Reviews by tipula

These tracks all have great rhythmic rapping and interesting, varied sampled stuff in the background. Every song is different and interesting, musically. The only thing tiresome about this is the lyrics. I think I’ve had too many rap albums lately or something, because the endless litany of “I’m cool, I’m rich, I can rap better than you, I’m going to kick yall’s ass” stuff got tiresome after a while and I started to hope it would end. I’ll give it a couple weeks and give this another chance, but for now it’s a 3.

A marvelous record, the kind of thing that makes me say “yay, I know I'm going to like this” when I reveal my album of the day. I never had a copy of this Siouxsie album, but I of course know several of the songs like "Spellbound" and of course "Halloween." This is what I love about this project - there are so many albums from the 80s and 90s that I never got around to going back to because I was off into some different thing.

The rock/post-punk/whatever music I like best has a certain scary movie kind of tension to it, and this is just that sort of thing. I'm glad to hear some of the tracks I hadn't heard at all or in a very long while, like "Into the Light" (with a bit in the background that reminded me of some Eno song that I can't remember at the moment), "Monitor," and "Night Shift." And “Sin in My Heart," with the guitar that sounds like a piece of metal being struck. Oh, and the frenzied ending to "Voodoo Dolly."

Well ok the whole album, really, and particularly the guitar.

Wait, is that "The Great Gates of Kiev" in the intro?

I liked this record a lot; it was muddy and random and original. I imagine if I were young and Black I would probably relate to this record like it was something that hit deep inside me - but despite not being any of those things, I found it pretty compelling. Every track had something interesting in the mix that was going on in the background of all the ferocious rapping.

Ah yes, this album. Do I want to listen to this every day? No. Are there a whole lot of other punk bands that I’d rather listen to than this? Absolutely. But it is a solid collection of raucous songs.

"Bodies,” though - it makes me want tell them all to fuck right off with that. It's an incredibly forceful song, though. Can I dislike the lyrics and the singer, and yet think that something is a good song anyway, in the way that a good song is something that keeps your attention and gets its point across? I suppose I can.

This record is kinda hip-hop but feels more like dance-pop, which means it isn’t going to be my favorite kind of thing. There are some interesting synth and percussion ideas here and there, though. And I really like her voice, but unfortunately I kept hoping that this particular record would expand its boundaries a bit the way I remember hearing on some later record that she did that I picked up in the mid-90s, but, this one didn’t stray too far. I have to admit I just didn’t really get into it.

Hey I've got a copy of this record, dating back to when I first heard the song “Krautrock” on the radio in the 70s. But somehow I never listened to it very often; I guess I wasn’t ready for it yet, because I’m really enjoying it now. I listened to it once this morning, but realized as I began writing this that I needed to pay closer attention to it, so now I’m listening to it a second time on headphones.

I want to say that “Krautrock” is my favorite on here, partly because it exemplifies the mesmerizing, repetitive genre that ended up being named after it and is still a favorite genre for me, and partly because it’s just a great toe-tapping track (up until it starts sounding like threatening psych soundtrack music, which is also great). But the whole album is fantastic.

Ha ha here comes “The Sad Skinhead,” with the screaming, the dancey strumming, and the - xylophone? Whatever is going on here, it’s disorienting enough to keep me happy.

“Jennifer” is a relatively “normal” song, but still, there are symphonic noises shifting out of tune, raspberry electronic blurps happening in the percussion, and a fun excursion at the end that sounds like the cat has gotten onto the piano again.

The rest of it is all marvelous as well. We’ve got a disturbing piano with something confusing and symphonic competing with it, a sound like a car full of wasps, a freewheeling jazz saxophone and a bass, a compelling shifting repeating rhythm that becomes more dizzying as a track approaches its close (and then just stops mid-note), some nice off-tone string stuff with clock noises, and - a church organ? And then it all closes with “A Bit of a Pain,” which would sound like a normal rock song except for the periodic blorts of electronic noise and woman speaking Finnish (?) that elevate it.

This album is full of delightful surprises. I advise anyone who doesn’t quite get it the first time around to put their headphones on and listen to it again.

I’ll admit to having been a bit of a snob about Green Day - I mean I was already in my 40s when this record came out, so I’ve never really been their intended audience. But hey, I’m kinda enjoying this. It’s not very adventurous, musically or lyrically, and the social criticism is mild, but still, much of it is better than I’ve always assumed it would be.

“St. Jimmy” is probably what I liked most on here. The music on this track is a little more frenzied, and the vocals not miked so prominently. To me the best punk rock is a bunch of short songs that are a big wall of noise and you have to work a little to figure out what they’re saying.

I loved ELP when I was a tot, even went to see them later on when they were touring on "Brain Salad Surgery." But eventually I moved on to more jazz-inflected prog like Soft Machine, Gong, and such, and never really looked back. So this is the first time I've listened to "Tarkus" in a very long while. And this will also be the last time I listen to it, hopefully.

Emerson was an incredibly gifted keyboard player, and Palmer does nice things on the drums. But I've come a point where I really can't stand Greg Lake’s singing and vaguely mystical lyrics. And while there are some nice instrumental passages on this record, as a whole it’s kind of a blunt instrument - altogether too much.

Best track: "Infinite Space," an instrumental.

Not the sort of music I usually listen to, but I have to say that every bit of it is well done. And also the sadness of losing Dolly Parton - who again, I never listened to, but had HUGE appreciation for because of her essential goodness, more and more examples of which I’ve been hearing of in the past 24 hours. And of course Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris both have amazing voices and make a great contribution to this album. (And ok, “Wildflowers” is making me cry.)

I never had this record despite having been very enthusiastic about Led Zeppelin when I was a teen. There's good stuff throughout. Some of it feels rougher and more like straight-up blues (of course with weird effects) than their later stuff, which I might not have liked when I was 14 years old but can appreciate now.

"Dazed and Confused" is of course pretty great, with all the spacey weirdness in the middle, and then the drums kick in. And "Black Mountain Side," with the trad-sounding guitar, and wait, is that a tabla?

Robert Plant will of course always be Robert Plant, so we have our share of bay-bay! aaaaaa-haah WO-MAAAAAN here like on all of their other records. I had to skip past the end of "You Shook Me" when he went a little too far with it for my patience.

Summary: Yep, this is Led Zeppelin all right. I enjoyed a lot of it, but don’t intend to dig back into it again anytime soon.

So I’ve never listened to this record in its entirety because I’ve been irritated by the song “Blister in the Sun” since the very first time I heard it 40-whatever years ago. I made it through the whole song this morning, though, so be impressed with me. No, that didn’t improve my opinion.

The Violent Femmes have a slight resemblance to the Modern Lovers, except that the singer doesn’t have Jonathan Richman’s sincerity and quirky sense of humor. So it all just ends up being annoying.

Wait though, “Gone Daddy Gone” is fun. I was going to smack a 2 onto this record until that came on.

Another album of enthusiastically played bluesy/trad music that would be best with a pint of good beer in front of one. The fast ones are fun piano, fiddle, sax wailing away; perfectly competent. The slow ones are… slow. I think this record is another example of “you’ll like this if you like things like this.” I played it while prepping dinner and processing some photos, and it was fine for that.

One song sounded exactly like “Werewolves of London,” except with lyrics that were a complaint about things all sounding the same, which I guess was on point.

3 stars

I was terrified of this album, having only known Joanna Newsom as a squeaky-voiced person who occasionally crops up in certain kinds of quiet indie-folk radio sets. But when I read in the wiki that it was recorded by Steve Albini and mixed by Jim O'Rourke, I said wait, what?!

So: surprise! This Joanna Newsom album isn't tedious at all. Maybe my negative opinion was based on songs from some different album? First of all, the shortest one of these songs is seven minutes long - the whole album consists of just five long, atmospheric tracks. This means that they flow back and forth interestingly, interacting with her harp and a great accompanying ensemble that sometimes matches the singing but then dissolves into marvelous dissonance.

Her voice takes a little getting used to, but I discovered that when you pay attention, it really works with the material, particularly since her lyrics are so interesting and inventive. “Sawdust and Diamonds” made me realize that these songs are like old epic poems rather than something to have in the background while doing the dishes or chatting at a restaurant.

I’m very surprised that I’m giving a Joanna Newsom album 5 stars, since if you’d asked me to guess my rating before hearing this I’d probably have said a 3, or even a 2. But after all, that’s what this project is for.

I win: I got two late-70s NYC art punk records in a row! (Yesterday was "Marquee Moon")

This was my favorite record for a while in 1978, but I haven't heard it in ages. Despite that, I'm currently singing along with every song. "I'm painting! I'm painting again!"

I like these quirky early Talking Heads albums the best. This is a great record - the jangly bouncy music, the puzzling lyrics, Byrne's weird vocals. I was wondering whether I’d still be a little tired of their version of “Take Me to the River” since it got so much airplay at the time, but no, it’s great. That was admittedly nearly 50 years ago, after all.

Favorite track: “The Big Country,” which I’m always reminded of whenever I fly out west and look out the window of the airplane. But really, it’s the whole thing.

I see - I see no - EVIL!

Ahhhhhhh this record. It occurs to me that I haven’t listened to it since Tom Verlaine died, and we listened to it constantly and cried whenever the title track came on in 2023, though. This is a large part of what I mean when I say I'm grateful for what happened in rock music in 1977.

The title track is magnificent - the way it goes along like a normal song but then has that break that starts with the guitar - and then the bass joins - and then the drum - and it builds - and builds - and then it dissolves into a delicate thing that sounds like the dawn. And then! it starts up again

Oh, and there’s a second side too

257) Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Fever to Tell - 4/5
These songs are short, and the music is fun and thrashy. I liked “Maps” like everybody else does, of course, with the more restrained vocals and the jingly repetitive guitar. But also “Pin,” with its video with the insects, and “No No No” with its dub percussion thing.

Sometimes it all felt a little - forced? cheesy? But around the 4th track it started to grow on me, like oh right when they’re doing this cheesy rockstar thing it’s maybe on purpose, kind of like a The Cramps sort of thing; so then it was ok.

I’m not running off to download this so I can listen to it all the time, but I liked several of these tracks much more than I thought I was going to. And I’d rather listen to screamy-thrashy than most other genres, so that alone brings it up to a 4.

My prediction that this would be the kind of bland vocal pop music that I don’t usually like wasn’t completely off base. But some of it turned out to be less conventionally melodic and more interesting than usual for this genre, with some of the lyrics complex enough to make me want to look them up later on. I doubt I’ll return to this, but I’m glad to have improved my unfounded previous opinion of her work.

Favorite track: White Dress, which was quite poignant while not being cloying, and had a great video.

I probably hadn't heard this whole album since the 70s, and I don't know if I've ever paid close attention to it track-by-track rather than hearing it on the radio or in the background of some party. I thought I might give it a 4 because of its length, but on listening to it closely, I can’t see giving it anything less than 5 stars.

Hendrix was such an amazing guitarist that even material that in other people's hands wouldn't be all that interesting, like “Little Miss Strange” and “ Let the Good Times Roll,” are set on fire here.

I’ve always loved "Crosstown Traffic,” with its very consistent string of traffic metaphors.
And Voodoo Chile of course is very solid electric blues. I love that it's 15 minutes long, with the drums, organ, and guitar interweaving in that mesmerizing way.

1983 (A Merman I Should Be) is another good tune with the spacey jingly percussion break. And whoa I didn't remember that "Still Raining, Still Dreaming" was on here too.

Hendrix's "All Along the Watchtower" to me is the definitive version. Wait, you say Bob Dylan wrote this song? Huh

Finally, wikipedia reminds me of “as was common with multi-LP albums, sides A and D were pressed back to back on the same platter, likewise sides B and C.” That drove those of us who just had regular manual turntables nuts.

Here’s Neil Young album #4 - just two more to go. Sometimes this project feels like an endurance test.

But that’s not fair - these guys are good musicians, and it’s enjoyable in that way that you’d enjoy a country rock band if you were several pints in at a noisy bar with some friends on a hot summer night. It does feel like a live band, with some buzziness and long instrumental jams. Sure, this is a great album. But I probably should be experiencing it with beer rather than coffee.

Standard early-70s country/blues rock. I appreciated the fact that I've managed to avoid being overexposed to this record over the past 50 plus years like I have with some other CSNY-adjacent stuff. The playing is good, though a couple tracks approached a little too closely to soft rock for my taste, and I listened to the bluesy tracks thinking "why listen to this when we have people like Muddy Waters to listen to." But still, it was largely a workable album, for folks who are in the mood for songs like this.

"Fallen Eagle" was the most interesting song for me on here, since I was following the lyrics from the perspective of being here in the future where eagles have had federal protection for quite a while and therefore are pretty numerous in places like here near the Potomac River (in Manassas, even), and in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. But maybe it's a metaphor? Or maybe it’s a warning.