Industrial soul that's forward looking and deeply rooted. Emerging from BLM, the lyrics are urgently political; at their best they're an expression of pain and rage, at worst it's a ripped from online a mix of sloganeering and irritating self-help affirmation. It's never very subtle, but that's not what the moment demanded of artists - and the songwriting transcends the immediate overt 'relvance' of the content. Overall this is a stylistically rich blend of sounds from across a wide spectrum of genres woven into a cohesive affecting album pushing soul forward. Stop Dem and Hard Life are haunting church harmonies set against slow brooding grooves that erupt into joyous gospel jazz. Sometimes these transitions feel very forced, like mandatory optimism - they can't end on a down note so have a sudden turn out of nowhere from the deep solemnity of dark techno into kind of vapid 'everything's going to be alright' hippy outro. Wildfires, Monsters, and Sorry Ain't Enough swap the techno-bass for a jazzy RnB bass and more organic arrangements that continues the dark melancholy feel. Bow, the song with Michael Kiwanuka, adds an afro-psych (fuzzy wah-wah guitars + soukous arpegios) sound and pan-African thematic to the mix. Eternal Life floats on a blissed-out synth pop riff that the vocalists orbit around and as the beat rises and falls. Miracles combines a reggae groove and a trip-hop vibe to make a platform for powerful back an forth between the main vocalist and her backing singers. The album closes on the Motown sounds of Pray Up Stay Up, a simple dinky piano+deep bass hook with a southern spiritual refrain looping along - the chant remains even after the fade out. 9 albums in two years does suggest they're a prolific collective, but might benefit from some curation. A trimmed down double album of this and Rise would be really incredible. Favorites: Wildfires, Sorry Ain't Enough, Bow, Eternal Life, Monsters

Not even the slide-god Duane Allman can rescue Eric Clapton from his native bland blues-dad territory. Layla is a good song I never need to hear again, but otherwise the best tracks on here are like filler on an 80s ABB album - big broad major-key southern rock chord progressions, mildly funky basslines, and mostly aimless noodle. The best bits are the harmonized gual guitar leads and Duane's slide solos/fills. Clapton's vocals are flat and soulless and, Cream aside, I've never understood the hype around him as a guitar legend - he's just a technically proficient but very mechanical Buddy Guy/BB King impersonator with nothing special about his phrasing, tone, or anything. There are so many licks on here some are bound to be good, so every couple songs there's something ear-catching like a cool descending run, a minor pentatonic->mixolydian transition, or a big melodic line. It's all very mid, but hey, there's a lot of it - real discount bin stuff...

If you're making a list of albums that defined a time period in terms of pure ubiquity, this would have to included for 2015-2017 - but that does tell us what a bleak pop landscape that was. This is very bland music combined with generic EMOTIONAL lyrics and BIG singing. It borrows some interesting sounds from 2007 indie synth pop on Send My Love, but ruins with with the millenial ooOOaaAA. But's its mostly just bleak piano dirge: Coldplay with the range for the tv singing talent show era.

This album samples lots of jazz and FUNK Then it goes all hardcore PUNK Beastie Boys rap in a group of THREE Pretty corny now, but it works for ME ok I'll stop. This album is good when it's a hip hop album - the BB's and guests' verses are all at a really consistently high level, with inventive beats and sampling, and distinctive cadence/flow. The punk stuff is like C-tier Minor Threat, the jazz stuff is kind of pointless. Favorites: Sabotage, Update, Get it Together, Do It

Kind of a pivot from the psych-pop of the Jimi Hendrix Experience to the psych funk of the Band of Gypsies, this album is Hendrix in transition and captures the full range of his powers. Voodoo Chile is an extended jam over a deep base groove with a virtuoso guitar performance while Voodoo Chile (Slight Return) tames the wild exploratory song into a straight-forward rock single, a successor to Purple Haze. The fuzzed out guitar sounds so damn good, even on cheesy tracks like Noel Redding's Little Miss Strange, which has the unfortunate job of following Voodoo Chile. His playing-style -extended pentatonic blues with constant embellishment - remains distinctive despite being universally copied. The solo on Come On is fast and chaotic blues rock guitar taken to its logical conclusion and the wah-pedal wild panning and multi-tracked parts on Rainy Day and Still Raining show how he was incorporating emerging tools into his playing. There's also some late 60s studio experimentation with reverse tape effects, delays, overdubs, and stereo effects features JH as a creative song-writer and recording artist not just an exhilarating performer. The songs don't reach the heights of the Axis album's gems or the perfect pop singles of Are You Experienced, but even so songs like Long Hot Summer Night, Crosstown Traffic, and House Burning Down show his ability to craft a radio-friendly hits. And Watchtower obviously rules. I prefer both the looser live BoG albums that would follow this and the tighter psychedelia and pop songs of the preceding studio albums, but this is far more experimental and has so many unexpected ideas throughout it that it is still an exciting listen.

The best songs on here are dreamy and chill with Christie McVie & (obvs) Stevie Nicks vocals and her distinctive melodic phrasing.supported by spacey textures, and the bass carrying a lot of the music forward (Over & Over, Sara, Storms, Brown Eyes) or other SN-led songs with a more full chugging along on a groove rock-sound (Angel, Sisters of the Moon). They're experimenting with a lot of other stuff (sounds, tones, genres, instrumentation): there's a Stevie Wonder-style clavinet sound (The Ledge), generic 80s arena rock sound (Thing about me, walk a thin line), 70s country-rock sound (save me a place, that's all for everyone and the synthy I know I'm not wrong, honey hi), some devo-sounding synthy stuff (not that funny). There's some interesting guitar work (messing with reverse tape effects, volume swells and stuff) like on What makes you think you're the one? but the song is too Elton-John mashing a piano in 4/4 staccato to be interesting. Again, best stuff is when the guitar is drenched in reverb nicely compressed, sitting alongside SN vocals. Lots of songs on here - nothing as stand out as their greatest hits and a fair bit of filler - but the best songs highlight the best aspects of the band.

The whole THE BEATLES thing is annoying as hell and I'm always tempted to reactively underrate them because of their obnixious place in the pop cannon, but then you hear the albums and try to forget that stuff and, well, damn... This album is all Jangle and Swagger, incredible melodic and harmonic sensibility combined with propulsive energetic playing, high tempos - like they're impatient with the boundaries of the pop-rock song and about to burst beyond it. Tried playing along on guitar and the changes come so fast, incredibly restless music. The John-led stuff hits hardest of course.

Ray Charles is strangely a gap for me, so I'm pleased to sit with this one. With RC's singing and piano at the center of a selection of mostly ballads, this oscilattes between genres depending on the accompaniment from upbeat Swing & Jazz with horns (bye bye love, half as much, just a little loving, don't tell me your troubles) to slow-burning Scmaltz with strings (you don't know me, born to lose, I love you so much it hurts). It's as if the album was constructed to demonstrate how much better one style is than the other. The schmaltzy stuff is really pretty dire - as good as RC's vocals are they only rarely (I Can't Stop Loving You, I'll Never Stand in Your Way) elevate this tedious plodding chintzy 50s crooner crap. The horns songs really rip though, punctuating the vocal performance with jazz riffs, the odd solo, and lots of energy to go with the walking bass and swinging drums - providing the classic counter-part to the lovelorn ballads. "Worried Mind" brings the two sides together into a cool blues with strings supporting a jazzy piano-forward arrangement. In a nod to the album's title, "You Win Again" brings a country-inflected gospel sound to support another unbelieveable vocal performance. Another Hank Williams Classic, "Hey Good Looking" is re-invented as a really lively big-band swing, while the childish "You Are My Sunshine" becomes a fully adult motown soul track. His "You're Cheating Heart" is less successful: it's slowed way down and uses swelling strings and thick harmony from the backing singers that takes too much of the honkytonk life and cheekiness out of the original. No surprise, but the singing really is the star here - reaching and tender but always in control - we hear hints at the latent virtuosity, but always delivered in service of the song.

Along with Live/Dead this is the best live album there is, capturing the red-hot Allman Brothers giving birth to the jamband. Duane Allman is unstoppable on slide guitar - the phrasing, the rough-fuzzy tone that becomes crystaline as he climbs the neck, the electrifying runs and perfect fills between his brother's lines. Dickey Betts isn't bad either, adding major-key country melodies and jazz sensibilities that bring a joyful climax the blues jams. Gregg Allman's singing is deep and corny and moving; the drummers can't stop and Berry Oakley's bass holds it all together. The only thing wrong with this album is that it isn't the deluxe edition, where Whipping Post fades and those first few gentle notes of Mountain Jam kick emerge. Blues rock should have stopped after this really as what's the point, but don't hold the millions of tiresome blues-dads that followed them against the Allman Brothers, this is an all-timer.

It's amazing how stripped back these songs are: snare, kick & high-hat, some jazz samples for horns, and a bass line - the perfect platform for Q-Tip's hyper-enunciated clean and clear delivery with his classic cadence that itself carries the beat. You see how this that spawned a million cringey mystical-lyrical slam poetry imitators. Playful and conversational, the lyrics here vary between story-telling and abstract - mostly upbeat and bright-eyed. Overall the sound is laid-back and affirmative with a underlying sense of humor. Description of a Fool and some of the other songs with longer instrumental sections hint at what would become down-beat, instrumental hip-hop, and trip-hop. They're having fun messing around with samples and peicing it all together, could have more restraint sometimes (Why does it start with a 7-minute collage of 4 song-ideas with one good verse between them?! Why the tag 'say rhythm' bit at the end of Ham and Eggs?). These sample-heavy albums can be kind of distracting (where's that from? What else have I heard that in?) but some fun bricolage as they graze on, digest, and renew the archive of 20th c pop rnb soul and rock. Lots of great tracks: Luck of Lucien, El Segundo, Bonita Applebum, Can I Kick It, Youthful Expression, Go Ahead in the Rain

Classic case of not for me, dawg. There's just an inante sci-fi looser energy coming from this whole thing - sounds like they're huge fans of all of the worst aspects of Led Zeppelin and learned all the wrong lessons from the Who. The first four minutes is just a series of intro-riffs, so you're just left wondering when the song is going to actually start, then a bomb goes off, a stupid bible quote, and more intro riffs into the first verse (4:50). Then it ends with a few notes on a lute before burbling water takes us into the next song in the overture. They do the 'chinatown riff' at the start of passage to bangkok. They make the typical prog error of confusing having lots of parts in songs for having interesting song-writing. The songs just seem like cobbled undeveloped ideas, but sound totally sterile. They have a reputation for being super technical complex prog-wizards, but these riffs are just power chords! His voice is powerful, but if you're not into it its pretty grating. The drums are too hyperactive to actually establish much of a beat. Think of something positive to say...The breakdown at the 19 minute mark of the overture is pretty fun. The bass playing throughout is good. The guitar tone is cool and there are spurts of twin-lead harmonies I liked. The guitar solos are ok, and a respite from the singing. Despite a 20 minute opening track, it's only 38 minutes long...

The album opens with three tracks of spacey funk: all wah-ed out guitars and astral synths/keyboard sounds grounded by rock-solid bass grooves and locked-in drums. This peaks with the extended jam on Papa was a Rolling Stone that gets pretty psychadelic. Transitions into a soul ballad with cheesy strings then a jazzy doo-wop story song and then a piano and strings-led ballad - these are really plodding and drag on and on - it's really not helped by coming right after such good funk material. Despite that there are some nice clean guitar tones (perfect reverb/tremelo) hitting the chords and the bass lines are so damn good - that's really the stand out performance on this album. "Mother Nature" has a jazzy-RnB soul sound (think Curtis Mayfield) and though slow, is a lot more interesting than the dull middle - more great bass work, and the best vocal performance of the album. "Do Your Thing" brings us back to the funk with a slow, deep groove, great harmonies and horns that fade out but could go on and on. Overall, The Temptations' 60s pop-soul stuff is much stronger and other artists would take this space funk sound much further in the 70s but this is an interesting transition between the two. And the bass is so good. Favorites: Papa was a Rolling Stone, Do Your Thing

Lindisfarne soundsystem represent. Dark techno combined with monastic chanting, complex rhythms and layer upon layer of sound shifting in and out - the music never settles for very long. Definitely more like the soundtrack to a video-art installation than radio music - but that's what she's going for. Between Icelandic lyrics on some songs and Bjork's vocal style there aren't a lot of hooks or memorable melodies to hang on to. Instead, this is about sonic textures, dissonances resolving and harmonies dissolving, poly-vocal stuttering, singing degrading into noise-making...like the voices in your head having it out on a windswept hebridean island. The album is all about the vocals, but there are some fantastic synth parts like the delicate, shimmering and fuzzy marimba-sound pulsing out the rhythm on Desired Consellation. Favorites: Where is the Line with You; Who is it... ; Desired Constellation; Triumph of a Heart

Amazing combination of dark and honest lyrical contentwith incredibly light-hearted, blissfully corny, and over the top songs. I only knew the hits coming into this, so am surprised at how deep the album goes and how wide-ranging it is. George Michael appropriates huge swaths of the 70s & 80s pop sound pallet: the kitschy achey breaky heart country sounds on Faith, the ghostbusters keyboard laying it down on I Want Your Sex, the Procul Harum-style organ vamp on One More Try, the Parliament space-funk bass on Hard Day; the minor-key Pet Shop Boys synth on Hand to Mouth; the Dire-Straights guitar/horns poprock of Look at Your Hands; the Peter Gabriel response song Monkey. He ends up creating some exuberant pure-pop that's moves across genres and styles - that mix keeps the album interesting from song to song. The coherent strand is his singing/lyrics that really sell it and mean it doesn't come across as ironic pastiche - he's having fun with it, but it isn't a joke. It's pop, so the vocal performance is the star: ranging with tight control from whispered intimacies to wailing lovesongs to anthemic affirmation. The songs are all maybe a minute too long.

Easy listening blues rock, the best bit is the harmonizing guitar leads and melodic (vs shredding) solos. The songs are overlong - chugging along through one basic chord progression over and over verse chorus chorus chorus solo chorus. Tuesday's Gone is good, the rest is pretty meh and I cannot listen to Freebird one more time. Listen to Little Feat and the Allman Brothers instead.

Suffers from being over-played when I was a teenager, too much radio play, and an over-hyped reputation so it's impossible to approach with any freshness. This is my least favorite of the first 4 Led Zeppelin albums and the big hits songs (Living Loving Maid, Whole Lotta Love) here are the most over-familiar and least interesting. Heartbreaker still goes though - even if the riffs are all too familiar, the heavily distorted fuzzed out guitar on here still sounds amazing and Page's blistering pentatonic solos still scratch that teenage itch. Ramble On is my favorite track, pointing at the direction they'd go for III and Houses of the Holy (Thank You as well). Driven by an acoustic guitar riff, layered with distorted electric leads, delay and reverse effects, organ adornment, and propelled by the kinetic bassline. The Lemon Song especially is a bass masterclass. Jimmy Page and John Bonham get the plaudits, but John Paul Jones's hyperactive bass playing is really fantastic throughout: ranging, melodic, pulsating under the riffs and holding it together while the guitar and drums are going off.

"Anyone who's ever been on it, knows exactly where it's at" This album is all about the lyrics and the guitars. The sound is traditional guitar rock with the odd country-twinge. When it dials in the three guitar attack is a blistering force of distortion and harmony. The vocals aren't virtuoso or anything but perfect for the songs, raspy and hoarse with a heavy accent. Great songwriting overall, and all tied together through an exploration of 'the duality of that southern thing' and a radical act of self-mythologizing, projecting the band into the southern rock cannon in Skynard's wake. Though the valiant effort to articulate an anti-racist Southern heritage and de-exceptionalize the south as THE site of American racism sometimes comes across as mostly self-exculpatory. The personal songs and family stories are the strongest. I love Cooley's songs on this album: Highway 72's verses, Women without Whiskey's jangly guitars, Zip City's yearning angry vocals and squeaky squirrely solo. A bit too much of a good thing though; the double album drags on a bit even though the quality of the songs doesn't dip, it's a bit samey. Decoration Day would be my pick for a DbT album instead. It makes sense they've released so many live albums, as this is really a band you have to see to believe.

Sparse sythn-driven slow-burning 80s sad-guy pop - a bit like Killing Joke or a less exuberant Peter Gabriel. The vocals are the dominant element; slightly hoarse, plaintive, searching, and introspective, operating within a fairly narrow range but using volume dynamics to shift intensities they convey loneliness, loss, and a sense of life happening elsewhere. There's a lot of lyrical repetation, emphasis on choruses and individual lines rather than extended verses. The synths are more upbeat: shimmering and arpegiatted with bright tambers. The bass and very reverby drum machine tracks are very synth-sounding too, giving the whole thing that pure-plastic post-modern sound. There's the odd bit of very compressed-clean guitar that comes in as an accent in key moments to build up tension (like in Stay). Easter Parade is a slow piano ballad and big change of tone. Heatwave is another ballad, but much more interestingly arranged, with a very layered bed of synth and keyboard parts as chill and inviting platform for the singer to float over. Favorites: Stay, Heatwave

Nice layering of textures and sounds and creative production. The sound is very full across the band - as the bass/keys/rhythm guitar form kind a driving mush that pulses along while the guitar leads work really well to propel the songs from verse to verse, experimenting with some interesting tones. It's very contemporary sounding. Bowie isn't retreading old sounds, but digested the alt rock and indie sounds of the 90s/00s (that he influenced) and comes out the other side to make an album that's very much in synch with rock of the 2010s. Some signature elements are there: his voice and melodic style, the interstellar lyrics, the squigly reverb-drenched guitar bursts, cheesy synths and noodly sax. It's never quite as anthemic his classics, but has some catchy hooks. In the end though, this is Mid-tempo rock with very tasteful production/arrangement, but clearly carried onto the list by being Bowie. Favorites: The Stars, Dancing Out in Space, You Feel so Lonely

This is an album for people's who's favorite band is Spinal Tap. I can't believe this is on the list, I always thought this was a novelty act or the glam Jackie Jormp-Jomp. The Darkness is a mash up of AC/DC and Boston with Geddy Lee on vocals regurgitating every 70s rock cliche. They're good at it (the guitar tones and harmonic leads do replicate the 70s arena rock sound perfectly) and its pretty fun but because the hooks don't have the worn-in familiarity of decades of radio super-saturation the songs don't elicit the begrudging hum-along of even dreck like "More than a Feeling." Could see this being a fun bar-band, but an all-time album? At its best you could put this on while you're painting a wall and forget is on, but when it calls attention to itself its extremely annoying. Favorites: Growing on Me, the first 20 seconds of Holding my Own

Surprising melding of early 70s country-rock sensibilities with soul/RnB sounds - not what I was expecting at all. The funk bass lines are great: dancey and hypnotic they propel the songs along. Hammond organs and sparse electric guitar build up the jazzy chords, rhythm and vamps. Bongos add more texture on top of the drums and horns come in for quick solos (move with me) in transition and strings appear for dramatic effect (sweet surrender). The vocals are not my thing. Impressive range and strong delivery, but it always sounds like he's doing a bit. So much wailing and the scatting is way too much (get on top). Nighthawkin veers into 70s sitcom theme song territory. Honk Kong Bar is more of the acoustic folk sound I associated with TB. Make it right is a jazzy western. Favourite: devil eyes, make it right

The forbidden riff. 5/8 good songs (even if 1 is ruined by overplay), 1 amazing song (When the Levee Breaks), and 2/8 forgettable fillers (Evermore, Four Sticks). IV sees LZ's transition from proto-metal hard blues rock towards proto-prog, developing more complex song structures, more elaborate instrumentation and production, and goblin-type lyrical content. But don't worry, fans of white dudes screeching "mama", you will not be disappointed. The delicate mandolin/acoustic guitar duet on Going to California is an unexpected highlight. The huge drums on Levee are undeniable. And corny as it is, the solo on Stairway rips.

Classic bay area psychadelia - more bluesy and less poppy than its UK counterpart (think Buffalo Springfield/Jefferson Airplane rather than 1960s Pink Floyd). The signature sound here is the combination of the swirling whirling organ with the overdriven pentatonic guitar spasms. The bass alternates between a solid motown-inspried bass that keeps a groove going under it all on some songs and on others a more melodic arpegiated textural thing higher up the fret board. The vocals are the staple blues-rock delivery and they sometime edges into a Pig Pen-style RnB rave-up. Songs are mostly conventionally structured. Just the organ, lyrics, and the aesthetics convey psychadelia. Mostly pretty upbeat/uptempo and busy, without the spacier darker sounds other bands were developing. A good album example of the original 'Nuggets'-era style that's always been a pretty limited sound to me - I like the stuff that went more garage rock or more exploratory/improvisational and this is neither nor. This album is mostly interesting as an artifact of a time and place in rock history more than something I want to put on. Favorites: Death Sound, Sad and Lonely

I primarily know this as the arena-rock radio hegemon against which the amazing music of the late 70s defined itself. I certainly didn't need to hear these songs 8000 times and ambiently absorb 40% of the lyrics and its hard not to hold that against them. Not an album of subtle pleasures, this is the corniest rock imaginable. But, Boston, "there is something about you," and somehow I find myself begrudingly enjoying this fun anthemic and melodic album. The guitar tone is the star here - overdriven, over-dubbed, and over the top. And yet, I really am in no rush for the 8002nd time hearing this. Favorite: Hitch a Ride

This one is all about the Wailers. The ensemble performance on Catch a Fire is perfect and the production/arrangement is amazing. There's so much space within each of the songs, making room for a big band and massive range of instruments who each add something to building up the texture, rhythm, and harmony on each track but never sounds cluttered or overly busy. The root of this is the sparse but bedrock bass that leaves tons of room within its melodic phrasing and big hits on the 2 & 4. This lulls you almost hypnotically while the other parts float around. The clavinet sound throughout is really distinctive, adding funky synchopated counter-melodies and melding in with the edge-of-break up guitar chord stabs. The dirty slide guitar brings an ethereal country sound to Baby We've Got a Date and the wah-wah guitar gives Stir It Up's chill groove a psychadelic edge - both of these are Wayne Perkins overdubs. The reverby guitar parts on Kinky Reggae give it a dub sound as it fades out. Obviously Bob Marley is the star vocalist and his performance on all these is at once richly emotive and smoothly controlled. Peter Tosh brings his own unique, edgier, angrier, delivery and tone to his songs. The the backing singers perfectly occupy the space between the organ and the lead vocal, doubling the downbeats and doubling down on the lyrics. None of the songs on here are as burned out as the mega-hits from Legend so this feels fresher to dig back into. All bangers, but favorites: Concrete Jungle, 400 years, Stir It Up, Midnight Ravers

Some Riot? More like Slow Quiet. Trudging low-tempo rock like Beta Band with the handbrake on or Arcade Fire smothered by a lovely pillow. Some songs have elements of some good 90s bands: Cake, Beck, Tom Waits, Calexico. It's pleasant enough and very unobtrusive, some lush sounds and pretty bits. The yearning vocals are the only thing that captures the attention. They seem to always be advertising a show in town, truly can't see the appeal of this as a live act. It's like the score for a movie about 42-year olds loosing interest in each other while hiking in a fjord. Boring!

Melodic punk verging into power pop. They do a lot with so little - just some power chords, dead-simple riffs, yelped out vocals, and a guy blasting away on drums at 2x speed. On some riffs the lead guitar has a fantastic chorus-pedal sounding tone - almost doubled up an octave giving a tiny bite of a brighter pop sound. The stripped back sound delivers a 36 minute dose of pure brash energy. These 70s punk albums sound so much less aggressive and in your face with nearly 50 years of hindsight - this is just old fashioned rock and roll played faster and through crappier more distorted amps. The genre of punk kind of just dissolve into post-punk, proto-punk, power pop, leaving basically just the Ramones and Sex Pistols. Favorites: I Need, I Don't Mind, Love Battery, No Reply

Don't forget the joker! Sabbath mashing the NOS, god damn this goes so hard.

This such a dark thematically consistent album: slow and brooding, desperate and disillusioned, Neil Young is the friend telling hippies they're pissing in the wind at the end of an era. The upbeat opener 'Walk On' is a nostalgic good-time song about yesterdays, but things get real real quick. The wavering tremelo organ on 'See the Sky About to Rain' is the ominous sound of heavy clouds and the lapsteel is the wind of a dew-point drop; they serves the song perfectly. The chaotic bass and angry guitars on 'Revolution Blues' channel the dark vibes from the up Canyon. Vampire Blues slow mesmerizing groove disolves into a deconstructed guitar solo, scratching and scribbling on the stings as the song fades out. Contrast that with the peircing clean tone through the slow reverby minor-key 'On the Beach' - where the guitar perfectly extends NY's voice - thin, faltering, fragile and introspective, but deeply expressive. 'Motion Pictures' & 'Ambulance Blues' close the album with sparse acoustic songs - the violin and harmonica interplay on AB give it an almost raga-drone feel, while the detuned guitar parts on MP make it feel like watching melting film. Favorites: Revolution Blues, See the Sky About to Rain, On the Beach

Overall this is a very woozy dreamy album - slow paced and meandering tipsily through different sounds and arrangements. - Folky/classical acoustic instrumentation: nylon string guitars, pianos, flutes. - Jazzy psych with drums electric bass and drums and a clean tone electric gutiar strumming. - crooner strings + 12 string guitar and horns with a melodic jazzy bass lead. - spaghetti western psychadelic with reverby chords and horns on top. - gentle bedroom-pop with hushed chords and expressive nylon guitar melodies. - jangly upbeat indie-pop with a warbling clean guitar chime leading. - Beatles-eque 'eleanor rigby' strings riffs. - piano ballads. - Far out chaotic soundscapes - fuzzed out guitar over minor7th harmonies and driving bass Despite the wide variety of sounds, there's a coherent relaxed, intimate, and warm feel across the whole album. The vocals throughout are a breathy and dramatic tenor. Something about the melodic phrasing and harmony in Brazilian music really doesn't work for me - combined with the all the intricate chords and complex voicings it never seems to resolve as I'd expect and feels incomplete - tonal ambiguity. That's decades of harmonic acculturation for you, but I ended up liking this a lot more than I expected because of the chill feel and the combination of sounds and styles. Favorites: Dos Cruces, Clube de Esquina No 2, Paisagem de Janela, TREM DE DOIDO

Rod Stewart : Country : : Billy Crystal : Jazz There are some good Rod Stewart songs, but these are not them. You're English, stop singing about hobos. Seeing how badly this mash-up can get makes Exile on Main Street look like an even bigger achievement. Why does the guitar double the vocal melody on Gasoline Alley? Why these songs so long? Dylan, Stones, and Elton John? Yeah those guys did okay, but hold my beer...Ronnie Wood's guitar tone sounds good even if he isn't doing much particularly interesting and I do like Rod's raspy voice. Favorites: Country Comfort (for 2.5-3 minutes, but get out while the going is good!), the violin, 12-string & slide guitar bits on Cut Across Shorty, thinking about how good Young Turks is the whole time

This album is fun and pretty consistent with one big highlight: Take me Out is a great song. But its mostly par for the course wake of The Strokes 00s indie-rock.

The coolest album there is. They perfected post-punk basically before punk even happened. Two thrilling guitars wrapped around each other like chaotic DNA. All sparse jangly-disorted chords and scattering frenetic leads with an incredible sense of melody and dramatic tension. The bass adds an extra layer of propulsive energy and counter-melodic riffing while the drums drop in and out, sometimes restrained with almost jazzy cymbal work, rolling high-hats, establishing the beat on snare-rim, and tight fills, until breaking into some hyper intense punk verve. Insouciant vocals with the occaisonal pubescent break, brilliant with off-kilter delivery and surpring phrasing. Damn I love this album so much. F. R. I. C. T-I-O-N!

"How about no?" - Dr. Evil Little Britain CSNY. Psychedelic folk prog with lots of ideas - few of them good.The bass sounds like farts, pretty cool! Nice acoustic instrumental on The Clap in a virtuoso folk style. The guitar and bass interplay on Starship Troopers is great throughout, especially the spacey ending. But the vocals are irritating, flutes have no place in rock music, and there're too many parts all jammed together into each song, you're just getting into a groove then here comes a tempo/key/instrumental change. Very taxing to listen to and the whole thing reeks of cider. Oh, 'All Good People' is by Yes? Hadn't realized. I hate that song. I gather this was a very influential album, unfortunate.

One to sink into and let wash through you. This album captures the anxiety and anomie of the millennium - the dark depths below the shallow sheen of Blairism and Brit-poptimism. Unsettling poly-rhythms, dissonant harmonies, glistening shimmering textures that shift and mutate as instruments come in and out, fade outs where you realize there's been a guitar hiding in the mix that entire time, that warbling thin and piercing singing (I get way it's not universally loved, but it works so well for this music - how insane would this sound if they had a normal rock singer on this?!), the fluttering panning what is that sound snyths, electronica inspired drums and bass, melting horns and washed out strings. Korn for softboys, dance music for shut-ins, this is dismal and alienating exploration of the dismal and alienating feelings of shiny glass cities and the empty boom of the FIRE economy.

What if a band that wrote really good 3-minute rock songs drew out an idea for a 70-minute album? What if that album told a story? And what if the songs were subsumed to telling the story? And what if the story was extremely goofy? Pinball Wizard is a very dumb idea for song but is way better than it has any right to be. The rest is extremely boring. Random guitar parts throughout sound good and I always love JE on bass - but these songs are such a drag.

Dudes having fun goofing around with synths and drum machines and keyboards. Hard to imagine this being a massive cultural touchstone and the frontier of cool now since it sounds so corny, especially the rap - the beats sounds and samples are still pretty decent. Perfect Eddy Murphy sliding across the hood of a long car music. At this point more of an artifact than an in the rotation album.

Kind of a nothing album. The 4-6 real songs are good but not great WN songs - his gentle nylon string guitar melodies accompanied by a piano, subtle country bass and very light drums with the odd lonesome harmonica solo. Very minimalist sparse sound throughout. His voice is great, but doesn't do too much with it here. 'Can I Sleep in Your Arms' 'Blue Eyes' and 'Hands on the Wheel are the real stand out vocal perfomances with some emotional depth. Given the way the sparse arrangements emphasize the vocal, you'd want more. There are so many pointless micro-songs - it's like the score for a cowboy movie that does really well setting the mood and fading to the background. The album tells a story but not as well as some of the classic country story songs. They really went nuts with the concept album thing in the 70s and it was not a good idea. Favorites: Hands on the Wheel, Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain

Truth in advertising; Otis Redding does, indeed, sing soul. Fantastic song selection and thrilling performances all across this album. The vocals are warm and honest, with controlled runs and embellishment but also gruff and occaisonly raspy with a break when it all gets too much. The backing musicians are the definition of in the pocket, on cue and on point. The basslines are so smooth, floating things along, the guitars clean light-reverb sound sets a relaxed tone, the drums keep it all moving with quick little fills to pass from section to section, and the horns build and swell to build up the tension and release it when they hit the big riffs just right. Immaculate.

Lots of different iterations of the RnB band sound showing its range. There are jazz fusion tracks like Contusion that are fast, with great riffs and guitar/keyboard tones and tight collective playing through intricate parts. There are funky uptempo style songs lead by the horns and melodic bass playing like Sir Duke that have a motown basis but incorporate a bigband jazz sound with harmonized horn/guitar leads. There are songs like Ordinary Pain that anticipate the galactic funk of parliament. The bass is the star on so many songs, relentlessly grooving through the changes with imaginative lines and perfect anticipation. Lots of good stuff, but the slow songs are really dire, with orchestral strings and horrible overwrought lyrics like 'babies die before they're born infected with disease'. Isn't She Lovely is so sickeningly sachharine I have diabetes now. If It's Magic is a warbly and tuneless 4 minute ballad. I know he's a legendary singer, but I find his voice to be very nasal and almost thin at times and just at the edge of being off key like on Summer Soft - I'm sure it's intentional and has to do with the jazzy chords/modes he's using where he's delaying resolution to the tonic? But still, find it kind of unpleasant at times. Favorites: Contusion, I Wish, Ordinary Pain, Another Star, As, All Day Sucker

Never got the hype with these guys, despite a few real tries. It's all so...fine? Feels like a college project about americana - well thought out, tastefully arranged, and performed skillfully, but without any real gusto it ends up pretty bland and lifeless. I didn't realize the last few songs on the album are so good, but it turned out Spotify was just auto-playing Gram Parsons and Buffalo Springfield.

Lo-Fi indie centered around the acoustic guitar/vocal with clean tremelo+reverby electric guitar parts adding some color and a drum/bass to give the rockier songs a full band sound. His voice is hushed and breathy, constrained to whispering in a fairly high range. He has a fairly distinctive melodic sensibility that backs away from the big crescendo, building up to deflate and deflect away from the major resolution. The way its recorded sounds like demos or bedroom tapes, which, combined with the vocals and introspective lyrics gives the album an intimate almost parasocial feel. I've given this album a go so many times, but this time with good headphones, a lyric sheet, and close attention I get it much better - it just disappears as unobtusive kinda boring background music unless you zoom in. Still not the biggest fan of his voice, but this overcast afternoon I appreciated the autumnal moodiness of this much more than I have before. Favorites: Alameda, No Name No 5, Punch and Judy, Cupid's Love

Dark and moody, bleak and beautiful all the way through. The layers and layers of guitars with open string drones swirl all around drenched in reverb and flanger giving a dense relentless texture alternating with jangly arpegiatted hooks. The bass carries the main riffs, cutting through the whirling texture to drive things on. You can hear their punk beginings and disco leanings in the pummeling the drums get on when the pace picks up. Great drum sound - the snare really pops. All the instrumentation is in service of giving Robert Smith's vocals a platform for lift off. One of the best not obviously good singers, his range isn't great and his tone isn't rich or anything, but the depth from which he reaches to get the words out gives them a sense of edge-of-control desperation. All the elements are pretty basic really, but sound they make together are so good, and the melodic interplay of bass, guitar, and vocals is brilliant. Album was over before I realized it and hit replay immediately.

Cool guitar sounds and some hard-hitting riffs. The vocals are delivered powerfully, with a commanding range - but they're somehow impersonal and technical, compared to the more anthemic stuff Freddie Mercury would sing later. Very hard to take this seriously in a post-Spinal Tap universe. The fantasy-infatuated 70s rock always makes for pretty bad bootleg-Tolkein lyrics about mystical lands of Ogres, Fairies, Queens. Don't Care! The operatic prog aspects of this make for some disjointed over-stuffed songs; just get out of your own way and let Brian May rip in 3-part harmony.

Can't think of any other artists at the middle of the electronica( )folk venn diagram, and it doesn't seem like it should work, but this album pulls it off perfectly, setting strummy acoustic guitar singer-songwriter fare to Portishead sounding high-hat dominant electronic beats. Fantastic production overall, each instrument, sample, and effect comes into its own, letting the singing star and tie it all together. Like the best bits of Astral Weeks remade with a 90s pallete of trip-hop, dub & some krautrock. A few songs have some great lead guitar work with mildly-overdriven slides and volume pedals to create a swelling swirling edgeless shoegaze sound. Some tracks are more raw stripped down acoustic songs - forceful vocals, loud/quiet dynamics, finger-picked guitars - these are less distinctive in terms of production, but still have the unique voice. She has a distinctive voice and delivery; she hits the highs but lives in a breathier heady middle range, fading out at the end of phrases, the melodies disappearing into themselves, peaking with emotive variations on the hooks. A beautiful and nearly Sui Generis album.

You can tell from the cover that this album has a lot of psychology. It's a farily diverse album, some tracks have an interesting combination of a broadway pop sensibility with the sounds of 70s arena rock (Movin Out, The Stranger, Get it Right), there's a Long-Island-Stevie-Wonder jazz ballad (Just the Way You Are), some corny crooning (Vienna, Always a Woman), showtune ethnography (Italian Restaurant), barroom (more like golf club bar and grill) singalongs (Only the Good Die Young) and Hey Jude cosplay (Everybody has a Dream). The whole thing is like a Paul Giammatti fronting a Wings coverband. Somehow this is even more boomer than the Woodstock-era stuff.

Tension, anxiety, stress, chaos - Radiohead examines and produces negative affect, it's all disonant chords and disjunctive lead lines, unsettled poly-rhythms, and whatever the opposite of soothing vocals are. At times its too much for the songs themselves to handle and it starts to sound pixelated as they burst the seams. They're holding on the electronic excursions of their last three albums while re-introducing a more direct rock sound, like the Bends-era band playing Krautrock. Lots going on in the production with dense textures establishing each songs ambience and the rhythm section kicking it into gear. So many good sounds: The bass rumble on 15 Step. The reverbed-out guitar lead on Bodysnatchers. The groove on Nude. The low-end synth on All I Need. The chiming riff on Reckoner. The gentle thrumming fuzz of House of Cards. The acceleration/decceleration on Jigsaw...

The only good rock opera. The movie version of this is awesome and really conveys the whole story of childhood in the wake of WW2, English institutional authoritarianism, and the vacuity of celeb life degenerating into a fascist cult of personality. But as an album even this suffers from 70s concept bloat with lots of songs there for the story, but that don't hold up as songs. The 45-minute best-off cut of this would be amazing. Odd that on Roger Waters's definitive statement album the real stand out musical moments are David Gilmour's. An all-time great guitar performance here with precise lyrical phrasing, that slow/fast stuff, his endless sustain, and the purest chrystaline-fuzz strat tone recorded. Fuck. Yeah. And it's not just the solos - the big echoing open chords and bright chimey transitional fills are all great.

Smooth jazzy advertising music; makes me want to shampoo and have posh ice cream.

Psychedelic chamber pop. The mood is woozy and vague. Slow paced and ornate - with Beatles-y sounds and beach boyish harmonies. Pianos and big churchy organs are the lead instruments, with a high up the fretboard bass. The guitars are all chime and jangle. Very finicky composition - choir boys messing around with mushrooms. Time of the Season is the epitome of groovy.

Dark and stormy with lots of electronica influence in the bass and drums parts (a bit like Burial) and lots of gothy Cure/Depeche Mode/Nine Inch Nails sounds in the layers of droning guitars and minor-key synth & string parts. Bowie consistenly has the best use of sax in rock music, which continues here, with jazzy parts and solos running under and alongside the vocals, creating a poly-vocal multi-melodic bursting feel to the songs. His voice is distinctively his, but somewhat wispy and injured, fully committed but exhausted. He's giving the last he has singing "I can't give everything away."

Kind of a pivot from the psych-pop of the Jimi Hendrix Experience to the psych funk of the Band of Gypsies, this album is Hendrix in transition and captures the full range of his powers. Voodoo Chile is an extended jam over a deep base groove with a virtuoso guitar performance while Voodoo Chile (Slight Return) tames the wild exploratory song into a straight-forward rock single, a successor to Purple Haze. The fuzzed out guitar sounds so damn good, even on cheesy tracks like Noel Redding's Little Miss Strange, which has the unfortunate job of following Voodoo Chile. His playing-style -extended pentatonic blues with constant embellishment - remains distinctive despite being universally copied. The solo on Come On is fast and chaotic blues rock guitar taken to its logical conclusion and the wah-pedal wild panning and multi-tracked parts on Rainy Day and Still Raining show how he was incorporating emerging tools into his playing. There's also some late 60s studio experimentation with reverse tape effects, delays, overdubs, and stereo effects features JH as a creative song-writer and recording artist not just an exhilarating performer. The songs don't reach the heights of the Axis album's gems or the perfect pop singles of Are You Experienced, but even so songs like Long Hot Summer Night, Crosstown Traffic, and House Burning Down show his ability to craft a radio-friendly hits. And Watchtower obviously rules. I prefer both the looser live BoG albums that would follow this and the tighter psychedelia and pop songs of the preceding studio albums, but this is far more experimental and has so many unexpected ideas throughout it that it is still an exciting listen.

Weird English guys doing Nashville schmaltz about an old boat and lightbulbs. Not what I was expecting at all, makes me long for disco. Prog adjacent folk with acoustic guitars, lots of strings and bells, the odd French horn - but barely any rhythm section. At best (Marley Purt Drive) they sound like a decent The Band tribute act. Sometimes (whisper, give your best) they sound like a 7th tier Beatles ripoff record playing too slow. Cons: the songs are extremely repetitive and very very boring. Pros: they last forever and there are loads of them. What is it with this list and tedious British concept albums?!

The Rolling Stones are the best Southern rock band, they even have the best racist song. This album is full a out country blues gospel rocker - maybe not quite at Exile level, but getting there and more concise. 'Wild Horses' is an all time favorite. On 'Can't you hear me knocking' they're doing a Santana/Allman Brothers thing with a loosely psychedelic blues jam. 'You gotta move' works less well, imitating a zither and stomp blues that relies more on Jagger doing old blues guy voice. 'I got the blues' slows it down for a church organ lament, layered with great horns parts and bright clean guitar line. The acoustic guitar + dirty slide guitar on 'Sister morphine' carries the song through a traditional folky verse chorus into the chaotic descent of the Neil Young style second half. Good as he is, Keith Richards has never been a personal favorite but he really is the star on this one.

Just a couple steps removed from the "My name is LL Cool J and I'm here to say" era, the production on this album is lean and clean - minimalistic beats driven by boom boom tish drums, funky looped basslines, and sparse synth/sample accentuation that put the vocals front and center. There are just 1-2 beats/parts per song so the sound is fairly repetitive. There are long verses and short infrequent choruses. It's an old-school sound, though rap is pushing into new areas, speeding up a bit with a twisting clever and boastful style that would dominate the early 90s.The delivery on this album is precise and focused - putting an emphasis on the playful wordy verses' stories of love and lust, rivalries and friendships, parties and fights, crafting LL Cool J's smooth bravado persona. 

Glossy 80s pop with a heavy dose of smooth jazz. Chimey slowed-down Johnny Marr-wannabe guitars and some bright synth sounds combined with a busy neo-soul bass and Kenny G saxophone. It sort of works? The songs are all lush and slow artifice with a chorus-pedal sound saturating the album. No real distinctions between the songs, it's a mood album that's calm relaxed and upbeat- but that's another word for boring. The sound of the milk aisle in the early 90s.

One of my first CDs and still one of my favorites. The imagery, timing, and performance here is responsible for the corny Kurt as grunge angel thing, but this album itself is untouchable. Stepping back from the loud-quiet-loud super distorted style of their other albums, this performance brings out the quality of Nirvana's songwriting (and their taste in covers). The arrangements - replacing distortion pedals for a cello and adding in a second acoustic guitar, generally quite understated drumming - bring the singing to front and make more space for it to stand out in the mix than usual and Cobain delivers the best rock vocal performance of the 90s. Hoarse and desperate, powerful until it breaks, bleak and vulnerable - his voice is incredible. I've heard it a millions times and it's still magic.

Glasgow's answer to Franco & OK Jazz. The bass and drums are the root of the funkiest sound on the Clyde while the two intertwined clean jangly guitars' rhythmic and melodic interplay bring a bright and breezy indie sound. Jazzy sax and keyboards are scattered across the album for a smooth easy going vibe. There's a distinct West African flavour in the harmonies and guitar parts, with the high-life style sweet major-3rd sounds, densley textured Rumba grooves, bongo fills, and cheesy keyboard/synth parts. This is most clear on 'Million Pleading Faces' and 'Hokoyo', which have an 80s Southern African pop meets Fela Kuti feel, but carries through the entire album. I imagine these are marmite vocals - but I like the off-kilter delivery and one-off style. Incredibly fun album. Favorites: Rip it Up, Louise Louise, Breakfast Time, Tenterhook

Warbly vocals over disjointed complicated guitar parts and herky jerky drumming. There are some exciting sounds, including some nice warm fuzz, creative layering of vocal harmonies and instrumentation, and even a few good riffs, but nothing good lasts very long as songs swerve in new directions constantly. It has a very stop-start feel without strong melodic or sonic through-lines. More ‘interesting’ than enjoyable, pretty annoying to listen to really. The synthier soul tracks like ‘stillness is the move’ with more propulsion are good though.

Part of that late 60s/early 70s rock turn towards Americana, BS&T looks to Jazz and Big Band as well as the more expected folk and blues, bringing plenty of horns and (unfortunately) flute and strings into a rock band template. The album is all over the place in terms of genre, but the horns sound good and the bass really does a lot of the heavy lifting giving these songs a bit of energy and momentum lost when the main songwriting instrument is the piano. The extended organ noodling is very boring, but the deeper groove jazzy jams with a trumpet/sax lead did draw me in. It doesn't always work, and when it does it isn't really that good - I'd rather listen to folk rock or jazz rather than both at once.

Quiet folk pop acoustic-guitar driven songs that emphasize Tracy Chapman's distinctive voice: kind of nasal/heady nearly yodeling on the highs, rich and warm in the lows, controlled and expressive in a deceptively wide range. The solo acoustic stuff is bit boring, her best songs bring in a backing band to speed things up and have a rich full sound and very pretty accents. Fast Car is such a great song, the simple guitar hook rising and falling restlessley, the call and response vocal urgently optimistic but full of ordinary disappointment, the big chorus's meaning shifting with each iteration of slow heartbreak.

There some surprisingly good stuff verging on Krautrock on here (Soldiers, Visitors), but it swerves into cheesy Puttin on the Ritz territory inevitably. The ballads are awful - slow and sickly sweet. Some good bass playing and Steely Dan style jazzy stuff, the harmonies and melodies are undeniable pure pop genius. But there's just a bass layer of inescapable Eurovision corniness.

Like a funky Van Halen or if the Red Hot Chilli Peppers didn't suck. Vernon Reid rips all over this album with a huge bombastic 80s tone, shredding solos, some great riffs, and some Nile Rodgers style disco rhythm guitar. The drums are big, reverby as hell, and go at full blast, the bass is busy and propulsive. All that doesn't leave much space for the singer so he creates it by belting out the vocals at the top of his register at film volume. Some prog elements in there, a bit of slide guitar, loads of chorus pedal, a talking heads cover and the all-timer Cult of Personality.

For some reason I never gave Steely Dan much of a listen, my loss! This album has so much stuff I like - complex but uptempo compositions, dense jazzy arrangements with all sorts of instruments making quick cameos, close harmonies and memorable melodies, virtuoso musicianship and a bit of a sense of humor. The guitar work is great - a range of cool tones from bright clean and compressed to scuzzy and fuzzy playing tight punchy solos with inventive phrasing. The only knock is that it's so polished, rehearsed, and cleanly produced it ends up a bit plastic - it's like smooth Zappa. It seems like their legacy in rock is mostly in jambands.

Balaeric dance mashed up with mega-pop, it's somehow simultaneously uptempo, upbeat, anthemic and chill in a trancey way. Liked it a lot more than I expected from only knowing the song Ray of Light previously but it suffers from CD-era bloat. Nothing on here is as aurally infectious as her 80s classics. Basically a solid 90s techno-pop album with some star power.

There's basically two sounds on this album: Dirty punk songs with fast staccato riffs and fuzzy guitars over snare-banging drums & spacey indie rock with a more melodic lead guitar sound with big reverby toms-banging drums. The vocals are in a high register, alternately yelping and nearly operatic. They were always an ambiently around band listening to indie rock in college but never gave them much of a close listen and I actually though Maps was a Broken Social Scene song for years - that is the standout track on this album, both in terms of quality and aesthetics - it's much gentler, more atmospheric, and anthemic than the rest of the songs, which are tend towards the punk end of the spectrum.

This is the dawn of the arena rock sound that would take over the 70s. Who's Next has lots of experiments with sounds and production within fairly conventional rock song structures- from the synths of Baba O'Riley to the weird squirty fuzz guitar sounds and panning phaser lazer sounds on Going Mobile, to the recurrent pairing of big overdriven riffs with a bass-layer of folksy strumming acoustic guitars like on Behind Blue Eyes to the alternating close-harmonies and wailing vocal leads. Because so much of this has become classic rock radio cliche it's hard to listen with fresh ears, but Baba O'Riley and Won't Get Fooled Again are still grab your attention demand you turn up the volume.

This album samples lots of jazz and FUNK Then it goes all hardcore PUNK Beastie Boys rap in a group of THREE Pretty corny now, but it works for ME ok I'll stop. This album is good when it's a hip hop album - the BB's and guests' verses are all at a really consistently high level, with inventive beats and sampling, and distinctive cadence/flow. The punk stuff is like C-tier Minor Threat, the jazz stuff is kind of pointless. Favorites: Sabotage, Update, Get it Together, Do It

A dense and punchy sound defined by a thick unrelenting guitar. Warm, bright and overdriven, Bob Mould's playing sits somewhere between rhythm and lead as heavy riffs turn into melodic hooks. Sonically they're often like the Pixies, but the songwriting doesn't use the loud/quiet formula so much and there's not as much space in the music, instead it's a dials in the red full on punk approach like Dino Jr, but with added Rem poppyness: harmonies, catchy controlled vocals, and the odd hard strumming acoustic guitar. 'If I can't change your mind' is a power pop song for 90s alt rock radio. It's a good album that starts strong, but I'd rather put on Husker Du or the comp bands. Favorites: changes, helpless, the slim

I always associated them with the annoying jangly early stuff so only recently really listened to the Byrds with any attention after following Graham Parsons' discography backwards, so don't think I'd heard this album (apart from the ubiquitous 60s documentary soundtrack song Change is Now) but there's lots to like: Twangy country licks, baroque harmonies, Beatlesy pop melodies, raga drones, psychedelic production tricks, horns, slides, and synths and the occasional blues rock guitar solo - it all comes together better than you'd think in this controlled concise experiment in hippy indulgence. After the elaborate Sgt Pepper-sounding composition of Artificial Energy, the vibes chill out and we get a more blissed out ethereal California sound. The spacey-drone stuff in particular is really good and genre-setting for more exploratory instrumental psych, garage, and high-desert metal.

Amazing recording and production; this album sounds like a top tier Motown band live in the studio with Lauryn Hill - the deep grooves of the bass, funky Stevie Wonder-sounding clavinets, the tight swing of the drums, and the soulful horns throughout build an incredible platform for her vocals - precisely rapped verses weaving together personal stories, sociological observation, and political critique - her delivery slides between rapping and singing as melodies seem to emerge out of nowhere. Other songs have a more PC-built beat feel, with classic 90s production, turntable scratches, and looped samples - good, but not as timeless or distinctive as the more neo-soul stuff. Her voice is a bit nasal and limited to a mid-high range, but has great expressive vibrato that wraps around the backing vocalists and her own overdubs to create a poly-vocal harmonic gospel choir sound. Nice Bob Marley Burning reference on the cover.

On the folkier pastoral end of the 60s psych spectrum - acoustic guitar songs with strings, horns, harpsichord, etc embellishment. Lots of Major 7 chords and not much a pop sensibility in terms of catchy hooks gives it a floating unresolved kind of listless quality. Some songs have fairly complex compositions with intricate, verging into prog, elements. The few guitar solos are interesting takes on the genre - classic psych fuzz tone, but they never really take off - sticking to kind of stochastic blasts in a pentatonic box, adding rhythm and texture rather than a climax. Overall it has a relaxed cabin in the woods kind of a feel that's undercut by tension/anxiety from the strings - making it an ominous vaguely dystopian album. The main vocal sounds a bit falsetto and artificial - not sure why so many of these late 60s psych/folk bands went for that la la la kids song type singing, it sucks.

Feelgood Afro-centric 1990s alternative hip hop at its best. Mostly original 'live band-style' jazzy/soul/funk beats with some samples and turntable stuff over the top. Upbeat and uplifting tone combined with dense lyrical content dealing with ISSUES. Sometimes it's a bit cringe, but hard to fault earnestness. The cadence, flow and expressivity of the delivery is great and the vibes are good as hell.

Draws widely on 80s/90s British indie & post-punk influences, channelled through an electronica production and song-writing approach. Dark and heavy mostly, with distorted guitar riffs and synth leads on most songs over industrial drum/bass loops. A bit like Big Black of Nine Inch Nails, but with a bit more of a Happy Mondays dance sensibility. Iggy Pop doing a Sean Connery impression on Aisha is a treat, the slow build on the opener Dirge is draws you in, and the spacey garage track Broken Little Sister is a fuzzed out bit of psych. It's pretty derivative, but of good stuff.

Is this the thickest guitar album of all time? Layer upon layer of fuzzed out riffs, overdriven leads, detuned chords, crystalline clear intros, and double, triple quadruple-tracked harmonies are all compressed into a warm, oozey and totally distinctive sound. That sound paired with a great sense of melodic phrasing makes for some of the most inventive and memorable playing of the era. The drums cut through the density of the guitars with sharp bright and clear snare, tom and symbol sounds and an almost jazzy playing style that, rather than doubling down on the heavy riffs, elevates them with a more spacious synchopated approach. If the guitars are thick, the vocals are thin and raspy, nasal and heady: the range is more about volume/intensity than anything else, from whispered, gentle and introspective to searching screams and wails. Like the songs. then, heavy or tender. Amazing musicianship and recording is combined with some of the best alt-rock radio song-writing of the 90s on singles like Today, Cherub Rock and Disarm which still stand up after thousands of plays and brilliant album tracks like Soma, Mayonaise, Hummer, and Spaceboy.

Proto-industrial sounds with a strong emphasis on dark and moody keys and synths. Some good post-punk lead guitar work on a few tracks but as accent rather than the basis of the songs. The vocals are very Bowie-style: off kilter crooning and high drama. A couple songs at the end are a bit tuneless, extremely repetitive, and go on way too long.

From the fade-in on natural mystic, the deep hypnotic bass groove carries this album everywhere it goes, leaving ample room for funky electric piano, soulful horns, guitar stabs and solos, lively percussion, pitch perfect harmonies from the backup singers, and, obviously, an all-time vocal performance from BM. The album is full of inspired interplay and joyful back and forth between the musicians/singers, all feeding each other and running with each other's ideas creating endless layers of rhythm and melody. I could live without hearing jamming ever again, but the rest of this is a genre reaching its zenith.

The unique thing about this album is the brilliant sonic construction of space. There's a glossy shimmering surface: pulsating synths and ephemeral keyboards, vibrating tremolo/wah guitar lines, squiggly turntables, and a high hat heavy drum part. The bass is often part of this, high up the neck and melodic, but then drops down low for a big hit in tandem with a bass drum, and all of sudden the depths below the surface reveal themselves - they do this over and over and it's exhilarating in a blissed out chill way. The vocals move across these layers, soaring high and dipping low, breathy and intimate then angsty and ethereal. The exemplary album of a weird shortlived fusion electrorock mini-genre - thoroughly of it's time and place but transcends them and still stands out 30 years later.

The most soothing album there is, I love it. From the first few piano notes on the first track it announces what it is: spare melodies, vibrating textures, slow, calming waves of tranquil sound and gentle dissonance that resolves quickly into the settled swelling of ethereal synths. Tune in or zone out, pay attention or let it course through you, it's reassuringly there, rising and falling like the sky breathing.

This album is like a mad glam scientist messing around in the synth lab and emerging with a bizarre mixture of sweet pop (Faraway Beach, Some of them are Old, Cindy), haunted saloon player piano (Driving me Backwards), goopy ectoplasm midway to becoming new-wave (Needles, Dead Finks, Warm Jets, Paw Paw), and freaky avant-punk (Black Frank). Baby's on Fire is somehow all of that and more with an anthemic melodic hook, spooky harmonies and synth work, and a Robert Fripp going demented on guitar for a while section - extremely good. The album is restlessly inventive, alternatingly beautiful and bizarre.

The two sides of Neil Young - the acoustic balladeer and the electric rocker - share the stage on Harvest, swapping songs, verses, and solos to create a country-rock masterpeice. Harmonicas, close harmonies, exquisite lap steel guitars, and banjos give the album a folksy twang, while the overdriven rhythm guitars and stochastic fuzzy leads bring a heavier, dirtier energy that cuts through the pretty country facade hinting, alongside the gloomy lyrics, of darker depths below. The songs are slow and reflective but the musicianship and vocal performances are so rich it's never dull. NY's voice especially is thin and fragile, almost weak, expressive of a lonely hurt. It's not all brilliant though, "A Man Needs a Maid" and "There's a World" are huge drags, burried under onslaught of ham handed piano and a terrible orchestral arrangement that go for BIG AND SERIOUS but end up sounding like a Disney cartoon.

An album as bleak as 2003, Hail to the Thief captures the ambient dread, malice, and sense of distant violence of the metropole at the dawn of the global war on terror. It kicks off with 2+2=5's synths going off like an alarm. There There is that era's best song, a refusal of the injunction to become a terrorized paranoid freak sensing danger lurking in every corner - "Just cuz you feel it, doesn't mean it's there". The amalgam of electronic sounds and (relatively) raw guitar parts, chaotic techno beats, frenetic synths, close but off kilter harmonies, and bleated vocals ratchet up the tension over and over. Though there is the odd cathartic climax, there's little relief - the songs don't resolve into stable melodies or return to familiar terrain. Drunken Punch Up offers a bit of a groove to sink into, then layers with with discordance. Myxomatosis has a heavy synth riff that's used a platform for more textural experimentation. Sail to the Moon is a disquieting lullaby with its relaxed piano. ethereal reverby guitar parts, uneasy synths and searching vocals. Wolf At the Door is like a nightmare nursery rhyme with a guitar part that's always falling forward into the next arpeggio without resolving as the vocal descends wildly into a frenzy until catching itself at the last minute, fading away deceptively sweetly. This is the soundtrack of a world spinning out of control.

The interplay between Johnny Marr's jangly hyperactive constantly changing rhythm guitar and Andy Rourke's pulsating melodic bass parts creates the distinctive signature sound of the entire Smiths' catalogue: pulsating overlapping rhythms, bright poppy chords, harmonic leads with droning open high-strings. Morrissey's may be a reactionary clown, but he was a brilliant lyricist and lead singer, crafting unexpected melodies and bittersweet anthemic choruses and delivering them with sui-generis baritone/falsetto operatic flair. It's all so melodramatic I could set myself on fire. I can never pick a favorite betwen this, Meat is Murder, and Strangeways, and in any case none of their studio albums are as good as the singles compilations which are pure hit upon hit, but there're very few albums I've listened to as many times as this one and am still excited to put on at least every few weeks. A+ material from the best band of the 80s.

Funk pop that sounds way better on headphones than speakers. At it's best this is a hard rocking wah-guitar workout. The standout track is Take Me Higher, all driving fuzzy bass and energetic horns. Simple Song and You Can Make It have a great NOLA funk sound with organ/guitar riffs establishing the dominant hook, back and forth interplay between singers, and horns for big hits. Sex Machine is a psych-funk wah excursion - fun but a bit repetitive. Everyday People and its B-Side You Can Make it are really awful though - EP is forever tainted from being played to death in a cloying Toyota ad - boring arrangements, slow dragging composition, and a meaningless quasi-political message.

Hard hitting big beat/DnB techno with a charismatic lead singer and a band kind of feel that got it out of the rave and onto the radio like few others from the genre. At times it verges into NIN industrial territory but clubbier. Too long and a bit samey as an hour-long album, but the hits, Breathe especially, are great - catchy hooks, head-banging synth riffs, distinctive snarled vocals, and tension/release build ups & drops, and some big bass booms. Surpringly good as a getting stuff done on the computer album.

Poppy RnB combining fairly traditional 60s motown-style instrumentation and arrangements (lots of good horns) with 2000s elements: hip hop pop beats, chorus-heavy song structures, rap verses, turntables, and self-aware sampling of her own hits. This album is leaning into the gospel diva thing and all the songs function as platforms for big vocal perfomances. She has some pipes and isn't afraid to use them. She's an undeniable talent, terrifying range, astonishing control, surprising tonal variety and this is a virtuoso performance in an style that's not usually my thing, but I liked this more than I expected. The first half is hard to distinguish this from the rest of the generic pop radio landscape of this period and it blurs into the morass of post-boy band American Idol bubblegum. The second half, where she escapes the 2006 hit factory to campily mess around with woozy blues and horny jazz stuff is fucking great (the ballads & orchestral less so though). Why is her dedication to the fans 4 minutes of voicemails of people praising her? Favorites: Nasty Naughty Boy, I got Trouble, Mercy on Me

Someone gave the guy mumbling at the back of the bus a classical guitar. Turns out he can play a bit and has a lot to say. It's bitter, glum and acrimonious in an undirected kind of way - lot's of ambiguous 'yous' have wronged him. The country-rock adjacent Diamonds in the Mine is a bit of surprise but works really well - soaring lap steel sounds against the dark brooding strum.

Pure 80s excess. This album is overflowing with ideas, each song is layers and layers of synths, huge reverby drums, virtuouso guitars, and charismatic vocals popping in and out of every range possible. It all (more or less) coheres around big catchy hooks and memorable choruses, then departs into extra codas, tacked on solos, refrains, and returns. The production and performances are so tight - its bursting at the seams and gloriously excessive without being distractingly busy or chaotic. It's obviously a pop album, but there's something ineffably wierd and singular about the conception and execution of these ideas that transcends genre.

Gloriously juvenile garage rock. Sometimes they sound like a filthy rolling stones tribute act, sometimes they're inventing punk, sometimes they're off on a psychadelic adventure. The guitar is way stripped back and basic, like a kid who just got a fuzz pedal and a wah wah going nuts with it. Some quick and nasty solos and some pretty straightforward but thoroughly effective riffs - I wanna be your dog especially. Iggy Pop is basically a fully formed punk front-man on his debut, a limited singer but all drawling-snarling throat shredding charisma.

When I was 14 and this came out I loved scar tissue the first few times I heard it and got the album. I was disappointed in how bad the rest of it was, but that was common with 90s radio bands' albums: full of filler. Then I heard scar tissue 500 times a week on the radio and stopped liking that one song too. Then Californication was played out even more and I can't even here a note of this band without instinctively reaching for the car radio knob. So, it's been a long time since I revisited this album but good to know that my 14 year old self was correct: there's one good song on here ruined by overplay and the rest is boring dreck. Embarrassing little raps, self-parody level slap bass, the most vapid lyrics imaginable, and annoying whiney vocals. Some pretty guitar bits and solid drumming apart there is basically nothing here. BSSM was goofy and fun, this is somehow goofy and self serious. How is this band so big? America's Coldplay.

There's not a better hard rock album. GnR distilled everything good from 70s/80s rock and channelled it through a world-historical dose of cocaine and ego to put out a record that nobody can top - all written and recorded in like a month or something. So many all-time great riffs, licks, solos, and hooks - incredible songwriting. Slash comes in like a squal - blasting constant leads and squealing pinch harmonics all over the place (even while the verse is going on). His playing is blistering but also that much more melodic and memorable than the 80s shredders and the sound is so huge. The rhythm section is rock solid - Duff Mckagan's punk background means the energy never drops. Axl's range is all over the place, starting with a gruff growl and ending up with a glass-shattering scream. He has a really playful articulation, stretching out words or rampaging through them with almost a rapper's cadence - pure rock charisma. This, not grunge, killed hair metal - why bother with anything else once you've heard this?

Elaborate upbeat funk with a pop sensibility that's the template for tons of the RnB and neo-soul that would follow. Lots of these sounds have become genre conventions (the reverby guitar hits, rising and falling horns, sexual healing-style moaning vocals, bass grooves carrying the song through the changes...) that it's hard not to hear them as conventional 35 years later. But the very 80s sounding bits (amazing synths and drum machines) are certainly signs o the times (not to say they don't sound awesome, just quintessentially 80s) and Prince's vocal style in terms of both delivery and melodic phrasing marks it as uniquely his own - hardly contained to a genre and certainly not generic. Except on the almost power-pop 'I Could Never' he's not in guitar god mode, here he's in sensual song-writer and immaculate vibe curator mode. I've never really listened to this in full before but it sounds really familiar nonetheless - I think because so much 90s stuff was influenced by this. Maybe also because it's a like a hybrid of Madonna, Parliament Funkadelic and Marvin Gaye filtered through the medium that is Prince. Favorites: Hot Thing, Housequake, The Cross, I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man, got that look

Dark brooding stormy synths replace the classical guitar on this very 80s sounding album. LC is playing with a much bigger persona, stepping with some swagger out of the confines of his folky singer-songer writer era into a new phase as a disco-goth front man. It's a bit like Depeche Mode. The lyrics - cynical, jaded, lusty - and vocals - deep hoarse crooning - are still the main thing, but the production and arrangements are totally different than his early work. He's drawing on a pretty eclectic sonic pallette: synths and cheesy keys, drum tracks, gospel choirs, lap steel guitar, and even a bit of the old classical guitar for added flair. Favorites: First We Take Manhattan, I Can't Forget, Tower of song

Overall this is one of those iconic touchstone albums with a basically indisputable canonical status that actually isn't as good as I remember it being when I first encountered it... It was very funny to learn that they were considered a Cream/Jeff Beck Group rip off. Guess it's all just heavy fuzzy blues by some English hippies. Jimmy Page's playing is pretty much untouchable - riffs so ingrained in they're basically default setting on any electric guitar and frenetic blues rock solos that've been emulated for 50 years ever since. The bass and drums are rock solid, big, bold, melodic and deep. The vocals are harder to listen to with every year of hindsight. Lots of the songs are a overly long and pretty repetitive - relying on a great riff, but just looping it over and over. Good Times Bad Times & Communication Break down are much tighter and quick-hitting with a sound/riff structure verging into punk - though with a way more exploratory bass. Your Time is Going to Come breaks out of the blues template for a more original and anthemic rock sound, with cool instrumentation and overdubbed slide guitar parts giving an uplifting astral kind of sound. Black Mountain Side is a nice rustic instrumental acoustic folk guitar workout with a hint of a raga edge. How Many More Times is a rip-roaring sometimes psychedelic finale with an all-time classic fuzz riff and guitar heroics that breaks down and builds up and breaks down over and over. All good fun, but not one I need to hear in full all that often.

Euphoric and anxious, this album is a masterpeice of unsettling texture and rhythm. Beats drop in and out, strings swell from nowhere, bells and chanting synthetic vocals echo across vast open spaces, dense synth/drum machine disonance packs in and in and in to create some claustraphobic chaos. Bjork's voice is mostly wispy (breathy, intimate, inviting) but occasionally titanic (powerfully belting out big crescendo as the music swirls around). Quiet tracks like Cocoon crackle and click along with ambient Eno-style synth bedding. Poppier (lol) songs like It's Not Up to You hover in major keys, resolving the album's pulsating tension into blissful choruses. Mesmerizing, absorbing, and stressful - this is an incredible expression/exploration of isolation and romance.

Why do they spend 6 minutes demanding the funk?! They are the goddamn funk. Great fun from the most effortless band in show business. Parliament has an amazing combination of exuberant musicianship, total mastery of a genre and complete comitment to goofiness. There's a wide cast of singers chiming in alongside George Clinton for a wild poly-vocal performance, but really this album is all about the deep interstellar bass grooves endlessly adorned with horns riffs, guitar stabs, and an unlimited supply of elecric pianos, organs, and synth licks. The bass tones are so good - clean and precise with a magnificent pop and then suddenly as sythny and bizarrely distorted as a malfunctioning robot melting down at a disco in Spaceballs.

An unfunny comedian doing a Billy Joel impression. What could go wrong?! Everything.

Driving beats, funky riffs, gloriously corny tones, and a catchy sense of melody - it's like a darker harder disco sound played through a Nintendo for a rave in an abandoned train yard.

Textbook generic rock by numbers. The guitar tone is the only standout element with a tight bright distortion sound ringing out in the open chords and a generally fun & concise if unoriginal approach to solos. Good clean crisp drum sound too. Otherwise it's just dudes doing rock noises. Pretty stripped back in terms of production. They had a formula and somehow it worked for them for decades, but good God is it tedious. Truly the Top Gear of bands.

This album has a consistent Americana indie jangle going on (kind of like Tom Petty twang meets the Smiths chime with some U2 bombast). The two huge (The One I Love & End of the World) hits are memorable anthems I'm still happy to hear after thousands of listens and the album tracks are all solid to great. Peter Buck has fantastic guitar sounds, inventive parts, and great hook. The rhythm section is tight and expressive. Michael Stipe's vocals are charismatic, earnestly open and his melodies catchy and engagingly overwrought. The songs are concise pop gems with a just right blend of power-pop bright energy and post-punk snarl. The production is flawless and it all sounds crisp, clear, and perfectly balanced. But for some reason despite liking every component of REM individually their albums have never really clicked with me. I put them on, sing along to the hits, and enjoy the rest in a kind of zoned out way. Favorites: Oddfellows, The One I Love, Occupation, Disturbance

Not to be that guy, but it true: their early psychadelic shoegaze stuff was better than their commercial breakthrough album. Sadly this album finds them less as a Slowdive rival or a ladish Spiritualized and more as a proto-Coldplay. It retains elements of their early sound - big spacey reverb-laden ambience, swirling wah-wah & delay pedal guitar parts, trance-inducing slow riffs and looping bass parts, big builds and breakdowns - but it's filtered through a much more mainstream alt-rock, almost Pearl Jam-like, approach with a much bigger emphasis on the balladeering mournful vocals front and center which makes it somewhat more generic. I'm a sucker for the twangy lapsteel accents which give it an extra element of angelic spaciousness - functioning as a blissful contrast to the misery of the lyrics on a song like "Drugs Don't Work"

Pretty and melodic, overall this is a hushed and chill album that either fades into quietly into the background or demands close attention to the masterful song-writing, subtle phrasing, and understated instrumental prowess. Paul Simon loves a bit of the old cultural appropriation: the soaring Andean melodies and harmonies with pipes and charangos on El Condor Pasa are great and woven nicely into the structure of the pop song. Unobjectionable, and I get there's a lot of craft to it, but its never been my thing. Music for coffee shops and used book stores.

Swinging drums, tight solos and emphasis on the horns harmony - fairly short compositions. Very jarring when the singer comes in on the last track.

Now that's what I call music for airports Vol 62. I used to put this on a lot when I was working. It's the sound that birthed a million 'chill focus: lofi vibes to study to' playlists - the main virtues are being louder than background noise, pleasant and ignorable. They're good at it, but it's not exactly the highest praise ...

Jangly 90s power pop with an alt-country accent. Mostly guitar driven sound with dueling leads, high arpegios, and big open chords, though some songs have a piano foundation hinting at the more singer-songerwriter style Aimme Mann would turn to later on. Fairly standard stuff in terms of rock song structures and sounds. The vocal parts are the stand out - she has an engaging accessible sometimes a bit nasal voice, a good sense of pop melody and some very nice harmonies, all of which are in service of delivering a heady introspective and romantic set of lyrics.

Grunge founding fathers or the last great classic rock band? At the time it seemed like the birth of something new with this dirty and heavy punk/metal infused break with the canon but 3 decades of hindsight and radio play make it seem more like the culmination than a rupture. Big 70s Zeppelin style riffs and grandure, Hendrix-inspired wahwah guitar leads all over the place, and Neil Young's chaotic electric intensity combined with a punk sensibility disenchanted with the overblown pomp of 80s rock. There's not a ton of variety on this album and they set the template for 1000s of terrible mid-tempo buttrockers to follow so its hard not to hold that against them, but these songs pretty much all rule. Energetic playing, impassioned vocal delivery, incredible hooks and anthemic choruses throughout.

3 all time great pop hits, 1 all time abysmal collabo. The production on this album is so good, so many different parts all balanced just right and sounding crisp and clean and perfectly polished. Funky synth tones, tight compressed guitars and a crazy EVH solo, bright horns, energetic bass and an incredibly charismatic vocal performance. Its like the motown sound dragged voguing and screaming through the disco era into a world of soft-focus 80s sheen. Sometimes it's sickening how dripping in cheese it is, sometimes its so gloriously corny you have to embrace it. Lots of references to young things and who owns what babies - yikes!

He could've just been a good beat producer for some poppy hip hop, but instead had to become the most cursed invention of the 1990s: the celebrity DJ. The beats are pretty good and there are some cool electronic sounds/samples but just repeating the same stupid vocal clips over and over and over and over and over again on so many tracks is incredibly annoying - who is that for? "check it out now it's the funk soul brother" is a sentence too dumb to hear once, and now I've had to hear 475 times? Fuck you. The best part of this album is that it led me to Camille Yarbrough's Take Your Praise.

I know it says opera in the title so they're intentionally going for this massive sound and songwriting excess, but it just ends up overblown and pompous. Freddie Mercury's vocals are spectacular - what a range and capable of so much stylistic variation. Brian May's guitar sound rules - all squealing barely contained chaos and an amazing combo of technique + melody with creative use of recording tricks for double harmonies. The electric piano(?) sound on Best Friend is funky and fuzzy and the bass is dynamic and lively in a Beatlesy way. '39 is an Irishish folksy jaunt, there are some prog-style tracks, some kind of Elton John piano pop rock. So, lots of interesting elements - but all together its a tedious chore. The songwriting is so maximalist, like just adding more parts, more key changes, more tempo shifts, more tonal breaks is the way to make a song better. The epitome of this, Bohemian Rhapsody, is the most overrated song in the canon - but they also include Love of My Life, a B-grade knock-off of themselves! With a harp fade out followed by a ukelele intro on the next track - stop it. The 70s would be so much better if all these rock dudes had never learned about the existence of opera.

Controlled chaos that's both genre defining and genre bending - bringing elements of jazz, rnb/soul, reggae, and rock together for a 45 minute funk dance party. There's a real house party atmosphere to this - like a performance going with a constantly rotating cast. Each song is loaded with ideas pulling it in different directions - vocalists come and go, guitar shredding fades in and out, the bass sets up the main beat then goes for a melodic wander, there's a guy standing next to the mic just making little comments, synths and horns have cameos for quick riffs and solos - but all it coheres around a rhythmic idea and tonal center, under a groove. The constant guitar solo over the top is such a funny touch, it's like a guy noodling along at home to an album accidentally got overdubbed onto the official release. The party vibe means it's pretty unfocused: the songs are a good time, but also a long time.

Ive always loved 'don't you want me' but somehow never listened to the rest of this album. It doesn't reach quite the level of earnest anthemic belt-outable pure pop genius of that hit, but is a demonstration of the possibilities of synths for making era defining sounds. Bright and light instrumental tone combined with a dark moody vocal, robotic rhythms and human heartache. 'Seconds' does all that perfectly with a deeply affecting minor key Electro Joy Division dirge. Generally though it's more towards the pop new wave side of the spectrum, it still retains a lot of the energy of talking heads style post punk. Favorites: seconds, dont you want me, sound of crowd, darkness, love action

If the Grateful Dead is the psychadelic outcome of a bunch of talented California hippies dropping acid, King Crimson is the English nerd counterpart. It lets loose and gets exploratory for a while, but returns to a fussy prog version of psych with a stronger emphasis on composition than groove. The first half of the album album goes 'out there' through accumulating layers of overdubs (strings, flutes, horns, wind effects) and tight technical riffs in odd time signatures and songs with lots of different parts then it gets shaggier (and more fun) in the middle. Easy Money is a brilliant track with some amazing guitar work and a long 'jam' sandwiched between a tightly orchestrated head/tail. Talking drum builds slowly from some wind effects into a Soft Machine meets Kraftwerk repeat pattern with more and more lead instruments (violin, Fripp-ed out guitar, synth effects) coming in as the jam builds and builds in energy and tension into a somewhat artificial crescendo that sounds like birds screaming. The bonus track session recordings are more of the really good stuff - looser trance-like tension/release phillip glass + riffs and math rock stuff, deeper bass grooves and more guitar histrionics.

The sounds isn't great the but the performance is pure heat. Incredibly tight rhythm section doing instant switches between soul ballads and funk rave ups so uptempo it sounds like they're playing on 1.5x. The horns and bass carry the songs along, with some subtle guitar counter melodies and syncopation. It's all about the the vocals though: they reach beyond his throat's breaking point becoming raw screams and then dive back to controlled crooning. The songs are mostly short RnB/pop compositions that don't develop into the deeper grooves of later 60s/70s funk. They introduce James Brown and then it's over before you know it.

Texas country with a rock influence - particularly in the rhythm section. Great guitars: delicate crystaline steel string acoustics, twangy as hell tele sounds, gorgeous lapsteel and slide solos. The vocals are classic semi-nasal country baritone with the odd yodel and some close harmonies thrown in - lively, engaging, and well suited to the melodies. The titular honky tonk comes mostly from the pianah-based tracks like Fingernails that are just basic I-IV-V blues tunes played fast with a twangy vocal. I could do without the frequent accordian parts with make a lot of the arrangements sound like really corny fake Irish folk music. 4 pretty great tracks, a bit of filler, and 2 pretty bad ones. Favorites: Because of the Wind, Jericho, Downtown, Masquerade

Alt-Country with a Southwestern flair - why does a tremelo pedal sound of the high desert? It just does. Hushed vocals and a generally mellow approach: acoustic guitars, laid back drums, unobtrusive bass and then some 'flourish layers' of electric guitars, synths, and vocal harmonies - then the whole thing is drenched in reverb. Some songs take a harder rock approach with a bit more distortion and some squealing guitars along with a more robust drum part, but their hearts don't seem in it and it fizzles out quickly, returning to more relaxed coffee-shop fare. Somehow I'd never heard of this before despite it being up my alley and only slightly before my era, wierd. Favorites: Punishing Sun, Shiver,

The beats are inventive and lots of fun. Eminem's delivery is totally distinctive with his unique cadence, internal rhyme schemes, clever word play, and poly-vocal bits. It's a nasty artifact of late 90s shithead suburban white guy culture from the Kidrock and South Park era. He's rapping in character doing misogynist fantasy, but it's not like he has anything interesting to say about that other than repeating and performing it apart from the knowing patheticness of the character. But instead of really developing that he just inserts skits that voice the stupidest possible strawman moral majority critique of his work which he then gets defensive about. But damn he such an annoyigly good rapper and Dr Dre really killed the production on this one.

Powerful debut album introducing the core elements of the clash sound which they'd take to the next level over the next few albums. I'm always struck at how accessible clean and poppy this album is for being one of the foundational punk records. Garage rock bands were scuzzier than this, which seems relatively mild compared to like the Stooges. The guitar distortion is distorted but tight and compressed with very controlled playing. The songs have classic blues chord progressions and verse-chorus structures. The bass is fast and loud but melodic like an amped up Jamerson. There's some sneering snarling singing but way more harmonies than screaming and there are some really catchy hooks. Between the vocals guitar leads and bass parts the album is overflowing with melody. 3-4 really standout tracks, the rest is a bit generic but in a genre defining way. Favorites: Remote Control, Police & Thieves, Janie Jones, Deny

Autumnal and nostalgic, this album wears it's influences unabashedly and unironically. In 2014 being a rock band is like wearing a vintage shirt, it's inevitably a self-consciously retro enterprise whose success/failure is predicated on having good taste and knowing how to make old stuff fit. So this isn't the most original album you'll ever hear, but they have great taste in what vintage rock elements they borrow and a knack for arranging them all into something that's warm and cozy and fits perfectly. The guitar playing is simple, melodic, and totally effective, focusing on tone and texture over fireworks, it's echoey and washes in and out, sometimes fuzzy or all phaser warble and tremolo tremble, sometimes bright and clear and cutting. His voice isn't spectacular but sits just right in the mix; hoarse mumbly and shy but very affecting, it flits in and out of the layers of keys, synths, sax and guitar. They build tension and energy slowly through repetition of basic chord progressions, lead riffs and drum-machine sounding rhythms that becomes trance-like, peaking and deflating and going again.

Loose laid back funk with a jazzy feel and a tropical psych vibe. Busy rhythms with drums, bongos and more percussion doing polyrhythmic stuff and a tight bass sound high in the mix linking that to the array of textural instruments: acoustic guitars, flutes, strings and horns and cheesy keyboards. There's odd fill/noodle but no leads/solos really - like pure background jazz bordering elevator music. The singing is a bit tuneless and flat. Pleasant but dull overall, great for the pre-show music at your next coffeeshop poetry open mic. Favorites: sweet thang, Island letter, strawberry 23

Extended soul funk jams with the smoothest baritone vocals you'll hear, some ripping guitar lines, and a full on set of arrangements. I feel like this one is relatively overlooked and underrated, probably bc the song lengths make it very radio unfriendly and it doesn't have the tight pop song-writing of other soul singers' best work, but the performances are amazing and they really nail what they're going for in terms of setting a mood.

Spacey post-new wave sounds, the music is pretty slow mellow minor key stuff with a mix of piano, acoustic guitars strumming, electrics chugging and some synth/keyboard accents. It's all bedding for the wide-ranging and impassioned vocals/lyrics which are the real driving force of the album. Nothing Compares 2 U is an incredible performance but none of the rest reaches those heights - it's not bad, but a bit slow and samey.

Very high-production value country with a real compressed studio pop to every twang, the album nonetheless has a neo-traditional sound, highlighting classic folk instruments - fiddle, mandolin, banjo, accordion, lap steel - on the solos paired with a classic bright clean telecaster with dialled in slap echo+tremelo providing in the main licks and a big reverby drum sound. The vocals are straight from the nose in a classic kind of pinched 'high lonesome' style and the lyrics are textbook stuff all about the women that break your heart and the trucks that break your back. The accordion tracks especially bring a Tejano/cumbia sound to the Bakersfield style while the melodic phrasing and harmonies are often straight-up bluegrass. Overall, an odd combination of polished and rootsy that I can imagine annoyed a lot of people invested in the authenticity aura of country but it sounds good and is a musically fun strut through some bleak themes. Favorites: I Got You, What I Don't Know, Buenas Noches, Pillow

Powerful griot-style vocals and an array of Senegalese instruments like djembes, talking drums, fula flute and kora paired with nylon-string classical guitars, electric bass, full drum kits, the cheesiest keyboard sounds, epic guitar shredding and high-tech production techniques to create a pulsating polyrhythmic ambience. The vocals carry the drama of the songs with classic call and response story singing while the backing music tends to settle into a trancey groove that builds and intensifies then chills out as instruments come in and out to add layers or perform solos. There's a such a fine line for artists like Baaba Maal before they slip into the lucrative boomer birkenstock and tie-dye 'world music' lane, losing contact with the living musical traditions and youth audiences that actually animated them. Oddly here its the most dated 'inauthentic' keyboard/synth stuff (like Hamady Boiro) that grounds this in actual West African popular music of the 80s/90s and keeps it wierd and interesting enough to be mostly on the right side of that line.

Rappin' Pavement, pretty good. Alt rock with some great guitar sounds, genre-bending songs, warbly off kilter vocal delivery and a very practiced looseness. I both hated this and was intrigued by it when I was like 11 - I always listened closely to figure out why I didn't like it, until I started to actually really like it. One of the the best iterations of the eclictally ironic but earnest postmodern gen-X spirit.

Gorgeous interlocking lead lines from the guitars, kora and vocals, a relaxed mostly acoustic palette, and trance inducing drone/rhythm parts made of layers and layers repeating melodic figures and hand drums. There's a totally distinctive approach to guitar playing here that I wonder maybe has something to do with a applying a kora-informed sensibility combining rhythm and lead playing and featuring short expressive runs?

Doo-wop harmonies, blues rhythms, country licks on a bright and crisp edge of breakup strat and a great ear for pop melodies make for a catchy and hugely influential album. I liked it more than expected though it's hard to hear it beyond the 'oh this is where the Beatles/beach boys/ventures got it from' reaction.

Not even the slide-god Duane Allman can rescue Eric Clapton from his native bland blues-dad territory. Layla is a good song I never need to hear again, but otherwise the best tracks on here are like filler on an 80s ABB album - big broad major-key southern rock chord progressions, mildly funky basslines, and mostly aimless noodle. The best bits are the harmonized gual guitar leads and Duane's slide solos/fills. Clapton's vocals are flat and soulless and, Cream aside, I've never understood the hype around him as a guitar legend - he's just a technically proficient but very mechanical Buddy Guy/BB King impersonator with nothing special about his phrasing, tone, or anything. There are so many licks on here some are bound to be good, so every couple songs there's something ear-catching like a cool descending run, a minor pentatonic->mixolydian transition, or a big melodic line. It's all very mid, but hey, there's a lot of it - real discount bin stuff...

Discordant and tense, these songs whip things up into a frenzy that either all comes crashing down or breaks like a wave into a (relatively) serene plateau. They have some of the best guitar in post punk, detuned drones, dense textures, airless distorted riffs that resolves into roomy crystalline chords, shoegaze use of effects combined with a faster punk energy - there's some really pretty melodic playing buried under the layers of dissolution. Individual songs don't really stand out to me because the songs all have a couple of pretty different parts that are hooked together by tension/release moments or bridging riffs and there are lots of parts that happen just once rather than verse/chorsus structures: it's rare to return to a familiar place. But the album as a whole is very cohesive sonically and stylistically. One exception is Hot Wire My Heart which is like an oldies rock-n-roll song processed through the SY sound and comes out sounding like a classic punk. Overall though instead of songs there are individual parts that stand out - the amazing slow building part on Pacific Coast, the jangly introductory part of Tuff Gnarl, the break in Pipeline where it opens up and dissolves, lots more - but this feels like an album meant to be swallowed whole.

Bay area boomers pretending to be cajun swamp guys - what a wierd premise. The vibrato-tremelo guitar tone is pretty cool, even though it sounds like Austin Powers. Has this band been ruined by pop culture? Probably, but was there ever really that much there to begin with? Not really. It's not that there's anything really to dislike, just that there's nothing there. It's such dull plodding blues rock with no real stand out elements in terms of performance, song-writing, anything. It's like a high school jamband that hasn't learned how to move beyond a vamp + solo. They put out 3 albums in one year - terrible idea. A tight 30-minute 7-song best of CCR album would be a fine 2* entry in over-played classic rock lane, but 2 of their mid hits and 5 tracks of good ol' chooglin' not so much.

Shoegaze Sinatra. A Thom Yorke impersonator with a wider range and maybe a bit more vocal talent but far less songwriting or sonic creativity, this album is all mid-low tempo woozy piano ballads. Some of it is pretty, some of it is pompous, most of it is boring. I never understood why this kind of indie crooning singer was so popular in the mid 00s?

If you're making a list of albums that defined a time period in terms of pure ubiquity, this would have to included for 2015-2017 - but that does tell us what a bleak pop landscape that was. This is very bland music combined with generic EMOTIONAL lyrics and BIG singing. It borrows some interesting sounds from 2007 indie synth pop on Send My Love, but ruins with with the millenial ooOOaaAA. But's its mostly just bleak piano dirge: Coldplay with the range for the tv singing talent show era.

Well I gave Adele 1* yesterday so credit to the algorithm for turning up something that definitely isn't that. What if you had a hardcore band, got rid of the superfluous high frequency instruments and just cranked up (in every sense) the bass and drums? Stripped down riffs marinaded in terrifying distortion and blasted out furiously. Frenetic noise and untamed feedback played so fast you can feel it slipping out of their hands as they try to wrangle the squal. Having been in bands that wish we could've pulled this off I know it's harder than it sounds. Some cool melodic bits, some almost danceable riffs, some tension/release, a bit of a prog vibe sometimes then some nearly ambient stuff. It's not going into regular rotation, but not everything needs to be 'chillwave folk to study/stare out a rainy train window to.' Favorites: Dracula Mountain, Longstockings, Wonderful Rainbow, Duel into Deep

More energetic than I expected with kind of a Stone Roses feel coming especially from the bass and the bright shimmery melodic lead guitar lines. But it isn't as as poppy and does a lot more of the drone shoegaze thing: big washy sounds, lots of delay/reverb on the guitar, vocals are kind of flat and buried in the echo. It seems like they do a lot of things well all at once that other bands took a lot further to be more distinctive - slowdive with the slow contemplative thing, my bloody Valentine the dense intense thing, spiritualized the orchestral psychedelic thing, the verve the pop adjacent accessible indie thing, radiohead the textural anxious tension thing. Favorites: nowhere, sennen, kaleidescope

After realizing they're crap at psychadelia, this is the start of the best era of the Rolling Stones, initiating a 5-album cycle of country and gospel inflected blues rock. Sure, it's wierd British guys doing Americana cosplay, but they're better at it than any of their US contemporaries and nowhere near as gross as other English bands doing it. It's loose and free and fun throughout so much so that they even pull off a non-annoying honky tonk piano. The lead guitar work is dead simple and perflectly effective with a nasty snarling tone and quicky dirty bursts. The bass likewise is just right, dropping little fills and chord tones to propel it forward and tie it togther harmonically. None of these are my favorite RS songs, but the album as a whole is so consistent and coherent sonically and thematically. Favorites: No expectations, Sympathy for the Devil, Salt of the Earth

Trip-Hop feeling combination of drum-n-bass beats, electro beeps & boops, and jazzy acoustic instruments (lots of piano in particular and some acoustic guitar leads) with that classic airy unresolved almost a-melodic Brazilian singing. The percussion parts are cool: lots of hand-drum fills in between the beats. Wierd that a potentially unique Yugoslav new wave x Brazilian jazz collaboration ends up sounding so generically 90s chill electronica - maybe something lost a move away from synths and into digital production?

The mainstream gateway to underground backpack rap, this album is feels like the conclusion of the arc of 'conscious hip hop' that kicked off with the Native Tongues scene in the late 1980s and is the representative of that tradition within the amazing cannon of 2002ish rap. There's fun production and some great (if not especially innovative) beats with a neo-soul psyche flavour - taken to it's furthest in 17minute combo off Break You Off > Water. This isn't a party album with big choruses, anthemic hooks or danceable repetition, instead the emphasis is on the verses' complex lyricism: all densely packed-with allusions, playful and incisive lines and rapid fire delivery.

Jangly and bittersweet poppy alt rock. This is a solid debut that sets out the sound REM spend the next two decades evolving. The best bits are the hyperactive interactions between the bright clean guitar arpegios (great right-hand work here from Green) and the melodic Beatles-y bass lines. The singing and lyrics are in Stipe's distinctive style, but don't reach the heights that would come in later albums.

Dark and melodic with a surprisingly dancey industrial underpining from the bass & drums that I hadn't really picked up on when this was all over the radio. Dense production ala Smashing Pumpkins - the sound is really full across all the channels - very little breathing room. The hits have really catchy hooks and instantly recognizable line delivery, but the rest is a lot less memorable - fades into the morass of decent mid 90s alt rock.

Folksy soul with jazzy RnB harmonies and arrangements supporting a powerful vocal performance. The singing displays an incredible range - most comfortable in a warm and intimate low-mid range, she drops down into some smokey lows and raises up for alto flashes. It's light and easy going, singing in service of the song not to feature virtuosity. To start, the songs are driven by an acoustic guitar in a classic singer-songwriter mode but fleshed out with strings, horns, piano and some restrained electric guitar along with simple bass parts and swinging drums plus he odd solo from a pretty lap steel, or a smooth jazz sax. Songs are generally slow and atmospheric, wintery Sunday morning fare. In the middle the pace picks up for some funkier tracks like Join the Boys, People, and Tall in the Saddle that combine a bit of Funkadelic fuzz with the artificial sweetner of Stevie Wonder pop. It ends with some hot twangy blues on Like Fire and Saggle that have a rampant bass and astral slide guitar and a bit of country flair. The production is crisp and clear, a full sound but still roomy with lots of space between the instruments. I'd never heard this before but wow. Favorites: Down to Zero, Join the Boys, People, Like Fire, Tall in the Saddle

Pretty overrated. More noteworthy than actually great, this one ends up being significant mostly because of some boomer mythology about guys getting mad bc a guy played a new kind of guitar. Like a Rolling Stone is obviously a great song, the star is the organ part, but I never need to hear it again. For all the electro-furore, the rest is surprisingly basic folk blues cowboy chord stuff - high energy and well performed but musically not that creative. The slower moodier and atmospheric Ballad of a Thin Man is a nice change of tone that sounds way ahead of it's time, anticipating dozens of dark balladeers to come. Queen Jane Approximately is another great organ part combined with a busy lead guitar arpeggio part hinting at a surf sound. Tom Thumbs Blues has a woozy feel from the barroom piano and vibrato sweet sixths guitar slides. Overall, the lyrics and distinctive singing are the real featured elements - they're an effective combination and he has some great acerbic lines but there had to benin these endless verses. I've never thought they're worth the detailed parsing that's sustained the Dylan industrial complex...

This saccharine overdose has me reaching for the insulin. The vocalists all deliver brilliant performances, the melodic phrasing remains surprisingly fresh despite the saturation of these songs, and the hit machine soul side of the production/arrangements (horns, swinging rhythms) is in full effect. But I can't stand these damn strings all over every track and, going full Grinch-mode, the songs are truly grating at this point.

60s throwback whimsical indie rock with a lot of fuzzy chorus-ed out guitar parts. Dreamy power pop psych sounds with busy arrangements and major harmonies mixed with Lo-fi shambly vocals drenched in reverb. Some pretty guitar leads with clean warbly delay tone - prolonged into textural playing like at the end of desire lines. Slows way down sometimes into something with jazzier chords and clean guitar tones and very little in terms of rhythm section for a very bedroom feel - these tracks are kind of boring. Too many animal bands from this era, they all get blurred together. Favorites: memory boy, helicopter

A thorough response to anyone who ever accused them of denying being bad company, this album is the factory settings of state fair rock.

Combine dark and light to create moody bliss - a dead simple but totally effective formula. A brooding reverby atmosphere pierced by bright melodic lead guitars playing simple major key melodies that soar over gloomy the distortion. Hit a big minor chord to kick off the bridge and release the tension back into a major by the end. The vocals seemingly straining their limits even in a pretty modest range make it somehow vulnerable and poignant. Contains one of only like 4 songs that get away with a 'do do do' chorus. A punk approach to loud stripped back musicianship combined with a pop melodic sensibility, an ear for richly layered guitar texture, unhurried songwriting and the patience to dwell in an atmospheric slow (maybe a bit too one-speed) zone make for a gem of gothy proto-shoegaze near perfection

Title track is one of my favorites but the rest not so much - kind of tuneless and searching for a hook in an operatic style. Some cool sounds and production with the synths and stuff, but not put to much effect. The ambient Eno tracks at the end are great though. Best of Berlin Bowie would be a welcome release as in between the hits there's lots of mediocre stuff clogging up these mid to late 70s albums.

Music for an alienated middle schooler's bedroom or a midwestern kind of racist strip club. Heavy and aggressive metal with enough industrial Trent Reznor influence that the slow sludgy riffs and intensely distorted guitar sounds have a distinctive groove to them. The higher pitch reverby guitar stuff - short phrases or tones repeated as a riff is intensifying - work well to build up an atmosphere and add space to the hyper-compressed mix. The singing is a nasty snarling growl screech that perfectly serves the shock-the-suburban-christians aim of the album, and boy did it. Hook line and sinker. I haven't really heard this since the 90s and in retrospect see how influencial it was on a lot of the screamo punk/metal/grindcore stuff like pg 99. Seems like them and Korn had a couple years head start on the rest more boring Nu Metal they ended up getting lumped in with and sharing a lot of bills with, but that let them establish themselves as a distinct thing. They were the band of choice for my middle school goth friends but even though I liked the songs and videos they were never really my thing. A 2-disc best of Nu Metal compilation could be a 3-4* album, but this is another victim of the late 90s 'CDs are 80 minutes and need to be full' approach to albums. One big hit, a few solid tracks, and probably 40 minutes of filler.

Rock revival ala Black Crows but for the post Strokes era. They're pretty eclectic in their influences and have a wide range of sounds/styles on the album - classic rock, funk, folk, ska, balkan jazz, indie pop, and alt country - and to go with that there's very diverse instrumentation. It's an enjoyable but pretty unoriginal album though - they're like a really good local band but with a pretty defined ceiling. Boomer hegemony is when a perfectly fine but nothing remarkable band like this is included in a list of essential albums because of how well they hue to the same preconceived template of guitar-based rock that conservatively defines the cannon. Favorites: Not a Lot to Do, Remember Me

Folk sounds, punk approach, pop sensibility - a stripped down and lively album that's all strumming acoustic guitar, melodic bass, simple energetic drums and the odd violin. The vocals are great in the Lou Reed Jonathan Richman style: ironically swaggering and off kilter delivery. Blister in the sun is an all time great feel good radio song and there are few other stand out songs. Incredible that this from 1983, feels really 90s in a way I can't quite pinpoint.

Surely there's nothing left to say about the vocal performance on this one: deeply emotional, sensitive and hyper controlled, fully attuned to the music. The backing band is incredible and the sound is amazing - lush, vibrant, and rich but full of room and atmosphere - some of the best bass playing recorded to go with memorable horns parts (the sax intro to What's Going On has to be the among most recognizable few notes), keys, organ, and the full motown thing. In that vein though, there are couple of schmaltzy string songs where there's an overdose of Maj7 chords and the vocals get a bit too wailing. This always gets a lot of credit as a protest album, but the politics are really pretty anodyne - "won't somebody think of the babies" "why are there so many problems" "who did this?" "save the children" it's all pretty apolitical really especially considering what was happening in Black politics at the time.

The albums opens with some uplifting major key synth pop with a melancholy undercurrent, like a spiritual New Order. The bass is driving in a hard 4/4 time and the wave patterns on the synths accumulate into mesmerizing rhythmic layers ala Kraftwek, topped off by shimering keyboard melodies. This style alternates with more slowed down bleak introspection with long low drones and drums that clatter out of synch and out of the mix. In 'Georgia' we're back in pure pop territory almost Gary Numan, with a bright high synth lines weaving together more of a groove feel in the bass/rhythm parts. Guitars kick in on Begining of the End with a chiming clean chorus tone arpegio that really rips through the synth pallette. The vocals are classic 80s British electo-pop (a bit like Depeche Mode?) with a spoken feeling that's mostly low but breaks into song and reaches up for the emotional climax. The second vocalist (on Souvenir) has a higher range, but similar slow enunciated nursery rhyme delivery. I'd heard of but never listened to this band, I guess they barely on the radar in the US in the 90s/00s before the LCD Soundsystem era revival of interest in 80s synth stuff - but this seems like a big step in combining the ambience of Eno and the trancey robo-disco of Kraftwerk with a pop emphasis on catchy melody and radio friendly song structures. Favorites: She's Leaving, Joan of Arc (Maid), Begining of the End, Extended Souvenir

Funky new wave from the wierdly prolific Sheffield post-punk scene. Lots of that Nile Rodgers-style strat rhythm guitar high in the mix alongside the synths and cheesy keyboard sounds. Sometimes crosses into Talking Heads territory, sometimes into Donna Summer remix land. The very heavy disco influence and a sing-songy vocal style make this feel really plastic and goofy - but the Clockwork Orange reference in their name and the gang of Patrick Batemans on the album cover hint at a level of playful post-industrial cocaine satire going on here alongside the earnest embrace of some of the most excessively silly in retrospect 80s excess that's part of a liberation from the tiresome self-seriousness of authenticity-punk/rock.

There's nothing complicated or difficult here in terms of musicianship or composition, yet it's absolutely original and genre-defining. Punk slowed down until it becomes atmosphere, a gloomy spacious and echoey void they fill in with a sparse reverby snare, stabbed dischordant guitar chords, searching lead lines, ominous bass riffs, and miserable melody. The sound of a haunted and grim post-industrial winter. Primal, despairing, perfect.

"Dre makes the beats so fun-fun-funky" its true. You can hear the roots here of the production that would dominate the 90s emerging from the sparse drum-machine big BOOM BOOM TISH formula with layering samples from a deep well of jazz, funk and soul - taken to an extreme on what's basically a genre-reinvention cover of Express Yourself, but more varied on most of the other tracks that borrow from 4-7 songs at a time to put a rhythm together. Having a bunch of different rappers performing across the album keeps it fresh, but the songs are all too long/repetitve and the album could be trimmed down a bit too.

Stop trying to make sax happen. I've never gotten the hype with these guys despite giving it a good go a few times. They're like a band made from the most annoying bits of David Bowie's discography and a twist of prog-rock fussiness. The operatic singing doesn't do it for me, the guitar tone is like a beginner dialing a DS1 to 10, the compositions get in their own way and never let any rhythm build up. Somehow the sax ends up being the best bit.

If you'd asked me before starting the 10001 albums if I liked Bowie I'd have given a pretty unequivocal yes - but the more of his albums I listen to closely and completely the more I find him kind of tedious and annoying, with a few amazing songs scattered through a huge and hugely uneven catalogue. He's doing interesting stuff in pop culture, but I don't actually want to listen to most of most of his albums... This album opens with a Rolling Stones style honky tonk track with that tack piano sound and bluesy guitars. The title track is more distinctive, chaotic pianos and woozy unresolved vocals harmonies flit around a solid groove on the bass. Then there's one of his signature show tune style story-sining tracks. Panic in Detroit sounds like Ziggy Stardust: bright overdrive and hand-drums for an upbeat glam sound that and climaxes with a fun dueling/harmonizing guitars panned left/right section. The doubled guitar lead sound re-appears on Time, another broadway style song with some cool piano/guitar interplay that opens up into an intense gospel meets glam choral outro. Let's Spend the Night Together gets back to the high tempo honky-tonk piano & dirty guitars Rolling Stones sound for a horny high energy rave up. Jean Genie is back to the glam blues formula: harmonica and a I-IV-V chord progression with theatrical singing all about fame and sexuality. In a way, it doesn't make sense to rate this one as a discrete album. It's part of a whole multi-media project of film/video, stage performance, interviews etc through which he developed and played with this glam persona and carved out a space in pop culture and so much of that was responding to trends, styles, moods etc that would have made more immediate sense to a contemporary audience. It asks the important question, what if Mick Jagger was even more queer coded, but in a kind of space way? This album's meaning is so contingent on that multi-album multi-platform aesthetic project, that taken on its own outside of that context it isn't really that compelling: none of these are among his best songs and the sounds are all pretty familar stuff.

Bright and Jangly guitars doing electrified folk fingerstyle picking arpegios combined with perfect close harmonies, sutbly melodic bass, and some well crafted arrangements mean this album is overflowing with melodies. It's at once exuberant and tightly controlled, exemplifying the style of tight fractal baroque psychadelia that proliferates inwards (vs say the let it all hang out liquid light show psych of 60s Grateful Dead). Eight Miles High gets into more 'freak out' territory with frantic drumming and guitar spasms, but they reign that back in quickly with a tight harmony. The raga-style drone on Why portends a lot of what's to come, but again, even though it emerges nicely from the chorus they confine this to a tightly bracketed segment that ends with an abrupt shift back to the verse, keeping the psych on a leash. Not sure what it means that I think this band is best at arrangments and stuff, but also I prefer the Dead's version of I know you Rider and Hendrix's Hey Joe - I guess it's the looser more improvisatory open approach they take over the tightly structured Byrds versions. The sitars and sitar-sounding guitars all over this album are really great and they're probably the best at that renaissance 9?) sounding melody/harmony in rock. This list has made me realize that I like the Byrds more than I'd thought, but 5 Byrds albums, 2 Gene Clark, 1 David Crosby Solo (+2 CSNY), and 1 Graham Parsons might make this the most over-represented group after only the Beatles. Favorites: 5D, Eight Miles High, Wild Mountain Thyme, Why, Psychodrama City

Sloppy psychadelia, loose let it all hang out acid rock based in blues. The bass provides a solid danceable foundation with some pretty deep grooves, the drummer kicks it along, and then the extremely awesome sounding fuzzy as hell squealing guitar and Janis Joplin take it turns wailing over the top (or not and both just go for it at once). I used to have a licorice-type reaction to Janis Joplin's vocals, but they've grown on me. She's maxing out, pushing her voice into the red: there's something earnest about the hoarse, scratchy delivery where you can hear the effort exceeding the limits of her ability. Nothing complex musically here but its very effective and one of the most enduring artifacts of hippy culture. The guitar on here is really great - that 60s Santana, loud and fuzzy reverby mostly pentatonic thing that gets epic/melodic and then descents into scattered squealing - basic as hell, but so much fun. Favorites: Oh Sweet Mary, I Need a Man to Love, Ball and Chain, Peice of My Heart

Industrial soul that's forward looking and deeply rooted. Emerging from BLM, the lyrics are urgently political; at their best they're an expression of pain and rage, at worst it's a ripped from online a mix of sloganeering and irritating self-help affirmation. It's never very subtle, but that's not what the moment demanded of artists - and the songwriting transcends the immediate overt 'relvance' of the content. Overall this is a stylistically rich blend of sounds from across a wide spectrum of genres woven into a cohesive affecting album pushing soul forward. Stop Dem and Hard Life are haunting church harmonies set against slow brooding grooves that erupt into joyous gospel jazz. Sometimes these transitions feel very forced, like mandatory optimism - they can't end on a down note so have a sudden turn out of nowhere from the deep solemnity of dark techno into kind of vapid 'everything's going to be alright' hippy outro. Wildfires, Monsters, and Sorry Ain't Enough swap the techno-bass for a jazzy RnB bass and more organic arrangements that continues the dark melancholy feel. Bow, the song with Michael Kiwanuka, adds an afro-psych (fuzzy wah-wah guitars + soukous arpegios) sound and pan-African thematic to the mix. Eternal Life floats on a blissed-out synth pop riff that the vocalists orbit around and as the beat rises and falls. Miracles combines a reggae groove and a trip-hop vibe to make a platform for powerful back an forth between the main vocalist and her backing singers. The album closes on the Motown sounds of Pray Up Stay Up, a simple dinky piano+deep bass hook with a southern spiritual refrain looping along - the chant remains even after the fade out. 9 albums in two years does suggest they're a prolific collective, but might benefit from some curation. A trimmed down double album of this and Rise would be really incredible. Favorites: Wildfires, Sorry Ain't Enough, Bow, Eternal Life, Monsters

There are a few good riffs and heavy sounds on here that presage what Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin would extend in the following years. There are also some real stinkers (Blue Condition, yikes) too though, and a lot of it just middling. Brave Ulysses is decent, but basically just a first draft of White Room. Plenty of fun guitar playing, but Clapton has to the luckiest right place/right time musician - just being around as a competent blues guy when fuzz and wah-wah pedals came out and plugging into that gives him this reputation as a pioneering wizard. The falsetto vocals are so annoying. I guess they were an exciting live band that jammed these songs out beyond the confines of mid 60s blues rock - the way the bass/drums hit on here I can see how that would work, but as a studio album it doesn't really capture that thrill.

Hard album to make sense of out of context - made for a party and a parody of the party, it's an artifact of a multi-national european dance scene and chaotic 80s postmodernist dada, it's hard to imagine this was ever intended to be listened to off youtube sitting on a sofa. Though it works unexpectedly well for a sunny Scottish winter weekend afternoon. The first half is hedonistic trance: big beats house music full with a hip hop flair from the samples and the odd rap verse. The second half is the hang over: ambiently melancholy and reflexive with slower tracks, strings and churchy lap steel sounding synths, and a reggae dub feel. Favorites: The White Room, Build a Fire, 3am eternal

The foundation of the songs are fairly standard bluesy pop rock structures gussied up with Zappa's signature baroque doo-wop and jazz approach to composition, zany arrangements and instrumentation, and his satirical view on both the 60s mono-culture and emerging counter culture. Like lots of Zappa stuff, this plays with the boundary between novelty songs and real rock. He's at once one of the most serious, curious, and experimental composers in the rock cannon and one of the goofiest exponents of musical and lyrical silliness. It means his work both rewards careful attention and relistening, but also becomes more tiresome and less exciting the more you hear it. 'Trouble Every Day' for instance is a perfect execution of the California psych blues-rock genre but also demonstrates Zappa's boredom with and scepticism of the scene surrounding it. 'Help I'm a Rock' takes this even further with a Kafkaesque premise for a dissociative freak out anchored in a trance-inducing bass phrase - it's ludicrous but extremely good.

drowsy and uplifting - it's the feel of an icey cola in the shade on a baking hot day. Afro-cuban jazz combining Spanish guitar, Caribbean rhythms, jazz piano and salsa horns with close vocal harmonies. Loads of harmonic minor/phrygian melody for that distinctive phrasing. Could listen to this all day.

Sample heavy and uptempo electronic music - I never really get what this kind of music is for, its not exactly danceable club music and is too busy to work as background music and too stupid to be worth paying attention to. It's what they play in a heist movie during a quick cut montage, or what you have to shout over to have a conversation because someone thought it'd be a good idea to have an annoying DJ at a reception but it's too loud in an echoey venue.

The most Black Sabbath sounding of the grunge cohort, this album is all about the top of the line sludgy sludgy riffs coupled with some great guitar lead lines that reinforce the main idea before going off course into some wah-wah territory. The chorus-effect on the dirty leads sounds really cool, bringing some bright tone tone the dark moody pallette. The vocals are the star though, soaring and diving they cut through the thick heavy mire of the slow grooves, belting out some massive anthemic lines. How he makes YEAH HERE COME THE ROOTSER sound so badass is hard to explain. They shouldn't held responsible for the Butt Rock that came after them, but you can see the template here - slow distorted and heavy with a hint of groove and a pissed-off sad guy wailing over top of it. They're so good at it you can see why it spawned so many pale imitators.

Synth pop revival from France in the vein of Future Islands or La Roux. Bright and upbeat tones with a darker minor key mood give it that darkly euphoric bittersweet feel. Tastefully indulgent and skirting the line between earnestness and irony, the album is full of all sorts of corny stuff from the Nile Rodgers disco guitars to the cheesy synth/keyboard patches. Falsetto singing: fragile and introspective until it reaches for the big power lines. It's all pleasant enough, but it sounds like music for a Parisian H&M - trendy and fun presentation of glossy surfaces that suggest a darker understory.

Magpie songwriting with bits of reggae, Andean pipes, jazzy folk, Django jazz, overdriven electric guitar, bluesy finger picking, to go along with the main strummy acoustic sound. The recording and mixing is crisp and balanced - every part sits just right and there's a ton of breathing room making this very relaxing and unobtrusive background music verging on boring. That said, there's a lot of subtle songwritery stuff going on in the chord changes, voice leading and all that if you tune in and pay close attention. Favorites: run that body down, peace like a river

A more eclectic version of The Ramones, X has all the downstroke chugga chugga chugga distorted guitar, but mixes it up with more direct influences from surf, rockabilly, and funk for a slightly less teenage sound that straddles the vintage punk/post punk styles. Seeds of pop-punk and emo here as well as hardcore - fast riffs, (top notch) active melodic bass, catchy singing and even some harmonies. Favorites: Adult Books, In this house, Universal Corner, White Girl

The culmination of the post-hardcore indie trajectory before it's absorption into the majors as alt rock in the wake of Nirvana, the Pixies had forged a wicked blend of aggressive and abrasive punk sounds, slowed it down a tad and mixed in melodic elements from surf, angular guitars from post-punk, and some new-wave beats. Nothing on here is as good as the best songs on Doolittle (or Surfer Rosa) and you can kind of tell it's a band that has already accomplished it's perfect form and is trying to do more of that. But, they are damn good at doing that thing still. The vocals are just at the edge of control, a voice breaking yelling out the lyrics' abstract images. They're obviously most famous for their use of dynamics, mashing the distortion pedal to kick things up and switch intensities on a dime, but on this album they expand how they're doing dynamic juxtapositions. On Ana & Havalina, the bright clean tone on the lead guitars cuts through the dirty mix, highlighting the understated poignancy of the lines, keeping the fuzz at bay until it can't anymore and is overwhelmed. Joey Santiago is the star of this one, playing great melodic lead parts tying these songs together and standing out against the sometimes repetitive riffs. Favorites: Cecilia Ann, Ana, Havalina, Down to the Well, Hang Wire, All over the world

If we think of classic rock as a genre rather than era, this album is one of the few that makes the case that their is some continued relevance and room for new contributions to the genre in the 2010s beyond bar bands and tribute acts. Part of the early 2000s rock revival indie era, The Black Keys along with the White Stripes, BRMC, Hives etc kept trying to make garage happen again. They're my favorite of that cluster of bands, and this is both their commercial breakthrough and fullest realization of that vision. If you're going to be a guitar/drum duo, both of those parts need to be top tier, and this album pulls it off with flair. Even if you've never heard this, it feels very familiar: there's nothing super original in it, but the guitar work is a masterful and tasteful display of rock playing that's digested the rock canon - a huge range of tones (fuzzy, overdriven, bright clean, heavy, soaring, jangly, muted), rhythm parts that establish a solid groove and keep things interesting with fills and licks without being distracting or showy, some ripping solos that don't go on too long, total command of the pedal board with dialed in delays/reverb, textural tremelo, whooshing phasers/flange and a bit of wah. There's room left over to fill in with fun bass/organ parts to round out the sound. The drums are similar - nothing spectactular but perfectly in the pocket and committed to a groove. The vocals are played like a guitar on the edge of breakup, pushing into the red for a bit of scuzz around the edges of the verging on falsetto belted out impassioned delivery. Favorites: Ten Cent Pistol, Sinister Kid, Tighten Up, Black Mud

Incredible to think that this was one of the biggest British pop stars of the 80s - even if this didn't sell like her other albums, it's existence speaks to a much higher public demand/tolerance for wierdness and a level of artistic risk taking and experimentation at the top of the charts that no longer exists. The thing about experiments though is that they don't always turn out. This one finds Kate Bush leaning way into some of the most annoying aspects of her sound: the alternatingly fluterring operatic and chimpmonky vocals, the challenging melodic phrasing defined by huge leaps into the high range, and the extremely slow arhythmic compositions, and overuse of cheesy strings. The ornate baroque arrangements are pretty cool, lots of random instruments, synth tones, shimmering effects and textures. Favorites: Leave it Open

The scratching and rapping really suck and surely would have sounded old-fashioned even by 1989 standards. The pop RnB stuff, while still incredibly dated (those synths! those drum machines! the keyboard strings! that reverb tone! that rangey breathy vocal belting out the hook over a vaguely house beat!), has much more of a classic enduring quality just for being a lot of fun. Would be better if they cut 1-2 minutes off each song though - nowhere near enough ideas to flesh out all these 5 minute tracks. Favorites: Inna City Mamma, Love Ghetto, Buffalo Stance

The soundtrack to depressing microwaved ravioli and cloying sentimentality. Musically, this genre for me is primarily associated with Looney Toons and the vocals with comedians using the style as a way to do bits. So its hard to take seriously as real pop and I expected to hate this, but it was better than I thought - there's plenty of swinging big band stuff with energetic horn parts and dynamic bass/piano interplay that makes up for the occasional plodding schmaltzy orchestral ballad. The vocals arent exactly my thing but he is a masterful performer oozing cool confidence and control. The melodic phrasing always has some little surprise like a downward resolution running against the grain or an unexpected modulation.

Such a discrepancy between the heavy noise the cover promises and the chilled out woozy grooves of the music. It's a mellow sunny album with it's feet grounded in mid tempo blues guitar rock and it's head in the clouds of excursions into lush & orchestral blissed out psych. Never got the hype with TRex though, it's all very competent and there's nothing I actively dislike but it's pretty plodding and a bit boring.

#1 in bands you'll hear 1001 times before you die whether you like it or not. Probably a 2 on its merits musically, but subtract 1 for how many times I've been subjected to it. The first 30-90 seconds of these songs where they play a catchy little intro lick then run through the main riff are pretty decent - the guitar sound is bright and noisy with the compressed tightness of an overdriven Marshall, pure rock. But then the vocals kick in and it's awful and the guitar just play the same dull riff over and over. So many of these songs sound just like each other. Think about what else was happening in rock and pop around 1977-1980 and this just sounds totally regressive. Music for grandads clinging on to being 14. AC/DC is so tame and rehearsed, lacking the exhilarating thrill and rawness of the actually fun great adolescent bands.

They have some amazing songs across their catalogue, but this is the cure's album masterpiece: 70 minutes of lush heartbreaking miserable bliss to wallow in. The washy sort of out of focus synth/guitar textures wash over you in waves and waves of warm beautiful atmospheric gloom. The drum and bass parts draw you further in creating a trance to lose yourself in. But when you're cascading and adrift, the lead guitar comes in, the sweet in the bittersweet brew: jangly and clear but drenched in reverb and delay and phaser, it picks out instantly memorable bright melodic lines that float gloriously above the trance and cut through the gloom, pointing up towards something light and ephemeral (Picture of You, Plainsong). Or it finds a swirling path through a minor key deeper into the bleak darkness (Last Dance, Disintegration). After a few heavy tracks in a row they mix up with a pure pop banger like Lovesong or the groove of Lullaby. Fascination Street brings it all together, a hard-driving pop-industrial beat/riff, a miasma of syths and guitars, and an anthemic belted out vocals. Robert Smith isn't gifted with huge virtuouso range or power, but uses his fragile voice to perfect effect, pushing beyond its capacity into a vulnerable wavering tone that perfectly suits the lyric's mix of pained anger, lovelorn infatuation, and nervous hope.

They kick this one off with one of their best songs, and a perfect opener - the fade in, uneasy tremelo as the signature guitar part emerges conjuring a storm and the vocals jump in begging for relief. Like most of their stuff in this period, the rest album finds them doing Southern-face: it's all drawling vocals, slack slide guitar riffs, harmonica trills, honky tonk pianos, and a lot of choogle. This material is loose and fun and fine as it goes, but not as good as the some of the other stuff they put out in this golden era of Rolling Stones Americana. You could condense the best of this, Exile, Goats Head Soup, Sticky Fingers, and Beggars Banquet down into three perfect 8-song albums that'd all be five-stars. It's their best era but still pretty bloated, this album especially. The middle three minutes of Midnight Rambler is a rave up that goes nowhere, fades out, then comes back for no good reason - like they're trying to do a 60s Grateful Dead/Allman Brothers thing, but don't really get how to improvise because Mick Jagger can't not sing for a more than 50 seconds.

Bright and jangly up-tempo songs that channels the Beatles and, with a tad harder edge, lays the ground for power pop to come. Great lightly crunchy guitar sound. There's a near constant backing vocal part that takes on the function an organ might have of giving some bedding/continuity alongside the more stochastic guitar/drums parts in addition to being a harmonic counterpoint. A few songs (Mr Churchill, Australia) get a lot looser, delving into a trancey psych jam that has an almost Can feel to it.

Genius pastiche of the Mafia movie genre, appropriating it's poses and cliches to present scenes of a youth spent hustling. Playful, funny, and deadly serious - this album is an endless stream of verses from a hugely talented groups of MCs coming into their prime. Coming in a couple years before the total commercialization of hip hop and it's total take over of pop, there's a lot more room in the wu-tang formula for this expansive wordy delivery with minimal use of refrains. The production is stripped down - basic drum-machine beats, crackling samples, and simple melodic hooks on a loop give a cinematic atmosphere that gives a bare bones rhythmic structure and mood for the rappers to flit around.

Common's delivery isn't lightning speed, but he works his way through some serious verses here - more reflexive and inviting than the relentless 'lyrical mystical' style - smoother and easier going, this oozes relaxed confidence. There's a solid verse/chorus structure to all these songs, bringing the lyrical excursions back to a central hook and thematic idea every minute or so. The production is all Gospel soul and funk woven together for some a rich warm sound over pretty laid back loungey beats.

Sometimes the dumbest things are the best things. This is one of those times.

Alternates between heavy industrial brooding beats that set a dark ominous atmosphere and jazzy RnB numbers with a warm relaxed feel. On one of the industrial tracks (Boss), the vocals are pushed into the red, distorting and fuzzing out, matching the intensity and aggression of the delivery. Venom has a tense string part and ride cymbal part that's there to ratchet up the anxiety underneath the heated quickfire verses. On the jazzy tracks (Wounds, Selfish) everything is buttery and smooth, a quick but deliberate unhurried flow taking turns with gospel/soul backing vocals. A real lush vibe from the bass and piano, horns and guitar, even some flute. 101 FM sounds like the hip hop take on the hold music for a Chinese Restaurant. Inflo's production is excellent, lots of live instruments that come through crystal clear and give a real sense of space and presence to the recording. Succinct, self-assured, and coherent without being repetitive, this is a super solid album I wouldnt otherwise have known to pick out from the crop of Little London rappers. Favorites: Selfish, Boss, Venom, Wounds

It sounds like the music that a band in a movie about the rise and fall of a shaggy glam rock band with a real bastard singer would play and you'd think, hey that sounds pretty decent for a band from a movie, they really nailed how a band like that would sound. Some good atmospheric reverb&tremolo guitar sounds. The songs are dark and moody with a driving propulsive energy that suits the histrionic spiraling vocals. He has a very vegemite hit or miss voice, and it's a miss for me. That makes paying close attention to the lyrics - which meant to be the selling point? The storytelling and the characters? - a bit tough since it means focusing in on the most annoying part of the music: his pseudo Jim Morrison goth crooning. I guess they have a cult following, from decent live shows and lyrical lore, but I wonder if it isn't maybe among people who, in general, prefer movies to music? Even the cover suggests that interpretation.

It's not that its bad, just that it's nothing. They had the crazy idea to make stripped back blues based rock music with some fuzzy distorted guitars and emphasis on big riffs, for some reason this is very exciting to a large number of people and they're treated as important artists. They'd be a fun local band to see live doing throw-back rock, but 7 Nation Army catching on as a stadium rock anthem elevated them way out of their league. I guess being one of the last big bands standing holding a guitar and being very deferential towards rock tradition has meant they're carrying the torch for rock dudes. But they're scrapping the bottom of that barrel and coming up with pretty minimal ideas.

Funkadelic, Prince, Stevie Wonder, Hendrix... he's copying from good source material. But the problem with wearing your influences on your sleeve is that when you're this bad it just reminds everyone how much better music there is they could be listening too instead. Insipid lyrics. "There is a woman who does drugs and has sex for money, ain't that a shame." "What if we like, did a love, instead of like, doing a hate?" It's so embarrasing when dumb rock guys really go for it with the deep social issues songs. Thin grating voice. Slow repetitive songs that just play the one-line choruses over and over again. The sax is good at least and Fear has a a pretty good groove until the boring riff kills it.

This is what the future felt like in the 1990s. There would be two jobs: hacking and making techno to play at the permanent rave happening in the basement of an abandoned factory. This album serves both ends, mostly chill ambient stuff to put in your ears and hack into the mainframe with the odd harder edge dance track for the rave. It's decent at the latter and good at the former in a boring but pretty way. So it'll get put on a work playlist and listened to much more often than stuff I like more but is too engaging.

The guiltiest pleasure. There's something that deeply and essentially just sucks about this band, but if you suspend critical judgement and let the cheesy vibes wash over you it's possible to feel that easy feeling, like the warm fading rays of a desert sunset and the chill of an evening breeze. But the you notice how trite it is or remember what creeps they are and it jerks you back to the vacuous reality of sad 70s corporate rock.

I used to really love this album but can't remember why - good feelings left over from discovering them via Yoshimi and seeing their amazing live show a couple times? It's pretty listless for long stretches. Dreamy slides into dreary. Too many songs never really get going and when they do collapse back into themselves before too long. It feels like inflating a balloon with a hole in it. The strings and elaborate orchestral arrangements kind of bog it down and don't let the riffs really come through. There are some good moments of course. The sense of melody is great and even though its thin, underpowered, and just off key his voice is really affecting in it's wavering faltering earnestness. Some pretty moments of quite reflectivity, some nice little guitar parts... Favorites: Prize, Spoonful, Superman

Those are some pretty big beats you have there, it'd be a shame if something happened to them.

The up-tempo funk/RnB stuff with a full band is great, lots of intricate interlocking parts, Stevie-Wonder level textures/instrumetnation and loads of melodic energy - they jam some of the songs out with a borderline psychadelic flavor to go with the James Brown style rave-up. Their covers really bring their own thing to enliven what are originally some pretty bland soul RnB pap. Fuzzy wahwah guitars over basically a disco song is a surprisingly good combination, I'd never heard the full version of That lady, but it rips! Same for What it Comes Down To & Sunshine & Summer Breeze. The slow smooth ballads are kind of nauseating though - needs some acidic tang to go with the molasses!

What a voice! What songs! What a performance! What harmonies! What a recording! Hot damn. The plucky little guitar parts on the second half take away from it, giving it a dinky jazz-psuedo-bluegrass sound that distracts from the core strengths of the album. It's like they accidentally left on a track of the engineer noodling along on top of the recordings. Otherwise, this totally nails the arrangements/instrumentation. The bass is great, the clean little guitar stabs are perfect, even the strings aren't too cheesy and I loved the Spanish bolero style horns on Can't Love em All. But that voice, damn!

Playful and uplifting, this is an unbridled expression of youthful goofiness and pure creativity combined with a pathbreaking flow and refined taste in the sampling/production. Soul, funk, jazz, country, psych all paired with simple drum-machine parts and scratching give this a party feel of sharing records and swapping verses, roasting each other, doing bits, telling stories, flirting. Somber spiritual moments about love and transcendence flip immediately into teasing each others' gear and BO. Swagger, joy, reflexivity, and unmatched cool - the whole Native Tongues indie Hip Hop thing had it all.

70s prog with a goofy sci-fi style title, not an auspicious begining. Randy California is an all time great name so +1 for that. Some of it pretty basic blues guitar rock - fine but boring and done better by others. The more original stuff is more exploratory, combining that ye olde acoustic folk sound that English bands loved for some reason with wierder instruments/arrangements in a vague approximation of Zappa. Some of that stuff suffers from the prog tendency to shove way too many ideas into a song. Some songs are doing that theatrical Ziggy Stardust thing, very annoying. The best parts are the kind of trippy spacey songs that eschew those fussier prog elements and let the fuzzier riffs breathe. But this is basically the turd that you can polish enough to turn into Boston. Favorites: When I Touch You, Street Worm, Rougher Road

The 1990s 'world-music' sheen diminishes the forecefulness of the previous generation's afrobeat, buffing off the edges and taming the wildness of the Kuti sound, turning it into something a lot more generic as it circulates primarily for a European/American audience. Femi's band's keyboard tones, super compressed bass sound, and bordering-on smooth jazz sax bits really detract from the hard-hitting funk fury of Fela. There are still some fantastic deep grooves here though and the horn riffs really rip. "No Shame" is a powerful anthem for migrant labor, reminding workers to take pride in who they are despite the degradations they face.

Prog on easy mode. Peak 70s bloat. A aliant effort at making a perfectly smooth album. Like using a firehose to fill a half pint glass with Paul McCartney's worst impulses. Or if Andrew Lloyd Weber wrote a musical based on Space Oddity. Once in a while there's a bridge that really hits, but it's a bridge over something you'd want to hear between to things you don't.

Easy going relaxing jazz. The melodies and solos flit playfully around the rhythms where the beats never hit quite when you'd expect, the distinctive time signatures keep everything slightly and delightfully off kilter.

Tight, heavy and high-strung nnu-metal that stops and starts on a dime. Great tension building breakdowns, moody intros, and some pretty huge riffs. Doesn't have the rapping element of nu-metal, but does the bass/guitars perfectly - thick, compressed, down-tuned sludge tone with a bit of groove to the riffs. The vocals are the most unique element, a snarled rapid fire delivery with melodies using the harmonic scales for a slighly exotic flair, they push into the red for some intense operatic belting andlow growling screaming. Not sure why this one got picked over Toxicity, which made a much bigger impact and took their whole sound to its fullest expression... Favorites: Spiders

Usually a teenage release is a nasty mess, but this one has some real spunk. 'Alright' on its own makes this worth a listen, an unbridled blast of underage hubris and swaggering world at your feet energy, pure joyous optimism. They won't let you make em like that now of days. The rest of the album is less distinctive, drawing on the familiar pallette of British 90s guitar pop, but they do it as well as just about anyone: bright and crunchy guitars, propulsive bass, hyperactive drums and exuberant vocals. The Arctic Monkeys really stole these fellas' bag and ran with it, huh

Now a camp classic, but camp is about knowing something sucks and loving it anyway for the lols. I don't understand why we're all supposed to retcon this into being good. bUt ShE's aN iCoNiC pOp KwEeN! Who cares? Does pretending this is good somehow make it worth the abuse we now know she endured bc of it? Celebrating this is just celebrating the abusive corporate monoculture that victimized her. Sure, it was a defining sound of its time, but so was kid rock and the chilli's baby back ribs song. This music sucked in 1999 and it sucks now and nostalgia for pre 9/11 adolescence isn't fixing anything.

Loved this when I first heard it a few years after it came out but assumed that the emphasis on the storyline would make detract from it as a re-listen, but not too much. It's still a very funny and closely observed take on being at a bit of a loose end as an aimless youf all hanging on little details and clever lines expresses the quick escalation of a temper around minor irritations, the sense of purposelessness, being bored of your friends, the desire for something more but easiness of feeling defeated along the way, banal disappointments from everyone around you, the ordinary shitiness and small-mindedness of everyday life, simpe contentment turning into self hatred, the annoyance of going out and not really enjoying yourself but kind of trying, hearbreak and accrimony. The production is simple and effective, basic mood setting beats link the feel and emotions of the story to the rhythms and color of the music - the modal shift in empty cans is perfect, but mostly the music settles back, letting the verses take the lead moving things forward. Favorites: Blinded by the Lights, Such a Twat, Fit But You Know It, Dry Your Eyes

The best part of New Order (apart from the hard-driving bass) is the transition from the dark minor to the uplifting major - but this Balearic inspired album mostly sticks to the majors, which combined with the pure corny synth tones gives the whole thing a very candyfloss feel. Sometimes that sugar rush really hits just right though and a wave of pure 80s cocaine indie disco fever washes through your veins. The bass is just as good as ever and the choruses are really huge. His voice is so limited and he rarely pushes it beyond a very narrow range close to a speaking voice - the melodic phrasing within that is also pretty limited, but very much part of the signature New Order sound. As much as I love New Order, this isn't one of the albums I would have chosen for this list. But, they're a singles band not an albums band, but I guess you can't just include Substance, even though it really their most iconic release. Listening to it more closely than I had before, and not evaluating for what it's missing (the remants of Joy Division and post-punk), it stands on it's own very nicely and is pretty much a perfect dance rock album from this era alondside albums like Screamadelica. It's an intersting transitional album between the new romantics 80s synth pop sound and the 90s house/techno Ibiza rave thing.

Lots of the songs are basically genre tributes and so don't feel especially original. You get the sense that this is a performing bar musician comfortable doing a lot of sounds but without a sound of his own. The consistent point is the vocal delivery and lyrical POV - he has a very distinctive and well developed sense of melody and acerbic lyrics. It's mostly all pretty uptempo and driving with a consistently restless feeling and relentless energy. The backing band brings a lot of that, plenty of fun accents and fills to go with the solid bass/drum foundation. He doesn't slow it down too often, and when he does it stands out: Allison is a classic lament to seeing a fleeting crush be with someone else in a deeply disappointing way.

A fun blast of 80s cheese - fwompy bass, disco guitars, unabashed synths laying down some funky pop.A great voice.delivers a strong vocal performance and some catchy hits. But it's basically a Stevie Wonder / Michael Jackson / Prince photocopy, so why not just listen to the real deal? Favorites: who's loving you? Wishing well

You know how everyone thinks Otis Redding songs would be way better without the vocals? Well finally an album that's just the band!

Mid-tempo and lushly orchestrated with a massive instrumental ensemble, this is an affecting rumination on having been young from the other side of a kind of disillusioned weariness: "one day they'll see it's long gone." It's an early onset middle age album, and a bit boring at times - partly as a means to produce the feelings its about: uneasiness, tired tension, vague foreboding. But there are some pulsating synths and soaring guitars that whip into a frenzy every so often too. The vocals are searching and warm and earnest, mostly eschewing the massive arena choruses for a breathy 70s singer songwriter sound. They seem very invested in the album as a form, this isn't quite an indie rock opera or concept album, but it is a very cohesive hour thematically and sonically that approcahes its themes from a few vantage points and builds to a big peak. It's got momentum to, like an econoline van rolling down a long hill, but it in a cinematic way. Sprawl II really brings it home beautifully: a synthy neon sound glowing over a dark gloaming. Favorites: Half Light II, Wasted Hours, Sprawl II

The combination of drones, complex but lowkey & low tempo percussion, looping recursive melodies, and general spaciousness makes this a very relaxing meditative album. It remains very understated and doesn't work it's way up to an intense peak the way other Indian Classical Music I'v heard does.

Very 2009 indie: in the high end you get shimmering glossy textures from the guitars and synths, in the low end there's a head-bobbing groove but too slow to really get you moving, this leaves middle open for a spacey ethereal feel. The bass keys guitar and vocals swap interlocking melodies in a round in this room. The sense of drama in this spacey pretty vibe comes from the vocals' operatic delivery. Perfectly fine in design and execution but hardly an essential must-hear album.

As the retro machine recycled flower power for a new generation high on ecstasy and the end of the Cold War, it unleashed some of the most insanely upbeat and joyfully naive music of all time in the early 90s to spiritually balance out the dourness of grunge. There's one idea and it's not that good, but they pursue it to its logical conclusion and its hard to be too curmudgeonly about such a goofy album, all they want is a good beat after all, and they have more than a couple to share. I was wondering where the groove was, now I know: it's in the heart!

The recording sounds like shit, he only knows two chords and the drummer only does the train chugging beat, but the songs rule, his voice is incredible and it's a hell of a performance. The harmonies and playful back and forth with June Carter bring a dose of levity to a set that's mostly dark story songs about dying at work, being on the lam or getting locke dup. This one isn't quite as good as Folsom, but the cover is way cooler.

Very meditative - lots of long repetitions of pretty simple vamps to establish a harmonic center and rhythm and then free ranging exploration of the melodic possibilities that affords. Some cool emergent stuff where ideas from one hand feed into the other and impromptu phrases turn into repeated figures and themes. Like a lot of long-form improvisation you can focus in on the details or passively let it absorb you to set a mood. Perfectly suited to the work I needed to get done this morning. I've listened to this a lot over the years without ever knowing the background story behind it.

'There she goes' is extremely annoying, just slathered in cloying John Cusack face vibes. The rest is Beatles knock off indie pop for the post-Smiths era with a garage rock twist. It has a nice jangle to it, some psychedelic flair, and the hooks are strong. It gets better and better as it progresses though, dropping the bubblegum pop and getting into more exploratory deconstructed territory with a darker edge. Favorites: feelin', freedom song, failure, looking glass

Pure kinetic perfection that appropriates all the most exciting energies of its era to create something unheard and strangely alien. Relentless grooves, complex poly-rhythms, hyperactive guitars that are at once post-punk and disco, new-wave sythns, funk bass, Krautrock trance, lush gospel harmonies, intriguing imagistic lyrics and off the wall charismatic vocal delivery. Nervous, ferenetic and anxious and yet totally self-assured in vision and delivery. I've listened to this thousands of times and hope to listen thousands more, one of the best albums ever recorded.

The backstreet boys if you dipped them in glue and dragged them through New Wave. Incredibly glossy production and dandelion light vibes. Ahead of it's time, but the bright lightness is a dark ominous sign of the boyband bubblegum tsunami that the pop factory would unleash a few short years later. A few welcome tastes of the signature pet shop boys speak-sing delivery (Yesterday When I Was Mad) and some nice rise and fall melodies with pretty distinctive phrasing, but for the most part they've moved on from the 80s synth pop sound for a fast Scandi techno pop thing that is really not my thing.

This album is nothing if not a testamanent to the raw human urge to create. There's something inherently self-indulgent and obnoxious about this whole project, but they do pretty much pull it off - it's more twee folk inspired indiepop than anyone could ever need, but hard to begrudge a bit of eccentricity and commitment to the bit. Systematically trying to find so may different approaches musically and lyrically to such a familiar topic does produce some great juxtapositions of perspective and feeling. Somehow it's both eclectic in its genre borrowing and very samey - inevitable after 3 hours I guess. They're good at powerpop, indie folk, alt country, and that kind of high-desert Leonard Cohen meets Calexico thing (Underwear), but very bad at gospel, piano ballads, euro electopop, and all the kinds of jazz. Some poignant turns of phrase and disarming melodies, lots of pretty guitar sounds, the odd synth lead, lots of duds and plenty of keepers - again, inevitable after 3 hours. Hard to be negative about an album with so many great songs, but there is SO MUCH FILLER. 20 Love songs would be a nearly perfect album. With 69 songs there's so much opportunity to make terrible decisions, like sticking a flute on the otherwise good 60s psych pop Sweet-Loving Man or the excessive stereo panning on Abigail. The really low pitch singing songs are unbearable, especially when he goes into that amelodic warbling (Cactus, Busby) and the ukelele based songs are as irritating as all ukelele based songs (Pretty Girl is Like, Nothing Matters when we're Dancing). It's hard not to resent them for creating the template for Sufjan Stevens and wave of crooning cloying banjo/ukelele twats who followed suit. Favorites: All My Little Words, I Don't Want to Get Over You, Sweet-Loving Man, Time enough for Rocking, Grand Canyon, No One Will Ever Love You, Papa Was a Rodeo, Epitaph for My Heart, Underwear, I'm Sorry I Love You, Death of Ferdinand de Saussure, Yeah oh Yeah! How to Say Goodbye

Love the trip hop production - great beats and nice spacey atmosphere. Few things have ages as poorly as scratching though, and this album has way too much of it. The flow is smooth and playful, building up the stupid character of Dr Octagon and his porno-bio-political universe. It's definitely more rap for rock critics who prefer a dense lyrical concept album over the actually popular hit-oriented party rap.

One of the real standouts in the class of 2000 rap golden age, this album is overflowing with musical ideas, huge hooks, kick-ass cameos, hilarious verses, and unstopable energy. Like the rap Prince, Outkast is a sponge steeped in American music from soul and funk to rock and hip hop to disco and house. Electrocute that sponge until it squeezes out an album and you get Stankonia, an eclectic and thrillingly produced 75 minutes (dear year 2000, you don't need to fill up the damn cd!) of otherworldly beats and Atlien rhymes.

The backing band on the first half has an incredibly loose and relaxed jamming feel, like they're warming up playing a few familiar numbers everyone has known forever and played a million times. So much of the energy in these versions comes from there, and seems to inspire Dylan to deliver the vocals more freely,.with more to play off and a strong beat to work off. Subterranean wouldn't work nearly as well solo acoustic, so it's so funny that that's the part all the folk dorks got mad at. When it's just him and acoustic guitar and there's a lot less to balance out his annoying voice it's pretty grating, Gates of Eden is just verse after tedious verse and 3 chords for like 6 minutes. It's alright ma has a bit more dynamism and variety, but drags on too. The return of the bass and another guitar on baby blue lifts that song: gentle countermelodies and simple harmony giving so much more to latch onto and deepening the feeling. Some songs just fade out or just stop feeling unfinished - great song writer but not a great arranger - which is why he's been covered so well so many times.

Prog dorks are so impressed with themselves for having heard classical music. Who cares?! Get over it. This one is better than the yes album bc there is some cool synth stuff (roundabout) and bc they abandoned the flutey folk sound for something with harder riffs (5%) with bass parts that rip (heart of the sunrise) and even coming close to having a groove (the fish). But good lord this crap is always on the precipice of being extremely annoying. Totally incoherent songs where 30 seconds of a good idea immediately ruined by a hard right turn into some goofy nonsense. Favorites: the fish, the first couple of minutes of heart of the sunrise, the part of America where they're doing an Allman Brothers parody until he starts singing

The first Stones album I got into, a sprawling masterpiece of loose blues, twangy country, and gospel harmonies. The recording captures something magical in every performance and the production leaves a lot of space for it all to live in. There's a lot going on in every song, and it can feel crowded like a bunch of people jostling around a bar, but then eases up and opens out for an impromptu jam in a shabby living room - a crappy old piano in the corner, a couple of just about in tune guitars noodling along, some tipsy singers chasing the melody, a guy with a sax walking in to blast a few notes, a laconic drummer doing as little as possible, a bassist taking it most seriously and having the most fun of anyone...so good. This is hands down the Stones' best album and along with the Dead's live shows this same year probably the highpoint of the early 70s country-rock thing.

Never heard of this, but (even though the album came out once punk was already dead) it's great 1st wave British punk so basically just regular ol' rock played fast and sloppy with a bit of a snarl to it. Classic teenage themes of being bored, rejecting religion, fighting bullies, staying up late and hanging with the fellas. Lots of chaotic energy, a lingering pop sensibility that leads to some very catchy melodies, and despite the adverts, songs with 3+ chords! The Great British Mistake is incredibly prescient for some 70s punks - staring complacently at your own past as history passes you by. Hmm... Favorites: One Chord Wonders, Bored Teenagers, Newboys, On Wheels, Great British Mistake

Synth-driven and very atmospheric 80s New wave. Lots of high-tone keys that texture and convey lead/counter-melodies. They get lots of strange and experimental tones/sounds from these keys - like a maxed out chorus pedal sound, a melting song-stopping effect. Vocals are a coy tenor, variously operatic and snapped out (a bit like Bauhaus). There is some swirling textural guitar work creating a stormy unsettling feeling on some tracks. Overall, it's a mixture of poppy major key songs and some dancey tracks but generally more minor key drones/dirges. Reverby drums add a lot of space. Favorites: Party Fears Two, Arrogance Gave Him Up, Gloomy Sunday, Better This Way

The first half is big and bold but sometimes woozy and swoony brass band full of glorious horns just bubbling up. RC delivers a hot vocal performance that brings it to a boil. It's big band jazz arrangments of classic blues. The second half is piano ballads with string adornment that cool it all the way down. This verges more into schmaltz, but the depth and range of the vocals overcomes the corny studio treatment its subjected to.

Surf punk from the beaches of, er, Massachusetts. This album induces whiplash in all the best ways: stop-start quiet-loud melodic-chaotic tension-release. Squirmy little guitar leads explode into huge riffs and even doubled up harmonic lines. The culmination of the post-hardcore wave, they also borrow liberally from the poppier 80s college rock sound for a bit of jangle, a knack for an extremely catchy chorus and fun lines to belt out. The band is a tightly coiled device that explodes on a whim. The lyrics are all abstract imagery taken from a world of industrial pollution, disillusioned relationships and dreamy free association. Not every song is a winner, but there are 6 or 7 all time great tracks on here.

The VU's twee indiepop album, they depart from the hard-edge dissonance and dark psychadelic explorations of noise of white light/white heat and instead deliver a of couple brooding and bittersweet love songs, a couple of classic singalongs, some proto-punk spirituals, and an experimental sound-collage story. It's not as a great in total as their other albums I don't think, but the highs are so high. Pale Blue Eyes & Candy Says are as simple and poignant as it gets, while What Goes On and Begining to See the Light are surprisingly upbeat rockers. A great less is more album - there's nothing flashy or complex here in terms of musicianship, performance, or even songwriting, just a stripped back simplicity of vision and commitment to melody and a mood.

It’s club night at the fairy-glen. This album is at its best in techno-mode with big house grooves and driving uptempo beats (Big Time Sensuality, Crying) where Bjork plays the role of the disco diva-vocalist over the top, taking that role into spritely and unpredictable elfin directions. The vocal performance is amazing, lines that start as guttural growls rise and rise to soprano fluttering climaxes. The darker slower tracks (One Day) combine moody synth beats with more layered rhythms moving slightly away from the 4 on the floor sound to achieve a kind of bleak trance effect. There’s some cool jazz borrowing (Human Behavior, Aeroplane) with organic horns sounds to cut through the synthetic textures. As wide ranging as this is, it pretty much all hits, the only one that doesn’t work is the really sparse harp+vocal track (Like Someone in Love). Totally unclassifiable, but probably the best electronica with an experimental rock sensibility hybrid stuff to come out of the 1990s.

The king of the wah-wah pedal and the master of the ultimate falsetto, Curtis Mayfield delivers a set of slow-burning funk soul. The bass makes this work - spare and efficient, hitting a few clustered notes to keep the deep groove going and creating a vast opening for the other instruments to gather in and build up the harmonies and rhythms. It's the classic CM combo of a a very laid back and gentle album musically with deep themes. The lyrics alternate between romance and sociology, delving into violence, inequality, and the endurance of hard times in post-Civil Rights America - drawing the two strands together in the end, uplifting loving brotherhood as the way of making it through. So in Love is the only really stand out track though. The entire album is WAY slowed down and relaxed without much variety, like turning on a tap for 35 minutes of pure Mayfield,

Tried and true americana songwriting with hokey as hell lyrics and I love it. Inject that bittersweet lapsteel sound straight into my veins. Her voice is great, and the way the other instruments and vocalists float around her melodies, harmonizing and passing the lead back and forth brings an exciting choreographed energy to the arrangements. The little mandolin fills pop in once in a while to kick it up a notch, then the fiddles ease is back down. Very pretty very soothing and a relaxed if melancholy feel. It's extremely faux-rustic tasteful BnB in a converted Vermont cheese barn, but god damn if it doesn't hit you right there in those folksy autumnal feelings.

Safe to say, there's a lot going on. This is basically radio-pop from the post-genre hip hop hegemony era. But it's also a concept album that asks an important question: what if an extremely famous guy was also extremely horny? The defining feature here is the maximalist production. There's some incredibly lush gospel stuff, some funny appropriations of black sabbath and king crimson, some dumb skits, some annoying choruses, some tiresome mediations on fame and celebrity (yawn), some attention grabbing verses, some spaced out deep beats, a lot of propulsive forward energy, and oh shit, is that RZA?! Nicki?! Raekwon!? Kanye is a tedious bore and a mid rapper, but also a masterful producer, beat-maker, hook-writer and creator of interesting audio-collages.

One trick ponies with a pretty fun trick - blending high energy electroclash with a chilled out psychedelic sensibly. Some of the best hooks of the decade to go with some fun beats and synth sounds and top tier melodic bass work. The drop on electric feel is so damn good. Kids is destined to be on every millennial nostalgia playlist for eternity. Starts to drag on the 2nd half when they switch from synths to guitars and become a Bowie tribute act - of moons has a cool freakout solo bit and post rock outro though.

Slow, heavy, and enveloped in a thick fuzz, but enough about me! Badoomtish. A bit disappointing since I love the first three Sabbath albums. This one has never stood out to me even though I know it has a big reputation, so I was eager to give it a close listen. But, I was right. Vol 4 is a bit samey and the production isn't great. It sounds a flat and doesn't have the huge sound you'd want from a stoner metal album or the high energy you'd get from metal later in 70s/80s. This album also doesn't have the terrifying sense of dread and foreboding they captured on their debut. There are some great riffs though, Iommi rips some sick solos, and Ozzy wails all over it...but still, kind of Sabbath-by-numbers. It's like they woke up from a binge and forgot how to play Master of Reality, heard it once, and then had to recreate it. I'd take that album over this one 100% of the time.

I'm not mad, you're mad! I'm just bitterly seething and telling anyone who'll listen I don't even care. His best album by miles. Great combo of 60s pop song writing and new wave sounds, of swirly organ and funky synth. The bass parts are so good, really the load-bearing element here, carrying the groove and ripping lines all over the neck. He'd be way more popular if he'd quit here instead of sticking around being an incredibly boring VH1-style loser for 4 decades

Oh cool another rock opera. All these dudes with mountains of drugs convinced that albums need a plot and that writing musicals is some kind of high concept achievement. This one at least has a few good chunks, like the 30 they hit three chords in a fast chugga chugga way that the Ramones would spend their career copying, and some of the sax stuff. But overall, this is pretty annoying and one of the most overrated albums.

80 minutes of this guy?! On a Monday?! "The Lyre of Orpheus"!? Come on man, give me a fucking break. This album has the frantic energy of a mega-church band trying to whip the congregation into a frenzy with an overwhelming deluge of keyboards and big reverby drums and wailing. Sometimes that's pretty fun. The bass is really good throughout - melodic, driving and high in the mix. There's also some nice atmospheric/textural stuff and some cool guitar parts. I just find the songwriting to be very conventional big bland rock but with grand pretensions to it. And I don't like Tom Waits enough to want to listen to a pale imitator. Every song seems like it should be wrapping up, but then there's another verse/chorus, and bou does it start to drag in the moodier slower second half. It has a cool film-noir feel to it, but the whole thing really overstays its welcome. Favorites: Messiah Ward, Let the Bells Ring, Easy Money

Love the funky clavinet tracks, hate the schmaltzy piano ones. His voice is so weird: he has such control and range and subtlety with it, but he loves these unresolved jazzy minor11th or whatever melodies that mean he always sounds off key. Music theory heads love to figure out all the little modulations and chord voicings and stuff he does, and that's neat and everything, but fails to ask the basic question of it slaps, and too often, this does not. Especially when you have Superstition just sitting there demonstrating how hard he can rock its very annoying wading through all this over-thought wishy washy stuff. That said, there's some really fun synth noodling thrown in there.

On paper I like all the elements of Depeche Mode - the dark and brooding synths, the deep booming vocals, the goth electro-new wave beats, massive reverby drums, the lush arrangements, the whole miserable gloomy post-pop vibe - and yet somehow they've never really connected with me beyond the really big anthemic songs, none of which are on this album. It's very frustrating, knowing I ought to like it, respecting the craft and performances, wanting to enjoy it and delve in deeply, but just remaining kind of unmoved.

Opens with a song about having a rash, bold move. Loads of that huge 80s whoompy bass sound, possibly the whoompiest. The next song is more familiar: gentle acoustic guitar with a pitter-patter bongo percussion part and jazzy electric piano chords for a dash of schmaltz - his soft light vocals floating warmly over the mix. The rest of the songs settle somewhere between these 80s disco inflected synth pop and 70s folk singer sounds. It's all smooth and tasteful and pretty dull in a distinctly upper middle class upper middle brow way. Impossible to listen to this without picturing an arena full of Larry Davids vibing out to the musical equivalent of hotel art.

Gentle acoustic guitar and a soft breathy voice calmly delivering the guaranteed chillest 28 minutes of any day you put it on, Pink Moon is the aural equivalent of an overpowered boulevardier on a shitty Thursday after work. Sweetly smokey, it really takes the edge off. Perfect.

A voice that makes the speakers in your trunk rattle like a trap hit. Paired with sparse instrumentation from across genres (gospel blues, country, jazz, industrial), the voice is front and centre, sultry slow and steady, so low and heavy that it barely raises itself into song. Urgent but not rushed. Weary, but willing to try a near final gasp - an affirmation of the art that made a life. The violins and lap steels and choir all hint at what's next, morbidly uplifting the music soars while the voice remains tethered to the body. Favorites: traveling light, leaving the table

If you thought Keane was too 'out-there', if Coldplay gets you too excited, if you love listening to people whinge about the weather, if you can't get enough of that OK Computer thing where Radiohead combined acoustic guitars and ethereal electric ones and electronic textures but for some reason don't have access to the real thing, if you'd like to hear a band beside Oasis explore the idea of a wonderwall, if you wish the Verve had more harmonica, or if you're running a hospice experimenting with new techniques for lulling people to a soft lovely boredom-induced death, then boy, is this is the album for you. Otherwise, stay well clear. Awful.

The Police fall wierdly between being a cool post-punk/new wave and and a massive classic rock arena jugernaut. They're too dorky (smooth, bright, poppy, and jazzy/prog sounding) to be cool, but draw on the same reggae and punk influences as the other British late 70s acts. They fit in better with the synth pop and new wave stuff, even though they have the very classic power-trio instrumentation. The musicianship is through the roof from all three, the light-touch drumming, the melodic Jamaican inflected bass, the gorgeous chorus effect-maxing shimmering guitar hitting those crystalline chords, and the unmimstakable voice and delivery. I guess like U2, they're the post-punk outliers who've become ensconsed in the classic rock radio cannon - though they had the decency to break up on a high note. Walking on the Moon is possibly their best song and Message in a Bottle is great, the rest has some good moments (the radiohead-sounding arpegios on Bring on the Night, the dub bass on Bed too Big), but is less inspired overall. I'd have chosen Outlandos or Zenyatta over this one and Synchornicity, personally. I guess that indicates that they're probably a greatest hits band in the end. Distilling those 5 albums down into 80 minutes of their highest highs would give you a compilation that can stand up next to anyone's with massive hits, a totally distinctive sound, genius songwriting, and pristine recordings of top performances.

Relaxed and warm jazz ambience from the piano, with a touch of 70s funk from the keys and electric organs. Woodwinds add a classic 40s element both tonally and to the harmonies - but god I hate flute noodling. The jazz crooning vocals get pretty grating at times. Higher tempo songs with a strong bass parts popping along and melodically connecting the changes are much stronger than the slow ones that just dwell in washy unresolved chords. They're playing with the contrast between the form/content: loungey vibes and funky fusion are the delivery mechanism for GSH's angry portraits of the persistent injuries to Black life post Civil Rights era and poetic condemnations of the failures of the imperial American state. The point of the contrast being that the backing music is drawing from and adding to the deep well of Black creative tradition that expresses that and transforms it to something sustains and inspires nonetheless. A poetry album that paves the way for the wordy native tongues school of 90s hip hop and backpack rap to follow (lets not talk about the thousands of cringe slam sessions too). Favorites: The Bottle, Peace Go With You, Rivers, H20 gate blues

At its best when it's doing a Supremes kind of Motown thing with a horn section, backing singers and some lively bass. At its worst when it verges into Broadway territory with story-telling ballad style, or when it goes all schmaltzy slow and sparse and flutey. An incredible, if kind of nasal, voice with a huge range, but that includes a very annoying piercing high-range she spends lots of time in.

This is less irritating than I expected it to be, but it's still just barroom blues with the mildest hint of psychadelia. It's like the Pigpen songs from a 60s Dead show, just with a smoother vocalist. There's some ok blues rock guitar and psych organ stuff - the instrumental breaks have a cool feel to them. But really, it's pretty dull. I don't even like the Doors but this doesn't have any of the stuff that makes them unique, even if that uniqueness is hugely overrated and what I feared would be irritating. They're a greatest hits band at best, and this album doesn't have any of the hits!

It's basically the same song on repeat, but what a song. From the first boo bap a doo wah to the final yeah! it's an incredible performance - an incindiary singer, Little Richard burns through these jumped up blues tracks with a level of intensity, charisma, control and pure heat that you can literally hear pushing recording technology beyond its capacity to capture. The guy's out here basically inventing rocking the fuck out.

A movie needledrop classic that immediately indicates the 60s are happening. It's a great example of the early psych formula: pulsating bass and droning open strings to induce a trance, some swirly whirly organ and very reverby guitars, a bit of fuzz to break from reality and some vaguely heady lyrics to suggest you open your mind and head out there. The songs borrow heavily from surf rock and chuck berry style blues rock, but arranged in the new trippy style. Play it loud and freak out the squares, man! Very funny that Zappa's debut album came out the same year and was already basically a parody of the California psych scene within months of it starting.

boring post-grunge midtempo 90s alt rock that never made it to the radio. Imagine a really muddy recording of stone temple pilots' filler tracks with the hooks taken out. A real dirge. Some good guitar parts here and there, and when the vocals veer into screamo territory it's more compelling, same when it slows down and spaces out into a more shoegaze sound. Favorites: be sweet, when we two parted

A transition from the epic melodic thrash of Master of Puppets to the all-conquering hard rock of the Black Album, this album has elements of both but isn't as a good as either. Still, it goes very hard - some huge riffs, some gnarly shredding, some awesome harmonic leads, some quiet somber moments that build anticipation, and tight tight playing throughout. One is really the only stand out song though.

Lush arrangements combining rich orchestral string & piano sounds with pure 80s whoompy bass, industrial synth, gnarly guitar, and big echoey gated drums tones. She's in Depeche Mode mode here, taking a bit of the edge off her earlier more challenging work for a glossier sound that still retains the darkness and operatic flair. A few songs have a propulsive driving beat pushing verse to chorus to big a climax, building layers and layers of texture and pulsating rhythmic intensity. Others linger in a more structureless slow swelling ambient zone - a bit aimless, but they're effective platforms for her distinctive singing. Alternatingly frail and booming, smokey and piercing, whispered and wailed, the album is all about the vocal performance. It doesn't depend on deliving a central melody, but floating around a mood, rising and falling in and out of the instruments, adorning the songs with short bursts of intensity and signaling shifts in the feeling of the songs. The incredible This Woman's Work is the obvious stand out: the initial sigh is disarming, stripping back the arrangement to piano and some sparkly synth swells lets puts the full spotlight on the forcefully tender vocal and the most memorable combination lyrics/melody on the album. Favorites: Sensual World, Love and Anger, Heads We're Dancing, Deeper Understanding, This Woman's Work

If you don't think mid-career Oasis is bloated and bland enough you'll love this album. I always thought he was more of a post boy band ballad singer and didn't realize he had this much of a rock sound, but this is basically a low effort brit pop album with a touch of blink 182 and smashmouth. Angels is laboratory engineered to manipulate the mawkish sentimentality English people confuse with emotion.

A mellow album with an original combination of elements from funk, afro-pop, dub, blues and ambient genres. It's extremely laid back even at its most high energy, like JJ Cale in slow motion, like Funkadelic curling up to take a nap, like Steely Dan letting it all hang out. The guitar playing is the highlight, messing around with delays and reverbs to play notes that fade in and swell and fade, doing lots of cool textural stuff, and experimenting with tone. His voice was jarring, almost unnerving, at first but you get used to it. Not one I'd heard before, glad to know it, but unlikely to revisit anytime soon.

The singing here is much more polished compared to the wildness of her BB&HC era, but still a full throated, impassioned and characteristically hoarse vocal performance that steals the show. The songs are all pretty standard California psych blues numbers, apart from the stand out cowboy-country of Me and Bobby McGee, the best one of all.

Lush genre defying pop with a deep slow groove and insistent rhythm. Draws on jazz and rock and RnB and trip hop to create a sultry lounge cabaret sound that rises and falls like a deep breathing exercise interspersed with sprints. Her low pitched voice delivers the reflective personal lyrics, ranging confidently from a hushed whisper to a charismatic storytelling, to an almost diva-like whirlwind. Way more musically interesting than her 90s folk singer songwriter contemporaries, the arrangements are so rich: piano driven, drum machines, ethereal slide guitar, xylophones, some sort of overdriven sitar thing? I've heard criminal a million times and it still holds up, the rest I've only rarely listened to, but it's very consistent in sound and quality, though the slower stuff drags a bit. Favorites: sullen girl, shadowboxer, criminal, child is gone

A playful romp through the genres, they do a bit of blues soul RnB psych pop surf garage and more - bringing an off kilter but charismatic vocal and a sardonic sensibility to it all. Not as intentionally alienating as their other stuff, it ends up being a kind of fun tongue in cheek 60s tribute act by a talented troll.

An all-timer, this album has such a distinctive sound and compelling irrepressible energy. Simple but totally captivating beats with a smooth laid back funky jazz flavor keep your head bobbing along gently. The production is clear and crisp and balanced and everything comes through just right, like a live jazz trio perfectly captured laying it down. The vocals are the really stand out part though. Keeping the choruses to a minimum, Q-tip, Phife Dawg, and Busta Rhymes swap verses relentlessly and joyfully, they each have a unique flow, playing around with cadences, going off on wordy excursions, spinning out elaborate stories, bantering, conjuring images, and having fun with the language. It starts and ends on a high and never lets up in between.

Fundamentally pretty boring 70s classic- straightforward arena filling pop rock with familiar chords, predictable structures, and melodies you've basically heard before. Good enough unchallenging music that certainly goes down easy. The only really good bit is how hard they lean into the gimmic of twin guitars harmonizing on the leads - yeah, it's corny as hell, but my god it rips. The sax stuff and new wave-sound tracks (dancing in the moonlight) are pretty fun too. Has there ever been a cover that more succinctly illustrates the idea of cock rock?

California Stars and Way Over Yonder in the Minor Key are two of the best contributions to the alt-country cannon and At My Window Sad and Lonely, Hesitating Beauty, and One by One are just a tier below. The arrangements and performances really sparkle, in different ways they're all sing-along songs with a poignant sense of missing out on a better life going on elsewhere without you, accompanied by a woozy slide guitar. The rest doesn't hit nearly the same level though - competant mid tempo acoustic rock that just chugs along unobtrusively. The idea of turning Woody Guthrie's old lyrics notebooks into 20th century songs is a cool project and this is a very logical pairing to carry out, but I can't help thinking I'd like it more if it was just a Wilco project. The Jeff Tweedy sung songs are the strongest, his voice conveying the tender lonely country feeling works much better than Bragg's more rigid delivery of the propaganda songs.

Not what I was expecting at all. Surf's Up means Surf's time is up. Much looser, darker, and weirder than the classic Beach Boys stuff, this album still has the signature emphasis on thick harmonies and lush production, but it doesn't come at you with the big hooks and 2 minute concentrated blasts of pure pop. Instead, it has a washed out acid hangover feel to it, woozily easing you into a slightly formless psychedelic daze punctuated by fuzzy guitar leads, some bleeps and bloops that sound like kraut-rock before it had been invented, and all sorts of different random instruments sounds. Favorites: Disney Girls, Feel Flows

The most overrated album in rock history. It's an interesting document of growing experimentation with recording technology and the art of production as part of music composition. It's the beatles, so there are lots of interesting melodic phrases, great sounding little guitar fills, and good basslines (doing a funny tuba oompa boompa thing all over the place), but the lyrics are all pretty insipid and the whole brass band concept album thing is pretty stupid. There are so many joke songs for an album always held up as the pinnacle of serious rock artistry. And somehow Ringo has the 3rd best song and the 2nd best one is George's psychadelic raga. It's just way too much of a Paul cartoon brain album. A Day in the Life is great though, like the wrapped up the concept album thing and realized they forgot to include any actually good tracks so stuck a bonus one on the end.

Fela Kuti and Austin Powers go to Bollywood for a funky jazzy set of show tunes. All sorts of 60s pop psychedelic sounds combined with Indian instruments and harmonies, driving rhythms and a swinging 70s internationalism all in service of big musical motifs. Some of it sounds like it's from a noir, some for a james bond, some for a.big dance number, and some like a spaghetti western. The songs are pretty overlong, there's plenty of schmaltz, and it's all pretty cheesy - but a fun album. Not really something I'd plan to listen again, but it piques interest in what was going on in South Asian popular culture around this time and why this soundtrack in particular is featured.

Ace of Spades is a 5-star album that rips from start to finish and I'm sure it was a hell of thing to see Motorhead live, but I don't really see what's added by listening to a live recording of these songs - a bit faster and messier, even more energy, but a muddy sound that turns it all to mush.

Though they wear their influences conspicuously with classic RnB and rock and roll covers and a brash surf sound, you can start to see the emergence of their more complex pop song writing to come. But this is them still in full teenybopper mode, jangly and sweet upbeat love songs with a funny playful side. They mastered the genre though, these songs are nearly all pretty perfectly crafted little gems and the recordings are brimming with energy.

Such an annoying type of guy - an 80s LA dude pretending to be a beat poet roadhouse bluesman, a middle class Bukowski-wannabe fixated on the down-and-out figures of a previous generation. It's pastiche all the way down. The music is pretty decent though, slow moody and stripped down to drums and a bassline with either jazz horns, bagpipes, or guitars filling it out along with the barroom piano/organ. His vocals though, not so much; he croaks the lyrics like a strung out hermit, he has a voice like a crapped out speaker, but even that seems like part of the affectation.

Live fast, have a mid-life identity crisis young. A rocker's experiment with smooth jazz ballads, this is a genre crossing set of songs that sets a mellow mood with careful production and rich instrumentation. His voice isn't built for crooning, and feels like a sodden blanket drapped over the delicate music. Sometimes you can be so open-minded that your brain falls out, A Gospel is the sound of that happening. It kicks up a notch in the final stretch with a more high energy synth pop sound. Hard to imagine who in mid 80s Britain was the audience for this, but speaks to an interesting eclecticism (or lack of direction) in popular music burning out after half a decade of post-punk and new wave.

Very elusive album that I can't quite put my finger on. At times I loose focus, at times it demands full attention. For good and bad its a lot like Bowie - the rockier guitar stuff isn't that interesting, kind of generic blues rock with some powerful sax. The synthier kookier stuff (like Ladytron) is more original and interesting, with cool textures and less predictable structures. The bass is doing a lot of work in both, melodic and leading. I still don't get why they're so hyped and influential - I guess because of what Eno went to do? And you had to be there to get excited by the Ferry glam side of it? But yeah, left feeling like I don't get it and it just passed me by.

Extremely my shit. Mesmerizing bass and organs and some trance inducing drumming set a deep groove as a platform for the guitar, electric piano, and especially MD's trumpet to go off. It settles into some quite contemplative dawn moods with a shimmering vibrato sound and sunrise soloing, then heats back up for some spikey intense jamming. Music dorks in the 60s were really afraid of electricity and it was very stupid.

Those mop top lads from merseyside have only bloody gone and done it again!

What? Why? This thing with including late era work from significant artists of the 70s/80s is so silly. XTC have some great albums, but this is not one of them. Trying to get beyond what I hoped this would be, to hear it for what it is... Heavily orchestrated, fussily composed verging into prog, an indulgent tribute to the most over indulgent bits of the Beatles. It's lush and somber, very adult (there's a song about having a shed), but that, as usual, mostly means boring (there's a song about having a shed).

Much more of an early 60s classic "Oneders"-style rock and roll / soul / doo wop than I really realized. Their blues efforts (please please please, i'm a man) are way less compelling than their pure power pop stuff. The emphasis in all of these very tightly constructed songs is on the harmonies and the big bright pop melodies. But they bring a chaotic high energy rhythm section and overdriven guitar loudness that goes harder than the songs really allow, and so the band erupts from the confines of that early 60s pop rock and roll mould. Favorites: The Good's Gone, La La La Lies, Kids are Alright, Legal Matter, I Don't Mind

Laid back rock from the high desert, Calexico has a ecclectic relation to genre, incorporating accordian waltzes, mariachi choruses, atmospheric post-rock psychadelia, jazz drumming and horns, emo melodies, dub melodica, trip hop ambience, some cumbia rhythms, folksy alt-country acoustic and high-lonesome slide guitars to create a sound that encapsulates the borderlands. It coheres perflectly into a spacious cinematic album that winds its way slowly around, settling into the songs gently, quickening the pulse with new instrumental layers, and calming back down with its whispered lullaby vocals. Without being a concept album, it takes you on a journey, like driving through the sprawling outskirts of South Western city, cruising through the strip malls feeling a saturday afternoon evolve into saturday night evolve, catching snippets of what's playing out the car windows, the weddings and bbqs and parties, the bars filling up and spilling out - there's a bit of filler in the in-between moments, but they're taking you to the next place.

Bright and jangly melodic pop that lacks the force of their best work, but replaces it with a funny observational approach to song writing and richer arrangements. Is this just little England nostalgia though? It's self aware and parodic, but not entirely kidding about yearning to live in the Hot Fuzz town and win the flower prize...Requires a few listens to sink in.

Surely no accident to get this on May 2nd, 30 years from the day of Nelson Mandela's election in South Africa's first democratic election after the end of apartheid. Paradoxically, because of breaking the cultural boycott with Paul Simon, LBM became the sound of South Africa's freedom struggle in the Western imaginary in the late 1980s. They also became one of the first big groups in the emergent 'world music' genre - bringing a touch of exotic flavor to western record collections. Rooted in traditional Zulu harmony and genre, refracted through gospel choir traditions, the album sounds incredible: it's a recording that captures the depth, subtlety, range, and expressive capacity of the voice and a set of virtuosic performances that manifest the power of collectivity, collaboration and intradependence. I think this is the element of this music that made it rise to its occasion and endure since - the peaceful power and collectively rooted strength that's the foundation of harmony and that provides the platform for individual soloists and melodies to shine.

Dark and brooding, furious and horny, desperately nihilist but oddly life affirming in its pure heavy catharsis. NIN combines the moody goth synth sounds of Depeche Mode with the relentless intensity of Big Black. This is like a prototype for Nu-Metal, minus the rapping: the grooves that turn into riffs, the confessional verses that turn into tortured screaming choruses, the fusion of metal and electronica. Reznor's efforts to explore mood and texture are a huge success, this is an album you can see when you close your eyes: rust, char, ooze, scratches scrawl and scar...you know, goth shit.

Proggy pop combined with big dumb 70s rock, so: big synthy riffs and spaceship tones. Having the electric piano at the forefront makes for a kind of showtune feel. Like a copy of the more annoying side of David Bowie. All the maximalist tendencies but little of the creative energy, and done on the cheap. They sound like a filler band on one of those compilations they used to advertise on TV like "ALL THE RADIO HITS OF THE 70s YOU KNOW AND LOVE!!!! (except for the good ones)"

Turn the hardcore dial up to 11 and keep going. Noisy brutal and short. Probably the only appropriate aesthetic response to the nightmare global political economy consolidating itself in the late 80s: the real grindcore was going on in SE Asian export processing zones. Some really good chugging riffs, some blasted to hell beats, some ghoulish screaming. Not your sunny Sunday morning coffee and toast music, but when your in the mood to rage, it's hard to think of anything going harder than this. Plus, I heard Ian Napalm and the rest of the fellas are big into orienteering.

Beats from a deranged music box, verses from an insanely talented group of young rappers pushing each other higher and higher. Funny and dark, real and yet full of fantasy world making conjuring the Wu Tang kung fu mythology. RZA's beat making and overall production is lo fi genius: he builds a slow deep and spacious groove with simple bass and piano hooks, spooky atmospheric sounds, a bit of DJ scratching and bare bones drum machine parts..Their hugely effective platforms inviting the lyricists to fill in the room with one virtuosic performance after another.

The end of the millenium was a pretty bleak era for music, and 1999 in particular may be one of the worst years for albums - it was the year Blink 182, Santana and Limp Bizkit ruled the radio. This album speaks to the level of extreme exhaustion in pop rock as a genre. Pretty forgettable stuff - another band that sounds like a tribute act to Oasis's worst tendencies. Despite their best efforts, no amount of orchestral swells and acoustic strumming and affirmative choruses will conjure an emotion from these bland bloated songs. If they made an Almost Famous style movie for Britpop, these would be the b-sides off the fake band's singles. It's not that it's unpleasant, it's that it's barely anything at all.

The title track is an early entry in the canon of tedious boomer rock self mythologizing. The rest is like a hippy Billy Joel, or a best a saccharine Nick Drake with the dark pathos replaced by bland sentimentality. It's mostly gentle and inert acoustic guitar/piano open mic night crooning and insipid lyrics. The slightly more fleshed out arrangements like on Winterwood (with a shuffling snare, a bit of melodic bass, and some pretty electric piano parts) give it a bit more liveliness.

The classic D&B sound: deep bass grooves combined with rapid fire drum machine programming, synth parts for texture and mood, then diva-style vocal singing/samples strung across the top to give it a center. Was this album making or just mainstreaming this template? Despite the kind of spasmy herky jerky feel of the rhythms, it does work incredibly well as a tune everything else out and focus on some bullshit kind of functional music, though it adds a layer of ambient stress to the focus. Not sure it needed to be two hours long though, JFC! It's called Timeless, but it is incredibly of its moment. Interesting that this era of Jungle, Drum & Bass, House and electronica in general had a much more widespread presence in UK pop than in the US, where it seemed relegated to clubs rather than radio...or maybe it just passed my suburban existence by...

Sometimes it really isn't that complicated. All it takes to make a beloved rock album is a few chords, loud amps, some undeniable hooks, a taught gristly bundle of pure charisma, and David Bowie behind the boards. This is always cited as a favorite album by every 80s/90s alt rock indie post punk band, I guess because it had a stripped down 'raw power's compared to the bloated radio rock of the late 70s, but retained an essential musicality that the increasingly derivative punk scene didn't always bother with.

Emo nu metal, from, wait, what? 2008?! I'd give you the self titled and/or Iowa as massive genre defining albums, but this one? This band really cashed in on the last gasps of the CD buying era huh? The CD era means it's way too long, both individual tracks and all together. It's the signature combo of relentless double bass pedal drum blasts, heavy riffs with maybe a bit more groove than you'd expect, and alternating screaming vocals to build up the tension and pop punk style melodic anthemic emotional moments to release. Theres some surprising Soundgarden sounding stuff (Gehenna) that's pretty derivative but not too bad. Overall, the guitars are pretty fun: down tuned and chugging, they throw in some 80s shredding and pinch harmonics for a treat. They know what they're doing and it's only like 12° off from the hard punk/metalcore music from the late Clinton /early Bush era that I did really love, but something about this band has just always sucked. Maybe it's the fatal association with being MTV clowns trying to be hardcore on the Sprite© Mainstage® brought to you by Kia™. Favorites: Dead Memories, Gehenna

Mariana Trench level grooves from start to finish, the funk dial is pushed dangerously into the red. Fela looked at the Africa 70's 3 congo players, shekere, and Tony Allen on drums and said fuck it, more percussion! Ginger Baker going from Eric Clapton to Fela Kuti has to be music's biggest ever upgrade. The bass performance is incredible, the horns are blasting pure fire, Fela's organ parts rip, and the call and response singing generates even more energy. You could power a megacity off this album, and it's not even one of his best.

Simultaneously in four eras at once, this album has a retro 50s/60s doowop digested through punk thing, a mid 70s disco thing that puts the beat first and insists that rock should be fun to dance to, all of the elements of the 80s new wave thing, all of which would be canonized in a billion 90s teen movies. There are so many currents running through this (power pop hooks and harmonies, arena rock guitars and huge drums, post-punk scenester cool that's somehow not just affectation, synth pop instrumentation, even some heartland rock organs and earnestness) but they're all synthesized in a coherent purposive whole. Amazing fun top to bottom that peaks with Heart of Glass, one of the coolest songs on the 70s.

Disco funk fun to get any party started. There's a sheen of glossy cheese lacquered thick over this album, but underneath is an amazing bass performance and probably the best right hand in guitar history. Nile Rodgers really maxes out that compressed single-coil strat sound. The ballads are dire though.

Heroin raga, this is an exercise in texture and pulse. No bass, no drums - the rhythm that there is comes from the trance-like vamping strings and droned guitars that disolve into frenzied feedback. Flat monotone vocals with all the enthusiasm of an exhausted au pair singing a lullaby, a great performance of alienated ennui, of a bored hipster affect aggresively unimpressed with everything that could possibly exist. I know the mood, but it's not exactly fount of creativity. Way too much irritating flute. These Days is very good though, the only song that comes close to her songs on the banana album.

Too much of an OK thing. A landmark in sample-based production, the problem is it is full of reminders of cool soul and jazz and reggae and bluegrass tracks I'd rather be listening to instead.

I find it impossible not think about how calculated this all is, like, 'ok we need a song that's going to go on a million treadmill workout jams playlists, we need a song to hit the 27-36 tequila & kombucha cousin demo, we need to perfectly tread the line of being racy enough to get tweens excited but tame enough their moms don't mind' - but that's just mega pop production, so its hard to begrudge her specifically for it, it's just annoying to realize you're in the '34-43 working on the computer rock uncle demo' and that they successfully hit you with a few. And she did! Some of these songs are catchy as hell and have some amazing anthemic hooks. There's some really cool atmospheric textural stuff and kind of euphoric blissful spacey production I really enjoyed. It's upbeat and energizing without being obnoxious, propulsive beats and plenty of changes. It's not meant to challenge the listener at all and doesn't, but just delivers pure pop straight to the veins. It's meant to be a throwback to 80s synth pop, but it sounds like she was just stealing all the drum machines and keyboards and producers from the 2008-2013 indie synth scene, the whole vibe of people LCD Soundsystem imitations - the best of that stuff is pretty good, and it's not a bad idea to rip it off to make yourself zeitgeisty and one of the era's biggest stars.

Slow and stately country ballads with easy listening arrangements: nylon string guitar, piano, organ, cheesy strings, some nice horns and a light hand drum/bass rhythm section. His understated lead guitar playing on the nylon strings is great on a few tracks, simple, melodic, and spacious - says a lot with very little. Willie Nelson's warm baritone is the throughline on the album though: technically limited but aged and inviting, he croons his way through a set of jazz & country standards. It's an interesting companion to Ray Charles' 'Modern Sounds in Country' insofar as as we see a canonical artist interpreting the songbook - but it's not really a good representation of Willie Nelson's actual contribution to American music. Phases & Stages or the one with Waylon Jennings would be much better picks. That said, this sets an incredibly gentle relaxing mood - it's the audio equivalent of taking a hot shower after a dusty day.

Song by song I just kept turning the volume down until it wasn't on anymore and that was a nice change.

A classic Black Atlantic album from the multi-cultural wake of the slave trade and migration in Bristol, this album draws heavily on Jamaican dub, on British rave scene (via Detroit) electronica house and techno, soul & RnB, hip hop and reggae, slowing it all down and spacing it all out, opening up the sound to create more pockets, a more relaxed feel. The production is era-defining. They'd take this formula and improve on it on their next albums, but the three big tracks on here are just incredible: Safe From Harm, Blue Lines, Unfinished Symphony.

I'd always assumed this was a folksy acoustic guitar singer songwriter album, but it's got a lot more fleshed out instrumentation than expected- the piano is dominant, with the often bass punctuating rather than carrying the rhythm, some tracks with congas/bongos and latin rhythms, acoustic guitars, flutes, and other kind of floaty instruments come in and out to adorn and jazz it up, some small doses of electric guitar leads give it a belated CA psychedelia flavor. Her voice is warm, relaxed, rich and well suited to the songs/arrangements. The recording sounds great. There are a few 'Oh, this is Carole King? huh' songs - familiar and ubiquitous, but not ones I'd ever really liked enough to look into. It's all very tasteful and adult and pleasant, just like all that early 70s chilled out James Taylor Joni Mitchell Cat Stevens Billy Joel Paul Simon easy listening stuff, but that means aesthetically conservative, predictable and kind of dull.

I only new Michael Franti from Spearhead being on the bill at jamband festivals and had no idea he had a early incarnation as a Boots Riley/the Coup style conscious political rapper. Very much an artifact of early 90s post-coldwar left cultural production, the main concerns are war (in a kind of generic sense), consumption, media/TV, corporate power structures, the war on drugs, militarism. Musically, it's pretty straight over the plate early 90s hip hop production - drum machine beats, jazz and rock samples, some turntable scratching - the tracks are busy but not lushly produced. This is self-identified brocolli hip hop you listen to because it's good for you - impactful in terms of the merging of content/form, but a document of its time, more like watching an old episode of the daily show than listenting to a timeless classic.

Paranoid combines the two strands of Black Sabbath's early sound - atmospheric goth horror and fuzzy blues power-trio rock - into a an avalanche of terrifying sludge: heavy riffs that come in two speeds but just won't stop pouring out, banshee vocals wailed from the depths, powerful rangy bass, all-over the kit drumming, and, most importantly, the concept of some kind of man, but of iron?! The seeds are sown: stoner and doom metal, thrash metal, speed metal, hair metal and even punk, post-hardcore and grunge are all here in germinal form. It's always funny how Ozzy's vocal melodies are just the riffs - total idiot song writing that still kicks.

There're basically only two different songs, nothing special about the arrangements, and hardly brimming with virtuouso musicianship - but it's deservedly one of the best regarded country albums and live recordings due to the sheer magnetism of the vocal performance, the magic between the performer and the audience, and the capacity of these simple country song structures to tell a story of guys who started fucked and then fucked up descending further into fuckedness and reaping what they've sown and being self-pitying and self-hating about it.

Goddamn I love this band so much. That signature thing where they start with a spacious slow groove and detached flat affect vocals, then build up layers and layers of guitar lines, dissonance distortion and feedback, filling in the space until it's super saturated as the vocals get more and more angst and it eventually bursts and a clean guitar arpeggio comes in like the cool feeling after a quick dew point drop and a downpour have taken all the oppressive humidity out of the air. Masters of tension and relief, of the hard-earned explosive climax, of time and texture. The two-three guitars going back and forth, interweaving lines, bouncing ideas off each other, extending each others openings, or just layering give this such an dense exciting feel - like Television re-invented for the grunge era. This album is packed with so many riffs, melodies, turns of phrase, powerful sounds, and they come across so forcefully and precisely and with such control even as they're pushing every meter deep red.

Bombastic production: big rock/jazz samples where the beats are kind of frenetic and don't settle into grooves or emerge as jams - instead they're high energy complex stop/start collages with an emphasis on organic guitar horns and piano parts (and less successfully, synthy strings) over right clean drum machine tracks. His flow is easy going uptempo and precise but doesn't have a really stand out style or a distinctive flair. The verses are the stars bc the hooks are kind of weak, none.of the songs have a really catchy memorable chorus or anything, surprising given his association w Jay Z and Kanye who are so good at exactly that. The songs w Gemini are good. A bit too much filler at both album and individual track level. "The Instrumental" sounds like Linkin Park.

Piano based rock is always at risk of becoming showtunes, and this is no exception. The vocal performance is really good, and at its best there's a fun flamboyance to the unbridled 70s cocaine excess of the production/arrangements. But I have never, and still don't, understand the hype with Elton John. The songwriting comes across as clever and referential/winking genre tributes more than anything. He was early on the reggae appropriation trend (Jamaica Jerk Off), but good lord is that an abomination. He anticipates some of the sound of new-wave with the hoped up synthy rock & roll (Sister Can't Twist). His attempt at a Rolling Stones honky tonk song (Saturday Night) is good and would be a nice fit on Sticky Fingers. It's impossible to listen to Candle in the Wind without your skin crawling from the mawkish sentimentalism the British public has imbued that song with since the 90s. Bennie and Jets and All the Girls Love Alice and are fun. The Nashville-sounding country twist with cloying strings and lap steel on Roy Rodgers is a funny touch, taking a silly saccharine ballad about a TV cowboy to ludicrous levels of camp - I think it might be my favorite track.

There's some fun jammy blues stuff with George Harrison on guitar and pretty groovy bass, but that's not what you're listening to John Lennon for. Jealous Guy is a great song sullied by what's known about his behavior. Imagine is so embarrassing it hurts, imagine being moved by that. His voice and the cadence of his vocal phrasing are the best bits. But this is mostly pretty dull stuff.

Steeped in the history of space funk and psychedelic soul but ahead of their time in terms of beat making and their pop / hip hop sensibility this album is an eclectic epic full of hits and hooks, catchy as hell, raunchy, funny, and perfectly executed. It's It's too long, but it's the pinnacle of their career: great features, distinctive voices, signature production style.

Millennial dad rock with all the excitement of a Prius. The National's sound is sweepingly cinematic with big orchestration and spacious reverby/tremelo u2-style guitar swells. Slower and more stately than their 00s indie counterparts like interpol, the walkmen or broken social scene - they elements in common with those bands but its just never connected for me. It's mature and sophisticated and polished and ultimately pretty plodding dull stuff that's successfully repressed the libidinal teenage agita that animates better rock. They're good at conjuring a mournful contemplative mood, but there's not enough dissonance to make the peaks satisfy or cathartic - it just ebbs and flows, no tension no release.

You know you've done something special when the first four notes of your album are, 40+ years later, still the go-to signifier of horniness.

Dark and moody droning synths going through the chords at a glacial pace, as drum machine rhythms urgently try to beat out a pulse, breathy chanted vocals rise from the depths of goth despair with a bit of insouciant Lou Reed flair, some organ swells and bells and xylophones adorn the high end to and add counterpoint and texture. Extremely good brooding mesmerizing psych-punk.

It's funny how time tames music - this is nowhere near as extreme sounding today as I'd remembered from when I first delved into thrash. It's so much like Iron Maiden or Judas Priest, sped up for sure, more aggressive with a punk/hardcore influence, but the same basic premise: hard chugging riffs, discernable hooks, powerful drums, and a singer with some serious pipes. Anthrax keep it pretty tight - the sound is dialed in and focused, the guitar solos are concise and scarce, and the songs come in quick and heavy. They mastered the thrash template they co-created and set the machine to full blast. But it's a bit samey as a result. This definitely goes hard - can't go wrong if you're looking 50 solid minutes of blasted riffs and belted out vocals.

Oh yeah...I remember them! Crisp smooth and clean beats with a propulsive high energy feel. The delivery is similar: precise and clever with some quick turns of phrase and conscious content. Continuing the Native Tongues/backpack rap tradition, but it's kind of generic sounding across the board and nothing strikes especially powerfully - but maybe it's another one that'll need a few relistens to really sink in...

Low? More like LUSH! This album is like diving smoothly into a lazy-river made of synths and floating around letting the current push you around. Eno's presence is huge in the creation of these layers of tone and texture and pulsating sound and slow swelling rhythm, with Bowie crooning louchely over the top, bringing a bit of edge and charisma to the chilled out mood. Sound and Vision is an all time great electropop song. The rest is a lot less individually memorable though. The first half distills emergent 70s synth pop to forge the foundation of the 80s new-wave sound (it's also a cool extension of the song-writing style and aesthetic on Iggy Pop's the Idiot). The second half is an excursion through krautrock ambience.

Kirkland Signature Depeche Mode. Synth pop that has a bit of jangle, a bit of hooky new wave power pop, a bit of dark and moody, and even a bit of heartland twang, but doesn't lean hard enough in any direction to be really satisfying. It's easy listening, but most of the tracks seem like they'd be filler on the good bands of the era's albums. It gets more cloying and boring as it goes on and the endearing novelty of the unrestrained 80s production wears thin. Last 4 songs end it on a high note with more subtle radio pop bright bass forward sound (and the bonus disc demos let the instruments and songs shine through the cheesy production).

Fast, melodic & basic. Cost $10 to record and you can really hear it. Crunchy and bright guitars, relatively low in the mix and the vocals really dominate. A ton of songs, none more than 2.5 minutes - most under 1.5 mins - it give this a pretty thrown together half thought out feel. Unsurprisingly the longer songs are best, because they’re actual songs, not just self-recorded demos to come back to and finish. Many ideas, little execution, lots of wasted potential bc there are some great moments and sounds. But the songs finish before they even start. Classic slacker trick: if we don’t really try nobody can say we failed.

As one of the most ubiquitous albums of the 90s I know all the words to half these songs and have a good time belting them out at first jokingly then it gets serious, and it's like damn, you really do ought to know. The bass sound is so whoompy. It rules. It's like RAAAIIIIIAAAAIIINNNM....

Swishy beats and swanky synths, amazing bass lines, luxurious textures, high gloss production. Somehow it's catchy despite being essentially instrumental lounge music. Music for a montage riding elevators up and down a fancy art deco arcade turned mall wearing some Wes Anderson type outfits.

60s psychpop harmonies and bright open sound and a touch of surf rock guitar tones + 70s krautrock driving rhythms + 00s indie synth maximalist instrumentation & production = an upbeat high energy immersive and engaging bit of fun.

It's not that it's bad, its just so boring and there's such a surfeit of this kind of 70s blues rock shit that's been hyped for decades that I just can't bring myself to care. I love jambands so have a high tolerance for indulgent instrumental wank, but my god this is some tedious stuff. Shredding blues licks over a hard rock riff is the lowest form of virtuosity! He's not even that good at guitar - nothing interesting in terms of tone, technique, phrasing, harmonies, musical approach, anything...he's just pretty fast and had loud Marshalls. The vocal solos are even worse, just a dude screaching. Then the endless drum solos that go nowhere. Urgh. No sense of improvising as a collective process of discovering emergent music from listening and responding to others, just turn taking showing off on dull solo after solo. Who cares?!

N'Dour takes the jazzy relaxed open feel of 70s West African Golden-era of Afro-Cuban rumba (from his Star Band de Dakar days) and opens it up. This album lowers the role of the guitar and makes space to incorporate more Senegalese musical traditions (the interwoven griot-style vocals, the wide range of hand drums and the talking drum) and for some smooth jazz sounding horns/keyboards. The horns are great, but the keys, combined with the very 80s production and the bass tone in particular, do give this a very corny dated feel. Along with Salif Keita's, N'Dour is one of the cornerstones of the whole Putomayo world music 'genre' and forged a sound that would become the somewhat stultifying generic default for West African musicians seeking an international audience, combining glossy global sheen with the authenticating use of local instruments. But here in its nascent stage, there's plenty of energy and excitement to the music, and even the corny keyboard sounds have an endearing nostalgic wistfulness to them.

Did this album fall in a tub of body lotion? It's so SMOOTH! It's like a simulator for being on hold with an airline. It's the soundtrack to going grocery shopping in the suburban 1990s when someone decided that this combination of disco, funk and jazz should be the default sound for all commercial space - no edges, just positive vibes and mellow moods. It's kind of a nadir for all three genres - the saccharine strings, the glossy production, the total coked out mundanity. But it has some fun elements: the bass especially goes hard, a d the guitar/sax solos sometimes rip off a hot line amidst the smooth noodle.

Pretty run of the mill lo-fi indie: a bit of a folksy sound, a bit of a pop melody, an overall bittersweet mood, some messing around with effects and wonky instruments, a shaggy bedroom feel to the arrangements and production. A very endearing artifact of the DIY creative spirit and of a basic impulse to make music. But it's only like one level up from coffee shop open mic stuff.

This was one of the first CDs I ever bought, and I was desperate to like it. It was the guy from Nirvana so it had to be good. And the music video was so goofy and fun. But that's all it was in the end, a novelty act with good pedigree but not much in terms of musical ideas or memorable songs. I wasn't mad, just disappointed. Nowhere near as good as the other mid 90s alt rock radio staples, but they somehow outlasted them all became one of the longest running most beloved bands of the last 30 years, which I'll never understand, they're so boring and generic. A band for people who've heard of rock music and like the idea of it. An album for big fans of room temperature water. Even saying that, I'd put The Color and the Shape on the list because there are some much stronger songs on that, but this album is just factory settings post-Grunge. Every mildly good moment on this album sounds just like something Weezer or Smashing Pumpkins or Stone Temple Pilots or Bush or whatever other band from the time did way better. Favorites: Floaty, exhausted, this is a call

Slint took the power of the post-hardcore underground and slowed it down, expanded the emotional and sonic range, and created something terrifying and brutal. Even more so because the patience and psychotic control over the stop-start soft-loud dynamics, with precise abrupt transitions. Tensely coiled and balanced on a knife's edge, the soft parts are anxious and ominous - muted dissonance just waiting for the slightest trigger to explode into a distorted fury. The explosions are raw and powerful, the guitars just slam a pedal, but the singer tries to turn himself inside out lungs first. The whole thing is like a grainy horror film: teens wandering into the woods, going off alone, and being ripped apart by some unknown monster you just catch in glimpses. The bleak sound of being cold and hunted and salvation never comes.

Transition between the psychedelic blues of the 60s and the new wave of British heavy metal of the 70s, that has a touch of the prog. The huge organ sounds give it a big cathedral effect, but slows it all down. The guitar compensates with fast heavy riffs and faster shredding solos. The vocals wail over the top, shattering the stained glass with some massive high notes. Propulsive bass energy. It's tighter than the bloated live album, but still kind of boring 50+ years later, especially showoff guitar stuff, but that's a bit unfair since that's so much to do with how many copies of this there have been since.

A little commercialism goes along way in taming prog excesses. This is a tighter, more focused, and way less annoying version of Rush. Just write some rock songs, not a suite of pseudo classical nonsense with an overture ffs! The flanger and drums and then the riff to kick off Tom Sawyer is so damn good. YYZ sounds like a corny Joe Satriani track where there's an alien-style complicated backing track for some virtuoso guitar histrionics. The instrumental is a nice break from the piercing vocals though, yikes. Some great bass playing throughout, the guitar tones are all pretty cool and the drums patterns are intricate as you'd expect from a guy with 700 piece kit...

It's Marvin Gaye, so there's a great vocal performance. It's Tamla Motown so there are incredible bass parts. It's late 70s soul, so there's some deeply funky Rhodes parts with jazzy hand-percussion. But I'm not sure it amounts to much - the songs themselves are a let down, leaning into that washy unresolved lounge sound and ending up cluttered with too many instruments. But when that sultry sax hits, oooohhhhh baby Favorites: Anger, Is That Enough, Time to Get it Together, You Can Leave

More boring blues dad stuff. A few hits on here have been on permanent radio rotation for 5 decades so have that warm familiarity. His voice is great in its gritty overstretched way. They're not reach for the dial songs, but equally nothing worth seeking out. Very disappointing that 'Who'll Stop the Rain' wasn't the far superior 'Have You Seen the Rain'. It's just totally inessential replacement level rock by numbers - listen to Marvin Gaye or Little Richard or Chuck Berry or Jimi Hendrix instead of their pale imitator.

More ambient than the popier Moon Safari, this soundtrack reminds me of Pink Floyd style spacey pscychadelia updated for the EDM era (no surprise since PF did a few scores/soundtracks before DSotM). Washy synths, trancey chord vamps, groovy basslines, trippy effects, a combination of tight drum machine patterns and more free live drummer fills, instrumental apart from random samples with clips from news. Good working music: interesting enough but unobstrusive. Builds some light tension, quickens the pulse, but then a slow release...

This isn't as good as I remember. Taxman is simple and effective pop rock w reactionary lyrics. Eleanor Rigby seems like the point where they start to get hugely impressed with themselves and lean into their pompous era - insanely overrated song. I'm only sleeping dabbles in studio effects for a psych101 rocker with great melodies. Love to You has a sitar drone and raga beat to an exotic flair that's quintessentially 60s. Here there Everywhere is tender chamber pop with a jangly guitar lead that adds an spikey element to the bittersweet smooth harmonies. Yellow submarine is Barney level pap. She said has the most iconic 60s pop psych sound with the massive swooping sounds, jangly guitars, and doubled vocals. Good day sunshine is more stupid kids music with an oompah doompah beat and idiotic chorus. And your bird can sing has a great high energy riff and catchy vocals - the guitar sound is great. For no one is a way less successful harpsichord song than Girl, but has a cool horn part. Dr Robert is generic LSD pop. I want to tell you is more of that iconic distinctive combo of close harmony and jangly guitar leads. Got to get you into my life is by far the best McCartney song here, carried by a Motown sounding horn part and bass line and a great vocal performance that builds and builds until a very satisfying break. Tomorrow never knows wraps it up with an all time great psych excursion into drones and trance and studio trickery. The guitars do sound great on all these songs, and they're having fun with more exploratory instrumentation and studio experimentation and I do love the way they bend a song with bridges and melodic variations twists and turns.

It used to be easy to hear this as a creative exploration of the wild persona formed by the combination of American racism and cult of celebrity, a look at the bipolar contradictory pressures placed on Black artists in particular. He's funny: Proclaiming 'I am a god' to demand being satisfied with the most banal desires like croissants. He's poignant: tender gospel harmonies run through autotune testify to personal and family suffering, substance abuse and more. But he's so stupid: it turns out this wasn't an incisive skewering of megalomania, but just the early stages of it - a man driven into chaos by the structural conditions of the idiotic attention economy he used to be smart enough to observe but now, like so many, just exists in reaction to. The sound of the album is great - rich but spare, the beats the drops the samples and the textures all work perfectly together to create a dark introspective mood for the vocals to lash out against with extremely non-reflexive lyrics that just excrete straight from the id. The pairing of a sample of strange fruit about lynching with verses about issues with his wife and beef with his rivals shows how he transmutes structural critique into rationale for interpersonal self serving ego serving self justification.

Somehow Moby comes across as the biggest douche in those Woodstock 99 documentaries that also feature Fred Durst and the promoter who ran it all. Boring album that sounds like the music from every airline video about the nearest exits. Every track has basically the same structure: looped sample + default drum machine pattern + some ambient keyboard chords or a twinkly piano melody. Can anyone explain the appeal of this and Fatboy slim? Why was there such an audience for tedious loops repeating the same stuff over and over in the 90s? I guess this is on here because the more interesting downtempo and electronic artists he's copying didn't work in the album genre? It's pretty relaxing though and at least he has the courtesy to not put a loud track on the second half to wake you up if you doze off...

Cartman's In the Ghetto will always be the cannonical one, but its cool Elvis did a version too. This must've sounded very backwards looking in 1969, but in retrospect has that timeless classic feel to it. The band sounds great - a lively bass that keeps everything ticking along, some gentle soulful twang on the guitar, gorgeous backing vocals, surprisingly tasteful arrangements for the horns and strings that are lush but not (too) schmaltzy, and a crisp clear recording give this that essential soul sound for these pretty straightforward country and blues songs. Polished and slowed down compared to the raw energy of his early career, Elvis is in emerging as a full blown crooner here, demonstrating an impressive low range, that signature warble, and a flair for phrasing.

Smooth delivery of very wordy but laid back verses over jazzy rock beats. It all works nicely in the extremely 90s alt/underground hip hop style. It makes sense that had a way bigger impact in the UK than the US as this was so out of step with the mainstream of 90s US rap in the mid 90s, but fits in perfectly with the downtempo, trip-hop and late madchester sound and generally fun-seeking ladish attitude of British pop of the time. The beats are really nicely constructed with soul samples for cool horn sounds, chilled out synth parts, and mesmerizing drum loops. The hard rock choruses & riffs really let the songs down though, they just whack on the distortion and hit some big chords to raise the energy, really jarring and ultimately flat/dull despite the aim.

An amazing combination of the two dominant early 90s New York hip hop sounds - the emphatically lyrical wordy and insistently clever delivery of Tribe Called Quest or Digable Planets paired with production style of Wu-Tang, with dead simple looped piano/drum machine beats that serve as perfect platforms for the delivery. More than any individual contribution, the interplay between the voices swapping verses, picking up and continuing each others ideas, speaking back and forth, extending the rhyme schemes and cadences is the real magic here. The hits were inescapable but remain fresh and exciting, some of the best hop hop singles of the 90s. Overall it's is very consistent in terms of sound/style and quality - so a bit samey, but lots of good stuff, though the Bob Marley cover is very corny. The whole thing has a very cinematic feel, from the movie-poster style cover and the silly skits, to the atmospheric beats, and scene-setting, character-establishing, story-telling style in the lyrics.

Every country cliche in the book and its glorious. Twangy guitars duelling, that lap steel slide sound, honky tonk barroom piano, close harmonies, simple cowboy chords and a basic oompa doompa bass, all performed and captured perfectly. It's an amazing collection snarky "I'm so goddamn sick of your bullshit" songs sung with an incredible combination pissed off verve and oh so sweet charm.

From the first note it's pure unbridled 80s pop - massive synths, gated drums pounding out a big slow beat you can still dance to, a bit of dirty guitar, a huge hook. An extremely fun album totally lacking in self seriousness but certainly more than just a bit of disposable bubblegum pop. I thought I was only familiar with Girls Just Want to Have Fun as a one off from 80s pop compilations but there are so many hits I recognize that were just floating around the 90s cultural detritus. It takes some guts to think, "yeah, Prince is pretty good, but I know what If You Were Mine really mine needs is to slow down and make room for a bit of mall-core." Heard a whole, there's a lot more akin to new wave and teh quirky synthy side of post-punk than I expected. Other than the visuals, this (Money Changes Everything especially) really isn't that different to Born in the USA era Bruce Springsteen, just branded as suburban pop instead of heartland rock.

So much in the con column: rock opera, piano based rock, pompous but slight themes, kitsch without camp, show tunes with 0 sense of fun, slow ass over composed songs that last for ever, nothing musically interesting, it's very long So little in the pro column: impressive vocals, sometimes it fleetingly sounds like some better (if only slightly) 70s band (Bruce, Elton, Queen), the cover would be great for a thrash band, the odd raging sax solo

Another being on hold simulator! Instrumental electronic neo-soul with a vague funky hip hop feel that's the official soundtrack of every douchey bar that calls itself a lounge. It's relaxing and unobtrusive but impossible to mask the scent of hookah and despair on this album. Thus is a great example of a genre (Gen x muzak) worth including in a survey of pop, but it's boring to start with and way too long.

Combines the massive pop sensibility of an arena rock band with the dorky approach of a New Wave band overflowing with catchy melody and bright sounds. There's a fantastic dynamic between the synth parts and the guitar, a classic garage rock/power pop Vox AC30 sound: tight, dry, compressed, lightly overdriven for big midrange crunchy chords and quick and dirty leads. The synths give a bit of quirky flair and silliness, an at the time modern sound that now dates it (in a good way) - while the guitars ground it solidly back in radio rock. I've heard so many of these songs so many times, but never listened to the album through so never realized how tightly they all fit together and what a punchy and polished set it is.

Eno style ambient synth textures combined with a psychadelic jazz musical approach encompassing sax and trumpet blasts, squidgy basslines, organ vamps, piano tinkling, and an experimental poetry approach to lyrics conveyed by Wyatt's fragile voice. It builds and builds through slow repetition and layering that brings more dissonance and disorder and polyrhythmic tension that all creates a sense of anxiety and anticipation. With a watery theme, it conveys the feeling of being overwhelmed and giving yourself over to the force of the sea, not thrashing against it, letting waves wash over and push you around, succumbing to a blissful dark sense of dread disorientation and powerlessness.

Too much exposure to Irish-American nonsense has ruined the possibility of ever enjoying this actually pretty decent album of Irish folk music (reels, waltzes, jigs, ballads, heavy use of accordian, penny whistle, mandolin, and basic snare drum kits) with modern lyrics and a sped up punk approach.

A melancholy joy. It's Nick Drake's distinctive breathy warm voice, gentle melodic phrasing and cadences, and his jazzy folk chord progressions with a full soul backing band bringing uplifting horns, searching sax, gospel back up singers, reflexive piano, electrifying guitars, swelling strings, and (unfortunately) flittering flute to the party. The upbeat uptempo songs contrast with the sombre dark lyrics for a powerful effect, but the arrangements are sometimes too much on the slower songs, overwhelming them with too much mood. When it hits it hits so good though. Favourites: Hazey Jane II, Poor Boy, Northern Sky

An all-time favorite I slightly ruined for myself by overplaying it as a teenager obsessed with David Gilmour. He is absolutely thrilling on this album. There's nothing pyrotechnic or as singularly epic as the Comfortably Numb solo, but his phrasing, that compressed strat tone, the fuzz sustain, the control in his vibrato, everything about it is just unbelievable. Those piercing but tenderly tentative first notes when he comes in on Shine On are set the mood for the entire album. This is a very strange album to be such a huge commercial hit: 5 tracks, two stretching out to nearly a quarter of an hour of meandering guitar, synth and sax, a very personal and loving tribute to a lost friend and original creative heart of the band blown up the maximalist scale of arena rock. The 70s were a wierd time. My favorite PF is the Echoes/Ummagumma era of long explortatory psychadelia, but this album (and Animals, which I maybe slightly prefer) have a nice dose of that but with added high-budget studio recording polish and a more composed prog rock feel. Try as they might, even 40 million buskers can't ruin Wish You Were Here.

Only 2 years into the 70s you get all these suburban American kids raised on British Invasion, California Psych, and jangly country/folk rock forming their own bands to relive it all for themselves. Because it's a half generation later there's a degree of pastiche along with the bright earnest try hard optimism. You can hear the whole 60s thing refracted back through itself in this album full of hooks and harmonies and some really incredible crunchy guitar sound. Somehow this is both extremely derivative and foundational of its own style of unabashed song-oriented good vibes rock that would become power pop, college rock, indie pop whatever... I'm late to this band despite always knowing about them, and they endear themselves more with every listen. The acoustic final few songs let it down a bit though as the infectious energy dissipates.

The youth may think Stevie Nicks is witchy, but little do they know about the dark magic and gothic spells of Siouxsie, rock's best Susan. This album sounds like a decomissioned barbed wire factory cursed for being built on a druidic ceremonial site and haunted by centuries of ghouls.

This was the first album I ever bought so these songs have all worn some very deep grooves into my brain. It holds up insanely well for such a juvenile album because it's captures the frustrated ennui and idle horniness of bored suburban adolescence so perfectly. It's a coming of age album without the mandatory growth narrative, instead Dookie dwells in the aimless feelings of listless youth, disenchantment, laziness, wasting time, and thwarted progress - but it takes pleasure in the wallow. A perfect artifact of 90s loserdom. The fact that all the songs rip helps too. Fast and energetic, with an awesomely cheap tight dry distorted guitar sound, some of the best hyperactive bass playing of pop punk, and wall to wall all action drumming. The melodies take it over the edge though, hugely memorable instant sing-along classics delivered in a wholly appropriate snotty nasal brat sneer. Pop punk peaks here, there's no competition.

It's a huge mystery how this guy came to be such a big figure in rock. He's a nothing song-writer who relies on covers for anything interesting and then approaches them with pretty familiar arrangements that don't offer anything new. Totally flacid singing and profficient but basically replacement level blues rock guitar, which is meant to be his whole thing? His tone and playing just sounds like a competent JJ Cale rip off on this album. The middle few songs are like bad CSNY/Eagles offcuts, but he's late to the country rock bandwagon. There's a kind of loose jammy feel to the album and it sounds like a group of very capable musicians having fun playing together. But that doesn't mean I want to listen to it - keep the dad rock in the garage! Bland 0 risk pablum that's too dull to be unpleasant.

This hits that rock-country sweet spot perfectly and turns the smooth vibes dial up to 11. There are heavenly slide guitars all over the place, gorgeous close harmonies, barroom piano, and a laid back feel. He wears the country style naturally and without affectation, fitting right into the twangy sound on True One. Life's Greatest Fool and Silver Phial ad a lush gospel sound with a backing choir. Silver Raven is a stunning minor key acoustic driven song with an tender swelling guitar lead woven between the lyrics and CSNY sounding dark harmonies. No Other, Lady of the North and Strength of Strings have a more ecclectic prog/psych feel to them with synths, organs and wah-wah guitars playing vibey riffs in harmony.

Brian Eno seems to have had the same frustration with the limitaitons of 60s/70s pop rock sound as the prog guys, but had the opposite response - instead of cramming every song full of as many instruments and notes and time signatures and mythology as possible, he stripped it apart and slowed it down - opening up the expanses within glam rock in a way made possible by the synths and new recording technology and some very talented (prog) musicians to support him. Robert Fripp really lets loose on some of these songs in such a distinctive wierd way. Much more chilled than Here Come the Warm Jets, but not yet as fully ambient as Music for Airports, on Another Green World Eno has the patience to get wierd make textural music that shimmers and glistens and ebbs and flows and washes around, gently filling up the space that comes when you take away structuring devices like verse/chorus/bridge. It's spacious music that conjures a world, a wierd alien world that's just familiar enough to invite you in. It's tenderly melancholy, pensive and delicately optimistic.

The soundtrack to a village feast in Redwall, this should come with mice and badgers and shrews and voles dancing around in the shadow of a dry stone wall. I always though this was one of the more boring bands of the 00s indie world and dismissed them as an annoying acoustic guitar open mic band with grand pretensions who failed to rock. 15 years later, I have more patience for it than I did then and appreciate the autumnal harmonies, the diverse pallette they're working in terms of sounds, instruments, and genres, and the chill rustic vibe a lot more. It's got it's feet in 70s country-rock, but there's plent of psych prog 60s 'Canterbury' flair to a lot of it, and a lot of references to medieval music and older folk traditions, but without going in too deep or too far afield from the big acoustic indie sound of their own era. The problem there is that it seeds some of the awful 'stomp and clap' Obama era music, urgh. Great voice, pretty arrangements, and sophisticated song-writing. But still, it doesn't rock and it is a bit pretensious.

Halfway between Black Flag and the Spiders from Mars, this is loud and fast and dumb as hell. Its got the high energy and directness of a punk band paired with the hooky bombast of a classic rock arena band. The thing is, Guns N Roses already perfected this formula. They're an early entry in the turn of the millennium back to basics 1234! Rock and Roll! sound alongside the Hives and White Stripes - just ok backwards looking revival party music harkening back to the garage. They're good at it and I see how'd they could be band to see live (for 25 minutes opening for a better act) but it's all incredibly familiar sounding and so unoriginal and the album goes on forever and ever and it's all the same. Pretty much the definition of disposable rock and as far from essential listening as you can get.

A perfectly realized 35 minutes of hardcore's sound and spirit. Visceral and raw, this album hits hard, fast and loud - an onslaught of lightning riffs, pulverizing drumming and a whole range gutteral screams from agonized drawn wails out to raging machine gun blasts. Damaged captures suburban alienation from the bland world of Reaganism and 80s mass consumerism, articulating its pure hate of the hollow life they promised. Beyond that though Black Flag epitomized the ethos of DIY counterculture, the desire to live differently and make your own way - and the grueling commitment and burnout that involved. This sounds like that - flailing angrily to create rigorously rehearsed chaos.

Love to listen to this while tossing power pellets into my giant triangle mouth and escaping from ghosts.

I like so much about this album but wish I liked the sum of its parts more. Abrasive and uncompromising, this album is a feast of distortion and discordance, a harsh sounding exploration of harsh feeling. It has the sonic signature of late 80s/early 90s alt-rock in the wake of the post-hardcore DIY bands like Husker Du, Fugazi, or the Pixies - dark, aggressive, and brutal guitar-driven noise that leans into soft/loud dyamics and gritty texture to build up loads and loads of tension, taking a punk ethos but a more expansive experimental approach to song-writing, with strange time signatures that change, and evocative personal lyrics. It sounds amazing, all the instruments are presented raw and direct in their full intensity, overwhelming the vocal, which struggles valiantly to rise above the riotous noise. It's not an immediately approachable album, the songs don't have instantly memorable hooks/melodies to invite you in or allow you to hold on, and so requires a few listens to work its way toward familiarity so its power can sink in.

I was so primed to hate this as soon as I saw the cover and that it was a French DJ, but you know what, it's a pretty fun 90s version of a disco album that's full of great synth sounds and decent beats. It's dumb and fun, and doesn't really have ambitions beyond that. The vocals are pretty awful though and the samples are extremely annoying, and they just get played over and over and over and over and over. We get it, music makes you lose control - shut the fuck up already! So the songs get extremely grating very quickly making it much harder, sometimes impossible, to just enjoy the synth stuff and electronica production.

The full band stuff sounds good when there's a more complex and layered platform for his voice that balances out his strident earnest singing. The jangly opening single New Brunette is a poppy gem of a love song; the bluegrass tinged Wishing the Days Away is a classic bittersweet ode to wasting time; the simply arranged The Passion has whistful interplay between Marr's pretty arpegio's and Bragg's tragic vocal in a cool hommage to British folk tradition; the bugle on Home Front add a powerful melodic counterpoint and a solemn timber that establishes the mood. But the more sparse arrangements with just acoustic guitar or piano sound focus too much attention on his voice which I find to be quite grating and flat. It's a lyrics driven album, but I don't have the attention to focus in closely on his verses. His political songs are engaging with their moment but that means they end up sounding quite dated and limited, or overly broad and generic. The romantic songs have a longer lasting appeal and manifest the tender humanism that's the actual emotional core and ideological center of his politics.

One of those germinal 'this is where it all comes from' artists - swinging bluesy piano jazz with a big band and charismatic vocals that sets the template for rock and roll. It's so foundational it ends up sounding very basic and over-familiar going back to it, so hard to enjoy as something other than a kind of museum peice.

Replacement level 60s soul pop with all the edge of the Sesame Street house band.

Her song writing really emphasizes lyric above all else, the songs never resolve into a clear form, instead meandering from verse to verse with some nice melodic phrases but not enough repetition to anchor them as compositions. Combined with the very consistent instrumentation, it means the album sounds very monotonous and samey over the course of 50 minutes - all blurring together a bit. Her voice is expressive and emotive, really chewing over and delivering the verses, but has a thin warbly timbre that always feels underwhelming. The music itself is a washed out jazzy folk where the signature sound is the whoompy fretless bass cast against the bright acoustic guitar. Lots of open extended chords that defy resolution and keep everything open and ethereal and very heady.

A British approximation of some of the best American RnB & Soul songs and sounds of the early 60s. She brings a lot to the material - a charismatic performance and a wide ranging rich voice that's as comfortable belting out a powerful anthemic chorus as whispering a soft hushed line. The production is great too - nothing original really, but a solid recreation of the Stax, Spectre sound - lush and maximalist: gospel singers, horns, swelling strings, crispy clean guitars, jazzy drums, and a propulsive bass. The album is at its best on the uptempo RnB tracks that are brimming with energy, the slow soul ballads get mired in the mush of sentimental strings. Favorites are the ones I instantly recognized, incredible hits: Mama Said, Will you Love Me Tomorrow, I Only Want to Be With You

Genre hopping always risks incoherence, but this album has enough of a narrative through-line concept (always a risk in and of itself) and a clearly consistent voice & overall aesthetic that it ties together the eclectic pallette it's drawing from. It dabbles in hip hop, neo-soul, prog, punk, synth pop, psychadelia, smooth jazz, monastic folk, and intergalactic funk, but it's produced and sequenced in a way that these are smooth and emergent segues rather than disjunctive leaps. JM is comfortable and confident as a performer across all of this. There aren't any big standout catchy songs and despite the genre variety it is a bit samey tonally for 70 minutes - you're meant to absorb it one go for the story I guess, but the rock opera thing is always a chore.

A bit of 1980s for the synth pop beat, jangly guitars, and big U2 sounding production and a lot of 1880s for the industrial era invention of tradition folk music. Alt country, but the country is Ireland.

Patient exploratory jamming that captures the very best of the early psychedelic Dead for one of the best live albums of all time - not just the hits performed in front of an audience, but an album who's liveness, the presence of performance, is what makes it what it is. Dark Star alone makes this a five-star album: the interplay between the band, listening, responding, building, and turning each others melodic and rhythmic ideas as they improvise their way through the (more structured than you'd think) segments of the peice is staggering. There's so much space in the music despite the number of instruments contributing to it. Through Dark Star > St Stephen > The Eleven they ratchet up the tension, go dark to dwell in some minor key modes, bring it back to a bright joyous major key, let the music dissipate, wrangle it back together for a verse, segue from song to song to keep it rolling. The album climaxes in the raunchy RnB rave up Lovelight, before the mournful dark blues of Death Don't Have No Mercy, which eventually dissolves into feedback, the controlled chaos of signal becoming noise becoming signal.

Her most maximalist and most accessible album, Hounds of Love cannonballs deep into the pool of 80s pop production to immerse the songs in gated drum machine beats, whoompy bass, massive synth lines, huge gospel backing vocals, riffs on the strings, and a kitchen-sink load of sounds and samples. It feels like Peter Gabriel at some points, in the best way. For all the lush production though this is a very cold album, icey and blue and windswept.

I'm the late 90s, a record label genius thought, "damn! We'd sell a lot more of these Usher CDs if he was a white guy!" So they found a handsome shape to stand in front of some literal Michael Jackson offcuts and 20+ years later we still have to listen to this guy. What a world. It's not bad, it just sucks. The production is great, but that's like saying Toyotas are well made or cinnamon toast crunch is nice and sweet. It certainly is a perfect example of what 2002 sounded like - teen pop remade with hip hop production to create the hegemonic radio sound for the next two decades. 3 huge singles and 60 minutes of filler made you 100s of millions of dollars, but does it make an album? Dire stuff, perfectly smooth predigested and inescapable.

If I wanted to listen to a bunch of nerds on keyboards run up and down scales in weird time signatures, well, I'd listen to this. But I don't, so I won't. The cover rules though.

Dark hipster psychedelia, it still sounds alive and urgent. I'm Waiting for My Man and Run Run Run are incredible high energy rock songs, all propulsive rhythms and distorted guitars, and actual hooks. The best bits are stripped back and spare without any studio frills or production wizardry, when it sounds like a band in a room playing themselves into a increasingly frenetic trance drawing on a whole repertoire of ragas and drones and changes and a pharmacy full of downers. The viola does so much work here, like on Heroin where it adds a layer of tense anxiety buzzing along barely in one channel, a bare bones vamp that itself descends into screeching noise as the songs climax. Lou Reed's gift for disarmingly sweet melody means there's a bright core to everything, shining through the darkness and chaos. To balance out the descent into madness, there are perfectly crafted little loungey bubblegum songs, Femme Fatale, Sunday Morning, I'll Be Your Mirror - sweet and jangly and atmospheric, ironically naive but bittersweet pop gems undercut by Nico's flat dettached deadpan delivery.

I've tried diving into The Fall's discography before but always had the wrong starting point I guess and got too frustrated by the grating noise and aggressive anti-musicality - but this is much friendly water to wade into. He's assembled a pretty fantastic post-punk band here with a funk driven bass high in the mix, guitars that jangle and slash and swirl around, propulsive drums for dancing including high-energy nearly D&B drum machine patterns, and some awesomely cheesy 80s keyboard sounds. They're playing pretty conventionally organized songs - verses, choruses, hooks, melodies, everything! -borrowing a bit from two generations of alt rock: the post-punk of 80s bands like Gang of Four and the Manchester rave rock of Stone Roses & Happy Mondays - going pretty close to full disco on 'Service' & 'Past Gone Mad'. It's powerfull and driving, atmospheric and exciting, restless and frenetic music. It all makes for an accessible and, even appealing, platform for the vocals - which are snarled and sneered and drawled out more than sung. The whole thing is unhinged in a very fun way. Should've started here with them, let's see if this works as a gateway into the rest...

I love screaming "School's Out for SUMMER, School's Out for EVER!" every June as much as the next guy, but had no awareness of the rest of this album, which is both blandly generic classically rock and oddly all over the place stylistically - bits of prog, psych, RnB, funk, blues... It's fine, but pretty boring basic garage rock stuff despite the unexpectedly fun breadth - a singles band really.

The snarling vocals are obviously the standout element of this, but somehow they found a way to play and record every instrument snarling. The guitars are bright and brash and sound really amazing, especially when they go from tension building palm mute to full bore power chord thrashing. 50 years have tamed this so much as what's considered too hard/too loud/too abrasive has gone miles beyond, making this sound like Chuck Berry with a DS1. Not sure how well it worked as a gimmic to sell trousers, but they certainly inspired loads of way more talented creative people to fuck around with guitars and find out what they could get up to.

Wistful and blissful country tinged rock. His voice is so frail it really sells the tender heartbroken songs. He dials in the Americana sound perfectly with that combination of acoustic guitars, piano, harmonica, and vocal harmonies - everything very simple and understated but just right. My favorite Neil Young is live over studio and the harder rocking stuff - the rockers on this aren't his best, but "Only Love Can Break Your Heart" "Don't Let it Bring You Down" "Oh Lonesome Me" & "I Believe in You" are the pinnacle of soft rock intimate NY.

Black Hole Sun is one of the best songs of the 90s. Fell on Black Days is a solid alt-rock radio staple. Yelling SPOOOOOONMAAAANNN is about as fun as grunge gets. The rest is very consistent - heavy detuned riffs with a bit of a groove to them, high-caliber vocals, and some cool guitar stuff - but it's all a bit samey and there's too much of it. Very butt-rock. They've become pretty overrated in retrospect: their best stuff is great, but it's spread out over a bunch of CDs with tons of filler.

The least overplayed and so the most fresh to listen to of Led Zeppelin's first 4 albums was always my favorite growing up. You get the big riffy rockers (Immigrant Song) and the blues guitar/vocal workouts (Since I've been Loving You), but the acoustic folk driven stuff on the second half is the best, from the driving mandolin on Gallows Pole to the tender 12-string psychedelia of Tangerine, jangly stoned dream That's the Way, and traditional Bron-Y-Aur Stomp. But it's not actually as great as I remember it being not having listened all the way through in a few years. They take this combination of sounds a lot further on Houses of the Holy where it fits the peaks of arena rock glory.

One of those where I appreciate it more than I like it. Not a genre I'm fond of, but this one makes me see the appeal. Loungey piano-bar jazz with an incredible vocal performance. What a voice! Warm, relaxed, commanding, casually virtuoso, hugely charismatic, her phrasing and cadence demands attention.

You know that feeling like when you're at a freaky circus show and its too hot and humid in the tent and you're running out of air and getting increasingly anxious and they keep bringing out more clowns with basoons and chimps doing a one man band and then somebody starts doing gnarly sax solos and shredding fuzz guitar hard panning the delay effects and now its time for the tiger taming and the elephant parade and you've eaten more cotton candy than should be allowed and are really thirsty but the only thing there is is warm monster energy drink, and the key changes and tempo picks up and the trapeze artists are going nuts flipping around, and all you want is deep gulp of fresh air, but now its time for a soft-rock Isley Brothers tribute and you're bouncing on a trampoline for some reason and getting way too high and there are more clowns and more sax solos bouncing up with you and there's nowhere to land, but it's ok because there some Grays coming to beam you up into the spaceship from that one Boston album cover?

I've tried so many times with this band, and have come to appreciate the impossibly dense and unforgiving sound of Loveless, but this album just feels like a step along the way rather than essential listening. They're a jangly chamber-pop band with the reverb dialed up high going into the pre-amp to create a load of washed out overdrive that's a gossamer sheen over the songs, but they haven't really reached their final form yet, the maximalist take it to its logical conclusion pure barrage over overlayed fuzz and reverb and phaser and tremelo they'd get to a couple of years later. That said, there are a couple of pretty great songs on here that have incorporate the bright clean jangle to drive the scuzzy sounds along and even some pretty vocal melodies emerging from the fog. Favorites: All I need, You Should Never, Sueisfine

Rastabilly. Pretty good, but I'd rather just listen to reggae.

Maximalist millennial indie rock lead by the voice of skinny jeans, a nasal yelp that's powerfully belted out despite seemingly being unable to fill the diaphragm. Very distinctive and weirdly affecting. This debut album is their best work; they hadn't turned their sound into the arena filling formula yet and so there's a vitality and urgency to the songs and performances here. I always passively liked but was never the biggest fan of this band and haven't really enjoyed their subsequent work much despite dutifully giving it a listen, so I thought this would've aged bably, but damn this album is very good, actually way better than I remember. The sound is so massive it's like they've build a runaway train they're struggling to wrangle back into control, and it's exciting to listen to them do it. On Wake Up they make such a big engulfing noise and have such massive simple sing along chorus, inviting you to join the choir, its got a transcendent religious feeling to it. Rebellion moves the melody to the strings, which combines with the propulsive rhythm that just keeps going to induce a similar feeling being washed along into a larger collective being. Shame the album ends on kind of a dud.

Find someone who loves you the way people in the 90s loved listing to the same sentence over and over and over again.

Sometimes you have to let your inner Bevis take over and just enjoy stuff that is dumb as hell but indisputably rocks hard as hell. These are pretty basic essential thrills: big distorted riffs played at a medium-high tempo with some guitar heroics, a machine of a drummer, and an incredible vocal performance that really pushes into the high end extremely forcefully. The more time passes the more the distinction between metal and classic rock fades away and the idea that this is an especially hard, loud, or aggressive sound or a distinct genre seems kind of absurd.

Everything in this album sounds amazing from the energetic bright horns to the crisp reverb and clean tremolo tone of the guitar, the drum sounds and the RnB bass, it's a great recreation of the classic soul band recording which sets the stage for a stunning singing performance. Hugely charismatic and inviting. Amy Winehouse's voice is warm and coarse and covers a huge range of tone and emotion - in the tradition of great soul singers, she aspires to a model that's come before but adds her own 21st c contribution to that lineage in the lyrics and delivery. Used to be very overplayed, but it was so good to return to after a couple years not putting it on.

Love the warm overdriven guitar sounds and the faux-effortless shaggy feel of the whole thing. His melodic phrasing, use of the pause and change of direction and slacker cadence are great, kind of sardonic and full of ennui. They're basically power pop songs - quick hits that get you a little hook, a couple verses, chorus and solo but recorded Lo-Fi and wierded up and given a thick layer of almost shoegaze fuzz. Bored and erudite but pretending to be lazy (as opposed to pissed and strung out and actually stupid) - this is the epitome of that pole of the 1990s white dude specturm.

A rip roaring good time full of furious drumming, frenetic guitars and anthemic vocals. They sound like guns n roses at times and black flag at others, a really great combination of pop sensibility, rock musicianship and hardcore energy. Always knew the name and associated them w the dumb sound of 1st gen punk, but there's way more to it than I expected - what a gem!

The disconcerting house band of a horror movie carnival freak show.

Like so many RS albums, this is extremely uneven with a handful of really great songs, the ones where they delve in psych sounds, incorporate the exotic instruments of the empire, and create some incredible vibey grooves. Under My Thumb is such a good track spoiled by its extremely fucked lyrics, White Room is an all time great rock song, Mothers Little Helper a fun jaunty ode to meth, Out of Time is a pure Motown rip off but an incredibly poignant one performaned with amazing charisma. And that bass! But there's so much filler in their pretty generic honky tonk blues mode. Nobody needs Going Home's 11 minutes of them pretending to be Delta Blues guys, or the boring chuga chuga Chuck Berry stuff like It's Not Easy or High and Dry. It's frustrating listenting to them trying to write the material they'd just been covering up to this point, instead of writing more original stuff that they're actually way better at. They just released way too much music for a decade and lots of it sort of sucks. They are the quintissential greatest hits band.

All nervous energy and funky grooves, this is the tense and frenetic music of a band in a hurry, pushing post punk into new wave and already looking beyond - they're not fully realized yet, but when a band's first song is Psycho Killer they're in for great things.

Indie rock Graham Parsons, even down to the Emmylou Harris collaboration. Its so easy to be tedious and dull in this folksy acoustic introspective singer songwriter country genre, and there are a couple of plodding duds on this album that fall into the trap, but the handful of really incredible songs, the wide open heartbroken songwriting, the spare, spacious very pretty arrangements, classic Americana instrumentation and the vital tender thrilling performances make this an alt country great.

The band is funky and very tight, the production is lush with layers and layers of synths, spacey effects, overdubbed vocals, disco beats, and fuzzy guitar solos and little neo-soul fills. The songs feel kind of baggy though, overlong and under formed and the vocals, delivered in the classic nasal Bowie style, don't really stand out to provide a catchy anchor point. Its post-pop/rock in its aspirations, more like astral psychedelic dance music that wants to ride the vibe and float around the groove. Favorites: Stay, Word on a Wing, Wild is the Wind, golden years

I used to listen to this all the time, but it's so much more eclectic than I remember - maybe it all used to blur together into what I assumed 70s British punk was, but now I hear it as like a sample platter for post-punk where you get a little taste of every sound and style that would follow - some slow chugging riffs, some funk infused beats, sped up hardcore powerchords, snarling drawled out vocals, aggressive angular guitars, grinding industrial sounds, power pop harmonies, a deadly serious but also constantly unserious affect, some hi-energy poppy jangle, lo-fi production. It really has it all and shows how much you can accomplish with minimalist instruments and more talent for song-writing than musicianship, but a huge amount of creative energy to invest in messing around and making stuff - it's dark and angry at times, but also kind of a joyous artifact of the diy spirit and ethic. Favorites: Reuters, Mannequin, Three Girl Rhumba, 12xU, Lowdown, Strange

I can't stand the title track having had to hear it so many times, and the ballads & slower tracks (Somebody Loves Me, Easier to Love, You're a Friend) are pretty dire schmaltz, but the uptempo disco tracks (Greatest Dancer, Lost in Music, One More Time) are perfect: wild funky bass grooves, that drum beat, Nile Rodgers going nuts on guitar, a bit of surplus percussion, some delightfully cheesy production touches, the alto vocals and tight harmonies floating gently over the track, just taking it easy. Pure fun. The recording is so crisp and there's so much space in the mix which makes it really warm and inviting. That bass tho *Homer Simpson drool*

Known about this for a long time as an actually good proto nu metal album but never made time to listen to it until now. It's not a wrong take but kind of minimizes what they're up to with the deep grooves, thrash riffs, hardcore screaming, Brazilian percussion, gutteral death metal howls, industrial production and epic breakdown & rebuilds. Extremely good at its best, but 72 minutes is probably 33 too many. I'm not pissed off enough to REALLY love this, but if I were, oooh boy...

So smooth it hurts. Schmaltzy disco funk but without any of the fun. This is cruising down the soda aisle at suburban 90s supermarket music, it's what's playing while you argue with your mom over getting Mug vs store brand root beer. Africano is ok smooth jazz blacksploitation soundtrack material.

Classic Motown style appropriates the groovy rock sounds of the psychedelic 60s for a powerful high energy backing band supporting the virtuoso of virtuoso vocal performances.

Lots of cool synth parts, some good riffs, thunderous bass and epic sweeping passages. Peter Gabriel has the best voice of all the prog singers. But it's really a pretty tedious chore getting through this. It's an album of good moments that come and go without leaving much impression bc they're mired in a million overly elaborate ideas.

Probably the pinnacle of studio album psychedelia. A couple of filler tracks, but the highs on this are so high. If you play guitar there's a 95% chance you've spent hours deconstructing and trying to master the stuff he's going here. The gorgeous chord extension playing on Little Wing & castles made of sand which is just probably as good as anyone will ever make a guitar sound, the emotive blues based playing on Axis, the fuzzed out wah rock of Spanish castle magic, the way he combines rhythm and lead playing on wait till tomorrow and so many others, the explosive funk of little miss lover, the panning reverse and swirling effects he plays with, the double-stops all over the place. His voice is great too, tender and warm, open and vulnerable, especially in comparison to the swaggering charisma of his other albums.

Congolese music is always evolving micro genres and trends, even if the distinctions can be pretty subtle. This is light and airy soukous, it has the verse/chorus/dance structure and the distinctive non-stop guitar arpeggio attack driving it on and a very busy percussion section, but it's slowed down a tad and much more romantic than most dancefloor pumping soukous. His voice is well suited to this, a smooth baritone that patiently delivers the lyrics with whispered glissando flair. The intro of keyboard synth sounds in this era saved band leaders the cost of a full horn section, made touring easier,.and brought in a bunch of novel sounds, but it makes everything sound so awfully smooth and incredibly cheap cheesy and dated. Its dance music that confirms to genre conventions so dancers know the moves, which gives it a somewhat, well, generic feel, especially from afar.

Groovy as hell. Incredible percussion. Cool falsetto. A soul funk master class.

Krautrock beats, lush orchestral arrangements, and upbeat woozy spacey electro psych sounds make for a fun trance inducing, very chilled out, atmospheric album. For the most part - there are a few more fuzz guitar and swirling organ driving garage rock inspired songs too, but they're at their best in the more patient relaxed sprawling mode, letting the groove carry them along. But when the beat drops out they get pretty listless and dull (monster scare). It's the 90s idea of the 60s, and it's mellow vibez. Favorites: metronomic underground, percolator, yper sound, tomorrow is already here

Not bad, kind of fun even. Better songs than Lenny Kravitz, but the same generation of early 90s classic rock revival, just ripping off the Americana-era Rolling Stones and Lynyrd Skynyrd instead of Jimi Hendrix. The most famous song is an Otis Redding Cover. I guess they came on the scene as a lot of the big 1st gen classic rock bands were hitting a nadir so there was a gap in the market they happily filled and somehow became a thing, but I've never been able to see them as much more than a genre tribute act. It's country-inflected blues-based rock with big guitar and some gospel touches. A genre I like and they're good at it, but nothing new to see here folks, move it along.

Extremely uneven song quality even though the sound and production is all very cohesive and totally distinctive - they're eclectic in their influences but nobody sounds like them really. One of the ultimate greatest hits vs albums bands. Wrapped around your finger is bizarre song for an all time great pop hit, I'll be watching you is a creepy masterpiece about creepiness, synchronicity II has an incredible new wave riff and a wildly catchy hook. The rest is more sprawling and experimental, but not always successfully so.

Loping melodic bass with surf and funk touches, chiming palm muted guitars (what a tone! Rickenbacker + AC30, perfect), high energy drums and warm engaging singing - it's simple stuff performed perfectly and written with a real flair for a catchy hook. A huge power pop sound, bright and optimistic but paired with an ironic lyric. At times a.bit like Elvis Costello in the guitar sound and nerdy punk delivery or Billy Bragg in the voice in more tender moments or occasionally a bit of Johnny rotten snarl. I've listened to this a few times over the years but it never really hit until today, but damn this is so good.

Deep deep bass grooves from Aston Barrett, funky-ass clavinet & organ, amazing backing vocals from the I-threes and ga couple of all time great songs. The production/recording are great, just tons of space and loads of room for all the instruments to shine, but also work perfectly as a platform for the lead vocals. It's not his best album as he's missing Bunny Wailer and Peter Tosh, but it's still pretty close to the zenith of Reggae, though not yet at the mega crossover pop sensation he'd soon become.

Slow burning deep groove funk with a dark minor key feel to it. Angry, uplifting, sensual, it's a whirlwind of feelings. The guitar is riding the wah wah pedal like a madman, the bass is powerfully in the pocket, the organs give an extra bit of energy and texture. It's a loose freeform band, but all working in support of Sly's lead vocals, but the album gets kind of unfocused and sprawling.

The CIA turned Indonesia into a plantation dictatorship to produce a bass tone this rubbery. They armed generations of Saudi monarchs to secure access to the petroleum byproducts needed to create these synth sounds. They made Colombia into a narco state to produce the cocaine mindset that made this seem like a good idea. It undeniably worked. But was it worth it? Probably not.

The archetype LA sunshine psychedelic jangle pop band get hijacked by Gram Parsons and end up deep in Appalachian folk, Southern gospel, Nashville schmaltz and Bakersfield outlaw sensibility to create their best work. It's glorious pastiche that becomes fully it's own thing, the hillhippy sound. The album is full of swelling strings, heavenly lap steel guitar, close harmonies, ripping banjos, propulsive mandolin parts, and full twang lead guitars. Gentle ballads, sardonic love songs, bittersweet laments, and the rare touch of peak 60s Rickenbacker jangle and Beatlesy melody. None of the songs are real standouts but it's rock solid throughout.

Plinky plonky plinky plonky plinky plinky plinky plonk.

I used to pretend not to like this, but never changed the channel when it came on MTV. There's something deeply embarrasing about this (the over-wraught teen angst, the scatting), but they're probably the most (top 3 at least) original metal band of the 90s and this is them at the top of their game (the riffs are deep and hard as hell, yet have a real groove to them) and working with a producer who knew how to make them sound good (it's thick, heavy and intense, with layer upon layer of down-tuned distorted), the propulsive . They broke open a new sonic palette in metal, following the loud-quiet dynamics and ultra thick guitars of grunge, but going as hard as possible. That's probably mostly for the worst in terms of their followers, but this album undeniably captures a mood, an embarrasing mood, but a real and widely felt one.

A Smithsonian folkways style anthology of American folk music that's an effort to consolidate a cannon and reproduce the tradition over generations. So you get what today feels like fairly conservative curation and arrangements but performances for the ages. But that said, it did mark a break with the schmaltzy overblown Nashville country production of the 60s and a return to the stripped back & acoustic roostier roots of country (bluegrass & mountain music especially) that 70s artists like the Dead, CSNY, Gram Parsons were popularizing via their interest in the Lomax recordings project and folk songs, sounds, and instruments. Way too long, but it's more of an archival document than an album really.

They're high on their own supply at this point in their career, but it's pretty good supply so there're lots of good songs on here. My god, the hype is out of control, though - get a grip, people!

The production is bright and full of upbeat soul samples reworked into propulsive beats, goofy drops, and infectious hooks. He's great a musical collage and creating exciting beats, texture, and atmosphere - less great as a rapper, he's pretty agile but his tone is nasal and the flow is like a lesser version of the conscious rappers of the early 2000s. The verses cover a pretty wide range, from funny and sardonic to darkly angry and excoriating, announcing the themes he'd continue to explore through his work, some interesting, some overly self-involved and boringly biographic & mythologyzing- it's all there, just not yet batshit. His innovation is really pushing the very personal vulnerable self-exposition that is also very culturally of its Livejournal confessional era. Even the arrogant projection of a larger than life persona is, at this point, aspirational wishcasting that reveals the itch he'd destroy himself scratching.

One of the definitive examples of the late indie-boom art-school rock of late 00s, that's kind of an escape from the city to get wierd and record in a cabin aesthetic, turning towards rustic acoustic instrumentation, experimental composition beyond the rock song confines, warbly operatic but hushed vocals, and oriented towards texture and atmosphere more than melody and rhythm. I get why people burned out and got bored of guitar-driven indie rock and garage revival stuff, but this stuff always seemed way too ascetic and inward looking to me, and just doesn't hold my interest at all despite being nice to listen to, interesting at a surface level, and acheiving some engaging sounds in parts. Favorites: All We Ask, Two Weeks

Pure bliss from the first bass note through every modal shift and unhurried deeply expressive solo.

Intricate jangly guitars chiming away under dense cryptic lyrics, all with a kind of country tinge to it. Some of it sounds like the logical culmination of the 80s new wave sound, other parts like an experimental folk act, sometimes like an Americana Smiths, at best they're sweeping and epic like War-era U2. I've tried many times but really can't connect with 80s REM beyond the singles, there's something weirdly inaccessible or uninteresting about so many tracks on these albums, so I never got why they were such a big fixture of the alt/college rock scene. I just like them better as 90s major label sell outs and in radio dominating greatest hits mode I guess... Favorites: World leader pretend, orange crush, I remember California

Tightly wired spring coiled punk rock with a lofi electro new wave synth sound and a high energy post punk dancing beat: it's the death disco formula, with a 90s art school feminist sensibility and DIY aesthetic. There is more of a 60s garage psych rock back to basics rock&roll feel to it than I expected on a few tracks. Powerful and fun, touchingly earnest and sweetly melodic, distorted as scuzzy but always under precise control, pissed off and jarring- it's a pretty wide ranging creative album that goes hard from start to finish. Favorites: deceptacon, the the empty, eau de bedroom dancing

One of the definitive bands of 90s indie, this is the opening of a near perfect run of three albums in a row for B&S. The seeds of this are sown by the bands on the C86 compilation, but this is the cream of that crop of quiet British indie pop, making them the heirs to the Smiths. The melodic phrasing in the vocals is full of surprises, like a familiar nursey rhyme that goes off in unexpected directions. The horns bring such a bright energy and harmonic complement, the jangly clean/acoustic sound and simple but lively rhythm playing gives it an infectious joy. I'm sucker for this combination of bright poppy upbeat music paired with wry melancholy lyrics, for the disco flourishes, the tremelo guitar, the sing-along choruses and intimately observed and self-depreciating verses. It's gorgeous autumnal music, bittersweet and wistful, relaxing and uplifting.

Sits somewhere between Talking Heads style New Wave/post-punk, King Crimson prog, the glam of Roxy Music and Bowie, and the spaced out trippy textural ambience of krautrock. Loads of amazing synth tones, propulsive rhythms, gentle melody. There's a mix of high-energy stuff and some very patient, languid, verging on ambient stuff. Favorites: Here he comes, King's Lead Hat, No One Receiving, By the River

The two mega-hits are incredible and even though the rest isn't (couldn't be) at that level, it's a solid 40 minutes of pure synth pop magic full of catcy melodies, awesomely cheesy tones, tense moody post-punk guitar parts, a bass that won't stop popping, and coked out energy.

British folk songs re-arranged for the psych rock era. The guitars are cool, a bit of combined drone/lead/rhythm playing going on that sounds oddly like Sahel desert rock. The lilting vocal melodies are all straight out of the king arthur. Some surprisingly deep grooves and heavy riffing at times. It's got a bit of Led Zeppellin and a bit of Velvet Ungerground to it and you can hear the early roots of UK prog in the tight complex combination instrumental playing and the interest in folklore as source material/inspiration.

Country, Blues and Jazz had a lot more interesting stuff going on in 1960, even though the seeds of something big are sown in albums like this, it's like the throat clearing before rock really got started. It's influential and important and all that, but 64 years later it's just so familiar (even never hearing this album before) that it makes very little impression. There's blues rhythms and country twang and pop harmonies and it all sounds good, but it's basically bubblegum that's been polished by hindsight.

Story-telling country songs across a range of genres/moods, all twangy and made with high-polish Nashville production, from poignant folk to pop bluegrass to piano ballads to high energy country rock. Her vocals in particular are the highlight with memorable phrasing, pauses, and overall a really charismatic delivery. The soaring lap steel soars the close harmonies are really affecting in the way they always are.

Jangly 60s power pop with a bit of Dylan and a bit of psychedelia and a lot of Beatles. Mostly bright and uptempo with short songs and pitchy lightly fuzzy guitar but some tracks with drones and slower folkier sound

Infusing post disco funk with jazz for a set of deceptively smooth, incredibly intricate compositions performed expertly and dark sardonic stuff going on lyrically. Aging is liking this more and more...

Spare stripped down Americana folk - just an acoustic guitar and a singer working their way through some deep songs and deeply familiar sounds. Welch & Rawlings are both amazing musicians who get so much out these really simple bare bones arrangements - there's loads of space, patient pauses, quiet intimate moments and subtle intensity. They're probably the best at what they do even if what they do isn't my favorite kind of Americana - give me a full band electric alt country treatment of these songs and I'd be thrilled.

More expansive and ecclectic than I was expected (I think I was expecting Supergrass) - this brings elements of trip hop, shoegaze, and 90s alt/indie rock for a spacey album of beat-driven extended instrumental passages, and zonked out psychedelia. It's a mix of Portishead and Beta Band, but not as good as either. The slower orchestra backed tracks are really plodding and bloated, like the worst aspects of a 70s concept album. Mostly woozy, floaty, and kind of boring.

So buttery smooth I felt my cholesterol rising.

1st generation UK punk that has a real "bunch of kids fucking around having a good time making some noise together" feel to it. There’re the basic guitar/bass/drum punk chugga chugga boom riffs but on top you have wild sax and harmonized guitar parts taking turns playing big hooks over/inbetween Poly Styrene’s distinctive singing: forceful and nasal and charismatic in its "who cares if I’m on key, I’m here to rock" energy - the OG brat. Some great lines: “my mind is like a plastic bag, it sucks up all the rubbish fed in through my ear!”. A punk circus.

Love the beats and the overall production even if it does get a bit repetitive after a few songs. Relentless high octane delivery, very distinctive voice, with loads of long verses and only short hooks/choruses. Strong brew of anti-cop politics, violent self affirmation, and wild sexism. Hilarious that 35 years later this is still the paradigm of what rap is in the heads of American conservatives. It was self aggrandizing myth making but it came true, even if Ice Cube himself outgrew this persona into his acting career...

Exhibit A in the case for going electric. This is really a quite tedious album despite a few good songs. He demonstrates his knowledge and mastery of the solo guitar-singer folk song format (A+ on your Americana homework, Bob) but also the limits of that genre. Good songs to cover and arrange with more interesting instrumentation, but they feel like demos here. Albums like this are always going to end up on lists like this out of historical significance, but they don't always hold up that well. Favorites: girl from noth country, hard rain, don't think twice, Corrina Corrina

Incredible vocal harmonies and some great songs. Mostly acoustic guitar accompaniment, but some light psych touches from the bass and sitars (?) and the occasional electric guitar that all adds dynamism. But the real action is in the singing. Very high highs, but kind of dull lows. I thought this was wimpy and boring for the longest time, but lately have really come to appreciate this subgenre of chilled out hippy country rock more and more. Favorites: helplessly hoping, wooden ships, suite Judy blue eyes, everybody's talking

Bright and bouncy synth that's pure pop like a glass of champagne on a speedboat hottub, but wait, what's that? dark themes and gloomy undercurrents behind the glossy surfaces. Makes me want to get my Patrick Bateman on.

There are already 7 Bowie albums on this list, no need to include a low-grade photocopy made of cast of ideas from his most annoying era as well. There are some ok moments on here (mostly the harmonizing guitars and the country excursion on 'Ballad of Mott'), but it's peak 70s bloat and not even in a particularly fun way. It's just so god damn boring. Like the soundtrack to a TV movie musical based on a movie based on a jukebox musical that couldn't get the rights for the real songs.

It's fine. Chilled out, lots of layers to the sound, cool textures. A compelling mix of indie and electronic approaches in the songwriting and arrangements. But it comes and goes without leaving much impression.

Fraile vocals, shoegaze guitars, big orchestral arrangements - it's very cinematic but like a movie with cool cinematography that's extremely boring and goes on way to long probably staring Ethan Hawke. Yet again, after many attempts upon lots of recommendations, I just cannot get with this band. Favorites: Goddess on the Highway

Music for guys who say 'broads'. It does make me want to plan a heist in an art deco hotel lobby.

The best stuff on here is like Credence doing astral weeks covers. Those songs are great, but the live performance doesn't bring much to them. The majority of it sounds like Van Morrison doing Credence covers though, and it's god awful. The choogle levels are through the roof. I'm curious what the case for including this one is - some live albums are definitive releases either from bands that weren't great in the studio or where live improvisation is central to the music (grateful dead, Allman brothers, lots of jazz), or canonical recordings that're essentially high energy greatest hits collections from singles artists that capture their live talent and charisma in a unique way (James Brown, Al Green), or breakout commercial hits (cheap trick, Peter Frampton) but this is just worse versions of songs that at best show he could sing well.

Fun pomo stuff: an original blend of big boomy beats, hipster interpolations, slacker rapping, sewn together sound collage production and revolutionary posturing. Paper planes is A+ the rest more of a B/B+...

Come on Eileen isn't even a good song, but I've heard it 1000s of times for some unknown reason. The horns are good but everything else is really annoying. This guy's voice is unbearable, thin, nasal, and weak but not in an endearing way. They're not fun enough to be a ska band, too schmaltzy and sentimental to be post-punk, too slow and old-fashioned to be new-wave, too over-produced to be soul, it's just a big mash of nothing. If there's a quota of 1980s Birmingham to fill, replace this with the Au Pairs' Playing with a Different Sex.

Hands down the second best Strokes album.

Holy shit I'd forgotten how much fun this album is. I mean, I KNEW it was good, but damn, it's just non-stop.

This guy stopped being one of the Byrds because he was afraid to fly lol. This album has extremely divorced energy. It's relaxed country-rock with intertwined acoustic guitars, a touch of bass, and barely a drum, it puts the emphasis on the lonely vocals and mournful harmonica. It's all sad, bitter, and longing lyrics and gentle strumming. Sometimes it sounds like a mediocre Dylan rip off, but the best bits are like a folksier version of the Eagles. Cold beer on a hot porch kind of music. I actually like it a lot, but wouldn't really consider it essential listening at all - he has better work elsewhere and other people do this genre better...

I first heard this band on TV ads for one of those MEGAHITS OF THE 80s compilation CDs and though that 'Shout, shout, let it all out, these are the things I could do without' was a hilarious thing to say in a song. But you know what, there are things I could do without and if I could just shout to let them all out, I would love to. Everybody Wants to Rule the World rules. That little guitar intro thing that's pushed aside by the two synth chords, ooh baby! So simple, so effective, just pure pop perfection. Head Over Heels has an incredible piano riff that builds tension and releases into a floaty verse and propulsively off kilter chorus and some totally unique vocal delivery. The rest is full of cool tones and textures, angsty vocals, smooth sax, glossy simmering synth surfaces and rubbery bass and some of THE definitive 80s drum sounds. Drags a bit on the slow stuff in the middle. It's like if Splenda was an album.

As bad as the label folk-jazz would make you assume. Tuneless but talented vocals and dangerous levels of xylophone. Really dreary stuff. It's a hot guy moping around for attention, don't give it to him, you're falling for his trap!

Everything is so busy but ultimately kind of boring. High energy low reward. Some cool guitar parts and synth tones though. The best song is Prairie Rose, it sounds just like Talking Heads.

Lyric-centric music delivered by a wide ranging and subtle, but kind of a-melodic voice accompanied by gentle folksy jazzy band. Nice relaxed feel to it, especially the hippy country stuff, spacious and expansive, slow, easy going tasteful and adult. These are polite words for boring.

Extremely mid: middle of the road, mid-brow, mid-tempo, middling. Strummy acoustic guitar driven pop rock, with an 80s indie sensibility. Some pretty & melodically phrases electric guitar parts with chorus/delay tones on the leads. Too many gratuitous harmonicas and string parts. A bit like a lot of other stuff that's way better: a thousand UK twee indie bands did it better the 80s and then the one hit wonder post-grunge alt pop rock bands of the 90s refined this formula. It's like a 0% gin Gin Blossoms. Favorites: clouds, streets of your town

Hardcore in it's purest form: loud, fast, perfectly controlled riffs and screamed-yelped vocals. An incredible artifact of the do it yourself + anyone can do it ethos.

The worst of the three big y2k 'guitars are back' indie rock garage revival bands. The vocals are so grating. The riffs are very high energy and can be fun, but its super frenetic, unfocused and there is way too much treble. I like the garage punk sound, but it's really just an incredibly annoying album and the whole visual marketing thing with them made them just made them seem like an industry hype band.

Film Noire plots with an Appalachain setting relayed via bluegrass tunes. Amazing brotherly harmonies, cool mandolin parts, and some nearly Hawaiian twang. A truly American album that pairs sweet and innocent gospel music paired with dark themes of murder and abuse, a classic folk tale/music tradition.

Fast, fun and extremely over the top. Relentless galloping rhythms, nonstop riffing, harmonized dual guitar attack, shredding solos, wailing vocals, songs that veer wildly between proto-thrash/hardcore and pop- prog. Time has taken the edge off and made this seem somewhat kitschy, but it's still a good headbanging time 🤘

Ska, soul & pub rock. Fun horns, uptempo bass and lively drums, pretty crappy if animated charismatic thin nasal lead vocals fleshed out with some backing singers. High energy but easy going. More interesting as an artifact of a place/time in UK pop culture than as an album I want to listen to.

Comes and goes without leaving much of an impression. Sounds a lot like the Beck I remember from the 90s: shaggy alt-rock guitars combined with hip hop beats, slacker vocals sliding between singing and rapping in his signature playful drowsy delivery, some cool production (sounds like Outkast sometimes) and lots of ideas including some fun riffs and lots of swirling sounds. But none of it really stands out, seems like mostly filler and doesn't advance much on the what he'd already accomplished on earlier albums. Not bad, but not essential listening. Favorites: Que' Onda Guero, Girl

Funky organ-led jazz with a strong footing in blues. Goes down smooth.

The whole 80s production gang is here! Rubbery bass, disco guitars, digi synths, gated reverb big drums, awful strings, hyper compression, diva backing vocals, corny keyboard sounds, crazy decision making... It's like an AI amalgam of 80s pop, lacking its own personality aside from the drama in the vocals. Bands with better songs and more interesting taste can wrangle this sound into really effective distinctive albums that bear the scars of their era but stand the test of time - this band isn't one of those though. Not terrible, but it just constantly reminds you of the bands who made the same songs but 45% better.

Make Yourself combines lots of the elements of late 90s radio rock - the heavy detuned grooves of Nu Metal, the whiney vocals and loud-quiet dynamics of emo, the influence of electronica, the hip hop DJ sounds, the post-grunge mid tempo sludge of butt rock yearning, the handsome guy singer of MTV rock, the DEEP emotional acoustic ballad, the aimless suburban rage of the time. I thought it sucked in the 90s and that their fans were a pathetic combination of frat morons, rollerbladers, and losers who couldn't commit to going full nu-metal goth. The music is maybe a bit better than I initially gave it credit for, but it is so tedious. 311 does the hip hop metal way better, Deftones do the serious emo stuff much better, Korn and Slipknot are way heavier hitting, and as much as they suck Limp Bizkit are more absurd and fun, so what's the point of this?

One of the classic rock guys I've always overlooked, but why? This is so good. Full studio wizardry and song-writing prowess on display. Orchestral without being corny. Huge swelling sounds like synth padding before Eno made them cool. Effortlessly poetic and classically melodic. Ok, sometimes a bit corny and so literary its up itself.

Dark moody synths and extremely 80s tone blues guitar set the mood: brooding and sultry. The vocals are nasal and hoarse. It's like Nega-Fleetwood Mac.

Shaggy garage rock from an arena filler, loud and heavy and thick as sludge - NY is at his best in hard rock mode with guitar blazing and this is a giant dose of that. Not quite at the level of his 70s albums, but full of verge and reinventing himself for the 90s as the godfather of grunge - you can really hear what Pearl Jam in particular took from him here. The songs aren't especially remarkable, but work perfectly as mid tempo blues grooves for him to stretch out. And his guitar playing on this is great: controlled chaos on the precipice, the tone and phrasing and squall are so distinctive. Favorites: white line, fkng up, love to burn, mansion on the hill, love and only love

Sustainably made using the offcuts of an Outkast album. The Soul Machine is straightforward Virginia Beach hip hop from its heyday: tight clever pop production, that incorporates some disco & techno elements, lots of samples and allusions to 70s soul and funk, dynamic and upbeat beats, call and response choruses with a choir, quick wordy rap verses and big catchy hooks. Better than I expected from what I thought was the Gnarls Barkley one-hit wonder's side project, but it does just sound like filler from the bigger & better albums these producers made at the same time, so it's familiar and accessible, but not especially compelling on its own terms. 73 minutes? fuck off.

Ambitious orchestral and cinematic a bit like Nick Cave or Tom Waits, but with a 90s indie sensibility. Slow and melodramatic songs with a big crooning baritone vocal. The best songs, at root, are blues piano & guitar based rock dressed up to sound like an opera, the worst ones ditch the rock and go fully orchestral arrangements and composition. Respect for the songwriting and performances, but this really has 0 appeal to me and I can't understand who the audience for this maudlin grindingly dull bloated stuff is? A few good lines though - "If you were a horse, I'd clean the crap out of your stable" - that have enough of a sense of humor to save it from being the most up itself thing imaginable. And the trumpets are pretty cool. Favorite: I'm All You Need

The melodies are full of surprising turns and pretty harmonies. But it has some of the blandest folksy psychedelic jangly touches, the arrangements are mostly a big schmaltzy pillow, and it's a tedious 30 minutes with an overall extremely irritating precious vibe with one huge hit I never need to hear again. Music for babies.

It doesn't always work when a lo-fi bedroom artist transitions to deploy the full suite of studio tools, but this album really does, marking a big leap in Elliot Smith's music - the songwriting and vocals remain more or less the same - Nick Drakey influenced sad slow songs sung airly with slightly offbeat chord changes and rhtyhmic patterns - but the arrangements are a whole other level: either lush and orchestral chamber pop or harder rocking full band, it combines huge sounds with intimate vocal performances, replacing the lo-fi static fuzz that used to suffocate the singer with arrangements that either lift him up, or bury him in. Lots of good stuff on this, a creative amalgam of lots of 90s indie/alt rock production, I just can't get past not liking his voice at all.

GZA delivers some of the best verses in the Wu Tang cannon, so no surprise his solo album is rock solid. The main theme is violence in the drug trade, starting with street dealing but moving cinematically to demonstrate that there are levels to the violence - mafias, international smuggling, political corruption, and the degrading economy of CREAM that makes the world cold. The album connects the brutality of the streets to the sophisticated schemes of states and corporations. The tracks are intersperced with Samurai samples that put violence, especially duels, at the center of their interpretation of social life and the struggle for survival, positing rapping as the extension of this tradition of deadly combat. The whole Wu-Tang clan features at some point, one or two guests per track, but GZA's is the main voice throughout. RZA produces his signature beats, spacious, ricketty and off kilter. It makes for a very cohesive album with a cinematic ambition - life as movie - that is just a bit repetitive and homogenous compared to the more varied collective Wu Tang projects.

Music to make you feel like your bus ride is part of an epic action montage when really you're stuck in traffic outside and abandoned kebab shop.

Massive vocals raging over heavy & tightly played staccato mid tempo riffs with some electronica adornment. A combination of trip hop and nu metal. This sounds like when Serbia or somewhere enters a hard rock song for Eurovision. In other words it's overblown, ear-piercing and somehow both irritating and dull.

The beats are made from classic soul and funk samples with a bit of live bass to animate them, for a smooth easy going sensual strip club feel that fits well with the horny songs and offers a stark contrast on those that deal with the violence of hustling life. He's got an incredible lyrical gift and delivery, layering rhymes on top of each other relentlessly in a fluid direct cadence that plays around the beat to create a autobiographical/self-mythologizing narrative, that ends in a remarkably introspective reflection on lovelessness and how little it all amounts to in the end. The skits are so annoying and it gets a bit samey over an hour, but there are torrents of masterful verses and Big-Poppa has probably THE most iconic sound of 90s hip hop.

One of the most unique deployments of the 80s sonic pallette of synths, big reverby drums & drum machines, rubbery bass, compression, and synthetic production excess as nylon guitars, electric pianos, string sections and saxaphones make cameos. Its full sounding but also full of space, each instrument filling it's niche and leaving room for the rest to come and go, particularly the plaintive mournful vocals that occupy the center channel, the main line of address. Strange and compelling, a relatively recent discovery I like more each time I listen.

3+ hours of 90s jungle/drum & bass/whatever electronic microgenre bleeps and boops that's great for two ends of the spectrum of human activity: either getting off your gourd on E in some overpriced and uncomfortable room inexplicably called a 'lounge' or sitting down to hammer out some work on the ol' laptop. I've listened to this lots in the past for the latter purpose and always liked it but don't have the time today. The signature sound is the contrast between the fast drum machine beats and the chilled out synth bedding that gives it an extremely alientating pseudo-relaxing but actually high-energy feel to it, like it's designed to produce that uneasy uncertain anxiety you get in a busy mid december Zara and challenge you to sublimate that ambient stress into productivity by using it to block out everythign else and then forgetting it's on as a means of focusing. It works, but horrid stuff when you think about it. This isn't an album, it's a sampler or more like a box set, albums are not this long. What's the rationale for the like 3 compilations that appear on here?

Congeals the disparate veins the 80s underground - art school punk, hardcore, post-punk, post-rock, no-wave, experimental composition, noise rock - into an album that's dissonant & melodic, angry & blissful, distorted & chrystaline, grimy & pure, heavy & ethereal, earthy & haunted, driving & sprawling, tense & cathartic. Perfect.

Another album in the creative nadir of 80s blues-based classic rock saved only by some raunchy guitar tones, the high driving tempos with a bit of groove, and that they aren't taking themselves too seriously. It's extremely stupid music but hey they're having fun with it.

Slowed down alt-country that like a blues band doing a shoegaze album. Haunting Nico-like lead vocals over glacial chord progressions and loads of instrumental flourishes that flesh it out. You get a very atmospheric live feeling - it was recorded off one mic in a church apparently. Lots of covers they give their treatment to. Because of the languid pace and familiar country sonic palette (sliding steel guitars, harmonica, accordion, fiddle, acoustic guitar, gentle bass lines carrying it along, very quiet drums) it’s incredibly unobtrusive and undemanding, perfect chill background music that fades away soothingly.

A common problem with this style of 60s psychedelia across the board is that there're too many whiplash style changes within individual songs as if pure juxtaposition is an incredibly clever compositional technique and that eclecticism means doing lots of different things in quick succession. It just ends up being annoying, like listening to someone else flicking through radio stations trying to find something good and then changing as soon as you're settling and starting to enjoy it. Likewise, the production is overly full and distractingly busy - too much flute and the chamber pop arrangements are cloying. Learn to say no. The songs where they keep it simple and stick to one sound are ok, at least not actively unpleasant. Something about Portuguese saudade style melodic phrasing just doesn't work for me either, every line can't be an anti-climax. I've tried to like tropicalia so many times - on paper sounds so cool - but it just doesn't work for me at all. Favorite: Eles

It's the production approach and beat making skills of what's usually consigned to be back-up support in music, taken to the extreme point where the otherwise dominant element of hip hop, rapping, becomes extraneous. This one's been in my regular work-listening rotation for years. Does a good job keeping out other noise, interesting and varied enough to not become annoying, but relaxed and chill enough to not demand attention or take focus.

Soft psych with fluttery guitar, poppy Beatles-inspired vocals, and cutesy overthought arrangements ranging from jazzy horns to renaissance harpischord and strings to children's cartoon music. It's very timid, mild, and straight-laced compared to other psych from the era. It does not rock at all. These guys took the Acid Test, but got an F and went to get Monkees haircuts instead.

It's fun to hear people messing around with new tools and technologies in emergent genres, using copy-paste sampling, drum machines, scratching, synths and all the rest to create some upbeat beats and dancefloor filling rave music. It's incredibly dated and specific in a nice way - the sound you'd hear in the party scene of a Gregg Araki movie where everything is day-glo goth and covered in neon graffitti.

D-tier 90s alt rock. Distorted hard rock guitars with wah-wah solos, pseudo-Oasis vocals heavy churning mid-tempo rhythm section pounding along. Not bad exactly, but at best a passable imitation of better bands from the era. Hard to imagine much less essential listening really. Favorite: Innocent Smile

It's impossible to evaluate a solo career without reference to their prior band, and when your prior band was the best of 80s your new stuff can only ever pale in comparison. Musically, this is boring adult indie contemporary, missing the jangle genius and thumping bass of the Smiths we're left with bloated orchestration and slow sub-Oasis strumming. So attention goes to the vocals (fine) and lyrics, which are a mix of self-pity (but without the heightened youthful witty melodrama that made this arch and fun I'm the 80s) and banal nationalism. One of the biggest loser trajectories in music history

My #1 don't understand the hype band. At best they're just an incredibly bland Led Zeppelin rip off, at worst a cloying copy of Bowie's worst albums or a skin tight pleather CCR. The bass parts are pretty cool at least. The most overrated band of the 70s.

With so much good Zappa to choose from it's a shame that this mediocre satire album gets recognition. Hippies certainly deserved the mockery but this is Zappa at hist most annoying, taking on the worst tendencies of the flower power psych pop he's parodying and combining it with his own worst tendencies for fussy over-writing and irritating instrumentation. Apostrophe, Joe's Garage, Roxy & Elsewhere, Zoot Allures, Jazz From Hell, Sheik Yerbouti...these are all far more deserving than this one, who's main value is as a reminder that even their contemporaries thought hippies sucked.

I remember hearing about this band from the English music magazines I read as a teenager, asking for the CD for Christmas and being incredibly disappointed. I get why this band never broke in the US. What I don't understand is why they did in the UK. His voice is grating and the music is incredibly boring mid-tempo over-orchestrated alt rock. It's not even dull enough to ignore, it's like having a persistent whine and high-pitched buzz in your ear.

Interminable over-orchestrated plodding pompous schmaltz. Theatre kids were a mistake.

It's interesting to learn about pirate radio and the broader media/commercial environment in which this cohort of classic UK artists came of age and rose to fame. The album is an interesting artifact in that sense, but its appeal outside that is pretty limited. Worth including in a museum of rock, less so in a best albums list. Others did the flower power psych pop stuff way better, and The Who were way better as harder hitting proto-punks and massive guitar noise rockers. There are few moments where they do they thing, but it's always interrupted by something annoying. I think this band's ambition is their downfall - they got tired of doing what they were best at, started reaching for big ideas that got stretched incredibly over the course of a full concept album.