Mar 07 2025
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I Need to Start a Garden
Haley Heynderickx
*Very* reminiscent of Joni Mitchell, who's an artist that I never really quite got the hang of during the main run. I feel like I prefer singer-songwriter stuff when the arrangements are piano-based instead of guitar.
3
Mar 08 2025
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Mm..Food
MF DOOM
2004 was a really good year in music, this clearly included. Super fun! Seems like a lot of people get annoyed by the cartoon samples, but honestly it's like listening to someone laying the groundwork for how to do a youtube poop (this is a compliment).
5
Mar 09 2025
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Dimanche à Bamako
Amadou & Mariam
Appreciative of people putting more actual world music on the users list, especially for something like this where it’s truly a broad international collaboration
4
Mar 10 2025
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Afraid Of Sunlight
Marillion
Cannibal Surf Babe tricked me into thinking this would be a much better time than it was.
2
Mar 11 2025
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The Evil One
Roky Erickson
A lot of fun ideas and moves in this, all of which fail to transcend the extremely stale production sensibilities of the time
2
Mar 12 2025
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Squeezing Out Sparks
Graham Parker
Fucking outrageous, it's like he's doing an Elvis Costello impression for some reason. On the one hand, I guess mission accomplished from the original project that I can pick up on that now. On the other hand, all of Costello's six albums on there sounded identical to each other. The People wanted more of that in the feed?
2
Mar 13 2025
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Symbolic
Death
Shares some DNA with the Korns and the Slipknots of the world, elevated by having decent production/mixing
3
Mar 14 2025
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Kick
INXS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFyCPicGbXM
Honestly for coming out late 80s, this sounded relatively fresh
3
Mar 15 2025
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Don't Say No
Billy Squier
Go! Go! Power Rangers
3
Mar 16 2025
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World Of Echo
Arthur Russell
My head’s turned into an empty cavern. Sole occupant: one cello. Fun headphones listen, did not need to be over an hour.
3
Mar 17 2025
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You'd Prefer an Astronaut
Hum
Pretty solid alt-rock, and from decently early on, as far as that specific scene goes
4
Mar 18 2025
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Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum
Tally Hall
Wasn't really sure what to do with this until learning that the Actual Cannibal Shia LaBeouf guy was part of this group. It's ~EcLeCtIc~, you see.
I was a TMBG guy back in my youth, probably would have gone wild for this shit if I'd heard it when it came out
3
Mar 19 2025
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I Am
Earth, Wind & Fire
Get up and DANCE! Music that puts me in a very good mood
5
Mar 20 2025
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Emotional Mugger
Ty Segall
Midway through the 2010s was a really strong period of Garage/Psych rock. King Gizzard’s kind of evolved in the last ten years to take up Phish’s torch, but the rest of them for some reason haven’t really broken their Scene containment into much of a mainstream.
This one is very much part of all that stuff; space alien vocal affect aside, it leans lots more Garage than Psych. Pretty fun!
5
Mar 21 2025
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A Live One
Phish
Lol the people here are such babies about Phish.
Phish is a band that wasn’t on the original list at all. They deserved to have *exactly* one slot on there, and this is probably the best one to represent their whole deal, given the live-experience tape sharing schtick they had going on during their peak. It's got the arpeggios, it's got the distinctive guitar sound, it's got the white guy funk passages. The arrangements are complex and varied enough to pass the 2+ hour length of this *way* faster than a lot of the 75-minute entries from normal 90s bands. Sorry you guys met an annoying hippy once.
5
Mar 22 2025
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Transatlanticism
Death Cab for Cutie
Man this era of soft boy indie rock has been nonstop whiffs as it comes up. Flaming Lips couldn’t do it for me, these guys had no chance
2
Mar 23 2025
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From The Lions Mouth
The Sound
New Wave-adjacent. Gothy, but not in a fun way. It's like halfway between Joy Division and The Cure, and not as good as either
2
Mar 24 2025
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Gemstones
Adam Green
Pretty big gulf between what I thought this was going to be, and what it actually was. Kept me interested through the whole thing. Not minding what this scamp is getting up to
3
Mar 25 2025
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Carrie & Lowell
Sufjan Stevens
Pretty glad to have drawn this one on a dark, quiet, rainy morning.
4
Mar 26 2025
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Bleed American
Jimmy Eat World
Very fun album, which is weird because I hated Green Day, and this doesn't seem all that different. Mysteries for the ages
4
Mar 27 2025
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Souvlaki
Slowdive
On the better end of stuff I've heard from shoegaze: a genre I don't care for very much
3
Mar 28 2025
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People
The Burning Hell
I get that Whedon Voice hadn't yet worn people down in 2013, but this is insufferable in 2025. Lyrics are clumsy and trying too hard for "colloquial," and the vocalist can't pull off the Cake thing he's aiming for.
Honestly after checking the wikipedia for the band, "Trying Too Hard" is just kind of the issue in general. I like Trying Too Hard bands when they're applying that effort to the sound production & musicianship, but Mathias Kom's whole deal seems to be an overeducation in the *social* production of music, and the end result comes across like something like The Oatmeal, or any of those other comics that wants very badly to be relatable, so that you'll share it with your facebook friends (in 2013). More SEO than any kind of artistic statement. And apparently a lot of people like that kind of thing! I find it offputting.
1
Mar 29 2025
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McDonald and Giles
Ian McDonald
Didn't recognize the people on the cover or their names, but the vibe of the album cover had me bracing for like a simon & garfunkel sound. But no! It's a couple of King Crimson members doing a quick side thing! Good stuff.
5
Mar 30 2025
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Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit
Courtney Barnett
Solo acts/singer-songwriter music living or dying for me based entirely on the backing music. She did good work here
4
Mar 31 2025
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Brat
Charli xcx
Makes me think less about "the club" and more about being drunk and taking an uber home in NYC. I don't really care for this kind of music, but later book editions definitely gotta dip into some of their Techno budget to put more stuff like this in there.
2
Apr 01 2025
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Real Life
Joan As Police Woman
Solo acts/singer-songwriter music living or dying for me based entirely on how interesting I think the backing music is. This one bounced off me.
2
Apr 02 2025
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Version 2.0
Garbage
I loved their debut. This one's still grungy, but leans a lot more industrial on the B-side & has a kind of euro dance/pop stink on the A-side. Both directions are very Produced, and it's worse than what the first album was doing. Still liked it a lot!
5
Apr 03 2025
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MOMENTUM
Calibro 35
Reminds me of the Barry Adamson albums from the original list, but with more of a dub/trip hop flavor & less circus brass
4
Apr 04 2025
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Nurture
Porter Robinson
Stinks to live in a world where the wikipedia on this thing is talking about how this is a very emotive & personal album for Robinson, but all of my associations with this kind of music is, like, cab rides and twitch stream intermissions. The background radiation of overstimulating situations. New generation of elevator music. I didn’t even dislike it, I think I just have negative associations with where I’m likely to hear stuff like this out in the world
3
Apr 05 2025
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Mad Dogs & Englishmen
Joe Cocker
An hour-15 of pretty decent blues rock. I don't think this brought much to the table that the original list didn't cover, and there wasn't enough variety in the runtime to stop it wearing out its welcome
2
Apr 06 2025
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God Shuffled His Feet
Crash Test Dummies
There was a lot of stuff I’d missed in the 90s that I knew I was ignoring at the time. Crash Test Dummies is a weird one because I only heard about them last year, but everyone was talking like this was a big deal band at the time. Had to be there, apparently
3
Apr 07 2025
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22, A Million
Bon Iver
Comes in swinging, and then settles into kind of a "Dreamy" space. Would have preferred the alchemy lean harder toward the first mode, but overall it was pretty decent
3
Apr 08 2025
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Pony Express Record
Shudder To Think
I guess grunge lasted long enough that someone tried to get proggy with it. It's not a good match, this was a chore.
1
Apr 09 2025
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Bob Mould
Bob Mould
Ed Balls.
Hüsker Dü guy's solo work. Middle-of-the-road 90s alt-rock, doesn't have much new to bring to the table, and the new stuff it *does* bring gets a bit grating
3
Apr 10 2025
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Under The Pink
Tori Amos
I really like Tori Amos music : )
Singer-songwriter stuff is so much better when it's piano-based
4
Apr 11 2025
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Les deux doigts dans la prise
Les sheriff
This was a *bold* choice for a user submission, but it was a good one, this kicked ass. Rare long punk album, and on top of that it kept it interesting the whole time.
The original list + the user albums have really elevated how I feel about french music, all of their stuff has come across really well
4
Apr 12 2025
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Tomb
Angelo De Augustine
God I can't stand this kind of breathy vocal delivery. Awful headphones experience.
1
Apr 13 2025
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Give Up
The Postal Service
I was about to be very annoyed about these 00s indie singer guys all sounding the fucking same, but then I looked it up and it is literally the actual Death Cab guy. Forgiven.
I'm liking way more than Death Cab, it's got good beeps & boops
4
Apr 14 2025
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Hammersmith Odeon, London '75
Bruce Springsteen
Not minding it! Springsteen’s an artist where the original list was actually really helpful for learning to appreciate him a lot more.
3
Apr 15 2025
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The Rise And Fall Of A Midwest Princess
Chappell Roan
WAY more personality than brat.
Feminomenon is one of the most annoying songs I've heard in my life (writing "get it hot like papa john" into the CHORUS?! what is WRONG with you), but I actually liked the rest of it! Roan's one of the more interesting acts in pop music right now, and the original list should have more of this kind of thing on it.
4
Apr 16 2025
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Don't Throw Stones
THE SPORTS
Just kind of standard rock, with a bit of new wave sensibility creeping in. Sorta the general sound of 1979 distilled into 40 minutes. I dunno that this has brought much new or interesting to my life
2