Listed below are the overall rankings for the best albums in history as determined by their aggregate positions in over 59,000 different greatest album charts on BestEverAlbums.com! (Chart last updated: 1 hour ago).
"A very logical sounding follow-up to her debut. While the songs don't have the singular power of the tracks off the first, that may change for me upon repeated listens. The finales of each of these songs are extremely song. I wish Chromeo's release this year had sounded this focused and clean sou...""A very logical sounding follow-up to her debut. While the songs don't have the singular power of the tracks off the first, that may change for me upon repeated listens. The finales of each of these songs are extremely song. I wish Chromeo's release this year had sounded this focused and clean sounding. While I can't say it's better than the first, I don't want it to seem like this is a bad album. Quite the opposite in fact."[+]Reply
"Many artists have refashioned themselves under a pop-dance music mold. The stylistic shift has worked or not to varying degrees. Speaking of just the last 20 years, the first example that comes to mind is the dizzying plummet of liz phair from indie rock grace to major label puppet. That also bri...""Many artists have refashioned themselves under a pop-dance music mold. The stylistic shift has worked or not to varying degrees. Speaking of just the last 20 years, the first example that comes to mind is the dizzying plummet of liz phair from indie rock grace to major label puppet. That also brings to mind jewel's transformation from folk poet to her blatantly saccharine "0304". When it comes to rock music, U2's "pop" succeeded in places of blending the techno sound of the time with their patented stadium rock. The biggest success story in dance pop transformations is ben gibbard joining forces with dntel for the superb Postal Service album. But of course, others like Bright Eyes ("digital ash..") have attempted the same to a far less successful degree. For the most part, the dance infusion is problematic for an artist who already has an established pop/rock sound. It sounds forced and/or phony.
I discovered tegan and sara opening for ryan adams circa 2000. I loved their upbeat acoustic tales of love's complications and scorns in support of their "if it was you" album. That was the first (and only) time i exited a concert wanting to immediately purchase the album of the opening act. It was sold out at the venue but i picked it up the next day and wasn't disappointed in the least. "monday monday monday" and "underwater" were/are my favorites on an album replete with catchy upbeat pop/rock songs bouncing atop the twins' personalities. They make simple music based upon not-so-simple relationships and the emotions involved.
They've transformed their sound in small increments over time, from the acoustic pop/rock "if it was you" to a more "new wavey" pop/rock sound infused with more electric guitars and aggressive musical approach. Those increments left me unprepared for what i heard on "heartthrob", a full indoctrination to today's dance music. On first listen, the album immediately made me think of "pink meets robyn" but with a hollow liz phair center. Any actual instruments used are buried under a drum machine and (at times, wall of) synthesizer. The charm of a tegan and sara album is derived from what feels like their authentic tales of relationship trials and woes. On "heartthrob", these woes sound artificial, concocted for a quick, freeze-dried plastic packaging to mass market to teenagers and your mom alike. I can't hear their personalities well, if at all on some songs. ("drove me wild" is one of the exceptions.) Most of these songs could be sung by anyone. And that's the danger of converting to dance music (and auto-tune, for that matter) -- your sound is instantly synthesized into a form where the performers and personalities don't matter as much as simply feeling good, having a good time and dancing. Without the organic feel of HUMANS making music and a proper palette for expressing human concerns, heartbreak and other subjects of the human heart, then such emotive topics, even if they're still being expressed, are lost.
That's the main problem i have with "heartthrob". Instead of hearing the heart throbbing and aching for men in their lives, i instead imagine a poster of a male heartthrob on tegan and sara's wall and they're singing to a dance soundtrack songs they think that hunky paper doll might want to hear. It's that detachment from real emotions that keeps me from liking this album as much as their others. It's that reality of life and love that i hope they bring back on their next album, while abandoning the artificial sound which subtracts from a warmth of personality that i know they have, which i've seen first-hand nearly 13 years ago."[+]Reply
"Guitar virtuoso Bill Nelson and his band Be Bop Deluxe was one of the most exciting acts that emerged in Britain in the middle of the glam rock period of the early 1970s. Stylistically, the group is clearly related to both David Bowie and Cockney Rebel. In 1976 the group's absolute masterpiece, "...""Guitar virtuoso Bill Nelson and his band Be Bop Deluxe was one of the most exciting acts that emerged in Britain in the middle of the glam rock period of the early 1970s. Stylistically, the group is clearly related to both David Bowie and Cockney Rebel.
In 1976 the group's absolute masterpiece, "Modern Music" was released. This album is definitely the most melodic, with more songs tied together in shorter suites. The album contains no less than fifteen songs which are generally of shorter length than usual. Most of the music is of such high quality that the tracks can easily stand alone outside the context of the album. A lot of songs could be brought forward here. Tracks like "Orphans of Babylon," "Kiss of Light", "Gold at the End of the Rainbow," "Modern Music", "Make the Music Magic," "Forbidden Lovers" and "Down to Terminal Street" are all titles that stand out in the Be Bop Deluxe song catalogue. "[+]Reply
"So my copy of Peasant on vinyl arrived the other day, it's pretty cool – I really like Dawson and it's nice to have a slice of him in my collection. This one ain't getting in though, it's his weakest project in a while. The whole trilogy idea was always a pretty stale threadbare linking of his pr...""So my copy of Peasant on vinyl arrived the other day, it's pretty cool – I really like Dawson and it's nice to have a slice of him in my collection. This one ain't getting in though, it's his weakest project in a while. The whole trilogy idea was always a pretty stale threadbare linking of his projects, but it would be justified if The Ruby Cord – as the first two in their own respects accomplish admirably – offered a meaningful commentary about humanity's prospects and what that means for us now. Oddly, despite Dawson's characteristically shrewd and perspicacious social observations, it doesn't whatsoever. Or, if it does I have not been able to extract it with the same didactic ease with which Peasant and 2020 provide; this album loses itself in abstraction. It seems that Dawson didn't have anything trenchant to say about the 26th century after-all.
The essential quality of 2017's Peasant is that the "community" is insular, founded on xenophobia, and resistant to the encroachment of the stranger. The hypothetical bard is thus traversing through this social landscape "in search of the Holy Grail of human decency." In 2020, people share the same spaces (they are all still British; they are neighbours), but there is no more "community." Dawson talks about class stratification, manufactured consent, and the lingering shadows of empire, but it is a guttural experience of alienation that plagues the album: "I know I must be paranoid / But I feel the atmosphere / 'Round here is growing nastier / People don't care anymore."
As 500 years from now will prove – in Dawson's mind – there will never come a techno-utopia for humanity. Instead, if I am to force it into some narrative continuity with these two prior projects – as Dawson wants us to do – the slow death of community will reach a natural conclusion and those who still linger will be rendered truly and literally alone: Hermits in a dying land approaching extinction. It's an almost Fisher King-esque tale, but calling it that would only imply that there is a better album about a 26th century Fisher King dystopia where our wounded spirituality, atrophied community and racist demons manifest a literal T. S. Elliot wasteland, this time of a distant post-post-modernity.
Despite spots of intriguing musicality, nice production and an otherwise not unpleasant listening experience, this is conceptually bankrupt.
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"82/100 A solid and efficient album, in the continuity of what we already knew from Kali Uchis, but for the moment it suits perfectly the expectations, hoping that she manages to recycle her formula for the next project Key songs : I wish you Roses / Endlessly / Moonlight Other rating : - Isolatio...""82/100
A solid and efficient album, in the continuity of what we already knew from Kali Uchis, but for the moment it suits perfectly the expectations, hoping that she manages to recycle her formula for the next project
Key songs : I wish you Roses / Endlessly / Moonlight
Other rating :
- Isolation (2018) 87
- Por Vida (2015) 77
- Sin Miedo (2021) 68"[+]Reply