This one speaks to my younger self, and its first tastes of freedom. Back then this hit me like a ton of bricks. I did not speak the language, did not understand the words. But I heard this sound, and was angry and furious and dangerous. It broke a wall in me, and I knew I wanted more. This was one of my first "chosen" records, bought with my own money, and I played constantly. My parents hated it, and I loved that they hated it, because that meant that I now had a life separate from theirs. It was a transgression, that pointed the way towards autonomy, and it was as loud as I was quiet then. I did not need to be angry, because Axl was.
30+ years later the agression, the anger is still here. The band is TIGHT. Stuck together by sweat, attitude and an all-consuming lust for life. And they also constantly sound on the verge of explosion. They seem to be tethering on the edge between just enough rope to hold the songs together and utter chaos. It made me think a lot of the NY Dolls, but on a darker side. It is also an underdog record, in that the characters are misfits and live in the margins of society. Both bands live in a violent world, but where there is a spirit of community in the Dolls music and attitude, there is none of that in AFD. Everything seems to be a zero-sum game, where the narrator of the songs is alone and where outside of sex, drugs and rocking out, there is only fear. And women often lose. This is a violently misogynist record.
AFD is a record made by people who want to matter now. The band plays like tomorrow does not exist - like there is only today, what they want and everything that stands in the way. It is not trying to be pretty, but it is real and it makes no excuses for it.
I cannot say I enjoy it now. The misogyny is a big turn off. But I also can't help looking at it with a sort of tenderness towards my younger self who was trying to find its way and its voice towards adulthood. This record was a stepping stone towards that, and it pointed me towards other music that did show me this sense of community I was longing for.
Disclaimer - I have always really struggled with blues rock. Especially with Eric Clapton.
In the case of this record, I get it. These are competent musicians.
They love the blues as a musical form. I love it too.
So why is it that I am left completely unmoved by what is happening here?
This feels like a conversation I am not invited in. And I have no desire to engage with it.
I don't understand this. These people are obviously very skilled at their instruments. And I have no doubt that they are sincere in what they are doing.
But. I don't know what they are actually doing.
For me the question being asked here is "What makes music "music"? Is it in the experience of the listener? Is it in the intentions of the player(s)? In the conversation space created between the two? If music is in this in-between space, this is a record in which I cannot enter. And I may actually not want to.
Sounds are created here, they are put together, and I remain utterly unmoved. If anything, I get irritated. My attention has nowhere to hang on, everything shifts so fast. I cannot see one idea I can get interested and curious about.
It feels like being talked at, and I have nothing to say or contribute. It makes me want to be somewhere else, doing something else.
The final straw is their cover of the Kinks. It makes me sad that they somehow had to get roped into that mess.
I had never seriously listened to KD Lang before this, and I need to reconsider some life choices. This album is a warm cup of tea and a blanket. All warm, soft edges, flowing. It's intimate and comforting. You can feel the intention and the craft behind every voice accent and every instrumentation choice. This record enveloped me.
It is tightly connected to the tradition from which it flowed. There is an obvious reverence and love for these songs: as if KD Lang was inviting us to her house and introducing these songs as her friends, stopping for a bit of conversation with each one, sharing what makes them special without telling us but by showing us what they are made of, what they mean for her, where they come from and where they might be going next. This love from the material never turns into sterile imitation. In that she is supported by a flawless production, completely in the service of the songs.
She is never crushed by the excellence of the songs, but instead shows what is possible when this excellence can free you to find your own voice. In a way this makes this record a wonderful example for how constraints can lead to outstanding creativity. Nothing is superfluous here.
The result is a record that manages the rare feat of feeling lush and humble at the same time. And completely timeless. I will come back here.
What i have gotten to know Isaac Hayes for is his voice. Unmistakable, warm, deep, enveloping. But what starts this record and runs throughout is the incredible, soaring power of the music. The voice here is an instrument in the whole: this thing, hypnotic and that comes at you from all over the map. The strings, the funky riffing, and this bass, round and enchanting and almost liquid. And as I walk around the house, head nodding, I am travelling. He does not come in until we are a good 2-3 minutes in, but is already haunting the song, picking his spot.
At the time, it must have been such a tricky piece to pin down. What is this thing he is doing? The year is 1969 and Hayes is doing whatever he pleases with whatever he finds. Four songs, with one topping 18 minutes. These « songs » soar to become soul epics and rewrite the format of whatever soul music was at the time. Whatever this is, it is luscious, spacious and smooth like a warm summer night. And the next minute it is raucous and gritty. And I cannot think of anybody doing anything comparable to this. Funkadelic released their first a year later in 1970, and then Maggot Brain was in a year later. Stevie was not yet working on his 1970s classic albums.
There is yearning here , for an expanded life, an aspiration to freedom, and a bravery that is barely contained. I am tempted to say it is fearless, but I don’t know. Maybe there was fear, and that might be what makes this record special. It cannot be easy to refuse to be contained when you are a black man in 1969. And yet there is a container: that of the soul tradition. Making Walk on By your first song on your first record, only to explode it and send it to the stars the way Hayes is doing here is both deeply loving and incredibly bold. This is a black man taking a song written by two white men for a black singer, completely reappropriating it and turning it into a manifest. This is excellent.
If you see me walking down the street
And I start to cry, each time we meet
Walk on by
Walk on by
Make believe that you don't see the tears
Just let me grieve
In private, 'cause each time I see you, I break down and cry
I don't know what to say about this that has not been said before. Neil Young was touched by grace on this. (with the obvious exception of "man needs a maid", what the hell were these lyrics?). 'Words' is the one song of his that always hits me right in the feels, no matter how many I have heard it. And one thing that really got to me this time in ways I had not noticed to this extend before is Ben Keith's pedal steel. Subtle, aching, intentional.
My dad is a huge fan of Young, and this is probably one of the first records I ever heard. To this day, hearing this record reminds me of him, and of the turntable in the living room, or of the many hours we spent on some road on our way somewhere... I can smell the car when I hear this.
Some records are that: a direct line to love and belonging to one another across generations, and to smells, emotions, feelings from a time that has passed and of which I have grown nostalgic without realizing. Today I sometimes join forces with my daughter and my mom to tease him endlessly about his enduring, unextinguishable love for "Nelle Youngue" (pronounced with a heavy french accent), including his more tedious productions of late. But deep down I recognize there something beautiful and precious about sticking with an artist no matter what, because they woke something up in you that cannot be tamed.
This album, for me, encapsulates the best of my dad. He sticks with people. He is grounded and deeply connected to the place he is from (he actually lives less than 5 ks from the house he was born in). He values friendships, and cares for people and for the world. He loves hosting, and to be surrounded. He is a simple man, but also a quite complicated in many ways. And we have had our differences, disagreements, misunderstandings, frustrations at one another over time, but. There was always this deep love for music, and this album which he gifted me in so many ways.
"There's a world you're living in
No one else has your part"
He definitely found his part, and is playing it beautifully.
As for the album, I don't think this is even my favourite one of his, musically speaking (On the Beach might take the crown). But this is definitely the one I carry with me and know the most intimately. How do you even rate this?
I love this record, and this band, unconditionally. This was the first time I bought music that felt deeply personal. I was 14 and had to borrow 59 Francs from my mother at the local supermarket. This record was a slow growth on me, but I kept on listening because it felt special and strange, and I did not understand it, but something about it was enchanting. I have never stopped listening to it since, in fact this is probably the one record I have listened to the most in my life.
I connected with it at a level no one else I knew did back then. My friends did not really seem to understand what I found so special about this record. REM were weird, in a way that felt freeing to me at the time. I felt seen, even though I did not understand the words at the time (I still don't to some extend!). I did not know what it said, but it made me feel something new. And this voice was carrying me. To this day Stipe's voice brings a smile to my face whenever I hear it. He became like an old friend.
The more and the longer I listened over the years , the more layers unfolded. I saw that Stipe's lyrics were beautiful and obscure, and evocative in the way that I aspired to write at the time. I remember cutting up the lyrics of Nightswimming for a stage play in Calgary in the early 2000's at a time where was not confident enough to write in English: another moment where Automatic for the People became an invitation to freedom and creativity and finding a new voice.
The music felt uncomplicated, and yet it was far from simple. Mike Mills' bass is quietly brilliant as always, and he truly shines on this as one of the most expressive back up vocalists of his time. Peter Buck is still expanding his palette from the mostly acoustic instrumentation of Green and Out of Time, slowly bringing more grungy textures. And the string arrangements by JP Jones act as a great container for the intimate, dark yet hopeful atmosphere of the songs.
It is not an easy record. Grief runs through, flowing with the water that is everywhere here. But it holds a very special light. and it always delivers me home, wherever I am.
"The ocean is the rivers goal, a need to leave the water knows.
We're closer now than light years to go."
Indeed we are, sweet friend.
I had never listened to this one from the Velvet Underground. This is a really good record, somewhere between the sneer and agression of their first one and the sunny disenchantment in Loaded. Though John Cale has left at this point and been replaced by Doug Yule, the tension and dissonance he was bringing to the whole is still haunting some of the songs, like with the organ in What goes on. Lou Reed is maturing as a writer really in his own league, but this feels like a transition: where the tension between Cale and Reed was driving the early Velvets' music, the center is visibly moving on this one.
Love the doo-wop accents on Candy Says, a nice wink from Lou Reed to the music he grew up listening to in the 50s. And the nod to early R'n'roll on Beginning to see the light. And I love the closing song, with Moe Tucker singing, bringing to the foreground the child-like innocence and simplicity that drives most of their music, even at its most furious.
Though it does not reach me as viscerally as their first record, this album is a great listen, with some amazing moments: Candy Says and Pale Blue Eyes are easily among the best songs Lou Reed has written. There is a kind of purity that he reaches at these peak moments. These songs feel like quiet creeks that invite reflection (the mirror is a theme in the Velvets music that reappears here and there here): moments of peace in the chaos.
I don't know many bands who can capture this sense that beauty and chaos are merged at the hip, that there cannot be one without the other. The beautiful, the quiet, the still carries the memories of the grit and the filth it emerges from. And the oceans of noise carry the seeds of grace. It is playful and dark, graceful and filthy, honest and sarcastic, full of paradoxes. Just like life, and just like humans.
That is a good example of something I may not have really (like,really!) listened to, if not for this list. I knew the Pretenders were good, but I did not realize how good. I thought this was great.
It carries tons of attitude, it's sexy, it oozes personality. A really fun record, that draws on the energy of punk rock but is also quite sophisticated. I loved the sound of the guitars - the crisp and sharpness, but there are also lots of textured, subtle work. And that voice of Chryssie Hynde, completely unique.
I will come back here.
Even though I have been listening to hip hop for most of my life, I still feel like a guest when I listen to it. Maybe it has to do with the fact it is not music I grew up with - I really got into hip hop as a young adult, and so I feel that I never quite know the codes. In a way, listening to hip hop for me carries a sense of displacement, an unfamiliarity that is quite good, because it invites humility and a certain reverence. It's not unlike my experience as an immigrant, in many ways.
When it comes to listening to records like this one, I want to make it justice, and I don't always quite know how because I cannot assume I understand the experiences and stories it carries. As I enter into this one, I also want to forget to some extend how much I know about the cultural significance this particular album has taken over time.
The playfulness and the humor are striking here. The pop culture references are everywhere, the most obvious being the 70s Kung Fu movies that bring the running battle meta-theme for this album. But the record does not stop there, referencing so much black musical excellence in the sampling. RZA's work is stellar - such a brilliant blend of influences. This is a alchemic genius at work.
This crew is tight - the interplay between all MCs brings so much fun and conversational quality in the music. The many different voices and styles, from cerebral to brilliantly chaotic, all draw the picture a complex web of characters. This is music brought together by a community. It has this feel and it makes me want to go back to it, like a good movie.
Definitely a record to listen to before you die, if anything because of its historical significance and how much it has become a turning point of hip hop culture.
Are we there soon? How long is this going to be?
Faced with a choice to get angry over this whole thing (including cover and band name), or move to something more interesting, I went as far away as I could from this mess.
My flight took me all the way to KD Lang's Hymns of the 49th Parallel. Thanks for the recommendation, friend! That was a way better use of my time.
I definitely did not need to listen to the Darkness.
I am not sure why I needed to listen to this. For every uninspired Oasis copycat band with a bored sounding singer, there has to be something more interesting and adventurous elsewhere. I don't know. 1001 records isn't that much when you look in the entire world of music. I had a great day listening to Mulatu Astatke instead of the Charlatans.
I have liked this record for a long time. I initially got into it a few years after it was released, thanks to my sister who had a copy laying around that became stapled to my discman (these were the days). To me it's music that is really evocative of a specific time and place - the early 2000 and the whole rock revival after grunge petered out into endless not so great things and after nu-metal took over (in the US) and brit pop started to fade. It seemed that at that time there was much to listen to that had this kind of grit and amateurishness that band like the Strokes, the Libertines or the White Stripes brought over. That was a breath of fresh air for the fan that I was at the time.
This is not particularly original, but it works. It is, in some ways, manufactured too: there is an affected boredom and laziness to Casablancas's vocals and the whole thing seems very intentionally produced to sound somewhat sloppy. But it works. It's got a pretty great bouncy energy about it. I love the bouncy bass, the guitars are pretty sharp (as in cutting and edgy). It manages to sound quite primitive and simple while staying sophisticated. There is also a sense of looming disenchantment and melancholy that is never quite far, like in Alone, Together, or Last Nite that will become more prevalent in their later records and make them, in my view, more interesting.
This record also got me back to listen to the sources of this sound, back to being fascinated by the mix of grit and artsy of 70s NY punk-rock. Come to think of it, this was kind of a bridge towards these ancestors. And it brings quite a lot of charm to this process even as you suspect how manufactured the tears in these tight fitting jeans are.
This was ear candy. Amazing voice harmonies in service of a set of songs that brought me right into a time and space that captures imagination: the counterculture 1960s. The songs are far from easy - there is so much complexity and delicate craft in these arrangements. And at the end of the day, though it looks sunny on the outside when you pass by quickly, there is also deep melancholy and disenchantment inside. It made me think of this deep sadness that happens when you realize that as you are experiencing time, it has already passed and that the best is behind before you know it. A sense of grief for what is still here but will be gone soon.
This said, though I can appreciate the atmosphere and the craft involved in these songs, I don't think I will come back here.
Well, that was fun. Lots of pretty good ideas and feels here. The backing vocals strategically placed, a nod to the 50s. The use of reverse tapes, the little guitar fills, the subtle hits of horn and strings, the production. And then there is Cosmic Dancer, a gem of a song. There is a fragility in the voice of Marc Bolan that makes these songs different and more interesting than if they were just odes to life and pleasure. It is always sexy, but there is an innocence and something else here, a little restrained and sad. You can sense the tears are not far under all the makeup. He really captured what must have been the atmosphere in 1971, when the joy and the sunniness of the hippie movement collapsed on itself and started to show something much grittier.
Cold music you can't touch,
that keeps its distance and
does not invite in
glass everywhere.
there was a series of equations to solve at the source
a puzzle to which the music is a solution
something to look at but not enter
was there a who they had in mind?
made for spaces empty of community.
deserted banks of dry rivers
Where is life?
I will not come back here.
Just the opening track made me smile. That is humour we have not come to know Hendrix for.
It all starts with the blues. But then the trio departs and it quickly gets funky. The drumming gets spicy. The guitar gets fiery. We get to the land of magic.
A sense that this music is both from the world (the blues) and truly not from this world. This is the sound of multiple possible worlds captured at once.
This is great, living, moving music. And yet. They were still learning to shape their power. Incredible, really.
The tone is set from the get go with this intro.. This is a record that will take its time. It will be sparse and lush at the same time. The music drips from the ceiling. The voice comes in. The keyboards fall while the guitar ascends.
Pictures of you. The grace. Curtains of sounds, upwards and downwards, through which the voice appears. Wanting to feel, touch and be touched. Looking for a connection. It gets funky in all the right places (lullaby). It’s has humor and night terrors. It opens up the curtains on paradoxes and opposite directions. Up and down. Dry and wet. Low and High. Hard and soft.
The bass sometimes is retreating, at other times driving the whole, like it it drives this stroll on fascination street. Agressive, steady, round. Guitars swirling around this line. The whole thing has warmth to it, but has the cold edges of punk rock in some of the vocals.
Music is full of paradoxes and they are well exposed here.
The end is always near. Bouncy sounds. A voice in a room full of walls, looking for space and finding it. It is a record where containment talks to freedom. There is space and there are constraints.
Water is a theme. Lots of cascading sounds praying for rain. What is the process of disintegration? What does it mean for things to lose integrity? Particles separate, humans move away from each other. Disintegration is what happens when something is moving away from itself. When it stops holding together. The forces that held it let go, and particles drift.
It sure feels like a lot is falling away here: sounds, relationships, people. I seem to constantly hear the sound of water flowing, falling. The ghost of a stream. THis music is wet. Prayers for rain.
Even when songs have a bounce to them, like disintegration - voices are a bit behind in the mix, like trying to stay afloat. An echo responds.
This record invites impressions. The songs hold multitudes - Yearning for connection, falling and yet full of life. It’s a record full of alienation, but there is a surprising light to it that comes through as well. And perhaps that is the first paradox here.
Homesick- its hypnotic bass, cascading piano, all surrounded and enveloped by the ascending guitar. Until the voice comes in. A dramatic, inspired landscape as the backdrop for a voice that is set loose from the song that this guitar is tracing in the sky. This is a dance between the elements. When the piano comes back, the exile is complete.
The record ends with Untitled. As if when all is said and done, when the disintegration is complete, we lose the ability to name things. Time is undone. But for all that has passed and gone, something emerges whole. It is a simple song. Maybe the closest to the idea of a Ritournelle - a spiral motif, that closes the record with a lift.
When all is said, this might be the most beautiful thing Robert Smith has done.
Depeche Mode, over the years, has been pioneering in bringing a degree of drama, seriousness and hunger for meaning in the world of electronic music. These are musicians that obviously take their craft very seriously. Though I will never be mistaken for a fan, I really respect the path they took as writers, and I truly enjoy some of their songs. They know how to create an atmosphere.
I remembered this record as sounding more dated than it actually was. Yes, all the tricks from the 80s are in and it feels very bip bip, but when you listen closely there are a lot more subtle arrangements pieces that make the songs interesting beyond the ones that everybody knows. Personal Jesus, Enjoy the Silence and Policy of Truth are the obvious hits that we all know, but even in these songs I heard things I had not paid attention too before, that give them depth and provide a window into the attention for detail that went into the writing and recording process.
The themes that the record centres are far from easy, but these songs pass the test of time in surprising ways. This is a nocturnal record. Someone stands in the dark in front an open door, in an empty room, wondering if courage is staying behind or crossing the threshold. Wrestling with choices. Dave Gahan is a great singer for this - he really brings this charisma to carry the battle.
I enjoyed my time here and found a new level of respect for them.
I just lost a whole review of this album. Damn!
I heard somewhere that it was a feminist song by song response to Exile on Main Street. This delivers, big time.
It is a rollercoaster. Going from raw to raunchy to sweet to vulnerable to courageous.
Vulnerageous? always real and honest and authentic.
Liz Phair seems not interested in telling me a pretty story, or being nice, or playing guitar heroically, or finding the smart arrangement, or even singing well. She dips her pen in authenticity and joy and pain and experience, and looks curious about where or how deep she can go while still holding things together. And she ends up telling a beautiful story.
When I first heard her in the 90s, I did not speak the language, at least not fluently enough to understand what the songs were about. But what I did pick up on and resonate with is the vibe, and the broader themes in the songs. Not unlike other grunge and lo-fi bands I was listening to at the time, she made me feel like I too could write songs if I could access that experience. That sense of self-authorship and self-permission still permeates these songs as I listen to them years after, this time understanding what she is talking about.
With this record, Liz Phair opened a space of possibilities and permission for people who did not see themselves in the music that was around, much like she did not see or hear herself in Exile on Main Street. What she did to remedy that is create something beautiful that was truly and apologetically hers. Here was someone standing fully in her own power and fragility, and inviting us in. And so it became possible for others, particularly women, to do the same.
I have a lot of respect and time for this. What a gift to the world!
Oh, what a ride. What a wild, kaleidoscopic, pleasurable ride. What a rich, unique, bombastic contribution. I am not even sure what musical landscape it is contributing to. It is one that is full of colors, that is spacious and intimate at the same time. One that can unfold and reveal itself more over time. One I can dance and daydream and feel the melancholy of time.
It is serious music that does not take itself seriously.
Music is love, pleasure, feels, and play, and these people have managed to create something beautiful to bring me along. Definitely worth a 1001 listens.
This was quite good, and I wish I could have spend more time with this record. Lots of little sound gems scattered all around, like bread crumbs tracing a path in the forest...
The first songs remind me a bit of Stereolab, and brings in flavours of Krautrock. It might be her voice. The sound landscape is both minimalist and quite rich. Overall the whole thing is very intriguing.
The themes and the sounds echo one another - images of nature, curtains of butterflies and a summery meadow. There is an interesting interplay between the natural, organic feel of the whole, and some elements and themes that have quite an industrial feel to them - like the bass and drum parts in the 1st song, or the synths loops in the 3rd song. It gives off a feel of what would happen if we get to see the 2 worlds (the post-industrial and the natural) as integrated into a new whole.
Her voice is what brings it together. Naive, airy, a bit tenuous at times, like if it was walking an edge between two universes. Riding the beauty flourishing in surprising encounters.
Not necessarily my cup of tea, so I do not know whether I'll come back here often. But I enjoyed my time here.
That is a record I grew up with, was gifted to me, and that I have thoroughly absorbed. Is there a point for me to say more?
It has everything. Storytelling. Social commentary. Some of his best poetry. Nuanced, intentional instrumentation. A look at Mother Nature on the run. A window into a unique mind. A feel for something very old, but also very new. And healing, in many ways. This is comfort music.
I have definitely listened to it more than 1001 times already, and yet it is always a good visit.
This was not memorable. It was not bad, but it did not hook me anywhere, did not inspire me to daydream, or dance, it did not move me or make me think or feel much. Unfortunately I do not care much about the Zutons after today.
They did make an album, that's dedication to the craft and worthy of respect. But does it make it one of the 1001 albums I have to listen to? I do not think so.
I really enjoyed this. There is a love for music and creating together something on the spot that matters to them, that is quite beautiful. The thing being created is also not about them. Even though they are obviously very gifted musicians, I do not feel like I am not just watching them (or listening to them) do their thing. I am part of it, being taken for a ride in the best way.
The chemistry is palpable, and the songs feel epic without being pretentious. I can freely wander in them, without getting lost.
This album, for me, plays to an old idea of music being something that one participates to, even if the role is to listen. It makes me think of music as a form of ceremony, where listening is a form of action as important as playing.
There is a simplicity to this, even as the songs take on such complex, travelling shapes. In the end, we are here together and that matters.
I will definitely come back here.
As far as Beastie Boys albums go this sounds like what it is: a transition album. But it also has its own huge merits.
It is quite unique in that this is the one record where they pushed themselves to experiment with sampling as far as they could at the time. And far they went. There is no way this record could be done today, with this amount of sampling. It would cost a fortune (which apparently it did, by the way!).
These are a bunch of snotty kids from NY, raised on bad jokes and underage drinking, and this sense permeates the record. It's funny, full of energy, it's all over the place, it's often really dumb (Johnny Ryall?), inappropriate (Hey Ladies?), and it borders on chaos. But it's also incredibly tight and cohesive, sonically speaking. It is relentless in its experimentation.
It is urban music. Chaotic, hot, loud. It often feels like standing on a street corner and having all the sounds of city swirling by you. People run around, bump into you, everywhere you look there is something interesting and weird going on, and many stories are happening at the same time. Characters come and go, say one word and disappear. It's as disorienting and attention competing as modern life. It's also sunny and unthreatening. And there are the Boys, trying their best to help us keep up with their experience in this world. There is a deep love and reverence for the music that brought them here and the characters that opened to them the doors to this strange and fascinating world.
After this one they went back to their instruments and brought back their hardcore roots into the mix, finding the sound they came to be most known for. But they would build on the seeds planted here, where they positioned themselves as serious artists in their own right.
This here is a classic. I have been visiting for close to 30 years and will definitely be back.
I wish I had more time to unfurl my thought on this. Every time I listen to this I appreciate it more, and see and hear more things - more feels, more little details, more moods, more subtle shifts. Every time I get touched in a deeper way.
There is so much talent packed in these 14 songs. So many stories, so many accents. His voice and his guitar work is beautiful. The craft involved to create each of these little objects is unbelievable.
A gem of a record, that I would probably not have listened to if not for this list.
I have listened to a lot of Sonic Youth in my life, but not this one. This is a band that is also a movement.
They have been a pretty important figure in my journey towards weirder and noisier in music during my teenage years. I can't say this is my cup of tea now, but I still give respect to their sincerity and drive.
As always, here we find them searching, looking for something that is eluding them. This is the work of a bunch of punk kids trying to find their way and make art that is true to their experience, and translate that quest in sound. As far as tension and release goes, they still play on that edge, bringing a very primitive take on it. And sometimes we get a reminder that this is still Rock'n'Roll, as the ghost of mystery train checks in.
This is also the 80s in the concrete Jungle. This is growing up in reaganomics, and the city is in ruins and all your friends are poor and artists. You play on second hand guitars and broken microphones. This is messy, loud, threatening. At times it feels like chaos is taking over. That we are witnessing some kind of sonic dissolution. Everything then is hanging by the thread of Steve Shelley's drums. Then there are moments of quiet menace, usually carried by Kim Gordon.
This is not beautiful, nor is it trying to be. They are after something else than beauty. I am not quite sure what that something else is, so I guess that is why so many still listen after all these years.
I gotta admit I did tune out at some point. But I still have a lot of respect for them as artists and gratitude for how they opened my ears to difference in music.
How and why did we get here? This could have easily been avoided.
I spent many, many hours listening to this record when it came out. It is fascinating to revisit these albums that have shaped my musical taste in so many ways.
This one smells like sleepless nights with friends, listening to music, playing cool and thinking about what it would mean to live the kind of life that Buckley and others talk about in their songs. What it would mean to be in love like this, to live like this, feel like this, dream like this. We were a bunch of teenagers trying to understand what being alive was supposed to mean, by listening to these songs. Jeff Buckley taught us a lot.
This album also opened my eyes and ears to other music that would become important: Nina Simone, Benjamin Britten, Captain Beefheart (Gary Lucas, who co-wrote 2 songs here, used to be Beefheart's guitarist in the later part of his career). Life courses through these songs, often over the top epic, but always sincere. He caught lightning in a bottle with this one. Many tried after, but I can't think of anyone who got it in the same way.
And then he was gone. Just like that, it was over.
This is one that walks with me.
I liked this quite a lot - lots of good, unusual ideas. It can veer towards the epic, but retains an edge, especially in the guitars and bass sounds. The singer sounds reasonably possessed. It's got some punk-inspired energy to it, and it also packs a lot of little things in the songs that make them very intriguing and ingenious.
This is the second Echo and the Bunnymen record I get through this list, and they have not disappointed. So far, one of the good discoveries from here.
These germans could really pack an atmosphere. Some songs feel like they expand and move in waves, others are tight and oppressive. They embrace the qualities and constraints of electronic instruments to create something dramatic and that actually does not feel repetitive.
The songs bring in different themes and textures, and tell different stories than what the world of pop / rock music was interested in. It is all robotic and industrial, obviously. But also surprisingly soulful and poetic. And definitely unsettling.
Not quite my cup of tea, I'll admit. But I can recognize and appreciate its merits as an artistic achievement.
Another formative album on the list. They made better music after this one. More nuanced, more opened to the world, less muscular. But this kind of defined an era, for better or worse (the worse being the staggering number of bands that more or less built a career trying to copy this album).
It also brought along a better model for masculinity in mainstream rock, where it was possible to play heavy and be compassionate and sensible and generally try to be a good human. How refreshing was that after the 80's?
It was near the top of my playlist in the early 90's. It is not anymore, but still brings back good memories and smiles.
This is an album I would love to spend more time with, I don't think I really got to know it. Every once in a while this happens with this list.
One side effect of the list is that it gets me to reflect how much of the music I listen to, as eclectic as it is, is really grounded in a tradition and a culture that is in direct relation to my upbringing. Past a certain amount of degrees of relationship, I guess the potential of 'discovery' fades. Past that point, I need to rely on other sources to find out. When I was younger, the music press played that role: I used to religiously read record reviews and music magazines in my teenage years. Or liner notes: the first thing you did when you bought a CD was to read the notes to discover what musicians had to say about who influenced them, or who they sampled. And then you would go to the local library to find these other artists, and that was how I built my culture.
The age of streaming does not really allow you to do that anymore, so you have to find other ways and be intentional about it. Or you stay within your niche. Nowadays, I find that reading artists' memoirs gives me a window into their evolution as musicians, and plays that role in mapping out lineages and pointing me towards new music. I also come to appreciate this list as a means to show me towards music that is different from what I usually listen to (even though I struggle with its bias towards white, masculine, western artists).
War is one of these bands that the list gives me a chance to get exposed to. And I am so grateful for it. This is a great record, with lots to chew on. The songs feel spacious, obviously funky, and in conversation with the world surrounding them. There is a great sense of place, of community. A song is shared, co-created with a multitude of voices and characters, sometimes singing together and sometimes apart. Four Cornered Room is a mini-masterpiece, with its haunting harmonica.
I will be coming back here.
Nothing to write home about here. The songs kind of blend into each other. It all feels safe and familiar, nothing dangerous, nothing surprising.
It evokes the kind of music you might have played on a long road trip, one of these where the landscape barely changes. You might have gotten that tape used at a small record store in one of the small towns you stopped in on your way to whatever coast you were heading to at the time, while your friends were stopping for chips and peanuts. You may have played it repeatedly over the many hours you spent in the back of your friend's tiny car, wondering if you would make it over the top that hill you were pushing through.
Once the trip was over, you probably never listened to it again. But you have fond memories of these days. You sometimes think about these folks but you doubt you will ever see them again.
What can I say? These songs here have pretty much managed to tap directly into both the tradition and the future of American counterculture. This continues to inspire, close to 60 years after it was released.
Everything was exploded. Everything was allowed. This album does not capture the feeling of whatever reality Dylan was living in. It frees it. Dylan took the constraints of songwriting of the time, digested them and created for himself a whole new rulebook.
And then he did again. Over, and over. He don't look back. And when you see him there, he's gone.
He made freedom a verb, and a practice.
I never quite understood the hype surrounding this band. But I also never really listened to their work before this album today. I appreciated it. The songs convey atmosphere. It was perfect for a grey-ish pring day in the city.
You can feel they have given a lot of thought, time and craft to their sound. There seems to be a lot of work behind this. These are people who obviously take their craft very seriously. All interventions seem precise, intentional, thoughtful - every song like a carefully crafted little box.
The flipside is that they also kind of sound the same, and that spontaneity seems lost. The whole ends up feeling a bit too sanitized and clean for my taste.
A good summer record! Bouncy and sunny, but not without depth and a bit of drama. Celebrating life, being together, being human, what's not to like?
It's ironic that it's called 'in our heads', given how much it makes me want to get out of my head. And it sometimes succeeds.
This would probably be a really fun live act.
If you were looking for misogyny you found it.
Finally. Something that gets us to travel outside of the anglo-dominant music world!
This is delightfully weird, all over the place, exploded and inventive. It just packs a lot in its 37 minutes, so much so that to fully digest it one day is not enough. The voices, the guitars, all go to some pretty strange places that I know nothing about. It travels in time and space, dreams of freedom and tenderness and fury. It welcomes and celebrates life at every turn, inviting nature as part of its choir of voices.
I will have to come back here.
This is the kind of record I am grateful for - something I have been hearing about for a long time without getting around to actually listen, and that pushes me out of my comfort zone.
This here is a beautiful record. Sandy Denny's voice makes the fog lift. The view is perfect. The land is majestic and full of life.
Listening to these songs is like witnessing the reconciliation of time, and this is what good folk music does. Honouring the tradition that brought us here while encapsulating contemporary emotions and atmosphere.
The playing here is gorgeous, keeps us attached to the world and to community, while whatever Sandy Denny does brings out the magic, the heart, and the sense of something that is there without being seen. She sings the river that runs below the river and gives a voice to the ghosts.
Beauty.
My relationship with this one is complicated.
On one hand, it has been a major influence to so much music that I grew up with and love, and I have travelled with Iggy for most of my life, with the stooges or solo. There is Bowie, in all his Berlin glorious sound, jiving with Iggy and the two of creating something fresh, decadent, martial yet organic, sexy. Often demented, yet also often sensitive.
And then there is sweet sixteen and its ode to sex with underage girls, and I struggle. There is Turn Blue. These were not good people, and yet they made great music. This poses one of the days' great questions, around how we value art made by people who hurt others in the process, and where this hurt becomes a theme in the music. If I think of art as a way to build community and find an expression of our common humanity, then this is highly tainted.
Of course, then, there is the grotesque. The exaggeration of everything, of every excess, every evil, to give voice to the not glorious parts, the ugliness of this common humanity. There has to be a place for it. The selfishness, the uncaring, the alienation and the loneliness.
One star, for the same reason as I gave one star to Doggystyle. I can't stand behind art that dehumanizes others.
An amazing record by an amazing musician.
It's like the earth is talking. It's like the wind sings to us. It's like water filling cracks I did not know I had. I do not know what he is saying but this makes me feel more.
Good art does that. It meanders, explores corners of the soul like a good story can. And gathers the embers of a life aiming towards its end, surrounded by friends and grounded in the place where the story began and unfolded.
And though he was dying at the time and knew it, there is so much life that is flowing through these songs.
What a beautiful gift to leave behind.
What a statement of a first record!
It is inspiring to see someone burst on the scene this way, fully formed as an artist, unapologetic in her power and her choices.
Everything about this record feels bold and in your face. It is lush, epic, dramatic and raw. A masterclass in authenticity and storytelling.
Though I am not a fan of this particular music style, I was surprised and quite taken by this. I appreciated the production and the songwriting here. Lots of detailed work on the soundscapes. I really loved the bass, the liquid textures here and there. Solange's voice does not particularly touch me, but I love the self affirmation that comes through her lyrics.
The community comes through here: friends come in and out of the songs, bring their gifts, stay for a while and leave, giving it the feel of a moment in life. It is open, it breathes, it is joyful and free without shying away from the pain. A really thoughtfully constructed album, and another testimony of Black brilliance.
I never cared a whole lot for early Beatles. Sorry fellas, it has not changed. I am not with the Beatles yet. I’ll wait for their souls to turn into rubber.
This is amazing: Woody Guthrie, Billy Bragg, Wilco. Natalie Merchant guests for a couple songs.
I had never heard this before. They created a beautiful nest for Guthrie's poetry to soar from. This is co-creation across generations, and a truly inspiring project.
There is something about the Kinks that seems so quintessentially british that I always feel somewhat transported to a different time and place every time I listen to them. A sense of mood, played with a straight back, a devastatingly quirky sense of humour, a certain idea of melancholy, a sense of rhythm.
This album finds them at their best. Songs are populated with intelligent and funny / serious lyrics, interesting little finds scattered throughout (like the horn sections at key moments), fast changes that keep me on my toes and, in a way, prefigure the rise of progressive rock. They are ambitious, but without taking themselves too seriously.
Listening to this also reminded me how much a band like the Libertines owes them. A really enjoyable record, that I will happily come back to.
What a great, crazy record! A whirlwind of emotional landscapes on that one, which was surprising to me because emotion is not something I think about a whole lot when I think about Eno. But this really surprised me: it's a bit manic, often fun turns to yearning (on some faraway beach), to sinister (blank frank), to joyful, to sorrow, etc. The experimentation is there, of course, the playfulness. It's like seeing in his head, and it's messy! Promises of things to come: you can sense the smell of what he would do with a band like the talking heads only a few years after. Everything is there, though he was just getting started.
Nothing can be added to what has already been said about this. Eleanor Rigby alone is worth the price of admission, but the whole record is perfect.
It's get the obvious out of the way. It has been getting harder for me to listen to Kanye given his spiralling in the last few years. He has become the anchor of toxic masculinity mixed with untreated mental illness.
But the man is also a genius, and this album might be his masterpiece. It is also really disturbing to listen to now because in a way it represents a pivotal point in his trajectory. Kanye, here, is starting to show who he really is, and his beautiful dark twisted fantasy is becoming his world. The beats, the samples, the arrangements are unbelievable as they were since he stepped on the scene, but thematically we are retreating from the often hilarious, ridiculous, messy but brilliant raps of his earlier albums to something far darker.
He is a complicated man, who oozes pain and has shown himself to be a real shitty human being human being as a result of that. Yes, he remains a musical giant, but I can't get behind the other stuff.
I have no idea what happened here, but that was a lot of fun! What a loud, moving, kaleidoscopic, wild, delirious ride. Would come again.
This was quite a surprising album, much better than I expected. I remembered the hits but most of the songs stand the test of time quite well, much better than most of their brit bands peers. It has more groove and grit than I thought. Arrangements are clever, occasionally a bit experimental too. Bittersweet Symphony is a little classic.
Last one of the Smiths! Brilliant songs, Morrissey's poetry is sharp, and he has not yet turned into a neofascist. Johnny Marr's guitar work will quietly influence thousands of wannabes in the decade to come.
It's my favourite Smiths record, not necessarily the best, but the first that I truly listened to (in several road trips, like all records should be listened to). In a strange way, I share it with my mom who absolutely does not listen to this kind of music. But she was trapped with me in a metal box for hours that weird time in 2003 and there was only this tape and one by Pavement. So I know this pretty much by heart.
Now if only Morrissey could have gotten his act together and become a decent human...
I think I disliked the hype surrounding that record so much when it came out that I refused to really listen to it. All the talk about the new Beatles, the drama with the other bands of the time, added to the fact that the music did not seem all that original, completely turned me off.
But all these years later, it really stands the test of time. The songs feel honest and there is a sense of energy and life to them. It is good rock'n'roll, makes its point and leaves it there. I enjoyed it a lot.
McCartney doing McCartney things. His output post Beatles is uneven, but here he is at his most versatile best.
The album is not as messy as Ram (my absolute favourite of his!), but still blends lots of different genres together in an ambitious stew, while excelling at everything he seems to be touching. There is a love for music, for good songwriting, for playing, that shines through all these songs.
That is always what strikes me when I listen to McCartney at his peak: here is a man who seems to love good music and what it does to him and to others, and this love is contagious.
Well that was a fun record, carried by a fresh voice in this sea of mostly anglo-saxon white men making music.
An important record, would come back here again.
It's Bowie. Life on Mars is a mini-masterpiece that has been a part of my life for a long time. A few of my best friends growing up developed an obsession with this song, and we listened to it hundreds of time over the course of a summer we spent gazing at stars, being wildly irresponsible and overdramatic, taking late night walks, exploring psychedelics and pretending that adulthood would never come. That's Hunky Dory for me. To this day when we see each other, we kiss each other 12 times on the cheeks, just like we did then. Even if don't see each other for years, we remember that ritual, and even the memory makes me smile and slightly melancholic. These people taught me so much about friendship, love, being human, appreciating beauty.
Solid grooves, great vocals, great bass, great guitar work. Nothing t throw there, just a really solid funk / soul record that would be endlessly sampled by the hip hop community a decade later. Great music.
Some no non sense, good ol’fashioned rock’n’roll. Nothing fancy, nothing mind blowing, nothing new. Sincere and to the point!
That was fun! Pavement was such a refreshing and unique voice when I was growing up and finding myself, and deciding what I liked in terms of music.
I first heard this a few years after it came out. it did not exactly sell millions in the small provincial French town I grew up in: I think the number of people I knew who listened stands at exactly two. This brings me back to that time where if you found someone who liked to the same music they would almost become family.
There is some complexity to the songs, although they are played in a very primitive way. They are also better musicians than they are sometimes given credit for. Stephen Malkmus as a songwriter really captures something of his generation's atmosphere: the limited possibilities, the boredom, the constrained dreams and aspirations, the melancholy, the weirdness of the mainstream, and its pull, too...
The 90s, in a nutshell.
It's Miles Davis. Of course it's great - this album changed the course of modern jazz after all!
And yet - I remain a bit untouched by this, as if this is talking to me from a distance. Where later stage Davis takes me by the guts, this does not grab me. There is a politeness to it today, maybe unfair because I am obviously receiving it 70 years after it was shared with the world and subsequently influenced thousands of musicians.
To the non-musician I am, it sounds a bit formulaic and... Boring?
It's not often that you listen to a record for the first time and instantly know this is going to be a classic. This one is that. Not all the songs are at the same level, but the strong moments of this album are so strong that their beauty and grace wash over everything else.
I remember when she came on the scene. I was a music-loving teenager who was starting to understand and value what was weird, different and singular. Björk was already all of these things and more. She was unrestrained, and sang with a freedom and abandon that I had never heard before. She did what she pleased, and sounded like someone who approached art, and life, without judgment.
I still find that extremely inspiring, and she remains one of my musical (and life!) heroes. These days her music may not be as commercially viable, but it remains utterly hers - interesting, unique, sincere and exploratory. She is someone who to me exemplifies the joy that can be found in creativity, and a learning mindset. After all these years, she is still growing on me.
This is overall not my cup of tea, but there are some bangers in that record. Slower, heavier and dirtier electronic music than I usually hear.
Straight-up classic that opened my world to hip hop and hardcore punk at the same time. This is still a pure joy to listen to after all these years.
From a style and theme perspective the Boys retain their humour, but they have matured. The misogyny of earlier albums is gone and straightened up in the opening song of the record, and have their first attempts of including Tibetan musical themes.
They are facing the impossible task to blend all their influences, and somehow they do it. It's messy, often ridiculous in its scope, noisy and brash and obnoxious. You love it or hate it, but it's hard to remain indifferent. For me, it is one of these records that have shaped my identity and told me I did not always have to choose between what to love and what to do. It showed me you could be several things at once, and still have integrity and soul.
I refused to listen to anything reggae for a loooooong time, out of spite for all my reggae loving high school peers who I thought were exemplifying an extremely boring subculture at the time. I came to equate reggae with a sense of drugged out sameness, dipped in smelly pseudo mysticism. But mostly, I was just reacting to bad imitation reggae and to what I perceived as cultural laziness, leaning towards what I suspected to be cultural appropriation.
Unfortunately this closed off attitude turned me off from artists like Marley and records like this. This is a straight up masterpiece. Tight musically, sparse but precise, and hopeful.
No, I don't need to listen to this before I die.
They have not arrived yet. But they are coming.
They are so young. And they sound and sing it.
The songs float, unweighted.
Lots of hand-holding, but it does not anchor them.
I did not know Crowded House, shockingly, before listening to this. I also now feel OK that I did not. This album is good. Songs are good. well crafted, well produced, well written. I just don't feel particularly grabbed by anything. It is light, pleasurable even. But it is not memorable.
Oooh, this is good. Really good!
This is what it must feel like to discover a classic about 30 years after it came out. Not too late.
Roaring and funky.
Liz Fraser's voice might be the closest thing to the sirens our old buddy Homer was describing a few years back. Whimsical, hypnotic, mesmerizing.
Except this is definitely contemporary. The siren is occupying a box, but she has not lost her freedom. Her voice does not expand in space but she fully inhabits the small corners and fills everything that is to fill.
Her bandmates have crafted the perfect case. It has space, texture and mystery. It holds nuance, as not all is soft in this world they have created, but even the abrasive can be lush here.
It sounds like it comes from another world, but it's very much this one.
Meh. Not much there to hook me. There is a bit of a sameness floating here. The production is mostly irritating in that I hear that kind of sound blaring out of car windows on a regular Thursday evening in my neighbourhood. If I already feel forced to listen to it when I take a stroll in the city, I definitely do not need to listen to it more before I die. Thanks, but no thanks.
That was beautiful. Though this is not a style of music that I am fond of, I loved how she expanded the scope of all the material she chose for this. And that voice...
This is JB before JB. He has not yet turned up the funk machine to its full glory to become Mr. Dynamite. Here he shows up as a really good R & B / soul singer. The seeds are there - the showmanship, the energy, the voice. The band is tight, it's just that the material is not quite fully there yet.
Nirvana's fury, documented by Steve Albini.
Beautiful, imperfect, tender, raucous, hungry, cynical, emotional, viscerally sincere Nirvana.
An abrasive caress.
Kurt Cobain's true legacy.
I need to rest after I listen to this.
A classic. It's boisterous, swampy, stinky and has no class, but it's fully alive. Like your 8 year old self and your cousins after an afternoon of fighting each other with rotten fruit.
I must have listened to this record millions of time. Back in the day, I had to buy the CD again because the first copy wore out.
Tom Waits was a big part of my life for a long time. He inspired me to live my life and pay attention to the world in unusual ways: noticing what is not like the rest of the world, noticing how things work, noticing the strange in the everyday, listening for good stories of small time.
He was another of these artists that made me feel like he was talking to me and that made the world an interesting and endlessly creative place to live in.
This is music that is also a way of life and an ethics: of compassion, community, weirdness. It's beautiful in the strangest of ways.
This was quite enjoyable and fun to listen to. A collection of unpretentious songs, simple in the best way.
This type of music is not generally my cup of tea, but I can appreciate why other people may like it. It is sophisticated yet very accessible. There clever arrangements and hooks all over the place. Musicianship is pretty much flawless, as each song really is its own universe.
So - it's competent, and even beautiful at times, and yet that is not quite enough to move me. What I get from experiences like this is really an ongoing inquiry about what is it about music that gets my nervous system and my imagination moving? I don't quite know, and it is probably a wide spectrum of things, moments, and experiences. And that a lot of them are linked to relationships: parents, siblings, friends, lovers, weddings, burials, campfires, roadtrips, conversations, heartbreaks and love.
And nowadays every once in a while I hear something for the first time out of the blue and that really rocks my world - Arvo Pärt, James Blake, Idles, Pomme, Elizabeth Cotten, Karen Dalton, Jeremy Dutcher, Elisapie, Gòrecki. But I never quite know what is going on when I get these goose bumps. I guess that might be spirit.
Punk-rock flat-out classic that basically wrote the code for what would become hardcore. What's not to like? I don't care if I can't understand what he's saying, this is great.
Another flawless classic. 5 stars, what else?
It's the Who. A bunch of classic epics on this one.
My father had this record, but I don't remember listening to it that much when I was a kid. I do remember being strangely unsettled by the cover image.
On the whole, it is quite inventive with its use of synths and the mix between primitive rock'n'roll and bits of traditional / folky tunes scattered here and there.
The songs seem to be stretching themselves self between several ambitions: attaining the visceral quality of the best rock music, telling a good story and showing musical sophistication. The album does not always deliver on all fronts, it sometimes turns out a bit pompous (Bargain), but you can never fault their sincerity.
There are a lot of things to love here. These people know how to create great sense of atmosphere. Overall, though, the sounds blend into a kind of sameness that ends up being a bit disorienting, like a landscape with landmarks. There is no tension / release dynamic here - maybe that is makes this music so strange - songs are floating and ebbing into each other. It was good for a stretch, then I got a bit seasick.
KD Lang is a special treasure. This album is proof of that.
What a fun record! It's full of life and joy, it's ambitious and original, and pays homage to Black greatness in a way that makes it live and never mummified. Amazing talent.
A really fun collection of tunes! Surprisingly fresh, even after all these years.
Great album, that did so much to open my ears to electronic music. It's funky, also quite inventive and contemplative. A classic.
OK, you might see me, and I appreciate that. But did you need to make a whole album about it? I don't quite see the point.
It's the Pixies. It's weird, it's loud, it's quiet, it's light, it's heavy, it's tender, it's joyful, absurd, brash, pop, punk.
It's fucking wonderful.
My favourite Neil Young record!
This is so beautiful. An absolutely flawless record. We listened to it so much in my house growing up that for a number of years I could not listen to them anymore. But I got around to recognize this as the brilliant collection of songs, voices, atmospheres, landscapes, emotions.
Absolute bangers from start to finish. Hallucinatory, danceable, dangerous in the best of ways.
Absolute beauty. What a treat.
I found this one a bit hard to care about. I guess MBV would have made an interesting live experience, though necessarily a pleasant one. Weirdly melodic, but so drenched in noise, distortion and feedback that it's difficult to sense the landscape.
It's bit like driving and finding yourself in the middle of a rainstorm, and looking through the windshield. All forms distorted, barely shapes. And you quickly feel disoriented and a bit lost, even as the path you are on is a familiar one, one you have taken hundreds of times. All of a sudden these curbs are dangerous.
Everyone around you is as lost as you are.
Absolute classic by a genius at the height of her powers. Everything Joni Mitchell touched at that time struck gold. A truly unique voice of beauty, grit and grace. Masterpiece.
That’s a plain awesome record.
A classic, genre-defining piece of work.
A big part of my soundtrack of the 90s.
What else? Beth Gibbons's voice still splits me open. Utley's and Barrow's soundtracks still slaps. Dripping melancholy and rainy sunday afternoons in grey cities. Not everyday, every season music. November made into sound.
I get that this album was hugely significant when it came out. Songs are powerful, honest , vulnerable. It was a whole vibe in 1995.
But it also hasn't aged very well. The production is muscular in a way that does not serve the songs. Lots of unfortunate post-grunge vibes.
It's aged surprisingly well. Guitars have this massive 90's sound that actually works well here instead of drowning everything (especially lack of imagination and musicianship) as is often the case elsewhere. This is not smart music by any stretch, but it is fun and full of energy. I never was a fun and still am not but I can recognize the appeal.
This is a great album by a band that might still be underrated. Jarvis Cocker shines as one of the best lyricist of his generation: funny (I'm not Jesus, though I have the same initials), touching, clever. His descriptions of middle class english life, the boredom, the ridiculousness, the yearning for excitement and normalcy, the oddness, are just perfect. And the band is tight and unassumingly inventive: using samples for the first time ("this is hardcore"), with crisp guitars and bouncing watery bass and slapping drums. Sometimes reminiscent of Scary Monster-era Bowie (Party Hard). It lives in the cracks: somber / fun, lush / dry, melancholic yet danceable, hopeless yet optimistic and full of life. Brilliant work.
This album is an absolute masterpiece.
What can I say that has not been said about this classic? It might be the best known work by Bowie. I don't think it's his best though. It certainly is interesting and has been obviously hugely influential, and yet when you know what he did afterwards, it does feel a bit short and empty.
Bowie basically spend his whole life developing his craft as a songwriter, so it's not to say that he hasn't arrived yet. In fact, I think Bowie understood better than most people that arriving is a never ending process. This, as a step, was a significant one. Just not the one I resonated with the most, I guess.
Great album. This type of record is a great example of what this list can bring: exposure to great music that I could not know otherwise.
Not my cup of tea by any stretch. But the songs are, as always with him, amazing. The heroic 80s drums production is a bit of a turn off for me, but I can acknowledge that this album was extremely influential in music, for good reasons.
There is such a great tension between the muscular production and the vulnerability and rawness of the lyrics that lives well to this day. I am actually really thankful to this list for helping me get into Springsteen. He is someone that I kind of brushed off as a boomer act, but there is so much more to him.
I was pleasantly surprised by this album. It's weird but occasionally quite catchy. Kings of the wild frontier is a great song. A bit uneven though.
I am trying to be kind and generous but this is really obnoxious. I did NOT have to listen to this before dying.
It's Nick Drake. Enough said. The man could do no wrong musically. Brilliant guitars, beautiful voice. And these songs. Haunting but comfortable like a warm blanket at the same time. This is a record that was touched by grace.
This album has everything.
Remember finding a cheap used copy of this in a record shop, and putting it on just by sheer curiosity. And then getting my mind blown.
What an unbelievable document of the time: the talent, the humanity, the brotherhood, the beauty of it.
Yes it is occasionally a bit pompous and self-indulgent, but also touched by grace. One of my desert island records.
Very fun record. All over the map, exploding with creativity. Most of the time I felt I did not know where I was or what was happening. After a while, I become a bit unsettled and disoriented: as if in a room where there is no floor, ceiling, walls. Do I belong to myself?
This album reminded me quite a bit of the Beta Band. Which is a good thing because the Beta Band is awesome.
A good mix of funky and weird and psychedelic. I enjoyed it a lot.
This album for me is the genius of community at work. Everybody here is at the top of their game, and the synergy and the joy of playing together is palpable. An island of coherence in an ocean of chaos.
Beautiful chaos of a record. The grit, the joy and the madness of that time in New York made into music.
So. Much. Energy. What would this guy have done if he had lived long enough to listen to 70s Stevie, Funkadelic, Sly Stone, the Beach Boys, Hendrix?
Great album!! Simple Twist of Fate is one of my favourite Dylan songs ever. An under-known gem of a song.
Yikes, this is really not very good.
Well. This was original. I did not enjoy it.
On any day, there is more inspiring, longing, joyful, cathartic music to listen to than this.
I can appreciate the craft and the intention that went into it - these people wrote songs, made art, and were committed enough to share it with the world. That is gutsy and vulnerable and honourable.
But these two dancers are not dancing with me.
This album grooves, slaps and suffers at the same time. It's all liquid basses, funky guitars, soaring vocals, and aching words, angry and sad. It is beauty.
What is there to say? It's Nina Simone. She is everything that is great about humanity. A treasure.
Well of course this is going to be awesome.
I know a lot of people love Zappa's music. I can't. I appreciate the man and all he stood for and the freedom he exuded and inspired. But I can't find any emotional connection to the sounds.
Properly unbelievable record.
Horses. Horses. Horses. Horses.
The emergence of an important voice.
Patti Smith is a human treasure.
This record opened many doors for me. I had never heard anything so raw and cold and incandescent at the same time. It was and is a fascinating thing to feel, late in the night, in the city or in the country.
It's winter music, a soundtrack for an uncanny world, still here not far under the surface of the one I live in now. A brutal beauty in the air.
I guess not for me. This album really helps me appreciate focus. There are probably lots of great ideas in there but I am having a hard time recognizing a single one of them. I am left very unmoved and confused at the same time.
Nope. Did not need to listen to this.
Absolute gem of a record. It's clever, funny, and you can dance to it. What is not to like?
Bof. C'est souvent joli, mais pas vraiment mémorable. Vibe typique folk-rock années 70, ce disque a sans doute eu beaucoup d'influence sur beaucoup d'artistes, mais aujourd'hui c'est un peu beige. C'est probable que je n'écouterai plus jamais ça.
Ce qui irrite, c'est qu'il y a tellement d'autre musique qui pourrait être inclue dans cette liste à la place de ce type de disque, mais ça nécessiterait d'aller au-delà de la culture anglo-saxonne qui domine outrageusement ici.
Music for people who are testing their sound system for 253rd time today.
Nope. J'avais définitivement pas besoin d'entendre ça.
This is one of the beautiful records by the man who used to be Smog. It is gorgeous.
You might not like it and it's OK. Maybe it's not for you. You still deserve love and joy and all the good things.
You might love it. If that's true, you are one of my people. I smile at you from the other side of the street, the river, the world. You are blessed, my friend.
Thank you Mr. Callahan.
I don't quite know what to say about this. It's not bad. But it sure is busy. I can sense a deep love for music and community, but this feels tedious.
Jah Wobble is an incredible bass player, with a pretty unique and nuanced sound. As a vocalist, though, there is something that does not line up with the rest. A contrast between the expansive sense of possibilities from the music and the limited range of his voice. Maybe that is why the spoken bits work better than when he tries to sing.
Did I need to listen to this before I die? No, I don't think so.
A bit polarizing, I see.
This was a defining album of my (sonic) youth.
Also one of the very shows I have been at.
Unquestionable 5 out of 5 for the awesomeness of teenage angst.
Also for the unlimited love for early rock'n'roll and blues.
My ears were never the same after this.
FUCK SHIT UP!
Delicate, haunting songs from a unique and beautiful soul.
I keep coming back to this guy, and this album, ever since it came out and I first heard Happiness (the gondola man) on a compilation from a french music magazine. I did not notice it much at first, but that is what haunting is. A little melody, a feeling that never really goes away one it shows up.
That's it. He came, sang his songs, showed us his heart so we could see ours and he never left, though his body is gone.
Elliott Smith is a human gem.
Waterloo Sunset already is a 4 stars.
Then there are the other songs that are amazing as well.
Funny, clever, inventive, trippy.
The Kinks are a gem.
That was really fun!
Also tighter than most punk bands of the era. I was expecting something a lot more chaotic, and was surprised - there were some really good hooks there.
Just an overall amazing record. Off the charts musicianship, great songwriting.
This is actually pretty great. Reminds me a lot of Fugazi, soundwise. Lots of energy and more complexity than your typical grunge era thing. sincere, not boring, brings the fuzz.
I can see why this was influential, but it sounds like it was recorded in a rusty can of sardines. I had to bail after 1 song and a half.
brains melting on the edge of chaos
rock machines banging metal pipes on concrete walls
will we find hopes for beauty
this record is a trip
that started in a crowded pub room
sounds that carried experiences and friendships
and memories of love and wonder
and enduring feels of teenage crushes
a life whispered in the winds
I don't get it. More blend than this, you get soup.
It's Nick Cave
with a broken heart
more water images
and an adaptation of a 16th century Louise Labbe poem
and a song about an oratory in brompton
what's not to like?
Once I had soup. It tasted great.
No words. Bass pulsing through the bones. Horns shaking the floor. Drama and flowers. Something sweaty creeping in. It might be love in the end.
This.Is epic. One of. the best hip hop records I have ever listened to. So cool, so tight, so fun, so good. More please!
This is actually pretty great!
Absolutely excellent. A soundtrack for the turn of the millenium industrial blues.
Another mid record ripping off Blues by american white men? Yes, please, by all means.
Seriously. In 2026, who needs to listen to this?
Straight up classic. Imperfect, messy, gritty, sincere and incredibly joyful. Yes, they can be pompous and are not immune to the odd catastrophe, but they get up again, dust themselves and play on. Respect.
Just play Pagan Poetry again. And again. And again.
So. Gosh. Darned. Funky
moves that make you want to move
open with eyes closed
appreciate the grit.
the Beats are fun and drip life
but I can't get in
if not being yelled at
is never not a good thing
this can be avoided
putting music on
does not always lead to bliss
don't remember this
