All Members - Don Sleet

Advantages: Mellow listening for the darker mood
Disadvantages: Dull and uninspiring, for the most part

...to get bogged down in the downcast revelry of the music, and becomes merely another tone amid all the musical sleet. "No Joy In Mudville", at over 6 minutes, is the longest track here, and it certainly feels like it. Aimlessly wandering around on a sparse line of drums and chimes, it goes nowhere and goes there bloody slowly. After about four minutes there are splashes of colour to the grey, but it comes too late and certainly isn't as rewarding a payoff as, say, The New Pornographers could have provided. The spindly guitars of "405" offer a brief window of interest, and the song certainly seems to be going somewhere. Gibbard masks his vocals with a strong fuzzy vocoder, and… it's lame. Seriously. It's what I imagine it must sound like to live inside the head of Esther Ranzen, and I can think of nothing worse than that. It buzzes and flails... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful

Advantages: The Pete Townshend "magnum opus"; the finest production by The Who. Symphonic in its magnitude; superb songs, playing, arrangements
Disadvantages: Takes a little concentration and study - but then don't all great works of art?

...superfluous to the story or not sufficiently developed in form. This work has had a chequered career. It was perhaps too far ahead of its time as a concept album (who else would have dared to attempt such a piece 30 years ago?). The tracks were deemed too long to find easy air play. It seemed to fall out of favour with the other members of the group. Its live performance was not fully realised until the late 1990s (yes – I saw Quadrophenia at Wembley Arena; I still have - and wear - the T-shirt!). It was made into a film some years later – which is a story in itself. It starred a number of rock and punk worthies (Sting, Toyah, Lesley Ash, Phil Daniels) just starting out on their career. Quadrophenia is a story of teenage angst. For all its frustration, heartache and black despair the sound is glorious. Although set in the 1960s and the “mod... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful

Advantages: good variety of songs - all the hits
Disadvantages:

...ABBA Gold bring together all those classic hits we remember from the Seventies in one compilation CD. It has all the tracks you would expect to find on an ABBA CD, from Waterloo to Dancing Queen and Mama Mia. The beauty of this compilation is that everybody knows all the words to the songs and can sing along to each and every one. The sleeve has an interesting history of the group, charting the relationships and marriages between the member, and gives the reasons for their eventual split. ABBA Gold is one of those classic albums that everyone should have in their collection, even if you don;t have any of the others by the group.... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average somewhat helpful