Reviews by uhhhellurr

this, in my opinion, is the stones at their best. the album has all of the qualities of what makes a great stones album without none of the bloat of some of their (one of their) highly acclaimed albums. the album comes out with a blaze of aggression and keeps the attitude going. 'sway' is one of my secret favorite stones songs, and 'wild horses' is one of my not-secret favorite stones songs. even when the album downturns to the more acoustic "traditional" blues sound, like "you gotta move" the album doesn't quit. what makes the stones the stones is the oomph their albums give, and this is one of the oomphiest albums around. one of my favs!

the first three songs are all-timers. there's a reason they get played to death on classic rock radio. the rest of the album, in my opinion, is good, not great. nothing bad here, but nothing as special as the opening three tracks. pretty good album overall, but it feels pretty formulaic after a while. the musicianship here is great, in particular the guitar playing is iconic. the production here is impeccable. brad delp's vocals are incredible. it might be one of the best sounding records of all time. all that said, a very good album front to back, if not a bit cliche.

this was a really fascinating album. obviously a lot of it is voices and altered voices (nearly all of it?) and the music can be a little bit challenging at times, but i found it all fairly compelling. it's an album that sounds cool. although i think at points it's definitely difficult to listen to. i had never listened to bjork before and often i hear her spoken in the same breath as yoko ono, and honestly i do not see the similarity between this and yoko's works (i do enjoy yoko as well) beyond "woman with unconventional voice is making weird music" - all that being said, i did enjoy my time with this one.

boy, this is a bit of a mixed bag. sometimes i can't get past the lead vocals, sometimes the instrumentation is a little too avant-garde for my liking, sometimes the songs are really cool. the ending of the final track sounds like a cat is jumping on a keyboard. i still think overall, i liked it, but it is definitely a bit of a mixed bag. maybe it would grow on me with repeated listens or maybe only partially.

yeah sorry, this one just ain't for me. i think it's a case of "you had to be there" - or maybe "you had to be a depressed and angry kid in middle school when this came out." in general, i think the production is pretty solid on this one. the musicianship is definitely there. i'm just not very into the vocals here, either the screaming or the rapping. the scream-singing is technically better and i think evokes a lot more emotion, but the rapping is baffling, since it is not particularly well rapped, written, or, quite frankly, good. then we get to the lyrics which are really, REALLY not my bag. i understand a lot of people are attached to this stuff and it resonates with them, but for me it's the opposite. maybe i am too privileged to have never had my angst manifest in this direction, but to be honest, i find it quite alienating. even at my worst, i don't think i've ever felt quite like the vibe that this album gives off, maybe i'm just lucky, but man it just does not resonate with me.

marvin may not be at his best here but he is pretty damn close to it. the vast majority of the album is great as hell and the only "bad" parts are okay if you can deal with some prime early-mid-70s explicit moaning. only thing i will say is i'm not sure why 'keep gettin' it on' is so close to the title track, but i guess it bookends the sides, so it's alright. but yeah, front to back this is a classic for a reason. and it's a lot shorter than i remember!

oh my god? talk about an album that i never would have been exposed to otherwise that i was absolutely blown away by. every second of this is a fabulously funky fusion of funk and brazilian music. there is not a bad moment on here, it is just dripping in sweat in the best kind of way the entire length of the album. i will definitely return to this one! really awesome stuff.

what can i say, cube does it again. i really jive with the production on ice cube's records. really cool, really funky. ice cube's rapping is aggressive and he sounds cool as all hell when he's rapping. i think as with a lot of other rap of this era, it is a little bit dated in terms of "acceptable" terms etc. but the content of his rapping is still on point and still extremely relevant 30+ years later. whereas 'ameriKKKa's most wanted' gets a little too caught up in the whole "ice cube is a sexist" thing, i think this one is a lot more focused on the political statements, etc. which i think makes for a better, harder hitting experience.

i would say in general, deep purple tends to be music i don't really care about - i first encountered 'machine head' in this project and wasn't wowed by it. it just really isn't my music. so going into this one, i was sort of expecting more of the same, but i think ultimately, i like this one better. to me it's got more of a raw rock energy that machine head doesn't. it feels a little more rough around the edges, which i like. to me, it sounds like if you put the doors on steroids. just very frenetic, and i appreciated it more than what feels like the more premeditated 'machine head'

i never listened to ac/dc in middle school so this music really hasn't resonated with me. it's funny to me that the only song on this album i knew ahead of time was the title track and, quite frankly, it's the lamest song on here. the rest of the album really doesn't do it for me a whole lot. solid enough hard rock. the sound is better than i feel the songs are. just really makes me feel like music a middle schooler would like. ah well, i gave it a shot.

of course, i knew the big song off of this album before listening, but i kind of wish the whole song was as fun as it. 'groove is in the heart' is so infectious, catchy, and upbeat, it makes the entire rest of the album feel kind of lethargic and uninteresting in comparison. the sampling and production here is cool and i think the vocal performance from lady miss kier is pretty good but the sum of the parts here is just kind of blah. i really was hoping i would like this more.

pretty solid album but i think it's a little too serious and pretentious for me. i do enjoy this era of synth-driven music, and i greatly enjoyed the sounds on this one, as well as the production, but i found the sounds themselves a bit lacking. still was enjoyable, but not really my favorite.

i'm not really a big metal guy at all, but i appreciate this era of metal a lot more than the more modern sound. i love the rawness of it. particularly the energy of the guitars and the drums. this album does this well, but i don't really care for the overdramatic spin on this one (edgy? not really, maybe for the time). also none of the songs stood out to me in any way. so, ultimately, like the sound, don't really care about the music that's here. not bad, not awful, not great.

every yes album i have encountered just has the air of 'coolness' - the production, the musicianship, the performances just sound cool. on this album, they employ a lot more acoustic music than i would normally associate with yes, but it still works well and i love seeing their versatility and having it succeed. of course, the famous track on here ('i've seen all good people') is great, but to me the stars of this album are the bookends ('yours is no disgrace' and 'perpetual change') which are great early prog gems. look, you pretty much know what you're in for with yes, and i am totally on board with it.

this is one i've been meaning to listen to for a while now. listening to this album, you can tell its dna has been passed on to many modern artists, particularly the women-driven indie rock of the last decade plus. it has a rawness that i think was unique for the time but has been emulated for decades at this point. from a standpoint of production, i did enjoy the slightly raw sound. i thought her lyrics were honest but i did feel like not all of the songs landed with me. that being said, there are a few on here that are fantastic, such as, 'never said' - which i think is an all-timer. all that being said, for me, this one is good, not great. i think with time, i can definitely grow to love it, but as it stands right now, it was not out of the park for me.

despite being a relatively big neil young fan, i have not listened to a breadth of his music, including this one. what i really liked about this is that this album has a nice balance between neil's acoustic side and hard rock side, which culminates in the bookended versions of 'my my, hey hey'

i also enjoyed the fact that it sort of toes the line between live album and studio album. sometimes it feels like it's a studio album, and then the audience noise starts bleeding in. i know neil young can be a bit divisive, but i tend to land on the positive side rather than the negative, and i greatly enjoyed my time with this one.

i like a lot of neil young's stuff and have always enjoyed this album, but it's not quite to the level of some of his other work, particularly the two or three albums that precede this one. half of this album is songs i love (like the title track, 'revolution blues,' and 'vampire blues') but the other half doesn't quite do it for me. just feel like the crop of songs is not as strong as on some of his other efforts. it's not that i think the album is bad, i just think it could have been workshopped a bit more.

not quite my thing. in a lot of respects, this reminds me of arcade fire's music, but seems a little less accessible. the instrumentals here are fine and i liked them, but i had a hard time getting past the vocals. they sort of sound like a cartoon vampire. idk, i know it's supposed to be ~artsy~ but it sort of falls flat to me.

i am perpetually conflicted about the doors. last week, i was given their first album and i love it a lot. this album is always the other side of the coin for me. where their first album feels fresh and energized, this album feels stale, stagnant, depressing (derogatory). jim morrison's nearing death here and he is very obviously riddled with his various vices. his vocal performance is, at points, atrocious. this seems to be a hot take but his vocal performance on the title track is actually borderline unlistenable to me. it's not good. it's not cool. it's not A Vibe. it's just sad. he was never a singer's singer, always fueled by attitude, but on this album it's not attitude as much as an imbibed stupor. the crop of songs here are also not very strong. my favorite of the bunch has always been 'love her madly' which i think is classic doors fare, but not too much more than that. what i think saves this album from being a complete disaster is the musicianship by the rest of the band. and, as always, i will give a special shoutout to ray manzarek, whom without, the doors would be nothing. his keyboard playing is spectacular and iconic on most everything he touched.

look i am biased about this one, this is one of my favorite albums by one of my favorite musicians. in a lot of respects, i think this is mccartney at his greatest as a rock music craftsman. every song on this is hooky and catchy. of course he had been writing iconic hooks and melodies for over a decade at this point, but here it especially feels like music that was made to be as hooky and catchy as possible. songs like 'jet' and the title track 'band on the run' are classics and rightfully so. the musicianship on here is great, but of course the highlights are paul's musicianship (sorry linda). if i could make one nitpick about this album, it's that i love almost all of the songs, but i think if you replaced 'picasso's last words' with almost anything else (i honestly think it overstays its welcome, but hey, it's kitsch, it's paul) it's an even stronger album. but i do unabashedly love this album regardless.