Reviews by wotanmjolnir

'What the fuck is this ridiculous devil's haircut bullshit?!'
'Oh, mate - wait until you get the bit about having a cigarette on each arm and a carburetor tied to the moon. I must have been so fuckin' high when that came out of me!'

This album is as 90s as tamagotchis, OJs tiny glove, and Mr Fucking Blobby (which is his legal first name).

When i was a kid my parents had a tape of a Stars On 45 Medley of Beatles songs, and that is where I know most of this album from. I'm not a huge early Beatles fan, but those memories are good, so it's OK. Also, Any Time At All has the same George Harrison guitar sound as Fish On The Sand from Cloud 9, which was the very first CD I ever owned. I was a precocious 11 year old.

There really is not much memorable about this album. It's very early-90s British music scene, but that shouldn't be a surprise. You can pick up elements of where they were going with little bits foreshadowing Country House popping up on Chemical World (which is really good), and other bits smelling of Tracey Jacks and other Parklife stuff. It's fine, if you can live with Damon Albarn having the cock-er-nee turned up to 11. Chemical World and Villa Rosie stand out.

ACK-ACK-ACK-ACK!

You can imagine this album popping up as the soundtrack to a Dudley Moore film from the 80s, but holy hell it makes me want to move my feet.

"Please can you make it stop! They've been playing the same 7 notes for 10 minutes!"
"I'm sorry son, that's just how it is."
"Oh, thank god, they've stopped ... oh shit, no its just an exaggerated pause! They're doing it again! Even the singer wants to stop - he's screaming and screaming in agony!"
"No, son - you've got it wrong again. That's just Ian Gillan."

By the Christ do this bunch love the smell of their own farts, or what? Technique is incredible, and sound quality and production is great for a live album, but there's maybe 20 minutes of good album here. The thing is over two hours long.

The fire at Montreux didn't go far enough.

DUNH-DUNH
Tss
Tss
Tss
DUNH-DUNH
Tss-tss-tss-tss-tss-tss
DUNH-DUNH
Pock-pock pock pock pa-pock pock
DUNH-DUNH
Pock-pock pock pock pa-pock pock
DUNH-DUNH
BAM-BA-RATTAT RAT-TAT-DIDDLY-DIDDLY-DIDDLY-DIDDLY

And then the world changed.

I like the White Stripes, and I REALLY like The Raconteurs, byr I'd never heard this album before. Needless to say, I liked it. There is no real standout track, but it's solid JackWhiteMusic from start to finish. Good album.

Genuinely thought the opening line was "You smell like a punchbag", which on continued listening may have improved things. Angryman sounds a bit like if Ian Brown had been asked to soundtrack a blaxploitation flick. I kept waiting for Zia to do what it clearly wanted to do and turn into Time by The Alan Parsons Project, but was left disappointed

There's nothing wrong or bad about the album, but it's not groundbreaking, and I can't see it being influential. I fully expect at least one of these tracks to have been on Made In Chelsea. I can't really give it a 2, but it's a very, very low 3.

I really enjoyed this. Being a British child in the 80s I knew of the band, but had never heard anything that I remembered by them. This album though, from note one, was just really good. Really, really good. Monitor especially stood out for me, but it also showed the tendency that this album has that makes it 4 not 5 stars - that song could live with being a minute shorter, and it's not the only one. Voodoo Dolly especially did nothing for me, and it did it for over seven minutes. It's not enough for me to not like the album, but it's enough to knock it down a point. It's staying downloaded in my Spotify library, and that says a lot.

This has that early 2000s slightly breathless, retro, twee feel - it kept reminding me of The Magic Numbers , or Corinne Bailey Rae. It does have some pretty dark lyrical imagery, but that is offset by the melodies and (over) production. It's perfectly nice, but I'm not sure it deserves a place on the list. Having said that, the falsetto on 'The Distance From Her To There' is really shit.

It's a classic, just notcreally my thing. The voice is impeccable, and there are some great songs, but as a whole it's ... OK. I won't seek it out, but I also wouldn't turn it off.

OK it's Queen, but it's early Queen, and there is a lot of growth to be done. Seven Seas of Rhye is an absolute banger though

“Does that mean it’s more whimsical? Is it any more whimsical?”
“Well, it’s one more whimsical, isn’t it? It’s not ten. You see, most blokes, you know, will be playing at ten...Where can you go from there? Where?”
“Why don’t you make ten a little more whimsical? Make that the top number and make that a little whimsier?”
“These go to eleven.”

But I fucking loved it.

I was 16 when grunge hit, and I still think that living through the 90s as a late teen / early twenty-something was a great time, possibly only beaten out by the mid-late 60s. I didn't catch on to Mudhoney at the time, but I knew of them, but listening to this really shows where grunge came from. So much of the energy, anger, garage-bandness clearly influenced much of that scene a few years later.

This brings back memories of a good time, even if the music is (mostly) new to me.

I have been disappointed with most of the rap and hip hop I've had so far - so many of them are over long, uninteresting, and plagued with those skits that I just don't get. This, however is different - its only 42 minutes, and is right, and clear, and the flow is great. My heart sank a little this morning when I saw another 21st century rap album pop up, but I enjoyed it.

It's all very nice, but I half expected to find out I was in the concourse of a huge marble concourse of a top-tier hotel, or the middle of some video game like Journey or My Time At Portia. Can't fault it, but I doubt I'm going to rush back - but I could be wrong about that.

This may be a perfect album. Start to finish there is barely a misstep, if there are any at all. Phenomenal.

I can imagine Patrick Bateman loving this album.

This is a completely uncomplicated rock album - verse / chorus / verse / chorus / solo / verse / chorus and on to the next track - but its very good at it. Yes, some of the lyrical content are crass or pretty objectionable, but this is Motorhead, and they play rock and roll.

This is perfectly nice, easy folksy-poppy-pleasantness (as long as you ignore the incredibly inauthentic blues of Steamroller and the plain fucking weirdness of Sunny Skies. Oh, and you can get rid of Oh Susannah, too). Several times I thought "oh, Fire and Rain, I know this one" and it turned out to be a different song though, so read into that what you will.

This is a nice, easy, unchallenging album to while away 30 minutes - it's very hard to hate, but also to love.