Best Music Review Website?

by far

pitchfork is wunderbar, even though i never read other people's shit

For some writing I'm doing I'm trying to find reviews of Eno's 'Here Come The Warm Jets', from when it came out ('74). Save this gem from RS:

This record is annoying because it doesn't do anything. The songs aren't strong enough individually or collectively to merit more than a passing listen. Save for some incendiary guitar work by Robert Fripp during "Baby's On Fire," the instrumentation is pretty tepid. In fact the whole album may be described as tepid, and the listener must kick himself for blowing five bucks on baloney.

i've not had any luck so far. Is there a database somewhere to find old, original reviews that I don't know about?

there's the christgau review, of course, which is actually a little hard to find because it's categorized under plain "ENO":

The idea of this record--top of the pops from quasi-dadaist British synth wizard--may put you off, but the actuality is quite engaging in a vaguely Velvet Underground kind of way. Minimally differentiated variations on the same melody recur and recur, but it's a great melody, and not the only one, and chances are he meant it that way, as a statement, which I agree with. What's more, words take over when the music falters, and on "Cindy Tells Me" they combine for the best song ever written about middle-class feminism, a rock and roll subject if ever there was one. My major complaint is that at times the artist uses a filter that puts dust on my needle

(oh, i left off his letter grade, which was A)

you're asking for a database of contemporaneous reviews, though, and i don't know about that. other than christgau and rolling stone's archives (and maybe creem?) i'm not sure that one exists

rock's back pages has a couple mentions, but it's subscription based

Thanks Zach, that's actually very helpful! I was looking for Xgau but couldn't find it. Nice juxtaposition with RS too, though that was probably expected around that time? Interesting times.

A db of old reviews should exist imo.

Two more good ones:
popmatters.com
75 or Less

― lyra (lyra), Tuesday, August 20, 2002 11:23 PM

I had 387 reviews up at 75orLess, but after the label took over and the reviews stopped, Mark fucked up the site so badly that there's not even much of an archive anymore. :(

:'-(

bangs in creem:

I've had Here Come the Warm Jets in import copy since early spring, and the best of it still stuns and fries me every time I slap it on. Side two does tend to meander a bit, but side one has one of the most perfect lineups in years, solid and throbbing primitivo all the way but with the strangest increment of avant-girdings, like a cross between Nico's Marble Index and Slade. Don't worry, Eno may like synthesizer but this isn't one of those doodley-squats like George Harrison's Electronic Sounds -- these are hard-driving, full-out rock'n'roll songs with consistent percussive force, slashingly economical guitar solos by Fripp and Roxy's Phil Manzanera (who is the most exciting new guitarist since James Williamson, whom he technically far surpasses), and the consistent acidulous edge of Eno's vocals.

Which is where the real twisto action comes in. This guy is a real sickie, bubs, sick as Alice Cooper once was sposed to be, sicker by far than David Bowie's most scabrous dreams. What will you make, for instance, of a song which begins with diabolical electronic telegraphy and the lyrics "Baby's on fire/Better throw her in the water/Look at her laughing/Like a heifer to the slaughter/Baby's on fire/And all the laughing boys are itching..." Don't tell me about the sleaze in your Silverhead -- Eno is the real bizarro warp factor for 1974. It's like he says in "The Paw Paw Negro Blowtorch": "By this time I got to looking for some kind of substitute/I can't tell you what kind, but you know that it rhymes with dissolute..." Meanwhile, the drums are pounding and the guitars are screaming every whichaway in a precisely orchestrated cauldron of terminal hysteria muchly influenced by though far more technologically advanced than early Velvet Underground. Don't miss it; it'll drive you crazy.

http://music.hyperreal.org/artists/brian_eno/interviews/creem74a.html

this has links to a whole bunch of period reviews:

http://www.moredarkthanshark.org/eno_interviews.html

Hey thanks, thats very helpful!

I don't know if they cover Eno, but I just came across http://www.rockscenester.com , a "complete and completely free online archive of Rock Scene magazine (1973-1982)."