Reviews by therealab

Sunday Bloody Sunday is an intense way to open an album, reminds me of Bombtrack to open Rage Against the Machine's debut album. 20th Century U2 > 21st Century U2. New Year's Day is maybe my least favorite U2 hit, it sounds very much of it's time though, the music could be a Cure song and Bono's vocals are at their most annoying on it. A lot of really intense drumming on this album. It's supposed to feel like war drums or the cacophony of war I suppose. I don't know about this album. This album sounds like a band that heard the Clash and decided they had to do a Clash album in their own way and it is not entirely successful. You can hear how this band became The Joshua Tree U2 and the biggest band in the world. At the same time, you can hear them trying to incorporate what was going on musically at the time this album was made. After Sunday Bloody Sunday, Two Hearts Beat As One is the best track. Some late punk, some Wave, some ska, it's all from the early 80s and it's all here.

My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue) is the hit. It's better to burn out than to fade away is an all time lyric. It's interesting that later in the song he says it's better to burn out than to rust, I wonder if old rock stars feel that same way now. This is how folk rock should sound. Few songwriters can make you value both the story they are telling and what they are really trying to say at the same time. Pocahontas would be called cultural appropriation today. Neil Young's voice outside the context of his music would be terrible, it's crazy to think it worked with Buffalo Springfield and CSNY. You can hear the punk influence on Sedan Delivery...better to meet the times where they are than fade away. Black Francis heard Sedan Delivery and thus the Pixies were born. Hard rocking Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black) to end the album. Having different versions bookend the album is an interesting touch and leaves me wondering which version I like better (I think it's Into the Black).

This sounds like something...I can't place it though. If Wes Anderson decided to have a house band for his films, this would be who he would hire, maybe Zach Braff too. I bet this is The Shins' favorite band. I'm not sure this is something I'd listen to again, but it's ok. The Kooks' She Moves in Her Own Way owes a lot to You're Just a Baby. This project is warping what I think of as "good". This album is only good in the context of this project. The chatting over I Could Be Dreaming is distracting, reminds me of Simon and Garfunkel's Silent Night. The lead singer reminds me of Nico, and I bet these guys love The Velvet Underground. If Oasis was the mid-90s White Album Beatles, Belle & Sebastian was the mid-90s The Beatles Beatles. Maybe the mid-90s Donovan is a better comparison?

This album is on this list because it was the theme to The Exorcist. If you want to include an album that's only famous because of its association with the film it was featured in and was on the pop charts, make it John Williams' Star Wars. This is an insufferable inclusion on this list. Music critics have to love things that make them sound smarter than everyone, it's part of their DNA apparently. Now we've reached the Peter and Wolf narrated part of the album, telling me which instrument is which. The music during the lecture is at this point is actually the best part of this album so far. Part II is much worse than Part I. The changes between styles within each side of this album make the compositions sound disjointed. Without The Exorcist, this album would not be remembered today. All of the grunting just adds to the stupidity of this album. Now part of this sounds like some themes from the first track. The transition to the Sailor's Hornpipe is just a hard stop and start to end the album. It's including nonsense like this that makes me question why I'm participating in this project.

Starting off well, Song of Love is classic 70's blues rock.
It's crazy that this album predates Lynyrd Skynyrd, they totally ripped Steven Stills off. Only four songs in, I'm calling it, this is his best work. I spoke exactly one song too soon. Both of Us (Bound to Lose) is more of a CSN type of song. And followed with straight bluegrass on Fallen Eagle. The album feels a little disjointed with the jumps in style, but I think I understand what he was trying to do with the album, it all fits in a way, music, title, cover. It's like he went to Nashville and sat at one bar and wrote a song in every genre that passed through, southern rock, folk rock, bluegrass, country. Some are more successful than others. Just as I'm thinking the county music is getting a little wearisome, I see this is a double album (bad sign) and each side had a different musical theme (mitigating factor, maybe?). I wish Spotify would add a column to show the original album sides each song was on. Now, I'll have to figure out which side is my favorite. Right now, I'm leaning towards the first. Not loving the synthesizer on Move Around. It's an uneven effort, some songs on each side are good, but it's just too many songs to expect all of them to be great or even good.

I don't love Simon and Garfunkel. Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme is corny. David Gray's White Ladder was definitely influenced by this album. Homeward Bound is great. You can feel the kid who just left home and is feeling lonely in it. Paul Simon is a great songwriter, great storyteller. The Big Bright Green Pleasure Machine sounds like a nickname for the Incredible Hulk's junk, but I think it's about drugs. The Dangling Conversation and Nico's These Days have a more than passing resemblance. A Poem on an Underground Wall is as hard as two Columbia University folk musicians could possibly sound. Found sound of the nightly news' greatest hits from 1966 over Silent Night feels like a freshman film school project.

Ambient techno is not something you sit down to listen to. It's something that's on in a hipster coffee house while the surly barista takes your order. This feels like the music that plays over the opening credits of a 90s movie about shady stockbrokers. This album is a chore already. It's hard to focus on the quality of the album because it is designed to be on at a speakeasy as background music. Seriously, this is the score to a movie about computer hackers working against the government until they realize they were being used and were working for the government the whole time and then they take down the rogue agent who ran the whole operation. This is like the alternate soundtrack for the Matrix. Someone has definitely tried to sync this album up to a movie at some point. This is like the Dust Brothers' Fight Club soundtrack if instead of fighting they got high the whole movie and sat around a pretentious club all night. I bet this is Moby's favorite album and, to quote Eminem, he can get stomped by Obie...nobody listens to techno. The Monkey King is in the movie Heat. The whole thing sounds like an demo tape for someone trying to score films. Another album where there is no telling when it ends even when a new album starts on Spotify.

Was this band Duran Duran at one point? New Wave music is terrible. Each song is somehow both better and worse than the one before it. This album is awful. This is one of the worst non-experimental albums I've ever heard. I understand why this album made the list. This is the band that literally every other New Wave band of every variety sounds like. A uniquely terrible album.

k.d. lang does straight country music? I had no idea that's where she got her start. I think of her as the Constant Craving singer, more folk pop. She has a real Patsy Cline vibe. Which makes sense because I just now learned it was produced by the same guy who produced Cline's best known works. This is a revelation. k.d lang is awesome! I love this album and I would never have expected that. This has a Dwight Yoakam kind of feeling. She should have stuck with this, I'd rather listen to this album than almost any other \"country\" music produced since 1988.

Suite: Judy Blue Eyes is another strong contender for best first track from a debut album. Marrakesh Express is too goofy and light for me. I think Neil Young was the lynchpin for these guys not sounding like a precursor to the Eagles. Great voices. This is threading a very fine line between folk and folk rock so far. Wooden Ships, right in the middle of the album is a great album track. The straight folk songs are not as good. Helplessly Hoping is beautiful, maybe it's the lyrical content that's making me like some of the songs less because this folk music. The old timey English ballad lyrics leave a lot to be desired, on this album as well as in folk music in general. Long Time Gone is more rock, you can hear the rock, the blues, the psychedelic influences and the harmonies are great of course. Song with No Words is pretentious, hippie crap. Everybody's Talkin' is a terrific song and this is a great version, maybe better than the Harry Nilsson version. Super folk Teach Your Children is a good version too, I think I like the more produced version they did later, but this is good too, very stripped down.

The lead singer reminds me of Jarvis Cocker, which makes me feel like Franz Ferdinand is alt-rock Pulp. Take Me Out is a great song, love the bassline. This is like a cross between punk and glam rock. This album was so good, I didn't realize I'd listened to the whole thing.

Is this electronic music or hip hop? Either way, it is not good. I guess this is dance music but it's hard to imagine anyone actually dancing to it. I get why a music critic would put this on a list like this, but it's almost unlistenable. Steel drum is a hard instrument to effectively integrate into popular music. It feels like this a forced combination of world music, electronic and hip hop. This manages to be dissonant and repetitive at the same time. Galang is the hit from this album and is definitely the best track. I did not even notice the difference between Galang and M.I.A, when the album ended I was surprised.

This is like proto-New Wave. I'm not loving this right off the bat. There's a vaguely ska element of so much British pop music from the mid-70s to the mid-80s that makes everything sound similar. This is like crappy Clash. These critics must be predominantly British because there are a ton of unknown, repetitive British bands in this list. Maybe this band was the first real New Wave band. A very active horn section in this album. These guys took what the Clash did and made it worse.

Blue Suede Shoes maybe takes over the top spot for the first song off a debut album. Maybe the difference is that this is a cover of a Carl Perkins song rather than it being the first time anyone had heard it. Elvis might be one of the greatest performers in rock, pop, country and gospel music. I've never heard his version of I Got a Woman, but it is good. Another song with whistling. I like the songs that rock much better than the ballads. Little Richard's Tutti Frutti is the superior version. You can hear where this music came from and what came after. I think that's because Elvis was a performer, not a songwriter. He was interpreting what came before him in a way that influenced so much that came after in a lot of different genres. Damn this guy can cover songs! Great version of Blue Moon.

PLAY SOMETHING FROM THE STRANGER! 1980s doo wop Billy Joel sucks! Moving’ Out (Anthony’s Song) is one of the better Billy Joel songs, has an Abbey Road vibe to it. Good lyrics, catchy tune, stupid motorcycle sounds. I have a feeling every song after this is going to pale in comparison to the first one. Whistling very rarely adds anything positive to a song, Patience by Guns N’ Roses, Ennio Morricone scores and that song Darryl Hannah whistles in Kill Bill is pretty much it. Just the Way You Are, another hit. This sounds like the defining song of adult contemporary radio. This is Wonderful Tonight for people that got old in the 70s. Damn, this album has a lot of his hits. Scenes from an Italian Restaurant is so corny. What is with the use of all the smooth jazz saxophone? 1977 must have been a truly dismal year for music or Grammy voters must have felt like proving once and for all that they are truly the biggest morons alive. Only the Good Die Young sucks. This song is way overrated. This is one of his biggest hits and it is truly awful. The idea of Billy Joel running with a dangerous crowd is hilarious. Him and Fred Durst are equally fake hardos. She’s Always a Woman to Me is awful too. This album has a lot of his career defining hits and almost all of them are terrible. Everybody Has a Dream is an improvement over most of the rest of the album, good to close on a high note.

Deceptacon is a fun album. This is like 90s The Go-Gos and I like it infinitely more. There's something punk and something pop and something retro about this. The feminism on this album is right in your face which I guess makes some sense due to the fact that this album came out at the height of the Grrl Power and Riot Grrl eras. What's Yr Take On Cassavetes has maybe the stupidest lyrics of any song I've ever heard. Phanta shares some of the Imperial March. You can hear the Pixies influence. Eau D'Bedroom Dancing is cool. The lyrics pn this album could have been written by a whiny sixteen year old girl in 1998. The album is short and catchy. I don't know that I love it, and again, the lyrics are truly dreadful, but I wouldn't turn this off if it was playing. The Donnas owe these ladies a debt of gratitude. Dud Yr so Crazy!! is maybe worse lyrics than the Cassavetes song except the spoken word lyrics over an industrial beat makes for a much less appealing song.

good album, m.A.A.d. rapper. Kendrick has a very distinct flow. You can hear the influence of Outkast, not just his rhyming, the music too. I could do without the phone call sketches. Kendrick is super horny. This is going to date this review, but Kendrick and Drake on the same track is crazy. Poetic Justice is a great song. I know hip hop doesn't really do covers, but this about as close as you can come of a cover of Anytime, Anyplace by Janet Jackson as you're going to get from two MCs. His rhymes are amazing, I'm less thrilled with the beats. Several of these songs are made up of what seems like multiple songs, complete changes in beats. Swimming Pools (Drank) sounds like being drunk, good song. Sing About Me, I'm Dying of Thirst might be the longest rap song I've ever heard....a 12 minute song is not easy to pull off. He writes amazing lyrics but the beats leave something to be desired. I did not like this album as much as I thought I would.

Will this album live up to my memory/the hype? Citizen Cope owes these guys a lot. There's a proto-Southern Rock vibe to this album...so good, but funny that they were all Canadians except for Levon Helm, I guess that's why he's regarded so highly. Caledonia Mission is a great song, really encapsulates the sound of The Band. What can you say about The Weight but that it's an amazing song. Long Black Veil brings it too. They are great storytellers as well and songwriters and musicians. I Shall Be Released is such a great song to close an album on.

Joni Mitchell and Carole King might be the same person. Folk music is way more popular with music critics than with anyone else. This sounds like adult Sesame Street music, I might rather hear the Pinball song counting to 12. She might be the lyrical equivalent of Bob Dylan, but this just doesn't resonate with me the same way. Maybe it's a male/female thing? There's something about her delivery or songwriting that reminds me of Jill Scott, not on every song, but some. This is not good. Maybe I haven't been paying enough attention to the lyrics and am missing the meaning because this is not great music or great singing.

The first song is titled Moribund the Burgermeister, I feel like I'm in for a very pretentious experience. Solsbury Hill is an amazing song and by far the biggest hit from the album. There is no way Peter Gabriel thought Excuse me was a good song other than as a goofy interruption. It's like he heard a Randy Newman album and thought he absolutely had to have a song like that on his album. This isn't a super cohesive album, no real theme or definitive sound. I suppose that's the danger of an art rock debut, it can end up sounding like an eclectic mish mash of postmodern songs. Slowburn is more of a standard prog rock song, could be an ELP song. Down The Dolce Vita could be ELP too. Even weirdos can't escape their time and place. Here Comes the Flood is a good song, an a good choice to end the album.