Uh. Not great. Obviously incredibly talented musicians — amazed the so ich depth achieved by only four people — but I got bored and tired of waiting for the soundscape to evolve into something interesting. At points, it came close, but mostly just a frustrating listen
Terrific. Amazing songcraft: classic folk and blues forms, yet they sound fresh and brand new.
An absolute triumph. If you love jazz, this is its final form — like looking through a wormhole into the infinite; if you’re new to jazz, this is a spark of understanding.
One of the greatest jazz records of all time.
The genesis of industrial music, but with pop sensibilities and a new wave edge.
Dark, but accessible and relatable.
If ministry’s psalm 69 is a day when everything goes catastrophically wrong on the factory floor, then this is a relatively good one; but it’s still the same cold and dangerous factory.
Amazing
Trance should be a music you fall into and out of. Back and forth between passive and active listening. Like sitting on the porch of a cabin by a mountain stream — you aren’t always consciously aware of the stream, but it comes in and out of focus and each time you notice something new and beautiful. But in this case, I just found myself being irritated the stream was still going on. In short, pretty boring.
Nico can’t sing, and neither can Lou Reed. The subject matter is odd and foreign and the lyrics are sometimes frightening. Nobody on this record is an instrumental virtuoso, in fact some of the playing is barely adequate.
None of that matters. It’s cold and bleak and at the same time sunshiny. Is it the songwriting? Is it the haunting way the songs follow you? Who cares? This record is mind blowing.
R&B visionaries. Excellent.
Art school nerds make excellent records full of surprises. Good stuff.
For me this album is bittersweet. It’s a banger and has some of my favorite U2 tunes, but it also marks the beginning of the end. After this, U2 became the characters they portrayed in the zootv tour. Comical, outsized, yelling into an empty room relics. It’s a great album and would’ve been a fine outro for one of rock’s greatest bands, but alas, they chose to try and take it with them.
If Steve Earle had a better childhood, he would’ve been Ryan Adams.
That is intended as high praise.
This record kept getting better and better; at first I dismissed it as same old alt country bs, but the songwriting managed to break through my cynicism. Excellent, will definitely listen to more
Maybe the Elton John/Bernie Taupin songwriting team isn’t quite in the same breath as Lennon/McCartney, but it’s pretty damn close. If they can make you feel real, honest emotions for an actress who died decades ago and an English farm boy lost in Hollywood, then they’ve definitely got chops.
Like all Elton John records, it’s got more than its share of hits, but it’s also got some of his best deep album cuts. Brilliant
Holy shit. Bombastic rage and pathos, Ice Cube rips the veil off the elusive American dream. 3.5
I think I’m pregnant now, and I’m a middle-aged dude.
How can you follow up a bonafide masterpiece? You really can’t, unless you’re Marvin Gaye, and even then it’s gotta be the grooviest, sexiest, most seductive bassline under the smoothest vocal you’ve ever heard. This is that. 4/5
It’s impossible to overstate the influence and reach of Bob Marley & The Wailers. This record was the flashpoint of a brilliant and all too brief career. And like most of their records, the track listing sounds like a greatest hits.
When it hits, damn. When it lags, it’s still worth it.
I don’t review Beatles albums. They’re The Beatles, what else can be said?
Unlistenable. What is this shit?
This is another album it’s hard to oversell. Its influence crosses genres and economics; and it continues to influence today.
Yeah, no
- Music to walk to.
- Walk in a place you’ve never been
- A new city with new faces.
- shades of Cooley high
- kinda feel this like muted music in the apartment down the hall. Follow the sound and you make new friends and hear new stories.
4.1/5
This is a prime example of peak musicians at peak power. There are few wrong notes on this album; the ethereal, gauzy tone of “whispering pines” might be a bit much, but even then Richard Manuel and Rick Danko’s haunting vocals make it worthwhile. This is one of the tightest albums by one of the tightest bands. Epic.
This record is the soundtrack to a cautionary tale of mental illness. It’s the Syd Barrett story laid out musically and it’s just as sad. His influence is obvious and important on tracks like Astronomy Domine and Interstellar Overdrive, but this is not that. So much so in fact, that it showcases how much he missed the rest of Floyd, not the other way around.
I had to listen to Meddle to clean me ears. 1/5
David Bowie rarely put a musical foot wrong and this is no exception.
It’s not my very fav Bowie — that’s obviously Ziggy Stardust — but it’s still high quality Bowie.
4/5
If you can’t say something nice…
2/5
Beautiful. Melodic. Haunting.
4.5/5
Beautiful poetry set to meh music. Well-crafted, but frankly boring songs. Sleep to Dream, Shadowboxer, Criminal, and The First Taste standout, but the rest of the record had me listless. That’s a shame, too, because her voice is beautiful and her story is captivating. This album smacks of session musician production. Maybe if she’d had a band who’d suffered for these songs like she did. 3/5
**Disclaimer. This isn’t a fair review. Only listened to three tracks.**
It took two guys to make this?
I wanted to say that this record is dollar-store Daft Punk, but that is offensive to both Daft Punk (obvi) and to dollar-stores. They’d never sell this shit.
Sounds like ‘my first synthesizer’ by playskool.
This record is a reminder that 1001 albums is actually a fair shit-ton of music and by sheer odds there’s got to be some seriously, craptastically bad music. This is that.
0.5/5
“Y’all better hurry up and finish the album before your mom gets here to pick you up.”
— overheard from the engineer’s booth at guitar center during the making of this record.
It’s fine. Competent.
2/5
Beautiful record. Flows well from emotion to emotion and from tone to tone. Each tune is a story that quickly gets you invested. There are two tracks near the end (Welfare Mothers and Sedan Delivery) that sound like George Lucas enlisted Carmine Coppolla to write a punk song for the sequel sequel “Even More American Graffiti”: they’re done “correctly” but with some kind of realism missing. Neil Young’s pretentiousness almost comes through on these tracks and they’re distracting enough to mention.
But when the first power chords of “Hey Hey My My” kicks in, all is well and good again.
4.2/5
I guess I’m old now.
Two songs in (maybe three?) and I gave up.
There’s an old joke that goes ‘how can you tell one bluegrass tune from another? By the title.’ and it rings true with bluegrass, but this is some next level repetitive shit that can only be recognized as separate tracks by the silence in between.
Seriously. I don’t care how legit angry or disaffected you are, the message is lost about 20” in. Just shit.
I mean the longer I listened, I got more and more angry that this was released to the public, much less put on this list. Jesus fuck it’s horrible. Like I want to go find these dudes and the dude who put them on this list and slap them in their stupid faces.
Just fuck you, for real.
0/5
Classic. Not quite Aja, but brilliant.
3.5/5
Sketches that show glimpses of the brilliance to come. Great, but not perfect. A little overlong and outros tended to run on in a repetitive way.
3.5/5
Any other group, this would be a masterpiece that defines the band.
As it were, it almost broke up the Beatles.
That being said, it’s still the Beatles and it’s — as usual — next to perfection.
Europop trash can with one half eaten eclair sticking out, just visible above the rim.
If you’re craving fresh, monotonous executive-to-studio anal drippings, this is the record for you.
Plain bagel. 2.5/5
Classic, near-perfect performance. You can hate jazz, but you can’t hate this.
4/5
Beautiful and haunting. Odd and intimidating yet accessible and strangely familiar. Have I heard this before? Where? Did I dream it? Brilliant
4.5/5
