Beautiful Garden Is Open - Sephardic Tinge

Advantages: Great tunes, vocals, Madonna at her best
Disadvantages: none

..., pure pop dancer with a dreamy, soaraway chorus and more than a nod to previous hit 'Beautiful Stranger', finds our heroine head-over-heels with some boy or other. Nobody's Perfect- Air-style, synth-powered, slow, strange and melancholy tune with a vocodered up Madders confessing that she's done wrong and saying she's sorry. Don't Tell Me- By far my favourite track on the album. It has great guitar strings and a country western style to it. What It Feels Like For A Girl- Tender, sensitive, flirtatious, sexy and oddly vulnerable-feeling ode to the female perspective which opens with a spoken word sample of Charlotte Gainsbourg from the movie The Cement Garden. Compelling little grower. Paradise (Not For Me)- Haunting, Air-meets-Daft Punk style synth atmospherics. More of that vocoder vocal stuff, whispers, lush stirring strings. Although... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: Sorrowful and dark - a return to form.
Disadvantages: A bit extreme for some people.

...tinged "Isis Script", the raw death metal of "Fever Sea" and the brilliant guitar work and sorrowful mourning of "The Lake of Ghosts." This last track has an absolutely beautiful riff, and some of the best written lyrics I have ever heard on a My Dying Bride album. All in all, I can really recommend this album to any doom metal fan, or indeed any fan of sorrowful, introspective music in general.... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: Stunning, jaw-dropping, powerful and immediate, I hope that's an advantage.
Disadvantages: That is wasn't four times as long on the same vibe, as Pearl Jam lost the edge after this debut.

...out MTV Unplugged for the best version of Porch - and my favourite rock song - that you'll ever hear) and shift into the huge sounding Garden before dropping a great dirty riff in for Deep. Finally the album fades out with Release, a really beautiful song, and a long repeat of the album intro as an outro. Throughout this whole business, you can hear the tightness of the rhythm section, with Jeff Amment's bass a delight that only a high end stereo really lets you appreciate, and some solid funk-tinged main playing by Stone Gossard, but the real effects are bought out by Mike's furious solos and Eddie Vedders souring and powerful voice, along with thought provoking lyrics. If you ever own one rock album, it has to be this one.... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful