1001 Albums Summary

Decent! Not as good as Still Crazy or Hearts and Bones

Still probably my least favorite of the IRS era, so much of it feels underwritten, or like a one-note predecessor to Monster. "Welcome to the Occupation", "Exhuming McCarthy", and "Oddfellow Local 151" still rule though.

Like a time machine straight to an early oughts Starbucks

I'm sorry, it's just not my thing. Jimi's later stuff is a lot more interesting to me, even if I can appreciate the influence of this stuff.

Listening to this I realized that for as many of her songs as I love, I've never actually listened to a Dolly album. This one is mostly great - Waggoner's songs are the only ones that really drag it down. Dolly's material shines.

The first of these I haven't listened to, and it's fine! It feels like a recursive, weird little thing - Lou Reed doing David Bowie doing Lou Reed - but the great songs still hold up, especially walk on the wild side.

i mean, it's pink moon. as solo acoustic albums go it's basically this and elliott smith's s/t in the pantheon. beautiful music with a bleak and terrifying heart. "things behind the sun" is an all-timer.

A great album that gets docked points for not being as good as the first Julie Ruin album and for inventing electroclash

I have no way of objectively reviewing this album. I was obsessed with it as a kid and its entire message is pretty repugnant to me as an adult. I think its best songs still have an infectious energy and incredible skill that feels pretty wasted on boneheaded murder fantasy and extremely long gay jokes.

Maybe not my favorite Pogues album, but definitely the Best Pogues album. Shane McGowan's songwriting is at its peak and the band has a power and focus that was lost in the murky folk of Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash. An absolute riot from start to finish - if this is hell, we should all be so lucky as to fall from grace.

The Dirty Projectors ruined indie music for years. The worst kind of trollish, intentional obscuritism. I have never wanted to punch a guy more than this specific guy.

My least favorite of my favorite Elvis Costello albums. Everything he does well gets its start here, but it's all still pretty embryonic, with a lot of songs getting by more on the force of their performance than the quality of their craft. Which is a bummer compared to how great his songwriting eventually gets, but hey, sometimes you wanna hear steve nieve go apeshit over a song about masturbation, and you can only get that here.