My 1001 Albums Journey

Albums Rated

3.74

Average Rating

Complete

1021 albums remaining

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Taste Profile

1960

Favorite Decade

Folk

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5-Star Albums

1-Star Albums

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Albums

You Love More Than Most

Album	You	Global	Diff
Happy Sad Tim Buckley	5	2.78	+2.22
The Dreaming Kate Bush	5	2.97	+2.03
Music For The Jilted Generation The Prodigy	5	3.07	+1.93
No Other Gene Clark	5	3.18	+1.82
The Boatman's Call Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds	5	3.19	+1.81
Mr. Tambourine Man The Byrds	5	3.22	+1.78
Apocalypse 91… The Enemy Strikes Black Public Enemy	5	3.23	+1.77
Dry PJ Harvey	5	3.24	+1.76
Live At Leeds The Who	5	3.32	+1.68
There's No Place Like America Today Curtis Mayfield	5	3.37	+1.63

You Love Less Than Most

Album	You	Global	Diff
Smash The Offspring	1	3.37	-2.37
(Pronounced 'Leh-'Nérd 'Skin-'Nérd) Lynyrd Skynyrd	2	3.75	-1.75
Hotel California Eagles	2	3.59	-1.59
S&M Metallica	2	3.26	-1.26
The Renaissance Q-Tip	2	3.24	-1.24
Sweet Baby James James Taylor	2	3.24	-1.24
Marcus Garvey Burning Spear	2	3.19	-1.19
Dear Science TV On The Radio	2	3.16	-1.16
Devil Without A Cause Kid Rock	1	2.06	-1.06
Get Rich Or Die Tryin' 50 Cent	2	3.05	-1.05

Artists

Favorites

Artist	Albums	Average
Nick Drake	2	5
Bob Dylan	2	5

5-Star Albums (23)

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Popular Reviews

Dry

PJ Harvey · 2 likes

5/5

This was an easy assignment. Can't believe it's thirty years old already. Still a rocking hurricane wind tunnel, with no doubt or hesitation. How Polly came off the blocks this incandescent is still astonishing.

good kid, m.A.A.d city

Kendrick Lamar · 1 likes

3/5

Tasty baked goods between the ears, but the contrasting cock strutting gets wearing. Maybe a later KL will work for me.

1-Star Albums (2)

All Ratings

Californication

Red Hot Chili Peppers

3/5

3 20+ years later and still not feeling this is somehow their best, notorious as it is for the start of the Loudness Wars in mastering. BSSM and Mother's Milk are so much better. So much padding. It ends well, though... Even so would not miss it for another twenty years.

Funeral

Arcade Fire

5/5

This really holds up after 18 years. Euphoric at times, and the Neil Young like urgent fragility of Win's voice has never been deployed better since. Always a good medicine to thaw many a heart that's grown old and cynical.

Dry

PJ Harvey

5/5

Lady Soul

Aretha Franklin

5/5

I think I just heard the best version of People Get Ready. Ain't No Way is the deepest cut with the biggest emotional punch.

Heroes

David Bowie

5/5

Compulsory Bowie listening? All for it. On this occasion I worked out that Adam Buxton's Bowie impression is based entirely on the vocal mannerisms in Sons of the Silent Age.

The Low End Theory

A Tribe Called Quest

4/5

Moreish. I'm going back in.

16 Lovers Lane

The Go-Betweens

4/5

Need to revisit this asap. Pop sensibility steering well wide of sentimentality, spacious production values. Late 80s sophistopop minus the pretentiousness.

Happy Sad

Tim Buckley

5/5

Where has this been all my life? Astral Weeks via Kind of Blue, Stevie Wonder's Visions and Eddie Vedder. Not what I was expecting at all. Love it.

Elephant Mountain

The Youngbloods

3/5

Mostly uninspiring despite oodles of one of my favourite things: Wurlitzer electric piano. They pull a great save with final track Ride The Wind, though...

Microshift

Hookworms

2/5

This should have connected with me more: shimmery synths, Foals-style grooves, beta male vocals. It doesn't quite add up. And then you read the band dissolved almost immediately after this album's release due to sexual assault allegations against the lead singer.

Dear Science

TV On The Radio

2/5

Some potential here, but not grabbing me on first listen.

Frank

Amy Winehouse

5/5

This album is peak Amy for me. She has some fun with the inevitable Erykah Badu comparisons, but this is a bright new talent, rather than the significantly retro retooled Mark Ronson stuff. I can barely listen to Back to Black due to its ubiquity and idolatry but this? Forever.

Wish You Were Here

Pink Floyd

5/5

I was five when this was released and it made a huge impression on me even then. I have to avoid listening to it for months sometimes years to try and get back to that memory of deep discovery. As an adult I came to love Meddle most of all, but this still sits above TDSOTM for me.

Sunday At The Village Vanguard

Bill Evans Trio

4/5

Sublime and atmospheric. Alice in Wonderland especially

The Man Who

Travis

3/5

At the time of release, I'd kind of dismissed Travis as sitting comfortably in the sweet spot between Radiohead's High and Dry & Fake Plastic Trees. Yes, they're still fairly undemanding, but Fran's lyrics with subversive nods to Oasis (twice) and Beck suggest an edge I'd missed entirely before. Writing to Reach You packs a yearning in the chord progression of the chorus that now feels like the most poignant nostalgia. We've all aged 23 years since this came out, but sometimes it can feel like we jumped the decades overnight. I will be coming back here.

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

Wilco

3/5

There's some Grandaddy eclectic behaviour here but I need a few more listens to absorb.

Liege And Lief

Fairport Convention

3/5

A whole new genre created in one album from 1969. Impressive but still not quite there yet for me.

Bummed

Happy Mondays

2/5

While I get their significance in the Madchester Legend, thirty years on all I can hear is Special Brew INXS.

Here Are the Sonics

The Sonics

4/5

Refreshingly raw, Hamburg Beatles level rock and roll, everything pushed into the red. Must learn more.

The Velvet Underground

4/5

Must spend more time here. If anything more accessible than the debut. After Hours especially.

Pretzel Logic

Steely Dan

5/5

Smash

The Offspring

1/5

I am not the target market. Exuberant mediocrity.

Grace

Jeff Buckley

5/5

Actively avoided listening to this for a while as so many talent show voices had mangled Hallelujah so much. What a phenomenal talent, not a single duff track and even in the rockiest moments sounds intimate.

The White Album

Beatles

5/5

What can you say?!? It's the bloody White Album. 25 years ago I thought it was half full of filler, now ALL of it is essential.

Bizarre Ride II The Pharcyde

The Pharcyde

3/5

Quite a ride as advertised. The jazz and funk grooves are exceptional, the humour self deprecating and otherwise, but the misogyny has not so worn well. You could easily carbon date this to the early 90s.

Hotel California

Eagles

2/5

You can still smell the Brut on every track. Even though some of the components should click with this Steely Dan head, it's still not happening for me except with the title track. The smug macho stuff devoid of irony is a tougher sell now. And the outro of The Last Resort is interminable still.

Hard Again

Muddy Waters

4/5

Such a brilliantly filthy romp throughout. Only 13 years after the release of "Folk Singer" this feels so lived in, and raw.

Pink Moon

Nick Drake

5/5

An incredibly intimate follow up to the often over orchestrated Bryter Later, a beautiful mind laid bare and fragile.

Bringing It All Back Home

Bob Dylan

5/5

An album of huge contrasts from the profound to the brilliantly absurd.

Ten

Pearl Jam

4/5

31 years on and still a monster, one I've warmed too much more in my forties and fifties

There's No Place Like America Today

Curtis Mayfield

5/5

Feels like a mid-70s What's Going On. Spending more time here.

The Renaissance

Q-Tip

2/5

Samples and grooves are excellent, lyrics unfortunately not so eargrabbing. Shame.

Music For The Jilted Generation

The Prodigy

5/5

Peak Prodge, by far!

Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space

Spiritualized

4/5

Never heard this in full before but now appreciate why its spacerock gospel is loved so much. Borderline euphoria in contrast to extreme melancholy: what a mix!

Back At The Chicken Shack

Jimmy Smith

3/5

Smith's playing is so light and economic - a rarity in a lot of jazz - but feels like he's in danger of taking a back seat in his own band.

Mr. Tambourine Man

The Byrds

5/5

Too many favourite things here

Endtroducing.....

DJ Shadow

4/5

Known about this since '96 and only heard in full for the first time. Not what I was expecting at all. Incredibly immersive. A portal to another world.

No Other

Gene Clark

5/5

First heard this in the early 2000s. Mostly buried since '76. I'd take this over the Eagles any day.

Sweet Baby James

James Taylor

2/5

As much as the title track and Fire and Rain are undeniably classics, and considering his bitter battle with Warner's recovering decades of owed royalties...I always get the impression there's a very angry and cynical bastard singing the sweetest songs. I may be completely wrong, yet I can't shake the impression.

Apocalypse 91… The Enemy Strikes Black

Public Enemy

5/5

Last album of the imperial phase? Maybe. Still feeling every note and word of it? Yes.

Snivilisation

Orbital

3/5

This one still sticks out of the Orbital catalogue as their most experimental, as the dancefloor is cleared for more dystopian underscoring. Some great riffing on Kraftwerk's Radioactivity is in there, plus the speech samples of preachers keep up the oppressive culty feel. Easy to admire but for me hard to warm to. Hoping to encounter In Sides again on the 1001 journey.

Sound Affects

The Jam

3/5

First ever listen. Significant experimentation here in the midst of the hit singles, almost Prog in places!

Get Rich Or Die Tryin'

50 Cent

2/5

This was a tough journey. Relentless strutting and name dropping.

A Walk Across The Rooftops

The Blue Nile

4/5

Timeless sophistopop where so much of the magic is in the spaces. Tinseltown in the🏃‍♀️Rain: perhaps only Richard Hawley's Coles Corner gets close to the same fragile melancholy.

Highway 61 Revisited

Bob Dylan

5/5

I finally got Dylan when he started to make me laugh, rather than the background whine of my early childhood. I was sixteen when this finally opened the floodgates.

Bryter Layter

Nick Drake

5/5

In some ways over-orchestrated compared to FLL - time can only just be kind to the "hello trees" instrumentals, but Poor Boy and Northern Sky are sublime. Anyone else hear Hazey Jane I and think it anticipated Dire Straits by 8 years?

Murmur

R.E.M.

3/5

All the familiar kindling but this band doesn't ignite for me fully til Document

Live At Leeds

The Who

5/5

You are there!!

The Wall

Pink Floyd

4/5

Can't believe I first got immersed in this when I was nine years old. Probably scarred me for life. Gilmour brings the odd flash of brilliant sunshine to penetrate the Orwellian/Freudian misery woven by Waters. It does still hold together, perhaps surprisingly.

(Pronounced 'Leh-'Nérd 'Skin-'Nérd)

Lynyrd Skynyrd

2/5

Extremely competent but continues to not grab me. As for Freebird, impossible to hear without picturing a high Jenny (Robin Wright) pinballing around a balcony.

The Boatman's Call

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

5/5

A very easy assignment. Absolute classic from beginning to end.

Dusty In Memphis

Dusty Springfield

4/5

Buena Vista Social Club

3/5

A staple of my hi-fi salesman years. A recording of incredible faithfulness to live performance, and compelling stories of the musicians and their traditions...so why do I find it so wearing after the first half?

En-Tact

The Shamen

3/5

Surprised by how much I didn't hate this.

Devil Without A Cause

Kid Rock

1/5

An ordeal from beginning to end.

Marcus Garvey

Burning Spear

2/5

First listen ever and despite the superb production not connecting with me much at all

good kid, m.A.A.d city

Kendrick Lamar

3/5

Tasty baked goods between the ears, but the contrasting cock strutting gets wearing. Maybe a later KL will work for me.

The Dreaming

Kate Bush

5/5

I'm still with Hounds of Love for peak Kate, but is this truly her most experimental album? Yes.

Country Life

Roxy Music

4/5

Though long aware of the sleeve art's notoriety, I was fully expecting some more of the glam peacocking of For Your Pleasure, but arrived at much more introspective tunes, lush strings and a very different vocal style.

Crooked Rain Crooked Rain

Pavement

4/5

Private Dancer

Tina Turner

4/5

Odd that the tracks with more electronics hold up better than those with acoustic drums and guitars. Let's Stay Together holds its own in comparison with Al Green's original and the Heaven 17-boosted songs makes you wish it had been a consistent style across the album. Help! in particular still clangs heavy for me.

S&M

Metallica

2/5

You can sometimes have too much of a good thing. Two thirds of the time this sounds like tuning into two radio stations at once as the orchestra PLUS power chords is so dense. It works best in the "ballads" and Master of Puppets, but this is not one I return to often.

Vivid

Living Colour

4/5

Impressive debut, but they really hit their stride on Time's Up

Maverick A Strike

Finley Quaye

2/5

Decent musicianship and the Indie Rock/Reggae is... experimental. A dear and trusted friend recommended this album to me 25 years ago. He really shouldn't have. The two stars are for me committing to the project and getting through those 52 minutes again.

Straight Outta Compton

N.W.A.

5/5

Stardust

Willie Nelson

4/5

Surf's Up

The Beach Boys

4/5

I can't even hate on Student Demonstration Time, Disney Girls is lush and the rest: sublime.

Fetch The Bolt Cutters

Fiona Apple

4/5

Absolutely fearless, loud, real!