Reviews by wotanmjolnir

This is the music that gets played in bars where old white people drink cocktails prepared by a brown person (but one of the good ones) and arrange to cheat on the person they’ve been married to for forty years but hate, before going off to slowly and painfully fuck each other in grim silence.

Samba deez nuts.

Listening in 2025 this sounds very safe and tame compared to what came after. It really isn’t very exciting, the beats are bland but the rapping and flow is solid, it’s just very dated and not my bag in general. Not rubbish, but not good.

Whilst, naturally, jazz is and will always remain shit, this is among the slightly less shit examples of a shit genre. That doesn’t mean it isn’t shit, of course - it is. It’s just not quite as shit as most other jazz.

Such a fun album, if a bit bloated and overly long. So much variety, yet also very clearly ELO - a really good album.

“All please rise for the National Anthem of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, ‘Mr. Brightside’.”

Lounge disco - a bit odd but it’s not bad. The first track kind of sums it all up, really.

The reviews of this are pretty rough, and it starts off as quite a difficult listen, but I like punk, and whilst this is more hardcore than punk it settles down into a pretty strong album with some good punk / post punk sensibilities. One I think that will benefit from more listens.

Jazz continues to be shit.

Jesus fucking Christ.

Oh, yes please.

The first properly good Beatles album. It’s still quite lightweight pop, but Lennon and McCartney are clearly showing a growing maturity in the songwriting, and there are a some really good tunes here. Not their best by a long way, but still a really good album.

The Ringo song is a bit shit, of course.

This is better than I expected, and the opener is engrained in British consciousness by featuring in endless adverts and incidental music, but other than that I can’t really remember a thing about it.

I love #1 Record, it was completely new to me and was one of my early great discoveries. This, however … this is just a bit shit. It’s unremarkable and unmemorable, and nowhere near the high watermark of #1. Disappointed.

Hmm, an odd one this, and I feel a bit bad about my opinion.

I remember when this came out and there was a bit of fuss in the UK about them - there were a few of these gentle, pleasant albums around at the time (José Gonzales, this lot, Magic Numbers etc), and I bought it and never really listened to it.

I didn’t really miss much.

It’s very pleasant, and nice … but it’s not very interesting, and it goes on forever. Background music feels harsh, but that’s my impression. It’s not bad by any means and if it was on somewhere I wouldn’t be upset, but I’m never taking it off the shelf again.

Nothing’s Shocking - Jane’s Addiction

I never caught hold of Jane’s Addiction at the time - I was more blues rock / hard rock / thrash so they were never likely to float across my deck. I knew Been Caught Stealing, of course, and liked it, but any other stuff I’d heard I dismissed, with Perry Farrell’s voice not helping.

Listening to this today I was very pleasantly surprised. It’s a really good, melodic, and driving record, and Dave Navarro is a hell of a guitarist. I still don’t like Farrell’s voice a lot of the time, but this is a really good album.

I finished listening to this crap, looked down and found out I was wearing a single dangly cross earring, white slip-ons with no shoes, a snug fitting t-shirt and a shiny sports jacket with the sleeves pushed halfway up my arms, and somehow my greying hair had been transformed into a luxuriant bouffant with platinum blonde highlights swept through it.

Herky-jerky, plinky-plonky, twingy-twangy, wishy-washy wank.

Plus, somebody smashes a glass in the live medley and the crowd doesn’t go “WEEYYYYYY!” Fucking embarrassing.

A great, great album. At times invigorating and uplifting, at others introspective and heartfelt, but always interesting. Also, that thunderous drum sound on Fight Test is epic.

George Michael was an absolutely glorious human being in an industry that is jam-packed full of shitcunts. I wish I liked his music more than I do, but it’s just a bit bland for me. This is better than Faith, though, and Praying For Time is just such an accurate and scathing assessment of the world as it was and as it is. George Michael was too good for this world. RIP.

I dismissed The Black Crowed at the time, lumping them in (incorrectly) with The Cult, and not my thing. Which is odd, as I loved Little Angels, and they sound remarkably similar. Suffice to say I really liked this, good hard-rocking bluesy rock, exactly my sort of thing. Plus, the cover of Hard To Handle is excellent.