Being the 4th best of the big four of grunge is still better than most of the alternative-rock cheese that came after Seattle was mined for oil. I just wish somebody would've given Eddie the heads up that ending your song about a little boy killing himself in front of his class by scat-singing is probably in poor taste. I think this'll be all the Pearl Jam I need until I turn 43 and deeply resonate with Black after divorce number 2.
It only took two days for me to land on not only an album that I've heard before, but an album I have physically. Neat!
Singing like this must have hurt, surely. You'll hear Janis howl, squeal, and outperform basically anyone you could throw at her. She's so powerful, she makes the luscious and vibrant songs that make up this album swell up and practically burst at the seams. She's so powerful, she takes stripped back acoustic songs and makes them captivating, emotional, and lived in. Every song sounds like 100 bad days and nights, every note sounds worn down but kicking. The backing band plays second banana, but playing second banana to Janis fucking Joplin is still no easy feat. It runs out of steam by the end, but if I did what Joplin did on Crybaby I'd probably be on the floor having an asthma attack. Almost overwhelmingly powerful.
In his linear notes for the album "Live At Birdland" by John Coltrane, author and controversy magnet Amiri Baraka says of John Coltrane that "... his music is one of the reasons suicide seems so boring." Besides being an intentionally button-pushing and heavy statement, I think it gets to something important about music- it takes the big, evil, question mark planet we crawl on and stuffs it away for awhile. There's a lot to be afraid of, and a lot to mull over, but why not stop and smell the roses? And maybe, if you're lucky, the album you stumble on will permantly help you think through things.
Brian Wilson, using an unbeatable mixture of lover-boy anxiety, symphonic genius, and divine intervention, planted a bed of roses that manages to do more in 38 minutes than most bands can in entire discographies. Everytime you stop by, something new will stand out. You could go the cheesy route and say that this album is a look inside of the head of one of music's great geniuses, but I think that would do a severe disservice to the amount of pain that Brian Wilson faced in his life. No, this album is more beautiful than that- it's a gift to anyone that's ever loved and lost, to anyone who hasn't fit in, or who's acted unlike themselves. He was there, and he doesn't want us to get there. He planted this garden for us. May we all hang onto our egos.
39 minutes in a fun house that's burning down, where the mirrors are warping and the speakers are playing parade music that's in a time signature that doesn't exist. Absolutely (and understandably) not for everyone, but it's truly in a league of it's own. Mingus never did anything like this again, because it probably would've scarred him too much to dive back into the madness. Singular and engrossing, from the first horn squawl to the last one.
I should say now that I'm entirely pro 'pop albums stuffed with love songs.' Not everything needs to be juicy or hyperspecific or deeply confessional. There are songs here that do blend together (and the 2nd track STINKS) but it is hard to deny that Adele's voice is wonderful and her songwriting is solid. If the album had more songs on the level of "Hello", it would probably get a higher rating, but the fact that there is one at all means this is worth your time. Do the moms have the music? Maybe this time, but I'm still not sold on Alanis Morrisete.
Without the Pixies, the 90s would've sucked.
Well, more than they already did. It's not just the quiet / loud / quiet song structure that every band worth their weight in alternative rock radio pinched from this album, you could also make the case that the Pixies made being weird on rock records cool. They were not the first or the last of this ilk, but pop time signatures played as noisily as possible with reverance to surf music, punk, noise rock, and garage and interspersed with personal conversations and unintelligible lyrics will make anyone who can dig it feel very, very hip. I don't know what most of these songs are about, but I think that's the fun of it. Listen to a Steve Albini tone poem, pick up a guitar, and change the world.
Do I prefer the shaky, freaked out punk sound of Unknown Pleasures? Probably, but that doesn't stop me from seeing the beauty here. I do wish that a few of these songs didn't go on and on and on and on as they do, but to pretend like Ian Curtis's half-toneless mumbling isn't poetry would be dishonest. The dense, droney thing this album is going for did melt my icey heart by the end, but the 1st half is a bit repetitive. I wish we could've watched this band grow into something more, but what was laid to tape is worth celebrating.
Yeah, I don't get this one. Not that I don't get this music (I do, anyone with a Bandcamp account or an ex boyfriend with a delay pedal would) but I don't get why this is the one that's on this list. If there are more shoegazy, noisy indie-hipster hell rock albums on this list, they'll almost definitely be better than this one. Less boring, at the very least. All I can do is pray for My Bloody Valentine (or christ, even Duster!) and wait for this whole thing to blow over.
I feel bad being so mean, but this album constantly skirts the line between being pleasant enough and pissing me off. Final song in tribute to Jay Reatard? Pleasant enough. Annoying vocal effects making the sincerity of that tribute seem dubious? Pissing me off. If my friend was in this band, I'd probably go to the VFW shows and take their picture for Instagram.
I like this, I really do, but I'd be lying if I said I got what most of these songs were about on my first listen. That never took me out, per say- the hooks never stopped hooking and the beautiful production never stopped being beautiful- but I think one of the down sides of listening to a new album like this every day is that certain things are worth gestating on. Attack of the killer genre-fusion poppy concept record from outerspace? I'll relisten to this at some point soon.
I understand the low reviews here, but I kindly ask that anyone who is angry at this album for being kind of geeky and strange to relax a bit. I think this is worth hearing, maybe just for the strange stylistic choices and the silly (stupid) lyrics. I'd take a dozen of these over a sickly sweet California folky LP from the same time. Thanks for the weirdo record, Tim.
Easy to put into your pipe and smoke. Noisy and psychedelic, but also no-frills and raucous like all the best Stones albums are. What a winner, hooks on hooks and riffs on riffs.
Any white guy with a guitar can put his mouth to a harmonica and call himself a rockstar. Any middling white guy can pose as a rockstar by writing hackneyed songs about such varied and untapped ideas like how fun it is to have casual sex, New York, girls, Hollywood Boulevard, flowers, and how sad it is to have casual sex. Any middling white guy can abuse and exploit young women who are smarter and more talented than he is by pretending to be a rockstar. Ryan Adams innovates on this Grammy nominated (!) album by checking all three of these boxes at once.
It's oppressive, in the way a shitty bar-band is. Overstuffed with instruments, no silence or intimacy, just shitty songs about girls and suffocating organs. It would be interesting (in a sick way) to close your eyes and play house listening to this album (imagine your shitty, cigarette stench boyfriend coming in and playing these songs for you...) if it weren't for the fact that not a lick of it is interesting. For over an hour, this Ephebophilic shitbag pushes you through song after song of meandering, suicidal notebook poetry. (Not suicidal in the sense that the songs are about suicide, but suicidal in the sense that it made me want to find a sharp edge and rub my neck against it.)
In a world where arguments about separating the art from the artist happen constantly, I believe it would do the world good to cut out the artists that aren't worth keeping around and then getting onto the musicians that matter. I'm not sure if Ryan Adams is in the first draft of people we should collectively remove from our minds (Marilyn Manson, Gary Glitter, that tattooed fuck from Falling in Reverse) but he's certainly among those musical talents.
As a proud Touch & Go Records stooge (the first album I ever hid from my mom was Songs About Fucking) I can admit that this is on the weaker end of their mostly flawless 1980s / 1990s output. It doesn't rock hard enough, damn it... you want the guy to scream and for the guitars to go crazy but they don't. And it's not like a Slint thing (also Touch And Go... they must've had a dousing wand for shit like this) because it never really feels like it's building up to anything. There are faster songs, and those are solid. Still imposed by a vocalist who refuses to yell.
I think this album does act as an interesting glimpse into an under discussed time in rock history, though: the post-Soundgarden, pre-Creed no man's land of VH1 and MTV nonsense that gave The Meat Puppets a popular(ish) album and Daniel Johnston a major label contract. How into that time period of music you are depends how much of this sort of noise rock brow beating you can take.
Honestly, I get a little sick of the luscious art-pop thing the album is doing by the end. But christ almighty, that's probably my fault. Can your lobster be too buttery? Can your caviar be too rich?
Alright, it's not THAT good, but it's pretty solid. Track after track of earnest love songs, dry British snark, and proto-new wave rhythms. All wonderful stuff, though I still stand by my point that you can have too much of a good thing. I wish it held back a bit more often, maybe.. maybe I'm just not high brow enough to get it.
(Insert witty comment about the album cover here... cuntry life? I dunno.)
I think the best albums sharpen the people who hear them. It doesn't have to be moralistic, it can just make you stronger by making you happy, but as we live and breathe through whatever fugging Reich we're in now, we need to bang our drums and wake up the zombies.
It's not just a political choice to rant and rave here, the album is fantastic. The band is so cohesive and lively, the lyrics are scathing, and the energy is palpable. I regret that I didn't know much about Fela Kuti before this, but I'll rectify that as I live and breathe.
I grew up on a steady diet of punk rock, my dad's thrash metal, and a few (at the time unwanted but secretly genius) dabs of modern pop and country through my mom. I don't know what music Ian Mackaye grew up on, but I don't think I need to: I (and loads of other people, who vary in terms of coolness, record collection size, and diehard adherence to preconceived and usually shallow punk rock ethos) come back to this album because it is a relatable dose of pure teenage rage. We've all been hormonal, we've all been mad at douche-bags spilling beer everywhere. When this album came out is pretty goddamn remarkable, in the sense that Minor Threat managed to be so early to the 'party', but the album is far from dated.
Even if you hate the way this record sounds (I know I don't, but maybe you will) you have to give it to 'em: telling kids that violence is lame and that women are worth respecting is more commendable than the things most people I know were doing at Ian's age, even if this being a band of kids fresh out of high school means the lyrics are occasionally awkward. But Christ, is that such a crime either? You gotta meet these records at their level every now and again...
Maybe this being one of the 1001 albums I MUST hear before I die is a geographical thing, because this is the first I've heard of this solid, hazy indie rock. Gets over the hump that most self-important indie-twee (sleaze?) debuts find themselves in by not focusing too much on how smart and significant the lead songwriter is and instead focusing on cool textures, hooks, guitar squalling, ETC. Good for looking out the window and thinking hard about something important (but not too important.)
It's a bit underdone in the middle, the songs get a bit cheesy and overly hooky. I would never call a group of people I'll never meet in my lifetime sellouts, but I do think if they stuck to the ambient stuff the album would be *all* killer. So it goes.
I think I just hate this guys voice. I'm not usually that direct in one of these reviews, but it's been a secret shame of mine for years that London Calling has never done that much for me. I, a self proclaimed 'punk' in high school and 'music nerd' now don't listen to The Clash recreationally. Fuck, man, I've tried! I don't need my punks to use saxophones or stay in key, but that sort of thing doesn't turn me off either. What am I not seeing? Why does everybody I know tell me this is the greatest album of all time?
I still don't really get it, and I've been smashing my head against the stage trying to figure it out. The 'punk' thing to do (and the thing I did in high school) would be to trash the album, give it a one and a smart-ass review, and put on some Black Flag. But then again, posing as an unaffected, chortling doesn't seem very punk (or very punk), so I have to give credit where it's due: this is a good album filled with good songs.
They're clever, they're biting, they chug along just fast enough to where you're not bored but slow enough to let the wordplay sink in. It's never really sunk into me, maybe with the exception of "Lost in The Supermarket." I hum that song everytime I'm getting tailed by a guy with a 'nam hat in Walmart. Can't say I love the reggae stuff the album does, but that's probably just me.
Alright, here's where I get bold. (Christ, nobody's reading this anyhow.) Beyond the album's honest to god strengths, I think this album gets a lot of praise because it is very hip to have a favorite punk album, and it's even hipper to have a favorite punk album that you can show a girl you want to get with. The cover makes a great poster, the record makes a great shelf piece. I don't think ALL of the album's hype is phony, but I can only throw on an album so many times to try and discover its hidden genius so many times. 10,000,000 music nerds, Rolling Stones writers, and douche-canoes with Pearl Jam tattoos can't be wrong.... right?
I am not immune to Jack White's slick, pasty blues rock charms, but I am also acutely aware that he made much better music before and after this album. It's not bad, per say, it just feels a bit stiff and constrained. He gets weird, and he tries out all sorts of styles, but there's a point in which it all blends together: not like Pet Sounds, more like Kings of Leon (!). Maybe it only reads that way because I know Jack is capable of his own Pet Sounds.
I can't give much grief here: the album has it's moments, it's never abrasively bad or anything. And besides, you'd be a bit disenfranchised if your cousin / ex-wife / drummer let you out on your own.
I listened to Alice in Chains a lot in high school, to an almost agonizing degree. I would start my day, every school day, listening to music about wasted potential and drug addiction, suicide and misery. I quickly got diagnosed and wised up that living that way was making getting out of bed each morning more difficult than it needed to be.
I do not mention this to bring this album down, or to state that it's themes are one note and only suitable for teenage sad-sackery. (Not unwarrented sad-sackery, for the record. It wasn't about girls or cars, I was struggling, but it was still no doubt draining and partially self-inflicted.) I want to highlight the opposite, actually: in getting out of high school, listening to more varied types of music, and giving myself room to breathe, I found coming back to this album emotionally cathartic and deeply rewarding.
I believe almost everybody comes back to some of the music they consumed in their younger and more vulnerable years with a bit of embarrassment. I mention that to say that there is nothing embarrasing about this album: it is a testament to fantastic songwriting, to pain, to a good drummer and a good bass tone. It's a concept album about not getting any better, it starts with death and ends with forgiveness, forgiveness it may or may not have even earned.
It is usually weak criticism to link the dead musicians to the sad songs they wrote, something that should be saved for middling Cobain biographies and high school essays about Nick Drake. But Staley (a bluesman by reason of pain and timing) and Cantrell (a de facto pick for grunge rock god, a genre that didn't accommodate well to writing sweet songs about your dad or playing metal guitar solos) May just be the 90s Lennon / McCartney. Junk-age pop geniuses, helping all the lonely people figure out where they belong. (That may not be the best example, considering Lennon and McCartney famously argued about who wrote that song for years, but the line is still good, right? Right? Bite me, I thought it was good.)
I think the reason it's so easy to link the artists to their various vices as portrayed on this record is because of how lived in these themes feel: the 90s had no shortage of albums about hating yourself (most likely ushered in by this band... god knows they ushered in the yelpy "YEAH" that all of the post-grunge slop artists borrowed) but depth is the name of the game here. It's not just music to overdose to (or a major label equivalent) it has nuance and bite. "I've eaten the sun / so my tongue has been burned of the taste" existing in the same song as "I'd like to fly / but my wings have been so denied" is pure fugging genius, especially when the song itself is mixed and mastered like Icarus just now feeling the heat on his wings.
But they aren't one trick ponies... it isn't all heroin and yelling (not that that would be a bad thing, or something to take lightly.) The band go a lot of different places, and they go through all of them naturally. Hard rockers exist alongside slower cuts, thoughtful and downright experimental song structures in between the best singles 1992 had to offer. The drumming tosses you around, and lays a nauseating and dense sort of rhythm that keeps the band in line. The bassist acts similarly, knowing when to hold 'em and when to let Layne and Jerry do their (respective and also collaborative) thing.
I am not in high school anymore, and I am thankful for that fact everyday. But I am also thankful that I once was, that it weathered me a bit and helped me come to love music as I do now. I am also deeply thankful that this album doesn't suck, and that revisiting it may have actually made it better than I originally thought. Smarter, at the very least.
It feels pretty cheap to rate the intentionally-anxiety inducing album poorly because it succeeded in making me freak out. With that said, I probably wasn't in the mood to listen to gorgeous vocals crooning over spacey art house hip hop noise. I'll be in that mood at some point, and when I am I'll throw this on (or just take a nap instead.)
Joni Mitchell could perform her poetry with the accompaniment of bagpipes filled with sand and I would still be enraptured, so I can't say the 'poppy' production here bothers me. Maybe you could argue that by six albums in, Joni was treading the same water over and over again, what with the artsy musical boyfriends (the courting) and the breaking up
n' boozing (the spark.) But Christ, let her be self-indulgent: if you had her previous five albums under your belt, you'd let yourself write about Paris a little longer.
Oh, and about that last song. I'm sure the reaction to 'joni-jazz' is going to be split on this site, but I thought it was cool enough. Is it conceited to call yourself a genius? Probably, but if you had to deal with those Rock 'n' Roll magazine fucks speculating about your virginity while you were writing the best albums of the 60s, you'd rub it in their faces too. (Hey, it's a good thing this book doesn't include the rest of the 'Joni-jazz' records... right?)
To not only reject a racist, violent Reagan-era government but to label YOURSELF a public enemy takes stones. I don't believe music leads people to violence (or video games, for fucks sake) but listening to this made my heart race and my teeth grit.
They aren't the most varied or lyrically dense rappers (though they have their moments) but their anger is so goddamn potent that it all goes down smooth. Don't believe the low reviews (anti-hype?)
(Man, Flava Flav used to be cool!)
A great guitar player, a drummer with the most infuriating snare this side of Ulrich, a pedophile, and a bassist who's great in interviews walk into a funk/rap/rock heroin bar and make a bajillion dollars off of people whose deeply rooted racism make them incapable of listening to music that their parents didn't bone to in 2003.
Yeah, I didn't care for this one.
