Some great crunchy guitar early and gorgeous vocals and production. But forgettable and repetitive songs with dumb lyrics.
Baba and Blue Eyes and Won’t Get Fooled all great. Just because I’ve heard them more? Are they radio played because they’re better, or do we think they’re better bc they’re radio played and familiar?
The Who are an undeniably great band. Daltry Moon Entwistle Townshend. They rock. But seventies cock rock kind of sucks. Lyrics are bland and dumb. The Who seem committed to this juvenile shit like oh we all peed on the wall, we’re bathing in baked beans. Guess it made the greatest generation angry which must have felt good but it ages poorly.
Better than The Who and Queen. More straight hard rock. Gets boring after an hour, but a forty minute highlights cut would slap. These guys can play. Chugging drums, blazing lead, nice little double lead lines harmonizing guitars. Who and Queen probably better live. Solid late seventies live rock.
Listenable for Come Out and Play, and Self Esteem. The rest is pretty generic nineties pop punk. Come Out and Play gets most of its charm from surf rock - Pulp Fiction? Two stars for the energy and production and humor and those tracks. Otherwise forgettable and obnoxiously intentionally juvenile and repetitive and lyrically offputting.
Badass. Hard. Nasty toward the end. But musically prescient and tasteful and a good time for all.
Meh. Not my thing. Virtuosic playing and nice incorporation of classical motifs. But to jagged and not enough melody or harmony or swing or groove for my taste. Feedback and other noise lands as more annoying than sublime. Talent to burn, and maybe their other stuff is great. But this isn’t for me. Took three attempts to listen thru and the effort was hardly worth it.
I like. Late sixties Brit pop. Beatles and early Bowie vibes. Very English, including a startling condemnation of war in The Butcher. Time of the Season is a masterpiece that too much radio play can’t ruin. Production lyrics everything from the future. Those two are five star. The rest are good and would probably grow on me but not enough punch to rise above three. Surprisingly tame for a band called the Zombies! Strong three stars, maybe four with more listens.
Perfect rockabilly rock perfection. Buddy and the boys are a platonic ideal of the form, and I won’t hear a word against them. Twenty five minutes of bliss. If you don’t like this you don’t like American music.
Stop singing at me.
Gorgeous voice and production and really sophisticated songwriting. Clearly surplus talent. I guess he’s queer which adds a star automatically. But this kind of baroque over the top - more Beethoven tho - is too much for me. Maximalist pop. There must be a time and place for it. I’d rather listen to Bowie any day. White people and white men in particular just lost the plot after grunge and the dominance of rap/rnb. Doubling down isn’t the answer.
Bob showed me again how great Frank can be. His voice is everything you could ask. But the self pity and drippy strings get old quickly, and an hour is about twice as much as anyone needs. This started at five stars and steadily declined. Wants more variety and shorter run time. Rich beautiful white guys feeling sorry for themselves spoils like milk.
Better than any non Kendrick rap album I’ve heard in a long time. Good beats and not too much distracting side stuff. Feels old fashioned, with choruses and straightforward raps. Dre is weird and talented and with that voice, while Boi flows with the best. Close to four stars, but I’m in no hurry to listen again, so three. Still, the hits hit and the rest is just fine.
Delicious! Just weird and noisy enough, lovely passages, funny, German, real fuck you we're having fun energy. I’ll listen again and it may well be a five. This is a true find, totally unknown to me before today. Why I tried this whole project. Krautrock!
U2 sucks. Which is probably just how Gen Xers feel about sixties and seventies rock. We all want to burn down what came before.
Can’t understand how this is a totemic album if the eighties. Because the rest is so much worse? The hits are good but repetitive. I probably would have loved it if I were born in 1970 and 17 when this came out. Alas, I wasn’t, and I don’t. Bono’s carefully triangulated liberal Irish Catholicism - I wanna drink with my lefty friends but not offend the pope or Reagan, challenge them, convict their hearts for Jesus! but not offend - is exhausting. As is his keening wail. As is his self indulgence. And that thumping rhythm that a hundred bands drove to death - looking at you, Coldplay.
Like all these albums, maybe great for someone sometime. Now a period piece curiosity at best. I’ve found what I’m looking for, elsewhere.
Fun! Some tracks very like U2, except good. Semi intelligent dance pop. Not something I listen to much but when I do I’ll certainly check this out again. Forgettable, but in a good way.
Is this progressive rock? Why does it so often refuse to dance or swing. This is why Dead > any prog - they too get weird but always come back to dance.
Still, close enough to my wheelhouse that I’ll listen at least once again. There’s good stuff here, not least the cover art.
Now this is cock rock done right. Aussie incorrigibles with ten songs about one thing - the highway to hell is slippery indeed. It’s base but knows it, and though every song sounds like the one before, it’s a good song sound, and the band takes itself exactly unseriously enough. Inimitable vocals, massive guitar and throbbing rhythm section. Throbbing indeed.
Sparkling English post punk or pop punk or something that still sounds fresh nearly thirty years later. And it dances. Melodic and varied enough I’d like to listen at least again and again at least. Anticipates Spoon and a lot of other music but much less precious and self aware. Back when white musicians didn’t think so much (of themselves).
Chill, man. Probably sounded fresher when new - this sound has been done and done since. Not interesting enough for a four, but not bad at all.
A thoughtful take on core country, doing what it’s always doing by figuring out how to look back just right. Mostly it succeeds, though not always (“Fingernails” wtf). His voice isn’t beautiful or memorable or ugly enough to be great, and neither are the songs. It’s probably one of the best country albums of its year or several years, though I doubt that’s saying much. I’d like to hear it at least once more. Can’t hold a candle to Lucinda Williams.
Two stars because Bubbles loves them, and because they're nerdy Canadians, and because Alex Lifeson seems like a genuinely wonderful human. But while Geddy's bass is solid, his voice is everything bad about post-Zepplin male vocalists - nails on a chalkboard. They can play, "Tom Sawyer" is fun, and they're probably fun live, but this is barely listenable.
Delightful. The full-Reagan (or Thatcher, I guess) album cover got me, and the ridiculous name. I'm here for it all - that weird 80s voice lots of people did, being a million miles from U2 and bands like Rush, talking through the songs, the heavy British accents, the surprising instrumentation (steel guitar!) - all of it, a breath of fresh air after a few heavy lifts.
Too spare, too strident, and - I never thought I’d say this - too British. I like the lefty fuck your Seeger thing. But yeesh it gets old real quality.
This was once my favorite Beatles album and, who knows, may be again someday. These days my favorite Beatles are on the knife edge between their bopping youth and experimental middle period, rich and stoned and sick of fame and the road but still entirely under Brian’s thumb. Still, this must be the world’s greatest swan song by the world’s greatest (studio) band by far.
Really wanted this to be a four, and went back and forth throughout, but it errs just a bit on the side of cerebral and Radiohead-y. If it would just swing or rock a little more, I'd love it. Be weird, be loud, be atonal, be angular, but make it sound like something humans will enjoy listening to. Lots to like here, and with another listen or two it might be a four. I really want to like this band, though I'm not sure why.
Just funky enough. Great lyrics and voice. Could easily become five stars.
This is fun! This is new wave? The hits are great and the rest stands up, ages well, just quirky enough.
Magnificently hard, driving. The Who wish they rocked this well. Anticipates AC/DC but far less juvenile. Gets the hard rock screech right without Daltry’s peacock ego or Plant’s tiresome overuse. Love this.
I’m too young to have been listening when this was fresh, and now it sounds every bit of thirty-something, and I mean that as a compliment. Queen is a hell of a rapper, and the Golden Age sound here before everything became gangsta is very nice indeed. Feminism good beats great raps nothing to dislike. An hour doesn’t feel too long.
What fun! Vibrato sneer is friendly and fun. Crunchy punky little pop songs and takes itself not at all seriously. Nothing not to like!
What’s left of my early teen misogyny really wanted to dislike this, and dismiss it like I did when I was thirteen and it was inescapable. But it’s too funny, surprising, smart, feisty, and strong to be swept aside. And far too Dylanesque.
Gorgeously produced and played and lyrically moving but goddamn it I hate voice vibrato.
I hate this. I can turn it really far down in the background and it's kind of like a sound machine. I can imagine loving it if I were twenty in '86 and dancing drunk in a sneezy basement club. On some good uppers. But this sound that feels like it defined a certain kind of angsty Gen X eighties alt rock is something I do not like. Makes one yearn for the wrecking ball of grunge and rap 'round the corner.
I admire this, but I don’t like it. Heavy raw wild intense. But not my scene.
Not really my vibe but the voice wears surprisingly well, something Husker Du and Billy Bragg and others could learn from, and should have. This album is as old as me and has aged nearly as well. Blister in the Sun sounded fresh when I was fifteen and still makes me smile. Add it Up, et al. Hard not to like!
It’s fine. The hits are great, and Dre’s production is delightful, as always. Doesn’t deserve to be so popular, though deserve has nothing to do with it.
Two and a half, I guess. I respect this Britrock thing, but it doesn't really move me much. Feels like a period piece. Would listen to other Kinks, though.
Cute. And impressively angular for peak-disco era. But angular ain't my thing, and this wears thin quickly. Butchering "Satisfaction" is some kind of statement, I guess. I can't get no.
Inconsistently brilliant. Tons of variety, perhaps too much. Broken Arrow is a weird Beatles-y collage thing, no thanks. But the first three or four really go - rock, country, jazzy. 3.5 rounded down to 3 for the inconsistency, but there's lots here to like, especially Neil Young.
Magnificent groovy funky fun. Doesn’t really reach a consistently transcendent level but it is consistently great.
Well, I love this. Haven't heard other Zappa, but this is just my cup of tea - jammy, complex, weird but disciplined, astonishingly talented, head-bobby. Instrumentals, and Captain Beefheart! One of my favorites of all the albums so far.
The first half is stronger than the second, but that's to be expected since the first half is perfect. Van the man!
Punky and fun. But it goes on too long, and is inconsistent. There are some stretches of 4-star rock in here, with all the right snarl and swagger, but too much indulgent mediocrity to rise above a 3.
James Brown has always felt punchy to me, like the band is boxing my ears. I wish they’d settle into a groove and ride it. But I think it’s a feature that would have made them a joy live. And you can hear it here, this gets an extra star for the euphoric Apollo audience. Also, the man can sing, and his band kills.
Adele has an extraordinary vocal instrument. Shame to waste it on this tripe. Everything is overdone - vocals, lyrics, production. I bet in a room with an acoustic group and good songs she’d slay. Bonus point for just how remarkable her voice is, but otherwise insufferable.
I suffered through this. Bonus star for Ganster Trippin, which tripped me down memory lane to being 13 and thinking it was great. Also when I hear Fat Boy Slim I see in my mind Christopher Walken dancing. But this shit is obnoxious. Repetitive, grating, juvenile in all the worst ways. I’d have to do a mountain of ecstasy to get in this groove; even then I’d want something less idiotic.
Good but not great. Without the focus and melodic genius of Ziggy.
Beautiful atmospheric late nineties French well electronica. Has aged so much better than contemporaries like Fat Boy Slim. Anticipates the sound Theivery Corporation made their brand. Tres bon!
Warmed over seventies Beatles has more tuneful and less awful than I expected considering how much I dislike Jeff Lynne. That overdone production tho eww.
Chock full of interesting and tuneful and often funny ideas, but it does't really cohere into something I enjoy listening to. A couple 4-star songs, but plenty of 2-stars as well. Still, I'd listen again. Closer "People Taking Pictures of Each Other" is a prescient commentary on an age that can't experience the present without somehow capturing it for later - and this was 1968!
Real talent, and fun, but it's not really my thing. Much respect, and I liked it much more than I thought I would, but it's not something I'd spin more than rarely - just not the sort of thing that resonates with my life. Though I bet it was a banger if you were the right age in '95! Also, a little too long.
Charming, varied, tuneful, crisp, interesting. I've never liked Costello's voice more - he avoids the intentionally-obnoxious thing he sometimes does. With more listens it could easily be a 4-star.
I like Ray, and many of these tunes, but the big band/strings is too much. Is this meant to broaden his appeal to white audiences? I'd trade all this for "Hit the Road Jack" with his band. I like that big brass sound less and less - it's like an air raid siren. How did it ever become a thing?
Well this is so goddamn good. Killer beats, brilliant-hilarious lyrics, gorgeous production. Everything dances, everything's fun. Back when his swagger was earned. What a shame Kanye has become such a toxic monster. Four star album, zero star human.
A rocking good time, but too much horn too much noise too much goofing for my taste. As with so many on this list, in the proper context - like drunk and live with a crowd of young and beautiful people - this would be transcendent magic. Here and now the fun becomes grating pretty quickly.
Jagger heard "Run for Your Life" close Rubber Soul and was like I can be WAY more misogynistic than that! "Stupid Girl" is a stupid song. And there's plenty more. But also lots of vintage mid-60s Stones, as they were just finding out what that meant. Not just a white blues rock band, but that magic that would peak in the late-60s and early 70s with Let it Bleed, Sticky Fingers, Exile, et al. If you dig what's good here, and loathe what isn't, some advice: the UK version has a couple more great tunes, including "Out of Time" and "Mother's Little Helper". Make a playlist of both the UK and USA versions, cut the shit (including the pointless "Going Home"), and you have a fine little album that's at least marginally less objectionable lyrically, and excellent otherwise. Track list: Paint it Black, Mother's Little Helper, Lady Jane, Under My Thumb (gross lyrics but it bangs), Doncha Bother Me, Flight 505, High and Dry, Out of Time, I am Waiting. Four stars for those, but just two for the original.
You know what? I dig this. Head-bobbing rhythms, searing vocals, a great echoey ambiance. This is my first listen to The Cure and while it's too far from my Americana comfort zone to be top-tier, it's an easy four stars and something I'll certainly listen to again.
Meh. I guess I'm in the minority here but I've never really liked The Beach Boys. Their best early stuff I can dig a couple tracks, but those famous harmonies grate more than elevate. I don't even like Pet Sounds much, so it's not that Brian Wilson (RIP) is missing here. They're trying something here, credit where it's due, looking for their place in 1971 American music. And there are a couple of good tracks. But mostly it's warmed over musically and too on the nose lyrically. It's got real "hello, fellow teenagers!" vibes, a sort of catchall attempt at zeitgeist, but from what feels like an outsider's perspective. Let's play dirty blues and sing about student protests! Environmentalism, sexual liberation, and even (shock!) a kind of world-weary resignation (Surf's ALL DONE, man). All of which could be forgiven if these were great songs, but they're not.
An easy four stars. This kind of music is a balm after some rough albums. How anyone could prefer The Beach Boys *Surf's Up* to this is beyond me, but diff strokes diff folks, as Sly says. Not five stars b'c it's not that peak early Temptations that we all adore - we ALL, damnit. But they're trying something new here, and it mostly works. In fact, listening adjacent to *Surf's Up* is appropriate, as in both cases you're seeing an established (and more musically conservative) group try new things, both musically and politically. The Temptations land it beautifully. By comparison, The Beach Boys are lost at sea.
Two stars instead of one because this astonishingly anticipates so much twee precious white feely feels music of the aughts. Two stars and no more because I loathe this shit, from the cover art on down. To be fair there are some actually good tunes, and the story of its genesis is impressive, but I loathe this kind of aren’t I being special and so strangely narcissistic but beautiful? Eww.
Delightfully sincere British folk rock plus… drugs and stuff, that whole late sixties vibe. This ages well. Only four stars bc vocalist Sandy Denny does her best impression of Joan Baez and I do not like how Joan Baez sings. That earnest warbling soprano female folk thing is not for me. Otherwise a great album, including a few excellent Dylan tunes. Million Dollar Bash is especially good, though it serves to remind us yet again - for those who still need reminding - that nothing compares to Dylan's sublime weirdness, especially on those Basement Tapes tracks. Even the overlong "Sailor's Life" manages to be interesting throughout, unlike the indulgent bloat that often made it onto albums around this time (e.g. The Stones "Goin' Home") - mostly due to the excellent playing, through the whole album really, excellent playing. Favorite track "Si Tu Dois Partir" - I'm thinking damn it I *know* this song in English I swear!
"Changes" is a great song, but the rest are pretty forgettable. I dig Sabbath's sound, and Ozzy's voice is near the platonic ideal for hard rock like this. But most of these songs go nowhere interesting. A star less than the brilliant *Paranoid*.
Delightfully weird. Bjork is a force, and a voice. Einar Örn is hilarious as co-vocalist. Not the sort of thing I'm going to put on often, but it's too strange and fun to rate lower than four stars.
Too obnoxiously jangly slacker noisy to merit a relisten. But better than one star, if only for the heady nostalgia rush of that drum sound and guitar sound and vocal delivery that was totally ubiquitous by the late nineties. I was mostly too young to know band names, and hardly followed contemporary music anyway, but the whole vibe of this album was inescapable back then. In my day. Still, nostalgia aside, there’s not much here I like.
I like young fresh Michael before the supernova of fame burned so hot, and the weight and weirdness of all that. There are clunkers here, especially ballads, but the production and songwriting and playing and electric conviction of his performances compensates, and I just can’t drop to three stars. I’m not a huge MJ fan, but this might be my favorite.
I love Bob Marley, and this album has two perfect songs in “Stir it Up” and “Stop That Train.” Much of the rest is great, but it doesn’t sustain at that high level throughout. Reggae is too similar track to track for my ears, so I’m kind of grooved out by the second half. I’d prefer a little blues or gospel or rnb or something to round out the sound and keep it fresh. I’m just reciting a late seventies Jerry Garcia Band set list, which isn’t fair to Bob and the magnificent Wailers, but the heart wants what it wants. At its best there’s little I like more, but there’s too much here that’s just good to be superlative.
Well, I loved this. It's hard and heavy, but it's melodic and smartly atonal at the right times and in the right ways. The double-bass approach sings, grinds, thrums. The vocals and lyrics are subdued and strong. A few degrees to either side on any of this, and it wouldn't work for me. But I was bobbing my head and digging the groove - crucially, it shakes its ass, which is all but a requirement for my musical taste. This is way out of my wheelhouse, and I dig it.
Magnificent. Funky, groovy, jammy, multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, world-feel but very lived in and local at the same time - not performative but actual - the sound of heat and hope in LA in '72. Will listen to this often.
Charmingly bonkers cover art, and a title straight from a perfect Dylan song. Plus, I learned that I actually do know a few Steely Dan songs, from listening to too much "classic rock" radio in the late 90s. What's good here is great, and the eclectic virtuosity is a delight. But there's stretches of dad-rock, yacht-rock, soft-rock, whatever. So, dig it, but four stars.
I listened to this a long time ago and remembered thinking it had a few perfect tracks with a lot of crappy filler in between. Many years later, I think it has a few perfect tracks and a lot of crappy filler in between. I get that this is meant to be a rock opera film score whatever. Fine. But it doesn't work as an album. The songs that are great are really peerless - Another Brick in the Wall (pt. 2), Hey You, Comfortably Numb. And some second tier gems, Run Like Hell et al. But generally this is the kind of bloated maximalist mediocrity that gives later-70s rock a deservedly bad name. Punk, new wave, someone please kill this. Perhaps it works live, but I have my doubts - decadent nonsense. All the best things people say about Pink Floyd are represented in Dark Side of the Moon. All the worst are here. A twenty minute mix tape of highlights would be four stars, if not five.
Gosh I really dislike U2. Especially Bono, whose voice and lyrics and whole energy just repel me. The band is tight but forgettable. The suffer from what I call the Nashville Effect (after the awful Altman film) where something is either widely beloved (U2) or universally praised (Nashville) but is actually mid at best and it makes you like it even less because the praise makes it extra insufferable. I was optimistic about this one, after mostly suffering through the obscenely overpraised Joshua Tree - hey, Berlin, fresh start, nasty. Everything good here is done wayyyy better elsewhere, including in Bowie's Berlin Trilogy, which I've never even heard, I'm just that confident in Bowie's weird greatness against this recycled trash. Without Joshua Tree's couple iconic hits, it doesn't even merit two stars.
I don’t mind this. I was at the height of a couple years long lost weekend when this came out, and might have dug it at a certain point in the evening in my favorite hipster scum dive bar, between American Spirit yellows and half priced double Long Islands. But it ain’t mgmt, or mia, both of whom do this sort of indie sleaze thing more enjoyably, and themselves aren’t ever consistently great. Close to three stars because it’s tuneful and grooves and doesn’t take itself seriously. But I’ll never revisit it, or that time in my life, so two.
Super mid, Neil. Far inland from the perfect On the Beach. I suppose this is meant to be Laurel Canyon disillusionment, and it works here and there. But his voice is pushing somewhere past annoying - it can be wonderful at times - not here, the songs are desultory, and it all feels slight and barren. Half assed? Two star album bumped to three for the righteous fuck you of Southern Man. Skynyrd wrote a much better song, but fuck all that racist Lost Cause romanticism. There ain't much to country livin': sweat, piss, jizz, and blood.
I loved that sample from "I'll Be Missing You" (rot in hell, Diddy), traced it back to the nearly perfect "I'll Be Watching You," and purchased The Police Greatest Hits on CD, which was the kind of thing you did back when you couldn't otherwise sample (hehe) the music before buying. I listened to that one golden track a couple dozen times and the rest only a time or two because, well it's shit. So I came to this thinking hey, maybe I'll give it another chance. Here's what happened, dear readers:
Tracks 1-3: Good lord this is horrific shit.
"Hey Mr. Dinosaur
You really couldn't ask for more
You were God's favorite creature
But you didn't have a future"
Track 4, "Mother": OK, that was delightfully unhinged. Maybe there's hope.
Track 5-6: Nope.
Track 7, "Every Breath": Yep, still slaps.
Track 8: So they want to be an arena rock band with big anthems, eh? Someone tell that to side one of this album. And yes, Sting, you are the king of pain, poor thing. Being a rich white beautiful entitled British rock star is a bum deal. Thoughts and prayers.
Track 9: Midding as 8. Could be fun to sing if you were very drunk, and stupid, and had sun stroke.
Track 10: Now we're back to the garbagey shit! Gotta finish like we started.
Track 11: Bonus track, perhaps the shittiest of them all! My wife is mad at me b'c I played it in her hearing.
Fuck The Police.
Pleasantly noisy, and with enough groove to be enjoyable. It's not really my scene, and too damn long by far - 70 minutes is a haul, even when it is your thing. But three stars for its massive influence, and the manifest baddassery of Kim Gordon.
Falls shy of the massively weird genius of "Dark Side," but follows that up admirably. Much better than the bloated, indulgence of "The Wall." "Welcome to the Machine" grates more than it needs to, but the rest works: "Shine on You Crazy Diamond" could be twice as long, and captures Floyd at its maximalist hypnotically harmonically melodically symphonically gorgeous best. "Have a Cigar" and the title track are both perfect, of course. It's too slight to merit 5 stars, but it's very good stuff - this isn't a one-great-album band.
What could be more seventies than Cheech and Chong guesting on a Joni Mitchell modal jazz vibe album. Pass the quaaludes, man. Fun in its way, but it doesn’t land for me. There are moments - Joni’s voice is a powerful instrument, and she’s a sharp, incisive lyricist. But the songs don’t take on a life of their own. They feel muddled, structureless. These sorts of modal moods can work if there’s lots of interesting stuff happening in the space opened up (sixties jazz; The Dead) but there’s not enough of that here. It’s at once too languid and flimsy while also busy and overfull. Down to two from three because as great as her voice is it often grates on me. Joni may be an acquired taste, and she’s adjacent to lots that I love, so I’ll keep at it.
