Album Reviews & You isn’t just another pile of stiff music criticism — it’s where albums get taken apart, celebrated, mocked, and loved, sometimes all in the same breath. Every review comes with a podcast episode, so you can read it, hear it, or ignore both and just argue with us in your head about why your favorite track is obviously better. Classics, deep cuts, guilty pleasures — they’re all fair game. The only rule is to keep it honest, a little weird, and fun enough to remind you why you love music in the first place.
We lost Ace Frehley this year, and that makes this one sting a little. Ace was the wild card, the genuine article in a band that perfected the art of pretending to be genuine. So, in his honor, I decided to revisit the last Kiss album the original four “made” together: Psycho Circus. What I found out by reviewing this album is that by “made,” I mean posed near one another for pictures in makeup while a small army of session players did the actual heavy lifting.
Over‑Nite Sensation came out in 1973 and instantly proved that Zappa could make filth sound like art school. Everything here is ridiculous — lyrics about threesomes, arrangements that sound like insanity and jazz in a blender, and guitar solos so good they make you question your will to practice. This album doesn’t try to be accessible. It just works on the assumption that you’re weird enough to enjoy it anyway.
Kanye West: the man, the myth, the walking dissertation on self‑importance. I think he did a song called Gold Digger about 20 years ago — that’s the extent of my expertise here. What I do know is that his portfolio includes a complicated relationship with religion, some “creative” political takes, and an ego so large it’s probably eligible for its own zip code. Still, I can’t deny the dude's influence.
Have you ever listened to something so many times you forget it’s real? That’s me with Phish.
I’ve been seeing this band live since the early nineties. I’ve smelled… things-whole ecosystems of human odor, patchouli, and various herbs that changed my perception of the universe. I’m not some outsider sneering at the scene — I’m a jaded vet that still floats in it. I know the difference between “cow funk” and “space funk.”
This is my first real trip into the world of Tater Shift — a place where sincerity is produced in bulk and heartbreak comes in 4K resolution. Her fans call it catharsis. I call it very loud feelings with a rewards program. So here we go as the door creaks open to the Church of Swiftian Spectacle.
Now, I’m not new to this one — I’ve been listening to Moving Pictures since before I could grow a patchy mustache, and it’s still one of those albums that makes you feel smarter just for owning it. Not actually smarter, but “I read the back of the cereal box while listening to a 7/8 drum pattern” smarter. It’s Rush in their prime — before the mullets grew out too far and the synths started unionizing.
This isn’t just any cult film soundtrack—it’s the musical equivalent of being tickled by an alien in high heels. It’s camp, chaos, and charisma in one vinyl sleeve. And I’ll be walking you through the album track by track, picking apart every shriek, sax solo, and fishnet-flavored flourish. Because if you can’t overanalyze a glam rock Frankenstein musical in late October, when can you?
Now, I know what you're thinking: "Another 'Talking Book' review? What's left to say?" Well, my friends, I'm not here to regurgitate Wikipedia. I'm here to give you a very unprofessional take on an album that's so good, it almost makes me angry. Angry that I'll never be this talented. Angry that my own musical endeavors sound like a cat fighting a vacuum cleaner compared to this masterpiece.
Metallica’s Master of Puppets, this is the sound of four guys in their early 20s, angry at everything, but mostly at time signatures. It’s fast, it’s ferocious, it’s flawless — well, except for Lars. But he’s there, clanking along like a toddler with a pot and spoon. So strap in, crank up your speakers, and prepare for an hour of existential rage, guitar heroics, and one Danish man trying to murder his crash cymbal collection.
David Allan Coe’s Longhaired Redneck. This is the kind of album that sneaks up on you like Dan and Shay at a NASCAR race asking who’s pitching. David doesn’t just sing—he lectures country DJs, serenades angels and drunks alike, and somehow makes you believe that Ernest Tubb and a longhaired redneck could share a whiskey and a smoke on a Saturday night.
Check Your Head” is what happens when three dudes who already rewired hip-hop decide they’d rather jam with their own brains for a while. This 1992 masterpiece was the sound of the Beastie Boys dragging their crates of vinyl, instruments, and egos into a sweaty garage and saying, “Let’s make noise that feels like it smells.
This thing has been called groundbreaking, influential, dangerous — you know, all the words people use when they don’t want to admit they were just scared of Lou Reed. Let’s go track by track, because apparently I hate myself.
From the opening “no, no, no” of Rehab to the bittersweet strut of He Can Hold Her, every track drips with humor, heartbreak, and just the right amount of self-destruction. It’s not clean, it’s not polite, and it sure as hell isn’t easy listening. But that’s what makes it brilliant.
It’s been hailed as one of the greatest albums of all time, but listening to it, I just kept asking myself: greatest what? Greatest cure for insomnia? Greatest example of a producer burying the vocals out of sheer mercy? Greatest soundtrack for making a grilled cheese sandwich?
Released in 1984, it turned that skinny motherfucker with the high voice into a global deity. Nine songs, barely 45 minutes, and not a wasted second — unless you count Baby I’m a Star, which is basically him screaming “Look at me!” for three minutes straight. But even that works, because the whole point of this album is that we are looking, and we can’t look away.
Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia — the title alone feels like a dare. Like, “I’m going to make an album that sounds like you’ve already heard it, but with shinier buttons and a compression setting that could flatten a fucking mountain.” It’s disco, it’s EDM, it’s pop, so polished you could see your reflection in it, and it’s got enough writers per track to field a football team.
This isn’t a party album. This isn’t even a “throw on while cleaning the house” album, unless you need to mop, that could happen from all the tears this album brings. It’s heavy, it’s beautiful, it’s prophetic. I’d never heard the whole thing through before now, but I have heard most of it playing over the speakers as I’ve shopped at the local adult toy store. Nothing says “sexy fun time” quite like Marvin Gaye singing about war, famine, and drug addiction.
This record is noisy, angsty, surprisingly melodic, and wrapped in a cover that has caused lawsuits, confusion, and at least one “wait, what?” from every parent who’s ever seen it. So let’s break it down track by track, from underwater babies to rotary-phone vocal effects to Kurt mumbling about crackers.
Ronald Reagan was president, Pac-Man was eating quarters across the nation, and Michael Jackson released the biggest-selling album of all time. Thriller wasn’t just an album; it was a phenomenon, a cultural earthquake, a nine-track declaration that pop could be weirder, funkier, scarier, and more sparkly-jacketed than ever before.
Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours isn’t just an album — it’s a soap opera pressed to vinyl. Divorce, betrayal, cocaine, and tambourines that never quite hit the beat — somehow it all came together to create one of the best-selling and most beloved records of all time.
The themes? Taxes. Death. Acid sunshine. Fake birds. Submarines. Doctors giving you drugs. And of course, love songs that make you wonder if you’re really in love or just really high. Basically, it’s Rubber Soul after a few bong hits, on the road to Sgt. Pepper with the windows rolled down and a bag of questionable substances in the glove box.
Track by track, through the brilliance, the bloat, the penis jokes, and the moments of actual genius, and see if To Pimp A Butterfly is the masterpiece people claim—or just an extremely long group project where half the team forgot the assignment.
If you only know Sly from the hits—“Dance to the Music,” “Everyday People,” “I Want to Take You Higher”—then Riot will hit you like a bucket of bong water to the face. The sunshine is gone. The tie-dye is faded. The cocaine is plentiful. This isn’t the sound of a band throwing a party; it’s the sound of one man locking the doors, unplugging the phones, and overdubbing himself into a drug-soaked cocoon of paranoia.
So here we go: Sour. The debut album that made Olivia Rodrigo a household name, broke the internet, and apparently convinced half the population that heartbreak is a full-time job. It’s basically Adele For Kids. Every track title is presented with lowercase letters in the tracklist, which must mean it’s edgy. Or lazy. Or both. (Wow, “no caps” — how will society recover?)
Will Surface is a lifelong music junkie, multi-instrumentalist, and occasional smart-aleck who’s been playing, touring, and arguing about records since the cassette era.
He’s not here to write press-kit fluff or pretend every album is a masterpiece — he’s here to dig in, crack jokes, and remind you that music is supposed to make you feel something (even if that feeling is, ‘wow, this track really stinks’). Between the blog, the podcast, and the animated versions of the podcast on YouTube, you’ll get plenty of honest takes, questionable metaphors, and maybe a little too much enthusiasm for deep cuts nobody asked for. But hey, that’s the fun.
will@albumreviewsandyou.com
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