The full recording with Carl Perkins, Statler Bros, etc is even better. Hearing Hugh Cherry instruct the audience really puts you there.
I have a lot of nostalgia for this coming out and not quite getting it. Some kind of disconnect happened, the fact that it was dumped online at the height of napster. Took the truffle hunt away from us pigs. It's like, of course this is 'good,' but I wasn't ready to actually understand it on its own terms.
Looking back, this seems like the apex of pop production. Truly the end of an era.
4 stars only just because somehow after all that it still exists at a cool distance for me. Something I can admire more than love.
It's good. He's good. It took this project for me to fully realize that because I had classical vocal training and for years this kind of singing literally hurt to listen to. But now I undid all that and I think he's perfect and deserved the nobel prize.
Still prior to cohesive 'album' era but undeniably banger after banger.
Sometimes I can hear this stuff and it feels fresh. The instrumentation is frankly a little weird when you listen to it! If I default to half-listening at any time though these tunes are so familiar I could be in a grocery store or at a wedding. Not the band's fault for being so popular.
Sometimes you listen to an album from here, unfamiliar to you, and you think "Wow, this sounds so fresh. Everything being made now is just a rehash of some random 20th century trend. But this original take is way better!"
I think if you tried to bring this sound back you'd be drawn and quartered!
This one is pretty much a Jacques Brel album. I sort of feel bad for baritones in music. They aren't allowed to have any simple feelings. They always have to play the heavy or the sad old man.
The definitive version of "Next" for me is the Alex Harvey version. I love that one. Honestly this cabaret stuff only makes sense to me once it's married to punk or whatever you want to call what Tom Waits does. I've also had great experiences with the later Scott Walker albums, but it's fairly dense stuff. Not something you can listen to in any context except to sit and listen to.
Fun for a while, then it got a little boring. I preferred the monster voice to the singing voice. Drums sounded terrific throughout.
I was not a fan of the songs themselves -- sorta boring! -- but was fairly swept away by the instrumentation, especially on the back half of the album.
The stuff that came out when you were an adolescent.... that's the purest form of nostalgia. Even if you never actually heard it, it can still put you in that specific emotional world. Everything about 1999 was moody and sexy.
IIt must've been a hard time for asexuals, way harder than for gay people. They didn't have marriage yet, but who would want to get married when shit like this was coming out?
Very familiar with this one. Everything is still where it should be. Like walking into that perfect version of your childhood bedroom, untouched by time, that only exists in your mind's eye.
I was so happy to finally watch these music videos in HD. They're really spectacular. Nirvana is at its core just a really smart band with great songs. If you can forget for a minute the obvious tragic narrative surrounding Kurt Cobain, which dominated their entire catalogue for me, the material really opens up.
Tried it once, and I couldn't for the life of me keep my attention on it. Found it aggressively boring.
Second try, I started digging the groove, was getting more out of the lyrics, and then a song or two later... nope. Not for me. I just can't figure out a way in.
Jesus Built My Hotrod is great and has a really funny music video. Made me wish the rest of the album had that much fun and self-awareness.
By album's end I felt like I was missing something, more variations in feeling. I don't usually listen to metal. It's a lot of fun, but at album length I become hyperaware of a kind of one-note feeling which flattens the whole experience.
Everyone's got that one crazy diamond friend that gets permanently tied to this album.
Waldorf: It was dumb!
Statler: It was obvious!
Waldorf: It was pointless!
Statler: It was... short.
Statler & Waldorf: I loved it! HA HA HA HA!!!!
It's probably not their fault that the 3-chord guitar-bath became an aggressively generic sound for so much of the 90's.
Maybe it's like when I showed my wife the Matrix and her reaction was a kind of shrug, which then led me to explain to her how mind-blowing that movie was at the time.
I liked the song about murdering your girlfriend in a river. Murder songs have fallen out of fashion and that's a shame.
Sometimes this listening project feels like a job. Other times I see the album and know I'm in for a treat. In this case, an album I know and love well.
In the most absurd best-case possible scenario, I somehow got to it years and years after getting almost too familiar with The Wall, Wish You Were Here, and Dark Side of the Moon. So it came at me as a very fresh but familiar, strange yet cosy experience.
That said I'm taking away one star for what is clearly an irresponsible use of stereo panning technology.
"You can't hang a man for shooting a woman who was trying to steal his horse."
Can't argue with that logic! Insane that Willie Nelson had this voice when he was young. He sounds like he's a bazillion years old.
Aw I thought I was really going to like this. Unfortunately anything that’s in this genre that isn’t a mega-mega hit immediately feels like filler to me. You only really know how bad filler feels when you’ve fallen for a hit single on Z100 then gone off to Sam Goody to buy the album for something like $20, which is a lot to a kid. Eventually you end up listening to that filler crap and sometimes grow to like it in a horrible stockholm syndromish way. Yet it ultimately never shakes the stink of buyer’s remorse.
I’m open to exploring and learning about this other stuff more now that we’re past this economic container of a pop album. Maybe Madonna cared way more about singing in Hindi for example, than about the one dance hall staple on this record. And maybe there are other textures she and her producer collaborators explored in those other songs. I can’t tell if I am capable of drawing much from that well yet.
Well she's terrific. Hee hee haa haa, no notes. I don't know how much of what I like of what Timbaland is doing in some of these, structurally, though he gets to use some cool effects.
From my limited view, it feels like this is before rap entered its operatic Kanye era. Producers still happy to set up a groove and fade it out at the end. In this case, I feel he relies too heavily on the source sample to make a chorus happen.
I'm not going to listen to this, tbh. I already know the whole thing and I also "know" Phil Spector. What it's like to be in his back to mono mind. He's very Nazi-like, the closest thing to Leni Riefenstahl pop music has. Oppressive, but undeniably impressive.
That Jumpin Jack flash obviously slaps. But at the same time, I get exactly what someone else, perhaps Ravi Shankar, said about using traditional instruments like the sitar for pop and jazz, that it sort of undermines its spiritual significance. This blending kinda reminds me of a college party in an uncomfortable way. The illusion of having a multicultural experience, though the difference is only skin-deep. Timbre.
At the same time, trying not to see the sitar as a sound that's been smuggled in, being bent over backwards to accommodate scales that it's not really set up for... maybe it's more like a proud ambassador, Ananda showing the world what it can do. I'm sure that's closer to this album's intent. And yes, maybe a rebuke of Indian traditionalists thrown in the mix.
After the recognizable pool party cover songs are over, we get some mind-bending fusion jams. Whether Sagar (The Ocean) works for you or not depends entirely on the time of day and the lighting.
This wasn't doing it for me until I got to the horn section on Tonight, which got me in a better frame of mind for the rest of it. Still weird to think of this kind of pop as a must-listen in any way, unless you experienced it at the time and are nostalgic for it.
I can imagine driving around with my friends as a teenager with this burned on a CD. It didn't actually happen for me with this album, but it's a solid vibe.
Nerds have been trying to ruin this for me for as long as I can remember.
Sorry, it's good but so much of it has been so massively overplayed for so much of my life. Hate to downrate something for being so successful and game-changing but it's just not my vibe.
I love curvy Jewish bisexual potheads so this was extremely My Thing.
I'm going to try again with this. But my first thought was that this era of bluesy rock only sounds good at the back of the Roadhouse, with Laura Palmer dancing.
I can imagine sitting at a show with a tall beer and getting an incredibly warm feeling from the atmosphere and music. But this alone was not enough to get me there.
5 million stars. I don't think I have anything else to say on the matter.
I enjoyed this, though I feel like I've only scratched the surface here. I definitely wouldn't have been ready for this when it came out. This kind of band is for over-30's at the very least.
I really like this era of production. I wonder if anyone has written about this period of the early aughts as a short, golden era of technology really helping trained professionals right before the same technology would rip the entire industry apart, thus creating far fewer specialized professionals.
That said, it didn't quite hit me like I think it's supposed to. Maybe on subsequent listens I'll get more out of it.
I was so ready to be welcomed into this particular Pleasuredome. That opening track is so awesome.
And then they talk a bit about war... OK. And then the craziest surprise... a Bruce Springsteen cover? Um... what?
Nothing against the covers -- they're good -- but the opening track promised some kind of bacchanal of lusty dance songs or way out-there, outer space ambiance. Not covers of already popular songs?
It's beautiful playing, but I'm not sold on the improv solo album concept. It needs something. A sonata has intention and structure. Improv in groups as the intensity of collaboration and people listening to each other, reacting to each other in a kind of dialogue. Imagining being in that live audience, where I could feel what Keith was reacting to, leaves me with a 'guess you had to be there' feeling.
This can "go with" something. You can put it on while watching the snow fall outside. Or perhaps watching a concert film where he's doing this. Even then I can't imagine that my mind wouldn't wander to other things. It might be too pretty.
Hard for me to quantify, really. Something I've been able to appreciate from a distance but never quite get. After some time, it actually was coming up so often on my Apple playlists I had to delete it from my library.
Something about the warbling in head voice, and the sort of too-interconnected piano chord textures. It's so insular.
I and a gazillion coffee shops have dried this guy's memory up, I'm afraid. Sugared up his heroin veins, then simmered down to pumpkin spice syrup. Sorry that I can't get past that on a relisten.
Intimate to the point of, "Alright, Frank." But the melodies are great, and the arrangements are top-tier. Lush and sometimes funny.
It may have given some straight guys in 1955 not just a homosexual experience but an immersive view of what it's like to be in a relationship with a difficult, emotional man. It's not about being Frank. It's about Frank being two inches away from your ear telling you he's lonely. I didn't always want that feeling, listening to this. It's maybe too much for headphones. Should be played on a sound system in one of those crazy early 60's bachelor pads while sitting with a drink.
The Apple spacial localization technology makes the intimacy even more unnerving. I put my phone in my right pocket while riding on the subway, and suddenly a guy was crooning directly into my right ear...
Sometimes I think I took too many years of voice lessons. All it really does for me now is make stuff like this that much harder to get into. I like the creative arrangements -- I genuinely dig the music, and if this was on at a little party I would say, Okay, cool. This is a cool party. As much as I can be nostalgic for different eras of music, the punk-fueled, anti-good-singing movement is one I am very glad we collectively moved away from.
(approvingly) You can tell that this is from the same general time period as "vampire western" movies.
I am not currently in one of my jazz-appreciating eras (2-3 month periods where I am kinda annoying to talk to) but I know enough to give this five stars. Not because it's great or anything but because Miles Davis' ghost is very real and will mess you up if you give him anything less.
When I saw this album come up , I thought "Oh, great. More pub operas."
But the Who has always sounded best to me when they're not so serious and this definitely fits the bill. Plus they're really good -- this was a good show. I had a great time listening.
I wish there was less sanctimony around these live albums so that some of it could be cleaned up a bit. Even something as simple as leveling out the chatter in between songs so that I'm not turning the volume up and down all the time.
Something interesting about this list project -- I totally perceive the standards for selection if I was alive/musically aware at the time. For instance, this shit sucks and it's boring, and I don't really have to dig into the vaults or study up my historical contexts to modify or support that point. Next!
Dated in a way where some of it comes off as silly/goofy. Which isn't the worst way to age as music goes.
Depending on the hour, I have alternating feelings about remixing recordings of spirituals as pop songs. In one way, it feels more honest. On the other, the recordings feel like they have been orphaned from their entire purpose.
Hard for me to judge -- seems designed to fit neatly within my wheelhouse but somehow I didn't come away feeling like I had an Alice Cooper-shaped hole that needed to be filled. Satirizing boomer aspirations... okay, thanks. Mostly I felt like I just came to this too late for me to feel strongly about it.
I also didn't know anything about Alice Cooper except that he had a really theatrical stage act. He's got a great voice and the backing instrumentals are a lot more rich and varied than I'd expected. Might give it another listen.
I don't like everything on this album but look, the highs are so high and I have an endless respect for this artist.
You know what? I liked this.
Wasn't sure how I'd be able to feel anything from this -- haven't been into this kind of pop since 7th grade. First... wonderful production. If this kind of pop is like candy, I felt like I was at the factory. Buzzing with ideas but disciplined enough to make it cohere.
The emotions behind the songs are simple with a little twist, just enough of an ironic edge to balance out the sweet. Nice work, young lady. Sure you will go far.
Never before had someone created music that was equally good for driving, fighting, and working real fast on the computer. Pop this on and do your taxes in like... twenty minutes.
The Matrix (1999) could not have happened without this music preexisting it. It is the hidden glue. Give Hackers (1995) credit for putting the first pieces together for us.
Years later and I still don't really know what to do with it. I was sorta too old for it when it came out and now I don't feel that different. Neither in the prime audience market nor am I nostalgic for when a lyric like "Jesus of suburbia" could have done anything for me.
I listened to the wrong Blur album. Now that I'm on this one, I guess there's nothing wrong with it but I totally understand people calling it "utter shite" or whatever Brits say when something is totally out of the thrust of what people consider cool. I respect the people who will make fun in the face of the cool, though. I can listen to this with my five year old son and not be too worried about him picking up on weird vibes. Just a little arrested development.
This hits a great groove and sustains it for its entire runtime. I can't not think about that viral video with all those kids singing at him. Love to the French.
When this collection breaks out of English-language albums it really makes me wonder about the selection criteria for this list. Because this is French spoken word poetry you need to have the translation open in front of you to get something out of it, but there are a lot of great non-English albums that focus a lot more on the music than the language, so it's less of a barrier for casual listening.
In the game, "marry, f*ck, kill," this is one you marry. It's goofy-funny while still being able to pull off cool-sexy, a rare combo, but it exists. Take my wife!
Perhaps you commitment-phobes out there can listen to this and see how all these features can coexist. Maybe there really is the perfect person for you somewhere.
Very familiar with this one. It's fun, but it's just about nostalgia for me. Nothing in here pushing me forward. Just a simple recall for the melancholic party boys era.
I almost wrote this off for sounding so much like famous bands that came later but the reception other people on here gave it caused me to give it a relisten. Most importantly, checking out their music videos, which in this era is an essential part of the package. Now I'm hooked and am telling friends about this band, which is as good as it gets for me.
I immediately respond to the harder, louder stuff on here. I don't have much else to say except thanks for the good time.
Hard for me to rate because this is clearly evening music and I do a lot of my listening on commuter trains but will give it some time over the weekend to take in the stories and let it percolate. I'll say it was a lot more accessible and fun-sounding than I thought it would be.
This is very practical music. You can have this on running errands and feel a little more chill. The flip side of this: it's not music that sits in front of you and demands your attention. Even when I tried to stop and pay more attention, it slipped into the background of my thoughts and just subtly adjusted my groove. So, to me, something to keep around for cooking or driving.
I'm so passively familiar with these songs that I was so excited when the album turned out to be about an apocalyptic orgy. Simply an incredible concept. It makes total sense that Jack Nicholson's Joker would blast Prince while killing people with poisonous gas. This shit is dark!
Man, I really don't like his voice. How did this ever get past the guards? He's fine when embedded in group harmonies, or helped by instruments. There are some really nice songs on here but I just hate this singing style so, so much.
There are a few songs on here that are so entirely connected with driving down to the Jersey Shore for prom weekend... my first taste of beer, the first time I saw a girl blow smoke into a guy's mouth while making out, staying with a friend while our dates were around but not with us... They were doing their own thing... and we were trying to get with them somehow...
Anyway the rest of the album is relentless to the point of it being kinda boring, but I knew when Paradise City came on I couldn't give it less than a 4.
This album is great for a lot of reasons. Sinatra at this point had smoked the optimal number of cigarettes to give his voice some heft and gristle without losing musicality. The arrangements are lush and brassy, but the songs are so tightly constructed that the orchestration never gets too soupy. The masters are so well-preserved, it sounds like it was recorded yesterday. As a kid I'd play this album while hitting golf balls around my house, sipping sparkling water.
Pretty cool, funky 80s percussion. I didn't really listen that deeply but I'm going to keep going with it.
In Moby-Dick, one of the reasons white is said to be terrifying is that by signifying so many things it begins to signify nothing, a meaningless void. This album is weird not in spite of tight, popular ballads amidst the other stuff but because of them. Nor are they taking 'weird music' and dumbing it down for the masses. They really are asking us to accept anything the Beatles could be, without trying to contain themselves within a narrative. Annoying thing to do, actually.
It's so much fun, and I realize that I only really listened to Nine Inch Nails in the Kazaa era where I basically grew to know their singles rather than albums. So I thought I knew this but I really didn't.
Do they paint themselves into a corner early on and maybe don't have anywhere to go after side A? I'm tempted to think that. It is so often an issue with bands that are mainly interested in creating a totally new sound at the outset. More about textures than about narrative. And here the only place to go is quieter and more reflective. I'll have to spend some more time with it to get into the words, which remind me of being a teenager.
There's a lot to enjoy here but it's tonally all over the place? Seven songs in I was still thinking about the song about dinosaurs.
The Shins scene from Garden State but instead it's my friend's girlfriend Ada putting this on to help me come down from a bad trip in 2004. Forever grateful to you, Air!
I recently listened to this one. Listening to it again, still feeling the same mix. I think this very good. I just don't really know what it does for me personally. I'm probably on the cusp of getting it. Not the worst thing to walk around listening to, that's for sure.
I liked Funeral a lot when it came out, but I was hesitant with Neon Bible. The Arcade Fire had settled on a sweeping, big sound and narrative drive that reminded me so much of musical theatre. And that's not a bad thing, per se. But hearing another album come out from that same group amounts to a feeling like a musical sequel. You know how many good musical sequels there are? I doubt any of you'd ever give "Love Never Dies" a chance.
My point is I'd already played out Arcade Fire when this came, and unlike a more reasonable-sized group they couldn't really change their tricks around from one album to the next. The songs keep crescendoing, the autobiographical family-dying stuff starts to veer towards Eminem's mom territory. Interestingly, I had friends who first heard about them with this album, and the consensus seemed to be that this one is better than Funeral. They might be right, actually, but how the hell would I know?
I think the thing I like about British prog rock bands is that it's about as far away from the blues as you can get. They're wailing on their fifes and mandolins as if John Lee Hooker never picked up a guitar. It's a responsible position for British boys to take.
I'm not saying I don't like the blues. There's just something increasingly awkward about white British boys, even someone as transgressive as Mick Jagger, taking on roots music directly. For the first thing, it's boring. It's kind of supposed to be because when you have the blues, your situation cannot and will not change. An American black blues artist in mid-20th century music can make that work. Mick Jagger in a live performance can probably make that work too. But listening to this now I just kept stifling a yawn.
The second point I don't actually believe in, that white people shouldn't do black music or something like that. Here's a slightly more nuanced take. The blues was a foundational element of rock and roll. But roots blues music is a traditional sad music like the fado in Portugal. At this point, it is clearly from another time and rooted in place. Can anyone sing fado? Of course, it's their right. Would you ever take it as seriously if Taylor Swift did it? Rather than a not-famous, life-wrecked woman in Lisbon?
This was such an enchanting surprise. I've always loved Magnetic Fields so the instrumentaition felt so strangely familiar, long before I ever made the connection. Dark, poppy, fun, sometimes trance-like. I'm in!
I liked this enough when I first heard it to add it to my library. Still pretty cool, but I was deep in a 1960s era back then and now not so much. Ratings are subjective, folks.
Boy, this just did not work for me. I tried to get in the right mindset, thinking... "oh these harmonies are good. Oh, the fellow playing the organ has skills..."
Nah, never cared a lick about what these people thought about Mondays or California.
I'm guilty of ever so often bemoaning the current lack of sexual forthrightness in our media, something we'd get so often in the horny 90's. Even the Disney movies were all about sex back then.
But I can definitely see in this album the way taking it kinda far makes it sorta cartoonish. And I feel more and more distant from the horniness, the 90's in the rear-view mirror looking more and more like the 60s or 80s. Sonically and thematically distinct. Old.
But I still kinda love these guys. "Under the Bridge" gives me a mostly-imagined memory of it playing in the kitchen of a boardwalk pizza place while they're cleaning up.
It's just a great collection of violent ballads. The cover says it all. Incredible.
I've seen The Ballad of Buster Scruggs since the first time I've heard these songs. Listening to them again I'm reminded that the Coens did a fairly accurate hit job on this particular kind of singing sociopath.
I've always liked these guys. Very comfy-cosy sound.
I have a much higher tolerance for dumb stuff I didn't live through. Dumb stuff you lived through gets automatically linked with a kind of dumb guy you can perfectly visualize. And it's instantaneous. As soon as I saw this album popped up my face pruned up into an octogenarian frown and my voice, now Joe Biden's, said "Aw come on, man."
I half tried, but honestly no matter how well they land their intended effects it is all so wholly wrapped up in a package of bad taste. I kept searching for what part of my lizard brain I share with a fan of this material, but all I hear is Christian rock.
This sounds very very Irish and that’s never a bad thing for me. Actually if you put this on an Irish travel video, then it would sound terrible… but right now I’m just waiting for my laundry and it’s making me want to blow up a British parliament house and dance.
The title song has been stuck in my head since I first listened to it a couple years ago. So warm and nostalgic.
Love it when a terrific live album shows up on here. Honestly feels like it should be a totally separate list/category, since I’m not entirely sure if a studio album by same band would be my thing but this definitely is 👍🏻
I don't hate it as much as the Big Lebowski does, but it is kinda boring.
He's got a nice singing voice. Too bad he's such a 'smashing bore.' Artless politics talk right at the head of the album sounding like it could have been some teenager's twitter feed.
There's nothing that special about it to me except that it conjures up nostalgia for 90's action and hacking and drug culture. Which a lot of the time is an automatic five stars.
Very cool. The use of full orchestra is so muscular here you'd have to believe that this was a time when music could really change the world. There's simply no other reason for that kind of intensity.
I like it, I just haven't done nearly enough opiates in my life to get quite to their level. It's not that I haven't ever... I mean I do 'get' enjoyable slinking behind the beat in a not-quite-on-pitch slurred singing style. But it's just not the trip I'm currently on.
I don't know how that prior review ended up here. That was for an entirely different album by Linkin Park.
What I have to say about Björk is... I don't think you need to be gay to like Björk. However, I feel like the part of me that appreciates Björk without being fully immersed by her, the part of me that feels detached and bobs my head along and says "oh, interesting that she did that here." That part of me knows that in some shadow world a .03% gayer version of me has wallpapered his existence with Björk's music.
I've been enjoying the metal recs from this list, and I've learned to judge the albums not by the fast-paced, heavy stuff which is uniformly great but the slower ballads. There is a necessity to them -- no album can keep up a fast pace and not feel flat -- but there is a risk, too. For one thing, the ballads can be very boring, or expose the kinda dumb lyrics. Probably the worst situation is where it's also just so theatrical that you feel like you're not at all on the same page. Basically, I came away from Iron Maiden thinking I might prefer a live album.
Like Alabama Shakes, really well-produced music that has been totally owned by coffeeshops near college campuses. It immediately makes me feel like I'm grading papers late at night and have totally plateau'd on caffeine intake.
That's not a knock on the music per se. College coffee music generally reflects budding music connoisseurship of many a barista. Though the stuff that gets played most often does serve a practical purpose, and in the end may be too anodyne to be something worth paying a lot of attention to. Like the americanos I'd be chugging while this played, more than serviceable, but it's not here to take center stage.
Some great stuff, some boring stuff. I have no idea what to do with something like "Take It From Here," for example. I guess it's for sex or something, if 20-year-old white boy is what does it for you.
Whatever this character is... this kind of digusting horny lout... I'm not saying wokeness is ruining art or anything like that but I do sort of miss music being a fairly ignoble profession, best left to the scumbags. "Peaches" is just amazing.
"Let Me Roll It" is one of the all-time greatest male love songs in existence. So much of the rest of Wings feels like it's missing the other Beatles ingredients. Either that or it's accurately ushering in the next era of pop rock, a frankly awkward musical phase. Still I do like Paul, and enjoy getting his unfettered corniness. High quality musician, great voice.
"Tiny Dancer" soars. The others are less familiar to me so it takes a second to get the narratives, since they're fairly dense, actually. I think I get it, though. Yes.
Well finding out that I adore Missy Elliott has been a real discovery from this listening project. It's so, so fun.
