1001 Albums Summary

Alanis Morisette looks like John Travolta. This album really does nothing for me. It occupies the mid-90’s cultural slough whose festering miasma spread well into the 2000’s. It is an anthem for being too hot in pyjama pants on a summer day at 12:45 pm and wanting to kill yourself; that feeling of having completely wasted your day and that, consequently, you’ll do the same for your entire life. It makes me feel like my head is under a heat lamp, like I’ve been sitting on a hot sidewalk all day. The vibe is just not good at all. The lyrics and vocal technique feel like an Adam Sandler number. It’s very cheesy, the kind of thing women like Tony Soprano’s sister listen to. It’s what your very sweaty, overweight, bead obsessed aunt and her boyfriend listen to in their 1995 Honda accord with no air conditioning while they smoke with the windows up and sway their heads back and forth like they’re waving candles at some boomer concert, then consistently, loudly, and obnoxiously shushing whenever you ask them to turn it down or crack a window. It’s fine, just not really my thing.

I’ve been playing Disco Elysium lately, and have been loving it. I debated race science with a techno giant. This album seems like the kind of thing the player character would listen to. Good bowling alley music. Not particularly interesting, however. Feels more like Muzak than anything else. Has the rough hewn, scratchy quality a lot of English music from this time possesses, a vibe I am entirely neutral towards. This album neither exceptionally offensive, nor does it arouse any feeling in my whatsoever. If my friend played this in the car, I would neither thinks it’s abhorrent nor beautiful. I wouldn’t think about it all. I doubt I’d notice it. It would wash over me. I keep losing interest oh my god I cannot sit through this entire album. It’s like eating beige, or drinking wallpaper. At least it doesn’t trigger the same cosmic dread in me we’re it American. Then I’d have to imagine it playing in the dystopian setting of the Big Lebowski bowling alley and dispair.

This goddam website won’t let me correct spelling mistakes in my previous reviews so now I look like a dumbass. Fuck autocorrect. But this album is pretty sick. The opening is grand and powerful, like an operatic overture; indeed, it feels like is Bellini had to write a pop/rock album. That being said, the interesting opening is kind of undercut by the Meatloaf adjacent sound of the music that follows it, which is just not my jam. But there are a few nice tracks I enjoy. If this were playing at a midnight diner it would be the perfect vibe, but I can’t envision listening to this on my own time. Superb craftsmanship, just not for me.

Better than 6ix9ine, not quite as good as Kendrick Lamar. It’s very well made, but suffers from endemic issues in earlier rap, which might have to do with technology or just the state of development the genre was in at the time. The beats and samples are too monothematic, looping ad infinitum for most of the song. I feel like triumph of Kendrick was dependent on the variety of musical moments in his songs. Pretty good, but once you’ve listened to a song for 30 seconds you’ve gotten the point. At least the album is short: so many artists push for an hour of music when they’ve scarcely got 40 minutes of good material.

I liked the beats, they were very interesting. I was expecting this to be as horrific as other 80’s attempts of white people rapping, but it works, surprisingly. I think that the album would have been far better served with actual rappers, though. I complained in a previous review about the uninteresting beats in Illmatic: if Nas’ skills had been utilized with these beats, then it would be a 5. But it’s not. 2 or 3 at best. The Beastie Boys should’ve stayed producers. The beats being interesting paradoxically makes the whole album mono-thematic, that theme being shouting. Such a shame.

Ew.

It’s so fucking cool. I can overlook a lot of technical issues just because the energy this album brings right off the bat is immaculate. It’s also cool hearing black dudes try to figure out how to sound cool in a gangster setting without coming off as ridiculous. They often do not succeed. (Parental Discretion Iz Advised? Who the fuck thought that looks cool typed like that?). Kinda runs long though. The entire album could have just been the first two songs, edited to be half the length, and it would be just as significant and likely more listenable. It’s okay. Just fine. I would recommend Glenn Gould’s performance of Scriabin’s 3rd Piano Sonata much more enthusiastically. Did you know Scriabin had synesthesia? Of course you did. Everybody knows that.

I think the lack of willingness to wrestle with this album on its own merits attests to something disturbing about the way we consume art. This is the first album sent to me by this program which does not fall into cliched song structures and 2-4 minute songs. It’s very texturally, harmonically, and structurally interesting. These tracks take me on a journey. I don’t listen to the first 30 seconds and think “okay so that’s basically it”. I’m a fan of classical music, so more free form gobbledygook bullshit nonsense strikes a chord with me. To me this is capital M “Music”, a genuine expression of artistic intent not derived solely from a capitalistic drive for profit. This album was not made to satisfy a quota or buy a yacht. It is genuine art that attempts something unique that is worth at least contending with. It is imbued with history - or, more accurately, historicity - and progression, evading the typical static limbo which plagued conventional pop. Also I shit on my own balls and now I’m pissed off. Fuck McDonald’s. It’s like communion, except instead of turning into the blood and body of Christ inside you, it transmogrifies into sludge diarrhea.

Uhhhhhhh I hate all these songs to begin with so adding schmaltzy drums does nothing for me.

What the fuck are these guys saying? This sounds like the elevator music on the way to purgatory.

The most late 2000’s shit I’ve ever heard. This sounds like what would play after a transformers movie. Or perhaps during a video of somebody building a Lego Star Wars prequel set. Maybe in a PowerPoint made by a couple high school nerds who love Halo 3 and Modern Warfare on xbox 360. I wish I’d been that kinda guy in that period of time. Damn.

Uhhhhh Jesus fuck no

It’s alright, okay? What more do you fucking want from me. Albums like these really remind me of the swirling cascade of humanity that is just slowly spinning down the drain beyond sight. I don’t know who Fiona Apple is, and after I’m done listening this I won’t remember. She’s just another one of those perfectly average artists who will be forgotten alongside the rest of us. I become gripped by a creeping dread while listening to music like this, since it reminds me of the interminable march of history towards an end point of oblivion. But after that deluge of death consciousness, I assuage my panic by forcing my self into the painfully temporal process of listening to this album. It becomes an all encompassing, rapturous moment as I stick myself firmly in the present as past and future wash away, a temporary glimpse of enlightenment and the end of suffering as facilitated by a mediocre soundtrack. This transgressive act of being, of disabling the conscious speculative aspects of your brain, renders you a being wrapped in time rather than hurtling towards it on rails. All that’s left is awareness of the things around you, that becomes your reality. And it’s totally liberating. The air is fresher, the light sweeter, and everything more full. Moments like that make me want to get into Buddhist meditation practice, because they’re just fantastic and I’d like to make them easily replicable. But this album is fucking not great. Don’t listen to it.

So cozy and sweet. This album reminds me of NaissanceE, a really good video game. Same open and airy aura, a grand illusion of vastness. Pretty chill.

Back to acids, huh? What about that idea? The lack of artistry is made up for by technical polish. It’s like rubbing your face all over a freshly polished red classic convertible from the fifties, but in sound form. Feels like what would play in the trailer for an Ice Age film. The occasional song has a genuinely interesting sound, like “Without You”. It’s cool. Sounds like a shittier version of Kiss from a Rose. The second half of the album has done interesting moments, too. The whole experience feels too much like processed cheese, however. I can’t bring myself to give this anything approaching a 3, most likely because of my superego’s association of itself with high culture and it’s inability to concede to guilty pleasures.

I am genuinely convinced that I will never understand why people like the music they do, and that the Rolling Stones throws darts to determine their best albums lists. This is fucking boring. I do not like it or see any musical appeal in it. How the fuck did people listen to dogshit like this for an entire decade? The Vietnam era of music was really a blight on mankind. But being anti-war and anti-troops is unironically based, so it’s got that going for it. Veterans do not deserve your respect. And neither does this album.

*Loud snorting noise* Wee wee wee *Loud snorting noise* Wee wee wee *Loud snorting noise* Wee wee wee *Loud snorting noise* Wee wee wee Get it? Because it makes me go to bed. Grab your blankets and your teddy bears for this one, folks.

God were all the “great” songwriters mediocre fucking hacks? I swear to god, every one of the “great” albums on this list are tedious, mind numbing exercises in unmusical repetition. What the actual fuck am I supposed to take away from this album? Does ol’ bob know that there are more instruments than just the guitar? His Spotify calls him “One of the greatest figures of the 20th Century”. I wanna vomit. Stalin, Mao, Roosevelt, step outta the way! This nasally overrated fuck is here to spew pretentious nothing at you for an hour. Fuck rock & roll, fuck folk music, and fuck the baby boomers who ate that shit up, consequently forcing me to listen to all of it due to its “historical significance”. “Greatest songwriter of all time” my ass. The music is utterly unremarkable. And I’m not listening to the lyrics, you have to bribe me with good tunes first. Schumann was a real first rate songwriter, and you actually want to listen to his music even though it’s all in German. God this entire culture of ranking fucking albums based on historical significance is so goddam tedious, a way for musically illiterate tools to learn what they’re supposed to like and what they aren’t. AGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH I FUCKING HATE BOB DYLAN

This sucks. It sounds like Walmart David Bowie waffling his way through some of the most tepid, uninspired disco instrumentals of all time. This entire album washed over me like a glass of room temperature milk. I can’t believe people dedicated their hearts and souls to this music (actually, probably not. If they had, it would be far better).

This is a bunch of weird gay bullshit.

Exceptionally well made album with superb musicianship. I cannot, however, give this more than a 3: I simply hate rock. My antipathy is not due to the music itself. No, rather my hatred of this genre is owing entirely to the type of dude it spawned. I HATE guys who love rock. They’re all 40-60 year old dickheads who INSIST that this is the coolest music ever and that, by proxy, they are also super cool for being fans of it. They love classic cars, nudie calendars, and loudly complaining. In short, they are 12 year olds stuck in the bodies of men. By endlessly propagandizing Led Zeppelin as the coolest music ever, they have inadvertently made it lame. It has become a caricature of itself. Thanks Gen X and the Baby Boomers, you ruined your own favourite music for everybody born after 1990.

Funky as hell, cool as shit.

Sploinky music that makes the soul feel whole. It’s weird, a little unsettling, and a pretty chill vibe.