Not gonna say anything particularly unique, but this is one of those albums where you have to ask, how is every single song this incredible? How does the production sound so good despite being lo-fi? Is that an allusion to Steve Reich? I'm a sucker for albums that are about America, the idea, too. If you can get past the 5 really short songs and the really long titles, it's a real treat. While there is definitely a beginning and an end, it feels less like a book and more like a ... read more

This is a strange one to write about. I have a lot of sentimental attachment to this record; I listened to it a lot as a kid. The songs here are very catchy, and very suitable for playing to your children. It is very much a product of time, however. Released during the civil rights movement, it's an almost unnervingly earnest celebration of American folklore, in which the one black character, John Henry, famously worked himself to death, virtuous cowboys fight off Mexicans, and the only ... read more

Quite a good album, with excellent standout tracks (Prelude, Mr. Skin, Morning Will Come) mixed in with definitely of-the-time tracks (Nature's Way, Love Has Found a Way) and some interesting experiments (Space Child). They're at their best when they're rockin' though. Seems like it would be good to drop acid to.

Sure, it's "radio friendly", but catchy, well-written pop tends to do well on the radio. I mean, really, besides Hot Cha (which is another merely good, interesting, whimsical experiment), basically everything here has something ticklish, lyrics-wise and music-wise. I mean, who doesn't like a four-on-the-snare beat and lyrics about a lighthouse?

Found out about this from Anthony Fantano's review of Ants from Up There. I'm not sure this album gets the recognition it deserves.

The lo-fi-ish bare-bones production, very-old-sounding synths all really make you feel like you found some kind of artifact. There are points of genuine songwriting transcendence here. Shine a Light coaxes more out of I IV and vi chords than any other song I've heard. This Heart's on Fire reminds me of Springsteen---never a bad thing---and builds to such a ... read more

If you heard Trout Mask Replica and turned it off in the first three seconds, give this a shot.

Some bangin' blues rock with eccentric vocals. At their best, they mix sick riffs and bass lines with strange production and vocals, and at worst it's pretty good, if not a bit predictable (e.g. Call on Me, When There's Woman). Songs like Zig Zag Wanderer and I'm Glad are also somewhat predictable, but slap. I'm surprised nobody has sampled I'm Glad, actually.

Yellow Brick Road is probably my ... read more

Wherein TMBG leans most heavily into rock bangers, and is the best off for it. Don't get me wrong, there's the classic tomfollery (a lot of which is condensed into the monumental "Fingertips" suite), but there's the most in the way of quality songs out of any of the Johns' albums. It's really easier to list the ones that aren't total bops ("Spider" and "Which Describes How You're Feeling", which are classic little TMBG jingles; "If I Wasn't Shy", a bit of ... read more

The epitome of not taking yourself too seriously. The third track is called "Number Three", the Accordion/Guitar duo close out with a song called "Rhythm Section Want Ad", and there's a song called "Youth Culture Killed My Dog".

But they're not just self-referential goof-offs, they can really write incredibly catchy songs, my favorites being "Hotel Detective" and "She's an Angel" (which is up there in terms of best love songs of all time, ... read more

Minimalist music is a bit hard to write about. It's got marimba, xylophone, piano, clarinet, wordless voice, it's built on a sixteenth note pulse in the mallets, and is built on a cycle of eleven chords, but why should you listen to it? I mean, if the fact that it's the same sixteenth note groove for almost an hour is intriguing enough to you, by all means. But what makes this stand out against other minimalist music?

For me, probably because this is when I first listened to it, the piece is ... read more

A seminal and very consistent work of indietronica with some really great standouts (Such Great Heights, ...Silhouettes). The best way I can think of to describe the sound of this album is "wintery": it's cold, grey, and melancholy, but there's so much beauty, and it's punctuated with moments of brightness and celebration, even if you're celebrating from inside of a nuclear fallout shelter. It's mostly about a breakup, sometimes explicitly, sometimes through metaphors about ... read more

In my opinion, Mr. Twin is best when he's at his most melodic (in part because we both like the pentatonic scale), which is why I like 4 and Fingerbib so much. They're his two best tracks, two of maybe the best electronic songs ever, and probably the most accessible tracks in his catalog.

As for the rest, the experimental breakbeat-type stuff on Cornish Acid, Peek..., and Yellow Calx are certainly interesting and stimulating, but I just don't get the same kind of enjoyment out of them that I ... read more

So, a bunch of Marxist Frenchies get together and make an album of retro-futurist krautrock-inspired lounge jazz. I can't help imagining listening to this while sitting on a couch in a house filled with 1960s-styled appliances watching commercials for flying cars and rolling my eyes while I read a socialist pamphlet. It's so delightfully uncool.

Just a couple notes, the 17-minute long Refractions in the Plastic Pulse is really like four songs (which I kinda wish they split up, but whatever), ... read more

This is such a sick album

Part throwback to old-school crisp, punchy, braggadocious hardcore hip-hop, with a modern edge in its production (plus a sick Gang of Four sample on the ground below), and part razor sharp political commentary. I mean, "look at all these slave masters posing on your dollar" (JU$T), "not a holy man but I'm moral in my perverseness // so I support the sex workers unionizing their services" (the ground below), "how long must the holy hold onto ... read more

The Wall can suck it, this is the best Rock Opera of all time. I'm not going to really go into depth about the plot, you can go read the Wikipedia page, but I will note that while the story is pretty specific to the lives of mid-60s mods, the themes explored are universal: wanting to fit in, whether you can enjoy yourself when the world seems like its falling apart, wanting to escape your problems with drugs or physical escapism (or both), it's all here. And the musical themes, Helpless Dancer, ... read more

Really, all you need to do to see the importance of this album is to take a listen to electronic music before this album, and electronic music after this album. Although the performances sometimes come across a little stilted, that's part of the charm.

And, if Europe Endless isn't one of the best songs ever, a glorious optimistic ode to European integration. Same goes for most of these songs, the Hall of Mirrors is a dissection of fame (maybe even body dysmorphia? Either way, it still holds ... read more

First of all, what great album art.

Second of all, this is a very entertaining excursion into the human condition and the causes of our societal ills. When the inspirations for the album are "the state of society" and "documentaries about monkeys", you know the result is at least going to be interesting, and the results are generally pretty great. It's kind of a "Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!" of the 21st century.

The kick off is Baby Criminal, featuring ... read more

I'm not a huge expert in electronic music, but while this album is definitely electronic, it's also a jazz fusion record. Nespole, the title track, Argente, and Thin Air are all primarily electronic; Silhouettes, For Mamish, and Peroration Six are primarily jazz. But regardless of this, all the tracks are fantastic, and the album is very cohesive, despite amount of variety in the tracklist. Nespole grooves like nobody's business, and Silhouettes, while I'm not sure it *quite* justifies its ... read more

This album is a remarkable improvement from their excellent debut, but it really scratches a very different itch. One thing to note is the influence of Steve Reich and minimalism, especially on Bread Song and Haldern, which allows the beautiful melodies they have shown they can craft as far back as Track X to serve as ambience to Isaac Wood's tragic lyricism. When they're not crafting minimalist masterpieces, they're creating soaring indie rock melodies (Chaos Space Marine, Concorde, Good Will ... read more

One of the most genuinely innovative rock albums in the past few years. The combination of Slint-inspired guitars (Athens, France, Science Fair), klezmer influences (Instrumental, Opus), and weirdly specific lyrics (Science Fair, Sunglasses) creates a really unique, versitile, and still pretty cohesive listen. Even the most mellow track on the album, Track X, has really beautifully written guitar lines, and serves as an example of how good they are at using their unique instrumentation. Also, I ... read more

This has got to be the Boss's best album, and one of the greatest albums of all time (maybe my favorite).

I've seen some critics say this LP is dragged down by how convinced of it's own greatness it is, but I don't think that applies when the music is really that great. The one-two punch of lyrics that convey both the romance and the perils of the American dream and living dangerously as a youth, and the wall-of-sound production which endows the story with the grandiosity it deserves. The ... read more