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You Love More Than Most
| Album | You | Global | Diff |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Before And After Science
Brian Eno
|
5 | 3.08 | +1.92 |
|
I'm Your Man
Leonard Cohen
|
5 | 3.09 | +1.91 |
|
Double Nickels On The Dime
Minutemen
|
5 | 3.11 | +1.89 |
|
Vivid
Living Colour
|
5 | 3.2 | +1.8 |
|
Scissor Sisters
Scissor Sisters
|
5 | 3.23 | +1.77 |
|
Mama's Gun
Erykah Badu
|
5 | 3.25 | +1.75 |
|
Astral Weeks
Van Morrison
|
5 | 3.26 | +1.74 |
|
Countdown To Ecstasy
Steely Dan
|
5 | 3.29 | +1.71 |
|
Chirping Crickets
Buddy Holly & The Crickets
|
5 | 3.29 | +1.71 |
|
Trout Mask Replica
Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band
|
4 | 2.29 | +1.71 |
You Love Less Than Most
| Album | You | Global | Diff |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Shake Your Money Maker
The Black Crowes
|
2 | 3.29 | -1.29 |
|
Since I Left You
The Avalanches
|
2 | 3.28 | -1.28 |
|
american dream
LCD Soundsystem
|
2 | 3.17 | -1.17 |
|
Le Tigre
Le Tigre
|
2 | 3.14 | -1.14 |
|
Third
Portishead
|
2 | 3.13 | -1.13 |
|
Led Zeppelin
Led Zeppelin
|
3 | 4.09 | -1.09 |
Artists
Favorites
| Artist | Albums | Average |
|---|---|---|
| Stevie Wonder | 4 | 4.5 |
| The Velvet Underground | 3 | 4.67 |
| Marvin Gaye | 3 | 4.67 |
| Beatles | 7 | 4.14 |
| David Bowie | 9 | 4 |
| The Who | 5 | 4.2 |
| Leonard Cohen | 5 | 4.2 |
| Steely Dan | 4 | 4.25 |
| Miles Davis | 4 | 4.25 |
| Talking Heads | 4 | 4.25 |
| Michael Jackson | 3 | 4.33 |
| Bob Marley & The Wailers | 3 | 4.33 |
| Jimi Hendrix | 3 | 4.33 |
| Van Morrison | 3 | 4.33 |
| Prince | 3 | 4.33 |
| Led Zeppelin | 5 | 4 |
5-Star Albums (61)
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Popular Reviews
David Bowie · 65 likes
3/5
There’s some strong stuff on here, and it’s Bowie after all, but it sort of highlights my continuous gripes about this list giving some artists too many spots. If you’re boiling down Bowie to a “must hear before you die” list this obviously doesn’t make the cut in my book.
The Adverts · 28 likes
3/5
This is as good as any of any it but I'm sick of British 70s punk in this list. It's a very shallow sound.
Funkadelic · 28 likes
5/5
Another one that is so insanely elevated above the general pack. Not enough great music is also genuinely funny.
Röyksopp · 24 likes
3/5
Experience being on hold with a modernist Scandanavian cell phone company, or watching a low energy Dr. Who chase scene, or perhaps a languid dialogue-free hand job video from a dubious "educational" VHS ordered from the back of a magazine... Is this where all these electronica tropes got invented? A fair bit of variety, but then a fair bit of monotony within individual songs.
The Temptations · 21 likes
5/5
The level of this (the musicianship, the artistry of the lyrics) rises so far above some of the indie crap that had come up in this list so far...
All Ratings
Nick Drake
4/5
Put in mind of my first encounters with Nick Drake, I think my brother introduced me, but we didn't talk much about it and the internet still being fairly nascent in the late 90s, I just walked around in my ignorance. I heard something from this album playing in a shop and me filmed it to a girl working there, and she said something about how sad it was, which is how I learned he wasn't around anymore. I haven't listened to it in a while, and I'm surprised by how brief this album, and and most of the songs, are. Under the spell of the phrasing of Things Behind the Sun, I wrote this: https://songsofdays.blogspot.com/2007/05/163-92098-her-majestys-fools-fibonacci.html
The Rolling Stones
4/5
Before I listened to this album the first time (late 80s), the Rolling Stones were mostly part of the background radiation to me, a ubiquitous presence I was always aware of but thought about little. A friend turned me on to Exile and it captured my full attention immediately. Hardly any filler, compared to most double albums.
DJ Shadow
3/5
I don't think I've listened to this in full before: my hip hop credentials are weak. I did see him in concert in the late 90s, a show my brother invited me to join him at. It was a bad vibe night in Minneapolis I guess: Jeru the Damaga continuously berated the audience for not being hype enough and going like half an hour over his set, and DJ Shadow kind of listlessly spun record for about 20 minutes and then just left the stage...
The Kinks
4/5
Prior to the 90s I think I was only aware of the Kinks from Lola (I knew You Really Got Me but I don't think I knew who it was by). I came to the whole 60s psychedelic rock/British invasion/folk revival in my college days. A fine album though I think Village Green is still my favorite
Blondie
3/5
Looking at this bbn playlist I wondered if I was going to recognize anything other than One Way or Another. Heart of Glass was the only other familiar song. This album came out considerably earlier than I would have thought. The musical style of many of the songs I didn't particularly recognize surprised me
Michael Jackson
5/5
Adding more words about this album can of be a worthwhile expenditure of time. Had the LP when it came out. Looking at the playlist again I was surprised at how long the songs were.
The Verve
3/5
Any essentials list is going to be subjective but this inclusion is the first so far to really raise an eyebrow from me. Oh well: it probably dates me more than anything. Got absolutely spammed by Bittersweet Symphony in the late 90s, especially during one of my few and brief MTV watching eras. Didn't recognize a single other song off the album. Surprised by several Eagles-esque, lightly countrified sad-ballads amongst the offerings.
Ice Cube
3/5
My knowledge on hip hop in general isn't strong, less so gangsta rap, even so it's obvious the relevance of this has only increased over time.
The Smiths
4/5
Then this one came out later than I'd have expected. Nearly every song made a distinct impression.
T. Rex
4/5
Came out the year I was born. Again, minimal filler, every song hitting distinctly. As a rock fan it took me a ridiculously long time to get into T. Rex
Brian Eno
5/5
This is absolutely my jam. Still don't know if King's Lead Hat is an intentional anagram of Talking Heads (or vice versa, or neither).
The Doors
4/5
I'm wishing they'd skipped the ratings with this thing, or at least made them optional. This album might deserve a 3 or even a 2 from some perspectives of sophistication; I'm inclined to give it a four on pure nostalgia. I played this to death in the early 90s.
Coldplay
3/5
I don't think I've ever listened to a full Coldplay album before. Not exactly my cup of tea, though I didn't find it unpleasant. A little monotonous in tone?
The Prodigy
3/5
Another icon of my mid-90s MTV era, and of course The Matrix soundtrack. Again though not really my thing.
3/5
I know many people, including some whose opinions I hold in high regard, really go for this side of Zorn's eclectic catalogue. This struck me as a little less beatnik-screamo than Naked City but still not my cup of tea. Of course this is coming from the asshole who gave The Doors by The Doors 4 stars. An exhausting listen for me and the first item my Youtube Music subscription failed me on.
Deep Purple
3/5
I suppose Deep Purple should land firmly in my classic/psychedelic/heavy rock wheelhouse, but I never really got into it. I do appreciate the severely dated, unironic preteen-level cool of Space Truckin'.
Dire Straits
4/5
I definitely need to get more into Dire Staits. Only readily summoned touchstones are Sultans of Swing and of course the much later Money for Nothing, that video icon of my pre-cable existence when my only access to music videos was Friday Night Videos.
Bon Jovi
3/5
I totally get the earned place this has in the pantheon of Rock and Roll, and I could listen to any song from it at any time without rancor, but I don't ever need to hear it again.
Elliott Smith
3/5
I probably should have been listening to this more carefully. One of these singer songwriters that's been on the periphery of my radar for a long time but never got to. It sounded pretty but I wasn't really tuned into the lyrics. Something to revisit.
Brian Eno
3/5
OK, for sure Brian Eno is a genius, but sometimes I'm listening to something like this and wondering if it's a case where being a genius means you get to just noodle around for an hour sometimes. Im sure some smarty pants would be able to tell me off.
The Cure
3/5
I'm fond of the Cure, although not to the extent of having ever purchased an album. This was fine, lovely in places, but maybe needed a little more variation in tone.
Steely Dan
5/5
Steely Dan is one of those sharp break artists for a lot of people, love it or hate it... I fall firmly on the love side, though I can see the objections of a superficiality... But to me that all-surface high gloss is what it's all about. Hardly needed to listen to this one, it's basically on repeat somewhere in the back of my head, along with Pretzel Logic and Can't Buy a Thrill - to me, jus gr about perfect.
David Bowie
4/5
I mean, Bowie, right?
R.E.M.
3/5
REM is one of those bands that figured very prominently in my daily playlists for many years (starting with an LP of Life's Rich Pageant owned by my brother, a situation that will no doubt become a common refrain in this project). And then I just stopped picking up the new stuff and really stopped listening to them at all.
Aerosmith
4/5
Another prominent player in the late 80s Friday Night Videos era. Pulls off the "wall of anthem" of the Bon Jovi but with more wit and whimsy.
The Style Council
3/5
First thing from this list that I actually hadn't heard of before. After reading descriptions online I guess I was expecting something like a Billy Bragg-esque folk rock, which it is definitely not. Interesting and another one that merits revisiting. The rap delivery section in one of the latter half songs has not aged well.
Booker T. & The MG's
4/5
Reading about it prior to listening, the title track is called out as one of the most recognized instrumental tracks... No idea. Hearing it the penny drops immediately, and I'm reminded again fo the depth and breadth of my ignorance.
CHIC
3/5
More super familiar music I never bothered to know the facts about before, so it nothing else this project is broadening my knowledge. Disco is not particularly in my wheelhouse though I am certainly of similar vintage.
Fela Kuti
3/5
Always down for some Fela Kuti. Discovered that Ginger Baker's passing in 2019 snuck past me.
Rod Stewart
3/5
The other side of the "oh that's where that song is from" coin: A name that's totally familiar but I don't know any of this music. I liked not just fine.
Bob Dylan
3/5
My relationship with Dylan's discography peters out around the mid 70's - pretty much with Desire. I don't hate this, or any of the latter days stuff I've heard, but neither does it change my mind on the topic.
Frank Ocean
3/5
Definitely some smooth jams, along with some genuine oddity
The Beau Brummels
3/5
Maybe this is particularly foundational but it seemed like pretty bog-standard 60s folk-rock to me. Fine, but "essential"?
Rush
3/5
I like Rush... I don't think 2112 is the finest representation. Its side A concept piece is Rush at their silliest and most heavy-handed, and the B side is patchy and uncohesive.
Primal Scream
3/5
All right. I can appreciate the house thing but was never at all of that scene.
Elvis Presley
4/5
My Elvis knowledge is very dim. I found the pretty wide range of styles interesting.
Led Zeppelin
4/5
Another album I barely need to actually listen to, since I've been playing it pretty routinely since my teens. And frankly still thinking rocks pretty hard.
Crowded House
3/5
If nothing else this project is acquainting me with the music of a lot of names/bands I've heard of but never listened to. This was really not to my taste though.
Public Enemy
4/5
I can't be anything but a tourist in this genre which brings up all kinds of... feelings. I think I can appreciate it and respect the foundations it represents but it's not what I'd choose to listen to in the car.
Le Tigre
2/5
First thing in this project I really disliked. Found the singing incredibly grating when it wasn't pretentious intoning.
Big Brother & The Holding Company
3/5
I understand the regard its held in, I mostly played out my interest in the 60s psychedelic rock era around the turn of the century.
LCD Soundsystem
2/5
clearly in a minority here, did not like this (not quite as much so as the Le Tigre, but I think only because I thought it overall blander). Interminable, and monotonous - and a vocal styling I could happily do without any more of for the remainder of my life.
Solomon Burke
4/5
I can forget that this style made it deeply into the 60s, and heavily influenced what followed in pop. Always down for this kind of thing.
Hanoi Rocks
3/5
Another familiar name with little context that comes to mind. Finnish glam rock? Extra points for weirdness, especially in the first half, and a really first tier album title.
Manu Chao
3/5
Interesting? My Spanish definitely isn't up to it. Would happily listen in the background for hours at a time.
The Clash
3/5
I don't think I ever listened to this start to finish before. To be honest a lot of it just seems like typical English rock other than being sung with an "oi, I'm a rebel" aesthetic.
The Temptations
5/5
The level of this (the musicianship, the artistry of the lyrics) rises so far above some of the indie crap that had come up in this list so far...
Pet Shop Boys
3/5
Distinct memories of the nubbly orange CD sleeve in record shops. I can see the quality of this but once again not particularly my genre.
Charles Mingus
4/5
The first item in this project not pretty solidly under the pop tent? I liked listening to it.
Fever Ray
4/5
Picked this up a while back under influence of the Vikings TV series opening sequence. On prior listens I felt like the latter half maybe dragged or got monotonous but I'm feeling on this listen maybe it merited closer attention.
Public Image Ltd.
2/5
I really hated this, even more than Le Tigre. And honestly, looking back at my prior ratings, I think I'm supposed to have it like the bourgie scum I am. Surprising amount of preaching in post-punk, just preaching to a different choir.
Creedence Clearwater Revival
4/5
Again, revealing my general proclivities in music (not punk) I am all over this. I had this on a cheap department store cassette tape as a teen and played it until it fell apart.
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
3/5
It always feels like I am supposed to really like Nick Cave but I consistently react to the studio stuff as just OK. Reminded during this listen of that Chris Knox line "Leonard Cohen used to bend his words this way... to try to make a song out of a speech."
Thelonious Monk
3/5
As usual I don't feel qualified to critique jazz. This captured me less than other Thelonious Monk pieces I've heard.
Maxwell
3/5
Very very smooth. I liked it.
Dusty Springfield
4/5
Somehow so dumb I never realized Dusty Springfield was English. Son of a Preacher Man ha e a special place in my heart for obvious reasons.
Nico
3/5
I love Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground so much that I have an automatic soft spot for Nico, but I'm not sure it quite carries a full album for me. I kind of liked the flutey compositions that I take it she hated. Sort of interested to hear some of the later stuff she had more control on.
Sparks
3/5
I can grasp the aesthetic of this and certainly see the artistry of it but to be honest I found listening to it kind of exhausting.
UB40
3/5
For me this just kept fading into background reggae. Good but not engaging. My regard for political lyrics is not what it once was.
Sly & The Family Stone
5/5
Wow that's a lot of iconic pop in one place. The level of creative originality is incredible.
Sonic Youth
3/5
Find I'm very tired of the vocal delivery of this era and strata of alternative pop. A bare three points for the instrumentation which I liked better, but didn't really care for this.
Pink Floyd
5/5
Was actually able to pull out an LP to listen to this one. What more could be said about it at this point?
Jamiroquai
3/5
Is this the best pick of this band? I feel like they tightened up the sound and toned down the hippie vibe in favor of a little deeper orchestration as time went on. Still I have no problem with this at all.
The Smiths
3/5
Figuring out the book this thing is based on is British in origin after making the unhappy discovery that Morrissey is behind a whopping 6 of it's entries, which is clearly too much even if you set aside his recent taste for right wing nationalism. The music is fine, the ostentatious doling about MUHDUH I could do without.
Pulp
3/5
Something I don't think I ever came across before, although some of the songs seemed strangely familiar. Interesting.
Curtis Mayfield
4/5
I recall this as one of those albums I first came across through the associated movie and the two are indelibly intertwined, actually a rare event (Harold and Maude and The Graduate come out mind). First rate.
Elvis Presley
3/5
Interesting how much of the earliest stuff is unfamiliar, and the how exaggerated the vocal styling is on some of these tracks
Miles Davis
3/5
I think I may intrinsically lack the sophistication to get jazz. Boodily beedily beedily boodily boopidy boodily doodily deedily beedily boodily deedily doodily do.
The Replacements
4/5
Owned this years ago, I can't remember the format, probably cassette given the time, anyway I don't have it anymore. I really loved it though and listening again after many years it definitely holds up.
Gary Numan
3/5
I'm not sure I ever listened to a Gary Numan song other than Cars before this. New Wave was THE new music of my youth and I retain an affection for it from that. The cover art for this album is superb.
Nine Inch Nails
3/5
Industrial certainly does what it says on the tin, but I daresay the transgressiveness of this seems a little juvenile? "God is dead and no one cares," and the song is called "Heresy"? Kind of paint by numbers.
Lenny Kravitz
3/5
Another album whose singles played predominantly in my 90s video phase. Decades later it comes of as maybe a little soft-pedaled? Plenty of good stuff though. Saw Kravitz live at a festival in the mid-90s and he did not disappoint.
Femi Kuti
4/5
New to me. One thing you are not seeing a lot of in the music published for the American market is calls for Aftican unity. I liked this album.
Sigur Rós
3/5
Sight Ros is another one of these things I feel like I'm supposed to really like but just find OK. I certainly didn't have this but it didn't really go to a deep place with me that it seems to with many people.
The Black Crowes
2/5
There have certainly been things so far in this that I've disliked intensely but this is the first inclusion I just found quizzical. It was easy enough to listen to but I just don't think it's near the same level as it's peers on this list.
Underworld
3/5
Honestly all the EDM sounds the same to me. Maybe this is again particularly foundational but to me it probably could have been most anything in the genre.
The Specials
3/5
Ska again not a big factor in my musical lexicon but it's a fine album and some standout songs I've long appreciated.
Teenage Fanclub
3/5
Starting to worry about the annoyance to discovery factor on this list. Honestly found this bizarre- mixing workmanlike if slightly plodding ballads with some of the sloppier guitar soloing I've heard, plus some feedback-noise cacophany elements without Hendrix level virtuosity to hold them together. Not a lot of meat on the bone.
Pet Shop Boys
3/5
I don't have anything additional to add about the Pet Shop Boys.
The Rolling Stones
4/5
Realized I didn't know this as well as I thought. Didn't realize Honky Tonk Woman was more or less an alternate B side, the version of Midnight Rambler I identify with appears to be a live version I couldn't source off the bat looking for it... Other than that, it's classic Stones, amazing if you like that kind of thing (which I do).
Dexys Midnight Runners
4/5
Another band where I'm familiar with the name and one song. But I thought it was very good, if a little outside my genre tastes.
Napalm Death
3/5
Repetitive to say, but I can respect what this is about and how well that's done here, but it's not for me. I couldn't tell the supposedly very different tow sides apart. Tremendous cover art, and I do hate multinational corporations.
David Bowie
4/5
Is it elevated or marred by its very odd ending? I wonder if I'd esteem it quite as much were it not for Howie's sainthood, though I definitely like it.
The Rolling Stones
4/5
If you like their thing you can't really fault this run of Stones albums.
Cee Lo Green
3/5
Very tight initially, but failed to hold together as well for me in the latter half.
My Bloody Valentine
3/5
This kind of shoegazey alternative... All the willful dissonance and prickly unfriendliness of punk without even the toughness or commitment to counterculture. This made almost no impression on me. Not quite bad enough for 2 stars but that's a scant 3.
Creedence Clearwater Revival
4/5
Too many iconic hits to give less than a 4, although there is a little slack in the middle of this short album
Creedence Clearwater Revival
4/5
My rational stats brain tells me that if anything it's a sign of actual randomness (or at least pretty good pseudo-randomness), but this run of Credence strikes me odd because none of us are truly rational deep down. This is another good 'un, anyway.
Jean-Michel Jarre
3/5
I feel like I might derive more from this with repeated listening a and closer attention but as it went it stayed pretty well background, pleasant enough but making faint impression.
Elliott Smith
3/5
I can see the influence, and quality in this. Something about it failing to connect for me. Too gloomy, and doomed.
Dirty Projectors
3/5
The vocals, a little trying to me. Maybe too clever by half.
The Pharcyde
3/5
Good fun, with all the typical problematic elements.
ABBA
3/5
The ABBA concept album? This one makes me want to get all meta about this listening project in general but I'm resisting. And maybe that's the most meta response of all?
Funkadelic
5/5
Another one that is so insanely elevated above the general pack. Not enough great music is also genuinely funny.
Roxy Music
4/5
Very strong Eno in this iteration of Roxy Music. With his typical operatic flourishes which are always interesting to me, though not quite pop.
Sufjan Stevens
4/5
So many standout songs I love by the always worthwhile Sufjan Stevens, though for me the very long album falls slightly short of the highest tier by an element of self-indulgence exemplified by its ridiculous song titles.
The Charlatans
3/5
There was that one Rolling Stones record review that said all of Led Zeppelin's blues covers other than When the Levee Breaks sound bizarre parodies... The vocals on some of these tracks sound like bizarre parodies of Pop. The rest of it just sounds like big standard pop to my ears. What's alternative about it, other than the haircuts? Decent music.
Manic Street Preachers
3/5
I assumed I wasn't going to care for this based on the general vibe and a weariness with pallid, black haired UK alternative but it was pretty good. Yet another bizarre tragic young end (?) story!
Pink Floyd
3/5
I find the freshman effort one of the weakest (although comparison for Pink Floyd is a weird game given how radically the band changed over the years). Interstellar Overdrive is self-indulgent, knob-twiddling cacophony; the whimsy that plays well in Bike tips into mawkish silliness in Gnome. The seeds are there though.
Beastie Boys
3/5
I don't feel like this is their strongest outing. There are some great songs, there is also some flat monotony.
Jethro Tull
3/5
Tons of iconic riffs, though this era of rock does seem particularly histrionic.
Bob Marley & The Wailers
4/5
Like jazz I don't feel qualified to judge reggae. Am I qualified to judge anything? Always liked Marley, of course the regard of white former college boys is fraught for this Jamaican protest music.
Beatles
4/5
Obviously great, probably deceptively simple, though things like the country/surf/flamenco tinged rhythm guitar of And I Love Her hints at things to come. The lyrics, though sharp, are pretty basic and by the numbers pop love blossoming/love in peril stuff
Green Day
3/5
First encounter with Green Day was as an opener for Bad Religion, playing pretty straight ahead punk. Their transformation into more of a conventional alternative rock band was an odd one, though obviously it worked out for them. Listened to this album a lot in the day, although the lyrics increasingly strike me as pompous.
The Velvet Underground
4/5
The Velvet Underground (and particularly Lou Reed) were one of my early musical icons. As great as I think this is I'm not sure I see it as the flawless masterpiece some critical reception suggests. They say it was recorded in two days and it shows. Still, a critical work of raw innovation.
Faust
2/5
Initial heavy music until I realized I was thinking of Feist. Baffling German noodle salad.
Anita Baker
3/5
I'm normally not much of a consumer in the whole chanteuse vein though I certainly recognize vocal talent. This was definitely a cut above though. The lyrics though solid were just not that interesting.
Paul McCartney and Wings
3/5
Not much to say about this one. Good enough but sort of delivers it's best material in the first two songs.
2Pac
4/5
Obvious genius within it's genre but I find it difficult to look past the sadness of his pointless violent young end, so confidently predicted in these lyrics.
Siouxsie And The Banshees
3/5
I think it's been pretty well established that punk isn't my genre but I liked this better than anything else in that vein so far. Siouxsie Sioux pulls off the vocals in a style that usually grates for me.
Rush
4/5
Some 14 year old version of me lurking in the nether resources of my mind wants to give this 5 stars. All of Rush's typical borderline pomposity and borderline ridiculousness is on display but it all holds together in a near-perfect pre-millenial airbrushed sci-fi lozenge.
Fleetwood Mac
3/5
A whole lot of very low key countryish rock that didn't really do a lot for me.
Ride
3/5
I liked this pretty well but like most of the so-called shoegaze genre it had a problem of slipping I to the background and no particular time or lyric ended up really standing out for me.
Beatles
4/5
Listened to this a fair bit several decades ago... Many great pieces but I'm not sure that it holds up so well as other selections from the band's catalog. Some serious self indulgence and filler in the mix.
The Magnetic Fields
4/5
Kinda wanted to hate this but I have to give respect where it's due. Inevitably there is some filler and I thought the end was weak but it deserves its place as an Indie classic.
Jimi Hendrix
5/5
One of the greats to me. Listened to this so many times but I'm still struck by the variety in a not particularly long album. Engaged from beginning to end.
Sly & The Family Stone
4/5
Not quite the level of Stand! A view that might change with repeated listens, other than the two obvious standouts a lot of this just hopped along in the background.
Frank Black
4/5
On the fence about this one, good or great. Overlong, and could certainly have been tightened up, but a lot of it rocks pretty hard
The Blue Nile
4/5
This was something really unique, I'm not sure how to classify the genre on it. Totally new to me and a welcome find.
Tom Waits
3/5
It's that first-phase Tom Waits jazz I thing, right? Clever and funny writing but maybe not much depth yet.
Joy Division
3/5
More gloom and doom from another of the gloomy doomed. There doesn't seem to me to be that much there for all its lasting reach.
Chicago
3/5
More complexity in the music than I might have given it credit for. Not really my thing, and I think the lyrics are a little dull and trite.
Jungle Brothers
4/5
So much of the basis apparent of the first hip hop I really fell in love with, De La Soul and Tribe Called Quest.
Boards of Canada
3/5
Another genre where I'm not sure if I lack the sophistication to really hear what's there or if the emperor really does lack clothes. Pleasant enough to listen to.
The Yardbirds
3/5
Couldn't get more proto-British 70s rock, a melange of blues, post-rockabilly and psychedelia. Kind of unfocused though
Deerhunter
3/5
OK but didn't make a deep impression. Sounds like a lit of things, but then again maybe a lot of things sound like this. Feel like it might grow on me with repeated listening.
Robert Wyatt
3/5
On the fence with this. Fully original and a great deal of individual vision (some reminding me a of Chris Knox) but the execution a little scattershot.
Electric Light Orchestra
3/5
Surely there is a brilliance in this but the EZ listening vibe is a little too strong for my taste.
The Incredible String Band
3/5
Barely skates three stars for interesting weirdness but the utter monotony of the vocals injures any virtue in the words and music.
Ramones
3/5
This kind of thing always seems strangely tame for the controversy it stirred in it's time. The "slide 40th Anniversary Edition" with it's endless remixes, mono remixes, original stereo and mono album versions, live cuts and demos seems decidedly un-punk somehow. Still all part of the Hit Machine.
Shivkumar Sharma
3/5
The jazz problem again: I don't feel qualified to critique this. I liked it, I enjoyed listening to it, the musicians' skill was evident. My ratings are subjective and entirely meaningless.
The Band
4/5
Old time pseudo-Americana fronted by mostly Canadians shouldn't work this well, though like most things of its vintage the politics and social sensibility haven't aged perfectly.
Roxy Music
4/5
Really something quite else. I don't think it's ever really been duplicated.
Tom Waits
4/5
Some rate this below Swordfishtrombone but I think it ranks with his greatest.
Hole
3/5
I liked this better than I thought I would. Generally find grunge very hit or miss but this hits more often than not. Lyrics are pretty adolescent angsty fare though, while still ominously prefiguring the impending adjacent tragedy.
Steve Earle
3/5
Less dopey than much new country but not really my thing.
Hugh Masekela
4/5
Thought this was great, usual I'm too dumb for jazz caveats I can probably take as read from now on.
Bonnie Raitt
4/5
Really a brilliant lyricist in this genre. Traditional without being cliched. There's a blend of strength and vulnerability in the sensibility of the writing. The music doesn't stand out so much as the writing but it's all rock solid.
Manic Street Preachers
3/5
Seemed a little formless compared to the band's prior entry in this project. Good but vague.
Elvis Costello
3/5
Although there are some standout songs I don't think this is the strongest of his albums - there's a lot of material in the middle that runs together for me. Still foreshadows a great talent.
Living Colour
5/5
Living Colour is something genuinely unique in rock and roll. An absolutely phenomenal album, and featuring one of the greatest rock covers of all times in These Memories Can't Wait.
Sepultura
3/5
Another genre I never really came around to. I respect the speed and precision of the instrumentation, and there's clearly more than average going on musically here. Typical of the genre I found the lyrics ho hum, and the vocalization does nothing for me.
Rage Against The Machine
3/5
This seems pretty juvenile now but then these dudes were in their early 20s. It also is still very rousing and bad-ass
4/5
Possibly in a minority (of those that actually like the Beatles) feeling this falls short of the coherence of Rubber Soul and Revolver. But one of the great psychedelic rock albums of the era
Sinead O'Connor
3/5
One of the albums I felt familiar with but really it was just the all-pervasiveness of the Prince cover for a time. I don't think the rest of it actually measured up to that mark.
Soft Cell
3/5
Similar reaction to I Do Not Want... By Sinead O'Connor I'd listened to the day prior: I feel like the best song and biggest hit on the album is the cover, because it's easily the best constructed song among the rest. It's a funny album and there are several high points but in a lot of places I found both the instrumental and vocal parts getting grinding my repetitive, the sexy lyrics aren't actually erotic (maybe not the intended point) and that schtick gets old quick.
The Monks
3/5
Points for being unique and ahead of its time, and a fair bit of music I genuinely enjoyed, but as is often the case with the avant garde I found a fair bit of it pretty trying as well.
Hole
3/5
I don't think a list of 1001 albums for requisite listening before death genuinely needs 2 hole albums but there it is. My comments on the prior one are fine for this one too.
Dr. Octagon
3/5
Funny and it's got that stream of consciousness lyric flow, what's going on with the sampling is very interesting. I might have an upper limit on butt jokes.
Elvis Presley
4/5
Solid Elvis, I think this starts to show a more individual voice than the last one I listened to.
Paul Simon
3/5
This, after "From Elvis in Memphis", it's the kind of thing that makes you question: is it truly random? Lot of coincidences in a set of only 1001. I remember when this album was absolutely everywhere. It's excellent but maybe a tad lightweight.
Jane Weaver
4/5
Very interesting, strongly reminiscent of Stereolab, and in some parts aspects of the Velvet Underground. A couple of bland tracks but mostly pretty great.
David Bowie
4/5
Started out this album thinking what is it with Bowie and this kind of jazzy overproduced pop, why is this the huge deal but as a whole it really is such an iconic rock sound of it's era. Superb deceptively simple lyrics too.
Soundgarden
3/5
The older I get, the faster this style gets old when I give it a listen. It was key pop of my heyday as a creature of my culture, masquerading as something non-mainstream. Black Hole Sun is an amazing song though.
Frankie Goes To Hollywood
3/5
Really a very weird album from a pretty weird band. The wild misinterpretation of the breakout hit is funnier in the context of the whole thing.
The Dictators
3/5
Always on the fence about this kind of thing. I get the "protopunk" genre, however unintentional it may of been. It mostly just seems like a goof to me. Clever enough, some harmless fun, I'm just not sure it replaced whatever it was supposedly subverting with anything that lasting.
Fugazi
4/5
Possibly peak Fugazi, a tremendously lean and disciplined sound.
The Stone Roses
3/5
I guess I have to be chalked up among those who find the extreme hype around this album baffling. I thought it was fine, I enjoyed listening to it well enough and didn't dislike any of it, but I also wasn't over the moon about any of it. A little soft and slack throughout. Certainly there is Madchester scene music I like better.
Joan Baez
4/5
Obviously a pinnacle talent in this genre, though I think her style meshes better with some songs (Silver Dagger, John Riley), but can't quite carry others (House of the Rising Sun) where her singing is just too refined and frankly pretty for the content of the lyrics.
Common
4/5
The lyric flow and DJ work are very evidently first rate but I didn't give this close enough attention. Very shallow in the genre, I'll need to revisit this.
Stan Getz
5/5
Just perfect composition.
The 13th Floor Elevators
4/5
Beyond unique, too canoncial for less than 4 stars but a little too loose and sloppy for 5.
The Temptations
4/5
Didn't hit me as hard as the prior offering by the Temptations, though I think the album version I pulled up may not have been the best mastering, the sound seemed a little muddy. Still great.
Pet Shop Boys
3/5
I know this list is UK-centric but honestly: picking 1001 "essential" albums from 5-6 decades of pop, soul, hip-hop, and jazz, does NOT need 3 Pet Shop Boys albums. I do not get the hype.
Shuggie Otis
4/5
Incredible inventiveness, musically adept and powerful. I’m not sure it all quite hung together as a cohesive whole, though all the individual pieces were exquisite.
Talking Heads
4/5
Very great (Talking Heads very much my thing, going back to the very early days), though I think not quite at the full cohesion of the sound or themes yet at this point. Still one of my favorite albums.
The Jam
4/5
The Jam seems like a very deep take on the Pop Idiom. Astute variety and very smart lyrics.
Neil Young
4/5
In truth a patchy album master by some plodding (not to mention pompous) nonsense. But the great stuff is so great.
Anthrax
3/5
Like most thrash I can appreciate the technical skill, and in this album the lyrics have more variety and invention than the run of the mill, but the style just doesn't do anything for me, and a fair bit of it felt awfully monotonous, though there were some standouts.
Stevie Wonder
5/5
What can you say? Real genius, and with such tremendous range
Beatles
4/5
I don't know, I've got the same issue with this as I have generally with the early catalog. Nothing stands out all that much. Very good but not yet quite exceptional (except as a pop phenomena) The originals are very much standard pop love songs of the love you so much/why you do me so wrong variety, while the covers lack the rock power of the originals (with the notable exception of Money).
PJ Harvey
4/5
I came on PJ Harvey latish by way of Rid of Me and worked back to this, boy I listened to these a lot in the mid 90s. Vocals are a little inconsistent here but the fundamental structure is there.
Garbage
3/5
Probably deserves a better rating from me for the extreme competence of the execution but in the end there's something a little too calculated in this, finely engineered to be a hitmaker of its era. The petulant lyrical sensibility (so exactly summarized by the album's biggest hit) is all the more eye-rolling for this blatant pop pandering.
Paul Simon
3/5
I can't help but compare this to the pinnacle releases of Simon and Garfunkel and for me it falls short. Very good but not the top of his solo catalog either.
Sex Pistols
4/5
Here's an unpopular opinion: of all the post-rock-n-roll movements, I think Punk has the shallowest range and the shortest shelf life. For all that this is pretty damn solid.
The Kinks
4/5
Long one of my favorites, both of the Kinks and of this era/style generally. For me it doesn't quite make it as a concept album, and a fair bit of what occurs between the masterpieces is a bit lightweight - but the great stuff is so great
Otis Redding
5/5
Again me saying more things about a Soul artifact like this seems silly. Some of these iconic songs honestly seem like they descended from a higher realm.
Rod Stewart
4/5
I think this one might be Peak Rod Stewart. While the voice is clearly an iconic element, there is also tons of understated, subtle mastery in how the music is produced and engineered.
Lucinda Williams
4/5
Never been all that much of a Country guy but when it comes to the travails of love and lust there is material like this that deftly trumps any rock and roll dicks out bombast... "I take off my watch and my earrings
My bracelets and everything
Lie on my back and moan at the ceiling
Oh my baby"
No content warning on that, damn.
Pavement
4/5
Another album I listened to a ton at a certain time, but haven't much since. It's clear to me how some would find this massively annoying as I have some of the grunge/punk spectrum stuff that's come up on this list. No accounting for tastes: for what it is, though, I think it's tremendously solid.
Rufus Wainwright
4/5
Very good, although I feel like somebody tried to engineer the living defi option of "too clever by half"
The Undertones
3/5
I've about had my fill of the UK punkish rock foundations. I can recognize this as objectively good (for what it is) though it does suffer from the now tired refrain of monotony of tone.
Bob Marley & The Wailers
5/5
Peak reggae, not much else you van day. Listen to the subtlety of the singing in Jammin, Marley was a true genius.
Joni Mitchell
5/5
Another high note in a very specific genre (that basically has a one woman sub genre in this particular performer). About perfect, if you like this kind of thing (which I do)
The Louvin Brothers
4/5
Randomness is sending me all countrified lately. Not really my genre. This is good, although a lot of that leans pretty heavy on the traditional and folk music it draws from.
Frank Sinatra
4/5
Realize I know very little about Sinatra: it seems from reading this album marked a kind of inflection point of his turning into the Sinatra of my all but unconscious cultural zeitgeist awareness. I realize this is not actually a review but I'm kind of sick of that anyway, it's not like I'm qualified to judge a particular offering even in the context of all Sinatra, let alone all pop, rock, punk, hip hop, some country and some jazz of a 3/4 century... this project is ridiculous.
The Waterboys
3/5
Found this to be relatively run of the mill folkish pop. Possibly harder on it than it deserves because of the annoyance of not being able to just play the album as released due to YT Music and it's weird presentation of it's available selections.
Suede
3/5
I don't know if it's the most pretentious album in rock and roll but it's pretty overblown. Treated as humor it's not so bad.
Mudhoney
4/5
Listened to quite a lot of Mudhoney (and other roots grunge like Screaming Trees, Dinosaur Jr. etc) back in the mid 90s. It deserves points for the energy, the consistency of execution, and how foundational it was to the development of this particular sound... Though it’s a sound I’m not all that interested in listening to anymore.
Janelle Monáe
4/5
This is pretty fire, although I'm not sure if the extreme diversity of styles quite holds together to support it as a Concept piece. A few more listens might bring me around on that though.
Common
4/5
Very much in my "like" territory as far as hip goes, an artist I haven't listened to enough. Especially effective deployment of guest artists.
OutKast
4/5
It’s a pretty solid trick to make this long of an album not feel overlong or padded out, and the two quite different elements complement each other better than would seem possible on paper
The Go-Betweens
3/5
I want t like this more than I did. I like Indie; I like Australia. The vocals, honestly, seem a bit weak. the music, overproduced. It’s very decent.Not so sure it belongs on the 1001 list.
Nightmares On Wax
3/5
Plenty of worthwhile stuff but like most DJ output just found a lot of it monotonous. I don’t know how into this music you can get if you’re not part of its Scene, though I’m sure many unaffiliated aficionados would show up to prove me wrong
Kid Rock
3/5
This is actually pretty competent, though the rap-rock delivery is not that original. The whole redneck pimp schtick I really just have no interest in (don't much give a shot about any other kind of pimp actually).
Finley Quaye
3/5
My initial reaction to this wasn't great, but I found it grew on me. More going on but instrumentally and vocally than the pop-reggae first impression suggests.
Radiohead
4/5
The real Radiohead definitely starting to show up here though I think better is yet to come.
Jimmy Smith
4/5
A deeply foundational sound I think. I feel like I've heard a thousand samples from this.
Jerry Lee Lewis
4/5
Lewis is an absolute master, and a defining figure in a particular type and era of rock and roll. Though there is a touch of a Showman's routine about it that slightly diminishes it for me - dampens the true soul of it a bit. Which is not to say this isn't a ripping live show recording.
Miles Davis
5/5
The idea of my adding something to the words written about Kind Of Blue is beyond ridiculous, so I'll just observe (which I'm sure is also far from original) what a hash ass mistress jazz seems to be in that era (I don't know about now, hopefully it isn't still cutting off geniuses in the prime of life right and left). Of the six musicians who accompany Davis on this album only 2 made it past 50, Bill Evans barely so, and among the whole crew only Jimmy Cobb reached what could reasonably be called old age.
Beth Orton
3/5
Obviously good but somehow didn't strike very deeply for me. I wasn't attending particularly to the lyrics and maybe am giving this less than it's due.
Genesis
4/5
That 70s English prog rock sound. As I observed in classic Rush from prior reviews, there's a fundamental silliness about some of it, but it's not boring, and set in a lush ass sonic landscape.
David Bowie
4/5
Bowie pulls off this trick he's done with me before where at the start I'm thinking this guy is just a rock and roller with a great makeup artist and photographer, but by the end he's sold me on the Bowie magic once again.
Coldplay
3/5
Certainly competent, it's got a pretty well-worn sound for it's genre... Overall, though, and particularly lyrically, pretty lightweight.
The Stranglers
3/5
At this point in this project I guess it’s established that classic era punk is not really my thing. Musically I found this kind of dull, the lyrics and vocal delivery typical of its genre and era. Is it really more than moderately dirtied up rock? Lou Reed just called it Rock and Roll and did it ten times better.
Buck Owens
3/5
I guess I didn't mind this at all, though it's not so much much thing, my Countey palate being pretty limited. It's certainly well done for what it is, though I think the lyrics are over-reliant on a particular style of wordplay, and the sort of emotional range is pretty shallow.
Isaac Hayes
3/5
Although all good and with some standout pieces, most of this to me sounded like just what it was - incidental music for a movie soundtrack. As opposed to, say, Superfly, it didn’t quite hold up as a stand-alone album.
Brian Eno
4/5
I like Eno a lot, though I think this is occasionally marred by the extremity of experimentalism. Sure beats the alternative of course.
Buffalo Springfield
4/5
All good and certainly the scratch for that classic hippie era itch. To me the Neil Young songs are just on a higher level to the rest.
The White Stripes
4/5
I don’t think I’d listened to a full White Stripes album before. There was a period where a few songs were very heavy on a certain kind of radio and I got sick of it but listening to this I think I short changed it. Though the style, particularly of the signing, does wear thin.
Bad Company
3/5
Listenable enough but a little paint by numbers.
Goldfrapp
3/5
Its always nice to get a little further off the beaten path with these albums, though I’m not this was really forging new ground in 2000 compared to, say, Laurie Anderson in 1986. And it’s hard to judge the lyrics since so much of it was basically incomprehensible. I did like it though.
Haircut 100
3/5
I listened to this a very great deal in situ, as it were, an LP sincerely bought by one of my siblings when it was released, and I don’t think I’ve heard a bit of it since (maybe the odd throwback radio play of Love Plus One or Favorite Shirt a time or two across the ages). Playing through the whole album for the first time in certainly 30+ years found I remembered it quite well, B sides and deep tracks as well, and it holds up - breezy and lightweight though it (very much by design I think) is.
Pink Floyd
4/5
Another album I’m deeply familiar with (but haven’t listened to end to end for many year). I think I eventually sold the big double CD version I had with the full booklet, way back far enough that you could actually get a decent return from a used record store for that kind of thing. But I’d listened to it dozens of times before that, even seen the movie a few times.
At the end of the day I have to count myself with those who judge this to be terribly heavy-handed and self-important, at least in its lyrics and vocal performance. A lot of the music and especially the guitar is quite subtle. The overall package would have been improved by a strong dose of humor (Something in the Terry Gilliam vein perhaps) but nearly the whole album is deadly earnest and irony-free. Hey! Teacher! Leave those kids alone.
Pantera
3/5
It's pretty much established at this point that the metal, of whatever flavor, is not generally my thing. Competent but for me monotonous and uninspiring.
Pixies
3/5
I like the Pixies and I’ve listened to this album a fair bit over the years. I don’t know that I think this is their best: the execution is a little muddy in places.
Arctic Monkeys
3/5
The overlong and fundamentally meaningless title about sums this up for me. Significantly less there than what purports to be.
Eels
3/5
Feeling pretty tired of this style of depressed, quirky white-boy genius type, which seems heavily over-represented in this list.
Fred Neil
3/5
Folk pop, it seems frankly pretty lightweight. My perspective in the value of this kind of thing has become jaundiced as I watch this bad old world age.
Portishead
2/5
Intensely disliked most of this. Pretentious but also boring. The vocal delivery... I honestly can’t fathom anyone wanting to listen to singing like that.
Billy Joel
3/5
I like Billy Joel generally and I find people who hate him tedious. A lot of it is worn out for me (I don't ever need to hear Piano Man again and the less said about who started the fire the better), and the only album I routinely listen to is Glass Houses. This is all right and has some classics on it but also some pretty typical filler.
Nitin Sawhney
3/5
This slots into a particular slice of global music that doesn't do a lot for me, though a few of the pieces stood out. Thematically, subtlety obviously wasn't the point, although maybe when the topic is nuclear proliferation, that's fair?
Moby Grape
4/5
Straight out of the soul of 60s psychedelia, with boatloads of rock and roll tragedy on top of it.
The Cardigans
3/5
What is it with Swedes and English language bubblegum pop? This was all pleasant enough, though other than the song that dominated a certain slice of my radio/video airtime history, not all that memorable.
Lorde
4/5
Very good, though lyrically very heavy on the breakup lament, which I can only take so seriously from someone barely out of their 20s.
The Monkees
3/5
The Monkees occupy an odd place in my pop music lexicon. The active band era predated my existence by a few years, with the barest intersection (various reunions I didn't register at the time notwithstanding). I watched tons of them in reruns, though, and the obvious hits are cataloged in the depths of my semiconscious inner pop library. Since childhood, I thought of this band not at all though, except briefly when Jones and Tork died. Reading up on this album, I'm impressed by their dedication to being allowed to operate as an actual band. Still, it's hard not to make the obvious comparisons: the whole thing is heavily derivative of the Beatles, and not truly up to that standard. But I'm persuaded it earns its place in this list.
Happy Mondays
3/5
Consistent with my reaction to the Madchester/baggy thing, I liked this OK but am not quite seeing the level of adulation.
Tito Puente
4/5
I don't come from a "dance culture" and I think it impairs my true appreciation of this kind of thing (and probably of life in general) but this is still clearly fire.
Kate Bush
5/5
This one is a masterpiece, I think, within its niche which is perhaps narrow, but important to the evolution of Pop overall.
Screaming Trees
3/5
I went through a reasonably long Screaming Trees phase before moving on from it (and the relevant genres, for the most part). This is fine but I think there's a lot better material in their earlier work.
X-Ray Spex
3/5
I feel like I need to make a disclaimer that I honestly don't dislike all punk. But I sure didn't like this. I'll give it points for the inventive (but scattershot competence) use of horns and for sheer earnestness. But I found the singing - near monotone yelling too far out of their effective register to be anything but dissonant - just intolerable. Delivering lyrics not half as clever as they're making themselves out to be.
Liz Phair
4/5
I got into this a year or so after it came out and just loved it a lot, and still give it the occasional listen. Decades after the fact I still think it's very good. The signing is not terribly strong, though in that it's a class in playing to your strengths. And despite being very much a young person's product the lyrics still hold up. Certainly still a landmark of a certain facet of the 90s indie sound.
Blur
3/5
This was fine but didn't make a very deep impression. It mainly seemed like just pop, but sporting a particular attitude that I could probably decode more meaningfully if I was of the culture, but as a dumb American just comes off as some type of generic non-posh UK vibe.
Roxy Music
4/5
There is something unique about Roxy Music. It's definitely rock and roll, yet it has those Eno avant garde vibes, a bit of glam English camp... Always works for me.
Röyksopp
3/5
Experience being on hold with a modernist Scandanavian cell phone company, or watching a low energy Dr. Who chase scene, or perhaps a languid dialogue-free hand job video from a dubious "educational" VHS ordered from the back of a magazine... Is this where all these electronica tropes got invented? A fair bit of variety, but then a fair bit of monotony within individual songs.
Spacemen 3
3/5
Kind of expected to hate this (I'm not entirely sure why, something about the whole presentation put me off. I think I could have gotten way into this much earlier in the development of my tastes. Now it's striking me as frequently self-indulgent, and lacking in range. Even so I generally enjoyed listening to it OK.
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
3/5
Mostly found this overwrought. Certainly interesting, but I can’t matinees sitting down and choosing to listen through this for pleasure.
The Chemical Brothers
4/5
I remain on the fence about the whole DJ thing. Which is so dumb, any question of whether remix and mash up are art is very long since settled. Even mentioning it, I sound like some backwards art historian trying to get a discussion going about whether photography belongs in the study of visual arts. Even given my backwards skepticism, this is clearly at the top of the genre and in fact an album I purchased when it came out.
The xx
3/5
I liked this pretty well. The call and response aspect of the duet vocals was an unusual touch for alternative rock and well executed.
Buena Vista Social Club
5/5
I think this is a great thing, a true artifact in culture. It has its imperfections but for what it is in itself, about perfect
Johnny Cash
4/5
Listened to this many times before, pretty uncritically. This time around wrestling a little with how great it is. Am I overrating it because of the whole legend and lore aspect? It certainly hits some heights, it also is certainly sloppy as hell at times, but then again that’s a live album.
Bruce Springsteen
4/5
Can really imagine I have much to say about Born to Run that wouldn’t retread territory that’s been gone over many, many times. I was interested to read that it came out of basically the same recording sessions that produced Nebraska, and listening to it in this context gave it some additional texture for me, and made sense. They really are two sides of a coin. I like it as I generally like Springsteen, though it would not make my top three of his albums... maybe not even my top five.
Simple Minds
3/5
This did not do a whole lot for me. The overall affect seemed fairly flat and none of the lyrics really stood out. I didn't dislike it but it kind of faded into the background.
The Stooges
4/5
I think my favorite so far of the punk offerings from this list. Still not really my genre but so clearly laying fundamental ground for the future of rock and roll that even I can see it.
Björk
3/5
Another’s one of these things I can appreciate the artistry of but I find the music and particularly the signing exhausts me pretty quickly.
The Streets
3/5
Recall when a local alternative station put "Fit But You Know It" on heavy rotation. It irritated me at the time, and now listening to the whole album I sincerely don't get the hype. The musical accompaniment is so slight, the delivery of the lyrics so one-note. Bare points for cleverness in the storytelling but really don't feel any need for more of this.
Bee Gees
3/5
Apparently I didn't know anything about the Bee Gees except for the most pop cult disco stuff. I found this album very odd. Not really my cuppa but I didn't despise it or anythong.
Fiona Apple
4/5
Another album defined in my mind by the very heavy presence of videos in the MTV rotation, during what turned out to be a relatively brief window when what MTV broadcast meant dick in the world of popular music. Going back to it I find it still very good but with limitations showing. There is the perennial eye roll of a teenager delivering super deep, world-weary relationship drama with irony-free gravity. The music was produced to a high gloss that’s to some degree superficial. There was never any doubt that Apple was the real deal here though.
Parliament
5/5
Outrageously funky (perhaps too much so for me at points- when that ultra low squelching synth whatever it is gets going in Thumpasaurus it feels like something drilling into my spine). Genius, anyway.
Grant Lee Buffalo
3/5
Didn’t make a big impression. Nothing in the lyrics really grabbed me, most of the singing wasn’t very strong, and the music was fine, but not as interesting as the reviews would have led me to believe.
Ice Cube
3/5
Wasn’t really in the mood for this. Tired of trying to review gangsta rap anyway, my opinion on this isn’t relevant.
Run-D.M.C.
3/5
I know it marks me out as a Hip Hop unsophisticate, but I had a hard time getting into this. The sound was so stripped down and elemental, alongside the uniform rat a tat cadence of the rapping. I appreciate this intellectually but I wouldn’t seek it out.
Sebadoh
3/5
I listened to a fair bit of early Sebadoh but didn’t really get much past III. I Think the earlier material is stronger.
Orbital
2/5
I honestly didn’t think the music could irritate me more than this album’s stupid title but it really outdid my expectations. Literal hatred: I refuse to believe the laudatory reviews about this overlong trudge of pretentious monotony can represent anything other than drug nostalgia.
Machito
4/5
Packs a lot of wallop into a brief package, though I see the objection I read in some reviews that the songs are so short that the musicians don't really have room to stretch and stand out.
The Zombies
4/5
Canonical psychedelic rock, what more is to be said? My ardor for this genre has cooled with age. But this is at top of this particular line.
The Who
5/5
I think one of their best, maybe the best. It’s all spot on, exemplary of their unique brand, and of course a fist full of absolute iconic rock classics.
Ray Price
4/5
Very odd framing in he album’s intro bit, leading into a straight forward but very good honky tonk record.
Bruce Springsteen
4/5
In my top 3 for Springsteen. Strongest in the lyrics: a lot of the music and delivery are great too. Some of the story songs get a little dull and plodding though, less songs than monologues, but it’s a minor quibble.
Wild Beasts
3/5
Although this was rally not for me (the operatic signing, the mystical montage music that was honestly mostly all pretty similar) I have to appreciate the originality, and the lyrics were unusual, and clever.
The Young Rascals
3/5
I didn't think I knew anything about this album until Groovin' came up, and then I spent the rest of the album trying to decide if I'd ever actually heard that whole song before or just 7 second snatches of it on K-Tel compilation album TV ads in my teens. This is all fine and workmanlike production but most of it is pretty by the numbers and there's a reason, I think, that I only recognized one song.
The Adverts
3/5
This is as good as any of any it but I'm sick of British 70s punk in this list. It's a very shallow sound.
Eminem
4/5
Eminem gets away with the usually tedious art of outrage for its own sake by being so blatant, self-conscious, and funny. '97 Bonnie and Clyde is still too much for me, and if that invites the charge of moral hysteria so be it. He didn't just write it and put it on the album, it was made the cover art. Overall though the talent is too high a level to dismiss.
Laura Nyro
4/5
This is a style of music that has never quite done it for me, though somehow Joni Mitchell gets a pass for it with me. This one grew on me though as it went on. Still not really my thing but it's clearly hugely influential and objectively good.
Method Man
3/5
Maybe I just don't get the Wu Tang thing. A lot of this just hit me as meandering warm up to a payoff that didn't come and it quickly faded into the background.
Yes
3/5
Good stuff that seems marred to me by way too much excessive guitar noodleism, though as with some jazz I am stuck wondering if I am playing the role of well meaning but doltish Emperor Joseph II protesting "too many note!" Possibly too lowbrow for prog rock.
ZZ Top
3/5
Another prominent star in the constellation of my pop adolescence. Friday Night Videos standards for many months. Clearly guitar is the star here, and it doesn’t get much better for this style of American heavy rock. The singing shows its weakness whenever the material gets slightly challenging though, and the lyrics at best have a slick but superficial stylishness, at its peak in Sharp Dressed Man.
Turbonegro
3/5
Seemed like pretty standard rock-oriented punk, reminiscent of Bad Religion to me, differentiated mainly by the pretty adolescent dedication to profanity. I didn't dislike it.
Bruce Springsteen
4/5
In my Springsteen top five, for me Born to Run still holds up after all these years, but Jungleland is the true pinnacle of the album.
Cheap Trick
4/5
I don't really need a ton of this kind of music in my life but I have to give this extra points for being such an iconic live album. I think it's rare to really capture that exceptional live show magic, particularly for a big arena show.
Radiohead
5/5
Heavy nostalgia from the last era in which I did any serious music video watching. In any event, this one is to me peak Radiohead, and quite at the top of whatever their strange genre is.
Herbie Hancock
3/5
I liked this pretty well throughout bit it did sure feel like another trip to the jazz genius noodle factory. Too sophisticated for me probably.
The Police
4/5
Still manages to sound tremendously modern to my ears all these decades on. Despite a few missteps (that inexplicable fade-in on Oh My God) it's about as good as The Police get.
Shack
3/5
This was fine but never quite gelled for me. All over the map stylistically; going from Beatle-esque to post-folkish to pretty standard alternative pop. Grabbed me in a few places but mostly faded into the background.
Fatboy Slim
3/5
Still dubious about remix as an art form, however much this calls me out as Old Man Grumpus. This is mostly pretty easy to listen to but aside for other artists' work I think it's pretty sterile. All the heart and soul in it derives from the songs it lifts content from.
Travis
3/5
Seemed like pretty bog standard light alterna-pop. Competent but too soft to have much impact. A group like Kings of Convenience shows how this kind of thing can be done to better effect.
Cocteau Twins
3/5
This is probably brilliant if it’s your kind of thing but I just can’t get into the music - the kind of high toned, cascading orchestration kind of exhausts me.
John Lennon
4/5
The best of Lennon's solo career I think.
Tricky
4/5
More inexplicable rights BS from Google as a third of the songs from this aren't available in the album playlist on YT Music, yet I could watch them on YouTube on the official channel. So left with annoyingly switching between the platforms to listen to the full album in order. It would be easier to find some rip of the full album someone has undoubtedly uploaded to YouTube which just as inexplicably stays up unmolested, except this somehow obscurely feels like playing into Google's hands. Anyway, aside from the rigamarole I liked this a lot.
Missy Elliott
4/5
Listened to at least parts of this a fair bit back in the day. I think to surface gloss of the saucy content distracted me from its deeper track message of grief for the many senseless losses hip hop sustained around the turn of the century, and its call for unity.
The Crusaders
4/5
All excellent, pretty brief album and didn't quite consolidate into a single work for me.
Leonard Cohen
4/5
I’m a big Cohen fan going way back, I have memories of pulling this LP out of the stacks for one of my college radio shows back in the 90s (I was particularly fond of inserting Tonight Will Be Fine from Songs from a Room into a midnight to 2 am show). For that, I never owned this one, and was surprised at how unfamiliar I was with the deeper tracks. Some surprising gems (Diamonds in the Mine displays Cohen in a shade of crazy I hadn’t encountered before). The standout hits are what they are for a reason though, Last Year’s Man and Famous Blue Raincoat stand well above the rest here.
Michael Kiwanuka
4/5
I thought his was tremendous. A very distinct voice, but stylistically hard to pin down. Soulfully performed and deeply personal, and just very good
Miles Davis
4/5
Too dumb for fusion Jazz. I didn’t dislike listening to this but as usual I don’t feel like I really know what is going on and a lot of it feels like just meandering improvisation. Presumably as brilliant as the jazz heads say.
Red Hot Chili Peppers
3/5
Deeply embedded in the college experience of the early 90s, the music jams pretty hard but I can't fully get past the juxtaposition of the extra dirty silliness with the super self-important kinda dumb pontificating.
Madonna
3/5
Certainly some pop bangers here, though decades along it's evident that Madonna is not such a strong singer. Some of the more ballady fare is pretty forgettable.
ZZ Top
3/5
In what is becoming a refrain, I don't think a list of 1001 "Essential" albums including the offerings of rock, hip hop, jazz, funk, soul, folk and more of better than a half century requires multiple offerings from ZZ Top. I think I refer this more blues forward era of the band overall though.
Beatles
4/5
So I’m in the dull majority who like the Beatles, though the music is no longer in heavy rotation for me. I like this crossover period from pop to psychedelic: still punchy ditties almost all under 3 minutes. The latter half is a little heavy with upbeat but mopey lyrics in the “girl done me wrong” vein, capped (in the 2009 remaster the YouTube music offered up) with a catchy, charming countrified number about a man’s vow to stalk and kill his girlfriend for infidelity.
Eric Clapton
3/5
Listened to a fair bit of Clapton (and Cream) in my late teens/early 20s era, and not much since. A great guitarist obviously, this holds up (despite the odd success of the slightly cringey, to my today ears, reggae cover) but a few standouts aside, a lot of it is pretty average English white guy does the Blues fare.
Black Sabbath
4/5
Heavy metal has never been a key genre for me, though I had a cheap double length cassette copy of We Sold Our Soul etc. as a teen that I played literally to death. The first album is clearly groundbreaking, and there’s a charm (if one isn’t too steeped in humorless religiosity) to the “just literally satan,” completely unsubtle, occult angles.
Bob Dylan
5/5
My favorite Dylan album by a fair margin (and I’m generally a fan). There isn’t a single unimportant song on it.
Suzanne Vega
3/5
Never a big follower, I perceive the high level of Art Attitude toned down in later work, to the benefit of accessibility I think. I liked it, wouldn't necessarily seek it out.
The Triffids
3/5
This didn't really mesh with my tastes. But a distinctive voice and lyrically interesting.
Metallica
3/5
Weird choice to represent Metallica. It's actually better than I expected but exhausting at the length.. The orchestrated instrumental sections all sound like extended Bond film themes playing over the end credits. Latter Metallica is always hampered by its own self-importance and this is canonical in that regard.
The Rolling Stones
3/5
Some big name classics on this, as well as some unfamiliar (to me, being not VERY deeply into the Stones) gems. Also a fair bit of not that inspiring blues/rock retread typical of the times' English rock scene.
Blue Cheer
3/5
Found this truly pointless. If this is the birth of Heavy Metal, I guess metal is hammy blues rock covers drenched in muddy guitar pedal effects.
David Crosby
3/5
Briefly very into CSN&Y and a general Woodstock phase in earl college years. Reflecting in this I realized that Woodstock 1999 was further back in my son’s relative history than actual Woodstock is in me, and I feel so so old.
Amy Winehouse
4/5
It’s hard to get past the cautionary note and forecast of tragedy aspect of this, particularly when the catchy, hooky mega hit of the album is an absolutely succinct explanation of how Winehouse would come to die at 27. Very good but already showing wear: it sounds mostly to me like vanishing potential.
The Doors
3/5
I'm always up for a little Peace Frog. It's one of their better albums, hampered as usual by Morrison's descents into self-importance and a certain monotony at times in the music.
AC/DC
4/5
Top tier AC/DC. As always both the lyrics and delivery are a little, well, Meathead. But as far as that kind of thing goes, no one really did it better.
Keith Jarrett
5/5
I thought this was absolutely fantastic, crazy random vocalizations and all. I was in a near delirious state with 103 degree fever while listening so your mileage may vary.
Stereo MC's
3/5
Oh, that song. This was alright, don't find a lot of cause to listen to this kind of thing though.
Iron Maiden
4/5
My previous exposure to this music almost exclusively through that subset of high school friends with whom, not to put too fine a point on it, I used to smoke dope. Embarrassed to realize I never really tracked that they were an English band. The music seems almost akin to baroque classical in the context of all the increasingly blacker shades of metal that have followed on. As often with this kind of thing a lot of the lyrics are weighed down by their own portentous self-importance, still I found myself heartily belting it out along with the choruses on Run for the Hills (with headphones on while washing the dishes, so metal)
Sepultura
2/5
So much metal in this list. I have nothing else to say about Sepultura. The appearance of Latin influences in some of the music were welcome relief but I just find the croak/growl shouting pointless and intolerable.
Brian Eno
4/5
I think this album was my first introduction to Eno (if I’m remembering right, my brother put Baby’s on Fire on one of the many comp tapes he made me). The presence of Needle in the Camel’s Eye on the Velvet Goldmine soundtrack renewed my interest. The experimentalism pushes against listenability at some points but this is a great album.
Lynyrd Skynyrd
4/5
More material from the high school stoner vaults. The Dixie attitude is thick as pig shit, frankly, but it's an undeniable Southern Rock classic.
Pink Floyd
4/5
I like Pink Floyd but my exposure has actually been very shallow. Dark Side, Meddle, The Wall and Piper in decreasing order of frequency, and I only generally listened to the first two in recent decades. Long ago I had a cheap compilation cassette that include what I learned yesterday was a criminally edited version of Shine On You Crazy Diamond, and Wish You Were Here, both of which I liked a lot. This is a worthy successor of Dark Side, I think, and on a similar level.
Belle & Sebastian
3/5
Another of these groups it seems like I should be into on paper: the execution is certainly polished but something about it all hits me as insincere.
Bert Jansch
3/5
Solid folk, it didn't make a huge impression beyond that.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
3/5
Didn’t do a ton for me despite the glossy sheen of the presentation. I could see someone finding this amazing and I wouldn’t fight them over it, it just didn’t land with me.
Lambchop
3/5
Found this very weird. The vocals rubbed me the wrong way, and that was even before the super weird supplemental vocals kicked in on some of the songs.
Air
4/5
This stood a head above the typical electronica fare from this list so far for me. I really dig the chill, atmospheric mood and vocals.
Radiohead
4/5
Works for me. Radiohead manages to convey their particular and unique sound, also seem to be evolving toward something.
Cocteau Twins
3/5
Prior commentary on this group pretty much holds, though it grew on me a little in this outing. Not quite my thing.
New Order
3/5
Hit me as a blend of pop and dance/electronica that just didn’t do a whole lot for me.
Louis Prima
3/5
This seemed pretty iconic of a certain genre/era but also a bit of a, I don't know, shtick? I don't think I'd just sit around listening to a whole album of this for pleasure.
Arcade Fire
3/5
Arcade Fire is supposed to work for me on paper and people really love and almost revere it but I just don't.
Aretha Franklin
5/5
Boggling amount of iconic soul classics packed into one relatively brief album
Elbow
3/5
Didn't exactly come together for me. The genre seemed muddled and musically and vocally, mostly didn't grab me. I liked the final bonus track on the version YT Music came up with best out of all of it.
808 State
2/5
Goofy, really didn't see the point to this. So many cheesy riffs and weird vocal choices.
Small Faces
4/5
Very good and way ahead of its time, though the whole fairy tale/nonsense dialog elements of the last half just muddled the B side for me.
Crosby, Stills & Nash
4/5
Another thing I was way into during my Woodstock prenatal nostalgia era. It all seems a bit making now, and the old hippies that made it through are all wealthy old farts. Still pretty great on its own terms though.
The Jesus And Mary Chain
3/5
Another band I have instant name recognition on but I don't know I ever knowingly listened to. I didn't hate this but thought the sound was a little muddled and overall pretty monotonous.
Echo And The Bunnymen
3/5
Another band I first heard of through the old 80s Gang of Printers bootleg merch catalogs I used to love poring over as a teen. I don't know I ever listened to any up to this, British punk and post-punk not really being my thing. It's clear enough how deeply ingrained these kinds of early outgrowths of punk are in the grunge and alternative scenes to come. I liked it.
Cat Stevens
4/5
Arrived at Cat Stevens a long time ago via Harold and Maude and always liked it a lot. There can be a certain preachiness to his lyrics and can maybe err on the side of softness and lightness but I think this album is pretty perfect.
Jeff Beck
3/5
Altogether this seemed like kind of an incoherent mess. It’s been interesting in this listening project to more deeply trace the through line from British emulation (or appropriation to be less kind) of American Blues to what came to be known as Heavy Metal, and this is clearly an iconic waypoint on that road, but I don’t think I’d bother to listen to it again.
Van Morrison
4/5
Another album I think I had a cheap cassette reissue of and played a great deal in a certain phase of my 20s. Not really into Van Morrison any more but this is still pretty flawless.
Mike Ladd
4/5
It certainly held my interest throughout, though not all of it seemed exactly to be music. I don't think I grasped that much of the lyrics really, with their rapid fire flow and dense cultural references.
The Go-Go's
4/5
Still a real gem and a new wave/pop icon. Maybe a little lightweight to quite attain masterpiece status for me but a strong 4
Basement Jaxx
3/5
I guess this had some elements of interest that rise above the median of its genre, but like most the dance/electronica it just didn't grab me that strongly and quickly turned into background noise.
Curtis Mayfield
3/5
I find it hard to imagine disliking anything Mayfield did and this is no exception, but nothing in it grabbed me that strongly or really stood out for me.
4/5
The big hits off this still hold up for me. Its clearer from several decades on that the album benefited greatly from its venerable producers. All a bit portentous and self-important but that’s U2
Nick Drake
3/5
Reading up on this I was surprised that I hadn't previously known of the familiar faces doing backing instrumentals... Good but I think Five Leaves Left and Pink Moon surpass this one.
Simon & Garfunkel
4/5
A great, weird, brief little album that includes a couple of their greatest songs, one of which is one of the great rock and roll songs of the 20th century, as well as the underappreciated gem that is Save the Life of My Child.
Baaba Maal
3/5
I enjoyed listening to this and it was interesting, but lacking the language or any real cultural basis in the music, I think my ability to appreciate it is pretty limited.
Eagles
4/5
My interest in the Eagles waxes and wanes, I rarely seek the music out, but this is a pretty iconic offering in its genre.
Elton John
4/5
Solid, slight point loss for the degree that the time is past for the "as a white guy, here's my perspective as a Native American" genre.
3/5
Not my favorite Kinks album so far though I liked a lot of it (Victoria is a particularly strong start) and didn’t dislike any of it. The heavy leaning on the “whatever happened to good old Britain” angle gave a lot of the lyrics the character of a tract though.
Fairport Convention
4/5
The only thing I really knew of Fairport Convention was Sandy Denny guest vocal for Led Zeppelin. It occurred to me I kind of mixed them up with Pentangle in mind. As folk rock goes I thought this was pretty first rate.
Eurythmics
4/5
New waviest of the new wave.
The Sugarcubes
3/5
Not surprisingly my relative disinterest in Bjork translates similarly to the Sugarcubes. Maybe moreso, I can appreciate the artistry of Bjork's vocal styling without particularly caring for it: whatever Icelandic croak-core is going on with the male vocals on this, less so. Just not my cuppa.
The Dave Brubeck Quartet
5/5
Even this perpetual jazz neophyte can hear how peerless this is. The one instantly recognizable piece took on greate depth and nuance for me in its proper context here.
Television
3/5
I liked this pretty well, the music moreso than the vocals. To me it seemed to jump pretty well over post-punk and even new wave genre wise, pretty far ahead of its times.
Sam Cooke
5/5
Amazingly good. So much energy and spontaneous live feel but also polished and delivered with pinpoint accuracy.
The Flying Burrito Brothers
3/5
Didn't really land with me.Just very countrified soft rock
Aerosmith
3/5
Some bedrock classic rock in this one. Deeper cuts don't add a lot though.
Gil Scott-Heron
4/5
Scott-Heron's work seems to me sometimes as not so much music as a sonic art installation, which is maybe a distinction without difference? Interesting to listen too and definitely makes me think but I'm not exactly tapping my toes.
Various Artists
3/5
The output of Phil Spector’s production feels like some kind of devilish stress test of the semi fictitious chimera of “Cancel Culture”. Sure, it’s branded with the name of a clearly terrible (and if you believe the reports of some of his family, genuinely evil) person. On the other hand do you punish the individual artists by tossing it all in history’s dustbin? Putting all that aside, none of this grabbed me that hard. I didn’t feel like Christmas classics were much improved by that famous Wall of Sound treatment.
The Roots
4/5
Solid and engaging.
Harry Nilsson
3/5
Another gap in my pop lexicon: I never heard of this guy, though I recognized the coconut song (and, uh, holy fake patois). Foundations of the post-60s post-crooner.
The Byrds
4/5
Listen, it's tight, it has real beauty. My cynicali middle-aged self can't help but ponder it in context of the relentless commodification of folk and punk in this era. In and of itself it's a great album. One point off for being a full third Dylan cover album.
Belle & Sebastian
3/5
I liked this better than the past installment but this band is still just not my thing. I think the tone of both music and singing get really monotonous through the length of an album.
The Doors
3/5
This is becoming a tired refrain but again: if you're boiling half a century worth if pop, punk, hip hop, rock, plus a smattering of jazz, country, and world music down to 1K+1... I just can't justify multiple Doors entries - and I LIKE the Doors. And this one... despite some great songs it also displays some of Morrison's lazy phone in efforts. The blues retreads in particular are pure filler.
ABBA
4/5
While I can rock to ABBA at times this was driving me nuts yesterday, though my context (wrapping up the year at work) was probably more to blame. I acknowledge this is Core Pop.
Faith No More
4/5
Hadn’t thought about this album in a long time and had forgotten how it dominated rock/alternative airplay and MTV back in 89/90. Solid rock, some occasional bits that didn’t age well (such as the fairly lame scraps of rapping).
Neil Young
3/5
Although it has some very strong songs I don't know if this tops my personal Neil Young album chart to the extent it belongs on this list.
Franz Ferdinand
4/5
I purchased this at some point, for the U.S.-recognizable hit, and ended up liking the whole thing better than I expected. Finely executed, unique sound.
The Hives
3/5
What amounts to a greatest hits album seems either a little like cheating or else something that should be more utilized to cut down on the repeat appearances by acts that don’t really justify more than one slot... This was fine anyway, though I feel like ther are a lot of other post punk, garage rock-y bands that bring more original creation to the table and probably didn’t make the cut for this list.
The Offspring
3/5
This is great for what it is though honestly I would go with Bad Religion for largely the same sound with smarter lyrics and more interesting vocals (I watched Green Day OPEN for Bad Religion in the First Avenue main room in Minneapolis in the early 90s if you want to approximately date my old ass)
TLC
3/5
Boy this was huge in 1994. I must have seen that Waterfalls video a hundred times but I don't think I ever listened to the while album before. Dated in places but holds up. RIP Phife on the intro track!
Jane's Addiction
4/5
Defining college radio fodder of my tender late adolescence. And actually pretty great. Got Caught Stealing is still pretty subversive and fun a t the same time which is a surprisingly rare combination.
Ella Fitzgerald
5/5
What’s to say? Mastery on top of mastery. Within its genre (if that’s the word) it couldn’t really get any better.
Barry Adamson
3/5
Same basic issue for me as with the Bad Seeds Murder Ballads thing: I just find the drama and attitude kind of contrived and overly theatrical. Which I grasp is it working as intended, I’m just not personally into it.
Prince
5/5
This album was in my house soon after it’s release (an LP purchased by my sister I believe), I’ve listened to it I’m sure a hundred times, and very happily listened to it again as it came up on this list. I think it’s a true masterpiece, blending psychedelic funk, R&B and Soul, pop and rock With a seamless precision not seen before or since. Prince’s vocals are as good as anything James Brown did, as good as anything by Michael Jackson - and he’s a virtuoso guitarist to boot. This one will survive the ages
Abdullah Ibrahim
3/5
I think I need to plead jazz ignorance again on this one. I listened to it happily enough but nothing struck me that forcefully. More Google Music nonsense with the whole album available except for the title track. I listened to a couple live versions to make up the experience but seriously what is that.
Joni Mitchell
3/5
I get that this is a road album but a fair bit of it landed too far on the meandering side of song structure for me. Unfocused. Though when it hits right as on the title track it’s pretty strong.
Khaled
3/5
I can dig listening to this kind of thing well enough but I'm only getting so much out of it given relative ignorance of the culture and absolute ignorance of the language. Another full failure for YouTube Music, I pieced as much of it as I could together from individual tracks on compilations and such, the rest made up from YT videos with some truly heinous audio deficiencies suggesting multiple layers of badly managed piracy.
Massive Attack
3/5
A lot of people clearly think this is The Business and I guess I’m just not getting it. A lot of the lyrics seem to me almost laughably stuffed with pompous cliches, the music doesn’t really impress me that much and clashes strangely with the vocals. Didn’t hate it but certainly wouldn’t seek it out.
The United States Of America
4/5
I’m not convinced this is as far ahead of its times as it seems to be getting sold to me as. The electronica doesn’t really innovate anything Raymond Scott wasn't doing a decade earlier. Musically, where it doesn’t reflect a lot of other psychedelic rock of a similar if not earlier vintage, it frequently shades to the tedious side of avant-garde. I’ll take Wikipedia’s word for it that the lyrics are political: I wasn’t hearing it. Still, it does synthesize these things to an unusual degree and has enough solid gems to scrape a bare four stars. I’d listen to it again.
Todd Rundgren
4/5
Solid, inventive, and with a lightheartedness that is often lacking in big arty magnum opus type productions. A fair minority of it felt like filler to me and I thought the bulk of it more low weight pop than I expected given the critics, but maybe I did not attend to the lyrics well enough based on some of the reviews.
Tracy Chapman
4/5
My main contact with this was the radio airplay dominating Fast Car back in my high school days. Which remains the best of this I think: an incredibly spare collection of lyrics to generate such an evocative portrait of love, generational poverty and almost hopeless optimism. And perfectly matched musicslly by Chapman's stripped-down singer-songwriter style. The whole album is good though a lot of the activist sort of lyrics are basic to the point of being trite (love is hate, war is peace does not need to be committed to any type of media ever again) and while repetition is a valid tool of poetry it is sometimes overused in this. But this is largely nitpicking, it was a very strong debut.
The Isley Brothers
5/5
Peak Soul, with intriguing shadings into rock. Hardly any filler, my only quibble being the lyrics mostly really aren’t very deep (the metaphors in Highways... bordering on mawkish). First rate overall.
The Pogues
4/5
Folk slash punk not really my bag, but it's hard to argue with the skill of the execution.
Mike Oldfield
3/5
Very odd to hear the iconic, familiar opening with its absolute association with The Exorcist, then have it unfold into the much different context of the overall composition. I admire the inventiveness, technological experimentation, and boldness of the composer in putting such a thing out there. It doesn't all hold together however, and the vocalization on side two in particular struck me as truly pointless and actually detracted from the whole.
Neil Young & Crazy Horse
4/5
The whole time I was listening to this I was trying to remember what format I had owned it on. I don’t seem to have a physical copy any more. Either CD, or so help me, a cassette, long gone to my frequent moving nomad days. I sure as hell listened to it a lot, I still knew it pretty much word for word and note for note. One of the great concert albums to me, that convey that true sense of the live set for all that it’s half studio tracks. The “Indian” themes haven’t aged so great. Still a classic.
The The
4/5
Not familiar with this band or album, not sure what I was expecting but it wasn’t this and I liked it a lot more than I expected to as well. I needed to give the lyrics better attention than I did, missing a lot of the political commentary (though there is always that weird mirror-world familiar/not familiar to UK centric writing of that nature: “this is the 51st state of the U.S.A” hits differently to a Minnesota boy.
Billy Bragg
3/5
I owned this at some point in the past though I don't think I bought it for myself. I can't argue with the musicianship though it seems like pretty bog standard neo-folk but to me the lyrics and vocal delivery haven't aged so well- song craft these a very definite back seat to the polemic delivery.
Erykah Badu
5/5
This one I came to through my wife's collection - saw her live at First Avenue Main room in the early 2000s and it was an incredible show. I think the is an actually important album, true 21st century innovation in funk.
Minutemen
5/5
If I’m being brutally honest there is a fair bit of what I’d have to call filler on this double album. But the best of it is better than it has any right to be and considering it was recorded for eleven hundred bucks (maybe three thousand in 2022 dollars) I think it gets an extra star in my book. My first and most extensive exposure to it was a double length cassette my brother made me from his LP: I was shocked to discover no complete CD release ever come out, and I had to root around on the u-tubez to get the full listening experience. The idea that there may be people out there who think they’ve listened to Double Nickles but have never heard Little Man with the Gun in His Hand rocked me to my core.
Emmylou Harris
3/5
This kind of country is not really my thing, while I can recognize it’s quality. The rather apocalyptic title song was an interesting detour.
Oasis
3/5
I don’t think I ever listened to Oasis for a protracted period before and honestly wasn’t that impressed. A monotone and kind of grating guitar sound, pretty dull drum and bass, and lyrics that are superficially glib but not really saying much. Workmanlike rock but is there any real innovation?
John Grant
3/5
A lot of this was very pretty but overall I felt missing something... some incursions of a harder edge, for the tension in the music to break through more often? I liked it though.
The Soft Boys
4/5
Big Robyn Hitchcock fan from way back. This a straightforward but super English psychedelic rock album
Lightning Bolt
3/5
This had some really interesting points but in general I find a little bit of the Noise Rock goes a very long way for me. The focalization (particularly the kind of nasally “Captain Beefheart sings The Blimp” only more incomprehensible” stuff I’d had enough of after about two minutes). I suspect it would all be a lot more effective live where the energy of performance could better carry the periodically discordant chaos.
The Smashing Pumpkins
3/5
I assumed I'd give up on this thing's egregious length but muscled through the whole thing. Another album cemented in my mind by the dominating video presence of Tonight Tonight. I like a lot of what the band did musically but I really don't care for Corgan's singing and his lyrics are a particularly disagreeable blend of self-pitying, self-indulgent, and self-important.
Lou Reed
4/5
I've read Reed himself disdained this album at least somewhat but I love it. Wild Side, Perfect Day, I'm So Free... it's rock and roll, it's sweetness with hard edges, and queer as hell to boot. Essential.
Grizzly Bear
3/5
A band I'm mostly unfamiliar with. I thought this had a strong start, got kind of bogged down in the middle, but finished very well.
Christine and the Queens
3/5
Though not a style of music I generally go for, I found this interesting enough to listen to the whole thing again, in French the second time.
Leonard Cohen
4/5
I don't think any of the songs on this qualify as "flaming shits" as the original Rolling Stone review reportedly said 3 did. Several I think qualify for Chris Knox's lyrical dig at Cohen's tendency to "try to make a song out of speech". The big songs on the album sre of course among the best in any league. Extra star for a debut with such an absolutely distinctive voice.
Marianne Faithfull
4/5
I guess I never really got onto Marianne Faithfull’s post-70s career. I don’t know what I was expecting but it wasn’t this. Not exactly for me but I’ll give it an extramarital point for some ahead of their times raw nasty lyrics
Incredible Bongo Band
3/5
Fun but not really that substantial.
Public Enemy
4/5
As always I feel ill equipped to critique hip hop, but I was really struck by the diversity in this album, unified by humor, wit, and anger.
The War On Drugs
3/5
The guy who wrote this list certainly has a type where indie rock is concerned. I liked this pretty well, but the limitations of the vocalist detracted from the music a bit for me, and rendered most of the lyrics indistinguishable. So if they were clever, they were lost on me.
OutKast
4/5
Great, although the often frenetic pace and elaborate vocals delivered at the same left me trailing behind and not picking up a lot: this is one I need to spend more time with.
Talking Heads
5/5
My first off-mainstream music love as a teen was what got lumped under the broad umbrella of New Wave. The proliferation of sub-genres and side-genres around this wing of the Rock and Roll mansion starts to strike me as academic confabulating pretty quickly, though this album makes a strong argument for how diverse and wide ranging New Wave actually could be. It is about top form for Talking Heads, I think.
The Avalanches
2/5
I didn’t really have any use for this. It wasn’t actually offensive but struck me as wall after wall of bland sound assortments narrowly meeting the definition of a song.
New York Dolls
3/5
Underwhelmed at first - early tracks seemed like just good old rock and roll - not that much of a departure from, say, the Stones... but it grew on me as it progressed
3/5
This one a little more Prog than I generally tolerate in my Rock. Obviously created by very smart, very hardworking souls but for me, listening feels like a bit of a chore, or at least a Project.
Metallica
3/5
Among the variety of metal my youth cohort favored I liked Metallica the best, though I'd pretty well outgrown it in my 20s. This to me marks the turn towards self-importance outshadowing the music. I liked the old stuff better.
Cypress Hill
3/5
This list has turned up a little more 90s hip hop than I strictly feel a need for. The rolling delivery and wit to these lyrics carries this along, but all the typical issues of the genre and era (homophobia, sexism, glorification of gun violence) has begun to sour it a little much for me.
The Cure
3/5
Nothing sounds quite like it, and I have a soft spot for both the lyrics and delivery, but the sheer extremity of the emo and sometimes muddy sound detract.
Astrud Gilberto
3/5
Hard not to like this kind of music with its winsome singing and big band professional accompaniment. But nothing on this really stood out that much either, other than the slightly bizarre duet with a child (?) singer towards the end.
SAULT
4/5
Very good, and a very distinctive sound. Puts me in mind of Masters at Work output. In terms of production and polish maybe a little inconsistent - but that’s a very minor quibble.
Bad Brains
3/5
I wanted to like this more than I did. The different stylistic elements just didn’t come together for me, though I certainly didn’t hate it.
The Byrds
3/5
Possibly lowballing this out of the feeling this sound and era are over represented on this list, and possibly in the official pop pantheon generally. The usual problem of covering Dylan in that the rest of the lyrics suffer in comparison. I never dislike listening to this kind of thing but it’s a well I rarely return to otherwise these days.
Lauryn Hill
4/5
Pretty flawless, all parts working almost seamlessly together, Which so often doesn’t really come off when rap and hip hop are blended with soul, R&B, and reggae influences. In this it’s all unmistakably part of one work and message.
The Divine Comedy
3/5
This was... not to my tastes. I felt like this person’s singing really didn’t mesh with the music. And I couldn’t figure out if the lyrics were supposed to be as creepy as they were...
Suicide
2/5
Came into this expecting not to like it, but was surprised by how well I liked the opening music. Then the vocals really lost me. I am pretty tolerant of this kind of minimalistic, repetitive electronica but not as a vehicle for this kind of combination of dopey lyrics and creepy singing (hitting its peak on both fronts in Girl, though the intermittent screeching in Frankie Teardrop was also next level irritating and nearly made me give up on it. The vocal equivalent of a punchable face.
The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion
3/5
I've seen them in concert and enjoyed it, sadly this studio version didn't hit so well. A fella hollering full volume in a little packed club is a little different than getting it on your headphones at work where it's basically the equivalent of someone screaming right in your ear. Could be the not great (though far from terrible) streaming plus middle of the road headphones, but the mix on this was gratingly heavy on the high end for me. Nails on blackboards. Even for all that it's pretty unique.
Patti Smith
3/5
One of those albums I felt so familiar with the existence of, it made me feel like I knew the album itself, but on listening realized I was slightly familiar with the first song and not at all with anything else. Honesty didn't care for it that much. The vocals are so absolutely the defiant "I'm not part of your system" arrogance of youth and I'm just too old for that shit anymore.
The Clash
3/5
As I go along, early punk seems more the prefigurement of the direction of rock and roll than anything. I like this just fine but I'm not over the moon about it.
Morrissey
3/5
I've complained too much already about the over-representation of Morrissey on this list: but I just don't get it. Pretentious, gloomy, musically not that special. Teen angst on a bigger budget.
Elvis Costello & The Attractions
3/5
I’ve liked Elvis Costello going way back: I don’t think this is his best and forebodes his being another artist who is frustratingly over-represented on this list. His worse tendencies as a writer are on display here: over-written lyrics that fall short as songs per se, resulting in a kind of plodding delivery.
Antony and the Johnsons
4/5
I liked this, for all its over the top operatic presentation, it had a unique sound and the lyrics mostly managed to be dramatic without falling over into mawkish melodrama.
Neil Young & Crazy Horse
4/5
Some of my all time favorites here, and of xourse the two lengthy linchpin numbers of Down By the River and Cowgirl in the Sand. A coue of dull spots hold it just shy of masterpiece status for me but still essential.
Steely Dan
4/5
Another one of Steely Dan's greats. A little soft in places (the lyrics of Charlie Freak bordering on mawkish) but mostly solid.
Earth, Wind & Fire
3/5
Funky but a little over the top at times - the ultra-extreme falsetto, wacky electronica interludes, the spoken word bits. Not my favorite so far in this genre
Dr. Dre
3/5
Lyrically it's honestly kind of a G version of meathead rock - and yeah, its funny, but the whole dis culture and violence and misogyny and hemophilia wears thin. Musically it's obviously super foundational.
Elvis Costello & The Attractions
3/5
Beyond belief is my all time favorite Elvis Costello song, closely followed or maybe a co-first with Lipstick Vogue... listening to a couple albums coincidentally in close succession is making me realize though that I’m maybe really more of a “Greatest Hits” variety of fan. I don’t dislike any of it but a lot of it sort of blends together for me.
Bob Marley & The Wailers
4/5
How do these crazy talent-vortices spontaneously form? A bunch of kids get together and shortly are defining some swath of a major genre. And then again tragedy is so often looming over it, and is that some dark part of it. It’s a bad old world.
The Modern Lovers
3/5
Wears its VU influence too much on its sleeve for me, while not really measuring up (in the vocal department particularly, and emulating Lou Reed is frankly not that high of a bar to aspire to). While Reed assumed the persona of coldness and flat affect in some of the characters he voiced, in these performances that shoe fits a bit too well. And the lyrics aren't as clever as they think they are, though not without charms.
The Slits
3/5
The kind of thing that hits me like an interesting anthropological experiment - the trenchant 70s feminism, the crazy German ululating vibrato - but it’s hard to imagine electing to listen to it for the kinds of reasons I listen to music.
The Disposable Heroes Of Hiphoprisy
3/5
I’m a fan of Franti across his projects and solo output. Musically this did not do so much for me, just no my style. Lyrically the preach factor tended to outweigh flow, a borderline he transgresses pretty commonly (not to impugn the messages, it just doesn’t all gel for me as a whole composition)
The B-52's
3/5
Loved this as a kid (my teen cohorts definitely not getting it, putting me in for a bit of mockery - but they were all drunkenly dancing to Love Shack in college in just a few short years). Did not hold up for me quite so well - the minimalist kitsch, the repetition. But still enjoyed it.
Amy Winehouse
3/5
Wine house not quite up to full power here, and as usual I find it hard to separate the music from how rapidly the full star gestalt would burn out the filament in that bulb.
The Kinks
3/5
The Kinks are an interesting study in rock history. There are really quite a lot of albums, and the influence is great, but relatively few actually recognizable hits, especially in the U.S. this is another album I hadn’t listened to before. Good, though not hitting the levels of my favorites with this band.
The Last Shadow Puppets
3/5
I liked this pretty well - I'm always up for some lush orchestration - I'm not certain the lyrics behind it aren't mostly flash without much substance though... But it's a superficial impression and I might come around if I spent more time with it. Weirdly only an EP version available on YouTube music, I had to find an unauthorized upload of the full album on Youtube.
Sonic Youth
3/5
Big indie icon in my college radio days. I don't hate this but the music is just straight ahead rock with a vocal style I'm sick of.
The Strokes
3/5
Maybe it's just me lately, everything is hitting me at three stars, I don't actually dislike it but it's not exciting me. I recall this being a big deal when it came out, though, and I didn't really get it then either. This vocal recording principle where it sounds like someone put a transistor radio in a Mason jar.
Randy Newman
3/5
This version of Randy Newman I have a little less love for. Musically it’s a bit monotonous, and the lyrics get snarled in the writer’s sense of looking down from a position of such superiority. There’s an unpleasant smirk lingering under it. I feel like Newman settled out to a subtler version of a similar music and message later.
Don McLean
4/5
Sure it’s peak hippie feely. In the right mood I dig this kind of thing. About as of its era as it gets.
Sonic Youth
4/5
I liked this best of any Sonic Youth I’ve listened to so far. Still very raw, alterntaive and experimental but hung on a solid rock armature that keeps it pleasurable to listen to.
Everything But The Girl
3/5
I found listening to this pretty painless but a lot of the delivery was a little too smooth jazz for my taste. What I picked up of the lyrics seemed pretty well formed.
Meat Loaf
3/5
Some extra credit has to be allowed for the audacity of putting out what is basically a musical without a plot, in the packaging of a heavy metal album. I don’t think I ever listened to the album before and certainly none of it was familiar other than Paradise... which is a superbly constructed song for all the ultra-banality of its concept (and even in that deserves a nod for the underlying cold-blooded assessment of the actual beating heart of most teenage love songs). Obviously a core artifact of its pop era, though considered on its own as an album I’d have to say that it barely stays ahead of its many weaknesses.
Taylor Swift
3/5
I like Swift, and watching the kind of weaponized transition interesting Uber Pop was fascinating at the time. Shake It Off and Bad Blood are still bangers. At the end of the day a little mainstream for me and the veneer of production is so seamlessly slick that it doesn’t leave much to hold onto.
Elvis Costello & The Attractions
5/5
I think this is the best Elvis Costello album that know well, though to be honest I don’t know much past the 80s. It has my tied for first favorite song of his, Lipstick Vogue, and even his worse tendencies (having the persona of a mopey, whiney lover with a pretentious voice, both in the literal and authorial senses) are displayed to at their best here in songs like Chelsea.
Queens of the Stone Age
3/5
Really did not have much use for this and its popularity and regard escape me. I don’t even want to spend more time thinking about the specifics; will happily never listen to this band again. Escapes a lower rating by being mostly competent If unremarkable rock and only having a tiny bit of the synthesizer knob-twiddling that made me want to throw my phone in the garbage.
Pearl Jam
3/5
I'm just... not a fan of that voice. It's good old rock and roll, and a real nostalgia trip for my early college years, but not a thing If seek out.
LCD Soundsystem
3/5
I haven’t generally been a fan of this band, though this one grew on me over its course. Still strikes me as not as smart as it thinks it is, and at this point I’ve had enough “I’m from New York” attitude to last a lifetime. It’s just a place, you’re not special for being from (or being in) some particular place.
Taylor Swift
3/5
Pleasant enough to listen to but not much really leapt out. The inversion of the usual trope in the "murder ballad" wasn't quite enough to elevate it (and is it, like, supposed to be some kinda girlpower anthem? Cause it's still wrong to murder someone over infidelity), and the final cut with Bon Iver gave an unflattering focus on just how watered down the rest of the folkified pop was.
Bobby Womack
3/5
Struck me as a straightforward soul album, nothing hit me that strongly, but it was all well done, especially considering it was the work of a person who was well into the throes of being Sly Stone’s cocaine buddy.
Steely Dan
4/5
This used to be one of my less favorite Steely Dan albums (aside from Deacon Blues), in spite of being generally a fan. It has grown on me over time though, as repeated listening revealed the care and intricacy of its production. I’ve never really got the charges of their being cold or soulless. I find delivery of grown-up melancholy very poignant.
Cyndi Lauper
4/5
Another pop pillar of my youth I haven’t sat down to listen to in many years. The songs are masterfully constructed, though at album length I found the signing trying - a little too much and too sustained of that high and tight thing. Clearly by intent: the odd Betty Boop homage towards the end makes it clear Lauper knows what she’s about. The solid backing in a lower register on Time After Time really balances that aspect out and for me it could use more of that. Still super iconic and great.
Mercury Rev
3/5
Another band I’ve heard of but never listened to. Eclectic (possibly to a fault) and I could do without the wild theremin forays (or whatever electronic noise generation gizmos were at play) but some really strong parts too and worth further exploration.
The La's
4/5
This is a real odd artifact. Aside from the ubiquitous hit (instantly familiar though I couldn’t come up with any context for recollection) I didnt know a thing about this band. A real odd mix of (to my ear) 60s britpop and psychedelic, some 70s American rock but also Velvets-sequel avant-garde alternative, and perhaps more obscure influences at play. Still wrestling over whether it is essentially just genre mash-up or actual invention. Audacious enough for a bunch of kids to grab an extra star.
The Fall
3/5
Another one of these bands I feel like I’ve been hearing about since college radio days of the 90s but never got around to. And hearing it I can definitely see the point. The vocals are not to my taste. I’m a fan of more than a couple acts where the singer can’t (or just doesn’t) really sing so I guess that’s on me. But it wore on me after a while, though I liked a lot of the music and thought it was all interesting.
The Afghan Whigs
3/5
Didn’t really grab me. More dubiously portentous, gloomy dude-alt.
Gene Clark
4/5
My kind of thing, whatever that says about me, and I thought a very fine example of its type and era. It’s rejection in its own time kind of mystifies me.
The Human League
3/5
My sister bought this LP in my 80s childhood and boy I listened to it a whole lot. There is some forgettable stuff in the first half but the album, and the B side in particular, still holds up on its own terms.
Iggy Pop
3/5
A little drone-y and semi-sinister dude drawl for my taste. I will allow there is despite my tastes some obvious brilliance at play.
Billie Holiday
4/5
Beautifully wrecked voice in these dreamy, pretty settings is almost too precise a metaphor for Holiday so close here to the end of her life.
Bill Evans Trio
4/5
I enjoyed this but had my usual issue with this kind of jazz where when it gets into the long form improvisation it just seems like noodling around scales. I know this makes me a low brow but there it is.
The Prodigy
3/5
I just don't get The Prodigy. Is it a dance thing? A drug thing? Is it all an elaborate joke? Surely those super cheesy "breaking glass" percussion effects aren't unironic? The even-cheesier "villainous laughter"? I wouldn't be surprised if barks and moos showed up. But then for a minute from time to time, it would all come together and I'd be like, now that's tight.
John Coltrane
5/5
Rare among jazz albums in that I feel like I genuinely get it, I think it's a masterpiece. This might not be considered a ringing endorsement given my general ignorance, but I'll stand by it.
Bruce Springsteen
4/5
Great album though not my favorite, I like how musically experimental it gets in places, but there are also some dull points that kill the momentum.
David Bowie
5/5
I would give David Bowie’s last album 5 stars if he had spent an hour playing the Benny Hill theme on a comb and TP kazoo. But in fact this is very good, though not easy. I think it stands on its own, aside from its context in Bowie’s life, in a rightful place alongside his best.
Paul Simon
4/5
Very good, clearly staking Simon’s claim as a self-sufficient solo act. Some of the writing suffers his flaw of being a little too precious, particularly as it clashes with the aspirations to a darker, street-level sensibility.
The Flaming Lips
3/5
I found the beep boop electronica a little trying on this one, while there was a lot of fun parts.
George Michael
4/5
Such a big deal when it came out, ubiquitous video play. It holds up, I think, a pop-crossover genre classic, though as I often feel with this sort of thing, the production is a little to slick, a seamless facade that excludes most of the true funk and soul.
FKA twigs
3/5
I enjoyed this, although the music felt perhaps a little one note. Some interesting things going on in the lyrics.
The Byrds
3/5
Another really over-represented band on this list. Although I like this kind of thing pretty well as a rule, there is an awful lot going on in this era to give so much coverage to one group.
Kacey Musgraves
3/5
I liked this pretty well, strong Lucinda Williams vibe. In the first half in particular I felt like it really walked a nice line between a solid country foundation with more pop-oriented production. Some of the flip side tipped more into a bland pop sound. Good overall.
Rocket From The Crypt
4/5
Honestly not in the mood for this kind of thing much anymore - loud and angry is a young man’s game. Still, this is that being done about as good as it gets. Fast songs, lots of variety, unflagging energy. Surprised I hadn’t heard of this before.
Boston
4/5
It seems kind of goofy to bother saying anything about this album. It’s Boston. Naming you band after one of the major US cities is bold, I’ll say that. I don’t ever need to listen to this again, but it’s clearly a masterpiece in its genre.
The Cramps
3/5
I appreciate the concept and execution, though as with the B-52s at album length it starts to wear thin for me. The jangly, rockabilly-esque music, the oddly inflected (and rather affected) vocals. Perfect to fit a niche interval in a mix tape, not my cup of tea to sit down and listen to for the better part of an hour.
Stevie Wonder
5/5
Soul masterpiece. Wonder was really peerless at this phase.
The Undertones
4/5
Just good clean fun, with a smart dash of self awareness that isn’t allowed to rise to such a level as to overshadow the intent. A little lightweight, but when it’s so clearly and deteriminedly by design, is that really a minus?
Drive Like Jehu
3/5
Was not in the mood for this at all, so I don’t know I gave it a fair shake - although I also think it had some objective flaws. Some really intolerable noise garbage. And though it’s par for this particular course, this particular style of shouty vocals doesn’t for me improve at length.
Derek & The Dominos
4/5
Obviously there are some classic rock classics here. There is also a fair bit of typical Clapton lazy blues filler. Mostly redeemed by virtuoso guitar... Getting an assist from Duane Allman never hurts I guess.
Fats Domino
4/5
Again one of these where, what am I going to say about this most classical of classic rock? So I’ll just ponder again the oddity of selection on the YT Music - all of the songs in question were easily found, but the “album” per se was not, I had to cobble a playlist together from compilations.
Country Joe & The Fish
4/5
As with all output of the prime American Psychedelic era (a really narrow window actually) it’s hard not to judge it in context of that grim looming reality that Hunter S. Thompson described so thoroughly- that this wave would very shortly break, and roll back. For me anyway it makes some of the most intolerable Hippie Shit (e.g. The Masked Marauder) grate a little more. Still, the energy and innovation here are real.
Deep Purple
3/5
I feel like with a very few exceptions, live albums are only suitable for fairly serious fans of a band or performer. It mostly held here, I am relatively indifferent to Deep Purple and was unmoved by these various bloated song versions, with all the Original Recipe Heavy Metal live show trimmings - the hyper-extended drum solo number, the call-and-response yell-off with the crowd... On the other hand just getting me to tolerate a nearly 20 minute version of “Space Truckin” is a feat, and at times the fun and energy of the time and crowd does shine through.
The Lemonheads
3/5
I miss this lighter, more gently weird side of that swath of genre you used to be able to get away with just calling “alternative” back in the 90s. Mostly just good old rock and roll, and I’m not sure this distinguishes itself that highly above many similar acts of the age, most of which didn’t manage to crest much above regional recognition. But I liked it perfectly well.
Red Snapper
3/5
I had the same issue with this I have with a lot of the kind of nerd-jazz intellectual alternative, that “being music” seems to take a back seat and many of the choices just age badly. Particularly the vocal element here, the whole robot voice repetition chorus thing did not satisfy.
Sister Sledge
4/5
About peak disco, marred only by the vapidity of some of the lyrics. It's rate for something to be such a complete period piece that can still stand on its own merits.
T. Rex
3/5
I like T. Rex but again I think over represented here. The lyrics have a nice flow but is it just a load of twaddle? I don’t think this is the strongest album.
Emerson, Lake & Palmer
4/5
The sheer audacity has to be admired. Is anyone trying to pull off this sort of highbrow goof in rock and roll land anymore? Would any major label dare greenlight it? It succeeds quite well as a prog rock album on its own merits as well, and has enough humor and high spirits to mostly dodge an indictment of tremendous pretentiousness. Mostly.
3/5
Another album largely defined in my mind by a particular era when Inas intentionally watching music videos. Singles from this just dominated (as did the “new British Invasion” narratives, coverage of the rivalry with Blur, and reports of bad behavior). I think it’s overrated, though I like a lot of it, and the screamingly loud, over-compressed mixing marked the escalation of a rotten trend.
Ray Charles
3/5
I didn’t have anything against this but it seemed like an odd selection to represent Ray Charles. I’m not sure that showcasing Charles as a vocalist was all that necessary of a goal. This is all solid but at the end of the day it’s just an album of standards, competently but not remarkably performed.
Kanye West
4/5
Kind of proves the persona couldn’t be separated from the music from day one. The genius is real, but man the self-absorption is too. Really great though.
Waylon Jennings
3/5
I liked this, although the lyrical range struck me as pretty limited. Musically solidly in its lane and well played but nothing that really reached out and grabbed me.
Bob Dylan
4/5
Listened to a huge amount of Dylan at one point in my life, not so much anymore. There are few modern lyricists in his league in my mind but in albums like this in particular I wonder, behind the opulent wordplay is the substance really there or is it just reeling stream of consciousness. Still way up there, second tier Dylan in my personal reckoning.
Willie Nelson
4/5
Nelson makes this sound so easy, the whole project seems like kind of a softball pitch. Classic songs, straightforward arrangements, mostly voice and guitar. But the product is incredibly pleasing which hints I think that the simplicity is deceptive. Nelson nails every song and shows his great versatility as an artist.
Nirvana
4/5
Back from in the day (when my primary exposure was massive overplay of Teen Spirit on MTV) I discounted Nirvana and grunge in general and Cobain in particular, and later sort of shrugged at his death. Another rock and roll drug addict unable to negotiate fame. Later I came around on some grunge era acts like Screaming Trees and Mudhoney and after listening to Cobain’s Unplugged set, decided I’d been wrong there too. There is a lot of strong stuff on this, though there is also some definite filler, and the protracted noise jam at the end of the album is a tired trope I’d love to see retired. Still an iconic entry in its genre and time.
Slint
3/5
I liked this better than I expected to... after reading about the band I expected to hate it. The creepy murmuring vocals got old quick. Didn't find the rock all that math-y. It was all right.
Alice In Chains
3/5
Not generally into this shade of the rockified mostly-metal and it really wasn’t what I was looking for when I listened to this. Just all the portentous, self-important singing and preponderance of heavy-handed chunka-chunka guitar.
Little Richard
4/5
I’m waffling over how to rate anything so foundational to rock and roll. I liked it and respect its innovation (although it’s a sound now so embedded in a strata of pop that it’s hard to hear it as innovating). But there is some monotony to it.
Barry Adamson
3/5
Very odd. Certainly interesting but not exactly music, or at least not the variety I’d choose to sit down and listen too.
Dolly Parton
4/5
Probably like many of my particular ilk it took me a long time to see past the cultural presence and facade of Parton (at its peak in the late 70s and 80s when I was growing up) and realize her profound talent and originality. This is excellent, if mostly a shade shot of her very top tier
The Allman Brothers Band
5/5
Certainly one of the greatest live albums in rock history. Duane Allman’s slide guitar is so unearthly good and the whole band is just in sync, the crowd wholly on their wavelength. A masterpiece.
Frank Zappa
4/5
Zappa is all but revered by friends whose musical opinions I take seriously. But I haven’t always found his music easy to get into. I liked this right from the start though, and thought the whole album was fantastic.
The Teardrop Explodes
3/5
I didn’t mind this but it struck me as fairly typical of its time and genre.
Orange Juice
3/5
Flesh of my Flesh the only familiar tune to me on this (I think my brother put it on a mix tape he gave me many, many years back - so many it was on an actual tape). They have a unique sound, and generally I like dot, though the vocals seemed over affected. Clever lyrics.
Guns N' Roses
4/5
Dominating in my late teens. Listening to the full album for the first time in many, many years it was interesting to note that a fair bit of it was not quite fully professional... The polish a tad patchy, some slight flubs. When it's on point it is quintessential American heavy rock. A bit meatheaded as most of its genre is but smarter and wittier than most.
The Beach Boys
3/5
As Beach Boys albums go this isn’t at the top of my list. Seems somewhere between the classic Surf Rock and whatever Pet Sounds is and doesn’t for me capture the best of either. Which isn’t to say it isn’t good.
Van Morrison
5/5
I think this is Morrison’s best. Tremendous musical range, a cinematic expansiveness in the sound, masterful composition and performance and yet with a genuine feeling of spontaneity and looseness.
Neil Young
3/5
This seems like an odd item to select from Young’s catalog (though that’s partly a factor of his over-representation on this list, my now tired refrain on the thing). Though it’s certainly a notable artifact of its times, with more baroque elements like the Manson connection (drawing a coincidental line to the Recent Beach Boys selection that came up for me there), I think there’s a reason that only Walk On and For The Turnstiles from this made it into the Decade compilation. The longer pieces have interest but don’t rise to that sprawling, psychedelic-country epic quality of Cowgirl in the Sand or Down by the River.
Michael Jackson
4/5
Not quite the tour de force of Thriller, and a couple of the ballad numbers are forgettable. Mostly on par with the most iconic material though, and such a distinct and futuristic sound.
Sonic Youth
3/5
This is mostly pretty good (aside from some intervals of truly intolerable noise garbage) but I’m having a hard time getting past the (yes, it’s getting to be a monotonous refrain with me) egregious over-representation of Sonic Youth on this list. Five albums! This isn’t the Beatles or The Rolling Stones (neither of which I think need 5 albums to be adequately represented, for that matter). There is an awful lot of music in Sonic Youth’s genre space. What a waste of an opportunity to elevate some more obscure offerings.
Aretha Franklin
4/5
Obviously a really great R&B album, and Franklin’s singing is stellar throughout (especially considering she was just 25). But the musical accompaniment and songwriting aren’t as consistently great (though this is partly the reality of leading with the absolutely dominating Respect, which overshadows the rest of the album). Not to say any of it is bad - indeed mostly it’s very good - but the first song sets the bar so high it’s hard not to see the lackluster entries among what follows.
Alanis Morissette
3/5
Constant play of the singles on alternative tending radio and the videos on TV in its day. Another where I doubt I ever listened to the actual album. I scorned this pretty heavily when it was new - a lot of the lyrics simultaneously ostentatious yet kind of incoherent, all the examples of things that were not actually ironic... I'm more forgiving of it now. Morissette's youth at the time factors into my modern assessment, as does a basic recognition that releasing a slew of banger hits is no small feat, whether the genre and content are quite to my taste or not.
Kraftwerk
4/5
Another album my brother turned up with in the 80s, no clue how he got onto them. I listened to it quite a bit, over 30 years ago, and not at all since. Surprised to find I remembered it very well, and I think that lasting impression says something about it. It really is iconic, and was a big part of so many foundations of electronica that were set down around those times. I have to dun it slightly for the lyrics being so mundane, even though I think this is an intentional choice.
Grateful Dead
4/5
I was never a big Dead fan, though when a friend put Friend of the Devil on a mix tape it swayed me to consider that I hadn’t given them a proper chance. Still not entirely my thing, but listening to this now I can see that there is a resonance that transcends its genre and era.
Motörhead
3/5
Never knowingly listened to anything by this band before. Couldn’t find much to fault in it, just good old straight ahead rock and roll with a fair dose of thrash in it. Clearly laid a lot of ground for metal to come. As usual I find the metal attitude a little boring and one note. I did appreciate lyrics that were largely free from posturing about spiritual, philosophical or political evil. No grandiose pretensions here, just your basic lifestyles of the rough and rowdy.
Moby
3/5
My very uncool and old fashioned question about this kind of thing is, does it lean more heavily on the strength of its samples than its own contributions? I’m pretty sure I owned this at some point, listened to it a lot. Returned my to it after many years I feel like, astute sample choices aside, the compositions are pretty pedestrian.
Pentangle
3/5
Pretty much straight ahead folk. The delivery strikes me as perhaps a little too formal. I liked it well enough but I think it’s a taste I’d generally go elsewhere for.
Al Green
4/5
Hugely iconic soul, one of these albums where it’s hard to credit so many classic songs cheek to jowl. Green’s biography suggests a pretty problematical individual, but it seems I’ve decided to put such considerations to the side for this project.
Wire
3/5
Old note by now but my main objection here is the English punk/post-punk vocal style. Understood about one word in ten and the attitude is just boring. Maybe it was super rebellious when it was new, maybe annoying middle class, middle age dudes is the whole point. I liked the music pretty well. When I heard REM’s version of Strange I had no idea it was a cover.
Pixies
4/5
This is the real alternative to me, not sounding quite like anything else. The whole album doesn’t stay at quite the same level, but Gigantic and Where Is My Mind moved directly into the eternal pantheon for this kind of music.
Baaba Maal
4/5
As always with non-English language selections I feel like I can’t fully appreciate this. The instrumentation is fantastic, and although the signing style is way outside my cultural zone, it was interesting, and complemented the music.
Supergrass
3/5
I recall having a couple of Supergrass albums in the family, including this one, that got listened to quite a bit. Hearing it again after years it didn’t have a huge impact. Solid alternative rock and roll of the British flavor, nothing wrong with it, but nothing from it really stuck with me either.
Syd Barrett
3/5
In my high school stoner cohort the Pink Floyd discography started with Dark Side of the Moon and ended with The Wall. I got into Meddle in college (the first CD I purchased, as it happened, a really terrible digital transfer). But it was pretty far down the line that I listened to Piper at the Gates of Dawn and wonders where on earth that came from, and learns about Syd Barrett. Is it genius? The potential is surely there and shines ferociously through at some points, but much of it is too slack and sloppy to fully carry.
A Tribe Called Quest
4/5
A crazily strong debut and from such a young group. This kind of hip hop is so established now but back in the late 80s it was represented by a tiny number of acts, and well against the mainstream grain of the times. Although not all the tracks live up to the standard of the greatest ones, it’s a full and coherent album - slightly ostentatious extra long title and all.
Leonard Cohen
5/5
I’m all about Leonard Cohen and for me this is the pinnacle of his latter career albums. Lyrically impeccable and musically precise, even the singing (it’s hard to deny that Cohen increasingly was a singer in spite of his voice as he aged) delivers perfectly suited to the material.
Steely Dan
4/5
I’m a Steely Dan fan and I love this album, one of the beloved cassette acquisitions of my youth. Still I waiver between masterpiece and merely great, though I’m not sure why: every song is solid, there’s no real filler. But there are higher heights to come.
Dead Kennedys
3/5
My attitude about political or activist music has been going downhill a long time... It’s hard to feel like it really affects anything, and it all ends up on Google Play advancing the cause of neoliberal capitalism... still, this did dare to be more objectionable than most, and rocks pretty hard throughout. Biafra makes some weird singing choices but you can’t deny it’s distinct.
The Boo Radleys
3/5
One of these where I’m just not getting it. Quite a lot of the “innovation” in this I found to be basically a bunch of avant-noise garbage. I’m not wholly against such stuff but it crosses the line into irritation pretty easily. My main issue here was most of it didn’t seem really incorporated into the songs in which it occurred: it was just jammed in on top or in amongst, jarring shifts in tone and, for that matter, volume. A bunch of people clearly think this is clever, it just made me want to stop listening. In between these affronts there was I’ll admit a fair bit of perfectly acceptable shoegazey alt-rock, and the occasional moments when it all actually comes together into something more.
Nick Drake
4/5
The youngest performer still alive from this (at least that I could find anything about) is Richard Thompson at 73; Drake himself would turn 74 this year if he’d lived that long. There is a timelessness about his music though. It was never actually folk, and presaged genres like shoegaze by decades. It seems he spent his brief career on the precipice, head barely above the rough seas of drug abuse and mental illness, and this tension both informs and impairs his music I think. It is a sad tale.
My Bloody Valentine
3/5
If I hadn’t been streaming this, during significant portions of it I would have assumed something was wrong with either the media or my equipment. Apparently this was considered some sort of guitar innovation. A lot of juxtaposition of mumbly incomprehensible lyrics and grating noise. Didn’t care for most it if that’s not obvious.
The Auteurs
3/5
This didn’t make much of an impact on me either way. A general impression of glam-inflected English alt-pop, somewhat arch lyrics that never really hooked my attention. Perfectly competent but I wouldn’t seek it out.
Spiritualized
3/5
The review I wrote for this didn’t go though and I don’t feel like recreating it. Too much shoegaze lately in a nutshell.
Depeche Mode
4/5
It’s not quite my style but the dramatic synth-y pop certainly stands out and doesn’t sound quite like anything else.
David Bowie
3/5
There’s some strong stuff on here, and it’s Bowie after all, but it sort of highlights my continuous gripes about this list giving some artists too many spots. If you’re boiling down Bowie to a “must hear before you die” list this obviously doesn’t make the cut in my book.
Pulp
3/5
I can imagine myself getting into this at a certain point in my life. These days I find the individual neurosis less interesting. At times it would start to win me over but just too sad-sack portentous, and the Bowie-esque weird lyrical elements seemed a little pasted on. The instrumental elements were better than the lyrical for me.
Fleet Foxes
4/5
I think getting a true folk feeling in modern and original songs is harder than it may seem. This does it as well as I’ve heard it done, and also moves confidently between this and a more contemporary style without losing a unique and unified sound. Overall liked it a lot.
Public Enemy
4/5
I think I’ve probably said what I had to say about hard core hip hop, so I’ll just observe that I hadn’t known before that Terminator X retired from music to run an ostrich farm in North Carolina.
Randy Newman
4/5
This one I guess is peak Randy Newman, at least of this particular aspect of his singer/songwriter persona. And I like it, a lot of it is pretty funny, the music is all solid and some rises to a higher level. But there is the issue of the kind of condescending sneer behind a lot of the satirical lyrics, this attitude of “let’s channel how these idiots think” but without any hint really of pointing to a better way.
Radiohead
3/5
I didn’t hate this but it does kind of seem like “when geniuses faff around”. Most of the instrumental innovation struck me as merely electronic noodling. Only the last track really stood out as striking new ground.
Cream
4/5
Peak Cream, I think, unless you prefer the bluesier stuff to the psychedelic, which I definitely don’t. Another one I knew pretty well note for note, despite not having listened to it for years. In my youth I owned it, one of my beloved cheap department store cassettes, and played it a ton. It actually holds up pretty well, although like a lot of this era a lot of the lyrical sensibility comes of as an odd mix of mawkish and ostentatious.
Solange
4/5
Typical problem here of critiquing something that is clearly (and very explicitly)made to celebrate and uplift a culture I’m not a member of. I liked it, anyway, and appreciated the artistry, though at times it seemed more like extended meditations than songs. Maybe by design, what do I know.
5/5
For me, the top musically for first era Bowie, and a real genre-definer for the loosely conceptual rock album.
Megadeth
4/5
I liked this best I think of the metal selections on the list so far. A lot of variety in the sound, not just chunka-chunka drone or endless shreddy solos. Though somewhat given to the typical metal sin of pompous self-importance, there seemed to be some humor in the lyrics too. The singing didn’t favor clear articulation though, and I couldn’t catch most of the words. At times the singing got overly caricature and affected too, really my only gripe with this (and a minor one, mostly the singing fit the music well, but it was definitely the weaker point).
Dusty Springfield
4/5
Nothing not to like about this, An amazing singer and though the songwriting quality varies significantly, it bottoms out at “pretty good” and a plenty of it ascends to pop classic status.
Hookworms
3/5
I was prepared to really dislike this, but ended up finding it quite good, though a little too much the Radiohead B-squad frankly. Very 21st century end to the band with one of these hard to pin down he said, she said ( or more precisely in this case, she said she said, he said) me-too downfalls where the actual reality of what happened will never be known.
Tori Amos
3/5
Strong memories of this album which I chalk up with pretty good certainty (but no clear recollection) to an ex-girlfriend. Or possibly the wife, but if so she hasn’t listened to it for a long time. Maybe both. I didn’t get around to asking her. Can’t fault the music or the singing, the lyrics are way into that aggrieved young woman territory. Not a whisper of humor or lightness in it, and that aspect gets a little trying in my book.
Black Sabbath
4/5
It holds up amazingly well: they really were on the leading edge of something new and all the elements are harmonized in service of that sound and sensibility. There is a little too much muddy recording and sometimes kind of dumb lyrics (though they are mostly pretty good and well ahead of most of their genre ilk) for a perfect score, but it’s a great album.
The Beach Boys
3/5
Weird album, even for later stage Beach Boys, and a weird choice for this list. A weird time for America: this came out just a couple months before the articles that became Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and the rather dismal “socially conscious” songs suggest they hadn’t gotten the memo, that that wave had long sense broken, and was rolling furiously back. The last half of side two is better but doesn’t quite pull the whole effort above average.
Penguin Cafe Orchestra
3/5
I liked this pretty well, and points just for being well off the beaten track... the pop got a little too avant- for me in several places though, shading well into annoying territory. But I’d be up to hear more from this project.
Arrested Development
3/5
While there is a lot of good here I don’t think it has aged entirely gracefully. For all their good intent there is some pretty hackneyed writing (if you give a man a fish? That’s like satire of actual social commentary), and the beats and rapping don’t always stand out.
Ramblin' Jack Elliott
4/5
I sometimes feel like I succumb to the “authentic therefore good” reasoning with this kind of thing. Is it that great? Is it authentic even, I suppose, this Brooklyn-bred child of a well-to-do professional. On the other hand it’s safe to say running off at 15 to join the rodeo wasn’t some stunt to develop a good backstory for his later music career. I didn’t mind this at all though this kind of deep roots country is not a music I go to as a rule. But I’ll defer to Woody Guthrie and Johnny Cash to tip the scale on this one.
Carpenters
3/5
There’s a definite pop genius to this, and it gets surprisingly weird at times, but it’s just too soft for my tastes.
Adele
4/5
Obviously a powerful voice and I like the arrangements. The lyrics... as always I find it a little hard to take a 25 year old waxing philosophical about their deep relationship travails, and how time has changed them. Even setting that aside there is a lot of faux-deep that reveals pretty banal constructions on closer examination. But hey, sometimes that’s just what you’re looking for.
Judas Priest
4/5
Never really thought a lot before this project about how much early Metal is a product of the UK. I’m sure this means something, though I couldn’t say what. Can’t really fault any of it for what it is.
Beatles
4/5
If you like the Beatles (which I do), one of the great ones. I do think it’s marred by a lack of cohesion and composition caused by its “your side, my side” assembly. And much as I’m loathe to agree with Lennon’s pretentious attitude of the time, the lyrics of Maxwell’s Silver Hammer are kind of dumb.
Iggy Pop
4/5
So obviously setting foundations for where Rock was headed, that it’s perplexing how little notice it generated in its time, though I suppose that sort of culture lag is the somewhat more the rule than the exception. I do think the limitations and monotony of the vocal delivery detract from the overall quality.
Miles Davis
5/5
As I’ve observed many times through this list, I’m not a jazz head and don’t feel qualified to judge. This really carried me along through a lot of it though. It definitely lost me several times. I can’t say I’ve heard anything much quite like it though.
Michael Jackson
4/5
Disco at its best, a bunch of absolute bangers on this one. Some of the B sides are pretty forgettable though. I’m in the camp that Thriller is the better overall album.
The Rolling Stones
4/5
Despite Lou Reed’s pronouncement that Sympathy for the Devil was the only serious song in the Stones’ repertoire, this whole album is exceptionally solid. Of course it’s got that weird English Blues appropriation thing, which to me has aged worse than the more straight-ahead rock and roll. And lyrics like Stray Cat Blues don’t really scan in this day and age, the sort of over the top predatory hedonism they made fun of in Metalocalypse. Putting aside such woke quibbles, for a Rolling Stones fan this is about peak.
Norah Jones
3/5
I certainly didn’t dislike this, and it’s pretty enough... but there’s not much variety in the vocal delivery, and the musical accompaniment and lyrical choices are all pretty safe and bland.
Arcade Fire
3/5
I think I’ve covered this at least once already. Not a particular fan, I think the lyrics are faux-clever, the music has that excessive loudness of so much modern production but under that and a lot of overclocked effects it isn’t much. Would happily never listen to any of it again.
Tom Waits
3/5
Not quite at the level of Rain Dogs or Swordfishtrombones to me but a solid Tom awaits album.
Koffi Olomide
3/5
I couldn’t discern what really distinguishes this from a whole lot of pop-ified World music I’ve heard by the by... It’s all competent musicianship, good singing (though of course I can’t comprehend a word). But it couldn’t help but fade into the background for me. Upbeat but relatively insubstantial.
Supergrass
4/5
My favorite Supergrass album I think. The whole Standard English Indie Rock Vocal Deliver Protocol is a little limiting, but this is the kind of music it fits best. Just fun and fast.
XTC
4/5
This is the real indie, very weird and relatively unsuccessful in its time. I liked it, it seemed like a genuine product of unique individuals.
The Smiths
3/5
It's well enough established in this project that I hate the Smiths in general and Morrisey in particular. I'll allow that some of the music is not bad, though not quite good enough to rise above the mopey, sententious lyrics and Morrisey's ur-emo delivery. I am a little cheered to learn that all his royalties from my unwilling plays are likely being paid to the disgruntled former drummer.
Radiohead
4/5
I like Radiohead a lot and this is a great album, but I don’t feel like I have anything new to say about this music
Fugees
5/5
Another album linked to certain period where I watched a lot of music videos on MTV (particularly waiting for a carpool weekday mornings) and this - especially Ready Or Not - was dominating airtime. It is really top tier hip hop and holds a huge role in defining an era in its genre.
Janet Jackson
4/5
The music is very much of its era, and the political lyrics are a little on the nose, but this has aged surprisingly well for all that.
JAY Z
4/5
It’s very good, but I can’t heal feeling that the ideas at the foundation of so many of the lyrics (basically “I Am the Greatest”, with a healthy side portion of “and you all suck”) has an awfully shallow bottom. The excellence of the lyrical flow, as well as the beats and sampling, carry it through though.
Kendrick Lamar
4/5
So good and new in many ways, though I can’t help but feel there is a little bit of “have your cake and eat it too” to the lyrics - like it’s wall to wall sinnin’, justified by a thin suggestion of personal and religious redemption. Some songs like Swimming Pools negotiate this tension very well, others not so much.
Simon & Garfunkel
4/5
This project made me realize I’d only really listened to singles and greatest hits of this duo. Hearing the deeper cuts and sequences in the actual albums (as well as the studio versions of several songs I had only heard a live cut of) has been eye opening: the weirder, more experimental stuff. Percussion! Anyway it’s a great album.
The Divine Comedy
3/5
I appreciate the level of weirdness in the ostensibly pop space, though at album length it’s not really my cup of tea. Again this thing where I found the lyrics too difficult to follow to appreciate much of what sounded like probably pretty clever stuff. It all got a little too operatic and showtune for me in the latter third.
Hawkwind
3/5
I get there was a whole art scene thing behind this, and this space theme I guess would have come out more strongly if I’d paid better attention to the lyrics? But as a purely sonic entertainment I’m not sure it’s distinguished much from any regular old hippie jam-a-roo, and one (at double length) I found increasingly tedious. Scrapes the barest three stars with me for style and the in-your-face artiness.
Jeff Buckley
5/5
Odd relationship with this album because I love the versions of many of these songs from the Live at Sin-é album just a little bit more (particularly Eternal Life). All things being equal it’s an album I’d likely give 4 stars, but I have to push it one extra for so, so brief a candle.
The Electric Prunes
3/5
Knew about but never really listened to this band. It was more interesting than I expected. The lyrics are a little hand wavey, does this actually say anything kind of typical of much of the era. And there is some of that odd inclusion of kind of old timey singalong numbers you sometimes got with the old psychedelia. Overall worth a listen though.
Arcade Fire
3/5
I think I’ve already covered this band twice: I just don’t get the hype, it’s unremarkable alternative rock to my ears, about a decade late to claim any innovation in sound. This similarly didn’t do anything much for me. I didn’t hate it at all but nothing stood out.
John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers
3/5
The playing is on point, the singing is fine, but a little bit of the whole Blues by way of jolly old England schtick goes a long way for me.
Eminem
3/5
If you like rap, the ability in both the writing and the delivery is undeniable. And the underlying commentary about the pious tendency to equate words with actual doing of things (or even endorsement) is apt, even more so in its time. But I find the product exhausting at length, the relentless kill kill kill. Like this current genre of movies where the action scenes are copiously punctuated by (when not entirely composed of) people getting shot in the head at point blank range.
Wilco
3/5
Likeable enough. Seemed like pretty standard alt-rock with extra country leanings, and I wasn’t feeling whatever extra it supposedly brought to that particular table.
Black Sabbath
4/5
I’ve listened to quite a bit of Black Sabbath over the years but not really to the full albums much, and increasingly impressed with the band. This is very strong and also showcases the always-surprising gentler side, with the really beautiful Laguna Sunrise and of course the amazing Changes. There is some filler though, the genuinely pointless FX being the most egregious.
Aphex Twin
4/5
I liked this but I’m not sure what all you say about it. Ambient is a weird genre where sort of falling back from the forefront to become part of the context is maybe the point. Bonus score for the precocious origins and technical inventiveness.
Jefferson Airplane
4/5
Obvious classic of its era that still holds up in my book.
Death In Vegas
3/5
Something of a genre defier, although the blanket electronica seems to be where it falls there is stuff in here that trends more towards the less driving side of industrial, alongside post-pop electronica reminiscent of something like Stereolab. The diversity is an overall strength though it also delivered a couple of songs I couldn’t wait to be over.
N.W.A.
4/5
I think I’ve covered my take in gangsta rap sufficiently... I appreciate this, respect and enjoy the wordplay, and see it’s stature as a cultural artifact. But the absolute degree to which I’m a tourist in the world it depicts is something I’m not completely comfortable with, and the frequent refrains of murder, mayhem, and misogyny wear me out.
Van Halen
3/5
Obviously planted one of the big flag in the hard rock scene, particularly on the American side of it. Still fairly meathead, as befits its genre, and despite the accolades I found the music got a little plodding at times. Would happily listen to any of it most of the time, would never seek out the album to listen to again.
Queen
4/5
All good I’ll n my book - the bombast, the orchestration, the fantasy world mumbo jumbo that holds this almost unique prominence in British heavy rock. Good clean fun.
The Birthday Party
3/5
It’s been well covered here that the Nick Cave thing doesn’t really work for me. I think I liked this less than prior examples. I think they’re doing exactly what they set out to do with this and there is an audaciousness to it but I have no use for it.
The Mars Volta
3/5
I generally liked the music, even if it got a little heavy-handed. Apparently there was some kind of story in the lyrics but I couldn’t make out one word in ten so that part was lost on me.
Jacques Brel
3/5
What do I make of this? Not really my genre or era normally, and I couldn't understand a word of course. Even so I liked it - excellent singer and, even in a language I can't speak, had classic feel.
Queen
4/5
I haven’t actually listed to a lot of Queen, aside from the hits everyone’s heard a thousand times. Pretty sure I never listened to this album before. It’s way weirder than I would have guessed. It’s interesting to hear Bohemian Rhapsody in context, with its call backs to little motifs from earlier songs. Very good and very strange, for an offering from an arena-filling rock band.
Jimi Hendrix
4/5
Very big 60s psychedelia/hippie rock phase in my young adulthood. I’ve probably listened to this a hundred times, but not recently. Of course it still holds up, mind blowing sound for a trio. Very near top performance right out the gate.
Sonic Youth
3/5
Nothing new to say about this band. I don’t get the hype, I find it overrated, I think the number of spots they’re given on this list is crazy.
Slipknot
3/5
I’m sure this band is doing exactly what it set out to do, and it seems they’ve been fantastically successful at it. Not for me though, one could go back and pull out all the things I’ve mentioned not liking about metal and string them together and you’ve got Slipknot. The skill of execution and focus here prevents me from giving it the 2 stars I feel in my heart, though.
Deee-Lite
3/5
The came out my freshman year of college and Groove Is In the Heart was absolutely everywhere for a while. A couple of lesser hits pinged memory while listening to this: most of it I’d never heard. The rest of the album lacks the star power of the major hits but overall a very consistent and decent dance album.
Richard Hawley
4/5
Repeated references to this as “retro,” which seems a little off to me - more a factor of this being difficult to define, genre-wise. Wikipedia calls it art- and chamber- pop, but it’s country elements are as strong as the pop, along with a heavy vibe of singer-and-band, which (for all that’s its most iconic stars are of an earlier era) never went away, so is it really retro? Whatever the case, I liked it, and it’s ambiguous but decidedly gentle style was a nice change of pace.
Wu-Tang Clan
4/5
My usual rap caveats apply- I’m just a tourist in its culture, but that culture is a part of my overall national culture and my feelings overall are complicated. This is nevertheless very good, the large ensemble really works, diverse but with a real cohesive heart. Smartly written funny, yet with a real bleakness in the more gangster elements that gives it all more depth and texture.
Terence Trent D'Arby
3/5
Huge play of Wishing Well and Sign Your Name in my high school days, then this artist fell wholly from my awareness. Hearing it again the first time in a long time, it strikes me as pretty straightforward Soul.
Beck
3/5
I stopped tracking Beck at Odelay. I liked this okay, though not much of it really stood out from the overall melancholy.
The Chemical Brothers
3/5
Not my favorite of this duo. Leave Home was the only song that really stood out for me.
3/5
This odd, disco-inflected, almost-big band thing that cuts a narrow but sharp-edged swath through pop music... I didn't hate it but there's a particular styling especially with the vocals that wears on me.
Supertramp
3/5
My knowledge of Supertramp began and ended with Breakfast in America, which my sister owned on LP when it came out, and I listened to a lot. It was interesting to listen to this and discern the more-art-than-pop roots.
Tina Turner
5/5
Not many examples of rock and soul being fused so seamlessly, and the special sauce of course is Turner's truly one of a kind vocals. Pop masterpiece.
Heaven 17
3/5
Too weird for me, and in that manner of a lot of early synth pop, too enamored of its machine generated bleeps and bloops. I didn’t absolutely hate it but I was glad when it was done.
John Cale
3/5
Not uninteresting, but the overall composition seemed kind of indistinct to me. I read a couple of the lyrics and had a similar impression: obviously the product of someone very clever and with a gifted touch with words, but were they actually saying anything much? Maybe I’m the one who isn’t smart enough. Also the vocal tracks in most of the mixes were kind of muddy.
The Flaming Lips
3/5
I liked the pink robots album better... This is all clever and I like their style but there got to be a vocal monotony for me... The lyrics are virtually all delivered in a very narrow band - volume, pitch, emotional intensity (or lack thereof), you name it.
Kanye West
3/5
West seemingly by design makes separating the man from the music harder than average. I thought My... Fantasy was stronger than this overall, among his mid-career output in this pre-off-the-rails phase. Crazy inventive stuff with beats and samples and the lyrics are as always clever but despite nods to black issues is there really much to it other than braggadocio and this curdled sexual Lothario routine?
U2 has been pop background radiation since I was a teen. Don’t think I ever owned an album (other than the one iTunes foisted on me that one time), my sister maybe had the LP of Joshua Tree? I don’t remember this album, other than Beautiful Day; other than that and the final track, not much stood out for me. Vocals surprisingly weak on a lot of tracks.
Tim Buckley
3/5
Kind of on the fence the whole time about this high tight hollerin’ kind of singing style, which at times seemed Out of phase or at odds with the music. I wasn’t getting the lyrics so maybe they were great, I don’t know. Clearly a talent but for me not quite fully baked.
Björk
3/5
I recognize the talent but I’ve never been able to be a big fan. Just not my thing. The singing style gets old for me quickly. Some of the production tricks on this one come off pretty dated. Still it’s not boring and it doesn’t sound like anything else.
Missy Elliott
4/5
Crazily strong debut. Just fresh and solid from top to bottom.
Bauhaus
3/5
Honestly this music seemed pretty silly to me.
Blur
3/5
I didn’t really follow the Brit Pop thing, other than being vaguely aware of the rivalry between Blur and Oasis. Aside from Song 2, which was everywhere for a while (and still pokes its head up Now and then) none of this was familiar. I wish this list features more real indie acts (Bedhead? Silver Jews? Mountain Goats? Smog? Given time I could probably come up with a hundred contenders) rather than a third album from this rather mainstream band looking to reinvent itself by way of their sound.
Einstürzende Neubauten
2/5
Pretty much endured this. I’m a generally open to the idea that I’m not getting something weird and could be brought around to appreciation but This one I thought was a load of BS.
George Jones
4/5
I appreciate and often enjoy the super-authentic old country sound, though at album length the slow pace and maudlin texture start to wear thin for me. This is top of the game though.
Throwing Muses
3/5
Very difficult to find, no trace of it on YT Music, I gather it’s not on Spotify either, possibly on Pandora if search results are to be believed, but you know, not going to get back into that relic over one album. Not available to buy anywhere I could find except as a pricey used disc or LP. Honestly find that kind of inexcusable in this age of essentially free and instant publishing: some rights holder is being an idiot. Upshot is I listened to a half assed playlist on YouTube that kind of approximated 80% of the album. Which was fine, distinctive, but another one of these highly affected vocalists who’s style gets on my nerves after about three songs.
Led Zeppelin
4/5
Another chance to drag out some vinyl and listen to it, a nice reissue gifted to me by my brother long ago, complete with the recreated spinning image wheel. Zeppelin goes straight back to my musical roots as a high school intellectual stoner, and I still love the music unironically, unsophisticated though this taste may be.
Dire Straits
4/5
Ubiquitous in my teens, particularly Money for Nothing with its classic MTV era video and Walk of Life which was just everywhere for a long time. Though I never owned it most of the songs were familiar. Just solid rock and roll.
Joan Armatrading
4/5
Someone I hadn’t heard of before, and really enjoyed within this kind of pop chanteuse genre (which is not really something I seek out but I liked this better than most). Nothing really to complain about here - the songs are well chosen for her voice, nicely arranged with skilled but not distracting instrumentation, beautifully sung.
Air
3/5
I’m generally a little dubious of soundtracks as albums. Mostly didn’t really read for me as songs as such, what did wasn’t really my thing, and mostly just faded into a weird background texture.
Isaac Hayes
4/5
Extra point for the sheer audacity of a four song soul album, though in truth I felt like the schtick wore thin on the extra long final track.
Linkin Park
3/5
Not my thing, the hard rock/rap mash up and the relentlessly angsty lyrics, but I don't really get the hate either, they are obviously executing pretty flawlessly on exactly what they’re aiming at and a lot of people understandably like it a lot.
The Verve
3/5
I don't really find this band that engaging. Pretty standard mopey alternative.
Dolly Parton
4/5
Nothing to complain about here, 3 peak performers in their genre and they sing very well together. I don’t want these kinds of songs all day everyday but this was a well composed selection.
Tom Waits
4/5
A great album. At the start of Waits’ turn into experimentalism, parts are maybe a little too derivative of Beefheart (even the title is reminiscent of a Trout Mask Replica) but it stands on its own in the genre. My appetite of the weirdo stuff isn’t inexhaustible but I’m generally up to give this a spin.
The Cure
3/5
Robert Smith is probably about the peak of this kind of youth-angst ethos with the high-melodrama vocal delivery. This era of the Cure is a little too relentlessly woe-is-me for my tastes. Fair enough for early twenties I guess, but I prefer the later stuff where it gets leavened by a little lightness and pop.
Kraftwerk
3/5
Kraftwerk doing its Kraftwerk thing. What’s to say? Super modern in its time, the intentional monotony wears thin after a while.
Ministry
3/5
Industrial is not for me. I’m uninterested, as always in the hardcore/metal vein, in the various permutations of shouty/screechy/growly vocals. And the content here - I’m not offended by the “extreme blasphemy” kick, but it’s fairly boring as transgressive attitudes go.
Germs
4/5
Sometimes these foundational cornerstones of a genre leave me less impressed but I could see the point of the hype on this one. The sound is iconic, the lyrical sensibility clever, self-aware, and very punk. No love on YouTube music though, another where I ended up finding an (easily searchable, clearly identified, complete and decent quality) YouTube video on some unofficial channel, still can’t figure out how that works other than I guess no one is trying to fight it.
PJ Harvey
4/5
Got way into this a while after it came out (by way of my brother, a common refrain in these capsule reviews), from there looked back to Dry and the 4 Track Demos. Stopped following her after Dance Hall at Louse Point. But I listened to this a whole lot and still knew it well these decades later. And it holds up, a really great album actually, although the wall to wall relationship torture themes don’t really resonate with me anymore.
Buddy Holly & The Crickets
5/5
As I was listening to all these we very familiar songs, that are as firmly embedded in my cultural zeitgeist as the Star Spangled Banner, I pondered whether it was all really up to the hype. Some of the recordings are fairly muddy; Holly’s voice, though he had no trouble carrying every tune and played to his strengths, was not something spectacular. Would it really still carry the same cultural weight without the tragic end looming over it? Ultimately (though his tale can’t of course be unwound from his untimely death) I do think it holds up: early rock/rockabilly classic, and a damned shame we lost everything he might have followed with.
Burning Spear
4/5
Distinct memory of pulling this for a college radio show - no recollection what inspired it, I wasn’t much of a reggae listener and had probably never heard anything besides a Bob Marley greatest hits album. I also remember actually reading up on Marcus Garvey as a result, though typical of my early 90s memories it’s hard to recall how I did so in those pre-internet days. I guess I must have gone to the damn library. Anyway my first introduction to the wider world of reggae and dub.
Ian Dury
3/5
No awareness of this person other than that my brother once put Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll on one of the many mix tapes he gave me. I enjoyed this pretty well, though I suspect I’m losing a fair bit of the wit in translation, both of accent and slang.
Leonard Cohen
4/5
Another inexplicable hole in YT Music’s catalog. Honestly I wouldn’t mind it as much if there was just some website I could go to and find out what arcane IP infighting was responsible for the situation. I know that has nothing to do with the music but you know, it’s early career Leonard Cohen. If you like that you’ll like this. It’s not his strongest album in this era, there is some relative filler and it takes the austere sound to a fault, but there are some absolute essentials on it too.
Deep Purple
4/5
Very interesting that this harder rock iteration of Deep Purple blew up in Europe while the prior more psychedelic phase was the peak in the US. I liked this fine as early proto-metal hard rock type material goes. Probably deserves an extra star for being fairly innovative in the genre.
Talking Heads
4/5
I’m a big fan from just about all the way back, and especially of the earlier catalog through Speaking in Tongues. This album kicks off so hard that I feel like it can’t quite carry that energy through the whole thing, but it’s all good songs and absolutely sticks the landing.
The Icarus Line
3/5
I had more of an appetite for this kind of thing in my past; it’s appeal - the frenetic racket of the instrumentation and the particular afflicted affect of the vocals - have greatly paled for me. There’s very little post punk/hardcore alternative I still feel inclined to give time to and this ain’t gonna join that list. Given the sneery LA attitude dripping off it I’m resisting the urge to knock off an extra star on general principles, but it was competent and reasonably listenable, just not my thing anymore
3/5
This was fine as far as Dylan live goes, though his vocals, particularly in the acoustic set, already seem to be verging on self-parody - the exaggerated drawl, that nasal upward lilt at the end of almost every line. The electric set is more interesting to me, with Dylan consciously reinventing himself - in real time and in public - and by all reports in the face of angry opposition from some of his biggest fans. Still, I’d go with Before the Flood for a live set.
Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five
4/5
There's definitely some filler but a ton of hip hop innovation at work as well. Aside from the historical significance, a solid album overall in its own right.
The Youngbloods
4/5
Felt unfamiliar with this band, aside from it being a name that popped up in the histories of several musicians. Didn't recognize any of this album, but I liked it and felt like it was ahead of its time. After listening I checked out their one hit and the penny dropped: totally familiar, but I'd never associated it with a band before.
Beastie Boys
4/5
I remember this album being a huge phenomenon in my teens. The Beastie Boys somehow managed to come out legit, somehow earnest and fully committed to hip hop and while failing to take themselves or hip hop culture seriously in the best way. I haven’t listened to this album end to end probably for decades and it holds up, though I don’t think it’s their best.
a-ha
3/5
I wondered if I’d recognize anything other than the big hit from this and the answer was no, I didn’t. Liked it all well enough, for its style and era, but not much of beside that one hit really grabbed me.
Fiona Apple
4/5
Very good, though I’m not quite at the fever pitch of adoration of most of music criticism at its release. I feel like the rough edged, DIY thing isn’t always a strength in this, and at times feels manufactured, though it probably isn’t (or at least no more than anything), and mostly it works. A lyrical powerhouse, any complaints are really quibbles, it’s a great album.
Kraftwerk
3/5
A little on the fence on this one, which Like other Kraftwerk openings I heard a fair bit in my teens. I like the title track a lot, think it really does what it sets out to do, but the flip side never makes quite the impression.
John Prine
3/5
I liked this pretty well, but it is at that level of Country Sap that is a little strong for me. The maudlin plus the aw shucks and all. Clever writer though, and plays to his strengths as singer.
Os Mutantes
4/5
I enjoyed listening to this though throughout I was sort of going back and forth over whether it really rose above the general fray of 60s/70s psychedelic rock, or if the hype was more from the exotica factor. Of course the language barrier always makes me wonder how the part of the experience I’m missing might change my perceptions. It brought me around anyway, with the unusual degree of variety of sound and very strong closing songs.
Bonnie "Prince" Billy
3/5
I enjoyed this well enough. It takes the unpolished schtick to a fault in many songs, however. The lyrics are smart but at times it seems that smartness supersedes good poetic structure - wordy mouthfuls that roll over the beat (such as it is). Ends stronger than it starts I thought. There are other artists (Smog comes to mind) in this vein that I like better.
Daft Punk
3/5
Well you know, Daft Punk is great and all. There is still quite a lot of what I almost always find tedious in EDM... squelchy synthesizer sequences, repeated one thousand times. I realize it’s kind of the point but it treads a line with me and this one crossed that line a little more than some of their later work.
Beatles
5/5
This one I think is the real deal, both good and important from start to finish, no filler and no weak songs.
MGMT
3/5
Another one of these “oh they’re THAT song” albums. Overall I found this just all right, the music a fairly flat serving of blippy synthesizer rock and the baby rockstar mentality of the lyrics a little irritating.
Goldie
3/5
At the end of the day I think the EDM, the Drum and Bass, the Trance and House and Jungle is mostly not for me, at least not as a standalone thing at length. I just don’t get it. Lots of bits I liked here, but then these long stretches of what are, to me, just relentless repetition and monotony.
Billy Bragg
3/5
Nothing wrong with any of these, but I’m not sure how strong of an impression it would make without the origin story. But then I’m not a massive fan of Bragg or Wilco (though I’ve nothing against either). It was interesting how many of the songs played perfectly well as modern folkish pop - had I heard the without context I would have accepted them as contemporary lyrics without hesitation. There’s some serious writer’s chops in that.
Bob Dylan
4/5
The pace of development in songwriting is pretty astonishing. Despite the number of iconic hits there is a fair bit on this album I find relatively forgettable. Still an iconic landmark of this new folk era.
Beastie Boys
4/5
The Beastie Boys’ masterpiece, and really one of the rap greats. I hadn’t realized before I read up on it the degree to which it was a Dust Brothers collaboration.
Duran Duran
4/5
Just a really superb pop classic. There more to the sound than the very glossy surface suggests, though the lyrics are a bit of a garble when you really try to parse them out. The hits are timeless but I didn’t find much in the deeper cuts.
David Gray
3/5
Found this to be a little easy-listening for my taste. Nothing against it but nothing particularly stood out for me either.
Japan
4/5
I thought this was a very good showing within its genre and era. Reading old reviews it seems like it got slagged a bit for being derivative of more recognized new wave heroes, but I feel like it innovates beyond its influences. It lags in places and the vocals have that 80s synth-guy affect that isn’t my favorite thing, but overall I liked it a lot.
The Stooges
3/5
Never got into the Stooges though they would seem to be in my wheelhouse. I liked this, felt a little less tolerant of long experimental slogs like We Will Fall than I do with similar indulgences by say the Velvet Underground. And generally find this a little slack and undercooked, but then that’s Punk right?
Funkadelic
3/5
Honestly this seemed a little half baked to me. George Clinton is a legitimate genius so obviously there is still a lot in it, but I definitely not at the top of my list as far as his output goes.
The Byrds
3/5
Maybe least favorite offering for this band from this list. Still too many Dylan covers, and ones I don’t think do much for the songs. The traditional and pseudo-traditional themes in this rockified Country have the same bizarre twinge as most of Zeppelin’s blues covers.
Justice
3/5
This list has really been hitting me with the EDM and related ilk lately. This was all right, I had nothing against it. But if it’s not just more of the same, it’s beyond my capacity to discern in this genre.
Miriam Makeba
4/5
Stellar voice. I liked all of this, though it has some of those wacky choices world music type offerings of its era sometimes display - the little sociological commentary before the Click Song, or that odd duet with the laughing man.
MC Solaar
3/5
The language barrier seems an even greater obstruction than usual with rap, where quality is so tied up (at least for me) with the strength of the wordplay. It sounded good, I didn’t mind listening to to it. The backing music and beats were fine but didn’t stand out.
Simply Red
3/5
Always a little dubious of the so-called blue eyed soul, particularly (and this is an unfair prejudice) when it originates in the UK - similar feelings on the blues. You can’t argue this guy’s got a Voice though, yet I don’t think that quite carries it for me. It’s best when the accompaniment is more traditional, some of this has a kind of light-jazzy-pop vibe that magnifies the whole “but is it really authentic?” issue.
The Fall
3/5
Not really a fan of this. I don’t hate it like I have some of the post-punk but Imjust don’t think it lives up to the hype.
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
3/5
Pretty damn good, and merits a bonus point for pure debut confidence. A lot of the elements are already there, though with the notable exception of American Girl they hadn't yet learned to meld it all into weaponized earworms.
Van Halen
4/5
This might be peak Van Halen - always solid rock and roll with significantly better than average smarts. Jump is one of the absolute best songs of this style of rock: check Aztec Camera’s hilariously downbeat cover to see how finely tuned and resilient its song structure is.
Tangerine Dream
3/5
I only knew this group from soundtracks, primarily the one for Risky Business, and had no idea they were German. I wasn’t expecting this to be quite so “experimental” I guess. It was not for me, mostly due to the endless repetition of very short sequences. Maybe I’m not sophisticated enough to detect the nuance, it just seemed like a bunch of synth noodling.
James Taylor
3/5
Most of the genre stuff - the folky, the jazzy soul, a Cowboy song for crying out loud- just doesn’t hit for me. The wrong voice. He sings well, the accompaniment is solid and professional, it just doesn’t quite ring true. Only the big hit really lands - Taylor needs to be a genre in himself.
Rahul Dev Burman
3/5
This seemed like kind of a goof mostly, it didn’t really scan for me as something to sit down and just listen to as an album. I did kind of want to join in a big crazy costume dance number.
The Beach Boys
4/5
I like this a lot though I’m not sure it’s the luminary icon of pop perfection it’s sometimes held up to be. To me it seems that, as often as it transcends genre into the realms of High Art (which is pretty often), it also gets lost in its own overly complicated and intricate production.
Hüsker Dü
3/5
The final studio offering is, as Mould reportedly had it, a “pretty good” album, not one of my favorites though. It does feature one of my top Hüsker songs (Standing in the Rain) plus a couple of honorable mentions (Ice Cold Ice and She Floated Away), but overall it has that disjointed, My songs/your songs problem characteristic of the band with two strong leads that’s about to call it quits. Good but not essential.
Talking Heads
4/5
Really strong debut with many standout songs. It’s pretty amazing how fully formed the sound and sensibility is (giving credit to what was related in reading about the making of the album, that the band put off going into the studio for quite a while after interest in recording them began, due in part to feeling they weren’t yet ready).
Happy Mondays
3/5
I don’t get it with this band. The music goes between bog standard blues-rooted rock and a slack pastiche of new wave, dance and funk that doesn’t add anything I can discern to any of them. But the vocals particularly do nothing for me, this sustained monotone Northern British yawp. The playing is too competent to get into 2 star territory, but it’s a bare 3 for me.
The Only Ones
4/5
I’d never heard of this band, another hole in my U.S.-centric knowledge of pop music culture. I liked this a lot, though the vocal delivery bordered on a territory of affectation I dislike, and struck me as the weakest component of the music. I’d like to spend more time with this band and get to know the lyrics, which I wasn’t giving much concentration.
Nirvana
4/5
When Nirvana was hitting their peak in the early 90s I didn't pay much attention, I knew only Teen Spirit from endless MTV play of the video, hadnt really picked up on grunge generally. Cobain's rock star drug addict travails seemed like a tired cliché, I was indifferent, even callous over the news of his death. Seeing this live set changed my mind: the emphasis on unusual covers, and Cobain's delivery - tentative at first, but with growing confidence and conviction. Capped with maybe the definitive version of All Apologies and stunning rendition of (what in its original would have been) Black Girl. Less than half a year later he was gone.
3/5
Another band I’ve heard about but never listened to. Like a lot of what gets billed as pronto-punk or whatever it kind of struck me as just very sloppy rock and roll. Didn’t hate it at all but I wasn’t seeing the big innovation. It’s possible they’re one of those bands that a live set isn’t the best introduction, for me at least. Of course it ends with one of those clangoring noise fests that may be sick when you’re at the end of participating in an energetic live show in the midst of an enthusiastic crowd, but mainly annoy me in recordings.
Lou Reed
4/5
I really liked this album from the first I heard it, which was a really long time ago, as I became a Lou Reed fan boy in my mid-teens. Still think it’s great. The music has a lot of depth at repeated listens and lyrically it has more of a narrative arc than 8 out of 10 “concept” albums.
R.E.M.
3/5
Late high school through early post college I listened to a ton of R.E.M., running a few years behind the actual releases - my interest peaked around Life’s Rich Pageant I think, and tailed off sharply thereafter. This is fine but not their best to my mind and is definitely in the era where my attention started to flag.
Peter Gabriel
3/5
A odd mixed bag, this one. Only recognized Solsbury Hill, though I don't know that I'd known its title or who it was by. And then there's some stuff that almost sounds like Randy Newman and so stuff wackier than that. Overall I liked it but it had no cohesion as an album.
Marty Robbins
4/5
Was this the peak “Cowboy Lore” era of U.S. culture? I’m sure a lot of ink has been spilled on the anthropological phenomenon. This is good old Country music anyway, and nearly flawlessly delivered. Though perhaps for the material it is a tad too polished and refined.
Kendrick Lamar
4/5
Very good and very interesting. I’ve said this over and over at this point well over halfway into this list, but I suppose it beats repeating: I inevitably struggle a with hip hop that is particularly focused on the black experience because it’s not made for me. I’m a tourist, and consuming this for enjoyment is unavoidably voyeuristic.
Fela Kuti
4/5
I'm not sure if you can really separate this from its crazy political context. Purely as music I'm not sure it makes it to my top tier of music I've listened to by Kuti. Though second tier is still pretty great.
Digital Underground
3/5
Vaguest awareness of this group from the Humpty Dance which was big for a while in my late high school/early college days. I don’t recall noting anything about it at the time except the chorus which seemed repetitive and inane to me. It’s interesting to listen to it again decades later, and with a lot more hip hop listening under my belt, and realize how funny and satirical and self-aware the lyrics are. The whole album is pretty funny actually, and lyrically reminiscent to me of subversive avant-rock material like Beefheart or Zappa. Wrapping up a long album with a 15 minute suite about an alternative reality where there’s a pill that makes you have an intense imaginary sexual experience is an... interesting choice. Overall I liked it, though the minimalist backing and repetitive nature of a lot of he songs left me feeling like it ran longer than it needed to to make its point.
PJ Harvey
3/5
I mentioned elsewhere I didn't really follow Harvey after To Bring You My Love/Dancehall at Louse Point. I liked this, I'm always up for. Reinvention, though it strayed into a kind of Bjork-ish vocal territory that isn't my cuppa.
Bruce Springsteen
3/5
Obviously this has to be understood as a 9-11 aftermath product, and like most such, it hasn’t aged particularly well (though in a field that includes 20 years of costly, deadly conflict in Afghanistan that culminated in the almost immediate collapse of the U.S.-supported government, you know, it’s relative). But honestly, not that great for a Springsteen album, and it’s inclusion on this list sort of baffles me. Nowhere is the antic wit of the Boss’ early outings, nor do we encounter his middle period’s cast of lovable (or at least relatable) losers, with their implicit, trenchant critiques of how America chews up its working classes. With a couple notable exceptions it’s mostly platitudes wrapped in pretty middle of the road, mostly soft rock music.
Pretenders
3/5
Another band I’ve always known about but never really listened to. Interesting, I generally liked it, and particularly in the first half. The latter half seemed duller and more overlong songs. Vocally went off the rails for me at times - sometimes in a good way, sometimes detracting/distracting.
Willie Nelson
4/5
Actually pulled out an 8-track tape for that period-appropriate listen on this one (not my original copy or anything, I’m old but not that old, my player was a gift from a dead-media-aficionado friend and he tape was a thrift find). And what can you say, this thing is an artifact, a singularity of outlaw country. Have to pull a point back for the “she was unfaithful so I just had to murder them both” trope.
Kanye West
5/5
Kanye, or I guess Ye, is of course all kinds of problematical now, or perhaps “extra” problematical would be the way to put it. At this album’s point though he could still be thought of as a provocateur. And this titanic hip hop opus served to prove the method and yes, genius, behind the mad antics. And it has all the incessant bravado and seemingly inescapable misogynistic attitudes of its genre but even these are tempered here with humor and self-awareness. I don’t think he’s matched it before or since, and sadly it seems truly dubious whether we’ll ever see this Kanye return.
Foo Fighters
3/5
I admire the origin story of this, Grohl working in relative secret to get out of the shadow of Cobain's tragic end. The product is very competent rock. The weaker point is the lyrics, muddy both in delivery (overlayered and effects-laden as they are) and content. I think later works from this band are stronger.
Genesis
3/5
Thought this was a little full of itself but not really all that coherent. The lyrics often get bogged down in conveying the story, yet I didn’t find the story particularly compelling or indeed comprehensible. Add in being very long and having some irritating noise intervals and I don’t think I’ll bother listening to this again.
Butthole Surfers
3/5
I admire the whole versus mainstream, dropping out without tuning in or turning on, DIY punk attitude behind it all - anointing yourself with a name most (at the time) radio stations wouldn’t and likely often couldn’t say is some pretty stark consequence-owning up front. And I’ve definitely enjoyed many a Butthole Surfers song, on a mix tape or jockeying a college radio show. At album length it wears thing real quickly for me though. The subversion doesn’t really point to anything else, maybe proudly so, and it’s fairly well documented hereby this point that my tolerance for noise music is low.
Stephen Stills
4/5
A little sprawling and unfocused at times, but the overall effect felt worth the time, and some really stellar pieces I hadn’t heard before pushed it into great territory.
Little Simz
3/5
Never heard of her before, started out a little underwhelmed after the hype indicated in the pre-listening research. But it picked up steam and ended strongly. The backing music was too stripped down for my taste and often honestly a little dull. A lot of potential I think.
Tom Waits
3/5
The prior three albums to this one are my favorites; this one felt like where the schtick tipped over into almost a caricature of itself. I don’t hate it but it’s never been the Waits album I’d reach for.
The Fall
3/5
I’ve already been over this band twice before: don’t like it, don’t get it. This is my least favorite of the three I think, probably because someone else took a significant role in its creation.
Alice Cooper
3/5
Just straight ahead rock and roll in the teen angst/teen rebellion vein right? I’ve got nothing against it, wouldn’t really ever seek it out either. It seems almost impossibly tame now, lyrically.
John Lee Hooker
3/5
As a teen (indeed into my early 20s) my entire music collection was cassettes. Quite a few of these came off the bargain rack at a (now defunct) retail chain department store in my small hometown. Among these were a bunch of cheap, indifferently mastered compilation albums of Blues Legends - Muddy Waters, Bo Diddly, B.B. King - and John Lee Hooker. A friend turned me on to this - the closer to the source origins of the versions we'd been introduced to in Clapton and Led Zeppelin records. So I was (through little merit of my own) a little ahead of the curve when Hooker had his return to prominence with this album. I think it's a very good though not great album, and value it mainly for it affording him both a little of the recognition he deserved and a comfortable living in his later years.
The Black Keys
3/5
Very on the fence about this duo. I can get into the groove of the music but both the lyrics and their delivery bug me on some level. I guess they seem contrived, a put on attitude covering some underlying hollowness.
Sleater-Kinney
4/5
Very strong musically, real guitar prowess and powerful drumming. It’s no mean trick to fill out this much sound with a power trio with no bass. I vacillated on the singing. Tucker’s most common vocal tone wears on me at length, not least because when she’s really shouting it out she tends slightly but consistently flat to my ear. Brownstein is easier to take and really tempers the vocals when they’re singing together but here voice here isn’t strong enough to carry a song. I liked what I heard of the lyrics but would have to spend a lot more time with this to get more of a feel for that. Overall I think I like this as well or better than anything I’ve heard out of the Riot Grrrl scene.
Prince
5/5
Early introduction to this: my sister had it on double vinyl in the mid-80s, with its inner sleeve images, one in full Band Picture Day regalia with the Revolution, the other a boudoir photo featuring The Artist in bed with watercolors, his cute butt (mostly) concealed by tastefully arranged satin sheets. Which is neither here nor there, other than that format suits this sprawling masterpiece, less focused and more self-indulgent (but in that fantastic Prince way he totally got away with) than the imminent pop missile of Purple Rain, not a song under four minutes, four songs over seven minutes, full power Prince on display: the unearthly range, wild shifts in voice and vibe, able to hold the cutting edge of new wave synthesizer pop then just jam in however much deeply authentic funk soul. Dirty as hell and funny to boot.
Primal Scream
3/5
Descriptions left me expecting something a little more more fast and furious, this was more experimental, though not in a bad way. It had that tendency to fade into background music for me however.
Ash
3/5
Good energy and a lot of talent but came across to me as fairly unfocused.
Red Hot Chili Peppers
4/5
I’m not much of a fan generally, but this is really very good. Not all the proto-Rock-rapping holds up, and the lyrics are often a little dumb (“hardcore soft porn” is not some kind of brilliant inversion). But it’s fun, high energy and sincere.
4/5
I thought this was very good. The more pop orient d stuff is as good as anything, say, U2 ever did, plus some more interesting weirdo experimental elements to round it out. Interesting band I’d never really listened to before.
AC/DC
4/5
I’m always down for a little AC/DC, plain old rock of a similar vintage to myself. This comes with my usual reservations about most heavy rock - the sound can get repetitive and the lyrics a little meathead. This band at least benefits by not taking itself too seriously and staying out of portentous, “wait here’s our hot take on the state of the world” territory (looking at you later Metallica). This is about as well as this style gets done. RIP Bon Scott.
Astor Piazzolla
4/5
Pretty down with this, though it had a bit of that issue I get with modern jazz, where it sometimes seems to just run into a bunch of scales noodling up and down and I don’t know if it’s really an Emperor’s New Clothes situation or if I’m just too dumb and unsophisticated to get it. Also kept making me think about music in those Professor Layton DS games (not a bad thing!) though that obviously gets the direction of influence backwards.
Fun enough but kind of slack and sloppy.
Mudhoney
3/5
I liked the Superfuzz ep better, what's done here didn't quite fill an album's worth for me. It generally displays that failing of grunge for me: is it really more than dressed-down rock with punk trimmings?
Paul Revere & The Raiders
4/5
One of those “clearly representative of an iconic sound of an era” pieces but where I only actually recognized one song. Altogether it’s a fairly weird album, some psychedelic leaning parts, a couple pretty out there experimental numbers, but then some super lazy “I got a dope car” numbers as well. Extra point for the bizarre swings in vibe.
Neil Young & Crazy Horse
3/5
I feel like I owned this at some point, near to when it came out, I certainly am very familiar with the material. Whatever the case, I haven’t had it in my collection for many years. Which about sums up my feelings on it... A decent enough album, though lyrically nowhere near the top of Young’s game. And the loose, recorded live feeling that serves to benefit a Rust Never Sleeps becomes a liability here, giving some songs a slack, lazy feel. It doesn’t make the cut for Neil Young on this list in my book (he’s over represented even without this one).
Madonna
3/5
Clearly recall this coming out (it’s from earlier than I would have thought) and being heralded as a great reinvention by Madonna. Some catchy stuff but listening to most of these songs for the first time in decades, I’m struck by how middle of the road it is. It might have been a departure for a major pop star, but it’s pretty mundane for its genre.
Goldfrapp
3/5
The second encounter for me in this list with this interesting duo that I’d previously never heard of. I can’t recall if I had this issue with the previous one but this is marred by some very muddy recording/mixing on some tracks. I like this generally and Goldfrapp herself definitely ranks now for me as one of the significant singers of this era of pop music. I feel like my regard might increase if I spent more time with the lyrics which I wasn’t really getting on one go around.
Skunk Anansie
4/5
Only clue I’d previously had of this band’s existence was from the great underrated cyberpunk thriller Strange Days. This was really great, much smarter than average hard rock with nice speed/metal edges and a unique and pleasing sound and sensibility.
Siouxsie And The Banshees
4/5
It is wild how some of these acts seemed to spring up almost fully formed. This is punk developed and refined but still sharp edged and biting. Good stuff.
Led Zeppelin
3/5
Another chance to dig out some old vinyl for this list. I like this, I've been a Zeppelin fan since I was a kid. It's clearly an important album in heavy metal and rock history. I'd put II, III, IV, and Physical Graffiti ahead of it in quality and importance on my own Zeppelin list though.
Super Furry Animals
4/5
Trying without success to remember when I got into this band and how (definitely something my better half introduced anyway). Great album, one I hadn’t heard before.
Bob Dylan
4/5
A great one, though I think at length there is something of a monotony of tone, and Dylan’s vocals are mostly near their most obstinately Dylan-y. Still an album I’m happy to give a listen pretty much any time.
Johnny Cash
4/5
It couldn’t be more evident that Cash is singing his way out of this veil of tears here, which sometimes makes it all that more powerful (Hurt), but doesn’t always land (at its best I don't think his vocal style was ever right for Simon and Garfunkel, and doesn’t mesh with Apple’s accompaniment on Bridge Over Troubled Water). Nevertheless it’s a powerful swan song overall.
The Band
3/5
I like this but feel like the Band hadn’t quite hit their stride yet. The sound is a little reedy and under-defined, too many Dylan covers. Brimming with potential that would really shine through the next release.
Thin Lizzy
3/5
Pretty bog standard hard rock mostly, obviously some important rockers in the mix, and also redeemed somewhat by some genuinely weird lyrical detours along the way.
Elastica
4/5
Just a solid torpedo of well-crafted post-punk. Lyrically the words suit the music well but I’m not sure they’re saying all that much. But the whole album is so well played and composed, not one real clunker in a crowd of short, fast songs, that this quibble is minor.
The Velvet Underground
5/5
This blew my mind when I listened to it as a teen, and still kind of does. Love it all, even the frequently maligned Murder Mystery.
Morrissey
3/5
I’m so sick of the egregious over-representation of Morrissey on this list my immediate reaction was 2 stars, no matter what. But I have to come to terms with the fact that my issues with him are mostly not about music, at which he’s certainly competent. Alternately (and sometimes simultaneously) maudlin and self-important lyrics are the primary sins here as always.
Joni Mitchell
4/5
This is surely groundbreaking, and very lovely. But I do think the kind of run-on strings of wandering lyrics, that kind of improvisational jazz style of singing, gets tangled up in itself at times. It's not an accident that all the real hits had the foundation of a solid chorus.
George Harrison
4/5
It’s very good and great in places. Lacks cohesion though, and there is some definite filler in the very sprawling mix. There’s a real masterpiece somewhere in a more tightly edited album.
New Order
3/5
This list leans pretty hard on this post-punk to new wave transitional era in British rock, though so guess I can see the argument for its importance on the non-hip hop side of pop music. Though by 1985 I’m not sure this is bringing all that much new to the table. Some interesting things going on lyrically here, at least at times, but the vocals are very much the weakest link.
The Young Gods
3/5
I didn't really have much use for this. I don't really care for this kind of singing (if that's the word for it). Maybe being able to understand the words would help, but I doubt it. Playing it near maximum volume on my headphones did nearly down out the music the weird denizen with a giant rolling suitcase on my bus ride home was blasting from what appeared to be a battery powered clock radio, so there is that.
Paul Weller
3/5
I feel like this person has come up in this list a few times in various incarnations, but nothing has stuck with me too much. I liked this fine anyway and some of it was quite good. A little middle of the road: competent and well produced, but firmly tethered to a particular and fairly mainstream channel of pop soul.
Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band
4/5
In my 20s I owned this on cassette of all things, and listened to it many times, though not for years since, up to now. Is it genius? Reading for the first time about Van Vliet’s abuse of his compatriots throughout its creation, my tolerance is somewhat diminished. It’s genuinely funny and interesting, certainly unique and influential. Is this enough to carry the aggressive weirdness through? I conclude yes, and though I find the tales of the Captain’s cultish and violent dominance of his band abhorrent (and anyone theorizing it was necessary to generate this can go pound sand), it’s still one of the greats.
Spiritualized
3/5
I feel like I could listen to the output of this band pretty much perpetually, but nothing in particular of it really sticks with me.
Muddy Waters
5/5
About as straight ahead post war blues as it gets. Nothing to fault.
Traffic
3/5
Kind of a folk-jazz noodles for the most part. Certainly didn't mind it but a little unfocused.
Everything But The Girl
3/5
I can't really fault anything about the execution here, the singing and musicianship are solid. But it's just too soft-rock for my tastes.
Korn
2/5
Hated this. Everything I like least about metal plus some dopey rapping and junior high edgelord obscenity. There is some competent musicianship when it isn't descending into long noodling spooky ooky wing wang intervals under a bunch of whisper-growl lyrical B.S.
Fleetwood Mac
5/5
Nearly half powerhouse pop icons - Dreams, Don't Stop, The Chain, You Make Loving Fun, and my personal top pick, (though Dreams beat it in the court of public opinion), Go Your Own Way. And really nothing weak supporting those gems. All boiling out of the cauldron of one of the most canonical examples of rock band-"family" dysfunction ever. Masterpiece.
Frank Sinatra
4/5
Always up for a little Sinatra. A nice pairing that delivers the goods.
M.I.A.
4/5
Like many the average listener gotnturned onto this by the ubiquitous Paper Planes. Pretty jamming throughout. This sound wears thin for me at length and I haven't really followed her past this album (the recent crazy venting doesn't help). Still a great album and at its time a very fresh sound.
The Killers
3/5
A solid entry in the hard alternative rock genre. The vocals have limited range and grow less tolerable when they try to push those boundaries, the lyrics are superficially clever but lack depth, and the mixing has that Loudness Wars issue - it only sounds good at (tom my old man ears) excessive volume. Still I didn't hate it by any means.
Peter Frampton
4/5
One of the all-time great live albums. Not without filler: the Jumping Jack Flash cover is pretty unnecessary - but generally a nice rock romp.
Can
3/5
Typical Can experience for me. For some reason I feel like I'm "supposed" to like Can, and somewhere in the first 10 minutes I'm like "wait, do I actually like Can after all?" Because there are many brilliant moments. But then, I sort of realize I've been gritting my teeth through the nth minute of a violin's staccato, almost tuneless sawing away and then I'm like, "oh right, this is why I don't particularly like Can". Maybe I'm too dumb, the kind of breathless no-reservations accolades mystify me.
The Specials
3/5
A little bit of Ska goes a long way with me. I like the Specials, but more as a source of variety on a compilation playlist than at album length. No real fault on this it's just not my genre.
Thundercat
3/5
Guess I expected this to be more hip hop and less kind of avant-jazz electronica chorale... I didn't dislike it but it struck me as a little low on variety of sound.
CHIC
4/5
This stuff is like the Disco Template. Flawless execution. We make fun of Disco still but this sound penetrated pop music deeply at every level.
Janis Joplin
4/5
Joplin's delivery here sometimes seems on a ragged edge of falling apart completely, seeming to prefigure her imminent untimely demise. Then again her voice will be strong and clear like the young woman she is, and it feels like she could have had half a century of singing in front of her, with better luck and some intensive rehab. A shame either way.
Prince
3/5
This is not my go-to era of Prince, although I recognize the artistry. I feel like it might grow on me if I gave it more attentive listens.
Cornershop
4/5
Very clear memory of a period where Brimful of Asha was dominating video and radio airplay. A fun and excellent album, though it gets into self-indulgent instrumental dicking around a couple times.
My Bloody Valentine
3/5
This didn't do much for me. About as interesting as it got in the first 5 minutes, and every song circled into pretty much the same jammy repetition, blurred with heavy handed effects.
Violent Femmes
4/5
Such an iconic artifact of post-punk/early alternative, and it still holds up very well in that context. There's a strong whiff of juvenalia - and why not, it was made by kids - and the Lou Reed/Velvet Underground influence occasionally shades from homage to near imitation. The editing isnt perfect - there are several pretty clunky and abrubt fade outs in songs. But overall it's a surprisingly mature (in its vision and execution) and polished album.
R.E.M.
3/5
I think I said in some previous R.E.M. review that my interest peaks at Life's Rich Pageant, but hearing this for the first time in years, I was reminded I listened to this album a whole lot over the course of three years or so, back in my cassette days. And it's pretty rocking to be honest. I'm not convinced most of the lyrics aren't nonsense, if high-toned and intellectual sounding nonsense. And it marks to me the turning point to the mostly serious R.E.M., whimsy pretty much evicted from the music, and not to the better.
Wilco
3/5
I was pretty distracted listening to this so the fact it didn't really grab me is maybe less meaningful. Well I'm not going to go back.and listen to.it again so I guess it's 3 stars by default.
David Holmes
3/5
Did not have much use for this. Mostly innocuous, though it got irritating in places, mostly just not very interesting sampling and meandering synthesizer B.S.
Metallica
4/5
Probably peak Metallica in my book, just tight, technical high speed metal wall to wall. On the downside it pretty much marks the turn to the all-serious, no-humor, self-important vibe that pretty much defined the band thereafter.
Nas
4/5
One of those albums that just feels foundational, a dense dark brick at the base of so much to come.
Milton Nascimento
4/5
I really liked this. Hard to pin down stylistically, sometimes reminding me of a certain era of neo-folk, other times in the vicinity of psychedelic rock, but not quite any of them. Never felt the language barrier more acutely, particularly with my vestigial high school/college Spanish giving me the feeling I often have hearing Portuguese - like I can almost pick out the words (but not quite). I liked the sound of whatever it was anyway, and the signing very much.
Dizzee Rascal
3/5
Not really my jam. The vocal delivery is some kind of UK bad boy variant that just doesn't mesh with my sensibilities, and I thought the music was generally dull. Call it 2.5 and round up as an allowance for the culture barrier. Some clever wordplay.
Queen
4/5
It's Queen: ballady baroque rock, solid all the way through, not nearly as weird as some of the more progressive outings but still with plenty of well-off-mainstream flourishes.
Aerosmith
4/5
Top tier first act Aerosmith, nothing much to add over what I've said before regarding this very consistent band.
Marilyn Manson
2/5
I think it's well established at this point this kind of music is not my thing. I'm not offended and I don't find it particularly controversial. I really dislike the while croak-shout school of vocal delivery. There's reportedly a story to the whole thing, but I can't make out 3 words in 20 so this lost on me. And mostly I think industrial is boring. Extra point deducted for being egregiously long.
Stevie Wonder
4/5
There was this pretty long era where it seemed like this material just poured out of Stevie Wonder... All great, unique, the kind of music that makes Soul live up to its rather grandiose name.
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
4/5
At its best, as good as this era of Hippie Rock got. Not perfect: hits or not, My House and Teach Your Children are mawkish pablum I never need to hear again. Woodstock gets more dated every year, though it's still a rocking song. But mostly very good.
Buzzcocks
4/5
Smarter and more fun than much Punk. Generally in the sweet spot for my tasted in this genre.
Motörhead
4/5
This band has been a pleasant surprise in this list - always heard about them, never really listened. Surprised to find I like it pretty well. Just top tier authentic hard rock and roll. There's a no-nonsense sensibility to the lyrics I like: I'm self-destructive, and I know how that's going to turn out. Of course it ends up with the line-up on this live album all dead pretty early into their elder years, but there you go. Signing is the one weaker point: it's done with gusto and it fits the material, but at album length the limitations and thin range start to detract somewhat from the overall experience.
Def Leppard
3/5
I don't know why I remember this story (if it deserves that moniker) but way backnin the early 90s one summer I often found myself sitting in a study carrel in the science library of a large Midwestern university, aimlessly reading the graffiti when I got bogged down in whatever I was reading. I used to write down samples I found particularly noteworthy, on of which was "Def Leppard sold out!!!" At the time I thought it was wild someone would feel inspired to make that announcement in like 1993 or whatever, it occurred to me while listening to this that they probably wrote it about this album when it came out and it just never got cleaned. Anyway, it's hair metal, competent fast rock with, like, super dude-bro lyrics sung in that particular way. Fine, would not seek it out.
Megadeth
4/5
I think I've said it before but I've been pleasantly surprised by Megadeth in this list. Not always (or to be honest, often) in the mood for metal, but this is good stuff, classic speed dynamics, actually pretty smart lyrics with even some actually decent singing.
Ray Charles
4/5
A ton of iconic pop here. Is it Country and Western music? I'll leave that to the musicologists, other than to say the one thing that slightly detracts for me is that a couple of the song selections don't really suit Charles' treatment all that well.
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
3/5
I liked this best I think among the Nick Cave offerings so far, probably because it is less stentoriously committed to the whole Roots Gothic thing which palls quickly for me. Still plenty of that stuff though. I cant deny smart lyrics and good musicianship, so I guess it's a taste thing.
John Martyn
3/5
Generally liked this, though I have to say a lot of it felt slack and sloppy. Though it runs counter to some ideas of the artist I think many of these people would have ended up stronger musicians if they'd managed to battle their demons more successfully.
The Smashing Pumpkins
3/5
Always thought this band was overrated and still do. Corrigan's voice and general persona in particular I can do without. The music is good and well performed but I don't think that interesting or innovative.
Donald Fagen
4/5
It's hard not to judge the solo work as a Steely Dan annex, which isn't really fair - though the kinship is unmistakable. I suppose it is subject to the usual complaints - that the music is bloodless, technical jazz-pop. Which I never bought, I like this about as well as any of my second-favorite Steely Dan and I think it has plenty of soul.
Duke Ellington
3/5
Jazz you know: I like it but don't think I exactly understand it, above a superficial level. I liked this fine, the version I was listening to was not great fidelity-wise. I can't say it stood out for me.
Serge Gainsbourg
4/5
Another artist I've been hearing about forever but never really listened to. I liked the music a lot: the vocals (predominantly somewhat oily French murmuring) did considerably less for me. Of course I couldn't understand a word, other than the repetition of the name Melody Nelson five hundred times - each one a little jarring in this context as it's a name that would fit perfectly in the context of my rural central U.S. childhood. Does this anglicized Scandanavian surname sound exotic to the French ear? Anyway I gather these lyrics I couldn't understand are about an old French lecher creeping on a 15 year old girl? The whole thing is very, very French, but I can't deny I enjoyed listening to it and it gets a bonus point for its aggressive wierdness.
Massive Attack
3/5
Like other examples by this group from this band, I liked this well enough but it didn't really wow me. I think it could often use a rawer edge on one hand, and on the other the occasional lighter side, lyrically.
Run-D.M.C.
5/5
It's crazy how huge this was when it came out, how much influence Walk This Way had in pushing the crossover potential of rap and hip hop. Pretty much the perfect 80s New York rap album.
Suede
4/5
I liked this a lot, maybe best overall of these 90s Britpop offerings so far. While definitely in the sonic sounds soundscape of things like Oasis and Blur, it has a kind of psychedelic retro infusion that I found very pleasing.
k.d. lang
4/5
When country starts to cross over its usually straight to pop; lang goes on a more interesting direction here. Just solid lyrics and song craft on display, quite lovely. Maybe a little uniformly soft and low key: the emotional affect of it all is a bit flat.
Afrika Bambaataa
4/5
It's interesting to consider how this is pretty much contemporary with the Run D.M.C. album from a few days ago, but seems like an entirely different era. I guess the progression of the "schools" of rap and hip-hop is pretty damn compressed. Still liked this a lot, crazy glam space flare and all. Very funky.
The Notorious B.I.G.
4/5
Deep roots of a whole lot of modern hip hop here. As with Tupac though, it's hard to separate the music from the senseless and unnecessary young death. The nihilistic shadings of a lot of the lyrics a bit too prescient.
Robbie Williams
4/5
Just good for this kind of genre, solid music and well sung. There’s a bit of “poor little rich famous me” to this, though looking over the trajectory of Williams’ life and solo career it’s clear his struggles are real. And a little pop-slick. But I can’t really fault it seriously.
Johnny Cash
3/5
I like Johnny cash but I'm not sure this list requires two live prison concert albums. The shtick is pretty much the same as Folsom and I think the latter is a little superior.
Bob Dylan
4/5
Definitely one of the greats from Dylan; and one of these albums I listened to so much in a certain era of my life that it just sort of permanently resides in my head.
The Mothers Of Invention
3/5
I know smart people adore this but I found it almost immediately tedious. There is something admirably antisocial about setting out so aggressively to put down everyone, but being against everything mainstream doesn't mean you're right. Closing a relatively short LP where no other song is over 3 and a half minutes with 6 and a half minutes of intolerable noise garbage sort of sums it up. Call it a two and a half star for me, and round it up for historical significance and general audacity.
Gillian Welch
4/5
I liked this a lot, though a couple songs (the initial title track, and Everything is Free) stood way above most of the rest for me, which came across as pretty standard bluegrassy folk, well performed but not extraordinary.
Q-Tip
3/5
The comparison is perhaps unfair but inevitable: solid throughout, and some bright gems (the final track in particular). YouTube music denied me a couple tracks (sampling rights bullshit I suppose) so I might have missed some. But generally though I liked it, it doesn't quite hit that magic alchemy of Tribe.
The White Stripes
4/5
This was the album where they got super ubiquitous. This is good solid alt-rock or however you want to peg it: the place it comes from feels authentic.
Leonard Cohen
4/5
A worthy finale for Cohen. Melancholy and spiritual, no easy platitudes but a portrait of a centered man.
Ozomatli
4/5
I liked this. Crazy eclectic sound - from Indian raga vibes to sounds approaching klezmer, and it's always a nice change to have socially and politically aware music that is largely positive and upbeat.
50 Cent
3/5
I couldn't seem to access anything but a radio friendly edit type version of this album on YouTube music, which degrades the rapping a lot. Some outstanding moments, but overall a little flat, particularly as regards the music which is largely generic and repetitive beats.
The Who
4/5
Wild how this shifts from pretty typical 60s blues-inspired rock to a tremendously modern sound anticipating hard rock and punk. I've always liked the Who but haven't thought much about how on the vanguard they were in the 60s.
Kate Bush
3/5
I felt a lot of affection for this, although it definitely commits to its deep wierdness to a fault. Certainly not boring. The music I think could have done with a little less new wave blips and a little more orchestral lush.
Beyoncé
3/5
Obviously good, though, like almost all top tier money acts of today, over produced. Contributing to its primary weakness, monotony of tone (not so much in the lyrics and vocal performance, but in the backing music).
The Who
4/5
Nothing to complain about here for a Who fan. All the hallmarks of a great live album: many classics, funny interludes, interesting cover choices. It was particularly interesting to here echoes of the times - whether inspiration going one way or the other or just general cultural resonance. Heard shades of Zeppelin, Hendrix, the Stones, and even the Velvet Underground at times, that don't show up in the studio work.
Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band
3/5
A little less full formed in its wierdness as compared to Trout Mask Replica. No objection to this jazzbo blues rollicking but it doesn't feel essential.
Green Day
3/5
I think I already pulled out the old tale about how I saw Green Day open for Bad Religion in the early '90s, very early days when they were on Operation Ivy's label and very punk. Nothing wrong with this though it seems like a textbook example of the mainstreamed major label release.
The Who
4/5
Happenstance pulled up three Keith Moon-era Who albums within a week from this list for me - I'm a fan and I've listened to all these songs a lot but even so I'm surprised and impressed by the range. Very few bands managed to have as much humor and whimsy and still rock so hard where it mattered. A great and odd album.
Killing Joke
3/5
This was all right for aort of proto-industrial, not really my thing. The vocals got stale for me pretty quickly.
Flamin' Groovies
3/5
Enjoyable listen of a band I don't recall recall hearing about before, but so derivative of the Stones (who had definitely arrived at the territory earlier), and I'm not convinced are adding anything new or essential.
The Saints
3/5
Recall a generally favorable impression while listening to this, but it sort of drifted through without making any very distinct mark. Seems like possibly an early artifact of punks road to more mainstream alternative rock.
John Martyn
3/5
Thought this was tighter and better focused than the last entry I got by this individual. Still, it's a genre of modified folk that doesn't quite mesh with me.
Tortoise
3/5
Does "post rock" mean kind of bland Electronica? Because that's how this struck me... though I was in the midst of an unpleasant driving experience while listening to it so I may not have given it proper attention. I didn't hate it or anything.
Doves
4/5
Another band I hadn't heard of (that UK indie scene): immediate reference point was Alt-J, though clearly if there is an influence, it went the opposite direction timeline-wise. Generally very good, though I couldn't pick up much lyrically on one listen.
Santana
5/5
Another selection once represented by my adolescent and young adult cassette collection, and listened to many, many times, though not for years or probably decades. Absolutely holds up for me, really about perfect in itself. Just an iconic product of its times as well.
Pixies
4/5
A fine alt-rock album, emblematic of a certain era, though I'm not quite as estatically into this band as some.
Tim Buckley
3/5
Clearly a lot of talent here but this fell apart for me pretty decisively. The overlong and frankly pretentious title track exemplifies the flaws. The kind of operatic circus vibe definitely not doing it for me. Some decent music in earlier, more toned down tracks.
Super Furry Animals
4/5
Solid rock, a longtime favorite. An interesting flavor to this sort of post-heavy turn-of-the-century era alternative, is it Welshness?
Calexico
3/5
On the fence about much of this kind of neo-roots music. I didn't dislike this, but I think I'd rather listen to actual old music or else something in a similar vein but more particular to its times.
The Sabres Of Paradise
2/5
Rare selection on this list whre I gave up on it unfinished. Not actually offensive, but couldn't really see the point. I found nothing in particular to distinguish any of it.
3/5
I've mentioned in prior reviews I didn't really track Harvey's post-millennial career. I think I liked this best of what I've listened to so far. It doesn't really forge new ground vocally or lyrically, but the music goes in really interesting directions. How well she meshed with Thom Yorke was a surprise.
Marvin Gaye
5/5
Must be the pinnacle of this sub-genre of seduction soul. Perfect craft.
Beck
4/5
The album was about the last time I paid attention to Beck. I definitely owned it on CD at one time. It's very good, though like always with Beck (up to the point I was keeping up anyway), there is this pervasive tone of kind of detached intellectualized calculation - what might less charitably be described as smugness, but I think it's more just the typical curse of post-modernism preying on the brainy type. In songs like Jackass this album occasionally transcends this and expresses something with genuine sincerity.
Sisters Of Mercy
3/5
The exception to the "don't judge a book by its cover" rule? The album art for this is just so... on the nose. I didn't hate it at all actually but it is capital G Goth at its most stentoriously self-serious. Though possibly in on the joke? If so, with an amazing poker face about it.
Alexander 'Skip' Spence
3/5
I kept running across mention this album reading about other artists and bands while I've been doing this project - I guess Moby Grape is one of those "6 degrees of separation" bands, at least in the 60s-70s psychedelic scene. Descriptions of the album itself led me to expect something darker, and more harrowing. Maybe I didn't listen closely enough but mostly found it pretty in line with the kind of music it was born out of, mostly straightforward but somewhat slack and sloppy - consistent with its creator's reported intent of its songs being demos for a more finished composition. And its a shame it was left where it was as there's certainly a great album in it - it really shines through in parts - and I can see why it's a revered artifact and don't dispute its inclusion on this list. But on the whole, just in itself, it's extremely uneven.
Beach House
3/5
Perfectly fine but not outstanding to me in any particular, pretty run of the mill soft-rock alternative, with its million dubiously differentiated subgenres.
Ice T
4/5
I understand that outlaw music is a presence across cultures but honestly have had about enough gangster rap with this list. With the intervening years as an actor and "reality" entertainment star, it's easy to forget what a big presence Ice T was in that scene though. It's very good for what it is, and though I'm no expert I think the incorporation of heavy metal and rock was pretty pioneering.
Ladysmith Black Mambazo
4/5
Obviously not getting anything out of the mostly non-English lyrics, but nothing to fault with the music, top tier for tight vocal harmony.
Jurassic 5
4/5
Interested in this particular style of flow that hasn't has much presence in my hip hop listening to date. I liked it.
The Who
4/5
For a long time pretty much my only exposure to the Who was a cassette of that greatest hits album with the Union Jack shirt on the cover. And I don't know why I didn't branch out more because I loved that tape and listened to it a lot. Later my brother gave me a couple LPs and I bought Sell Out on CD. But I'm still a fairly shallow fan - I don't believe I ever listened to Tommy start to finish before, for example.
Pretty interesting. It mostly skates the Rock Opera dilemma with its opposing pitfalls - overly wordy, unpoetic songs to drive exposition on one side, versus managing the vaguest narrative that can only generously be labeled a "concept" album on the other. To the degree this errs it's more to the latter side, which is good - the music being the main point however lofty the concept aspirations. Without outside interpretations supported by years of amateur analysis plus a couple of filmed/staged interpretations, I don't know I'd have extracted a very coherent story out of it. But there is a lot of good music and the themes running throughout are strong, and it was certainly an audacious move for its time, particularly from a band whose star (by all reports) seemed like it might be waning. Well worth the time.
U2
3/5
Not that big of a U2 fan, and found this a little weak. Mysterious Ways is the only real banger on it, End of the World also pretty good. The rest is as always competent rock, diminished by a little too much self-seriousness.
Orbital
3/5
Second offering from this band encountered through this list and I just don't get it. I was never a techno guy which obviously doesn't help but even adjusting for that this just does not strike me as necessary, let alone essential. Mostly too bland for 2 stars but I would aggressively avoid listening again.
Portishead
3/5
Review history indicates I really hated the prior offering from this band. This didn't rub me the wrong way nearly so much, thoughbits a style I could simply do without.
Jimi Hendrix
4/5
These sixties icons become more period pieces with each passing decade - still amazing, will always keep a solid place in pop history, but I have to say I found the shine slightly dulled, listening to this one for the first time in many years. Axis held up better.
Depeche Mode
4/5
It's a particular taste which is not an everyday go to for me but I think this is near pinnacle for this kind of moody synth-sample new wave of its era. Pleasing despite the somewhat pretentious lyrics and vocal style.
Metallica
4/5
This is the Metallica of my youth, and still top tier metal in my book. The lyrics are a little basic and the singing, while very competent, isn't much more than that. The music is impeccable though, and just a good time when I'm in this genre mood. Holds up very well.
Mariah Carey
3/5
You know, it's high ticket mainstream hip hop soul, which is fine. Carey is a great singer but it all has a little too much of that record biz gloss on it for my tastes. The unnecessary version of The Beautiful Ones served as an unflattering highlight the difference between this and the equally mainstream output of a genius auteur like Prince.
Black Flag
3/5
As with other examples of bedrock punk this strikes me as surprisingly tame, almost innocent. Regular jack offs screwing around. Very much of my era - every mediocre program call-out in TV Party absolutely hit for me. Overall a little basic, lyrics and music alike, but I liked it.
Ananda Shankar
3/5
I liked this and the fusion of sitar with the cutting age synth technology of the era was surprisingly effective. The music though seemed under-ambitious, most evidenced by the two pedestrian covers of over-exposed rock hits.
3/5
Never really a Devo fan, though I can see the value in it. To me the music isn't really that far off mainstream rock and the lyrical sensibility and vocal delivery don't do a ton for me. Solid for what it is but not my thing.
Incubus
3/5
This seemed about as middle of the road, middlebrow hard rock as you could possibly get. I've got no use for it at all, though there's nothing distinct enough in it for me to actually hate it.
Sugar
3/5
A prominent feature in my college radio era, back when we just called it all "alternative". Hadn't listened to it this in a good long while, surprised by how soft and mainstream a lot of it felt. Felt fairly lukewarm about this.
TV On The Radio
4/5
Really good, the rare instan enof coming across a sound that feels new.
Gotan Project
3/5
Generally liked this OK though it fell into that synth monotony issue, and the electronica component often felt like an overlayer that did not quite integrate.
Gang Starr
4/5
Very good, clearly a cornerstone in this style and format of rap. A duo I'd heard about quite a bit but hadn't listened to at length before.
Stan Getz
3/5
Absolutely on-brand and consistent throughout, but it suffers for me from a kind of uniformity of tone. No tension.
Jorge Ben Jor
4/5
I liked this a lot, wished I could understand the language. It had a unique vibe of having one foot firmly planted in an ancient tradition and the other in the future.
Dexys Midnight Runners
3/5
I was trying to remember if there was another album from this band previously on this list, or if they just kept popping up in other background reading because of that 6 degrees thing in British Pop/Soul. Regardless the sum total of my knowledge of this group previously was Come On Eileen, and I was not expecting this album to be quite so odd. Listening to the sole U.S. hit in context I was struck likewise by what an odd song it is, especially for a number one single in America, a song I knew but realized I'd never really paid attention to before. Generally I liked the album, though it's not exactly my genre.
Dion
4/5
Maybe heretical but I'm not sure the Spector sound has aged all that well, though it could be some combination of the source (I have no idea really what YT Music is up to in that respect -codecs, bit rates etc.) and my lackluster playback equipment. Other than that this is all solid, well crafted lyrics riding a flawlessly professional musical foundation. Much of it delivered by Wrecking Crew icons who are departing this mortal coil at an unsurprising but sad rate over the last couple decades.
Traffic
3/5
All good fun, but at length (and with multiple outings with the band on this list) there is a tinge of dated nostalgia trip to it, and quite a lot of jammy meandering noodling.
Love
3/5
Interesting branch on the whole 60s counterculture scene I hadn't encountered before. My appetite for the kind of musical theater/rock-operatic slant is fairly limited though.
The Libertines
3/5
The music is fine, the singing doesn't so anything for me, the attitude is fairly obnoxious.
The Residents
3/5
I've enjoyed a fair bit of Residents in my day, though on this listening I found myself mostly not in the mood for the aggressive wierdness. I admire the obdurate artistic rejection of accessibility but I'm not sure they were all that great of musicians.
Snoop Dogg
3/5
Funny and laconic West coast flow is clever, though typical of this era the trenchant misogyny bums me out.
Nirvana
4/5
I've noted in previous reviews I came around on Nirvana after being initially dismissive. This is very good, although my appetite for the depressive affect is considerably diminished from my younger days.
Can
4/5
Felt like I finally sort of got the Can thing on this one. Still not wholly off the fence; the mumbly, undermixed, occasionally comprehensible signing still not doing a lot for me. But the full compositions of these long pieces kept me engaged.
Fairport Convention
3/5
Another mystery just not present on YT Music, yet a search on the video side is happy to turn it up, clearly labeled and arranged in a playlist. Not sure about the source, but what I got was fairly muddy sound quality. I wasn't that wowed by this anyway. I didn't dislike it but felt like it failed to quite negotiate a line between traditional music and neo-folk.
Bee Gees
3/5
I think my total knowledge of the Bee Gees prior to this listening project was Saturday Night Fever/Staying Alive, so all this very English concept folk/rock/country is a pure surprise. This suffers from that musical theater problem I've complained of before - poetic quality suffering for the sake of a kind of weak narrative. Stylistically it is kind of scattered as well, but generally I liked it and found it agreeably odd.
The Cars
4/5
This thing is like a capsule evolution of New Wave. Insane line up of heavyweight hits on the A side.
The Jam
4/5
Interesting vibe on this band, sort of Punk Refined, which I suppose raises question about whether punk-ness really survives refining, but these philosophical considerations fail to keep me up at night, it's just good rock and roll.
David Bowie
3/5
A brisk and enjoyable listen though I'll commit heresy and say that on closer inspection, it's patchy. The lyrics to the overlong title track for example are kind of a semi-coherent mess, consistent with introducing a persona whose character is basically constructed from cocaine.
Yes
4/5
Pretty close to peak Prog rock. It manages to keep on the right side (barely at times) of lyrics becoming overly narrative to the point all poetic snap is lost, and for complicated art rock it remains accessible and rocks pretty hard.
Jazmine Sullivan
3/5
I felt like this started stronger than it played out. Great singing, good but not that memorable music. Conceptually kind of a mess.
Brian Eno
3/5
Ahead of its time, but I'm not actually sure this holds up that well. To me it has a really dated sound, and the only song I'd really bother coming back to is The Jezebel Spirit.
Bill Callahan
3/5
Longtime Smog fan but I haven't kept up on his career under his own name. I liked this, though I don't know if it tops the list of what I've heard.
Ute Lemper
3/5
Very strange and not my cup of tea. Not boring anyway.
Ravi Shankar
4/5
One of those odd products of its time with the whole tutorial aspect, but nothing to fault in the music.
Donovan
4/5
Donovan occupies a wierd niche in the whole 60s-70s counterculture/psychedelia vein for me. The inter-album swing between culturally relevant boho modernism as in the title track versus solidly neo-traditional (a genre I think is very difficult to get right) like Three King Fishers. Particularly interesting is the prominent strata of dark strangeness running through it, most prominent in the difficult to classify Season of the Witch. Whatever it is I'm on board for all of it.
Stereolab
4/5
Another band I was in on early thanks to my brother. I saw them twice in Minneapolis in the early 90s and both shows were amazing. This is a great album, though I am maybe a little fonder of the earlier more low-fi offerings.
Christina Aguilera
3/5
Never listened to much of this artist; it was better than I expected. Certainly she has the voice. Lyrically it had this aspect of a pretty young person presenting some bog-standard, 101 level political/social ideas like something new and innovative because they just discovered them for the first time. But she was very young here and that's what you do. The music is serviceable but not much more.
Paul McCartney
3/5
The real genius level of Paul McCartney is on display in the fact that Maybe I'm Amazed almost carries this whole album - but not quite. None of the rest of it really stuck for me (though none of itnis bad), and it seems like an odd pick for this already over-represented artist.
SZA
3/5
Same issues with this as I've generally been having in this genre - the signing is strong but musically the vocal lines are monotonous, the lyrical content just doesn't interest me, and the musical accompaniment is generic. Nothing stuck with me and I wouldn't listen again.
The Velvet Underground
5/5
I've known this album since the late eighties and listened to it many, many times. It still holds up and it's unquestionably a landmark in the alternative rock landscape. The extreme roughness in parts of the production detracts at least a little, but I think it manages a top rating for sheer audacity in its time.
Queen Latifah
4/5
Crazy confidence, style, and presence, especially considering her age at the time. Just solid hip hop.
Raekwon
4/5
Capturing the through-line from the ghetto gangster fantasy to the mafiosa fantasy in ridiculously adept flow has a niche but definite genius. This genre is not always my favorite (and arguably not "for me" anyway) but of what I've heard I think this is among the best.
LL Cool J
4/5
Chance generating another run of Rap and Hip Hop classics for me out of this list. Like the Queen Latifah album from a couple days back it's just wild that someone so young could so consistently deliver with such confident swagger.
Joe Ely
3/5
A fully polished and workmanlike artifact but I couldn't escape the feeling that in all ways, but particularly lyrically, it was a little basic and on the nose. Not entirely my genre so maybe I'm missing the subtlety as it certainly seems to be very well-regarded.
Madness
3/5
Always enjoy a little Madness, though not big on Ska overall. Another one here where Google Music failed me, maybe because it never had a U.S. release? These digital rights issues perpetually baffle me.
The The
3/5
I liked this fine though it seemed like pretty standard proto-new wave (with a couple of odd curveballs) and suffered from that 80s British serious alt-guy vocal syndrome.
Pavement
3/5
I had a strong Pavement phase in like the early 2000s but the sound kind of wore out on me. And this was never my favorite album, my top hits are all off the earlier low fi EPs and Slanted... not bad but I feel like the earlier stuff featured more interesting songwriting.
Carole King
3/5
I distinctly remember my parents had this LP when I was a kid. I don't particularly recall listening to it, though the big hits on it are familiar. Those hits are certainly iconic, but I didn't find a lot of depth in the rest of the tracks.
Joy Division
3/5
I've heard to so many albums and adjacent to this through this project that I was honestly surprised I hadn't actually listened to this one yet. I feel like I've read about the short life and unhappy end of Ian Curtis half a dozen times while following Wikipedia articles around on prior albums and artists. As well, I've been seeing this album's iconic graphic since my tweens.
So with all this build up... as with a lot of this genre, I'm kind of underwhelmed. Certainly it is foundational and ahead of its time, but foundational of what? A whole lot of British mopecore, with that vocal thing... Maybe the real gold is in the lyrics, I didn't listen to this with absolute attention. But at the end of the day I think it's just not my thing.
Elvis Costello
4/5
Solid, with all the expected features of a Costello album... but lacking any true bangers like Beyond Belief or Lipstick Vogue or classic ballads like Alison. Not sure it needs to be on this list more than many other very good but not truly great albums.
Gram Parsons
3/5
Another album that's been lurking in the background of this list, Parsons and his depressing end coming up repeatedly in the background reading. It pretty much seemed like late 20th century modern country to me.
Sheryl Crow
3/5
This was fine, frankly I though most of it had a pretty bland sound and the lyrics mostly standard Country Girl fare with a little intellectual embellishment. Only a couple songs really stood out to me.
The Rolling Stones
3/5
Seems an unnecessary entry for this over-represented band. It's the start of it all - so what? It was the same blues retreads as the rest at that point.
Laibach
3/5
Some of the stuff on this list I can just imagine that one friend sitting you down in front of the Hi Fi for a play and watching for your reaction as you fumble for your more positive impressions that aren't fooling anyone... not an industrial fan (if that is indeed what yous call this), and the kind of satiro-fascist shtick gets old for me quick. The repetitive stuff towards the end bordered on intolerable. Not quite 1-2 star territory but I wouldn't bother with it again.
Les Rythmes Digitales
3/5
I've slagged off Dance music enough on this list (summary: I think it's mostly good for dancing, significantly less so for listening). This had a promising start but the back half featured all the repetition and squelchy synth blatting that puts me off most Dance.
KISS
4/5
KISS' whole thing was, you know, always pretty dumb, aside from delivering extremely competent hard rock music... This is such a perfect artifact of its time and their particular zeitgeist (that allowed them to unironically claim an "army" of fans), that the level of meathead passes through to the other side and becomes part of the appeal.
Slayer
3/5
Slayer was very big among my edgier high school cohort (edgy not in the sense of hip people with an edgy vibe, these were troubled youth who went on to things like serious entanglements with the justice system). Clearly this is significant in the evolution of thrash and speed metal, and on the instrumental music side it delivers. I never like this kind of vocal delivery and I never will. But the real obstacle for me is how unpoetic the lyrics are. The subject matter... well I'm not particularly sensitive in that area, though I do think it's even more than usually for this genre shock for shock's sake. But it also is just basically a prose recitation of darkness and atrocity. No meter, no structure, no rhyme. Maybe that's the point? Well, it's a dumb point.
Frank Sinatra
4/5
Sinatra was just a fixture in culture by the time I became aware of him, so it's fascinating to learn that the music and era I most associate with him was really a come-back after a period where it was very dubious that his relevance in popular music would survive at all into the post-war era. Anyway, for this kind of music there are peers but no real superiors.
Holger Czukay
3/5
When I was browsing the Wikipedia page for this album as I do when time permits, I was wondering why all the players' name links showed I'd visited them already. Then figured out this was pretty much just more CAN. Which there was already plenty of on this list. Try as I might I can't get into it. Too much of it just seems silly and affected.
Sabu
3/5
I liked this, but an awful lot of it was just drums. By a really great artist sure, but that's not enough to carry a piece for me. It sounded like there was some pretty funny stuff happening lyrically at times which of course I couldn't understand.
Julian Cope
3/5
I liked this more than I expected to, based on the descriptions. For the most part straightforward singer-songwriter fare, and well done. Typical of many what used to be double LPs in the pre-CD era, it fell apart a bit at the end with some material that felt like filler to me. I think it could have been edited down to a shorter, better album. But ended strongly.
Led Zeppelin
4/5
My brother was early in on the return of vinyl, and gifted me Physical Graffiti on a double LP in the full cutout packaging. Not great condition: it a was well-played used copy with plenty of crackle and hiss and one bad skip on In My Time of Dying. I babysat it through a good play recorded to cassette and took that (for once, legal) tape with me to college and listened to it many, many times. Later one of my first digital purchases was a Zeppelin "box set" - from some (I assume) long defunct MP3 store with a brand name that was recognizable in the early Ohs that I can no longer remember. I am well acquainted with this album.
It had been quite a while since I gave this an end to end listen though and I have to say it held up much better than I expected. There is for sure a bit of typical double album filler, but even the B side material all has something going on, little iconic riffs and lines that earned rent free space somewhere in the resources of my mind many many years ago. And the best of it is up there with the best of Zeppelin and for that matter early heavy metal rock, period. It's a great album.
Circle Jerks
3/5
My general feeling about this kind of hard core thrashy punk is that it gets old for me pretty quickly. But of course that's the trick here: at around 15 minutes overall, no song even 2 minutes in length, there's really no time for it to wear out its welcome.
Venom
3/5
It's interesting to see the kind of through-line from British Blues-covering to Zeppelin-esque original "Heavy Metal" to the roots of what is now thought of as heavy metal in all its labeled permutations. Not that big of a fan of the sound though, and while I'm not bothered by the occult or Satanist content, it's a pretty shallow iconography that holds little interest for me.
Steve Winwood
3/5
The first track on this is such a quintessential 80s television theme song... a period piece for sure and a little EZ for my tastes, but I didn't dislike it.
Caetano Veloso
4/5
I liked this a lot, a really beautiful singing voice and interesting mix of South American and US/UK pop influenced music.
Nanci Griffith
4/5
Well constructed and performed country, not strictly my genre but I can appreciate it. Perhaps a little too clean and squared away.
4/5
Pretty good... I will say this list has introduced me to a lot of American Rock of this era that I hadn't listened to before. At times this almost transcends both its era and genre.
Slipknot
2/5
I flatly think metal is way overrepresented on this list. I don't have much use for this. There's nothing much besides speed going on musically, I despise this kind of vocalization as always, and screeching "F- You All" is edginess for fourteen year olds.
Drive-By Truckers
3/5
I didn't have much use for this slack, grunged-up and meta Southern Rock music. Neither the content nor execution of the lyrics much impressed me.
Lupe Fiasco
4/5
This kind of lush hip hop with fast paced and intricate lyrics is a side of the genre I hadn't gotten into much. It's very good, and interesting.
Meat Puppets
4/5
This seems to anticipate and frankly transcend a lot of alt/indie/grunge developments to come after it. Definitely at the top of that game.
System Of A Down
3/5
More interesting than a lot of the metal I've been through here. A lot of it still pretty silly and adolescent in its transgressiveness.
Hot Chip
4/5
I thought this had a lot more going on than most of its genre ilk, particularly in sound variety and vocals. The songs never drag on to wear out their welcome as so often happens in the dance/Electronica spectrum.
Brian Wilson
4/5
Excellent, of course Wilson is a genius composer and arranger, backed by a Cadre of very talented musicians. I have to fall in the camp though of feeling it hearkens too clearly to the Beach Boys without quite capturing that particular lightning in the bottle. It's nice to have a version of this according to the artists vision but seems like something of a contrived artefact.
Joni Mitchell
4/5
Excellent, not an album of Mitchell's I was familiar with before. Typical of experiments of its era the synth sounds can come off a little basic, though at the time I'm sure it was quite avant-garde.
Prefab Sprout
3/5
I liked this pretty well, smart lyrics, though found it had something of a soft and uniform tone that tended to fade it into the background.
Neu!
3/5
Up until the vocals entered the picture this struck me as something like the soundtrack of a Wim Wenders film... which is not at all a criticism or complaint. The vocal component really didn't add anything for me. Rather the opposite. I remain unable to fully get behind the Krautrock.
Adam & The Ants
4/5
My brother introduced me first to a lot of the bands and artists on this list: this one came by way of my sister, back in its original era. I always felt like Adam & the Ants occupied their own unique niche in British 80s pop and new wave. Though the themes of indigenous peoples' plight (such as they are, it's all pretty vague) don't really land these days, the music is at the top of the game, very much holds up for me.
Big Star
3/5
Some interesting stuff (the cover of Nature Boy stands out) but struck me as pretty unfinished (the vague cover of Femme Fatale exemplary of this).
Richard Thompson
4/5
I think this might be around the pinnacle of this era and genre of neo-folk. My one objection is that it comes in so strong, with When I Get to the Border and The Calvary Cross, that it's tough for the still very good remainder of the album to quite match it.
Nitty Gritty Dirt Band
4/5
If you gather a bunch of old school Country and traditional music legends together tonsing hallowed classics it's not much of a stretch you're going to end up with a great album. Credit due to the Dirt Band for thinking of it and pulling it off of course.
Scott Walker
3/5
I thought the opening song was really interesting, both musically and lyrically. The rest of the album didn't hold my interest quite as much. Definitely unique, which is always appreciated.
Beck
3/5
I sort of checked out on beck somewhere slightly south of Odelay.... like REM I feel like he dialed into something genuine pretty quickly, but I don't know that his sophisti-grunge with hip hop and remix trimmings really evolved much after that. I liked this well enough and he's certainly a clever lyricist - maybe a little too clever, you can almost miss that most of it doesn't say anything in particular.
Stevie Wonder
4/5
An exceptional amount going on with this, between the music, the lyrics, and the pioneering forays into cutting edge synthesizer technology.
Songhoy Blues
4/5
Lot of weight here, music in the effort of preserving culture while in flight from religious and political upheaval. A lot of pathos in the vocals despite the language barrier.
Elton John
4/5
What's to say, it's classic Elton John - Core Pop in other words. Good throughout and a couple of right bangers. I'll admit I've always felt Candle in the Wind was maudlin bordering on mawkish and overwrought.
Elis Regina
3/5
Had trouble finding this actual album to stream. This artist's release history seems to be a bit of a mess (like half the albums listed on Wikipedia show just the title "Elis" and I assume what's to be found out there is a lot of posthumous compilation). I cobbled a listen together somewhat approximating the named album and found it to be just alright.
The Mamas & The Papas
4/5
Encapsulates something about its era, though not an altogether unproblematic thing. That kind of peace and love vibe without that much actual content or thoughtful philosophy behind it. Beautiful music and especially signing though, and the lyrics, while often kind of vacuous, are winsome.
N.E.R.D
4/5
Pretty hot. I think it could have been edited down some to its benefit, it's a long album and drags at time. But overall great.
Talk Talk
3/5
On the fence about this one. Somewhat turned off by the vocals at the outset. Some of the music stood out favorably though but I was distracted while listening to it. My estimation might rise with a more attentive listen.
Emmylou Harris
3/5
Solid country of a more modern slant. Though thoroughly competent, a touch monotonous musically.
CHVRCHES
3/5
I didn't dislike this, I'd even say I enjoyed it, but found its while vibe pretty odd.
Count Basie & His Orchestra
4/5
I respect Big Band but have never found it particularly attractive fare to sit and listen to at length. This clearly a cut above however, and a lot of variety in the sound.
Britney Spears
3/5
Spears is a singer I know almost solely through the cultural zeitgeist. The launch of her career as an ostensible adult seemed particularly egregious in terms of leaning on the young and innocent imagery while infusing everything else with sexuality within an inch of plausible deniability. The music, while professionally catchy pop, I find mostly pretty dull, though there are a couple of interesting moments. Not a fan of her particularly affected signing style.
Grateful Dead
3/5
I may have related this before but I mostly discounted the Dead until a close friend turned me on to a few tracks that, while not making a superfan out of me, did open my eyes to their value above the whole traveling hippie drug festival thing. I'm not hugely impressed with this live collection. A lot that strikes me as akin to noodley jazz scales with slacker instrumentation, a good chunk of lazy blues meandering, and the not quite 8 minutes of feedback can absolutely go stuff itself. Can't deny some standout sections that truly capture a band perfectly in sync and jamming on a shared frequency with their audience.
4/5
Ran into my usual issue with this kind of music, in that the repetetiveness (that is clearly an intentional and I assume integral quality of the genre) frequently gets on my nerves. This was a cut above though, mostly stayed interesting, and steered clear of more egregious sonic insults. And though of course I couldn't understand them, all the vocal elements were well done and added to the music.
Malcolm McLaren
4/5
I had a home-taped cassette of this in my late teens. I don't remember how this came about, other than I'm sure my brother introduced me to it. I listened to it a lot. It's a unique piece, interesting and fun, and was neat to revisit.
Roni Size
3/5
Another I will just have to write off as that I do not get this whole style of music. Just monotonous interminable repetition to my ears.
Emerson, Lake & Palmer
3/5
The big opus piece up front kind of displays what is for me the worse side of prog rock: flexing on intricacy, difficulty and speed, but what it accomplishes musically I find dubious. Didn't do much for me anyway. Some gems in the back half however.
Bebel Gilberto
4/5
Luck of the draw I'd just recently been served an album by the producer Suba who died as the result of a fire during the production of this album. This is good, and more accessible for me than some of the South American music I've heard on this list.
Gang Of Four
4/5
This list has exhausted my taste for British punk and post-punk quite a bit but this a cut above - tighter music, better lyrics, and if that British bloke-yawping vocals thing is still in force, it's less intrusive and tempered by a bit of almost-harmony.
Scott Walker
4/5
Second album on this list from this guy (the other pretty recent too) and I don't know quite what to make of it. It's not boring, anyway, and the music is well-voiced and well-produced. Bonus point for just really odd lyrical choices.
Justin Timberlake
4/5
I don't disdain, and even admire in some ways, ther star maker machinery (behind the popular song). The judicious addition of soul and hip hop elements to the dance and pop foundation of his boy band roots is well considered and well done. He certainly has the goods, both in voice and star quality. Typical of products of the machine, it has that manufactured taste... the human element almost glossed over. For what it is its top of the line though, if not really my cup of tea.
Echo And The Bunnymen
4/5
Definitely makes it into the top rank of the ubiquitous British post-punk/new wave presence on this list - smart lyrics and solid music. Still a bit of that British alt-pop guy vocal style that just ain't my favorite.
Ryan Adams
4/5
I don't think I ever actually listened to this artist before. I thought this was very good, if a little padded out at its length.
Echo And The Bunnymen
3/5
Chance delivered two albums nearly in a row by this band I'd heard of but never listened to previously. This was shorter and seemed to me considerably wierder than the prior one. Not necessarily to its benefit.
King Crimson
4/5
Maybe the first (and one of the few) albums in this genre I ever owned. Top of the line prog rock, and I actually like it a lot. Though it carries some of the common sins of its type - there is for example a real stretch of some absolute intolerable horseshit in Moonchild. Mostly it keeps it pretty tight however.
The Byrds
3/5
Too much Byrds on this list, it's sort of inexcusable. In spite of a couple gems, it's a patchy album.
Badly Drawn Boy
3/5
Never encountered this before, I liked how it started out quite a but, though it went through an odd shift of tone and sound throughout and ended in what felt like a less interesting alt-rock vein.
The Pretty Things
3/5
Some interest here, but it didn't succeed in carrying much of a narrative for me and no songs thay really grabbed me.
Saint Etienne
3/5
Pretty unimpressed through most of this. The Neil Young cover (of a song I like a lot) didn't do much for me. Mostly it was my usual issue with this kind of music, just the repetition of simplistic lines. If there's some deep nuance or subtle complexity to it I'm not getting it. The interstitial found sound bits and clips seemed random and not particularly inspired. But then it surprised me with the last couple songs which I though surpassed anything else in the album.
B.B. King
5/5
What's there to say? A true Blues legend, performing at the top of his game.
Blood, Sweat & Tears
4/5
Realized as I started listening to this that it was one of these bands I had in my head as a thing with no clear or examined idea of what they were actually about. Just a disconnected name. If you'd played me the two well-known songs off this LP blind I couldn't have told you who they were by. Anyway pretty odd, maybe. Little too show-tuney quite often for my tastes, but I generally liked it, and an extra point for unabashed wierdness.
Morrissey
3/5
Enough with the Morrissey on this list. I just don't get being that over the moon about the maudlin self-importance.
The Stooges
3/5
I recall being more impressed with a prior outing by this band. Nothing against this, but I'm not convinced I was all that innovative in 1973.
Big Star
4/5
It's interesting to have this juxtaposed with my album of yesterday, the Stooges' Raw Power. Same era, but although this arguably comes off as pushing a more conventional rock sound, I think it's the more innovative album.
Animal Collective
3/5
I liked a lot of this but also hit quite a few patches of headache-inducing wierdo noise.
Rufus Wainwright
4/5
I think I got the second half of this quite a ways back and I'm wondering what I said about it. I liked this, he's clearly very talented, but there is an element of a little too clever (and well aware of the fact) and a little too gloss. I'd like to hear him a little rawer, a little rougher, a little closer to the heart.
George Michael
4/5
I like this departure from super-slick pop though maybe it swings a bit too somber. Still very good.
Aimee Mann
3/5
Some talent here for sure, though the lyrics are very, well, angst girl genre. Vocally a bit weak as well.
Kate Bush
4/5
Another album that featured strongly in my teen years by way of my sister's LP collection. For whatever reason Bush's wierdness strikes the right chord with me, and she certainly has the goods to back it up, both vocally and in musical acumen.
Simon & Garfunkel
4/5
Great, with several dare I say important songs. The over-serious and maudlin Boxer tips some of the duo's weaknesses however. A couple of shifts to an almost country and western vibe create turbulence in the album's flow, though not unpleasantly.
A Tribe Called Quest
4/5
Truly great hip hop album with several truly essential tracks and a couple of clunkers.
Kings of Leon
3/5
This was good fun, if fairly loose and a little sloppy. I'm not sure how high it rises above a host of similar southern-rock inflected alt-rock.
David Bowie
4/5
I liked this, a lot actually, though perhaps it felt a little fragmentary and unfinished.
Willie Colón & Rubén Blades
5/5
Salsa is not really my genre but this seemed pretty much perfect to my unsophisticated regard.
Big Black
3/5
I can see the significance of this as an early through-line from punk to industrial (though a couple of the rhythm tracks hit me as solid arguments for human drummers). And I'll always cheerlead for true punk sensibility as regards the business of music. I think bands of a similar era (Hüsker Dü, Minutemen) had more interesting things going on musically and a whole lot more lyrically. I didn't dislike it though.
Ali Farka Touré
4/5
Really excellent, with a strong unifying musical theme that transcended the language barrier for me.
Magazine
3/5
I liked this pretty well, appreciated the wierdness and the bridge to much new wave and alt-rock. Fair dose of that British alternative male vocalist thing, a little of which goes a long way for me.
Fishbone
4/5
In my first real solo apartment, when I moved in there was a Fishbone poster hanging over what turned out to be a fair-sized hole in the bathroom door, and up to now that was the sum total of what I knew about Fishbone.
I liked this pretty well, although Ska (which I felt to be the dominant genre leaning) is really not my thing. I thought the Curtis Mayfield cover was the best thing by a solid margin, and I do think that represents the high level of musicianship here applied to an even higher level of songwriting and composition. But my proclivities aside, I have to give an extra point for sheer ability and execution.
Kelela
3/5
One of these albums where all the credits are for "production" and "mixing". A lot of talent here but to me the stewpot of Electronica generates something with the soul severely muffled.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
3/5
Very particular female alt/post-punk kinda vocal styling on this that I'm not a huge fan of. Though that's strictly a preference thing: solid artistry all around.
R.E.M.
3/5
I think I said on a prior albums on this list, REM for me peaked around Life's Rich Pageant, and though I listened to this and Document a lot when they came out, they wore out for me. REM doing its REM thing that it pretty much did for the duration, until it stopped.
The Dandy Warhols
3/5
The heroin song was ubiquitous in its era; hated it then, hate it now. Spent the rest of this swinging between thinking it was actually pretty good and finding the whole attitude incredibly irritating. The dullard sobriquet "Minnesoter" nearly pushed it into 2 star territory.
Madonna
3/5
There is a fitting pop superstar arrogance to just naming a release "Music". Madonna signing about what music does to the "bourgeoisie" is the icing on the cake. Obviously with the sort of team behind something like this, there are catchy pop earworms aplenty. I think this list has leaned too heavily into this artist's later catalog; its all pretty forgettable.
Merle Haggard
4/5
Stark contrast to the heavily processed digital pop of a lot of the recent fare Ive gotten from this list. Real instruments played by powerful talents, minimally processed vocals. It is not strictly my genre but it's top of that game.
William Orbit
4/5
As Electronica on this list goes, I liked this as well or a bit better than anything else so far, and better than most. There is a fine line between a hypnotic pattern and irritating repetition and this stays on the right side of it. The spoken word stuff struck me as it almost always does as pseudo-philosophical drivel.
Van Morrison
4/5
Well it's almost all the classics and rock solid live performance. It's unfortunate that Morrison has gone down this path of the contrarian British conservative-ish grump, but no need to hold that against this product of a simpler time.
Kings of Leon
3/5
Kind of departed from the swamp rock into some almost Springsteen territory. I liked it but like the previous entry from this band found it a little middle-of-the-road alt-rock.
Ali Farka Touré
4/5
Second album by this artist in close succession, by luck of the draw. I liked it even better than the first, I think. A real deep personal callback as well as I actually worked for Public Radio International a long long time back, and that guitar line in Diaraby is deeply wormed into my music brain.
Tears For Fears
5/5
About definitive of an era and genre. An absolute product of its time, but for that, near perfect.
Dagmar Krause
2/5
This honestly seemed like a parody of something though it clearly was not. The cabaret style singing and broad accent, the old school up the proletariat lyrics of some of the material, the perfunctory instrumental accompaniment. Wierd selection for this list.
Lana Del Rey
3/5
Kind of a one vocal trick pony? Enough interesting musicians to elevate the overall composition, though as always it seems with modern pop, produced within an inch of its life.
Neneh Cherry
3/5
Very late 80s hip hop, not a bad thing. A lot of clever lyrics, the music serviceable but mostly contained to that scratch and beat of its era. Good stuff from an artist I hadn't hear before.
Ms. Dynamite
4/5
All this UK hip hop is new to me. Thos was very good, both the lyrics and delivery.
King Crimson
4/5
One of a handful defining British prog for me. I like it though as usual with prog rock, advanced jazz etc., at times it makes me feel sort of dumb and left wondering if the more challenging parts are just artists taking the piss on the strength of their virtuoso abilities.
Ryan Adams
3/5
A little moody/gloomy, but I guess it's a breakup album. Solid country and rockabilly otherwise.
Love
3/5
A little perplexed by this band which seems to have made a firmer imprint in the UK as an exemplar of the 60s Rock Scene. This ranges from the most hippie dippy kind of ephemera to hard-edged almost-surf. But it's definitely patchy - in particular, the lyrics throughout feature some clumsy phrasing, and the singing regularly misses the mark.
The Sensational Alex Harvey Band
4/5
Another clearly vital and seminal act I wasn't really aware of before. Not a huge fan of the vocal style, and a lot of the lyrics barrel past transgressive into pure self-parody, though maybe intentionally. The music is fantastic though.
The Everly Brothers
4/5
Pretty peerless in the filed of 50s-60s teen crooner pop. Not really my jam though I recognize it's place. A little treacly.
The Vines
3/5
Definitely a cut above a lot of this type of post-grunge, punk-inflected rock in both substance and style. Definitely still solidly in that pack, though. Not sure anything distinguishes it that highly above a lot of peers. Still I enjoyed it, though it's not a genre I go too all that much anymore.
Public Image Ltd.
2/5
I just can't with this smack. The initial 10+ minutes of just low effort BS filled my heart with hate which did not diminish. It failed the saving grace of so many punk albums by not even being short.
Björk
3/5
Try as I might I'm just can't take to this austere, mostly a capella haunting. She's got the vocal goods and I've no doubt she is executing her particular vision, just not my taste.
Cowboy Junkies
3/5
I bought this under some unknown influence maybe 10 years after it came out, listened to it once. On a second listening I remain perplexed by it. In general I prefer the original versions of the cover songs, and the original songs just don't make a deep impression. I don't hate it, but it is all a little vague and whispery.
The Pogues
4/5
Is "Celtic punk" a genre with more than one member? I suppose I night be surprised. Not always a fan of what McGowan voice (or punk inflections generally) add to what is often essentially traditional music. But itnis exactly what it means to be and the musicianship is first rate.
Skepta
3/5
I liked this all right, though like a lot of UK hip hop it just doesn't quite connect for me. Some cultural divide: though I'm hardly of U.S. hip hop culture either, somehow I get it more fully. The stripped down drum and bass music was a little flat for me, I suspect it plays a lot better in the live environment that grime came out of.
Gorillaz
3/5
I think this band is a little overrated. There is a lot of cleverness but then given the artists involved that's no surprise, but it's kind of a shallow dish.
3/5
Good fun as always though looking back at the last entry from X on this list I feel like their sound and sensibility developed a lot more sophistication even a couple years later on More Fun...
Eagles
3/5
Ran into more rights BS with this one, a surprise, with most of the album unavailable to stream. Some exclusive deal with another service? Fallout of the chronic lawsuit issues the band and its members are embroiled in? I cobbled a playlist together out of live tracks and near misses and called it sufficient. It's, you know, Eagles. I'm not too sophisticated to enjoy these classics among classic rock, but don't find much to say about it.
2/5
Never optimistic with the label Noise Rock and sure enough I hated almost all of this. Struck me as reaching towards the wierdness of The Residents but nowhere near as clever or artful. At the end it did resolve into something tolerable but not enough to redeem it for me.
Muddy Waters
4/5
Muddy Waters is obviously a classic bluesman, though Inwonder if this stands so highly above many, lesser known peers. Not to say it isn't great, it is (if you like classic blues). And deserves extra consideration for being one of a handful who truly brought the sound to the world.
Sade
3/5
This sort of super smooth pop-soul is definitely of a certain era, and not that much my thing, but it has a certain charm.
Def Leppard
3/5
I feel like I already did one by Def Leepard and used the anecdotes and quips I thought of... This was one of THE rock monoliths of my high school days and it is solid for what it is. What that is, however, is a fairly shallow pool.
k.d. lang
4/5
Extraordinarily mature development of voice and sound considering the handful of years she'd been in the business. Maybe a little too purely straight ahead Country - it needs a little twist and surprise. Still a really great debut.
Weather Report
4/5
Found this very pleasant, full of peaceful energy.
Dr. John
4/5
Pulls off the spooky vibe in a gratifyingly wierd manner. These days you have give at least some contemplation to a white artist pulling a persona out of a decidedly non-white culture, and a deeply stereotyped one at that. Given his deep New Orleans roots and diverse collaborators though I think it gets a pass.
Guided By Voices
3/5
I'm not cool enough to have been into GBV before they broke through, but my brother was and exposed me to a lot of earlier stuff. I have to say it was better. This album seems well along into them basically doing their own shtick. I just don't see it as the "must hear" album of their giant catalog.
U2
3/5
U2 very much joins the list of acts I find egregiously over-representeded on this list. It's fine, whatever, though at their most self-important.
Soul II Soul
4/5
Admirable diversity and prominence of vocal performance for a dance album. Didn't all land for me, but deserves an extra point fornthe audacity of the title for a debut album.
LTJ Bukem
3/5
My usual mystification with the appeal of drum and bass. Even the genre name is like, what were you expecting? The repetition, the goofy effects sounds and samples (Ferris Bueller? Really?). Perusal of the internet informs me that my reaction is typical of the "uninitiated". At this point I don't think my initiation is likely.
Gene Clark
4/5
This guy has come up a dozen times on this list. Pretty sad tale overall. This is pretty powerful, though a little too trenchantly maudlin for a masterpiece appraisal.
Jah Wobble's Invaders Of The Heart
4/5
Did not expect to like this but I thought the music was really interesting and good. The sticking point was the male vocals: just lacking in strength and range - a weakness highlighted by the presence of singers like Atlas and O'Connor. Still, pretty remarkable.
Scritti Politti
3/5
An interesting period piece but the sound is very, very dated. A fair bit of it also kind of all sounds the same.
Stephen Stills
4/5
Strong material throughout with a couple of real standouts, but not really breaking new ground on CS&N(& sometimes Y) territory, and a little unfocused.
Silver Jews
3/5
I think this is the first album from this group I've seen on this list, though the sad story of its leader has popped up several times through U.S. indie scene connections. I like it. The tone (even when the lyrics are relatively positive) is a little unremittently bleak.
Throbbing Gristle
2/5
The list of artists that managed the jump for me from performance art to music I'd actually listen to on purpose is pretty brief. Laurie Anderson, Meredith Monk... that might be it actually. I thought this was pointless pretentious garbage. Complete waste of time.
Mott The Hoople
4/5
One of these bands I've known about forever but never really listened too, though I've had a bit of later Ian Hunter in my personal mix for a long time. Clearly a lot of fundamental rock DNA in here, that English transformation of American blues and roots rock. Good and sometimes great, though parts of it fall into a sort of repetitive tub-thump strum-along monotony.
Sarah Vaughan
4/5
Pretty flawless. I thought the music was a touch too subdued (though obviously it is there to frame the voice, and it could be the recording/mixing).
Jane's Addiction
4/5
This came out a couple years before I went to college and was still a huge item on the music scene there. I'm on the fence 30 years later: it doesn't sound like anything else and still rocks pretty hard. There's a goofy dumbness to some the lyrics though.
2/5
I've never actually listened to this band before and honestly it was better than I expected (which isn't saying that much as my expectations were catastrophically low). A lot of it is just so dumb though.
Giant Sand
3/5
I liked this a lot, though I got distracted ny things coming up while listening and feel like it would take another listen to really peg how I feel about it, particularly lyrically.
Nina Simone
4/5
Always amazing, though I think later work rose to greater heights.
Talvin Singh
3/5
Plenty of interest, but a persistent new age electronica kind of vibe that put me off.
Peter Tosh
3/5
Everything around Tosh is always colored for me by his terrible and senseless killing. Reggae isn't a big part of my music appetite and while this is good, I don't think it gets into the highest tier of what the genre has achieved.
Dinosaur Jr.
3/5
I got onto this band bqckwards stsrtung with Barlow and Sebadoh. This kind of sub screamo meets hipster post folk isn't so much to my taste anymore but this is still pretty good.
10cc
3/5
There's a definite charm to this level of gooofery being executed with so much skill and energy. I'm not sure it's something I'd ever really seek out, but I'm glad to have listened to it.
D'Angelo
3/5
Very smooth and accomplished, talent to spare... But the content and general vibe are maybe a little basic.
Dwight Yoakam
4/5
Very solid entry in the "sad sack" genre of modern but very roots-oriented country. I'm not sure it brings anything much new to the table. But so proficient that's maybe a nit pick.
Fun Lovin' Criminals
4/5
One thing that has been really interesting about this list are the U.S. groups that never really made it at home but developed a following abroad. I thought this was very good actually, I'm surprised by the lukewarm reviews it got in its time and it's failure to chart to any significant degree in the U.S.
Devendra Banhart
3/5
New to me, and definitely interesting. Betrays some of the typical sins of this kind of super indie auteur post-folk... introspective past the point of obscurity, minimalist to the point of monotony, vocals idiosyncratic to a fault. I'd give this artist more tries nonetheless.
De La Soul
4/5
Tremendous, inventive and fun.
Jack White
3/5
Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed this, but it feels a little like Jack White had his Jack White thing dialed in and could crank this kind of thing out ad infinitum.
Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark
3/5
I like living in a world where things this off the wall don't just exist but apparently sell a hell of a lot of records. A little too quirky to be something I'd generally throw on to listen for pleasure though, and it's rocking that Standard British Alternative Male Vocal style .
James Brown
4/5
One of those "it must have been amazing" live recordings. I'm sure I don't have anything meaningful to add to the critiques of James Brown.
Django Django
4/5
I liked this a lot. The sound and feel transformed throughout in an unusual and interesting way - from a kind of 80s science fiction vibe to things reminiscent of Simon and Garfunkel, neo-folk in the vein of Shearwater, to British post-rockabilly like P.J. Harvey and John Parish. Never heard of this band, definitely up to try more from them.
Neil Young
4/5
Overall not Young's strongest album to me - much as I don't dispute its ideas, Southern Man is Young at his most holier than thou preaching, despite being a bit of a banger. A lot of the rest is weirdly subdued low energy. But it is redeemed and then some by the presence of the title track, possibly my favorite Neil Young solo song, and When You Dance... which is certainly in my top 10.
Dexys Midnight Runners
3/5
Quite a curiosity... the long compositions with their interstitial dialog bits. There is solid material, it's interesting to get more of this band than just "the hit," but it didn't quite pull it off for me.
Dennis Wilson
3/5
The inevitable Beach Boys comparisons don't exactly favor this as the compositions fall significantly short of Brian Wilson's intricate orchestrations. On the other hand, there is a welcome rough edge of genuine grit on this - darkness and anger - where his brother could only really achieve a kind of melancholy dismay when reaching for pathos. Hard to separate this from Dennis' troubled later life and sad early demise.
M.I.A.
3/5
I became aware of M.I.A. when Paper Planes blew up, purchased the album I think through eMusic (does that still exist?) back when it was in its indie-only, monthly use them or lose them points model. Super catchy but ultimately wears a little thin for me. I enjoyed this maybe a little more than that previous album, it had a rougher, rawer edge that served it well.
The Shamen
3/5
Awfully dated, including a boatload of parody-level hokey electronic effects and flourishes. Not a big fan of most of the vocals, sung or rapped, either. Not terrible but not something I'd generally bother with.
Dinosaur Jr.
3/5
Nothing new to say about this band from a couple weeks ago's review of You're Living All Over Me... kind of wore this sound out for myself in the 90s. The penultimate (and longest) track's descent into full screamo distortion cacophany tested the limits of my tolerance: the kind of thing that might be righteous in a live show but just grates blasting through the headphones.
The Jesus And Mary Chain
3/5
This didn't do a lot for me, generally This band has failed to make much of an impression on me. Middle of the road alt rock.
Tom Tom Club
3/5
As a fan of Talking Heads and (to a lesser extent) Byrne's solo career I've heard about this band a great deal but never actually listened to them. Genius of Love is the only song I recognized. An obvious kinship to Talking Heads and doesn't benefit from the comparison in my opinion - it's just a lot lighter weight. Still enjoyed it well enough.
Lloyd Cole And The Commotions
3/5
A very decent example of a certain style and era of British pop I hadn't heard much of before embarking on this list. Enjoyable listen although nothing stood out that much to.me.
Elvis Costello & The Attractions
4/5
Definitely top tier Costello with some critical songs. The perpetual histrionic agonist love motif does wear thin.
Destiny's Child
3/5
This modern era of pop/soul... A characteristic feature is a long list of "personnel" with barely any recognizable instrument credits but a whole lot of things like "production" and "programming". I see the appeal and there is some real artistry to be found here, but it's not really my thing.
Björk
3/5
I think I liked this the best of the (excessive number of) Björk albums on this list, for an active energy and variety I find lacking in a lot of her work (where I feel like a kind of monotonous brooding intensity never quite opens up into whatever the payoff is supposed to be). People I respect love her and I'm fully open to the interpretation that I'm just not getting it for whatever reason.
Soft Machine
3/5
I felt pretty done with this not long into the opening live piece, but I came around for it somewhat as the album went along. Still a little too much Prog Jazz for me.
White Denim
3/5
A new band to me, and interesting. I don't actually encounter a lot of modern alternative chanelling that countrified psychedelic rock of yore. I liked it but it didn't bowl me over. I was kind of distracted when I was listening, though, and think the group probably deserves more attention.
Doves
3/5
Not what I expected and an unusually broad variety in the sound, I found it hard to pinpoint actually. Not sure it quite added up to a cohesive artifact for me, but it's another one I feel deserves further attention.
The Thrills
3/5
I liked this pretty well, though it seemed to lose its national character early in and trend more generic alt pop of its era. I remember hearing that One Horse Town song a bunch at some point, maybe it became a darling of the local public alternative music station.
Minor Threat
4/5
Mostly felt to me like proto-Fugazi (with the latter being distinctly more fully formed), which is probably some kind of deep heresy. Which is not to say I didn't like it. Although it can feel preachy I admire the purity of this vein of punk, and the virtue of not overstating its welcome never hurts.
Girls Against Boys
3/5
Didn't really grab me. Vocals are seldom the strong suit of this kind of music and these are uninspiring even in that context.
The Bees
3/5
Something completely new to me, and interesting - eclectic, it might be said, to a fault - s little unfocused. But of really I liked it.
David Ackles
3/5
A real curious artifact of its time, this one. I didn't dislike it but found a lot of it odd. A little too much of it that kind of sing-songy half talking delivery that puts me in mind of the less tolerable side of musical theater. Worth a listen still.
Joanna Newsom
3/5
I don't mind a bit of baroque, and I didn't hate this, but there is a level of affectation here (particularly in the vocals) that is too much for me. Compounded by songs of a somewhat egregious length.
Ghostface Killah
4/5
The gangster thing has kind of lost its shine for me. But the art and wit of the vocal flow is impossible to deny.
The Sonics
3/5
I guess this is ahead of its time and reportedly influential, but seemed like pretty by the numbers rock and roll, with too many covers of standards that hardly seemed definitive or even particularly necessary.
Radiohead
3/5
I harbored some naive dreams about the internet freeing us from the stranglehold of the Content Monopolies (don't laugh kids) and was very excited by the unconventional release of this. I'm not sure it belongs on the list of the absolutely essential Radiohead. Listening to it for the first time in a long while, I found it held up, but also held the same flaw I originally perceived: the first half is very strong but it lags considerably on the back half.
American Music Club
3/5
Perfectly serviceable countrified alt-rock with occasional glimmers of psychedelia, yacht, what have you. Not sure it stands out particularly.
4/5
Pretty flawless Country of this Sad Lady subgenre, all about that pure voice. Not my genre generally but I can appreciate it.
TV On The Radio
4/5
Previously had only listened to Dear Science by this band, this seemed more aggressively art-forward. It grew on me though and I ended up really liking it.
Robert Wyatt
3/5
I'm glad to live in a world where wierdness like this can get published... I liked some of it very well and didn't particularly dislike any of it. It got too much into meandering, stream-of-consciousness rambling for me though.
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
3/5
I respect the musicianship but Cave's Gothic creepy thing just isn't for me.
The Coral
3/5
Interesting outing from another band I'd never heard of. I liked the energy and originality. Eclectic perhaps to a fault though - stylistically so all over the map I felt like it had no cohesive center to bring it all together.
4/5
Only really knew this band from Low Rider and Why Can't We Be Friends, so it was interesting to realize there was a lot more going on there. I liked this a lot, particularly the title track.
Culture Club
4/5
Purest essence of pop. Boy George is an odd candidate for icon, it's not as if he's that strong of a singer, but it all works. A fair bit of filler in this though.
fIREHOSE
3/5
It's hard not to go to the Minutemen comparison and that's an unrrasonably high bar. This is perfectly solid in its genre and I enjoyed it.
The Associates
3/5
Little random spike of the 80s lately and this is so 80s. Fairly amusing listen actually, though with that UK New Wave vocals thing, so operatic and affected.
Pere Ubu
3/5
Another band I've heard about forever but never listened to before. Musically interesting but the yawping vocal style is not for me.
Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan
4/5
I could listen to this all day. No clue what a meaningful rating would be, other than the singer has a strong voice.
John Lennon
3/5
Never a huge fan of Lennon's solo work and thus didn't much change that. Wikipedia suggests it was influenced by things happening to him in therapy and that scans, and not to its benefit. I didn't dislike it but it didn't really grab me.
Mj Cole
3/5
As usual with this kind of thing I don't have anything particularly against it but find it wears out its welcome for me in well under the (usually excessive) album length.
Youssou N'Dour
3/5
I liked this, very positive energy, though of course the lyrics were opaque to me.
Quicksilver Messenger Service
3/5
Underwhelmed, kind of slack jam band forgetability to me. Probably would have been a blast to be in one of the actual audiences, most likely super duper high.
Alice Cooper
3/5
Always struck by how relatively mild and understated these old metal/horror rock type acts are (though there is certainly some way out there concepts entertained). Not my genre generally but an enjoyable listen.
Slade
3/5
Presumably foundation level stuff for this style of Brit rock. Lyrically functional though they seemed like a whole lot of nothing. Completely fine but I don't imagine I'll come back to it.
GZA
4/5
Probably pinnacle level for this genre of hip hop. I grew up on the same kind of badly dubbed kung fu films filling weekend hours on sleepy regional TV stations, wierd resonance for a former (very former) kid from the rural midwest - framing that hits better for me than the mafiosa thing.
Adele
4/5
It's a pop artifact obviously but in its context it's pretty flawless. Maybe an issue in pacing, it gets a little bogged down in the middle with too much slow and sad, but they are all good songs.
4/5
Embarrassingly I don't think this is the first time I felt like I knew this band, got confused by what I was hearing, then realized I was thinking about INXS. This anyway was interestingly wierd and pretty unlike anything else. I enjoyed it.
Todd Rundgren
3/5
A lot of talent and creative brilliance on display here, but the overall package is kind of a sloppy mess.
Leftfield
3/5
As usual I found the drum and bass elements repetitive and the album as a whole overlong, but it was elevated by a greater variety and diversity of vocals.
The Mothers Of Invention
3/5
Frequent musical brilliance, vocally inconsistent... started falling apart for me in the latter half, and by the end of the 12+ minute slog of the final song I felt nothing but irritation.
The Darkness
3/5
State of the art rock circa...1986? The vocals sometimes seemed to be intentionally verging on satire. Perfectly content to listen to a bit of retro hair rock but I'm not sure it brought anything new or distinct to the table.
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
3/5
Honestly I think I just don't get this. There is obvious intelligence behind the lyrics and artistry in the instrumentation but is it exactly music? Tonal monologuing over movie soundtrack backing.
Tim Buckley
3/5
Pretty, but excessively maudlin.
Klaxons
4/5
I liked this a lot, it actually felt like something new sound-wise, integrating a lot of modern non_rock elements without their feeling pasted on.
The Police
5/5
About perfect. So little of post-punk and new wave really moves the dial for me, but the Police really brought something new into pop.
Peter Gabriel
4/5
I don't think I ever actually owned this but I sure heard a lot of it in its day (not all though, given I had no idea there was a version on it of the song I knew as Excellent Birds from Laurie Anderson's Mister Heartbreak). The clever video for Sledgehammer was ubiquitous back when my only access to music videos was Friday Night Videos on NBC. And of course In Your Eyes as featured in Say Anything. There are some flat points but overall a great album.
The xx
3/5
This didn't do all that much for me, proficient and slickly produced as it was. The vocals and lyrics in particular I just didn't warm to.
Iron Maiden
3/5
Solid from the get go, if a little bread and butter basic in its construction. Likewise the lyrics are pretty lightweight.
Peter Gabriel
3/5
A lot wielder than where I came in on Peter Gabriel's solo career (around about So), though not without charms. A taste I might acquire with additional exposure.
The Gun Club
3/5
Found this to be straightforward but relatively lackluster rock and roll.
Jeru The Damaja
3/5
Hip hop is obviously a list unto itself; the selection on this list is a little heavy on this style. This is good for that style, though with the usual unwelcome doses of misogyny and hemophilia. I've had my fill of the style St the moment though.
Marvin Gaye
5/5
Gaye's far too early and unnecessary death is a real tragedy. This has that rare quality of being absolutely of its time, yet immediately classic and timeless as well.
The Good, The Bad & The Queen
3/5
Actually purchased a download on this around when it came out (Herculean was getting a lot of play on a local alt rock station and my young child liked it). Haven't listened to it a whole lot since. I like it, but overall maybe the content is a little thin.
The National
3/5
A band I keep hearing about but haven't actually listened to much. I liked this OK, though it seems comfortably and not very remarkably ensconced in its particular genre of gen-x generated post-grunge alt-rock.
Kings of Leon
3/5
I believe this is the second album from this list I've heard for this band. The first was more kind of straight southern rock and didn't make a huge impression. This is musically more interesting. I wasn't able to pick up much lyrically though and the vocals didn't do much for me.
The White Stripes
4/5
The Whites' work stands out against a lot of the similar era alternative rock as bringing some genuinely new material to the game. This is a great album.
The Zutons
3/5
Pleasant enough listen. Stylistically a little all over the map and though this could be intended as a feature, I felt like it tended to lack cohesion and as a result it faded into a kind of radio background music.
The Damned
4/5
Hadn't listened to a lot of this iconic band. Impressively pure punk spirit of its era. I liked it a lot.
Marvin Gaye
4/5
I gather this is considered a classic but I think there's such a thing as getting too personal, and for me that aspect got in the way - not just the lyrics, but the almost conversational singing style. Though it did grow on me as the album went along and had pretty well won me over by the end. It's still Marvin Gaye after all.
Morrissey
3/5
Again I'm tempted to slag this with a one star review just for the egregious over-representation of Morrisey on this list. But really to me it's just a solid 3: the music is pedestrian, he certainly has chops as a singer but lyrically I find it a little plodding and artless, and the songs with a "message" are typically self-important and preachy.
Coldcut
3/5
This comes into its own particularly with some of the guest acts. But some of it (quite a lot if I'm honest) gets into that found noise faffery the remix boys so often succumb and which I find mainly annoying. The good outweighs the bad for me, but narrowly.
The Psychedelic Furs
4/5
Vaguely familiar from my youth which featured New Wave of this era heavily. Rocks pretty hard in that laconic English way, the singing brushes the lower end of ability to a degree that you wonder at them getting away with it. But for this it works. Probably slightly overrating out of nostalgia.
Mekons
3/5
Not without charms but the kind of loose and extemporaneous nature is ultimately to its detriment I think.
The KLF
3/5
I like the whole absurdist anarchy vibe of the KLF but this music is honestly pretty dated.
Iron Butterfly
3/5
I don't know I ever listened to the full version of the famous title track before, and it was kind of a slog. Insee the place this all plays in the hard rock/heavy metal timeline, but found it pretty so so.
The Beta Band
3/5
I liked this pretty well, it had an interesting and distinct sound. The album as a while would have benefited by more variety in tone though.
Pere Ubu
2/5
Apparently I'm too dumb to appreciate this and pretty much endured it. I find it unfortunate because there is some interesting stuff going on musically that gets drowned out by the art noise BS.
G. Love & Special Sauce
3/5
I can only pan this so much as it's generally good-natured dumb-foolery but really the whole fake patois blues-ish thing ain't aged well.
3/5
Nothing particularly grabbed me about this. It's quick and facile, the lyrics have a sharp flow but don't actually say much. Fine but not stand-out.
The Cult
3/5
This kind of immediately fell into the background as I listened, filed under British proto-metal/heavy rock. After the fact, while reading the unusual song titles, I wondered if there was more going on lyrically that I failed to pay attention to.
Scissor Sisters
5/5
Never heard this before and I thought it was nearly perfect - steeped in the Spirit of the luminaries of Glam but cutting its own path. Interesting lyrics and largely flawless delivery. A real gem.
Fatboy Slim
3/5
I feel fairly indifferent to this. I've expressed my admittedly retrograde skepticism of remix culture before. I can't fully escape the feeling that the real creators are just getting mined, catchy though these beats may be.
The Beta Band
3/5
Had another album by this band I'd never heard of before just a few days ago. Similar issues: I like it, they've got some interesting sounds going on, but it's lacking something. Not getting much from the lyrics and the overall composition is kind of missing a central point of view.
Christina Aguilera
3/5
Similar reaction to her last appearance on this list: as a signer she certainly has the goods, and some kind of elite crack team assembled these pop missiles. But it's all too slick and overproduced for me. Some essential component of soul is muted. A lot of the lyrics are really on the nose too- no nuance. I don't dislike it but I wouldn't seek itnout.
Led Zeppelin
5/5
Despite the big number on this one being overplayed to the point of self-parody (still a great song), this remains the peak for me of this genre of heavy rock. Crowned by one of the few blues reworks (by this band indeed within the style and times in general) that really rises into something new.
Mylo
3/5
Most of this felt like what they use these days to back certain kinds of mass produced "viral"-aspiring videos. Cooked down pop hooks. Nowhere has it been more apparent that this thing of using repeated spoken word bits as elements of composition is a dicey technique. It rarely works and usually detracts.