MicShazam reviews his favorites
 

Since I killed off my music journal, I've arguable been ****ting on music a lot more than I've been praising anything, and that's unfortunate. I was thinking that I wanted some sort of outlet for all of the music that I actually adore, but it also had to be a fairly easy thing to keep up with.

I'll try to do some sort of mini-review format, and see if I can keep it going and make it into something of substance. No way I'm doing a regular journal. Journals suck and I'd like it if people commented freely in here.

Believe it or not, I actually like some music. Some.

First real post in just a moment.

No. But that said, since this is not a journal, you can rec me anything you want. I'd only write about it if I end up thinking it's really good though.

You can't even react with a couple sentences to say how much it sucks?

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Artist: Roxy Music
Album title: Flesh + Blood
Year: 1980
Album link: https://open.spotify.com/album/1qPdwK9Ew939DdtkACLMvD

This is the worst Roxy Music album by far. Or so people will tell you. Sure, it's pretty sleek and approachable. Quite poppy, not very art rock, and even sort of AOR at times. It's grown on me a lot over the years and my favorite songs on this album are some of my favorite Roxy Music songs overall. I'd say that some of the simpler radio rock songs like "The Midnight Hour", "Oh Yeah" and "Over You" make it easy to see why some fans would object to this album, but I just kind of like the overall vibe of this album at this point.

Of course, "Avalon", the album that comes after this, is even more sleek and soft, but that album seems a lot more well liked by people in general.. Perhaps because it has more of a unique and cohesive style to it. "Flesh + Blood", in comparison, is sort of a hodge podge (Same old Scene has disco elements ffs!), and on top of that, several of the songs are covers.

I think "Avalon" is a great album, but for me, it just doesn't have quite the highlights that "Flesh + Blood" does. Check out the hightlights I've selected below. Those pretty much make this album a classic in my eyes.

Highlights:
Same Old Scene
My Only Love
Rain Rain Rain
No Strange Delight
EDIT: Listening to the album again, I realize that Eight Miles High also belongs here.

Favorite rating: **/***

I guess I can. I'm not gonna be a total thread format nazi. I guess I can just focus on the albums that I consider my favorites and then take whatever people might throw at me whenever I feel like it. Sure, why not.

I'm just gonna have to try and put the emphasis on positive responses to music. I'm whining enough about music that I don't like elsewhere.
Maybe try and hit that 75% / 25% balance.

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Artist: Depeche Mode
Album title: Some Great Reward
Year: 1984
Album link: https://open.spotify.com/album/5wfikaEZXnQTXWBZ5osw9A

I'm not sure if I've ever mentioned this, but "Some Great Reward" has been one of my absolute favorite albums for many, many years.

There's a very unique atmosphere to this album. I like the other, similar sounding Depeche Mode albums from this era, but this one just has that certain something about it that even great albums like "Black Celebration" and "Music for the Masses" don't have. I mean, I love "Black Celebration" almost as much, but in a certain sort of way, it's not even close to digging as deep into my mind.

Listen to a song like "Lie to Me" (link below). I love absolutely every single detail in this track. It's sublime. The mellow melancholy of this track. Those dark bass lines. Those synths... Gorgeous!

Honestly, I might find that a few tracks here are a bit silly, but the album is so amazing for so much of the run time that I can live with songs like "People are People" and "Master and Servant".

I once watched a Depeche Mode documentary where I saw how they experimented with different sounds for this album. It's paid off in spades as there's a lot of interesting sonic textures all over this disc. My favorite track off the album, the closing track "Blasphemous Rumours", has some metallic rattling and distorted gargling voices. I saw in the documentary how Martin Gore dragged a metal rod through a metal window frame to create one of those sounds. The great thing is how the end result is a very catchy and melodic album and not just a collection of noise experiments by any stretch.

A couple of my favorite tracks, "Stories of Old" and "If You Want" are even sort of oddball. I feel like the former of the two is an unsung hero of the Depeche Mode discography. I just love everything about that song.

"Some Great Reward" is a great album with a few minor blemishes. I'd take a flawed diamond any time over a perfectly polished piece of glass, so I'm still going to insist that this album is truly great, despite how I think a couple of the songs are quite less than great.

No other album sounds or feels quite like this. I think that a lot of Depeche Mode albums are really good, but this one is at the very top for sure.

Highlights:
Lie to Me
Stories of Old
If You Want
Blasphemous Rumours

Favorite rating: ***/***

Interesting.
I don't quite understand your rating system though. Is ***/*** 3 out of 3 stars? And if so, why not just make it ***? Or 3? Or just say everything is rated out of three? And on that, if that is the case, doesn't that really restrict you, in that you can only have a 1, 2 or 3 rating? Or have I got all this wrong?

It's just a rough rating of how high the album would be out of all of my favorite albums. Three stars means there are few albums I love as much, but one star is still a favorite album, since that's all I want to review.

And I'm writing "***/***" so you know how high the scale goes. Two stars (or whatever) don't mean anything without some context.

TH criticizing other people's esoteric rating systems.


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Fair enough. Kind of looks like you're saying fuck/shit though. :laughing: Generally I think ratings are understood to be out of five or ten, but well it's your thread, so you do what you like. Just it does look a little weird.

I know, right? I mean, how could anyone understand the concept of speedometer that goes from 1 to 10? Madness! What: do I expect you all to be members of MENSA or something? :rolleyes: And as for Love or Hate, well, don't get me started!

I can easily just drop the ratings anyway. I guess I just felt like I had to have one because... that's just how these things go, or something.

I always feel weird about rating music. You can't quantify the personal impact of art.

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Just sayin'...

I'd definitely prefer something less exact than that. It's just personal preference, but the more fine grained the ratings, the more I dislike using it. I sometimes even feel like 5 is too nitpicky for me when it comes to regular rating systems.

I'll have it figured out by the next album review I post.

Do you remember how half the forum was confused by this rating system? Good times.

Another thing that can work is various smilies. You can have laughing for top spot, crying or angry for lowest, and a whole lot of other **** in between. Or various Homer Simpson expressions. Or kittens with different expressions. Or whatever. Up to you. A thermometer is also an idea.

Just proves either a) how stupid some people are or, which is more likely, b) they were all just trying to wind me up as usual. It could not be more simple. And actually, no, I don't remember anyone being confused by it.

Bruh nobody likes those things you do. They're cringy and terrible.

Translation: YOU don't like them.
Now let's **** off and leave MicShaz's thread alone. You've already spammed the emergency contacts thread enough.

Nah nobody likes your smilies or Simpsons' gifs.

Good how you can speak for the entire forum now.

I don't know why you think this is only my opinion.

Maybe because you're the only one saying it?

Sorry that nobody has responded in an hour.

I honestly feel like I suck at expressing how I feel about music. I wish I had some other way of sharing the music I love than writing about it, but I can't think of a good method. I might just have to take some people hostage at gunpoint and play music for them until they say they like it.

Gonna do some more of these, but ugh... motivation is low. Just posting a bunch of Youtube videos is so much easier.

Just do a few youtube videos with a sentence or two of what you like about them. That's pretty simple. :)

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Artist: Happy Rhodes
Album title: Building the Colossus
Year: 1994
Album link: https://open.spotify.com/album/4YXpNU2es1uhSKEE67qSLf

Happy Rhodes is a pretty obscure 80's/90's artist who I only know of because a retrospective collection of some of her early material was published recently.

After hearing that compilation album, I managed to get one of her 90's albums on CD, which felt like an important event, because I get kind of carried away when I find a new artist that excites me.


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Happy Rhodes


The music here is almost entirely in service of Rhodes' elaborate vocal melodies and vocal overdubs. Some songs even have some pretty 90's sounding beats, but you will find a lot of different types of arrangements on this album. Some songs feel a bit funky, some melancholy and atmospheric, some almost a bit dance-able.

Check out the awesome bass, keyboard and guitar backdrop in the song "Omar". Also notice how the music suddenly sounds like something from Bowie's "Labyrinth" soundtrack for a second just before it kicks into a vocal bridge, then goes back to it's drop-dead-gorgeous, darkly beautiful, moody verses. We also get some simple but wonderful guitar lead work a bit into the song. Not least, Rhodes' voice is ****ing amazing all the way through this song. Her lows, her highs... all just impeccable. This song is "all time favourites" material for me.

I don't think the music is all that deep in general on this album, or what I've heard from other Happy Rhodes albums, so there's no doubt that you've got to connect with her singing style and voice to find anything of value here. Personally, I'm totally on board and very happy that I found Happy. Sorry.

Highlights:
Collective Heart
Omar
You Never Told Me
If I Ever See The Girl Again

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Artist: Beth Orton
Album title: Sugaring Season
Year: 2012
Album link: https://open.spotify.com/album/5iGGHaRS9W9FJCnEdWGjfF

Singer/songwriter material. This genre is gonna take up some space in this thread, that's pretty much guaranteed.

I started in the early part of Orton's discography. She got her start in the mid 90's, so this 2012 album is fairly deep into her career.

I like the early material, but I'm honestly pretty impressed with her progression. This album enjoys the benefits of both her more matured singing voice, that seems to have gained a whole new dimension since the album "Trailer Park", but the songwriting is also damn near perfect here.

Each song is eminently memorable and brimming with personality. I also love how the album feels perfectly consistent in vibe and texture, while the songs actually manage to touch upon quite a few genres for inspiration.


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Beth Orton


Instrumentation sounds great all the way throughout and I feel like this genre, at it's best, really makes me appreciate good quality sound like few other genres. It's so much about nuance and you will get a heck of a lot more mileage out of this sort of music if you've got an appreciation for all the little variations in texture and harmony, the frequently subtle and sparse use of bass notes, the sometimes quietly skittering percussion, and of course not least the expressive nuances of the vocal performance(s).

This album is a great showcase for why I love this sort of music. If you don't get what attracts me about music (been said before by various people that they can't get a feel for what goes on in my head when it comes to music), listen to the song "Poison Tree" (link below) on good speakers/headphones and try to really listen with patience to all of the little details and the unfolding melodies. And same goes for "Dawn Chorus". That one might actually be my favourite, but it's a hard album to choose favourites from.

A really good album. Plain and simple.

Highlights:
Dawn Chorus
Candles
Poison Tree
See Through Blue
Last Leaves of Autumn

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Artist: Tori Amos
Album title: Abnormally Attracted to Sin
Year: 2009
Album link: https://open.spotify.com/album/4MPDYyzBRzspZvv8q84S1V

This album single handedly changed my musical tastes and set off a chain reaction that led to where I am now.

If discovering Metallica was what came to define my musical tastes as a teen and a young man, the discovery of Tori Amos showed me the direction I needed to move in as I was slowly growing out of what had made the most sense to me as a teen.

One thing led to another: I discovered artists loosely related to Tori Amos; then artists related to those, and so on. Then, having adjusted to new sounds over time, I started hearing other genres with new ears and that brings me to 2018.


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Tori Amos

This album approaches the singer/songwriter tradition from a pretty odd angle. The songs on here vary quite a bit in style and some of them have various slight hard rock, prog rock, blues or electronica influences seeping through the cracks. Some tracks are way more like what you might expect this album to sound like if you don't know Tori Amos, but know the genre. Amos was always pretty unique in her musical approach, so it doesn't always feel right to just label her "singer/songwriter" and let that be done with.

I'm thinking about what I love about this album. It's somehow not easier to figure out when you've known an album for nearly a decade. I think that, basically, it comes down to the songs being really solid and memorable and down to how I like the vibe of the album. Like a lot of Tori Amos' material, the songs have a melancholy tinge and that trademark voice that some describe (quite unjustly) as "shrill". I love that icy cold voice with that unmistakable Southern twang. She's got certain vocal "tics" that you will either get along with or not. But that's probably the case for most notable singers. Check out the song "Curtain Call" for a song that will confront you with Tori's voice in all of it's glory. You'll figure out then if you can get on board with this or not.

I also love how this album has generally quite full sounding instrumentation, like a rock album. Electric bass and lots of layering. A lot of singer/songwriter albums are sonically sparse - which can of course be great - but I do like the way the production on these songs envelops you like a warm blanket of sound.

Some will take issue with the considerable length (17 songs, minus one bonus track) of this album - something that is business as usual for Tori - but I don't mind. There's not any song on here that I'd like to leave off. Damn good album, and of some significance to me in terms of my personal musical history.

Highlights:
Give
Flavor
Curtain Call
Fire to Your Plain
Abnormally Attracted to Sin
Police Me
Lady in Blue
Fast Horse

So basically: MicShazam likes attractive women that sing songs

Just like Galaga.

I like a lot of female artists, but not for their looks.

Barbara Morgenstern is no stunner, but one of my favourites

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Her music will come up in here as well soon enough.

Also, look a few pages back. Which member of Depeche Mode do you consider an attractive woman? This guy?

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"I have a black friend tho"

I also like a lot of music made by right handed people. That doesn't mean I'm specifically a fan of music made by right handed people, or because it's made by right handed people.

i’m left handed and you like my music

Bet your mind is blown now aint it

"I have a black friend tho, and he's left handed"

I have a left handed black friend thats also a tranny

My beautiful thread

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I can see it coming

Review Metal Machine Music. I wanna know which side is your favorite.