1001 Albums Summary

As much as I like music with groove, and have listened to Le Freak throughout my life, this album showcases exactly how disco watered down funk and soul until it was flat and tasteless---and left the 80s in a funk vaccuum (or at the very least, took the heart out of soul). This feels.like yacht rock or muzak. Definitely not one I'll listen to again...

Sigh. I feel super critical today. But this one just didn't grab me. Not even a lyric, a line, a melody. Maybe nova scotia has spoiled me, but there's more affective folk in our backyard. Some of the instrumental surprises were interesting, but it was as if they were trying to be retro and new, but had nothing of value to say or add to the timeline of music history. I like music that does something to me emotionally. This doesn't. Even the lyrical repetitions ring hollow to me---rather than emphasis, I hear loops that are caught up in a navel-gazing sense of their own perceived profundity. At the very least I would have liked to have heard a good story or sense of lived understanding of thought/sensation.....

Listening to this as a curious tourist. This is not somewhere I'd live, or even visit for long. A unique signpost in Bowie's chameleonic, protean carpet flow. The first few songs are a talking heads impersonation...Sound and Vision gives glimpses of a more layered Bowie, and "Always Crashing in the Same Car" would have been a great song to play on repeat while getting drunk after a breakup in undergrad. I like the schizophrenic variety here, and especially enjoyed the electronic/synthesizer sound experimentations....the instrumental tracks sound like he's trying to compose soundtracks---maybe evolving his concept album efforts beyond language/lyrics?

Compositional genius. Music that surprises and grooves and laughs at you and itself in the most serious of ways. Milla thinks each track sounds like choosing another map in Mario Kart!

Wow. I initially laughed at and rejected this. I made fun of it with Milla. I mocked it when Eduardo, Osama, and I were chatting on the weekend. And now I've listened to it. In its entirety. More than once. And I'm fascinated. By the music, by the lyrics, by the interludes, by the rich nature of its tapestry and its amalgamation of influences. I hear more than a half century of musical referencing through this album. It also makes me wonder if I'm wasting my life. I want to live in some of these songs. Well--maybe just take a vacation in them. I've never been so wrong in my first impressions. This album sticks and surprises.....my only reservation is that because of its veneer, because of its first impressions, it might get tangled in genre limitations and fail to reach beyond its initial audience. I never would have given this album a chance if it had not been for this exercise and two very persuasive friends.

Man. I thought I loved this album. I have it on vinyl. I've listened to it a lot (well, mostly side one). "Walk on by" is still brilliant soul...that fuzz guitar is soooo chewy.and "Hyperbolic...etc." is fun. But "One Woman" and rhe insanely long "By the time..." are fucking garbage filler sounds....it's like Hayes already knew people were just going to fuck to his music, so he made these extra long, radio-unfriendly tunes that could fade into the background and last longer than most of the men who bought the album. And since South Park, it's impossible to listen to these songs as anything other than alternative, edited versions of "Chocolate Salty Balls". I will always celebrate good, thick, juicy soul and funk grooves, but this hot buttered mess melts into greasy self-indulgence.

This album is all over rhe place, thematically. It's trying to emulate and further ghetto/gangster rap, it's trying to insert an interventional sensitivity into issues of cultural oppression and human tragedy, it's playful, it's heavy, it's frivolous, it's immersed in ego capitalism, it critiques ego capitalism.... Diversity usually signifies complexity and richness, but this variety creates an unpredictable uncertainty. Maybe that's its politics: fuck you, don't try to contain me; I contain multitudes. Maybe this is what it means to be an outcast who gets a chance to have a voice, and then shouts and sings as loudly and diversity as one can (because who knows how long we'll have the mic?) Back in the day, as a privileged white kid who romanticized the black experience in america, I loved this album...I loved the way it disturbed adults with its blatant language and explicitly sexual references. I loved this evolution of rap and hop hop rhythms (this album and Busta Rhymes albums were my go to sounds). But, like now, I had/have no idea or understanding of the lives and struggles and tragic screams and triumphant howls of these artists. I looked through the window of these songs and thought, "Wow. Cool" and then used them as background music while I was working on my doctoral dissertation. Now I think this album is a juvenile mess. But I'm still an ignorant tourist, and this review reveals more about my limits than the album's genius.

A simple story that stretches through the music of this concept album paints an emotional portrait of grief and redemption for the red-headed stranger. It's simple and raw and relateable. It's a human story that everyone will experience at least once in their lifetime. I'm surprised by the way that these songs pulled me in and carried me along. Willie was 42 when he put out this carefully crafted and unpretentious story. Damn.

A lot of these albums have little interludes between the songs. Like little folk song narrative calibrations.... This album has always been a mystery to me. When it dropped, I loved it. It was danceable, intense, angry, determined, and seemed powerful. During this morning's reunion of ear and sound, I giggled more than once at its goofy self-confidence and interventional optimism. Danceable politics...get em with the groove and they will join the rhythm nation. Music will heal all (in addition to militaristic choreography). I think I was intrigued as a kid by the Trojan horse of these tunes. Songs that sounded like her brother, Michael's, but which contained culturally reflective and politicized thought that seemed broader and more socially concious than his pop hits. Janet was trying to differentiate herself, stand out, assert a feminist social compassion. To be taken seriously. But then this group of songs hits the listener: miss you much, love will never do, and alright, escapade, come back to me, someday is tonight....back to softpop and love. (Until the guitar and independent strength of Black Cat) So how does this all fit together? Does this all fit together? This album is a declaration of independence from Michael's overwhelming celebrity. It's a younger sister trying to be taken seriously: politically, musically, artistically, sexually. Asserting her diversity. Asking us to dance with HER. Black cat

How to even capture my relationship with this album? This was a life soundtrack for me, a time of freedom and excess and immortality and confidence and a constant battle against tides of cynicism that come from living and loving through uncertain times with uncertain people. This music, this album, was a friend, a shield, an ingredient in self-definition and defiance, a symbol of evolution and the beautiful surprise of novelty and unpredictability. It still holds all of that weight. Cornell's voice was an inspiration. Rock and roll could survive and feed the soul through anything. This album still makes me want to just get in my car and drive. Without a sense of destination, but full of the desire for motion and adventure....

Shuffle. Groove. Close.my eyes and this electric blues makes me smile. Bonham's liquid drumming, Page's guitar like an organic limb, Plant's wailing orgasmic voice...radio unfriendly song lengths that feed the ear like the heartiest meal.... So many essential tunes here. Babe I'm gonna leave you (I've got to ramble), You shook me, Dazed and Confused....ooof. what a fucking masterpiece of a song. There's so much to love here. But there are also some odd places where the band gets lost in its own maze. There's a diversity here that works, but signifies a band still insecurely experimenting with their emerging identity and stylistic power. But the elephant in the room? Plant's lyrics. Fucking garbage. Which is why I listen to his voice as a non-signifying instrument most of the time. If you ever want to make people laugh, read the lyrics to "Babe I'm gonna leave you" as a spoken word poem. Sigh.

This is music for inner and outer space travel. It gives me early pink floyd vibes and vangelis' Blade Runner soundtrack.... This was such an innovation at the time...and hits me as an anticipation of electronically driven evolutions of classical music. It's so easy to make these sounds on today's computers, we forget how technically experimental and innovative this music is. Our ears have become accustomed to sounds these days that are more layered and technically complicated that this, but there's a simplicity here that pulls me into a tron-like journey. The soundtrack to cyberspace....with headphones, these tones move through the inside of my skull and define an almost infinite arena of tonal play....

I remember seeing and selling this when i worked at record stores, but I'm not sure why it never grabbed me then. "Jupiter and Teardrop" is so Bowie but with that extra impactive guitar sound. Loving that track so much. The layers of acoustic and electric guitar work well here. And man, some of these lyrics: "When the earth is ripe All the worms wake up In their stars and stripes And their swastikas" Reading up on the band and on Grant Lee Philips, it blows my mind how much exposure they had without also experiencing mainstream success. Maybe the political lyrics that offer a scathing critique of America had something to do with it? There are country influences here, but not enough of that flavour to nauseate me. It's cool to discover music later than its cultural moment and to love it---so much better than never experiencing it at all! I don't love all of this album, and it's probably not one I'll return to frequently, but it's good and definitely underappreciated.

Hm. Really trying to appreciate this album for what it is. I love Tabla drumming, I love artists.and albums that respectfully showcase world music diversities, I appreciate musical fusions and experimentations.....and although this album has all of that, it isn't landing right in my ears..... Maybe more accurately, not all of it is landing right. There are some beautiful and breathtaking musical moments here. I think what kills it for me though, is the dated dance beats and the Kitaro-like self-aggrandisement and a confidence that hyperbolically and unintentionally takes things into goofy teritory... instrument solos that sound like a playful Disney movie chase scene mixed with Joe Satriani-like musical masturbations. And omigod, let's not linger on those lyrics from the first track...like an Enigma fuelled nightmare without gregorian chants... Here's the thing....Indian music doesn't need to be colonized by other sounds to be cool. "Mombasstic" was an interesting jazz experiment, but I've heard this done better, elsewhere. And maybe this album was the inspiration for those other, better sounds....so this deserves some pioneering respect I guess... But how pioneering is this? Maybe I've been spoiled by time and other music...in 1989, Peter Gabriel released the soundtrack "Passion" for the movie "The Last Temptation of Christ"....*that* is a wold music masterpiece. A symphony of sound that moves me emotionally... Sone positivity to finish: Sutrix was my favourite track....and I couldn't help but dance a little to "Eclipse"

This was quite a week.....I'm behind on these reviews. So I will be uncharacteristically succinct. I first heard maiden in grade 5 when the senior kids brought their albums into our boot room at school. The music shattered my little mind and the album artwork forever recalibrated my aesthetic preferences. My parents had the "Piece of mind" album and I've been a maiden fan ever since. But this first album I really didn't listen to or care about, 'cause I prefer Bruce Dickinson as a vocalist. So hearing this, now, is wild. A mix of Kiss and punk influences, with seeds and premonitions of their signature literariness and epic guitar arcs to come. Not my fave, but that's not the point. The branches make more sense now that I've returned to the roots.

This album is impossible to listen to objectively. It's in my blood and makes up some of the base pairs of my DNA. It's an endless summer album. One of lazy sunshine joy, daily crushes, and utopian conversations under stars while lying on car hoods (back when car hoods were made of real steel and could hold our body weight without buckling). I hear it and it's a time machine. More accurately, it brings a fuzzjoy mood into my 2024 brain and a goofy grin stretches across my face. The pumpkins have been up and down, musically, but this--to me--is their apex.

I try to like Van Morrison. But omigod. A 2-disc live album? This *did* help me to enjoy his sounds a bit more, but I would have appreciated some moderation....it's like being force-fed something at dinner that you only kind of tolerate,and end up chewing a mouthful of mush that you don't want to swallow. For some reason, I have no emotional connection to Van Morrison's sounds....if boredom was an instrument, this would be it. Like Jimmy Buffett and Dave Matthews, it's hard to listen to somebody enjoying themselves so much by creating something so banal.... I'm glad I was only 3 when this concert happened and that my parents didn't subject me to this vocal masturbation. I know he's loved. And I'm glad people enjoy this muzak. I'm just going to leave the show early and wait for you all in the parking lot. (And I'll be listening to the original version of Ray Charles' "I believe to my soul" rather than this mutated cover version...

Not sure what or how to rate this.... It's her debut. From today's ears, 21 years after its release, it's less impactive to me now than I'm sure it was to others back then. These vocals are raw, jazzy, vulnerable, hint at the weaknesses that will eventually and tragically consume her.... Even though I didn't find this album enjoyable from a personal point of view, and was surprised at the acoustic-ness of thos album compared to her later works, it strikes me as important and as potentially impactive as Billie Holiday's songs were back when she emerged on the scene.... Having just discovered Raye's music, but then realizing how far she's grown since her first (and only to date) album release (and knowing that I would have likely panned that first album had I heard it)...I can acknowledge the value and necessity of this album for Amy Winehouse's career..

This is crazy. Never have i ever heard of this band before. And yet listening to this album was....familiar somehow, beyond the obvious influence echoes. I couldn't put my finger on it. It was like....the *essence* of the 70s, or.maybe the essence of the 70s from a nostalgic point of view. The music doesn't foreground itself, and isn't all that memorable...but it just fits. I said to Jenn as I was listening to this: "this music sounds like the interludes they used to have in "That 70s Show" between scenes when the characters were dancing to some instrumental rock in front of a green screen where psychedelic stuff was projected...." .......and then I heard it: "In the Street" I knew it immediately.... The theme song for "That 70s Show"! 😄 I love it when music burbles to the surface of awareness even though it's always just been there, under the skin all along, echoing though cultural legacies... This is a good pack.of bubblegum cowbell throwback poprock to end my day and week with. (Weirdly too, the first few notes of the first song reminded me of the beginning of Jesus Jones' tune "Right Here, Right Now"!!)

It's hard to overemphasize the importance of this album---so many sounds in here that have rippled out and echoed through music since... It's raw, unpolished. It's indie and artistic. It's ennui and ecstasy. It's heroin and beatnik. It's New York at its filthiest, when adult stores, perpshow cinema, dealers, addicts, whores, and pimps filled Times Square. It's litter and graffiti. It's fucking genius that captures the moment and shows the way out. It's endless loops and untuned voices. It's timeless.

I really really tried to enjoy this. I read everything I could about its concept album genius. I respect Stevens as an artist. I enjoy his music. But all I could swallow from this one was Casimir Pulaski Day, which I recorded and sang to a friend two years ago because she requested it. I just don't get it. And I don't want to get it. Which reveals my own limitations more than anything. But I think I'll put it in a little box and open it again when I'm 70, and see if it sings to me then.

Wow. This is why I love doing this with all of you. Never would I have chosen to listen to this on my own. What an amazing earful of Brazilian musical joy! My limits in understanding the words of these songs allow me to listen to the voices as pure instruments... What's weird is that this wasn't a studio album of hers when she was alive...so I'm not sure what to do with a best of collection...as it's likely a curation that depends on receptions rather than artistic intentions... Her story and fire and tragic early death intrigue me and lend an energy to the music that makes me appreciate her drive and accomplishment all the more... One thing this album has reminded me of is how music markets, like the internet, are still so provincial and exclusive. A lot of this has to do with language differences, but is still a poignant reminder that we are not exposed to global sounds and talents as often as we should be. And the persistent perception of East vs West global hemispheres continues to excludes our potential exposure to the global south.... I'm grateful for this listening opportunity.

What the absolute fuck. This did not age well. It's like going to a rave with Madonna in 1990 and taking the latest designer drug. It's like the shitty opening band for the Pet Shop Boys. It's like being drunk on tequila shooters after using fake ID to get into a club and having a drunk girl get her fingers caught in your overly moussed and hairsprayed hair as you dance on the speakers. It's like all of the memories inwant to forget. More positively, I laughed so much while listening to this. I know the artists intended their lyrics to be profound and impactive, but they sounded like a virgin on mushrooms hanging off of your sleeve trying to convince you that they've found wisdom. The pure and perfect comedy of unselfconscious and innocent profundity. And then I cried because this is going to irreparably fuck up my spotify algorithm....

Incredible. Night and day from her earlier work. Darkness is a muse. Pain and the loss of control can make great art, but its nonrenewable fuel is the soul. This is raw and vulnerable, playful and defiant, broken and ragged. "Cry without screaming" as U2 says.... some people make their struggles so public, and the public will consume it as entertainment, applauding and calling for more.... Strangely, I wish that Tom Waits would cover this whole album....it carries his melancholy, his drunken growl, his parade of melodic persistence...

Maybe it's the rain, but this album is an immersion that lays the foundation for melancholic self reflections. It slows time and asks me to put down the oars... I love the cure's moody soundscapes. They create mood rather than music. They give me permission to mourn. I've always loved their name as well....if they are the cure, then what's the disease? I remember them as a soundtrack to the emotions we weren't supposed to have in the 80s . Amidst the headlong rush of ego-fuelled parties and self-important ambition and greed, they sighed in the shadows....

Fuck apathy and ennui. Fuck stasis and complacency. Fuck big bands and the music of white America. Fuck slow time. Fuck our parents. Fuck quiet technique. Fuck traditions and classical sensibilities. This music is about movement, sensuality, ecstasy, joy, spontaneity, and energy. It's punk. It's ignorant and disrespectful (in overt and subtle ways). It's a conduit for unspent and repressed energies. It's cathartic and liberating. It's madness. It's unethical. It's disturbing... In 2024, though, this (and Jerry Lee Lewis) are quaint. They've been surpassed by more extremity, more experimentation, more intensity. But this heartbeat of energetic disruption can still be heard and felt. Even as you frown at biographical shortcomings and cultural appropriations, your toes still tap, and a smile infects your face. If not, you're a corpse. This isn't music. It's a stimulant. Amphetamine. I shouldn't take it, but it makes me feel so fucking good.

This album was such a beautiful little surprise. I'd heard a number of the songs before in various contexts. And they've been kind of playing in the background for a long time, but to hear all of this material together, unraveling song after song, was simply a joy. Each song offered something different and diverse, and emotionally surprising, but also nostalgically refreshing. Maybe this is just a new relationship energy I'm experiencing with the album that will fade fairly quickly over time, but I found that each song's discovery was accompanied by a little electric excitement--kind of like when you slowly increase the intimacies with someone that you've had a distant crush on in the background for a long time... it's comfortable sunshine, it's fun, It gets in you.And you catch yourself humming to yourself throughout the day....

Wow. What a feast. A feast you can dance to. A feast that makes me want to put down all of this work I have to do, turn my back on the september morning chill, and head to L.A. to swear off winter forever... Each song has *such* a good groove, layering sounds and languages and cultures...I'm constantly being surprised by the inclusion of different instruments as these songs unfurl.... While there are a number of sounds here that have appeared in more popular music and tracks over the years, none of this feels done just for the sake of including a sound. As well, these tunes aren't overproduced. They're expertly mixed but still managed to retain the rawness of live music celebration... This kind of discovery is what participating in this 1001 albums exercise is all about... "The revolution will begin this Saturday night..."

I love the pixies. I've loved them since they started making music. But returning to Bossanova is a bit of an eye opener.... It's their third album. Some would say that here is where they finally came into their sound, confident in their alternative music success, refining all that had come before into a signature aurally. I remember loving this album. Playing it endlessly. Using it as cultural currency in conversations. Happy thst a band I knew already was finally becoming more mainstream and noticed.. But listening to it this week, I noticed something different. Yes, it's a refinement of pixies sounds and signatures, but it's also repetitious. The freshness of Doolittle and Surfer Rosa are recycled here....more of the same. More. Same. The best news for fans who don't want their favourite bands to change, but--from another perspective--creeping stagnancy. Or maybe more kindly...a holding pattern, a careless stasis that comes from touring fatigue and the pressures of being more visible. Energies were being siphoned off already...Kim Deal was recording Pod with her Breeders side project...a fresh and fun new collective.... Not to diminish the power and importance and sound of this album, but its less of a maturing sound than a fatigued one for this amazing band...

Strangely, I listened to this while doing yard work and some breaking down of old decking, and it seemed so oddly discordant....the soundtrack of urban complexity and musical refinement framing physical labour, sweat, and muscular exertion.... but it worked, and smoothed out my afternoon with a kind of calm balm.... Is there a class to jazz? Is it an upper class.kind of music? Does it belong in cocktail bars and quiet penthouse lofts? Is it well dressed and smartly pressed? Does it sneer at its bluesy cousin and dirty folk brethren? All i know is that this is where the saxophone belongs...maybe jazz is the *only* place that saxophone belongs...

Hm. Not what I would have picked as the stones' finest or most memorable album. What it does well, though, is showcase how effectively British music laundered the blues and sold it back to America as good ol' white guy rock and roll.... But the stones have always seemed to me like British expats who decided that America was much more their home vibe.... But maybe music shouldn't have a geography. Maybe music is fair trade and sounds are there to feel... Maybe I'm writing nonsense because this album was nothing special for me....

I tried. i tried so hard to love this. I made excuses for it. I blamed myself. I remembered that jazz is challenging, revealing listeners' limitations more than anything else... But this feels unfocused. Playful, but shallow. Like a kid that takes out all of the toys from the toy box but then doesn't really enjoy any of them and doesn't put them away. Maybe it's the "edge of the 80's" vibe, maybe it's that I just finished listening to Thelonious Monk, but--like a good boy--I finished all of the songs on the platter, but only because I was looking forward to some sort of dessert... Not an album or band I'll ever likely listen to again...

This is such a weird album to review. All I hear when I listen to it is my 13 year old self thinking about strange electronic futures under the shadow of nuclear war, feeling strange lusts for Annie Lennox's shaved head and deep, powerful voice, and remembering music through the medium of music videos from now on. This album has aged. I have aged. My hearing is memory mixed with the knowledge of now that shrinks the strange innovations of this album into a small smile as I shake my head. But Lennox is still a goddess thst I'd submit.to. Dave Stewart shaped so much of the music that poured into my ears during this decade.... But listening to it now? It doesn't have the hooks to keep my attention and my curiosity has moved.on. it will always symbolize that edge between innocence and the unknown for me...but in an anachronistic, quaint kind of way

Perfection.

This album is so interesting....Fiona Apple's songs are like Leonard Cohen's songs in that I listen to them for the lyrics and not the music. There are so many honest reflections here. Nothing sugar coated. Nothing idealistic. But the music is...forgettable to me. All except for "slow like honey." A song I will never tire of. Other than that song I'll probably never listen to this whole album again. But it does, holistically, affirm that Fiona Apple is formidable. A perceptive honest voice that's wise without being bitter.

Fuck yeah. The Stooges and Iggy. This album makes me want to uproot and unplug, searching for other lost and curious souls to spend the rest of my heartbeats moving through an unsolvable mystery. Even now, this album overflows with a raw energy that is frightening to a lot of people...it leans away from logics into desires that so many of us repress and exhales them in songs of such energy and transgression....it's punk, it's rock and roll. It's Jerry Lee Lewis unhinged on amphetamines and exploring his queer side...

This album struck me as something predictable and expected from the Byrds....but then the end of C.T.A.-102 and the song Mind Gardens interrupted my relatively passive listening stance and made me re-listen to the whole album again. Upon a second listening, it became apparent just how diverse this album is, how its psychedelic urges led to experimentations that were so bizarre at times that they preserved the odd freshness of the experience. The mixture of expected folk-rock sounds and these unexpected other growths suggests that this is either an album of transition, or--if we assume that all art is a footprint record of transition and transformation--then it's a record of exploration, of journeys familiar and unfamiliar. Not necessarily coherent as an album, but more like a party where there are many different and diverse people in attendance, but all share a few common denominators. I probably won't listen to this again, but it's added depth and texture to my understanding of the history of this band and the evolution of sound and music through the late 60s...

Holy fuck. This is a revelation. I can't believe I've overlooked and been unaware of grime music overall. As I stuff my conscience with humble pie and my ears with these sounds, I feel like a kid again. This is fresh and dirty , and strums something primal and electric in my soul. This album is genius...and my life from now on will be different and significantly more textured and flavored as i fall down this grimy rabbit hole universe!

This didnt even work for me as background music.... The first song is unique, but then they all blur together...

I love Neil Young. Period. But listening to this album reminded me that my exposure.to and experience with him comes largely from selected playlists and greatest hits collections, which ignore.a lot.of the experiences that this album exposed me to.... And it made me think that art and music are processes, feeling around in the dark for sounds and visions to express and materialize ideas....and so much of that, even if recorded, mastered, and released, is just a record of process, of that hunt. Not for all artists, of course....but I get that feeling with this album. It's a record of creative process, a sense of exploration and attempt. And it's not all good or memorable...but it is worthwhile.

Following from my previous review....if Neil Young's "On the Beach" suggests creative processual emergence, then this live album combines that kind of exploratory creativity with established nodes of musical identity for Deep Purple. Beyond studio artificially, where levels are checked, retakes are common, post-processing is essential, and solitary tracks are captures in isolation from other band members, this is a recording of organic synergy, of collaborative intensity in real time, together, between musicians who are intimate enough with each other's creativity that they can play with and off each other, renewing each other in a live moment of ephemeral energy.... And what an energy. An event, a single moment in time, recorded, captured, replicated and replayed in ways that blasphemes against the very nature and purpose of a live concert....so much needs to be said about what a recording does with and to the liveness of a moment. Like a photograph, these sounds have been stolen and preserved from time's relentless stream, enabling this experience for ears like mine which could never have witnessed it in person. The air moves in this room in the same way it did in Japan, that day... All said, this is an experience, and this band is spectacular. I bought this album for my dad one Christmas with the few dollars i'd saved from my job working at a gas station....it represents our shared love of music and of music that moves the heart and mind. "Child in time" here is a fucking triumph.