Great storytelling album, very influential for the folk/rock genre. Felt very americana. Most tracks are somewhat basic musically, but you're here for the lyrical content for the most part.
Favourite Tracks: Like a Rolling Stone, Ballad of a Thin Man, Desolation Row
Experimental art rock that was way ahead of its time for 1991. Can clearly hear the influences on other rock acts of the 90s and all types of acts today. Abrasive and dissonant at times and those vocals are so soft, but very musically interesting and kept my attention the entire time. Would rate 4.5/5 if possible.
Favourite Tracks: Only Shallow, Loomer, Come In Alone, Soon
Enjoyed this album quite a bit, just felt it wasn't very cohesive. I especially didn't really see how the instrumental track in the first half really fit with the rest of the album. Some great tracks though.
Favourite Tracks: Changes, Supernaut, Cornucopia
Great Jazz-Pop-Rock fusion album. Very well produced with no filler. So many dynamics and rhythm changes and syncopation throughout, really fun listen.
Favourite Tracks: Peg, Deacon Blues, Home at Last
Very funky and fun. Prince is a legend and so easily crafts these catchy jazz-pop-funk tracks. Heard Parliament Funkadelic vibes on Housequake, and the songs like Ballad of Dorothy Parker like influenced modern R&b/funk artists like Anderson .Paak.
Favourite Tracks: Sign I'm the Times, Ballad of Dorothy Parker, The Cross
This album had some bangers, definitely ahead of its time with its sound. The vocals weren't my cup of tea, but the instrumentation and progressions were really cool. Enjoyable listen (besides Don't).
Favourite Tracks: No Bones, They Always Come, Yeah We Know
Very consistent, enjoyable album. Many more highs than lows.
Favourite Tracks: Everlasting Light, Ten Cent Pistol, These Days
Fun album with fun sounds for daaaaaancing. Might not listen again casually but still found it enjoyable!
Favourite Tracks: El Cayuco, Saca Tu Mujer
Not my style but I enjoyed it still. It's definitely a landmark album for the genre and and the future of electronic/pop music
Favourite Tracks: Sweet Dreams, Wrap it Up, This is the House
Weird and wonderful and fun. Just a whole lotta noodling and soloing and creativity that was really enjoyable to listen to.
Favourite Tracks: Peaches En Regalia, Little Umbrellas, It Must Be a Camel
Funky, groovy, great album. Couldn't stop myself from tapping my feet to just about every song.
Favourite Tracks: Cloud Nine, Love is a Hurtin Thing, Dont Let Him Take Your Love From Me
It was fine. Country isn't my style but this wasn't off putting, it was whelming. I liked the bluesier parts best.
Favourite Track: Busy Being Blue
Greater than the sum of its parts. It can be skeletal at times, but also larger than life. It's cold and dark, but conveys so much emotion through the movements of the music. Every little piece of the puzzle matters and was well thought out, from the swells of strings on How to Disappear Completely, to the transition between Optimistic to In Limbo. A 10/10 album experience.
Favourite Tracks: all of them
A landmark album in hip-hop, and one of the father's of jazz rap. The beats are great, the lyrics are clever and impactful, and it's just generally fun all around. And then they came out with Midnight Marauders too...
Favourite Tracks: Buggin Out, Vibes and Stuff, Scenario
It was fine. It didn't really catch my attention too much, but there were some good tracks on it. It was a pretty reasonable 3.
Favourite Tracks: April 5th, Give It Up
One of the GOAT rock albums and a truely influential album. Zeppelin is like an all-star cast of musicians for this genre. When The Levee Breaks still has one of the most amazing intros of all time. A masterclass.
Favourite Tracks: All of them, but special shout out to Misty Mountain Hop, Battle of Evermore, and When The Levee Breaks
The beats are funky and fun and you can hear the influence it had on southern and alternative hip hop. Must have been a breath of fresh air during the gangsta rap era of the early 90s. Some of the subject matter in the lyrics came off a bit squeaky clean and naive though, but overall a fun listen.
Favourite Tracks: Tennessee, U
Cool album and fun listen! Wasn't a huge fan of the hard panning of vocals to one side and the whole instrumental to the other, but still good none the less. 3.5/5
Favourite Tracks: Situation Vacant, Waterloo Sunset
Pretty much packed with bangers. A lot of classics on this one. The intro to Hot For Teacher is always incredible, and I love the syncopation in the prechorus too. Just all around fun album.
Favourite Tracks: Hot For Teacher, Jump, Girl Gone Bad
It was fine. A lot of songs started to blend together. Could be a symptom of production at the time, but it was fine.
Favourite Tracks: it was fine.
It was hard and heavy and dark, and it was great. This one felt a bit more cohesive than the last one, and seemed like it had more of a consistent theme to it.
Favourite Tracks: The Wizard, A Bit of Finger/Sleeping Village/Warning
It was certainly interesting and it was certainly an experience. I can appreciate the experimentation and the influence this this must have had, but I'm not likely coming back to it anytime soon.
It's so good. So much variety and incredible performances vocally and musically. I was also surprised how many of these songs I didn't even know I knew. There was only one or two I hadn't heard before. What a great album!
Favourite Tracks: (Besides the classics) Death On Two Legs, I'm In Love With My Car, Lazing On a Sunday Afternoon, Seaside Rendezvous
So different from what I expected with my knowledge of other Beck albums. A much more calm, melancholy vibe and feeling with slower tracks and more ambience. The riff-driven songs I know from Beck are replaced with swelling strings, soft acoustic guitars, and more feeling and emotional impact. What a cool album and a pleasant and welcome surprise.
What more is there to say about this one that hasn't been said? I continue to find new moments in this album that I love, like the harmonies at the end Never Going Back Again, or the kind of off-kilter strumming pattern in the intro of I Don't Want To Know. It's a wonder album with ups and downs and beautiful flow throughout.
A pleasant album with a lot of cool sounds. It does feel a bit ahead of the curve for 1984 while still having some of that quintessential 80s new wave sound. I really enjoyed the breakdown near the end of Thorn of Crowns, and the chord progression in the chorus of The Killing Moon.
Favourite Tracks: The Killing Moon, Thorn of Crowns
Such an influential album and group. The skeletal production works well with Run and DMC's expressive style and signalled a change in hip hop at the time. Loved the dialogue between the two MCs too on tracks like It's Like That.
Bombtrack after bombtrack. It's just banger after banger. This album just brings the energy way up with the first track and it stays there until the end.
Not usually a country fan but this was an enjoyable listen. Loved the production on this album and all of the cool chord progressions. The tone of the album felt pretty consistent throughout as well. A pleasant surprise!
Favourite Tracks: Slow Burn, Lonely Weekend, Space Cowboy
Pleasant listen, it didn't really standout much or grab my attention, but it was easy to listen to. Really enjoyed the chord changes and progressions of some of the songs like Ba-Di-Da.
Favourite Tracks: Ba-Di-Da, Everything Happens
It's Christmas. It's a Christmas album. It's one of the best Christmas albums. The wall of sound is in full effect here and it works so well. An excellent album and the perfect day for it. Almost like that was planned...
Really enjoyed this album. I was going into it expecting indie pop like Two Weeks, but I was surprised by how complex it ended up being. It doesn't follow the typical indie trends, especially at the time of its release, and experiments with time signatures, dissonance, complex meters, harmonies, guitar phrasing and traditional song structure. Fine For Now had me nerding-out trying to follow all of the changes. It's still an indie rock album at it's core and not the most experimental thing I've ever heard, but I loved hearing the risks it took in this genre.
Favourite Tracks: Two Weeks, Fine For Now, While You Wait for the Others
It had a lot of bangers and ace of spades is of course a monster of a song, but the album was a little one note to me. Still enjoyable with all its energy.
An iconic album for hip hop. It's fresh, grimy, hard hitting, and fun. The production is amazing, I love the jazz and so samples. All the members come through with great verses and the variety of voices this provides keeps every song exciting. A bonafide classic.
What a great debut! Really cool sound on this album that's different compared to what you usually hear in the big hits. More of an edge to some of them, more raw. Quite the start to a legendary career.
What a pleasant listen. Stevens weaves great stories into enjoyable folk melodies so well, it just puts you in a good mood. Really well crafted from start to finish.
Cool mix of folk, rock, and South Asian sounds even. The title track is a banger but the rest was good too!
An awesome album, very consistent throughout and the changes in tone are well navigated. Loved the big hits, and loved discovering the other gems throughout. The harmonies and story telling are just excellent. Special shoutout to Only Living Boy in New York for being incredible.
Really enjoyed this album! Early garage rock but it's still bangs. Obviously knew the big ones and enjoyed hearing the hidden gems.
More variety of sounds on this album that I expected. I came in thinking it would all be like Sweet Emotion and Walk this Way, but it varied quote a bit. Adam's Apple, No More No More and Round and Round were my favorite new discoveries.
So many interesting and different sounds here. Appreciated the variety and the blend of genres and cultures throughout. It was cool hearing the different instruments and vocal style mixed with more western backing music. Not sure I'm racing back to it, but it was an interesting listen.
The influence this album has had on music in the decades that followed is clear when you listen. You can hear the the early sounds of 90s grunge, noise rock, Arcade Fire, The Strokes, and multiple others. It's also full of unique chord progressions and sound combinations like dissonance and percussive playing. Very cool album!
It was decent, liked most of the tracks but besides the big ones they were too memorable. Solid 3
A lot of bangers, a lot of angst, a lot of mentions of milk. It's smack dab in the middle of the grunge era and is clearly a classic of the genre. It's very raw, and you can hear it in not only the lyrical content, but also in the unprocessed vocals and instrumentation at times that are imperfect and feel human. Not to say that it doesn't still sound really good, because it definitely does.
It's just full of hits and bangers, and a landmark album for Britpop and the 90s. Wore out this CD in my parents' 2002 Toyota Sienna. Special shoutout to She's Electric which is so damn good.
Veeeeerrry socially conscious. The messages were raw and well put together, so much focus was put in the lyrics and the tone was consistent throughout the album. The beats were great too, but sometimes the more spoken word delivery style didn't mesh as well with the musical elements and felt a bit disjointed. The message was clear but the flow wasn't as on point as what would have put this over the edge.
Awesome album. Lyricism is top notch, and the beats are immaculate. Questlove and J Dilla on production is such a dream team and they really show out. The feature list is great too with Slum Village, Mos Def, MC Lyte, Bilal, etc. It's one of those albums that you have to keep coming back to in order to really dive into all of its nook and crannies of both lyrical meaning and musicality.
Also my neck is sore from nodding my head for over an hour straight.
This was a bit of surprise, as I was expecting a regular 80s pop album that I've heard in a hundred different other artists, but it was actually pretty enjoyable! The first track was my favourite with its kind of dreary and dark feel. Throughout the whole album there was a lot of depth and feeling that I really appreciated. There were moments that felt a little repetitive or unexciting, but overall I enjoyed it. I'd probably give this a 3.5 if I could, and a 4 if it was a bit more consistent.
The rhythms on this thing are awesome. So different and unique, really enjoyed hearing how not only the drums but also a lot of the melodies would shift and feel off kilter before you really find them as they develop. A bit repetitive within the songs for me but still very cool listen.
Really enjoyed this one. Loved the combination of singer-songwriter folk and jazz, and the consistent tone throughout. The musicality was really cool throughout as well, with interesting timings on songs like Day is Done, and awesome chord progressions like in River Man. Definitely made me want to listen more.
Lots of bangers, including 90s classics. These songs just have such a fun every to them most of the time. Impossible not the tap for foot or nod your head.
I liked the album and it had its fair share of funky tunes, I felt it could have been more consistent though. I do hear the influence on like modern chamber pop even on this one which was really cool
A very relaxed listen. I liked the bluesy acoustic ballads and the story telling throughout. Bandera was a great way to close out the album. Probably closer to a 3.5 than a 3, I definitely enjoyed it.
A great voice and cool jazz songs are always good in my books. The live recording, with the announcement to the crowd and the mistakes all left in, adds this level of authenticity that made me enjoy it even more.
Groovin' (the song) is sooo smooth. The album is also pretty damn smooth as a whole as well. I would probably give it a 3.5 if I could.
Some of that classic grimy east coast hip hop. Raekwon floats over RZAs production and the Wu Tang features just add to the feel. So much influence from this album on late 90s/early 00s hip hop with the mafioso wave.
It's got that classic Aerosmith sound, but I preferred Toys in the Attic better. This one ran together a little bit on first listen unfortunately.
It had my at 9/8 timing. Such an interesting album with other cool time signatures too. The arrangements and are great and I can see it being one of those ones I keep coming back to and discovering new little intricacies.
It's just a great album that I've listened to countless times. Classic/5
Probably a 3.5. There were a lot of tracks I liked but probably an equal amount that I was pretty meh on. The time changes on Heart of Glass are always welcome though.
Started strong with Freedom which is a banger, but died down later in the album and I found myself waiting for the end a bit. He has an incredible voice but some songs felt a bit dated.
I appreciated the uniquene songwriting, specifically the song structures and lyrics which often told interesting stories that caught your attention. But something just didn't click like I wanted it to.
Really enjoyed it, there's some classics on here that are excellent. I think Aja was a bit more consistent though.
It's epic, huge, and awesome.
Some classic alternative rock from the 90s. I was leaning towards a 4 because I liked the first half a lot, but it kind of lost my interest on the back half of the album.
Loved the use of 5/4 time but wasn't really that hooked by the whole thing.
Such a classic. Melding neo-soul and hip-hop together in a concept album and it's done so well.
The experimentation on this album is awesome and I really admire Bowie's ability to constantly evolve throughout his career and continue to take risks. The allusions to his death on the album also make it a memorable listen.
Good ol' southern rock. The classics hit hard and the deeper cuts are still good.
Really enjoyed when they went into the heavier parts of the album, it almost felt like a mix of U2 and Oasis but more aggressive. If it were a bit more consistent it would be an easy 4.
I can understand the influence this had and the songwriting is unique, but it was not pulling me in on first listen. Could definitely be a grower though.
I can totally hear the indie rock and alternative influence this has had on music. Could get better with more listens.
Don't Think Twice It's Alright may be the best Dylan song. The others were very good too.
Awesome, had that 'wall of sound' feeling, and the harmonies and progressions are all there.
