Reviews by ultraclear

Knocking out both Morrissey reviews here since I basically got a double feature:

I hated these. Morrissey's like a chik fil-a kind of topic, where the main cultural impact I get exposed to is a million people very loudly flogging themselves for being such big fans of the awful person/franchise, but then you go check out the thing for yourself and it feels like you're being pranked because the idea that people are out there having such strong positive association with them in the first place is such a tough sell to me.

It's a mediocre chicken sandwich, and extremely boring, grating music! Come on!

I think I was kind of chilly on The Cure last time they came up, but I really enjoyed this one. Felt like it was keeping the pace up a little more

per wikipedia, "conceived as a soundtrack to an imaginary film", although music from this was then actually used in David Lynch's "Lost Highway." Really fitting choice for that movie, though, there's an underlying spookiness to this that I really appreciated

I didn't like their debut album when it came across the list, but I liked how weird and energetic they got with this one

Endlessly funny to me that these guys were 100% a California production rather than actual swamp people, but either way this album rules. Even though 1969 is basically the 70s already, I give a lot of credit to 60s bands that didn't just try to sound like the Beatles or Beach Boys

Kinda as always with the Beatles, and especially this era of them, the production history of this is a lot more interesting to me than the music itself. It's good, but I find it musically less interesting than Revolver, and historically less interesting than White Album

the sound design of this really swung for the fences, bringing in a lot of found objects, literal industrial machinery etc, which did admittedly grate at times (grew up next to neighbors that liked to bring out leaf blowers at 7AM, fuck off suburbs). idk, this definitely wasn't my favorite thing by a long shot, but the rest of you goons deciding this is your literal collective least favorite thing in the archive is really uncalled for, considering some of the dreck that's in this list.

Synths cover of Modest Mussorgsky. Came out 1971 and sounds exactly like 90s jrpg fight music, chef's kiss no notes

I used to feel pretty positive on new wave, in theory; by now, though, the generator's served me up so much mediocrity from this era and made abundantly clear how many of these acts were one-hit wonders. This one was kind of a breath of fresh air, like with Depeche Mode I actually *get* what makes them appeal beyond "Enjoy the Silence"

I'm in favor of most jazz most of the time, and I really have been enjoying hearing from this 60s-70s era where historically, rock would've been in the process of completely overtaking the airwaves, and so the jazz artists start getting up to even more ambitious experiments. YES, I like jam music, YES I like prog,

I try to not immediately reach for "I did not in fact need to listen to this one before I died" when I don't like one, because at 1089 entries on the list, obviously there's going to be some duds in there. But geez this one was skippable. A late-90s attempt to update crooner shit to modern sensibilities, no thank you

Big fan of solo Peter Gabriel work and both Genesis eras, but it's been a good long while since I sat with the old 70s stuff. Somehow aims for both grand and cozy, and manages to make both work

I've shared variations of this point before re: Cohen, but, like...

One of my partner's favorite genres is like acoustic singer-songwriter stuff. "Sad man with a guitar" music, as she calls it. And I cannot stand sad man with a guitar. What I need when I'm down is "Sad lady with a piano." Any case, I'm not Leonard Cohen's audience, and that's ok

(I can sometimes work with "sad man with piano" though, like I really like Warren Zevon a lot)

Never actually sat down and listened to the title song, I basically only ever hear it driving or shopping; it's fun if overplayed, but the rest of the thing wasn't anything to write home about

'80s metal stays losing. idk thrash has never been my thing, but I'd still pick metallica over these guys any day. All that speed & momentum, and nothing interesting done with it. Also they're setting off my Dad Rock alert, where the lyrics and themes probably freaked out a lot of parents when this first came out, but these days it just seems cute

Clearly heralded a lot of how 90s rock ended up going, though I think I prefer other acts occupying that space. The particular guitar tone they lean on really grates on me after a while, and this one was a double album

Easily my favorite offering from that generation of aughts alt-rock, makes me kind of sad that "Mr. Brightside" went the distance to be enshrined as a classic of the time but nobody really cares about "Take Me Out" anymore

[every review about how weird, growly, jangly, and off-putting this is, but *as a compliment*]

Malian blues! Very cool sound, and the band's history is really interesting! I am all the way invested in this

*S o u n d C o l l a g e*

I love both Eno and Byrne, and I like to put this album on every so often, but it's also not the best work either of them was doing around this time