Reviews by ultraclear

I think this was a more even experience, but had lower highs compared to Magnolia Electric Co. Rock solid either way.

Somehow missed these guys back when they were around. Fits right into the alt-rock of the era, with a little extra boost to their percussion section. Liked it!

The original list had their debut on it, which I think was both the right amount and the right choice of album for them. That said, I mean come on, it's the B-52's, they're a great time. I'm happy someone submitted this one.

70s punk band, your imagination can do most of the heavy lifting.

One of those things where if you were checked into their particular regional scene back in the day, I could maybe see getting attached to them, but when blitzing through all this stuff on streaming, it doesn't stand out even a little bit

I'm *very* curious about what kind of reception this got when this came out. It's doing like self-aware throwback (relative to the 70s) blues rock. I have no familiarity with Winter, so I wondered at first if this would have been a nostagia-bait thing, but from reading his wikipedia, seems like it's more of a last call for a fading star situation.

Checking off a lot of post-punk boxes, shades of your Joy Divisions, your Falls, etc. Singer's kinda doing a Nick Cave impression sometimes.

Lowest average rating on the users list, which got me disappointed when it just ended up being mediocre nu-metal. I was hoping for something actually heinous

I *really* disliked that other Angelo de Augustine album that came up on this, so I was surprised by how much I liked this. If I remember right, my problem was a vocal delivery thing, so he's probably helped in that regard by having a partner on the thing.

I feel like Sufjan Stevens is one of those where I'm going to have to do a deep-dive listen to a bunch of his stuff in a row someday

Singer-songwriter stuff isn't generally my cup of tea, but I'm glad that he can at least sing. Probably also hit a lot better back when it released in 2006. Would have been fresh air for that era.

Confident I'm the only person who will make this comparison:

They remind me of the Arctic Monkeys, where they're in the same scenes as bands I like, check a lot of the right boxes, people who know my tastes keep recommending them to me, etc... and I just can't get into them. Refuses to click for me.

Slow Orchestral's a very nice change of pace from most of the rest of the list.

Better hit rate than I'm used to from folky fusion, but then again, the English version of that usually works better for me than American-style.

If not for the fact that it's in French, indistinguishable from movie end credits music of the era

The Christian angle is the only remotely interesting thing about this. Super boring sound.

It's great, but it did take me a couple tries to fully get it. Had to swap away from my cheap headphones, and clear away distractions before I could settle in. Definitely not a background music for work album.

I think I'm starting to hit post-rock saturation on this list

Proggy punk has come across this thing before, but these guys actually got the goods.

Strong offering, although it does show off a little bit that punk was not spared from the album-too-long-disease that was plaguing metal during the CD era

I think this is my first Dub sighting on either of the lists. It's adjacent to the kind of thing I normally gravitate to (sparser and lower BPM than I prefer), but really enjoyable.

I feel like this one must have been held back a bit by its release era. Real pearl-jam sounding vocals, which was distracting.

Had me worried at first because I'm usually lukewarm-at-best on folky indie rock, but a benefit of releasing pre-2010s is that it remembered to actually be rock music in some way