Not RHCP's best album, kind of a mess, really. But has great songs, like Under the Bridge and Breaking the Girl.
Great samples and a couple of great songs, but the album is too long and loses its grip halfway through.
This album is amazing. You can feel the band having fun while creating a masterpiece of funk music. Every band member contribution is worth noting.
This album feels uninspired and repetitive. The songs are fine, but nothing that you haven't heard before or that was made in a better way after.
This is the fourth and last in what I consider to be the Rolling Stones peak period of creativity, from 1968 to 1972. An amazing rock album with a lot of gospel and swing references and great songs like Rocks Off, Tumbling Dice (my favourite Stones tune), Sweet Virginia and Shine a Light.
This album is a mix of salsa percussion and piano at its finest. The songs build up beautifully and "Pedro Navaja" is a masterpiece.
One of the greatest Talking Heads albums, which means it's one of the greatest albums of all time. It has "Uh-Oh, Love Comes to Town", "Don't Worry About the Government" and "Psycho Killer" a's highlights, but all 11 tracks are new wave classics.
It does sound like a soundtrack to a film noir, but it takes some time to take of as an album. "Sounds from The Big House" is a great track, though.
This album's A-side is perfect, from "Speed of Life" from "A New Career in a New Town", being "Sound and Vision" one of the greatest songs of all time. The B-side is also great, of course, but it's very different from anything else Bowie did or would do, since you can feel Brian Eno's presence everywhere. It's near perfection.
Clube da Esquina is one of the masterpieces of brazilian music. An MPB classic, with nods to psycholdelic pop, rock and some experimental moments. The vocals by Milton Nascimento and Beto Guedes are the hightlights, specially because their voices are in contrast. When this double album opens with "Tudo Que Você Podia Ser" you already know that you are in for an incredible ride and that the artists involved are in the peak of their creativity. "Dos Cruces", "Me Deixa Em Paz" and "Nada Será Como Antes" are also worth noting.
This is the start of the peak period of creativity for the Rolling Stones. A great rock album that explores the roots of the genre, with blues rhythms, and also some early examples of hard rock. "Sympathy for the Devil" is a anthem, a masterpiece that embodies everything that rock could be, and "Street Fighting Man" has such beautiful layers of acoustic guitar and sitar, and a very unique riff.
Although it does feel like it has this mix of The Byrds and Syd Barrett (that everybody talks about) as a major influence, the album never really pulls through and becomes very repetitive, very fast. It has some cool ideas, but they were already being executed by better post-punk bands.
Hejira is an album of explorations. Joni Mitchell created big lyrics for long songs, just like the road trips that inspired the record. The jazzy feeling of the album makes every listening an oportunity to discover something new. Tracks like "Coyote", "Furry Sings the Blues" and "Song for Sharon" becomes prettier every time you listen to them.
This is such a fine exemple of trip-hop and chill-out electronic music, and it leaves no doubt that Röyksopp is one of the major artists in those genre. The experimentations make this album unique, but it also feels that there are so much space for then to grow (and they did). "Eple" is so catchy and stays in your head for days.
Bayou Country is a small, seven track album, that leaves you wanting more. Songs like "Born on the Bayou" and "Proud Mary" are some of the best exemples of the american southern rock genre and John Fogerty's voice is something else, especially in the opening track.
This is 2Pac's best album. The musical production is very good, the choice of samples and the list of colaborators are great. The beats are well crafted and songs like "Me Against the World", "Dear Mama" and "It Ain't Easy" are among the biggest classics of the West Coast hip hop subgenre.
This is very repetitive and uninspired, one of the worst new wave albums i've ever listened to.
Never Mind This Album, know what i'm saying? But "God Save the Queen" is ok.
A classic rock and roll/boogie woogie album, with mostly danceable fast tempo tracks. "Honey Chile" and "Blue Monday" are great song and the rendition of "What's the Reason (I'm Not Pleasing You)" is fun. Fats had a great voice for his style.
M.I.A. is a legendary artist. She's able to do with music things that few others can. This album is 15 years old and still sounds fresh. The mix of styles is so unique and one of the reasons this is called the album of the third world. Tamil instruments, Bollywood vibes, funk carioca, Sub-Saharan Africa percussion and even some didgeridoo thrown in for good measure. Most of the songs are gread, well crafted and full of layers - and "Paper Planes" is probably the best song of its decade.
This album shows as evolving genre about to reach its international peak of success. Bob Marley and Peter Tosh are great composers and this is a reggae standard by all means. Althoug "Stir It Up" is the most famous track, "Concrete Jungle" is a more interesting song, with a nod to R&B and other reggae's influences.
Nelson's style matched Booker T. Jones' production perfectly and the result is a fairly simple album, but one that is beautiful from its cover until the last track. Can't really say I love all the songs, but Nelson personal choice of covers makes sense and made his vocal performances more passionate. "Georgia on My Mind" is the obvious classic here - creating another definitive version of a song that already had a definitive version with Ray Charles - but "Stardust" and "Moonlight in Vermont" are also worth noting.
A very good early exemple of trip hop. A lot of good references, expecially in the choice of samples. The sample of Isaac Hayes' "Ike's Rap II" elevates "Glory Box" to another level and the singles are the best tracks - all trip hop classics.
This is a great album, one that makes you think that maybe what the Beatles were doing in 1967 was not so unique. Nice baroque pop, rock and even some early R&B songs makes up for a great album overall. It even has a feeling of nostalgia in it. "David Watts", "Death of a Clown" and "Waterloo Sunset" are the highlights.
Never a mix of Synth-pop, gothic rock and dance music worked so well. This is Depeche Mode's best album and has a lot of great songs. "World in My Eyes", "Personal Jesus" and "Policy of Truth" are all amazingly creative song, great efforts by Martin Gore. But "Enjoy the Silence" is at another level (but curiously, the single version is better - which is rare). An amazing listening, nonetheless.
This is folk rock in a very traditional way and it has a great progression from "Scarborough Fair/Canticle" to "7 O'Clock News/Silent Night", almost telling us a story. "Homeward Bound" and "The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)" are also very remarkable songs and Paul's voice mixed with Art's is always a delight.
This album is as interesting example of lo-fi production and a milestone of the shoegaze genre. It doesn't click for me at all, but i like Bilinda Butcher's vocals in "Lose My Breath".
Lust for Life is an album with a very interesting story, involving the growing relationship between Iggy and Bowie that resulted in great songs - the peak being this album. The mix of hard rock and some kind of punk reminescent from the Stooges (and heroine) is very unique, especially in the opening track "Lust for Life". "Some Weird Sin" is very raw, "The Passenger" is a classic and "Tonight" makes clear that this is basically a Pop & Bowie effort. Always a great listen.
This album is basically an opener of what the hip hop of the 1990s would be like. Groups like Public Enemy and N.W.A opened the way, in the late 1980s, for rappers to take the spotlight in the next decade. In this sense, this first Ice Cube effort goes everywhere, but finds things to say in every corner it touches. Great lyrics, beats and samples overall. Songs that are more political and have social commentary are the highlights, like "AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted" and "Endangered Species (Tales from the Darkside)", but the rawness of "The Nigga Ya Love to Hate" is also very interesting.
Often cited as a classic Folktronica album, it actually lacks a little bit on the electronica side. But the songs have beatuful arrengements and the lyrics are very interesting. The problem for me is that, from the first track on, "Stolen Car" (the best on the album), the album loses momentum very fast and starts sounding repetitive in the second half. But Orton's voice is beautiful and, by itself, is reason enough to give it a listen.
This is by no means the best album of Astrud's era on Verve. It has some nice songs and good arrangements, but it's basically a repetition of the formula of americanizing bossa nova classics for the US, a staple of the 1960s that was already becoming boring in 1967. The result is a little bit more pop oriented than her previous records and the best tracks are reenditions of american standards, like "My Foolish Heart".
This is an interesting indie rock album that show one of the best things in the genre, that is mixing other styles to make compelling songs. In this case, funk, soul and post-punk share the space with a more traditional rock and the result is never boring. "Golden Age" and "DLZ" are great songs, and "Crying" is something of a hidden gem. Adebimpe and Malone voices, together, make this album an unique listen.
This is a classic indie pop album of a band still in formation. Although all tracks were composed by Stuart Murdoch almost as a solo effort, it really feels like it was conceived considering that a band would play it. And that's the evolution that made Belle & Sebastian this big number of the scottish indie scene. "The State I Am In" and "You're Just a Baby" are great songs.
Nighthawks at the Diner is the best of Tom Waits' jazz albums from the 1970s. It transports you to what feels like inside a jazz club, very moody and atmospheric. The lyrics are great, sometimes funny, and the piano is always on point. A great record, beaing "Eggs and Sausage (In a Cadillac with Susan Michelson)" the highest point of the journey.
This is a great debut by a very creative band, that always challenge the limits of alt and nu metal. The lyrics are, mostly, great, tackling genocide and religion. And I say mostly because System of a Down always finds a way to sound a little conspirational. But in 1998 the world was completely different and it feels more naive than insane. The instrumentation is great, especially Dolmayan's drums - a great influence for other nu metal bands. They also chose the right singles, since "Sugar" and "Spiders" are the best songs.
This is such an iconic album, that it's hard to find something to say about it that hasn't been said before. Curiously, this is also, by no means, Pink Floyd's best album - or maybe not even one in the top 5. But it's still a great double album, one that has become relevant again and deserves a new listen, because of it's anti-war and anti-fascist vibe, while still dealing with feelings of abandonmant, isolation, depression and the loss of sanity (a common subject for the band). The problem is that it can be very pretentious and megalomaniac, especially on the Roger Waters side - which makes up for 75% of the album. But it's still a good and well produced albums, with amazing lyrics and great narratives in song form, like in "Mother", "Goodbye Cruel World", "Hey You" and, most of all, "Comfortably Numb".
This was already terrible in 1998 and, even then, it managed to age poorly. It has some mildly interesting rap metal and country rap moments, but nothing done better before or after. It's just an album that fans of those genres might think about listening after everything else those crossover styles have to offer, and even so, maybe it's better to listening to something else when you reach that level of rock botton.
This debut by The Cars is as ok pop rock album with fun poppy tunes and some new wave instrumentation. It has good guitar riffs and nice vocals, but sounds mid most of the time. "Just What I Needed" is somewhat a classic, but one at the very botton of the list of late 1970s pop rock classics.
Darkness on the Edge of Town represents Springsteen maturity as a composer and its defining in the formation of the heartland rock subgenre. It created several classics of his live performances, like "The Promised Land" and "Badlands", but his voice doesn't sound great in most of the tracks. It's a good album, but also one that is incredibly overated and almost make no sense (like most of Springsteen records) for an audience that is not american.
"Nights Introlude", the first song on this album, is one of the greatest trip hop master pieces of all time. Overall, Nightmares on Wax's beats are very smooth, but not in a smooth jazz way, and more on the smoothness feel on the layers of his production. The early hip hop references are very well put in songs like "Dreddoverboard", just like the spy movie soundtrack vibes of "Mission Venice" are perfectly fit. "Stars", for instance, is almost a early chillwave track. It's a very creative album from start to finish.
S.F. Sorrow is a mix of early Pink Floyd with late Beatles, but the result is just one more band doing psychedelic rock in the late 1960s. "Baron Saturday", the album highlight, is a good combination of those references.
Muddy Waters already had a 40 year old career by the time he released Hard Again, but his voice still sounded amazing and gave a unique signature to his music. It's indeed a return to form for the legendary blues musician and the rerecording of "Mannish Boy" made it sound fresh more then 20 years after the original version.
This is Mitchell's greatest album, and that's saying a lot, since she has a lot of great records in her catalog. A folk masterpiece comprised of 10 beautifully composed songs, with iconic lyrics about relationships, tackling topics like falling in love, feeling insecure, clashes of egos and everything you can think about when you are in love. The side two of the album has an almost perfect sequence of songs, starting with "California", then "This Flight Tonight", "River" and the amazing "A Case of You". One of the greatest albums of all time, indeed.
This album is stunning, a jazz masterpiece in everything that made jazz unique in the early 1960s - a single composition that stars almost like a ballet and evolves to become very experimental, with an eleven piece big band working in full synergy to deliver something unique, with a beautiful orchestration. Mingus' piano sounds amazing, and his double bass is also out of this world. There's nothing like The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady.
Celebrity Skin is a great power pop album and an interesting way to depart from the grunge style from previous albums produced by Courtney Love's Hole. The changes in the line up and production style resulted in a album about California that works very well as a single theme record. Love's lyrics are at her peak, exploring themes of superficiality and sexism that fits very well with the California motif. "Celebrity Skin" and "Malibu" are alt rock classics and great late 1990s songs.
"Grace" is a nice alternative rock album, with jazz and folk references, and even some hard rock moments, like the banger title track "Mojo Pin". His version of "Lilac Wine" is also very interesting, but the great song, that makes this album really great, is his reendition of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah". His choice of verses fits his style perferctly and in shone new light to an already classic tune. Nice arangements and a great voice by Jeff Buckley makes it a 1990s rock classic.
Haggard's working class outlaw country in I'm a Lonesome Fugitive has some interesting moments, but as a non-american that normally don't listen to country music, it's impossible not to compare his music with that of Johnny Cash and the comparison is not good for Haggard.
"Rattlesnakes" feels like an indie pop album lost in time. Lots of acoustic guitars and tambourines, some fun lyrics and cheerful sounds, and sometimes it tries to sound like a happy Bob Dylan. It doesn't really stand out as an album.
This is, by far, the best and most successful Van Halen album. The Van Halen brothers with Michael Anthony and David Lee Roth were the best that they could become and it shows. "Jump", "Panama" and "Hot for Teacher" are three of hard rock's biggest classics and the album as a whole, a short one with only 33 minutes, is pure 1980s rock zeitgeist. The production is overwhelming, the instrumentation, mixing hard rock with glam and pop, is perfect and Roth's voice is amazing in every single track. One of the greatest rock albums of the 1980s.
MTV Unplugged in New York captures an interesting and unique performance in Nirvana's career, with acoustic instruments and a series of covers that fitted the band's repertoire very well. "The Man Who Sold the World", originally by David Bowie, is the album highlight, and gave new light to one of the best songs written by the english musician. The trio of Meat Puppets covers are also very interesting, especially in the way Kurt Cobain's voice sounds in those. Songs like "Come as You Are" and "All Apologies" are very well arranged for this album, as well, and shows a band evolving - a evolution that was cut short, unfortunetely.
This is the album that transformed ambient music from a concept that some artists used to toy with to a de facto music genre. Brian Eno's sensible minimalistic approach in those four compositions became a roadmap for ambient records in the late 1970s and it's still very much referentiated to this day. The piano improvisations stitched together, the vocal loops and the beautifully crafted synth sounds all come together to create an album that grows inside you like a very powerful feeling and leaves you calm, but also pensative. As a electronic music record, it also explored that dicotomy of a human-machine relationship, evoking the uniqueness of giant flying metal machines mixed with small helpless humans on the go.
Altought the attempt to remove the tension of an airport terminal through music didn't really work on a practical level at the time, when it was used as an art instalation, airports enviroments changed a lot in the last 25 years and I'm curious to see how it would work like that again after all this time and in this world we currently live in.
Nonetheless, it's a masterpice, an album that goes straight to the heart.
Mixing tango with electronic music is such a good idea, that Gotan Project's debut album still sounds fresh even to this day. The ominous feeling of the violin and the bandoneon, classic tango instruments, are put side to side with lounge beats, and the result is chilling, in a very good way. Santa María (del Buen Ayre)" and "Época" are staples to this very unique genre, and the fact that they've included a cover of Frank Zappa's "Chunga's Revenge" makes listening to this album a fantastic voyage through western music, from Argentina to the world.
Five Leaves Left is such a poetic album, it sounds so beautiful throughout all 10 tracks, every single one masterfully crafted by Nick Drake's voice and acoustic guitar. The string arrangement in "River Man" is one of folk music's finest and, also, most tracks have unusual instruments, but they always work so fine. We have congas, flutes, oboes and vibraphones - the result is a little bit minimalistic, a little bit experimental, pushing the boundaries of folk music.
EVOL still has the rawness of early Sonic Youth records, but is a clear transition to a more alternative rock sound, leaving the noise rock and no wave sounds behind. Gondon's compositions, like "Shadow of a Doubt", are album highlights, just like every tracks with her vocals, like "Starpower", which sounds ominous and very post-punk in style. It shows a growing band, with still so much to create.
"The Space Ritual Alive in Liverpool and London" is a mix of two live performances by Hawkind, recorded eight days apart in England. It's an somewhat interesting record of space rock in his development, but not a particular good one. For a band focused in adding psychedelic and progressive references to their music, they're too focused on Dave Brock's guitar riffs (and maybe that's the reason why he is the sole continous member of the band after all those decades).
Elastica's debut is a epitome of the new wave, picking up every single good reference of the style and putting it together to create fast and relatively small tracks that are very rocky, but also very melodic. Unfortunetely, as a new wave record, it arrived to late and, sometimes, it feels out of place and time - but "Connection" and "Waking Up" are great songs.
Oh, you pretty thing!, is what I have to say every time I listen to this album. Eleven beautiful songs, all beautifully composed, covering a variety of interesting topics, from art itself to fatherhood. The best art pop album ever made, and one of several Bowie albums that belong to the lists of best records ever made. It has "Changes", "Life on Mars?" and "Queen Bitch", what more do you need?
"Imagine", as a song, is very boring and naive, almost detatched from everything Lennon did and would do until his death. But as an album, it's great. "Crippled Inside" is a ironically joyous way to talk about depression, "Jealous Guy" is a great exercise of how bad man can be to their lovers, one of Lennon's biggest personal struggles, "Gimme Some Truth" is a political anthen to this day, "How Do You Sleep?" was a great way to put out all of his anger towards Paul McCartney, and so on. A great piano rock album, overall.
"Buffalo Springfield Again" it's an ok album by a pioneering band, with good songs like "Mr. Soul" and "Bluebird", that showed that Neil Young and Stephen Stills were great up and coming composers, but overall the album has an uninspired instrumentation that sometimes sounds empty, but not in a good and celebrated folk rock style. Not the best Buffalo Springfield album.
"Van Halen" is a frenetic debut by a frenetic hard rock band, leaning towards a glam metal that would become the band's signature style. "Runnin' with the Devil" and "Ain't Talkin' 'bout Love" are very good songs.
This is a very good selection of songs from Elis Regina to the international market, even though it's lot really clear for me where does it fits in her official discography. Nonetheless, it's a great showcase of her beautiful voice, her impressive range and her ability to make it work with a variaty of musical styles - MPB, samba and pop. This is the greatest voice of brazilian music and songs like "Rebento", "Se eu quiser falar com deus" and "Aprendendo a Jogar" makes it very clear.
"Legalize It" shows that Peter Tosh was not just a sideman in the Wailers, but a force to be reckon in the reggae canon. The legalization of cannabis is the centerpiece of this record, but Tosh also discusses colonialism, which makes this record sound fresh more than 40 years after its release.
This is indeed, like they say, one of the best jazz live albums of all time. Bill Evans was one of the greats when it comes to piano, and the clearness and strongness of his style are captured very well in this record. The best thing Evans did was leave Miles Davis' band in 1959 and form his own trio, since Scott LaFaro' bass and Paul Motian' drums were a perfect match for his refinement. It's a shame that this trio only produced four albums and one have to wonder what else they would gift us if it wans't for LaFaro's tragic death. But to end on a lighter note, the performances of "My Man's Gone Now" and "Solar" are essencial jazz.
"A Grand Don't Come for Free" has a interesting structure as a rap opera, mixing alternative hip hop with electronica to tell a mundane story of a british young middle class man. But the structure is the only good thing here, as the songs struggle to be anything more than a white man's hip hop experiment.
"Gasoline Alley" world almost as a companion piece of the discography of Rod Stewart band, Faces. It has contributions of almost every member in the band at the time, but the result is a little more folk and roots rock then the general Faces sound. It's a mix of Stewarts own compositions mixed with interestingly arranged covers of rock and roll classics like "It's All Over Now" and "Country Comfort". It's a competent record, as most things Stewart did at the time, but not as historical for pop music as some would sugest.
"Millions Now Living Will Never Die" is not only a very good album, but it also a very important album - as a genre defining record in the post rock genre. Everything that would become a staple for this style is here, specially the focus on textures and timbre in the place of common rock structures like riffs and chords. It's as if rock and roll was becoming free jazz. "Djed" is a 20 minute masterpiece that shows how well Tortoise work together as a band, crafting songs together to create minimalistic sounds, beautiful to the years. In this record, however, they still sound a little crude and it's their next record (1998's TNT) that would show what they were really capable of.
"Sunshine Superman" is psychedelic folk at his finest, from the title to the last note of the last track on the album. Donovan crafted a great album that still sounds fresh after 55 years. "Season of the Witch" is a masterpiece and the title track is also worth noting.
"Heavy Weather" is a great example of a jazz fusion record that has such a good vibe that it's no wonder why it's one of the most successful and acclaimed records of the genre. The opener, "Birdland", has Joe Zawinul and Jaco Pastorius mixing piano and fretless bass as the signiture sound of the band. Joined by Wayne Shorter, Alex Acuña and Manolo Badrena, what you have is a dream team of jazz, and songs like "Teen Town" and "Palladíum" are unforgetable classics of the style.
"Bad" is the last good record of Michael Jackson's career. His last Quincy Jones production is also a departure from his signature style form "Thriller" and "Off The Wall" in favor of a more condensed mix of pop, rock, r&b, funk, dance and soul. A lot of different styles that was great to generate a lot of hit singles, but still work as an album. The lyrical themes also varies a lot, hitting from his relationship with mass media to world peace. Songs like "Bad", "The Way You Make Me Feel", "Man in the Mirror", "Dirty Diana" and "Smooth Criminal" have a permanent place in the pop music pantheon.
"Stand!" is such a great achievement for a band that, until this release, was struggling to reach the spotlight of american popular music. Maybe that's the reason why this is such a frenetic mix of soul and funk, with a lot of psychodelia and a rawness in the lyrical themes that shows a band working on it's political views in a way that would be more clear in future records, with equality and peace as the main themes. It's a breakthrough album that enbodies the zeitgeist of the time with near perfection. "Stand!", "I Want to Take You Higher" and, specially, "Everyday People" are the highlights.
"More Specials" is a cool 2 tone album, fusing ska with post-punk in a very unique way. Basically an expansion on their previous record, it exceeds their debut effort by including collaborations with names from other 2 tone bands like Bodysnatchers and Madness, and the new wave from The Go-Go's. With even more political lyrics, thi record has classics like "Enjoy Yourself", "Hey, Little Rich Girl" and "Do Nothing".
"Beauty and the Beat" is a historical new wave record, not only because it's celebrated as so, but also because of its importance as the debut of one of the most important and celebrated all female bands of all time. It has a raw fun feeling throughout, adding some pop and punk elements to match Belinda Carlisle high pitched voice with some effective instrumentation. "Our Lips Are Sealed", "This Town" and "We Got the Beat" are songs that shows the power of a band destined to influence a generation to come.
"Station to Station" is David Bowie's best album from the second era of his long career. It takes the funk and R&B explored in his previous album and mixes it with the art rock that would define his style for the next four albums. It show an artist pushing his creative limits with amazing results.
"Station to Station" explores krautrock and conects with disco music, "Golden Years" sounds like Bowie became the Elvis of funk, "Word on a Wing" is where his cocaine addiction is more apparent, "TVC 15" is a raw, almost new wave masterpice, "Stay", the best track on the album, goes from funk to hard rock and has Carlos Almoar guitar at his peak and "Wild Is the Wind" is a Nina Simone homage for the ages.
Thematically it's a very ethereal album, with lyrics about existentialism, occultism, mythology and religion, but also about love and surreal dreams.
A masterpice, from start to finish.
"Back at the Chicken Shack" is a interesting jazz album, with a focus on hard bop and references to early soul music. The use of the Hammond organ creates a unique sound and a competent backing band, specially Stanley Turrentine's tenor sax, gives a smoothness to the songs.
It's interesting to understand that "Birth of the Cool" is a compilation and not an album per se. Comprised of songs recorded in three sessions during 1949 and early 1950, it's a record that shows the evolution of cool jazz, a style being molded on the go with different session bands full of musicians that would make history or were already doing so. Max Roach, Gerry Mulligan, Kenny Clarke, Lee Konitz and John Lewis all have great contributions on this release, showing that Miles Davis was not only a great musician, but also great at chosing his band. It's an 11 track compilation with 11 pieces of jazz history put together.
"Killing Joke" is an early and raw effort in the industrial rock genre, mixing post punk with a very metallic instrumentation. I understand that this is an historic record for the industrial scene, but doesn't sound particularly good.
"Music for the Jilted Generation" is a frenetic record released by the heavy hitters of the breakbeat techno. With a darker tone than their predecessor, it's a mix of 13 songs that elevate electronic music to a even more hardcore position. "No Good (Start the Dance)" is one of the ultimate classics of the 1990s raves.
This mix of indian classical music with electronica has its moments and interesting collaborations (like Ryuichi Sakamoto on the flute), but its also very dated and kind of all over the place. Some dub rhythms and jazz moments are worth the listening and the beats are not bad at all, but it lacks cohesion.
Every song in "Street Signs", Ozomatli's third album, is a blast of latin rock, funk and hip hop in your face. An ensamble of great musicians with a great variety of references coming together to create a nuanced and cohesive record that talks about workers rights and imigration in a very interesting way, that keeps you hooked from start to finish. "Believe" and "Santiago" are beautiful songs.
"Brothers in Arms" is a very definitive pop rock album from the eights, with a collection of hit compositions, molded by Mark Knopfler's guitar. You can't talk about the mid eighties without citing "So Far Away", "Money for Nothing", "Walk of Life" and "Your Latest Trick", the first four tracks on this records - quite an opener.
Lirically, songs tackle themes like the perception of the working class and the stupidity of militarism, but there are also love songs - written in a very iconic Dire Straits way, full of metaphors. It's a very complex album, almost minimalistic in the amount of details that you can find while listening to it, and it never gets old (except when the lyrics cite MTV as a music television or uses the world 'faggot', two things that got very and poorly old).
"American IV: The Man Comes Around" is a beautiful album, especially with the rendition of Nine Inch Nails' "Hurt", but not only that. The duet with Nick Cave in "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" and the one with Fiona Apple for "Bridge Over Troubled Water" are very well produced and very delicate. "The Man Comes Around", the only new Cash composition on the album, opens and sumirises what the album will be, a great folk country record.
A big depart from their previous records, "Stankonia" threw away the mellow and chillness of early Outkast and focused on the zeitgeist of the early 2000, with a chaotic sound, mixing 1970s funk and early hip hop references with a a solid alternative and progressive rap production. Thematically, you can trace a topics from start to finish in this album, with lyrics about the aspirations of the black people in the USA, materialism in black culture, the public perception on hip hop at the time and the life of black women in southern United States. Songs like "Ms. Jackson" and "B.O.B." are great classics of an eternally evolving hip hop sound on which Outkast have a very important role to this day.
"The Dreaming" is the fourth in a series of five albums by Kate Bush (her first five ones!) to reach a almost perfect sound of progressive pop and rock, with avant-garde instrumentation and production. This is, in this stint of five, her most experimental record and the most maximalistic one, blending genres in a way that was only possible because she had access to cutting edge recording machinery and creative control on the result - a rare feat for a woman in 1984.
The talks about existencialism, the pursue of knowledge, sex, godly desires and even colonialism, but there are also songs with narrative, like "There Goes a Tenner" and "Night of the Swallow". The very well crafted lyricism of Bush's songs clashes beautifuly with the instruments of each song, with a lot of percussion punctuating the rhythms as she tells her stories with a voice that never sounded more mature.
The single "Suspended in Gaffa" almost sums up what the record is about, with a baroque piano, the mandolin and the synclavier playing around, conducting a strong feeling of pursuing things that one really wants but can't seem to be able to experience or reach again - a common theme of Bush lyrics throughout her career.
I love the name of this album because every corner of it that you look at shines like a diamond. A hard bop masterpiece and Monk's most famous record, "Brilliant Corners" is beautiful and complex, showing his ability as a jazz composer focused on unconventional structures and african-american references. It presents an artist at his creative peak, with a band full of great names like drummer Max Roach and tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins. An essencial jazz record and an epitome of what jazz was like in the mid 1950s.
Talking about love and New York City, PJ Harvey's "Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea" not only sounds but also feels like a alternative rock album. A much more melodic effort compared to her previows records, it has great songs like "Good Fortune" and "This Is Love" but is not as powerful as previos releases, like "Rid of Me" and "To Bring You My Love".
"Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)" has a very unique sound, a hip-hop that sounds underground and avant-garde at the same time. The result is a hardcore effort that became greatly influential at the time. The lyrics are raw (talkin about urban life), but also very humorous (about martial arts movies and comic book) and goes through a lot of free association. The samples are also a very defining caracteristic of this record, and RZA's production created a blueprint for the genre.
"Faith" pretty much sums up pop music from the late 1980s. It's a pop record, of course, but the use of funk, R&B, synth-pop, blue-eyed soul and rock in instrumentation and production makes up for quite an eclectic album, an interesting achievement for George Michael in his first solo effort. Fully produced by himself, it has very personal lyrics tackling topics like sexuality and relationships that resonated internationally at the time and made "Faith" a very influential album that tell the history of his time.
"Sheet Music" is a very competent rock album by 10cc, a relatively underrated band that, in fact, did some of the best art rock songs of the 1970s. A very creative group of musicians that explored each others creativity generated a set of tracks that are always worth the listening, because of it's freshness decade later. "The Wall Street Shuffle" and "Silly Love" are quintessential 1970s rock.
Departing from a raw hard rock style from their previous records, "Destroyer" shows a more mature KISS flirting with heavy metal and growing to have better compositions and production. Still a lot of silly 1970s excess rock lyrics, but making it very clear that what they want is to party, never really taking themselves very serious. Paul Stanley's vocals are at its peak and Ace Frehley has some of his greatest guitar solos in here. Gene Simmons and Peter Criss also have very good contributions, wich make "Destroyer" something of a very definitive studio album for KISS - an important part of american rock music.
