My 1001 Albums Journey

Album	You	Global	Diff
Playing With Fire Spacemen 3	5	2.55	+2.45
The Madcap Laughs Syd Barrett	5	2.62	+2.38
Atomizer Big Black	5	2.74	+2.26
My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts Brian Eno	5	2.79	+2.21
Tago Mago Can	5	2.79	+2.21
Live / Dead Grateful Dead	5	2.82	+2.18
Only Built 4 Cuban Linx Raekwon	5	2.84	+2.16
Damaged Black Flag	5	2.86	+2.14
White Light / White Heat The Velvet Underground	5	2.88	+2.12
D.O.A. the Third and Final Report of Throbbing Gristle Throbbing Gristle	4	1.89	+2.11

Album	You	Global	Diff
A Night At The Opera Queen	1	3.95	-2.95
Cosmo's Factory Creedence Clearwater Revival	1	3.9	-2.9
Back In Black AC/DC	1	3.84	-2.84
American Idiot Green Day	1	3.77	-2.77
Californication Red Hot Chili Peppers	1	3.69	-2.69
21 Adele	1	3.69	-2.69
Tea for the Tillerman Cat Stevens	1	3.67	-2.67
Bayou Country Creedence Clearwater Revival	1	3.64	-2.64
Out Of The Blue Electric Light Orchestra	1	3.64	-2.64
Sheer Heart Attack Queen	1	3.64	-2.64

Artist	Albums	Average
Talking Heads	4	5
Miles Davis	4	4.75
Bob Marley & The Wailers	3	5
Radiohead	3	5
Jimi Hendrix	3	5
The Smiths	3	5
Sonic Youth	3	5
Pixies	3	5
The Velvet Underground	3	5
Pink Floyd	4	4.5
The Cure	3	4.67
Nirvana	3	4.67
Prince	3	4.67
Johnny Cash	3	4.67
Bob Dylan	7	4.14
The Smashing Pumpkins	2	5
Iggy Pop	2	5
The Jesus And Mary Chain	2	5
Joy Division	2	5
Oasis	2	5
OutKast	2	5
Fela Kuti	2	5
Aretha Franklin	2	5
Wilco	2	5
Brian Eno	5	4.2
Björk	4	4.25
Neil Young	4	4.25
Black Sabbath	3	4.33
The Rolling Stones	5	4

Artist	Albums	Average
Queen	3	1
Yes	3	1.33
Creedence Clearwater Revival	3	1.33
Bee Gees	2	1
Red Hot Chili Peppers	2	1
Randy Newman	2	1
Rufus Wainwright	2	1
Adele	2	1
Kings of Leon	2	1
The Divine Comedy	2	1
Manic Street Preachers	2	1
Aerosmith	2	1
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds	5	1.8
Tom Waits	5	1.8
Joni Mitchell	4	1.75
Tim Buckley	3	1.67
The White Stripes	3	1.67
Deep Purple	3	1.67
Dexys Midnight Runners	3	1.67
Rush	2	1.5
Rod Stewart	2	1.5
Christina Aguilera	2	1.5
AC/DC	2	1.5
Frank Sinatra	2	1.5
T. Rex	2	1.5
Emerson, Lake & Palmer	2	1.5
ZZ Top	2	1.5
Simon & Garfunkel	3	2
Roxy Music	3	2
Stevie Wonder	4	2.25

Artist	Ratings
Big Star	5, 1
Green Day	5, 1
Van Morrison	1, 5
U2	5, 4, 1
Motörhead	5, 2

Fleetwood Mac

3/5

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.

A Hard Day's Night

Beatles

5/5

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.

Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music

Ray Charles

3/5

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.

At Fillmore East

The Allman Brothers Band

5/5

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.

People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm

A Tribe Called Quest

4/5

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

2112

Rush

1/5

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...

All Directions

The Temptations

3/5

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

Medúlla

Björk

4/5

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

Faith

George Michael

3/5

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.

(Pronounced 'Leh-'Nérd 'Skin-'Nérd)

Lynyrd Skynyrd

2/5

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.

Led Zeppelin II

Led Zeppelin

3/5

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.

Southern Rock Opera

Drive-By Truckers

3/5

"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.

A Walk Across The Rooftops

The Blue Nile

3/5

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

The Next Day

David Bowie

3/5

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

Permission to Land

The Darkness

1/5

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

Greetings From L.A.

Tim Buckley

2/5

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

Led Zeppelin IV

Led Zeppelin

4/5

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.

Electric Music For The Mind And Body

Country Joe & The Fish

2/5

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

Boston

2/5

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

Catch A Fire

Bob Marley & The Wailers

5/5

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

The Seldom Seen Kid

Elbow

1/5

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!

Another Music In A Different Kitchen

Buzzcocks

5/5

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

Ace of Spades

Motörhead

5/5

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

On The Beach

Neil Young

4/5

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

Clube Da Esquina

Milton Nascimento

3/5

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

Gasoline Alley

Rod Stewart

1/5

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

Franz Ferdinand

3/5

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.

Marquee Moon

Television

5/5

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!

The Yes Album

Yes

1/5

"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.

Amnesiac

Radiohead

5/5

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.

Tommy

The Who

1/5

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.

Planet Rock: The Album

Afrika Bambaataa

1/5

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.

Red Headed Stranger

Willie Nelson

2/5

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

Otis Blue/Otis Redding Sings Soul

Otis Redding

5/5

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.

Songs In The Key Of Life

Stevie Wonder

3/5

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

The Band

2/5

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.

Either Or

Elliott Smith

3/5

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

Seventeen Seconds

The Cure

5/5

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.

Queen II

Queen

1/5

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.

Central Reservation

Beth Orton

5/5

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.

The Stranger

Billy Joel

2/5

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.

In Rainbows

Radiohead

5/5

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 Wall

Pink Floyd

5/5

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.

Tanto Tempo

Bebel Gilberto

2/5

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

Odessey And Oracle

The Zombies

2/5

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.

Blackstar

David Bowie

3/5

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."

Electric Ladyland

Jimi Hendrix

5/5

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.

Odessa

Bee Gees

1/5

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?!

Sticky Fingers

The Rolling Stones

5/5

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.

Mama Said Knock You Out

LL Cool J

3/5

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.

Idlewild

Everything But The Girl

1/5

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.

MTV Unplugged In New York

Nirvana

5/5

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.

Rip It Up

Orange Juice

5/5

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

Bitte Orca

Dirty Projectors

1/5

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.

Blood, Sweat & Tears

2/5

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.

Tracy Chapman

3/5

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.

The Visitors

ABBA

2/5

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.

Vivid

Living Colour

3/5

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.

Pretzel Logic

Steely Dan

4/5

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.

Ray Of Light

Madonna

3/5

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.

Fever To Tell

Yeah Yeah Yeahs

3/5

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.

Who's Next

The Who

3/5

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.

Ill Communication

Beastie Boys

3/5

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

Copper Blue

Sugar

3/5

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

The Notorious Byrd Brothers

The Byrds

4/5

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.

The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill

Lauryn Hill

4/5

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.

Forever Changes

Love

3/5

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.

3 Years, 5 Months And 2 Days In The Life Of...

Arrested Development

4/5

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.

The Contino Sessions

Death In Vegas

3/5

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.

Siamese Dream

The Smashing Pumpkins

5/5

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.

The Idiot

Iggy Pop

5/5

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.

Exodus

Bob Marley & The Wailers

5/5

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.

Dummy

Portishead

5/5

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.

Ambient 1/Music For Airports

Brian Eno

5/5

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.

Here Come The Warm Jets

Brian Eno

4/5

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.

Harvest

Neil Young

5/5

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.

Hail To the Thief

Radiohead

5/5

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 Queen Is Dead

The Smiths

5/5

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.

Stand!

Sly & The Family Stone

3/5

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.

The Fat Of The Land

The Prodigy

3/5

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.

Back to Basics

Christina Aguilera

2/5

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

Songs Of Love And Hate

Leonard Cohen

3/5

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.

Purple Rain

Prince

5/5

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.

The Stooges

3/5

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.

Californication

Red Hot Chili Peppers

1/5

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.

Appetite For Destruction

Guns N' Roses

5/5

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?

Sign 'O' The Times

Prince

5/5

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

I'm Your Man

Leonard Cohen

4/5

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

Led Zeppelin

4/5

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.

Vespertine

Björk

5/5

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.

Mothership Connection

Parliament

5/5

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.

Good Old Boys

Randy Newman

1/5

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

90

808 State

3/5

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.

Highway to Hell

AC/DC

2/5

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.

Document

R.E.M.

4/5

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

Urban Hymns

The Verve

3/5

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"

Bridge Over Troubled Water

Simon & Garfunkel

3/5

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.

Birth Of The Cool

Miles Davis

4/5

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

Melody A.M.

Röyksopp

2/5

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 ...

Whatever

Aimee Mann

3/5

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.

Ten

Pearl Jam

5/5

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.

Thriller

Michael Jackson

4/5

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!

You've Come a Long Way Baby

Fatboy Slim

1/5

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.

A Night At The Opera

Queen

1/5

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.

One Nation Under A Groove

Funkadelic

3/5

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.

Dare!

The Human League

3/5

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

Larks' Tongues In Aspic

King Crimson

3/5

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.

James Brown Live At The Apollo

James Brown

4/5

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.

Honky Tonk Masquerade

Joe Ely

3/5

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

Chore of Enchantment

Giant Sand

3/5

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 Slim Shady LP

Eminem

3/5

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.

The Clash

4/5

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

Lost In The Dream

The War On Drugs

5/5

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.

Inspiration Information

Shuggie Otis

2/5

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

Hot Buttered Soul

Isaac Hayes

4/5

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.

I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got

Sinead O'Connor

3/5

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.

Buenas Noches From A Lonely Room

Dwight Yoakam

4/5

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

Lam Toro

Baaba Maal

3/5

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.

Odelay

Beck

4/5

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.

Talking Timbuktu

Ali Farka Touré

4/5

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?

Chirping Crickets

Buddy Holly & The Crickets

3/5

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.

Layla And Other Assorted Love Songs

Derek & The Dominos

2/5

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...

Sister

Sonic Youth

5/5

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.

Bayou Country

Creedence Clearwater Revival

1/5

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.

Want Two

Rufus Wainwright

1/5

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?

25

Adele

1/5

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.

Wonderful Rainbow

Lightning Bolt

3/5

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

Nowhere

Ride

3/5

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

Beggars Banquet

The Rolling Stones

4/5

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

São Paulo Confessions

Suba

3/5

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?

Phrenology

The Roots

3/5

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.

Murmur

R.E.M.

3/5

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.

Garbage

3/5

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.

Joan Armatrading

4/5

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

Highway 61 Revisited

Bob Dylan

4/5

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...

A Christmas Gift For You From Phil Spector

Various Artists

2/5

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.

Halcyon Digest

Deerhunter

3/5

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

Bad Company

1/5

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

Darklands

The Jesus And Mary Chain

5/5

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

Heroes

David Bowie

3/5

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.

Antichrist Superstar

Marilyn Manson

2/5

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.

Who Killed...... The Zutons?

The Zutons

1/5

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

Violent Femmes

3/5

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.

What's Going On

Marvin Gaye

5/5

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.

Architecture And Morality

Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark

3/5

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

Penthouse And Pavement

Heaven 17

3/5

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.

Unknown Pleasures

Joy Division

5/5

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.

Straight Outta Compton

N.W.A.

3/5

"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.

For Your Pleasure

Roxy Music

2/5

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.

Aladdin Sane

David Bowie

2/5

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.

Fifth Dimension

The Byrds

4/5

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

Cheap Thrills

Big Brother & The Holding Company

3/5

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

Untitled (Black Is)

SAULT

4/5

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

Disraeli Gears

Cream

2/5

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.

The White Room

The KLF

3/5

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

Freak Out!

The Mothers Of Invention

4/5

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.

Buena Vista Social Club

5/5

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.

Since I Left You

The Avalanches

1/5

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.

Dirt

Alice In Chains

4/5

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.

Chris

Christine and the Queens

2/5

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.

Paul Simon

3/5

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

Wild Gift

X

4/5

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

Bossanova

Pixies

5/5

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

Brothers

The Black Keys

3/5

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

The Dreaming

Kate Bush

3/5

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

Raw Like Sushi

Neneh Cherry

2/5

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

Songs For Swingin' Lovers!

Frank Sinatra

2/5

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.

Electric Warrior

T. Rex

2/5

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.

Back In Black

AC/DC

1/5

#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.

Disintegration

The Cure

5/5

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.

Let It Bleed

The Rolling Stones

3/5

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.

Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire)

The Kinks

3/5

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.

Only Built 4 Cuban Linx

Raekwon

5/5

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.

Be

Common

3/5

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.

Definitely Maybe

Oasis

5/5

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

GREY Area

Little Simz

3/5

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

Henry's Dream

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

1/5

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.

Get Behind Me Satan

The White Stripes

1/5

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.

Let Love Rule

Lenny Kravitz

1/5

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.

Strange Cargo III

William Orbit

2/5

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.

Eagles

2/5

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.

The Soft Bulletin

The Flaming Lips

3/5

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

Exit Planet Dust

The Chemical Brothers

3/5

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

3 + 3

The Isley Brothers

3/5

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!

Rock 'N Soul

Solomon Burke

4/5

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!

3 Feet High and Rising

De La Soul

5/5

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.

Twelve Dreams Of Dr. Sardonicus

Spirit

2/5

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

Femi Kuti

3/5

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.

Out Of The Blue

Electric Light Orchestra

1/5

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.

Time Out

The Dave Brubeck Quartet

4/5

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.

System Of A Down

3/5

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

I Should Coco

Supergrass

3/5

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

...Baby One More Time

Britney Spears

1/5

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.

A Grand Don't Come For Free

The Streets

4/5

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

Technique

New Order

4/5

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.

My Aim Is True

Elvis Costello

4/5

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.

Introducing The Hardline According To Terence Trent D'Arby

Terence Trent D'Arby

2/5

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

Green Onions

Booker T. & The MG's

3/5

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

The Suburbs

Arcade Fire

3/5

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

Call of the Valley

Shivkumar Sharma

3/5

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.

Two Dancers

Wild Beasts

2/5

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.

World Clique

Deee-Lite

2/5

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!

At San Quentin

Johnny Cash

5/5

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.

The Köln Concert

Keith Jarrett

3/5

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.

The La's

3/5

'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

Remain In Light

Talking Heads

5/5

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.

Very

Pet Shop Boys

2/5

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.

69 Love Songs

The Magnetic Fields

4/5

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

Dr. Octagonecologyst

Dr. Octagon

3/5

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.

Stankonia

OutKast

5/5

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.

Bringing It All Back Home

Bob Dylan

5/5

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.

Fragile

Yes

2/5

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

Exile On Main Street

The Rolling Stones

5/5

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.

Crossing the Red Sea With the Adverts

The Adverts

3/5

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

Sulk

The Associates

4/5

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 Genius Of Ray Charles

Ray Charles

4/5

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.

Doolittle

Pixies

5/5

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 Velvet Underground

5/5

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.

Debut

Björk

5/5

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.

There's No Place Like America Today

Curtis Mayfield

3/5

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,

The Last Of The True Believers

Nanci Griffith

4/5

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.

My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

Kanye West

3/5

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.

Oracular Spectacular

MGMT

3/5

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.

Vol. 4

Black Sabbath

3/5

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.

This Year's Model

Elvis Costello & The Attractions

5/5

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

The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars

David Bowie

2/5

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.

Abattoir Blues / The Lyre of Orpheus

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

2/5

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

Talking Book

Stevie Wonder

3/5

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.

Music for the Masses

Depeche Mode

2/5

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.

Hearts And Bones

Paul Simon

1/5

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.

Pink Moon

Nick Drake

5/5

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.

You Want It Darker

Leonard Cohen

4/5

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

The Man Who

Travis

1/5

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.

Reggatta De Blanc

The Police

4/5

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.

Winter In America

Gil Scott-Heron

3/5

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

Eli And The Thirteenth Confession

Laura Nyro

2/5

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.

Morrison Hotel

The Doors

2/5

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!

Here's Little Richard

Little Richard

4/5

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.

The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators

The 13th Floor Elevators

3/5

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.

Gentlemen

The Afghan Whigs

2/5

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

...And Justice For All

Metallica

4/5

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 but the whole thing rips.

The Sensual World

Kate Bush

4/5

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

Life Thru A Lens

Robbie Williams

1/5

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.

One World

John Martyn

2/5

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.

Pearl

Janis Joplin

3/5

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.

Tidal

Fiona Apple

4/5

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

Safe As Milk

Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band

3/5

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.

The Low End Theory

A Tribe Called Quest

5/5

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.

Live And Dangerous

Thin Lizzy

2/5

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?

Mermaid Avenue

Billy Bragg

4/5

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.

Surf's Up

The Beach Boys

3/5

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

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

Beatles

3/5

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.

Shalimar

Rahul Dev Burman

2/5

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.

No Sleep 'Til Hammersmith (Live)

Motörhead

2/5

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.

With The Beatles

Beatles

3/5

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.

Swordfishtrombones

Tom Waits

2/5

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.

Cafe Bleu

The Style Council

1/5

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.

Roxy Music

2/5

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.

In A Silent Way

Miles Davis

5/5

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.

Rubber Soul

Beatles

5/5

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

Apple Venus Volume 1

XTC

1/5

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).

My Generation

The Who

4/5

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

Feast of Wire

Calexico

5/5

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.

The Village Green Preservation Society

The Kinks

3/5

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.

Shaka Zulu

Ladysmith Black Mambazo

4/5

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.

The Downward Spiral

Nine Inch Nails

4/5

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.

Crime Of The Century

Supertramp

1/5

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)"

Scum

Napalm Death

3/5

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.

Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)

Wu-Tang Clan

5/5

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.

Hms Fable

Shack

1/5

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.

American Pie

Don McLean

1/5

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.

Timeless

Goldie

3/5

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...

Lust For Life

Iggy Pop

5/5

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.

All Hope Is Gone

Slipknot

2/5

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

Live!

Fela Kuti

5/5

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.

Parallel Lines

Blondie

4/5

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.

C'est Chic

CHIC

3/5

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.

Chelsea Girl

Nico

2/5

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.

Paul's Boutique

Beastie Boys

2/5

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.

1989

Taylor Swift

4/5

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.

Stardust

Willie Nelson

3/5

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.

Only By The Night

Kings of Leon

1/5

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

Blue Lines

Massive Attack

4/5

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.

Tapestry

Carole King

2/5

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.

Hypocrisy Is The Greatest Luxury

The Disposable Heroes Of Hiphoprisy

3/5

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

Black Sabbath

5/5

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.

At Folsom Prison

Johnny Cash

5/5

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.

Dirty

Sonic Youth

5/5

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.

Lupe Fiasco's Food & Liquor

Lupe Fiasco

3/5

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.

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

Elton John

2/5

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.

Imagine

John Lennon

2/5

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.

Speakerboxxx/The Love Below

OutKast

5/5

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.

High Violet

The National

2/5

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.

Let's Get It On

Marvin Gaye

4/5

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.

Suicide

4/5

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.

Among The Living

Anthrax

3/5

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.

Power In Numbers

Jurassic 5

3/5

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

David Bowie

4/5

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.

Calenture

The Triffids

2/5

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).

Alien Lanes

Guided By Voices

3/5

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.

Jagged Little Pill

Alanis Morissette

3/5

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....

Moon Safari

Air

4/5

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.

Django Django

3/5

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.

Made In Japan

Deep Purple

1/5

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?!

Immigrés

Youssou N'Dour

5/5

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.

Street Life

The Crusaders

1/5

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.

The Hour Of Bewilderbeast

Badly Drawn Boy

2/5

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.

Foo Fighters

2/5

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

Spiderland

Slint

5/5

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.

Deep Purple In Rock

Deep Purple

3/5

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.

Moving Pictures

Rush

2/5

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...

Here, My Dear

Marvin Gaye

3/5

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

Cosmo's Factory

Creedence Clearwater Revival

1/5

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.

Virgin Suicides

Air

3/5

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...

Revolver

Beatles

4/5

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.

Yeezus

Kanye West

3/5

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.

Play

Moby

1/5

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...

From Elvis In Memphis

Elvis Presley

3/5

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.

Come Find Yourself

Fun Lovin' Criminals

3/5

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.

The Score

Fugees

4/5

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.

Don't Come Home A Drinkin' (With Lovin' On Your Mind)

Loretta Lynn

5/5

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.

She's So Unusual

Cyndi Lauper

3/5

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.

Bat Out Of Hell

Meat Loaf

1/5

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

Smokers Delight

Nightmares On Wax

2/5

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.

The Cars

4/5

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.

Rock Bottom

Robert Wyatt

3/5

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.

Rum Sodomy & The Lash

The Pogues

2/5

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.

Bryter Layter

Nick Drake

4/5

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

Wish You Were Here

Pink Floyd

5/5

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.

#1 Record

Big Star

5/5

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.

Juju

Siouxsie And The Banshees

5/5

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.

Dookie

Green Day

5/5

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.

461 Ocean Boulevard

Eric Clapton

1/5

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.

No Other

Gene Clark

4/5

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.

Another Green World

Brian Eno

4/5

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.

Fleet Foxes

3/5

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.

Apocalypse Dudes

Turbonegro

1/5

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.

Damaged

Black Flag

5/5

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.

The Man Machine

Kraftwerk

4/5

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

Rid Of Me

PJ Harvey

3/5

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.

Darkdancer

Les Rythmes Digitales

1/5

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.

Talking With the Taxman About Poetry

Billy Bragg

2/5

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.

This Is Fats Domino

Fats Domino

3/5

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.

Groovin'

The Young Rascals

1/5

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

Hejira

Joni Mitchell

2/5

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 Girl Called Dusty

Dusty Springfield

3/5

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

The ArchAndroid

Janelle Monáe

3/5

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.

Fisherman's Blues

The Waterboys

2/5

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.

Live / Dead

Grateful Dead

5/5

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.

Hounds Of Love

Kate Bush

4/5

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.

Justified

Justin Timberlake

1/5

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.

Tarkus

Emerson, Lake & Palmer

2/5

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.

The Velvet Underground & Nico

The Velvet Underground

5/5

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.

The Infotainment Scan

The Fall

4/5

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...

School's Out

Alice Cooper

2/5

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.

Never Mind The Bollocks, Here’s The Sex Pistols

Sex Pistols

3/5

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.

After The Gold Rush

Neil Young

5/5

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.

Superunknown

Soundgarden

3/5

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.

Led Zeppelin III

Led Zeppelin

5/5

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.

At Mister Kelly's

Sarah Vaughan

3/5

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.

A Wizard, A True Star

Todd Rundgren

2/5

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?

Isn't Anything

My Bloody Valentine

3/5

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

The Specials

3/5

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

Funeral

Arcade Fire

4/5

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.

Dig Your Own Hole

The Chemical Brothers

2/5

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

British Steel

Judas Priest

3/5

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.

Back To Black

Amy Winehouse

5/5

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.

Slanted And Enchanted

Pavement

4/5

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.

Machine Gun Etiquette

The Damned

5/5

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!

Duck Stab/Buster & Glen

The Residents

3/5

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

Aftermath

The Rolling Stones

3/5

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.

Talking Heads 77

Talking Heads

5/5

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.

Heartbreaker

Ryan Adams

4/5

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.

Station To Station

David Bowie

3/5

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

Pink Flag

Wire

5/5

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

We Are Family

Sister Sledge

3/5

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*

Roots

Sepultura

3/5

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...

That's The Way Of The World

Earth, Wind & Fire

1/5

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.

Lady Soul

Aretha Franklin

5/5

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.

The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway

Genesis

2/5

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.

Axis: Bold As Love

Jimi Hendrix

5/5

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.

Haut de gamme / Koweït, rive gauche

Koffi Olomide

3/5

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.

Superfly

Curtis Mayfield

5/5

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

Emperor Tomato Ketchup

Stereolab

4/5

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

Shake Your Money Maker

The Black Crowes

2/5

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.

Synchronicity

The Police

3/5

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.

All Mod Cons

The Jam

5/5

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.

Natty Dread

Bob Marley & The Wailers

5/5

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.

There's A Riot Goin' On

Sly & The Family Stone

3/5

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.

Arc Of A Diver

Steve Winwood

2/5

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.

Sweetheart Of The Rodeo

The Byrds

4/5

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.

Live At The Star Club, Hamburg

Jerry Lee Lewis

2/5

Plinky plonky plinky plonky plinky plinky plinky plonk.

Follow The Leader

Korn

3/5

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.

Will The Circle Be Unbroken

Nitty Gritty Dirt Band

4/5

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.

The White Album

Beatles

4/5

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 College Dropout

Kanye West

3/5

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.

Veckatimest

Grizzly Bear

2/5

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

Kind Of Blue

Miles Davis

5/5

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

Green

R.E.M.

3/5

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

Le Tigre

4/5

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

Tigermilk

Belle & Sebastian

5/5

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.

Before And After Science

Brian Eno

3/5

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

Rio

Duran Duran

3/5

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.

Liege And Lief

Fairport Convention

3/5

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 Zeppelin 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.

A Date With The Everly Brothers

The Everly Brothers

2/5

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.

Coat Of Many Colors

Dolly Parton

3/5

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.

Face to Face

The Kinks

3/5

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

Aja

Steely Dan

4/5

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...

Time (The Revelator)

Gillian Welch

3/5

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.

Rings Around The World

Super Furry Animals

2/5

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.

Let's Stay Together

Al Green

4/5

So buttery smooth I felt my cholesterol rising.

Germfree Adolescents

X-Ray Spex

3/5

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.

AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted

Ice Cube

3/5

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...

The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan

3/5

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

Crosby, Stills & Nash

3/5

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

Actually

Pet Shop Boys

3/5

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.

Mott

Mott The Hoople

1/5

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.

Hot Shots II

The Beta Band

3/5

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.

Deserter's Songs

Mercury Rev

2/5

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

Jazz Samba

Stan Getz

2/5

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

It's Too Late to Stop Now

Van Morrison

1/5

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.

Kala

M.I.A.

3/5

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+...

Too Rye Ay

Dexys Midnight Runners

1/5

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.

Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not

Arctic Monkeys

5/5

Hands down the second best Strokes album.

London Calling

The Clash

5/5

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.

White Light

Gene Clark

3/5

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...

Songs From The Big Chair

Tears For Fears

4/5

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.

Happy Sad

Tim Buckley

1/5

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!

Country Life

Roxy Music

2/5

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.

Court And Spark

Joni Mitchell

2/5

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.

16 Lovers Lane

The Go-Betweens

2/5

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

Out of Step

Minor Threat

5/5

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.

Your New Favourite Band

The Hives

1/5

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.

Tragic Songs of Life

The Louvin Brothers

4/5

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.

Iron Maiden

3/5

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 🤘

Searching For The Young Soul Rebels

Dexys Midnight Runners

2/5

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.

Guero

Beck

2/5

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

Back At The Chicken Shack

Jimmy Smith

3/5

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

The Lexicon Of Love

ABC

1/5

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

Incubus

1/5

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?

Paris 1919

John Cale

4/5

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.

Broken English

Marianne Faithfull

3/5

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.

Ragged Glory

Neil Young & Crazy Horse

3/5

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

Cee-Lo Green... Is The Soul Machine

Cee Lo Green

2/5

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.

A Short Album About Love

The Divine Comedy

1/5

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

Bookends

Simon & Garfunkel

1/5

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.

Figure 8

Elliott Smith

3/5

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.

Liquid Swords

GZA

4/5

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.

Our Aim Is To Satisfy

Red Snapper

1/5

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.

Post Orgasmic Chill

Skunk Anansie

1/5

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.

Ready To Die

The Notorious B.I.G.

3/5

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.

The Colour Of Spring

Talk Talk

5/5

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.

Logical Progression

LTJ Bukem

3/5

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?

Daydream Nation

Sonic Youth

5/5

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.

Eliminator

ZZ Top

1/5

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.

The Trinity Session

Cowboy Junkies

3/5

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.

Caetano Veloso

1/5

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

Endtroducing.....

DJ Shadow

3/5

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.

Electric Prunes

The Electric Prunes

2/5

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.

What's That Noise?

Coldcut

3/5

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.

1977

Ash

1/5

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

You Are The Quarry

Morrissey

1/5

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

The Slider

T. Rex

1/5

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.

We're Only In It For The Money

The Mothers Of Invention

1/5

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.

Everything Must Go

Manic Street Preachers

1/5

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.

Punishing Kiss

Ute Lemper

1/5

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

The Who Sell Out

The Who

2/5

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.

Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim

Frank Sinatra

1/5

Turns out combining two boring schmaltzy genres gets you a schmaltzy boring album.

BEYONCÉ

Beyoncé

3/5

Reviewers here seem really mad this this album doesn't allow them to sustain the fantasy that music isn't a commodity. This is an industrial cultural product with the full force of that machinery brought to bear on its production to, unsurpringly, extremely successful effect. People get caught up in the paradox that this industrial product is marketed through a narrative of the individual authenticity of the artist's voice and the delusion of an intimate relationship between performer and audience - no shit, Adorno Jr, it's pop music! Lush, polished, horny, ultra-processed pop-music that distills the latest sounds, skills, technologies and talents of RnB, Hip Hop, House/Electronica, poat-millenial indie rock, and pure-pop into a zeigeist capturing culturally dominant force that creates a wide range of moods and feelings. The corporate feminism stuff is cringey, so are the bio-pic audio snippets, and there's something inherently undignified about the word instagram appearing in lyrics though, throws me way off. Favorites: No Angel, Rocket, Mine

Pretenders

3/5

Quintessential New Wave - tight compressed and slightly dirty guitars, a bit of jangle, loads of hooks, a touch of corny cutting edge for the day production, and heavy dose of retro flair recalling the rock-n-roll of the early 60s. I only knew the hits, but there are some bangers on this one and the instrumentals are great surprise. Favorites: space invader, private life, Kids

Tom Tom Club

3/5

An exuberant global funk explosion, just gleefully letting loose, pure fun. We're going to have a synthesizer party tonight! Favorites: wordy rappinghood, l elephant, Lorelei

La Revancha Del Tango

Gotan Project

3/5

Swishy combination of trip hop/instrumental hip hop DJ production techniques and tango rhythms and some jazzy piano. Kind of a novelty, but it works well. Good for working and zoning out or for playing in the atrium of your neo-art deco hotel lounge.

Hot Fuss

The Killers

2/5

Corporate indie for elliptical machines and hockey games. Super high-energy hype up music expertly assembling the most excitable elements of millennial guitar rock from alt rock, emo & pop-punk, post-rock and garage revival (epic reverby guitars, driving bass, synth hooks, marching drums) to create an explosive anthemic sound. They blow their wad on track two with Mr Brightside though and the rest can't reach that level. A compilation of the best of Killers, Bloc Party, Snow Patrol, Twilight Sad, post Is This It Strokes, mid-career Arctic Monkeys, Franz Ferdinand, the Arcade Fire jock jams and all the other bands from this era that sound like this would be an awesome CD-length album representing the last gasps and final dying fling of guitar rock. But there's too much samey filler on this album and oh my god the 'soul not a soldier' and 'INDIE ROCK AND ROLL' bits made me throw my headphones into the bin. What about this makes it sound incredibly British?

Midnight Ride

Paul Revere & The Raiders

1/5

Made their name as a Minor Threat cover band, but basically a Chuck Berry tribute act getting trippy off the mildest grass the 60s had to offer. I like the sound: organs, bright chiming guitar, busy drums, some bolero style trumpet - but they're not doing anything distinctive really. This era is wildly overrepresented, just including the Nuggets compilation would save so much space, this is much more of a track on a compilation band than an album on a canonical list band. 'Melody for an Unknown Girl' is one of the most insipid cringey things I've ever heard. Favorites: kicks, all I really need is you

Want One

Rufus Wainwright

1/5

Want One? No thanks.

Fetch The Bolt Cutters

Fiona Apple

3/5

Percussive piano, jazzy bass, and madcap drumming - it's an unstable teetering foundation on the cusp of spinning out of control, giving the album a nervous unsettled mood. Despite the emphasis on rhythm, the grooves never take off, stuttering, stoping, starting, remaining constantly off kilter. It's a big sound in a small package, like an experimental orchestra rehearsing in a crowded storage room, for a cluttered claustrophobic aesthetic. Pretty cool, but don't really get the hype. Favorites: Ladies

Live At Leeds

The Who

5/5

The Who at their best - skip the fussy stuff and the overwrought concepts and get right to the rocking. John Entwistle is just a pure monster in the bass rampaging all over the place with a powerful rumble, Pete Townsend isn't that good of a guitar player but just rips hard into some unbridled noise, Keith Moon slams the drums like they banged his mum, and Roger Daltrey is fine, doing classic classic rock guy stuff, but happily gets out of the way to let the band cook.

Oedipus Schmoedipus

Barry Adamson

2/5

Part of the Nick Cave extended universe. It's cinematic - conjuring dramatic images, tension, and sense of a scene. It's genre-bouncing (from croony jazz to acid house to loungey trip hop to elevator jazz and noir soundscape) in a mostly referential pastiche way. It has expansive instrumentation, not always successfully- vibes and drum machines are an awful combination. Is there a sound more dated than turntable scratching? It was never good. Mixed album that goes on for way too long. The dark ambient soundscapes are cool, the bright jazz is unbearable, the rest is mid background music. Favorites: set the controls, business as usual, dirty barry, sweetest embrace

Are You Experienced

Jimi Hendrix

5/5

The best 60s psych album by miles. It combines deep roots in American electric blues & RnB, British flower-power aesthetics, genius pop rock songwriting, casually revolutionary guitar playing, high energy fuzz, trippy studio recording effects, and a dangerous dose of pure charisma.

Heaven Or Las Vegas

Cocteau Twins

4/5

Finally getting the hype with this one on the 25th attempt. It's always been somewhat alienating to me and hard to connect with, despite lots of people insisting I'd like it. Not sure why, maybe it's having listened to lots of 80s/90s UK indie pop and shoegaze over the last year for whatever reason, or that this is a remaster that's a bit easier on the ears, but this is way more accessible, the hazy high-end that always pushed me away isn't there and the songs themselves come through way more than ever before and the individual instruments' contributions stand out more clearly. There's a nice combination of Cure-esque basslines driving the songs, jangly shimmering guitars washed in an ethereal bath of reverb delay and modulation effects, big echoey 80s drums, some synth tones, and hushed alto vocals that start with a whisper and resonate, echo, double up and harmonize into something huge. Slow and spacious, mopey and hopeful, dreamily malingering in misery, this is almost as good as everyone's been saying!

Modern Life Is Rubbish

Blur

3/5

I got this as a teenager and always felt like I'd bought the wrong Blur album because it just didn't connect at all. A couple decades letter, I can appreciate it a bit more, though primarily as a historical touchstone. It's a foundational bit of Britpop that draws on tradition of UK powerpop for tight melodic songwriting and some of the sounds of the era's alt/indie rock for its fuzzy energy. Rejected by America, they delve deep into Briticana with ironic art-school eccentricity and authentic ecclecticism. It's well crafted and put together, sounds great, cool use of effects, lots of clever song-writing tricks and catchy melodies. It's wry and whimsical, serious about musicality but uninterested in the dark gloomy depression of grunge, instead creating the definitive Britpop mood of optimistic nostalgia. But it's also got too much annoying stuff and none of it is as good as their next two albums. The foundation rather than the pinnacle of this 60s-yearning brand of 90s guitar pop. Can't help but feel Blur would be better represented as a Best Of band not an albums band. Whoever keeps making these double-length special issues the default on Spotify is not doing anyone a favor - just give me the original tracklist FFS! Not some bloated monstrosity full of unwanted extras and bonus tracks and remixes and outtakes. Favorites: For Tomorrow, Colin Zeal, Oily Water

Berlin

Lou Reed

3/5

A desperately sad story told desperately. An album that feels like trying, and failing, to drag yourself out of bed with a hangover. Heavy, grim, dark, full of anger and self-loathing. Very effectively captures and recreates that mood. Big ambitions semi-coherently articulated, some tender intimate moments and beautiful passages emerge from the struggle. Seems like a sketchbook full of ideas taken into a fully loaded studio prematurely, so kind of a bloated mess, but again, that fits the mood pretty perfectly.

Bert Jansch

3/5

Just a man and a guitar singing bluesy folk songs and ripping through some pretty incredible fingerstyle parts. A bit Nick Drake, a bit Led Zeppelin III, but not as melodic and bitter sweet as former and lacking the hard rock edge of the latter. His playing is really incredible, open string drones and moving pass notes, while picking out complicated chords and lead lines - hard to fathom how he pulls it all off. Technically impressive while also being gentle and soulful, but it’s not the most dynamic stuff and very solidly in its lane genre-wise. He’s just doing folk music (extremely capably) rather than doing something with the folk style/palette.

The Black Saint And The Sinner Lady

Charles Mingus

4/5

A film noir freak out, this is THE album to listen to while tailing some dame and slipping into a hallucinatory mental breakdown.

Bone Machine

Tom Waits

2/5

Dark crooner jazz infused barroom blues from a bourbon- soaked cookie monster. The whole album reeks of fedora. A weird boomer affection of pretending to be a depression era drifter. Sparse rough arrangements put the emphasis on the upright bass, plinky plonk piano and bare bones percussion. Some aching lap steel & violin playing adds a nice country twang and high range harmony to a the best tracks. A top 5 'nobody actually likes this, they just like the idea of being a guy who likes this' band. Favorites: who are you this time, a little rain, goin out west

Meat Puppets II

Meat Puppets

3/5

An unlikely combination of post punk angularity, country twang, and prog complexity with a vibe that presages much of the 90s slacker alt rock feel.

Frank

Amy Winehouse

3/5

Raw and jazzy, a singer finding her voice and building up the sound she'd fully realize on Back to Black. This is less poppy and more rooted in neo-soul and jazz, with lots of blue notes, extended chords in complicated voicings, and more stripped down arrangements focusing on clean guitars and keys with deep electric bass and more sparing use of horns. Moody's Mood has some cool dub production. All of that puts her voice really front and center, highlighting her gritty timbre and remarkable control.

Reign In Blood

Slayer

3/5

Aggressive riffs, snarling vocals, heavy hitting drums. It all sounds the same, but what a sound!

Ritual De Lo Habitual

Jane's Addiction

2/5

Funk punk band with classic rock ambitions with a charismatic but annoying singer for high energy, bloated thrusting. They have a very unique sound - the distinctive combination of vocal style and effects paired with the wash of guitar creates a huge expansive feel. The last third is the best. Exactly what the band of the host of a reality tv show about tattoos should sound like.

Parachutes

Coldplay

4/5

Buttery toast, mac and cheese, vanilla ice cream, scrambled eggs, corn on the cob - things can be boring and family friendly, corny and cheesy and still good. Embrace the cringe, succumb to the acoustic sincerity, let go of the sneer and just let the earnestness wash over you.

So

Peter Gabriel

5/5

How dare she criticize Peter Gabriel, with her little screw me hair cut and all so 'neh neh neh' - doesn't she know he single handedly created WOMAD?! This is peak of 80s production - he just gloriously embraces synth, compression, rubbery bass, cheesy keyboard patches, and gated drums from top to bottom, and pairs it with a full on afro funk rhythm section, backup singers, great songs with a range of emotional tones and his own searching oddly alienated earnest vocals.

The Wildest!

Louis Prima

4/5

This is the music that bugs bunny in a dress puts on while making some strong cocktails. Raunchy horns, goofy vocals, wildly energetic performances - all good fun.

Bizarre Ride II The Pharcyde

The Pharcyde

3/5

Jazzy samples and wordy verses - like a West coast Native Tongues: upbeat, funny, and wide ranging.

Supa Dupa Fly

Missy Elliott

3/5

Part of a wave of mid 90s hip hop albums that really brought the genre to a commercial peak and changed the sound and style of pop music across the board. The slowed down and spaced out beats with a sultry RnB feel, emphasis on hooky grooves, and the big choruses made this THE production template for the next decade plus. Laid back delivery of sharp rhymes paired with sung lines, overall Missy Elliott's verses are still central but less out front and more part of an ensemble funk performance.

Let's Get Killed

David Holmes

3/5

Chill instrumental trip hop electronica with hip hop, dub, electronica, acid house, indie rock and WOMAD influences combined for a cinematic feel. Nice and relaxed background music - the lynchpin of many a 'music to study to' playlist.

The New Tango

Astor Piazzolla

3/5

Jazzy orchestral music with alternating leads from violin, xylophone, and that accordion type instrument. Complex melodies and dynamic composition with changing parts at top speed, discordant harmonies, angular rhythms, and abrasive tones keep it edgy and tense, building to intense moments of release. You'd twist your ankle if you tried to actually Tango to this, surely. An outlier in lots of ways, Zappa and gotham project being the closest comps I've come across so far.

Parklife

Blur

4/5

Bright and energetic, overflowing with melodic ideas and alt-rock guitar sounds. A bit power-pop and a bit psych, it's all extremely 90s and extremely English.

1/5

This is the glam rock Dr John tribute act you never knew you needed, because you didn't. Somebody nuke the swamps of the Glasgow Cajun Quarter before this abomination breaches containment.

Off The Wall

Michael Jackson

4/5

The pinnacle of disco production paired with pure pop songwriting and fueled by endless supplies of cocaine and funk. Updating the Motown sound for the synth erA, this album that has been the template for commercial RnB ever since. When you open with an all time great song it's going to be downhill inevitably. The slow jams and ballads stink - skewing way to far to the saccharine schmaltz side and lacking the tight dance grooves that make it endearing. Favorites: don't stop till you get enough, rock with you, burn this disco

Shadowland

k.d. lang

3/5

Bluesy country with crisp clean high gloss production, a yodeling twangy vocal, lush arrangements and the slightest twist on some classic genre songwriting that does, in the end, become a bit generic. The late 80s is an interesting moment in the recurrent back and forth exchange between country, rock, and pop with urban cowboy, Dwight Yoakam, cowpunk and the rest embracing and reworking the the Nashville, outlaw, and roadhouse archetypes for a very knowing almost pastiche but not winking continuation of the sound.

Colour By Numbers

Culture Club

3/5

A melting pot of disco synth pop new wave and soul with incredibly neon 80s production and some gale force full blown diva vocals. Fun and sad and idealistic. At its best in radio pop hit and dance club banger modes - less strong on the ballads.

Mr. Tambourine Man

The Byrds

2/5

Just because something was commercially successful in the era when there only like 5 bands and all they did was rip each other off and smoke the mildest pot and think they were tripping doesn't mean it's essential listening. As much as I like the Rickenbacker jangle, this doesn't hold up well at all. Sounds like if the Monkees were a Dylan cover band.

Qui sème le vent récolte le tempo

MC Solaar

3/5

Jazzy Native Tongues style beats for a feel good relaxed sound. His delivery is great, incredible pacing and a cadence that wraps language around itself as he shifts tempos, accelerating through a verse hitting a rapid fire couple of lines and stepping back for a more spacious playful flow.

Sea Change

Beck

3/5

A 90s slacker alt rock take on Nick Drake. Slow and somber songs with folksy acoustic guitar at the center of understated and tastefully lush arrangements that sound a bit like Beta Band. Beck delivers a sensitive and hushed vocal performance. Their whole thing has a melancholy wistful mood. Nothing especially original, but all extremely well crafted and executed, it's comfortingly familiar sounding even though I never (consciously) listened to this when it came out.

Cupid & Psyche 85

Scritti Politti

1/5

Written by someone who's only been exposed to a Michael Jackson slow jam cover band and performed using only a toy Casio keyboard. Somehow this is rotting my teeth.

Blur

2/5

Their most famous song but not their best album. Kind of a tired burned out one, lo-fi, shaggy, and sprawling. Lots of songs but it's stuck halfway between their brash zannier previous style and the more experimental stuff to come. Favorites: Death of a Party, Song 2, Beetlebum

Neon Bible

Arcade Fire

4/5

The birth of millennial indie arena rock. Combining the massive atmospheric post-rock sound and elaborate instrumentation of other Montreal bands like Godspeed and Broken Social Scene with more straightforward up-tempo songs and epic headline melodies (and martial drumming) makes for a hugely effective anthemic album full of drama: building tension, big climaxes and sweeping moments of release.

Melodrama

Lorde

3/5

This has all the hallmarks of mid 10s pop production, trauma-core. An electropop pallette that's all about moody pulsating synth and a patina of nostalgia for a sound its audience originally knew as always already retro. Drawing on electronic dance music for the build/drop crowd moving effect but played too slow to dance to, instead the pacing makes room for big swells and leaves lots of room between the beats. Huge choruses - shouted rather than sung for pop buy-in - that feel a bit forced like they were written to be on at the emotional peak of a mediocre teen drama. An explosion of big fill-in-the-feeling feelings, fill-in-the meaning meanings. Dynamics that flip between bombastic beats and quite piano. Hushed breathy vocals that create a whispered intimacy, then they're doubled and tripled for a polyphonic effect for maximalist choruses. Subwoofer testing low end bass hits to connect the ethereal synths to your body and ground it. A detached disillusioned affect from hyper-mediation and lyrics that mix up deepening isolation and self care. This was one of the big albums that made this sound hegemonic, but it still ends up feeling a bit predictably samey and none of the songs really pops in the way Royals did.

It's A Shame About Ray

The Lemonheads

1/5

Replacement level 90s pop radio alt rock - nice jangle, strummy, some twang, it's very bright, melodic and earnest, but extremely paint by numbers. I like this genre a lot, but really hard to call this essential listening as an album - maybe a song on a best of the rest 90s comp.

Here Are the Sonics

The Sonics

1/5

I like the Lo-Fi garage rock sound and DIY spirit - amping up the fuzz, shredding the vocal chords, direct raw performance, and pushing the recording into the red - but they have literally 0 ideas. They're even derivative in who they're ripping off! I'm sure this was a fun band to be in and to see live at the sock hop in 1966, but my god the mid 60s are the most over-represented era. It's as if the world would end if every micro step in the evolution of white guys learning how to play Chuck Berry and Little Richard songs wasn't represented in excruciating detail. Can't we just have the Nuggets compilation instead of all these mediocre 'proto-something interesting' albums with one ok song?

Fishscale

Ghostface Killah

3/5

Propulsive beats assembled from infectious high energy soul/RnB samples. The vocals are top tier - it's rip roaring raps with an emphasis on storytelling verses, tight word-play, funny lines, and great images from an all star cast of Wu-Tang affiliates. Full of drama, vision, and powerful vignettes, but nothing super catchy in terms of memorable choruses/hooks - a bit overlong too, this is a prestige TV series of an album. Favorites: Shakey Dog, 9 Milli Brothers, Back Like That

Shleep

Robert Wyatt

3/5

Tense, weird, sprawling, dreamy, lush, harmonically dense & dissonant, spacious, dark but optimistic. A very out of time album where 60s folk psych meets 70s prog experimentalism meets 80s synths meets 90s postmodernism meets 00s post rock rhythms meets 2010s electro ambience. Favs: Alien, Free Will and Testament, Heaps of Sheeps, Blues in Bob Minor

I Against I

Bad Brains

3/5

I prefer the more raw hardcore of their self titled debut to this album's slower performance and more polished sound with glossy 80s production and a weird chorus effect on everything. That said the funk bass and shredding guitars rip unabashedly hard and this is them pushing well beyond the edge of the overly reductive/restrictive hardcore formula they'd already perfected.to craft a more eclectic hard rock sound that grunge and alt rock bands would be ripping off for the next decade+.

Siembra

Willie Colón & Rubén Blades

3/5

A perpetual motion machine created out of layers and layers of rhythm from the rich percussion, bass, even the way the piano is played like a drum at times, and the multiple melodies from vocals, horns, guitars & piano to create rhythmic counterpoints.

Illinois

Sufjan Stevens

1/5

I really hated this when it came out, but figured so many people seem to like it and it gets so much critical praise, I must've been missing something. Then the flute comes in, and I remember why I hated it. And then his voice comes in and I remember why I hated it. Then he starts with some of the most irritating lyrics imaginable and I remember why I hated it. Then there's more goddamn flute. Then I look at the cover again. I see the sentence-long song titles. Then I remember this was part of the an absurd conceit that delighted the most NPR-brained homework lovers on earth but that thankfully it only ever got 4% completed. Then I see that he filled up the entire damn 74-minute CD. The flutes haven't stopped. The circus music starts. Then it's the forced intimacy of hushed whisper singing over fingerpicking acoustic. Plinky plonky plink piano tenderness. The dreaded millenial banjos and ukeleles come in for some fake pastoral aura. The french horn for faux-grandeur. I'm at serious risk of doing harm to myself and those around me if I'm subjected to more than 10 minutes of this, yet bravely I persist. The flute persists. The red mist thickens. Favorite: Night Zombies

(What's The Story) Morning Glory

Oasis

5/5

You never forget your first musical love. When it's this good why would you even want to?

Quiet Life

Japan

4/5

Goddamn this is so cool. Dark minor key synth-based post-punk with an edge in the vocals and the guitars touch of punk to the vocals. The somber and introspective mood constrats with the glossy artifice of the synths for a nightmarish party feel - this is a great document of the imaginary of what the inside of a computer, and so the impending computer-based future, must've sounded like in the late 70s. Kind of a Blade Runner of an album, but projecting that dystopian aesthetic onto an imagined alien other: 'Tokyo'. Favorites: Fall in Love with Me, Alien, All Tomorrow's Parties, Quiet Life

Tical

Method Man

3/5

Distinctive Wu Tang production - sparse herky jerky beats and Kung Fu samples for a vaguely spooky combative action-packed cinematic feel that sets the stage for the verses's terse concise delivery. As good as this, Raekwon, Ghostface, and GZA's albums are, they do feel kind of over-represented on this list. A tight 2 disc compilaiton of the best of the Wu-Tang extended universe would really hit the spot.

Peter Gabriel

2/5

This album lacks the directness and the sense of fun that makes So so good. Solsbury Hill is a great song pointing at the direction he'd go over the next few years, but the rest is either still bogged down by the bloated pomp of the over-written ultimately very boring prog and glam sound, or, in the case of Waiting for the Big One, an embarrasingly bad attempt at loungey piano blues. The album is basically as pompous as the Wall but nowhere near as good, even if Here Comes the Flood has a bit of a Pink FLoyd sound and a cool guitar solo.

Sound Affects

The Jam

4/5

Dry as a tinderstick and ready to catch fire his is taught edgy post-punk/power-pop bristling with energy. It's nostalgic for the mid 60s with lots of Beatles, Byrds, Kinks and Who imprinted in the songs, but a heavy dose of new-wave style in the delivery. The bass earns its spot high in the mix with propulsive melodic lines and a touch of funk. The vocals are direct and earnest (his timbre reminds me of Billy Bragg) with a flat distant affect for that art-school cool feel, but in a kind of shy reserved way. Favorites: Set the House Ablaze, That's Entertainment, Scrape Away

Phaedra

Tangerine Dream

4/5

Patient spacious electronic dreamscapes pairing Echoes-era Pink Floyd psychedelic exploration of ambience with new toys from the land of synths and sequencers. The songs evolve slowly, with layers rising and falling, effects coming in and out of focus, melodies passing through inconspicuously, arpegios intensifying and dissipating over a sombre vamp of artifical strings. Stressful and anxious at times, relaxing and blissful at others.

Dance Mania

Tito Puente

3/5

Irresistible percussion, lively horns, fun melodic phrasing, call and response singing, and rich orchestration combine for an swinging energetic, jazzy album that made 40 minutes of answering emails much more enjoyable than normal.

Tonight's The Night

Neil Young

3/5

A tragic heartbroken album that draws on a few different NY styles. There are the country-adjacent folksy acoustic guitar with twangy arrangements and close harmonies songs, the solo piano ballads, and the hard-rocking proto-grunge dirges. Individually I don't think any of these songs are among his best, other than excuisite desolation of Albuquerque. There are better versions of each of these styles - but together it works perfectly as a deep dive into the darkness of loss and disillusionment. Favorites: Roll another Number, Albuquerque

Junkyard

The Birthday Party

2/5

Demented circus music, recorded by the ghouls who haunt an abandoned carnival. I like the dark demonic grooves, the squigly guitar terror, the aggresive industrial effects and would be into a band that pushes this dynamic even futher (like Swans). The vocals fit with the aesthetic - highly dramatic, screaching howls and horror, like Tom Waits being tortured - but push it over the line into being extremely annoying. I like their debut better, but this is definitley more interesting to me that Nick Cave's solo stuff. The cover rules.

Fear and Whiskey

Mekons

2/5

Pairs post-punk style aesthetics with Irish folk and Country sounds - a bit of fiddle and accordian, some lilting rhythms, some traditional melodies. It's an interesting idea in principle, and somebody was bound to do it (see also the Pogues) but in practice it ends up pretty put-on hokey and contrived. Favorites: Hard to Be Human, Lost Highway

Woodface

Crowded House

1/5

Treacly jangly pop on the threshold between 80s new wave and 90s alt-rock with 60s psych throwbacks. Some nice melodies but really the only interesting this is the variety of instrumentation. It is sickeningly sweet stuff with vacuous lyrics, uninspired performances, and bland songwriting. Cloying 90s filler.

Younger Than Yesterday

The Byrds

3/5

The center of the venn diagram made by Beatles/Dylan/CSNY with the twangle dialed up and some psych production flourishes. A bit of a transition between their jangle pop and country rock eras. Pretty sounds, an bright optimistic feel, hyperactive bass parts, cool harmonies, and very melodic - but nothing especially remarkable from the most over-represented band on the list. Not every 60s album with sitar is worthwhile!

Marcus Garvey

Burning Spear

5/5

A huge band makes a huge sound and Burning Spear's is uncompromising, A packed horn section brings big bright energy and melodic counterpoint, backup singers deepend the vocals with close harmonies and ad lib flourishes, the drums and percussion are perfectly in the pocket, the guitars add more rhythm with upstroke chords and tight little lines in the high end, the keys are there for more funk in the mid range, and the bass is unstoppable - propulsive and deep, thudding into off beats, swining in anticipation around the rest. Burning Spear's vocals emerge from this mass, weaving in and out, interacting with the rhythms and riffs, stepping back to shout from the pockets, percussively rapping out a line with the drums, rising up to float above for a wail.

Live At The Regal

B.B. King

4/5

Compared to other great electric blues guitarists of the era, with either a leaning towards to the traditional acoustic blues greats (Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker) or the more uptempo rock and roll style (Buddy Guy), this album's prominent piano and horns parts giveit an extremely big band jazzy flair and the incredible vocals make it feel like a motown soul album. His playing feels generic now thanks to a billion blues dads, and it wasn't especially groundbreaking then in terms of the underlying theory or anything, but is such a perfectly realized version of it's genre - exquisite call and response phrasing and that brassy tone. You don't get a fundamental building block of lead guitar playing like pentatonic boxes named after you for no reason. If anything, he's an underrated singer though; he's really belting it out here - incredibly charismatic voice.

Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots

The Flaming Lips

4/5

A lush woozy psychedelic indie rock opera. The signature sound is the contrast between the over-the-top orchestral arrangements and the very barebones acoustic guitar + drum machine + thin warbly vocals at the heart the songs. This works very well to create the sense of an overwhelming and alienating mismatch between the self and the environment - the core theme of the opera's story.

Maggot Brain

Funkadelic

3/5

Wild wah guitars over tense arpeggios to start off, then surprisingly acoustic back porch folksy sound (like if The Band could groove) given the astral funk journey they'd embark on shortly. The gritty guitars and organs work together nicely to pick out some funky riffs. Fun polyvocality with playful interplay between the singers and instruments, its a gospel choir having a party. The guitar keeps shredding wah over the top and the sound moves form the porch into a dirtier garage rock style.

Born To Run

Bruce Springsteen

5/5

Barroom pianos, jazzbar sax, soul arrangements, and clean classic rock guitars all combine for a huge cinematic sound that's full of restless yearning. They're really great at building tension and energy. The vocals are direct and earnest with powerful delivery and a distinctive voice. Some incredible hooks and catchy little melodies. It's one I have come to appreciate more over time, but still more recognize as good than really love.

Rocks

Aerosmith

1/5

I like the bands they're ripping off (Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin) and the biggest band to rip them off (Guns N Roses) but this in-between cohort of 70s hard rock (Aerosmith, Kiss, AC/DC) has always been the nadir of classic rock to me. Creatively bankrupt, unexciting, over hyped - it's just tedious blues chord progression with a bit of distortion, mid level guitar heroics, a wailing singer and some annoying visual gimmick - vacuous rock star stuff that is even worse when compared to the underground and alternative stuff (or even the pretty similar british metal) happening at the same time. The only saving grace of this album is that it wasn't as overplayed on the radio growing up and so I don't viscerally hate these sons as much as others of theirs.

Beauty And The Beat

The Go-Go's

3/5

Fun high energy new wave that emphasizes the drums banging out the Bo Diddley beat, guitars borrowing style and sounds from surf rock, and a direct popping bass bouncing along, all in support of sing songy vocals. Mostly it's bright and poppy but a few cool moments when it's a bit darker and more post-punk. Favorites: automatic, skid marks on my heart, our lips are sealed

The Rising

Bruce Springsteen

1/5

The album that enshrined Springsteen as the secular saint of the American liberal. It's politically patriotic, drawing on the big story of American strength in diversity, exceptional goodness, and progressive inclusivity to call for unity in suppressing the base desire for revenge and instead being our best selves. Everything is going to be ok, he keeps reassuring us, as long as we call on our better angels: strength, faith, love, hope - America is the miracle he's waiting for. Musically it reflects this message by combining his 80s heartland rock sound with lush modern 90s production, extra americana twang paired with Putumayo world-music Arab singing, epic classic rock guitars, RnB jams, and an even heavier than normal gospel sound, sanctifying the liberal patriotic message with the rich sounds of the black church and the post-civil rights story of national redemption through the moral arch of history bending toward justice. In stark contrast to the reactionary music of the time - thin one-dimensional pop country cynically weeping into the flag and joyously baying for blood - this is somber sophisticated and reflective - if vague and cliched- desperately charting a path rising through the end of the good times. "Come on, let's be friends," he begs over a smooth jazzy RnB Jam. The problem is that it's incredibly boring, bloated, and uninspired - it feels like 72 minutes of homework. No wonder this is what made him the homework-loving Ivy League liberal's heroic voice of the everyman. No wonder he has a podcast and coffee table book with Obama trying to sell this same story of American greatness in the Trump era. No wonder this ultimately vacuous patriotic message falls flat in the face of deteriorating material conditions fraying the flag he's waving. Better than Toby Keith, but a dead end, politically and aesthetically.

New Gold Dream (81/82/83/84)

Simple Minds

2/5

I like the smooth synths' relaxing vibe and jazzy pop feel but felt like it didn't have enough to dig into. A lot of elements that other adjacent take much futher and to a more satisfying conclusion.

Suzanne Vega

2/5

Acoustic guitar based singer-songwriter stuff all glittered up with 80s studio production wizardry: super jangly fingerpicked acoustics that sound like a harp, chorus pedals on crystal clear super compressed electric guitars, lush reverbs, synth textures, electric violins, a bit of rubbery bass - sparse drumming retains the folsky singer-songwriter aesthetic. She has a gentle voice that alternates between breathy singing and chatty urgent talk-singing. Easy listening but kind of boring.

Ogden's Nut Gone Flake

Small Faces

1/5

More English guys who think they're so clever and charming but really are just irritants.

Snivilisation

Orbital

2/5

Uptempo but chilled out electronica designed for a montage, or creating the feeling of living inside one.

Crocodiles

Echo And The Bunnymen

4/5

I like all the components - the dark atmospheric sound, the modulated guitars and cutting bass tone, the slow brooding feel, the 60s psych and 70s punk influences, the detached booming vocals - but it doesn't all come together as much as it should into great songs. Favorites: rescue, all that jazz, crocodiles,

Fly Or Die

N.E.R.D

1/5

Hendrix : Kravitz :: OutKast : NERD Incredibly repetitive songs that get boring 1 minute in. Smug eclecticism that dabbles in a lot of genres without going beyond the surface of their sound, so you get lots of boring fuzzy guitar riffs, generic jazziness, bland RnB horns, corny rap bravura, perky charmless britpop jangle, and annoying emo melodies. A good argument for keeping the producers behind the boards.

Every Picture Tells A Story

Rod Stewart

2/5

The bass parts rip on the fast songs, the gritty slide guitars are pretty on the ballads, the mandolins are a fun twist, and his raspy voice brings it a weary world-worn aura, but the songs are just pretty boring blues rock with way too much annoying honky tonk piano and an overall phony Americana feel.

American Beauty

Grateful Dead

4/5

There's a 5-star 45 minute album's worth of material distributed across this, Workingman's Dead and the first Garcia and Weir solo albums representing the pinnacle of the Dead's Americana era. Alongside CSNY, the Byrds, the Band etc - other bands who're better songwriters and recording artists - this is a major album in the hippy turn towards country and folk. Even though it's a favorite band's best (or 2nd best after Workingman's Dead?) studio album, I never listen to as none of what I listen to the Dead for is here - the dark intensity of their psychadelic blues, the bright exploratory improv of their jazzy jams. It's their slow twangy Americana era, fairly conventional songs (arranged interestingly, and performed expertly) with some cool - albeit saccharine - harmonies and lots of pretty guitar parts - it's gentle easy going feel good, sometimes plodding, music - perfectly stoned and relaxed, but lacking the audience heat and high-wire risk that animates their live performances.

Steve McQueen

Prefab Sprout

3/5

A band I whose name I'd heard before, maybe as a punchline to a joke I didn't get, but never listened to. An album where you picture the music video for every song - all kooky animations and billowing curtains and neon moods. It sounds great, bearing all the hallmarks of its time. The guitar sound especially is so good, bell-like hypercompressed and so clean it cuts. The bass has an awesome pop to it and the synths are cornier than a road trip in Iowa. Jazzy funk straight from the supermarket radio paired with new wave art pop, the songwriting is full of yearning instropection and heartache juxtaposed to upbeat music. It fades in the final third and Horsin Around is a hard pass. Favorites: Bonny, Goodbye Lucille 1

Cypress Hill

3/5

An extremely Grand Theft Auto album: swaggering funky beats, comedically violent lyrics, casually derogatory, gangster posturing loved by suburban stoners. Best use of a 'booyah' on the list so far.

Miriam Makeba

2/5

A classic appreciate it but don't really like it album. Combines jazzy crooning piano ballads, South Africa choral church music, Calypso sweetness. Great vocal performances and a historical touchstone but it's very slow and gentle and kinda boring.

Metallica

5/5

A great album I never need to hear again since the radio and I played it to death in the 90s. The hits are amazing but there's a lot of sludgy chugging but decidedly not thrashing filler to go with them. This and, even more so Appetite for Destruction, are the pinnacle of hard rock and it's been radically diminishing returns ever since.

Buffalo Springfield Again

Buffalo Springfield

2/5

A cool guitar album: raw fuzz tones mixed with bright and energetic acoustics. Uneven set of songs though with a pastoral country folk sound that gets a bit sleepy.

Da Capo

Love

1/5

Laurel Canyon flute nonsense. Just about OK in garage rock mode, tedious in airey medieval folk mode. Revelation is a pretty good Grateful Dead jugband era style jam until the Jim Morrison impression starts and it turns into an aimless blues rave up, the jazzy sax bit with a trance feel and wandering bass brings it back to life.

White Light / White Heat

The Velvet Underground

5/5

Chaotic fuzzy drones, wild guitar parts that dissolve into squals of feedback, dark intense bass riffs, frenzied drumming, lo-fi production and wild expressive performances all combine create a hypnotic hallucinogenic atmosphere. Extremely cathartic noise. Sister Ray is the star of the album, but the title track is a great garage rock track that basically invents pop punk. Lady Godiva and Here She Comes now features more of their gentle darkly pretty songwriting. The Gift is kind of annoying though.

Aqualung

Jethro Tull

3/5

Lots of great guitar parts from the folly acoustic finger work to the heavier electric leads. The way all the voices sync up in the riffs is cool, but an an overused trick by the 4th time. Vocals are a bit grating. They just about pull off the flute, but it's dicey.

Ananda Shankar

3/5

I love the way the sitar uses drones that create a contrast between on the one hand the continutiy of that sound which works amazingly along with the rhythms to create a deep trance like state while, on the other hand, and the changing melodic phrases and intensification of speed/tone create a layer of tension and release through each song. This album works up sitar arrangements of familiar 60s rock classics - kind of corny, but makes sense as familiarizing bridging element introducing western listeners to a set of sounds they'd known for a couple of years as a means to give rock an exotic twist.

Bubble And Scrape

Sebadoh

4/5

Shaggy lo-fi post-hardcore indie rock played at an ambling pace with lots of space for the fuzzy guitars to blossom, for the overdrive to warm up, and the riffs to grow and weave around. A nice amalgam of the sounds of the pre-grunge DIY underground - a bit of the slacker energy of Pavement, the nervouse energy of Missions of Burma, some of the dynamimcs of the Pixies, and the heavy crunchy distortion of the Melvins, the driving energy of the Minutemen, the thick chugging riffs of Dino Jr, and the sprawling dissonance of Sonic youth. The vocals are thin and introspective, mumbled and screamed and somewhat buried in the mix - none of the songs have have the hooks or big catchy melodies of Pixies/Dino.

Elvis Is Back

Elvis Presley

3/5

Top tier musicians playing a nice amalgam of 50s popular genres encompassing country, RnB, soul, blues, doo wop and jazz. The vocals are great: warm and hugely charismatic. The guitar is twangy and tight. But none of the songs or performances really stand out as anything more than well crafted genre pieces.

The Nightfly

Donald Fagen

3/5

Silly smooth and billowy soft - leans hard into 80s production, pushing the sound as far as possible through perfectionist performance and recording, elaborate harmonies and complicated jazzy composition. My taste was formed valuing raw, direct and aggressive music - so polished convoluted and mellow sounds have been a challenge to learn to love. There's a detached wet irony and indulgent technophilia you have to respect if it ends up sounding like supermarket music.

Savane

Ali Farka Touré

5/5

More richly produced and fully arranged than his more bare bones early 90s albums, AFT reaps the rewards of his breakthrough into the world music genre on this album. It's a more fully realized, if slightly more generic sound as a result. His guitar work is great, all mesmerizing drones and melodic fills, working with and against the kora GOAT Toumani Diabate to weave together a complex call and response, polyrhythmic, relaxed but super energetic sound. The sokou single string violin adds an awesome lead element and extra melodic voice on a few songs, really bringing that wild trancey velvet underground sound. I might've picked In the Heart of the Moon over this one, but this is a great representation of Malian music at its moment of peak global recognition.

Sincere

Mj Cole

2/5

Sincere borrows and reworks RnB and disco, combining it with Drum and Bass to make a new chilled out jazzy sound that moves away from the intense 4 on the floor dance music for something more laid back. This is a solid represtantive for a major and influential genre (UK garage) that has had a big inpact on neo-soul and pop production. It's not bad to put on and zone out with, but it's pretty boring after a bit and suffers from by association from being the soundtrack of douchey bars with uncomfortable plastic furniture and expensive redbull drinks that call themselves lounges.

Beautiful Freak

Eels

2/5

Kind of an offcut of 90s alt rock. Novocaine was a favorite when it was in the radio. I enjoyed the overall slacker feel of it, the sparse relaxed arrangements, the guitars' bright overdriven sound, and the high end slide/key parts, but it comes and goes without leaving much of an impression. Favorites: novocaine, guest list

Throwing Muses

4/5

On the bridge between 1983 post punk and 1993 alt rock, this is full of dirty buzzing guitar, gritty driving bass, and high drama operatic vocals. Borrowing from surf, new wave, and cowpunk, the songs are driven by catchy riffs and guitar figures, oscillating between tight and chaotic sections, building tension up and unleasing it all at once as the drums go nuts.

Done By The Forces Of Nature

Jungle Brothers

2/5

Feel good beats and playful,. political, afro-centric rhymes, but pretty repetitive and too long.

Atomizer

Big Black

5/5

A brutally aggressive despairing grind, and that's just the bass tone. Buzzsaw guitars slash out churning riffs, dissonant noise, and some surprisingly melodic leads over sledgehammer drum machine parts. It's like a hardcore band replaced their instruments with a construction site and it rules.

Elephant Mountain

The Youngbloods

3/5

The jangly bright poppy stuff is pretty annoying in that naive 60s sunshine hippy way, but the spacier jams like the fuzzy 'darkness, darkness' and the jazzy outro to 'Francis Drake' (not the over composed fussy intro) are more exciting. The Motown via garage psych 'Sham' goes hard. You can see how this (the noodly 'Trillium' especially) might've nudged their Marin County comparisons the Dead towards the jazzy Americana they'd get start playing by 1972 when they got a pianist. A pretty mixed album and part of the massive over representation on the list of every niche iteration of the psych-folk continuum of late 60s. Favorites: darkness darkness, sham

Arise

Sepultura

3/5

An album with a real clarity of purpose, this is a pretty perfect realization of the thrash model, it's full of rage and resentment, furious, aggressive and explosive. Relentless drums blast away like machine guns. Thunderous bass and tight dialed in guitars tear through riffs like tornados before unleashing some gnarly shreding solos and lead harmonies. The chug becomes a groove when they let it sprawl a bit. The vocals are a growling barked sub-scream, a bit one note though.

This Is Hardcore

Pulp

4/5

Pulp really goes all in on this one, going beyond the cutsey power pop or laddish rock of their Brit Pop contemporaries for something lush, cinematic, and grandiose. I like the drama, the noire moods, the big melodies and huge sweeping strings, the Bowie-inspired songwriting and the arch delivery full of both earnestness and irony. There's a big gap between the best songs and the rest though - lots of mid-tempo filler without much flair to it. Favorites: The Fear, Help the Aged, This is Hardcore, Sylvia, Glory Days

D.O.A. the Third and Final Report of Throbbing Gristle

Throbbing Gristle

4/5

Morons on here getting mad that there aren't any melodies and it gets a bit wierd, as if Throbbing Gristle were trying and failed to make Rumors. It's not really an album you put on to rock out to, but a meditation on bleak alienated life, on the grind of late industrial Britain, on the rotting urban fabric of the 1970s. It's the bleeping and fraying electronics of a barely functional life support system. Musically it draws on ambient composition styles, krautrock explorations of synth/tape loop technology, darker psychedelic approaches to creating strange mental states through drones, repettition and rupture, punk embrace of noise, and the kinds of sounds you'd associate with video art and multimedia installations. All of which creates a collage that captures, reproduces, extends, and aestheticizes a set of nasty latent public feelings: anomie, aggression, resentment, despair, indignity, exhaustion. Of course it isn't pleasant! Favorites: Hamburger Lady, AB/7A, Dead on Arrival, Weeping

Cut

The Slits

3/5

Punk's anyone can do it approach, some ska/reggae/glam rock sounds, some cool uncoventional guitar parts, some classic robotic funk post punk bass playing, and an off kilter detatched sing-songy vocal delivery for some cutting dark lyrics. Cool as hell.

Dub Housing

Pere Ubu

3/5

Prog punk. One of the foundational post-punk albums, this is aggressively weird. Funky bass but robotic without any soul/blues - the rhythm is like it’s all made out of corners and could come clattering down anytime, just pure momentum holding it together. Strange layers of keyboard, synth, and effects stacked up on top of each other. The vocals are sort of sung, more like yelped and shouted and wailed. The guitars are there to mess up the rhythm even more and bring more noise to the high end. Follows in the eccentric auteur Beefheart tradition of avant garde chaos, but angrier, less psychedelic and more ironic. Pioneering, influential, but not one to listen to for fun.

Madman Across The Water

Elton John

3/5

She just died? Wow. I didn't know that. You're telling me now for the first time. She led an amazing life. What else can you say? She was an amazing woman. Whether you agreed or not, she was an amazing woman who led an amazing life. I'm actually saddened to hear that. I am sadden to hear that. Thank you very much.

Dire Straits

3/5

The headline attraction is the instantly recognizable guitar tone and style. That glassy clear strat sound pops with compression and cuts through with a gentle bite, pairing a touch of country twang with a ton of JJ Cale phrasing. The feel is relaxed and warm, easy going good mood dad rock. I can't get over how great the recording/production is - it sounds amazing! Clean and bright and balanced with a solid low end, plenty of space, subtle dynamics - like an unfussy but equally meticulous Steely Dan. None of the other songs are nearly as memorable as Sultans, but they all know all the chords.

D

White Denim

4/5

Cool eclectic cosmic psych rock with bits of garage, jamband, prog and alt country mixed together. It's extremely busy throughout - they don't linger on an idea or a groove for long before the whirlwind carries them somewhere new. Bright and upbeat with a jangly fun feel overall. Would be good live you'd think. I'd never heard of them so it's a pleasant surprise, but since I was paying attention to this kind of music in the US at the time, it seems like a strange inclusion over bigger bands in the same era/genre that aren't on the 1001 like the jammy country rock of My Morning Jacket, a folksy crooner with a big emotive sound like Bon Iver, a way bigger jamband like Phish, or indie pop rock acts who had more mainstream crossover like the Shins. They weren't a huge hit or critical darlings (37 on NME's album of the year list, not on Pitchfork, NPR, Stereogum, AV club) - not say that's the standard, but just to say it wasn't getting a ton of attention at the time, so why does it stand out in retrospect? Would be interested to read the explanation, but I will just enjoy a bit of swirling whirling vaguely psych indie guitar rock in the meantime.

Ghosteen

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

2/5

Songs so glacial they becomes ambient. Slow heavy mournful dirges on synth and piano with choral support and swelling strings. His voice is frail and thin, raw and tender, hurt. It's like watching the tide come in on a miserable wintery beach. Dark and despairing with cracks of light coming through.

White Ladder

David Gray

1/5

Pro-tip: if you're a pale imitation of Van Morrison, don't end your album with an interpolation of his best song, it just reminds us all how much worse you are than him. This is a perfect album for when tap water is too spicy - perfectly crafted and perfectly dull totally disposable slow sad guy acoustic pop. There's a place for this kind of music in the world wherever mellow inoffensive sound is necessary - waiting rooms, fast casual sandwich chains, airport gift shops, overwrought scenes in boring movies. It's music you hear constantly but only involuntarily.

OK

Talvin Singh

2/5

In the 1990s the craziest thing you could think of was 'dude, what if an Indian guy used a computer' and so a billion of these East meets West, Tradition remixed with Modernity, World Music Electronica albums flew off the shelves into the discmen of the most easily impressed and embarrasingly dreadlocked goofs you can imagine. That said, there are some cool sounds on here - especially the interplay between the locked in precision of the DnB drum machine beats and the looser feel of the tabla hand druming and syncopated rhythms of the string instruments melodic phrases. It's spacey and aspirationally uplifting. The jazzy sax is corny and the flute is never welcome. The whole thing is pretty one note and gets kind of boring after 20 minutes but works well as background sound.

Sweet Baby James

James Taylor

2/5

Music for people who say they don't have sex, they make love. Gross.

Welcome To The Pleasuredome

Frankie Goes To Hollywood

1/5

Incredible title track and relax is a certified slap, but the rest is extremely uneven synth pop, including a bunch of random covers. Fun enough, some cool bass parts and synth tones, but too long and gets a bit tedious.

Behaviour

Pet Shop Boys

3/5

Sad synths and bittersweet beats. Its glossy and polished, but full of pathos. The comedown after the after-party, a self indulgent apocalyptic disco. Perfect for when you want to cry but are being forced to dance. Favorites: the end of the world, being boring

Elastica

3/5

High energy and lots of fun: punk style and pop hooks. They're like a New Wave act for the post-grunge era with just the right amount of blur/pulp style britpop whimsy. Textbook 90s alt rock guitar sound - crunchy overdrive, compressed tightly to keep the chaos in order, scooped mids.

American Idiot

Green Day

1/5

I dont get how Green Day have held on to such a big place in American culture - Dookie was amazing, Brain Stew was pretty good, but that Good Riddance song gave them a ruinous taste of sincere balladeering and since then it's been a long steep decline. This album was their big return to the spotlight - an Anti-Bush pop punk opera that is just as embarrasing as that sounds. They still have a nice bright overdriven guitar sound and some decent riffs as well as a gift for a catchy vocal melody, but they're totally wasted on this. Turgid slow tempos turn into forced sped up breakdowns, bombastic production, bloated song writing (8 minutes! 8!), corny arena rock climaxes. The lyrics are pure dumb guys making a statement stuff. Honestly, their songs about teenage disaffection, smoking and jacking off offer a more profound insight into suburban American culture and alienation than this overblown grandiose turd. When Sept Ends is truly abysmal - I know I 've heard this before, but it is so much worse than I could possibly have imagined, how was THIS their return to the bigtime? Good lord this whole thing just sucks so bad.

Apocalypse 91… The Enemy Strikes Black

Public Enemy

3/5

Love the bare bones boom boom bap beats made of scratching and samples looped on repeat but they get a bit samey after a few tracks. Their song w Anthrax kicks the shit out of Aerosmith & RunDMC, even if they accidentally invented Nu Metal.

Rattlesnakes

Lloyd Cole And The Commotions

4/5

Jangly guitars, warbly vocals, shimmering synths, poppy bass, cheesy strings, upbeat songs with a bit of snap to them and bittersweet melancholy lyrics. A kind of pop rock that they just don't make anymore. Like a British post New Wave version of heartland rock - a bit phonier, less bombastic, but hitting the same adult contemporary notes. Drags a bit on the slower tracks, but when they're in full on bright jangly mode its so good.

Night Life

Ray Price

4/5

What a voice! Sad sentimental songs sung so sweetly, with aching swelling pedal steel guitars, crystal clear twangy reverb soaked telecaster solos, just the right amount of honky tonk piano, a touch of fiddle, and a bouncy cowboy bass carrying it all along. I love this old addicted to heartbreak country stuff that's all about what a big loser you are, how everyone is so cruel to you all the time since you're a pathetic drunk failure, how you'll always be lonely and you deserve it for being a stupid miserable little shit nobody could or should ever love, and how the only pleasure in life is the anguish of seeing other people have a good time that you're not invited to and the only thing you can do is project onto them your own fantasy that they're not actually enjoying themselves.

Different Class

Pulp

4/5

Forged by 80s New Wave and art school post punk but embracing the exuberance of 90s pop, this is peak Pulp: archly dramatic, full of wit, whimsy and irony, but earnestly bombastic. Overflowing with catchy lines, huge hooks, and anthemic energy.

Duck Rock

Malcolm McLaren

2/5

Successfully replicates that annoying feeling of driving somewhere confusing where you need to pay attention but the passenger keeps changing the radio station constantly except instead of pop country and car dealer ads it's South African choral pop, Cuban dance music, DJ blathering, and old school hip hop scratching, but they switch channel before you can get into it at all. Infuriating, fun, stressful, distracting, a waste of a great cover. Barely any ducks.

So Much For The City

The Thrills

1/5

Americana for big fans of The OC. It's a swagless Byrds and Beach Boys California tribute that they sometimes pull off. The best bits are the slow spacious parts with loping melodic bass, big reverby atmosphere, gentle piano, soaring slides and clean echoey guitars (Deckchairs & Cigarettes, Hollywood Kids), very pretty, if ultimately empty. But then as soon as they try to high energy and that constant annoying banjo sounding arpeggio kicks in it becomes unbearably cloying. "It's such a shame when old friends fall out" - and actual lyric they repeat multiple times! good lord that's embarrassing.

Kenya

Machito

4/5

Big band jazz with loads of horns blasting out huge riffs and taking turns stepping out to rip quick solos, rumba grooves for some swing, seven layers of percussion for hypnotic complex rhythms and an endless reserve of energy. Music that makes it worth driving your big long car out to the casino.

War

U2

5/5

They're so good at building tension, letting an atmosphere develop, creating an enveloping mood and then doing that dew point drop thing where it all releases, shifting on a single beat. The heavy new-wave post-punk influence on the bass and drums gives them a hard edged tone and a driving beat. The soaring guitars are a thrill - glassy crunchy and direct - simple parts crafted perflectly to echo and bounce and create a huge space for the vocals to fill. It's so big and bombastic and ambitiously produced it's really an achievement, and not even they're best.There are three of the best songs of the 80s on here that still hold up however overplayed they are. The rest isn't as good, but never drops to being mere filler, they're probably both a Greatest Hits and an albums band. This is probably the first album I was ever really into even before I had my own music, I remember the CD and asking to always put it on in the car as a like 9 or 10 year old, so 0 bias here...

In It For The Money

Supergrass

3/5

Brimming with enthusiastic energy, propulsive high energy songs, Brit Pop whimsy, and kitchen sink instrumentation, this is a small band making a grandiose album. Cheapskate has an acid post-Madchester dance feel to it. The rest is floating on the 3rd wave (?) of the mod rock/power pop guitar band revival cycle. It's bright and optimistic, but full of nostalgia, they do it well and it's a fun album, but nothing really stands out.

Vulnicura

Björk

3/5

Feels like being in a small boat in a big storm. The music is sparse and dark, swelling strings and washed out synths, scattered with bursts of electronic noise, it creates a feeling of a vast windswept encompasing expanse battering and moving you, hinting at but not reveal an abyss below. But the voice is intimate and intense - itself highly manipulated and textured, filtered through effects to distort and chop and rework itself, but still direct and inescapable, extremely proximate.

Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)

Eurythmics

3/5

An amazing range of synth sounds combined with a powerful vocal performance. The arpeggiator freak outs are cool as hell and the drum machine parts have a nice robotic groove to them. A bit uneven Favorites: Jennifer, sweet dreams, love is a stranger.

Van Halen

4/5

A band that has weirdly grown on me over the years as I've come to enjoy the unabashed big dumb sound and kitschy debauched style. Incredible guitar tone, epic anthems you can really pump a fist to, arena filling drums, and crazy charismatic vocals. Sometimes it's just time for uncut puro braindead fun. Ice Cream Man is an embarrassment though, wild.

I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You

Aretha Franklin

5/5

Perfect embodiment of the Muscle Shoals RnB sound, harnessed in support of an incredible vocal performance - not just an amazing voice, but impassioned singing capturing a big emotional range. Deep gospel roots, uptempo funk on the bass, mellow jazzy piano to cool down the heat from the horns - it sounds amazing: rich, warm, lush. The whole album is a joyful comfort.

Moondance

Van Morrison

5/5

Perfect A side. VM delivers an all time great vocal performance - introspective, melancholic, tender and delicate, forceful and reaching. The music is autumnal and folksy, mellow and jazzy, warm and familiar - tied together by great bass playing that underpins lush and deeply textured arrangements. The B side isn't as good, but even so is basically is a sneak preview of the rambling gospel country Americana that the Rolling Stones would do shortly afterwards on Exile. So good the flute is forgiveable.

The Madcap Laughs

Syd Barrett

5/5

Whimsical lo-fi folk psychedelia that's mostly famous for the mythology surrounding it, as a haunting document of a psyche on the cusp of descent. Even so, it stands up as a singular expression of his creative impulse, and an exploration of the singer songwriter genre, drawing on the dark drones and fuzz of the velvet underground, the sing songy melodies of kids music, the jangly guitars of the 60s and the eccentricity of English acid psych. His voice is frail and fragile, pushed beyond itself into adolescent cracking but open and earnest and incredibly charismatic. This is a key precursor of the shaggy slacker rock, bedroom lofi, and outsider art that would flourish in the 90s.

Car Wheels On A Gravel Road

Lucinda Williams

4/5

Folksy alt-country, twangy Americana, swampy blues. A huge contrast to the bombastic mega-pop country of the era (Twain, Brooks), this is a return to a rootsy style and dark, angry, melancholy themes of Southern abjection. The production is very radio-ready though, the big clean drums setting a propulsive groove that kicks it out of singer-songwriter gear into almost a heartland rock sound. The bright chiming surf guitars on a few tracks are so good! Less a fan of the cajun elements though, the corny accadian accordian sound really takes away from a couple of otherwise great songs. Favorites: Greenville, Metal Firecracker, 2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten, Right in Time, Joy

Selected Ambient Works 85-92

Aphex Twin

5/5

A deeply meditative album: the repetition draws you into to a drance, the warm tones make it feel comfortable and relaxed, the subtle shifts in texture and timbre keep you engaged albeit passively, the ebbs and flows build and release tension gently, the bass resonantes throughout your body while the lead lines distract your mind.

Modern Kosmology

Jane Weaver

3/5

Psych revival with droning swirling guitars and mesmeric synth parts over locked in krautrock grooves, lead by big vocals that are doubled and tripped for self-harmonies, soaked in reverb and delay, and bounced around the stereo for a being inside a kaleidoscope effect. Stereolab is the biggest comparison, but elements of Velvet Underground, Bjork, Portishead, Can and Pavement to go with it.

A Northern Soul

The Verve

4/5

Taking the mdma rock of Madchester out of the Hacienda and into a dingy dive bar, keeping some of the groove, but mostly slowing everything down and adding layers of swirling shoegaze guitars covered in wah wah and reverb, this album is full of big sounds and spacious songs that spiral and sprawl out. It does that trippy pyschadelic thing of using drone notes and warm overdriven repetition of melodic loops to draw you in hypnotically, allowing the rest of the sound to work on the rest of your mind and body - the high-register loping basslines create a loose floaty feel, the gutiar leads introduce little phrases that repeat and interate and transform into fuzzy feedback and fade away. Blissed out music and depressing lyrics, the classic combo!

Darkness on the Edge of Town

Bruce Springsteen

3/5

Cliche americana, corny piano rock, cheesy sax solos, a big anthemic sound rises and falls over mid-tempo beats - not a promising recipe, but it works. Despite his limited range and wierd stuffy-nose timbre, the raw energy in his voice cuts through and gives this a compelling charisma that draws you in to the stories and mood of the album. Opens strong but drags in the middle.

Dry

PJ Harvey

3/5

I like everything about this, but somehow despite trying a few times it never really clicks - I haven't found the right setting to really absorb and let it work on me. It's full of plaintive, urgent, angry vocals. Grungy distorted guitars altenate with violently strummed acoustics. It's dark and despairing. There's lots of space in the music with big chords in line with drum hits rather than constant strumming. Other songs have guitars drop out/in and a more propulsive bass/drum groove underpinning it. It plays with quite loud dynamics, and gradually building/removing layers of guitar parts: overdriven riffs, cleaner kind of whiny sounding guitar leads. I enjoy it while it's on, but nothing lingers.

The World is a Ghetto

War

1/5

Chilled out funk with jazzy horns, busy percussion, gospel vocal harmonies and an deep groove to it. Though it presages a lot of very annoying and smooth jazz funk it's dynamic and soulful enough to avoid being easy listening. At the very least the contrast between the urgent social commentary of the lyrics/titles and the upbeat fun of the music is pretty striking.

Truth

Jeff Beck

3/5

Proto hard rock that's basically blues with fuzz and wah wah. This was released alongside Cream's Wheels of Fire and Hendrix's Electric Ladyland, the year before Led Zeppelin I and 2 years before Black Sabbath's debut. All these bands are basically doing the same thing - a hard charging rock trio with a great bass player and a guitar dude shredding over top + some sort of vocalist that's kind of an afterthought even though it takes up a ton of the album. Jeff Beck's leads are great, but not especially original here. Rod Steward is tolerable. Ronnie Wood's basslines really kick it on. It's one of the ultimate dad-core albums, I'd have picked the wierder and more original Blow By Blow instead.

Highly Evolved

The Vines

1/5

Auww, you did such an amazing job picking out your 90s alt rock coloring book and you're so good at staying inside the lines and picking the right color crayons for every area!

Rage Against The Machine

4/5

Anti war anti corporate politics appropriated by the band's teenage audience as adolescent rebellion. Fuck you (mom) I won't do what you tell me! But if rock-n-roll isn't for pubescent catharsis what is it for? When that was my demographic this was the gnarliest, hardest, dirtiest, fastest thing imaginable (ie in the radio) and I was first scared of it the loved it. In retrospect it's much cleaner (the guitar is distorted but very tightly), the riffs are slower and have more of a groove, and the extreme vocals are a much more focused rap-scream delivery than I remembered. Far from wild and flailing it's precisely controlled fury and it fucking rips hard. A comp with the best tracks off this and evil empire and 2 from their 3rd album would be the best hour of 90s metal hands down, but they all have some filler.

The Undertones

3/5

It's so funny how 45 years of retrospect makes this kind of punk sound so essentially like 50s rock-n-roll just a notch faster and slightly more distorted, but the chord progressions and harmonies and hooks are basically the same. It works, though, hey, it's a good formula for having a bopping good time with your (leather jacket wearing and safety pin pierced) best girl!

Rapture

Anita Baker

2/5

A Häagen-Dazs® ad's idea of horny music. Smooth and sweet, sensual but vanilla, mass-produced and bland, but with an unstoppable rubbery bass tone.

Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables

Dead Kennedys

4/5

Since Minor Threat was my first love in punk everything before always struck me as hokey and underpowered, this included. And Jello Biafra's voice was an immediate turn off so I really never gave this a chance. Big. Mistake. Like lots of early punk stuff this IS just basic rock-n-roll played harder faster and louder, they keep the surf rock style and guitar solos and everything, but it's blistering paced on the verge of chaos at all times, sped up so much that there's a qualitative transformation: it distorts into deforms itself something else entirely: like a band trying to reach escape velocity. Amazing to hear zero subtlety political satire that still feels super relevant - probably because it's full of righteous rage but also funny and direct and not milquetoast indie liberalism full of vague universals.

Scott 4

Scott Walker

2/5

Dramatic cinematic music and baritone crooning. Opens with a fun noir cowboy jazz track but then gets bogged down in a bunch of tedious slow-paced orchestral schmaltz. But the only way out is through: when the schmaltzy strings really slow down it becomes something interesting again, an ambient textural bedding for the vocals' existential anguish. Favorites: Seventh Seal, Old Man's Back

Entertainment

Gang Of Four

5/5

Goddamn this album rules. An explosive release of nervous energy. This was the coolest band to rip off among all the cool bands I grew up seeing in the DC area back in 2000 (Q and not U, Rapture, Black Eyes etc). It makes sense as it's a perfect formula - driving funk bass, slashing wild guitars, extremely kinetic drums, and yelped vocals that are basically another percussion instrument - for high energy, danceable, and unrelentingly hip party punk. Damaged Goods is the perfect post-punk song.

Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes

TV On The Radio

3/5

Synthy sounding guitar riffs and loads of actual synths combine with a thick fuzzy bass to create a big dense sound with lots going on. The drumming is really cool - relaxed and spacious but always up to something interesting. The vocals are an intense falsetto. There’s a lot of it that’s all very consistent and coherent. The two stand out tracks are Starring at the Sun, their big single that has a compelling ‘round’ style hook sung over a dark and ominous 1234 synth beat and Dreams another catchy vocal led song with a dark dark synth, fuzzy bass and interpol-sounding droning guitar.

Screamadelica

Primal Scream

5/5

Time to don my novelty bucket cap and the most ludicrous jeans ever made, down a handful of pills, and pop in a pacifier to bliss out to the ultimate rave rock album.

Live Through This

Hole

3/5

Pretty straight down the middle 90s alt rock. Heavy punk influence tempered by radio play ambitions, post-grunge production with big dirty guitars, loud-quiet dynamics, personal is political feminist lyrics delivered by an alternatingly whispered intimate / screamed guttural vocal.

Oxygène

Jean-Michel Jarre

3/5

Busier and more attention grabbbing than other ambient albums and less hypnotically driving and psych than Krautrock, this is is a bright and poppy super melodic take on spacey synth electronica.

The Pleasure Principle

Gary Numan

4/5

Not only is he a pop star, right, he's got a pilot's licence. Imagine that! Gorgeous synth tones, lots of catchy riffs and hooks, and a robotic but charismatic vocal style that fits with the drum machine rhythms. If I was a glammed up business guy I'd also be suspiciously intrigued by the glowing triangle on my desk.

Music From The Penguin Cafe

Penguin Cafe Orchestra

3/5

Really wonderful interplay between the organic and synthetic. Warm lush strings work with cool synth and keyboard tones to create a vibrant, gently thrumming, peice of neo-classical music with shades of ambient experimentalism and jazzy psychedelia. Weird and whimsical, but expertly composed and crafted.

When I Was Born For The 7th Time

Cornershop

1/5

Eclectic album combining britpop guitar, trip hop drumming and EDM chill beats, Punjabi melodies and instruments, light shoegaze atmospheres, funky soul grooves, Beck-style slacker rapping, and a magpie approach to sampling aesthetics, styles and sounds. Can't say I feel the mid 90s hype on this one - they're one hit wonders buoyed by a remix of the overly long 'Brimful of Asha' and a few ad placements. It's not obnoxious to have on, but leaves little impression and is pretty forgettable.

In Our Heads

Hot Chip

1/5

Glossy but empty millennial synth pop, bright and breezy upbeat stuff that draws heavily on 80s New Wave and disco styles, sounds and rhythms. Sounds mostly like corny sitcom theme song music in the end. Gets very bad when the dancey synths dial back and they turn into sincere guitar crooners like indie Ed Sheeran (look at where we are) or into an ersatz neosoul space jazz Odyssey (now there is nothing) - awful. A byproduct of accelerating cycles of nostalgia, at its best this is fun dance music that's a great artifact of the late peak hipster moment, because of how affected, winkingly unoriginal and ultimately disposable it is.

Butterfly

Mariah Carey

1/5

The official soundtrack of hating middle school dances. Inescapable 90s mega pop pairing RnB diva vocals with hip hop production and latching it to the mtv rocketship. Lots of talent but the songs seem mostly like vehicles to show off the incredible vocal range, like the Steve Vai of singing. Just because you can hold that note doesn't mean you should, or do it every single time. After a couple of interminable ballads, the sultry slow jams are a welcome relief, but it all makes you miss Honey's higher energy hip hop pop. Then that comes back with Breakdown and it's not that good either actually.

Close To The Edge

Yes

1/5

The phrase 'tedious wank' gets thrown around gratuitously nowadays, but sometimes it's the only one that fits. Grating vocals, over thought compositions, technically skilled musicians who can't stop flexing, d-grade Tolkein mythology. The interesting moments are all immediately subsumed by a new idea and tone shift, just totally scattered whiplash songs more concerned with being clever than good.

Trio

Dolly Parton

3/5

Gorgeous 3-part vocal harmonies, acoustic bluegrass backing from fiddles and banjo/mandolin/flat picking guitars plus a bit of extra juice from drums and soaring lapsteels, classic folksy country songs about wayward lovers, broken hearts, wandering minds and better days ahead/behind: immaculate vibes. The sappy piano ballad drowning in schmaltzy strings (I've Had Enough) kills the energy out of what's an otherwise well paced and uptempo bittersweet album.

The Real Thing

Faith No More

1/5

It's never a good sign when you find yourself reflexively reaching for the lower volume button. The vocals are so grating they're almost unbearable. The guitarmonies are cool, the riffs are decent and even the funk metal bass has a fun novelty to it, but the the singing is noxious and then he starts sort of rapping. Oof, brutal. The War Pigs cover is good, but the thing about covering an all time great song is that it just throws into relief how bad all your originals are!

Music From Big Pink

The Band

3/5

Another pretty over-rated classic. Hugely influential in orienting 60s rock towards a folksy Americana sound, this album is full of traditional melodies, soul crooning, gospel tinged RnB arrangements and rootsy instrumentation, capturing a bucolic hippy mood. Some good songs, some nice guitar playing, too much organ vamping and a thin voice that I've never felt properly occupies the space created for it. There's also a lot more going on here than the stripped down barn-core aestheics suggest, the proto synth sounding keyboard stuff in particular.

Sheet Music

10cc

1/5

There's a fine line between whimsical and goofy and they fell off it within 2 minutes. Extremely annoying.

Young Americans

David Bowie

3/5

DB must've heard Stevie Wonder and thought he'd have a peice of that. It's all funky clavinet, gospel backup singers, smooth jazz horns and wailing RnB sax. Fame is an all time great song the rest is just a pretty fun genre tribute .

Machine Head

Deep Purple

1/5

It's a shame we can't run the electric grid on tedious 70s rock since it since it seems there are bottomless wells of the stuff.

Physical Graffiti

Led Zeppelin

2/5

Even when I was a big LeZ-head I thought this album was bloated and pretty uninspired. Boring riffs, generic solos, annoying wailing vocals. Lacks the raw power of their first albums or the cool exploratory mood of Houses of the Holy (except for the songs included here cut from that one) - it's just tired and phoned in. All the songs, even the good ones, are too long like warm versions of better ones they've already done.

The Poet

Bobby Womack

3/5

I was in a foul mood when I put this on and it kind of helped to be honest.

Bongo Rock

Incredible Bongo Band

1/5

One of the more coked up novelty records in the history of coked up novelty records. Decently fun, but it gets old fast.

Closer

Joy Division

5/5

TFW Unknown Pleasures isn't bleak enough.

Beach Samba

Astrud Gilberto

1/5

Half an hour of tipsy lullabies, tropical hold music, and the soundtrack to a cutesy wes anderson montage. Sleepy, swishy, swinging subdued jazz and a hushed intimate vocal. Kind of a snoozefest

Innervisions

Stevie Wonder

2/5

I still just can't get excited about Stevie Wonder. The funk brings amazing energy, I recognize the subtlty and complexity of the song-writing, there are some nice melodies and there's a lot of talent on display, but it always leaves me flat. It's fine, nice to have on, but really just does nothing for me and cannot understand the hype.

Movies

Holger Czukay

4/5

A wild dream: full of free associations, digressions and changes of direction. Incredible drumming anchors montaged flights of fancy, playful synth parts, audio samples and crystal clear guitar leads. It has a prog feel to it, but more patient and willing to settle in a groove and let the drums work their trance magic, opening your mind to the collage piled on top. Extremely cool by the pool.

All Things Must Pass

George Harrison

3/5

Too much of an ok thing. Sprawling beyond the confines of Beatles pop songs this is a loose jammy pastoral album with lots of psych, spiritual searching, and bucolic atmospheres. Tender vocals, unhurried pacing, maximalist wall of sound instrumentation but a relatively murky reverby production style, and a clean/acoustic core give it a gentle relaxed soothing but melancholy feel. Bluesy slide and twangy country lapsteels guitar over loads of it for an additional layer of pathos. The melodic style and harmonies are so classic and familiar from the Beatles, but it has a very Big Pink aesthetic that's a big departure. I have a lot of patience for bluesy jams, these are just fine, nothing remarkable, like blind faith or traffic outtakes, or just want a bar band noodles on to warm up. The longest one is best though as it evolves through a few phases in an interesting way, the rest are just 12 bar progressions with solos.

Group Sex

Circle Jerks

4/5

Explosive drumming, punchy riffs, bratty vocals, concise writing, teenage rage and LAlienation, cheap and crappy sounding DIY style. They pretty much perfected the genre on their first attempt.

The Modern Dance

Pere Ubu

4/5

It opens with piercing feedback in one ear and chuck berry riffs in the other and proceeds in an equally eclectic stapled together style. Punk deconstructed and reassemble in pieces, it's sparse and tense, twitchy, nervously kinetic, alternating between thrashing squall, angry free jazz chaos, and hushed reflective hungover meditation. It's not the best post punk album, but they take an early stab at most of the sounds the genre would develop, planting seeds that bloom on dozens of great albums.

Black Monk Time

The Monks

2/5

Ripping garage psych with a prominent organ and a weird approach. Lots of people did the same thing not too long after so it's kind of a tired sound, but credit for being ahead of the pack.

Nothing's Shocking

Jane's Addiction

2/5

High energy, dumb as hell, relentlessly chasing new thrills - like the labrador of bands. Halfway between hair metal and grunge, this is hard rock in party mode, full of wah wah guitar shredding, huge vocals that are more charismatic for being pretty technically limited, and some 80s LA surf punk funk (ala social distortion) from the bass and drums. The recording sounds awful, super muddy and sludgy, doesn't make the most of the cool rhythm guitar sounds. A 35 minute best of combining this and Ritual with the love version of Jane Says would suffice for Jane's Addiction.

Take Me Apart

Kelela

2/5

Futuristic soul. Big on ambience, this is full of lush RnB and glitchy electronic notes that make a deep sombre introspective but also bombastic atmosphere. Emphasis on vibes, feel and groove over hooks. The Björk influence is clear in the moody tension and cold spacey production. Her voice is powerful and expressive, but used more as another textural element than as a pop diva lead. Overlong and samey.

Teenage Head

Flamin' Groovies

1/5

Hippy Americana. It must eco friendly since everything is recycled: second hand blues riffs, reheated country twang, leftover honky-tonk, thrift shop boogie, and a tired Elvis impression. Pretty basic bar band stuff done competently but it's hard to think this was imaginative even at the time and it certainly has little to offer 50+ years later.

Solid Air

John Martyn

3/5

Gorgeous acoustic guitar and a sweetly expressive if limited and nasal voice. The song that sound like Nick Drake is great, the ones that sound like Fairport Convention or Cat Stevens aren't. Some nice funky jazzy moments from the electric piano and electric guitar/sax interplay that goes from poppy Stevie Wonder to dark fusion groove. Get that flute out of here though! Slow and relaxed, warm feeling but pretty sombre thematically. Favorites: over the hill, rather be the devil, dreams by the sea, man in the station

Bad

Michael Jackson

3/5

Extremely uneven - 3 all time greats, pure fun bangers (Bad, Smooth Criminal, The Way You Make me Feel) and then a heaping pile of schmaltzy saccharine bullshit. Noone cares about the ballads, MJ, we're here for the dance hits so cut out the crooning, it's truly awful. The 80s guitar shredding is kind of good and really funny.

Haunted Dancehall

The Sabres Of Paradise

2/5

Easy going electronic background music that combines chill beats to study to with heist movie soundtrack. Apt title - it's like a DJ booth came to life and needed to make music to calm itself down.

Os Mutantes

2/5

Fun psychedlia with lots of zany stuff going on, crazy compositions, great fuzz guitar, and a wild atmosphere. I always find this band incredibly stressful to listen to though, it really puts me on edge - as much as I like this in principle I have yet to find the right context in which to actually enjoy it. Guess you had to be there...

Hysteria

Def Leppard

2/5

Sometimes the most metal thing you can do it makes a new wave album.

The Holy Bible

Manic Street Preachers

1/5

Tedious hard rocking guitar rock with loads of attitude but barely a hook. It's loud and aggressive, but lacking the dynamics or memorbale riffs or artistry to make that interesting. Just mid-tempo, mid-level, noisey but not challenging, angsty, annoying and stressful. Really a slog - have never understood how this band got as big as they did, despite trying a few times!

Remedy

Basement Jaxx

1/5

Spent the morning getting the house ready for a Eurovision party and this seems randomly like the only occasion this album is the perfect one to have on. Eurotrash errands music.

Illmatic

Nas

5/5

Jazzy samples and DJ scratching with boom bap drums make for classic 90s beats - a driving propulsive rhythm paired with relaxed warm sounds. Nas's verses are relentless: non stop rhymes within and between lines, story telling, image conjuring, world building. With an even cadence at just above conversational speed, he barely leaves any space to think and absorb what he's said before he's into the next thing.

Coles Corner

Richard Hawley

3/5

I tried getting into this when it came out but had no interest - found it boring and sappy, but it hits different 20 years later. In the words of philosopher Mark Hoppus, 'I guess this is growin up'. Post-Britpop indie rock crooning is really not a genre that should work, but this wierdly does. Lush orchestral instrumentation and tasteful arrangements for big atmospheric sounds set the stage for tender gentle vocals that stay comfortably within their limited range and warm timbre. The clean guitars are bright and clear as a bell, shimmering with tremelo and echo for a beautiful surf rock effect, picking out pretty counter-melodies. It's all very affected, going for a vintage noire aesthetic and dated grand old big band wall of sound nashville schmaltzy style, but because it's not flashy or pompous like Nick Cave or Tom Waits it doesn't come across as iritating, just someone using a specific set of sounds and styles to realize a project. It still gets a bit boring after a while though, but a great relaxing album. Favorites: Hotel Room, Wait for Me, I Sleep Alone

Africa Brasil

Jorge Ben Jor

4/5

Funky afrobeat rhythms and jazzy Brazilian melodies, it's a very natural combination for high energy psychedelic dance music that goes hard. Hands down my favorite of the Brazilian albums on the list so far (no coincidence as it's as much Lagos as Rio sounding). Even though this is as good as it gets I still don't like Portugese singing - something always feels off key and off kilter about the harmonies and phrasing. But this just has so much percussive force, infectious groove, soul delivery, and sheer charisma to the performance it's undeniable. A highwater mark of global funk.

Fuzzy

Grant Lee Buffalo

2/5

Kind of a cool combination of acoustic and electric guitar sounds for a bit of jangle and a dose of fuzz. Has more of a country folk feel to it than a lot of other 90s alt rock, without going full alt-country. Definitely has the gen x angsty melancholic overwrought emotional range nailed down, an album made for Ethan Hawke to make annoying faces over. Favorites: Grace, Fuzzy

m b v

My Bloody Valentine

2/5

Thick fuzz, heavy reverb, slow tempos and grinding churning rhythms, ethereal vocals and lead guitar melodies struggling to escape the event horizon of the dense sound. Good at what it is - noisy textural psych best played loud on a gloomy evening. A welcome new album from a cult band whose reputation grew lots during a long time away, but not one I'd call essential in any way. A few highlights but also a couple of real torpid stinkers that just draaaaaaag onnnnnnnn and the whole thing is pretty monotonous.

Second Toughest In The Infants

Underworld

3/5

It's so funny how music originally meant for getting off your tits on e at rave is also so good for drowning out the world to really zoom in on a couple of fuck off spreadsheets.

Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space

Spiritualized

5/5

A huge sound surrounds the frail lead vocal which is left alone and raw, overwhelmed and struggling to persist in the turbulence. Quiet pauses and maximalist noise flow beautifully into each other. They do this thing where they're grooving along with as full a sound as you can imagine - a loud space rock band with gospel singers and horns and strings - and then a descending bassline drops in and reveals an entire abyss you've been floating above the entire time and it's pure magic.

L'Eau Rouge

The Young Gods

2/5

Heavy menacing riffs, hard hitting industrial drums, growling guttural throat shredding vocals, some mathy proggy bits. The bits where it all comes together really rip, but there's a lot of it that doesn't that's kind of dull, not enough tension or dynamism, all the menace but without the threat - ruins the suspension of disbelief and it all becomes a bit rediculous and laughable (les enfants, lol). Favorites: Crier les Chiens

Surfer Rosa

Pixies

5/5

Explosive, catchy, furiously fun. It's a perfect blends of the heaviness, speed and dynamics of post-hardcore DIY indie rock with power pop hooks, surf bass + light hearted mood, and post-punk guitar textures + abstract lyrics. Just an unbelievable debut that right from the jump establishes a formula a million other bands have tried to do a million times.

Stripped

Christina Aguilera

1/5

Peak 2002: a TRL video star, expensive production aiming for lush but ultimately kind of chintzy crappy digital sounding, ubiquitous hip hop elements, RnB slow jams, psuedo heavy guitar riffs for no reason with the worst tone imaginable, pop discovering Latinos, horniness as feminism and generic empowerment, ultra low rise jeans and terrible haircuts, all stuffed into a sprawling 78 minutes. Her voice is powerful, she's good at going real low into a growl to gather force for an alto explosion, hitting those glass shattering high notes; it's a strong and pretty varied vocal performance - the ballads are too much though. A couple of good songs but sooo much garbage to wade through - lots just bland and boring but some aggressively bad (Fighter, Cruz, voice within). Favorites: Get Mine Get Yours, Walk Away, Dirrty

Survivor

Destiny's Child

1/5

Generic RnB pop with bland hyper commercial production and an only ok vocal performance at best (harmonies are good, but Beyonce's voice is so bad on this, so nasal and thin - really piercing). There was way better, more fun, more soulful, more interesting sounding RnB in the late 90s than this. If your whole album is constantly returning to a theme you're ripping off from Gloria Gaynor, you really have to do better than this. Opens with three ubiquitous singles that have wormed their way into the collective unconscious through sheer repetition, the rest is pretty boring filler - it just gets worse and worse as it goes on, and it goes on for a while. The most interesting thing is the incoherent psuedo feminist messaging pairing anthemic odes to independence via commodifying your body with demands to put some clothes on to please men. A telling artifact of it's time, but musically there's just nothing to it - this is mostly notable as a footnote in the Beyonce story arc.

Penance Soiree

The Icarus Line

2/5

A minor drop in the wave of millennial garage rock revival. Howling vocals, amazingly scuzzy guitars, big banging drums, driving riffs and touch of electronica. Good fun but pretty generic. A bunch of LA dudes had the brilliant idea of being the Stooges.

Suede

4/5

A mix of big brash joyful rockers with fizzy guitars and a power pop harmonies and oceanic feeling blissful spacey tracks with a floaty sprawling feel. Though they have lots of overlaps with the other big britpop bands - blur's whimsy, the verve's chill psychedelia, pulp's drama, Oasis's catchy hooks - they're carving out their own shoegaze but upbeat glam rock lane. Somehow I missed this the first time around (they really never made it to the US radio) but this is a consistently strong but nicely varied, and great sounding album.

Pyromania

Def Leppard

3/5

It's just so stupid you have to love it. Mid tempo hard rock with solid riffs, precise leads, loads of hooks, and some insanely expensive sounding production. It's before my time so never really internalized this stuff, but can really see how it would become a ubiquitous deeply imprinted part of dumb guy culture.

Surrealistic Pillow

Jefferson Airplane

3/5

Hard to separate from every cliche boomer montage of hippies, the 60s, San Francisco, and all the rest, but it's iconic for a reason. The fuzzy garage blues psych style, gnarly guitars, a bit of a groovy groove and booming pair of pipes are so good. The twee folksy stuff not so much - slow, tepid and meandering. Favorites: DCBA 25, somebody to love, 3/5 of a mile, embryonic journey, plastic fantastic lover

Under Construction

Missy Elliott

3/5

A fun album full of choppy keyboard and drum machine RnB pop rap beats in big party mode, braggadocios horny rhymes, and all-star cameos. Mixed in with some reflective personal tracks about embracing life in a new way the wake of loss. Too many annoying and weirdly defensive spoken interludes. Not as good and not as many undeniable hits as So Addictive but still a good time.

good kid, m.A.A.d city

Kendrick Lamar

4/5

The prestige TV of 2010s music: drawn out multi level storytelling with plenty of sex and violence, social commentary via personal coming of age narrative, flashy high end production, self consciously artsy, expertly assembled with some real virtuoso performances, building tension that drags a bit in the middle, loved by middle brow critics for its gritty authenticity.

Brilliant Corners

Thelonious Monk

5/5

Peaceful but disquieting. Monk plays with a stuttering skittish rhythm, pausing unexpectedly, tripping and catching up, emphasizing beats you weren't ready for and holding a rest a beat longer than usual. This is all most evident on the solo piece 'I Surrender, Dear' where it's him and the piano and he's free to riff without a bass/drum waiting on him trying to keep time. The blues and swing pieces are classic hard bop, warm and lively with hints of dissonance from the piano shading the tone and pushing new harmonic interpretations of the melodies.

Live At The Harlem Square Club

Sam Cooke

5/5

Explosive vocals that somehow achieve a soaring growl and deliver 1000 volts of raw charisma, backed by a hot hot RnB band that's really cooking: wailing horns, clean bluesy guitar fills, hopping bass. Most of the songs aren't that even that great, but really who cares with these incendiary vocals?! What a performance.

Giant Steps

The Boo Radleys

4/5

An eclectic band moving between the different rock guitar sounds of the day (thick reverb soaked shoegaze textures, jangly indie pop strummy, nostalgic garage psych riffs and wah wah leads, crunchy britpop chords) and adding in horns and flutes and dub bass for a big hard charging sprawling record. The vocals have a Power pop melodic sensibility and a 60s harmonic sound paired with an experimental approach to recording with modulation and distortion. Opens very strongly, but a handful of slow quiet meandering tracks in the final third mean it drags on a bit too long - should've ended at Lazarus. There's so much great guitar on this, nothing flashy but perfectly delivered parts and tones.

Violator

Depeche Mode

3/5

A deep dark synthetic world of distorted reflections bouncing off shimmering glossy black surfaces. A band I wish I liked more than I actually do. Love the cold metallic vibe and funkless disco rhythms but get a bit bored, the tempos are all too similar and even though there's slow build up and intensification, there's not enough tension in the composition. Favorites: policy of truth, enjoy the silence, world in your eyes

Abbey Road

Beatles

3/5

No wonder they broke up, half the band wants to write wiggles level Oompa doompa doo music for toddlers. Some cool synth stuff, the dark spacey grooves on the A side are really good, Something is a gem, and lots of impressive studio wizardry, but too many annoying novelty songs and clever but empty songwriting moves.

Deja Vu

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young

5/5

Is this the capstone album of the hippy era? Pairing the psych blues rock sound with the rustic Americana country turn, CSNY embodies the back to the land bucolic aesthetic, a shift away from the more confrontational (or at least commentary) 60s sound to an inward looking search for the good life and concern with the outward appearances of rebellion (I almost cut my hair). Amazing vocal performances both from soloists but especially the group harmonies. I love Stills and Young exchanging gnarly filthy guitar leads under the whole thing, and the interplay between the acoustics in the rhythm section. A Jerry Garcia cameo (pedal steel on teach your children) doesn't hurt either! The recording is so nice too - there's so much space between the bass parts in the low end and the soaring highs of the vocals harmonies, and each instrument has its own room to come through and contribute to the whole.

Foxbase Alpha

Saint Etienne

3/5

Surprisingly effective pairing of acid house rhythms and indie pop sensibility for a chilled out bit of emo dance music. Warm and bright and optimistic feeling.

New Wave

The Auteurs

2/5

Very generic 90s pop rock. There are some nice guitar sounds (some jangle, some arpegios, some fizzy leads, some big sweeping chords) but the vocals are whispy and pretty weak and the songs are nothing special. It's all extremely mid-tempo and middle of the road - it's not abrasive or dissonant enough to have any real tension or dynamism and not hooky enough to work be anthemic or catchy pop. A strange inclusion since there's so much much better 90s indie to pick from.

Smile

Brian Wilson

1/5

I just don't get the hype with this one. It's not like the back story is even that interesting, people are just so over invested in dull 60s lore and desperate to rehabilitate a lost genius. The album itself has lots of sophisticated harmonies, thoughtful arrangements, and tons of dense layers to the production, but what does it amount to? A wishy washy hour of schmaltz that goes nowhere - incredibly boring. Good vibrations' inclusion only underscores how lacking the rest of it is. Favorites: wind chimes, child is father, good vibrations

Microshift

Hookworms

3/5

Solid synth indie with strong beats, krautrock drumming, riffs that are a throwback to 00s post punk revival guitar, some garage psych fuzz bits, classic synth tones and programming, lots of energy throughout and a singer that suits the music and doesn't stand out for good or bad. They're doing a very generic sound as well as can be. This is such a fun kind of band, people are always going to keep having them, making ok albums and playings party shows that get the crowd dancing. There should be (and kind of is) one in every town at all times and once in a while one of them like MGMT will strike gold with a banger that goes huge and brings a lot more energy/attention to the scene so it starts to permeate the whole pop landscape before receding back to baseline.Some good stuff on this album, but nothing bangs hard enough to break containment.

Space Ritual

Hawkwind

4/5

An attempt to blast off into outer space that can't escape their own thick clouds of smoke. One of the most stoned albums of all time, a pothead triumph. Lemmy's bass is the driver, picking out forceful droning blues rock riffs that ebb and flow and build intensity before breaking out into a euphoric blissed out groove. The guitars make a huge fuzzy reverby echoey noise, billowing smoke and frothing atmosphere that occasionally coheres into a melody or a solo before diffusing back to ambience. Pulsating whirling synths, gnarly sax lines that amp up the energy, propulsive drumming. Big dumb fun, an inspiration to thousands of basement rocker psychonauts all across the land.

I’ve Got a Tiger By the Tail

Buck Owens

3/5

Skipping the schmaltzy Nashville strings and opting instead for a straight from the road house honky tonk style with huge twangy guitars, soaring pedal steels, Appalachian fiddle, and a jumped up bass, this is a landmark of rock-n-roll infused California country meant for dancing and boozing and weeping. Great performances, especially the honey sweet tenor vocal and Don Rich's spanking telecaster sound. Classic songs that have been played a billion times, but none are my favorites in the genre, other than the bonus track live 'Act Naturally', whoooo boy!

Horses

Patti Smith

4/5

First and foremost a collection of poetry that wears it's musical influences (Mick Jagger's white bluesman vocals, Jim Morrison and Bob Dylan's mystical rock poet persona, the Velvet Underground's dark psychadelic chaos, Television's spidery guitars) brazenly. An interesting pivot between the hippie late 60s and the punk mid 70s, lots of this is like New York Dolls and Richard Hell's version of bluesy old fashioned rock sped up, glammed up, made thematically darker, more personal and raunchier (though she definitely didn't take on their taste for short sharp songs). Other parts have a more polished kind of new-wave sound with herky jerky rhythms and guitars that sound almost like synths. Some of it is more stripped back and nearly folksy, but piano based, and leaning towards an arena friendly Fleetwood Mac sound. Ecclectic, but coheres around a) her voice, which definitely takes the punk approach of not needing to be very good technically to be charismatic and to deliver the lyrics, which are definitely her real emphasis, and b) her persona, the ultimate scenster, an act of self-crafting and projection which is the album's main accomplishment. I've tried with this album a few times over the years and never really cared about it either way, but like it a lot more this time around. Maybe it's from randomly being in the middle of reading Please Kill Me, where she plays a staring role (but comes of pretty badly - just an ludicrous hipster making insufferable pronouncements about the future of poetry being the tired Rolling Stones) and having more context for it.

Fear Of Music

Talking Heads

5/5

Brimming with nervous kinetic energy, nonstop post punk grooves, swirling ambient menace and explosive joyful melody, darkness and light, whimsy and paranoia, irony and earnestness.

G. Love And Special Sauce

G. Love & Special Sauce

2/5

I saw G Love at a festival; it was the late afternoon of the last day and they were on before a band I was there to see on a secondary stage. It was hot as hell and even muggier. They were the perfect band to listen to while we sprawled out exhausted on the floor desperate for shade, drank as much cold anything as we could, chatted at the back of the crowd, and waited for something better to come on. They are a perfect band for exactly this scenario. Philadelphia's answer to sublime, bluesy singer songer writer acoustic guitar funk with a bit of hip hop style and bit of 90s lo-fi slacker rock attitude. Laid back low key unobtrusive good time party music.

Sheer Heart Attack

Queen

1/5

All of the annoying parts of prog, glam pop, and hard rock melded together into a seamless half hour of irritating, bloated, pompous arena rock from the most overrated band of all time. The guitar tone is the only good bit and he doesn't even do anything especially interesting with it except the harmonized lead on Misfire - otherwise its just boring shredding and medium riffs that're always quickly subsumed by a new movement in the song from a bassoon or a choir or something else borrowed from classical music that for some reason is impressive to simpletons. Everything about it is showy but vacuous. At least they aren't singing about wizards and trolls anymore.

Happy Trails

Quicksilver Messenger Service

2/5

One of a million bands from the 60s psych wave, but on the trippier acid jams side more than the garage rock side. This all starts with a basic blues groove on the Bo Diddley beat and a chugging choogle from the rhythm guitar backing a heap of noodle from the lead guitar, who has the classic psych sound: sticking to blues scales but delivering a deliciously nasty tone from a fuzzy SG through a loud amp, modulated with wammy, wah wah and a whirling Wurlitzer. The bass is the best bit though, ripping jazzy walking lines with a rock swagger. The jams rise and fall and move through a few segments with tonal and stylistic shifts until it disintegrates into a sparse feedback and noise jam before coming back as a rave up. I'm as predisposed as can be to enjoy this sort of thing and only found it only fine. Maybe more accessible but way less exciting than the same year's Live/Dead which does the dark spacey psych and the rave blues both way better. Mainstays of the San Francisco scene, I think they're very much a you had to be there kind of band, eclipse by their contemporaries. Favorite: Cavalry

Scream, Dracula, Scream

Rocket From The Crypt

1/5

Ska punk straight out of a Tony Hawk game. Expensively produced with lots of overdubs and a very polished 90s alt rock radio friendly sound that leans a bit Springsteen anthemic at times, but mostly stays in the nightmare venn diagram overlap of green day and the bosstones. Decent guitars parts, horns complementing the bass parts and adding harmonies, very whiney vocals, big drums. The songs are over-written with lots of changing parts and stop start style. It's really pretty annoying.

Like Water For Chocolate

Common

3/5

Common is only a B- rapper in terms of flow and style, he has a monotone delivery and pretty repetitive cadence, but is a good story teller and expressive writer on the conscious/intellectual side of the spectrum, though that’s all still pretty basic as far as it goes. The stars here are the producers who’ve put together an incredible set of beats, J Dilla especially, who has that warm soul/gospel forward style with a bit of vintage crackle, funky bass parts, and nostalgic feel good atmosphere. Others bring a jazzier feel or an old school boom bap + scratching style to it so there’s some variety across the (long!) album.

Heartattack And Vine

Tom Waits

1/5

Ok, we get, you're drunk, wallowing in self-pity, and mad at everyone the world - get a grip, loser. His whole persona is meant to be this romanticized self destructive heart on his sleeve lovelorn guy, but in reality he'd be the most tedious bitter self involved dipshit you'd get stuck sitting next to on a Greyhound. He's the tragic figure in a movie where you know there's no hope of turning his arc around and you're just waiting to see how he gets put out of his misery and stops torturing everyone around him. He's good at writing songs painting this one specific, and wildly overdone, literary figure. The thing about making your lyrics the main thing but having a ludicrous kermit the frog on ludes sounding voice is that it's impossible to listen past how you're singing to hear what you're saying. There's no point having the genius mind of a poet and a silly voice deep into self-parody. Jersey Girl is a perfect example of how this album fails: it starts good, has a very cool feel to it and the clear cutting guitar sound is really pretty, and even the strings are well done, but it's ruined as soon as the vocals come in. If you can get past the voice there's a pretty good blues band playing on most of these songs, some decent atmospheric grooves, cool organ parts, and tasteful guitar work.

Legalize It

Peter Tosh

3/5

I'd have chosen the more politically strident and musically progressive Equal Rights which offers a more unique sound than Legalize It but, dubious medical claims aside, Tosh's debut solo record is still a solid roots reggae album from the genre's golden era. Tosh has a great vocal style: an immediately identifiable voice, cadence and phrasing paired with a charismatic delivery. The funky clavinet is amazing, the bass grooves deep as hell, the guitars are right in the pocket, really the whole band so dialed in it's joyous. A few corny keyboard sounds on a couple of tracks only slightly spoil the fun, and while warm and chill, the album lacks the driving energy and fierce urgency Tosh brings to his next one. Favorites: Brand New Second Hand, Burial, No Sympathy

Seventh Tree

Goldfrapp

2/5

Synth and drum machine based dreamy whimsical psychedelia with acoustic guitars, cellos, flutes and other organic instruments added to the mix to bring a natural sound for the nature theme. The main musical aspiration is creating ambience and modulating mood, layering shifting textures harmonies and effects to maintain a pleasant woozy vibe to float around on melodically. Extremely coffee shop coded electrofolk, this is from just before the Spotify driven rise of ambient playlist indie neo-muzak, but really anticipates the core of that style: breathy vocals, washed out synths, gentle acoustics, sleepy tempos, mellow unobtrusive calming vibes.

Vulgar Display Of Power

Pantera

4/5

They're jackhammering the road outside my window and this is the perfect thing to have on my headphones to drown it out. Pantera takes the speed and aggressiveness of thrash metal and puts a bit of southern stank on it with riffs that have a sludgy heavy swing to them. You can see why the Nu Metal guys stole this formula and just popped it up a bit to make it a touch more accessible. Fun guitar and bass playing from the full blast high octane solos that never overstay their welcome to the full bore downtuned chugging. Punishing drumming, he's kicking the shit out of the kit. The vocals range from agonized wretching screams to horrifying guttural growls, spewing out mad at the world dumb guy lyrics - good stuff, shame he's a shithead nazi. Ending with a terrible ballad is a hilarious move - who is that for?! lol

Achtung Baby

U2

4/5

Easy to mock, harder to admit they're actually extremely good at writing overwrought anthems that work on you despite yourself. After an incredible run in the 80s this is a re-invention for a new era, but since they reinvented themselves to be the omnipresent bland wallpaper of a slowly fading genre (radio friendly pop rock), it's their last good album. Three huge hits are great, most of the rest is decent unobjectionable stuff, but there's a lot of it to get through - they really are a greatest hits band. The less said about the Fly the better though - a vehicle to launch Bono's new persona as 'guy with a big pair of sunglasses', what a twat. Like the much better War album, this bears the marks of its time and place, 1990 Berlin; it's the soundtrack of an earnest optimisitc post-coldwar liberalism anticipating the end of history, celebrating universalism, unification one-ness. One especially - the rest has a bit more ambient darkness and introspection to it. Daniel Lanois has them sounding great - huge, sweeping, polished - pure bombast. The rhythms nod toward acid house as they're starting to adopt some electronica elements here they'd soon dive way deeper into. The guitars are bright and chiming with a bit of break up scuzziness, some wah wah wildness, all echoing through the mix with that distinctive Edge AC30 tone and melodic phrasing.

Mask

Bauhaus

4/5

Dark and moody but having a good time, surprisingly funky at times, snarling and aggressive at others - a land of contrasts pairing miserable despairing vocals and angry disco drum machines. Favorites: kick in the eye, x-ray eyes, passion

Connected

Stereo MC's

3/5

An English guy rapping over acid house sounds like a nightmare but it weirdly works. An artifact of an optimistic experimental time in music as the quirky strangeness of rave culture blossomed and seeped into the UK mainstream . It's full of uplifting rhythms, pulsating beats, fun sounds, and hooky anthemic lines. Surprisingly great.

Ingenue

k.d. lang

2/5

Some nice twangy touches and soaring lapsteels parts dress up a slow set of songs. Some samba, some accordion, some noir, some warm relaxing moments, some schmaltzy annoying bits. Favorite: save me

All That You Can't Leave Behind

U2

1/5

Beautiful Day was so ubiquitous on radio, tv, ads, public space when this came out I almost have a nostalgic fondness for it just from sheer pavlovian force of repetition. The rest of doesn't benefit from this. Lots of great guitar sounds, but they're all wasted on an album composed almost entirely of insipid therapy platitudes, self help affirmations and car commercial anthems. The formula of minor chord -> major chord plus lots of delay and a big sound is the cheap spirituality of megachurch worship music, creating an ultimately empty sense of oneness and catharsis. In the 80s U2 used to be able to pull this off, bits it's so hollow here. It's so blandly uplifting it's not just grating, but insulting - it's music to cheer up people who are so simple they can actually be cheered up by saying, 'hey cheer up mate'. Oh ok!

The Atomic Mr Basie

Count Basie & His Orchestra

3/5

Fun high-energy high tempo big band dance music with some amazingly raunchy sax solos, swinging beats, walking bass, playful back and forth between the parts of the band, and, in the slower moments, some mellow moods. I can't be the only one that kept expecting to hear the Family Guy song half the time.

Merriweather Post Pavilion

Animal Collective

2/5

Have tried many times but never got the hype with this album. Dense layering of synth textures and rhythms echoing around a big reverby space with all the digital bells and whistles thrown into the mix, combined with breathy multi tracked vocals weaving in and out of each other among the synth leads. It's a trippy sound that floats and jangles and pulses in a bright sunny haze through a set of meandering strangely baggy seemingly (but not actually) structureless songs. There some cool sounding stuff in here, but they remain an emperor's new clothes band for me.

Songs The Lord Taught Us

The Cramps

3/5

Elvis revivalists with punk rock energy, swampy twang, spooky horny vibes, and a decent sense of humor. The guitar sounds are great, they nail the tremelo/reverb surf style. A few songs make for a fun addition to a playlist but listening to a full album starts to feel like wearing your halloween costume into November.

Double Nickels On The Dime

Minutemen

4/5

Bass driven riffs with a jazzy funky hoping style and gritty tone, propulsive energy from the drums, slashing chords and gnarly leads from the guitar, all surprisingly clean and bright. Eclectic influences distilled into a truly unique blend of visionary big hearted explosive and emotive outside art post punk. A singular band that left a huge mark from their sound to their ethos. It's a tough album to sink your teeth into since it's so big and sprawling but all the pieces are so small and elusive - it takes a few listens to sink into the mood and to latch onto a few highlight tracks and let the whole thing grow on you.

Dear Science

TV On The Radio

3/5

One of the canonical albums of this decade of indie rock, but I think I wasn’t really paying attention when it hit, so it kind of passed me by. This is uptempo and driving, with the synth playing a dominant role and the bass delivering a kicking beat. It’s hard to pick out what the guitar is doing as it kind of disappears into the richly textural and layered sound - like Animal Collective but more structured and funky. A masterful studio production with lots of elements coming together in every section. The songs don’t linger in one place too long, peaking into big lush choruses transitioning into contemplative instrumental breaks, verses coming and going. It risks veering into the irritating prog zone, but stays safely away in the end.

Third/Sister Lovers

Big Star

1/5

Don't get the hype with this one. Artsy power pop with chamber arrangements, acoustic guitars, some slide, and lots of frail vulnerable vocals. It's slow and plaintive, reflexive and tender, but definitely does not rock at all. People seem enchanted by the backstory, but the album itself doesn’t do anything.

...The Dandy Warhols Come Down

The Dandy Warhols

3/5

A bit of strummy jangle, a bit of brit pop swagger, a bit of shoegazey swirling noisey atmosphere, a bit of psych modulated drone, a bit of warm shaggy fuzz, a bit of college rock goofiness, a bit of winking throwback garage rock nostalgia, a bit of power pop harmony, a very stupid band name. Hey, they're out there having fun being a pretty decent guitar band, not hurting anyone (except themselves it seems), but not a whole going on. They have great taste in music and in cool vintage guitars to go with their a classic PNW hipster aesthetic - but a good example of how taste doesn't necesarily transmute into inspiration. The mythos outstrips the music. Would anyone care about this band if it wasn't for Dig! and the drama around their friendship/feud with another band with a very stupid name? Favorites: Orange, Every Day Should Be A Holiday, Good Morning, The Creep Out

The Stone Roses

5/5

Upbeat and dreamy, triumphant and bittersweet, anthemic and intimate - this album is pure joy. Tied for the best Manchester album (with Queen is Dead, Unknown Pleasures, and Definitley Maybe). John Squire's guitar playing is sublime, the grooves are undeniable, Ian Brown's singing is blissfully naive and direct, a perfomance that demands you belt out the hooks at the top of your lungs along with him. I Am the Resurrection is the best break up song of all time - so good it almost makes you want to get dumped just to really feel it. Noone could ever make an album that captures this energy again, even them.

Chemtrails Over The Country Club

Lana Del Rey

3/5

LdR's music dwells in the abject psychosis of Americana, surfing its fantasies and detourning its tropes. Chemtrails over the country club is a great line in this vein - speaking to both the ambient toxicity that haunts the American suburbs but also the deranged conspiratorial ways of thinking about the disquieting latent menace of living in the heart of empire. Her voice is whispy and ethereal; the melodies are seductive and elusive, approaching familiar moves before turning away. No hooks here, just mood. The music is the same, floaty swells of piano and acoustic guitar with strings and slides and backing vocals that rise and and fall. This album doesn't really have a stand out track and gets pretty samey, a bit boring with ballad after ballad and no beats to be found - she should be on the list, but this the wrong choice. In 2015 a friend said LdR is music for dumb guys with smart girlfriends and refused to elaborate, but it makes sense.

Sunday At The Village Vanguard

Bill Evans Trio

4/5

The piano does what you'd expect in a jazz trio, but the drums and especially the bass go way beyond expectations, going nuts, frankly. Group improvisation premised on deep listening, counter melodic interactions and constant manipulation of rhythm and harmony - goes way beyond a rhythm section supporting a soloist. 40 minutes of virtuoso bass playing isn't for everyone, but if it's your jam this is fucking marmalade!

Scott 2

Scott Walker

2/5

Cinematic crooning with a big orchestral sound, luckily some good warm horns to balance the cheesy strings.so it doesn't get too schmaltzy. Great baritone voice and an impressive performance, but it's pretty boring - drama without fun.

Ramones

4/5

An album that hits like a big huff of glue. Basic teeny bopper rock and roll played louder faster harder and beyond the competence of the band, so sloppier. Catchy hooks, close harmonies, boundless bounding energy. Very funny how they mix angsty teenage stuff with songs about turning tricks in midtown.

Slippery When Wet

Bon Jovi

1/5

A dangerously combustible mix of hair spray, pure cocaine, industrial cynicism, and half remembered Springsteen songs. I've known this album as anything other than a corny joke to bellow along with when it the hits come on the radio - three singalong karaoke mega jams that are undeniably fun despite being way overplayed and incredibly crap. Listening through in full I realize that even the hits are way too long and the joke wears off after the first chorus, but the song keeps going, and goooooooooing. The rest is 80s pop metal filler with an emphasis on the pop - the metal is exclusively the palm muted riffs and squealing pinch harmonics on the guitar. It sucks at such a deeply fundamental it's almost good. Almost...

Nevermind

Nirvana

5/5

The second album that was ever my favorite album, this is a formative one for forming my tastes and preferences so I'm basically incapable of any critical distance. One thing I'm struck by listening now is how damn good it sounds. It's pretty incredible how cleanly recorded such a dirty band can be and how much difference that makes. The bass comes clanging through powerfully, the guitars are drenched in fizzy distortion but sound sharp and bright, the drums are hard and heavy but all totally distinct, the vocals are screeching and frenzied but stand out crisply in the mix. It means you can turn it up LOUD to get the full effect without it turning into an indistinct muddy mess. It's incredibly ungrungey really. Compare this to something musically similar like Dinosaur Jr or Husker Du who have great songs, loud quiet dynamics, and heaps of distortion, but who's records have a layer of sludge to them making them feel more distant and inaccessible. Nevermind has clean and corporate production that oddly really lets the songs get more in your face and in your head.

Music

Madonna

1/5

Madonna suffering from a seriously bad case of the Y2K bug. It sounds like she listened to a bunch of 90s electronic alt rock (Beck, Portishead, Beta Band, Stereolab) and thought, oh I'll have a go at that. The electro pop stuff is pretty solid, if uninspired, high spec dance music as you'd expect from a standard bearer of the genre and some of the chilled out mellow stuff is decent, but what the hell is this acoustic strummy pseudo Sheryl Crow stuff ('I deserve it') and auto-tuned trip hop ('nobody's perfect')?! Awful.

Risque

CHIC

3/5

Sick bass lines and ultra tight super compressed clean rhythm guitars bring unprecedented levels of funk energy to the cheesy AF disco beats, corny synths, and schmaltzy strings. The ballads are a huge drag, but there's no beating the uptempo tracks on this for pure dance energy. The songs are all way too long, but that's just to keep the dancefloor pumping.

Music in Exile

Songhoy Blues

3/5

Trancey blues with cool interlocking guitar parts, driving bass and drum parts, and a youthful up-tempo rock energy. Not sure why there's such a boundless appetite for this kind of samey genre in the festival circuit, but it's much more exciting music than dad blues rock, so the more the merrier.

Band On The Run

Paul McCartney and Wings

2/5

All the talent, production wizardry, and cocaine in the world and this is what he comes up with?

The Doors

3/5

When Robbie Krieger's snakey Byzantine SG leads, Ray Manzarek's swirling organ take center stage, and Jim Morrison shuts the fuck up and they're actually a decent blues psych band with the classic 60s California sound. The trouble is he rarely does since he's constantly wailing on and on about little girls.

Teen Dream

Beach House

2/5

Airey upbeat and ambient dreamy indie made for chilled out coffee shop background music playlists - pleasantly woozy and unobtrusive, pretty, light, lush with energy from the bass, style from the synths, and heartfelt earnestness from the vocals - but ultimately kind of boring empty purely mood music.

Destroyer

KISS

1/5

An Alice Cooper parody act who took themselves seriously, Kiss always seemed to me like the band from a musical about a hard rock band and this is exactly album that a glam band from a musical would make. Competently made by people who know the genre and know how to take all of the stupid gimmics of a hard rock band and dial them up to 11 for dramatic effect. The only good thing about this is that these songs aren't quite as ground to death by radio overplay as their bigger hits.

Black Sabbath

5/5

Ozzy wailing "Oh no, no, please, God, help me" brought an entire genre into being. Taking the blues rock power trio formula of the 60s UK bands and slowing it down, sludging it up, deepening the riffs, magnifying the latent sense of the menace and terror, Black Sabbath create an incredible feeling of ominous doom, of bleak despair, and black magic, capturing the folk horror affect flittering around the margins of late industrial civilzation. Ozzy and Tony Iommi get a lot of recognition, but listenting to this I'm struck by the power of Geezer Butler (who has to be in the bass pantheon with John Entwhistle, Jack Bruce, and John Paul Jones) - just pure thunder coming off his fingers as these basslines rumble down.

The Sounds Of India

Ravi Shankar

4/5

Long form, patient music that unfolds gradually and experiencially. Gorgeous meditative stuff, it works perfectly to quiet the world and let you focus in and zone out. While the improvisations and melodic flair give you something to pay attention to consciously the the repetitions and drones encourage the mind to wander, a delicate balance of presence and abscence. The drumming and rhythms intensify and relax building and releasing tension.

Headquarters

The Monkees

1/5

Worthless pop culture flotsam. The Beatles are already basically just music for children, so why would a kids' show pastiche act of them be anything other than a childish born-outdated disposable bauble?

This Nation’s Saving Grace

The Fall

4/5

Spikey angular guitar noise, bouncy grinding bass and snarling sarcastic vocals. What a horrible racket! And there's an incoherent mumbling crank drunkenly rambling all over it! Stupid rock and roll perfection.

Doggystyle

Snoop Dogg

4/5

Instantly recognizable thanks to the pairing of Snoop's distinctive flow and Dr Dre's signature g-funk production. Parliament funkadelic really deserves credit for how hard these beats hit! Catchy hits, decent filler, and tons of meme worthy stuff from izzle to bowowow to money on my mind to sippin on gin and juice to what's my name to the swizzley sounds. He'd never remotely reach these heights again - it's hard to imagine that this is the album that's the basis of an insanely enduring 30 year career as a dominant if gimmicky pop culture figure weed guy who'll endorse anything and turn up to any event.

Eternally Yours

The Saints

4/5

Punk bones but college rock flesh, with jangly REM guitars and horns filling out the glam punk NY Dolls inspired sound, a slacker drawl singing style, and some clean power pop hooks complementing the overdriven four-chord garage rock riffs. Extremely effective straight ahead rock and roll, the less said about that harmonica the better though.

My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts

Brian Eno

5/5

Amos Tutola's novel is set in the middle of the traffic between the real world and the mythic mystical world, it's about multiplicity and transformation, hallucinatory subverted expectations and the substances like palm wine that lubricate metaphysical traffic. Taking its name from Tutola, this album is thematically similar - full of polyrhythms and multi-layered pulsating textures that shift and slip as they take shape, funk grooves and afrobeat patterns that hit an infinite repeating delay loop, chants and dream like samples and snippets. It's magical stuff, imaginatively conceived and perfectly executed.

LP1

FKA twigs

3/5

A glacier of an album. Icey cold and geologically slow moving, creaking cracking and glitching rhythms, an ethereal whispered falsetto blizzard blowing across the surface while a deep timeless calm melts under intense pressure within, bluer and bluer the further you listen down the cracks.

Murder Ballads

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

3/5

He's very effective at creating this cinematic film noire mood musically to convey the style and atmosphere to go with his dark storytelling songs. Dark bass grooves, clinking piano hooks, huge echoey drums, tremolo guitars and light orchestral touches. He's also very effective at using his voice to create the main character/narrator: a wretched debauched staggering low life inhabiting a nasty urban underbelly. Wierd mismatch between the album and the cover though. His voice is less grating than Tom Waits, but it's the same deal basically. This is the best of his I've heard so far.

Back to Mystery City

Hanoi Rocks

1/5

Twin guitar glam rock bordering on hair metal (but a very soft metal, like aluminum). Pretty generic mid-tempo beats, no real riffs or gnarly solos or any of the sheer absurd excess that would make this fun, instead it’s random harmonicas, reverse delay effects, and chugging nothingness. An 80s Finnish Cheap Trick that’s barely a weak copy of the Scorpions. “Until I get You” is pretty good TBH

Bug

Dinosaur Jr.

4/5

A bridge between the post hardcore indie rock of the 80s and the slacker post grunge alt rock of the 90s, Dinosaur Jr combine hard driving aggressive sound with shy introspective vocals. The album's sound is all sludgy noise, shaggy riffs, muffled production, explosive dynamics, off the wall guitar parts. It's a thick impenetrable noise that obscures lots of surprisingly catchy hooks and big choruses that stumble out of the feedback and fuzz. On paper they should be a favorite band, but I've never liked them quite as much as I feel I should - but even so, this album rips. Favorites: Budge, they always come, freak scene,

Red Dirt Girl

Emmylou Harris

3/5

Warm relaxed folksy country with an acoustic guitar and EH's beautiful voice at the heart of arrangements fleshed out atmospherically with echoey dirty electric guitars, droning baritone parts, textural piano/organs,.and some perfect vocal harmonies. Dark sombre and contemplative songs, full of grief and loneliness.

Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

3/5

Vintage Americana with a couple of incredible hooks and guitars that have jangled on the radio and movies for 50 years. Crispy clean production that just sounds amazing. High highs that are overfamiliar but still rip and then a lot of pretty boilerplate 70s rock. He's definitely a Greatest Hits artist - has a lot of them, but they're spread out over a ton of albums over several decades...

Frampton Comes Alive

Peter Frampton

1/5

Some nifty guitar playing on some bland as hell pop rock. The talk box is a fun gimmic for a few minutes. Everything about this was done better by better bands, but it was SO commercially dominant and culturally ubiquitous so you get why it gets included in lists like this (especially by guitar rock biased critics who treat this more seriously than other disposable bubblegum pop just because there's a Les Paul involved) even if it doesn't really stand up.

Olympia 64

Jacques Brel

2/5

It's so funny how good France is at all culture except for music. Art, philosophy, film, literature, architecture, photography, fashion, food: they're up there with the greats - the course of 20th c culture passes through Paris and its colonies. But Daft Punk/Air aside, they're total duds musically - so much so that their best guy, French Sinatra, is Belgian! Maybe they're too addicted to their own language to really let music do it's thing. That's why Chanson and Hip Hop have been their preferred genres, poems set to music. Anyway, this album is a pretty fun one - a great expressive voice full of drama delivering the verses with full force, accompanied by loungey piano, cafe-ass accordion, some light bass touches. It has a very cartoony animated feel to it contrasting the lyrics' dark take on modern life and love.

John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band

John Lennon

3/5

Since the Beatles went from teeny bopper love songs to hokey novelty songs about Polythene Pam and Mean Mr Mustard they never had much scope to explore more mature themes, so their first wave of solo albums saw an explosion of more personal reflexive confessional material. It's a great album about a guy looking to find his peace and realizing he can't because of his mum, religion, childhood, class and career and that he has a lot of shit to work out. The best part is his voice: raw, broken up, hoarse screams that really push the raw, broken, emotive content of the songs to a higher level. I loved this album as an annoying teenage atheist but am less into it as a slightly less annoying adult atheist.

Home Is Where The Music Is

Hugh Masekela

4/5

Bluesy, funky, silksy smooth, warmly easy going jazz that brings together fusion sounds, cuban rhythms, big band song structures and brass harmonies in the heads, and soulful playing in the solos. The electric piano and rhodes tones and playing is especially great both in the lead or comping under the sax/horn parts. They settle into some great deep grooves on several tracks with spacious bass parts that leave tons of room for the soloists to go off. It's a fairly accessible jazz record that easily fades to background, but is worth paying close attention to for all the interplay and improvisational expressivity. Favorites: Maesha, Maseru, Inner Crisis

Sex Packets

Digital Underground

2/5

The last gasp of the second wave of hip hop - lots of the basic nursery rhyme cadence in the raps but with seeds of the soul & funk sample heavy dj scratching boom bap /proto g-funk style, the wordy flow and interplay of Native Tongues, and the sing songy pop choruses and dance breaks that would soon blow up mc hammer, naughty by nature and vanilla ice. Dumb concept album stuff, but hey at least it's not another rock opera about a sci fi dystopia where it's illegal to rock. Favorites: freaks of the industry, underwater rimes

A Seat at the Table

Solange

3/5

Warm relaxed neo-soul jams with organic lush instrumentation and deep RnB grooves paired with some high tech production and computer drum tracks. Horns, guitars, keyboards, and lots of backup singers - it all has a chilled out hanging out feel to it. Nice features from Q Tip and Lil Wayne add to this feel. Solange's vocals are fluttering falsettos and altos, whispered and sung in fleeting lines that float on the beats. Ephemeral and ethereal, it's all vibes and no hooks - there's nothing as good as the amazing 'Losing You' on here, but it's a jazzy laid back time. Interludes are annoying, trite vox pop rambling cliches.

Felt Mountain

Goldfrapp

3/5

Slow cinematic and moody, this combines pre-rock loungey jazz with big orchestral production and post-rock atmospherics with emphasis on texture and tension - these two moments are merged through the filter of late 90s ambient electronica and downtempo trip hop beats.

Repeater

Fugazi

5/5

Tense, taught, and explosive songs from the guys who perfected hardcore and invented emo. By taking their foot off the accelerator they found a way to make the music more intense, to capture a wider range of feelings, to reproduce more moods, to express something even more angry, frustrated, agonized, and charged. They shifted from the guys lashing out wildly to harnessing a latent, seething, aggression with a purity of focus. The rhythm section is the key - locked in grooves with surprising funk play against the dissonant thrashing from the guitars and anguished screams of the vocals. The best thing to ever come out of Washington DC.

Tubular Bells

Mike Oldfield

1/5

Mike... Mike, Mike, Mike! Mike? Mike. Mike! Mike?! Mike! MIKE!! Yeah, ok hi Mike, I think we got it, the bells, they're tubular, yeah, no I get it, tubular, Mike, yeah. Thanks.

Talk Talk Talk

The Psychedelic Furs

3/5

Not the best of the explosion of post punk / new wave bands in the early 80s UK, but they merge a lot of the elements of that scene (especially bands like Echo & the Bunnymen, The Jesus & Mary Chain, Siouxsie & the Banshees) plus a bit more Bowie/Mott the Hoople glam influence, into a sound that's swirling and atmospheric, darkly moody, dissonant and textural guitarsm, reverby drums, bouncey driving bass, and snarling hoarse vocals, all with a thick murky layer muffling it somewhat. But they also leans into a cleaner jangle style for some at times surprisingly poppy bright and melodic stuff - especially on the brilliant stand out Pretty in Pink - or, even more strangely, into louche loungey sax rock like No Tears. Favorites: Pretty in Pink, All of This and Nothing, She is Mine

Basket of Light

Pentangle

3/5

I went in crossbows blazing ready to hate on some annoying ren-faire bullshit, but it gradually won me over with the gentle power of the interlinked acoustic guitar parts, sitar drones, and surprisingly intricate percussion. It's basically acoustic prog. The vocals - where the bulk of the dragons and maidens larping folk stuff is dominant - are very annoying, but the instrumental sections are warm and relaxed and lively. You can imagine these songs being really great performed in the right environment like an grand old cathedral or an abandoned abbey. It's not fair to judge them based on the 2025 stench of real ale that it gives off, though. It's cool that there was a scene around revisiting and enliving musical traditions going back centuries and pairing them with blues based guitar playing, and this is a nice document of that that moment that pairs well with folk horror from the era like Wicker Man, Blood on Satan's Claw and Witchfinder General. Favorites: Train Song, Once I had a Sweetheart

Tellin’ Stories

The Charlatans

2/5

Store brand britpop from the freezer section. The best bits sound like the verve with big swirling psychedelic feel and wah wah guitars, sometimes they lean more oasis with fizzy overdriven guitars and a snarling vocal, some of it has a bit of left over warmed up baggy swagger. It's all pretty decent but non descript, great filler if you're trying to pad out side b of a too long 90s 90s UK mix tape.

Pacific Ocean Blue

Dennis Wilson

3/5

Warm and dreamy mix of soft rock and surprisingly heavy bluesy soul tracks. A great album for when you have it all but are miserable anyway, for staring at the sea and thinking it sucks, for the self-indulgent depressive pleasure of knowing you're missing out, for listening to when you've pushed people away and are mad they're not around.

Run-D.M.C.

2/5

It's amazing to think how far the peopel following in the path Run DMC forged got and how far the genre eclipses it's origins. This is hard to hear this as anything other than a fossil, an indicataive artifact of a moment in the evolution of sound and style where the core features are all there in elemental form that would be iterate and florish as it proliferates. The rigid staccato quarter note flow gets very grating quickly and the scatchy casio keyboard beats are iconic but repetitive. The corny metal samples on Rock Box and the synth sounds on 30 Days and lots of other tracks are great though. But still, there's an unmissable charisma to it, all playful bravado and lyrical charisma - and their relentless abuse of that sorriest of species, sucka MCs, is very funny.

The Age Of The Understatement

The Last Shadow Puppets

4/5

Arctic Monkeys swagger mixed with a cool surf guitar sound and a 60s Bond swishy orchestral arrangements makes for a very fun, stylish sugar rush of an album.

Better Living Through Chemistry

Fatboy Slim

3/5

Way fewer irritating vocal samples than the other album so a lot easier going, he actually allows the moods and vibes of the beats to breathe, settle, and come through a lot more. Extremely 90s UK mix of dub, house, baggy, trip hop and DnB sounds. Mostly big beat brash bangers that are joyously stupid dance floor fillers, but a few chilled out mellow melancholy numbers to cool off. Still, a lot of songs for really trying to convince yourself your having a good time - no wonder this has become the default inoffensive sound of high energy optimistic advertising for package holidays, sales at the electronics megastore, exciting new biscuits, and 2 for 1 pizza delivery.

Rejoicing In The Hands

Devendra Banhart

2/5

His voice is extremely annoying at first, but once you get used to it works pretty well, wrapping itself around the melodies and heightening the strange affect of the songs. The guitar work and sparse string arrangements are really fantastic. It's cool when folk music is a living tradition with new iterations to articulate it with new musical contexts rather than a fossilized museum genre replaying the same stuff over and over, so respect to DH for that.

Green River

Creedence Clearwater Revival

2/5

How do we get 3 CCR albums and none of them have that song about seeing the rain, their best one by miles?! Pleasant but plodding Americana. It's the same 12 bar blues chugging along over and over again with a folksy arrangement, predictable guitar licks, and a warm vocal delivering the lines. Inoffensive but so dull - them and the Band are some of the most overrated acts of the 60s. The Dude was wrong - the Eagles are better than this. Favorite: Lodi

Psychocandy

The Jesus And Mary Chain

5/5

A joyous combination of miserable love, fuzzy feedback, power pop melody, punk rock energy and lush noise.

Trafalgar

Bee Gees

1/5

Smooth soul ballads with all the edges polished right off and replaced with strings so saccharine you'll puke. They're talented vocalists and do some nice harmonies, but it's marshalled for some of the most insipid songs imaginable. Dire dire stuff. How are there two bee gees albums and neither is Saturday night fever?!

In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida

Iron Butterfly

2/5

Big dumb fun heavy psychedelia with a massive organ sound, gnarly fuzz tone, lots of bluesy shredding, one of the most memorably stupid riffs of all time, and buckets of self indulgence.

Opus Dei

Laibach

3/5

The sounds are synthy and industrial, based around marches/martial rhythms, with artificial electronic horns blaring out and a 19th century national anthem style vocal. The whole thing is like what you'd hear over the course of a dystopian fascist rally. But then it degenerates into dissonant bluesy guitar solos. So sometimes it's stirring, but it's mostly repellent, tedious, and bloated, which was the satirical aim I guess. I found a great RYM review that situates this within the trajectory of late Yugoslav cultural politics, explaining the layers of parody, symbolism, approrpriation and detournement that would've registered to its audience and put this at the forefront of a left critique of Titoism coming from the Slovenian arts world. So that helps position this as a cultural artifact and specifically as a peice of agit-prop. It also means that without a deeper appreciation for that context it's hard to really say anything meaningful about this an album. Partly also because it doesn't seem like it was meant to stand as a discrete album and in fact is part of a critique of capitalist art production and the effects of the commodity form, of which the standardization and fungibility of the album form itself is a major part.

L.A. Woman

The Doors

2/5

One last gasp from the corniest guys to ever do it, and this time they're bluesmen! Surprisingly funky opener then it slows into a plodding 12 bar formula for a while. The fuzzy guitar leads are nice in that quintessential 60s psych way and the massive swirling organ sounds work great - they're at their best when they're a jamband. 12 good songs spread over 6 albums makes them a very frustrating band.

Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness

The Smashing Pumpkins

5/5

The first CD I ever bought. This album was kind of intimidating to me as an 11 year old, there was so much music to absorb, so much harsh dissonance and abrasive distortion, so many densely packed hyper compressed layers to every song, so many explosive riffs, such a singular and often repellent voice. But I must've listened to it a few hundred times, unpacking, exploring, getting more and more familiar with the songs between the radio hits letting it sink in and rework my circuitry. I haven't listened to it all the way through for decades, so I'm surprised how much I've retained and how well it all still works on me, swerving from sonic and emotional extreme to extreme, screaming catharsis and hushed intimacy, fuzz and fury, noise and melody, building pressure and easing off for a relentless 2 hours. The best songs on their earlier albums are better than the these, but this is insanely consistent for being so ranging (it touches on metal, prog, grunge, shoegaze, punk, indie pop, even alt country) - there are some gems buried in the sprawl and the guitars all sound so damn good. Favorites: Tonight, Zero, Bullet, Love, Muzzle, Take Me Down, thirty three, 1979, Eyes of Ruby, Beautiful, Lily

Low-Life

New Order

5/5

New Order's best songs are the non-album singles collected on Substance, but this is still a banging album. Humanistic synth pop that's dark and moody but also joyfully dancey, oscillating between Joy Division, Cure, and Depeche Mode sounds of the gothy new wave, but always distinctly New Order with those incredible melodic Hooky baselines and affectless flat vocals that are nonetheless deeply emotive.

Diamond Life

Sade

4/5

The main feeling this album creates is yearning. Specifically, yearning for the low level middle class luxuries of 90s television: lush shampoo, posh ice cream, massive glasses with normal amounts of red wine in them, fire place sex, glass coffee tables and complicated CD players.There's a boringly dismissive reactionary snob response to this that's probably the one I'd have had in my teens or 20s, but - going full Bateman - distance reveals some of the quirky idiosyncratic touches that make this work so well, the warm inviting disco jazz vibe, the soul bones of the song writing, the clean cutting guitars, the tender sensuous vocals. It's pure commercial pleasure, all sheen and gloss, rubbery funk and smooth synths with its edges polished right off, promising to take the edge off.

Vincebus Eruptum

Blue Cheer

2/5

The obsession with tracing genres back to some singular origin - a holy moment of conception, an immaculate birth - leads to a bunch of mediocre but early albums having a load bearing weight put on them they really can't sustain. Take away the 'first heavy metal' tag and your left with a classic San Francisco psych blues album that's a bit wilder, louder, and fuzzier than its peers, fun stuff that sounds basically like shit. The vocals are a weak Pigpen, the guitar a pale Hendrix, the bass and imitation Entwistle, and the drums a pretty decent Bonham. Sounds like a very fun band to be in though, tripping your ass off and making a louder noise than anything a boomer had ever heard before. If not a direct inspiration for, a manifestation of the same spirit than has animate a billion basement jam sessions.

Brutal Youth

Elvis Costello

1/5

At somepoint in the late 1990s the hotshots at VH1 decided that we all needed WAY more Elvis Costello in our lives. Surely he's one of the most singular and important artists of his day, widely beloved and full of creative energy! No, he was just despertate to get on TV and show off his collection of embarrasing hats. Dude made 2-3 good albums in the 70s and we're meant to care about his long career making the blandest say nothing mid tempo rock? I don't think so, pal. This isn't aggressively bad, it's just relentlessly dull.

I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight

Richard Thompson

3/5

Lots of nice guitar and plenty of haunting minor harmonies and dark melodies in the Celtic folk tradition. Favorites: cavalry cross, bright lights, rainbow

At Budokan

Cheap Trick

2/5

I was pretty disappointed with this when I got the CD in a 12 for the price of 1 deal from BMG music club in the 00s. Surrender is an amazing song and I Want you to Want me is an overplayed but endearingly earnest timeless power pop gem, but the rest is pretty boring stuff, sitting somewhere between 70s classic rock and 80s new wave - chugging along at mid tempo with a bluesy beat, tons of guitar noodling, insistent drumming, and kind of thin but very charismatic vocals. The rhythm guitar tone is great though, bright and scuzzy chords ringing out loudly. They're the of arena rock version of a John Hughes movie - saccharine teenage bubblegum.

Water From An Ancient Well

Abdullah Ibrahim

4/5

The ideological basis of apartheid was, aside from white supremacy, the one-to-one mapping of peoples and cultures: each race/tribe has their own culture and they are meant to develop separately. In this context ecclectic music performed by multi-racial ensembles and borrowing melodies, rhythms, styles, and arrangements from a variety of border crossing genres and traditions from within the country and across the Black world was a giant fuck you. A bold assertion of the cultural hybridity and creativity of African life - particularly township life. Hence the persecuccion of South Africa's jazz scene, the exile of star musicians, and the politicization of what would otherwise sounds like some of the most laid back mellow instrumental music - classic big(ish) band cool jazz with South African characteristics and a smooth as hell vibe.

John Prine

5/5

Mostly acoustic folk arrangements based around guitar picking/strumming fleshed out with fiddles, slides, organs, a touch of bass, light percussion, and the odd fuzzy electric guitar, all putting the vocals front and center. Traditional tools for timeless songs in the peak moment of post Dylan 70s country rock harnessing Americana aesthetics to explore the darkness of cold war nationalism for its own inhabitants through a series of pained character studies.

It's Blitz!

Yeah Yeah Yeahs

3/5

High energy guitar & synth dance music huffing the fumes of the early 00s indie boom. It's uptempo, bouncey pop - rising tension and big explosive choruses and massive hooks with very polished production. Very fun songs that really sound great, even if there's not much too it. Music for jogging, but in skinny jeans.

Fire Of Love

The Gun Club

5/5

Throw away all the boring genre labels with modifying adjectives, this is stripped down, amped up, spun out good time rock and roll with old fashioned beats and classic guitar sounds and timelessly charismatic vocals.

Parsley, Sage, Rosemary And Thyme

Simon & Garfunkel

2/5

Mellow sleepy vibes with gentle acoustic guitar picking and beautiful close harmonies. They're really good at what they do, but what they do is so insanely boring. Good to put on to counteract the stress of an intense 30 minute email inbox sprint I guess. Seems like they have a lot of albums on the list beacuse they had a few 'can't leave this song out!' songs spread out over like 4 albums - a good candidate for a greatest hits/best of band, but even that would be a boring 45 minutes.

Emergency On Planet Earth

Jamiroquai

2/5

Famous for a great music video (for a song not on this album) and for wearing a stupid hat, this has a retro disco funk sound updated with 90s electronica style. It's a fun enough album - the live horns, jazzy basslines and swirly organs on the instrumentals especially - but his voice is grating (like someone doing a Stevie Wonder impression).

Automatic For The People

R.E.M.

5/5

Beautiful sounding album with a mix of acoustic guitar jangles, controlled chaos feedback, gentle pianos and energetic organs, distorted cellos, slide guitar melodies against lush strings, and rich super expressive vocals. It shimmers and pops and blossoms wonderfully, warm and nostalgic, mournful sombre and full of pathos. Slowed down songs, mostly ballads, allow all this room to breathe. It's pretty incredible this was a muddy post punk band less than a decade earlier, 90s major label recording budgets were a whole other world! It's way overblown but damn it works

Life's Too Good

The Sugarcubes

4/5

Fun new wave pop with some dreamy shimmer and post punk angularity to go with the bouncy bass - the mix is cure, siouxsie & cocteau twins combined with devo & talking heads. Synthesizes a lot of 80s sounds and presages a ton of 90s alt rock style. What a voice! A spectacular range from guttural lows and shattering highs within moments.

Oar

Alexander 'Skip' Spence

3/5

Sparse shambling psych folk with a real outsider artist feel to it, an auteur album that's also a document of a hallucinogenic breakdown. Sparse instrumentation with droning guitars, trance like bass parts, and skittering percussion.

I’m a Lonesome Fugitive

Merle Haggard

4/5

The title track is an all time great outlaw country anthem, the rest is rock solid mid tempo twang about women and liquor and the problems they get you into and the ever tempting promise of escape to the rails.

Born To Be With You

Dion

3/5

Liked this way more than I expected to - it's big orchestral soul, saccharine soft rock emotions, totally bloated arrangements and maximalist production, but the melodies are there, the performance is solid and the mood is chilled out and fully relaxed; it just feels nice - a warm bath of album.

Close To You

Carpenters

1/5

Mrs Buttersworth : syrup :: the carpenters : folk

Kick Out The Jams (Live)

MC5

4/5

Wild rock and roll played on, and often way past, the edge of control, descending into a noisy furvour of wah wah and feedback and pounding drums. An inspiration to millions of garage rockers, amped up punks and stoned shredders. It's basic blues rock in the 60s mould, so there's something over familiar and a bit boring about it at root, but it's played with exhileritating abandon you just have to kick along.

1984

Van Halen

3/5

I don't know what it means that this is a band that I really dismissed as a teenager but have come to appreciate more and more over the years - something about the unabashedly dumb fun unseriousness of it just really hits. Eddie Van Halen is most famous for the shredder pyrotechnics, but it's rhythm playing that really stands out here - the riffs and licks, the squealing tone, the style, and the interplay between guitar and synths over the driving thudding rhythm section. They have a rock solid greatest hits compilation from the David Lee Roth era, but the albums are all half killer half filler. Favorites: Jump, Panama, I'll Wait

I See A Darkness

Bonnie "Prince" Billy

3/5

It sounds like the sun going down on a freezing cold blue sky day with deep snow on the ground. Dark Americana, the sound of going to cabin in the woods with a guitar to work some shit out. Fraile alto vocals on the cusp of tears give this a delicate fragile mood: sombre, reflective, hurt. They're doubled and split, with a small gap between them, playing with multiples of one voice and amplifying the unsettling psychic environment of the album. Sparse arrangements let everything breathe, fill and linger in the space available for a melancholy ambience.

Spy Vs. Spy: The Music Of Ornette Coleman

John Zorn

4/5

Could you mosh to this? Enjoyment is the wrong criteria for evaluating this. Of course it isn't enjoyable - it's free jazz played with the pummelling abrassiveness and agression of hardcore punk. Each song is surprisingly tightly structured, you can hear them racing through the head before erupting into the cacophony of free improvisation and then, somehow, wrapping it all back together with a synchronized refrain. It kind of chills out half way with peices that have a bit of a groove and more approachable lead lines - even sounding like a deranged version of an early 90s sitcom theme song for a minute.

The Marshall Mathers LP

Eminem

3/5

The production is damn good and his flow, wordplay, rhyming and delivery are brilliant and totally distinctive. An incredibly talented rapper with nothing to say, but a million ways to say it, Eminem give us a window into the ugly feelings, vile prejudices and idiot ideas of 90s dirtbag masculinity, even in the way his focus shifts to reacting to his own fame. There WERE a million guys just like him, grown men with the personality of Cartman.

Wild Wood

Paul Weller

1/5

A standard bearer of British punk/post punk cool blows all his cred making a blues dad album. It's easy going easy listening stuff without any edge. But the rubbery bass, whispy vocals, and generic funkiness are tragically middle aged. Some of the guitar sounds are really good at least and the looser jammier parts are fun. But the crooning smooth blues...oof. Favorites: shadow of the sun, has my fire really gone out

Wild Is The Wind

Nina Simone

5/5

Incredible vocal performance demonstrating total control over her voice, even as she pushes beyond comfort - dynamic, richly expressive, subtle when it needs to be, explosively dramatic when it needs to be. The music is ecclecctic, some schmaltzy ballads, some folk standards, but the best bits are the bluesy big band jazz tacks with lush arrangements led by her piano and fleshed out with a mini orchestra for a classic soul sound.

evermore

Taylor Swift

2/5

Breathy and intimate and drenched in reverb - this is the highest production lofi album ever. Simple piano parts and delicate guitar pushed through a small low headroom amp to breakup gently. Master of the generic bizarrely asexual love song and heartbreak song and lovelorn song about ‘you’ and ‘I’. Indie guitar folk rock aesthetic, slow songs and tender sounds (her attempt at a wonderwall? at Tom petty?) complement her vocal style, the hurry up and wait phrasing, melodic sensibility and range. It's very nice and cozy, but kind of boring. The heartland rock sounding cowboy like me and the poppy champagne problems are best.

The Scream

Siouxsie And The Banshees

4/5

Abrasive and relentless spooky punk with high drama operatic vocals, chugging dissonant riffs, burning intensity and a loose shaggy style.

John Barleycorn Must Die

Traffic

2/5

Pretty much the most standard issue boomer dad rock imaginable. Jazzy blues jams with a ton of organ and piano in the lead paired with lightly fuzzy guitars, swanky horns and, urgh, flute. Loose playful feel and organic arrangements and some funky bass parts give it a warm relaxed vibe. Winwood's vocals have a hoarse timbre and an ambitious range but can be kind of grating - I guess that's why I like some of these (and other Traffic songs) best as covers.

Tea for the Tillerman

Cat Stevens

1/5

Pure uncut boomer sentimental schlock. 35 minutes of lullabies for adult babies. Hey, it works - a real snoozefest!

Cross

Justice

3/5

Heavy hitting beats and fun synth sounds, hyperactive songs full of ideas that're constantly changing and introducing new elements, textures, samples, and rhythms glitching in and out. Anytime there're vocals it drops way off though, very annoying inane stuff.

Golden Hour

Kacey Musgraves

3/5

Warm and cozy, an optimistic burst of pure high spec pop country production informed by 2 decades of rustic acoustic indie singer songwriters. Tasteful songs cleverly adding new shades while still coloring comfortably within the traditional lines. Distinctive melodic phrasing. Lush arrangements bringing in soaring slides, dabbling in electronic sounds, and leaning heavily into rich orchestration.

Homework

Daft Punk

3/5

Samples looping, beats banging, hooks iterating, tension building and releasing and building and releasing, synths glitching screeching deforming sound into new textures and patterns, beats banging, repeating, looping, building releasing, howling. Oddly both all consuming and totally ignorable (but passively anxiety building) depending on how loud you play it. Favorites: The dirtier noisier stuff like Rollin and Scratchin

Let It Be

The Replacements

5/5

Shaggy shambolic rock and roll inspired by the anyone can do it / do it yourself ethos of hardcore and driven by a relentless all consuming drunken youthful urge to create, express, and react. Wedged between punk and power pop and alt country, it barley holds together yet coheres into something magical, the guitars' scuzzy jangle, the deeply emotive hoarse vocals, the punchy drums and loping bass together create an alienated but earnest, melancholic and wistful, ironic but open sensibility. It's so basic and raw, naively touching. I was late to this band, but they've become a favorite.

B-52's

The B-52's

3/5

From being familiar with the hits I was expecting a lot more of the bouncy new wave stuff and was surprised at the post punk edge on a lot of these tracks. Fun surf influences, nice gritty passages, but despite some good stuff from the band, the vocals are so annoying that they make the whole thing sound like a novelty act.

Teenager Of The Year

Frank Black

3/5

A heaping dose of post-Pixies alt rock, none of which raises quite to those heights, but the album is still full of exciting guitars, driving propulsive rhythms, and catchy melodies. Plus the odd alt-country twand. It doesn’t have the loud/quiet dynamics of the Pixies best songs, but that trick had been copied to death and diffused across the radio by the mid 90s anyway. Lots of short songs, mostly built out of the signature of combo of clean and dirty guitars and surf, punk, and classic rock roots, but with added pianos and synths to flesh out the arrangements and more of a power pop indie orientation (and in one cringey case, reggae). Drags on a bit, would be best curated down to 16 tracks/45 minutes.

Vanishing Point

Primal Scream

3/5

Dark dystopian electronica with touches of dub, jazzy instrumental hip hop, and chilled out ambient trip hop and, less successfully, corny blues rock. Late night music for empty streets and rainy highways, neo-noir moods for the millennium. Lots of it sounds like prelude, anticipating a main event that never fully arrives.

KE*A*H** (Psalm 69)

Ministry

4/5

Unrelentingly abrasive with pummeling riffs and a forceful set of drum machine beats that bring a level of robotic techno groove to some of the grimiest, heaviest, scuzz recorded.

Dog Man Star

Suede

3/5

Representing the Bowie inspired glam art rock side of brit pop, Suede's crowning album is a massive sweeping music with arch high drama vocals. Great songs and sounds but the mix is muddy so it never fully realizes the grandiose scale they're going for though. A few tracks are immediately grabbing but overall it feels like a grower.

Unhalfbricking

Fairport Convention

2/5

The best moments on here bring together the dark psychedelia of the Velvet Underground with the medieval folk style of UK psych, pairing droning guitars and violas working against each other a over sparse but insistent rhythm section to build intensity chaotic intensity while a monotone vocal delivers ancient melodies. The more they lean into the folksy pastoral or corny blues the worse it gets though. Favorite: Sailor's Life, Percy's Song

Kimono My House

Sparks

1/5

Unbearable prog pop. One of the most annoying things I’ve ever heard. Theater kids in album form - just a massively irritating and twee onslaught of bright noise, childish melodies, and idiotic instrumentation. OOH LOOK HOW WHIMSICAL WE ARE!!!! shut up.

Faust IV

Faust

3/5

Classic Krautrock that, while it doesn't have the driving motorik and funk energy of Can, has the loose jammy sprawling feel, emphasis on drones and repetitions and shifting textures, and psych exploratory energy to it. More of a proto-shoegaze than a house music precedent. Favorites: Krautrock, Jennifer, Giggy Smile

Head Hunters

Herbie Hancock

5/5

When the generation of guys who brought Bop, Hard Bop, Cool Jazz, and Modal Jazz to and through their logical got tired of playing the same solos in the same spots over the same vamps - nothing new here, just iterations on the Same - they splintered into new directions: challenging deconstructive avant-jazz, new age spiritual jazz, afro-centric polyrhythmic jazz, jazz/rock fusion and dark gnarly funk. Herbie Hancock took the astral funk route, rocketing straight to space by leaning hard into synths and grooves to make some an all time great, super accessible, dance album that just will not quit.

Ellington at Newport

Duke Ellington

4/5

Swishy swinging dance music paired with thrilling virtuouso soloists taking turns ripping through the changes. The best of big band, a view into a pre-album era of popular music as, first and foremost, performance, and of jazz in particular as live and living, not the fossil we inherit in the 21st century.

Tank Battles

Dagmar Krause

2/5

A very different kind of album for sure - definitley not a pop album by any definition. A rendition of Weimar cabaret translated to English. It's an admirable project with some great very dramatic performances. Although it's not really something I'd ever want to put on, it could be cool to see live and learn more about the music/lyrics and the context of their creation as well as the context of this rendition. Definitley sounds like a German of a certain generation grappling with what their parent's generation did.

Crazysexycool

TLC

2/5

Smooth funky RnB with light hip hop touches and lush sultry neo soul style to the production. A couple of huge singles (but lots of filler) definitive of the radio pop sound of the mis 90s. Was never really my thing, but have come to appreciate the style and sound of this stuff more with distance - it's way better than the Swedish factory pop and bland asexual talent show diva stuff that replaced it.

Step In The Arena

Gang Starr

3/5

Jazzy boom bap beats with classic dj scratching, soul samples, and a laid back upbeat feel to them, especially when the upright bass parts hit. Tight wordy verses delivered in two similar precise high speed flows with distinct timbres/cadence. Conscious positive rap from the same time/place as the Native Tongues acts. No bad songs, but there's not a ton of variety to it, so the 50 minutes feels a bit long.

Time Out Of Mind

Bob Dylan

3/5

The good songs are sad wallows in the darkness of death and heartache with an immersive atmosphere and a slow burning intensity. The bad songs are disposable blues tracks with a more upbeat feel but pretty boring - necessary pallette cleansers for contrast maybe, but there're too many of them and they're all overlong. The whole thing is a classic case of CD-era bloat - the 45 minute LP cut of this would be great. The soaring lap steels, delicate clean guitar leads, gentle organs, and moody pianos and the huge reverby production all give the slow songs such a sombre reflexive feel - a heavenly sound for a morbid mood.

Blonde On Blonde

Bob Dylan

5/5

A perfect autumnal album for mid October, wistful longing nostalgic sounds for walking through crunchy leaves wearing a light jacket against the crisp air, feeling the sun settle down earlier and earlier.

O.G. Original Gangster

Ice T

3/5

Era-defining but because of that extremely dated. Hard hitting but basic beats without a ton of variety. His delivery is extreme and the material explosive, covering police violence, domestic/family abuse, racism, sexism (both pro and con), money, drugs, tits, ass - the whole gamut. It really seems like he had a ton to get off his chest in the late 80s/early 90s, said his peice, and moved on. The hardcore track is a really funny amalgam of hardcore punk and hair metal - what are the wierd white kids in LA in 1989 doing? Let's show that we can do that too!

Boy In Da Corner

Dizzee Rascal

3/5

Propulsive kinetic beats and an angular staccato flow - the production draws on dark and heavy jungle style for a menacing edgy sound and rhythms that seem always off kilter, a step off, just catching up to steady themselves - toppled by the explosive force the verse.

Strangeways, Here We Come

The Smiths

5/5

Arch drama and jangly magic and some of the bounciest bass in pop.

In Utero

Nirvana

4/5

More abrasive and raw than the polished Nevermind, drawing more from the post punk/hardcore 80s tradition than the metal well that fed Soundgarden or Alice in Chains, this is a bracing mix of aggression and melody. Pummelling riffs and pop hooks, violent textures and dissonant harmonies, guttural screams and brutal lyrics.

Sunshine Hit Me

The Bees

3/5

The Bees combine the lo-fi acoustic singer-songwriter psychedelia of Syd Barrett with a globalized hipster appetite for the sounds and styles of world music for a pleasantly warm and dreamy swishy lounge meets indie bedroom pop vibe that's tastefully arranged and expertly crafted. Very nice, but lacks excitement.

S&M

Metallica

2/5

Metallica are already two albums deep into their buttrock era when this came out, so they have a well of mid tempo bloated ballad songs to further bloat with orchestral arrangements where the extra 100 instruments don't slow them down too much. The songs that are meant to thrash really suffer from the bloat though, the heavy layers of extra instrumentation don't add anything extra to the raw power and energy of thrash metal. The best songs are the slower ballads from the early era that already have a bit of that metal neo-classical grandiosity to them or the 90s radio hits that benefit from throwing more instruments at just ok hooks and kirk Hammett's wah wah pedal. An orchestra can't chug, and can hardly riff, but sure can crescendo. Is this the most pompous dumb guy album ever? Makes sense that this is only a couple years before the hilariousness documented in Some Kind of Monster...

The Coral

2/5

This what happens when someone good at Karaoke is off-handedly told they could start a band but takes it way too seriously and only bloody goes and does it, but just stole a bunch of songs from those compilations put out by record labels that scour the third world for obscure Peruvian cumbia synthpop, Zambian circus psych, or Balkan disco jazz vinyl to re-release.

Elephant

The White Stripes

2/5

Dum dumdum dum dum dummm dum. Some good riffs and lots of nice guitar sounds, but it's really just a microwaved and kind of boring version of English blues guys from 1967 who just learned about Muddy Waters & John Lee Hooker and got to be the first ones to rip them off while using really loud amps with fuzz pedals. The slower, acoustic stuff on here is really awful - when your voice is this thin and weedy don't put it front and center. This is surely fun music to make, but it isn't that fun to listen to.

The Predator

Ice Cube

4/5

Hard hitting boom bap beats and verse after verse deconstructing the violence of American racism, the routine violence it engenders the lives lived amidst that violence. The sound is definitive of its time, dated but iconic. The eviseration of racial liberalism and the dominant banal ideologies of white supremacy are remarkably, tragically, timeless 30+ years later.

Blue

Joni Mitchell

1/5

I struggle with lyric-first songwriting so have never connected with JM, especially since while her voice has a great expressivity I just don't like listening to it and dislike her distinctive style of melodic phrasing. The music is superficially gentle and warm acoustic stuff but actually has more complex dissonance and jazzy harmonics. The songs are more intricately structured than classic verse chorus folk - de emphasizing repetition and refrain and instead unfurling narratively. The arrangements are nice on here, with her voice and guitar at the front but supported by acoustic bass, hand drumming, and backup singers. The piano stuff not so much. I've tried so many times with her and with this album in particular but no matter what it's never for me.

Bitches Brew

Miles Davis

5/5

Damn this hits so hard. Sprawling hallucinatory jams that conjure a a primal scene, a fire in a cave, deep grooves plumping unknown depths of dark funk, febrile keys that come in layer and layers, swelling atmosphere and chaotic noise that dissolves as it resolves, a sweaty heat punctuated by a fire alarm trumpet from a nightmare echoing through and out of time. Frenzy. Fever. Fear. The bass arrives just in time, giving something to hold on to, a life raft for the soloists to climb aboard and keep the party burning. The jazz trance descends...

Five Leaves Left

Nick Drake

3/5

Bucolic folk with picked acoustic guitars and lightly played stand up bass, flute, hand drumming, and an overall gentle jazzy cabin feel to it - his voice is as ever, whispery and expressive. None of the songs here reach the level he'd soon get to though, and it's a very pleasant but not gripping album.

The Hissing Of Summer Lawns

Joni Mitchell

2/5

A backing band that sound like Steely Dan noodling over Crosby Stills and Nash make for a surprisingly good sound - warm and loose, jazzy jammy, with a touch of controlled fuzz and something approximating funk - she's getting a little bit wierd with it, incorporating dark synths, dense soundscapes, and lush tropical arrangements. I still don't like her voice though and there's just so much of it.

The Good, The Bad & The Queen

2/5

I used to listen to it a lot when it came out and I was working in an office - it drowned out the rest of the office successfully. This is perfect office work music - unobstrusive enough to fade into the background but interesting enough to listen to for a second here or there, it's mellow and calming but has enough going on rhythmically to keep the energy up, there are hooks with enough verve to occupy the back of your mind but the vocals are delivered in a flat monotone that begs to be ignored by the front, the arrangements are fully fleshed out and varied enough but have a coherent feel for the duration. It's totally fine but really quite boring.

Sail Away

Randy Newman

1/5

One of the most baffling figures in music history. The musical equivalent of Lenny Bruce - held up as a legend but truly sucks to listen to. Good at the one trick of pairing banal sentimentality with cutting sarcasm for sickly sweet cyncism that, I guess, passes as world weary wisdom. I guess you can see that working for songwriter, but when you have that voice, to release a solo album? I suppose the sheer audacity to step into a recording booth to lay down the vocal tracks is admirable.

Bummed

Happy Mondays

3/5

Sounds terrible, doesn't make any sense, rarely in tune, but a jolt of pure party energy and magical guitars.

Aha Shake Heartbreak

Kings of Leon

1/5

Classic rock for epic bacon IPA millennials. A standard issue southern rock rolling stones cover band who heard the strokes first album and jumped on the trend to become, somehow, arena filling corporate indie stalwarts. Too bland to be bad, they're the buffalo wild wings of 2000s hipster rock.

Clandestino

Manu Chao

3/5

The Lonely Planet of albums, music for tourists who insist on calling themselves travellers, the Che t-shirt of artists. A topical tropical dream of counter-globalization, of a world of cultural exchange as resistance, of hybridity and translation and multi-lingual genre hopping code switching as a global musical commons, of joyous self expression and feel good partying. A dream that curdled over and after the 1990s and was revealed to be just a French guy on holiday, primarily a project of bourgeois first world self-making, just as subject to the stultifying forces of capitalist co-option, of commodification, standardization as any other cultural product - something that becomes just another cultural signifier, the default soundtrack of a certain kind of bar, hostel, or cafe in the gringo district of whatever popular backpacker region. Still, some of those evocative trumpet parts, latin harmonies, and Jamaican basslines really are pretty nice and laid back. An album I've heard a thousand times without ever putting on myself but never minded at all.

The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn

Pink Floyd

3/5

The whimsical psychedelia of posh boys messing around with hallucinogens. Sounds like Austin Powers but trippy, demented, unstable, a dream that inverts to nightmare and back- astral in theme but sometimes quite contained and tightly structured musically, baroque and sing songy, until it does descend into much shaggier looser spacier exploratory jams, before returning to songs that're short and tight and buttoned up nursery rhymes about gnomes. Extremely English.

To Pimp A Butterfly

Kendrick Lamar

4/5

A continuation of the jazzy hip hop conscious rap tradition with a lot of unfashionable (at the time, peak Trap era) sounds from 90s RnB, 70s funk, smooth neo soul that end up sounding fresh and vital - a live band in the middle of a chart full of laptop producers will always sound extremely living and dynamic. The lyrics are a mix of urgency - responding to police violence and mass incarceration - and complacency - an Obama era faith that "we're going to be alright" and that the civil rights movement is an going if painful and painfully slow inexorable march forwards. A very of its era thematic approach, with the political juxtaposed with personal, social and individual experiences of violence weave in and out of each other, hustling in world of mutual and self exploitation, grappling with contradictions and inconsistencies of the world and the self all at once, one through the other. Earnest and cynical and really on the nose. His flow is great, his phrasing precise with a rapid fire cadence, the timbre of his voice isn't my favorite though: thin and nasal. It's really good, but also extremely overrated - critics and audiences needed to anoint a rap genius for the 2010s and he was the vessel for all that cultural weight.

If I Could Only Remember My Name

David Crosby

2/5

An all star cast of Laurel Canyon & SF psych scene fixtures get together for a loose jammy album with very unstructured and honestly pretty weak songs, but a very chilled out, if uninspired, vibe. Bluesy, folksy, astral, primal. It's got some great vocal harmony and the a strong performance from DC, but mostly it's at it's best when it's basically a Grateful Dead live session with some great Jerry Garcia noodling and fun exploratory bass from Phil Lesh and Jack Casady.

Nixon

Lambchop

2/5

Nice and gentle, unobtrusive alt country with a bit of jangle, not that much twang really, and a lot of pretty indiepop inspired songwriting and production. It's atmospheric, laid back, a bit dreamy, and easy going stuff that's not especially original or as far as I know influential or iconic of a time/place, so not sure why it's included really.

Warehouse: Songs And Stories

Hüsker Dü

2/5

A band I always feel I ought to like but never quite manage to. Something about the way their albums are mixed ends up sounding thin and tinny, so the abrasive aggressive guitars end up come across as scratchy and grating and the voice as overly nasal and annoying - the overall effect is fizzy and muffled. The recordings really don't do justice what could be great songs, proto pop punk brimming with hooks and tight riffs and inventive playing.

Rattus Norvegicus

The Stranglers

4/5

Extremely cool glam punk that's a rocking stew of television style spindly lead guitars, Elvis Costello new wave synth, Doorsy psych organ parts, Iggy Pop garage rock drive, Modern Lovers aloof cool guy vocals. It's got a real spacious spare production and an almost disco inflected rhythm with actual danceable beats - damn this really rips.

Billion Dollar Babies

Alice Cooper

2/5

An album that captures a moment of eclosis: the glam butterfly emerging from the chrysalsis of garage. An album that asks: what if Ziggy Stardust was a SICKO and TWISTED?! It's basic rock and roll played for high drama, leaning into the HORROR persona and SHOCKING SICKENING REPULSIVE content that would come to define the band. Even if the spectactle of the band was something DEMONIC, these are still 60s guys at heart who can't away from the damn harmonica and white boy blues rock rhythms and so musically this is pretty boring stuff. Wish it was half as SATANIC and SCARY as the pearl-clutchers feared...

Pills 'n' Thrills And Bellyaches

Happy Mondays

4/5

The most mellon twisting album of the 90s - at once ecstatic and miserable in a uniquely Mancunian mode. Sprawling dance rock that's wild, ecclectic, hedonistic: a triumph of the pure desire to have a good time over the necessity of talent. Fun remixes too.

Loveless

My Bloody Valentine

4/5

I've always like but never quite loved this album and still don't fully get the hype. It's an experiment in distortion and dissonance and layering, of lettting waves and waves and waves build up and crash around and seeing what difference patterns, warbles, echoes, shimmers, tremors and modulations emerge - it ends up as an impossibly thick fog of fuzz barely illuminated by the ethereal vocals that shine over the top, brightening the mist without clearing it away. It's at its best when it lets an actually melody emerge from the mire and introduce more dynamics to the shifting field. Favorite: When You Sleep, what you want, only shallow, soon

Venus Luxure No. 1 Baby

Girls Against Boys

4/5

Buzzing guitars, gritty doubled up bass riffs, hard hitting drums, guttural throaty vocals, all assembled with grinding aggresive production make this a bit of an assault on the sense. A bit like, but a lot more unsung than, the classic post-hardcore bands like Sonic Youth, Fugazi, Dino Jr, Husker Du etc, this is from a bit later, from the grunge/alt rock era, where this heavy distorted sound had all been a bit more normalized, and more melodic sensibilities had crept in to make the leap from the diy space to the radio. This album is still on the harsher, more aggressive, less accessible side of that spectrum though, leaning heavily into the scuzzy low end, the abrasive textures, and the violent dynamics - and it fucking rips. Very strange I'd never heard of this before... Favorites: Bughouse, Rockets are Red, Go Be Delighted

Hotel California

Eagles

2/5

The birth of corporate americana. The high fructose corn syrup of music. Unbridled commercial drive meets rock solid musicianship, expert recording/production, a few ears for a hook and a great flair for harmony. This combination of endless self pity and smarmy good time smooth easy feeling is the pure uncut essence of boomerism. Overplayed, but for a reason. Perfect lead guitars and some slinky baselines. But God it sucks. Bloated and boring as an album, they're the definition of a greatest hits band.

Hybrid Theory

Linkin Park

2/5

Probably the most polished commercially designed smoothed over and predigested album of nu metal. All the parts are there: down tuned riffs, bad raps, dj scratching, big shouty hooks, vaguely directed anger at liars and 'you' - but the aggression is dialed back and reigned in, made safe for the teenage suburban bedrooms where this ire is most strongly felt. One of the strangest parts of aging is seeing the shitty radio bands of your youth become beloved legacy acts. I thought this was just disposable fake metal for tasteless morons and that once or went away once we were done for good. But as LP themselves say 'nothing seems to go away' and we're stuck with this juvenile - but not in a fun way - bullshit for ever. I do love using the phrase 'everything you say to me takes me one step to the edge and I'm about to break' in casual conversation though, so thanks for that.

Go Girl Crazy

The Dictators

4/5

Dumb rock and roll fun from dawn of punk, they're doing budget glam with all the skill and production nous of a highschool battle of the bands, but that gives it a great mix of ironic joking and earnest commitment to the bit.

They Were Wrong, So We Drowned

Liars

3/5

Dark grimey stuff emphasizing dissonance and discord, deconstructing the synthy indie dance punk music of the era by running it through an industrial shredder and attempting to recompose the remainder.

Jack Takes the Floor

Ramblin' Jack Elliott

2/5

So hard to listen to this on its own terms as opposed to being just a progenitor, as something typical of one of the major traditions that fused and morphed until it became the basis of huge swathes of American popular culture. But what it is is a man and his guitar and a nice singing voice who isn't afraid to yodel or trade verses with a pal. It is funny to see how far back anxieties about Americana authenticity go, how long city slickers have wanted to play cowboy, how much traditional genres are co-opted and re-animated by interlopers and commercialism, and how unstable the whole mess of roots has always been. In the end, the real America is wanting to be country, being worried someone will call you phony, and overcompensating by being as old fashioned as possible.

Pornography

The Cure

4/5

A thunderstorm without lightning. The darkness before the pop dawn of the cure, this is an album of despairing desperate depression from the bleakest British night. It's an incredible achievement of swirling synth textures, guitars picking out melodies through a heavy cloud of modulation effects, of vocals the fade and decay before drawing breath to go again. none of this has the hooks or choruses of their greatest hits, but makes up for it with the full spectrum lush wallowing.

Bandwagonesque

Teenage Fanclub

5/5

Shaggy slacker rock surprisingly brimming with hooks. Loping melodic bass, fuzzy guitars, sweetly earnest vocal harmonies, a bit of noise around the edges. Jangly power pop with the gain up high that tumbles occasionally into grittier terrain.

Real Life

Magazine

5/5

Tight tight tight. Hyperactive melodic bass gives this a relentless propulsive energy, powerful high-up the neck dirty rhythm guitar bursts into surprisingly rock solos and melodic lead parts. Lots of tension building up and up then bursting out into a big major chorus. Some basic 1st gen punk songs as starting points but too much chaos and musicality to stick to that formula - instead they get weird and artsy. Absolutely rips.

The Chronic

Dr. Dre

4/5

The step up from the basic boom bap beats drum machines and dj scratching of late 80s hip hop to the flourishing of styles in the early 90s is incredible - the jazzy style of native tongues, the dark demented world of Wu tang, and the commercial dominant style of g-funk Dr Dre cooked up for this album that took off and took over. The grooves on this are so fucking good - ripping off parliament and mainlining bootsy Collins bass parts will do that. The raps are decent - introducing snoop's signature flow, a novelty that has truly worn off, and dre's ultimately pretty limited montone tough guy delivery - even if the content is mostly indecent. Lacks the gritty social realism and righteous anger of other gangster rappers, even in the song about the Rodney King riots, and leans mostly into cock/glock raps. 4 all time great iconic 90s hip hop tracks on here. Deeeeeeeez nutz!!

Pelican West

Haircut 100

2/5

Cornier than Iowa, this is the Talking Heads x Kenny G mash up you don't know you needed (you didn't). XTC for band geeks, Orange juice for yuppies, it's all smooth funky artifice, a disco mirrorball synthpop sax jam session. It oscillates wildly between fun and God awful, even within each song, even simultaneously - very confusing.

Blood Sugar Sex Magik

Red Hot Chili Peppers

1/5

The only ok album by the most annoying and inexplicably hyped band of the 90s who, for reasons science will never explain, are still going strong?! and it's got like 7 minutes out of 73(!) that are good and they've been overplayed beyond the threshold of any possible further enjoyment. Hyperactive, aggressively silly, grating raps and overwrought juvenile emotion, they're an overgrown novelty act. Guitar guys love John Frusciante for some reason? He's fine but just plays Hendrix leads and Nile Rodgers rhythms...

Locust Abortion Technician

Butthole Surfers

3/5

Like a classic fuzzy bluesy garage psych record played on a dying record player through a crapped out broken speaker and hit by a bolt of lightning. Dumb as bricks and sounds like shit, a dirt bag acid trip masterpiece of manic sludge.

Come Away With Me

Norah Jones

2/5

Post 9/11 america was all jumped up on nu metal and revenge, and needed calming down - a pretty dark haired lady with a nice soothing voice was the warm bath the nation needed. The 2002 suburban anesthetic starter pack: nasty cinnamon candles, cheap australian wine, Old Navy fleece, Amelie on DVD, and drowning out the beating drums of the impending forever war with this album of smoothed over corporate Nina Simone impersonations. I didn't really work though did it?

Fred Neil

3/5

Folksy acoustic singer songwriter stuff with a nice, kind of jazz, backing band giving it a bit of nice oomph. The country leaning stuff is great - approximating Johnny Cash and incorporating a bit of slide and twang. The the blues leaning stuff and the really slow ballads are pretty boring and predictable. The raga at the end is really amazing, gives the acoustic guitar a real workout on some mesmerizing psychedelic drones. Favorites: Everybody's Talkin', Everything Happens, Sweet Cocaine, Cynicrustpetefredjohn Raga

Pump

Aerosmith

1/5

The blues based hard rock arena bombast of Led Zeppelin, the chaotic energy of CBGB glam punk, gnarly guitars and a megalomaniac singer. How does it end up so boring? Why does this suck when Guns and Roses rule and even Motley Crue have their moments? There's no inspiration, no fun, tired riffs, stock solos and the best high spec coke fueled production that their 80s corporate behemoth record label could splurge on, designed to max out radio airplay. Janies got a gun is good because it's a least a little weird, the rest sounds like them ripping off the generation of bands who ripped them off. Tap water hard rock.

Celebrity Skin

Hole

4/5

Power pop songs with post grunge arrangements. Full of great melodicism and vocal harmonies that go with Courtney Love's forecful throaty delivery, that cut through a mix of heavy, sludgey, buzzsaw distorted, and bright jangly guitars. I only ever knew the title track, but there's a ton of good stuff going on this album. Favorites: Awful, Malibu, Heaven Tonight, Petals

Myths Of The Near Future

Klaxons

2/5

Yeah, that's what indie rock sounded like in 2007.

Protection

Massive Attack

3/5

The main focus is the low end - the construction of spacious dark beats, propulsive but laid back - borrowing styles from dub and house music, the interplay of repetition and iteration, of subtle variation and constant looping, of synchopation and resolution, of reggae basslines's flair and the machinic precision of the drum machine. Then the high end they fill with whatever - house diva vocals, raps, toasting, jazzy piano - and it just works. Impossibly icy and steamy, the sound of a damp warehouse recently packed with bodies - the contemplative calm after the heat of a rave.

Now I Got Worry

The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion

1/5

There will always be a near endless supply this kind of fundamentally silly dirty rock n roll post blues band because the way electric guitars work mean it's the easiest and most fun kind of music to play, the first thing you can do in a group setting, and a ready template to pick up and goof around with. Totally understandable why these bands exist, much less so why they have an audience - I guess it's for guys who like to say "they don't make music like this anymore" while listening to music like this being made right now.

Triangle

The Beau Brummels

1/5

Every dipshit who walked past a guitar in 1967 ended up this book, huh? More boring baroque pastoral folk psyche with Dylan rip off vocals, cheesy strings and dorky harpsichords, forced whimsy, and flower power imagery. One of the more derivative albums of the San Francisco psyche scene.

The Gershwin Songbook

Ella Fitzgerald

2/5

Great voice that works its way around the melodies beautifully for a powerful perfomance, but this style of stringy jazz is too schmaltzy to bear.

All Hail the Queen

Queen Latifah

3/5

Jazzy Native Tongues beats with a classic old school boom bap basis incorporating lots of reggae funk and soul samples, agile rapping going through verse after boastful verse, and poppy RnB hooks/choruses. One of the best sounding classic hip hop albums of the 80s, this holds up way better than most of its peers.

Rain Dogs

Tom Waits

3/5

Another album of demented carnival music, for a 1980s idea of a 1930s depression era travelling circus - hokey accordians and a carnival barker lead singer warbling on about film noire protagonists, twisted lovers, and dark dealings in the underworld. His voice is not as obnoxious here as on some of the other albums. But. the best bit of this by miles is the dark twisted demented guitar work of Marc Ribot - pure skronk: bluesy leads through the looking glass, huge leaps in the melody, harmonic minor scales, sharp overdriven tone, repulsive and alluring all at once. Lots of very fun raunchy saxaphone leads, swinging jazzy grooves, and lively bass lines.

Treasure

Cocteau Twins

4/5

Fragile glassy shimmering surfaces with ethereal vocals. Hazy atmosphere pierced by bright clean guitars, propped up, sometimes, by a Cure sounding bassline. It’s so consistent in tone, timbre, pace and style that one track is rarely distinct from the next. It feels unstructured, like the parts never cohere properly into something recognizably a song. But it sets a mood, anxious reflexivity, dreamy nostalgia, stoned longing.

Zombie

Fela Kuti

5/5

Opens with a hard driving funk tour de force, a thick steamy dance party with endless layers of brass, percussion, keyboards, and a relentless bass - an undeniable groove with call and response vocals delivered forcefully, woven between sax lines and trumpet stabs. Mellows out into a slower jazz fusion number to breathe, a patient groove with slinky melodies. The band is huge and with so many parts locked in together it creates a kaleidoscope effect, ever shifting, always a new element or detail, fractal funk.

Soul Mining

The The

4/5

Bright jangly and bouncy pop with a vocal that varies from soft crooning to dramatic post punk snarl. It's super smooth sounding: extremely clean production gives it a light breezy feel - there's plenty going on, but it isn't cluttered or chaotic. The guitars are great - jazz chorus sounding clean tones ringing out catchy leads and arpegios - the best bits are when they take the lead in the mix. The synths sound cool, but tend to wash out the songs and don't get used well when they're at the forefront though.

Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge

Mudhoney

3/5

They had the smarts to clean up the vocals to offer a counterpoint to the scuzzy guitars, giving the sound a lot more dynamism, creating a bit of breathing room in the mix. They're like an American Jesus and Mary Chain, fusing noise and pop into louder fuzzier heavier version of basically the 60s garage rock template, complete with surf solos. The dirty bass parts rip and the nasal slacker rock singing works perfectly for the dgaf affect.

A Little Deeper

Ms. Dynamite

2/5

Pretty standard issue RnB infused hip hop, sounds like a lot of the music that dominated the radio and charts around the late 2000. The most distinctive and best best bit of this is the organic instrumentation with horns and clean jazzy guitars creating a lively warm soul sound, like a rap Amy Winehouse.

Slipknot

3/5

For a band that is basically byword for the excess, stupidity, and mindless violence of turn of the millennium metal this is actually surprisingly good. The riffs are, of course, hard and heavy and downtuned to mud, but have a good groove to them and the dj/effects give a bit of higher end texture. The screaming vocals have a guttural power and the odd bit of melody to them, once you get used to it it works. The sound is insanely thick and bricked, it fills all the space available instantly - the double blast drums especially leave no breathing room, to space to think - collapsing distance and submitting you fully to the noise - you either succumb and give yourself over to it, or switch it off immediately. Good thing the lyrics are all unintelligible bc they are so stupid it hurts and the raps are awful, but at least they're relatively rare. The most stressful thing possible to just passively have on in the background.

21

Adele

1/5

Singing is emotional and the louder you do it, the more emotional it is.

Millions Now Living Will Never Die

Tortoise

5/5

Tense dissonance, a thrumming ambience suggesting something's off, expressive and restrained guitars that are at once vaguely punk and darkly jazzy, meditative and absorbing but disquieting.

Blunderbuss

Jack White

3/5

A fitting album cover since everything jack white does is through a knowing referential/reverential backwards looking buzzard's gaze on the rock canon - he's constantly devouring and regurgitating blues- country- garage- psych- rock - he's tasteful and talented so it's usually pretty decent but never especially interesting. But blues rock addicted boomer critics can't get enough so he's been lauded for being an anachronism his whole career.

Manassas

Stephen Stills

3/5

Don’t know why I never listened to Stills more. This is a really solid country-rock album from the heart of that era. Stills + Byrds vet Hillman rip it up here - the best stuff is the close harmonies and gentle pretty country stuff, but they veer into wah-wah blues rock and some slide-guitar ABBesque stuff too and it’s actually pretty good. Then there’s some acoustic folky stuff that’s a bit more boring. Nothing groundbreaking, but I wanted to add almost every song to my country-rock playlist, just to fill it out. Extremely dad core easy going stuff.

Goodbye And Hello

Tim Buckley

2/5

Some decent bluesy psych rock with a nice groove and soul/RnB arrangements and some solid mellow country/folk rock ala Neil Young. Best on the higher energy tracks or in full out spacey ambient mode - the folksy ballads with medeival melodies are a drag. His voice is bearable for the most part, but fundamentally annoying and very nasaly - he really pushes it with some of the extended wailing portions. Favorites: Pleasant Street, Once I Was

Killing Joke

5/5

Menacing and ominous. Sparse industrial sound with buzzing guitars, drill-like riffs, muffled anguished vocals, clattering pounding drums, and a machinic funk to the bass. A perfect debut that pretty well defined the genre formula. Requiem is such a good song - despairing spirituality in a disenchanted world.

Joan Baez

2/5

A classic 'respect rather than enjoy' album. Nice fingerpicking guitar and a remarkable voice (albeit not one I actually like listening to) delivering a set of classic folk songs expressing Americana ren faire taste.

Arular

M.I.A.

4/5

Exuberantly ecclecic, a kaleidoscopic blend of sounds styles and genres bombastically borders crossing and delivering playfully rebellious protest dance bangers. great fun.

Shaft

Isaac Hayes

2/5

The title track and do your thing are cool as hell and the other songs with vocals are solid jazzy soul social realism.tracks, but the rest is supermarket Muzak level smooth jazz. I'm sure it worked well for the movie, but it's not at all interesting outside that context, until it got chopped and samples a billion times for hip hop beats.

Music Has The Right To Children

Boards of Canada

5/5

Calming and contemplative, quietly dramatic, a world of moods and ambience conjured from the subtle variation of bleeps and bloops, textures, rhythm, and synth tones. Magic.

Music For The Jilted Generation

The Prodigy

3/5

Dark timbre scary rave bangers with plague levels of infectious energy and huge bombastic beats.

Club Classics Vol. One

Soul II Soul

3/5

Smooth RnB, propulsive drum machine tracks, boom bap beats, a jazzy feel, vocalists toasting and rapping and singing - this album combines pop, soul, disco, hip hop, reggae/dub and house in various permutations, but always upbeat, dancefloor filling, and joyful. Very dated sounds, but in a fun nostalgic way.

Raw Power

The Stooges

5/5

Coiled nervous energy released in explosive bursts of fuzz, howling scrams, flailing drums and scuzzy blues riffs played hard loud and filthy. A heaping dose of pure charisma, uncut thunder, primordial punk.

Moss Side Story

Barry Adamson

2/5

Making the score for a non existent movie is a cool idea that sounds on paper mostly like a project for a music school composition exercise - this has a basic noir feel to it, fancied up with swirling psych organs and 70s action funk. Good stuff to put on for reading detective genre fiction.

american dream

LCD Soundsystem

4/5

After burning out on the first few LCD Soundsystem albums in 2007 I've rarely returned to them, and never bothered with this one - my loss! The best part of the band is the movement between and combination of high energy dance stuff and the ecstatic tender slow jams. The synth sounds are amazing, the dense layers of instrumentation that builds the songs are gorgeous, the vocals are simple, direct and super effective and setting the emotional tenor. Reminds me of some of the best bits of the cure (the lush arrangements to sink into) and the talking heads (the infectious polyrhythms).

Selling England By The Pound

Genesis

2/5

Pros: synth sounds, when they settle into a groove and the guitar takes over, the pop informed bits, the odd heavy riff Cons: the neo folk pastoral stuff, the clever for its own good overly elaborate compositions, flute, the lyrics, the acoustic ballad bits, the meandering stories that dont go anywhere.

First Band On The Moon

The Cardigans

2/5

Sickly sweet pop rock so saccharine you'll need a dentist.

Exile In Guyville

Liz Phair

1/5

Drab music with the most boring version of the sounds of 90s alt rock: stripped back, lo fi, basic chords strummed at a medium pace - it all just sounds gray and overcast. That's the mood she's going for and she achieves it well, it's a long slog through 18 lyric centered lovesick bitterly let down songs. Tedious.

A Rush Of Blood To The Head

Coldplay

5/5

Music that makes 17 year olds nostalgic and world weary. One of arts signal achievements is to let you feel your feelings - Coldplay are cringe because they're so good it it. Pure pop that absorbed all the moves of britpop and 90s indie to meld into anthemic, overwhelming, over produced versions of the same tried and true chord progressions with huge hooks, big dumb chorus lines belting out tried and true lines: I love you, I miss you, you're good...it's so embarrassing how well it works, but suspending that feeling, succumbing, and letting it work... it does

More Songs About Buildings And Food

Talking Heads

5/5

A tour de force of kinetic twitchy nervous energy released in frantic bursts. Exuberant, skittish - a band finding its feet, and finding them sprinting full pelt.

A Nod Is As Good As A Wink To A Blind Horse

Faces

1/5

Boring blues rock that doesn't even have the benefit of Rod Stewart's good bad voice - he just sounds normal.

The Grand Tour

George Jones

3/5

Golden voice and immaculate vibes from the Nashville country machine - a touch of schmaltz, a heap of twang, sad heartbreak songs all delivered smooth and buttery.

White Blood Cells

The White Stripes

2/5

Bashing around playing blues riffs on loud crappy amps and howling into the microphone is an impulse as old as crappy amps; it's fun for all involved (except anyone listening). I get the spirit, but despite trying semi regularly cannot get past finding this band grating and mostly annoying.

KIWANUKA

Michael Kiwanuka

3/5

Gospel tinged rock with a varied sonic palette drawing on industrial techno, IDM, RnB, reggae, psych, and jazz. Rich warm baritone vocals are very inviting and the wealth of live horns and pianos makes for a great lush sound. Some nice guitar tones on a lead/riff, and some acoustic strumming, but it’s not exactly a guitar record. Production is super clean and clear. It opens well but gets pretty slow and trudging in the middle.

I Am a Bird Now

Antony and the Johnsons

3/5

Reminds me of all the things I dislike about Rufus Wainwright and Nick Cave, but for some reason this works for me. Intimate and operatic, emotionally raw but meticulously composed. Slow burning and intense. I think what's so powerful and unnerving about the vocals is the combination of the vibrato's wavering uncertainty and the forceful assuredness of the performance.

Nick Of Time

Bonnie Raitt

2/5

One surprisingly good soft rock track (Nick of Time), a few unsurprisingly boring blues ones, and the worst of it combines the two, or just goes into incredibly slow ballad mode. Thing Called Love is a surprsingly new wave sounding uptempo blues track.

Maxwell's Urban Hang Suite

Maxwell

4/5

silky smooth and buttery soft neo-soul. an incredibly humid album. warm and sultry, relaxed and totally at ease, the album is an hour of lush arrangements, jazzy sax, porno funk bass and keyboard parts, and falsetto crooning.

Hunting High And Low

a-ha

3/5

Albums from one-hit wonders are always a funny mix - songs that inevitably end up feeling like rough drafts, rehearsals, first takes, knock offs, or siblings/cousins of the anthem. This follows the script...but Take on Me is such a mega-hit and really stands up despite the overplay, hyper commercialization, endless parodies and use as shorthand for cheesy 80s mass culture. The rest is pillowy synth pop, all neon moods, glossy surfaces with dark undertones, and the jarring juxtaposition of earnest crooning with totally artifical instrumentation from the synths to the drum machines and produced to death bass sounds. The sound of the spirit become ensconsed in the digital cocoon, and at once lamenting and delighting in it.

A Love Supreme

John Coltrane

5/5

Searching restless exploration that pushes, pulls, and stretch harmony, rhythm, timbre and melody to create an uneasy feeling of dissociation, disjuncture, and disconnection. Music that's full of gaps and anxiously seeking to resolve itself, to cohere, to transcend - finding fleeting moments of joy, of blissful color that, with a the slightest twitch of hue, shifts tone, destabilizing the mood, casting back into the search.

The Dark Side Of The Moon

Pink Floyd

5/5

A five star album I never need to hear again.

Yank Crime

Drive Like Jehu

4/5

Aggressive emo ala Rites of Spring with throat stripping vocals, high energy high frequency live wire guitars thrashing around, and a very tight rhythm section that’s feeling the funk a bit. SoCal Fugazi. Big on quiet/loud dynamics, post-hardcore riffs, and descending into feedback only for a gnarly bass line to emerge from the chaos and bring it back. Some longer songs go into a textural grimey Sonic Youth direction, layering on the guitars over the bass groove until they whip it up into a closing frenzy, laying the groundwork for post-rock/screamo crossovers. Goes very hard, damn.

Heroes to Zeros

The Beta Band

2/5

Trippy psych jangle with a nostalgic 60s feel, woozy shoegaze atmosphere, a touch of electronica production, some Bittersweet Symphony style string bombast. Perfectly nice, very well made stuff that's pleasant enough to have on - hazy and dreamy in an upbeat lifting way - but doesn't leave much of a mark.

1999

Prince

4/5

Funky synthpop with huge hooks, boundless energy, a super kinetic nervous twitchy feel, and a lot more of a bouncy new wave feel than I expected paired with the eclectic astral jazz style of Parliament. Funny, horny, hugely charismatic, virtuoso, apocalyptic - real party at the end of the world stuff.

Hypnotised

The Undertones

3/5

Some cheeky Irish Ramones have only gone and bloody invented pop punk! Lots of chugga chugga chords, lots of hooks, lots of harmonies, lots of that thing where the bass goes up and up and up. A very non-aggressive approach to punk that’s more about having fun with the boys than raging against the man - kind of a new wave feel to a lot of the songs, despite no synths/keys.

Live At The Witch Trials

The Fall

3/5

The spirit of uncut cantancerous spite in audio form. Wierd rhythms, staccato performances, shifting song structures, none of the parts really cohere - it's like all the parts of the album were thrown into a cement mixer and poured straight onto wax. Sounds like total shit - a terrible singer spitting out putrid verse, awful musicians using cheap keyboards and tinny amps, recorded poorly for a weak thin sound - nastiness so pure it's inspired. Grotty, rebellious, annoyed and annoying, the sound of lashing out.

At Newport 1960

Muddy Waters

4/5

An electric performance - so thrilling a delivery of what has become the most tired sound in music that it still stands out and demands attention. It's hard to hear this as anything other than the tempalte, the generic form, the seed from which rock and roll boomed, the sound a billion guitar guys have been riffing on and ripping off, iterating and paying homage to over for the next 65 years with huge degrees of creative success. His guitar playing is solid but not as great as some of the other blues-rock transitional figures, the vocals are really the most amazing bit: rich, emotive, drawing on a deep resonance to power through, breaking engagingly, wraping the voice around the phrases, pushing out the lines and wails. The band sounds great too - the jazzy piano tinkling especially.

Your Arsenal

Morrissey

3/5

Jangle & Glam. Cool surf sounds but sadly just on the opener. A mix of sounds that synthesizes the wave of bands that followed the Smiths in twee indie pop (c86), artsy college rock (REM), and his classic touchstones - 60s girl group and 70s glam - into a blend that anticipates some of the more literate Britpop that would come shortly (pulp, suede). The production sounds good and his voice is in good shape, still some life to his performance. Lots of drama and self pity and dodgy (especially in retrospect) nostalgic nationalist declinism.

You're Living All Over Me

Dinosaur Jr.

4/5

The most flashy guitar player of the post hardcore bands, J Mascis plays like someone who grew up on Hendrix and the Stooges and came of age with Black Flag and Sonic Youth - virtuosity, but channelled into chaos, deconstructive violent playing on the edge of feedback, riffs and solos ripped from a wall of noise, loud, aggressive, but sensitive and emotive, leaning into something recognizable and melodic as it disintegrates. I've been listening to them more and more over the last couple of years and the alienating dissonance and nasal singing grow on me, the songs open up with familiarity to be, almost, singalongable.

Chicago Transit Authority

Chicago

2/5

I have a higher tolerance for fuzzed out psych garage guitar solos than most people, but this was tough even for me. A surprising debut from a band I associate more with super corny 70s radio rock, this album pairs fuzzy garage experiments with big brass riffs and soul/funk/jazz arrangements. Sometimes it works to create a kind of unique pop sound (heavy Abbey Road era Beatles with sax). The best bits are the countrified funk psych (I'm a man) but when they tighten up the sound gets really stressful and agitating but also bland (Someday). Sometimes they go full prog noodle experimental mode and while that was maybe interesting in 1969 (even then, not really) it really isn't in 2026. Favorite: South Carolina Purples, I'm a Man

Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret

Soft Cell

3/5

Great fun - bouncy synth pop made from the cheapest keyboards 1980 had to offer but capturing a gritty determination to fuck around and throw the best party possible. Dark, funny, ironic, detached, but earnestly throwing themselves into the moment.

Dusty In Memphis

Dusty Springfield

3/5

Soft schmaltz, bouncy RnB bass, warm brass, and a masterclass in breathy hushed singing. Easy listening, effortlessly cool, warm and chill, an instant mood raiser. The jazzier flutey & bossa nova songs ruin the mood though, urgh.

Pictures At An Exhibition

Emerson, Lake & Palmer

1/5

Is this meant to be fun? Enjoyable? Sophisticated? Clever? Impressive? An exhillerating display of virtuosity? A great lesson is just because you can doesn't mean you should? It's not even THAT technical is it? I truly never understood who this kind of stuff is meant to be for. There's a crowd going wild, who are you people?! Just listen to classical music, avant-garde experimental music, hard rock, OR do some math homework. But don't try to do them all at once - it just ends up as this tepid psuedo-smart dross.

Sunshine Superman

Donovan

3/5

Chilled out psych folk. Ironically though the follower stuff is the worst on here, suffering from that annoying medieval sound British psych loves and ultimately very boring. My favorite bits are the drones and meditative tracks that take a lot from Indian music as well as the CSN/Buffalo Springfield sounding bluesy bits with prominent basslines swirly organs and a spacey feel. I assumed this would be much more saccharine sunshine and flower power fluffy hippy stuff, but for the most part it's not really that at all despite being possibly the most 60s sounding thing imaginable. Favorites: Three King Fishers, Season of the Witch, the trip

Hot Rats

Frank Zappa

5/5

Shut up and play her guitar is the best advice Zappa ever took. None of the annoying unfunny comedy bits, just shredding, jazz rock riffs, prog compositions, studio wizardry and virtuoso performances. Sounds like mario music, like a demonic fire pit seance, like classic rock radio run through a kaleidoscope, like a hard bop acid trip, like a funky riverboat.

Public Image: First Issue

Public Image Ltd.

3/5

Bratty vocals. Adolescent lyrics. Brilliantly nasty sounding guitars: metallic, violent, buzzing dissonance. Anxious dynamics and a mood so tense its fraying at the edges, on the cusp of snapping. Deep dub bass keeps it all in check, holding down the low end so the riot above burns. The songs stretch out to 6 minutes, room to settle into a funk groove and thrash around a bit, but they outstay their welcome. The title track rips through its 3 mins though, it's the most direct and sex pistols sounding track with the best vocal melody on the album. The recording isn't great, feels like it's all compressed into the mids and has no room in it. They'd improve on the formula.

Electric

The Cult

1/5

One of the most boring by the numbers sub-ac/dc level hard rock albums imaginable. Bunch of British guys saw Bad Company and thought what if do that, but really take the edge off. No swag. Tedious riffs. Dull sounding. Not even any flashy wanky guitar. The musical equivalent of the bamboo they put in sausages to make them coagulate.

American IV: The Man Comes Around

Johnny Cash

4/5

Final albums by major artists, especially released in such proximity to death (Bowie's Blackstar for example), are hard to hear as something other than auto-mourning - and this one especially leans hard into the dark - glacial pacing and sparse arrangements mean JC's has nowhere to hide, the whole thing hangs on his voice and we hear it's fragility and its force in equal measure - a final, tender, intimate, parting gift, he's bearing his soul, offering it up, waiting for a higher power to take it in its hands.

It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back

Public Enemy

3/5

A tour de force of boom bap beats, hardcore sampling, DJ scratching, full blast raps from the machine gun mouth of Chuck D, and hey booiiiii hype. They've absorbed and remediated a political textbook in Black rage and radicalism. Sonically innovative when it came out, it now feels extremely dated, samey and overlong, albeit very exciting in small doses.

Is This It

The Strokes

5/5

35 minutes of magic. If you're going to steal all your ideas, steal from the best. Lou Reed's nonchalant vocal delivery and VU's lofi droning style, Television's intertwined guitars overflowing with simple melodies and tension, the Stooges' raw garage riffing, every post-punk band's agressive melodic lead bass style. The interplay between the 2guitars/bass and the vocals are so good - hooks and counter-hooks, snakey lines, bounce, texture, fuzz, energy. But reducing this to its influences misses what an incredible breath of fresh air this was in the nu-metal, butt rock, post-grunge rock landscape of 2001. One of the all time great driving around albums.

Street Signs

Ozomatli

2/5

LA's answer to Manu Chao, this is an ecclectic bit of world music drawing on global funk, hip hop, reggae, cumbia, salsa and other latin dance music, electronica, and rock. Scratching DJs compete with a horn section and a melodica to get a line in between rap verses. Party feel, but not an especially fun party.

Fulfillingness' First Finale

Stevie Wonder

1/5

Third time lucky? Nope. Still just don't like SW's voice, songs, or sound. All the talent in the world but none of the taste. The components are good - smooth funk & jazzy RnB, high spec 70s production - but it just ends up as cheesy pap. His nasal melisma is unbearable. The bass and keyboard parts redeem it a bit at least on the high tempo tracks where he's ripping off herbie hancock but the slow ones are just awful: sappy and dull.

Meat Is Murder

The Smiths

5/5

Bounce, jangle and moan in perfect proportion.

Tuesday Night Music Club

Sheryl Crow

2/5

Why would you include the debut album of someone who is almost exclusively known for the handful of extremely catchy radio hits from her second album? All I wanna do is the only one on here that made a mark. It's perfect fine pop rock with a tinge country twang and high spec 90s production, but none of the songs rise above pleasant background padding.

The Sun Rises In The East

Jeru The Damaja

3/5

Splitting the difference between Illmatic and 36 Chambers, this album is pure 90s NY hip hop with classic boom bap beats, lively rhymes, and a hard hitting sound.

The Boatman's Call

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

1/5

More portentous piano ballads from the world's dullest Leonard Cohen wannabe.

Nilsson Schmilsson

Harry Nilsson

2/5

Dreamy soft rock with a great ear for poppy hooks and harmonies. Mostly piano-based songwriting with an extreme Beatles influence. It has a very gentle ambling lazy Saturday morning feel to it - floaty and laid back af. It makes the Eagles look hardcore, makes the Beach Boys seem metal. The combo of Without You and Coconut is insane - the two most famous songs on the album seem to circulate independently but are right next to each other - an saccharine ballad so overwrought it hurts and then the goofiest bit of faux-tropical beach bum ephemera imaginable. There's a depressed feel that haunts and undermines the uptempo tracks - truly an album for divorced guys getting day drunk on rum and failing to trick themselves into thinking they're happier without her.

Let England Shake

PJ Harvey

3/5

Taking the edge of her earlier work, this album moves from post-punk/alt rock into a more indie sound - cleaner guitars, more atmosphere and space, less in your face intensity. Musically it's very of it's time - nice enough but a bit predictably following the beats, but it works really well to let her voice and words come through.

Palo Congo

Sabu

3/5

The percussion only bits get a bit tiresome but combined with the guitar work and call and response vocals are pure joy. Favorite: tribilin cantore

Hard Again

Muddy Waters

2/5

Chugging electric blues with a raunchy harmonica, bouncy bass, and guitar tone that cuts through, bringing those hot pentatonic licks straight to your ear hole. The singing is the best bit: saucy, expressive, funny. But even in 1977 this was a pretty tired sound, and even if MW was one of the original masters, mere authenticity doesn't make it any more interesting.

Viva Hate

Morrissey

3/5

Replacing the light floaty jangle of Johnny Marr's guitar with a mix of production styles like dark gloomy goth rock (Alsatian Cousin), string section (Angel Angel), and super 80s acoustic pop (Late Night) means that this is a pretty slow, bloated, and ponderous album that has all the maudlin crooning, but not of the bittersweet dynamism. Still, if you're going to listen to any maudlin crooning, this shithead is pretty much the best at it, and this being barely in the top 10 albums he's made is just an artifact of how prolific he'd been to this point. The two best songs are among the best Smiths approximation: Everyday is Like Sunday & Suedehead that have that bounce and jangle and a bit more of an upbeat uptempo sound to cut against the morose vocals.

Raising Hell

Run-D.M.C.

2/5

An artifact more than an album, this is another hip hop record from this era that is hugely influential and culturally significant, but really hard to listen to 40 years later as the genre has progressed so far beyond it and this is left feeling really one-note, dated, repetitive and ultimately pretty boring. Also, is this ultimately responsible for Nu-Metal, Kid Rock, and all of the other rap-rock hybrid monstrosities?

Channel Orange

Frank Ocean

3/5

Like a hip hop Nick Drake, this softly spoken slow paced sad boy stuff for a mellow introspective mood - but the pastoral nylon string guitars are replaced with loungey synths and drum machines. The music is lush and swirly, slightly out of focus, hazy neo-soul slow jams with gospel singers and funky noodling bass. His singing alternates between a nasal croon, a falsetto, and an almost mumbling rap flow - none of it is really very good, but works for the overall feel of the album.

Nighthawks At The Diner

Tom Waits

1/5

The perfect album for when you want the vibe of having a sleazy old detective movie on in the background but your TV is broken. Music for guys who confuse a tweed cap with a personality and alcoholics who are nowhere near as charming as they think they are. The whole thing is so desperately phoney and contrived, not necessarily a problem as copy things that don't really exist can be its own form of fun playful creativity, but it's done in a thoroughly humourless way. The jazzy walking bass rips though.

Porcupine

Echo And The Bunnymen

3/5

Great voice, moody atmosphere that's a cool mix of goth and new wave, dynamic interplay between synth/guitar/bass parts, lots of drama, movement, and sweep to the songs. It's the stock cube you need to put into a post punk soup to fill it out, but doesn't have any if the star ingredients.

Queen Of Denmark

John Grant

2/5

Weird one. A very boring piano/folksy opening gives way to a playful second half of goody genre pastiche with synth pop, kraut rock, new wave, and 80s hard rock sounds. From the most humorless tedium possible to just having fun messing around. But then back to the piano for more tepid ballads and ponderous strings.

Slayed?

Slade

2/5

Knock-off Bowie. The first draft of Oasis. But nowhere near as good. Extremely British amplifier guitar sound, chugging bar room blues rock riffs, big thumping bass, glam aesthetics, stupid lyrics and over the top forced anthemic vocals. Cheesy fun ok in small doses.

The Libertines

2/5

What's the point? Their albums are just a pretext for the obsessive press coverage of the most boring drama imaginable. Generic even in 2004, rote indie sounds and postures, some decent guitars and big drums, but no imagination and way too much of that whinging singing English guys thinks is charismatic.

I See You

The xx

1/5

Pop was truly running on empty in 2017. Worst possible combination of whiny indie, soulless electronic production, and vapid RnB pop vocalizing. Retail music for a run down shopping mall barely clinging on.

Konnichiwa

Skepta

3/5

Clanging beats and sirens sound the alarm, ominous pulsating rhythms, high energy and off kilter. Unsettling and anxiety inducing, angry and insistent. The raps are similar: a staccato cadence, harsh and confrontational, direct, boastful. Some catchy choruses scattered throughout, but also annoying skits.

Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo

Devo

4/5

Frenetic energy, goofy attitude, ear for a hook, messing around with synths but still essentially a basement dwelling punk band. This and Talking Heads 77 are the twin corner stones of so much great (and also so much annoying) stuff in the following decade.

New Forms

Roni Size

4/5

Breakbeats and repetitive bass lines and a chilled out atmosphere and some hushed raps. Great working music that drowns out the world and just flows.

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

Wilco

5/5

Open and opaque. Imagistic lyrics about heartbreak and love, nervousness and bad habits, nostalgia but undercut and unsettled, all delivered directly and earnestly. Simple songs deconstructed, restructured and rearranged.

New Boots And Panties

Ian Dury

2/5

Geezer core. All rude banter, character studies in pub blokes, goofy singalongs, and tipsy accordion. The warm ale of music. Possibly the most English album of all time.

Gold

Ryan Adams

4/5

He's not breaking any new ground here but that's not always the right criteria. This is just plain and simple heartland alt country adjacent indie singer songwriter stuff ripping off/extending the narrow band of Americana from exile on main St to Springsteen to Mellancamp. Beyond being a dickhead, he provokes strong reactions because of the unstable mix of earnestness and pretense, the cringe self seriousness and ludicrous affectation. He really over uses some annoying writing tricks (naming specific places especially) and there's a lot of mid tempo low inspiration filler on the bum, BUT, goddamn if the good bits (5 of the first 7 songs basically) don't hit hard if you let them.

Songs From A Room

Leonard Cohen

4/5

Quite, brooding, sombre songs that get better everytime you hear them.

American Gothic

David Ackles

1/5

Guy who wanted to write short stories but didn't have a pen, only a piano. Old fashioned pre-rock pop but with the pompous knowingness of doing it in a post-rock world.

Scissor Sisters

2/5

Left over synthpop found in the back of the fridge 20 years later and microwaved into a hot on the outside cold on the inside mush. Lots of cool textures and sounds, not much in terms of hooks/songs, pretty tepid predictable beats. Stock by the numbers millenial 80s revival stuff that takes the synths more into plodding indie than into than exuberant neo-disco.

Vento De Maio

Elis Regina

2/5

Breezy pool-side jams for a muggy afternoon. Smooth jazz, rubbery bass, super 80s production, samba rhythms, some more uptempo funk, loads of that floaty dreamy unresolved Brasilian Portugese melodic phrasing that always seems flat or like it doesn't have enough notes. I don't know why that style bothers so much, but I find the vocals incredibly grating.

Rust In Peace

Megadeth

4/5

Sick solos, relentless riffing, gnarly shredding, brutal chugging, operatic falsetto, wailing screams, dumb guy acting smart lyrics, goofy as hell and totally self serious, more sick solos. It's a guitar nerd's dream - super technical and played at a breakneck pace - but is way more melodic and accessible than I remember it being - amazing how much time fades some forms of aggressive harsh music.

Lady In Satin

Billie Holiday

1/5

Schmaltzy string, Bambi flutes, tame brass and plodding rhythms give all the songs a slow baggy washed out feel that nails a certain set of moods - listless, cool, complacent. But aside from a few turns of melodic phrase and the creaking cracking timbre of her voice, it's over orchestrated, tedious and pretty boring.

Brown Sugar

D'Angelo

4/5

A glorious renewal of the 70s slow funk sensual soul tradition, returning to warm organic instruments and a mellow laid back approach that sets the stage for some virtuoso singing-ceooning-moaning. The aural equivalent of silk sheets.

Master Of Puppets

Metallica

5/5

The perfect blend on raw thrash pummelling and epic neo-classical bombast, each balancing the other, giving a bit of pompous ambition that elevates the hard charging riffs and plenty of gritty energy that keeps the grandiose stuff from veering too far into prog wank - you can feel that they're itching to get back to some headbanging, shredding, and chugging even as they stretch out into harmonized leads and sweeping melodic passages.

Drunk

Thundercat

2/5

This album feels like a homework project. It demonstrates that they've mastered the instruments and the production techniques, they've studied the disco, soul, funk, and hip hop sonic cannon, they're doing clever things with sounds and samples and references. Good job, you get an A. It's expert and super competent, lots of talent on display, but has no reason to exist other than demonstrating that. There's not taking yourself too seriously, and there's being unserious - and this is both - it's silly and goofy because why not, it's just content through which to practice prowess. There's some decent jams, some nice arrangements, some solid grooves, lots of great bass parts, but it doesn't really amount to anything - pure filler. It's not even drunk, it's the epitome of tipsy.

Underwater Moonlight

The Soft Boys

4/5

A bit of a cross between classic punk energy, cute jangly power pop, and new wave quirkyness. The guitars are great - slinky leads breaking into some super bright twangy arpeggios. Naive lead vocals and Birdsy 60s psych harmonies. I wanna destroy you is an amazing opener, Kingdom of Love rips, Insanely Jealous is hilarious, and the closing 2 tracks are really good.

Guitar Town

Steve Earle

4/5

Bridging the outlaw country 'heartworn highways' singer-songwriter Austin scene and the more polished 80s heartland rock sound, this is a great bit of Americana - twangy but dark, cynical and jaded, with some great barroom guitar tones and a mix of sad bastard and big and blustery hard driving songs. He's a story-telling lyric-driven song writer, and I don't pay close enough attention to really appreciate what he's doing there.

Third

Soft Machine

4/5

Sprawling exploratory strange psych jazz from the most shroomed out dudes in village England where getting off your gourd and noodling on your bass are by miles the best way to spend your time.

Crooked Rain Crooked Rain

Pavement

5/5

Studied shagginess, pop gems buried in layers of warm fuzz and disjointed tempos, ironic detachment and drawling vocals. The songs feel on the verge of collapse, stumbling forward, barely coalescing at the last minute, then finally settling into some thrilling, moody, dramatic passages that build and build until clattering apart.

Bluesbreakers

John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers

2/5

Capable but thoroughly derivative electric blues rock - some nice fuzz tones and generic pentatonic noodling over the classic repertoire of 12 bar blues progressions. You can see how in London in 1966 this was fun for all involved, but it set a dangerous train in motion that's the curse of jam sessions and guitar stores everywhere.

Tago Mago

Can

5/5

Sprawling and trippy - it's held together by the mesmerizing motorik drumming and steady bass grooves which form a base for the rest of the sounds to float around, go nuts, explore, lose it, find it, settle down, freak out, and float on. Just an amazing album to put on and get lost in the sauce.

The Only Ones

4/5

Power pop gems with an almost punk dressing: effortless hooks, jangly guitars, a bit of dissonance and snarl, drawling vocals, bouncy bass, shaggy loose performances, Lo-Fi DIY production values, and a the energy of chilled out chaos. Another Planet is by miles the stand out track - a pure banger - but the rest is consistently great keep it simple stupid rock and loads of fun.

Peggy Suicide

Julian Cope

4/5

Similar recipe as Echo and the Bunnymen: moody gothic 80s synthy post punk with a heavy dose of dreamy 60s psych swirling around - big atmospheres, dramatic vocals, layers and layers of guitars and organs, melodic bass. But this more eclectic. Cope adds in a bit of the baggy madchester dance sound (easy rider, leperskin) and a couple of slower more stripped back acoustic tracks that start at Billy Bragg and ultimately build back up to a big orchestral psych noise. Some harder charging garage punk stuff ala Modern Lovers (hanging out). Some of it sounds like a British version of the shaggy slacker sound of 90s US alt rock. I like everything on here, but there is still too much of it - still, what a discovery!

Leftism

Leftfield

3/5

Spacey, dense, trippy electronic with a nicely varied sonic palette. Some chilled out stuff, some high intensity stuff, some dancey stuff, some bangers, lots of cool sounds, classic diva vocal samples, dank dub atmospheres, house beats, and a dark moody ambience to it all. It's so funny how this genre is great for both drug fueled rave partying and plowing through boring office work.

S.F. Sorrow

The Pretty Things

2/5

The same whimsical psychedelic style as all the other English bands from this year. Sing songy vocals straight from a nursery rhyme, quirky arrangements (flutes!) and melodies that all these bands have referencing medieval folk, magic mushroom imagery, and oh God, the album has a concept. These bands all simultaneously learned all the tricks to sound trippy, dialled them up to 11 for 2 years and thankfully got sick of it and/or fried out on acid - it's an interesting novelty artifact, but such a boring sound 60 years later. There are some cool fuzz guitar bits though and the parts where the vocals stop and the instruments freak out are fun (balloon burning, the journey, defecating grey).

Rumours

Fleetwood Mac

4/5

Pillowy soft rock. Fittingly for the epitome coke fueled 70s mega rock, the highs are HIGH but the lows are a drag. Some all time pop bangers, huge emotions painted in bright and broad, ultra clean production, a floaty laid back mood containing a lingering darkness. Now that we're all over the basicness & uncoolness of liking this it has become a bit overrated, but still, it's a warm bath. Feels good, man.

New York Dolls

3/5

Like the raunchy honk tonk era rolling stones with the gain turned way up, performed on speed and in high heels. This is the raw spirit of rock and roll delivered as a glammed up mess, it's full of swagger and snarl. Makes for a pretty clear stepping stone between Little Richard and Johnny Rotten. Big dumb debauched fun.

Cloud Nine

The Temptations

3/5

A fun mix of motown soul and 60s psych that peaks on the long instrumental jam at the end of side A, where you get the glorious Jamerson style bass and some great fuzzy guitar sounds combining for a heady bit of funk. The B side is classic but not especially inspired RnB - great vocal harmonies and more of that perfect bass but the schmaltzy strings drag it down a bit and the songs are mid.

Live 1966 (The Royal Albert Hall Concert)

Bob Dylan

4/5

A compelling argument for why rock is better than folk. Despite most of the best songs being on the solo acoustic + harmonica disc 1, the performances from the full electric band on disc 2 is just way more fun to listen to. Fun hearing him respond to the energy in the band, have more support, and let the possibilities of the songs blossom into something more fully realized.

Nebraska

Bruce Springsteen

2/5

Dark acoustic Americana that's even more affected than his normal stuff but has some good moments and introduces the legendary character 'the chicken man'. Spare and stripped back, a man and his guitar and his harmonica and his songs howling in the wind. Kind of whiny and boring, super overrated bc critics were too embarrassed to admit they like dancing in the dark so pretended to like this one instead bc it is bleak and holds a mirror up to society by having some lines that say 'factory closed'.

Fuzzy Logic

Super Furry Animals

2/5

More guys who grew up in the 80s recreating the 60s for the 90s. Fun but fleeting, a late to the party debut from a solid festival circuit 3rd tier Britpop act. Best when they're doing high energy psych pop, worst when they go slow spacey trippy. The promised fuzz is nice though, beautifully dialed in and warm.

Being There

Wilco

5/5

Their early albums have been overshadowed in my memory by how perfect YHF is, but holy shit this is worth a revisit. The opening has like 6 timeless songs I’ve loved since first listen, used to play to death, and still love to hear them play. Some of it is sparse singer songwriter folksy stuff, some of it really flesh out arrangements like a soul/rnb country band, some of it rocks with a barroom piano, some of it is dirty guitars. A blend of alt country twang, 90s post grunge radio sounds, and power pop jangle. The lyrics are full of great lines - these are amazing love songs about loneliness and attachment and longing and heartbreak - and the singing is full of life and emotion. Warm, nostalgic, earnest, weary, so so good. The only problem is there’s so much of it - prolific to a fault.

The Healer

John Lee Hooker

2/5

Blues is a zombie genre that's been living a ghoulish perpetual afterlife since the dawn of rock - it informs most guitar based music and gives the harmonic basis and structural template for everything from classic rock and psych, jazz and jam bands, garage and funk to punk and metal, it's revived every so often when a new guitar guy comes along paying tribute to the old masters, it lives on in the expensive les.pauls of dentists and in museumified concert settings, and every once in a while one of the old guys is wheeled into the spotlight for a tribute (see Buddy Guy, one of the last OGs, with Sinners) - this is one of those times. It's fine, but everything about it is so predictable and boring - the only interesting thing is the kind of jarring combination of earthy blues performances and super clean polished 80s production. Why this over one of his 60s albums?

Destroy Rock & Roll

Mylo

2/5

Retail music - upbeat uptempo bright and breezy synth pop electronica. At best it's like an optimistic Boards of Canada but for the most part it's like an own brand Daft Punk.

Don't Stand Me Down

Dexys Midnight Runners

2/5

The twangy 'knowledge of beauty' has a great country arrangement with violins and lap steels, the rest is all brassy pop and wierd soul pastiche with nasal vocals and lots of energy.

Floodland

Sisters Of Mercy

4/5

Absolutely rips - big gloomy synthy goth rock with great vocals and hooks for days. The sparse piano track (1959) brings it down a bit but when it's full force it's a hell of a mood.

Playing With Fire

Spacemen 3

5/5

Slow ambient drones, fuzzy edge of feedback guitars, hypnotic synth loops, and frail vocals - slow and patient songs that occasionally whip up a frenzy but more often nod out into addled bliss. Beautifully depressed, pure wallowing, endlessly chasing catharsis.

Black Metal

Venom

3/5

A gloriously stupid good time. Sophomoric satanism and schoolboy sexuality, power metal riffs chugging brilliantly, wild 80s lead guitar shredding \m/ it will never not be funny to think about the Christian illiterates getting trolled by this moronic bullshit.

En-Tact

The Shamen

3/5

Bouncy, dialed a notch or two above ambient, but still pretty chilled out, great synths, energetic beats - a few tracks are full acid house ala Happy Mondays - but it's mostly loungey wallpaper stuff. Good fun though.

Something Else By The Kinks

The Kinks

1/5

Extremely English, Extremely annoying, forced whimsy, the sound of taking mushrooms mistakenly thinking nursery rhymes and folk guitars and the renaissance and ripping off the Beatles worst tendencies makes a good combination. Tiresome. 1966-69 is so overrepresented it's a chore.

Fromohio

fIREHOSE

3/5

One of the more sui generis 80s indie acts, taming the dissonance of post hardcore and combining it with jaunty funky popping bass parts and guitars that twang and jangle. Everything's familiar but assembled and performed in surprising combinations. Only the vocals - nasal, flat, weirdly coffee shop open mic earnest - bring it down.

Ágætis Byrjun

Sigur Rós

5/5

The Svefn-g-englar single was a perfect release - an introduction to this otherworldy band conjoring this sweeping, ambient, spacious windswept alien sounds. This album is twice as long as the 4-track single and a bit baggy - the extended strings section and trip hop adjacent stuff drag it down a bit. Also not being a first encounter with the band it's a bit less special. But even so, the highs (Viðrar vel til loftárása & Svefn-g-englar especially) are pretty stunning: landscape painting as music - ethereal, dreamy, cathartic, spiritual, oceanic stuff.

Tres Hombres

ZZ Top

2/5

Some of the most generic blues rock the 70s has to offer.

Like A Prayer

Madonna

3/5

A couple of incredible era defining pop hits and some solid filler tracks channeling disco and all the 80s production wizardry available but also a lot of slow burning ballads that really stink up the place. Definition of a greatest hits not an album artist, but what hits!!

Abraxas

Santana

4/5

Along with Cream, Allman Brothers, Hendrix's Band of Gypsies, and the Dead this is 1970 jamband ground zero, exploding psychedelia beyond the fussy over-composed twee pop of London by sprawling out into improvisation of blues funk and jazz and, here, latin rhythms. The percussion and the guitar are the stars on this - constant polyrhythmic power and gritty dark overdriven SG tone and dorian / harmonic minor harmonies. The songs/writing and vocals aren't really much to remember but function as the vehicle for the jam/groove.

The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter

The Incredible String Band

1/5

God, hippies are so annoying.

Skylarking

XTC

3/5

New Wave Synths, keyboards and chorus-pedal guitars combine with a high, almost falsetto, vocal and lots of poppy arrangements and an art-rock approach to songwriting. At it’s best (Earn Enough for Us), it’s bright and upbeat power pop that presages a lot of 90s Brit-Pop. Other good bits head for the weirder artsy end of New Wave, with spacious deconstructed songs like Another Satellite, based on bizarre sparse soundscapes. But there are also some over-elaborate fussy songs with lots of strings that give have a bloated, annoying feel, like bad Sgt Peppers imitators. Some jazzy stuff that mostly sounds out of tune.

The Blueprint

JAY Z

3/5

Bombastic beats and big braggadocios raps - he is such a boring one dimensional man, a pure money mind. But the feel of the is great: propulsive energy, stylish sounds, a giant party.

Infected

The The

3/5

Synthy psychadelic goth disco - Depeche Mode is the obvious comparison, but this is a bit jazzier, poppier, brighter, and more uptempo. Fun, bouncy stuff with a dark undercurrent.

Something/Anything?

Todd Rundgren

2/5

Maximalist soft rock, like Gram Parsons meets Stevie Wonder - piano-driven songwriting with lush arrangements, loads of synths, easy-going moods, gentle harmonies, a hint of twang, and a blissed out hazy California sunset vibe. But its so easy-going and so soft it rarely coalesces into anything tangible, its a series of loose impressions, of passing feelings. It feels like it was made as a demonstration of what you can do with a state of the art early 70s recording studio.

Kollaps

Einstürzende Neubauten

4/5

Industrial horror - the only thing more terrifying than the despair of clanging machinery is the howl of post-industrial collapse, the looming void, the creeping rust, the screaching noise of iron wrought from itself. I can't watch any more of these German sitcoms.

Black Holes and Revelations

Muse

1/5

At best a rip off Radiohead with pop ambition replacing creative ones. At worst they're wannabe U2 at their most bloated and boring. Grating vocals, unearned peaks, predictable dynamic shifts, corny electronica. Piss poor. Just some of the worst stuff the 21st century has churned out yet.

Elvis Presley

3/5

One of those that's next to impossible to listen to outside of the 'influence', 'for its time' and 'pathbreaking' and 'changed everything' descriptors that turn it into a sacred artifact in ROCK HISTORY. It's a lively combination of jump blues, high energy RnB, and honky tonk - all the most danceable music the mid 50s had to offer distilled into one super charismatic package.

Blood On The Tracks

Bob Dylan

5/5

The combination of acoustic guitar strumming and laid back but melodic bass lines on this album gives that are really very simple songs/arrangements such a depth of feeling - gentle, sad, tender, warm - that just invite you to dwell in it.

Moby Grape

2/5

Classic San Francisco sound - close harmonies, bluesy electric guitars, a bit of a soul/RnB feel, and some country jangle, and some folksy acoustic stuff all blended up for a lightly psych sound. They don't push the boat out as much as the dead or nail the countrified harmonies of CSNY or the raunchy raw blues of Big Brother & the Holding Company - sticking to a more Beatlesy power pop. It's fine - but their best song, Omaha, isn't on this one.

Casanova

The Divine Comedy

1/5

Britpop Sinatra, without the charisma of either. Dull, gray, bloated - like a whale car ass washed up on a beach. When it's not boring it's annoying.

Hunky Dory

David Bowie

2/5

Another insanely overhyped album. Changes is great but the rest is really pretty bad. His voice is thin and weak and the songs are just crap Elton John piano rock with cheesy strings and corny brass arrangements to go with the irritating showtune style. I think this is my final of the 62 Bowie albums on the list, and I've come to the conclusion that I just don't like him very much. You could compile a pretty great 72-minute CDr best of that would be mostly bangers, but there's so much boring crap on all his albums, and the only one that was really good was the one that's basically a Brian Eno album.

Lost Souls

Doves

1/5

Decently atmospheric mid tempo indie radio rock but it's so bloated and aimless and the vocals are a whiny bore, Thom Yorke rip off but lacking any angst or dynamism. The strummy acoustic guitars are meant to give it energy but just make it tiresome. Some good instrumental passages with shimmering guitar leads and the feel of explosions in the sky doing Champagne Supernova, really pushing for epic and sweeping, but ruined by the whinging singing. Favorite: Rise

Sound of Silver

LCD Soundsystem

5/5

00s revival of 80s synthy post punk turned into dance music - the best heir to New Order. There's a surprisingly tender genuine break up song and a couple of amazing burnout/hangover songs - the whole thing is a beautifully bittersweet combination of lonely and party music.

Kilimanjaro

The Teardrop Explodes

3/5

Classic new wave stuff - a bit of funky post punk bass and slashing jangly guitar, some ska style horns played on cheesy keyboards, a couple synth parts, angular ironic disaffected vocals with a bit of pop melody. Building tension, dance grooves. A lot like talking heads and the police but also duran duran - upbeat energetic and full of nervous kinetic energy. Good fun

Chocolate Starfish And The Hot Dog Flavored Water

Limp Bizkit

2/5

A hilariously stupid album that captured the end of millennium zeitgeist of vague undirected being pissed. The singles aren't as good as from Significant Other where they really dialled in their signature style (swirly atmosphere then thudding thick downtuned guitar blasts) but Rollin' and My Way are quintessential dumb guy anthems. Fun riffs, extremely corny accents like the DJ scratching, and idiotic lyrics. People are mad about it, but metal has always been this dumb, this was just dumb music for especially dumb times. CD era bloat and loudness wars production make it sound bad and drag on forever. The songs are all at least a minute or two too long. Incredibly funny to be a band as huge as they were at the time and putnout that album cover that's so bad looking and not actually funny - one for all time moron mt Rushmore. Favorite: Take a look around

Ys

Joanna Newsom

2/5

An ambitious and original bit of folk opera that reminds me mostly of the pastoral psych-folk of the late 60s/early 70s in the UK but reinvented for millenial California. It conjures a medieval fantasy world with the arrangements (lots of strings, harps, flutes) and inhabits it with witchy croaking vocals and story telling poem-lyrics. Lots to admire conceptually, but I don't really like listenting to it at all - even once I get used to the voice.

Vauxhall And I

Morrissey

3/5

Morrissey's take on britpop - the band sounds like Suede or Pulp, but his voice is distinctly his own, all aching melodrama, pained pique, and sweeping nostalgia.

Grace

Jeff Buckley

5/5

It's so comically overraught it circles back around the being good. So much angst, so much drama, such beautiful guitars and swirling unsettled energy.

Histoire De Melody Nelson

Serge Gainsbourg

1/5

Some cool loungey sleazy psychedelic stuff going on musically, but more than ruined by being a concept album about hitting a child with your car then fucking her. Guys just had these fantasies out loud in the 70s huh? Great representative of France here, the laid back, chilled out, black turtle neck wearing pedo rapist.

Future Days

Can

4/5

Trippy and immersive, chilled out but intense, spacey and atmospheric but very present and lively. Warm and organic in timbre even as it slides into a robotic machinic trances of hypnotic rhythm. Choatic performances, songs that clatter and fall apart and reemerge in a new form.

Rust Never Sleeps

Neil Young & Crazy Horse

3/5

Mid career Neil Young isn't especially inspired, definitely one of his that could go - extremely overrated. It's kind of a shame to waste half a crazy horse record on a pretty bland acoustic set. The second half goes a bit harder with some classic proto grunge scuzzy stuff. The thundering distortion of the second 'Hey Hey' rips right through and the guitar parts on Powderfinger especially are up there with some of his best. Get the feeling this is included mostly on the strength of the ultimate boomer meta rock and roll question 'burn out or fade away'?

The Modern Lovers

5/5

If the Doors were New England hipsters instead of LA hippies, if Velvet Underground were a bit more laid back. Earnest and louche vocals with a warm timbre engaging delivery, over lackadaisical slacker rock. Effortless cool. Get yourself someone who'll love you the way Jonathan Richman loves Massachusetts and the Old World.

Heaux Tales

Jazmine Sullivan

2/5

The worst parts of RnB and being online all rolled into one blessedly short album of warbly nasal melisma and d-tier gender theory. Like, damn, you're saying there are transactional elements to sexuality that intersect with the economy? No way. So bored of people having these realization every 11 minutes. If you can get past the spoken word bits and the vocals there are some decent if generic 90s style jams with deep beats and lush arrangements.

The Rise & Fall

Madness

2/5

Jaunty pub rock constantly threatening to break into a singalong. It's like guys doing a kitschy ironic vaudeville show desperate for laughs for just winking aggressively.The brass brings a lot of energy and the overall sound is bouncy and kinetic. Our House is great, the rest is pretty boring.

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