Stream of Consciousness & Music Reviews

      Everything about A Night At The Opera is really, really good. The composition, the lyricism, all the performances, the technical wizardry, it's all great. I really don't know if I could run through everything on this album that's done incredibly, and frankly I think that that would just bloat this review. I've been a casual Queen fan for as long as I've been into music and finally giving a whole work of theirs a proper listen has satisfied and far exceeded my expectations. The album nails the various styles it goes for, including Queen's iconic spacey-sort of prog rock that they're best known for, as well as harder sounds (i.e. Death on Two Legs), folk rock, ragtime, etc. It's incredible how well the band is able to take so many wildly different sounds and make them their own. And I have to mention how incredible the flow of the album is, with pacing and transitions that rival the best of Pink Floyd; each song sounds like it's where it needs to...

      I'm split on this album. On the one hand it's one of the most technically impressive works I've ever listened to; on the other it's just kinda ok, pretty standard rock. Some of the tracks are incredibly impressive in their composition (Opus Insert, Magnum Opus) while others have absolutely nothing going for them (What's on My Mind). I think the best way to frame it is this: whenever the band is going through an instrumental section and just letting the music do the talking, it's amazing and genuinely some of the best music I've heard, but falls short whenever it has to return to it's verse-chorus structure that seems to hold it back. Thankfully, almost every song has multiple points of pure instrumental that are great and enjoyable. The instrumentation, composition, and timbre of everything on the album work so well together to create a unique sound that really encapsulates the hard rock/prog rock combo the band is sporting here. The combination of...

      It's been a while since I've taken a look at Pink Floyd and I don't listen to them too often any more, so why not take a look at another highly regarded work of theirs? Animals is supposedly inspired by Orwell's Animal Farm. I have not read Animal Farm, and I'm not really one for politics (especially 70s British politics) so I'm not gonna talk about any of that past here. Animals comes smack dab between Wish You Were Here and The Wall and boy does it sound like it. It has the somber sort of sound that was prescient in WYWH, while also starting to lean toward the harder sound in The Wall. This halfway point between the two isn't much of anything one way or the other; I like it enough but it doesn't really pop out at me, knowing the other albums and how they sound. One unique thing to point to that I really do like, however, is Animals' use of electronic modification and fuckery. I'm a sucker for some good distortion and synth-alteration (see...