Simon Lac’s Music Vault

An Opiniated Assessment

 

 

 

Recent updates:

February 28th 2006 Added Greenslade – Greenslade, Amon Duul II – Wolf City; February 26th 2006 Added Gentle Giant – The Power and the Glory, Free Hand; February 25th 2006 Added Gentle Giant – In a Glass House, Gryphon – Red Queen To Gryphon Three, Raindance; February 21st 2006 Added Tool – AEnima; February 12th 2006 Added The Police – Reggatta de Blanc, Zenyatta Mondatta, Ghost In the Machine, Synchronicity; February 8th 2006 Added Gentle Giant – Acquiring the Taste, Three Friends, Octopus; February 6th 2006 Added Gentle Giant – Gentle Giant; February 4th 2006 Added Peter Gabriel – Passion, Up; February 3rd 2006 Added The Police – Outlandos d’Amour; January 25th 2006 Added The Shins – Chutes Too Narrow, Revamped some of the text on the main page; January 14th 2006 Added Transatlantic – Bridge Across Forever (5-); Simon Lac’s Music Vault turned 1 YEAR OLD on November 20th 2005

ARCHIVED NEWS

 

 

Objectives:

 

First, for the completely clueless visitor: this is a music review website.  I love music… a lot…  And I feel like writing about the music I listen to helps me enjoy it more as it makes me both think and feel about the music, as opposed to passively listening and forgetting about it (often witnessed around me by people stating things such as “I love the fourth song but the eighth is pretty nice too”).  I love discussing music.  I don’t pretend I am better than the musicians because I rate them lower, nor do I pretend my opinion is right.  I am generally quite generous with albums though…  Anyway, the objective is to talk music.

 

I will try to be original, but I started as a progressive rock junky, and I still am a bit, so expect some of the classics…

 

PS: I do write weird sentences; my first language is French. I really don’t pretend that I write perfectly.

 

Methods:

 

First, I often have a debate in my head… Should I review bands even if I don’t own all their albums? Well screw that debate, I will.

 

Song colours:

Those songs stand out

Those songs are songs…

Those songs are not very good

 

Descriptor: The descriptor uses a couple of words that attempt to catch the general feel of the album. It’s sometimes quite efficient!  You will notice the album cover often influences this…

 

Also, I use a rating system: it attracts visitors! Not quite… but anyhow, I am plagued with that, and besides, I like rating albums (ignore it if you want).

 

+ or –

I use those to adjust my severity or generosity (after the ratings below, like “6+”, or “8-”).

 

10

Godly: Those are my classics, basically impossible to top.

 

9

Excellent: La crème of music, only to be topped by those with general or personal importance.

 

8

Very good: Those you get after the classics.  They have great potential. However, some average bands might never do better than this.

 

7

Pleasant: The average album ends up here. It’s good, gives you a good time, and that’s it. Sometimes though, they go through ephemeral greatness.  “Average”… yeah, I tend to give a lot of 8s and 9s though.

 

6

Handicapped: They’re generally okay, except for those blunt tunes or a couple of annoying moments. Sometimes their problem is hard to put a finger on; in my job, we call this “non-point source pollution” (as you can see, I’m not a music critic).

 

5

Passable: Yes, I guess you could pass on them… Those can be respectable in some ways, maybe too predictable…

 

4

Quite “average”: A euphemism meaning generally BORING. Easily forgettable tunes, longueurs and unoriginality are usually happy together here.

 

3

Mediocre: This is finally where it gets evil. There are only a few good minutes that are difficult to appreciate when considering the remaining garbage. It is often either forgotten, or remembered for the wrong reasons.

 

2

Plain bad: A few drops of integrity and a truckload of crap. I can’t believe they could think it’s good!

 

1

Atrocious: I never thought I could suffer physical pain inflicted by music.

 

0

Insulting: I’ve never been insulted, but if it happens, the music would really have to be scary.

 

 

 

 

Results and Analysis:

 

Total of albums reviewed:

77

 

Bands with reviews

 

Amon Duul II (1)

Beach Boys (1)

Camel (15)

Curved Air (2)

Emerson Lake and Palmer (4)

Eno, Brian (2)

Gabriel, Peter (5)

Genesis (20)

Gentle Giant (7)

Greenslade (1)

Gryphon (2)

Harmonium (1)

Police (5)

Shins (2)

Stevens, Sufjan (1)

Tool (1)

Transatlantic (1)

Triumvirat (6)

 

Agriculture in Lancashire 1849

 

Random list of additional bands that could get reviewed

 

Well yes, there used to be a list of a lot of bands here, but it was incredibly pointless, besides, I always realized some were missing.  Screw it.  I’ll just review more bands to make the page look more credible.

 

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