Reviews by uhhhellurr

fun album. obviously, the highlight is the epic title track, but there's some other great stuff on here to. now i have come to expect that every emerson, lake and palmer album is going to have some weird kitschy song on it that sounds like a ragtime. but i mean talk about three dudes firing on all cylinders. the musicianship is insane.

pretty neat album. obviously i know ravi from his adjacency to the beatles, and in particular, george harrison. but this album predates the beatles by many years. but what's neat here is that you can definitely see the influence on george and the beatles. there are even passages that sound remarkably close to beatles songs. you have to wonder if this album in particular was a huge influence on george. but beatles aside, this is a really neat album! hindustani music has such a wealth of interesting sounds and rhythms. what i found particularly interesting is this album is clearly made with the intent for western audiences to listen to it, so ravi does a lot of explanations of how the music works and is constructed. very neat!

a nice surprise! i obviously knew the one big song off of this and still adore it from when i first saw it on VH1 when i was in middle school. the rest of the album was brand new to me and i enjoyed it! i think if you know 'take me out' you're not going to be surprised by the rest of the album, but it's really solid and catchy.

i'll start off by saying, i don't really associate the ramones with punk entirely. the fact that it seems like they have a mid-60s pop song on every one of their albums makes it seem to me like they are aggressive pop rock. that being said, this shit rules, man. every song is short, sweet, and to the point. maybe the point is about sniffing glue or hitting someone with a baseball bat or kids losing their minds. but the album is fun as hell to listen to. the hooks are great and it just sort of oozes cool to me. i also sort of reject the idea of this album being "repetitive" because oh my god it's 29 minutes long. if you can't stomach this for less than a half hour, i don't know how you can stomach anything.

this one takes me back a little. 'two weeks' was a heavy hitter for me at the time, so it was nice to come back to it. i bought this album at the time on the strength of my love of 'two weeks' and i remember liking it but not having very strong feelings about it. upon relistening to it now, i kind of mostly feel the same. there is clearly one track that is above all the others. there's nothing bad here. it's an interesting album that feels akin to perhaps a fleet foxes at points, but also has its own identity. there are some really interesting, creative passages here. but the bulk of this album is good, not great. i still like it!

i'm sorry, this is now my 3rd nick cave album (4th if you count birthday party) and i am really starting to think i really do not understand this at all. i don't really find his music to be compelling or haunting, i just mostly find it incredibly dull and a bore. a pretentious dude droning on for over an hour. not for me.

man this one is going to occupy a weird place. i actually kind of enjoyed this, in a weird way. not the first time i've been exposed to ornette coleman's music so i kind of knew what to expect. the music is chaotic but fun and fascinating to listen to. the intensely wet production here definitely adds to the chaos. lots of squeaks and screaming (almost literally) saxophones here. but also at the same time, i kept checking to see how close i was to being done listening to this one. it's fun but as an entire listen, it does sort of begin to feel like a chore.

nice album. i don't have a lot of experience with tori's music, but i found this album to live in a comfortable place between kate bush and ben folds. her voice is quite nice and i love that the production feels sparse, yet big at times. the songs here are pretty good, with a lot of seemingly personal lyrics about some tough subjects. i think overall, the package is pretty good and i could see it growing on me with subsequent listens.

yeah this one kind of slaps. thin lizzy has one of my favorite sounds of a band of all time and it really holds up in a live format. the band has a lot of energy and the setlist is pretty killer. it's probably not all that mind-blowing, but it's a hell of a lot of fun to listen to. my only qualm is that huey lewis was somehow involved in the making of this album, which feels illegal.

genuinely one of my favorite albums of all time. it's very strange, it's very fragmented, sometimes it's a little rough to listen to. but todd rundgren has a knack for a melody and, here, is unabashedly himself. goofy, awkward, and on a lot of drugs. a lot of times it feels kind of zappa-ish, but to me this album is a lot more "poppy" than zappa usually is. the production can be a bit insane, but also extremely ahead of its time. there's nothing else that really sounds like this album. don't let studio fuckery like 'dog fight giggle' become your lasting memory of this album. 'when the shit hits the fan/sunset boulevard' 'zen archer' and 'just one victory' are all what this album can be and should be remembered for.

really enjoyed this! i've liked other stuff i've heard by fairport convention, so i knew i would probably like this too, but i think this may be my favorite that i've heard. it's definitely got that folky feel but it's a little more rock-y at points, something that i really liked. sandy denny's voice is one of my favorites so that was also a plus. really great album that i am definitely coming back to!

i've heard great things about this one for years but never listened to it. i have to say, it's really not my thing. i took french in high school but have lost most of it so the narrative is a little lost on me (admittedly). musically, it's interesting and there are some really cool segments ('en melody' is particularly funky and cool) but a lot of it just didn't really grab me. all of the 'melody' vocals are kind of jarring every time they pop up. the plot, as i understand it (once again, not getting this firsthand) seems kind of creepy and in a modern context i'm not sure how to take it. at the end of the day, i think it probably just isn't for me.

i love this album. it's obviously not going to be everyone's tea, but i do think this is probably the most accessible zappa/mothers album. it was my first exposure to them years ago and i kind of fell in love with it. it's a bit goofy and zany and there's lots of quirky shit on here, but when push comes to shove, it's really fun and really strong musically. to me, 'trouble every day' and 'any way the wind blows' are terrific. true to the album's name, there are some really fun 'freak out' sections on here, but also it's a freaky album (in a 1960s sense, an album for Freaks). yeah man, this is the good stuff.

yeah this is my shit. a british folk musician loudly singing about how great unions are. this album felt like i was listening to the british woody guthrie. aesthetically feels like the progenitor of frank turner. not only do i vibe with the tunes on that level, but he has a knack for a catchy hook too. definitely adding this to my rotation!

really neat melding of music from all over the world. feels like it's one part mississippi delta blues, one part western african rock. i'm really impressed by the musicianship here. some really fun riffs and grooves here. this is the sort of stuff i love to get in this project - something fun, something unique, something i'm glad i listened to before i died.

i'm a real newbie when it comes to ambient music, but as i understand it, this is sort of where it officially starts (at least in terms of a name). i've listened to other ambient music and enjoyed it, and i definitely enjoyed this. it's really sparse and calming and well, ambient. it's not something i would ever really listen to on repeat or anything like that, but for what it does, it does really well. it has a real calming effect that i think is neat.

can't be unbiased about this one. i adore this album, even with all of its quirks and bizarre choices and its notorious musique concrete behemoth. as a huge beatles fan, this album has always fascinated me. it is a fascinating look at a band that is starting to fracture. john and paul aren't really working with one another anymore and it's plain to see here: there's not a lot of co-mingling in their songwriting and there's a lot of "solo" work here, production and performance-wise too. ringo quits the band. george martin leaves abruptly on vacation. john is like, doing heroin and stuff. yoko is here and the other beatles don't really like it. they just got back from a crazy meditation trip to india. this album is hell for the beatles and it sounds like it. but that's why i love it. it's not a perfect album. it's quirky. it's weird. but that's what makes it great to me. the world's best band making a fractured all over the place album. there is no other album like it.

i'm sure there's more to the artistry here but this genuinely just sounds like a guy fucking around with garageband for an hour. there is nothing interesting here. at best it's the most barely-middling electronic music you've ever heard, but at worst it's the most boring, sparce beats with a bunch of reverb. a lot of these are barely songs. quite frankly, at times, it feels like it's barely music. is this a joke?

I won't say I am biased, but I grew up around a lot of Emmylou Harris' music growing up as my mom was a huge fan of hers. Emmylou's voice is really great and there's a solid selection of songs here. My only complaint is that I think she has better track listings in her career, and it's not my favorite mix of songs. That being said, she still is a great singer and this is a fairly enjoyable listen.

cool album. jacques brel has an iconic voice and this is a pretty decent performance of his classic chanson style. the album is tres francais, so if you're not into classic french music, you're probably in for a bad time. i still think it's a nice album, even if you consider it background music. but to me, it's more than background music. it's a classic example of what french music can be.