The Stone Roses

Artist Rating: 76%

Peak Album Score: 23

Average Album Score: 20

Development Score: 3

- There's definitely a serious change between the two albums, but it's not for the better.

Originality Score: 7

- I'm regretfully (hah) unfamiliar with the reportedly crappy English dance scene The Stone Roses overthrow, but it seems to me that the band's fusion of 60's pop stylings with late-80's dance antics (and a dash of original attitude) is pretty original.

Personal Bias Score: 23

- I like the band well enough, and their desire to be adored is infectious, but nothing they did (good as it may be) ever really pierces me. Maybe it's because I wasn't British (or alive, for that matter) in 1989.

The Stone Roses (1989) - 91%
Apparently the album that suddenly and single-handedly rejuvenated the awful British pop scene of the late-80's, The Stone Roses reveals itself, upon repeated listens, to be more than hype. No, it isn't even nearly the greatest album of all time, as every dang British magazine likes to say, but it isn't anything below excellent either. That said, Ian Brown sure sings like he's recording the greatest album of all time. Not that he sings brilliantly, mind you, but he sings with some serious attitude. The album opens and closes with declarations of the band's greatness and its desire to have its greatness recognized: "I Wanna Be Adored" kind of sums up the whole deal, with a slow, building groove layering awesome textures and cool, echoey vocals, and "I Am the Resurrection" is a lovely Beatlesque pop tune with an exceptionally jangly five-minute jam tagged onto the end. The album is littered with great pop songs, though. They're sort of like great, happy-sounding (though not happy, lyrically... at all) 60's hits, except drowning in echo and all underpinned by the dance beats of the era (not today's computerized ones). With the exception of the somewhat ridiculous "Don't Stop", which turns the entire instrumental track of "Waterfall" backwards as its basis (and doesn't do much with it), every song here is highly enjoyable (and danceable!), even if they all sound vaguely similar in the pool of echo.

- Highlights: "I Wanna Be Adored", "She Bangs the Drums", "Waterfall", "Made of Stone", "I Am the Resurrection"

Second Coming (1994) - 84%
This album reminds me, sonically, of Big Star's Radio City, and I suppose the two weren't made in dissimilar circumstances. Though I guess all of Britain wasn't counting on Big Star to deliver 'the next big one', which this overlong, uncharacteristically rocking album failed to do. But the anti-hype that follows in such a situation is always just as overstated as the hype the precedes it, and the amazingly titled Second Coming doesn't suck like it's supposed to. It is hard to wade through, though, with all the songs falling into the same funk-rock groove (the incredibly long "Breaking into Heaven" and its successor, "Driving South", sound exactly the same! That's sixteen minutes of one groove!) existing primarily to show off John Squire's guitar playing, which is indeed quite good. In fact, its awesomeness almost qualifies the album's ridiculous monotony and length! The funk grooves are dang solid, and his solos and fills are loaded with energy and inspiration, and display a very obvious mastery of the instrument. Ian Brown, though, sounds totally out of place on this album. It's almost as if he's lost everything that made him charming on The Stone Roses - his attitude and... lots of echo. Yes, the attitude is mostly gone (despite the title... and the length), perhaps with the knowledge that the group missed their chance at being as big as they wanted to be.

- Highlights: "Ten Storey Love Song", "Straight to the Man", "How Do You Sleep"