Reviews by uls980

Honestly was not excited for this one when I saw it come up. As far as the other The Smiths and Morissey albums I've listened to go, while not being bad, I've just never really cared for them. For post-punk, they've generally been too thin sounding and jangly for my tastes.

This one however has some teeth and power to it, with Morissey having a more full sounding voice thats very forward in the mix. And his singing is pretty on point compared to the other stuff. The opener and You're the One For Me, Fatty are my standouts with their reggae/surf rock vibes.

That said, I don't think its hitting me hard enough to quite give it the four. One of the highest 3s I'll ever give.

Gonna be honest, this is one of those albums that I've kinda always judged based on its cover. I know the album art is considered classic, but I've always hated it and stayed away based on that. But listening to it, its a lot better than my misconceived notions of it were. However, being funk it's just not really in my wheelhouse. Dangerously close to getting the 2 purely based on the fart and bathroom noises at the end of the album, but it'll still get my "Good, but just not really what I'm into 3".

Well this is definitely an interesting mess of an album. I definitely can see the comparisons to The Beatles' White Album. Basically a tale of two albums honestly. Buckingham's terrible experimentation (such as on The Ledge) vs Nicks and McVie hard carrying this album on their backs (mostly Nicks, who wrote the best songs on this album, particularly Sisters of the Moon, but McVie has some solid cuts). It's funny reading Christgau's comments saying the opposite, but he couldn't be more wrong.

Basically, the closer this album gets to sounding like Rumours is when its at its best.

Man the 90's were a wild time for music. Honestly, for my money, the best decade in music. That's not necessarily in relation to this album, its merely fine for me, but this album does exemplify a lot of why the 90s were so great. 90's were a time where pretty much anything could get radio play (in no other decade would Beck's Loser or The Butthole Surfer's Pepper ever be allowed to get airplay) and a lot of it was fantastic. This album is very 90's in sound while also kinda vibing with that "anything goes" mindset. Damn thing even has a jazz cut in We Do What We Can. Effortlessly smooth as well.

But yeah, it's generally just fine for me. All I Wanna Do is a fantastic song. We Do What We Can is great too. But the rest don't do much for me.

First things first, I've always hated Girls Just Wanna Have Fun. For the longest time it was easily my least favorite song of all time (with What's Up? By 4 Non Blondes in a very close second). Nowadays it's not bothering me quite as much, but Lauper's vocals on the song still annoy me.

Which is hilarious because Time After Time is an all timer of a song. Absolutely amazing. So those two songs canceling eachother out, the rating basically falls to the rest of the tracklist... which is generally just fine. Some not so-great songs like She Bop, some pretty solid cuts like All Through the Night.

So yeah. A real mixed bag of an album.

Fantastic bluesy/garage rock. Two genres I generally am not huge on, but The White Stripes knock it out of the park. Well deserved induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. And I'll defend Meg White's drumming until the end of time. Sure, she's not technically the best drummer, but she is exactly what The White Stripes needed. Put any other drummer in her spot, and the band would be demonstrably worse, and it'd be worse by many factors.

Hit after hit after hit with great deep cuts like The Union Forever. Great record.

For a country record, this album really ping pongs back and forth between country and R&B style pop. The opener is pretty great, but once ot gets beyond that its a lot of standard country or 80's style pop rock similar to Huey Lewis.

But overall, not really enjoying it. Not much that I haven't heard before.

If The Beach Boys were from Brazil, basically. Interesting enough to not get a bad score from me, but as always, I'm not a fan of 60's psychedelia.

I both understand and weirdly don't understand why this album is hated so much. It is pretty abrasive, but honestly I was somehow expecting it to be even more abrasive and experimental, closer to noise.

It mostly sounds like if you took the most abrasive Nirvana songs and made them goth rock/post-punk. And there are some less abrasive, more traditional type stuff on it like Several Sins.

Honestly quite enjoying this. Stuff like Dim Locator and Several Sins are great. Not the best Nick Cave project I've listened to (Murder Ballads and Tender Prey rank higher for me), but this is some good stuff.

I'll give it credit, they managed to make an album that sounds 20 years ahead of its time, but when that sound fits in with your Matchbox 20s (who I actually like the singles of, for the record) and other bands of that late 90s, early 2000's adult contemporary ilk, its not as glowing an endorsement to say it was ahead of its time.

The first three tracks were the soundtrack to the most bland radio rock I heard in the 2000's that I was waiting to end for the next song to come on, hopefully that I liked. And it doesn't help all the big songs off this album that I remember hearing all sound the same, with the same high pitched guitar sound (tremolo picking?).

Bullet the Blue Sky is a straight rip off of Ted Nugent's Stranglehold (good song, but being compared to Ted Nugent is not something you want). Yeah, I just don't like U2. Some of the most toothless sounding music I've ever heard. Apparently they have cutting political commentary, but I wouldn't know with the music being so ineffectual and dull. Writing political lyrics but setting it over really bland, uplifting stadium rock isn't a good mix.

Pretty much the same review as the Self Titled. Vocals aren't bothering me as much, but yeah.

Absolute classic filled with bangers, that's still as politically relevant today as it was when it released. Morello's inventive guitar is fantastic, Commorford's basslines perfect, Brad Wilk an incredibly underrated drummer, and on top of it Zack de la Rocha's punchy, immediate vocals bring the energy. Standouts for me are Bombtrack, Killing in the Name, Know Your Enemy, and Fistful of Steel.

A lot more eclectic than I was expecting. Usually 90's britpop feels like nothing more than Beatles worship fed through the lens of alt rock. Which this album has a bit of, Beetlebum is straight up (I Want You) She's So Heavy.

But you got more alt rock ragers like Song 2, and stuff that's predicting Albarn's work with Gorillaz. My only real complaint is whoever chose Beetlebum as the opener is a moron, lol. That's a closing song if I've ever heard one.

Kinda reminds me of what would happen if The Beatles had Boh Dylan in the band. Probably one of the better albums in the baroque pop/Psychedelic rock genres. Still not really my thing, a little too antiquated for my ears now.

Perfectly fine pop music, but he will go on to make much better stuff. Some of the tracks do overstay their welcome, like the opener, but generally everything is solid.

I regret reading the reviews on this, because now I can't really hear anything other than the vibrato. Not that I likely wouldn't have zeroed in on it myself, but it kinda feels like my dislike for this album is more suggested than natural.

Anyways, yeah the vibrato is distracting, especially since ANOHNI puts vibrato on pretty much everything. I'm not opposed to vibrato (Absolutely love Sleater-Kinney with Corrin Tucker's vibrato), but here it's just too much and too in your face. At times (Like on Fistful of Love) it verges on sounding like Elvis, and it's weird.

Combine that with, personally for me, quite boring music (Of what I did listen to, it kinda falls into the Everything But the Girl issue where every song occupies the same kinda vibe and tempo). It's beautifully crafted, intricate, vibrant music, but it's just not doing much for me.

Really great, emotive piano playing. Especially liked the part of the first song between the 10 and 20 minute mark. However, this does end up fading to being background music without additional instrumentation IMO.

This was a DNF for me. Not that it was offensively bad, but I just am not with the vocals or guitar tone on this one. Weirdly feels Bowie-esque but not in a way that sounds like they were ripping him off. Just not for me.

Honestly ends up in the same spot as a lot of the bossa nova, salsa, etc. music I've gotten on this list. It's soundtrack/envionment music, and not listening music to me. Still pretty cool French music I'd expect to hear in a restaurant/French film, but yeah.

Not really much to say other than its a great album. Some of the songs are a tad long for my tastes, but thats an extremely minor gripe. It's been a minute since I listened to Freewheelin', but I think I slightly prefer that one? I'll have to relisten sometime.