When Glastonbury announced the lineup for 2024's instalment of the festival, it was initially met with mixed reactions on social media. I swear, I must've seen about 10 people independently comment "that don't impress me much" in response to it, a painfully obvious reference to Shania Twain's status as a headliner. That being said, despite this, the lineup, I thought, was fairly strong. I'd pointed out about thirty or so artists that I'd be interested in seeing the replays of - LCD Soundsystem, Squid, Little Simz, PJ Harvey, Fontaines D.C., Lankum... the list goes on. But one name stuck out as one that I recognised from somewhere - Michael Kiwanuka. It took a quick google search before I found he' fairly well-regarded commercially and critically, and a little longer before I realised he was featured on Danger Mouse & Black Thought's 2022 track "Aquamarine" - one of my favourite songs from that year. Speaking of which, Danger Mouse's production is almost certainly the first thing I noticed upon hearing the first song, "You Ain't the Problem". The drums in particular sound excellent, and as I went further into the album, I found that there was a real depth and variety to the instrumentation here - all of which complement's Kiwanuka's vocals wonderfully. It's clearly quite the ambitious project, and it's extremely cohesive. My only issue is that there weren't really any individual songs that stood out to me as highlights; this is really a non-issue, though, when the quality of the music on here is as consistently as high as it is. Overall, well-produced, well-performed, and an absolute joy to listen to. Is it my favourite album from 2019? Nowhere near. But as far as I'm aware, the Weyes Blood, Tyler the Creator and Black MIDI albums from that year aren't on this list, so for all intents and purposes, it may as well be. 8/10

It's pretty unremarkable, honestly. I tended to zone out a few seconds into each song, there's never really anything that interesting happening. It's one of the albums on this list that I feel like is only on there for one or two songs, in this case, it's "Breakdown" and "American Girl" - so it doesn't help that I didn't think much of the former. At least it's short, with a 31 minute runtime, but that didn't stop me from checking how long was left at some point during each song. 4.5/10

Very close to being a perfect album. I'd take it over Nevermind any day, it's the much more adventurous album and has such a considerably larger impact on me - the guttural screams in the chorus of Scentless Apprentice, the dissonant chord that opens the album, immediately establishing itself as a noisy, angry powerhouse. Albini's production does such a huge service to the album (I'd also recommend listening to his original mix as well, it's somehow even more raw). Despite most of my favourite things about this album being the noisiness and rawness of it all, my two favourites here are arguably the most poppy songs - Heart-Shaped Box and All Apologies. There's a certain contrast between the melancholy atmosphere at the start of Heart-Shaped Box and the unassuming, almost uplifting riff on All Apologies, but they both start with just a guitar. These are two songs that, in my opinion, absolutely master the quiet-loud verse-chorus dynamic, Smells Like Teen Spirit is nothing compared to either of these. Considering the band's direction here, also hinted on You Know You're Right, "all in all is all we are" is unfortunately Nirvana's equivalent to "and in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make". Kurt's passing does hang over this album in many places, certain moments feel like a means of expressing whatever pain he was going through in the form of music. It's almost difficult to listen to in those parts, not because of how visceral it is, necessarily. I listen to much harsher music casually, but it's just how expressive Kurt is on this album - it's almost like the anger unleashed on Converge's 2001 album Jane Doe, but with an almost defeated feel to it. R.I.P. Kurt Cobain and Steve Albini 9.5/10

It’s hard to say anything bad about this album. People say it covers a lot of ground but I’m not sure if I agree with that - all of these songs feel like songs made by The Clash in 1979. Let’s be honest, they have a good ear for a pop hook, and do it in a way that very much feels like their own. The reggae and dub influences on there are impossible for me to overlook - I love some dub in my rock music. It makes songs that otherwise don’t stand out to others, such as Revolution Rock, really fun to me. I do wish it were more punk-y, and straightforward in areas, but that’s more an issue with The Clash being labelled as a punk rock band more than anything else (and let’s be honest, there’s plenty of post-punk and new wave on here) so it’s not the band’s fault, and I’m not going to dock points on the basis of them not meeting my expectations genre-wise, as it’s simply not the vision they would’ve had going into the album. I will also say that while I do enjoy my standout tracks, nothing goes above and beyond for me - as good as the title track, Spanish Bombs, Lost in the Supermarket, Guns of Brixton and Train in Vain are, it’d be hard to say any of those are 10/10 and perfect tracks to me. They don’t quite scratch a certain itch for me. With all that being said, this album is undeniably fantastic. 8.5/10

Bloody hell. This album is hardly essential to listen to before you die - unless you consider that this may be the album to finish the job for many. It's not even music, just mindless noise. Especially that song 30,000 Monkies (which is not how you spell monkeys.) Will not be listening again. ... Alright, I think anyone who would've enjoyed that review has gone off to listen to Guns n' Roses instead, or something of the sort. I can justify getting pretentious for a bit looking at how low the score is for something I genuinely like a lot. So here's why this album is excellent - it's fun. It really is just that simple. Just sit back, enjoy the seemingly endless wave of feedback, wild drumming, fuzzy bass, and, in one word, chaos. I've listened to a lot of noise rock, and also a fair bit of straight up noise, and there isn't much that matches Lightning Bolt for me. Genuinely, the first time I heard this and their superior 2005 album, Hypermagic Mountain (seriously, if you enjoyed this, at least check out the track Dead Cowboy), I couldn't believe for a second when I found out that it's just two people - a bass player and drummer at that. At times the bass produces tones similar to that of a guitar, while also performing the job of a bass. It just sounds so full of life and energy. Trying to find any deeper meaning in this is a pointless activity. It's just two people who, similarly to The Velvet Underground on Sister Ray, just wanted to make as much noise as possible. And really, at the end of the day, isn't that just the ethos of rock music? 8.5/10

Björk is, and effectively always has been, one of my favourite artists. But this album has always evaded the ability to fully justify that. Yes, the three albums from her that followed this are undeniably excellent (particularly Post and Vespertine, which I believe to both be masterpieces), but Debut is also often lumped in with those releases, albeit to a slightly less exaggerated degree. I can see why, but I just find it dated in a way that for me, someone born over ten years after this album released, doesn't fully click. The synths sound like music you'd hear on a PS1 demo disc. There's More to Life than This, while the shift during the second verse is genuinely a really cool idea and adds very specific imagery that I don't actually hear in very many songs, just sounds kind of dire outside of that. It feels like parody of 90s dance music, but without any irony. There's also something like Anchor Song, and while Björk would go on to make some really beautiful minimalist closing songs on the next few albums, Anchor Song just feels quite empty. All that being said, Human Behaviour and Venus as a Boy are excellent songs that set an early precedent for Björk's talent as a musician and composer. I know I've spoken about things about this album that I dislike more than like about this album, but I do want to make it clear that for the most part, this album is perfectly fine. It's just difficult to talk about "perfectly fine". This album is very clearly overall more good than bad, but as a debut from an artist whose album streak after this would be consistently 9/10s at worst, it does feel underwhelming. 6.5/10

Wish I had more to say about this one, I wrote a review a week ago then lost it. Probably for the best too, I was extremely drunk based on the fact that I was moments away from turning 20 when I listened to this. So I have no idea how coherent that review would've been. Anyway, this is the best Bob Dylan album, he's one of the best songwriters to ever live and this is his finest achievement. 9.5/10

Coming straight off of listening to the dull slog that was Derek and the Dominos' "Layla", I wasn't looking forward to revisiting another >60 minute long record. But at least I'm familiar with this one, even if on past relistens I haven't gotten as much out of it. Boards of Canada are a group I enjoyed a lot more when I was 16 and listening to a lot of IDM. Overtime, I realised I was completely missing the point of their music - the weird surreal feeling of fear and dread hidden very delicately in there. So that's where I've been at for the past few years with this. That being said, going from a 2/10 to a 7/10 is still a jump forward, and ten minutes in, I was already considering bringing that 7/10 up to an 8/10. I'm about three weeks in to using this site, and I've gathered that the average user here really, really likes rock music, and is likely a fair bit older than me. So with that in mind, I imagine a fair amount of people went into this expecting to dislike it the moment they saw 'Electronica' in the tags, the way I do when I see a classic rock album, hence the quite frankly abysmally low score for one of the most well-regarded albums in the genre. RateYourMusic has this in its top 200 of all time, I believe. If I'm wrong about that, then their follow-up album, Geogaddi, definitely is there, and also #1 for the year 2002. I can see why too, there really is something eerie about this album, the way voice clips are chopped up and arranged provoke these very surreal and strange visuals. But it's the fact that a lot of them are from children's TV shows - it's like sitting in front of the TV at night at a very young age and seeing something very innocent but strangely unsettling. Of course, the textures of the synths are also fantastic, and I point to the song Roygbiv as an example of a rare moment where the sound on this album feels extremely full. The hi-hats are crisp and weighty, the melody is ridiculously memorable, and I really wish it went on for longer than 3 minutes. As much as it hurts to see this album rated so low, I've never been as big a fan of electronica as some other people I know. Despite this, I'd like to attempt to somewhat remedy the injustice done here. 8.5/10

Eric Clapton spouts boring and ridiculous drivel, with a severe lack of emotional intelligence. Not only in real life, but also on this album. It really is "Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs", in the sense that Layla is the only real takeaway here, and even that song isn't anywhere near amazing. And even at that point, it makes less than 10% of the album. The vast majority of everything else here is really basic blues rock with uninteresting production and, in parts, stupidly overlong. I've always used "this album is just this song and a few others" as an insult but it's quite literally on the label here. I will never understand why so many of these classic rock albums gain classic status just from having one or two mediocre songs that still get played on rock radio from time to time, because there's nothing surprising here or really even that engaging. And I don't know if there's anything I could dislike in an album more than that. 2/10

3.06? We can do better than that for the peak of indie rock. Deerhunter were a band that I was completely infatuated with this time last year, and remain in my top 5 artists ever - I believe they're the only one to show up on this list (Swans, Boris, Unwound aren't here, as I'd expect, and I'll only end up talking about Jim O'Rourke via the Wilco connection) so I'd best make this review worth it. I even named my band after one of their albums! So I do feel a real affinity to this band. Not this album particularly, but that's only because Microcastle and Weird Era Continued are as close to perfect as you can get with indie rock, and Halcyon Digest isn't far off either. A big complaint people seem to have with this album is that it's "pretentious". To me, that word in the context of music means an album that's kind of up its own arse. Listening to songs like Don't Cry, Memory Boy, Revival, Coronado and Fountain Stairs, I really can't see how that could possibly be the case. Those songs are quite simple and, importantly, know they're quite simple. They don't do anything more than they need to and start citing philosophy and spouting psuedo-intellectualism. Bradford Cox's lyrical style is effectively just stream of consciousness, and with that in mind, going into this album looking squarely at the lyrics is the wrong approach. It's a mood-setter, and for the vast majority of the songs, outlines the feel of them perfectly. There are exceptions to this rule of course, but those are actually usually the standouts. Take a song like like Helicopter, which is, for my money, the best song on here, where they crafted an entire story accessible in the liner notes to create context and backstory for the subject of the song. It elevates the song a fair bit - but it's not necessary to enjoying the song, and the themes of loneliness and isolation on that song are still poignant even without that. Or the 7-minute closing track He Would Have Laughed, dedicated to extremely talented garage rocker Jay Reatard, a contemporary of Deerhunter and collaborator with Bradford Cox on one occasion. It's a song dealing with his death and it's a fitting tribute, with the song ending so abruptly, just as it feels like it's winding down. Now, the music itself is on another level. On this album they distill the shoegazier moments from Microcastle and some excellent pop songwriting (Revival and Coronado are so clearly inspired by The Beatles at points) that they still add their own noisy edge to, similarly to what Pavement were doing a decade prior. The way Earthquake builds throughout its runtime is to die for, the outro on Desire Lines is absolutely perfect, somehow eclipsing what would be the best chorus on the album if not for Helicopter, and speaking of which, the bridge between the final two choruses on Helicopter is a particularly euphoric moment. There's a moment on He Would Have Laughed when an acoustic guitar comes in and the feel of the song shifts entirely, but it's still the same song at its core. This part of the review is obviously going to be a little more personal to me, but I do feel like Bradford Cox, as a songwriter, creates queer music. Halcyon Digest and especially Monomania are the best examples of this, but the brand of queerness on this album is one that I've always found myself identifying with heavily. There's an essay that RateYourMusic user spectreview wrote about a similar thing - I'll link it at the end of the review. But there is something in there that I, as someone who does struggle with queer identity, find extremely comforting. There's a certain warmth to this album at its core, beneath its cold exterior. It's so easy to discount an album like this as "hipster rubbish for flannel-wearing IPA drinkers", but you could do a similar thing for any other album that's ever existed. The Dark Side of the Moon? Basic shite for people who don't listen to that much music really. Highway to Hell? Novelty music that old people with bad beards take seriously. The Glowing Man by Swans? Overly-long wank that never ends. That last one is my favourite album of all time, and I love Dark Side as well. It's easy to discredit an album on arbitrary means, and sometimes maybe we should. But this is still a significant album, and I love it more than about 995 other albums on this list. "Now they are through with me." Also, here's the essay I was talking about earlier in the review: https://rateyourmusic.com/list/spectreview/deerhunter-were-my-first-queer-salve/ 10/10

First time listening to a solo Lennon record. I'm not going to write an entire essay about it for once, but its very good. Introspective John Lennon isn’t something I thought I needed, but here we are. 8.5/10

Here's the first artist I'd never really heard anything about before starting doing this. Of course, anyone who's ever heard LCD Soundsystem before is familiar with the reference to them on Losing My Edge. But even with that in mind I had no idea what I was getting in for when starting this album. Listen to that blown-out production, the vocals are clipping, the instruments are being played shoddily, the harmonies are out of time. Perfect, a rock n roll record that isn't mind-numbingly boring. It's not like with Guided By Voices where each song is badly-produced in a unique way that injects each song with personality, but if I were to listen to any of these songs, this would be my preferred way of doing so. I truly do believe that the spirit of rock n roll is making as much noise as possible, and I think this sticks to that ethos, taking really basic songwriting and song structures and bending them to a level that would've felt unrecognisable in 1965. 7.5/10

There's better Eno ambient out there and better Bowie art rock, but this and "Heroes" (which I think is also on the list) are exceptional blends of the two. This is slightly weaker than the album after it, but features anxious-sounding pop with a noisy edge to it, and Subterraneans is maybe my favourite ambient track in the Berlin trilogy. 8.5/10

The top review on this album mentions that another highly-rated review gave it a one-star rating on the basis that it's not in English. Now, I want to give my own explanation as to why this kind of dismissal is so utterly (and quite frankly) stupid, with my experience with this album as a guide. As with all albums, this album is elevated with some level of context going into it. Some of Cuba's most talented artists from the 50s, 60s and 70s meeting up with USA guitarist Ry Cooder, and making an album. It's effectively a supergroup. In fact, there's a 1999 documentary about it, which I've not seen. So it's fair to say that in South America, particularly in Cuba, this album is a huge deal, even winning a Grammy award. Plus, while this is the only studio album under the name Buena Vista Social Club, it gave several of the performers on there a second wind, with Ry Cooder, Ibrahim Ferrer, Compay Segundo, Juan de Marcos González and his Afro-Cuban All Stars receiving acclaim with their solo efforts around this time, as well as several others featured on the album - importantly, collaborating with other Buena Vista Social Club performers. All this to say that this is a culturally significant album, and discounting this based on it being sung in Spanish is remarkably ignorant. But obviously that isn't the issue here, if you're not willing to listen to the language of another culture, chances are you don't actually care too much about the culture itself. Alright, that's a whole different bag of worms, but let's talk about the music instead. This is from the perspective of someone who, in terms of traditional South American music, is only familiar with a few artists (Milton Nascimento, Lô Borges, Chico Buarque, João Gilbertido and Antônio Carlos Jobim, and even then, I've only heard one album or song from each). How does it read to someone unfamiliar with the genre, coming from indie rock, alternative rock and experimental rock? I like it quite a bit, personally. I think it's a very inviting record, even, and there's a lot to like here, especially from the stellar first three tracks. It never completely astounds me though, which I attribute to my lack of experience with the style of music here. In this respect, I do understand being put off by it. But to me, I see it as a springboard to learn more about this style of music, how it's done traditionally and how it's performed now. What modern flourishes appear in this album, with it being released in 1997? I don't know, but I very much do want to find out. I realise I've not gone too in-depth about what I thought about the music itself, but the fact that I've gone on this entire tirade should be enough of a hint that I did quite enjoy it. 8/10

Frankie Goes to Hollywood were unapologetically gay chart-toppers in the mid-80s from Liverpool. And pointing out the inherent queerness in this album is kind of important, contextually. The song Relax was actually pulled from mainstream radio stations such as the BBC after a DJ played the single, calling it "disgusting" after stopping the song halfway through. Despite this, it remained at the top of the charts for 5 weeks. Even Top of the Pops refusing to show it didn't stop it. This is music that people clearly wanted to hear, further evidenced by Relax also hitting Number 10 on the USA's Billboard charts. I mention this because the controversy surrounding this album is juxtaposed with a Springsteen cover, particularly Born to Run. What a statement to make, honestly. As much as I do want to praise a genuinely queer cover of Born to Run, I do actually think this album is bloated, and the covers are a big part of that. There's a fair bit of filler here past the excellent A and B sides, and I do want to also mention that the full versions of Two Tribes and Relax are superior to the versions here on the album, taking a form similar to the excellent title track. Effectively, it's like the difference between the single version of Pet Shop Boys' version of Always On My Mind compared to the full 8 or so minute version. The difference is night and day, and the extra time for those songs to develop a bit helps them out a ton. I wish that's what happened on this album, cutting some of the covers and lesser cuts like the Krisco Kisses and Black Night White Light and giving the remaining time to better versions of already great singles. Though, I suppose that's difficult to do when you want your album to be a commercial success. This would've proven moot in hindsight, however, as they would break up following their second album, Liverpool. Overall, a great slice of 80s new wave that removes a good amount of the cheese associated with the genre, but quite bloated with cuts that really don't help the album all that much. I'd give this a 7/10 if I could, but regrettably, due to the 5-point system on this site, it'll have to be a bit lower.

One I've heard before, but years ago. While I was in my mid-teens, even. First thing I'm going to say is that the genres on the page are wrong. This is jazz. Call it jazz-rock, jazz fusion, whatever, the way the dynamics are played with here is extremely similar to jazz and the instrumentation, while not exactly 1 to 1 with Miles Davis' first quintet, isn't too dissimilar from something like his second quintet. So approach the album with that in mind if you haven't heard it before, because I feel it's what makes the album. It's not just guitar virtuosity throughout, hooks come in and out in a very natural-feeling way and the "jams" change dynamics in a really satisfying way - listen to the drums at any point during standout track "Willie the Pimp". While it's still the only Zappa album I've heard in full thus far, and while it definitely feels like it lacks the attitude present in key tracks I've heard from later on in his career, it's excellent. 8.5/10

Alright, this is the first Kanye album I've decided to seek out and listen to since the first of several incidents in late 2022, meaning this is the first time I've listened to him intentionally in two whole years. So, I have to make it clear, as I tend to do with artists with utterly deplorable views, I've had to access this album through certain means. I'm not giving this man even a small fraction of a dollar for a stream. With that out of the way, there was once a time when I adored this album, it utterly floored me on first listen. While I was familiar with artists like Danny Brown at the time, I'd only really dipped my toes into the genre of experimental hip-hop at the time. To be quite honest, I think it's a good thing that an album like this was as popular as it was in 2013. It's extremely forward-thinking at times and while it's definitely not as impressive as I once thought it was (go and listen to Dälek's debut album - the song "Forever Close My Eyes" is one of the best things I've ever heard, and it came out in 2002), it's certainly nothing like what you would've heard on the charts at the time. The album immediately hits you with the most formless song on there, "On Sight". In case you weren't already of what you were in for with this album, this song makes it clear. This streak only goes on, with "Black Skinhead", "New Slaves" and "Hold My Liquor" being highlights on the album. That being said, a song like "I'm In It" is straight up embarrassing at points. It sounds like it's building up to a really interesting soundscape, only to hit you with trap hi-hats, which on their own would be fine but then you notice it. The dog barking sound effect in the background. Surely this can't be real, right? It is. It would be the most embarrassing moment from the first ten years of his music, though the entirety of "Drunk and Hot Girls" has a much better case for this. "Blood On the Leaves" is a jarring song, with the main sample being Nina Simone's version of Billie Holiday's track of the same name. A song whose impact is as arresting as that being paired with trap horns is an interesting choice, but somehow convinces me of the emotion Kanye bears during the course of the song. I don't necessarily like listening to it, but I at the very least understand the intention here. It feels poorly-handled though. This album is fairly conscious at times, particularly on "Black Skinhead" and "New Slaves", and while they don't say anything nearly as significant as what Kendrick Lamar was doing a year prior in terms of bringing consciousness back to mainstream hip-hop, the use of that particular sample just feels so out of place. As for the rest of the tracklist, "Guilt Trip" is pretty, "Send It Up" is fine, and "Bound 2" is beloved by many but not by me, though I do think it's very, very good regardless. This album no longer has the same impact on me that it might have had when I was 17 years old, but as a piece of music, it's still very good regardless. 8.5/10

Not one I expected to be well-liked here, and I'm not surprised to see that 2.64 score, but as usual it's blatantly wrong. It's raw, rough around the edges, and at times weirdly catchy. "Frightened" is one of my favourite recent discoveries, I listened to the start of this album while walking my dogs and was just walking down the street just in awe of how amazing the keyboard sounds on that song. It's almost like a sonar, and of course Mark E. Smith's delivery over that and the jagged guitars and bass makes for a really interesting listen. The rest of the album is very much the same, with some tongue-in-cheek humour (say "John Quays" out loud) but never loses its appeal, with a couple earworms in there. Their Peel sessions from around this time are also very much worth a listen, so I highly recommend those too. 8/10

this is just led zeppelin with extra steps. you want me to take the whole “first metal album” thing seriously when the album in question has “evil woman” on it? no thanks. their next few are significantly better

not even the best of their three albums, but the other is the best on this entire list. still incredible 9/10