Apr 15 2024
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Talking Book
Stevie Wonder
Stevie legend more like. Good album. Great mix of chill vibes and sexy funky tunes.
Best Song: I Believe (When I Fall in Love It Will Be Forever)
Worst Song: Big Brother
Score: 8/10
4
Apr 16 2024
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Young Americans
David Bowie
David Blowie more like. Good album. The Beatles cover doesn't really work with the vibe, and Bowie is almost overdoing it with the vocals there. The rest of the album though is sleek, luscious, and sexy. The production is immaculate, so many great little details.
Best Song: Somebody up There Likes Me
Worst Song: Across The Universe
Score: 8/10
4
Apr 17 2024
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Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not
Arctic Monkeys
Arctic Punkies more like. Good album. Love the raw energy and youthful rock bangers in this one. Listening to this I can almost smell the Carling and WKD in the air, and feel the bottom of my shoes sticking to the club floor. I wouldn't want it any other way.
Best Song: A Certain Romance
Worst Song: You Probably Couldn't See For The Lights But You Were Staring Straight At Me
Score: 8/10
4
Apr 18 2024
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Sticky Fingers
The Rolling Stones
Strolling Bones more like. Mid album. I think the band clearly have a lot of energy and vigour - I can imagine they'd be absolutely sick live, but their music has rarely done anything for me. The bangers always feel like they need more punch, and the ballads always feel too meandering.
Best Song: I Got The Blues
Worst Song: Moonlight Mile
Score: 6/10
3
Apr 19 2024
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Tea for the Tillerman
Cat Stevens
Kat Seaton more like. Good album. Really immaculate vibes here - and the production is really fantastic on this. Late 60s and early 70s are such a golden era for singer-songwriter music and Stevens' is no exception in making his mark. His voice is gentle when it needs to be but possesses this strong earthy power at times too.
Best Song: Father And Son
Worst Song: Longer Boats
Score: 8/10
4
Apr 22 2024
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Lust For Life
Iggy Pop
Iggy Bop more like. Sick album. I've enjoyed the Stooges before but there's something special about Iggy's collaborations with Bowie, where I think the former's snarl and roughness is complemented by the latter's tenderness and charm. Love the production on this album - the guitars hit so hard and some of the rhythms here are so infectious too.
Best Song: The Passenger
Worst Song: Turn Blue
Score: 9/10
5
Apr 23 2024
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Kind Of Blue
Miles Davis
5
Apr 24 2024
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Aja
Steely Dan
Steely Nan more like. Good album. Can't get enough of the band moving more into jazz fusion at this point in their career. The album is just full of juicy, sexy jams with a bountiful array of instruments and sounds to wallow in.
Best Song: Peg
Worst Song: Black Cow
4
Apr 25 2024
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Different Class
Pulp
4
Apr 26 2024
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Nevermind
Nirvana
Good album. Listened to this a lot as a teenager, probably my first intro to heavier sounding music & it still hits so hard. It's cooled on me a little bit but is still an album full of bangers.
Best Track: Something in the Way
Worst Track: Endless Nameless
4
Apr 29 2024
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Smash
The Offspring
One of the worst albums I've ever heard. This kind of pop punk is really not my thing & just sounds incredibly dated now. Some of the riffs are cool but the vocals are just so hoarse and uninteresting.
Best Song: Come Out And Play
Worst Song: What Happened To You?
1
Apr 30 2024
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Since I Left You
The Avalanches
5
May 01 2024
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Talking Timbuktu
Ali Farka Touré
Really lovely album. Just some great, chilled out cowboy vibes for a solid hour. Need to listen to this in the desert sometime.
Best Track: Ai Du
Worst Track: Sega
4
May 02 2024
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Meat Is Murder
The Smiths
Some really great guitar riffs on this - I can imagine listening to some of these a lot and not getting sick of them. Morrissey is a little whiney on this, and his vocals have never really appealed to me, but I think there's some really interesting lyrics in this. A lot of the album seems to be about adolescence, depression, and being suffocated by a hypermasculine school environment. I can see why so many people relate to these songs even when Morrissey seems like the strangest person to have written them.
Best Track: Barbarism Begins At Home
Worst Track: I Want The One I Can't Have
4
May 03 2024
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Throwing Muses
Throwing Muses
Clearly a very influential album in gothic and post-punk. It's been really interesting listening to the kind of band who would have inspired Sonic Youth, Pixies, or Nirvana. The music is dark and creeping, with often quite strange changes in key. Kristin Hersh's vocals vary between shrieks and whispers, and her lyrics are these striking tangled poems. I liked it a lot.
Best Track: Rabbits Dying
Worst Track: Soul Soldier
4
May 06 2024
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British Steel
Judas Priest
Such a meat and potatoes rock album lol. I kinda wanted it to be more metal but I think the corny 80s rock works in the right moments. The guitar solos are indulgent and sloppy and fun. Some of the tunes do sound very dated, and the perfect kinda stuff for my ready unsalted playlist, but there is certain kind of fun to it too.
Best Track: United
Worst Track: Red, White & Blue
3
May 07 2024
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Aftermath
The Rolling Stones
There were some good moments on this, but it's a little more sparse compared to sticky fingers. I like some of the darker gothic-pop moments on the album, but it's spread out amongst some quite tedious blues tunes, a lot of which lack energy behind them.
Best Track: Under My Thumb
Worst Track: Going Home
3
May 08 2024
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Youth And Young Manhood
Kings of Leon
Feel like this is more fun as background music. A lot of the album is inspired by punk and rock music but just sounds way too clean for me. Most of the album doesn't quite feel like it's doing anything new too. Some songs feel like it takes a page from the Strokes or the Velvet Underground. I mostly wanted it to be more raw.
Best Song: Talihina Sky
Worst Song: Wasted Time
2
May 09 2024
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Hot Buttered Soul
Isaac Hayes
What a baller album. Probably one of my favourite discoveries since starting this challenge. Hayes' voice is lush and commanding, and he's accompanied by some really gorgeous production and orchestration behind him. I particularly like the last track with how this very bare bones instrumentation goes from unsettling to much more grandiose and beautiful.
Best track: By the Time I Get to Phoenix
Worst Track: Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic
5
May 10 2024
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Two Dancers
Wild Beasts
Not really thinking much of this. I find a lot of the tracks to be quite forgettable and in the absence of anything catchy I feel like the tunes aren't that delicate or interesting either. I like the vocalist with the deeper voice more than the falsetto too - feel like he has much more going on.
Best Song: All the King's Men
Worst Song: Hooting & Howling
2
May 13 2024
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Doggystyle
Snoop Dogg
Maybe this album hits different when blazed out of your mind, but my overall opinion is that it is just good. There are some really fun beats, and I think Snoop is the king of vibes based rap, but there are a lot of elements to this that seem to have dated quite badly. He constantly raps about his balls - why? I think he also tries to emulate Slick Rick a few times on this without putting much of his own spin on it. Also the best song has by far the least streams???
Best Track: Serial Killa
Worst Track: Lodi Dodi
4
May 14 2024
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Pretzel Logic
Steely Dan
Good album! I like Steely Dan a lot and there's a lot of fun stuff on this one. I don't think it has the same excessive bliss of the jams on Aja, but there's so many great tunes and playful melodies to keep me happy. It's a short and sweet album too.
Best Track: Any Major Dude Will Tell You
Worst Track: Monkey in Your Soul
4
May 15 2024
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Dry
PJ Harvey
Wild to me that this is a debut album - PJ has such a defined sound at this point and it's electric to listen to 30 years on. It's really fun to listen to - a little grungy, snarly, but also tender too.
Best Track: Dress
Worst Track: Hair
4
May 16 2024
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Play
Moby
It might be because we've had 25 years of electronic/sample music since this but I found a lot of the album quite bland and uninteresting. There are some interesting and fun moments on the album, but especially when the Avalanches or DJ Shadow were doing much more unique stuff with sampling in this era, I was left wanting a lot more from this.
Best Track: My Weakness
Worst Track: If Things Were Perfect
3
Jun 25 2024
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Vulnicura
Björk
This grew on me so much! I love how concise and vulnerable the lyrics are. I love how the album goes from luscious string arrangements to haunting electronica over the course of the runtime. It's up there with Blood on the Tracks as an all-time great breakup album.
Best Track: Lionsong
Worst Track: Notget
5
Jun 26 2024
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Abraxas
Santana
Good album! I love how this doesn't seem to be confined by genre. It's just high energy instruments and vibes. What more could you want.
Best Track: Incident at Neshabur
Worst Track: Hope You're Feeling Better
4
Jun 27 2024
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This Is Fats Domino
Fats Domino
Good album - I don't think it matches the energy of Louis Prima but a lot of this is still really fun tunes. The kind of thing that would be perfect on the radio in Fallout.
Best Track: You Done Me Wrong
Worst Track: Troubles Of My Own
4
Jun 28 2024
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The Wildest!
Louis Prima
Lotta fun. The recording is a little rough but there's a lot of energy and charm to this album. Louis Prima is effortlessly magnanimous and I just love the spirit of swing channeling through this.
Best Track: I'm Just a Gigolo / I Ain't Got Nobody
Worst Track: Whistle Stop
4
Jul 01 2024
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xx
The xx
I guess you had to be there...
Best Track: Islands
Worst Track: Shelter
2
Jul 02 2024
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Hail To the Thief
Radiohead
Fuck You Bush! Far from Radiohead's best but is a really solid album with a great mix of creepy/delicate tunes and some freakier paranoid anthems.
Best Track: There, There
Worst Track: The Gloaming
4
Jul 03 2024
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Slayed?
Slade
This album sounds like it should be blaring in the grottiest bar imaginable in Blackpool. Some of the songs do sound like a B-Tec Led Zeppelin, and some of the vocals are incredibly grating. I was surprised by how much of this I enjoyed though, some of it is just meat and potatoes rock and roll done well. And sometimes that's enough to make up for their spelling of 'Goodbye'.
Best Track: Gudbuy T'Jane
Worst Track: How D'You Ride
3
Jul 04 2024
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Elastica
Elastica
Enjoyed this quite a bit - nothing like some high energy girlpunk to get you through the day!
Best Track: Vaseline
Worst Track: S.O.F.T.
4
Jul 05 2024
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Apocalypse 91… The Enemy Strikes Black
Public Enemy
Loved this album - it's so high tempo and the energy never quits over the entire runtime. The production is dazzling and the rapping is just as good, energetic, urgent, current, and so forward-moving in hip hop.
Best Track: Nighttrain
Worst Track: Bring Tha Noize
4
Jul 08 2024
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Led Zeppelin III
Led Zeppelin
Good album. This album just keeps on giving & it's probably my favourite of their self titled releases. I think they hit a great balance here between folk and rock & it slaps so much.
Best Track: Since I've Been Loving You
Worst Track: Hats Off To (Roy) Harper
5
Jul 09 2024
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Hot Rats
Frank Zappa
Loved this so much. I love how much Zappa embraces goofiness in this and ends up fully committing to a sound unlike any other. Such an influential album.
Best Track: Peaches En Regalia
Worst Track: It Must Be A Camel (only just)
5
Jul 10 2024
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This Is Hardcore
Pulp
I liked it, but was left a little underwhelmed. The highlights are really high on this, but I found the album as a whole quite a mixed bag. I think Pulp tend to do large, bittersweet, bangers really well, but I do think the more they experiment the less it works. Also I don't feel like album lives up to its title - it could be a lot sexier!
Best Track: Like a Friend
Worst Track: Seductive Barry
3
Jul 11 2024
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This Year's Model
Elvis Costello & The Attractions
Really fun album. This Elvis guy knows how to make a banging tune - even better than his namesake!
Best Track: The Beat
Worst Track: Big Tears
4
Jul 12 2024
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Eternally Yours
The Saints
Think I'm just gonna have to accept that I'm not that into classic punk. Post-punk and proto-punk both have much more interesting things going on. There's some cool moments on this but I didn't get a lot out of it I'm afraid.
Best Track: Memories Are Made of This
Worst Track: International Robots
2
Jul 15 2024
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Revolver
Beatles
Obviously a great album. Not my favourite Beatles but it has some really incredible moments from both the singles and the B-sides. The 2022 mix also sounds so clean and crisp - what a treat!
Best Track: Eleanor Rigby
Worst Track: Doctor Robert
5
Jul 16 2024
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Stankonia
OutKast
Those guys know how to write a tune!! Big Boi and Andre 3000 are such a great artistic match - I hope they keep making music together forever!!!
Best Track: B.O.B. (Bombs Over Baghdad)
Worst Track: I'll Call B4 I Cum
5
Jul 17 2024
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Dookie
Green Day
I get why a lot of people love this album, and I was still thirteen I imagine it would really go off. The production is pretty good here & I don't dislike it. I do find the harmonies quite grating though, and the lyrics are frequently cringe.
Best Track: Longview
Worst Track: All By Myself
3
Jul 18 2024
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Odessa
Bee Gees
Thought this was quite mid. I think it lags behind a lot of contemporary pop music, especially the Zombies, the Beatles, and the Beach Boys. The orchestral stuff is a bit much, and they also really struggle to find a catchy tune for a lot of this.
Best Track: I Laugh in Your Face
Worst Track: Seven Seas Symphony
3
Jul 19 2024
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Mermaid Avenue
Billy Bragg
Delightful vibes from the GOATs of dad rock. It's silly and folky and heartwarming. Just what I needed.
Best Track: One by One
Worst Track: Birds & Ships
4
Jul 22 2024
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Beauty And The Beat
The Go-Go's
Enjoyed this a lot. Could imagine a lot of these riffs in a 00s indie rock song. It's a little punky but has a lot of melody and vibe still.
Best Song: How Much More
Worst Song: Lust to Love
4
Jul 23 2024
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Can't Buy A Thrill
Steely Dan
Ten songs - nearly all bangers. This slaps. Love you Mr. Dan - keep doing what you're doing.
Best Track: Only a Fool Could Say That
Worst Track: Fire in the Hole
4
Jul 24 2024
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At Folsom Prison
Johnny Cash
CAN SOMEONE PLEASE GET HIM A GLASS OF WATER HE IS A THIRSTY BOY. NO, IT DOESN'T MATTER IF ITS RUN OFF LUTHER'S BOOT.
Good album. Some top tier memes in here - love the egg sucking dog, love 25 minutes, love cocaine blues, stage banter is top tier and Johnny's songwriting tells so much with so little. A lot of fun!
Best Song: Folsom Prison Blues
Worst Song: I Still Miss Someone
4
Jul 25 2024
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Nowhere
Ride
Really sick album - can't wait to listen to more Ride. Worth breaking EU law by turning up my headphones all the way. Love the drums, love the distortion, love all the little melodies, and most of all love the badass cover.
Best Track: Vapor Trail
Worst Track: Decay
4
Jul 26 2024
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461 Ocean Boulevard
Eric Clapton
What a dry album. Clapton is just so juiceless, I've listened to this four times and gotten barely anything out of it. Will likely forget soon.
Best Track: Mainline Florida
Worst Track: Let it Grow
2
Jul 29 2024
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Slippery When Wet
Bon Jovi
There are some songs I like on this - but the album as a whole is absolutely atrocious. The vocals sound like a nasty exhaust pipe. I think the album succeeds when it gets quieter, but unfortunately everything seems to be chucked in together as loud as possible. The kick drums, synths, power chords, and synths all feel so overindulgent; its like taking a five course meal and drinking it as a smoothie. I do think I might like the album a bit more if it was better mixed though.
Best Song: Living on a Prayer
Worst Track: I'd Die For You
2
Jul 31 2024
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Elvis Is Back
Elvis Presley
He's bloody back. I hadn't heard of any of these tunes but this is such a slick album. He really plays to his strengths while trying new things. I liked it a lot!
Best Track: I've Got a Dirty Dirty Feeling
Worst Track: Reconsider Baby
4
Aug 02 2024
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Ocean Rain
Echo And The Bunnymen
Adore this album! So much good vibes. There's a lot of bitter, dark goth rock here that you just want to wade all the way into. A couple of moments feel a little typical of 80s pop but otherwise the band manage to make a sound entirely their own.
Best Track: The Killing Moon
Worst Track: Crystal Days
4