Stream of Consciousness & Music Reviews

    I know my gushing over ELO may be getting tiring at this point, but it's my blog so stuff it. I love this album. So much, that I want anyone reading this to stop reading and go listen to it right now. Seriously, it's that good; plus I don't want to spoil anything. Read further at your own caution. As you may have guessed, Time is another conceptual album, not unlike one of ELO's other albums, Eldorado. And similarly to Eldorado, this album is a near masterpiece in my opinion. It tells the story of a man from 1981 transported to 2095 and how he struggles with it. The way that it's told, both how it's shown through the music and lyrics and the ambiguity at all turns, works so massively in favor of the theming of the album. Much like with my review of A New World Record, I really can't do this album justice with my own words. Even outside of the narrative, the music is amazing. It features synth more than ever here, which has already proven to pair very wel...

      What the hell did I just listen to? I feel like that sentiment is exactly what the Greek band Aphrodite's Child was trying to convey with End of the World. The album is like a combination of psychedelia rock, prog rock, pop, and metal. This odd concoction sounds like it wouldn't work very well, but it surprisingly does. The constant switching between trippy, excitable moments and slow ballads works really well and I have no idea why. One part might be the vocal performance, which manages to be haunting at times, other times loud and frantic, and sometimes both. I can't really credit a name to it because multiple members of the band are credited with being vocalists but there aren't any specifics past that. All I know is that what they offer goes pretty well with the overall trippy feel of the album. One thing I do know is the keyboard (played definitively by Vangelis Papathanassiou) is easily the best aspect of the music. Much the vocal performance, it's a...

      I said almost  none of them were related. One of my friends said I should listen to this and I figured that I could listen to 2112 and this back to back since I was already planning on listening to the former anyway. And speaking of 2112, Signals feels a bit underwhelming since I'm listening to it hot off the heels of it. While 2112 was wild and high energy excitement for the narrative portion with a slow cool down on the b side, Signals is like low energy practically the whole way through with only a few moments of intensity. Every element of the music is the same, but just feels lesser in a way. Lee's vocal work matches that of it in 2112, but is much less energetic and doesn't have nearly as much dynamic impact. And the same can sort of be said about pretty much all the instruments too. They seemed less involved and sort of melded together. It still had a similar sound and was still distinctly Rush, but it was like an AI tried to replicate their music and wa...

      Where do I even start with this one. I've said it for other albums and I'll say it here too: This album is very highly regarded and for very good reason. It's a goddamn experience listening to this thing. The first track alone could be it's own standalone album and still be amazing. The narrative told by that first track is just so excellent. It touches on some bases of human psychology and society in what it says about authority with the Priests and the  inherent profoundness of music to us. And for me, it seems to have a similar structure and theming to that of Eldorado by ELO, one of my all time favorite albums, as well as Anthem by Ayn Rand, a novella that I adore and highly recommend. Unfortunately, the B side of the album feels underwhelming by comparison. Going from the Grand Finale of 2112 into A Passage to Bangkok feels a bit disappointing. There are good songs in the rest of the album with good stuff in them; it's just a bit of a let do...

     Merry Christmas and happy holidays to all 4 of you who'll read this! I've had a lot on my plate lately and haven't done anything on here for a while despite wanting to. So to make it up to both myself and anyone who cares, I'll be reviewing an album everyday this week as a sort of "Holiday Marathon" or something. I don't really know, I just want to listen to more music. So every weekday there'll be a new review up, and almost none of them are related to each other or Christmas (as far as I know). Anyways, on with the review!        First up this week is the recently released "Power Up" by ACDC. Man, this is a feel good album. It sounds like it was ripped straight from the 80's, with similar styles and performances to something like Back In Black; especially Angus Young, who sounds just as good now as he did back then, if not better. Speaking of elements which are better here, the guitarwork by Angus and Stevie Young is so on ...