Fitfully decent 00s dance punk with slight Art Deco Talking Heads and Bowie croony thing going on. Unlike the real Archiduke Franz Ferdinand I wasn’t really struck or blown away. In terms of best songs. I would take out Jacqueline (even though she’s seventeen), marry Take Me Out and push the rest off a cliff.
Just exquisite. Perfect heartbreak album. One of the greatest voices of all time. The first album on the 1001 list chronologically speaking and arguably not bettered until 1989 when The Blue Nile recorded Hats.
Before Coldplay came along and knocked them off their perch, Travis were the best post-Britpop tunesmiths around and this here Man Who probably counts as their magnum opus. Going for it is a light, shimmery indie sound inspired by classic Radiohead and a batch of really excellent evergreen singles. Writing To Reach You, Driftwood, Why Does It Always Rain On Me? and Turn all bang in a kinda awesome but wussy way. 3rd track As You Are is also a grower, starting with streaks of I Would Like To Teach The World To Sing and then a bit of added epic Radiohead growl. If there is a downside to the album is that many of its deep cuts are simply too sleepy and relaxed and it judders to a halt actually with closer Slide Show. Bonus Track Blue Flashing Lights the band show all their claws though in a raucous spitting tale of domestic disturbance. 4 stars.
This debut from the 80s all-girl new wave group would have been quite good if all of the songs didn’t feel so plain and average. I know there were hits but there wasn’t anything that jumped out as quality or even being properly distinctive and memorable. Literally is just plain all-girl new wave-sound and no keeper songs. The Bangles afterwards would do a much grander job. 3 stars because technically not bad, just average.
Perfect Moon even if it is just a man and guitar along with a single overdubbed piano line. Simple, beautiful melodies and the most intricate, spellbinding fingerstyle guitar work. Manages to flip from completely bleak, barren and doldrums-like to intensely warm, hopeful inspiring with the same minimal guitary ingredients. Tortured and yet so tranquil sounding at same time. Strikes such a consistently rich and powerful mood throughout and is not a moment too long or too short even at a usually paltry 26 minutes because it’s so condensed with brilliant songs. Truly folk at its peak and an album to eclipse virtually all others.
Pretty solid album, plenty of decent tunes and lush textures and arrangements. The title track makes for a quite an epic opener until it just ends abruptly. Sun Hits The Sky and Richard III stand out as the most supreme songs in terms of catchiness and quality and there are a couple more that nearly match it but there isn’t quite a heavy hitter that I can put alongside Alright or Moving as true classics. Lots of cool synthy tones that weave well with the music but overall this bunch of songs just aren’t the most compelling. Circusy closer Sometimes I Make You Sad is kinda crappy. Album art is excellent.
A veritably classic ‘classic rock’ double album with a fair bit of detritus but a very strong 4 overall. Lengthy but supreme middle-eastern flavoured Kashmir and In The Light shine out at as the most epic and majestic high points but it is quite choc-a-bloc with lots of good material like Ten Years Gone, sinisterly funky Trampled Underfoot and tantalising, tender throwaways like Bron-Yr-Aur so plenty to enjoy. In My Time Of Dying is an 11-minute blues grind which isn’t that interesting over its run time and Side D is mostly garbageland with Wanton Song the only thing really worth salvaging so about only 62% or so of this is truly a must-hear.
Light, cosy 4 stars. Full to the rafters with lovely piano pop ballads but feels a bit plain after a while over the course of the album. I Feel The Earth Move and It’s Too Late firm favourites and definitive versions but a lot of these other classics that she originally wrote I tend to prefer by other artists. Smackwater Jack the one track I would cut back.
Not really a big fan of Talking Heads or David Byrne and I find his yelpy delivery on Born Under Punches to be particularly annoying. Crosseyed And Painless doesn’t do much for me either but The Great Curve jumps out more- I quite like the extra frantic cartoon car-chase vibe and some of the dentist drill guitar tones that pop up here and elsewhere. Once In A Lifetime is a pretty wondrous, iconic highlight where everything clicks impeccably into place and I can admit is pretty great. The second half beyond that is a bit barren and it is just the dark, doomy stillness and despondency of closer The Overload standing out as the next most notable track even if it is a copy of Joy Division I Remember Nothing.
A proper 21st century classic filled with mostly phenomenal tracks but also a couple of crummy, cobwebby ones too. First half flows really well and is largely magnificent with overpoweringly bleak moods and brilliant, inspired embracing of avant garde and electronic genres. Second half is a lot more disjointed with Optimistic and Idioteque being clear masterful highlights. In Limbo is one of the more rubbishy songs and Motion Picture Soundtrack is somewhat of a letdown closer so overall the album kinda drifts apart and loses itself somewhere in 4 star land.
Pretty tough to get through. It’s about 70 minutes, 20 songs and most of them sound the same. Vocals sound creaky in a Roy Woodish kind of way and the riffs just do the same sludgy thrashy jangle kinda thing. Standing In The Rain jumps out early on as a quality tune but after that highlights were hard to find. Actual Condition has a slight retro rockabilly 50s diner feel that doesn’t really fit and probably the song I liked the least. 2.5 stars.
Okayish desert blues. Rich, earthy, fairtrade sound but none of the songs really grabbed me and the vocals weren’t quite my bag. A 1001 album I wouldn’t mind too much if it was playing at a coffee shop. 3 macchiatos out of 5.
Good beats. Bad skits. Has at least one top drawer song with It Was A Good Year.
A bit of a rough listen. First song sounds like Emo Philips going berserk. At least it’s fairly short and the instrumental to vocal ratio is pretty generous. End of Plateau is cool and there’s the odd nice Canyonero riff and Turkey In The Straw solo here and there.
Solid album. Definitely one of the more essential Britpop releases and Jarvis and band feel at the top of their game here. Common People still an all-timer, frankly different class but Mis-shapes, Disco 2000 and Something’s Changed are quite excellent as well. There are couple of lowlights - the spacey, spoken word verses on FEELINGCALLEDLOVE are a bit of a drag and I Spy goes for a Leonard Cohen Takes Manhattan/Gloria Gaynor I Will Survive combo which doesn’t 100% work for me.
Pretty dated production with lots of slightly limp techno dance beats and gimmicky effects particularly on the first track with the harsh, sucking gated gaps of silence. There a few pretty good songs and I do like Shirley’s suave, slightly snarly Madonna vocals but really it is just Stupid Girl that is the standout for me. 6.0
Pretty cool listen. Chock full of loads of divergent styles from indie, electronica, pop, funk, afrobeat and occasionally elegant chamber music. All blended masterfully but with mainly with Radiohead and Lenny Kravitz vibes protruding. Opener is great, instantly hooky and whilst the music is consistently sleek and creative and cleanly produced I wasn’t pulled in again until Red Dress and then album started clicking. Solemn vocal riff on Love Dog got me thinking of Toto I Will Remember. DLZ big heavy highlight towards the end. Overall a strong 00s entry and one I would go back to.
A most resplendent album spooling with genius, out-of-this-world vocal harmonies and orchestrations. On balance a very tight collection of songs about innocent teenage inner conflict and romance co-crafted with guest lyricist Tony Asher. Absolutely groundbreaking for its time and still sounds so fantastic today. Wouldn’t It Be Nice, Sloop John B, God Only Knows and I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times feel most supreme and just explode with greatness but still there is so much to love here.
Not the world’s most impressive or exciting band but they delivered the goods with this 00s indie classic. Great synthpop elements and some of the catchiest, most prevalent songs and hooks of the decade. First half has the bulk of all the iconic singles whereas in the second half the quality control goes a bit awry. On Top and woozy synthfest closer Everything Will Be Alright are slightly grander album cuts whereas Change Your, Believe Me Natalie just plain suck. UK tracklist has Glamorous Indie Rock And Roll stuck in the middle of the album and is like chucking in a hand grenade of clunky riffs and bad autotune. An album whereas at least 7 of the 11 tunes are absolutely excellent.
Nice soothing dollop of country folk. Immaculately crafted and prettily sung but a bit too gentle and not that captivating. Kinda ordinary songs that don’t really jump out. No Free Birds or Stairway To Heavens in this collection.
Has a couple of notable classics that open each half with the title song and Season Of The Witch. There are some enjoyable light, medieval textures throughout along with Donovan’s wispy, freakay, Bowiesque-before-Bowie troubadouring. There are also a couple too many song that lack any kind of colour or magic though so it ends up being a patchy listen. 3.5 stars.
Quite overrated imo. Starts off great with Victoria but rest of the album is a slog. Neither any of the tunes or the story are that interesting to me. Brainwashed has a bit more rock bite and build up in Shangri-La is ok but nothing spectacular. I don’t really like the jokey, mugging, vaudeville style of singing that Ray Davies puts on occasionally during this.
Big, beaty tour de force. A couple of absolutely slamming tunes in Right Here Right Now and Praise You and Gangsta Trippin also good. Also love the skewiff funky vibe of Fucking in Heaven. Middle stretch of the album is less poppy and more of a clobbering dance workout and not as strong. The exotic Love Island and epic Acid 8000 make for a triumphant pair of closing tracks though.
First off a real eyesore album cover. Kind of like The Bends done in a drab Massive Attack 100th Window style. Music is actually a pretty cool mix of all sorts of stuff from soul ballads, trip hop, drum n bass, jazz, TV soundtracks, Hindistani rap and classical. A bit like Protection by Massive Attack but with the added Rubber Biscuit Hindustani rap and classical. Unfortunately it’s all bit soupy and generic sounding. Songs are not really that interesting and most of the styles except for the novel worldy bits have definitely been done better on other records. 2.5 stars
No ducks were harmed (I think) but my ears certainly were. This was actively atrocious. Most of the songs were annoying, pitch-shifted limericks or vocal tics given wonky synth treatment and sounded like 1930s Merry Melodies from Hell. At a push Blue Rosebuds was slightly weird, soft and dreamlike in a Doors End Of The Night/Eraserhead kinda way at least for the first minute so until the high-pitched vocals came in again and ruined it. Lizard Lady had kinda fun lyrics and story although I didn’t like any of the vocal delivery and second half again amped up the terribleness. Cool album cover.
I guess that’s why they call it the blues... because is this pretty good blues. Good band. Good live recording. Good to check out but nothing I love too much. I Got My Mojo Working parts 1 and 2 is probably best segment. 3.5 stars.
Pleasant enough but certainly not life-affirming album from an indie folk band trying to sound like oasis most of the time. Songs are simply OK and are quickly forgotten but it is quite richly arranged most of the time with strings, horns and the odd wall of guitar noise. So most of the time it sounds good except for the chopped off ending of Streets Of Kenny and the annoying one-note trumpet solo in Re-Instated. And vocals are a bit stodge Cast as well. So yeah, the only memorable elements here are the bad parts. 2.5 stars. HMS Fable should be a shipwreck in a sea of obscurity yet has weirdly been salvaged for this 1001 series.
Not a fan of the first half at all. Just a nasty racket with sub-Weezer songs mixed with elements of Slint and other noise rock crap. Second half starting from Loretta’s Scars was a lot better and more tuneful actually. Quite a few pleasant songs pleasantly sung and performed. 2.0 for first side and 3.5 for second side so 2.75 overall.
Straightforward classic with immensely raw blues rock sound and phenomenal singing from Janis Joplin throughout. Amazing artwork and featuring top notch songs such as Piece Of My Heart and others.
This debut from the 80s all-girl new wave group would have been quite good if all of the songs didn’t feel so plain and average. I know there were hits but there wasn’t anything that jumped out as quality or even being properly distinctive and memorable. Literally is just plain all-girl new wave-sound and no keeper songs. The Bangles afterwards would do a much grander job. 3 stars because technically not bad, just average.
Kinda passable conscious hip hop palaver over some poppy and approachable but fairly dated 00s production. There’s a few punchy, catchy highlights early on like with Kick, Push but a lot of the beats afterwards are quite subpar and skippable and choice of sample for Daydreaming is really eye-rolling and overfamiliar. And at the end Lupe forgets what liner notes are for and gives 12 minutes of shout outs to everyone he can think of. A mega patchy 2 and half stars.
Big chore of an album with nothing coming close to the best Pixies songs. First few tracks are absolute pain and torture and whilst it does become more listenable as it goes on it’s still about 20 tracks too long. 1.99 stars.
The first half is good because Papa Was A Rolling Stone is such a classic and takes up a good 75% of the runtime and lyrical theme of Run Charlie, Run is quite loaded let’s say. Second half is really not memorable at all so it lands somewhere between high 3 and low 3.5.
Has a clutch of famous songs at the start that range from good to naff but still kind of good that I’ve heard on the radio a million times anyway. After that the quality tanks faster than Tank Girl leading a charge of tanks off a cliff. Just empty, soulless R & B dreck and cynical, lazy filler.
One of the most immaculately produced albums of all time and also a complete lyrical masterclass. Just a really wry, astute but also loving send up of growing up in 50s surburbia set to the smoothest of 80s sonic landscapes. IGY is one of the most perfect and uplifting yet sharply ironic songs of all time and Walk Between The Raindrops a fabulous and bittersweetly emotional send-off. Title song also another incredible, hook-laden individual highlight. Even if the music is potentially too slick at times, the wonderfully observed themes, lyrics and overarching album concept makes this a record that keeps giving and giving.
So Bryan Ferry’s Goat Dracula croon and the raging, piercing, headachey sax playing isn’t always that pleasurable but this is a pretty rich sprawling slab of art rock with lots of suspenseful build-ups and opulent backdrops and textures that clash high-class with the hideous. Definitely takes a few listens to absorb. Do The Strand is the most immediate by far but Editions Of You with its splenetic fireworks synth and Grey Lagoons are also great rockers. The Bogus Man is a super tetchy funk groove/atonal jam that goes on forever but it’s really just the title track where the outro lingers on past its welcome.
A smattering of good tracks - Hey Ya, The Way You Move and maybe Roses. Not a great ratio for a 40 track collection. Even though it gets very eclectic, something about OutKast’s style I find very tacky and annoying and too often the songs just sound ghastly. 2.5 stars.
Nice, easy, soothing, classic 90s listen. Everything feels quite pared down and intimate and Elliott’s whimpery, eggy vocals tend to blend in softly and superbly with the extra-delicate folk. There are light strains of Beatlesesque and S+G melodies and harmonies and also some spikes of spikey angsty angst rock to mix it up. So a by and large mellow record with a razors edge at times. Between The Bars easy standout quality wise early on and then a strong sequence of tracks towards the end. Either a mid 4 or a high 4.
Kinda underwhelming listen. I like quite a few Ian Dury and the Blockheads songs but none of them seem to feature here on the original tracklist. Lyrics are slightly amusing throughout and First song Wake Up And Make Love With Me is a strong seedy opener but music-wise everything else is somewhat moth-eaten and needs chucking out for a different pub-rock wardrobe. Light 3.0.
Partial classic. Partial sham. There are some sweet, tender melodies like on the first track and the stripped back, lo-fi production and stylisms still sound very cool and modern but many of the songs are actually too minimal and humdrum and plod on forever. The Slinty sound collage piece The Murder Mystery is also just repetitive and annoying. The Ain’t Misbehavin’ style jazz number at the end with Moe the drummer singing is almost cute.
Not exactly top tier Crimson but still really good. Every track called Larks’ Tongue In Aspic is especially excellent. Slightly meandering with the middle bunch of tracks.
A most of the time mid-quality Oasis/Coldplay combo. There a few fairly strong tunes like Break Me Gently, Catch The Sun and The Cedar Room which have richer arrangements and more melody and feeling but everything else is a bit ordinary and blah and fading to grey where the band are less like Doves and more like Pigeons. Somewhere between 3.0 and 3.5.
Big, beaming bronze medal collection of alt-country/heartland indie. Tracks are crisp and clean yet rootsy as well and most of the songs are of a fairly good quality. When The Stars Go Blue and Nowhere Girl shine best. Ryan Adams has a certain blandness as a singer though and his songs are often a bit too slickly spun and don’t really have genuine emotional pull. It almost is authentic but isn’t quite. Most of it does sound like generic music that would be plonked somewhere in a special episode of Scrubs, The OC or Dawsons Creek.
Scraggy, smack-induced, Pavement-inspired semi-comeback after their burnout with Britpop on The Great Escape. This holds up much better and is a great record overall, kickstarting with two of their most iconic and enduring singles with the Beatlesy Beetlebum and sports arena mainstay Song 2. There’s cool, lo-fi slacker elements on Ballad Of A Country Sad Man and Graham Coxon ballad You’re So Great, tinge of techno on thumping, titanic On Your Own, haunted pier vibes on Theme From Retro and Death Of A Party, a burly blast of Bowie Boys Keep Swining rip-off on M.O.R and grisly urban/East End safari on experimental closer Essex Dogs. First half has all the hits but album is loaded with solid tunage from practically start to end and still sounds fresh and modern. 4.5 stars.
4 of the most legendary and timeless prog rock and music rock songs of all time. Plus Moonchild.
Before Coldplay came along and knocked them off their perch, Travis were the best post-Britpop tunesmiths around and this here Man Who probably counts as their magnum opus. Going for it is a light, shimmery indie sound inspired by classic Radiohead and a batch of really excellent evergreen singles. Writing To Reach You, Driftwood, Why Does It Always Rain On Me? and Turn all bang in a kinda awesome but wussy way. 3rd track As You Are is also a grower, starting with streaks of I Would Like To Teach The World To Sing and then a bit of added epic Radiohead growl. If there is a downside to the album is that many of its deep cuts are simply too sleepy and relaxed and it judders to a halt actually with closer Slide Show. Bonus Track Blue Flashing Lights the band show all their claws though in a raucous spitting tale of domestic disturbance. 4 stars.
Almost prime Stevie, coming after Innervisions except not nearly as loaded with big hitters. Songs range from fantastic, fair and forgettable. This should make for a patchy record but sound is so mellow and breezy throughout it makes for an overall pleasant listen and is often really delectable with the rising harmonies on Smile Please and woozy synths and even more dreamy harmonies on Creepin being the tastiest highlights . 4 stars.
Pretty cool Cuban jazz record with lots of nifty playing and some of the best Exotic Socialista Hotel singing on it. 3.75 Cuban Cigars out of 5.
One of the most immaculate and masterful albums of all time. Title song when it takes off is full-on transcendence and is like a jazz-rock Stairway To Heaven. Peg is the feel good hit of every summer. And Deacon Blues has just the best lyrics and could very well be my own theme tune.
Really dated collection of cold sterile drum and bass. There’s the occasional fine groove like on Brown Paper Bag and ok vocal features like on the title track. There is a distinct lack of warmth, variety and musical interest across the project though. Really is just repetitive breakbeats and lifeless video game menu music. Also the runtime is merciless. Album is practically neverending. Discs of this are like Hydra. I attempted to start disc 2 but my mind just got frazzled very quickly after the intro.
Super iconic early 70s Bowie album. The one after Ziggy Stardust. One of his artiest yet glammiest and rocking. It’s also pretty hokey and uneven with just a couple of glorious tunes like Drive-In Saturday and Jean Genie. St*nes cover Let’s Spend The Night Together is a proper rollicking highlight as well. Title song is actually hideous and definite lowlight for me. 3.5 stars.
Nice bustling British blues classic and important stepping stone album for John McVie of Fleetwood Mac and Eric Clapton before he became God. Great tunes. Great playing. Great vibes. Good album art. A lot of blues indeed were broken out. 4 stars.
Incredibly front-loaded with the ultimate best song and all the other hits right at the start. Becomes a less alluring stay the longer it goes on with Pretty Maids All In A Row offering terrible room service. A four star hotel because of the excellent first half and Victim Of Love and Last Resort are pretty good as well.
One of the all-time great rock operas despite straddling a real fine line in the 2nd half of not being that good. Super ambitious with phenomenal highs like Hey You, Mother and Comfortably Numb and also Run Like Hell and One Of My Turns. It’s not a totally watertight classic despite being practically the Roger Waters show and there are some pretty rotten bricks towards the end like The Trial. 4.5 stars rounded up to 5 for the site.
Outta sight 60s psych folk record with a couple of truly evergreen cuts like 8 Miles High and Mr Spaceman and some richly orchestrated deeper cuts like John Riley. Not a lot to throw for the birds here except for the atypically average Hey Joe cover.
Appropriate that they’re in a helicopter on the album cover because the quality of the tracklist gets almightily choppy. Singles like Dancing Queen, Knowing Me, Knowing You and Money x3 outshine a hundredfold the rest of the songs which are at best pleasant or not even slightly pleasant at all like on the track where one of the two blokes takes over lead vocal duties. Light 3.5 stars.
Some of the most powerful and masterfully produced singles in all of popular music. Probably should get 6 or 7 stars for title song alone but it does get pretty flimsy right towards the end of the album. Bye Bye Love means bye bye half a star so 4.5 overall. Still a strong 4.5 though.
Basically a truly excellent record if it weren’t for Joni’s vocals being so shrill and birdsongy. It’s ear-stabbing when she’s happy and flips to her highest register which makes upbeat tracks like All I Want and California total minefields. This Flight Tonight is pretty cool and folk-poppy despite the voice. The moodier and more sullen tracks like Blue and softer, pleasantier ones like Little Green are so pretty and A Case Of You really shines as the best overall song. A very conditional 4 stars because of the musical quality throughout.
Two regular gothy synthpop dudes strike up the courage to make one of the landmark albums of the 80s and maybe the greatest album of the century perhaps. It’s a production extravaganza with a luxuriance of whirring, grinding, despairing synth mixed with more relaxed, natural and polished instrumental tones and Orzabal and Smith are on super top form vocally as well. Featuring a trio of hugely successful singles and top of the lungs anthems which land so monumentally in a tracklist that is insanely tight and magnificently sequenced. A lot variety as well from the monstrous, mechanical stadium synth rock of Mothers Talk and Broken to the beautiful smooth jazz anguish of The Working Hour and the meditativeness of I Believe and more mystical closer Listen. Easy 5 stars.
Just a bunch of silly Sesame Street bordello songs and Halloween tunes. Feels like puppets are singing and playing along to every clink clank beat and junkyard rhythm. Even prettier ballads like Time, Downtown Train and Blind Love are a bit comically overwrought and hard to take totally seriously. The vocals on Blind Love are absolutely outrageous by the way. Like the Cookie Monster trying to crap out a massive boulder. The last song Anywhere I Lay My Head is the Cookie Monster crapping out another boulder whilst transforming into a werewolf with Last Post military brass playing underneath. Super eclectic overall but sunk to 2.5 stars because half the tracks are really annoying.
High points on album - euphoric ‘bow bow bow’ bits on Second Hand News. The Formula One section on The Chain. The divine heavenly background harmonies on disco romp/affair You Make Loving Fun. Has a clutch of singles like Don’t Stop, Dreams and Go Your Own Way which are so overplayed and yet still so good. Definitely helps the album that the romantic crossfire hurricane behind the making of the album is so legendary because there are a couple of songs or so that aren’t nearly as high quality or as interesting. Songbird is a robustly boring, typical pretty ballad that Nigel Tufnel rewrote a few years later and called Lick My Love Pump. Oh Daddy and Gold Dust Woman right at the end are a touch too atmospheric and the combination of them brings the album down to a whimper. It’s these 3 songs plus the overplayedness of the main hit singles that curtail these most pervasive of Rumours from being an all time favourite.
Big old bunch of occasionally catchy disco masterminded Nile Rodgers/Bernie Edwards of Chic. They strike gold on He’s The Greatest Dancer which electrifies on every level and has hooks for days. We Are Family the title song is not gold at all in fact is horrible and cheesy but is also about as famous and as catchy. Nothing else is really as spectacular or as memorable and these sisters are also not the greatest singers so it can get pretty dull beyond the hits.
Sleek, soulful and sometimes even snazzy like on the snazz-jazz title track which is a shoe-in for top 10 songs that use the word ‘fantabulous’. Caravan is great. Come Running is great. Into The Mystic a bit overrated. Album gets more rag tag towards the end. Everyone a bit repetitious and out of place stab at baroque pop. 3.5 stars.
More like the La Di Da’s. Has one awesome Britpop-influencing ‘1001 songs you must hear’ type song in There She Goes but nothing else comes close to matching it so the album is overall quite the disappointment. Very sixties revivalist and if it was released back then it would have been called There She Goes and 11 Other Songs.
From first moment to practically last this is piano pop perfection. Songs are so catchy and buoyant and there is such little let up. It’s Thriller-esque in that everything could have been a hit single. It’s loaded with a tonne of McCartneyisms but a lot of other variety as well including the cinematic title song, samba of Get It Right The First Time, street folk in Scenes From An Italian Restaurant, the Dylanesque She’s Always A Woman, gospel closer Everybody Has A Dream and world’s best love song that even Paul McCartney wishes he wrote in Crazy Frog err I mean Just The Way You Are. Fair to say that Billy Joel is on peak form here.
Kinda cool but scrappy debut offering with herky jerky riffs and annoying vocals as is always the case with this band and below par production. Songwriting is bit random and terms of hit rate percentage it’s more like 33.5. Psycho Killer is easily the best of the rabble with The Book I Read and No Compassion the next most goodish tunes.
Probably 3.5 stars because there are a couple of shaky songs mainly when some other rough random dude starts singing. Plus also because of doubts about whether this is an actual studio album. Bumped up to 4 for the site because overall it’s such a lush, vibrant listen with good melodies, good playing, good singing and smooth tangs of 80s tropical jazz synth. João Camel-approved.
Super snazzy jazzy debut with big sexy clash of 00s neo soul and retro 50s styles. Kind of more along the lines of ‘promising debut’ rather than true 1001 material and probably Amy’s second best album but still, amazing voice and lots of greatness and spiritedness swishing around in here also.
Certainly not wrong about ‘infinite’. There’s so many songs to wade through here. I got bored after about 7. Plus you have the constant, painful Billy Corgan screech and whine to contend with. Some nice symphonic elements and 1979 is on here but overall getting through this double album is completely torturous.
More like ‘Bore of Enchantment’… oh wait, that doesn’t sound much worse than its current name. ‘Snore of Encrapment’? Either way this is a very lacklustre, completely non-essential album. The closest thing slacker and alt-country has to Shack. And because it was officially taken off the 1001 list I didn’t even have to listen to it anyway.
A good time capsule record. Like Life On Mars-ing to the grottiest, dingiest Madchester nightclub, investigating and hanging out with all the lowlife and having a mildly decent time. Chief gargoyle Shaun Ryder comes up with lots of memorable lines and you really hear chief dancer Bez’s contributions too. Gold is struck on the super ravey, earwormy and iconic Step On along with Lady Marmalade rip-off Kinky Afro and Loose Fit. The rest is generally ok but not especially catchy and it’s mainly helped by the dance beats which do tend to be more comedownish than partytastic. Grandbag’s Funeral and Bob’s Yer Uncle probably the two other main highlights. Low 4 stars. “You’re twisting my Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, man”
Like a teeny tots version of Rage Against The Machine with baby’s first DJ turntables and aw diddums screamo vocals flying around. After just a few tracks I felt like I was melting back into being an angsty teenager and almost tripped over a skateboard that had magically grown over the process of listening to this. Some legit awful tracks with the most cluttered, churned, plastic production and the best songs like Crawling and In The End aren’t even songs anymore if they ever were, just memes. Kind of almost look back on it fondly because it was such a big part of the music fabric at the time however cringy. Singles off of Meteora are better though.
The title track features the grand Randy Crawford, was used on the Jackie Brown soundtrack and is a scorcher of a funky disco soul anthem even if it is stretched for miles beyond its natural length. The rest of the album is immaculate, smoothalicious, background jazz funk of a very high order. Overall, not quite an uptown offering but still a virtuous showing from these coffee shop Crusaders. 3.5 stars.
Great debut album that stands a little small now in the loom of Loveless. Music is coolly shambolic and is like a mix of Dinosaur Jr, Smiths, Velvet Underground, Jesus And Mary Chain and good Sonic Youth. (When You Wake) You’re Still In A Dream and Feed Me With Your Kiss have the best energy and are awesome rock-outs and riff fests but most these tracks are either super fun or bizarrely pretty and ethereal. The 1-2 of No More Sorry and All I Need are kind of sucky and astringent though. I Can See It (But I Can’t Feel It) right at the end is a seriously blissed dreampop nugget.
Juju, “an object that has been deliberately infused with magical power or the magical power itself”. I’d say that magic was strewn across this album a little unevenly with Spellbound, Halloween and Monitor easily the biggest highlights and a couple too many deadweight songs mainly in the back half. For the most part even with the songs not always being that catchy this is a decently atmospheric, unnerving listen with lots of nice, wiry Brillo pad of guitar, rumbly thunderous percussion and plenty of gothy, waily, tribally goodness. 3.5 stars.
Very vibrant blast of funk metal as well as reggae, ska and even early skater punk. And it is kinda cool except that it is just really cheesy and dated and more often than not the songs are super lame and annoying. It’s almost like Faith No More joining forces with Was (Not Was) and coming up with more songs like Walk The Dinosaur except not as good. There could also be snatches of Cult Of Personality if it was by Living Off-Colour. The cover of Freddie’s Dead at the start is a complete bungle. There are occasionally okayish party jams throughout but Bonin’ In The Boneyard is not one of them. 2.5 stars
More like Hanoi Sucks. Getting through this was tough. Every song plays like super rubbishy, not at all glamorous early glam punk metal but they’re all like 5 minutes long and I wanted to get the first plane ticket out of this Mystery City pretty much instantly.
A goodish live album with one song everybody knows anyway in I Want You To Want Me. All the others are hardly America’s most wanted and the same Japan crowd probably went crazier for the Carpenters as well.
Perfect Moon even if it is just a man and guitar along with a single overdubbed piano line. Simple, beautiful melodies and the most intricate, spellbinding fingerstyle guitar work. Manages to flip from completely bleak, barren and doldrums-like to intensely warm, hopeful inspiring with the same minimal guitary ingredients. Tortured and yet so tranquil sounding at same time. Strikes such a consistently rich and powerful mood throughout and is not a moment too long or too short even at a usually paltry 26 minutes because it’s so condensed with brilliant songs. Truly folk at its peak and an album to eclipse virtually all others.
More like ‘Snorenography’. It starts off quite menacing and nicely evil sounding but that song and every one after it just turns out to be super repetitive, droning and tedious. Not a whole lot of, or rather, any melodies to be found here and Robert Smith yelp singing is way more annoying that it usually is. Some cool wiry guitar lines that are basically copied and pasted from Joy Division Closer.
A true power pop classic. Easily the #1 Record that Big Star have done. Shines blindingly bright with its ballads which are of the bestest order. Feel, The Ballad Of El Goodo, In The Street, Thirteen, When My Baby’s Beside Me, Give Me Another Chance and Watch The Sunrise all S-tier. My Life Is Right, Try Again and Ringo track India Song somewhere between A-minus and B tier. 4.5 big stars.
Cool acousticy album. Cool setlist and versions. Ladbaby cover at the end is cool.
Nice bit of random, wiry, angular indie rock from the 80s. Songs range from humdrum to o hey that’s pretty good. Highlight is What Gets Heard where Harry S Plinkett is on lead vocals.
Absolutely terrible. A dull, grey 70-minute musical wasteland. Noam Chomsky wrote a book about ‘Failed States’ and I think Daydream Nation was listed as one of them. 1.5 stars.
No rising or falling, just a lot of ‘Midness’. House Of Fun is still a bop but really the only Madness record worth checking out is their Greatest Hits.
Fitfully decent 00s dance punk with slight Art Deco Talking Heads and Bowie croony thing going on. Unlike the real Archiduke Franz Ferdinand I wasn’t really struck or blown away. In terms of best songs. I would take out Jacqueline (even though she’s seventeen), marry Take Me Out and push the rest off a cliff.
Just exquisite. Perfect heartbreak album. One of the greatest voices of all time. The first album on the 1001 list chronologically speaking and arguably not bettered until 1989 when The Blue Nile recorded Hats.
Mid-60s proto punk/Nirvana record. Sounds a bit like Surfin Bird but with more screaming and leagues lower recording quality. Whereas early Kinks singles are mint examples of proto punk this is much more ridiculous and novelty and kinda rubbishy. Interesting in certain ways but I probably won’t be getting the 60th anniversary reissue when it comes out.
As Louis Balfour on the Fast Show would say, “…Nice!”
A grand don’t come for free, it come for four! An easy four stars for this exemplary, ambitious, high-cultured hip-hopera. Dry Your Eyes one of the top ballads of the century and Fit But You Know It a Parklife for the 00s.
Nevermind Trafalgar. This felt more like The Hundred Years War. It is such a tremendous slog with one murderously dull and wretched folksy symphonic cornball ballad after another and not one disco hit in sight. The music is already pretty lame anyway but the Gibbs bros manage to serve up a truly bizarre and horrendous set of vocals with Robin especially pushing the boat out here. Robin has some really stiff and weird delivery going on with When Do I and with the chintzy oompah eurovisiony arrangement it does give me serious Edvard Khil trololo vibes except it’s not fun or uplifting in anyway and on the histrionic Lion In Winter he sounds like Roger Daltrey with a buzzard in his throat whilst running around after catching fire. 1.5 stars.
A challenging album to get into. Julian Cope’s deep, often tuneless voice does grate quite often and even though there’s so many different styles swirling around here there’s just not much in the way of quality songwriting so this act of throwing a hundred things against a wall and trampling over it in monotone boots comes off as super indulgent and messy. And crushingly long. 2.5 stars.
Super icy early 80s goth/post-punk. So icy you could take the album and use it as a miniature ice rink. Not a particular masterpiece although it does have mostly good songs, an intensely sparse and chilly and kinda wonderful atmosphere throughout and also the best Cure track with A Forest. Light 4 stars.
The last ABBA album before their first dissolution and it’s actually pretty solid. It’s not exactly loaded with fire and doesn’t have any iconic hits but there is still a lot of general yummy synthpoppy goodness and a super cool classy standout ballad towards the end with Slipping Through My Fingers. The title track opener is a great whirring bit of electrodisco about the secret police. Soldiers has a real bouncing infectious, almost prowling safari like groove. Head Over Heels is a kinda cheesy 80s game show theme however. One Of Us is the most poppiest normal thing on here and is technically on ABBA Gold which I forgot about. Favourite ones are possibly the B-sides/extra tracks not on here like Should I Laugh Or Cry and The Day Before You Came which are both brilliant productions. Light 4 stars.
Cool band. Album cover is cool.
Mouldy grandpa funk from the 60s with some supercharged phases but also muffled production, corny pocketful of posies pop melodies and vocals and some absolutely atrocious extended jamming which means that it doesn’t really stand up as a full decent album.
Not that huge a fan of Perry Farrell’s vocals, it can have the effect of a long jet of skunk spray over a song but this is actually a pretty groovy rock album with constantly excellent guitar and really improves with the longer trippier, more drawn out songs towards the end.
Certainly no enemies when it comes to making classic albums. Very trailblazing for the hip-hop genre with its mix of ferocious swag, punchy MCing, constant brutal blast of Bomb Squad beats and firebrand politics. A fully rambunctious listen from start to end and maybe a tad samey because of that and also a tinge dated sounding but still a classic. 4 yeah boii’s out of 5.
Pretty humdrum, lightweight work. Has a dash of Smiths, Simon & Garfunkel and 60s easy listening but just feels like a sterile mixture and also all so twee. Songs and chord changes are usually pretty dull. Singer’s voice is a bit of a constant annoyance, almost has that Nick Drake wisp but with no fragility or emotion and is probably more like David St Hubbins singing We Are The Flower People. Instrumentation throughout is generally cool and relaxed although for some reason the trumpet solos set my teeth on edge. Mayfly with its Telstar flavours for its solo is probably my favourite track. Low 3.
His aim is decent. It’s not exactly his grand masterwork (that would be either Armed Forces a few years later or Painted From Memory with Burt Bacharach in 1998) but this is a good debut and introduction to Costello with pockets of sharp shooting, snarly brilliance from the off like Welcome To The Working Week and other tuneful highlights such as Alison, Red Shoes and I’m Not Angry. And reggae-rific best song Watching The Detectives which was originally a non-album single. Light 4.
Big fan of the synthpoppier Pretty Hate Machine and Closer on here is my kind of jam but even though it is considered something of NIN’s absolute masterpiece it is way too rackety and abrasive with very few tunes that I actually like. The remix album featuring Spyro The Dragon called The Downward Spyro is way better.
Overwhelmingly exquisite and to an outstandingly effervescent degree. The guitar effects are a constantly fizzying masterclass and the songs are a mixture of crazily beautiful and uplifting to completely chilling and haunting. I feel like I am swimming in a lost underwater kingdom filled entirely with cherry cola and a mermaid siren is singing the most gorgeous indecipherable melodies.
Some rocking highlights but Changes is a pretty dopey ballad and back half of the record is a bit of a slog. Snowblind is probably the best song here but Snowbound by Donald Fagen is more my thing. Black Sabbath Vol 3.5.
Hey man, this Hendrix chap is pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty,, pretty, pretty, pretty good. UK version with bonus tracks for the best sequencing.
Not exactly my ideal power trio. After The Jimi Hendrix Experience the previous day, moving on to this is like going from a bottle of fine Johnnie Walker Blue to a manky bowl of rice pudding that’s about a year or five out of date. Bland by design but also extremely gross. For a group that features Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt is the one with the worst hairpiece with those Eddie Munster/Lazytown stylings.
Not exactly ‘Blundertones’ but having this on the list is definitely a bit of a bungle. Really ordinary. Not catchy enough to be pop. Not cool enough to be punk. Ugly cover. Their one great track Teenage Kicks isn’t on here and apparently not on their other 1001 album (???) and I don’t even like the song that much. Maybe the debut is a more legitimate entry but certainly not this. A bit sad that the best thing by miles is an average cover of Under The Boardwalk.
A solo album from the main Beatles dude that is filled with mostly good songs. Imagine that! Highlights are Imagine, Jealous Guy and Paul McCartney love letter How Do You Sleep?
Call Me NOT Djam Leelii but I wasn’t really that keen on ‘adventuring’ into this. After a quick brisk through it, it seems like gently sinister or gently gentle background music for movies where the action lame or otherwise moves to a scene in Africa. Not awful but a bit boring and not really my ‘Djam’. 2.5 stars.
Nice breezy indie clubland listen that has two absolutely groovalicious choice cuts with the acid house cover of Only Love Can Break Your Heart and the resplendent pop euphoria of Nothing Can Stop Us Now. Plus also some more slender beautiful highlights with Spring and London Belongs To Me Now and the female vocals throughout the album tend to be pretty delish. It’s a bit fragmented by frequent TV and movie snippets as well as sudden bursts of ambient and the weaker tracks do feel a little too random and sketchy. Either a strong 3.5 or a low 4.0.
Nice, cool listen with Son Of Sam and L.A being the coolest cuts. Gets a bit samey and loses its lustre later on. Lop off about 4 or 5 songs and you have a much cooler, nicer album. I have the Goyte song stuck in my head because of Track 2.
Electro-Shock Blues and Blinking Lights And Other Revelations get even deeper and personal and are arguably more incredible works but this one is just a conventional set of great songs and definitely my go-to Eels album. On here they cultivate a nice, classic, easy-going, kinda Beckish alt-rock sound but the best songs are so much better and more meaningful and resonant than what Beck was doing with Odelay for example. Novocaine For The Soul is probably the most iconic and invigorating track and along with Susan’s House, My Beloved Monster and Your Lucky Day In Hell are amongst my favourite songs of the decade. Mental, Rags To Rags and Flower also very strong and Spunky, Manchild and title track splendid, supple, slender ballads. As well as the cool, cool, poppy beats, guitar and production, lyrically is where the album really shines. Every wry, woe-is-me couplet Mark Oliver Everett aka E fires out is pretty much pure humorous diamonds.
Probably should be on a Mount Rushmore for classic Dad Rock albums. It’s in equal turns truly magnificent and monumentally dull. Money For Nothing has hooks for days (and outros for years) and is one of the tracks of the century. Gets gradually naffer as the disc wears on. Why Worry? is the silkiest and softest of snooze savannahs, stretching ridiculously for almost 9 minutes. Ride Across The River has a litany of cheesy dated keyboard sounds that make it sound like a blend of Indian Restaurant background music and an episode of CITV Jungle Run. One World is actually a good guitary highlight towards the end amongst the cheesy country, smooth jazz and new agendas but if the generally highly regarded title track closer has any brilliance it’s very subtle. Very light 4 because I do like it a lot for the first half and it is magnificent in its scope even if not all the tracks are wildly amazing.
Kimono my house but don’t invite Russel Mael. His squally, super-theatrical dentist drill vocal stylings basically wreck the joint. Otherwise this would have been a fairly solid bunch of spiky and angular 70s glam pop. This Town Ain’t Big Enough For The Both Of Us and outro of Equator two main peaks of annoyance. 2.5 stars.
Generally very good. A rich, buzzing tapestry of South African folk, freewheeling Paul Simon wisp and the pharpiest 80s bass. Boy In The Bubble, Graceland and You Can Call Me Al the main highlights and true songs of miracle and wonder.
Complete garbage. Nasty, screechy, plinky plonk, faux-experimental post-punk. At its best the songs sound like an inferior version of Television. At its worst it sounds like someone dropped a music junkyard off a Looney Tunes cliff. I couldn’t tell if the vocals were Peter Griffin, a brainslugged David Byrne from Talking Heads or a screeching Beaker from the Muppets. There’s a funny haywire moment on Life Stinks where it goes up an extra notch in intensity almost as if it was putting itself through a wood chipper. The ultimate nadir is probably Sentimental Journey which is like Joy Division’s I Remember Nothing but graced by the mumbly narration of Mr Plinkett and a thousand extra glass bottles and windows being smashed up.
The Police’s massively best-selling final album which also happens to be one of the most lop-sided in history. The A-side generally tends to be B-Tier Police or worse (much,much worse). The title track opener and O My God are fine but Walking In Your Footsteps and Steward Copeland aka Ringo song Miss Gradenko are pointless filler and Mother by guitarist Andy Summers is part primal scream therapy, part Norman Bates monologue and part Discipline by King Crimson gone wrong and is ear-shredding in its awfulness. In terms of being a jarring inclusion it’s like chucking a bouncing ball of machetes into a sea of pillows or a scene of Cannibal Holocaust in a cut of An Officer And A Gentleman before a large unsuspecting movie theatre audience. The last 5 songs starting with Synchronicity II are all solid gold and appear on The Police’s Greatest Hits anyway but I would give 4 stars here simply for the stacked brilliance of the second half. Even though the atrocity of Mother is hard to overlook, albums with King Of Pain, Every Breath You Take and Wrapped Around Your Finger can’t be 3 stars.
I love Pretty Hate Machine so this should be more my sort of thing and even though I like some of the beats and soundscape of Enjoy The Silence I just don’t dig that much of it. The version of Personal Jesus feels a little too plodding and dudes voice always is just a bit too dour.
Basically a classic debut from the opening public service announcement to the end of 2nd track My Name Is. Beyond that nothing really has the same level of hooks, landing humour or pop appeal. Still probably Eminem’s 3rd or even 2nd best album at his terrible rate.
A pretty gargantuan gold-plated 5 star for sure. The first 8 minutes of Shine On You Crazy Diamond are grander than 1500 Mozart symphonies and maybe is the finest stretch in all of recorded music and the rest of the album is pretty great as well. Like a tumultuous epic voyage filled with the scrummiest mountain-sized pangs of sadness and regret and a great statement from the band about the music industry after the all-out success of Dark Side Of The Moon. Only 4.3 on the global charts… wish it were higher!
Aggravatingly average post-punk. Even the way they’re standing on the eyesore landscape and the cheap green font they use on the cover is irritating. Really lacking in tunes and doesn’t hold the slightest candle to Ocean Rain. 2.5 stars.
Pretty Chill. The second best album called On The Beach after Chris Rea.
A collection of super musty and cobwebby early electro and hiphop stretching as far back as 1982. Planet Rock has that cool icy Kraftwerk interpolation and is a nice throwbacky listen for a few minutes but an entire album of this stuff is actually pretty nightmarish. Just incredibly cheesy and dated with iffy beats and whack flow.
Lambchop dude seems like a bit of a shyster. Takes a bunch of elevator country and soul and does completely interchangeable Kif Kroker-style wispy breathy mumble singing over it. There aren’t really any discernible melodies and the songs don’t tend to go anywhere. It’s mellow and listenable enough because of the easygoing music backdrop or at least until the falsetto starts and then it’s really hard to take the record seriously because it then turns into gushing ballads from a Miss Piggy/Audrey from Little Shop Of Horros/squeaking radiator hybrid creature. It adds a crazy level of cringe to what is otherwise a completely bland yet pitchfork approved faux quirky alt-country/indie album.
There are a few certainties in this world. Grass is green, Pope is catholic and Prince is the greatest musician to have ever walked the planet. And this is truly one of the all time great double albums. So fresh, funky, vibrant and eclectic with the heavy, politically conscious title track opener, hip hoppity Housequake, tinges of Daft Punky electro on Ballad Of Dorothy Parker, the badass genre bending chipmunk voice of Camille on the fantabulous, philosophical If I Was Your Girlfriend, religious soul searching with the acoustic rocker The Cross, the greatest house party and last hurrah of his former backing band The Revolution on It’s Gonna Be A Beautiful Night, classic rock fm/baseball anthems with Sheena Easton duet U Got The Look, a pantheon of feel good pop with Play In The Sunshine, Starfish and Coffee Strange Relationship and more as well as some of the slinkiest soul ever with the slushing scorchtastic closer Adore. Even though it’s a double, each disc is really tight and it all flows wonderfully. There’s little padding on this sexy beast. Easiest 5 stars ever.
“WOAH! WERE HALFWAY THERE WOAH!! LIVIN ON A PRAYER!!! TAKE MY HAND WELL MAKE IT I SWEAR WOAH! LIVIN ON A PRAYER!!!!!!” With the extended number of albums on the 1001 list I’m probably only about a tenth of the way there but colossal everlastingly brill hair metal anthemry such as this does make it easier. Social Disease the one main iffier cut plus a few forgettable ones near the end and Raise Your Hands, Let It Rock and Wild In The Streets other top drawer songs besides the huge, hella fun hits.
A Christmas Gift that keeps on giving. Locked and loaded with tried and true Christmas hits and reinforced bombastically by his patented Wall Of Sound production, this splendorous seasonal showdown from Phil Spector is a complete bullseye. Minus 2 stars for holding my wife captive and shooting at my foot after a sharades game gone wrong an awful 15 Christmas’s ago.
A smoggy shoegazey Springsteenish spectacular for a good hour span, this starts off so spiffingly with supercharged widescreen epics like Under The Pressure and Red Eyes. And whilst it is generally strong throughout it does get deeply samey with all the constant smoggy, shoegazey widescreen Springsteenish epics. Still one of the standout releases from 2014 though.
Down By The River and Cowgirl In The Sand are mildly decent twitchy guitar epics but overall this debut from Neil Young with his Crazy Horse team tends to be duller than a dull day in Dull County. And things veer from dull to just dreadful with the painful screeching violinfest on Running Dry (Requiem For My Patience). 2.5 stars for that and for being so staggeringly overrated.
A pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty good David Bowie album. Perhaps his first pretty good one that kickstarts the prettiest of 70s hot streaks. Probably only Pink Floyd and Steely Dan compare. Life On Mars? is a soaring, sensational standout. Changes, Oh You Pretty Things and Queen Bitch also top tier Bowie. It is not all Hunky Dory though. Eight Line Poem is a bit Hunky Snory whilst the Andy Warhol song and Belway Bros are incredibly Clunky Dory. Other than that though it’s pretty glamtastic and good.
From top to bottom she is a bit of a stunner but from front to back this album is actually quite a letdown. It starts off so alluringly with a couple of extremely strong singles and she has such a smooth, silky voice with a sweltering swelterpit of synthy, clubbish RnB neo soul behind it. Unfortunately this sweltering swelterpit of neo soul goodness turns to completely vapid smush about 3 tracks in as no more actual different beats or grooves or songs are brought to the table. Even Kelela’s seemingly super silky, siren like voice gets kinda tired and samey after a certain point. A one trick pony albeit a sexy one so 3 stars.
good kid, long album. Not my vibe.
Very ‘yeh, whatever’ comeback album from LCD Soundsystem who said they already broke up in 2011 and gave a massive self-congratulatory farewell concert for it. This album is more like American Sleepwalk or American Staring into space on a long rattly pitchfork indie train journey. Songs have that general super original Bowie/Talking Heads blend and one of them copies that Shehnai sound off King Crimson Sheltered Sky that goes on for way too long. Overall not entirely wretched but quite annoying on every other track and unlike their previous releases deeply, deeply bland. I got bored and fed up half way through and just switched on to Substance by New Order for some actual banging electronic indie.
Hip hop study beats to study and relax to. And by relax I mean get irritated to and switch off very quickly. Shame because I did want to like this more because of the talent involved but the rapping wasn’t anything special and the production behind it was super headachey and annoying.
No hardline as such, this is album is squishier than the squishiest clean up on aisle 3. Perhaps more like The Flatline. Super rancid 80s hospital. radio squared with supermarket radio featuring soggy, boring grooves all played by a singer who seem like a bland smush between Prince, MJ and Stevie Wonder. I’m normally a big sucker for 80s pop and RnB but this was way too iffy and derivative.
Possibly my less favourite of their 3 studio albums but still pretty phenomenal with toppity top tracks such as Spanish Castle Magic, Wait Until Tomorrow, If 6 Was 9, Little Wing and Bold As Love. Tracklist is very snappy, tight-knit and incredibly well sequenced and does stand up as a true classic of the decade. Magnificent blend of blistering metal, soft as silk balladeering and powerhouse psychedelia.
Not exactly Exodus by Bob Marley. This is about the reggaeish bunch of reggae that ever reggaed and it reggaes quite stodgily at that. At no point does it ever light up. Far from legalizing it, I would get some SWAT team in and enforce it off this list.
Possibly not as great as OK Computer but in some ways even better. This is a straightforwardly super collection of glumtastic indie with an extra slollop of icy piano, beats and synths plus a few regular full-throttle rock moments like on the scintillating opener 2+2=5 , strident lead single There, There and folksier Go To Sleep. Myxomatosis towards the backend is another doomy, searing hellscape of a highlight. 4.5 stars because there are a couple of threadbare moments like on I Will and Scatterbrain but I would be inclined to round this up to 5.
Good bunch of classic-era Stevie. Some gold standard gems like Superstition and Sunshine Of My Life, other smooth gems like You Got It Bad Girl and You & I and gunky funk gems like the proto Prince Maybe Your Baby. Not wall to wall greatness because of a couple of snoozier lightweight cuts towards the end and the gunky funk of Maybe Your Baby is a bit too gunky and gaping but overall pretty nice and mellow.
Not exactly bad but not that good either. She has an fine warble but apart from the one obvious highlight, the songs and production here tend to be pretty third rate. She knocks it out of the park on Nothing Compares 2 U and makes the Prince song her soaring own but everything else is either sub-Enya, sub-Sundays or sub-Billy Ocean. I do not have this album and am certainly not wanting it that much more now.
First ‘stone cold’ classic Queen album. A couple of killer singles with Killer Queen and Now I’m Here plus a general flurry of poppy, rocktastic awesomeness with slight tiddlings of opera and music hall as well. Brighton Rock, In The Lap Of The Gods, Stone Cold Crazy all strong, super fun highlights but I especially dig the swoonier, soul-stirring slower-paced Stormtrooper In Stilettos towards the end courtesy of soul king and badger saviour Brian May.
The quintessential punk album. Snotty and wretched but in a really good way. Key inspiration to a lot of my favourite groups including Joy Division, Guns N Roses, Scritti Politti and Simply Red. Because John Lydon is such a reeking twuntchops I thought I would not really dig this album so much anymore but it’s still a complete blast and holds up very well mainly thanks to the guitar and drummage. Anarchy In The UK and God Save The Queen super iconic highlights along with Pretty Vacant. Bodies which piles up near the start is the only slightly iffy song of the lot.
He’s Stan Getz and whatever you want, Stan gets! (As long as it smoothalicious jazz samba solos). 3 and a half cappuccinos out of 5.
A little slight at 28 minutes but in effect a mini masterpiece up there with Beatles’ Revolver as highest quality, most ambitious studio work of 1966. Has a mix of everything from spike-tingling renaissance covers, all-timers like Homeward Bound and 59th Street Bridge Song, swinging sixties vibe of Big Bright Green Pleasure Machine, intense folk moods of Patterns, savage Dylan parodying on A Simple Desultory Philippic and poignant sound collage with the 7 O Clock News/Silent Night closer. For Emily Whenever I May Find Her is astonishingly beautiful but Flowers Never Bend With The Rainfalls is a hooktastic lyrical masterclass and nudges into the lead as my fav. Not really a bad song and simply incredible harmonies and arrangements throughout.
Hard to go crazy anything with punk music this schlubby and ordinary. Timeline-wise I guess this fits in quite early on in the punk scene between New York Dolls and Ramones but it doesn’t really matter because the record doesn’t hold up as anything special. The very best songs are probably the cheesy garage covers of I Got You Babe and California Sun.
Pretty groovy tight-knit 60s concept album about a village or something. It’s kind of in that weird zone of being mostly nearly classic but having nothing that touches upon the very best of Kinks’ real hits. Title song has the best quality perhaps even glorious melody even if it goes round and round too much and I get tired of it by the end. That and other best moments like Picture Book, Last Of The Steam Trains and Big Sky lay the tracks for Blur Parklife. It does lose steam in the second half though. Phenomenal Cat has a bit of laughing gnome in the package for example and Wicked Crapabella is crap. Low 4.
In terms of Smiths album covers this is definitely the worst… it’s just a beige, vomity looking floating head. In sonic terms it’s definitely a downturn from their previous - very flabby and overproduced and not enough Marr-inspired guitar jangle. The best melodies like Girlfriend In A Coma are ones you’d hear on a best of anyway and tunes like Stop Me Stop Me Oh Stop Me and I Started Something I etcetera are not in their best produced form or as great as they could have been. Death Of A Disco Dancer and Unhappy Birthday are maybe worth checking out but in general the first half is patches of greatness and the second half is a total letdown.
All time classic bow out from America’s greatest band. Very low down dirty blues for the most part, Love Her Madly is a catchy callback to their earlier years. Title song is pure driving neon-lit exhilaration. Just as album gets a bit too circusy desert blues with The Wasp (Texas Radio And The Big Beat) it whams with one of the most Rhodiest, career-defining and zeitgeisty tunes of all time with Riders Of The Storm. A through and through all-time great.
An album recommended by 1001 album generators and also Dewey Finn from School Of Rock. Dewey Finn was more on point by just singling out Roundabout. The solo compositions here are all varying degrees of gash with the Jon Anderson vocal loop being the most ear-mincing but Roundabout and Heart Of The Sunrise are as top notch as prog rock can get.
Very sameish sixties swamp rock. Green River running a little dry on this one. Bad Moon Rising is a classic that you’ve probably heard a million times anyway but everything else basically sounds like the same song all sung by the Rich Texan guy from The Simpsons.
Another S+G mini-masterpiece with even bolder and more iconic front sleeve. First half is a wild rapidfire journey from the bookends of life with extremes such as crazy wailing synth, choir and space orchestra of Save The Life Of My Child and gushing sentimental, super-affecting strings n diced sound clip poignancy of Old Friends and Voice Of Old People plus a mission to find America along the way. Second half are just random songs plunked together with no real thread or connection but they’re all heavy hitters with indisputable classics such as Mrs Robinson and Hazy Shade Of Winter. As well as being musically more daring and ambitious the lyrics are also very unique and memorable with songs about being a Kelloggs cornflake swimming in a bowl and elephants at a zoo that are kindly but dumb.
Crazy cool album with crash of elements such careening punk rock riffs, bellowing stutter of nerd baboon vocals and a laboratory of synths gone haywire plus a lyrical thread of humans evolving backwards because evil technology. It’s all a restless barrel of fun that threatens to get too tetchy and tuneless with noise assaults like Jocko Homo but mostly stays with the realms of classic. Uncontrollable Urge is a knockout brilliant and punchy intro, the cover of Stones’s Satisfaction is made to be as perfectly awkward and discombobulated as possible and is somehow more satisfying than the original and Gut Feeling near the end has a gliding krautrock feel and is a phenomenal standout.
Crusty debut from Buddy Holly and his Crickets. It contains some truly great tracks such as That’ll Be That The Day and Not Fade Away that are true mainstays for all rock n roll time but most of the other songs are not that great and tend to be slathered with super old fashioned and unnecessary Bing Crosby barbershop backing vocals that act as a dead weight to these songs that were already kinda dull and sleepy to begin with. Worth checking out for the famous hits and then applying bug spray to the rest.
Past 1st track Personality Crisis which is a good enough tune this is a big long stale glam rock trudge. The guitar riffs are punky and fine but the vocals suck big time and act like a bulldozer in drag over songs which which mostly tend to sound the same after a certain point anyway. 2.5 stars
São Paulo confessions that by themselves are more wretched than the crime. All in all a bunch of noisy Latin and sterile, listless electronica and downtempo styles that don’t mesh well at all. Some tracks are technically ok whilst others are just jarring and awful. I give it 1 star for not being essential listening at all and for being murderously long and dull.
Kinda surprised by the first track. Very electronic and a little like LCD Soundsystem if it was written and performed by a jolly hobo. The rest of the album tends to be gentler folky meanderings and a schlep more crazy old man singing. I did manage to fall asleep several times so the album did technically live up to its title. Near the end instead of That Old Grey Mare, the crazy old man singer goes into a rut of Subterranean Homesick Blues but in a minor key. This isn’t the absolute pits because it is very quirky and unusual throughout but I have to give a 1 on principal because the guy can’t play or sing and seems to go out of his way to make the tunes as awful as possible.
About as good as punk gets which is pretty good. Blitzkrieg Bop and Beat On The Brat are top notch and send the record off euphorically coasting but after a certain point ie 2 or 3 tracks all the songs start to sound the same. Still, at least its very short and a virtual classic for the genre alongside Sex Pistols own debut.
Sabotage Album. The album with Sabotage. The one song that doesn’t sabotage this album from the 1001 list because otherwise it would be a 2 or worse.
Pretty solid album for the most part. Does shine throughout with quality songs and great piano playing even if the melodies are kinda flighty and the singing style is a bit too shrill and theatrical for my tastes. Last couple of songs sunk the album for me. As raw and severe Me And A Gun is in terms of topic I do simply prefer Tom’s Diner.
One of the best pop albums of the past 20 years. A huge reinvention at the time and a massive step up from her debut. The 60s soul and motown inspired production and Amy’s enormous amount of sass and swagger and extra personal lyrics means that this sounds both super vintage and super modern and the songwriting is so much tighter this time around. Featuring a clutch of fantastic singles that are still on mega rotation today plus plenty of other characterful album tracks. Favourite song Tears Dry On Their Own.
Not exactly bad (except for that cringe One More Dance duet with a drunk Dr Hibbert on extra laughing gas, that one sucks megatons) but definitely way too old-fashioned, fuddy-duddy and out of my wheelhouse. I was bored solid throughout most of this. It’s the kind of thing I would expect to find in those old Disney wartime package movies with footage of different music cultures and whose scenes I would skip and go straight to all the cartoon segments. 2 and a half stars.
Very crumbly and lame slowcore/grunge/slacker/crud rock whatever. They stumble upon a cool supercharged guitar riff every once in a while but most of the time this is aimless dossy noise. Generally it sounds like a dull handicapped Nirvana, at its shrieking worst like an even crapper Meat Puppets and at its best like a slightly cooler than normal early Snow Patrol. So a mixed bag that’s still mainly crap.
Band name is meant to be ironic, right? The closest this album gets to making a commotion is Forest Fire which is still a resolutely 7/10 song. Patience has those female backing vocals to give it a slight Prefab Sproutish/Deacon Blue flavour and in general it has a nice classy, vaguely jangly sophistipop sound but everything about the band is only minutely above average and the songs themselves are vigorously unmemorable.
Clint Eastwood is a banger for certs. 19/2000 is a banger or rather the Soulchild remix which appears as a bonus track (original version is pants). Rock Da House which is a showcase for the only other memorable featuring artist Del The Funkee Homosapien is pretty good as is Tomorrow Comes Today. Other than that, this Gorillaz debut is a very gloomy and barren affair with a lot of empty sketches that have life-suckingly dull and literal titles such as 5/4, Punk, Slow Country and Sound Check. There’s a coolish dejected vibe in the first half but it by far and away drags in the second half and overall it’s so not a patch on Demon Days or even Plastic Beach
Elton and his backing band at the very top of their game during the height of glam and expanding out into eclectic double album territory with album cuts as strong as the proggish Funeral For A Friend, surging Grey Seal, Sweet Painted Lady, Harmony and Ballad Of Daniel Bailey. Also hilarious crapcuts like Jamaica Jerk Off and Your Sister Can’t Twist just for some extra eclecticism. This is not to mention the 4 legendary hit singles which populate every Elton best of from here on in. This is an absurdly fun and firm 5 star album.
Kinda squidgy, skewiff socially conscious hip-hop. The samples and vibes are all snazzy and jazzy and cool but also a teensy rough and slipshod plus the raps are a mite chipmunk and dorky. There are some semi-decent phases but no outright bangers and I remember their later albums being a lot better. Definitely no 3 Feet High And Rising.
Doesn’t get more classicer than this. Perfect union of rock and broadway, of larger-than-life talents of singer Meat Loaf and songwriter/composer Jim Steinman plus producer Todd Rundgren and the two coolest most skilled members of E Street Band. 7 expertly crafted songs that clearly stand the test of time riddled with purest melodicism, melodrama, entertainment, romance and extravaganza. High octane rock n roll thrills plus overwhelmingly brilliant balladry. For crying out loud I know this is a 5.5 out of 5.
Weird Nirvana/Nick Cave/Yoko Ono howly hybrid thing writhing around on the floor in Steve Albini’s special mix of serrated blades and doggy doo doo making serrated blade and doggy doo angels. The iconic cover shot of her having a wash up in bathroom flinging her hair is the only cool and non garbage thing about this terrible terrible earsore album.
Real ho hum alt-country that leans too heavily into the mariachi and kinda unravels past the halfway stage. Does feature Black Heart which is a sterling, surreptitious string sloshed mega high point. Bit bonkers how no other track here comes slightly close to matching it for quality. Generally these are songs that are fit for making an OK soundtrack to Breaking Bland.
If the A Tribe Called Quest album from the same year is a little closer to the rap Pet Sounds or at least rap Today! then this one is much more like Sex Rap Safari or Sex Rap USA. In other words really corny and dated and a little slipshod in places but also oodles of fun. Humpty Dance is tbh a kinda garbage start but on The Way We Swing they cue up Hendrix Band Of Gypsys and it becomes a good record again. Whole album is a mega Will Smith-athon because the grooves constantly evoke Fresh Prince Of Bel Air and on Underwater Rimes even a bit of Shark Tale. Gutfest 89, Freaks Of The Industry, Doowutchyalike and entire Packets suite all ribald highs. The Danger Zone dullest low.
Very intimate and serene plus a few extra spiffing rumblytastic solo bass spots as well. It’s elegance and grace. A smile on my face. Tonight when we chase the dragon the water may change to cherry wine and the silver will turn to gold. Alice in wonderland!
A true blockbuster we have here. One of the best bands over the past 40 years at a real prime Goldilocks point in their career delivering a most immaculate set of songs that are in turn barnstorming, anthemic, magisterial, soul-stirring, moody and cinematic. All in all a deeply boppy, powerful and life-affirming combo. Man On The Moon and Nightswimming are two incredible iconic hits packed near the end but elegiac closer Find The River is such a blissful, heavenly and moving send-off that just sneaks it as my favourite track with the richly tender and beautiful Sweetness Follows up there as well. A very easy and very automatic 5 stars.
Learning that Don McLean pled guilty to domestic violence charges against his ex-wife and now has a extra large warm slice of ‘American pie’ about a third of his age makes me wanna give this a firm thumbs down but unfortunately the title song and Vincent are just a little too all-time classic to write off. Overall very crisp, mellow, breezy, poetic listen maybe a bit corny in places and definitely gets flaggy in terms of quality towards the end. 3.5 stars and stripes.
It’s live. It’s a jive. Drums thrive and thrive again times eighty-five. Grooves are a big bounding restless beehive. Fela Kuti is the headlining feature along with Cream’s own cutey Ginge Baker but the latter is only on a couple of tracks so he kinda takes a skive. This Fela guy is great and definitely worthy of a deep dive. The whole album is a giant yes from me, Clive.
So rich and moody. What an amazing voice. Four Women is a pretty startling highlight where at the end she reveals that she is a 21st century Canadian electroclash singer. Plus some excellent David Bowie and Jeff Buckley covers on this one with the title song and Lilac Wine.
Would have preferred a longer album about love by a different artist with a less dronier and annoying voice and a music accompaniment that wasn’t so pompous and pastiche-heavy. There were touches of Bacharach I liked towards the end but for a short collection of songs it is also very spotty and uneven. 2.5 stars.
A bleary Velvet Underground gig but where the band members are all from Cast and Inspiral Carpets. Ladies and gentlemen we are floating in crap.
More like ‘The Goodness Of Ray Charles’. All of this stuff is very good. A lot more restrained, chillaxed and easy listening big band stuff and less gritty blues and RnB than I was expecting. Don’t Let The Sun Catch You Cryin’ fav tune.
Like the album sleeve a bit of a sketchy uggo scramble. Some very groovy swinging sixties bops like Over Under Edgeways Down but also a lot of ye olde English noodly guitar slops and renaissance fair gump plus the vocalist for this group tends to suck big time. Jeff Beck only showing periodic flashes of brilliance.
A true 00s dance classic, building on from the good work of Daft Punk’s Discovery and Human After All. Lots of glitzy groovin beats and whirring, warring dance-scapes although these days I do prefer the more vocal-based tracks. D.A.N.C.E, DNVO and in particular Tthheeppaarrtty with the wise beautiful chops of Uffie are all absolute 10/10 ace amazing choons of the highest slammingest order.
Very good album. Basically up to the level of Cheap Thrills with iconic tracks such as Me And Bobby McGee and Mercedes Benz to fit alongside Piece Of My Heart. A few more albums like this and she would have had a quite impressive pearl necklace.
If ‘This’ was Happy Hardcore then I would like it a lot more. As it is, it’s just very bleh and inessential. Where are the Common Peoples and Disco 2000s? Different Class and His n Hers so much better.
Nice early queen. Good display of folky proggy fantasy choral metal with side long suites about ogres and fairy fellers. It’s all a bit soupish though and you don’t get a truly classic Queen song until bam right at the end with Seven Seas Of Rhye. High 3.5 because still mostly a fun listen.
The album cover is so outrageously ugly and over the top in a way similar to the original Appetite For Destruction cover I almost kind of like it. I also like Nick Cave from 00s onwards plus Grinderman, some 90s Nick Cave but not so much the 80s stuff. I especially don’t like this. It is all just a horrid din. The snare in She’s Hit actually sounds like shotguns going off but in a really tetchy, arthritic way and the rest of the album is pretty much just as painful to listen to.
‘a La supreme’? I’m sorry but we already covered that La’s album for 1001 and it only had one decent song in There She Goes. Not supreme at all! Other than that, this is a pretty blissful record with transcendent playing that holds up as one of the most essential of the Jazz genre.