Reviews by ultraclear

Very mellow, but not boring in a way that drags down what I'm doing when using it for background music

Weird and fun one! Norwegian band, good alt-rock bones, but then they've mixed in the right amount of whackiness to be interesting instead of annoying. I like the cut of their jib. Soft 5.

I always forget with these guys that "ska-punk" means that the Punk part is actually *very* present in the alchemy. All-timer of an album cover.

Not as good as the one on the main list. Seems like it'd be good nighttime driving music, if that were a hobby of mine.

This flavor of "chill" hip hop normally puts me to sleep, but I did like the amount of plinky keyboard sounds in the mix. Made it good for the rainy morning.

Kind of gives me Siouxsie, but the singer sounds like she's doing a Rush impression, kind of? I dunno if that makes any sense. Pretty fine post-punk thing

Absolutely nails the throwback 90s angst sound, which makes all the lyrics about social media and data mining really stick out. Kind of drifts too clever for its own good, in that way, I don't need this kind of music to be self-aware

Unhinged in an extremely good way. Was very unsurprised to learn the guy's French

Damn, in hindsight these guys were a huge omen for Imagine Dragons-type music coming down the pipeline

The user albums have had a hot streak of emo music, but I think this one’s pretty boring

There's been a couple examples of this kind of thing coming up in the user list. Very produced, "dreamy" vocals. I tend to like that style because the backing music is very krautrock-adjacent, but it does lack that certain *das weiß ich nicht*

Fun for most of the duration, but does start to lose me during the final piece. 4.5 rounding up, though

Found my way to this one when I was younger, via Danny Elfman's film score work. It's very funny to have the vocabulary to now contextualize it as having short flashes of absolute genius, but mixed in with a lot of forgettable New Wave sensibility.

This one's interesting, because it wouldn't really stand out if not for having been released 2005. Feels really ahead of the curve in terms of where pop music was going.

"Wistful," which is interesting that I'm feeling that, since I didn't really listen to these guys growing up.

On a streak of throwback albums release within the last 10 years. Not doing a ton that I couldn't get from other post-punk offerings

2022 release?! Man, I know this kind of bare-bones punk always is going to have a core of fans, but this breaks *no* new ground. Music for an audience that just wants the same thing served up for eternity, if I'm being judgemental about it

Solid work from what seems to be a pretty obscure Welsh indie act. This is the kind of album that I'd be raising an eyebrow at if it were on the original list, but that I'm actively hoping to draw for the user albums.

Copy/Paste review I've got of every american aughts metal release: too goddamn long, and just does the same shit each song. This one's better than the slipknots that have come up on here.

Interesting to pick a TMBG from the 2010s, which I think is around the point most people sort of stopped paying attention to them.

I've been pretty mixed on a lot of the eclectic nerd albums that people have been putting forward, but I kind of feel like "eclectic" is something that's kind of uncharacteristically missing from this one, at least compared to the TMBGs that I have nostalgia for