Reviews by uhhhellurr

an interesting album. i've never heard of it or david ackles before, but seeing that it's a singer-songwriter album from the early 70s, i figured it had a pretty good chance of being up my alley, since i enjoy a lot of that kind of music from that era. i'm not really sure how to feel about this one. it wasn't bad! it reminded me a lot of randy newman or van dyke parks (definitely more van dyke parks in terms of song style and production style). it's interesting and it definitely feels like the concept of 'american gothic' is ever present. it feels like it's trying to rise to the occasion of an aaron copland. i just wish i enjoyed listening to it more because it is a fairly fascinating album.

look, it's a pretty good album. i like the clash. there are some really good tracks on here (i particularly like 'white riot' and 'remote control'). but we all know this is not the pinnacle of the clash. it's good! it's not great.

really solid album. fun thrashy metal. i'm learning to love metal but i did enjoy this one. my only gripe here is that i don't know that i really like dave mustaine's singing. sometimes he sounds like a cartoon character, and not in a cool fun way. but overall, i would say i enjoyed this one!

really cool, really chill album. the exact sort of thing i love to come across in this project. something completely different. it's pretty refreshing. the musicianship is really nice and i really loved the full band moments (especially when the fuzz guitar comes in). just a super neat album!

reading through reviews of this album, i think a lot of the importance of the everly brothers is lost on modern audiences. yeah, this music is juvenile and a bit eye-rollingly too much about love, but it's also music for teenagers of the era. you can tie a direct line from this stuff to a lot of modern pop music. but what makes the everly brothers the most special to me is their harmonies, which are unmatched for the era and were immediately influential on a lot of their successors (the beatles, et al.).

all that said, this isn't my favorite crop of songs from the everlys. but i do adore their sound and there are some Stone Cold Classics on here ('love hurts,' 'cathy's clown')

maybe the most classic of all classic western albums. this album puts the western in country and western music. the songs are short, sweet, and catchy. marty robbins' voice is so great and pleasant to listen to. to be honest, i think marty robbins was the vocalist early elvis was most trying to be when he sang ballads. just a really solid album.

i'm a little biased because i grew up with this one. this is one of my dad's favorite albums and i have loved this album for a long time. what's crazy to me about this album is that steve winwood is in his early 20s! anyways, this album is terrific. the first side, in particular, is almost perfect to me. i adore all three songs. the second side i have learned to love more recently, but on this listen, i really liked it as well. the album is jazzy, rocky, and even folky, and is a pretty good mix and is never dull. to be honest, i feel like this one gets underrated a bit. but then again, i'm a bit biased.

alright, i don't think this one was quite for me. there were moments on here that i really liked, but this one is a bit too dissonant and unpleasant for me to really enjoy. mostly this is from the vocals, which often are group vocals doing dissonant harmonies, which was a bit hard for me to get down with (especially when the one guy is hitting the falsetto, my lord). the instrumentation was pretty alright, but i had trouble with the vocals. to be clear, i don't think this album is supposed to be easily consumed, it is definitely an album that is trying to be challenging. and it achieves that pretty decently well. but i'm not sure i really enjoyed the challenge here.

i'm not too familiar with richard and linda thompson outside of i know they are big names in the folk scene of the 70s (-ish). this album is very english folk forward, which is not typically my preferred style of folk, but the album is very pleasant to listen to. i do have to say, though, my favorite tracks were the tracks that had the full band on them, which provided a much more interesting energy to me than the straighter fare. i also particularly liked linda's voice, which is so nice to listen to.

cool album. really teeters on the warbly indie psychedelic music i personally really like. that being said, although i liked the sound and the production, none of the songs really left too much of an impression on me. i did enjoy the intro into 'hail bop' 'waveforms' and 'life's a beach' and also found interesting the more egyptian inspired cut 'skies over cairo' but the rest of the album was strictly good, not great.

pretty cool modern funk album. there was a lot of catchy and dancable stuff on here and enjoyed it! it was fairly consistently good and i did really enjoy listening to it. for me, it didn't really rise to the occasion of "truly great" but it is definitely fun!

there are some pretty decent moments on here, but overall, i was pretty unimpressed. to be clear, there was nothing truly awful here. mostly just too dull for me. no real highs, no real lows. very in the middle. the highlight to me was 'down on me' which i thought was a fun song that reminded me a little bit of the replacements. but otherwise, not much going on here for me.

the inclusion of horns here is pretty interesting and unique for a punk-ish (non-ska) band but really most of this album i could take or leave. there are some really interesting callbacks to 60s rock here, like in 'used' and 'misbeaten,' but really i find this album is trying to do too much in too many directions for me to really appreciate any of it. one minute it's a bashy punk song, the next minute it's a 60s sunshine pop song. don't know what the vision was here. feels too incoherent. still, it's a fine enough album, but i wasn't into it too much.

fairly new to metallica but this is the first metal album i have listened to where i actually see why people call this one a classic. every song on this is full of thrashy goodness and the musicianship is really great. the highlight for me was the title track, which is thrashy and has a lot of great "change-up" moments.

gonna be honest. this one really grew on me. i'm not a huge punk guy, but i appreciate the genre for what it is. i have heard the name black flag a million times and have, of course, seen the logo in countless hot topic stores on the t-shirt wall, but have never actually listened to them until now. really fun, really frenetic, really aggressive. i liked the second half of the album more than the first half.

really cool album. miriam makeba's voice is incredible and this is such a nice and sweet version of african music that has been made for a western audience. this is the exact sort of stuff that i wish there was more of on this list. the only thing on here that i think spoils the album a little bit is the track 'one more dance' which sounds like she is duetting with ed wynn's character from mary poppins. but otherwise, this is pretty stellar!

a classic for a reason. this is bob dylan at his (first?) peak and it truly is a great album. front to back, it just is a pinnacle of its era. great songwriting, great musicianship. lots of highlights here but my favorite has always been 'one of us must know (sooner or later)' and lately i've particularly grown fond of 'sad-eyed lady of the lowlands'

really cool, really chill side A and a chill and evolving side B. miles' trumpet playing is, of course, top notch, and it is cool to see this stop on his evolution from jazz icon to fusion innovator. the moment side B builds to that funky rock-ish groove is great! neat stuff.

kinda dramatic, kinda cinematic, really kinda boring. if I had a nickel for every time this list gave me demented circus music!

I have a strange relationship with Elvis' music. he is the alpha to a lot of my favorite artist's omega. without him, they would not be. most musical artists in the 20th and 21st century would not be. and yet, I am rarely impressed by his music. it's alright. it's not bad. there was nothing here that was bad. and yet, there was not a lot that I felt very strongly about either. the highlight for me, by a long shot, is 'such a night.' but the rest I could take or leave.