Reviews by tipula

Neil Young album #3 here.

There are a couple tracks that I like better, like "Are You Ready for the Country," with the funky piano & arrangement and obscure lyrics; "Old Man," where the guitar & banjo are more interesting than on some of the the other tracks here and is interesting hearing it now as an older person, and "Needle and the Damage Done," which is very raw and intense.

However, this one also contains one song that I actively dislike ("A Man Needs a Maid"), a song I've heard so many times that just seeing the title without listening to it now has it stuck in my head ("Heart of Gold"), and a bunch of other songs that are pleasant but not a standout. So, I probably wouldn't ever go back to it, and therefore, 3 stars.

One of my all-time favorite albums, easy 5 stars.

I actually only had time to listen to the first couple of these songs today, but I know this record so well that I'm confident that my rating will continue to be 5 stars after listening. So much of this record has things I like, like Fripp, Eno, shoutouts to Krautrock, and David Bowie, obviously; I saw him when he was touring on this album. And the title track always makes me cry.

This is a great record. Standout songs for me are the stories told on "Oh, You Pretty Things" and "Is There Life on Mars?," the proto-punk "Queen Bitch"; "Changes," of course; and the intriguing closer "The Bewley Brothers." And the gender ambiguity of the cover and "Pretty Things" is something I've always loved.

Not all the songs are equal to the best ones, so I'd probably give this 4.5 stars if we could get more incremental. But since we can't, I'll go with a 5.

So I could say this was enjoyable, but it was mainly in an "I'm listening to an annoying album that combines all the worst excesses of British music from the mid-1970s in a neat little package, and isn't that quirky and entertaining" kind of way.

Annoying but bearable.

3 stars

Hey look, a (relatively) contemporary album that we actually own and listen to from time to time! Named after a venue that I've been to a number of times! I even had lunch with a friend up near Merriweather Post Pavilion recently!

Anyway, I think this is an interesting record, thick with electronics and harmonies. But I don't listen to it very often because it sounds a little too, I don't know, wholesome? There's a near-Beach Boys level of cheerfulness in many of the vocals, and it lacks the kind of dissonance that makes me really love an album. But I appreciate how imaginative it is.

4

I don't usually go for a singer with an acoustic guitar and some strings and such in the background, but Leonard Cohen is an exception. His lyrics are so strange and absorbing, and the tone of his voice and the guitar give it a an appealing edginess that I wouldn't expect from material like this.

I already knew a number of these songs, of course, but some I hadn't heard before. (Though I swear I know a different version of "Sisters of Mercy.") I don't think I'll go out of my way to hear the whole album again, but I'm glad to have heard it this evening.

I've gone around saying "The one U2 album I still like is 'Achtung Baby' - I even saw them on this tour. So let's see if I'm just making that up, since to be honest it's been 30 years since the last time I listened to it.

Yeah, I still like it. "Zoo Station" opens with interesting electronic stuff, and "Until the End of the World" is a favorite since of course I loved that movie and saw it several times. And "Wild Horses" and "Acrobat" are bringing back some memories from the early 90s, hoo boy.

So yeah that listen was memorable - there are some songs on here that are important to me. However, I was also reminded that I've always been annoyed by a couple of them, like "Even Better than the Real Thing." And Bono's voice gets tiresome by the end.

But anyway, while I probably won't go back to listening to this a lot like i did in the early 90s, I'm glad I got to revisit it today.

Another record that I have heard a squillion times, having known a large number of people who like Dylan and The Band in my day.

The slow songs on here drag a bit, but I like the faster tracks that sound a little honky-tonk or Cajun or whatever on here. And then there's "Chest Fever" with its memorable organ bits, and of course "Long Black Veil" - who can resist a folksong sung from beyond the grave.

3 stars - I enjoyed hearing most of this again today, but I feel like I've heard it enough times over the past decades to consider it done at this point.

Hmm, I know I've heard songs by this band, but have no memory of what they sounded like. That's usually a bad sign, but we'll see.

So this is normal rock music, competently done. It sounds a lot like what Dire Straits would have sounded like if they were interesting; there are lots of blurry instrumental bits and pleasant, indistinct vocals. The wiki says these guys were influenced by the Spacemen 3, which I'm not really hearing, but maybe that's where the nice blurriness comes from.

I'm looking at 3 stars for this; it's not something I'm going to run out and look for a copy of since I don't really listen to normal rock music much anymore. But it didn't make me want to turn it off.

Le Tigre! I've heard "Deceptacon" off this on the radio but never the whole thing, so let's get into it now.

And: Hooray for women doing chaotic-sounding, fun-yet-angry pop music. These are great songs, with just enough thought behind the lyrics and discordant crunching in the music to keep me happy. Extra points for the fabulous intentionally crap album cover.

5 stars

I have definitely heard The Joshua Tree enough times to be able to declare that I heard it before I died. We listened to this record constantly when it first came out; it had some inspiring instrumentation and was fun to sing along with while driving around. But then I got sick of it and haven't listened to it since. So it was fun to hear it again today, but I doubt I'll go back to it anytime soon.

Of course I have to mention that hearing "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" immediately called to mind the hilarious Negativland track "U2" that sampled that song and made fun of U2 a bit. At the time we thought it was absurd for Island Records to sue little Negativland over that? But they may have had a point, seeing as that's always the first thing I think of when I hear the original song.

3 stars for U2, 5 for Negativland

wtf, this incredibly tedious soft rock album was the fifth best-selling record in the UK in the 2000s?

1 star

Oh. Yeah, I really don't like music like this, at all. She has a lovely voice, the music is competent, but I just really don't like vocal-forward contemporary jazz-pop-whatever love music.

This whole album is like going to one of those high-end shopping malls in the 90s that had a piano and that's nice, it's fancy, there's music, but then someone starts singing and it's THIS, and you decide you really didn't need to buy a new jacket after all.

I genuinely hate this record, but I think it's me, not Norah, so I'm not going to disgrace her with the lowest rating.

Didn't know what to expect from this
"Festival Junction" starts out with a clarinet (?) that is a great tune and goes on for quite a while; then into a very swinging tune. This goes on for a good 10 minutes and is wonderful.
There are a couple of slower pieces, but they're nice bluesy stuff that's a pleasure to listen to, still with a beat. And the end - Diminuendo and Crescendo - are frenetic and great
This isn't the kind of music I usually listen to, but the whole thing was great - hey that's why people talk about Duke Ellington. Proud to be from DC, Ellington's city!

I love this record! Immediate five stars without even having to listen to it, but of course I will listen to it right now because I love this record.

I have to confess that I only heard the classic "Music Has the Right to Children" for the first time 2 or 3 years ago. We were listening to one of our usual freeform radio shows and the dj played "Aquarius." That track immediately grabbed me: the guy saying "Orange" in a quirky voice, the sampled children laughing, the woman counting.

And off to Bandcamp I went to get a copy of this record, and it's been on very frequent rotation ever since. It's a mesmerizing record that rewards close attention; headphones or a long highway drive. "Aquarius" stands out, of course, and also "Telephasic Workshop," with its stuttering sampled voices. But the whole thing is great, a nice blur of electronica with well-chosen, subtle samples, most with a constant beat.

Sixty-ten stars

Oh man this record was on CONSTANT rotation in my household when it first came out. A great collection of songs, with contributions from people like Kate Bush, Laurie Anderson, and Youssou N'Dour.

At this point I'm a little tired of "Sledgehammer," and I always thought "Big Time" was a little dumb. So 4 stars for this one

A very large number of weird, catchy little songs that would sound like they're from 1965 except they're all obscured by a hail of fuzzy, discordant noise. And they're all just a minute or two long, so nothing drags on.

5 stars, I love this record.

XTC is one of those quirky bands that I usually can only take so much of. There's more variety than I expected here, though.

But most importantly, this record has the great track "Dear God" on it, which I've always loved. If this whole album were as strong and angry as that song, I'd give it 5 stars. I've always loved that song.

So I'm not anti-Madonna in general, I know she had some fun songs back in the day. I appreciated the vaguely pro-trans language at the beginning of "What It Feels Like for a Girl," and one or two tracks had fun club music-y things going on that reminded me of Rozalla or whatever from the early 90s.

So some of this was ok? But most of it was a chore, with autotune, stupid lyrics, and as a bonus some faux-chanteusey nonsense in one of the songs.

2 stars. It would have been 1 star if I'd had to listen to the cover of "American Pie" that's on the extended version - I already despise the original, so threatening me with a cover of that song by Madonna is the kind of thing that would get me to confess in an interrogation. "Anything but that, I swear I'll talk!"

Hey, I had no idea this Beck album existed. A lot of this reminds me of his earlier material - indie with little hip-hop flavored sampled bits. Maybe a little more smoothed out.

"Qué Onda Guero" is a little cheesy, but it feels right. This is making me want to listen to actual hip-hop-inflected Mexican music instead, though. "Missing" is atmospheric; I like it a lot. It might be my favorite track on the record? But I also like the song "Farewell Ride," with its interesting cowboyish guitar.

The only thing on here that I didn't really take to was "Earthquake Weather," which sounded like some band from the 70s that I can't remember the name of.

4 stars - I'd listen to it again sometime.