At their best Depeche Mode are an overly serious version of Kraftwerk with a monotonous cabaret singer. At their worst a soulless New Romantic band of goth posers. PICK A LANE Depressed Mood! I will give the list a pass on one Depeche Mode album, but why two? At least I got them out ogf the way early. This has been a very below-average week. Hopefully next week isn't all Tom Waits and Rod Stewart 🫣 .

Discarding all sense of musical conventions reminds me of both the fall and the minutemen but with less of an effort to make musical sense. Anti music Don’t take the brown acid, man. It’s “challenge music.” Side effects may include writer’s block, delusions of postmodernism, man’s inhumanity to man, and improper comparisons to abstract art.

I love this album more than life itself. The perfect expression of the 1970's. A bit cheesy, incredibly fun (yes, incredibly), slightly tipsy. I can imagine Fatboy Slim hearing these grooves and thinking "I'm going to base my entire career on this." Incredible.

Great traditional country from the late 80s. Dwight Yoakem's voice is perfect throughout, with just the right amount of crack, yodel, and twang. Not a note out of place with a genuine swing that comes from a place of sincerity. Deep emotional content and some intriguing darkness that bears repeated listening. Almost Shakespearean at times. Excellent top to bottom, and I'm not a big Country fan, but I DO enjoy almost everything I've heard from Dwight Yoakem.

The defining album of the Album Era. That cover. The long long chart run - 736 nonconsecutive weeks (from 17 March 1973 to 16 July 1988) including a run of 593 weeks. Nothing I can say that hasn't already been said. My own reflection listening again after many years: - Still perfect. - Owes its existence to Rick Wright and Nick Mason. - The band is firing on all cylinders. - Perfectly balanced between the head and the heart. - An exquisitely beautiful work of art. - Ironically, the start of the Roger Waters Corporation Business Interest Ltd. Money, indeed. - There is a throughline from CAN to this to Talk Talk's "Spirit of Eden" to late 90s Radiohead. - Still powerful and really great to listen to, front to back.

I would give this a five star rating if it was just side one. A career defining disc for the band.

Settle for Nothing is a great Nirvana song Love the snare sound on this album Bullet in your head: so much sabbath! Stylistically homogenous throughout which is the album’s greatest strength and weakness at the same time as it could get the point across with Bombtrack and Take the Power Back, then call it a day. Freedom is also cool. A good heavy rock album with a lot to say that kind of popularized the rap-metal hybrid genre that was outside the mainstream.

Amazing album. The perfect positivity antidote to my last two albums 😀 (Liquid Swords and Rage Against the Machine). Lots of variety stylistically from cut to cut. Really exceptional recording quality and virtuosity. Never realized what a great singer Maurice White is, this is just next level.

Every song is about some kind of conflict. Outlaws. Guns. Cattle. Saddles. Way out west. It’s all here. I’m just kind of digging it and HOLD UP THE MASTERS CALL! Jesus makes an appearance holy cattle stampede Marty. Calm the fuck down. However not a note out of place. Iconic vocal sound. Strumming acoustics. Lots of backgrounds and echo. Far west on the country western spectrum.

Easy to over-analyze this one. A sonic gem. Stevie wonder at his musical, spiritual, and intellectual peak. Absolutely astonishing record. I could listen to Higher Ground all day every day. Some other brilliant cuts that I was unfamiliar with like Too High and Misstra Know It All make this a great listen. Will revisit many times I’m sure.

Why didn’t I know about this back in the day. Kicks ass top to bottom. Taking away one star for the inclusion of Stephen Tyler

Very avant-garde at a time when that was a term that meant something. The acid trip allusions are a bit much in this day and age but I'm sure at the time very subversive. Some intriguing sounds and themes. Music for musicologists, could be considered progressive Classical if not for rock instrumentation. Worthy of a place on the list but not something I would listen to repeatedly, though I do appreciate stuff that veers in this direction: music you might hear at an academic Art museum retrospective and go "huh!"Sort of surprising this ever got pressed. Interesting

Discarding all sense of musical conventions reminds me of both the fall and the minutemen but with less of an effort to make musical sense. Anti music Don’t take the brown acid, man. It’s “challenge music.” Side effects may include writer’s block, delusions of postmodernism, man’s inhumanity to man, and improper comparisons to abstract art.

Hard to get past the recording quality. Jarring changes in volume that have nothing to do with dynamics in the composition. Sloppy playing doesn’t make it “punk.” The song “lRaw Power” could be half as long. As Pru lLeith would say “it’s a bit rough and ready.“ I “Need Somebody” is a template for STP, definitely get the feeling they listened to this stuff a lot. Just not a big fan of Iggy Pop. I sort of get what he’s trying to do but the drug-addled bad boy with no regrets schtick just isn’t that appealing, especially in a historical context. Do like the heaviness and riff sensibility though.

No notes. Perfect.

When did the Blues become a dirge? Cause this ain’t that! Was gonna tell a story about young me and how I accidentally discovered this and how I think it was an important punk album but I’ll save it for another time. A lot of these albums are historically important because of their influence or popularity but don’t age well. This is not one of those. Which isn’t to say it wasn’t popular and influential. It’s just a great record. Fun to listen to, soulful, all the musicians are in top form. A gem top to bottom and glad to see it on the list.

I saw this come up and went “ew” to myself 😬I’ll give it another chance. Did not like Dinosaur 🦕 jr at the time (even though I was the exact audience for this). Be right back… Ok. I really like this one. It’s hard to get over the vocals but I think I am starting to understand the concept. The heaviness of the guitar, power trio factor, laissez faire attitude: tick tick tick. I’m in. Kind of a fan now. 😬

Omar Hakim saves this for me. Don’t love it. Great guitar playing but it sounds too much like a bad Springsteen impression

Good vocal quality from Martin Gore, well recorded, some cool synth sounds and darkish themes. But I didn't like it in 1987 and I still don't really like it. It just doesn't have the energy I want. You can sing some dark ballads, but give it a little emotional depth, man! Catchy tunes nonetheless, and "Personal Jesus" is always good for a laugh.

Not what I expected. A unique new take on some classic soul sounds. Kiwanuka has a great voice and that is the main appeal of this abum. It also works as an album , which is an interesting throwback concept nowadays. A little sad and lonely when you look at it next to its influences like Otis Redding or Bill Withers. Not a masterpiece by any means but you can feel Michael Kiwanuka's intention and looking forward to more. First time hearing about him - is the 1001 albums book slightly UK biased?

Learned this was a Chic album! Nile Rodgers, Bernard Edwards, and Tony Thompson play funk with a Pop sensibility throughout and it's kind of above criticism. Trying to approach these albums as one would when rating a wine or beer (possibly): is it a good example of the genre? Is it well crafted? This album is certainly a well crafted piece of music, Disco or not. As much as "We are Family" is a standout, nothing here falls flat. There are some cheesy musical tropes (breathy whispering "why?" in the call-and response, the nearly overwhelming string section), but it's all much more innocent abstractions that service the songs. This album sounds great and is an example of Chic's musical genius - songwriting, producing, and playing gives them artistic control and they thrive in the dance pop environment, obviously.

Great traditional country from the late 80s. Dwight Yoakem's voice is perfect throughout, with just the right amount of crack, yodel, and twang. Not a note out of place with a genuine swing that comes from a place of sincerity. Deep emotional content and some intriguing darkness that bears repeated listening. Almost Shakespearean at times. Excellent top to bottom, and I'm not a big Country fan, but I DO enjoy almost everything I've heard from Dwight Yoakem.

Okay I get it. Has notes of punk, post-rock, pure noise, industrial, and traditional rock as well. Too easy to criticize, this music is more of an artistic statement than Music. Much like The Fall as an anti-music statement. The album gets SO CLOSE to being interesting at certain points. I definitely experienced some cognitive dissonance, and I think that's what these guys are after (?). There is more interesting avant-garde and noise out there, starting with Merzbow (and maybe ending with Merzbow). I might check out some of this bands newer stuff just to see where they went with this idea.

This is not for me. Ute Lemper is an excellent vocalist. Hopefully she's doing some Disney soundtracks and making a living. Including this on the list feels like someone's pet project. We all know someone that tries to get you to like music that you just don't for whatever reason: "C'mon man! You HAVE to hear this!!!" It's okay. Very heavy-handed. Maybe for another time. Elvis Costello jumped the shark a while back when he tried to do a Country album (yeah, I said it). Considering skipping blatant attempts at taste making on this list in the future.

Great classic Brazillian Jazz, exquisite and mellow. Let Joao and Astrud Gilberto sing. The extreme closeup on Getz's tenor sax is jarring to me. Really great songs. Surprising that this was as popular as it was! First, it's mostly Portugese, and second, it's Jazz! A really important album that (sort of) defines its Jazz sub-genre. A good jumping off point for this kind of music.

I can’t fault it. On the other hand, this particular brand of 60s soul is a bit over dramatic. For me. Great musicianship and vocal harmonies and a small amount of risk taking make Cloud 9 inoffensive. Not awesome.

Really like the heaviness of this. Chuck D's voice has power, and FlavorFlav is really entertaining, especially "Cold Lampin'." Love the socially conscious lyrics throughout. Great disc!

More from my bud GPT3.5, actually reflecting many of my own feelings about this album (also think the recording is fantastic and I absolutely love the drum mix): "Ten" by Pearl Jam is an absolute masterpiece, earning every bit of its five-star rating. From the moment you hit play, the album takes you on an exhilarating journey through the grunge era, leaving an indelible mark on the musical landscape. The opening track, "Once," sets the tone with its raw energy and Eddie Vedder's unmistakably powerful vocals. Each song that follows is a testament to the band's exceptional musicianship and songwriting prowess. "Alive" and "Even Flow" showcase the dynamic interplay between the instruments, while Vedder's evocative lyrics add depth and meaning to every track. The album's emotional core is perhaps best exemplified by "Black," a hauntingly beautiful ballad that stands as a timeless classic. Vedder's soul-stirring delivery and the poignant instrumentation create an unforgettable listening experience that resonates long after the final notes fade. "Ten" isn't just an album; it's a cultural touchstone that encapsulates the spirit of the '90s alternative rock scene. Pearl Jam's ability to seamlessly blend grunge, rock, and introspective lyrics is unparalleled, making this album a must-listen for music enthusiasts of all genres. In essence, "Ten" is a five-star triumph, a sonic journey that remains as impactful today as it was upon its release. Pearl Jam's debut is not just a record; it's a timeless masterpiece that deserves its place among the greatest albums of all time."

Unfamiliar with this artist. I think I had a playlist based on Joni Mitchell where he showed up and I remember the song as a kind of stand-out. I could have been someone else, though. This music is representative of something that I just can't put my finger on. I don't know what to call it. It's music that is highly regarded, but I don't see it. Other examples: Kate Bush, a lot of Bob Dylan, the band Bush ;) There's probably a German word for it. Music that 'everyone' likes, but it just rubs you the wrong way. I almost had to turn off the the whole thing during the song Dancing - you really rhymed "fancy-pantsing" with dancing? "Certain Surprise" sounds as drugged as Martyn certainly was when they recorded this. Drugs feel good to him, I'm sure, but that voice is "infuriating" (to quote Phil Collins) - HIT THE NOTE for fuck's sake. Ugh. Sorry, just the visceral reaction I got from this. There is definitely a free-form attitude about it, but it is more like Lightning Bolt than Coltrane. This freewheeling is possibly not done for artistic effect. Possibly he was just a problematic person who had enablers that encouraged him to surface his demons for some entertainment. It SOUNDS TO MY EARS like Martyn knows how to play and compose a kind of Nike Drake style English folk, but is so caught in his own mental shit (and wants the rest of us to feel this pain as well) that any song construction that might please the audience is eschewed. Just play the first thing that comes to mind. Sure it's unusual, but there are always critics who will give five stars to the unusual regardless of whether the music sounds good or not. As long as it's different sounding, which this certainly is. Here's the thing. So many self-centered artists expose their pain to us, and many do it in a way that we can relate to. Kind of why we listen to music, to some degree, to get into or out of various states of mind, feelings, thoughts... I just think in Martyn's case he doesn't care whether I like the music or not. And I believe he has said so himself on many occasions. It's like the person who's "just being honest, telling it like it is." We all have our own reality. Great music intersects with the reality of artist and audience alike. ------------------------------------------------ The following is the result of asking ChatGPT to edit the above to be more concise, and I have to say I like it: "Unfamiliar with John Martyn until he appeared on a Joni Mitchell playlist. His music, akin to the elusive category of universally liked yet divisive artists like Kate Bush or Bob Dylan, leaves me uncertain. Certain tracks, like "Dancing," made me cringe with questionable rhymes. "Certain Surprise" feels drugged and, though free-form, lacks the artistic resonance of Coltrane, leaning more towards chaotic than intentional. Martyn's apparent disregard for audience preference suggests a self-indulgent approach. While he may possess the skill for English folk à la Nick Drake, his fixation on personal demons overshadows potential audience enjoyment. The music feels like a stream of consciousness, deviating from structured compositions that might please listeners. It's undeniably unique, but uniqueness alone doesn't guarantee quality. Unlike artists who skillfully share relatable pain, Martyn seems uninterested in whether his music resonates. His indifference contrasts with the symbiosis of great music, where artist and audience connect. In Martyn's case, his "just being honest" approach results in a disconnect between his reality and that of his listeners."

Immensely listenable genre bending album that sounds as great as it did in 1973. Bringing the Latin vibe into the funk-rock gives the band a unique flavor that I've always really liked. A lot of great musicianship on this album. Hidden gem: Beetles in the Bog. It's got this New Orleans drumline feel with some conga and chopping funk guitar that was surprising, fun, and fascinating. I love the rhythms on this album.

I really enjoyed this. Some great story-telling and humor. A little bit of Peace and Love with "A better Place to Live," some sweet gospel, some humor ("Travelin Man"). But it has my new favorite song, the stunningly beautiful "Early Morning Breeze." Short and sweet. Dolly Parton has such an iconic voice and her songs are more interesting melodically and lyrically than the Porter Wagoner ones. Still great overall. Coat of Many Colors has a comfortable, folksy tone, simple instrumentation that highlights the songs and Dolly's lovely voice.

Just want to add - listen to Joe Morello's left hand on Time Out. Masterpiece. The subtlety and understatement is from a higher level. Beautiful example of dynamic range in that tight rhythmic structure. Great album, historically significant, an old favorite. I love every note on this and I am NOT a big saxamaphone guy!

1 cup post-punk poetics 1 tb each b52s, au pairs, and gang of four season liberally with arpeggiated major chords and unusual rhythms serve slightly undercooked pairs well with the unmistakable Kristin Hersch/Tanya Donnely harmony {chef's kiss}

Cool album, side 2 is especially good. Ronnie Lane doesn’t need to sing when you have Rod Stewart in your band. I liked it more than I thought I would. Love the guitar.

Kind of a wild ride as it always is with Pixies. I love the Kim Deal/Black Francis harmonies, the dual guitar wall of noise, the verging on out of control lead vocals, the esoteric and inscrutable lyrics, the asymmetrical over the bar line compositions, the unusual but not too avant garde chord progressions... I will have to listen to it a few more times again to get the full experience. THis album bears repeated listening for sure. Also interesting to hear it in the same week as the Throwing Muses album, lots of compare-and-contrast available between these two. Killer album from an important band.

Oooohh hmmm. Really wanted to like this but the big symphonic swells and background (FOREGROUND) vocals left me feeling … betrayed. Ray Charles is amazing though.

I always want the Ramones to go harder. Good album though, short and sweet. Never really saw them as a Punk band, but I suppose for most listeners “punk” is more a musical style than a social group association so it probably qualifies. They have a good sense of humor and you get that the early Ramones didn’t take themselves too seriously. The later Ramones did have to be THE RAMONES and I wonder if that limited their artistic range. This album absolutely defines The Ramones, for better or worse. Good job attacking the status quo!!!

Great album. I love Latin music and this is really enjoyable and extremely well executed example. Interesting variety of moods. Too bad I don’t speak Spanish 🇲🇽😌

Ginger Baker’s weird snare tuning and signature Tom sound. He also sings a song on this album, which was possibly not a great idea. Everyone was under the influence here, including the producer, how else to explain “Mother’s Lament 😭” The best songs on the album are the ones you’re familiar with - Sunshine of Your Love, Tales of Brave Ulysses, Strange Brew. Which are great. Except for these standouts, it feels a little low-effort. Clapton was beloved back when this came out, but his style never touched me all that much. And apparently he was just as much of an a*hole in his early years as later (citation: A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs, episode 126 - For Your Love by the Yardbirds, Andrew Hickey) so anything he could say now to turn people against him is pretty irrelevant now. Ultimately for me there’s a lot to love here (Sunshine of Your Love, Jack Bruce’s falsetto) and a lot to just forget (Blue Condition, bearded rainbows).

I am firmly in the ‘Paul Simon is a songwriting genius’ and the ‘Simon and Garfunkel’s harmonies are without equal’ camps.

Sorry Zoomers/Gen Y, I was like 50 when this came out so it's one of the worst things to ever happen to me. I AM sorry it's not King Crimson or whatever

I came to the realization, after listening to this, that it's just a sideshow and each song is a different freak. Points for attempting to be entertaining. Tom Waits is the emcee/barker. This is not "rock" music however, and should not be categorized as such. If I think of it as an attempt at being folk-adjacent, it makes more sense. But I get the feel that Tom Waits is simply aping some persona, perhaps a troubadour William Burroughs? To my ear the music not really sincerely felt by the singer or has much of a folk soul. Waits is just a kind of guy that got stuck writing high-school level poetry (one laughably typical example "Oh, when the moon is a cold, chiseled dagger/ And it's sharp enough to draw blood from a stone") and little stories about murder and bad people (that he imagines are out there). I don't get the gravelly voice affectation, I suppose it adds to the persona Waits is attempting to create. All of these little creations are deeply disturbed or whatever, and I'm not interested in meeting them or getting to know them, thank you very much. Keep them in your "closet of dreams" or wherever they came from. This album is not something I would purposely play. I understand what he's trying to do and I respect it, it has artistic merit definitely. But it's just unpleasant and darkly weird. And some listeners really like the darkly weird. I do not, really. Please stop yelling, Tom.

Third garbage album in a row! This is the first album I ever bought with my own money. Best $5.99 I ever spent. Never gets old. 10,000 out of five. Last thing: listen to Plant screaming \"GO AWAY HEARTBREAKERRRRR!\" at the end of that song, then we can talk about Robert Plant, okay?

I love Losing You, the Kenny Jones solo at the end is superlative. Maggie May is okay. A lot of the rest sounds like a bar band jamming too late at night, as another reviewer here mentioned. The misogyny and racism on Every Picture Tells a Story is awkward. That's Alright is an abomination - the phrasing is off-putting "Well that's alright MA-MAMA" instead of NOW MAMA is irritating. Another case for me of "Why do so many people like this?" Was there a dearth of quality music in 1972? Is everyone (and by everyone I mean critics and record buyers AT THE TIME, check out the Wikipedia stats and critical reception) just overly impressed by British pub-rockers playing American country music? I know the Stones did this a lot in the 70s as well, never really found this appealing. Maybe it's more impressive if you're British and not ever been exposed. This is a bit third rate. He shouyld have stayed with the Faces, man!

Super interesting at times. A lot of what you hear about this album revolves around the story of the bad piano and how everyone overcame their problems to produce one of the best Jazz albums ever. It's like the Michael Jordan \"flu game\" in the 1998 NBA finals. You won! Why belabor it? If I didn't know any of the story, I think I might like it better. Is the story making excuses for a poor performance? Doesn't sound like it. The music itself plows vigorously through a wide range of feelings, tempos, techniques. I don't know a lot about music theory but I'm sure there's tons to dissect in this. It really is an impressive work. Verges on stepping into uncharted territory sometimes, but is a little timid in that regard - I would like to here more experimental sounds. I really like some of the atonal harmonics the piano gives off, especially apparent in the first minutes of Part I. I hear a lot of influence, from Bob James to Radiohead. Interesting album and pleasant. A little like a soundtrack, as Keith Jarret himself has said, but transcendant nonetheless (felt like pretentiousness was appropriate for this one).

The best of the “grownup” R.E.M. albums. We are all alone, together. No jokes today. A really professional production, some brilliant songwriting and spotless execution. Though I usually like my REM less polished and more inscrutable, this album hits hard emotionally. Looking back at it now makes it feel even heavier. This came out in the deepest part of grunge, a pretty rebellious move for a pretty sounding album. Find the River kills me. Check out the video.

Not bad. Probably overrated due to the Monkees' popularity, but a fun effort. A little light psychedelia here and there mixed with songs about holding hands and pretty girls. "Sunny Girlfriend" brings a little country to the party, and the first three songs could be on any alt-rock band's covers list. Not intense.

First time hearing this band and I have to say I am impressed, especially by the Dave Mattacks' drumming. Effectively mashing-up a fairly heavy rock sound (at times) with British folk sounds very natural for the band, at a time when LITERALLY EVERYONE was trying to be Bob Dylan. They find their own roots, resulting in a sincere and interesting sound. No one is trying to do the Blues®, or R & B, or Soul or country. So much has been said praising Sandy Denny that I'm not going to mention her except to say she makes this. Without her it's just ok, a nice try. Simply great.

NO MORE ROD STEWART PLEASE! Jeff Beck is amazing, but he gets stomped by Rod Stewart and the ham-fisted piano player. Also you guys need to practice a little more, the drummer is trying to swing but my god is it awkward. Find the groove! Although with rod stewart screaming all over everything I can see how difficult it would be. If only there was an instrumental Jeff Beck album 🤔🤔🤔

She says “Losing love is like a window in your heart Well, everybody sees you’re blown apart Everybody sees the wind blow” Probably should write an entire essay about this album. Linda Ronstadt. Ladysmith Black Mambazo. Youssou Ndour. Adrian Belew. African skies. Diamonds. It’s all good and we forgive Paul Simon for whatever sins of appropriation because this album introduced a huge audience to a kind of music we were previously unaware.

Ahh, I love Radiohead's sonic experimentation. Just wish I had more time to just sit down and listen because there's a lot of layers. So I guess Radiohead is like an Ogre. I jest, but this band DOES NOT. This is their main flaw - so serious! That and Thom Yorke's vocals don't always resonate (no pun intended). Sometimes feels like the musical equivalent of the movie Eraserhead. This is a really interesting album, heavy both thematically and structurally. A unique, risk-taking band band that somehow makes their experimental psychological meanderings almost accessible. One last thing - if EVERYTHING is obscure, nothing is obscure.

She's Fresh, It's Nasty and Scorpio (especially Scorpio) are agreat time. Didn't love the R&B/slow-jam middle. THe Message everyone remembers, and sadly really nothin' has changed. This version finishes up with The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash, very very cool, ya gotta hear it. Definitely agree that this is an album you have to hear before you die. Glad I didn't die before I heard it. 😬

Interesting document, but I don't need the talking in between songs. Enjoyable bluegrass. I especially like the instrumental tunes (please learn how to finish those without resorting to "Shave and a Haircut, though!). The old-school Country/Hillbilly artists are not at their best so it works more as a tribute than an original work of art. Could be condensed to a single LP without losing anything. Maybe do that for casual listeners then make the extended version for the hardcore fans/historically motivated.

For me great music takes you to a different place, a state of mind. Mothership Connection does that. I got totally into it, just changed my thinking for the better in the middle of a semi-trouble-filled day. The opposite of the seriousness of Radiohead or Gracelend (Paul Simon) but equally excellent. Has a good sense of humor. I loved it.

Finally some metal! Near flawless execution by possibly the most influential Metal band of all. Kind of a bummer that Steve Harris and Clive Burr didn't play on more records together because this rhythm section is massive. Bruce Dickinson is hands down the best metal singer of all time. Yeah, I said it.

First recorded use of guitar feedback! What an historic moment. Love Teenage Lobotomy! This whole album is great, put The Jam on the map, I love it. In all seriousness, this is in my top ten favorite albums of all time and one of the most important albums in rock music.

They do not heed Miles’ admonition: “Don't worry about playing a lot of notes. Just find one pretty one.”

Not bad, not my thing. Huge record at the time. A little TOO smooth. Inoffensive pop from the eighties, I sort of can't get through it all the way. Just okay.

Incredible musicianship and interesting juxtaposition of GSH's poetry in the jazz improv context. Different from anything else I've heard recently. A bit "of its time" while still being relevant. A lot of music about Black culture is acclaimed, but did we not get the point? It doesn't seem like the world has changed at all in the 50 or so years since this.

You guys! Don’t tell anyone. This is NOT GOOD. Dude. Some people are going to pretend that they think this is the best thing that has, literally, ever been recorded. But here’s the thing about that: They don’t play together They sing off key ( annoying not quaint) More pretentious immature poetry (I’m looking 👀 at you Tom Waits) Don’t act like you’re the first person who was ever in a difficult relationship. Seriously someone is trying to trick you. Listen more critically. Maybe I’m at a place in my life where I don’t want to hear your complaining anymore. I don’t understand the love for this or the VU in general.

Not bad. The Phil Spector spoken word thing at the end is... ironic? Cool Christmas album for Christmas day! Some really fun uptempo high-energy stuff, lacking in sentimentalism, which I appreciate in a Christmas album.

So, this is a fairly deep work. Unique and touching. It's pretty obvious to me that this music would not be beloved by a vast audience. Too introspective, too insecure. These are qualities in people that we often tr to overcome and the casual music buyer doesn't want to spend their hard-earned cash on such things. But as a work of art I can appreciate it. In fact, the poetry here is (of course, Drake studied literature at Cambridge) on a higher level. Sorry to hear about Drake's ultimate inability to satisfy his own ambition. Maybe if he had been able to accept his own version of himself... life is difficult for us all at times. Maybe don't try so hard and accept that the world IS the way that it IS. Not to say that it isn't painful. This music is a strangely clear and vivid view of Drake and his feelings, feelings that I know I've had a various times. Quite an amazing work actually.

Didn't want to listen to this. Like a walk in someone else's dark, slightly frightening forest. You probably shouldn't be there alone. Very 'adult contemporary' without being catchy. No contrast, everything is of a piece. Nothing to anchor the listener in a context. Seems to me like he is trying to write popular (1960's UK) music but with some kind of anti-war thread, but I could be completely wrong. I found this hard to understand in an unpleasant and confusing way, the point of view in any given song was not clear. But a lot of the best music is hard to "get" on first listen. Maybe I'll listen again to try to figure it out. Probably not, though.

Love CCR and I'm not even a boomer! Even their toss-off blues cover is far and away more entertaining than anything else at the time. The album has aged well, it still sounds good. Great mix of blues-rock styles with great energy. LISTEN UP ROD STEWART: this is how you do gravely-voiced blues singing!Short and awesome.

Moments of brilliance but nothing too special. Really liked the heaviness and interesting sonic quality splattered across the album. Didn't so much love the insincerity in the lyrics. Self-pitying super-successful rock stars has always been a sore spot for me and I think there is a bit of that here, albeit more abstract than Bon Jovi, Metallica or Bob Seger. All in all though an enjoyable listen if not slightly contrived, like most of Blur's stuff, but well executed.

Ushered in an era of lo-fi blues posers. That in itself is both unforgivable and welcome. Unusual, heavy, bare-bones, intense, and satisfying. Actual songs that don't overstay their welcome. Some raw emotion down at the end that sounds more bitter 20 years on. Great genre-defining album with one of the most interesting drummers ever.

Much of this album seems to be self-indulgent experimentation, or contractual obligation work, or writer's block. None of these are bad per. But they are not the stuff masterpieces are made from. Bigger Rundgren fans than I probably appreciate this more, and it did have its enjoyable moments. Listened to this twice to get a better grip on it. It does go down a little easier the second time. Rather listen to Iron Maiden again, though. Sex, drugs, and Rock n Roll I guess? A reluctant 3 ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Still shockingly good, downright mythical. Simply a masterpiece.

Surprisingly great singing and you can feel Alice Cooper influencing every heavy rock artist that came after. Noteworthy for the Broadway style theatricality, which is not unexpected for Alice Cooper considering his reputation as a live act (esp. in the early days). I love that Alice Cooper is partially responsible for jettisoning the hippies from the pop charts. In 1972 I think everyone was probably ready for a break. Fun album!

One of the albums I have essentially memorized top to bottom. Haven't listened all the way through in a while and it was interesting to hear Sandy Dennis on this after the Fairport Convention album. Truly did not appreciate her contribution on this. Remarkable. JPJ's organ on Misty Mountain Hop is underappreciated. I don't want to see documentaries about this. I don't want to biographies authorized or unauthorized. I don't want to read the (probably) too long Wikipedia article. It's just music, man, don't over-think it. Unless you want to, and Led Zeppelin allows that as well. They finally got to jam the folk-rock down our collective ear-holes, though, and we ar BETTER FOR IT.

Hendrix is without question the BEST rock guitar player who ever lived - a fact I just came up with out of thin air, but also confirmed by Rolling Stone. The songs on this seem to me either overly numbed or excessively energized, neither to a satisfying effect. BUT SO CLOSE it's a little frustrating for me. I don't think that was the intention. It's hard to say what the intention was. The music is just not completely formed. There's quite a bit of experimentation and what sounds like goofing that might have been left out. Heavy, innovative guitar sounds are sometimes squashed by the production: the stereo panning, the compression, the tape bouncing and flanging muddy the waters, if you will (see what I did there? Hendrix was kind of a blues guy? whatever, nevermind). Ladyland is great but not awesome, with flashes of brilliance so blinding you have go over it again to make sure you heard what you thought you did. Overall groovy album with a few rough spots here and there mostly from the production stuff. All the guitar panning made me dizzy. 😵 Not kidding.

I love the heaviness P.E. brings to the party. I don't love the constant badgering. The audience for this is not going to listen to it anyway. I the end it comes off as complaining more than anything else. Some high-quality socially conscious takes are here though and sometimes those things make for an uncomfortable listen. I like Flavor Flave more than I should though. There's nothing I *don't* like sound-wise on this album. At the same time it's just more of the same. Not clear why it made tis list except for the Anthrax collab which is pretty groundbreaking.

Her: I'm gonna pull a Tom Waits song out of my ass RIGHT NOW: On a Thursday the rivers run raw His garbage mitt can't catch the claw The jailer-man don't obey no law He planned it out, he killed his Ma On Friday all the beggars fry A rat-burger below the bigger sky And now and again amongst the rye We make all your mamas cry There ya go. I'll be back later to pick up my Grammy.

A short, non-exhaustive list of things I liked about Blur's "Parklife": Eclectic song styles keeps it interesting - a little dance music, a little post-punk, a little smooth Continental pop (I don't know what I mean exactly by that, but a lot of this album has a very "European" feel), a little new-wave, a little of that atmospheric Britpop sound but with *just* a hint more edge. Drums, bass, guitar and vox all pretty resplendent, and excruciatingly tight even when purposely breaking into the sloppier compositions. Incredibly well balanced and "fresh" without sounding forced. This Is a Low is a great example. Unapologetically anglo-centric. Different and a wee bit odd without being overly challenging. Everything has a familiarity. But not predictable. Again, nicely balanced. Has a good beat, you can dance to it :)

Weird without being pretentious. Pixies came out of the womb fully formed, somehow. I always forget how heavy their stuff is. Gigantic is such a catchy, avant-pop song, as is the ubiquitous "Where is My Mind." Joey Santiago's solo on Vamos brings out the ghost of Andy Gill and is a thrilling surprise. The best albums (of which this is one) bear repeated listening and it seems like each time you play it, you hear something new. More accessible than some of their other stuff, possibly. One complaint: that song Cactus is trying a little too hard to sound like Nirvana ;) And yeah, I give a lot of five star reviews, what about it?

Great voice, classic soul singer doing some less-than-usual tunes. I especially like the second half of this LP with "Won't You Give Him (One More Chance)". Nicely recorded and put together collection of singles and filler, none of which are throwaways. A nice, positive record if you're into that kind of thing. Didn't blow me away but has a good energy. Influential.

You know the generator is up to something when you get Elastica so soon after the two Blur albums. I love this A LOT. New wave? Really great post-punk, power-pop. A real headbanger, one of my favorites so far. No complaints, but with 16 songs you do get some monotony into the middle. A bit saucy and a blast of energy. I'd say a lot more about this but I'm falling behind in my listening so I gotta move on. Listen to Stutter.

Dark dark dark. This is probably going to be the heaviest rock that we get on the 1001 albums list. Vinnie Paul shows here why he was considered among the best metal drummers to ever play. Clean on the fast parts. Massive on the slow parts. This brings a heat and rage that is not matched by any other genre. Unlike the storytelling you get with Iron Maiden or the confused existential soul-searching of Metallica, Pantera has an incessant raging emotional fire. Sonically crushing, creative, and astonishingly tight, this gives birth to some of the best metal to come after it: Gojira, Avenged Sevenfold, Lamb of God and Trivium among them. This album seems to have brought this sort of dark introspective hardcore more into the mainstream. Underground black and death metal existed at the time but it certainly wasn't as accessible as this or the early thrash of Metallica and Anthrax, etc. It's cool, though. A lot of newer genres rear their ugly heads: djent, prog, post-hardcore, melodic death metal, southern (think Mastodon or Baroness), and whatever it was that Alice in Chains was doing. Criticisms: can be same sounding, guttural screaming is a good effect when used sparingly but here Anselmo WANTS YOU TO HEAR HIM (fair enough given the subject matter), sometimes the subtlety sounds forced. Overall a good record with tons of intensity that I wish Pantera could have built on instead of started luxuriating in for most of the ret of their career.

Interesting. Lots of juicy progginess disguised in early '00s Americana clothes. Has a strong psychedelic skeleton, and yeah, the rhythm section is great, throwing a lot of notes in there. Like Rush for Deadheads. Pretty cool, a good listen.

Although Critically Acclaimed®, still one of my all time favorite albums. Not a throwaway on here, but Angels Want to Wear my Red Shoes, Watching the Detectives , and Allison are outstanding. This is Elvis' debut, making it all the more amazing.

Rock and Roll the way Satan intended! An all time favorite of mine, reminds me of 8th grade.

Brian Ferry sounds like he's doing a character. It lacks emotional depth and clarity for me. Not very sincere, but it feels like that's kind of the point (?). Songs aren't very memorable. That being said, Phil Manzanera is extremely good on here. Out of the Blue is a GREAT song though! And you can here the New Wave influence in a lot of this. Not awesome.

Very poetic. I'm not very familiar with his work, which should appeal to my avant garde sensibilities. This album probably needs more context (time, place) for it to make sense to me. Another critically acclaimed record that made me wonder why. I like a lot of his later work better. Not sure what I'm missing here. If I had more time I would probably listen a couple more times.

Let's talk about William Babinski's "The Disintegration Loops" album instead for a moment. The Disintegration Loops album https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Disintegration_Loops# (actually 4 albums spanning nearly 300 minutes) are a museum piece, not necessarily music. Babinsky is a sound artist who used tape loops a lot in his work to evoke feelings that traditional recordings do not. The disintegration loops are recordings of some of these sound loops - recordings of voices, old music, found tapes, etc. - literally disintegrating as they pass across the tape heads. Each time they pass through the machine, a little more gets worn off. It's really interesting ambient music. There is a haunting beauty hearing the music itself completely fall apart. The falling apart is the music. The rhythm comes from the loop repeating, the sound changing ever so slightly as it goes on. Certain sections are beautiful, others nasty. When I listened to this, as more and more of it goes away, the more I found myself wanting it to remain in the world even though the whole point was it's own destruction. Listening to something disintegrate works as a museum piece. As a rock album, especially from The Beatles, it just hurts a little.

Thoroughly enjoyed Miles Davis embracing a minimalist approach and the innovations he adds. More approachable that the later electric work like Bitches Brew. I especially like the reprise on In a Silent Way, kind of the second half of side two, where the guitar plays an ostinato that reminds of Eno's Music for Airports I, the melody kind of revolving around itself without ever fully resolving. Innovative and lovely. Really subtle, bears repeated listens.

Decent post 9-11 indie Rock. Somewhat dismal thematically like a lot of Arcade Fire's stuff is. Nice execution. Some really interesting orchestration and instrumentation to deepen the mood. No Cars Go is a great tune.

With all due respect, and I mean this most sincerely, this is yet another example of how Critical Acclaim® is a poor determining factor for whether I will like something. In fact Critical Acclaim® appears to be something that puts me off more often than not and unfortunately this very list is just a list of Critically Acclaimed® albums. Critics™ want you to know they have better taste than you, possibly. Maybe you meet the artist, that's very special, so now you give an excessively positive review otherwise that artist (and their record company mates) won't be as willing to give you any attention in the future. Bit of a racket when you really sit down and think about it. Especially back in the 60s through the 90s when Major Labels™ and The Radio® were the primary form of music delivery. Critics at places like Rolling Stone and the NY Times could influence opinion for the unwashed masses who had neither the time nor the taste to decide for themselves what was good and what wasn't, after the Labels and The Radio told them what they should be hawking. It was a good system for those inside it. Everybody made a dollar (except the artists, of course!) I'm not trying to be one of those trolling contrarians (everybody knows one - check out yfbspod.com for an amusing example of the contrarian taken to an extreme for comedic effect), but for reasons I am still trying to understand, if all the critics love something then I am immediately biased against the disc right out of the gate. Don't tell me what to think, I guess. Which is why, after a mere 83 albums, I must remind myself NOT TO READ ABOUT THE ALBUM BEFORE I LISTEN to it so that I don't otherwise taint my own review. For some of the older albums I am already aware of the Critically Acclaimed® label (CA from here on out) and my own bias about that. You gotta ask yourself: maybe there's a reason why every mainstream rock journalist can't keep themselves from being the first to fawn over certain albums (this, and all Bruce Springsteen albums, or anything by Tom Waits, for instance), put them on the best of the year lists, and so forth? Maybe this work is real world changing music unlike anything ever known, which will upend your existing worldview and alter the very course of the culture of humanity. It is possible, and I do myself a disservice by not allowing it. Anyway, this is one of the most CA albums ever made. It's okay, a little dirgy, takes no risks to speak of, the instrumentation and technical quality is generally middle of the road. Springsteen isn't hurting anybody, and that's fine. There's some catchy songs here and some thought-provoking lyrics. The band is good, Clarence Clemmons (sp?)has a recognizable style and Springsteen's iconic voice is familiar and welcoming, but he can bring the heat when needed (not too much, though, we're not here to upset people). All due respect. Springsteen is an icon. That doesn't make it great. I'm going against the critics on this one.

Changed pop music not necessarily for the better. Didn't age well. The hits are awesome, Beat It and Billie Jean especially. Important culturally as R & B has completely replaced Rock as the mainstream in pop music. Mostly cringey (especially in retrospect), and MJ's voice doesn't work well in most of the material.

Gross. I get it. Critically Acclaimed® (lol), but I don't want this in my life. Trolling. Seek professional help, this is not serious art.

This is a great palate cleanser from the bitter nastiness that is The Slim Shady LP! I'm getting a lot of influences here ranging from Simon and Garfunkel, The Beach Boys, and the Beatles among them. It's nice, inoffensive, comforting folk-rock that ends up in Southern California and spawning a whole generation of singer-songwriters that punks and metalheads would later rebel against. The baby boomers did get to lay claim to some really interesting and iconic music that could give you something to think about. But only if you wanted, no effort needed! Graham Nash seems like a fairly cool bloke, too. And oh yeah, harmonies, lest I forget ;). 1969 was a watershed year for albums wasn't it?

There are some flashes of brilliance, of course. The outro on Bold as Love is especially amazing. Mitch Mitchell is in FINE FORM on this one, too. Hendrix always leaves me wanting a little more. Always kind of too loose. Great album overall.

Interesting production and a nice variety of styles make this more entertaining than I thought it would be. Some of the more gangster material is a huge bringdown for after what seemed like it would be an entertaining and generally thoughtful album by an interesting vocal presence.

Elvis, before getting chewed up by the mainstream American entertainment industry, had an astonishing sound. The Sun Records rockabilly cuts are historic for a reason and there are some fine examples here. Scotty Moore, Bill Black, and DJ Fontana are present on most of the songs. After this Elvis got manufactured by Colonel Tom Parker and apparently sold his soul, but at least some of the early stuff like this is here to remind us all what a big deal this dude was at the time. What a voice. Okay song selection, but I think Tutti Frutti was swing and a miss, while Blue Suede Shoes is inevitably the more well known version but lacks Carl Perkins' edge. Absolutely an album you should here before you die. Really enjoyable for me as a big rockabilly fan.

When this came out it fell into a category of music I called "Eurodisco," which my local "Alternative" station played so much of I actually wrote them a letter telling them if they didn't STOP DOING THAT I would be forces to take my business elsewhere and I MEAN IT! Wll, of course they didn't, I did and neither of us missed each other for a tenth of a second. I hear this now as a frequent listener of electronic music and it has a... quaintness. It's kind of weak, still, and relies too heavily on dance styles that wouldn't be native to the Isles (mostly Acid House). Influential, not very underground, it lacks depth, and I found it to be kind of boring. But like I said, in my younger days when I would have been the audience for this, I absolutely abhorred this kind of music. Given that, it wasn't unpleasant or challenging and definitely has some fun moments. Also cool to see some EDM finally on this list!

One of the first albums I ever bought with MY OWN MONEY! By far the best post-Beatles McCartney album in my opinion. Catchy as hell, amusing, touches of the loveliness we've all come to know. The song arc is excellent. One of the best of all time and a big personal favorite. Brings me back to my childhood I would grab one of my dozen or so albums, put it on the record player and sit down in my beanbag chair with the album cover in hand and just get transported to a completely different world :P

I apologize in advance for this being a review of my own feelings about the album rather than about the album itself. Pretty much par for the course for my reviews, now that I think about it. There are five-star albums, and then there are albums like this, which hold a special place in my heart. I somehow bought this when I was 11 years old. Songs like "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road", "All the Young Girls Love Alice", and "The Ballad of Danny Bailey (1909–34)" didn't make much sense to me back then. But I would put this on, open the album, and dissolve into a completely different world. When I heard this again just now, I was transported in my head back to my bedroom as a kid, lost in music, not really caring about the meaning. The music transcends words. This is how great art always affects me. I WANT to tell you about it. I want you to understand its value emotionally, sensorially, musically, and in a thousand other ways that change my experience—some of which have English words, most don't. But the ability to communicate art's a priori nature lies exclusively in the experience of it. Which is both frustrating and fantastic. I will probably end up saying this again, and I wanted to mention it when I wrote about "Band on the Run" (another album that lives in the same place as this): analyzing art robs it of the deep joy that comes from experiencing it. Check out the original album on vinyl if possible: every song has the lyrics and an illustration; it's an amazing package. Some part of the album experience is the package, the manipulation of the disc on your stereo, moving the needle JUST SO onto the groove at the beginning before the actual music starts... ah, good times! "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" is fascinating, humorous, sad, multi-dimensional, deep and broad, engaging, weird, fun, cool, bold and meek, familiar and mysterious all at the same time. And for reasons I just can't put into words, it really means a lot to me.

The song "Celebrity Skin" is catchy and thoughtful enough, so satisfying in a way. Also familiar, being the big hit and title track on the disc. I'm going to break down what I don't like about this and I'll try to keep personality issues out of it. Although I find it to be in extremely bad taste to attempt to force your drummer to quit. Really really bad form. Just have a meeting: "Listen, after doing two albums with you both of which were really succesful and Critically Acclaimed™, we just want to go in a different musical direction and we don't think you're going to want to hang, I'm sorry." Hole was of course just a Courtney Love project, but you don't have to be an asshole. Read the wikipedia article about how Love and the producer conspired to record this with studio guy Dean Castronovo. Even more unethical is not pulling the original grrrl drummer off the credits, keeping Hole's (almost) all girl grunge band aesthetic intact but still able to pull this over-produced attempt at a commercially appealing rock album. This attempt at a grunge-pop mashup (originally perfected by Nirvana) feels extremely disingenuous. Also whatever attempt at the "Califorinia sound™" {citation needed} would be the antithesis to that punk/grunge aesthetic that they were faking before. Nothing about the band Hole feels genuine. From their going to Minnesota (!) to recruit Kristen Pfaff, guitarist Eric Erlander's girlfriend who overdosed at 27, 4 months after Courtney Love's husband, to the above mentioned drummer shell game, to the bizarre choice of Production and musical direction. The best songs here are co-written with Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins, which is telling. As a whole it is really not as great as you're being led to believe. So many other grrls did this better, from PJ to The Breeders to L7. Courtney love's singing ruins it for me. It's not good. I love the heavier genres like punk, grunge, an metal, but this is a cash grab or something and it sounds like it to me.

Densore, Krieger, and Manzarek with some weird spoken word dude on vocals. Pretty obscure, surprised to see this on the list considering how underground this band was. Wonder what ever happened to them. Seems like they just stopped releasing stuff after a while. One note: I never realized (or forgot) how incredible Robby Krieger. Really amazing, in all seriousness.

Really digging “Cobra Bora” it’s got some attitude. Likable uptempo electronic dance music. I much prefer instrumentals in this genre, and this albumis no escption. I think the weakest songs on this have vocals and they feel a bit labored: less funky or sincere. Like the artist is try to wedge a vocal track into his groove because he's "supposed to?" Likable nonetheless. The back end of this album is a little heavier, which I also like in this kind of music. Mostly a party, though!

This is a really solid post-bop (?) jazz album with Jimmy Smith's instantly recognizable organ. Lots of saxamaphone (Stanley Turrentine) for those who like that sort of thing. Doesn't stretch the genre or do anything too fancy, and sometimes that's exactly what you want from a jazz album. The great Kenny Burrell pops by for anice bit on the guitar. Love Jimmy Smith's blues comp. Cool that this is mostly a three-piece.

I love this band so much it's kind of embarrassing. This album cover LOL! It is "dad rock" that maintains some edge even today. I really like everything on here, it's a guilty pleasure. I dig their loose approach, it adds flavor to what could otherwise be unremarkable blues rock. "Lookin out my Back Door" is homey and quirky and I love it. I loved this even when I thought I hated country music, wghich this (kind of) is. Great band, killer songwriting, topical without being dated, at times fun and other times somewhat dark. A little humor goes a long way.

Glad I got this from the generator. I have heard of them but haven't listened to them at all closely. This kind of sneaks up on you from being a chavvy cross between The White Stripes and Franz Ferdinand, but toward the end of the album it seems to find its own voice. Listening to the whole thing beginning to end is sort of like riding along with these fellas as they experience a night out, stuff can go right(\"I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor\") and then things can go wrong (\"From the Ritz to the Rubble\"). Separating this from other post 9/11 post-punk revivalists (like Franz Ferdinand in fact)are that they make these compelling little stories, and the lofi affectations that have a ton of burning young-man energy. Actual songs that don'task me to invest too much effort (I'm looking at you Arcade Fire). Fun tunes, fun album, a great listen from beginning to end! At 41 minutes (the perfect album length) it's a throwback to when the Album was a \"unit of art\" to quote someone who I forgot.

I was going to go on another useless diatribe about my problem with Critically Acclaimed® albums, but instead I will leave the following one word review of Crooked Rain Crooked Rain: Whatever.

Difficult to decipher, but I have rounded up some clues. I will need to listen several more times before even beginning to deduce who the killer is, but here's what I have so far: 1 - The term "Mushroom" has multiple meanings. Especially important to recognize that Damo Suzuki is a Japanese native person singing English words in front of a West German band. "When I saw a mushroom head I was born and I was dead" could refer to The Bomb OR a psychedelic experience. That the succeeding song pulls out of this one and literally explodes on the first note could also imply something more base level. Mushroomhead. hmm... 2 - Paperhouse lulls the listener into thinking this might be a rock album. It is not. That is a mental trick designed to pull you out of your usual reality in a nicer way than just dropping Aumgn on you. 3 - The rhythm section of Holger Czukay and Jaki Liebiz (later sampled by Q-Tip on ManWomanBoogie, I still can't get over that fact) both had parents who were essentially dispatched by the Nazis. This generation of German people is rarely talked about in these parts. Why do you think they're making so much noise? In some ways it appears this music might be a reflection of their inner lives, or at least in my imagining. Chaotic. Harsh. Frightening. UNRELENTING. WWII must have absolutely sucked. 4 - Unlike any other CAN, or any other Krautrock for that matter! 5 - WHY did they get a new singer? From wikipedia: "Mooney quit the band and returned to America soon after the recording of Monster Movie, having been told by a psychiatrist that getting away from the chaotic music of Can would be better for his mental health." IF THAT WERE TRUE, are we not encouraged to get away from the chaotic music of CAN? Why only Mooney? Just asking questions, not saying that CAN is an aborted CIA MKUltra spinoff project to weaponize rock music against the hippies. I am 100% NOT saying that. Do your own research. 6 - Damo Suzuki (friend of the great Mark E. Smith, RIP) did this month, just as my findings have come out and I now have no way to corroborate them. This is very suspicious. 7 - If you play "Aumgn" backwards, it says "Bring me a towel. I killed Luap" over and over. IN CONCLUSION: some say that this avant-garde masterpiece is not an experiment in merging rock aesthetics with musique concrete, or a stab at musical dadaism and surrealism, or spontaneous outbursts of sound simply for their own sake to further explore the ideologies of post-modernists like Stockhausen. No, they claim it is something more sinister, that perhaps CAN were mere puppets of the military-industrial establishment, bent on undermining the emerging free-thought and youth movements (among so many other postwar philosophies that were starting to dawn) by turning music against itself, in an effort to lead it towards it's own destruction. I don't say this, but some do.

I'm not listening to this dude. Not gonna give him the $ 0.0002 or whatever streaming royalty you get. Kanye West sucks in so many ways all of us should do everything we can to reduce whatever influence this idiot mouthbreather has left.

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Eclectic and entertaining. Especially liked sthe more innovative sounding stuff like "Manwomanboogie" ... OH SHIT!!! That's a CAN sample!!! It's Krautrock week and I am PRESENT! I love that there is a CAN sample on here, had no idea. Good job Q-Tip. There's a little trilogy of slightly twisted prog style in the mifddle of the albumthat I was really impressed by the sheer "newness" of the sound (for lack of a better word) with "We Fight/We Love", "Manwomanboogie", and "Move / Renaissance Rap." Wordy but not obnoxious or excessively violent or confrontational. Interesting album.

The slow tempo of these songs are, I'm sure, old Leonard Cohen's sincere self-expression. I haven't heard anything else he's done, so I don't know if his other work is like this. It's all stripped down to the most minimal instrumentation, simple progressions, simple poetic meter, in your face vocal production, and the aforementioned tempos. Kind of refreshing in a way after listening to so much experimental stuff. I had this thought just this morning: very little music is acoustic now, very little is just people playing a non-electronic instruments, or singing without any digital manipulation. So I am enjoying this possibly for that reason alone, (fully aware that this album contains some electronic instruments). Electronics or the production trickery is not the main focus. For example, Q-Tip's "Renaissance," which I thoroughly enjoyed, is composed almost entirely of samples that are further twisted into a new sound somewhat distant from their original source. Whereas here Leonard Cohen invokes church organs, choruses, piano, a string quartet, and his own voice in a strikingly grounding way. I found the songs with a religious theme were most interesting. Unlike Tom Waits, he's not playing a character, seems like he's speaking (literally, he doesn't sing much on this) from the soul. Different and unique, I like it a lot more than I thought I would. Play this during the daylight hours though, that's all I'm going to say.

Coincidence one day after the Q-tip album? I THINK not! Positive hip-hop! Consistently funky beats throughout. Humorous and entertaining, youthful almost to a fault, but thoughtful as well. "I Left My Wallet in El Segundo" and "Ham and Eggs" have a lighthearted flow that's missing from a lot of other hip hop. Having fun is allowed here, but they still speak from their souls. Some of the grooves went on a wee bit too long, but even for that and the length of this album, it was an entertaining ride.

Nile Rodgers, Bernard Edwards, and Tony Thompson can play whatever they want and it will always be the best funk you have ever heard. A couple of the ballads are a little bland, but outside of that, this is a true gem and a really satisfying listen.

If I criticize this, then I am one of the people he complains about, so I'm not going to feed that. Although reading about this album did introduce me to a new term, "transgressive art," so I did learn something. "You know how a lot of white Establishment types think Rap music is nasty? Watch this!" As juvenile as anything else this dude does.

Listened to it several times trting to come up with a proper review, but you know, you just gotta hear it. Brilliant folky Latin Jazz, heartfelt, for the love of the music and nothing else. The musical equivalent of a National Park.

Pro: Vocals("Music Is Love", "Laughing", "What Are Their Names"), some cool experiments("Music Is Love", "Orleans", "I'd Swear There Was Somebody Here"), Graham Nash, Neil Young, Crosby's guitar, Mickey Hart Cons: Jerry Garcia (does he know more than the one guitar solo?), the cover, too much Grateful Dead slopping all over, heavy sedation

The algorithm is really trying to bring me down. First Eminem and now this. I have avoided listening to this wannabe Alice Cooper my whole life and frankly I'm sorry to see it show up on this list. Pretty inconsequential gross-out music, it proudly wears the Trent Reznor industrial-metal brand right up front. So if you like that stuff, which not everyone does, you'll like this. Gives rise to some of the most extreme music to come, like Dillinger Escape Plan and their ilk. Marilyn Manson's (if that IS your real name) attempt at genre-bending transgressive provocation is merely a passable mashup of Nine Inch Nails, the aforementioned Alice Cooper - who, by the way, did a far far more interesting and entertaining version of this schtick 25 years prior - and possibly Throbbing Gristle. Take that mix, dirty it up, and voilà! Rock stardom! Fame! Fortune! It's all very self-referential. Wow, that's deep man. I "like" extreme metal, and you might lump this in that category. But it's unoriginal and frequently boring, and like a lot of stuff that doesn't hit me, devoid of soul. This feeIs like a stage show that just needed a soundtrack. The music kind of sucks, the majority of the people involved are huge assholes, and while that's not in itself a disqualifier of good music, the shenanigans are a distraction. P.S. The U.S. Congress in the 1990s really had some serious issues, why are they so worried about what your kids are listening to? If you want to MAKE 100% sure kids hear this shit, make a big deal out of how they shouldn't get to hear this shit.

The defining album of the Album Era. That cover. The long long chart run - 736 nonconsecutive weeks (from 17 March 1973 to 16 July 1988) including a run of 593 weeks. Nothing I can say that hasn't already been said. My own reflection listening again after many years: - Still perfect. - Owes its existence to Rick Wright and Nick Mason. - The band is firing on all cylinders. - Perfectly balanced between the head and the heart. - An exquisitely beautiful work of art. - Ironically, the start of the Roger Waters Corporation Business Interest Ltd. Money, indeed. - There is a throughline from CAN to this to Talk Talk's "Spirit of Eden" to late 90s Radiohead. - Still powerful and really great to listen to, front to back.

Progressive! Wish I could hear it on something other than youtube though.

Seems like a bit of an experiment gone off the rails. Pretty aggressive and anti-establishment, but better as a concept than actual music. It's okay, I'll allow the proto-punk label (because I am, yes, the official in charge of allowing labels, suck it). Entertaining.

If I saw this in the store as a teenager there's no way I want to know what's on this. No way. Based on the cover alone. I don't know who that red-faced squinty guy is, but he does NOT look like he will add musical value to my life. Or the Ron Wood-lookin dude on the left. The front guy just seems like he wants to be anywhere else and the only person who looks even somewhat like a rocker is being hidden in the back. This better be good. Well, it was good.Really good. Exactly the kind of thing I would have loved as a teenager actually. Like a cross between the Violent Femmes and the Buzzcocks with a bit of early rock influence (think Elvis Costello more than Elvis Presley). The Only Ones are great instrumentalists, wrote hooks, and simply great all around. I guess these guys worked on the music more than how they look, which is perfectly fine considering the result. I apologize for my earlier remarks. This is a basket of fun danceable tracks mixed with some odd (in a good way) slower tunes. I'm astonished that I'd never heard of them. This album lives up to the "1001 Albums You Have to Hear" rule for me.

***BEGIN CHATGPT PROMPTED REVIEW*** "461 Ocean Boulevard" by Eric Clapton is a lackluster attempt at revitalizing blues classics through the lens of the so-called "California Sound." While tracks like "Mainline Florida" and the standout "I Shot the Sheriff" provide fleeting moments of intrigue, the album predominantly relies on covers, reflecting what seems like creative laziness from Clapton. The appropriation of reggae elements in "I Shot the Sheriff" may resonate with some listeners, but it also raises questions about authenticity. Ultimately, the album falls short of delivering the innovation and depth expected from an artist of Clapton's caliber, resulting in a forgettable collection of uninspired renditions. ***END CHATGPT PROMPTED REVIEW*** One last note: if Clapton only played guitar there would be no problem.

The Smiths weren't really all that great, but they were definitely considered that by some in their time. A bit too challenging to be a pure pop band, but they did fill a temporal void in alternative music between post-punk and grunge. For me, Morrisey pushes his poetic self-reflections too far. AndI realize that while it's part of the campiness, his vocal affectations obscure the songs' musical soul. Like putting too much mustard on a great sandwich. No matter how good all the other elements of the sandwich are, all you remember is that it was mustard. With the Smiths, you have to like mustard A LOT.

Here is the lyric sheet for this album: ah - ah - ah - oh yeah! I could have gone my whole life without listening to this and I would not have missed it. The album is derivative in countless ways and so weak musically that I was almost offended. Electric? Hardly. MAYBE "Bang a Gong. MAYBE. Whoever is playing percussion on this is trying to be heard above the drummer, so they're hitting the tambourine (or clapping, or the bongo) just before the downbeat. And it's not consistently done, either. Just random movements to offset whatever groove might be trying to emerge. The guitar sound is compressed and a little flat. The singer (Marc Bolan always made me uncomfortable and not in that "ooh, what-a-strange-and-interesting-person kind of way but in the creepy-but-thinks-very-highly-of-himself kind of way) has NO dynamics or range, the lyrics are insipid and tried. Listening to this is like watching a remake of a TV show that was based on a bad Broadway show that everyone in the 70's had to watch because there was nothing else on. A real overrated downer. Electric my ass.

Funky, jazzy, high-energy afrobeat by the undisputed king of the genre. Throwing Ginger Baker in there creates a symbiosis that makes this album as great as anything else on the list. Pure soul from every single band member working as a team. Fun as hell and now my new favorite album. Love love love.

One of my favorite albums. Lots of deep emotion. Monster musicians, especially Manu Katchè and Tony Levin. Bill Laswell and Nile Rodgers even pop in. In Your Eyes is the best love song ever written and there can be no argument. Saw Gabriel live in October 2023 and it was life-altering. This album never gets old.

Heartfelt and nicely recorded post-punk! Listening to this I was thinking about how refreshing it is to hear women doing heavy music without relying on tropes but rather investigating and expressing their own point of view, unapologetically, without compromise. And Punk is the format for that - the idea of people outside the mainstream doing what they want, don't really care what you think. Reminded me a little of Throwing Muses, but with even more edge. Glad to hear this, I've heard of the band but never had a chance to listen. I would give it 3 1/2 stars if I could.

First time hearing any Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Really interesting. Kept me engaged over both of the albums, but kind of a bit much to take in all at once. Kind of Tom Waits-ish but without the annoying gravelly-voiced circus ringmaster character. Kind of pretentious, the songs about love and sex were compelling but lack ambiguity or abstraction that makes someone else's stories artistic. Otherwise very enjoyable on a Saturday afternoon cleaning my raingutters!

It took 43 people to make this? Unpopular opinion but I think Amy Winehouse’s voice is weak and annoying. The songwriting left me cringing. Much like every other post 2000 female r& b artist. Very commercial and definitely not for me. Owes too much to its influences.

Head Over Feet is a nice song. Forgiven is a good new treatment of an old theme. She shows off some vocal chops on Mary Jane that were a surprise. Ironic is a way better song than I remember. Maybe it’s the nostalgia sauce that makes it more delicious than it used to be.

A Moogtastic panoply of zounds with a surprise around every corner. Wish I was there to see it! I like most of what Fatboy Slim does. This one is not quite as taut as "You've Come a Long Way, Baby" but has similar punchy rhythms and tasty synth oscillations as its successor. If you like "Praise You" and its ilk you'll like this.

You can't fool me, I know punk rock when I hear it. Maybe it's psychobilly. Whatever it is, it's rad. Album of the week.

I'm a little loathe to admit it but Robert Christgau's assessment mirrors what I think exactly: "The Chronic (which I still can't stand but respect for its influence and iconicity)" "Dr. Dre: The Chronic [Interscope, 1992] The crucial innovation of this benchmark album isn't its conscienceless naturalization of casual violence. It's Dre's escape from sampling. Other rappers, as they are called, have promised to create their own musical environments, usually without revealing how much art and how much publishing fuels their creative resolve. But Dre is the first to make the fantasy pay out big-time. The world he hears in his head isn't the up-to-date P-Funk fools say they hear--that would be too hard. Instead he lays bassline readymades under simulations of Bernie Worrell's high keyb sustain, a basically irritating sound that in context always signified fantasy, not reality--stoned self-loss or, at a best Dre never approaches, grandiose jive. This is bell-bottoms-and-Afros music, its spiritual source the blaxploitation soundtrack, and what it promises above all is boom times for third-rate flautists--sociopathic easy-listening. Even if it's "just pop music," as some rationalize, it's bad pop music. C+" DNF

It's an art piece! You will enjoy this a lot more if you take a naive approach and reject the notion that every band or album has to belong to some genre. For example, Wikipedia puts the song "Psycho Killer" alone into no less than 6, from art punk (wat?) to no wave (sure, okay). Just relax and allow Talking Heads '77 to reveal it's true nature. Talking Heads laissez-faire approach to music frees them as songwriters to rummage around in your psyche and find whatever weirdness they can turn up. Like when you go to a new town, everything familiar is a little different. Songs about the mundane that reveal other concepts about ourselves without force or irony. Groundbreaking yet catchy, odd but confident. Some of David Byrne's most entertaining and interesting vocals on all of the Talking Heads records are here. A really important album for the future of the metagenre known as alternative rock and a home run on their first at-bat. I was complaining I was down in the dumps I feel so strong now 'cause you pulled me up

I have to put this to bed for myself. Been wracking my brain trying to figure out, really, what I think about this album (and Radiohead in general, as I still owe a review of Kid A). But I think I finally got it. The band are paradoxical. Yorke goes out of his way to confuse us both lyrically and professionally - in interviews, his stage presence or lack thereof, etc. Abjectly refusing to take the Prog baton, while doing exactly that. Being the "Biggest Band in the World™" while at the same time the most introverted band to ever exist (putting the lie to "introversion" as real concept at all, but these personality tropes help marketers so let's all just keep on pushing the stereotypes). Being upper-crust English Gentlemen from Oxford yet having a vicious hatred for the establishment. Being the living human embodiment of these paradoxes would push one to the edge of a certain socially acceptable madness. The listener is expected to ignore all of it and take a quick dip in this strange pool. I'm not judging this as bad. In fact, one of the reasons Radiohead succeeds is that they are somehow able to make catchy well-composed, almost accessible music out of this confused, often depressing and enraging state of mind. It's an impermanent state, but one that will float in and out of consciousness without warning. And one that leaves only on it's own accord, even if asked politely. This is Radiohead for me. They absolutely went to a place pop music (HA!) never really went. If we believe Yorke and Co this was not contrived but spontaneous. Another paradox, in that if tyoou think about it, no music is either truly spontaneous or truly contrived, it's not a black and white thing. I was becoming annoyed by interpretations of the lyrics and their confusing, abstract nature: WHAT DOES THIS MEAN! Add to it the idea, for me, that some of these interpretations do NOT correspond at all with what the words in the poems actually ARE. Just as an example, let's talk about Airbag (first song on the album and puts itself out there as a representative). I've read articles whose purpose was to shed light on the poetry (it's poetry, in the ancient sense, but without the storytelling) claiming this song is about a car crash. And outside of the literal interpretation, about "transport", and maybe even the dangers of modern society, cars, whatever. But if you look at the lyrics, what are they really saying? Born again. Almost died. Airbag saved my life. What actually saved your life, man? How did you almost die? Was Thomas telling the story of a car accident that he was in? Maybe.. these guys are a paradox. Maybe all of his angst has to do with people like me misinterpreting what he's trying to say. (I've read that infact some of Thom Yorke's angst comes from exactly this.) Is "Airbag" a complaint about technology, or an acknowledgement? The fine German car caused a problem (car crash), but the Airbag prevented a different problem (death), so maybe the technology that can kill you can actually save you? What is repeatedly discussed is being born again, and the chorus about an interstellar burst and how I am back to save the universe. Yes, Thom Yorke was in an accident, yes, he has spoken about it and the relationship to this song. So you can certainly take it very literally - the feeling of escaping a near death experience adn emerging from it with a renewed sense of joie de vivre. But HAVE YOU HEARD THIS SONG. There is no joy, only fear. So it's poetry and soundtracks. The poetry isn't really all that great. The singer sounds almost as if he doesn't want you to understand the words, they are there as a vehicle for his voice to intertwine with the guitar - vocals as musical instrument. WHich is great. People love that. It has just been difficult to unravel the various paradoxes with Radiohead, or understand when they are possibly NOT being paradoxical at all. I came to this music later in my life. If I heard this first when I was 17, you couldn't tear it out of my cold dead hands. But I deeply respect it, tall the guys in this bad are fantastic musicians and Thom Yorke is without question one of the best vocalists of this generation (arguably any generation), and an entertaining frontman as well. But every time I hear Radiohead, a small bit of my enjoyment is clouded by the cynicism that they themselves frame everything with. It becomes tedious. I feel pressure to like them more than I do. When that pressure gets to be too much to take, I put on OK Computer and drift away to a different place ;)

This was very interesting, as a Rock album after Radiohead supposedly ended the album era. There's a late 60's folk/psych feel here that is charming and sincere. Lots of musical variety and some intrguing surprises here and there without being overly ambitious, making this an enjoyable listen.The album feels very live - as if I were listening to the band in the pub wherever these dudes are from, everyone is having a great time. Really fun.

Another juvenile fit-thrower from the 90s, like Marilyn Manson and later Eminem. DNF

There's a macho approach to rock 'n' roll that The White Stripes didn't exactly avoid in previous albums, but on this they somehow became Led Zeppelin all of a sudden. Almost overconfident without the self-effacing charm of previous albums. Still brilliant in a lot of ways: clever lyrically, solid grooves that maintain the DIY trope, and some 5-star guitar playing - Jack White's guitar sound speaks to me, and some of the solos on here are wildly expressive. Drugs make an appearance, though? What's up with that?

Sometimes music can just be something to listen to, not worry too much about, enjoy the sound, the rhythms, the little melodies, the chord changes. Just listening with no effort expected on the listener's part. Light entertainment for your amusement.

Give it up for The Attractions ladies and gentlemen! The rhythm section and drum 'breakdown' on Lipstick Vogue literally making me cry. It's not Punk Rock, it's another level of Elvis Costello that didn't show up on "My Aim is True." More complex. More inscrutable. Deeper. Heavier. Angrier. "Big Tears mean nothing {scowling} When you're lyin' in your coffin" Jesus! Easy, Elvis! Then they just toss off "Radio, Radio" like it's a Sunday afternoon jam with friends. Fantastic. Takes a while to get into, but once you do, it's a pretty fulfilling musical experience.

Kind of strangely good hard rock at the end of the hair-metal era. Peak Stephen Tyler, I'm not a huge fan, but tons of respect for the voice. Smarter than average but with some cheesiness (which is not the worst thing in the world - a sense of humor is always welcome). Enjoyable overall. For me the big winner is the whole second side of the album, notably Hoodoo Voodoo/Medicine Man, which was a Brad Whitford (!) song. Go figure. Janie's Got a Gun is a good song, regardless of what you think of Aerosmith. Good, well thought-out album. Good to see rock stars come back from the dark side instead of immolating themselves for a change.

Five stars because fu the Fall are awesome. It's different and you just don't get it. This is their most accessible album, and it's not all that accessible. I wonder if someone challenged Mark E. Smith (who is a god by the way) to come up with a pop album? Might change me name to Shadrach Glamrick.

Pop R & B isn't my usual taste in music but the further into this album I got, the more I enjoyed it. Especially like the socially conscious songs and the variety of influences (dancehall, rap). Always cool to get a feminist perspective. Really like the cover of "Can't Take My Eyes Off of You."

Really like Guitar-Radiohead a little more than Experimental-Ambient-Radiohead, and this peak Guitar-Radiohead. SO EMOTIONAL though, fakeplastictrees kills me every time. High and Dry is a great pop song on an album is chock full of great songs, I don't care if Thomm doesn't like it. Not an easy or casual listen, but as deep as anything the band ever did. Not for everyone. It was always odd to me how popular this band was, hoping someone can explain it to me some day.

I saw the Dead Kennedys at this weird little gymnasium in SLC. Got smashed up against the stage for most of the show while my friends were either in a mosh pit or floating around the outside. I was wearing my favorite metallic orange skinny tie and a shitty thrift store suit. Someone tries to choke me or hang me by grabbing my tie, I couldn't see them and I decided I could escape by whipping my head around like a dog that doesn't want to e on a leash, all the while screaming Chemical Warfare into the mic the Jello pushed in the faces of us all getting smashed into the stage. The tie itself was finally unleashed but I didn't really care, that was he best night of my young life up to that point. My friends had similar tales. Hands down my favorite punk album ever and I think most of these themes still resonate. My deadhead friends couldn't listen to 5 minutes of this without yelling at me to turn it off, but that was their loss.

Inoffensive but otherwise meh. Owes a lot to Prince and Michael Jackson (no relation). Black Cat is a cool song, others are mostly unoriginal and weakly executed.

Intense. Not what I expected. A lot of variety musically. Really powerful, at times prescient considering Jeff Buckley's short life - for example on "So Real" he sings "...I couldn't awake from the nightmare that sucked me in and pulled me under Pulled me under oh that was so real..."

Like the best bands, the best albums are of a piece. The last of the great rock-era U2 albums, before they "reinvented" themselves - as what, many of us fans STILL do not know. I guess just "not this anymore." Yet this album (and the little portion of their career it represents) was a career plateau that they never really got back to. They hold up a mirror to America, more as their own introspection than as a preachy diatribe. There is a respect and disappointment in the romanticism. And it's not all about America, either. Running to Stand Still, Streets Have No Name, most of these are about everywhere. Like a daydream, images fade in and out, some more lucid than others. The themes and lyrical content give the whole thing its emotional underpinning. U2 as musicians have hit their stride, confident in the style that they invented for themselves and unapologetically galloping from one rendering of it to the next. Instrumentally, U2 have a tension between the piercing staccato of guitar and the down-to-earth smoothness of the bass. This tension is not so much antagonistic as it is a framework or scaffolding. The drums/bass/guitar push against each other and work together to support whatever chaos is happening on top of and around them. Kind of a cool trick that works really well for them in that the singer isn't doing pop tropes all the time. He requires an instrumental pulpit that the band are happy to provide. Neither can exist without the other. This structure sounds great on an album with outsized and ambitious anthemic thrust. It does fail for some listeners who aren't up for that level of commitment, maybe. U2 have attempted to take on difficult and far-reaching themes, inside and outside of themselves. It can be a lot. I always really loved that about them, though. They are committed to each other, the fans, the music, and what they are trying to say. When it works, like it does here, it can be a religious experience.

Some interesting grooves. Story songs, but without much subtlety. I do feel transported into a world I'm unfamiliar with, I enjoyed that. Not Just Money, Super Rich Kids, and Crack Rock carry this whole thing for me. A lot to recommend but it doesn't make me feel anything. I like the minimalism and chill tempos. I would need more time with this. Seems like Frank Ocean (if that IS your real name!) is not that into making music and this was something he shedded like a snake skin from his lifestyle. It's ok.

Some of the worst music I've heard of the albums I've listened to so far. Really not good. I never "got" the Beach Boys, and this just makes me dislike them more.

Couldn't get through it. Maybe some other ti,e. He's a good enough singer, and I'm sure this is a good example of the genre. I couldn't do it. Grateful for having a streaming subscription so I don't have to buy or try to borrow stuff like this.

This is heavy proto-grunge, negatively focused on the whole, challenging, noisy, and weird. What was happening in Massachusetts in the late 80s? This is what "indie" used to be. Much less of an attempt to be popular through hooky songwriting tropes. More from the heart and about as underground as you want to be without disappearing completely. I don't dislike this era, sort of underground American post-post-punk - I don't know. Definitely not for everyone. A bit in that Minutemen/Hüsker Dü/Meat Puppets vein. A lot more dismal and introspective though.

At their best Depeche Mode are an overly serious version of Kraftwerk with a monotonous cabaret singer. At their worst a soulless New Romantic band of goth posers. PICK A LANE Depressed Mood! I will give the list a pass on one Depeche Mode album, but why two? At least I got them out ogf the way early. This has been a very below-average week. Hopefully next week isn't all Tom Waits and Rod Stewart 🫣 .

Too slow, too much production, too much not enough. Lacks any intensity. Pretty soulless. Damn, the whole thing is like the worst Lynyrd Skynyrd, but more robotic. The singer is good enough (I guess, can't really hear that well). Outside of Bittersweet Symphony, this just drags. It's so long. I tried, but the slide guitar/slow tempo/acoustic campfire strumming just feels contrived out here. Come On is okay. Rounding down one star for bad behavior and breaking up 3 times. I would love to hear something by these guys without all the echo and tambourine

It's okay. Hugely popular and hugely disappointing for a ZZ Top fan back in 1983. One of the few bands though that was able to incorporate post-punk/new-wave into their mix a little. ZZ Top have some funk and soul baked in that helps this rise above the doldrums of the era. Also, TV Dinners is awesome, you guys just don't get it.

I love everything about this band. Sort of a weird B-52s vibe but a little... nastier? Funny, interesting, different, upbeat, fun, contemplative, cerebral, poetic, odd, indecipherable, fascinating, Arty, percussive - has a good beat, you can dance to it. High quality musicianship, you can tell they've played together for a long time, very cohesive and tight, expressive, good dynamics and support for the voices. This is a good band. Oh, yeah, also Björk 🤩 (pronounced "byerk").

Soothing and hypnotic. Pt. 4 has a lovely mid-seventies European futurism, at the time the most high-tech sound imaginable which even today sounds somewhat otherworldly. Cool recording. Has an "organic" feel to it even though completely electronic, even the bird sounds are synthesizer and studio effect. Astonishing to me that he recorded this in his apartment.

Marvin Gaye has a remarkable singing voice. Let’s Get It On is pretty catchy and everything on the album is well executed. But! This music exists for one reason and one reason only, and I think we all know what that reason is. Outside of a very specific context- or possibly a slow dance - it doesn’t appeal to my taste. Great work though just not my bag. A little too slow and romantic.

Great debut album. It's just rock and roll, don't over-think it. A good bit of fun. You can really hear their influences, almost a little too much, but because I like those influences I won't count it against them ;). Cool sound, lots of bass, great drumming as well. There are some interesting innovations on here. I enjoyed this album quite a bit, fun uptempo blasts - probably not "Britpop" if it wasn't released at that time. Slightly better than three stars. If this were a 100 scale, and: ⭐️ = 0-20, ⭐️⭐️ = 21-40, ⭐️⭐️⭐️ = 41-60, ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ = 61-80, and ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ = 81-100 this album is definitely in the top third for me, especially after the last week or so.

Listened to the first of the four (five) LPs that comprise this, I think. The Apple Music version did not include the instrumentals at the beginning, but you can find those on a different release if you want to be a completist. Glad to be exposed to this. What Pop was before the rock era, this is definitely a work of art. You can't find fault with Ella Fitzgerald, or the band. Perfect execution and this was the peak of Jazz as a popular music form. A type of literature, music school is still teaching this for sure even though it is really no longer in the pop idiom. Which is a bit disappointing considering the level of talent here. Again, glad to get it on the list. Was meditating on the question of "How would you feel if today was your last" and I was definitely glad I heard this before I died. Good to see this on the list, I think eventually I will play the rest.

Oof getting behind in my reviews! Just a couple notes about this interesting album: 1. Obviously influential, maybe not just Ravi Shankar but the whole Indian Classical genre, and obviously in Britain. 2. Culturally more important than musically, maybe? 3. Difficult to pay attention to continuously, but enjoyable in the background. 4. Get your mind somewhere else for a change, this kind of music is really healthy for the brain if nothing else because it is different from what you're used to. You don't have to like it, but do yourself a favor, and as he says, listen with an open mind and you will be rewarded. 5. Virtuosic. I wish I had more time to just let it wash over me(maybe I'll listen to it again today, since I don't have to listen to Kanye West).

Maybe some other time. Not my jam, sorry. Weirdly popular in the UK - why? Average to below average alt-pop. And, yep, I get it, you're gay. DNF.

Over rated. I remember why I don't like the Stones all that much. They always sounded a little out of tune and like they were phoning it in (except for Charlie Watts, of course). Weirdly ironic to criticize your middle class peers while engaging in the very behavior you're criticizing. Oh wait, I forgot,you're writing about "characters." Sorry. I KNOW I'm SUPPOSED to LOVE the Stones as anti-establishment heroes, but they were always pretty representative of the establishment in Rock, weren't they? Minus one star for Critical Acclaim®.

I feel like they could have rehearsed more, but there are interesting ideas here and there. Flavors stuff that would come down the road 10 years later, especially in American New Wave and post-punk like Talking Heads, Pere Ubu, or Devo. When this was released it was probably quite a bit more challenging than it is today (almost 60 years later!!!). Mostly typical 1960s blues-inspired meanderings, like every other psychedelic era band, but with less attention to hooks and more Dadaism. Wondering whether Cap'n Beefheart suffered from some mental illness, and I don't say that in a joking or judgemental way, but I sincerely wonder if everything was going okay. I hear a little anguish in the vocals, and I could be mistaking Beefheart's method of self-expression for true pain. So maybe in the end, the Blues was sincere. This music walks on the ol' line between madness and art. Captain Beefheart is just over the line a little bit, at times on this album and ABSOLUTELY on the upcoming Trout Mask Replica. And that makes stuff like this even more interesting. Is it good? hmmm

Nope. Didn't listen. Won't ever listen. It's really disturbing to me that EVEN AFTER Kanye West exposed himself as a conspiratorial anti-semitic dipshit, he goes on a tour and releases new stuff and remains popular. I hate it. Can't figure it out. I think he learned about how to con his loyal followers from the former president. Just wrote about mental illness and how maybe Captain Beefheart was toying with that line between madness and genius (myth by the way, but hey, popular music, right?). Kanye West has the more sociopathic version of this, where he feels okay exploiting his fans. "Yeah, look how CRAZY I AM!! {That'll be $250, please.}" This dude has a lot of problems, always has, and I'm kind of sick of using brain cycles thinking about it.

So much music is both comprised of and decorated with vagaries, subtleties, and ambiguity. There's a lot of cognitive load trying to parse meaning, to unwind a metaphor, to extract contextual clues - like riding the train to someplace you've never been. {That's an analogy not a metaphor} While sometimes interesting and entertaining (appeals to taste notwithstanding), the effort can be exhausting, especially when traveling to a frontier where you must have your wits about you at all times, aware, ready for surprises of all kinds, friendly or otherwise. Sometimes it's really nice to avoid all that and just get blasted with a straightforward message in a forceful way. Back it up with technical mastery and you've hit a sweet spot. Anthrax doesn't hit that spot for everyone all the time, myself included. But today, nailed it. No complaints.

Vocals rely a little bit on a resemblance to Neil Young. Some novel rhythmic passages and the drums are up in the mix which I like. In fact the production of this album is interesting throughout. It takes risks. There is a definite early to mid 2000s alternative rock sound that this fits in with. Like Arcade Fire, maybe Interpol, etc I mean it’s not unpleasant , just a wispy psychedelia that I won’t remember well tomorrow. Floydian spaciness in Approaching Pavonis Mons by Balloon

When I drive now it is no longer a pleasant experience. It's a stressful exercise in accepting the fact that you can't control other people, judging only hurts yourself, and anger management all while navigating an increasingly dangerous and out of control world. Putting this on helped soothe the pain as I drove to the store and back. Trip hop is cool, I listen to it a lot, especially instrumental stuff. This is great. Almost broke my earbuds, there's SO MUCH BASS. (A compliment, not a complaint). Not the best but there are some choice cuts - I could live with Five Man Army for a long long time. Owes a lot to some post-punk R & D guys like Adrian Sherwood and Jah Wobble.

Nearly flawless! An intriguing and important cultural milestone. Beautiful tunes perfectly executed, sort of like Rumors from a technical point of view. Eclectic. Socially conscious pop music is pretty rare, even more rare is socially conscious music that universally acclaimed and beloved. I don't know what happened to music after this. It just got dumber and lower quality. Thank god for this high bar though.

Lovely. Such a strong voice, it seems like studio recordings just don't capture her power. Very accessible, firmly grounded in popular formats - I swear I can hear samba, some calypso, jazz, and everyone will recognize Mbube - The Lion Sleeps Tonight, but the roots version. One More Dance is one of the absolute most bizarre recordings I've ever heard, I think.

This is extremely okay. Brutally and immensely unoffensive. A brilliant, timeless, and absolutely astonishing variety of middle-of-the-road pop. Wants to be milquetoast without ever getting there. Jokes aside, if you're in the mood for some good-time mid-sixties pop-rock, go put this on. Stepping Stone is the edgiest thing here, but this isn't about being edgy. Some creepy moments (Girl on the 4th Row, Melody for an Unknown Girl) that didn't age well, hysterical nonetheess. They weren't going for that, but it's entertaining all the same. The perfect example of a "sound" that some cool new West Coast bands are going for (looking at you, Buttertones). Rock and Roll without all the drugs and sex.

Jack White's talent is taking the simplest riffs and exploring all the possibilities of them. Here he works more on song structure and studio execution than the White Stripes' more blatant guitar-based anthemic crunchiness. This is a little bit more wordy than the White Stripes or even the Raconteurs, more thoughtful, and a little more obtuse for me. There's a strange flow to it, though, not BAD per se, just a bit stream-of-consciousness. Feels like we Jack White is going down a different road musically at the end of the album than where we started. It's not disappointing, but it is a goodbye to the earlier simpler grittier garagier (garage-ier?) work into the more backwoods idioms that he ventures into later. Can't wait to see how he changes in another 10 years.

"It's Blitz!" comes across as formulaic. Lacks the aggression, emotion, and sincerity of their earlier stuff. The disco/dance grooves are just weak. Karen O's voice is not Gloria Gaynor, Donna Summer, or even Debbie Harry - and it is Blondie (or possibly No Doubt) who they seem to be reaching for, rather than capitalize on their OWN unique flavor. It just feels forced, like a great basketball player who suddenly gets to the Finals and chokes away the win because they get overwhelmed by the moment. Which isn't to say it's all bad. Dissapointing.

BoC are mechanistic, experimental, cerebral musique concrete with a very specific attitude as an art project. Late 90s Electronic music was Big Beat, danceable throbbing rave-oriented controlled chaos that required little to no cognitive effort on the listener's part. This is a completely different thing. It is electronic music to be sure. Some bits also bear a resemblance to dance tropes of that era. Well-executed similarity to other forms of electronic music, serve as an entry point for something far more interesting, yet entertaining. From simple bass and drum grooves, they wash the whole with other colors that seem unintentional in their effect. Moods shift from joyous to anxious, naïve to wizened, celebratory to frosty boredom. BoC create art that occupies an unnameable state of mind that existed in its past. Perhaps. I think I remember hearing this or that, I remember what it felt like (or I think I do), but that might only be because the sound suggests it. What you are hearing never actually existed. What exists is your memory of something similar, buried now because it's unimportant or unused. There is a way to dive into how this fits into postmodernism in a way that I won't go into today, but it can spin off in an epistemological direction for sure. What do you really remember? Is memory a real thing in the world? We probably invent an abstraction of the past so that the world has some structure., even though the "world" is just complete uncontrolled chaos. It's why we invented God, or maybe music This music works in that role for me really well. A structure where the mind can wander down weird little paths of memory and emotion, some I've seen before, some remind me of places I've been or people I've heard in other rooms while multiple TVs play various indecipherable and unimportant things. "Music Has the Right to Children" is accidentally popular, it seems. Kind of divisive, looking at the reviews here. I love it, but you don't have to. Give it a chance if you want something to think about.

Perfect for walking around on a grey springtime afternoon, the mountains ahead, lake in the distance. Joni Mitchell has SUCH A GREAT voice, but she's pretty horny, isn't she? And why not? When a dude is horny and singing about it no one bats an eye. Joni Mitchell does it and EVERYONE LOSES THEIR MINDS. God damn Jaco Pastorious kills it. Fantastic record.

A great Rock and Roll, underappreciated. Could have been the Pixies though.

Respectfully: Willie Nelson does a good job of infusing these old standards with his iconic vocal sound. But this comes out at a time when pop standards were passé. A few other big names filled gaps in the market when there was no traditional pop on the charts: Linda Ronstadt, Rod Stewart (!), Carly Simon, and this. Would have been better if Willie leaned more into his Country and Jazz instincts, instead of the straight approach he takes here. I will say, pretty rebellious to make this album, as a successful country artist, in 1977. At least it wasn't disco or punk. Thanks, I suppose for that!

Some okay tunes, a bit (a lot) immature lyrically. "Angular" guitars and pushing the bass up in the mix on top of a disco-style drum groove does not make this anything like post-punk, as I've heard this band described. I'm thinking more Roxy Music than Gang of Four, too slick to truly be a garage band. The best songs are the most popular and those verge on being mere earworms. Hints at heaviness. I vaguely recall reading something recently about listening to bands who aren't very good but have a great record collection. I think FF qualifies. Not a COMPLETE waste of time, but I have pretty limited time.

Is that Bill Hader? Dude's got a Rockmount Ranchwear shirt it appears. The cover DEFINITELY does not sell this - the posturing is strong in this one. The guy on the far right - ew. I bet they from Ireland or something. This better be good. (Not feeling generous today). Not going to break my rule and read about them before I listen, though. BRB! Is this a prank? They ARE from feckin’ Ireland!!!! I just heard Willie Nelson and now here come these poseurs. Yikes. Bad ideas poorly executed. Why not do your own stuff and leave the Americana to someone who knows how to do it? Awful. Couldn’t get through it.

Hahaha Lucinda Williams after that stupid The Thrills album!! Oh the ironing is delicious 🤤. Still angry about Irish guys using a fgake southern drawl. Great songwriting delivered with authenticity. The album has a lot of variety, a range of emotion, interesting and fresh subject matter. Really liked these little glimpses of people's lives, Lake Charles was a memorable example. I've never listened to Lucinda WIlliams before because I kind of afraid of country music, but this was great. Haters gonna hate, as they say. I typically oppose the Critically Acclaimed™ stuff, but this deserves the awards.

Best songwriter of the baby boom generation and there is no argument. I too am Just thanking the Lord for Paul Simon's fingers 😉

Excepting the couple of hits, this is fairly mediocre. Relies a little too much on a laid-back acoustic folky sound, and George doesn't need the likes of Bob Dylan or Eric Clapton to help him. Not for me to decide, but in my revisionist history George does the following: 1. Instead of Phil Spector, literally anyone else. George's tunes just don't fit and there's no ironic contrast. Just reverb and it brings the wwhole thing to a place it doesn't belong. There's a fine line between clever and stupid. 2. Just get a band, abandon the all-star guest appearance party. 3. Pick the 8 - 10 best songs. OR 4. Finish a thought. A lot of the stuff on this album seems like demos without structure. Take all the ideas, put some together, take some apart, move some around. 5. Sing from your soul, not someone else's. George Harrison seems to get caught in that thing that so many British rockers did around this time and thought they were George Jones or something? Country rock is not all that awesome even when it's done well. 6. Of course, just one album man. Just one. The Beatles were so popular they got to that point where NO ONE gave them any feedback. This album is too long. Maybe flesh out the weaker songs and put them on a later album? The good stuff is really good though. I just wish he pruned out the Americana sounding stuff. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Some really cool rhythms and as Tim Bowness says “proto-goth… AB SO LUTE slab of atonal noise.” And that’s what this is start to finish. I listened to this out of context, that is, walking to a work function on a sunny cool late spring morning. 1982 me would love most of it. Very DIY with shades of PiL but not enough. More in a Crampsy/B-movie/ tongue in cheek vein than his later more literate work. It’s ok, a tough listen all the way through.

I wanted to like this more than I did. Just too long, man. The problem with digital technology in music production and reproduction is that what used to be a creative constraint, being the amount of material the artist could reasonably add to an album. Because tape was EXPENSIVE, took specialized knowledge to work with effectively, had a finite physical capacity, and took up physical space among other things. The artist and producer needed to be super selective about what they committed to tape and by extension the record they made. You had to rehearse as studio time was also expensive and in limited supply. A lot of effort had to go into song selection, recording method, it all adds up. Only the best performances make the cut from a purely practical and financial perspective. But with digital all that went away. On the positive side, now anyone truly can make professional sounding work, and make recordings anywhere (dorm room, backyard shed, etc.). Digital distribution has further democratized the industry, and most barriers to creating, publishing, and marketing music are gone. Additionally, recordings can be ANY LENGTH without constraint. This lack of constraints allows artists (who are in love with their own work as if it were more important than their own offspring) the ability to publish everything they make, regardless of quality of the performance, whether it's a unique or novel expression, or any other reason to prune. This lack of constraints is especially detrimental in electronic music, where an artists ability to play a musical instrument is another constraint that no longer matters. Just sample something, loop it, add some beats, boom - done. Now there's too much. This Roni Size album has some good stuff on it! But too much. Too much of every song contains recycled elements of the last, and the next. Pop clearly eats itself here, but not in a self-referential post-modern way (like Boards of Canada). An example of the post-vinyl digital abundance and ego stroking that is now de rigeur.

So far this week I've had a triple album (\"All Things Must Pass\" by George Harrison - 104:12), a double CD album (\"New Forms\" by Roni Size/Reprazent - 139:54) the very challenging 47:20 atonal slab of \"Junkyard\" by The Birthday Party, and now this Jazz double LP weighing in at a hefty 76:33. What next, possibly \"simulated_worlds\" by NǽnøĉÿbbŒrğ VbëřřĦōlökäävsŦ (80:49:58) or perhaps Bull of Heaven's \"210: Like a Wall in Which an Insect Lives and Gnaws\", a piece lasting exactly fifty thousand hours? All told I have to put in 6 hours and 7 minutes, and it's only Thursday! Good thing I like Jazz! This is a good album but not an exceptional album excepting the fact that it's Hugh Masekela from South Africa, not exactly a Jazz hotbed before this (so very groundbreaking in that respect), and the high quality of the music across the length of it. Subjectively speaking of course. I do like Masekela's spare style and bright, melodic approach to the horn. At times blasting out hard bop like Dizzy Gillespie or gliding into the long breathy single notes like Miles, where he tries to coax every last drop of life out of that one sound. All without being overly cerebral or challenging, making this a fairly accessible work for Jazz fusion (which is definitely what this is). The best tunes on here are the more funk-driven ones where the band is not meandering as much, like on "Inner Crisis." Bringing in some textures that haven't been played to death for the 25 years prior. The drumming was a little heavy-handed I thought, great nonetheless. There are probably some number of Jazz albums that could be on this list instead of this one, but it's an enjoyable, uplifting entry.

The Kinks ushering a new political era! Dying in a war for no reason, income inequality, misplaced patriotism (is that what it's called in Great Britain?), wartime propaganda, questioning authority, parodying the advertising of Australia! This one's got it all! It's all good, The Kinks rule, and the British Empire is officially dead! huzzah

The opposite of a sophomore slump. I was going to ding this by a star for "I Believe," but it's a perfectly executed soul ballad with the same self-observant attitude as the rest of the album, gently laying you down in front of the massive "Head Over Heels/Broken," which rips out your heart then gifts it back to you in a healed, refreshed state where you can now see the world a little more clearly, less shit-stained. Brilliant album beginning to end, with that lush, mid-eighties gloss that can sound dated but here is effective as part of the music, magnifying the themes, spreading the music out. Simple without being boring. Huge without being obnoxious, or tedious. It just has a sincere character, unlike a lot of other so-called synth-pop/new wave from that era - not going to name names because Tears for Fears songwriting and musical chops elevate them to a level that exists sort of above any genre. Unfortunately for us Orzabal and Curt Smith didn't get along well after the next album, maybe got steamrolled by their hype, who knows. Good to see they got back together later because this was a unique sound, great voices, great playing, great songwriting. "Songs from the Big Chair" has aged well, a superior example of what pop music sounde like inthe mid-eighties, and remains one of the best albums of all time.

Somewhat judgemental about the Nasty girl, which sends a mixed message on the heels of Bootylicious. Interesting attempt at infiltrating a pop/dance/r&b record with some intellect, and it has some touching moments. Probably aimed at a different demographic, but kind of enjoyed it, even though I'm a proponent of DAD ROCK. Makes sense, their producer is Beyoncè's dad.

Gangsta rap

Every time I listen to this I hear something new. THIS TIME, I heard a running theme, both romanticizing and eulogizing someone's gauzy, distant view of a pop culture that never was. Like all the Glam was just for show, and underneath was something less appealing, strangeness that is no longer interesting and exciting but bitter, ungrounded, untethered. Often the lyrics go off the rails of saliency, and this state of mind is further illustrated by Mike Garson's solo at the end of the title track. Like a stage set that we get glimpses of an unkempt chaos behind it. But just glimpses. Things are starting to fall apart. Or maybe just change into something else.

People on here hating real music that makes you happy for some reason. 5 stars always for one of my favorites. Not even bill Bruford's best work and it's still objectively better than anything - anything - released after 1999.

Another god-damn double album. Apple music describes it as the "first double-album masterpiece of the rock 'n' roll era". We'll see. Starting to be concerned about time about 1/4th of the way through this beast of a list. Although last week was great, 2Pac excepted. This is the hipster music origin story. "Bob Dylan" is a brand, not a dude. An acquired taste. If I was 17 in 1966, I would have been on the bandwagon. But I wasn't, so I'm not, although the influence is EVERYWHERE. I'm going to make a little list right now, off the top of my tiny head (also going to make this review into a Bob Dylan-type song later): The Byrds, Every god-forsaken California Sound (and by extension, Yacht-Rock) associated artist from the Doors (yes, the Doors were the progenitors) to The Eagles (Dylan made it okay for these fresh suburban post-hippies to ape a Country vibe) to Jackson Browne, Joni Mitchell, etc etc etc ad nauseam, Post-British Invasion - look at Pete Townsend's pretentiousness after 1966 - every rock musician smokes a bowl and thinks they're now TS Eliot, Tom Fucking Waits and his ilk (e.g. Nick Cave), David Bowie, Bono, Johnny Cash, Patti Smith, The Clash (wat?), Springsteen and by extension Bon Jovi. I could go on, but once again, TIME IS NOT ON MY SIDE. Then think about the artists THOSE artists influenced. That being said, he is a wordsmith nonpareil. (<-- see what I did there?) Also his anti-authoritarian, anti-mainstream approach does expand his appeal to the more underground among us. I have a philosophy about music that I want throw out here, and that is that there are two kinds of rock music. The first is Elvis based, the other is Dylan based. Every one, without fail, takes a spot on that spectrum somewhere.

Some of the lyrics are straight up hilarious, to wit: "Not on the bed, lay me on your sofa Call before you come, I need to shave my chocha You do or you don't or you will or won't ya? Go downtown and eat it like a vulture" EAT IT LIKE A VULTURE!!! hahaha Otherwise, some cool beats. WAY too horny though.

Really thought it would sound dated, but in fact, better now than ever. Innovative - along with Zeppelin and Sabbath, created the genre. Cool, catchy, and unmatched performances - Ian Paice is exceptional on here, his playing is on another level. Great band, fun tunes, and if this is "Dad Rock," good! Now I know what my favorite genre is.

This one goes to 11. An absolute delight beginning to end. Like Satan's house band. Has that weird, garagey muffled-yet-echo-y sound of all the best underground music. Really great metal album. Thinking Van Halen probably secretly listened to this, especially Teacher's Pet. Which is a weirdly horny tune amidst all of threst of the hellscape. Good job!

"Kids today don't know what it's like to get their hands dirty." - FatBoy Slim, on cratedigging

Unrecognized jangle-pop masterpiece ;). Really tight, they keep it simple and cool. Not the most profound music ever made but catchy and accessible. Great dynamics, lots of variety and little surprises embedded in familiar rock formulas that somehow feel innovative. Musicianship is the highest quality, really excellent playing. Again, not overly complex, not tedious or boring. Bears repeated listening for that reason. I like the recording quality. It's massive but intimate, full, crisp. A great record, like if there was a happier British REM. "Fools Gold" rules!

Hey everybody! 😎😎😎It's the feel-bad album of the summer!🌞🌞🌞🤩🤩🤩 It's an artistic statement like Type-O Negative doing Summer Breeze. It surprises me whenever ideas like this get the careful, even superb execution that they do. Maybe they just sat down and said: "Let's write an album that will be critically acclaimed™," and that was the only parameter. It's really pretty bad. The concept is derivative if not ill-conceived. The playing is fine, but I feel like they're pushing my face into something I simply don't want (and never asked ) to look at. The singing, while true to whatever disturbed and unlikable character this is supposed to be, is obnoxious with no real redeeming quality. I'm not sure where this type of music comes from, just exploring the darkest places. It's just that there's no hope, it never let's up. It's not even like metal, where you get actual visceral anger. It's just the soundtrack of people being assholes to themselves and each other. Pretty lame. The effort that went into making this surprises me, because what do you think about yourself or your audience when you do something like this? I guess it's just going hard on your complaints, really really hard. Narcissistic. It's (again, this turns up a lot in the Critically Acclaimed® albums) like bad high-school poetry.

I am not a good enough writer or thinker to say anything cogent about this masterpiece immediately after hearing it for the first time. Notes: - Bowie is in a bad mood - Theorem: David Bowie can do no wrong (musically). - Dimery wrote a couple books about Bowie, IIRC? - Fan fiction/speculative: Bowie actually is an alien or possibly a returned jesus and we (earth-based humans/mortals) are tested with determining this to be true. We are given some clues, all of them in musical form. This album is the final one. Our literal last chance to save ourselves, but we must first decipher the music. A sad and brilliant album with amazing musicians. Heavy and very very dark in places. Throughout, I get the impression that Bowie just really likes to sing. There are some subtleties in his voice here that are really interesting, and absolutely on par with much of his earlier work. NOT THE SAME, different, but on par. Enjoyed this a lot, lives up to the accoades for sure. Bowie is still with us.

Every song is a dark epic. Brutally powerful and quite overwhelming, as is its intention. Lars Ulrich's drum sound was unique and genre-defining, Hetfield's vocals (though for me, somewhat monotonous) reflect the disturbed, unending torment, anguish, and anger that embody the victims in these songs: damned, despised, dismissed. Much od the al;bum could be described as over-complicated, but I get the sense the band is feeling its way through uncharted musical territory, and when they hit the sweet spot between excessive indulgence and grand artistic statement, it's pretty sweet. At the time, really experimental, and WAY more serious than a lot of Metal that had come before and in that, paving the way for more extreme genres.

Bring on the Night. Walking on the Moon. Bed's Too Big Without You. Message in a Bottle for God's sake. All the other songs are praiseworthy as well. Stewart Copeland proving once again he is the best drummer in the rock era. Andy Summers' artful renderings. Sting in top form. Great album.

Writing about the Beatles is like Dancing about Astronomy... wat? Dig these lads. There's more historic value than anything else to "With the Beatles." Still magical, the early Beatles changed popular music like nothing before or since. The recording I heard today on Apple Music has obviously been cleaned up for the digital age and is a little out of context, but after a few minutes the ears become accustomed to the sound. In fact, the cleaned up digital versions gave a freshness to the sound that you don't get when playing an old scratchy vinyl. On the other hand, these songs are somewhat famous for their exquisite production and engineering, which were designed for the technology of the time. Meaning that vinyl was the way god (George Martin) intended. There are a lot of technical avenues I want to go down, like how there's spanish rhythms all over the place, how the vocal harmonies seem to always resolve perfectly, how Ringo brings much-needed energy to tunes like Roll Over Beethoven (and every other song on here for that matter, many of which would be real yawners without him, more on that next time I get a Beatles record), but it doesn't matter in the end. Why does everyone love the Beatles WITHOUT EXCEPTION? Just listen to it.

An album called "Apocalypse Dudes" ooh I don't know about this. Not great. Doesn't come from a sincere place, all style and no substance. It's like they are consciously trying to make a mash-up of every heavy rock genre from glam to proto-punk (a term I violently disagree with, but that's for another time) to hair-metal. Well executed but puerile, with some very professional (too professional) playing. Anything resembling the sonic character of heavier genres like punk - the DIY aesthetic, a garage sound, etc. - are not present on this. Maybe that's the point. The best thing here is the instrumental break on "Prince of the Rodeo" which is otherwise almost unlistenable.

Quintessential album by one of the most recognizable artists in the genre. BB King does some very “pop” sounding interpretations of his favorites, and everyone sounds like they’re having a good time. Killer guitar solos from a unique stylist, and his voice is in peak form.

Like a lot of the other reviewers, I think your enjoyment of this is based on context. The less formulaic stuff sounds great while riding the exercise bike, for instance. But for me EDM with vocals can be grating if not done correctly though. And it is apparently really hard to do correctly. There's a jarring dissonance between the structured artificiality of the synth and a human voice. It feels like a cop-out every time I hear something like this with a female soul singer layered on top. It's like the artist has some idea about "dance music" and throws the vocals on. Gives it more soul? In theory this should be brilliant but there's a competition for attention, and eventually the lack of focus is annoying.

Painterly, and excruciatingly dark. Which makes the popularity of this album interesting to me.If you were a heavy band from Seattle you were getting a lot of marketing push, like so many other underground trends did before. Like Rock music itself did when it first happened. Soundgarden are excellent musicians, I especially love Matt Cameron, and of course Cris Cornell is the best rock singer of the generation. But the album leaves a bad taste in my mouth when I'm done chewing on it. The dark themes, the offputting odd time signatures, detuning, and otherworldly sonic landscapes combine with the high level of musicianship and Cornell's vocal prowess to create an intensity that takes you to another place altogether. Not a superfun place though.

Sample selection. Drum-forward. Innovative combinations of sounds - a floating female choir weaves through chopped-up funk grooves atop a skeletal piano scaffold. Experimental without being overly challenging, complex without being obnoxious, heavy at the right moments and leavened with classical in places, soul in others, or maybe that's some 70's Adult Contemporary hits... just really entertaining. Cool as ƒ€©k. Flirted with a 5 on this but it's not really on the same level as Aladdin Sane or Tears for Fears. On the other hand, I gave Fatboy Slim a 5, so maybe it is. Close, anyway. Maybe I shouldn't have given Fatboy a 5, this is easily as good.

Always loved Little Richard's stuff. Great to hear an entire album from him. Seminal and still has that energy he was famous for. Whe n your fans include Elvis and Paul McCartney, you're doing something right.

Prince at his horniest and weirdest. Still accessible, though, making this such an interesting trip of an album! 4+

Sold 100,000 in the UK, so there's that, I guess. It's anyone's guess what the ACTUAL GOAL of this music is. I mean, it's fun to go down to the studio and just make noise, and I like the drums/bass/guitar formula as much as the next person. But what are you bringing to this party? Especially in 1999, la fin de siecle. Post-Radiohead, Post-Nirvana, Post-Britpop, Post-Portishead. The bookending songs, "Dirge" and "Neptune City" are the most interesting ones on the album, and I won't remember them tomorrow (I barely remember them now). Not really songs so much as a kind of background noise you might hear at the new latin-fusion restaurant in some mid-population city like Des Moines or Santa Clarita. Just okay, just enough edge to make it almost tip over into the badass side of the rock spectrum without really hurting anyone. Looks like a lot of effort went into this, but for what?

Put this on, head down to your local skatepark and watch the kids - 'cause you're way too old to be skating now, you WILL hurt yourself. Solid legit pop-punk. Thrashy and smashy. Respectful of its SoCal punk roots. Good energy, fun, doesn't take itself too seriously. And isn't that what rock and roll is all about, my friends? Frontman Dexter Holland has a PhD in molecular biology 🧬, owns a hot sauce company, AND wrote Self Esteem. My idol.

This album won a Grammy for Album of the year, which goes to show how irrelevant the Grammys are and how absolutely awful the state of pop music was. I remain astonished by the way critics fall over themselves to laud stuff like: Better come back down to Mars Girl, quit chasing cars What happens when the dough gets low Bitch, you ain't that fine, no way, no way, no way Better come back down to Mars Girl, quit chasing cars What happens when the dough gets low Bitch, you ain't that fine, no way, no way, no way [Outro: Big Boi] Crazy bitch Crazy bitch Crazy bitch Crazy bitch Crazy bitch Crazy bitch Crazy bitch (Bitch) Crazy bitch (Stupid-ass bitch) Crazy bitch (Old punk-ass bitch) Crazy bitch (Old dumb-ass bitch) Crazy bitch Nice. "Hey Ya!" is a fun song, but it's not as praiseworthy as many made this out to be. Mostly weak rap tropes and computer-generated, dirty R & B. The little 'chp chp chp' sounds and fake handclaps (I know, they make them sound even more artificial than they need to be for interest) are just on the cringey side of annoying. Still looking for the "conscious" rap here, maybe self-conscious, because it certainly is that. Like you're Gil-Scott Heron? Overrated hype train with no redeeming value except for the single. Way too long, took me three days to finish it and I felt like I needed a shower afterwards. 1 star for SpeakerBox, 1 star for the OH SO SUBTLE Love Below.

All the things a lot of listeners abjectly hate about Rush, I love. Too many notes? Check! Geddy Lee's voice? Check! Bombastic overreaching themes? Check! "It's prog oh my!" or "It's nothing like the beautiful precious prog of the 70's oh my!" CHECK AND MATE! To the haters: let people enjoy things. Maybe it's not your taste, maybe the Rush fans you've met are weird, maybe you have a belief system about Rock® that Rush doesn't quite fit into. Let it go and move on to the next thing. Rush play with their hearts. Yes, it's really technical, which can be a turn-off for a lot of people. You don't listen to classical or jazz either then, probably. Who cares. Let it go. Let us have our fun! This was (kind of) the last album in Rush's golden era starting with 2112. It has the most popular hooky material they ever did, without a weak spot across the entire disc. "Vital Signs" is the harbinger of what was to come, a turning point for band and fans alike, as the music moved away from the spacey prog-like shenanigans they feasted on for so long toward more personal, simpler compositions. Very straightforward lyrically, unlike much of the earlier catalog, replete with metaphors and sci-fi as it was (not that we don't have metaphors here, but their meaning are very clear this time around). There's no long-form time-signature changing vulgar display of chops like "La Villa Strangiato" here. Cool moment in the sun for a band who really created their own path, and did so without hurting anyone or themselves along the way.

Yay drugs! Summertime Blues is okay.

The template for the rest of their catalog, but with that little EXTRA SOMETHING that superstar artists have before they hit it big. A little... hunger? Passion? Hate to use that word, but there it is. Before Glenn Frey acquired an unhealthy appetite for his own songs, and possibly coke. Starts with one of the most iconic guitar chords in rock since A Hard Day's Night. Listened with 'beginner's mind' and really enjoyed almost every track except the forced-sounding ballad "Most of Us Are Sad." Earlybird was especially surprising, the band is having fun and it sounds like it, kind of a post-hippie campfire singalong. I like this banjo-driven profundity more than I should. Have been a hater for the longest time, but I've gained a new appreciation for Eagles after hearing this (I think for the first time). 1972 definitely came HARD with the country, between this and Neil Young's Harvest, these successes led to that mid-seventies MOR AOR stuff like Bread and America.

A lush epic in which Queen homes in on the sound they became famous for. Massive, complex, and thought provoking compositions bolstered by a sonic tapestry built around Brian May's beautifully engineered guitar architecture (guitarchitecture?) and Freddie Mercury's mercurial vocals ;). Roger Taylor and John Deacon not only support this whole stratified monstrosity (which is continually threatening to cave in due to the sheer weight), they solidify and amplify the orchestration. This album gets more impressive every time I hear it. What an extremely good and interesting band Queen was.

St. Jimmy is the best pop punk song since The Buzzcocks "Ever Fallen In Love." Fight me. Big anthemic songs. Flawless execution, hard guitars, Green Day made a big rock album in an era when that just wasn't happening. A great sounding recording. A favorite and still meaningful. Somewhat sad and cynical - is all hope gone in modern America? How do we feel about it?

The Stones are best when doing their own thing and not trying to sound like someone else. Here, you have essentially two songs where they sound like themselves, and we all know which two those are. Advice: Mick, you're MICK FOOKIN' JAGGER you don't have to try to sound like Bobby Dylan or Muddy Waters. If I wanted to hear those guys I would go listen to them. Keef, wake up, tune up, find a lane. Again, when you do your thing, it's genius. Charlie Watts, just keep doing what you're doing - this album needs more drums. Bill Wyman good luck in your future endeavors, no notes. Nicky Hopkins, good job, calm down a wee bit please. Thanks.

Some catchy tunes but I'm extremely indifferent to the themes here. Very self-indulgent. The song "Porcelain" is downright cringey. Keidis' is no Freddie Mercury, let's just say that. Or T.S. Eliot. Flea and Chad Smith are a top-tier rhythm section (of course) and the harmonic interplay between Frusciante and Flea is compelling, and the thing that makes this an album not to miss before you are dead: in the ground or in an urn on your grandchild's mantlepiece, never really knowing whether you had an impact on others, never having the fulfillment of a life well lived. Perhaps your death will be a glorious one, say, fighting for the liberation of a righteous people whose only hope is to live autonomously, unburdened by interlopers, overlords, or autocrats. More likely though is that death will come to you through the inevitable and unremarkable disintegration of your physical being. If you heard this album before your imminent demise, well at least there's that. But like so many others, I wish Anthony Keidis was a better singer and they could think of something besides drugs, sex, and California to write about. There's nothing pulling me in on this.

Really haunting. This draws me in and it's hard to drag myself away. Incredibly powerful, and like other great jazz singers of her era, a wild dynamic range. Moving from quiet to loud in the space of a couple syllables brings that majestic, epic feel. Like an ocean wave, you float in the warm sea, get lifted up, and as more and more turbulence spins up, you get pulled away against your own power and pulled onto the beach, slightly afraid but in awe at the same time. Her piano playing is something special. Lilac Wine is a killer, her voice and the piano combine to create something unusual, astonishing. I've never heard anything like this before. It was interesting, the day I heard this, Donald Trump was interviewed at the National Association of Black Journalists. He was trying to talk about how Kamala Harris identified as Indian, but all of a sudden she's Black. Trying to divide us all, again. Disgusting. Then I heard the song Four Women, the song about black women's identity, possibly the struggle of this. Something I know nothing about. Sorry that Trump's shitty little ideas still exist and I'm sorry Nina Simone didn't have more impact on American culture. It's telling that this is the first time I've really heard anything by her, a 20th century middle-class white guy.

The album for when you're ready to stop taking everything so seriously.

The most anti-establishment thing to come out of 1968. Fun to listen to, starting with the famous "Hello, I'm Johnny Cash" line. June Carter sounds amazing. A true documentary, Cash is true to his Spiritual and chuggin' train roots. A little sloppy in places but that just adds to the charm of this album.

This is unexpectedly exciting. Oasis pushes the poppy British alt-rock (Stone Roses, Blur) into a less profound but bigger-sounding, more entertaining place. It's catchy, crunchy, and a bit chippy as well. Having never heard anything by Oasis before except for the overplayed and milquetoast Wonderwall, I had no idea they had such a gigantic wall of guitar sound - and I do love a wall of guitar. More Kinks than Beatles, but also neither of those. Deservedly on the Great British Rock Bands Continuum® "Definitely, Maybe" is surprisingly excellent. Never a dull moment, this entertaining record has some nice songwriting that finds a way to fit the singer's rather limited voice into their schema. Of course as an American, we were denied this record, even though it sold 7082 billion in the UK, because it was too British. I say that facetiously (a word which I did spell without help just now, thank you!) but Americans in 1994 were looking for the next Kurt and this was consciously not it. THANKS A LOT music marketers in the 90s :( . Ended up missing out on this, Blur, and god knows what else! I suppose I will find out - god bless the list. May the force be with you.

Otis Redding and the Stax band set an unreachable high bar here and make it sound EASY. Pretty incredible, important historically, aged to perfection.

I appreciate Billy Bragg's commitment to the bit. Not surprised to see it on this list. Has an amateurish feel that's slightly off-putting, what with the gigantic themes. He's like that dude who's always right and wants to bend your ear in a loud voice about how Reagan and Thatcher set us on the course to societal ruin, and you just came for the beer and the band. Guitar sounds like this dude in my town that is busking by the train station sometimes. Not a great player, but has a very STRONG approach, a bit too shouty. This album could (should?) just be poems, but that doesn't pay as well or get as many girls nowadays, does it? And by nowadays I mean the 20th century. Maybe it was the opposite in the 1800's? Some records take a lot more effort than others.

Weird, humorous, catchy, slightly antagonistic. Every Beck album feels like going to an invented magical world with its share of fun and fears alike. Unapologetic Beck fan - busted. Pack your suitcase.

Lacking in emotional content, or maybe I'm just a jaded aging hipster. More Talking Heads and even shadows of Gang of Four here and there: "Sound of Silver" more like "Sound of Anthrax - but I forgot the words so I improvised something really silly." A lot of misplaced nostalgia about growing up, wondering if this is purposeful or spontaneously heartfelt? Intuitively feels like the latter at first listen. Some mid-oughts alternative rock that sounds like the Killers, Phoenix, Franz Ferdinand, etc. etc. etc. Which *I* don't love but appeals to a lot of folks. That said, this album is kind of interesting. More so when the singer is just chatting over the bleep blorp stuff, it's painfully obvious when he's out of his league - not everyone can be David Bowie, nor should everyone make the attempt to be. "Be yourself" is always the stylistic choice that is most satisfying. Works well on songs like "Us v Them" and "North American Scum." Not convinced it is worth all the accolades, though. Maybe it's the hipster music trick of appealing to the 30-something east-coast white boy English majors who write for Bitchfork, Rolling Stone, et. al. rather than doing anything risky.

Van Morrison's voice doesn't appeal to me. Outside of that, a bit of cultural appropriation. Overrated. Extra point for everybody here hitting the notes at the right time. Not my jam.

The children of rich people need something to do with their lives also, you know. I was touched. \"Little tufts of finch-down\" A lot to unpack here, as they say. Glad to hear this highly unusual bit of poetry and harp come down the pipeline. Has an ancient feel, and I could listen to a good harpist all day, not being facetious. The words, though, overwhelm with power. Really well done. A surprise. Who knew?

The drums are very grounding. Videotape: sounds a little like they’ve been listening to Willam Basinski. Really nice avant-something piece. The painterly approach to creating music remains but now it’s watercolor. Lacks the intensity and energy of some of their earlier work. Feels like the band have become extremely comfortable with whatever it is that bothers them. Now we just float around in it. Radiohead are great but I just can’t put my finger on what it is that bothers me about them. Maybe it’s that one time people liked the slow song, so every song is now a slow song. Maybe it’s the weird theorem that all singers want to be Frank Sinatra. It’s my theorem. All singers devolve into their favorite singers. Thom Yorke has a neat voice, but the bars-long sustain can be a bit much sometimes.

Neil Young always has done whatever he wants, and he is a bit of a complainer, isn't he? His complaining is usually relatable and soulful, right-minded, pointed. Here he acquires a bitterness and edge that follows him for the rest of his days. Neil's a sensitive dude. He does the Dylan thing on "Revolution Blues," still doing the Neil Young thing, with the David Crosby guitar thing. Brilliant song. This is kind of a masterpiece, now I'm listening to it again. All the "... Blues" are phenomenal, the country instrumentation is spot on, the metaphors are sharpened like vampire teeth ( 😘 ), and Neil's unmistakable voice is still youthful and pointed. On the whole, it's just... so... ornery? Jaded? I strongly recommend going for a nice walk on a late summer afternoon while listening to this and getting caught in a massive downpour as the album build to its crescendo with "Ambulance Blues." Just walk on home, try to get through it, maybe. "Though my problems are meaningless, that doesn't make them go away." It's 'cause you have the curse of genius, Neil. Thanks for sharing.

I really really like this kind of jazz influenced hip-hop. Smarter, more positive, more diverse themes, still has a lot of toughness and rage. Standouts: Thin Line, DDT, One Of Them, Acetate Prophets - especially Acetate Prophets.

I really do not Love. I dunno man, I was just trying to be clever. I mean, it's o... k... Owes a lot to the production, which is maybe trying a little too hard to be the Beatles or something? Songwriting is stilted more than organic, forced. Just watched a live version of Arthur Lee doing \"Maybe the People Would Be the Times or Between Clark and Hilldale\" and the band he was with gave it the juice it needs, which it DOES NOT have on this album, none of the songs really do. With the possible exception of \"Live and Let Live.\" The lyrics on this leave me cold but I appreciate the effort. I've never heard this before, is a bit cynical inm the middle of the whole Flower Power movement. Baroque Pop and psych, leans into a folky space that collides with the songwriting a bit. By that I mean the lyrics have a more "pop" style, repetitive words or phrases, a verse/chorus/verse structure. Simon and Garfunkel use the pop formula to great effect by integrating folky sounds and vocal harmonies. These guys need to rock, I think. Interesting album and a unique band for sure. Sounds pretty dated. I'm sure I would have more affinity toward this if I was there at the time or understood the context better.

Beck creates enjoyable and (for me) thought provoking tunes. Stealing Stephen Wilson's term "magpie" for Beck, he gathers bits from a broad range of sources, reordering and reconstructing them in intriguing ways, but not with out soul and whole lot of catchiness. Surrealistic, other-worldly, mystical, and wack. Yeah I said wack 'cause I too am a linguistic magpie!

Tull is like your favorite familiar local restaurant. Often you go elsewhere, sometimes close by for a change of pace, sometimes venturing far afield to explore new culture, different surroundings, feel the thrill of novelty. But here you are now. Back again for the millionth time and no less disappointed for it, on the contrary, like coming home to loved ones or a familiar place that has etched a deep groove in your heart. Familiarity overwhelms objectivity. What's good about the album, what's not, none of that matters. Music you fell in love with early on is forevermore untouchable, and this is such an album. I would posit that this is objectively good, whatever that means: well executed, well recorded, solid compositionally, surprises here and there, emotionally charged performances, intelligent, interesting, and unusual subject matter presented in a pleasantly poetic fashion. It even rocks, and there are those of us out there who, and this might be hard for some to believe, actually like the flute! To add, the 2016 Steven Wilson remaster is a great addition to the canon. The drums are a bit more percussive, and the orchestral sections move forward in the mix to great effect, especially in My God and Wond'ring Aloud.

A perfect gem. Have to give it 5 stars on the strength of Aretha Franklin's voice alone. So much excellence compacted into 30 minutes. This is the music every Soul/R & B artist forever after was trying to be (with a couple exceptions obviously, Stevie Wonder among them). Such a classic, unbelievably well executed, deserving of its accolades.

Fascinating, dark, introspective, unbalanced, and difficult. Art, without question, but not for everyone. Managing our emotional pain is one reason music exists. Portisehead is really good at framing that world in a visceral way. Nothing is tactile, everything is just out of reach in a way. By that I mean the sound - almost drums, almost guitar, then it fades away or explodes off in the distance. THe sound of lonliness is really palpable in the vocals. Often it feels like you're the only person in a very large, very empty, very dark room. A little frightening.

Alright, what the hell is this? RESISTING THE URGE TO READ ABOUT IT BEFORE LISTENING... here we go... imagining myself seeing this at a record store, not gonna buy it based on the cover alone... plus who calls themselves "Casanova?" Later, after buying an Oasis album or something, I go to a friend's house and they HAPPEN TO HAVE CASANOVA's "The Divine Comedy" (and you thought Jethro Tull was pretentious) and I'm like, "Well, I guess we should listen to this." My fictional friend only has this album because he's a DJ at the local non-profit alternative radio station and everyone at the station has to review a few LPs before they play them. Record companies give these away to radio stations in hopes that the station will put it on their playlist. Alternative radio gets to be independent and play stuff that they judge to be worthy, unlike commercial radio, whole other story. ANYWAY my bud throws this on. Poptones. Is this a throwback attempt? Seems a little professional for something that just comes out of left field. First song ("Something for the Weekend") is a little story-song with a twist ending. The next one is a cheeky little number, self-referential but, DO I KNOW YOU? Song 3 "Middle Class Heroes" is a cringefest with some weak abstraction of a moral judgement on... the middle class? People with children? Indians? "In & Out of Paris & London" is literally hurting me - trying to do a Morrisey thing? The reasonable side musicians he had on the first couple songs have now quit in protest and now Casanova (?) relies on synths. But not in a cool way. He's doing a lounge-lizard thing but the compositions are making me lose my faith in humanity. How did this get made, let alone released? I'll find out later. The next "song," called "Charge" (some war metaphor, clever, never heard that before!) contains a disturbingly childish derivative of a Brechtian march of some kind. I keep using phrases like "of some kind" and "a ____ thing" because this is so badly executed I can't determine the musical roots to which it is trying to emulate. This person is TRYING REALLY HARD to be clever and it comes off as misplaced arrogance. Really difficult to get through, the vocal quality is awful, like a dude who just can't get enough of his own voice and no one has the courage to tell him it's medocre at best. Trying too hard. I don't know if I can get through this, wondering why it's only the list. {EDIT: found out why it's on the list} Gah, more callbacks with the synthesizer trumpet and the dorky toy piano sound while this fool does his best Sinatra. "You don't really love me and I don't really mind, cause I don't love anybody, that stuff is just a waste of time, you don't really love me but I'd do you" WHAT IN THE LITERAL FUCK. Argghhh second song in a row with the stupid whistling like it's 1937 or something. This is making me want to destroy my own house. Kill me now. Gonna stick it out because I'm a masochist I guess. The little jazzy breakdowns are godawful. I'm guessing this dude is like an actor or theater guy, who made this album as a side project. "Through a Long and Sleeples Night" starts and all of a sudden something extreme and sinister is happening, but the cheesy syntho-trumpet remains. No growly vocal will save this from pure amateurish contrived garbage that has made this bed... OH!!! This is that shite The Divine Comedy! The BAND is The Divine Comedy! Ah, also responsible partly for the insanely bad Ute Lemper album. I'm leaving in the first bit where I mistake the name of the band for the name of the album because that's: 1. Bad graphic design, 2. Self-centered to think that I would know your band well enough to make the distinction correctly, and 3. The name "The Divine Comedy" is one of the worst band names I've ever come across, while it is plausible that the guy on the cover might have the stage name Casanova - as many others do. In all seriousness, this is so bad to be offensive. Hire a fucking trumpet. This is making me want to jam a sharpened pencil into my ears. Shocking to me what becomes popular.

Possibly a worse cover than Casanova by The Divine Comedy. 2004. Another one where I say "Why is this on the list?" Also, more hip hop? I suppose it's popular. Pharrel Williams is in this band, and that guy has become more successful than all but 3 other people IN THE HISTORY OF THE PLANET. At a previous job, we would have an all-hands meeting with some teams under a director, whose meeting this was. After the song "Happy" came out, this director (a 60 year old woman) would play that song at the beginning of every all hands, while everyone came in to the meeting room. Every meeting. What a nightmare. A real Office Space moment. So, between that and this album cover, today's listening is already tainted. But, we press on, don't we. A lot of people don't like Yes or Pere Ubu, either. Uh, this guy (Pharrell) is a good singer. Like really good. Songs are legitimately clever for the most part, interesting and have a bit of variety. And they rock, I am loathe to admit. Or maybe it's low key parody? Why not both? Pleasantly surprised. Couple mainstream reviews calling it prog-pop? Not bad.

Was I just complaining about bad graphic design? Feeling much better now. Nothing on the cover of this album indicates who it is, what it's called, nothing. Just two suits. Wild but the PERFECT image for the music. Peak Hipgnosis and peak Pink Floyd. Peak album era. The imagery enhances the music and provides an entry into whatever world this is. The music has you doing a double-take back to the cover. Many levels of genius here. The album's pretty good, too.

Neat high-energy rhythms from start to finish. A little "rickety," like a jalopy driving fast through the crowded streets of Rio in a 1970's spy movie trying to evade the villain. A new genre for me, glad to hear it. Jorge never takes his foot off the gas on this.

Just okay. Like a lot of forgettable late 80's alternative with too much reverb and not enough edge. Too much acoustic guitar. Too much studio. Too much of the single octave where the vocals are. Songs are not memorable - not catchy, not hooky, no dynamic range, no temporal interest, everything sounds dated... there is a lot of stuff from this era that is so much better and meaningful. I don't want to say this is bad, but it is walking on that fence trying not to fall off. It's worse than bad in a way, it's boring.

Life Thru a Lens is starting strong, surprisingly entertaining. I can see why this was popular. I can do without the power ballad "Angels." "Old Before I Die" definitely trying to sound like Oasis, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Still, pop sentiment, it's all pretty shallow. It didn't hurt me to listen to this and now I am familiar with Robbie Williams.

Once again, slightly pissed that I haven't heard this before but really pleased though to have finally heard it. Ahead of its time. The massive, nearly overwhelming wash of guitar wouldn't work nearly as well without the bombast of the rhythm section, which 'swings' a little, for lack of a better term. The slightly out of tune singing is MY only complaint, but it has a unique charm. And it's not just a constant barrage. There are some subtle moments, a wide range of emotion. I can see Radiohead using this as a bit of a template for sure. But Ride is blast of dark energy that has a spontaneity that Radiohead never approached, a dreamy unpolished rawness.

A list of complaints about this album: Pretentious and lacking punch. And by that I mean that I fail to find any real energy or enthusiasm. Perhaps purposely droll, so cool we can't be bothered? Tom Verlaine is not a good singer. Not even in the Neil Young/Bob Dylan/Tom Petty way where the lack of vocal chops is secondary to the soul and lyricism. Just plain unpleasant. Proving once again that you can't just call something "punk" if it sounds weird and amateurish. I'm (again and not for the last time, I'm sure) missing something as this album is in the pantheon of American post-punk, Critically Acclaimed™, but I didn't like it. It has moments, but those moments require SO MUCH EFFORT on the listener's part. Maybe you had to be there? I get what they're trying to do, which is set themselves above the rest of the downtown art-rock scene in 1977. Who rejects an invitation to be produced by Eno? Tom Verlaine thought he could do better himself. Incredible. Hard to listen to some of these albums in an intellectual clean room due to their reputation. Part of an insular scene that was too cool for anyone except those in it. I don't think they were trying to be popular or appeal to an audience outside the scene. Certainly they wouldn't care what I thought.

Never fails. Always found Ziggy to be strange and a little frightening. Really "trippy" without a TRACE of psychedelia. I wonder what it would have been like to hear this for the first time as a 17 year old, when it first came out. Imaginative and a little overwhelming. I don't think I ever really understood what was happening. It seems a little like a three act play, a musical (maybe? just brainstorming here). Act one, Ziggy and "his" crew are not here yet, they're on their way. It's a Five Year mission, and someone is screaming at the end: maybe this is where they enter our world, where they discover love. Different kinds, different ways. This is our weakness, our strength, that we all share.I am also busting up my brains for the words. Moonage Daydream, arguably the best song on tis album. The protagonist is singing to the alien, he wants them (?) to love him. Desperately. We've all been there. Notice how Starman starts. Like it's not in it's groove yet. I see this as the start of the next part, when the aliens figure out how to get here, how they're going to infiltrate us. See, a long time ago, aliens were not always evil, more like benefactors. Like the mythological Jesus. Is Ziggy the 2nd coming of Jesus, but now he shows up like this? At the END of Starman, "let the children boogie" and now there's a groove, right. They figured out how to play. Every song has some strange apparition at the beginning. Through part two, we get sermons from, it would appear. We see the first worshiping by Lady Stardust. Star - has that early rock/doo wop vibe cut in with some heavy power chords. "I could play the wild mutation as a rock and star." WHO'S point ogf view is this? Ziggy? Wants to be a rock star so he can fall in love? THinks it will be easy? hmm So, part three, the post-transformation, now Ziggy exists as a thing, too perfect, falls victim to the excesses of stardom (Suffragette City), then Rock 'n Roll Suicide, it's over man. But your NOT alone. Just put this on, Ziggy is here to save us with his message of love.

Zep-heads who put III at the bottom of their stack might reconsider. They push you off a cliff with the seminal viking invective opener, planting their flag at the very summit of heavy metal (evermore). Allowing a moment of recovery with a strangely appropriate middle-eastern groove that not only presages the mighty Kashmir but pulls the persian rug out from under you with its hippy-dippy lyric, which, in the hands of anyone but Robert Plant, would alienate any previous fans and drive away any future ones. You have now been soothed into acceptance for the rest of this utter masterpiece as you glide into one of the absolute gems of their back catalog, Celebration Day. Peace and love, my friends, peace and love. But don't get too comfortable, cause here comes the fiercest blues the band has ever done (or will ever do, fight me). I listened to Since I've been Lovin' You yesterday and I'm still trying to recovery. OH THE PAIN as if Bonham was hammering nails into your head. And it just gets better. Gallows Pole, Out on the TIles, Bron-Y-Aur, what a ride. The eclecticism here is pretty astounding, always with that incomparable rhythm section. Never again will we see (hear) such a thing. Frosting that cake with the weird Hat's Off to (Roy) Harper... this still leaves me wondering. It's one of those albums you can listen to a thousand times and still hear something new every time. Starting to think Zeppelin never made a bad record. I just lied, I've always thought that.

Very forgettable Euro-disco. Not innovative or interesting in any way that I can think of. Surprised to find out that MJ Cole went to university on a music scholarship, graduated and then did this? Maybe if you LOVE House music this works for you. Ironically titled "Sincere."

Great album, never knew this existed. Elvis brings the country soul that was so popular at the time. And as always, that guy could sing like no other. His appeal, needless to say. This is all about Entertainment, and it does entertain. Doesn't try to get too profound, while at the same time, does give you stuff to think about, but only if you want. Consistently good. A great variety of songwriters here but cohesive nonetheless. Looks like this is where Elvis gets off the rockin' train and takes a stop at country town, with a soul twist. Well executed, very fun. Not quite 4 stars for being a little over-produced and loungey and not as heartfelt as some of his earlier stuff. "Ghetto" and (on the re-release) "Suspicious Minds" are standards now and for good reason.

Sucks that this stuff is still relevant 60 years later. Kind of pre-proto-punk disguised as "folk." Or just hardcore folk, I'm no expert. The Bob Dylan early stuff is highly respected and highly influential, after hearing this, I can see why. A little self-centered(?). More entertaining than I thought it would be.

R.E.M. veering into pop territory seemingly by accident. Still has shades of their earlier artier stuff. Michael Stipe is more in your face. Mike Mills weaving in tasteful homespun backgrounds. Bill Berry offers his best performance with his impeccable timing, and adding darkness to the orchestration. Peter Buck driving this whole thing without overwhelming it. This feels like a band who enjoy playing together, no one is trying to elevate themselves above the music. Great production, almost too spotless. A fantastic album that I've always loved and I wish I had more time to write about it.

I don't want to spend any time on this. Some of the guitar solos are memorable. Another reviewer here said that this is the type of thing that gave rise to punk rock and I couldn't agree more.

"Tiger"! The greatest ABBA deep cut ever! Arrival has some surprisingly darkish stuff on it. Surprising because ABBA makes some of the lightest music ever made! I was thinking "oh! ABBA! Gentle enough for a fifth-grader!" Have you heard "Knowing Me, Knowing You" or "That's Me"? I'm not explaining that to a fifth-grader. On the other hand, the shimmering pop beauty of "Fernando" or "Dancing Queen" (or pretty much any other song on here) knows no comparison. Really good, especially for those times when Nick Cave or Joanna Newsome are just a bit much!

Do I have to? Comfortably Numb is fine I guess. Depressing in a kind of and exploitative way. Too long, too self-centered, inauthentic intensity. Unpopular opinion as a big Floyd fan. The Wall is another big seller, Advice: don't take acid and see the movie in the theater. I WOULD NEVER do something like that, but I have heard it's a bad idea.

Definitely more cogent than Beggars Banquet. Pretty tight, which the Stones often aren't. "Monkey Man" is one of my favorite deep cuts. But this album is downright nasty, in places. Never read the lyrics to "Let It Bleed" or "Midnight Rambler," it's all fairly grim, which I suppose reflects the kids' mood at the time. I think the Stones lack creativity in a way. They copy their influences a little too much in this period. They do a passable job of bringing bluegrass and country elements into the music, and of course they were the vanguard UK Blues Poseurs®. But they are best when following their own muse, like on "Can't Always Get What You Want" or the aforementioned "Monkey Man." It's an essential album, no question. I don't know if it's great, though. So much time has passed since this came out, it's almost impossible to judge it on its own merits. For sure one of the top 100 Stones records.

I would own an outdoor lounge at a luxury resort just so I could play this album on a loop.

Appealing musically, and anything Mick Jones is associated with can't be all bad. Props to the rhythm section. I'm looking for evidence of the Jam and I'm not really finding it, lads. I'll coin the term "Post-Brit-Pop." Smells like music industry chicanery, what with the pretty boys and all. "What Became of the Likely Lads is aight, innit?

Starts strong, then retreats into a sameness that I did not enjoy. Didn't care much for the pervasive violence. Some think punk is defined by violence, but some are entirely mistaken. The tunes don't benefit from the big-money production (also this is an anti-punk sell out) with horns and strings, especially if the orchestra is playing the same riff that the guitar/bass/drums/singer are playing. Kind of dull overall, not really hardcore because it relies almost entirely on violence and victimhood tropes. I don't know why but I thought it was somewhat incomprehensible.

Mostly a masterpiece. Accolades are deserved for this well-crafted pop album. Nilsson has a great voice with tremendous dynamic range, variety and a heartfelt emotional power. Outside of the two more well-known tunes (Without You and Coconut), "Jump Into the Fire" and "Gotta Get Up" age really well. Nice recording, too. Stands out, being from before the time when pop music was formulaic copy-pastes of pop music that was copy-pasted from the previous, ad infinitum.

No reason not to give this a five. Steve Gadd putting on a clinic. Ridiculous. Bernard Purdue doing his shuffle thing (a god among men) in Home At Last. Catchy, jazzy and just a little off, this is Steely Dan 101. Spotless performances of some great songs. Clichè though it is, this album exists at another level entirely. A satisfying listening experience that you can return to.

I am NOT their audience, but even someone like me can recognize greatness. Killer grooves, entertaining rhymes, stuff to think about. How is this triple-platinum and I've never heard it? Moody and dark.

My precoceived idea was that this would suck. But apparently I'm becoming indoctrinated into the east-coast rap scene of the 80s and 90s. I really enjoyed this record. Just the right mix of social consciousness and hardcore with some excellent grooves. I had a hard time with "Bitch," though. Weird to get this and Wu-Tang one after another.

Hi everybody! What a wonderful album, oh golly gee whiz! Well now, this is the bee's knees, I gotta tell ya! THE antidote for all the east-coast rap I've been getting. That Frank Sinatra sure is nifty! { Okay, I can talk now... some goon who I overheard being called \"Johnnie the Finger Breaker\" just left to use the toilet so I gotta write fast! I'm tied to chair in a warehouse, address unknown, except it smells like fish and sweat so I must be near the docks. Couple hours ago I'm in my usual coffee shop, writing this review of Frank Sinatra's \"songs for swingin' lovers\" (hey! it's not capitalized on the album, why should I have to follow the rules?) about an hour ago when all of a sudden these two huge hairy guys come walking up behind me and ask, in the most sinister way you can imagine, \"Are you writing a review of Frank Sinatra's \"songs for swingin' lovers\" for your 1001 Albums generator site?\" and I said \"No, this is, uh, this is just a quick email to my sister stationed overseas! See, she joined the Army last year and I haven't talked to her in a whille...\" \"HEY,\" one of the thugs says in a stage whisper (at least they have a modicum of politeness, or maybe they were just trying not to draw attention to themselves), \"I can SEE the album art right there on your laptop and the too-small review box right below it! You think you can pull a fast one on us?! Well guess what Shakespeare,\" (aww! thanks man!) \"you ain't writin' nothin that we don't tell ya to write, capiche?\" \"Kuh what? I'm sorry, didn't quite catch the last bit there my good man (trying to buy time -- I hit the power button on my phone 5 times in quick succession to alert the authorities -- you know if you do that, you can call 911? Pretty cool feature, on the iPhone anyway) and the other guy says to me \"OH! A WISE GUY! Hey Johnnie, we got us a wise guy!\" Then they both start laughing hysterically. Well, no sooner do they STOP LAUGHING ABRUPTLY than I find myself tied to this god damn chair, and I'm trying to put together what happened between then and now. And good lord do I have a headache. Anyway, I really disliked the Frank Sinatra album, except for "You Make Me Feel So Young," which I only feel OK about because it was in that movie Elf, which is a fun time. As is the song "Pennies From Heaven," but it's the MUCH better version by Louis Prima, of course. Jazz is not something to approach casually. If this is your entry point to Jaz, then by all means, have a good time. The arrangements are perfect, every accent is perfectly timed, perfectly placed. But Jazz, like Rock, has some edge, it has some underground origins. This bears little resemblance to the Jazz of Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller, etc. But, you know, I guess everyone has to hear Frank before they die. (Insert bad Amy Winehouse joke here.) OH! These dumbasses used blue painter's tape instead of duct tape! HAHAHAHA! My lucky day! Well cats and kittens I AM GONNA skedaddle before Fingers McGoo (or whatever) comes back to slap me again for dissing the once great Sinatra. I guess those Mob connection rumors were true after all!

When you make a clone of the Velvet Underground, then clone it again, then clone the clone, you get this untuned unlistenable non-sequitor spewing garbage. Like the bad practice tapes of the crappy punk band I was in as a 17 year old, except somehow they made a record? Because they're from New York maybe? At first it was "Oh, a little Smashing Pumpkins precursor, ok!" but they really lean into the atonal stuff REALLY HARD. The only emotion it evokes is annoyance. And this from a person who has seen this band live and paid money for at least one of their albums (which also is not good). One of the most overrated bands of all time and absolutely the most overrated band of the alternative rock era (1986 - 1994 approximately when all these guys - Pavement, Dinosaur Jr, etc. - got major labels deals because of Nirvana). 1 extra star for the song 'Cross the Breeze, and Kim Gordon.

Undeniably great. Some of the most astonishing bass playing I’ve ever heard. But a little Bill Evan’s goes a long way.

Great album, great cover art. Janis Joplin is incomparable and probably influenced everyone from Chrissy Hynde to Bon Scott to Stevie Nicks. Just another level. I love the timelessness of this record, there's nothing on it that is topical or connected to the time it was made. Should last another couple hundred years. Could be tighter. And if Janis Joplin is your singer, why would you relegate her to backups on "Oh, Sweet Mary"? Really the only flaw on this album.

I love this album more than life itself. The perfect expression of the 1970's. A bit cheesy, incredibly fun (yes, incredibly), slightly tipsy. I can imagine Fatboy Slim hearing these grooves and thinking "I'm going to base my entire career on this." Incredible.

Linda Ronstadt, Emmylou Harris, and Dolly Parton - how can you go wrong? A lot of heartbreak on here, great traditional country flawlessly executed.

One of the most important documents in pop music history really doesn't sound like it after nearly 60 years. But in its context it really was earth-shattering and made it okay for rock and pop artists to explore what THEY wanted, and not the record company or the producer. Push the envelope and try to do more than your friendly rivals, and you end up with arguably the most creative period in music. Play with exotic non-western instruments. Upend a song structure. Cut some tapes up and throw them back together. Rubber Soul is the root cause of every album you love (and possibly hate as well, I don't know for sure). But for sure The Beatles started it. Whatever it is. The music itself is great - not spectacular - but again the value is in the new construction, like post-modernism in art, nothing was ever the same after it. Sadly, we have returned to the pre-Beatles era where commercialism is the driving force behind pop music, leaving virtually no place for art. There are still great musicians and singers. But their self-expression is absent, it seems. Maybe another Beatles will come along and change that. But that's as unlikely as the first Beatles were.

I have to avoid reading about what Thom Yorke thinks about his own work because it seems like I always disagree. For instance, he thought the song Backdrifts could have been left off the album when I thought it was a standout. Nonetheless, "Hail to the Thief" is like all Radiohead albums - never not interesting. Sonically shocking us this time, not with sounds like they lit a synthesizer on fire, but with acoustic guitar and a drum kit. WELL PLAYED, Radiohead. Well played.

Decent sort of "lounge country." Lacks edge, but well executed. Willie-heads hate this version of Nightlife.

The Mars Volta have created their own world thematically and musically that can rightly summon King Crimson, CAN, and Mahavishnu in the same 4-bar phrase. Extending that over the length of this album is an astonishing technical achievement that does not put the lie to the most prescient criticism of Prog Rock/Metal which is the lack of soul. That said, it does reflect genuine emotion in a dark pool of surrealism that does meander into the nightmarish. Truly a feast for the kind of listener (like myself no doubt) hungry for novelty, complexity, heaviness, and just pure instrumental debauchery. I tried to play thisa in the background on a small mono bluetooth speaker and I regretted that decision very much. You have to pay attention to this and you probably should use headphones if possible. One of the best albums I've heard in a while would give it a "high 4 stars" if that were possible.

Like I said about the velvet underground: this is not good. Pretentious art-fools (sorry Kim, I think you're great) being SO VERY EDGY! MY DAD DIDN'T LOVE ME. Fuck off with this. Stop calling it punk, I know punk, this is some bullshit.

In my personal top 10. Especially love their punk shit like Heart Attack Man. The thing about the Beastie Boys is they always go all in. They sound like they sincerely love what they're doing anfd they put some ENERGY into it. Combine that with the cleverness and the unique sound of their voices, the schtick, it all works somehow. More representative of gen-x than anything else, grunge be damned. I should listen to Bodhisattva Vow every morning immediately on awakening and make myself a better person. RIP Adam Yauch. Music lets you live forever.

Another masterpiece. Trying to think of other artists who did anything like this - MAYBE Run DMC? - just can't think of any. Killer rhymes, sweet-ass grooves, so much funk, always tongue-in-cheek, pure entertainment. A huge step from their first album, which was a blast in its own right. Loved it.

Creepy and purposely incomprehensible, gauzy, difficult. Kate Bush has a fine voice, but listening to lyric-based music always makes me search for the meaning and in this case I kind of don't want to know. Feels a bit (a lot?) self-centered but isn't appealing enough to make me want to explore further. Hearing this was a good idea, I get why people like her, but it just has a grating effect on me.

Letting Johnny Marr off of his leash, while tightening Morrisey's (the title track 🐄 excepted) proves to be the most enjoyable way to make a The Smiths record. "That Joke's Not Funny Anymore" is a really great song, and "Barbarism Begins at Home" is a better Gang of Four song than anything GoF was doing at the time. Good songwriting makes a difference, and letting the band run is, as I said, the best version of The Smiths. Minus one star for not putting "How Soon is Now" on here. WHO'S THE REAL MURDERER?!

Trying to figure out why people don't like Fishbone as much as they SHOULD. Maybe black guys doing heavy rock makes people uncomfortable. (Maybe not, just wondering aloud). Stay in your rap, your R&B, but that's it. But man these guys can do some cool cool shit. Maybe a little unfocused for some, but not for me. Appeals in the same sort of way as the Beastie Boys, music for the short attention span generation! Fishbone is a "taste" issue for most people I think. It's hard to put my finger on why I like it. I generally go for high-energy stuff that's well executed and has something to say. For that reason I gravitate toward the more energetic genres like punk, hard rock, funk, and metal. (wanted to use a different word here, but gravitate is correct by this definition: 'To be attracted by or as if by an irresistible force.') Fishbone comfortably made their home in all of these. And I'm the one guy who also likes ska, not gonna apologize. (Why does ska take so much shit? Maybe the genre was irreparably tainted by the 27,863 (give or take) bad 90's SoCal SkaPunk bands that thought music is mainly a comedy routine they could do to pass the time in college before going on to work in their Father's Law Firm? The mostly stupid hats? Motherfuckers made it so we can't wear a fedora seriously anymore. The cultural (in)appropriation? Now that I break it down there is KIND OF A LOT of problems aren't there? Of course very few of them involve the music directly, but whatever. I love all the Reggae branches - ska, dub, dancehall... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reggae_genres). Fishbone lives in exactly that high energy place where the genre matters less than the content. But some people get inappropriately angry when a band starts with a soul song then does a punk song, then a funk song. And I understand, you want don't want to make trouble with your brain. I have a friend who refuse to listen to anything except "hard rock," his idea of variety is mixing in some U2 (FIRST 3 ALBUMS ONLY) with his Chevelle. I'm not criticizing his taste, I'm thinking of this as an example of the Fishbone hater who just can't break out of their own self-inflicted handcuffing to explore something (dare I say it?) different. Same person that HATES country music - I used to be that person, so I know from where I speak. On the other hand, who cares? I love it, my wife doesn't have to, and we can all still hang out together.

These songs have emotional power as deep as Joan Armatrading's voice, really bringing you into her world. Engrossing, like Joni Mitchell or Neil Young at times. Very listenable, sweet and lovely. Her voice is unique and you should hear it at some point in your life. Cool to see on the list.

Every song is fantastic, and the hits are hits for a reason. Maybe "Indian Sunset" is a well written metaphor. Thinking of it that way helps me listen to it, otherwise it kind of fails. And that would make it the single sour thing on the album. Because this is so... beautiful. I just don't have another word that fits. For me Elton's early stuff is brilliant in every way, touches me, pulls my attention and keeps me in it beginning to end. The background vox on this are worth 5 stars alone. I love the sincerity, reaching for Americana in the way all those British blues guys did. THis is successful, unlike so much - even the Stones are treating the country and bluegrass styles like it's a posh joke. Elton makes it his own. It's good music, well recorded, executed perfectly, with far-reaching lyrics sung by one of the greatest.

It's LGBTQ week (apparently)! I think I've heard of this band before. Not familiar, though. I kind of don't have time for this and it's not really "my jam," but I'll try. Cringier than expected, actually. How long is this? I'm going to move on now that I know what this is. It's fine, I understand why critics would praise it. Probably could have been 9 love songs? DNF.

Way less pure disco than their later stuff, really well done EDM that possibly caused this music to infiltrate every TV show and ad that happened after. It's good though, so I get it. Not something you put on to have a serious listen. It's a non-stop party. First half is better, and the complaints about this being repetitive are not off-base. Liked it way more than I thought I would.

I see what they were going for, and it truly is an amazing execution of Brian Wilson's ideas. Groundbreaking sonically and I like Apple Music's quip about it: "Of all "Pet Sounds'" legacies, the most profound is the idea that pop music -- something accessible and extroverted -- could be used to express deep, internal worlds. Definitely a must hear, especially this cluster of songs from the end of side one to side 2 - Sloop John B., God Only Knows, I Know There's an Answer. Very highbrow.

I Zimbra is such a fantastic groove, veering into a joyous Crimsonesque jam that always ALWAYS makes me happier than when I put it on. Mind - clever, astute, amusing, paradoxically minimal and complex. Building on the annoyance of confusion, the guitar breakdown at the end solves nothing but is somehow incredibly helpful. Paper is the epitome of Talking Heads funkiness. The verse part, with the little spoken stream of consciousness double meaning anxiety invoking lyrics - "hold on to that paper, there just might be a chance that it MIGHT work out!" Cities is embedded in my skull (almost typed 'school' just now). What does it say that I often wake up in the middle of the night with this running in my head. Look aver there, dry ice factory, good place to get some thinking done. A guitar solo like no other. This song speaks to me so hard for reasons I just can't explain. "Forgot to mention Memphis, home of Elvis and the Ancient Greeks. Do I smell, do I smell home cooking? It's only the river, it's only the river." We start seeing the source of the anxiety, which the scratchy funk is an expression of. Find myself a city to live in. I got three passports, a couple of visas, don't even know my real name. Being in the Talking Heads is alienating. Life During Wartime is a metaphor for touring, which Cities is a kind of preface. You can almost take it literally. Also SO DANCEABLE I'M LOSING MY MIND. Flip it over to side two. Don't get too far into your own head. Ahh, too late, Memories Can't Wait. Listen to the Living Colour version of this, it will change your life. Whatever this party is, I just want to go home. "Other people can go home. Other people can split. I can never quit." So heavy, dude. But it's a solid idea that I'm not hearing from anyone else, I wish I could love this end part more but that wouldn't be possible. The chorus of Air haunts me daily as well. "Some people never had experience with (Air)" sung with the airiest of vocals... so perfect. It's perfect. I don't know how but it is. And another ripping solo at the end, heavy Talking Heads is just so satisfying. A little anger, feels good to get it off your chest possibly. Heaven is not my favorite thing, but still so clever and the band hits it so perfectly. Nothing ever happens, this feels like a little joke, and it's pretty funny. In heaven, everyone leaves your party at exactly the same time. This is something David Byrne fantasizes about, a place where something isn't happening, where he is in the moment, kissing someone again. Contrast! Nothing is exciting. It's hard to imagine that nothing at all could be so exciting, could be this much fun. Animals. My favorite song. Animals think They understand Trusting them a big mistake Animals want to change my life I will ignore Animals advice... absolute genius, the best of the earlier Talking Heads. Don't even know what a JOKE is.

Complex and profound. A BIG four stars. Grounded a little bit by the production which is a good thing. Pixies can be a lot to take but they do a nice job here of overcoming their more out of control tendencies to make a very listenable album. Takes a few times through to really get it. Well worth the effort.

Really excellent trip hop. Groovy mid-tempo loops with some nice stylistic diversity thrown in - dub, funk, rock, this has a lot of little surprises. Frequently background music at work.

A bit dismal, some of the early 2000s “stomp - clap” alt sound in here. Thought provoking though. Great talent but nothing to write home about, there’s no Eddie Van Halen or Stewart Copeland here.

Tunes!

Best ska album ever, sorry Desmond, sorry Skatalites. Not sorry.

Enjoyable mid-tempo EDM with bits of dub, funk, a little jazz at times - shades of Soul Coughing, but JUST shades... nothing really memorable or catchy but they successfully bring you from one track to the next without a lot of effort. Vocal tracks were a little week but overall pretty fun. Has a good beat you can dance to it. Always cool to get something I've never heard before, will be checking the rest of Red Snapper's catalog. Interesting drum/bass/guitar core.

WHAT A CLASSIC! 14 songs in 16 minutes, including the greatest songs ever recorded: Wasted, I Just Want Some Skank, Live Fast Die Young, and Beverly Hills. This album rules. Saw the Circle Jerks in San Francisco in 1982 and it was the scariest show I've ever seen. Life changing. Punk as go intended.

You forget how much you like some albums. This one has a lot of nostalgia factor. Everyone's older brother was playing this constantly. It's great, though. Just don't look for a lot of profundity. 4 stars for the guitar tone alone, and the solo in "Do You Feel.." is one of the GOATs. Peace and love, very sincere, lots of mistakes - it's live after all. A great listen.

Never realized James Brown had such a huge vocal range. This would be better - not that it's bad - if I could SEE what was happening. The music gets interrupted A LOT by the audience interaction. So it sounds like a wildly entertaining live show that doesn't translate too well to a recording. Sound quality kind of suffered as well. That said there are some great moments on here, the medley at the end leading into Night Train are excellent. And you can definitely feel the energy. Proto-funk. Interesting transitional stuff, takes us from R & B/Jazz/Jump Blues into a heavier place.

A great album! Catchy, heavy, ornery, a bit weird and personal. The frustrations of youth. Green Day defines the "pop-punk" genre with this album, respects its influences. Also, thank you for making something heavy that wasn't grunge in the 90s.

First song had promise with the horns. Well, that went away as quickly as it came. Christgau was less enamored, saying "...if those horns are somebody's idea of a joke I am not amused." Kind of a mishmash, the band doesn't seem to land on anything. It's okay, has good energy, not really punk though? DNF moving on

Imagine if Gorillaz was a mid-2000s alt rock band (think Arcade Fire, Modest Mouse) but take the dancing out of it. It's working overly hard at profundity, I think. It's okay... I mean, what do you do when you've reached that level of success? It's cool to take musical risks like this as the alternative is either more of the same or quitting altogether. At some points this album feels like it's going too hard for a contemporary sound, for example, shades of Radiohead on The Bunting Song. Hearing Simonon is the highlight for me, though, but it's altogether too laid bake and a little monotonous.

The best of the Fripp/Wetton/Bruford era. A pure smorgasbord of sound, I just can't get enough. Exiles being the only real downside, but the guitar/bass interplay is intricate, beautiful. Crimson, and Fripp especially, had a way of giving soul and feeling (whatever that is) to their odd-time, meanderings. And this doesn't work at ALL without the musical confidence each of the members brings to the party. Very communal. Nothing else like it. Obviously not for everyone but gods among prog fans such as myself.

Stevie Wonder's hits overshadow the deep cuts SO MUCH that people like me, unfamiliar with the albums themselves, never got to enjoy the more subtle lesser known stuff. What an amazing songwriter Stevie Wonder is. Every cut on Talking Book is excellent. I don't have the good taste to embrace his soulful ballad side, but the quality is there. "Big Brother" is an AMAZING song, all of the funk stuff on here is awesome. There's even a little "country" (?) tunewhich was great! More guitar than I remember... a really satisfying listen with lots of variety, and of course, Superstition is on here. You can't go wrong!

This made me sad. Respect for the conceptual thrust. Very intense, and (for my middle-class white ass) pretty rough. I see why people are praising Kendrick Lamar. Interesting.

Mostly fun up until "Good to Be On the Road Back Home." Had to blow past that one. Brim Full of Asha is a killer pop tune, and I LOVE the heaping scoops of Indian classical. I'll definitely be playing this again, really innovative. Danceable, brings in some Dub style production. Has some really good heaviness to it, a good sense of humor (sorry: "humour"), surprising sound design, and moves at a nice tempo. Lots of variety.

Neil Finn: great voice. Theorem: all rock singers ultimately want to be Mel Tormé or Frank Sinatra. Neil Finn can almost prove this, most noticeably on the ballads. Great drumming by Paul Hester, tragically died of suicide at age 46 in 2005. Great production, great songwriting, impeccable execution. All of this does not make for a perfect album though. It’s too precise, too chill, too easy. It’s not annoying, it just has zero edge musically or otherwise. So it comes down to a matter of taste. Crowded House do a PERFECT job of not doing anything new or even all that interesting. Which sucks because I really liked listening to it. Also very much like the band. Loved Split Enz. I wanted to like this more. “Not bad != great” is another possible theorem.

PJ Harvey has a dark side that literally scares me. Because I’m afraid of the unknown. This album brings together all of her very best aspects - the over- the- bar line cleverness, the plaintive and urgent vocals, direct, distinctive; songwriting that somehow manages to be simple but dives deeply. She always bares her soul with a confidence you don’t get from anyone else. The duet with Thom Yorke emphasizes this: feels like Thom is always falling apart falling off a cliff. Until PJ comes along to pull him out of his quicksand. The woman is strong. I love this contrast. They pull it off. Great art. Some touching pieces. But not off putting or difficult (Kendrick I’m talking to you). I haven’t heard something in a long time that I had the sincere urge to hear again like “Good Fortune” or “Kamikaze.” Genius.

SHA-LA-LA JAILBREAK HUEY LEWIS Good stuff. Heavier than I remember. Well produced - the energy builds across the entire album and crescendos at the right time. Not too long, works well as a "unit of art."

I wrote one of my GENIUS reviews about how Black Sabbath is weird and iconoclastic, etc. But the machine ate it somehow. One of the main points was how unusual it was that at the nadir of the soft rock era, these blokes went to Southern California and came back with Supernaut. Brilliant. Not even going to take off a star for "Changes" as much as I want to. God I hate that song.

Never heard of it. Kind of like the Dadaist derived cover art. Don't like the name "Hookworms." Actually, I might have heard of this... NOT GOING TO READ ABOUT IT NOT GOING TO READ ABOUT IT NOT GOING TO READ ABOUT IT NOT GOING TO READ ABOUT IT Every time I read. about the album it taints my judgement, especially when it's stuff I haven't heard of. Starts off very kraut-rocky. Love it. Seems pretty positive. SInger is singing, has a Gary Numan or OMD vibe. Starts belting out a bit like so many other alt-rock, over emotional singers though, like LCD Soundsystem, Modest Mouse, Snow Patrol, etc. (Where did that sound start? hmm...) Some interesting post-punk stuff here and there, but nothing that says “must hear before you die.” A little derivative, even. The book sometimes seems to include stuff like this just to remain contemporary and sell more editions, possibly. …. AAAAANNND then I read about it. ☹️

This is from the Wikipedia article: "Ed Ward in a 1976 review in Rolling Stone felt that the music was rootsy and compelling, but that it wouldn't be understood by American audiences, and that the lead song about Marcus Garvey wouldn't make sense to anyone who didn't know Jamaican culture." TRY TO FUCKING LEARN about it then. This is a nearly perfect Reggae album. The grooves, the themes, Burning Spear's voice - perfect in their imperfection. A textbook, go learn about why Marcus Garvey is important, go learn about Jamaica, go learn about Rastafarianism. Reggae is like Gospel. The passion of roots reggae lies in the combination of spirituality and social consciousness. It's pretty inspiring to think that after centuries of victimization and exploitation, which continues in Jamaica to this day, Rastas want to rise above. I would love to hear the original mix, but it appears to only be legendary or lost?

Is this some kind of joke? If so, someone needs to explain it to me. Once again: The Velvet Underground (and now that I've heard this, Nico) are BAD. As in NOT GOOD. You are being pranked. Hit a note. Tune your guitar. Take a poetry class. WHO SAID YOU COULD DO THIS! Insultingly bad.

The Beatles do stuff like "Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon" and get called geniuses; Queen do it and they get called other names.

The always amazing Janis Joplin goes down some new roads here with funk, gospel, country, straight up blues. Fantastic album, and a bit sad in retrospect.

I had no idea. What a wild ride. One forgets what great musicians Banks Rutherford and Collins were, not to mention Peter Gabriel's outlandishness. AMazing, arty, bizarre.

OHHH, I GET IT NOW! Madonna is like the pop superstar version of David Bowie, what with all the reinventing and \"shape-shifting\" and songwriting ability... nevermind, this bit sucks. Mostly cringey, the song \"Amazing\" is ok, but even that just goes on too long. Madonna does not sound like she's having fun - which is the first rule for this kind of music. Some interesting production here and there. Why MUST I hear this before I die? Probably would not have been worse off without it. But hey, I made it through.

A poor man's Roxy Music with a bass player who forgot to tune up? It would have been better if David Sylvian didn't just wake up before recording this. Can hear all the influences too much, and I can hear who they influenced, and that bored me. Flat dynamic range and the sleepy vocals made this into a chore for me. Seems like a lot of what might be categorized as Post-Punk from this era had a very droll style, too cool to really rock. No fun.

A lot more interesting and entertaining than I thought it would be. Very intense in places. "The Ninth Wave" was metal. Eclectic and surprisingly rhythm centered. I found it all more fascinating than I thought I would, having pretty much ignored Kate Bush this whole time. I'll probably listen again, the hits (Running Up That Hill and Cloudbusting) are actually really great songs that have aged very well.

Great vocalists (of course). The 12 minute album version of Papa Was a Rolling Stone is absolutely worth the price of admission. Everything else left me a little cold, but that whole first side was great.

IT’S THE VOCALS!!! The vocals are out of tune! It’s cringe-inducing bad country music, falling far short of the profundity to which it aspires. The upbeat stuff is just goofy sounding and the slow stuff is banal and hits like old gum on the bottom of my shoe and I’m just too tired to do anything about it. You really need two drummers for this? As a drummer I can tell you, you might not even need one. Not even going to write about the lyrics. God help us. Sugar Magnolia is alright. This is what you think of when you think Grateful Dead. A rare tight performance, and I think it’s Bob Weir singing actually hitting the notes pleasantly enough. Still awful. Now that that’s over I’m gonna sit down and “patch my bones” WHAT THE LITERAL FUCK

Most of these albums are not the kind you can just put on in the background and groove to while cleaning the house. This is certainly one of those. Intricate and intimate. A very introspective album, very poetic, very arty. Interesting progressive electro-folk. A lot to take in, I would like to just put this on with the lyrics in hand on a Sunday afternoon in Spring with nothing else to do in order to feel it completely.