The Smashing Pumpkins were, without qualification, the worst band to defecate from the 90s US alternative scene. That is not hyperbole; if anything, it's diminishing how appalling they were regardless of time, location or genre. Of course, the blame piles onto one man: Billy Corgan, the worst frontman in rock, alive or dead or not even conceived. The vast majority of gametes nestling in your testes has a far stronger claim for musical significance. So why is Billy Corgan so bad? Let's get the purest, most straightforward reason out the way: he can't sing. Indeed, he sounds like someone deliberately attempting to sing bad. Specifically, he sounds like Cartman from South Park, who was meant to sound as cacophonous as possible. Do you want to hear Cartman sing one proto-emo dirge, let alone nearly thirty? When I say Corgan is a bad singer, I don't mean he's unpolished and inexact; I mean that he is painful to the ears. Our dogs refused to be in the same room when I played this. Coupled to Corgan's inability to sing is his inability to write lyrics that don't collapse into risibility. There is not one word on this album to take seriously. Take the lines (preferably out back to be shot): Emptiness is loneliness, and loneliness is cleanliness And cleanliness is godliness, and God is empty, just like me It would be polite not to guffaw, but not guffawing would be dishonest. Or how about the rubbish-yet-bizarrely-popular 1979? I bet you thought it was a wistful, bittersweet recollection of carefree youth. Nope. Here's the chorus: That we don't even care to shake these zipper blues And we don't know just where our bones will rest To dust I guess forgotten and absorbed Into the earth below Now children, do you think adding a bit about rotting corpses to a limp song automatically grants it gravitas? (By the by, Billy Corgan was 12 in 1979. He wasn't out partying and fingering girls, he was still throwing tantrums when his mum said it was bath night. The only song more ridiculous in this regard is Summer of 69, as Bryan Adams was 10 in 1969, and there's no way Bryan Adams was so cool that he started his first band and lost his virginity aged 10. And yes, I am directly calling Billy Corgan a pale imitation of Bryan Adams). Of course, Billy Corgan would say he means every word, that these words are his heart, his truth. Anyone with an iota of sense would retort that he was talking bollocks. (And let's not forget he's now into vaccine denial and 9/11 conspiracies, so I feel no compunction in calling his a massive wanker). The ingredients for the shit sandwich are assembled. We have a singularly uncharismatic and grating singer, screeching out the most lamentable high school doggerel, all backed by your standard substandard post-Nirvana alt-rock pop-punk-by-numbers that littered the US in 1995. So what's the next logical step? Why, it's to make a TWO HOUR concept album (a concept which is never clear and in any case gets jettisoned about three songs in). One song would be insufferable; 28 of the fuckers just bludgeon the listener into a depressed numbness. With some lengthy, challenging albums, such as Trout Mask Replica or Metal Machine Music, one feels satisfied with oneself for having listened all the way through. This album is twice as long as Metal Machine Music, but there's no sense of accomplishment in listening to this, because there's no reward. Even passing a particularly stubborn log brings relief, but this is only like being stranded in a rainstorm. You don't get inivgorated, you just get cold and wet. Also, the title is crap. Mellon Collie? Is that a pun? I really don't get it. You shouldn't get this either.

This is proving to be the hardest album I've found to review so far, not because I'm confused by my opinion of it, but because I don't know whether to consider it accidentally exploitative. Bruef summary: Roger Waters and Nick Mason forms the Architectural Abdabs at art college (a standard incubator for artsy British bands), Syd Barrett joins and changes the name to Pink Floyd after two blues musicians he loved, they achieve their first success with Piper at the Gates of Dawn, tragically Syd suffers from serious mental health issues and cannot continue with the band, Syd records two solo albums, Syd quits music and lives reclusively until his death in 2006. I was not prepared for how grim the experience of listening to this album would be. Yes, by inclination Syd Barrett was a whimsical songwriter with an obviously far better sense of humour than Roger Waters, and on the surface this album showcases that to the point of incoherence, but this album isn't just a mess, although it is an absolute casserole of an album. The first side is okay, exercises in Barrett's warm eccentricity, but not spectacular. Sadly, the last few tracks degenerate into essentially studio outtakes, revealing an ugliness to the whole exercise. It felt slightly sordid listening to this album. It didn't feel like the demonstration of a lost genius; it felt like a ramshackle using of a talented but troubled man. This is not to say that a work by someone with significant mental health issues is by its nature compromised either aesthetically or morally. Barrett's contemporaries Brian Wilson and Nick Drake both made excellent albums whilst struggling with debilitating mental illness. But one can wish an album show its creator a little more dignity. So, I can't recommend. I have to give this one star, but please understand it's a highly qualified one star in no way reflective of Syd Barrett's talent.

I adoe garage rock, and this is a wondrous slab of it. Exactly what you want of a Saturday night. Simple, unpretentious, clearsighted, slamming rock 'n' roll.

I had never heard of Gillian Welch before thi sprang up in my playlist. My appreciation for country, Americana, bluegras and such is a little limited, due to both a lack of knowledge and a wariness based on prominence of the genres' more embarrassing examples. So, I hope you understand that I began playing this album with open-mindedness, but with a dash of trepidation. Within a minute the album had struck me with a haymaker, mocking me for my hesitancy. This album is not only brilliant, it's obviously, mathematically brilliant. I try not to use hyperbole, but I am struggling to describe this album without resorting to such. Both unadorned and luxurious, this is the result of exquisite care taken with both art and craft. If you don't appreciate this faultless yet human treasure, then you should have a good long talk with yourelf.

This was one of the first albums I ever bought, when I was eleven. I genuinely loved Alright when it came out, though I preferred Lenny. Indeed, I even had a pair of rudimentary sideburns aged 11 (though in fairness I've somehow always had a pair of Sidney Sideboards ever since I was about 8; I didn't spurt into puberty especially prematurely, I just always had sideburns). Now, I have no problem with me loving this album as kid, but how would I respond to it as a 30something? Very warmly, it turned out. We have here an amiable, sincere yet playful and funloving record. It's an adolescent record (indeed, children liked Supergrass), but thankfully focuses on the carefree happiness of your first spliff and your first caress of a bosom, rather than 28 tracks about self-harming and hanging round cemeteries. To add a note on the album's eclecticism, I Should Coco has a intriguing number of different styles. Yes, these styles aren't jarringly different from each other, forming part of the standard canon of British indie rock (Beatles, Kinks, Who, Clash, Jam, Smiths, Stone Roses etc.), but Supergrass' embrace of them feels organic, as if they actually just like those bands, rather than out of a need to brag about their record collection (looking at you Spiritualized, Primal Scream and Radiohead). It's a pleasing, natural variance that doesn't reek of showiness. Basically, not a duff track, and that's great enough.

My first day at this, and quite an intimidating entry. The music was perfectly fine, but surely this is not meant to be enjoyed as an album per se, but rather sampled occasionally?

Loved the first seven tracks, but found it less likeable from Idiots Rule onwards. Nevertheless, I would recommend.

I adoe garage rock, and this is a wondrous slab of it. Exactly what you want of a Saturday night. Simple, unpretentious, clearsighted, slamming rock 'n' roll.

The issue with this album is how well-behaved it all is. It's really hard to find faults with the playing, but it's that Formica quality which ultimately makes it impossible to love. Why listen to a pastiche of Exile on Main Street and Grievous Angel when you can listen to Exile on Main Street and Grievous Angel? By the end I was screaming for the Stooges or something with a bit of blood to it. Now, this is not a bad album. But that's the problem. It's so well-mannered, it doesn't take any real risks, and as such there's nothing to root for. If it's your bag, that's fine, we won't fall out, but surely you recognise on occasion that this feels programmed rather than written?

Obviously, the musicianship is faultless, and thankfully the professionalism here is part of the band's passion for an eclectic range of music. Yet one would like a more organic tracklisting; the division of the LP into electric and acoustic sides makes the album feel like slightly artificial, as if driven by guile as much as creativity. Also, and you may disagree, the cumulation and ordering of the acoustic tracks causes the last two tracks, Bron-Yr-Aur Stomp and Hats off to (Roy) Harper, to sound a little peculiar, like experiments that don't completely come off. Nevertheless, there's more than enough meat here.

A curious beast, with emphasis on the word "beast". The most popular songs associated with it (Paint It Black, Under My Thumb, Mother's Little Helper), are all in my Rolling Stones top 10, and I adore Out of Time, even though I prefer the Gary Filmore version (seriously, I completely adore Gary Filmore's take on it). And yes, I appreciate the dark paths the Stones explored here: all the snottier to sound, an admirable trait. Prosaically, I just think there's a touch too much filler for this to be a full 5-starrer. I'm practically nitpicking, there's obviously excellent stuff here, but if you go dirty, you'll have fun but you'll probably end up with nits.

What a wondeful album. My acquaintance with Leonard Cohen had been slight (and I've no desire to hear any version of Hallelujah ever again), so tonight was my first real dip into his work. My, what a work! His control of language impresses most; is there a misplaced word, an unrefined phrase on the album? I couldn't find one. Nor could I fault the atmosphere of each song. The wistful and bittersweet fits exactly next to the panicked and chilling. Superb.

I feel a little strange reviewing this, as it comes off the back of listening to Led Zeppelin III and the Rolling Stones' Athermath, both of which I gave four stars. Now, the star system is not fit for purpose, and I guess for that reason I have to add a qualifier (I loathe needing to clarify what's cock-obvious). Anyway, I found this superior to the two albums I just mentioned: lean, fierce, dumb in the right way, organic, and above all rocking. But I've given 5 stars to 3 out of eight so far (this, along with The Sonics' Here Are The Sonics and Leonard Cohen's Songs from Leonard Cohen) , so am I diminishing the ratings system, or did I just have a fortunate streak? I supppose the albums in this exercise have the reputations of classics.

Although this is CCR's second album, it still feels tentative, in both a positive and cavillous reading. The songs suggest a desire to stretch (witness the forays into swamp rock), but one gets a sense of caution, of an unwillingness to tread too far or to flat-out holler. Of course, CCR would achieve that with later songs and albums. However, this album feels slightly hesitant: for instance, the two jams, though fine, aren't bombastic enough to properly engross. This album is great fun, and shows CCR heading in the right direction, but it's not the most essential of their work. Compare it to the Rolling Stones' Aftermath: good stuff, but you should really stick around for what happens next.

Frankly, and indeed somewhat purposefully, this album is a clear oddity. A work where the bombast is the point, where everything is XXXL and then further expanded, the only parallel that springs to mind is Born to Run, which is comparatively modest. But does it work? An album of histrionics and declared emotional extremes harking back to the teenage experience, I ultimately found such a pose too much of an affectation to embrace. Of course, the paradox here is that the affectation was obviously meant sincerely, that Jim Steinman and Meat Loaf authentically loved the sentiments of this album. But I do not share that stance, and this attempt to make the ultimate rock 'n roll album doesn't fully escape self-parody. (Speaking of which, didn't rock 'n roll start off stripped-down and straightforward? How do you get from That's All Right Mama to Paradise by the Dashboard Light?) In fairness, there are of course occasions for such grandiosity, and I shan't object if someone puts a track of this album on the jukebox, but I wouldn't do it myself.

There is a perfect, 5-star album within this. One wants to vaunt the ambition, talent and bravery of such a vast work, but it is just too vast. The effect is one of eating a whole box of chocolates: every morsel is delicious, but you are left exhausted and a little nauseated. That criticism feels a little harsh: every song on the album is fine, and taken individually they'd be a treat. However, taken together they clamour for attention, drowning out each other. Prolificacy can be a virtue, but it easily degenrates into self-indulgence, and one should always remember that precision is just as virtuous.

I have been in a permanent yawn for half an hour. I have never felt my face so weary. Now, most occasions of boredom lead to frustration, not physical tiredness. I am perversely impressed at how soporific this album is. It's all just one song, and quite a boring song at that. So, we have one boring song raised by an order of magnitude. An album consisting of pure halal filler. You know how pop stars are supposedly able to sing people out of comas? Dire Straits can play people into them. Punk happened for so many reasons.

A warm, embracable album, quite odd from such a politicised disc. Indeed, the juztaposition between the bitterness of the lyrics and the smoothness of the music works rather well. I was not persuaded, however, by the song Jesus: is religion really the most reliable panacea? It didn't really work on What's Going On, and it doesn't really work on this. Also, perhaps a little too short? Curtis Mayfield already had a fistful of classic albums, so he could afford himself a little space to experiment and indulge. Still, a solid album by a true great.

Firstly, it must be said that her voice is astounding. An extraordinarily emotive performer, equally adept at doleful ballads and exuberant, joyful numbers. This album has such great stuff. However, the Harry Belafonte-style songs sound a little dated to my ears. But they are tolerable, and there is true gold elsewhere on this album. Beforehand, I knew nothing about Miriam Makeba, and this was a most impressive introduction.

I had an epiphany last year, listening to Every Picture Tells a Story for the first time: Rob Stewart was actually great, and EPTAS is a masterclass. So, I'm delighted that A Nod... is The Faces in exactly the same groove as EPTAS. What I wanted was more of the same, and it seems The Faces were in accord. Of course, saying one album sounds like another doesn't really say anything much. So, this album is a laid-back, rocking, laddish, boozy, bluesy, rogueish yet softhearted paean to both the raucous Saturday night and the dog-rough Sunday morning. Just don't think of The Stereophonics and you'll love it all.

I had quite some trepidation in reviewing this. I'm not averse to jazz at all, yet I worry that I may lack the musicianship to appreciate this album fully. Or rather, I perhaps don't have the philosophy to appreciate it fully, if one excuses ihe pretension. Now, there are tracks on this I loved (Li'l Darlin' in particular), but I found myself overwhelmed a little by the big band aesthetic (to get pretentious again). I wished one track were a little different to leaven it slightly. Is that my fault? Am I being too harsh on myself?

I love punk, by which I mean the 70s' variant, not Green Day and their ilk. In fact, the music I was weaned on was punk; my brother is 15 years older than me, so I got all his old punk LPs in the 90s. Anyway, depite that, I have never liked the song Teenage Kicks; I found it mawkish and overplayed. It still never really appealed even after I realised it was about wanking. Nevertheless, I lsitened to listen without prejudice and I loved it! The Undertones were really a great adolescent band, and this album showed a slight addition of postpunk jerkiness. Above all, this album is fun, unalloyed joy. What else do you want?

According to legend, Elton John didn't originally need glasses. He took to wearing a pair to emulate Buddy Holly, but this caused his eyes to adjust, thus making them a necessity. Just thought I'd start with that. I haven't had an opinion on Elton John previously. I've never had any inclination to sit down and listen to any of his albums; my favourite music seemed to have little overlap with his music. Of course, Elton John has been bloody everywhere for all my life. I begrudge him that status only in that nobody should be bloody everywhere. So this album was oddly one I'd never heard which I'd assumed I already knew, clearly a mistake on my part. I tried to listen without preconception, and I think I did, and as an album it doesn't really work. The most obvious flaw is that Side B just meanders around, not really striking the listener. The songs, mostly 4+ minutes, can't really be called filler, so are they just a bit dull? So, we have a clearly toploaded album. How does the rest favour? I found the lyrics a touch overcooked, but curious enough to have some charm. Is the music emotional, mawkish, or insincere? I don't know. Maybe it's subjective. It may not be my bag, but I can understand other people going for it.

Beforehand, I did not see the point of the Eurythmics. Firstly, ridiculous and pretentious name that invites unintentional spelling mistakes, so I wasn't inclined to take them that seriously. Secondly, Sweet Dreams is massively overplayed, seemingly bolted on to every documentary about Thatcher, even though it doesn't really go anywhere. Still, I rather like synthpop; indeed, I love Kraftwerk, Gary Numan, Soft Cell and New Order. So I tried to have an open mind, seriously. The first side, I didn't hate. I know, faint praise. I felt the songs were slightly overstretched, but were tolerable, pleasant enough. I still don't get the affection for Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) (by the by, that is a genuinely annoying use of parentheses after the title: Annie Lennox clearly says "these", especially since it rhymes with "seas" in the song). But when Jennifer came on, I found myself genuinely liking it: a sinister, minimalist, impressionistic murder ballad. So I began hoping that the second half would continue in this unsettling trend: synthpop has always been an excellent vehicle for the macabre. Nope, the next song This is the House is horrible! It's really, comically bad! An unwitting self-parody that's also the lamest attempt of a Bowie impersonator attempting funk, with added sound effects. This is outrageous! This is contagious! This was released as a single! Then, on the next song, Somebody Told Me, Annie Lennox THREATENS TO RAP. She doesn't, but she really indulges the hip-hop inflections in the chorus. With that, you can really taste your anus at the back of your tongue. The last song is a meandering and really dull bit of real dullness, conning itself that an epic closer is reducible only to length. So, can I condemn an album for three weak tracks at the end? Yes, I can. Imagine a chef offers to prepare you a meal. The first half consists of a passable, slightly stodgy stew. You feel a little bloated, not too impressed, but not inclined to complain. Then, they offer a delicate lemon and honey sorbet as a palate cleanser, and they get the sharp and sweet balance exactly right. But at the end, the chef clambers onto the table, lowers his strides and does a massive, stinky poo right onto your plate. What would you remember, the stew or the poo?

No, I'm not going to pretend that I like this album. The music sounds like the vaguely jazzy background musak ITV played when broadcasting a loop of Teletext pages at 4:30 AM. But this album is still quite the curiosity, as I found plenty to laugh at. Take the song Walking In Your Footsteps: it contains the couplet "Hey Mr. dinsaur/ You really couldn't ask for more". It's hard to treat that lyric portentously, yet it's in a song musing on the extinction of the dinosaurs and fearing for humanity's fate under the shadow of the nuclear weapon. Is Sting being whimsical, sardonic, bitter, absurd, or is he just unintentionally undercutting his message with a weak lyric? I don't suspect Sting of having much of a sense of humour, unless you count Old Rainforest-Breath's ads for Jaguar. Or how about the song Mother, the only one written and sung by Andy Summers? It's just bloody odd. It's like a early-60s' Halloween novelty record, and Andy sings like he's forgotten his much-needed lithium. Mind, that's probably my favourite track: at least it's having fun in its derangement. So, the best track on the album is only interesting by virtue of its madness. That doesn't augur well for the rest of the album, does it? Simultaneously pretentious and artless, The Police? More like The Poo-lice.

The album is essentially a proof-of-concept, sketches for their later work. What we have is an establishment of The Blue Nile's aesthetic: meticulous, melancholy and songs given space to breathe. However, one can also criticise the mildly haywire arrangements. Also, one can find The Blue Nile generally overproduced and a touch too cold to love. I have spent the evening listening to this and their follow-up, 1989's Hats. Hats is obviously the better album, and I am puzzled as to why it wasn't the book's choice for their Blue Nile album. That said, two Blue Nile albums are a bit too much for one evening. I can grasp the appeal, but I can't concur that The Blue Nile are one of the great forgotten groups of the 1980s.

A solid, warm album of great songwriting detail. Now, I have only heard the album once, and with such an album, where the subtleties are the point, I believe one listen probably isn't sufficient for a full assessment and appreciation. As such, my current take is tentative and provisional. I may in future consider this a 5-starrer, but I may equally retain it at 4 stars.

This album has the strengths and weaknesses of a debut by a clearly talented and idiosyncratic artist. We have such a lush and engrossing sound, led by an utterly sensuous and beguiling voice, simultaneously titilllating and menacing: a dip into a lustrous black. However, sometimes the record takes the aesthetic too far, and stumbles into mild self-parody. The circus music of Oompah Radar (wow, some people find clowns sinister!) and the occasional stabs at surrealist lyrics (gosh, dream imagery!) don't fully work. All this is to be expected: with such a unique artistic vision, Alison Goldfrapp is comparable to Kate Bush, in that her muse leads her to either to the misguided or the inspired. However, like Kate Bush, Goldfrapp has the sheer flair and savvy to transcend her whimsies on her best work, such as on her two subsequent albums. Felt Mountain is a great introduction to her work, but "introduction" is the operative word.

I want to give this five stars. My right hand is desperate to click on the mouse to give it five stars. I run through the highpoints of the album continually, yearning to give it five stars. I recall how mesmerized I was by the third quarter, how warm and blissful and singular and vast and searching the record is, and I want with all clarity and desire to give it five stars. And I can't. The issue emerged in the fourth track, Run, where they make a rather blunt allusion to the Velvet Underground's Run Run Run. This distracted more than anything, and threw me from the music. Was I listening to genuine sentiment, or rather a demonstration that the band owned a cool record collection? Is that even a problem? I don't know. I can still hear the beating of a heart within this album, but it's muffled by a leather jacket the album insisted its mum got it in order to impress the girl albums.

I had never heard of Gillian Welch before thi sprang up in my playlist. My appreciation for country, Americana, bluegras and such is a little limited, due to both a lack of knowledge and a wariness based on prominence of the genres' more embarrassing examples. So, I hope you understand that I began playing this album with open-mindedness, but with a dash of trepidation. Within a minute the album had struck me with a haymaker, mocking me for my hesitancy. This album is not only brilliant, it's obviously, mathematically brilliant. I try not to use hyperbole, but I am struggling to describe this album without resorting to such. Both unadorned and luxurious, this is the result of exquisite care taken with both art and craft. If you don't appreciate this faultless yet human treasure, then you should have a good long talk with yourelf.

This is proving to be the hardest album I've found to review so far, not because I'm confused by my opinion of it, but because I don't know whether to consider it accidentally exploitative. Bruef summary: Roger Waters and Nick Mason forms the Architectural Abdabs at art college (a standard incubator for artsy British bands), Syd Barrett joins and changes the name to Pink Floyd after two blues musicians he loved, they achieve their first success with Piper at the Gates of Dawn, tragically Syd suffers from serious mental health issues and cannot continue with the band, Syd records two solo albums, Syd quits music and lives reclusively until his death in 2006. I was not prepared for how grim the experience of listening to this album would be. Yes, by inclination Syd Barrett was a whimsical songwriter with an obviously far better sense of humour than Roger Waters, and on the surface this album showcases that to the point of incoherence, but this album isn't just a mess, although it is an absolute casserole of an album. The first side is okay, exercises in Barrett's warm eccentricity, but not spectacular. Sadly, the last few tracks degenerate into essentially studio outtakes, revealing an ugliness to the whole exercise. It felt slightly sordid listening to this album. It didn't feel like the demonstration of a lost genius; it felt like a ramshackle using of a talented but troubled man. This is not to say that a work by someone with significant mental health issues is by its nature compromised either aesthetically or morally. Barrett's contemporaries Brian Wilson and Nick Drake both made excellent albums whilst struggling with debilitating mental illness. But one can wish an album show its creator a little more dignity. So, I can't recommend. I have to give this one star, but please understand it's a highly qualified one star in no way reflective of Syd Barrett's talent.

The Smashing Pumpkins were, without qualification, the worst band to defecate from the 90s US alternative scene. That is not hyperbole; if anything, it's diminishing how appalling they were regardless of time, location or genre. Of course, the blame piles onto one man: Billy Corgan, the worst frontman in rock, alive or dead or not even conceived. The vast majority of gametes nestling in your testes has a far stronger claim for musical significance. So why is Billy Corgan so bad? Let's get the purest, most straightforward reason out the way: he can't sing. Indeed, he sounds like someone deliberately attempting to sing bad. Specifically, he sounds like Cartman from South Park, who was meant to sound as cacophonous as possible. Do you want to hear Cartman sing one proto-emo dirge, let alone nearly thirty? When I say Corgan is a bad singer, I don't mean he's unpolished and inexact; I mean that he is painful to the ears. Our dogs refused to be in the same room when I played this. Coupled to Corgan's inability to sing is his inability to write lyrics that don't collapse into risibility. There is not one word on this album to take seriously. Take the lines (preferably out back to be shot): Emptiness is loneliness, and loneliness is cleanliness And cleanliness is godliness, and God is empty, just like me It would be polite not to guffaw, but not guffawing would be dishonest. Or how about the rubbish-yet-bizarrely-popular 1979? I bet you thought it was a wistful, bittersweet recollection of carefree youth. Nope. Here's the chorus: That we don't even care to shake these zipper blues And we don't know just where our bones will rest To dust I guess forgotten and absorbed Into the earth below Now children, do you think adding a bit about rotting corpses to a limp song automatically grants it gravitas? (By the by, Billy Corgan was 12 in 1979. He wasn't out partying and fingering girls, he was still throwing tantrums when his mum said it was bath night. The only song more ridiculous in this regard is Summer of 69, as Bryan Adams was 10 in 1969, and there's no way Bryan Adams was so cool that he started his first band and lost his virginity aged 10. And yes, I am directly calling Billy Corgan a pale imitation of Bryan Adams). Of course, Billy Corgan would say he means every word, that these words are his heart, his truth. Anyone with an iota of sense would retort that he was talking bollocks. (And let's not forget he's now into vaccine denial and 9/11 conspiracies, so I feel no compunction in calling his a massive wanker). The ingredients for the shit sandwich are assembled. We have a singularly uncharismatic and grating singer, screeching out the most lamentable high school doggerel, all backed by your standard substandard post-Nirvana alt-rock pop-punk-by-numbers that littered the US in 1995. So what's the next logical step? Why, it's to make a TWO HOUR concept album (a concept which is never clear and in any case gets jettisoned about three songs in). One song would be insufferable; 28 of the fuckers just bludgeon the listener into a depressed numbness. With some lengthy, challenging albums, such as Trout Mask Replica or Metal Machine Music, one feels satisfied with oneself for having listened all the way through. This album is twice as long as Metal Machine Music, but there's no sense of accomplishment in listening to this, because there's no reward. Even passing a particularly stubborn log brings relief, but this is only like being stranded in a rainstorm. You don't get inivgorated, you just get cold and wet. Also, the title is crap. Mellon Collie? Is that a pun? I really don't get it. You shouldn't get this either.

An album born from ambition and technical prowess, but the unfortunate result is an album that's impossible to love. Let me elaborate. I came here knowing nothing about Animal Collective (after university I travelled the world for a decade, so when this came out I had no real desire to strain myself with maintaining a working knowledge of contemporary American indie trends), so this was my first experience of the group. Afterwards, I feel no internal clamour to make Animal Collective part of my life. Firstly, their aesthetic is wilfully garish and saccharine, but a conscious use of the garish and saccharine, whether sincere or ironic, is still garish and saccharine, and it will annoy those who have a distaste for the garish and saccharine, just as metal's aggressiveness and indelicacy alienates plenty of people. Secondly, I mentioned at the start that the album is ambitious, which is of course a highly loaded term. For instance, the choral singing constantly used on the album is a clear nod to the Beach Boys, but such an homage reveals irresolution as much as taste: are they complimenting the Beach Boys, or are they grasping for the trendiest ideas? I honestly can't tell you. Developing this Beach Boys comparison further, I don't think the melodies on this album are that memorable. Yes, I know there's also an unmelodic, glitchy rave aspect to this, but I think the desired result was to be a synthesis, not the actual unsatisfying compromise. This lack of memorable melody is what deflates the album, and I can't help feeling that the album was conceived as an exercise in cleverness rather than heart. For such a supposedly outgoing, emotive, happy band, I heard the faint clang of calculation in the background. Finally, on Guys' Eyes, one of the noises sounds like a fart. There are moments that appeal, and I accept that further listenings may increase my fondness for this, but I don't know if I want to devote any more of my life to Animal Collective. I'll give it three stars for effort (like I said, ambition has positive aspects, as well as negative ones), but that is partly bcause I want to be generous.

The debate is whether to award this four or five stars. Yes, that requires explanation. Here, we have a double album, or perhaps more accurately two albums in one package. The first, Abattoir Blues, despite the Grand Guignol name, is a full-blooded rock 'n roll, bluesy stomp of a record. The first album also benefits from an uncommon quality in rock: it's got a sense of humour. The opener Get Ready For Love raucously juxtaposes Christian expression with rockstar strutting. Hiding All Away has the very chucklesome verse: You searched through all my poets From Sappho through to Auden I saw the book fall from your hands As you slowly died of boredom The worst fault you could say about the first album is that there are touches of filler (Nature Boy, the first single, didn't really raise my skirt), but that smacks of nitpicking. The second album, The Lyre of Orpheus, is a softer, more delicate work, with more acoustic numbers, but of equally high quality as the first. Whereas the first invigorates, the second beguiles. Indeed, the second's stock consists of sincere, sometimes plaintive, sometimes jaunty love songs (the video to Breathless has Nick Cave dancing with cartoon toy rabbits). And again, the nitpick is over the occasional track being somewhat fillersome. So what does this mean in the final summary? Are these albums to be assessed as two great albums in a twofer? Two great single works that don't really fuse together? A quintessential case of a double album missing true greatness by a cat's pube just out of its overlong nature? Fuck it, I'll be generous. Five stars it is. (And yes, the star system for rating anything is moronic, especially stars).

For some reason I can't fully grasp, I have avoided listening to OK Computer ever since it came out 24 years ago. I suppose I could attribute it to hype aversion, that an album acclaimed so immediately must reflect journalists seeking unanimity for than anything. Therefore, in 1997 I bought The Prodigy's The Fat of the Land, mainly because everyone in school had also bought it. And yes, I did dismiss the critics as sheeplike whilst aping the behavior of everyone at the comp. So, has OK Computer aged well? (As to whether Fat of the Land has aged well, what do you expect from an album that quotes Goering's guns not butter speech?) One can detect the odd wrinkle and stretchmark. Firstly, the student politics of the album incite cringes rather than riots. I like to think that I am now of an age where I have a more considered view of the political landscape, and if you wish to criticise the IMF, I'd prefer your criticisms to be substantive and constructive. Still, one part of growing up is that you don't derive your politics from albums, so I can't slam Radiohead too much on that front. So what about the rest? Well, the music is fine, great in places, but I still rankle slightly at the constant need to allude to other music. I can't be the only one who doesn't want their albums reduced to a Where's Wally checklist, "Oh, just spotted Magazine, and that's Can, and that's Bitches Brew, and I think there's Edgard Varèse..." Sure, Radiohead are by no means the worst offenders from this era (Spiritualized and Primal Scream, obviously), but however much they wish to tip the titfer to their influences, it can detract as it can distract. This seems harsher than I intend it to be. OK Computer is a fine album, cohesive and biting. But the iciness can leave one cold, especially on the tips of one's ears. In short, OK Computer is... OK. I feel really pleased with myself for that last bit.

This was one of the first albums I ever bought, when I was eleven. I genuinely loved Alright when it came out, though I preferred Lenny. Indeed, I even had a pair of rudimentary sideburns aged 11 (though in fairness I've somehow always had a pair of Sidney Sideboards ever since I was about 8; I didn't spurt into puberty especially prematurely, I just always had sideburns). Now, I have no problem with me loving this album as kid, but how would I respond to it as a 30something? Very warmly, it turned out. We have here an amiable, sincere yet playful and funloving record. It's an adolescent record (indeed, children liked Supergrass), but thankfully focuses on the carefree happiness of your first spliff and your first caress of a bosom, rather than 28 tracks about self-harming and hanging round cemeteries. To add a note on the album's eclecticism, I Should Coco has a intriguing number of different styles. Yes, these styles aren't jarringly different from each other, forming part of the standard canon of British indie rock (Beatles, Kinks, Who, Clash, Jam, Smiths, Stone Roses etc.), but Supergrass' embrace of them feels organic, as if they actually just like those bands, rather than out of a need to brag about their record collection (looking at you Spiritualized, Primal Scream and Radiohead). It's a pleasing, natural variance that doesn't reek of showiness. Basically, not a duff track, and that's great enough.

Fun fact: the official newspaper of the Vatican once named this the second greatest album ever, after the Beatles' Revolver. So, what did the Papal hacks see in the debut album of a former drug-hound gun-nut jailbird who once gave his seed to a lesbian couple? Well, there's some obvious greatness here, and it's an album that aims high and mostly lands (yes, you heard the distant rumble of a qualifier). One of the more sophisticated hippy folk works, the playing is at once intricate and unforced, each piece allowed to grow at its own pace. Indeed, the feel is of a languid jam where enough has been smoked that the walls have turned green (among the notables appearing are Jerry Garcia, Neil Young, Graham Nash, Joni Mitchell and Jefferson Airplane). That said, there are touches of melancholy to tracks like Laughing and Cowboy Movie, which of course adds to the richness of this album. As for that qualifier? Well, Song with No Words (Tree with No Leaves) is a song with no words, and skates right to the edge of self-parody. An album like this does take risks, and it's in the nature of risks that they may not fully or even parly succeed. So, I choose to hesitate over giving it five stars, but I fully understand those who bow towards this. Also, some of the last few albums I received (e.g., OK Computer and the execrable Mellon Collie...) possessed no sense of humour whatsoever, and were significantly worse off for such pomposity. Hell, it's nice when an album is capable of a chuckle.

A Yes album, even The Yes Album, doesn't feel like a Yes album unless Rik Wakeman and Roger Dean is involved. Now, that's piffle. This is clearly a Yes album, it sounds exactly like Yes, the songs are firmly in the Yes scool of lyricism and thematics, and whereas Roger has become inseparable from Yes, Rick Wakeman's been in and out of them more often than the crew of HMS Queen Elizabeth with your mum. Now, I am not a Yes fan, I subscribe to the standard that Yes were bloated and bizarrely inane, despite the grandiosity of their lyrical and musical conceits. I understand that the fans consider Starship Trooper one of their monuments, and I acknowledge that the last movement of it has a proper driving frug. And that occasional frug is the best of Yes. However, between each instance of frug there's about 15 minutes of quite boring, quite charmless noodling. But how would a band like Yes grasp the aesthetic of less being more? They're Yes, not the Ramones.

How does one assess an album by an act as idiosyncratic as Sparks? simple: you listen to Kimono My House, and you conclude that it's great. Job done. Kimono My House is the album that brought the brothers Mael to stardom, and placed them within the glam pantheon. Wonderfully, Sparks has never stopped, and indeed they're enjoying a deserved second flush of critical and commercial success. So how does the album that propelled them to fame affect the listener today? Sparks have one of the most well-developed sense of humour of any band (one aspect of this 1001 album exercise is that it made me realise how important it is for a band to have a sense of humour about them, rather than disappear up their own fundament mewling about how tortured they supposedly are). One must surely delight at the smutty erudition of the lines: You mentioned kant and I was shocked You know, where I come from, none of the girls have such foul tongues The album is festooned with such zingers. The music itself is highly stylised, baroque even, but that's authentically Sparks: Ron and Russell are educated, wry chaps steeped in the history of songwriting, so primitivism would just be an ill-fitting garb for Sparks. Be thankful that Sparks pursue such a singular muse, and that the made a singularly great album as this.

Woowee, jazz-funk! An album of straight-up 70s jazz-funk, evoking a 70s urban atmosphere of hustlers, punks, pimps and junkies. And so, it's an album firmly stuck in 1979, all economic malaises and Iranian hostage crises. So, the album and the genre itself has dated not all too cheerily. But can one listen to it with clean ears? Yes, of course, and there's stuff to enjoy, definitely. The title track has especially borne the years well. And despite my qualms over its antiquated sound, I rather like the sleazy, grimy aesthetic that this record proffers. But I cannot deny that in some parts it drags and occasionally falls into, yes, elevator music. So, the good parts are good, and the not-so-good parts are not so good. I think I deserve a prize for such a no-nonsense assessment.

The Massive Attack albums I have owned are Blue Lines and Mezzanine. Personally, I prefer the exquisite bleakness of Mezzanine to Blue Lines too-cool-for-skool eclecticism, but both are rather fine albums. So, I was not unprepared for Protection. And, as someone who has enjoyed plenty of Massive Attack in the past, it's slightly disappointing. Don't misunderstand me, the music is of Massive Attack's high standard, but that's the problem. It feels safe, tentative. You hope for the band to evolve, for the album to take far more risks, but they seem to have been stymied by the success of Blue Lines, and as such we have a classic example of second album syndrome. I acknowledge that I sound overly negative, but that's because I know the group did better before and after. With this album, I wish they'd been more daring, and used less protection (thank you and goodnight!).

A hard album to assess. The album has a real sweep to it, a sense of ideas being mustered, and a evident passion. So why am I not responding to this as warmly as I should? Maybe it's the middle. Like your mum aged 22, there's palpable sag in the middle. It could be me: I was at uni when this came out, and the hype of the New York rock revival never persuaded me, despite the constant claims of Sonics/Gang of Four/New Order parentage. Possibly it's my aversion to record-collection rock, and I'm not impressed by a rehash of Bizarre Love Triangle. But ultimately the Yeah Yeah Yeahs just aren't enough. You want more. Listening to them, you want them to be a little more melodic, a little more emotional, a little more abrasive, a little more arctic, a little more erotic, a little more bombastic, a little more detached, a little more serene, a little more urban, a little more experimental and a little more fun. You have here a decent band, sure, and that's fine, but a decent band is not a great band, and even though I want to root for them now, I find I can't outright.

Jimi Hendrix is glaringly the greatest, most charismatic, most talented artist of the 60s, and here we have his debut. In truth, this is not so much structured as an album but rather as an assemblage of Hendrix songs, showcasing what voodoo mojo geetar freakoutery he could do. But what a showcase! Virtually every moment and every aspect stuns the listener. Since everyone knows Hendrix's guitar virtuosity (he was quite good, apparently), I shall instead talk about his voice. Hendrix himself was rather disparaging about his voice, and was very self-conscious about it. To every other listener, Hendrix's dismay is baffling. His voice is somehow warm and seductive yet simultaneously masculine and fiery. Another aspect perhaps overlooked, though to a lesser extent, is the range of styles Hendrix adopts and mutates into his own; the rock, ballad, blues, raga, soul, R&B and psychedelia displayed here all bend towards Hendrix's star, a process sustained in his later albums. Hendrix had talents far beyond the guitar, and this album is proof. Why aren't you listening to this now?

BBC Two: The Album. Joking aside, Another Green World ingeniously manages to be bold and uncompromising and also pleasant and accessible. Perhaps Eno's most celebrated solo album, Another Green World is often seen as a transitional work between his first two, more overtly art-rock albums and the ambient work of his subsequent string of albums. In retrospect, Another Green World successfully marries the two mindsets, with the textured approach enhancing the melodies, rather than allowing them to drift. A curious point, made by plenty including Eno himself: Eno is not a tortured artist. His muse is not begat from struggle, indignation nor despair. Rather, his is the work of a sane, well-adjusted man who experiments because he finds it personally and creatively rewarding. In a sense, you could say his music is led by the head rather than the heart, but he does have a good head. Phil Collins drums on this.

Reviewing this album poses some quandaries, quandaries that are par for albums of similar themes and aspirations. What is the boundary between ambition and self-indulgence? How can one depict politically and ethnically charged disunity without falling into either morbidity, exploitation or platitude? When does nuance collapse into contradiction? How does one make an entertaining album about serious concerns wthout getting out of one's depth? Tragically, I don't think Lamar resolves those questions, and though the album is theoretically fascinating, it does not overcome its quite significant flaws. Take the scope and the eclecticism. Prima facie, its survey of jazz, soul, funk, pop and hip-hop should impress both intellectually and artistically, and occasionally it does, but it also quite often just becomes a demonstration of guile rather than inspiration, or cleverness rather than craft. I don't doubt that sampling Fela Kuti was meant as a sincere homage, but the impression is also that of a box being ticked. This aspect, that of the bet being hedged, reveals itself more obviously in the lyrics. Lamar refers to dark personal issues, such as depression, survivor's guilt and thought of suicide, but this is undercut by the comedic number For Free?, which admittedly features highly deft wordplay, but still revolves around a rather unpleasant female stereotype, which also undercuts the album's tirades against negative stereotypes. The result isn't so much variegated and kaleidoscopic as confused, leaving the listener desiring a bit more discernment. The end track of the album, Mortal Man, offers a microcosm of the album, showing both its peaks and nadirs. It shows the album's yearning for an overarching take on one man's hope and fears regarding racial harmony, but it's overlong, pretentious and rather schmaltzy in its triteness. It's based on Lamar's visit to Nelson Mandela's prison cell, yet it concludes with a constructed interview between Lamar and Tupac, where he brags about his wealth and explains the butterfly metaphor in painfully pompous and unnecessary depth. Again, I believe the intentions were honest, but it ends up cluttered and self-inconsistent. There is great stuff to be found on here, but one never loses the sense that the fantastic 40-minute album carvable from this 80-minute one would be much more satisfying and potent. (Actually, while I'm here, I'd like to take a star off my review of Ceelo Green... is the Soul Machine. It has similar faults to To Pimp a Butterfly, but To Pimp a Butterfly is a more interesting album.)

I've always resisted listening to the Pixies. I've remarked on my review of OK Computer that I postponed listening to it for over 20 years, and I guess I developed a similar cringe towards a band so similarly heralded by critics. Also, I've never liked Where is my Mind?; its ubiquity as an alt-rock anthem didn't ease my stomach one bit. So, my actual knowledge of the Pixies was essentially goose egg. And I was an idiot. A proper kegs-on-head silly Billy. It annoyingly turns out that Surfer Rosa is a genuinely great album, and the praise it has received over the last three decades is fully warranted. One thing nobody told me was that Surfer Rosa is rather fun, and indeed rather funny. Considering the eulogising this album generates, I was expecting something portentious, not a lean, good-humoured plate of post-punk irreverence. Also, as much as I have grimaced at the constant employment of Where is my Mind? by directors seeking a bit of Gen X cred, the song really makes sense and blossoms when played as part of the album. I am very pleased to have been wrong. Also, there are boobies on the cover. Just think you should know.

I listened to this album. I liked parts of it. Then I went on with my day and didn't think about it at all. Faint praise, I know. And I don't think I can muster that much passion to go through this album's okayness. There are striking moments; Streets of Your Town has one line that really startles. But this is essentially your standard gangly indie guitar with some clever lyrics, and you yearn for more instances of lyrical sharpness. You'll have no regrets listening to this, but you'll find little that'll make you fight for the Go-Betweens. Mind, if you pin your colours to the Go-Betweens' mast, I doubt you'd carry much weight in a fight anyway.

Honestly, I did not have high expectations going into this album. I have never understood the fuss over Metallica, who are just a metal band. I have always imagined that Metallica would resuly if you were to devise the most generic metal band of all. So, I've never had any interest in exploring Metallica. And this album is... a standard metal album. That's it. It's not noticably bad nor noticably good. It is the most average metal album conceivable. Boilerplate, passable, run-of-the-mill, middle-of-the-road metal. They should have nicknamed this the Grey Album. Well, there are some points worthy of comment. Firstly, Enter Sandman is a very silly song. Call me a purist, but I don't think a metal song should have a chorus that ends, "We're off to Never-Neverland." Is that meant to be terrifying? Was he threatening to take his kids to Michael Jackson's ranch? Still, the lyrics originally referred to cot death, so I think we should be thankful for what we got. Secondly, the album occasionally alludes to other pieces of music, the odd snippet of melody, that sort of thing. Sampling Morricone's Ecstasy of Gold on The Unforgiven is acceptable. Opening a song with West Side Story's America steers the album into self-parody. So, the only time the album avoids being average is when it's risible. Finally, the effect of the album's style is counterproductive. The heaviness of the album isn't unsettling or invigorating; it's blank and quite deadening. The songs are overlong and the lyrics are insipid, so the listener is just bored. They should have nicknamed this the Grey Album.

I fell asleep. Proper, serious, full 8-hours no-stirring hibernation. Maybe I was just tired. But I still struggle with U2 for one major reasons and several others of varying import. Yes, Bono is self-righteous and insufferable, but is that just one variation of the rock star complex, a complex I don't mind in, say, Jim Morrison or Dave Lee Roth? Yes, using Christian imagery to describe romantic scenarios is a centuries-old cliché, but so what? It does seem sincerely meant. Yes, One and Mysterious Ways have lost all impact they may have had, but can you blame the songs just because they were enormously overplayed, and shouldn't you try and listen with fresh ears? However, the major problem is that Achtung Baby is dull. Dull in conception, dull in execution, dull in presentation. I understand Achtung Baby is vaunted heavily (admittedly by an always-fawning press), but that just poses the further question: for whom is this album? (Yes, I decided to be exacting there.) The supposed innovations (including dance rhythms, for instance), were already old-hat by 1991 (weren't they contemporaries of New Order?; it doesn't help that their dance incorporations are really safe). If the listener doesn't appreciate the sentiment behind the bigger songs of the album, the whole just becomes an hour of quite samey, quite unengaging, quite dull music. The playing is competent, but that just adds to the sense that this album is product, not art. Oh, one innovation worth noting: U2 attempted a more jovial, irony-infused stance on this album. But in retrospect, it doesn't really come across. U2 embracing irony seems more an exercise in guile rather than a conceptual leap. It's not so much a change in direction as a Tory MP donning a baseball cap for a photo op at Alton Towers. Refreshing sleep, though.

Dinosaur Jr. were considered innovative because they fused hardcore punk noise onslaughts with hard rock staples of guitar solos and the sort. But this leads to two queries: does this leave them unsatisfying two groups rather than contenting one, and was this development that wholesome? Frankly, I'm currently not in a position to answer just yet. Give me time to explore Dinosaur Jr. more. However, I can tell you this album slightly suffers from the attempt to placate the straightforward rockers and indie kids. Yes, individual moments and tracks shine, but the sum is hesitant rather than inclusive. As proof, consider that the best, most alive song on the album is Don't, the most outré and punky. I wish they had focused on their strengths. A decent album, but aggrieved at the hinted potential for more.

It's great fun. That's all the summary you need. Getting into a little more depth, here we have a live album showcasing a band about to break through (in America; Japan caught onto the Cheap Trick gambit early on), and here we have a band relishing a moment of glory they'd assumed was fleeting. Also, the best of these songs are essentially indestructible, so we have a warm, melodic, upbeat band enjoying playing warm, melodic, upbeat rock. The middle sags slightly, presumably the time when you went to the bar or for a piss, but otherwise this album is pretty irresistible.

Whereas Jane's Addiction's first studio album, Nothing's Shocking, had a very strong first half let down by a weak second half, Ritual de lo Habitual has the inverse problem: a great second half hampered by a lacklustre first half. Okay, that may be a little too venomous; the first half has some charm. But, it's also quite oikish and irritating, like a 14-year-old after three cans of lager. Partly this is due to the music: funk metal has aged horrendously, and it wasn't too pretty at the time.But funk metal has another aspect that worsens it further: it believes that it is the coolest music conceivable (seriously, Extreme of all groups thought they were the great arbiters of taste with Get the Funk Out). As such the first half only appeals if you're still a virgin. But the second half goes some way to redeeming the album. The obnoxiousness dissipates and the songs gain more heft as they get longer. Still, I ultimately prefer Nothing's Shocking, and I can't call this album essential.

What we have here is a continuation, or perhaps less generously an appendix, to Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers). We have the same methodology (hah!), the same kung-fu samples, a slightly lighter atmosphere and a slightly more technologically swanky approach to production. But the connections to Enter the Wu-Tang aren't just obvious, but declared; one of the tracks is a remix of Method Man, one of the standouts from Enter the Wu-Tang. To be clear, Enter the Wu-Tang is one of the great albums of the nineties, so where stands this: a noble sequel, a development of an established aesthetic, an exercise in caution or a placeholder? Well, Method Man and Rza are too talented for the last two, and Tical is in no way a bad album. It's just that you wish for more of a distinction from the earlier album. I'll still give it four stars, but that's in part goodwill.

Ah, to be thirteen. To start wearing Lynx obsessively and masturbate for whole weekends at a time. And, of course, to own one's first Iron Maiden album. But then, at 15 you feel your first breast and try pot for the first time, so Iron Maiden loses its lustre. Of course, if neither happens, one unfortunately gets stuck on Iron Maiden and metal for the rest of one's days, and such a limited scape is no basis for a life's music. So yeah, I had cassettes of Iron Maiden, Killers, Piece of Mind and The Number of the Beast aged 13. But at 14, I got into The Doors and rediscovered my childhood love of punk, so Iron Maiden felt embarrassing in their juvenile appeal. So, I had real trepidation when Iron Maiden popped up. And I liked it. Juvenile appeal still appeals, and one occasionally yearns for Satanism, sci-fi references and songs about women with big boobies. Of course, one's diet shouldn't consist solely of ice ceam and Monster Munch, and too much Iron Maiden can be bad for one's appetite. Remember kids: if you find yourself falling asleep on the sofa at 4am clutching a three-quarters-empty bottle of Strongbow while the tenth episode that night of Red Dwarf blares from the telly, you've had a bit too much Iron Maiden.

I had to take some time with this one. Yes, I'm inviting that dread phrase "rewards repeated listenings." But this is not an album that generates an adrenalin rush. It is an album that requires a more patient approach. The warmth of the album took me two playthrough to get. But when it did, it hit me like a heatwave. Likewise, the playfulness and the intricacy. I shall hold off on giving it the full five stars, but it's definitely at least a high 4, and I reserve the right to amend that in the future. Speaking of which, as I have now rated 50 albums, I'll do a bit of a tidy-up and give revised opinions on certain albums. Ella Fitzgerald - The Gershwin Songbook: raised from 3 stars to 4 (the very first album I received, and a terrible choice for a first album, being three hours and such. I can accept I was unfair due to algorithmic misfortune.) Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin III: dropped from 4 stars to 3 (the second half really doesn't work, though the first half rocks like a bastard.) Cee Lo Green - Cee Lo Green... Is The Soul Machine: dropped from 4 stars to 3 (To Pimp a Butterfly is a better, more interesting album, and that merits a three. Also, I'm so tired of the gangster posturing. You're meant to be a soul singer, not a drug mule or whatnot.) Dire Straits - Dire Straits: raised from 1 star to 2 (I wanted to give it a kicking, and I still do, but it can't be compared to something genuinely abysmal like Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness.) Elton John - Madman Across The Water: raised from 2 stars to 3 (I admit Elton John isn't my bag, but I can appreciate why some people go for it. Also, the album has the same faults as Led Zep III, and I gave that three stars).

The first thing to strike the contemporary listener is how antiquated the album sounds. I mean this neither as condemnation nor praise, but just observation. It sounds exactly how a major hip-hop act would sound in 1986. So, with that qualifier, the album is still rather fun. The shared duties and alternations between the lads still delights. Easily a 4-starrer. However, there isn't quite a sense of flow between the songs. Raising Hell feels more like a collection of songs than a cohesive album. This is not a flaw per se, but I can't declare it a masterpiece.

A great live album, nothing more nor less than that. Of course, this is not at all a bad thing to be. The standout track is the 11-minute Lost Someone, which not only manages to predict several soul developments of the 60s (it has shades of Papa Was a Rolling Stone), but anticipates funk and even elements of hip-hop. The minor tracks are, well, minor, but in no way sound unpleasant. In fact, the whole album is a treat.

No, it gives me no pleasure to say this album doesn't work. It gives me no pleasure, indeed. The Who Sell Out is a concept album which purports to be a radio broadcast, with adverts appearing between the songs. Is that a wry look at the commercialisation of music, or just a conceit that doesn't really say that much? Ultimately, the latter. The Who doing a fake ad for baked beans just comes off as silly. Separating the jingles and the concept from the album, the songs do not hold up especially well. The Who simply weren't built for light, melodic pop, and their attempts are just featureless pastiches. Occasionally, The Who do flaut their heft, and the possibility of a rockier, heavier, more cogent album emerges. But that just depresses further, as the listener wonders what could have been. A deviceful misstep.

I have avoided listening to Tupac, not for ideological or snobbish reasons, but because I didn't like his big hits. Hit Em Up is genuinely unpleasant to listen to; it just sounds ugly to brag about sleeping with another man's wife, and Tupac makes it as childish as possible. And Changes features the worst sample in the history of music. Why sample such an obviously bad song? Don't talk about the lyrics, as you don't care. You hate the song for such a hateful piano shittening. That said, RZA merging James Brown and Tupac for Django Unchained was masterful, and my only criticism was that he never managed to stick in Robert Johnson at the same time. But how do I feel about a Tupac album with more thought applied? Well, initially rather warmly. He evinces a desire to explore serious, occasionally dark, occasionally bleak themes. Thinking further, this album is often fascinating, yet often unengaging. To compare it to a later album that this influenced, to the extent that it featured a fictional interview between Kendrick Lamar and Tupac, Me Against The World is a more coherent album than To Pimp A Butterfly. I don't doubt the sincerity of Tupac's concerns with thug life, as it were. But Lamar displays far more linguistic fireworks than Tupac, and one problem with Me Against The World is that Tupac sounds so straightforward. Yes, he has flow, but you want more developed imagery, more ambitious rhetoric. I'm trying to recall a metaphor from the album, but I can't. You get the impression of an artist capable of more depth, an artist of promise, but not quite fulfilling it yet. A second listening may bump this up to four stars, and a compilation of Tupac's best songs (not most successful) may well be a 5-starrer, but this sits at a comfortable 3 right now.

So, the greatest, most visionary, most talented, most virtuosic, most charismatic musician of the sixies releases a second album. And of course it's wonderful. What did you expect? That Hendrix would make bad songs? In his pomp, he simply didn't have the capacity to offer substandard material. The Noel Redding song is a duffer, but in no way does it, or can it, diminish from the sheer wizardry of Hendrix, The album starts with a radio interview asking if Hendrix descended from a UFO. That's as good an explanation as any. And I have Electric Ladyland to come. What delights will come. I was listening to this on Spotify, and the album was interrupted by an ad for the 20th anniversary of a Travis album. What a fucking pollutant.

Preconceptions are a terrible thing. I first heard this album last year, having had no interest in Rod Stewart for most of my life. He just seemed one of those performers from a distant era and of little relevance nowadays. Then I discovered that this album is quite rated, so I gave it a spin. And I was totally blown away. It turns out old Rod's a excellent interpretor of songs, capable of delivering real warmth and sentiment. Now, Rod was still in Faces at the time, and Every Picture Tells A Story is compabale to the excellent A Nod Is As Good..., but Every Picture Tells A Story just manages to pip its half-brother by the sheer weight of the songs. In particular, (I Know) I'm Losing You is surely one of the best covers of a Motown song out there. An unalloyed delight.

Now, I adore 70s punk and post-punk. I consider them together to be the greatest genre of music. However, I'd never sought to listen to X before, for no reason other than I've always been more compelled towards UK acts of the period. I decided to set the evening aside to listen to both this and their earlier Los Angeles, and I found a rather pleasant straddling of punk and new wave, with Wild Gift the more embraceable. I'd have to say it lacks the knockout blow of a 5-starrer, but it's plenty rocking and sardonic, and there are worse ways of spending an evening.

Bowie was the greatest album artist of the 1970s, a period noted for great album artists (Stevie Wonder, Neil Young, The Clash, Led Zeppelin, Kraftwerk...), and Hunky Dory was his first album where he organically combined his varied artistic passions. In the credits, Bowie is credited as "The Actor" (though his films may make you think otherwise). As such, the listener senses a multiplicity to this album, that of numerous roles being adopted. Since this was Bowie's lifelong creative persona, and since this is the first album where he fully expounds on this iridescent philosophy. Indeed, the opening Changes serves as a manifesto. However, don't believe that this album, for all its theatricality, lacks tenderness and heart. The piano-led melodies are at turns bombastic and fragile, and the whole record demonstrates that Bowie settling into the role of Bowie was in pursuit of his muse. Indispensable, and yes, hunky dory.

My history with Radiohead has been slightly iffy. Previously, I had only listened to one Radiohead album, OK Computer, which I only bothered with because it popped up on this playlist. I found the student politics and the record collection rock of OK Computer had dated pretty grimly, so I had little expectation that Kid A would be a genuinely excellent album. Yes, it's one of those turns-out-I-was-misguided reviews. I don't wish to spend my time comparing Kid A to OK Computer: I am not that interested in OK Computer. But I will say that lyrically Kid A is less obnoxious than earlier Radiohead efforts, as Thom Yorke spends less time declaring that he is saying something important. Indeed, the vocals oft seem tonal rather than expositionary, there to add aural texture rather than offload pronouncements. Indeed, although this sounds rather tautological, Kid A is very much sound-driven, as in side 2 of Low or Eno's ambient work. Oddly, I found it remarkably hospitable: the drive to explore noise is clearly far more endearing than sloganeering about one's carbon footprint. A revelation.

Why are all these RnB albums so long? Well, there's a clear reason: Songs in the Key of Life. But why that album? Well, it's really good. Yet a further question: why draw from the same well constantly? Now that I have a harder time explaining. Admittedly, RnB has never really been my jam. I really don't feel myself prudish, but I have never considered that that what soul music needed was a dosage of crassness. Now, I recognise that as just a lazy prejudice, so I welcomed the opportunity to have my options guided by this challenge. Frank Ocean has been the best so far, but I still have a few qualms. Firstly, why the length? Remember the mantra: long and thin goes too far in; short and thick does the trick. Sweet Life and Super Rich Kids are essentially the same song, so why have both? Theere's no bad track, but the length diminishes more than it expands. Secondly, some of the lyrical conceits don't quite land. The centrepiece, Pyramids, has Cleopatra journeying to the present and becoming a stripper. I am struggling to grasp the point being made. Or take Forrest Gump, and wonder at how it casts Forrest Gump as well fuckable. One wishes for a shade more quality control. Do not misunderstand me, this is a good album (whereas Ceelo Green... Is The Soul Machine is diminishing with each new album). But the listener need not fret that much if they decide to skip it.

No album is more 1989. It's frozen in a block of 100% pure 1989. It's produced by George H.W. Bush on the deck of the Exxon Valdez. So yes, it's all dated to buggery, but that is not that bad in itself; listening to this has some of the joys of archaeology. However, it's also very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very repetitititititititititititive. All the house beats sound exactly the same. All the raps sound the same, with the sole theme that of Queen Latifah being a good rapper. That makes one good song, but this is meant to be a bloody album. A second listen proves more appealing than the first, but it's still one fine song done 12 times. Yes, one fine song done 12 times. Indeed, one fine song done 12 times. Truly, one fine song done 12 times. In frankness, one fine song done...

Record collection rock: the dance remix. That's the annoying thing: the album is obviously great. It's clever, it's groovy, it rocks out, it's amusing, it's urbane. But it just tries one erg too hard to demonstrate that it's too cool for school. Imagine a posh kid bringing in a 100 quid skateboard to show off to his classmates, then tumbling off and breaking his front teeth on a kerbstone the first time he tries a grind. LCD Soundsystem don't embarrass themselves so (as I said, the album is great), but they always seem at risk of injuring themselves in their desire to impress. I suppose I could argue that, like a Tarantino film referencing Godard, part of the fun is clocking the allusions to Kraftwerk and Suicide and New Order and Pink Floyd and such and such, but that neglects the fact that at his worst, such trainspottery tendencies by Tarantino grate rather than amuse due to the perceived lack of a real emotional core. Really, I want to give this album 5 stars, but I hesitate at the sense of a brag over ownership of a mint-condition vinyl copy of Station to Station.

That's one ugly cover. Anyway, polished to the point where you can't embrace it, Can't Buy A Thrill sounds exactly like what it is: a Steely Dan album. A album where the overriding commandment is "Make it smooth," that mantra unfortunately makes the album impossible to love unironically. A lot of the instrumentation has dated despicably, reminding one oddly of Kokomo. But the issue isn't one of age; I suspect many found this grim listening at the time. Rather, what we have is a clearly talented group of musicians making music as a demonstration of their cleverness, instead of in any way engaging the human heart. That said, the odd track has charms; Midnite Cruiser is a perfectly fine bit of 70s classic rock, and Brooklyn is a warm country-twinged number that, shock horror, connects to the listener. Indeed, the album does become more gripping towards the end, when they resist the impulse to dull jazzy noodling, but even that appeal has limitations. A three-starrer, and that's thanks to my generous nature, and the album better be bloody grateful.

Our first foray into the Big 4 of Thrash was Metallica's Black Album, which I found mediocre and quite inane. Yes, I know, complaining about metal lacking profundity isn't the most original of criticisms, or even much of a criticism in itself, but it was an album with little to say for itself. Which brings us to Metallica's main rival, Megadeth. Formed by Dave Mustaine after he got kicked out of Metallica, he sought revenge by playing heavier and faster. With Peace Sells, Mustaine purportedly brings a punk-inflected political consciousness to his lyrics. You realise how daft that last sentence sounds, right? Are we really to include this in the great tradition of protest music? Does the title track stand alongside A Change Is Gonna Come? Hell, I'm not even asking that the album be dismissed for hollow affectation; I'm pointing out that one perhaps should not treat the political musings of Dave Mustaine too momentously. Musically, it's one of those codifiers of a genre that, well, has been imitated so often that the original potency has been quite diluted. This is not to say it's bad; I prefer Megadeth to Metallica, and happily see this as a healthy three-starrer, but no more than that. I suppose I'd characterise the album as good, yet ultimately unpersuasive. This album doesn't reveal a band to obsess over, to stock up on the back catalogue and doodle the logo on your pencil case. It's an okay metal band. By the by, Dave Mustaine's spent the last decade on Alex Jones' show, saying Obama wasn't born in America and that several school shootings were staged. Do you still want to maintain he has insightful and considered takes on the body politic?

So, the New York garage rock/punk/post-punk revival, eh? I was 18 at the time, and as big as the movement was, it didn't appeal to me on the whole, despite my love of garage rock, punk and post-punk. This was partly an aversion to hype, partly that I found certain bands flat (I'm rather curious how I'd find The Strokes nowadays), and partly a nascent disdain for what I have come to recognise as record-collection rock (I don't believe I'm the first to use that; I think it owes its coinage to the music writer Simon Reynolds, but theft is pretty much the easiest crime to justify materially). I have previously reviewed The Yeah Yeah Yeahs' subsequent album It's Blitz, and found it acceptable enough, but also safe, timid and frustrating in its refusal to move from the middle. To this album's credit, it at least heads somewhere. But it also underscores my main issue with record-collection rock; often the album are corkers, but also redundant. Why listen to a band heavyhandedly alluding to PiL and The Germs when one can, you know, just listen to PiL and The Germs? This is an issue the album battles with, not wholly successfully. We see a significant variation of styles delivered in the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' manner, but not every attempt works, and the album is quite uneven (does anyone need their foray in dub No No No? Not really not really not really. Also, note that post-punk groups had been tackling dub in a less contrived manner over 20 years earlier). The album improves as one gets towards the end. I can accept that many people really embrace Maps, and I've no inclination to disabuse people of that, even if it personally doesn't quite hit my G-spot. The closers Y Control and Modern Romance are probably my favourites, and the hidden track is fun as well. So a bottom-loaded album. But the main reason the last few tracks surpass the first half significantly is that Karen O drops the obnoxious wackiness and sings like a being with a human heart. Does that mean the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' central conceit, Karen O's stance as frontwoman, was misconceived at conception? Not quite, but ultimately, what we have is a talented band not quite sure what direction to pursue, so they try as many as possible somewhat cursorily. This is a better failing than It's Blitz' lack of any direction, but it's still a criticism.

Is it me, or does this sound really quaint? Metal has that bizarre quality nowadays: the mainstream has acclimatised to the genre enough that the casual listener may well find this safe, twee and pedestrian. I may have started that paragraph sarkily, but with thought I realised it's exactly right. Sepultura, and by extension death metal as a whole, occupies such a sonically conservative cul-de-sac that it feels cosy and reassuring to people who like this music and nothing but tedious to those who don't. Me, I guess I find it rather boring, but I believe that the aspects I found soporific would comfort and tranquilise a fan, and that's fine. Just don't pretend it's hard. It hasn't been hard since 1993 at the very latest. Also, is the cover meant to be a scary monster? I think I stopped drawing such beasts aged 10.

I find jazz a mite tricky to write about, an issue I suspect I share with many. How do you dissect it entertainingly without either splatterings of empty words conveying the square root of sod all or acres of minutiae about unorthodox time signatures and tonal clusters that also convey the square root of sod all? Can you just write "it sounds nice" or "it sounds bad"? Anyway, this sounds nice. By "nice" I mean bold, intricate, formidable and singular. Of course, with such an experimental piece as this, the listener is required to be open-minded, but that also implies that it's rather your fault if you don't get this. I'm happy with that conclusion.

Embarrassing moment of second-guessing myself with this. I initially listened to this, perfectly enjoying it, but with the critical intention of determining whether this monolith of rock warranted the full 5 stars, an intention that slightly drained the sheer pleasure. This is not the mindset to approach this album, or any AC/DC album. Yes, I know, that's obvious. So, I applied some common sense. I went out and did enough physical labour to require a fistful of Deep Heat (I dug graves for two dogs), got some beers in and just rocked out (if any band justifies the employment of the phrase "rock out", it's surely AC/DC). And to nobody's surprise I loved every note, every clear, direct, unpretentious note. Akin to a perfectly cooked steak, the exact amount of taste and blood.

An odd duck, in a very specific way. Now, My Bloody Valentine subsequently became both extolled and notorious for Kevin Shields' protracted, exacting production methods, which of course gave us the mesmeric Loveless. Isn't Anything offers several hints of the direction MBV would take, but rather than seeing the album as just a precursor, can we examine the album as its own entity? Well, plenty of the ingredients of a great album are assembled. It's unique, heartfelt and often exquisite. However, Isn't Anything just lacks that tiny but essential bit of spice. It has 12 very fine songs, but not an unalloyed masterwork. You'll enjoy the album considerably while it plays, but you won't think about it the next day. Slightly depressing that I couldn't avoid qualifiers, but a mere blemish away from greatness still prevents greatness.

2002, my first year at university. Oddly, I don't recall this album being played that much. Don't misunderstand me, In My Place, God Put a Smile on Your Face, The Scientist and Clocks (tracks 2, 3, 4 and 5 on the album, a warning sign?) were as ubiquitous as oxygen (they still are), but I hadn't sought to listen to the album. I accept that was partly prejudice against the hype, partly a sneer at Chris Martin's Bonoesque, narcissistic proselytism for somewhat ill-defined causes, partly a distanced yet justifiable disregard over their lyrical shortcomings. But whilst listening to this, I realised that I had really quite missed the point. I had ignored that Coldplay have a straightforward mission: vague, slightly sad yet very much hopeful singalong anthems for wimpy indie kids. As someone with touches of wimpy indie kid, I immediately got the appeal of the album when I actually bothered to tune in. It's a very easy album to embrace. Yes, that's because it's overtly populist in its ambitions, but that's not an a priori failing. It really just means the melodies are likeable. As for the lyrics, I had overlooked an obvious point about Coldplay: as a group following on from Oasis, the definitive British band of the 90s, they had graduated from the Noel Gallagher school of lyrics providing mood rather than meaning. Yes, we're not talking Dylan, but that's not the point of this. Would you prefer the Beatles if Keith Moon replaced Ringo? The album is fairly long, and threatens to stay until it begins to stink, but it avoids that mainly because, despite the singles all coming from the front, the later tracks are clearly not filler. More negatively, after a while there is the sense of inspirational-mix-for-a-5k, but what did you expect from Coldplay? Sexy boudoir numbers? A soundtrack to a drag race, whether cars or transvestites? Sidelong noodlings attempting to replicate the aura of Venus? If you accept this album on its own terms, you'll enjoy it so much more.

It has taken me a few days to write a review of this. That is partially procrastination, but there was also a desire to let the album sit for a day or two. This is an album of quite some density. I would have also said of some uniqueness, but the post-punk/goth/indie roots of this are unmistakable. In that regard, it does the job rather finely. Often the album charms in its quirkiness, but of course that word warns of the possiblity for irritation. For me, it avoided that, but I would not battle someone who found it properly flossed their punani. Along with that, I think it just narrowly misses the knock-out blow tthat would make it a full 5-starrer. Maybe another listen would bump it up, but maybe not. Still, great fun.

Given the rather embarrassing cover and the vintage of 1989, I lessened my expectations of this album, even though I have loved plenty of John Lee Hooker joints. And the grimness of the 80s production on the opening track made my gums recede, sounding exactly like a shifty, leisure-suited band in an especially dingy bar playing Midnight at the Oasis. So why did John Lee Hooker lose his creative bearings on this album? Well, the first seven tracks are all collaborative, but they lack any sense of creative tension or exploration, an absence spotlit by the mouldy production. Maybe it's reverence towards John, causing the performances to seem mannerist and artificial. However, the last three tracks are solo efforts, and we finally hear the old Hooker magic. Seriously, the last three tracks rescue the album from embarrassment and belatedly demonstrate John Lee Hooker's majesty as an artist. So, the mean of the album is very much average, but the best tracks are touched by the hand of God and nobody else.

To 5-star or not to 5-star: aye, that's the dilemma. I suppose I need to evacuate some sputum of criticism before I praise. The forays into blues perpetrate a minor incident of white-rocker-trying-to-sing-blues-without-suficient-force-or-authenticity, but in this case it's in no way an unforgivable offence. And thankfully so, because a lot of the album works like a bastard. The initiated will detect a similar vibe to the Doors' first album; two of the main differences is that this lacks the occasional European vibe the Doors generates, and also that Jim Morrison was one of the greatest white blues-hollerers. Of course, the all-American nature of Electric Music for the Mind and Body is hardly a reason to lambaste the album, and it's pleasantly eclectic within its parochialism. Aside from nascent psychedelic rock we have the aforementioned blues, but also pop touches, straight-up rock, some country twangs and mild Dylanesque wit. That said, the album reaches its apex towards the end, where it gets properly psychedelic; LSD explorations are the reason you listen to this. And I was prepared to give it five stars, but a final listen has demonstrated that the album doesn't cohere enough, that the poppiest number is somewhat weak, and by bringing up the Doors' first album, I raised a beast that the album cannot hope to vanquish. 4-and-a-half stars. That, my friends, is hesitancy captured by the graphical representation of luminous celestial entities.

I am struggling to work out the point of this album. I accept that the musicians involved are talented, in the sense that they can play their instruments properly. But to what end? I've reached out to a mate who's more into this, and I think I have concluded that I hear this as the curdling of jazz fusion. I don't find it fun, nor interesting, nor that exploratory. Yes, I can understand that maybe (and I think it's questionable) that I'm judging from hindsight. But large parts are insufferable, large parts are boring, several are both, and the occasional glint of quality, where the talent actually finds a handhold, only reminds me that I'd've preferred a much different direction. Maybe I'd be more generous in a different state of mind, but I'm wondering what state I'd be in. Actually, I'll relent. I can accept that I wrote the preceding paragraph while grumpy. I subsequently relistened, and while I still don't really like it, it's not an overturned bus of an album. It's just from the iffy end of fusion jazz. God, this reviewing malarkey's trickier than it seems.

A decent album. Not great, not egregious, just the exact, forensic point of okayness. I have never warmed to Take on Me. Overwhelmingly overplayed and slightly gimmicky, I always preferred The Sun Always Shines on TV (and honestly, I've never bothered paying attention to a-ha before). However, as the opener, I will acknowledge more of a charm than I have previously recognised, but not enough to persuade me to like it fully. The other singles are better, often quite melancholy, and one has to relish Morten Harket's lyrical idiosyncrasies (who doesn't marvel at "Please don't ask me to defend/ The shameful lowlands/ Of the way I'm drifting/ Gloomily through time"?). But, and this is with all the goodwill in the world musterable for this album, I can't really call it an essential listen. There's fair filler and, although it's enjoyable to spend an hour with these fetching Norwegians, I'm not going to build a shrine to them.

Reading a few other reviews, a few people have compared this to Barenaked Ladies. Steady on, chaps and chapesses. Them's fighting words round our way. Also, they don't! I have no idea why they'd make that comparison. More reasonably, plenty have noted that this sounds like a heavier REM, mainly because it does. But is that a good thing? I mean, six albums into Hüsker Dü's career (to do umlauts, hold Alt Gr and press 2, then the letter you want umlauted: that's Uncle Stylo's tip of the day), and they've managed to sound like college rock? That seems closer to settling than progressing. Also, why is this a double album? I can't say it gains anything by being supersized, and turns an okay album into an okay album that's twice as long. Now, of course there are highlights and good songs, and there's no fluorescent duds on this, but why would anyone hold this to their heart? Competent but ultimately unlovable. Barenaked Ladies' One Week contains the lyric "Chickity China / The Chinese chicken / You have a drumstick / and your brain stops tickin'". Is it me, or is that a wee bit racist?

Ah, to muse on what could have been. First thing to note is the cover: where is the parental advisory sticker? No need for one. For you see, what we have here is a less famous entry in daisy age rap, a short-lived tendency in hip-hop circa 1990 when rappers adopted a gentler, more playful, more positive stance. Of course, pop rap has been a perennial since Rapper's Delight, and daisy age led directly to the positive hip-hop of Arrested Development, but then it all died a death, buried under the juggernaut of gangsta rap. And I think everyone can nowadays agree that this was a real shame. Plenty of angsta rap has really not aged well (you know what, kids? People might get a bit sniffy if you express misogynistic and homophobic sentiments), and more generally, people would like a softer, more thoughtful take on hip-hop, which this album is. And from the off, the album delights. This is an immensely charming album, the flow charismatic as only old-skool hip-hop couplets can be. It's genuinely pleasant to hear a rap contain the lines: Stay out the dark and you'll find that you'll be strong Believe in yourself and nothin' will go wrong There's room out there for those who want some Because everybody's got a little light, under the sun. Even the tracks about the ladies are about good-natured flirting rather than objectification, and Black Woman outright praises, well, black women, directly saying that, along with love and protection, black women deserve respect, a most appealing concept. Also, the music itself impresses in its funky diversity, ranging from bebop to doowop to 80s squelchy synths. There are nits to pick. The album is a little too long, and I didn't really appreciate the message of In Dayz 2 Come, but I'm all prepared to overlook those because the album is such a joy regardless. I came away wishing that this had taken off, rather than The Chronic, a conclusion with which I suspect many would concur. Sometimes the best doesn't win. C'est la vie.

Fuck the Red Hot Chili Peppers. There you are, the Gang of Four, making one of the truly great deconstructions of the rock album with Entertainment!, and a bunch of conceited blowhards with no heart strip your angular, provocative funk-punk for parts and use it solely to score smack and ass, and as a horrific bonus begat Crazy Town. So yes, this album is a standout masterpiece of post-punk, a genre admittedly littered with standout masterpieces. With this, we have one of the most overtly political albums of the period, a late-Marxist synthesis of Brecht, Gramsci, Marcuse (the "repackaged sex keeps your interest" refrain summarises his later philosophy in five words) and Situationism. This radicalism extends to the music, where the instrumentation is egalitarian, with the consequence being to boost the bass (thus making it as funky as all fuck) and streamline the guitar (making it as sharp as all fuck). To appreciate this fully, it helps if you know what commodity fetishism and false consciousness mean, but if you just dance as jerkily as possible to this, you should love this. You should love this anyway. The allied group Delta 5's Marxist-flavoured Mind Your Own Business were recently used to advertise Apple, and as I already mentioned, the awful RHCPs nicked the Go4's innovations and hawked them in a meaningless, bastardised manner. This is an example of not only Marcuse's despair that capitalism subsumes everything, but Baudrillard's jest of how all this is just the free interplay of signs. By the by, I am not a Marxist.

Not much to say about this. It's an outdated album from a genre that no longer exists. It doesn't sound bad, and you'll find stuff to like, but you will, perhaps unfortunately, see this as a curio. That said, I was utterly won over by You Didn't Have to Be So Nice, a sweet, sincere little duet between Astrud and her six-year-old son. I've played it to the mothers of young children in my intimate circle, and they agree it's lovely. Actually, that's the issue. That's the song that has real heart to it. The rest feels like generic album fodder, pleasant but forgettable. That may be unfair reasoning, but three stars seems exactly fair.

Let's get the obvious out the way first: this is just too damn long, a common flaw in Todd Rundgren albums. One wishes that he could suppress his brobdingnagian tendencies and just focus on producing one great slab of vinyl rather than two middlers packaged together. However, that's hardly the only flaw present. That feels harsh, and it's not as if the album sounds bad, but the first three sides merge into a bog-standard 70s powerpop/AOR rock that neither offends nor inspires. So paradoxically, we have an overtly ambitious record that tries to play as safe as possible. However, side 4 markedly improves things, being rockier, more awake, and quite a bit funnier. As such, side 4 raises this to a 3-starrer, but that's all it can do.

I wished to write this with as little hyperbole as possible, but this is one of the greatest albums ever made, quite possibly the greatest debut album ever made and an utterly mesmering, utterly unique work of art. Indeed, when I listen to Joy Division, they convince me that they are the greatest band of all. I acknowledge that not everyone appreciates their beautiful bleakness, but I also acknowledge that those people are fools. Still, hyperbole would lead to charges of reckless writing without sufficient content, so let's try for a more objective analysis. The first thing to strike the listener is the depth of the sound, a sound both colossal and intimate, conspiratorial even. Significant dues for this go to the difficult, eccentric genius producer Martin Hannett; for instance, he recorded each element of the drum kit on its own, so each sound wouldn't have the other drums bleeding into them (curiously, much of Joy Division initially disliked the faster-but-slower measured intensity Hannett's production brought, feeling it didn't represent the adrenaline-charged, uncompromising ferocity of their live performances; they have since accepted the Unknown Pleasures sound, reasoning correctly that it still sounds urgent and magnificent). However, it was the band that made this unprecedented music: bass-driven without being funky, heavy without being metal, recognisably rock (there's even a guitar solo on Shadowplay) yet somehow appearing to have evolved on a different planet to rock, Unknown Pleasures sounds newborn yet fully-formed, displaying an astonishing amount of craftsmanship for four boys aged barely 20. And we finally get to the singer, the perversely winsome Ian Curtis, who was (and I apologise for the hyperbole yet again) one of the most affecting, most powerful singer-songwriters ever to gaze into the abyss. I don't find it valuable to look at a work of art through the prism of the creator's biography: do you think George Orwell must have known a load of talking communist pigs? So I don't care to dwell on the heartrending end of Ian Curtis' life. Instead, I will query why Ian Curtis is seen as a figure in the tradition of romanticism. Ian Curtis' work is more modernist, in its focus on horrific extremes (just look at the name), its rejection of traditional forms, its ultra-expressionist tenor and its refusal to draw a pat conclusion (yes, I know there's significant overlap between romanticism and modernism, but I still assert that the Joy Division ratio was far more modernist than romanticist). Less Byron, more Bataille. Astonishingly, their next album would be even better, but that's a tale for another day.

What killed Britpop? The most common answer, Oasis' Be Here Now, has some merit: although in no way the turkey of legend, its hubristic, cocainistic bloat is obvious. Now, Oasis were the best, most important Britpop band, so a relatively weak album from them had to corrode the genre's reputation. But, of course, this is far too simplistic. Now you may not wish to admit it, but Blur were nowhere near as good as Oasis, and part of Britpop's collapse was due to them finally being rumbled. And, of course, the glut of charmless no-mark bands like Menswear, Kula Shaker and Blouse was ultimately the method of execution, a death by a thousand cuts. Also, the culture that blossomed around Britpop swiftly turned bathetic, all dodgy sideburns, four warm cans of Stella and Gail Porter flashing her spiders' legs. Finally, the fashion just inevitably changed, opening a flank for Radiohead to seize all the critical cachet with their own not-aged-too-well darling OK Computer. And then we have this, the follow-up to Pulp's era-totemic Different Class. Jarvis Cocker had founded Pulp as a teen in the late 70s and had stayed firmly lower-league for over ten years, but with Different Class, Pulp and especially Jarvis became stratospherically famous. With this, our Jarvis found that the success and the attendant women, charlie and notoriety he'd lusted after for so long didn't elate him, it emptied him. So, our Jarvis' next album developed a cynical, self-loathing edge. And that's the sticking point of this album: it doesn't want to be liked. It feels alienated by the whole world, so it seeks to alienate the whole world. This does not make the album bad; there are several good songs on it, especially the sordid, engrossing title track. But there is the occasional duffer (the almost parodic dance-infused Party Hard causes the listener to recoil), and more seriously, the whole atmosphere of the album is slightly yet wilfully hostile, as if the album just wants to be left alone. A note on the title track. One of our Jarv's fave songwriting tactics is to write a masturbation fantasy, usually but in no way exclusively in a romantic manner. Do You Remember The First Time, I contend, is written from the point of view of a lesbian wishing to resume an experimental fooling-around with a straight friend who is nowadays in a heterosexual relationship. Disco 2000 is a paean to tugging yourself off over the memory of the girl you had a crush on at school. But with This is Hardcore, the romance, the desire to connect with someone both emotionally and physically, is absent, and the song is just about wanking over porn. What development better indicates the album's coldness, compared to our Jarv's earlier work? This album is oft called not so much a cocaine album, but rather a cocaine-hangover album. Cocaine albums, such as Be Here Now, have a grim reputation for disaffecting self-indulgence, and this album still pushes the listener away, if for the perhaps nobler reason of disaffecting self-disgust. So what was Pulp's contribution to the death of Britpop? The smartest, wittiest (and perviest) band to flourish with Britpop came to hate it, and deliberately released an album that cut their own throat.

Before this record, I had never heard the name quiet storm, the genre to which this album apparently belongs (I knew about the genre, just not the name). The brief potted history of quiet storm goes: in the 70s, with African-American audiences for soul music growing older, along with more and more African-Americans entering the middle class, suburbia and college, there emerged a market for a form of soul music more apposite for this upwardly-mobile demographic. That is, they sought an easy, Vaseline-smooth, uncontroversial soul music as a pleasant background sound to lovemaking. Taking its name from a radio show, which in turn took its name from a rather lovely Smokey Robinson number, quiet storm proved insanely lucrative throughout the 80s, yet it has never shaken the reputation of artificiality, of using the tools of soul to create product rather than soul. I have never been fond of that overproduced, anaemic style which became the dominant form of mainstream soul in the 80s. Partially it is the sense that this is soul for the Reagan era, of Reagan-approved soul. Many of the greats of 60s and 70s soul (Jame Brown, Curtis Mayfield, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, etc.) often had a civil-rights-era political dimension to their music, but 80s soul largely abstracted itself from that aspect. But that is not the issue here. Simply, all heart has been sapped from the music. The production has aged as well as Jacko’s legacy, and that smooth soul plus smooth jazz leaves the listener with nothing to hold on. Tragically, Anita Baker is an obviously talented singer, who happened to come to prominence after the golden age of soul. Individual moments strike the listener, but it requires the listener to sift. I accept that part of the 1001 exercise is to cover a gamut of Anglo-American popular music, but that does mean it occasionally throws up prominent albums from iffy genres. In American Psycho, the protagonist Patrick Bateman devotes a chapter to his appreciation of Whitney Houston (who does not have an album on this list, by the by), just after describing a sexually sadistic murder. He characterises Whitney as the greatest jazz singer of her generation, and tells the reader of the dignity and sincerity inherent to her debut album. Of course, this is meant satirically. We recognise that we are meant to mock Patrick for his abysmal taste and his facile justifications (which seem cribbed from music critics, indicating Patrick’s obsession with conforming), with the implicit message that Whitney’s music, and by extension quiet storm, is largely a cold, barren wasteland. Anita Baker had the misfortune to sow her seed on that wasteland. That said, in the wake of Whitney’s death, there has been more of an appreciation of her abilities as a singer, but not to the extent that it has prompted a critical reassessment of her 80s work. And yes, I know it is unusual to spend so much time talking about Whitney Houston in an Anita Baker review, but it underscores my point: sometimes genres should just be left to rot. Or are we all clamouring for the return of the teen death ballad?

It’s an absolute mess! A stamping-together of numerous 70s trends, the resultant album just confuses and irritates. Is it mild glam pop? A Bonzo Dog Doo-Dahesque stab at absurdist comedy? A smooth country-infused rocker? An experimental proggy casting where the songs are suites with multiple movements? Parody? Self-parody? It’s all these things at different points. But does it work? God, no. Over the course of these reviews, I have realised that a sense of humour can elevate an album, but the most painful of spectacles is comedy that doesn’t work. This album continually tries to joke around, presumably claiming inspiration from the Beatles’ kookier stuff, but itself inspires only an embarrassed downward glance from the listener. Also, and it must be said, it’s overtly racist at points. As for the music, very occasionally you hear a snippet of a slightly interesting idea, but nothing is sustained, and all they do is swerve wildly to a completely unconnected style ten seconds later, leaving nothing for the listener to chew upon. This isn’t eclecticism, it’s senselessness. I was prepared to give this 2 stars, but a relisten proved this to be far more annoying and unpleasant than I was crediting it. Beforehand, I wasn’t ill-disposed to 10cc. Their singles were quite fun, and although I’m not persuaded that I’m Not In Love is a masterpiece, I understand why some people adore it. But this record demonstrates that, unless later albums actually show coherence, they only have worth as a singles band (which is not a bad thing to be). Also, there’s a typo on the cover: instead of Sheet Music, it should say Shit Music.

Okay, a fantastic album by one of the most talented acts of the 90s. I have previously said that the dominance of gangsta rap help back hip-hop, yet here we have the greatest gangsta rap of them all. Now, it's interesting to compare this to Tupac's All Eyez on me. With that, there was the constant sense of a punch being pulled, of someone playing at being a thug, and playing at being a poet, and fallaciously assuming that the logic would make him a thug poet. With Enter the Wu-Tang, we have proper thug poets. We have such uncompromising music and such uncompromising lyricism, and both beguile. One will love the dark laughter. If people tolerated gangsta rap as it gave the promise of an eventual wonderful act, this is that promise being fulfilled. The mysticism is piffle, but that's in no way a dealbreaker: it's nice to have an east-coast hardcore rap outfit culturally appropriating kung-fu movie lore.

I had been procrastinating my review of this, because the Sex Pistols were the most important band to my life, and I think I became very wary that explaining my veneration of the Pistols would slightly dispel the magic. I feel I should add some biography. My brother was 14 years older than me, and when he was a teenager, punk was already long dead. But, as an angry teen, he'd built up a vinyl collection of the Pistols and the Clash. Then one of my sisters, 7 years older than me, began seeing an Iron Maiden fan around 1993 while she was into Nirvana, so they dug out my brother's old albums. Initially, when one of my other sisters, 4 years older than me, played Anarchy in the UK once (odd, as she has never been into punk or rock, preferring smarter pop), I tried to be a snotty, bratty younger brother and dismiss it, but I became fascinated. So, my earlier-mentioned sister began playing the Sex Pistols for me, along with Guns N Roses and Nirvana (despite Kurt's rhetoric, every Nirvana fan was also a GnR fan). I now recognise the Sex Pistols as the first artistic experience I ever had in my life, aged 8 in 1992. And yes, that does mean I was a cooler 8-year-old than you. Looking back, much of my subsequent aesthetic mindset was determined by Never Mind the Bollocks. I discovered and fell in love with dada aged 15, clocking that it was WW1 punk. Most of the music I adore is music I can connect to the Sex Pistols (aside from the Stooges, Ramones, Clash and Joy Division, I would name my beloved blues, rock n roll, outlaw country, garage rock, Krautrock, glam, and indie as punk-adjacent, along with plenty of others). Much of my favourite writing has a punk sneer delivered with two fingers. Hell, despite the punk aesthetic being so watered-down that the anarchy symbol is a corporate stand-by, women with dyed, spiky hair and Doc Martens stir something in me few women do. But why was I hesitant? Are the Sex Pistols like an eclipse: as astonishing a spectacle as they are, you shouldn't look upon them with naked eyes? Nope. I was second-guessing myself again. The Sex Pistols are the greatest, most important band of all, and Never Mind the Bollocks is the greatest, most important album of all. The title makes the point: compared to the Pistols, much else is just bollocks. The album is ultimately a monument to two youths: Steve Jones and John Lydon. Steve Jones, a teenage petty criminal who was just starting off on the career of professional criminal (already a housebreaker and football hooligan, even he accepts that without the Pistols he was destined for prison), agrees with his mate Paul Cook to join a band founded by Wally Nightingale called Swankers, with Jones on vocal. Badgering Malcolm McLaren for management, they also recruit his stockboy Glen Matlock as bassist. Though a charismatic thug and womaniser, Jones is not a great frontman, and McLaren convinces him to take up the guitar and ditch Wally (what an apt name). The group, now firmly cemented as Jones' band, stages auditions for a new lead singer, and a teenage oddball with green hair and yellow teeth (hence the nominer Johnny Rotten) mimes to the wonderful Alice Cooper track I'm Eighteen, securing his place in the band. Remarkably, that football hooligan turned out to have an instinctive, almost unconscious grasp of the most powerful power chords, and that oddball happened to have a decent brain, making that unaligned pair briefly the greatest living songwriters, in that they simply made the best songs. Of course it couldn't be sustained; nobody could be that wonderful for too long, and the collapse of the Pistols is one of the most wretched in music history. But they made the greatest album of all, an album that served as a compass for good music: everything worthwhile can be found if you follow the path directed by Never Mind the Bollocks. My ultimate question: what do I have to say to that 8-year-old boy who would jump around the front room to God Save The Queen after mass? You were right. Fucking hell, you were right. John Lennon is a wanker. Got any glue?

Like nearly all record-collection rock, White Blood Cells is simultaneously corking fun and hugely frustrating. It also manages to demonstrate that most conspicuous of paradoxes: in its attempts to sound as authentic as possible, it serves principally to sound inauthentic. That opening may suggest that I view White Blood Cells and the White Stripes harshly. Please let me assure you that is not the case. The album is a 4-starrer and much of it is obviously great. The White Stripes were very much the diamonds of the garage rock revival, and their best songs (Fell in Love with a Girl, Seven Nation Army, yes, their most famous ones) were the best songs of that movement. Jack White has proven that he can consistently bash out a riff to rank alongside those of Tony Iommi or Angus Young. But I can't deny that I felt slightly weary listening to the album. Here's the issue, as I see it: the White Stripes don't so much declare their influences as advertise them. This is not bizarre in itself. These influences, a melding of Son House and Loretta Lynn and the Sonics and the Stooges, are extremely common; indeed, those represented genres each form a rich, deep seam of American music. Again, this is not an oddity. However, the White Stripes have clung to their predecessors so firmly that the listener wonders if the White Stripes could release a song that wasn't beholden to Muddy Waters or the 13th Floor Elevators. Isn't rock n roll meant to be about disrespecting your elders? There is an Italian concept called sprezzatura. Stemming from the late Renaissance work on civilised behaviour The Book of the Courtier, sprezzatura can be defined as studied carelessness, the projection of nonchalance in order to hide effort and make skilful acts appear easy (sprezzatura is most famously employed within fashion, where the wearer will make deliberate mistakes in their garb to show that they don't give a damn; Gianni Agnelli, the owner of Fiat, was perhaps the 20th century's greatest practitioner of sartorial sprezzatura, with the wearing of his watch over his shirt cuff becoming his signature flourish). That's what's missing from this album: insouciance. When the White Stripes bragged about recording the album in 4 days in order to sound unpolished, you couldn't help sense Jack White nerdily showing us his workings.

I resisted listening to Bruce Springsteen for years. I had long suspected that I would eventually become a fan, but I came to believe it to be the final step away from youth and into middle age. The day I turned 35, I went out and bought vinyl copies of Born To Run, Darkness on the Edge of Town and Nebraska. Oddly enough, a dear friend also fell for the Boss aged around 35, having been given tickets to a gig and swept away in the joy felt by both the Boss and the audience. It would appear that Springsteen is nowadays both the condolence a man gives himself when he gets his first grey hair and the reassurance he gives himself that he isn't impotent just yet. But anyway, Born To Run was Springsteen's breakthrough after his first two (fine) albums sank commercially, an all-or-nothing, budget-breaking last chance that thankfully paid off. And a colossal attempt such as this warrants a colossal sound, with Springsteen fulfilling his ambition of cutting a record that sounded like Roy Orbison singing Bob Dylan, produced by Phil Spector. The album seeks to, and manages to, resurrect Spector's Wall of Sound aesthetic, basking in utter bombast. However, the album establishes the now-defining Springsteen message of the emptiness of dreams, of how a life spent pursuing a fantasy is only likely to end abjectly. Of course, the album is astute enough to realise the power of reverie; just listen to the title track. But though he and Wendy may be born to run, the album ruefully considers that they have to run somewhere, that the real world is always there. Also, the photo on the cover, of Springsteen chummily leaning on Clarence Clemons, is one of the most charming, uplifting images in rock. By the by, I have not had a grey hair yet, and my penis still works.

A rather uncomfy listen. I have listened to some Zappa albums in my time, but not this, and I was expecting a flawed work, even if it turned out to be great. However, the cringeworthy aspects overshadowed the interesting parts, and I can't say I enjoyed it, especially since I found it more callous that humorous. This was the first album by the Mothers of Invention, and also one of the first double albums (Dylan's Blonde on Blonde came out a week earlier); it was also a pioneer of the concept album, a term that has subsequently gathered substantial baggage. The concept was apparently Zappa's satirical take on American pop and the incipient hippy movement, but that summons a perennial demon of Zappa's oeuvre: he's not that funny. Comedy tends to date easily, quickly and poorly, and that's even with the most celebrated comedians: blacking up was a lot more mainstream in the post-war period than you might surmise. With Zappa's humour, the standard adjective employed is "sophomoric"; it's a clever man saying "bum", convincing himself that the spectacle of a clever man saying "bum" is so radical ("Bugger me, I thought he was going to recite The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, not say bum!") that it must be both mind-expanding and hilarious, whilst pretending not to hear the coughs of a visibly embarrassed audience. Likewise, the satire of the album just fails. It's just a series of songs that are lacklustre versions of the genres they are meant to be mocking ("Say, do you know what would be clever? A doo-wop song about rejecting a ex-lover! Nobody else would ever have that idea!"). And if the message is that The Mothers of Invention are somehow better than what they are parodying, then I'll choose the side of the parodied: their songs sound better, and Zappa comes across as a peevish killjoy. Even in his musique concrete tracks, which one can assume is the part which most excites Zappa, he spoils it by, yes, adding some of his comedy. Has anyone ever chuckled at the name Suzy Cheesecake? I understand that the comical aspect to Zappa is only one part of a multifaceted, prolific career, and that Zappa fans often agree that his comic material is his most tiresome. So maybe a different Zappa album will entrap me, but I found this to be Zappa at his most obnoxious. Another curious point is how dated the production sounds. The contemporary ear would most likely find it muddy and distant. Now, this is obviously not as off-putting as Uncle Frank telling a joke about two nuns in the bath, but it indicates that the main appeal of this album is archaeological; as an artefact of a certain 60s tendency, it's interesting, but as a work in its own right, it's just rather annoying.

Firstly, to explain the title: it stems from an Aleister Crowley poem about 69ing, and let's be honest, is of no great profundity. The band were often just dicking about, and with that stance of dicking about is how best to approach this album. Ministry are usually classed as industrial metal (leaning more towards metal), two terms which scare off plenty of the weaker-bowelled. That said, they also bore off plenty who find both industrial and metal infantile and predictable. As for me, this album represents one of the better combinations of both, where the industrial harshness actually boosts the fun of metal. Specifically, this album is at its best when it reminds one of Motörhead, when it embraces the hard, fast, rough, loose rock n roll Lemmy championed. Occasionally the album gets ponderous, when they forget they're meant to be fribbling about and instead try to play as if the indecipherable lyrics meant something. But none of those instances really taint the album, and the discerning listener should cheerily ignore those parts. It will not at all persuade anyone ill-disposed to metal, but that's no reason for anyone to get upset.

Landfill indie is a pejorative term used by music critics to describe the glut of rocking indie tracks that bloated the UK in the latter years of the noughties. Now, UK indie has always had a much greater supply than demand since the early 80s, and a deep old dive into the more obscure of UK indie from any period in the last 40 years will turn up the odd pearl, along with the occasional used syringe. But the late noughties seemed especially plagued with middle-class quartets sporting shaggy hair and warm cans of lager, delivering moshable riffs that were constrained so as not to be too insensitive. Think "music leading to the ad break of The Inbetweeners" and you're exactly where landfill indie attained its cultural apex. My contention is that the foundation stone of this particular style of landfill indie is Radiohead's The Bends. Yes, you can point to the guitar-centric arrogance of The Stone Roses and Oasis, or the off-kilter kitchen-sink observations of The Smiths and Blur, or the wasted refinement of Suede and Pulp, and they are all key building blocks. But the sonic template for what became noughties mainstream indie originated in The Bends. Consider these facts. The first riff every landfill indie band learnt was Street Spirit (God, I grew sick of hearing that dribble continuously for hours in mates' bedrooms). If you plonked Just in the 2008 charts, you'd think it was just (hah!) a standard, slightly harsh, slightly cynical bit of landfill indie that landfill indie bands would release just to dodge the monotony of songs about their desire to explore a trustafarian's internal plumbing. Radiohead had become the most critically feted rock band by the year 2000, thus becoming the icon for your ambitious indie bands; Oasis had blown it, Coldplay were too liked-by-your-parents, Damon Albarn decided to be much more interesting with Gorillaz, and much other indie of the time was, well, heading for the landfill. Almost by default, Radiohead were the indie band to emulate. However, Radiohead didn't want to be the most heralded indie band; they were pursuing their own experiments, occasionally to great results. So, the landfill indie of the noughties touched on Radiohead's most accessible album as inspiration: The Bends. So is The Bends diminished by lesser bands seizing its aesthetic? Well, is Nevermind diminished by Puddle of Mudd? Personally, I recognise Radiohead has done great stuff, but not as much as is claimed, and in any case I just (did it again!) don't love Radiohead. Too much intellectualisation, too much calculation. Not that the intellect is something to snub, and this is a fine 4-starrer, but it's just (thank you and goodnight!) a smidge hard to detect the heart beating underneath the cleverness. I'll leave you with a game. Listen to the opening guitars on any song, and imagine it's by the Stereophonics. It fits perfectly, n'est-ce pas?

My history with this album has been extensive. This album directly reminds me of several of the most important women in my life, both past and continuing. Of course, it's a truism to say that Nick Drake is a potent female aphrodisiac, but it's better for both parties that teenage boys try to impress girls with this album than with attempting to neck a pint of vodka then spewing in their hair. And yes, it is an astonishing work. The legend of Nick Drake has him as one of the great tragic figures in music, a little (6'3") lost boy of exquisite fingerwork and calm, yet desolate imagery, but this album proves that his music is stupefying and hypnotic on its own, without needing to conjure Nick Drake's melancholy end. That said, despite the wistfulness of, say, The Thoughts of Mary Jane, Five Leaves Left has an undercurrent of anguish throughout, together begetting a wonderful bittersweetness. For my money, this is the strongest of his three albums, a warm, reflective and rather diverse collection as beautiful, intricate and delicate as a cobweb. Now, I have recently reviewed Unknown Pleasures and Never Mind The Bollocks, and have declared each of those perhaps the greatest debut album of all. I'm going to be greedy and put Five Leaves Left in the same category.

A quinessential case of an exceptionally talented, middle-aged artist hitting 80s production styles in the same way a roast dinner hits the floor: you can salvage quite a tasty bit, but some will need to be thrown away, and you'll ultimately be left disappointed. The alum's strength is obvious: here are some of Leonard Cohen's best, sharpest lyrics, blades dipped in lemon juice. Oft wry, indeed comical, the whole album has a slightly sleazy overtone; one is much reminded of Serge Gainsbourg in its erotomanic cynicism, especially on Everybody Knows' bitter rationalization that everyone is in on life's big con. The album's end, Tower of Song, is Cohen's great apologia to the craft of songwriting, a monumental track that still holds the power to make listener shiver. However, the album has a critical flaw: the music (which seems rather an important flaw for an album to have). Cohen employs his synths and drum machines almost recklessly (and Jazz Police can be considered a fully reckless employment), and thus the album becomes stuck in such an archaic aesthetic that often the nod a top-notch couplet inspires is married to an involuntary wince at the Casio beat (and trust me, I'm not at all averse to synthpop). The best songs on this transcend that limitation, and maybe a more acceptive listener could relish the musical direction Cohen takes, but I found appreciating the greatness on this album required recognising a few caveats.

One great speciality of the British songwriter, one we Brits especially appreciate in our songwriters, is the teller of the uncomfortable truth. One can see shades of it in Mick Jagger, Roger Waters and Damon Albarn, rather more so in John Lennon and Shaun Ryder, and signally in Ray Davies, John Lydon and Jarvis Cocker. However, no British songwriter has embodied this archetype as eminently as Morrissey, the eccentric, catty, wilfully contrarian yodeller of 80s indie codifiers The Smiths. Indeed, pointing out (his version of) facts most would rather cold-shoulder became his songwriting raison d'être. Of course, this stance seems a dangerous one to hold; several of the figures mentioned have struggled with the consequences of an audience expecting a perpetual heckler shouting that he can see the emperor's knob, and I'd argue that this is a significant reason why Morrissey has pissed all over his reputational chips in recent time. But anyway, Meat is Murder, the second Smiths album, offers no extreme departures from the standard Smiths aesthetic. This is not a disparagement; the Smiths had a set palate of some variation (glam-tinged jangles, rockabilly stompers, histrionic wails of despair (their forte)), so they had no real need to go beyond it. Also, the Smiths were rather good at what they did, so we have a rather fine collection of songs. The songs themselves are split between the sardonic, the comic and the tormented; of course, the best song on the album, The Joke Isn't Funny Anymore, belongs in the last category. But note that the jokes on the album often work rather well: I'd like to drop my trousers to the queen Every sensible child will know what this means The poor and the needy Are selfish and greedy on her terms It made me laugh. However, I don't think I call give Meat is Murder five stars. Yes, it's because it just lacks that pinch of spice to complete the recipe. And yes, I should mention that the title track is the weakest on the record, but not for its vegetarian screed; the song is musically a experiment that doesn't really work. A noble misstep, but still a misstep. J.K. Rowling's favourite band is the Smiths.

The third of the big 4 of thrash metal I've had to review, and it suffers from the same problem that afflicts Metallica and Megadeth's recordings of the era: by codifying thrash, they made it staid and predictable. Now, that doesn't mean the music sounds bad per se; it just means that, in retrospect, it sounds unadventurous. In terms of the influences on display, I distinctly identified Iron Maiden, with certain shrieking guitar solos and lyrical themes. And let's concentrate on those intriuging lyrical themes. I Am The Law is a song about Judge Dredd. That's it. It gives an overview of the Judge Dredd conceit, and nowt else. I'm not sure how I'm meant to react to that. Is a plot synopsis a good basis for a song? Then comes Efilnukifesin (N.F.L.) (Nise fukin life backwards), an anti-drug song that, in its favour, does provide some grisly imagery, but also hits as sanctimonious. However, the most striking song on the album is Indians, part of that aw-bless tradation of metal songs based on the plight of Natives Americans. Of course, this tradition doesn't avoid stereotypes of the noble, stoic Indian, but Anthrax could have avoided screaming "Wardance!" at the bridge, and they definitely could have avoided moshing in a plains Indian headdress in the video. Now, accusing metal of being thick is to miss the pointsome what : it's meant to be coarse, direct and reptilian. But if you're going to be thick, it's probably best to avoid message songs. Yeah, I talked myself out of liking this album. Mind, I don't care that I did.

Hey chums, it's the latest case of personal-iniquity-shredding-a-musician's-reputation! I don't wish to talk about the current nastiness surrounding Dizzie Rascal. Not least, I favour death-of-the-author, and have no probs separating the work from the artist. Anyway, in 2003 Dizzie Rascal was carried everywhere on a sedan chair held aloft by slavering critics, becoming that rarity of a respected UK rapper and symbolising the transition from garage to grime. I had the album myself, but in honesty I can't say I played it too much beyond the singles. In 2022, perhaps I can manage a more studied take. Firstly, Fix Up Look Sharp is an indestructible song, properly manic and banging, with this great playground sense of kids sharing yo mamma jokes. And Boy In Da Corner is at its best when it exhibits a childlike charm, when he's bragging about his trainers. But, gangsta posturing was surely passé by 2003, or at least it should have been? It dilutes the album's appeal considerably. Another point is the attitude to women. When does a cynical stance become a noxious one? A few times it appears to accuse young women of ensnaring unthinking men (and their money) by calculated pregnancy, and the title of the song Jezebel is as shrill a warning siren as one may require. This is where immaturity festers into misogyny. In retrospect, the initial appeal of Dizzie Rascal was partly the shock of the new. Audiences had already concluded that garage wasn't especially tantalising, and any step from that felt like the right one. But the actual slab we have hear is overlong, inelegant and not sufficiently charismatic. Later albums are an improvement, but it's slightly baffling to contemporary ears how this became the critics' champion all those years ago.

Controversial opinion time: this is a fine album by a fine band, and definitely warrants 4 stars. Not 5, 4. 4 is a great rating for an album, and if you had a 4-star album, your nips should tingle with pride. But it's not a 5-star album, and definitely not in the top 10 best albums of all time in the history of the world... ever!. It's a solid, fun piece of work that delights, but it has some filler and doesn't overwhelm the listener sufficiently to raise it to the most exalted pantheon. Prove me wrong! I know the history, of how this was one of the first albums to push the idea of the studio as instrument, and that it punctuated the Fabs' transition from superior pop quartet to psychedelic Shackletons. But the presence of Tomorrow Never Knows does not negate that And Your Bird Can Sing is filler, in that it's a slightly boring, fairly innocuous three-minuter that, well, fills a quarter of an inch on vinyl. Now, such a statement might make me sound as if I wish to be harsh towards this album, and I genuinely don't. I can happily accept that there's some topmost work on this. But exactly why is this so venerated? I can't suss that out. While I'm here, can I ask if I'm perverse for preferring Yellow Submarine to Eleanor Rigby? The former is a cheery little bit of jest from our mate Ringo, detailing the band's happy adventures under the sea, which is exactly what I want from the Beatles. The latter is an okay, slightly stodgy cut of mild pretentiousness that feels too slight for the subject matter, which is what I don't want from the Beatles. Also, is Taxman that popular a sentiment in this day and age? Who wants to hear about millionaires whinging that they might have to give up a chunk of their money Everest in order to pay for a few schools and hospitals? Am I that out of sync with the rest of the world? Why has a Beatles album led me to question the nature of the human race? And remember kids: John Lennon is still a bit of a tosser.

Hollywood's contemporary model for the music biopic means we won't get a film of Sam Cooke's life in the foreseeable future. The current template emphasises the redemptive nature of their music, of musicians who battled their demons successfully and performed exquisite music that justifies all the torment they suffered (e.g., Ray, Walk the Line, Bohemian Rhapsody). With Sam Cooke, the outstanding pioneer of soul music, his unfortunate, sordid end precludes your standard music biopic. The only way it could happen is if it ends with a triumphant performance of A Change Is Gonna Come, and just puts a small note at the end saying he was shot through the heart by a hotel manager after an apparent drunken brawl with a prostitute. Still, I neither want nor need a Sam Cooke biopic, and I am rather glad that Sam Cooke won't be contorted through the Hollywood sausage process. Anyway, this album is wonderful for the extremely simple reason that Sam Cooke performs wonderful songs in a wonderful fashion. That's it. That's enough. I had earlier reviewed James Brown's coeval Live at the Apollo, to which I gave 4 stars. I stand by that rating; the album is great fun, if perhaps not quite a masterpiece. I have no such hesitancy with this. It's pure pleasure, pure joy. That it was shelved for two decades just bewilders the modern listener. The record label deemed it to be a bit too passionate and heartfelt for its initial release. Yes, the money men behind the label have always ruined everything with their valueless stupidity. Thankfully, you're now in a position to treat yourself by giving this a blast, so you should take advantage of that right now. Now! I mean it!

(Due to the nature of this album, I suppose I should add a content warning for language which some may find offensive. No offence is intended. By the by, am I the only one here offering such a courtesy?) God, I'm chary about reviewing this. I have previously suggested that the commercial success of gangsta rap proved ultimately detrimental to hip hop's artistic development, both in that it smothered other branches of the genre, and also it didn't have that much of interest to say. However, I recognise that maybe I'm arguing from a surface understanding of the music; I love other transgressive music like Throbbing Gristle and Slayer, so I might appreciate this particular style of bluenose-tweaking. Anyway, I had The Chronic aged 18, so I'm not coming into it virginally. But, one aspect that has made me uncomfortable with gangsta rap is, yes, the exploitation of negative stereotypes of a minority. Now, NWA were rather guilty of that themselves, but there was some leavening due to Ice Cube's undeniable intelligence. The Chronic, of course, does not have Ice Cube on it. And as such, it largely lacks any point to make. It's a repetitive series of depictions of racial violence, but it says nothing to make the listener ponder, except to wonder if this is unpleasantly comparable to a minstrel show. Are they just showing nasty caricatures of African-Americans for your entertainment? Take the song The Day the Niggaz Took Over. As a song, it purports to show narrratives of participants of the LA riots. But it conveys no message: it's just people saying they like to go looting. That would be criticisable enough, but the opening uses the word "apartheid". In 1992, apartheid was finally being dismantled, and even though he'd once committed sabotage against the regime, Nelson Mandela renounced violence. Did they not pick up on the cognitive dissonance? So what is good about The Chronic? Well, the production is fantastic: the squelchy synths and Funkadelic basslines still make white people bite their lower lip as they rock out. But it's in service to a charmless conceit. You know, the misogyny and homophobia aren't just massively offensive, they're not nice to listen to. Also, has there ever been a skit on a rap album that rises above the level of chore? But, the failure of The Chronic is due to none of this. Not the shallowness, not the coarseness, not even the bigotry. The album fails because it's boring. I realised that by track 10, the poetically titled Lyrical Gangbang, that I was really, really bored, that the album was just something on in the background. This should be no surprise; an hour of some men continually shouting out motherfucker for the sake of shouting out motherfucker doesn't appear prima facie to be the most enlightening use of your time. But it is surprising how tedious it gets. For all its supposed attitude, The Chronic is extremely ignorable. This is the sound of talented individuals wasting their time and yours solely because some idiots will always throw their money at people blowing raspberries and saying "bum".

My 100th review! And it's for a good album! Rather a nice coincidence. I only really got into Black Sabbath in my 30s; beforehand, I just unconsciously assumed that I didn't need to devote any time to listening to it. I guess I had become weary of metal in my twenties, not least because moshers seemed wilfully monocultural in their dismissal of all other genres. Still, by 35 I had repented and Black Sabbath became dear to my heart. So I am already well-disposed to this record. The opening, The imaginatively titled Black Sabbath, by Black Sabbath from the album Black Sabbath, is one of the great calling cards by a band; indeed, at the very least it makes the band's name clear. It also demonstrates the great originality of Black Sabbath, namely Tommy Iommi's riffs and Ozzy Osbourne's vocals. Famously, Tommy Iommi lost the tips from two fingers from an accident at the sheet metal factory where he worked (it was his last day and all). Making a virtue from necessity, Iommi almost unthinkingly developed a wholly new sound to accommodate his circumcised hand, fretting chords and detuning his guitar as these were easier on his poor fingers. The result was the heaviest noise yet conceived. As for Ozzy, "singer" is not the word. "Interpreter" is far more suitable. A troubled youth with a Beatles obsession (he avowedly idolises Macca), Ozzy's vocals shouldn't make sense (he has a Brummie accent for God's sake, objectively by far the worst accent across the whole of the United Kingdom), but it turned out he matched this dark, arcane music perfectly by dint of his instinctive ability to howl unearthily. Oddly, not many metal bands have sought to follow Ozzy's untutored vocal (lack of) technique, preferring singers that know how to show off their range. Punk was seemingly more sympathetic to the parable of Ozzy; it's not that far a distance from Ozzy Osbourne to John Lydon and Mark E. Smith. This is to punk's credit. Black Sabbath's debut album is not perfect. The best songs (Black Sabbath, N.I.B.) are visionary and enthralling, but the covers on the album, while not bad, are not essential; the closer and cover Warning in particular drags for 10 minutes. You're here to hear Black Sabbath be Black Sabbath, not an everyday blues-rock band. You want Satanic wails and anti-hippy gothic heft, not a Cream impersonation. In other words, four stars, with future albums promising 5. Anyway, with 100 album, allow me to take stock. The only album whose rating I'd change is Frank Ocean's Channel Orange, taken down from 4 stars to 3; imagining a time-travelling Cleopatra deciding to become a stripper just smack as silly sausage, not hypnagogic. I'm very chuffed with my choices for 5-starrers, and it's only Dire Straits' debut that I'd lift out of the 1-star oubliette (only to two stars; it's not a good album, but it's not a catastrophe like the others). The best discovery I have made is Gillian Welch's Time (The Revelator), the best album so far is between Never Mind the Bollocks and Unknown Pleasures, and the worst album by a distance of several parsecs is, of course, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. The biggest lesson I have learnt on this quixotic journey is that a decent, intelligently deployed sense of humour can elevate an album to the highest echelons, but nothing is more painful than bad comedy. Also, when are we going to get an edit function? I wince at every typo I have made.

Freaky Brazilian psychedelic pop jams, a genre which surely sounds one of the coolest on earth. The album itself is pretty cool, but am I enthusiastic for it? One question: does anyone really find it that freaky? Its unconventionality felt predictable. Maybe I'm inured to psychedlic oddness, but I wasn't remotely as startled as I had come to expect from reading accounts of this album. This isn't a failing per se (novelty isn't inherently better or worse than caution aesthetically), but I would suggest that either the psychedelights of this album have been superceded by later sonic experiments, or that critics have overstated this album's strangeness because it's all in foreign. This is not to disparage the album; it's worthy of your time, and you should find much to like on it. But I can't say it's seismic enough for a full 5 stars. A worthwhile curio.

A slightly frustrating album, in that it merits 4 stars rather than the 5 I had wished to give it. This is not the fault of the album, of course; it is the fault of me. Creedence Clearwater Revival were a brilliant band, and I had hoped to give one of their albums a 5-star salute. However, this isn't quite that album. I had earlier reviewed Bayou County and had given it 4, considering it skillful yet tentative, in that it seemed afraid to flat-out holler. Thankfully, that is not the case with Cosmo's factory. The problem is that the album lacks that vital spark needed to push it into the highest echelons. Like the Beatles, CCR were so prolific in such a short time, not every release of theirs demands veneration (shut up, you know I'm right). This album is not treading water at all, but maybe swimming too leisurely (I'm not a strong swimmer, so swimming metaphors might not quite be my forte.) The 1001 list, I contend, neglects to mention CCR's best album, Willy and the Poor Boys (at the very least, it contains their best song, Fortunate Son). And maybe I'm biased in wishing to give at least one CCR album the highest nod. Still, let's hope that Green River, the third CCR album on the list, knocks it into the back of the old onion bag, or else I'm going to be really gutted.

Come with me, my gentle friends, on a mystical voyage to a long-desolate land where I have no map, where one flinches at the fauna and flora (usually dragons soaring imperially through a purple sky and Moroccan hashish respectively), and where your dad informs you that the wandering minstrels starving in this once-verdant wasteland could properly play their instruments: welcome to the land of soft prog. Soft prog is the term I'm defining as distinct from hard prog. The differences are obvious. Hard prog bands are the ones who pushed prog to the sonic and lyrical extremes of nonsense (your Genesises, Yesses and ELPs), whereas your soft prog bands stayed closer to the standard of the 70s rock band, only stepping partially into the realm of sonic and lyrical nonsense. Supertramp are firmly in the latter category, here producing an album of 8 long songs with shared themes of loneliness and madness, rather than suites in three movements transcribing the Tibetan Book of the Dead, which they would not have actually read. Mind, Crime of the Century does aspire to the grandiosity of, say, Dark Side of the Moon or The Lamb Lies Down in Broadway, declaring solemnly that it's dealing with very serious themes. So it's Hegelianistically pretentious. Now, pretentiousness is not necessarily a failing in my book; I love plenty of bpost-punk bands who claimed inspiration from Wittgenstein and Dada. But I have never found the pretentiousness of prog bands to appeal; it's not much of a brag to say you've read Tolkien, a children's author. But never mind; the theme of isolation is not diminished simply because it's a common theme. But on my second listen today, a glaring, sizeable problem emerged: I couldn't tell any of the songs apart. It was as if all the songs sought to reflect the Platonic Supertramp song: 7 minutes long, histrionic bridges and a lyrical conceit that suggests a band swimming into currents they can't navigate safely (curiously, that also serves as the Platonic Tears for Fears song). Anyway, this homogenity made me conclude that Supertramp only had a smattering of smattering ideas for this album, and just continually recycled the fuckers. I can't say this album is a disaster; I think one or two of my mates would explain to me for 45 minutes precisely why this is a masterpiece, and this morn I was happy to be generous and give this 3. But that second listen just discouraged me. Having a tortured emotion may be an everyday currency in popular music, but I don't see the benefit of announcing your sadness so flamboyantly. I'm sure the cover inspired the cover to a Fighting Fantasy book. I just checked, and I think I'm right: no. 32, Slaves of the Abyss. That's not one of the sci-fi Fighting Fantasy books, though. Trick missed, methinks.

This review has taken a few days. I knew I liked it very much straight away, but there was some wavering, some irresolution on my part, and I couldn't grasp exactly why. I still feel twinges of uncertainty, but hopefully bashing out some words will clarify things. Fairport Convention are not really a group that has entered my orbit; this is not due to any preconception about folk, but just that every time I always found another act that stirred my curiosity more. Sorry Fairport Convention, but I'd rather check out Alice Cooper and Jacques Brel at this minute. Anyway, Richard Thompson left Fairport Convention and started his solo career, and then a duo with his new wife Linda (fun fact: Linda Thompson used to be Nick Drake's girlfriend). And I found Linda to be the standout, the main reason the album works so well. Please understand that this is not meant as a slight against Richard: his songwriting on this record, notable for its air of despair, continually impresses, as does his fretwork. But Linda's singing is what I truly adore about this album: just listen to how eerie and unnerving her voice is on the last, best track, The Great Valerio. But why have I paused? With most of the folk albums I love (e.g., Five Leaves Left or Jackson C. Frank's one album), I raised my skirt for them first time unquestioningly. With this, it has had to work a little to seduce me. Also, I wish it would last longer. There's not so much a sense of a journey across this album, but rather ten fine songs. When the end came, I was taken by surprise: was it already over? I wish I didn't have to be this critical; I would love to eulogise this, and there is real gold here. Perhaps more time with it would drive me to bump it up to the highest perch, but I already have about 900 more albums to sort out.

The fifteenth (out of currently 30) studio albums of Elvis Costello, and the sixth and most recent included in the 1001 Albums collection, Brutal Youth is almost Delphic in how incomprehensible it is for someone not already into Elvis Costello. Elvis Costello has never pinged on my radar, even though he came to prominence during an era I adore, late 70s punk, new wave and post-punk. Perhaps unfairly, I'd always just suspected Costello belonged with the new wave bandwagon-jumpers like Sting, stripping the music of its vitality and questing spirit in order to make marketable product. So, I never bothered with any of his albums; indeed, Brutal Youth is my first Costello album. And I don't know who this album is for. Would an Elvis Costello fan find handholds within this album? I was just left staring in rather bored confusion. I can't recall any of the lyrics, other than a chorus about even the clown knowing when to strike, which just seemed too undercooked and asinine an image to be in any way effective. The songs blend into each other, to the extent that I genuinely mixed up the first and second track. And at 15 songs, it begins to get pretty whiffy towards the end. Whiffy, but not putrid. It may be the case that I am too unfamiliar with Elvis Costello's works to appreciate the direction of this album, and with a firm knowledge of Costello's most feted albums, the rewards of this will become dazzling. But, it may also be the case that he's an overrated hack who latched on to others' innovations. A number of other possibilities may be true; maybe this is just a weak album by a capable songwriter. I can only report what I feel now. Elvis Costello produced the Specials' first album. I suppose that's a reason to hold out hope.

The difficult second album: a quick primer. One phenomenon critics are wont to diagnose is that of the difficult second album, of a lesser album following a sledgehammer of a debut. Critics are also swift to attribute this to the shift in gear a successful debut imposes: you have your whole life to write your first one, and one year for your second. And critics routinely admit a failing on their part: oft the second album isn't that bad, but they see it as diminished when stood against the first. Now, large parts of that earlier paragraph are bollocks. Some groups peak with their debut, of course, but some require time and succour to blossom fully: Second Coming may not have equalled The Stone Roses, but the Happy Mondays' first album, Squirrel and G Man 24 Hour Party People Plastic Face Carnt Smile White Out, proved the working prototype for the Mondays' future glories. Also, the first paragraph is a touch slanderous on critics; at least the critic knows the other albums. Anyway, Leonard Cohen's second album, Songs from a Room, is excellent, but not as good as his first. This makes it sound as if Songs from a Room perhaps lacks some of the majesty or the power of Songs of Leonard Cohen, Leonard Cohen's first album, when it doesn't. Nor is the songwriting a step down; Leonard Cohen was glaringly one of the great songwriters to emerge in the 60s, Bob Dylan's morose brother, the main dispute being who felt more breasts. I have since got drunk, and have concluded that this would be a five-star album in the hands of any other. Just because I incrementally prefer the first to the second doesn't mean this in any way disappoints in how it blends the sacred with the base, or how Bird on the Wire nods to Bukowski, or how The Story of Isaac answers Highway 61 Revisited by reminding us that God left Isaac tormented with the threat of murder. So, a five-star album. Perhaps not as immediately brilliant as the first, but I have persuaded myself. I feel rather mature.

I took a short break when this came up, mainly because I got a bit ill. Mind, I was also wondering what I wanted to say about this album. This album really did require several listens for me to comprehend my thoughts fully, but it turned out my opinion is not as effusive as the critical standard for Let It Be. This is not to slam the album. Much on the album to like, indeed love, and it's a firm 4-starrer. But US college rock has never seduced me. I can accept R.E.M. did a few worthwhile albums in the 80s, but I'm not going to cream my jeans over every song they produced then. And The Replacements have a similar fault to R.E.M.: they are just a bit too clever-clever, rather than just clever. The title, on its own, stands right on the boundary of inspired and smug. The wilfully puerile Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out and Gary's Got a Boner, likewise, straddle that boundary with a nut on each side. But these and others, in aggregate, make the album a tiny bit irritating. Also, ask yourself this: can you sincerely, hand on heart, give 5 stars to an album that gives a songwriting credit to Ted Nugent?

The payoff of diminished expectations, eh? As a British indie kid ca. 2000, The Jam were, like The Clash and The Kinks, part of my heritage; when my mates and I made mixtapes for the car in order to impress each other, a Jam track usually found its way onto our exacting compilations. However, The Style Council never got chosen; the only mate of ours who listened to The Style Council did so as an act of genuflection to his hero Paull Weller. This attitude, by my understanding, is pretty common across the UK: The Jam get praised as a key part of the British canon, and The Style Council get dismissed as a peculiarity by a iconic songwriter fleeing from his previous image. In any case, the sophisti-pop, 80s blue-eyed soul, jazzy instrumentals and (gulp) raps each seem, at first glance, a threat rather than an experiment. But ride me sideways, I rather like it. Paul Weller, giving his reasoning for this iconoclasm against The Jam's kinda thing, pointed out that the kids today in the mid-80s were grooving on down to soul, disco, R&B and other genres rooted in black music, so he and his new bandmate Mick Talbot might find exploring such music rewarding. The discerning listener may note that Mick Talbot was formerly the keyboardist for Dexy's Midnight Runners, the great soul champions of British new wave, so The Style Council were not going into these exotic genres that blindly. And Weller makes a decent enough fist of this more soulful style for Café Bleu to work. The album has 5(!) instrumentals, but neither their smoothness nor their jazziness grates. However, songs like The Paris Match (sung by Tracey Thorn of Everything But The Girl) have moments of real beauty, Strength of Your Nature possesses a fierce pulse, and the rap of A Gospel, remarkably, doesn't embarrass Weller nor the listener, a frankly miraculous turn of events when one contemplates the Wham! Rap and a thousand other sorry stabs at hip-hop by white singers. Now, I said I came into this album with slightly diminished expectations, allowing the album to surprise me with its high quality. So if you read this, I might unintentionally heighten your expectations, possibly leading to a sizeable disappointment. Maybe you should just ignore me.

Rock music criticism, for all its supposed involvement with such a debauched, rebellious industry, is overwhelmingly conservative and starchy, and brooks no deviation from the established diktats, demanding that tame, stuffy acts receive all the plaudits while the genuinely challenging and alive must get sidelined. Surely nobody seriously thinks that three Beatles albums belong in the top ten albums of all time? Or that U2 are somehow one of the mightiest living flag-bearers for rock 'n' roll (a mate of mine once sent me a series of links where contemporary reviewers had deemed each of U2's last 5 albums as "a return to form")? And then we have the infuriating case of the Happy Mondays, the greatest, most inventive, most iconic British group of the late 80s and early 90s, yet somehow certain critics blithely dismiss them as grubby also-rans to the Stone Roses, which leads to the patent absurdity of the Stone Roses receiving all the praise for fusing indie and dance with Fools Gold, despite the Mondays having done so earlier, more radically and better (Fools Gold doesn't really go anywhere, and its melody is oddly unmemorable for such a supposed anthem; at the same time, the Mondays were dazzling with the Madchester Rave On E.P.). One obvious reason why the critics did this: they felt they had to credit someone with such an innovation, but dance music was a wee bit tricky for them to comprehend, and anyway who wants to credit the Mondays, those slovenly thugs? No no, let's award the Roses, at least they didn't progress that far outside our ken. (For clarity's sake, I do like the Stone Roses, and will even assert that Second Coming is nowhere near as bad as its reputation suggests; well done critics, you managed to mess up there as well). So yes, it is clear to anyone with at least one partially functioning ear and an actual spine that the Mondays were not only the better band, but the ones who defined the epoch and the ones who belong more in the great rock pantheon. Kids, with that in mind, how good do you think Pills 'n' Thrills And Bellyaches is? With the fullness of time, everyone should be able to clock that PnTAB, along with much of the Mondays' back catalogue, set the agenda for much of the best British music of the 90s. Screamadelica's distillation of the E experience? The Mondays were first. Blur's sarky kitchen-sink vignettes? Grandbag's Funeral, take a bow. Jarvis Cocker's masturbation fantasies set to lyrics? Bob's Yer Uncle. Suede's flaneur sleaze? Who was ever sleazier than the Mondays? Oasis' magpie-like purloining of riffs of rock past? A technique itself purloined from the Mondays, the most brazen of thieves (literally: like their forefathers the Sex Pistols, they nicked all their instruments when starting out). The mainstreaming of dance music? Yes, other bands (significantly New Order) can claim more responsibility, but the superstar DJs of the 90s still owe quite a debt to the Mondays. It would make sense to call the Mondays the great codifiers of 90s British music, were they in any way interested in laws. Anyway, pointing out that PnTAB is influential is not the same as saying it's good, so I am fully tumescent with delight to preach to all you lost children that it's absurdly wonderful. Their previous album, the romantically titled Bummed, was also absurdly wonderful, but the two albums sound shockingly different from each other. Whereas Bummed is sordid and nebulous, PnTAB is sordid and sun-kissed, all acid house keyboards and crisp guitar melodies. PnTAB is also a textbook example of how to construct and order an album, without filler, with diversity of style yet unity of tone. How many other albums can make you dance like, well, Bez on one song, yet crack out the air guitar on the next, all the while making such a transition wholly organic? Along with this, the Mondays simply don't sound like any other band. The only bands to have come close are, as has been stated earlier, the bands who sought inspiration from these loony-tunes scallies. Your bog-standard insulated Radiohead fan will try to show disdain for the Mondays by saying they stole it all from Can and George Clinton, proving their foolishness by forgetting that the Mondays didn't care if they yoinked a melody or two, that the Mondays actually built skyscrapers on their thefts, and that the Mondays were so blisteringly original that even their pilfering couldn't detract from the fact that nothing on the planet resembled the Mondays at their peak, not even the multitude of bands that tried swiping a bit of the Mondays' shabby allure. Of course, I haven't mentioned the shiniest diamond on this jewel-bedecked album yet: Shaun Ryder's sheer magnficence as a lyricist. In my review of Meat is Murder, I spoke about the British songwriter's stance as the teller of uncomfortable truths. Shaun Ryder is an exemplar of that tradition, alongside Ray Davies, John Lydon and (quintessentially) Morrissey. Just take a look at the still-hilarious, still-biting opening couplet to album-opener Kinky Afro: Son, I'm 30 I only went with your mother 'cos she's dirty. The rest of the song, an inadequate father in utter self-pity pleading with his son to forgive him, but still too proud to apologise, with the son responding just as the father would have, understanding yet completely dismissive, remains one of the most astute character studies in all of rock (how many 90s indie songs repeat the trick of the singer explaining, "I get you, but fuck you anyway"?). Also note that, for all the hedonism the Mondays exhort, our Shaun's lyrics have not only thick strands of pessimism, but a worldly-wise stoicism. As the title says, pills 'n' thrills come with bellyaches. I have quoted one song. In fact, every song from the album can be quoted so, as demonstrations of Our Shaun's absolute lyrical expertise. Take Dennis and Lois: Honey, how's your breathing? If it stops for good, we'll be leaving. Or how about the chorus to God's Cop? God made it easy on me. That was intended to be a poke in the eye at the rabid, religiously zealous Chief Constable of Greater Manchester James Anderton, but it also serves as rather a nifty cocaine line (see what I did there?). Such pearlers cram, indeed constitute PnTAB. Shaun Ryder at his best is equal to Bob Dylan at his best, and Pills 'n' Thrills and Bellyaches is easily one of the five greatest British albums ever recorded. However, there remains the question: why did the Mondays blow it? As hagiographic as I have been, I must be honest and admit their flaws. The Mondays' embrace of pleasure led them to unremitting sexism (the year after PnTAB, they guest-edited an issue of Penthouse). After Shaun made an unwise comment made whilst high (he joked about "selling my arse for 50p", which some tabloids reported as a confession that he had been a rentboy), the Mondays made homophobic remarks when challenged by an admittedly hostile journalist. As a liberal type, these blemishes make me wince, but I hope I don't sound dismissive to say that their youthful prejudices do not diminish them in my eyes; they are my favourite band (duh), and they have meant so much to me that I will eulogise them, especially as their failings, their humanity, are part of the reason their artistry is so embraceable. My father was a homophobe, but that doesn't mean I stopped loving him. Love is not blind, but it is forgiving. To suggest some perspective, I believe it's easier to pardon the Mondays' regrettable epithets than, say, N.W.A.'s witless, self-parodic anthems to murdering prostitutes. Aside from that serious ugliness, I should talk about their record label: the barmy indie totem of Factory Records. Tony Wilson, the Yeats-and Debord-quoting newsreader who helmed Factory, declared that Factory's greatest achievement was shepherding two truly great bands, Joy Division/New Order and the Happy Mondays. He was right. He was also right about the (literal) price such shepherding cost. The collapse of Factory Records has become one of the monumental legends of music. Factory was losing money due to the crushing debts of their revolutionary white elephant club, the Haçienda, and the only option the label saw was to get the Mondays to record a fourth album. However, our Shaun had become addicted to heroin, and their manager got the bright idea to record the album in Barbados, an island free of heroin. There was no heroin on Barbados, but it was festooned with crack, the least creative drug of all. All the money Factory sent over, the Mondays spent on crack. They then sold the record equipment for crack, then they sold the studio furniture, then they sold their clothes. Eventually, when Factory got the master tapes from Barbados, they discovered Shaun hadn't recorded any vocals. They quickly bandied him to a studio in Surrey to finish the album, and the resultant album, Yes Please!, proved a substantially weakened follow-up and a commercially and (somewhat justified) critically catastrophic release. Factory went into administration and the Mondays split in internecine hatred, their legacy tarnished by their own druggy stupidity. Unfathomably, our Shaun and Bez managed a successful comeback with their next group Black Grape, producing one classic album in It's Great When You're Straight... Yeah!, and one duffer in Stupid Stupid Stupid. Black Grape broke up, and Shaun assembled a bastardised, pub-karaoke version of the Mondays in one of the tawdriest, most depressing reformations in music history, with our Shaun playing the pathetic jester for the sole intention of paying off tax bills based on name recognition alone (is every detail microscopically right? No matter, I'm printing the legend). Taking this all together, this is why critics have bestowed the baggy, pilled-up glories on the Stone Roses, glories that rightfully belong to the Happy Mondays. Just because you're the best doesn't mean you win. But why should I care? Why should the Mondays care? Despite everything, despite all the ignominy they proffered and invited, they already proved themselves one of the greatest bands of all time, with two of the greatest albums of all time, and some of the greatest songs of all time. Neither they nor I need to worry about some Pitchfork-scrutinising wanker declaring them too coarse and visceral for their milquetoast sensibilities. Nietzsche once wrote that the belly is the one reason man does not take himself for a god. The Happy Mondays assert that the belly is exactly why a man can be a god. Bez' father was a policeman.

Is there a general term for the transition hip-hop made from 1988 to 1992, a period we can now recognise as rather tumultuous for the genre? During these years, we observed the rise (and occasional fall) of, among plenty others, Public Enemy, Ice-T, NWA, De La Soul, Cypress Hill, A Tribe Called Quest, MC Hammer, Arrested Development, Snoop Doggy Dogg and Will Smith, and my faithful friends, you know that several of those ultimately proved detrimental: just ask Chris Rock! (I'm already embarrassed to have made that joke, and that's while I'm typing it right now). Regardless of that, hip-hop was a significantly different entity at the start of 1993 than it was at the end of 1987; in 1987 America, a rapper was someone a sitcom grandmother would impersonate in a bum-moisteningly embarrassing routine about why her grandkids should never even look at marijuana, whereas in 1993 America the actress who played that granny would be calling the police twice a day over her fears at seeing a "rapper" in her neighbourhood. Now, I'm speeding over much relevant history and culture of those four years, but forgive me; you're smart, you can fill in the details yourself (actually, was there that much hip-hop about the end of the Cold War? Loads of rappers gave their takes on 9/11, to varying levels of taste). Gang Starr fit into the alternative hip-hop of the period, having a firm foot in really old-skool hip-hop with their beats and good-natured bravado, yet showing a greater sophistication than their predecessors, both musically and lyrically (the sample from the French electropop anthem E.V.A. is wonderful), and broadly, the album works. One aspect that stands out from this album is its clear intelligence. As much as it flaunts a cockiness, it always mitigates it with the sober realisation that arrogance, or indeed the desire to be arrogant, leads to many a fall, many a humiliation, and many a fuck-up. But I can't ignore the grumbles I have. The tracks feel rather samey, so quite a few tracks feel fillersome, meaning that the album feels far longer than it is. This lack of diversity also causes the listener to drift, generating the perverse conclusion that you think the rhymes might be interesting, but you're not interested enough to pay attention. The standout tracks (Step in the Arena, Who's Gonna Take the Weight?, Just to Get a Rep) are fantastic, and the album never sounds bad at all, but one wishes for a few more fireworks. Still, it does have the merit of thoughtfulness. Much hip-hop of the era had that quality, but much else didn't (much managed both simultaneously; Public Enemy and Ice Cube decided to fight racism with racism). An interesting artifact from an era of interesting artifacts, but this at least is interesting in itself, and not just historically interesting, unlike 2 Live Crew declaring their yearning for pussy or Vanilla Ice imploring ninjas to go, go, go.

I'm pleading the fifth! I don't know what to say about this at all. I don't know anything about son, the genre of traditional Cuban music of which this album caused an international revival, and I don't think my opinions would be that considered or that insightful. I guess I can say I prefer the second half to the first, with the slower, more melodic songs, and the music sounds good throughout, although since I know nothing about son, I found it occasionally like wallpaper. A hedged bet of 3 stars, dolely because of my own ignorance.

I have always loathed the song Imagine. This hatred, I understand, is very common. Both on its own and considered within cultural context, Imagine cheesegrates the sensibilities of anyone with a scraping of taste, reason or heart. It rhymes "one" with "one", just as a starter. The melody is basic past the point of banality (and it was used better on Jealous Guy, which in any case was performed better by Roxy Music: you really need Bryan Ferry for that blue, wistful saudade atmosphere, that's what he gets up in the morning for). A millionaire ensconced in his mansion asks us to "imagine no possessions"; presumably he imagined no possessions, as he could just buy whatever he wanted. One can defend its simplistic, naïve messaging as wilfully childlike and idealistic (in fairness, it does retort "You may say that I'm a dreamer"), but that just underscores its infantile, playground view of politics; also, as adults, aren't our political values meant to be taken from sources a bit more substantial than 3-minute hippy anthems? Yet the inherent irksomeness of Imagine has become exponentiated to an emetic degree by its overbearance in culture. Remember Gal Gadot and her celebrity pals trying to bring the world together in the early days of Covid by singing Imagine over their phones? I just tried putting it on Youtube, but I was genuinely too scared to hit play. Imagine is, of course, mountainously smug, but Gal et al. create a planet of smugness in 3 minutes, whereas that slowpoke God had to take a day to make the earth (although he did also make the heavens and light that day too, so he took a third of a day to make the earth, maybe?). That is one especially charmless sample from a smorgasbord of mortifying celebrity versions of Imagine. Want another? Cee-Lo Green's take on Imagine changes the most interesting line "and no religion too" to "and all religions too", managing the dubious achievement of making Imagine even more inane and unchallenging. About the only by-product of Imagine of any merit is when Oasis stole it for the beginning of Don't Look Back in Anger, which is still the best of beery singalongs at closing time. Still, I'm here to review an album, not one song, and the album is properly weird. It does have the apparent virtue of authenticity, of John Lennon making an honest John Lennon album, but an honest John Lennon album is not an album around which the cult of John Lennon was consecrated. Now, if you want John doing songs that sound like Beatles off-cuts, you have Crippled Inside's jaunty cynicism (George Harrison plays on 5 of the songs). Gimme Some Truth provides you with your fix of vinyl-thin political protest. If happy-clappy hippy sentimentality is your bag, man, then aside from Imagine you cool cats should dig Oh My Love, though I wonder if it's possible not to laugh at the lines "I see the wind / I see the trees". I'm So Hard is yer boilerplate bluesy rocker, and I Don't Wanna Be a Soldier Mama is yer standard jam that goes on just a tad too long. But if none of these styles really satisfy, the weaknesses of John Lennon's songwriting emerge like a magic-eye picture. In particular, much of his lyricism is unintentionally comical. "Oh Yoko, my love will turn you on" ends in perhaps the three worst words imaginable in that situation (seriously, do you want that image rattling around your head?). "How can I go forward when I don't know which way to turn?" only makes sense if John is driving a car. I Don't Wanna Be a Soldier Mama has its die/fly/cry/lie rhymes, making you wonder if John don't wanna be a launderer mama, he don't wanna dry, John don't wanna be a salesman mama, he don't wanna ply, John don't wanna be a psychic mama, he don't wanna scry... (make up your own, kids!) But the best song on the album also makes for the most uncomfortable listening (well, aside from the excruciating Imagine). How Do You Sleep? shows us the angry, resentful and vindictive John Lennon, his ire generated by and thrust at Paul McCartney. Brief backstory: with the fallout of the Beatles' break-up, the courts had gotten involved, and John made a few disparaging asides about his former bandmates in interviews. Macca then, on his album Ram, recorded Too Many People, which featured a few mild jabs at Lennon, then took out an ad parodying John and Yoko's bagism by showing Macca and Linda dressed as clowns (I would say Macca probably meant this as a joke, albeit perhaps a little unwise in the midst of the legal farrago). This caused Lennon to revert to his most splenetic in How Do You Sleep?, barraging Macca as a middling chancer bolstered by sycophants who will ditch him now the talent (i.e., John) has disappeared. The thing is, the song works: the wordplay is clever and intentionally funny ("The only thing you done was yesterday", "The sound you make is musak to my ears"), and Phil Spector's strings reinforce the groove of the Wurlitzer and slide guitar (George Harrison again). But the rancour John displays only unsettles the listener, like a glimpse of, well, an exceptionally bitter argument between a divorcing couple (Ringo visited the recording of this song and found it upsetting, believing justifiably that John had gone too far). As for its place on the album, it frankly demolishes all the peace-and-love affectations the rest of the album tries to volunteer, implying that John the ambassador of peace was hiding John the brute spoiling for a fight, and all it took for that metamorphosis to occur was a slight dig and three pints of bad cider. In summation, Imagine qualifies as the quintessential John Lennon record, but that is very much a backhanded compliment. It has all that's stimulating about John Lennon's music, and all that's tiresome. Whether you find Imagine inspiring or exasperating is your prerogative. Personally, I don't find John Lennon, or Imagine, that interesting. The songs tend to be just okay, with one notable atrocity, and the best song is unrepresentative of the album and itself a disconcerting listen. Much of the curiosity this album fosters is due to its historical circumstances: the break-up of the Beatles and the curdling of hippy utopianism. By the by, I write this in 2022. Since in recent times we have witnessed a worldwide resurgence of nationalism and religiosity, along with marked increases in inequality and the entrenchment of consumer capitalism ("imagine there's no smartphone / I wonder if you can"), doesn't that mean that the legacy of Imagine is illusory, and that the judgement of history is that John Lennon was a tosser?

Scottish indie is separated from both other British indie and other Scottish art by its whimsy, its gentility and its poppiness. Whereas indie from the rest of the British Isles dabbles with sweetness and light, it doesn't supress its tendencies to morosity and rock for long. And if Scottish literature has one distinctive theme, it's guilt, be it personal, communal or ancestral: from Macbeth quaking before the visage of a dagger (even though Shakespeare was English) through various justified sinners and Jekylls and Hydes, to Renton and his pals' quest for oblivion, the Scottish protagonist never ceases to loathe themselves for the crime of simply being alive and Scottish. Scottish indie, however, has embraced both warmth and humour, and frequently sought pointers from straight-up pop. Look at The Jesus and Mary Chain incorporating girl-group melodies within their wall of noise, the enshrining of jangly guitars with the Scottish C86 bands, Teenage Fanclub's championing of Big Star and the Beach Boys, Belle & Sebastian dismissing grunge with an effete handwave, and Franz Ferdinand declaring that they wanted to make music for girls to dance to. If you're looking for a group that established this Scottish lighthearted, openhearted ethos, the one that makes most sense is Orange Juice. Orange Juice were your standard art-school band formed in the wake of punk. However, they reacted against the perceived dourness and melancholy of many post-punk bands (making them post-post-punk?) whilst retaining the movement's heterogenity and intelligence. The provocative wannabe impresario Alan Horne founded Postcard Records as a vehicle for Orange Juice and (the much more angst-ridden) Josef K; the tagline for Postcard Records was "The Sound of Young Scotland", an affectionate distortion of Motown's "The Sound of Young America", and as clear an indicator as any of Orange Juice's embrace of effervescence. Also note that Orange Juice were one of the most clean-cut, well-behaved bands of the time, eschewing alcohol (hence the bandname) and most drugs (though sometimes partaking in the mod/punk staple of amphetamine, funnily enough). With this, their second album, the line-up had changed substantially, after leader Edwyn Collins left the original drummer and guitarist. (the next drummer, Zeke Manila, was Zimbabwean, and two of the songs are sung in Shona). With this new line-up, Orange Juice hurtled in an even poppier direction, overtly referencing the Four Tops and, in the common post-punk ambition, marrying the Buzzcocks with Chic. And I like it a lot. The title song not only gave us the definitive post-punk slogan, but also provided one of the wryest takes on unrequited desire in the indie canon. Edwyn Collins proves himself one of the great articulators of adolescent hesitancy, turning wimpiness into, if not quite an admirable trait, then a charming, completely human feature of the everyteen (it's only a shuffle from Edwyn's croon to Morrissey's yodelling). Wonderful moments stud the album, such as the innocent piano motif on Flesh of My Flesh, which is then taken up by the saxophone (yes, saxophone). That said, the album warrants those two dread phrases, "rewards repeated listenings" and "the whole is greater thann the sum of its parts". Initially, you may well find the deliberate smoothness ungripping, and certain songs may seem disposable. But if you find the aesthetic intriguing and perhaps a little racy in its own way, then some Orange Juice should slip down satisfyingly. Orange Juice, like so many Scottish indie bands, provide Scotland with its much-needed sunlight and vitamin C.

Deceitful cover ahoy! This ain't no psychedelic headfuck, no tripping on the radical zephyrs of the Mother-Creator's minddrive. Of course, this album fits chummily into the late 60s hippy climate, and one can gesture towards the album's occasional suggestions of dreamscapes, but it's not a journey into the beyond. Rather, it's a genteel, mildly quizzical but bittersweet slab of baroque pop. Think Village Green Preservation Society instead of Tomorrow Never Knows. Actually, focus on that bittersweetness. Odessey and Oracle (the typo was an honest mistake by the cover artist, which the band tried to sell as deliberate). The album seems to have been dipped in the joyful pain of irrecoverable nostalgia. Fully the first side does not deviate from depicting the grief at the loss of potential, of the blueness at remembering when one could have been a contender. The first song, Care of Cell 44, has the convict wondering if his partner still loves him, A Rose for Emily concerns a woman who shall stay unloved her whole life, Maybe After He's Gone deals with a deluded suitor trying to persuade himself that she'll return to him, etcetry etcetry. And all that I found very effective. The songs themselves are exquisite, almost flimsy in their delicacy. But these multifaceted studies are great for a supine wallow. The second half turns more spritely and more positive, with some exception. Changes continues the melancholy of side 1, and Butcher's Tale (Western Front 1914) is The Zombies' pacifist anthem, of a fear-ridden WW1 Tommy cursing the priest who encouraged him to enlist (set to an ironic church organ). But apart from those, side two is a lot more smoochy and romantic, ending with Time of the Season, that tribal hippy makeout perennial. You can guess that the second side coheres a little less than the first, but not that it alienates the listener at all; indeed, there will be plenty who prefer the songs about your current girlfriend to the ones about your ex. I was hesitant about awarding this 5 stars, but why not? One can ferret out flaws if one wants, but who wants to undertake such a miserable activity? I guess these five stars are partly akin to a Grade II listing, but I enjoy focusing on Odessey And Oracle's considerable charms much more than its scarce peccancies.

I don't like Nico's voice! At all! Right, with that gangly truth evacuated, I feel better, more capable of discussing this album cogently. The Velvet Underground and Nico has long held the critics' choice of coolest album ever, but to we professional contrarians that's a provocation; hasn't its coolness been diluted by the elevation of the Velvet Underground to the pantheon? And isn't Eno's declaration that the few who bought this album each formed their own band obsolete nowadays, considering this is now an entry-level music snob text? Funny thing: plenty of bands I adore cite the Velvet Underground as a major influence (Bowie, Roxy Music, Sex Pistols, Joy Division), but that's also true of plenty I find inadequate (U2, The Strokes, a thousand abject landfill indie bands each with the lame ambition of their debut album fusing this with Sgt. Pepper). Influence is not a virtue in itself, and humanity has quite the history of venerating the feeble. So, shearing away the tangles of its legacy, I can say that much of the album does hold up. Lou Reed's drug odes still sound exhilarating, and I'm a sucker for sleaze. The production is a tad muggy, but that's to the album's benefit: how would their songs of pushers and transvestites work if they sounded like Steely Dan? But whilst listening I found myself thinking of The Doors' debut, which was released two months before this. The Doors (the album) shares much with The Velvet Underground and Nico: the subject matter (drugs, fucking, mooning authority, nightmarescapes), freaky beatnik ropy poetry, the desire to experiment, to stretch rock beyond its still-inchoate borders. But The Doors (still the album) coheres much more satisfyingly than The Velvet Underground and Nico. The tracklist to The Doors (again the album) feels impeccably structured and it flows effortlessly. The Velvet Underground and Nico, by contrast, seems just an aggregation of songs. Fine songs, yes, but songs that don't cleave together that well. Also, The Doors (yet again the album, but also the band as well in this case) got to number 2 on the Billboard chart. The weird, disreputable and exploratory were already becoming mainstream by the time this was released. Surely The Velvet Underground and Nico's legacy involves some revisionism? But that's not the real problem. The impediment, as I said right at the start, is that the Nico-led songs sound crap because Nico can't sing. Andy Warhol insisted that the band feature his acolyte Nico, ignoring that she sang as well as an anus, and the band accepted her to keep the peace and perhaps get fellated. Nico was partially deaf and didn't know what key she was singing in. The result was, to be technical, pisspoor. Try listening to Femme Fatale, counting the words as she sings. With the twelfth word "break", the whole song aptly breaks as Nico strains for a key she has no hope of finding. Her songs aren't bad enough to ruin the album, but they feel more like chores than treats. One lazy contention about albums like this is that time has blunted their impact, that in 1967 this would have been as gobsmacking as a brachiosaurus. However, I don't think that's the case here: I believe I view The Doors (once more the album, and I think the band as well) as remarkable as 60s teens would have, whereas I view this is as more interesting on paper than in actuality. The Velvet Underground and Nico is a valiant and oft-successful first attempt, but it's hard to herald it as the grand paradigm-shifter of 60s rock.

Country music is the music genre that provides the most evidence towards Sturgeon's law. For those who don't know, the Sturgeon in question was the science-fiction author Theodore Sturgeon, who once wrote a novella called Killdozer!, where the antagonist is a sentient, killer bulldozer. The (possibly apocryphal) tale goes that Sturgeon was conducting a Q&A at a science-fiction convention, and one participant asked him if science-fiction was really a legitimate field of literature, stating truthfully that 90% of science fiction was, well, crap. Sturgeon immediately shot back, "Ninety percent of everything is crap!" This is now known as Sturgeon's law. I dn't think it's too much of a revelation to anyone that a jumbo proportion of music released under the country banner is crap. This has affected even the most beloved and esteemed of country artists: you don't measure Johnny Cash's discography by the number of records, you measure it by the yardage it spans, and nobody that prolific could make every song a pearler. Indeed, Rick Rubin rejuvenated Johnny Cash's career by encouraging him not to just bash out albums like trainers, but to focus on polishing his work until the album shone like a diamond. Anyway, Buck Owens was similarly generative, producing 20 studio albums, two holiday albums, three live albums and six compilations in the 60s alone. Who has the energy to go through all of those? Are some of those albums corkers? Certainly. Are some of those reeking? Probably. Anyway, some people just don't like country music. They dislike the instrumentation, they dislike the perceived cornball sentiments, they dislike cowboy boots, they dislike the unfortunate cultural baggage some country has been saddled with, they dislike the unabashed forays into novelty records, they dislike the need to sift through crap in order to find the worthwhile nuggets. Thankfully, I've Got a Tiger By the Tail is replete with nuggets. It's a straightforward, unpretentious good time. Of course, it's country, so much of the album deals with melancholy and heartache, which is great in itself, but the listener will be grateful that the album is leavened by rock 'n' roll additives and a healthy splash of wit. It won't persuade anyone disinclined towards country, but let them be content in their missing-out. It can't quite raise my spirit enough to warrant the full 5 stars, but don't worry about that: it delights enough.

My cohorts, a quick check of my earlier reviews will reveal that I gave a shiny 5 stars to Nick Drake first album, Five Leaves Left. Here, we have poor Nick's second album, Bryter Layter. Out of the classic Nick Drake trilogy, Bryter Layter is the one I listened to the most infrequently. Don't misunderstand me, I didn't consider it in any way a bad album, but the outright prettiness of Five Leaves Later and the starkness of Pink Moon meant they were the ones that hypnotised me. So in my head, Bryter Layter became the slightly impoverished relative by default. This was of course imbecilic of me. Bryter Layter continues Nick Drake's faultless track record whilst remaining particular to itself. Bryter Layter is in no way a rehash of Five Leaves Left, but instead shows dear Nick developing his style by exploring new musical vistas. Now, Bryter Layter is not as musically eclectic as Five Leaves Left, but that is not to its detriment. To say that Bryter Layter is more coherent is not the right term, but its consonance definitely stands out as a progression from Five Leaves Later. Lyrically, we have still the gentle sadness laying foggily over the music. Bryter Layter does not evoke death as Five Leaves Left does, nor is it as raw as Pink Moon, so we have the paradox that the listener feels Bryter Layter to be Nick Drake's healthiest record, despite the album's loneliness and remorse. Also, note that several songs concern love, albeit love tinged with inexact regret. A more remarkable addition to sweet Nick's arsenal is humour. In One of These Things First, a paean to a lost love, he lists the choices he could have pursued, how he could have been a sailor or a cook. But then he muses that he could have been a signpost or a whistle. Since this is Nick Drake, the absurdity is understated, but it is still there. Finally, in perhaps the album's best song, Northern Sky, we have one of the rarest and most precious qualities in a Nick Drake song: hope. Is Bryter Layter an anomaly in the Nick Drake canon? No, that's far too strong a reading. But it does partially dispel the notion that all his work was written under the gaze of the black-eyed dog. A wonderful record that entices the listener to luxuriate in its nuances.

The most celebrated album ever? Pet Sounds has cemented itself to the top ten of countless lists concerning the greatest albums ever, although curiously it's absent from this site's top 15. Anyway, such a position should neither extol nor sully the album in the ears of the listener, as the predictability of such lists indicates how meaningless they are. For instance, Citizen Kane has its reservation at the toppermost of film polls, and the first-time viewer usually concludes that it's actually, properly, seriously good, but the same lists that hold Pet Sounds aloft usually have the ridiculous phenomenon of 4 Beatles albums in the top ten albums of all time (I have recently concluded that the Beatles were primarily a singles band, and none of their albums display the Fabs at their fabbest). Happily, Pet Sounds falls into the Citizen Kane category. This is not to say that I consider Pet Sounds the GOAT; I don't. But I can't deny this album's magnificence. The genesis of Pet Sounds has been exhaustively documented: the Beach Boys began as the means for the autocratic, abusive minor songwriter Murry Wilson to attain stardom vicariously through a singing troop comprising his sons and nephews. However, one of those sons was the sensitive musical prodigy Brian Wilson, who broke from Murry to craft a more personal, emotional pop music inspired more by Phil Spector's Wall of Sound than the goodtime surf-music stipulated by the formula Murry conceived (then championed by everyone's one-despised Beach Boy Mike Love). With the British Invasion, and specifically Rubber Soul, Brian Wilson felt an overriding, and ultimately unhealthy, ambition to surpass the Beatles' sonic achievements (with hindsight, is Rubber Soul actually that good? Isn't it just an average, acceptable collection of songs? But then, do I know more about music than Brian Wilson?) One oddity of Pet Sounds is that it was released in 1966, during a time when the hippy movement was becoming established. Indeed, nascent psychedelic rockers such as the Doors, Love and Jefferson Airplane took Rubber Soul as a thrown-down gauntlet to reconnoitre into the beyond. Pet Sounds has none of this, focusing on producing the most impeccable soundscape. Along with this, Pet Sounds doesn't seek to investigate the more R-rated themes that had begun to interest rock. Rather, Pet Sounds is adolescent, almost childlike in its innocence and honesty. The opener, Wouldn't It Be Nice, is an almost-chaste yearning for the fireworks of romance the young assume are permanent with true love (maturity bestows the not-always-welcome realisation that romance and love are far more complicated, but the desire for love so intense never leaves you regardless of age). I Know There's An Answer (inspired by Brian's first experience with LSD) manifests that teenage sense of having everything figured out and nothing figured out, of recognising the phonies and not knowing whether to hug them or run away with a deafmute girl (baseball cap-clad douchebag Mike Love objected that the song was immoral to his square sensibilities, then later sued Brian for a songwriting credit). I could go through almost every song dissecting its guileless charm, but let's change focus to the flow of the album. It starts off exuberantly, and the first half maintains this joy, yet side 2 is far bleaker, far more introspective and self-doubting. Of course, this is still firmly adolescent, and instead of souring the album elevates it, articulating the alienation and despair that period of one's life attends. The album ends with Caroline, No, a heartbreaking song about heartbreak and the end of love, and the ideal counterpoint to Wouldn't It Be Nice. This is not to say that Pet Sounds is in any way a concept album, but it has a remarkable thematic coherence, a coherence that justifies its status as a masterpiece. Pet Sounds probably isn't perfect. God Only Knows suffers from its ubiquity, which is hardly Brian Wilson's fault. But tweezering out the minor faults of Pet Sounds would be fussiness, not diagnosis. The most valid criticisms one can make of Pet Sounds are the name and cover. According to Brian's first memoir, the title stems from somehow-more-villainous-than-Charles-Manson Mike Love damning the album, saying, "Who's gonna hear this shit? The ears of a dog?" Mike Love denies saying this (and sued him), but are there any circumstances where you want to believe Mike Love?

2002, along with continuing the streak of every year of this millennium being utterly crap, saw the release of Original Pirate Material, the debut album by The Streets, a garage/hip-hop homegrown work by Mike Skinner, a talented emcee from Birmingham, who pretended to be Cockney to the bones. Now, I started university in 2002, and beforehand I spent some time in London, and I can tell you that Original Pirate Material was everywhere in the capital, for good reason. Original Pirate Material presented a recognisable portrait on contemporary youthful London life, both hedonistic yet somehow unsatisfied, loving the pub-club-spliff-takeaway treadmill yet wondering if life should be so shallow and focused on instant gratification. Mike Skinner proved a witty, incisive lyricist, a man steeped in that British tradition of the clever-beyond-his-class songwriter, and it demonstrated that UK hip-hop, oft a kicking-boy of British music, could foster an independent, worthwhile voice. This is not to say Original Pirate Material was perfect; many found The Streets grating and oafish with justifiable reasons. But I was not one of them, and I had moderately high expectations for what The Streets would achieve in the future, and A Grand Don't Come For Free could have cemented Mike Skinner as one the great British lyricists. I hated it. I found this album abysmal. It is the sound of a starving artist being offered a banquet, then pigging out and disgusting everyone by pouring custard onto a beef wellington and subsequently vomiting all down his front. Every decision made on this album proves to be exactly the wrong one, and I have no idea why this, instead of Original Pirate Material is on the list. Harsh, I know, but the deterioration from the first album to the second is palpable. For his second magnus opus, Mike Skinner deciding to make a concept album. That sound you just heard was you releasing the safety catch off your grandad's luger. So, a concept album about a poor young man who meets a girl, blows all his dosh on an ill-considered bet, gets drunk/stoned/pilled-up, loses the girl, then either sits in his flat resenting his bad run of luck, or finds a grand down the back of the TV (yes, that last part makes absolutely no sense). As a narrative, it sounds and is pretty banal. But the main issue with the story is that even though the chap goes through a series of common experiences, the listener doesn't empathise with him at all. He just seems such a twat. He goes through these experiences with little genuine reflection, almost like a philosophical zombie, an entity with no internal life whatsoever. The girl leaves him because she clocks that he is just a loser, an opinion with which the listener agrees. The albums second greatest weakness is that you just don't care about him. The biggest weakness? Mike Skinner's rapping. All his talent, all the lyrical flair on the first album has vamoosed. Try saying this couplet: I might ask my mates where they'll be drinking From the sofa giving them a ding Seriously, just say it. It feels awful in the mouth, because it is an incorrect use of metre. The entire album is constructed from similarly jackknifing lines, lines which invariably end in the worst rhyming couplets conceivable. Again, look at the cited example, which manages to be both lazy and laborious. And then Mike somehow succeeds in making it worse by STRESS-ING EV-ER-RY SYL-LAB BLE. Mike Skinner seems to be aiming not so much for Roots Manuva as Pam Ayres. A Grand Don't Come For Free is one of the most wince-inducing cases of second album syndrome I have heard. The biggest hit from this was Fit But You Know It, which was a huge song at the time. Fit But You Know It doesn't quite slot into the risible concept of the album, which can only be to its credit. But consider the song's half-life. Dapper Laughs was a comedy character by an already-forgotten estate agent-turned comedian, whose schtick was short skits on Vine depicting a wilfully crass lad (his catchphrase was "Proper moist!"). His routines consisted of 6-second bits where he would say, for instance, you shouldn't eat a banana next to a gay man, as he'd think you'd want to suck him off (ba-dum-tsh!). ITV2 (the number tells you it's crap in advance) gave him a short-lived TV show, where he tried to parody dating advice shows by granting his wit and wisdom to actual members of the public (such as shouting out "GET YOUR GASH OUT!" to show off your adventurous side). A few rape jokes down the line, his show got put out of our misery, and the comedian had to go on Newsnight and announce he was retiring the character. Anyway, the theme tune to Dapper Laugh's show was Fit But You Know It. That's what I now associate the song with: a pillock shouting at passing women to show him their boobs for proper bants.

Everyone's favourite cadaverous, golfing evangelical Republican makes his most famous album, the grand celebration of the teenage boy (strictly speaking, this is by the band Alice Cooper, led by Alice Cooper, who would later go solo under the name Alice Cooper). Although not a concept album, School's Out sticks its central theme out like a tongue. This theme is, of course, the unthinking delights of the male adolescent. This extends even to the artwork: the original sleeve came with four legs so the "desk" could stand up, the album opened like a proper desk, revealing depictions of a catapult, a pen knife, marbles and a comic book. Topping all this was a pair of paper knickers covering the vinyl itself, a girl's underwear being the greatest prize a boy's desk could hold. As such the music itself, though firmly hard rocking, actually comes across as oddly ingenuous. It's the music of a 13-year-old playing GTA, still feeling mildly guilty over his fifth wank of the day. The opener and title track, Alice's Cooper's most renowned song, has become the quintessential song about the end of the school year, which is a fantastic turn of events because it is a brilliant song. They pitch the song perfectly, sufficiently childish and mischievous without being obnoxious. However, the album beginning on such an apex may cause the rest of it to appear diminished to the listener. One leitmotif that occurs throughout the album is West Side Story, one of Alice Cooper's (the man, not the band) favourite films. Indeed, Gutter Cats Vs. The Jets lists Bernstein and Sondheim in the credits. The inclusion of these allusions is thematically fitting, what with those finger-snapping street toughs dancing into a rumble. But you may find that this pushes the album over the line from self-awareness to self-parody. Personally, I'm fond of dear Alice, so I'm happy for him to indulge his peccadilloes. The album rocks like a bastard, and has several aces (Public Animal #9 is a particular killer), but I can't quite muster five stars for it. Maybe the issue is structural: you start off with School's Out, you inevitably have to come down after that peak. Still, it's not as if you won't enjoy the descent. Michael Bay's favourite film is also West Side Story.

As a student, I once spent a summer working in a purgatorial tourist trap shop in a seaside town, selling dinghies and pornographic playing cards to apathetic tourists. The music the shop played was from a 5-cd compilation; the staff (mainly 16-yr-olds) had been prevented from putting on their own music after the boss walked in to the sound of Eminem rapping about raping his own mother. Anyway, the best songs on that CD were one of the few reasons I didn't open my own wrists whilst working there. These included I Am The Resurrection, Ghost Town, The Model and Sunshine Superman (the worst included Bette Davis Eyes: who would want Bette Davis' wonky eyes anyway? They looked like Ygor's from Young Frankenstein). So, I have quite some fondness for Donovan from the outset. That the Happy Mondays paid homage to him on Pills 'N Thrills and Bellyaches also works in his favour. But I had not sat down and properly listened to an album of his before. This was no purposful evasion; I just hadn't. I probably would have given this a bash at some juncture in the future, but other acts have piqued my curiosity more over the years: Gary Numan has seemed more overtly intriguing to me than this trippy folk-rock troubadour. Listening to this album inevitably conjures the image of you-know-who. Yes, him. This causes a doubt as to whether Donovan is truly worthwhile, or just a capable xeroxing in lieu of the real deal. I'd like to dispel that scepticism. Although of course he was an influence on Donovan, it's unfair and reductive to dismiss Donovan as mere karaoke, and also you'd be missing out. You see, it turns out Sunshine Superman is highly enjoyable. Part of this pleasure comes from his distinction to Dylan; contempt might not be in Donovan's bag, but Dylan can hardly manage Donovan's feyness. Indeed, one can discern how this influenced Marc Bolan, particularly in the lightness and clarity of Donovan's voice. However, the best songs on this album (Sunshine Superman, Season of the Witch, Bert's Blues, that sort) are, perhaps counterintuitively given Donovan's reputation, rather fierce rockers. The gentler, folksier numbers unfortunately tend to drag a touch, but not disqualifyingly so. As such, this album isn't perfect, but a great time should result anyway.

A maddening album to write about, as it manages to be exactly good enough to warrant 4 stars, and so it's almost impossible to get traction with your prose when discussing it. There are no faults on the album to a fault, and as such it just lacks that touch of character to make it a true classic. Moby Grape possess a reputation among two particular tribes of music snob. Firstly, they appeal to those who wish they were acid causalties in the Summer of Love, as they love the idea of peace and love and especially free love; that last category makes up about 99% of their yearning for the hippy ideal. Secondly, they appeal to your standard Pitchfork reader who will lecture you on how this album is better than Forever Changes, which is better than Fifth Dimension, which is better than Electric Music for the Mind and Body, which is better than Surrealistic Pillow, which is better than The Doors, despite them never having sat down and listened to any of those, all the while living in pitiful terror over the discovery that their favourite film is actually Frozen. So, the album accidentally suffers from the reputation of its advocates being mild cases of douchebag. But why this audience? Well, Moby Grape go down as one of the most legendary lost bands of the 60s, one of the most promising acts crippled by incompetent label bureaucrats, pernicious management, internecine tumults, personal catastrophes and perennial bad luck. Their debut album Moby Grape, therefore, has to be a masterwork to redeem the sorry tale of Moby Grape. And in truth, it's a very good album. It's a very good collection of very good songs. And that's it. My opinion of the album over time is something I find curious. Learning of this album's notoriety, I first tried it about ten years ago, and I was distinctly underwhelmed. It lacked the spark of several of those 60s Californian albums I listed earlier, a few of which I consider masterpieces. Over the last decade, I've given it a few more chances, and I have grown much more of an appreciation for it. But my first reaction, I believe, captured a sad but undeniable truth of this album: it's alright, not great. One can't find a flaw in the playing or the production, but one also can't find a riff or a holler that truly stirs up the blood. It's worth exactly 4 stars, which somehow feels heartbreaking. That said, one offshoot of Moby Grape really does warrant all the accolades: Oar, the sole solo album by deeply troubled bandmember Alexander "Skip" Spence. But that's a different album on the list.

Secretary rock! Music for secretaries. For those about to take a bubble bath with a glass of Chardonnay before retiring to bed with a Marian Keyes and a Rampant Rabbit, we salute you! Perhaps I should elaborate on what secretary rock denotes. Secretary rock is the genre of genteel singer-songwriters playing mild, offensively inoffensive acoustic numbers on either piano or guitar usually about the desire for love rather than love itself, primarily for a adult female audience pursuing an accessible, usually romantic, occasionally bittersweet and above-all tasteful slab of music to play in the evening; such women may well own copies of Nevermind and OK Computer, but they turned them off when Territorial Pissings and Fitter Happier came on, never to be played again. Remember Dido? Her No Angel (such a secretary rock title) is the paradigm of the secretary rock album. Of course, the term secretary rock comes with slightly unfortunate assumptions about the gender of its fans; that said, prog rock has the same issue inverted. Also, plenty of male acts purposefully make secretary rock: Michael Bublé, David Gray, Jack Johnson and John Jackson. But we should acknowledge that secretary rock is a genre primarily aimed at women. As a broad-shouldered, hairy-chested, hairy-toed sort of chap, secretary rock is not really the genre for me, in the same sense that boy bands aren't marketed towards your thirtysomething straight guy (although more thirtysomething straight guys have a secret fondness for Take That and N-Sync than you think). Tracy Chapman's debut album, Tracy Chapman, is one of the main progenitors of modern secretary rock: no dissonance, very weak eroticism, no vocal or instrumental gymnastics (secretaries may own a Mariah Carey album, but Mariah ain't secretary rock), slightly pompous, an exercise in bourgeois good taste. And there's the problem. It's so beige. It lacks any bite, to the extent that you wonder if it's still alive. Can't secretaries dream bigger? The aspirational cosiness of the album does a disservice to both the creator and the listener. A secretary's reach should exceed her grasp, or what's a Kate Bush for? Actually, I am overlooking the political currents running through the album. Or rather, I don't find much intrigue in them. I have said before that popular music is not where adults should derive their political opinions on, but the protest song is, at its best, one of the great traditions of popular music (how many political classical pieces can you recall? Beethoven's Third?). But Talkin' Bout a Revolution is utterly platitudinous and quite smug. What revolution is Tracy Chapman advocating? I suspect she just means better schools and hospitals (which is obviously not a bad thing to want, but it's hardly the Beveridge Report). For Cthulhu's sake, secretaries are surely cleverer than this? Tracy Chapman is surely cleverer than this? Both can do better. Both know they can do better. Both need to realise that lovemaking is not just the most intimate expression of love a person can experience with another, it's also the most fun a person can delight in with another. It's all lovely to cuddle a lover through the night, but it's even lovelier to explore the delights between the sleights of their thighs. Mr. Rampant Rabbit can hop off.

I have previously said that I find reviewing jazz deadening: I have neither the expertise nor the inclination to write about jazz in a considered manner. Also, who wants to read about jazz? Have you ever read a genuinely entertaining passage about uncommon time signatures? (Postscript: I sent this piece to a friend to read before it was uploaded, and she refused, saying she hated jazz and would decline to read a jazz review regardless of who wrote it or what it said. That, my associates, is vindication.) Still, I should seek to toughen myself up, and Herbie Hancock's Headhunters is properly labelled jazz-funk, so perhaps I could treat this as a bridge from one genre I'm comfortable writing about to one that makes me uneasy. But then, I remember the genre is jazz-funk. Quick primer on jazz-funk: in the late 60s jazz cats, most notably Miles Davis, start to take inspiration from hard rock, because everyone understandably wants to be Hendrix. Likewise, soul musicians also start to take inspiration from hard rock, because everybody understandably wants to be Hendrix, and thus devise funk. In the febrile conditions of the early 70s, both camps merge, begetting a form of jazz that's all about the bass and rather synth-driven. Now, among some of your clever-clog music journos, jazz-funk (a.k.a. fusion) retains somewhat of a high reputation due to its, well, fusion of jazz and funk. However, it's hard to think of a genre more widely despised than jazz-funk. Miles Davis' Bitches Brew has perennially battled Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica as the album most heralded by pseuds who secretly prefer Girls Aloud (e.g., my mate Rob), and just as many clever-clog journos decry jazz-funk as utterly fucking unlistenable. As for myself, I guess I'm a jazz-funk pragmatist. If it sounds good, it's good. If it sounds wank, it's wank. Miles Davis' On the Corner? Good. Weather Report's Heavy Weather? Wank. The opening to Headhunters is promising. The first track Chameleon starts with a stone groove. But you drift. Your attention takes a little walkabout, and without realising it you've somehow brought a cheesemaking kit on Amazon, all because your brain was looking for something to do whilst listening to jazz-funk. Now, none of that is meant to imply that Headhunters sounds bad: it doesn't. It sounds alright, but nothing more than that. And it drags. When one is arsed enough to concentrate, individual passages impress, but one inevitably loses focus and Headhunters just becomes something on in the background. Is that a mark of a good jazz album? Upon a second listen to this album, I am wholly unshifted in my jazz-funk pragmatism. I know that some will treasure this, and some will loathe it. I enjoy the possibly sanest position of deeming it okay. It sounds fair, but a bit dull. What a great virtue concision really is!

Something I have discovered about myself during this vinyl odyssey is that I have quite a fondness for what I consider the best country. Yes, that qualifier makes it almost tautological. But remember that even the most ardent country fans would recognise that a lot of country is banal, overproduced, saccharine, meatheaded or just a bit naff. Anyway, like plenty of people my age, I first began wondering if country had some charms I had, in my ignorance, cold-shouldered after the late renaissance of Johnny Cash (actually, with me it was more that my love of Elvis steered me towards the rest of the Million Dollar Quartet, but you know what I mean). After that, it was a short jaunt to Hank Williams and Merle Haggard (who I prefer to Johnny Cash, in my standard contrarian manner), but I had no drive to explore further than there. I'm British: country is never going to be seen as cool over here. But I just looked up my stats, and country currently sits as my 5th favourite genre, with a flattering average of 4. The best album the generator's introduced to me is Time (The Revelator) by Gillian Welch, an astonishing exploration of Americana's potential. Much of the classic rock I relish openly declares its debt to country. So, I guess I like country. So where does The Last of the True Believers sit? A comfortable 4. Genuinely sweet rather than diabetes-inducing, and although a touch slight, The Last of the True Believers proves delightful throughout if you like country. If you don't, I don't think you'll gain much out of this, and that's fine: it's hardly an offence to dislike a style of music. I should say this is afflicted with that common ailment of 4-star albums: it's more a collection of very good songs than a cohesive album. But is that a fault per se? Hendrix's Are You Experienced is pretty much just a bounding-together of individual tracks, and I still consider that a masterpiece. Mind, Are You Experienced is a collection of some of the greatest songs ever, not just ones that are very good.

Although I have owned two Aphex Twin albums in the past (his more raucous, jungle-inflected stuff), to be honest Aphex Twin is an artist I have found easier to admire than like unquestionly. The story of Aphex Twin fascinates, partly due to Richard D. James' gleeful mythomania. Among his claims include sleeping 2 hours a night, gaining musical inspiration from lucid dreaming, scratching sandpaper instead of records, owning a tank (apparently, he actually owns an armoured car), living in a bank vault, purchasing the Michael Faraday Memorial, playing gigs in people's living rooms, and being named after a stillborn older brother. One of these legends is that this album assembles tracks he had lain down since the age of 14 on his ZX Spectrum, hence the timeframe indicated on the title. But is the music as interesting as the lore? The adjectives Aphex Twin generates seem impressive to some: experimental, challenging, innovative, unique, uncompromising. To multitudes, those terms inspire despair rather than intrigue. It appears tailor-made to accompany an Adam Curtis montage or Chris Morris' more surreal excursions; again, that thought will cause some to weep. But I am a sturdier figure. I chew up supposedly formidable works as if they were made by Wrigleys. Over this week, I have listened to Selected Ambient Works 85-92 thrice, and yes, it conjures those dread phrases "rewards repeated listenings" and "on its own terms". On the first occasion, which was not part of the reviewing process, I was, like I suspect many others would be, a trifle bored. It's an hour of ambient electronic dance music ca. 1985-1992. It sounds like an hour of ambient electronic dance music ca. 1985-1992. It didn't sound unpleasant, but unengaging and meandering. So, I continued with my assumption that Aphex Twin was not that embraceable. The second time, after the generator presented it, I found it much more alluring. The ambient nature of the album clicked, and I thought myself foolish for my prior dismissal. The third time, whilst writing this, I focused more the textures of individual tracks, and I was oft reminded of a group I adore, PiL (just checked, and the album does sample PiL's Fodderstompf). Like PiL's early work, the iciness may lead even those who appreciate difficult music to have their misgivings, but I'm not one of them. So yes, I like Aphex Twin, and I like this album a lot. By the by, Fact magazine (no, I haven't heard of it either) named this as the greatest album of the 90s. Even though this is an excellent album, can you think of a more pretentious choice?

Can one judge a band for spawning a contemptible legacy? You know, if every band citing them as an influence turns out to be not just woeful, but hateful? Radiohead and landfill indie, or Nirvana and all those godawful mid-90s angsty alt-rock twats? One of the most acute examples of deleterous imitators threatening the original band's reputation is Faith No More. Practically a one-hit wonder in their home country of the States, they managed much more success in Europe and the Antipodes. Despite this, the lead singer Mike Patton has good (hah!) claim to be the godfather of an especially American genre, nu-metal. With The Real Thing's eclectic fusion of metal, funk, rap, and prog, Faith No More set up what would become the sorriest genre of music 10 years later. The line from Faith No More to Korn, Limp Bizkit and Papa Roach is an inch long with no deviations. Is The Real Thing to blame for the crimes of the future? Well, it's not as if it can't be judged for the crimes of its present. Funk metal and rap rock are hardly the most esteemed of genres for justified reasons: not only were the songs usually risible, they tried too hard to convince that they were the apotheosis of cool, making them the least cool music on the planet. Still, I was 6 when Epic was released as a single, and I remember thinking that the song and video, what with its rapping and its posturing and its special effects, was awesome and radical, a song worthy for the Bretts of the world. Thirty years on, I can't deny it still has an immature charm, even if the vision of Mike Patton frugging around like a numpty in Bermuda shorts invites a chuckle and not a whoop. It does remember to rock enough, and that's enough for it to work, if not quite excel. And you can extend that judgement to the rest of the album. It's a servicable rock album, diminished partially by showy gooning. Although Epic is the defining song of the album, I prefer the opener From Out of Nowhere, which is a fine, solid bit of 80s hard rock. The album peaks with its straightest rock numbers, yet chafes when they start slapping the bass and throwing gang signs. I should also mention that Mike's voice proves divisive; many will find it, like those of his nu-metal descendents, uninvitingly whiny. I empathise with that position, but I was able to forgive it. It's adolescent more than discordant. I acknowledge that I'm being generous, but there are far worse albums in the world. Every album claiming this album as inspiration, for instance.

(Content warning: this review includes a discussion of anti-Semitic statements.) A while ago, during a review of Gang Starr's Step in the Arena, I wondered if there was a term for the period in hip-hop from 1987 to 1992, which saw the genre both go mainstream and mutate into something almost unrecognisable. Well, Wikipedia designates this period as golden age hip-hop, which strikes me as a slightly lazy terming, but that's just a quibble. In any case, the most critically feted act from that period is surely Public Enemy. Explicly political, explicitly pugnacious, Public Enemy took both their philosophy and rhetoric not so much from the mainstream civil rights movement, but from the more hard-line Black Power movement, which within its membership has had elements espousing black nationalism, black self-determination and, at its most extreme end, black separatism and black supremacism. In my review of Tracy Chapman's first album, I questioned the depth of her political statements, as I found them essentially platitudinous, at their hearts just pleas for better public services. But what about the opposite case, when the act evinces a position that is radical to the point of outrage? For instance, the Clash would wear t-shirts bearing Brigade Rosse, an Italian commmunist terrorist group who were responsible for the murder of around 50 people. In retrospect, I think it's as plain as day that Joe Strummer was being a silly sausage, and the Clash's somewhat callow glorification of far-left rebellion has aged as well as communism. But Public Enemy, especially with the album Fear of a Black Planet, represents perhaps the platonic example of a major group vaunting immoderate politics and inviting justified indignation. Beforehand, Public Enemy had, with lyrics declaring Louis Farrakhan "a prophet", indicated that their stance was not as mainstream as, say, the condemnation of police brutality. But then Professor Griff, both Public Enemy's Minister of Information and their Bez, gave an interview to The Washington Times, where he declared that Jews were "responsible of the majority of wickedness in the world." This was not the first time he had expressed anti-Semitic views in an interview (also, he was openly homophobic in the same interview, and again this was not the first time he had berated an interviewer homophobically). Leader Chuck D dithered, initially firing Professor Griff then inviting him back. You should note an unsettling taste developing in your mouth. This album emerged in the aftershocks of all this. And this album has openly anti-Semitic and homophobic lyrics (I'll spare you, you can look them up yourselves). It also spouts long-disproven conspiracy theories and avows positions that, I suspect, most people will find nonsensical and rather unpleasant. This is not in any way to dilute the seriousness of racial issues in the States and beyond, but rather to hope for a more sober, considered take on important political issues. For all the righteous anger supposedly driving this album, the listener should take it as gimmicky, as a childish tack in lieu of intellectual sophistication. Also, the album's length and the lack of musical relent become wearying, and finishing the album degenerates to a chore. By the by, Public Enemy didn't stop there with the anti-Semitism. Their 1999 album There's a Poison Goin' On includes the song Swindler's Lust (again, I won't be quoting the lyrics), and soon after that Chuck D and Professor Griff formed a side project named Confrontation Camp. Who on earth is still championing Public Enemy? 4chan?

An album requiring the listener to meditate on it, Daydream Nation does have the courtesy to indicate that it takes time to appreciate it fully. Mind, does such effort compensate generously. Sonic Youth became the Brian Eno of US alternative rock, in that they occupied a role of in-house philosophers, figures whose experiments and theorising plotted much of the landscape for many who would follow. Rock had investigated dissonant, disjointed guitars before (to exhaustion and nausea with Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music), but it was Sonic Youth who summarised it into a template for your standard 90s alt-rock weasels. Sonic Youth were also one of the biggest proponents of a genreless approach to music that embraced the high, low and middlebrow, rejecting those labels as unconducive to a truly explorative love of music. Sonic Youth had no qualms mixing John Cage, Albert Ayler, Led Zeppelin, the Carpenters, Suicide, Minor Threat, Madonna and KRS-One. Now, like Eno, this seems more driven by intellectual rather than emotional concerns. However, like Eno, they had good heads, so criticising them for that seems slightly churlish, even though someone could legitimately say their intellectualism is why Sonic Youth gives off too much of a chill for them. Another consequence of this is that someone who claims Sonic Youth to be their favourite band is hopelessly pretentious. Still, Sonic Youth have been warranted critical faves since they developed their approach in the early 80s. With Daydream Nation, their most celebrated album, Sonic Youth managed to place simultaneously one foot in the vanguard and the other in the relative mainstream. So gnarled guitars and R.E.M. melodies, basically. Now, Daydream Nation partially suffers from the diluting effects of every Sonny-Jim subsequently pilfering their innovations (which, in fairness, Sonic Youth would acknowledge resulted partially from their own purloinments). This perversely is in scale with their increased ambition for this album; when you break through, you want to hear everywhere the noise you pioneered, especially when others copy you. A double album made for a bit more dosh than their previous records, Daydream Nation is quite the troughful to nosh through in one visit. So yes, once again it's our old pal "rewards repeated listenings". The initial hearing may prove samey, but later the nuances will chime through. That aspect underscores the delightful paradox of this album: whilst ostensibly an uncompromising, punk-infused hard rocker, the real delights are in the subtleties, the details. Now, as it's a double, the disinclined listener won't be arsed to devote the time to comprehend it, and even the well-disposed may feel their joints start to itch at the length. But if you want it to persuade you, you'll find its disparately fluttering eyelashes will make you buy it a drink or five.

A classy album, this one. It's so classy, you can use the cover model's pubes as dental floss. But yes, this is a sophisticated album intended for we sophisticated cats. The ideal circumstance for listening to this album is whilst sitting beside a roaring fireplace, reading Nabokov's Pale Fire, lazily swirling some Rémy Martin around the glass and being fellated by the woman on the front of that month's Vogue. Indeed, that's how Bryan Ferry ends his Wednesdays. I'm quite a fan of Roxy Music. I love them in a similar way to how I love the Happy Mondays. I love their inventiveness, their oddball discernment, their magpie ransacking of any and all music trends that took their fancy, their unabashed hedonism (which led to both Roxy and the Mondays putting underdressed lovelies on their album covers; neither group could remotely be called feminist). Also like the Mondays, Roxy moderately pissed on their reputational chips with later demerits, leading T-Rex/the Stone Roses to nab more than their fair share of glam/baggy kudos. But this is their first album, so let's save that story for the last Roxy album on the list (Country Life, if you're wondering). Roxy Music gestated in that classic incubator for smart British bands, the art college. In fact, Roxy Music may well qualify as the quintessential art college band. Bryan Ferry, the son of a Geordie miner, was magnetically drawn to the Fine Art department of Newcastle University (not technically an art college, but it's not as if he studied chemical engineering). Under the tutelage of Richard Hamilton (who designed the cover of the Beatles White Album), Ferry became devoted to living a life governed by elegance, taste and flair, seeking to unite his idols Marcel Duchamp, Humphrey Bogart and Otis Redding. Brian Eno, the son of an Essex postman, immersed himself in the then-nascent postmodern attitude of questioning every assumption that British art colleges had fostered. Wielding a post-structuralist arsenal of hypotheses and approaches, Eno sought to put art theory into music practice. (One oddity about Roxy Music is that, for all their assertions that they were creating a new aristocracy, along with Bryan Ferry's latter penchants for foxhunting and Eton, the band members' backgrounds were almost all firmly working-class. The ony posh one in the group was public-school-educated guitar ace Phil Manzanera, the son of a man who worked for a British airline and who might have been a spy working throughout Latin America). Roxy Music was Bryan's baby, but though he was unquestionably the leader (one constant source of resentment within the group was Bryan's insistence that he be credited with "words and music" on the album, meaning he'd get the bulk of the royalties), Bryan needed the rest of the group to construct his vision. Also, Brian had gallons of ideas of his own, and though Bryan and Brian would battle in part over who had the biggest avant-garde chops (also, Bryan got miffed at the remarkable quantity of ladies who bounced upon Brian), on the first two Roxy albums one can feel how synergistic Bryan and Brian were. These ideas, which can't be attributed solely to Bryan or to Brian, include a pop-art derived rejection of high-low culture boundaries. In the first track, Re-make/Re-model, has each band member play an excerpt from another piece of music: Graham Simpson, the soon-departing bassist plays the riff from Day Tripper, Andy Mackay, the saxophonist and oboist (and son of a London gas man) plays Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries, etcetry etcetry. This was at a time when prog rock was trying to build its own high-low culture barrier, putting itself on the high side. This is surely a reason to love Roxy Music: they pointed out, musically and comically, that those prog popinjays were a phananx of wankers. If I had to single out a curious factor from this album, it would be its romanticism. Yes, it's a romanticism that's been dolled up with camp and irony, but it's still romanticism under the cosmetics. This is due to Bryan, not Brian. Whereas Brian would nick prodigiously from the past because the very idea of such theft interested him, Bryan truly venerated the matinee idols and soul singers of his youth, and he was clever enough to clock that he could be simultaneously arch and sincere. So, we get his paean to Bogart (2HB), his three-part vignette on love discovered, consummated and recalled (If There Is Something), and his doo-wop pastiche (Bitter Ends). That said, Bryan's romanticism (which occasionally veered into chauvinism) is only one facet of this great album, and I wish I'd said more about Andy and Phil (I don't know what the drummer Paul Thompson's dad did for a living). But there's so much to devour here, and I've wittered on enough already, so why not find out yourself? Play this album, it's dead classy.

I hadn't heard of Mike Ladd before receiving this album, and I guess I was slightly daunted by reviewing another hip-hop album after my severely negative reaction to Fear of a Black Planet earlier this week. Of course, hip-hop is a diverse genre, and it's immoral to judge someone for the iniquities of another. So, I postponed reviewing this for a few days in order to try and approach it open-mindedly. And I liked it, but I didn't love it. Mind, I get a few hints that this is a album not really seeking to be loved. From what I have gathered, Mike Ladd is a whale of an MC in the underground hip-hop brigade who happens to have been a lecturer on poetry at NYU. And I can't deny that this album is a dense, intricately constructed work. The album explicitly draws influence from Afrofuturism and, more broadly, science fiction. 1984, Blade Runner and the works of William Gibson all get allusions, and the bonkers Saturnian jazz leader Sun Ra casts an immense shadow over this album. As such, one can admire the grand scope and craft of Welcome to the Afterfuture, but one can also recognise that such a enterprise will leave some cold: some people just despise sci-fi as tedious piffle. Me, I can enjoy the occasional knee-trembler with, say, a Kubrick film or a JG Ballard novel, but I have no yearning to tackle any form of Dune. This album will appeal to some as much as it will appal others, and others like me will just consider it alright. I should point out as well that the album is rather low-key in its tone. This album isn't hook driven, nor especially virtuousic lyrically. The craft can't really be faulted, but it doesn't elate. I believe this is purposeful; the themes invite contemplation, not joy. This is an album best enjoyed alone, gone midnight. It's an album to admire, not adore. But the by, on the song The Animist, he talks about what his name would be if he were Jewish (Jared), Muslim (Ibrahim) and Catholic (Chris). The name Mike, which I assume is short for Michael, comes from the Old Testament, meaning it's a Jewish and latterly Christian name (and Michael is an archangel in Islam, though I don't know if Michael is a common name in Islamic cultures). Did he forget his own name?

I did it myself. I can't blame anyone else. I am the responsible party. I was sitting down, listening to this and rather enjoying it, but then, when the fourth song started, three words popped into my skull. Those three words absolutely torched the album, then salted the earth upon which the album stood so nothing could grow back. I gained no joy from those three words, but I can't deny that they're true. I really don't want to be mean to this album, and I apologise for any upset I cause, but if I tell you them, you'll realise I'm right and the album will be ruined. So, I'm going to give you every chance to back out. If you stop reading this and just listen to the album, you'll probably get quite a bit of pleasure from it. But when you hear those three words, there's no going back. I'm serious. You may very well be better off ignoring me and instead trying to spot the jazz and hip-hop inflections throughout the album. You may find Erykah Badu's earnestness charming in its lack of guile, and though you'd probably think the album overlong, such ambition may impress you. But with those three words, there's no doubt that you'll immediately recoil from the album and never wish to hear a note from it again. And I'm sorry. I didn't want to conjure those three words. But I did, and it's done, and I have to be honest, but you don't need to know. You can just continue in happy innocence, or you can continue reading. I'll give you some time to think. ... ... ... ... ... Here's another warning. Think about what you're doing by reading on. If you want to keep on finding sausages tasty, you don't see how they're made. ... ... ... ... ... One more chance. Next time I'll say the three words, and it'll be on your head. By going on, you accept your share of responsibility. Once again, I am sorry. ... ... ... ... ... Are you ready? ... ... ... ... ... "Jamiroquai with tits!"

Previously, I gave Dr. Dre's The Chronic 1 star, primarily for being boring. However, I have to give this, which The Chronic samples heavily, 5 stars. Mad, innit? Anyway, this is rather a tricky album to dissect, mainly because of its excellence. Pointing out the flaws in an album tends to be an easy task. Articulating why an album is good challenges far more. Now, of course George Clinton gives us a ready adjective for that purpose: it's funky. But what do you say beyond that? Well, one aspect bugs me mildly: it's a concept album. For the thankfully uninitiated, the concept album was a disastrous by-product of the more general formation of the album as an artform in itself. With the word "art" now part of their vocab, bands tried recording albums that told epic stories about orcs and aliens, jammed with leitmotifs and musique concrete experiments in order to underscore the profundity of the message, man. Now, the concept album is an almost wholly lamentable concept, and almost every attempt at a concept album irks the listener and degrades the artist. The concept behind any concept album would cause a teacher to humiliate a twelve-year-old if the poor mite submitted it in a creative writing project. Yes, it helps if albums are thematically coherent, but that does not mean attempting a sequel to the Silmarillion, it just means making sure the album flows smoothly. Mothership Connection is one of the vanishingly few concept albums that work, but what's the concept behind this album? Black people in UFOs. As an image, one can feel gladdened by the glorification, the humour and the afrofuturism. But is it enlightening? Not really. But that doesn't matter. The music is plenty enlightening enough on its own. Toasty and ingratiating, there really isn't a badly placed note on this album. It's perfectly acceptable to revel in Mothership Connection without bothering with the narrative. Just love it.