Reviews by uhhhellurr

a bold-faced political statement. i thought the first handful of songs were fun and aggressive. not really totally my cup of tea, but i was on board with what they were cooking. for me, sustaining this for the entirety of a 53 minute long album was a bit much. i like what they were going for and i think it works, i just think that it ends up being a little bit too much and too same-y for me. after a certain point, it does feel a little bit like, "yeah, we get it"

that being said, i still think the messages on this album are still relevant today and i did enjoy myself a decent amount.

this is an album i have grown to love over the years. i didn't like it at first - it's one of those albums that people rave about but i think the goofy second half really gets to people, me included. i'm still not a fan of the narrator, but if you can get past him, it truly is a great psychedelic rock album that has some really killer songs and sounds great to this day. high energy, great riffs, just an all around great album. not to mention, the title track into 'afterglow' is a truly killer one-two punch to open an album. the small faces really fit my musical sensibility so this one is definitely up there for me.

yeah i mean i am totally biased when it comes to this album. it's a contender for my favorite album of all time. i fell in love with this album when i discovered it in middle school, and although i know a lot of this album gets played to death on classic rock radio, it has not killed my adoration for this one. the songs are great, the musicianship is top notch, and what puts it over the top for me is the production. this album sounds so fucking good. my god. all timer for me!

a really enjoyable, chill "soft" jazz album. i really enjoyed the vibe of this one. i don't know if i would consider this album mind blowing in any capacity but it was certainly a nice album to listen to at the office on a friday after a long week. i found it to be pretty zen-like. nice stuff

i'm only really familiar with marianne faithfull as being related to the rolling stones, with her hit cover of the stones' song "as tears go by" - in a lot of respects she reminds me of nico, in style and not necessarily in relation to a band. that being said, i didn't know what to expect from a new wave album from her. and what i got was not really all that much. her voice is not your stereotypical "nice" voice, which is alright, but the instrumentation here is so middle of the road new wave that her voice does not really carry this album. the songs are ok, nothing special. her john lennon cover is pretty dull and repetitive (although that's a bit on the source material, but maybe a song that is entirely a folk ballad should not be a new wave song).

mostly i just feel like this album doesn't bring anything bombastic or interesting, as i would expect from a new wave album. a lot of her contemporaneous new wave artists were doing very creative, forward thinking things and it just isn't happening here. this album sounds like if you had a really watered down elvis costello album. her vocals are vaguely interesting but not good enough or fascinating enough to make this album worth listening to again. sorry, didn't care for this one.

i had no idea what to expect when i went into this one. i am actually a bit floored because listening to this album, it sounds like it is from the 90s - contemporaries of bands like pavement or ween, but this album is really ahead of its time. it must have been insanely influential on bands like those.

album is a bit rough around the edges, definitely not your easy listening fare, but i enjoyed the way it weaves between a punk-ish sound and a country twang. were it a little bit more coherent, i think i would have more fallen in love the first go around, but i think this is more of a grower to me. definitely can see myself enjoying this more if get more acquainted with it.

this is my second endeavor listening to lana, after hearing people rave about her music for years. my first was her newest, "Did you know that there's a tunnel under Ocean Blvd" that I listened to outside of this project to listen to this past year's Grammy Album of the Year nominees. as compared to that album, i liked this one better, but it has a lot of the same issues that I had with her most recent, which is mainly that her albums just bore me. I don't mind soft, acoustic, ballad-y music, but her music just ends up dragging for me. i like the songwriting on this one better, i actually think it's interesting and catchy at points. i really liked the joni mitchell cover! but that shows me that i think her songwriting isn't for me - when she's covering songwriters i love, it works really well. but overall, i can just say that i'm getting the sense her music isn't for me. i don't find it particularly haunting or beautiful, it just feels very middle of the road to me. it isn't bad, i just find it a bit boring.

yeah this is extremely my shit. not a dull moment on this one. just the most exquisite grooves you've ever heard. wall to wall funky goodness. the rhythm section is on another level, the guitars are funky. just knocks the vibe out of the park. ga ga goo ga, ga ga goo ga, ga ga goo ga ga, indeed!

so i think my taste in electronic music is very particular. a lot of the stuff i have been presented so far i have not really liked and hasn't really given me a sound that i really like. this album did. i had a lot of fun listening to it, i thought the songs felt dynamic and interesting. i still think it gets relegated to background music, but at least it's kinda fun background music.

a pretty fun album! obviously i knew the big song off of this but didn't know what else to expect. it's a fun, sleek, pop rock album. very clever and the arrangements are great! i loved the sound of this one. the cover of iron man i could have done without, it was goofy and i felt like it didn't fit the rest of the album, but otherwise, i had a pretty good time!

this is an album i have known my own life, through my dad. this album hit my dad really hard in his life and has been a constant favorite in his life. so i have learned to love this album through him, and i still do to this day. for me, i just really love the sound of this album. it sounds so great. very soft, yet aggressive at times, with a touch of sinister at times. the bass playing is unreal, as is a lot of the musicianship. another biased review, but yeah, i love this album a lot.

I had never really listened to George Michael, but am marginally familiar with Wham! so I kind of knew what to expect. this album was pretty pleasant. not something I ordinarily go for, but was nice enough to have on as I went about my business. it didn't resonate with me fully but i enjoyed the sound of it.

this was a pretty fun album. I had always heard of Roxy Music but have never really given them a shot. the sound of this album has aged really well and has some pretty engaging sounds. i particularly enjoyed 'out of the blue' with the heavy flanging. overall, a pretty cool album that i could see myself getting further into upon additional listening.

EDIT: yeah i listened to this again and it's pretty great!

not sure what to make of this one. i liked parts of it, other parts i found dull. overall it was a decent enough listening experience. i particularly liked the 50s throwback sound - particularly '(wading through) the waters of my time' - i find a lot of this album has a retro feel. sometimes it works well and sometimes i found myself uninterested. was this an album really must hear? probably not. was it alright? yeah!

so once again, i am totally biased as a life-long beatles fan. last year i listened to every officially released solo beatles album, and this one is definitely near the top of that list. although i am definitely more of a paul guy than a john guy, i still really love this album. to be honest, i find the title track very overplayed and a bit overrated - i don't think it's miles better than anything else on this album. highlights for me include 'jealous guy,' 'gimme some truth,' and 'how do you sleep'

to me, this album is an exercise in growth for john. his previous album is very raw, very emotional, very bitter. that bitterness still seeps through on this one at points (especially in the paul diss track 'how do you sleep'), but this album is overall a lot more thought out, at peace. he was a complex person, both good and bad, and i think this album highlights that conflict pretty decently.

overall, i think this crop of songs is pretty consistently good. as i said, i am a bit biased, but this is one of my favorites!

second slipknot album in a week and my opinion hasn't changed much. i think as a baseline, i appreciate the instrumentation, in particularly the drumming. the guitars are played well too. i just really cannot get past the vocals, and really the lyrics. it really does not resonate with me at all. i've had my fair share of angst in my life, but it's never manifested like *this* so this is pretty unrelatable for me. i have listened to and listen to a lot of musicians with non-standard voices and that doesn't bother me, but for some reason the growling never lands for me. and what makes it all worse for me is this album is an hour long! i could probably stomach this a bit better if they knocked a handful of songs off, but man this thing sort of went on for a while, huh? oh well, i gave it another shot. just not for me.

this was a strange album for me. i think the first half i was sort of adjusting to this album. it's a little off-kilter. by the second half i was really enjoying myself, especially with the songs that had a horn section. not an album i think i would have expected lou reed to make given my previous context on him listening here, but still, a fun time, a little challenging, but i could see myself listening to this album a few more times and really appreciating the quirkiness.

i am a pretty big REM fan, especially their earlier stuff. this album, to me, is a vibe album. kinda off kilter, really catchy rock music, very smart lyrics. i just really enjoy diving into this one, even though it may not be their most consistent album. i particularly love songs like 'catapult' which is more indicative of their overall sound, and 'we walk' which has some unique instrumentation from them and a slightly more sinister sound. overall, perhaps not my favorite from them, but i do really love it regardless.

just a great album, front to back. of course, i've listened to this one countless times and know it back to front. the only song on here i am always iffy on is 'meeting across the water' which never has really landed for me. but the rest of the album is just balls to the walls great, that it easily overcomes that one blip. it's a classic for a reason!

this is a pretty crazy punk record. i thought it was pretty fun. obviously a lot of ~noise~ going on on this one - if that's not your thing, i get it. but to me i really enjoyed the chaotic energy of this one. definitely a vibe album.