The first track made me think I was listening to some kind of proto math rock thing, only coming at it from a different direction. That idea disappears pretty early into the second track, but the thought was interesting.
Category: Music
The Smiths (1984)
The British music critic establishment and whomever else greeted this band as saviours must have been so desperate for guitars to greet this band – this jangle pop music – as the thing to deliver them from synthesizers, instead of something louder or more interesting (or both). The Smiths are one of those mystifying bands …
Sparkle in the Rain (1984) by Simple Minds
What do you do when you’ve heard one band your whole life and not another, and then you hear the second band and they sound a lot like the first? But, the thing is, the second band was actually first, and really doesn’t sound that much like that first band.
Pretzel Logic (1974) by Steely Dan
I liked Countdown to Ecstasy more than any other Steely Dan record I’ve ever heard. And it imbued me with the hope that I would hear further records, probably from this time in their career, that I would also enjoy more than most of their records. I had that hope until I listened to this …
KISS (1974)
For a band that looks scary – well one of the members looks scary – and with their kind of stage show, this is some pretty tame blues rock. Much like Alice Cooper, the appearance and show match the music in a way that can only be described as incongruously. It’s a wonder how these …
14:59 (1999) by Sugar Ray
I hated Sugar ray. I hate “Fly.” I hate “Every Morning.” I hate Mark McGrath’s flat singing and his fame-whoring. I hated their super poppy “fusion” thing which seemed like some weird kind of experiment of what would happen if a generic “alternative” pop rock band tried to incorporate hip hop like it was nu …
…Baby One More Time (1999) by Britney Spears
I’m not sure I can convey the loathing I felt towards Britney Spears when she first debuted. I hated both her music, the singles of which were catchy enough they were hard to ignore, and what she represented: manufactured pop. I told myself she was a puppet. In 1998 and 1999 it felt like we …
Under the Pink (1994) by Tori Amos
Amos’ debut was so ambitious and so impressive (if you can get by the histrionics) that I think the world might have been tempted to think there’s no way she can follow it up.
Technique (1989) by New Order
The fusion of alternative and dance was such a big thing in the late 1980s in the UK. But it’s not something I really get because, well, I don’t like dance music. But I wish I could appreciate it more, because there are all these bands, with all these acclaimed albums, and I listen to …
Footloose Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (1984)
I don’t review soundtracks normally for at least two reasons: normally they are not entirely composed of original music and they are not culturally significant enough – i.e. some kids probably bought it but the rest of us likely ignored it. But this one, well it is composed of original music, to the best of …
1984 by Van Halen
I know when I listened to Van Halen’s debut album – I think the only album of theirs I’ve actually listened to all the way through before this one – I was thinking it lacked one thing: synthesizers. The decision to add a cheesy ’80s synth to a sound that was already pretty fucking dumb …
Learning to Crawl (1984) by Pretenders
I never liked Chrissie Hynde. I don’t know why I didn’t like her when I was young – maybe I just didn’t have an opinion and don’t remember – but I know why I didn’t like her as an adult: I watched her and Morrissey shit on prog rock in New York Doll while I …
Defenders of the Faith (1984) by Judas Priest
I can’t say I loved Screaming for Vengeance. It felt pretty commercial to me – a little too concerned with selling records and not enough with Metal!!
Quique (1993) by Seefeel
I don’t know ambient music much beyond the 1970s, aside from a few 1990s albums I’ve encountered due to my podcast. But I do know that the vast majority of ambient music in existence has been created with synthesizers and other electronic instruments, keyboards hooked up to synthesizers and now computers, not rock band equipment. …
Public Image First Issue (1978) by Public Image Ltd
Simon Reynolds begins his definitive history of post punk, Rip It Up and Start Again with “Public Image” and this album. He argues that Lydon leaving the Sex Pistols, recording and releasing a song about them and releasing this record mark the point at which punk wasn’t just punk, but evolved into something else. It …
Mekanïk Destruktïw Kommandöh (1973) by Magma
The first time I heard Koenji Hyakkei I thought “Oh my god, what is this?!?!” and kind of lost my mind. It seemed like someone had invented a new spin on prog rock in the 1990s and I had just missed it during my teens. It was a while before I knew about Zeuhl or …
Sabbath Bloody Sabbath (1973) by Black Sabbath
Is a band that does one particular thing very well, like Black Sabbath, allowed to evolve? It’s one of those tricky questions. On the one hand, we expect many if not most artists to evolve in some way. (Thank the Beatles for that, if you hate that.) On the other hand, some bands (AC/DC, Ramones, …
S. F. Sorrow (1968) by The Pretty Things
If being first counts for anything, this record deserves more attention than it has received (in North America, anyway). Tommy is viewed by so many people as the first ever rock opera but it wasn’t first (this came out five months earlier in the UK), however a delayed release of this record in the US …
White Ladder (1998) by David Gray
When I lived in rez, my neighbour played this record fairly frequently because he loved Dave Matthews and Dave Matthews put it out in the US. (He seems to have played it so much that, a few years later, I would insist that the men in my rez only liked DMB, Sublime and David Gray, …
Chaosphere (1998) by Meshuggah
I listen to every record I review a bare minimum of three times (but rarely more than that unless I own the album and have heard it before). But every so often I listen to a record three times and I’m pretty sure I need to listen to it more to figure it out. This …
Supposed Form Infatuation Junkie (1998) by Alanis Morissette
My biggest problem with Jagged Little Pill is its faux grunge (what we would now call post grunge) production; there’s this veneer of trying to make Alanis fit in with alternative rock bands, but it’s clearly the work of someone who was never in an alternative rock band and is just trying to create a …
Mutations (1998) by Beck
I can imagine that, had I paid attention to Beck more when he first became popular, and only heard Mellow Gold and Odelay, and not his earlier “anti folk” records, this record might have knocked me on my ass. In retrospect it has far more in common with Sea Change than it does those records …
The Red Shoes (1993) by Kate Bush
The first time I listened to it I just couldn’t get over the productive, which sounds so ’80s like any number of early ’90s albums, made by artists or producers who hadn’t yet seen the writing on the wall – that the era of gated drums synthesizers approximating any instrument you could think of was …
Bummed (1988) by Happy Mondays
I know of Madchester from 24 Hour Party People and from the unfortunate legacy of its approach to percussion which infiltrated into so much ’90s music. But I don’t really know any of the bands. This is probably my first proper Madchester record though now that I see it’s lumped in with Baggy I’m not …
Touch (1983) by Eurythmics
The distinguishing characteristic about the Eurythmics that makes them more accessible to me is that, unlike most synthpop bands from their era, they believe in instruments other than sythesizers and sequencers and the like.
No New York (1978) by Various Artists
I have heard about this record so much that it was inevitably going to prove difficult to listen to it by the time I got around to it. I first learned about it in The Secret History of Rock close to twenty years ago but I have at least managed to listen to the Contortions …
Outlandos d’Amour (1978) by The Police
The Police’s debut album is a bouncy energetic thing, with way better than you’d expect musicianship for their music scene and the kind of performances you would require from that same scene. Much of what initially captivated people about this band, present on this album, would disappear by the end of their career.
The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle (1973) by Bruce Springsteen
I have never heard a Springsteen record like this one. Maybe that’s because I just haven’t heard that many Springsteen records but I suspect or at least wonder that it’s because, at some point later on, he figured out who he was, and this version wasn’t part of that (or wasn’t normally part of that).
Piano Man (1973) by Billy Joel
I do not like Billy Joel. I recognize he has talent but let’s say I don’t like the way he uses it. I find his melodies too sappy and saccharine but even when I don’t I often don’t find them compelling enough. I regularly do not like his lyrics. But it’s really the arrangements that …
Stranded (1973) by Roxy Music
I must say I was pretty damn worried about the first post-Eno Roxy Music album. I have heard later records and, well, I didn’t love them. I don’t love where Ferry took the band. I figured this was the beginning of the end, with the “end” being Ferry the oh so sophisticated synthpop crooner.