Reviews by ultraclear

A very proggy blend of psych rock. *Extremely* reminiscent of Hawkwind from the main list.

Baffling experience. It's mashing up the tackiest aspects of metal and eurodance, and the combination doesn't work at all. There's not much attempt to blend the two styles either, they're just kind of existing alongside each other in the audio channels.

Bumping the rating up to 2, though, because adventure is about the journey, not the destination.

A grandiose shouting style of indie rock, very of the time. Imagine Dragons sort of became the culmination of this style's direction, which unfortunately scuffs up a lot of this kind of thing for me in hindsight. It's a fun trip down memory lane, though.

I sometimes struggle on rap albums because I very much tend to be a music > lyrical content listener. Always rules to get something like this where the productions is showing up extremely well

Classic of goth albums. Good anthropology, but every song went a little too long for my taste

Trading in some rock for smoothness, but I still can’t quite get there with Arctic Monkeys

Final song "Decode - Twilight Soundtrack Version," say no more. The distinct sound of Teen Feelings in the year 2009

The vibrato takes a little getting used to, but this is some rock solid alt-rock

Slow Jazz, which isn't usually my favorite, but makes for a nice change of pace

80s-pop piss take that's very pleased with itself that it gets to use grown-up words. Complete snoozefest for me.

American folk music, more in the "mining town" variety than the "dusty roads" type you sometimes get.

Taking a look at the track list, I was kind of surprised this one wasn't on the main list—after all, it's got two of their biggest hits in "One More Time" and "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger."

Actually listening to the rest of it though, I kinda get going for Homework, the more consistent album, instead... *if* they were limited to one slot per artist. In a world where fucking Orbital has two slots, there were plenty of ways to make room for this one.

Daft Punk "greatest hits" album, basically. Obvious 5, but they're also operating at that Beatles level where it's almost boring to talk about how good they are. That said, the original list had so many crappy electronica entries that it really ended up deepening my respect for Daft Punk's talent.

The cargo-cult Rage Against The Machine vocals are obnoxious, but at least there's some interesting stuff happening in the rest of the music.

Angry music with correct politics mostly saddens me these days, because I've given up that it matters that much that they do. Feels more cloying than anything. Like even these guys themselves decided when the rubber really hit the road in 2025 that it was a good time to call it quits.

Had to give it a couple listens to get my head around it, but also it deserved those listens. Overstuffed in a good way, but also weirdly bouncy the entire time, like if I let go for even a second, the entire thing would float away into the sky

"Run Away With Me," rather than making me feel like I was drunk in an uber at night, made me feel like I was drunk on a boat at night, which I appreciated. The rest of it sure was some pop music from 2015. Was looking at my watch a lot as the thing went on.

I feel like pop albums, already suffering from a problem of the non-Singles usually being really forgettable, would benefit a lot from trimming their runtimes down to a 30-40 minute range instead of the 45-60 minutes they usually clock in at. Each of them usually has some good stuff in there, but they all feel very bloated

Wouldn't normally stand out to me as anything other than replacement-level indie pop, except for that 2003 release date. That seems so far ahead of its time, anglo idie groups wouldn't make their way over to this sound for a solid 5-10 years, I feel like.

"The news on 9/11/2001 if the attacks never happened" is a cute concept, but not really conveyed successfully unless you've read the wikipedia entry. Still, there's worse things to feed into my ears than weather channel vaporwave

Core album from an important band in the "eclectic mix by & for weirdos" realm. The People's White Album.

Educational! It's a big deal album, but only within genres that I don't tend to fuck with. I like it least when it's being club music, but I like it a lot when it's doing distorted glitchy nonsense, and that distortion seems to seep right into the track sequencing—the opening track is very misleading for what the rest of the album's going to do, and dropping from that immediately into Ponyboy is so goddamn funny.