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I like it a lot; it's always been my favorite from the Soundgarden catalog. More visceral than the mature "Superunknown" and more polished than the raw "Ultramega Ok," it represents the perfect compromise achieved by the band's music, the most cohesive and "square" album. I consider it one of the best Rock/Hard-Rock albums released between the '80s and '90s. Moreover, this is the best lineup of Soundgarden, at its peak, with Yamamoto, a great bassist, who played a crucial role in the songwriting process. And then there's a brilliant singer/songwriter, an excellent guitarist, a drummer also in great form, and what comes out is a very homogeneous album, even in the quality of the tracks. Oh, I wouldn't go so far as to call it a masterpiece or consider it one of "my" essential albums, just because I see Soundgarden as excellent students who, while making a fantastic impression, haven't surpassed their masters (we all know the various inspirations of the band; I don't need to repeat their shopping list). So, it's a matter of taste, but I truly find this album skirting perfection; it has only great tracks, from the first to the last, no dips, no weak points, no underwhelming songs, it flows smoothly—it's a solid block of excellent hard-rock 2.0. Beautiful.

The last album in a trilogy of masterpieces, this jewel from 2001; another splendid hit for Mark Linkous-Sparklehorse. An album of disarming delicacy, only occasionally interrupted ("Piano Fire," "King of Nails," and the madness moment of Tom Waits in "Dog Door"). Wonderful songs one after another and collaborations utilized to perfection (Waits, PJ Harvey, and John Parish, with Dave Fridmann; the latter two not only play bass and piano on some tracks but are also co-producers). "Eyepennies" eternal...

Happy ep. How beautiful is "Happy Man"? And how much more in the electrifying version "Happy Pig" with the medley ending that picks up "Pig"? Then there's another lovely cover of a piece by Daniel Johnston; after "Hey, Joe," here comes "My Yoke is Heavy." In short, a good job, a nice interlude between "Good Morning Spider" and "It's A Wonderful Life."

AARF: Attoroni (Matthau, Grant, Coburn). AUDREY. Big Director. Big Movie.

Horror and psychological thriller at its finest. The Kubrick-Nicholson duo is devastating. Another 5-star gem from Stan.

Epic, stunning, shocking, violent, extraordinary, a breathtaking finale. One of the 10 greatest films of all time. I won’t use more words because I have none left; I’ll just say that the first 30-40 minutes and the finale alone are worth a 10, everything else just solidifies it. Story.

One of the greatest filmmakers of all time delivers one of the top 5 war films ever made. Grotesque and bitter, the first segment is truly genius, while the second, set in Vietnam, is more conventional but still hits like a punch to the gut, due to its realism and brutality. The futility of war and what it transforms simple boys into. An immense masterpiece.

The film is almost a masterpiece and yet, paradoxically, it is one of Kubrick's worst (this should illustrate the greatness of this director and the heights he has reached). A great, truly great film, with multiple layers of interpretation, incredibly powerful scenes, a stunning Kidman, and a Tom Cruise in one of his most convincing performances. Splendid direction and cinematography, and the ending is noteworthy. The excellent epitaph of one of the greatest directors in history.

Enormous film. Cruel, ruthless, cynical, Stanley Kubrick's first great masterpiece remains one of his most beautiful films even today. It has no flaws, the direction is marvelous, the screenplay is ironclad, and the performances of Kirk Douglas and McReady are absolutely stunning. Probably the greatest anti-militarist film of all time. The execution scene, in its simple, ruthless cruelty, has an impressive visual power. The ending is one of the deepest and most successful ever.

Further strides for Fagen & Becker in this album, following their already remarkable debut. From this record, it becomes increasingly difficult to pinpoint lackluster tracks or dips in quality; we are already perilously close to perfection. Eight songs, each more beautiful than the last, each with its own spark, where the meticulous pop of the band perfectly blends all possible genres of music—from the "Americana" that explodes in the stunning refrain of "The Boston Rag" to the irresistible R&B/Black itch of "My Old School," passing through the Jazz of "Your Gold Teeth." Often, all these influences are actually mixed together, creating a unique style, a trademark of these two musical "POP" geniuses. If I had to choose one standout track from this album, I would say "Show Biz Kids"; that song drives me crazy. Sublime.

Excellent debut that will be followed by great and undisputed masterpieces. This is not yet at titanic levels, but it's still quite a lot, and Fagen/Becker are already two excellent authors, with their pop blending various musical influences into a miraculous harmony and balance. Already surrounded by talented session musicians (Jeff Baxter on guitar in many tracks, to name one), the two geniuses gift us in this first album with superb songs like "Do it Again," "Fire in the Hole" (my favorite), and "Turn That Heartbeat Over Again." Ah, I love "Kings" and "Only a Fool Would Say That." A great start to a great story.

Read the perfect definition of the user Barracuda Blue, please. A beautiful album, flawless and rich with insights and brilliant ideas, perfect songs follow one another seamlessly. It flows smoothly like oil in its perfectly blended mix of genres, thanks to two exceptional composers like Fagen and Becker. A piece for everyone, the one that excites me the most, probably "Charlie Freak." A wonder.

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Beautiful album from Hackett's "late phase," listening to it again I liked it even more than during my first listens a few years ago. I even prefer it "a little bit" to "Out of the Tunnel's Mouth," which was already very nice, and I don't hesitate to say that it's one of my favorite "electric" albums of his, in his extensive discography. The new band is solid, and the inspiration is high. There are plenty of beautiful songs here; to be honest, there's not even one that doesn’t convince me. Hackett doesn't completely give up on some eclectic variables, like the rock-blues of "Catwalk" (rhythm section Chris Squire-Simon Phillips, a bomb) or the exotic double feature with Middle Eastern flavors of "Waking to Life" (lead vocals by Steve's sister-in-law, Amanda Lehmann, who also plays rhythm guitar and provides backing vocals throughout the album) and "Two Faces of Cairo," two great tracks. But it's a very measured eclecticism, not exaggerated. For the rest, he plays it safe, without shining in imagination (there's a melodic theme that recurs throughout almost the entire first half of the album) but with excellent melodic inspiration (that theme, for instance, is spine-tingling), and his guitar here is pure rage—like a deity, be it diddio-shubniggurath-horus or any divinity one might choose. The songs are all very beautiful; I'll pick two as examples, "Loch Lomond" and "A Place Called Freedom" (with more American ballad sound, just like "Looking for Fantasy," which is beautiful too), stunning. The interludes with classical guitar also fit perfectly. Oh, nothing, for me it’s a fantastic album.

Before being struck by one of the legendary live performances of King Crimson (especially by Bob Fripp), during the summer months of 1969 (Hyde Park), one of the musical passions of young Hackett—a passion that has never faded—was for Blues and R&B, both rooted and from Chicago as well, but with particular dedication to British white Blues, a hotbed of extraordinary guitarists. So, in a decade where he did a bit of everything, why not make an album to indulge in playing and composing some Blues? And the result is quite pleasant in my opinion. There are some covers, the pieces that are more radically Blues (and what can be said about the energetic one-two opener "Born in Chicago"-"The Stumble," a perfect start) as well as the title track, for example, but most are written by Hackett, who in the more successful songs focuses on a more modern take on Blues and infuses touches of "hackettism" here and there, making it all very personal (and what beautiful pieces "Tombstone Roller" and "Big Dallas Sky" are, as well as a more standard and fun song like "Footloose," which has great energy). Hackett also personally enjoys the harmonica, and he plays it quite well, it seems to me. Of course, it's not a masterpiece of the genre—some tracks, while pleasant, leave little behind; it's not one of the most visceral examples of white Blues—but the passion (and there was no doubt about that with Hackett) is definitely there, and the album comes across as beautiful, alive, and convincing, not a bored exercise in style.

Hackett in Brazil (part one). Having exited the "Defector" tour stressed and overdosed on aspirin, Stefanuzzo decides to take refuge with Kim in her homeland, Brazil, and relax nicely for a few months, maybe writing some songs between drinks, a swim, and some lovemaking. And yes, this first Brazilian album of his (no musical influences, it was conceived and written there) isn't great. You can tell it’s the typical ultra-relaxed album of an artist making music during a serene time without putting in too much effort, just casually. Kim was also on vacation, no painting for the cover, just a photo she took of her husband, where Steve's expression reveals the vastness of how little he cared about putting effort into composing at that moment. But this kind of light-light pop doesn't suit him well, and the album is filled with very dull little songs (the nicest is "Hope I Don’t Wake Up," even if it sounds, to put it mildly, reminiscent of Yes, from around the same time, of course). Steve sings it solo (horrible choice), and indeed, the instrumentals save it: "Air-Conditioned Nightmare" is nice and the already typical classical guitar piece ("Cradle of Swans") raises the level of an album among his absolute worst. A couple of tracks could have been better, perhaps, but they weren't; the rest is mediocre pop with horrible backing vocals and sung parts.

Here it is, the worst album by Steve, the ugly mess wisely hidden for 14 years but then for some reason released in 2000 by his label, Camino Records. It wouldn't have been missed. There's no denying it, 1986 remains a terrible year for many big names from the previous decade, and it seems to be particularly catastrophic for everything that revolved or had revolved around Genesis (or almost, there was always Gabriel's "So," which is a fantastic album, but even that is his most commercial and features a couple of chart-topping pop tunes, one of which, "Big Time," is a piece of garbage). 1986 spared even Mr. Hackett, a year when he decided to play "pumped-up rock" and his miserable AOR. We had the decent (for someone who likes those sounds) album by GTR with Howe as an example, and that would have been more than enough, but in that same year Hackett recorded more pop-AOR songs with various collaborations (Bruno Mars, Bonnie Tyler, Chris Thompson) following the album with Howe (who doesn’t play here but is a co-writer on one track; I presume many songs here were intended for GTR). To be fair, a couple of songs are nice in their cheesy, over-the-top pop-AOR, like the duet sung by Tyler and Thompson, but here it's mostly pure crap, the worst kind of pop-rock-AOR, worse than what GTR offered. Ah, Steve, it's clear you weren't doing your best...

Steve closes the decade beautifully with an album that, as the title suggests, represents a return to serenity and the ability to compose music with a free and tranquil mind, after three difficult years during which his ex-wife Kim tried to take everything from him, even the spare strings for his guitars, because she had forgotten that her husband hadn’t played on "Invisible Touch" and wasn’t exactly making pounds flow from his orifices. Here, Hackett abandons the slightly exasperated eclecticism of some previous albums and finds "the permanent center of gravity," so to speak, in a more "dry" and compact album, more decisive in the musical direction to take. In doing so, Hackett manages to write songs that perfectly blend the electric soul with the acoustic-classical one (the perpetual alternation of acoustic and electric or the dichotomy of an introduction with a classical guitar leading to an electric change is present in almost all tracks) with a fluidity and naturalness I hadn’t felt from him... Who knows, maybe even since Spectral Mornings. "Sleepers" is, hands down, the peak of the album, a little masterpiece where Hackett's electric guitar starts to stutter again (remember "Ripples"? There you go), but all the tracks shine, with just a couple being slightly less convincing but still pleasant. Beautiful, beautiful.

Hackett in Brazil (part two). Three years later, Stefanuzzo and his lady return to Brazil to compose some music, this time with more conviction compared to the ultra-relaxing vacation of "Cured." This is an interesting album, not spectacular but with some nice pieces and good ideas, and perhaps a bit underestimated within its discography. This time, some vaguely Brazilian influences can be heard, at least in the choice of musicians, all local (a substantial group of percussionists, but not only) except for Mosley and Magnus. But since Hackett is a joker, suddenly there are references to Japanese music ("The Doll That's Made in Japan," with Kim on vocals as the "Japanese girl," but they also pop up in the excellent "What's My Name") with Hackett playing the koto, things like that. Being a joker, the album closes with 40 seconds of instrumental from Disney's "Pinocchio" song, just because. "Myopia" is also a very particular piece by his standards. In "What's My Name" and Matilda-Smith... (great track, perhaps the best) there's excellent use of percussion (Brazil, not Africa, yes, but it's never been so close to Gabriel as in these snippets of the piece) "Taking the Easy Way Out" is a nice ballad and so on. Here Hackett experiments with something a little different, and it's one of the times he pulls it off well. In my opinion, it’s a solid work, an album to reconsider at least a little because it's really not bad at all.

Steve Hackett on classical guitar is always the best, in my opinion (maybe it's because I adore the sound of the instrument), even when he records an album under unfortunate conditions and in a complicated time, namely during a turbulent divorce from his now ex-wife Kim and also at war with the manager who had taken away his chance to record music in a studio (oh, to put it mildly). This album Hackett had to play and record in his own home, in an improvised studio, probably while Kim was busy ripping the carpet off the floor to take that with her too (guys, we’re lucky she didn’t come to our house asking for her husband’s record covers back, just kidding Kim, don’t sue DeBaser). Apart from his faithful friend King on production and mixing, here there’s only Hackett and his guitar. That’s it. Not even his brother on flute. Just him. Him and the classical composers he pays homage to, because here Hackett relies on the safe harbor of performing other people's pieces. The most represented is Bach, of course, since he was the one who originally opened new "Horizons" in guitar playing for Steve many years ago. And well, it might be an album made out of necessity (it was the only type of album he could afford to make at that moment, in fact), but it's still Hackett playing Bach and company with a classical touch. A gem. Hats off.

A good album this "Wild Orchids," within the average output of Hackett's electro-acoustic work. The main flaw of the album is indeed that 17 tracks are too many, and not all are valid, and the extreme stylistic eclecticism of the various songs doesn't help either. This is another characteristic that I both like and dislike in Hackett; for instance, here it seems he takes pleasure in surprising the listener with songs that are vastly different from one another in terms of genres, styles, atmospheres, etc. In the end, I can't help but think that his stylistic signature is to not have one. And while I usually enjoy versatility even within the same album, and appreciate Hackett's versatility as well, sometimes with him it feels excessively forced, as if he has never understood (or maybe simply doesn't care) what exactly to put in his albums. Fortunately, the average quality of the songs here is more than satisfactory. There are acoustic/classical/orchestral pieces (once again the Underworld from the splendid "Metamorpheus") and electric pieces, extremely sweet and wonderfully bucolic soft songs ("To a Close") and edgy, dark tracks, covers of Bob Dylan, and songs that you would never think "Wow, this is Hackett, you can tell" (like "Down Street," which by the way is one of the most beautiful, or "Ego and Id," composed by John Hackett, a classical flautist, and it’s an amazing electric piece...). Recurring musical themes, beautiful songs and others decidedly less so ("Wolfwork"). A bit messy, but it's a good album.

Hackett's misstep in the last decade, one of his less beautiful albums which, by the way, is placed between two much more inspired ones. There are a couple of decent songs (the title track is nice, for example, as is "The Wheel's Turning") but overall I find it weak, flat, and very disappointing, with few ideas and even some messy parts. There are melodies, arrangements, and solutions in several tracks that aim to be epic but flirt with the cheesy; sometimes they hit the mark and give it a high five. It's a heavy album to listen to, boring, even if here and there in almost every song there's that piece or that passage of guitar that, okay, is nice, but it's not enough. The cover is also terribly cheesy... Sure, the wolf cubs are nice, but the overall effect, my goodness, no. For me, while waiting to listen to the latest release, the decade 2010-2020 has been fruitful for Hackett from a qualitative perspective, "Wolflight" being the only half misstep.

After the artistically unfruitful Brazilian holiday at Hackett in 1982, it was time to start stressing and arguing with Charisma again. The result is this album, released the following year, which went through a troubled gestation and would be the last published under Stratton-Smith's historic label (which at the time I believe was hardly managing much anymore...). "Highly Strung" I like; it's a nice album overall, better not only than "Cured" (thanks ar ca) but for me also better than "Defector," and I don't hesitate to say so. It still partially follows a very pop-oriented path, but much less and more rarely than its predecessor. The sounds, when they're not too cheesy or plastic, are brilliant, lively, and sharp, just like Hackett's guitar, which here shines more than ever. In short, just "Casino Royale" (which will become a classic in Stefano's live sets) overshadows "Cured," and if we want to talk about '80s pop, "Cell 151" with its very poppy and cheeky first part still triumphs over the pop-curedian style. All the more pop-oriented tracks are at the center of the album, and while "Weightless" and "Walkin Through the Walls" are a bit weak (the only ones on the album I don't like), I open the wardrobe and pull out the skeleton: I like "Give it Away," the most bubblegum-pop thing this man has ever done. Everything else is made up of high-quality tracks ("India Rubber Man" is a delight, "Group Therapy" is excellent, and so on). A great album, for me.

"Guitar Noir" is a beautiful album by an artist who has reached full maturity, a refined, elegant work often set in soft atmospheres, delicate when not dark or melancholic. This is also one of the albums where Hackett manages to better blend the acoustic and electric parts of his music, in a constant exchange and dialogue between them in most of the songs, with the excellent help of Magnus' keyboards, following a well-defined path, still far from the furious eclecticism that will dominate his albums in the following decade. Then Hackett allows the acoustic "soul" and electric "soul" to take separate paths, resulting in two of the best pieces, two instrumentals, "Walking Away From Rainbows" for classical guitar and "Sierra Quemada," which is the most typically "his" electric piece in terms of guitar style—a piece that would have fit well on "Spectral Mornings," just to be clear. The other two standout tracks that elevate the album are "Vampyre With a Healthy Appetite" and then, of course, the splendid "There Are Many Sides of the Night," which traverses electric, acoustic, and even orchestral elements, encompassing all things Hackettian, the peak of the album. The low point is the nice yet isolated "Lost in Your Eyes," which feels out of place with the rest and, frankly, is cute but not much more. Other than that, there are beautiful (on average) refined songs that contribute to making "Guitar Noir" one of the most coherent and successful works of Hackett's electric phase post-'79.