Excellent live album with great musicianship, but it's strongest as a showcase of Kurt Cobain's deep love for music.
Good album, early songs weren't incredible to me but last two are a great end to the album. 0 songs favorites.
I mean it's incredible, genius album 5 stars, no notes, a killer start to finish. 1 Favorite: When doves cry.
Great noise pop, love this genre, Psychocandy is better though and by a solid margin.
One of the best Christmas albums ever. Phil Spector was a genius, too bad he was a piece of shit.
Primo art-alt-rock from the 2000s. Some songs hit better then others but that last song is incredible.
The entire b side is all skips and the lyrics are such 60s European bullshit but the wall of sound production is just top notch and Jackie's a fucking killer opener.
Primo college rock, slow start into a strong middle and end, It's the end of the world as we know it (and I feel fine) continues to be a truly great song
Beautiful soundscape, a bit slow and repetitive but that's likely because it's not really meant for active listening, also the last track has the most animal crossing 1 am flute of all time.
Good 90s sad boy art rock, sounds good, but I can never take 90s sad boy shit seriously.
Yep that's the stones alright
Cheesy 80s, good songs in the middle but too long and the impact of songs about loneliness is somewhat tempered when the sax solo kicks in
Not bad or anything, but once it hits why worry? The rest of the album is interminable and I don't feel like I HAD to hear this album before I died.
Good album, not much to say except it's funny how clear it is this is before album structure became important, literally just a pile of songs
Good experimental rock, I liked it except for the ukulele in the middle
Goddamn this Obama era jangle rock is aggressively not for me.
Great Jazz album, likely the best album ill give a three simply because I doubt I'll listen to it again
Good soil album with some strong 80s influence
Not bad or anything, just not for me
idk I just got bored these 70s soft rock story songs never do anything for me
Hell yeah Judas Priest!!
awww yeah I wanna funk
One of the best albums by one of the best bands of all time, unofficial 6 star
Holy shit there is not one millisecond of this album I do not genuinely and deeply hate with all my soul. Cure for the Itch is the best song on this album and it laps the rest so hard and fast that im amazed they wasted their time with other songs.
Theres like 3 fun songs buried in a 17 song mess of an album that felt like the funkiest slog possible
Not every songs incredible, but changes, life on mars and queen bitch immediately found homes among my loved songs
Massive improvement over her other album, there are enough lillith-fair-chick-rock sensibilities in this to be a good enough album to listen to, but it's nothing special and the last 2 songs are so so boring
A solid enough album knocked down to 2 stars for showing me the origin of the "put the lime In the coconut" line is a fuckin TERRIBLE novelty song
I doubt I'm gonna rate any New Wave album below a 4 but this is an easy 5 top notch New Wave-synthpop-new romantics, may be one of my favorite albums now
The good: easily Ye's best production, this is him at his height every songs a 10 out of 10, for example that interpolation of Sigmas somebody to love on bound 2 is immaculate
The bad: not one word on this album didn't either age weirdly or badly, the hypersexuality just sounds gross now and man do the socially conscious songs feel unsincere knowing where Ye's head would end up
All that being said the production and musicality of this albums still among my favorite rap albums of all time
A classic of 90s gangster rap, strongest as a demonstration of the anger of Rodney king era los Angeles
Not for me
Thankfully I heard this after Scott Walker's Scott 2, because this album is heavily influenced by it. It feels like an attempt to create a 90s version of Jackie, and it succeeds somewhat. The highs are not as high, the lows are not as low, and it doesn't pull off the sleazyness nearly as well. However, I appreciate the sheer theatricality of this album, it goes 10 miles over the top and it knows it.
Appended: This has become, over the years since I originally reviewed it, one of my favorite albums ever made.
Beautiful album, exceptional vocalist.
Post-Britpop's refutation of Britpop by simplifying the grandiose sounds of Britpop bores me so much my god this albums BORING
Pretty good folk rock, loved percy's song though i doubt I'll listen to this album again
A powerful album about being both nostalgic for and proud to have risen above the violent place you were raised, while also being immediately obvious just how much the songs on this album influenced rap for the next decade
Sorry, just found this album boring
Very trumpety
Great noise rock, not Sonic Youths best album and other bands would go on to take the noise rock sound farther and better (lightning bolt) but this is a solid album thats great to listen to
fuck its so good i gotta be one of those led zeppelin guys now huh
Solid disco album, a number of forgettable tracks buoyed by two of the greatest disco songs ever made.
Frontloaded with three great songs, then into a huge pile of bloat ended with a song about sexual abuse, a sung prayer to god and the three singers telling each other how great they are, outstandingly uneven album.
Bored me.
R.E.M at their most college rock and most boring, radio free europe is still fun but the rest of the album was eh
I don't like simple musicality, I have a major focus on music over lyrics and I tend to get bored with jazz. This album never had a chance
yep thats what i expected. its complex, difficult, and deeply interesting in a way that i loved. i'd never put a song on a playlist, but id buy a record and put it on every once in a blue moon
i get its early punk, but i didnt hear a song i "got" more then lust for life until L.A Blues and that song clicked
i can hear the influences on 80s hair metal all throughout the album, but its not exactly its zenith
i mean london calling came out the year before can i go listen to that instead? oh, i can? cool.
The theatricality of this albums fuckin great, idk if its the best album ever but i loves every second of it
prog rocks just fun
Jimi Hendrix's strongest work and a fantastic combination of classic blues styles combined with new forms of guitar and sound manipulation.
Absolutely classic blues, truly incredible stuff
Sadboy singer-songwriter just isnt for me
Classic soul, mindblowing that respect is an otis redding original but arethra definitely does it better
Dramatic singing of covers in a german cabaret style, produced and coworked by the divine comedy. good stuff but very uneven
Led Zeppelin continues to kick ass, not quite 4 levels but still great stuff
Great dance punk, maps is still a classic
Oh thats why theyre compared to the beatles
A classic of rap, but this specific 90s style doesn't click with me very well
Great debut album, but feels like it gets more props as a really great debut then it does as a really great album, it's uneven and the highs are high but the lows are so forgettable
Good reminder that New Wave was the genre of art school nerds, and sometimes that wasn't for the best. Sweet Dreams is still a banger, though.
Listening to this album served almost entirely to make me realise a lot of jokes ive heard before are at kid rocks expense and for good reason, rather be listening to icp goddamn
just an incredible album, loved it
Classic Early metal, makes me wish coven's witchcraft destroys minds and reaps souls was on this list, anyway this album is the most primo shit
Made me question if New Jersey was the most American state, so that really says everything
Imagine, if you will, a goth whose favorite album is Willy and the Poor Boys. Solid album, but my favorites, Blunderbuss, Hypocritical Kiss and Hip (Eponymus) Poor Boy, felt like the songs least emblematic of his style.
Solid 60s psych, real early which is why its here. Janis can certainly wail, to her bonus and detriment. I liked Piece of my Heart and Combination of the Two, but I wouldn't listen to it again.
Y'ever want to listen to a man die?
I mean it's incredible, genius album 5 stars, no notes, a killer start to finish.
You listen to enough New Wave, and you realize how Big Tent it really is. This is definitely closer to a Eurythmics then it is to an ABC, to its detriment for me. It definitely has three killer songs, but even so I wouldn't call it my favorite New Wave jam.
So there's a tendency in electronic music to praise early three hour long albums that invented the genre as genius instead of what they are, which is jingling keys for people doing meth. Goddamn this album is interminable, listening to it is like getting pranked by a friend who sets a song you're listening to on loop without telling you. No wonder the guy from Pendulum thought this guy was a fuck. Got through like half of half of the songs, fuckin hell 1 out of 5 this bores me to hell and back.
Girlfriend in a Coma was intended as a serious re-imagining of a Nina Simone song, which makes the fact that it's hilarious a bit awkward. Anyway, have to say it, The Smiths are incredible sadboy rock and in Morrisey's honor I'll feel slightly bad the next time I eat a hamburger.
Ok, like I get it, the songs are solid enough and the guitar playing is obviously masterful, but my god. Somewhere halfway through Key to the Highway I had my fill and we were halfway through. Album slowly lost me as it went, and Layla did not get me back.
Genuinely entranced by gunfighter ballads like an 8 year old in 1955 watching Davy Crockett, my god some things never change.
Ok, so, I have a bit of a tendency to be flippant in my reviews, so sue me. There's 1001 albums, 1078 if you include the ones removed in future book revisions, which you obviously do because this album is one of them. I'm not gonna write a book report for each one, I work 12 hours shifts suck me dry. However, man oh man do I love the Dirty Projectors. I discovered them through Swing Lo Magellan, an album I definitely own on vinyl, their follow up to this album, and this is just more experimental, complicated, noisy then that was. Amber Coffman and David Longstreth have fascinating voices and the compositions are so chaotic without being obnoxious. The structures of the songs are so visible, even if they look Escherian. I loved this album all the way through, with it's off time fuzz guitar, wails and random key changes it really is an absolute banger. 5 out of 5 bought this album on vinyl the instant I finished it.
One second its bash and crash proto-skatepunk the next its reflective post-punk and the next its a Randy Newman pisstake about genderqueer lovers. This is a defining album in the list of "Albums Mack gets and likes but doesn't much care about" which puts it at a 4.
Do you know how disappointing it is to be excited every day to get a new, cool album to listen to and it's fucking HYBRID THEORY? I'm just copy-pasting my previous review, fucking whatever:
Holy shit there is not one millisecond of this album I do not genuinely and deeply hate with all my soul. Cure for the Itch is the best song on this album and it laps the rest so hard and fast that im amazed they wasted their time with other songs.
Y'see? This is what this whole project is about. I can tell you with 100% certainty there is not a chance in hell I would have listened to this album outside of this project, but man is it an interesting one. Was skeptical going in after having to listen to Timeless, wasn't pumped about another 1990s era English 75+ minute long electronic album, but most every song in this album is different and interesting, and I loved sitting down and listening to *the majority of this. Certainly won't be going in my absolute top tier or anything, but I'm definitely glad I listened to it. Attached sounds like a song that would play at the entrance to EPCOT and I'm not going to pretend I don't appreciate that, and Crash and Carry just DRIVES.
Alright I know I'm an easy 5 but this is one of my favorite albums of all time. Yeah, I know this is like, top three defining albums of my high school years, but it still holds up as a sadboy masterpiece. Jamie XX's production is impossibly clean through every inch of this album, with songs sounding crisp and new and some, like Night Time, building to a climax that sounds incredible. This is one of those albums I both love and am confident belongs on this list, a masterpiece of sad indie that shaped the 2010s and propelled the career of one of the best producers of the 2010s. Also, I mean, this album has 0 skips. Not one skip on it, its incredible.
Honestly thought I'd like it a bit more then I did. Berlin Trilogy era Bowie? Art Rock? Experiments with Electronica? Honestly, going in I thought it would be a slam dunk. I mean, don't get me wrong, it's a great album and I'm glad I heard it, and I'd probably fall in love on listen 6, but on listen 1? 4.
I can see all the bits and pieces here that make it an 80s, west coast classic, but I'm not listening to it for 75 minutes without getting honestly kind of bored. Also, the idea of the skit in rap albums was a terrible idea, and they're never any good.
I kept writing new reviews constantly as I heard this album, I'm just posting them all:
This sounds like it's written by someone who grew up on 80s pop long after the 80s, and as someone who grew up on 80s pop long after the 80s I can relate.
Listen. There is a continuous line between Scritti Politti - Color Me Badd - Kylie Minogue - Robyn - Carly Rae Jepsen - Charli XCX - Sophie that defines a horrifying amount of my love of pop music. I can't begin to pretend I didn't start to love this album from the ~50ish second mark of the first song.
I don't know how this album sounds revolutionary and incredibly dated at the same time, but Scritti Politti sure did achieve it.
What even is a Scritti Politti?
Ok. Ok. So. Pulling back the curtain here a bit, I have a tendency to go into the Global Stats section of this website and check out the highest and lowest rated albums. The highest rated are all basically what you expect, but the lowest? A lot of artists I'd never seen before. And there, between Grindcore and Industrial acts that bang and crash and inscrutable Trout Mask-ass art rock sat Scritti Politti, which Wikipedia described as a synth-pop band with state of the art studio production. I've been so curious since, how can a band that influenced Haim, Elton John, Hot Chip and Kylie Minogue be one of the worst bands of the best? And here we are, I finally got to listen to it, and y'know what. I see why it's down here, for sure. Sickeningly sweet production, the lead singer sounds like a parody of a boy band frontman, whole thing is like someone asked Max Martin to make a Stock Aitken Waterman track from memory, but also HATED Stock Aitken Waterman. The album definitely has it's misses, A Little Knowledge and Don't Work that Hard are nothing songs despite being so close to the rest because the album sits on a fascinating razors edge, but honestly. I love it. The singles are solid 80s sophisti-pop with Perfect Way being one of the cleanest pieces of Bubblegum ever made and I can hear the reverberations of this album through the next 40 years of music. Goddamn am I annoying.
Genuinely though, I think the only way on earth someone would like this as much as I did is if they grew up on the exact same blend of 80s New Wave, 2010s Synthpop, 2020s Hyperpop, Plunderphonics and the Maplestory soundtrack that I did.
All that being said, 4, masterpiece of bubble gum that makes the Archies look like Napalm Death, but this isn't quite reaching the Echelons of 5 star 80s nonsense.
Appended: Psyche, figured out the edit function, this is a 5, see Leftism review.
The day is Friday, March 21st at 2:30 A.M, and I have been sitting in a hospital room for the last 20 hours straight, supporting my wife in a labor induction process that is starting to seem like it will take 3 days. My wife is asleep, and I am lying on a deeply uncomfortable couch unable to sleep because I have been on the night shift for the last 6 months. The only things I have heard over the last 20 hours outside of my wife and nurses has been 20 straight hours of a baby heartbeat over ultrasound and 10 hours of food network reruns. I set the scene, dear reader, to underline that I am currently apocalyptically bored, and it is in this boredom I have decided to undergo the task of listening to the third hour+ long English electronica album of this list, three of what is probably 200.
and it's just making me more bored
abysmal.
I have put the album in it's entirety in my Spotify queue, and to make sure I don't overshoot and accidentally listen to even more samey electroslop that autoplays after this album ends I have put Perfect Way by Scritti Politti. This is no longer a review for Leftism, this is now an appended review for Scritti Politti: Scritti Politti, when heard after 70 minutes of this, is a 5 star magnum opus, and I'm sorry I doubted it.
Impossibly chill and smooth, it's just genuinely fun to listen to this. Incredible musicianship, crisp songwriting and a suite of singles and legendary songs, I cannot think there exists a human on earth that can't jam to reeling in the years.
The annoying thing about The Beatles is that they genuinely are that good. This isn't even close to their best album, probably best described as the first album in an 8 album run that defined western pop music. The whole album is insanely listenable, and songs like Norwegian Wood show just how cutting edge and influential they were every single album. 4 Stars according to the rating system I've been using and am outlining in text for the first time below:
5 Stars: A great album I love, and one which I will be purchasing physically to have as a part of a permanent collection.
4 Stars: I get why the albums on the list and I like it, but it isn't going in the permanent collection.
3 Stars: I get why the albums on the list but I don't much care about it.
2 Stars: I get why its on the list but I hate it.
1 Stars:
Either:
I understand why its on the list but I hate it with the core of my being,
or,
I don't know why I listened to this, and it could be removed from the list tomorrow.
Maybe I've just been in a weird place emotionally recently but this album made me cry.
Probably the best album I'm giving a 4.
White Rabbit is one of my favorite songs ever and was a genuine factor in the naming of my daughter, which should really underline just how boring the rest of this album is. I get why its on here, the defining album of the San Francisco Sound and one of the most important records of the hippie movement, but my god do most of the songs do literally nothing.
Originally, my review for this album was "Country Music for people who voted for Reagan", but then I googled Steve Earle. Turns out he's a lifelong socialist and, like, genuinely incredible. Lifelong Pro-Choice, supporter of people with autism, strong focus on being anti-capital punishment. He protested against the Iraq War, Steve Earle sounds awesome. Too bad every song that sounds like yours for the next 40 years would be made by shitheads. 2 stars, which includes the bonus one for Steve being cool.
I wrote a longer review earlier, but I restarted my computer and lost it and I don't care enough about this album to rewrite it. Blah blah boring blah blah free form guitar is weird and sucks blah blah 2 out of 5.
The highs of this album are absurdly high. Boyz, World Town and XR2 are bangers that really show the skill of M.I.A and Switch and how incredible the global influences are, and Paper Planes is a genuine classic that will be listened to for decades to come. The lows, however, are really low. Mango Pickle Down River and 20 Dollar are terrible, just terrible.
Major Lazers's Guns Don't Kill People, Lazers Do does what this album does, with the same personnel, better in my opinion.
I did this album a disservice by listening to it on spotify, in my gaming chair, while playing Marvel Rivals, which is what I've been doing for the majority of these albums. This album should be listened to in a grand music hall, played by a jazz orchestra of masters, accompanied by a wonderful ballet. I feel like listening to it how I did meant I only got half the experience. Despite that, this album is a masterpiece, and it should say something that despite feeling like I did the album injustice in how I listened to it its still a clear 5 out of 5.
For three days now every time I would try to listen to this album I'd get about 2 minutes into a song and just switch to youtube.
1/5 This came out a year after Pyromania, people had an idea of how Hair Metal worked by now how is this album this boring.
It's enjoyable enough, but I didn't hear anything that made me any amount of genuinely interested in this album.
76 minutes of music to wait on hold to while a city natural gas clerk takes a nap.
Skilled enough pop-soul from when the English were being introduced to it. Beatles did it better a year later on Rubber Soul, though, and Dusty doesn't do anything too interesting here.
Early 90's Seattle really was an insane scene, so many incredible bands were created, Nirvana, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam.
Mudhoney is not one of those bands.
An album 60% as good as 36 Chambers gets 60% of the score 36 Chambers will get.
This is just awesome to listen to. If there's anything this project has taught me, it's that I have a soft spot for Prog Rock, and this is primo Prog. All 5 songs do their own thing in enjoyable ways, I even loved the 10 minute song where they noodled around with the volume on 2%. I was excited to get this album and man was it as good as I hoped.
As someone who married a Jersey Girl, never has it sounded so miserable to be with a Jersey Girl. Tom Waits just is not for me, Nighthawks at the Diner annoyed me and this bored me, take this gravely voiced nonsense somewhere far away from me.
Orchestra pop, Baroque pop, Chamber pop, I don't care what you call it I love it. Absolutely one of my favorite genres of music, and I'll be a lot more positive on it then a lot of other genres. This isn't close to the best example of Chamber pop on this list (The Divine Comedy, my beloved) but it's great stuff. The Funny Bird is beautifully explosive and Delta Sun Bottleneck Stomp is one of the best album finishers I've ever heard. Absolutely love it.
This isn't quite where Can't Buy a Thrill was, but it's still a great album. Also my daughter loves Steely Dan and stops crying when I put them on so bonus points for that.
More like there's some mediocre funk goin' on.
I mean you know this a 5/5 so let's talk about Blondie.
Did you know Blondie, specifically Debbie Harry, helped to put rap on national TV for the first time? In the early days of rap, it was the sound of the Bronx while New Wave and punk were appearing in Manhattan. Instead of staying completely separate, there were crossovers as the grafitti artists bridged the gap between the two art scenes. The downtown New Wave groups started to adopt rap styles in their songs. That's where Blondie's 1980 hit Rapture came from, and it was in 1981, on Valentines Day, that Debbie Harry, after bringing them onto the show herself, introduced the Funky 4+1 as they performed on SNL. That's The Joint by the Funky 4+1 is awesome by the way.
Anyway, this isn't even Blondie's best album. That crown is held by the 2001 CD reissue of Autoamerican, which includes the first printing of their hit song "Call Me" on a Blondie album. Call Me fucking rules, it was produced by Giorgio Moroder and it fucking DRIVES, like all of Moroder's songs. It was also recorded for the soundtrack to the movie "American Gigolo" for some fuckin reason. A lot of the early synth masters did soundtrack work. Giorgio did Chase for Midnight Express. Jan Hammer did the theme to Miami Vice. Vangelis did Blade Runner and Chariots of Fire, and Wendy Carlos did The Shining and Tron. Funny how that works.
Genuinely an incredible album of early Metal that is as fun to listen to now as it was back then, I assume.
You wanna know what album I wish was on this list? Coven's Witchcraft Destroys Minds & Reaps Souls. Came out the year before this one and is awesome Proto-Metal.
Anyway, 5/5 already rated it before.
There was a good chunk of this album where I just forgot why my original review was "Good 90s sad boy art rock, sounds good, but I can never take 90s sad boy shit seriously." This is a great album, why couldn't I take it seriously? Then came "Fitter Happier", and that audio rendition of Fight Club reminded me why immediately. They just didn't have problems in the 90s, did they? Oh no, guys well off, healthy and happy, what a pig in a cage. Yawn, boring, next, 4 stars though the rest is great.
The problem with these 90s electronica albums is that they're absolutely interminable. For the first, like, 4 songs I was feeling a three, its not bad rave and the world elements are definitely neat. Unfortunately, there's 15 songs on here and they get worse and worse as the album goes. Tapped out at Hear Me, just didn't need to hear any more from it.
It's fine R&B but I could not have needed to hear this album less. This could have been a clean 1000 albums instead. Honestly this could have been like, 300 albums but whatever.
I didn't realize how many great Arena Rock songs came from this album alone. Wow, crazy. Anyway, Foreigner is better.
So is Styx.
honestly so is loverboy
and journey
better then reo speedwagon though, so thats something
There are 7, yeah that's right fucking SEVEN, Bob Dylan albums on this list. To be blunt, there is exactly one reason that this album is on this list, and its because it shows the response to Bob going electric because he changes to electric halfway through this album and got booed.
BUDDY
I was booing Bob Dylan from song one of this album, you fuckers from '66 don't got nothing on me, I'd have been revolutionary in my hating on Bob Dylan.
Anyway, Bob Dylan sucks, he sings like hes making fun of himself and his songs are boring, if I'm giving Tom Waits, a 30 times more interesting artist, a 1 or 2 then poor bobby over here will live in the lowest depths of onedom.
Also electric bobs better then folk bob.
Allegedly someone yells "Judas" at bob at some point right before "Like a Rolling Stone" on this album but I just don't hear it, maybe they cut it out of the copy I was listening to? The wikipedia page says that the crowd was hostile to him switching to electric but both halves the crowd sounds the same to me.
GODDAMN, this album would have been so good if it was literally any good, like any amount of good at all. Instead, its 7 songs formed of a basic drum loop and a single simplistic synth line that sounds like shit. Its definitely punk, in that they were way more interested in sounding like they were coming on "Girl" then they were in sounding any good.
Frankie Teardrop is interesting, and I get what its trying to do, but I don't find it particularly compelling.
Other bands would take everything this band did and run with it way harder and better then anything on this album. Listen to "High Pressure Days" by the Units, it came out three years later and is a way better example of Synthpunk.
Bonus star for being the seminal album in one of my favorite genres ever, but listening to this and then swapping to Crystal Castles or You Love Her and you can see just how much could have been done but just wasn't.
Listen, maybe there will be a world in the future where I'm not so bored by every single song on this record that I manage to listen to it.
Maybe one day it will be me on the beaches of beautiful Ipanema, drinking a delicious caipriniha, heavy on the cachaça, as I enjoy the bossa nova sounds of Antonio Carlos Jobim and fall into a trance. Maybe one day, during carnaval, I will salsa dance into the night, accompanied by the laziest guitar strumming anyone has ever heard, and I'll get it. I'll understand the Brazilian way, live by "L'amour pour principe et l'ordre pour base; le progrès pour but", and as Cristo Redentor stares down upon me I will feel the beauty of Brazil smile upon me.
Until that day this boring shits a 1, fuck off Brazil's got booty jams that blow this album so far out of the water they glisten in the Rio de Janeiro sun like Scarlet Macaws.
During the course of this hour long double album I went from "wow ELO rules this is sick" to "wow they really have one trick don't they, I'm getting bored" to "ok nvm I'm starting to get it this is cool again" to "oh hey Mr. Blue Sky this song rules" and then back to "idk how much of this album I needed to hear, I got it after song, like, 3" and all of that actually averages out to a 3 out of 5. I have turned album rating into a science and I may be the best to ever do it. You're welcome, review reading public.
Jeff Lynne sometimes sounds like Jimmy Fallon's parody of Barry Gibb on those SNL Barry Gibb talk show sketches, I think that might be an insult?
Have you ever heard an album you know is good, like well made with good singing and clearly important in its genre, but it just doesn't do anything for you? Unfortunately, I'm a pophead who is actively listening to these albums, and in doing so this album just bored me. It's good, don't get me wrong, but I'm not rating by quality I'm rating by personal taste, y'know? Anyway, 2.
This is straight up Skate Punk. Like, I'm pretty sure the Buzzcocks could headline Warped Tour. This isn't an insult, honestly, this album kinda rules. It's snotty, bratty, and feels like some kind of proto-pop-punk that's somehow simultaneously 20 and 50 years ahead of its time. Unfortunately, it doesn't quite hit where I want it to give it a 5, but goddamn I'd never heard of the Buzzcocks before and now my mind is blown by them. I wish I could put a bonus mark on albums that I just want to demarcate as representative of why I'm doing this project, because this is definitely one of them.
This album bought an incredible amount of goodwill with me with "So Long, Marianne". I find 60s folk usually deeply boring, I'm not much of a lyrics guy and the artistry of "grand poetry atop sparse instrumental" is often lost on me: guy who likes Charli XCX a whole bunch. That being said, Leonard Cohen does show some solid ability to put together something interesting under the vocals. I don't have a ton of love for this album, its just too slow and sparse for my liking, but Leonard Cohen shows flashes of his ability to arrange a hell of a song on here. You can see how he eventually created "Hallelujah", but he's not there yet.
Incredibly strong sample work highlight an album that would be damn near perfect if they found a lead singer who didn't sound like she was hiding from her parents at 11pm with how goddamn quiet and flat she was most of the time and how often the producers focused on "chill beats" before anyone even invented that term. The first section of this albums incredible, I love Sour Times to death and I was certain it would be one of my favorite albums. Unfortunately, the interesting sampledelia gave way to a neutered Ute Lemper doing Lofi Beats to Study/Relax to. Started this album in love with it, ended almost mad at it. Still a 4 out of 5, the great songs reverberate through my childhood taste in music. There ain't a MS MR without this I bet.
Ah big ups to the mandem MJ Cole n dem rude boy Danny Vicious number 1 on the track. Bruv its proper pants mate, MJ Cole a ponce, got a gooner at the pub, up the Arsenal frreal, who say MJ Cole outchea reppin the blues the poofter. Shits mental, cor blimey and bloody hell, gwaan barney the chap down the chippie.
It's been 10 days since I've had the time to do a full album listen for this project and it was spent listening to the least important bit of britpop possible. It's fine, britpop in general is pretty good so its not like this is bad, but this is pretty high up there on the didn't have to hear list.
Peg? Yes ma'am!
Well made Blues sharpened to a razor point, but definitely infused with enough 80s maximalism to make it sell. Strong stuff, and I'm glad it got John Lee Hooker the respect he deserved, but it feels closer to the blues rock he inspired then the talking and hill country blues he made when he was younger.
It's good, a couple touches too twee for my tastes though, and I just couldn't stand the lead singers voice after a while.
Van Morrison manufactured classics on this album, primo cut after primo cut, but dang do the songs on this album remind me of the albums art. A high quality piece, sure, but then a whole bunch that just do the same thing with minor variations.
I think I'm just going to give hair and glam metal a standing 3/5 from now on. Yeah, yeah, AC/DC aren't hair metal, but AC/DC->NWOBHM->Def Leppard->sunset dtrip bullshit->Motley Crue, the lineage is there. Anyway 3/5 it rocks but in one specific way that doesn't get very interesting after the killer opener. Shazbot Nanu Nanu.
On a certain level I am starting to feel almost feel bad about how much I just don't care for Leonard Cohen doing his thing, he's obviously skilled 2 just seems brutal. Then I remember I also gave Elliot Smith and Nick Drake a 2 and I'm nothing if not consistent.
I am apocalyptically behind in these reviews, which makes the fact that I've heard this album before super helpful. Incredible album, one of the heights of Britpop, the Gallaghers are annoying as hell and I love that. Every day at midnight I get on here and check the next album in hopes its Justice of the Avalanches. I'll catch up on the other albums soon.
Almost confused by how few thoughts I have about this album. I'm almost comically incapable of taking most metal seriously, though, and a meedley guitar solo while Hetfield yells about pulling the shortest straw is genuinely funny. Is this album good? Probably. I didn't mind listening to it or anything.
Took me a bit to figure out what I thought of the album, but honestly? Kinda rules. Love the weird jazz art-rock thing its got going on, but the first and last songs are pretty clearly the best. This is a real reverse bell curve, high to low and back to high. Probably not going to listen to it ever again, but I'm glad I heard it.
Incredibly cheesy but honestly pretty fun. It sounds like video game music, which I guess inevitably happens when you combine synth with classical music but I enjoyed it. I get why the general vibe at the time was negative in America but also if I was at this show in 1971 I'd've lost my damn mind.
Y'know, for an album so well regarded as a masterpiece I expected it to be less messy. I mean, as a card carrying Beatles apologist it is still a great album don't get me wrong, but to be up there with Rumors? Are we sure? The Maxwell's Silver Hammer album? I mean it's a 4 and that's good, also Ringo Starr songs are awesome, I love Octopus's Garden.
The Beach Boys really are incredible. This is orchestral garage rock with multi-part harmonies, they really do make a genre all their own. That being said, I remember some of these songs sounding different? I listened to the remaster on spotify, maybe that was the issue, but the versions I remember as a kid were better? Weird.
If bands were Pokemon then The Cult is one of those Pokemon with split evolutions, like Wurmple. It's up to you, it evolved from Steppenwolf at level 1983 and at level 2000 it evolves either into The Strokes or The Darkness, depending whether your Indie or Glam stat is higher. You know what I mean by this? You don't? Awww nuts. Anyway, it's a fine album, I've heard it before in different albums though 3/5.
Strong, classic album that was fun to listen to as someone who didn't recognize the band at all. Absolute jumpscare at the end hearing such a recognizable song, one of my favorites of the sixties. If the rest of the album was even a little bit of the same quality as Time of the Season it'd have been an easy 5, but the rest is just solid, giving it a 4.
Not the Talking Head's best album exactly, but the Talking Heads are definitely up there among my favorite bands, and Fear of Music is a part of their incredible 5 album run from '77 to Speaking in Tongues, it was never going to be anything but a 5 from me. They just are that fascinating a band.
So in my review of Metallica I described myself as "incapable of taking metal seriously". That is still true, I can get hints of how important this album is, it sounds at times Nu-Metal-ly before that genre really kicked off in 1998-2000, but in terms of actually listening to it? Couldn't finish it, just got too annoyed at the growl screams and repetitive riffs.
I am at an absolute loss. Some genuinely great African and South American inspired tracks and some of the clearest examples of the cultural crossover between New Wave and Hip Hop are buried on a quasi-piss-take album by an absolute goon. Am I supposed to take this seriously? The World's Famous Supreme Team do, when they espouse 5 Percent-er thought on World's Famous, but I'm not positive Malcolm McLaren does. Is he taking this album seriously? He capped it off with Duck for The Oyster, so I'm compelled to say he isn't but this album's produced by Trevor fucking Horn, it sounds incredible. Based purely on enjoyment of listening, I have to give it a 4, and if you ask me to rate it on anything else I will short-circuit and self-destruct.
R.E.M. is a weird band for me. Their highs are so high, Stand through Orange Crush is a great sweep of songs, and I genuinely forgot just how fuckin' good Orange Crush is. Alot of the rest is kindof forgettable though, and when Michael Stipe's singing isn't working out, it REALLY isn't working. Good stuff though still, leaning four but placing at 5 because I'd love a physical copy.
Hey, remember that Suicide album I reviewed a while back? To me, this album is that style, taken to the dark, industrial place "Frankie Teardrop" showed, and perfected. Remember, this band's only got a singer, a drummer and a sampler/keyboardist, it's damn near all electric, and yet any time I felt like the bad was getting too close to retreading ground it switched up on me. Starts with a Jacques Brel pisstake, opens into these symphonic and almost "Cyberpunk" era Billy Idol industrial and then brings out the accordion. Incredible. I haven't even looked at how hard this album would be to get physically but I want it.
Marvin Gaye really was the king of the 70s R&B-Soul Fuck Jam. Some real classic fuck jams on here, which I probably would have been well served listening to while getting down fuck nasty. Unfortunately, I listened to them while playing War Thunder instead, so kinda lost some magic there. Clearly an incredible singer, but I got the gist pretty early.
Fela Kuti is a legend and this is an excellent introduction to the American-Nigerian crossover Afrobeat that's only gotten more and more popular in the decades since this album released. Also, as great as this album is, it is 2025 and I just kinda got bored.
A classic, Baba O'Riley and Won't Get Fooled Again are legendary classic/arena rock songs. I also didn't realise until the song started that Behind Blue Eyes was The Who. Learn something new every day.
Another Fuck Jams album, this time with funky guitar and worse songs. It wasn't bad, but I got the bit halfway through and it really started to drag. Also, "Til the Cops Come Knocking" may be an eighth as sexy as he thinks it is, if that.
Are Kiss cool? No, seriously, are they? They must've been at the time, otherwise how did anyone take them seriously? They definitely became uncool in the 90's, Alt-Rock and Grunge were never gonna let these discount Arthur Browns be anything other then lame as hell. However, we're in new sincerity now, "Bat Out of Hell" is fucking awesome, is Kiss getting the same reevaluation? Well guess what, I've decided I get to answer this question permanently. KISS... IS... NOT COOL. Fuckin' pop-rock-metal garbage isn't over-the-top enough to be Meatloaf or legit enough to be Sabbath. I wrote this review listening to "Great Expectations", which may legitimately be the worst song ever made. Beth does nothing for me, fuck this album.
There are some incredible songs on this album, 911 is a Joke, Fight the Power, Welcome to the Terrordome. It'd be a masterpiece if it was just those songs. Unfortunately, its so full of filler that I've tried to listen through it like 5 times and at this point I've just called it. 3 out of 5, 5 out of 5 if its 30 minutes.
Straight up, the first 9 songs of this album are just short of perfect. Everything up to and including Runaway is the strongest stuff Kanye ever made. "Hell of a Life" and "Blame Game" are as weak as every Kanye song where he's mad about women are, and "Lost In the World" is better but not too special. My word though, the first 9 are incredible.
Fuck yeah, Locust Abortion Technician! I have had this album permanently saved to my spotify sidebar for a decade now, it's a masterpiece of noise rock. I'm skipping a lot of backlog 'cause I've heard and loved this album before and I'll love it again. It's weird, it's mind-shattering, it's probably best heard inebriated, it's SATAN SATAN SATAN, it's fucking awesome.
