An all time great soul song. THis came out the same year Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell were singing Ain't No Mountain High Enough....Motown is overrated. There's a reason they call Aretha the Queen of Soul. Drown in My Own Tears is another great song. I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You) is the best Aretha song and arguably the greatest soul song of all time. I love this song. Everything is perfect about this song, the organ, the horns, her voice. The Muscle Shoals sound at its peak. Motown is R&B, this is Soul. This album is amazing. There isn't a single miss on this whole album. Save Me has the same bass line as Gloria and I love it. A Change Is Gonna Come is better when Sam Cooke does it, but the cover is ok. This album is super highly regarded and it's still not high enough.

This is much more straight 60s psychedelica than what Pink Floyd would become. I like it much less. Lucifer Sam sounds like the theme song for a British TV show of the era. This is like bad, corny Beatles psychedelic rock. Pow R. Toc H.'s chattering is annoying. This reminds me of something I can't place. The switching audio channels is giving me a headache, like when the front windows in a car are rolled up but the rear windows are rolled down. This is like if Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band sucked. Give me 70s Floyd any day over this. And to end....some found sound. Just like the Beatles, what a terrible rip off. I just realized some of this album sounds like Robert Wyatt....no thanks.

Peter Piper, classic Run-DMC. Rap before gangsta rap was like a whole different genre. It's hard to pick a favorite Run-DMC song, but It's Tricky is definitely a contender. Peter Piper, It's Tricky, My Adidas and Walk This Way is the best four song start to any album. That's crazy. Walk This Way could be two bands' best song. Is It Live is so clearly produced by Rick Rubin they could have called it "Rick Rubin Was Here". It actually sounds super derivative of another Rubin song, "She's Crafty" by the Beastie Boys, or maybe the Beastie Boys song is the derivative one, they both came out in 1986. The singles are great, most of the album tracks are great, this is a great album.

Roundabout is the big hit, which I thought was by Supertramp. The guitar part of this song is the same as the melody to Love Machine by The Miracles. And now I can't hear anything else. Prog Rock sucks. This song goes on forever, eight and a half minutes. At least the remainder of the album is relatively short since this is sucking up all the air on it. Cans and Brahms is so pretentious. Reminds me of ELP's Pictures at an Exhibition "cover". We Have Heaven is the most annoying round I've ever heard. And now some radio show door slamming and walking sound effects. Every song on the album sounds like I've Seen All Good People but worse. Three song of 8 minutes or more and short, filler tracks in between. This is one of the worst albums I've ever heard. South Side of the Sky is insufferable. Rush heard this and thought, "We can suck too." Five per Cent for Nothing is only 37 seconds long and might be the most annoying track on the album. It sounds like the start of a Primus song. These guys couldn't be more pretentious, The Fish (Schindleria Praematurus) is literally them using a Latin name for the number of syllables but trying to sound smart. And closed out with an eleven-and-a-half minute drag.

This guy's voice is annoying. This is like a rejected Singles soundtrack audition. Epic, the Red Hot Chili Peppers rip off hit. The "rapping" is terrible. It's hard to believe this song got as big as it did. The "What is it?" chorus evil snake wizard voice is so silly combined with the rapped lyrics. Melancholy piano closer to cap it all off. Falling to Pieces was another single off this album and it sucks too. All the NuMetal bands should send these guys a fruit basket because they are the original NuMetal band. They did it first and maybe did it worst. Zombie Eaters goes in a totally different direction, this is their Silent Lucidity I guess. Queensrÿche sucked too. And it's made worse by the rapping somehow. This is a joke. This album is both annoyingly bad and completely forgettable at the same time. The Morning After is the title song to a terrible 80s movie. The lead singer is butchering War Pigs. Leave it to the professionals fellas. Edge of the World sounds like a bad hotel lounge act.

There is definitely a Pixies vibe to this. Connection is the hit. I'm not hating this. This sounds very mid-90s, Pixies, Primus, Garbage...there's something very time specific about them. Indian Song...that's super racist. This is deteriorating fast. This feels more like the discount Pixies than contemporaries now. I bet the xx love these guys. Vaseline is needlessly silly.

I remember when this album came out. My friend Scott Hale got it and we listened to it playing video games at his house and it sucked. They sound like a Flaming Lips cover band. Novocaine for the Soul was the hit and it's terrible. Susan's House is another dud. Tape recorded talking over the music is not creative, it's lazy. This is not what makes art. I'm tired and this album is not helping. This looks like a solid 1 so far. There has not been a decent song on this album yet. It's like Beck if he sucked. I hope they had to pay Giorgio Moroder royalties for Mental because they totally ripped off the bassline. Another song that could very easily be a Flaming Lips song, Spunky. This album is terrible. Your Luck Day in Hell is the best song on the album and it's not that good.

I have never really liked the Smashing Pumpkins so I'm not going into this with high expectations. Cherub Rock is ok. Unfortunately, that's one of the songs I thought I liked going into this. I think it's Billy Corgan's voice that I hate so much. The music isn't awful, standard 90s alternative, but his voice is annoying. A lot of songs from this album got radio play. That definitely doesn't mean they are good, but this was a popular album. Disarm is the hit and I hate it. Another long album. If you ask AI to make a "90s alternative album", this is what it would spit out. Mayonaise is the best song on the album. No, the best song is Space Boy. The second half of this album is better, the album tracks are much better than the singles.

Sonic Youth is the bridge between punk and grunge.
Or like a harder version of the Pixies. You can definitely hear both in their music. Rage Against the Machine's Testify has the same sound as Drunken Butterfly. I wonder if the producers of The Crow or Judgement Night asked them to just do the whole soundtrack for their films. You can hear their influence in a million different songs. Orange Rolls, Angel's Spit is just Kim Gordon yelling and I could do without that. This album is losing steam. I like the less punk songs better. Chapel Hill is one of the better songs on the album though. Creme Brulee is starting off on the wrong foot with all the distorted sounds.

Simon & Garfunkel are storytellers. America is a great song. Popular folk music hit its peak right around this album's release in 1968. Paul Simon does breakup songs better than anyone. Come on Simon & Garfunkel, found sound? Voices of Old People has no business on this record. It's the lead in to Old Friends, but it brings the album to a screeching halt. Bookends Theme starts the album and ended the first side of the album....clever. Punky's Dilemma feels like the song that launched Flight of The Conchords. That, or Paul Simon was bored during breakfast one morning. Mrs. Robinson in its original context. It's hard not to picture Dustin Hoffman doing The Graduate things this song is so tied to the movie. The first side of the album is generally better but Mrs. Robinson is a great song and anchors the second side.

Roadhouse Blues is the lead track and the big single. The Doors reigned when there were still album rock groups, before everything became driven by hit singles. In the immortal, made-up words of Lester Bangs in Almost Famous, "The Doors? Jim Morrison? He's a drunken buffoon posing as a poet." I had a conception that I didn't really like The Doors but this is better than I was expecting. Peace Frog is better than Roadhouse Blues. Spoke too soon, Morrison has to drop so slam poetry in the middle of the song. Blue Sunday is terrible. Land Ho! is the best song on this album. Indian Summer delivers exactly what it promises, melancholy. This album was better than I'd expected, more blues rock and less psychedelic. Also less intrusive electric piano.

Iconic album cover. It seems odd to me how many title tracks lead off albums but maybe that's the norm. I always liked With a Little Help from My Friends, Ringo never got enough credit. Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds is the most listened to track off this album which seems crazy to me, definitely not the best song. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, With a Little Help from My Friends, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds and Getting Better is an amazing start to an album, insane run. Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite! however is not. The carnival theme isn't doing it for me. I get it, you went to India. When I'm Sixty Four has that daily story songwriting like in Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, they have a number of songs like that including She's Leaving Home on this album. A Day in the Life is the big finale. It's the best song on the album. End of album shenanigans? Come on Beatles, you're better than this gimmicky crap. I'm sure every band that does this now looks to this album for inspiration. The problem is that they are not the BEatles and haven't earned it.

Fast Car is the career defining hit. It's a good song and was sampled to perfection by Nice & Smooth on Sometimes I Rhyme Slow. These are truly depressing lyrics. Tracy Chapman hates America. This is so overtly political it's boring. It's like getting a lecture rather than listening to music. She could take a lesson from Bob Dylan on how to do this. Baby Can I Hold You is better...just a love song, a nice change. Right back to the lesson on how everything sucks. Capitalism is bad, rich people are bad.

Let's Get It On, another soul album with the title track hitting lead-off. What an incredible song. You can not listen to this song and not feel like getting it on. Teddy Pendergrass heard Please Don't Stay (Once You Go Away) and knew he'd be a star one day. Why do all of his albums have full tracks that amount to the codas for extended cuts of the big hits. It feels like the creativity of 60s Motown Soul with a more pop sensibility loses something in the 70s albums. Distant Lover is a great song...unfortunately the best version is widely known not to be the album version but the live version from the Oakland Coliseum. Marvin Gaye is overrated. I love soul music and Marvin Gaye produced some of my favorite jams of all time, but his two most critically acclaimed records have some hits and a lot of mediocre or worse filler. You Sure Love to Ball was a single? It's a little on the nose, even for someone who sided with Jodeci in the Jodeci vs. Boys II Men debate. One hit, one good song done better live and mediocrity or worse after.

Starting off with the title track, a bold, and absolutely correct, choice. This is a great song that is now unfortunately linked in my mind to the Pulp Fiction soundtrack. Al Green is a great soul music performer. It's hard to decide if I like 70s soul or 90s/2000s neosoul better. I'm loving the horns in this. Memphis soul might be the best soul. I knew I liked his hits, but this album is a revelation. Old Time Lovin' is great. This whole album is great so far. It's crazy to me that Darondo wasn't more popular...he has a very similar sound to this album. I'm not going to oversell the importance of an album's length on my rating, but it has some importance.

The first track is not terrible. In the battle for best grime MC, I'm comfortable saying Skepta is superior to Dizzee Rascal after only one song. A recorded phone call...the hallmark of a truly terrible album. They use the word fam a lot. 50 years of hip hop, a limited number of albums which made this list and this gets selected? Now a recorded video game chat session. And an angry recorded message now. The Pharrell track is an improvement over what has been a steady decline from the first song on.

This sounds very much of its time. Glory is a good song...it has an Elliott Smith vibe. This is a good album and you can still hear the influence in indie rock today. A lot of later 90s acts owe Liz Phair a debt of gratitude. I bet Fiona Apple had this on repeat in 1993. Fuck and Run is a great song. I thought I remembered this album better than I do. It's good though, great album cover. I'm not sure if there even was a single off this album that got a ton of airplay but I do like this album. The lyrics to Flower are hysterical. It's hard to pick a favorite song, a lot of good candidates, Johnny Sunshine might be it though.