Journey Complete!
Finisher # to complete the list
876
Albums Rated
3.44
Average Rating
80%
Complete
Rating Distribution
Rating Timeline
Taste Profile
1990s
Favorite Decade
Post-punk
Favorite Genre
UK
Top Origin
Wordsmith
Rater Style ?
186
5-Star Albums
39
1-Star Albums
Breakdown
By Genre
By Decade
By Origin
Albums
You Love More Than Most
| Album | You | Global | Diff |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Scum
Napalm Death
|
5 | 2.07 | +2.93 |
|
Playing With Fire
Spacemen 3
|
5 | 2.54 | +2.46 |
|
Boy In Da Corner
Dizzee Rascal
|
5 | 2.57 | +2.43 |
|
Darkdancer
Les Rythmes Digitales
|
5 | 2.59 | +2.41 |
|
Rising Above Bedlam
Jah Wobble's Invaders Of The Heart
|
5 | 2.61 | +2.39 |
|
Live At The Witch Trials
The Fall
|
5 | 2.64 | +2.36 |
|
Back to Mystery City
Hanoi Rocks
|
5 | 2.68 | +2.32 |
|
New Boots And Panties
Ian Dury
|
5 | 2.7 | +2.3 |
|
m b v
My Bloody Valentine
|
5 | 2.72 | +2.28 |
|
The Infotainment Scan
The Fall
|
5 | 2.72 | +2.28 |
You Love Less Than Most
| Album | You | Global | Diff |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Bridge Over Troubled Water
Simon & Garfunkel
|
1 | 3.97 | -2.97 |
|
Metallica
Metallica
|
1 | 3.79 | -2.79 |
|
Dire Straits
Dire Straits
|
1 | 3.72 | -2.72 |
|
Hotel California
Eagles
|
1 | 3.6 | -2.6 |
|
Rumours
Fleetwood Mac
|
2 | 4.46 | -2.46 |
|
Imagine
John Lennon
|
1 | 3.45 | -2.45 |
|
Reggatta De Blanc
The Police
|
1 | 3.45 | -2.45 |
|
Layla And Other Assorted Love Songs
Derek & The Dominos
|
1 | 3.39 | -2.39 |
|
25
Adele
|
1 | 3.36 | -2.36 |
|
The Yes Album
Yes
|
1 | 3.31 | -2.31 |
Artists
Favorites
| Artist | Albums | Average |
|---|---|---|
| Radiohead | 5 | 5 |
| Sonic Youth | 4 | 5 |
| Talking Heads | 4 | 4.75 |
| My Bloody Valentine | 3 | 5 |
| Nirvana | 3 | 5 |
| Pixies | 3 | 5 |
| The Fall | 3 | 5 |
| Beatles | 7 | 4.29 |
| The Rolling Stones | 6 | 4.33 |
| Björk | 4 | 4.5 |
| Prince | 3 | 4.67 |
| David Bowie | 7 | 4.14 |
| Air | 2 | 5 |
| Massive Attack | 2 | 5 |
| The Flaming Lips | 2 | 5 |
| Oasis | 2 | 5 |
| Eminem | 2 | 5 |
| The Smiths | 2 | 5 |
| Joy Division | 2 | 5 |
| Kraftwerk | 2 | 5 |
| Hole | 2 | 5 |
| The Prodigy | 2 | 5 |
| Iggy Pop | 2 | 5 |
| The Cure | 2 | 5 |
| Manic Street Preachers | 2 | 5 |
| Kendrick Lamar | 2 | 5 |
| The Clash | 2 | 5 |
| The Chemical Brothers | 2 | 5 |
| The Jesus And Mary Chain | 2 | 5 |
| Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds | 4 | 4.25 |
| Stevie Wonder | 4 | 4.25 |
| Blur | 3 | 4.33 |
| The Stooges | 3 | 4.33 |
| The Beach Boys | 3 | 4.33 |
| Kanye West | 3 | 4.33 |
| The Velvet Underground | 3 | 4.33 |
| Johnny Cash | 3 | 4.33 |
| Arcade Fire | 3 | 4.33 |
Least Favorites
| Artist | Albums | Average |
|---|---|---|
| George Michael | 2 | 1 |
| k.d. lang | 2 | 1 |
| Yes | 3 | 1.67 |
| U2 | 3 | 1.67 |
| Bee Gees | 2 | 1.5 |
| Emerson, Lake & Palmer | 2 | 1.5 |
| Dolly Parton | 2 | 1.5 |
| Dire Straits | 2 | 1.5 |
| Eagles | 2 | 1.5 |
| The Police | 2 | 1.5 |
| Simon & Garfunkel | 3 | 2 |
| Steely Dan | 3 | 2 |
Controversial
| Artist | Ratings |
|---|---|
| Beastie Boys | 5, 2 |
| Funkadelic | 2, 5 |
| Taylor Swift | 4, 1 |
| Bob Marley & The Wailers | 2, 5, 5 |
| Metallica | 1, 4, 4, 4 |
5-Star Albums (186)
View Album Wall
Popular Reviews
Radiohead
5/5
Claustrophobic, paranoid, oblique and dystopian, a big fuck you to Britpop. In 1997 this sounded like the future to my tiny little 13 year old mind. I always was a pretentious little git.
72 likes
Throbbing Gristle
3/5
Massive banger after massive banger. Huge soaring choruses, exquisite melodies and perfectly polished pop hooks. An earworm if ever there was one.
63 likes
David Bowie
4/5
Better than Lodger, not as good as Low. My short assessment of the Berlin trilogy. My cat named Bowie disagrees with this assessment but who gives a fuck what he thinks, he's a cat.
59 likes
David Bowie
5/5
I've again deferred to my cat named Bowie on this review. When I told him that Low was today's album, he legged it from room to room around our apartment, bouncing off every wall and surface like he was off his tits on catnip. When he finally came down off his Low induced high, he told me "this is Big Dave's finest hour". So there's your review.
52 likes
Napalm Death
5/5
The sound of a flight of stairs falling down a flight of stairs, in a good way.
51 likes
1-Star Albums (39)
All Ratings
Ghostface Killah
3/5
Buena Vista Social Club
3/5
John Lennon
1/5
Bland. Very MOR. Would have given it a very bland 2 but it's hard to listen to a wife beater twittering on about being a jealous guy so he's getting a 1.
The Byrds
3/5
So high on acid that they forgot how to spell "Birds". Quite impressive that they managed to write these pleasant ditties in that sort of condition really.
Dusty Springfield
4/5
Dusty is a very Memphis name for a girl from Camden isn't it? Epic Spector-esque strings. The sort of music Sean Connery's Bond would stick on on a Sunday afternoon if he ever got a day off. Which he obviously doesn't because he's James Bond.
Electric Light Orchestra
3/5
'60s pop meets '70s prog. The album John Lennon's Imagine wishes it was.
Paul McCartney and Wings
3/5
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yrop_GZsp-U
The Slits
4/5
Rock meets reggae meets world music. The Slits were more punk than all the boys.
Spiritualized
3/5
Music for stoned spacemen.
David Bowie
4/5
My cat, coincidently also named Bowie, ranks this as David Bowie's 5th best album. He is a cat of discernable taste.
Creedence Clearwater Revival
3/5
A favourite of Jeffrey Lebowski and my father-in-law. If The Dude and the Russians are in agreement, who am I to argue.
Buddy Holly & The Crickets
4/5
Buddy Holly's '50s rock n' roll, as all American as apple pie, the Super Bowl and marrying your 14 year old cousin.
Frank Sinatra
3/5
Lounge. Chill. Croon. Vegas. Mafia. Frank.
N.W.A.
5/5
You are now about to witness the strength of street knowledge...
M.I.A.
5/5
In a nod to the Pixies, M.I.A. poses the question, "where is my mind?". It's a question that has echoed down the generations, until now. There is only one question of any importance today - "who is Nigel?".
Traffic
2/5
Four white boys from Birmingham not playing heavy metal, who'da thunk it.
I listened to this several hours ago and can't actually remember anything about it. It was definitely no Sabbath though.
Radiohead
5/5
Claustrophobic, paranoid, oblique and dystopian, a big fuck you to Britpop. In 1997 this sounded like the future to my tiny little 13 year old mind. I always was a pretentious little git.
Talking Heads
5/5
In my youth I once snuck into the Sydney Opera House to watch David Byrne sound checking. He didn't play any of these songs so this anecdote probably doesn't have much relevance here. Great album though.
Morrissey
3/5
Probably the last of his great albums before he outed himself as the rock n' roll Nigel Farage. These days big mouth strikes again and again and again and heaven knows I'm miserable now.
Suicide
2/5
Probably the favourite band of all your favourite bands. They died a death at shows night after night so The Horrors don't have to, sorta like rock n' roll Jesus. Definitely an album I like more in theory than in practice though.
Pink Floyd
2/5
Overblown, overlong, overrated and just fucking boring.
George Michael
1/5
The The
4/5
The The. Good Good
Crowded House
2/5
"There goes God in his sexy pants and his sausage dog" is a high point of this album, it is all downhill after that.
Sade
2/5
Have you ever heard a band playing in an upmarket cocktail bar? They invariably sound like this. Not sure if that is a compliment or an insult though.
David Bowie
4/5
Better than Lodger, not as good as Low. My short assessment of the Berlin trilogy. My cat named Bowie disagrees with this assessment but who gives a fuck what he thinks, he's a cat.
Bob Dylan
3/5
Yanno foie gras? Yanno how they force feed the ducks to fatten their livers? That sound of ducks squawking in discomfort and pain, that's Bob Dylan's voice.
Napalm Death
5/5
The sound of a flight of stairs falling down a flight of stairs, in a good way.
Doves
3/5
Teenage Fanclub
3/5
Neil Young
2/5
Tonight's the night? I wish Neil. 21st June 2021 is the night.
Led Zeppelin
2/5
I recently read Pamela Des Barres' book "I'm With The Band". I'd give the book 4 stars. I'm giving this album 2 stars. The big takeaway here is that Led Zeppelin were much more interesting off stage than they were on record.
Randy Newman
2/5
If like me you thought Randy Newman was just that soundtrack bloke, I've included a short summary of his life from a website called Wikipedia. We can all learn together. Learning is fun.
As for the album, the album is fine. Ironically, most of it sounds like it should be on some movie soundtrack or other.
"Randall Stuart Newman (born November 28, 1943) is an American singer-songwriter, arranger and composer known for his Southern-affected singing style, early Americana-influenced songs (often with mordant or satirical lyrics), and various film scores.[5] His best-known songs as a recording artist are "Short People" (1977), "I Love L.A." (1983), and "You've Got a Friend in Me" (1995), while other artists have enjoyed more success with cover versions of his "Mama Told Me Not to Come" (1966), "I Think It's Going to Rain Today" (1968) and "You Can Leave Your Hat On" (1972).
Born in Los Angeles to an extended family of Hollywood film composers, Newman began his songwriting career at the age of 17, penning hits for acts such as the Fleetwoods, Cilla Black, Gene Pitney, and the Alan Price Set. In 1968, he made his formal debut as a solo artist with the album Randy Newman, produced by Lenny Waronker and Van Dyke Parks. Four of Newman's non-soundtrack albums have charted in the US top 40: Sail Away (1972), Good Old Boys (1974), Little Criminals (1977), and Harps and Angels (2008).
Since the 1980s, Newman has worked mostly as a film composer. He has scored nine Disney-Pixar animated films, including all four Toy Story films (1995–2019), A Bug's Life (1998), both Monsters, Inc. films (2001–2013), and the first and third Cars films (2006, 2017), as well as Disney's James and the Giant Peach (1996) and The Princess and the Frog (2009). His other film scores include Ragtime (1981), The Natural (1984), Awakenings (1990), Pleasantville (1998), Meet the Parents (2000), Seabiscuit (2003), and Marriage Story (2019).
Newman has received twenty-two Academy Award nominations in the Best Original Score and Best Original Song categories and has won twice in the latter category, contributing to the Newmans being the most nominated Academy Award extended family, with a collective 92 nominations in various music categories. He has also won three Emmys, seven Grammy Awards and the Governor's Award from the Recording Academy. In 2007, he was recognized by the Walt Disney Company as a Disney Legend. He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2002 and to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2013."
Fugazi
5/5
Ian MacKaye, the punk GOAT. This album was so far ahead of its time but that's no surprise, MacKaye has always been ahead of the game. He was wearing the 21st century hipster staple tiny little woolen hat/skull cap thing in the 1980s. What a fella.
Butthole Surfers
4/5
Elton John
4/5
@SHACK - who's your favourite Rocketman, Elton John or Kim Jong-un?
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
2/5
Turbonegro
4/5
A solid 3.5 but I'm marking it up to 4 on the basis of their live show ass fireworks.
Deep Purple
2/5
Lenny Kravitz
1/5
A soulless Pound Shop Prince.
Ice T
4/5
Below is a list of the musical Ices in order of preference:
1. Ice Cube
2. Ice T
3. Vanilla Ice
Happy Mondays
4/5
Professional Mancs doing funky Manc business professionally. Very good.
Arctic Monkeys
5/5
***FIRE EMOJI***
Led Zeppelin
2/5
The Teardrop Explodes
4/5
Chamber Psych before it was cool by Scouse mad 'ead Julian Cope and co.
Yes
1/5
I'm punk innit so this sort of shit brings me out in hives, and it doesn't even have Rick Wakeman and his capes on it.
Pavement
3/5
Mott The Hoople
2/5
Bowie without the sparkly catsuits, the anisocoria and the tunes. Basically, Bowie without the fun stuff.
Meat Loaf
2/5
Air
5/5
Put this record on, fix yourself a cocktail, close your eyes and you can almost feel those Cafe Del Mar come-downs.
Travis
1/5
The musical equivalent of the colour beige.
Stephen Stills
2/5
Coldplay
2/5
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
4/5
Bad Company
3/5
Bill Evans Trio
2/5
Niiiiccccceeeeee https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsQYzpOHpik
Wilco
3/5
Q Magazine favourites Wilco sounding a lot like a band beloved by Q Magazine. The big takeaway here is, if you like this album then you won't regret treating yourself to a Q Magazine subscription. If Q Magazine still exists of course, which it probably doesn't as print media is dead.
The Everly Brothers
3/5
Beastie Boys
5/5
I've never understood why The Beastie Boys' reputation as the ultimate frat boy party band, forged during the Licence To Ill era, stuck with them throughout their career. They knocked out "the hip hop Sgt. Pepper" in Paul's Boutique and still don't seem to get the credit they deserve as innovators. This album is all over the place in the best possible way. Hip hop to punk via funk and Miles Davis inspired jazz. An absolute classic.
The Pogues
4/5
Booze-soaked Irish fighting music plus one improbable Christmas smash and one God awful novelty hit.
Aretha Franklin
3/5
Haircut 100
3/5
The Triffids
4/5
***to be read in the voice of Harry Redknapp*** The triffic Triffids.
They do seem to have sparked some controversy in the Spackers judging panel, do the Triffids. Harry Redknapp also caused controversy by successfully swerving tax evasion charges by claiming he had secret bank accounts in his dog's name because he couldn't read. So there you go.
The Rolling Stones
4/5
Black Sabbath
3/5
There's absolute bangers here in Paranoid, Iron Man and War Pigs but the rest of it just passes me by really. It's amazing that from this small acorn, the mighty metal tree did grow.
Lou Reed
4/5
The coolest album cover of all time, produced by Bowie, songs about New York's seedy underbelly, Lou Reed at his most accessible, what's not to love?
New Order
4/5
Don McLean
2/5
That one song everyone loves then a load of other less good songs sounding a bit like the one song everyone loves.
Lauryn Hill
4/5
Morrissey
4/5
Just about my favourite Morrissey solo album but some of the more problematic lyrics seem even more questionable in light of his recent madnesses.
Belle & Sebastian
4/5
Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark
3/5
OMD, second to The Coral in the most musical Wools race. Contrary to my general musical tastes, I tend to prefer OMD's more poppy output and whilst this album has some moments, a lot of the more experimental stuff is pretty forgettable.
Joan Baez
1/5
I thought this was going to be perfect listening for a slightly hungover Sunday morning but her voice is far too shrill for my tastes, I only made it halfway through.
Soft Cell
2/5
T. Rex
3/5
I'm pretty sure T.Rex would have been long forgotten if Marc Bolan had lived to an old age rather than going out young wrapped around a tree. This album is fine, no more, no less.
Gene Clark
2/5
Nice sunset
Fiona Apple
3/5
It's fine but hopefully someday in the future when this list is refreshed, this album is replaced by Fetch The Bolt Cutters which is a far superior album.
Pet Shop Boys
4/5
There was some recent Spackers discussion as to whether any 1980s electro bands were more than singles bands. The answer is emphatically yes. The answer is Pet Shop Boys.
Elton John
3/5
Donald Fagen
2/5
I know absolutely nothing about Donald Fagen and knowing nothing about Donald Fagen, I am struggling to put this album into context. Is it meant to be taken seriously or was it meant as a tongue-in-cheek pastiche? I mean look at that album cover! Either way, it is pretty poor.
The Undertones
3/5
If it is good enough for John Peel, it is good enough for me.
4/5
In those hedonistic early '90s days, I bet Blur never thought their rubbish modern lives would turn out to be fat cheese maker, voice of a cartoon, Labour councilor and a quiet, speccy fella (ok, so Graham hasn't changed much). This album seems to get overlooked for some reason, maybe because it falls between Baggy There's No Otherway Blur and Britpop Parklife Blur. It's up there with their very best work though.
Neu!
4/5
I do enjoy a bit of kraut in both its guises - sauer and rock.
Simon & Garfunkel
2/5
My Bloody Valentine
5/5
My bloody favourites, to be played as loud as your ears can take.
Talking Heads
5/5
Talking Heads you say? Well they're no Stuart Maconie in the talking heads stakes. When was the last time you saw David Byrne on one of those I Heart The 1980s, I Heart the 1990s, I Heart Whatever Happened A Week Last Tuesday TV shows? And when was the last time Stuart Maconie wasn't featured in one of those I Heart The 1980s, I Heart the 1990s, I Heart Whatever Happened A Week Last Tuesday TV shows? Byrne just isn't putting the work in to be considered a real top level talking head. He's just not in the conversation when Channel 4 are looking for someone to reminisce about the first series of Big Brother. This album is great though, I'm sure Maconie has pretended he remembers its release vividly on some nostalgia-fest TV show or other.
The Young Rascals
2/5
Left me a bit cold this. One Motown song, one Blues song, one song that's a bit Beatles, one song that's a bit Beach Boys, one song that's a bit Love, one song that's a bit Serge Gainsbourg. None of them as good as the originals. Seems like they couldn't decide whose coattails they wanted to ride to the topper most of the popper most, so they grabbed a big handful of all the coattails.
Led Zeppelin
2/5
The Monks
3/5
If I was a Monk, I'd be pretty pissed with all the hype Velvet Underground get. This pre-dates VU's album output and is equally as out there for the time period.
David Bowie
5/5
I've again deferred to my cat named Bowie on this review. When I told him that Low was today's album, he legged it from room to room around our apartment, bouncing off every wall and surface like he was off his tits on catnip. When he finally came down off his Low induced high, he told me "this is Big Dave's finest hour". So there's your review.
David Bowie
3/5
Bowie the cat fainted with excitement when he discovered that he was getting David Bowie two days straight, so while he is recovering there will be no namesake kitty review today. In my non-kitty opinion this album is good, it would be a highlight in the career of most people but this was Bowie still just finding his voice. There's some bangers and some filler but there was so much better to come from Mr. David Jones on later albums.
John Grant
2/5
TLC
3/5
Hugh Masekela
2/5
Miles likes jazz.
Black Sabbath
3/5
The Style Council
1/5
Comfortably the worst album we've listened to on this list. I had hitherto been unaware that it was possible to make music that sounds so soulless.
Ray Price
2/5
Country Sinatra
The Verve
3/5
I wish this album went out with a bang after History, it would be a solid 4 or maybe even a 5 then. As it is the back end of the album is all just a bit of a slog.
Lou Reed
2/5
Massive Attack
5/5
Portishead
5/5
Japan
2/5
Public Enemy
5/5
The Stooges
4/5
Proto-punk apparently. It doesn't actually really sound much like punk for the most part (see Dirt). It's probably considered punk because of the onstage peanut butter incident and the onstage bleeding and the smack. A lot of smack. Minus major punk points for Iggy supporting Reagan in the '80s though. So yeah, it is a dead good album in its own right but not as punk as The Ramones or The Sonics or Death or SHACK eating eggs from the bin.
Public Enemy
3/5
Sorry to disappoint Mystic Meg's shite cousin Quaylo but this one's only getting a 3. To me it feels a bit tired and phoned in musically in comparison to the first three albums. But note to the mystic meff, Fear Of A Black Planet will join It Takes A Nation... on a 5 when it comes up.
Wilco
4/5
For anyone that liked Elliott Smith but wished he was just a little bit less miserable.
The Pharcyde
4/5
It's just really good fun innit. Cartoonish, body popping, Richard Pryor sampling good fun.
Leonard Cohen
2/5
Hawkwind
3/5
I quite enjoyed this for a short period but it just goes on a bit. It again makes me thankful that punk happened.
Tangerine Dream
4/5
Julian Cope
3/5
Marilyn Manson
2/5
***CANCELLED***
Queen Latifah
3/5
A classic debut containing a bonafide anthem in Ladies First. Some say this was the pinnacle of Latifah's career. Those people have obviously not seen Ice Age: The Great Egg-Scapade.
R.E.M.
3/5
Bauhaus
3/5
The Godfathers of Goff sounding not very goffy. Presumably there was already a goff backlash by 1981 that they were trying to avoid. The album is fine but is very post-punk by numbers in comparison to the originality of their early output. The change of direction is pretty understandable though, once you've released Bela Lugosi's Dead, toured in a hearse and risen out of coffins on stage every night you're probably just about running out of goff road to run.
LCD Soundsystem
4/5
21st century krautrock and I love me some kraut.
U2
1/5
I am delighted to confirm that U2 are not my U. This album supposedly marks one of the greatest reinventions in rock history. So well done U2 on leaving your post-punk roots behind and reinventing yourselves as a bland, beige proto-Coldplay.
The Flaming Lips
5/5
Fever Ray
5/5
Icy Scandinavian business. Far more subtle than The Knife but it is an album that reveals more and more with every listen. I am sure there must be an alternative universe out there somewhere in which The Knife were the biggest band on the planet and Fever Ray is the biggest pop star the world has ever known. It's a universe in which I want to live.
Jorge Ben Jor
3/5
Queen
3/5
Bob Marley & The Wailers
2/5
I struggle with Bob Marley. I am admittedly no reggae expert but to my untrained ears, musically a lot of this sounds like a lounge bar band pastiche of reggae, it's soulless at times. Sacrilege I know.
Todd Rundgren
2/5
Metallica
1/5
Oddly enough, I had a dream last night that today's album would be a thrash classic. Sadly I dreamed of Slayer - Reign In Blood not this limp lettuce of an album.
The Saints
3/5
Sisters Of Mercy
3/5
Bob Dylan
3/5
TV On The Radio
5/5
Funky Indie, that should be a genre right? And this album should have led the Funky Indie charge. Although most indie bands going funk are an absolute car crash so maybe not. TOTR are one of the most consistently brilliant bands of the last 20 years. All of their first three albums including this one are stone-cold classics.
Os Mutantes
4/5
The Brazilian Velvet Underground & Nico anyone? I really enjoyed the oddity of this.
The Lemonheads
5/5
One of the first handful of albums I ever bought with my own moolah and I've still got a huge soft spot for it. It's pretty much perfect in its own early '90s slacker pop kinda way. Although I really wish they had left it alone and not tacked Mrs. Robinson on the end in an attempt to shift a few extra units.
Van Morrison
2/5
Wire
5/5
A lot of bands have built a lot of careers on ripping off this punk classic (hello Elastica, hello Guided By Voices). Considering it has helped spawn genre after genre, DC hardcore to the early 2000s British post-punk revival, it still seems to go somewhat under the radar. They must be gutted that they sold sod all records and made no money off of it really.
Sebadoh
4/5
The Divine Comedy
2/5
A posher, shitter Pulp. It does contain the Father Ted theme tune though so have that Jarvis.
Sonic Youth
5/5
Bee Gees
1/5
Thank Jeebus disco happened.
Thundercat
4/5
He's no Snarf is he?
Isaac Hayes
3/5
Come on admit it, you all sang along as "SHACK" instead of "Shaft" didn't you?
4/5
The Go-Betweens
3/5
Television
5/5
Marvin Gaye
5/5
Pure sex. The album that is playing in my head whenever SHACK is in smelling distance.
Belle & Sebastian
4/5
I've always had a huge soft spot for "twee-pop", despite absolutely hating the term twee-pop - I'm sure NME are to blame, they usually are. The world would be a little less fun without the jangly indie of twee bands from Talulah Gosh to the mighty Los Campesinos!, and Belle & Sebastian are up there with the very best of them. This isn't their best album but it's a strong debut, especially considering it was thrown together in a week and none of them had played together before recording. Oh, and the album cover is a woman breastfeeding some sort of toy tiger fish, so there's that.
Funkadelic
2/5
Pet Shop Boys
4/5
John Lee Hooker
3/5
Radiohead
5/5
Radiohead's first step beyond being "the Creep band". A stone cold classic. A stone cold classic made even better by having what looks like an Easter Island head in the final flings of ejaculation on the cover.
Oasis
5/5
New Order
5/5
An album that doesn't really have any of the hits and is all the better for it. New Order's most cohesive and coherent album by far.
Depeche Mode
4/5
It's a 4 for me Clive.
John Coltrane
2/5
Jazz is a lot like England's "golden generation" of footballers. On paper, there's a lot of superstars but in practice, each player seems to be out of sync with each other and playing to their own tune.
Frank Black
3/5
Harry Nilsson
3/5
Didn't think I'd know any Harry Nilsson songs but there are some stone-cold classics on here. I'm all for the odd choice of album name and album cover too.
Boards of Canada
5/5
I've very fond memories of this album, it opened me up to a world of leftfield electronic music that my young Britpop addled mind never even knew existed. And in later years it was my go-to to help nurse my "morning after" mind. It's aged really well too, which a lot of similar albums from the era definitely haven't.
Sarah Vaughan
3/5
The album's alright but if Sarah Vaughan thinks she can hang her hat at mine, she's got another think coming.
Sister Sledge
4/5
The Doors
4/5
I always lumped The Doors in with Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin as a band I thought were hugely overrated. I might have to reassess that as I really enjoyed this.
Eminem
5/5
It's still shocking, it's still nasty, it's still dark, it's still funny. It's all a joke, Slim Shady is just a character, we all get that but it still really doesn't sit well in the woke 21st century, and probably rightly so. An album so fucked up that Marilyn Manson thought it was too over the top for him to appear on. That said, it's still an astonishing album, a true hip-hop classic. There aren't many out there with the rap dexterity, the writerly precision and the comedy timing of peak-era Marshall Mathers.
fIREHOSE
2/5
It's no Double Nickels On The Dime is it? And they've got their capitalisation all wrong there.
Nina Simone
4/5
Powerful.
Fishbone
3/5
I don't really know what this, it's all the '80s in one album. I think it would take a good few listens for me to decide whether I actually like it or not.
Frank Sinatra
2/5
PJ Harvey
3/5
I do like a bit of Peej but this isn't one of my favourite albums of hers.
Gillian Welch
3/5
The Doors
2/5
Pastiche blues apart from Riders On The Storm which sounds like The Doors does lounge music. I like the one that sounds a bit like a carnival version of the Only Fools And Horses theme tune though.
Green Day
2/5
A punk rock opera concept album? Johnny Rotten would be rolling in his grave, if he were dead. Shame he's not dead really, rather than selling his soul on I'm A Celebrity and butter adverts.
The Who
2/5
It would probably be of more interest to me alongside the stage play but I couldn't be assed with this as a stand-alone album.
Iron Maiden
4/5
Eddie's an absolute lad isn't he? I enjoyed this way more than I was expecting to, I thought we were in for much more guitar wankery. It's a lot more classic hard rock, as opposed to metal, than I was anticipating. Very good.
Brian Eno
5/5
Cyndi Lauper
5/5
You can stick Madonna up your arse, this is how you do perfect '80s pop.
Emerson, Lake & Palmer
2/5
A Tribe Called Quest
4/5
MGMT
2/5
Tie-dye bandana hype. I couldn't get on board with the music (or the tie-dye) at the time, and I still don't get it now. Three absolute monster hits and a lot of really dreary filler. Rehashing all the shit parts of the 1970s in a knowing hipster way for the 2000s generation, great.
Curtis Mayfield
4/5
The Smiths
5/5
Oh Mozza, why did you have to go and ruin it? Ya silly racist.
Leonard Cohen
4/5
Good this. I do want it darker. I want SHACK being left in charge of a pack of boy scouts levels of darker. Let's see if you can match that for darkness Leonard.
Common
5/5
They don't make hip hop albums like this any more because a) Kanye finds it impossible to just let his productions do the talking and b) hip hop has subsequently discovered fucking auto-tune. I absolutely love this album but I do find Common's delivery dull at times compared to his '90s peak. Imagine how incredible Resurrection era Common over Kanye/Dilla beats would have been, sigh.
LCD Soundsystem
5/5
The Sound of Silver? No sir, this is a gold medal contender if ever I heard one.
The Beach Boys
4/5
A stepping stone album that sounds equal parts early surf-pop Beach Boys and the later sonic experimentation Beach Boys, but just not quite as good as either.
Jimi Hendrix
2/5
Couldn't be bothered with this at all. It's just not my bag maaaannnnn.
Soul II Soul
3/5
I used to really love this album but having not listened to it for a long time, I actually found it pretty dull. Maybe it hasn't aged well. Or maybe I haven't aged well.
Neil Young & Crazy Horse
3/5
The Specials
5/5
The Stooges
4/5
SHACK
Derek & The Dominos
1/5
Oh the irony of someone that is openly racist building a career on piss poor blues rip-offs. Fuck racist, rapist, anti-vax Clapton.
Jeru The Damaja
5/5
Curtis Mayfield
3/5
Eurythmics
3/5
Tom Waits
3/5
Not what I was expecting from Tom Waits. I'll probably give this a few more listens as I suspect it may be a grower not a shower.
The Roots
4/5
The Who
2/5
Screaming Trees
3/5
Bob Marley & The Wailers
5/5
SHACKY don't worry about a thing, because every little thing is gonna be alright (this is my message to you).
Pretenders
3/5
Aimee Mann
2/5
Wetter than SHACK's luscious locks after one of his infamous six-hour showers.
Beatles
5/5
Never heard of this lot but I predict big things for them, they'll go far.
Buffalo Springfield
3/5
Ok, not as good as Dusty Springfield or Springfield from the Simpsons.
Van Morrison
4/5
A list of vans in my order of preference:
5. Van Halen
4. Van Morrison
3. Van Gogh
2. The A Team van
1. The van in which SHACK picks up the kids.
The Afghan Whigs
5/5
Afghan Lids
Tom Waits
4/5
He was surprisingly experimental wasn't he old Tom? The kinky devil.
Radiohead
5/5
Laibach
4/5
Mekons
3/5
Bob Dylan
4/5
Blonde On Blonde, a highly misleading album title that. There's no hot Scandanavian girl-on-girl (or Scandanavian boy-on-boy) action to be found here.
The Sugarcubes
4/5
The Only Ones
4/5
Morrissey
4/5
CHIC
5/5
C'est très chic.
Kelela
2/5
Electronica dubstep dance party Kelela yes, trad r'n'b Kelela no. Far too much of the latter on this.
Roni Size
4/5
House of Darkness basement banger.
Peter Frampton
3/5
Orange Juice
4/5
Don't rip it up and start again lads, this one is sound.
Santana
2/5
Queen
3/5
Elbow
2/5
Dreary.
Mudhoney
4/5
The Sabres Of Paradise
4/5
Leonard Cohen
3/5
Keith Jarrett
3/5
Joy Division
5/5
Manc miserablist masterpiece.
John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers
1/5
I like that they look like a '90s Britpop band on the front cover. There's nothing else I like about it. More of notorious racist Eric Clapton ripping off music of black origin, goody. If this album was a famous footballer, it would be Sinisa Mihajlovic.
Muddy Waters
4/5
Like Genie from Aladdin (the Robin Williams one, not the Will Smith nonsense) rocking an Everton shirt, eating blueberries and riding a blue whale into the deep blue ocean. All the blues.
Elvis Costello & The Attractions
3/5
Everything But The Girl
1/5
Everything But The Tunes.
Björk
5/5
Air
5/5
Tricky
5/5
Dexys Midnight Runners
5/5
Deserves a 5 just for managing to make dungarees cool. Top effort. If it was a footballer it would be sarong wearing trendsetter David Beckham.
Jane's Addiction
3/5
Jane's have always felt to me like a band that I should really love but they just leave me a bit cold. I can't really put my finger on why. This album is pretty decent but I can't imagine I'll listen to it again any time soon. If it was a footballer it would be Alan Shearer who I could also never muster any strong feelings about.
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
2/5
Miles Davis
2/5
What a talent. Imagine being able to play that much trumpet while smacked out of your eyeballs? It should be a lesson to all these namby pamby modern rock'n' rollers, get off the 'gram and get on the smack.
The Avalanches
4/5
You're a nut, you're crazy in the coconut. Exactly.
The Who
4/5
The Incredible String Band
1/5
Bad. Comically bad.
Garbage
4/5
Parliament
3/5
A funky ball of tits. The problem with Parliament is that there have been so many comedy pastiches of P Funk that all I can hear is the comedy pastiches. I'm Old Gregg! You ever drink Baileys from a shoe? I got a mangina etc, etc.
If this album was a footballer, it would be Noel Fielding.
Otis Redding
5/5
More soul than SHACK's size 18 shoes. Soul/sole - see what I did there?
10cc
3/5
Kanye West
3/5
Two takeaways here - 1) Humble Kanye is weird. 2) Bort Ainsworth still wears Von Dutch.
Kanye West
5/5
Five stars despite Kanye's sometimes shoddy vocals and fucking autotune. The beats are different gear.
Cypress Hill
4/5
The Rolling Stones
5/5
Paint It Black and Under My Thumb you say? Yes, of course I am giving it a 5. Bet Charlie Watt hated it though, absolutely hated the Stone that fella, absolutely loved the jazz.
Ravi Shankar
3/5
Are you George Harrison in disguise?
Manu Chao
4/5
Lies, lies from tiny eyes. Manu, stop trying to lay claim to SHACK's crown as King of the Bongo.
Everything But The Girl
3/5
Madonna
2/5
Thought I was going to love this as I am a sucker for a well crafted pop album but it is just a bit shit. Even the hits aren't as good as I remember them.
Big Star
4/5
Most of this was enjoyable, I like the shoegazey before shoegazey was a thing-ness of Kangaroo but the happy-clappy Jesus song and the absolutely abysmal Velvet Underground cover? Not for me Clive.
Genesis
1/5
I like the one where the big monkey plays the drums in exchange for chocolate, why isn't that on here Phil? This is vastly superior to the other prog we've had on this list, although that is a pretty low bar really. I've said it before, and I am sure I will say it again before we get to the end of these 1,001 albums, but thank the Rock Gods that punk happened.
Yes
2/5
More prog, yay. If this album was a footballer, it would be Kazuyoshi Miura - it goes on playing forever.
Kraftwerk
5/5
It hurts my head to imagine how alien this must have sounded in 1978. Like Arnie turning up naked and nicking a motorcycle, it must have been like the future had arrived.
Nico
3/5
Bert Jansch
3/5
Folking hell. For folks sake. Un-folking-believable.
Have you seen that video where Haaland balances three balls on each other and hits a target? Yeah, I've got nothing else to say.
Sly & The Family Stone
2/5
I've tried hard with this album over the years, it feels like it should be something I really like but I just don't really get it. It wanders into aimless, hookless meandering nothingness far too often for an album with such a massive reputation.
Siouxsie And The Banshees
3/5
It's a pretty decent early punk album but doesn't really grab me like her later post punk/goff incarnation.
808 State
4/5
Talking Heads
5/5
Things what I did done learn from the 1,001 Albums: Part 4 - Talking Heads are really bloody good. No idea why I paid them so little attention before. If they were a football team, they would be Brentford (a breath of fresh air) as opposed to Burnley (Aimee Mann - a bit dull), Norwich (The Incredible String Band - really, really shit) or Man United (any jazz - loads of fellas doing loads of different playing with absolutely no cohesion).
Aerosmith
4/5
Hard rock, hard cock. Well sort of, I'd say it gives me a semi at best.
Supergrass
3/5
Some killer, some filler.
The Smashing Pumpkins
4/5
Billy Corgan - tactically inept cabbage head.
Dolly Parton
2/5
Red Hot Chili Peppers
2/5
In the words of Krist Novoselic..."white boy funk sucks".
The Gun Club
5/5
Carole King
2/5
Madonna
4/5
It's a William Orbit album innit, and a good William Orbit album at that. It just happens to have Madonna singing over the top. It probably would have been better without Madonna singing on it but then it probably wouldn't have made this list. So there you go.
Run-D.M.C.
4/5
What a four track run Peter Piper, It's Tricky, My Adidas and Walk This Way is. I needed a little sit down after that. The rest of the album, as good as it is, is a bit underwhelming in comparison.
Fred Neil
3/5
Nirvana
5/5
This is very nice, I'm sure there will be quite a large audience for this quiet, LOUD!, quiet, LOUD!, quiet, LOUD!, Beatles meets '80 hardcore thing they've got going on. If they stay on the right path and stay away from rock n' roll excess (say no to drugs kids), I predict big things for this band.
Dizzee Rascal
5/5
This album sounded like it came from another planet in 2003 despite actually coming from a 15 year old kid mucking about in his school music rooms in Bow. 18 years later those beats still sound like nothing else that has come before or since.
Blur
4/5
Don't believe the rumours emanating from the Bolton region of Greater Manchester, this is a well put together album not just a hit or two and some filler. It just about manages to stay on the right side of the Mockney geezers schtick that became overwhelming by the time of The Great Escape. And those hits that the Bolton fella is on about, they really are some monster hits aren't they?
Echo And The Bunnymen
5/5
Top Scousers.
5/5
Top Scousers.
2/5
It's just not very enjoyable. I know that's not a very insightful review but it's all I can muster.
AC/DC
3/5
Not as good as ACxDC. Are ACxDC on this list? They better had be. Some Anti-Christ Demoncore to warm your cockles. Took Bort Ainsworth to see ACxDC once, I don't think he enjoyed it. Probably would have preferred AC/DC.
Herbie Hancock
3/5
Jazz funk. The mixture. The cerebral musicality of jazz mixed with the visceral groove of funk. What a combo. Jazz's deformed cousin.
Earth, Wind & Fire
3/5
Crosby, Stills & Nash
3/5
Taylor Swift
4/5
Just dead good pop music innit, and there's nothing wrong with that. The best all out pop album we've had on this list. Could do without her vocals though, she's very bland.
Jethro Tull
3/5
Funkadelic
5/5
What a delightfully mad bastard George Clinton is. I love this album mainly because I don't understand any of it. And it's actually listenable which can't be said of a lot of Parliament/Funkadelic's output.
Ian Dury
5/5
Fugees
5/5
Was tempted to give this a 1 star review purely to spite them for their tardiness in turning up for gigs. But then it's so, so good. It's in the top 10, maybe top 5, hip hop albums of all time in my very humble opinion. Ms. Hill is criminally underrated as a rapper too. Maybe that's because she's a woman, or maybe it's because she never turns up to her fucking shows on time.
Richard Thompson
2/5
Missy Elliott
4/5
Dire Straits
1/5
Every song starts out a bit like Sultans of Swing but then turns out to be nowhere near as good as Sultans of Swing. Then there's Sultans of Swing which is alright. And then there's some more songs that start out a bit like Sultans of Swing but turn out to be nowhere near as good as Sultans of Swing.
If Robert Johnson really did sell his soul at the crossroads, I'm sure Beelzebub is making old Bob suffer in eternal damnation by playing this type of watered down, piss weak "blues" on repeat to him for all eternity.
Simple Minds
5/5
This couldn't be more of its time if it tried. It's the musical equivalent of Molly Ringwald doing a Jane Fonda workout while wearing leg warmers and a Walkman. Very 1980s. But the 1980s was the best era for music (it just was alright), so that's just fine.
Paul Simon
3/5
Muddy Waters
3/5
Hole
5/5
The Auteurs
3/5
Jamiroquai
2/5
Prat in a hat.
Ramones
5/5
One trick ponies sure, but what a trick it is.
Soundgarden
2/5
Grunge = Nirvana + a wave of brown, murky mediocrity. Soundgarden = an average pub band + smack.
FKA twigs
4/5
The Prodigy
5/5
Frank Ocean
4/5
Lambchop
3/5
@SHACK, @SHACK, @SHACK, @SHACK, @SHACK, @SHACK, @SHACK, @SHACK, @SHACK. SHACK LOVES LAMBCHOPS.
Amy Winehouse
4/5
Miles Davis
3/5
Aphex Twin
5/5
Miles Davis
3/5
The Verve
4/5
Thin Lizzy
3/5
Dr. Dre
5/5
Milton Nascimento
1/5
I'd never heard of Milton Nascimento, on first listen it felt to me like this was on the list purely to up the quota of Latin albums. I've since done some Googling and he does seem to be very highly regarded, Rolling Stone voted this album the 7th best Brazilian album of all time but it's not for me. It's really bland. It's got none of the exciting party elements I would generally associate with Latin music. Instead it is infused with the dullest elements of jazz and prog. And if there's one thing this list has taught me, it's that jazz and prog are not my bag baby.
Cat Stevens
3/5
I do like cats. On a sliding scale of cats, from Lee Cattermole at the bottom to Thundercats at the top, this is somewhere in the middle. I enjoyed it more than I had expected to. I probably wouldn't rush to listen to it again but it was less bland than I had anticipated.
The B-52's
4/5
It's just good fun isn't it? Grey po-faced post-punk painted in technicolour and covered in glitter.
SZA
3/5
This is pleasant enough but I struggle to see why it is put on such a high pedestal, it sounds a lot like all the other neo-soul/alternative R&B out there. It's no A Seat At The Table.
The Yardbirds
3/5
It's fine, mid-table blues inspired '60s rock n' roll with some mild psychedelia thrown in for good measure. At least it doesn't have thundercunt Clapton on it.
Iggy Pop
5/5
Never mind The Stooges, this is peak era Iggy, well on record at least. Iggy and Bowie is the dream team innit. I would have thought The Idiot and the Berlin Trilogy are all on this list as well which says a lot about how creative these two were during that period.
Lana Del Rey
2/5
Bland background music.
Bob Dylan
4/5
Voice of a generation? Voice of a duck farting in a space suit more like.
Nirvana
5/5
Raw and beautiful. Just how SHACK likes to eat his meat.
Pixies
5/5
It's all the best bits of rock n' roll from 1960s surf rock to 1980s hardcore thrown together in a way that is completely and utterly unique to the Pixies. Well it was unique at the time, every man and his dog ripped off the simultaneously abrassive and catchy formula in the early 1990s (hello Kurt). Although no one, Nirvana included, got anywhere near the surrealist genius of Charles' lyrics. It's in my top 5 favourite albums of all time without a doubt.
R.E.M.
3/5
The sound of a band still finding it's feet. It's enjoyable enough but very much sounds like a band writing songs that were facsimilies of their influences. There was a lot better to come from R.E.M.
Roxy Music
4/5
https://youtu.be/8E0qSTFIauw
Antony and the Johnsons
3/5
I loved this album when it came out but listening back to it now, I am struggling to remember why. The voice is beautiful but the music seems to be there solely to showcase the voice, there's not a lot going on. The later ANOHNI stuff is infinitely more interesting.
Lightning Bolt
4/5
A conversation from the mid-2000s:
The White Stripes - "Ooooooo look how much noise we make with only two people."
Death From Above 1979 - "But we make even more noise with two people so there!"
Lightening Bolt - "Hold my pint..."
5/5
Strong hat game.
Def Leppard
2/5
I really don't want my metal to sound acceptable to my mother. Give me more Slayer and less Bon Jovi. And NWOBHM is the single worst name for a musical movement ever, so it is a no from me.
Penguin Cafe Orchestra
4/5
I thoroughly enjoyed this. Folky, orchestrally and a bit post-rocky (before post-rock was a thing).
Sums it up better than I can: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZ-K74QzNzM
James Brown
3/5
My Bloody Valentine
5/5
Every hipster band on the planet dabbles in shoegaze these days, none have ever come close to this masterpiece.
Various Artists
4/5
A Wall of Sound/Christmas combo, what's not to love? It beat listening to Mariah Carey wailing on about wanting me for Christmas while I ate my Christmas dinner. I'm married Mariah, leave it out will you. You bring this up every year, you're embarrassing yourself.
Steely Dan
2/5
2/5
If "Yes" is the answer, what is the question?
Is this the last time you ever want to hear an album by the prog rock band Yes?
Fleetwood Mac
2/5
Slightly better than Lee Mack, no where near as good as mac and cheese.
Most overrated band of all time? Probably.
3/5
It sounds like a band trying to leave behind the '77 punk sound of Los Angeles (which is fine) but not really hitting on anything new of note. Punk was splintering in a million different directions by 1981, this probably wasn't one of the more exciting ones.
Sonic Youth
5/5
Major label sell out bastards. Playing songs with hooks and tunes and everything. Bastards.
3/5
I think I have had my quota of Dylan, no more please.
Robert Wyatt
4/5
Probably the most enjoyable jazzy/proggy album we have had on this list, although that's a very low bar. I can definitely hear some echos of this in Radiohead and God Speed! You Black Emperor.
Franz Ferdinand
3/5
@SHACK - please, please take me out and show me your dart of pleasure. Please.
This was a gateway album to a lot of post-punk classics for me, however having now absorbed those post-punk classics, this really does sound like a poor imitation.
Jurassic 5
4/5
Funky, old school stylee hip-hop vibes.
The Velvet Underground
5/5
A truly iconic album. It's just cool isn't it? Everything about it is cool, from the cover art to Nico's very good, not very good singing to Lou Reed's snide attitude to John Cale's experimental noise making. The grandaddy of trendies everywhere from art-rock to heroin chic to 21st-century hipsters.
Joni Mitchell
3/5
Why did Joni opt to have her left hand protruding like a chode from a road on the front cover of this album? What's she trying to say? What's the deeper meaning?
The Flying Burrito Brothers
2/5
Nah mate, I'm a taco man and generally I prefer my Mexican food not to be airborne.
Suede
5/5
Sexy, sleazy, gritty, glitz and glamour. All the good stuff. Like shagging behind the bins while clothed in your most extravagant finery and covered in glitter.
The Cure
5/5
King of the Goffs in not actually that goff shocker. It's just really good indie/rock/pop/whatever music. Happy face emoji. Sad face emoji. Panda bear emoji.
Incubus
2/5
I was very much into the wave of early 2000s British rock bands that were clearly influenced by Incubus (Biffy Clyro, Reuben, YOURCODENAMEIS:MILO et al) but I could never really get on board with Incubus themselves. They seem to have taken their cues from Grunge, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Nu-Metal, none of which are exactly my favourites. And "to resist is to piss in the wind, anyone that does will end up smelling" has got to be in the conversation for worst lyric of all time.
5/5
I went into this thinking I was going to hate it. I've continued to listen to Definitely Maybe sporadically over the years but it's a long time since I've bothered with What's The Story. And maybe it is just nostalgia but I still really, really enjoyed it. So that's good.
Circle Jerks
5/5
I was going to wax lyrical on this then I realised the band is called "Circle Jerks" and the album is called "Group Sex" so anything I write is going to pale into insignificance in comparison to whatever Nigel Spackman writes.
The Stooges
5/5
What you've done wrong here lads is that you've written an album called Raw Power and not a single song is about SHACK. Massive oversight.
The Smashing Pumpkins
3/5
Mellon Collie and the Infinitely Long Album, am I right? Behave yourself Corgan, you're from the punk generation, you're not in Yes. I do really like most of this album but it just goes on far too long. Far, far too long. No one ever needs to make a double concept album, ever. It's a shame because the singles here are some of the best songs of the 90s. If they'd shaved about four and a half hours off the running time this could have been one of my all time favs.
Steely Dan
2/5
I bet the Germans hated this album because;
1. It's fucking BRETZEL innit;
2. It's not a very good album irrespective of the bastardisation of the German language.
Solange
5/5
@SHACK says he enjoyed when she punched Jay Z in the face. That's my review. 'ACK.
Talking Heads
4/5
Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five
4/5
Simon & Garfunkel
1/5
I did not need this today, awful.
Faith No More
4/5
Basically a Mr. Bungle side project.
Run-D.M.C.
4/5
The album that ripped hip-hop from its disco roots and set the template for its next 38 years. The album that proved full length LP album hip-hop could be a thing. The B-Boy style that reinvented urban fashion. And in Rock Box the song that quietly went about creating the rock/rap crossover format, got Run DMC played on MTV and had a large hand in hip-hop going mainstream. Got a lot to answer for haven't you Rock Box eh?
As influential as it is, there's a bit too much filler in amongst the bangers to make it a 5. That said, an album containing Hard Times, Rock Box, Jam-Master Jay and It's Like That can't possibly get less than a 4, filler or no filler.
Eric Clapton
1/5
Awful, racist, rapist, anti-vax conspiracy funding cunt. And the music is shite.
The Velvet Underground
3/5
It's probably just me but Candy Says has always really annoyed me as an album opener. It is a decent enough song but feels much more like a slow paced, mid-album song. Other than that the album is fine but is just kind of pales into insignificance in comparison to the spikier, edgier, more difficult early albums. There's lot on here that just sounds a bit too much like cleaner, duller, more grown-up versions of older VU songs.
Jefferson Airplane
3/5
I don't know much about Jefferson Airplane other than the name, was expecting this to be more psychedelic, particularly considering the album is called Surrealistic Pillow. Instead this is fairly generic late '60s rock n roll, which is fine. The woman's voice is boss though, I'll give them that.
Elastica
5/5
And the award for the band most brazenly ripping off Wire goes to...
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
4/5
Might have given it a 5 if he was still rocking his '80s mullet. He's Australian, why is he not wearing a mullet the flaming galah.
Boston
3/5
Probably should have hated this, didn't. It's good ol' pop music masquerading as rock. Very good, carry on.
Tom Waits
3/5
The unwritten story behind the album:
A heartattack induced by a sighting of SHACK,
Clinging to a vine as he rips out your spine.
Damn, this poetry malarkey isn't as easy as Nigel made it look.
Michael Kiwanuka
5/5
Well, well, well, this was a pleasant surprise. I had been aware of Michael Kiwanuka but I was expecting this to be a soppy great wet lettuce of an album. I had assumed he peddled watered-down mainstream "soul" which would be none of my business. How wrong I was. Google tells me it is Danger Mouse produced which explains the epic panoramic production. There's more than a bit of Bill Withers buried in the album's DNA but it is still very much its own thing. It's modern soul on a grand scale and I will shortly be purchasing a copy, this one is a keeper. Well done 1,001 Albums Generator, a big thumbs up for you.
Ella Fitzgerald
4/5
Big band songs about love. Good.
Joan Armatrading
3/5
Just about above average singer songwriting. Hard for me to muster any strong feelings for this either way really.
Foo Fighters
4/5
Pretty decent slacker, pop, rock, quiet, loud, quiet, loud, melodic, shouty, melodic, shouty, whatever. I just wish they'd knocked it on the head after this album rather than continuing to write the same album over and over again with ever diminishing returns for the rest of eternity.
Paul Simon
3/5
Team Garfunkel here ✋️, better hair.
Manic Street Preachers
5/5
My favourite album when I was 12 years old, my favourite album now and almost certainly my favourite album on the day that I die. This was a cultural rabbit hole for 12 year old me that opened up a vast world of music, books, art, movies and politics. It's a dark has hell (The Intense Humming of Evil), grim and sneering (Yes), smugly intelligent (well, the whole album really), incredibly beautiful (This Is Yesterday) and it fucking rocks (Faster). It's a juggernaut of an album. An utter masterpiece.
Beach House
2/5
I've never really been able to get on board the Beach House hype train. There's bits of shoegaze (at its blandest), there's bits of Flaming Lips (at their blandest), there's bits of MGMT (who outside of the hitz were pretty bland themselves), but 12 years on I'm still struggling to find much of interest in this. It's hipster MOR. I was surprised it made best album of the year lists back in the day so I am even more surprised it has made it onto a best albums ever list.
Kendrick Lamar
5/5
Kendrick Lamar - changing the game since 2011, changing the use of capital letters and punctuation since 2012.
Fleet Foxes
2/5
Did these come before or after Mumford & Sons? It's very Mumford & Sons. Fairly dull folk tinged indie. Thank God this lot and their ilk didn't take over the world as it briefly looked like they would in the early 2010s. Strong album cover though.
The Young Gods
4/5
Allez la Suisse! Hopp Schwiiz! Whatever the Italian version of Go Switzerland is! The Young Gods, the third great Genevan export - just behind Calvinism and money laundering.
If we're going Swiss though, can we get some Celtic Frost as well please oh lords of the list?
Is Nigel going to freestyle on A Nod Is As Good As A Wank To A Blind Horse? Almost certainly.
This was fine. Nice, safe, comforting vaguely bluesy rock n' roll. Although I do wonder if it already sounded retro / dated (delete as appropriate) when it was released as it does absolutely whiff on the '60s.
a-ha
4/5
You're just a shit Duran Duran, shit Duran Duran, shit Duran Durrraaaannnn.
Actually that's not true, I enjoyed this, I'm a sucker for well crafted '80s pop. And Take On Me innit, stone cold classic.
The Cars
3/5
Good this. I bet Partridge is a fan. Good driving music. I might buy driving gloves. Vegan ones obviously. Well done everyone. Cook Pass Babtridge.
Pavement
4/5
It's sidewalk you nonces.
Songhoy Blues
3/5
The Songhoy Bhoys there doing bits. Good.
Missy Elliott
4/5
The baddest bitch of the century hitting hard like penitentiary dick. I can only assume that's pretty fucking hard as sadly I have no first hand experience of penitentiary dick.
Count Basie & His Orchestra
3/5
The Replacements
4/5
Who are they replacing hey? Kurt Zouma kicked a cat, should they replace him at West Ham? Thomas Muller sold some horse spunk, should they replace him at Bayern Munich? SHACK never writes any reviews, should they replace him in this group? You decide.
Buzzcocks
5/5
I love 'cocks. I am very glad to see this album on the list, it generally seems to go a bit under the radar comparative to the other early punk classics. It's probably my second favourite album of the first 1977/1978 wave (since you are asking, the first is always going to be The Clash by The mortherfucking Clash).
The Velvet Underground
5/5
Crimely over looked in favour of the debut album. This is the Velvets at their difficult, anti-flower power best. I can only assume that a lot of the wilder elements of the Velvets originated from John Cale as the John Cale-less third album is positively bland in comparison.
Koffi Olomide
3/5
The enjoyment of music is tied to when you listen to it, where you listen to it and who you listen to it with. I listened to this on a Kenyan beach while sipping cocktails. That's the setting that this album is made for. I very much doubt I would have enjoyed it quite as much if I was listening to it on a wet Thursday in a Bolton Nandos.
The Beach Boys
5/5
Introduces young kids to a wide range of animals from eight different habitats or groups. Hear the sounds they make and learn a few fun facts about each animal. There are some memory-recall and musical-exploration games, as well as a collection of offscreen activities to do as a family.
Ray Charles
3/5
Incredible Bongo Band
3/5
The Strokes
5/5
Little known fact, the body on the front cover belongs to the infamous Andi "SHACK" McCormick. SHACK's naked flesh was considered so arousing that the album could not be released with this cover in the US.
Radiohead
5/5
Big. Bigger than SHACK on his tiptoes with his hands in the air.
Black Sabbath
4/5
Heavier than Putin's plans for Ukraine.
Brian Eno
2/5
I really enjoyed Here Come The Warm Jets when it came up on this list, so much so that I went out and bought it. It didn't enjoy this one quite so much. Maybe it is a grower but on first listen it felt to me like a lot of half baked, half realised ideas.
Supergrass
3/5
Two thirds of an album of bangers that falls off a cliff towards the end.
The Shamen
3/5
Big fish, little fish, cardboard box.
Elliott Smith
3/5
I love me a bit of Elliott Smith but find this album's inclusion a bit odd, it's easily his weakest effort.
Ray Charles
2/5
Country and western music ma hairy hoop. This isn't like any country and western music I have ever heard. I'm not sure if that's a good or a bad thing but I didn't think this was up to much either way. Cocktail bar background music at best.
James Taylor
2/5
Sweet baby James eh? Bad peodo you lad.
Motörhead
4/5
I once bought tickets to see Motorhead live but Lemmy died about a week after the ticket purchase. I never got to see Motorhead because Lemmy was dead. I did get a full refund on the tickets though. That's it, that's my story.
I'm not as good at this as Nigel am I?
The White Stripes
4/5
Decent colour scheme but the husband and wife pretending to be brother and sister thing was all a bit weird wasn't it?
4/5
The Clash
5/5
This came out yesterday www.rebeldread.com. Watch it. It's a better summary than any review I could write. And when you're done with that, watch Westway To The World. Yes I know this isn't a list of the 1,001 greatest documentaries of all time and no I don't care. Carry on.
George Michael
1/5
As a wise turnip once said, do I not like that.
Johnny Cash
5/5
Cash & Rubin, an unlikely pairing that just works, like peanut butter & jam or SHACK & cable cars.
Tim Buckley
4/5
I've never bothered with Jeff's old fella, mainly because I assumed he did a line in basic Bob Dylan-esque '60s folk minus the Dylan foghorn voice. I enjoyed this though, the voice is as big as you'd expect but musically it's much more complex than '60s hipster New York folk. He's done a good job of cramming all of the '60s into a folk framework, it's a bit psychedelic, a bit avant-garde, there's some soul thrown in there and some jazz and it works. Strong ketwig too.
Cocteau Twins
4/5
This is the sound track to my dreams, the nice dreams though, not the dirty ones I wake up from erect.
Eagles
1/5
Painfully bland, only managed about 5 songs. Nnnneeeexxxxxxttttttt.
Shuggie Otis
2/5
Oddly unfunky funk.
Norah Jones
2/5
Jimi Hendrix
3/5
The Cardigans
2/5
I can't quite put my finger on why but I really didn't enjoy this.
Primal Scream
5/5
The Go-Go's
3/5
Depeche Mode
4/5
The Doors
4/5
The Jam
2/5
Early punk without the edges, post-punk without the experimentation. It's all just a bit new wave, a bit safe and sanitised for me.
CHIC
4/5
I really wish someone had had a quiet word with Nile Rodgers and told him to swerve the ballads and stick with the disco bangers. I guess he was keen to show his range, because he really does have range, but if you can write Good Times, We Are Family, Le Freak, Upside Down et al, just do more of that. This is a 5 star all day long if you exclude A Warm Summer Night and Will You Cry. Shame.
Red Hot Chili Peppers
4/5
I generally don't like the Red Hot Chili Peppers and this is definitely a Red Hot Chili Peppers album. The white boy funk is present, the terrible lyrics are present (just naming places does not a lyric make), the whinging songs about drug addiction are present and yet it is far more bearable than anything else they have ever done. This was John Frusciante's first album back with the band after he went all in on the smack for most of the '90s. His guitar sound on this album coupled with the Rick Rubin production is massive. It's a shiny big pop-rock album that even manages to make the sporadic bursts of rap-rock listenable.
5/5
Let's be honest with ourselves, live albums are a bit shit, that's just a fact. Capturing the magic of a great band live is nigh on impossible. So if this truth is held to be self evident and Kick Out The Jams is this good, MC5 must have been an absolute force of nature to see live in person. This is everything that is good about rock n' roll - heavy, high energy, raw, intelligent, super cool, sleazy, punky, bluesy - all the good adjectives. So effortlessly iconic that they have the dubious honour of having their logo worn by teenager influencers who wouldn't know a white panther if it jumped up and bit a hole in their $100 t-shirt. KICK OUT THE JAMS MOTHER FUCKER!!!
The Cure
5/5
Batman walks into a bar with a pig...
It was a hot summers day and the barman thinks it's a strange sight, not to just see Batman, but to see him with a pig that has jet black hair, black eye shadow and studded bracelets.
The barman says "Is there anything I can get you Batman?"
He replies "Just-ice for goth-ham"
Blur
5/5
WOOOOOOOOOO HOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!! ST PAULI! ST PAULI! ST PAULI! ST PAULI! Sorry, drifted off there, it's good that one though innit?
The rest of the album is great too. Blur's best in my humble opinion.
Spiritualized
4/5
The smack-addled, cinematic end of Britpop.
Khaled
1/5
This came out of the gates strong, El Harba Wine is like '90s Euro Pop through an Arab music filter. Or maybe Arab music through a '90s Euro Pop filter. Whatever. So that's good, but it went downhill from there pretty quickly. A terrible John Lennon cover and a lot of very '80s sounding cheese. and schmaltz. Most of the album is restaurant background music at best. At least it wasn't DJ Khaled I guess, so that's a small win.
The Temptations
3/5
I really like The Temptations, I absolutely love the '60s era classic Motown pop Temptations and I can fuck with the Sly Stone inspired '70s era Temptations (there's an album called Psychedelic Shack, what's not to love?!). I'm pretty surprised this album made the list though. It's not one I have listened to much before, it's a halfway house album really. It is still peppered with moments of '60s style soul (moments that are less good than what they had done before) and there are some very clear hints of the more experimental direction the band were heading in, but at this point the ideas still seem only half formed. Hopefully Temptin' Temptations and All Directions are on this list, they are albums that far better represent the two sides of The Temptations.
The Kinks
4/5
God save Donald Duck, kinky.
Bruce Springsteen
3/5
Boss. I like earnest, blue collar rock n' roll Bruce but I could do without the more new wave-y stuff on here.
Willie Nelson
2/5
At least I now know why he is more famous for smoking weed than he is for his music.
Finley Quaye
4/5
I wasn't expecting much from this but really enjoyed it. It sounds very Bristol influenced. A bit dubby, a bit trip-hoppy. Thumbs up. Smiley face. Sun is shining emoji.
Grizzly Bear
4/5
They really shouldn't be called Grizzly Bear playing music like this. Bear Cub instead maybe? Anywho, the album is a cracker. It is not hard rock by the way, the band name may have misled you.
AC/DC
3/5
ST. PAULI! ST. PAULI! ST. PAULI! ST. PAULI!
Sorry I drifted off again there.
Aside from the St. Pauli connection I have no strong feelings about AC/DC either way. If they just played the intro to Hell's Bells on loop for 40 minutes it would be a 5. As it is, it's a 3.
Carpenters
1/5
Nope, they should have stuck to carpentry.
Miriam Makeba
1/5
Justice
4/5
It doesn't quite hit the heights of timeless classic like a lot of the albums produced by Justice's massive '90s dance band forefathers but it makes you want to tap a toe, throw a shape and shake the derriere and that is good enough for me.
Mj Cole
3/5
I'll take your Dubstep, I'll take your Grime but UK Garage is generally just a bit too polished, a little too bling for me. I mean look at that album cover. So this wouldn't have been my choice to go out gurning to in the Noughties but on this run through I did quite enjoy it as background music while I worked.
Drive-By Truckers
3/5
Motörhead
4/5
Ryan Adams
3/5
Megadeth
4/5
I have always tended to avoid Megadeth because I really can't be bothered with Mustaine's voice, his guitar wankery or his bleating about Metallica being mean to him. As a general rule I prefer my thrash more punk and less ginger but I surprisingly really enjoyed the shiny big hooks and proto-prog metal bits going on here.
Maxwell
3/5
The one where Maxwell fucks off his silver hammer in favour of '70s soul tinged r'n'b.
The Dave Brubeck Quartet
2/5
Stevie Wonder
4/5
Van Halen
2/5
My Bloody Valentine
5/5
X-Ray Spex
5/5
Oddly overlooked first wave of punk stone cold classic.
The Rolling Stones
5/5
I Are Bort is not going to enjoy this.
Killing Joke
4/5
Is it goth? Is it post-punk? Is it industrial? All I know for sure is that Jaz Coleman looks disappointingly normal while doing his weekly shop.
Sufjan Stevens
3/5
Bruce Springsteen
4/5
SHACK
Well if he had gone dark story telling country, this would be SHACK.
SHACK
Where's Maddie SHACK?
Charles Mingus
3/5
Eminem
5/5
The Modern Lovers
3/5
A passable impression of The Stooges and Velvet Underground.
Arcade Fire
4/5
In suburbs, in the bushes by a children's boating lake in a park I once saw SHACK clad only in a grimace and his mother's fishnet tights furiously reciting Othello in a menacing mumble. He's an actor now darling.
I am reminded of this stark image when listening to this album and I think it speaks more to the music's essence than I ever could.
Sonic Youth
5/5
Three albums in Sonic Youth were well on the way to EVOLving a sound utterly unique to Sonic Youth. The underlying outbursts of pop, whilst present, are buried way deeper in the mix here than on later records, it's very much more Black Flag less Madonna. To an extent, it makes perfect sense that the album was released on SST alongside the likes of Husker Du and Minutemen but the sheer avant-garde-ness at the centre of Sonic Youth makes this so much more EVOLved than any of the other post-hardcore Greg Ginn was releasing at the time. It's an album of screeching guitars and spoken word surrealism, it's dark and sinister, it's dense and difficult "anti-rock", it's walls of noise with the very occasional outbreak of beauty. It's very fucking good.
The Magnetic Fields
3/5
You've got the admire the ambition here and the best bits are a 4 star album, maybe even 5, but there is just far, far too much of it. Nearly 3 hours of music was too much in 1999 so in 2022 when you're lucky to hold a listener's attention longer than the length of Tiktok video, it is just madness.
Incidently I lasted 26 songs before drifting off and doing something else.
The Stone Roses
5/5
A Manc conspiracy theorist primate with a voice like a de-tuned fog horn and his pals produce one of the greatest albums of all time, whodathunk it.
Kendrick Lamar
5/5
When a jazz infused, avant-garde, politically charged hip-hop album makes Kendrick one of the biggest pop stars on the planet and in the process partly restores my faith in the general music buying public.
Death In Vegas
4/5
This always felt like a sister album to Primal Scream - XTMNTR to me. An older, slightly mellower, less successful step-sister but a sister nonetheless.
Alice Cooper
2/5
It's a bit glam, it's a bit prog, it's a lot dull. It's a mess of an album, it goes in a million different directions, a bit of jazz here, a bit of cabaret there and none if it hits home with me. Based on the music alone this album would have been long forgotten. Vince Furnier creating Alice Cooper was a stroke of genius, he is still a household name in 2022 and it sure as hell isn't due to the strength of the music on this album.
The Band
2/5
I listened to this, I can confirm it exists. I have nothing further to say.
Siouxsie And The Banshees
4/5
You call this Goth do you Siouxsie? Not even close. Get back to me when you have successfully invaded and sacked Rome then we'll talk.
The Smiths
5/5
Hey Morrissey SHACK eats lamb chops, what ya gonna do about it?
The Byrds
3/5
Paul Weller
3/5
Beatles
3/5
System Of A Down
5/5
Genre hopping experimentation, heavy as hell and insanely catchy, that's a trick very few bands can manage. SOAD are, and always were, so much more than the knuckle dragging nu-metal bullshit they got lumped in with.
It's frankly an insult to compare songs about the Armenian genocide to doing "it all for the nookie". I'm not even sure this can accurately be described as metal as there is so much other goodness going on here. Even though SOAD sound almost nothing like them, the only comparison point I can think of is Faith No More. Well, Faith No More but not shit. Faith No More with the white boy funk dialled down and the Slayer dialled up. It still blows my mind that Toxicity was even more wild than this and yet it somehow pushed them into the mainstream.
Prince
4/5
Prince is to 1980s party music what SHACK is to child snatching - the sexiest in the business.
Deerhunter
3/5
Fun fact pop pickers, I always get Deerhunter and Deerhoof confused. Make of that what you will. This is fine but if I remember correctly I prefer Deerhoof. I think.
Fatboy Slim
4/5
Strong enough to really compete in a Eurovision semi final. Probably.
The Kinks
4/5
Kinky
Ute Lemper
3/5
Adele
3/5
The Dictators
4/5
Creedence Clearwater Revival
4/5
"And was there anything of value in the car?'
"Oh, uh, yeah, uh... a tape deck, some Creedence tapes, and there was a, uh... uh, my briefcase."
If it's good enough for The Dude, it's good enough for me.
Elvis Costello
3/5
Top Red is Elvis.
The Chemical Brothers
5/5
A very big one from my yoof this. A life defining album for me. The first dance album I remember falling absolutely head over heals in love with. It has aged really well too which a hell of a lot of 1990s electronic albums haven't. Private Psychedelic Reel in particular still sounds absolutely humongous played as loud as your speakers can take it. It was a long slippery slope for me, from listening to this as a 13 year old to many, many a lost night spent gurning my chops off in dark, sweaty rooms in my later years. What a fucking slope that was though.
Simon & Garfunkel
3/5
Bob Marley & The Wailers
5/5
Leonard Cohen
3/5
Leonard Cohen doing all the 1980s and still managing to sound typically Leonard Cohen.
Janis Joplin
2/5
I am sure her voice is technically excellent but it is far too much for me to listen to for more than a couple of songs.
Mike Ladd
3/5
I very much enjoy the sort of left field hip hop labels like Def Jux were pumping out in the 2000s so I'm not sure how this album passed me by until now. I actually listened to it twice today as it still passed me by on the first listen. Second time round it did click though and I suspect it is a grower, I'll definitely go back to it at some point. That said, I can't see it every being one of my go tos of the genre. If this has made the list, I am very much looking forward to the big hitters of the era (hello Funcrusher Plus, The Cold Vein, Fantastic Damage, Operation: Doomsday, Labor Days, Madvillain etc) making an appearance in the days and weeks to come.
Prince
5/5
Purple adjacent people in order of preference:
1. Purple Aki
2. Prince
3. Paul Manning
4. Tinky Winky
5. Barney
Nanci Griffith
2/5
Conjuring images of sawdust, line dancing and incest as all good Country should.
Sigur Rós
5/5
I can only assume this is what the soundtrack to life in the womb sounds like.
Aretha Franklin
5/5
The Soul GOAT. Or whatever a female goat is I guess. A doe is it? We'll go with that. The Soul DOE.
Afrika Bambaataa
5/5
Intergalactic paedo-ing. Hyperspace kiddy fiddling. Absolute nonce-sense.
Billy Joel
2/5
I like where the first song goes "ACK, ACK, ACK, ACK, ACK".
Living Colour
4/5
Funky rock n' roll. Hey Red Hot Chili Peppers, over here 👋. Listen and learn, it can be done without sounding shit.
Rod Stewart
2/5
Let's have it right, this is the only Rod Stewart moment anyone cares about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xPDBA2mSHI.
We'll gloss over his singing about a slit eyed lady here.
The White Stripes
4/5
I could never really get on the White Stripes hype train and Jack White always struck me as a bit of a bell whiff. I probably didn't give this album much time upon its release because I was already well and truly over the colour coded sister shagging shtick but listening to it now, it is really strong. It has a timeless quality to it that a lot of early '00s indie certainly does not. Jack White obviously has a deep passion for the blues and it is ever present as an influence but, for the most part, it never feels like a straight up homage/rip-off (delete as appropriate). Yer man's own 21st century twist is always present. It's certainly a million miles away from the Black Keys and their ilk who seemingly listened to one Howlin' Wolf best of album and regurgitated it ad infinitum. And let's face it, no matter how many times you hear it, and we've all heard it A LOT, Seven Nation Army is an absolute monster.
Still I stand by my gut instinct that Jack White is probably an ass-hat.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
4/5
Beatles
5/5
The Police
2/5
ACAB or something.
John Martyn
3/5
Is there such a thing as solid air? Just like solid water is ice? And if so how does solid air look like? And how cold does it have to be to have solid air?
Temperature would not be a factor in creating solid air, although I suppose if you chilled air to absolute zero, or minus 459.67 degrees Fahrenheit, it might solidify.
If the sun were made of air instead of hydrogen and helium—and if you compressed all that air into the size of an office building—you would have solid air. This would be no mean feat, because the sun is bigger than a million Earths.
Most atoms are 99.9999999999996% empty space. If you took out all the space that exists in atoms the entire human race could fit into the volume of a sugar cube.
There’s a major problem with compressing atoms. They constrain enough energy to flatten a major city. This is how the sun has blazed so brightly for billions of years without ever decreasing in size. The compression of hydrogen atoms in its core—in synergistic coordination with heat expansion—produces nuclear fusion. This process unleashes energy in the forms of heat, light, photosynthesis, vitamin D etc.
The compression would need to be so powerful it overwhelmed the atom’s energy. Something of like a black hole where not even light can escape, and everything is crushed. The solid air you’d get would be denser than a neutron star.
And it would probably look opaque, although it remains to be seen how light would refract off mashed together subatomic particles.
The Jesus And Mary Chain
5/5
Beautiful crafted 1950s and 1960s style classic pop songs slathered in epic walls of white noise. Cool as they come indie perfection. Must be played loud enough to make ears and eyes bleed.
Johnny Cash
4/5
Look at the sweaty nonce. SHACK in a playground much?
Prefab Sprout
2/5
I'm a sucker for well crafted 1980s pop but this really didn't grab me. They've welded the earnestness of 1980s Smiths era indie to a big pop sound and in the process seem to have forgotten that pop is supposed to be fun.
Google tells me this is sophisti-pop. I've never heard of sophisti-pop but the name seems to fit. I bet Patrick Bateman was a fan. Although FYI guys, there's nothing "sophisti" about the name Prefab Sprout. Dreadful, dreadful name that.
Little Simz
4/5
5/5
Pretty much as close to perfection as alternative rock gets.
Deee-Lite
3/5
Deee-lite-ful.
Kid Rock
2/5
I am getting wafts of Rage Against The Machine, I am getting very mild background notes of NWA, I am getting a strong scent of Insane Clown Posse, I am getting a lot of toothless Southern rock loving trailer park hick oder and I am getting an overwhelming stench of cheese and horseshit. The last couple of years of the '90s really were a wasteland for popular culture.
Sex Pistols
5/5
Still got it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mSE-Iy_tFY
Even jarg butter can't ruin this stone cold classic though.
Violent Femmes
4/5
Amy Winehouse
3/5
Probably should have talked to Frank shouldn't she?
OutKast
3/5
Hats off to Outkast for attempting this length of album. They have always pushed the boundaries of what hip-hop can be and this is no different. Whether the boundary pushing two separate albums as one thing came about because of "artistic differences" who really knows but as with most double albums, if the fat was stripped off this and it was condensed to a single album, there is a really great record here. And as with most successful duos, it is clear from this experiment that they are better together and much more than the sum of their parts.
Speakerboxxx is a solid hip-hop album containing a handful of bangers that doesn't quite hit the heights of previous Outkast efforts. Frankly, what it is missing to elevate it is some Andre 3000 gold dust.
On The Love Below Andre 3000 drops rapping almost entirely in favour of space aged funk. Prince is a very obvious influence but the album falls well short of that type of greatness. Here again, the missing ingredient seems to be the absent partner. I can't help feeling that Big Boi's hip-hop grounding would have prevented a lot of these tracks disappearing into nothingness. Experimental nothingness, but nothingness nonetheless.
Nick Drake
2/5
Acoustic-y singer song-writers aren't usually my thing, it really needs to be something special to grab my attention. Five Leaves Left, in all its breathless beauty, is such an album. For me, Pink Moon is not such an album. It's just too stripped back, too stark, frankly too dull. Drake's guitar playing is still fantastic but with the warmth of playing of the Five Leaves Left era completely absent, it leaves me cold.
The tortured genuis, who may or may not have killed himself, will always be a tale that sells units. I do wonder if this album would simply be considered a side note in his career, a glorified demo, if he had lived to a ripe old age. It seems to me that in his passing, this album has been elevated from a career misstep to the last will and testament of a broken soul. He deserves to be remembered for better.
The Byrds
4/5
Jingle jangle, jingle jangle.
Throbbing Gristle
3/5
Massive banger after massive banger. Huge soaring choruses, exquisite melodies and perfectly polished pop hooks. An earworm if ever there was one.
Johnny Cash
4/5
Cash playing some crowd pleasers while trying dead hard to be one of the lads. Up there as one of the best live albums ever for sure.
The Black Keys
3/5
Complete Throbbing Gristle rip off. Experimental to the point of being unlistenable.
Pet Shop Boys
2/5
Not one of their best, Pet Shop Boys by numbers and too many wet ballads.
Pixies
5/5
The third best Pixies album by a distance and still a solid 5. Says it all about how utterly incredible they were in their heyday. They were more consistent than SHACK's weekly Tesco big shop.
N.B. For those interested the weekly Tesco big shop consists of 24 chicken breasts (reduced value only), 64 large eggs (each carefully checked for damage before purchase), 6 packets of bacon (lovingly referred to as "that ham you eat hot"), as many lamb chops as his meaty arms can carry and 1 carrot (to help him see in the dark). He goes to Marks & Spencer for his bits.
The Youngbloods
3/5
I listened to this. It was fine.
Animal Collective
3/5
I have never been able to make my mind up on this album. I still can't make my mind up on this album. You should probably listen to it yourself and make your own mind up on this album. Or don't make your mind up on this album. Whatever.
Peter Tosh
3/5
Jah bless.
Stan Getz
2/5
Jazz! Nice! Lounge music. Cocktail bar music. Howard Moon. Not my bag baby blah, bah, blah. The same review as I have written for every other jazz album on this list.
R.E.M.
3/5
Reasonably Entertaining Music
Elvis Costello & The Attractions
3/5
Stevie Wonder
3/5
What do you call Stevie Wonder playing tennis? Endless love.
Baaba Maal
3/5
Megadeth
4/5
Two things The List has taught me:
1. Fuck jazz;
2. Megadeth aren't half bad.
Thank you The List.
Elis Regina
2/5
Roxy Music
4/5
https://youtu.be/loqsnJtq87M
Dinosaur Jr.
4/5
Tracy Chapman
2/5
Cheap Trick
3/5
Sinead O'Connor
2/5
Lucinda Williams
2/5
Grant Lee Buffalo
3/5
Pixies
5/5
Like SHARK tearing through a paddling pool full of toddlers. In a good way.
Aerosmith
3/5
It's all big mouth, tight trousers, rock n' roll and SHARK fish fucking toddlers in placcy pools.
Did Quaylo say the same? Bet he did.
Quicksilver Messenger Service
2/5
David Bowie
4/5
Stereolab
4/5
Beatles
4/5
Eagles
2/5
Bon Jovi
3/5
Merle Haggard
2/5
Ice Cube
4/5
Deep Purple
3/5
Alice In Chains
3/5
The Jesus And Mary Chain
5/5
Judas Priest
3/5
Booker T. & The MG's
2/5
Thought I was going to love this but really couldn't take much of the rinky dink organ sound. It makes everything sound like a bad wedding covers band.
Duran Duran
5/5
Inch perfect pop music.
Rush
4/5
I have heard a lot over the years that Rush are a lot of people's guilty pleasure. I can see why, I enjoyed this way more than I have enjoyed anything even close to prog that is on this list.
Willie Colón & Rubén Blades
3/5
Colon
Jungle Brothers
3/5
Like the Lionesses winning the Euros - I feel like I should be pretty into this but ultimately it kinda passed me by in the background.
Faust
3/5
Fairport Convention
3/5
The Temptations
5/5
Motown goes funky, what's not to love?
Elvis Presley
3/5
SHACK got a phone call from his son's school today...
"Hello, is that Mr. SHACK?"
"Yes, how can I help you? This is indeed the mythical SHACK."
"Hi, this is little SHACK Midget's music teacher calling."
"Oh, hi."
"Yeah, hi. I just wanted to let you know it looks like you have a little Elvis Presley on your hands!"
"Really? Wow! That’s..."
"Yeah, we just found him dead on the toilet."
Dr. John
5/5
Psychedelic voodoo blues.
Hole
5/5
It seems to get overlooked because of the circus surrounding her but Courtney Love wrote some amazing music. This and Celebrity Skin are head and shoulders above anything, except Nirvana, that came out of the grunge boys club of the same era. Courtney's voice both literally and lyrically is the most perfectly punk of the era.
Coldplay
2/5
The most interesting thing about this album is that the leader singer's ex-wife sells vagina scented candles. So there you go, make of that what you will, review out.
Venom
3/5
Bruce Springsteen
4/5
Nobody needs to see the whole of The Darkness taking on that geezer from U2, have some standards Bruce you fucking pervert.
The album was surprisingly good though, much better than the big hitter Brucy albums we have had so far on this list.
The Allman Brothers Band
2/5
Dull, dull, double dull.
Robbie Williams
3/5
Well written alt-pop, it almost sounds like a squeaky clean Supergrass at their more whimsical at points. Kudos to whoever wrote the music, not so much the cringe inducing lyrics. The bit about girlfriends doing the dishes in particular hasn't aged well.
Barry Adamson
5/5
I was not expecting this on the list.
I thought this was an underrated oddity that no one actually listened to aside from anal music geeks. I had assumed that no one really cared about an album from that fella from Magazine that isn't the main fella from Magazine, clearly not. It's the soundtrack to a movie that doesn't exist, featuring Nick Cave, Billy Mackenzie and Jarvis Cocker, and it's every bit as quirky, sleazy and kitsch as the soundtrack to a movie that doesn't exist, featuring Nick Cave, Billy Mackenzie and Jarvis Cocker, should be. If the movie was real, it would for sure be directed by David Lynch. I thoroughly enjoyed revisiting this gem.
Fela Kuti
3/5
Top fella Feli.
Iron Butterfly
4/5
I was fully expecting a band called Iron Butterfly to be some sort of proto-metal band. This very much isn't proto-metal. It is much, much more butterfly than it is iron. It's a butterfly that went absolutely massive on the '60s California flower power scene.
Willie Nelson
3/5
Marvin Gaye
4/5
Fats Domino
3/5
Arcade Fire
5/5
Moby
4/5
Guns N' Roses
5/5
Pearl Jam
2/5
Heaven 17
2/5
Korn
1/5
Jeff Buckley
5/5
The La's
3/5
The album that inspired a generation of scallies to pick up guitars. An album with a lot to answer for. The '90s Britain would have sounded very different without the influence of this album, it would definitely have sounded a lot less like the '60s.
Slint
5/5
The mythical beast that is Slint's Spiderland. An album that initially sold about 5,000 records but went on to inspire a generation. How very Velvet Underground of you.
I find it really hard to judge an album like this. The genre it kick started is now so common place that Sigur Ros and their ilk are regularly played as background music on daytime BBC TV, but this must have sounded like it came from another planet upon its release.
On paper this is pretty much my perfect album but there is something indefinable about it that just doesn't grab me as much as a lot of the post-rock that followed in its wake. It's still very, very good but I'm not sure if I am judging it entirely on the music or the myth or the legacy or a bit of everything. But fuck it, it is getting a 5.
Peter Gabriel
3/5
There's a decent album buried in here but there's just too much of everything. It very much feels like throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks. Some of it hits but a lot of it really doesn't. There seems to be a desperate need to prove he can do all the genres. Still it's better than most of the proggy albums we have been tortured with on this list.
Underworld
4/5
Have you heard Underworld? This sounds exactly like Underworld sound.
ABBA
3/5
All the pop. The most pop that pop can be.
k.d. lang
1/5
Dull, middle of the road, one paced music for middle aged Volvo driving, geography teachers. Calling it beige would be a disservice to the colour beige.
The Zombies
4/5
A bit Pet Sounds, a bit Village Green Preservation Society, a bit Sgt. Pepper, a bit Forever Changes. It's a decent album but it's very late '60s psychedelia by numbers. It's like SHACK wearing trousers. We all like SHACK in trousers, you're still getting a lot of SHACK but it's not making you wet in quite the same way as SHACK in short shorts.
Jah Wobble's Invaders Of The Heart
5/5
Almost as much fun as SHACK being attacked by a wasp.
The The
5/5
The National
4/5
Wasps 6 - 0 SHACK. SHACK really is a club in crisis.
Gang Of Four
5/5
Gary Numan
4/5
If you like the song Cars by Gary Numan then the album The Pleasure Principle by Gary Numan is for you. It contains Cars and lots of songs that sound a bit like Cars.
Youssou N'Dour
3/5
The Mars Volta
5/5
It's impossible to review this album without sounding like a pretentious twat...so I'm not going to bother. Listen to it yourself you lazy sods.
Rahul Dev Burman
3/5
I refuse to review this album because it is a fucking travesty that the 1,001 albums generator has continued during such a tragic week. RIP week 7 of the 2022-2023 Premier League season. Long live week 8 of the 2022-2023 Premier League season (and Godspeed to those rearranging week 7).
3/5
Bruce Springsteen
4/5
Blue jeans wearing, fist pumping Americana rock n' roll.
The Louvin Brothers
3/5
Inbred country pumpkins. Probably.
The Electric Prunes
3/5
S'alreet. Another album on this list that seems to want to cover the bases of all music that was popular in the late '60s. Jack of all trades, master of none vibes.
1/5
This is the sound the world makes around me when I have an enormous hangover.
Radiohead
5/5
Linkin Park
3/5
The best of the bad nu-metal bunch.
Arrested Development
5/5
Posi hip-hop. Good.
The Offspring
4/5
Smashing
Tortoise
4/5
Almost a classic but not quite. 4 stars. Tortoise's Millions Now Living Will Never Die presents a bass-heavy, tranquil and intriguing post-rock sound which would come to have a profound influence on the nascent sub-genre, radically expanding the territory of post-rock from that staked out by Talk Talk in years past.*
* Yes, I did just copy and paste this after a brief Google search. It's 5am and I am hungover alright, what more do you want from me you pack of pricks!?
Fun Lovin' Criminals
2/5
Loads of genres I love thrown together in a way I hate. Scooby Snacks is big though.
5/5
The best David Bowie apart from that bit he did in Extras. Oh and Labyrinth, Labyrinth is big.
Beastie Boys
2/5
Love Beastie Boys. Hate Licensed To Ill.
Thank fuck they grew out of their juvenile boobs and beers phase quickly. The oldest trick in the book, white boys steal black man's music and sell it to the mainstream. It blows my mind that they went from this derivative novelty dirge and within three years got to almost killing their careers with the high water mark of sampling that is Paul's Boutique. The lesson here...listen to Paul's Boutique which will almost certainly not be on this list because it was light on sexism and gimmicks and sold fuck all units.
You're welcome.
Rest In Power MCA.
Dion
1/5
Tim Buckley
3/5
Sex obsessed honky tonk funk, not what I was expecting from a Tim Buckley album at all. But it was pretty enjoyable nonetheless.
Stevie Wonder
5/5
If it's good enough for Coolio and Big Willie Style, it's good enough for me. Absolute masterpiece. Well in Stevie lad.
Bonnie "Prince" Billy
1/5
I remember the music papers creaming their tits about how good this album was when it came out. I think that says a lot about how low a bar music was setting itself in 1999. This was then, and still is now, a painfully dreary album.
The War On Drugs
4/5
Much better than Ronald Reagan's war on drugs but nowhere near as good as that song what Grange Hill did:
https://youtu.be/kkQXnQ0plDA
Thought provoking, emotive stuff I am sure you will agree.
Grange Hill I mean not Adam Granduciel and his mates. Obviously.
Gang Starr
3/5
If there's only one Gang Starr album on this list, for me it shouldn't be this one (Moment Of Truth is the winner). This is decent but very much sounds like they were still in the process of finding their own sound. Premier's beats and Guru's rhymes both evolved massively, and for the better, from here on in.
The Clash
5/5
First wave punk GOATs.
Country Joe & The Fish
4/5
Acid soaked bluesy Summer of Love goodness.
George Jones
3/5
One word review: SMOOOOOOOTH
The Pogues
4/5
Booze soaked, punk inspired Celtic diddly-dee. Available for birthdays, weddings and bar mitzvahs.
Wu-Tang Clan
5/5
Very few hip hop groups, very few musicians, in fact, very few artists of any persuasion manage to create their own universe and invite their fans to live in it as Wu Tang did here. Kung-fu fighting, Five Percenter quoting, chess playing, street thuggin', hardcore hip-hop straight outta Shaolin (a.k.a. Staten Island). The 36 Chambers is a fantasy universe cut through with the grim reality of the violent street lives most of the Clan were living in the early '90s. RZA's red raw beats and nine unique voices, each with a story to tell, came together "like Voltron" to create something that still sounds utterly vital nearly 30 years later.
Pere Ubu
4/5
Godfathers of avant-garage/post-punk/art rock/whatevs being the Godfathers of avant-garage/post-punk/art rock/whatevs. Sonic experimentation breaking out into the occasional herky, jerky, jangly post-punk tune. Sold fuck all records but inspired a generation, that old chestnut.
Raekwon
5/5
It's Raekwon's name in big lettering on the front cover but this very much an introduction to the flourishing bromance between Rae and his former street rival Ghost Face Killah (former rivals to such an extent that Rae was the perpetrator that shot up Ghost's mom's apartment as mentioned at the start of this album). Both step up their game massively here, finding their voices individually, as a pair and as part of the wider Clan.
As with Enter The Wu Tang (36 Chambers) before it and Liquid Swords shortly after it, the album excels in creating its own unique world. In this case gritty neighbourhood street life is blown up into a widescreen mafioso world. The mafia trope has been revisited and mined to the point of cliché ever since by innumerous rappers, from Jay Z to Freddie Gibbs, but it was done first and done best here.
The album's cinematic quality speaks to the rapid development of RZA's production skills from the grimy beats showcased in 36 Chambers which was released less than two years before. When there's conversations about the best producers in the game, it seems to get overlooked what a stupidly high level RZA was operating at in the early '90s. Not only was there constant quality, there was an absurd level of quantity. This is the second of three Wu Tang adjacent, RZA produced albums in 1995 alone and it is generally considered the best of the Clan members' solo efforts (although Liquid Swords just about edges it for me).
With this album Wu Tang changed the game...AGAIN.
Elvis Costello
3/5
New wave retro rock n roll. It's jolly good fun in an unadventurous kind of way.
Billy Bragg
4/5
The taxman isn't interest Billy lad, he's into levies and impositions and assessments and such, not poetry you soft sod. If you insist on communicating with the taxman, why don't you play him one of your nice punk infused political folk songs instead of droning on about Keats and Ginsberg and such? Good lad.
Stereo MC's
3/5
I always assumed Stereo MCs were American until I listened to this. I was wrong, this is very much the sound of early '90s underground British dance music crossing over to the mainstream. It's much better than I expected, a decent take on the electronic music sounds of the day and some (not so great) rapping thrown in for good measure.
Grateful Dead
2/5
I was expecting a lot more from this.
The Grateful Dead are such a legendary part of '60s counter-culture but on the evidence of this bland, middle of the road take on Americana I am struggling to see why.
The Mamas & The Papas
3/5
Lush well crafted '60s harmonic folk-pop.
Manic Street Preachers
5/5
UB40
5/5
I had no idea that prior to being the house wives' favourite reggae-lite pop band UB40 were a politically charged reggae behemoth. The music on display here is rudimentary, it's clearly a band still learning to play, but the album is all the better for that. The rough around the edges feel provides an authenticity that you're not getting with Red, Red Wine! There's a soulful, sax driven, feel to the album that makes it much more than a straight up derivative of Jamaica's dub legends. I absolutely loved this album which I did not expect.
Prince
5/5
Lots and lots of perfect purple pop pixie business.
Morrissey
4/5
Big album from a massive arsehole.
Nitin Sawhney
3/5
Musically this album melds Indian classical music, trip-hop, drum n' bass and chill out with numerous other styles thrown in at points for good measure. It's seemingly a concept album with a running commentary on both on national identity and nuclear war. It's a brave, expansive album and a lot to absorb on first listen. I'll probably revisit it at some point and I suspect it might get a higher score after a few more listens.
Elvis Presley
5/5
By far the best Elvis album.
Dusty Springfield
5/5
Wide screen, epic Dusty. Absolutely perfect.
Tom Waits
3/5
Things I learnt from The List number 74: Tom Waits is a much more challenging listen than I had expected prior to starting The List.
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
5/5
Nick Cave has consistently been one of the most brilliant artists of the last 40 years. Very few musicians, if any, are hitting creative high water marks like this so deep into their careers. An absolute masterpiece within a career of masterpieces.
Billie Holiday
3/5
Loads of songs that could soundtrack Sean Connery's James Bond shagging.
Lynyrd Skynyrd
2/5
It's pronounced 'Leh-'Nérd 'Skin-'Nérd but what does it mean? WHAT DOES IT MEAN!?!?!
Talvin Singh
3/5
The album title has pretty much done the review for me.
Fleetwood Mac
3/5
Enjoyed this, didn't expect to, mainly because I was expecting it to be turgid shite like Rumours. Good. Carry on.
John Prine
2/5
Meh
Christine and the Queens
2/5
I'm a sucker for well made pop music so I had high hopes for this but it's bland, very bland.
Deep Purple
3/5
Hard Rock doing what Hard Rock does. And look at them being literally carved into rock on the cover, how very clever.
ZZ Top
2/5
The beards and shades had me off, I thought ZZ Top would be way more fun than this.
Emmylou Harris
3/5
Devendra Banhart
3/5
Little Richard
4/5
Elliott Smith
4/5
Dr. Octagon
4/5
The Who
3/5
Tina Turner
3/5
The Cramps
4/5
Queen
4/5
Blondie
4/5
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
4/5
Massive Attack
5/5
The Sonics
5/5
Gorillaz
3/5
Half of this sounds like late era-Blur cast offs and half sounds like it is produced by Dan The Automator...funny that.
T. Rex
4/5
Sabu
3/5
MC Solaar
5/5
Simply Red
2/5
Jeff Beck
2/5
Silver Jews
3/5
Michael Jackson
4/5
4 for the music
0 for the peodo-ing
The Kinks
4/5
Billy Bragg
3/5
Big Brother & The Holding Company
5/5
Dire Straits
2/5
Skunk Anansie
4/5
Skunk Anansie dabble with nu-metal. But better than that sounds.
Led Zeppelin
3/5
Flamin' Groovies
4/5
The Who
3/5
Nine Inch Nails
5/5
Barry Adamson
3/5
Sam Cooke
4/5
Today's album. The track Somebody Have Mercy has a phenomenal line towards the end. It's live, so I doubt an official lyric, but it's well worth checking out.
Burning Spear
5/5
Badly Drawn Boy
3/5
SHACK is typing...
B.B. King
4/5
Van Halen
2/5
Sly & The Family Stone
3/5
Beck
3/5
Small Faces
2/5
Small Faces try to gone done did a Sgt. Pepper. And fail.
Gil Scott-Heron
3/5
Janelle Monáe
5/5
Beck
4/5
The Human League
5/5
Queens of the Stone Age
5/5
Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band
2/5
The Undertones
4/5
The Beach Boys
4/5
Marty Robbins
3/5
Solomon Burke
3/5
Slipknot
3/5
A LANDSHARK favourite jam. He blasts this on his CD Walkman while going about his biting the heads off humans business.
Apart from that, it's nowhere near Slipknot's best album, an odd choice for this list.
ABBA
1/5
Said the blonde lady off of Abba regarding this album, "It really was a fucking nightmare because I got into drugs, alcohol, redheaded women and Burger King, and that combination, man, it’s the path to destitution. And that’s exactly where it took me. Life was killing me. I tried to mask the pain by drowning myself in cocaine and alcohol until I thought I was the Pope. I used to walk the streets in Soviet and Nazi uniforms. I put a sign outside my house encouraging burglars and left my front door open. I would lie under the bed wearing night vision goggles waiting for people to come in – and they never did. The intruders never came, the fucking cocksuckers. I was a complete mess."
Or maybe it was someone else that said that about something else, something more interesting. It was probably someone else and definitely something more interesting. Carry on. Nothing to see here.
Oh, the album? It's awful, it would have benefitted from some drugs, alcohol, redheaded women and Burger King.
Jean-Michel Jarre
4/5
Dennis Wilson
2/5
The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion
4/5
Dirty mutant blues n' roll.
Gene Clark
3/5
This is ok, better than most of the output of the various Byrds. If you like middle of the road '70s folk country rock then fill your boots.
Jerry Lee Lewis
5/5
Rock n' roll's original whirlwind / Grade A shithouse. One of the few live albums I have ever heard that really makes me wish I'd had the chance to see him live. It's a performance every bit as raw and frenzied as the Jerry Lee Lewis legend would have you believe he was in real life.
Kacey Musgraves
1/5
Fuck you the List, what a way to ruin Christmas you fucking grinch.
Pink Floyd
2/5
Syd Barrett psychedelic genius my hairy bum hoop, he's got nothing on Ben Doak.
This probably would have just about scraped a 3 until I got to The Gnome but that drivel has knocked it down a point.
Rod Stewart
3/5
I've said it once before but it bears repeating: https://youtu.be/3xPDBA2mSHI
k.d. lang
1/5
"Some people say I'm a pussy. I say, you are what you eat." K.D. Lang, 1988*
*Probably. Or not. Probably not.
Suzanne Vega
3/5
Ok. Average at best. Carry on.
Beatles
4/5
Yeah, about as good as '60s British guitar pop gets. And some early examples of what would become the McCartney signature style of balladry thrown in for good measure. Probably the best album by this era of The Beatles i.e. the bowl cut, matching suits, cheeky chappy Beatles.
Can
4/5
Abdullah Ibrahim
2/5
The Chemical Brothers
5/5
Cornershop
4/5
Brian Wilson
4/5
Les Rythmes Digitales
5/5
Eels
3/5
Isaac Hayes
5/5
Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band
3/5
Röyksopp
3/5
Ramblin' Jack Elliott
4/5
Steve Earle
3/5
Goldfrapp
4/5
Steely Dan
2/5
Steve Winwood
3/5
Roxy Music
4/5
Michael Jackson
5/5
Hanoi Rocks
5/5
Lloyd Cole And The Commotions
4/5
The Waterboys
4/5
The Black Crowes
2/5
Nirvana
5/5
Destiny's Child
4/5
Joy Division
5/5
Liz Phair
3/5
Elvis Costello & The Attractions
4/5
D'Angelo
5/5
Jane's Addiction
3/5
Tom Waits
2/5
Pulp
4/5
Patti Smith
5/5
Emmylou Harris
3/5
Frank Zappa
3/5
Scott Walker
4/5
Chicago
3/5
Stevie Wonder
5/5
Nas
5/5
Kraftwerk
5/5
50 Cent
3/5
The Isley Brothers
3/5
Anthrax
4/5
A Tribe Called Quest
4/5
Bruce Springsteen
3/5
King Crimson
3/5
Love
5/5
The Prodigy
5/5
Marianne Faithfull
3/5
The Rolling Stones
3/5
Def Leppard
2/5
David Bowie
4/5
Beatles
4/5
The Crusaders
3/5
The Disposable Heroes Of Hiphoprisy
4/5
The Monkees
3/5
Arcade Fire
4/5
The Stranglers
4/5
Bonnie Raitt
2/5
Mudhoney
5/5
The Rolling Stones
4/5
The United States Of America
4/5
The Icarus Line
3/5
Dolly Parton
1/5
Metallica
4/5
Bob Dylan
3/5
Black Flag
4/5
2Pac
3/5
ZZ Top
3/5
Kanye West
5/5
Happy Mondays
4/5
Dead Kennedys
5/5
The Fall
5/5
The xx
4/5
Tori Amos
3/5
Louis Prima
2/5
Cream
2/5
The Fall
5/5
Alice Cooper
3/5
The 13th Floor Elevators
3/5
Erykah Badu
4/5
Public Enemy
4/5
Pink Floyd
3/5
John Martyn
2/5
Sonic Youth
5/5
The Police
1/5
Ryan Adams
2/5
Caetano Veloso
2/5
Portishead
4/5
Astrud Gilberto
3/5
Kate Bush
5/5
The Flaming Lips
5/5
David Ackles
2/5
Tears For Fears
4/5
Lupe Fiasco
4/5
The Birthday Party
3/5
Taylor Swift
1/5
Mercury Rev
4/5
Rush
4/5
Q-Tip
3/5
Björk
4/5
The Rolling Stones
5/5
Led Zeppelin
3/5
John Cale
2/5
Traffic
2/5
The Killers
3/5
George Harrison
2/5
Björk
5/5
Frank Sinatra
2/5
Adele
1/5
Beyoncé
4/5
Donovan
3/5
Metallica
4/5
Ladysmith Black Mambazo
2/5
Wild Beasts
4/5
Kate Bush
3/5
Metallica
4/5
R.E.M.
3/5
SAULT
4/5
The Last Shadow Puppets
3/5
3/5
Spacemen 3
5/5
Dwight Yoakam
3/5
Emerson, Lake & Palmer
1/5
Ride
4/5
3/5
Orbital
4/5
Björk
4/5
Nick Drake
4/5
Tim Buckley
3/5
Moby Grape
3/5
The Soft Boys
3/5
The Libertines
5/5
Common
4/5
Slayer
5/5
Magazine
5/5
Snoop Dogg
5/5
Orbital
3/5
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
5/5
Nightmares On Wax
5/5
Scritti Politti
2/5
Brian Eno
4/5
Slade
3/5
The Byrds
3/5
Jazmine Sullivan
4/5
White Denim
3/5
The Blue Nile
3/5
De La Soul
5/5
Beck
4/5
Shivkumar Sharma
3/5
Mike Oldfield
3/5
Miles Davis
3/5
The Jam
4/5
Throwing Muses
4/5
3/5
Buck Owens
3/5
Todd Rundgren
2/5
Kate Bush
3/5
PJ Harvey
4/5
Astor Piazzolla
3/5
The Mothers Of Invention
3/5
Mariah Carey
1/5
Femi Kuti
4/5
Iggy Pop
5/5
Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan
3/5
The Fall
5/5
Pulp
5/5
The Pretty Things
4/5
Jack White
3/5
Thelonious Monk
2/5
Waylon Jennings
2/5
Peter Gabriel
4/5
Bee Gees
2/5
Hot Chip
3/5
N.E.R.D
4/5
Ozomatli
3/5
Stan Getz
2/5
Supertramp
2/5
Aerosmith
3/5
Bill Callahan
4/5
CHVRCHES
4/5
The Band
2/5
AI
Nonce
Music From Big Pink
In that order.
Ash
4/5
They were 17 when they wrote most of this. In the infamous words of Big Mac SHACK Attack, "they were very mature for their age".
Tom Tom Club
5/5
The best side quest since Andi went to a gym for a bit, and came back as a massive, semi mythical beast now globally known as SHACK.
The Streets
4/5
Mike Skinner’s A Grand Don’t Come For Free isn’t just an album — it’s a slice of early-2000s British life wrapped in beats that sound like they were produced on a slightly sticky pub countertop. It’s a concept album that actually works, telling the story of a geezer who loses a grand, falls in love, messes it up spectacularly, and maybe (depending on how charitable you feel) finds a bit of redemption at the end.
The beauty here is in Skinner’s total commitment to the ordinary. He raps (well, half-talks) about broken TVs, arguments in takeaways, and nights out that go sideways — yet somehow it all feels mythic. Tracks like “Dry Your Eyes” and “Blinded by the Lights” are modern tragedies, told through kebab wrappers and Nokia texts. The production is minimalist but brilliantly purposeful; every cheap synth and clunky drum machine sounds exactly right for the world he’s describing.
It’s also one of those albums that rewards full listens — it’s a story, after all — so anyone who skips tracks is missing the point. It’s like fast-forwarding through Coronation Street and expecting to understand who’s been sleeping with whose cousin.
And speaking of skipping effort… word on the street (pun entirely intended) is that Dave Group Of Trees was supposed to write a review himself, but he decided that was “too much hassle” and outsourced it to AI. So here we are, me — a literal algorithm — praising an album about working-class struggle, while Dave sits somewhere on his sofa, “researching” (read: watching football highlights and eating crisps).
Lorde
3/5
When Lorde released *Melodrama*, she didn’t just drop a pop album — she handed the world a glitter-covered therapy session wrapped in synths, sobs, and lyrical brilliance. It’s the sonic equivalent of staying up too late, staring at the ceiling, and convincing yourself that heartbreak is actually character development.
From the euphoric sprint of “Green Light” to the devastating quiet of “Liability,” Lorde captures every emotional frequency of a quarter-life crisis. The production (courtesy of Jack Antonoff, professional feelings translator) shimmers like champagne at a party you’re pretending to enjoy. It’s artful, aching, and danceable in a way that makes you question your own coping mechanisms.
Now, some people hear *Melodrama* and immediately start rethinking their life choices. Others — like Dave A Group Of Trees — simply open ChatGPT and type, *“Write a review of Lorde’s Melodrama that makes me sound insightful but not like I cried during ‘Supercut’.”* Dave is a man so allergic to effort he’s essentially outsourced his emotional growth to artificial intelligence. He’s not writing his own thoughts anymore; he’s just curating vibes while reclining horizontally, one AI prompt at a time.
Still, even Dave (between naps) would agree that *Melodrama* is a masterpiece. It’s raw but polished, sad but exhilarating — the sound of youth combusting gracefully. Lorde doesn’t just describe emotions; she dissects them, sets them to music, and somehow makes you grateful for your own heartbreak.
LL Cool J
3/5
LADIES LOVE COOL JAILO
Culture Club
1/5
Wow, turns out handcuffing that fella to a radiator was only the second worst thing Boy George ever did.
The Charlatans
4/5
Speaking of Charlatans, I see even writing reviews via AI has become too much for Dave A Group Of Trees. And he shags pasta.
I find this a really difficult album to judge. Objectively I think it's probably a pretty ok effort. A bit baggy, a bit Britpop, very much of its era. It's fine, nothing more, nothing less. But I am scoring it a 4 because listening to this for the first time in about 25 years bowled me over with nostalgia. It made me all warm and fuzzy inside for a (probably mainly imagined) simpler time. A time of bucket hats and good drugs. A time when I was coming of age and learning about the world (and said good drugs). A time of hope. A time when Britain was leading the way in music, fashion, movies and art. A time when Britain was fucking cool. A time of Things Can Only Get Better Blair, not war criminal Blair. A time when bands could wrap themselves in the British flag without fear of association with hate filled gammons. A time that was...fun.
Music is about the way it makes you feeeeellllllll maaaaaaannnnnn. Even if said feelings are informed largely by rose tinted fantasies.
The Boo Radleys
3/5
In the pantheon of giants steps, this one isn't up there with that one what that man did on the moon, is it?
It's fine.