Review an Album - Music - Forums : Best Ever Albums

JMan

As long as some of us are getting fired up for the new BEABlog, I thought reviewing albums here would be a good start for practice for testing our critiquing and writing skills. So I'll post a review, another user can tell me what he/she thinks, then that user posts a review, and the next critiques that review and posts another, and so on. I won't be posting here as often as I do with other threads.

BLUE by Hayden Who

Hayden Who has had a string of novice to good albums, a string that was cut by the amazing production and true talent that was put into an album as beautiful as it's album cover art, "Blue." the album starts with the electronic masterpiece "Mr. Who," a perfect introduction to the artist and the album. Going Somewhere is a perfect track that adds more jazz into the mix, continued by an array of sounds and rhythms ranging from catchy slop to the smoothest jazz styles to higher-pitched legends. The album also includes influences from many of the jazz and electronic greats and samples from interviews to add flair. Finally, the album ends with a beautiful piano track! All tracks have amazing production. Each sound falls perfectly into place, and there's the right amount of reverb.

I was never a fan of electronic, and I was only a bit into jazz. This is the album that got me more into those genres, especially electronic. Move over Daft Punk, move over John Coltrane. There are many bands that have at least one legendary album. Hayden Who, a Bandcamp user who does not have a mainstream personality, has found his legendary album that I wold put above many of BEA's top 100 anyday! In fact, this is the best album of the year!

I'm not too impressed with this review. it's a second draft. What do other users think? remember: the next person to post critiques my review to help improve it, and I will try to improve it on my chart. The next person writes a review, and the next post will have the user's review of another album, and the next person reviews that review and then posts another album review.

Write well!

Guest

JMan wrote:

BLUE by Hayden Who

Hayden Who has had a string of novice to good albums, a string that was cut by the amazing production and true talent that was put into an album as beautiful as it's album cover art, "Blue." the album starts with the electronic masterpiece "Mr. Who," a perfect introduction to the artist and the album. Going Somewhere is a perfect track that adds more jazz into the mix, continued by an array of sounds and rhythms ranging from catchy slop to the smoothest jazz styles to higher-pitched legends. The album also includes influences from many of the jazz and electronic greats and samples from interviews to add flair. Finally, the album ends with a beautiful piano track! All tracks have amazing production. Each sound falls perfectly into place, and there's the right amount of reverb.

I was never a fan of electronic, and I was only a bit into jazz. This is the album that got me more into those genres, especially electronic. Move over Daft Punk, move over John Coltrane. There are many bands that have at least one legendary album. Hayden Who, a Bandcamp user who does not have a mainstream personality, has found his legendary album that I wold put above many of BEA's top 100 anyday! In fact, this is the best album of the year!

OK, here goes nothing. The review is far too cloying. It reads like something a stalker would write. In the first paragraph alone you use the terms "masterpiece", "amazing" (twice), "beautiful", "legends", and allude to perfection three times. You need to tone down the overenthusiastic (not to mention overused) adjectives, and try to explain what exactly makes this album so good, and in more detail than you have done. What makes this album an "electronic masterpiece" compared to other albums? Does it convey a certain tone? What sounds and textures are achieved by its electronic elements? How do they work against the album's jazzier elements? Is it a natural hybrid, or do the two genres play off of each other in some sort of playful juxtaposition? Why is the production amazing? In what ways, specifically, does it complement the songs? What exactly is the right amount of reverb? The right amount of reverb for what?

You then go on to explain that you aren't really a fan of either genre. Personally, I'd leave that out. It lets the reader know that you aren't any kind of authority on the subject, and thus lends your review little credence. I'd also avoid saying things like "move over Daft Punk, move over John Coltrane". It will only serve to annoy fans of those bands, and you don't even explain how Hayden's music is comparable to either of those artists. Also, telling a man who has been dead 46 years to "move over" is pointless. You then say something about a "mainstream personality" that I still don't understand, and go onto call the album "legendary". Surely, in order to be "legendary", it has to have been around for more than a couple of weeks?

The above are just my problems with the content, all things that can be easily fixed with a little bit of research and a healthy dollop of tact. My real problem with this review is the writing style. It's all very, "I went to the shop. I bought an ice cream. I paid at the counter. I left the shop." Try and mix up your sentence length and structure, and try to think a bit more outside of the box in terms of the direction you take. It's good that you avoid meandering, directionless prose, but there's also such a thing as being too direct and to the point. Your first sentence says too much. You already let your feelings be known that you love the album too early on. Take a while to get to your conclusion, don't just spell it out straight away. Take a read of some other (contemporary) reviews on professional sites to try to get a better idea of what I'm talking about - you'll virtually never find a reviewer who gets to the point so impatiently and without any significant elaboration.

Anyway, hope all of that makes some sort of sense, and that it's of some help. Keep going.

I can't be bothered to write a review right now, but here's something I wrote for the book:

Ghostface Killah – Fishscale (2006)

Y’all be nice to the crackheads, everybody listen up. Fishscale is the closest the album format has ever gotten to recreating the experience of watching a great gangster movie. You can practically smell the cocaine and gunpowder. It’s unflinching in its portrayal of Ghost’s world, a New York City inhabited by silly chicks with a misguided idea of revenge, players and pimps bitin’ off fiends, maricóns on the couch watching Sanford & Son. It’s all smoky, psychedelic soul, the best producers in hip-hop (Pete Rock, J Dilla, Just Blaze, MF Doom) reimaging old Blaxploitation soundtracks through a Shaolin filter, the type of shit Ghostface excels over. Nobody’s raps ever sounded so good over soul samples. Ghost’s impassioned, high-pitched rasp has been one of hip-hop’s greatest and most recognisable voices since he invited us to “catch the blast of a hype verse”, but on Fishscale he exhibits a sense of control that few thought he was capable of. Sure, he still spits madcap at times, but on tracks like ‘Back Like That’ and the self-produced, criminally underrated ‘Big Girl’ he proves himself to be a consummate vocalist, as indebted to Otis or Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland as he is to Rakim or KRS. Lyrically, he spins vivid yarns about the life of a drug dealer, but smartly manages to eschew the glamour and remorseless glorification that so many lesser rappers fall back on far too willingly. During the intro to ‘Kilo’, a catchy ode to cooking crack and one of the album’s two duets with longtime partner-in-crime Raekwon, he admits to being “paranoid as a motherfucker”, whilst on ‘Shakey Dog’, the album’s breathless opener, he tells in painful detail of a robbery gone wrong, his own associate getting so overenthusiastic with his gun that a shot bounces “off the Frigidaire” and grazes Ghost’s ear. Despite his insistence throughout the album that he’s a “kingpin”, and vain claims such as, “I’m 33, I look 26 with big furs on”, at no point does the listener feel envious of Ghost. He isn’t trying to convince you that what he does is a smart, viable career option, he’s just telling it like it is, warts and all. Of course, there’s still room for some classic, larger-than-life Ghostface braggadocio, such as on the fantastic Wu-Tang posse cut ‘9 Milli Bros’, where he admits that he’s “the golden child that’ll bone the crowd” (harking back to the unforgettable “you Goddamn right, I fuck fans” line from ‘Mighty Healthy’), but on the whole he’s more concerned with giving his audience the nitty gritty of life in the streets, and the album is all the better for it. Ghostface is the only rapper since Slick Rick to marry such engrossing storytelling with such a loveable (though not exactly admirable) personality, and Fishscale is his magnum opus.

Of course, this is a retrospective review as opposed to a contemporary one. They're somewhat easier to write in that the author has the benefit of hindsight.

rayword45

Gender: Male
Age: 26

I did a whole music review project over the summer, one new album a day. Those were written in a really, really casual style though, and sound like a 15-year-old's writing (as opposed to a 16 year old's writing). Here's a random sample.

Day 62: GODLOMANMACHOPANZILLA by Computer Jesus Refrigerator (Album Choice: ToasterCubed)

Only one mini-review today, of Play Hard by Krewella. And, wow, it's dubstep/electro house and poppy vocals. This combination is already extremely common, and nothing in this genre interests me. Do I need to go in depth? That description should be apt enough so you know your own opinion, since it isn't really much new at all. My opinion? 6. Out of an even number above 8.

And now, time for noise. With glitch. Did I do an album with that description before? I remember yesterday I wrote a mini-review without mentioning the album name like the idiot I am.

THE ALBUM WAS Wonderful Rainbow by Lightning Bolt BUT I SAID THE ARTIST NAME.

This time I said the album name already. This is noise and glitch with an obnoxious album name that I don't want to type again and eyesore cover art. One guy does drums and sampler, the other guy does keyboards and sampler. That's doesn't sound noisy, that sounds like what street musicians use. To make that noisy will either be incredibly awesome or incredibly awful. I chose this album like many others because it's short. It's like 26 minutes or something, and over half of the 16 tracks are under 2 minutes. That should make picking stand out tracks easy. Or would that make it hard? I don't know.

The first 2, I mean 3, I mean 4 oh whatever. All these tracks seem to flow right into each other. Which isn't hard to do here because this is just live drums and sampler cacophony. That's not what I assume when people say noisy in music. This sounds like some crappy collage smash I made in 7th grade on Audacity, in other word, this is like the musical equivalent of abstract art. Not the kind where they just draw one shape and call it day, the kind where they throw splotches of paint everywhere and ask you to find meaning. Choosing a standout track is hard for obvious reasons, and I love noise rock. Long-Form Epic, at least, is pretty funny in name since it lasts 0 seconds. And The Satan-Strawberry Connection SORT OF has a melody... That was a lie, I think. The rest, I don't understand what the hell is going on.

What the hell was that? I had the same reaction for Transformalin but this time it's a lot different. That was like horror film ambient music. It sounded disturbing. This is like a guy on crack using Audacity. It sounds... Confused. Like an album if Felix Colgrave wanted to make a whole album and hired a live drummer for no real reason. I basically just listened to 26 and a half minutes of mindless sampler noise. Yep, that's the best way to describe it. Mindless sampler noise. I was expecting something like atonal guitars, and I got this. And I sat through the whole thing. Wow, what the hell am I doing?

I'm gonna go sit in the corner and re-evaluate my life.

JMan

Not to seem rude, but it's more like a 12-year-old's writing. You start out well, but you go on about how you made a review without stating the album name, and then you make a lot of contradictory statements about your "opinion" of the album when you really sound unsure of yourself and your opinion.

Quote:

To make that noisy will either be incredibly awesome or incredibly awful. I chose this album like many others because it's short. It's like 26 minutes or something, and over half of the 16 tracks are under 2 minutes. That should make picking stand out tracks easy. Or would that make it hard? I don't know.

The first 2, I mean 3, I mean 4 oh whatever.

If you're to write reviews, you need to be sure of your opinion. The rest was decent. I like some of the insults you threw out, and I like your closing sentence. I also think you should seperate the pros from the cons.

Anyway, here's my next review. It's of a hip-hop album and I've only heard 7, so go easy on me.

3 FEET HIGH AND RISING by De La Soul

I have a new favorite rap album: 3 Feet High and Rising by De La Soul. I'm very glad I made the decision to try out 3FH&R. It showed me a whole new aspect of hip-hop.

My personal favorite thing about the album is how different it is from the albums I've heard. It's a little bit softer, unlike Beastie Boys, a little slower paced unlike the Wu-Tang Clan, and the album has many samples from a wide variety of genres, adding greatly to the diversity, including rock music such as Led Zeppelin, funk bands like The New Birth, a some Kraftwerk electronica, some smooth R&B like The Mad Lads, the psychedelic music of The Monkees, and even other hip-hop groups. There's even a sample of an Eddie Murphy skit, and a Richard Pryor skit as well!

The album starts out with a game show tune and some contestants introducing themselves, which I thought was a good opener becasue a game show is unexpected for a musical album. The music obviously picks up in the next track, "The Magic Number," where the great stirng of samples including the Eddie Murphy one I mentioned earlier began. The string of great tracks gets better with the short but not simple "Cool Breeze On the Rocks," which mixes samples from Michael Jackson, Jefferson Starship, and many different bands and more. "Can you Keep a Secret" is a personal fave because of the sample's drumming and trumpets as De La Soul whispers their way through senseless and comedic lyrics including a word they made up: luuden. The album finally gets more upeat with "Jenifa Taught Me," but becomes soft again with "Ghetto Thang." Sadly, there was a pointless track: "A Little Bit of Soap," which thankfully lasted for one minute. But the album picked up with "Tread Water," which had a very interesting beat, contrary to the next track, "Potholes in My Lawn." "Do As De La Does" was one of the two perfect tracks, as it has a faster pace and great backing vocals from the samples. "Plug Tunin'" was next, and had an interesting little piano riff through the track which surprisingly brought the beat up for me. The good string continued until the one track I cannot understand: "Description." But then came the best and my favorite track, Me Myself and I" because the main sample is of one of my favorite pop songs, Knee Deep by George Clinton. If you ask me, the mix that De La Soul did to that song was perfect.

All in All, I hardly saw anything wrong with this album.
Lyrics: 80. Sometimes they sound like generic hip-hop lyrics, but sometimes they told stories, like in "Jenifa Taught Me."
Production: 85. I wish I could mix samples like that.
Vocals: 90.
Consistency (how often good tracks appear compared to OK or bad ones): 85.
Variety: 100. The rhythms, tempos, and styles not only of the samples but the tracks themselves never ceased to impress me.

I give the album a 92/100. Once the chart bug is fixed, this album will most likely make it to my top 100.

I'm not too impressed with it. If anybody has a comment, please let me know. Obviously on this thread.

Guest

JMan wrote:

3 FEET HIGH AND RISING by De La Soul

I have a new favorite rap album: 3 Feet High and Rising by De La Soul. I'm very glad I made the decision to try out 3FH&R. It showed me a whole new aspect of hip-hop.

My personal favorite thing about the album is how different it is from the albums I've heard. It's a little bit softer, unlike Beastie Boys, a little slower paced unlike the Wu-Tang Clan, and the album has many samples from a wide variety of genres, adding greatly to the diversity, including rock music such as Led Zeppelin, funk bands like The New Birth, a some Kraftwerk electronica, some smooth R&B like The Mad Lads, the psychedelic music of The Monkees, and even other hip-hop groups. There's even a sample of an Eddie Murphy skit, and a Richard Pryor skit as well!

The album starts out with a game show tune and some contestants introducing themselves, which I thought was a good opener becasue a game show is unexpected for a musical album. The music obviously picks up in the next track, "The Magic Number," where the great stirng of samples including the Eddie Murphy one I mentioned earlier began. The string of great tracks gets better with the short but not simple "Cool Breeze On the Rocks," which mixes samples from Michael Jackson, Jefferson Starship, and many different bands and more. "Can you Keep a Secret" is a personal fave because of the sample's drumming and trumpets as De La Soul whispers their way through senseless and comedic lyrics including a word they made up: luuden. The album finally gets more upeat with "Jenifa Taught Me," but becomes soft again with "Ghetto Thang." Sadly, there was a pointless track: "A Little Bit of Soap," which thankfully lasted for one minute. But the album picked up with "Tread Water," which had a very interesting beat, contrary to the next track, "Potholes in My Lawn." "Do As De La Does" was one of the two perfect tracks, as it has a faster pace and great backing vocals from the samples. "Plug Tunin'" was next, and had an interesting little piano riff through the track which surprisingly brought the beat up for me. The good string continued until the one track I cannot understand: "Description." But then came the best and my favorite track, Me Myself and I" because the main sample is of one of my favorite pop songs, Knee Deep by George Clinton. If you ask me, the mix that De La Soul did to that song was perfect.

All in All, I hardly saw anything wrong with this album.
Lyrics: 80. Sometimes they sound like generic hip-hop lyrics, but sometimes they told stories, like in "Jenifa Taught Me."
Production: 85. I wish I could mix samples like that.
Vocals: 90.
Consistency (how often good tracks appear compared to OK or bad ones): 85.
Variety: 100. The rhythms, tempos, and styles not only of the samples but the tracks themselves never ceased to impress me.

I give the album a 92/100. Once the chart bug is fixed, this album will most likely make it to my top 100.

I'm not too impressed with it. If anybody has a comment, please let me know. Obviously on this thread.

JMan wrote:

Not to seem rude, but it's more like a 12-year-old's writing.

JMan

I expected so, since I've heard very little hip-hop. Can you explain, Lethal?
EDIT: You're supposed to critique my reniew and then review an album. Remember?

Sorry for the rudeness, rayword. Sad

Last edited by JMan on 12/01/2013 20:08; edited 1 time in total

Guest

JMan wrote:

I expected so, since I've heard very little hip-hop. Can you explain, Lethal?
EDIT: You're supposed to critique my reniew and then review an album. Remember?

I was actually just pointing out how rude you were being, if I'm honest. There are better ways of telling someone that you don't like their work. But yeah, have a look at my critique of your Blue review again, because it basically covers the problems I have with this one.

Also, I'll drop a review here later tonight or tomorrow.

JMan

lethalnezzle wrote:

I was actually just pointing out how rude you were being, if I'm honest. There are better ways of telling someone that you don't like their work. But yeah, have a look at my critique of your Blue review again, because it basically covers the problems I have with this one.

Also, I'll drop a review here later tonight or tomorrow.

I thank you for the review, but I'm having a little trouble determining the coincidences in both albums. You say that your "Blue" review basically covers the same problems. What problems?

1. Over-enthusiasm. I hardly used words like "amazing" and it's synonyms, but I did use "perfect" a couple of times to talk about which tracks got the 100 rating.
2. In Blue, I didn't explain what makes the album what it is. I did that with De La Soul. I said the album's different from the rap I've heard because of the use of samples from many genres (and I gave examples of the genres) and the slower pace, and I mentioneded the strange add-ons like the game show.
3. Mentioning I'm not a fan of the genres. If you're counting the sentence I used beforte the opening paragraph, that was not part of the review.
4. Mixing Sentence Sturcture. I made sure I did that. I avoided as many periods as possible without making the sentences too long.

I'm not trying to argue or troll, but I'm asking for more clarification, please. Here are some points that the two albums do have in comon.

1. I didn't take a while to get to the point.
2. Comparing bands. I guess I should be more experienced in comparing bands before I do, like how I compared John Coltrane to Hayden and I compared De La Soul to Wu Tang Clan.

Here are my problems with the review. I rushed it. I was doing multiple things at once and didn't bother to correct the spelling and grammar errors. I also spoke about the use of multiple styles in the samples a little more often than needed. Some of the sentences don't even look complete. I rushed things because I was busy. I'll be sure to relook the review and then post it on the album page after I get more clarification on my mistakes, because I see many different mistakes in the review that weren't in the first one.

Guest

You already said it yourself, but you need to take care when comparing artists. I knew what you meant when you said 3 Feet High was slower paced than Wu-Tang, but only because I know some things about you and your music experience that others might not. Compared to Wu-Tang songs like 'Hollow Bones', 'The Heart Gently Weeps', or 'I Can't Go To Sleep', De La Soul are not particularly chilled out. And I don't want you to take this as me saying, "you should specifically mention which Wu-Tang album you're talking about to avoid confusion", because that isn't what I'm saying. I'd just avoid such an obvious and easily pick-apart-able comparison.

You also just talk through the album in the order it plays out. This has never been a style of review that I think works. This part particularly...

JMan wrote:

The album finally gets more upeat with "Jenifa Taught Me," but becomes soft again with "Ghetto Thang." Sadly, there was a pointless track: "A Little Bit of Soap," which thankfully lasted for one minute. But the album picked up with "Tread Water," which had a very interesting beat, contrary to the next track, "Potholes in My Lawn." "Do As De La Does" was one of the two perfect tracks, as it has a faster pace and great backing vocals from the samples. "Plug Tunin'" was next, and had an interesting little piano riff through the track which surprisingly brought the beat up for me.

...does not work at all. You've mentioned that a song is more upbeat than the last, but nowhere here is there any sort of actual description of the songs. Why is 'A Little Bit of Soap' pointless? What is interesting about the beat on 'Tread Water'? Saying something is "interesting" is redundant if you don't elaborate on what is actually interesting about it.

Lastly, try and work some sort of running theme into your review. Come up with a cool conclusion about the album's themes and what it tries to achieve, as opposed to just coming to the conclusion that it's good or bad. You could have talked about the playful nature of the record, and how they brought a sense of childlike wonder to a genre often bogged down in violence and narcissism. You could have mentioned that the sampledelic nature of the record is entirely fitting given hip-hop's bastard origins, coming as it did from the inaccessibility of real instruments and the subsequent reliance on turntables to make music. You could have talked about how the eternally optimistic nature of the record is what makes it so timeless, not to mention what made it stand out amongst its far more downbeat, realist peers. But instead you just say that it's good. Honestly, that isn't enough. Anybody can say that they think a record is good, the key to a good review is explaining why that is.

Hope that helps pal.

JMan

Awesome tips, man! These really helped. Thanks! Exploring themes and describing tracks. I suck at describing songs, though. Anyway, gonna refrain from posting here for now.