The original list is infamously weak on metal, especially anything post-Metallica, and Lateralus is one of its most egregious snubs A remarkable and hypnotic prog metal album that deserves all of the hype. It’s ridiculously virtuosic yet still punchy and emotional. Schism is the song that blew up but the title track is the true highlight for me, especially the ‘bridge’ section where each instrument comes back in in a different time signature and the melodic lines weave together as it builds. Even ignoring the metric complexity and the constant Fibonacci sequence references throughout the song, the build just sounds so incredibly powerful

A really cool bluesgrass/rootsy album that sounds like Ancient Greece by way of New Orleans. The instrumentation is brilliantly rustic, the songwriting is winding but also hooky, and the narrative drives the whole thing along at a great pace without diverting from the impact of the music. It really is crying out to be a musical and it’s quite surprising it took six years to bring it back to the stage - all of the key elements are already here! Mitchell gives a very diverse and powerful performance, but it’s the guests who really do help bring this version to life. Justin Vernon and Ani DiFranco both sound fantastic as Orpheus and Persephone all across the record, and Greg Brown’s Hades sounds like he smokes twenty Tom Waits’ a day

An incredibly confident debut album that I enjoy more with each listen. The production and Roan’s songwriting are so strong, and the album combines amazing hooks and danceable pop with more tender and genuinely touching ballads. The lyrics are clever, impactful, and often very very horny, and the songs really stay with you. It does tail off a bit after Pink Pony Club in my opinion - the last three songs are probably the most forgettable on the album which is a bit of a shame as it gets so close to a perfect landing. But it is such a strong debut on the whole and, especially after blowing up even more with last year’s fantastic single Good Luck Babe (her best song by far), I’m very excited to see what Chappell does next. Not only does she write great music but she’s already proven herself to be a significant voice for change in the music industry, whether that’s being very vocal about trans rights and honouring her various influences from queer and drag culture to her recent speech after winning Best New Artist at the Grammys calling on record labels to offer healthcare and other work benefits to their musicians. The Midwest Princess has had a meteoric rise and I do not expect her fall to come any time soon

This was my favourite album of 2022 and one I’ve grown to love even more since. So many highlights and never boring despite its 80 minute run time, it’s Big Thief’s most tender and exciting project, with some absolutely beautiful moments and stellar guitar playing. It’s a pretty strong contender for album of the decade so far

A remarkable debut album from a true pioneer, and my introduction to hyperpop (for better or worse). When I first heard this back in 2018 it really blew me away - it was futuristic and noisy as hell but also so catchy when you let those hooks envelop you, unlike anything I’d heard before. I think it’s still arguably the pinnacle of the genre. While SOPHIE had been crafting this sound over years of singles, EPs, and production work with the likes of Charli XCX, this is her first - and tragically only - full length project. It is so assured and stylistically confident and feels simultaneously like a veteran professional at the top of their game and a young, hungry artist carving their space in the industry. The alchemy that makes this project click was made even more prevalent by last year’s disappointing and muddled posthumous SOPHIE album, which had glimmers of greatness but ultimately was clearly not as cared for. I don’t think it’s a perfect album - the middle drags slightly for me - but the opening four songs and the closing two are magnificent. It’s Okay to Cry is ethereally beautiful, Ponyboy and Faceshopping are brutally industrial, and Immaterial is just a massive uplifting bop

My first of the user-submitted albums! This was a really good way to kick things off, with a fun album by a band I had never heard of The songs cover a really wide range of territory - stylistically and lyrically - and are consistently witty and defy expectations. The performances remind me quite a lot of The Magnetic Fields and similar artists, but the sheer variety on this does see them carve out their own niche within that sarcastic folk space. A good time!

Man, in a weird and maybe counterintuitive way I feel like I would have enjoyed this more if it was someone other than Chet The tunes are smooth as hell, with some incredible musicians (including the iconic Evans/Chambers/Jones rhythm section) playing remarkably lovely jazz, and Baker’s trumpet playing is truly wonderful. But once you’ve heard the beautiful 1954 album Chet Baker Sings, it’s not that easy to listen to a Chet Baker album where he doesn’t

This was a pretty lovely discovery. A very soulful kind of country album with eclectic vocals and a vintage style that never felt too over the top and still managed to sound fresh and inspired

I really enjoyed this when it first came out and it was one of my favourite albums of 2023. Spirit 2.0 is a truly beautiful song and the production on the whole album is pristine and fantastic. Unfortunately the songwriting just didn’t really hit for me, and on the relisten I just found it all a bit samey. Would definitely recommend checking out the deluxe version, as those four bonus tracks do elevate it, but yeah - a slightly underwhelming revisit for the standard album

This was an interesting one. Swedish folk with an electronic twist. The first couple of songs were lively and pounding, and while they were fun I thought that style was going to get repetitive quite quickly. I was very pleasantly surprised then when the album suddenly started going into darker territory, with the electronics adding to this eerie soundscape rather than block rocking beats. Something very different and definitely worth checking out

One of the most innovative hip-hop albums of all time. Madlib’s production is remarkable, the supervillain concept is really fun and perfectly executed, and Doom’s rhyme schemes, delivery and lyrics are second to none. Possibly the biggest snub from the original 1001 albums list

Another really fun discovery. Kind of an Andrew Bird vibe, or a less extravagant Father John Misty. Very lovely and well arranged singer songwriter tunes

A fantastic homage to 70s funk with a massive Parliament/Funkadelic and Sly and the Family Stone influence. It’s spacy and groovy and Glover is at his most electric all over this. A massive switch up from the hip-hop and pop bangers of his earlier albums, this is just straight up stank. The first half is incredible, especially the epic opener Me and Your Mama and the massive single Redbone, but the album does kind of drop off in the second half. A couple of songs near the end are a bit forgettable, and the closing track Stand Tall has a perfect hook that just drowns in its overbearing effects and unconvincing key changes. That first half though, god damn

Didn’t really get on with this one. Decent indie rock that reminded me a bit of Pixies if they just did the soft bits of their soft-loud dynamic. Nothing stood out to me much

Blink’s best album and a fantastic slice of energetic and catchy pop-punk, with Travis Barker solidifying his place in the group with some of the most ridiculously quick and technical drumming the genre has ever seen. The only thing keeping this from being a 5 is that there are a couple of songs (especially Mutt and Wendy Clear towards the end) that do absolutely nothing for me. But when the album hits, it really hits. There are the huge singles What’s My Age Again and All the Small Things, the more retrospective Adam’s Song, and the up-tempo ragers Dumpweed and The Party Song - so much variety for a pretty commercial pop-punk record and just a very fun time

A solid and groovy dub record that’s very laid-back and atmospheric, but ultimately a bit too samey throughout to keep me hooked

This was my favourite album of 2022 and one I’ve grown to love even more since. So many highlights and never boring despite its 80 minute run time, it’s Big Thief’s most tender and exciting project, with some absolutely beautiful moments and stellar guitar playing. It’s a pretty strong contender for album of the decade so far

I found the Marillion album on the actual list very underwhelming, but was pleasantly surprised by this one. It’s still got very crisp and clean production but it doesn’t sound as sterile as a lot of the tracks on Misplaced Childhood. It’s arena rock and does have the cheesy elements that can sometimes make that genre quite boring but combines them with interesting prog-inspired guitar licks and grooves, and the strong performances on the ballads stop them veering into schmaltzy territory. In terms of my personal enjoyment it’s probably a 3 but, considering I’m not really into this brand of rock and it surpassed my expectations, I’ll bump it up to a 4

This was great! I’ve heard good things about Robyn Hitchcock before (and embarrassingly somehow got him confused with Robyn of Dancing On My Own fame) but never set aside the time to get into him until now. I also hadn’t realised he was the singer of The Soft Boys (whose album Underwater Moonlight was on the main list and I think I enjoyed??) until today This album was a wild ride - spritely, incredibly varied and with a magnificent presence from the start. He hits an avant-garde folk rock sound somewhere between Richard Thompson and Robert Wyatt that also reminds me a bit of R.E.M and early Radiohead in places. Just a lot of fun and it has definitely inspired me to check out more of his many many albums in the future

A weird album to review. The first half is pretty good if not remarkable prog. The second half is a ridiculous ambitious orchestral suite - it starts amazingly, and then descends into this weird vocoder-driven section. The entire album closes with a pretty weak ballad. There are amazing stretches that I loved and underwhelming stretches that frankly baffled me. I didn’t love it but I sure was entertained

A really solid prog album with fantastic grooves and some really effective more tender moments, though quite a few of these softer parts don’t have as much impact. It’s not Wilson’s strongest work in my opinion, and The Raven Who Refused to Sing or something like In Absentia from his time in Porcupine Tree would be a better example of a more consistent and rewarding project

A remarkable debut album from a true pioneer, and my introduction to hyperpop (for better or worse). When I first heard this back in 2018 it really blew me away - it was futuristic and noisy as hell but also so catchy when you let those hooks envelop you, unlike anything I’d heard before. I think it’s still arguably the pinnacle of the genre. While SOPHIE had been crafting this sound over years of singles, EPs, and production work with the likes of Charli XCX, this is her first - and tragically only - full length project. It is so assured and stylistically confident and feels simultaneously like a veteran professional at the top of their game and a young, hungry artist carving their space in the industry. The alchemy that makes this project click was made even more prevalent by last year’s disappointing and muddled posthumous SOPHIE album, which had glimmers of greatness but ultimately was clearly not as cared for. I don’t think it’s a perfect album - the middle drags slightly for me - but the opening four songs and the closing two are magnificent. It’s Okay to Cry is ethereally beautiful, Ponyboy and Faceshopping are brutally industrial, and Immaterial is just a massive uplifting bop

I’ve listened to more blink-182 this week now than I have done in years. This self-titled (or apparently ‘untitled’) album is a really interesting change of pace for them - at the height of their pop-punk powers, they took a left turn for a moodier emo-inspired sound that must have been a huge inspiration for the wave of mid-‘00s ‘emo’ bands that followed. I think it’s great they did that, as they were already getting diminishing returns with their 2001 album Take Off Your Pants… feeling like a less good version of 1999’s Enema of the State. I was quite excited to give this more mature Blink record another shot now that I’m older, especially as I couldn’t remember much outside of four massive and magnificent tracks. Feeling This is a statement opener and maybe my favourite Blink song, I Miss You is possibly their biggest, Down sounds like a completely different band, and Always is a great song even if it kind of sounds like it could have fit on any of their previous albums. Unfortunately with this latest relisten I had the same take aways - those four songs are still fantastic, but everything else is quite forgettable. There’s interesting stuff going on, such as the hip-hop inspired drum break The Fallen Interlude and the moody track with Robert Smith of all people, but there are also naff lyrics and forgettable hooks. It’s an album I’m very glad they made, I just wish it held up better

I fondly remember being introduced to this album by a former colleague who put it on during an otherwise tedious shift manning our office’s reception area. Very little work was done as we were just vibing out to this. In the Stone is an incredible opener, After the Love Has Gone is a picture perfect ballad, Boogie Wonderland is obviously massive - those are probably my favourite three but there’s really not a bad song on here In my 4-star review of the EWF album on the main list (That’s the Way of the World), I sung its praises but noted it’s not as good as I Am. After relistening to I Am, I definitely stand by that. This shit slaps

This was incredibly fun. I was expecting a grunge or more R.E.M-ish ‘90s indie album but this was like… if Queen did a kind of grungy R.E.M-ish 90s indie album? Lavish production and great hooks with a bit of fuzz and attitude that resulted in a really interesting and unique listen

An incredibly confident debut album that I enjoy more with each listen. The production and Roan’s songwriting are so strong, and the album combines amazing hooks and danceable pop with more tender and genuinely touching ballads. The lyrics are clever, impactful, and often very very horny, and the songs really stay with you. It does tail off a bit after Pink Pony Club in my opinion - the last three songs are probably the most forgettable on the album which is a bit of a shame as it gets so close to a perfect landing. But it is such a strong debut on the whole and, especially after blowing up even more with last year’s fantastic single Good Luck Babe (her best song by far), I’m very excited to see what Chappell does next. Not only does she write great music but she’s already proven herself to be a significant voice for change in the music industry, whether that’s being very vocal about trans rights and honouring her various influences from queer and drag culture to her recent speech after winning Best New Artist at the Grammys calling on record labels to offer healthcare and other work benefits to their musicians. The Midwest Princess has had a meteoric rise and I do not expect her fall to come any time soon

Yeah I didn’t really give Jimmy Eat World enough credit back in the day. They were the band that bridged the gap between that gate kept ‘emo’ sound and the various pop-punk-adjacent bands from the mid-‘00s branded as emo. Their more mature and slightly darker tone put them closer to the former but their urgent drive and knack for catchy choruses meant they were misleadingly marketed as the latter, despite never really fitting solidly into either category. As a fan of your Panic! at the Discos and All Time Lows and the like growing up, a lot of which I no longer listen to, I just never really got into Jimmy Eat World and dismissed them as being quite bland outside of the absolute smash of a track The Middle. I appreciate them a lot more now, as while they were far less theatrical than their Warped Tour contemporaries, the songwriting holds up. The slower moments on this album I never really connected with are actually very emotional and well considered, and provide a nice contrast to the more energetic singles like The Middle and the title track, which opens the album in beautifully sardonic fashion

Another solid country-tinged folk album - this one with gorgeous harmonies and a Conor Oberst jumpscare on the last song - that was really nice to listen to but just didn’t really stick with me

This was pretty good! Grunge-adjacent but more of a power pop sound with very catchy hooks especially on the first three songs (my favourite of which was Solar Sister which had a really fun guitar solo). The album lost a bit of steam after that though, with some hooks that didn’t really land for me, and I wasn’t too enamoured by it until the last two songs which were a lot darker and kind of shoegazy. It was a really welcome change of pace and I’m glad it ended as strongly as it started, even if it didn’t quite hit in the middle

Didn’t get into this one at all I’m afraid. A cheesy ‘80s take on ‘60s-style rock with generic songwriting, rubbish synths and reverse snares all over certain tracks, and really cringy lyrics. The falsetto in the ballad Nobody Knows is pretty painful, and the bass tone in the verses of I Need You sounds so much like a Casio preset it’s actually kind of funny (though otherwise I think it’s a pretty good song and probably my favourite on the album) Apparently two songs from this album have been sampled by Eminem which is fun Also my goodness Billy, please put your dogs away

Another ridiculous snub, I have absolutely no idea how this still isn’t in the 1001 It’s a landmark album that still holds up incredibly well, and is the undisputed highlight of the ‘emo’ genre. It’s theatrical, energetic and packed full of hooks, and every single song on it is a winner.

A really lovely and creative folk album that also contained a couple of punk elements. Great songwriting and singing and lyrics, with inventive rhythm and metre switches (even if a little over-done in one of the songs) and just generally great vibes. I’d never heard of this band going in so this was a very nice discovery

I’ve just never really clicked with Mayer’s music. Great guitar player and the production is solid but his songwriting is just a bit bland

This was really fun in places with some great energy and incredible playing, but certain parts got old very quickly. The interpolation of the Pink Panther theme on Offshoot was a nice little reference but then became the entire B-section of the track for no good reason. The 15 minute Ghostbusters cover was also pretty exhausting by the end That being said, considering the amount of live albums already on the list, I’d much rather have something like this - where the live setting and the jamming it allows space for is the key feature of the music - than the live Cheap Trick album that’s just a rougher performance of their studio tracks

Another really solid Zappa record. Not quite my favourite of his, and I don’t think I’d replace any of the 3 on the main list (even though I don't vibe with Freak Out quite as much, it’s an incredibly important album that deserves its spot), but if you were going to add another this would almost certainly be it It’s also one of his most accessible albums, with genuinely catchy songs like Uncle Remus complementing the usual zaniness like St Alphonsos Pancake Breakfast, and nothing goes too far into full-on freak territory

Avicii was one of the poster boys for a wave of EDM that has just never really been my thing - it’s fun in the right setting but just not something I enjoy listening to on my commute or whatever. The big single on this album is Waiting For Love, which is an alright club banger but not on the level of his previous tracks Levels or Wake Me Up. Elsewhere the album is a bit more adventurous, playing with a country sound on quite a few songs rather than just recycling the same EDM tropes. It was more varied than expected and I appreciate what it was going for, just not one for me

I didn’t really care for side 1 of this project by two former King Crimson members - it was just a lot of noodling without the commanding vocal presence or impactful hooks and stabs that make Crimson’s music stand out. The second side - Birdman - was a step up though. It kicks things off with a really fun and jaunty track, almost like a Kinks song, that then leads into part 2 with a killer funky groove. The next few parts have some more enjoyable soloing and the suite culminates in a rousing and quite lovely anthemic instrumental section

Very fun, eclectic and inventive funk metal with ridiculous bass playing. I don’t enjoy quite as much as their debut Frizzle Fry, but it’s still a wonderfully unique and enjoyable album

A fun, groovy, wavy time as one would expect from the B-52s. It doesn’t quite reach the heights of their staggering debut or their later peak Cosmic Thing but it’s still a grand way to spend 35 minutes

WOOOO!! One of my absolute favourite albums of the last few years. A continuous loop of jams upon jams, ridiculously good 5/4 hooks, devilishly fun guitar playing, and pure energy and good vibes

It’s fun and noisy hyperpop from one of the most eclectic groups out there. I don’t think it’s quite as impactful as their first album - nothing here is on the same level as 745 sticky, money machine, or stupid horse - but it’s still just very enjoyable. The jarring ska of I Got My Toot Removed, the more metal-leaning Billy Knows Jamie, whatever Frog on the Floor is, and the standout pop single Hollywood Baby - it’s all just good dumb fun

Another one I’m quite surprised wasn’t on the original list mainly due to the sheer size of it. According to Wikipedia it’s the 8th highest selling album of all time (putting it ahead of Rumours, Saturday Night Fever, ABBA GOLD, and any one album by The Beatles) and a whopping 12 of its 16 tracks were released as singles It’s probably the peak of pop country, and while there are some elements I’m not a fan of at all - a lot of the production choices are very lifeless or just generic, so many songs have great chorus/boring verse syndrome, and the duet From This Moment On sounds like the big ballad from a forgotten post-Menken Disney film - but Twain has enough presence and charm to pull it off. And when the songs hit, they sure do hit. I think every Shania Twain song I know is on this album, including songs I forgot I knew like Love Gets Me Every Time and When. Some of the songs I didn’t know are a lot of fun, filled with needless stand-up key changes that are all pulled off annoyingly well. It all just sounds so professional and expensive and meticulous, and has enough heart that the downsides that kind of sound can bring are easily overlooked. There are a few weaker songs towards the end, especially the very cringe Rock This Country, but thankfully it pulls things back for the tender closer You’ve Got a Way

Yeah, ambient techno just isn’t really for me, sorry. There were some very interesting textures in this and I appreciate that it was a bit more varied than I initially thought - with the last couple of tracks picking up the tempo- but otherwise it all just kind of blended into one

Fantastic vibes bolstered by ethereal production on what is probably Tame Impala’s strongest album. It opens incredibly strongly with the psychedelic Let It Happen and other highlights include the blissed out Eventually, the swaggering stomp of The Less I Know The Better, and the hazy banger New Person Same Old Mistakes Some songs don’t quite hold up - Past Life has never worked for me and I don’t think Kevin’s vocals are too great on Yes I’m Changing - but it’s mostly pretty consistent with its dreamy sheen and catchy, inventive songwriting

A very eclectic and expressive alt-rock record that reminds me quite a bit of later releases from Fiona Apple and Regina Spektor, but with some heavier riffs and harder beats on some tracks. The blistering opener was a highlight as was the closing track, and the fantastic guitar playing throughout added a really interesting dimension to the songs. Unfortunately it didn’t all work for me, especially the 7 minute cover of Amazing Grace about halfway through which really dragged

Fun, raucous, energetic hardcore/ska from a truly innovative punk band but, even though it’s under a hour, at 27 songs long this compilation is just far too long and repetitive. The album and EP are both pretty good on their own, but listening to them stuck together like this became a bit of a slog. There are some absolutely great tracks on here, and a lot of filler

A very interesting album with almost Tool-esque prog-metal grooves and angular post-hardcore guitars, alongside some of the wildest vocal melodies I’ve ever heard but also some huge grungy choruses - like Alice In Chains meets self-titled-era Deftones but also nothing really like either of those bands. The opening song was so aggressively discordant in a truly unique way - the vocals never sounded ‘out of tune’, they were clearly meticulously planned to create as much tension against the instrumental as possible. It was like an alien had listened to a handful of 90s alt-rock albums and confidently spat out vocal lines with no concept of how they ‘should’ progress or resolve - but it worked and added to the dark and isolating tone of the album

An interesting selection considering the much more well known releases earlier in TMBG’s eclectic catalogue. The fact that they don’t have a single album in the original list is ridiculous when really any of those first five albums (especially Lincoln and Flood) have a pretty strong claim. This seems to be TMBG’s return to ‘music for grown-ups’ following a series of charming children’s albums. I think it would actually be difficult for them to write an album that’s not fun at this stage, they just have such a knack for melodies and a real curiosity for song structures and textures. Stylistically it’s all over the place yet somehow cohesive as expected, whether that’s the presumably-Strokes-inspired You Probably Get That a Lot or the overbearing nonsense of The Lady and the Tiger. There are some delightfully quirky songs like Cloisonné and Three Might Be Duende, as well as the fantastic heavily-panned canon of Spoiler Alert, that really stand out in the way some of their greatest hits do, but on the whole the album does seem to lack the vibrancy that makes their first few albums so engaging

Springsteen is on fantastic form on this album and his energy across the two hours is magnificent. Unfortunately it’s a bit early in his career to really warrant a live record of that length - with only the three albums and some covers to choose from I did feel like I was just counting down the minutes to the next Born to Run track, and everything on the second half especially seems to go on a lot longer than is really necessary. It’s all performed very well but nothing elevates it above the studio recordings. At the end of the day, I’d rather just listen to Born to Run

A pivotal and atmospheric post-rock debut for sure, but not quite as powerful or enduring as its follow-up Lift Your Skinny Fists…

Crushingly heavy jazz-inspired metal, with some surprisingly beautiful moments as well. The song structures lurched about quite wildly and while the heavier bits made an incredible impact they didn’t always blend into those softer moments too well. I certainly enjoyed this in places but it was a quite volatile listening experience

Peter Steele’s baritone is impressive and the darkly gothic vibe is fun for a few minutes, but the songwriting is just so boring and dated - and incredibly repetitive, most notably in the first couple of tracks which total 20 minutes without either song really going anywhere

Sorry supporting cast of High School Musical, but I do not really care for the status quo This started better than expected to be fair, with some good variety over the first few tracks rather than all just dated blues-rock - Oh Baby had some really fun riffs and A Year was like something from Led Zeppelin III - but the second half faltered a bit. The Doors cover at the end was a particular low point for me and just didn’t get close to living up to the original

Really interesting and impactful noise rock that covered a lot of ground in its very short run time

Continuing the ‘goat’ theme from yesterday’s The Jesus Lizard album… This is probably Darnielle and co’s strongest album, with insightful storytelling songs recorded in an incredibly raw no-frills lo-fi manner, putting all the emphasis on the magnificent lyricism and songwriting. Blues in Dallas is a real change of pace towards the end - the only song without just guitar, it’s a melancholic yet catchy Casio-backed jaunt and probably the most memorable track on the album. It’s a great tune but maybe would have worked better as a closer, as going back into two final guitar songs does make it feel a bit out of place. Those guitar songs are bloody great though

A pivotal album in the emo scene that I never got into when I was younger but felt somehow nostalgic listening to it now. It’s strange to think SDRE are from Seattle because it’s so removed from the grunge that had defined that area and basically the entire alt-rock scene at the time. This really does bridge the gap from the hardcore emo of Rites of Spring and those other punk-adjacent bands to the more melodic side, and its influence can be heard pretty wildly. From the likely candidates of Jimmy Eat World and American Football to the more theatric ‘emo’ of the mid-‘00s to even stuff like Biffy Clyro’s debut - this feels like the birthing pool of all of those sounds and styles. And even if it didn’t inspire anything, it would still be a great listen

A decent but forgettable radio rock record that had some good hooks in the first few songs, but some of its incorporation of electronics was cheesy and ineffective, and the album ran out of steam quite quickly

An absolute whale of a live album at over 2 hours, apparently cut down from an original selection of 560 takes from across an entire tour I appreciate its ambition and I’m sure the shows would have been a hell of an experience, but the lack of memorable hooks makes the psychedelic jams feel quite redundant. The soloing is impressive and even hypnotic at times but the tunes they’re structured around just have no impact, so there’s no real sense of tension and release - it all just meanders, and meanders for far too long Also I was very disappointed to read on the wiki page that the album title was just due to fans asking when they would record ‘a live one’. I thought it was an actually quite inspired fish pun on catching ‘a live one’ - alas

A lot of fun and incredibly eclectic, and sounding far more modern than 1994. It covers so much ground - from Mexican folk/dance music to synthesised industrial metal - and does it all pretty convincingly, or at least in an entertaining way. Excluding a handful I was already very familiar with, this is my favourite of the user-submitted albums so far by quite a long way

A truly gorgeous record about love and loss, so intimate compared to the elaborate Illinois or the robotic Age of Adz. Sufjan at his most vulnerable (maybe excluding his most recent record Javelin - but definitely his most vulnerable at this point) and, in my opinion, with his strongest set of songs and most beautiful performances

A really solid classic rock album with huge sounding tunes that didn’t get too repetitive. The only Bob Seger song I knew was Night Moves which is from his previous album so this whole thing was new to me and it was pretty great! Strong performances, clever and catchy songwriting, and an instantly iconic sound and presence

A really cool bluesgrass/rootsy album that sounds like Ancient Greece by way of New Orleans. The instrumentation is brilliantly rustic, the songwriting is winding but also hooky, and the narrative drives the whole thing along at a great pace without diverting from the impact of the music. It really is crying out to be a musical and it’s quite surprising it took six years to bring it back to the stage - all of the key elements are already here! Mitchell gives a very diverse and powerful performance, but it’s the guests who really do help bring this version to life. Justin Vernon and Ani DiFranco both sound fantastic as Orpheus and Persephone all across the record, and Greg Brown’s Hades sounds like he smokes twenty Tom Waits’ a day

Probably The National’s strongest project, and certainly more consistent than High Violet which made it on the original list of 1001 albums. It kicks off with one of their greatest songs Fake Empire and goes to strength to strength from there, whether it’s an emotionally wrought ballad or a sardonic mid-tempo ballad - it’s quite a lot of ballads to be honest, but they all sound really good It’s got the energy of their earlier records and the production prowess of their later ones, with gorgeous soundscapes and songwriting throughout

An impressive but overblown prog album. The overall sound world is quite lovely and the musicianship is very impressive, but there are just not enough strong or compelling ideas in here to warrant its 85 minute run time

Another really fun Garbage album filled with hooks and a great combination of rock and electronic production

A moody and spiky post-punk record in the vein of Parquet Courts (reminds me of Idles as well but I think this album predates them) with fantastic grooves and thoughtful lyrics. I only discovered Protomartyr from the album they put out after this which is also really good - definitely one of the most exciting and consistent rock bands of the last few years

A lovely, delicate reverb-soaked record. The vocals are beautiful and the instrumentals are sparse and effective. Sounds exactly what you’d expect something on Sufjan Stevens’ record label to sound like

The songwriting is generally pretty great but the lyrics were quite off putting - unnecessarily cryptic with no hints of a deeper meaning, with a load of random pop culture references and occasional filth thrown in there for good measure. The instrumentation is quite stripped back - mainly just guitar and a Wurlitzer piano - which works well on most of the songs but some of the more elaborate ones (like the opener) feel like they’re lacking some broader instrumentation to bring the melodies to life. I enjoyed it on the whole though, as the songs are inventive and versatile, reminding me a bit of They Might Be Giants. I just somehow get the impression this guy would be really annoying at parties

One of the most baffling albums so far. The production is wild - so many very 80s touches that individually I would find annoying but there’s just so much going in that it goes full circle to being really fun. Drum Talk sounds like the fucked up lovechild of Paul Simon, Phil Collins and Afrika Bambaataa, and I am loathe to report that Bogart actually slaps - and the production choices somehow get even weirder from there, with the absolute banger Gone To Pieces and then the frankly ludicrous panning on Shame on You Some of the vocal lines are quite strange for such commercially driven pop music and some of Kershaw’s line deliveries are quite strange for an English singer - I honestly thought he was Swedish or something I don’t really know what to make of this. I don’t think it was good, and a lot of it just confused me - but god damn it, it made me feel something. And at the end of the day isn’t that what music is all about?

I was convinced this was on the original list of 1001, to the extent I even commented on that when reviewing a different Marillion album a few weeks ago Anyway, this is pretty good. I like that all the songs flow really nicely together - so many classic rock ‘concept albums’ are only very vaguely conceptual and just feel like a loose thread tying together a collection of mainly unrelated songs, whereas this is very clearly a carefully considered and cohesive project. It sometimes gets a bit silly and I think it tails off a bit towards the end, but it’s a pretty good effort and I applaud the idea even if not the execution. Also one of the tracks is called The Bitter Suite, which is a phenomenal name

Fun, inoffensive 80s pop with some catchy choruses but nothing much else going on

An incredibly catchy and varied Latin ska album with hooks for days. This was just very very fun

A pretty cool and varied Malian jazz album. There are a lot of Western influences on here, particularly Spanish guitar music, combined with the grooves and timbres that you only really find in West African jazz, that results in an interesting vibe and sound of the whole record. The opening track was incredible and gorgeous, and I really thought this could be a 5, but I didn’t really click with anything else anywhere near as much

I generally prefer Sparks’ weirder art pop stuff, but can’t deny this is an incredibly influential (and just very fun) synth-pop classic. The Moroder production is next level, and the hooks on Tryouts for the Human Race and the title track in particular are remarkably uplifting

The original list is infamously weak on metal, especially anything post-Metallica, and Lateralus is one of its most egregious snubs A remarkable and hypnotic prog metal album that deserves all of the hype. It’s ridiculously virtuosic yet still punchy and emotional. Schism is the song that blew up but the title track is the true highlight for me, especially the ‘bridge’ section where each instrument comes back in in a different time signature and the melodic lines weave together as it builds. Even ignoring the metric complexity and the constant Fibonacci sequence references throughout the song, the build just sounds so incredibly powerful

A stylishly psyched-out debut by one of the coolest bands of the last decade. It’s nothing revolutionary and it’s probably not their most assured or memorable work (I’d give that to the album after this, or the country-tinged Leon Bridges collab Texas Sun) but it’s a solid and groovy 40ish minutes of chill beats to study/relax to

A really solid country/americana record with some great songwriting and guitar playing. It all gets a little samey after a while and, while it’s all good, there wasn’t anything especially noteworthy for me that elevated it to great

A fun and eclectic dub record, not really my thing but there are some interesting moments and I totally see the appeal and influence of this

I didn’t really get anything out of this - ‘80s style hard rock that wouldn’t have stood out in the ‘80s, and just felt incredibly dated for 2009

Ty Segall is one of those modern artists I swear I’ve heard before somewhere or another but never really dove into or kept track of. Well, that’s about to change, because this was a great (re)introduction. Weird experimental rock with an Ariel Pink spirit but a smoother Tame Impala-like sound in places, but also with notes of The Velvet Underground and Bowie? I don’t really know, there was a lot going on, but it was all very good. Also I just read that, while promoting this album, Segall wore a baby mask and went by the name ‘Sloppo’ so… that’s fun I guess?

I do get the hype around this latest The Cure album - it’s the first release in nearly 20 years by a truly legendary band, now the elder statesmen of goth rock, and it’s their strongest release in over 30. It just really doesn’t stand up to their best work in my opinion A lot of the positive reviews commend how much it sounds like their darker and more meditative records like Disintegration and Pornography, and it does sound a lot like those two - just a less interesting version of them. There are some good songs on here for sure, and Robert Smith’s voice sounds exceptional for a guy in his 60s. The slow and foreboding opener Alone, which I wasn’t a big fan of when it was released as a single, actually does a really good job of setting the tone - similarly Endsong does a great job at closing things out. A Fragile Thing is very catchy and the highlight of the album for me, and one of the only tracks on here that does stand up with those earlier records. Everything else just sounds like subpar The Cure, and unfortunately (at risk of sounding like I’m contradicting myself) the one song where they really sound like they’re trying something different is Drone:Nodrone which sounds incredibly dated and just weirdly clunky. I don’t think it’s a terrible album at all, but it’s maybe The Cure’s 7th or 8th best record. Maybe it is a return to form but to me it sounds like a band with nothing new to say since the 80s

Eels up inside ya. An eclectic and interestingly orchestrated indie rock record with plenty of catchy highlights, from the chirpy weirdness of I Like Birds to the slightly eerie groove of Flyswatter to the college rock anthem Mr E’s Beautiful Blues. It has the hook-centric drive of bands like Cake and Weezer combined with the experimentalism of Beck or Sparklehorse and everything just gels very nicely

Mid-‘00s albums are kind of underrepresented on the main list of 1001 albums, primarily because the first list came out in 2005 and revisions since then have mainly added new stuff rather than updating albums from around this time. The latest list only has 3 albums from 2005 - Be by Common, Illinoise by Sufjan Stevens (both fantastic) and Coles Corner by Richard Hawley (pretty average). No Demon Days. No Late Registration. No The Woods. And no Silent Alarm Bloc Party is exactly the kind of cool and influential British indie band that would fit perfectly on this list, and there are quite a few similar but less impactful artists on there, which makes Bloc Party’s omission a bit more baffling. It’s a fantastic fusion of indie and dance punk, with energetic and catchy anthems (most notably Helicopter) and some really lovely and more meditative electronic moments such as the closing track, and surely influenced LCD Soundsystem and the rest of that New York dance punk wave. It’s fun, it’s cool and it sounds so pristine, and it’s more than worthy of a spot here

Folk music for theatre kids (not derogatory). This was quite fun - it got a bit predictable after a while, with a lot of songs going for the same reverb-heavy slow build bodhran-bashing songs that people would have described as epic about 10 years ago. Still a nice listen though, and some fun lyrics varying between a real high fantasy vibe to just some modern day nerds playing D&D and talking about their lives

This is where Childish Gambino really blew up and proved himself as an exciting and versatile artist, rather than just an actor/comedian who could make some fun raps. It’s a really ambitious project, especially with all the visual and online stuff to complement it but even just the album itself is pretty huge in terms of its scope. It is chronically online almost to a fault but very witty and entertaining, and Glover’s performances are great over some really solid and out-there production, combining huge pop hooks with some pretty wild instrumentals. It’s a bit inconsistent, with some tracks coming across more as skits or ideas than fleshed out songs, and not as direct or impactful as his follow-up, the funky and futuristic Awaken My Love!, but it’s a real landmark project

An inoffensive stomp-clap folk album that sounds like every other inoffensive stomp-clap folk album. The first couple of songs are pretty good - the opener is quite expansive and varied while the big single Ophelia is very catchy - but there’s nothing of note later in the tracklist. Not a dreadful album, just a quite boring one, and sometimes that’s worse

The kind of music that could only be made by some crazy Germans in the 70s. It’s an interesting if not entirely enjoyable listen, with avant-garde jazz clashing with tight prog rock motifs with pretty spicy results. Every time I come across this album, I forget that it’s not Amon Düül II by Yeti - it’s Yeti by Amon Düül II. There was another affiliated band called Amon Düül who were just kind of forgotten about. That’s awesome

A really solid modern punk record, combining a quite direct and hook-centric 90s sound with some more angular riffs and less standard grooves to keep things sounding fresh. There were a couple of slower power ballad-type songs that could have made for an anticlimactic end but the performances and energy were still really strong and vibrant

A pretty solid if not entirely inspiring early prog album. The opening track was one of the best written songs I’ve heard in quite a while, and the rest of the album was pretty good but didn’t come anywhere near that level for me

Another fun if quite inconsequential 00s indie record. There’s a good variety of tunes on here - it generally has a quite eccentric Vampire Weekend kind of vibe but some of the more acoustic songs are like a less depressed Bright Eyes, and Shivers (I’ve Got ‘Em) has a very Queens of the Stone Age groove. I enjoyed it on the whole and got more out of the album as it went on but it didn’t quite break through for me

Super catchy J-pop that transcends the language barrier with its vibrancy and innovation. I first heard Utada a few years ago with her most recent release Bad Mode, which I really liked though it feels quite cold and paranoid at times. This is a much breezier and vibier album that you can actually dance to - and the final track was used as the Kingdom Hearts II theme so that’s pretty rad

This was pretty cool and it was nice to hear something very different. Contemporary classical with an electronic twist, combining sparse and somber strings and piano motifs often with some subtle delay or other manipulation (though the opening track is less sparing and just vocoders itself to hell - in an effective way). There were quite a lot of short pieces that seemed a bit too similar to each other and didn’t really develop enough for any one in particular to stand out (besides the very distinct opener as already mentioned). Pretty enjoyable on the whole though. Also the guy scored three Denis Villeneuve films so mad respect

Wow it’s been a wild few days. J-pop, electronic minimalism, and now Finnish symphonic metal. It’s a pretty fun synthesis, and really leans into the theatricality of both genres. My main criticism is that the production is quite flat so everything just sounds a bit muted - albums like Metallica’s S&M, Fleshgod Apocalypse’s Opera, and anything by Ghost really make the riffs and the strings sound a lot heavier and more menacing

Mon the Biff! The album after this was my introduction to Biffy - it was impossible to escape the Mountains video on Kerrang TV for a few months - and I absolutely loved it but it took me a little while to go back to their earlier stuff - in fact I don’t think I listened further until hearing their Revolutions live album from Wembley. Their first three albums (which I now really enjoy) kind of scared me at the time, but Puzzle was a fascinating blend of that odd and heavier earlier work with the shout-along hooks and gorgeous ballads of the slightly poppier Only Revolutions. I’ve seen them three times now and Living is a Problem… (the opener to Puzzle) is always ridiculously fun in a live setting, while the soaring Folding Stars and the delicate Machines are both incredibly powerful. Some of the deeper cuts on the album are really fun too - the drum groove of A Whole Child Ago always sticks with me, Now I’m Everyone is super catchy, Love Has a Diameter has that stupid hummingbird lyric, and 9/15ths just sounds absolutely massive. It’s just an incredibly consistent record, and a landmark release from a very prolific band at their most ambitious and impactful As an aside - this was also the era where Biffy started writing great B-sides as well, and the sister album to Puzzle (Missing Pieces) has some bangers on it as well (and sadly is significantly better than anything they’ve released in the last 10 years)

My least favourite of the user-submitted albums so far. I don’t want to be too harsh as the album deals with a quite heavy subject matter and clearly means a lot to quite a few people based on some of the reviews. It’s great that it has provided that catharsis, and the best thing about music is that different music can resonate with different people in completely different ways. That being said I just did not vibe with this. Everything was so reverbed and distorted that it was unintelligible, and the few bits of clean vocals that cut through sounded really rough. On top of that it was all just quite boring as well. There wasn’t really any song structure or development - each track just relied on these thick shoegazy textures, and the textures sounded bad

Got to love Danny Elfman. This album is a great display of very fun and incredibly catchy 80s pop, with Elfman really trying to sound like Bowie but over some slightly weird, slightly gothic, and generally very silly production

One of the best pop albums of the 21st century. Every song has hooks for days, the production has that 80s throwback charm while still sounding modern and fresh, it has THAT SAX RIFF Run Away With Me seems to have usurped I Really Like You as the big song now which is well deserved, though for me the highlight is the run from Making the Most of the Night to Let’s Get Lost - two incredibly catchy songs bookending Your Type, which has Jepsen’s most e.mo.tional performance on the whole album. It’s remarkably consistent all the way through though, even including all the deluxe and expanded editions - It’s just got everything you could possibly look for in a pop record. And the companion EP E.MO.TION Side B slaps as well

The only album by legendary punk band Bad Religion I’ve heard in full before this is their Christmas album so I’m expecting this to be quite different… It’s not that different, their Christmas album goes hard as hell. This does too. I’ve definitely heard American Jesus before but couldn’t tell you where - it’s a great song! Everything else was pretty great as well

Damn, this was actually quite disappointing. I think Vulfpeck are incredibly talented and incredibly fun, but this was not the best showcase of their talents. Some of the songs sounded a bit disjointed and the mixing was quite echoey and not very precise throughout, and the vocals were really lacking. Even though their last couple of albums haven’t made as much of an impression on me, I’d much rather listen to one of their studio albums like The Beautiful Game or Mr Finish Line. Just a slightly underwhelming live album from a band I imagine would be super super fun to see live

Ben Gibbard’s prolificness in 2003 really needs to be studied. Bro released two of the most era-defining projects with two different bands in completely different genres. Give Up maybe seems like the more groundbreaking record, really nailing that electronic indie sound and paving the way for a lot of exciting bands over the next few years, and it also has probably the strongest song across both records with the ethereal Such Great Heights. However, Transatlanticism is still my favourite of the two. It’s maybe a less original sound, just going for the brand of indie that was already popular at the time, but it absolutely nails the sound it goes for and has that more mainstream appeal with the soaring hooks while also reaching that lingering Midwest emo audience with its energy and dissectible lyrics. The New Year is such a statement opener - that first line is probably the most memorable of the entire album - and the hits keep on hitting from there. It’s probably the more consistent of the two albums and covers a lot of ground in its relatively short run time, and just has such a massive emotional and cultural impact

I’ve never really got into Faith No More, even though their sound contains so many elements I usually dig elsewhere. Angel Dust is probably their most iconic and singular album, where their weird little blend of funk-metal seems grander and more vibrant than their by all means still pretty good rap-rock-leaning debut The Real Thing. It’s a fun album and covers a lot of ground sonically while never feeling too disjointed, though none of the songs really stick with me. Even the iconic Midlife Crisis has just never really landed for me in the same way as Epic, the one real standout song from their otherwise less cohesive debut. It definitely deserves a spot on the 1001 albums list, probably more so than their debut which made it over Angel Dust for some reason, but just not really one for me no matter how many times I give it another shot

Another pretty fun funk-rock record with a harder edge - kind of metal in places but also a big hip-hop and dance influence. There’s a lot going on and not all of it works, and while I enjoyed it in small doses the album seems like it goes on for ages

A super funky R&B/soul record, kicking things off with the timeless Lady Marmalade which is of course a standout but never feels like it overshadows the rest of the album. So many great tunes on here with some lovely ballads as well as some quite out-there deeper cuts like Space Children. A great recommendation and a remarkably strong album from a group generally regarded as a one-hit wonder

A solid prog album with some very pretty moments and generally really good playing, but nothing quite catchy or technically impressive enough to make its mark

A very weird and diverse album that I loved at times and found incredibly annoying at others. Having both Curtis Mayfield and Big Daddy Kane on the feature list is insane, though the songs they featured on were a bit underwhelming (with Mayfield’s track riffing waaaay too hard on his classic Move On Up) There’s some fantastic production on here, and some dogshit lyrics, and some very weird and almost pained vocal performances. Speed is a great tune until the singer just starts rattling off a load of Springsteen song titles, like one of those cringy All on the Board ‘poems’. Love Cliché is fantastic and sounds like absolutely nothing else on the rest of the album. It’s far too long and far too inconsistent, and I genuinely genuinely hated some of it - but by god some of it was charming as well

I remember getting a Living Colour album on this generator just after CM Punk returned to WWE and now, just a few days after he brought back This Fire Burns for his Wrestlemania main event entrance, I get Killswitch Engage. Looks like the algorithm is a fucking massive nerd as well Howard Jones took over on vocals shortly after this album, and he’s the singer on the few Killswitch songs I’m familiar with, so it was quite interesting hearing an album with Jesse Leach. Jones’ voice is more soulful and he brings a bit more power to his choruses, but Leach brings a lot of variety and emotion to the tracks on here. I haven’t really heard enough to properly compare the two, but they both seem to be killer vocalists in their own right It’s a pretty badass metal album, with some really fun riffs and generally favouring huge rhythmic breakdowns over noodly guitar solos, and it all hits really hard. I don’t listen to anywhere near as much metal now as I did maybe 10 years ago, but albums like this remind me why I used to be so fond of the genre

A solid country pop album but with some good storytelling songs here and there (He Thinks He’ll Keep Her) but nothing too exciting going on melodically or instrumentally so everything just kind of blended into one. Didn’t care for the duet, and it was no real surprise that the best song on here was a Lucinda Williams cover

I’m very glad someone submitted this and it has become one of my absolute favourite records of the last decade. One of the first truly great albums I remember being introduced to by an Anthony Fantano review embarrassingly enough - this made a huge impact on me with the first listen and I’ve just grown to enjoy it even more since. It does such a good job of conveying the uniquely rustic avant-folk sound of this fantasy world, with weird guitar tunings and an almost percussive acoustic playing style, overlaid with Dawson’s otherworldly bardic caterwauling. The melodies are deeply strange yet somehow embed themselves into my brain, and the album is somehow quite scary and overwhelming at times but ultimately brings me a lot of joy. It’s an incredibly original piece of work and is not only an album, but a doorway to a fantastical land of ogres, shapeshifters, and heavily-bearded Geordies.

This was a wonderful surprise. I actually checked out The Hold Steady’s album before this last week off a random recommendation, which I enjoyed but didn’t stick with me too much. This was a slightly more streamlined sound - maybe a bit less individual but a really good display of everything it was going for. A lot of the tracks had this huge stadium rock atmosphere but still with that indie edge, like Bob Mould leading the E Street Band. It kicked off with so much energy and just kept that momentum going, with stellar songwriting throughout. The one low point for me was probably Chillout Tent, and the lyrics in general were a bit hit and miss. Still - a fantastic album and a band I’ll definitely be returning to

Good god, this was an experience and a half. Eclectic nightmare fuel, like The Residents meets Devin Townsend, with some incredible harmonies and wild instrumentation choices. Each song was quite exciting and it was impossible to tell where it was going to go next, but the double album format worked against it to an extent - as that unpredictability ironically just got a bit repetitive after a while, and each song melded into one. Still, very inventive and fun on the whole, and would have been a highlight if just a bit more selective with its tracklist

Didn’t care for this one at all, not much going on musically and a really irritating Eddie Vedder dialed to the max vocal style

A quite interesting combination of punky industrial noise with some quite ambitious orchestral movements that fit together slightly better than expected. Didn’t love it but not as violently abrasive as the band name suggests

As smooth and sickly sweet as the titular whipped cream, this is Tijuana brass at its most blissfully muzak. It’s kind of jazz in the way that yacht rock is kind of rock, and despite the genre label the band lineup is as Mexican as apple pie. But damn it sure is smooth

This is the album I suggested! I first heard WORRY a few years ago, after reading James Acaster’s book about music from 2016 (the book is called Perfect Sound Whatever, which is the closing track of this album). I liked it enough to buy it on Bandcamp but didn’t go back to it for a while, when suddenly during lockdown I put it on again and it just had a very profound effect on me. I then had a period of a couple of months when I was listening to this every single day. It became a comfort album for me in a way I’d never really needed before, and the experience of just listening through to WORRY from start to finish and embracing every emotion it brought up was quite therapeutic at a very rough time. Something about the anxiety of lockdown and the current political climate is so perfectly reflected in this record, which I usually describe to people as ‘pop-punk for grown-ups’. It is angry and raucous in a distinctly modern way and doesn’t hold back with its criticisms of gentrification, doomscrolling/algorithmic bias, and shitty landlords. But it is also uplifting and packed full of hooks and stadium-sized choruses (like the soaring summer singalong of June 21st, or the entirety of Festival Song), with the most powerful gang vocals I’ve ever heard (I still get chills every time We Begged 2 Explode kicks in). It is remarkably entertaining and inspiring. Jeff gives an incredibly powerful and emotional vocal performance all over the album (with some funny and quite charming slips on the high notes in I Did Something Weird Last Night - the aftermath of recording shouted gang vocals before the other vocal tracks). The instrumentation is really solid throughout with very fun drumming and some fantastic catchy guitar and bass lines, as well as some oddities like glockenspiels and kazoos that are somehow timed perfectly and just fit with the rest of the instrumental palette. Musically it goes through about every punk sub-genre, most notably on the second half of the album which is structured as one continuous movement just like Abbey Road, and flits from ska to hardcore to the electronic pulse of The Fuzz without breaking a sweat. And it all ends with Perfect Sound Whatever, and that cathartic mantra ‘perfect always takes so long because it don’t exist’. Well I’m sorry to disagree with you Jeff, but this album is pretty fucking perfect

I’m not a huge death metal fan to be quite honest, and the vocals in particular didn’t really click with me on this one. I thought it was a really well put together album though, with fantastic riffs and Gene Hoglan’s incredible metronomic drumming. The more melodic moments were a nice touch to provide some variety but really the tightness of the heavier sections was the standout. A really strong representation that I actually quite enjoyed from a genre I generally don’t vibe with

Of course I fuck with Snarky Puppy. I don’t think you were allowed to do a music degree in the 2010s if you didn’t fuck with Snarky Puppy. This is a good shout for their best album - I also love its predecessor GroundUP which opens with my favourite Snarky song Thing of Gold. We Like It Here has some absolute bangers on it as well though, especially the closer Lingus which is just ridiculous. It’s a fantastic modern jazz album that is so stylish and virtuosic that it’s quite easy to forget it’s all recorded live - it just sounds so tight and expertly constructed that you think it HAS to be a compilation of the best takes, and then you occasionally hear the crowd applauding after a solo and it reminds me just how darn good these musicians are. I don’t think Snarky have a single album I would say is perfect - their music lacks that element of emotional impact or transcendence that makes some classic jazz or something like The Epic by Kamasi Washington so effective - but it’s a truly impressive outing with catchy heads and mind-bending solos by some of the most technically proficient and inventive jazz musicians of their era

The first Songs: Ohia album I’ve heard other than The Magnolia Brewing Co., which I always thought was the band name with Songs: Ohia being the album name. The fact that Jason Molina seems to have followed that album up with multiple releases under the name The Magnolia Brewing Co. makes this even more confusing Anyway, this was a beautiful album. Very emotional and fragile, basically all just acoustic guitar and vocals, and kind of like a cross between Elliott Smith and Magnetic Fields

A very mixed album for me. The Rev’s drumming on songs like Beast and the Harlot and Bat Country were hugely inspirational for me when I was learning, and the guitar playing across the album is fantastic. Unfortunately the songs themselves don’t quite hold up, especially on the second half where the album really meanders. After the big Guns ‘n’ Roses style centrepiece ballad Seize the Day (complete with a soaring guitar solo), every song is about 7 minutes or longer and it’s incredibly uneven (despite some really good moments like the classical guitar outro to Sidewinder) M Shadows’ vocals are also pretty mixed throughout. There are some really powerful moments like the pre-chorus of Trashed and Scattered and the emotional bridge of Seize the Day, but other times where his voice is super whiny (he insists on doing this falsetto overdub on some tracks that just sounds really bad, and he just generally doesn’t sound great on the tonally-confused closer M.I.A). The production is also quite tinny on a lot of the tracks, which is a shame as you end up missing some details of the very intricate drumming. It’s nowhere near as consistent as their self-titled follow-up or Nightmare, but there are some absolute bangers in the first half and some very impressive and influential moments elsewhere.

Can’t say this is a record I come back to that often but its impact on the jazz scene is undeniable. It’s not as noisy as I remembered and actually has some really touching soft moments. There’s nothing too overbearing or squawky, and while the improv does get very free in places it all still follows that familiar bebop structure. Coleman’s sax runs are just insanely fluent and seem to transcend the boundaries of melody, harmony, rhythm, and space-time. Inimitable playing paired with a groundbreaking singular vision, Ornette Coleman I respect your game

This was fun! Never heard of this band at all and initially though they were one of those many late noughties American indie bands inspired by Animal Collective - then found out they’re from Scotland and this came out in 2001. Wild There is a britpop influence for sure and it becomes more prevalent as the album goes on, though that art-pop style still pokes through occasionally with some of the instrumentation. Started really well, got a bit predictable after a while, but a solid project on the whole

Took me a little while to get into this one (I did not care for the robotic voiceover intro) but it was a fun and campy punk album with a lot of attitude and energy. Nothing too original or inspiring but still well worth a listen

Animals is a fantastic meditative prog rock album that sits comfortably in one of the greatest album runs of all time. It seems to have become the cool choice as a favourite Floyd album and I totally get it, but it just doesn’t hit me as strongly as Dark Side or my personal favourite Wish You Were Here. I would probably even choose The Wall most days, which I think has higher highs and is still remarkably strong on the whole despite being a bit bloated. There are some parts of Animals where I do kind of lose interest, which just doesn’t happen on those other three landmark Floyd albums from this era, and the standout tracks for me are the shorter Pigs on the Wing bookends, with the longer tracks in the middle being a bit sprawling, especially Sheep which seems like it takes a while to get going. Still a fantastic album though

A quintessential electronic record with crossover appeal that really should have been the Daft Punk album to make the original list. Homework is a great debut but Discovery just builds on everything that made it work and makes it hit even harder

I remember being about 14 and having a couple of friends who were really into Alexisonfire (and singer Dallas Green’s solo work City and Colour, which I’ve somehow only just noticed is a pun on his name). I never really got into them but always thought they were pretty good Listening to them again for the first time in another 14 years, I feel kind of the same. It’s aged a lot better than some of the similar bands I was listening to around the same time, but doesn’t quite have the intensity of a letlive. or a La Dispute. It’s a solid post-hardcore record and I like the interplay between the two vocalists (Green providing the cleaner vocals and Wade McNeil hitting the screams before his slightly weird tenure fronting Gallows after Frank Carter left). The songs are just not especially memorable though, and it lacks those big impactful moments I look for in this kind of music. Again, I can’t really get into them, but they’re pretty good

Just a couple of days after Discovery (which at least had an alternate Daft Punk record for representation) comes another one of the most ridiculous snubs from the original list. I have no idea how Robert Dimery didn’t include this as one of 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. Maybe he just didn’t like the idea of a concept album about being a bit too into Anne Frank? (honestly fair enough). In the Aeroplane… is a strange album. Its premise is strange and its lyrics are often unsettling - ‘your father made foetuses with flesh-licking ladies’ is one that always strikes me. Musically it’s very simple until it’s not. It’s one of very few albums I can just play all the way through on guitar, though there are a lot of production details that really stand out - the lo-fi fuzz that breaks through on songs like Holland, 1945 and Ghost to the slightly mistuned brass and electronic orchestration that gives everything a uniquely eerie quality. But it’s also very jovial in places - in particular the bagpipe-led untitled instrumental, which always reminds me of my friend Chris saying it would make great entrance music for an improv group or professional wrestler. There are so many fantastic touches that make this great record even more rewarding. The theremin wail climbing higher and higher in pitch during the verses of the title track, most notably over the lyric ‘how the notes all bend and reach above the trees’; the two wild mid-syllable octave jumps in Oh Comely; the final seconds of the album after its closing line ‘Don’t hate her when she gets up to leave’ when you hear someone stand and leave the room. It’s a sparse acoustic album until it’s not, it’s incredibly emotional despite being so cryptic that I don’t really know why it makes me emotional, and every song is anthemic and catchy as hell

The longer I spend going through the user-submitted albums, the more I think Dimery is an absolute hack. This is the third album in just four days that should have definitely been included, and is pretty much THE post-rock record at this point. That’s not to say I adore this album - it’s great but not really my cup of tea - but it is a truly legendary and awe inspiring piece of work. Cinematic, all-encompassing, and at turns beautiful and crushing, it is a masterful sonic experiment that somehow feels deserving of its intimidating 87 minute run time

Arctic Monkeys’ first two albums lit a firework under the UK indie scene and pioneered a new wave of pub rock bands. Their two following albums were a bit moodier and more psychedelic - they showed they had range and that they were friend with Josh Homme now. Then came AM, a staggeringly huge record which was inescapable for years, and solidified the Monkeys as one the biggest rock bands of the 21st century. It would have been so easy to follow it up with AM 2 and live off the diminishing returns for another few albums, but instead they took the left-field option. I’m really glad they did as Tranquility Base is so so much more interesting and exciting than if they tried to just recycle their already quite derivative brand of blues rock revival. Shame it fucking sucks though. It’s a pretty wild concept - Turner is this lounge singer on a luxury resort on the moon, and this gives them an excuse to chuck in a load of sci-fi references and then not really do anything else with the concept. It’s so wild it could just about work, but Turner doesn't have the self-awareness to play into the silliness of it all and pull it off Richard Cheese style, and instead it’s a pretentious half-baked mess. A lot of the vocals are out of his range as well and he just doesn’t have the mic presence to carry it - his swagger from AM is weirdly gone and he struggles his way through song after song. It’s not all bad - the instrumentation is often fun and plays into the spacy concept even if the songs often meander and don’t deliver. Some of the tracks that do hit are the cool scene-setting opener Star Treatment, Four Out of Five which is the closest this has to a single, and She Looks Like Fun which is the only song where Turner seems to be in on the gimmick - it’s got this haunted funfair vibe and sounds absolutely batshit and is just a lot of fun. I guess my main issue with the album is that so much of it just sounds like nothing. It has this really unique and actually quite fruitful concept that is just not played into enough. If they leaned into the silliness more, it would make the experimentation worth it - if they had more fun with it, it would be more fun to listen to. As it stands it’s a failed experiment and ultimately quite forgettable - and no concept album about a lounge singer on the fucking moon should be forgettable! - and while AM endured for many years after its release, I think Tranquility Base is already starting to be lost in time… like tears in the rain

A cool and consistent solo debut from a low-key indie legend. There’s Regina Spektor style piano ballads but a bit of that St Vincent edge on some of the full band tracks. It maybe doesn’t quite carve out its own sound, but it’s a really strong addition to that burgeoning mid-2000s scene. Save Me is a swaggering monster of a track, and the guest feature from Anohni on I Defy is another gorgeous highlight

A strong enough sophomore album from one of the biggest and most exciting pop stars in the game right now. I don’t think it’s as strong as her debut, which was a breath of fresh air and contained banger after banger, but it shows some growth and a bit more range as an artist rather than playing things too safe. Vampire gets the plaudits and it’s a great song (if maybe not as good as Drivers Licence, the emotional centrepiece of the previous record) but the other two singles really stand out for me too. The punky/new wave of Bad Idea Right with its fuzzy guitar solo and the chant-along anthem Get Him Back really push Rodrigo’s sound into uncharted territory to great success. It’s not as consistent as the debut and not one I’ve really found myself returning to, but it’s still a huge record and makes me excited for whatever she does next

Didn’t care for the first song at all but I enjoyed it a bit more as it went along. A lot of other reviewers have compared it to Elvis Costello and… yeah it sounds just like Costello, other than a couple of songs where the singer just does a bad Jagger impression. I enjoyed the quirky rhythms of the title track and Who Listens to the Radio was a very catchy and well written song, but everything else just felt like a less good version of other songs I’ve heard before

A stunning and dark masterpiece from progressive metal icons Tool, with a more industrial approach than the hypnotic transcendence of later albums like their magnum opus Lateralus. It’s their most aggressive and sardonic album, though tracks like Forty Six & Two are still catchy and anthemic, and it’s full of fantastic moments though doesn’t quite reach the highs of Lateralus for me and is also a little less consistent. Still, when it really hits - especially on the astounding title track - it sure packs a hell of a punch

Another Tool album literally the next day? This one leans more into that abstract and proggy side post-Lateralus, with winding song structures and a lack of real clarity and hooks compared to their previous two albums. It’s still magnificently played but the songs have nowhere near as much punch as their Ænima or Lateralus (arguably even Undertow) and I never really find the urge to revisit this one.

The pinnacle of live albums. It loses a bit of its impact by being removed from the iconic visuals of Demme’s film, but it’s still a timeless classic. Not sure why anyone bothers playing live music after this

I’ve never fully enjoyed or fully disliked a 1975 album - I find they never quite have that consistency that makes a great album, but all have pretty high points and their musical evolution is generally interesting enough for me to keep coming back to them even when I know I probably won’t love the whole thing. This is arguably the most consistent of theirs, and the left-field alt-rock of Part of the Band may be my favourite The 1975 song (it always reminds me of Pavement for some reason? not sure if that’s anything to do with the music or just because it has a lot of inventive euphemisms like in Silent Kit or Harness Your Hopes). I also love All I Need to Hear, a really tender and low-key ballad that doesn’t sound too cloying like some of their earlier slower songs. Those are really the only two that stick with me, but the rest is still a pretty good listen on the whole, and I like that they’re taking risks and pushing themselves. Hopefully album 6 will be the one that really works for me

I don’t really get the reverence for Joe Cocker. There are some solid performances on here, but its frankly quite embarrassing to put out an 80 minute live album exclusively of covers, and Cocker just comes across as an enthusiastic pub singer

A soothing and very promising debut EP. It has some James Blake production and a Sampha feature and the influence of those two artists really shines through - it also reminds me of Anohni and the Johnsons in places. Its brevity is maybe at its detriment and it does feel more a teaser than a cohesive and intentional project, but as an introduction to Mustafa’s sound it’s a very warm one. Looks like he dropped a full album last year and I’ll definitely be checking that out

This started off as a quite lovely acoustic album, with breathy vocals over sparse textures, and was nice enough if a bit overly familiar - but something changed at the end of The Sound of War. The track ended with this unsettling drone that did not let up and just held you in that noise, and the following song was much more avant-garde and felt somehow ominous. The second half of the album was back to the quite lovely acoustic stuff but there was this underlying eeriness, with a rich dreamlike quality that reminded me of Jenny Hval or Agnes Obel. The project closed out with the sumptuous Mountaineers, with an almost unrecognisable John Grant feature, and the final couple of minutes were actually transcendent

Another very average late 70s album that sounds just like a less good version of Costello or Petty. I’ve never heard anyone pronounce UFO like Parker does on a track towards the end and I think it’s quite damning that that was my biggest take away from the album

A fun sophisti-pop record with some catchy songs and ridiculous lyrics that sometimes really worked for me and sometimes really really didn’t. Other people seemed to enjoy the ‘Tom Waits pastiche’ but I found it quite disappointing, as it completely misses the soulful quality of Waits’ voice and just opts for a generic gravelly growl - though the closer with that Heartattack and Vine-style bassline was a highlight. Rotterdam is the real star of the show though, a charming and jaunty banger perfectly positioned near the middle of the hit-and-miss tracklist

A pretty cool ‘00s alt-rock album that reminded me a bit of Franz Ferdinand, but with some Scandi folk melodies creeping through. I enjoyed this quite a bit and got more into it as it went on, but it didn’t quite do it for me

A pivotal ska album that really deserves a spot on this list. Now that I think about, I’m not sure if there was any ska in the original 1001 albums. There was hardly any reggae either - basically just a couple of Marley records and that dogshit Clapton album. I’m very glad I got to check this out again, as I remember not really vibing with it a few years ago. I think I went in expecting bright and punchy horns-led ska like Reel Big Fish, so the harder skank of Sublime just didn’t hit that spot. It’s much more an extension of skate punk, with some hip-hop and almost nu-metal influences in there too, along with some great hooks even if they’re a bit more subtle than other bands. Enjoyed this quite a lot in the end

Spoiler alert - his name isn’t Jonas, it’s something much more stupid This album basically redefined American indie rock in the post-grunge vacuum, and it’s just a bunch of dorks talking about playing D&D and how cool it would be to surf to work. Not much to say about this one other than it’s a pretty much perfect album, and a very notable omission from the original list

Instant classic and one of the finest hip-hop albums of the 2010s. Gibbs takes the hard-hitting street consciousness of gangster rap and combines it with the swagger and hooks of the bling era, all over some of the most luscious beats Madlib has ever cooked up

A bright and blissful electronic album that made it to my best of 2021 list, though I haven’t revisited the whole record until now. Look at the Sky is euphoric and a fantastic way to kick off the album, and Blossom near the end is an incredibly beautiful song and one I went back to a lot shortly after the album came out. Everything else is pretty good, and the production is remarkable throughout, but it’s really just those two songs that stick with me

A radical reinvention for Bon Iver, whose folky leanings of the astounding For Emma Forever Ago are drenched in electronics here. 22 (Over Soon) is such a strong introduction and I don’t think the rest of the album quite holds up to it but it’s still a lovely listen, with gorgeous melodies chopped and screwed in all sorts of ways

A vibrant concept album full of hooks that weave in and out of each other and reprise themselves just as you managed to get them out of your head. I caught a bit of The Decemberists at a festival last summer (having only heard their two earlier albums Picaresque and The Crane Wife) and The Wanting Comes in Waves was a song that really stuck with me - pleased to report it is just as catchy and hard hitting on the album

Absolutely huge-sounding punchy ska, with hooks for days and a ridiculous amount of energy. One of those bands I’ve known of for ages and never really given a listen, and I completely understand the hype now