Lykke Li - Youth Novels

"I think I'm a little bit in love with you"

It's my opinion that Lykke Li and Robyn should be the United States' biggest pop stars. Robyn does better dance music than Lady Gaga and Lykke Li does better earnest soul pop music than Adele. Sweden is apparently a hotbed for under rated talent. While we're on it, David Fincher's Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was good too and it's set in Sweden and based on a Swedish novel. Come to thing of it Volvo makes good cars and the Swedish Chef is a great Muppet. This album is full of excellent pop hooks crafted by the same man who brought you the greatest whistling solo of all time in "Young Folks" by Peter, Bjorn, and John. Lykke Li's wispy, reverbed out vocals are incredibly engaging on excellent tracks like "Little Bit". I also like Swedish meatballs, Ikea, and Ikeas's 50 cent hot dogs. Way to be Sweden, way to be.

4/5
Favourite Track - Little Bit (I'll also include the version she duets with Jimmy from Degrassi the next generation)

Coldplay - X&Y

As evidence that I do not have a lot of albums that begin with X, I have picked this Coldplay record to listen to and review. Don't get me wrong, I love "Parachutes" and most of "A Rush of Blood to the Head" but was never too fond of this particular record, it has it's moments, but never was an overall great record to me. I like Coldplay when it's guitar based, the epic, piano "Clocks" types songs seem to dominate this album. My favourite track on the album is the hidden track "Kingdom Come" because of it's simplicity and because it sounds like it could have come from one of the American records by Johnny Cash. Point is, listen to "Parachutes" and think of how good of a band Coldplay could have been.

3/5
Favourite Track - Kingdom Come

And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead - Worlds Apart

Pretty good follow up to "Source Tags and Codes" but nothing too exceptional. There's some solid songs, such as "Caterwaul" and "Will You Smile Again" but most of the other tracks are largely forgettable. I guess that's why I've had this on my computer since it came out and only listened to it, maybe, twice.






3/5
Favourite Track - Caterwaul

Pearl Jam - Vitalogy

"I thought you were a friend, but I guess I, I guess I hate you"

I had never listened to this album all the way through, and I feel that I have missed out on a great album by not doing so. It may be because I just watched the Cameron Crowe doc "Pearl Jam Twenty", but I am currently in love with Pearl Jam records, with this one going right near the top. I don't think Pearl Jam has ever sounded so raw on a studio album. The ballads like "Nothingman" are just as excellent and powerful as the more rocking songs like "Last Exit", the balance is extraordinary. And, "Bugs" is the weirdest track since The Police's "Mother".




4/5
Favourite Track - Corduroy

Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures

I could live a little better with the myths and the lies,
When the darkness broke in, I just broke down and cried.
I could live a little in a wider line,
When the change is gone, when the urge is gone,
To lose control. When here we come.

I had taken too long of a break from listening to this record. I don't remember it being this great, but it really is. It's so far ahead of it's time, it's ridiculous. People should just throw out any Interpol or similar type band's albums and just listen to this and Closer.







5/5
Favourite Track - Shadowplay

Pavement - Terror Twilight

"You kiss like a rock, but you know I need it anyway"

Easily the tightest sounding Pavement record, which I just read was partly due to the fact that it was produced by Nigel Godrich, of Radiohead fame. I don't know that it's my favourite record by the band, but it does feature my favourite song of theirs, "Major Leagues". It's less experimental, and more laid back, a great record for a rainy day. Stephen Malkmus' solo records sound a lot more like Terror Twilight than they do compared to any previous work, which makes me doubt the influence of the rest of the band on this effort.



4/5
Favourite Track - Major Leagues

Saves the Day - Stay What You Are

Ceilings don't exist and there are no floors beneath me.

This is one of the best records of the pop punk\emo era. It's easily the happiest sounding, insanely morbid album off all time. It's full of great, catchy hooks that you'll sing to yourself and then say "wait... what did he just say?" The song "As Your Ghost Takes Flight" is the most obvious example of this with lyrics like  "I should've had my hammer and a few rusty spikes to nail you on a wall and use bottles to catch your blood
and display you for the neighbors so they know your time had come"  Good times.

4/5

Favourite track- Nightingale

video for freakish is also good

Jeremy Enigk - Return of the Frog Queen

"the lines made me perfect and came then, the light gave me dark"

This, in my eyes, is the most perfectly recorded album of all time. Not at all over produced, it's fragile with mistakes left in that make it almost seem live. It makes me want to record something every time I listen to it. It's primarily acoustic guitar driven,with the occasional piano... and a full orchestra. It's both quiet and intimate and a humongous sounding classical piece at the same time. This record was recorded after Sunny Day Real Estate broke up the first time, after the recording of LP2. I think that this record really was a stepping stone for the later Sunny Day work, not necessarily in the arrangements of songs, but the power and confidence in which Jeremy Enigk sang. It's perfect in every way.

5/5

Favourite Track - Shade and the Black Hat

The Smiths - The Queen is Dead

It wasn't exactly difficult to choose an album for today, as The Queen is Dead is the only record I have that begins with a Q. Luckily for me, it is a great record, perhaps The Smiths best. The only difficult thing is trying to choose a favourite track. I don't think Morrissey was ever a sharper lyricist than he was on this album. His biting sense of humour on tracks such as "Bigmouth Strikes Again" and "Some Girls are Bigger than Others" is utterly genius. The title track rocks harder than any other Smiths tune, largely due to Mike Joyce and Andy Rourke, who rarely get any credit but surely deserve it.

Oh yeah, Johnny Marr is always incredible.
5/5
Favourite Track - There is Light that Never Goes Out

Blur - Parklife

"I get up when I want, except on Wednesdays when I get rudely awakened by the dustmen"

While not my favourite Blur album, it is quite good. I've always been more partial to 13, Blur, and Think Tank, which apparently is very American of me to prefer those albums to Parklife and Modern Life is Rubbish. However that is in no way me slighting this album in any way, I simply heard the other ones first. I've always thought Blur was certainly more creative and artistic than their Brit Pop rivals. I liked how they intentionally tried to mix up their sound, not only from album to album, but from song to song. Case in point, "This is a Low", "Parklife", "Girls and Boys", and "Trouble in the Message Centre" sound like songs from a completely different band each time.  

4/5
Favourite Track - This is a Low

Echo and the Bunnymen - Ocean Rain

"You set my teeth on edge, You think you're a vegetable, Never come out of the fridge"

Is there a better sound in all of pop music than the E minor that is struck just before the chorus of the Killing Moon? No is the answer you were looking for. This is a perfect album all the way through, but even if every song was terrible, except for "The Killing Moon", it would still be worth owning. I never really noticed the incredible Doors influence on them until this most recent listen, minus the organ, add some jangly guitars and more hairspray.




5/5
Favourite Track - The Killing Moon (I know it's the most popular track, but it's that good, video's not bad either)

Ride - Nowhere

"I learned the Hard way that life should be easy"

So if you already own "Loveless" by My Bloody Valentine, and you love it, but don't know what to listen to next, Nowhere should be it. It's a quintessential shogaze record that occasionally works on a pop level as well on songs like "Vapour Trail". The album hits it's stride to me on "Dreams Burn Down". It has everything you'd want in a shoegaze song including beautiful swirling guitars from Andy Bell and Mark Gardener.





4/5
Favourite Track- Dreams Burn Down

Mortal Kombat - Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

"Sonya Blade"

You may be thinking to yourself that this is not a legitimate album to be reviewing... and you may be right if the only song you knew from it was the Mortal Kombat theme. You know, the one that played in the commercial for Mortal Monday (September 13th 1993), the day that was just as good as Christmas for this 11 year old, as I could then play the game on my Super Nintendo. So anyway, I loved the game, so inevitably I would love the movie that came out in 1995 and everything associated with it including the soundtrack. In retrospect, this album gave me my first taste of real heavy music. I thought that "Twist the Knife Slowly" by Napalm Death was going to steal my soul by listening to it, turns out it didn't but I felt cool listening to something so heavy. I knew kids who listened to Korn and bands of that ilk couldn't touch the heaviness of a band like Fear Factory. In my musical genealogy, the Mortal Kombat soundtrack introduced me to Napalm Death which begat my interest in Jesu which begat Isis which begat Godflesh which begat Ministry, just to name a few. There are some cheesy,  NIN clone type bands on here, but as a whole, it is a solid roster of heavy music pioneers... and yes, there are two versions of the Mortal Kombat theme.

3/5
Favourite Track- Burn by Sister Machine Gun
Also Favourite track - Twist the Knife (Slowly)
by Napalm Death

Also, the Mortal Monday commercial

Spiritualized - Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space

"Those tracks of time those tracks are mine"

This may be one of the most ambitious albums of the Brit Pop era. It's more accessible than any other previous Spiritualized or Spacemen 3 record, yet still takes a lot of chances with dramatic changes from soft and beautiful to chaos. Most of the lyrics deal with love and loss, with some heavy drug related overtones, as any good trippy album would contain. I couldn't recommend it more highly. My favourite track is "I think I'm in Love", but I've chosen Come Together for my video today, because it is one of the best videos ever made.


















5/5
Favourite Track- I Think I'm in Love

Kasabian - Kasabian

John was a scientist, he was hooked on LSD
Interested in mind control and how the monkey held the key

So even though they're Noel Gallagher's favourite band, Kasabian has much more of a Happy Mondays, madchester type vibe to them if you ask me. In that I mean, very dancable rock music. I can surely imagine Bez doing... whatever he does, to songs like "Test Transmission". The entire album makes me feel like I should be doing something bad ass, like I'm in a Guy Ritchie movie (not Swept Away mind you). If there were such a thing as hooligan rock, this album would be a prime example, there's even a fine homage to A Clockwork Orange.

4/5

Favourite Track- Club Foot