470
Albums Rated
3.2
Average Rating
43%
Complete
619 albums remaining
Rating Distribution
Rating Timeline
Taste Profile
1950
Favorite Decade
Soul
Favorite Genre
other
Top Origin
Wordsmith
Rater Style ?
27
5-Star Albums
22
1-Star Albums
Breakdown
By Genre
Top Styles
By Decade
By Origin
Albums
You Love More Than Most
| Album | You | Global | Diff |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Introducing The Hardline According To Terence Trent D'Arby
Terence Trent D'Arby
|
5 | 2.98 | +2.02 |
|
Pieces Of The Sky
Emmylou Harris
|
5 | 3.11 | +1.89 |
|
Let It Be
The Replacements
|
5 | 3.25 | +1.75 |
|
I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got
Sinead O'Connor
|
5 | 3.26 | +1.74 |
|
This Year's Model
Elvis Costello & The Attractions
|
5 | 3.31 | +1.69 |
|
A Girl Called Dusty
Dusty Springfield
|
5 | 3.33 | +1.67 |
|
Court And Spark
Joni Mitchell
|
5 | 3.35 | +1.65 |
|
The Köln Concert
Keith Jarrett
|
5 | 3.39 | +1.61 |
|
Paul's Boutique
Beastie Boys
|
5 | 3.46 | +1.54 |
|
Dusty In Memphis
Dusty Springfield
|
5 | 3.47 | +1.53 |
You Love Less Than Most
| Album | You | Global | Diff |
|---|---|---|---|
|
In The Court Of The Crimson King
King Crimson
|
1 | 3.6 | -2.6 |
|
...And Justice For All
Metallica
|
1 | 3.42 | -2.42 |
|
Lost In The Dream
The War On Drugs
|
1 | 3.39 | -2.39 |
|
NEU! 75
Neu!
|
1 | 3.1 | -2.1 |
|
La Revancha Del Tango
Gotan Project
|
1 | 3.03 | -2.03 |
|
Deserter's Songs
Mercury Rev
|
1 | 3.03 | -2.03 |
|
Brown Sugar
D'Angelo
|
1 | 2.93 | -1.93 |
|
In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida
Iron Butterfly
|
1 | 2.93 | -1.93 |
|
The Sun Rises In The East
Jeru The Damaja
|
1 | 2.91 | -1.91 |
|
Destroyer
KISS
|
1 | 2.85 | -1.85 |
Artists
Favorites
| Artist | Albums | Average |
|---|---|---|
| Simon & Garfunkel | 2 | 5 |
| Dusty Springfield | 2 | 5 |
| The Beach Boys | 3 | 4.33 |
| Beastie Boys | 3 | 4.33 |
| David Bowie | 5 | 4 |
Least Favorites
| Artist | Albums | Average |
|---|---|---|
| Metallica | 2 | 1.5 |
| King Crimson | 2 | 1.5 |
| The Mothers Of Invention | 2 | 1.5 |
5-Star Albums (27)
View Album Wall
Popular Reviews
War · 2 likes
3/5
Funk sauce. “Cisco Kid” is a great leadoff. But War ain’t playin’. “Four-Cornered Room” and “The World is a Ghetto” are confrontational and angry tracks. Sometimes the music doesn’t match the lyrical intensity - “City, Country, City” is a way-overlong snooze. But War is cool and they say the things that matter in their cool, easy way.
Alice Cooper · 2 likes
4/5
All my life I never took a ride on the Alice train. He was a novelty act, a couple good songs, to my mind crazily overrated. I was listening wrong. Alice is Broadway, he’s musical theater, he’s glitter blown in your face with attitude. He’s more than a rock star: he took all the elements of KISS and Bowie and made his own legend. I’m sorry I took so long to come around, Alice. I am indeed not worthy.
The B-52's · 2 likes
4/5
B-52s were punk as fuck. What else sounded like this in 1979? The debut's still as great as the day it was born. And they just got better. B-52s will live forever, because they must.
Def Leppard · 1 likes
3/5
This album was where I began to part company with the British Boys. I was a huge DefHead up through Pyromania, but this lost me. As crazy as it sounds to say they’d gone too commercial (that’s ALL they were), the Mutt Lange-ing of Hysteria got out of hand. Songs got bloated, lyrics got way dumber, and the whole pop-radio affair just didn’t appeal to headbangy l’il me. There were plenty of bangers, sure! But the goofy raggedy fun was lost. Ah well.
Stephen Stills · 1 likes
3/5
Boomer stuff. It’s fine.
4-Star Albums (159)
1-Star Albums (22)
All Ratings
John Coltrane
5/5
The standard. I don’t know jazz. But I know that when I listen to A Love Supreme, I think, “oh, I want to hear that again.” And then I understand what I like about jazz, and why it’s the standard.
Wilco
3/5
Lovely, lonely, longing, like a poem written by a weedy traveler left on the table of a diner. Who knows where it will end up, but it needed to be said. The waitress picks it up - at first she thought it was some shitty attempt at a tip - and reads a few lines between orders. It stirs something unknown in her. Maybe she’ll give it to her son and he can pass it around. To someone who appreciates this kind of thing.
“The sound of clouds above the world” is a lyric that plays repeatedly in her head.
The Beach Boys
5/5
Brian Wilson drove his bandmates nuts making this album, but no one else could create the original, wildly creative sound he directed. A pop masterpiece that doesn’t sound like pop at all. Like classical music that’s actually interesting.
Simon & Garfunkel
5/5
David Bowie
3/5
Bowie gonna Bowie. I don’t love this album apart from “Sound and Vision” and “Speed of Life”. The rest is very introspective and Instrumental. But I keep listening because even rambling, experimental Bowie is still interesting. I think the final track, “Subterraneans”, is a beautiful mood piece.
Blondie
4/5
James Brown
4/5
Hell yeah King of the Apollo, Hardest Working Man in Show Business rips off the roof and renames it the House of James. This album’s really short! But listen to the famously tough Apollo crowd melt in his presence, and you’ll be wanting more too.
The Specials
3/5
Sure! Fun. Not really my thing. Cool, repetitive, kinda ska, kinda reggae. Skeggae. Okay. Good times.
David Bowie
4/5
Franz Ferdinand
4/5
Plenty has been written about this album, so I’ll leave the review to Simon Fernand of BBC Music: “[Franz Ferdinand] may not be a particularly long album, but it is a masterpiece of funky, punky, suave cool from the first track to the last."
Pink Floyd
3/5
You just made the longest-charting album of all time, a stone classic . It’s okay to take a breather.
Led Zeppelin
5/5
SCREECHING NOISES
BURSTS OF THUNDER AND LIGHTNING
A HOWLING FIGURE IN THE NIGHT RAIN ATOP A STONY PEAK
SEX
ANVILS RAIN FROM THE SKY AS THE GODS SPLIT MOUNTAINS AND BRING FORTH TWIN-HEADED DRAGONS FROM THE DEEP OCEANS
SEX
A SOFT TUNE PLAYED UPON A MANDOLIN AS THE GOATS FROLIC
ANVILS
I like it
Doves
4/5
This would get four stars for “Words” alone. As it is, the album’s a repeat listener. Cool and tight with a style I don’t know what to call. Like if 10cc kept it up. Canadian.
Aerosmith
4/5
It should be a 3.5 star rating, because there’s some seriously filler shit on here, but I’ll err on the side of generosity due to the stone-legend bangers on this record.
Nas
3/5
From Wikipedia:
Chris Ryan, writing in The New Rolling Stone Album Guide (2004), called Illmatic "a portrait of an artist as a hood, loner, tortured soul, juvenile delinquent, and fledgling social critic," and wrote that it "still stands as one of rap's crowning achievements".
Works for me
Todd Rundgren
4/5
Todd Rundgren, hit machine? No! Todd Rundgren, music maker! This MF sits “Hello It’s Me” at #22 on a 25-track album! But before that are plenty of terrific songs.
His sound is unique and he’s one prolific artist. He puts out so much but it never sounds “filler”. Another musician I need to spend more time with.
ZZ Top
4/5
I came to ZZ Top with Eliminator, and I played it until the wheels fell off. So it took me a long time to learn about the origins of the Li’l Ol’ Band from Texas. I didn’t have much taste for the sound of Texas swag-rock, but this album is a blast. It’s fun! It whips, it rocks! Yeeeahhh! Guitars!
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
2/5
I don’t like Karen O’s voice - or more, the way it’s distorted in the Yeahx3’s songs. I’m in the minority on that, I don’t care. And the songs don’t vary. Loud buzzing until the last few songs sound like the whole band crashed after a sugar rush.
I will just never like the Yeahx3s.
Stevie Wonder
4/5
Sprawling, sensual, wild, overlong, gorgeous, transcendental, overlong, weirdly written, utterly funky and one of a kind. Stevie had a lot to express on this album, and he let it all flow. It doesn’t all work, but it’s unique and legendary.
Michael Jackson
2/5
This shit didn’t age well. MJ knew it would be hard to top “Thriller”, so he didn’t. You can’t dance to any of it, and the beats and lyrics are so soft. Your butt is mine, indeed.
The Sonics
4/5
Hell yeah the raw Seattle sound, rippin out the throats of pretenders, mainlining straight into souls of Mudhoney and Tad and Nirvana and Soundgarden, this shit is awesome and LOUD
The Doors
3/5
Warrior-poet draggy nonsense, repetitive, overlong garbage cut with a couple of absolute gems. If Jim Morrison had learned to sing and write songs, they could have had something!
Fatboy Slim
4/5
It's a trip! It's got a funky beat, and I can bug out to it!
A Tribe Called Quest
4/5
Like one unbroken track of flow, funny, clever and rude as hell
Cornershop
3/5
It was fine. There are one or two semi-bangers outside of "Brimful of Asha", but the rest sounds like a sleepy jam session among friends. Nice beats but forgettable songs.
Dion
2/5
A couple of really good songs on here. "Only You Know" is a repeat listen. Unfortunately it's on a double-length album full of half-finished songs that sound very much like each other. Pleasant but really forgettable.
Dr. Octagon
2/5
Boring, too long, forgettable. Please no more hour-plus albums with the same beat and shitty lyrics
The War On Drugs
1/5
We kick off with an eight-and-a-half minute track that goes absolutely nowhere. It’s downhill, or rather, level ground with no ups or downs from there. I forgot about the existence of this album halfway through listening to it.
Orbital
2/5
Boring bullshit
Belle & Sebastian
4/5
All B&S albums are beautiful in their own way. This one moves with the grace of a cat in a spacious, warm house. It sounds like their third or fourth album, doesn’t it? Composed, skillful, moving and confident. Get this: it’s their FIRST. That magic only comes from the earth and the air.
The Who
4/5
I’ll tell you who’s next: me, to play this album over and over again. Out of my way, I say! Classics are classics because you can listen to them anytime and they don’t get old. So I’m an Xer with Boomer taste maybe, I don’t know; this record smacks.
Travis
3/5
Dreamy pop that fades as it plays. A coupe of songs I like on here, but “Slide Show” is a farce of an album capper.
Can
2/5
You know, it was fine. It wasn’t great. It was pretty bad in parts. I didn’t like it. But if I was super-ass high in a sunlit San Francisco apartment in the summer of ‘71, I would dig on this and then fall asleep. So.
4/5
Now this is what I like! The damn-you England rant couched in deceptively upbeat and catchy tunes. I listened twice in relief after so many duds on this generator. Man, they can't sing so well, but they are so distinctive. I keep returning to the Kinks because they keep innovating. Great album.
Buddy Holly & The Crickets
4/5
Oh hell yeah, this was fun! Short and sharp. It’s been ages since I went back to the beginnings of (the white knock-off version of) rock and roll. Buoyant and classic hops! The Crickets sound QUITE old-fashioned, but charmingly so. Always worth a revisit.
Joy Division
3/5
New Order was a phoenix.
The Flaming Lips
3/5
Wayne Coyne is a fabulous human being. I’m glad the Lips make music beloved by millions. They’re just not my cuppa. I don’t really like his singing, and the songs aside from a few slappers don’t reach me.
CHIC
4/5
Disco. I cruise down Sunset in my ‘74 LeBaron, in the glow of an L.A. summer afternoon, past Grauman’s where the Han Solo impersonators do a little dance with the tourists, smelling the sea breeze trying to cut through the smog. I pick you up and we head for the Mangione concert at the Bowl. Stars in our eyes if not in the skies, baby.
Disco.
Jimmy Smith
3/5
Very skilled musicianship! I like this, but I don't like a whole album of it. I can't believe this is one of 1,001 albums I MUST hear.
Super Furry Animals
2/5
Good listen, but forgettable. They kind of sound like Guided by Voices, but without quite the coherence or catchiness. I was hoping for more, but I couldn't get into it.
Mott The Hoople
3/5
British folk-rock psychedelia. Sounds like a blend of the Kinks, the Who, the Stoens and Bowie, while still being its own thing. Who influenced whom? It’s a good album that doesn’t quite stand out from its peers.
Nick Drake
5/5
Unrivaled. Nick, why did you leave us?
Neil Young
5/5
Another classic. What’s underrated about Young is that he incorporates so many musical styles/genres into his sound and makes them something unique. There’s a marvelous orchestral piece on here that sits with folk-rock, country and blues. Amid the classic songs is a remarkable catalog of Americana. ITV’s timeless .
Genesis
3/5
The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway is widely regarded as one of Genesis's most important and influential works, inspiring generations of progressive rock musicians.
-- https://store.acousticsounds.com/d/178476/Genesis-The_Lamb_Lies_Down_On_Broadway-Hybrid_Stereo_SACD?srsltid=AfmBOoqY9Ce99zbVJVEBShZlZ8FNg-GMGjxxdWnZBMC8ETwR_b21g0Ci
The Band
2/5
I don’t like The Band.
B.B. King
4/5
B.B. bent low and whispered in Lucille’s ear. “Lucille, my love… why do I play the blues when I’m a successful and beloved musician?”
Lucille looked B.B. in the eye. “Blues is part of your soul. It will always be in you. You can make millions and be world-famous, but you can’t leave the blues behind. And you can’t leave me behind either. Now honey… play me.”
And B.B. did.
Ray Charles
4/5
I mean, the title speaks the truth. It's goddamn Ray Charles, motherfucker. Whaddaya need, a road map?
Boards of Canada
4/5
Space jazz. I like it.
Yes
3/5
I mean, I like some Yes. A couple tracks on this album really spin. Though it would piss off the true Yes-heads that I prefer the mid-80s output of 90125. It’s maybe not a good sign that I couldn’t tell when the album ended until I was three tracks deep into the next playlist. And Jon Anderson shout-sings and it gets on my nerves. So what I’m getting at is, I have to say no to Yes.
Metallica
1/5
This album was shit when I first heard it, and now it’s remastered shit. Congratulations. You got big and decided to write Really Important songs. But they sucked! And you forgot to write good music to accompany your diary entries!
You could have been the AC/DC of metal, man. You blew it.
Eurythmics
4/5
Eurythmics brought the 80s into focus and outclassed all their imitators. This album was so weird and cool in 1983 and still sounds like nothing else. I got shit for having a crush on Annie Lennox, but come on!
Sade
4/5
Smoooooooooooooooooooooth.
John Lennon
3/5
Harrison had the best post-Beatles output, but Lennon cut himself loose and produced some fine, angry and heartfelt music freed from Paul’s ribbons. There’s classic music on here and some working-it-out jams. John always sang with his heart out in the open. I still think about what he could be producing today.
Destiny's Child
4/5
Springy, slinky and full of jams. Not my typical music but a great album to listen to.
The Charlatans
3/5
Are the Charlatans for real? Not quite. Catchy songs (“One to Another “ has a nice pop to it) but they don’t rise above the sound of better Britpop bands.
Simon & Garfunkel
5/5
“I hate your guts, Art. Let’s break up.”
“Likewise, Paul. Screw it. Before we split, should we record one of the greatest folk-pop albums of all time?”
“Sure, what the hell.”
Weather Report
2/5
The dawn of smooth jazz?
It’s well made for what it is, but what it is is not for me.
Dinosaur Jr.
3/5
Big ugly fun. Even the five-minute “Don’t”, which is J Mascis howling “whyyyy don’t you liiiike me” over and over.
Adele
4/5
Hadn’t heard this one in a while. It’s a killer. What a range she has, and the emotion comes pouring out of every song. “Sweetest Emotion” is such a strong closer; I crank it LOUD
Big Star
2/5
I kind of hated this one, it sounded like half the album was a protracted fade-out. I know the history. But other reviews have called it something great. I’m going to give another listen; for now, it doesn’t work for me.
Kanye West
3/5
Killer beats, snap-wit lyrics, confidence on wax. Points off for being a Nazi fuckhead.
Dennis Wilson
3/5
Overlong? Indulgent? Sure. But Wilson has a gift for creating songs that reflect his dreamy yearning as an artist. Some beautiful melodies here; it reminds me a little bit of Brian’s work.
Willie Nelson
4/5
Willie’s voice is so pleasing, I can listen to him sing anything. That twang puts a sweet spin on this collection of standards. He really slows the tempo, savoring the lyrics so that the songs really feel lived-in.
Fleet Foxes
3/5
Pretty music
Throwing Muses
4/5
I couldn’t find the chosen album on Spotify, so I listened to The Real Ramona instead, and it whipped ass. It burned the grass, stood me up against the glass, completed the pass, and sounded a little bit crass.
I liked the album.
Jeff Buckley
5/5
Incredible. Jeff had a unique sound, wild and unpredictable and compelling. I’d never listened to Grace all the way through before, but I will listen again.
He met his father only once, and the two sound very different, but both made music that was one-of-a-kind.
Alexander 'Skip' Spence
2/5
Much like Big Star’s “Third”, this is an acid-haze album that’s been celebrated retrospectively. Not by me. A collection of unmemorable half-songs that ramble and then just stop. Just ain’t my thing.
The Zombies
3/5
Classic tea-and-cakes Brit psychedelic pop. “Time of the Season” is actually my least favorite track - it sounds annoying compared to a banger like “Our Year”. Good groovy stuff.
Sepultura
3/5
I don’t usually go in for pebble-gargling grind metal, but my god did I need to hear this album yesterday.
Van Morrison
4/5
Outstanding, gorgeous, evocative music made by a fucking ass-brained cuntfuck. You can’t win ‘em all.
The Lemonheads
3/5
Prime 90s pop, with the jangle and the alienated lyrics and the catchiness. One I can listen to multiple times. “It’s a Shame About Ray” absolutely holds up. I say: Dando-riffic!
Blur
4/5
So good. Not much to say, just playing it again. And again.
That album cover is mesmerizing. I wonder who won.
Paul Simon
3/5
A few classic Simon tunes right off the bat. Tentatively finding that distinct Simon sound without Art’s harmonies. Experimental on a few tracks. The first steps of an incredible solo career
Traffic
2/5
If I want to hear a big multi-instrument band of white musicians play various genres, I'll listen to Chicago. If I want to hear the whitest vocalist on Earth, I'll listen to Rush (I won't listen to Rush). If I want to hear unmemorable and dated songs that pass serenely through my ears for an hour, I'll give this a spin.
Britney Spears
3/5
FREE BRITNEY!!! There are 3-4 club bangers on here, the rest is typical pop album business. All enjoyable and easy on the ears. You lead off with THAT song, you can pretty much do whatever else you want.
Creedence Clearwater Revival
4/5
I usually don’t like too much CCR but this album was pretty great! Aside from the classics, many tracks I hadn’t heard before really went hard. “Ramble Tamble” is a great opener.
Bob Dylan
4/5
This is the shit. Dylan goes electric, etc. I recently watched “A Complete Unknown” so it was fun to picture Bobby writing these songs with a sly sneer on his face, thinking “one day they’re gonna make a movie of me and they’ll know I was pretty.” The BALLS to make “Baby Blue” the album CLOSER.
Portishead
3/5
Sleek misery. Dreadpop. Beautiful dirge music. I don’t know, it only makes sense after 9:00 pm and it’s entrancing then. In the daylight it’s out of time and place. And with daylight saving time coming around I’ll be more confused than ever.
The KLF
3/5
Let me just say this:
KLF is gonna rock you. It is known.
Good power-dance nineties pop. 3AM Eternal is the only true standout but the songs aren’t slack. I’ll listen again.
Lynyrd Skynyrd
2/5
This one doesn’t even have fuckin Sweet Home on it. What’s the point? Neil Young just released a new album in 2025 and he still whips your asses. Why’d you disappear, anyway? Oh right.
The title of the album was strictly for the band’s benefit, ‘cos sometimes they’d forget. They knew three chords and their lyrics were the Crystal Pepsi of southern rock. Too bad Tom Petty came later or we might have done without you entirely.
Suicide
1/5
These aren’t songs. And I hated listening to them.
Chicago
3/5
Hoppin'! The band learning to be tight. Weird album: absolute bangers followed by eight-minute intolerable "free-form" guitar pieces. Loses steam as it goes, but you can hear that these guys are skilled as hell and having fun. Maybe they'll make a few more of these.
Hookworms
3/5
Never heard of the band or the album before, but I like it. Psychedelic sort of pop, rock, other in interesting combinations. I'd listen again, it's not something I've heard before but it hooked me.
Booker T. & The MG's
3/5
Why don't they make the whole album out of "Green Onions"? I could listen to that track endlessly. The rest of the album is okay, but only a couple more tracks catch the ear and the organ music gets a bit repetitive.
Killing Joke
3/5
It's fine. Repetitive, not in a great way.
Shack
3/5
Pretty good, pretty interesting. Sounds like a pastiche of four-guy guitar bands without being derivative. It's its own thing but it's hard to describe how it's different.
Worth another listen.
N.W.A.
3/5
Kinda drops off after the first two tracks, but the first two tracks are so fucking good it really doesn't matter. You get cut a lot of slack when you lead off with music that literally changed the idea of rap and pissed off the cops for life.
Guns N' Roses
4/5
Still electric after 35 years to hear that riff open the album. These guys ruled the world for a few months and got out just before Nirvana extinguished them. It’s easy to forget how fucking huge they were. Then they (Axl) got weird and stupid, like so many bands do, but you just need one classic album to live forever.
The B-52's
4/5
B-52s were punk as fuck. What else sounded like this in 1979? The debut's still as great as the day it was born. And they just got better. B-52s will live forever, because they must.
Metallica
2/5
Couldn’t finish it. Why did the songs get so strained and uncool? I know they wanted to move on from “Damage Inc.” and the like but I’ll listen to that song fifty times before I crack the case on the later stuff.
This album is NOT essential!
Herbie Hancock
3/5
Herbie Hancock always cool. I’m happy I sought out more of his material beyond Rockit. Bringing the jazz and the funk together like PB&J.
Dexys Midnight Runners
3/5
“Come On Eileen” was an outlier for this band, and I like a lot of this material quite more than that song, which became an eardrill. Kevin Rowland’s voice is A BIT MUCH sometimes, but when he dials it down and the band gets into a groove, there are some terrific relistenable songs.
The Byrds
3/5
byrdsrightsactivist gives this album two talons up
Elliott Smith
3/5
Morose music for morose times. Thanks and God bless, Elliott,
Bob Marley & The Wailers
3/5
Bob Marley is an actual legend, but reggae bores me.
The Stooges
3/5
IGGY POWER
Curtis Mayfield
4/5
Superfly and Shaft should duke it out in the alley. So smooth and beautiful
The Black Keys
3/5
Ooh this is fun! Heavy beats and guitars, thudding catchy rhythms. Not a raw sound but quick-seared on the grill. Yeah, Black Keys. All right. What it is.
De La Soul
4/5
So glad it’s streaming now. I got to see De La Soul at Bumbershoot years ago, and briefly confused them for Yo La Tengo because I’m an idiot. I make it up to them by listening frequently. I’m not sure this one’s their best when there are so many to choose from. My name’s Plug Four.
The Velvet Underground
3/5
Cool. Velvet is best for me in small doses. Well, small doses of Lou Reed. Honestly my favorite album of theirs is VU, which is so playful and divergent from their typical, well, drone. There’s some killer music on here, of course.
Elliott Smith
3/5
“Son of Sam” is a great kickoff track.
AC/DC
4/5
It’s AC/DC man, you need a road map? Highway to Hell might be my favorite of the Bon songs. The greatest loss the band took when he died was his sense of humor. Bon was fucking funny, something Brian can’t match.
Elastica
3/5
Pretty good electropop, Nothing kicks like “Connection”, so they probably did steal it whole from Wire. But it’s fun, the songs are short and fast, and they sound cool.
Arcade Fire
2/5
I can’t remember anything about this album ten minutes after playing it. Ancestor of Imagine Dragons, I suppose. That one song about driving a car or something is okay.
Mudhoney
4/5
Finally, the fuzz pioneers of the Seattle Sound get their due. Goddamn, I haven’t listened to this one in a long time and kicks like a boot to put it on again. It’s nasty, loud, raw, rude and funny as hell. God bless you Mark Arm and your little dog.
Prince
5/5
I accidentally deleted my first review. This album blew my head off in 1984 and still does today.
The Allman Brothers Band
2/5
Made it three songs. Spare me southern rock - a jug band with electricity. No más!
Frank Black
3/5
Hadn’t heard any Frank outside of the Pixies. Wasn’t interested. But I like this and I’d listen again. Different sound from those days: less manic screeching (which I love, don’t misunderstand), more grounded, melodic and even a little countryfied. “Headache” stands out, but several tracks are repeatable. Sexy!
Digital Underground
3/5
Terrific fun when Humpty's on the mic, pretty bland when he's not. When Humpty's not around. all the other characters should be asking. "Where's Humpty?"
Soul II Soul
2/5
Wow, boring. Listen to “Back To Life” and skip the rest. Easy-listening hip hop.
Talking Heads
4/5
I don’t know what to write here. I love this album, it’s great. Cohesive, creative, sounds like nothing else. You could put Psycho Killer way down the list here.
King Crimson
2/5
marty that was very interesting music
Tom Waits
4/5
It’s incredible to me that a resurrected Civil War soldier can talk and eat and drink among us in the present day., and “sing” such terrific songs. This album came out in 1975, and he YET WALKS AMONG US TO THIS DAY. Tom Waits is the Unkillable Nicotine Troubadour.
Queen
4/5
Here's a band that plays opera, music hall, jazz, country, carnival and baroque pop and has the right to call itself one of the best ROCK bands in history. Let's put out a wild, eclectic album of varied styles with energy, humor and creative drive and then we'll put GODDMANED BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY as the next-to-last track.
Gods.
Gotan Project
1/5
Unseasoned soup. Glop. Third rate Astrud Gilberto. Why can’t I review a Gilberto album instead? This jello doesn’t belong on any must-hear list.
Marvin Gaye
4/5
Ooohh so sweet. Takes me into a time warp of a mid-70s summer groove. The sound is perfection. Mr. Gaye is buttery smooth and so so horny. I had to laugh when I thought “this one track is beautiful, soulful - what’s it called?” and it was “You Sure Love to Ball.”
Yeah you do.
The Killers
4/5
Fuckin great, no mess line drive rock and roll. This album’s basically a classic, not bad for a debut record. Brandon Flowers’ voice was built for these songs, an unmistakable yawp of emotion and power. Let’s play it again!
Fleetwood Mac
5/5
I’ve listened to this album 54,000 times and it never gets old. Except for “Oh Daddy”, I’ve only listened to that one 48,000 times ‘cos it’s a bit janky. To be a drug dealer in the Sausalito studio - the stories I could tell! I’d contrive to have Christine write a song about our tender encounter and leave “Oh Daddy” off the album.
Paul McCartney and Wings
3/5
A prime example of why Paul wasn’t the same without John. Wildly catchy and well-crafted songs share space with utter piddle.
Led Zeppelin
4/5
Aside from The Lemon Song and Movy Dick, this album’s a monster that starts in sixth gear with Whole Lotta Love and keeps the pedal down. Honestly you could just make the whole record out of WLL and it would be four stars. But we get 3-4 other classic stompers as well. Just cut the drum solos.
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
4/5
His lycanthropy transformation interrupted by a bolt of lightning in the summer of 1797, Nick Cave stalks the earth, howling songs of tortured love and loss into the lonely wooded mountains. Field recordings have given us the gift of his music, but Mr. Cave himself will never again live among “the normal”.
The Teardrop Explodes
3/5
Julian Cope and the lads overcame one of the goofiest names in music to produce a solid album of psychedelia-tinged Britpop. The origin story is a winner.
The Jam
3/5
It was good and cool. Never listened much to The Jam, they never really cracked the U.S.
Echo And The Bunnymen
3/5
“Echo and the Bunnymen, what a dreadful group. They've let me down. There's this duality I feel; I can think other people have let me down, yet as an artist I think that I can do whatever I want to do and I'm not letting anyone down. People trust us not to be stupid, at least in a way.”
— Robert Smith
https://www.spin.com/featured/the-cure-robert-smith-march-1988-cover-story-cure-all/
Pulp
3/5
I really liked this record except where it falls apart at the end.’m honestly yoo stoned to wtirr Yee w a review but I dig savage English music with bite.
The Slits
3/5
Cool, angular punk. Sexy ska-jazz, riffy, dynamic. Slightly savage. Infecting. Moves like anger. Dance to it. If you can.
Sam Cooke
4/5
Cooke tears through about twenty songs in about 35 minutes, sounding almost manic as he pumps up the crowd and sings every song at full power, and it's terrific. Massive live-performance energy as he goes through the hits, and there are a lot of hits. Cocaine is a hell of a drug!
Public Enemy
3/5
"It’s a sprawling, messy, politically charged, and ultimately humanistic album. It features Chuck D and Flavor Flav trying to envision the future, and taking chances as performers."
-- Jesse Ducker
https://albumism.com/features/public-enemy-fear-of-a-black-planet-album-anniversary
T. Rex
3/5
Ripping! What are they? There’s no sound like T. Rex. Marc Bolan was a wild man and we were robbed of goodness by his early death. Their influence is everywhere.
Look at these titles:
Baby Boomerang
Soaceball Ricochet
Rabbit Fighter
Chariot Choogle
That’s rock and roll.
Norah Jones
2/5
Smooth, pretty and like pancakes: all exciting at first, and then you’re fuckin sick of it! (Hedberg) She has a very limited range. I’ll say the non-hit songs are more interesting, but still: just give me some Aretha or Etta. Hell, give me Sade.
Public Image Ltd.
1/5
It’s not good! Atonal repetitive noise offset by short bursts of musicality. Ugly, repetitive and boring! They got better. Why the hell is this album on the list? Pick “Album” instead; this one is a No.
Louis Prima
4/5
The Wildest! The goofiest! The funnest (not a word)! Louis’s the king of the swingers, yo, the hustle VIP. Him the best. Thanks for the banana split.
Bonnie "Prince" Billy
3/5
“The tracks on this release this release are not available.”
Fuck you, Spotify!
I listened to his newest album, The Purple Bird, instead. It’s quite good! Is he always playing countrified folk? Guess I’ll have to listen more.
Sparks
3/5
I tried to compare Sparks to some other bands and I can’t really make it work. Maybe if Queen and Guided By Voixes put on a cabaret show. They are distinctive, weird bastards and they seem incapable of pouring weird and catchy music into the world.
Garbage
2/5
It’s fine. Passed by with a murmur. I’ve never been a Garbage fan, their sound just never sticks with me. “Stupid Girl” is a kick, though the rest of it is mostly… 90s pop.
N.E.R.D
3/5
Had never heard of N.E.R.D., nor that Pharrell Williams was part of it. Here’s the verdict: I like it. It’s lyrically fun, it’s musical, it has a fresh energy that makes good repeat listening. Will I seek out more N.E.R.D.? This will not shock you: yes.
Songhoy Blues
3/5
It’s cool. I don’t know what to write about it. It’s not my thing.
Ash
3/5
Never heard of them before! It’s good, it’s not memorable. To be fair I was listening at work and didn’t really give it my full attention. I liked the 90s sound and I’ll have to give it a full listen later.
The Velvet Underground
3/5
Some legendary songs are supported by some, honestly, droning filler. The last two songs are painful. VU are rightly legends for their music, but Jesus - some of their output was pure scag.
Elvis Presley
4/5
This album SLAMS. The production is fantastic, Elvis booms out of the center surrounded by a crisp, snappy, powerhouse of a band. The first few tracks are the best, energetic out of the gate, Elvis seducing you with that mountain echo of a voice. But the remainder are no slouch, as he shows off his whole vocal range. Really fun album, man, listen to it again!
fIREHOSE
3/5
Prince
4/5
Absolute funkenstein, of course. Prince becoming PRIIIIINCE. Some of these songs go on way too long is all. Partial demerit. But Purple Rain is around the corner.
The Mamas & The Papas
4/5
Knockout. I have to sing along. The Beach Boys mastered harmony but the M&Ps made it soar like a finely tuned choir. And there were so many more hits to come. BRB, gotta listen (and sing) again.
50 Cent
2/5
I gave it a listen, or about half of it. That’s more than enough. You don’t need the full 75 minutes (!!!) to absorb Curtis’s worldview, which - guess what?! Women be ho’s and he’s the baddest MF on the planet. You’re boring, Fitty.
Gil Scott-Heron
4/5
Poetic, visceral, angry, loving… Gil leaves nothing out, creating poetry straight from his soul. Nobody else was making music liking this. A couple tracks drift, but forgivable because the album as a whole is a testament. Nothing’s changed but the names.
The Who
4/5
Rock opera! Nobody does rock operas anymore. Cowards! Umber never seen it performed; it would hold up today as a tale of abuse, cults, pseudoscience and so on. It’s a comprehensive tale told through great music and probably could only have been made in the 60s. Listen for more than “Pinball Wizard”. It’s a masterpiece.
Grateful Dead
2/5
The Dead suck. I hate them. I’ve tried. “Box of Rain” is a pretty good song I suppose.
Fairport Convention
4/5
Sandy Denny had a voice that would make me drop my carpenter’s tools and follow her into the English countryside. She might sing-command me to throw myself off a cliff then, but the journey was all worth it.
3/5
https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/3756-stories-from-the-city-stories-from-the-sea/
Liz Phair
3/5
The debut is not as snarly or speedy as I imagined it would be. More of that comes on the second album. But Exile’s wit and attitude are diamond-sharp, and “Fuck and Run” and “Divorce Song” are still savage enough to make me suck in my breath with a wince. She’s fun. That voice like “molten tar glurping out of a drum with evil on its mind.” (Douglas Adams) A little scary.
D'Angelo
1/5
I fell asleep one minute and 22 seconds into the first track. The bus I was driving plunged over a cliff and took 13 lives in the crash. You’ll be hearing from my lawyer, D’Angelo.
Hole
4/5
Hell yeah. The Cobain-wrote-it myth is shit; who’s to say Courtney didn’t write Nirvana songs? She didn’t, she was busy writing ripshit songs about women’s experience. This album blazes, and holds up better than most 90s albums. Kids, listen: women can be drug-addicted absolute rage cases too!
Deep Purple
2/5
Name one Deep Purple song. No, not that one, a different one. Exactly.
A lesser Black Sabbath intercut with a lesser Yes (Maybe?) and just as long, without being terribly interesting.
The album cover puts them on a Rock Mt. Rushmore. Sure, in the Superman II universe.
The Replacements
5/5
One of the ‘Mats best albums and one of the best albums of the Eighties, period. Playing it takes me right back to high school and maxing out the tape in my Beetle. Raw as hell and fucking funny. And “Androgynous” follows “Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out”. What band can put two together like that?
Elvis Costello & The Attractions
4/5
This is damn good. Less glib and more haunted-sounding than his later work, which is the reverse of how that usually works.
Michael Jackson
4/5
He had one-and-a-half good albums remaining in him after this. Don't defend Bad. You can't and shouldn't.
After that it was embarrassment. But in 1979 the man could FUNK. This nugget is a pop bomb that announced that Michael had PLANS. And it still rules.
I might like this better than Thriller. I'll get back to you on that.
Kate Bush
4/5
Kate Bush descended from Planet Nine to teach the children about love. But they were obnoxious, so she hooked up with David Bowie to start a nationwide school-lunch program. But Bowie was obnoxious, so she changed clothes and wrote songs about life on her planet, and sang them to us in her alien language, and they were beautiful and strange and captivated our very souls.
Bowie hung his head in shame. “What have I done,” he sang to the children, who found him obnoxious.
William Orbit
2/5
hummmm
it's a long groove, and it is just SO BORING
The Avalanches
4/5
Avalanches albums are a cosmic collage, full of motifs that appear and reappear throughout the record. “Frontier Psychiatrist” is kind of a culmination of these, but the fragments of sound continue through the other songs in strange ways. They turn all these bits into something catchy and connected, which would seem impossible, but there it is. Listen on repeat!
The Smiths
4/5
Kings of English mope produce another stellar trudge through black ash and wet sand. Holidays on the beach! There is no misery like English misery: cultivated, harvested and shared in bounty with the world. Fuck Morissey, but the man knows his milieu.
Elvis Presley
3/5
Saucy stuff. Not as criminally good as Elvis in Memphis, but he indulges in a dirty, lowdown sound that’s a lot of fun.
Bill Callahan
2/5
Bill Callahan must be popular with some, but he isn't for me. I don't like his monotone talk-singing, the lyrics are a bit pretentious and the songs are kind of boring. Overrated. Sorry.
Aretha Franklin
5/5
What am I supposed to write here? It’s Aretha. If I give this album any less than its deserved five stars she will arise from the netherworld and banish me to the land of wind and ghosts.
3/5
X was always a little outside my rotation. They have some terrific songs, but I never made them a regular listen. Maybe it’s the production, maybe it’s because Exene and John can’t really sing. But they’re punks who really broke out of the men-only club. The songs I like aren’t on this album.
Anyway, I give cookie jars about a B.
Germs
2/5
I was going to say I’m just getting old, but I didn’t like this when it was new, either.
Motörhead
4/5
Kick off with Ace of Spades and just keep going. Every track slays, and they give every bit of it live. No dropoff! No soft-hearted jelly boys here! Punishment at eleven-scale! Thank god for Lemmy.
Tears For Fears
4/5
Sounds like it was recorded in a cathedral, or should be heard in one. TFF made pop music sound so epic that I can remember many bands trying to copy that huge feeling. The hits are endlessly replayable, and the lesser known tracks ring with emotion. There was nothing like Tears for Fears.
Rocket From The Crypt
4/5
Savage! Great line-drive rock and roll. Didn’t give them much of a listen back in the ‘90s (I think I imagined them as some pretentious goth’punk band because of their name). My mistake! Good stuff.
3/5
Funk sauce. “Cisco Kid” is a great leadoff. But War ain’t playin’. “Four-Cornered Room” and “The World is a Ghetto” are confrontational and angry tracks. Sometimes the music doesn’t match the lyrical intensity - “City, Country, City” is a way-overlong snooze. But War is cool and they say the things that matter in their cool, easy way.
Earth, Wind & Fire
5/5
Stone classic. Takes me back to, like, summer of '77, windows rolled down in the Beetle, feeling the breeze cut the heat, doing the airplane thing with my arm out, and "Shining Star" comes on KJR and... "yeahhh... YEAHHHH..."
Frank Sinatra
4/5
Sad Frank is more interesting than My Way Frank. He really sounds lonely. He's not, of course, he has dozens of pals and the company of many lovely women all the time, plus he's fabulously wealthy and connected to powerful political figures, but I'd like to see Bing try to pull off these songs!
Ian Dury
3/5
Ian’s cool. He’s not really in my strike zone but anyone who can title a song “Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll” and make it GOOD is doing all right. ‘E’s takin the piss, idn’e?
The Beach Boys
4/5
It cannot be a coincidence that this album arose in the stack on the day Brian Wilson died. If it was or if it wasn’t, that’s pretty fucking sick either way.
You start to hear Brian moving the band toward more sophisticated and complex songs and leaving the surfer fluff behind. More introspective and layered.
Anyway I’ve been playing Brian all day, so thanks for an excuse to just keep on lisrening.
Isaac Hayes
2/5
Smooth and oh! that’s the Public Enemy sample. Very cool. Too long and meandering though. Nobody needs 18 1/2 minutes of “By the Tine I Get to Phoenix”. Eh, it’s good nackground music.
Duke Ellington
3/5
Duke is the best at what he does. His music is not really my thing, but it’s fun to listen to. This one’s good as a live album because his band and the audience really feed off each other. At one point it sounds like the crowd’s going to riot if Duke & co. don’t continue! Don’t do that. Bad form.
Ice T
2/5
So you mean to tell me that the man who spouted boring tuff-man rhymes two years after NWA had already blown him off the map, went on to years of sparkling mediocrity on a Dick Wolf procedural?
Huh.
The Smashing Pumpkins
2/5
I don’t get the appeal. They have a few good songs, but everything except “Sweet Sweet” sounds the same on this album: droning, crunchy guitars, few hooks, and Billy Corgan, who ‘sings’ like he’s pushing out a painful shit on each track. I really can’t stand Corgan’s voice nor his whole personality.
Pet Shop Boys
4/5
Always loved Neil’s crisply bored/haughty elocution. Somehow that aristocratic accent brings in real emotion. It works by never sounding wedded to electronica, but pushing it into a romanticized form that, it turns out, is INSANELY catchy. PSB’s sound ages very well.
Death In Vegas
2/5
This album made no impression on me at all. I think there’s singing on some tracks.
Bob Dylan
5/5
Thrity trillion words have been written about this album. I'll just add: all killer, no filler.
Adele
4/5
I played “I’ll Be Waiting” three times in a row; was that even a single? The point is, 21 goes deep. The hits are obvious but there are no bad tracks on the record. And Adele’s voice still hits like a train. Goddamn can she belt! The album’s lost none of its impact fourteen years on.
3/5
Pleasant.
Supergrass
3/5
Regretting that I didn’t seek out more Supergrass in the 90s! They’re tight, they’re funny and “they produce good rock and roll, uh, music.” — Adam Scott
Beastie Boys
4/5
Abe Vigoda and Phyllis Dillard teamed up for an ‘answer’ album but it was never released due to their heavy drug use and fallout from their wildly sexual affair.
I’ve loved LtI since the first notes exploded in my ears in 1986. I didn’t know you could do that with music! The yelling is a little grating to my mid-50s ears now, but it still whips ass. Beasties are unmatched.
Deerhunter
3/5
It’s fine? I feel like I should have more to say about it but I don’t.
System Of A Down
2/5
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kR0gOEyK6Tg
Jeff Beck
3/5
Jeff Beck pairs perfectly with Rod Stewart. Something about Rod’s rasp and Jeff’s virtuosity gives the songs the right kick. I don’t like all the track choices (Old Man River and Greensleeves?), and there should be more Beck just shredding. But a solid album!
Kanye West
3/5
Great fuckin album by a real fuckin asshole
Calexico
2/5
A double album? It came and went like a Texas wind. Blew by quickly, which means it didn’t really reach my ears. Started strongly, but with the exception of a couple of mid-record tracks it was a slow and meandering disappointment.
Buena Vista Social Club
3/5
It's lovely, it's just not my thing. Doesn't move me.
Elvis Costello
4/5
Young punk Elvis rippin shit up right out of the gate. He's had a million 'phases' but he started out strong and never really let up. My favorite of his is King of America, but how many first albums are this re-listenable?
Portishead
2/5
Boring. I just don’t get the appeal of Portishead. They seem to have many fans! But I find them mopey and slow and I can’t distinguish any of their songs except the mopey and slow “nobody loves me” song. They have no hooks. It’s just dull sombersound all the way. Pass.
The Cardigans
3/5
Didn’t know much about Cardigans outside a couple hits, but they’re a fun, diverse and kinda weird band (Burning Down the House with Tom Jones?). Started on their catalog after this one, which is high otraise from me. Nina Persson’s voice is fetching.
The Damned
3/5
Big and noisy and punk! Only a couple songs stand out though. Their music is a hybrid form of punk/metal/Sabbathy goth. What kind of sound are they really? I guess they’re damned if they, no I can’t do it.
Green Day
3/5
It’s a good album, but I can’t believe Green Day were ver called “punk”. Pop-punk, maybe. Sure. But people forgot punk even existed in less than 15 years. At least wlthey were doing an approximation.
Green Day are a good listen but super overrated.
Bonnie Raitt
3/5
Bonnie Raitt is fine. She’s good! But she’s so overexposed and overrated that I think of her as just another Starbucks artist. Sorry Bonnie, but there’s nothing you can do to change that.
808 State
3/5
Fine. Zingy electronica. Is it essential? Nah. But it’s worth a listen.
Miles Davis
4/5
What the hell can I possibly say about Miles Fucking Davis? Read this essay by someone who knows what they’re talking about.
https://www.jazzwise.com/features/article/kind-of-blue-how-miles-davis-made-the-greatest-jazz-album-in-history
Everything But The Girl
3/5
Lovely, lyrical and transportive to the 80s. Really no one sounded like them. This album doesn't even feature "Missing" but it doesn't matter. The songs are jazzy, melancholy, poppy, a one-of-a-kind stew. I often don't think I'll like listening to EBTG but I'm always drawn in.
The Kinks
4/5
Social maladjustment and class warfare, all with a beat you can dance to! Well, you can’t really dance to it - not even to “Come Dancing” years later - but you can bang pots and pans and throw dishes and tell the rich wankers to shove it up their arse!
Kraftwerk
2/5
A couple tracks are fun, but Kraftwerk just ain't my thing. It's dull, repetitive and long. Now comes the time on Sprockets where we sway in a desultory fashion.
4/5
I mean, they were big. But then they got HUGE.
Fela Kuti
3/5
From Rolling Stone: “This intimate collaboration was actually recorded in Abbey Road studio instead of a traditional rock venue, but was electric nonetheless.” Kuti is a rhythm master, but a 16-minute drum duet to close the album is pretty egomaniacal.
Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan
3/5
Hypnotic. I find this much more listenable than the Fela Kuti album that came before, though they both feature long-groove songs that just carry and carry. Ali Khan's keening vocals contrasted with the chanting/droning singers and the chugging-engine drums put me in kind of a trance. Play it all day.
Steely Dan
4/5
How is probably their best album also their first? I don't know, but you don't mess with The Dan; you just roll with it.
Iron Butterfly
1/5
I guess the drugs hit different back then.
Billy Bragg
4/5
It’s too hot to think. This album from one of England’s finest troubadours and the American roots-rock Wilco turns Woody Guthrie’s writings into lovely and memorable songs. Here’s a better-written history:
https://albumism.com/features/billy-bragg-and-wilco-mermaid-avenue-album-anniversary
Emmylou Harris
4/5
Emmylou’s voice is golden thread spun into music and drizzled with honey. That makes no sense, but how about you listen to her sing for an hour or two and see if it doesn’t make you believe in weird possibilities. Her sound is so sweet and inviting, it kind of opens your mind to the world. Maybe I’m high as hell, but I don’t think so.
A Tribe Called Quest
3/5
Love it
Pentangle
1/5
Discount Fairport Convemtion led by Dollar Store Judy Collins, piggybacking on the faux RenFaire fad of the late 60s. Not an original note is struck, nor a single original idea expressed. No wonder I never heard of 'em.
Bauhaus
3/5
Solid goth-punk, sounds a lot better than most of the pretender shit that came down the pike.
Lauryn Hill
3/5
Sounds lovely in many ways. Yet her bouncing melisma is very sing-song samey, and I start to wish she had the backing the Roots on this one too. It can’t help sounding a bit dated.
The Triffids
3/5
Reviews of The Triffids suggested they “should be at the same table as U2”. Sorry, but I don’t hear it. Plenty of good songs on here, but nothing quite sticks as hard as Bono and the boys. I might give it another listen. The production also sounds a little flat, and that might be what keeps this album below top-tier.
Black Sabbath
5/5
Even if Ozzy hadn’t passed the day before, this would still rate five stars. Fucking straight-from-hell metal blasting the incense-and-peppermints scene to smithereens. The songs have only intensified in power since their debut. Long live the Madman of Rock and Roll!
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
3/5
Nick & Co. are an incredible band but this isn’t ideal music for streaming at work. My bad. I’ll give it another listen in an old abandoned Victorian covered in creeping vines and littered with the sorrow-soaked bones of dead children.
Al Green
4/5
Soul Brother #1-A sings so beautifully.
MC Solaar
4/5
French rap? Well… why not? Surprisingly catchy even though I can’t understand a word of it. L'homme a un, comme on dit, flux.
Mike Oldfield
2/5
Wow extremely uninteresting. Listen to the first three minutes of track one for that spooky Exorcist vibe, then sign out. You’ve heard the peak and you saved yourself 55 minutes of boredom.
Aretha Franklin
4/5
Queen B slays all
Stephen Stills
3/5
Boomer stuff. It’s fine.
David Bowie
4/5
David visited me in a dream once. He said, “you pretentious twat, this is the most common dream about me that posers have.” I said, “don’t be mean, some of the music is transcendent and some is artsy garble.” He said, “just for that, I’m going to sing an eight-minute song about an electric penguin that’s danceable and completely inscrutable.” And I said, “David, please, make it just six minutes.” And he then made it eleven. I love him so much.
Steely Dan
3/5
You don’t fuck with the Dan. Got some legend tracks even though it goes a bit saggy toward the middle-end. Finishes strong with “Monkey in Your Soul”.
The Who
3/5
Lively! The Who kicked ass live, even with the obligatory 1979-era 15-minute tracks.
Ghostface Killah
3/5
"Bursting forth with some of the most pungent yarns, potent barbs, and peerless production of the Wu member's remarkably consistent career, Fishscale is the choice outcome of an endlessly creative mind using experience as a compass en route to triumph."
-- Pitchfork
https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/3637-fishscale/
I know it's good, I just personally don't like it.
Funkadelic
3/5
Start your album with a ten-minute jazz-funk ramble to weed out the posers, then hit ‘em between the eyes with the leaded gas. Funkadelic does shit their own way.
Beastie Boys
4/5
The Boys are... mellower? Not possible. Less shouty, perhaps. Exploring the funk and the groovier lines, with occasional acts of SABOTAGE!! They never do anything twice, so you can listen to their albums over and over for new sounds. They're musical mad scientists whose growth you can chart over the albums' courses. So fuckin brilliant.
ZZ Top
4/5
I played the hell out of this in 1984. I think I had the vinyl! Put the needle down and wait for the drums of "Gimme All Your Lovin'" to blast the walls down. Hasn't lost its fastball after... 40 years?! Jesus. Hail the Texas Kings.
Oasis
4/5
It’s a shame that Liam and Noel died in a murder-suicide in 2002, though it’s hotly debated whether any suicide took place: both left manically-scrawled notes that read “I’m going to kill the bastard before he kills me”. Forensic scientists were unable to determine who died first, but the sheer quantity of mayhem - guitar strings wrapped round necks, eyes gouged out with picks, mic stands shoved up arses, etc. - suggests something extremely heartfelt took place.
Coldplay
3/5
They’re the English Dave Matthews Band: professional and “epic” while sounding, aside from a few hits, bland and forgettable.
U2
4/5
Okay, see, yesterday was Coldplay, and today is the band that whips Coldplay’s ass and tells it to stop being such a copycat whinerbaby. Fuckin U2 in 1982 was unstoppable.
Eagles
3/5
I don’t hate the Eagles as much I wished I do. I just can’t. There are some, well, not ‘bangers’, that’s too strong, but ‘agreeable head-nodders’ here. Most bands are full of assholes; the Eagles’ problem is they got too popular, so the assholes stank more.
The Verve
3/5
I had a thing written here and it got eaten up. Suffice to say I enjoyed it.
The Isley Brothers
3/5
It’s covers, it’s nice, fine, actually lovely voices not doing too much annoying melisma, chill, but I don’t like their versions of some songs I really like, like, leave Summer Breeze ALONE, boys, it is TAKEN.
Q-Tip
3/5
Good, fine, whatever, I can’t judge rap or hip-hop or whatever, I can’t define what’s good or bad. Except for Kendrick, he’s good. And he’s on the new Clipse, which is also good. Please don’t ask me. Congratulations to Mr. Tip.
The Flying Burrito Brothers
3/5
Good music, I enjoyed it. Too depressed to write anything more.
Faust
2/5
I enjoyed the parts of this album that didn’t make me want to hurl my headphones across the room. Sadly that was only about 20% of the time! It’s weirdly creative and like little I’ve heard before; it just sounds like bullshit to me.
Leonard Cohen
3/5
Leonard is an enchanting writer; his songs capture the deepest feeling in the smallest detail - they are universal in the most specific way. D’you know what I mean?
I just wish I didn’t have the feeling that when he sings, he’s almost parodying himself. I do not like his singing. I’m sorry. Covers of his tracks are almost always better.
So be it. Daniel Day-Lewis can’t rig the lights for his movies. As far as I know.
Alice Cooper
4/5
All my life I never took a ride on the Alice train. He was a novelty act, a couple good songs, to my mind crazily overrated. I was listening wrong. Alice is Broadway, he’s musical theater, he’s glitter blown in your face with attitude. He’s more than a rock star: he took all the elements of KISS and Bowie and made his own legend. I’m sorry I took so long to come around, Alice. I am indeed not worthy.
Creedence Clearwater Revival
3/5
Good crunchy southern bayou rock! My tolerance for it is extremely limited, but CCR makes it worth a listen.
Iron Maiden
4/5
Have to ask forgiveness from Bruce & Co. as I passed on Maiden in high school (except Piece of Mind). They fucking rock, and they’re literate as hell, full of allusions to sci-fi, mythology and classical books. Frank Herbert told them to eat shit, but he’s dead now, so who’s laughing? (It’s Eddie. Eddie’s laughing.)
Sonic Youth
3/5
Fuzz buzz, cat scratch fever, chicken yowls, head down, terror angst. The cool way your guitar hangs down when you play it. And don’t play it.
Thurston, who else is named Thurston but Mr. Howell? Still: rock star. Kim was better. In everything.
Afrika Bambaataa
3/5
Very nice. I’m not qualified to say more.
The Temptations
4/5
Real smooth and funky. Let’s leave “The First Time…” to Roberta Flack, though.
Lambchop
4/5
Never heard anything quite like it. It’s a stew of pop, soul, country, R&B and electronica, among others. Took a few tracks but man did this album grow on me. It’s weird and unpredictable, and fun to listen to. How refreshing to hear music that’s truly different.
Terence Trent D'Arby
5/5
Fucking perfect. I played this a billion times on a lousy cassette tape on release. God he was electric! The songs kick with vibrant energy and spirit; his voice crackles and shrieks and roars with soul. Not a flat track on the album. I still play it and it never disappoints.
The Temptations
3/5
It’s good it’s fine whatever we just had a Temptations album let’s move on
Dire Straits
3/5
Mild. Pleasant. After-dinner-mint rock ‘n’ roll. Dire Straits have some decent songs but they are terribly, terribly overrated.
Leonard Cohen
2/5
Again I will say Leonard Cohen’s songs are better when he doesn’t sing them. Somehow his delivery makes his lyrics feel so self-indulgent. I don’t know. I feel like i should go to music jail for this, but I don’t really like him.
Lana Del Rey
2/5
Lana drones on about a trauma she imagines is universal, but mostly revolves around pools and sun and backyards. Sorry your ice cream melted. There’s one song near the end that features a beat and a pitch change, but it doesn’t last. The album ends with a cover of “For Free” that’s more plastic than a Chuck E. Cheese ball pit and requires the help of two others. Keep Joni’s name out your mouth, Lana.
Miles Davis
4/5
I don’t understand a thing about jazz, but I like it. I especially don’t understand Bitches Brew but for nearly two hours I was never bored. Miles Davis was a weird dude but he could play the fuck out of some trumpet.
Sonic Youth
4/5
“Old transgressive habits die hard, I guess, just like punk supposedly did, way back when Sonic Youth deigned to pitch and shift their rock and roll to a decidedly bigger demographic and fuck it up for everyone. And fuck it up they did, thank God.”
— Pitchfork, David Raposa
https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/7349-goo-deluxe-edition/
Ananda Shankar
4/5
I should listen to more Indian music. I hadn’t heard Shankar before, but listening gives me the same feeling as Ali Khan: inmersion in the rhythm and the repetition, the chanting, the way voices will counter the wild high-low of the music. It puts me in a meditative state.
He covers “Light My Fire” here in a way that improves on the original in every way. I think a Doors album is next on the list, so I’m bracing myself.
The Doors
3/5
The Doors are fun when Jim keeps his Lizard King shit under wraps. He's courteous enough to spill it all out with the last track, "The End". The Jesus Man still can't resist giving us a "back door man" song (nudge nudge wink wink). They're highly overrated but they did make some fun songs and this album has a few snappy tracks.
Judas Priest
3/5
Ripping!
The National
2/5
blubblubblubblubnummmbubbalupbummmmm... gummmbluhhh bummm
Will Leitch does a cruel and inaccurate impression of Matt Berninger that makes me laugh. Can't disagree. "Bloodbuzz Ohio" is a good track but the rest is humblebumble low-register sadboy stuff.
Blood, Sweat & Tears
3/5
Derivative! Well, that’s not completely fair. They sound like a copycat band but they borrow from so many sources (Chicago, The Moody Blues, Motown, Jethro Tull) that I can’t accuse them of straight ripping off of any one thing. They are fun to listen to when they’re not being horribly pretentious, and there are a few memorable tracks on this album.
Cream
3/5
Pretty good I guess! Some legend hits rounded out with swill. Fuck Clapton.
Emerson, Lake & Palmer
1/5
Like a nightmare combination of Spinal Tap’s jazz exploration and Ross from Friends’s “music”.
4/5
It’s clear why they can sell out stadia 30 years later.
Rush
3/5
The hits are fantastic - Tom Sawyer boys like a bomb, Limelight rips - but the rest is just not my cuppa. Can’t get into their music on any long-term basis. But I kind of understand why their fans are legion.
The Saints
3/5
Solid! Crunchy semi-punk I’d never heard before.
Goldfrapp
3/5
It’s good, I think? It’s very atmospheric and ‘soft’ and it kind of washed over me. But I liked what I heard. That’s not much of a review, I know.
Lorde
4/5
Lords is doing unique shit. I don’t like all of it, but I like that she’s singing very personal songs, songs that sound like she crawled out of her hangover bed and wrote down the immediate feelings.
The Band
2/5
Once again: I don’t like The Band.
Joni Mitchell
3/5
Joni moves further into the jazz age. When I first heard this album I kinda hated it, but I realized it was a natural progression in her sound. I like it a good deal more now, but it’s also harder to get hooked. Her voice is till in peak form though, and it’s a pleasure to listen to her move into different moods and methods.
Neil Young
4/5
“ On the Beach is one of the few from Young's catalog that doesn't land easily on either his country or hard-rock piles. Three song titles with the word "blues" give you an idea of the mood, but hardly prepare you for the bleak anger of "Revolution Blues" or "For the Turnstiles", post-apocalyptic visions as eerie as any of 28 Days Later's scenic pans.”
— Rob Mitchum, Pitchfork
https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/11868-on-the-beach-american-stars-n-bars-hawks-doves-re-ac-tor/
Peter Gabriel
5/5
Somehow I deleted my biggish review so I’ll just say: a fuckin masterpiece.
Queen
4/5
I didn’t know about Queen until 1979, when “AOBtD” went smash. Hey, I was ten, I didn’t know shit! But the Q-Boys were ripping shit up for YEARS before then, and this album is fast, snarly and more punk than the operatic tone they’d evolve toward. It kicks ass.
Dusty Springfield
5/5
It's really a perfect album. Dusty's voice ranges from seductive to melancholy, honey-sweet to sassy sour, and she sings some of the most beloved songs of the 60s. She's a knockout. I've listened many times before and I will listen many more.
Stan Getz
3/5
Smooth and silky
Little Richard
4/5
Dude can bop!
The Gun Club
3/5
Good stuff! I don’t know this band. A song from a subsequent album came on after this album finished, and I liked it more than anything on Fire of Love, so
Buffalo Springfield
3/5
Neil Young⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Not Neil Young ⭐️⭐️
I’m tired
The White Stripes
4/5
People crack on Meg for drumming like a dinosaur, but else can you do when Jack is blasting out caveman rock at epic intensity? White Stripes just want to get to rocking and they don’t wanna complicate it! BANG BANG BANG! THUD THUD BANG YYYEEEEAAAAHHHHH!!!
Marilyn Manson
1/5
When Marilyn knocked on my door trying to shock me I pretended I wasn’t home. He persisted, and to get rid of him I gave him one piece of Halloween candy and told him to scram. He kicked over my Ridwell box and left in a huff.
Venom
1/5
fuck this. don’t put bands like this on the list as a joke, it’s not funny.
Eels
3/5
“…while these 12 songs are marinated in misery and grunginess, that’s not the point of them so much as it is the darkness that enables you to see the album’s light. It’s a dim, flickering light, but it’s there just the same and it comes in the form of the record’s most childlike elements.”
https://www.godisinthetvzine.co.uk/2018/07/19/from-the-crate-eels-beautiful-freak/
Public Enemy
4/5
This one commandeered my tape deck in the summer of ‘88 and held the top spot for weeks despite stiff competition from Guns ‘n’ Roses, INXS and the Cure. As a stupid suburban white kid, PE punched me awake to the anger and energy of rap beyond Run-DMC. I couldn’t believe you could say these lyrics, and make it sound so good. And damn funny! All power to Chuck D and Flavor Flav now and forever.
Beck
4/5
His finest until Morning Phase, which is the standard. Hard to fathom that this heartfelt beauty comes from the artist who debuted with Stereopathic Soulmanure. But Beck is never predictable, always changing in the weirdest ways.
a-ha
3/5
The rest of the album is quite different from the monster hit, as would be expected. Morton Harket shows (maybe not) surprising range on some heartfelt ballads, and the songs are a small cut above the 80s pop of the day. Also they're Norwegian? I guess I forgot.
The Beach Boys
4/5
Damn. My long review got eaten up by a reloaded page. Suffice to say that this is a pretty underrated album, grand in scope and theme, and feels like a true group effort with Brian mostly on the sidelines.
Beck
3/5
A solid album, in the Beck pastiche mode. Inventive, silly, catchy; is it his best? No, but what is “best” with Beck anyway? He’ll reinvent his sound on the next album and it’ll be weird and fun. You can’t contain his creative crazy.
By the way, if you want to read the most obnoxious, snotty, perfectly Pitcheforque review, see this: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/621-guero/
5/5
As close to a perfect album as can be made. A milestone work by a very strange man. I’m taken aback to realize just how many iconic tracks are on here. Like the Cars’ first album, no misses.
Johnny Cash
4/5
What can I say? The man loves being in prison. And the prisoners love him back.
Yes
4/5
Yes being Yes. They’ll hit you with a perfectly crafted “Roundabout” or “Long Distance Runaround”, then a nine-minute synth-orchestral instrumental that’s about extraterrestrial frogs. Yes is one of those bands that sound good only when you’re older.
Pixies
3/5
Shoulda picked Surfer Rosa. This album is fine and has more than a few Pixies twists and derangements. Just not enough. The songs have a real samey chugga chugga sound. Feels like they’re not fully into it? Still a notch above standard indie rock.
4/5
Once they went to studio-only, the Beatles changed entirely, and they could never be compared to any other 60s band, because their focus was experimenting with sound in ways nobody else could replicate. It created fantastic music but also a strange detachment. You hear it on Sgt. Pepper: songs stretching out their drug-fueled explorations and indulgences. And the pull of their own interests beginning to pull the band apart.
I mean, it’s a fucking brilliant album of course.
The Kinks
3/5
50 percent bangers, 50 percent mash.
Alanis Morissette
4/5
An outstanding debut that still slices keenly after — oh my god, 30 years? There’s some youthful energy here that sometimes slips into smugness, but I can forgive “Ironic” and other overreaches because the songs whip, and her distinct voice rides high and low throughout, unapologetically raging and endearing in equal measure.
Pink Floyd
3/5
I thought they were ripping off the Moody Blues, but it was the other way round, to go by the release dates. Half the bands in England were doing this faux-medieval naffing around until something better came along; some of it was even good. Some of this is good. But we’re all grateful they moved on.
Marianne Faithfull
4/5
“Released in 1979 following periods of homelessness, heroin addiction, and scandal, Marianne Faithfull's opus recovered her from exile and captured a generation's disillusioned comedown.”
— Lindsay Zoladz, Pitchfork
https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/17565-broken-english-deluxe-edition/
Supergrass
4/5
Why these dudes aren't selling out stadia on the level of Oasis to this day is beyond me. But what the hell do I know, I was under the impression they were an American band for the longest time til I actually heard them. Supergrass is funny, clever and they play they shit out of punky, punchy rock songs. Their best song isn't even on this album, but that just means you get to discover more.
Dexys Midnight Runners
4/5
Took me forever to listen to this album once I was sick of “Come On Eileen”. Which turns out to be about the fourth or fifth best song on here! You gotta get used to Kevin Rowland’s yelping style, but this band is tight and fun, and Too Rye Ay is very relistenable,
Slade
3/5
Powerful. Chunky! Fun. What I thought was Scotland's noisiest band was actually England's ninth-noisiest (English bands can be very noisy). Photographs of their mid-seventies height highlight their difficult hair and their way of standing together so closely they appear glued. Dave Hill was an alien from the year 31,000 who came to destroy us all but decided he'd rather play guitar. Noddy Holder was named "Noddy Holder".
Seriously I like this raucous band quite a lot, and it seems they did too.
Radiohead
3/5
Not a good album to listen to at work. Sorry guys. But I’ve heard it many times before, certainly. It’s beautiful and sinister in a way that is less… structured? differentiated? from their previous albums. That is to say, there’s a uniformity of style on this one whereas OK Computer reaches highs and lows with tracks that are much more distinct. I’ll play rhis again… but only after Kid A and OK have had their turns.
Red Hot Chili Peppers
2/5
The soundtrack to a Michael Bay porn flick.
Bob Dylan
4/5
Imagine that you’re the kind of artist who can bookend your album with “Rainy Day Women #12 and 35” and “Sad Eyed Lady…” Now stop imagining it because you can’t. You’re not Bob Dylan, is the problem.
The Smiths
3/5
Dr. Dre
2/5
This hour-long rant about guns, money, n—-as and hoes could have been an email.
LCD Soundsystem
4/5
Something great.
The Notorious B.I.G.
3/5
Better and much funnier than The Chrinic, but it’s still over an hour of “look at me, I got the biggest dick”. Diminishing returns.
Arctic Monkeys
3/5
Not what I thought. I expected emotion, got punk-tinged snarl rock. Which is better! Clearly I haven’t really listened to Arctic Monkeys.
Lloyd Cole And The Commotions
3/5
It doesn’t move my needle, but it’s not a bad album.
Steve Winwood
3/5
I like Steve Winwood! He writes some toe-tappers! He also tends to meander and several songs sound samey. But he has a knack for finding grooves, and stands as one of the top Tolerable Guys in the Geddy Lee Club.
Ryan Adams
3/5
Always drawn to Ryan’s kind of “fuck-you Americana”. He writes some good hooks and his lyrics can be sour and mean but funny. He may be a dick, but see if you aren’t nodding along to “Hallelujah” when it hits.
Eminem
3/5
Three cool tracks and severely diminishing returns. Loved his lyrical gymnastics to start with, but Jesus is he obnoxious. “Kim” is a fucking disgrace.
The Pogues
4/5
So hyped for this record I smashed a whiskey bottle over my head, slurped it up off the floor, and stole my grandmother’s car. Now I’m in jail in an unfamiliar city. Does this happen to anyone else?
The Smashing Pumpkins
3/5
The Pumpkins are terrific musically. The songs are complex and interesting. They rock!
Then Billy Corgan opens his mouth.
The xx
3/5
Smooth. Beautiful. Dark. Mysterious. Moody. English.
Beatles
4/5
An almost perfect finale (I can’t get with “Maxwell’s”). Feels like a celebration of all their collective power; everyone gets to take a bow. Every time they reach the end of the Long Medley and crescendo with “Carry That Weight”, I get slightly choked up because this was The End, for one of the greatest bands in history, and you can feel them feeling it too. A grand curtain call with a tinge of sadness.
Goldie
2/5
These selections are a book called 1,001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.
In no way did I need to to hear almost two hours of sonic jumble and la-di -da, somehow combining smooth jazz and lite techno in an indulgent creator’s ramble that must have pleased Goldie very much, but bored the hell out of me.
Do better, 1AYMHBYD. Do better.
Deep Purple
2/5
Wikipedia quoted a source that said Deep Purple was “part of the Holy Trinity of proto-metal” with Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. What a grievous insult to those bands. Deep Purple are dull and derivative; “Smoke On the Water” likely inspired Spinal Tap.
Elton John
3/5
Tiny Dancer could be the whole album, but Sir Eltie also gives us Levon, Razor Face and Rotten Peaches among other contenders. What drags down the rating are some is some drag on the back half and the truly embarrassing Indian Sunset. Ah well.
Tori Amos
4/5
Tori fucking rules and why am I not listening to her every day?
Def Leppard
3/5
This album was where I began to part company with the British Boys. I was a huge DefHead up through Pyromania, but this lost me. As crazy as it sounds to say they’d gone too commercial (that’s ALL they were), the Mutt Lange-ing of Hysteria got out of hand. Songs got bloated, lyrics got way dumber, and the whole pop-radio affair just didn’t appeal to headbangy l’il me. There were plenty of bangers, sure! But the goofy raggedy fun was lost. Ah well.
Orange Juice
3/5
Fine. Inessential. Some kicky Britpop with a couple catchy songs.
Ministry
3/5
Jesus built my hotrod, then took it for a joyride and wrapped it around a tree.
Motörhead
4/5
This’ll blow your mind. You ready? Motörhead is more than “Ace of Spades”! Right? What they are is a raging, balls-nasty hard rock band that don’t give a FECK, mate!
Seriously they have so many great songs that just kick ass with speed and power. Okay, “Jailbait” is HUGELY REGRETTABLE. Bad one! But the rest is heavyweight drillbit rock that holds up forever.
The Police
4/5
What I love about this album is that it front-loads all the strange and experimental stuff, so just as you’re thinking, well this is VERY INTERESTING, it pops out the hits like bullets, one after another. Oh, this song? Oh yeah, this song! And this one, yeah! If it were reversed I might have a lower opinion of the record. But I appreciate and miss that old version of Sting who was much closer to the leather-Speedo madman than the soporific tunesmith we have now. Well, Trudy has no complaints.
Joni Mitchell
5/5
I can’t count how many times I’ve listened to Joni’s masterpiece, and it doesn’t matter. I can play it wherever, whenever and I’m transported to the summer of 1974. Her voice now has that smoky, sexy edge to it, and I feel I’m literally living in the LA sun, in the hills, feeling the mood and breathing the air.
It doesn’t make sense because I was six years old then. But I mean that she captures in words and music a time and place and feeling in such precise emotional detail that Court and Spark becomes a time machine. I step in and I’m there. I don’t mean just nostalgia. I mean an artistic vision that transcends the present. That is timeless, as in it stops time.
The only other album that manages this feat is Rumours. That was a group effort. This is one woman’s singular story, and it’s perfect.
Massive Attack
3/5
So chill. So electronic. The contributions from Tracey Thorn and Nicolette make for the best tracks, setting the stage for Elisabeth Fraser on Teardrop. The songs are hypnotic, and the best tracks have those cool entrancing women’s voices pulling you in.
OutKast
3/5
“Hey Ya” arrives on disc 2, as it were, about an hour and twenty into the whole affair, and it sounds nothing like rest of the album. It’s followed by a 6 1/2 minute track that’s just “you think your shit don’t stink, but oh honey it do”. Which is to say, there are many great tracks, the album is still way too long, and OutKast love to prank their audience.
The Psychedelic Furs
3/5
I’m stoned and I can’t think of a thing to say about this album sorry but it’s good
Rahul Dev Burman
3/5
Pretty good Bollywood Hindi music that front-loads the bangers and drags for the second half. The whole movie is on YouTube and has John Saxon in it, so points for that!
Snoop Dogg
3/5
Been a long time since I heard this one; it’s more fun than I remembered, back when gangsta rap had a sense of humor about itself. And bangers galore! Snoop is impossibly boring nowadays, but he made a snappy debut.
Frank Zappa
3/5
An almost entirely instrumental jazz odyssey, and therefore since he doesn’t spew his contemptuous lyrics at the audience, one of the best Zappa albums.
The Offspring
3/5
SoCal punk rock supreme. The only problem is Dexter Holland, who starts at 10 and goes from there. I'd like The Offspring so much more if he put more Zack de la Rocha on it.
Santana
3/5
Every song I know from Santana is basically on this album, except “Smooth”. (Man, Rob Thomas looks like such dork white boy in that video). This kind of guitar-jam, electric organ sound is not really my speed, but it’s a classic of its kind.
Michael Jackson
3/5
Beyond the monster hits, so many of these tracks are locked-in-the-80s dated. And so many of the lyrics are cringy and childish. Obviously the groove is what matters. But there’s a lot of slag on here. “The Girl is Mine” is such a disaster.
Still. The hits are undeniable and legendary. Can’t really knock it down. One star deduction for the pedophilia.
Paul McCartney
2/5
This is the album that Paul just had to quit the Beatles for. “I’ve been aching to show the world the true Paul - a half-assed collection of barely-there songs, twee ramblings and a love letter to my wife that lasts 45 seconds. This one’s for you, Linda!”
Linda had no comment at press time.
Wild Beasts
2/5
Hmm. Okay. I think this one actually belongs in 1,001 Albums You Might Get Around To If You Feel Like It.
The Jesus And Mary Chain
3/5
Dark and moooody, just the way you like it. The Tampa Bay Lightning are not very goth, but these guys are.
Fiona Apple
4/5
She released this album at age 18. Eighteen! I was washing dishes at a restaurant for an insane Frenchman and stank of grease and industrial soap after every shift. Oh I’ve wasted my life…
Bruce Springsteen
4/5
Drivin down that lonesome highway, I drank a toast to my father’s ghost and wrapped that Pontiac round a tree. Times is tough, I said to the highway patrolman who had stolen my girl from me. There’s a darkness on the edge of town - is it my soul, or because the streetlights burned out again?
Wu-Tang Clan
4/5
My Wu-Tang name is Spiritual Mayor. So apparently I ain't nothing to fuck with. It's so damn good, this album, better than Liquid Swords. Bangers pretty endlessly. Enter the mythology and roll down your windows. It'll get loud.
Steely Dan
4/5
Shit! I had a whole ESSAY written about this album and my phone died three seconds before I hit ‘submit’! I’m not rewriting all that. Aja is a terrific album and Steely Dan is a great band.
Talvin Singh
1/5
Good one, guys. You pranked me hard with this one.
Seriously, did someone lose a bet?
Bee Gees
3/5
Grandiose and operatic. I don’t know how to describe this big, passionate album - maybe it’s the soundtrack to the most ambitious musical that never got made. It’s overwrought and some of it just cheesy as hell, but it’s compelling and fun to listen to. How they went from Odessa to Saturday Night Fever in nine years is astounding.
Blue Cheer
2/5
Of all the color proto-metal bands of the 60s - Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Pink Floyd, King Crimson - Blue Cheer are not the least interesting, but absolutely inessential.
Marvin Gaye
5/5
Oh I’ll TELL you what’s going on - Marvin Gaye’s putting out the #1 soul brother album of the 20th century and making it stick. So sweet and buttery smooth, so timely it’s timeless. Jesus he was only 45 when he died. Goddammit Marvin’s dad.
Van Morrison
4/5
Cool, great album, can’t deny it. God, he sucks.
Morrissey
4/5
Cool, great album, can’t deny it. God he sucks. See also: Van Morrison. Can we get a break from theses diva assholes for a while?
Sister Sledge
4/5
They are much more than “We Are Family”. Disco-soul grooves, great voices, sweet harmonies. Still, That Song stands out and I could hear it 1,000 times without boredom. Sometimes all it takes is one.
Elvis Costello & The Attractions
5/5
“Perfectly balancing the raw energy of My Aim Is True with the more elegant pop songwriting that would come to characterize much of his later work, This Year's Model is not only Costello's best work, but one of the most distinctively brilliant albums ever to be released.”
—-Matt Lemay, Pitchfork
https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/1615-this-years-model/
Kraftwerk
3/5
In 1966, fresh off the success of Pet Sounds, the Beach Boys went to live in West Germany while doppelgängers took their places. Ingesting copious amounts of heroin, Eurodisco, binge-watches of Worker and Parasite, and long, leisurely and insanely dangerous highway drives, they at long last produced their masterwork “Autobahn”, under an assumed name. Brian Wilson considered it his greatest work, while Mike Love called it “a piece of scheisse” and bitched the whole time about the food.
Jane's Addiction
4/5
This album kicks ass, it spins in unexpected directions. It’s moving, it’s sad and funny and rude as hell. Some of these songs I haven’t heard in years and they have depth and resonance I never recognized. Ritual kicked open the door and said, hey fuckers the 80s are over! This is what the 90s will sound like!
3/5
The most 90s album of the 2000s. Muse are fine, though every song sounds like an anthem. Kind of tiring after 13 similar songs. Supermassive Black Hole is a killer though.
Air
4/5
I only read the book, didn’t see the movie, but Air’s tracks seem to perfectly capture that ineffable melancholy of the Lisbon family. Air excels at creating songs that are pure feeling. The distorted narration of “Suicide Underground” captures that mood of longing, wanting to know the truth but kept at a distance, the elegant sadness. Gorgeous.
Jungle Brothers
3/5
Yeah Jungle Brothers
Yeah
Sarah Vaughan
3/5
Really captures the sense of time and place. Would love to have witnessed it live. A few glitches make it not the best-ever live album. Someone said they wished this list included a studio album and I agree. Vaughan is fantastic but I’d like to hear her without the imperfections.
The Mothers Of Invention
1/5
A question for the 1,001 Albums committee: why do you hate me?
Jeru The Damaja
1/5
Repetitive, slow AND boring? 1988-style raps in 1994? Where do I sign up?
Hey he has a rap called “Da Bitchez” on here. You will never guess what he thinks of da bitchez. Not in a million years.
Aw, you guessed!
Animal Collective
2/5
I have apparently never heard Animal Collective, or entirely forgot their sound, because I expected to hear something like Fountains of Wayne.
Merriweather does not sound like that. My ignorance may admittedly affect my grade. But while I appreciated the dreamy, synthy music, it’s really Not For Me.
Talking Heads
3/5
Love the Heads, though there’s inevitably a point on every album where I kind of zone out. The songs turn into repetitive low-key chants and I wonder where the last four tracks went. Don’t misunderstand; they have multiple righteous bangers, they just don’t always cohere into a listenable whole like Stop Making Sense.
Dire Straits
3/5
Dire Straits are fine. They’re fine! They’re a Jimmy Buffett version of Steely Dan. Nah, that’s terrible. But they play guitar really well great and some of their songs are a fun hang if Knopfler doesn’t sing too much.
They’re a solid middle infielder with good ranging defense who hits a lot of singles and doubles. Might platoon him with the new kid at second base.
Bob Dylan
3/5
You hit play and think, man, Uncle Bobby’s about done here. After 431* albums, 17,665* songs and 31 million* cough drops, what more can he do?
Then you hit a song like “Make You Feel My Love” and realize: goddamn, Uncle Bobby’s gonna outlast us all.
And that was 28 YEARS AGO.
*numbers are estimates
Beatles
4/5
Well, it’s the Beatles innit? Their second album and they’re exploring the studio space. Bound to the 3-minutes-and-out formula, they’re pushing it out lyrically. Part of their power came from their collaboration: every member gets a bit of spotlight.
And their energy! They always sound into it, which helps rescue the clunkers. They were so tight after years in Hamburg. With the Beatles builds another few rooms in the house of legend.
The Mothers Of Invention
2/5
I gave it a shot. Then I started to think about my life draining away while I listened to this instead of actually good albums. So I bailed out after three ‘songs’.
No more Zappa please.
The 13th Floor Elevators
3/5
Cool proto-punk sound mixed with psychedelia. "You're Gonna Miss Me" is an all-time banger. Never knew what instrument makes that wubba wubba sound. Maybe spare its use a little bit? Anyway, good times.
Roxy Music
3/5
Roxy Music is kind of indescribable. Louche cabaret music? If David Bowie performed in the 1940s? Sedative Techno? I don’t know. But it grows on me real fast. Listen to Braun Ferry sing the word “heroin” on that one song. You’ll be hooked.
Hugh Masekela
4/5
Absolute jazz. I love this! I was completely unfamiliar with Masekela but I love his style. The man is a mega talent. I can listen to this over and over. Gonna seek out his other records.
Slipknot
2/5
This is what I imagine Stephen Miller listens to when he's edging.
Teenage Fanclub
3/5
Better than Nevermind, as SPIN claimed? Not quite. But it's an inventive, catchy and well-written album that I could play repeatedly. And it won't get nearly as overplayed as Nevermind was. So good on them.
The White Stripes
4/5
White Stripes delivers a mammoth sound on this album. No gray area here, Jack White pachyderms a whole lot of noise in his trunk to make a powerhouse sound. Okay the elephant puns are weak. There are so many hits on here, it's easily the Stripes’ best album. Tusk me on this.
Kate Bush
4/5
In 1986 Peter Gabriel filmed a video for his duet with Kate Bush, “Don’t Give Up”. The video was a single unbroken slow zoom of Peter and Kate locked in an embrace for the entirety of the song.
I have envied Peter Gabriel for 39 years.
Stan Getz
3/5
Funny to have a smooth, summery samba album come up in the rotation on Christmas Eve. But it’s pretty, light ‘n’ smooth jazz and it’s a side of Stan Getz I hadn’t really heard.
Various Artists
4/5
Merry Christmas everyone!
Jurassic 5
4/5
Chunky and full of muscle. Heavy with the beat and the rhyme, flowing quite natural with the def cold rhythm.
Hiphoppin in a family way, writing lyrics on your mama’s behind, stumpin with the flavor
I have no idea. Fuckin great album yes
Joni Mitchell
4/5
I love Joni though this album meets the end of my true devotion. It still rates four stars because she’s a ripping musical genius, and “Coyote. “Song for Sharon” and “Refuge of the Roads” are keepers. The long songs and the sameness of the sound start to lose my attention. Her voice is starting to lose the high end and the songs are less engaging to me. After this she goes deep into jazz exploration that I never connected with.
U2
3/5
The ultimate “we went in a new direction” album. While several tracks on here bang, many simply don’t grab my achtung. Here we begin the slow downslope of U2 fatigue.
Tim Buckley
4/5
I imagine Tim Buckley in medieval times as a troubadour, walking the countryside singing songs of love and longing. A band of followers in his wake, chasing off rats and bands of marauders.
Buckley had the most sonorous, resonant voice, the kind that would be shouted from a mountaintop. It gave his songs a transcendent depth of feeling.
Roxy Music
3/5
Much Roxy, very Music
The Good, The Bad & The Queen
2/5
Gorillaz B-sides-and-outtakes kinda project, didn’t grab me at all
Parliament
3/5
cool cool cool honestly it’s kind of a drone until Give Up the Funk but it still funks
Bad Company
3/5
I get these guys mixed up with Whitesnake all the time, which is likely a huge insult to both bands. Sorry. BC does have some good swaggery songs on here, but I confuse the bands because they both do the tiresome “admire my schlong” rock that I’ve outgrown.
Circle Jerks
3/5
The song-a-minute approach works! Get in, scream, get out. Circle Jerks were one of the best LA punk bands. They were pissed off but they were never annoying - just funny, aggressive and concise.
The Cure
2/5
Almost a full instrumental record. Ethereal and atmospheric. It’s their jazz album. Not terribly memorable.
Coldplay
3/5
This is good! I dismiss Coldplay for being U2-lite, but that’s unfair. Chris Martin’s plaintive voice gives the music a sweet melancholy, and the band has some great hooks that build a strong mood. Of all their albums this is one I’d listen to again.
Arrested Development
3/5
Fresh and earnest hip-hop that may have had only a moment in the sun, but was a fun alternative to gangsta. Kind of like if P.M. Dawn had come back a bit closer to Earth. "Tennessee" still bangs and it sounds more energetic than the rest of the album, which does groove into repetition too often. But it's great to listen to if you want to warp back to the early '90s.
Simply Red
3/5
Good debut by a band that would get even better. I played Holding Back the Years an absurd amount (great to sing along with) but I didn’t really know the album. Good songs on here but several misses, including a hideous cover of “Heaven”.. White soul/jazz vibe on several tracks. They would hit their stride with Men and Women, which I played FOREVER.
New Order
3/5
It’s fun, pop-tinged new wave that doesn’t sound like a dirge for a change. It’s also quite overrated, and can we please acknowledge that Bernard Sumner is always slightly off-key, driving me slightly batty?
The Waterboys
3/5
Fiddle dee dee… Great musical talent on display. Goes on too long both in quantity and duration, like an old Irishman tellin’ stories at the bar. You can only play the fiddle so many ways. A few tracks really catch and hold; I’d say the first half holds the true lucky charms.
Robbie Williams
2/5
"Mum, can we have Oasis?"
"We have Oasis at home, dear."
David Bowie
4/5
Bowie’s third-best album and his best cover art.
Tim Buckley
2/5
I would say something pithy, but I’ve been laughing at the other disdainful reviews and I can’t add anything clever. This is not good music and I wonder why Buckley’s worst albums are on this list.
Mercury Rev
1/5
Guys, if you want to get high on a Friday night and jam out for a few hours in the downstairs rec room, that's cool. That doesn't justify turning it into an album for public consumption.
The Human League
2/5
Before we get to the music, I hate this album cover. It’s so ugly I can barely look at it. One point deduction right there.
The music is fine. Unremarkable britpop that pops out a couple of standout tracks. Even “Don’t You Want Me” becomes a bit of a plod. Not much to say here.
Depeche Mode
4/5
I adore Depeche Mode but every time I listen, my hair turns black and falls into my face and I have to put on my black turtleneck and my black trenchcoat and wander the streets of London in the black of night. And airfare to London ain’t cheap! So it’s a rare treat.
This album would rate just for “Never Let Me Down”, but there are so many Mode bangers on here.
Crosby, Stills & Nash
4/5
A debut that plays like a greatest-hits album. Not until the Cars’ first in 1978 would they be matched.
Dusty Springfield
5/5
Dusty is the Queen Bee, the blackest-sounding white soul woman there was, whose voice is so honeyed she can take any song and make it her own, forever Dusty. I could listen to her albums on repeat all day, and the only reason I don’t is that I have to sleep sometime. I love Dusty Springfield and I invite you to join my cult.
MGMT
2/5
Maybe I’m just too old for these guys. Hate the lead’s voice and much of the music sounds obnoxious and repetitive. “Kids” is an overplayed grater. But there are some catchy tunes, I’ll admit. I think it’s more of a “me” problem.
Madness
3/5
Madness are fun! (is fun?) Ska, music hall, pop, probably a jumble of other genres banging off each other in an upbeat jam. They don’t take it too seriously and the songs are pretty short , which keeps the energy up. I went down a rabbit hole after this one spun out, and played another album’s worth of their best tracks. Two steps beyond…?!
The Last Shadow Puppets
2/5
It’s fine, it’s forgettable orchestral pop like it’s the soundtrack to a 1964 French western. I don’t know why it exists. But listen 1,001, this isn’t a must-listen and you know it. Stop feeding us bullshit! Where’s Cat Power? Where’s Neko Case? Where’s Gaga? Where’s Bill Withers? Where’s anything after 2005? I’ve listened to about 400 albums on this site and too many of them sound like frosted nothing. Get people programming on here who know music, not just their personal playlists.
Ali Farka Touré
3/5
This is more like it. Something different and cool, undefinable and eclectic. Bluesy Afro-jazz? Hang out and listen to this just as Toure does on the cover. Is that a sitar?
Jimi Hendrix
4/5
I realized this was released three weeks before my birth. So maybe I absorbed Jimi’s sound in my crib. That would explain some things.
JimI fills the kitchen sink with blues, jazz, soul, and rock and roll. He also has a sense of humor in burying two stone classics at the very end of an album that features TWO songs over 13 minutes in length, one of which is followed by a minute-long track.
The drugs were good in 1968. That results in an album that rollercoasters from sharp, killer songs to meandering, stops-dead-for-a-drum-solo tracks. Mixed bag. But it’s original and wildly creative, and I’m not gonna rate an album with “Watchtower” and “Voodoo Chile” - for starters - any less than four stars.
Emmylou Harris
5/5
Voice like honey-sweetened tea, a sound like wisdom beyond her youth, a beautiful presence as a performer. Emmylou always seems like the most self-assured singer, an easygoing mastery in her music that gives the impression she sang this way from birth. This was her goddamn debut album.
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
3/5
Well, the title doesn’t lie. Operatic, dark, dramatic. Also very theater-kid energy. The songs go from passionate, angry, intense to overblown and silly. But that’s the Nick Cave promise. It’s gonna get big.
1/5
No thank you.
Talking Heads
4/5
Such a relief to hear real music after that atrocious Liars thing. Talking Heads burnishing their sound on their second album. The songs are sharp, punchy and innovative. The band is tight and moves easily with Byrne’s sideways energy. Legends are building.
Sinead O'Connor
5/5
I was in college and she blew everyone away. There was no one who looked or sounded like Sinead at all. She was captivatingly beautiful and had a voice that could both knock down buildings and grow gardens. She injected her rage at class and race politics into the Top 40 and forced us to hear, if not listen.
We never listen. We get upset when someone tears up a picture and we treat it the same as a murder. Then we abandon them though their voice keeps calling out.
I miss her. Margaret Thatcher is burning in hell.
Throbbing Gristle
1/5
I lasted three “songs”, which is three more than I should have.
Love
3/5
Enjoyable psychedelic flower fluff
The Dave Brubeck Quartet
4/5
Fabulous “starter jazz” album. Is that fair? Well, it was a gateway for me to listen and learn about jazz music, and I listened a lot. “Blue Rondo” is a lovely introduction that changes tempo and highlights the whole quartet as pinpoint musicians.
The energy changes from track to track, never settling in one place, and just as it’s feeling a little languid, bang - in comes “Take Five”, the centerpiece of the album and a milestone in jazz. It’s just beautiful to listen to. It sounds so… easy. But making it sound easy is so hard.
“Time Out” is a reward no matter how many times you’ve listened.
Charles Mingus
2/5
I’m certain Mingus is a musical genius. But his music is decidedly not for me. So do I rate it highly, chicken out and give it a 3, or admit that I endured this album more than anything?
I didn’t like it.
Jimi Hendrix
4/5
Jimi’s second album might not be his best compared to Are You Experienced?, but it’s the tightest of them, jamming 13 songs in under 40 minutes. It feels like he might have pushed himself to that deadline; songs just abruptly fade out with no warning. Or maybe he just had the motor revving, and it was go, go to the next track. Axis flows from psychedelia to rock to blues, often in the same song. He was at peak power now.
Favorites: Exp, Spanish Castle Magic, Little Wing, If 6 was 9
The Cure
4/5
Their best album? It’s either this one or Kiss Me x 3. Kiss is a full rock opera with epic waves of sound and orchestration; Disintegration returns to more of the ‘classic’ Cure sound, though lusher and wider in scope now.
The first half is impeccable, with “Pictures of You” being the ür-lost-love song. You can imagine Robert wailing this lament atop a dark windswept cliff. Then “Lovesong” captures an almost bare-bones need and tenderness in its swirling melody. “Lullaby” is so gothically creepy it’s pretty much camp, and I adore it for that.
The remainder is less memorable, diving into longer, contemplative songs that don’t match the nerve of the first tracks. But it’s still endlessly replayable, with that unique Cure sound sending me on a journey deep with Robert’s singular mind.
The Birthday Party
2/5
I was about aa far as “Big Jesus Trash Can” when I asked myself, “Is that Nick Cave?” Turns out it was! So I learned something new, which is that I love Cave’s solo career. I didn’t like this noise when I was fourteen, and I twice as don’t like it now.
The Style Council
3/5
One of those albums with a hot song that sounds nothing like the rest. A spirited jazzy, lounge-y sound that throws a lot at the wall, but not a lot sticks. “You’re the Best Thing” is lively but goes on too long. “Headstart for Happiness” features a woman vocalist whom I wish had been featured more. “Ever-Changing Moods” is a kick, but even that is lower-energy than I remember. A band that sort of couldn’t get out of its own way.
Sly & The Family Stone
4/5
An essential soul-funk album, aside from the 13-minute “Sex Machine”. Why is there always one like this on every late-60s/early 70s album? Well, TV hadn’t reached its peak so people needed something to do.
Anyway, what a monster album. So many grooves with staying power.
The Black Crowes
4/5
Played this album SO much in my twenties. Still whips ass! Made me like southern rock again!
1/5
Nah, fuck this.
Björk
3/5
I can’t properly rate this as it is one I simply can’t listen to at work. I tried, but it scrambled into background noise, which is not a thing you really say about Björk. It deserves a much better hearing so I will try again.
3/5
Raw as hell and louder than bombs! I wish I’d seen this show but I was five months old. Oh well. MC5 sound like the first American punks and surely inspired hundreds of bands. I’d say we rarely get that energy anymore, but it just sounds different now.
Beatles
4/5
At times I’ve made a personal cut of the White Album, eliminating the tracks I thought did not belong. But they all belong. This is who the Beatles were at time of release - exploring, starting to move in their own independent directions, dipping into weird, sometimes self-indulgent music. It’s sloppy and brilliant and sometimes dumb, but it is absolutely the Beatles. I still like to listen to Revolution 9,, because it’s the spiritual capper to an album that tries to encompass everything.
Paul Simon
4/5
Cultural appropriation, schmultural appropriation. Simon collaborated with some of the greatest South African musicians of the day. Their efforts complement each other beautifully. Simon’s storytelling is warm-hearted and universal, and the African vocalists put the songs in a new context. Simon’s lyrics express loneliness with wry humor and deadpan wit. It doesn’t all work, and it gets a little twee, for sure, but…
A good album makes you want to listen for days and weeks . A great album makes you want to listen forever. This is a great album.
Radiohead
4/5
I have no idea how to rate a Radiohead album other than to say, “it’s fantastic and strange and upsetting and I want to hear it again.” This album is less explosive and experimental than Kid A and OK Computer - quieter is not quite the right word - but it still hums and pierces my listening like an existential bee zipping around my head.
Favorites: Pyramid Song, Morning Bell, Like Spinning Plates
Happy Mondays
3/5
This is a review of the album Pills ‘n’ Thrills and Bellyaches by Happy Mondays.
Jane's Addiction
4/5
This album was literally ahead of its time - it sounds like 1993 amid the wave of Nirvana and Pearl Jam. Perry’s an absolute freak on the mic, his lyrics are stories of rage and lost souls. The songs just rip and they still sound fresh. I didn’t really get JA when they arrived, but it’s clear they were the catalyst for the sound of the 90s.
Steve Earle
3/5
He’d get better. For a debut, it’s all right. He’s got that snarly twang locked in and the guitar playing is solid. I like “Hillbilly Highway” more than I probably should.
Frank Sinatra
4/5
It is May 1956 and you are Frank Sinatra. Your arm curls around your new girlfriend (was it ‘Dottie’?) as you both gaze out the window of the Pan Am Clipper taxiing for the morning flight to New York. You are Frank Sinatra and you are on top of the world. The new album is in the can and it’s the perfect soundtrack to your life.
Miami was a whirl of sun, beach, ocean swims and at least three other girls you cheated on Dottie with. You gaze into her happy brown eyes and she gazes back and neither of you care that your dick has its own fan club. That’s just how it goes when you ride with Ol’ Blue Eyes. Enjoy it while you can, babe, before you’re just another tale of conquest shared with the Pack. The perks are more than worth it.
You are Frank Sinatra, and as the plane angles for takeoff the sunlight crosses your eyes and makes them gleam like diamonds.
You think, come fly with me.
Erykah Badu
2/5
This record was so boring I forgot to rate it for two days.
King Crimson
1/5
What the hell? This album already came up! And I still hate it!
The Dandy Warhols
3/5
They have a distinct sound of snark and sharp observation that set them apart from other bands of the 90s. Warhols just sound really good, too. “Boys Better” is my favorite on here, a great rolling buzz track. I don’t mind the two long instrumental tracks that the record back-to-back; they make a languid vibe that offsets the harder energy of what came before.
The Modern Lovers
3/5
I haven’t gotten into Richman, really. “He can’t sing, his songs meander, they’re kind dumb.” The secret to unlocking Richman is, of course, that you have to listen stoned! Because it all makes sense then. He sounds stoned, singing high lyrics to baked music. The vibes fit perfectly - you just to meet his energy. I’m being serious. Some music just has be listened to twisted .
Tim Buckley
2/5
I could have sworn I rated this one before, but apparently not. Must have been an independent listen.
Happy Sad has about 90/20 ratio of Sad to Happy. There’s not much here. The first two tracks have some life, and “Buzzin’ Fly” has a kick to it. The rest is an overlong soup of overlong songs that dirge along from A to B with no lift and no change. I enjoy some of it, but it’s not interesting enough. At least it’s better than Jim Morrison or his shitty ‘72 album.
Jeff was the better Buckley.
Megadeth
2/5
Dave Mustaine was in a band called Metallica before starting Megadeth, did you know that? He’ll tell you. The reason he’s no longer in Metallica is because that, apart from “Peace Sells”, he can’t really sing or write compelling lyrics. His band rips pretty hard, though.
New York Dolls
4/5
New York Dolls! The album that made Christgau shit his pants! It’s nearly perfect punk rock: loud, raunchy, funny and just unserious enough to be totally serious.
Steely Dan
3/5
Stop calling it “dad rock”. Dad rock is the fuckin’ Eagles, man. Becker and Fagen would throw Henley and Frey out of class and make ‘em repeat freshman year.
I love Steely Dan for the sound, foremost. The tracks are so clean, so sharp, they were 10 years ahead of their time in production. But the lyrics aren’t pop, or “rock” slurry; they sound sinister and sad, lifting up a shiny rock to let the bugs come out. “Your Gold Teeth”, “The Boston Rag”, “My Old School”. This is what always drew me to the Dan - that impeccable sound with unsettling lyrics, like they were Nixon’s house band.
Brian Eno
3/5
I love the late-70s period of electronic, ambient, funky keyboard-heavy music of Kraftwerk, Talking Heads, Gary Numan, Herbie Hancock… Eno fits right in this group. While I love to zone out on his later 22-minute mood bombs, this album offers a taste of that plus what passes for “pop” in Eno World.
Brian Eno
3/5
I like this. It’s weird, idiosyncratic and at times hypnotic. Eno and Byrne are two autistic guys being dudes, turned loose in the studio to commit the music streams running in their heads to vinyl.
It’s not particularly memorable. But it’s a pleasant listen that has enough moments to hold my attention for an hour of runtime. I like to think of it as a little rumspringa for two creative giants to do whatever the hell they wanted.
The Shamen
3/5
Good, fun dance music! Never heard of ‘em.
Wire
4/5
Great driving punk, influenced by the British scene and in turn influencing Talking Heads and R.E.M.. These songs have a punch and a drive that sticks in your head.
Dr. John
2/5
Okay, I listened to Dr. John, can I go now? How does a guy make a Cajun album with titles like “Gris Gris Gimbo Ya Ya” and “Danse Kalinda Ba Doom” - sounds exciting! - and dump this half-awake, shitty-production, slow-ass boring record in our laps? Is he always like this? Is he on a mission to make people hate Louisiana music? Wait - is he gentrifying it? Please tell me how this “Doctor” - where’s your degree from, Hollywood Upstairs Medical College? - has stayed popular for decades.
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
4/5
I’m pretty stoned writing this review, as I imagine CSNY were in recording the album. But as I can only type out a semi-literate assessment - an assessment that has taken me four hours to write as I am repeatedly distracted by my dog, Royal Match on my phone and some really tasty dill pickle corn puffs - I must tip my cap to the Crosby brothers for creating a classic folk-rock record under the influence of considerably more powerful drugs.
Big Brother & The Holding Company
2/5
I’ve got memories tied to this album that seriously affect my rating of it. I remember looking at the cover aa a kid and feeling it was ugly and sad, and gave me bad feelings. Probably because it reminded me of some of the people my mom hung out with, and I didn’t like those people. It felt like a reflection of a scary and painful time growing up. That is a hell of a burden to lay on a blues album, of course! Layer it in with the fact that I just don’t like this music anyway, that Robert Crumb gives me ick vibes, and that Janis would be dead in two years and I just have a hard time viewing this album objectively at all.
The production is also pretty muddy. And that wasn’t her natural singing voice.
The Sabres Of Paradise
1/5
Now you're just trolling us.
The Hives
4/5
This is good rock and roll, uh, music, as Adam Scott would say. The sheer power and loudness of their style keeps me coming back to the Hives. They’re still delivering - their 2025 album rips hard. Sure, the songs sound much the same, but then I’ve been listening to AC/DC for nearly 50 years, so who cares?
Ladysmith Black Mambazo
4/5
Gorgeous
Frank Ocean
4/5
Nothing else sounds like it. Ocean mixes up all kinds of styles & genres on here, but it’s cohesive in the way you might experience a trip through his mind. Gorgeous flows and a wistful, introspective mood - and a deep sadness that comes out in arresting ways.
Crack rock.
Great late-night album to get high and just ride with. Many haters giving one star sound fucking dumb or racist or both. Fix your hearts or die.
Channel Orange.
Meat Puppets
3/5
I guess I expected a little more… excitement? from a country-punk band named the Meat Puppets.
Willie Colón & Rubén Blades
3/5
Pleasant
Massive Attack
2/5
Very uneven. I don’t know what to make of Massive Attack. Some of their songs like “Safe From Harm” and “Unfinished Sympathy” are beauties, and others - “Five Man Army”, “Lately” and especially the dreadful “One Love” - are just dregs. More blah than blast in the balance, I’d say. Bring on the Teardrop(s).
Queen
3/5
Not full-Voltron Queen but getting rhere. Building their power. Yes, you have to put up with a few clunkers on every Queen album, but the ones here are pretty forgivable. Nobody was making music like this in 1974.
Ute Lemper
2/5
Once this album completed, the next song in my algorithm was by Bjőrk, and I thought,”Now that’s the sort of pretentious claptrap I actually like!”
Basement Jaxx
2/5
Okay, whatever that was. Undanceable dance music. I know it was recorded by Basement Jaxx because they say “Basement Jaxx” about 400 times. Cool album cover.
The Byrds
4/5
First off: fuck all y’all haters. Countless reviews saying “country sucks!” Yes - it does NOW, it didn’t THEN. This was a risky left turn for the Byrds, who dove deep into experimental music after “Eight Miles High”, with extremely mixed results. The influence of Gram Parsons led to this recording of country-pop that features some classic songs. And sounds great!
For a deep dive (really, really deep) on this album, find Andrew Hickey’s episode about it and much surrounding ephemera on his podcast “A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs”. Part 1 of episode 172 is transcribed here:
https://500songs.com/podcast/song-172-hickory-wind-by-the-byrds-part-one-ushering-in-a-new-dimension/
Anita Baker
2/5
Music for a 33-year-old bank teller who kicks off her heels after a long day at work, flopping into her beige couch in her “newish” Thousand Oaks condo in 1986. She pours herself a glass of Chablis and sets it down a bit carelessly on the glass-and-chrome coffee table. She gives her Persian, Mister Sniff, a few distracted scratches as she looks out the window, where you can almost see the ocean.
Maybe Steven will call, and they can go out to eat tonight so she doesn’t have to cook another frozen dinner. But the answering machine light isn’t blinking, and the sun is beginning to set through the haze.
She takes a swig of the wine, and sighs deeply. She’s tired.
Music would help the mood. It’s Wednesday night, and she needs to feel good. Let’s see… what would be just right?
Neu!
1/5
NEIN!
Finley Quaye
2/5
I don’t really like reggae of whatever flavor, and there’s certainly nothing special about this.
Lucinda Williams
3/5
A few songs get their claws in me. “Car Wheels” and “2 Good…”, “Drunken Angel” (hmm, kinda frontloaded I see). Williams’ voice is distinct, evocative, sometimes a little played-up into irritating. Sonically it’s very country-verging-into-Americana, and sounds ragged but clean. A good record, not a knockout.
Beastie Boys
5/5
Licensed to Ill was a blast, and Paul’s Boutique blew the fuckin doors off. I spun this up the first time and I knew it was a game-changer. God it was fun! Wore out my cassette, blasting it out of my car. The sheer creative force of their sampling genius, the flow, and the crazy stupid fun of the whole joint made it legendary. Still play it wall-to-wall today.
Merle Haggard
4/5
Just as I expected, the knee jerk “country sucks” reviews flowed in like a polluted river. Correction: contemporary country fucking sucks, yes — this kind does not. Haggard, Nelson, Jennings, Campbell, Williams et al., knew how to write songs with heart and soul. Haggard sounds like he’s gonna open up his veins on some of these tracks. He might have been a redneck asshole — hell, most of them were — but he kept it to himself. And he has the most twanged-out countryfied voice you ever heard.
Give real country a shot. You might like it, and that’s okay.
Pavement
3/5
I know Pavement is legendary, and that Malkmus is a genius, etc. But they have never done it for me. Just can’t get grabbed. Maybe it’s the whole tone of the thing, or Malkmus’ mumbly, off-key lyrics. Not charmed. But I know I’m in the minority.
R.E.M.
4/5
Hell yeah, a debut album that plays like a Greatest Hits. Well, leave “Laughing” off. But I could see Michael and Ric Ocasek laughing over beers and saying, man, how did we do that?
The word that comes to mind is “timeless”. These songs stick around because they’re too good not to.
KISS
1/5
In 1978 I was nine years old, and I bought this record from a local Pay ‘n’ Save. I didn’t even make it through side one before I asked my dad if we could return it. Which was an insane thing to ask, because it had been opened and played! Here’s the thing: Pay ‘n’ Save took it back. Because even the underpaid clerk understood what a monstrous pile of shit this album was, and KISS in general.
I exchanged it for the Grease soundtrack, and I never looked back.
Billie Holiday
4/5
What a voice. Like your grandma on heroin. That’s a compliment. She sounds like an imperious cat who likes expensive jewelry. Billie Holiday is like if Eartha Kitt was raised in a castle, so she lost some ferality but gained regality.
None of the is makes sense. She’s wonderful, and I’m not just saying that because this album followed KISS’s “Destroyer”.
Cocteau Twins
4/5
I’ll take Heaven.
Antony and the Johnsons
2/5
Well this one was interesting. Seems like a real personal passion project. Songs of self-discovery. Just feels like they’re playing to an audience of one. And we really gotta dial it down on the melisma. That’s too much melisma.
Not my thing.
Incredible Bongo Band
4/5
The Rosetta Stone of sampling is also a kick-ass groove by itself. My joy in hearing where the Beastie Boys got that track is equaled by my ass shaking to the killer beats and breaks. If you can make “In-a-Gadda-da-Vida” sound actually good, my friend you can do anything.
Keith Jarrett
5/5
Normally classical/jazz piano doesn’t hold my attention as a solo instrument. But this is something else. Jarrett’s approach grabbed my attention; the pacing, the timing, the particular feeling he infuses in the notes makes it stand out. I just know - without expertise - that I’m listening to a master. It’s not suitable to classify this as classical or jazz; it is something new and distinctive.
It was only after I listened all the way through that I learned that Jarrett had improvised this entire concert with a substandard piano, with a sore back, with an empty stomach… well, the greatest speak for themselves. True brilliance.
Little Simz
2/5
Cool to see women succeed in rap/hiphop, they’re still too few in number. Simz has some lyrical weapons, but this album falls into the same trap that puts me off most of the genre: flat performance, monotony, the same subjects of guns, shitty men, getting paid, etc.
Her voice is so drearily one-note that it becomes a drone. Doesn’t hook me.
Drive-By Truckers
4/5
Does what it says on the tin. Sweeping southern gothic on an epic scale: love, death, sweat, guns, women, shitty politics, racism, and the Devil. Pretty damn righteous.
Best:
Ronnie and Neil
Wallace
Zip City
Let There Be Rock
Shut Up and Get On the Plane
Arcade Fire
3/5
Funny that one of the best tracks, "Sprawl", occurs at the end of the album. You have to drive through several neighborhoods - some bland, some interesting - to get there, and you're a little tired when you arrive, You can't quite remember where you started from, but you enjoyed the scenery. Some of it was beautiful, in fact. But you wish the trip had been a little shorter.
Carole King
4/5
I’ve listened to Tapestry approximately 271,664,818 times and it still moves me when I give it a new play. It’s an album that’s gone from great to hugely overplayed to settle into its proper status as an icon. Carole King doesn’t have the range of an Aretha or the power of a Janis; what she has is the ability to sing in a lived-in, truly emotional way that draws me in no matter how familiar the song. Listen to how she sings “Natural Woman”. She doesn’t try to compete with Aretha, but gives the song a softer impression that she’s singing just to her love in the same room. And her songwriting is natural and true. That’s the compelling style of Carole King. Timeless.
The Magnetic Fields
4/5
What I like best about 69 Love Songs is that they don’t half-ass any of them. Are they all memorable? God, no. Are they all good? You can’t write 69 hits, though it would be nice. Would any other band try this? Maybe Guided By Voices, but that’s beside the point. I like that Stephin Merritt and Co. dedicated themselves to nearly three hours of music just so they could get to the sex number. That’s commitment.
It’s pretty front-loaded with the bulk of the best songs on the first disc. But there’s plenty to enjoy here, especially when Merritt’s voice digs down to that sonic register that makes Thurl Ravenscroft green with envy. Was he raised on a diet of tar and gravel?
Favorite songs:
Absolutely Cuckoo
I Don’t Want to Get Over You
The Book of Love
Fido, Your Leash is Too Long
A Pretty Girl is Like
Love is Like Jazz
(Crazy For You But) Not That Crazy
Papa Was a Rodeo
Underwear
The Death of Ferdinand…
The Night You Can’t Remember
Xylophone Track
Christine and the Queens
4/5
“Ninety minutes of French pop? Terrific… my finger hovers over the 1-star rating.”
(five minutes later)
“Mon Dieu! Je suis submergé par la fièvre de la danse!”
Alice In Chains
2/5
Men would rather record an album of mid-range fuzz-dirge yelling their angst for an hour than go to therapy.
Sorry to be mean, but AIC does nothing for me. The most overrated Seattle band of the early-90s. “Would?” really pops as the last track as it’s a breath of fresh air from the endless muck.
Morrissey
3/5
It’s too bad Morrissey is such a fucking asshole, because he wrote some damn beautiful catchy tunes. “Every Day is Like Sunday” is the most hilariously suicidal song ever written. Just a masterpiece of self-indulgent misery.
I used to think his “beautiful mope”character was just that, an act. But M. really believed in his own bullshit as The Smartest and Most Misunderstood Boy in the World. But his lyrics were full of self-pity AND hatred for everyone else, and he’s curdled into a fully-formed shitbag. There’s no saving him. But I’ll still play “Suedehead”, “First of the Gang” or “How Soon is Now?” because they fucking work, despite everything.
Sonic Youth
2/5
I could never get into Sonic Youth, but I don’t think they’d care. After the first few songs, the album crumbles into noisy wah-wah for the last 20 minutes, like drunk college students banging around on instruments late on a Thursday night. The only difference is, the students didn’t record their efforts.
Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five
4/5
Another crash course in sampling history! Now I know where Lindy West gets that drop.
Anyway, legend, obvs.