Briefly review something you heard recently (or are listening to now)

Tina Turner - Twenty Four Seven. I've never listened to a full Tina Turner album - this is her final studio album and it doesn't have any recognizable hits so it's kind of a weird place to start: See, when I heard she passed away I decided to listen to something of hers, I'm still on the 1999 thing, and she did have an album that year, so... Anyway, I find most of this So Okay, It's Average - Tina's voice sounds great throughout, but the songwriting and production can let her down at times; it seems like they were trying to keep the sound of the album modern but not too modern, but they may have played it too safe because without her distinctive voice some of these songs feel like they could have been on absolutely any other pop / r and b album of the mid-90s. Still there are a few stand-outs and it's not the worst way to go out for a final studio album of one's long-running career.

PACOL. - Everyone on Planet Earth, This One's for You. Let's Rock!

"ok this album is genuinely some of the most amazing sound collage stuff i've heard in a while. i was definitely expecting something good with this album, but MAN were my expectations blown out of the water. hopefully, this becomes popular one day, this REALLY deserves the attention.

it's a lot more "smooth-sailing" then most sound collage stuff, i'd say. of course, there's still some rather eclectic genre changes, but they seem to flow into each other instead of changing abruptly (most of the time). there's a surprising amount of singing on this record, and it's actually really good. it's reminiscent of p.rosa's stuff, in a sense.

to think that this was made by a bunch of 4channers who decided to remix The Life of Pablo at first...now i'm tempted to listen to that album. (The Death of Pablo)"

Edited by ZuggaluggalocoroG on Nov 27th 2023 at 3:06:52 AM

Will Wood - The Normal Album

i didn't really like will beforehand but now that i've listened to the album i think i like him more

i also like how the composition of all the tracks give off the "mentally unstable" vibe it does to be honest

8.5/10

Blur's self titled album, I liked Song 2, Death Of a Party and Beetlebum before listening to it, but i feel like there is something missing here? The songs dont really feel connected in any way so the album feels kind of disappointing even if i DO like the songs

Edited by RaisinRangel on Jul 16th 2023 at 6:18:48 AM

Subrosa - Never Bet The Devil Your Head. This is kind of The Band Minus the Face version of only slightly less obscure alternative rock band For Squirrels - where For Squirrels most obviously had R.E.M. as a jumping off point, Subrosa tended to be compared more to Nirvana - but what's sort of laudable to me is that, while Post-Grunge was in its early stages when this came out (1997), they weren't shying away from some of the more experimental elements of the style - whenever they do remind me of Nirvana, it's usually In Utero specifically, and probably because the singer has started screaming his lungs out - then there's an outright Noise Rock song in "Antigen Fiend", and eerie use of an out of tune piano in "Pretend". Even the poppiest track, "The Life Inside Me Killed This Song", seems sarcastically poppy - it also has one of my favorite lines in the album in terms of nihilist dark humor - "grunge is dead, he's buried next to God".

Talk Show - Talk Show. I guess I'm on a 90s The Band Minus the Face thing now? This was basically the rest of Stone Temple Pilots keeping themselves busy when Scott Weiland was in rehab / starting to write his own solo album. It flopped, probably for the same reasons that a lot of "band minus the face" projects flop, but it's not a bad STP-style album, especially if your favorite is Tiny Music, which this resembles the most closely - "Hello Hello" was the first single, and that's one of the ones where vocalist Dave Coutts sounds the most like Scott, so I can imagine some casual fan at the time hearing it on the radio and thinking it was some single from the last STP album they must have missed earlier.

Edited by MikeK on Jul 26th 2023 at 3:01:16 AM

I watched a video by Brad Taste In Music lately, and in it was a song known as "YouTuber On Twitter”, and it’s the worst thing ever. There is no redeeming qualities to it. It is torture. And it’s by Onision. That’s all you need to know. AVOID IT AT ALL COSTS.

Triple Q - Sucker is a new and original song that doesn’t plagarize at all

this mashup scratches my brain

10/10

Pavement - Terror Twilight: Farewell Horizontal. So, what I actually listened to was a recut of the album that they did for a deluxe reissue. The band and their Record Producer, Nigel Godrich (best known for frequently working with Radiohead), had very different ideas of what order the songs should be in - the original 1999 album used the band's track-list, the reissue uses Nigel's. This kind of demonstrates how much a difference the order of songs can make - in particular, the reissue of the album starts with the two longest, most complex songs, and as a result it kinda feels more like a psychedelic, "stoner" album, even though it's the exact same songs and recordings from the 1999 version ^note the only unreleased song to be added to the main sequence is "Shagbag", which is just a short instrumental interlude.

Steve Burns - Songs for Dustmites. Steve from Blue's Clues made an alternative / indie rock album shortly after leaving the show, with the help of Flaming Lips' Steven Drozd, and it's not bad. This was also the year after Flaming Lips released Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, and it's somewhat in a similar style, with several songs using that album's distinctive combination of acoustic guitars, trippy synthesizers, and electronica / hip hop style drum machines. I've never watched Young Sheldon, but apparently the opening track to this album, "Mighty Little Man", was its Real Song Theme Tune.

Edited by MikeK on Nov 21st 2023 at 11:57:00 AM

themes within themes within themes - I'm listening to albums from 1995, within that I'm temporarily fixated on industrial and Industrial Metal, and within that everything I listened to today ended up being at least loosely connected to Nine Inch Nails.

Nine Inch Nails - Further Down The Spiral. A Remix Album of The Downward Spiral. It's actually interesting how cohesive this is as a remix album, especially since Aphex Twin, in typical Aphex Twin style, just did his own thing and called it a remix. Check this out if the main thing you like about the original album is the Nightmare Fuel elements.

Filter - Short Bus. I listened to this album a bunch as a teen, but I'm just now coming to realize it could actually be looked at as "industrial Post-Grunge" instead of Industrial Metal. Which is not as bad as I may have made it sound.

Prick - Prick. Speaking of unusual Industrial Metal hybrids, this is sort of a mix of Industrial Metal, New Wave Music and possibly Glam Rock. There's the harsh guitar and drum sounds and general sonic experimentation you'd associate with industrial metal, but applied to songs that often have a more poppy, playful, and tongue-in-cheek feel than you'd normally expect. Maybe that's why the album cover is a jester with his head covered in black ink.

Some hours ago I input in one of the forum games a song that I heard recently, normally following up the newest songs that are on the japan trending lists in Spotify then I found Play by the new band Enfants.

The song was really a surprise in the japanese music sea that is full of cute voices (the standard in jPop and anime intros), japanese tries on urban sounds (that I usually run away) and the regular international trends that Japan import from Korea and the US. Why?

The band has a familiar sound that has this breaking vocalist sound that makes me relate them quickly to Asian Kung-Fu Generation (those that make one of the best intros of Naruto) but also to the rock style and angst that I heard frequently in the Foo Fighters.

For me hearing something like this is a like a fresh drop of water in a desert filled with autotune and trends to follow... If rock was not so expensive to produce (sigh)

https://youtu.be/CLfjlL0H-ek

the verve - a northern soul - britpop, neo-psych, space rock, shoegaze

the title track of this thing gives me the mental image of an athletically-built young man with black chrome skin, sitting on the hood of a just-as-glossy, all-white sports car that slowly rolls down a runway. the strip’s sides are decorated with advertisements not unlike those you’d find at a stadium, and it seems to stretch on endlessly into the night, as do the crowds surrounding it that cheer and flash photos. all of this is to say that it feels enormous, and weirdly sleek; something about that metallic, spiky guitar tone that constantly seems to swell up, and the shuffling rumbling bassline, and those high-pitched sparkling synths really hit the spot. it’s incredible.

and so is the rest of the album! the aggressive walls of fuzz guitar on this is music; so it goes’ spacey drones, the quiet comedown of drive you home, the storm of baggy grooves and wah-heavy guitar on brainstorm interlude (best song btw; the repetitive fuzz and the repeat call of “COMING IN” in the intro alone gets me so pumped every time i hear it that i throw my phone into the wall); the unexpected-but-welcome shift into trip hop territory on life’s an ocean; the way (reprise)’s buried vocals and walls of feedback drone on into the astral plane… every song here is a winner, even the lesser tracks like the mellow jangle pop of on your own, or history with its contemplative atmosphere and gorgeous string sections.

it took a while to really love but, to me, this really outdoes a storm in heaven and urban hymns, taking all of the band’s facets (interplanetary jam sessions, hard-edged britpop, and subtler acoustic comedowns) and executing them all perfectly, showing everything i love about them. 63 minutes of concentrated win and the verve’s finest hour by far. 10/10.

The Smile - currently trending in the top 50 viral in Japan is the newest album of The Smile, the group made by Radiohead veterans Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood along with drummer Tom Skinner...

By one side you notice that even Yorke can have a soft, tender side on his music while never leaving the way he produced his songs on Radiohead, its like hearing Kid-A but as if someone older took on the music and asks to put something more mature, less rebel.

The disruptions in the sounds are there, Bending Hectic has distorsioned guitars in calm environment that then turn into an orchestral hiss and breaking into a very hard and astonishing ending where the guitar gives its best.

Friend of a friend sounds like if Yorke heard some Norah Jones records and begin bending her sing style with his, giving a cool trip to a modern adult sound without leaving the way he make his songs.

Is wonderful to hear Yorke again and giving us such a trip...

Some thoughts on a couple things I listened to recently for the 1995 thing I'm still doing:

Kyuss - ...And The Circus Leaves Town. The only other album of theirs I've heard is Blues For The Red Sun, and this is just the slightest bit more laid back and less heavy than that - but it's not a bad development because it kind of shows a more psychedelic side of the band. Actually, I can hear more of the roots of Queens of the Stone Age here.

Slash's Snakepit - It's Five O'Clock Somewhere. Most of same musicians who played on Guns N' Roses' Spaghetti Incident are also on this, just no Duff McKagan ^note though he's credited with cowriting the first single (and one of the better tracks), "Beggars and Hangers On" and of course no Axl - instead there's Mike Inez on bass and Eric Dover on vocals. This feels a lot like it wants to hearken back to GNR's Appetite for Destruction - the sleazy feeling and the playing is there, and Eric Dover's vocals fit in without being an exact Axl clone, but there's not really enough good material to justify the almost 70 minute run-time. Too bad, because the first few tracks had actually grabbed me and made me hope this was some lost hard rock classic that just didn't get its due because of coming out when grunge and alt rock were still prevalent (and/or not having as recognizable a vocalist)

Edited by MikeK on Mar 1st 2024 at 6:22:32 AM

Ministry - Hopiumforthemasses. These past couple albums have been interesting - like Moral Hygiene before it, this has all the on-the-nose political references you'd expect from the title (and um, at least the past 20 years of their career), but there are at least a few departures from the expected shouty industrial metal - a few tracks have Al using a more melodic vocal style and the last three tracks are all kind of stylistic experiments: "It's Not Pretty" spends about half its runtime as moody acoustic goth before inevitably shifting back to industrial metal, "Cult of Suffering" is a surprisingly funky Eugene Hütz collaboration, and most surprisingly the album closer "Ricky's Hand" is an outright throwback to the EBM / industrial-infused Synth-Pop of Twitch. ETA: "Ricky's Hand" turns out to be a Cover Version of Fad Gadget, but it's still interesting to see them doing this style again.

Edited by MikeK on Apr 18th 2024 at 11:09:38 AM

I'm on 1985 now:

The Residents - The Big Bubble. I wanted to like this because the concept is interesting, and I did like an album of theirs with a similar one, The Tunes of Two Cities. But it's just so underdeveloped musically, with only the occasional cool bit here and there, mostly provided by Snakefinger. I do find it interesting that Wikipedia claims they sought a "live" feel by recording the vocals first - I wonder if that means that the vocals were also written first, like they wrote and recorded vocals with built-in pauses, then figured out what the instruments would be doing under that afterwards. It does sorta sound like it.

AC/DC - Fly On The Wall. Some of the lesser tracks on this kinda sound like someone parodying AC/DC and I guess it's partly because Brian Johnson is often even less intelligible than usual and the mix only exacerbates that further. I do like the title track, Shake Your Foundations and especially Sink The Pink.

Aerosmith - Done With Mirrors. Most of the above applies but I can understand what Steven Tyler's saying.

Brian Eno - Thursday Afternoon. Ambient music gives me time blindness- or at least when it's one hour long track it does.

They Might Be Giants- 1985 Demo. OK so I just wanted to listen to TMBG but their proper debut was 1986. This is interesting if you're a fan though- only one of these songs (the excellent jerky funk rock "Hell Hotel") has never been on an official album in some form, but these are mostly different arrangements from the ones you'll be familiar with if you're a fan. I actually like the version of "When It Rains It Snows" better due to its almost baroque synth pop style

Edited by MikeK on Apr 18th 2024 at 11:51:38 AM