Reviews by tipula

Huh, I've never heard of this band. The cover art made me wonder what was going on there and I didn't have high expectations for it. But it ended up being pretty interesting.

Some of it is very jam band, kinda like Little Feat or the Dead.
Other bits are more complex, with occasional hints of Tejano and Canterbury sounds dropped in here and there. So it looks like we have a new genre here, "Texan jam-prog."

I don't see myself reaching for it again, but it was a fairly enjoyable surprise.

3/5

Led Zeppelin II: a solid group of blues rock/metal tracks. It's an important record because of the influence it had on later work.

I don't really like Led Zeppelin the way I did once, so I found some of it (like the vocals) a little annoying. And at this point I really don't need to hear "Whole Lotta Love" again. But I did enjoy much of it, like "Ramble On."

3/5: objectively good but not really my thing these days

Yeah I'm sitting here singing along with "Jesus Doesn't Want Me For a Sunbeam." This record was on constant rotation in my household when it first came out.

I never play my old Nirvana records anymore, I guess I got a little tired of them and what I like to listen to has changed a lot since then. But I really enjoyed hearing this one again today. I think it feels fresher than the others because of the mix of covers and less-played originals and of course the acoustic setting.

4/5

I like the background music on a lot of this - the opening doomy-sounding electronics made me think that maybe this'll be another nice hip-hop surprise. But the vocals were kind of an annoying distraction for me. I'd be interested in hearing a remix of this as a purely instrumental album.

I know my opinion is affected by what Kanye is like these days, and it's certainly not uniformly terrible. But I can't get past a 2 on this one.

There are a couple of Elliott Smith songs that I hear now and then and really like, but sadly none of them are on this record.

I can tell that this is good for the genre, but I feel like it's more calm and ballad-y than I usually like. If we could give half points I'd say 3.5, but I think based on this one listen that I'll give it a 3.

When this record came out I was very anti-Elastica. But I think I was in my Coil phase at the time, so you don't want to have to trust then-me's judgment about Elastica.

So, my impression 30 years on? I still find it pretty annoying, like most of these songs felt like blander versions of other bands' similar music. Technically they did a fine job, but by the time I was 2/3 of the way through I started wishing it would end.

But "Stutter"'s good, and a couple of the other tracks were ok too. So, 3/5

I love qawwali music, so I was really pleased (and surprised) when this one came up. I knew a couple of tracks already from another Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan record that I've got that I think is a comp, not sure because it's been ages since I played it! Must do that more often.

4/5 because while I wouldn't play it all the time, it's really wonderful and mesmerizing music.

When I opened this up this morning I yelled "YES!"

Confession: since I wasn't really into punk at the time, I've only recently been catching up on the stuff that came out in the 80s while I was listening to New Wave and my old prog records. So, I've only had a copy of this record for a couple of years, and have come to really like it. It's great for driving around - just an all-around propulsive record, consistently good. My favorite track is "Jesus and Tequila," but the whole thing is great, 5/5

This record is all about "Peace Frog" for me, since it's one of only a handful of Doors songs that I still really like. So that was fun to hear again: "bloody red sun of fantastic LA"! I used to go to LA a lot for work, and I'd think of that song. But sure, it's also good to hear "Roadhouse Blues" and "Waiting for the Sun" from time to time, and even the songs that don't grab me as much are redeemed by the guitar and keyboards.

So: while I was much more inclined to listen to the Doors when I was 18 years old, today I ended up enjoying "Morrison Hotel" as a whole more than I thought I was going to.

3/5 though because for me it's mainly just about that one song

First time hearing this record; The Flaming Lips is one of those bands that I've heard on the radio periodically but never grabbed my attention enough to get me to buy one of their records.

The music on this album is interesting - unexpectedly symphonic. A couple tracks struck me as a little too sweet-sounding, but I can see how repeated listens could make them work in context with the rest of it.

The singer has an interesting voice that sounds a lot like Neil Young to me - but it's like Neil Young did some kind of multi-year ecstatic retreat and then stumbled out into the light, inspired to have a completely different kind of sound.

4/5 that could convert to 5/5 after listening to it some more

Much of this record is great - the intense music - the guitar, the bass!, and Morrissey's often heartbreaking lyrics.

What I was most looking forward to on this record was "How Soon is Now," though, which I swear was on the US version of this record, but it isn't on the version linked here since it wasn't on the original UK release. Too bad, I really like that song.

Despite my disappointment about not getting to hear "How Soon is Now," I've given this a 4/5, since it really is quite good.

There are a few tracks on this record that I've always liked, especially "[I Don't Want to Go to] Chelsea." Catchy tunes, cleverly rhymed lyrics.

There are a couple duds, though, and the subject matter is pretty repetitive. And I'm a little sick of "Radio, Radio."

Despite those complaints, I seem to be tapping my foot anyway - the beat is pretty irresistible. I'm leaning around 3.5 for this one, but I think I'll bump it up to 4 because I really do like "[I Don't Want to Go to] Chelsea."

These singers are wonderful - this is a cool choice for a Christmas record. But....

I guess for some people, no matter how many times they hear "Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer" in a given season they're still always filled with warm nostalgia for childhood Christmas mornings, and can't wait to hear it again. Aw, and now here's Frosty! They love that song!

But honestly, me? I really would be glad to never hear about Frosty again. And now it's the end of the season, when I'm looking forward to not hearing any of it for another 11 months. (Plus, Phil Spector, eew.)

They should have given me this record on December 1; I might have given it a 3 then.

2/5

If you can believe it, I've never heard this whole record before, just tracks like "I Wanna Be Your Dog" on the radio.

Most of this is fun loud garage/proto-punk stuff with great fuzzy guitar bits, which I love. I was mildly baffled at first by the 10-minute psychedelic track at the end of the first side that had with Iggy singing about his usual subject matter over sitar and Hindu chanting, but let's remember that this was recorded in 1969, not 1979. The second side is great - turn it up louder. Even louder.

Thank you 1001 albums generator, it was lots of fun listening to this today. An excellent break from the standard Christmas Eve day playlist.

5/5

There was a time when The Residents were my favorite thing in all the world. I've seen both them and Snakefinger live multiple times, was in the Residents Usenet group, used to tell my kid that his Christmas presents were from Santa Dog... I'm sure I could think of more examples of my complete Residents-induced derangement at the time.

So I was wondering why I had to dig this record up on YouTube; I know I had a copy of it at some point. Then I listened to it, and realized that other than "Constantinople," the vocals are rather consistently irritating, aren't they. I don't know why the 1001 guy chose this particular record for the book, since there are better ones from that period like Meet the Residents, Fingerprince, and Intermission from the Mole Trilogy; any of those would have gotten 5 stars from me.

Based on that I originally gave Duck Stab a 3, but on listening to it again today, I was overwhelmed with Residents nostalgia, and enjoyed it much more. I also compared it in my head with other records I've since given a 3 to, and realized that surely this is more enjoyable than Depeche Mode or The Who!! It's just a slightly less enjoyable fabulous mess than the rest of the Residents' albums that I have, which probably would get 7 stars. So I regret the error of my ways and have upgraded this album to a 5.

So of course I've heard individual tracks off this record, but it's mainly been in the context of those end-of-year "best 1,000 songs since 1960" type radio shows, sandwiched between Oasis and Janis Joplin or whatever. It's completely different to listen to the whole album and really pay attention to it. Lauryn Hill's voice is both strong and beautiful (I like this version of "Killing Me Softly" better than the original), and the way the three of them work together makes every track imaginative and forceful.

5/5 stars for this one. The generator is turning me into a hip-hop fan!

(I have to add that I'm happy to have finally heard the track that was sampled on that song that then ended up being redone as The Gilla Band's "Why They Hide Their Bodies Under My Garage")

This is the first record that I've gotten on this project that was a new, wonderful discovery. I had no idea who Coldcut was, but when I saw that this record had both Mark E. Smith and Queen Latifah on it, my first reaction was "wait, what?" and then I immediately put it on.

Here we have some dance-y music incorporating lots of sampled speech and sounds, which was weirder and more interesting to me than a lot of the stuff in that genre that got airplay here in the US. (I somehow managed to miss getting into the whole techno thing, so I don't have many referents there.)

So, this was very fun; while many of the records I've been fed so far in this project have taken a bit of an effort to get through, I was sorry when this one ended. If I ever find a copy, I'll buy it. Until then, at least I have Youtube -- 5/5

So I feel very strongly that what made The Smiths as good as they were was the music, not the vocals, and this record reinforces that opinion. Plus he's turned out to be kind of politically terrible, which I can't help but be influenced by. So yeah, obviously not a big fan here.

However, despite all the negativity in the previous paragraph, this really wasn't as irritating as I feared it might be. So, 2/5.

I've heard Elliot Smith tracks here and there on the freeform/college-type stations that I tend to listen to, but haven't ever listened to an entire record of his. So I appreciated the nudge today.

I really like his voice, and there's something about the instrumentation that I also like - kind of subtle but interesting at the same time. I don't know if I'll buy this record, but I liked all of it - so, 4/5.

Ha ha this is what I get for telling someone "I like The Mekons more than Bob Dylan" yesterday. What can I say, everything by him has always sounded kind of samey to me, and then he takes out the harmonica, etc etc.

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the first couple tracks on this record, acoustic things that I wasn't very familiar with. But it stopped being fun around the halfway point, with a number of tracks like "Mr. Tambourine Man" that I've already heard enough times for an entire lifetime. There was also the issue that somebody in the Youtube comments brought up, that the mixing wasn't great on the electric songs so the singing was obscured by the music, fairly average blues-rock stuff.

tldr: while the first half of the record had me thinking "this is more interesting than I thought it was going to be, I'm going to give it three stars," by the midpoint it started dragging and ends with a two. Not entirely Bob's fault, but he's got a Nobel so he probably won't mind this too much.