Punk started shifting here. I dig the groovier stuff over the more by the numbers punk stuff. From reading up on the band, will be checking out their catalog at some point.

The singular 80s record. A new standard in just about every way. An onslaught of hits.

The Artic Monkeys debut is a fine modern punk pop album. I fail to see what all the fuss is about. They are fine.

One of my all time favorite hip hop albums. I don't know if it was the first, but it was the first one I noticed a real Jazz influence in. This was the peak of golden age beats and lyrical invention.

Very excited. Never heard of this artist, always up for some international music. The singing is beautiful on this album. As are the melodies. I hope to spend lots of time with it. The English songs are not as successful as the ones in her native language but a good listen all the way around.

Punk started shifting here. I dig the groovier stuff over the more by the numbers punk stuff. From reading up on the band, will be checking out their catalog at some point.

Not much to say about this one. It's pretty perfect. For my money, their best studio work.

This is one of those highly revered cult albums that lives up to its hype. It's haunting, simple, and beautiful. An album I always feel like I don't spend enough time with from an artist I know I haven't spent enough time with.

Yoshimi is the sweet spot between the reserved Soft Bulletin and the utter batshit crazy of the rest of The Flaming Lips catalog. It had an amazing structure and some of their strongest songs. Nature versus machine being told against a backdrop of audible maturity and pure creativity. It’s all pretty much perfect.

Metropolis Suite: The Chase was a fully realized statement from an artist who arrived confident and ready to change music. The concept was continued into The Achandroid which, unlike The Chase, is not concise and a little half baked. Its one real problem is it’s long. Metropolis feels like the elevator pitch and ArchAndroid plays like the three hour blockbuster and two hours in your bladder is really begging you to do something about the gallon of coke you drank. You kind of have to disengage but you don’t want to. Also like that summer blockbuster it’s a little all over the place. Like Coldwar really fits the concept but does Tightrope? It never lacks in inventiveness or swagger though. Like their idol Prince, Monáe actually does need a little editing and I think Diddy just threw them the keys to the studio. He was probably all like I’ve got this train wreck over here I’m trying to figure out, I don’t have time to edit your whole space thing. I don’t even know what Genorape means but you do your thing.

Crazy glam rock. I don’t hate it.

an all time classic full of classics. It's a bit long, but it's all gold!!

Fantastic early rock rave up!

Joyful music. Milan music with a western guitar flare. Highly listenable.

A strong debut from an exciting and emotionally complex performer.

House music that works from home with an album that doesn’t just slog on. Solid stuff.

Quite simply, this is the sound of the Summer of Love coming to a close. Flower power is losing its allure and the Manson murders are just over the horizon. This is the madness and the drugs, the love and the hate all encapsulated in one time capsule that has been open to us the whole time. It is astonishing in its emotion and it's sophistication. Peak psychedelia in all of its glory and insanity. Hell, the title itself, LOVE FOREVER CHANGES, is poetic and profound given the subject matter and the moment in time.

Controlled chaos. Really dig this.

A hodgepodge of rock and folk. Proto hipster swagger.

Fuzzy, psychedelic, funk rock. Pretty damn perfect.

After I'll Wait, the album drops off, but before that this is Van Halen at its most poppy catchy and infectious. Eddie is in great form throughout and Dave is having a lot of fun. The end of an era and they go out in style.

The singular 80s record. A new standard in just about every way. An onslaught of hits.

Beats are great. Lyrics are mostly nonsense. Flow is alright. Not a great record.

A landmark jazz album, many a person has found this to be a key in their jazz appreciation.

Pleasant Dream Pop that is engaging. It is easy to see why the band is so lauded and why they are often imitated.

Honky Tonk goes Music Row. A slick slice of the seedier life by a master of singing.

Hate the dynamics, should probably revisit at some point. It is an excruciating listen for this exercise though.

One of the best albums about death ever made. A man towards the end screaming at the void.

A fun album, it's by no means perfect, the Prince cover is pretty bad and the last half is lackluster, but when it hits, it does so hard. 80's new wave fun with a LOT of personality.

Powerfully spiritual music performed by great musicians.

Interesting heavy music.

Seems nice enough. Solid Velvet Underground like rock.

It starts pleasant enough, then it gets a little weird, then it overstays its welcome.

Stevie Wonder had started his own path with Where I'm coming from and Music of My Mind. Talking Book refined his new freedom. Innervisions through Songs in the Key of Life is when he really set sail, realizing his potential. Great stuff.

Interesting heavy music.

The album where the Cure became the Cure.

Perfect. As were the two albums before this one.

My favorite album of 2019. It is a masterclass of progressive R&B. It recalls the past and paves a way forward.

a r&b hang out record. Acension is still one of the best songs of the past 30 years. His voice is silky smooth. The height of neo-soul.

GOTH GLAM FUN. Not something I want to listen to all the time, but a good time regardless.

I've been on this personal punk journey for a bit now and I really like this album (first time listening to it). Hardcore is hit or miss for me. This is hit. Makes sense as I really appreciated the Black Flag stuff with Morris as a front man, even more so than the Rollins stuff. This is going to make me check out Redd Kross and give Bad Religion another look. Very enjoyable, short and succinct.

"Vig explained that as in his opinion 'the most exciting bands are those who incorporate all those elements of punk, funk, techno, hip hop, etc.' Garbage would attempt to do the same and 'take those influences and make them work in the context of a pop song.'" That is from the wikipedia article on Garbage. You guys know that I'm not a big fan of the "genre" of "grunge." Not, mind you, that I dislike Nirvana, Alice In Chains, Pearl Jam, etc. I think the genre is some stupid marketing ploy to convince people that this disparate music that came from a scene is somehow linked by a unique sound which is utterly preposterous bullshit. That being said, Garbage is a record that is "grunge." It's a pop record with bandmates made of a production team that was en vogue and very instrumental to that scene's rise. They got bored, started dicking around making remixes and then said shit, we should be a band. We can take all these different sounds we love and combine them into a pop behemoth. Over the years, there have been many disparaging remarks from many of the type of folks who enjoy this band's music about bands like Coldplay and Muse being corporate entities playing to the lowest denominator. I've always found that to be a particularly weird thing to say of a band. Certainly, there have been corporately produced bands throughout the years, The Monkees and NSYNC immediately come to mind. Not to say that these bands were not talented, hell Neil Young auditioned to be a Monkee and in an alternative reality, he made it and the course of history and music is very different in that timeline. We all know that Justin Timberlake is a very talented musician as well. But to say these modern bands that made it big were somehow created and to use that as a way of demeaning their fans and music was just odd to me. Garbage's record has some undeniable hits. Stupid Girl, Queer, Vow... they're good pop songs. Very of their moment and time. Hell production wise, they might even be a bit cutting edge. The album does take the sonics of the burgeoning Trip Hop scene of the time (Portishead, Massive Attack) and brings it to the alternative scene. It's all very marketable and pretty much manufactured that way. This is a band of producers who found a unique singer who was otherwise failing and gave her a platform of polished sounds of the times. There is nothing inherently wrong with that. If you like it, you like it. It is what it is. There is nothing even bad about this record, you could even point out several things in this write up that show this album deserves to be on this list. It is an album of its time, it kind of sums up the total of the hip pop music scene of the mid 90s and hell, that's important in and of itself. As a long time consumer of critical writing, I know that a lot of people look at the score before they read or decide to read a review and if you've done that, you probably wonder why the score seems so discordant to the words written here. The thing is, it is completely a record of the moment, not just in the sound presented as a snapshot of the totality of music at the time it was released, but in that it is fleeting and ultimately unmemorable. Moments after even Stupid Girl plays, it fleets from the mind. I think the fervent fans must have been so enamored with the lush sound that they played it on repeat by pressing that magic button on their discman until it did become the earworm it so desperately wants to be. None of it makes any mark on me. Just as Spooner and Anglefish ultimately did not make a mark on music other than being previous projects by the two biggest talents involved in this. Manson is a capable singer, who desperately wants to be a Beth Gibbons but beyond her striking looks, doesn't find the sound or content to compete. Vig is a producer of some talent. Love him or hate him, he had his finger in the pulse of the music of this time - maybe so much that he made a record that showed how fleeting that actual pulse is. It's remarkable that he did get to work with bands who did make remarkable records under his watch and he even gave them a little of his own thing to help define a sound, an alternative to the pop rock, glam metal, glossy r n b, etc. He helped make Punk poppy. Which is a double edged sword, good and bad. The music was brought to the masses and changed everything much for the better before the internet came along to emancipate the populace from their corporate music industry shackles. Ultimately, this is the sound of that freedom and maybe that's why it doesn't make the impression that it should. It's an important record that five hundred years from now (assuming man has not destroyed itself) will not be remembered. Utlimately, Garbage, Manson, and Vig will be footnotes to musical history much like Antonio Salieri.

Moody spy music that makes you think about dancing while chilling at the house. Pretty perfect music, all said and done.

I don't think it was really my first exposure to Neil, but this was the first album I owned. Neil being Neil. Introducing some of his best songs through the live setting. Showing off his acoustic chops and being influenced by the punk movement of the day. Great song writing, great playing, great singing, great heart.

Lounge music for sociopaths.

This is where they hit the map. Bringing on Patton and setting MTV on fire with Epic. I think Angel Dust is a better album, but this was an intro for a lot of folks and brought their weird but infectious vision of progressive funk metal to the masses.

Awesome Samba! Great stuff, makes me want to dance. Very groovy!

One of my favorite MCs. Reasonable Doubt and this one are easily his best. Just the way he laughs in the beat to the first track shows his skill.

Competent Afro-Cuban Jazz.

Good patiche of all the pop rock that came before it. Solid release. Too bad about Butler.

My favorite Beatles record. A folk pop classic.

Good hang out at the house techno. Mellow, with a variety of genres to keep it interesting.

What a singer, what a songwriter, what an album.

This is really a collection of club bangers loosely forming an album. It's really to hype for general at home listening but for a work out or the club, it is pretty awesome.

noodly prog music at its stereotypical height. only resembles the piece presented occasionally. Also, an awful recording.

More dates than I remember, when it hits it’s great but there is a lot of clunk going on too.

I don’t think the sequencing in this album is great. That being said, it’s a great record to get lost in. Deceptively complex. Dark brooding themes with butt wiggling beats.

Debut records don't get much better. Stunning lyrics. Great accompaniment and a singular voice.

glam art punk. This has been a grower for me. I like it more each listen.

Perfect art rock, art punk pretty much never got any better.

All time classic. Hard rock doesn't get much harder.

Brilliant. One of the first touchstones in electronica. Still sounds as amazing today as it must have in 92 (this was hard to get back in the day). Ambient music was not just sleepy chill at home music at the time, but could easily be played at the Rave. This album shows that. Brilliant stuff, hard to believe it came out in 92 and that some of it was recorded as early as 85 and all in his bedroom long before computers made it really easy. A revolutionary album on many fronts.

Glam gets gritty. Great protopunk.

Very good post punk pop.

Fun punk rockabilly. Sounds like a deranged Elvis.

A legendary performance and album.

Simon & Garfunkel are part of my musical DNA. My Grandfather and Mother talk about seeing them in Cameron Stadium when my Grandfather was a Duke Divinity student. Half of my full studio album discography on vinyl once belonged to my mother, including this album. While Cecilia, The Boxer, and Baby Driver were favorite songs, I did not hold this album in very high esteem until I listened to the 2020 season of The Opus on the album. I spent quite a bit of time with the album when I listened to that season in 2021. I came to love it during that period and it is probably my favorite album by them now. Part of it was probably a reaction to overhearing the title song (especially covers, Jesus, like Hallelujah, I could go the rest of my life without hearing a new version and they should set the songwriting royalties at such an exorbitant rate as to discourage people from singing it). But as I came to really understand the album and its place in time, I even over came that hurdle to love that song once again as I had as a youth. The album is like a minibiography of the band taking you from their humble beginnings with Bye Bye Love to foretelling Simon's solo stardom with The Only Living Boy in New York. It is nigh perfect by one of the greatest of singer songwriting teams. It's a beautiful swan song and probably should have been left as their last testament as opposed to numerous attempts to rekindle the flame rather through artistic desire, nostalgia, or money.

Galm rock pretty much perfected. Really need more time with it.

Thank god the producer convinced Fagen to be the singer moving forward because I'm not a fan of Palmer. Do It Again and Reelin' in the Years could have been on any of their other albums. It's a tentative debut, there are glimpses of what would come, but there is a lot that doesn't quite work as well. Not a bad album, but not great.

Brilliant noise pop.

Dark and brilliant.

an undeniable talent and great band but it all feels… sterile.

A hidden gem in the early development of country rock. Ambitious and sprawling.

Seems like pretty decent Glam, would need some more time with it.

Creepy lush music.

nothing stuck out as bad. Quite a few songs stuck out as exceptional. It's really long and this was a first listen, will need more time with it.

competent noisy rock.

An uneven album by one of the all time greats.

Undoubtedly influential album that just feels like noodling to me.

Solid post punk, would like to spend more time with it.

Emotional. Sprawling. Epic. An improvisational feat!

Very good Reggae. Will spend more time with it.

One of the all time great debuts. A dark fully realized and original album.

The Neil songs are great, the rest is uneven and doesn’t meet the high bar of the first album.

This is a solid album by one of the most consistent bands in American music. I mean Power Pop wasn’t even really a thing yet but you had Petty, Big Star and Dwight Twilley making it a thing. This album is a concoction of southern sensibilities and Punk aesthetic. They made better albums for sure but the sneer was never the same & there was never the same sense of urgency. Sure, almost 50 years later this sounds like classic rock radio but this was fresh and new and slightly dangerous in its day. If nothing else, it has Breakdown and American Girl which are stone cold classics. It’s amazing to think they were this fully realized from the get go.

I don’t think I’m capabale of thinking about this album critically. She had been a country artist before this album. She was quirky and strange, her songs full of humor. In the three years between Absolute Truth and Twang, she came out as a lesbian and to further alienate herself from a still very conservative musical genre - she became an outspoken animal rights activist. With this album she transitioned to an adult contemporary artist. She was suddenly doing music that more closely resembled what you would hear in nightclub and more likely some seedy French place. The production and vocals immaculate. The album itself is very much about unrequited love and is an emotionally complex work from an artist who not only reinvented herself but stepped out with new confidence and a bit of a cavalier devil may care attitude not accepting compromise with her audience. It is an artist saying this is who I am and my desires and if you don’t like it, I don’t really care.

This is peak George Clinton to me. While One Nation is Under a Groove is great, it isn’t quite the sound I associate with Clinton. Aqua Boogie is my other fave and the far out sound I associate with Parliament. This album is more of a direct lineage from James Brown’s funk but is reaching for that spaced out sound. What really struck me today is how clean the production is… I’ve always thought of Clinton’s sound as cacophonous but this album has presence of stage depth and the instruments are distinct and separate. There is a cacophony but if you listen clearly you can hear everything. And it grooves!

Sometimes you have to check your biases. This was not as bad as I expected it to be. Actually quite enjoyable and more so with each listen. Even the singles started not to annoy in context.

Stunning

Ubiquitous and catchy. A little long.

My favorite album by one of the best bands of the late twentieth and early twenty first century/. A band at the cusp of reinventing rock. It’s epic.

Space noodling jazz funk. Odd and brilliant.

My favorite not live release of the electric/fusion period. This is considered Miles' first fusion album, he had been headed that way for a minute adding electric instrumentation to Miles in the SKy and Filles de Kilimanjaro. Even further Sorcerer and Nefertiti had shown a shift from modal music to a more moody groovy music. In many ways, Nefertiti feels like Silent Way. The biggest difference not just being the augmentation of acoustic instruments but the addition of the work of Teo Macero. The music begins to be composed after the studio work is done... having many takes cut together to form a new composition different then even the free flowing takes in the studio. This would not only be a big deal in the music Miles would make for the rest of the seventies, but in music in general. It is a piece of the puzzle that became EDM and Hip Hop. @jamieanderson1968 says the Laswell work is sacrilege to some, but I think it shows that he understood what this was. Panthalassa is worth a listen and a fitting tribute to this period of not only intense experimentation in the music, but in how it was released. This is not only just a masterpiece but one that still challenges musicians today to do better. A top notch band expanding the possibilities of the music and a top notch production that expands what music actually is. This album is a vibe.

Cinematic infectious booty shaking kitsch.

I didn't really know the Bon Scott story until recently and now I find this album sadly ironic. I also find the idea that the difference between this and Back in Black is filler funny. AC/DC is nothing but lean. Which is part of their problem, they created a formula for their sound and went with it. The filler is just stuff that they didn't release as singles, because I don't think the quality of songs ever lets up on this album. This is basically a call for help from Bon that wasn't heard. It actually fills me with a bit of dread now. Ultimately, it is fun. It is one of two for sure essential albums by the band, the other being Back in Black. Sure the fans will throw Dirty Deeds out as well and honestly, I think through Let There Be Rock they are very solid (and Powerage mostly suffers from them straying from the formula.) Anyhow, this band made these two unequivocal masterpieces. AC/DC is an important band though. Mutt made them marketable and by extension created a world where Hair Metal ruled the airwaves, GNR dominated sales, and ultimately - when combined with the indie movement in the eighties - allowed the harder music when Punk broke to be palatable by the masses and marketed as Alternative. If this album had not been a monster followed by a behemoth none of that happens the way it did.

A band I’ve always meant to spend more time with. I’ve always had a copy of Invisible Touch (just picked up an OG the other day) and I know the Lamb Lies Down very well. HUGE fan of Gabriel’s solo stuff and a fan of Collins’ solo stuff but never dug into the rest of their catalog. I mean I’ve heard this but never gave it the time it probably deserves. I have a feeling this is exactly the kind of music that people who hate prog rock are talking about when they say they hate prog rock. It’s very English. Very noodly. Very full of itself. I’m honestly not sure where I fall half way through it. I’m still mixed on my third listen. There are parts I really dig then there are parts where it makes me want to stuff things in my ears. I have a feeling this is not the best starting place.

A heck of a lot of fun. Derivative but fresh. Will revisit.

A very good album by a very good band.