It's quite good, though it is a little on the slow side for my personal tastes. That said, there were several songs here that even I enjoyed - the titular song, and Ms Vanderbilt were my personal highlights. I'd give 3.5 if I could.
There's some extremely important issues here. As a person, I couldn't be any more different from the artist. But the stories of community to fight against marginalisation still resonate strong. But outside of that, I'm not much of a fan. It's too slow, I almost fell asleep in the middle.
I quite like this one. It really does feel like the most 1970s thing to ever exist. The tracks are smooth, relaxed, confident and cool. Listening to it as an album, the themes here tend to feel a bit repetitive. However I won't mark it down for that - it can be forgiven as I believe the songs are intended to be scattered around a film? And not played back-to-back. I've not seen the film to be certain though.
I enjoyed Think the most - it stands out from the others. Not to say the others are bad by any means.
AHHH! This is wonderful! Caribbean music isn't a thing that I've had an enormous amount of exposure to - media like films and games set there being the prime source. I've always loved that music, but lacked the leads to find more. Until now. These tracks are excellent, clearly the works of masters in their fields.
An enjoyable time. Some familiar favourites, and some covers. The covers strike me as somewhat weird choices though, and kind of break me out of the music. That said, Cobain's vocals are incredible.
A massive dichotomy. Fun music, deeply disturbing themes. I like the instrumental tracks the best, and Pinball Wizard is a classic. But overall not a fun time due to the themes dealt with.
A confusing experience. I come into this not being a fan of hip hop in the slightest. But there's some beats and themes here that make listening quite enjoyable. The comedic elements also make for a fun time.
But there's one giant elephant in the room. What on earth is De La Orgee doing here? It is so out of place, that it actively makes the rest of the album worse.
I liked this, but listening to it was quite the trip. The electronic noises are fun, but occasionally off-putting. Sea of Tears, and State of Mind are two extremely beautiful tracks, I loved them both. Jah the 7th seal has a really fun effect, playing with the audio channels. The computer I was listening on crashed during one of the sci fi sounding sections, which really freaked me out too.
Good fun, but I'll give my computer a break for now!
A thoroughly weird, off putting, disconcerting experience. A confounding cacophony. Variable volume blasting out my ear drums. An unpleasant time was had listening to this - it sounded like an anxiety attack in audio form.
Starting out, I didn't really know what to expect. At the end, I'm somehow completely unsurprised by what I got. How those two can coexist, I don't know, but they did it. The end product is an interesting mix of fun, eclectic, "substances", relaxation, and love. I generally enjoyed my time with this album, though a handful of moments either grossed me out, or got a little too trippy.
An extremely pretty, perhaps relatable story of loneliness, falling in love, being turned down, coming to terms with rejection. And then a side story at the end, with themes about mental health and acceptance of neuro-diversity, which would have been extremely forward thinking for the time. I thoroughly enjoyed my time listening to this, relating to the themes very strongly.
Generally, this embodies my typical experience with hip hop. It's overwhelmingly masculine. Overwhelmingly sexualised. It's crude, sexist, loud, and repetitive. Disappointing to learn that S/TLB's Roses and Hey Ya are likely just the exceptions to the rule. That said, Toilet Tisha hit like a truck. I have to praise it, for having the courage, or perhaps self-awareness to address an issue as heavy as teen pregnancy, leading to suicide.
Is it hypocrisy, not connecting the dots between the hyper-masculine culture the album endorses and the social outcomes which result? Or is it setting the listener up, showing them all these themes and acts they might think of as "fun" (though I think of them as disgusting), before smashing them in the face with the consequences of their actions? That's not a question that I feel I can answer definitively.
Though even the most masterful of plot twists cannot fully forgive what came before. 2/10.
Having no idea about the language, I really only have the choice to look at this one through a similar lens to BVSC, just judging purely from the vibes the music give. Overall, I had a quite fun time listening to this. The tracks are generally quite bouncy and fun, offering something worthwhile, even to a person who does not speak a word of Arabic.
There's some vibes here, musical motifs perhaps, that draw parallels from the 70s and 80s in the West. Things like the synths, and a cover of an extremely well known song. Adapting a foreign movement like that, and putting a local cultural spin on it acts as a bridge, making the foreign culture more accessible to a Western audience (read: me).
Would I listen again: Maybe. Honestly, it's pretty unlikely. But possible all the same.
This might be a controversial opinion, but I feel like the skills of guitar and vocals are quite mismatched on this one. The guitar is amazing, some of the best you'll hear anywhere. The vocals though? I feel like the main singer is stretching his voice a bit too far, and it kind of detracts from the experience. Also, there's some problems with pacing and timing - two of the tracks seem to go on a bit too long for my preferences, knocking the listener out of the groove, so to speak.
Overall, I feel like this is quite a good album, albeit with a few flaws which prevent it from evolving into the great album, that tracks like "Good Golly Miss Molly" and "Proud Mary" indicate that it had to potential to be. I don't want that to sound like I didn't enjoy my time listening (I absolutely did), but more that it could have been better.
I feel as though this one as a whole is meant to be taken through a Marxist lens? At least, that's what my inner pol-sci graduate is telling me. That said, I never really wrapped my head around old Karl. There's a vibe here of despair at the state of the world, the way that the economic powers that be exploit the worker, and leave them alienated from the products of their own labour. People are forced to toil, with little hope of salvation. Even if they want to jump the border to a place of more opportunity, they may well just be moving somewhere worse.
I quite liked the instrumentals in this album - it's a real shame that the one hiding in track zero really does seem to be lost to us. (I looked a little too, and found nothing, not even a rubbish quality YouTube rip) I feel they do quite a wonderful job of showing the sense of hopelessness which pervades the album. The manufactured, synthetic vibe captures the story of alienation from life and products of labour.
Would I listen again: Unlikely. Even though it's very well made, the themes don't exactly make for an entertaining time. The instrumentals are perhaps an exception.
Very well done, thank you for making me feel depressed at the state of the world.
Well. this one was quite the roller coaster. I guess if I expected anything, that would be just about it.
I'm not loving what I presume is a stylistic choice to lower the audio quality of the vocals in some of the tracks. Perhaps it's a me thing, but it just makes it extremely difficult to discern what is actually being said here. It essentially detracts from the excellent quality music that the foggy voice is being imposed over the top of. But this was only really a problem on the first two of the tracks. The rest - they're great. Instruments, voice, tempo, tone. Everything came straight from the heart in these tracks.
Would I listen again: To the whole thing? probably not. But to individual tracks? Yep. There's five here that are going on my "new favourites" playlist, so that's a pretty solid performance.
Overall, this way more chill than I came into it expecting. I know I'm usually a fan of the more energetic works, but I actually quite like this one.
I enjoyed the recurring theme of "having the sunshine". I'm not certain, but I'm taking from it a message of having destiny in your own hands, being able to make of your life whatever you choose. Personal freedom. A theme that resonates quite strongly with me.
Also, there's a lot of interesting juxtaposition going on here. Modern vs Traditional is well explored - coming out when it did, a time of technological revolution, makes this especially relevant. There's also cultural comparisons going on, Latin Simone being a key here. Slow Country brings the Rural vs Urban. All the choices to be made reinforce the idea of self determination the early tracks in the album propose. songs
Would I listen again: To some, maybe. Unlikely to the whole album.
Rating: I had a fun time listening along to this, grooving, and some interesting themes that can make you think. It's quite good on the whole, and didn't have any glaring weak points, in my opinion anyway. It feels like the definition of a high 4 star to me.
The early tracks give the feeling of being stuck in limbo, or purgatory. Or maybe the world's slowest phone queue. And it's not changing as we proceed through. There's a weird amount of death being mentioned here too. I'm a little worried about the mindset which might have led to the creation of this. Nothing happy. Nothing relaxed. An dark place. The composers' mental demons are plain as day to me in these tracks. I'm not sure exactly what demon is being referred to here, but it still evokes extremely powerful feelings of struggle and empathy.
It certainly did it's job, putting out a feeling, a story of suffering, and 99% hopelessness. The final lines "I must fight this sickness, I must find a cure" offer a hope spot to finish on.
I think this album is emblematic of the ethos of the 1001+ album journey. They're albums you have to hear. Not necessarily because they're good, but because they changed something, or created an entirely new way of making music.
The soundscape here is overbearing. Like the din of a busy road in the morning peak hour - there's no stops. No breaks. By and large, everything sounds far too squished. Many instruments compressed on top of each other, making most of them indecipherable. Like they've been thrown in an audio blender, if you will.
But somehow, despite my mind telling me all these reasons why it's bad, why I shouldn't like it - my heart just won't listen. It's not the best thing ever, but I still quite enjoyed my time listening. I'm awfully confused on the whole, but that's ok. Synthethized Shenanigans is what I expected, and what I got.
Rating: A high 3, low 4. I guess I'll put a 3. I've got no more words to justify that. And if I did, you wouldn't be able to hear them through the $2 shop mic and screechy guitars anyway.
I generally like to try and synthesise my experience with the album into a few lines, maybe a paragraph at the end in this section. But for this one, I'm really struggling to do that. There's actually a couple of tracks here that I like, or liked parts of. Graveyard; Pittsburgh to Lebanon; and Human Cannonball are highlights. But there's other parts that are just weird. Indeed, 90% of the album's running time is taken up by weirdness.
I've really not got much of an idea exactly what the band were trying to achieve in making this work. The best guess I've got is "Have some fun, take some drugs, see what we make, and maybe we'll sell some copies of it, to pay for the whole experience". It's puzzling. Some people bought copies of this? Enough people to garner enough attention to end up on a list of 1000 albums you need to hear? I got it for free and I think I might have overpaid.
Rating: There is a very stark dichotomy going on here. A very bimodal distribution of my enjoyment. Fun bits, crazy bits, unintelligible bits. I think the only thing I really can do here is to plop it down right in the middle of the scale. 3.
The classics are that for a reason. They stand the test of time. Seven decades later, some of the tracks on this album are still an enjoyable time to listen to. But the classics are that for another reason. They're selectively chosen, specifically to be the best of the best. Survivorship bias means that only the highlights persist in our minds. There's weaker songs, which just end up forgotten. This album has songs which fall in both categories.
Also, I suspect that Little Richard may have been scamming his record label here. They contracted him for twelve unique songs. But somehow, he snuck several copies of the same track in here under different titles. Joking aside, it did get a bit repetitive hearing numerous tracks with the exact same vocal and instrumental motifs.
Rating: This album has a few stand-out tracks, a few tracks which are pretty average, and a healthy dose of self-plagiarism. But on a more serious note, even the "bad" bits are still perfectly enjoyable. It's at no stage a chore to slog through. So I think that a fair rating would be 4.
They're talented, but perhaps they need to pick a lane? There's a weird smug vibe here - like White is saying "Look at all this stuff I can do!", at the expense of the album being a coherent work.
I know it's strange, I tend to think of albums as little more than a collection of songs. But in this case, what's going on here is so disjointed, that I can't look past that. And then a critical hit from an emotional nuke to close.
Rating: Random/10. It's all over the place, I feel like if I'm trying to assign a rating, I might as well be throwing darts at a board. In a tornado. While standing upside down. Because I think that's what the artists did while composing this. Well I got the 14 segment of the board. So I guess that's a 7/10. Or a high 3, low 4 on this scale.
Jazz is a genre I know despairingly little about. I sort of wish I knew more, to pick up on what I suspect are a whole host of musical references which are flying over my head. Many sequences and motifs which are ringing bells in my mind, hints, clues and shout-outs which are slipping through my fingers. Though, I think it's only fair that I go into these blind, as I have with the other albums to date. It's been a recurring theme through many of my reviews, that I've said I enjoy the instrumental tracks more than the vocalized ones. Perhaps, judging on my past form, the reader might expect that I'll look favorably on this?
Well if so, the reader is absolutely correct. I certainly enjoyed this. For what is practically my first foray into the world of Jazz, I feel both exceptionally lucky, and unlucky. Lucky, in that I started out on such a dynamic work, which teems with emotion. Optimism, Power, Sorrow, Joy, Despair. And everything in between. Unlucky, in that I've spent decades of my life not knowing that this beautiful material was out there.
I am genuinely surprised at how much I enjoyed this. I picked it out to do fairly late on a Saturday evening, expecting it to be relaxing, not especially intellectually challenging. I wouldn't call it challenging, but somehow, it's bewitched me. Coaxed me into writing a review longer than some essays I've written. It sounds like just an endless spray of words. But it's actually a love letter. A love letter to a genre that I never knew.
There's not a whole lot of coherence here - the only overarching theme I got was love and relationships, of different stages and flavours. Newly kindled, long distance, fiercely protective, obsessive.
But sometimes, that's ok. And this is one of those times. The tracks are linked by fun use of the synthesisers, something that's right up my alley. Even if it didn't make much sense, it's still ok. Life doesn't really make sense either, so why should the music we listen to? Embrace the weird. Embrace the chaos.
Bjork is weird. But so am I. I think she's my kind of weird. 5
