Reviews by uhhhellurr

pretty decently fun album. instrumentation and vocal performances are fairly strong. unfortunately, despite there being some moments onto his one that I enjoyed, I felt ultimately it was a pretty middling experience. on the good side of middling, but there wasn't anything here that stood out to me. in particular, I felt the songwriting just did not hook me at all. not a bad album, but not anything that I feel I will go back to

i've never listened to motorhead, with the exception of the odd song incidentally over the years (playing rock band, etc). i'm not usually a huge metal guy but i enjoyed myself here. this album whips ass! the album is hard rocking and frenetic, like a huge runaway train barreling down the tracks. i don't know if i'm sold on the lead vocals themselves, but they certainly add to the aggressive nature of the music and i do much prefer them to a lot of the more modern, growly vocals i've heard from more modern metal bands. in particular, i really enjoyed the musicianship exhibited here. the drumming is precise and clean, while having an aggressive, loose feel. the guitar work here soars, and the bass playing holds everything together while managing to be high flying and exciting. you can tell everyone here is in sync with one another and firing on all cylinders. i think i could really start to enjoy this album on multiple listens. good stuff!

i didn't know what to think going in but have always heard great things about d'angelo. i enjoyed this! super smooth r&b. his voice is incredible and the production is fairly solid. at times, it has a little bit of a jazzy feel - although the jazzy feel of 'when we get by' does, at this point, feel pretty dated and funny due to its use of synthesized jazz instrumentation (it kind of sounds like a nintendo 64 game song lol). i particularly enjoyed his cover of smokey robinson's 'cruisin'' which i think even though it was recorded 15 years prior, fits the sound of this album very well. you can definitely tell that d'angelo and the other producers of this album have a lot of reverence for old school soul music, which i think is what i appreciate about this album the most. it feels like a natural progression from the likes of smokey robinson or perhaps al green. just a solid, chill album.

i'm a huge fan of 60s psych, and this is a cornerstone album in that genre. i used to have a kneejerk reaction to not like this album because it was forced by my boomer parents down my throat but after falling in love with so many of their contemporaries' music, i have come back around on this one. the songwriting is great and the production sounds great for an album from 1967 - when 'hi-fi' as it currently stands was a distant dream. i still can't believe how good and clean 'embryonic journey' sounds for something recorded in this era - it honestly sounds like it was recorded a decade later. grace slick's vocals on this are iconic. it is a really great package altother. and although i still want to have a kneejerk reaction to this one, i have to admit, it's a classic and important album for a reason.

yeah this was difficult for me. i like challenging myself with music, but not like this. the music is aggressive but i can't get past nick cave's growling and howling on this one. it made it very hard for me to listen to. i actually liked the instrumentation but after a while it felt more and more like "ok, i get it, i get it." if i can give the album artwork some credit, it reminds me of garbage pail kids and the music on this album i think definitely fits the vibe of garbage pail kids. unfortunately, garbage pail kids is not my vibe.

I know a pretty decent amount of the isleys' hits from listening to a lot of old pop/r&b music so i figured this would be in line with a lot of my music taste. boy howdy, i think that was an understatement. this is a fantastic album! the big hit off this one, 'that lady' is an all time banger, but all of the album cuts are great too. i especially enjoy the covers on here - in particular, their cover of 'listen to the music' is an awesome funk version of the doobie brothers classic. not a dull moment on this and the musicianship is top notch! excellent stuff!

when I saw this album influenced bruce springsteen, i was intrigued. but boy i could not hear that influence at all until i listened to the track 'frankie teardrop' which you can tell bruce was directly inspired by for 'state trooper'

that aside, the album is interesting. it's described as a punk album but because of the sparseness of the arrangements (just keyboard and vocals) it doesn't have the unabashed loudness you expect from a punk album, but a more subdued, yet still energetic form of music. from that standpoint, i enjoyed a completely unique take on a genre in it's naissance more than maybe some of their other contemporaries in the punk scene. that being said, the songwriting here is pretty barebones (it is punky after all) and if you don't have the loud, bombastic instrumentation from that, you focus on the songs more and i don't know if i think the songs are strong enough to carry this album otherwise. it's a cool album, but i'm not sure i'll come back to it again.

i went through a decently big stones phase and i really like this album. it's not my favorite of the stones' 'classic period' but i think it's a really interesting showcase of their transition into roots-focused rock. of course, the two big songs on here are stone-cold classics for a reason, but i've always loved the more country stuff on here - especially 'love in vain' and 'country honk'

if i have any complaint at all, it's that this crop of songs is not as strong as other albums they released in this general time period - but to say this album is not good because it's not 'sticky fingers' or 'exile' seems unfair. those albums are extraordinary in their discography, and although that technically means this album is more ordinary, i still think it's a great album.

i usually try to have an open mind, especially when i'm presented with an artist i've never heard before. i was excited to listen to this one based on the genres given on wikipedia, but unfortunately i was a bit disappointed in this one. although i think the songwriting was fairly intriguing and the lead singer's voice was very strong, i can't get past the production on this one. i imagine if this album was produced more like a folk-y album, and not an 80s pop album, i would have liked it more. the production feels dated and not in a fun or good way, and doesn't feel like it fits the songs or the album. it took me several pauses within listening to listen through this one. sorry, not a huge fan!

my exposure to tom waits is fairly limited - i've listened to his first two albums on my own, but haven't explored him much further. i know his album gets a little more avant garde and challenging to listen to, but i found this one to be a fun listen. it's a fun jazz record with a live audience environment, it really gets the 'jazz club' aesthetic down. the musicianship is great but not very showy. waits' songs are fun and very off-kilter and wacky. probably not everyone's bag, but i appreciate the sort of sleazy vibe he was going for. definitely one i think i could appreciate more with additional listens.

i'm a bit torn about this one. i used to be very into the black keys about a decade ago and this was my absolute favorite by them. nowadays i am not a huge fan of their music, so at this point in time, i don't really feel like giving them a score of what i probably would have a decade ago.

overall, i still think this is a good album. i don't think it's anything mindblowing and i think a lot of their contemporaries make music that i think feels more genuine and sounds better. the album still has a bunch of bops on it - and i can't get tired of 'tighten up' and their cover of jerry butler's 'never give you up' - what i think are highlights of the album.. the production on this one feels a little stale but when they are loose, i think this album can borderline rip. the musicianship on this one is pretty good and i think the songwriting is solid. to me it sounds very early '10s commercial now, which i didn't at the time (but this sound has been co-opted by truck commercials for years). i think at the time it felt a little more novel than it does today. honestly, i still have a little bit of a soft spot for it.

what I think stands strong about the sole sex pistols album to this day is the frenetic energy and the sneering attitude. i don't know if it's the punk album that is technically the best, but it is a lot of peoples' first punk album and it is a great intro to the classic punk sound. every song here is fairly searing and i think it holds up decently well. one thing i will say is that if you are a person who likes variance in their albums, you are probably not going to enjoy this one, especially with the lesser-known album cuts, it gets a little same-y. but i'm not sure if there's a record that captures the energy of the nascence of british punk more than this one.

a perfectly pleasant, laid back album. there's nothing here that's technically bad, it's all copacetic, as they would have said back then. when this album is firing on all cylinders, so to speak, it's a great album. tracks like 'box of rain,' 'friend of the devil,' 'till the morning comes,' and 'truckin'' are all great, blissful hippie fare. where this album has issues is with the album cuts, which tend to drag a lot, like the painfully slow 'attics of my mind.' these tracks are not awful, per se - but they tend to drag the pacing to a slog. otherwise, the musicianship here is very nice and the dead's harmonies are vastly underrated, in my opinion. overall, a good, not great, fairly inconsistent album.

god i'm sorry this album is SO FUCKING COOL MAN. i've known it for a long time now and every time I come back to it, i am continually blown away by the feel of this one. it's an all time vibe album for me, nothing sounds like this album, nothing gives off the vibe of this album. Gris-Gris is a singularity. you're not here for the quality of the lyrics, this album is VIBES ONLY and the vibes of this one are IMMACULATE. it sounds so dark, and so folk-y (in the sense that it's very rough around the edges). to me it perfectly matches the cover of this album, it feels like music being played at some sort of voodoo ceremony.

man i'm sorry, i just don't really jive with this. growing up being forced to listen to these songs in the car will do wonders for not wanting to listen to this album at all. i'm not the hugest fan of janis' voice and i don't really get the appeal of this one. the music is fine, but nothing mindblowing. the production on this is so sterile, it's hard to get any energy from the recordings at all, even ending of the big track "me and bobby mcgee." I understand that she passed away during the recording of this album, so it may not be "finished" but it still gets heaped tons of praise on it anyways. i dunno. nothing remarkable here for me, very middle of the road. dare i toss around the "overrated" word?

what i love about laura nyro is her songwriting. particularly i adore how her songwriting sort of meanders left and right, switching up tempos all the time, almost as if the music is going with the wind. so many of these songs will start off slow, soft, intimate, and then explode into an uptempo soul groove - or vice versa. not only that, but her melodies are incredible and so is her voice. the arrangements on this one are equally spectacular. i understand if you don't dig the brill building vibe of this one, it's definitely a bit dramatic, but to me this is truly one of the pinnacles of songwriting on display. sophistication at its finest!

not bad, not bad. i knew the two singles off of this beforehand, the smash hit title track and 'vincent' both of which i think are great tracks. the rest of the album is a lot more like 'vincent' than 'american pie' - more slow, pensive folk-ish music, as opposed to folk-ish rock. that's not to say that there aren't more rock-y moments on this one, but it definitely is a lot more subdued of an album than the title track would lead you to believe.

this is another heavy hitter from my middle school days, when i first started exploring music more widely. i think this album is brilliant and fun. there's some goofy "old fashioned" sounding stuff ('lazing on a sunday afternoon', 'seaside rendezvous', 'good company') but, like some later beatles, i think it's fun and charming. of course there's the big song on here that everyone knows, but my favorite songs on here have always been the biting 'death on two legs' and the immense 'the prophet's song' with it's amazing "vocal round" middle section leading into one of my favorite queen moments of all time ("god give you the grace to purge this place..."). of course it's widely regarded as an all timer, and i have to agree. to me, this is one of the world's most famous bands firing on all cylinders.

I'm not totally well versed in the entire discography of the smiths, but I am familiar enough with the "big songs" - familiar enough to know I like the smiths a lot, but haven't had the chance to dig in on them. needless to say, I enjoyed this one! although I find his modern incarnation a bit insufferable, morrissey's vocals and lyrics in this stage are iconic and the musicianship in general is great, but the smiths would not be the smiths without johnny marr's guitar playing. I can confidently say that I am becoming a smiths guy.

i had never heard of this album or band before, but oh my is this album prescient! this album sounds and feels like an album that swarths of 1980s college rock/alt rock bands listened to. you can hear the blueprint being made for bands like REM. a very cool album. i particularly enjoyed the tinge of psych rock that it had at points, especially the sitar on "positive vibrations"