Reviews by ultraclear

Any kind of "chill" hip hop sits at a knife's edge for me where it can either deliver on that adjective, or end up as Just Boring. This one held my attention! Maybe ran a little one-note, but it made for good working music instead of putting me to sleep

Much groovier than I'm used to from them. Tough to rate, because on the one hand, they're undeniable, but also they got so much exposure on the main list that I dunno if I needed them to come up on the users albums..

ahhh who am I kidding, this was great. 5 stars.

Extremely quirked up, but not aiming for a TMBG-style nerd audience. This one was extremely popular with the class clowns & stoner types at my midwestern high school. It's pretty alright, manages not to wear out its welcome, which is impressive.

Pretty good chugga wuggas. Extremely strange and disconcerting during part 6 when they briefly switched to clean vocals and major key

It's War on Drugs, it's The Killers, it's another Springsteen-inflected night driving rock album. Lacks the pizzazz of the E-street band, but honestly that's true of most of these kinds of acts.

Super smooth, relaxed rap, very slick & polished production. Really easy listening, which makes it maybe a little less memorable than it could be.

The gold standard of country, alt country, and neighboring genres. I say that despite liking only about four of the eight original tracks—when the thing's hot, it's really hot

Not only hard rock cafe, but weird throwback cargo cult hard rock cafe. I won't pretend to be completely above it, it's fun enough, but there's basically zero chance I'd listen to this band or album on my own—if I'm in the mood for cheese rock, I'm probably going to reach for the original music that these guys are aping.

Making another tally under "guy that mumbles and slurs his words into your ear for too long" albums

I'm torn. On the one hand, it's a straight-up throwback to a real specific folky psychedelia of the 60s, some of which featured on the original list & none of which I liked. On the other hand, this is a hell of a lot more listenable than any of the originals, even if the difference is just the band actually knowing how to play their instruments

Had to take a couple runs at it because this is very much not good music for working to.

I don't have a great sense of what defines the boundary of shoegaze vs. something more along the lines of ambient or post-rock, but I have learned during my time on this site that I prefer my shoegaze to be on the heavier & more oppressive side. Bootgaze.

Some of these other reviews are making me nervous for everyone's memories. Their entire debut album was on the original list that you all had to complete to get here! What do you people *mean* you only know "Kids" and "Electric Feel"???

Far as the music goes, I mean some days you release an album that defines an entire era of party music, and then some days 17 years later you produce something that's slower and more meditative, after dozens of other acts have already trod the same ground without being *nearly* as boring. Glad for the MGMT guys that they're still out there making music, but this one was a dud.

I didn't care for this kind of thing in my teen years, either

I was pretty ready to be dismissive of more late 60s psych rock after everything we went through on the main list, but this really won me over. It’s not doing anything super fancy, but it’s executing well. Pays a lot more attention to playing interesting bass grooves than these usually do, which I’m almost always a fan of.

Indie prog! Story-style concept album, it does a great job evoking the grandiosity of 1970s Genesis, without fully copycatting an outdated era like how Marillion tried to do it. I enjoyed this a lot, though I'm not sure yet if I plan to check out the other Acts of this thing.

Finally some recent punk music that’s not just trying to do punk from the 1970s again

Looks and sounds like a bowling alley during friday night after-dark hours. Releasing something in 2021 that leans this much into the corny dubstep elements is a move that I find endearing, rather than annoying, but... eh I think it's kind of a mess, overall

Seems like in addition to the music sounding very Sinatra, he's a comparable cultural figure for France. Reading the wiki & other reviews, it sounds like he was a cool & interesting guy, but in terms of the album, I'm sorry but I really, really dislike crooner music on the best of days

Y2K American Post-Hardcore, which is an interesting combination of time, genre, and place. Post-hardcore's *really* not a genre that I care for (and jesus goddamn the people here love adding it to the list), but thankfully this one's making more interesting moves than most of the others that have been sent in.

It was very affirming to check the wiki and learn that some of the members would go on to form The Mars Volta—it's very proggy, and I thought I recognized the singer's voice, but he's doing a completely different (worse) style on here.

I was nervous going into this one. TMBG is one of the major fathers of quirky nerd music, and I’ve been lukewarm at best on most of the other quirky nerd music that people have been sending in. It's actually a pretty big nostalgia album from my youth, but I hadn't put it on in over 15 years.

I think ultimately it’s held up pretty well, but I can sort of feel the strain of how my taste has changed over the years. There’s a handful of all-time great songs on here, but they’re separated by deserts of throwaway tracks, and it feels like there’s not a ton of intention or craft in the sequencing. Fun trip down memory lane, though.