I absolutely LOVE Tom Waits. While I have other records of his that I like more or listen to more often, this one is great and it's probably one of the more accessible ones. I love the gypsy blues piano and the acerbic point of view. Beyond the great sense of sound on this record with all the different piano sounds and the guitar and the odd, spacey arrangements, his lyrical sense is wonderful and that's what really will keep me coming back to Tom Waits for the rest of my days. These songs produce a smoke-filled noir film scene in my head filled with seedy characters and stories. I feel like I should be sitting alone at the end of a darkened bar stirring a glass of warm brandy with a nail and taking it all in. In another life, in another time... that could've been just where I ended up. There's a wonderful enjoyment of the dark and unhinged nature deep within us all that Tom seems to be able to put his finger on. It makes me somehow less afraid of that part of me. He finds a way to make it all sweet in the end and wraps it up the darkness with a bow quite nicely... a ratty, beaten up bow that's been stepped one out on the street, but a bow all the same.

I love this album. It's like punk attitude with electronic or dance production and songwriter lyrics. It feels good, but it also feels important. These songs are emotionally impactful, poignant, and at times somewhat unsettling. But they ultimately have enough structure and melody and major chords to actually feel triumphant over the noise rather than leaving the listener exhausted by it. At times you could almost believe this band my have come out of late 80's into the 90's... you can hear Talking Heads and NIN and Radiohead rolled in there, but those bands would NEVER have let as much soul get into a record. You can also clearly hear Michael Jackson or Le Chic in the guitars and you get touches of Motown horns and strings throughout the record. Those things play so well against the electronic dubbed bass and 4 on the floor dance beats. Stork & Owl, Golden Age, and Shout Me Out (heart for DnB) are stand out tracks for me for completely different reasons, but I love them all.

No listen necessary. This album has been burned into my brain for a LONG time. Dre set the standard with this one and mainstream rappers have been trying to match that for a long time. I was never huge on Dre as a rapper in general. His flow is fine, his lyrics are fine, he's good. But Dre always seemed to know what sounded good for a moment in time and how to get the best out of his team. Revolutionized the way hiphop was made, sold, and loved.

This album was light years ahead of hip hop on several fronts. There's an awesome female empowerment push in this that is great. I love that she confronts it head on about how male rappers get to talk about all the dirty stuff, but women are supposed to not talk about that. As if 80% of male rap lyrics in the late 90's early 2000's wasn't about women and sex. Aside from her stance on rap culture and feminism, this album just absolutely SLAPS. The beats are great, her flow is awesome, her word play is unique and interesting, her message is fantastic, the guest spots are incredible (Beyonce, Jay Z, Method Man, TLC, etc). I'm consistently impressed with how everything she does is unmistakably hers. Even without her raps on this album, I probably could've picked out her style. Personally, this album wasn't in rotation with me when it came out and flew under my radar until MUCH later. But listening to it back now... it seems like this album would've been made much more recently than 2002. Great record and deserving of a higher place in the hip hop pantheon. So much of modern female rap culture started with and emulated Missy. Give up the flowers.

This is probably one of the most formative albums in my life. The Band is a core memory and this album is the beginning of it all for me. My son's middle name is Levon after Levon Helm. While I can admit that my own nostalgia probably clouds my ability to assess this album honestly, I don't care. I know every note and every word and every inflection and every sound on this record and I will carry it with me forever. Aside from Robby Robertson essentially stealing all of the money from the rest of the band in the publishing deals and the drama fall-out of that, this is probably a perfect band for me. I truly believe that Robertson, Helm, Dank, Hudson, and Manual all could've been centerpieces in their own bands. They all wrote great tunes, sang well (enough), and played the hell out of their instruments. Having them all develop together made The Band and Music from Big Pink an absolute mile-marker in Rock and Roll. Also, moving out of the 60's folk, The Band helped cement the world of Americana, which is an odd thing since Levon is the only one of them that isn't from Canada.

Wow. I've never heard this record. Now that I'm listening to it, I don't really think there's all that much special about it for me. The music is fine, but it feels like it all falls along traditional Indian music lines. It's in a standard Raga, it heavily samples commonly known Indian artists, and the electronic bass just follows the Tabla line for the most part. That said, I would probably prefer to listen to those original artists like Zakir Hussain or Rakesh Chaurasia over this. The main thing for me is that the actual Indian music this is quoting from is amazing drum and bass music in and of itself. I'm not sure the electronic drums and DnB treatment really change the tone or feel of the music much for me. It's always such rhythmic tumble through 4's and 3's anyway and the bass is held down by the Tabla, which is really as close to a dub bass sound as an acoustic drum can make. So it doesn't feel like this is that much of a departure musically. I like it, but I think there are some other amazing records in this vein that I would prefer. Meh.

Oh snap... I don't know this band or this record and I'm a little ashamed. But, this will be a true first listen... should be fun! Sonically, there's still a bunch of the hallmarks of the 80's hair metal bands: several ballads, strings sections, synth punch-ins, soaring vocal choruses with no real lyric, etc. But there's clearly Television-type post-punk stuff going on with the guitar, which feels like the same thing that grunge is born of. The mix of a bunch of different late 80's/early 90's sounds is great. It's got this wonderful Britpop feel to it. It's a good concoction. All that aside, it's the songwriting that really keeps me going with this. This band is clearly an arrow aimed directly at David Bowie and the Pixies, intentionally or otherwise. The Pixies is clearly a contemporary and that all makes sense, and I don't think you can argue either the Pixies or this band exist without being in Bowie's lineage. What's super interesting to me is that they use the sound of the instruments as the glue to hold the sound of the record together while the songwriting is kind of all over the place. It really works, but only because the songs have enough variation and fluctuation in them to not sound the same as the last one even though it's the exact same guitar, amp, distortion, drum sounds, etc. As much as it it's Bowie-influence, at heart it's almost more like Bowie trying to do Neil Diamond songs with a proto-grunge backing band... ... you son of a bitch, I'm in.

Oh, it's like slipping back into old comfy PJs before sliding into a bed with freshly washed sheets. The B3 is soothing and warm and the walking blues lines are comforting and easy to hear. The light jazz treatment within the blues framework is just about as classic as organ music gets for this New Orleans boy. Jimmy is clearly one of the great organ players and was instrumental in popularizing the B3, so there's a lot of deserved flowers to give there. However, I'm not sure how much 1-4-5 blues I can take without some real serious chops to keep me going, and that's not really here. Don't get me wrong, this music is great to have on while you work or clean or cook, but I'm not spinning this record to do active listening or learning. The band is good, but not great. The groove is deep, but none of these solos are going down in history as "must listen." The sax solos are not particularly special, the guitar is lacking (especially with access to so many of the wonderful Motown players around at this time... David T Walker, etc. I would've liked to see some more heat), and even the organ play is not particularly difficult or deep. The band sounds good. The mix is good, I love the buttery tones of the B3, and the drums are clean and bright, but they're a long shot from Herbie's Headhunters or The Meters or Dr. John, all of which I'd prefer to this. Ultimately there's some amazing organ music that I think is perhaps more deserving of a place on this list, so here's a couple if you're interested: * Dr. Lonnie Smith - Finger Lickin' Good (1967), Mama Waller (1971) * Joey DeFrancesco - Relentless (1993) * Papa Grows Funk - Live at the Leaf (2006) * Jon Lord - Sarabande (1976)

Meh. It's early rock and roll, but it's just not doing it for me. I feel like a bunch of the bands that I love from the 80's and 90's would probably quote this album as important to them, but I'm not quite getting it. In fairness, my own lens is probably getting in my own way. It's almost delta blues, but it's not. It's almost southern rock, but it's not. It's almost Elvis, but it's not. It's almost boogie-woogie, but it's not. I could easily be struggling between several well-tread paths and not quite able to place it in my own pantheon. This is also 10 years after the Kinks and the Velvet Underground, which I think blows this out of the water in terms of rock and roll before it was classic rock or southern rock or any of those other subgenres.

This album is so much better than I remember. It's got this great 90's feel all over it. It feels a lot like Beck and the Shins and several other things that were happening in the mid-90's, but it genuinely feels organic to this group rather than derivative or copied. The songs are good, but the attraction is really the production and the studio work. Everything sounds good and the songs vary widely in sound, instrumentation, and timbre without completely losing the plot. There's a funky groove with a break-beat, there's a piano ballad, there are several production "rock" songs, and even a couple sing-a-long sections. Guitars are either super clean or super crunchy, drums are clean and compressed, bass is simple and deep and round. Very 90's! It really makes so that the tracks all blend really well and gives the vocals a clear space to shape the emotion of the record. I'm surprised how well this album holds up for me. I expected it to sound much more dated to my ears and maybe even cringey (very like my own personal 1996), but I really like it. I'm impressed with how well balanced it is, how funky it is, and how well the production fits the album.

Oh, fuck yes. This is my shit. There's nothing about this record that I dislike. The rhythm section is tight, the melody players are tasteful without resorting to simplistic cliche lines, the songs are good, the mix is perfect, the horns and production are well thought out and clear without overpowering... but the real joy here is the warm, smooth, soulful voice. I could listen to Al sing the dictionary.

I absolutely LOVE Tom Waits. While I have other records of his that I like more or listen to more often, this one is great and it's probably one of the more accessible ones. I love the gypsy blues piano and the acerbic point of view. Beyond the great sense of sound on this record with all the different piano sounds and the guitar and the odd, spacey arrangements, his lyrical sense is wonderful and that's what really will keep me coming back to Tom Waits for the rest of my days. These songs produce a smoke-filled noir film scene in my head filled with seedy characters and stories. I feel like I should be sitting alone at the end of a darkened bar stirring a glass of warm brandy with a nail and taking it all in. In another life, in another time... that could've been just where I ended up. There's a wonderful enjoyment of the dark and unhinged nature deep within us all that Tom seems to be able to put his finger on. It makes me somehow less afraid of that part of me. He finds a way to make it all sweet in the end and wraps it up the darkness with a bow quite nicely... a ratty, beaten up bow that's been stepped one out on the street, but a bow all the same.

As much as I respect the blues, I'm just not that into the straight blues genre. It's a cool record and I can see how it influenced a ton of music in the 20th century... but there's only so much 1-4-5 a man can take.

I can't decide whether his voice reminds me of Bob Dylan or Tom Petty... bit of both I suppose. Regardless, I love this record. It sounds great, it's mixed well, the songs are well written, and the overall vision is executed well. At times I feel like it is a bit of a one-trick pony in that all the songs do sound relatively similar. The guitar sounds are pretty consistent, the song structures aren't wildly variable. So, there's a very distinct sound to his music, but luckily for me I really like this particular trick. Highly recommended for a drive with the windows down when the weather is nice. It's such a dreamy soundscape to sink into. Lovely.

I'm so partial to this sound. Is it because I was predominantly a bass player? Maybe. Well, Probably. The groove, the soul, the smooth falsetto vocals... This is very akin to the New Orleans funk music that is in my bones. I could listen to Curtis Mayfield every day for a long time without an issue. I'm so in love with this sound.

This is another formative record for me. I was spinning it over the weekend and discovered I had 2 copies. Growing up it was on around our house quite a lot and I know it by heart. I learn to play guitar with a ton of these songs. It's an exercise in nostalgia for me, but I'm not sure whether I can actually assess the music on the record with any sort of perspective. The Band, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Willie Nelson, etc are just so deeply ingrained into my psyche. That being said, the musicianship on this record is pretty amazing. I mean, the list on the left hand side of the cover is ridiculous: Watson, Scruggs, Carter, Martin, Vassar Clements, etc. It's a veritable who's who in the world of bluegrass, country, and folk music. This just feels like a picking party after a wedding and I'm not sure that's not my version of heaven. Lots of folks in and out, the conversations before and after tunes, classic and standard tunes, great harmonies, fierce picking... My bluegrass heart never had a chance.

Let's start with the obvious. The harmonies are deep and wonderful. The sound of this record is amazing. The various instruments and percussion sounds provide depth and marry with the harmonies to produce a really cohesive sounding record. A++++ sounding record. That being said, I've never really been too big on the Beach Boys. The songs don't really send me as compositions, the lyrics don't mean much to me, it doesn't change the way I see the world or my experience in it, and I'm just generally bored by the standard pop sensibilities of the whole thing. I struggle with the first couple of Beatles records in the same way. I mean, teenaged unrequited love songs in the verse1/verse2/chorus/verse3/chorus structure just only get me so far and that description could be used to describe 3/4 of this record. So, here, the appeal for me is the recording process. The harmonies are great because they don't settle for the standard 3 part harmonies of melody + down a third + up a fifth. Adding sevenths is such a simple idea chordally, but it really makes the whole thing shimmer when you use it correctly. The use of a really wide variety of instruments (both for melody and percussion) really fills out the sound. The effect of all this is that each song sounds really rich without sounding too over-produced. The focus was clearly on blending the sounds rather than separating them and I can really appreciate that. But I'm not in love with this record or the band like many are. I own this record, but I almost never play it.

Hard to listen to modern EDM music and not respect the foundation that Kraftwerk laid down. Synths and dancehall beats are never going out of style. This is some of the first electronic music and it doesn't have all the polish sonically or structurally that would come later, so it's a little tough to listen to in stretches, but it's great to have on while you work or read. Good stuff! An extra star for being so far ahead of its time.

I really enjoy this record, but it's SO contemplative. I can't just have it on. It demands attention and thought and that's not always where I am. Thus, my listening enjoyment and analysis of this record changes depending on where, when, and how I'm listening. In some way, I feel like that's the quintessential nature of great jazz records. To say that I "enjoy" this record is not quite right. To say that I "appreciate" this record is a massive understatement.

I love Brian Eno so much. I listen to his stuff all the time on my own and I appreciate his acerbic point of view. It's groovy, interesting, well-recorded, and always seems to have a purpose. He makes art with sound and I've always appreciated that. He's not trying to write a hit, he's not writing an anthem, he's not writing something for radio, he's not writing music to listen to while you do other things. Sometimes he's not even trying to write a song. He's writing music for the same reason painters paint and sculptors sculpt and writers write; because he has something to say and art is the way he chooses to put those ideas into the world. I love Eno b/c what he has to say is always different than what anyone else has to say and it's always relevant to me and my experience in the world. This album is wonderful and weird and interesting and unlike just about anything else anyone had ever made to this point. It's singular to Eno in the early/mid 70's. It may not be everyone's cup of tea, but I'm totally into Eno's brew.

Meh.

This is the record that I learned about down-tempo trip/hop. It changed the way I listened to music and I will forever love this record.

My wife and I used to listen to side 2 of this record going to sleep for several years. We'd turn it on and fade away to the smooth timber of his voice and the lovely Travis-picking. It's a great songwriter's record. These are simple songs elevated with great guitar work and smooth effortless voice. There are few things as organic as that and James was probably one of the best. People forget that he was around the Beatles early on and influenced their songwriting, even directly inspiring "Something" by George Harrison. Also, he's one of the most underrated guitar players on the planet. Listening to Lo and Behold off of this record is an absolute master class in finger-picking and writing two completely separate guitar parts that can be played independently and still sound like the song enough to play and sing to, but when played together blend so perfectly that they almost sound like a single piece. Perfect. Story-time: In the summer of 2002 while I was in college, on a lark, my aunt bought me a ticket to see James Taylor live. She knew I liked music and was a bit of a hippy, so she thought that was appropriate. She's... not real hip. I went alone b/c no one else wanted to buy tickets and I was the only person under 60 at the show. Let me tell you, JT and his band were absolutely fantastic. So much so, I bought solo tickets to 6 other shows on the tour and followed him down the I-10 corridor from Jackson to New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Lafayette, Houston, Austin, and San Antonio over the next 10 days or so. It was during the summer and I just stayed with college friends along the way. So, the summer after freshmen year in college while my friends were all living it up on summer vacation or following Widespread Panic or gearing up for Phish's imminent reunion or whatever college freshmen do, I was following James Taylor. I was not very cool.

There are about 15 songs by XTC that are absolute bangers. Every time one of them comes on I think "I should listen to more XTC." Then, I listen to more XTC and remember why I don't listen to more XTC. This is roughly a yearly occurrence. I struggled through this record, but I really liked 2 songs.

There are about 15 songs by XTC that are absolute bangers. Every time one of them comes on I think "I should listen to more XTC." Then, I listen to more XTC and remember why I don't listen to more XTC. This is roughly a yearly occurrence. I struggled through this record, but I really liked 2 songs.

Classic new wave. It can get a little too pop-oriented at times for my taste, but it's undeniable. Catchy, a little punk attitude, a little art school attitude, but undeniably cool. Good stuff.

What's not to love about EWaF? Funky grooves, great ballads, top musicianship... Soul in the realist sense. Love this record, but it is clearly of an era so I'm not sure it lives up to the legend of their reputation.

I've always listened to LCD Soundsystem as a band of singles, so I've not really ever listened to a record all the way through. However, this record has several of my favorite tracks on it, so I'm super interested. I love good dance music and LCD is built on dancehall beats with glitchy bass lines and then layering on melody and just a touch of harmony. It's like a band playing with a drum machine and then doing live bits in the same way many artists use samples. Not really verses and choruses, but also not really straight samples. It's somewhere in between, which I feel really gives LCD their unique sound and let's them be a band, but also produce great electronic music... best of both worlds. I love dance music best when they use great groove rather than hitting you over the head with hooks. Stand out tracks for me are: * Time to Get Away + Us V Them - which I feel could have been on the Talking Heads record like Remain in Light. Great looped groove feel. * Someone Great - Somehow able to be brooding and ominious and still be a banger in the dance club. This song just feels like Brooklyn to me so much. * All My Friends - one of my favorite dance tracks of all times... I've covered it in a couple different bands and it always kills. I never played in straight electronic or dance bands, so whenever it would start I could see like 10% of the crowd just absolutely go nuts. The LCD fans are out there and they are devoted! Hell, I'm on of them!

I don't hate this record. It's fine. It's somewhere between a singer/songwriter record and an over-produced pop record. The songs aren't bad, but they're not great. The sound of the record is actually pretty good. I like the production on it for the most part. The mix is good. I'm just not sure it belongs on any lists at all. It feels like 100 other records. Meh.

This record is so good that Lauryn Hill is still touring it. Literally, she's still touring the songs on this record and it's still selling tickets. Wyclef spun this record and it's still maybe the best thing he's ever done. This record just exudes cool. Lauryn has something to say on this record. She lets everyone have it and I'm 100% here for it. The beats are boom-bap, which really let's the production stay pretty chill. That helps the vocals fill out the textures and the message stays front and center. I always think this record is "of a moment" when it comes up. But it holds up. This record still bangs. It holds up much better than I thought it would. If this record came out today, I'd still think it was awesome. It hasn't aged at all.

This is a really good record. I forget how good a lot of these songs are because they've become nostalgic or ubiquitous, but they are still kicking ass. It's anthemic and joyous and dark and it just works. Great songs that sound great. Hard to beat that.

I liked it.

Ok. Buckle Up... I'm sorry ahead of time for this super hot take. It's spicy and I hope it's taken tongue-in-cheek as it's meant. I hate this album with the flames of a thousand suns. There's nearly nothing about the album that I like. First, I don't like the songs. As compositions they lack any real potency of meaning or intent for me. I don't identify with them topically or emotionally, and I'm not even entirely convinced that there's a structure or meaning behind the them at all. Second, the recording is absolutely the worst. I've heard recordings of raccoons fighting in a dumpster that were easier to listen to. There's clipping throughout the tracks, it doesn't sound like it was mastered at all, the mix cuts the music when the voice track clips, the recording process was completely ignored. It literally sounds like they set up the instruments, plugged a single mic in the middle of the room, pushed the faders all the way up, and then hired a pack of screaming goats to have a karate tournament next to the drum set while the actual band fucked off and drank cheap wine out back by the railroad tracks. On a serious note, I'm not one to shy away from difficult music. I like art that challenges assumptions and disregards norms and breaks rules... That means it can deeply uncomfortable to listen to at times, and I appreciate that. But I genuinely don't understand this record's intent. Why were these choices made? What's the artistic expression here and why is music the choice of medium for it? What does this have to teach me? What conversation am I meant to have with this? What thoughts or emotion is it supposed to translate? I feel like someone is speaking a language I don't understand and then asking my opinion on the author's ideas.

I like Leonard Cohen a lot. I'm not always a fan of his music and production (though it's never bad and some of it is really, really good), but I am such a big fan of his lyric and artistic position that it almost doesn't matter. I'm not here for musical virtuosity or for jazz theory or for clever staff work. I'm here for the art and he doesn't need all that shit to get his ideas across. That's why he's one of the greatest songwriters of all time, but not really on the list of greatest musicians of all time.

This is the best album of all time and I'll hear no arguments. If you can't down with this, then I don't know how to help you.

Punk legends at the top of the game. Not much to review here. If you're into punk, then this is a Rushmore type album. If you're not into punk it probably sounds like all the other you punk you don't like... Just the way the universe intended.

They say you're either a Stones fan or a Beatles fan, but you damn well must like one over the other. I'm a Beatles fan. I dig the Stones. This is a pretty good record and I completely understand why it is a classic in the truest sense of the word. But I'm just not thrilled by it. There are about 5 songs by the Stones that I think are among the best songs ever written/recorded, but only Wild Horses and Dead Flowers are on this record. Just to demonstrate where I'm at, I fucking LOVE these two songs. But the Stones didn't even like the song Wild Horses so they gave it to the Flying Burrito Brothers. Then after everyone liked it a ton, they recorded it themselves. And by far the best version of Dead Flowers was done by Townes Van Zandt. So, I'm not trying to diminish the songs or the Stones in any way, but I suppose that just goes to demonstrate that I never connected with this band the way many do.

Meg, it's fine. I can't really even muster up a solid review, but I don't hate it... so I guess that's alright.