The old five-point scale has been retired in favor of just rating stuff 1-10, which allows me a much more nuanced final rating. Still don't take it that seriously. Most of these come from my own collection, so the grades skew rather high. Your results may vary if you send me stuff to review.

Each album is given three Essential tracks, my personal favorites, regardless of how weird and inconsequential they are. The Quintessential pick is the one I think best represents the album as a whole, so you can try one song instead of a whole album of songs. Non-Essential picks range from merely disappointing to outright unlistenable.

Jonathan Ian

[#] I (2006)

Works better when you're not an angry squirrel.

Reviewed July 23, 2019

Neurotically Yours creator Jonathan Ian is of course no stranger to angry acoustic songs, as anyone who's seen the show will surely know. Of course, there's only so much anger a small, pitch-shifted squirrel can dole out before it seems comical, and that's where the beauty of Jonathan's solo albums lie. True, some of these songs have appeared on the show in reworked forms, notably "The Greatest Actor of All", but the frustration and regret within these songs transfers a lot better when you're not also throwing nuts at people. Though instrumentally it's very simplistic and Jonathan is not exactly a top-shelf singer, that just adds to the charm.

When the album hits high, it does so rather beautifully—see the bitter rage of "Inconsequential" or the plaintive pleas of "Entertain Me Again"—but the album could've done with a lot of trimming. The production is also rather dated; though a solo acoustic album doesn't need high production values, the hollow reverb paired with the rather subtle but distracting MP3 compression doesn't exactly add to the music. Fortunately, "High Quality" and "Sung it All Away" are solid enough book ends to make up for it. This is the kind of album that'd do well in playlist form. Cut out some of the more repetitive, weaker tracks and you'll have a solid ten songs of squirrel songs minus the squirrel. Thankfully.

Essential:	"High Quality", "Entertain Me Again", "Sung it All Away"
Quintessential:	"The Greatest Actor of All"
Non-Essential:	"You Have Your Reasons"
Rating:
Further listening:	Download from Jonathan's Bandcamp