You have to be on a little bit of a sad streak for this album to hit right. Luckily for me, I picked this one up in the late afternoon on the second shortest day of the year, after my girlfriend had just left to go home. So, as the late afternoon crept into a very dark Vermont evening, I put this album on, and it was perfect. A world unto its own.

Today, in 2023, I am no longer a 12-year old American boy. No longer am I the pimpled king of "Roller Kingdom," scared to death to meet the eyes of my middle school crush in the adjoining Birthday Party Room. Nor do I wait for the 6:45am bus, scribbling frantic answers to a history worksheet– a poor writing surface, those bus seats!– that has small, pitying holes in it from my erasable pen. These facts put me at an extreme, almost disqualifying disadvantage to rate an album like this. A genuine handicap for an album whose influence is foundational to many of my 2000's peers, but in retrospect may only be a good time if you're deep in Angst Mode. I knew kids who picked up guitar because they listened to this CD! The patron saints of Lazer Zones everywhere. In seriousness. I like my Blur, I like my Arctic Monkeys, I like my Strokes. This is hard to get through. Grating. This shouldn't happen, because I know all the songs already. Halfway through, I'm thinking, "Maybe I'm having fun! Maybe I should sneak one of these songs in at my wedding." Alas. Not Enough Fun. A generous 3 might be possible. But I have dutifully deducted a point for the refrain, "I've got soul but I'm not a soldier," sung forty times behind a gospel choir. That line's been bouncing around in my head since the Roller Kingdom Days, and unfortunately, now illuminated by the scribes of Genius, it yields no special magic. 2/5

"But who really cares? Who's willing to try... to save our sweet world?" Shadows and light. Chiaroscuro, in painting. The bitter and the sweet, in chocolate. It's the stuff of melancholy, of regret, worry, dark times ahead. Marvin Gaye's human pleas, genuine and earnest... to save the babies, up against a symphony that's filmic, romantic, in an almost 1001 Strings kind of way. An orchestral setting that Berry Gordy thought was too old, outdated, the kids will never dig, etc. etc. But it's the perfect backdrop– nostalgia– that gives us context for Marvin's anguish about the future. It's also personal. It's an album about his brother's letters to him from Vietnam... the anti-war protests that Obie Benson saw firsthand which lead him to write "What's Going On?"... his own dark struggles with his family, addiction. A changing planet. And somehow Marvin is perfectly positioned to help us understand. He doesn't preach, he doesn't condescend. He brings you into his inner world, and doesn't count you out. And it's a Motown album? Impossible. I can't imagine the whiplash from the American public when this came out. Motown? Song cycles? Dark subject matter? *That* Marvin Gaye? An album for a coming storm... and one to put together the pieces from a few very real personal storms in the 1960s. An amazing album. The soundtrack to so many people's lives, their own anxieties and dark places and chances for redemption. Music for a sweet world. 5/5

Among the “1 Star Album Club,” some space must be reserved for bold, exciting ideas which have been ruined by their execution. I actually enjoy a lot of the experimentalism on this album, and I want reward any and all artists willing to go out on a limb. You can hear some nightmarish— but somewhat enticing— sounds on the second half of this record. Almost a more homespun, industrial version of the Raymond Scott/Manhattan Research tapes. Little ideas made from experiments, and some are pretty neat. That’s the instrumental second half of the album. Unfortunately for Eunsturzrnde Neubauten, most of us start our albums at the beginning, and the beginning of this album is absolutely unlistenable, and it is entirely up to the screaming, frightening vocals. Comparisons have been made to the sound of Hitler screaming one of his speeches while giving you a root canal. I think that’s not at all unfair. I can’t hear anything redeeming in those first three tracks, and that’s a lot of time to lose someone. If Neubauten was really going for this, and they actually want me to turn my mind to the dark, repressed memories of my last dentist appointment, then “Steh Auf Berlin” is a stunning achievement. And so it is with all of the good ideas on this album: ruined by horrific vocals. I’m so repulsed by them that anything else redeeming on this album is forgotten. I was going to write an unserious review, but halfway through my second go-round I realized that this band is actually deadly serious, and so they deserve to be more than just slagged off. 1 star for me.

I came into this album mildly interested. I listened to Bob Marley a lot when I was younger, and my lasting impression was pleasant, political, fun. Good background, maybe. In other words… I was wholly unprepared for the 40 minutes I was about to get. This time, I decided to listen a little closer to the musicianship, get a sense of what is going on in the background. And let me tell you. These players are…. So. Fucking. Locked. They are locked like a locomotive. They’re not going anywhere. When you look up “pocket” in the encyclopedia it should be the smiling face of that clav player on Track 1. Unbelievable. This is how you start a reggae band, folks. You hear some music that is so unbelievably locked like this and you think maybe, just maybe we can pull this off. Well you probably can’t. Don’t let it stop you, but… the level of locked and loaded on these rhythm parts puts most other reggae and ska to shame. To shame. That’s how high the heights are here. This kind of rhythm is so infectious. I was having a hugely fun time. I am thankful this exists, and it is no longer background music to me. It is music music. I am going to evangelize to all my music friends. They’ll think… “Jacob, aren’t you’re exactly 50 years too late?” Fuck I don’t care. 5/5

several classics! Liked it much more once I paid attention to the songwriting

It's definitely not an album that I thought I'd be into, but I found things to love in it after giving it more listens. I like the more 70's folk elements of the songs, and the more tender moments. Rod Stewart is kind of a force on all the songs, and I wish the songs were a little more dynamic to go along with his singing.

This album was so enjoyable! From the first 5 seconds of Willow, I was hooked. I thought many of the songs were strong, and there’s a lot of variation between tight songs and open-ended songs. The production is subtle and never overpowering. Some of the transitions between sections were just masterful. It’s a little uneven in the second half… there are just a lot of songs!… but then Evermore happens and I’m like, that’s a great end. Overall enjoyed the natural confidence of this record a lot, as someone who came in expecting things to be much more buttoned-up.

Sweet, endearing record. And possibly the most British thing I’ve ever heard. This is what I picture in my head when I think of what a random British person had on in the 1960’s, while eating some equally British foodstuffs. Just fun and enjoyable to hear. There weren’t any huge standout songs to me, but they have a very immediate, almost theatrical sound that I liked. Some almost McCartney moments with the songwriting, and I enjoyed the genre switch-ups. For me, they get a 3, via a somewhat generous rounding-up.

Another album that took me by surprise! I didn’t know what to expect coming in. This is the kind of record that oozes authenticity. We’ve all heard the inauthentic, canned, commercial version of this sound, but this feels like a record whose bona fides can’t be questioned. Plus, the band is so tight. And extremely British! Checks all the boxes for me.

Okay. This is not fair of me, I know… it’s a classic album, it’s without a doubt strong all the way through, it sounds like the fulcrum upon which music was shifting from the 60’s to the 70’s. But I just have trouble *enjoying* John Lennon’s solo music. Where people hear peace and love, I hear cynical, jaded, angry. In common parlance… he sounds butthurt! The McCartney “How Do You Sleep?” track doesn’t help adjust my perception. I think John Lennon’s writing has to contain some of the most widely misinterpreted lyrics in music. People wish to ascribe to him a mistaken sense of optimism and level-headedness that I see nowhere in sight. There’s nothing wrong with the album, the Phil Spector production feels nicely restrained, there are great sounds. He sings his heart out. But I’m not eager to return to John Lennon’s world.

I could not stop laughing through the first 15-20 minutes of this album. I think the song “E-mail my heart” finally broke me. Bad in an enjoyable way, and good in some ways that count. The producers are clearly having tons of fun with their assignment. It’s not jaded, apathetic, soulless pop… it’s often very silly, but you can have fun with it. So dated, too! Every one of Britney Spears’ songs have the same quality of her album covers: you can tell immediately what year it was made in, because there could be no other.

I feel enriched by listening to this, and there are some surprisingly touching moments. Pictures from a scene I was never a part of..: feels like a time capsule, and I’m at the show they’re playing these in. As an album, it’s hard to recommend because it’s so long, and there are a lot of records that could have been cut. But it shines bright where it does! I’ll be chewing on this one for a while, it’s not digestible in just a few bites.

I have to put down a 5. A life-changing one for sure. Bruce didn’t connect with me before this album, and this was the first one that made contact. Emotional, complex, musically perfectly on point. It got me singing in a new way. I really connect with these songs.

Really fun, super creative. Way more variety and just plain quirkiness than I thought there would be coming in. I was thinking a strong 3, but the guitar solo on the last track converted me to a totally new religion.

I like Grateful Dead, I could enjoy them more, I like a lot of the songs on this record. That said, for every studio version of these songs, I feel like I've heard a live version that's way better or has more soul in it, and I'm not even much of a huge Grateful Dead follower. So I think I'd prefer to listen to their live records over this. That said, I'm surely missing some context with this record, but that was my reaction.

It's hard to get myself in the mindset of what this would be like to hear in 2004. The fact that this music surely has been in 100 commercials for a new iPod is not helping. I have to grade it poorly as an album, because 1) there's just not that much complexity, and we've heard more interesting and complex garage rock albums already, with more of a character, and 2) it's a compilation album, which as an album does what it needs to do (showcase their best songs), but mostly just feels like a lot of swings at bat. I thought it was well-produced, and I have nothing against the band. Just not a great album, I'd say.

Agh, I've been fretting over whether to give this a 3 or a 4 all day! I listened to this album religiously in college, and I'm drawn to it for the same basic reasons: very striking artistic vision, anachronistic production (the new age synths, sequencing, processed vocals, with a few clean guitars in there), creepy lyrics and vocal delivery. In essence, everything a girl could want. I'm just a little hung up on some of the lyrics. There are some really mysterious, stunning lines, but some just feel either repetitive, or others obfuscatory. But overall, I want to reward albums that feel confident and out of time, and this one really feels that way.

I don’t quite know what to make of the Smiths yet, if I’m honest. I’m too distracted by Morrissey’s lyrics and the pervasive silliness of the music. There’s clearly something more complex going under the surface with these lyrics, but it evades me. It’s got this funny skip to it, most of the music… almost silly? I think I need more time with this one.

I really felt like I connected to Marianne Faithfull in this record. You can hear the years of pain, suffering, grief, defiance. I think her performance is captivating, and it helps that the music is so well produced, a really good example of this style, great guitars. The one track in the middle that sounds like an English folk tune, but with a different take on it production-wise… THAT I really liked. But it had me hooked from minute 1! Four stars!

An album that really sounds good on paper! David Bowie and Philly Soul, recorded with some current and future Philly greats. I should like this album! I ultimately wasn't very attached to it. A lot of the songs seem very jamm-y, and were no doubt fun for the musicians to play, but seem to just go on for longer than they should. The Philly Soul-inspired sound can often be much too busy for my taste... a lot going on, but not a lot of dynamics or things that are too interesting. I prefer the more stripped-down, motown-esque tracks, like "Right. And Bowie isn't his most spirited in his delivery... he seems a bit detached from the energy of the rest of the track (the backup singers are trying their hardest!) Still, there are a couple solid classics. This album really should be a a high two stars, but I put it to three stars because of Fame and Young Americans, both excellent tracks.

I can't believe I never listened to this album! What an emotional conclusion to Smile. The first two songs made me tear up, thinking of what this must have been like to actually finish after so many years. I'd listened to the Smile sessions dozens of times before, but I would always come away confused its overall direction. It felt beautiful and far advanced from Pet Sounds, but incomplete. This really feels like all the pieces of the puzzle are in their place. And what a treatment! Brian's writing is incomparable... wide-eyed and childlike, but always with some complexity lurking. Now that everything is arranged the way it was intended to be, it makes so much sense. The album plays out like a film or musical... very strong arcs. I could gush about this more, but I mean... it's one of my favorite and most cherished songwriters, finally realizing a vision that was a dream for 40 years. Emotional and captivating. 5 absolutely deserved stars. As an album, it feels completely realized, in a way that I never appreciated before

I've never really given Neil Young's music a fair listen, which is totally unfair of me. I found a YouTube video of a vinyl rip, which I have no doubt elevated the experience. Really moving songs, great performances, and I love the orchestral stuff mixed in, which actually elevated the music without it feeling corny at all. Some undisputed classics on this album as well, which felt like they happened at the right time. I really enjoyed it, and I can't believe I never gave Neil Young a chance before now! I know that doesn't need to be said, but it pains me that this isn't on Spotify, so I don't know how often I'll go back and listen to it. Scarcity in music! What an idea. We're used to having everything all the time. I enjoyed my time with this album, and hope we'll meet again soon.

I mean, what to even say. Ambitious and full of joy. Re-listening to it, I’m struck by how much heart is clearly in the making of this album, especially in Robin Pecknold’s vocal performances. There’s really nothing like it… he’s laying it all on the line for some of these recordings. It’s easy to take a backseat listen to “Fleet Foxes,” to keep it on in the backdrop and largely tune out to its arrangements, its lyrics. But poking under the surface is a real, joyful world that they carved out on this album. It’s a sound that feels like it’s always been there, but it hasn’t… it’s fully unique to this record! There are plenty of influences to string the story along, and I especially noticed some of the psychedelic folk influences this time around. But it’s really a world unto its own, which is easy to forget after 15 years. A monumentally ambitious sound, confidently realized on a debut album. 5 well-deserved stars.

Like DJ said... I liked it the more I got into it. At first I was a bit lost and distracted by the lyrics, which are somewhat jarring. The second listen was where it started to come together for me. I read that this was a radically new sound, that really nothing like this had been done, and that nobody was clear (even up to the last minute) whether it was any good or not. That made me understand the album more... it's unintentionally groundbreaking. It does feel a little bit effortless in a funny way, and not contrived. I liked it the more I got into it.

I didn’t love this album. I enjoyed the first few tracks, but couldn’t get over the lyrics toward the later tracks. Juvenile, but not in an endearing way, to me at least. I was also fairly unimpressed by the instrumentals… rather relentless. “Three Days” feels like the standout, but only because it’s a break from the more relentless pace. Agree with the other reviewers… would have loved to see live, but as an album it feels a little tedious to get through.

I’m so polarized by ABBA, and so gosh-darn ambivalent about this album! It’s probably been the hardest album for me to give a proper rating… for every individual aspect, I find things to both love and hate. At baseline, I’m just not an ABBA guy… something about the production feels fairly schmaltzy, and too “tight” in an uncomfortable way, like I’m hearing a MIDI recording, or the backing track of karaoke night. It gives me a headache if I listen for too long. It doesn’t help that so much of the more cheesy 80’s rock musicals seem to have taken direct cues from this. And the chorus/delay effects on the otherwise stellar vocals are just gratuitous and unnecessary. All I’m thinking is… if only this was recorded in a different decade. Any decade! That said… there are moments where the instrumental really locks, and it just surprises you! And there are a couple great guitar solos. Songwriting: some super moving songs, and wide open, creative structures. Love when the choruses take you by surprise! I’m much less crazy about the slight whiff of The Barber of Seville I get in most of these songs. When it works, it works, but many times it’s gratuitous or is at best a bad impression of the reference. I get the idea, but it seems to work as often as it falls flat for me. Still, I listened a second time, and I found more to like than dislike! Even if the more grating parts of the album bothered me even more. So I’m straight down the middle on this one! Hope I haven’t lost all of my friends.

I've never really given Smashing Pumpkins much of my time, and this was a lot to digest at the first go– my only major critique of the album is that it feels a little long. But from the moment Disarm came on, I was completely onboard with the sound, completely taken by its narrative voice. The tracks on the back half really allow the songs to build from ballads to these full, raw tracks. I was just impressed by the range and the performances, even if I wasn't catching everything lyrically on the first listen. One I'll definitely have to go back to. But very, very impressed on the first go. Side note: prog rock albums don’t sound good in my car! So I nearly got the wrong impression. The guitars felt misleadingly busy on a system that had poor midrange. Glad I got it on a better system eventually.

It was fun! I had a good time. Nothing super standout. Loved the Beatles-y sound and melody writing. As an album it’s a little empty in the middle, but I liked some of the cuter songs like Metal Baby.

Am I crazy?? I loved this. Absolutely loved it. All I could think was, am I supposed to not like this or something? Because on paper, I shouldn’t love it as much as I do. Plenty of the choruses and grungy “yeah”’s are so corny, the writing is so over-the-top pop anthemic, the guitar solos gratuitous. It’s like Thriller meets AC/DC meets We Will Rock You meets basement-pinball-tournament metal (complete with some early 8-bit pinball-sounding Fairlight samples). I should not like this! But I LOVED it. Something about it just works, in this super funny way where all these disparate pieces come together to form a whole. I think a lot of it is the genius of the songwriting. All of Def Leppard’s hooks are really four hooks crammed next to each other, with some death-defying way of getting from hook A to B to C to D. Almost atonal in its approach! Keeps you guessing. The songwriting is so gratuitous, but the skrelt-y metal vocals and vibrato guitar solos make things feel so silly and over-the-top that it feels theatrical. “Metal on ice.” The guitar work on some of the tracks is just unreal, like watching a high wire act. If there was only a third act with an ear break, maybe more downtempo, more complexity… if only! It would be an easy 5. As it is, an hour of just single after single tires you out. And it’s an hour! Too long. If it was, say, everything up to and including Gods of War, minus some of the more conventional AC/DC rips, I would be pretty much dead set on this. But it’s so close to perfect! I’m a convert and you’ll have to fight me. 4 stars!

Among the “1 Star Album Club,” some space must be reserved for bold, exciting ideas which have been ruined by their execution. I actually enjoy a lot of the experimentalism on this album, and I want reward any and all artists willing to go out on a limb. You can hear some nightmarish— but somewhat enticing— sounds on the second half of this record. Almost a more homespun, industrial version of the Raymond Scott/Manhattan Research tapes. Little ideas made from experiments, and some are pretty neat. That’s the instrumental second half of the album. Unfortunately for Eunsturzrnde Neubauten, most of us start our albums at the beginning, and the beginning of this album is absolutely unlistenable, and it is entirely up to the screaming, frightening vocals. Comparisons have been made to the sound of Hitler screaming one of his speeches while giving you a root canal. I think that’s not at all unfair. I can’t hear anything redeeming in those first three tracks, and that’s a lot of time to lose someone. If Neubauten was really going for this, and they actually want me to turn my mind to the dark, repressed memories of my last dentist appointment, then “Steh Auf Berlin” is a stunning achievement. And so it is with all of the good ideas on this album: ruined by horrific vocals. I’m so repulsed by them that anything else redeeming on this album is forgotten. I was going to write an unserious review, but halfway through my second go-round I realized that this band is actually deadly serious, and so they deserve to be more than just slagged off. 1 star for me.

I enjoyed this one! There were plenty of surprises. Even though it's a sound we all know, and has at this point been nailed down pretty much completely, I came away feeling like there was some definite joy in making this album and writing the songs. Open-ended structures, more exploratory sections and sound design. The parts that are meant to sound straight-ahead even do so with ease... it's doesn't feel too belabored, wrought, or (on the other hand) disinterested. I really liked it. Inversely proportional to how much I dislike the bands did this kind of thing, but with no feeling.

Just an amazing sound for Beck. Elements of psychedelic folk, twangy guitar sounds, and gorgeous orchestration. They fit so well together… it’s a cinematic sound and a great pairing. I especially loved Nigel Goderich’s production treatment on this album: inventive, versatile, but never feeling too full. How does he do it? Everything sounds like a movie. I will definitely return to these songs. It was a comfortable, contemplative morning listen.

Ah! I was hoping this would be the one for me. I’ve been hoping that a blues record would come along someday and convert me. I love playing the blues, and I think I’d really dig seeing a blues band play. So maybe an hour record of Muddy Waters, laying it all on the line, could get me there. Sadly, not this record for me. I still had a good time, and the first track is iconic. Past the first two tracks, things got more monotonous. I always feel like I don’t know what I should be listening for! What am I missing? What’s the part of the blues that I need to “get” to unlock it? A fine listen! Just not a conversion experience, which upon reflection is a lot of pressure to put on any one record. 3/5.

I am enjoying this album! I like the drunken dive bar sound of the lead singer. The musicians are very fun to listen to. They're so versatile and there are so many of them! It just sounds like a whole packed crowd of people playing. I'm enjoying listening to the unison parts, like when the banjo and the mandolin are together. These songs run the gamut. "Fairytale of New York" is too beautiful... such a good duet. A lot of these songs sound like they're in a movie. I like how joyful the music is! I got to the "Sketches of Spain" track and was like ????????. I feel like I'm hearing a folk band stretch its wings and try things out. It's long, and this is a LOT of Irish folk for me to do over two days. But overall very pleasant, at times emotional. Good time was had.

This is my second Morrissey album for 1001, on the long road to "getting Morrissey's music." I have to say... I'm starting to get it more. The production is overall pretty safe, and not super interesting, save for a couple of standouts... it has that kind of safe, U2 sound to it. Steve Albini producing, who isn't ever bad, but never really my favorite choices... other than a couple of spirited guitar solos. But the background music doesn't seem to be the point of Morrissey. I get this sense that all of Morrissey's songs are the same: there's a backing track, which is almost totally disconnected from Morrissey and his lyrics. And then front and center you have Morrissey, with lyrics that range from sarcastic to pathetic to darkly funny. In a funny way it reminds me of some kinds of hip hop, where there's this wide gulf between the musicians making the track, and the lead, who's floating above it all, in his own world. There's something kind of funny about that. I enjoy it more once I get into the lyrics and discover the darkly funny stuff, but as an album, it's got a lot of "same." 3/5.

Incredible! Such a creative, spirited album. You can read much about Amanda Shankar’s ambitions for this album— he put his statement right on the cover!— so it’s a manifesto kind of album. His goal is to combine his advanced study in the sitar, plus Indian classical forms, with 60s psychedelic rock, heavy Moog synths, big operatic arrangements. A platform for him to show us how expressive the sitar can be. On every one of these points he succeeds. The album is innovative as a piece of music for its time, but it’s also fun, and you can tell that everyone is having fun. The idea of combining Sitar and Western music could have been boring, or academic, or shallow in its exploration. This album is none of these things. I get the sense that Amanda Shankar is exploring this idea to its absolute fullest, complete with some crazy Moog sound effects on the tracks! And it’s a perfect environment to show us his skill in playing, with different shades of an instrument you might have overlooked. I’m getting major Herbie Hancock vibes on this album, in the way the album feels so inviting, excited about its own sound, like he’s the first explorer. And the musicianship is just amazing throughout. This album made me re-discover the sitar! Which makes me one more convert to Amanda Shankar’s way of thinking. What more can you ask for. 5 stars!

I enjoyed listening to this album! It was fun to have on in the background. Some of the songs are undeniable, and I especially loved their Dylan cover. They suffer somewhat from the same affliction that so many bands had at at the time, which is being difficult to distinguish from being a b-side track on a Beatles record. But of those bands (there are many), I found these guys to be pretty fun, and at times more experimental. when they lock, they locked! Enjoyed my time with this record.

this was a stunning album on first listen... so pointy, and almost unapproachable? I keep thinking about pointy towers and brutalist architecture when I hear this album. I gotta say that I enjoyed the lyrics as well... Never too on the nose for me, maybe it's in the delivery. I feel like I'lll return to this album. Great morning punk listen while buying groceries at the co-op! To quote Charlie, "I feel like this should be 4 stars, but I can't exactly point to why." 4/5!

Undeniably a good album. There are just too many hit songs, it’s hard to believe given how short it is! I love the fun childish energy of the Band all over this… it feels like they’re really leaning in to their strengths. Unfortunately for me, I grew up after Green Day had already come and gone through the halls of my high school… really, in Green Day’s wake. That unfortunately means that I remember one or two kids who seemed to base their entire whiny personality on Billy Joe Armstrong’s most tortured vocals. So it’s no fault of the band that I have this strong association between their lead singer and some bullies from 2006, but there ya go. 4 stars, without a doubt a classic. Thank you Billy Joel Armstrong for inviting the whole front section onto the stage at the Tweeter Center in 2009, sorry Billy Joe Armstrong if I offended you in an unflattering connection to our high school “punk scene.”

Three punk albums in one week… all from very different eras! This might be my favorite time period. It just feels so silly and unserious, and then you get behind the lyrics and there’s more to it. I think the singer alone gives this album an extra star, he’s so unique. Holiday in Cambodia is pretty amazing. When he started screaming “Pol! Pot!” I must have been at peak Dead Kennedys. I really wish this album were mixed better. It’s a shame that it sounds like a pretty lofi, live recording… some more fidelity would have done a lot for me. Thank you punk albums for being so short! In and out and done! Thats how it should be.

This is the perfect blend of sweet, salty, and bitter to me. It's got tons of that anxious, foot-tapping energy, mixed with a tiny bit of that Steely Dan cynicism, but plenty of wacky fun in the production. Lots of Beach boys backing vocals, funny early Fairlight sampling, just silly songs performed seriously. Sounds like an extremely contentious recording process, from reading the Wikipedia. On that page, there's a picture of Andy Patridge self-seriously belting into a mic while reading from a comic book, and I think that pretty much sums it up for me! So wacky and fun and also serious. Gets me in all the right ways.

Captivating album. It really feels like you’re hearing the last breaths of Bob Dylan, as he’s nearing the end. It’s rough, yearning, full of pathos. But what really struck me about the album was the way it’s recorded! I read about the album production beforehand… how everything was done live, in this one-mic-in-the-room style, how the effects on Bob’s voice were printed on the performance as he sang. I had read all this background, but I honestly didn’t expect to hear that much of a difference in the sound. Man was I wrong! It’s such a unique-sounding album, sonically. It sounds full and live but also fuzzy, like an hazy, impressionistic version of a 50’s blues record. Something about the recording makes it feel so out of time, so strange… and made me on my toes for the whole listen. You know, 5 stars! It had me all the way through.

This was a fun listen. They undeniably have hits! This was one of my mom's favorite bands, growing up. I like to picture her getting this record as a brand new vinyl, and putting it on for the first time. It really is like time-travel music. That's how I'm getting to understand bands like Jefferson Airplane more... not as particularly groundbreaking, not because they have the most poignant songs, but as capturing a very particular energy and time. It feels like the music that plays as the backdrop to so many young people's adventures in that time. There's definitely more depth to the music than I may be leading on, but that's my overall impression.

I wasn't able to give this album the listen it deserves. My impressions are that this reminds me a ton of garage rock bands from my hometown in MA, and sure enough, they're from Amherst! It's really endearing. But I have to dock points for the mixes! Some of the recording and mixing on these records (especially the first few ones) are so, so bad! And not bad in an endearing kind of way... they just feel pulled right off the board, or like they were referenced in a really bad room. So I'm feeling a safe 3. I'll definitely return to this, and it feels buzzy and creative, reminds me of my hometown. But could be so much more listenable.

I did not love this. There are moments of earnestness, longing, excited energy in the songs, which makes it feel like the records are about to turn a corner. But really, it's just bathed in a morass of pretty bland arrangements, songs that are too long, chord changes and structures that feel uninspired. "The Drugs Don't Work" is genuinely great, and there's something to be said for "Bitter Sweet Symphony" being an undeniable timestamp of the era, of that scene, of what being in middle school was like for every middle schooler in 1997. But even that song don't hold up well! I was looking for something more, and there are hints of it, but I didn't find it.

This is one of those albums that makes me wonder how the 1001 Albums list was conceived, and what possessed the writers to put this on it. The album isn't bad by any stretch! Just fairly middle of the road. A stalk of grass among many, cut to exacting length. It's hard for me to get past the production, which seems very, very safe. Which leaves me with questions! Why is this on here? What cultural, historical significance does it have beyond the music? I must be missing context here. It certainly is hard to find in the music.

I unexpectedly, quite unexpectedly, LOVED this album!

We are closing out 2022, and it is time I put aside all the old, well-worn prejudices against Green Day that I harbored in high school. The sins of the fans– the many sins of some *particular* fans I knew in high school– are not the sins of the band, and they should not cloud my judgment. At this point, 50 albums in, I am like Spock, a Vulcan reviewer, evaluating albums on pure logic. So utterly removed am I from emotion. So advanced beyond the petty, petty drama from 2007. I have attained escape velocity. The baggage I once came to this record with has all but escaped my mind. I have forgotten it. I am one. With Green Day. To listen to this album is to experience a divergence... a dissonance. On one hand, here I am with all of my prejudice. On the other is a genuinely captivating record. Oozing with ambition, with confidence and vision and rock opera-ness and so many goddamn hits that it seems impossible they're all on this album. The height to which this band climbs on this album is so impossibly high, it's hard to not just gawk at how high up things are. It really feels like a capstone record for a time, and maybe for the genre altogether. The conclusion of something. I think the band should be extremely proud of the record, and they really deserve the praise they get for it. And really... really, I'm over it. I swear. Really. I'm going on two listens. We'll see about 3.

You have to be on a little bit of a sad streak for this album to hit right. Luckily for me, I picked this one up in the late afternoon on the second shortest day of the year, after my girlfriend had just left to go home. So, as the late afternoon crept into a very dark Vermont evening, I put this album on, and it was perfect. A world unto its own.

I mean, man. Tom Waits grew on me. Not on listen one, not even on listen two. My first listen, I was pretty close to repulsed. Such an abrasive voice, it’s easy for it to feel like sandpaper on your ears. But something was telling me that there must be more going on, must be something there. Tom Waits on this record is deep in America’s underbelly. We’re in the deep, dark caverns of depravity along with him, and for someone like me it’s just pure shock and distaste as he pulls you in. Honestly, I was gonna turn it off until I got to “On The Nickel” and I was like wait… this is a genuinely heartbreaking song. So I went on the journey with Tom Waits. And 3 albums in (I listened to the late career, sultry bayou villian-character record Blood Money, as well as the genuinely charismatic Closing Time, with barely a family resemblance to his later self), and… I’m a convert. It’s a fulcrum record, on which Tom Waits is becoming the character, getting drawn into the darkness. And it’s now genuinely captivating. I can’t tell what is the performance art, or where the character ends and the person begins, but I’m enthralled. Consider me a fan.

Definitely a high 3 for me. It’s always hard to get inside the mind of someone hearing this for the first time, and having their world changed. There are aspects of the sound that are just starting to get more progressive, for sure. The guitar tones in particular are starting to sound more biting, the drums more pushed and distorted (at times it feels like they’re literally pushing the recordings as hot as it can go). But for a listener today, this album feels like a point on the drive, a stop before the destination, for both harder music and The Who as a band. Still, I really enjoyed listening, and there are some catchy ones!

Wow, maybe my favorite Christmas album I’ve ever heard? I didn’t just have a good time… I had a Great Time. Phil Spektor in his prime! The Ronnettes with their most Brooklyn accents! Lots of fun sound effects and orchestral stuff. Always fun, never too jaded-commercial, always having-a-good-time-with-it-commercial. I gained a new appreciation for songs I’d heard before, it helped fill out the missing pieces of the puzzle for me with these Christmas songs I’ve no doubt heard in countless shopping experiences. 4 stars! I have been gifted.

I had high hopes coming into this album, as with all my exposures to Bowie from this period. This is late 70s Bowie, however, and it would seem that much of the album was made in the absence of our leading star. At least that’s how it sounds to me on my first few listens. There are so many tracks that are puzzling to me; on the one hand, here are some of the best instruments and production on any Bowie album, with really creative instrument choice, sound design, and arrangements, especially for the period. And almost nothing Brian Eno touches is without merit. That said, it sure sounds like Bowie phoned it in on top of a couple of these instruments after they had been recorded. I keep waiting for Bowie to come through with one of his signature, aching yet effervescent rock star lines. But he’s almost nowhere to be found! And when he does arrive, it’s too little too late. I’ll have to hear the rest of this supposed trilogy, but until then, I am left none to impress. 2/5. This review was translated and dictated by Becca Lipstein. No proofing was done.

Instant conversion experience! A band that, for silly reasons, I never gave the time of day. And then 1001 Albums Generator made me sit down and really listen. And I realized… I already knew half of the songs! And they’re amazing. I just get a great feeling, listening to this album. I’m sure others have some background on this, but one thing that surprised me was the recording quality, for the period. I think this was 1971, and it really sounds like a big upgrade in overall sound quality, compared to rock albums beforehand. The guitars in particular sound perfect. That’s the sound in my head that I hear when I think “guitar.” Just amazing. Going back for my second go-round, driving across the Midwest. Perfect.

I am completely unimpressed by this album. I must be missing something! To me it just sounds really boring. The recordings and arrangements just sound really… square? There’s some interesting sounds, sonically, but overall I feel like I’m being beat over the head repeatedly. The lyrics I tuned into are all pretty corny. I must be missing context! I dunno… maybe all of the ways this album was groundbreaking or original have now been beaten to death. To me, it sounds boring, slow, and square. I don’t think it should be on this list.

Stunning, stunning debut album. An album that feels like it set the tone for an age. A great case of an album that I was super familiar with in high school— I probably played it a few dozen times while driving around— but a retrospective listen only caused me to love to album more. The first half of the album (up to Kids) is just immediately iconic… but the production was what caught my ear! 15 years later and I’m like… something about this sounds so Flaming Lips. And sure enough, it’s Lord High Wizard Dave Fridmann on production! An amazing combo. I feel like listening to this album deeply got me a masterclass in dynamic, full, quirky, Phil Spektor-y wall-of-sound gushiness. I don’t know much about the background on the making of this album, but it sounds like a perfect pairing to me, between the silly, irreverent lyrics and the Phil Spektor-y symphonic sound. I loved it all the way through. I got so many ideas from just listening to the instrumentation. For a debut album? Nothing less than a perfect first ball.

Really enjoyed this one. From track one! Such a perfectly tight sound, subjects, political messages, fun, all those great grooves. I felt like the band was so tight! Listened a few times this weekend. Overall great stuff.

How to review an album like this! Something that’s so self-evidently influential, that it must have inspired every producer within a 15-year timespan afterwards… from Alchemist to No ID to Nujabes to Doom. It’s all there. I get why it’s on the list… it’s very significant. Supposedly it’s the album that got Radiohead to start sampling on OK Computer! It’s kind of the moment when it all crystallizes for hip hop… when sampling really takes on a life of its own, is coming into its own as an art. And I’m really happy that 1001 made me finally sit down and listen to this album… one I always said I’d get around to. It’s also really, really interesting to listen to still. There are things about it that are funny, like the skits (which hip hop is now replete with). There’s sentimentality… I can just picture a younger Nujabes listening to this and the gears start turning. And still, there are aspects of the production that are surprising, or feel like you haven’t heard it copied to death yet. All on an MPC60, which makes the record sound both familiar and yet like sonic unobtanium. It’s the way samples are supposed to sound to so many producers, because this is how they hear it in their heads, but it’s more truly lo-fi than all of that. Inspiring as heck. Even the super dated parts feel fresh on this album. Long live sampling! 4/5.

Didn’t love it, I’ll be honest… and I really tried to get in deeper. Listened a few times on this road trip. You can’t deny his sincerity… I just didn’t quite get onboard.

Had a great time with this record. And now I feel like I understand the British ska scene more, which always seemed opaque to me. The styles on this album run the gamut, but the pervasive feeling of cynicism, feeling trapped, angst is present throughout. But it’s also fun! I just appreciated how deftly this album moves between styles… things feel very urgent and never overwrought. I read that it’s not unlike a live album, and I really get that sense. Great listen!

Okay, I'm definitely warming up to this one. But it was a long road to get there. My first reaction to hearing this album was feeling a little distant from the music. I guess that's a fair way to put it... listening to Elvis' voice has always had the quality to me of viewing an historical artifact behind a glass case. Very much like listening to a broadcast recording of Churchill. You can't help but listen to it and go "oh, that's just Elvis The Historical Figure," and it almost rolls off my ear like it's a museum piece. It doesn't help that– and I'll be honest here– Elvis really hams it up. An amazing performer, no doubt, but you get the sense he could be singing about anything! I'm always wondering who's the man behind the singer, what his internal life must be. Whether he is actually connecting to the words in "In The Ghetto" (written by Mac Davis). Is he really feeling it? Why am I getting the same feeling I get when I hear an audiobook reader recite someone else's book? Where is Elvis in this picture? All that said: This is just a really pleasant album to listen to, and a great example of a crossroads album between the Nashville sound and some soul/ Motown influences. It's just a good mix. Part of me is like, eh, the playing is nice, but have you heard the basslines that James Jamerson is doing on all those Motown records? Really any late-60s Motown record puts this record in stark relief. Especially for 1969... a LOT has happened to develop that sound by then. But the cool thing about this album is that Elvis is doing it, and he's doing it *well.* I need to stop wishing that an album *isn't* this other, better produced album, and just appreciate the moment that we get. And it is a treat that we get to listen to this kind of crossover. 3/5

Here's what I'm here to say. This is absolutely some of the tightest playing I've heard on any funk record period. This is the album that should be referenced as what playing in the pocket sounds like. Everything, from the keys, bass, guitars sound like one machine. And most of it was played by one person! Insane. I'm not getting any of the lyrics on this listen, and they're hidden, darkened, almost like the singer is trying to confess something but is somewhat timid to say. But supposedly the lyrics cast a long cynical shadow on the record. And the dark, dull, supposedly heavily overdubbed recordings add to that flavor... the record feels a little dour, even as it's some of the catchiest and funkiest playing you'll hear. I'm totally onboard. I think it's only a 4 for me because I wish the lyrics took these instrumentals to that next level, and really dug their heels in. But I'm definitely playing this album a bunch more times. It's a weirdly cozy, Sunday afternoon pleasant record to put on, dark as it is, and I'll be putting it on many more times.

At least one star has to be given to them for Scarborough Fair... an unlikely hit if there ever was one, and one that perfectly captures the woody nymphy folk sound of the era. I'm a huge fan of where that genre ends up... I think psychedelic folk might be one of my favorite ever genre for how weird it gets... and this song is definitely in the minds of a lot of artists as they go in that way. The rest of the album is a mix. Homeward Bound and 59th Street Bridge Song perfectly capture the lyricism, the playfulness that I love about Paul Simon's songwriting. Tongue in cheek and then yearning visual, pulls you in. At times I think he's a little too clever for his own good, but what can you say about an English major who soon to become one of the greatest songwriters of his generation. That's the artist's journey. I'd absolutely listen to this a few more times. There's always more to the lyrics to pick up. We're right around the corner from Bookeneds and that's when my ears start to really perk up. But there are some really tender moments on here. Two caterpillars in metamorphosis.

Something about this album just isn’t clicking for me, even after 3 listens over a couple of days. I am not sure if it’s the album’s problem, or mine. I am not counting out CCR… this is just the first time I’ve given them a real, honest listen. There are some guitar parts that feel *awesome*, like they really get you going. The lead singer is selling it on those first two tracks. But I feel pretty distant from this music, like it’s a culture I will always be an outsider to, and I’m craning my neck for some vantage point to get a proper look in, but it’s no use. It all feels a little foreign to me. I think I need another entryway in, and maybe there’s another CCR album that gets me there. For me, 3 stars is “had a good time,” and I’m still standing outside the venue, trying to figure out what the whole thing is about.

I didn't like this record, but I'm holding out that there's something I'm missing. Sign me up for pained, afflicted, sobering, wistful country. Some amount of dirt, or edge there. The songs here feel simultaneously safe and pitying. Nothing goes right for Dwight Yoakam. It's all pain, denial, rejection, affliction. That's a part of the story, of life, yes. To me, it felt like too much of the same note. Maybe this just isn't the time of my life to hear this record. Maybe I need a breakup and a rejection and my best friend dying. Even so, I don't think this is the one I'd reach for. 2/5

Okay before I write anything, just know that I am *for sure* buying this album on vinyl. And it is going at the absolute top, most-easily-accessible place in my future dream record playing room A cooky, campy, proggy symphony if there ever was one. I came into this listen with LOW expectations. A while back, I saw a YouTube vide of Mike Oldfield performing the title track of Tubular bells, and 20 minutes left I was left feeling dizzy, Eurovision-y, a little numb from its sheer length (?), and feeling super unimpressed. Just confused, like... what is this silliness? It felt very indulgent, but the music behind it was so uninteresting, very loop-y. A guitar would come in after 15 minutes and you'd be like, oh wow, something new. And then lost again. I don't know where *that* piece of music is on Mike Oldfield's original Tubular bells from 1973... it seems to be absent. This Tubular Bells is very different. There are high highs and low lows. My high point was probably the growling muppet prog rock in the last third of Tubular Bells Pt.II... so silly. Then there are themes that, no fault of Oldfield, have been completely beat into your brain by every video game composer of the 90s and 2000s. The opening track, while I'm sure was used well in The Exorcist, sounds... kind of lame. We've heard it. But again, there's so little continuity between the vignettes that, at some point, he just pulls the rug on you, and you're off to some other land. Super proggy (especially the second part, which I liked vastly more than the first part), never too serious (I'm thinking of the "And Now... Spanish Guitar!" sections), sometimes genuinely interesting or beautiful. Really a surprise, a grab bag. And recorded in one of the best years for music recordings, so that doesn't hurt either. It's hard to hear it, today, as something groundbreaking, but sounds like it really was. Nowadays, it may be a little unserious, a little silly, medieval, parochial, but... it's one of those one-of-a-kind experiences. Absolutely worth a trip. 4/5 PS: I found the YouTube video that I saw, of a very late 90s Tubular Bells... prepare thine ears. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSRJvq4Wd48

An album that I would always look at and say, "oh yeah, I played that a million times in high school." Apparently I didn't have the full one on iTunes, because quite a few of these songs are brand new to me! I know so little about Grizzly Bear's story, but to hear this album up against their first is like seeing boys becoming men. The records on their first project are wandering, searching, somewhat nervous lofi when put up against this album, and I can't help but think that the songwriting is a huge part of that journey. I can't get enough of Daniel Rossen's songwriting... I think he's just a really unique writer, both in tone and in the way his melodies and chords work. The Rossen songs tend to be my favorites, especially when you can feel the band going off the deep end a little, but oh man! That last song "Foreground!" That's an instant favorite for me, and it hits me right in the heart. "Two Weeks" is an obvious giant hit, but it feels a little misplaced on this album, like it's an entirely different band from the one that does "Southern Point" or "Dory." A real mystery of a band! Some of the textures are some of the most beautiful things I've ever heard, other songs feel a little meandering or confused, sort of like their earlier works. It's a little uneven for an album, but I wouldn't want to live in a world where this album didn't exist. 4/5

Wow. I get what all the fuss is about. This is the kind of album that 1001 Albums was made for... an album that you might have some ambient awareness of, that you might think, abstractly, "that sounds like it would be good," but never actually gave it your ears. This is the first time I've ever properly sat with a Led Zeppelin album, and I've gotta say... it was pretty unforgettable. I was taken from basically the first moment of the first song. So many things were clicking for me... Robert Plant's feverish, skrelt-y vocals that immediately recall a half dozen other singers so clearly indebted to his sound, the drums (the drums!!) and how creative the fills were, the inventive ways they're re-interpreting blues records... I really, really got it. It was like a lightbulb moment... ah, so that's why every late 60's band and their mother was trying to make this kind of music. They were all listening to Zeppelin! I was really on the edge between 4 and 5 here. Truth be told, I spent the next several hours mainlining as much of Led Zeppelin's next 3 albums into my ears as I could, and what I heard was... insane! So now I know where the story goes with this band. I know how they rapidly evolve, how some of the best music they ever did is yet to come. But for introducing me (and the world at the time) to such a bold, intense, sexually-charged-guitar-solo sound, I have to give the album high marks for sending me in a tailspin. With so many albums to get through, it's rare to have an instant conversion experience. A well-deserved 5/5

Finally had a breather after a crazy week to review… a funny album. The Streets’ “A Grand Don’t Come For Free.” An album I’m already a little endeared to. Perhaps unreasonably attached. I kept thinking “I’ve heard this before!” But I just couldn’t remember where. I think it was midway though a heavy alt hip hop phase I had. Here’s what I’ll say. It’s an ambitious concept. Some blending of musical theater, lyrical storytelling, multiple characters, etc. And all about such a mundane life and characters, with mundane problems, that it’s pretty funny. I actually like the cheap 2000’s production… you get the sense that the main character is so strapped for cash that he could only afford the absolute cheapest sampler and a Casio keyboard. A few of the songs sound basically unmixed. Something about it kind of works. It’s a pretty unique album because you get the sense this could have almost been cleaned up to be a… musical? Maybe it just wasn’t the right time. With a good editor, maybe broadening the other characters out, I could see it. But I mean, some of the lines are just grating to hear… after a while, are you sympathetic to the main character, or just annoyed at his stupidity? I guess that’s kind of the point. But it doesn’t make you want to return to the album a ton. But yeah, this kind of storytelling is kind of normal for hip hop, you hear some version of this everywhere. Mundane problems, gossip, axes to grind. Which is all really fun if the music grooves. This music is intentionally not tight and almost low effort, which again, fits with the story, but makes it less of a fun listen. I’ll still feel vaguely affectionate to it if it were to come on randomly, but I don’t think I’ll be returning by choice. 2/5

I’m left a little confused by this album. Stylistically it’s all over… and many instrumental records that feel out of place. I’d say the rap… wasn’t bad?… but the songs played for me too close to their genre templates, and didn’t really surprise me. It’s eclectic, but throughout the album I was hoping for more cohesion, more of a reason why.

We’re far enough into 1001 Albums, and I’m hooked enough, that having a mediocre album feels like a genuine bummer. This album was just really boring! There was nothing about it that I really connected with. A while back, I got really deep into early 90s sample CD’s… when sampling had escaped the hardware, and now there were hundreds (!!) of loops available for use on the computer. And boy, it’s some great stuff, but it all sounds so, *so* impossibly 90s. Like, every sound in those early sample CDs made it into every CSI episode, every late night thriller b-movie, ever 90s techno or dance track. This album is nothing but those CDs! I can barely hear anything else, past the super dated sounds and loops. I like those sounds, in a kind of fun endearing nostalgic way, but the compositions here just left me super bored. The ending of the album had a tiny bit more for me to like in it, but everything else is just hard to listen to for very long. And I’m not a listener who hears the lyrics first, by any stretch, but you get the sense that William Orbit actually does not care what lyrics his singers are saying. Hoping for something spicier tomorrow… 1/5

Loved loved loved this album! I thought I had combed over most of the highlights of Tribe and the individual members, but this one must have totally passed me by. This was pure quality. The Norah Jones record was amazing!! D’Angelo feature at the end was so up my alley, like right in the center of my zone. I love q-tip’s delivery, I love the funkiness of the record, I love the BASS PARTS. WHO IS PLAYING THESE BASS PARTS. The sample selection is amazing, harmonically in a totally different zone if it’s own. This is really really great. Sad to have missed this album for so long.

This album is basically impossible to review. I've turned it over a dozen times in my head, in the last week. Did I enjoy listening to it? Almost universally no. Pretty much anything in this corner of pop, anything ABBA-adjacent is baseline annoying to me. But then...! You go into the history behind this record. Madonna's intentions, to make an album about forgiveness, atonement. A reckoning with her Catholic upbringing. The last song ("Act of Contrition,"), with the backwards music, where she realizes all the platitudes, the posturing toward God doesn't get her into heaven. I mean... that's an Extremely Good premise for a record. The parts that are darker, more moody... I like those parts. I like how human Madonna feels on some of these records. I like Prince's guitar playing, I like his duet. Can this record pull itself from under all the cheesy 80's production, all the misguided choices? I am completely unsure. I'm not gonna lie that I thought about this record a lot. Even if it's not to my taste, I have to give Madonna credit... there's a lot of ambition here. 3/5

A brilliant and talented band that very rarely makes any songs I like. You can hear very clearly in this album that their showboating, free-wheeling arrangements are nothing new, and they had been doing this thing for quite some time before Bohemian Rhapsody et al. Killer queen is a song where that kind of energy works brilliantly. Something about it focuses in just the right way, with just the right elements, that it’s infectious. It just works. The rest of the album— with a couple exceptions— just doesn’t work for me. The pacing is too frenetic, there’s a lot of quick switch-ups, effects, guitar solos, but behind some fairly lackluster writing. “Bring Back That Leroy Brown” perfectly illustrates this. There’s barely two bars strung together before an insert, effect, banjo strum, bgv, guitar solo, harpsichord solo, etc. Can you imagine recording that live to tape? The musicianship necessary is next level. But it makes me feel nothing except mild anxiety, and some annoyance. I get that it’s the style, it’s this dinner theater style! But it tires my poor ears. And for what? For an okay song. That’s this album for me.

Revolver is a basically perfect album, by an imperfect, human, but nonetheless a one-in-a-million, band. I mean, what are the freaking odds that two of our greatest songwriters are in the same band? And that they are coming into their own, writing-wise, at exactly the same time, pushing the band in two divergent, competing directions. Lennon’s mystic but somehow cynical, afflicted songs, about the mundane things in life that somehow keep you wanting. McCartney’s way of encapsulating phases of love and living in a small turn of phrase, so earnestly, but from the perspective of the songbird, maybe the muse, looking below on the human condition. And all of this song-y-ness happens in… 2 to 3 minute, experimental, baroque pieces of music that bear more resemblance to Mozart than music today. All while being silly, whimsical, experimental, uncompromising in its quality. On four tracks! It’s actually like going to the Moon. The talent here for everyone involved is just staggering. I’ve given a lot of records from this period 3 stars, 2 stars, because Revolver etc. loom large in my mind. So many records of this time, sonically, sound like the era they’re from… chambers, stringy guitars, wall of sound, tape breaking up. And, well, Revolver actually sounds nothing like that. Totally a product of its time, but outside of it. These focused chamber arrangements, minimal and still whimsical, playful. I can actually hear the limitations of George Martin and the band as they struggle to fit their ideas down into four tiny tracks of tape. But rather than push the tape, they edit the arrangement, obsessively. Condense, break it up. There’s never too much or too little in the production, it’s exactly the right amount. Really impressive to hear. I used to say this was my favorite Beatles record because that’s what everyone always says. Now, with 15 years worth of returning, and having gotten into the actual business of songwriting and production, I can say it’s got to be one of the brightest. Maybe the best example of their songwriting chops in action, George Martin’s budding experimentalism. It’s just tight, there are no misses (okay I never *loved* Dr. Robert), and it’s some of the band members’ best individual efforts. It’s the Beatles as maybe they should be best remembered. 5/5

Am I being too cynical here? I’m imagining Robert Dimery going, “Oh no, we forgot that we need a Latin album in the book… what about the album that won the Latin Grammy last year?” In today’s world, where English-speaking artists are releasing high profile Spanish-speaking collaborations with huge Latin artists and dominating charts, where these artists are not just ascendant, but genuinely groundbreaking… should *this* be one of the few Latin albums on the list? For me, 1 stars means no, it should not. 1/5 I did like the Killer Mike sounding guy though. Not saying the music was unpleasant or even un-fun. But it should not be here.

I liked it! I’m intrigued. I’m eager to hear more from the Doors. Some of the songs give you this offbeat, unsettled feeling. You get the sense that there’s something odd about Jim Morrison. He’s not immediately scannable. Like there’s something brewing under the surface. I’m only getting a quick look with an album that has a couple of standouts, but is mostly a mood. Where do they go next? (No spoilers). 3/5

I must be by far the least knowledgeable of the Bob Dylan reviewers on here. I have always been a “music first, lyrics… eventually?” kind of guy. This is changing. Now I crave music with something to chew on. Meanings superimposed on meanings. Poetry, which gives every shade of grey a sense of contrast, another color. Or turns a sad story into a joke, or a twist of the knife. A sense that things can be more than what they appear to be. And I never feel more like the uncarved block than when I come to Dylan. totally uninformed, but… moldable. There’s just something mythical about his writing, and it makes his stories feel out of time. They are archetypes, but they’re very playful, referential. In a moment he’s serious, and at the next moment the collapses as a joke, or a play on words. I’m entranced. Even in his most irreverent, most referential, whatever… there’s always “something there” with Dylan. The lights are on. You get a sense that there’s another layer you need to unravel, that there’s a reason he’s pointing you to this archetype, that situation. Much to take in. 5/5

I liked it, I had a good time! I heard a vinyl rip of it, as Neil would have wanted. come to think of it, Neil probably doesn’t want me to hear a version of this album that isn’t direct vinyl. Nothing really stood out up re-visiting, but I’m open to putting it on again. His mix of melancholy is always home-y to me. It didn’t have the same effect on me as Harvest. But I had a good time!

A real question… why do I like this so much, and yet similar versions of this style that are only 5-10% different are almost unlistenable to me? What’s the magic that makes this work for me? The first thing that stood out to me was balance… the elements that might seem dated, that otherwise would irk me, always feel properly balanced with other ideas. Something about the breakbeats, drum machines, the lonesome and somewhat desolate vocal, and the string arrangements… it all feels balanced. It just all works really well together. Where other examples of this 90’s dance, breakbeat style don’t hold up to me, this music is well-served by its counterweights. That’s true in the mixing as well… everything sounds very natural, never too slick. Never cheesy. I had a great time listening. It’s also a clear jumping off point for artists today, some of whom are contemporaries. I think this is great, and genuinely feels like it could have been made a decade later and still be intriguing.

Today, in 2023, I am no longer a 12-year old American boy. No longer am I the pimpled king of "Roller Kingdom," scared to death to meet the eyes of my middle school crush in the adjoining Birthday Party Room. Nor do I wait for the 6:45am bus, scribbling frantic answers to a history worksheet– a poor writing surface, those bus seats!– that has small, pitying holes in it from my erasable pen. These facts put me at an extreme, almost disqualifying disadvantage to rate an album like this. A genuine handicap for an album whose influence is foundational to many of my 2000's peers, but in retrospect may only be a good time if you're deep in Angst Mode. I knew kids who picked up guitar because they listened to this CD! The patron saints of Lazer Zones everywhere. In seriousness. I like my Blur, I like my Arctic Monkeys, I like my Strokes. This is hard to get through. Grating. This shouldn't happen, because I know all the songs already. Halfway through, I'm thinking, "Maybe I'm having fun! Maybe I should sneak one of these songs in at my wedding." Alas. Not Enough Fun. A generous 3 might be possible. But I have dutifully deducted a point for the refrain, "I've got soul but I'm not a soldier," sung forty times behind a gospel choir. That line's been bouncing around in my head since the Roller Kingdom Days, and unfortunately, now illuminated by the scribes of Genius, it yields no special magic. 2/5

Charlie already said everything that I could have with this one. Early, experimental, confusing, funny, uneven pacing. But... a VIBE. An arrival. It does sound like they're figuring out what it is. I love the playfulness of it, the songs that feel like skits. And yeah, the title track is really worth the price of admission. I love how it just perfectly captures something, it's like a photograph. 4/5. Special.

I mean. It's spectacular. Ambitious. An artist who took the idea of "concept album" and ran so hard his legs fell off. Insane to think that he wanted to do one of these for each of the 50 States. It's too long! But... damn. Small sacrifice for such a complete work.

Four years after hearing this for the first time, this is an album is the one that stuck like glue on me. Far, far away from cynical land, commercial land, cool land, exists this child-like id this so so beautiful, so unconfined, so premature… but always with a hint of sadness. The big-ness of the world as seen through the eyes of a child in the backseat of the car, whose seemingly incoherent babbling may at first be inscrutable to the adults, until realizing that— hold on— what exactly is he saying? Maybe… there’s something profound he’s getting at? Out of nowhere, the words: “I stood up and I said YEAH,” you immediately understand. That’s The Flaming Lips. Also, laying my cards out. I realized this year that I’ve been a Dave Fridmann acolyte my whole life, as a producer. And I had no idea. It’s because this album’s production DNA is stamped on so many follow-up indie records for the next 20 years. By now, it’s been somewhat codified, figured out. But there’s something so wild and untamed about the arrangements that use Disney-sounding orchestration on some 90’s synth patches, butting up against some really hard, intense shimmery synth jam. The rapid switch-ups, the wall-of-sound big-ness, the kid instruments. By now I have you figured out, Dave Fridmann. But this is a version of The Flaming Lips that isn’t fully figured out, so it’s more raw, more unpolished, than Fridmann’s later work. And I like it more. PS: if nobody’s told you this, go listen to the Live At Red Rocks version of this album, with the full orchestra and choir. You’ll be glad you did. 5/5

Really enjoyed this listen! Dark hallways of deception and intrigue come to mind. Music for when you’re plotting your next palatial overthrow. But then again; when has the vibraphone not had that… vibe? 3/5

Not my favorite Blur album, but also never bad. I’m always inspired by their song structures and adventurous chords. I would have loved to have heard the Andy Partridge versions of these songs, which supposedly were demo recordings early in the process. It’s hard to rate this, knowing what the band will ultimately become, and how good it’s about to get, but I didn’t dislike it. I also love the super Britishness of bands like this and the Kinks… it’s a thing I’ve recently discovered through 1001. 3/5

Something about this just worked for me. It was the blend of synth, new wave, experimental music, but also very catchy. I loved the experimental vocal stuff. Yeah I overall was super impressed, it filled in the gaps for me! 4/5

Fascinating album. I read the background about all of the difficulties with the original mix… the David Bowie mix done in one day, off of only three or the original 24 tracks, so I was intrigued. I put on the original Bowie mix and was ASTOUNDED by what I heard. It’s so harsh it’s almost unlistenable! I’m listening on a nice system, and the only way I could stand this album was by a) going into another room, b) listening on worse speakers pointed away from me, c) turning it up so loud my hearing started to fatigue. And I expect that’s what happened to many teenagers who put this album on for the first time… it is so harshly mixed that it must have sounded like nothing anyone had ever heard. It’s those anger frequencies! The ones that you get with a crying baby, or scraping metal against metal. The ones we’re wired to get angry or upset over. It’s crazy that a badly mixed, almost unlistenable album is what inspired the seeds of the punk movement… and it’s probably in part because of the bad mix! The 1991 “Iggy’s mix” is far, far more listenable. You get a sense of fresh experimentation, antics, fun, showmanship, just rawness. The guitar solos are all still there in the remix, I don’t care what anyone says. The rawness is still there. But the thing that’s going to be imprinted on my mind is how intense and angry the first mix made me feel. A great example of “not as great as you remember.” Because what you remember is more the emotion of the event, the feelings you get, the afterimage. And that says something about the experience of music by itself. 4/5

An album that got worse, the more I listened to it. Seriously impressive feat. The first 5 minutes, I had my jaw dropped… what is this symphonic, atonal, music, how are these drums hitting so hard? It was really a treat. It felt like the overture to an extremely enticing sci-fi film. But then the first track went on for 22 minutes. And it got worse! As in, repetitive worse. As a dance track, yes it makes sense. But then the album stopped impressing me. Its charm wore off by around track 3 or 4. Insanely interesting ideas at first, just lackluster execution that left me confused. 2/5

Have had some difficulties getting into this album. I’ve given it several listens, but Elvis Costello is currently rolling off of me. The production is interesting, songwriting is intriguing. I am just left with nothing to hold onto. Not counting him out. 2/5

Didn’t have an amazing time, but I didn’t have an un-fun time either. And I’m starting to dig hardcore, and dig this album the more I listen to it. Bad Brains may be a band who requires several, orthogonal exposures to it before it settles in your brain. I’m coming around to it. Some of the grooves are seriously cool, and I like the proggy hardcore sound. The guitar sound is pretty amazing. I had a big moment with 90s metal bands like Megadeath… this seems like it shares some lineage. There are parts I like a lot. However, nothing getting around the fact that some of the songs are a little meandering or hard to follow. I know of Bad Brains from their other, self-titled album, which I just think is more fun sounding and maybe showcases them better. Also the mixing feels kind of… boring? Not “fun,” like their last record. More scooped and a little empty, which to me doesn’t suit the record.

Okay! Back at it, after an unusual 1-week absence. Time for a prototype British punk record whose influence apparently knows no bounds, who seem like they must share DNA with the Kinks… who I had trouble getting into. I liked the eclecticism, I like the tongue-in-cheek feeling of the music, but nothing really stuck with me. It might have been the fact that I listened on the plane while half asleep. I gave it another chance while more awake, and there still wasn’t anything for me to grasp onto that I actually loved. 2/5

I really warmed up to Missy Elliot. The timbaland bounce— and I cannot emphasize enough— is I N C R E D I B L E. He’s the best at this by far. The danceability of every record. Ah! Too much spoken word intros! It was great at first. Then it was too much. I got too much of a peak behind the curtain. Ah I love the bounce.

This is good! I should have been listening to Ghostface Killah way more when I was in the phase for this, somehow his solo work completely blew me by. It's moving, his verses really pull you right into a vice grip with their imagery, the skits are wild and funny. Pretty much everything I could hope for from a release like this. I just didn't enjoy myself too much... this album kind of made me stressed. Usually there's enough balance in the production, or enough funny, to offset this, to make something more colorful. There's a little bit of balance on this album, but for me not enough. Some of the productions are amazing, however, great examples of the period. 3/5

this is a GREAT album. and a great SOUNDING album. It's just fun! I get the appeal. This somehow conveys The Who to me way more than their first studio album. I feel like this really captures the spirit of the Who, and more importantly what it's like to be at one of these shows. 5/5!

I liked this album! I am intrigued. I want to hear more. The lead singer is compelling. There’s definitely something here, the songwriting is really interesting. I wasn’t thrilled with the production overall… somewhat generic? And I’ll have to hear the back half again. But I’ll definitely give it another listen.

I’m definitely warming up to this album. It’s theatrical, quirky, fun, if a little mystifying. There are some genuinely really cool guitar licks and arrangement choices here. It manages to be pretty approachable and never corny, I don’t know how they’re pulling it all off. I’m impressed, having a good time the more I listen. 3/5

I needed Songs In The Key of Life more today than I thought I did. Most of us do. Who can't listen to "Love's in Need of Love Today" and not, on some level. feel a need to weep? Every time I come back to this album, I learn something new. On his earlier albums, you'll find plenty of incredible songs, great arrangements. Key changes that make you question if you've ever really played music before. But this album is where it all takes flight. There's something for everyone in this album, which is why its appeal must be so great. Songs about early love, lust, mature love, being a parent. Everything through this lens of an incredible songwriter, who also happens to have some of the greatest musicians of the day playing alongside him! This album is simultaneously an album to find new love to, an album to appreciate what you have, an album to put on in the background of your day, and one (for the songwriters and musicians out there) to study, for its influence is profound. Heck, is this the only double album *ever* that I love, all the way through? That alone is a feat. 5/5

Yup. I don’t want to be unfair to Springsteen. His heart’s in the right place, and this album is clearly inspired. And this is an album that’s more made for The American— the idealized, the one who stands front and center in a Norman Rockwell painting— more than it’s made for me. To listen to this album is to get a quick shot of that specific blend of Americanness. He goes right to the heartstrings. I am usually a pretty easy for this, and I fall for it a lot of times in this album. Songs like “you’re missing…” I mean, come on! That’s pretty heartbreaking! And then we have a lot of what sounds more like Bruce Springsteen-type-stuff than actual Bruce songs. It’s just a little unexciting. The fire in the songwriting and purpose is there, but the production or arrangement falls a little flat for me. Like they took the most middle-of-the-road approach to the production. Which is disappointing because there are some heart-tugging ones on here! I’m going for a reluctant 2. Bruce was my first 5 stars on this list, for Darkness on the Edge of Town. He deserves every one of those stars, and I’m sure we’ll get more. But I’m not, like, convinced that this should be on the list, with such a messy middle. Whatever, I’ll still be feeling a little American wistful the rest of the night. 2/5 PS: genuinely think I took a star off because of the clear “Middle Eastern type beat” midway through, that is as transparent a choice as it can possibly be for an album about 9/11… that uses tabla. TABLA, Bruce. Why tabla. Why did you do that.

Okay I warmed up mighty fast to this record. At first I’m thinking… ah yes, we’ve heard a lot of post punk music recently. And my brain falls into the same template. But then I realize that there are actual songs buried under here. Sweet songs, endearing songs, innocent songs. And the juxtaposition of the heavy guitar noise… never too much, but always poking through, so you’re aware of it. Like a swarm of intrusive thoughts. I had to get over the mixing (it’s not great), and try to focus. But, buried deep in that haze, there’s something delightful about what’s going on. 4/5.

An imperfect, too long, but like… amazing album. The story is what gets me. It’s so funny, moving, strange, dark comedy. I loved it. And this is a really groundbreaking album. It feels like the confines of rock and roll and being pushed against, cracking at the seams. Can we do full stories now, with instrumental interludes? A whole character arc, a whole life? I’m sold. It’s protean, in some ways, and at some moments still massively moving. 5/5

Okay, this album is good. Very very good. Billy Joel is usually too schmaltzy for my taste. But like, come on! Movin’ out is undeniable! Phil Ramone is very good at his craft! I wanna get into him more. This just feels very specifically New York, Philly, jazzy, theatrical. I like it. It’s not Paul simon for me. I think the comparison is unflattering. The lyrics aren’t often to my taste, but like… this is a story. There’s a throughline. That’s what I want in my albums. And this one is undeniably a story of a lot of America from a time long ago, one that seems almost extinct except for when you turn on the radio. It’s not my favorite listen of the era by any means, but it definitely belongs there. 4/5

I don’t know why I never listened to this album. It somehow totally passed me by. I listened to some later Sigur Ros albums, but I never felt like I was in the mood for what I *thought* this album would be. I thought it would be mostly ambient, sleepy, uninteresting, long, drawn out. There are times for this, but I never found myself at that particular juncture. Forcing myself to put this on today, I was stunned… it’s way, way more deep and inventive than I thought it would be. There’s some real dynamics in the music… the first few are what Sigur Ros are known for, ambient-leaning post rock music that’s contemplative, slow, dramatic. But there are… other sounds on here! And I loved those other sounds just as much. There are songs that are electric, songs that are really stripped back. Some utterly beautiful horn and string arrangements which I can’t get enough of. And the haunting vocals… so weirdly out of place, but somehow adding contrast. I couldn’t help but think about all of the buzzing, atonal guitars behind all of this music, and how that’s such a good choice for a mainly ambient album. It’s contrast. We’ve heard a bunch of late 80s rock recently, where the noisy, buzzy guitar always threatens to overtake the beautiful music. There’s something of that here, and I think that’s why this isn’t just another ambient-influenced record. It’s genuinely it’s own world, and it pulls you in deep. 4/5

This is early Frank Zappa (maybe… earliest Frank Zappa??), as well as a crew of what will become the revolving cast, and let me just say that, if you don’t know that context— if you aren’t already down with his antics or know what to expect— this has to be a confusing album. I’m the kind of person who regularly recommends Captain Beefheart to my friends, so yes… I’ve become that guy. For a Beefheart fan, and a fan of the weird 60’s and Zappa, this album is positively delightful in how approachable this album is to this blend of weird. It’s parody, it’s experimental, it’s funny, it’s silly… and a little biting or cynical, in a way that only the silliest of satire can let you get away with. “Go Cry on Somebody Else’s Shoulder” is like, peak Zappa. A 60’s doo wop trend, taken to absurdities. They are clearly having a laugh at the expense of the whole genre, but something about the character that Zappa does is disarmingly funny. Piercing. And his comedic timing is unmatched. It makes you think that maybe all of that other music you heard in the 60s was too stodgy, too self-important, too constrained by seriousness. Let me defend the end of the album too. Even the most avant garde stuff is… never stuffy, never pretentious… what a relief! It’s experimental without the whiff of self importance. This kind of stuff is a breath of fresh air for me, who as a former student in a contemporary music department had to suffer through so many recitals of music whose “message” was so self-important or self-serious as to suffocate your impression of it. I’m talking about “It can’t happen here.” Any conscious human American in 1966 knows exactly what this is about. But man. This is pure id. Comedic, funny, disarming? Silly??? About a serious subject?? It makes you wonder how they’re pulling it off. I’m going hard 5. We can’t reserve all the 5’s in the 60’s for the Simons and Garfunkels. 5/5

I laughed when I saw the title. “More Specials.” Our group in particular didn’t love “Specials,” so now we’re treated to “More.” This will be fun. For their first album... I think I gave it a higher rating than it deserved, just because this type of skinhead punk/ska was new to me, and “A Message To You Rudy” is undeniable. A fun record. It doesn't have a lot of the *crunch* of reggae records. Nor the really insane pockets that those players have, the ones that make your whole body bounce. It's more clean. Nothing wrong with this. I mean, this kind of cross-pond ska and reggae was so pervasive when I was younger, I get the reason they're inspired. I certainly didn't mind this record, and the parts about it that are funny, strange, campy are things that I also like. I also like the library records, the really strange and creative ska and dub records of this period that these guys are clearly inspired by. If this came out today, it'd actually be pretty prestigious... this kind of thing is championed by some big producers today. It would also probably lean into its influences more, sonically. They'd get the bass tone dead on, they'd have more pocket to their rhythms. But it's also a little... boring? The music is very full and generic for a listener today, or anyone familiar with ska or reggae, and it kind of just rolls of you. It's not surprising. A lot of more generic instrumental tracks. Also the drop off in energy for the 7-minute "Stereotype" track is real. That track just goes on... forever! I have questions. That's what my two's are for. 2/5

I went down a huge Fiona Apple spiral this morning, thanks to this album. She is AMAZING. I think Never Is A Promise alone, if that was just the album, should win an award. To think that she was, what, 15 when she wrote these songs?? This is about as good a debut album as you can possibly ask for. It's inventive, it's interesting, it's complex, it's got such a mood. It captures a feeling and then challenges it. I'm in love. Coming back to this album, I hear a little bit of Rickie Lee Jones in her delivery now that I didn't hear before. She doesn't hold it back. I mean what more can you ask for from a singer-songwriter. Ask for more from Fiona Apple at your peril, she's already given so much. 5/5

Yup, echoing Caleb’s review. I didn’t love it. I liken what Willie Nelson was trying to do, I just thought the execution was less than great. Very inventive. I would not have expected this from Willie Nelson. I just wish it was done a little better. And yeah, Time Of The Preacher happening 3 times would *potentially* work. But here it doesn’t really. 2/5

The biggest surprise of this whole 1001 albums journey so far is that I like hair metal, I like 80s rock anthem pop. I like this. It scratches an itch for me. I think that Def Leppard is what did it for me... it was so ridiculous, so over the top, so cheesy that it had this kind of flip for me, where I started just having fun with what I was hearing. This album is PARTLY that. The first few songs are addicting. Sticky. "Jump" feels like we're in a whole new world, it feels like the synth is finally here to stay. It's triumphant. "Panama" too. It's a great sound they've got going. I was so ready to give this album a 4, but then... the back half was kind of boring. Kind of what everyone assumes these guys do when they get in a room and jam. Less meticulous, fewer really compelling compositions. So close to hitting the mark for me. Could have been a moment for a tone shift! But even at 35 minutes it got a little old by the last 15. Had a good time regardless. 3/5

"But who really cares? Who's willing to try... to save our sweet world?" Shadows and light. Chiaroscuro, in painting. The bitter and the sweet, in chocolate. It's the stuff of melancholy, of regret, worry, dark times ahead. Marvin Gaye's human pleas, genuine and earnest... to save the babies, up against a symphony that's filmic, romantic, in an almost 1001 Strings kind of way. An orchestral setting that Berry Gordy thought was too old, outdated, the kids will never dig, etc. etc. But it's the perfect backdrop– nostalgia– that gives us context for Marvin's anguish about the future. It's also personal. It's an album about his brother's letters to him from Vietnam... the anti-war protests that Obie Benson saw firsthand which lead him to write "What's Going On?"... his own dark struggles with his family, addiction. A changing planet. And somehow Marvin is perfectly positioned to help us understand. He doesn't preach, he doesn't condescend. He brings you into his inner world, and doesn't count you out. And it's a Motown album? Impossible. I can't imagine the whiplash from the American public when this came out. Motown? Song cycles? Dark subject matter? *That* Marvin Gaye? An album for a coming storm... and one to put together the pieces from a few very real personal storms in the 1960s. An amazing album. The soundtrack to so many people's lives, their own anxieties and dark places and chances for redemption. Music for a sweet world. 5/5

Man, I super wish I liked this album, but I did not. I feel left out. There's clearly a joke here I'm not getting. Or rather... I might be getting the joke, but the poor execution is keeping me back from enjoying this album in any way other than to say "fine, I get it." Put another way: there are other albums that do this kind of thing. But they do it better. Tom Waits comes to mind... someone who captures that misanthropic, guttural, antagonistic character. Comedic, yet deadly serious. The cartoon villain is the facade, he draws you in. Slowly, you understand his inner logic. In that way, this version of Leonard Cohen and Tom Waits' characters share more than a little family resemblance. But unlike any Tom Waits album– whose music is equally compelling– this album falls almost totally flat musically. It feels like either a) the production was put together in a lazy, half-assed way, or b) the production was put together in a lazy, half-assed way, AND Leonard Cohen intended it to sound lazy and half-assed. Either way: that's what I mean when I say I don't get it. I'm not going to lie that I loved "First We Take Manhattan" in a deadpan, ridiculous, laugh out loud kind of way. Same with "Everybody Knows." But the songs overstay their welcome, and the production gets lazier and more karaoke-like. There are some seriously bad, bad background singers. It just doesn't work. It would only work if I had no ear whatsoever for music, and only cared about lyrics. Even then! Great concept, just poorly (or lazily ? ?) executed. 2/5

I just like this! I can’t explain why. I love the Cuban rhythms. I love the conga. I love the “liveness” of this. I have nothing special to say. The rhythms really are my thing. I’ve always wanted to learn the congas, and this might be the thing that gets me off the couch and down to the local music store. The intense LCR stereo is INTENSE, but nothing you can't solve with a little distance from the speakers. 3/5

As a musician, it’s hard not to have exposure to Björk and not be forever changed. What strikes me is her uncompromising vision for the album. Sonically, texturally, lyrically. Björk is not one to retreat into the weirdness, the safety blanket of “cool” that the avant garde sometimes affords its participants. She is loud, brash. Fully committed, fully 100%. Listen to “Play Dead” if you doubt this. The best end credits track on any album I’ve ever heard, full stop. Symphonic, serious, intense. The weight of the whole album comes to bear on that one moment. It’s so impressive. Another artist who may be known for one thing, whose depth and complexity only reveals further on closer inspection. Björk is the very model of an artist. And not the sly, slinking, self-effacing, apologetic genius. The bold and the brash. The one to deliver a wakeup call to music. I’m entranced. She has so much tension in her music, so much unresolved emotion. I feel stressed listening! It’s compelling. Symphonic. 5/5, life changed

Classic summer album. Listening in March makes me even feel like the summer is a little closer, the sun is just a little sunnier. A little repetitive, but honestly… would it be such a classic “put on in the background and enjoy your one sunny day” record if it wasn’t? I have nothing insightful to say! This album just feels good. 4/5 I know I’m 20 years late to this battle, but… Spotify, record labels, stop with this “Deluxe Album” insanity. A poor, hapless listener might happen upon “Moondance Deluxe” by mistake and be treated to 4 hours of scratch takes and demos. Nobody needs to hear take 9 of Glad Tidings.

“Rednecks” is just stunning. I think I had heard this first from one of the Malcolm Gladwell podcasts about songwriters, and that's what hooked me. Such a tightrope walk he walks. That's the heart of all these Randy Newman records: dissonance. So feel-good, and yet so repulsive, but so warm, but so comically wrong, delivered straight and earnest. And he never breaks character. It's really only something I think he can do. Him and few others. Find the pathos and sympathy in unlikeable, racist anti-heroes, and then turn around and skewer them at the same time. How does he do it? We don't know. And “Marie” gets me every time. Reminds me of “Coney Island Baby,” Tom Waits. Bittersweet. I love my anti-hero songwriters more and more with every passing day. A lot of bittersweet this week! The string arrangements really give it that extra nudge for me. Randy Newman's range might be a little limited, but he nails the hell out of whatever it is he's doing. 4/5

I think I liked their more experimental instrumental back end versus their beginning. At least that was more dynamic and less constant loud Some exceptions. I liked "If Only." That hit me in the right way I found a lot of the beginning / middle boring. Not turn off completely, just not fully onboard. Max told me that their later albums are much better and more popular— I think I’ll have to check those out after. 2/5

This album took a full week to hit me. It’s so, so sad. You can just feel the grief and wonder and anguish in every song, but in particular songs it hits this crescendo, where you know he’s talking about his son. It’s like real grief: on waves between sorrow and anguish and peace and feeling. It took me a while but I started to feel really, really moved by this. I mean, the crescendo track, “Ghosteen,” it got me to cry, I actually rode with it. This album is not for everyone, nor is it for everytime, but you have to just marvel at its sheer intensity, it’s operatic quality, the storytelling that Nick Cave has perfected and is really special at a moment like this. Are there things I would change? Yes, it’s overly long, hard to grasp, the instrumentation is a little too saccharine, too dirge-like for too long. But tell me you’re not grabbed by Nick Cave’s performance, his lyrics. And yes I had to read the lyrics to really, really get it there. I’m so bad of a lyrics person, even Nick Cave needed some translation for my brain. But yeah... I mean, god damn. Probably only listening to this again in the most tender of moments, but you have to respect it. 5/5, if this was staged I would watch the hell out of it and probably weep.

Instant 5!!! This is the album that got me into metal. I finally got what everyone was talking about. It's so pleasing, it's so hilarious, it's so over the top, it's amazing. Fun metal. Fun like a haunted house pinball machine. Crazy that it was made by such a troubled person. It’s really creative. People talk endlessly about the guitar solos but it’s really the songwriting and arrangements that feel inventive to me. 5 stars because if rocked my world when I first listened to it last year. 5/5

I thought it was great! But the front half is much better than the back. It’s good for a few great songs. It fun, creative, just loud and rough and got a lot of energy. I dug it! Though yeah, not enough to give it a 4. I still had a great time; though. 3/5

Well I mean, I didn't hate it, but it's just not something I love. I'm not against anything in this album, there's nothing lazy or unoriginal or lacking in spirit. I just think I might be alive at the wrong time to enjoy this album, because it just rolls off me like nothing happened. Lots of heavy guitars tend to do that to me, and this album has a texture whose sameness I can't really appreciate. Just don't think it's for me! Nothing wrong with it, though. I’m open to several more listens. 2/5

I liked this! It was raw. This kind of thing I’m really warming up to. Something about it felt like it got this kind of thing right. Like Bloodsucker, which is pretty choreographed, well rehearsed. Just felt more like a complete experience, vs other albums like this we’ve heard. I dunno! All the early, proto-metal, rock albums are kind of blurring together for me. But this one felt tighter than others. Also I looked up some music videos of Deep Purple and loved what I saw. 3/5

Live albums are basically un-reviewable. In the past I've given them either 1 star or 5 stars, based on what side of the bed I woke up that morning. There are some exceptions. There are songs that are only truly captured live. Things that represent a significant moment in time. But, for the vast number of live albums, they are red meat for fans. They're enjoyable only with the significant context of the band's other music, and this makes them a categorically different listening experience than studio albums of fresh music. Context is half of everything in music, and the context required to enjoy a live album is missing. "Oh, you should listen to their other albums first." Exactly. And to make it worse... this is my first Metallica album I've ever heard! Not a good start for a band that– my loss– I've ignored. This one IS different. It's a genuinely ballsy attempt at mashing Metallica with an orchestra. Sometimes, that's amazing! It's a category I actually love. But the missing context is tying me in knots for this one. Therefore, I must regress to a rough point system: Starting at a neutral 3: -1 points for being over 2 hours long +1 points for sheer enormity of the balls required to do this +1 points for the orchestra being really pro and sometimes really enjoyable to listen to -1 points for many of the arrangements sounding like Super Bowl intro music. (but... what else could they have done?) -1 points for Robert Dimery thinking this was significant enough to put on the list So... 2/5? That's satisfactory. An ultimately confusing listen.

Great. Great, all the way through. An album that took me by surprise. I was taken in by the songwriting. I think someone on the reviews said that it was a lot of elements that shouldn’t necessarily work together, but they all work here. I just really liked it. Fun fact: Mark Oliver Everett, the songwriter behind this project, is the son of Hugh Everett, creator of the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum theory. And Mark made this amazing documentary about his relationship with his father (a very cold and absent one in his childhood), and re-discovering his dad, years after he died, by retracing his life and scientific work. It’s a really moving documentary! I’d recommend. That context really gave me a lot, going into this album. 4/5

First Jimi Hendrix album! You can’t knock this! So good! Inventive, magical. 4/5

Okay, very interesting album. You can only find it on YouTube, and the band’s works itself seems hard to find. I don’t see why it should be— the album is really good. I loved the singer’s performance in the album… so fun, and unthinking, and pretty unique. Some combination of what feels like psychadelic, maybe folk chord ideas, and alt punk. I mean it was super cool! After the second half my ear started to get a little tired of the tonality of it… it does feel a little long. But I had a good time, 3/5

It was fun, it was funky, it was creative, the production I found very playful and silly and cool FX, and yet I barely enjoyed myself at all, and that might just be my personal taste the music. Yeah, overall, it was way more interesting and fun and inventive than I thought it would be, but I wasn't super crazy about it!

I blame this album for being the reason I got behind on reviews in the first place (I think I’m caught up on listening to the albums, just owe some reviews)! Here’s the pattern: I get to an album, one highly regarded with a huge cult following, people gushing about its influence or breakthroughness. And I think it’s fine. This album is fine. I listened to it about 5 different times and I think it captures the spirit of the show, I just found that I slowly lose focus and it creeps into the background and I am not very interested in what I’m hearing. I hear no major standouts, and before you know it I’m back at the beginning having wondered where the last 30 minutes went. So I just haven’t found anything to grab onto yet. And that’s just how it’s gonna be. 2/5

Wow I love this! It’s so fun, and off-kilter, in a head-not-screwed-on-tight kind of way. And so sticky. If I remember, this is an album where a garage, raw, imperfect band worked with a producer to get 10% more perfect, and I think they nailed the balance here. Nothing is ever too tacked down or “nice,” which suits the bad and the songs really well. And I love the lead singer… he brings the level of intensity that’s hard to look away from. Reminds me of another alternative album from last week— the lead singer can make or break a project like this. “Here comes your man” is so good, and so sticky. They are good at their craft! A lot of Beatles structures or progressions, but done their way. Overall, great fun, and I’ll definitely return to this album. 4/5

Nothing about this album is really connecting for me. It has “Our House!” Which is better than we all remember. Theres plenty of inventiveness in the arrangements, in some of the chords. A little off-kilter! I like some of the stranger stuff with the sitar record, the very strange rhythms.

I’m not gonna lie, Charlie’s strongly worded review made me pause here and reconsider! But my first reaction was wow, this is WAY better than I remember it being! I enjoyed myself a lot on the hits. Cyndi Lauper is just wild and really committed, kind of raw? On the hits. And the production is just awesome on the big ones… girls just wanna have fun?? No wonder that blew up. Time after time?? Just has a hook-ness to it. But Charlie’s right. There is some just plain generic to the back half. Still, I was impressed. And I liked this more than Madonna by a LOT. A lot a lot. Those first few tracks, that’s the 80’s female pop I want to remember, and I could honestly leave a lot of the rest. 3/5

This is amazing! Just scratches the right itch for me. I love the sound, the synth playing is unreal, and they somehow took Summer Breeze and matched it, and went even further. Huge fan! 4/5

This is extremely solid. A gentle, easy, yet comprehensive introduction to the sitar by Ravi Shankar, who knows his audience well. His stance of humility and grace comes through in the early recordings. And then you hear him play… wow! It changed my mind on the sitar, and showed me there was more than meets the eye. I just love records like that. Reminds me of the classic record that Pete Seeger did on how to play folk guitar— the one that Joni Mitchell picked up when she first started playing. This record must have changed many hearts and minds, and I’m happy it exists. And incredible playing! 4/5

I had slightly less fun with this Def Leppard album than the last Def Leppard album we got. Something about this one felt 40% more cheesy, and 40% more “normal?” than the other one. There were some classics though. “Photograph” is amazing, and that’s the kind of thing I want all their songs to me. “Too Late for Love” is so hilariously cheesy in the beginning with “somewhere in the distance….” intro. And yet. I love it! There’s just less of that in this album. For my money I’d listen to their next album more, but the energy is there, the fun is there, I just know what they’re capable of. 3/5.

This is a really solid Band album. It’s a great listen all the way through, but To Kingdom Come is a favorite of mine. There’s something about those young, pathos-filled, pleading vocals on “Tears of Rage…” they get me! That’s what I get from The Band a lot… it feels genuine. The feeling of being young, upset at the world and wondering why it has to be this way. I know so little about their history as a band, or what gets them to this album. But I always get that sweet, sad feeling listening to them. Good album for many occasions, I think it has more than meets the eye. 4/5

A pleasant surprise of an album! I liked it. It got a little repetitive toward the second half, but I found the blend of genres really surprising in how well they worked. A lot of these records I feel like I've heard before and don't remember where from. Just really liked it overall, 3/5

Impossible album. Really difficult to get my head around. It's long, so -1 star for its absurdity. It's monotonous. It feels like one long dream sequence, almost trancelike. I LOVED some of the songs, they were so precious, and for a few minutes there I felt like I really got what they were going for. But it's just way too gratuitous for me to want to return that much, 2/5

I have to give this a 5, because it was life-changing. It’s an album which the spirit of it, the underlying story, and the experience of listening to it is more impactful than any one song, other than the two which carry the album, “Astral Weeks” and “Madame George.” Yes, much is repetitive, much is jammed out, a bit same-y, the box of melodies that Van Morrison draws from is a bit limited. The album feels rough around the edges. But it’s more about the album’s free, conscious-less, yet urgent feeling.It's like the ultimate "id" album. It feels like pure gut, pure expression of something beyond the artist. The jazz/folk palette is just the setting, the context with which the album unfolds. What really astounds me about this album, after reading some history about it, is how little personal chemistry there was between the musicians and the artist, and how workaday the recording sessions sound for the session players. They took a couple days, walked in to Van Morrison's world, and came out with a masterpiece, all with such little report, little interaction between them. Just instincts, jamming, and improvisation. No talking, just music. Van Morrison thought the sessions were okay, the musicians were mildly pissed off. But they made some of the most emotional and free-wheeling pieces of music from this period, because the elements were in just the right place for it to happen. That's why this album is so amazing... it's a prototype. Many musicians say they're eternally indebted to this album, and I can understand why. It asks you to walk through the door to this other way of making music, that's much more about the raw, the outbursts of emotion, the jam, the stuff that's rough around the edges. Accessing the spiritual, in the ordinary act of playing together. And that's why I love this album so much. 5/5

What to say about this album? Meh? My first contact with it has been confusings. The musicianship is top notch, and the recording quality is extremely high. I like 90s, beastie boys type rap. I like funk. I like Rage Against the Machine. I like Dispatch when they were going more Rage Against The Machine. I like Rick Rubin... I think I do? I get this "eeehhhhh" taste in my mouth after listening to it for too long. Maybe they spend too much time on a single idea, and it gets boring to my ear? My negative feelings, I can't explain it! I'm all turned around! I want to feel the feelings of this album! But then I got to "Suck My Kiss" and I feel repulsed. Maybe it's the jammy, blues structures. Maybe it's the same-ness. You might have to just give me more time to form an opinion on this one. I can't keep up! I'm having a nervous breakdown! 2/5

What a treat! A timeless album, with so much to love, so much to dig into. Some classic Stevie moments… that unending positivity faces off social issues, hardship, family. Higher Ground is such an insanely good sound. Whoever is on those keyboard parts is LOCKED. I think I come back to this album as often as Songs in the Key of Life— it’s a little more digestible, the hits are there, the insane musicality is there, you’ve got Golden Lady, Living for the City— insane post section. Stevie seems to have no limits on these records. It’s a better world that we have this record. 5/5

this is pretty hilarious, and got more hilarious the more I listened to it. It's campy, fun, and is a nice counterpoint to the 90's conscious rap we've been getting a lot of. I like that they're just trying to have a good time but also give it some campy backstory. Love my hip hop that's like this. 3/5

I liked Dolphins. Nothing else caught my ear, sadly. That said, I'm going to listen 5 more times, probably so I can discover that Charlie was right and it's a keeper. 2/5

Caught me from the beginning. Immediately, really really good. I’m basically an instant fan. Beat poetry over the noisy, grinding guitars, I mean this is amazing. I loved how dynamic the songs were… there’s a cinematic quality to all of their music. Never too insistent on one mood— always challenging, shape-shifting. I had a great time, and I want to listen more to their work. Immediate fan! 5/5

Kind of a wild affair, even for David Bowie. I listened to this back to back a half dozen times over the weekend. It's impressive that he's still got a strong connection to lyric, this late in his career. I appreciate how improvised and experimental some of these records feel. And I love late career albums, that's something I've discovered from this list. Does it put it over the line for me? This might actually be one of my more favorite Bowie records we've heard on this list, other than the hits. I think it's a very special record, and I'm glad we got it. I'm gonna go with "Good Time Was Had," and I'll be returning. 3/5

I will never like this album as much as seemingly everyone my age does. And that's okay. I never have understood why I don't seem to like Frank Ocean as much as everyone else. I mean... talk about iconic stuff. Hits packed with hits. Every song on this album is a soundtrack song for nearly everyone in my life, especially around college. And I appreciate the "album"-ness of it. It feels cohesive, directed, Frank's singing is iconic. Beyond that... yeah? I just don't find myself coming back to it. Nothing against the record at all, it's just not something I connect with. And it's not over-the-line enough for me to be stunned, track to track, like a good kid m.A.A.d city, which came out right around the same time and for whatever reason I unfairly compare against. Were my standards way too high for this era? I lived through it. This was a special time for music, and everywhere you looked there was a brilliant concept. At least, that's how it felt. This one feels like we're getting a taste of that, but it's maybe too sleepy for me. I dunno. Maybe I'm just standing outside the coronation, feeling a little disoriented or sour for no good reason. Still, great. 4/5

This album is SO funny. It's so out there!! And it's a Nick Cave early glimpse. WOW. So over-the-top unpleasant to listen to. Just an album full of turn-offs. Great execution on a disgusting idea, 3/5

This feels good, this might be one of my favorite Neil Young albums I've heard other than Harvest! Definitely less hit potential than Harvest, but it's really solid all the way through, and the band just adds an extra flavor to it. I would absolutely put this on while doing other things. Neil Young never ceases to get me just a little more bittersweet-feeling than I did before. 3/5

I feel slightly less than neutral about this album. I have been waffling between 2 and 3, but I have to shoot just short for this one. The playing is exceptional, and some of the arrangements are really fun– I especially like the horns! And this is not the sound that I expect from Chicago– I don't know what I expected, to be honest. Much more versatility. To me, though, it just feels like Normal Music. As in, it's nothing astounding or notable, other than the really great playing, and maybe the feeling I get around it? It just feels like I'm hearing a band having a good time, at an outdoor blues festival. So I feel overall "meh" about it, even though the recording and playing are superb. Just didn't speak to me. 2/5

I feel set up. I have been primed in about 2 dozen ways to like this album. First it was Def Leppard. Then Megadeth. Then, hearing this album, I realize that one of Dispatch's lead singers, Brad Corrigan– a band that was my North Star when I was younger– must be majorly inspired by the tight, pointy harmonies from Alice In Chains! The resemblance is striking. So I've had Alice In Chains harmonies in my head for years without even knowing. So even though metal/grunge is new to me, part of this album feels like a homecoming, to a harmony land I know very well and that influenced me in a lot of ways. From Alice In Chains! I missed this in high school. I wasn't ready. So I have to go 5 again, dammit! It's catchy, great songs, nothing I know quite sounds like this blend, did I mention I love harmonies, it's clearly MEGA influential, they are giving it their all. If you aren't primed as much as me, I get it. But this was the link for me. I'm trying to think, what's the better version of this album? Not much. Maybe could be 10 minutes shorter. Ah fuck it, 5/5

Not only did Charlie’s review say everything I had been thinking already— fully in agreement— it’s also masterfully written, and got me thinking about how covert political or radical music can sneak into songs that seem unserious or campy. Wild that I actually liked this a lot. I’m almost more impressed with an album like this, where it’s so easy to be off the mark and be bad, but manages not to be. 4/5, surprise hit for me.

Oh man, really really really good. Sterolab is hitting on this really specific set of sounds, in concert. If there’s one thing that will reliably get me going, it’s the mixing of influences like this… their music feels like a melting pot. Experimental but charming, and the lead vocals are really the glue. I had an amazing time listening. 4/5

If the stated goal of 1001 Albums is to inject you with a broad scope of great music from the last 70 years, the unstated (implied) goal has always seemed to be getting you turned onto Bowie. He has by far the most number of albums on the list— 9 albums as a solo artist— and, for our group, the first album we ever got was Hunky Dory, which set us off to a very Bowie start. That album is a great opener to Bowie because, more conventional it may be, you get the sense that something much more interesting is brewing under the surface with him. We’re 220 albums in and— by my count— 6 Bowie albums have showed up. Nothing has grabbed me by the throat as much as the end of Ziggy Stardust, an album where you feel like the whole of the world is resting on Bowie’s tortured shoulders. But for such a high height, that’s a hard ladder to climb twice. Some of the albums have been fine. The Philly Soul one— can’t even remember its name— was notable for the Lennon collab, but you get a sense that the more he retreats into mania and drug addiction, so, too, do his albums, into question marks and dead ends that start to feel unapproachably vague. Aladdin Sane is a mix of this. The unbelievably good “Time” is on here, which is as raw and pained and theatrical as any on Ziggy Stardust. Panic in Detroit is amazing, a song whose lyrics just add to the frenzy and confusion and surrealism of the whole album. With Bowie, other than Ziggy Stardust, I'm always left a little wanting. I never feel like he sticks the landing in his albums. I don’t know what makes me feel this, but they seem like ambitious projects that nonetheless feel incomplete, or with some songs that feel half-baked, like he had the musicians or engineers take over the track. It’s for some reason more unapproachable to me than any art rock of this period, and I’m always left wondering why that is. He’s no doubt an incredible songwriter, in his own way. You’re not gonna get McCartney songs. You’re going to feel a tiny bit anxious, disorientated, windswept after hearing Bowie. I love the manic, tragic fun of this album. Sometimes I feel like he’s doing that Stones sound better than they do. And the playing is incredible. This is still an essential perspective on the “feel” of the art and rock worlds of the 70’s. That feeling that everything, Bowie included, is about to totally fall apart. I rate this a 4. My gut just can’t give it a 5, even though I’m probably on at least 10 listens at this point, and I delayed this review for 3 months to see if I missed anything. Some bright, incredible moments, but not as “complete” feeling as his previous album.

I agree with Charlie completely on this— a surprise album that has lots of family resemblance to a writing style that quickly got canonized in Father John Misty, Jonathan Coulton, etc— and one which I still can see writers today using liberally— this deadpan, literal, referential style which never leaves character. Feels like it’s 50% of the way to being a Lonely Island song, but it stops short of cracking a smile. I’m lukewarm to that kind of thing generally, but this writing feels less abrasive and more truly depressed than those other examples. And it’s just pleasant to listen to. I’m happy I got introduced to this, absolutely. I remember Midlake! They did a serviceable job, nothing exceptional. I’m glad this exists, 3/5

This is a cool album. I like listening to this infinitely more than their second album with Search and Destroy on it, because with that one the mix makes it unlistenable. This has a lot of the proto-punk harshness of that one, mixed with the always confounding, earnest and boyish delivery of Iggy Pop, which still sounds captivating. It's like, what combination of brain cells caused The Stooges to exist? I'm still wondering. I listened to this a ton a few months back without penning a review, and now I'm here to say that I really enjoy it. 4/5

I need to review these albums after I listen to them, my review backlog is long. This album really surprised me! You think you know an album. Along with everyone on the planet, I was assaulted by these songs against my will for about 5 straight years, and anything you are forced to do leaves, at best, an unpleasant taste. The radio’s superpower— to make a song heard by everyone on the planet— is also, when used too much, what causes weariness, exhaustion. If I have heard these songs 100 times each so far, the entire planet has probably heard them by now. And nothing is good enough to warrant that kind of campaign. And yet… I hadn’t really “heard” these songs! To listen with both your ears, you’re just taken by both the craft of songwriting on display here, and the power and irresistibility of Adele’s voice. And it is so perfectly imperfect, and it’s beguiling… some of these lead vocals sound like she did them in one take! There’s no tune in sight, some of the background vocals are crazy out of tune. But in a really amazing way! Yeah, this album gave me hope. The heavy soul influences (I’m surprised Mark Ronson didn’t take a stab at this project, because every other super producer at the time seemed to), the really played out piano and guitar tracks. The production felt natural, unforced, not too over-the-top. Really a nice blend. I was thinking, imagine all the pop songwriters and producers of today instead try to make music inspired by soul, delta blues, country… imagine they broaden their influences in what they do, make things less bland. That imaginary album in my head is basically this album. It’s really NOT that bland, that soulless, that imitative, as a pop product… it’s pretty undeniable no matter how they got there. So this is a heavy surprise 4. I was nearing 5 territory, honestly! But the unsettling sickness I feel from some of these songs, and every mundane memory I’ve had from the last 10 years being infiltrated by them, cannot totally remove my bias. 4/5

Oh man this album. So good. It feels like both a quintessential Common, record, AND a quintessential Kanye-produced record. Kanye’s still, in this period and beyond perhaps, as inventive as a producer, maybe far more, than he ever has been as a lyricist— it’s his signature, it’s hard to argue with. This is straight from one of his highlight periods. I played this album a ton of times in college, I’ll never get tired of listening to it. Not a ground-breaking, life-changing work, but a fantastic example of the good in hip hop. 4/5

I'm pretty much exactly with Charlie on this one. Discovered a whole new singer who I had never heard of and fell for her voice hard, she just has this incredible emotional range in her voice. But the background is pretty straight and feels uninspired. Could have been way, way more interesting. But as a vehicle to carry her brand of heartbreak, I think it's great. 3/5

This is a great album! A strong listen. I liked our last, earlier (?) CCR album a little better, and I’m now warm to their thing and I want more. I will dutifully put this on for every subsequent time I grill things. 4/5

This is pretty good! Dre makes this album really over the top for me. I love how irreverent it is, I love hearing snoop actually take the music thing kind of seriously. It is fun to be around. 3/5

Good album! A bit overwhelming. Wow that first song is a hit. I think I would have loved this kind of progressive stuff, if I was younger when it first came out. It’s a bit hard to get your bearings, as it’s developing, changing so often. But yeah, it’s like ear candy… almost irresistible. I had fun! 3/5

I'm supposed to say this is overrated, no I think it's great! I think it's about 5000% cheesier than I remember it being when I was 20, haha. The drums do not hold up at all. They feel very very silly. The production and the general through-composed, interlude-heavy tracks, especially in the front half, are really like catnip for me. It's some aspect of what shaped me musically. Honestly people say this is pretentious but I like when pop artists are this ambitious and are trying something real. The lyrics are super weak in sections, haha. But this is really really good in sections, and it's not all formula. 4/5 I appreciate the ambition

Miles, let’s go! I’m not nearly literate enough in Jazz to know what it is I’m hearing here, but to me it sounds free-wheeling, really tight horn parts, an extremely accomplished band that’s clearly played a lot together. This is not Kind of Blue, which I now grok, and it’s not Sketches of Spain, which is an unqualified masterpiece and a sleeper hit for me personally. I’m definitely gonna put this on more and see if I can get deeper into it. Good album, great morning listen, 3/5

This was really good. I had it on over the weekend pretty constantly. A fascinating proto-electronic project, gushing with interesting sounds, samples, all small adventures. Nothing is too ambitious, or too flashy… honestly I was expecting far more intimidating music. I was pleasantly surprised how understandable and listenable this thing was. Great for putting on behind your day. 4/5

I don't think I came across this at the right age to really appreciate this. The Beastie Boys impress me with their ambition but they also annoy me. A lot of amazing grooves, just too hard to grab onto anything. 2/5

I feel like this is mostly a “meh” album. I liked Deep Purple when we first encountered them! This is a good representation of them, but it just doesn’t pack the punch of their studio albums from around that time, and they’re not to be blamed for that, the experience of a live show is just so different from studio that they don’t often translate. The songs felt monotonous somewhat in this format, which is odd, because on their studio albums I felt like they were a far more dynamic band. 2/5. Didn’t hate it, but didn’t really feel memorable to me.

It was fun! I have nothing special to say other than I enjoyed my time on planet earth while listening. 3/5

Ah Nick Cave, always down for a good time that Nick. He really knows how to pal around. Stagger Lee won me over. Then Henry Lee I started to get. Is this like, that Leonard Cohen album we had, just better executed? This is the first Nick Cave album where it intersects between “interesting concept” and “listenable” for me. I definitely don’t want to live in Nick Cave’s universe. That sounds like a miserable place to be. But I enjoyed this record a lot more than I thought I would going in. 4/5

I loved this so much. Wow, why did I miss this when it came out. It’s so unique. I’ve never really heard anything like it. I remember hearing FKA twigs’s second EP, maybe? This is a whole world unto its own. Oozing creativity. I was just waiting to find out what she was going to do next. I loved the choral influences. I’m sad that I never heard this when it came out, but in hindsight maybe I just wasn’t ready. 5/5, blew my mind

Such a great record to put on, well, anytime! The musicianship is stellar. I feel like this is a proper entry to blues, it feels a little easier to take in, the musicians are top notch, mixed well. Classic

I'm coming back around to some albums that I must have listened to a dozen times but never reviewed. This is a particularly difficult one. I love Sticky Fingers, but the Stones generally don't land for me because, at this point, it's shorn of all the things I love... melody, song, things about the recording or production that make you go wow. There is no wow. None of it grabs at me immediately. So I stashed this album away as yet another, overlong, double-album fest for something that really didn't catch me. But then something happened. I came back to it again after a month and... all of the ways it had felt too smooth for me, too flat or uninteresting, were giving way to this feeling of attachment. I just like rock and roll, and I like that this feels like a loving, confident send-up of it. It feels like you're listening through the studio door to this long-drawn out party. It feels really alive. Maybe rock at its most alive I've ever heard. Nothing about this is programmed, it's messy, it's kind of bad even at parts! But that's what you get when you hang with these guys. So now, thinking of it like an experience, a send-up to a big old party and worship at the feet of blues and soul and rock... I actually get it. It's really bright. Not perfect, but I'm coming on over. I'm getting converted. 4/5

On paper, an album by The Beach Boys without the involvement of its central, tragic character, Brian Wilson— and right off the heels of the collapse of their ambitious Smille— seems like it must be doomed to fail. That’s certainly the way you might tell the story, if you didn’t know better. Brian’s barely present on this album, contributing a few, brilliant songs other than his half-completed Surf’s Up— and, reportedly, he was all but completely missing for the production. And yet this album does a marvelous job of capturing not only the spirit of The Beach Boys as they were evolving, but also the songwriting voices of the other members, encouraging them to go further, stretch the concepts, try new things. This obviously doesn’t work well on “Student Demonstration Time”— no explanation needed— but I’ve always felt that “Feel Flows” and “Don’t Go Near The Water” are right up there with some of the weirder, stranger, more introspective Beach Boys songs from Pet Sounds etc. And “Surf’s Up” is probably up there for the best 4 minutes that the 60s ever produced, and the way the song was concluded, understood on this album, is an amazing rendition of it. No, it’s not Smile, but then again, nothing ever was. 4/5

We are spoiled with riches with Kendrick albums, and this one’s only sin is that it’s not my *favorite* Kendrick album, that it’s eclipsed by the artist that he would eventually become. Still, you see absolutely everything in this album that will stay with Kendrick… his eye for drama, his sly way of turning what sounds like a sleeper song into something that never leaves your head, his lyricism, his insistence, the mood. All there. And some of the most influential records of the 2010s! No way this isn’t 5. We are too spoiled when it comes to Kendrick. 5/5

some of the 1-star reviews for this album are obviously unfair. The more I hear these 90's electronic artists– the Aphex Twins, the Orbitals– I realize that some of the genre-bending artists from the early 2010s which I love owe more than a little bit of their adventurous sprit to some of these artists. Some really interesting attempts and sounds here, and it doesn't sound hashed to death or so formulaic as to be uninteresting. And I am always tapping my foot to these. They have the pocket. Overall, not mind-bending, but really explorative and much more original than I had thought it would be. 3/5

Good album, short, sweet, I like the songwriting, nothing really grabbed me, 3/5

pretty cool album. Walk On By is so epic, it's that sound that's escaped out from its 2-minute, tight pop constraints in to this loud experience, this really high octane jam. By The Time I get to Phoenix doesn't grab me in the same way, maybe because the burn is so slow, but I like what he's doing here. As an album, it's a little confusing, but I get why this was mega influential. 3/5

This is pretty sick. I can see why this was so influential in the hardcore scene. A really cohesive sound that just works. Super raw but also understandable, even for someone who doesn't listen to much hardcore. Not an everyday listen for me, but it was fun and I would definitely see them live. 3/5

This was great, I really enjoyed. The songwriting really surprised me! 4/5

This is funny, I think Rust In Peace has spoiled me for this album, because while it’s really impressive technically it’s just a bit more boring for my ear, less hard and totally insane than that one. I mean, not every album needs to be Rust In Peace, but it definitely feels like a slightly more generic, more proto-metal album? Just a tiny bit more hairy and Van Halen -y than I was expecting. Still, good time. Can I just go for an aside here and say how funny I think metal is? It’s so funny. Like when they’re about to intro an insane riff and Dave grunts into the mic, “killing is my business… and business is GOOD!” It’s so funny! My brain lights up in all the same ways, like this is dark but also extremely hilarious. What a good combo, 3/5

Insta 5 and a great weekender! I loved listening. It’s amazing how deep in my brain some of these solos are. They’re omnipresent, they’re canonical. I listened to this album a ton in college and we had a bunch of practice analyzing some of the solos. Truly one of a kind. 5/5

Starts out so insanely strong, gets less interesting, but then comes back to being interesting again. It’s just such a great, great recording and representation of these musicians, which is what I think makes it endear. 3/5

I’ve listened to this twice, waiting for something to grab me. Nothing ever did! A shame. I usually like big concept albums. Even the orchestration felt kind of flat to me, and I’m usually an absolute sucker for that kind of stuff. Charlie put me over the edge! It’s true! I thought this was gonna be cool and was bummed out. 1/5

Wow, totally in agreement with Charlie on this one! A great find. Van Morrison is in top form for this album which is RARE, as so much of his discography seems like a mixed bag, never quite reaching the heights of what you know he’s capable of. Here it’s him in top form, and his band is INSANELY tight! It just works! He’s got that one note he loves to wail on over and over, but when he does, I’m like yeah, that’s why I like Van Morrison. Should have known that he would be terrific live, as Astral Weeks sounds like it was essentially a lot of pseudo-live compositions. I’m a big fan of this sound. I will definitely keep it around. 5/5

Very good approachable actually musical and interesting industrial music with AWFUL lyrics that were repulsive to me. I guess that's the point? Thanks for making me disgusted, teenage Steve Albini. Wish I hadn't looked up the lyrics. 2/5

I was captivated by this album from the first minute. Completely sold. It is literally the birth of a genre, but that beginning… absolutely sounds timeless, and there is nothing like it! It still sounds so out there and not generic to me, one of a kind! I love this kind of stuff. It still sounds progressive, perhaps from another planet. The bluesy stuff toward the middle was also interesting to hear, how that develops out. It’s also so well-recorded for supposedly being a live album, essentially. 5/5 will absolutely get on vinyl.

so good! An instant connection with this one. I had never heard of this Thelonius Monk album, though I’ve played out others. This one was just a great listen during my morning. 4/5

No. But yes! But, no. 1/5

Feels like a quintessentially 4/5 album to me. An iconic showcase of McCartney at his most indulgent, most artistically free and fun, you can just tell when he bangs out those high notes that he's having a blast! Some undeniably good sounds, and an attempt at album-level cohesion that's not terribly convincing, but at least they give it a shot. I love McCartney-Beatles, I think compared to Lennon he's still (improbably) somehow under-uppreciated, but this was a tiny tiny bit too indulgent to me, before it got a little predictable. Still, great playing, some really fun George Martin-y arrangements, great musicianship. A master at his craft on a pure fun album, nothing too self-serious. Love it. 4/5

Beguiling! I don’t honestly know what to say! It’s a Björk a cappella album, we didn’t know that we were gonna get that, I didn’t know that was gonna happen, and yet here we are, with a Björk a cappella album. And it’s 80% so, so, cool. And 20% disturbing and gross! Whyyyyyy the weird disgusting sounds on Ancestors, Björk, why? Why? I was really enjoying the album and then i was like, please stop Björk. Please stop. It turned from admiration into complete disgust. But then again, that’s just me. So much to be repulsed by with this album is also what gives Björk her power… she is mercurial. Creatively electric, full of emotion, impassioned and somehow never pretentious, more childlike. She is our resident lovable space alien. I think so much of this album was brilliant, and a decent amount was misguided, but that’s what you get, and you don’t get upset. 3/5. I was very moved at points, but truly some of those grunting noises were the biggest turn-off

Before listening to this, I had a vague feeling that The Cars were a mostly silly band who makes silly music that doesn't quite land for me. This album made me appreciate what they do *slightly* more than just be silly, but to me it ends up sounding 15% too generic, 30% too unnecessarily silly without being charming, for me to really get into it. I appreciated the compositions more, the carefree attitude throughout, but something about this album just turns me off. 2/5 for no concrete reason.

yeah, this is a really cool album. It took me a while to get into because it just makes me feel stressed, and other than potentially TVC15, there are no standouts where they really start to roll and I'm hooked. There's a lot of silly Bowie-isms, but the tracks are so well constructed and interesting and zany that you can't help but admire them. There's more going on here than I caught on my first, second, or even third listen. I wouldn't say it's a *fun* listen, it just makes me feel that slightly antsy, paranoid feeling I get when I hear Bowie from this period. I don't think it's Bowie's best, but it is really singular. 4/5

I'm always more impressed with Deep Purple's stickiness than I think I am going to be, I end up humming their hits a lot more. We had gotten the live version of this album a few weeks back, and this is way more engaging than that! I'm not NOT a fan. 3/5

This was actually awesome. I've been overly harsh to 90s breakbeat albums in past reviews here. This one totally grabbed me beginning to end. Very danceable, very easy to work to in the background, just really grabby and interesting. And some actual... songs?... peppered in there? This is my breakbeat-hacker-man-in-some-unfinished-downtown-loft-hacking-shit album. I will put it on in such conditions. 4/5

Oooooh, this was *fantastic.* a slow burn all the way through. Long, jammed out tracks and sly melodic hooks that get stuck in your head, amazing sense of space, I was so invested all the way through. Felt like a truly artsy record. I thoroughly enjoyed. 4/5

We're spoiled by the Beatles. That's all I really have to say. Aftermath will always be an important album, it seems, for both cementing the LP as an album, a thing young people were interested in, and also giving the Stones excessive confidence to write their own songs, keep going. But... I don't like it. The closeness to Rubber Soul (and Revolver after it) make the Stones' attempt at songwriting and melody writing feels still nascent. This feels like: simple song (with crude lyrics and okay singing) + exotic or interesting instrument. That alone doesn't make me like this album. And the band doesn't sound tight in several songs. The instrumentation sounds a little lazy. I have to think that Aftermath has the biggest Beatles-adjacent lift of any album I can think of. Most of the classic, 1-degree-separated-from-Beatles albums around the same time have genuinely amazing songs, or have something about the performance that is captivating and remains timeless. There are so few good songs here. For all the stature of this album, there's just nothing memorable. I'll keep sticking to the stones, but this really isn't memorable. 2/5. Rounded up for its historical significance.

God, what horrific accident of 1001 albums gave me two Rolling Stones albums in a row? Just trying to get through this and Aftermath singlehandedly killed my drive to keep going with the albums. It was rough! I am biased against the Rolling Stones almost eternally, something about them just feels empty to me. My brain needs good melody, good songs, interesting production, something to latch onto. Aftermath had so little of that, for all of its praise. But I loved Sticky Fingers, and I grew to really cherish the boisterous, happy-go-lucky, crazed party attitude of Exile on Main Street. This is just getting to the part of the Stones that I like. The songs that just have that frenetic crazed energy with the rhythm parts– Monkey Man, Gimme Shelter. That has that same feeling in the guitar where you just want to jump up and do stuff, that kind of urgency and fun. I love it. A lot of this album is a bit boring and somewhat sleepy compared to the lightning in a bottle you get in the beginning and the last few tracks. So it's not a great, complete album. But it points to somewhere really good for the Stones, and those couple of tracks make the listen worth it. 3/5

We’re on over 175 albums, and I keep going back to the title of this project. 1001 albums to listen to… before I die? THIS is an album I need to listen to? Before I die???? Didn’t like. I think there are better bands that do some of this. Give me any early Dispatch song, any record on any album, over this. This just feels like what is playing in a random coffee shop in Cambridge 20 years ago. I could tolerate it in that environment, but that’s as far as your gonna get me onboard. I found it monotonous and kind of tiresome. It does feel very adjacent to things I like, as a Vermonter. But that doesn’t make me like it. 2/5

I've left this album on in the background several times over the last few weeks, and no special magic has revealed itself. I liked the last Echo and the Bunnymen album a lot, on reflection. The guitar lines in particular stuck with me. For this one, nothing's really sticking. Even though I like the sound. 2/5, would absolutely see them live if I had the chance, but nothing is clicking.

Freaking Tapestry. Tell me you don’t need these songs. Tell me they don’t bring at least one tear to your eye. I don’t believe you. 5/5

This was better than I expected! Way better. Wacky and really varied. 4/5

This album has one of the most personally life-changing songs I head in my 20's ("Since I Left You,") Which was so bright and prophetic and singlehandedly steered me toward the kind of sampling I love in my musical life, and for which I have thought about countlessly in the years since hearing it for the first time. And yet, for silly reasons, I never got around to hearing the album that it came from. Sometimes a single song shines so brightly, it's like a mission statement and the whole thesis in itself, the premise and the conclusion. That's how I always felt about "Since I Left You," the title track. So I never ventured further. What a mistake! The whole thing just cements the sheer ambition of The Avalanche's Project, and how *much* further along in this stuff they were than anyone else at this time. The whole thing plays like one huge dance party, one big hurrah through the fantastical words they make. And it's funny! It's SO funny at times. I am awed by the ambition, the aesthetic, the originality, and the pure FUN I feel throughout this record– doubly so once I remember that they probably did this whole thing on ancient sequencers that are long defunct!– and I had such a great time. A one-of-a-kind record that I'm so happy exists. 5/5

I really liked this album. I think the production is fantastic. Really gave me some great creative ideas. I mean it's a more intimate, songwriter-focused, version of Norman Fucking Rockwell which I also loved. I just think everything about it is silky smooth and so polished and really understated in this nice way, takes risks where you want it. Not my favorite songwriter or artist but plenty of things on the sonic level that gave me ideas, to aspire to. 4/5

Good! But why are there 16 songs? It's too long. I kind of am loving Blur. But there's too much filler that's hard to distinguish in the back half. I like how it's both super silly and has a strong identity to it. But it's too long. 3/5. Kind of wish I was a teenager when this came out, I'd probably be obsessed.

I like this and you can't tell me I'm not allowed to. It's so good! Hits some soft spot for me that's emotional and comforting, just the right notes for me. A few tracks that are just a bit on the bland side, but I really appreciate the songwriting, and it just makes me feel really at home and comfy. I can't explain why I like this so much! I'm not doing a very good job at it right now. 4/5

Has to be overrated because its regard is so inflated. For historical reasons as much as anything. I found many of the same things in it to like that others always find, but I found other parts overlong, or not particularly interesting. Still, it’s an undeniable mood of an album. Feels like cinema. There’s nothing quite like this album, even if its ideas feel a little protean. 4/5

This album wins me over every time. I get an urge to drive fast and break things. I think it’s brilliant. Amazing guitar songs. 4/5

Waaaaay too long! You can’t listen to this album and be grumpy at the same time. It’s hard to be mad at it. It just feels good all the way through. It is upstaged quite a bit by the songwriting genius of both CSN and Harvest which came out the same year, but I don’t think it’s totally fair to compare them. This is a different vision of that sound. I just was always waiting for the song to appear, but they rarely materialized. I thought the playing was terrific. Wild reading the harrowing stories of making this album and working under a cocaine-addled Stephen Stills for 100 hours a session! I liked it. 3/5

I found this album charming! I really enjoyed Dusty’s performance, she has one of those voices that’s so powerful but so expressive, you can understand every nuance. And the songs she picked are really good! I just liked the “all live done in a room” sound for a change. Definitely a surprise hit for me. 4/5

Okay yeah, some of the lyrics are kind of cringey, but I like his delivery, reminds me of Gil Scott-Heron (not a particularly favorable comparison), but I'm not necessarily *not* down. the TV song made me feel like I'm listening to a street preacher outside a government building. Similar vibes. If it wasn't to rap, it'd be 200% more cringey. But it is a good-sounding album, it passes the test. I just lost interest after hearing yet another on-the-nose lyric. 2/5

I came into this album mildly interested. I listened to Bob Marley a lot when I was younger, and my lasting impression was pleasant, political, fun. Good background, maybe. In other words… I was wholly unprepared for the 40 minutes I was about to get. This time, I decided to listen a little closer to the musicianship, get a sense of what is going on in the background. And let me tell you. These players are…. So. Fucking. Locked. They are locked like a locomotive. They’re not going anywhere. When you look up “pocket” in the encyclopedia it should be the smiling face of that clav player on Track 1. Unbelievable. This is how you start a reggae band, folks. You hear some music that is so unbelievably locked like this and you think maybe, just maybe we can pull this off. Well you probably can’t. Don’t let it stop you, but… the level of locked and loaded on these rhythm parts puts most other reggae and ska to shame. To shame. That’s how high the heights are here. This kind of rhythm is so infectious. I was having a hugely fun time. I am thankful this exists, and it is no longer background music to me. It is music music. I am going to evangelize to all my music friends. They’ll think… “Jacob, aren’t you’re exactly 50 years too late?” Fuck I don’t care. 5/5

This is a really really really good album. And an album you can confidently hand to anyone who has never really listened to 90s hip hop before, of all backgrounds, and get them invested. I listened to this a ton on a Tribe binge a few years ago. Ambitious, funny, never too serious but also very serious, just a lot of soul and heart. I have to give this a 5 because it's gotta be in the top 10 of hip hop albums I'll remember in 30 years. 5/5

I like Gilliam Welch and I like this album. This kind of private somber comfortable feeling. Her voice does all the heavy lifting for me. So steady, that’s why it’s a good companion. Never sticks out too much. I can feel the desolation and the loneliness a mile away. But it’s cozy. This is what a lot of New England sounds like to me, I don’t know where she’s from but it feels so familiar to the folk/bluegrass scene here. I think one of my friend’s parents put this on a lot I’m the car. Just feels like home. 3/5

This is a crazy romp. A crazy romp through the woods with four crazed musicians. I loved so much of this. It was really well done. If you’re feeling dazed or disoriented, I won’t blame you, because I felt dizzy from vertigo from some of these tracks! But they’re really well done. Nothing is ever bad. It’s all really engaging and some genuinely breakthrough sounds. And it wasn’t so parodic as to be annoying. Maybe it’s because I didn’t listen to the lyrics (?) but I unexpectedly loved it. I’m not sure if I’ll return to it anytime soon, but its impression will hang around. 4/5

In spite of loving some of the orchestral arrangements, the horns and strings peppered throughout, and being pretty warm to this genre of psychedelic folk rock, I found very little to like in the songwriting. It's Dylan-adjacent but feels pretty watered-down. I thought I'd really like this! But there wasn't a lot there that didn't pass over my ear. 2/5

I thought this was pretty good. I had a good time. I'm not sure if I'm going to return to this sound, I just don't fetishize this sound in the way that Jack White clearly does. The songs are good, but they don't really captivate me other than the opening few. 3/5

This is fucking good. Money For Nothing, wow. what an entrance with that guitar. Solid solid amazing guitar work. But like, this album has the GOODS. "Your Latest Trick" alone, if that was the only good track on an album, I'd be trying to find ways to justify giving this a 4. That's an epic, epic sound. And so smooth. It really is an album that makes me feel good. There's something about this that keeps me grounded. Even just the instrumental tracks, those are so tasty and pleasant. Somehow these instrumentals introduce a tad of cheese with the 80s-ness, but it gets flipped around, turned upside down by the grooves and the rhythm section, which is really what pulls it into one thing. I will keep listening to this album. They just have a way with dynamics, where they keep you invested with so much surprise. 5/5

Really good JAY-Z Album. Hard to argue with. Very good hooks, very good early Timbaland productions, early Kanye productions, Just Blaze, you know! 2001 and the gang’s all there. I’m always gonna like JAY-Z, something about him is kind of endearing and I can’t put my finger on why, even with so much swagger and confidence and braggadocio. He seems like a good person to have at your party. I really like this. It’s good, but compared to the heights he’d reach on The Black Album, Blueprint 3, Watch the Throne upcoming… this is the entree. 4/5

Hard to be left unsatisfied after hearing this album. It's just exquisite. It SOUNDS like D'Angelo at his most unconscious, his most musically free and unwrought. Just effortlessly making incredible music. But... apparently he spent ages, recording all of the instruments himself?? At 21?? Unreal. I couldn't believe that because it sounds so effortless. It just sounds like, an early incarnation of D'Angelo, with an incredible backing band. Well, it turns out that that's D'Angelo as the backing band. Wow. Still a classic, still an incredibly fun time. 5/5

Not only did I not like this… I did NOT like this. Boy George’s voice annoys me to no end. I cannot understand how someone would find that voice attractive. It always sounds off, like we’re at this creepy community theater show. I can’t place why exactly I was repulsed by this album. But I think it’s 85% Boy George. The other 15% is when, on half their songs, they have an actually good gospel singer in the background doing mindless “hey, heyyyy” sounds that serve no purpose. I hate it when people do that. I hate-listened twice. One star. 1/5

To listen to Radiohead around the Kid A period, you have to be in a kind of a bummer mood. This is, after all, the most successful bummer band. I love these albums, they're evergreen to me... I discover new things in them the older I get, that 16-year-old me didn't see or understand. The lyrics alone you could spend a long time on. It always surprises me how alien Radiohead starts to sound at this point. Alienated from the sound and styles of the late 90s / 2000's, kind of lonely in their pursuit to get to the natural conclusion of this sound. And their sound palette alienates the listener a lot of the time. It's that mix of those noisy, antisocial, uninterested blasts of drum machines with the refined sound of Nigel Godrich's orchestration. And Thom Yorke has that quality to anything he sings... arresting. The bittersweet, tonal, in the same way a theremin solo can almost make you cry. This is supposed to be the Pt 2 of Kid A, but to me it still feels like half Part 2, and half b-sides or slightly less polished demos from those sessions. Once we get past Knives Out, things get a little muddy. And there is some muddiness earlier than that as well. but then Life In A Glasshouse comes around, which kind of puts the whole project in context. Thom Yorke as jazz crooner of this dysfunctional band. Kind of an incredible ending. I'm on the edge between 4 and 5. I am going to round down for the slightly messy middle. But really, hard to argue with those first few songs. 4/5

More Than A Feeling alone entitles this to a good rating. This type of arena rock is usually a big turn-off for me. Very low hit ratio. But Boston pulls it off! How do they do it? Which brings up a topic I've been thinking about, throughout this 1001 experience. We often get albums which are the "canonically great" example of a style or genre. Sometimes, it's a genre where 90% of it seems to suck. But then... this band does so well. It's as fun and manic and silly as the pinball-looking cover. Is that all some genres are? Someone like Boston comes around, makes a killer arena rock sound, and then hundreds of bands try (and fail) to replicate the formula? That sounds about right. This pairing just works for me. I think they should be the only ones allowed to do it. Nobody else should be allowed to make this kind of music except Boston. By the way, this album sounds GREAT on the ATCs. Great rock sound. 4/5

The 80's. As oft repeated: it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. This album is the most 80's, and it is in the keeper pile. Its focused energy, surprising emotional range, and classic after classic keeps it firmly in that camp. We had Brothers In Arms a few days ago, and now this. We have been blessed. Daniel Lanois production! I'm becoming a big fan. He's hitting all the right notes with all the added percussion, drummers. The Kate Bush feature on Don't Give Up is iconic. The sheer hit-ness of this album pulls it up past the murk of 80's– the synths, the Phill Collins drums, the Fairlight stock sounds– into a new territory. There's something that goes past the cheese into this whole new territory, on something like "That Voice Again." It reminds me of why I like Bruce Hornsby. I don't know exactly what stirs in me feelings of longing, heartache. How does Peter Gabriel do it? I don't know. 5/5

Is this what new wave is?? Because I like it. Just the basslines alone make you feel so silly listening to them. It makes me want to do a noodle arm dance. While grooving about that fascist groove thang. 3/5. I'm keeping this around.

I liked this a lot. I've always been told to listen to Pavement but somehow never got around to it. I really like the energy, it feels like I'm in this chaotic playroom turned into recording session. There's something really effortless and playful about the album which I like. I'll need to listen more. 3/5

Instant 5. Like Uncle Jim with the Boston album, I didn't realize there's a woman's face on the cover of the album until now. Somehow my brain always missed it. I was super super lucky to see them with my dad in Boston in 2014 before Walter Becker's passing. The second half of the show they just played Aja straight through. We were spitting distance from Walter Becker on guitar. That is a show that, at the time, I didn't fully appreciate how rare this was– seeing the canonical "no touring" band, in concert. I'm so happy I went. Even if it may have compromised the final paper I had to write that evening... Aja grows on me the more I interact with it. It's antithetical to my own musical approach– I'm a much more immediate, improvisational, happy accidents kind of composer. This music is famously squeaky clean, perfectly recorded, with player-book-grade solos from some of the best session musicians in LA, commandeered by two perfectionist dictators. Couldn't be more different. So why am I drawn to it? It's the lyrics. The mythical storytelling of sleaze, excess, losers. What a honestly weird combination. It takes everything that is borderline annoying about perfectionist music– antiseptic, unapproachable, too shiny– and gives it this strange, off-kilter spin. Mesmerizing. Also, what a counterweight. We've had a lot of earnest, virtuous music recently. Fun to live in the world of quantum criminals. I'm also reading Neuromancer right now. I feel like these two things somehow can go together. In a funny way. 5/5. The title track has been stuck in my head all weekend.

Hold on, who is this? This is why I'm here for 1001 albums. I had no clue who this guy is. He's talented and a really good songwriter. Some ghostly, almost McCartney lines on some of his lyrics. I'm not surprised at all by the Beatles affiliation. What happened to him? I really enjoyed the sound. It's nothing groundbreaking, but again, thought I would have come across this artist by now, in one of my obsessive 70s music binges. Like finding a missing puzzle piece under the couch for that puzzle you've been working on. I liked it. 4/5

Wow. The cover is so epic. Something about this is grabbing me in a way I didn't expect. It's got this simple, heartfelt sound that's straight to the point. Great songwriting. Are all of these originals? Could have sworn I've heard some of these before. After about an hour, the sound got a little tiring to me, just because it was very predictable. But as a jolt in the morning, it was really nice. I could imagine this being in my rotation. I think the songwriting put it over the top. 4/5

Agree with Charlie! I was surprised I had never heard of this. I haven't gone this deep down 80s New Wave world, but this album has an immediacy and undeniable hooks. It seems simple, minimal, sticky, and experimental. I love it! What's going on with the Wikipedia of The The? There is one current member (Matt Johnson, who seems to have singlehandedly made this album) and... *19* past members of this band. Does this man just burn through band members???? I must know more! 4/5. Good fun

Thom Yorke is a genuinely weird frontman for the band Radiohead almost became. We have more context for what Radiohead would turn into than the band themselves had in 1995. They seem to have no idea that they are about to break hugely influential ground. On this release they sound significantly more tethered to the times. This album has almost more resemblance to something like Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill of the same reason than to OK Computer— let alone Kid A / Amnesiac. As a mid-career Radiohead fan, there’s little you can grasp onto— other than “weird chords”— that doesn’t have a tiny smattering of 90’s Britpop attached. But you can definitely see some glimpse of what might have been… if the band had just listened to one too many A&R men, flew a little too close to the sun imitating the success of Creep, gone for more radio. In that future, we don’t get Weird Yorke. We only get worse music. So it’s a weird listen! But I like it! Fake plastic trees is a favorite. 4/5

My least favorite Radiohead album is the most obviously depressing. A friend told me it was his favorite when he was in high school… and that, in hindsight, he must have been “pretty fucked up.” I put it on many times but never got past track 3, because I was not fucked up enough. A shame! The best songs are in the second half! There, There is gorgeous. Sail To The Moon is perfect for its off-kilter, slow-dance-during-the-apocalypse sound. Some of these swim in your head, an afterimage on a screen that never quite goes away. Even if they’re not the most sing-able, they haunt you. Like Amnesiac which we (crazy!) had also this week, you have to be in that mood. The mood that my friend was apparently in all through high school. If you’re there, this is the place. 4/5

Echoing Charlie completely… how unfair is it that we get one day to absorb Blonde on Blonde. This feels like speed-reading that Shakespeare play you were assigned in high school, the night before a pop quiz. It’s a real book we’ve got here. I never got Bob Dylan until I was 29 years old. The year I started listening to the words the musicians were saying. As for Dylan, the nut finally cracked for me with Time Out Of Mind, one whose production drew me in enough, made me play it enough, that I had to listen in. And whenever I do listen in— which is not my forte— I find layers of play and irony and sarcasm and valor and archetype. Real mythic stuff. It’s gonna be a long time before I hit the center of this one. It’s like a book you want to read slowly, to savor the ending. 5/5

This is the first review I've written where I could actually stand to get in some pretty serious professional trouble, if certain friends of mine find this review 😂 (I know some of the people involved. And let the record show that, track by track, the people I know who worked on this all did stellar work). This has got to be the biggest whiplash I've ever gotten for an album that I used to listen to in college. The difference between how much I liked it when I was 21 (which was, more or less, positive), and how much I like it 10 years later is... cavernous. I had MANY questions this time around. I found every song Max Martin was involved in to be silly. His production is annoyingly uninspired. I consider Max Martin to be a net negative on music as a whole. Other producers did a fine job, but Max and his crew dominates the record, and it's that ultra sleek, maximalist, very bland sound that I just can't stomach anymore. I think that certain pop artists, for whatever reason, in the press and the listening public, are afflicted with the soft bigotry of low expectations. We expect so little of them, from a music-y, album-y, concept-y side (they're busy doing other things, after all), that when they clear an exceptionally low bar we've been holding out for them, it's seen as groundbreaking. When this album came out in college, the press around it was very, very positive. Universal acclaim. We were all kind of swept up by this album, and the idea that Taylor Swift might be doing something exciting. The excitement lasts for precious few songs (Welcome to New York is great), before quickly being bloated by these maximalist records! Why did I think otherwise? I just never expected that much of Taylor Swift, and she cleared the bar. I don't feel this way about Folklore, Evermore, or anything after. I think those genuinely are getting into great music territory. This one was so lacking the actual artistic meat and bones that my memory (and the press around it) promised it would have. A fate suffered by plenty of Britney Spears albums... also a Max Martin creation! There is a pattern here. A generous 2/5. If you're reading this and you worked on this album (and you know me)... you know who you are, and I like your work on here. Actually good shit.

What a fascinating listen! To be Paul McCartney in 1970… I do not envy him. His band is breaking up, and he’s the one who’s been trying hardest to keep it together. And here he is, cranking out music. No studio, no fancy tricks, no producer… just him and a tape recorder. And it’s… a funny listen! I find myself in awe of his songwriting, when the faucet is turned on. It’s just that it’s so stubbornly *off* for most of the album! It’s experimental, instrumental, certainly *interesting* that Paul has half of his songs meandering, a little basic, almost demos of the ideas. Even the songs feel half fleshed out… a far way to drop from Abbey Road, or Let It Be, just a year prior. This is someone who sounds like he’s figuring himself out… which is just plain weird, since the last 5 years of his discography make the self-evident case for a songwriter who had it *all* figured out. I’m glad he got back on his footing with Ram and McCartney II, but here he just sounds lost. There’s very little reason for anything that goes on, and ideas simmer into focus and then lose the plot. I was close to a 2, but as a McCartney fan, I have to acknowledge the few great moments. They’re just so few and far between. Glad that he eventually made it out of the morass. 3/5

It's hard to come away from anything Brian Eno does without a massive amount of respect. He is so evidently an artist with a capital A... the kind that someone in the contemporary art world would recognize a bit of themselves in. An experimentalist, an intellectual, but– thankfully for us– he actually walks the walk. I love that. I always come away from anything he does with a little bit of awe, looking up at the structure he's trying to erect. It's often ragged, rough around the edges. But there's really an artist there, amid it all. He's a perfect blend for me between the avant garde and the popular taste. This album has some bright moments. It's just hard to figure out which would have been groundbreaking to contemporaneous listeners, and which (to my ear), sound overplayed. That's because Eno is so massively influential in instrumental music, period– never mind ambient, which he undeniably invented– that any of his best ideas seem like they were destined to be reprinted for the next 25 years by the ambient film scorers and elevator musicians of the world. So I lack context to know what truly breaks the mold. I will say that the title track, Another Green World, always grabs me. I love that kind of immediacy... that's the version of Brian Eno I am unconsciously imitating in my own work. What a great listen. Rough around the edges, and so much less fleshed out than any ambient work is going to be in 25 years. But hey... it's 1975. So rarely does a new sound both break ground and crystallize into a solid form so quickly. This is a lot of broken ground. But what an expanse! 4/5

This is so good! The band is in top form. I’ve never heard this before. A band at their most electric, most practiced. I especially loved those wild and free, squealing clarinet solos. Fun to listen, including all the commentary and banter between numbers! Captures an amazing moment we’d otherwise never hear. 4/5

That was fun! I thought I'd like this more than I actually did– I'm biased toward Donovan. He's the kind of slightly campy, off-kilter, a little inscrutable edge to the 60's flower power thing that I think is fun. I really started paying attention to him with Mellow Yellow, which was a centerpiece record for me for discovering a whole lot of new stuff. This one was... less exciting than Mellow Yellow, for me. Very 60's camp. The super sober, English fantasy songs are really funny. I just didn't connect with many of his songs, unlike his later records. I found his songwriting to be a little underdeveloped. I don't know whether this is the only Donovan record we get, which would be a shame, because he is a delightful counterpoint to the more *serious* rock and roll records we have here. Between a 2 and 3 for me, but rounded up for Season of the Witch which is great. 3/5

I didn't love this! I thought I would. The Beastie Boys really wear me out. Ultimately their voices and personas grate on me. This album is in Sample Hall Of Fame, and as a huge sampler I thought I would hear what others were hearing here, which is reportedly a quantum leap forward in the sounds of sampling, in the hands of the Dust Brothers. From my vantage point... it's hard to hear! So many of the techniques and collage stuff sound primitive to me. Even though I know it was groundbreaking at the time, this album is frankly left in the dust in terms of sophistication and technique just a few years later by... pretty much everyone. So I don't know! Maybe the lyrics and the braggadocio are throwing me off the scent here. There were some great standout tracks, and it was a fun record to put on all afternoon. I just don't really want to put it back on. 2/5

I had more fun with this album than I thought I would have when I was 5 seconds in. I was thinking, oh no, not another "The Hives." This was way less annoyingly polished (like the Hives), way more explosive, and just fun and silly. I ended up kind of coming around to it! This is pretty much on the opposite pole of my normal home turf, music-wise. I really don't love Queen or most glam rock stuff, and the lead singer is sometimes super eye-rolly in what he does. Why is this working for me? Well it's honestly that they just sound like they're having an insanely fun time! So you can't be super grumpy at them for too long. And they just go all-in, 100%, on every record. Reminds me a tiny bit of why I liked the past Def Leppard albums. 3/5

This was a good record! Sounds really unique. Feels like a sound plucked right out of a moment in time in the 60's, with this wild, frantic energy that Janis Joplin is so good at as a performer. I actually kind of like that it was live-esque (apparently the majority of it isn't live, there are just overdubbed crowd sounds), but for some reason it worked in my brain. Maybe it's because the record just sounds rough enough around the edges, the guitars and drums sitting in that unsure spot in the mix that you get with live albums. Added to the imperfect, messy, fun sound. I'm a fan, and its uniqueness as an album definitely gives it staying power. I'm going with 4/5

I’ve been caught up on the albums, but way behind the reviews. Uh…. There’s just too much going on! It’s a little too frenetic and try-everything for me to really want to settle into it. It’s also really smoothly put together. I admire the ambition of this guy. Truly some huge arrangements. But for whatever reason it doesn’t connect with me emotionally. And I can’t seem to figure out why. Mr. Blue Sky is awesome and proves that the mission statement here was worthwhile and worth trying out. But something about it is hard to listen to for a while. Like seeing a movie with extremely fast cuts… impressive, but after a while you feel dizzy. 2/5