Ian Brown
Solarized
Release Date: Feb 22, 2005
Genre(s): Rock, Alternative
Record label: Koch / Polydor
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Album Review: Solarized by Ian Brown
Fairly Good, Based on 2 Critics
Based on rating 7/10
On his fourth solo album, Ian Brown marches on as confidently as ever, mixing mystical aural textures with massively addictive melodies. Album opener "Longsight M13" is as catchy as any song in Brown's back catalog and continues the spacy vibes of his previous full-length effort, Music of the Spheres. "Time Is My Everything" blends Stone Roses ephemera with dusty Spanish horns straight out of an Ennio Morricone spaghetti Western film score, while a goth guitar backdrop on "Destiny or Circumstance" warps the mind like nothing since the Sisters of Mercy.
Based on rating 3/5
You know where you are with Ian Brown. Having established his densely-layered, post-baggy sound early on, he's stuck with it through four solo albums, hence the familiarity of his latest ganja-tinted musings. Now 40 (such a thing once seemed unimaginable), he's still the Madchester raver in his mind: anti-authority on the harmonica-honking Kiss Ya Lips (No ID), anti-capitalism on the sinisterly sparse Upside Down, anti lots of other vaguely defined "bad" things.
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