The Stone Roses – The Stone Rose ★★★½

Year	Album	Artist	Stars	Score	Genre
1989	The Stone Roses	The Stone Roses	★★★½	73	Rock	Psychedelic Rock	Madchester

The Stone Roses’ 1989 self-titled debut album is a little disjointed and underwhelming at times, but overall the band brings a lot of good songs to the table and moves in a bunch of different directions that keeps you engaged the entire way through. 

The opening two songs are probably the two strongest on the album. “I Wanna Be Adored” is a dark, shoegaze influenced track that’s an alt-rock classic that deservingly still gets played on the airwave and fits right in 30 years later. It’s followed by “She Bangs the Drum” which is a good, upbeat song that makes you want to go on a jog in the crisp air. 

I also really enjoy “Fool’s Gold” at the end of the album too; the straight madchester vibes don’t quite fit the rest of the record, but it’s a fun song overall that I could see myself throwing on outside the context of the record a lot. 

Some psychedelic 60s and 70s vibes shine through from time to time too, and help the album not get too serious or weighty. There are times where it feels like a song is going to get kind of dark, but it usually resolves in a pleasant way musically. 

But as mentioned before, the album goes in a lot of directions stylistically, and I never feel completely comfortable or settled in because of that. Even if I like most of the individual tracks, it’s hard for me to find a real connective tissue from beginning to end, which makes the album drag on. The last two tracks being the longest by a lot also adds to the dragging, and “Bye Bye Bad Man” earlier in the record is just a miss in my opinion.