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Wed Mar 03 2021
Pretzel Logic
Steely Dan
Steely Dan made more accomplished albums than Pretzel Logic, but they never made a better one.
3
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Thu Mar 04 2021
Aja
Steely Dan
Aja is a shining example of jazz-rock at its finest.
3
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Fri Mar 05 2021
Modern Life Is Rubbish
Blur
The reason Modern Life Is Rubbish is such a dynamic record and ushered in a new era of British pop is that nearly every song is carefully constructed and boasts a killer melody. Even with its flaws, it's a record of considerable vision and excitement
4
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Sat Mar 06 2021
Blood On The Tracks
Bob Dylan
This is an album alternately bitter, sorrowful, regretful, and peaceful, easily the closest he ever came to wearing his emotions on his sleeve. Dylan made albums more influential than this, but he never made one better.
3
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Sun Mar 07 2021
Otis Blue: Otis Redding Sings Soul
Otis Redding
Redding's powerful, remarkable singing throughout makes Otis Blue gritty, rich, and achingly alive, and an essential listening experience.
4
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Mon Mar 08 2021
Urban Hymns
The Verve
Urban Hymns is a rich album that revitalizes rock traditions without ever seeming less than contemporary. It is the album the Verve have been striving to make since their formation, and it turns out to be worth all the wait.
4
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Tue Mar 09 2021
Queen II
Queen
The one thing that is missing is any semblance of a pop sensibility. This hits like heavy metal but has an art-rock sensibility through and through, which also means that it has no true hook in for those who don't want to succumb to Queen's world. But that kind of insular drama is quite alluring in its own right, which is why Queen II is one of the favorites of their hardcore fans.
2
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Wed Mar 10 2021
Parsley, Sage, Rosemary And Thyme
Simon & Garfunkel
Simon & Garfunkel's first masterpiece, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme was also the first album on which the duo, in tandem with engineer Roy Halee, exerted total control from beginning to end, right down to the mixing, and it is an achievement akin to the Beatles' Revolver or the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds album, and just as personal and pointed as either of those records at their respective bests.
4
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Thu Mar 11 2021
Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)
Eurythmics
Eurythmics' breakthrough album is a deft mix of electronic thrills, new wave chills, and sultry R&B, the latter supplied by Annie Lennox's warm tenor.
3
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Fri Mar 12 2021
Ananda Shankar
Ananda Shankar
1
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Sat Mar 13 2021
It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back
Public Enemy
It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, a record that rewrote the rules of what hip-hop could do.
3
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Sun Mar 14 2021
Cee-Lo Green... Is The Soul Machine
Cee Lo Green
3
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Mon Mar 15 2021
Franz Ferdinand
Franz Ferdinand
Despite its slight unevenness, Franz Ferdinand ends up being rewarding in different ways than the band's previous work was, and it's apparent that they're one of the more exciting groups to come out of the garage rock/post-punk revival.
4
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Tue Mar 16 2021
Californication
Red Hot Chili Peppers
Californication is a bona fide Chili Peppers classic.
4
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Wed Mar 17 2021
First Band On The Moon
The Cardigans
First Band on the Moon is saved by the Cardigans' core strengths: Persson's vocals and Svensson's arrangements.
3
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Thu Mar 18 2021
Let's Get It On
Marvin Gaye
Perhaps no other record has ever achieved the kind of sheer erotic force of Let's Get It On, and it remains the blueprint for all of the slow jams to follow decades later -- much copied, but never imitated.
2
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Fri Mar 19 2021
Antichrist Superstar
Marilyn Manson
Antichrist Superstar is an unexpectedly cohesive album from a silly shock metal band and will stand as Marilyn Manson's definitive statement.
1
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Sat Mar 20 2021
Graceland
Paul Simon
With Graceland, Paul Simon hit on the idea of combining his always perceptive songwriting with the little-heard mbaqanga music of South Africa, creating a fascinating hybrid that re-enchanted his old audience and earned him a new one. An enormously successful record, Graceland became the standard against which subsequent musical experiments by major artists were measured.
4
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Sun Mar 21 2021
Hunky Dory
David Bowie
On the surface, such a wide range of styles and sounds would make an album incoherent, but Bowie's improved songwriting and determined sense of style instead made Hunky Dory a touchstone for reinterpreting pop's traditions into fresh, postmodern pop music.
3
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Mon Mar 22 2021
Raw Like Sushi
Neneh Cherry
Not easily classifiable as a whole, Raw Like Sushi is one of the most soulful and "hip-hop" albums considered neither R&B nor rap.
3
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Tue Mar 23 2021
Younger Than Yesterday
The Byrds
Younger Than Yesterday was somewhat overlooked at the time of its release during an intensely competitive era that found the Byrds on a commercial downslide. Time, however, has shown it to be the most durable of the Byrds' albums, with the exception of Mr. Tambourine Man
4
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Wed Mar 24 2021
Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
Elton John
It was designed to be a blockbuster and it was. Prior to Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Elton John had hits -- his second album, Elton John, went Top 10 in the U.S. and U.K., and he had smash singles in "Crocodile Rock" and "Daniel" -- but this 1973 album was a statement of purpose spilling over two LPs, which was all the better to showcase every element of John's spangled personality.
3
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Thu Mar 25 2021
The Man Machine
Kraftwerk
More pop-oriented than any of their previous work, the sound of The Man-Machine -- in particular among Kraftwerk's oeuvre -- had a tremendous impact on the cold, robotic synth pop of artists like Gary Numan, as well as Britain's later new romantic movement.
5
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Fri Mar 26 2021
Straight Outta Compton
N.W.A.
It's impossible to overstate the enduring impact of Straight Outta Compton; as polarizing as its outlook may be, it remains an essential landmark, one of hip-hop's all-time greatest.
2
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Sat Mar 27 2021
Dire Straits
Dire Straits
Driven by Mark Knopfler's spare, tasteful guitar lines and his husky warbling, the album is a set of bluesy rockers. Knopfler also shows an inclination toward Dylanesque imagery, which enhances the smoky, low-key atmosphere of the album. While a few of the songs fall flat, the album is remarkably accomplished for a debut, and Dire Straits had difficulty surpassing it throughout their career.
5
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Sun Mar 28 2021
If You're Feeling Sinister
Belle & Sebastian
Sinister plays like a great forgotten album, couched in '80s indie, '90s attitude, and '60s folk-pop. It's beautifully out of time, and even if other Belle & Sebastian albums sound like it, this is where they achieved a sense of grace.
4
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Mon Mar 29 2021
Astral Weeks
Van Morrison
Astral Weeks is generally considered one of the best albums in pop music history, but for all that renown, it is anything but an archetypal rock & roll album. It it isn't a rock & roll album at all. Van Morrison plays acoustic guitar and sings in his elastic, bluesy, soulful voice, accompanied by crack group of jazz studio players. Astral Weeks is a justified entry in pop music's pantheon. It is unlike any record before or since; it mixes together the very best of postwar popular music in an emotional outpouring cast in delicate, subtle musical structures.
3
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Tue Mar 30 2021
Bluesbreakers
John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers
Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton was Eric Clapton's first fully realized album as a blues guitarist -- more than that, it was a seminal blues album of the 1960s, perhaps the best British blues album ever cut, and the best LP ever recorded by John Mayall's Bluesbreakers.
3
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Wed Mar 31 2021
Woodface
Crowded House
The songs are easily their finest to date, combining flawless melodies and the outstanding harmonies of the Finn (Tim and Neil) brothers' perfectly matched voices.
3
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Thu Apr 01 2021
Born To Run
Bruce Springsteen
If The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle was an accidental miracle, Born to Run was an intentional masterpiece. It declared its own greatness with songs and a sound that lived up to Springsteen's promise, and though some thought it took itself too seriously, many found that exalting.
4
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Fri Apr 02 2021
Fire Of Love
The Gun Club
The Gun Club's debut is the watermark for all post-punk roots music. With Pierce's wailing high lonesome slide guitar twinned with Ward Dotson's spine-shaking riffs and the solid yet off-the-rails rhythm section of bassist Rob Ritter and drummer Terry Graham, the Gun Club burst out of L.A. Nobody has heard music like this before or since. Pierce's songs were rooted in his land of Texas. Fire of Love may be just what the doctor ordered, but to cure or kill is anybody's guess.
5
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Sat Apr 03 2021
Songs Of Love And Hate
Leonard Cohen
Songs of Love and Hate is one of Leonard Cohen's most emotionally intense albums -- which, given the nature of Cohen's body of work, is no small statement. . If Songs of Love and Hate isn't Cohen's best album, it comes close enough to be essential to anyone interested in his work.
3
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Sun Apr 04 2021
Architecture And Morality
Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark
If there was a clear high point for OMD in terms of balancing relentless experimentation and seemingly unstoppable mainstream success in the U.K., Architecture & Morality is it. Again combining everything from design and presentation to even the title into an overall artistic effort
4
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Mon Apr 05 2021
Ogden's Nut Gone Flake
Small Faces
There was no shortage of good psychedelic albums emerging from England in 1967-1968, but Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake is special even within their ranks. The Small Faces had already shown a surprising adaptability to psychedelia with the single "Itchycoo Park" and much of their other 1967 output, but Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake pretty much ripped the envelope.
3
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Tue Apr 06 2021
Parachutes
Coldplay
Parachutes deserved the accolades it received because it followed the general rule when introducing decent pop songs: keep the emotion genuine and real. And Coldplay did that without hesitation.
5
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Wed Apr 07 2021
Ten
Pearl Jam
Eddie Vedder's impressionistic lyrics often make their greatest impact through the passionate commitment of his delivery rather than concrete meaning. His voice had a highly distinctive timbre that perfectly fit the album's warm, rich sound, and that's part of the key -- no matter how cathartic Ten's tersely titled songs got, they were never abrasive enough to affect the album's accessibility. Ten also benefited from a long gestation period, during which the band honed the material into this tightly focused form; the result is a flawlessly crafted hard rock masterpiece.
5
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Thu Apr 08 2021
The Nightfly
Donald Fagen
The Nightfly is lush and shimmering, produced with cinematic flair by Gary Katz; romanticized but never sentimental, the songs are slices of suburbanite soap opera, tales of space-age hopes (the hit "I.G.Y.") and Cold War fears (the wonderful "The New Frontier," a memoir of fallout-shelter love) crafted with impeccable style and sophistication.
3
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Fri Apr 09 2021
Manassas
Stephen Stills
A sprawling masterpiece, akin to the Beatles' White Album, the Stones' Exile on Main St., or Wilco's Being There in its makeup, if not its sound. Rock, folk, blues, country, Latin, and bluegrass have all been styles touched on in Stephen Stills' career, and the skilled, energetic musicians he had gathered in Manassas played them all on this album. What could have been a disorganized mess in other hands, though, here all gelled together and formed a cohesive musical statement.
3
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Sat Apr 10 2021
Emergency On Planet Earth
Jamiroquai
"...the album was an infectious, funk mezze of trumpets, saxophones, didgeridoos and flutes, spawning the hit singles Too Young To Die and Blow Your Mind which both entered the UK Top 10 in 1993." BBC Music
3
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Sun Apr 11 2021
Moon Safari
Air
Unlike most electronica producers, Air had musical ideas that stretched beyond samplers or keyboards, and Moon Safari found those ideas wrapped up in music that was engaging, warm, and irresistible.
3
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Mon Apr 12 2021
Live At The Regal
B.B. King
Live at the Regal is an absolutely necessary acquisition for fans of B.B. King or blues music in general. A high point, perhaps even the high point, for uptown blues.
3
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Tue Apr 13 2021
Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo
Devo
Produced by Brian Eno, Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! was a seminal touchstone in the development of American new wave. It was one of the first pop albums to use synthesizers as an important textural element, and although they mostly play a supporting role in this guitar-driven set, the innovation began to lay the groundwork for the synth-pop explosion that would follow very shortly. It also doesn't hurt that this is arguably Devo's strongest set of material, though several brilliant peaks can overshadow the remainder. Of those peaks, the most definitive are the de-evolution manifesto "Jocko Homo" (one of the extremely few rock anthems written in 7/8 time) and a wicked deconstruction of "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction," which reworks the original's alienation into a spastic freak-out that's nearly unrecognizable. But Q: Are We Not Men? also had a conceptual unity that bolstered the consistent songwriting, making it an essential document of one of new wave's most influential bands.
5
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Thu Apr 15 2021
Calenture
The Triffids
McComb's explosive rage at the finale of \"Vagabond Holes\" should have been the Triffids' last gasp, an unsettling blast of scarred emotions that isn't easy to shake off.
5
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Fri Apr 16 2021
Mama Said Knock You Out
LL Cool J
It leaves no doubt that Mama Said Knock You Out was intended to be a tour de force, to regain LL Cool J's credibility while proving that he was still one of rap's most singular talents. It succeeded mightily, making him an across-the-board superstar and cementing his status as a rap icon beyond any doubt.
2
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Sat Apr 17 2021
Tigermilk
Belle & Sebastian
They're in full flower on Tigermilk, surfacing on tunes throughout the album, but crystallizing on the skipping "She's Losing It," rushed "Expectations," '60s throwback "I Could Be Dreaming," and, especially, "The State I Am In," a masterful melodrama that points toward the richness of If You're Feeling Sinister, which arrived just a few months later. Those are the moments when Belle and Sebastian feel preternaturally gifted, seeming to know precisely who they were right out of the gate.
5
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Sun Apr 18 2021
Van Halen
Van Halen
Among revolutionary rock albums, Van Halen's debut often gets short shrift. But make no mistake, Van Halen is as monumental, as seismic as those records, but part of the reason it's never given the same due is that there's no pretension, nothing self-conscious about it. In the best sense, it is an artless record, in the sense that it doesn't seem contrived, but it's also a great work of art because it's an effortless, guileless expression of what the band is all about, and what it would continue to be over the years.
4
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Mon Apr 19 2021
Metallica
Metallica
In retrospect, Metallica is a good, but not quite great, album, one whose best moments deservedly captured the heavy metal crown, but whose approach also foreshadowed a creative decline.
3
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Tue Apr 20 2021
If I Could Only Remember My Name
David Crosby
David Crosby's debut solo album, If I Could Only Remember My Name is a one-shot wonder of dreamy but ominous California ambience. As it is, If I Could Only Remember My Name is a shambolic masterpiece, meandering but transcendentally so, full of frayed threads. Not only is it among the finest splinter albums out of the CSNY diaspora, it is one of the defining moments of hungover spirituality from the era.
4
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Wed Apr 21 2021
At Budokan
Cheap Trick
While their records were entertaining and full of skillful pop, it wasn't until At Budokan that Cheap Trick's vision truly gelled. Many of these songs, like "I Want You to Want Me" and "Big Eyes," were pleasant in their original form, but seemed more like sketches compared to the roaring versions on this album. With their ear-shatteringly loud guitars and sweet melodies, Cheap Trick unwittingly paved the way for much of the hard rock of the next decade, as well as a surprising amount of alternative rock of the 1990s, and it was At Budokan that captured the band in all of its power.
4
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Thu Apr 22 2021
The Gilded Palace Of Sin
The Flying Burrito Brothers
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Fri Apr 23 2021
Highway to Hell
AC/DC
Of course, Highway to Hell is the final album AC/DC recorded with Bon Scott, the lead singer who provided the group with a fair share of its signature sleaze... AC/DC has never sounded so enormous, and they've never had such great songs, and they had never delivered an album as singularly bone-crunching or classic as this until now.
4
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Sat Apr 24 2021
Ready To Die
The Notorious B.I.G.
The album that reinvented East Coast rap for the gangsta age, Ready to Die made the Notorious B.I.G. a star, and vaulted Sean "Puffy" Combs' Bad Boy label into the spotlight as well. Today it's recognized as one of the greatest hardcore rap albums ever recorded, and that's mostly due to Biggie's skill as a storyteller.
1
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Sun Apr 25 2021
Tago Mago
Can
With the band in full artistic flower and Damo Suzuki's sometimes moody, sometimes frenetic speak/sing/shrieking in full effect, Can released not merely one of the best Krautrock albums of all time, but one of the best albums ever, period.
3
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Mon Apr 26 2021
Another Green World
Brian Eno
A universally acknowledged masterpiece, Another Green World represents a departure from song structure and toward a more ethereal, minimalistic approach to sound. Despite the stripped-down arrangements, the album's sumptuous tone quality reflects Eno's growing virtuosity at handling the recording studio as an instrument in itself
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Tue Apr 27 2021
I Against I
Bad Brains
I Against I was for Bad Brains what London Calling was for the Clash -- the band's first fully mature work, one which successfully brought together all of its diverse influences while at the same time showcasing a singular vision. Also like London Calling, it was to be the band's masterpiece, in the original sense of that term -- a creative pinnacle which they would not reach again...this is music-making of an order not usually seen in rock & roll.
3
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Wed Apr 28 2021
My Generation
The Who
An explosive debut, and the hardest mod pop recorded by anyone. At the time of its release, it also had the most ferociously powerful guitars and drums yet captured on a rock record. While the execution was sometimes crude, and the songwriting not as sophisticated as it would shortly become, the Who never surpassed the pure energy level of this record.
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Thu Apr 29 2021
Let It Be
The Replacements
Let It Be looms large among '80s rock albums, generally regarded as one of the greatest records of the decade. So large is its legend and so universal its acclaim that all the praise tends to give the impression that the Replacements' fourth album was designed as a major statement, intended to be something important when its genius, like so many things involving the 'Mats, feels accidental.There's just enough angst and tastelessness to have the album speak to teenagers of all generations and just enough complicated emotion to make this music resonate with listeners long past those awkward years, whether they grew up with this album or not.
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Fri Apr 30 2021
Arrival
ABBA
Although three LPs and a greatest-hits compilation preceded it, Arrival is aptly titled, as this album announces the band's move beyond bubblegum. Arrival contains three huge hit singles, the dramatic "Money Money Money," the downcast "Knowing Me, Knowing You," and quite possibly the band's finest four minutes, the absolutely perfect pop classic "Dancing Queen," a combination of Spector-ian grandeur, McCartney-esque melody, and the indescribable vocals of Agnetha Fältskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad
2
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Sat May 01 2021
Triangle
The Beau Brummels
The jewel in the Beau Brummels' crown, Triangle was an unexpected departure from the band's earlier hitmaking formula -- and demonstrated Ron Elliott's growing maturation as a songwriter. All the band's signature styles (folk, country swing, and Brit-pop) are still heard in the mix, but the tunes here assume an added aura of mysticism. Too long ignored by rock cognoscenti, Triangle is (all hyperbole aside) a fine album that deserves to be heard by a wider audience.
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Fri Dec 31 2021
In Rainbows
Radiohead
4