1001 Albums Summary

Enjoyed listening to this and it surely would have been revolutionary at the time, but no memorable tracks for me aside from Wait Until Tomorrow and Bold as Love. Just not my thing!

Need to listen to these at different times of day/different moods. Sitting in an office listening to indie rawness isn't a great listening exp.

Totally hypnotic in the feeling it creates. The kind of music you play on a train as you travel across the American plains (speaking as a non-yank who has never done that, but this image has a pulling resonance). Chugging drums and a soaring, nostalgic mood. Loved it.

Very cool, love the tanpura drone. We're used to this genre in the West now but at the time must have been a revelation and can very much see the influence on Harrison.

Not a huge fan of blues but good tunes

funky fresh fun, thank you Stevie

Time to Pretend is a fantastic opener and Electric Feel and Kids makes this a really impressive debut, but overall nothing too moving for me

Fuck this was cool!

Bit meh, very 90s, sickly sweet

Paint It Black is an amazingly unique track but it belied a pretty average, straight-laced album.

Goes hard. As someone who doesn't listen to a lot of rock, this was a great listen. Big crashing drums, big guitar lines that went in really unexpected directions, and love Joe Cardamone's voice.

Just a great sad little album. It's a bit all over the place in terms of genre and instrumentation, but the storytelling and lyrics pull it all together. On The Beach is his coolest track for me.

Class!

Sleazy and fun, but the Bowie whining got a bit grating after a while.

God I love Faithfull's voice on this album, what a surprise to listen to the silky contrast of her earlier 'As Tears Go By' after, but it works perfectly to show the move from the poppy 60s to grungy, drugged up fucked up 70s.

It'd be easy to dismiss this as a corny 80s album with a couple hits, but on a full listen it deserves a lot better than that review. Soul, funk, pop; jazzy muted trumpets, sax, bass, synths; long, expansive tunes - it's sprawling in every direction of genre, instrumentation and song length, yet the whole album is tightly constructed. And Sade's voice, perfect.

At times grandiose and angry, then gentle and mesmerising, sometimes even sinister. With Thom's long held notes and the thick instrumentation, it's the kind of album that completely washes over you and coats you in a mood.

Chug-a-lug music never really been a big thing for me, people will either find it energising and psychedelic or monotonous and boring. Hero is a standout but it leans more to the latter. Perhaps one of those albums that was revolutionary at the time for pushing the boundaries of rock structure and inspiring the move into punk, but now it feels a little repetitive and German.

A monumental album, lots of fun for a Led Zeppelin newbie to experience a sprawling album by a group of obvious masters. Fuck though it's long and brutal, the couple softer easy-listening tracks like Bron-Yr-Aur and Down by the Seaside pop up feel like you're coming up for air. But overall the song writing, the riffs, the drums... it all goes so hard and in so many different directions.

Rock opera and English rock and roll, two genres which really don't do it for me. It sounds like the Stones attempts at blues/gospel, which is also crap. Fair enough he was on tour in the US and influenced by the American sound, but it falls flat where Ziggy soared.

My second Stones album on this journey and a second example of them opening with a magnificent single ('Paint it Black' on Aftermath), surrounded with some forgettable noodling around. 'Gimme Shelter' and 'Can't Always' carry this record.

Sex on Fire and Use Somebody punctuated my awkward teen years, hard to get past the nostalgia factor, but there's a couple other decent tracks here at the beginning with Closer and Crawl. But then it falls apart and it's hard to listen to the singer's garbled voice for an entire album, not even sure what accent it's supposed to be, only just learned from this album that they're southern. Had to skip through the end.

Fun little album, a couple tidy tracks like Otto's Journey and In My Arms and always loved Drop the Pressure. Could use a length cut for some tracks where the spoken samples get trying.

Read some criticism of this album that it fails in its attempt of soul, Bowie himself calls it "Plastic Soul". I'm not sure it needs to be reviewed from that lens. If you accept that this isn't a "true" soul album and just take it for what it is, track by track, then it's a cracker (pun unintended). Aside from his incredible creativity and reinvention, there are simply some fantastic tunes here like Right and Fame. Somehow Bowie manages to dodge being totally cheesy and lame, which really this album would be in lesser hands. This is exemplified in the opening track with that sitcom sax, I mean my god that should have flopped the whole record but it's just really fun and there's a cheeky irony in the lyricism and vocals which elevates it all.

Definitely marks the opening of the 80s in that it's a bit corny and smooth all over like a barbie doll, rock without edge. Perfectly serviceable for a high school 80s movie and I bet ma and pa love bopping along to it, can't fault it for that, it's just a bit boring and forgettable. The Wait is a good track though.

Just perfect

Didn't connect with this one. Thought it was going to be promising from the first half of the Satie, but then it was mostly half big band jazz, half rock singing, didn't meld for me, felt like a pub band.

Sick album and so refreshing from all the staid rock that populates this list. The production and flow is smooth as, I didn't pay too much attention to the lyrics on first listen, maybe they're a bit afterschool special corny "fuck the man", but there's some good bars there. They could've eased up on the boring repetitions of the song titles in the chorus, got a singer in there or just skipped the need for a chorus. Overall though this was a great addition.

Perfection

Watching videos of Monk he has this almost childlike style of playing - hesitant bum notes, prodding keys top-down with rigid fingers - but will then roll effortlessly into beautiful trilling and meandering solos. The man was an amazing, singular talent and clearly didn't give a toss about cohering to standards of melody and rhythm. Although maybe not on the same wavelength (who could be), there's some gorgeous sax by Sonny Rollins on here too.

Superb, delicious, nostalgic, it's angsty but in the best way. Buckley's voice, my god, velvet soft on one track, raw, angry and tremoring the next - amazing emotional range in this album.

Couldn't get into this one, found his voice too much.

Loved this one! Beautiful harmonies