Is "Respect" a Toploader? Yes, but only in the sense that it is one of the ten best songs of the twentieth century (and probably the best cover). Everything pales beside it...

Surprisingly (sunny why, tho – no idea why I expected what I was expecting) melodic and enjoyable. The outtakes and extras were a bit...extra. Still

To describe an album as being full of album cuts seems ungenerous (as well as illogical). But there we have it. Lots of noodles and doodling, some esoteric songwriting, but nothing of note, really.

Is this actually random? 200+ albums and the first DM I get is the day after Fletch dies. Reminds me of the problems Apple had with the shuffle facility on the original iPod (summary: peeps refused to believe that random was random, and so an algorithm was introduced into the software to create randomity. If such a word exists. Which probably mirrors the whole process of creating a random sequence. For people with a very fixed idea of what random should mean.)

What. Fresh. Hell. Even for 1999 pop. An aside. If in any doubt about the motives of Ms Spears backers: the music on this album is on a par with the music of S Club Seven. Which is to say, aimed at twelve year olds and made by a notional big sister or brother. It's impossible to unthinkable "(Baby Hit Me) One More Time" (although the Travis cover does help. But it'll be interesting to do the Lady Gaga test on this song and video.

and "Dancing in the Dark", the last to be recorded, on February 14, 1984. The latter was written overnight, after co-producer Jon Landau convinced Springsteen that the album needed a single. According to Dave Marsh in Glory Days, Springsteen was not impressed with Landau's approach. "Look," he snarled, "I've written 70 songs. You want another one, you write it." After blowing off some steam, Springsteen came in the next day with the entire song written. Marsh, Dave. Glory Days. Pantheon. Born in the U.S.A. became the first compact disc manufactured in the United States for commercial release when CBS and Sony opened its CD manufacturing plant in Terre Haute, Indiana in September 1984. Wikipedia

However, the album's best-known track, "Son of a Preacher Man", was not among these, and was originally written with the idea of submitting it to Aretha Franklin. (Franklin cut her own version of the song in 1969 after Springfield's single reached the #10 position in the Billboard Hot 100.) The recording was a challenge for Wexler. In his book Rhythm and the Blues, Wexler wrote that out of all the songs that were initially submitted to Springfield for consideration, "she approved exactly zero." For her, he continued, "to say yes to one song was seen as a lifetime commitment."[9] Springfield disputed this, saying she did choose two: "Son of a Preacher Man" and "Just a Little Lovin'".[10] He was surprised, given Dusty's talent, by her apparent insecurity. Springfield later attributed her initial unease to a very real anxiety about being compared with the soul greats who had recorded in the same studios. Eventually Dusty's final vocals were recorded in New York.[11] Additionally, Springfield stated that she had never before worked with just a rhythm track, and that it was the first time she had worked with outside producers, having self-produced her previous recordings (something for which she never took credit). During the Memphis sessions in November 1968, Springfield suggested to the heads of Atlantic Records that they should sign the newly formed Led Zeppelin group. She knew the band's bass player John Paul Jones, who had backed her in concerts before. Without having ever seen them and largely on Dusty's advice,[12] the record company signed the group with a $143,000 advance. (Mick Wall (2005). "No Way Out": 83.) Despite modest sales, it was the first of a small wave of "in Memphis"-style albums that were recorded by pop singers at American Recording Studios.

Popular music scholar Yuval Taylor described it as "a burning hot prefiguring" of the music that Miles Davis would perform on his 1975 live album Agharta. Other sources say the title is a reference to band leader George Clinton finding his brother's "decomposed dead body, skull cracked, in a Chicago apartment." According to legend, the 10-minute title track was recorded in one take when Clinton, under the influence of LSD, told guitarist Eddie Hazel to play as if he had been told his mother was dead The cover artwork depicts a screaming black woman's head coming out of the earth; it was photographed by Joel Brodsky and features model Barbara Cheeseborough In 2003, Rolling Stone ranked Maggot Brain #486 on the magazine's list of 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, with the magazine raising its rank in 2012 to #479, calling it "the heaviest rock album the P-Funk ever created". In the 2020 reboot of the list, the album's rank shot up to #136.

Shirley Manson had been performing with the Edinburgh-based rock band Goodbye Mr Mackenzie since 1984. In 1993, several of the members, including Manson, formed the side project Angelfish. Their only studio album, the self-titled Angelfish, was as commercially unsuccessful as preceding albums by Goodbye Mr Mackenzie, selling only 10,000 copies. Initial sessions with Vig on vocals and the members' past work with all-male groups led to the band's desire for a woman on lead. Marker was watching 120 Minutes when he saw the one-time airing of the music video for Angelfish's "Suffocate Me". He showed the video to Erikson and Vig while their manager, Shannon O'Shea, tracked Manson down. When Manson was contacted, she didn't know who Vig was and was urged to check the credits on Nirvana's album Nevermind, which Vig had produced. On April 8, 1994, Manson met Erikson, Marker and Vig for the first time in London. Later that evening Vig was informed of Kurt Cobain's suicide Garbage continued to work on the album throughout the start of 1995, delayed by Vig's work producing Soul Asylum's Let Your Dim Light Shine album and the songs being "piecemealed together in the studio". Vig described the composing process as a "dysfunctional democracy" where someone would bring a loop or a sample, which was followed by jam sessions in which the band members would "find one bar that's kind of cool, load that into our samplers, jam on top of that, [and] Shirley will ad-lib", with the process continuing until the song was finished, often with "all of the original ideas gone, and the song had somehow mutated into something completely different." Among the songs that were completely reworked, "As Heaven Is Wide" went from "a big rock track" to a techno-style song with Tom Jones-inspired beats, only keeping Erikson's fuzz bass and Manson's vocals from the original recording

Incendiary!

Not that it is bad per se. But, like, Masters of Puppets covered this territory almost a decade earlier. Underwhelmed.

Choose your own (aural) adventure…

Huh. Bit off piste here. Pleasant surprise

“I want a girl with extensions” (Around the Way Girl). Boy, nothing dates the album like this. (Although, to be fair, the diversity of hair clip use these days could give this line a new lease of life…) The very conservative use of samples and loops makes me realise, belatedly, that this album was pointed directly at the mainstream. Got there just in time too - The Chronic and Gangster Rap reshaped that landscape just a year or so later…) On the whole, a period piece rather than a classic. Mama Said Knock You Out is still banging, tho…

Carrie Snodgrass. That's a blast from the past. Ambulance Blues stands up with the best of Young's work. I got this on CD not long after it had (finally) been re-released. It was already been discounted heavily, which was a surprise. At first. If (a huge counterfactual here) Youtube had been around a decade earlier, would this record have attained a cult status? I think not. It's not quite the digression from the commerciality (bestowed retrospectively) of Harvest, it's a rather middling endeavour. But scarcity created a sense of value.

One to return to. Intriguing, if noisy

Q: what sets Nevermind (and, perhaps, Ten) apart from the rest of the Grunge crowd? A: It’s pretty hard imagining an R n B cover of Smells Like Teen Spirit. This is not a diss of 90s RnB, much of which I liked. The point is that much of it, and 90s HipHop, was producer-driven brilliance. So too Grunge, but lacking the brill bit. The drums on Dirt are fucking fantastic, the guitars intriguing, and Layne Staney’s voice would carry anyone for an age. But it’s at least 60% producer wizardry, isn’t it? (If I were more committed to this task, I’ll search out the demos for this. But there’s only so much time in the world…) Imagine SWV or Aaliyah hitting Would? :)

This is quite frustrating. I've spent my life happily untroubled by the need to justify my dislike for Elvis Costello. And then I get two of his albums in a week. There is an important place for irrational loathing in this world – mainly the fact that one never feels motivated to act on it. Having struggled through this milquetoast offering, I now have the distinct urge to kill an ant or something equally unpleasant. (Note to self.) I generally do not pay attention to lyrics. Too intellectual a response. I need my my music to grab my by the short and curlies, to drag me down to uncharted emotional depths. Searing guitars, plaintive voices (not lyrics, mind: voices), bone-juddering bass lines, ethereal chants: All have done the trick in the past, all will do so in the future. I'm sort of tempted to listen to this again, just to see if there is anything in the word arrangement that justifies the foolishness people express about Mr C. But this may make me even angrier yet. So no.

So-so. Inoffensive, a little dull. The wikipedia entry for the album was more entertaining. (i.e. didn't know that Gladys Knight and the Pips were first on the slate with I Heard It Through the Grapevine. As for the performance shenanigans of the Dennis Edwards era...life is sometimes more scandalous that fiction.)

So...I'm going to have to (at least slightly) revise my opinion on Elvis Costello, given that he produced this album. It is a period piece, true, but a fairly good one. Odd thing about this is that it is easy to be pessimistic about the state of the nation etc. But even it its pessimism, stuff like ska actually pointed out other viable possibilities, an organic reorganisation of the order of the day. The point is to remember this, and not what the naysayers have to say. They always have something to say. Most of it is useless.

Q: What's better, The Bends or OK Computer? A: Kid A Which isn't entirely fair...on OK Computer. But that's by the point What one often forgets is that Radiohead are a *brave* outfit. They're restless, adventurous, and have never been afraid to explore new territory. Which is saying something for a band of five guys who've been making music for 30 years. This is their last *explicitly* commercial album. Not in the sense that they aren't in the business of scoring and retaining a hold on a distinct fanbase (I think every musician wants this – its always a matter of scale, rather than intentions), but rather that they've worked from instinct rather critique ever since. I always think that the transition occurs somewhere between High and Dry and Street Spirit (Fade Out). The former is serviceable, but it's music making by supervision – where are the hit singles, etc. The latter isn't very far away from it, but it's much looser, less constrained, more ... real? It hasn't always been a smooth upwards trajectory ever since (Hail to the Thief and King of Limbs both have notable bad patches). But its been their own journey ever since The Bends

Indifferent, to be honest. Quite excited to *rediscover* Chris Thomas, though. Had no idea that he produced songs on the White Album, for instance. Sounds like quite an affable chap. (I suppose one would have to be to work with Pink Floyd. Writs and all that.)

Did a REM binge a while ago, so this is still relatively fresh in the conscious mind. It's a bit of a bridge album – doesn't have the fresh looseness of their first few albums, and the songwriting feels a bit forced. But it is better than Green, which I (personally) think is the weakest of their pre AFTP albums. Anyway. I only now found out that Jefferson Holt got the boot for what may have been an alleged#MeToo situation. It seems that he got our learned friends to keep the matter nice and quiet. Shows how much my thinking has moved on from them days. I always assumed he'd be fast and loose with the double entry ledger... REM and "College Rock" will always be synonymous in my head. Unwashed, unshaved, reeking of stale beer and cheap aftershave. The audience, that is. I do not say this mockingly. I got to REM at a slightly more advanced stage in my evolution, but I had been that dude. Just with different music.

You know, Comedy is one of my all time favourite singles, and it really breaks my heart that the album doesn't get anywhere close to it. They set the bar too high, they did. So it goes.

Oh this is so joyful.

It’s a good album, it’s different to most stuff of the time. But it kinda sets itself an almost impossible task with the opening track, which is a killer and a half, before becoming distinctly domesticated. It is what it is, I suppose.

Well. Le Cont is Stuart Price. Which makes that shtick an extremely worthwhile proof-of-concept. Still didn’t like it, tho.

I quite like the fact that Ken Norton produced both The Pixies and Busted. (Wikipedia quite charmingly describes Busted a a punk band. O tempora, o mores...)

I guess you had to be there to get it. 'Chains' earns it a lot of goodwill, though. Ok, the second half of chains. The ‘Top Gear’ bit. And that skateboard song too. Laidback and fuck. But otherwise, the album is largely caterwauling for a live studio audience.

The Swedish album. ABBA (who I love) have a lot to answer for. A quick poll of a few teenagers who were in the sweet spot for this album when it was released: they remember nothing. Pop, good Pop at least, must be memorable and enduring. This album fails on the second count. (I’ll pass on the first.) Nobody argues if the new Taylor Swift album is better than the last, because no one remembers the last. (This may be a failing of autobiographical Pop too…)

If I ever needed reminding that I was a teenage Tory, then this is it. In my defence, my location and surroundings made this more or less inevitable. At my school, the furthest left anyone would have been would have been fair bit to the right of, say, Bill Clinton. (Some of us who relocated Stateside would have enthusiastically voted for him in 1992. And I'm not saying that this is (necessarily) a bad thing, but, you know. Youth. Radical politics. etc. Not on our register). it holds up pretty well. Some absolute AOR (to borrow an Americanism) classics here, like The Man's Too Strong. And, I mean, this was more cutting edge than Christopher Cross. And in the somewhat privileged West African milieu I inhabited back in the day, guitar Rock was a fucking radical thing to enjoy. (Note. Yes, I listened to Police, and Prince, and Depeche Mode, and the Pet Shop Boys, and Kraftwerk, in 1985. Favourites then, still favourites now.) (Also in my defence. Brothers in Arms was a gateway drug to Def Leppard, then Metallica, then Anthrax, then Industrial, then Einstürzende Neubaten, then Nick Cave etc etc. No, not a gateway drug to REO Speedwagon and Journey. Anyway, just saying that some good did come out of this album for me, via one of my many make-your-own-adventure musical lifetimes .)

God that was dull

well. You know. Waterloo Sunset.

Is it me, or is Poor Boy the proof-of-concept for Screamadelica?

Circa 1993, it was impossible to read Q and not have a nuanced, often contradictory opinion about Suede. (NME and Select readers, accustomed to being told what to think, had no opinions worth noting.) On the balance, Suede were not the collective Messiah. But they did have a picture of two lesbians kissing on the cover of their album 30 years ago. That’s one in the eye for the young ‘uns who think that history started in 2010. (Yes, I was the same etc etc) (The full image is actually quite interesting. The artists didn’t give them permission to use it. More trouble than it was worth, she thought.)

<yawn> Ok, a bit unfair. However. My introduction to EW&F was thru unscheduled interstitial on NTA2 Channel 5 (if you know, you know) - snippets of a TV Special hosted by Natalie Cole. The costumes. The hair. The unbridled exuberance. Next to that, this is like Protestant church music. My argument is that six albums in or not, they hadn’t quite found their metier. Thank the heavens they did.

Mike Patton is on record saying that he shakes his bottom better than Anthony Kiedis. True or not, he’d have done better if he could sing better than AK. One theory is that this is low on the evolution chain that runs from swamp dwelling to Nu Metal. A competing theory posits that this is pretty far along the chain - just that the genre didn’t go very far. Epic is still fun. Thy said, it’s weird listening to albums like this, a generation after deciding not to spend my pocket money on a whim and the influence of a hot single. Thank goodness for common sense.

Well, you know. Worthy. Indulgent. Sometimes plain dull. (Ok, to be fair, idk how groundbreaking this was in the day itself. But I do know that other groups - Brass Construction, Skyy, Dynasty, the funkier parts of the Solar Records roster, generally - grabbed the ball and ran much further with it. Give the guy a living legend medal and move along, I think.

as first albums go, this is fucking ace. As first singles go (is this right? to lazy to check) Sultans of Swing is neither the best, not the most radio-friendly cut. Embarrassment of riches. When I first heard this (retro-tracking the back catalogue in the wake of Brothers in Arms) I used to imagine the ideal listener of the time. Its late. Co-habitants have buggered off to sleep. Outside, the silence lays thick. Indoors, single lamp by most comfortable armchair. Brushing off the vinyl, pouring out a subtle malt (generous serving), and settling down for 40 minutes of me, myself and I. Subtle malt and vinyl aside (I lack the resources for one, the temperamental inclinations for the other), I did this last night. God, it felt good.

This is the breakup album, right? Not that it should be anthropomorphised to one person's unhappiness, obvs. (Later) No it isn’t. Apropos of nothing, time for a self-clarification of this wretched star system. Five stars. Indispensable. It is a privilege to be (re)acquainted with this masterpiece. Will be downloaded onto my device and listened to regularly. Four Star. A fine album. My impressions may be tainted by subjective memory muscle responses (on the whole, albums released between 1985 and 1999). At the least, a prompt to explore the artist/band’s back catalogue, get a sense of context. Or an excuse to wallow in nostalgia for a bit. Three Star. Serviceable. At the worst inoffensive, at the best well made but ephemeral. Every so often, a song or two give cause for closer consideration, but on the whole nothing here that will change any aspect of my life. Two Star. Poor/cynical/unformed. Like most music, it will mean something g to someone somewhere. I’m not that person One Star. Mum got her church group to buy a copy each. You know the Brian Eno anecdote about the Velvet Underground? Well, whoever made this album went to a Kenny G concert and was similarly moved. Poor us. Blur is a four star, even though objectively I think it might be a three. It was a big break from Britpop. In retrospect, they did a Radiohead before Radiohead. (Alburn, who is one of the most curious people in pop - a compliment) was all over Pavement and Dinosaur Jr. at the time.) Aside from the radio ‘friendly’ unit shifters here, some underrated classics (Strange News from Another Star - Bowie for the 21st cen., anyone?) Blur don’t deserve the opprobrium heaped on them. Yes, they were (are) precious. But never opportunistic.

When Spike Lee came into town to promote The 25th Hour, he had a Q & A at what is now Everyman Islington. Someone had given him an Arsenal shirt; he immediately started playing the hooligan by applying American race relation tropes to the UK situation. Ah, I miss those innocent days… Anyway. Bought this album purely on the basis of the Springsteen song on the Spike Lee Joint’s soundtrack (‘The Fuse’) (I’m just going to say now that, for all sorts of reasons, the record company bloc had downloading and streaming coming for them from a mile away. The saw it, and waited for the catastrophe like a rabbit caught in the headlights. Buying an overpriced album because it’s the only way to enjoy a song at one’s leisure. Sheesh. It wasn’t home taping that killed music, it was EMI) Anyway. It sounded pompous then, and still sounds pompous now. The loathing I had for Springsteen many a year ago has mellowed to a grudging respect (although, tbh, why should anyone give a hoot about what I think about The Boss?) (Murder Inc was the song that forced me to give his back catalogue an honest reappraisal. Anyone who can do that must be half-way to good at the least) Bruce, like Spike, is a prisoner of the hype around him. Because we live in a hyper literal age now, once again, the circle has closed and he fits properly in the zeitgeist. But this album, nevertheless, belongs to a different time. About 20 years past. When fairly or not, not many people were too bothered about what he did, and his main constituency were men who then were about the age I am now. Nostalgia blunts our critical facilities, I fear…

Ok, here’s something odd. Even though the Tupac lost cuts cottage industry continued to roll out albums for donkey’s years after his death (or, if you haunt some seriously unserious corners of the internet, after he removed himself from the fame game and relocated to Peckham) I have never sat and listened to an album of his from start to end. First time for everything… (Afterwards). Great delivery, shame about the production

Spellbound is still lovely. Still an odd mix. Not totally-related observation. In Notes on a Scandal, the Cate Blanchett character puts on a vinyl version of a S+tB song, Dizzy. She says (I think; if I were diligent about this, I'd do a check, but...) that it's an old favourite. This is impossible, tho. Said song didn't exist in this past, not on vinyl or anywhere else...

so-so. Very much of its time. (cf. Fascinating Rhythm, which is much more adventurous.)

There's something contrary about leaving one of the best songs of the 21st century (Mykonos) off your debut album. I've really worked at this album over the years. But, I'm sorry to report, there's much less to it than meets the eye.

Is "Respect" a Toploader? Yes, but only in the sense that it is one of the ten best songs of the twentieth century (and probably the best cover). Everything pales beside it...

Uneventful. Never quite figured why I skew Calexico over Wilco so strongly.

The joke almost goes on too long.

First album I didn’t listen to all the way through. It isn’t bad, it’s just determinedly undistinguished. Brings nothing new to the table. At best, an example of common-or-garden variety Synthpop circa 1982. Fungible to the nth degree.

Ah come on. I don’t need to do this. Anyway, in no particular order: Greg Phillianges; the red zip up jacket in ‘Beat It’; Ola Ray; Eddie Van Halen; Mr Quincy Jones; bunched up jacket sleeves; Paul McC genuinely relevant (even if not genuinely good) post Beatles; tiger print pocket square; Say Na Na Na - Na Na Na; Hot Rod Temperton; etc etc.

Rubbish.

Yes, we can boogie.

A good listen. Older and wiser, the "contrivances" (i.e. this didn't emerge whole from a jam session) are clearer (actually, would it be fair to say the the craft, as opposed to a natural predisposition for aesthetics, is more obvious now?) but still a jolly good listen

Perfectly sound for what it is, but not for me, I fear

Belinda Carlisle on a Specials album. Huh.

I sometimes think (unfairly) that Coldplay was what pushed Radiohead firmly into the leftfield. The chronology doesn't quite work, obviously. But, nonetheless, it is interesting to note that after early material that tracked pre-Kid A Radiohead, A Rush of Blood went headlong after a stadium pleasing bombast that aligned more closely with another big album from the year 2000 – U2's All That You Can't Leave Behind. The best of this album are the songs that bookend it - the 9/11 influenced Politik, and the elegiac Amsterdam. In between, any number of above average, slightly over-polished excursions on a basic theme. I'm not sure whether A Rush of Blood...has aged well, or that it simply stands up well against the hackneyed material Coldplay have served up in recent years. Either way, it's definitely a fan favourite, a pleasant stroll into nostalgia for raging pop-pickers like me, and a perfect introduction for the 15 year old who doesn't understand what Coldplay did to deserve the platform they have today.

You know, it'll be really good to give The Joshua Tree this treatment. Oh, Zooropa is better. Don't care what anyone says. But this is good

Dominion/Mother Russia is a goth masterpiece. The last of the album flags a fair bit, and has aged rather poorly. But still has its time and place intact...

nah. not for me.

There's a charisma to this recording that eases itself across time, space, even the setting for the recording (live albums always capture a different kind of energy, I think. There's an intimacy here that is neither a natural presence on the stage or even in the studio.).

Not quite fun for all the family. I never quite figured out the fuss about JaMC in the "mature" music press back in the day. Older and "mature" myself now, I sort of get it. Sort of.

Long, occasionally tiresome. I'm not at all familiar with the band, but I did listen to the album when it came out and thought much the same thing then. Seems a bit like a proof-of-concept than a work with an internal sense of direction, if you know what I mean...

Ok, so they aren’t one hit wonders. (Boss Drum is a miracle of the electronic age). But this is just a long cliche looking for a beach to happen.

Quite the discovery. I knew a bit about the Byrds, but nothing of Gene Clark, before listening to this. Elegiac, lucid, really lovely album

not for me. Interesting to capture melody as a distinct element of thrash metal. Still, merely a curiosity for me, I don't think I could warm to this. Rating here is purely subjective.

OK. Chain of Fools is a jam, of course. Otherwise, competent but conservative.

"Frat boy" is an over used and (probably) unfair pejorative often used to describe early Beastie Boys. Nonetheless: I still think, many years on, that this album cleaves closer to the philosophy of performed hip hop than to the organic spirit of the genre. I guess someone coming in cold to their oeuvre (unlikely, but bear with me) today might find some retro appeal to production techniques etc, but not much else. Or maybe I'm wrong.

Whimsy fun.

Indulgent fun for (specific) indulgent occasions. No real point in spinning this disc before 11pm, or alone.

I can't really detach this from the halcyon days of XFM etc. Still a good 'un.

Maps is a great song. Album with attitude, which perhaps wins out over the actual music.

Huh. An interesting time capsule. The version of People Everyday isn’t the hit single version which is both surprising and not at once.

Mmm. I see the charm. But not really for me

Singles aside (especially "Sonnet" and "Lucky Man") hasn't aged as well as one might have thought back in the day...

Electro-Punk? Post-New Wave? Neo-Techno? My thinking about LCD Soundystem has always been that you had to be there to get it. And I was a long way away from here... It has that false DIY vibe (cc. Arular), but with none of the charm home made one man shows are supposed to promote. It just seems rather mechanical...

Good contemporary stuff, although a bit too forward for my sensitive ears. Don’t think it has long term staying power though, very much on the disposable end of the pop spectrum (unlike, for example, Solangés album, which is a clear inspiration)

Electro Punk in the wild.

I'm genuine surprised by how much I enjoyed this album. Velvet Rope has sort of smothered the genuine ...well not charm, more like excitement, of 1814. It might be that the mechanised aspect of the lead video and production lumped it, mentally, with the proto-techno of the time (this demands unpacking – another time, another time...). Anyway.

It was a ...not a genre breaker, but certainly thrust Metal into the mainstream. I wonder how the album would have done without Nothing Else Matters. Matters not, we'll never know. That was the gateway to Everywhere I Roam, and for this we shall always be grateful It must be said that it has aged not quite as gracefully as, say, ...And Justice for All. Something about compromising for the zeitgeist?

Is it fair to think of Bad in the same way one (now thinks of Kanye West's 808 and Heartbreaks? An underrated album, belated recognised as the first step in an artist's creative zenith? Yes and no. Bad is underrated. If it were a couple of songs shorter, it might have been a flawed masterpiece (exit stage left, Speed Demon, for example). As it is, it is flawed. But with more than the occasional flash of genius (Smooth Criminal, Liberian Girl, Man in the Mirror). Kanye did MBDF, the first great album of the 10s, next. Michael, unfortunately, became a circus attraction: the good in his subsequent albums (and there was a lot of good) swamped by gossip, eccentricity, and ultimately tragedy. So it goes...

OK. Kashmir is a jam, obvs, but I think it's the drumming that stands out most on this album. Surprised to discover a direct line between this and Jeff Buckley's Grace

not for me in the present frame of mind

Few things, now or ever, like Dusty's voice.

Wagner's voice is like salted caramel chocolate. It shouldn't work but it does. Likewise, Nixon feels too mature an album to be a genuine breakthrough hit, but here we are...

I see the charm but still...it still feels like an album that lots of people like because they have been told that it is a likeable album. I don't feel that it holds enough – whether in the context of its release, or retrospectively – to justify its mythological status. But that may just be me. (cc. Dylan)

She has such a sonorous voice! When the Pawn...tops this, I think. But as debuts go, it is something special

Harmless fun

You know, we have to come to terms with the fact that The Smiths were a pop group. Literate and verbose for the genre, but still a pop group. And extremely good too. How can anyone hear "Stop Me" and not be lost forever? I don't know.

Wow. Still a winner

Surprisingly (sunny why, tho – no idea why I expected what I was expecting) melodic and enjoyable. The outtakes and extras were a bit...extra. Still

Once, on the strength of a gushing profile of Jony Ive's production team at Apple, I went out and bought Interpol's Turn On the Bright Lights. (It's complicated, ok? Let's just accept that I was a shallow and callow young man.) Not entirely surprisingly, the album was not to my liking (I did try bloody hard, I have to say), and I eventually disposed of the evidence of my foolishness in a charity shop. Never thought about Interpol until listening to this, many years on. I didn't buy High Violet at the time (thank you, unnamed music blog. God, those were the days...). I did like the anthemic pomp pf "London" (and, turns out, I still do); and like Turn On...I tried hard to like the cool new alt-rockers on the scene. I failed better with The National. But the point is that I wasn't their constituency, and neither them mine. Sometimes, it is best to accept the natural order of things as it is.

It’s easy – and helpful – to forget that this is the soundtrack to one* of the worst films of the 1980s. I mean, I really worked on liking this film. Really worked. But after a fourth watch, I pretty much lost the will to live. (I was, in a dumb 12 year old kind of way, quite shocked to discover that it is actually ok to like the album but hate the film. Sort of like loving the sinner but hating the sin.) *‘Purple Rain’, believe it or not, is not even the worst film Prince made in the 80s.

Oh. Trevor Horn. Now that makes a lot of sense... Everyone likes "The Look of Love" and "Poison Arrow", but I'd never bothered thinking deeply about ABC beyond this (other than once when Montell Jordan gushed lovingly about them in an interview, which was a bit of a surprise). I want to call this "polished", but I think the appellation unfair. Competent tunes carefully shaped into sums greater than their parts; complicated but never overbearing production; carefully calibrated balance of voices, instruments, and ambience, forming a pleasing whole. In short, Trevor Horn.

This got me thinking (via Kelafa Sanneh's excellent book about genre and music) about shortcuts, approximations, and the slippery slope that ends in shouts of cultural appropriation etc. The temptation is to place an artist in a box – commercial considerations, fear of the unknown, if-you-liked-that-then-you'll-like-this, etc. In this case, my first instinct was to think of Armatrading as proto-Tracy Chapman. Two things about this (1) Astonishingly lazy thinking on my part. They're nothing alike (2) I bet you Armatrading came up in an early marketing meeting for Ms C. it is what it is, I suppose. Creativity and imagination do exist in the sausage factory. My task is to enjoy the former without becoming a hostage to the latter "Love and Affection" is an amazing song, by the way.

Came to King Crimson via a cycling blog on Facebook (‘Epitaph’, scoring Merckx’s last day ever in Yellow, when he broke on Puy-de-Domê. Real pathos. Anyway, groovy jazz funk album, precursor for a decade of the excess and indulgence that is (British) Prog.

(The drummer aside) a triumph of enthusiasm over ability. But that’s what rock and roll should be about, no?

Strewth. Kill me now.

I get the attraction, but something about j. M's voice rubs me the Wrong way

Gentle.

To describe an album as being full of album cuts seems ungenerous (as well as illogical). But there we have it. Lots of noodles and doodling, some esoteric songwriting, but nothing of note, really.

I’ve always thought of the NWOBHM as an authentic precursor for Drum and Bass, Jungle and (for its sins) Gabber - in short, an aesthetic and musical precursor to some of the more interesting (and some of the more appalling) aspects of rave culture of the 90s. Anyway, never listened to anything by IM other than their ‘Straight in at No.1!’ strategically timed single releases. This is actually entertaining, in a slightly overwrought way. (Fun fact - Bruce Dickinson flies planes (commercial jets? I think, but not entirely certain) these days.)

If I must…

The solo in Smoke Over Water excuses a multitude of…well, not sins. But something not good.

Raucous. Unpolished. Summertime is a great cover, though. On a completely unrelated note. This is listed as an “Apple Digital Remaster”. Sounded like it had been filtered through Woodstock mud. Not sure whether noise cancelling headphones have made me a (far) more discriminating hearer, that my hearing is deteriorating, or …

Meh.

Overrated, if you ask me. (So is Swordfishtrombone, but that’s another matter altogether)

As someone said once.: if you are ever disappointed in Morrisey, that’s entirely on you. Anyways. Good, robust melancholia..

We need to talk about headphones culture. Seriously.

A bit rushed, no? Mind you, we spend forever and a day complaining about the perfectionism on Aja, so, you know, dismounting high horses and all that.

Ah - ah. Why do this to me? Didn't know until recently that Martyn Ware produced this album

Gateway drug for Kraftwerk was Africa Bambata, then "Breaking" (the scene where Shrimp dances with a broom, scored to "Tour de France". Nice thing about coming late to the party is that there is so much waiting to be discovered...

An album of its time. In this case, ‘time’ being the aborted sessions of the late 1960s rather that its belated release in 2004. It does have its charm, but it doesn’t add anything to the Beach Boys canon (completists, you can pretend I don’t exist. I’m cool with this)

It took me a *very* long time to warm to this album. On the balance, though, it is the most ... authentic? organic? ... of MA's first three albums. (Mezzanine, which is my favourite, has Del Naja's bleakness hanging over it; Blue Lines is a great album, but a little bumpy win places.) Anyway...

Undistinguished. "Blister in the Sun is fun", but aside from that ...

Huh! That was fun in a subversive way. As for the number of unrequited/rejected/betrayed love songs...

“Hey Siri, what is French Nihilism?” Unfair to rate, as not for me *at all*

Never heard of him (had heard covers of his songs, of course.) Rich, sonorous voice coupled with rather unimaginative arrangements. I’m guessing that there’s something here I’m not seeing - perhaps one had to be there to get it. Anyway, imho a rather undistinguished album…

Playful and self-deprecating, despite the earnestness of the project.

Whoa. Exuberant sonic assault. I mean, I'm pleased for them and all that they were able to have fun, but this just smacked me in the goolies. For half an hour.

I remain impervious to the charms of Mr Zimmerman...

So, the correct answer to this is anchored by whether (or not) you like the second half of “Freebird”. I do, and this will overlook the multiple crimes against creativity that the rest of this album commits.

An album-length reprise of ‘Rocking in the Free World’. Not really worth the trouble, imho.

So, all things considered. It helped that Eminem actually can spit lyrics. And that he kept his nasal whine. And that Dre saw beyond the physicalities and focused on the potential. And that 1999 was not 2019, and we had a more nuanced understanding of 'cultural appropriation'. (Don't get me wrong, there was hot shit on stilts then too. And far fewer people were paying attention to the egregrity of this behaviour. Nevertheless...)

Strictly irrelevant, but still...Motown Records? Possibly a licensing issue... Anyways. Dull.

Soporific. Probably also laxative.

I get the artist's prerogative, but still... For good or for bad (probably bad), my least favourite KB album. It's the one that saddled her with the 'away with the faeries' label. Which is an unfair distraction from her marvellous body of work, and has inspired a generation of lesser beings to (try to) emulate something they don't quite get.

I first heard Frank in a wine shop. Which makes me sad. Not the booze and stuff, but because I was trying to become domesticated at the time (I failed), and for a while this became semiotic cue for all the things I foolishly wanted to be at the age of 30 whatever. I guess it was actively disliking Back to Black (I've gone back somewhat on this over the years) that nudged me into listening to this a little more carefully. Winehouse's voice here was subtle, delicate, abrasive, plaintive, brash...I wonder what a different set of producers might have made of her?

New Wave Emo. tbf, the presence of Julian Cope ought to be warning enough of this...

Meh. "Apache" or not.

Hot 'meh'. Actually, this 'meh' is becoming predictable shorthand, with no thought behind it. So: (1) Sounds like sub-par Dylan. (2) I hate Dylan . (To be fair, this falls under 'meh' criticism. My dislike of Dylan is capricious, untested and quite possibly unsubstatiable.) (3) The production is really weedy. Lots of places where a bit of backbone would have made a big difference. But no banana. (4) Lyrically, absent without leave. I suppose this must strike some person's sweet spot. And it is helpful to remember the subjective element inherent in any ranking and recommendation process (mine included0. Even so...

Sharon Osborne and Billy Corgan. I think about this a lot

Sharon Osborne and Billy Corgan. I think about them a lot sometimes. I mean, how the hell did they think they could work with each other? Never mind. Great album. Still too long. But that’s the distinction between great and magnificent

Is this actually random? 200+ albums and the first DM I get is the day after Fletch dies. Reminds me of the problems Apple had with the shuffle facility on the original iPod (summary: peeps refused to believe that random was random, and so an algorithm was introduced into the software to create randomity. If such a word exists. Which probably mirrors the whole process of creating a random sequence. For people with a very fixed idea of what random should mean.)

The cover of "Because" (Deluxe Edition) is the perfect synthesis of past and present. Pseuds' Corner observation over.

Ayn Rand was once acceptable in polite Canadian society. That, and/or there are a lot of Boomer Bros north of the border...

A hip hip artefact (meant in a positive way). Funny to think that once, there were next to no female MCs. (The conversation about the job specification for female rappers is for people wiser that this writer.) Production credits are a veritable who's who of late 80s hip hop – De La Soul, KRS One, Prince Paul, with Fab Five Freddy lurking in the wings. Happy days...

Sprawl. Good sprawl though.

Noice

The hill I am prepared to die on: Mitch Mitchell is the star of this album

Production -4 Stars Talent - Well, let’s just say that copious use of the word ‘Fuck’ usually indicates a limited contextual vocabulary. ‘Fuck’ is, of course, an important aspect of relationship life - the terrain of Ms Kelala’s album. But (surprise surprise) other things come into the mix too. Not that you’d know it from the patchy lyrics and lavish use of auto tune, pitch shifter and other audio black magic. Not worth the time or the fucking money. And yes, I know it cost me nothing to listen to this album. Still…

First time for everything etc. Actually, I get the appeal. But I don't get the fanaticism. Nor the line in The Boys of Summer. So what if a Deadhead wants to drive a Cadillac? We all succumb to the dark side eventually, one way or the other...

Promoted above its station. (‘Motorcycle Emptiness’, in and of itself, stands as proof of this.) It’s a better-than-ok album, but (1) its primary utility was to introduce me to MSPs back catalogue, which I was only vaguely aware of before then, and (2) I guess is a ‘narrative’ album - the narrative the press latching on to here being Richey Edwards - the REM palaver, ‘For Real’, and finally his disappearance. Lots of people (like me) knew about all this without actually knowing their music.

‘Two Years of Torture’ ‘When Your Lover’s Gone’ ‘You Won’t Let Me Go’. Is it actually possible to ‘like’ an album so lachrymose?

Jazz rock or post rock? Important question, because then one can determine whether to compare this to - say - Electric Miles and Mahivishnu Orchestra, or to Mogwai and Godspeed! You Black Emperor. Why does this matter? The album is improvison weak, but sonically adventurous. I’m going with Post Rock.

For someone who always associated CTA with Peter Cetera and his works, this was a sharp (and bewildering) shock. My preferred response would have been not to rate this, because I simply don’t get the smorgasbord served up here. But since this isn’t an option…

Zappa gets such a bad press

I'm going to skip this, simply because I know this album as well as I know my little brother. (Quite possibly better) Side A (tape, since you're asking) remains one of the most incendiary passages I've ever heard in pop music (pop music: music explicitly intended for engagement by and the entertainment of anything more that an niche audience. A useful, if complete heuristic: if there's a third party budget on the table that extends beyond minimum wage, then it's pop.) Side B...actually, I will listen to this again. There may be stuff I've missing. I don't see how, but neither do I see how the two sides could be the creation of the same entity. (Later). Nah, Side B still sucks. So my rating is purely on the energy, the inventiveness, the playfulness, the shamelessness of Side A

I forget who it was that described Coldplay as making ‘music for bedwetters’. Alan McGee, probably. Unfair. But you know where he is coming from. Something linking Coldplay and McGee’s golden goose, Oasis, is that I have no idea who produced the albums of either. It’s not that producers are usually high profile, but most of the best do have a distinct thumbprint. With the two, nowt. (Also: Coldplay swallowed Brian Eno live. This suggests a black hole of conventionality, or a curiously ruthless streak. Hard to say which of course he two.)

Swagger can take you a long way. (They blew it by putting a lyric sheet in Be Here Now. Some people haven’t stopped laughing…)

There isn’t a single song here that matches Wolf Like Me. But as an album, it stands head and shoulders above Return to Cookie Mountain - and perhaps anything else they’ve done. I think the ‘African’ rhythm guitar trope is overused a bit (did they influence Vampire Weekend? Or the other way round? Does it matter), but still a sterling album.

So. MIA clearly has something going for her. But her albums always remind me of a snarky schoolgirl armed with lots of toys. (XR2 proves this point in more than one way). Paper Planes is a song for the ages, all the above notwithstanding.

After a generation of rap sampling funk, was this the first post-funk rap album? As I write this, I can't help but think that this is an intellectual reach to far. But there is a lot about this album that goes beyond a mere shoehorning of rap sensitivities into a funk sample. I bought this on the strength of "Ms Jackson", and didn't really like it. Now, it warms the cockles in a surprisingly non-nostalgic way. Different bases, true, but I think Kendrick Lamar (amongst others) owes this album quite a bit.

LOLZ. Like you need to ask.

The first great British album of the 1990s. (Yes, I know that it came out in 89. But rave changed everything, innit?)

I’m fairly sure I’ve had this already. Can’t think of any other reason to have listened to it, I have an irrational aversion to Townsend. Anyway, Baba O’Whatever is good fun, the rest ho-hum +

What a find. Wow.

Not for me

The ‘weakest’ in Stevie’s legendary run of albums in the 1970s - to my mind, a sustained period of creative genius unmatched in popular music ever. (Beethoven and Bach composed for mass audiences too, by the way). It isn’t a weak album, obviously. But the introspection sits a little heavily upon it at times. Still a pleasure to listen to it, though.

At the time, I thought that it took a lot of guts for George to go down the ‘grown up’ route away from teeny bop (high grade variety, it must be said) so determinedly. With hindsight… With hindsight. I’m not really a lyrics person, but listening to this now, I think, gosh. I wouldn’t want to contend with this degree of anguish, and to be permanently resident in the public eye for…

I don’t need to do this one because… ok I will. I don’t need an excuse for listening to one of my all time favourite albums, (Later) Gosh. ‘Kings Cross’ is a masterpiece of observational melancholy. It shouldn’t work in the same album as ‘Heart’. Or the plaintive complaint of ‘What Have I Done to Deserve This’. That’s the thing about this album. The whole is a lot greater than its parts. Not so many artistes really think about putting together a complementary suite of songs nowadays, rather focusing on bangers and necessary fillers. This is the package. THE package.

Something satisfying about knowing that I had good taste in 1986

First: Bridge... Is the strangest choice for an opening song that I have ever heard. It was made to end the album, it must have been. Second. How did DJ Shadow get away with sampling El Condor?

Don't believe the hype. No, that's not fair. I guess one had to be there etc. One thing I will say in their favour is that there is a complexity to their melodies that belies a stoner reputation.

A historic mistake.

Nostalgia tinted.

Dull. Mercifully short. She has a great voice, and some of the multitracking is inspired. But as a complete project…yawn.

Whimsy on steroids. In other (and fairer) words, not for me.

Damon Alburn didn’t write or produce this album. That much ought to be obvious.

I have this game where I try to figure out how a release from the past will be received today. If it is d genuine classic or not. No idea where californication as a whole would land. Good listening fun though

I know this is pre (sophisticated) multitracking; I know that I’ve been spoiled (in both senses of the word) by 320 kps and WAVs. . Still. The sound balance on this is absolutely atrocious. The melodies win out, but only just - and at the expense of the rhythm that does exist, and does seem to be quite adventurous. Pity…

I’m not entirely sure why Kanye is rated as a ‘genius’ producer - compared to, say, Dilla or DJ Premier or Pete Rock. Matters not. He is a good entertainer and (judging from the collabs here) a good man manager. Fun album with more than a few pointers to the future. (‘Never Let Me Down’, for instance, with a killer 16 bars from ‘Hova)

If the Greatful Dead dipped a toe in Prog. (Context. ‘Owner of a Lonely Heart’ is the only Yes song I have knowingly heard. However, I am familiar with ELP (and splinter groups), Van Der Graff Generator, etc.) Expected something completely different…

So. Country music, this album brought me to understand, is about storytelling. Problem is, I’m not a strong lyrics person. With, say, the artistic end or hip hop, this has never been a problem, since the best DJs create a collage of samples and soundscapes intricate enough to take up all my attention. Country tilts in a different direction, compositionally; since I don’t usually pay much attention to the lyrical content, I get bored even more quickly than usual. (This, of course, is entirely my problem. It’s like a Christian complaining about a Muslim/Jew because he doesn’t eat pork.) One or two tracks aside, I doubt that I’ll consciously revisit this album. I did, in a way, enjoy it, though.

This album changed my life. I don’t think I can actually say more than that.

Wow. A genuine find here. I sort of knew about XTC ('Making Plans for Nigel' etc), but had never troubled to explore further. Rundgren I met thanks to an earlier selection of 1001. 'Dear God' has left me in a puddle of inchoate emotion

So. I started off by mistaking this for "Throwing Copper" by Live, beloved of 120 Minutes-types in 94 and 95. Trying to unpick this cognitive dissonance in my head took me down quite a few unexpected rabbit holes. (Why was Chad Taylor fired? How does Ed Kowlacyzk own 55% of Live? How does one calculate this?) But I digress. I really wanted to like Hüsker Dü once upon a time. They seemed like a band that I should like. (See also Interpol). I could't. Not for trying, very hard indeed. But I did learn quite a bit about Mould, Hart and Norton. This, by Mould's post Hüsker band Sugar isn't *bad*, but ... let's put it this way. It was NME's Album of the Year in the early 90s – its most reactionary era, befuddled by rave and trip hop and acid jazz etc. (fair's fair - I'm still befuddled by acid jazz.)

Live albums, doubtless, have a point. But you won’t find it here. It isn’t bad, just very ‘contractual obligation-y’. One for the collector.

I think I’m going to do a playlist of ‘God’ songs.

Morrissey is the law of diminishing returns in human form. I think it works both ways though, I must say. The more the listener put into successive releases after, say, 1988, the less they received. Smart people simply accepted his existence and went about their business

When Jazz was allowed to be something other than A Credit to the Race. Halcyon days...

Good to know that this isn’t exactly random 😁

The dull margins of proto-grunge. Mannered, and thus inconsequential.

I have a thing for ‘reinterpreting’ lyrics. Which is to say (1) mishearing, (2), taking out of context, and then (3) reinserting said mishear lyrics into a totally different context. (An example. Start spreading the news/I’m leaving tomorrow. For a good two decades, I thought Ol’ Blue Eyes was a man of advance planning etc. as it happens, I still think ‘today’ makes no sense) Anyway, I thought ‘The Little Beggar Girl’ was ‘My little bagatelle.’ If Richard made Linda sing this on stage, no wonder they had a tempestuous relationship and so on. Talk about projection. She has an interesting voice, his is Kwiksave basics. Arrangement effective but just about that. Doubt I’ll go out of my way to listen to this again.

In the late 90s or early Noughties (too lazy to check) Chris Anderson wrote a book called the Long Tail. I'm going to own up to never reading it, but being familiar with Anderson's writing over the years, the various reviews and synopses coalesced around a graspable concept in my head: the capacity of the internet to facilitate the aggregation of niche networks would create significantly expanded possibilities for social discourse. Many people read, in place of "social discourse", "commerce". [Insert boilerplate reference to Neo-liberalism here]. I suspect that we are all hand-maidens to the rapacious beast that is Neo-liberalism. But that's not the point. The "significantly expanded possibilities for social discourse" hasn't, um, ended well. On this point, I intend to write an essay on the virtues of indifference one day. But that's not the point either. Music lovers (and music sellers) were long familiar with this paradigm. Any committed music listener (pre-downloading, I suppose, but that's another story altogether) would have lived this. And Ms Harvey's album popped this thought in my head once again. To cut a complicated and boring exposition short: why would the record company commission Steve Albini to produce this album, other than to shore up the niche audience that PJ's army were back in the day, other than to maximise the potential of the long tail. Will happily expand on this random and not-completely-grounded theory for money. I can be contacted through the usual channels. The album? Oh. Overdone in an underdone way. Does that make sense? it's like trying to magnify the virtues of a demo, when the demo is actually just the starting point. Didn't really work for me back then, still doesn't now. Not that it's bad or anything, but I think I (now) have been swayed by a meta approach. And the fact that Steve Albini was probably hiding Garbage (and Garbage 2.0) in him the whole time, waiting for an opportune moment to release Shirley Manson on the world. (ps. I quite like the techno-futuristic polish of the first Garbage album. But it must have been quite a shock for committed followers of Albini's low fi aesthetic. Like Billie Eilish in a Basque on the cover of Vogue after years of baggy jeans. If you must have role models, kids (and you shouldn't), please choose carefully.

circa 1998: what’s better, The Bends or OK Computer? This is one way of settling a pointless argument.

199-whenever: huh? 2022: Golly, the guy's a visionary, etc. OK. Truth is, when this popped up, I thought to myself, ini this order: "Why?" "I hate Loser" and "This is hype with a life of its own", in that order. Its still an oddball album, but not only does it work well, it was a long way from most of the stuff being done in the mid-90s. Arguable, a long way from most stuff done ever in popular music. (I mean, even Beck can get this vibe back any more). Lots of people have tried, but it's never again like the first time, is it? I guess the best way of explaining this is to propose listening to a lot of mid-to-late 60s British pop, and then listening to Revolver and Rubber Soul for the fist time. And then the penny drops.

I forget who it was that described The Bad Seeds as punks who can read music. Albums like this show up the inadequacy of the ranking system. I can appreciate the craft that went into this album, and it seems obvious that this collection of songs will speak to people in a way that no one and nothing has ever spoken to them and change their lives and etc etc. So, saying "I didn't like this" is both correct and uselessly subjective. A couple of songs did catch my attention, but it's more abrasive and/or less melodic than the Nick Cave stuff I do like ("Push the Sky Away" and "The Mercy Seat", as respective examples). Oh well...

Every so often, I wonder why I didn't listen to albums like this in real time. To be fair, I was not of an age to actively choose anything beyond nursery rhymes in the mid-seventies. Still. There was an overlap between Mayfield's active period and my active music listening, and whilst I had head of him and knew a few of his bigger 'hits', I never sought out any of his work until after he died. (this may not be entirely true. Hip Hop sampling opened a magnificently endowed world to me, for which I'll always be greatful). Anyway. Short, dreamlike, with a sharp lyrical undercurrent. Great for Sunday afternoons and the like

I her this and I hear instant nostalgia. I'm not sure if I'm being cynical or not. What I do know is that If this album had been released, say, a decade earlier, I would have loved it. Now...not meh, but I'm engaging with it dispassionately. Maybe there is something to that theory about our music tastes being hard wired in early adulthood. (LCD Soundsystem bubbled up just at the point when I started pretending to be a mature adult, and stopped following music and cricket obsessively. I lost out on both fronts – fooled no-one about the former, lost touch with the two things that matter more than anything else in the world to me on the other.) So actually this isn't instant nostalgia but an eternal sadness.

In early 1983, I was crazy about breakdancing. The only thing left in life (having satisfied my parents by being admitted to the most selective * secondary school in Nigeria **) was to become a professional breakdancer. To throw shapes. To have the MC hail me by name (what happened to MCs, actually?). To be an associate member of the Rock Steady Crew (and for a while, in a ghoulish extension of the rumour that Crazy Legs had broken his neck doing a headspin, a full member.) Anyways, all I did all day was to to watch pre-MTV videos incorporating breakdancing in one form or another. Bits of Herbie Hancock's 'Rokit'. MJ backsliding in 'Billie Jean'. Kraftwerk's 'Tour de France'. (Tour de France's video, as far as I recall, does not have any breakdancing. But there was an alternative clip that they showed on telly sometimes, that scene from Breakin', Shrimp with the broom. It moved me to tears every time. Tears of rage and frustration, mind; he was so good, I was so...not.) And Malcolm MacLaren and his All-Stars' 'Buffalo Gals'. MacLaren was a thieving magpie. But (and I'm not sure whether this is to his credit or not), he never denied it. And (and this is to his credit) he was usually very curious, and thus creative w/r/t what he was thieving and repositioning. In '83, this song was kind of like Gaga's Let's Dance 25 years on. Dazzled by the video, I never really considered the song on its merits at the time. But unlike the song that launched a thousand to the power of a thousand Little Monsters, 'Buffalo Gals' is actually good. Very good. As too is Duck Rock. It's belongs to a narrow and narrowing school of inquisitive pop, made by people who have large egos, great memories, and enough bluster about them to get crazy great things funded and made. (Damon Alburn is another example. And to be clear, this is intended as the highest praise possible). * At the time. Also depends on how you define the word "selective" ** I thought I had satisfied my parents. [Hollow/bitter laugh]

I know this is post Punk and everything, but this album feels like the producer (the head honcho at One Little Indian?) misread the brief, simply polishing the demos rather than building on them. Ho hum. Still, we do have this fortuitous discovery to thank for...well, Vespertine, for example. And Hyperballad.

Back in 2000, I bought a paperback copy of Armadillo, by William Boyd. Read it on the Oxford Tube, going to visit my sister, finished it on the way back. Felt proper clever with myself. Idly wondered about the fake-Fela musician he invented, scratched my head a little about his coterie of neighbours and their very bijoux building (come on, the housing market was daggers out at dawn then. I mean, even the Guardian had a property supplement. Which, incidentally, once reported that the best thing you could do about N15 was to drive through it. But this is a digression nested under a digression...) I re-read Armadillo a couple of years ago. Christ. Was I so gullible? It's an intelligent, well written, and essentially empty book, in that a very talented author basically dictated sixty thousand words down the line, safe in the knowledge that any number of readers would fall for its faux-realism and earn him back his advance. (It was adapted for television too. I didn't watch it because I "didn't want to contaminate the vibe of the original". Yes, I said this. Yes, I should be taken out at dawn, blindfolded, and shot. Incidentally, the adaptation sank without trace). This has nothing at all to do with The Contino Sessions, other than I feel exactly the same about this album. Actually, a little worse, because I have absolutely nothing to say about it other than to say that I was conned by it in the same way that I was conned by Armadillo.

One day, we'll be able to fully celebrate Nigel Godrich's contribution to the Radiohead sound the same way we talk about George Martin and The Beatles. This isn't to take away from the drive and curiosity of the Oxford Five. I'm not suggesting either that Godrich isn't already acknowledged as a pivotal influence on Radiohead. (Radiohead themselves talk about this a lot, particularly with regards to Kid A and In Rainbows. Still. Listening to OK Computer OKNOTOK for this, and for the first time (I didn't see the point in listening to it on random demand. I've listened to it perhaps a thousand times (I'm not exaggerating) and only will now, otherwise, if I feel an active yen for it) gave a real feel for the paradigm shift Radiohead made in 1997. (It was a paradigm shift until their next album, which made this one seem like an adventurous but nevertheless predictable progression from The Bends). The OKNOTOK songs are all fine, but they mirror the sonic trajectories of their BritPop peers – more of the same, with more production money. The understanding I take from this is that Godrich's nudging and prodding pushed Radiohead along until they found themselves in a place they didn't recognise. And, to their credit, decided to hang a round and make the best of it. It's impossible to listen to this now without thinking about the canon as a whole, and in that sense this is (unfairly) smothered, slightly, by Kid A/Amnesiac. For all that, as an album made with both eyes on the audience, it is up there with the best.

Credit should be given where credit is due. If I hadn't heard this in early 202, I wouldn't have listened to the Astor Piazzolla Prom in 2002 (it wasn't just Piazzolla, but that's what took me to it, and that's what stuck, and that's why he gets the credit, damnit!), and my life would still be much the poorer. It was a fun album then, different enough to actually be considered a little sophisticated – in much the same way a certain demographic thinks of the Pete Tong Classical "crossover" albums as a little sophisticated – but now feels a little worn. Maybe it was commercial-breaked to death, tarnished by association with the neo-bourgeoisie. I'll be generous. A lot of its afterlife isn't directly its own fault.

I don't like fishermen (long story). I don't like the blues (shorter story - trigger for disproportionate melancholy). Back in the day when a written review could be (and very often, had to be) enough information to buy an album on, Q really pushed The Waterboys, World Party and Karl Wallinger. (Incidentally, I just acquired a complete set of Q, 1-100. Still trying to figure out what to do with them next. Watch this space). However, the only places outside Berwick St where I brought records were blissfully aware of the existence of the Anointed One. And the dirty look I got from one of the guys at Reckless Records discouraged me permanently. Fortunate, that. Everyone likes The Whole of the Moon. Everyone who has heard it lies Glastonbury Song. Neither are on this rustic, heartfelt, but thoroughly unmoving collection of authentic folk-pop songs. And, truth be told, I doubt it'll do anything for an outsider coming to it cold.

Soporific.

Post-Punk or New Wave? UK or US taxonomy? Ah, who cares. Interesting artefact from a long gone era.

Well, I would have washed my hands of this had it not been for the intuitive/counter-intuitive (yes, it can be both at once) cover of "Just Like Heaven". It showed imagination and range; it took enough from the original to make the cover a worthwhile venture, without doing a Continental Philosophy free interpretation. Up until then, I was a bit bored by what seemed like predictable three chord grunge,( I did wonder idly about the fade-outs, which were unexpected.) Ranking here only reflects that fact that I'm gonna have to listen to this a few more times before I can form a confident pov.

Really? In 1989, when I was 17, I though this was juvenile and poorly considered. Good to know that I am consistent with a few things. Entertainment value rooted to time and place, no doubt ('Love in an Elevator', and its "x-rated" video, were considered a bit risqué back then. (Does anyone use the word risqué any more? Does the concept still exist? We go from prudery to full-on porn with no intermediate steps these days. Or maybe I'm being a silly old fuddie duddie). Musical value was close to zilch. And trust me, they knew this. (Check out the album cover. No one with any aspirations towards taste and aesthetics would want to be associated with that eyesore. I mean, the trucks are so ugly!) Anyways. If you know why this album found its way here, please do not @ me. I am the better for not needing to know such things.

Elvis was good. I don't think this needs to be qualified in any way.

Lester Maddox was quite the piece of work, it seems. Without passing judgement, interesting to read that Bobby Lee Fears, once of the Ohio Players, formed a twosome (gruesome qualifier subjective. perhaps.) late in the day. As for the album. I'm not going to say that it is irony free, but it does strip the joke down to its bare bones. That aside, one has to applaud Mr Newman for his resistance to change over the years. If it works, why change it? Actually, I'm being a bit unfair. For good or for bad, everyone knew who Lester Maddox was, and was able to make up their mind accordingly. Free world, freedom of association, etc. (yes. I know that Maddox went to extreme lengths to ensure that the only black folk in his diner were his workers. No, I'd have never stepped in it, even if I could. yes, I would judge anyone who, in full possession of the facts, did so. Yes, there is a powerful element of inequity and a lack of fairness in the story. But yes, so it is in many other aspects of life, many of which we cannot/choose not/simple do not engage with. We should always work towards fairness. Even in the full knowledge – particularly in the full knowledge – that we will *never* get there. Ever.) Did I like this album? No... Would I turn it off if it popped up unexpectedly? No. Do I remember anything at all of it? No. But all of this is me, not anyone else. Three stars again, but out of indifference (indifference of the most positive kind, mind)

The one 'official' Kraftwerk album I don't own. 'Autobahn' was on the radio a fair bit when I was a child. Which, if you grew up where I grew up, you would acknowledge as being rather odd. On a different note. Ignoring the uselessness of the term as a taxonomy, never quite figured out why Germans aren't (or don't seem to be – I've asked a few) pissed off by the term 'krautrock'.

Sounds just like you’d expect if you were getting high in Las Gidi back in ‘73. (‘Let Me Roll It’ aside. Me and that song do not get along at all). On the topic of getting high. When I was at school, there was a (possibly apocryphal) story about Shanna Ranks going to The Shrine during a tour in Nigeria, partaking of the sacred herb with Abami Eda himself, and promptly passing out. Nationalist pride takes strange guises sometimes.

Nope. God knows I've tried long and hard over the years. (Largely due to a Mr H. Hancock. If he recommended trying a dog's fart on loop, I'll do it no questions asked.) I guess this is one of those "it is *definitely* me, not you" affairs.

This album is proof of the clout Mr B must have had back in ‘83. ie before Born in the USA. Remarkable. It’s an album that either moves you or not. I’m sort of moved…

Nah. Mountain too high for me.

I'm sure this album will appeal to someone, somewhere. In fact, I can understand why this album did, and still will, appeal to someone, somewhere. Just that I'm not that person. There's a point where wistfulness crosses over into whimsy, the charming into the contrived ... actually, this is ad hominem. I didn't like this, and I'm only writing this because I have to give the wretched thing a ranking before I move on.

I was going to say something charitable about needing to understand the vernacular in order to get what the band is saying...then I remembered that for a while, I actually liked this sort of thing. Thrash wasn't ever an explicitly political stance, much more reactionary pose. Mind you, this was 1986. "Morning in America" and all that self-serving horseshit. One can excuse reactionary impulses. My sense is that outrage is worthless unless tempered and targeted usefully. And that takes a lot of work. This album is brimful with enthusiasm, a little short on reflection, and wouldn't have done more than preach to a niche band of coverts.

AS a point of principle, I'm not going to listen to this. I still have fond memories of it, memories that I've allowed to lie undisturbed for the better part of 20 years. (Occasional radio flashbacks aside.) I really don't want to have to overthink this now. And I know I will.

Yes, I know that it is a "contractual obligations" album (of a sort—settlement for a failed marriage, rather than rounding up a stupid seven-album deal. But then, since the ex-spouse to-be in question was actually the big sister of Mr Gaye's record label boss, there is an overlap, no?) ...but still, and "A Funky Space Reincarnation Aside", it feels like it was phoned in from Bruges. Flip side to this is that Mr Gaye's offcuts score higher than the entire oeuvre of some of his counterparts. So...

The percussive intro to this album is one of the iconic moments in 20th century popular music. The end.

So. I sort of knew that Karma Chameleon, Victims, and Church of the Poison Mind must have had a parent. But I'd never for a moment thought to seek it out. AS an aside – this is only the second 80s pop album I've been recommended thus far, after more than a year. We already know that "random" is infused with a dose of ... something (cc. Depeche Mode and The Smiths) . So... (Actually, I'm barking up the wrong tree here. Lets try again.) I can't be bothered going through the original list, but there's a bit of a bias here. The 80s are the decade where pop music became proper legit cultural capital, and 80s pop... (actually, I'm barking up another wrong tree.) Never ever saw this one at Our Price. Jolly good fun, neither disposable pop nor brooding over seriousness.

Nothing to do with the album itself, but the Apple remaster (compared to my tape and CD versions) sounds really off. It's as though the instruments have been relevelled by someone who hadn't actually heard the songs first. What you can take from this is that I like this album a lot, and I've liked it a lot for a long time. The End

Empty brain day. Nothing to say, nothing to do. (The reviewer, not the artist).

I would never have thought that I will have any residual fondness for this album. Nostalgia is an odd thing. I remember reading a profile of them in Q that pretty much broke my heart. I can't remember why (hey, this was almost a quarter of a century ago!), but I'm pretty certain it was as much about what was not said as what was said in the piece. I'll look it up sometime. Remember thinking (from the grand old age of mid 20s) that they were impossibly young. The energy of the performance is what carried them through then, I think. Personally, I don't think it belongs on this list; personally, I'm sort of pleased that it is on this list.

I like the idea of the ArchAndroid. But try as I have, it seems impossible to warm to. Too clinical and calculated for my liking

So, when "Bohemian Rhapsody" (film) came out, my then 12 year old asked if we could go watch it together because...I'm actually not sure. Rami Malek did have a name then, from 'Mr Robot'. But my kid's quest to watch every programme ever made for television is largely platform specific – Robot and Netflix and first-born never co-existed in the same televisual universe. Anyway, thanks to all the palaver about first Sacha Baron Cohen and then the director who is not David Fincher (who I think is a genius) but for some reason always crosses that particular identification wire, I wasn't keen. Also, I had a peculiar relationship with Queen. Like 3 million brits, I own Greatest Hits, and love pretty much every song on it. (Ditto Greatest Hits II) When Freddie died, I was devastated in a way that has only ever happened once since with someone in the public eye (Warne, since you ask). I liked Queen, liked them a lot, but had never ever owned a full album of theirs. (I had listened to The Works in full, but that's about it.) Anyways, I had no real expectations for the film. But (1) I was quite surprised to discover that I knew extensive chunks of the Queen Story, such that I knew exactly where the various fudges and smudges and reordering of the chronology were trying to hide; (2) it bothered me not a jot, because I loved the film. Really did. Still have no idea why the 12 year old wanted to. Musically, he's on the Grime end of the spectrum. Still he liked it enough to go back to watch it again. and a third time. Go figure. I guess its the music. It cuts across so much, almost without trying. Queen II is sort of like that. You wouldn't expect it to work, but, like, it does despite itself. And despite me. Oh, I have listened to another Queen album in full and more the once. The one with Death on Two Legs. I'm guessing that was 'A Night at the Opera'. Or maybe 'A Day at the Races'. See? This is so weird. I know all the albums off head, and probably in correct chronological order too. (including 'Flash')

This isn't very good, I fear either subjectively* or objectively. Getting his psychiatrist to write an introductory essay muddies the critical waters sufficiently to distract from this basic understanding. It's a cacophony of undistllled discontent, but much more likely to disengage than to rope people into the cause. *You have listened to Pithecanthropus Erectus, right? So what the hell I'm I supposed to do with this?

More than with any other Neil Young album (it's a matter of the falsetto), the adjective that comes to mind whenever I hear this is plaintive.

A lesson in musical education and cos-playing. I loved 'Hard to Handle' when this album was realised - 1992? 1991?. Because I come from a household where musical tastes were as uncoordinated (and as limited, in their own way) as Jim Reeves, Abba, Millie Jackson and Boney M (and yes, I know I could describe this as "eclectic". But that would be a lie, a lie crying out to heaven for vengeance) ...I had no cause to consider this as anything other than an original composition. Boy, Otis knocked me for six. (The story of how I came to hear the Otis Redding version is pretty revealing in its own way. Everyone knows "(Sitting on) the Dock of the Bay". I knew pretty much nothing else about Otis, or indeed about 60s soul beyond Aretha and Motown. One day, saw somewhere that Bryan Ferry named his first born after the singer. I've never liked Roxy Music very much, but Eno has always intrigued me. So, even though I hadn't listened to anything by RM other than Virginia Plain, on the basis of a deep and conflicted investment in Mr E, I decided to figure out what it was about Redding. In other words, I took the scenic route to the Truth.

This album has surprising depth, belying its vocal pop roots. Interesting to see that they wrote most of their own stuff too.

What. Fresh. Hell. Even for 1999 pop. An aside. If in any doubt about the motives of Ms Spears backers: the music on this album is on a par with the music of S Club Seven. Which is to say, aimed at twelve year olds and made by a notional big sister or brother. It's impossible to unthinkable "(Baby Hit Me) One More Time" (although the Travis cover does help. But it'll be interesting to do the Lady Gaga test on this song and video.

Interesting.

Anything I say will simply detract from this masterpiece. The end.

Is it bad to say that I prefer pompous Pink Floyd to this? (Actually, my favourite PF album is WYWH, so not quite. But I do prefer, say, The Division Bell to this.) Dunno, both from a historical and an artistic perspective, this seems neither avant garde enough to warrant a deep exploration, nor accomplished enough to endure 50 odd years. But this is me...

I read an interesting article a few days ago on Tedium.com (butchered by The Times a few days later – I imagine they came to it through the same source as I did, Popbitch. Make of that what you will of the "paper of record") about chord changes and pop music. Essentially, the author claims (on the basis of a geek level analysis) that the chord change is a dying art in pop music. Interestingly, he isn't necessarily a fan of this compositional 'trick' (he repeatedly cites Michael Jackson's 'Man in the Mirror' as an exemplar of emotional manipulation. Rather, he is interested in the changes to the act of composition – specifically the increasing use of DAWs like Logic Pro, and the ever-suffocating and acontextual embrace of hip hip tropes. The article is really worth reading. Anyway, this is a roundabout way of saying that Chris is a good album. It is passionate, and it seeks to communicate this emotion unambiguously with its listener. Think about it as torch music for the 21st century. Perhaps I'm being calculating, or even cynical, but I do get the sense that a few switches from minor to major keys would have turned a good album into a great one. I think.

A concept album, self evidently. I can't say I felt the concept translating terribly well. Irony is a selection of about 10 of these songs would have made quite the album.

So. There ought to be a rule here. 1 artist = 1 album. All rules are honoured in the breach, of course, so there will be room for exceptions. The point is that with such an injunction, this 40 minute dirge wouldn't have had a look in. Not even as a second album (Daydream Nation and A Thousand Leaves both wipe the floor with this. And that's without even thinking too hard about the SY back catalogue.)

Along with Medúlla, Björk at her absolute best. The attraction of Vespertine is the unexpected (for the time, and tome some degree even now) synthesis of organic and electronic. There's a warmth to the sound (not talking about the voice here – and, interestingly, I think this album showcases Björk's vocal range more effectively than any of her other albums.) I'm not, and I'll never be, a close parser of lyrics. but there is an edgy contentment that runs through this album. Sort of like, "I don't know how I got here, and I'm not sure that it's going to last, but I'll certainly enjoy the moment." Which is a lovely sentiment (assuming I'm not reading too much into the evidence, as it were.

I'm never sure what yo make of undemanding albums like this. One's relationship with them is less about the music itself, and more about the circumstances in which it meets one. I'm in my office on an unexpectedly sweltering November morning, construction work assailing me from the street. I can appreciate Jansch (whom I had heard of, a lot, but never heard) clinically, but there's little chance of a musical epiphany or whatever. I'll try to remember to listen to this at home some evening and reevaluate more closely. For the moment, perfectly fine for what it is.

Sometimes, I wonder what would have been of Femi if Fela hadn't existed. For one thing, he'd be accorded *far* more respect as an artist. The natural, and lazy, thing to do is to think about him as a derivative of his father, rather than (like a million other artistes, most not one-half of him) as influenced by him. I think he is a far more adventurous band leader than his father. I think that he was condemned to singing about social issues by his father. I think that I am doing him a disservice by evoking Abami Eda repeatedly here. This is a fine album. True, some lyrics are just this side of cringe – but, then, this was almost 30 years ago. It has matured well, and deserves your attention.

Counter to much of the presumptions about Punk today, a degree of musical knowledge and awareness was useful in the genre. To break the rules, you need to know what the rules are in the first place. Reference points are an important aspect of building a canon. So this album certainly pushes away from the over-elaborate theatricals of prog (and, in a sense, Disco), but retains a attachment to melody as the ('a', actually) motif that can hold a song in place – without feeling bound to engaging with the trope in the same way that their musical forebears did. There's something coy and endearing in Ari Up's delivery, which too marks it as not fitting the Punk consensus. Good find

Lord knows I tried. I tried because Tidal and When the Pawn... are two of my all-time top 149 albums (don't ask). So I'm happy to accept that (1) this is me, not you or her or anyone else, and (2) to acknowledge that once again (probably for the 20th time) I've tried and failed to listen to this album through to the end. I think is is a psychosocial trigger, possibly related to the eeriness of the pandemic period. Every time I hear it, I just seize up completely. It is unbearably...ok, I'll shit up now. Point made

I've listened to this already, and forgot to rate it. I"m struck by how pleasant, but completely unmemorable, the experience was. To be fair, the songwriting skews complicated, but not a single line or melody was recalled on the second listen through. Feels like reverse alchemy

Underwhelming. An artefact from a specific moment in time – of historical interest/significant alone. An analogy: compare Dizzee Rascal and Goldie. Rascal was a Grime pioneer. He earned the right to 'Bonkers' (which is a cool song, btw. But, you know, cred and all that.) Goldie had been in the D n' B trenches. But much more a water-carrier. An enthusiastic water-carrier, but still. Enthusiasm just meant that everyone was hydrated. it doesn't change the course of wars or anything.

If the only thing Lauryn Hill ever did was...oh, that's more or less right. Oddly enough (and I'm going to have to factcheck myself later), I think this was the album that first gave me cause for pause about the Q ratings system. Four measly stars. (cc Be Here Now). Musically, The Miseducation...did not bring anything new-new to the table. But, like The Score three years before, it is actually more than the sum of its parts. From the interstitials to the cover art to the videos to the exquisite sample choices (actually. this was peak Puff Daddy era. The Miseducation...approached sampling with a restraint that was pretty atypical for the era - the only other mainstream example from the era that comes to mind is Mos Def's Black on Both Sides. Which, of course, id G.O.A.T. material) ...basically, Ms Hill was, for a while, better than sliced bread. Probably still is. (I can't abide her cover of "Can't take My Eyes Of You". Dictionary definition of milquetoast. But then, if we we moved the world one inch to the left, it'll be perfect too.)

'Let's Get It On' either (1) disguises the perfunctory nature of the rest of this album or (2) highlights the perfunctory nature of the rest of this album. Depends on how you approach it. I think (2). It isn't a bad album, but the lead song always flags up what Gaye could do and didn't (or wouldn't) with this material. That Let's Get It On is, in effect, reprised half way through adds despair to disappointment. All that said: still stands read beanie , if not head and shoulders, above most of the mainstream soul of the period.

I can see the charm

Unlike Orange Juice (see 419) this is, for good and for bad, post-punk in sensibilities and outcomes. Which is to say, lest nihilistic but just as (perhaps more) ambitious than punk. "The Light Pours Out Of Me" is the clear highlight; enthusiasm counts for more that songwriting chops 5 days out of 7, so the slightly repetitive vibe of most of this album can be excused on the grounds that the vibe isn't a bad one.

Of course it is correct to describe this as post punk. But it feels almost like the antithesis of punk, with melodic pegging, considered (if not necessarily complex) lyrics, and clear investment in post-prod. Which is to say, it doesn't feel like it has the cynicism that sometimes overwhelmed new wave and Brit-Synth of the same period. But doesn't cleave *that* closely to punk either.

I'm very curious about the process that led to this album cover. Aside from being the antithesis of cool, it doesn't disguise the normalness of the Monkees—at a time when the wind was blowing counter-culture. Fine, Jangle-pop overlaid with melodic singing was tried and proven at this point. But...you know...talk about freezing a moment. Interesting, Wiki tells me that this was the first album that the band had a creative control over. It doesn't not work, but it seems rather unambitious. But then, it doesn't seem to be looking for a bandwagon to hijack either, so that's something. And the facts don't lie – it was a hit album. Perhaps young adults just functioned differently 55 years ago.

Odd how nostalgia can manifest in more than one dimension simultaneously. On the personal: this was the last album I bought during my first music collection era. (Yes, I was seduced by the bright future of streaming. But just to make clear, I'm not a vinyl returner. If for no other reason, I lack the space and I have a developed talent for scratching records and breaking needles). Beyond me, as most things should be: it evokes an age that I was never a part of but somehow seem to think that I can identify acutely. Which, I think, is very much a positive thing to say about the record. It starts with the cover and the title. A sepia-tinted photograph, simple iconography, a distinct yet understated distinction between band name and album name. The individual is in repose, but hunched into himself as though conducting an accounting of the soul rather than opening up to the world. (Re-reading this: what a load of Pseuds' Corner) I guess I like this not because it is an exceptional album (it is good), but because it speaks to me in very distinct and individual ways. This happens sometimes, when I listen to and fall in love wit a specific album, but have no real curiosity in exploring the rest of the band's catalogue. I short, I like this, but I don't think my reasons why will have any real bearing on anyone else.

I'm gonna pass on this.

Salsa is music for dancers. Which is to say, its fans engage with it viscerally. With the mind with the feet, a holistic integration senses and sensations, of the tangible and the intangible. Long story cut short: this is excellent mood music

Enthusiastic, exuberant, ebullient,

The challenge I find in post bossa nova genres (apparently!) is that they seem to surrender their viscera to something rather subdued and restrained. Thus this. The voice and arrangements are impeccable - to impeccable, perhaps. File under ‘world music’…

D’you remember when what’s his name who is now the voice of Apple Music had a show on MTV? 7pm four nights a week or so? (Zane Lowe. Fuck, I’m getting old. I was thinking Eddy Temple Morris and at the same time that that couldn’t be right.) Anyway. Good programme. He played Dead Prez and shit. And really have this album a push when it needed it. (Which sounds a pretty odd thing to say, but Play wasn’t always the every-track-licensed-to-a-commercial juggernaut that it became.) The sleeve had lots of earnest and questioning essays about … if I recall correctly, how you can have strong views but only beat yourself up about them. That didn’t age well lolz. Album has, though. It really is the sweet spot.

This was the first CD I ever bought (well, one of two - the other was Mary Jo’s What’s the 411). A tenner for both. My guess is that they’d fallen off the back of a lorry. AFTP was about one week old then. I’d heard ‘Drive’ and liked it, but I don’t think I would have bought this if not for my free trade fella on Wood Green High Street. Good on him. 30 years on, still an all time favourite. Some grumble that it is their sell out album. Maybe, but if so they did it in style.

Dad Rock as a proof of concept. Which is cruel, (and, for someone who knowing enjoys albums press-ganged into this snark, a bit close to the bone). But this is (more or less) what TSR has become. Needless to say, I Am The Revolution and Fools Gold are worth the rice of admission many times over.

Because Cocker remains a public image, one can't but wonder what he'd make of this album today. For what it is, and when it was, it is what theorists would describe as social observation. And for that, it is very good. The recurrence of key themes – lust, longing, betrayal – does make one wonder about the lives of others (the singer/songwriter other). In the UK, the working class narrative is under constant threat from the imperative to social advancement – an aspiration that sort of elides the uncomfortable that that this kind of hierarchy is relative, rather than absolute. If we could all become middle class, then we'd be living in a class-inflected Ponzi scheme. As it is, Cocker's biography strongly suggests that he has leapfrogged (by way of talent, and positioning, aided by that impenetrable variable which is public taste) to a point that (thanks to the surrounding eco-system, not by way of conscious intent on his part) would frame him something close to a class traitor. This is rubbish, of course. But this album does seem firmly bedded in a tribal understanding of social interaction. I ramble. This is still worth listening to, even if the Brit Pop context and the social critique are somewhat worn now...

It isn't that Bowie – Station to Station is a victim of his success (far from it). And it isn't that albums like this (or, as another example, Lodger) were buried by the success of some of his other stuff. (This album was top 5 on both sides of the pond; thereafter, Bowie wasn't a "commercial" draw until Scary Monsters and Super Freaks in...81?, and then (Stateside) with Let's Dance) (Yes, yes, the Berlin Trilogy. Brilliant albums, critical darlings, did nowt for many a year. Facetiously (partly) I can't help thinking sometimes that Bowie Bonds were a way of chiseling out the commercial rewards that they deserved and were denied.) Station to Station is overlooked, I think, in part because it defied characterisation – as did the Thin White Duke, heroin chic aside. (Cocaine Chic? Qualuudes? Who knows. Probably the lot.) Likewise the album. Station to Station, the opening song, is (if I may coin a genre) industrial blues; Wild is the Wind, which closes the album, is a torch song and I'll fight anyone who says differently). It's a great album that doesn't instruct the listener to do anything (dance, smoke, fuck) other than to shut up and pay attention. It's a good 'un

Could have sworn I'd done this before. Anyway. Always think of this as the spiritual forebear of trip-hop.

A friend, an early Dummy proselytiser, listened to my copy of the album once. I'd bought it on CD in 1996 or 97, I guess, from the cheap CD shop across the way from Reckless Records. I always assumed there was something slightly dodge about their sources. They were cheap. Not as cheap as Cheapo Records up the road, but, you know, they had new stuff. And I didn't peel the skin off my cuticles while rifling through their stacks. And I didn't leave covered in dust and sneezing. I did love Cheapo Records by the way, I must say. Anyway, my suspicions were confirmed when my friend, who had been tootling about with a spliff and a kebab and only God knows what else, very almost had a heart attack when the "It's A Fire" loop kicked in. Turns out I had (and still have) a Japanese import – for some unfathomable reason, the UK pressings didn't, include this absolute epic. God, I'm old. First encounter with Portishead was when Multitrack 3 on BBC World Service played the hell out of "Sour Times" *before* it won the (ahem) Mercury Communications Music Prize. (Anyone remember Mercury mobiles? Free calls all evening and weekend? My cousin had won. Used to go all the way to deepest Sarf London to rinse that thing...) Is it me or was the Mercury Prize much earlier in the year then? Have a vague recollection of it being in February. Must check. That, I think, was (at least in the years that I actively paid attention) the strongest shortlist – and thus the most deserving winner.

There isn't very much I can do any more about my core conviction – viz, that the The Rolling Stones are the the most celebrated singles band in history. I understand that this is their first album of solely self-penned material. The fact that the UK edition does not have the superlative Paint It Black aside, this really feels to me like when Big Fun broke free of the clutches of SAW.

[crickets]

Nice (albeit diluted) grooves here. Explains (sort of) the attraction of \"My Beautiful Friend\" (not on this album)

"Prosaic" and "pastoral" come to mind. But neither work. Aside from both being Music Crit. 101 cliches, the album has an edge that pushes aside the notion of bucolic domesticity. For what it's worth, I didn't not enjoy the album, but its lyrical subtlety could (not would) only speak to me in rare moments of introspection. So not sure this rating is a fair reflection of the album's potential.

Lachrymose-adjacent. What has always puzzled me about the Kinks is how they managed to sound so...unprofessional, when they were clearly anything but. (This is meant as a compliment, to be clear. I tend to compare them to The Stones, who always sounded (to me, at least) as if they were faking it.)

Who is Cosmo? Why the factory? Why the very backhanded compliment to Marvin Gaye? (I wonder whether this may possessed something of the Eric Clapton/Bob Marley "I Shot the Sheriff" dynamic – or just wishful thinking on the part of CCR?). Anyway. Rather than rubbish an album that is fond to many, I'll simply say that I'll acknowledge this without quite understanding why.

From a chronology of punk, an interesting contribution. But. Song titles like "I Just Want Some Skank" nod at the historical, rather than contemporary interest that this recording would offer most listeners in AD2023. (Having said that: in this halcyon age of polyamory and consensual non-monogamy, albums with titles like "Group Sex" might succeed in finding a natural audience. Perhaps. The edge of this tape*... ...the edge that this tape communicates might just be at odds with the everything-is-permissible-with-the right-amount-of-mutual-respect vibe of the present day. Again, perhaps. No. you shouldn't listen to it on anything other than tape. Authenticity matters, as does a natural disregard to matters like sonic fidelity. With the latter, our eardrums should be grateful...

FWIW, I don't see the change as such between Side A and Side B. A distinction without a difference, thankfully?

So. We are in the age of the long tail. Why then is it hard for intelligent, non-formula-ised music (like this) to find a place in the charts (even the lower reaches; Crowded House never threatened the higher reaches of the UK Top 40. But then, they never sought to, in that as water finds its level, so too they understood the true commercial and critical appeal of their particular brand of music) ? I blame pop journalism. (Yes. the definition of 'pop' has massively changed in the last thirty years). We are all the poorer for this.

Rick James, James Brown, and RHCP all subscribe to the genre called Funk. Discuss, with examples. This aside (and all three have places in my musical heart, albeit for very different reasons), Under the Bridge is the ultimate bait and switcher. Personally, I think they deserved all the new people it introduced to them.

Don't know enough to have an informed opinion about this, but. OK, interesting.

Nah. Guess one had to be there (paisley, psychedelia, weed and all) to get it.

Sweet, sometime bordering on saccharine. Nevertheless, the undeniable emotive force of Ms Holiday's voice and phrasing wins over elegant but largely linear orchestration

Not for me. Shrill, incessantly so.

In relation to ‘Lost Souls’, this is the biggest letdown since Alaa Al-Aswany’s ‘The Yacoubian Building’ and ‘Chicago’. (Not bigger than, mind. Still convinced a shapeshifter was responsible for that travesty. This is not bad, just dull. And ‘Lost Souls’ is an amazing album.

Not. Again. It's like when this supposedly random selection kept ramming Elvis Bloody Costello down my throat. This was ok, in that it didn't grate. But at best mood music – music for a mood I don't very much identify with.

So, it's pretty hard to say anything at all bad about Ella. Or Ira, for that matter.

Jamie Loftus is an LA-based comedian and audio producer. A while ago, she did an epic audio series exploring Lolita – the book, and how its complex legacy has evolved (and has been contested) over the last half century or so. It's a complex, nuanced and fascinating listen. (It's also 11 hours long.) It also reserves a special place in hell for two people, Adrian Lyne and ... Lana Del Rey. The first is understandable, even though I think he ought to be given a right of reply, if not necessarily the benefit of the doubt. You had to be in the 80s to understand the 80s. Not to justify any of the very many excesses of the decade (and his enabling hand in some of them), but at least to see them in context. One of a number of British Ad Men who transitioned to Hollywood filmmaking in the seventies and eighties, Lyne as a creative is (I think) both a prisoner of his time (unreconstructed) and his original profession (borderline unconscionable a lot of the time, even though this is dressed up along the lines of giving the audience what they (don't yet know that they) want.) (Lyne's cinematic output: Foxes, Flashdance, 9 ½ Weeks, Fatal Attraction, Jacob's Ladder, Lolita; Unfaithful; Deep Water. The semi-colons mark lengthy career breaks. I've watched them all. Jacob's Ladder – a fascinating and unhinged film – aside, there is an identifiable motif in his work. First time happenstance, second coincidence. The third time is enemy action etc etc.) There is an element of agency attached to choosing to make flashy erotic dramas – films that sometimes bordered on soft porn and often objectified their female leads. (Karina Longsworth's equally epic mini series about the Erotic 80s, for her film podcast You Must Remember This, explores this complex and beguiling swamp in exhaustive and engaging detail. Recommended.) Anyway, the point is that Lyne's hands aren't clean. His Lolita, in Loftus's eyes, was a crime against literature, filmmaking, and moral sensibilities. It is also worth pointing out that he did nothing illegal, and that he was the public face of the much larger collaborative effort that enabled the film. If anything, I'd argue that his Lolita forced (or at least accelerated) the end of a sometimes discomfiting film genre (one which, in the spirit of full disclosure, I acknowledge actively enjoying as a teenager), by taking it to its logical (and deeply illogical) conclusion. Del Rey? Loftus's ire derived from what, at length and repeatedly, she taxonomised as the commodification of a certain aesthetic, for personal (and commercial) gain and with no interest in the wider consequences. It's a complicated argument. I had had lots of thoughts about Del Rey before listening to The Lolita Podcast, many of them ambivalent. I hadn't thought about her as a spiritual enabler, though. I wonder whether Loftus credits her with more intelligence than she has, or with less intelligence. (Both measures are relative to Loftus's position. I have no claims to any knowledge about Del Rey's intelligence.) Anyway. As a voice and perspective of a generation now some way away from me, Loftus came across as...far removed from the stereotypes appended to "Millennials" (I don't subscribe to the Generation Game, but it is there so I shan't ignore it). The Lolita Podcast (my time suck caveat aside) is worth listening to as a piece of invested literary and social analysis. As for Chemtrails. Like I said, I've thought about Del Rey's output a lot over the years, mainly from the perspective of an enduring paradox: Del Rey as a manufactured product, yet with undeniable talent. Style is a lot to her. But there is a lot of substance. A bit over a year ago, I listened to all her albums in chronological order. (Streaming does have its uses). This, by a margin, was the least engaging. Some framed it as part of her evolution into a grown up entertainer. I found it untethered, a concept without a proper vehicle.

Nah…

Interesting that five songs are co-credited on the streaming version I listened to. Can't remember if I ever did read the sleeve notes on my CD version (I usually do) but pretty certain I'd never heard of the Gaza Sisters before now. More certain that they aren't mentioned in "Under African Skies", the documentary about the making of this album. Might be a factor in the occasional claim of self-centred cultural appropriation pushed in Mr Simon's direction every now and again. Anyway. Sound album, one for the ages.

Gentle. Undemanding. I wonder, is there is a Rock Family Trees of the Byrds? That would be quite a task, thrashing the myriad associations into anything resembling a coherent narrative. (mind you, there's no reason for it to be coherent. These relationships were anything but.) (Re. RFT. There isn't. Cowards. There is a Fleetwood Mac one, though. Needs updating, one imagines. Never a dull moment with those ones either.)

Lol Tolhurst remains one of the mysteries of modern music. If he were a bassist, I think I would have him figured out (Paul Simonon, Sid Vicious). Or, from a different perspective, a drummer (John Bonham)...oh. Tolhurst was a drummer. Well. He was the drummer on this. The percussionist, I think better to say. Not in a bad bad way. The sense of brood hanging over this album would not have been complemented by anything more than a good time-keeping. Great album. Mood music, if the desired mood is radical apathy. A Forest is, and will always be, a song to cherish

It is possible, I think, to acknowledge the appeal of Cohen without actually warming to him. Part of it is to do with the fact that (to my unending sorry) I am not, and now will never be, a lyrics person. Part of it is reactive, and thus illogical. I live in a place captured by the Cult of Cohen, largely uncritical and in thrall more to the social image that coalesced around Cohen during his lifetime (reinforced, unsurprisingly, by his death) than to, say, his actual music. (This too is reactive and subjective on my part. Perhaps I should simply go to a therapist, rather than working out my issues with my habits via intermediaries like stylish singers of a certain age.) All that said. Songs like Chelsea Hotel are indubitably from the top drawer. this album is of far more modest origins, and should do him no favours. (I do like the cigarette on the sleeve. But there you go, I'm imprisoned by trite superficialities myself...)

What links the Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplane and the Grace Slick of Jefferson Starship? The ability to tap into the youth zeitgeist of the moment, I suppose. "You can do jazz, classical, blues, opera, country until you're 150, but rap and rock and roll are really a way for young people to get that anger out" "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now" – a Reaganite anthem if there ever was one – was as connected to the moment as "White Rabbit" two decades earlier. This is a hard proposition to prove, not least because very few people could have (emotionally, subjectively) inhabited both milieu. Still, I stand by this thesis. "Somebody to Love" was on the soundtrack to one of the most hyped films of the 1990s, Jin Carrey's "Cable Guy". My theory is that it was always intended to be a dark and malevolent critique of consumer comfort – but got sidetracked by the outsized and unexpected success of The Mask. Dunno. Should look it up sometime.

Not listening to this. Electric Circus was a flawed but adventurous and sometimes very good album. This was closer to music by committee. "So, Mr Common, we have to tap back into the zeitgeist of 'One Day It'll All Make Sense' etc. You don't have the material? Worry not! We have you, and we have the incentive..." Yes, Be made lots of money. Still doesn't change the fact that it is a poor shadow of Common's first albums, and locked him into a creative cut-de-sac that I doubt he'll ever get out of now. yes, I am bitter. Can you tell?

A small part of me wants to say that this was a narrative hit. (If I could be bothered, I'd cross reference sales before Jeff Buckley's death against reviews and features either side of the sad event, and then look for the plugger who earned his Christmas bonus many times over in 1997.) But then "Grace". God, what a song. Even now. (I was very surprised to discover, not that long ago, that Joan Wasser – Joan as Police Woman – was dating Buckley when he died. I liked it more when I was less cynical and could easily believe that talent (yes, she is good) naturally finds its place. I'm not saying anything as crude as JaPW riding on her late paramour's coat tails. Not at all. But, you know, the narrative effect has a long reach. Even back in the day when music journalism was still respectable and listicle-free.)

If Van Morrison's voice didn't seem so...wheedling...would I take against him so viscerally? Probably not. (On the other hand, TB Sheets (not here) is a masterpiece, and proof in itself that I can get over myself and my irrational dislikes when the moment calls for it.) (That said, music is nothing if it isn't about irrational likes and dislikes. Summat to do with issues of internal narratives, I suspect.)

Gonna confess to being conflicted. This is one the the albums that I think I ought to like; I would have probably given it a milquetoast 3 stars if not for the fact that I went into the 1001albums review archive first. Lots of grudging acknowledgment of the production values, offsetting a general loathing of the product itself. Can you polish a turd? I think not. Aja isn't a bad album, just somewhat inoffensive and unmemorable – superior elevator music, perhaps? Maybe if De La Soul hadn't taken samples from Aja on Three Feet High... (source material was just a bit over a decade old then), it would have died the social death experienced by (say) Christopher Cross, rather than taken on its current legendary status. Perhaps/

Technically, I have no need to do this. Whoever is spying on my data at Apple would know just how many times I've played this since I got iTunes 20 years ago (they would also have to extrapolate backwards, and also account for the many times I've listened to the CD rather than streaming, but never mind.) Whether the Art Vs the Artist argument comes up, I think about this, and In A Silent Way, and excuse myself. My subjectivities mean that I have nothing of use to contribute to the conversation.

This is why I hate streaming platforms. I really want to know the production credits of this album. On the other hand. I only had this on tape. Even if I still have the tape (doubtful – and if so, it'll be at my mum's, which is much the same as not having it) ...and playable (more doubtful), I'll actually buy a record player before buying a new tape deck... Actually. I have a Walkman in working condition. This may be the start of a fun project. Me, my Walkman, and Sennheiser 250 headphones on the tube. Retro Steampunk futurism or something... Anyway. Fun album. Even the weak songs have a sharp production sheen. Enjoyed, still enjoy. And Blue Sky still puts something good in my heart each time I hear it.

Alan Vega routinely lopped a decade off his age. I'm not sure why, but that takes guts... I know why people like this album, or why people think this album should be liked (not always the same thing). I know that Death in Vegas and LCD would not exist without this album. (A mixed blessing in this household, tbf, but the underlying principle stands.) All that said. I'm going to bed.

Figure 8 remains my (subjective) benchmark (in that whilst I was aware of Smith, it was the first album of his that I listened to 'properly'). I'm not going to slight this with faint praise (Cupid's Trick, for instance, is up there with his best), but I couldn't and still quite warm to this. The retrospective gaze always sets a high bar, I suppose