Reviews by ultraclear

A lady with a very nice voice sings buncha folk songs backed by one (1) or two (2) guitars. I think maybe because of that sparseness, my enjoyment of what was going on varied really wildly depending on the song (I liked the minor key ones a lot I guess?) idk, overall wasn’t really to my taste, but it’s not at all confusing or disagreeable to me that people do like this, I definitely get the appeal! I’m admittedly too much of a fuckin prog rock enjoyer and it would certainly have defeated the entire point of what she’s doing, but yeah I would’ve preferred there be literally any backing instrumentation beyond just a guitar or two.

The third 1977 album I’ve been served this week! And turns out to have been a hell of a fitting followup to Kraftwerk, given some of the production history stuff, influences, etc.
Bowie’s another of my major blind spots, and I suspect this might not have been the best jumping-in point if I’m going to be lazy and only learn about him at the pace of the 1001 albums generator. I'm sure I'll get another shot soon.

I think this is the first album of this project that I’d actually listened to all the way through before. This is an excellent album, hugely influential, ahead of its time/invented the time. For how stripped-down it sounds compared to later electronic music, it still manages to be really sentimental.

Album opened incredibly strong, but tapered off *hard* for me as it went on.

Incredibly solid album, right up my alley.
There’s something I’m trying to put my finger on with this. A lot of the albums I’ve liked during this project will have a few songs that I really groove with, but will also bore me a lot at some other point. Vs ELO here, who held my attention and gave me a really good time the whole way through an entire double album-length of stuff… but at least on first listen, there wasn’t any particular song that yanked me in. A slower burn. Any case, liked it a lot.

From a position of basically zero prior experience with Springsteen:
His two modes on this are either Moaning or Growling. The majority of it is moaning, and I much, much, much prefer the parts where he’s growling.

I was excited to wake up and find out I’d drawn a salsa album for today, but turns out a full album-length wore me down by the end. It didn’t make for very good workday music, but it’d be great for dancing or cooking. A lot of the song openings decide to get really funky and interesting, and I wish that was more of what the full songs were.

I, alright. I’ve given country music an honest shot a bunch of times in my life, it’s never clicked for me, this one was no different. Though that said the music didn’t really annoy me as such, and I was never bored or pissed off with it the way I was with the Sinatra album last week, so hey. Wasn’t wild about the Dixie song extolling “rebel spirit”, but comes with the fuckin territory I guess.

I like a couple zeppelin songs, but I never took the time to sit down with any of their albums all the way through. There’s a specific blend of acoustic instruments with later rock sensibilities that works extremely well for me (e.g. Jethro Tull is a band I love *way* more than they deserve by any objective measure. Or like King Gizzard’s use of harmonica hits my brain really nicely). I don’t quite know the exact alchemy there, because there’s a lot of folk rock that I can’t fucking stand, but Zep III is like right in the sweet spot. Loved it.

I’m not very difficult to please with 80s synth pop, and yet this bored me a lot.

I liked this a lot more than Suburbs, and the release year was pretty interesting (if I’d had to guess, I would’ve placed this sound around 2008 at the earliest). This wasn’t *quite* to my taste, but it was frustratingly close, and I’m still trying to figure out what’s making the difference.

EDM pre-dating 2010/2011-ish, which was when I first became aware of any of that. This one made for, like, decent focusing music for me, but wasn’t particularly memorable

Sinatra and The Kinks had me insecure for a moment that there’s something broken in me that’s incapable of enjoying music below a certain bpm, but this was totally pleasant!

Maybe I would benefit from listening to other The Kinks stuff ahead of this, but for now this album was was kinda dull

A lot of people whose tastes I generally trust are way into Kate Bush. Idk if I'm sold yet. This was pretty good, maybe a bit slower than 80s music I normally like

Irish folk-punk! lotta fun every once in a while

I liked this a lot, especially the anti-arizona parts, and I’m uhhh better understanding now the roots of my middle/high school teachers in the midwest being so scandalized by rap, lmao.
Also something interesting to me is that because I’m very bad at passively picking up on lyrics, I really had to focus in while this was playing. Like the album really demanded my attention in a way I’m not used to.

“Some day I may buy her a ring, ringle-lingle” oh my god shut up you absolute asshole

post-punk tends to be comfortable listening for me; this album was fine, but didn’t register as something to rush back to

I was really caught off guard by how much I liked this. Considering how much time I didn’t spend with it during formative years, my tastes definitely seem to align really well with gothic stuff whenever I come across it. much to think about.