Journey in Progress
Discovering music one album at a time
229
Albums Rated
3.52
Avg Rating
53
5-Star Albums
21%
Complete
860 albums remaining
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1.8
Per Week
914
Days Active
Reviews
229
Written
100%
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vs Global
0.22
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3.52
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Which era do you prefer?
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1960s
Favorite Decade
Post-punk
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6
1-Star Albums
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Rating Style
You Love More Than Most
Albums you rated higher than global average
| Album | You | Global | Diff |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scum | 5 | 2.07 | +2.93 |
| Basket of Light | 5 | 2.76 | +2.24 |
| Songs The Lord Taught Us | 5 | 2.84 | +2.16 |
| Music Has The Right To Children | 5 | 2.91 | +2.09 |
| Kick Out The Jams (Live) | 5 | 2.91 | +2.09 |
| AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted | 5 | 2.93 | +2.07 |
| The Last Of The True Believers | 5 | 2.95 | +2.05 |
| Viva Hate | 5 | 2.96 | +2.04 |
| A Date With The Everly Brothers | 5 | 2.96 | +2.04 |
| Signing Off | 5 | 2.98 | +2.02 |
You Love Less Than Most
Albums you rated lower than global average
| Album | You | Global | Diff |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brothers In Arms | 1 | 3.74 | -2.74 |
| Bat Out Of Hell | 1 | 3.45 | -2.45 |
| The Man Who | 1 | 3.01 | -2.01 |
| The Nightfly | 1 | 3 | -2 |
| Rapture | 1 | 2.94 | -1.94 |
| Want Two | 1 | 2.84 | -1.84 |
| American Idiot | 2 | 3.76 | -1.76 |
| Hot Fuss | 2 | 3.74 | -1.74 |
| Californication | 2 | 3.71 | -1.71 |
| The Joshua Tree | 2 | 3.67 | -1.67 |
Artist Analysis
Favorite Artists
Artists with 2+ albums and high weighted score
| Artist | Albums | Avg | Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Smiths | 3 | 5 | 4 |
| Simon & Garfunkel | 2 | 5 | 3.8 |
| T. Rex | 2 | 5 | 3.8 |
| Bruce Springsteen | 2 | 5 | 3.8 |
| Beatles | 3 | 4.33 | 3.67 |
5-Star Albums (53)
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Popular Reviews
Nanci Griffith
5/5
Holy fuck, I wasn’t expecting much from this album when I woke up this morning, and even less so after the opening bars of its first track. But there I was standing at a bus stop in baking heat wearing a Sisters of Mercy t-shirt, and this album made me completely forget the searing sun and almost reduced me to tears. It’s so fucking good. Griffiths’ voice is so uplifting, it’s majestic. The production is incredible. This album just shimmers from start to finish - with the title track and “Fly By Night” my personal highlights. Every note seems meticulously placed so as to evoke as much emotion as possible. This is a country pop masterpiece and the easiest 5 stars I’ve given out so far.
22 likes
Anita Baker
1/5
A very uninspired assortment of supermarket music. While Baker’s voice is powerful and bursting with emotion, this is somewhat undermined by the obnoxiously synthetic 80s production which capes every track in a layer of aural polythene. It’s hard to treat anything Baker sings about with any sincerity when she’s surrounded by such artificiality.
Additionally, I would argue the songs just aren’t there on this album and they don’t amount to anything remotely consequential. Why this is so acclaimed is beyond me. Not fun. Not interesting. Takes itself way too seriously. It’s a begrudging 1 out of 5 from me.
12 likes
Morrissey
5/5
There has never been, nor will there most likely ever be again, a pop star like Morrissey. Sure, there have been many icons in the history of popular music. But not a single one of them can lay claim to the same blend of nonchalant authenticity and unbridled star power embodied by the morose Mancunian.
A commonplace opinion in casual music parlance is the recognition of Morrissey’s lyrical genius as frontman of The Smiths, while also sidelining his solo works as proof of the law of diminishing returns. Written amid the literal ruins of his bands’ dissolution, Viva Hate delivers upon the undisputed potential for Morrissey to bridge that gap between eccentric 80s has-been to genuine pop stardom.
Produced and largely written by Stephen Street, with the enigmatic Vini Reilly serving as Moz’s creative foil in place of Johnny Marr, the album is not a radical departure from The Smiths’ brand of 60s infused jangle pop. And yet the flourishes of bossa-nova rhythms and spiralling sitar-sounding riffs give it just enough flavour to mark it out as a distinctly Morrissey affair. Couple all that with two bonafide hit singles (“Everyday is Like Sunday”, “Suedehead”) and you have yourself a winner.
This is just the platform for what I consider one of the frontman’s finest lyrical outings committed to record. From “Alsatian Cousin”‘s acrimonious tale of romantic scandal to the melancholic nostalgia of “Late Night, Maudlin Street”, there is no single lyricist who could ever get away with such genius lines as “Rejection is one thing, but rejection from a fool is cruel”. It’s the commonplace elevated to the level of the sublime that earmarks Morrissey as the single most important lyricist in pop music history - and that’s not hyperbole.
A few minor detractions however. Leaving aside the questionable tone of “Bengali in Platforms”, a song that’s bafflingly clumsy at best and downright racist at worst, Morrissey’s decision to remove “Ordinary Boys” in favour of a tinny demo of “Treat Me Like a Human Being” is beyond comprehension. The album is slightly front-loaded in its original running order, but this just draws out side 2 with a completely redundant skipper of a track.
Going off of my vinyl copy, this album is a masterpiece. Arguably a more true distillation of Morrissey the artist than any other album in his enviable discography. It’s hard to believe there were some who doubted his ability to survive the demise of one of Britain’s most beloved groups. But this album secured Morrissey’s relevance in pop culture (on and off) for the next 20-30 years. As one of my friend frequently puts it: “The guy’s a cunt. But he’s our cunt”.
11 likes
T. Rex
5/5
There isn’t a noticeable difference in approach between this record and Electric Warrior. In some respects, the tongue-in-cheek innuendo and downright silliness are amped up a bit (with track titles like “Baby Boomerang” and “Chariot Choogle” it’s clear Mark Bolan doesn’t take himself too seriously). Only someone as charismatic and unique as Bolan could pull off those eccentricities without falling into parody.
He achieves the delicate art of making glam rock a legitimate vehicle for chart success without compromising the music. That’s because these songs are simply so outstanding that they cannot be ignored. Behind the playful facade, there’s a top quality songwriter. Tony Visconti’s production is fleshed out a lot more on this record and it makes nearly every one of these tracks a winner. Although it spawned two chart hits in “Metal Guru” and “Telegram Sam”, album cuts like “Buick McKane” could easily have landed him on Top of the Pops. That’s how good this record is. Highly influential from an utterly singular character in the history of pop music.
5 likes
Motörhead
5/5
What a fucking rush. They don’t deviate much from this formula, but my god is their formula worth listening to. Their mission statement is as direct as their throttling brand of metal: We are Motörhead, and we play rock and roll.
It’s really remarkable how some records just consolidate the most perfect distillations of their genre - Ramones’ debut, Eno’s Another Green World and undeniably this one. Lemmy’s rock star charisma isn’t some exaggerated caricature, he fucking embodies every trope of the badass rocker in a completely authentic manner. And if you don’t like that, you can fuck off.
Even extremely subject matters on tracks like “Jailbait” can be read as a matter-of-fact narration of the full throttle lifestyle of this band. The songs and production still hold up today, and the oft wielded criticism that this record lacks diversity seems a bit redundant to me. There’s no point criticising this group for what they aren’t. They’re just Motörhead. And they play some exhilarating rock and roll.
Fav tracks: Shoot You In The Back, We Are The Roadcrew.
4 likes
1-Star Albums (6)
All Ratings
Pink Floyd
3/5
“I can’t think of anything else to say except…”
Sometimes I revisit a “classic” album dismissed by my younger self and manage to overcome any prejudice I might have held towards its genuine merits. However, few albums provoked stronger feelings of antipathy during my teenage years than this one - nothing about Pink Floyd’s grandiose posturing appealed to me at a point when I was hearing punk for the first time.
Listening to it for the first time, my opinion has only slightly changed. The meandering pace of this album is only somewhat offset by the pioneering sonic innovations put forward by DSOTM. At it’s best, the band’s revolutionary tendencies are captivating. At it’s worst, the production sounds downright cheesy, and the lyrical sentiments border on ham fisted (see the on-the-nose till drawer samples on the intro to Money).
I can definitely understand the album’s status among the pantheon of ‘classics’. In many ways this is the classic album par excellence. But the more I hear these canonised works the more I understand that an album’s status as a classic threatens to undermine its uniqueness. There’s nothing here as game-changing as what was being offered by Kraut-rock innovators like Can or Faust. DSOTM is seemingly a classic album precisely because of that fact. It’s self-fulfilling.
Jorge Ben Jor
4/5
This is why I do these sort of challenges. A very pleasant surprise from this off-the- radar gem. A seemingly bewildering array of influences (blues rock, bossa-nova and African hi-life) is balanced so brilliantly by the songwriting without ever sounding derivative. Will definitely be returning to this outstanding album.
The Flaming Lips
2/5
Not a good showing for concept albums so far…
This was a really meandering effort from a group I was only somewhat familiar with beforehand. While the kitsch quirkiness is often highlighted as one of the albums greatest strengths, it started grating on me almost immediately. Part of this is down to my inability to believe Wayne Coyne is actually playing it for laughs - he takes himself way too seriously which betrays the overt silliness of this record.
The one saving grace I had read from many other negative reviews was the track “Do You Realize??” on the latter half of the album. But there was no redemption to my ears, it falls into the same lumbering anonymity you would hear on a call centre waiting queue. In a word, bland.
Michael Kiwanuka
3/5
Absolutely okay - completely unnoteworthy upon first listen, the kind of music which musicians/music students fawn over because it doesn’t actually say a great deal with its complex chord changes. Not for me but I can appreciate the production on it without question.
Kanye West
4/5
I’m definitely being forced to confront a lot of musical hang-ups in this initial run of albums. It’s not exactly a unique opinion to hate on Kanye, and I certainly fall into the category of “detractor”. I’ve also held a lot of reservations about the style of contemporary hip-hop he has helped pioneer.
My opinion on Kanye remains unchanged. The guy is repellent and everything he stands for reinforces my puzzlement over his status as an artistic genius. This album is extremely underwhelming when it comes to lyrical content, and does nothing to convince me that hip-hop is held to a complete double-standard by its fans (and we all know why…). Even the more nuanced reflections on tracks like “Gorgeous” are undermined by the Kanye’s asinine commonplace observations.
He gives a lot of time on this album to guest artists as well, which offers some respite. However, a strange Stockholm
Syndrome began to set in during these prolonged absences and I actually missed the guy’s presence on tracks. And then I realised this album is a real grower in terms of its appeal.
Complementing the production is a bit of a given, but it really is spectacular (particularly on “Runaway”, “Monster” and “POWER”). And in that regard I have gained a new appreciation of Kanye as an artist. He unquestionably embodies the hypocrisy and contradictions of his genre, but he’s more of a deliberate conduit than an unwitting victim. I refuse to afford him the luxury of attributing his vacuous artistic sentiment to the refuge of ironic provocation or iconoclasm. Kanye stands for nothing consequential. But there’s something extremely vital about this album which I cannot get away from, and it’s completely down to his singular talent.
100% will revisit in the future.
Bob Marley & The Wailers
5/5
Reggae doesn’t get much better than this. Catch a Fire will always be my favourite Marley album but this is a seminal album in its own right. Definitely prefer the version of No Woman, No Cry on this album.
Neil Young
3/5
Pretty much as I had expected from
the reviews: a flawed masterpiece. The orchestra sections don’t gel with Young’s polarising voice, but folky-er tracks like “The Needle and the Damage Done” are great. Solid album which is underwhelming in some parts, and excellent in others.
4/5
I wanted to hate this album so much. In principle, it’s the absolute antithesis of everything I love about music - overblown track lengths, virtuoso wankery and unbearably indulgent lyrical content. But I simply could not deny this album it’s classic status.
Most of my enjoyment of this album boils down to one facet: Steve Howe. His guitar playing is undeniably brilliant, balancing virtuosity and innovation whilst also serving the actual songs. It’s a balance which definitely falters periodically, but this is true of the album as a whole - particularly on the first and last tracks.
The second track was unquestionably my favourite, with a folk-infused opening which I absolutely loved. There are moments in which the production conforms to the cheesy archetype of prog rock calcified in my thinking. But even then, there are some sounds on this album which really are ahead of anything I’ve heard in the genre.
Testament to this album’s intrigue for me is the fact that I actually listened to it a second time in the same day just to make sure I wasn’t imagining things, desperately scrambling for a reason to take a couple more stars off. But alas…
B.B. King
3/5
Interesting for a blues album I guess.
Missy Elliott
2/5
Can see the appeal and Timbaland’s production is stellar (simultaneously dated and ahead of its time), but the length of the album and a number of its tracks made this a bit of a chore.
Marty Robbins
4/5
Culturally significant, get me to the nearest saloon.
Massive Attack
4/5
This album pretty much receives the same verdict regardless of who’s reviewing it: brilliant, but not quite Mezzanine or Blue Lines. Overall, I’d agree with this but Protection absolutely deserves to be on this list. Tracey Thorn’s presence on the opening track immediately had me hooked and “Three” is one of my favourite Massive Attack songs. There are definitely some moments when the music becomes a bit background (as with their later soundtrack work), and the live cover of “Light My Fire” is a bit puzzling. But this is a great chill-out album, never the same experience two listens in a row.
Nanci Griffith
5/5
Holy fuck, I wasn’t expecting much from this album when I woke up this morning, and even less so after the opening bars of its first track. But there I was standing at a bus stop in baking heat wearing a Sisters of Mercy t-shirt, and this album made me completely forget the searing sun and almost reduced me to tears. It’s so fucking good. Griffiths’ voice is so uplifting, it’s majestic. The production is incredible. This album just shimmers from start to finish - with the title track and “Fly By Night” my personal highlights. Every note seems meticulously placed so as to evoke as much emotion as possible. This is a country pop masterpiece and the easiest 5 stars I’ve given out so far.
Queens of the Stone Age
3/5
Think like most people I’m a bit confused as to why this album is on the list. I actually really like the guitar tone and the pounding song structures which Josh Homme’s riffy playing facilitates. But nevertheless a strange inclusion. My only rationale is that it showcases a relatively new approach to hard rock/stoner rock. But no more so than Homme’s work with Kyuss. An enjoyable listen nonetheless .
Creedence Clearwater Revival
4/5
Really good swamp rock. John Fogharty’s guitar tone is worth the price of admission alone.
Buena Vista Social Club
5/5
Great vibe throughout. Musicianship and cultural importance meets on this album. Sometimes the impact outstrips the actual music and this is one such case. Deservedly considered a classic.
Culture Club
2/5
This is a pretty superfluous album. Ubiquitous 80s pop, and not of the remarkable sort. There are a couple of decent tracks but not enough to make this an album you MUST listen to. Boy George’s pioneering fashion seals a two star verdict.
Billie Holiday
2/5
Not really keen on this one. The instrumentation is extremely uninspired and frankly dated, to such an extent that the initial intrigue of Holiday’s singular vocal is quickly diminished. Her talent is inescapable, but the songs just ain’t here on this album.
Fugazi
5/5
There a fewer bands who truly mattered to its fans more than this one. And it’s easy to see why on the strength of this album. The guitar work is enthralling and surprising. The song structures always catch you off guard without sacrificing a hook or melody, though there are some which leave more of an impression than others. In fact, there are few album openers as fraught with tension and engagement as “Turnover”. Another favourite of mine is “Merchandise” which gives Ian Mackaye the necessary soap box to berate and animate you into action. The comparisons to GoF’s Solid Gold are justified to an extent, but it’s clear that Fugazi’s pop sensibility was a lot less pronounced than their English predecessors. Nevertheless, it is there and it’s to the overall benefit of the album’s flow. I was in-between 4 and 5 stars for this one but I’m going to go with the maximum rating in the end for what this band stood for - a musical and social revolution.
Guided By Voices
4/5
Cleaners From Venus meets the Replacements. What’s not to like?
The Smiths
5/5
Impossible to be impartial with this band but that’s not really a problem when you hear how good they are. This album, like almost everything The Smiths put out, is a pop masterpiece. Plain and simple.
From the very first track Johnny Marr’s ambition to move away from the domain of jangle pop into a more expansive sound impresses itself. In fact this record in some respects is the full realisation of everything The Smiths wanted to be. Not beholden to the past but greatly indebted to it. Also noteworthy is the surprisingly abstract, though no less literate, lyrical content of Morrissey. So much can be said about the enigmatic frontman which might best be saved for another of his albums. But unquestionably he raised the bar for lyrical contemplation in pop music, and in many ways contemporary music criticism is centred around considerations of his style, and the droves of imitators he spawned.
An undeniably singular pop group who have never been rivalled.
Jimmy Smith
4/5
Really great stuff. What’s noticeable is how Smith so masterfully concedes the limelight to Burrell and especially Turrentine on so much of this album. There’s always something of a ceiling for jazz in my eyes, but there’s no denying this is a toe-rapper.
James Taylor
2/5
My dad once described James Taylor as “that guy who can’t wait to bring out his acoustic guitar at a party”.
Not for me. Best songs: Sunny Skies, Blossom
Ice Cube
5/5
Wow. This is just pure energy. Everything I like about hip-hop and more. Ice Cube really was at the top of his game here and the soul funk beats are just sublime. A word on the album’s misogyny. It’s a bit of a commonplace to diagnose this symptom in hip hop, but interestingly while “You Can’t Fade Me” unquestionably leaves a bad taste in the mouth, it exists in this strange tension alongside “It’s a Man’s World” towards the end of the album. That is truly the kind of confrontational paradox that this genre often avoids. In a word: masterpiece.
Led Zeppelin
4/5
I’ll confess to never having been to keen on Zep’s bluesier cuts. To my surprise however, this album demonstrates a versatility and nuance that I thought beyond this band. Side 2 of this album in particular really won me round. The folky stuff is really quite outstanding - sometimes understated and atmospheric before really indulging in some grandiose elements. Thoroughly enjoyed this, though Plant’s voice begins to grate after a while.
Rufus Wainwright
1/5
Irremediably dull. He probably thinks the idea of “Baroque Pop” is high concept art. It’s actually hokey as fuck.
Carole King
5/5
A songwriting powerhouse who was well ahead of her time. There is a consistency on this album which delivers top class song craft on nearly every track. The undeniable highlight for me is “It’s Too Late”, with its anguished chorus and gorgeous instrumentation.
Tom Waits
4/5
The first Tom Waits album on this run. I had previously heard stuff like Blue Valentine but wasn’t too keen on it. Can’t say the same about this one though. It’s brilliant. Much has been said about the stripped back sound on this record but I think this is where Waits’ voice finds its natural backdrop. Really enjoyed this record and looking forward to giving a second chance to some other bits in his catalogue.
David Bowie
3/5
Not the album that will change my mind on Bowie. An artist who I just cannot get my head around sometimes. That being said, listening to this one in a more objective frame of mind, I can definitely see the innovation he brings to popular music. “Fill Your Heart” is a particular highlight for me, along with the absolute monster tune that is “Queen Bitch”. A really good album with a lot of forward-thinking songwriting but which has nevertheless been dulled somewhat by the passage of time.
Sonic Youth
4/5
Album 30 on my run through this list and only the second which I actually have in my record collection.
Consulting some of the other reviews, I’m not at all surprised how many detractors this album, and Sonic Youth in general, provokes. Ironically, those well-trodden platitudes about the pretentious art school wankery and rebarbative musical structures are far more banal than anything you’ll ever hear by this groundbreaking band. And this is nowhere near their finest work…
That being said this album is unquestionably the go-to entry point for Sonic Youth. One apposite commonplace you often hear regarding this album is the noticeably more melodic overtones on this record. Taking its cues from Daydream Nation, Goo subtly amplifies the band’s pop sensibilities on a trajectory which they would continue to follow for the next decade.
That being said, this accessibility is a relative quantity. The band don’t entirely compromise their avant garde fundamentals and nowhere is this more present on songs like “Mote” - bookending its hooky, punk rush with aural assaults of feedback and interminable drones in keeping with the band’s ethos.
Perhaps the reason why I nevertheless remain somewhat indifferent towards this album (in light of my adoration for albums like “Bad Moon Rising” and “Evol”) can be traced back to its indeterminate artistic vision. It’s not as punishing or challenging as their most experimental works nor as melodically captivating as their later albums. In a way that’s what makes it such a unique record in the band’s discography; the album against which you measure your preference for Sonic Youth’s command of otherworldly distortions of pop music paradigms by way of ungodly noise, or their acclaimed sense of songcraft.
Either way, this album more than deserves to be on this list.
The Cramps
5/5
Not content with merely subverting the conventions of punk music to incorporate obscure relics of low-brow white trash culture, The Cramps proceed to beat you over the head with their new concoction named Psychobilly.
Leaving aside my prior adoration of this group’s catalogue, I expected this album to draw criticism for a lack of variation in their style of musical attack. But such trifles simply don’t enter my thinking while Lux Interior breathlessly splutters and yelps over Poison Ivy’s spidery guitar lines - her sensually twangy solo in the midst of the absurd chaos of “Garbageman” is the precise moment I fell in love with this group.
Whatever you think about this genre of music, its importance is absolutely irrefutable. The Cramps took one look at the pristine image of middle class America in 1980 and instead embraced its concealed obverse, its Mr Hyde, contorting the authentic fantasy of rockabilly USA.
Whatever their formula lacks in subtlety, it matters. Profoundly.
Joni Mitchell
5/5
Naturally, with Joni Mitchell’s current Spotify exodus, listening to this album wasn’t the most convenient experience (I had to stick on a copy we had at the record shop where I work). But my god was it worth it.
I wasn’t at all familiar with a great deal of her work beforehand, but I’ll certainly be going back to this one.
It’s hard to describe exactly what makes Mitchell’s songwriting so unique, but as I listened I was totally gripped by her sense of melody. It seems like she has the ability to change the entire mood of a song with the most deft usage of harmonic changes. Most of these songs felt almost impressionistic in their structure. Like Debussy meets Fairport Convention or Pentangle. The jazz flourishes are here too but not quite as pronounced as critics have made them out to be. With the exception of Mitchell’s gorgeous take on Waddell Gray’s “Twisted”, her folk roots permeate most of the album’s run time.
I was wavering between a 4 and a 5 on this one (there is a bit of a lull towards the middle of side 2 which drags slightly) but after a couple of listens anything less than full marks would be a travesty.
Songwriting, production and emotion - it’s all here on this album.
The Velvet Underground
5/5
Has to be a 5 BUT with major qualifications. This album is nowhere near the Velvet Underground’s best. The extremely rough production is simultaneously this album’s greatest strength and its weakness. The songs themselves definitely hit the mark, even if time has somewhat blunted their edge. You get the impression on tracks like the straightforward chugging rocker “Run Run Run” that Lou Reed is intentionally trying to sabotage any semblance of formality in their melodies - and that I guess is the appeal of this record.
But here’s the other thing, this album came out in 1966!! That’s utterly astonishing. There are sounds on this record committed to vinyl about 20 years before they had any right to be. As far as influential albums go, there are few which can measure up to this. Ramones, My Bloody Valentine, Jesus and Mary Chain and the Fall all trace their heritage back to here. It changed the landscape in such a way that, regardless of any technical shortcomings on this record, it is both aesthetically and sonically one of the most important albums ever.
The B-52's
5/5
One of the greatest debut albums of all time. Beneath the emphatic quirkiness of this band’s aesthetic, reappropriating the most eccentric elements of 50s and 60s fashion, there is a sound which is totally unique to the B-52s. Ricky Wilson’s guitar hooks lie at the heart of what made their initial run of albums so great, but every member of this band brings something vital to these songs. The chances of these 5 wacky individuals finding each other belongs to the realms of fate - if you remove any one of them, you lose something essential to the band’s sound.
“Lava” and “6060842” are my personal highlights, but I can’t fault this album in any way. It’s the perfect realisation of a sound and aesthetic which would influence the next decade of alternative culture so profoundly. “Rock Lobster” has slightly consigned this band to the realm of novelty, but while they don’t take themselves seriously, their music certainly should be.
This is the fourth perfect score I’ve given out in a row, but it’s also the most deserving of any of the 33 albums I’ve reviewed so far. The B-52s truly were the greatest little dance band around.
Steve Earle
2/5
Not a terrible album but he’s no Springsteen. Great guitar sound but barely a minute in to the album you’re bombarded with lines of indiscernible country babble populated by the occasional Southern town (“howdy dowdy Tennessee”). The earnest songwriting is definitely charming and it’s something which has pleasantly surprised me about this style of country pop so far on this list. But this ain’t top tier.
Dire Straits
1/5
Guitar George may know all the chords, but he has fuck all idea what to do with them on this album.
Pretty undistinguished 80s fm rock clogging up the airwaves for most of the decade. I did like the longer instrumentals, and the two singles are fine. But this is just a seriously dull listen.
Basement Jaxx
3/5
Have to give this album a lot of credit for trying to shake up the genre and rid it of its “close-minded” tropes. In this regard, the album is at least partially successful, although it does contain a lot of nondescript dance tracks. My personal highlight was “Always Be There”, and I’ll definitely be going back for a third or fourth listen.
Cat Stevens
3/5
Firstly, no one can argue that Cat Stevens has a truly outstanding voice. It’s powerfully vulnerable and elevates him above the rabble of bland folk singer-songwriters of the era. This album just didn’t really do it for me overall, however. The great tracks speak for themselves but it didn’t really grab my attention for the whole run time. Will definitely give it a second listen.
The Roots
3/5
The hip-hop albums I’ve encountered so far on this run have really pleasantly surprised me, so much so that I had very high expectations for this one. It doesn’t entirely deliver.
For starters, the album length (over an hour long) made this quite a difficult listen. I know this isn’t uncommon for the genre, but nevertheless it doesn’t flow coherently throughout. The energetic opening few tracks are somewhat halted by quite a few long dirges (though the 10-minute “Water” is one of my favourites on the album).
Much praise should also be given for The Roots’ experimentation with this record, fusing funk-rock elements with completely esoteric sounds in a very unique manner. I will have to return to this one for another listen, even if it takes an hour-long slog to listen through it in one sitting.
Barry Adamson
4/5
A very accomplished album from an extremely talented guy. I get the impression from other reviews that most people were probably unaware of Barry Adamson before listening to this. As a long time admirer of his work with Magazine, I have to confess to being less familiar with his solo work, though I knew it always slanted more towards soundtrack work (for films, it should be added, which were never made).
The album erects a sort of moving backdrop across its run time, almost like snapshots into a variety of film scenes which never quite form a coherent whole. One minute it’s a sensual neo-noir crime scene, the next a sinister foreboding befitting a psychological thriller.
If, in this regard, Adamson is equal parts musician and illustrator here, then it might be argued that this album does the musical equivalent of labouring this point on certain tracks. But this album’s diversity is ultimately never too disparate as to feel incoherent.
Plus, it has Billy Mackenzie doing vocals on “Achieved in The Valley in the Dolls” so it’s a winner for me.
Anita Baker
1/5
A very uninspired assortment of supermarket music. While Baker’s voice is powerful and bursting with emotion, this is somewhat undermined by the obnoxiously synthetic 80s production which capes every track in a layer of aural polythene. It’s hard to treat anything Baker sings about with any sincerity when she’s surrounded by such artificiality.
Additionally, I would argue the songs just aren’t there on this album and they don’t amount to anything remotely consequential. Why this is so acclaimed is beyond me. Not fun. Not interesting. Takes itself way too seriously. It’s a begrudging 1 out of 5 from me.
Red Hot Chili Peppers
2/5
I really tried my best to be objective with this album but fuck me the Red Hot Chilli Peppers are just the lamest fucking band around. I don’t care what anyone says, this band caters to two audiences with their tactless brand of dumbass dad rock: bank managers/ insurance brokers who let loose to Californication after a hard day at the office; and (worst of all) musicians whose fixation on Frusciante and Flea’s undoubted technical abilities completely obfuscates from the inanity of the music they produce.
Oh, and kids. Kids for whom a shirtless Anthony Kiedis flailing around like a jackass is the coolest thing ever before developing a thing called self-awareness.
Truth is, I was one of those kids and I adored RHCP for a brief period of my adolescence. But looking back I see them for what they are: painfully safe, totally uninspired fm rock. This album does nothing to change that fact. While I would even go so far as to say a couple of these tracks actually grew on me, the majority of this album is just so generic that no amount of intricate guitar work or flappy slappy bass guitar can make up for its shortcomings.
Frusciante and Flea would probably flourish in another band (the former’s first solo album emphasises that point). But here they just play it so safe and, to their credit, they sold plenty of records. But I was astonished to see how little criticism emerged in the reviews of this asinine jabroni douche rock.
Whatever semblance of innovation this group may have had as a rapid-fire punk/funk outfit had long vanished by this stage in their career. I do dig the artwork though, and “Parallel Universe” was a pleasant surprise. So it’s two stars. But fuck this band.
AC/DC
3/5
It’s hard not to be impressed by Angus Young’s riff work on this album - very intuitive and extremely creative given the very narrow parameters this band set themselves. There’s a couple of real classics on this record, a few stinkers too. Brian Johnson’s vocals are just as annoying as Bon Scott’s, however, and that’s what ultimately prevents me from enjoying AC/DC’s work as much as say Motorhead or Thin Lizzy. A really good album on the whole.
Cypress Hill
5/5
From the very first track, the landmark significance of this album impresses itself on you. Just an outstanding debut which doesn’t overstay its welcome, as with so many of its contemporaries and imitators. Infectious beats, catchy hooks - a hip-hop masterpiece without question.
Minutemen
4/5
This album is a total smorgasbord of Punk-Jazz fusion rock delivered across 80+ tracks at breakneck speed. I do think that the jazz thing is a bit overstated however. Arguably, Minutemen’s most overt loan from that genre is the way in which the most incongruous licks and rhythms suddenly find their place within a song without you even realising. An album I will definitely return to, even if it does lean quite heavily into Gang of Four/Pop Group territory as a precursor to the sort of unpalatable math rock I presently abhor. Really great stuff!
Simon & Garfunkel
5/5
Was starting to get a bit scunnered with the singer-songwriter genre. While these artists often contributed indisputable classics to the canon of popular music, their sonic palette often remains too circumscribed to my ear (not a criticism per se, but a simple reality of the genre).
That categorically was NOT the case with this album. 28 minutes of pure pop genius (with the exception of the drudgery of “Scarborough Fair”). Paul Simon is a songwriting juggernaut and this album is a perfect showcase of that. In spite of its brief run time, this record leaves a considerable impression, moving between sombre folk to almost Velvet Underground like chugging rockers - Simon’s versatility is incredible.
Loved this record, definitely going to get it on vinyl.
Sleater-Kinney
2/5
An absolutely okay listen. Some decent hooks here and there; political message I’m greatly sympathetic to and really good production.
And yet, this album quickly became background. The sentiments of the Riot Grrl movement, while of incredible social importance, lose a lot of their edge in favour of lyrical tropes. Yes, their preoccupation with women’s empowerment was vital, but I guess there’s only so many ways you can articulate that without recurring to extremely ham-fisted preaching.
Similarly, (I think) Corrin Tucker’s voice sounded totally incongruous on this record. For a genre which advocated sincerity and conviction, her sanitised warbling conveyed anything but that.
Overall, a decent record which has aged well in some respects, and poorly in others.
Tears For Fears
5/5
An outstanding gem of 80s pop music. Was already super familiar with Tears for Fears before this album, but an entrenched love of their first album The Hurting had somewhat sidelined their follow up in my estimations. Safe to say, I’m converted.
Given the now sacrosanct status held by this album’s two biggest singles “Shout” and “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” , it’s easy to forget just how much of an uphill battle the band faced in 1985 to obtain the critical acclaim the unquestionably deserved. Their brand of guitar infused new wave synth pop mixed with brutally honest reflections on mental anguish was met with indifference (or downright derision) from the music press, who deemed the whole thing pretentious. This album soon silenced many of their doubters.
The formula is not greatly changed from The Hurting, but is far more ambitious on the production front. Whereas The Hurting retreated into the abysmal depths of torment, on this album the songs sprawl and soar with a defiant arrogance, as their lyrics desperately clutch to a fleeting but vital optimism - these guys were outstanding songwriters, and they knew it. This linear interpretation of Tears For Fears first two records is far from novel, but it’s inescapable when listening to both records.
The outstanding production on this record accentuates the outstanding songwriting on this record, without consigning it to the realm of quirky 80s curiosity. Songs like the aforementioned “Shout” sound remarkably vital in a way that Dire Straits or Culture Club do not. To say that this record stands the test of time is to say the tower in Pisa stands on an incline. It’s really incredible.
That being said, the overall experience of this record is perhaps not as immediately impactful as their debut effort. The drawn-out song structures stilt the flow of the record, though the atmosphere created on this album perfectly compliments the band’s brooding self-analyses. It’s a minor complaint on a truly exceptional album.
If there were half stars available, I’d probably settle on 4.5 - but there isn’t, and I feel this record deserves better than just a 4. So it’s a well-deserved 5 stars from me.
Belle & Sebastian
3/5
To dedicate more than a couple of sentences to this album would be disproportionate to the impression it left on me. A pleasant if unremarkable listen.
The Rolling Stones
4/5
Exceeded my expectations to be honest. The Stones seemed to be on to something with this album, the rootsy blues mixed with a pop sensibility seemed like a formula for success.
The actual production is diverse enough to keep the album interesting, and tracks like the ominous “Gimme Shelter” and “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” form part of the canon of rock and/or roll. On the whole, a very decent album.
Mercury Rev
2/5
A bit of a damp squib to cap off 50 albums of this project. Seen the Flaming Lips comparisons from many reviewers and immediately feared the worst. As it happens, it’s not as bad as that. But it’s still very meandering and dull for the most part. Doubt I’d ever return to this one.
The Soft Boys
5/5
Unbelievably good album. I’ll confess, I had no idea Robyn Hitchcock was involved with this band before listening this album. But it’s no surprise when the very first track is a hook-laden pop gem like “I Wanna Destroy You”. From there on out this album is an infectiously good listen brimming equally with the adrenaline rush of punk as with the surreal quirkiness of 60s psychedelia, all anchored by Hitchcock’s peerless pop sensibility.
Even as the band quite openly flaunt their influences in every Byrds-like jangle or eccentric witticism, this album manages to sound completely modern. Even more than that, it actually represents the nexus between punk and jangle-pop which would dominate on college radio for the subsequent decade. I always thought that accolade belonged only to Pretenders’ debut, but this album has also stood the test of time. A surprise 5/5 from me…
P.D. - Kimberley Rew’s guitar playing on this record is astonishingly good. Amazing record on all fronts.
Travis
1/5
Unforgivably boring elevator rock. Nothing noteworthy about anything on this album besides Travis’ clear admiration for lumbering Radiohead tracks, and I continue to be mystified by the success of its single. A really sub-par representation of Scotland’s contribution to popular music.
The Velvet Underground
4/5
Second Velvet Underground record so far and I have to say I’ve thoroughly enjoyed both. This album is a bit more subdued and introspective than their raucous debut, but it’s a pleasant listen nonetheless and it shows that this group were so much more than a one trick pony.
John Cale’s absence is notable on this one, there isn’t nearly as much experimentation. However I don’t think it’s fair to say that the band’s experimental tendencies are abandoned altogether. Tracks like The Murder Mystery employ the same stereo fixing of simultaneous, polyphonic vocal tracks as on The Gift, and there are plenty of intriguing flourishes on the rest of the album to make this a continuation of VU’s ethos rather than a full 180. A great album overall - 4.5/5 from me.
Ozomatli
3/5
It’s pretty much impossible to make a fair judgement of this album seeing that I could only listen to one song. Finding the rest proved exceedingly difficult. So while I quite liked the one track I heard (an interesting mixture of Latin, Arabic and hip-hop sounds), hopefully I’ll be able to give it a proper listen.
Willie Nelson
4/5
You’ve just got to admire the balls on Willie Nelson to release this album, without a single fuck given as to the record company’s dismissal of its low-fi production. Punk as fuck. And it has some great tracks on it as well. Solid country record.
The Smiths
5/5
The Queen really is dead now!! An iconic statement in every sense from arguably the most important pop group ever. The sentiments of this album were as innovative as the overarching slogan which adorns its iconic sleeve - Britain only now stands on the cusp of a republic, but Morrissey has been leading the charge against the royals for nearly 40 years. Much like their previous masterpiece Meat is Murder helped bring vegetarianism to a wider audience, The Queen is Dead channeled growing hostility towards the British monarchy into the mainstream.
However, the rip-roaring title track - which is currently the unofficial anthem of the fledgling republican charge here - merges its bombastic sentiments with the sort of tongue in cheek humour you’d expect from Morrissey. While The Smiths has become synonymous with a very funereal brand of introspective pop, they never rocked harder than on the opening number.
But whereas I feel like Meat is Murder was really where Morrissey took centre stage (and Strangeways, Marr) here the pair of them are in perfect synthesis. The instrumentation is as diverse and shimmering as you’d expect from an album of such acclaim, and it really is the perfect showcase for the chief songwriters’ unmatched ear for a tune.
All that being said, I have always ranked this as my least favourite Smiths record purely for the sequencing. The slower, heavy-hitters I Know It’s Over and Never Had No One Ever appear straight after each other right at the beginning of the album, which gives off a false impression of dreary melancholy when really the rest of this record is almost saccharine in its pop melodies (and not to mention absurdly humorous in a quintessentially Morrissey-esque manner).
Still, this is a vital masterpiece and deservedly ranked among the best of all time. A band without rival.
PJ Harvey
3/5
The first PJ Harvey album I’ve ever listened to and it was okay. Gets a bit monotonous by the end but a pretty solid album. Would listen to it again and looking forward to checking out some of her other albums. This one was fine.
Dolly Parton
4/5
One big takeaway from this project so far has been just how much amazing country records were made both in and outside Tennessee. I can’t claim to have been particularly enlightened on the genre, and most of my impressions centred around an extremely hokey caricature of hillbilly folk rock. Once again, I’m pleasantly surprised.
This album is just so good. Dolly Parton’s songwriting is so stellar, but that goes without saying. What really hits home on this record is the production. There are some pop flourishes on this record which are so forward thinking, I’d have thought them impossible on a country record. But nevertheless they just serve to really hit home the songwriting quality on display. My personal favourite was the emotionally powerful “The Way I See You”, but the truth is there’s such a diverse spectrum of moods on this album you can’t really go wrong. Add in the relatively short run time and you have a winner in my book. Great stuff!
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
3/5
Another Neil Young record which fails to win me over. This just sounds like a group of guys who just write songs all day about anything that crosses their mind, and while some of them are good, there’s something forensic about that sort of practice. One track in particular sounds exactly like something off of Harvest (and not in a good way) but there is actually a decent amount of variation on this record. For that reason, it’s a bit of a disjointed, uneven listen.
Isaac Hayes
3/5
Firstly, make no mistake about it, this album cover and title just scream “soul-funk sex god” and I’m here for it.
The music itself is really a dream for sampling, and I can understand why DJs have tapped into this estimable well of funky rhythms. As an album though I’m a bit more perplexed by its sprawling tracks. I want to give Hayes credit for the way he draws out these epic crescendoes from each track, but they don’t half overstay their welcome after a while. I maybe have to listen to this record again to full appreciate its intentions, but my first impression was honestly one of indifference.
Franz Ferdinand
4/5
There’s no question that the legions of unspeakably dull, Primark clad, middle-class art school indie bands this album spawned would be good enough reason on its own to absolutely pan Franz Ferdinand’s debut effort.
It happens so often however that the progenitor of a musical movement or style actually has relatively little to do with the imitators which follow. I was so pleasantly surprised by how well these songs hold up now that the Topshop indie movement has finally been buried.
The heavy debt owed to the likes of Josef K and Orange Juice for their blend of post-punk hooks and dancey rhythms is immediately apparent. But , for better or for worse, this album belongs very much to its own time. Tracks like “Michael” still pack a punch, and the songwriting on numbers like “Dark of the Matinee” and “Take Me Out” have deservedly cemented their status as floor-fillers in any genre of the 2000s.
I want to hate this record. But I can’t. It’s just really great.
Goldfrapp
3/5
Very pleasantly surprised by this one. The ambition and artistic vision poured into this record is really admirable. Traces of Massive Attack and Portishead as well as a fixation on noir cinema and Bond themes makes for a very interesting listen. It isn’t always the most engaging record, fading into background music during certain tracks, but I’ll definitely revisit it for the production which is so far ahead of its time.
Dusty Springfield
3/5
Just meh.
Steely Dan
3/5
Steely Dan is a band beloved by a paradoxical demographic of music students/theory-heavy musicians and people who don’t really like music at all. Or maybe that’s not so incompatible after all - neither of those groups invest a great deal of genuine sentiment into their enjoyment of art.
In some ways Steely Dan are the epitome of this nexus point. There’s a pronounced pop sensibility in their songwriting an an equally pronounced tendency towards virtuosity. On the whole, I didn’t hate this album, largely due to the former characteristic. These guys could write a great song, and the persistent noodling isn’t entirely without purpose (even if it is without subtlety).
I will definitely come back to this record for the singles if nothing else. Pleasant surprise.
T. Rex
5/5
All the pomp and pageantry of the glam movement would have been consigned to relative anonymity and/or historical curiosity had Marc Bolan’s songwriting not been so damn good. And it is.
An absolute masterpiece which moved rock music forward about twenty years in one fell swoop. Camp and flamboyant without feeling dated, this record attains the timeless status of all classic albums in a genre whose silliness often resists such classification. One of the easiest 5 star ratings I’ll give out.
The Yardbirds
4/5
A great find on this list. The Yardbirds were known to me as the vehicle for numerous would-be legendary musicians and on this record it’s Jeff Beck on guitar duty who steals the show. The track sequencing is a bit of a mess (I ended up listening to it in both the US and U.K. order) but these songs are just so catchy and ultimately stand as a very strong representation of 60s garage rock.
Nirvana
4/5
It’s very hard for me personally to evaluate this album. I remember as a teenager being completely fixated on the grunge movement of the 90s, the way that it flipped popular music on its head and the morbidly emblematic demise of its figurehead Kurt Cobain.
And yet when I played Nevermind for the first time, I distinctly remember feeling quite underwhelmed. It was far from a bad album - tracks like “In Bloom” were the epitome of grunge to me - but it certainly didn’t sound quite as revolutionary as the circumstances around its release would have me believe. I would argue that while all canonically ordained classics eventually lose a bit of their edge (partly through over-exposure, partly via the march of time), this album fairs a lot worse on that front than even the likes of DSOTM (of which I had a similar opinion).
One thing that hasn’t been blunted in the last 30 years however is the great songwriting present on this album. My personal favourites have always been “Breed”, “Lounge Act” and “On a Plain”, but who can ignore the misfit anthem of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” or the brooding “Come as you Are”.
Cobain’s lyrical sentiments are sincere (as is his painfully angst-ridden voice) if not especially subtle - no doubt he was a troubled guy but it’s almost as if he’s just stringing together a bunch of platitudes about depression or isolation.
Butch Vig’s polarising production choices are frankly sublime to my ear, no doubt polishing Nirvana’s rougher edges but also accentuating the gutteral emotion underpinning these tracks - the overdubbed vocals do render the choruses a bit samey though.
On the whole, this is an important album with some fantastic tracks and even if listening to it today might not suggest as much, it’s deservedly regarded very highly.
LCD Soundsystem
5/5
Toe-tapper after toe-tapper on this album. Originality was something sorely lacking at this point in music history but LCD Soundsystem tapped into something very unique to create “nu-disco” and this album is a pure celebration of this fact. The best songs they would ever write including the soaring “All My Friends”. That song alone would merit 5 stars to be quite frank. Incredible album.
Morrissey
5/5
There has never been, nor will there most likely ever be again, a pop star like Morrissey. Sure, there have been many icons in the history of popular music. But not a single one of them can lay claim to the same blend of nonchalant authenticity and unbridled star power embodied by the morose Mancunian.
A commonplace opinion in casual music parlance is the recognition of Morrissey’s lyrical genius as frontman of The Smiths, while also sidelining his solo works as proof of the law of diminishing returns. Written amid the literal ruins of his bands’ dissolution, Viva Hate delivers upon the undisputed potential for Morrissey to bridge that gap between eccentric 80s has-been to genuine pop stardom.
Produced and largely written by Stephen Street, with the enigmatic Vini Reilly serving as Moz’s creative foil in place of Johnny Marr, the album is not a radical departure from The Smiths’ brand of 60s infused jangle pop. And yet the flourishes of bossa-nova rhythms and spiralling sitar-sounding riffs give it just enough flavour to mark it out as a distinctly Morrissey affair. Couple all that with two bonafide hit singles (“Everyday is Like Sunday”, “Suedehead”) and you have yourself a winner.
This is just the platform for what I consider one of the frontman’s finest lyrical outings committed to record. From “Alsatian Cousin”‘s acrimonious tale of romantic scandal to the melancholic nostalgia of “Late Night, Maudlin Street”, there is no single lyricist who could ever get away with such genius lines as “Rejection is one thing, but rejection from a fool is cruel”. It’s the commonplace elevated to the level of the sublime that earmarks Morrissey as the single most important lyricist in pop music history - and that’s not hyperbole.
A few minor detractions however. Leaving aside the questionable tone of “Bengali in Platforms”, a song that’s bafflingly clumsy at best and downright racist at worst, Morrissey’s decision to remove “Ordinary Boys” in favour of a tinny demo of “Treat Me Like a Human Being” is beyond comprehension. The album is slightly front-loaded in its original running order, but this just draws out side 2 with a completely redundant skipper of a track.
Going off of my vinyl copy, this album is a masterpiece. Arguably a more true distillation of Morrissey the artist than any other album in his enviable discography. It’s hard to believe there were some who doubted his ability to survive the demise of one of Britain’s most beloved groups. But this album secured Morrissey’s relevance in pop culture (on and off) for the next 20-30 years. As one of my friend frequently puts it: “The guy’s a cunt. But he’s our cunt”.
Jimi Hendrix
3/5
Not going to lie, Hendrix is the kind of guitarist who discloses his best tricks very early on and so once you’ve heard it once you don’t have to hear it too many more times. I also take umbrage at the psychedelic label attached to his music - trippy delta blues this may be, but 13th Floor Elevators it ain’t.
That being said there’s a lot to like about this album. Leaving aside the monstrous ending, there are some great jams here (“Crosstown Traffic” and “Little Miss Strange”) and they actually tend to be songs where Hendrix’s noodling take a back seat. There is a great deal of unfocused meandering licks on this record, but he always pulls it back. The album length is often derided for precisely this reason, but there are occasional long tracks which justify their presence on the record - the sprawling 1983 is my favourite track on the album, which definitely gives space for Hendrix’s more experimental (and, dare I say, properly psychedelic) tendencies.
On the whole, a great record.
Aerosmith
3/5
I’ll hold my hands up here, I hate Aerosmith, they’re lame as fuck. But this album is pretty good. This is a far cry from the extremely safe, bland, anaemic square-dancing bollock rock they would go on to make, and even further from the cartoon rock band they would become by the end of the century.
This album is far more interesting than anything I’d heard by Aerosmith previously. The combination of Joe Perry and Steven Tyler works to perfection at points on this record. Perry’s guitar work in particular is quite underrated on this showing. Tyler’s voice is a complete one-off but here he uses it to serve the song rather than prance about like a wannabe rockstar. He has a timbre very similar to Paul Westerberg in fact, and that’s not a throwaway comparison. Because while Aerosmith would lean in to bluesy, root-beer chuggin’ rock and/or roll, a lot of this album is straight up power pop - and I rate it. “You See Me Crying” draws the album to a painful halt. But “Uncle Salty” and “No More No More” are fantastic songs.
I have a lot more respect for this band than I did this time yesterday. Fair play.
Stereo MC's
2/5
90s dance/hip-hop: some good, some tragic.
Radiohead
3/5
Radiohead is an acquired tasted I haven’t acquired yet. The first album of theirs I’ve properly listened to all the way through and it more or less confirmed to the ideas I had it my head. Tense, nervy atmosphere with Thom Yorke’s painful wince over the top of it. There’s a lot to like about this formula, but it just starts dragging after a while.
Amnesiac was a perplexing listen for me, and I want to give it its due for obscuring the boundaries of what pop/rock music should be. That doesn’t make it an entirely gripping listen though, and I felt this was just a little too stale after a while. “Knives Out” was probably my favourite track, and it’s not really surprising that it’s the most conventional in structure on the whole album. Not quite sure what to make of Radiohead but no doubt they’ll reappear on this list.
George Michael
4/5
This album’s a real grower. During my first listen I can’t say it stuck out as a particularly outstanding album, and the early 90s production didn’t do much for me. However, a second listen completely changed my perspective and gave me a totally newfound appreciation of George Michael as both a lyricist and songwriter. The anthemic “Freedom ‘90” is a a stellar hit single, but its defiant mood of liberation isn’t especially prevalent throughout the rest of the album, which is a well-documented laidback affair. That being said, it also contains one of my favourite lyrics on the album which I’d never picked up on before: “All we’ve got to do/ Is take these lies and make them true somehow”. That’s not the only instance where I was taken aback by the subtlety and complexity of Michael’s songwriting. With the exception of the hit single, there’s nothing quite as immediately hooky on this record as on Faith. But that’s certainly not a bad thing, and Listen Without Prejudice is a far more rewarding listen if you’re able to embrace the title’s injunction. Great stuff!
Quicksilver Messenger Service
3/5
Not at all what I was expecting but a really strong album of psychedelic blues jamming. Prefer this sort of experimental noodling to most of the “acclaimed” jam bands out there, but it didn’t completely capture my attention for the whole record. The first side is the highlight although the quasi-western jaunt “Cavalry” is another great listen.
Roxy Music
4/5
Never been the biggest Roxy Music fan but their debut album definitely still packs a punch after all this time. The contrasting Eno/Ferry dynamic seems to work in perfect synchrony here, but the reality is that both of them would go on to far better things afterwards. The second half of this album is dominated by Eno’s experimentalism and is all the better for it, but there’s no getting away from how influential this album has become. Hard to add much more, while I prefer their later stuff and am unlikely to return to this record any time soon, it has plenty to offer a wide spectrum of listeners.
Milton Nascimento
5/5
An absolutely inspired album. I wasn’t at all expecting the diverse assortment of songwriting prowess on this record, but it’s an absolute masterpiece. Leaving aside the obvious exoticism of foreign language works, this album would be incredible wherever it had originated. It doesn’t draw too heavily upon a “traditional” Brazilian sound, which really expands its sonic palette. The songs take centre stage here, not the novelty of world music. While the album is about an hour long, none of these songs overstay their welcome and they really catch you off guard with how contemporary they manage to sound despite this record appearing in 1972. It’s simply brilliant, and while it hasn’t achieved the same commercial acclaim as some other Brazilian offerings, it really needs a reappraisal.
Motörhead
5/5
What a fucking rush. They don’t deviate much from this formula, but my god is their formula worth listening to. Their mission statement is as direct as their throttling brand of metal: We are Motörhead, and we play rock and roll.
It’s really remarkable how some records just consolidate the most perfect distillations of their genre - Ramones’ debut, Eno’s Another Green World and undeniably this one. Lemmy’s rock star charisma isn’t some exaggerated caricature, he fucking embodies every trope of the badass rocker in a completely authentic manner. And if you don’t like that, you can fuck off.
Even extremely subject matters on tracks like “Jailbait” can be read as a matter-of-fact narration of the full throttle lifestyle of this band. The songs and production still hold up today, and the oft wielded criticism that this record lacks diversity seems a bit redundant to me. There’s no point criticising this group for what they aren’t. They’re just Motörhead. And they play some exhilarating rock and roll.
Fav tracks: Shoot You In The Back, We Are The Roadcrew.
Frank Sinatra
3/5
An iconic voice singing some very pretty arrangements of American standards and bossanova classics. It’s hard to love such an album but it’s a nice, serene listen throughout. Background music for a dinner party if you’re so inclined.
Gang Starr
3/5
The beats on this record are top drawer. But while Guru’s lyrical imagery is definitely intuitive and novel for the genre, the actual egocentric tropes remain largely untouched. This is undeniably a great hip hop record though, but its impact waned greatly towards the latter half of the album.
Missy Elliott
3/5
Enjoyed this a lot more than her debut, Supa Dupa Fly. While this doesn’t differ greatly in terms of style or tone, it refines a good deal of the R&B/Hip-hop hybrid formula to make for a more distinct listen. That being said, it’s an album of ambivalence for me. Unquestionably Missy Elliott is a powerful figure, and a very articulate one at that, who challenged a lot of the misogynistic tropes of her contemporaries and offered a genuinely intriguing perspective. She exposed a lot of the hypocrisy surrounding the sexualisation of music through the masculine lens and also allowed for genuine character to resonate with listeners as opposed to some bland rapper archetype. I’m a big fan of this approach even when the music starts to wane in terms of its lyrical quality. Ironically, my favourite parts of the album are Missy’s monologues, which demonstrate a seriously focused vision for what hip-hop should be. That’s not a slight on the songs, but she is so adept at making you think and laugh in equal measure. The death of Aaliyah also looms quite large over this record, and there’s room for plenty of sometimes ham-fisted but always endearing reflection and nostalgia on tracks like “Back in the Day” and “Can You Hear Me”. Not sure I would go back and listen again, but Missy Elliott has my complete admiration as an artist who genuinely tried to enforce change in a stagnant field of expression - kudos.
Simon & Garfunkel
5/5
A songwriting genius paired with a sublime, angelic vocalist. Simon and Garfunkel compile extremely concise but impactful records, which don’t hang around too long but leave an indelible impression. Paul Simon deservedly takes his place in the pantheon of all-time great songwriters and even though I possibly enjoyed Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Thyme a bit more, this record is amazing. “Baby Driver” and “Keep the Customer Satisfied” are pop gems. I can’t really say much more about this record. It’s the gold standard for the singer-songwriter genre.
John Martyn
5/5
One of the most influential musicians in my life, and this album was arguably his finest hour. I was obscenely young when I discovered John Martyn’s music on a clip show about Scotland’s* greatest musicians, which lead me down a rabbit hole of Martyn’s resplendent, ornate, trippy, psychedelic brand of songwriting.
A live performance of the title track taken from his now iconic show at Rockpalast in Germany circa 1975 had me utterly transfixed. For someone who’s whole act was at that time incredibly barebones, he had a stage presence matched by few. How does the album version hold up? Actually not especially well. And this is a recurrent theme for the whole record.
The extremely jazz infused production of these tracks detracts somewhat from Martyn’s talents rather than accentuating them. As a stripped back performer, the songs are imbued with maximum emotion. Here, the cocktail bar organ are a little too on-the-nose and indulgent. Tracks like “Don’t Want To Know” have a similarly sparse opening only to retreat into the smoky environs of mid-70s jazz clubs.
“Over the Hill” and “May You Never” (a track which should be a singalong household staple across this island) are more conventionally folky and ground the album’s expansive soundscape in Martyn’s songwriter roots. Whether or not the array of sonic snapshots works for you as an album will depend on how much you focus on the actual songwriting on offer here - and on this front Solid Air is an utter triumph. Martyn’s polarising slurred vocal style presents another obstacle to negotiate. For me, it’s fitting that this album stand as an homage to Martyn’s late friend Nick Drake. Because not many besides the latter are capable of forcibly wringing every ounce of emotion out of each vocal line.
Given the luxury of half stars, I’d give this a 4 1/2 rating, but a musician as influential as John Martyn deserves better than that.
Aerosmith
2/5
What an absolute bummer. My second Aerosmith album after the pleasantly surprising “Toys in the Attic”, but this one more or less confirmed to my original impression of the band as a loutish cartoon rock group. Almost all of the pop sensibility from their earlier albums is reduced to the most banal rock and roll cliches which are seldom memorable, and frequently annoying.
Steven Tyler’s singular vocal talents are undermined by his seeming inability to pick out a catchy melody on this record. Only on the admittedly poignant single “Janie’s Got a Gun” does he contribute something consequential to the album. Truth be told, I really rate that song’s mature handling of an extremely fraught issue, the kind of topic which most glam rock/hair metal groups were incapable of confronting at this point in time. It’s nearly a saving grace for Pump, the one point when everything works across the whole group. There’s almost a duality in Aerosmith’s approach evidenced on this record: on the one hand, it’s clear these weathered rockers are capable of writing a tune and even incorporating some bluegrass flourishes in their style; yet they revert back to synthetic, nondescript 80s fm rock all too frequently.
The latter may have sold more records for them, but it does not a memorable album make.
The rest of these songs are mailed
Beatles
5/5
It’s taken 86 albums, but I’m finally given a Beatles record. And it’s arguably their very best. It’s hard to say a lot about this group given that they’ve been at the centre of mainstream discussion on “classic” music for the last 50-60 years. Rubber Soul is often seen as a pivotal record in the band’s discography in a very true sense of the word. Their is a subtle shift away from straightforward pop structures towards deeper exploration in experimental sounds. This, however, is very embryonic on this record. What this band achieved on a four track recording is simply unfathomable. The Beatles had a knack for making the most extraordinary songs seem accessible to the average person - no wonder their songs have achieved folkloric immortality in households across the world.
It’s basically the next 40 years of pop music distilled in one recording. My personal favourites are “You Won’t See Me” and the closer “Run For Your Life”. I’ll be a lot more in-depth with some of their other albums, but this one is just a really excellent record in all its immanent complexities.
Soul II Soul
2/5
Simply put, not for me. Dated production, struggle to see what this brought even for its time. The string sample from Chic is pretty great but the best track wasn’t even released on the original LP so I won’t be counting it.
Goldie
3/5
Impressive ambience in sporadic and fleeting bursts but there’s hardly any album which can justify such a gargantuan run time (which I’m completely sick of by this point). Will return to this fascinating record at some point.
U2
3/5
U2 had long jumped the shark by this record. They revel in the indulgences of hedonistic arena rock, but they wear their own caricature well on the whole. It’s definitely less remarkable than either of their first two records, but I was pleasantly surprised to hear the emotional punches land as well as they do. They haven’t gone full 90s wah-wah rock just yet.
The overall sonic impression is a bit confused as the group found itself in a bit of an identity crisis at the turn of the decade, but they came out rather favourably even as they sacrificed some of the vitality that made their early records so important to me. The songs are longer, the production even more polished than ever. I don’t rate the singles at all, they lack any sort of appeal to me.
But whereas they maybe lost their creative edge, the Edge himself remains one of the most evocative guitarists in popular music. You either love him or you hate him, but his ear for a melody is undeniable and he executes his sound better than anybody else. He is the epitome of a guitarist who always serves the song.
It’s a marked turn in U2’s discography, and while I’m not a great fan of their banal stadium-fillers, they were still capable of a stellar album (this one is still TOOO FUCKING LONG though!! Nearly two hours!!?!? Unbecoming of a great album, and I am sick to death of these marathon records! Keep it to 35 minutes lads).
Kanye West
4/5
My second Kanye album so far and safe to say his image has taken quite a dramatic fall from grace in the intervening couple of months. He has effectively dispelled any doubts that he is a pea-brained shock jockey devoid of any subtlety or nuance. This record, however, is not a reflection of this fact. It’s really outstanding. It’s appeal is not immediate, but not only is there a wealth of genuine insight in his social commentary (something which I felt Beautiful, Dark, Twisted Fantasy lacked) the songs carry an infectious pop sensibility that I really enjoyed. Its mammoth length is a drawback but, without wishing to labour my criticism of Kanye West the feckless iconoclast, the end result is still a phenomenal album. Personal favourite tracks: We Don’t Care, Get Em High, Never Let Me Down & Two Words
Devendra Banhart
2/5
A lot of really pretty guitar licks on this album but the overall “hippy dippy” vibe really irks me, not least because Devendra’s voice is a clone of Marc Bolan. I don’t tend to let an individual component of an album grate on me to the point of disruption, but the fact is he had to have listened to this record back, and he actually proceeded to release such a shameless pastiche of those early Tyrannosaurus Rex records. That being said, a couple of the more instrumental tracks are lovely, and they make you wonder what Devendra Banhart’s melodic strengths could have done in the hands of a more capable vocalist/lyricist (the pseudo-quirky gibberish on this album reeks of try-hard energy). A bit of a forgettable listen, even if it has its moments.
Garbage
3/5
Even if Butch Vig’s idea for Garbage was not as original as he thought it was (whatever they made from this record, I hope Curve were getting some of it), it’s still pretty well executed. Part shoegaze wall of noise, part danceable power pop with a few very catchy hooks thrown in for good measure. Like I say, the cut and paste sample approach in noise rock is a direct lift from Curve, and the similarities are frankly too great to overlook here. But the singles are far more chart friendly than anything Dean Garcia and Toni Halliday came up with (that’s not to say these tracks are better), at the expense of some actual innovation. Being a group mostly comprised of producers and industry professionals, the sound is largely forensic and calculated which is to the ultimate detriment of the record. But even while it clocks in at nearly an hour, the songs are strong enough to justify its length. On the whole, a decent record.
Supergrass
3/5
Stellar 90s indie which never strikes me as particularly special. Some great chord structures and the tunes themselves are catchy enough but it all sounds a bit too straightforward after a while. Favourite track: Sun Hits the Sky
10cc
4/5
This is like the cornball eccentricity of Sparks amped up to 100, and I rate it quite a bit. It definitely skirts the border of downright insanity but on the whole this absolute stylistic riot really appeals to me. Would definitely listen again.
Led Zeppelin
5/5
Have to admit, I had a set of completely different (and not very flattering) notes on this record written in a disgruntled drunken state. I guess I wasn’t really in the mood for more Zeppelin. But that’s why listening to these albums more than once is so important. This record is a masterpiece. Everything I enjoyed about Zeppelin III is here and more - Sandy Denny’s angelic voice, some of the best drum production ever recorded. This is a classic LP in every respect. Believe the hype.
The The
4/5
There really isn’t a songwriter quite like Matt Johnson. True to the title of this record, he combs the depths of misanthropic despair and constructs some of the most sardonic (yet still fleetingly hopeful) pop gems. This is a totally unique record, the kind which covers a mass of musical territory without ever sounding incoherent or superficial. The full gambit of Arabian scales and pounding dance rhythms is on offer here, and it’s all held together by Matt Johnson’s keen ear for a tune.
The two soaring singles, “This is the Day” and “Uncertain Smile”, are far and away the highlights of this record and embody everything which makes The The one of the most special groups in the British indie canon. I would even go so far as to say they are two of the greatest songs of the 1980s. But that’s not to diminish tracks like the infectious ear worm “Giant” or the nihilistic cynicism espoused on “That Sinking Feeling”.
It’s such a great record, but it does have a couple of flaws. The album is definitely a bit front-loaded in terms of its memorable tracks, and never really picks up the momentum in the latter half. As an album it’s a frustrating listen in this regard, at least to my ear. Their follow-up, Infected, rectifies this and serves as a much more rewarding listen in the one sitting. I adore the single “Perfect” but even then I’m not sure it’s inclusion in the original running order would have been fitting.
Nevertheless, I can’t detract too much from this record. It’s a standout album and one which I treasure in my collection.
Carpenters
2/5
One of my least favourite assessments of any album is the classic platitude, “Well, it’s not my kind of thing, but I can appreciate it nonetheless”. While this roundabout way of saying a piece of art evokes no significant emotion in oneself is a cop out, it’s the best I can come up with for this record.
Middle-of-the-road on a long, eventless highway, milktoast soft rock. Not diminishing the Carpenters’ talents as songwriters/arrangers is important, however. That being said, the proliferation of pretty forgettable covers (the sort you’d find on those bargain bin, royalty free Top of the Pops compilations from the 70s) cause the album to drag and cause problems as to my final rating. After all, it becomes difficult apportioning the credit to the rightful recipients when the brother and sisters’ contributions to a song are minimal.
Upon closer digging, they were definitely passengers on a few songs. And that’s a disappointment, because their self-penned tracks are some of the strongest on the record. And I love the harmonic minor hook on “Another Song”.
To offset my largely banal assessment of this album, I’m inclined to come down just south of a half-way grade - so 2/5 it is.
Kendrick Lamar
4/5
Tantalisingly close to the 100 mark, but this album prompted the longest pause of this project so far. And if nothing else, it’s noteworthy for that very reason. This is a seriously ambitious album, and one which you should definitely spend a bit of time with before making a judgement. I’ve done my best, and while its genius unquestionably reveals itself to anyone willing to approach it on its own terms, I can’t say that sonically this diverges too much from what I would somewhat crudely term “modern hip-hop”.
Like most of the other great rap artists on this list, Lamar tends to hit upon nuggets of profound insight in fits and spurts - “Speakin’ language only we know, you think it’s an accent”. The subtle complexity of such an aphoristic observation is really jarring, and it also sums up a lot of misconceptions held by myself with regards to this genre. The relatively sparse backing for Lamar’s lyrics don’t ever sound anaemic, even if they aren’t especially memorable. It’s all a backdrop to the overarching narrative of a young man coming-of-age in the projects.
A lot of the most objectionable content, however, is subsequently veiled by a deliberate cynicism as though the fact that Lamar is embracing a character’s mindset on a particular track is enough to absolve him, and may even be read as an ironic critique of hip-hop tropes. Problem is that this has been done so many times now that it’s almost becoming a trope in itself - and the misogynistic posturing all of a sudden starts to re-assume its original bone-headed character.
The fact that this record evokes these sort of contemplations is a sign of its quality. It’s a tough listen on some levels (especially give the customary obscene run-time), but it’s very rewarding.
Finley Quaye
3/5
This is a great record. Definitely has its faults (not least the questions around Quayle’s authenticity in assuming the role of reggae vocalist), but there’s some great tracks on here and the production is stellar. The real dilemma I was pondering centred around this album’s place on a list of 1001 records to hear before you die. And ultimately, while I accept arguments to the contrary, it’s a great representation of the direction of traffic for the genre towards the late 90s, incorporating rock and trip hop sounds to make something pretty unique. The latter half is a bit forgettable, but overall I enjoyed this record.
Amy Winehouse
3/5
A century of albums. Number 100. And it was absolutely forgettable. The singles are the strongest tracks but even these have the ring of advert fodder (they’ve basically been stock background music for every daytime tv show in this country since they were released). Winehouse has a pleasant voice but like the rest of this album I personally don’t see what makes it so special. Absolutely fine.
Mike Ladd
3/5
It’s hard to say a great deal about an album which never stays the same course for very long. But nevertheless I enjoyed the eclectic mix of moody ambient funk and trip-hop on offer here. A really great record which I’ll be seeking out on vinyl.
Sex Pistols
5/5
If ever there was an essential album, it’s this one. A lot can be said about the authenticity behind the anarchic message which compelled a generation to throw out the obsolete virtuosity enshrined in the rock rule book and start again, but you only need to look at the droves of bands formed after hearing the Sex Pistols to understand how important this group was (and still is..).
It’s well-trodden ground to highlight Malcolm McLaren’s curation of this group as a set of cartoon punk rockers, but the fact is that they were the ones who wrote the songs and stood up on stage absorbing the gobs of spit and vitriol from the general public. They talked the talk, and walked the walk. Everything about this record just slotted in perfectly into the abject social setting of 1970s Britain to rejuvenate an utterly stagnant musical landscape. John Lydon’s lyrics play a huge role in this matter, serving as the clarion call to get out there and start a band. Is there a slightly cartoonish quality to these vaguely anarchistic (sometimes superficially so) sentiments? Yes. But in some sense the most unrefined incarnation of an idea is also its most effective.
This album wouldn’t have held up, however, if the songs didn’t carry some kind of enthusiastic optimism - and on this record the songwriting is just outstanding. Glen Matlock and Steve Jones aren’t Yngwie Malmsteen, and that’s why they can come up with the simple brilliance of tracks like No Feelings and God Save the Queen. The latter track has arguably lost a bit of its integrity in light of some obsequious reformist remarks from several band members. But the rally cry against such servility committed to this timeless record will outlast all of that conjecture.
The enduring refrain of “No future for you” is the ground zero for the “new wave” of pop music. This album changed the game and it hits as hard today as it ever has done. A timeless classic, the most important record of all time - you name it, there is no superlative great enough to channel the scale of this record.
New Order
4/5
A great album which is criminally underrated and arguably the definitive statement from this amazing band. Equal parts infused with the brooding nihilism of Joy Division’s sound as it is with the burgeoning edm scene in the U.K., this record pushes the boundaries of what a post-punk album can sound like.
The opening flurry of tracks are absolutely exhilarating - the tender acrimony of “Love Vigilantes” leads into the album’s flagship single “The Perfect Kiss” before closing off side one with the breathless rush of “Sunrise”. Bernard Sumner’s bizarre lyrical head-scratchers are present here - “Don’t let anybody tell you that you’re no good, because you know they would” is a particular gaffe on “Face-Up” - but while his singing style is often derided, there is a heartfelt honesty to his messages which is extremely endearing. This ain’t a group of virtuoso musicians but they deliver some outstanding pop songs.
Side two leans into the brooding gothic territory of Joy Division on tracks like the icy “Elegia” or “Subculture”, but the shadow of their defunct former group does not hold this album back. Indeed, New Order’s experimentation with flourishes of pounding synths ripped straight from the dance floors of the Hacienda sets them apart as trailblazers for a formula of dance influenced rock music which became commonplace in the 90s. The production ensures that this sound hasn’t dated as badly as many of their contemporaries.
Much praise should go the way of Gillian Smith in this regard. But the standout performer on this record is Peter Hook. His playing style is oft imitated (though seldom replicated) and it is this sound which propels the majority of these songs, and serves as the creative melodic foil for much of this record. At times it sounds like he’s strumming a set of warped copper pipes on the other end of a metro tunnel. But his choice of notes, frequently simplistic in their composition, is perfect - whether his pulsating bass merely simmers in the bottom of the mix or thrusts forward on songs like the standout “Sunrise”, it is a focal point.
On the whole, while the slightly uneven track sequencing holds this record back from a perfect five stars, it is well worth a listen. It may lack the killer single like Brotherhood’s “Bizarre Love Triangle” or an indie floor-filler like “Blue Monday”, it is debatably the most essential New Order album you can listen to and the most fully realised representation of their artistic vision. A truly great record. 4.5/5.
Billy Bragg
4/5
This is a really unique record and a great listen overall. Billy Bragg’s songs definitely capture the essence of Woody Guthrie’s songwriting better than Wilco’s offerings - although “California Stars” is a homely nostalgia trip befitting of Guthrie’s lyrics. Naturally, it suffers from inconsistencies. But this is true of most of Bragg’s output at the turn of the millennium (coinciding with his fixation on adopting a Southern American accent, completely flying in the face of his whole ethos!). However, the songwriting is strong enough across the record to justify a greater audience than it has so far received. This is really a victory lap for Billy Bragg, who not only shot back to some kind of relevance in the twilight of his career, but created a set of timeless homages to one of his heroes.
Leonard Cohen
4/5
Sparsely ornate, quasi-flamenco folk songs populated by literary landscapes which revel in existential reflection. This is a stunning debut album, quite unlike any other in the contemporary western canon. Leonard Cohen’s music definitely demands a deliberate listener, there’s nothing here which is melodically accessible. Yet the production manages to elevate the barebones musical approach with some incredible flourishes of punchy acoustic guitar lines (on “Teachers”). If the yardstick of a perfect album is the manner in which it achieves what it sets out to do, then this would be a 5/5. But that’s not the basis of my ratings, but rather the impression it leaves on me subjectively. And in this regard, a few songs on this album are frankly less engaging. Favourite tracks: “Teachers”, “Stories of the Street”, “The Stranger Song”
Dinosaur Jr.
2/5
Sometimes you just have to hold your hands up and say, “It’s not for me, but if you enjoy this kind of thing then you’ll love this album.” Only problem is I’m the sort of person who enjoys this kind of thing, and I really did not like this record. It’s punchy, riffy noise-rock, but it just sounds so anaemic to me. The songs themselves are all so average that they don’t really rise above a bad Husker Dü B-side with a noodling solo from J Mascis in the middle. I can see why this record deserves to be on the list. It’s an interesting approach for 1988, but this record has not aged well. “Pond Song” was good though. That’s about it for me.
Common
4/5
Can’t say I gave enough time or attention to the lyrical content of this album but given what I know about Common, he seems like a pretty right on guy. Being a Kanye production, the beats don’t disappoint. It’s just toe-tapper after toe-tapper on this record. And *shock horror* it’s not a 3 hour mega-slog of an album clocking in at a mercifully short 43 minutes. There’s no filler here.
The White Stripes
4/5
Given the musical landscape into which the White Stripes emerged at the turn of the millennium, their nuts and bolts approach to the delta blues really was something quite radical. This album perhaps isn’t the best representation of what made this group so important, and it arguably overstays its welcome by a track or two. But the singles are modern rock classics and the production (though samey in parts) really focuses the band’s back-to-basics approach.
Laura Nyro
3/5
The longer I spend with this record, the more flaws begin to emerge. The first track more or less encapsulates everything right/wrong with the album - an extremely complicated, busy arrangement with every hook imaginable, but nothing with any staying power. Her voice is slightly weedy, and a number of the tracks veer into the territory of Gershwin show-tune. I enjoyed a number of moments on this record, but the songs themselves lack any kind of impression.
Dirty Projectors
2/5
This album irked me in a way which is difficult to describe. It’s convoluted song structures, utterly pretentious lyrics (the level of thought which went into the album’s title is indicative of everything this group has to say: nothing) and general lack of melodic hooks got under my skin like no other record I have encountered on this list. A record for musicians who treat their art as nothing more than a self-contained field of theories and concepts. That being said, I’ll spare it a one star rating for the one or two flashes of intriguing sounds which threaten to grab the listener’s attention at a couple of points during the album’s run, but which are too ephemeral to ever leave an impression. Absolutely aimless, characterless, soulless pish.
Frank Sinatra
4/5
Thoroughly enjoyed this album. I could definitely enjoy this record even more as background music at a mellow dinner party. And if I can enjoy an album in any setting, it’s better than some albums which I can’t enjoy at all. It’s just a selection of melancholy jazz-vocal numbers. They’re more or less the same tempo, but with Sinatra’s voice at their breaking heart they work well. The orchestration flits so delicately that the album threatens to fly off the turntable but on the whole this is a great listen. There isn’t a great deal of variation, and if you don’t buy into the album’s central premise then it’ll likely bore you. But I dig it.
Paul Simon
3/5
Not quite as immediately catchy as some of the other Paul Simon records on this list, his flirtations with a myriad of genres from reggae to jazz is still anchored by Simon’s peerless ear for pop melodies. That said, the real standout track on this record, “Me and Julio…”, isn’t really matched by the largely sparse arrangements on this record. It’s hard to explain what makes Paul Simon such an incredible songwriter, so just stick on his records and find out.
Various Artists
5/5
An absolute Christmas cracker. The Phil Spector Wall of Sound is in full effect on this compilation of holiday standards and it’s testament to how extraordinary his arrangements were that he could elevate these tracks to the status of all time classics. My personal highlights were the Darlene Love tracks, but the entire gang of Spectorites contribute so much to make this record the masterpiece that it is. This is THE go-to Christmas album without a shadow of a doubt.
Nick Drake
5/5
An incredible album, an utterly precious artefact of a songwriting genius. I personally don’t like to view these albums through the prism of hindsight. This record was ultimately lost amid a deluge of quasi-folk singer-songwriter fodder (most of it unremarkable). Far from a mere whimper from a tortured artist though, Fives Leaves Left is an accomplished reflection on the trifles of life (and much more). Nick Drake has taken on the role of a spectral figure of anguish and unfulfilled potential, but the majority of this album is very upbeat and whimsical - my personal favourite track is the beautiful love song “Thoughts of Mary Jane”. Whereas Drake would go off into jazzier, experimental territory on his follow-up album, Fives Leaves Left is sparse and deliberate in its instrumentation, and the flourishes of strings or bass are never ostentatious and always subordinate to Drake’s exhilarating finger style guitar playing. While it doesn’t push the boundaries on first listen, this record deservedly gets the sort of praise nowadays that it always merited but never saw during Drake’s lifetime.
Joy Division
5/5
The iconic Manchester quartet's second and final album before the suicide of lead singer Ian Curtis, the latter's specter naturally looms large over almost all appraisals of this densely atmospheric work. The album would, however, be considered a classic under any circumstances and Curtis' lyrics, pregnant with poetic imagery and historical symbolism, set him apart as one of the best frontmen in contemporary music, irrespective of his untimely demise. The foreboding existential anguish of 'Passover', along with the Kafka-inspired proto-death rock of 'Colony' are two particular highlights of the A side before the album's triumphant denouement with tracks like 'Twenty-Four Hours' and 'The Eternal'. Martin Hannet's production expertly captures the ephemeral brilliance of one of the most enigmatic groups in history on Closer - an unparalleled parting shot.
Run-D.M.C.
5/5
This album may be discarded as a historical artefact which belongs to its particular time and place, but I think it’s still one of the most vibrant hip-hop albums around. Which is ironic, because the beats are generally monotonous and the rhymes are not quite as biting as those who trod the trail Run DMC blazed. It’s almost primitive in its simplicity and that is emphasised when situated within a genre which has become elaborate and conventional to the point of parody. And this is the point, this album broke almost every convention in the book when it was released. “Rock Box” transcended the realm of hip-hop and encroached on the sacred ground of rock. Tracks like “It’s Like That” and “Wake Up” demonstrated that the genre could do more than just brag about cars and flashy watches (although the lads do spend a lot of the album reminding the listener who they are). In addition to its objective merits as a pivotal album in the history of hip-hop, I think it’s still a blast to listen to, and it has me doing the running man before too long. What a record.
Muddy Waters
3/5
I’d like to gush effusively about this evidently influential record, but it just doesn’t quite do it for me. The blues is one of those polarising genres which flits between the formulaic and the emotive. On this record, Muddy Waters undeniably channels a boatload of charisma, and there’s just enough variation to keep these songs interesting. But for whatever reason I can’t bring myself to characterise this album as anything other than just okay.
Harry Nilsson
2/5
The stellar and diverse production on this record can’t distract from the overwhelming lack of engaging songwriting. It’s as though Nilsson doesn’t know how seriously to treat this record, jolting between sincere reflections and downright bizarre affectations in the space of the same track. His reputation as one of the Beatles’ favourite songwriters makes sense from a production standpoint but ultimately the songs on this album seldom leave an impression.
Wire
5/5
Timeless classic. Punchy guitars and even punchier songwriting blitzed through in scarcely over half an hour, this record really is a bit of an outlier in the history of music. Few records sound as fresh and vital nearly 50 years after their debut. Whereas the slightly exaggerated pseudo-anarchism of bands like Sex Pistols and their legions of wannabe punks may look a bit cartoonish through the prism of history, Wire’s completely stripped back approach stands the test of time and represents a real challenge to the established musical order to this very day. Although the majority of these songs are barebones fragments punctuated by growling, feedback-ridden guitars, Colin Newman’s pop sensibilities shine through on tracks like “Mannequin” and “Ex Lion Tamer”. Wire are a band who always stood at the margins of their field, completely distinct from their contemporaries but always pushing the boundaries of what may be called alternative music. Following a short hiatus at the beginning of the 1980s, they returned with a string of albums which completely reinvented the band’s sound into an electronic groove-space, while still maintaining something that was essentially theirs. That period is my favourite of this unique band, but this is where you should start. So far ahead of their time, we still haven’t caught up yet.
Donald Fagen
1/5
Sounds like a poundshop Sting making pretentious yacht rock for a bunch of 80s insurance salesmen. Absolute wank.
Eric Clapton
2/5
A total cunt of a human being… but there’s no denying his chops. The reality is that he can garb his pretty inane blues rock in all the flashy riffs he likes, the songs don’t hold up to any scrutiny. That being said, I can’t say I hated all of it - the album is bookended by its two best tracks - so in a sense it fared better than I expected. But fuck you fash boy Eric, keep music Claptonless.
Ravi Shankar
4/5
A fascinating artefact documenting the West’s introduction to Indian classical music. Although Shankar wasn’t the first to implement the album format as a didactic tool of cultural discourse as much as a strictly melodic anchor point, his heightened profile really makes this a significant milestone in the Western canon. The actual music, interspersed with Shankar’s brief monologues explaining the forthcoming musical structures, is a gargantuan slab of exhilarating sitar playing which is undoubtedly captivating at various particular points as opposed to a coherent whole. If you embrace Shankar’s initial plea to an open mind towards this form of music, it is a truly rewarding experience from a legendary player.
Elis Regina
4/5
Another quite spectacular gem from Brazil. After “Clube Da Esquina” I had high hopes, and while this record could never match such a masterpiece (one of my favourites from this list so far) it holds up in its own unique way. Elis Regina’s voice is a powerfully soaring force of nature throughout this collection of jazz-funk pop ditties. It possibly lacks the ostentatious songwriting ambition of Milton Nascimiento and Lô Borges’ record (though both make an appearance here as well on two of the stronger tracks) but this is still a strong collection of toe-tapping floorfillers.
Youssou N'Dour
4/5
A gorgeous slice of west African folk/blues/afrobeat music. The tracks do become a bit background after the 20 minute mark, but the polarising synths mentioned in other reviews were too elusive for my ear. A real treat.
T. Rex
5/5
There isn’t a noticeable difference in approach between this record and Electric Warrior. In some respects, the tongue-in-cheek innuendo and downright silliness are amped up a bit (with track titles like “Baby Boomerang” and “Chariot Choogle” it’s clear Mark Bolan doesn’t take himself too seriously). Only someone as charismatic and unique as Bolan could pull off those eccentricities without falling into parody.
He achieves the delicate art of making glam rock a legitimate vehicle for chart success without compromising the music. That’s because these songs are simply so outstanding that they cannot be ignored. Behind the playful facade, there’s a top quality songwriter. Tony Visconti’s production is fleshed out a lot more on this record and it makes nearly every one of these tracks a winner. Although it spawned two chart hits in “Metal Guru” and “Telegram Sam”, album cuts like “Buick McKane” could easily have landed him on Top of the Pops. That’s how good this record is. Highly influential from an utterly singular character in the history of pop music.
4/5
There isn’t much to say about this album which hasn’t already been said ad nauseam. It’s a frequent entry in “Greatest Albums of All Time” lists, and more often than not it takes the prize. For me, the Beatles were suffering diminishing returns from Revolver onwards, and this record is no exception. Experimentation is used to mask the more dispensable tracks on this album, but that’s not to say it doesn’t at least partially live up to the hype. The soaring conclusion is deserving of masterpiece status on its own, so you can overlook missteps like “When I’m 64”. The Beatles were never a rabble-rousing group of revolutionaries, at least in their lyrical sentiments, but the musical leap forward on this album is indeed a great one. It’s not quite deserving of 5 star status for me (there is just too muy throwaway fodder here for my liking) but its highs are indeed among the most significant in pop music history.
Massive Attack
4/5
A totally unique, genre-defining album. The obvious inspirations for trip-hop may well land squarely in the hip-hop/soul-jazz camp, but the influence of the punk ethos from groups like Gang of Four (a professed favourite of Massive Attack) also reinforces the totally groundbreaking nature of this album. That being said, it isn’t necessarily a cohesive record, and “Mezzanine” will always be the defining statement of this band. I’m lead to believe this isn’t on the list, so in lieu of a five star for their sophomore effort, I’ll drop a perfect score on this record.
Beck
3/5
The kind of introspective mope-rock much more effectively peddled by the likes of Red House Painters. For me, I just don’t buy Beck assuming this new moniker of contemplative, depressed sad boy. The sombre tone of the album can’t really be criticised, but the lack of structural variation in these songs definitely emphasises its lumbering length. The production is mellow and downbeat, and it works well for the most part. But I think that the rather reserved contemporary criticism this album received upon its release is far more reflective of its overall strengths and weaknesses than the hysterical praise this album receives today. It’s very much middle-of-the-road, though it does threaten to be a half decent record.
The Magnetic Fields
2/5
Sometimes a songwriter hits such an inspired patch, the only showcase for their talents lies in a double-album (George Harrison’s “All Things Must Pass” & Smashing Pumpkins’ “Mellon Colie…” spring to mind). By that logic, this 3 hour long behemoth from Magnetic Fields might suggest a frenzied spell of prodigious creativity unheard of in music.
Alas, this is album is about 60 songs too long. It represents the sort of mechanical approach to songwriting directly anathema to the spontaneous creativity which defines all great art. Stephen Merritt’s process consisted of blurting out some random phrase and proceeding to force a chorus out of it. It’s an extremely rudimentary style of songwriting, and utterly pretentious for the first hour or so of utterly expendable cornball indie-pop tunes.
I generally found it easy to tune out of this record, only occasionally jarred into some sort of irate state by the odd plagal cadence (a serious bugbear of mine, but a favourite among jerkoff professional music eccentrics). Like I say, the gargantuan length is not a problem per se, but it can’t be filled by such pretentious claptrap.
With so much shit thrown at the wall here, some of it naturally sticks. Dare I say, there is actually the makings of a decent album here (or, on second thoughts, maybe an EP). The female vocalist on this album tends to take the lead on the majority of decent cuts. But on the whole this is a pretty loathsome attempt at dragging pop music behind a fortified wall of music snobs. So I’ll sum it up in a word: pish.
Favourite tracks: “I’m Sorry I Love You”; “Crazy for You”; “If You Don’t Cry”
Dexys Midnight Runners
4/5
One of the boldest statements of the New Wave scene and a seriously accomplished debut album. The sound of radio static shifting through Deep Purple, Sex Pistols and The Specials before pop music’s perennial shapeshifter Kevin Rowland exclaims “For God’s sake, burn it down!!” really lays out Dexys’ ambition in the opening seconds of this record.
The cultural rupture ushered in by Never Mind The Bollocks meant it was fair game for The Specials or the Pogues to revitalise staple genres such as folk and ska, so why not soul? The resulting sound is so captivating and the opening salvo of “Burn it Down” and “Tell Me When The Light Turns Green” is one of the most exhilarating I’ve heard during this project so far.
The sentiment of punk is preserved wholesale despite Dexys’ melodic drive coming from a brass section, accentuated by some really excellent production throughout. But the songs themselves are what elevate this record to another level.
As the album’s title implies, the search for the young soul rebels remains an ongoing one, and pervading lyrical themes of disenfranchisement and cynicism threaten to undermine the lofty ambitions underpinning this records revolutionary ideals. But Kevin Rowland‘s somewhat flamboyant delivery (polarising though it may be) serves as the necessary wink to the listener to reassure us that all is not lost just yet.
Almost everything about this record lands for me: from the artwork to the cleverly crafter and totally unique sound. But that being said, when the album loses steam it undeniably drags. The metamorphosis Dexys Midnight Runners would undergo by their second album also raises questions of integrity which, again, threatens to edge this album into the realm of the pretentious.
But I guess that’s the whole point: Rowland saw the direction of traffic within the punk scene and figured the best course of action was to “Burn it Down!!”. And if all it gave us was this album, then I’m more than happy to pile the pyres high.
New York Dolls
5/5
Whether or not this is ground zero for punk rock is largely irrelevant. What the Dolls accomplish on this record is a youthful exuberance which threatened to change pop music in a very dangerous way. As a diehard (yet reluctant) Morrissey fan, my exposure to the band came largely as a result of the latter's passion for their music. In the mind of one of pop music's most literate voices, this is the pinnacle. The songs are rammed with memorable hooks thanks to Johnny Thunders' ear for a melody, and David Johansen's flamboyant snarl obliterated the boundaries of 'taste' for the next several decades. They were a band ultimately blighted by misfortune, and Todd Rundgren's less than flattering production slightly dulls some of the energy of certain tracks. But this is a bonafide classic - from 'Trash' to 'Subway Train', this is all killer no filler. Enough with the banalities already, it's a five star masterpiece.
Elbow
2/5
A sleep-inducing listen. As many listeners have noticed, there is more than a hint of Radiohead in the elaborate, atmospheric song structures on this record, but I find this extremely meticulous attention to the production coupled with the orchestral instrumentation to result in a very cold listen.
As for the lyrical content, Guy Garvey's voice is not to everyone's taste, but it carries an innocence which, along with his Northern charm, almost makes him a believable narrator for his tales of lost youth. But where most mancunians threw their lot in with The Smiths or Gang of Four, this cunt was stuck on Sgt. Pepper's and Queen. Weirdo.
Fair play to him though, 'Grounds for Divorce' and the shit 'Hey Jude' pastiche of 'One Day Like This' have been staples of background music on British TV for the best part of a decade now.
That's where most of this music belongs though - pushed so far into the background, it risks reaching hell before passing through my ears. Seriously soppy, milktoast dad rock, and it even brings Richard Hawley down with it. 'Weather to Fly' is probably the only track where Garvey's ambitious vision is properly realised. But even then, this album is currently getting higher ratings than the New York Dolls?!? (the last album I reviewed). Get to fuck. This brings nothing new to the table, and conforms to a middle of the road archetype of wannabe Phil Spector studio nerds who populated student dorms throughout the 2000s.
Gene Clark
3/5
I really love the Byrds, and Gene Clark undoubtedly played a key part in what made that group unique. It’s one of the great music injustices that his audacious solo efforts fell largely under the radar, but does that make his most spectacular flop a lost masterpiece? To my ear, no. It’s definitely a grower, and I may regret giving such a middling assessment of this record if I keep returning to it enough. But while the rich production and extremely ornate flourishes of brooding psychedelic country are unquestionably standout elements, I can completely see why critics at the time were indifferent to Clark’s vision. Descriptions of this record are ultimately far more interesting than the music’s immediate impression - it’s very much a subtle sidestep than a giant Kraftwerk -esque leap forward. The same applies to Nick Drake, while the suffering artist whose acclaim is consigned to posterity is a nice redemption arc, the fact is that at face value this record sounds like a bunch of quasi-country singer-songwriter efforts at the time. Yet, whereas Drake’s songwriting carries a kernel of truly distinguished genius, I’m not hearing it on this one. It may continue to grow on me, but it’s simply a good album to my ear. Nothing more.
Gary Numan
4/5
Enjoyed this one a lot more than I expected. To say this album sounds ahead of its time is an understatement - it actually sounds timeless. The production is slick without being indulgent, and even though Numan’s whole laconic automaton gimmick wears a bit thin at points, the overall sound of this record is such a breath of fresh air in the context of the late 1970s. Strangely enough, I never noticed how much this record clearly influenced Wire’s 80s output, with the monotonous, pulsing synths interspersed with catchy hooks. It’s really awesome, basically.
Elton John
3/5
A bit of a baffling record. The long tracks sound long - like the mammoth opener, which masks a really great rocker behind some extremely bad 70s synthesisers - but the short tracks start to sound even longer, especially towards the end. Definitely could have chopped this album down to one record, and to be honest the best/worst tracks are the ones you already know. “Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting” is the only one I can tolerate. The rest is just the inconsequential banalities of a vapid pop star.
Nitty Gritty Dirt Band
4/5
I have to say, the prospect of two hours of country music didn’t seem the most appealing to me but this is definitely a valuable artefact of country music. There’s no getting away from the album’s daunting length, and if you have literally no time for this type of music it’s tantamount to a form of torture. I, however, have a good deal of affection for early country. There are enough standards here to really justify a listen, Maybelle Carter’s version of “Wildwood Flower” is the definitive rendition and “Wabash Cannonball” is fit for any hoedown. Less interesting, perhaps, are the prolonged periods of tuning and chatter which pop up from time to time. But the album length isn’t really a drawback for me - it’s necessary to showcase the array of country talent now immortalised on this record. It’s a vital interaction between mainstream pop music and a genre on the verge of irrelevance and in this sense it’s successful. Apart from anything else though, it’s a rootin’ tootin’ good time.
The Who
4/5
This is definitely my preferred era of The Who. It’s a really great display of blues, Faces R&B and Byrds jangle-pop all pivoting around a Beatles-like harmonic sensibility. Pete Townsend is really underrated as a songwriter, and tends to be focused on more as a guitar hero. But tracks like the absolute gem “The Kids Are Alright” display a timeless charm that has solidified its status as a classic. Elsewhere, this record has a lot of hidden gems amid some less distinguished fodder - “The Good’s Gone” and the quasi-psychedelic snarl of “The Ox” both leave a strong impression. The whole mod thing is a bit irrelevant for me as far as apportioning a rating for this record. It may stand as a cultural artefact, but so does Culture Club in this sense and the songs on that album fucking sucked. This record, however, is littered with great stuff, and it was great hearing it again.
In summary, pre-perm Daltrey>permed Daltry> senile xenophobic fossil Daltrey.
Ray Charles
3/5
Not a genre that does a lot for me personally, and the first half sounds too obsolete to my ear. The second half is a more somber affair, and it’s definitely a nice soundtrack to a nighttime stroll around the city. Nevertheless, I’m lead to believe that this is pretty mediocre Ray Charles by any measure, and it shows.
Metallica
3/5
The album which transformed Metallica from trailblazing pioneers into the U2 of heavy metal, the rock establishment if you will. There’s some great testosterone-addled head banging to be enjoyed here (Enter Sandman is the group’s calling card for a reason), and Bob Rock’s iconic production ultimately aids the band’s more lethargic tendencies. But the lumbering slow numbers are turgid and frankly silly. In fairness, the allusions to West Side Story, Spaghetti Westerns and so on show that the band were at least somewhat aware of their trivial image. But it’s not enough of a nod/wink when they go into the soppiest territory imaginable on tracks like “Unforgiven”. If you’ve seen the documentary, “Some Kind of Monster”, you know that this band are not the sort to posit nuanced philosophical observations - but even still their ideas on this record range from the goofy (“Nothing Else Matters”) to the reactionary (“Don’t Tread on Me”). Overall, it’s a perplexing listen. On the one hand, it distances the band so much from their unique aural assault by streamlining their more rambling tendencies, ensuring they could sell out arenas for the foreseeable. Yet in some respects this IS the Metallica sound, and for better or for worse it brought the band into the mainstream forever.
Tom Waits
3/5
The second Tom Waits record I've come across so far after the surprise gem 'Bone Machine', but this one is unfortunately inferior to his later work in almost every way. It's an inconsistent agglomeration of rootsy, bar room blues and quasi-Sondheim ballads. The latter are the nadir of Tom Waits' catalogue - his iconic (though polarising) raspy vocals on 'Bone Machine' were utilised to perfection, illustrating a ravaged, anguished despair that never took itself too seriously. Here he sounds like a barfly doing karaoke after his 10th whiskey.
The blues interlude doesn't end soon enough, and while Waits' does introduce the odd crumb of genius - 'There ain't no devil, just God when he's drunk' - it's just not enough. It's been called a transitional record for Waits, and you can see he was moving towards more interesting musical plains.
Kacey Musgraves
2/5
Her voice is seriously good (if a bit overproduced) and the songs are seriously well constructed. The problems emerge after the first couple of tracks.
I discovered she was helped by a crack team of hired hands in writing these songs. No matter, after all Morrissey couldn’t write a song to save himself, Marr gift wrapped him all of those pop gems. So what remains of Kacey when all is said and done? “Love is a Wild Thing” is about how love is wild? “Space Cowboy” is about how this jerk guy needs space? How clever. You can essentially reduce all of the lyrical prowess on offer here to the most surface level reflection on relationships with a handy sprinkling of new age sophistry which in essence boils down to a statement as profound as, “I like/dislike this person”.
At the end of the day, no amount of production or slick songwriting can mask how little artistic ambition remains once you’ve stripped away the hired studio hands.
It’s pathetic that this be included in a list that celebrates both historically significant albums and accomplished songwriters when this record is the antithesis of both do these things. It will be forgotten and it is a sad reminder of how much potential was lost during this generation of budding songwriters.
Lou Reed
4/5
This album should come with a disclaimer: Velvet Underground fetishists not welcome. There’s no trace of the trailblazing noise rock or even the glam stomp of Reed’s “Transformer” on this ambitious rock opera. It’s a radical departure in both form and style from his previous work - the instrumentation leans heavily into the brassy cabaret of early 20th century Berlin to narrate a bleak story of love, abuse and drug addiction (in that order).
While the lugubrious subject matter ultimately turned away many listeners, Reed’s diegetic narration is straight to the point and carries a directness which can sometimes seem silly (and often funny!). The hopelessness and despair contrasted with the elaborate bravado of the music perpetuates an unsettling atmosphere throughout. This is rendered even more powerful by the reality of Reed’s own interaction with the depths of heroin dependence. It’s a proximity which can be uncomfortable at times. But since when was pop music supposed to be easy? The measure of great art is its ability to undermine the pre-existing status quo, and introduce a new perspective into the public consciousness. It’s dangerous, and on these terms this record is an incontestable triumph. On the other hand, to my ear some of these tracks overdo it a bit with the aforementioned production, and it results in a number of subpar Lou Reed songs at the end of the day.
Nevertheless, this is an album that’s well worth coming to terms with. With an open-mind it rewards the listener with a devastating yet triumphant tale of resignation and defiance. I love it, warts and all.
Best tracks:
“How Do You Think It Feels”
“Oh Jim”
“The Kids”
And the euphoric closer “Sad Song”
DJ Shadow
5/5
A record which completely changed the way music could be used for artistic expression and challenged preconceptions about ownership and legitimacy in popular. The sum total is also an extremely engaging, powerful record which never drags across its hour run time. It’s remarkable to look at the primitive sampling and beats which supplement Run DMC’s first record and compare it to this - a record in which hip-hop literally eats itself, so to speak. Not only did it reappropriate the music being sampled, it made sampling the sole basis for the music to exist. Instrumental works which eschew traditional song structures can often be hard for me to digest, but this record is never too abstract for its own good. An absolute game-changing masterpiece.
Todd Rundgren
4/5
This was a weird listen to say the least. I had never actually listened to a Todd Rundgren album before, but I had a suspicion it was going to have some pretty incredible production. This album didn’t disappoint. I simply MUST highlight those drums! You’re basically hearing the next 20-30 years of rock music. It’s a long album (one of the longest single LP records around), and so there’s a bit of inconsistency as a result. The boundary between pompous, indulgent prog and genuinely revolutionary prog is quite a fine one, but on the whole this album fares well. The song structures and harmonies sound often dated, but Rundgren is really pushing the boat out on the production front - certainly enough to make up for the former flaw.
The Rolling Stones
4/5
It’s hard to evaluate the Rolling Stones on an album-by-album basis. Their brand of bluesy rock which set the template for many imitators doesn’t necessarily yield a consistent listen on record. And for every classic like “Sympathy for the Devil” or “Street Fightin’ Man” there are a number of more routine numbers. And this album is no different. It’s a well-produced affair, and cemented the Stones’ status as one of the most subversive and dangerous groups in popular music. But the latter element has long dissipated as they transitioned into a commercial behemoth, and that definitely hollows out some of the lyrical sentiments on this album. It’s still well worth a listen at the end of the day.
Al Green
4/5
Not a genre I’m particularly keen on, but for some reason this record just did it for me. It’s as though the meandering structures of soul have been streamlined into a seriously infectious formula of funky soul pop. Can’t comment on too much else really. As an album, it’s a winner.
George Michael
3/5
An ace single which is unfortunately not matched by the rest of the album. This project has definitely given me a better appreciation of George Michael as a notch above the cliché one-dimensional pop star. That being said, Listen Without Prejudice struck me as a much better rounded album. Here the production is just too rooted in 80s excess, and even while Michael is cute in his subversive hedonism, this subtlety is simply lacking in the ostentatious songwriting. A decent 80s pop album, but he would go on to do something much more special.
Roxy Music
3/5
This is more or less the inverse of the first Roxy album - one side of energetic proto-new wave rock sounds, another side of quasi-krautrock divergences under the leadership of Brian Eno. While I preferred the more esoteric work on their first record, here it’s a bit of a drag. Conversely, the first side has a couple of genuinely revolutionary rock music. It’s tasteful and bombastic all at once, but perhaps lacking in the chorus section to really worm its way to my heart. On the whole, it’s not quite as good as the first record but I can definitely appreciate Roxy Music’s valuable contribution to the canon of popular music a lot more for having listened to this record.
The White Stripes
5/5
Love, love, love. The White Stripes manage to be such an obvious amalgamation of instantly recognisable sounds - the harsh growl of Creedence swamp rock and Muddy Waters meeting The Cramps via Paul McCartney - but it’s always unmistakably their sound. This was exactly the shot in the arm that indie music needed at the turn of the millennium and nobody has equalled the raft of great songs they produced, though many have tried. A bit like Motörhead in that they don’t deviate too much from their formula, but it is a really great formula. I gave Elephant a 4 for its slightly off production, but this is the best White Stripes album, and deserving of a 5 in my book.
Pentangle
5/5
Say what you want about this record, but, for better or for worse, there aren’t many that sound like it. To state the obvious: it’s a jazz-folk-psychedelic trip through Renaissance England. And I am here for it. John Renbourne and Bert Jansch provide the most solid instrumental foundation for any album to succeed, but Jacqui McShee’s vocals flit weightlessly around the whole record. It conjures the same eerie juxtaposition of contemporary and profoundly folkish as the Wicker Man soundtrack (songs like Luke-Wake Dirge almost demand a Maypole to be truly appreciated). It’s a product of its time, and by no means perfect. But I love it, and that’s why I’d give it 4.5 (rounded up).
Roxy Music
4/5
The third (and surely last?) Roxy album I’ve gotten on this list, and all in chronological order. I can undoubtedly say that, having never listened to any of these records, I have a new found appreciation for Roxy Music’s work, and this album is definitely my favourite. It tempers a lot of the goofier/esoteric elements of previous record, and from its rip roaring opener it never really lets up, save for a brief detour into quirky baroque prog rock on “Triptych”. Eno’s absence here is not necessarily a bad thing (I never felt like his bits really meshed with the rest of the band) and Phil Manzaneras more than fills his shoes. The closer “Prairie Rose” is a fantastic example of how Roxy effortlessly eschewed genre boundaries and tastes to make something really their own, and even if I can’t say this is a perfect album, it’s definitely a great one. Plus, boobs.
The Specials
5/5
How can anyone not love this record? Its stylistic innovation is a lot less immediate than the social impact this record made, but it completely revitalised the reggae/ska genre for a generation of working class kids in the U.K., and did more than its share for racial and social justice in the meantime. The reggae standards are given a whole new impetus against the austerity of late 1970s Britain, and the original offerings are exactly that - totally original. “Gangsters” and “Rat Race” are brimming with satirical bite, and the energy of punk is perceptible throughout. Great instrumentation on top of that makes this one of the great debut albums of all time.
My Bloody Valentine
5/5
A record quite unlike anything that came before it, or has come since. Kevin Shields painstakingly crafted a dense quagmire of guitars waving in and out of tune and overdriven to the point of bursting through the speakers along with shimmering gusts of breathy vocals - it’s murky yet so vibrant and a masterclass in sound production. And thus came the definitive statement of shoegaze…
Listening to this record, with which I was already very familiar, on vinyl really hammers home just how perfectly every microscopic detail comes together in this collage of noise. Tracks seemlessly blend one into the other, you’ll go from an ethereal instrumental to the raucous favourite “When You Sleep” before “Sometimes” carries you into another realm of aural pleasure. The sequencing is absolutely impeccable. I read recently about how Shields’ notoriously meticulous recording process resulted in about twenty takes of a tambourine which is buried somewhere in this album. But you’ll probably hear it eventually - after each listen something new reveals itself, and it hasn’t dated for even a microsecond.
This was the Dark Side of the Moon for the 90s - and in keeping with this idea, it betters that record and then some. There’s no pre-tense here, or grandiose pomposity. It really does sound like the future even today. As close to a perfect record as you could possibly ask for. One of the greatest of all time.
Favourite tracks: “When You Sleep”, “Sometimes”, “What You Want”
David Bowie
4/5
As someone who is not an enthusiast of either Bowie nor soul music as such, I don’t care much for the debates around authenticity that surround this record. All I know is this album fucking slaps. Bowie settles surprisingly well in the soul/funk genre, which was slightly jarring at first. Like I say, I am not Bowie’s greatest fan. But to make a statement like this, such a radical departure from what his fans were expecting by this point, and do it successfully is testament to something truly enigmatic. “Fascination” and “Fame” are standouts, but overall I just love the way Bowie streamlines (some would say “dilutes”) the sometimes pedestrian structures of soul music. It’s not a masterpiece to me, but it is significant in the trajectory of this most unique artist. Finally, a Bowie record I really truly like.
Slayer
3/5
Finally a bit more heavy metal. This is a blistering record designed to test the limits of finger dexterity (and aural endurance at points). I have a lot of time for this sort of music, and there’s no denying the infectious energy derived from music played at a million miles per hour. The staying power of this record is actually quite astonishing given that even the “expanded” version clocks in at barely half an hour long. The riffs are frantic and sometimes hooky. The soloing is generally just a random assortment of notes splurged together on the track. Couple all of that with the overtly iconoclastic lyrical content, hell bent on saying and illustrating the most obscene images possible, and it’s a good time all round. But I can’t take it all that seriously as a record, simply because it takes itself too seriously for its own good. Nevertheless, I can get behind it. 3.5/5
The Rolling Stones
4/5
The Stones are really a band who are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. Their derivative style of blues rock for the arena stage is frequently dismissed as formulaic, but when they pushed the boat out into the psychedelic realm on “Their Satanic Majesties Request” they were lampooned in the music press as a second rate Sgt Pepper. And so they reverted to type and released a string of critically acclaimed records, beginning with Beggars Banquet in 1968, followed by Let It Bleed in 1969. I’ve had both of those records on my project so far, and so rounding off the triumvirate is Exile on Main Street.
Admittedly, my patience with the Stones is really wearing thin at this stage, and upon seeing that this record is a double LP my expectations were low. And, truth be told, this album exceeded those expectations. The songwriting here is really tight, and the production introduces a lot more stylistic variety than on the previous two records. I still struggle to pinpoint exactly which element seats the Stones at the top table of rock music, but I can’t deny this record has some great tunes.
It does veer into the obnoxious boogie-woogie territory on a couple of occasions, but actually this is some of their best work. I feel that this record could have substituted for any of the previous three or four in their catalogue - if nothing else it would allow for their outstanding debut and sophomore effort a deserved place - and I hope this is their last on this list (although I imagine Sticky Fingers will show up). As it stands, I’m not quite fed up with the Rolling Stones, but one more record and I will be too beleaguered to be objective about it.
Pantera
3/5
A string of metal after a long absence has proved very enjoyable. Though a tad long, you can really see why this album is considered an influential touchstone for metal in the 90s. Phil Anselmo (a bellend by all accounts) delivers a vortex swallowing howl that offsets the general lyrical banalities that plague this genre. There’s a real working man’s approach to Pantera’s crunchy assault, but equally there’s nothing rudimentary about Dimebag Darrell’s fantastic guitar work. There’s a bit of glam, prog and arena rock underlying the thrash moniker - and this is as much to the record’s detriment as anything. It falls into indulgent pitfalls which totally lose my attention, especially on the longer form compositions. This is a shame because as its raucous best, this record delivers some truly colossal riffs. A solid 3.5/5 for me.
Method Man
3/5
This is the sort of record which really separates an accomplished taste in hip-hop from a cursory knowledge. I unquestionably fall into the latter, but the whole point of this project was to throw myself into albums like this in the hopes of having some kind of epiphany.
In the end, all I can really say is I really enjoy this record. The production from RZA is quite excellent, but it’s a style which I’m led to believe he had already implemented (more) successfully with Wu Tang Clan. As for Method Man, it’s hard for me to reach a conclusion. The lisp thing isn’t a problem for me, and there’s some really neat lines in here. Unfortunately, evaluating music on “Rhymes” and “Flow” is a framework outside of my capacity, so generally if a hip-hop artist doesn’t immediately resonate with me it’s for good reason.
So, on the one hand, everything great about this record seems to have been better established earlier in the artist’s career. On the other, it’s just a really good album. Pinpointing the influence of Method Man and RZA in general is quite straightforward, but within the particular context of this record I’m not hearing it.
The Everly Brothers
5/5
Pop music is a bit like food. You’re loathed to throw it away, but keep it around long enough and it will fester and metamorphose into something frankly unpalatable. Fortunately, this record is merely the leftover curry from the night before which, while definitely past its prime, you won’t hesitate to bathe in the following morning.
My preconceptions of the Everly Brothers were truly shattered by this collection of rock n’ roll gems. To me, their music consisted of cumbersome 60s balladry rightly consigned to the dustbin of history. Here, those saccharine sweet harmonies work their magic on some truly outstanding pop gems.
This was a moment in music history where the status of pop “star” really was taking shape, and it’s a period which we must preserve in order to keep alive the sense of wonder and sheer amazement which once belonged to the realm of music. The Everly Brothers deservedly helped blaze that trail - how could they not? They had the talent to go with their schoolboy charm.
Admittedly, there is a bit of blue mould formed on the surface of some of these tracks. In today’s social context, the idea of some horny white boys serenading women in the most objectified sense possible is no longer palatable - and rightly so. But if some vague nostalgia isn’t enough to give tracks like “Made to Love” or “Lucille” a pass, I believe there often is more than meets the eye in these tracks. Take the former song - the narrator here is the father who proscribes a view of women as objects of desire and a necessary rite of passage for manhood. The hyper-macho stereotype is so impotent nowadays, you might as well look at these songs with an ironic lens and see them for what they are. It might be a stretch to say that there’s a nod or wink in this lyrical message, but for what it’s worth the song is inescapably hooky!
Yet, while I want to give this record 5/5, there are a couple of drawbacks. While the highs are some of the most enjoyable pop music I’ve heard in a while, some tracks on this record are so 1950s/early 60s I see visions of roller skating waitresses in milkshake bars with every note.
Having said that, who else am I doing these ratings for? For all its anachronisms, the Everly Brothers blast through a set of top tier surf pop songs in 27 minutes (a feat the Ramones would match a decade later), so make mine a double chocolate please.
Favourite tracks: “Made for Love”; “Donna Donna” (the fade out at the end let’s you soak in those heavenly vocals); “A Change of Heart”
Tom Waits
4/5
160 records in and one thing I know for certain now is that I’m a Tom Waits convert. This the third of his albums that I’ve been generated, and along with Bone Machine it’s a classic. His style is a unique and chaotic barrage of mawkish noir cocktail bar ballads and bluesy mopes against a generally bizarre musical backdrop of pianos, guitars and the occasional marimba. When you’ve settled into the surrealist confines of Rain Dogs, he throws you a downright pop gem like “Downtown Train” tinged with his sardonic witticisms and that utterly iconic voice. There was a time when I would have found an album like this utterly ridiculous. Throughout its run time it throws up constant surprises and musical jolts that it can almost seem like lunacy. But really, this is just Tom Waits. And I happen to love it now.
TLC
3/5
Was half expecting something like the black Spice Girls here. But to be honest there’s more to this record than meets the eye. Some interesting production, catchy choruses and biting humour make this a really fun listen. There’s no denying this record has dated a lot, but there’s a lot of merit in these songs. “Waterfalls” is the obvious classic, but “Kick Your Game” was another standout for me. Colour me surprised, this album was good.
Bruce Springsteen
5/5
Couldn’t hit the five stars fast enough. This is a complete radical departure from everything Springsteen had done before, and would go on to do after. They’re effectively demo tracks which somehow made it out as a finished record. The sparse arrangements (often no more than Springsteen, a guitar and some echoplex layered on top) somehow add more than they take away from these really heartfelt songs. His character work on this album displays an empathy with the working man which has always underpinned Springsteen’s ideas and rooted his music in the universal human experience of the underdog.
I guess this is the true measure of a great songwriter - for these tunes to work on every possible level is testament to the genius of Springsteen. I can’t claim to have been a massive fan before recently, but this album was an absolute joy to hear.
Favourite tracks: “Johnny 99”; “State Trooper” & “Reason to Believe”.
Doves
2/5
Spectacularly dull listen, falls short of its lofty ambitions as a record by being so forgettable. This is my first interaction with Doves’ music, and I’m mystified as to their success. At its best, this record is advert music. It’s like an amalgamation of Coldplay and Elbow at the turn of the millennium resulted in the musical equivalent of the neutral people from Futurama. The result? “I have no strong feelings one way or the another”.
Bruce Springsteen
5/5
An absolute triumph from the Boss. There has arguably never been a sequence of albums so contrasting in tone and sound as Born in the USA and its predecessor, but I’ve been lucky enough to have them both on this project in the last week and they simply serve to demonstrate just how good Springsteen’s songwriting could be.
No question, the title track lends itself to jingoists who completely miss its satirical edge. You can’t blame Springsteen for that. You can argue that off-record, his political posturing could be a bit more coherent. I would say that what bugs me is not so much that he’s too radical. Rather, he isn’t radical enough.
Nevertheless, back to this record. The production is pompous and totally extravagant. It’s a calcified relic of 80s excess. But underneath some of the superficial fluff lies the thing which elevates Bruce Springsteen above your average pop star. There’s a heart and sincerity in his work, and an energy from the E-Street band which is totally invigorating. There are anthems, and then there is the title track. One of the greatest tunes ever written in my opinion.
Any cartoonish optimism is tempered by a bitter sense of reality in Springsteen’s character work, and it results in an emotional concoction which carries this record effortlessly. I listened to this about 3 or 4 times before reviewing and I must emphasise that I had never heard it all the way through beforehand. “No Surrender” (another track open to misinterpretation , though admittedly only in Glasgow) is a personal highlight for me. But if I haven’t made it obvious enough so far, this album is deservedly in the conversation about all-time greats (warts and all).
So that’s two consecutive perfect scores for Mr. Sprinkles. Never thought I would say that.
Depeche Mode
3/5
A band I adore for their elite list of synth-pop singles moving into their “serious” period to mixed results. I should like this record a lot more, but it actually marks the point where I check out of Depeche Mode’s discography. Besides the singles, which are again top notch, the deep cuts are very samey both sonically and melodically. The production definitely ties another feather to the band’s bow, but it just didn’t resonate with me at all. It’s simultaneously dense and sparse and to my ear just falls a bit flat and, dare I say, dated. Obviously their earlier stuff is incredibly dated in this regard but it’s still ultimately fun. Here, the brooding introspection just never lets up and it seaps into every element of this record. It’s a pretty dark listen but not all that engaging across the full album. Nevertheless, I’m glad it’s on this list. Albeit with a bit of confusion I’ll admit.
Bonnie Raitt
2/5
Nothing about this record impressed me. Not her voice, not the lyrics nor the songs themselves. It just sounds like banal square-dancing pop rock. The sort of thing you would hear playing in a Southern bar before a naked Arnold Schwarzenegger bursts in looking for your motorcycle. Just very sub-par to my ear.
Manu Chao
5/5
There’s a school of thought which ascribed to Spanish culture a reactionary and backwards character which prevented any significant artistic or cultural products emerging from the Iberian peninsula. The origins of this character is rooted in the belief that Spain’s subordination to both Islamic and Christian fanaticism has imbued its people with a lingering aversion to the enlightenment values which gave life to some of the most precious artefacts of European artistic achievement. (see: the Black Legend on Wikipedia for more on this stuff).
Truthfully, you can kind of see what is meant by this theory, even if there are glaring historical inconsistencies underpinning its premise. While I am not even 200 albums through this project, the contribution of Spain to the canon of popular music is practically nonexistent. Its folk music lacks universal appreciation, and when it comes to popular music you can just forget it. The eruption of punk in the country, which had already invigorated most of Western Europe in the late 1970s, came too late and with seriously derivative results (a prevailing trend).
What has this to do with “Clandestino” by Manu Chao? Well, I would argue that the ex-Mano Negra member achieved one of the most significant Spanish contributions to popular music with this offering - even if he isn’t exactly, well, Spanish. His ancestral connections to the country are, in fact, to the Basque Country, which is a less than enthusiastic participant in Spanish identity-building.
That being said, Manu Chao’s use of the Spanish language is some of the most poetically ingenious you will hear. While the general locus of the record is found, rather predictably, in the idea of loneliness and nomadic uncertainty, he illustrates this sense of vagrancy with some really biting social commentary and sardonic wit. The multi-lingual approach to his songwriting compounds this placelessness which doesn’t so much torment the narrator, but rather confronts him as an inescapable reality.
Additionally, the record has a lot going for it sonically. It’s a really unique hybrid of Latin folk, hip-hop and punk which just works on so many levels. It’s a blend that’s hard to describe without sounding too reductive, but just listen to the subtle combination of genres on tracks like “Bongo Bong” - it sounds equally at home in the sun-bleached bars of Havana as it does in the rustic Parisian ghettos.
It’s a concept album in the loosest sense, but is so rich in thematic depth - and these two things should not be conflated. The album is so far from pretentious, that it delves so profoundly into its philosophical material. So… Vive La France? Arriba España? Gora Euskadi? Yes…
Coldplay
2/5
Coldplay forfeited the right to a fair trial long ago - their brand of middle-of-the-road, milk toast indie pop has clogged up the airways for the past decade and on that hill they must be strung up - but that's not to say this record has nothing going for it.
Love them or (more logically) hate them, they have a style - in the same way a bank manager or a similarly nondescript office drone has style. It's heartfelt guitar rock, not ambitious or challenging, but still earnest enough to secure them a deluge of critical and commercial acclaim.
It's a shit template, but if nothing else it's a template that they created and, dare I say, perfected. So for that I can spare this album the lowest of marks. But Coldplay suck, and that will never change. And we'll continue to love hating them.
Aimee Mann
3/5
A surprisingly decent collection of pop songs, but definitely could have gone to the grave without hearing them.
Fleetwood Mac
4/5
Can’t really tell you what I hate about this record. Can’t really tell you what I like about it. Can’t really describe why it sounds dated, can’t really say why it still sounds vibrant. It’s just really hard to say what this album is, because it’s such a yardstick in pop music - for better or worse.
The production is undeniably vibrant, but the hoaky background vocals just grate on me. There’s a couple of real bangers, and some dirges. Lesley Buckingham’s guitar playing is incredible, but the lyrical content is surprisingly banal.
The album has come to mean a lot more to many people than it ever will to me. But it is what it is I guess. I can’t take away its merits, but I don’t think you can ignore its faults.
Lauryn Hill
2/5
This record made me take an absence from this project which lasted nearly a year. It's absolutely fine, but I'm not listening to it again so all I'll say is from what I recall she whines a lot, is a seriously asinine character but writes a couple of great tracks. It's too long and the skits range from good to shit. That's it.
The Smiths
5/5
It goes without saying that this one is another masterpiece from my own personal favourite group, but also one of the most important cultural icons in British music history. While punk rock approached revolution with a sort of iconoclastic irreverence, The Smiths turned the mechanisms of pop culture against itself by appropriating nearly every trope lumbered upon guitar bands over the preceding two decades and creating something truly unique. An effeminate, quasi-Romantic wordsmith in Morrissey, combining with the understated guitar mastery of Johnny Marr was the kind of musical alchemy which has yet to be repeated to the same levels of cult worship that The Smiths’ music almost commanded of its devoted audience. Add into the mix a rhythm section of Mike Joyce and the mesemeric melodicism of Andy Rourke on bass, and you have yourself the greatest pop group is history, in my not so humble opinion.
‘Meat is Murder’ is where all of the aforementioned ingredients rise to the surface. Across this record, Marr’s inspirations lurk from rockabilly to funk, from Gene Vincent to the Gap Band, and the result is never derivative. This is thanks in no small part to the unparalleled wit of Morrissey’s lyrics, which truly shine on this album. Rusholme Ruffians describes a stabbing at a Manchester funfair with the kind of black comedic irony that has no right to work; The Headmaster Ritual lambasts the sadistic persecution of a generation of England’s youth at the hands of retired army lieutenants stationed in the state schooling system. Nowhere Fast and What She Said clearly draw upon the frontman’s frustration at the world’s inability to recognise his genius for what it was, with a few jabs at the institutional hypocrisy which venerates bone-idle monarchs instead. Whatever gammon-headed sentiments he gives voice to nowadays, Morrissey and The Smiths produced the most left-wing art to seamlessly infiltrate the pop charts against all the odds.
But it’s tracks like the breathtakingly melancholic Well I Wonder that represent more familiar thematic territory for Morrissey’s agonised croon – an absolute masterpiece which ought to have closed the record in place of his ham-fisted (pardon the pun) vegetarian treatise. That being said, the very refrain ‘Meat is Murder’ is now entrenched in the public lexicon, and further illustrates The Smiths’ significance beyond just a mere rock group. Only the slums of working class Manchester could have produced such honest art, and like it or lump it, this group were the cream of the crop.
If most of this assessment looks at Morrissey’s contributions (and I believe they were his best during this band’s brief lifespan), then that is not to dismiss Marr, Rourke and Joyce as simply a b-rate supporting cast. Rourke’s spidery bass lines on Well I Wonder and I Want the One I Can’t Have are worth listening to in isolation, and Barbarism Begins at Home is arguably his most recognisable composition. Even Morrissey’s utter contempt for Mike Joyce the man didn’t his admiration for the drummer’s importance to The Smiths’ sound, and Marr as ever is the creative foil that the outspoken frontman needed to catapult his deification in indie music circles.
Meat is Murder isn’t a perfect record – like I say, it’s a bit front-loaded, and could probably have been better sequenced – but it is an absolutely necessary listen if you want to understand why music without politics isn’t even music. An absolutely irrepressible masterpiece from a moment in time when popular music threatened to really matter.
The Strokes
3/5
The Strokes, for me, brought about the death of guitar music. Everyone knew the derivative quality of their music, but the independent music press were about to undergo a period of self-induced amnesia which refused to look at these bands for what they were and say, “the emperor really isn’t wearing a stale-fag smelling Harrington jacket”. In fact, Julian Casablancas looks exactly like the kind of guy who just gives off “I’m in a band” energy - a kind of performative rebellion that only the middle class can appropriate (without a shred of self-aware irony as well). There’s a depthlessness to The Strokes as a band that is quintessentially postmodern, and for that reason they are, in my opinion, disposable - they let the labels remove “New York City Cops” due to the sensitive atmosphere post-9/11, some punks eh?
That being said, this record is actually pretty good. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel, and wasn’t the revolution people convinced themselves it was, but these guys wrote some great songs. Especially the singles. Albert Hammond Jr. (nepo baby, of course) plays simple but catchy riffs, and though it’s all pretty po-faced, Casablancas’ voice is produced well on this album.
The movement they purportedly started spawned some complete turds that no amount of effusive press releases can polish. But The Strokes’ debut is still a cut above their acolytes. Don’t know why, but it is.
2/5
There’s genuinely fewer bands which frustrate me more than U2. Bono is an unabashed cunt, but a talented cunt. The Edge is an absolute extraordinaire who introduced an entire spectrum of possibilities for what a guitar could sound like. The band’s early output, I believe, showcases these elements at their very best, and I was pleasantly surprised by Achtung Baby as a late period gem earlier in this project.
But the Joshua Tree is the record which supposedly captures U2 at the peak of their powers (and popularity), and I was looking forward to hearing some of the deep cuts on this record. The lyrical themes aside (they’re obviously shite), I wasn’t that impressed by the overall tone they were going for on this record. For the most part, it’s just a really pedestrian record. The singles are well known by now, but apart from that there isn’t really much else to highlight. While The Edge blazes yet more trails from a production perspective, the absence of strong riffs relegates him so far to the background he’d have been as well just playing in the fucking deserts the band were so evidently captivated by. “Where the Streets have no Name” is the obligatory master stroke, but where that track is chiming, anthemic and deeply urgent, the rest of the record barely jerks itself from a sonambulent state.
On the whole, quite disappointing from a band that are capable of so much better.
The Undertones
3/5
Not a sophomore slump by any means, but following up one of the great debut records isn’t easy. The O’Neill brothers are superb songwriters with an irresistible ear for a catchy lick. And I can’t tell whether the criticism regarding Fergal Sharkey’s trademark quiver and its resemblance to Jello Biafra are serious - The Undertones were making music a full four years before the Dead Kennedys.
Ultimately, this is a solid pink artefact but the songs just aren’t quite on the level of their self-titled release. The sound develops from a Derry Ramones to more of a lightning quick Television on Hypnotised but I think that while Wednesday Week showcase this evolution at its best, the strongest tracks arrive when they stick to the urgent punk exuberance they know best - see the classic My Perfect Cousin.
Love this band, nonetheless, but perhaps a superfluous inclusion on this list.
The Avalanches
5/5
Caught me totally off guard but what an absolutely exceptional album this is. Describing its philosophy doesn’t really do it justice - the process of assembling a coherent record from sampled fragments is now commonplace, but it’s been executed so poorly that it can be easy to dismiss the truly outstanding exponents of this technique. But The Avalanches made a record that is completely unique, and more importantly it just doesn’t stop grooving for its entire hour-long duration. Hadn’t heard this record before but will definitely be going back to it from now on. Absolutely brilliant.
FKA twigs
2/5
Did everything I could to like this album but it just isn’t happening. People will repeat ad nauseum that listening music is ultimately a subjective exercise, but I honestly this the point of criticism is to situate any piece of art within its objective situation and contextualise its merits from that vantage. With that in mind, I’m lead to believe that FKA Twigs and the ensemble of producers she had at her disposal were pushing the boundaries of R&B. Incorporating washes of icy synths and soaring vocal effects, the album is at first really quite mesmerising. Additionally, though she is a far cry from the great wordsmiths of popular music, the almost painfully candid manner Twigs deals with the ubiquitous topics of love and heartbreak is occasionally appealing.
But there are some objectively deficient aspects to FKA Twigs’ artistry which simply must be called out - though the delusionally ebullient music press would never do so for an artist of her profile, particularly in this genre. But let’s not pretend like this is some milestone of cultural greatness. At it’s best it is simple good, 5/10 atmospherics which couches its earnest pretense in the most obnoxious artifice. In other words, the production which aims at novelty does so aimlessly. I actually really like the other word of some producers on this album (namely, Arca), but the sonic exploration of the mixing desk feels completely clinical here. More novel nowadays would be a producer who opts to serve the song rather than shoehorn another obscure Bossa Nova sample pitch-shifted to sound like Alvin and the Chipmunks.
What ultimately gets lost in this labyrinth of sounds are the contributions of Twigs herself. And by the end of this record I was lapsing into the most unforgivable of states when listening to a record - complete boredom.
I rate the ambition but this record falls way short of the hype, and is so much less than the sum of its parts.
LL Cool J
3/5
Did not dislike this half as much as I expected. Some of the beats on this record are really reminiscent of Public Enemy (obviously contemporaries but the latter perfected it in my opinion), and Mr. J sounds like a man possessed on some of these tracks. It’s the kind of aggressive, urgent hip-hop I like but it’s undercut by a few really cheesy number and the usual bone-headed sexism neither of which has aged well at all. On the whole, it didn’t knock me out, but it did jolt my attention for most of its hour-long run time.
Snoop Dogg
2/5
Crass, obnoxious but enjoyable in its pure absurdity. Snoop Dogg is a total caricature and, for better or for worse, you can’t ignore the bastard. This record is a bit too mundane for me, but ocassionally it caught me off guard with just how much it leans into its ridiculousness. Once that wears off, there’s not a lot here - just dated hip-hop employing the full gambit of genre tropes - but it’s a far from awful record.
Heaven 17
4/5
I think criticism of this record is just wilful ignorance. Here is a group whose appropriation of the synth-pop genre served as a kind of revolutionary entryism to the charts, and a valuable critique of Thatcherite yuppy culture before it had even fully flourished. Whatever you think of this album, Heaven 17 were conceptually light years ahead of so many of their contemporaries.
Undeniably the production has aged somewhat, but the bass chops provided by John Wilson on side 1 are nothing short of sublime, and the notion of incorporating a satirical put-down of a fascist movement that was a real threat in this country into a pop song is exactly the sort of statement that elevates this group and this album above the pack.
Singer Glenn Gregory embodies every bit the snide 80s wheeler dealer persona, hammering home the absurdity of Thatcher’s social Darwinism in a way that deserves a far greater analysis than what I’m going to offer here (although the fact that this record DOES deserve that analysis in the first place is testament to its objective importance). People seem to be dismissing it on the most superficial terms.
That being said, there is one area where the record arguably falters somewhat. And it’s an important one: the songs. Some of them just ain’t that great. Others, most certainly are. But for that reason I’ve been oscillating between a 3 and 4 star rating. Ultimately, I think this album is a rewarding listen, and deserving of its spot on this list. Heaven 17 took the most pioneering elements of its Human League progenitor, without compromising their social consciousness. We Don’t Need that Fascist Groove Thang more than ever now…
Frankie Goes To Hollywood
2/5
All of the negative traits ascribed to 80s synth-pop on this site, this album has basically all of them. Insipid, completely pretentious double-album. Fun fact: almost every single vinyl copy you come across has the inner sleeves falling apart from a bad glue run. A good metaphor for this album - superficially ambitious but lacking the basics. The subversive homo-eroticism of bands like Soft Cell is here replaced by Holly Johnson’s completely ham-fisted vulgarity. One or two of the covers (and there are a few of these to pad out this double album with derivative guff) are decent (Born to Run in particular). But this is a snooze fest and even the singles haven’t aged well. Skippable.
Ella Fitzgerald
3/5
I get the hate on this one - it’s a compilation and that alone should be enough to disqualify it. Equally, the overall style is more than a little passé nowadays. But that being said, I generally quite enjoyed this one. And I slogged it out through all three hours of it.
The jauntier numbers are the ones which really standout from the more turgid affairs - both Fitzgerald and the Gershwins shine when the tempo isn’t trudging along the ballroom floor behind them. As for the sibling songwriter extraordinaries, I’m a bit ambivalent about them. They are super composers and some of their arrangements are undeniably timeless. The embryo of modern pop music can be gleaned if you listen closely, and that’s not insignificant. But, in objective terms, they represent a curious period of music history when songwriting was a ringfenced affair instrumentalised in the interests large corporations - and the Gershwin’s weaker material exposes their ideological place on the conveyor belt of cultural fordism. It’s a shame, since it becomes a symptom of a more pervasive shortcoming in their songwriting: the lyrics. Leaving aside the obviously circumscribed subject matters they broach, every single song seems to be a cringe-inducing pun excessively laboured over two or three minutes. The rhymes begin to approach ”dad joke” territory, no matter how recondite the inter-textual references they draw upon (see “By Strauss”). The preludes and instrumentals by Nelson Riddle at the end of this mammoth 3 hour listen are completely forgettable - at best, they come across as deep cuts from the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang soundtrack (and that’s not a compliment).
With all that in mind, on a really base level some of these songs just resonated with me when I listened to them on a sunny stroll around my home city. They put a smile on my face and that’s more than can be said for some of the other pish I’ve been subjected to. It’s a product of its time, but like all great albums it has a timeless quality that prolongs its value as an album worth listening to. But maybe go for the abridged version.
Paul Simon
3/5
This album shouldn’t have been made. Breaking the cultural boycott of South Africa is an unpardonable faux pas from Simon, but the record he produced still has its merits nonetheless. I was first told about Graceland my a music teacher in high school, who told me to focus on the bass playing. Back then, I was gobsmacked by the fretless slapping on this record, but to my ear now it sounds a bit… well, shit. That’s more of a production quibble, but it’s far from minor. This album has aged a lot, both in its concept and its execution. Simon is a songwriting powerhouse, but you’d be better off going to the source of Graceland’s influences directly, rather than his bastardised brand of African soukous. Still, for all its many flaws when heard from a contemporary perspective, there are a couple of Simon’s trademark bangers to be found. Altogether, Graceland is less an album you should listen to before you die, than it is a record that you should listen to before the passing of time kills off any of its appeal.
King Crimson
3/5
It has all the makings of an insufferable barrage of prog rock schlock. Perpetual time-signature changes that induce a state of schizophrenia. Distended song lengths which, far from caputuring the imagination, leave you wondering what the fuck happened to those last fifteen minutes of your life. The hokiest lyrics which mask their shallow pretensions under the bravado of someone who’s read two chapters of a Philip K Dick novel. You can check all of these off the list, and for me that is as close to auditory hell as you can imagine.
But this record also has Robert Fripp. And that man is an absolute genius. Unlike their petuli oil enthusiast contemporaries, King Crimson’s music (and particularly this record) has clearly left a mark - partly because it still sounds fresh on the production front. Not even the generations of holier than thou math rockers this album clearly inspired can make me dislike it. Because it sounds fresher than most of that musical circle jerk ever could. At points towards the album’s latter half Fripp conjures a bewildering array of sounds from his instrument which have gone on to pollinate the music of artists across the musical spectrum. Seriously, some of his lines wouldn’t sound out of place on the first Siouxsie record.
Of course, its ostentatious nature means this record periodically meanders into the background. But if these guys wanted to, they could have produced a truly great record (I mean, it is truly great objectively) . Instead, King Crimson came up with a surprisingly good one. For this layman at least.
Lupe Fiasco
2/5
Trying hard with these new fangled hip-hop records but I guess what I’m with just isn’t “it” anymore. Great Kanye production but a dreadfully forgettable album, with the usual bloated run-time. Bang fucking average.
The Temptations
3/5
The kind of record I could happily lounge around to, though constantly having to get up to skip every other track would eventually cause the blood to come rushing from my head and make me dizzy. Their reasons for not wanting to record “Papa was a Rolling Stone” are also dumb (since it’s the best song on this album). On the whole, pleasant. But my head hurts.
UB40
5/5
Loved revisiting this album again. I remember first coming across it during a period of my life when I was taking a deep-dive into the early work of the British new wave bands from the 1980s. The interesting thing about the punk movement was the way it served as a ground zero for much of this scene - all bets were off and all directions were open to the likes of Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet, Dead or Alive and so on. UB40 fall squarely into this phenomenon, though unlike their contemporaries who would go on to produce better (if they produced anything at all), these guys really did peak early on Signing Off.
Applying punk’s DIY ethos to the reggae/dub genre was pioneering enough, but to further incorporate a left-wing social critique of Thatcher’s Britain (right down to the very name of the group) was another way in which UB40 fused the Jamaican musical conventions with a working class English consciousness.
Reggae wasn’t in and of itself a marginalised genre in British culture (Island records had been aiding it into the charts for decades before), but its diasporic fan base certainly was. And this is why the notion of a multi-ethnic group of lads from Birmingham making a selection of mostly original reggae tracks condemning British colonialism and the oppression of black people the world over was particularly revolutionary.
It also helps that said songs were infused with a really catchy pop sensibility that sits uneasily with its menacing dub production (a bedroom production into the bargain). Its instrumentation is quite rudimentary, but their nuts and bolts approach is more than the sum of its parts. The band’s later work would dilute much of this experimentation with their saccharine brand of reggae pop. But Signing Off is an extremely important artefact of a period of incessant revitalisation in British pop culture.
Arcade Fire
4/5
Really conflicted on this one. Seriously over-indulgent studio band with a healthy dose of pretentious philosophising. When you watch them live they spend half the gig changing instruments just to play the most rudimentary melodies. And it irks me tremendously.
But this album, for whatever reason, is one that I just like. The songs are all really solid, the studio extravagances are concealed from my gaze and actually produce some evocative music. A really influential album (both positively and negatively), and one which I just have to resign myself to liking. It’s really really good. There, I said it. Next.
Foo Fighters
2/5
Just no. Foo Fighters are your Gym teacher’s favourite band. The favourite band of your distant cousin who’s “really into his music”. Decked out in a plaid shirt and scraggly beard, the Foo Fighters fan is the kind of guy who memorises album sale statistics before the song lyrics. If you’re under the age of 36 and still listening to this band, god help you. Just tragic.
Like a bread sandwich or a pint of air, Dave Grohl’s songwriting has always just struck me as the most offensively inoffensive tosh you could possibly listen to. And from a guy who is a genuine music fan with some serious trauma in the business, his lack of insight is unpardonable.
Ironically, I think this Foo Fighters record almost belongs on this list, since while the band has since become a soulless corporate behemoth churning out throwaway stadium anthems, on this record they actually sound like a band. And the irony, of course, is that this is the only record they recorded where they weren’t actually a band. Grohl is in complete control here and, shock horror, it isn’t terrible. In fact, if you told me “Good Grief” was a lost cut from Guided by Voices I would have completely believed it.
The trouble is that for every decent song, there are about three or four which just clog up your sound waves. A microcosm of Foo Fighters’ career, if you throw enough shit at the mixing desk something is bound to stick - but don’t shove it down our throats and pretend we like the taste of said shit. On the whole, not good (but about half as bad as I expected, which is good). Got it?
Aretha Franklin
3/5
A hell of a lot of undistinguished filler on this album (near enough all of the non-singles tracks are totally disposable). And even while everybody holds their tongue on this issue, Aretha’s voice is not as dynamic as people make out. When she’s belting out her soulful melodies, there’s no one better. But I couldn’t believe how quickly her sass started to wear thin with me - when she isn’t doing her one trick, just skip.
That being said, the singles mostly make up for the album’s generally non-existent songwriting and anaemic production. I suppose it’s a drawback of this list’s criteria, but leaving aside her “signature song”, this is soul by numbers for me.
Khaled
2/5
This is a seriously odd inclusion by all accounts. Not doubting Khaled’s influence (simply because I’ve never heard of him before), but this album has very little critical acclaim from western music press and even less immediately identifiable innovation. I suppose you could say the fusion of Algerian Rai with everything from Rhumba rhythms to John Lennon’s “Imagine” (an atrocious rendition btw) is the album’s main gimmick. And at points it pays off - but very rarely. What you get instead is a record which is completely half-baked, and only the most lickspittle of western do-gooder would rave about this record to soothe their white man’s burden. In truth, it sounds absolutely gash for the most part, and would have been an anachronism even if it had been produced 30 years before it was actually released. I’ll give it props for its ambition but it’s time to stop this fetishistic approval of all music from outside our Anglo-centric cultural sphere. There is some seriously great, pioneering music from the Arab world, and this is categorically not one such example.
Boards of Canada
5/5
This is a tough one. It almost feels right to just give it a perfect score and move on. When a record has a “Legacy” sub-heading on its Wikipedia page, you know at the very least that it’s an influential one. But this is a double-edged sword since, in providing the template for IDM in the late nineties, its initial edge is somewhat blunted by the scores of imitators.
But, on the other hand, Boards of Canada are pretty inimitable in their vision for what electronic music could be: purposeful, meticulously thought out and with an intellectual profundity that flipped the dance music’s drug-induced transience on its head. This isn’t an album of momentary hedonism, it’s a soundtrack to childhood that captures the bittersweet essence of what it is to be nostalgic. Does that necessarily make for an immediate listen? No. In fact, on first listen I remember this album leaving me could. But revisiting it now, everything sort of fell into place. That’s not to say that I’ve made sense of Music Has the Right to Children and its ambitious reflections. But I guess that’s kind of the point.
Frank Zappa
3/5
Zappa’s a seriously unlikeable artist. His ostentatious musical projects are undermined by a pretentious sophistry that lacks any kind of actual substance. The music press have long pegged him as one of the most astute social critics in popular music, but all I’ve ever heard from him is a petulant form of contrarian iconoclasm that would make Christopher Hitchens wince. In short, I don’t really like him.
All the same, this is his first instrumental album so you are immediately spared Zappa’s boneheaded attempts at “satire”, and instead you get a record that actually grooves along quite nicely. Does it devolve into listless noodling at points? Of course. But if nothing else this album has given me an appreciation for the frustrating effect of Zappa as an artist. It’s probably one of my favourites that I’ve heard from him, Side 1 in particular was a relentless jolt that only occasionally lost my interest.
Even if Zappa obviously believed his music deserved to be read on a more intellectual level, you’ll find this one far more enjoyable if you just take it for what it is: a good jazz-fusion record.
Arrested Development
2/5
I remember when I heard "Mr. Wendell" for the first time, I really REALLY liked it. And then it dawned on me that the reason I liked it is because I don't like hip-hop (generally). That track is a bit of a microcosm for the whole album: it's pleasing and catchy, but totally without urgency. Pedestrian, idealist nonsense spews from Speech's mouth (in my opinion, one of the most conservative rappers, independent of his skin colour and pretensions). It's all just a bit limp for me now, even if it charms you into believing otherwise.
Duran Duran
5/5
There isn’t much more praise that can be heaped on this album that hasn’t already been inked by music critics for the last 40+ years. Everything about it - from the seductively iconic artwork, to the singles which are emblazoned in the public repertoire of 80s standards - has become emblematic of its era. So revisiting this record, you might expect it to have dated somewhat since its release back in 1982. But it’s one of these albums which perfected its formula so well that it taps it captures its cultural zeitgeist while utterly transcending it. The washes of 80s synths and drums cloaked in gated reverb are products of their time, but it is never intrusive. The songwriting is just so strong from track to track, it could easily be a Greatest Hits collection on its own - “Lonely in Your Nightmare” in particular sees Jon Taylor’s rhythmic thumps transposed onto the feetless bass to immaculate effect. This is the album format in its purest form - a deliberate artistic statement with no padding or weak cuts. Of course, it is also synonymous with the Thatcherite gluttony which was on full display in the video to the title track. Considering Heaven 17’s Penthouse and Pavement is so derided on this site, the latter record completely deconstructed the stereotypes that Duran Duran regurgitate unproblematically on this album. Leaving that to one side, it’s a phenomenal album that I love dearly.
David Ackles
4/5
A totally curious wee artefact. Like listening to Lou Reed’s “Berlin” if it was written by a slightly less nihilistic theatre kid. I had no idea this album existed and, even while its style does start to grate with me towards the end, there’s something irresistibly charming about it. At times vaudevillian, though not bawdy, you can hear the influence Ackles’ quirky songwriting has had on guys like Tom Waits et al. And I really enjoyed it. It’s not exactly a toe-tapper, and maybe part of its charm stems from its complete lack of popular appraisal. But American Gothic is an album I’m glad I heard before I’m dead.
Beatles
4/5
Yes, I’m going to commit the cardinal sin of Beatles evaluation and rate this album higher than Sgt. Pepper. This is just a masterclass in quality pop songwriting (mostly from Lennon, despite him being my least favourite of the fab 4). Whereas people point to their last three albums as landmark musical recordings, they are ironically far more dated in almost every aspect than the early stuff. “Hard Days Night” is a template that is still used today, and not some curiosity for studio production that only wanker audiophiles really care about (I’m looking at you, White Album). I don’t give a fuck about the spiritual sojourns through late 60s psychedelic drugs they would later go on, they were better when they didn’t think they were bigger than Jesus. And this album shows it.
Stereolab
3/5
This album is great in concept - bringing together a truly cosmopolitan mixture of 60s French chanson, 70s Kraut-rock and 90s British indie - but in execution it falters from time to time. I already knew the album fairly well, especially being a fan of Tim Gane's first band McCarthy (well worth a listen), but Stereolab only ever periodically tickled my fancy. Incidentally, I went to see them live in 2022 and it's still one of the worst gigs I have ever been to. But while their aloof, slightly over-indulgent, and deceptively rudimentary instrumental pieces don't really work in a live context, they're pretty good on record. "Cybele's Reverie" has a bit of McCarthy's pop melodicism, but, as the title suggests, with added whimsy. Does it all fade into the background on occasion? Yes. But that's not to say it doesn't also demand your attention on occasion. On the whole, it's an album I would support with more than a hint of contradiction.
Slipknot
2/5
Unlike a lot of reviews on this page, I don’t a a predisposes hatred of Slipknot’s sound or their campy imagery. In fact, I’d say it’s fully justified that they have an entry in this list - if for no other reason than their irrefutable effect on Metal’s assimilation into wider consciousness during the early to mid-2000s. But this isn’t a strong cut from them, and having two of their records on such a list is pushing it a bit. For a band renowned for their bulky riffs and pounding drums, I actually thought the production on this album was shockingly weedy at points. And whatever demented urge possessed Corey Taylor to pen “Snuff” for a Slipknot record better not cross my threshold anytime soon - he either needs an exorcist or sectioned for such a schmaltzy misstep. Not a great record to my ear and a bit of a bloated mess.
Booker T. & The MG's
3/5
The basic premise of this record was the repurposing of Jimmy Smith’s Hammond organ sound to the pop music scene. To that end, the title track is the pivotal artefact on this record and has rightly endured the passage of time. The rest of the album, though, is just a series of covers which try to demonstrate the versatility of Green Onions’ sonic innovation by replicating its one trick on a series of rock n roll standards. Truthfully, the result is less impressive, and not a single one of these covers unseats their original recording as the definitive one, but it’s still a nice background listen for the most part. Just go and seek out Jimmy Smith’s “Back at the Chicken Shack” for a more interesting approach to this technological milestone in music.
5/5
Album number 200 and it’s an absolute fucking rush. A complete whirlwind of late 60s garage psych which relentlessly imposes lick after lick, hook after hook and political soliloquy after… you get the idea. It’s perhaps not fair to assess this live recording in terms of the usual intentionality of the studio album. But either way, this is just such a great record and its influence hasn’t diminished over the years. Shame one of them became a right-wing loon…
Funkadelic
5/5
Phenomenal album which manages to alchemise an entire spectrum of genres without ever failing to be anything but a cohesive statement. Clinton is an absolute powerhouse at the mixing desk, and a visionary to boot. Everything from funk and blues to heavy metal sounds totally original under his aegis. The band’s name tells you pretty much everything you need to know about the sound (with emphasis on the “-elic”), and in the process you get a totally unique (and often uneasy) fusion record that hasn’t aged a millisecond. Completely undercut the stereotypical boxes black groups were supposed to be ticking. Love, love, love.
System Of A Down
5/5
Where do you even begin with this album? Hearing it again reminded me why SOAD were pretty much the only metal group that survived my personal exorcism of the genre from my record collection when I started developing some brain cells. These guys were so utterly original, poignant, energetic and downright insane. Their sound isn't necessarily flashy - Daron Malakian's guitar work is like a freakish mixture of Tony Iommi's purposeful riffing with Robert Fripp, minus the latter's virtuosity - but every element makes something totally unique. The incorporation of Armenian folk rhythms and completely esoteric song structures just makes every song a whirlwind. But it remains accessible at the same time, there's no pretense here even if Serj Tankian is inclined to get on a soapbox from time to time - and with good reason, SOAD remain a totally righteous group that stands on the correct side of history. Absolutely LOVED rediscovering this again.
Green Day
2/5
Not taking anything away from the cultural impact of this record (I feel a reluctant nostalgia towards it as a real zeitgeist moment in mid-2000s music), but it just does nothing for me anymore. It's a completely distended, superficial, processed punk (debatable use of the term) album. Its commentary is as laughably thin as a primary school reflective essay, and the rock opera premise irks me immensely. There are still one or two half-decent tracks here, but I couldn't wait for it to be over. Billie Joe Armstrong might not have wanted to be an American idiot, but his decision to pen some of this album communicates a level of idiocy that parallels anything said by Bush (albeit with considerably fewer civilian casualties).
The Sonics
4/5
Strictly for what this album symbolises - the reclamation of popular music from the clasps of musical proficiency and industrial finance - it more than deserves its place on the list. As an album itself, it might not strike you as that revolutionary today, but this is effectively the template for the most revolutionary cultural movement of the 20th century in punk rock. The original material is pretty iconic, even if the covers aren't. It has more than withstood the test of time, and I simply love it.
The Slits
4/5
A shambling rush of feminist punk energy. For some reason, I never took much to this record when I was younger. Its style was just a bit too rudimentary to my ear. However, tastes change and suffice to say I love this album. The reactionary philistines on this website pan it for the very reasons that I love it, and culturally it was a massive stride forward for female voices in punk. Ari Up is sadly missed, a frenetic ball of righteous fury, but always tinged by a sharp sense of humour. No matter how competent you think they were on their instruments, The Slits were (and still are) a seminal group, and Cut is essential listening.
Meat Loaf
1/5
Jesus wept that was awful. Don't care how intentional this album's camp indulgences are, the result is utter dog shit. Complete earwash that manages to miss every one of its comedic notes, and just leave you cringing from the opening track to its last. Absolute wank.
Super Furry Animals
4/5
This album was better than it had any right to be. I was under the impression that Super Furry Animals were like a Welsh Flaming Lips or something like that. Instead, they're like Catherine Wheel if they were fed a lethal amount of LSD. There are a couple of corny tracks, and the relentless tongue-in-cheek nature of Gruff Rhys' lyrics naturally starts to wear a wee bit thin. People complaining that this is just another mediocre record from that Britpop glut would do well to listen again - it's neither Britpop, nor is it mediocre. And are these guys singing in a Welsh accent? That's an extra star right there.
Throwing Muses
4/5
Really great discovery from this project. Throwing Muses have always been on my periphery, but sitting down to listen to this record was a totally different experience to what I was expecting. It's not too different to the Gun Club, but fed through Dolly Parton, and its fraught with tense lyrical insights that are so candid as to be uneasy at points. They would go on to do a more polished rendition of this sound for the rest of the career, and while it brought them a bit more success I think this record is something much more unique. Very strong album that will go into heavy rotation on my turntable from now on.
Michael Jackson
3/5
I hate Michael Jackson, think he is despicably overrated by critics. However, there's no getting away from the fact that this record is great, with hits galore, a crack squad of songwriters and a stellar production job from Quincy Jones. The latter's contribution here set forward a new template (for better or worse) for pop music, and it has aged surprisingly well. In fact, the singles here might be the tracks that have stayed in circulation, but the deep cuts have stood the test of time much better. McCartney's "Girlfriend" shines in particular. I don't love 'Off the Wall' - the second side slump is a bit too jarring unfortunately - but I will say I liked it a lot more than I expected to.
Echo And The Bunnymen
4/5
The first band I ever saw live (albeit in 2014, well past their creative peak). The Bunnymen are a true standard bearer for British alternative music in the 1980s, with their dark bent on 60s psychedelia filtered through the punk rock gaze. Ian McCulloch's surrealist but potent lyrical imagery coupled with Will Sargeant's economical twang and Les Paterson's spidery bass lines is a combination that produces a sound that description fails to do justice. That being said, I've always felt that on Crocodiles you're only really getting this concoction in embryonic form. Sargeant's playing is economical but effective on their later work, whereas here it is just slightly too restrained. Ditto McCulloch's songwriting, lacking the sinister whimsy that would appear on their masterpiece, Ocean Rain. Still, for an album release in 1980, this is still well ahead of the curve, and it remains a really solid piece of post-punk gold.
Robbie Williams
2/5
I really wanted to hate this album... so I did. How many 90s music bandwagons need to be jumped to revive the career of an overrated boy band singer? Answer: all of them. At its best, it's an album with some inoffensive advert music. At its worst, it's an album with some offensively inoffensive music that would be considered too vanilla for an advert. It's a no from me.
The Doors
4/5
This album came around at just the right time for me. Never been a major Doors fan, in fact I hate shilling for the canonical staples of so-called "Classic Rock". But recently I'm starting to see the appeal. Leaving to one side the polarising figure of Jim Morrison, the music on this album is seriously forward thinking. Krieger, in particular, shines with some understatedly brilliant hooks. On the whole, while Morrison Hotel might be considered an inferior imitation of their debut record, I still think it holds up pretty well regardless, a reminder of why The Doors were ahead of their time in so many respects.
Little Simz
4/5
Well colour me converted. I've been on a run of pleasant surprises recently and this was no different. There's a lot of hype following Little Simz, but this record goes some way to justifying a lot of it. A lot of modern hip-hop suffers from an over-indulgence in style over substance - abstract samples or soundscapes that are as disposable as the cookie-cutter lyrical sentiments they compliment. But there are a number of strengths to this album that elevate it above the rabble. The first is its length: in a genre that is bogged down with ghastly run times that make finishing a game of Monopoly feel like listening to a track off Pink Flag, Little Simz streamlines the whole process, leaving barely any filler. I (a total layman of this genre) also got the impression that she has a real affinity for a number of periods of hip-hop: the lo-fi feel of the album's opening tracks give strong Run DMC or Eric B & Rakim vibes, while the later tracks channel her clear love of Lauryn Hill. It makes for a much more interesting listen than her contemporaries who just seem to regurgitate the same formulas of the day. All of this would be redundant if the album couldn't produce any actual tunes - but it does by the boat load. 'Boss' was my highlight, again showing Little Simz's retro sensibilities by producing actual singles to accompany an album as recent as 2019?!? Even if she occasionally lurches into the well-trodden paths of rap sophistry, she still does it in inventive ways. A real grassroots, working class star, I'll need to give her Mercury prize-winning 'Sometimes I might be introvert' another go.
R.E.M.
3/5
Don't really understand the love for this record. It's R.E.M. but with all the charm and ingenuity stripped away in favour of a populist varnish. Michael Stipe's voice has always grated with me, so its foregrounding on this album doesn't play to the band's strengths. Namely, Peter Buck's jangling arpeggios. They're here but diminished in number. Maybe I'm being conservative, but I think Murmur is a better record than this. Of course, it being R.E.M., there are still a number of really solid pop tunes here (the singles, in particular, are strong). But despite breaking the band out of the confines of college radio obscurity, this doesn't sound like a group at their creative peak. Disappointing but still worth a listen.
Erykah Badu
2/5
Bland, long, and quite repellent in certain ways. The lyrical themes wear thin after about 2 tracks and while the first half of the record is decent background music, by the end Mama’s Gun has become background in the worst possible way. Neo-soul might be my least favourite genre.
Tom Tom Club
4/5
Staple of every DJs flight case and a sampler’s dream. Really influential record that still sounds fresh, even if the individual components are a bit threadbare at times. Obviously overshadowed by the Talking Heads’ output but I much prefer this record to anything that band put out.
Black Sabbath
5/5
No matter how dubious the credentials of selectivity are of this list, there's one thing that is beyond doubt when it comes to music: that Black Sabbath's 'Paranoid' belongs on a far more exclusive list of album's that can truly be described as 'seismic'. This record is a hulking behemoth of sound, and it remains an utterly astonishing listen today.
Curiously, the band weren't rated much by contemporary criticism. To these naysayers back in 1970, their music wasn't quite the revolutionary yardstick for heavy metal that its eventual canonisation would have you believe. In fact, the first two Sabbath records were derided as subpar attempts at some bluesy space rock.
The reason why it holds up so well today is that it doesn't fall into the well-worn science fiction tropes that have dated so much of that scene. The song structures are elaborate, but they're purposeful and never overstay their welcome. Tony Iommi's playing is deliberate and offensively catchy - here, he demonstrates why he's the undisputed king of the riff. His playing presages an entire spectrum of sound that would follow in the monumental trail he blazed on this record for the next forty years (without even coming close to the ear worms he hammers out on this album).
Paranoid is one of the few 'classic albums' that more than deserve that accolade. A record that delivers its groundbreaking gut punch with as much force today as it did back then.
Iggy Pop
4/5
Think I contemplated just about every rating for this album before finally settling on… 4/5. In the Bowie vs. Iggy conundrum, I’ve always come down on the side of the latter. When Bowie was churning out complete gash in the late 60s, Iggy and his Stooges were already light years ahead of the curve. But were it not for Bowie’s creative genius, Iggy’s career (along with his life) would have ended long ago. On this record, he wanted to take more of a leading role, and without Bowie’s hand-holding, you get a more mixed bag than on The Idiot. The singles are undeniable classics, but I think the standout track comes towards the tail end of the record in Neighbourhood Threat. The rest play like B-grade Bowie, and Iggy’s lyrical prowess was never anything to write home about and consequently doesn’t bring much to elevate them above the status of “fine”. At the end of the day, he’ll always be a problematic legend - *cough* “Sixteen” *cough*- and this record got him clean and healthy for another Stooges reunion. For that alone, this album deserves its plaudits.
Rush
2/5
I really tried with this one, but Rush are just a collection of total gimps. Gimps who can certainly play their instruments, but their asinine humour combined with a pathological compulsion to muck about with time signatures undermines any musical or lyrical coherence they might be capable of producing (though they’re pea-brained Randians so I didn’t have high hopes in the first place). This is especially disappointing since when they do play things straight, they come out with some decent power pop/80s fm rock. Alex Lifeson’s guitar playing is a particular highlight also, but it’s the constant buffoonery from Neal Peart on drums and Geddy Lee’s twinky voice that irk me like few other bands. The cover really sums everything up - about as subtle as a Roy Walker joke, and half as funny. With the 80s picking up steam, this album was Rush’s attempt to keep up with the times and embrace the new wave of sounds coming through. It has aged rather poorly, like if Devo had an over-inflated sense of their talents, but without even the quirky satire that makes their music so fresh even today. Prog is shite, in other words.
Dwight Yoakam
3/5
Didn’t mind this at all. Reading about Yoakam’s zero fucks approach to country, and the flak he took for it in Nashville, I quite rate his attitude. The record doesn’t suffer from the washes of 80s indulgence that detract from albums like Steve Earle’s Guitar Town. ‘Buenas Noches…’ pays more faithful homage to the forerunners of country, with fairly minimalist arrangements that compliment Yoakam’s songwriting. It’s not exactly a revolutionary record - if anything, his machinist pining comes off a bit reactionary at times - but it’s a decent record, and very interesting to note the evolution of the genre through this list.
The Band
4/5
A bit of a surprising gem considering the overwhelming amount of soft rock dross that accounts for 60s output on this list. The album definitely drags during slower tracks, but when it leans into its groovy brand of gritty country rock, I can really go for it.
Bob Dylan
5/5
My personal favourite Dylan record with my personal favourite Dylan song (You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go). Appreciating his work takes some getting used to - his songwriting variety is subtle, but definitely hits the untrained ear as a bit samey. But his lyrical turns of phrase on this record and the overall focus elevates it above so many others in his discography (alongside Desire). What you have here is the fundamentals of perfect songwriting, and if you need evidence of that all you have to do is look at the scores of outstanding cover versions this collection inspired.
The Killers
2/5
Phew, thought I was going to have to give this one a high score - nostalgia’s a powerful force, and this record clearly channels it for a great many people. Fortunately, with the exception of the front-loaded singles, the rest of the album is a pretty weak new wave throwback. Like the bastard child of Duran Duran and Roxy Music, but with lifeless production and totally perfunctory lyrics from one of the most nauseating frontmen tin contemporary music. The aforementioned singles have wedged themselves in every indie disco playlist for the rest of eternity. But The Killers’ debut ain’t much to write home about, and it just gets worse for their discography from here on in.
I will say this, the artwork is 10/10 - an absolutely stunning shot which deserves considerable recognition and brings back some good memories. Better than the music it prefaces…
Green Day
4/5
Pop punk is a risible genre which took the righteous anger of its forerunners and replaced it with a petulant ‘passage a l’act’ which didn’t accomplish much more than egocentric whinging. ‘Dookie’ is partly responsible for this, right down to the sensory overload of shit puns and childish in-jokes that populate the front cover of its sleeve. But flip it over to the rear cover and you get closer to Green Day’s mission statement here: a close up from one of their chaotic gigs around the time showing a sweaty mosh pit of frenzied kids. It was these kids that the band were talking to, disclosing the frustrations of middle America’s suburban neuroses. It might be largely superficial, but it’s a theme that the band really perfected here in a set of 14 excellent songs.
It’s hard to believe this is the same guy who wrote American Idiot, because everything he and Mike Dirnt touched on this record was pretty much gold. The production is immense, with Armstrong’s barking guitar mingling with Dirnt’s elastic bass playing to propel you through this record at a breathless pace. This conciseness, clearly indebted to the Ramones, is my favourite part of the album, and even when they slow the pace down in tracks like “Pulling Teeth” (a real highlight), they still conjure up some power pop genius. Re-listening to this reminded me how many of these tracks had seeped into my brain as a teenager, and even if Green Day were already churning out brilliant albums before Dookie, this one is arguably a cut above the rest of their discography.
All that being said, something makes me reluctant to give it a perfect score. Possibly it’s juvenile pretensions are just to overbearing to ignore, especially when you see Dookie constantly placed in discussions of ‘great punk albums’. It might not have aged all that well, but it’s still a fantastic listen nonetheless.
Prince
3/5
Never got the appeal of Prince but I’ll concede this album has its moments. There’s some quirky experimentation here, and, even while the sound itself is the most synthetic assault of 80s cheese, I quite like the programmed drums and bass from this period. Especially given its influence on early techno. The issue is that it feels like a collection of 12” extended mixes that could have been edited down, and it blunts some of the pop hooks by ramming them down your throat for about 3 minutes longer that they should be. On the whole, however, there’s some great funk here, and just about any of these tracks would fill a dance floor without necessarily challenging conventional taste.
Napalm Death
5/5
I don’t mean to sound like a complete contrarian here, but this album is a masterpiece. A breathlessly ferocious take on metal by a band that totally changed the game (more than once). Metal without pretension at a time when the likes of Malmsteen and Vai were wanking their fretboards to the tune of nothing. I saw Napalm Death (albeit a completely different lineup to the two that played on this record) in Glasgow last year and what struck me was just how leftist their message was in a genre with a penchant for the reactionary. They must have played about 400 songs in the space of 90 minutes. It was exhilarating in the way that guys who like watching free jazz get off on that racket. I can only imagine the negative press this record gets on this website is the result of Robert Dimery’s selections encroaching upon middle America’s fixation on the Eagles and the Doobie Brothers. But Scum wipes the floor with all of that tiresome ear wash every day of the week. If folk are prepared to give Miles Davis and John Coltrane a chance, it would do them some good to appreciate the intentions of this record. Napalm Death are a unique force in music and you absolutely must listen to this record before you die (even if only once).
Deep Purple
2/5
For an album that’s so closely associated with that burgeoning eruption of late 60s/early 70s youth rebellion, it’s surprisingly boring. Plus Ian Gillan is one of the worst lyricists in music history. The (few) iconic riffs can’t save this album from its mediocre songwriting.
Spiritualized
3/5
Have to give this album a lot of plaudits. For a record released in 1992, its sound projects the sonic trajectory of a whole genre for the next 20 years or so. Incorporating the anthemic gospel choruses that had become de riguer in British indie music during the 90s into the elaborate spacey drones he’d been honing as Spacemen 3 collapsed, there’s no denying Jason Pierce meticulously crafted a sound that is distinct and highly influential. And, more importantly, it makes for an occasionally captivating listen. I say, ‘occasionally’, because this same meticulousness that elevates Spiritiualized’s sound becomes a bit of a crutch after a while, and ends up putting a sterile varnish on a lot of the material on this record. For that reason, I can definitely appreciate those review which call this album “boring” or “over-indulgent”. It sort of openly flaunts the latter charge as a source of pride. But not all music aims at 3 minute catchy love songs. That goes without saying, and for that reason I definitely think Lazer Guided Melodies has its places. If only the album’s title didn’t bely the slightly wayward focus of its chief songwriter.