Reviews by ultraclear

Grew on me as it went on. Pretty fun weirdo music, though I think I'd have been more interested in it if the singer didn't hard-commit to doing a bad Bowie impression the entire time

I didn't think I disliked Bloody Kisses when I got that one earlier, but this one has so much more verve and variety. The songs are still a little too long, but they have a lot more going for them.

Not the biggest fan of spoken word layered over the beats kind of stuff.

Went on long enough that it juuuuust started testing my patience, but this is the kind of pleasant mellow music that can go on for a long time without getting tiring.

Started fine, but went on long enough that it got really annoying

As whiny as it is grandiose, it's music made in a lab to appeal to teenagers. And honestly, good for them. Not as fun as MCR, though.

Hard Rock Cafe, but I'm going to give this one an extra bump for being self-serious

Like a cross between oasis and the killers. I'd somehow missed this one when it released, despite it clearly having a hand in a bunch of music I liked back in the 2000s

Bit of a letdown. The genre descriptors "Black Metal, Avantgarde, Gospel" got my hopes up, but turns out that all averages out to "The second coming of The Black Keys, with a little extra spice in the production"

This is a weird one to try rating. The bones are extremely strong, but each song in the first half hard-commits to exactly one extremely annoying decision. The second half has less of that, but then ended up feeling a little bland for it.

More pleasant and less annoyingly earwormy than I expected, but I never actually sat down with the full album in one go before. This one's kind of an oddball compared to the rest of their work. It's wonderfully done, but it also doesn't sound like "them" as much. Really channeling specifically Talking Heads with the texture of a lot of the tracks, and leans heavily on more traditional vocals for the entire thing.

It's interesting, I thought that This Is The Kit album from earlier was boring as hell, but that this was a really calming and pleasant time.

God of course this stupid asshole covered wonderwall on here

I feel like motown's been so thoroughly relegated to oldies radio these days that it's tough for me to get on the right wavelength for this one. It's pleasant, but i constantly need to remind myself that I'm not grocery shopping right now.

Goddamn *somebody's* listened to a lot of Devo. I might have to give this another spin, paying more attention to lyrics, because I gotta be honest with myself that I probably wouldn't give this the time of day if I didn't already have a lot of goodwill for the guy who made it, and I know from past experience that there's going to be stuff in here that rewards close listening.

EDIT: yeah alright this album's got the goods. I'd stopped before the bonus tracks on the first listen, and turns out they whip. I forgot that bonus track means something different when it's an album from the digital age

I knew Boris by reputation, but for some reason I was expecting something raucous. This was downright mild!

People holding this up for its influence on later indie, but tbh I'm mostly just hearing a lot of influence points that came before this. Any case, all the songs wear out their welcome.

This does sound like what I imagine when I think of the words "floating points"

It's perfectly fine new wave

Alright, this is the third Ween to show up on here, and it's the first one where I feel like they've actually clicked for me. I've heard it described before as one of their weirdest, but honestly I found it to be the most accessible out of them. Might be because it's very consistent in its weirdness. It has a strong theme that it relentlessly sticks to. I had a lot of fun with this one!