in May of 2020, when I listened to the entire Bowie solo discography, I ranked this album his second best. it's a decision I still stand by! sorry, I just really love Blackstar, but in terms of "classic" Bowie, this is the album I reach for first. it's just such a succinct and perfect encapsulation of this artist (artists, if we take Brian Eno and Tony Visconti into account) at the peak of his powers! it may not have legendary, generationally anthemic songs with roof-tearing vocal performances like Hunky Dory or Ziggy Stardust or Station to Station, but so much of what makes this album special is its understatedness and brevity. the A-side is 7 flawless rock miniatures, all clocking in around 3 minutes or less, all replete with brilliant details in their pristinely engineered instrumentation, with heavy layers of Eno synths masterfully woven into the fabric for good measure. in many ways these songs (and others from the Berlin years) feel the bedrock of new wave and post-punk. even the instrumental songs are full of intrigue! the stakes on these tracks are much lower than they've been on previous Bowie albums, but there's a straightforwardness to the songwriting on this A-side, particularly in the lyrics, which I find really compelling. "Sound and Vision" might be the most "perfect" song in the entire Bowie catalog, and there's quite a few contenders there! then side B transports you somewhere else entirely. Eno takes center stage, with Bowie acting more as an object in the musical scene than a central figure across 4 grandiose slabs of ambient goodness. fuzzy string patches, Steve Reich-esque marimbas, thundering bass tones, droning vocals, and a ton of electronic pads all come together in various flavors. the connection these tracks have to the 7 rock songs that came before them isn't immediately obvious, but they just make sense together. with the rock side, you get terse reflections on David Bowie's state of mind as he tried to kick his various vices to the curb, and with the ambient side, that focus shifts outwardly to his immediate surroundings in West Berlin and the quiet horror of the Cold War. I can't imagine one without the other! this is one of the most transcendent listening experiences you can find in the entire rock music canon. 10/10.

oof. bad roll to get this early on. day 11? could Mr. Rock have waited until day 1001? Kid Rock may be one of the first contemporary conservative grifters; despite his bougie upbringing as the son of auto tycoons, his music deliberately appeals to the sensibilities of a particular kind of working class Republican voter, the type that might self-identify as "trailer trash" or some other rural descriptor. Rock's grift has gotten more obvious over time (especially in the Biden years), but a lot of the right-wing signifiers he hit us with on "Don't Tell Me How to Live" are also present on this, his breakout album. it's brash, crass, trashy and politically incorrect, and makes no apologies for any of that; unfortunately, like most self-styled "provocateurs" on the right who make it their bread and butter to talk a never-ending stream of edgy tripe, hardly any of it lands hard enough to really be all that offensive. that's true for "Don't Tell Me How to Live", and it was just as true here. Rock even drops the n-word on the closing track and it barely registers! why does he always talk about holding it down for Dixie? he's from Michigan! I'm all for hip hop and rock music coming together, but only if they're both done to a satisfactory level. with this album, the rock never rises above the level of corny pentatonic hard rock and heavy metal schlock. this album's riffs are universally limp and lifeless; even Limp Bizkit has a great riff every now and again! the country nods are similarly terrible, and now part of me has this terrible feeling that, if this album wasn't (somehow) a smash commercial and critical success, we might have been spared the whole bro country trend. Kid Rock is also, bar none, one of the worst rappers of all time. his flows are embarrassingly rudimentary, and his lyrical abilities are basically nonexistent outside of the ability to rhyme the ends of lines. Eminem's verse on "Fuck Off" is an oasis in the midst of the Sahara the rest of this album's rapping presents. late nineties Em laid way back on drum pockets in a way I absolutely adore. the thing that I think truly gets my goat with this album, though? most of these songs are about absolutely nothing. booze, drugs, sex (sometimes implied to be with underage girls?), partying. great. not like we already have exactly one billion much better songs about those exact things! and when Rock does try to maintain a topical focus, it's mind-numbing. you want to be a cowboy? again, you're from Michigan. you think the mother of your daughter is a slut? you should probably unpack that one with some professional help. "Only God Knows Why" gestures in the direction of dealing with some personal issues, but again, it's hardly about anything at all. "Devil Without a Cause" is an apt title, but not in the way I think Kid Rock wanted it to be. I literally don't know what his cause is here. I have an idea of what he thinks it is, but it absolutely does not translate into the music. this is easily the worst rap rock I've ever heard in my life, and I'd be very surprised if there's an album on the list that's worse than this. strong 1/10.

a very familiar listen for me at this point! this album was one of a few that provided me a "way in" when I was first trying to get familiar with the history of jazz. I was an alt-rock and prog kid first, and I was about 4-5 years into my journey as a saxophonist, so at first I gravitated towards various flavors of fusion. fusion often has one foot in the world of rock music, but the universe of funk music presented here by Herbie and His Hunters was something alien for me at the time. having listened to this album dozens of times for over a decade, I've come to really appreciate the overall mood it places me in. it really feels like funk music that got inflicted with a heavy dose of jazz, rather than the other way around. the pockets from Hancock's rhythm section (Paul Jackson, Harvey Mason & Bill Summers) run incredibly deep; they're just as capable of creating that signature hypnosis-through-repetition effect of the best funk (the opening few minutes of "Chameleon" being the best example) as they are at providing a playground for Hancock and Bennie Maupin to weave some incredible jazz yarns (Maupin's soprano solo on "Sly" is easily the highlight of the whole record for me). the lack of a guitar (other than the bass guitar, I mean) definitely gives the timbre of this album a kind of dryness that really works in its favor. the arrangement of "Watermelon Man" here may be the definitive version of the song; the bridge on Ab7 is a welcome addition that I miss when I play the Takin' Off version on jam sessions (ditto for the entire form of "Chameleon" with all the different bridge sections and solo vamps!). "Vein Melter" also grows on me a little more each time I listen; the synth strings on that track, and throughout the album, are the one part I would say hasn't aged as well as the rest. on the whole I was shocked at how contemporary this album still sounds in many respects, especially "Vein Melter", which stands out as a precursor to the ground that experimental groups like The Necks would later break. I guess I'm just a sucker for ambient, extended harmonies over a slow drum pattern! an album I can listen to at any time, in any place, and guarantee myself a good 42 minutes. strong 9/10.

in theory, as a former prog kid who knows and enjoys many of Supertramp's radio hits, I should be really into this. but for some reason, it just didn't leave a whole lot of an impression. the scope of this band's ambition is in full display from front to back (kudos to the sharp production on this album, which presents these complex studio arrangements with pristine clarity!), and there's plenty of moments across these songs that I think come together in a really satisfying way (the end of "Rudy" probably being my favorite example), but on the whole I find it kind of unfulfilling. in trying to reach a middle ground between the complexity of progressive rock and the accessibility of pop, it sort of compromises on both ends. many of these songs aim for a kind of theatricality and camp that feels somewhat kneecapped by the band's need to play things so straight. it may grow on me with repeated listens, and I'm definitely interested in seeing where the band took this sound on their later 70s output, but I do have to wonder why this album was chosen for the 1001 over one of their later ones. I feel like I'm still hearing a band finding their footing, despite a few standouts like "Bloody Well Right" and the title track. some great saxophone solos too! strong 6/10.

this won Album of the Year at the Grammys, which seems unthinkable in the current era of monogenre pop and hip hop slop those Awards are currently steeped in. this is a bold artistic statement the likes of which you just don't see as often in the rock music mainstream anymore. but, like with Supertramp yesterday, there's a lot here I should love, yet somehow I don't find myself getting sucked into this album's (admittedly very strong) songs and overall conceptual angle. I, too, grew up in the American suburbs, and relate very strongly to the feelings of alienation and desire for something "more" that many of this album's best songs capture quite well! one thing holding me back from full-on enjoyment here is that, across this tracklist, I'm mostly reminded of the artists Arcade Fire are obviously drawing their inspiration from, and part of me feels like I'd rather just listen to them instead. you've got folkloric heroes like Neil Young and Tom Petty, stadium stalwarts like U2 and Springsteen, maybe even some of AF's own indie contemporaries like M83 and Sufjan Stevens. obviously we all have to be inspired by something, but I'm not sure if I get anything out of this album that I couldn't already get somewhere else. beyond that, while these are some grand, sweeping songs (the string arrangements from Owen Pallett are especially noteworthy) that are often pretty earworm-y, something about the way they're presented feels like there's something being held back from me. I wish these mixes were a little more enveloping; I wish the performances went for a little more blood; I wish there were a few more surprises on the songwriting end. as it stands, this is pretty standard stadium indie fare; if you're into that sort of thing, you'll get more than your fill here. but at 16 tracks and over an hour in duration, it's a bit of a hard sell for me. light 6/10.

let's not pull any punches – the most important drummer on this album is Tony Allen. his drumming embodies all the finest parts of a myriad of traditions from Nigeria, America, England and elsewhere, and it sets up the entirety of The Africa '70 up for great success on both sides of this thrilling live-in-studio session (recorded at Abbey Road!), both with and without Ginger Baker. Fela Kuti's songs and Tony Allen's drums pretty much ARE the sound of Afrobeat to me at this point. that's no disrespect to Baker, who does remarkably well here! Baker was well-known for being kind of an asshole, but he definitely doesn't play like one here, injecting just the right amount of vitality into side B without stomping on Allen's (or anyone else's) toes. part of what draws me so strongly to the few Afrobeat albums I've listened to is the presence of so many engaging layers of rhythm, especially compared to Western funk music which I find, despite its superficial similarities to Afrobeat, is much more minimal in comparison. on this album, even with two drummers, a sizeable percussion section, rhythm guitar, horns and some unflinchingly repetitive basslines, there's a precision at play in every moment here that's difficult to ignore. yes, this is basically a jam session recording where a band plays four chords for around 8 to 13 minutes apiece, which I imagine is some listeners' idea of hell. if that's you, though, I would implore you to turn your attention away from pitch content! light 9/10.

I'm only five albums in, but 4/5 have been from the early seventies, and 2/5 have featured members of Cream. this is some freaky RNG! from my very cursory research, it seems like Derek and the Dominos was created out of a desire for Eric Clapton to just play some music, maaan, regardless of how it would be received by the audience he'd built up with Cream and Blind Faith. given that pure intent, and the fact that I'm by no means a Clapton fan—apart from his history of virulent racism and conspiracy-mongering, I think he's merely a good guitarist rather than a great one—I approached this with as open a mind as I could muster. I've certainly enjoyed music by people I find just as repugnant as him (if not more), so I really tried not to let my personal perception of Clapton have an effect on my stance regarding this album. that being said, I am bored to tears by this blues rock sound! every third laundromat, grocery store and radio station in my area serves an endless rotation of songs in this vein, and I am so deeply NOT the target audience for it! I don't really have an issue with straight-up blues guitar playing, but if you're going to infuse a rock element into it, I'm going to need a lot more in the songwriting department! Clapton's middling guitar antics and utterly vacant vocal presence can only take me so far! I can appreciate that this is probably the best batch of guitar performances I've heard from Clapton across an entire album, but when Duane Allman smokes him just about every time they trade solo blows, it's kind of a moot point. Bobby Whitlock's backing vocals really get under my skin, which is a shame since I like his keys. 77 minutes??? I'd maybe return to three tracks here. this truly is "Layla" and some other songs. most of the rest of the covers are utterly banal, and the originals? imagine being down this bad for a happily married woman! I'd maybe be willing to look past that, the ugly core of this album, if the music moved me, but on the whole, it very much did not. I'm gonna go watch some B.B. King clips on YouTube. decent 4/10.

this one started out pretty unassuming, but a few songs in, it totally had me hooked. by the time I got to "Vow" I fully got it: "grunge" music, but through a studio pop lens! kind of a cool angle that I hadn't really considered. it makes for a listen that's pretty easy-going and slick (this is a Butch Vig production, after all), but which still maintains a genuinely sinister undertone throughout. it won't weigh as heavily on your brain as a Live Through This or a Dirt, but there's definitely something slightly morbid going on here. like all the best "grunge" (kind of a crappy term, but you know what I mean), strong hooks, melodies and riffs abound here. but plenty of this album's best elements—Shirley Manson's somewhat understated presence as a lead vocalist, the prominence of loops and synths and non-diegetic noises of all sorts, the overall Wall of Sound quality of the production—make this a really unique listen compared to most of the other music I think about from this scene and this era. the sound palette here does a great job at synthesizing various nineties trends together. reading up a bit on Garbage's origins as a remix group also helped the material here come into focus; i can imagine the straightforward rock versions of pretty much all of these songs, and they're all much less interesting than these final products! decent 8/10.

in May of 2020, when I listened to the entire Bowie solo discography, I ranked this album his second best. it's a decision I still stand by! sorry, I just really love Blackstar, but in terms of "classic" Bowie, this is the album I reach for first. it's just such a succinct and perfect encapsulation of this artist (artists, if we take Brian Eno and Tony Visconti into account) at the peak of his powers! it may not have legendary, generationally anthemic songs with roof-tearing vocal performances like Hunky Dory or Ziggy Stardust or Station to Station, but so much of what makes this album special is its understatedness and brevity. the A-side is 7 flawless rock miniatures, all clocking in around 3 minutes or less, all replete with brilliant details in their pristinely engineered instrumentation, with heavy layers of Eno synths masterfully woven into the fabric for good measure. in many ways these songs (and others from the Berlin years) feel the bedrock of new wave and post-punk. even the instrumental songs are full of intrigue! the stakes on these tracks are much lower than they've been on previous Bowie albums, but there's a straightforwardness to the songwriting on this A-side, particularly in the lyrics, which I find really compelling. "Sound and Vision" might be the most "perfect" song in the entire Bowie catalog, and there's quite a few contenders there! then side B transports you somewhere else entirely. Eno takes center stage, with Bowie acting more as an object in the musical scene than a central figure across 4 grandiose slabs of ambient goodness. fuzzy string patches, Steve Reich-esque marimbas, thundering bass tones, droning vocals, and a ton of electronic pads all come together in various flavors. the connection these tracks have to the 7 rock songs that came before them isn't immediately obvious, but they just make sense together. with the rock side, you get terse reflections on David Bowie's state of mind as he tried to kick his various vices to the curb, and with the ambient side, that focus shifts outwardly to his immediate surroundings in West Berlin and the quiet horror of the Cold War. I can't imagine one without the other! this is one of the most transcendent listening experiences you can find in the entire rock music canon. 10/10.

(this review is for the original UK tracklist.) this solves a lot of the issues I had with Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs a couple days ago. in that review, I mentioned my burnout when it comes to the classic blues rock sound, but I mean, Hendrix is Hendrix! if you need ME to tell you he's in a league of his own, you should probably get out more! whereas Layla felt, to my ears, fairly reserved and polite, this is fully in-your-face. for as much as Derek and The Dominos pulled out all the stops in terms of their production and instrumentation, there's just no competing with a trio in the raw, especially one with Jimi Hendrix at the helm. the interplay between Hendrix, Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell is undeniable; the kinship they all felt with boundary-pushing small groups in the jazz world at the time, particularly the mid-sixties John Coltrane Quartet, is deeply felt throughout this tracklist. Mitchell's drumming in particular is show-stopping, to the point that I sometimes find myself focusing on him more than Hendrix! i also appreciate the very rough production and mix, which perfectly matches the Experience's unfiltered approach. Hendrix's blown-out guitar tone and experimentation with distortion and feedback point in the direction of future trends in guitar music like heavy metal, noise rock, totalism and a whole lot more. it wouldn't surprise me if Hendrix emboldened later avant-garde and fusion guitar icons like Sonny Sharrock and John McLaughlin to keep pumping up the volume! to this day, he's revered as one of the finest guitar soloists of all time (for good reason!), but his abilities as a writer of riffs and songs were also incredibly strong. you've got heavy, bluesy earworms ("Foxy Lady", "Manic Depression", "Fire", "Remember"), mind-altering slabs of psychedelia ("I Don't Live Today", "Third Stone From the Sun", the title track), and even a tender ballad ("May This Be Love")! this definitely gave me the itch to return to Axis and Electric Ladyland soon. maybe some of the live records too. strong 8/10.

this is day three in a row that I've found myself playing a bit of a game with this 1001 Albums challenge. I'm calling it "Cool, But I Already Know That One!" in elementary school, one of the only resources I was aware of for discovering new music was the radio. since I grew up on Long Island, that meant a lot of my first music discoveries came from 102.3 WBAB, Long Island's Only Classic Rock Station. while I've bemoaned my frustrations with the omnipresence of classic rock radio and the classic rock canon quite a lot in my adult years (and even once or twice in this list already), I have to credit WBAB (and Guitar Hero, of course) for starting me on this long journey we call Being A Total Music Dork as a kid in my mom's car. since it was always the more experimental or progressive stuff that piqued my interest, Rush's radio hits, especially the ones from the A-side of this album, left a huge impression. this some of the most delicately constructed rock music of its kind! all the best aspects of Rush's prior work as progressive juggernauts are present here, but even at their most ambitious, they always have one foot on the ground, and that's in the form of some tremendous pop songwriting. lyricist Neil Peart delivers some of his best, most evocative stanzas here, which Alex Lifeson and Geddy Lee match with some stupendous music. fun time signature changes, astute riffing, and tons of great melodies from Lee. did I mention the synths? too cool. oh, and Peart's drumming is pretty good, too, I guess. "Tom Sawyer", "Witch Hunt" and "Vital Signs" speak to non-conformity, prejudice, and people that deviate from the norm. these are common tropes in Peart's writing which I can definitely get behind, unlike the Objectivist stuff! "Red Barchetta" and "The Camera Eye" share a focus on the sensual experiences of being in a sports car and a bustling city, respectively. they're easily the album's two loftiest songs compositionally, so I like that their lyrics are less abstract to balance it out. "Limelight" is an ode to the barriers artists often have to put up around themselves to keep doing their jobs, particularly as they accumulate fame. Lifeson's solo on this one is deeply moving; to this day, it's probably my favorite Rush song. and "YYZ" is about planes or something. the first five tracks here are one of the most legendary runs in the entire canon! i really like the last two songs, don't get me wrong, but the A-side and "The Camera Eye" could be the entire album and I'd probably still call it one of my favorites of this era. decent 9/10.

an album I like a good deal, but one which I don't have much to say about, apart from "wow, this is layered!" the operative word here is "Big". this is quintessential eighties pop rock fare from top to bottom; most of these songs hit you with a wall constructed of shimmery guitars, icy synths, big drums dipped in thick reverb, and gripping vocal leads. over time, I've grown to really appreciate the tropes from this era of pop, tacky though they may appear on the surface to modern ears! this decade had a very particular production quality, an ethereal nature that always nevertheless feels like it's operating at a slight distance from me as a listener. there's a sort of intrigue in that dynamic that Tears for Fears, Talk Talk, Kate Bush, Depeche Mode and many more utilized to pretty tremendous success. the three biggest (and Big-est) songs here are big for a reason! I'm not sure I had ever heard the full 6+ minute version of "Shout" before but, damn, it's worth every second! a simple, perfectly orchestrated slow build if ever there was one. do I need to say anything about "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" other than "how did this almost not make the album?" I almost forgot "Head Over Heels" existed, so it was a pleasant surprise to be reminded of it again; I'll never get sick of a crafty modulation between a song's verse and chorus. the deeper cuts are nothing to sneeze at either! "The Working Hour" has some incredible saxophone work from Will Gregory; "Mothers Talk" has maybe the album's most infectious drum pocket; "I Believe" feels like a cabaret number floating through space; and I like how "Broken" frames "Head Over Heels" and gives it a greater musical context to exist in, then leads into the dreamy, near-ambient closer, "Listen". I definitely didn't expect to like this as much as I did! hoping for more surprises like that in the days to come. light 9/10.

oof. bad roll to get this early on. day 11? could Mr. Rock have waited until day 1001? Kid Rock may be one of the first contemporary conservative grifters; despite his bougie upbringing as the son of auto tycoons, his music deliberately appeals to the sensibilities of a particular kind of working class Republican voter, the type that might self-identify as "trailer trash" or some other rural descriptor. Rock's grift has gotten more obvious over time (especially in the Biden years), but a lot of the right-wing signifiers he hit us with on "Don't Tell Me How to Live" are also present on this, his breakout album. it's brash, crass, trashy and politically incorrect, and makes no apologies for any of that; unfortunately, like most self-styled "provocateurs" on the right who make it their bread and butter to talk a never-ending stream of edgy tripe, hardly any of it lands hard enough to really be all that offensive. that's true for "Don't Tell Me How to Live", and it was just as true here. Rock even drops the n-word on the closing track and it barely registers! why does he always talk about holding it down for Dixie? he's from Michigan! I'm all for hip hop and rock music coming together, but only if they're both done to a satisfactory level. with this album, the rock never rises above the level of corny pentatonic hard rock and heavy metal schlock. this album's riffs are universally limp and lifeless; even Limp Bizkit has a great riff every now and again! the country nods are similarly terrible, and now part of me has this terrible feeling that, if this album wasn't (somehow) a smash commercial and critical success, we might have been spared the whole bro country trend. Kid Rock is also, bar none, one of the worst rappers of all time. his flows are embarrassingly rudimentary, and his lyrical abilities are basically nonexistent outside of the ability to rhyme the ends of lines. Eminem's verse on "Fuck Off" is an oasis in the midst of the Sahara the rest of this album's rapping presents. late nineties Em laid way back on drum pockets in a way I absolutely adore. the thing that I think truly gets my goat with this album, though? most of these songs are about absolutely nothing. booze, drugs, sex (sometimes implied to be with underage girls?), partying. great. not like we already have exactly one billion much better songs about those exact things! and when Rock does try to maintain a topical focus, it's mind-numbing. you want to be a cowboy? again, you're from Michigan. you think the mother of your daughter is a slut? you should probably unpack that one with some professional help. "Only God Knows Why" gestures in the direction of dealing with some personal issues, but again, it's hardly about anything at all. "Devil Without a Cause" is an apt title, but not in the way I think Kid Rock wanted it to be. I literally don't know what his cause is here. I have an idea of what he thinks it is, but it absolutely does not translate into the music. this is easily the worst rap rock I've ever heard in my life, and I'd be very surprised if there's an album on the list that's worse than this. strong 1/10.

this is the first Blur album I've listened to from front to back. I didn't really connect with it, and I think that's for two reasons. first of all, I don't have the context of their previous work leading up to this, which features a much more specific Britpop sound, rather than this album's more general alternative rock palette. and second of all, I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy. it's interesting to see which UK artists manage to make an impact here in the States and which ones don't. our knowledge of the music of the British Isles tends to be pretty scattershot for that reason; Blur didn't really manage to catch the mass attention of Americans until this, their fifth album, six years into their career. is it because they started listening to American "college rock" bands and writing more American-esque songs on this one? well, Oasis made a huge splash with their sophomore album two years before this, and even well before that, there's a well-documented history of Americans being fascinated by a "British" musical aesthetic that dates back to the Beatles and the Kinks. for Blur, I think it may have something to do with how their sound and lyrical attitude reflect a particular kind of English cynicism, one that I don't get much out of since I've never even set foot in the UK, whereas we Yanks tend to prefer a general sense of optimism out of our British pop bands. undeniably, this album feels like it was written for a more international audience; the main way the Americanisms of this album come through, for me, is in this album's rough-around-the-edges presentation. there's still some polish and refinery on display on songs like "Beetlebum" and "M.O.R.", but most of the parts of this album that excite me are ones that start to feel a bit like they're breaking down. Blur were particularly influenced by Pavement when they wrote this batch of songs, and the best moments here definitely feel like they were recorded in view of a shrine of Stephen Malkmus. sonically, I think this record exists in a really cool nineties rock middle ground between the noisier sounds of American indie bands and the sophisticated arrangements of Britpop acts. which is why it pains me to say that I didn't really connect with this album that well from a compositional perspective! I like the opening two tracks, but everyone does. I don't really get as excited about any of the other songs here apart from the last two, and by the time they come on, the album's already over! there's a lot of neat sounds and good songs in the middle (some that remind me of the future sounds of Damon Albarn's Gorillaz), but none of them really blow me out of the water or catch my attention in any big way. there's a couple older Blur albums left on this list, and I hope that listening to them deepens my appreciation of what the band put together here. I appreciate the craftsmanship on display here, but I think having more of a familiarity with where these guys were coming from musically might make this make more sense. as it stands right now, I thought this was good, but not great. strong 6/10.

the catchiest songs you've ever heard about the worst guy you've ever met. I was fully unprepared for the sheer amount of anger that Elvis Costello radiates on these songs, much of it directed towards women! rock music and misogyny are no strangers to each other, of course, but with this album, I think Costello and The Attractions approach the subject with a satirical angle that's not immediately apparent on the surface. Costello's vocals, particularly on this album's most bitter songs like "Little Triggers" and "Hand in Hand", sneer and simmer with a barely contained rage... and yet The Attractions always make you want to dance! their music acts as a foil to Costello, deflating his rhetoric and turning it back on himself. this is a deeply unsympathetic portrayal of Costello as a man and a human being, and I think he's fully aware of that. hence, this album is an absolute ball. punk rock energy with powerful hooks, all tied together by that kooky organ. decent 8/10.

let me just express my gratitude to the curators of this list that the golden era of medium-to-large ensemble jazz, the focus of most of my work as a composer-arranger, is fairly well-represented on it! being a composer-arranger is sort of a (somehow) even dorkier version of being a singer-songwriter, so it's always nice to feel like someone is still in your corner. this is some of the most exemplary bebop of its time, truly making a case for jazz as Black American chamber music. this nonet lineup, owing to its warm brass section from trumpet down to tuba, is very easy on the ears, which allows your ears to hear through the old recording fidelity and straight into the beautiful counterpoint and harmonic motion present in all of these tracks. 75-ish years on, I'm still blown away by the sophistication in these arrangements, the bulk of which are handled by Gerry Mulligan, one of the architects of the "cool jazz" sound. Davis is featured prominently on just about every cut, but there's plenty of space for other soloists, including saxophonists Mulligan and Lee Konitz, trombonist J.J. Johnson, pianist John Lewis and plenty more. Gil Evans also makes two appearances here as an arranger on "Moon Dreams" and "Boplicity", foreshadowing many future successful Davis-Evans collaborations which would take place on a much grander musical scale. this may not go for your jugular like a typical big band record, but what this album lacks in volume and intensity, it brings instead in intrigue. this is music that you can't help but pay close attention to; if you're a writer, you'll listen to this record with equal parts admiration and envy. 10/10.

what can you even say about this, or any Beatles album, at this point? like, yeah, this is really good music. I'm probably not going to say anything even remotely contrarian for the entirety of this review! I've even got the weird stereo mixes everyone likes to complain about! this consistently stays in my top three favorite Beatles albums (I'm almost certain the other two will show up later in this list), and that's for a few reasons. Lennon–McCartney is a powerhouse songwriting team the likes of which was never seen before or since and et cetera, but give it up for George Harrison's three (count 'em, three!) contributions to this album! always nice to see your fave get a bit more shine. "Taxman" is the one everyone loves, and I like it a lot, but "Love You To" and "I Want to Tell You" are much more in my wheelhouse in terms of what I mostly listen to the Beatles for: sonic experimentation in a pop context! yes, many of my favorite tracks here are the weird ones. "Eleanor Rigby" with its creepy string arrangement and double-tracked lead vocals; "She Said She Said", which features some jangly, noisy guitar work; "For No One", a ballad with a Baroque flair, complete with a clavichord; and especially "Tomorrow Never Knows", one of the most mind-altering songs in the entire history of pop music. but then you listen to "Here, There and Everywhere", a song that's so straightforward in comparison with all the rest, and it's still completely captivating. this is a very special collection of tunes from a group of musicians capturing absolute magic in the studio. light 9/10.

this album first came into my life as a listening assignment from Mike LeDonne when he coached an organ quartet I was placed in during my grad school days with the exact instrumentation featured here. the sound of the Hammond organ, compared to a bassist plus a pianist, changed a lot about how I had to react as a member of a band, for a few reasons that are pretty apparent on this album. the Hammond is, in a certain way, a relic of a bygone era. in the fifties and sixties, they were a fixture of jazz bars and clubs owing to their economic value; a skilled organist does the job of two musicians for the price of one! however, the Hammond presents several challenges for the non-organists in the band. chief among these is the instrument's notoriously muddy low end, which can make it difficult for the drummer and guitarist to lock up with the organist's left-hand basslines. there's moments on this album where Jimmy Smith will speed just slightly ahead of drummer Donald Bailey and vice versa; this game of desynchronizing and recoupling just comes with the territory of organ grinding! as such, a lot of the repertoire that organ bands from this era gravitate to is in a soulful hard bop idiom, with simpler song forms that allow for that push and pull. there's perhaps no organist that typifies this sound, style and era better than "The Incredible" Smith, and this album in particular is a masterclass for anyone looking to play with a little more grease (which I, a suburban white kid, definitely needed to do at the time)! given that I'm usually paying the most attention to the saxophonist on any given album, I have to give it up to Stanley Turrentine, who plays a ton of great bebop phrasing with a heavy dose of the blues thrown in. I'm definitely still trying to cop his vibe whenever I play at these medium swing tempos. but Bailey and Kenny Burrell hold their own across this tracklist as well! Bailey's drumming is never too busy, and it's often deceptively technical, particularly on the title track, with its upbeats in the left foot. Burrell's role as rhythm guitarist is often very subtle, but he ties the entire band together flawlessly, and his solo spots are pure, understated genius. newer editions of this album append a version of "On the Sunny Side of the Street" to the end, and I'm never going to say no to that song! it sounds nice in G major. decent 8/10.

the importance of Buddy Holly and the Crickets to the history of rock music cannot be overstated. across an astonishingly brief recording career, Holly set the template which a host of rock music's earliest superstars modeled their own recordings and live acts after, from John Lennon and Paul McCartney (who named their band after an oblique reference to the Crickets) to Bob Dylan and The Rolling Stones and on and on. unfortunately, for my ears here in 2024, I appreciate Holly's music more for what it means to music history, rather than on its own musical terms. for me, it mainly comes down to the very silly backing vocals, which were the style at the time, but often feel like they actively intrude upon the overall musical texture. apparently, there's a newer release of this album that nixes the back-up singers, and I wonder if I'd like it any more without them. the songs themselves are also pretty typical early rock & roll fare; having just listened to Revolver two days ago (an album that released 9 years after this one), it's incredible to think that this genre would evolve at such a rapid pace! the highlight here is "Not Fade Away", with its variation on the Bo Diddley beat, but tracks like "Oh, Boy!" and "That'll Be the Day" can't be ignored. the influence of these songs on the early work of band like the Beatles and Stones is readily apparent, which makes this a really interesting historical document. those of us in the Current Year are definitely spoiled by the advances of generations of musicians that have come before. landmark albums in this vein often get hit with the "dated" argument, but remember that, at one point, this was the shape of rock to come! this was one of the first albums to feature the modern rock band instrumentation, which blows my mind, even if the music doesn't always do the same. strong 5/10.

this album, the first rap record I've been assigned for this list, is one which I've learned a lot about despite never making the time to listen to it before today. my middle and high school years, the time of my life where I first got into hip hop, were in the early 2010s. so, while I was having my mind blown back then from fresh releases by Kendrick Lamar, Earl Sweatshirt, Danny Brown, Death Grips and Kanye West (yes, I know), I was also catching up on the underground classics from the 90s and 2000s that were influencing a lot of my favorite new sounds (RIP DOOM). since my ears gravitated more towards the underground and "midstream" of the hip hop world, I missed out on a lot of the mainstream albums that have defined entire eras and subgenres of rap music over the years. I did a lot of further catching up during my 6 years in college, but here I am listening to a 50 Cent album from front to back for the first time at 27! I'm not too surprised by this site's ambivalence towards this album; it's certainly not reinventing the wheel or presenting a new paradigm for the genre. that being said, this is still a strong batch of tracks overall! 50's style as a rhymer is maybe a little rudimentary at times, but he's extremely believable as a character in the world his lyrics present to you as a listener. he's New York to his bones, but the comparison that first came to my mind when listening to this was actually California's 2Pac: that hard, gangster exterior that masks a lot of deep trauma. plus they both have Dr. Dre in the production credits! 50 handles a lot of his own hooks on this album, and actually holds his own as a singer decently well! there's some serious earworms to be found here if you're willing to surrender yourself to his admittedly repetitive subject matter. the stories of shootouts with cops, selling crack, escapades with women and weed smoking start to wear a bit thin by the end, especially through the bonus tracks. but, to me, there's not really a weak link in this tracklist! it's fairly even in quality from front to back; I just think it's a little long for it's own good. not helping matters is a couple beats here that don't quite feel as timeless as the rest, the synth strings on "Don't Push Me" being the most garish example. overall, though, I think the production is much like 50's own rapping style: simple, yet highly effective. I found this album worth the listen for the first four tracks alone, which I think may be one of the most exciting four-song runs on any album I've ever heard. "What Up Gangsta" makes me feel unstoppable! Eminem is two for two* on great features in this list, between "Patiently Waiting" and Kid Rock's "Fuck Off", the only redeemable moment from Devil Without a Cause! I think this was my first time listening to the explicit version of "In da Club", and the hook on this version is so much snappier with a more direct drug reference! it really elevated the entire track, to the point where it's become one of my favorite rap classics after having spent more time with this version, the jump-scare homophobic slur notwithstanding. "Many Men" was also a song that I immediately clicked with, and the moment where I felt the strongest connection with classic street albums like Me Against the World and Illmatic, with its vivid portrayal of the toll that a life of gang-banging can take on one's mind. probably my favorite song here, but it's close! I hope this album can get a bit of a reappraisal the more distance we get from its release. it may be a bit of a fluke; even as 50 Cent's follow-up album sold like gangbusters, he very quickly found himself outpaced by artists who were more on trend. but, as a time capsule into a world of hip hop that existed for only a brief sliver of its history, one which I was only dimly familiar with as a kid listening to the radio edit of "In da Club" in the car on the way to the doctor's office or wherever else, I found this album fascinating. light 8/10. *three for three if we count "Don't Push Me" as well.

my fiance is deep in the Bauhaus trenches, so I'm dimly familiar with this band, and with 80s post-punk generally. going into this album I expected something somewhat ominous, and I certainly got that, but I didn't anticipate how groovy and dancy it would be! I was definitely reminded of David Bowie's late 70s material more than a few times here. I don't love the tinny, reverb-drenched 80s production, but I've certainly heard more egregious, mushy mix jobs on other records from this time period. like with the Crickets a couple days ago, I think I appreciate this a bit more for its place in music history than anything else. after all, Bauhaus are one of the most beloved bands in the history of alternative music, let alone just goth rock; but goth rock's just not really a subgenre I'm as drawn to as others under this post-punk umbrella. it's possible I'd enjoy In the Flat Field or one of their other albums more, but this is the only Bauhaus album on the list, so I'll have to do that on my own time. strong 6/10.

this is a different kind of Queen than the one I'm used to; apart from the closer, I don't think I was familiar with any of these songs beforehand. a lot of the traits that I typically associate with their sound are present here, from the preponderance of overdubs to the progressive song structures to Freddie Mercury's dynamic, captivating presence as a lead singer. the difference, I think, is the heavier instrumentation; I'm not used to hearing Queen rock out to quite this degree! I like them in this mode, but it also feels a bit humdrum compared to their later albums. Sheer Heart Attack rocks harder, and A Night at the Opera really pulls out all the stops compositionally and instrumentally. despite that, I think this sophomore record of theirs deserves a lot of credit for being the one where they really started to find their footing. decent 7/10.

coming from a background in jazz and classical music, Steely Dan represents my platonic ideal of what a pop rock band can be. it's rare to come across rock albums this polished that still feel so vibrant and alive. a lot of yarn has been spun about the many session musicians and arrangers that worked to bring these songs to life, but my ear is always most drawn to the songs themselves. I've stolen a ton of chord progressions from them over the years, intentionally or otherwise! Walter Becker and Donald Fagen owe a tremendous debt as songwriters to the harmonic innovations of Wayne Shorter; there's a ton of Shorter-esque weaving in and out of different tonal centers across all of these songs, and Shorter's solo spot on the title track is one of the most exciting crossover moments in the histories of both jazz and rock music. I like the B-side quite a bit, but this has to be the most perfect A-side in the entire yacht rock canon, right? strong 9/10.

glitz and glamor! there's a level of sophistication in the songwriting and arrangements on this album that you just don't see as often in mainstream pop music anymore. dozens of session musicians, arrangers and writers came together to make these songs come alive (especially the Jerry Hey Horns!), and Michael Jackson's smooth, energetic vocals tie them all together. this is absolutely the first album that comes to my mind when I think of the disco era, and I think it's largely off the strength of the initial run of three songs. two of MJ's most iconic hits, and the often-overlooked "Workin' Day and Night", which really wowed me. the title track also delivers, of course, but some of the deeper cuts don't have that same sense of impact. despite the front-loaded nature of the tracklist, I think this album still succeeds on a lot of fronts. some of Jackson's later albums succeed mainly on the strength of their eclecticism, but I think I prefer this album's more singular sonic focus. light 8/10.

James Murphy & the rest of his Soundsystem have a deep working knowledge of the slow build. these songs often stretch as long as 7 or 8 minutes, and somehow they seem to flash by. even for as glacially paced as some of these builds are, they maintain this electrifying sense of intrigue at every moment. the mark of having fun is time flying, after all! Talking Heads is maybe the most obvious influence at play here (to me, at least), but the influence of sixties and seventies minimal music can't be ignored either. as much as these songs are all undeniable jams, they also have a tendency to put me in a bit of a trance, especially the title track. both LCD Soundsystem and minimalism have a strong association with New York City, so I don't know if I can call that a coincidence! the mix of electronic and acoustic instruments to create these dance grooves is near-perfect in its execution. this is no doubt a studio project, but it always maintains a live feel. there's little blemishes in the percussion, synths so big they sometimes clip, and often unrestrained lead vocals, but it's all in service to the groove. Murphy's topical focus is also quite strong, mostly centered around the passage of time and its effects on his life and his mind. while these songs often feel like they're suspended in time, Murphy is well aware that time never truly stops, for better or worse. I relate a lot more heavily to the sentiment of "All My Friends" at 27 than I did when I listened to this album for the first time at 19. decent 9/10.

it's interesting going back-to-back with this album and Sound of Silver. two electronic albums with a punk edge, but with pretty different approaches and affects. The Prodigy is undeniably more aggressive, leaning more on frenetic breakbeats and howling synths than static house grooves and cold bleep-bloops. it definitely feels like I should either be listening to this in a club or, better yet, while soaring down slopes in SSX Tricky. I'd be very surprised if this wasn't an inspiration point for Joey Valence & Brae, one of my favorite recently-broken-out music acts. there's still a lot of repetition at play, but it's less about slow builds and more about subverting your expectations. just when you start itching for things to switch up, The Prodigy does it! sometimes it's in pretty obvious ways, like taking the drums in or out, or introducing a new vocal. but there's also plenty of tiny details and edits that jostle me and keep me attentive, and I appreciate those moments even more. the three big singles ("Smack My Bitch Up", "Breathe" and "Firestarter") are definitely the highlights, but I also came away with this album with a great Kool Keith track I had never heard ("Diesel Power") and the hype-as-hell closer ("Fuel My Fire")! if I could change anything, I'd just take a minute or two off of "Narayan". light 9/10.

a pleasant surprise! my experience with Brazilian music is pretty limited outside of American jazz's flirtations with bossa nova. like any good RYMer, Clube da Esquina is one of my favorite albums, and I'm already a fan of one of Ben's earlier records, Fôrça bruta. the sound of the classical guitar is integral to a lot of this music, so I was pretty taken aback by how hard this album rocks! there's hardly any acoustic guitars to be found here, although there's still plenty of great Brazilian percussion, particularly a prominent cuica! we've also got great horn and string arrangements, plus an incredible section of backup singers. the rhythm section also deserves a ton of props! I can't really speak to any of the lyrical subject matter here with any authority, but Ben's singing across all these songs is full of infectious, authoritative energy. he could be reading the phone book for all I know, but that hardly matters to me! I'll definitely be coming back to this album more than a few times. strong 9/10.

far be it from me to question Geoff Emerick's production work—the dude engineered Revolver!—but this is a very strange mix. there's a lot more of a studio-as-an-instrument feel this time around in comparison to my previous Elvis Costello outing, This Year's Model. I get the sense that, with Emerick behind the boards, Costello really wanted to lean into the whole Beatles angle. the thing that jumped out immediately was the vocal production. the main thing that makes this mix so strange is how forward the vocals are pushed, and it's especially noticeable since many of these songs feature a ton of vocal overdubbing. I'm not 100% sure if this vocal treatment really suits Costello as well as it does the Fab Four, but I also kind of enjoy hearing his voice with such clarity. he doesn't snarl as much on this record, so you get to delight in his newfound sense of melody a little more. this album's also got a lot more reverb than I'd have expected, truly one of the hallmarks of the eighties! with the new sound also comes a different approach to songwriting. there's hints of the new wave sound here and there, but in a lot of ways, this is a Baroque pop album in disguise. again, the Beatles are a major reference point. the way "Shabby Doll" speeds up and slows down; the expansive, Abbey Road-esque sound of "Man Out of Time"; the kooky, massive orchestral arrangement on "...And in Every Home", as well as other hints of brass and winds on songs like "The Long Honeymoon" and "Pidgin English"; Phil Spector's vision of a Wagnerian approach to pop is alive and well in 1982! what really makes this worth listening to for me is that, even with the clear influences at play and all the bells and whistles, Costello's sonic and compositional identity remains very much intact from one song to the next. he's much more introspective here than he was on This Year's Model; even just from the sound of the music here, you can tell he's in a more melancholy place. I'm not sure if this needs to be 15 songs long, but there's enough excellent tracks here, especially on the A-side, that this is definitely worth at least a few listens. decent 8/10.

Björk's voice is one of the most magical instruments in pop music history. even in the course of a single song, her stylistic range is boundless. something about how her voice raucously floats over these house beats is undeniably infectious. but in between the bangers, there's a dreamy, sensual spirit of romantic ecstasy. it's present on cuts like "Venus as a Boy" and her rendition of "Like Someone in Love", both of which feature some incredible string arrangements, and it's even in some of the icier moments like "One Day", a track that sounds like it would fit right in on SAW 85-92. it's still unbelievable to me that Oliver Lake of World Saxophone Quartet fame has his hands on some of these tracks, especially "Aeroplane", which has a delightfully unconventional arrangement; it's probably the song that most strongly points towards the future of Björk's output. her later albums might be more adventurous musically and conceptually, but her first solo outing sets a tremendous blueprint for her later developments. this is truly a prototypical Björk experience; it's as close as you can get in her discography to a no-frills listen. strong 8/10.

this won a Brit Award and was shortlisted for the Mercury Prize? could've fooled me. I'll reiterate that I am extremely American, so I have absolutely no reference point for why exactly this album and this band had such a huge moment in the UK at the time. it's serviceable dance music with some cool drums, surprise horn lines and decent enough rapping, but nothing here really stuck with me beyond that. it gets pretty repetitive just a few tracks in. yeah, dance music is about repetition, but from song to song, I feel like I'm hearing a lot of the same musical tropes. I like the minor pentatonic scale and the Dorian mode, but for a full-length dance album experience, they start to wear out their use after a while. this definitely doesn't feel like an album I should be sitting in a chair listening to; maybe if I was in a different listening context, like a dance party or something, it would hit differently. but as it stands, I'm not sure I'd call this "Must Hear" material. I guess you had to be there. light 4/10.

would love to listen to a version of this that edits Diddy and the two atrocious sex skits out. what was the obsession with taking 2-3 minutes out of an otherwise fantastic album for the least funny audio skits you've ever heard? those blemishes aside, wow. this is one of hip hop's first timeless albums; Biggie Smalls' flows are immaculately constructed, and listening to him light these beats up is a pure delight. there's tons of different approaches to the art of storytelling across these tracks! my favorite is when he plays multiple characters in the same song, like on "Gimme the Loot" or "Warning"; it feels like he was planting a seed for Kendrick Lamar to harvest a couple decades later. "Things Done Changed", "Everyday Struggle", "Suicidal Thoughts" and many other songs here portray Biggie's criminal lifestyle and condition in society with vividly macabre detail, matched with ornate, jazz-tinged production and piledriving drum grooves. it's undeniably New York, but the influence of West Coast G-Funk is also undeniable. there's also a few glitzier cuts dedicated to his material possessions and the women he's bedding (and threatening to beat if they act out of line), as any mainstream rap classic worth its salt tends to have. the production value and rhyming quality hardly ever dips, but the subject matter is often pretty repetitive. there's definitely no shortage of material here, with 15 proper songs clocking in at over an hour. this was the early days of the CD age, where everyone was trying to fill up as much of that disc as they possibly could. I think you could maybe trim this down by 5-10 minutes and it would be a much tighter experience. but, when so many of these songs are so legendarily good, I can hardly complain! light 9/10.

this is definitely a lot to take in at once. both the newly completed songs and the older cuts included to fill this out to double album length present a smorgasbord of sonic ideas, making this perhaps Led Zep's most eclectic release. there's a couple progressive epics here in "Kashmir" and "In the Light", but also plenty of their signature bluesy hard rock sound, particularly on the A-side. elsewhere, "Trampled Under Foot" and "The Wanton Song" feature a prominent funk influence, there's a few acoustic cuts like "Bron-Yr-Aur" and "Black Country Woman", and even a few more straightforward cuts that still come together really successfully like "Down By the Seaside" and "Houses of the Holy". if you like any aspect of the Led Zeppelin sound, you'll be able to find it represented here in some fashion. when these four guys really strike gold, the results speak for themselves. that being said, whether or not you feel this needed to be 15 songs and 84 minutes long will depend on how many of these different sonic experiments actually pan out for you. for me, it definitely loses some steam by the end. the first two sides are by far the strongest in my mind, although sides C and D each have at least one really strong song apiece: "Ten Years Gone" and "The Wanton Song". "Sick Again" is deeply uncomfortable and I'd be happy to never hear it again. if I wind up returning to this album as often as other, shorter albums in their discography, I'll most likely cut it off before "Boogie With Stu". decent 8/10.

this was my first experience with Beck in a full album context, and while I knew going in that this was him in a more serious, contemplative mood than normal, I wasn't ready to be as moved as I was by a lot of these songs! when I saw Nigel Godrich handled production duties and read about this album's despondent break-up themes, that obviously made me think of Radiohead, but I came away from this feeling far more parallels between Beck and Nick Drake. of course, Beck and Godrich's sound is a lot more expansive owing to the higher production value, but the mellow acoustic vibe, the string arrangements, even Beck's singing, all brought albums like Five Leaves Left and Bryter Layter to mind. the run from tracks 1-5 here is by far the strongest (that little keyboard melody on "Golden Age" is so perfect!), but I was also pretty blown away by "Round the Bend". on an album full of great string sections, that song probably has my favorite. it's the most haunting song on the entire album, and it really stood out for that reason. I'm excited to see what else Beck's discography has to offer; hopefully I can catch him in a better mood next time! strong 8/10.