Stream of Consciousness & Music Reviews

    Queen's third album, Sheer Heart Attack, marks their real rise to breakthrough fame and a start toward the pop/glam rock sound that the band is most known for. Oddly enough though, the album also has a surprising amount of focus on a hard rock style in a number of the songs, like the opener Brighton Rock. The sound works well for the band, with Roger Taylor's impressive guitar skills nailing the intended effect. In addition to that though, the album also has quite a few tracks that go in wildly different directions (similar to its follow-up, Night at the Opera), which I think work well in the view of the album as a whole. I think that that's one thing that this album does very well, which is how each song is able to complement the others. Where one song may be lacking in one aspect or another or leave you wanting a little more from it, another is there to swoop you away and assail your thoughts. It's really nice and takes full advantage of its extensive 13-track set...

     I don't know too much about jazz other than a passing familiarity, so forgive me if I'm ill-informed in how I speak about it. Illuminations is a collaborative album between Alice Coltrane and Carlos Santana and I like it a lot! Once again, I'm not very familiar with Coltrane or Santana's other works (although I do know of Santana in general) but this is an excellent showing and very promising for their other respective works if they are anything like this. The purely instrumental jazz is composed beautifully, with the different layers of a wide array of instruments, from classic brass and wind, to a prominent Wurlitzer, that build on each other wonderfully. The soundscape that the music develops is captivating and manages to hold you as it progresses and unfurls itself, really creating a rich atmosphere that I loved being in. The range of the tones that it's able to convey is great as well, managing to at times be dramatic, energetic, moody and more, and it all...

    Being one of the founding pieces of music for prog rock, King Crimson's debut work is great. The elements of the genre are already fully laid out and well done here, including the usual long interludes and instrumentals, experimental instrumentation (shoutout to the mellotron), and only having 5 tracks. The aspects of the album that I want to highlight here are Peter Sinfield's lyrics and Greg Lake's vocals, which are both absolutely phenomenal and go together amazingly well, being the perfect encapsulation of a haunting and wistful spirit that I love. They're what give the album its identity and strengthen all the underlying elements. For the most part this album is just a really strong showing of why I love prog rock. Every element is on point and everything works so well together. Although, I would be remissed to not mention my biggest problem with the album, Moonchild. The 12 minute long song is really just a 2 minute long song followed by very abstract and s...

      Brain Salad Surgery. What to say about this album? I'm genuinely struggling. Emerson, Lake, and Palmer's 4h album (and coincidentally the follow-up to Trilogy, the only other ELP album I've listened to) is widely regarded as a true standout in the world of prog rock. In a certain sense, I would agree. The technicality and prowess demonstrated on the album is very impressive, especially for 1973. Emerson's keyboard and the synth are spectacular here, using novel timbres and displaying a lot of skill; with the way that they're able to convey a wordless story through a good chunk of the album is very impressive and probably my favorite aspect of it. The thing that I don't think I can avoid is compare it to Trilogy, which is both a good and bad thing. My main problem with Trilogy was how unfocused it was, never really having a solid identity or sound that it settled on or could come back to throughout and felt disjointed between the various styles and sounds i...

      14 years after the initial revival of ELO with 2001's Zoom is 2015's Alone in the Universe. The one thing I kept thinking while listening through this album is "this is what Zoom was trying to be". AITU is much more successful at the revitalization of the band (now properly Jeff Lynne's ELO) than its predecessor, with a better sound and overall identity. One of my biggest complaints with Zoom was how a majority of the album blended together and a lot of the songs weren't distinct enough from each other which resulted in the album feeling muddled with same-ness. Alone in the Universe is thankfully free from that issue, with most of the songs having their own unique sound and identify while still remaining cohesive as a unit, now with an underlying more acoustic, almost sort of folk-rock sound tying it together. This album marks a proper return to the ELO tradition of trying out unique styles between songs that's been a staple of the band since 1974, w...