Journey Complete!
Finisher # to complete the list
1075
Albums Rated
3.34
Average Rating
99%
Complete
Rating Distribution
How you rate albums
Rating Timeline
Average rating over time
Ratings by Decade
Which era do you prefer?
Activity by Day
When do you listen?
Taste Profile
2020s
Favorite Decade
Shoegaze
Favorite Genre
UK
Top Origin
Wordsmith
Rater Style ?
180
5-Star Albums
50
1-Star Albums
Taste Analysis
Genre Preferences
Ratings by genre
Origin Preferences
Ratings by country
Rating Style
You Love More Than Most
Albums you rated higher than global average
| Album | You | Global | Diff |
|---|---|---|---|
| Logical Progression | 5 | 2.52 | +2.48 |
| Calenture | 5 | 2.55 | +2.45 |
| Orbital 2 | 5 | 2.69 | +2.31 |
| Nixon | 5 | 2.75 | +2.25 |
| Peggy Suicide | 5 | 2.77 | +2.23 |
| Whatever | 5 | 2.82 | +2.18 |
| Colour By Numbers | 5 | 2.84 | +2.16 |
| Quiet Life | 5 | 2.85 | +2.15 |
| Kilimanjaro | 5 | 2.86 | +2.14 |
| Warehouse: Songs And Stories | 5 | 2.86 | +2.14 |
You Love Less Than Most
Albums you rated lower than global average
| Album | You | Global | Diff |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Stranger | 1 | 3.86 | -2.86 |
| Boston | 1 | 3.71 | -2.71 |
| Out Of The Blue | 1 | 3.64 | -2.64 |
| 1984 | 1 | 3.51 | -2.51 |
| Parachutes | 1 | 3.46 | -2.46 |
| Bat Out Of Hell | 1 | 3.45 | -2.45 |
| Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea | 1 | 3.38 | -2.38 |
| Private Dancer | 1 | 3.29 | -2.29 |
| Emergency On Planet Earth | 1 | 3.27 | -2.27 |
| Hysteria | 1 | 3.21 | -2.21 |
Artist Analysis
Favorite Artists
Artists with 2+ albums
| Artist | Albums | Average |
|---|---|---|
| David Bowie | 8 | 4.75 |
| Bob Dylan | 7 | 4.57 |
| Radiohead | 5 | 4.6 |
| Led Zeppelin | 5 | 4.6 |
| Steely Dan | 4 | 4.75 |
| Talking Heads | 4 | 4.75 |
| R.E.M. | 4 | 4.75 |
| Pixies | 3 | 5 |
| Black Sabbath | 3 | 5 |
| Kraftwerk | 3 | 5 |
| Pet Shop Boys | 3 | 5 |
| The Smiths | 3 | 5 |
| Roxy Music | 3 | 5 |
| Joni Mitchell | 4 | 4.5 |
| Miles Davis | 4 | 4.5 |
| Neil Young | 4 | 4.5 |
| Public Enemy | 3 | 4.67 |
| Neil Young & Crazy Horse | 3 | 4.67 |
| Bob Marley & The Wailers | 3 | 4.67 |
| Nirvana | 3 | 4.67 |
| Echo And The Bunnymen | 3 | 4.67 |
| The Velvet Underground | 3 | 4.67 |
| The Jam | 2 | 5 |
| The Smashing Pumpkins | 2 | 5 |
| Joy Division | 2 | 5 |
| The Clash | 2 | 5 |
| The Jesus And Mary Chain | 2 | 5 |
| Massive Attack | 2 | 5 |
| The Specials | 2 | 5 |
| Aretha Franklin | 2 | 5 |
| New Order | 2 | 5 |
| The The | 2 | 5 |
| Rush | 2 | 5 |
| The Band | 2 | 5 |
| CHIC | 2 | 5 |
| AC/DC | 2 | 5 |
| Beatles | 5 | 4.2 |
| Brian Eno | 5 | 4.2 |
| Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds | 5 | 4.2 |
| The Rolling Stones | 6 | 4 |
| Van Morrison | 3 | 4.33 |
| The Doors | 3 | 4.33 |
| Simon & Garfunkel | 3 | 4.33 |
| The Cure | 3 | 4.33 |
| The Fall | 3 | 4.33 |
| Jimi Hendrix | 3 | 4.33 |
| Marvin Gaye | 3 | 4.33 |
Least Favorite Artists
Artists with 2+ albums
| Artist | Albums | Average |
|---|---|---|
| Kings of Leon | 3 | 1.33 |
| Slipknot | 2 | 1 |
| Sepultura | 2 | 1 |
| Rufus Wainwright | 2 | 1 |
| Tim Buckley | 3 | 1.67 |
| Def Leppard | 2 | 1.5 |
| Coldplay | 2 | 1.5 |
| Stephen Stills | 2 | 1.5 |
| Christina Aguilera | 2 | 1.5 |
| Bee Gees | 2 | 1.5 |
Controversial Artists
Artists you rate inconsistently
| Artist | Ratings |
|---|---|
| Van Halen | 4, 1 |
| Eagles | 2, 5 |
| Lou Reed | 2, 5 |
| Dexys Midnight Runners | 5, 2, 4 |
| PJ Harvey | 4, 1, 3, 4 |
5-Star Albums (180)
View Album Wall
Popular Reviews
Pulp
5/5
Is this a flawless album? Well how about this. I listened to the album without Common People, Sorted for Es and Whizz, Disco 2000 and Mis-Shapes. And you know what? It is - Feeling Called Love, Bar Italia and Underwear would be the singles in any other album. Every track has its own story and sound while also sounding part of a coherent whole.
16 likes
Orbital
5/5
The first wholly great dance album of the rave era - 91 is pretty early to make a complete masterpiece. Halcyon is a thing of wonder.
12 likes
Magazine
5/5
Music was really moving at the speed of light in the UK in the late seventies. Released June 1978 only 9 months after Never Mind... and it sounds like punk is already in the rear view mirror. Sharp Shot (a legacy track from the Devoto/Shelley Buzzcocks) is both the best track and untypical of the rest of the album in its guitar thrash. Elsewhere it's jagged rhythms, Barry Adamson's moody bass, keyboards and shining through the first sighting of John Mcgeogh's luminous guitar work. An amazing album, and great though the other three Magazine albums are (until the first split) they would not recapture the consistency and quality of songwriting on here.
7 likes
Steely Dan
5/5
One of the best-sounding records ever made. Even if lush 70s jazz-rock is not your thing you can marvel at the playing and production. Wayne Shorter's solo, the chorus to Deacon Blues...it's pleasures are endless.
5 likes
Hüsker Dü
5/5
Ah the Du. Was ever such great songwriting let down by such awful production....oh guys you did it yourselves? Try and listen past the fact that the drums sound like they are made out of plastic, and there is no bass, to the late-period Du majesty. There are tunes that are catchy as hell (Could You Be The One, ice cold ice, She's A Woman), thrash outs (closer You Can Live At Home Now) and just plain weird (She Floated Away). A warehouse full of songs and stories.
4 likes
1-Star Albums (50)
All Ratings
The Prodigy
4/5
A trio of unmatchable singles, some decent album tracks but there is filler and tracks are stretched out. While the heights are greater than previous album Jilted Generation it's not as consistent.
The Rolling Stones
4/5
Perhaps the Stones most consistent album across 18 tracks, so a very solid four stars. But there's no track here that would get in a Stones top tent. So four stars.
Grizzly Bear
2/5
Just passed by without really touching the sides, there are occasional flashes of something more interesting but it's Fleet Foxes style stuff all the way really.
Frank Sinatra
3/5
First album I've never heard before. After the initial Frank resistance (AKA oh gawd the 'My Way' guy), this is very listenable. All about phrasing and being on, ahead or behind the beat. Subtle and seductive.
Jethro Tull
3/5
Not a band I would listen to, and their reputation is not inviting. Surprisingly sprightly and concise, mostly, with some excellent tunes. Solid 3, but the amount of flute will prevent more.
Billy Bragg
3/5
a real curates egg - some seem like proper songs (Minor Key) others like a mess of lyrics and jams (Ingrid Bergman). Overall the feel of a high class album where the albums gets everyone to cover an artists tracks, rather than a proper album.
4/5
Hard to imagine the shock this would have had on release. Still utterly bonkers in places, the best ever Satisfaction cover, and in Mongoloid a song that could never have been written today (I remember the lyrics being printed in Smash Hits). Only not a 5 as one too many song follows the same template.
PJ Harvey
4/5
Great sound and lyrics slightly lacking at times in the tunes dept hence 4 stars. Dipped a bit on re-listening from when I remember it last.
Metallica
3/5
Riff rehabilitation. As important an album as Nevermind in showing the way ahead for rock in the 90s. Cunning to include a couple of lighters-in-the-air ballads along with all the crunching. Very consistent and though not an album I could ever love, it stands up to repeated listening.
Def Leppard
1/5
The ultra-80s production, the - at best - dated lyrics. This album was either singles I already knew - difficult to escape if you were around in 1987 - and hated, or album tracks not as good as the singles. Not everything that sells tens of millions of copies then needs to be listened to now - wonder if Englebert Humperdink, famously outselling the Beatles, will be on the list. As he can't be worse than Def Leppard.
The Rolling Stones
5/5
This album gets better every time, unlike other vaunted Stones albums where the highs remain high and the not-so-highs flatten out (BB, LIB). This is just a miracle of songwriting and tight playing from start to finish.
Isaac Hayes
3/5
Three cracking singles, one of which is just amazing. The soundtrack itself, revolutionary at the time, is a series of funky and slow jams, great to work to and great in a movie, but not a compelling listen.
Franz Ferdinand
4/5
A shining light in the indie landfill era. I will never get over the fact that what sounds like the greatest song Josef K never wrote ends after a minute of Take Me Out, and becomes another fine but not quite so brilliant song. But sharp suits, tight guitar lines. Good work.
Metallica
2/5
Hey guys feel like doing a live album with a symphony orchestra? It'll be real classy.
Sure. My mum said all her friends who only listen to Mozart will buy the album if there's a symphony orchestra on it.
Double bubble!
Really though. Not an album anyone could describe as essential. Some good songs, but they gain nothing much by this.
Ozomatli
3/5
Not on Spotify so listening cobbled together from youtube and live albums. The good tracks are really good, with predictably the bass and percussion the standout elements. I can leave the 90s/early 00s staple of 'oh third verse time for a rap' element.
Steely Dan
5/5
One of the best-sounding records ever made. Even if lush 70s jazz-rock is not your thing you can marvel at the playing and production. Wayne Shorter's solo, the chorus to Deacon Blues...it's pleasures are endless.
Penguin Cafe Orchestra
4/5
I love this band, and there's no better working music. Enough going on to get you through a large spreadsheet, slowly changing enough to not distract.
Joni Mitchell
4/5
No-one bears - needs- repeated listening like Joni Mitchell. Even if it's on Youtube as she's pulled this from Spotify over the Joe Rogan spat. On first listen the tunes, even the song structure, are difficult to make out. Each listen, as the songs become familiar, gets better and better.
Van Halen
4/5
This is great fun. The precise point at which you can hear metal pivoting from the Sabbath era to the eighties. Of course down the line it would beget the horrific hair metal bands, but this is sharp, tight and both heavy and pop at the same time. Terrific. Can't forgive them for Jump though.
Pulp
5/5
Is this a flawless album? Well how about this. I listened to the album without Common People, Sorted for Es and Whizz, Disco 2000 and Mis-Shapes. And you know what? It is - Feeling Called Love, Bar Italia and Underwear would be the singles in any other album. Every track has its own story and sound while also sounding part of a coherent whole.
Aphex Twin
4/5
Ambient - it's a doddle eh? Some relaxed beats, a bass line and a few chords on the synth. Aphex Twin shows how difficult it is to make great 'ambient', if such a thing exists, by showing its all about the details. Without lyrics or vocals or anything like a verse/chorus stucture to grab the listener, these tracks are a masterclass in detail: detail in how each track unfolds in time, and the textures employed to keep simple elements always evolving.
Talking Heads
5/5
Tom Waits
2/5
I now know how people who go 'Bob Dylan - great songs but unlistenable' feel. I've tried with Tom, I really have. There are some good songs here, hence the 2. But that voice. Like someone gargling gravel. And - my bad for thinking this - there's a bit of me that feels that offstage he speaks like Niles Crane.
The Who
3/5
Not their best album, not even their best double album (Quadrophenia is more consistent), but completely with the zeitgeist in the late sixties, hence it's the one Who album everyone has head of.
The Slits
3/5
One of the first and best post-punk punk-funk punk-dub albums. Dennis Bovell's production is great, the lyrics are witty and subversive and in Typical Girls there's an irresistible single. Absolutely of its time, very listenable.
The Last Shadow Puppets
3/5
Alex Turner side project, not by any means unenjoyable and AM fans will get lots of enjoyment out of his usual droll delivery and lyrics, with a sixties flavoured backing. Without quite the crunch and thrill of the Monkeys though.
Coldplay
2/5
Nobody must hear Coldplay. They're just there. Like magnolia walls. As an experiment if I have heard an album before I'll listen to it without the singles. Different Class by Pulp would be great album without the singles. This, well without the singles it's one star.
Stereolab
2/5
I like the idea of Stereolab, I like the sound of Stereolab. But 60 mins of Stereolab is just a bit too much. Better in shorter sharper doses.
Bob Dylan
4/5
Fantastic. Only not 5 because I'm not a great fan of goofy Bob, evident on a couple of tracks, and he's made several other albums that are 5.
Johnny Cash
4/5
Hurt is a 6 out of 5 and another 4/5 tracks (Personal Jesus, I Hung My Head) are fives, but there's some stuff that doesn't work, like Bridge Over Troubled Water and In My Life, and even Cash can't make Danny Boy seem essential again. So a four.
Death In Vegas
3/5
From the era where dance-due producer bands ruled supreme (Underworld, Chemicals, Leftfield etc) slightly less exalted Death In Vegas stake a very credible claim to be at the top table. There's some quality vocals (not singing) from Bobby Gillespie, Dot Allison and Iggy Pop and an overall vibe of the Velvet Underground meets big beat. A slight reliance on the riff over melody stops this being a 4, but a solid solid 3.
Laura Nyro
3/5
There's only so many times you can listen to Tapestry, no matter how perfect it is. So when you want a bit of that but also something different there's this. Like King Nyro wrote lots of stuff that were initially made famous by other people. Unlike King her voice is a lot more distinctive, bordering on Joni Mitchell at times. I liked this on listening, and wouldn't have come across it otherwise.
Mekons
2/5
Some nice ideas, the Mekons are really an idea band - as in I like the idea of the Mekons more than I like their music. Was it really the first alt-country album? Anyway, not much distinguished music.
Pink Floyd
4/5
Not much to add here. It's a very good album.
Lana Del Rey
4/5
This (apart from the title track) seemed a lesser effort. But with each play the subtlety of the writing and production stand out more. And on the last track she's trailing a future as the Gen Z Joni Mitchell.
Beatles
4/5
Bulletproof. A couple of sentimental slowies hence not the full five.
Pixies
5/5
What a sound.
Barry Adamson
3/5
Enjoyable, hugely varied. Standout tracks featuring Jarvis and Nick Cave. Need to listen to a couple more times really.
Orbital
5/5
The first wholly great dance album of the rave era - 91 is pretty early to make a complete masterpiece. Halcyon is a thing of wonder.
David Gray
1/5
You know what, on the first side I wasn't completely revolted and though strictly background music was prepared to give it two stars. The second side is dreary though and culminates in the -5 stars for Say hello Wave Goodbye which is unlistenable to, by me at least. Was it the buskers fave which got him a deal. What goes on on Grafton Street should stay there.
Creedence Clearwater Revival
4/5
Sturdy swampy rock. Not much fat on this.
Bruce Springsteen
5/5
It's not the biggest-selling Bruce album, or the best. But it made him a superstar, and it contains three all-time classics in BTR, Jungleland and Thunder Road. A relisten reveals how much it's about Roy Bittan's piano and Clarence Clemons' sax. Possibly the most 'E Street' record of them all. Favourite bit ' the 1-2-3-4 count in during the middle 8 of BTR.
The La's
4/5
Ah. What a talent was there. Near the top of the list of 'what would a second album have sounded like'. Hard to take that we got Cast instead.
Beck
4/5
No hip-hop, samples, funk, falsettos, just a ruminative downbeat selection of gorgeous acoustic ballads. If ever you doubted he was hiding a lack of songwriting behind over-complex arrangements, this should set you straight.
Tina Turner
1/5
I was considering two stars, 80s awful production notwithstanding, as her performance is great, until Help and 1984. Help indeed. Imagine a loop of Tina's 1984 in your ears forever. Far scarier than anything Orwell could come up with.
The Human League
4/5
Phil Oakey's voice is perhaps the bit that's aged least well.but the songs are bulletproof.
Prince
3/5
As a single album four stars. As the first two tracks 5 stars. There are longeurs and his first 5-star piece would arrive next.
Jane's Addiction
3/5
Hawkwind
3/5
Ministry
2/5
A bit all over the shop, that type of metal/industrial that really does very little for me.
Buddy Holly & The Crickets
3/5
Some eternal singles, but the slow numbers are 'dreamboats and petticoats' mush and he's not really that good a vocalist to make them speak now. Still, only 25 minutes. Shortest album so far.
Black Sabbath
5/5
Just about their best and a high-water mark for the first heavy metal era.
Soft Cell
4/5
Unmatched in its descriptions of seedy Soho, bedsitter life, sex clubs - all set to what was at the time amazingly new music. Still holds up very well, and surprisingly the original songs have dated far less than the covers.
The Incredible String Band
1/5
Holy mary mother of God. Pyschedelic folk. Flutes, hurdy gurdies and lyrics about wizards and green crowns. Not incredible and surely indigestible without smoking a load of weed.
Belle & Sebastian
3/5
Solid debut, though the production I always feel with B and S is a little thin and twee, the songs are well-written.
Fairport Convention
3/5
Was OK, Who knows? is a banger but there's a bit too much folky stuff for me. Like the track that sounds like Pink Floyd.
The Jam
5/5
Their most consistent.
The Zombies
3/5
Pleasant, can appreciate the songwriting. Not quite as amazing as all that and a lot of the sixties stylings grate. But half a dozen really good songs.
David Holmes
2/5
A bit dull, nice background for working but some of his other albums are better.
Tim Buckley
1/5
Dull as dishwater meat and potatoes early 70s songwriter-rock.
David Bowie
5/5
Stellar. Improves if such a thing were possible by listening to the second side first, which contains more of the ambient tracks. The more uptempo krautrock tracks are just unbelievably good.
Beastie Boys
3/5
Was a good listen but not the revelations promised quite.
The Who
3/5
The Teardrop Explodes
5/5
Hard to see why this wouldn't be 5 stars as it's pretty perfect from start to finish. Only the horns sound occasionally dated.
3/5
Very pleasant listen with some high points, but not going to change my overall view of the Kinks as the fourth-best British band of the sixties. Which is not a bad position to be in.
Don McLean
2/5
AP is a tune, Vincent is very annoying and the rest is pretty anonymous singer-songwriter 70s stuff. So a 2 for the greatness of AP chiefly.
Supergrass
4/5
Always a good sign when every track sounds like a single. A quantum leap from the caffeine rush of the first album.
The Smashing Pumpkins
5/5
Just played the 'weaker' second half of the album and it's fantastic, every track a potential hit. Nirvana have the cool, the zeitgeist, the amazing live events, and the aura of tragic glamour - and the songs that defined a generation. But they never made an album as strong as this.
Joy Division
5/5
Justice
2/5
Depeche Mode
3/5
Pretty essential, they're nearly there re-inventing themselves from synthpoppers to epic synthpopper gloom gothers. Three stellar singles and a strong set of album tracks.
Charles Mingus
3/5
Pretty dense but pretty good.
The Soft Boys
3/5
Glad to hear this, the title track is great and the rest a solid slice of early 80s powerpop/psychedelia.
Caetano Veloso
2/5
An ok listen, but the nuances of this perhaps passed me.
The Black Crowes
3/5
Solid southern rock with a cleaner 80s production, nothing groundbreaking here.
Yes
4/5
Not a prog fan at all but this is just a fantastic combination of great tunes - something most prog appears to leave out - and twiddly widdly arrangements that have just enough sixties still about them. Great.
Dexys Midnight Runners
5/5
The first side of this is just astonishing - six, even seven stars. A fully formed sound from nowhere. If the second half can't quite sustain the extra-ordinary first five tracks (of which Geno is perhaps the weakest. Think about that.) then its just by comparison. An album so in love with a form of music it seems entirely natural to have a cover from that genre that fits perfectly.
ps fun fact Burn It Down was called Dance Stance on original release, as I have the 45.
Orbital
3/5
Very consistent without hitting the high points of the 'brown' album.
Amy Winehouse
2/5
The idea of Amy Whitehouse - a noughties update on the torch singer mixing jazz and soul is great, and her voice is amazing here too, but the songs don't quite nail it. Next one would.
Electric Light Orchestra
1/5
This was the first record I can recall buying. When I was still too young to go to second hand shops. Many of the other early purchases - Parallel Lines, Setting Sons - I listen to this day. This not so much. Not at all. Re-listening it is not really the songs. No-one can deny Lynne's songwriting. But there's a general sense of mid-70s ennui that the Eagles turned into gold, but here is just a sense of everything being just a little too laid back. Then there's Jeff Lynne's voice. Just don't like it - because he sounds completely without conviction. Not every vocalist is Iggy Pop, but there's a feeling for me he's doing the guide vocals for someone else. Finally, there's the odd novelty hit/pastiche vibe (Jungle could be a bad 10cc b-side) that a band at the very height of their commercial powers really shouldn't be doing. Want to hear the Quo with a string section? Birmingham Blues. Positives: Mr Blue Sky is still a pocket pop symphony, and the Whale is the bastard son of The Love Unlimited Orchestra and The Orb - bizarre and by far the most interesting track here. But for me the pop energy that fizzed through A New World Record has been traded away for something much lesser.
Jamiroquai
1/5
Aged like a fine wine. No more like rotting fish found at the bottom of the bin.
The Clash
5/5
Hard to find any faults, a pretty perfect debut. Perhaps only a 9 out of 10 for their somewhat clodhoppy reggae cover.
The Stooges
4/5
Great sound, everything turned up to 11
Nightmares On Wax
4/5
Great 'relaxing' music.
Madonna
4/5
Madonna - even Imperial Period - is the master of the '4 bangers so banging the fact the rest of the album is just okay-ish doesn't matter' - viz True Blue, like a Virgin etc. This is the exception that proves the rule, a Madonna album you can listen to like, an album as the bangers still bang, but the variety and quality of the album tracks are a cut above.
Little Simz
3/5
A grower and the beats are great.
A Tribe Called Quest
3/5
Solid effort from one the best rap groups of the early 90s.
Kacey Musgraves
4/5
The perfect pop album is a mythical beast and this album goes as close to nailing it as many. The first half is pretty flawless, and her simple but slyly hooky melodies are outstanding. A few more obvious tracks on the B - side let the quality down slightly, (Happy and Sad, Velvet Elvis) and I for one can leave the piano ballad.
Tom Waits
4/5
Really strong songs, and I like industrial junk Tom so much better than crooner tom.
JAY Z
3/5
Pleasantly surprised by this, though he's a name of course. Not just the flow, which is listenable, but the beats and hooks are great.
Herbie Hancock
4/5
Side 1 5 stars, side 2 3.5.
Curtis Mayfield
4/5
A real discovery, a brilliant album and none of his big hits.
Bad Company
3/5
If you had to come up with a reference album for 70s rock it would be this - a bit heavy, a bit hard, a bit FM. All tunes, but without a shred of originality. Guess that's what you get when you mix Free, King Crimson and Mott The Hoople. 1 and 1 and 1 make 3 here.
Pentangle
1/5
Occasionally you can admire the musicianship, craft and artistry while finding the entire thing unlistenable to.
Raekwon
3/5
Yeah the beats and flow are pretty good, almost like another Wu album as so many end up on here. Solid rap album.
Miles Davis
3/5
Almost too much going on for too long here. A great vibe, but feel that In A Silent Way and Jack Johnson benefit from a touch more focus while still being loose.
Traffic
2/5
Prog folk not my scene.
Wire
4/5
Amazing to think they were making this as punk was also about The Damned and The Pistols.
Thundercat
3/5
Pleasant, funky, surprisingly gentle at times, would listen to again without consciously opting for it over other stuff.
Joan Armatrading
2/5
I want to like this: Brummie ikon and all that, but really it's fairly dull seventies singer-songwriter stuff. Sorry Joan.
Randy Newman
2/5
I like the idea of Randy Newman, but ultimately his a bit ragtime a bit singer songwriter approach, and his dolorous voice, are a bit much over a whole album, however clever and insightful the lyrics.
Heaven 17
4/5
Provocation: this has aged much better than Dare. Just saying.
The Jesus And Mary Chain
5/5
In which the JAMC showed that under the pyros they had a sturdy songwriting chassis and (squabbling aside) were in it for the long haul. Flawless collection different from the amazing debut.
Jimmy Smith
4/5
Jimmy Smith is probably the most laid-back person on the planet. This sounds pretty good on a summer day, today. Not five because the Hammond all the way through is a little one-dimensional.
The Pharcyde
3/5
This is very enjoyable, in a TTQ way, the beats are great the samples interesting and the whole air is pretty agreabl(y)thick with weed.
The Triffids
5/5
I thought about giving this four stars and then thought 'I'm only not giving it five BECAUSE of Bury Me Deep In Love' which is really punishing them for Neighbours. So, for the songs, the playing, the vocals. 5 stars. A high-water mark of eighties Australian music.
Ella Fitzgerald
3/5
Purely because lush strings and jazz vocals are not my thing, but I can appreciate how brilliantly it is done here.
John Martyn
2/5
I can applaud the craft and there are a couple of great songs, but his voice just doesn't vibe with me, like he's singing while swallowing at the same time.
Public Enemy
5/5
The best - perhaps the only rap album without a second of filler. No skits, and even Flavor Flav is kept on a tight leash. The samples are brilliant and the beats unforgiving. A high water mark.
Kraftwerk
5/5
Nothing more to be said other than five stars. My favourite Kraftwerk album.
Taylor Swift
3/5
Pretty good pop album, maybe a track or two too long
Flamin' Groovies
2/5
So side one I am there for this, strong vibes of the Stones of the same period which is a good thing and good songs. But the covers that dominate the second half are inessential and Dr Feelgood would come along soon and do this kind of stuff much better.
Mike Oldfield
2/5
Yeah ok the first 10 mins and the bit with Viv Stanishall are great, but you're not telling me there's not filler on side 2. And the hornpipe. Grrr.
Sex Pistols
5/5
Nothing much to add. A band who said EVERYTHING they had to say in one pretty perfect album.
Nick Drake
3/5
Well that slipped down very pleasantly. Feel the first side is stronger than the second, but very listenable.
Nico
2/5
It's all pretty good stuff...until Nico starts to sing.
Sonic Youth
4/5
Not quite singalong, but the first album of theirs where noise and melody is in balance.
Kendrick Lamar
3/5
I like the melodies and his flow, but again why oh why do rap albums have to be soooooooo long.
The Verve
3/5
The Stone Roses
4/5
the sheer brilliance of the music overcomes the fact no album with Ian Brown singing should be five stars, or even three.
Massive Attack
5/5
Flawless. The singing alone on Hymn of the Big Wheel...
Lorde
3/5
She's got a way with a sly melody as well as bangers (Green Light). State of the art pop. 3.5 if they did half-stars.
Shivkumar Sharma
3/5
Quality of the playing and composition really not fit to judge. But it's a very enjoyable listen and good working music.
Suicide
4/5
Minimal magic, and the prototype for all the synth duos to come, though few would be as confrontational. Every time I play this it gets better and easier to listen to.
Pet Shop Boys
5/5
Flawless. By far their most consistent album, passing the acid test that listening to the album tracks without the singles shows no drop in quality.
Leonard Cohen
3/5
You know this was not so bad, better than I thought. He can sing (after a fashion) and the songs are pretty strong.
The Young Rascals
1/5
The fabulous sound of the Golden Hour from Wonderful Radio One. There was landfill before indie and this was it.
The Clash
5/5
Bands were travelling at the speed of light in the late 70s early 80s. The distance from The Clash is phenomenal. Again, the pivot album of their catalogue with everything in perfect balance. Amazing.
Fun Lovin' Criminals
2/5
This has not aged well, if there was anything to age in the first place. I remember Scooby Snacks being everywhere that summer, and it's much the best track on here. Apart from that, it's a desperately thin concoction of trying-too-hard samples, trying-too-hard lyrics and the odd funky bassline. Telling they were never big in the States, as this feels like some NY theme-park experience got up strictly for the tourists. Two starts strictly for the Snacks, and a gimmicky cover of What a Wonderful World showed how short of actual musical ideas they really were.
3/5
You know what this isn't that bad once you lean into it. Not on Spootify but there's some good youtube playlists with the full album, and making it to the end is definitely an achievement. Kinda like reading Ulysses, but with more squonking.
Emmylou Harris
2/5
I can go a little country, but this is just a bit too country. Can appreciate the artistry, and Boulder to Birmingham is a tune, but it's a bit full-on Nashville for me.
Earth, Wind & Fire
2/5
Well you know the singles sparkle, but this amiable album of pop-funk is let down by some familiar weaknesses: the plodding ballads which make you realise what an achievement Easy by the Commodores was, and the noodly jazz-funk odyssey (Americano). So a pretty mixed bag, more mixed than my bag, and on this evidence a band best served by a generous greatest hits.
Silver Jews
3/5
Heard of them before but never listened, pleasant lo-fi American indie with some good songs rather undersold by singing that may be an acquired tastes.
Country Joe & The Fish
2/5
Passed me by a bit. Not as annoying as I thought it would be, but nothing standing out.
Burning Spear
4/5
A great reggae album, from my favourite era of reggae music. Also - love an album that's 10 songs, 3 minutes each.
U2
5/5
Acid test for a five-star album laden with hits. What does it sound like when you don't play any of the singles? A 30 minute album with 'Zoo Station' 'Waiting for the end of the world' 'Love is Blindness' 'trying to throw your arms around the world' and so on would still be in my top three of U2 albums ever. So yes, all the accolades and more.
My tried and trusted 'no singles listen' for albums I'm very familiar with is dead easy as they put the singles on tracks 1-4. The 1001 randomizer threw up Achtung Baby yesterday, and just as this album's singles are not as strong as Achtung Baby.. so the album tracks aren't either. Probably their last really strong all-the-way through effort, with 4 great singles, so four stars.
Blue Cheer
3/5
Enjoyable in a Cream/Allman Brothers vein.
The Sonics
3/5
Proto-garage, almost all covers. Insanely good fun and very listenable to.
Missy Elliott
3/5
Liked this, definitely one of her stronger albums.
Belle & Sebastian
4/5
Their best, the strength of the tunes overcoming familiar weaknesses.
Van Morrison
5/5
I prefer this to Astral Weeks, controversial I know.
The Specials
5/5
Flawless debut.
The Monkees
2/5
I know we're supposed to say that they were actually as good as the Beach Boys and the Kinks. but they weren't were they? A stellar greatest hits, but their albums? No.
Jane's Addiction
3/5
Actually their choppy funky rock is growing on me, sort of like the Red hot Chilli Peppers but complicated and arty. Didn't mind this at all.
Merle Haggard
4/5
An entirely unexpected treat. A few country albums have already popped up on my list and so far, whatever the reputation, I've not gelled with them. This however, lean and spare, is a great listen. Most songs a little over 2 minutes, very few ballads, almost punktry.
Maxwell
3/5
So 90s it needs cargo pants. It's not my thing at all, but he's got a nice voice and some of the songs are well-written.
Dinosaur Jr.
3/5
Yes this is pretty good. At the point where they dialled back the pure noise and started to really foreground songwriting and melodies, the first of a five or so album Imperial Period. It's that good that the cover of the Cure feels like an afterthought rather than a commercial imperative, a bit like It's a Shame About Ray has no need of Mrs Robinson. Was clearly a thing at the time though, unlikely grunge covers.
Wu-Tang Clan
4/5
The B-52's
4/5
A sound mashed up from fifties rock and roll, easy listening and punk. I think that Wild Planet is a better album but it's a great debut.
Cream
3/5
Solid mid-sixties blues rock. Not my thing, but very listenable.
Björk
3/5
Bjork in perhaps the mellowest album of her career, and the last one that could really be called pop. Last song is an absolute tune.
Frank Zappa
3/5
Amazingly as he has such an off-putting vibe, this is a good album.
Miles Davis
5/5
Five stars. Tempted to deduct a quarter of a point for the vocal jazz on track 12, but really can't complain.
4/5
Why is it only four stars? Play it without the first three tracks and it's a good enough album. But overly reliant on the brilliance of the first three tracks, in contrast with Achtung Baby that is five stars all the way through.
Creedence Clearwater Revival
4/5
One of five they recorded in less than two years. From this Stakhavonite approach this is high-quality blues rock. Several great songs (Who'll Stop the Rain) and an epic cover of Heard it Through The Grapevine.
Jeff Beck
2/5
Though I can vibe with several of the late-sixties blues rock this list has thrown up, this is too far. Not only is their plank-spanking of the worst order, there's Rod and a novelty version of Greensleeves. Too much.
Nick Drake
3/5
Solid singer-songwriter album with enough melodic and arrangement twists to keep you listening. Never going to be the biggest fan of his 'hushed me' vocals though.
Adele
2/5
This is possibly the most machine-tooled bid for pop stardom since Like A Virgin. Don't play the big singles and it still sounds unstoppable. Not actually an album I feel a great deal of affection for, perhaps the only album I can actually like of hers is 19, but respect.
Baaba Maal
2/5
Not bad if to my ears a bit backgroundy (as often happens when singers sing in another language than English), two or three very strong tracks.
Eminem
2/5
Why oh why oh why do rap albums have to be sooooo long. Anyway, the big singles everyone knows, but the relentless dissing gets a bit wearying and the beats aren't as interesting as say Wu Tang. So by the end its all a bit samey.
Funkadelic
3/5
Too funky for Spotify it would seem, but there's an individual track version under George Clinton's account on youtube. Damn this is funky, rocky and for Funkadelic pretty focused. Good stuff.
Wilco
3/5
What would REM sound like with a slightly less charismatic singer, a touch more Americana? I've never quite clicked with Wilco, and this has not really changed my mind. On the two big 'singles' they connect with unanswerable tunes, but elsewhere it does always threaten to drift.
The Roots
2/5
Listenable to, but not really anything I could latch onto as above the norm.
Sebadoh
3/5
This grew on me, and need to give it another couple of listens. Some real songwriting charm, and the variety is great.
Judas Priest
3/5
Two monster hit singles, and barely a bad track on this. A bridge between Sabbath and 70s metal and the NWOBHM, with its poppy concision. Can see why they were huge.
D'Angelo
1/5
Is mid-90s neo-soul the hardest genre to listen to now? Beware of any artist who has his/her top off in their photos as a USP. One star for the first track, but boy this is inconsequential.
The Beach Boys
2/5
can you make (about) 11 albums in 4 years without stretching stuff a little thin? I'm no Beach Boy devotee and understand all the critical stuff about this being the start of their studio golden period, but its 26 minutes plus skit, two covers...
Elvis Costello & The Attractions
5/5
One of the greatest image/attitude/music look at me launches in music history. The Attractions replace Clover and the music is instantly more varied, textured and interesting - still anchored by Costello's brutal lyrics and sneer, and brilliant way with a melody. Two albums into his Imperial Period.
The Mamas & The Papas
2/5
Beyond the two smash hits this is pretty thin stuff, very standard for mid-sixties LPs that were merely means to extract more money from fans. Five cover versions in 12 tracks...
Bruce Springsteen
5/5
Apart from possibly Adam Raised A Cain, this is Springsteen's most brilliant album and there is not a weak track. Amazing to think now it was seen as a disappointment after Born To Run.
Leonard Cohen
2/5
Hey Len. I've got good news and better news.
Let's go with the good first.
The record company love your new songs.
And the better?
They feel inside the Laughing Len persona (so passe) there's a modern MTV star just waiting to be unleashed.
They do.
They do so much they've put it in your new contract. You do want a new record contract don't you?
I guess so.
Excellent. So sign here for gated drums. Here for over-assertive backing singers. Here for casio tone synths. Here for fretless bass. And here - very exciting this - for what they're calling 'Paul Hardcastle style' for Jazz Police.
What's that I hear? It's the sound of MTV Heavy Rotation Baby.
You know the wierdest part of the whole thing? Cohen produced the album himself. Listen to Jazz Police and wonder if the whole thing isn't a satire on the 80s music industry. Four stars for the songs, 0 for the production.
ZZ Top
4/5
Take out the four singles, play the other tracks. How many stars? 3. 3.5 if they did half-stars. So add four singles back in, and difficult to argue with at least 4 stars. Why not five? What is done is done brilliantly, but it is only the one thing that is done.
Neil Young
5/5
Not much to say here other than a fantastic album.
Dr. Octagon
3/5
If this list has one criticism, it's at times too tasteful. Not something that can be levelled at this completely-new-to-me slice of 90s hip-hop. It is absolutely mental, chiefly based around an alter ego who is an alien sex-obsessed gynacologist from Saturn, the eponymous Doctor. The beats are fantastic, sparse, melodic and spooky in an early Wu-Tang way. The rhymes are ridiculously misogynistic, pornographic (one track appears to be a sampled soundtrack to a porn film) but so lurid and OTT it's difficult to be outraged. Is it any good? I don't know, but glad it's on the list and three stars.
Portishead
4/5
Not as even an album as the first two, but after a near decade's gap still a remarkable return.
Aretha Franklin
5/5
The first album of 160 or so that after listening I went 'I need to buy this album.'
Leonard Cohen
3/5
the songs are great, the voice is fine. Just 70s singer-songwriter is not my vibe.
Beatles
5/5
Big Brother & The Holding Company
2/5
I can understand why this made a splash at the time, and the Janis-ites love it, but not for me.
Iggy Pop
5/5
The second album, after Lady Soul by Aretha Franklin, I've been motivated to buy after listening to this. Really its the fourth of Bowie's Berlin trilogy, or rather the first, and that's reason enough.
Incredible Bongo Band
3/5
Somewhat one-note, but a good note. Or beat. Horns plus bongos plus covers equals sample heaven.
Eurythmics
2/5
Dave and Annie. They bestrode top of the pops like mid-80s colossi, making the most of that new MTV thang to the max. Received wisdom: she had a great voice and presence. He wrote snappy pop songs. My wisdom: cynical industry chancers who were so in the middle of the road they've got white lines all down their faces. Inescapable at the time, irrelevant now. Two stars only for the last track which hints at what they could have done with a little less slavery to the machine.
The Verve
4/5
Remove the 4 big singles and you are still leaft with a consistently good album, the final refinement of the Verve sound (mid-paced winding and wistful with the occasional outburst of pissed off vocals and angry guitars). Only four stars because it is only one song, a great song, done in 10 slightly different versions.
Beck
4/5
Some long albums drag (most rap albums). This one is almost like a radio station being flipped from channel to channel, held together by Beck's voice and his marriage of hip-hop beats and blues guitar. His best album still and doesn't drag a bit.
Radiohead
4/5
this is a great album, and as well as the noise/electronica there are some more conventional and very beautiful songs that would fit into Ok Computer or In Rainbows. Definitely start here for the 'difficult Radiohead' rather than Kid A.
a-ha
1/5
My tried and tested formula for any album where I know the singles by heart (Achtung Baby or Eliminator for example) of not playing the singles and seeing how strong the rest of the album is has badly let me down here. I deeply dislike the singles and the album tracks do nothing to change my mind. Saving grace: at least it's quite a short album. But still shockingly mediocre (And You Tell Me is shockingly awful) and a model for everything that was bad about 80s production. There's no end of the badness here. (Not even started on the lyrics). Is this really the thousand and first best album ever made?
Cat Stevens
2/5
Gosh Father and Son, Sad Lisa and Wild World are irritating aren't they? A bit like American Pie there is surely no need to ever listen to them again, so whether they're any good or not is beside the point. Apart from these monsters there is a well-arranged set of 70s singer-songwriter tunes. He could craft a song alright, but not my scene at all.
The Doors
4/5
Got to be a candidate with Abbey Road for best final albums. Not five stars because of a couple of slight treading water tracks, L'America in particular but the highs are spectacular.
New Order
5/5
The debate will always rage about New Order's 80s albums vs the singles, possibly the last group where this a genuine discussion. The Perfect Kiss 12" is better than the album version, they recorded a 17 minute version of Elegia and put out another 12" version of Sub-culture.
But it's a pretty perfect album nevertheless.
Nine Inch Nails
3/5
It is long. And the first half is fairly monotonous industrial - but the songwriting improves a lot in the second half. Ending of course with Hurt, a song just about anyone from the past 60 years would give their eye teeth to have written.
Slipknot
1/5
I'd wear a mask if I'd made this album, though there is one point where the drum intro threates to go drum and bass. So one point for that.
LL Cool J
3/5
Historical artefact this, from I guess when major labels still wanted rappers to produce MTV-friendly fodder rather than controversy. LL is an engaging enough presence, but NWA were about to blow this kind of rap completely away. Only one track with an explicit warning! Bless.
Suede
4/5
Rarely has a debut set a template for a band so solidly from the start: pop bangers (Metal Mickey, Animal Nitrate) and epic ballads (Breakdown, Next Life) pitting Brett's Bowie-esque vocals against the nagging guitar of Bernard - for the first two albums at least. Thirty years later it's still working. Listening to it again the debt to Bowie makes it much more singular than the Britpop landfill that came along shortly after in debt to the Beatles, Kinks, Traffic etc.
Sly & The Family Stone
3/5
I hear what many people say about this being quite a challenging listen, with pop soul highs only really there on the singles and some quite angry grooves forming the bulk of the album.
Peter Gabriel
3/5
The very definition of curate's egg - Here Comes The Flood is magnificent, probably his greatest solo song (whether overproduced or not), Solsbury Hill a pop banger, and Humdrum a great track. But Moribund the Burgomeister, the cocktail jazz/blues of Waiting for the One and so on are perhap more like a rich 70s rocker struggling to work out what to say when going solo. Three stars but not evenly distributed.
Missy Elliott
2/5
This was not unpleasant but kind of passed me by.
Femi Kuti
3/5
Good working music. To dip in and out of.
Circle Jerks
3/5
The shortest album on the list, kind of like the Clash if their songs were only 60s long. The kind of album being always cited as incredibly influential rather than listened to and enjoyed. Bet they were great live.
Manic Street Preachers
2/5
Boy this is tough going. Too long, as many 90s albums were. And suffers massively from each song being about a minute too long, and way too similar to the others around it. I like them better when they go for tunes over riffing.
T. Rex
4/5
Just such a great album, anyone who thinks he was only about singles (which he was chiefly) should listen to this. Fantastic pop.
Björk
4/5
Lots of 'artists going dance' albums from the early 90s don't stand up that well, but this is still very listenable to. Lots of thoughts about whether the 12" mixes of Violently Happy and Big Time Sensuality are the best tracks (they are) and not on this, but this is the case with a lot of albums around this time.
Pavement
4/5
Did I like this? Not expecting too, with their wacky vibe and 'American Fall' billing. But it was full of melody and well-built songs. Maybe one of the very select albums I buy following hearing it here, but need to give it a couple more listens.
Eagles
2/5
Not much here beyond the singles, and as I don't like Witchy Woman that is two tracks. Two stars is generous. The stars aligned as a singles band got it together for one terrific album. This is not that album.
1/5
One of the best female songwriters of the 90s, along with Bjork. Possibly her high-water mark.
Simply Red
1/5
Jesus wept. The singles are enough to go no further.
Bob Dylan
5/5
Is this five or four stars? Most of the tracks are unquestionably a straight five. Is it a perfect album? No because Meet Me In the Morning is pretty throway. Is it great enough for five stars, yes.
Doves
5/5
One of my favourite bands, I love them perhaps more than strictly their music warrants (ie inordinately). But I listen to this again and think who else can blend the anthemic, the melancholy, power and reflection quite as well as they do. Yes the two singles (Pounding and Fear) are peerless, but Sulfur Man, Caught By The River and Words reveal themselves this time as their equal.
The Flaming Lips
3/5
An album which perhaps got a bit thinner on a relisten. Yes the melodies are stuck on wistful and yearning, and the vocals on falsetto - and over a track or two the Lips formula here is great, over a whole album it becomes a little samey. I prefer (don't shoot me) the albums which precede and follow (Soft Bulletin and Mystics) as though they were never lovelier than here, in the other albums there is more variety.
Rod Stewart
1/5
Lou Reed
2/5
Here's my Rod theory. It's always easier to forgive the later lapses of an act you got to know when they were great, than work backwards from an act you first had to hear on the radio when they were awful and put that aside when considering their earlier and clearly superior work. And so it is here. While I can appreciate this is a good album, I can never disassociate that voice from the crimes of the late 70s and 80s. Do You Think I'm Sexy, Baby Jane, Young Turks and so on. So sorry Rod for the music it's three stars, for the vocals it can only ever be one.
Garbage
4/5
Is there a more 90s band? Vat-grown hybrid of grunge guitars, dance beats and a sharp pop songwriting core. Almost like they were put together by a famous producer.... so with a slight caveat it's still a terrific sound even if the album is slightly too long. Ten tracks would have made it a whole lot better. So four stars. Can any album with the lyric I am milk. I am red hot kitchen really be five stars?
PJ Harvey
3/5
I love PJ's middle period but her early period is a bit too scratchy for me to really get into it. It's ok, but nothing compared to what would come five or so years later.
Public Enemy
5/5
Lot of noise when this came out about how the production was too dense to listen to. No, sounds fantastic. Had to check my vinyl and yes there were 20 tracks, 1 hour long, on it, so may have in fact been the mastering. The music is excellent, the hi points among their very best.
New York Dolls
3/5
Along with the Velvets and the Fall, a real influencers band. Unlike them the music is fine, but not amazing. Another in the endless series of New York bands where the look was at least 50% of the appeal.
Brian Eno
3/5
Not one of his strongest albums for me, pleasant listen but slightly too much going on for background working, not strong enough on the tunes for attention grabbing.
Dolly Parton
2/5
not unpleasant and some solid tunes but not my thing.
Paul Simon
3/5
On the surface marred by the 80s production, very evident in the first few tracks. But Johnny Ace is a great track, the others are solid, and props to persuading Philip Glass to do a little orchestration for your album closer.
The Smiths
5/5
This came up on Friday 9 September 2022. Its title is indeed accurate. One of my most-played and loved albums.
4/5
Wonderwall, Roll With It, Don't Look Back In Anger and Some Might Say is a four-track hit machine that guarantees four stars. For the five are the non-album tracks their equal, or are they sixes that demand a perfect score overall? No, and no. Bonehead's Bank Holiday and Hey Now are three star efforts, and Champagne Supernova outstays its welcome. So a very solid four. Possibly four and a half.
New Order
5/5
Yes probably the most consistent of their albums and fully deserving of five stars, though its reputation as their'rave' album is overstated. Fine Time is a club banger, but the rest is 100% classic NO 80s sound.
Steely Dan
5/5
The Dan bear such repeated listening because at their heart is mystery - is this a tune or just noodling? What do the lyrics really mean? And each time one has to unravel it all again. However, here they would never be so pop in their melodies and straightforward in their lyurics. Aja it ain't, but still five stars.
Sepultura
1/5
They might be Brazilian but on this evidence bog-standard death metal. Blast beats, chugging riffs and the throaty screamy vocals all the way through. Sorry.
Dire Straits
3/5
Pleasant enough debut, Walking in the Wild West End is a tune, and Sultans of course. But not enough memorable stuff elsewhere for more than 3.
James Taylor
3/5
Yes it's sturdy songwriting and at least there's a band, but hard to get too excited about this now.
Dr. Dre
3/5
P-funk bass, rolling beats, unrelenting misogyny - the post-golden age rap album of the 90s.
Supergrass
4/5
Excellent debut album, three catchy as hell singles and every track is a great listen.
Goldfrapp
4/5
Brilliant sideways move into pastoral and gentle psychedelia. Synths are gentle washes and pulses, a move that absolutely suited them.
Super Furry Animals
4/5
Very solid effort, Beatles, psychedelia, choruses. All good.
Iggy Pop
4/5
Not quite the lightning bolt that The Idiot was, the second of the Iggy/Bowie albums is still a great collection of tunes, perhaps stronger in its predecessor. Great album, at a period when music just flowed out of Bowie like a river.
Genesis
3/5
Quite like this, possibly the most Rush-like of their albums I've listened to. But it's still pretty wibbly and just when you start to think they're onto something they start another tune. I Know What I like excepted of course, great track.
Simon & Garfunkel
5/5
Can you not give it five stars? There's a five-star set of songs here, only perhaps let down by the throwaway live cover. Truly splendid.
Pixies
5/5
Just matchless. A classic test of a great album is that different songs reveal themselves over time. On this listen the vocals and guitar on The Happening are just amazing.
Curtis Mayfield
4/5
Got to be a vote for one of the best soundtracks of original music (as opposed to crate digging)
Todd Rundgren
2/5
Somethings too much is just too much. It's like one giant track which changes its mind every 90 seconds. Some lovely melodies in this, but a severe lack of focus.
Blondie
5/5
This was one of the very first albums I bought - actually my brother bought it, I bought ELO's Discovery, the only time he has demonstrated better taste. Only two things to note on one of the easiest 5 star reviews: I never knew that Hanging on the Telephone was a cover until very rcently, and you need to make sure your copy has the 5:50 disco mix of heart of Glass and not the single edit some early pressings of both vinyl and CD use (including my brother's copy I quickly inherited and still have).
Siouxsie And The Banshees
4/5
Their gothest and heaviest album - which is saying something. The perfect balance of pop-rush (Arabian Knights, Spellbound) Banshees and heavy grinders (Monitor and the quite awesome Nightshift which contains one of the best silences on any record). A very slight loss of focus at the end so four. Probably four and a half if halves existed. John McGeoch - the best guitarist that punk/new wave produced - at his absolute peak.
King Crimson
2/5
The prog motherlode. All a lot of huffing and puffing in search of something they don't quite find. Apart from the last track which really does pull it all together very well.
Iron Butterfly
2/5
It's generous really as the organist and bassplayer are not bad to listen to. The vocalist! It's like he listened to Jim Morrison and took all the wrong things. Also incredibly influential which is a bad thing.
Common
3/5
Solid rap album, reminiscent of Tribe Called Quest which is on the whole a good thing.
B.B. King
3/5
Yes this is a good album, and the guitar playing is fantastic, but over a whole album it lacks the deep devilment of the best blues. He's a showman rather than a shaman.
Boston
1/5
Usian Bolt's entire career at the highest level can be boiled down into a little over 100 seconds - that's all it took him to win six Olympic medals. Boston's entire top-level career can be boiled down into the 205 seconds that is the radio edit of More Than A Feeling. And just like Bolt's attempts to turn pro football (training with Man United, embarrassing try-out matches with Australian teams), the rest of Boston's career is somewhat pointless and second rate. Really, the second track here makes a decent fist of retreading the formula but after that it's desperate stuff. Chugging seventies boogie with hackneyed lyrics about being in a rock and roll band, having hard times, making it big, wanting girls, absolutely nothing of note here.
John Coltrane
3/5
Heretical I know. Not five stars. Not my favourite Coltrane album (Blue Train all the way). It's about this point that the idea of John Coltrane becomes so powerful that it's impossible to judge the music objectively.
Lauryn Hill
2/5
This album is soooooooo long that that's really my take-away. Just an exhausting album - made even longer by a minute of classroom skit after many songs. She can sing, she can write songs but someone get her an editor.
Deep Purple
4/5
Why not 5 as it's one of the template heavy rock albums. Not quite perfect, as Lazy is some standard boogie. But otherwise just brilliant.
Le Tigre
2/5
One track genius. Four tracks fine. Twelve tracks that's enough now.
Neil Young
4/5
Long-deleted Neil album from the mid-70s finds him in a pretty low mood, living on the beach, thinking about leaving town and generally beset by vampires of all descriptions. It's not an altogether easy listen. However, the last three songs are top-grade shakey and well worth the four stars.
The Rolling Stones
4/5
Take out the 5/5 tracks that start and end this album and its position at the very top of the Stones tree looks a little shakier: there's some filler (Country Honk) and some 3/5ers alongside great tracks like Monkey Man and Love In Vain. So 4/5 it is.
Neil Young & Crazy Horse
5/5
Pretty safe 5 star album and one I've listened to lots and lots. Not only is every track an absolute banger it's got some of his very best lyrics. Weakest track, Welfare Mothers, is still absolutely great.
ABBA
3/5
The eighties was hitting hard here. The Abba sound now sounding a little threadbare and tatty (oompah folk disco), the lyrics a little cynical. But more to the point, they were possibly the most singlesy singles band of all time, looking forward to Abba Gold coming up but this is 4 stars for the singles, 3 stars for the album tracks so 3 it is.
Solange
3/5
Pleasant enough, but lots of serious skits broke up the flow. Kind of drifted in and out of focus.
The Flying Burrito Brothers
2/5
We got two types of music here boy. Country and rock. Too much country though one or two absolute tunes.
The Go-Go's
2/5
Allegedly they were fiery punks when they started. You wouldn't know it from this watered down slab of major label corporate New Wave. The aural equivalent of the skinny tie and check jacket that pop bands put on around this time to fit in (looking at you the Cars). Our Lips Are Sealed is a brilliant song (co-written with Terry Hall, perhaps that's why), We Got The Beat less so and the rest forgettable. Belinda Carlisle would go on to dull out the late 80s as a solo star. Yes they were the famously first all-female band to write their own songs, yes that's important. But just not enough going on here.
Daft Punk
4/5
Not so much an album as a dj mix in the form of an album. Two stellar singles and some great rhythms, but they'd nail that 90s elusive beast 'the great dance album' next time round.
Buena Vista Social Club
3/5
Though not my thing three stars for the exceptional musicianship, and the fact that on a sunny late autumn Sunday this was great wake-up and coffee music.
The Cure
4/5
The third and gloomiest of their gloom trilogy (17 seconds, faith, this) I saw them on this tour and boy they did not look or sound happy. The first side of this takes some time to get going, but by the time of The Figureheard you are definitely there. Couldn't possibly top this, so pop singles it was next.
Bob Dylan
5/5
Most artists would place their dopey goofin around track half-way through side 2. Not here, it's the first track. Betraying a supreme confidence of peak Bob, more confident in his genius than perhaps anyone ever has been. Sad Eyed Lady.. might just be my new favourite ever Bob track.
4/5
Yes the band are in fine fettle but early signs of Wavering Bob Voice. It sounds like a great gig to have been at, but not quite THE BEST THING EVER .
Johnny Cash
3/5
Genuine respect for a singer with a man in black image of murders, betrayals and heists going to a prison full of people who did those things for real. Almost like Gangsta Country and Western. Couple of novelty tracks in between the murdering, drug taking and prison timing.
Carpenters
3/5
Jazz odyssey! Really the last track Another Song (one short of the album guys, let's do Another Song right here) resembles nothing less than Derek Smalls' finest moment in Spinal Tap. Apart from that its expert studio musicianship in the classic Burt Bacharach sixties style topped off with creamy Carpenter vocals. Two huge hits, a cabaret-style Beatles cover and lots of BB songs. Not my thing in the remotest, and so square daddi-o you can hurt yourself on those corners. Four stars for the two singles, two for some of the album filler but that last track eh?
Bobby Womack
3/5
Very listenable slice of late-period soul, without quite nailing the memorable tune bit.
The Beach Boys
4/5
This is fine, it's really fine, and perhaps the well-known songs I know well, and I'm not such of a BB fan to give it five stars when the slighly less well-known ones don't make me sit up.
Miriam Makeba
3/5
This was a great listen, a little naffly westernised in places but she has a fantastic voice. Solid three stars.
Muddy Waters
4/5
Not a mahusive blues fan but this really is very good. Full of filthy innuendo all the way with a top-notch live band. Everything is tight and concise with tons of blues personality from Muddy.
Tim Buckley
3/5
So hated Greetings from LA, lumpy coke-rock of the worst kind. This however is really much better, slinky winding jazz folk not a world away from John Martyn, but with much more emphasis on extended instrumental arrangements.
The Police
3/5
Super shiny deluxe pop. Take away the four monstrous singles (conveniently all back to back at the start of side 2) and we have a slight affair with in-jokes (Mother, Miss Gradenko), vocals by the drummer etc. etc. But those singles eh? BIG.
Ryan Adams
2/5
Hmm made two-thirds of the way through this. Basic indie singer-songwriter from the noughties. Clearly a very nasty man as well. Let's hope this is his one and only entry.
Eric Clapton
2/5
Never mind the politics or personality. This is lazy masquerading as laid-back. Dull. And his reggae vibes have not aged well, though you do have to give him a tiny bit of respect for bringing Marley to a wider audience, about as much as the Stones and Chuck Berry. Not much at all then.
Björk
2/5
The exact point that Bjork's music became a theoretical construct: an idea about making music, rather than making music. There are other good albums later in her work, but never again the quality of her first four.
4/5
This is possibly the greatest bar album of all time and should have been released on Mo Wax in the late nineties. Though I can't help but think of it as music to drink Corona to, it's pretty fantastic.
Deerhunter
4/5
the first 3 or 4 tracks didn't really do it for me, but the middle third of this album is very strong. Very early 00s US indie but some great songs.
Bob Dylan
5/5
The ultimate expression of Bob world. Listening again for this revealed that perhaps Desolation Row is a touch less amazing than I had previously thought, but the band is just magnificent.
George Michael
3/5
Ok I deeply disliked Wham and GM in the 80s and 90s, corporate pop. But listening fairly he's clearly a proper songwriter. Not the only artists whose production in that era has not worn well, and only the ballads are really difficult to stick by. Others, good radio.
Nas
5/5
Why aren't all rap albums like this? Tight beats, melodic hooks and samples, and every track a 4-minute unspooling of bars. Has to be five stars as it escapes the cardinal sins of rap albums: no skits, no 18 tracks, all killer no filler as they say. Also - like the best Public Enemy, Wu Tang (who do all of the above) and it shames me to say the first NWA album, bears repeated listening.
Michael Jackson
2/5
One has to admire the machine-tooled production and the rock solid choruses, but not my 80s at all.
Led Zeppelin
5/5
The fiviest of five stars. Theory: though Robert Plant was necessary, as every hard rock band had to have a wailer, this is all about the other three. Case in point: Bonham's drumming on When The Levee Breaks. Case two: Stairway to Heaven is the best example of can hardly hear it/quiet/soft/nice/loud/very loud dynamics ever recorded. Who cares about the lady who knows? Not me Clive.
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
4/5
The title, the double album. This is surely one of his gnarliest and most forbidding for the casual listener. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is one of Cave's most accessible albums period and several tracks, notably Beautiful World, Easy Money and O My Children have what can only be described as sing-along choruses. So come on in, the Bad Seeds play beautifully and you'll be ready for Your Funeral My Trial in no time.
R.E.M.
4/5
A band squarely in transition. Without two tracks this would sit deeply in the lineage of the first four albums, while perhaps introducing a slightly heavier sound. There is a small town wierdness that pervades tracks like Oddfellows Local 151 and Disturbance at the Heron House. But then there's two tracks that mark the absolute point at which world domination became a possiblity. REM at this point were the ultimate slow-burners: five albums in and their final form was only just emerging.
The Beau Brummels
4/5
Well this is a surprise. Great tunes, interesting arrangements and at that exact sweet 66 spot when the beat explosion met psychedelia. Forced to admit this is pretty good, a shame all their catalogue goes for ridiculous prices.
The Fall
4/5
Excellent album but would it even make my top ten Fall albums? No it would not. A more interesting point in their catalogue it can claim to own is the last unarguably great album they made.
Thin Lizzy
5/5
This is pretty much the TL greatest hits, from the golden run of albums from Vagabonds through to Bad Reputation. Notoriously lots of overdubs, but one of the great 'live' albums.
Mercury Rev
5/5
An album which grows greater the older it gets. The links with The Band are clear here - Levon Helm appears on one track - with this an updated ghost tour through American history. I like to imagine they're driving through deserted gas stations and tumble down wooden shops on Highway 66.
Stan Getz
3/5
You know not every album has to stop you in your tracks. This one sidles up beside you and starts stroking your hand. As the Fast Show would say 'noice'.
Primal Scream
5/5
There are some albums you respect, admire or are even awestruck by. And then others that are just love. This is one of those I cannot love enough. Ten reasons why:
1.
It easily passes the ‘what’s it like without the big hit singles’. Take out Movin On Up, Loaded and Come Together and you still have one almighty album.
2.
Loaded is surely by common consent the greatest remix ever - and the Higher Than The Sun Orb remix and Terry Farley 12” remix of Come Together are not far behind.
3.
It’s one of the great studio albums - like London Calling, The Hounds of Love or Revolver. By that I mean there’s a great producer at the helm (here the sainted and sadly departed Andy Weaterall, Jimmy Miller, The Orb and Hypnotone) and a sense of everyone pushing their skills and the tech to the max.
4.
It’s the album - the track - that brought dance and guitars together. Well, it and Fool’s Gold.
Unpopular view: it’s a better album than The Stone Roses.
5.
Nobody, not even his mum, knows whether Bobby Gillespie can actually sing or not.
6.
They left the title track off the bloody album!
7.
It’s the entire PS career in one album - Memphis 70s rock, dub reggae, a rock band’s take on acid house, ambient. About the only thing missing is the Ramonesesque racket they’d get to on Xterminator.
8.
There’s not one. Not two but three versions of Higher Than The Sun.
9.
There must be a Memphis Sessions style original album before the fairy dust was sprinkled. Come on Creation.
10. The cover was - like all great albums of the time - a great t-shirt.
Public Enemy
4/5
The last of the PE golden run of four amazing albums. Perhaps the least-heralded and its a little less blitzkreig than its predecessor. None the worse for a little more space and possesses mighty hits in the form of Arizona, Shut It Down and Can't Truss it.
Hüsker Dü
5/5
Ah the Du. Was ever such great songwriting let down by such awful production....oh guys you did it yourselves? Try and listen past the fact that the drums sound like they are made out of plastic, and there is no bass, to the late-period Du majesty. There are tunes that are catchy as hell (Could You Be The One, ice cold ice, She's A Woman), thrash outs (closer You Can Live At Home Now) and just plain weird (She Floated Away). A warehouse full of songs and stories.
The Who
5/5
Nothing for me to add here. I look at the track listing and can play every single song in my head. The only time IMHO - Tommy included - that they got it together to make not just brilliant singles, but a wholly satisfying album. Quadrophenia a close - actually not that close - second.
Aerosmith
2/5
There are some bands you get the sense are in it to make the music they love and all the other stuff - fame and fortune - is a secondary consideration. They'd do what they do for 50 or 5000 people. Then there's bands for whom it appears to be the other way round. Nirvana were just around the corner, and judging by this couldn't get there quick enough. Adequate.
SAULT
4/5
Ridiculously prolific, this is perhaps the album that catapulted them to wider awareness. It's not really 20 tracks, more a soundscape in 20 parts, some of which like Monsters and Wildfires are beautifully rendered modern R and B, some of which are spoken word, some instrumental. Really needing to be devoured in one sitting (maybe a coffee break after track 10).
Faust
3/5
Not unpleasant as background working, and probably great live as well. Grat that there is an actual track called 'krautrock'
Prince
4/5
After you subtract the monster hit singles that everyone can sing in their sleep, there's only four tracks left. They are all pretty good. Why only four stars? I don't think it is anything like his best album and what do I give Sign O The Times then? 4.5 if they did halves.
Billy Joel
1/5
Some albums surprise you. Some are just the way you expect. The big singles blighted my early years of listening to pop via the endless airplay on wunderful Radio One (UK only here). if Tina Turner's 80s input is music for people who don't like music, Joel is right up there too. The album tracks reveal nothing to change the situation.
Bob Marley & The Wailers
5/5
Stellar stellar album. Listen to the studio version of No Woman No Cry and you'll hear a version that's faster and less heavy on the organ and backing vocals than the much more famous live version from Live at the Lyceum. The second side's intensity drops a little from the first, but it's from a 6 to a 5 really.
Randy Newman
2/5
I can see absolutely why other people love Randy Newman. But I just don't click. Perhaps a result of associating him with Woody and Buzz. Sorry Randy.
Gene Clark
3/5
Yes this ok, a nice listen, without me thinking it's the best album ever made.
PJ Harvey
4/5
I recall this album on release as basically unlistenable noise. Clearly wrong. Instead the start of her 90s imperial run of albums up to ... well probably up to Let England Shake in 2011.
Duran Duran
2/5
My younger brother had this - I was at heart in 1982 a Bunnymen Teardrops New Order camouflage jacket wearing new waver. He, 2 years younger, had the pastel suit, blonde flick and white shirt of the New Romantic. We still have some excellent photos of him around that time. Anyway, the 3 singles were inescapable. The rest of the album is efficient. Now I'm in birmingham and you can buy an art print of the Rum Runner. All mental floss which ends up saying that they peaked with Planet Earth and declined steeply from there. he did go to Milton keynes to see Lets Dance era Bowie, so he got something good out of the whole thing.
Harry Nilsson
2/5
He hung out with the Beatlies ddin't he. So no surprise the best of this sounds like early solo McCartney. The worst of it sounds like....Without You. Being less than generous because that song is unlistenable to, it's a two.
Parliament
4/5
You are either a Clintonite or not. If you are this is with the early Funkadelic albums much the best place to start. Pretty damn good from start of finish. And like all good funk albums its chief subject is of course the funk. Getting it, having it, being it, losing it...
Arcade Fire
4/5
It's a four. The first quarter of the album is a five, taking up where The Neon Bible left off. But 16 full tracks is a bit too much and the second half of the album has a couple of samey tracks on. 12 tracks, 48 mins guys.
Sabu
2/5
There is not much latin American percussion in here and I'm a bit at a loss as to what to make of this. The conga playing is clearly great, and the mainly chanted call-and-response vocals add to what is quite a minimal sound palate. Rhythms and tracks that were crying out for just a bit more melody.
Bruce Springsteen
3/5
There were many turns Springsteen could have taken after the blockbuster variety show that was The River, which in retrospect puts a cap on 70s Bruce. He took the pop and bar band vibes of Hungry Heart and made a whole album following up on that. This is a Big Album, like they made in the eighties and just don't do anymore. Seven singles in the States (I think 5 in the UK) and endless rotation on MTV. Has it aged well? Not really. The title track is rendered virtually unlistenable to by virtue of the production, the Monster Hit is rendered virtually unlistenable to by virtue of being Dancing In The Dark. There's some good stuff here - Downtown Train and My Hometown in particular - but there are no tracks that would make it onto my Desert Island Bruce Disks. It can only be three stars, so that there's proper room for Tunnel of Love or Nebraska on 4, and Darkness.. on 5.
Funkadelic
4/5
Track one, eleven minutes of shredding. Track seven ten minutes of funk. In between five short and sharp tracks. Superbly listenable.
Kelela
3/5
Not an unpleasant listen and she can write a tune, but it's too long and quite difficult to focus at times.
Air
4/5
Some whispered vocals, airy synth washes and gently burbling bass. Some a bit slow, some with a bit more of a pulse. The whole thing is so much more than the sum of its parts and - cliche alert - it's all held together with a great sense of style.
Depeche Mode
4/5
Take away the four huge singles, and it's still a pretty good album. Probably comes closest to breaking the Mode album pattern of astonishing singles and ok album tracks. So four stars.
Ride
5/5
A band I love more than I should, as I lived in Oxford in the early nineties and even knew a friend of one of the band. Got a guest pass to their gig at Oxford Apollo on the second album tour. Full disclosure over, they have aged brilliantly and this album is full of brilliant tunes, Vapour Trails above all, lush harmonies and clever guitar textures. I listened to it from start to finish in a traffic jam on the M6 and was never less than admiring.
Ash
4/5
You know I'd not heard this for twenty years, owned by my partner. Girl From Mars was a banger always, but Kung Fu, Angel Interceptor, Oh Yeah are also absolutely brilliant too. I had this pigeonholed as mid-table Britpop but I'd put this in an Europa league place.
Steely Dan
4/5
Few bands have a core catalogue as focused and high-quality as the Dan. The temptation is to give every album five stars. But things are relative. there are five-star songs here - My Old School and Boddhisvata obvs, but Gold Teeth and Boston Rag though fine songs don't quite hit those heights. And if it's five then what is Katy Lied or the Royal Scam? So four, though a 9 out of ten.
Scott Walker
3/5
Very surprisingly pleasant listen, sophisticated late 60s singer-songwriter pop with good arrangements. The fearsome Scott lay ahead then.
Gillian Welch
4/5
I'd listened to this a few weeks ago. It's three stellar songs spaces throughout - Title track, I Wanna Sing and the astonishing and astonishingly long end track. They sustain interest throughout with just two guitars or banjo and vocals. Absolutely usually hate this kind of stuff, so it's a strong four.
Emerson, Lake & Palmer
1/5
Ok I tried I really did. I lasted 3 songs and then went 'you know what why don't I actually listen to the original' . Mussorgsky's piece in Ravel's orchestration is a minor classic and very listenable. When replaced by clod-eared synths, bass and drums it's about as listenable to as Concerto for Group and Orchestra. For Mussorgsky (in a recent Wiener Phil/Dudamel version) 3 stars. For ELP -3. This was why punk had to happen.
Marty Robbins
2/5
This is just too country for me, the lyrics are gently amusing with the passage of time but really it's novelty stuff.
Prefab Sprout
5/5
Many of the albums I end up giving five stars find the perfect balance between two contrary drivers in the artist. And so it is here: the pop rush and classic songwriting chops on one side, the witty wordplay, clever time signatures and chords on the other. Side one is one of the strongest side ones of any album in the eighties and it's a crime that When Loves Breaks Down wasn't number one: the record company clearly thought so too as they kept re-releasing it every ten minutes with another free single. No 25 with a bullet and since covered by the Zombies, Snow Patrol and Lisa Stansfield who clearly all know a classic when they hear it. they'd get the big hits on the next album, slightly too much pop rush and not enough of the grit in the oyster.
Leftfield
5/5
The sound of clubbing in the 90s and with the Chemicals and Underworld part of the 'big 3' of dance music bands making actual albums. As successful as either of the others in making an album that sounded like clubbing while actually being listenable to. Lydon and Halliday the coolest guest vocalists as well.
Fugees
2/5
This is a pleasant listen with some standout tracks. Lauren Hill's voice and the samples are great, but the beats and rapping are pretty ordinary.
The Byrds
3/5
Country-rock is a genre I don't immediately warm to, and the balance has to be exactly right. It is pretty much spot on here and it's a great listen. It's 3 and a half rather than 3, but probably for me not a 4 though for lots of others clearly will be.
The The
5/5
An album I had first on cassette (with additional album Burning Blue Soul), then on CD and now am streaming. As debuts go it didn't reveal quite how far Matt Johnson would go in terms of blood, sweat and guns but it's a solid gold set of tunes.
Shuggie Otis
3/5
Psychedelic soul, very pleastant listen and that Tarantino track, but not more than a 3
Rush
5/5
The ultimate game of two halves album. Side one sheer prog heavy genius and batshit crazy. Side two some nice but ultimately unremarkable single tracks. Can't give it a five, much though I'd like to, for Tears (ballads always problematic for Rush with that voice), and the ridiculous orientatlism of the guitar lick on Bangkok. Four then. They got the 'long tracks/short tracks' balance better on the next two IMHO
OutKast
2/5
Oh my god this album is soooo long it started in the second Obama administration. It's so long Britain has had four prime ministers (actually that'd be true of The Ramones) before side two. There are other long albums I like, but there just so many skits, filler and so on that the album of corking material is quite lost. I have this and after listening to again am ripping and recycling. So this works both ways I guess.
Various Artists
4/5
From the golden age of Christmas albums and songs (Eartha Kitt, Motown, the Beatles and Phil). Yes an awful awful man but shouldn't stop you listening to this. Did you spam me this on Christmas Day on purpose 1001?
Wilco
3/5
There's a lot here, 19 tracks. Not sure I've got it all on first listen, but there's a lot going on. Need to relisten.
Gary Numan
4/5
What a great album this is. The bass, drums and analogue synths provide a wonderfully warm soundscape on which Numan's chill android voice intones his Philip K Dick suffused tales of future alientation.
The Flaming Lips
4/5
Two great singles, and a band who in their second decade suddenly found a sound that resonated. Full of their crazy space lyrics but like the next two albums (their purple patch) underpinned by rock-solid songwriting and loads of hooks.
Violent Femmes
3/5
Every ten years I listen to this album and think 'its good, but not quite good enough to actually buy'. I still think that.
Bebel Gilberto
3/5
Nothing to it, a soft guitar, hushed drums and a simple yet lovely voice. But the whole so much greater than the parts.
Fleetwood Mac
5/5
What can you say about this album? Only that I noticed that Second Hand News is false start: a fine song but from another album. But from Dreams on in its pure 70s fm rock magic all the way.
Gang Of Four
5/5
Who would have thought that forty-five years on from punk it was albums like Entertainment that would remain vital and contemporary. Or: 1980. Everyone wants to sound like the Sex Pistols (see US hardcore: Pistols sped up). Eighties and nineties: everyone wants to sound like the Jam or the Clash (white reggae excursions aside looking at you lots of Britpop and the Manics). Last thirty years: the most important bands from the punk/new wave era in terms of influence and bands actually wanting to sound like them: Wire and Gang of Four. In sixties terms then we can see GOF as The Velvet Underground in this scenario with the Jam, Clash and Pistols as Kinks, Stones and….well who were the Pistols?
Whereas Wire’s songs were diverse GOF’s on Entertainment cleave to a restrictive template entirely in keeping with their politics. Slashing guitars, tight drumming and bass with a dried-out and sped-up funk tempo, and sloganeering vocals over the top. Elastica, Franz Ferdinand, Rakes and a billion other bands the sound you took from is here. What they didn’t take which makes GOF sound bang up to date is hardcore Marxism. There’s no personal insights, no obtuse metaphors or poetic phrases but political analysis: At Home He’s A Tourist (He fills his head with culture/he gives himself an ulcer) The problem of leisure/What to do for pleasure, Watch new blood on the 18 inch screen/The corpse is a new personality. These are lyrics that would make as much sense on a posterr. I wish I’d bought this on vinyl as the artwork carries all this into the visual arena: I spend most of my money on myself so I can stay fat/We’re grateful for his leftovers, the cowboy and indian sequence and so on. Streaming on Spotify is just not the same.
Conceptual joke/situtationist artwork: this was released on EMI.
And finally, in the scratchy textures and awkward corners there are nagging tunes and melodies. Not the kind to trouble Elton John or Billy Joel, but enough to have them in your head for a few days.
Afrika Bambaataa
3/5
Yes some excellent, vital tracks but absolutely not an album.
Elvis Presley
3/5
Not really about the albums was he, but of the early ones this is probably the best.
UB40
4/5
Listening to this today on the original vinyl I bought second hand in about 82, complete with bonus 12" disc. What a fine album this is, the most successful bringing together of new wave and reggae, perhaps the reggae equivalent of what Gang of Four did for funk. This and its follow up are just great, but from then on its a tale of diminishing returns, awful covers, awfuler collabs, fallings out and ultimately two UB40s touring simultaneously. Never let 'I got You Babe' stop you listening to this. In their defence they went bust several times and covers are a way to get a hit quick and money in. As a Brummie, whose local has a plaque commemorating their first rehearsal, it hurts that they didn't go onto fulfil the promise of the first two albums, though what do I know, they sold 100 million records. Most of which are Red Red Wine or I Got You Babe.
Elton John
2/5
No sorry don't buy the whole he was credible in the early seventies. Yes there are songs here. But not songs I particularly like. Even Tiny Dancer.
The Undertones
5/5
Yes one of the crown jewels of punk pop. Very little to add to this which is an album I originally got on a cheap portugese grey import market vinyl and has been a joy ever since. While Teenage Kicks might not be the best song ever (in that vein I would go for Another Girl, Another Planet by The Only Ones) it is definitely top ten.
Kanye West
3/5
Hardcore if such a thing were possible in rap. I can see why people rate this, and the final track Bound2 is an absolute banger, but there's too little of the sweet sampling that powered the college trilogy and too much of Kanye banging on about this and that. Short though.
Elvis Costello
5/5
Erykah Badu
3/5
Context is everything. At work had this on while working on budgets. Me and Erykah did not vibe. At home a couple of hours later the second half of the album sounded just fine while cooking. So a modern soul stew.
Roxy Music
5/5
What must have this sounded like in 1972? Google the Virginia Plain performance from Top of the Pops to see how they looked like they'd descended from another planet. The instruments were plastic, the outfits sequinny and the haircuts held up with clouds of spray. It's the sound of the future, a soundworld completely artificial and ironic, but completely convincing. One of the best debut albums ever.
The Pretty Things
2/5
It might be the first concept album ever but it's late sixties beat psychedelia and the tunes are Europa League.
The War On Drugs
4/5
Though it tails off a bit, this is a fantastic reboot of Dylan, if he was backed by Don Henley's Boys of Summer soft-rock 80s synth sound. They'd perfect this on the next record, which adds a bit of Springsteen into the mix as well.
The Band
5/5
The thing I always come back to with the first two Band albums is how ego-free they sound. Has a rock band (hah!) ever nailed the sound of five musicans sharing the music so harmoniously. There's other stuff such as the gold-standard songwriting, and their journey into America's folk past just as everyone else was going into the fab future, but it's the interplay of the musicians I always come back to. Still astonishing after all these years. And yes, if you give this 5 then the second album should really be a 6.
The Hives
2/5
I have this on CD, actually a compilation from two albums and various singles. Should it really be in this list then? Anyway, it's a frankenstein stitching up of the Kinks, Stooges, Dictators that doesn't really add anything to the mix except a crisp modern production. Thinking of ripping and binning.
Pet Shop Boys
5/5
There are some bands who are frozen in their first flush of teenage youth for decades (think the Ramones), and other bands who appear middle-aged from the start. The National come to mind, but the daddies of the prematurely middle-aged pop star vibe are the Pet Shop Boys. So it is that this album is told mainly in the past tense. The adventures of youth (Being Boring) are events that happened years, perhaps decades ago. Though they were around before the phrase 'sad banger' was invented, they took the melancholia melodies at the heart of Kraftwerk and married them with lyrics focusing on failed romances, youths lost to AIDS, regrets at poor choices and misunderstandings. It's all very adult and amazing that they could do all this and sell millions of albums. There's a much quoted comment from Neil Tennant that once Domino Dancing went in the charts at 7 he knew their imperial period was over. This, the first album they made after that, is them staking out a more adult territory that would sustain them for decades. Is it five stars? Definitely 4.5 and I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt, if just for Being Boring which is perhaps their greatest ever piece of songwriting.
My Bloody Valentine
4/5
Not much to add to the many comments. It's both an extremely challenging listen and deeply soothing. Best thought of IMHO as one long track through which different melodies rise and fall from the overall texture of distortion and noise. Not really any good or bad tracks, and one of its joys is re-acquainting yourself with the slivers of melody that emerge each time you relisten. Again, an album that absolutely bears repeated listens.
The Byrds
4/5
As they influenced so many of the bands I love, Fanclub and Smiths to name but 2, it's great to hear where the whole jangly power-pop Rickenbacker sound started. Ok they leant heavily on Dylan, but this is pretty flawless and the original songs are very strong as well. Heretical view: I prefer this Byrds to the now much-more fashionable country-rock period.
Talking Heads
4/5
It's four stars and a really good four stars.
Johnny Cash
3/5
Always engaging listening to Cash playing the Man In Black, chummying up to the cons and generally role playing the badass. Strong selection of classic C and W.
Megadeth
3/5
Two monster tunes (Hanger 18 and Tornado of Souls) and a great balance of shred and tune. Not my type of music necessarily, but I've enjoyed listening to this.
Jimi Hendrix
4/5
Possibly the best psychedelic album every made, and also some fantastic stereo effects as it was a new toy. Solid songwriting and of course some of the greatest guitar playing ever.
Van Morrison
4/5
What an impossible album to rate. It's the sound of driving through dappled sunlight through the trees in an open-top car on a warm summer day. Anyway, four stars.
The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion
3/5
The bastard child of The Cramps, Stooges and a thousand other scuzz rock garage bands. Is it fake is it real? Does it matter. The only way actually this could be any more enjoyable is if Jon Spencer was actually an Old Etonian called Quentin.
The Gun Club
3/5
The idea of the Gun Club sound, a punk take on Americana, is great. Can really hear their influence on bands like Mercury Rev. But the songwriting isn't always of the first rank. Fascinating listen, and a sense of wide open spaces that reminds me of the Triffids and Go-Betweens.
Arctic Monkeys
4/5
Simpler times. Before the loungecore and strings there were razor-sharp Sheffield anthems of pubs, hooksups and misspent evenings. Fully formed straight out of the box.
Talking Heads
5/5
A band by 1980 so far ahead of their time it would take others several years to catch up. Funk, rap, afrobeats all in a sonic stew anchored by Weymouth and Frantz - surely contenders for one of the best rhythm sections of all time. Though The Overload sees a very slight lessening of the quality, it's 4.75 stars. I've had an earlier TH album ten days ago on the randomizer - assuming from this that pretty well every album up to Little Creatures will come up at some point.
Michael Kiwanuka
3/5
A noughties soul update of the nineties dinner party vibes as practiced by Morcheeba, Sneaker Pimps et al. And thus three stars. Goes well with garlic bread.
Jerry Lee Lewis
3/5
Some fiery live renditions of Jerry's hits, chief attraction being his rolling striding piano, a thing of much joy. At 24 mins is it the shortest album on the list?
The Cure
4/5
The first of their 'goth cycle' - ok all Cure albums are a form of goth, but this, Faith and Pornography set an ever-gloomier template for the eighties. This is a sparse album of textures and moods, a world away from the spiky pop of their debut while retaining a knack for a good tune (A Forest) that would ensure that they are always listenable.
Lambchop
5/5
Wow I listened to this literally two days before it came up on the shuffle. Lambchop are absolutely an unclassifiable band, alt-soul, new country, whatever. But the songs are brilliant all the way through, Wagner's voice a dolourous delight and the arrangements stately. Is it a five? Yes probably.
Haircut 100
3/5
Three socking singles, and the whole album breezes along on pop-funky good vibes. Sometimes it's ok to be shallow - not everything has to be about Death and Taxes...
TV On The Radio
4/5
This might be the album (400 in) that I am finding hardest to place. It is slippery - there's definitely a touch of Talking Heads nervous funk - sinewy bass, tight dry guitars - but often uses these ingredients to make something entirely new. Post-rock from less accessible bands like Godspeed is there too. I've listened to it five or six times and their superpower would definitely be escaping definition. If it's a four and not a five it's that only occasionally, as on Family Tree, do they pull everything into focus.
Beth Orton
3/5
Wispy voice, gentle chord progressions, delicate guitars - at times just this, at times with muted drums and bass. The sound of a 1000 dinner parties and mornings after in the late 90s. None the worst for that and holds up very well.
The Divine Comedy
3/5
A solid three, two big singles and a high consistency of wit, arched eyebrow and glittery melodies all the way. and yes, Songs of Love is indeed the Father Ted theme.
The Cars
2/5
A quintesssential greatest hits band. Whatever you think of the singles, they clearly are all you need. This is not that greatest hits. Two singles, two stars.
Bruce Springsteen
3/5
Ok I’ll bite on this one. A 3 for me. But why you ask as a fairly strong Bruce fan. My case m'lud:
It’s front-loaded for acclaim: not only the first album with the E Street Band, its Bruce’s 9/11 rallying cry etc etc.
It’s really a reunion album, hi guys what have you been up to for the past 18 years. And like all reunions we want it to succeed so much it can’t possibly. The ‘return to form’ never quite is a return to peak form.
It is sooo long. 72 minutes for 15 tracks - and whereas earlier albums had epics (Jungleland, Racing the Streets) contrasted with short and punchy tracks, this sees every track stagger long past its natural lifespan. Smoking gun: at least one key change.
The ‘dad rock’ comments elsewhere are on the money: in Worlds Apart (Arabic music), and The Fuse (trip hop drums, looped vocals!!) we hear the sound of someone listening to what the kids have been up to. The Fuse is cringeworthy - not a comment one usually.
Clunky generic lyrics. Waiting for a Sunny Day, Lets Be Friends and Counting on a Miracle are free of metaphor and are a mite simplistic even for a Phil Spector track. We are a long way from The River.
The production is very dated: particularly the drums and synths which sound like this album was recorded a year after Born In The USA not 18.
A chugging mid-tempo beat that suggests they are all a bit too old to really rip it up, and that Bruce’s voice is no longer up to the slowed-down intensity of Drive All Night or Wreck on the Highway.
Arrangements that despite the aforementioned mid-life crisis effects are very uniform. It feels like an album - the very last track excepted - to give everyone in the band their due, which over 72 minutes means the tracks can blur into one another.
In retrospect a midway point: pointing as much towards the middling albums like Magic and Working On A Dream as back to the golden age.
Scores on the doors. Here is the tight, four plus star album it could have been:
Lonesome Day
Into The Fire
Nothing Man
Empty Sky
Worlds Apart
You’re Missing
The Rising
My City In Ruins
Nick Drake
2/5
Oh I don't know. I dislike this form of music so intensely that I can't judge whether St Nick is actually any good at it. Two stars.
Elbow
3/5
You know it's not bad, in a kind of rainy Sunday afternoon slightly bored and melancholy way. Maybe a bit hungover, perhaps thinking about a work meeting Monday morning. This is the soundtrack to that bit of your life.
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
3/5
Very much a debut album, American Girl a startling single that would grab attention, but behind it a sound that was still emerging from the shadows of 70s rock into something different.
Ute Lemper
3/5
Like a box of Ferrero Rocher, one Ute Lemper song makes you think this is the best thing ever. But after twelve the richness makes you feel a little bit sick. When you add in Neil Hannon as well, we really are at risk of diabetes. If you could discipline yourself to listening to this as one track a day that would be best.
The Sabres Of Paradise
4/5
Great ambient dub techno or whatever you want to describe it with. Haunted Dancehall is as good a description as anything else. Stands up well.
Lou Reed
5/5
Fivety five stars. Take away (deep breath) Vicious, Perfect Day, Wild Side, Satellite, NY Telephone and play the other six tracks and they are all uniformly amazing. For an artist whose vast solo output can mainly be described with the word patchy, this is an incredibly consistent album. That Bowie, he was quite on it in the seventies wasn't he?
The Smiths
5/5
The only two bands people are impressed by having seen twice are Nirvana and the Smiths - the latter at the Hacienda and Oxford Apollo, a gig at which future life partner was at but as yet unbenownst to me. All of their albums are five stars, and this is no exception. On yet another relisten you can hear how they had perfected the Smiths sound to such a ridiculous degree that they had said all there was to say: the 2-minute pop thrill dominated by Marr's chiming guitar and rousing choruses (Girlfriend In A Coma, Stop Me, Unhappy Birthday, A Rush and A Push) and the moody workout with a slower pace and more expansive arrangements (Disco Dancer, Last Night, I Won't Share You). Apart from that one can hear some of the early Morrissey quirkiness transforming into People I Do Not Like and Why They Are Awful: here disco dancers, record company executives and girlfriends. Alternative: Unattainable Heroes On A Pedastal who Still Make Me Miserable Even Though I Adore Them (Last Night.., Dead Pop Stars, Dan).
The Lemonheads
4/5
This is just great. The title track and My Drug Buddy are the standout tracks, that any songwriter of the past forty years would be proud of. Ably supported by a consistent slate of short, sharp blasts of early-90s grungy pop. Four stars. Didn't need to even mention that cover.
Soundgarden
3/5
Veered between a 2 and a 3 on this, and ended up, because Day I Tried to Live and Black Hole Sun are such tunes, I gave them the benefit of the doubt. As 90s as a David Fincher movie.
Elastica
4/5
Hey just because their best songs are other peoples songs doesn't mean this is not worth listening to. Still an insanely catchy and sleazy 40 minutes rifling through the post-punk canon. Think of it as sampling with instruments and you'll be fine.
Elvis Costello & The Attractions
3/5
Ah. Yes Beyond Belief, Man out of Time and Almost Blue are fine tunes. But elsewhere everything is swamped in complex arrangements and overproduction. I am not one who subscribes to this album as masterpiece. Overthought and overwrought.
Julian Cope
5/5
Is it his finest solo album? yes. Is it perfect no, and there are signs of the Droolian obsessions that would lead him into full on druidery. But the songs are bullet-proof and providing you don't mind it's a double, it's a fantastic time trip to early rave culture, poll tax riots, the awful afterglow of Mrs Thatcher and how deeply wierd we all were in the early nineties. Also, lots of great photos in the packaging.
The Avalanches
3/5
A mixtape album rather than an album, a collage of samples lovingly assembled but also, like the 2manydjs and cut up stuff prevelant in the noughties also exhausting.
Solomon Burke
3/5
Very listenable early sixties 'classic soul' - perhaps he doesn't touch the desperation or ecstacy that Sam Cooke or Otis Redding can reach, he seems quite a grounded chap. Full marks for putting forward his worldview that not every woman can be loved, as he is only one man.
The Stranglers
4/5
What a strange group the Stranglers were. Perhaps in a solid Europa league spot in the punk premiership, they were hardly punk at all. Insanely musical - but the standout instruments being JJB's bass and Dave Greenfield's swirling keyboards. All accomplished musicians/ice cream business owners. This after nearly fifty years is still a brilliant listen, brimming with catchy choruses and sharp chords. The lyrics? Well only Goodbye Toulouse (apocalyptic destruction of society) and the epic Down In the Sewer (rats resurrect society) are not about beating up women, ugly women, prostitutes, sexually available or unavailable women and so on. were they being 'ironic'. Not really sure myself, and I prefer the rat mythologising. Still, outstanding songwriting.
Dr. John
3/5
Listenable and Gilded Splinters is a proper tune, but elsewhere it's more about the voodoo vibe at times than anything else.
The Chemical Brothers
5/5
Though it may not be their most sophisticated album, it's the ultimate expression of their early Big Beat phase. Block Rockin Beats, Setting Son are both immense, and Where Do I Begin an early sign that they might have more conventional song structures under all the dj action. Five stars, and six if possible for Psychedelic Reel which which has one of the best drops in recorded music.
Culture Club
5/5
An album that should not wear well. But yet it escapes from an era of albums that have not: Rio and True for two. It has many of the tropes of early 80s Britpop: sax breaks check, featured female backing singers check, Motown backbeats check, dry as dust production check, gated drums check. And yet it effortlessly rises above all of tis to sound as brilliant today as bursting out of top of the Pops in 1982. Reasons why? George is a better singer than many others, and the songwriting is pretty foolproof. It delivers the four monster hit singles, but much more it’s got unstoppable momentum. Not until track eight – eight! - Mister Man, does the momentum slow from effervescent to album track. Even then, only for a moment are we down before Stormkeeper gets us back on track and Victims gives it the big closing number. Rounding up from 4.8 because yes.
Pulp
4/5
The mother of all come-down albums, a completely feel bad album about fame. Perhaps not Different Class, but in the title track, Help the Aged, Dishes and Sylvia there's a fistful of memorable tracks. Elsewhere, Jarvis is never less than listenable and their sound is tougher and harder, if not quite as poptastic in the choruses. Solid four.
Elvis Presley
2/5
Ho-hum. The big tunes you'll know and it's all starting to go a bit Vegas. Again, not an albums artist. Still, it's short. And a nice pic on the cover.
Portishead
5/5
Five stars. Just one of those albums where every sound is so carefully crafted the whole thing appears hewn from a single block of marble. And textures is exactly the right word - the metallic dragging that haunts Sour Times, the theramin that recurs, and the glorious film music samples that litter the album. All to provide a compelling soundscape for Beth Gibbons voice. Great though Glory Box and Sour Times are, it's Roads that is the 10/5 track - a better idea of the contemporary torch song you will not find anywhere.
The Magnetic Fields
3/5
Both a good album and the high concept of a good album, there is a double album worth four stars, possibly 4.5, but to get to the magic number 69 there's just enough filler to bring the score down. Nothing quite like it in rock, and possibly the only triple album in this list.
Stephen Stills
1/5
Never trust a hippy. This is a fabulously self-indulgent, self-important and cringeworthy album. The nadir is surely Jonathans Garden in which we have to consider the following:
With his love
And his carin'
He puts his life
Into beauty sharin'
And his children
Are his flowers
There to give us peace
In quiet hours
I have considered it enough. One star.
Prince
5/5
Nothing to add, peak Prince. If Around The World In A Day... was Sgt Pepper, this is The White Album and Abbey Road rolled into one humungous statement. See the concert film for the best live act in the world at the time as well.
Simple Minds
5/5
I love this album, capturing a moment where the chilly Euro-fluenced dance music they'd been perfecting on Empires and Dance and the Sister Feelings Call set thaw out with a new pop sensibility. It's really one mood, with pop sunshine ('Miracle') and longer more abstract tracks (King Is White) moving the dial back and forth but never leaving the unique mood they create on this album. From hereon in the law of diminishing artistic returns/bigger sales would kick in, as their writing and arrangements became simpler. But marvel at how complete an achievement this is.
4/5
Some very sage comments along the lines of 'it's why punk had to happen, but it's also really good' - which is pretty much how I feel about it. Never going to give this five stars with the Anderson voice, but it's a solid four.
Brian Eno
4/5
One of those albums about which you can say that though it didn't sell a million copies, everybody who bought it was a musician. It's still a fantastic listen, and great working music. Got to love an album with nods from Kate Bush and Public Enemy.
Leonard Cohen
3/5
Three stars. An enjoyable enough listen, and many of the songs are standards. But I'm not that sold on Laughing Len.
Venom
3/5
Not unlistenable to, but really not my thing. The kind of album that everyone who then made millions listened to (Metallica, Slayer etc) as it's the mid-point between NWOBHM and thrash. The band meanwhile sold about 30 copies no doubt, so kind of the heavy metal Velvet Underground.
Primal Scream
3/5
this is such a curate's egg album. A base layer of echo-ey dub, but there's thrash, 70s dub reggae, ballads and pretty much everything. Accordingly, no focus though a pleasant enough listen. The kind of album a band makes after a golden run comes to an end.
GZA
3/5
Great listen, the depth and quality of the beats here are just fantastic - as in Swordsman (recalling Portishead) or Duel of the Iron Mic. The rapping is so dense it can sometimes pass you by but a good listen.
Simon & Garfunkel
4/5
Solid four stars, probably four and a half. Not flawless, but with a fistful of undying classics.
Magazine
5/5
Music was really moving at the speed of light in the UK in the late seventies. Released June 1978 only 9 months after Never Mind... and it sounds like punk is already in the rear view mirror. Sharp Shot (a legacy track from the Devoto/Shelley Buzzcocks) is both the best track and untypical of the rest of the album in its guitar thrash. Elsewhere it's jagged rhythms, Barry Adamson's moody bass, keyboards and shining through the first sighting of John Mcgeogh's luminous guitar work. An amazing album, and great though the other three Magazine albums are (until the first split) they would not recapture the consistency and quality of songwriting on here.
T. Rex
3/5
Great pop album, a fistful of monsters and strong songwriting throughout. His imperial period might have been brief, but it was imperial.
Yes
3/5
I'm going to go for Topographic Oceans as the ultimate yes album over this, though Roundabout is an absolute banger. Very listenable, though ultimately not my kind of thing.
Janis Joplin
2/5
I am never going to get Janis Joplin.
Incubus
2/5
Not awful, but it's pretty run of the mill 90s rock, there's that telltale scratching mixed in so its got a touch of nu metal. And there's a big ballad for the radio plays. Very American. Didn't really do much for me.
The National
4/5
The slowest burn of slow burn bands. Conventionally their best album. In fact their best album. Not quite five stars, but a 4.5.
David Bowie
5/5
On a five-note scale this has to be a five. On a ten note scale still a ten. On a twenty-note scale maybe 18.5, as the Stones cover is pretty throwaway. Other than that, nastier and harder than Ziggy.
John Lennon
2/5
There is some nice playing from George and mates, and Lennon has still a way with a tune. but the overall vibe is of being cornered at a works do by that colleague that everyone else is avoiding because they know he can talk no-stop opinionated rubbish at your for an hour. And Imagine would make my reverse Desert Island Discs - ie what 8 records would you least like to have as your sole listening library, alongside Candle In The Wind and Bo Rap.
Ray Price
2/5
This is a very difficult listen for a modern ear, though interesting to hear it from a time when bluegrass, honkytonk and western swing were coalescing into what would become the 'nashville' C and W sound. Academic interest only. Willie Nelson played bass.
Sigur Rós
3/5
A band still evolving, some moments of greatness, but also some very lengthy passages when not much happens. Around the corner....
Sly & The Family Stone
3/5
Yes it's a pretty good listen. 3 stars.
Nitin Sawhney
3/5
It's very listenable to, I was doing a funding bid this afternoon, in a 90s office vibe with a big printer, usb drives and those jelly coloured imacs. I want to say I love it. But I don't.
Khaled
2/5
Well, it's pretty easy listening global pop, interesting to hear how Western textures and music programming infiltrate other genres. An inexplicable cover of Imagine however downgrades this from a three to a two.
Van Halen
1/5
I did not listen to Jump as like the entire population of earth I have heard it a billion times. The rest of the album is somehow worse..Jump has at least a pop sensibility. The rest is hair metal with a touch of synth. An album with no redeeming features at all. As you listen you can hear how it was written for the videos.
Marvin Gaye
4/5
The five-star tracks really are five stars, but this does drop a fraction on side two until the final track. Also think Let's get It On is the better album, so have to be able to recognise that. Definitely a 4.5.
Metallica
3/5
The sound of a band undergoing furious evolution. The riffs are still pieces of granite, the drums thud, the guitars occasionally wail and there’s growly vocals. The songs are a bit longer than on For Whom… and in the case of To Live is to Die there are slow sections that contrast nicely with the full on sludgerama that is their default sound. On this track, there’s perhaps a whiff of a new genre emerging, thrash prog. Mmm. The slow bits could be lifted from late-70s Rush. Elsewhere, as on opener Blackened it is all thrash all the time.
Interesting that they went for a more recognisable heavy metal sound next on the black album, as this is the sound of a band both slowing down (the overall tempo must be slower than Master of Puppets…) and expanding their sound. Dyer’s Eve and Blackened are perhaps last runs through the faster-than-you sound of the early stuff before MTV beckoned. There’s even a thrash ballad in One: practically auditioning for a slot on Leather and Lace IV.
What are they singing about? You know, world domination, injustice, terror, death. Going out with them must be a bundle of laughs. Unless they confirm to the old theatrical truism that the cast playing Hamlet are in hysterics all the time, while those doing a Noel Coward are throwing shade to each other non-stop.
Beastie Boys
4/5
The first 3 or 4 tracks are unrepresentative here - shouty and rocky BB's, but after that it gets much more varied and interesting. Funk, easy listening, jazz, soul - almost everything is in the stew. A rap group who became a group where rap was incidental.
10cc
2/5
This stuff has not aged that well. 10cc are the very definition of a greatest hits band giving you all the stuff you need, so on this album it is The Wall Street Shuffle. Otherwise it's pastiche pop. Immaculately done but absolutely of its time.
Blur
4/5
If there are no second acts in American lives, in great bands perhaps a second life is what makes them great. The Stone Roses, producers of one and a half great albums, could not for the life of them produce a second act. Neither could Britpop premier leaguers Pulp or Suede, the latter refining their sound over the coming decades rather than ever escaping it. Oasis bless them would never admit such a thing was even possible. So it's Blur who produced on this album an act of escapology - adding grunge, lo-fi, even psychedelia to the Britpop template that in the previous album had both peaked and exhausted itself. A fantastic album, one that showed the band could absorb almost any influence and use it to go to new places.
Gene Clark
3/5
Pleasant but unmemorable early seventies country-rock.
Stevie Wonder
2/5
Superstition is a five-star track, but apart from that and the fine final track it's mid-tempo pop-funk or syrupy ballads. Thin pickings.
Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band
4/5
Ok I will bite on this one and go never listened, did listen, very listenable. All over in barely 30 mins and some actual tunes and great guitar (courtesy Ry Cooder) to go with DGV's ultra raspy vocals. Hard to believe it would two albums to go from this to Trout Mask Replica.
Nanci Griffith
5/5
I am a fully paid-up member of the NG fan club and boy how she's missed. Be grateful that this - her best album - is on Spotify as her catalogue is only patchily available on streaming. This is right in the middle of her proper Imperial Period - starting with previous album Once In A Very Blue Moon (not available on Spotify) and stretching over five albums to Storms where she was operating with a quality and consistency that few singer-songwriters can match. Virtually every track here is gold, Love at the Five and Dime of course the stand-out.
Creedence Clearwater Revival
3/5
A solid three: blues-rock guitar, that rolling rhythm and the gruff vocals all very much present and correct. Listening this time around I noticed how with some extra harmonies here, studio polish there and some slide guitar on top the chords and melodies in several songs could just slide into The Eagles sound very easily. Not a complement.
Radiohead
5/5
What an album this is. The weakest track is perhaps Airbag, and it just gets better and better after that. Two thoughts: it's another example of the law of threes, completing the explosive growth from their debut through the Bends. After this it's a violent left turn with Kid A. Secondly, most of this album passes the 'busker test' therefore a proper tunes - Lucky, Paranoid Android, Karma Police could all work on an Amsterdam street corner with some guy with an acoustic guitar. Kid A, again not so much.
X-Ray Spex
5/5
Did music ever move as quickly as it did in the three years from 1977-1980? New Rose by the Damned was October 1976 and barely two years later bands like X-Ray Spex were moving light years beyond the speeded up pub rock punk template. Oh! Bondage Up Yours is one of the classic punk singles - a howl of protest from an extra-ordinary new sort of singer in Poly Styrene, mixed race, wearing braces and with a sandblasting voice.
But by their debut album the punk howl was only one of their registers. The title track opens on a hypnotic synth riff and an unfolding rhythm that the new romantics a few years later would kill for. Then there’s Rudi Thompsons er unique sax playing - in fact Laura Logic and even someone called Ted all took a turn at the sax keys.
Along with the thrilling sound what impresses in this album forty years on is the strength of the ideas. From OCD cleanliness, genetic engineering, the emptiness of consumerism, personality and identity crises: this is a cumulatively brilliant critique of late seventies society. Though its the student radicalism of the Gang of Four who get the plaudits for injecting post-punk with the overtly political, and the Au Pairs who hold the feminist ring, this album holds its own with both of them in the strength of its ideas.
An essential album, one of the albums on the cusp of punk/post-punk that has lasted best. 4.5 stars but surely needs rounding up.
Slayer
3/5
Pretty good, if not my stuff at all. Surprisingly melodic in the middle of the screaming and thrashing.
Q-Tip
3/5
Such an engaging rapper, and lovely to hear some native tongues vibes updated for the noughties. Like this.
Janelle Monáe
2/5
Just too much going on here - too many songs, too many style changes, too much in general. Some great songs - Cold War is fantastic, Say You'll go Good but it sorely needs an editor. Just lost me too many times.
Tito Puente
3/5
A couple of tracks yes a perfect tonic - a whole album the hypnotic rhythms, the clack of the timbales, the horns, the call and response vocals, it is all a bit samey. And music made worse by bringing the vocalist on. two and a half stars really but feeling generous.
The White Stripes
4/5
Hard to argue with this. Half a dozen classic WS tracks and its insanely listenable all the way through. Less is more.
Madonna
5/5
With a slight dipping with Bedtime Stories and American Life, Madonna's run of albums from Like A Virgin through to Confessons on A Dancefloor - near twenty years, is pretty well unmatched putting her up with critical darlings like REM and Prince. Like A Prayer and Ray of Light are the Everest and K2 in this range - I have a personal preference for the latter as I love the William Orbit wooshes and wibbles that provide the distinctive soundworld of this album. As ever the question is take the singles out and what's left. The answer is a lot. I'll even forgive her a bit of karmic nonsense with the om shantis and everything. This album is almost 25 years old which seems crazy as it still sounds contemporary.
John Lee Hooker
2/5
These collabathons can be pretty dull affairs, and so it proves here. Santana IMHO the kiss of dullness to anyone he works with. Concert at Newport the place to start with JLH not here.
Deep Purple
4/5
Tons of fun with all the Purple early classics sounding bigger, better and bolder live. No album with a 7-minute drum solo is getting five stars, but this is a shoe-in for four. Do agree that the presence of other Purple albums make this a pretty redundant use of a 1001 slot.
Pretenders
3/5
Refreshing to hear all the big tracks backloaded onto side two. I do never need to hear Brass In Pocket ever again though.
Tangerine Dream
2/5
Yes ok I can see how this is incredibly influential and all that but no matter how much I listen I can't get this - great textures but much less in the way of actual tunes.
Taylor Swift
4/5
This can't quite deliver the complete shock of Folklore, an utter sidestep from Swift. But it's an excellent collection of tunes, only disturbed by the somewhat disturbing eruption of Matt Beringer's dad vocals. Bon Iver is a much better fit though the National again are the indiefolk magic sprinkled throughout.
XTC
3/5
I have a lot of time for XTC and Black Sea, Drums and Wires and English Settlement are brilliant albums. Hope they come up later. I don't quite buy the 'late stuff is even better' - this has some lovely songs but it doesn't quite cut through, feels a bit 'classic' to me, though the occasional cut-through of the Wiltshire burr is always a joy.
Kraftwerk
5/5
What more can be said about an album that like Sgt Pepper or Pet Sounds virtually nothing is left to say. Two notes from the relisten here: their melancholy beauty is even more pronounced in a Brexit Britain listening to this love song to Europe. And the transition from Trance Europe Express to Metal on Metal is an awesome drop.
R.E.M.
5/5
What album buries its two strongest tracks three-quarters of the way through the album? A group so confident in their game they can do whatever they like. (tracks in question Man on the Moon and Nightswimming).
Keith Jarrett
5/5
Not much to add, one of the most perfect pieces of music ever created. Extra-ordinary to think it was all improvised. On tracks one and two you can hear someone composing in real time.
Fela Kuti
3/5
I like a bit of Fela, and this is a strong album. Limitations really that (sorry) it's great working music rather than something that makes me stop and actively listen.
Goldie
3/5
He wasn't the best D and B artist of the 90s, but a bit like the Damned he was the first to get his stuff out there and into the mainstream. Soft spot for anyone from Wolverhampton. This has some great peaks but it's a bit compromised by trying to make a home listening album out of club music. Not the first person to get caught here.
5/5
I know every moment of this album from start to finish and wore my vinyl copy out before buying it on CD. One of the greatest debut albums ever. How much is ABC and how much is Horn is open to debate, but the results are spectacular. The exact moment that post-punk gave way to 80s pop. Rewards listening on the best stereo/headphones you can find.
Bob Dylan
4/5
Yes it is a bit of a return to form, if by this do we mean better than Infidels or Down in the Groove. Is it a good Dylan album, yes it is. Is it the equal of his sixties golden period. No it is not.
The Only Ones
4/5
This is not just about Another Girl..., though it is mainly as that's like saying A Night at the Opera isn't mainly about Bo Rhap. So five stars for probably the best use of 3:02 in music history. But the opening and closing tracks are really strong. Extra-ordinary singing voice too - like Howard Devoto's another voice you couldn't imagine breaking through at any other time other than post-punk.
Talvin Singh
3/5
Very pleasant Sunday morning listening, very nineties mix of Indian and drum and bass. Almost almost really really good.
Joan Baez
3/5
Not my thing, acoustic guitar and vocals but her voice is so sincere, pure and expressive (this is not news, it is literally the things everyone says about Joan Baez) that this is a very engaging listen. Favourite track: Woman of Constant Sorrow, take that Soggy Bottom Boys!
Metallica
4/5
You know it’s not bad. It’s really quite good. I’ve played it three times and can enjoy listening to it. What I like:
Intros and middle eights. They’ve got a good grasp of rock dynamics and know that if you have 30s of acoustic noodling/slow strumming then the crunching riffs come on even stronger.
Twin guitars. Always a sucker for some double-guitar interplay. Bits of this, the best bits, sound a bit like Thin Lizzy. A good thing in my book.
It’s not really thrash though is it? If it is its the slowest thrash ever. So there’s actually room for tunes, singing, musicality etc to come through. It is intense. There’s no number about a lady in a red dress to be found anywhere.
Doomy lyrics. It was the eighties. Ronnie was joking around with the nuclear football, cruise missiles and the like. Not to mention the height of Thatcherism over here. So lyrics about death, destruction, madness, conscription and cannon doddering and general catastrophe are just fine. And the screaming, roaring delivery really sells it.
Riffs. Huge riffs. Riffs from outer space. Riffs carved from the side of Mount Rushmore. If these riffs were an actor they’d be Brian Blessed shouting from the top of a Welsh mountain.
What’s not so good.
The inessential instrumental. When your other tracks are called things like Leper Messiah, The Thing That Should Not Be or Sanitorium then having an instrumental called Orion rather lets the side down. Like YYZ on Moving Pictures its the heavy metal equivalent of the hip-hop skit. Where’s the screaming? Not that it’s bad, just that it’s not really needed.
They could do with an edit button. Most of the tracks clock in at the 6 minute mark which given the sound is everything up to 11 can get a little exhausting.
Frankie Goes To Hollywood
4/5
Perhaps the most epicly insessential album in history. Relax and Two Tribes had already been released in multiple 12" mixes by the time this came out, and the album mixes are not the best ones. The Power of Love and Welcome to the Pleasuredome were both also monster singles, though the latter is here in its full 13 minute glory. So, beyond this it is thin indeed - a slew of inessential cover versions, the odd filler instrumental, and three okay album tracks tucked away on side 4. So, 5 stars for the singles, 3 for the rest, 2 for the covers - round up to 4.
U2
3/5
Ah Bono. The Tony Blair of music. This feels like the first album in which the full on Bono Messiah complex hit home. The three singles on here I never really need to hear again, and New Years Day is a fine mid-80s rock single. Beyond the singles it's still pretty uneven with Red Light (featuring the Coconuts on backing vocals) and Refugee rather cringeworthly in lyrical terms. One of my least favourite of their albums - the more straightforward Edge's guitar sound is, the less interesting they sound. Three stars.
Ramones
5/5
Though there were precedents with the NY Dolls this arrived pretty much like a bolt from the blue. Side one is unbelievably strong, side two couldn't sustain but still it's gold all the way through.
Elvis Costello & The Attractions
5/5
Slap bang in the middle of his golden run of pretty flawless albums, and not just two monster singles though this is true, every track is brilliantly composed and the Attractions really find their feet as one of the best ever backing bands.
The Chemical Brothers
4/5
I can't rate this 5, as then where would Dig Your own Hole go? But this is a very solid 4, with a very clever downtempo feel to side 2 after the dancefloor action of side 1.
A Tribe Called Quest
4/5
One of my favourite rap albums, and the one you should play anyone who goes 'it's not really music'. This is such a musical album, full of snaggy hooks, great samples and just a sense of joy. The last couple of tracks see the quality dip a little. And the 'why' remix of Bonita Applebum is not on the album - to which one can only say WHY as it's awesome.
Led Zeppelin
5/5
Yes can't really see any reason not to give this five stars, other than there are other LZ albums that should have more than five stars. It is heavy.
Pink Floyd
4/5
Yes it's great, but it's symptomatic also of the facelessness of the Floyd. Their best-known album and it doesn't have a track that punches through to the global music psyche like Bo Rap or Whole Lotta Love. Having said that, the production on this album is amazing.
Devendra Banhart
1/5
One of the most annoying albums I have ever listened to. The voice of Marc Bolan's irritating brother coupled with twee as hell acoustic guitar. I rejoiced in the end of the album.
Fiona Apple
3/5
Someone anyone please get this artist an editor. There are some great songs (Ladies in particular) but they are somewhat buried in too many tracks, too much of the whacky production and generally too much of everything. I have listed to this before, and it did improve this time, so maybe in ten years it willbe a five, but for now its a three - really 2.5.
Bob Marley & The Wailers
4/5
I'm not normally a fan of deluxe editions, but the one of this album is essential. You can hear the original Jamaican mix, and the Island Records rockier remix version. Both are great, and you can hear Marley's songwriting progressing at light speed. A four, the last Wailers album before he was a superstar.
Norah Jones
2/5
I am loosely associated with some jazz concert programmers and we get vocal jazz artists wanting to get programmed sending their music through. This is exactly why the never get programmed. It's not objectionable, but it's not really jazz. It's like jazz, in the way that Bud Light is like a beer.
Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan
3/5
So why this album - of the possibly over 200 that Khan released? It's on a 'pukka' Western label, Real World, and has a western art director in charge of the sleeve. So I guess that. And that it's one of only four or so you can link to on wikipedia. My point being, and I enjoyed this album, is that is it better or worse than the other 200? I have no idea. And bluntly I'm not sure the compiler of this list really does too. Maybe he has a quawwali expert he can run this one past. But I've got no reason to believe it's not representative, and its a good listen, even if it's cultural value entirely goes above my head. let's finish with an anecdote: I attended an early WOMAD Festival in Essex in the mid-eighties and Nusrat was on the bill. We listened for an hour or so, then decamped to the main field to listen to New Order, who were great, then we came back and the man was still going strong. Respect.
Syd Barrett
3/5
Yes it's whimsical psychical folk and has an endearingly unfinished air, but you know what? I'd rather listen to this than Nick Drake.
David Bowie
5/5
If I had to pick one album as my personal greatest of all time it would most days be this. Staggering both in its achievements and the fact that Bowie was so out of it he can remember very little of making it. The only album I can recall actually being interested in listening to the live versions on Stage vs the original album vs the remaster (the Maslin mix) to see which is the most stupendous.
Jacques Brel
2/5
This is so ridiculously French it should come with a breton jumper and a beret. Drama and histrionics all the way, and though 28 minutes long an absolutely exhausting listen.
Antony and the Johnsons
4/5
I came to this fully expecting to dislike it, but after a couple of tracks I settled down and really enjoyed it. At the heart is some very solid songwriting, and his voice is pretty amazing. If I have a quibble, not one I thought I would, is that the Johnsons are time are a bit predictable and limited in their arrangements. But a very solid 3.5. One of the more surprising listens so far. Going to invest in a 4 on the basis I'll listen again.
Beatles
5/5
Just checked that I know every song by heart already. Yes I do. So no need to play. Five stars.
Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band
3/5
Basically unrateable. My view here is that you have to forget like or dislike, get or forget. It can't be reasoned with, it doesn't stop, it feels no pity. Whether you are there or not, it exists. Double album is too much, but 40 minutes is an audio equivalent of wild swimming. Bracing, a shock to the system and you return refreshed. 3 but could be 5, or 1.
The Blue Nile
4/5
Stellar debut. But there's a feeling that they are locating the Blue Nile special spot: not too eighties synth-pop (Stay); not too piano ballad (Easter Parade) - but a goldilocks zone of mournful, funereal rolling (Automobile Noise and the amazing Heatwave which emerges from this listen as the track from this album, setting the tone for the masterpiece that would follow). 4.4.
Sonic Youth
3/5
Ok, I had this down as a 3 but on second listen, particularly side two, you can hear the tunes emerging from the noise. There'd be a bit of arsing around (ciccone youth etc) and next time out would be Daydream Nation and lift off. Still a 3 but a 3.5.
Dwight Yoakam
2/5
We got all kinds of music here. Country AND Western. It's not unpleasant but really this won't convert anyone to C and W who isn't already. Less rhinestones but the same music.
Rahul Dev Burman
4/5
One two cha cha cha is catchier than....something very catchy. Why it's not appeared on any of those loungecore kitsch classics as it's better than almost all the tracks that do. An interpolation of That's The Way Ah-Hah is also genius. The rest of the album can't quite live up to this twisted magic, which shows George Harrison how to really blend Indian and western pop. But what this list is also all about. Tons of fun. 3.75 so I'll upgrade to a 4.
The Louvin Brothers
3/5
Tragic indeed, this is insanely listenable and depressing, being a non-stop litany of destitution, violent death, exile and sundered love. But they sing it all so beautifully these Soggy Bottom Twins. Not my genre, but shows exactly what was lost when bluegrass and country became Big Nashville. 3.5 really.
The Temptations
3/5
Solid album, nothing that remarkable apart from the title track and the 9-minute Run Away Child.. epic. Three stars.
Aerosmith
3/5
It's not a bad listen, but it is fairly generic mid-seventies rock that other bands did considerably better. Kind of like the Stella Artois of this kind of stuff, no-one will object to a pint of it without being especially thrilled to see it's the only thing on offer.
4/5
It's not the best Beatles album (that would be revolver or Let It Be) but it's the one that everyone knows. -1 for the interminable sitar track.
Billy Bragg
4/5
This is a great Bragg album to pick for the list, still got enough solo guitar and sandpaper voice Bard of Barking vibes of pre-Don't Try This...Bragg, but with some other instruments now creeping to make it a more varied listen. in Levi Stubbs Tears, Greetings to the New Brunette, The Home Front some of his best songs.
The Rolling Stones
3/5
Giving hope to covers bands everywhere...listening to this perhaps says that initially they were a 'right place right time' kind of act. Also, as the excellent recent BBC documentary revealed, this is also Brian's Stones, playing the music he loved. I can't give an album 90% covers more than three stars, but a 3.5
Happy Mondays
5/5
This album is ridiculously listenable to - bearing in mind that it's not clear how much the band played on it, how much was due to production wizadry, and it is clear how Sean Ryder was 'vocalist' rather than singer. Along with the first Stone Roses album a memento of a quite uniquely British artform: baggy.
Skunk Anansie
2/5
This feels like a Major Label Album - in all the wrong ways. What do we do with this artist? Make them sound a bit like other artists. 'Going a bit nu metal' really does not work for them, and surprised to see this on the list. Want to like it, but it's even got the big ballad for the radio play track. No.
Dusty Springfield
3/5
Yes it's a classic, love her voice but at times it is - sorry - a bit plodding.
Michael Jackson
3/5
Am I am Jacksoner? No. Does Billie Jean, Beat It and Thriller make a pretty amazing set of lead-offs. Yes. Is The Girl Is Mine, along with Ebony and Ivory, a crime against music. Yes. Yes. Yes.
The Pogues
5/5
I love this album, and have very fond memories of seeing them at Oxford Poly on the tour for this too. Less fond memories of an out-of-it appearance at Reading later in the decade. By far their most coherent album, and a thrillingly original idea of joining traditional Irish music with punk energy. Really, this is a flawless album, culminating in an epic take on Aussie anti-war classic And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda. How original the melodies of Pair of Brown Eyes and Sally Maclenanne are can be debated, how fresh they are here is unquestioned.
Sufjan Stevens
4/5
Georgeous voice. Solid songs. Interesting arrangement and the whole single state concept going on.
Eels
4/5
This one of those 'suburban' albums that American bands can do so well (think Gin Blossoms, first Counting Crows etc.) - think kids on bikes, the 7-11, walking over to someone's house (oh they actually did that). We didn't quite what a singular and depressive talent E was from this, by far their most 'band' record. But a great set of songs. If it was a photo it would be a 'golden hour' shot of trees, a street, a twenty something couple walking away from the camera.
Gil Scott-Heron
5/5
Not on Spotify but The Bottle, the epic H20gate blues and many other great tracks from a youtube clip, make this a great solid four star album.
The Boo Radleys
5/5
There's a lot in here, but mostly let's enjoy the last flowering of indie indie, with a bald singer, a terrible band name and the pre-Oasis Creation label. Because this is in its way as great an achievement as Screamadelica, a genre-busting blend of shoegaze, powerpop and psychedelia. However, they weren't cool and would have to release a much more straightforward and less ambitious album to get into the biggish time.
King Crimson
3/5
Incredible dynamic range - or another way of saying bits are very quiet and bits are very loud. Not unpleasant, always melodic, a bit banging and crashing at times, full on prog.
Einstürzende Neubauten
2/5
I would say that this one of those albums that most people will take a view on about two minutes in. And they'd be basically right. I saw them live twice in the mid-eighties, two of the most extra-ordinary gigs I've been to. At The Hacienda they started drilling into the walls, in Paris they had a concrete mixer which they emptied over the audience at the end of the set. But is it music? Possibly only tangentially. it's there with Metal Machine Music, Weld and another great unlistenable albums. Top cover of J'Taime mind, but no-one can give this more than two stars surely.
The Cramps
4/5
The ur-text of psychobilly, and absolutely massive in goth clubs throughout the 80s. Still very enjoyable, though by the end their one trick is somewhat exposed by repetition. Their next would take it all to another level.
Hugh Masekela
3/5
Very pleasant listening, apart from the drum solo three-quarters of the way through. But doesn't quite stick to the sides.
Manic Street Preachers
3/5
Two great singles, two fine singles and solid album tracks. At times the curse of the rock plodder strikes, and it's not aged that well.
Nirvana
5/5
this is a quantum leap forwards from Never Mind - the songs are stronger, the arrangements and playing is better, the whole thing is more consistent. Twelve amazing, brutal, heartbreaking tracks.
Led Zeppelin
4/5
Great debut album. Controversial view reinforced here, that the remarkable musicians in the band were not Page and Plant, but Bonham and Jones. The drumming from the very start is just remarkable. There's a (mercifully brief) sitarish track so could never be five stars, but definitely 4.4.
Crosby, Stills & Nash
3/5
Harmonies to die for, and some solid songwriting prevent me from giving it the two that this bunch of complacent sixties survivors probably deserve.
Bonnie "Prince" Billy
2/5
Quavery voice, acoustic guitar, hushed backing - it could be Bon Iver who maybe took this guy's hustle and made a million with it. Ho-hum. Maybe Spotify turned him down?
The Byrds
3/5
Solid sixties album with My Back Pages and Rock N Roll Star as obvious highlights. Rest of album is pretty solid bar the awful Mind Gardens, which prompted me to start a discussion on a forum about bands who went 'full maharishi' who really shouldn't. Three and a half.
The Saints
4/5
This is a very good album, not just the fantastic album opener but above all in the sense of the space, melodies and lyricism that would lead onto the Gobetweens, Triffids and The Church. Good stuff.
Bad Brains
2/5
Going to go against the reviews here and say that Rock For Light and Bad Brains are fantastic albums, ultra hardcore meeting reggae. This not so much I'm afraid, seems a bit of a watering down of the hardcore and a dilution of the reggae. Sorry.
Sisters Of Mercy
4/5
At the time - as a loyal Sisters fan present at the last ever concert by Sisters mk 1 at the Albert Hall - this was viewed as an awful attempt to 'go mainstream' . The world had moved on by 1987 and AE was desperate. Thirty years later and I'm of the view it was a great attempt to 'go mainstream' with This Corrosion, Dominion and Lucrezia My Reflection the equal of any earlier Sisters work. Still not quite sure there's a whole album here, so four stars. Patricia Morrison: the goth Bez here.
Jack White
3/5
Yes it's very listenable, yes its Jack White excitable yelping over the blues. So business as usual without Meg. He seems to have done ok for himself.
LCD Soundsystem
5/5
This album is a four-star continuation of the first LCD album, witty, distanced, ironic NY cool right up to track 4 - then it lifts into something completely different. Its still got the NY scene beats but the melodies, the rhythms, the vocals are something else. Ageing, worrying about still being cool, worried about clubbing being shallow....the next six tracks are as touching as dance music gets. Then there's a full-blown sad ballad to finish...worried that living in New York is not the answer any more.
Otis Redding
5/5
Yes solid as a rock, the songs are great, the singing is great and the arrangements and playing are fine. He's not got the purest soul voice (Sam Cooke, Aretha for me) but really these are quibbles. Just give the man five stars dammit!
Public Image Ltd.
4/5
Who took the right DNA away from the Pistols break-up is clear from this. While Vicious and Mclaran were messing around with mock-shock rock and roll covers, Lydon was accelerating away into the post-punk era with this ridiculous leap forwards. Sped-up dub bass from Wobble, scratchy funk guitar from Levene anticipating everything that would come from Gang of Four, Fire Engines etc. Lydon's atonal (even for him) speech/howl/singing fits in perfectly. There's even a (relatively) pop-rush in the title track. Fantastic.
Screaming Trees
3/5
A very solid 90s alternative rock album, dusted with the grunge vibe but with great vocals courtesy of Mr Lanagan and solid songs. Enjoyed this.
Serge Gainsbourg
4/5
The music, as some commentators have said, is very proto-trip-hop. Orchestral funk, like Isaac Hayes was doing at the same time, except with a breathy Frenchman speaking over it instead of an anguished black American. Music - five out of five, album concept 1/5. It has not aged well, and sits along Maurice Chevalier in the French musical nonce list of shame. I have to give it a four ultimately. Yes a different time, but hard to think that even in the early seventies having a whole album based around a middle-aged man having sex with a fourteen-year old was pretty unpalatable.
Skepta
4/5
You know what I really enjoyed this, much more than I thought it would. The beats and samples are great, much more tuneful than expected. His flow is great, and some niche shout outs including Hublot watches. Needs a relisten so giving this the benefit of the doubt.
The Auteurs
3/5
A solid listen, but prefer Black Box Recorder for the full Luke Haines experience.
Slade
3/5
It's a good enough listen but doesn't fundamentally alter the view that they were a singles band. Poor spelling too boys, must do better.
Paul McCartney
2/5
Sketches, noodles, drafts, demos - if you were being kind you'd say it was charmingly unspun. If you were not being charitable you'd say this would have been long consigned to the dumper but for the Macca brand. Utterly inconsequential, though Maybe I'm Amazed is a tune - one which clearly signposted the MOR direction he'd take in the seventies.
Lucinda Williams
4/5
This was a cheap CD purchase, and last time I listened I was unconvinced. So one result of listening again might of been to rip and remove. Instead its back on the shelves. The first side of this album is pretty well pitch perfect: a sweet spot between Springsteen, Nanci Griffiths and Gillian Welch. The kind of country rock I can absolutely get behind. Roy Bittan from the E St Band helped produce so no surprise at times it has the boss vibes, and the title track is one that the man himself would wish he had written. The second half can't quite sustain the stellar quality of the first, and there's a track too many, so four stars.
Arcade Fire
4/5
I was going to post about 'warm' and 'cold' albums but instead will reflect on how extra-ordinarily back-loaded this album is. The first four tracks are indistinct, hesitant, a bit sound and fury signifying not that much. And then the three punch of Kettle, Crown of love and Wake Up delivers something else entirely. The rest of the album maintains that level, perhaps its part of that uber-indie vibe this album has to make people work a bit first. Anyway, not their best album but very good.
Nitty Gritty Dirt Band
3/5
I have listened to thirty out of the 41 tracks and feel that's enough to make some comments. This is always listenable, and a fantastic corrective to the glossy Nashville MOR country that had solidified by the early seventies. But whether 41 tracks of it in one go is really the way to enjoy this music is debatable. Would it have been a four with 12 well-chosen tracks, possibly not but definitely 3.5 rather than the 3 it is after 31 rippin bluegrass numbers.
Can
4/5
Textural, ambient, krautrocky, funky...truly unclassifiable except nothing sounds like it descended from rock and roll anytime soon. Great.
Bruce Springsteen
3/5
Rule number one: no-one can sustain guitar and vocal over a whole album, no matter how good the songs.
The songs here are so good - Highway Patrolman, Nebraska, Atlantic City - that I am prepared to overlook this rule, if you listen to it as a vinyl album and take a break between the two sides.
Hanoi Rocks
3/5
Actually this is ok, the right balance of some sleazy vibes, sing along choruses and chunky riffs. Bon Jovi listened to this, cleaned it up a bit and boom.
Genesis
4/5
One of the longest albums in this list I would wager, at 1 hr 34 on Spotify. Above it only perhaps the very elite list of triple albums (Sandinista, 69 Love Songs etc). So yes it is much too long to stick with and absorb in a single gulp. I have listened it to it three or four times and: there is ALWAYS something interesting and worthwhile going on musically. It's a mid-seventies rock album - so if instrumental solos, big analogue keyboard sounds and massed vocal harmonies are not your thing then move on. I love it - far prefer it to the cod-folky stuff of earlier Genesis. The only Genesis album I actually 'like' as opposed to the odd track here and there. As with most concept albums, forget the concept, and enjoy the songs.
The Damned
5/5
Theory: after the first wave of Year Zero albums: Never Mind TB, The Clash, In The City, Rattus Norvegicus - and here Damned Damned Damned - bands took stock with their second album of more punk (interestingly in the case of The Jam and The Clash the second albums were probably the worst ones of their career) before with their third - London Calling, All Mod Cons, Black and White - and here Machine Gun Etiquette - laying out a post-punk musical template that would see out their careers. In the case of the Damned it's as a fizzy, late sixties psychedelic power-pop combo heavy on the organ and melding this with a bit of glam and garage. This album is virtually a greatest hits collection in itself and the one essential Damned album.
Queens of the Stone Age
3/5
Yes actually this is pretty, pretty good (perhaps the kind of album Larry David would listen to to wind other people up). All-round sleazy vibes and the world-weary flat vocals work a treat. Could be signficantly shorter and then would go up from 3 to 4.
Mudhoney
3/5
You know this is more diverse with a very strong finish than the first couple of tracks would suggest. They're not quite distinctive enough to make them a 'what aboutery' with the grunge Premier League but a strong playoffs from the Championship level.
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
3/5
Grudgingly I'll admit these songs are pretty great, even if three-quarters of the band are pretty dislikeable.
R.E.M.
5/5
Pretty perfect. The end of their second three-album cycle, moving from the janglemumble sound of the first three, to world-conquering titans. The first time I can really hear the mandolin in their work - crucial to the track that made them global megastars. There's another list song (I remember california), a dry run for a more straightforward acoustic ballad (Hairshirt) and a fistful of ironic powerpop songs (Stand, Orange Crush, Pop song). So, excellence as usual.
The Sugarcubes
3/5
A whole album of crazy clattering cats in a sack is a bit too much, but tremendous energy and vibes. Birthday is a tuuuunne.
Stan Getz
3/5
This is one of the best background working albums ever made. That's not a slight, just that it does its thing and if you dip out for 5 minutes that's ok, they're grooving and ready for your return.
Sepultura
1/5
The inclusion of Latin American beats at times is interesting but the guitars and vocals are pretty standard thrash, which is not my thing at all. Sorry. And another overlong album.
Can
3/5
This is a game of two halves - half is essential motorik, especially the monumental Hallelujah that a certain Happy Mondays may just have ripped off wholesale without even bothering to change the title for Hallelujah. However there are lengthy drum solos and periods of what appears to be studio chatter and just messing about on the second side. So three stars.
Quicksilver Messenger Service
1/5
I will never complain about how indulgent, noodly and length that Allman Brothers double live album is. Imagine all the skill, fire and interest removed from it and that's what we have here. How is this on this list when 90s scenesters EMF are Unbelivably not?
The Yardbirds
3/5
Not a great sixties fan, and this is pretty uber sixties stuff. Not unpleasant, but the Kinks/Beatles/Stones/Doors plus Motown and soul is my sixties pretty much sorted up to sixty seven.
Christina Aguilera
2/5
Oh my god this is sooooooo long. There are a fistful of decent pop tunes, not my thing but I get why they are good (Dirty, Beatiful etc) but at least ten tracks of filler. Just because you can does not mean you should. Pop albums - twelve tracks, 3 - 4 mins each, 48 mins tops. Simple.
The Byrds
4/5
This list loves The Byrds more than is strictly necessary, as this is the fourth album I've got to - while the likes of nineties indie legends EMF go unchosen. It's a pretty solid four stars, two stellar singles and always something interesting going on.
Bob Marley & The Wailers
5/5
Come for the songs and Bob. Stay for the Wailers - who might just be the greatest backing band ever, certainly top five with the Spiders from Mars, E Street Band, JB's and the Band. Every second of every track there is something amazing going on behind Bob, and for a good half of this album the vocals are so well known I can kind of blank them out. Exodus the title track is just a riff and a vocal line, but oh man the playing.
Jane Weaver
3/5
Bands like Stereolab explored ground between motorik and sixties Europop - and Jane Weaver merges these to great effect adding a touch of folktronica on top. She's a sturdy songwriter, so her subtle textures never obscure a great set of modern pop songs.
Paul Simon
3/5
The politics behind this album have not aged well. Call Me Al was ubiquitous and I never need to hear it again. But there's sturdy songwriting as you would expect. A simple three stars.
Neil Young
5/5
Evergreen Neil album, the soundtrack to the exact moment when the hippy revolution fizzled out and the freaks all got proper jobs and mortgages - though still smoked dope. If this was the soundtrack to a film it would be the key party scene in The Ice Storm.
Sarah Vaughan
2/5
I can say after many hours listening to Fitzgerald and Vaughan that I'm no great fan of vocal jazz. And so it goes here. Nothing wrong with anything, except it does very little for me. How High The Moon is a bit of a reach, here's me forgetting all the words and saying the first thing that comes into my head.
Christine and the Queens
3/5
I nearly had a conniption on Spotify, until I realised the listing was the entire album twice, first in English then French. The English half is a hugely enjoyable slice of wonky pop anchored by Christine/Chris's great voice and magnetic presence.
The Cardigans
2/5
Gosh this is pretty just OK but it is really one of the 1001 best albums ever made? Slightly twee, very clean and in Lovefool an annoying earworm. Thanks Baz Luhrmann. Cue cliches about Swedes and their sturdy constructions from Volvo cars and Ikea sofas, ok maybe not Ikea sofas, to this. Can you tell I can't think of that much to say about this album.
1/5
I really hope this doesn't appear on my Spotify wrapped for 2023. 'The most embarrassing album you listened to was...' the best bits of this are all samples, and the whole thing is so utterly cringeworthy: from the band name, to the album name to the artwork to the utterly unimaginative swearing.
Cocteau Twins
4/5
What a great second act the Cocteaus last three albums were: more concise songs, clearer production and even at times audible words. This is the strongest of the three and is a pretty perfect statement of the Cocteaus world - the rest is up to you.
Nirvana
5/5
Nothing to add here. Except possibly that Nirvana Unplugged is - shush - a more enjoyable album to listen to. About as easy to say something original about this album now as about Sgt Pepper.
Abdullah Ibrahim
2/5
One stellar track, Mannenberg Revisited, and a couple of other goodies, but the spectre of new age noodlings I am afraid frequently derails this. The mid-eighties was not a great time for jazz, and this kind of shows why.
Willie Nelson
2/5
My well this is so straight up it's kind of hard to believe the whole thing is not some conceptual joke. But no, Willie Nelson, the great outlaw country rocker, delivers a standard standards set. He brings absolutely nothing to these songs other than sincerity and a certain careworn-ness. The very very definition of inessential.
The Replacements
4/5
Unpolished, ragged at times but always very listenable and with a huge heart. Halfway between husker du and REM which is a pretty good place to be.
The Doors
5/5
One of the few albums I can rate without needing to play. All these tracks are etched deep in my brain and need nothing saying. All this without a bassist! A true marvel. Less than four years separates Please Please Me from this, but it seems like four light-years.
Siouxsie And The Banshees
5/5
Punk, post-punk, goth - pretty much everything and the best debut to come out of the first punk wave. It's five stars even without Hong Kong Garden and Staircase mystery - both singles but not on the original album. John McKay on this album is as good a guitarist as John McGeogh - very different, and a lot harsher, but as good.
Cee Lo Green
2/5
Can exclusively reveal who ran off with all the talent from Gnarls Barkley...............its.....................Danger Mouse. This is a pretty mediocre album only livened up by the two Pharell tracks, and its sixteen tracks -plus intro and outro long. Why it's on here I am really not sure.
Killing Joke
5/5
slow down the punk guitars, tribal drums, add some reggae bass and a general sense of doom. One of the founding texts of goth. The first Killing Joke album is absolutely essential and in Requiem, Wardance and Change (the latter on the expanded reissue) a phenomenal piece. They'd sell way more records in the mid-eighties, but this and its successor are the Killing Jokes.
Adele
2/5
Back once again with the beige mistress. Now that she has more money than she knows what to do with, and has unveiled yet another slab of Live Laugh Love in aural form as 30, how about not making 35 yet another MOR product and use that voice for something artistically interesting. For example:
Get Rick Rubin in as producer.
Get Massive Attack in as writers/producers - they conjured a career-best out of Liz Frazer for Teardrop following great outings with Tracey Thorn and Shara Nelson, so know a thing or two about great female voices.
Get Sigur Ros in - no need for a lyric sheet at all.
Steve Albini at the controls - maybe a stretch, but what have you got to lose? He'd make a 12-track album in two days, and you don't need to share the royalties.
Even - gawd help me - Dave Grohl would be something better.
The album? It's not one star. That would indicate something to object to. It's Stella Artois, it's Pizza Express it's a Ford Focus.
Alice Cooper
4/5
If you're never listened to this, then try and put all the Alice baggage to one side, and listen to it is a seventies rock album (ok this is not entirely possible with I love The Dead). But Billion Dollar Babies, Hello Hurray, Elected and so on are solid-gold rock classics. I did not know Donovan featured on the title track. The musicianship on this album is exceptional - check out the stuttering rhythms of Generation Landslide for example.
Def Leppard
2/5
This is nothing like as bad as Hysteria. Helped by the fact that it does not have four singles that I have an extreme allergic reaction to. But it's still overproduced and in Joe Elliot an extremely annoying (to me) vocalist. So, it gains a star by being one step back. By that calculus if their debut makes it onto the list it's be four stars.
Fishbone
2/5
I am sorry. You put everything out on the table and people don't know what to choose. Much though the idea of Fishbone is a great one, the reality of Fishbone is a billion things going in different directions.
The Afghan Whigs
3/5
Nothing wrong with this. 3.5 starts, but the Whigs - eternally half-way up the main stage bill at Reading in the early 90s - are not really a Champions League level act are they?
2Pac
2/5
Mediocre I'm afraid. Not interested in the 'was he a great or awful man' debate, but his rapping is uninspired and the samples and beats repetitive and one-paced. Also like many 90s albums waay too long. Not even any skits.
John Lennon
3/5
It's not a bad listen, but musically it's not that adventurous. He's always an engaging vocalist, and there are three standout songs in Mother, Working Class Hero and God. Just can never get that excited about any ex-Beatle solo stuff and this is no exception. Apart from the Frog Chorus of course.
Sonic Youth
4/5
Right in the middle of their Imperial Period, and repaying the big bucks Geffen threw at them. The first side is them reaching for the rock mainstream brilliantly, the second a little more in the 80s SY noisenik vein. In Song for Karen Carpenter one of their very very best.
Madonna
3/5
Hmm. On a re-listen this feels like a bit of a curate's egg, betrayed by three different producers. Three stellar tracks in Music, What It Feels Like and closer Gone. But bits of it feel like out-takes from Ray of Light, bits of it feel like a not quite fully achieved French filter house album, and bits of it are a bit duff. Then of course one of the worst covers of all time. So can't give it more than three stars.
Ali Farka Touré
3/5
a very pleasant listen, but not above the level of background music. sorry.
Aretha Franklin
5/5
I bought Aretha's 'Original Classics' series of five albums, in which this features, after hearing another of her albums earlier on in this list. I've only bought three other albums from this list as being without them in physical form is unthinkable having heard them. Surely the greatest female singer of the last fifty years.
Nirvana
4/5
I'm not a great fan of the Unplugged series, and what started off as a distinctive idea gave birth to the horrors of Jo Whiley's Live Lounge. But this is the exception that proves the rule - stripping back the noise is completely revelatory. Top covers, great playing and just a sense of the most important band in the world at the time.
3/5
Hmm. I'm a fan of their first album, but I think their bit of punk bit of rockabilly bit of new wave is already sounding a bit thin. Enjoyable enough, but not pulling up any trees.
Big Black
4/5
Listened to this on my vinyl copy, can't have listened for twenty years and it's insanely listenable. Now hoping Songs about XXing turns up on this list as well to get that out too. No Spotify.
The Young Gods
2/5
Euro punk cabaret. Not as impossible as Einstrurzende Neubauten to listen to but hardly easy. Probably awesome live.
fIREHOSE
3/5
American alternative music of the eighties is a hinterland I'm still exploring. This is virtually unclassifiable, but there are some elements of the Feelies, Violent Femmes and hardcore bands. But all melded together in short, sharp songs that prioritise rhythm and impact above melody.
Goldfrapp
4/5
Picking up the indecipherable singing style and gauzy soundscapes of the Cocteaus, on their first album they added trip-hop vibes for something that still sounds odd and fresh thirty years later. They'd forego this for a more straightforward electropop sound, then decide they didn't want that either. One of the more interesting bands of the last thirty years.
The Charlatans
3/5
Four monster tracks, two instrumentals (surely a rule of rock that you can only have one per album if you're not an instrumentals band) and some business as usual Charlieboys album. Solid but not their very best. 3.5 rather than 3, but not 4.
Bill Callahan
2/5
Although not an unpleasant listen, there's not really enough going on here to leave a mark, other than his Lou Reedesque voice. The songs are not as strong as Lou Reed's.
Sonic Youth
4/5
Second installment of Geffen's advance, more grandfathers-of-grunge sharp rock tunes. Spread over a double it doesn't have quite the focus of Goo, but several high points (100%, Sugar Kane, drunken Butterfuly) and an overall sense of a band both tight and loose at the same time. That old trick.
Beach House
3/5
Music that floats and drifts, catching you in its wispy melodies and airy textures. Yes from minute to minute it recedes into the background sometimes, but that's not a bad thing always. Not a bad thing here.
Scott Walker
2/5
Not my cup of tea, though he has a fine voice. You can hear the cracks starting to appear in the Pop Phenomenon - particularly in Plastic Palace People which is a deeply wierd track. Jackie an absolute tune.
Linkin Park
2/5
This now appears a bit better as its meat and potatoes combo of rap and metal was the album before the legendarily awful Kid Rock album. So no it's nowhere as bad as that, but it is very monotone. At a place I worked the boss had on her desk a rap album she'd confiscated from her son. This is the kind of music that twelve-year olds put on loudly to annoy their mums.
Kid Rock
1/5
Jesus wept. The bastard love child of The Beastie Boys and Lynryrd Skynyrd. Actually not as good as that sounds, as its so repetitive. Also appears he has not listened to a single rap album since the first Beastie Boys album.
Neil Young & Crazy Horse
5/5
Pretty much the Neil and Crazy Horse template for the next 50 years, particularly in Cinammon Girl, Down By The River and Cowgirl in the Sand. So yes five stars.
Tears For Fears
2/5
I try I bloody try but in between the pretty acceptable first and third albums this is an album I disliked from the start and with every listen nothing changes. Why rave had to happen.
Jefferson Airplane
5/5
This is in my top five of discoveries on this list, along with Nightclubbing by Iggy Pop and Otis Blue. The first side is one of the best sides ever committed to vinyl, in a genre (sixties psychedelic pop) that is not one of my home zones. Fantastic.
Ladysmith Black Mambazo
3/5
this is a breeze to listen to. Ambient singing if such a think were possible (possibly yes - Cocteau Twins).
The Beach Boys
3/5
This is a bit all over the shop, but an enjoyable listen, apart from the rewrite of Cell Block No 9 as Student Demonstration. Royalties owed there surely. But no particular desire to hear it again.
Booker T. & The MG's
3/5
Yes 5/5 for Green Onions itself, and the rest of the album is a groovy collection of organ-driven mainly covers. Very pleasant, though a little monotonous as a whole album and no 'Soul Limbo' - the intro to Test Match Special for UK listeners and up there with Match of the Day as the greatest UK sports show intro music.
Love
2/5
Going to disagree with the consensus on this album and go that yes Alone Again Or is a tune, but it's pretty standard late sixties a bit psychedelic a bit folky pop/rock.
Peter Gabriel
3/5
A lot has been made about the production, and on Sledgehammer and Big Time it does rather go for it. But under all the gated drums and synths there's a clutch of very solid songs. At least half of this album is so over-exposed though it's difficult to actually rate it properly.
Radiohead
5/5
Every time I play this album it gets better. Just a staggering range of textures and approaches to what a song or track is. In Morning Bell they event deliver a 'proper Radiohead song' with verses and choruses and everything to stand with their best.
The Crusaders
2/5
Street Life is an undeniable tune, but elsewhere it is jazz fusiony grooving and noodling. All very tasteful and immaculately played in a 'quiet storm' stylee but not really anything to shake my tree.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
3/5
Ok this has aged pretty well as that NY millenial movement - better than The Strokes that's for sure. A slight monotony does set in, but its short and sharp and does not outstay its welcome.
Jimi Hendrix
4/5
| am guessing you either think this is his masterpiece or four sides of self-indulgent wibble. What we can all agree with surely is that remove Voodoo Chile (15 mins) and 1983 a Merman (13 mins and you have an absolute kick-ass 46 minute album that would just about fit on a single album pressing. But we'll never know. So 4 - and 5 for the Electric Singleladyland
Guided By Voices
3/5
28 tracks in 41 minutes. Excellent. Each one an amuse bouche of early ninties indie, from some that sound like Oasis to some sounding more like Dinosaur Jr. or Nirvana. I like this a lot, though not sure how good it actually is.
The White Stripes
4/5
Pretty much peak Stripes, listening again reminded me how much they wrought out of so little. But how much was Meg? That we will never know.
Tracy Chapman
3/5
Fast Car, Talking About a Revolution and (tho I don't like) Baby Can I Hold You are all serious tunes. Backed up by a pretty strong set of album cuts. The production is uber eighties, reminiscent of Paul Simon/Peter Gabriel at the time. It's a definitive three, but no more.
The Mothers Of Invention
3/5
Crazy but accessible, and one of the first double albums ever released. Not a zappahead so can't give this more than three. One of my partners favourite albums.
Calexico
3/5
Very pleasant, and some deep songwriting skills as well as the TexMex vibes, some bits recalling DJ Shadow as well as Los Lobos.
Travis
2/5
Writing about bad music is so much more fun than writing about good - I guess that's what makes you a journalist. Me, I will just pass on that for our non-UK friends this album is one of a select few that cluster in the shelves of the charity shops of our fair country. Robbie Williams solo albums, Coldplay early stuff, b-grade britpop like Cast, rank boybands like Blue...The Man Who...is one of this select group. Because it's the album that your girlfriend bought you for your birthday that you chazza'd (technical term) as soon as you split up.
Throwing Muses
3/5
I love Kristen Hersh and Tanya Donnelly's solo work, and Belly, but have never quite vibed with where it all started. Perhaps just a bit too much going on at once, so this is a good listen but hasn't quite pushed the switch.
The Streets
4/5
As a Brummie of twenty-five years standing got to love Mike Skinner, even if he was responsible for one of the worst-sounding gigs I ever attended at the old NIA. This is The Streets most coherent statement, a rap odyssey in which Mike loses a grand, goes out, loses the girl, finds another girl, finds the grand. A lot of this is insanely catchy, and despite its well-chosen ultra cheap beats can't hide the fact that he's got some real craft as a songwriter. Listen to it in the album order pls, and marvel how everything comes together in the epic last track that could even be termed prog hig-hop/grime. It's definitely a concept album.
Eagles
5/5
Not an album I need to play again to rate. Has there been a less likeable band than The Eagles. Much of their music has been so overplayed that it's out there in the ether without anyone needing to choose. I would point out The Last Resort as my personal highlight of what is a pretty perfect album, the definitive statement of LA country rock and one that should be as celebrated as Rumours. Why isn't it? See maybe they're just not that likeable as people...
Public Image Ltd.
4/5
Not an easy listen by any means, but treat it as one long soundscape inhabited by Wobble's dub bass, Levene's sparse guitar and Lyndon's vocals and it accumulates over time. Normally I'd split a double album for two listens, this one is best done right through.
Ice Cube
3/5
Ice Cube's early solo career, repetitive lyrics about homies, gats, AKs, bitches, punk ass niggas, and cars notwithstanding - it is gangsta rap after all - is pretty damn listenable. And so is this.
Joni Mitchell
5/5
What a run of albums led to this. One of her most enigmatic, but seductive albums. Everything comes together on the final track which one of my very favourite of hers.
Echo And The Bunnymen
5/5
John Webster was one of the best there was. He was the author of two major tragedies. The White Devil and the Duchess of Malfi-O. You've either already bailed or you're on board. The lyrics are abstract to the point of absurdity, but the Bunnymen are perhaps one of the ultimate atmosphere bands. And this one is perhaps their densest, least user-friendly vibe. Singles The Cutter and The Back of Love are ridiculously catchy, but its perhaps their gloomiest album. Every time I listen to it it gets better and better, whereas Ocean Rain sounds a bit thinner, a bit more calculated. I will go to my grave convinced that Bono stole the world-conquering crown that was the Bunnymen's by right.
Everything But The Girl
3/5
If Stella Artois is the reference point for all lager - it can be weaker or stronger, better or worse - this album is the reference point for every dance/d and b inflected coffee table album of the nineties. Portishead miles better, a Leffe perhaps. Morcheeba miles worst - Carling. Needless to say, it deserves 2.5 stars. But I will reluctantly round up.
Stevie Wonder
4/5
A great album, but unless you're a paid up Wonderfan it's not five stars. Make no mistake, Livin for the City, Higher Ground, Don't You Worry, Mr Know It All are all five - but that's not the whole album. No fan of Stevie syrup and Golden Lady is that, All In Love is Fair similarly.
Hot Chip
3/5
Solid. One of the few times I've seen a support band blow the headliners offstage, when they supported Goldfrapp. Flutes is an absolute tuuune and other very solid tracks are Motion Sickness and Where We Are. I don't fundamentally think they are an albums band, but this is a good listen. 3.5.
Tori Amos
4/5
One of my favourite albums from the early nineties, and has weathered incredibly well. Not sure she ever got the balance between restraint and expression quite as right as she did here.
Kings of Leon
1/5
I don't mind the Leons instrumental schtick - kind of Strokes meets Lynyrd Skynyrd - but that voice. He is doing something that makes it like scraping nails on a blackboard to listen to. If there later stuff is tending to Coldplay vibes then let's hope the vocals go with that, as beige would be distinct improvement on this.
Saint Etienne
4/5
The 'radio selector' album is bit of a risk - if it comes off it sounds varied and rich, if not an incoherent mess. On the whole this is the former, from French sports announcements to movie dialogue and fake TV themes, as well as a fistful of great tracks. Only Love Can Break Your Heart and Nothing Can Stop Us are ageless and it's a quintessentially early nineties time capsule.
Dexys Midnight Runners
2/5
A sense of a band running on fumes here. Overlong tracks, several spoken word ruminations, arrangements that seem like more tortured versions of what seemed natural in the first two albums...I'm not buying the 'overlooked classic', but the well running dry. Having said that, Listen To This is a lovely callback to the northern soul stomping of their debut. Not enough for three stars though.
Motörhead
5/5
One of the very best live albums, as Motorhead flatten their own songs from the studio versions into noisescapes even more reliant on blast beats and pure speed.
Al Green
4/5
Super-sophisticated seventies soul. Title track is 20 out of 5, rest of the album a lovely listen.
Fela Kuti
3/5
Very listenable, apart from possibly the final track which shows that there is such a thing as too much drumming. But the ensemble is pretty amazing and Fela provides great frontman vibes. 3.49999.
Pearl Jam
4/5
Not so much the Stones to Nirvana's Beatles, as the Clash to Nirvana's Pistols perhaps. Listening to this album it becomes apparent that Nirvana's sound was a complete one-off, built from Cobain's singular songwriting and the trio's chemistry. So it was that on this a template was created that would power so much rock through the nineties. This also falls under the rare category of albums I love while also not being that tempted to explore the rest of the canon.
The Youngbloods
2/5
Another of a seemingly endless series in pleasant but inessential mid/late sixties r and b/pop/country hybrids.
Gorillaz
2/5
Some debuts are the best thing the band ever do, some are - appropriately enough for a cartoon band - a sketch of what they will go on to grow into. This is a latter, with Demon Days as a 1000% leap forwards. Is it just my imagination or was the Clint Eastwood single version way beefier than this, or has time flattened my memory?
Sinead O'Connor
2/5
Ok this is not as fearsome as much of her work, still at this point making major label music. Not sure I would listen again, but got to the end. is it three stars? Not quite. 2.5.
MC Solaar
3/5
great flow in a Gangstarr/Quest/Jungle Bros early nineties style. Very early listen to, though of course not sure what he's on about.
David Crosby
1/5
God this doesn't all sound like everyone was coked out of their brains making this. Half the tracks have no lyrics. It's only 1970 and yet punk already had to happen.
George Michael
1/5
I have listened and this has not altered my prejudices.
The Who
3/5
The time has come to admit that The Who's purple patch lasted in album terms from Tommy (generously) through to Quadrophenia - ie 4 albums over 4 years if you include Live At Leeds. Outside that it's patchy with great singles (My Generation, A Quick One, this one, Who Are You, Who By Numbers) and completely inessential and mediocre stuff - everything after Who Are You. This then is patchy with great singles. 3 stars.
Beck
3/5
Solid Beck album, revisiting to some extent the pick n mix magic of Odelay with another album that shows what a good songwriter he is, as well as sonic artist.
Blood, Sweat & Tears
2/5
though a bit early to be classically 'prog' this is proto-prog - very talented musicians demonstrating how talented they are at length. I think I like prog for prog's sake - so Rush, Yes, even early Genesis - rather than the 'progging up' other genres like classical, blues or jazz - both of which are on offer here to lengthy and tedious effect. Spinning Wheel is an absolute tune though so drags the whole thing up to a two.
Meat Loaf
1/5
Oh lawdy I am with Clive Davis who said that Steinman didn't know how to write rock music, this is more like the most ridiculous musical ever made - which is how it started. He could craft an ear-worm, but surely the only missing thing from this absurdly OTT outing is the Liza Minelli version of this album. Should add that all the singles - title track and 2 out of 3 - were inescapable on the wonderful Radio 1 of the early eighties.
The Kinks
4/5
I agree with the overall feeling that this may be the best Kinks album, and contains without doubt their best song, and one of the best ever written. 4.5 stars really.
White Denim
3/5
Yes lot's going on, almost too much. The shredding at the end of At The Farm is a wonderful thing, and it's a right old southern stew. 3.5 but it's tough at the top so rounding down guys.
CHIC
5/5
Not much to say here other than this is three of the finest musicians in the world at the top of their game. Their sound is surely one of the most influential ever.
The Icarus Line
3/5
This appears to have a lot of hate, but you know it's a fine noisy late 90s/early 00's rock. Certainly prefer this to nu metal. Very listenable to - but it is too damn long hence only three stars.
David Bowie
5/5
Such a flawless album it needs more than five stars. Again, an album grooved on my brain and absolutely no need to play it again.
Joe Ely
2/5
The nice thing about this is the sweet spot between rock and roll (Fingernails) and country (Honky Tonk Masquerade). The other thing is that it's not that distinctive. I can see why he went on tour with The Clash, and enjoyed listening, but no real desire to add to playlist. Also very short and sharp. Sidebar: some of these tracks have 3,000 spotify streams. Even notorious 1001-ers like Kollaps and Duck Stab/Buster and Glen have streams in the many 10,000's - making him I guess one of the most obscure artists on this list.
Foo Fighters
4/5
I like the early Foos when they were more of a post-Nirvana sideshoot and less of a Classic Rock Band. This is early Foos. Maybe it's just the first two albums I really really like.
Scissor Sisters
3/5
Revisiting an album I last heard when it came out, and when the songs were everywhere, I expected to dislike this intensely. But you know what, it's pretty likeable and has aged much better than I thought it would. A pleasant surprise, and shows that they were more than a gimmick cover and cool videos band.
David Bowie
4/5
Time was this was my favourite Bowie album. But over time I can see it was precursor to Station to Station, which is my favourite and possibly the greatest album of all time. Two monumental songs, the title track and Fame, but elsewhere a bit shallow at times.
Marianne Faithfull
3/5
Only occasionally does that cracked, rich voice coalesce into a full album. Here the title track and Ballad of Lucy Jordan do a lot of heavy lifting, elsewhere it feels a bit like a luxury Island Records solo album of the eighties, tho it was 1979.
Mudhoney
3/5
I'm not averse to this at all, some songwriting beneath the slackerdom and noise.
The Jesus And Mary Chain
5/5
A quite brilliant debut, up there with the best debuts of all time. Just Like Honey showed that beneath the noise there was a sturdy songwriting chassis that would enable them to evolve (a bit!).
Black Flag
3/5
The passage of time renders this pretty listenable, hardly the society wrecking terror it was viewed as at the time. Still short, sharp and occasionally hilarious.
The Who
4/5
The sound of a band evolving at the speed of light. There's plenty of Motown, Bo Diddly and the blues alongside the powerpop. Do you rate the Deluxe Edition which includes Anwhere, Anyhow and I Can't Explain or not. So on the strictly original track listing which only contains ten-star My Generation it's a four-starrer. My Generation though - their entire sonic career from crazy drum fills, bass as lead, feedback, solos and power chords. Just the moog of Won't Get Fooled Again missing. That and all the bad stuff. Roger Daltrey is a surprisingly generic vocalist (MG excepting) - controversial opinion.
Robbie Williams
2/5
After The Man Who the second chazza shop classic on this list. Angels would be pretty near the top of 1001 Songs You Never Need to Hear Again. Apart from that and other inescapable single Let Me Entertain You it's still a breeezy if featherlight pop listen. And the most childish F U teachers every committed to tape at the end. 2.5 but rounded down for that.
The Good, The Bad & The Queen
3/5
Coming after Parklife in my list, one of the three Blur-less Damon manifestations (solo, Gorillaz) and perhaps the weakest of the three. Pleasant enough but a distinct lack of killer tunes.
Blur
4/5
The creative high point of Britpop, and also of one of the most enduring British bands of the last thirty years. Come for Phil Daniels comedy stylings, stay for Albarn's knack for finding the melancholy and downbeat (This Is a low) as well as the party anthems (Girls and Boys).
Giant Sand
2/5
Mmm. Kind of like Grandaddy but without the depth of tunes. Straight out of early noughties college rock. Not unpleasant, but really a 2.5. Rounded down for length.
Ananda Shankar
3/5
Absolutely not something I would reach for, but this fusion of sitar and moog works pretty well, though it can never completely escape the whiff of cheese.
Queen
2/5
The earworms are the singles, the non-singles are not earworms. I don't like the earworms, though can concede their immaculate craft. Elsewhere it's all a bit hairy blokes in drag.
The Dave Brubeck Quartet
4/5
Ah one of the twenty or so jazz albums that make this list - a typical 'jazz for non-jazzers' along with Kind of Blue, Blue Train, Ah Um etc. etc. It's an excellent album, his blocky piano playing really shines through.
Rod Stewart
3/5
The Rod so far on this list has been awful. This is...probably his best. Still not for me at all, but the song selection and playing is nothing but copper-bottomed and can see how this made him a huge star.
Peter Tosh
4/5
Too much liberation and ganja for international superstardom, but his songs were at their best Marley's equal
N.W.A.
5/5
Fittingly I bought this album on a bootleg cassette in the States. Now have it on CD. As electric as ever, 35 years on.
Elton John
4/5
Surely no-one ever needs to hear the big singles from this ever again, doubly so for 'Candle' - there's a nice Zydeco-flavoured cover from kate Bush I'd recommend. Elsewhere this is still a pretty pretty good 70s singer-songwriter album and a solid four stars. Even though I really don't like EJ all that much.
Kanye West
4/5
Many here want to use their review to signal Kanye is a bad man. This would be a considerably shorter list if every artist who had said offensive things or even committed crimes (thankfully Gary Glitter or the Lost Prophets albums are unrepresented) are absent. Without endorsing his awful views in any way, this is a stone-cold classic, the first half of which is pretty flawless. One too many college digs on the second half for a five, but it's a clear 4.
Spiritualized
3/5
Beautiful, drifting, stately, otherworldy etc. Jason would get the tunes sorted in subsequent albums to add to the vibes on show here. Three stars.
Elvis Presley
3/5
You know what this is not a bad listen, quite fun. In The Ghetto and Suspicious Minds are tunes. The band are tight and the up-tempo numbers at the start are perhaps an indicator of a slightly more interesting road than he ended up taking. The second of his albums after his debut that I could contemplate listening to all the way through.
The KLF
4/5
Head to Youtube for the original mix of the album and the three monster singles. KLF were only ever about hits, Top of the Pops, 12" remixes, the Brits and all that really important stuff. Albums less so, as why would you throw away good stuff that won't get played on MTV/Radio One. 3 stars for the backups, 5 stars for the singles. 4 it is.
Jungle Brothers
2/5
Kind of like Tribe Called Quest without the magic, and like many rap albums of the time waaay too long. When I am world dictator it will be 12 tracks, 48 mins or the gulags for you. So really 2.5 but rounded down for length.
Pink Floyd
3/5
Nothing new to say about this album. Hideously unfashionable at the time, hideously unfashionable ever since. Some everygreen songs, but the concept and the linking bits are very skippable.
Sparks
3/5
Everyone knows 'This town' but this is an excellent album from start to finish. Along with the wonky pop there's a distinct krautrock chug. 3.5 stars really.
Lenny Kravitz
1/5
Chat GPT's take on how to mix Beatlesesque song structures, some Hendrix guitar stylings (toned down so nothing too scary), Prince vocals and a DOA early nineties production style. Lyrics auto-generated from keywords 'love' 'baby' 'freedom' and 'peace'. But we're still a world away from AI creating anything you could call original.
The Style Council
2/5
My oh my. We've only had Sound Affects from The Jam before this came up. It'll be a crime if this makes the list and the other two albums from The Jam's golden trio, All Mod Cons and Setting Sons, doesn't make the list. As someone who was a massive Jam fan the Style Council were always underwhelming - I can remember hearing Into Tomorrow (his first solo single) and going 'finally' - like instead of a difficult second album he went for a difficult second musical career. Funk, soul, jazz, mod all jostle uncomfortably on a confused record that goes off in a million directions without sounding convinced by any. In a non-instrumentals album you're allowed one, any more (like here) ends up sounding like half-finished tracks. The next album, Our Favourite Shop, is generally seen as a stronger and more coherent work. Maybe that's on here too.
Underworld
5/5
The naming of killer boy....Reverend Al Green...Karl Hyde's cut-up lyrics are an under-rated part of Underworld's armoury, along with his sometimes sung sometimes spoken delivery. This is an amazing album, showing how swiftly dance music was changing the musical landscape in the mid-nineties. Not since progrock had albums seen lengths like this: the first two tracks clock in at over 30 minutes, and the first has distinctly-named sub-sections, another prog move. All the tracks shift and alter evolve slowly - a bassline here, a hi-hat there, as melodies and Hyde's vocals emerge and subside from the central groove that anchors each (and made them such a mainstay of the 'DJ compilation mix' of the time). Apart from prog, an even better comparison is the minimalism of Steve Reich - imagine Music for 16 Musicians with a drum machine and you're halfway here.
Ramblin' Jack Elliott
3/5
You know this was not a difficult listen, lots of talking blues and guitar picking in an early Bob Dylan style. Jack is a more straightforward proposition, perhaps why he ended up nearer LLewelyn Davis than global megastar.
Marilyn Manson
1/5
Jesus christ (hah!) this was a slog. Each song sounds exactly the same, and there are lot of songs. If the devil does have all the best tunes then Mr Manson must have sold all his to someone else.
CHIC
5/5
Easy five stars here. Anyone who can should watch the 3-part BBC series Disco, Sound of Revolution which has some truly amazing interviews and footage, with Nicky Siano as a breakout star. The instrumental prowess on this album is mind-blowing.
Madness
4/5
Their brilliant career. Unlike their two-tone peers they could both sustain a lengthy career (Specials and Selecter, The Beat all imploding after 2/3 albums), and like them hit the ground running from the off. All of the first four Madness albums are excellent, a proper imperial period straight off the bat. This is the fourth and last (IMHO) and introduces a more reflective tone into their music, more lyrical ambition - it's really a love letter to the London they grew up in (Our House, Primrose Hill), and just a greater maturity from a band never far from silliness. Both a long way from The Prince and not. Perhaps the most London of bands since The Kinks. All of these things are compliments.
Ravi Shankar
3/5
Impossible to rate really as a Western casual listener but the spoken word intros are great and as a soundscape its great working music.
The Dictators
2/5
In the category of 'Interesting yes, influential yes, good not really' . An extra half a point docked for a pretty lame cover version. Along with The Tubes their 'progenitors of punk' credentials are slightly oversold to these UK ears.
Motörhead
4/5
The Velvet Underground of heavy metal. Hard to think of much happening in the thrash/speed metal scenes without Lemmy's discovery that turning the speed up to 11, keeping the songs to 3 minutes and the solos to 20s was a winning formula. Two absolute classics in the title track and We are The road Crew, but like many rock bands of the time their best album is live (No Sleep, also on this list I think).
Love
2/5
I'm sorry I know Love are much beloved but have now heard two albums from this list and don't get what raises them above a billion other beat bands who went a bit psychedelic.
Röyksopp
3/5
Such a clever and well-crafted album. It's a bit trip-hop, especially Portishead, at times, it's a bit coffee table dance, but there are some lovely melodies here that really nail this down as a pop album. Gotta look to the remixes for anything to actually dance to.
Spacemen 3
4/5
What a great album this is, the Velvets mixed with late sixties psychedelia, and a touch of Terry Riley drone music. Mixed in with the freak-outs and drones there'sa touch of gospel in which salvation or getting high are pretty much the same.
Derek & The Dominos
2/5
One hour and fifteen from the old r****t Eric, a double helping of smug self-satisfied blues rock. There is a little bit of energy that saves it from one star, but the coda to Layla goes on and on and is a classic example of more is less. And it doesn't have Wonderful Tonight on, so there's that.
R.E.M.
5/5
This is just a perfect album, not a single weak track. Not much to say about it other than it being one of the most stupendous debuts of all time, and its reputation only growing. If I had one caveat - only one - it's that the production is a little basic. The drum sound on tracks like Radio Free Europe is a little tinny. But really, it's nitpicking. Five stars.
The Temptations
4/5
Papa is 10 mins of utter brilliance, and elsewhere there's some sold seventies pop-funk backing it up. The sun was slightly setting on the all-covers soul ensemble, and their versions of Do Your Thing and The First Time Ever are a bit bloodless. Overall 3.5, feeling generous, rounded up.
Little Richard
4/5
This holds up really well because there are no ballads, just faster R and B and slower R and B. Simple. Got to give it a 4.
Dinosaur Jr.
4/5
Wiinning combo of angry fuzz guitars and lovely pop melodies. There's an agreeable ragged edge to Dinosaur Jr., a real songwriteryness which is why I guess they've endured so long.
Meat Puppets
3/5
Yeah this is a good listen, a bunch of rattling melodic short and sharp songs.
Big Star
3/5
Over the three Big Star albums there is one absolutely knockout to be assembled. This is a third of a great album, and This Mortal Coil knew what they were doing when they picked out Kangaroo and Holocaust.
Roxy Music
5/5
Stunning first side, fine second and a double punch of Really Good Time and Prairie Rose to finish. Slightly more guitar-based with the departure of Eno, and after a shift taking place from the wild art experimentalism of the Eno era to their mid-era sophisticated Euro pop this is Roxy at the top of their game.
David Bowie
4/5
I'm of course liking this a lot, as it pretends that his entire iffy career from Let's Dance to reality never happened. Certainly only Heathen of his post-LD works stands up to this, both a calculated return to the golden years of heroes and low, and a survey of virtually his entire career. Certainly some Ziggy-era glam and Hunky Dory big balladeering feature. if there's a melancholy, valedictory tone to much of the lyricism, well three years later we knew why.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
4/5
A textbook example of noisy guitar bands of the noughties going 'synthpop'. Some of these tracks have big fat analogue synths Gary Numan would recognise. But a really really strong set of songs, slightly more guitar heavy on the second side, and all built absolutely for singing along to at Reading midway through the evening.
Oasis
5/5
Tonight/I'm a Rock and Roll Star is just about the most perfect statement of Album one, side one, track one 'We're Here now' possible. Listening to an album that just about every British guitar band has had to relate to in some way over the past thirty years, it's hard to recapture how fresh and brilliant this sounded when it came out. The template for every single Oasis album ever is already in place: four killer singles (here Supersonic, Shakermaker, Live Forever, Cigarettes and Alcohol), some solid album tracks that would be singles on other albums (not least the aforesaid opener), a soaring epic (Slide Away), and a throwaway acoustic number (Married With Children). And lastly, one track that sounds so like someone else's you can't believe they haven't been sued for a writing credit (here Shakermaker = I'd Like to Teach the World To Sing). If all the singles here are scored at 10/10, the great album tracks 9 and the others 8 take one off for each subsequent album, so by the depths of 5th album Don't Believe The Truth it works out at 6, 5 and 4 which sounds about right. Bonus: their B-sides in this period were better than most people's A-sides, and are included in The Masterplan which is better than any other album they did apart from this one and (possibly) the second. Overall 5/5. Lyrics: Noel for No(b)el Prize for Literature. I'll take my car and drive real far/You're not concerned about the way we are. Genius.
The Stooges
2/5
erm a bit disappointing as up for the Igmeister usually. Sludgy.
Weather Report
2/5
Just because you are excellent at noodling, and this has a reputation of one of the greatest noodling albums of all time, and the players went onto noodle for other bands and enjoy international noodling careers, does not make it not noodling. That and any fusion saxophone risks tipping into epic sax territory. Two and a quarter, maybe two and a third. But not 2.5.
Beyoncé
2/5
it's a 2.5, at the back end of this in XO, Flawless and Superpower there's a lot of stuff to like. But to get there there's a lot of quite boring stuff, immaculately sung and produced but which does nothing for me. Other opinions are available.
Turbonegro
3/5
There are bands that just, well are - Kraftwerk, Roxy Music, peak Stones - and then there are the 'What if..' bands. Here the proposal is 'Imagine if Tom of Finland dressed a band blending Ramones/Dictators with rock guitar solos.' Well the results are a bit derivative, and it's hard to know how to take their 'Ass Cobra''Scandinavian Leather' gay/trans stylings. Some kick ass tunes, but really nothing distinctive on record. Can agree they are probably awesome live.
Iron Maiden
4/5
Have to admit I am no Maiden fan, and though I bought a couple of their early singles I very rapidly moved away from this kind of stuff. Cartoonish album covers, ridiculous clothes (striped spandex!), songs about ancient Egypt, Civil War ghosts, the usual Satan stuff. And while I will never be convinced about them as a band, this is an absolute banger. The first side is solid, but the second four songs are just brilliant.
Dusty Springfield
3/5
My son (jazzhead) has theory about why no-one can play like Clifford Brown or Miles Davis anymore. There were so many jazz musicians in the thirties and forties that you are hearing now the very best of hundreds of thousands of players. To make it to the top you had to be truly extra-ordinary. And so it is with female singers in the sixties (viz. Aretha). Though the material here is sometimes slight the phrasing, the variation, the tone...all truly exceptional. Greater things would come, and her truly great moments were of course singles. So a very solid 3.5.
The Darkness
3/5
Tons of fun. Channelling the more optimistic seventies classic rock sound, all duelling guitars, falsettos and killer choruses. Amazing they got a whole career out of pastiche Lizzy/Aerosmith/Queen etc.
Green Day
2/5
No sorry this is energy, three chords and not a lot else. Can see how incredibly influential it was, but rather monotonous over an album. Full marks for taking Fugazi, Black flag et al and making an absolute mint from it.
Robert Wyatt
3/5
Himm. A bit all over the shop. Some lovely playing, and his voice is just as amazing as ever. Reminded me of the Pauline Murray and the Invisible Girls album at times, which is a good thing. Straightforward three.
Minor Threat
3/5
Surprisingly varied, glad I listened, not sure I will again etc etc.
Stevie Wonder
2/5
Snoozie Wonder.
Duke Ellington
4/5
I guess that the jazz albums in this list are those from the '100 best albums of jazz' lists. It is a great album, and the vaunted solos on Dimuendo and Crescendo are superb. But the jazz albums here are a bit random - why not for example have Jacqueline Du Pre's recording of Elgar's Cello Concerto? Anyway, four stars.
Wild Beasts
3/5
This appears very polarising which baffles me. I would regard this as a solid slice of 00's indie, with a more distinctive vocalist than most. But the songs aren't really strong enough for more than 3.2/3/3
Count Basie & His Orchestra
4/5
1958 so can see why this is in. Tighter than a gnat's chuff. So tight you can see right through it. If all big band was all killer no filler like this then I'd like it a whole lot more.
k.d. lang
3/5
You know this is a revelation. Insert the old Buddy Rich at the hospital gag. Are you allergic to anything? yes country music. Pretty much describes my feelings, but the combination her voice, tasteful arrangements and a rock-solid song selection make this a solid three, probably 3.25 and I might even put it on the relisten pile.
The 13th Floor Elevators
4/5
What a great album this is. Mid-sixties garage rock is not my comfort zone, but I've heard this album several times before and it never disappoints. You're Gonna Miss Me and Reverberation are obvious high points, but it's strong writing and playing throughout. Probs 4.5 but have to round you down a bit.
Björk
4/5
The 'return to form' album is the holy grail of mid and late career artists, wished for far more than their ambient/reggae/classical excursion is a re-nailing of why we loved them in the first place. Rarer than hen's teeth, Bjork gets pretty close to the RTF ideal with a focus on strings and the kind of hushed electronic beats that dominated Post and Homogenic. If none of the songs are quite a Hyperballad or Joga then that's understandable. But always listenable, and within touching distance of a melody. 3.5 but feeling generous.
Pantera
1/5
Nothing much for me here, a white power version of Slayer. Sorry no.
The Fall
4/5
I have only twenty-odd albums and saw them live only 4/5 times, so a lightweight Fall-head really. This gets less spins than others possibly due to being on the original Small Wonder vinyl and safely stashed away. Their run of brilliant early singles - collected on Early fall 77-79 - has rather put this debut in the shade. A relisten reveals that it's - what do you know - already a classic fall album. Rebellious Jukebox, Two Steps Back, Industrial Estate and No Xmas for John Quays are all prime cuts, supported by such perennial Fall tropes as a dig at the music biz ('Music Scene') and a sub-1 min amouse bouche (title track). Their sound - rolling bass to anchor, clattering drums , obtusely tinny yet melodic keyboards - is here in template form. MES appears already full-formed, speech-singing and making everything rhyme by putting 'ah' at the end. Not a five as that would say it is the equal of 'This Nations...' or 'Hex Enduction'. But 4.25 definitely.
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
4/5
One of the NCATBS albums I would point as somewhere sensible to start. Full of Nick in Love vibes and with the Bad Seeds in a classic lounge band mode. Some of his loveliest tunes (Into My Arms and Are You The One particularly) and less gnarly guitar from Blixa and 8 minute old testament workouts. Not my favourite though, a solid 4.
Basement Jaxx
4/5
Perhaps the least-heralded of the bands who took rave and turned it into 'proper album music' (with the Chemicals, Underworld, Leftfield, Prodigy, Orbital) this is as light as a feather, perhaps a little overlong like several 90s dance albums, but full of lovely touches.
The White Stripes
4/5
Hard to find a Jack White album less than listenable to, and this sees them stretch their sound with more piano and instrumentation beyond the blues guitar and drums. My Doorbell is - a banger - and it's great all the way through.
Buzzcocks
5/5
When I was about 15 at school I went round to a friend's. We played bass and keyboards for a bit, then he showed me a dirt motorbike he had. As he was 14 all he could do was ride it round the garden. I had a music sheet book of Another Music In A Different Kitchen that was his, and never gave it back. Ebayed it for a healthy sum thirty years later. The album? By the band who were the first band I ever saw live. Just perfect. The sleeve, the title...everything that was exciting about music when I was 15. Still sounds amazing.
The Allman Brothers Band
3/5
You know I had it in mind to be severe with this, as when I ripped it had only a single CD's worth I could find a decade ago. But I'm at work ripping through tedious admin like bank details and budgets and some mellow endless shredding is exactly what works. So a solid three stars. Sitting down and listening to it without having something else to do would however be surely banned under the Geneva Convetnion.
Radiohead
4/5
Right album, wrong time. If this had followed OK Computer it would have been seen as a great step forwards, upping the glitchy textures and losing the last shreds of 'anthemic Head' from The Bends, Lucky, Karma Police. Following on from the double punch of Kid A/Amnesiac it can't help but feel like a step back in the catalogue. However, it's a pretty immaculate set of songs, and if it doesn't get the five it's to reflect the fact that 14 is one or two too many and there are 5-star albums elsewhere in their catalogue.
DJ Shadow
5/5
Ambient hip-hop trip-hop soul. Surely one of the best albums of the nineties. A debut so perfect he's never really got out of its Shadow.
3/5
When I was in the fourth form and starting to buy vinyl I bought a couple of albums by The Boomtown Rats (notably not listed so far and I'm up to 600 odd). Then within a couple of years I was listening to The Clash. For millenials aged 14 I guess this was who you listened to before Radiohead. Frightening to think that you wouldn't move on pretty quick. TBF, like the Rats, they can put together a tune - this one starts and end pretty well, but boy does it sag in the middle. 2.5 really but as a gateway drug to OK Computer I'll give it 3.
Jazmine Sullivan
3/5
It's really an EP once the skits are removed (serious skits rather than those on 3 feet high...) - but these half-a-dozen songs are a great listen, and they get stronger as things progress. solid three stars, in a genre that's not really in my comfort zone.
Tricky
5/5
What an album this is, one of the founding trilogy of trip-hop debuts alongside Portishead and Blue Lines. The first six tracks are as brilliant as anything on the other two, and like Blue Lines the contribution of a brilliant singer (here Martina Topley-Bird, there Shara Nelson) is perhaps underplayed. Still sounds fresh.
Beastie Boys
3/5
Young, dumb and still quite a bit of fun. You do listen to this album with a smirk all the way through.
Jah Wobble's Invaders Of The Heart
3/5
Listened to this twice, and if you can I would recommend. On first listen it's a bit unfocused and the plethora of different voices can mean it slips by and doesn't really grab you. While there are passages that are more textural and ambient, on a second listen melodies and structures reveal themselves.
System Of A Down
2/5
Pros: the songs are short. Most are based around some semblence of a tune. Cons: They all sound the same. Generic late 90s thrash I am afraid.
Moby Grape
3/5
Not all on Spotify but the 9/12 of the album I could hear was great, in that sweet spot around 66 when beat went just a bit psychedelic but was still pop.
Morrissey
4/5
Conflicted. Big conflict. I can look on at the Kanye or Clapton arguements and ultimately not got that much skin in the game. Kanye's first three albums are fine. Can leave the rest of it. But Morrissey. I loved The Smiths and saw them twice (ticket stubs framed of course). I've seen Morrissey solo once. Vauxhall and I, Viva Hate and his early singles compilations are all regularly played chez nous. And yet he's throughout his career written songs and spoken not just from a conservative standpoint. That would be Phil Collins or Tony Hadley. No, from an anti-immigration and 'England for the English' standpoint. He's endorsed far-right activists and the arguements that it's either because of his animal rights views or he's being a provocateur don't wash. Yet....the music on Viva Hate is fantastic. Like many first solo albums you suspect these songs were brewing during the end of the Smiths. Everyday Is Like Sunday, Suedehead and Late Night, Maudlin Street are fantastic tracks that could slot into say Strangeways....perfectly. Vini Reilly's guitar work on the above is very different but equally wonderful to Mr Marr's. Bengali in Platforms has a stunning looping, nagging guitar part....but it's a massively anti-immigrant rant. So, you could mark him down for his views, ignore this and mark the music. I'm a massive hypocrite and going for the latter. So, it's a four. Aargh. Will never buy any more of his music or see him live.
Fats Domino
3/5
The roll bit of rock and roll. Steady beat, that flowing piano and Fats melodious voice, never yelpy or hoarse. Easy three, and you can reconstruct this album in 5 mins from Spotify even though the album itself isn't there.
The Electric Prunes
3/5
Two monster singles, a short and sharp sixties album from that golden period when beat was blending into psychedelic. 3.5 really but rounding down.
Marvin Gaye
4/5
Many albums are a spite listen, few are a spite make. From its awful cover art to Is That Enough? and other raw lyrics it's one of music's greatest FU's. The music though, is great.
John Grant
3/5
This is a good album, and each individual song is fine. Possibly many are a four (Sigourney Weaver for example). But at over an hour it's much too long and suffers from the chocolate box effect: after twelve of such rich musical fare the delight has diminished somewhat through sheer repetition.
Kate Bush
4/5
I would place this exactly midpoint on the Bush discography: below Hounds of Love, Aerial, Never for Ever and The Dreaming. Equal with Red Shoes, and above Kick Inside, Lionheart and 50 Words for Snow. One of those disconcerting albums when side 2 is much better than side 1, and nothing else to say about what has to be a four. Hope the others are on the list. Not that I need to listen to them.
Alice In Chains
2/5
Plus point: they can touch a tune. Minus points: everything else and the length of the album. I guess CD was still a shiny new format in the nineties. Nevermind is 49 minutes. This is 57 but feels soo much longer.
Robert Wyatt
3/5
What is it? Jazz? Folk? Singer-songwriter? I have decided that I can't really get with John Martyn, but Robert Wyatt just has something that means he is always listenable. If you like you like.
The Cult
2/5
This has not aged well. Love Removal Machine still kicks something, but the rest of the album is a wasteland of oversized riffs and ridiculous rock posturing. They would keep all that in the next album and add a chunk of tune. There are some missing links that should stay forever missing and the one between The Doors and Aerosmith is clearly one. Most of its two for LRR. No album with a cover of Born to Be Wild this bad and inessential can get more.
Britney Spears
3/5
Hey Max it's great we're halfway through the album. If we keep up the standards of the first half of the album this is going to be a stone classic album. Can't wait to hear the tracks for the second side.
Er yeah Britney about that. I generally find that four or five bangers upfront plus an equal amount of B-grade filler that no-one will listen to more than once is the way to go here. It's worked for Madge for twenty years.
You the man Max.
Lupe Fiasco
4/5
What! 16 tracks! 70 minutes. Another over over long rap album to make your heart sink. More on that later, but this is one of the best rap albums this middle aged white guy has head in the last twenty years. Mr Fiasco has an engaging and open 'flow' with plenty of wit and intelligence in the bars. The samples are on the whole melodic, well-chosen and I would say make this a pretty good pop album. Now, back to that length. I see a gap in the market for 'Record Reducers' who will provide you with an authoritative 12-track, 45 minute cut of any album that bloats. This is more a case of just too much of a good thing rather than sprawl, and had it clocked in at the 45 min mark may well have been 5 stars. Legend has it CD length was fixed by Phillips to get a complete version of Beethoven's 9th on there. How they wish now they'd gone with the Ramones first album instead.
808 State
3/5
When this was made the dance revolution that would define the nineties (far bigger than grunge or Britpop, a proper cultural revolution) was a live events and singles affair. DJ Mix albums were recorded onto dodgy cassettes and sold at Camden Market. Two years before the first Prodigy album, four years before 'dance bands' like the Chemicals, Leftfield and Underworld would start to crank out proper dance albums this feels like a long EP. Absolutely of its time, and signposting the way ahead to greater glories, there's nothing here to equal the timelessness of Pacific State but its aged pretty well.
The xx
5/5
This is one of those rare albums that gets better the longer it plays. Intro and VCR are the weakest songs, and at that point you might be wondering what all the fuss was about. By the mid-point of the album why it's so special is abundantly clear. Very few artists use space in such a way, and by letting each element (beats, bass, guitar and vocals primarily) stand out in crystal clarity each reinforces the others. Up there with the classic debuts of all time.
Cowboy Junkies
3/5
Vocals five, song choices four, instruments three. Lovely to listen to.
Elvis Costello & The Attractions
3/5
A pleasant surprise. Not Imperial Elvis (first six albums, a proper golden run, not counting inessential Almost Blue) but a first-rate second tier Elvis. Tails off a bit towards the end and EC is not a six-minute man, but really this is a strong three stars.
Mariah Carey
1/5
Just because you can doesn't mean you should. Absolutely nothing to distinguish it from the tsunami of pop R and B in the nineties/early noughties than her voice. Which is a taste I have yet to acquire.
Germs
3/5
Yes listenable classic punk. Not a lot else to say, didn't outstay its welcome but not one I'm likely to revisit.
Brian Wilson
3/5
I can see all the fuss, a vintage era Beach Boys album in all but name decades afterwards. Beautiful playing and singing. But not my cup of tea. There is some trail off by the end (Vegetables) as well. 2.5 but will round up to 3.
Lynyrd Skynyrd
4/5
I had a battered copy of One More From The Road which I played to death decades before I heard their studio albums. And it is to that album that I would direct anyone to hear definitive versions of four tracks on this album, not least Freebird. The other tracks are fine back-up but as Motorhead (No Sleep..) and Lizzy (Live and Dangerous), UFO (Strangers...) the live album contains the versions that leap out of the speakers.
The Monks
3/5
The second-hardest album to find that I don't own. A 45-minute Youtube rip was the only thing I could find. This is pretty fine in a Seeds/Electric Prunes/Moby Grape/13thfloor Elevators beat going to psychedelia moment. But it also has many low points (Cuckoo) and thus can not be more than 3 stars. Great story behind the band.
Fatboy Slim
3/5
There's inescapable and then there's Right Here Right Now. Equally at home across sports footage, film montages, DIY presenters walking into homes, probably even local news about roadworks, it has become shorthand for 'this is exciting, honest'. It and Praise You and Rockefeller Skank are killer singles. The rest of the album is, well could work in a club mix.
Suzanne Vega
3/5
Somewhat odd choice, as its her second album that has the only tracks the wider public will remember (Luka and Tom's Diner). So is Solitude Standing also on this list, as 2 Suzanne Vega seems very generous. Anyway. Fey is a very underused word but absolutely describes Vega's delicate, at times whimsical vibe. Marlene on the Wall is a top track, and the album a good listen. Not so sure about the The Queen and the Soldier which is a valiant attempt to update the seventies singer-songwriter love for getting medieval on yo song (thinking Mr Stevens and his Lady D'Arbanville or Lindisfarne's Lady Eleanor. Not mentioning the full Rick Wakeman. So at times four, but overlal three.
The Band
5/5
Pretty safe five stars here.
5/5
Albums by Bowie that would need a comment because they are less than five stars and there are things to say about them: Space Odyssey, Man Who Sold The World, Pinups, Young Americans, everything from Lodger onwards. This is not one of those albums.
ABBA
4/5
There's the 'four singles/8 b-grade album fillers' pop model beloved of Madonna, Britney et al and then there's this. What to make of the fact that the title track has been streamed 4 million times while Dancing Queen has 1.5 billion. What you can make is of course that some tracks are very very good, exceptional, and others not so much - the singles. You could give it 8/5 for the singles. Maybe even 35/5. But let's be clear as an album, unlike say Pulp's Different Class, you take out the big singles and there's being generous a 3/5 album. So it has to be a 4 for me Clive.
Bee Gees
1/5
Not buying the hipster narrative that their disco heyday was a sellout, and that the late sixties stuff is some kind of Nuggets buried treasure. This is at times embarrassing and pretentious - if you're names not Eurovision or the Champions League then better not be writing a 'National Anthem for All Nations'. Hoping the Sat Night Fever soundtrack be on this list, but only 250 left to go and its not so far.
Finley Quaye
2/5
so insubstantial it needs pinning down before it floats away. Not actually offensive, but so inoffensive it kind of comes out the other side and is offensive again.
The Everly Brothers
3/5
Its short, its sweet but a little sleepy and clean-cut for modern ears. There's a lot of album cuts here to back up two to three classics. A three out of respect to the quality rather than personal taste.
David Bowie
5/5
Albums by Bowie that would need a comment because they are less than five stars and there are things to say about them: Space Odyssey, Man Who Sold The World, Pinups, Young Americans, everything from Lodger onwards. This is not one of those albums.
Machito
3/5
Frantic but fun, and absolutely the soundtrack to some sixties spy caper movie with exotic locales, femmes fatales and - ideally - Cary Grant in a great suit.
Michael Jackson
4/5
Five stars for side one, 1 star for the ulta-treacly She's Out of My Life. 3 for the rest of side 2. Round it up to 3.6. 4 for featuring the talents of Cleethorpes finest, Rod Temperton.
Emerson, Lake & Palmer
3/5
This was a surprise in that it was not toe-curlingly awful. In fact pretty listenable to, in that there were tunes and the playing was pretty good. Nothing like the stuff I actually like, and the throwaway rock and roll number at the end is quintessentially inessential. 3 stars.
The Beta Band
4/5
Without the shock of the new of the 3 EPs, still a great offbeat listen. Steve Mason is a genuine one off and needs to be cherished.
Leonard Cohen
3/5
Len was into Late Style early, so at the very end this is unsurprisingly an impossibly severe exercise. The voice is reduced to a whispery speech-song, the instruments are hushed and the actual tunes evaporate almost as they are played. Expertly done, but rather a tough listen.
LTJ Bukem
5/5
Yes it's a compilation, but it's head and shoulders above the other two big D and B albums of the mid-nineties, New Forms and Timeless. Rather than the 'biscuit tins falling down the stairs' vibe and shout-out MC's, this has ambient keyboard washes and jazzy rhythms. Incredibly influential, just listen to Demon's Theme, Music and Horizons which are three of his very best. His club mixes (the Mixmag one is great) are harder and my ears bled when I finally got to hear him dj last year. As many people have said on here, some of the best working music ever made. For me also, put this on when driving at night in the city and you have the perfect visuals and music. Even better if there's light rain.
Mike Ladd
3/5
Ok, a little bit like a DJ Shadow album with rapping over the top. Not going to return but a pretty good listen.
Queen
3/5
I am going to pretend that Bohemian Rhapsody is not on this album. On that basis: it's their most winning combination of end-of-the-pier show campery (Seaside Rendezvous is literally this) and pop-rock chops. You're My Best Friend is a fine lead single, The Prophet Song the epic prog-rock piece, and a clutch of perfectly ok album tracks. On that basis 3 stars. Can't wait for the album with Bo Rap on as that's get a COMPLETE shoe-ing.
Pink Floyd
4/5
This is a great rag-bag of folk, psychedelia and pop. Very different from the Waters Floyd, with Sid's whimsey well to the form - gnomes and bicycles etc.
Run-D.M.C.
4/5
One of the first hip-hop groups to really integrate rock guitar with beats and rhymes - setting the template definitively with Walk This Way. Four monster tracks to start, and though the second side can't help but feel a bit of a let down after that this is a straight 4 all the way.
Beatles
3/5
An enjoyable listen but really musically its not pulling up any trees nowadays.
The Velvet Underground
4/5
Not quite the lightning bolt of the first album, and definitely their least accessible album. Still sounding like no-one else and the definition of anti-commercial. Were they the first band to make a career out of refusing to be in any way careerist?
Morrissey
4/5
You can build an entire career on whining, just think of The Cure. So on a 'comeback' album it's strangely comforting to see his complaint button is practically falling off from over-use. Americans, the British state, Jesus, London, other people in general, people who say they understand him, lesbians, people he's jettisoned...just as well as while the lyrics are exhausting his/colleagues melodic gifts are in fine fettle. The first half of this album is one the strongest of his solo career. Now, he's still a massive racist and bellend and nothing here in any way contradicts this.
The Go-Betweens
4/5
A completely singular act, who along with The Triffids and the Birthday Party defined the post-punk Australian sound that made it to the UK. Two great songwriters, and on this album at least half of it is top-tier Go-Betweens which is high praise indeed. four point five.
Sonic Youth
3/5
There is probably one album too many by the Sonics on here, but this is one of their finer Blast First albums. Not so much a collection of songs as two sides of organised noise, some stretches more tuneful, others more noisy. My vinyl copy has the last track which goes on for infinity as it has a locked groove. Their secret weapon every listen reveals more is Kim Gordon's uber-cool vocals. 3.5.
The Undertones
4/5
Undertones acing the difficult second album effortlessly. A few more sixties influences, an inessential cover and the snap and bite of a top guitar band. The songwriting stands up really well, it is difficult to make songs that sound so simple, yet so complete. 4.25.
Ali Farka Touré
3/5
Great background working music, but nothing that in my case is going to lift it above a three stars. Nothing against the music or the playing which are both great, just personal taste.
50 Cent
2/5
I can see why this sold a bajillion copies. Dre in pop mode, and 50 cent is a surprisingly mellow and tuneful rapper bearing in mind his rep. However it's way too long (a punchy 40-minute 12-tracker once more the ask to raise it by a star), monotonous and half dollar does not have much to say lyrically or interesting ways of seeing it. Prosaic.
The Black Keys
4/5
Tight, tuneful and not a lot more to say. Do they have anything massively original to say in terms of music or lyrics. Not sure they have, but they wear their influences well.
The Libertines
3/5
Basically The Clash for Gen X, there's so much to dislike - their 'mythology', Pete's entire career etc etc but they do know their way around a tune and this is a good listen.
Joni Mitchell
5/5
Some albums are five stars because you get everything the artist has to offer and its wonderful. Joni Mitchell, and in particular this album, gets five stars because every time I listen to it I discover new things, new moments of melody, playing or rhythmic twists that it seems I've never noticed before. The finest Joni 'band' album.
Black Sabbath
5/5
Quantum leap forward from the debut, which is saying something. Not a weak track on one of the greatest heavy metal albums of all time. if there's a weak link it's actually Ozzy as instrumentation is so fresh and complex the vocals can't help but come over as slightly simplistic, great frontman though he is. It works, as Rush do with Geddy. Quibbles, Five stars.
Bob Dylan
5/5
Imperial period Bob (Freewheelin' - Blonde on Blonde). One of the albums to counter the argument regarding lack of tunefulness. Awesome cat action on the cover. That is all.
Anthrax
2/5
Three stars for the best musical tribute to 2000AD and ol stony face himself. Two stars for the rest of the album which does at least frequently touch something like a tune despite being thrash through and through. So 2.5 and not feeling generous.
The United States Of America
3/5
The word 'interesting' is the damning with faint praise applicable here. A bit Byrdsy a bit Bandy a bit Jefferson Airplany. Electronics are 'interesting' and three stars for an 'interesting' listen.
Deep Purple
3/5
Child in Time and Speedway King are absolute bangers, but elsewhere it is fairly standard early seventies rock. Hold on though..Machine Head is coming. 3.5 really.
AC/DC
5/5
Does it pass the 'take the tracks everyone knows out' test - absolutely. Though not the equal of the peerless four monsters (Bells, title track, Rock and Roll, Shook) the other tracks on this album are all great examples of peak DC boogie.
Elis Regina
3/5
Yes this is a surprisingly enjoyable listen in a genre I don't listen to and in a foreign language (to me). Beautiful singing and surprisingly contempory-feeling arrangements. Solid 3.5 really.
Red Hot Chili Peppers
4/5
I have always thought this album way too long, and in particular trailing off badly after Under The Bridge. You know this time round, listening in two separate sessions, the second half is pretty good too. I'm upgrading this to a four generously tho is prob a 3.75. Key to the RHCP's I've always thought is to think of them as a rock band. Funky they really aren't, the drumming is pretty square four to the floor most of the time, but that's ok.
Emmylou Harris
3/5
I can't believe it's not Lanois. Or Rubin. A mid/late career re-animation. Stately, sparse instrumention adding some gentle electronic textures to what's a stripped-back country setup. Lyrics absent of achey breaking and instead full of red dirt, brothers dying in the military, my childhood in the boonies and so on. Going light on the pedal steel and other arrangement cliches of the genre. The tempo is mostly mid, no Shania-type hoedowns, as befits a country matriarch. All told a pretty successful resurrection, if she needed resurrecting. 3.5 but there's a slight lack of variety - perhaps a cover of U2's One or a NIN classic would have sealed the deal of a 4.
M.I.A.
2/5
I want to like this, as a more abrasive Gorillaz, and there's a lot to admire. But it's hard work. Her voice is not that expressive, in a presumably deliberately monotone, and her DIY beats and samples don't often result in memorable moments. Having said all that, I may be too old to get it.
Stephen Stills
2/5
this guy is way over-represented, probably his third manifestation in this list. LTWYW is annoying, the rest of it nothing to write home about. Competent, listenable to but nothing to prompt a second listen.
The Modern Lovers
3/5
I'm a bit of a sucker for Jonathan's 'aw shucks just turned up here at the studio from the middle of nowhere with a guitar after two days on a Greyhound bus vibe' tied to a sunnier version of the VU groove. This is pretty good summary of his style, not for everyone.
Brian Eno
4/5
Almost an outlier in his catalogue - a conventional 12-track rock album with plenty of singing. Plenty of Roxy vibes, along with the Velvets and a dose of his new chums Iggy and David. It's a fun listen all the way through, and the monster guitar riff on the title track comes out of nowhere. Four stars.
Supertramp
2/5
If you combined the worst elements of twee 70s pop (think Gilbert O'Sullivan) and 70s prog then you'd get something like this. I will grudgingly admit that Goodbye Stranger (not on this album) is a tuune but this is a worst of both worlds.
Butthole Surfers
3/5
I thought I had this on vinyl but it appears I have their next album, which has their titanic cover of Hurdy Gurdy Man on. This is all over the shop - and that's why it's a great listen. Chaotic energy.
Echo And The Bunnymen
5/5
I am a fully signed up Bunnyhead (?) and this is as perfect a debut album as you could ask for. Ian Mcculloch is exactly who Jim Morrison might have been had he grown up in Liverpool in the late seventies, and one of music's best frontmen. De Freitas and Pattinson are a dream rhythm section, as 'angular' as other new wave bands but with a drive and melodic aspect others lacked. Will Sergeant created a guitar sound all of his own, enough said. Have I gone on about how unjust it is that U2 conquered the world while the Bunnymen, the finest of the post new-wave big 3 with them and Simple Minds, did not. It is unjust. The songs? Flawless apart from possibly Happy Death Men which does sound like something they knocked up in the studio in half an hour. 4.9999999. 'Heaven Up Here' is even better.
Digital Underground
2/5
Well this is weird. Doowhatulike and Humpty Dance are bangers, but elsewhere it's a bit 80s cheesy, and the Fresh Prince and Jazzy Jeff comparisons are not unwarranted. Never mind the bonus sci-fi concept suite about Jazz(y) mags of the future.
The The
5/5
Five stars straight through, and check out the 12" mix of Sweet Bird of Truth which is way superior to the album cut. Looking forward to Scraping Foetus off the Wheel appearing shortly on this list...
Richard Hawley
4/5
Who knew we needed a deep baritone with a soulful northern voice, a penchant for sweeping strings and a sense of magnificent melancholy. Never used to better effect than on the title track and the Ocean, Hawley crafts a classic out of fifties crooner styles, Northern grit and lyrics that send him out into the rain one more time in search of love.
The Beta Band
3/5
Solid three for the Dry Rain hitmakers. Off-kilter rhythms and melodies from Steve and the boys, always a good listen without ever getting you out of your chair.
Tim Buckley
1/5
This is the second TB album on this list and this is two too many. A real struggle to get to the end. Smug 'sensitive' singer-songerwriter pap. If I could give 0 I would.
Bee Gees
2/5
It's slightly better than Odessa, the last faux-history quasi concept album from the Bee Gees and is a single rather than double. But its very end of the sixties orchestral pop/rock and the songwriting is pretty thin.
Big Star
4/5
Yes the jangly guitars and harmonies are there, bridging the Byrds to REM, Teenage Fanclub etc - but there's also a glam rock touch that locates this in the early seventies. Not every track is flawless, but its heights are mighty indeed.
Koffi Olomide
3/5
Mmm yes it chugs along pleasantly enough while working without every grabbing me, possibly because of the lyrics in French. At the edges some dated 80s synth textures, but on the whole a 3.
Os Mutantes
4/5
damn this is a fine discovery. Late sixties beat/psychedelia is not my comfort zone but this is a damn fine first date and thus four stars. Need to go and relisten definitely to see if it joins Iggy and a few others as albums I have bought after hearing them on this list.
William Orbit
3/5
Solid three stars. It's best consumed as an ambient album rather than giving it your full attention, allowing the sounds to drip into your ear rather like...water on a vine leaf.
Alice Cooper
3/5
Once you take this as musical theatre then it's wild style and genre swings are much easier to understand. Four stars for the bangers, three for the rest. On the whole a three.
The Disposable Heroes Of Hiphoprisy
4/5
The first half-a-dozen tracks are an incendiary five stars. Tension and amazement dip somewhat on the back nine of what is ANOTHER overlong nineties rap album but it's an amazing debut full of lines that will stay in your head for days.
The Strokes
4/5
Sometimes white bread - properly baked, without a load of additives - is what hits the spot rather than all the sourdoughs and rye in the world. And sometimes a bunch of lads playing catchy indie guitar tracks...they didn't take over the world, but they did make one great album and Is This It? It is.
Kate Bush
4/5
Long seen as the runt in the KB catalogue, this album is undergoing a serious re-appraisal and quite rightly. I am a lifelong Kate head so bearing that in mind.... My current view on this album is that it suffers from its place in the catalogue, after Never For Ever birthed 3 monster hit singles (UK) and was her first No 1 album. After three years she returns with an almost entirely synth-led and sample-heavy album with no obvious hit singles. Failure. but what's next? What almost all agree is her crowning achievement, Hounds of Love. Listen to this album as a dry run at HOL, a first stab, and it makes a lot more sense. Tracks 1-5 are the wonky synthpop she would perfect an album later. The second side, though not a suite, explores the varied instrumentation and arrangements that she'd nail on Before the Dawn. This is not five stars, but it set her on a new course that would result in one of the greatest albums of the eighties. It couldn't have happened without this.
The Kinks
3/5
Set aside Sunny Afternoon and it's a lovely summary of when the beat boom was just going a little psychedelic, which in the Kinks Kase was bringing their inner music hall and its tradition of social observation and humour into the mix. Solid 3.5.
Everything But The Girl
2/5
I do like EBTG but after the first two albums and Walking Wounded it's individual tracks rather than albums. This is one of those albums from the late 80s that feels like everyone is under pressure from the record company to come up with hits...so there's a cover. 2.3.
Songhoy Blues
3/5
Very pleasant listen, goes well with work (as does a lot of stuff in another language than English as you're not decoding the lyrics).
The Smiths
5/5
Five stars. The Smiths are on of those groups where everytime you listen to their albums your favourite changes. Not quite perfect, the title track is a little self-indulgent, but elsewhere peerless.
Django Django
3/5
It's a good listen, with a nagging rhythm that's quite distinct. What I would term an 'emusic classic' - when I had a sweet sweet account that would let me download 75 mp3s a month for not very much money from indie labels. But is it one of the 1000 best albums ever made? probs no. Emusic staggers on like a zombie, I left 5 years ago and some of the albums they had then are still on their homepage. Anyone still using it?
Dead Kennedys
5/5
The true test of a five star album passed with flying colours: take out the singles and it is still great. Here California, Cambodia and Kill the Poor subtracted and still five stars. I might say 4.99 as Viva Las Vegas rather detracts from the ferocious purity of their debut. Relistening this time, can hear Dick Dale and surf sounds, fifties rock and roll and lots more - in contrast to say Black Flag who are much more monochrome (hah!).
Manu Chao
3/5
Short and ridiculously catchy this is a great listen from genres far from my comfort zone. Strong 3, maybe 3.5 but rounding down.
CHVRCHES
4/5
Synth-pop bangers ahead, I have to admit to loving this band slightly more then their absolute musical quality might suggest. A sucker for a well-enunciated Scottish accent perhaps. While never deviating from the template set out here, their subsequent albums reveal this to be a debut with lots to headroom for them to expand into. Also great live. Four stars.
Holger Czukay
3/5
great background working, and sure that Eno must have been listening to this. Great touches of quirkiness and humour in the samples. Good choice for this list.
John Prine
3/5
A social realist Dylan you say? With a better singing voice, ability to craft a song that sounds new and old at the same time. Slight tinges of C and W, slightly more straightforward storytelling lyrics and less stream of consciousness. Sounds like three stars to me.
Aimee Mann
5/5
Ok if you are not already familiar with Aimee Mann I am going to recommend that you absolutely don't listen to this first. Listen to the Magnolia soundtrack which has 8 of her A-star songs (plus a great cover). That will key you into her subtle, ironic downbeat world far more quickly. Then come back to this which is an excellent album. Yes it's a nineties female singer-songwriter and at times the production, playing and arrangements are of that time. But her lyrics, her delivery, her vibe, her songwriting are all absolutely excellent here as on this and next four or five albums. she is one of music's best kept secrets.
Peter Frampton
2/5
It's a 2.5 really. Soft rock from the seventies, immaculately played and in the case of Show Me and Baby I Love allied to diamond-hard songs. Elsewhere it can drift badly IMHO and so it's rounded down to a two. - a criminal cover of Jumpin Jack Flash and the self-indulgence encore vibes of the last track precluding any higher score.
Talking Heads
5/5
Until True Stories I would say there's an argument for saying TH had the greatest ever run of albums from debut - six studio, one live - all five stars. Nobody's going to make a case for Please Please or The Rolling stones as five star albums, if anyone can find a better run of six I'll be keen to hear. Yes this is 5 stars, not a bad track on it.
Jurassic 5
4/5
Yes I am liking this a lot, and probably need to replay. On the cusp of joining the very few CDs I've bought as a result of this exercise - 2 exactly, one Iggy Pop, one Pavement. Solid 4 stars.
Dizzee Rascal
3/5
How times change. What appeared confrontational and scary twenty years later is a hoot and a straightforward listen. Solid three stars, though three tracks too long.
Paul Weller
5/5
This is one of the first CDs I bought - the very first a 10,000 maniacs cd - had still pictures encoded for you to watch on a computer while you played the CD. this has aged much better - the most consistent songwriting of his now very long solo career, and brilliant playing and production. Warmth is not always a word you associate with the Modfather, but this has it in spades. Five stars.
Talk Talk
5/5
Ten albums ago on my list was The Dreaming, an eighties album that saw Kate Bush move on from the organic piano and rock band sound of her early albums to a sound dominated by synths and samples. This album sees Talk Talk go the other way - junking the synthpop of the first two albums for an analogue sound featuring organ, piano, harmonica, melodica and a choir. Like Bush Mark Hollis and Tim Friese-Greene used the studio to get the sounds they could hear in their heads down on record, and this album is a perfect mid-point between their poppy roots and their studio tinkering of the last two albums. Everything's in balance - including 4 accessible singles, an epic closer and some more experimental album tracks. One of the all-time great headphone albums.
Kendrick Lamar
3/5
Are we nearly there yet? This album is so long I'm still not sure if I listened to it all, but it seemed varied, tuneful and with some great vocals. Three stars.
The Mothers Of Invention
3/5
Imagine a sixties rap album where it's only skits. Crossed with Sgt Pepper. Immense fun to listen to, but not one that I need to go back to.
The Notorious B.I.G.
3/5
I'm going to level with you here, I felt ready to review this once we'd reached Big Poppa - track 13 with 6 to go. This album is so long not because it's 1 hour 16 but because it's 1 hour 16 of tracks that feel the same. P-Funk samples so beloved of early 90s hip-hop (Dre, Cube etc), bars that feature gats, bitches and money with a side-order of respect to the players, disses to the fakers etc. It's not a bad album and can see why people rate it, but prime Cube for example I would say does this if not better than a bit more concisely. And the skits. Stop the skits.
Kraftwerk
5/5
Can't be five, but is 4.75 so is five. Nothing else to add.
Small Faces
2/5
A tale of two halves, the first side being a pretty good slice of 'beat group gone psychedelic' from 1968. The second side a pretty bad slice of 'psychedelic concept album from 1968'. The narration is super annoying, the story unintelligible. Did Pete Townsend listen to this and think 'No worries those waiting for a good concept album - I got this' First side 3, second side one.
Joy Division
5/5
Throbbing Gristle
2/5
One of the founding texts of industrial, and on E Coli there's even a tune. An art project that relates to popular music of the time as the VU did in the sixties. And like them, not many people listened but many of those who did went onto form bands. Having said that, its anything but an easy listen. I did have a mate who lived in the mid-80s in Bethnal Green opposite a house he said was the P.Orridge base. 2.5 really, but can't round up for this one.
Snoop Dogg
3/5
Another musical cut from the g-funk era of Parliament, Funkadelic and Mtume beats. But Snoop's drawl is distinctive enough to stand out from the crowd. Still too long tho. What rap album wasn't (3 feet high and rising is the answer).
Rufus Wainwright
1/5
Just about my first DNF. His voice, somewhere between Tom Waits and John Grant, rubs me up the wrong way. And this goes on and on and on. Sorry Rufus, sure you're a great guy and all.
The Rolling Stones
4/5
Some unmatched songs, some blues noodling - 11 minutes of Going Home of which 7 are surplus to requirements, and generally was this peak Mick misogyny? Mother's Little Helper, Under My Thumb, Stupid Girl are lyrically a trio of shame - though fantastic music. It's not that they need cancelling, but like a rapper endlessly talking about bitches and hos it does get wearying.
Jean-Michel Jarre
5/5
The OG analogue instrumental synth album - Kraftwerk's melancholy vocals were always an integral part of their sound. Pt 4 an absolute banger, though it's also clear how much of this came from experimental as well as disco. Essential. Also managed to create a sound that sounds as French as Kraftwerk are German: the word sophistication comes to mind here. As George Bush might say, the French just have no word for chic.
Miles Davis
5/5
In many ways my favourite Miles album, as it's difficult to actually 'listen' to Kind of Blue. Kind of worn out for me. Minimal enigmatic Miles, extra marks if possible for the transcendent guitar moments at the end of the second track.
The Rolling Stones
4/5
Three monster tracks (first, last, Street Fighting Man) and gradually the Stones are evening out the quality to start their peerless run of late sixties/early seventies albums.
Roxy Music
5/5
What an amazing album this is. As several reviews have pointed out, the three-way tussle between Ferry’s croon, Eno’s electronic textures and Manzanera’s rocking out gives RM a drive and tension most bands could only dream of. How much more interesting bands are (Beatles, Radiohead) when they’re not dominated by one musical genius with some backing musicians he/she are mates with, or four clones.
The first five six tracks are awe-inspiring. Do The Strand opens by repeating the Virginia Plain stop-start rhythm to equally great effect. Editions of You is a real band wig-out. Everything appears to lead up to album centrepiece In Every Dream Home A Heartache, the title a homage to British popart icon Richard Hamilton. Over a subdued cyclical melody Ferry describes how his dream home, with every modern convenience, is empty - until he found true love with a blow-up sex doll. I blew up your body, but you blew my mind. Cue instrumental freak-out. One of the greatest drops in modern music and a song that’s beautiful, sordid, political, funny and lots more all at once.
If the last couple of tracks can’t keep the impossibly high level up, they would be highlights of nearly every other Roxy album.
A lot of hand-wringing appears about how fake Roxy Music were. As if being ‘genuine’ was any guarantee of interesting music. In fact the later career of Roxy demonstrates this exactly. The more ‘genuine’ a MOR FM pop band they became on Flesh and Blood and Avalon, the less exciting they became. Ferry’s faux-crooner persona in the dinner jacket had become so all embracing he forgot it was just that, a persona.
Think about it this way: RM were genuinely futuristic in the early seventies. Not futuristic in the sense of singing about rocket ships, but in the sense of a sound that sounded like it came from the future. You can imagine Roxy performing in the space hotel in 2001 while Dave makes a video call home, or in some neon-soaked dive bar in Bladerunner.
Badly Drawn Boy
3/5
Not sure it really is one of the 1001 best albums ever, but it definitely captures that flipside of club culture that was the acoustic chillouter - see also Beth Orton. The three singles are great tracks, there's always something interesting going on. Cardinal sin: wayyy too long. Pick your twelve best tracks BDB. 3.5 but definitely not a four.
Tortoise
3/5
First track is fantastic, the rest of the album can't quite hit those heights. Can see why this was mega-influential. Er...not a lot a else you can say. 3.5 really.
Cheap Trick
3/5
The second half of this album is pretty damn fine, the first half feels like...well a warm up for their best songs on the second half. So three feels about right. Great screaming from the Japanese fans.
Frank Black
3/5
Is this as good as the worst Pixies album (their last). Not really. Black and his songs are here but... Evidence: 1. 22 songs, even if many are under 3 mins, is just too many. 2. You don't realise how much variety Kim, Joey and David could wring out of their instruments until you hear a more limited band. 3. Not much in the way of backing vocals interplay. Three stars.
The Velvet Underground
5/5
What more do you want? Probably the album where it's clear Lou Reed is a quite exceptional songwriter. Candy Says, Pale Blue Eyes and Beginning To See The Light (a candidate for inventing the motorik beat) and evergreens you can imagine covered by anyone from Johnny Cash to The Clash. Every song is fully formed, and they benefit from more straightforward arrangements with more space to breather than on the first two albums. Yes The Murder Mystery is one of those long experimental tracks. But it all works, even and perhaps especially giving Mo Tucker the throwback closer After Hours.
Astor Piazzolla
2/5
yes it's fantastically played, and I've not listened to any other new tango, so horizons are broadened. But it is also very meandering - the jazz bit I guess. 2.5.
Shack
3/5
Not every album needs to change the world, and if this album treads some familiar post-Beatles sounds then it's none the worse for it. The songwriting and arrangements are top notch, and while you might not be blown away Michael Head's gift for a nagging melody will start to worm its way into your skull. 3.5 really, but a very solid three stars.
Rocket From The Crypt
3/5
The first four songs are impossibly good, where has this album been all my life? The next ten, while good, explain why I've been without it so far. 3.5 really, but for being a bit one-paced and having two songs too many rounded down.
3/5
The 'people who also listened to' on Spotify for this is a roll-call of men with beards who I find absolutely no compulsion to discover. Quicksilver Messenger Service, Vanilla Fudge, Moby Grape, Savoy Brown, Humble Pie....having said that this is an easy early seventies listen with lots of variety and usually a decent tune. On the early seventies note I've just rewatatched Almost Famous for the third time and absolutely this band sound like they could be Stillwater.
Van Morrison
4/5
The first half of this album I was not really there for the view that this is an exceptional live album with version of his songs that are significantly superior to the studio versions. Also, not there so much for R and B Van (ie Ray Charles) with the plethora of covers scattered through the first half. However it picks up significantly with the stunning take on St Domics Preview and from there on in the hype is justified.
Queen Latifah
2/5
This is like 3 Feet High and People's Instinctive...but with all the wit and invention sucked out and replaced by one-note samples and raps about one topic (me). Yes great that she was a successful female rapper, but being significant and making great music are not the same thing. And soooo long.
Pere Ubu
4/5
Utterly unlike anything else, the first side is a blast of new wave that is still, bearing in mind their forbidding reputation, 100% accessible. The second side is more of their arty stuff culminating in David Lynchian (Thomas' soul brother) Sentimental Journey. Fabulous cover as well.
Mj Cole
2/5
If you let this wash over you, then it's ok pop radio for background working. Vocals are melodic and the beats are nothing too severe. Having said that it's absolutely not one of the 1000 albums every made. From that year's Mercury Prize we could have had Lost Souls by Doves (epic northern melancholia), the second leftfield album (for the 'Guiness ad' track alone), Death in Vegas' Contino Session (dirty beats) or Nitin Sawnhey Beyond Skin (genuinely innovative).
Sheryl Crow
2/5
One of my favourite musical arguements is that U2 had the career that Echo and the Bunnymen should have had. So here then, Sheryl Crow has had the career and sales Aimee Mann should have had. Other than that I can't find much to say about this.
Sugar
4/5
One of Husker Du's great failings, particularly in the last two albums, was the awful production. No bass and biscuit tin drums. Here that is rectified in 12 short sharp Bob Mould tracks expertly produced and played. Different from Husker Du - no Grant Hart, but one of my favourite albums in his canon. Sounds like he went straight from Warehouse.. to this, but he snuck in two solo albums first. Wish I'd have seen either the Du or Sugar, one of my biggest live gaps.
Gang Starr
4/5
Lots of golden age hip-hop on here and this is a great listen, if not containing their best ever track Jazz Thing. Like TTQuest their beats are relaxed, but here with a slightly fiercer and less playful rap style. But it's a very convincing listen.
Steely Dan
5/5
An ongoing debate with myself is which band has the most perfect catalogue in music. Minimum five albums. Talking Heads were in there, but True Stories I feel increasingly is a real step down. The Pixies first five are a contender. So, if like the Pixies we are just going on first runs and regarding comebacks after a long layoff as inadmissable, the Dan are up there with the Pixies and Roxy Music. This, like all 7 - 7! - from their first run, is pretty flawless.
ZZ Top
4/5
Early mid-period ZZ - some fine songs, and one of those bands who are loose and tight at the same time. If this one is in the list then Deguello and El Loco better be too.
KISS
1/5
Very rarely does the word 'lame' apply to an album on this list. It does here. While I can get that their cartoon characters, merchandising and onstage antics are all not for me, but understandable, what is completely unforgivable here is the almost complete lack of ROCK. These tracks are weedy, puny and devoid of almost everything that their image says they will be. Makes me realise that although I dislike almost everything about Meatloaf, at least his music cashed some of the cheques his image wrote. The sound of uncashed cheques here is deafening. I mean, Beth, what gives men? Destroyers of worlds. Hah Destroyers of hankies more like.
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
5/5
Great art made from awful circumstances. At times so open it's a difficult listen. Not much more it feels even appropriate to say, but joins Black Star and other albums where the context is inescapable.
Pixies
5/5
The finest album by the best band of the late eighties. If only Black Francis had been a hottie, they'd have absolutely cleaned up instead of being the most influential band of their era instead.
The Psychedelic Furs
4/5
Things moved quickly in the early eighties, and in the space of three albums the Furs went from abrasive new-wave squonkers filtering the Berlin Bowie of Warszawa and Neukoln through punk, to sleek MTV pop-rockers produced by Todd Rundgren. This is the mid-point - with tracks like Into you Like a Train harking back, Pretty In Pink looking forwards. It's not my favourite Furs album, but it's a very solid four stars.
Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five
3/5
an album of two halves here Clive. On the one hand some founding rap beats (Message, Nasty, Fresh and electro banger Scorpio); on the other some lame r and b/soul - the rest. So three it is.
Elliott Smith
3/5
As someone who grew up on a post-punk diet of The Smiths, New Order, Echo and the Bunnymen etc. the miserabilism of this record doesn't piss me off the way it seems to do a lot of reviewers. Each song is well played and arranged, and the overall Beatles vibe judgement is not unfair. Not sure at the heart of it there's anything massively original to hear, though it's a very pleasant listen. 3 stars.
Tom Tom Club
4/5
A great compilation to be had from 'new wave rappers' featuring Blondie, Waitresses, Malcolm Mclaren...and of course this lot. Very solid album and no problem with four stars here.
Christina Aguilera
1/5
Side 1 is listenable if forgettable r and p pop from the noughties, churned out by Christina, Britney and many others. Side 2 though. The lady is not a vamp. This is ersatz vocal jazz of the worst kind. Think Madonna's Dick Tracey soundtrack as bad as that. DNF more than 30 secs of each track.
Waylon Jennings
2/5
So straight up country you have to respect it. Not my music at all.
Tom Waits
2/5
Surprisingly listenable from the old groaner - and the third album of his on here which feels at least two too many. But I'm never going to go back to it, perhaps only the beautiful last trick on which Tom does not appear. Also he does a kind of Tom Waits version of rap skits here.
The Cure
5/5
One of the great one-paced albums of all time. Some are ever so slightly upbeat, some even slower than seems possible, but they all flow in the same tempo like some great goth rive. They're all fabulously epic, stuffed full of melody and beautifully played. Five stars.
The Waterboys
5/5
This has to be in that quirky position of an album that I know backwards but don't own. Quite brilliant, and aged far better than their 'Big Music' era IMHO. On the relisten standout tracks are Strange Boat and The Stolen Child, When Ye Go Away joining the title track and Bang On The Ear.
Suede
4/5
The sound of being turned up to eleven, the sound of a band tearing itself apart, the sound of...pretty much everything from the kitchen sink arrangements, OTT Brett vocals, extended run times. But at the heart is some solid gold songwriting. After this flirt with extinction Suede would regroup sans Bernard, and while they'd make more fine albums never again would they sound so dangerous.
The Killers
4/5
There's not much of this album left once you take out the big singles - Mr Brightside, Indie Rock and Roll, Somebody Told Me, Smile Like You Mean It,Jenny Was a Friend of Mine. What's left rattles along pretty quickly. Is it a five star album? Not quite as the Killers are not a five star band. The last track is a bit of an unnecessary appendage. But it's 4.5.
Slipknot
1/5
Ok it has some semblence of tune, but it's really blast beats shredding and throaty howl vocals. Sure they're great live. 1.25
Dirty Projectors
2/5
The very definition of trying to hard. I did not bitte on this one at all, bitte but no bitte.
The Specials
5/5
In some music you can here the work, the sweat that goes into making it. Rush would be an example. More Specials is an album where the music flows effortlessly, ever changing (unlike Do Nothing) and evolving. As off the cuff as prime Jack Nicholson. Yes there are nods to film music and easy listening from Dammers, but at heart it's as rocksteady as the debut. And as flawless.
Sister Sledge
5/5
Six things about this album and why it’s a five.
Absolute disco bangers: He’s The Greatest Dancer, Lost In Music, We are Family. Like any great pop album if you can marshal three classic singles (Madonna, Prince er and probably Jackson) then who cares what the rest of the album is like.
There is no point in discussing the rest of the album, which is mostly fine mid-tempo disco with one ballad, when these three demand your complete attention.
Each starts with a leisurely introduction. Exactly like electronic music would do just over a decade later, Chic knew how to build tension and release. So the first track starts with the bass, drums and Nile Rodger’s brilliant guitar hook, then we get the keyboards, then the strings. Only after a minute of establishing exactly how great this groove is do we get the vocals.
They start with the chorus. Worked for Motown, works here.
Only perhaps Prince and Bowie have enjoyed a purple patch as rich as Rodgers and Edwards did in 1979. As well as this complete classic - to which they gave three of their very best songs, they released Risque with Le Freak and gave Spacer to Sheila B Devotion. A year later they would reboot Diana Ross with I’m Coming Out, Debbie Harry’s first solo album a year later and the quite magnificent Why by Carly Simon a year later. A few years later there would be Let’s Dance and Like A Virgin… wow.
If you’ve only ever heard the single version of Lost In Music the full album track contains four minutes of quite exceptional gospel-inspired vocal shredding by Kathy Sledge.
And that’s why an album of eight tracks can be a five star album on only three tracks.
OutKast
3/5
I have gradually whittled my Outkast collection to just this album, jettisoning Idlewild and Speakerboxx/Love Below. This album is also too long, but it's a single and I can just about ride it through. If it has at least two four-star tracks, the endless skits and half-formed tracks drag it down to a three.
Todd Rundgren
2/5
A double album of seventies pop-rock is still just seventies pop-rock, in fact less so as there's more of it, if that makes sense.
Muddy Waters
4/5
Pretty pretty amazing. Yes it's one note, but what a note. Great production. A Rick Rubin album twenty years before such a thing was a thing.
Pere Ubu
3/5
Dave its Dave Lynch here. Been thinking that those new wave bangers from the first album are a bit superfluous. I really liked the crazy soundtrack stuff that sounds like it should be in one of my movies. So make a whole album of that. Cheers other Dave, I think we will. Having said that it's still a good listen, if you lean into the craziness.
Ian Dury
4/5
Utterly original, a slightly sleazy top jazz-funk-punk combo fronted by the East End casanova that was Drury. 8 gold-plated singles would be a better representation, but this is still compelling from start to finish.
Destiny's Child
2/5
There's probably a great 12-track album here, and there are a couple of timeless pop classics. But can't look past how looong it is.
Thelonious Monk
4/5
I don't know about these jazz albums, they just appear to be ripped from another list with Kind of Blue and other usual suspects as 'tasteful jazz albums for the non-jazzer'. Why not some classical for the non-classical? Surely everyone has to hear Jacqueline Du Pre's Elgar Cello Concerto or quite frankly any version of Messiens Quartet for the End of Time? So rant over this is a great album, full of Monk's unique runs and chords, while perhaps being slightly mellower than some of his other stuff
Ray Charles
3/5
This absolutely deserves its place on this list. The craft in the arrangements, playing and singing is fantastic. Standards is not usually my thing outside of jazz, but glad to hear this.
Buffalo Springfield
4/5
Nothing to add here other than a very solid four stars.
Boards of Canada
4/5
I can see why BOC's sound is impenetrable to some. Wicker Man, the BBC Test card, library music, scary 70s childrens TV. Hauntology is a strain of British culture that's quite difficult to explain and how it has given rise in the Uk to a very specific form of dark electronica that BOC are probably the leading exponents of, along with Broadcast and the Ghost Box label. For me a strong four.
Kings of Leon
2/5
The singles are so over-exposed that I felt like giving it a one, but on the whole it's a bland two. Coldplay can't fill every playlist.
Mylo
3/5
Great trashy fun. Cyndi Looper, David Booie, Bruce Springsteen et al. Not everything has to be deep and meaningful. Points for Judie Tzuke sample too. 3.5 really but not a four. Should it be on this list, possibly not and I am guessing there's some spitting the dummy over it. But I have to now listen to the Kings of Leon's second album on this list and that is two too many. So chill.
Malcolm McLaren
3/5
You old faker Malcom. Again, plastic pop has been good pop ever since, well at least The Archies. Here the rascal rips off whole genres of black music from hip-hop to S Africa and sells it right back to us.
De La Soul
4/5
Four or so awesome singles, but just a bit too much of the skitting guys for five starts.
Neneh Cherry
4/5
Whip smart a proper pop lp with four great singles including one for the ages in buffalo stance. Job absolutely done.
Rush
5/5
An album I can pretty well play from memory in my head. I feel they never pulled off a flawless album - the whole of 2112 side two is pretty weak, maybe this and Farewell to Kings gets closest. The drum solo in YYZ is inessential on record (and on tour when I saw them on this tour). It's 4.75 really as Tom Sawyer, Limelight and Camera Eye are timeless bangers.
The Fall
5/5
It's madness to try and define the best ever Fall album, but this one would be in most people's top five. The balance between Brix-imported poppiness and earlier groove and noise is pretty perfect.
Terence Trent D'Arby
3/5
You know what this is still a pretty good pop-soul album. TTD delivers 4 monster singles familiar from bar one to anyone who listened to daytime radio one. His singing is great and even the 80s production isn’t too annoying.
Fugazi
3/5
Like many thrash albums, the first 3/4 songs sound fantastic. But over 12 songs a degree of sameness unavoidably creeps in.
2/5
Beefheart. The more out there Fall. Pere Ubu. A listening experience, but not one that necessarily needs repeating.
Sleater-Kinney
3/5
Chunky, great listen and probably 3.5 stars but it's enjoyable but not earth shaking so 3 it is.
Carole King
5/5
One of the easiest five stars. Flawless. Received wisdom is of course other people sang her songs better, and of course in the case of Aretha Franklin that would be true. But she's got a wonderful voice, a wistfulness and melancholy that's unique. And that fabled warm analogue early seventies studio sound is perhaps here only equalled by Steely Dan.
Santana
3/5
Always an enjoyable listen, and you'll recognise more than you think you will. A bit too noodly and the fact its two best known songs are covers perhaps precludes a four, but a definite 3.5. Album law is surely you're allowed one cover.
Fred Neil
3/5
Leaving aside the absolute sixties hippie shitshow that is the last track, this is a fascinating curio. Dolphins and Everybody's Talking are top songs, and great to hear the originals. But not much call for a revisit. 3.5, rounded down to 3 for the raga-out.
Morrissey
4/5
A solid four for the music whatever you think about the man. At this point just about possible to think he was fascinated by the right and wrote about it rather than believing in it.
Les Rythmes Digitales
3/5
slighty cheesy, this feels like the soundtrack to a succession of energy drink ads and where is the Fatboy Slim remix. Not unfun in anyway, but neither has it lasted as well as Justice or Digitalism in the post-Daft Funk french dance world.
The Prodigy
4/5
Yes it's too long but everything about is great, from the killer singles to the ambient tracks to the great oil painting adorning the inner sleeve (Castlemorton crusty types outwit the plods en route to a humungus rave). Their most consistent album.
Bauhaus
3/5
Bauhaus like so many bands of the late 70s/80s a killer singles band - here Kick in the eye, passion of lovers - but couldn't nail a full album of consistently good tracks.
The Faces are such a 3/5 band. No-one ever needs to hear the big hits like Stay With Me ever again, and the essentially great easy living bottle of whiskey and a fag vibe is fairly evenly spread over everything else. 35 mins though is about right.
Korn
2/5
Ok it's not as bad as some other stuff in its vein, as its not wall to wall blast beats and there is the sniff of a tune. But the vocalist redefines marmite. And it goes on for ever.
Dexys Midnight Runners
4/5
An album I don't need to listen to to rate, like many around in 82 when all the singles were inescapable, and COE was to the time what Last Christmas and All I Want for Christmas are for modern Decembers, except much more so.
Green Day
2/5
Just there really, out there, doesn't care whether you like it or not. I can make it all the way through, but it's not pressing any pleasure buttons.
Baaba Maal
3/5
It's great background working, but perhaps exposes the difficulties of putting music from completely different cultures into one dominated, both in terms of who does the list and who follows the list, by white western rock and roll. See also the odd classical or jazz album that makes it.
Guns N' Roses
5/5
Five stars, well 4.75 as last track Rocket Queen is a bit sprawling. But just undeniable all the way through - and passes the 'no singles' test by missing out the three tracks nobody nears to hear again. Still a great album without them, with them, five stars.
Grant Lee Buffalo
3/5
I had America Snoring on an NME compilation CD from the early nineties, so have a soft spot for this. But aside from this its a little like the Waterboys without the folk instrumentation, a little like the Violent Femmes and a little like...well a thousand other alt-indie-Americana bands of the time. Not really doing enough distinctive to justify its place here, though its an easy enough listent.
3/5
A classic 'glad this on the list' album and three stars for all its prog soul noodling, but feel my life is complete enough without listening again.
Elliott Smith
3/5
Pleasant Sunday morning listening without especially feeling I need to investigate further, and two on the list is surely one too many.
Black Sabbath
5/5
Track One, Side one - five stars, job done. Perhaps 4.75 over the whole album, but can't have less than five stars.
The Byrds
3/5
I'm a jangly Byrds man, so the album where they started to leave the jangle behind for country rock, with a side order of psychedelic whimsy is not my favourite. Three generous stars.
The Sensational Alex Harvey Band
2/5
Just like many other movements scratch below the surface of A-listers (Bolan, Bowie, Ferry) and glam has some ordinary stuff that has not aged well. SAHB being one. I've tried with him, but never works.
Method Man
3/5
Not an unpleasant listen, but lacks that essentialness of the best of the Wu-Tang.
Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark
4/5
Three banging singles, a band whose first four albums are remarkably consistent, but after that nothing much for me. Still, one of the best bands of the early eighties and this is probably one of the first fifty albums I bought. Great Peter Saville album design as well.
Sam Cooke
3/5
Im going to go against the grain and feel slightly underwhelmed by this. His voice is excellent, but the band are nothing to write home about and the audience interaction I find a bit irritating. Sorry. Hey it’s short and that’s good.
Bon Jovi
3/5
One of those albums that although the music is something I personally can't abide, the sheer undeniability of the tunes is evident.
The Pogues
4/5
Controversial opinion: this is commonly seen as their crowning achievement, and FONY is of course the one song that everyone knows. Thousands are Sailing is perhaps their finest single moment. But over a whole album it can't keep up with Rum, Sodomy....
Ice Cube
3/5
Absolutely classic gangsta rap. So how you feel about that will be how you feel about this. It's a never-ending parade of hoes, uzis, drive-bys, cash money, chronic and shout-outs to S Central LA. The beats and Ice's rap style are pretty functional. And gangsta's fairytales was so popular he brought it back for the next album. Painful.
TLC
3/5
you know what it is crazysexycool. Killer singles, some solid album tracks and a great Prince cover. Skip the interludes and this doesn't outstay its welcome, a rarity in 90s/00s hiphop/randb. 3.5 but glad to be taken out of the comfort zone.
Tom Waits
1/5
Boy oh boy this man must have some serious hold over the critical consensus. Because this is one tough listen, essentially one jazz track with mumbling over the top. Trout Mask Replica at least had the decency to stay a single album.
Stevie Wonder
4/5
Goddamn it this is so varied and brilliant even though I'm not a paid up Wonderer can't give it less than four stars. Liking all the single album edits in the reviews which would make it pretty flawless.
Willie Nelson
3/5
short, sharp, not my thing but glad I heard it. The kind of country I can get with.
Rage Against The Machine
3/5
Plenty of rage, and I get the naysayers, a bit like Ice-T's albums in the early 90s, this is channeling stuff for the burbs. But it's pretty listenable, and if the singer's rap-scream-singing patter is perhaps the worst thing about this, it is as nothing compared to the horrors Linkin park and Limp Bizkit would visit on us a few years later.
The Coral
3/5
Those magic mushrooms in Sefton Park again. On paper an update of the Bunnymen's scouseadelica sound is surely a good thing, but this is all over the shop and for every winning melody there's a throw away jokey track. 2.5 really but feeling generous.
Ice T
4/5
When I visited America in the early nineties you could still buy bootleg cassettes on the street. I got this and the second NWA album for not very much. Not listened to it all, and providing you don't really listen to it as music and think of it as an audiobook with beats it's still got a lot to give. His flow, though without much in the way of poetry, is alway engaging.
Amy Winehouse
4/5
running through my reviews is the gold-standard album: Different Class, Back In Black, Lexicon of Love, tapestry, Ray of Light. Take the monster singles out (usually four at least) and what's left? As an ep how many stars would it rate. In the above cases five stars, in this case three. So with the singles four stars then.
Fairport Convention
3/5
Side one four stars, side two very much a three. I have to come down on the three in the end. Not quite enough Sandy Denny and a bit too much flute and fiddle for a four.
Richard Thompson
5/5
Not often that you can point to an album and say without a second thought this is the best ever. This is the best folk-rock album ever made. It's 100% rock and 100% folk at the same time, thus deserving of 10 stars. The version I have on CD - also the current Spotify version - has the 10 minute version of Calvary Cross which is the song then six minutes of awesume RT shredding. So add 100% axe hero to the mix too. Linda is also the best folk-rock vocalist who's not Sandy Denny, but the songs here just so much stronger than Liege and Lief. there's still Krummhorn and accordion, but less of the clogs and finger in the ear vibe than Fairport.
Steve Earle
4/5
A bit of a discovery. Like country with all the fat trimmed off. Lean. Great tunes. Four stars from me. Not a physical purchase but added to playlists.
3/5
Side One: Kick Out
Side Two: the jams
Paul Simon
3/5
It is one of my law of live events that - Dylan excepted - one person and their guitar is rarely enough to hold my attention for more than a couple of songs. And so it is here, the ones with a band are excellent, the ones without are, well early 70s singer-songwriter. On the whole three stars, but individual track ratings rarely a three.
Lightning Bolt
3/5
Apart from the sheet metal intro track, this is what the White Stripes or even Royal Blood would sound if they turned things up to 11. While not easy listening it's hardly early Foetus or Einsturzende Neubauten.
The Dandy Warhols
2/5
Sooo dull and soo long. The very essence of meh. I guess I'm team Jonestown then.
The Shamen
3/5
Not everything ages well. The Shamen were one of the first rave acts to look like a 'band' as opposed to a faceless DJ. Sadly how they looked, with their keytars, cyberpunk shades and Dune-esque still-suits of this era look a bit risible now. Cyberpunk crustie if you will. Mr C has always seem a bit risible as a cheeky cockerney chappie rapper. However, the beats and rhythms and textures are still pretty good. Of it's time.
Dion
3/5
The basic idea of Dion plus Spector sounds great and I really enjoyed this. Add to playlist: Make the Woman Love Me hmmm that title has not aged well.
Soft Machine
3/5
The Robert Wyatt side is great, the last side also very listenable. But side 1 and 2 lean heavily into the jazz squawk. Overall 2.5 but feeling generous so a 3.
John Cale
2/5
When Cale comes up with a tune, as on the title track, this is pretty fine. But too many tracks without one alas.
The Kinks
3/5
Nothing to disagree with here, a solid 3.5 from me. Some falling off on the second side to a three really.
Kings of Leon
1/5
Pixies, Jesus and Mary Chain, Slowdive, Prefab Sprout, the Clash, Blue Oyster Cult, Comsat Angels, B-52s, Nanci Griffith, The Jam...just some of the artists more deserving of 3, 2 or even one place on this list instead of the third from this amazingly mediocre band.
Living Colour
2/5
Music from MTV. While not actually bad it's strangely unmemorable. A 2.5 but not a 3.
Red Hot Chili Peppers
2/5
These guys are chief offenders in the waaay too long album stakes since whenever. This is waaaay too long and even if were shorter the smell of mediocrity is overpowering. Another band with too many entries on this list.
Orange Juice
3/5
A 3.5 really. The first recorded use of the Roland 303 - as on the mega squelchy synth bass on the title track. On the whole I prefer their mega-scratchy sound before this rather than the Talking Heads sound here.
Jimi Hendrix
5/5
This would be my entry for the best debut album ever. The best he did by a country mile and hard to imagine much of modern rock music without this. Nothing to add apart from the fact that do listen to it on headphones as the stereo mixing is full on.
John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers
3/5
There are a fair few objectionable people on this list as people, but we're not asked to move in next to them. As music this is a solid three stars. That's all.
Steve Winwood
2/5
Mid-80s to a T and the first two tracks are pretty good. After that it's like a Bryan Ferry solo album when the musicianship, textures and production are all top-notch and cover up for the lack of top-quality tunes. Also each track probably a minute too long. 2.5
Hole
2/5
This is all very laudable, but with a couple of exceptions there's not a memorable song there, and I think it's a strictly minor entry in the grunge canon.
Ms. Dynamite
1/5
Boy oh boy this has not aged well. Limp R and B stylings, and it joins that sad list of Mercury music prize (non-UK readers go google) winners such as Speech Debelle, Gomez and Klaxons for whom winning the Mercury would be the alpha and omega of their career.
Paul McCartney and Wings
3/5
There is such a thing as being too tuneful. What with Laine and McCartney, it seems they couldn't settle on one tune per song, each one seems to be about four fighting for space in the track. Mostly a good listen though.
Miles Davis
5/5
No honestly just stop with the ridiculously token jazz albums. The entire history of jazz reduced to KOB, Time Out and and a handful of others that the late-sixties LP collector would have alongside the Beatles and the Stones. Having said that five stars.
Milton Nascimento
2/5
Kind of washed over me in a bit unfocused but pleasant foreign language way. 2.5 really but can't justify a 3.
Roni Size
3/5
Very recently played this and it's a long double album, as drum and bass often is. A fistful of absolute classics (the bassline on brown paper bag!) and an overall great background music vibe. Solid 3.5, but rounding down.
Sade
4/5
I played this to death on vinyl, as I did with the second album (which I marginally prefer). One look down the track listing and I can phrase each song in my head still. four stars, as they did at times succumb to a cheesy sax solo or two. But pretty perfect sophisti-pop and spawned several minime's like Swing Out Sister.
George Harrison
3/5
My Sweet Lord this does go on. It's got a single album of great songs, but just like Sandinista! and 69 Love Songs guys pls some editing. Also - sorry - the slight whiff of the Travelling Wilberries hangs over some of this. So anyway 3 stars.
Grateful Dead
3/5
All noodling all the time. Five tracks in a four-side set - feedback is exactly that, a final goodbye....I find Dark Star a bit too Dead for me, but the other four tracks are pretty good.
Jeru The Damaja
3/5
This guy completely passed me by in the mid-nineties, but this is a pretty listenable album of golden age rap, and can hear the gang starr vibes pretty well, which is a compliment. Also 40 mins long and skits to a minimum. All positives.
The Isley Brothers
4/5
You have three monster tracks then you're going to get three stars: Lady, Breeze, Don't Let Me. Is the rest of the album a pretty good funk-soul workout lifted by that guitar sound. Yes it is. Four stars. I have the now-deleted Greatest Hits and it is one of the Greatest Greatest Hits.
Dagmar Krause
4/5
Someone has put a pretty good playlist on youtube for this one, so it's twenty-odd snatches of Eisler German cabaret songs from the twenties and thirties. Pretty good. Her voice is amazing, completely authoritative.
Peter Gabriel
4/5
This is pretty good, Biko and Games Without Frontiers absolute classics. trivia facts: both Paul Weller and Kate Bush appear on this album.
SZA
2/5
You know what with a more distinctive singer this would have been in contention for a 3.5 or a 4. The beats, samples and melodies are a strong representation of contemporary pop r and b rap. Auto-tuned from A to Z, she's not quite able to lift this for me into something distinctive. It's a solid 2.5 but afraid it's a round down.
Cyndi Lauper
4/5
Let's be clear, the purpose of a eighties pop album is to deliver four - minimum - gold-plated singles. Which the first six tracks here more than delivers. So on the downslope you can do what you like, an essential cover or two, a forgettable album closer. Probably only Madonna delivered a better eighties female pop album than this.
LCD Soundsystem
4/5
Very good on the whole though this album is, it fails to clear the bar for reformed groups: is your new album better than the worst one before you split up? ie I'd take the first three LCD albums over this one. Secondly, and perhaps relatedly, it wears even more nakedly its influences: Talking Heads (scratchy white boy guitar, rubbery bass, funk drumming and a whine about the state of the word), Kraftwerk (the final track) and even Echo and the Bunnymen on its sleeve. 3.5 really but rounding up, even though this feels oddly inessential on this list. Final point: who aced the comeback album. Slowdive that's who.
Echo And The Bunnymen
4/5
Great to see the Bunnymen get their second entry, though I would rank their initial run of albums from the top Heaven Up Here/Porcupine/Crocodiles/Ocean Rain/Eponymous. The precise point at which they were trying to hard. Having said all that it's four starts, 4.25 really.
Donald Fagen
5/5
What an album this is. A concept album about a teenager in the late fifties/early sixties. Key lyrical themes are the promise of a techno-utopian future with flying cars, space stations and undersea train travel (IGY, the New Frontier), late night radio (the title track), and the opposite sex (Ruby, The Goodbye Look, Walk Between Raindrops). All of this wrapped up in immaculate jazz-tinged pop played by some of the best session musicians to ever walk the earth. One of those few albums that from first note to last unfolds with utter conviction. And fantastically produced. I could go on...oh and Fagan looks utterly cool on the cover.
TV On The Radio
3/5
Not always an easy listen, kind of glad it's out there rather than a favourite. 2.5 stars really but feeling generous.
Scritti Politti
3/5
Listen to the first 30 seconds of second track Small Talk and it is probably the best primer on 80s production techniques short of Phil Collins' solo work. Gated drums, synth bass, samples. The singles were ubiquitous on UK radio, and fair play to Green for constructing a Marxist take-down of the uber-capitalism of the eighties music scene, and coining it in the process. Brutally efficient.
Alanis Morissette
2/5
OMG my son aged 22 had no idea who Alanis was and had never heard Ironic. Generation gap be still a real thing. Having said that, this was inescapable in the nineties and its pop-grunge stylings have not worn well. The banger-factor of the singles saves this from a one, but it's not really one of the 1001 best albums every made is it?
Chicago
1/5
OMG this goes on longer than the paleolithic era. The music is pretty prehistoric too: a late sixties jam band except there are horns and everything goes on four times as long as it needs to. When I learned that Peter Cetera was in the band, responsible for some very deep eighties musical crimes, its fate as a one was sealed.
Grateful Dead
4/5
Dick's Picks volume 73 (triple cd) or 40 minutes of tuneful, concise folk and country-tinged rock? I'm obvs not a Deadhead as the answer is the latter, and you know what Workingman's Dead is like this better than the legendary Cornell university 75 set or whatever.
American Music Club
3/5
Easily track downable on Youtube and a nice slice of eighties college rock, from the stable of Green on Red, Long Ryders, Bodeans, Smithereens, Replacements and so on. If you like them you'll like this.
Coldcut
4/5
A riot of sampling fun, early house and generally the sound of the future starting up. No surprise the rights prevent any Spotify.
The Zutons
3/5
One of the survivors from the great indie landfill binfire, this is a cut above the Kooks et al. You'll recognise at least a couple of the songs if you're British and around in the early noughties. Classic three stars. But probs not one of the 1001 best albums.
Fatboy Slim
3/5
A dry run for You Come A long Way... - basically BLTC is the big beats without the pop-leaning vocal samples, much more of an album to get mixed into a club night. Still works as a home listen.
Led Zeppelin
4/5
The one where it was clear that there was going to be way more than blues rock. It's a largely acoustic affair with the mandolin alongside guitars, and with short, snappy songs and a traditional folk tune in Gallows Pole. Best known track Since I've Been Loving You sounds a bit of a throwback to the first two albums. Though a transitional album, as they'd bring all their influences and musical ideas together in one album next time out. But still a great listen.
Moby
2/5
Is three musical ideas - grab a vocal sample, lay some nineties trip-hop style beats under it, add some ambient synth washes half-way through enough. it would appear so. Has not aged that well and there are half-a-dozen tracks no-one over 40 needs to hear again. 2.5 but rounding down.
Japan
5/5
My brother, 18 months younger, had this album along with Rio and Let's Dance - I was more a post-punker than a New Romantic. I did see Japan live on the Oil on Canvas tour, and gradually over the last twenty years have found my way back to their genius. Tin Drum, Gentlemen Take Polaroids and now Quiet Life. It joins Iggy's The Idiot as the only album I have had to immediately go out and buy. Come for the immaculate Moroder disco groove of the title track, stay for the finest coda Roxy never wrote on The Other Side of Life. Five stars, even without actual Moroder non-album track Life In Tokyo. Best apocryphal story about the album: that Sylvian blew the entire clothes budget for the shoot on the red jacket on the cover. Good choice.
Ray Charles
3/5
Super smooth proto soul. Great voice and arrangements.
The Mars Volta
2/5
The American Muse. That sentence will pretty much determine what you get out of this. For me, as it's post-third album Muse, this means not much that's nice to listen to. So two stars. Also, like the Muse albums, goes on forever.
The Doors
4/5
Six albums in five years is a pretty ridiculous work-rate. Book-ended by two five star records, this one is a solid four stars.
The Vines
2/5
Garage rock indie landfill, in the UK both a charity shop staple and an ever-present in Poundland's £1 CD racks. Competent but spectacularly unmemorable or distinctive. 1.5 stars really but rounding up as it's not difficult to listen to.
Faith No More
2/5
1001 tracks maybe for the first two, the rest is insanely repetitive, sooo long and generally just the missing link between grunge and nu metal that nobody needed.
Rufus Wainwright
1/5
Two too many from Rufus on this list. In the four songs I lasted a vocal similarity to Thom Yorke reared its head, but otherwise its OTT business as usual.
Brian Eno
5/5
The Rocket 88 of ambient. Many earlier tracks can be cited, but the genre is deemed to start here. Five subtle background stars.
Anita Baker
3/5
I bought this album at the time, and the tracks Sweet Love and Rapture are still excellent examples of 80s soul. But the dry as dust production does her no favours, and on the whole it's an underwhelming listen. 2.5 but rounding up for the nostalgia.
Red Snapper
3/5
It's a perfectly acceptable entry into the trip-hop/d and b/coffee table/jazz stakes prevalent around the millenium. I got through a ton of emails while this burbled away in the background.
Frank Sinatra
2/5
Respect for the first concept album ever Frank, complete with cool artwork. However as ever the music of Sinatra leaves me as cold as a cold thing.
Gotan Project
3/5
Trip hop beats and tango tunes make a dinner-party or coffee shop album every bit as successful as you would think.
Arrested Development
3/5
Very listenable slice of Native Tongues-influenced rap, with three big singles.
k.d. lang
2/5
Second KD Lang on this list, probably one too many, and I feel exactly the same. Immaculately sung, played and arranged. Leaves me completely cold. 2.5 but as nothing going on for me, it's a 2.
Slint
1/5
Imagine the Velvet Underground's schtick of 'we sold a thousand records but everyone who bought one started a band' without any actual songs. Not buying its slacker cool in any way. Just tiresome.
Queen
2/5
A band whose basic ingredients (the choral Brian May guitar, piano and Freddie's vocals) leave me a bit cold) but this at least has stuff I've not heard a zillion times. Still two stars.
Frank Sinatra
4/5
Third time's the charm. The other two Sinatra albums on here left me cold, while admiring their craftmanship. This is just spot-on and advances son's theory on why jazz from the forties and fifties sounds so good: playing an instrument was a route out of poverty as well as a vast industry. So we're hearing the tip of a very large pyramid. Rather like watching Premier League footballers. Because the musicianship on this album is frightening. An all-uptempo album takes out at a single pass most of what I dislike about Sinatra and swing, leaving the fabulous playing under his cool cat phrasing. Only track that outstays its welcome: We'll Be Together Again. These are all miracles of concision and thus have to be under four minutes.
Doves
4/5
Some bands hit you between the eyes, some bands steal up to you and whisper in your ear. Doves are the latter, and though it's only four stars that's to reflect that even greater glories were to come. Cedar Room is six stars on its own.
Joanna Newsom
3/5
Lots of hate for this but you know what it's 10-minute harp-led folk with a woman's very unusual voice. A great listen, tho only on youtube.
Coldplay
1/5
Clearly you're all in or you're all out. I am out.
Astrud Gilberto
1/5
This album is so slight it disappears almost as soon as it's 27 minutes are over. The fact that the only things that stick are the awful Parade and a song sung with a child means it makes its mark in the wrong way.
Dire Straits
2/5
Was this one of the last albums that was truly inescapable. On Radio One (when radio was king) all day every day. It contains in Walk of Live and Money for Nothing two of the most irritating songs known to man and seems a little thin in the supporting album tracks compared to the preceeding two albums - though Les Boys and Industrial Disease show Knopfler had considerable form in the irritating track stakes. For a roots man he knew a good gimmick when he heard one. Anyway, a 1.5 really but his guitar playing is a good as ever so a a 2.
MGMT
3/5
A rule of thumb this list has not challenged is that a great pop album (think most of Madonna's imperial run from Virgin through to Music) delivers four great singles. Plus well a load of other stuff. This album delivers three great singles, plus a load of other stuff. Hence three stars.
4/5
Never judge a book by its cover. Mostly. But the more rhinestones, cowboy boots, stetsons, horses, pickup trucks and bootlace ties on a country star the less interesting they'll be musically. Here Loretta has only a frumpy housecoat and a forced smile - and a pretty all-killer country album with a fantastic voice (Living in Two Worlds for the voice and the phrasing in 'dividing where she finds an extra syllable and 'saaaame').
James Brown
3/5
Good listen, but while I respect the man I think I'm never going to love him.
N.E.R.D
3/5
This - while too long of course breezes past pleasantly enough without demanding too much attention. Again, is really one of the 1001 best albums ever made?
Justin Timberlake
2/5
Well we know the answer to what Michael Jackson would have sounded like had he been white (oh wait) and in a boy band from the nineties. And a whole hour of this stuff. It's just very very formulaic.
Nina Simone
3/5
One Nina Simone track is usually five stars. A whole album is a bit like a big bar of Toblerone.
The Associates
3/5
A mid-eighties time capsule, as if David Bowie had joined Altered Images.
Soul II Soul
4/5
For a few years the S2S beat was inescapable in the charts. this is a great album, but has to be docked a star for only including the short accapella version of Back To Life, with Keep on Movin (also here) their two truly great tracks. It is bitty and piecey, but the bits are pretty good.
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
4/5
Cave is really an artist where just about every album of his could be on this list, or none, depending on your view. This I would put in the middle of his canon, and is perhaps on this list as it's one of his more straightforward rock albums.
Dolly Parton
2/5
Super smooth 80s pop-country. It's not a complete blind spot for me - the Loretta Lynn album featured on this list is fabulous and I probably would buy if it was on CD - but this is just a bit to MOR, fabulously sung though it is. 2.5 really but should we as many have commented round up for Linda Rondstadt's remarkable wig on the cover? Er no.
Simon & Garfunkel
4/5
A great listen. Passes the 'can you still listen not as a historical curio but as great music' test easily. Only the Feeling Groovie 2 mins appear dated. Extra marks surely for their parody of Bob Dylan at the height of his fame/self-importance.
Traffic
3/5
It's ok, quite like the guitar but too many tracks succumb to noodling. Doesn't quite escape the late sixties hippie ghetto.
Stereo MC's
4/5
Absolutely banging rap/house/pop from the mid-90s. How you cope with Rob's sarth London drawl will probably determine how many stars. Me - 4.
Super Furry Animals
4/5
4.5 stars. Starts with perhaps the two weakest tracks on the album and just builds and builds, culminating in the awesome Run Christian Run. Gorgeous harmonies and melodies, bonkers keyboard sounds at times, random drum machine interventions, cryptic lyrics...it's a brilliant album and shows how unambitious most bands are. We can write you a drop-dead ballad or an insanely catchy pop song, but we can do all this other stuff as well.
Youssou N'Dour
2/5
Absolutely unqualified to say whether this is in fact excellent or merely good background listening. Suspect for me the answer is somewhere between the two.
AC/DC
5/5
I'm going for this over BIB as the ultimate AC/DC album. Monster singles, quality throughout and I think Bon gives them an edge that Brian, thoroughly nice chap, doesn't have. Also the last album where there's a trace of the blues roll of their early years.
Fiona Apple
3/5
A good enough listen but as her debut seems a bit in thrall to Tori Amos' debut...
The Police
4/5
Any pop album worth its salt delivers four singles: here it's job done. (Bottle, Moon, Beds Too Big, Night). Do the rest match it? Not really. Hence the fouriest of four stars. Does it sound like it was recorded really quickly without a real album's worth of A-Grade material. Yes.
Frank Ocean
3/5
I get this was incredibly ahead of its time, and you can hear its influence on much of modern pop (The Wknd) but it only coalesces into an actual song from time to time. Is that an issue?
Teenage Fanclub
5/5
The Fannies were quite incorrectly swept up with Britpop but really they're quite a different beast, the holy marriage between Big Star, the Byrds and 80s us punk. The combination of harmony singing, classic pop song structures and crunchy guitar saw them through a decade-long set of classic albums of which this is the first, and in many ways the original that would be refined over 13, Grand Prix and Songs From... a four-strong run of albums to live with the best of them.
Animal Collective
3/5
I can understand why this has a lot of fives and ones. Hell I feel like giving it both these scores. It is an exercise on one level in opaqueness and production. Songs appear to be being played underwater at times. Many are soundscapes that while pleasant lack focus. But at its best - on closer Brother Sport and My Girls, it's how the Beach Boys might have sounded if they were into glitchy electronica. I looked at this album and it's 2007, making it one of the last albums I would buy before Spotify made it possible to hear a whole album instantly with no commitment to purchase. Like many other frustrating things about this album, I struggle to remember why I bought it, but there's enough intrigue here to keep it on the shelves. 3.5 but rounding down for calling yourself Geologist and Panda Bear.
Cocteau Twins
5/5
The first C Twins album on this list was from their later 'more straightforward' period on Fontana. This is perhaps the apex of their 4AD sound, adding a muscularity and thicker texture to the gossamer (compulsory CT word) soundscapes of the two next albums, and a more ethereal (2nd compulsory CT word) sound to the first two albums. In conclusion: the CT mk 1 sound in perfect balance.
Megadeth
3/5
you know this is vastly more listenable to than Anthrax or Slayer, and even early Metallica - all of whom have featured on this list. Not my cup of tea but 3 stars.
Mott The Hoople
3/5
everyone with wonderful radio one would be familiar with the three big MTH singles - ATY Dudes, Memphis (here) and Roll Away the Stone. Beyond these there's a workmanlike piece of seventies glam rock album craft on display, without perhaps the spark that would make them A-listers. Great listen.
The Offspring
2/5
This is just so cynical, the exact major label venn diagram meeting of Nirvana and Green Day. Even the obligatory ska track (awful).
Elvis Costello
3/5
EC has always crammed songs onto his albums, 14 or more - culminating in the vinyl pressing madness of Get Happy with 20 songs in 45 minutes. Here there are 15 songs but it's 57 minutes and boy would this album have been improved by some compression. Otherwise, it suffers from the 'McCartneys' - however much a return to form it is, it's not really offering anything not previously explored. A good enough listen (which cannot be said of all his output of the past 40 years) but inessential. If one of his first six albums is not on the list, hard to argue for this being better.
M.I.A.
4/5
I liked this more as it went on, she's got a great voice and a knack for a nagging tune. Loving the lo-fi early noughties beats. Hey if everyone who has ever said bad things was barred from this list it would probably be 500 albums to listen to.
John Martyn
3/5
I'm no John Martyn fan and find his vocal style a bit too much of a swallow to swallow. But this, which mixes his vocals much more down in a soundscape that certainly has a call to be the first ambient folk album, is a good listen.
Ghostface Killah
3/5
Nobody does that 'flipping through early seventies radio/TV late at night' sampling like Wu-tang, and this is a very solid solo effort that perhaps lacks the mystery and crazy mythology of the very best of Wu, while bringing plenty of the gangsta chicks, guns and drugs stuff.
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
4/5
Transition from early Nick: violence and death with violent music, to classic Nick: violent and death with beautiful music now complete. One star off for the length of O'Malleys bar.
Jeff Buckley
2/5
Listened to this several times and just don't get it, other than the falsetto, Leonard Cohen and the good looks.
4/5
blur were a group whose first three albums each represent a quantum leap forwards on their predecessor. This one in the middle sees them adopt a mod persona that they'd tweak further on Parklife. Three very strong singles, Chemical World a favourite of mind, and a sense of a band about to happen.
Ryan Adams
3/5
It's a good listen, with the Rawlings/Welch presence very obvious on a couple of tracks. This is the second album of his on the list and while a fine singer and songwriter, he just feels a bit generic to me. 2.5 really but Winding Wheel and Come Pick Me Up are strong enough to lift it to a three.
Pet Shop Boys
5/5
Neil Tennant was one of the first to discuss the idea of an 'imperial period' for any great artist, and this album unquestionably is the last of their run of the first five albums. Upbeat and heavily dance music based, it does lean heavily for its greatness on Go West, not so much covered as completed re-invented - joining It's A Sin and W End Boys as the PSB tracks that are actually overplayed.
The Bees
3/5
Around the turn of the millenium there were a number of artists whose music I can only describe as 'shambling' 'mumbly' 'acoustic crate digging' or even 'beanie hat and beard'. Gomez, Badly Drawn Boy, Beta Band (who are better than this) and it would seem The Bees. The tunes drift away towards and away from them here without much sticking, apart from on the noted Lying In The Snow here, which is lovely and drags the whole affair up to three stars. Also complete Starbucks vibes.
The Divine Comedy
4/5
Damn OTT orchestrations and lush Neil Hannon vocals are triggering quite a few here. The writer of the Father Ted theme and My Lovely Horse will forever get respect at mine, and these are just great Divine Comedy songs.
Hole
3/5
The nineties in a can, and fair play to CL and crew for not sticking out there in noiseland but making a bid for some mainstream alt-rock action. Video by David Fincher surely. Would prefer listening to this to the Red Hot Chilli Peppers for example, but it does smack of a lesser Smashing Pumpkins vibe at times.
G. Love & Special Sauce
2/5
I can imagine in a certain type of sweaty small venue this stuff would absolutely work live. On record it's too long, each song sounds similar to the last, and the sloppy sound and vocals get progressively more irritating. Then again, I'm not a big Red Hot Chilli Peppers fan or Fun Loving Criminals and this is pretty much the missing link between them.
George Jones
3/5
Not quite the thunder bolt that Loretta Lynn was, but another slice of seventies country that's a great listen. Always go for the uptempo numbers over the ballads.
Barry Adamson
3/5
A perfectly pleasant though inessential listen. Plenty of people have made soundtracks for imaginary films so dont' understand why people are getting so worked up. Does it belong on this list? I'm more exercised by ex-magazine bassist BA being in my mind the same person ex-XTC bassist Barry Andrews who made stone cold classic new wave single Rossmore Road.
Billie Holiday
3/5
The last album she recorded, and I'd prefer her with a small combo than orchestra, as with all jazz vocalists. But still a voice you could listen to singing the numbers from the phone book as the saying goes. Strong 3 stars.
4/5
A late-era masterpiece, so subtle, slight and wistful it practically disappears in the light. But also deeply beautiful. I'm a big fan of the eighties XTC, but this might well convert me to their later stuff.
David Ackles
1/5
Occasionally your devastatingly original hot take is shared by.....every other reviewer. Soundtrack for an imaginary musical.
Aerosmith
2/5
Oh jeez yes Walk This Way gives you two stars. But the rest of the album is so unreconstructed seventies rock it surely can only live on FM radio and shrivels and dies when removed from its natural habitat.
The Thrills
2/5
The reviews are a long list of soundalikes so no need to repeat these here. Just to say that this album is a charity shop classic in the UK and with The Kooks and Travis one of the very foremost examples of 'indie landfill' .
Adam & The Ants
4/5
What a great listen, irresistible singles and strong supporting album tracks. One of the great examples of self-invention in pop, Ant willing himself to be a megastar on the basis of surf guitar, chanting, double drum power and pop hooks. Those that burn twice as bright burn half as long, and Adam you have burned so very very bright. As Smash Hits might have said three years later.
Air
3/5
A nice enough soundtrack album, but doesn't nail the Moon Safari trick of making music with textures from library and easy listening sound like the most vital music in the world.
Brian Eno
5/5
Just a compelling listen all the way through, as Eno transitions from artrock to something else. Very easy five stars.
Minutemen
4/5
Really liked this, though split into 3 listens. You can hear how they influenced the Red Hot chilli Peppers and a lot of alternative that wanted a funky side. Will definitely re-listen and a discovery. It's not hardcore music folks, way more melodic and more varied, though other albums of theirs I gather get nearer to that.
Klaxons
2/5
Two great tracks: Golden Skans and a cover of Not Over, some lolcast vibes, Thomas Pynchon and the Mercury prize. All adding up to a brief career and two stars. joining M-People, Gomez, Speech Debelle and many others on the Mercury prize mis-step list.
Willie Colón & Rubén Blades
3/5
The first track is a bit of a false start as I am going wow! The disco/salsa album we have all been waiting for. This is not quite followed up in the rest of the album which is a very fine salsa album and has astonishing levels of musicianship wihtout being quite my thing. Still, 3 stars.
Radiohead
5/5
On its own terms a pretty flawless album, and such a giant leap forwards from the grunge-homage Pablo Honey. If only we could mark out of ten, it could be a 9 to leave room for OK Computer and In Rainbows.
Tom Waits
4/5
After several less than sparkling albums on this list (Swordfishtrombones, Nighthawks at the Diner) here's the one for us Waits civilians, in which his whiskey-and-gravel voice is put at the service of a set of quite brilliant self-penned tunes. No wonder that slightly less gravelly voiced Rod The Mod came calling.
Paul Revere & The Raiders
3/5
Mid-sixties garage/beat band fun. Really glad to hear this, and the Monkees didn't so much cover Stepping Stone as photocopy it. 3.5
Fleet Foxes
3/5
Ok they can definitely sing, and definitely can harmonise. But their tunes are a little dirgey and one-paced to really fly for me. So a generous three stars, certainly not more.
The Smashing Pumpkins
5/5
Sometimes too much is exactly right. Too many songs, too many long songs, too many guitar solos....but just like Physical Graffiti here more is more. Is it better than Siamese Dream? It's certainly bigger. The killer singles are actually more killer than on SD so maybe yes. Any reason not to give it five stars? Can't think of one.
Common
3/5
There are a lot of tracks here. 16 and only one that could be seen as a skit. While each one is a pretty good listen, over time the effect is dulled. Good call back to Ghetto Heaven tho.
Buck Owens
3/5
didn't hit me like the Loretta Lynn album I gave five stars to (and would have bought if it was ever on CD), but a very solid and listenable country album. I've enjoyed the country albums on this list.
Lloyd Cole And The Commotions
5/5
This album I know forwards, backwards (if you play it backwards it reveals satan’s golf tips), sideways. Sideways is such a Lloyd word.
Lloyd grew up in the same village my parents lived in. Hence I feel I have a special connection with the Perfect Skin hitmaker.
The first Lloyd vinyl I bought was the Forest Fire 12” and how delighted was I to discover lots of extra guitar solo compared to the radioplay version.
I love this album so much it joins those whose plays have to be strictly rationed. I firmly believe each piece of music has only a certain number of times you can hear it, no matter how good, before it’s worn out for you. Cases in point: Fairytale of New York. Heroes. Born To Run.
LLoydworld is a delightful place. He’s in a room. There’s a window, possibly a curtain flapping. The door is open. Sun slants in throught he blinds. Postcards are stuck to the wall. On the floor there’s a suitcase. It’s packed. Or not yet packed. Maybe his. Maybe the girl’s. She’s in a blue dress. Or a white one. She may have said something. Or have not said anything. She’s leaving. Or he is. Or one of them needs to. In the Deux Chevaux outside. It’s hot.
If I could give this album six stars I would.
Led Zeppelin
5/5
Toughie. If you stopped the clock at the end of side 3 (Ten Years Gone) this would be a straight five. But side 4 does see a drop in quality (Boogie with Stu most notably). The first three sides see their sound become even more polished, bigger - purified - perhaps with Kashmir as the ultimate statement of their studio sound. Side 4 is not as gob-smacking (Black Country Woman perhaps excepted) but I can't but round up from 4.6 to 5.
Isaac Hayes
4/5
One of the best soul albums ever made, and enormous versions of Walk on by and By the Time I get to Phoenix are not a second too long.
Neu!
4/5
This, particularly the more ambient side one, is motorik at its most accessible. Liking this a lot.
My Bloody Valentine
4/5
I'm a 100% shoegazer, and MBV offered a cosmically heavy version of that in the nineties. This is an album that came out of the blue 20 years later, and without changing too much is a great listen, distortion, layers and the Loveless sound - but rhythmically more varied and with some songs that -gasp - are almost straightforwardly unadorned. Won't convert the uniniated and not quite sure what it's doing on this list after their first two albums made it, but four from me.
Napalm Death
2/5
A classic Peel band. Not as in a classic band, but as in a classic case of 'does he really like this? Is he playing it because it's good for us to hear it? ' They got through a Peel session in under seven minutes, which leaves plenty of time for the pub.
Hookworms
3/5
It's Hooky! It's Wormy-ing (its way into your brain)! you know what I listened to this when it came out and it passed me by. This on a relisten is a terrific album, kind of what Mercury Rev might sound like if they came from Yorkshire. 2018 is a bit soon to judge if this really is one of the best albums every made though. 3.5 but too recent for a 4.
Jorge Ben Jor
3/5
Pretty good listen, and a good example (like Metal Machine Music) of nominative determinism in album titles.
Spiritualized
4/5
The ultimate expression of J Spaceman's mash-up of psychedelia, strings, gospel, guitar freak-outery. Possibly the greatest bespoke packaging referencing drugs ever, though swallowing a CD-sized pill after cracking that blister pack was a mother.
Drive Like Jehu
1/5
Screaming, check. Chainsaw guitars, check. Full on 100% rhythm section attack mode, check. One minute thirty songs. Absolute uncheck. If the Minutemen had spun their songs out to 7 minutes and DNOTD was 8 hours long it might be a bit like this. Hence one star, and one of my few DNF's
The Jam
5/5
Another album I can remember virtually ever note from, the first band I fell in love with, and probably my favourite Jam album, as well as in my top ten favourite albums ever. The first band I ever saw live. So they're unlikely to get less than 5 stars from me. Over time I think that Setting Songs does suffer from the weight of its 'concept', but here it's just eleven blistering tracks. My vinyl copy (purchased 2nd hand, teenage pocket money didn't go to much new vinyl) has English Rose missed off. Weller says its because the lyrics didn't mean much without the music. Me, its because the lyrics and music are both embarrassing and shouldn't be let out in public. Still, easily skipped and eleven tracks left.
Deee-Lite
3/5
If pop house was a thing (was it?) this would be one of the founding texts. Tho Groove In The Heart is one of the 1001 best tracks ever, like almost all early dance albums this has a degree of filler and just about bounces over the 3 star line. But if this is included then where, a Brit asks, is Betty Boo's seminal Boomania?
Neil Young
4/5
Being Neil Young in the mid-seventies was tough. Not tough enough to write another twelve beautiful tracks though.
Dennis Wilson
3/5
A good listen, some real quality tunes and arrangements - if seventies California singer-singerwriter was more my bag I would even consider a purchase. As it's not, 3.5 rounded down.
Crowded House
2/5
Nobody ever needs to hear Weather With You or Four Seasons again. CH appeared in the (UK) charts when so much more interesting stuff was going on - principally rave, that they appeared old-fashioned at the time. Sturdy, well-built but lacking anything to set the pulse racing. Perfectly listenable album, but feels a bit comfy slippers. 2.5 really but their ubiquity on radio is a round down for me.
Liz Phair
3/5
enjoyed this. The early nineties American indie rock sound in a can. A slightly shortage over 18 tracks of memorable tunes, but a solid 3.
Janet Jackson
3/5
This was a pretty listenable album from a time where not much commercial pop has aged well. Yes the dry as dust production and the Jam & Lewis sounds are of their time - but so is the production on the Beatles early albums. It's too long, even without the skits, and the last couple of songs tail off, but it delivers a fistful of pop classics beforehand.
FKA twigs
4/5
Lots on here triggered by this. Seems to me after a second listen a pretty compelling slice of 2010s pop. Hyperdub, PC music, lots of other influences but its a pretty singular vision. The space in this album is immense.
Alexander 'Skip' Spence
3/5
really interesting listen, and a sad life. Obvs parallels with Syd Barrett and Roky Erikson. But some solid songwriting, albeit here in a fragile and unfinished state - these were demos and had they had the full studio production take this might have been one of the great late sixties albums. As it is 3 stars.
Neil Young & Crazy Horse
4/5
This is a pretty good album - the CH rhythm section get in the pocket and do their stomping thing, NY has a couple of great solos and the overall grungy sound is on point for 1990. There's a goofy one, one looking back wistfully to the sixties, one where the guitar solo is at the start...the songwriting is pretty solid. So for the album a four starts. But why is it here? It's the seventh NY album on the list, not counting Buffalo Springfield and CSNY. No complaints that Everybody Knows.., Gold Rush, Harvest, On the Beach, Tonights the Night and Rust Never Sleeps are included. But this takes the spot that could have gone to (deep breath) Sleeps With Angels, Mirrorball,...Freedom...and Zuma. The first two cover off the 'godfather of grunge' angle to better effect, Freedom is a great 'return to form' and Zuma, just peerless. Against which Ragged Glory is great, but hardly glorious.
Joni Mitchell
4/5
Not much to say here. Not my personal favourite Joni album, I'd go backwards or forwards from here, but can see why it's her most-loved album and the gold standard for singer-songwriter confessional. 4.5
Gram Parsons
2/5
Less than the sum of its parts. Ex-Byrd goes full-on country and discovers future star Emmylou Harris then dies tragic early death. However I find the music underwhelming, despite multiple listens. In fact this time around more underwhelming than before.
Patti Smith
4/5
thrilling, infuriating, baffling - all of the above, but you will definitely have a sonic reaction to Horses. No 3-stars sitting on the fence here. I'm not quite all in but can imagine seeing her live around this time would be a total five, but it's a pretty wild ride, as much MC5 as Pistols (not really Pistols at all). One of the great debuts.
Happy Mondays
3/5
Lots of hate here for the Mondays. Entirely unjustified. Their shifty, slinky funk is evolving at light speed here on their second album, accompanied by Ryder's druggy take on the MES Northern truth-teller persona. WFL is just brilliant, and all they needed for stardom was to hook up with a great producer, which would happen in one of the greatest-ever non-album singles, the Madchester Rave On EP and in particular the club mix of Hallelujah. Their time in the sun might have been brief - from Hallelujah to s+++ting the bed with Yes Please is barely two years, but it was glorious.
Arcade Fire
4/5
This is a dark record - dark lyrics, dark album artwork and a dark intense sound. It works brilliantly when they connect with a tune that matches the scale of the arrangements, or where they take a sidestep into something looser. I think Suburbs (prev. reviewed) is in fact their masterpiece, and there's a bit more light let in.
Bill Evans Trio
4/5
Long meandering melodic lines, three instruments in complete communication (tri-alogue?). Fantastic.
My Bloody Valentine
4/5
Detuned guitars, the 'glide guitar' effect, breathy background vocals and melodies rising and falling out of a bed of noise. It's all here, but in an outline form that would be filled in (concreted over?) in Loveless. Here the songs are more conventional and could have been written by another band, the arrangements could already only be MBV. They'd bring the two together next time out.
Massive Attack
5/5
Blue Lines was such an incredible debut that Massive Attack do the sensible thing on their second album. Refine, enhance and dig in. Two stellar singles with female vocalist check. Moody Craig Armstrong instrumentals. check. Horace Andy. check. Drop the ball with a throwaway live cover. Okay not check. Still five stars for me as the consistency and quality over the first nine tracks is incredible.
The Residents
3/5
This is the third lowest rated album on the entire list, with only Throbbing Gristle and Einsturzende Neubauten below. Both could politely be called acquired tastes. This however is damn listenable. It's as ever a rifle through popular music filtered through the Residents barebones style. there's almost covers, tracks like Weight Lifting Lulu that are pretty poppy - a way easier listen than say Napalm Death who are two places higher and actual tunes (most of the time). Their first album is a tough listen I will give you, but this? Give in to the cheapy Casio and speeded-up vocals and there's lots to like. If you like this then can thoroughly recommend Third Reich N Roll (covers) and Eskimo for full-on original batsh*tness.
Laibach
2/5
Laibach are the teutonic equivalent of the Mike Flowers Orchestra, best experienced in singles form. Two cracking gag covers. The rest of their sturm and drang rather passes me by.
The Adverts
4/5
Champions League
Sex Pistols
Clash
Jam
Ramones
Europa League
Stanglers
Buzzcocks
Siouxsie and the Banshees
Conference
Damned
Stiff Little Fingers
Mid-table Safety
X-Ray Spex
Slits
Skids
Adverts
Sham 69
The Ruts
In trouble
Uk Subs
Relegation Places
vibrators
Generation X
Rezillos
Championship: Angelic Upstarts, 999,Chelsea etc etc.
This is actually a great album from the first spurt of punk. Three great singles, consistent song-writing and catch sloganeering. Four stars here.
Drive-By Truckers
3/5
I do like the DBT's as everybody should call them, but think on this list they would have been better served by Dirty South, Alabama Ass Whuppin or English Oceans. Crying out for an edit down to a single album this one, their songwriting and arrangements mean too many songs sound like the one three songs ago. Three stars but do go and listen to the others.
Fever Ray
4/5
One of a kind, poppy, bleak and dark, tuneful and with some extra-ordinary vocals. The album cover chimes perfectly. Did I lean into the Nordic/cold trope? Can't escape it. Four stars.
Marvin Gaye
5/5
A shoo-in for the quite short list of the best Motown albums (not comps) of all time. Marvel at the production, marvel at Gaye's singing. The lyrics are well - complicated. Though it is indeed about getting it on, its also (as in the reflective bitter end track) about the hurt as well. Also what a beanie hat.
The xx
4/5
Third time out and you can hear the band starting to pull in slightly different directions. The first track is almost a false start, as the overt dance beats are dialled back for the rest of the album. On Hold is a sad slow banger for the ages and like their first the second half is stronger than the first. Not surprised its been solo activity since this.
The Birthday Party
3/5
Yes this is a challenging listen, but yes sometimes that's good. If you include 'release the bats' (strictly a non-album single initially) then this is a solid three for screaming, bleeding guitars and all-round batshitness. Also an awesome cover by Ed Roth of Kustom Kulture fame.
Girls Against Boys
3/5
This was a great listen. Not sure I buy the 'American Fall' claims, but there are tunes, a great groove and a general motorik vibe that not much American music gets. Strong 3.5. Way better than most early-90s 'alternative rock' choices on this list.
The Stooges
4/5
It's 1969 ok. A strong four - but there's a ten minute psychedelic wigout to just kick it below 4.5
Cornershop
3/5
Great listen, if overlong. BOA here in the original not the Normal Cook version that everyone knows. Four stars over the first half, three over the second. Great 'taking it back' version of Norwegian Wood to close out. Such a late nineties album (in a good way). 3.5 but the length brings it down to a 3. Second Wolverhampton band on this list after Slade - no Mighty Lemon Drops or Babylon Zoo huh?
The Velvet Underground
5/5
The best album ever by a band who can barely play, fronted by a singer who can barely sing. European Son I can leave. Tracks 1-8 sets out the template for every subsequent band who has worn black and sunglasses. Like Bob, other people may actually play these songs better, but these are the originals.
Donovan
2/5
Bob was right.
Louis Prima
3/5
I'm on for a bit of jump jazz, a bit of novelty fifties humorous music - There's An Awful Lot of Coffee In Brazil being a favourite. This is short and sweet, a cortado if you like. Not more than three stars but hey I'm sure Louis is not bothered.
Bonnie Raitt
2/5
In a certain type of Hollywood film (often when the sophisticated city type(s) are dragged into The Real America through all sorts of mis-haps, think Thelma and Louise or Something Wild) there’s a windowless bar with a neon sign in the window and some pick up trucks in front. It’s hot, damn hot, Paris, Texas hot. Our heroes, as their battered sub-compact Toyota gives up the ghost, open the doors and peer through the gloom. They’re there to meet the one shady person who has the mcguffin it’s all about. They walk up to the bar nervously in their ruined city clothes and several men in hats and plaid shirts/sherpa jackets turn round from their stools. ‘A-a-a-beer please. Two actually’. In the corner of this bar even though it’s mid-afternoon is a small stage on which a band is churning out generic blues rock. Hey - Hollywood moves with the times right - it’s fronted by a woman. Nick of Time or Have A Heart over the closing credits.
Bert Jansch
3/5
It's ok, some of the guitar playing is nice, but it's the kind of one-man and his guitar folk that doesn't do that much for me though can see why others might like it.