1001 Albums Summary

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.

couldn't this have waited until album #1,001? if you couldn't tell by that remark, this was the album which, beyond any other, I was most dreading having to listen to for this. Kid Rock may be one of the first contemporary conservative grifters; despite his bougie upbringing as the son of auto tycoons, his more recent music deliberately appeals to the sensibilities of a particular kind of Republican voter, the kind who drives (or wishes to drive) an oversized pickup truck with which he (and it's usually "he") never hauls anything other than his own ass, and only ever to work and the grocery store. you know, the sort of guy who imagines himself as rural despite living in a major metropolitan area? 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 Devil Without a Cause, 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 his anti-COVID "Don't Tell Me How to Live", and it was just as true here: his music is too terrible to even be offended by. he even drops the N-word on the closing track, and raps on multiple songs about holding it down for "Dixie" (he performed in front of the battle flag of the Confederate States of America, a modern symbol of white supremacy, with some regularity up until just a few years ago), despite being from Michigan, and you kinda just roll your eyes. considering that his recent political signaling has resulted in him basically being banished from any and all polite company, it's hard to feel all that sorry for him and the ever-declining popularity of his Pimp Cowboy brand. conversely, it's also tough to muster up much ire for the Kid; however, I have plenty of anger for the music he has created. the public eating this up, that's one thing. but critics, too? enough for some of them to tell me I need to mark this as essential listening before my death?! that's unthinkable, almost unforgivable; it's certainly an insult to the intelligence of anyone who decides to partake in this challenge. I'm all for hip hop and rock music coming together, but only if they're both done to a satisfactory level. think of the Beastie Boys, or Rage Against the Machine, or Death Grips in their later years. hell, even Linkin Park. on Devil Without a Cause, the rock never rises above the level of corny pentatonic hard rock and heavy metal schlock. the riffs are universally limp and lifeless; even the shittiest Limp Bizkit albums, the ones without Wes Borland, run circles around this. the country nods are similarly terrible, and now part of me has this terrible feeling that, if Rock didn't (somehow) have a smash commercial and critical success on his hands with this, 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 knowledge that the ends of his lines must, to one extent or another, rhyme. Eminem's verse on "Fuck Off" is an oasis in the midst of the Sahara the rest of the album's rapping presents, and even he would only make good music for, like, four more years after this! 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. if you're a rapper, you should be able to know how to tell a story, and the only song here that does tell a story ("Black Chick, White Guy") has a terrible story, and it's still a terrible song. "Devil Without a Cause" is an apt title, but not in the way I think Kid Rock wanted it to be: this music feels utterly pointless. easily the worst rap rock I've ever heard in my life, and I'd be very surprised if there's an album in the book that's worse than this. 0/10.

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.

I think I can safely say this was my first full-album experience with honky-tonk music, a genre I'm only peripherally familiar with thanks to Fallout: New Vegas and its influence on alt-country, which is typically the only country subgenre that really excites me. I've alluded to how painfully American I am on this list before, but I'm specifically a New Yorker, and even more specifically a Long Islander. country music is huge all over various parts of the state, but I've always felt like I'm at a distance from it. recently, I realized that what I really can't stand is the various post-9/11 mainstream country sounds, music that feels like so inauthentic that you'd swear it was created in a boardroom. this Ray Price album was hugely refreshing in comparison! I love the sound of pedal steel, and Price's voice is captivating over this selection of songs, pretty much all of which deal with sad romantic themes. there's an unmistakable nocturnal vibe here; slow tempos, unhurried vocal phrasing, the overall downtrodden vibe. I listened to this album at 1:30 in the afternoon, but I think I might have enjoyed it a little more if I waited for sundown (which, depressingly, is around 4:30 right now). I liked this, but I'd struggle to say I love it or that I'm likely to return to it. classic country music is heavily focused on the lyrics, but I've just never been that kind of listener. and after 12 tracks and 37 minutes of existing in this sonic space, hearing the same chord progressions and melodic phrases return many times, I think I had my fill. I get that the appeal is in the simplicity, and admittedly this album has a killer atmosphere, but again, I'm spoiled by the innovations of future artists. I'll definitely remember that title track, though! strong 6/10.

bear witness to one of the most well-oiled machines in rock music history. these songs are often thorny and complicated, but they always feel good. keyboardist Robert Lamm dominates the songwriting and lead vocal duties on this album, so his contributions stick out the most clearly. "Beginnings", "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?" and "Questions 67 and 68" are all masterstrokes that perfectly showcase Chicago's ability to balance tight playing of some difficult compositions (and some amazing work from the horn section, arranged by trombonist James Pankow) with free-wheeling exuberance; the latter really comes through when they kick out the jams on "Poem 58" and "Liberation"! Terry Kath is one of the electric guitar's most unsung heroes; his rhythm playing fits right inside Danny Seraphine and Peter Cetera's pocket, and his leads are mind-blowing. that's not to mention the strength of his pen and his lead vocals, showcased in the jaw-dropping "Introduction" to this entire double-LP! he also gets some time to drop some legitimately avant-garde noise work on his own solo track at the beginning of side C, as well as towards the end of "Liberation". allegedly, Kath was one of, if not Jimi Hendrix's favorite guitar player. well-deserved praise! light 9/10.

the latter two White Stripes albums deviate from the pattern established by the first four. this one may be their most varied, in terms of both style and quality. after a strong but misleading opener in their signature noisy, bluesy element, the tracklist takes all kinds of detours. the bulk of the material here alternates between acoustic (piano or guitar) and electric blues, but there's even more left hooks than just the piano. immediately after "Blue Orchid" comes one of the Stripes' most experimental songs, "The Nurse", which encompasses all of this record's sonic elements into a very strange four minutes. there's also "Little Ghost", an attempt at a country vibe that failed to connect with me. despite the quality control being all over the place, more than a couple of these songs are actually pretty great! "The Denial Twist" is probably the most successful of the piano-led numbers, with an infectious groove from Meg White while Jack White pumps out power chords on the keys. the electric "Instinct Blues" pumps up both the volume and the intrigue, with a start-stop pace that lets Jack control the flow of each section to make things feel askew. and there's a reason everyone likes "My Doorbell" so much! the deeper cuts don't really hit quite the same as they do on other White Stripes albums, but there's more than a few highlights here that fit right in with their finest, most classic material. light 7/10.

in a better world, one in which the work of female artists in hip hop was allowed the longevity and staying power it truly deserves, we'd be talking about Queen Latifah's debut album in the same breath as records like 3 Feet High and Rising. I don't just bring De La Soul up due to their inclusion on track 2 here (although that's a fantastic song!); 3 Feet High and All Hail the Queen are both emblematic of the ways in which rap music, and particularly rap albums, were evolving as the nineties were about to begin. I'm thinking especially of sample selection, conceptual focus, and most importantly, the expansion of subject matter! this is often cited as one of hip hop's first major feminist statements, and for good reason. I can think of times where I've heard female rappers attempt to prove that they can rap "as good as" their male counterparts, but Queen Latifah's perspective is much different. she isn't concerned with reaching parity with men, especially considering the evil they do (an evil she speaks about over a KRS-One beat on side B)! Latifah opens the album with a verse about how she might not be the best female MC you've ever heard, but MC stands for "Microphone Commando", and she'll command your attention anyway. she'll make you dance for her, a task made easier by some excellent beats from DJ Mark The 45 King! I love how rap songs from this era will sometimes have an instrumental break with a sample in one key, a section for the verses with a sample in a second key, and sometimes a hook that's in a third key! the subtle ways hip hop production breaks away from traditional tonality are not lost on me. the album's most iconic track, "Ladies First", is an ode to female solidarity, a message which I think has been somewhat lost in the modern rap landscape. since i started following hip hop in the 2010s, its culture's inherent misogyny has seemed to only allow for one, maybe two big female rappers to exist at one time. although, maybe with artists like Megan Thee Stallion, Doechii, CupcakKe and many others finding their way into a bigger pond this decade, that might be starting to change! decent 7/10.

almost a quarter of a century after it's release, this has easily earned "classic" status in hip hop circles. the story behind it is well-known: after three albums which helped open the door for Atlanta and the wider hip hop scene in the South, OutKast bought their own studio and, with their newfound recording freedom, sought to make something much more eclectic and experimental than anything they had done before. there's a case to be made that this is the duo's finest work, especially since nearly all of their tinkering and flirtations with a wide variety of styles comes together really well. highlights for me include "B.O.B.", which features the duo rapping at lightspeed over chaotic drum 'n' bass chops, with some incredible gospel vocals towards the back end; "Snappin' & Trappin'", which has the album's strangest drum pocket and very little in the way of harmonic or melodic information, but all the verses are hard as nails, especially from Killer Mike, who makes his recording debut here; "Humble Mumble", which evolves from an infectious salsa-tinged number to a driving club banger; and the first proper track on the album, "Gasoline Dreams", which borders on a rap-rock sound and immediately fires me up for the rest of the songs that follow. plus, "Ms. Jackson" and "So Fresh, So Clean" are, of course, generational bops. there's a couple weaker links here, mainly the skits and interludes. I also don't rock with "Toilet Tisha" that hard. but even with that being said, this is very often my favorite OutKast album. it's very hard to choose between this and ATLiens! lots of artists have had their shot at a more "eclectic" album, but few nailed it the way Big Boi and André 3000 did here. decent 9/10.

I'd like to focus this review around a single moment which I think sums up this album perfectly: "Don't Look Back in Anger" opening with what is, essentially, just the piano riff from John Lennon's "Imagine". Oasis were hardly the first (or last) band to be influenced by, or even directly lift from, the work of a Beatle or the combined Beatles. however, what troubled me about this introduction to "Don't Look Back in Anger" was that it felt to me as though Oasis were giving up the game. this is an element that contemporary reviews of this record really went after, and for good reason. it's one thing to pay homage to or write in the vein of one's influences (something Billy Joel has basically made an entire career out of), but it's another to bite them this directly. as many critics and musicologists have noted, "Don't Look Back in Anger" is far from the only example of such biting to be found here! this biting also serves to cover up the complete lack of ideas on display in Oasis' songwriting and production. I suppose this is pleasant enough while it's on; I wasn't actively offended by any of these 12 tracks, and a few of them are pretty familiar to me at this point thanks to the radio and the Rock Band games. but, once again, I run into the same problem I had with Devil Without a Cause: all of the sound and fury signifies nothing. these are attempts at loud, anthemic rock songs (right down to the string arrangements!), but they all feel completely hollow. not all rock music has to be about something, but it should at least be somewhat surprising! instead, I'm getting hit with this bricked out, mushy mixes and Liam Gallagher's caterwauling. that one Glassjaw song must've been written about his brother, who has less distinct songwriting qualities in his entire body than John Lennon had in his big toe. light 4/10.

Norah Jones' debut album was released on Blue Note, and features her elegant, smokey contralto and delicate pianisms backed by some pretty heavy hitters in the jazz scene at the time. half of these songs feature Brian Blade, who might be my favorite drummer on the planet! unfortunately, I think I set myself up for a slight bit of disappointment in that preliminary research process I take with all the albums on this list before pressing play. this is an extremely tranquil set of tracks, suited perfectly for the task of looking longingly out of your bedroom window with a cup of coffee. Jones and her band play very tastefully and unobstrusively; you could take the Terrence Fletcher route and deride this as "Starbucks jazz", but there's absolutely a place for this vibe in jazz. it's just not really what I go out of my way to look for as a jazz listener. I guess I was hoping for a little bit more musical excitement and interplay than what's actually here. it comes through every now and again, but I want much more of it! maybe if I had approached this with a slightly different mentality, I'd be able to appreciate it more for what it is, rather than what I might have wanted it to be. without question, I could definitely say I liked what I heard, but I think if I'm going to return to this, I need to be more prepared to listen to a pop album than a jazz one. decent 6/10.

"Never play to the gallery… Never work for other people in what you do. Always remember that the reason that you initially started working was that there was something inside yourself that you felt that, if you could manifest in some way, you would understand more about yourself and how you co-exist with the rest of society… I think it's terribly dangerous for an artist to fulfill other people’s expectations." quoted above is David Bowie's advice to young artists, advice which he gives in the 1997 documentary Inspirations. it's probably the single most important piece of advice I hold onto in my own pursuits as an artist, other than "you have more time than you think." it's also something I thought a lot about while listening to 1989. undeniably, Taylor Swift and the creative team(s) she's surrounded herself with have mastered the art of "play[ing] to the gallery." the numbers don't lie, whether it's on the charts or in the bank! it would be uncharitable of me to say something to the effect of, "well, nobody ever went broke appealing to the lowest common denominator," because the last thing I want to do is insult the intelligence or taste of anyone who might genuinely get a lot out of Swift's music. her most rabid fans get a bad rap, sometimes for good reason, but I know plenty of people—including other artists—who love all kinds of music and Taylor Swift! unfortunately for me, I'm just not the type of listener for whom her broad-strokes style of songwriting holds much appeal, if any. I acknowledge that the simplicity of her music is part of the appeal. her lyrics are replete with pretty surface-level similes. "I'm a nightmare dressed like a daydream" made my eyes roll a little bit, but it speaks to a pretty universal feeling: covering up the pain we carry through life with an exterior of pleasantries. but, in that moment on "Blank Space" and many others throughout this album, I wish she was able to speak to these feelings and experiences with a little more specificity. but of course, specificity isn't the priority with Swift, especially not on this, the album which marks the completion of her transformation from country girl to pop icon. the main priority? to craft simple, catchy, well-produced, commercially successful pop songs. to the credit of this album, it achieves that goal with flying colors! (Max Martin knows what he's doing? big shock.) these are songs designed to be sung by stadiums' worth of people. within each individual track, Swift stays within about an octave of her vocal range, usually a little more. her melodies often stick to just a couple pitches, and a lot of the choruses are a single pitch repeated. most of the chord progressions are stock four-chord loops (I think the musicological term is "Axis progressions"?), and there's not a key change to be found on any of them. instrumentally, the album is pretty standard, too. it's mostly basic mid-2010s synthpop fare, with the occasional acoustic cut and some strings here and there. all of this is a winning formula for creating songs that millions of people of varying musical ability and knowledge can sing along with and connect to. however, I think it's a losing formula for capturing my own personal attention. for 13 tracks I pleaded with this album to throw some sort of curveball at me, and it never came. the vast majority of my favorite music features an artist or artists with unique perspectives (whether in sound or words), but since Swift has to engineer every song for mass appeal, her perspective is a secondary concern. I feel like I somehow know less about her than I did before I listened to this! I'm far from an anti-pop person, but there needs to be some kind of left hook if it's really going to grab me. "Style" was pretty alright. I should really listen to that new Billie Eilish album again. decent 4/10.

when hip hop beats constructed from multiple samples became much more expensive to produce in 1991, few groups were as prepared to roll with the punches as the Beastie Boys. their skills both on the mic and as a rock trio had been established on previous albums, but Check Your Head and Ill Communication mark the height of their eclecticism. Ill Communication is a rap record, but it's also a whole lot else! the Beasties and Mario Caldato, Jr. are responsible for the bulk of this material, with additional instrumental contributions from Money Mark and Eric Bobo. there's instrumental jazz-funk loungers, throat singing, and a heavy dose of punk rock throughout the runtime. the two flat-out hardcore songs on here are some of my favorite tracks on the entire album! the Beastie Boys' artistic trajectory across their first few albums sort of reminds me of another staple of Jewish hip hop, the late great Mac Miller. their early work in the space was written off in some rap circles as gimmicky "frat rap" made by immature posers, but as they progressed, they each proved their bona fides by becoming more and more true to themselves in their work. in Miller's case, it made for a lot of very emotional, depressing work; the Beasties are almost the inverse! this is 20 tracks of pure fun; these three may not be tremendously talented MCs, but their charisma and flows are incredibly fun to listen to. I've been listening to Joey Valence & Brae's latest record a lot since it came out, and they're a group I'm glad to see keeping the Beastie Boys' spirit alive in the 2020s, but the original is pretty hard to beat. would love to see JVB get a live band behind them at some point. strong 8/10.

one of the most well thought-through concepts for an album I've heard in a really long time. I'm writing this review on a ThinkPad, a newer (Lenovo) model of the (IBM) laptop Manu Chao recorded Clandestino on. ThinkPads are some of my favorite computers ever made, particularly because of the bang you get for your buck. mine was a model released in 2015; I think I got it for less than $200, and it's still chugging along with minimal issues! apart from being great at the everyday basic things you want a computer to do, it's also allowed me to do a bit of light gaming, and it can even run FL Studio! the idea of making music on a portable computer (whether it be a laptop, a sampling machine, a tablet or what have you) is so ubiquitous in 2024 that children are using online apps to make songs in their school music classes! let alone all the bedroom producers and artists that have achieved huge prominence in recent years. but an album recorded on a ThinkPad being released in 1998 kind of breaks my brain a little bit! Chao was surely ahead of the curve here, right? in a way, he's an early harbinger of the future democratization of music production that came with the beginning of the 2000s, when MacBooks, all of which come with GarageBand, and inexpensive (or even free) DAWs became ubiquitous in the software realm for all operating systems. the decision to use such an inexpensive machine as a basis for this album's recording process comes with some distinct musical advantages which Chao takes pretty great advantage of. while he recorded all the music here, he was living a somewhat nomadic lifestyle following the breakup of his previous band in France, traveling throughout his former home(s) in Europe as well as Latin and Central America, never staying anywhere for long (although he did hang out with the Zapatistas in Mexico for a while). all along the way, he was recording these songs. the variety of locales is depicted not just in the wide array of genres and sounds explored across these 16 tracks, but also the four different languages in which the lyrics are delivered at one time or another. it's a perfect way to illustrate the LP's themes of loneliness on the road. the little details even add to the narrative! often, one track ends with the first few seconds of the track that comes after it, so the transition happens at an unexpected point. it's a great way to keep the momentum of the tracks going, simulating the rate at which Chao was moving from one place to the next. but what really ties everything together is how at home he sounds in every musical setting he presents! Latin musical motifs permeate the majority of the tracks, but there's also nods to dub, reggae, house, folk music and plenty more, all unified by his warm presence as a vocalist, with always just a touch of despondence thrown in. this is exceptional music borne out of exceptional circumstances. strong 8/10.

exceptionally funky, and exceptionally freaky. Sly was having issues with his mood and his addiction to drugs, resulting in a drought of recordings from the Family Stone for over a year and a half—a long time to go without releasing a new album in those days! while the band's usual lineup is present on more than a few of the songs on There's a Riot Goin' On, much of this material was created solely by Sly Stone, often enlisting non-Family members to fill them out. the resulting album is some of the darkest music you're likely to hear from funk's golden era. there's no point at which this music isn't incredible groovy. if you're a practitioner of the Stank Face, you'll find plenty of opportunities to work your craft. but even when the drums are tight and the bass is locked in and all the other stuff you want from a funk record, there's something mysterious, borderline surreal about it. I think I detected an Afrobeat undercurrent to this, what with the longer, vampier closing tracks to both sides of the vinyl! the mixes are often jarring, with certain elements feeling wildly prominent while others are barely audible. Stone's vocals, many takes of which were recorded with a wireless microphone while he laid in bed, are often uncanny in how close they feel. the drum machine overlaid with real drums creates a very off-kilter feeling in the percussion on some of these songs as well. this is often a very subdued listen, which definitely caught me off-guard. I wouldn't be surprised if OutKast were listening to this when they made Stankonia, which I listened to a few days ago for this project, and which features a similarly left-field approach to production. while there's not as much in the way of the sing-along hooks from their prior work, the timbral palette is fascinating, and the pocket is undeniable. decent 9/10.

my first proper live album for the 1001 project. the decision to include live recordings on this list might be a bit contentious, but I think a lot of the live albums I've seen in the list as I've skimmed the pages of the actual book, 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, many of the picks made by the team of writers that assembled the list are sensible ones. in particular, there's a focus on live jazz and blues recordings which, to me, aren't too much different from jazz and blues albums recorded in studio. whether they're in a studio or in front of a crowd of people, jazz and blues artists are going to play more or less the same stuff in the same way. and B.B. King can play some stuff! the spontaneity King and his band play the blues with is readily apparent. he would often start a tune without his bandmates knowing what it would be or what key it would be played in, and it takes a lot of skill to be able to follow along with that kind of leadership. their performances, especially during King's solo spots, are filled with the same kind of vivacity and interaction I usually expect from jazz musicians! the best part about this album, in my view, is that you can tell King has the crowd in the palm of his hand, both while singing and playing the hell out of his guitar. moving a whole crowd to scream and cheer for you with just a single phrase is a level of control I can't imagine being able to exert over an audience! my only complaint is that I wish this was another half hour longer. strong 7/10.

I'll lay my cards out now: I've never been a fan of this band. granted, my experience with them was somewhat limited, and it was mostly with the big hits off their biggest album, AM. more power to you if you like this era of Arctic Monkeys, but I never got anything out of "R U Mine?" or "Do I Wanna Know?" or "Why'd You Only Call Me When You're High?" (they were asking a lot of questions on that album cycle, I guess). but, even with my prior personal bias against this band going into their debut, I have to admit, this definitely has game. the Monkeys' adoration of bands like The Strokes is pretty easy to see, but I think they bring a certain British finesse to the whole thing which gives it a unique angle. a lot of the basslines get pretty active! Alex Turner's lead vocals, usually my main sticking point with anything AM-related, are pretty tolerable here. thankfully, he's got a pretty hard-rocking rhythm section behind him. the best moments here are the ones that feel truly explosive. I'm not quite as into their softer side. decent 7/10.

pleasant on the ears. David Gray's mellow guitar strumming and agreeable singing voice pair pretty nicely with this electronically tinged folk rock sound. I guess I just felt like the overall presentation was too plain for my taste. the loop-based composition process for some of these songs robs them of their momentum, since they often don't feel like they're building towards much. again, the sounds being presented are nice ones, but I find them a little too easy to tune out. this album's success surely paved the way for later "sad sack with an acoustic guitar" guys that would follow in the 21st century, but I think I'd rather stick with Bon Iver, The Tallest Man on Earth, and other such artists that bring a more distinct approach to that archetype. decent 5/10.

a picture of this album's cover should appear in the dictionary under the definition of "kaleidoscopic". it's miraculous that this music even exists, both in terms of its production method and the (what I'm sure were) exorbitant clearance rates for all the samples involved! a lot of plunderphonic and other sample-based music tends to draw a lot of attention to the "found sound" element of the composition process, but the Avalanches find tons of fun and unique ways to make these songs feel seamless, both within themselves and from one to the next. it feels almost akin to a high-level DJ set! one seamless, dreamy, summery jam that traverses a landscape of disco, hip hop, club beats and psychedelia. it's hard to resist the urge to move and groove to a lot of these songs, but they're also great for deep listening in the same way as as other plunderphonic masterpieces like Endtroducing or Donuts. where those albums aim for something emotionally darker, the Avalanches aim instead for a bright sense of optimism and wonder. strong 8/10.

Hendrix came back around pretty quick! most of what I said in my review of Are You Experienced applies here as well; considering Axis was released just half a year after their debut, it features the Experience in a very similar element. Hendrix's sound-play continues to get slightly more adventurous here, but this might actually be a little more accessible than Are You Experienced! there's plenty of mellower cuts here like "Little Wing", "Spanish Castle Magic", "Up From the Skies" and "Castles Made of Sand", all of which capture the Experience's sensational interplay while also delivering some fantastic, catchy melodies. although you can tell Hendrix and his team didn't have as much time to create and refine the material here, Axis still does a great job of documenting this band's tremendous talents. light 8/10.

a co-production between two artists from a bygone era which was promptly disowned by both of them, and for good reason. but oh, wait, the dude from Primal Scream said he liked it, so now it's a part of music history. Phil Spector's production fails on every level. these songs sound absolutely awful; there are basic errors in mixing that turn some of these tracks into non-starters, either because they're unintelligible or because they sound like lifeless, funereal dirges. at all times, there's too much going on. Dion's vocal performances range from tolerable to tuneless. hard pass. decent 3/10.

Destiny's Child has a couple songs that I'd call classics of their era of R&B. none of them are on this album. I can appreciate that this is an attempt at a pro-female, pro-empowerment statement from the group, but it feels extremely self-centered in ways that undercut that message. especially odious in this respect is "Nasty Girl" which, with its central lyrical theme essentially just being pick-me slut-shaming, basically invalidates this as a feminist record. plus, I hardly feel any group cohesion between these three women; this is basically a Beyoncé album with some contributions from two other singers who might as well be anonymous, given how subservient their contributions feel. "I'm a survivor", in many other contexts, would be a powerful statement, but then you remember that all Beyoncé's talking about surviving is a few lineup changes, something that almost every band goes through at some point. her vocal antics on many of these songs are legitimately in that Christina Aguilera tier of obnoxious (weirdly on brand with her current-day self-centered girlboss billionaire politics), and they feel so unearned given how little these songs have going for them compositionally and sonically. this is extremely plain R&B that's as deep as a puddle and sounding more and more anachronistic as time goes on. strong 4/10.

an incredibly raw and often emotional listen. Neil Young embraces the dark and reflects on his waning relevance (and his own mortality!) with stunning poetry set first against beds of tranquil acoustic guitar, then sheets of barrelling bluesy noise. this music really set the tone for a lot of the subsequent rock movements that sprung up in its wake in the eighties. the "college rock" groups and the punks of that decade all owe a lot to the sound of songs like "Powderfinger" and the political focus of songs like "Pocahontas". there's even a through line from here to the grunge movement, one which I think is most evident in the opener and closer, the songs here which most openly confront death and the legacy of artists head-on. rock and roll will never die. light 9/10.

the art of the piano trio doesn't get much higher than this, y'all. this one was formed by Bill Evans shortly after his brief, yet legendary stint with Miles Davis' band which produced perhaps the most popular album in the history of jazz. Scott LaFaro is on bass and Paul Motian is on drums and cymbals. I'm certainly not the first person to gripe about the fact that Bill Evans is often an unsung hero of this music! as far as I'm aware, it was Evans who introduced Davis to George Russell's Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization, a theoretical text from which a whole host of jazz musicians developed new means of melodic and harmonic expression, leading to the advent of modal jazz as the fifties became the sixties. despite Evans' indisputable importance to the acoustic jazz universe around this time—he worked in bands organized by Russell as early demonstrations of Russell's theories— there's hardly a word to be said about him in Ken Burns' Jazz, or many other jazz documentaries for that matter. thankfully, his legacy is very much intact among jazz cognoscenti, and he's worked his way into plenty of people's record collections in the same fashion that Johnny Cash or Beethoven find their way into mine. country music and Classical-period classical music (bad sentence) don't usually do much for me, but sometimes an artist cuts through all of your preconceived notions about genre or style and manages to hit you in a deep place all the same. Evans' interest in unique ways of structuring music, evidenced by his interest in the Lydian Chromatic Concept, is the keystone of his body of work. with the LaFaro-Motian trio, the emphasis is less on the chord-scale relationship (as it was on Kind of Blue) and more on using bebop as a vehicle for counterpoint. LaFaro is, by all accounts, the star of the show in this trio. you're unlikely to hear the double bass played this adventurously in a jazz context outside of the small number of recording dates this trio made. in most straight-ahead jazz settings, the bass grounds both the harmonic progression and rhythmic pulse; LaFaro often excels in both departments, but the most interesting moments here are when, during Evans' piano solos, he uses his instrument less as the band's anchor and more as an independent melodic voice, one which is truly in conversation with Evans and Motian rather than simply acting as their guide. it's incredibly rare to hear him "walk the dog", which I usually love to hear whenever I'm listening to jazz, and especially when I'm playing it, but I honestly think it would kill the vibe of this band if LaFaro laid down too many consecutive quarter notes! all three members of this trio operated with such extreme finesse and precision as a unit, and it's evident on every second of these performances. Evans has a delicate touch on the keyboard that's become sort of a trademark for him over the years, and his improvisational faculties are heightened here by LaFaro's presence. you can really hear them motivating each other! Motian's introspective, sensitive drumming is the glue holding everything together; he mostly plays with brushes here, and he manages to drive the bus and keep the energy of the band up while not overpowering the group dynamic. unfortunately, the Village Vanguard date that produced this album was the last time Evans and LaFaro would ever perform together. LaFaro died (at the tragically young age of 25) in a car accident just ten days later, sending Evans down a dark path which would define the rest of his performance career and parts of his personal life. what was to be a single "Live at the Vanguard" album became two, with the first-—Sunday at the Village Vanguard—being rushed to market just about three months after LaFaro's death by Riverside. although the circumstances surrounding this release, which specifically highlights tracks featuring LaFaro's soloing and appends his name to the front cover, are certainly somewhat dodgy in retrospect, it's still nice to have this as a historical document. Waltz for Debby, the second of the two, might have a slightly more well-rounded choice of tracks, but it's hard to turn down the set of performances on offer here either! although, if I really want that experience of feeling like I'm at the Vanguard in 1961, I'll usually just throw on one of the sets from the full compilation of recordings that these two albums were selected from, which came out in 2003 and is now widely available on streaming platforms. you can't go wrong with anything this trio put to tape. decent 9/10.

I've returned to the music of Brazil for the second time in this list, and I've found myself very interested in the sounds of Brazilian rock and pop being opened up in front of me, like an ornate jewelry box full of untold fortunes. the anglosphere certainly brought the guitar a level of international recognition, but the way other countries ran with the possibilities it created, combining it with their own local flair, is what makes listening to an album like this first self-titled record from Caetano Veloso so interesting. I recognize a lot of the sounds offered up by these songs; both on the acoustic and electric end, the influence of British and American psych (USian might be more appropriate here, but it's also clunkier) is undeniable, but there's obviously a ton of traditional samba and bossa nova elements underneath it all. there's actually not a ton to say about this on a musical front, because the charm of this music speaks for itself, even if you don't understand a word of the language being spoken. that being said, learning about the political context in which this music existed was pretty fascinating! lyrically and compositionally, it's fairly benign on the surface, but it turns out that that's by design; a lot of these songs were written in a way that allowed Veloso to express some legitimately radical beliefs on unity and community solidarity without Brazil's military government being able to notice. I wouldn't have been able to guess that the style and scene of Tropicália had such a strong sentiment behind it just from the sound of these songs, but it certainly deepened my appreciation of the material. in the grand scheme of the little bits of Brazilian music I've been exposed to, this might not be the thing I return to most often, but I give Veloso a ton of props for creating a form of protest music that sounds uplifting and optimistic, rather than navel-gazing and futilist. strong 7/10.

appreciate how sincerely geeky this record is! it definitely gives the appearance of a typical late-seventies post-punk album, but there's a level of pop finesse in the songwriting department that gives these songs a lot of strength and endurance. acerbic basslines, countermelodies galore (especially from the keys), surprising cadences and other harmonic motion. some of the material here comes off as borderline progressive, especially songs like "Burst" and "Motorcade", which owe a significant debt to, of all the bands in the world for a punk band to send up, Pink Floyd! "Burst" is spacey and flanged-out, but still retains the energy of punk from end to end; "Motorcade" is more obviously a punk song, but opens with a descending chord motif very similar to Floyd's "Echoes", plus some drum fills with huge Nick Mason energy, before picking up the pace multiple times over. elsewhere, songs take on a more straightforward approach in the vein of new wave ("Shot by Both Sides" is probably this album's overall highlight), but many of the best moments of Real Life aim in between these progressive and pop extremes, leading to songs like "My Tulpa" or "The Light Pours Out of Me" which are unlike much else from this era of British punk rock. decent 8/10.

The Doors were practitioners of a hard-rocking, surrealist approach to the blues which this, their fifth album, offers plenty of excellent examples of. Jim Morrison in particular writes some of his strangest stanzas and delivers some of his most primal performances on songs like the rollicking "Roadhouse Blues" and "You Make Me Real", the enigmatic "Waiting for the Sun" (which finally shows up two albums after the LP of the same name), and especially "Peace Frog", with its scintillating Bo Diddley-esque funk beat. unfortunately, Morrison Hotel is a bit front-loaded. it's hardly the worst problem an album can have, but when the first four tracks come out guns blazing the way they do here, you can't help but feel a little let down when the next seven are more hit-or-miss. there's "Indian Summer", one of the band's more cerebral tunes, and "Queen of the Highway" gives Ray Manzarek a chance to shine on keys, but I think the "Hard Rock Cafe" side wins out overall. strong 7/10.

I struggle to understand the lukewarm reception! what other rap record sounds like this? a lot of this stuff veers away from hip hop and into instrumental electronic exploration, with the 10-minute "To the Moon's Contractor" standing as a foreboding, surreal centerpiece with an orchestral sensibility, both in the sounds at use as well as the general progression from front to back. a lot of the tracks in that vein hold my attention just as easily as the more straightforward rap songs like "Bladerunners" or "The Animist". Mike Ladd is right in line, stylistically and philosophically, with a ton of his contemporaries in the East Coast underground. he delivers his words with gusto, and seems to take delight in making you listen really hard to catch everything he says. unfortunately, there's not many places to find accurate or complete lyrics for these songs, although it's pretty easy to catch onto the references to futurism, science fiction and police brutality strewn throughout (the closing track, dedicated to "All Those Killed by Cops", speaks for itself). what sets Ladd apart here is some truly futuristic production to match the futurism of his words. this is hip hop that feels pretty ahead of the curve for being released in Y2K! think Deltron 3030 or Vaudeville Villain but even further left-field. again, Endtroducing comes to mind, and it's a much closer comparison here than it was for The Avalanches a few days ago. tracks like "Red Eye to Jupiter" and "I Feel Like $100" really illuminate Mike Ladd's affection for jazz, with the former being a true embrace of the avant-garde, complete with direct lyrical and sonic references to Sun Ra. there's a few cuts here, like the title track, that are led purely by singing rather than all-out rhyming, and it's a nice addition. I also appreciate the recurring presence of strings, which add a touch of warmth to this album's otherwise cold, austere presentation. it's no coincidence that billy woods tapped Ladd for a feature on Aethiopes. if not for Mike Ladd, I don't know if we get billy woods, or many of the artists who have been part of the recent wave of experimental rap that's been taking Online music geeks like me for a wild ride the past few years, in the form we know and love it them today. decent 8/10.

this is the album that pretty much put the West Coast on the national stage of hip hop, and it has more or less earned that reputation. these beats are relatively barebones, but they often hit deeply hard. side A of the original tracklist contains some of mid-school hip hop's most iconic songs, with Ice Cube leading the charge as N.W.A's clear stand-out on the mic. it's well known that these guys weren't nearly as "gangsta" as they put on in their music, but their music still succeeds on the strength of their audible enthusiasm. when Cube or MC Ren say they'll bust your ass, you almost believe them. when Eazy-E tries the same, it's played more for humor, and yet he feels at home in the group regardless. the anger and calls to violence in these songs, the rhetoric which once shocked a nation, feels pretty toothless this many decades later, with Ice Cube and Dr. Dre being household names, but the misogyny present in a lot of these songs does genuinely make me bristle a little bit. I like Dre's counterbalance to the chaos which he offers listeners on his solo track, "Express Yourself". it's pretty funny to hear him talk about how he doesn't smoke cannabis considering that he'd drop The Chronic three years after this. despite the pretty severe drop in quality on the last four songs (the beats in particular get a lot worse out of nowhere), there's enough highly classic material on Straight Outta Compton that every hip hop enthusiast should make it a priority to experience at least a couple times. the title track, "Fuck tha Police" and "Express Yourself" are some of the first songs I think of when it comes to the West Coast. decent 7/10.

Raw Power is the culmination of years of blues bands slowly pushing the limits of how loud and hard they could play. this music demands to be listened to as loudly as you can withstand, with Iggy Pop's shout-along hooks and downright feral vocal antics fighting for space alongside some of the most blown-out guitar tones I've ever heard on a rock album, in any generation. what you see in the title is what you get! the release of this album in 1973 places it in a strange transitionary period for rock music, with its place as a founding pillar of the punk style placing it neatly between the blues rock of the sixties and the explosion of countercultural, often avant-garde rock and pop music that was to follow in the seventies and eighties. you can detect pieces of the DNA of early punk rock here, of course, but there's even bits that point towards new wave and hardcore too. it's not often you get to hear a record that exhibits those timeless sorts of qualities, where it feels like you're listening to music history play out in real time. strong 9/10.

a menacing set of songs which, as far as I can tell, sort of set the template for the first wave of post-punk and gothic rock! Siouxsie's voice isn't the most in-tune, but it's among the most evocative and intriguing voices I've heard in front of rock instrumentation. the guitar work definitely earns them the "Banshees" moniker; it's jagged, often noisy, and almost always angular. all of this is grounded by some excellent basslines and some pounding drums with a ton of delay and reverb. you can tell how many eighties bands had checked this album out, along with Joy Division's work from around the same time. pretty great Beatles cover! decent 8/10.

many of the tracks on this LP remain in the Christmas & holiday music consciousness to this very day. if you're in the United States, listen to your local adult contemporary radio station during the holiday season and you're bound to hear these versions of "Sleigh Ride" and "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home" show up. of course, the immediate impact of these songs is Huge, but they're mostly pretty pristine. I've heard some pretty awful Phil Spector production on this list, but this is definitely the era and style in which I think his "Wall of Sound" thing is most effective. I can't imagine how revolutionary it was to hear production like this in 1963! was personally glad to hear a lot of saxophone solos, and specifically glad to hear that they're played on baritone saxophone, perhaps the most underrepresented saxophone size in pop music! strong 7/10.

in the jazz world, there's often a negative vibe associated with the idea of achieving a certain level of commercial success, especially if your music leans electric. Weather Report, perhaps one of the most electrified groups in jazz history, proved with their first run of albums that an interest in amplification and synthesizers didn't necessarily mean you had to suddenly start writing pop songs. with Heavy Weather, though, Jaco Pastorius joins the battle. his signature fretless bass sound definitely swung the band's focus a little towards the mainstream (you could call this album a progenitor of smooth jazz), but in a way that feels less like a cash grab and more like a group of high-level jazz performers earnestly trying their hand at instrumental pop music. the opener, "Birdland", is one of the most iconic songs of the fusion era for good reason. hearing the melodies in the keys, horns and bass trading back and forth is a joy, and the whole thing builds to a tremendous climax. then you get hit with "A Remark You Made", a gorgeous ballad that puts Wayne Shorter's tenor saxophone in the center of some incredible harmony. these first two songs were written by Joe Zawinul, Weather Report's de facto leader, and are a fantastic display of how this band went about walking the line between jazz virtuosity and pop accessibility. the run of three tracks that closes the LP out are also stupendous, especially "Havona" with its epic introductory bass/synth chorale which comes back at the end to tie everything up. these three tracks also give Alex Acuña lots of opportunities for some tremendous drumming. as of the day I'm writing this, the 1001AG average on this album is a mere 2.98/5. I won't stand for this! decent 9/10.

these guys really like the key of F. these are some pretty decent instrumental R&B jams, but the harmonic homogeneity seeps in very quickly. worth a listen for the title track. my shortest review thus far. decent 6/10.

seems like everyone tried their hand at a double LP at some point; they just keep coming! Goodbye Yellow Brick Road distinguishes itself from most other double albums from this period by actually being relatively consistent across the entire duration of the experience. that's not to say it's flawless, as there's still the ungodly annoying "Jamaica Jerk-Off" and the very creepy "Dirty Little Girl" to contend with (I'm really not sure where Bernie Taupin's head was at with those). but talk about a strong start! the first four songs here are some of the greatest of their time: two captivating ballads, and two infectious rockers. my other highlights are the dizzying "Grey Seal" and my favorite song here, "Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting". at its best, this album's symphonic ambitions and blood-pumping performances create some of the most magical rock music I've ever heard. props to Elton John and co. for creating 76 minutes of steadily high-quality material! for the most part, anyway. strong 8/10.

here I am, thinking about Bowie and the gallery all over again. in a deliberate attempt to sell as many units as possible, Bon Jovi's third album is devoid of anything that could be called unique or interesting, either topically or instrumentally. I've discussed my frustration at the ubiquity and assumed supremacy of the classic rock canon, and glam metal albums like this represent the nadir of that entire group of recordings. the title must refer to the synths, which are barely audible and only serve to coat the guitars in a layer of gross slime. I'll give Jon Bon Jovi slight props for being a pretty capable singer, but the timbre of his singing voice just makes my skin crawl. the blurb written about Slippery When Wet in the 1001 Albums book talks a lot about how universal the themes of these songs are, and that's all well and good; but, again, Bon Jovi's approach to these themes reveals nothing about who they are as people. one of the reasons Bruce Springsteen, whose influence is all over this music, is so revered is the distinct quality of his lyricism; even when he's telling fictional stories akin to the ones on "Living on a Prayer" or "You Give Love a Bad Name", he places them in a very believable, vivid universe with his writing, both of music and words. a recurring theme with these reviews has been that I really want to hear someone's unique perspective from either of those angles, and I don't feel like I came away from this understanding anything about the members of Bon Jovi as artists or human beings. the band's take on a pop rock sound akin to that of Springsteen or Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers falls more in line with heavy metal, but it's so sanitized that it barely registers as metal. there's guitar solos and power chord riffs, but it never feels blood-pumping, exciting, haunting, or any of the other qualities that great metal can have. so I guess this record simply doesn't work for me at any level. the worst thing an album can do for me is nothing. light 2/10.

in comparison with There's a Riot Goin' On, the S&TFS album I got assigned for this list about two dozen days ago, Stand! is much more exuberant. Riot was borne out of isolation and drug-addled pessimism, whereas this record feels much more like a clear-headed plea for empathy and understanding. the band is insanely tight, and it's great to actually get to hear them together more! Sly's solo experimentations reap their own rewards, but this feels much more like a "Family Affair". personal note as someone who regularly plays in horn sections like the Family Stone's: I really started to sweat as I heard that horn line get so, so high on track 2 (the one I'm not going to type the name of)! half the fun here for me is listening to Cynthia Robinson and Jerry Martini work. from the jammier cuts to the more carefully constructed numbers, there's not a weak link across any of the eight songs presented in this tracklist, and some of them (especially "I Want to Take You Higher", "Everyday People" and the title track) rank among the best Black American music ever made. the pop, prog, and psych contingents of the soul and funk music movements all win here, and in pretty big ways. light 9/10.

Songhoy Blues have a pretty interesting story that's well-encapsulated by the title of their debut album, Music in Exile. members of this band were artistic refugees, pushed out of the north of Mali by the armed conflict that began there in 2012. a jihadist group had taken over much of the region and banned music, resulting in scores of musicians fleeing to cities in the south of the country to continue practicing their craft. one such musician was Garba Touré, who took a bus down to Bamako with his guitar, forming Songhoy Blues with other northern refugee musicians in an effort to invoke the musical spirit of northern Mali, and lift the spirits of other northerners in their predicament. adding to the "exile" component, this album was recorded in London as a result of the band's interactions with artists in the Anglosphere such as Damon Albarn (who landed them a placement on an Africa Express compilation), Nick Zinner of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (the album's producer) and Julian Casablancas (whose label partnered with Atlantic to release this album in North America). the band's hypnotic blend of American and British blues and psych rock with traditional West African music is highly evocative of the desert landscapes its members originate from. it bears something of a resemblance to África Brasil, which was Jorge Ben's attempt at a similar fusion of styles, although his take is, of course, much more on the Afro-Brazilian side of things. plus, Songhoy Blues have a much longer history of rock music to draw from than Ben did! there's a lot of really intricate riffing across all these tracks, and plenty of deep pocket and exciting rhythms that you just don't hear that much in "Western" rock music. this is music which, even if I don't understand the words being said, I can still feel a lot of vitality in. it was created out of the circumstances of an ongoing crisis in Mali, one of the main aims of which seems to be to erase the freedom of artists to properly express themselves. talk about using music as a means of creating opportunities to feel empathy! light 8/10.

I was born in the late 90s, so the way I was first exposed to the ABBA catalog was through the excruciating musical Mamma Mia! and its even worse film adaptation. thankfully, ABBA's actual studio output is nowhere near as dismal of an experience. although I'm now more familiar with their music via radio play and that one compilation that sold a bajillion copies, The Visitors was my first proper ABBA studio album experience, and one which pleasantly surprised me! I typically don't care much for ABBA's disco sound, which dominates most of their biggest songs. thankfully, this, the final album of the band's initial run, leans more into the future, with its synth-laden digital sound feeling a bit less dated and tacky than I'm used to. not only that, but these songs also deal with far more serious themes than most ABBA fare! political protest songs, songs about falling out of love, songs about watching your kids get older. something about bands made up of ex-married couples just gets the creative juices going, I guess: first Rumours and now The Visitors! strong 7/10.

even if you don't like country music all that much, the appeal of Johnny Cash's best work is pretty undeniable. this, the final album of his lifetime, was one in a series of albums mainly focused on cover songs and re-recordings of some of his older repertoire, a project undertaken alongside producer Rick Rubin which consumed most of Cash's creative endeavors for the last decade of his life. that being said, American IV does open with a bespoke original, the title track, one of the last song Cash ever wrote. it's replete with Biblical references, particularly in regards to death and Judgement Day, and these dark themes carry into many of his covers. we all know that Cash's version of Nine Inch Nails' "Hurt" is the definitive one, with Trent Reznor's lyrics taking on an even more twisted emotional dimension in Cash's gravely, borderline-decrepit singing voice. it's a true tear-jerker, although it seems like its legacy often overshadows the rest of the material on this record, which is a shame! Simon & Garfunkel's classic ballad "Bridge Over Troubled Water" (featuring Fiona Apple on backing vocals), Sting's cowboy song "I Hung My Head", Depeche Mode's rollicking "Personal Jesus", The Beatles' reflective "In My Life", and Vera Lynn's wartime standard "We'll Meet Again" all take on new meanings when an end-of-life Cash is singing them. Cash and his fellow musicians approach these songs, and plenty more, with an unadorned, acoustic simplicity that brings out all of their best features. not every track is a total slam dunk. but the vast majority of them are! strong 8/10.

what are the odds of getting two albums by the same artist in two consecutive days? I should go play the lottery. I, like many music listeners, was first exposed to classic country music through the more well-known live recording At Folsom Prison, which Cash released the year prior to At San Quentin. Cash was famous for his regular performances in prisons for crowds of inmates, a gesture of goodwill which just one small part of the many ways he stood up for the downtrodden in his music and his life. an earlier (1958) concert by Cash at San Quentin actually had a young Merle Haggard in the audience, and it partially inspired Haggard to pursue a career in music! it's amazing to think that Cash was able to give experiences like that to a population that often goes unspoken about in polite society. not only are these some great performances of some deeply witty and excellent songs, but Cash's command of his audience is impeccable. his ability to communicate so directly to the experience of his audience, and show his empathy for their plight, is tremendous to hear on record. not only is he hilarious, but he has a rebellious nature about him which the inmates listening are highly responsive to! I loved when Cash asked them what they wanted to hear his band play, rather than being worried about what his production crew might have wanted him to play. but the highlight of the whole thing is when they play his anti-prison anthem "San Quentin" twice in a row; after the first go, during which his audience uproariously received his commentary on how hellish the place is, he asks, "if any of the guards are still speaking to me, can I get a glass of water?" light 9/10.

Frank Zappa for album #69 just feels right for some reason. in my senior year of undergrad, in between all my classes and other obligations, I did a marathon listening session to most of Zappa's work with the Mothers and as a solo artist until about the early 80s. my favorite era is probably 1973-75, but 1967-69 is also pretty compelling. unfortunately, I've never gotten a whole lot out of this, the Mothers' debut. like, yes, there's some brilliant songs here, and the satirical angle is pretty well-preserved across both LPs, but I'm really not all that into all of the sonic experiments that take place. Zappa's fondness for doo-wop music is not one that I share, and I think the musique concrète endeavors here aren't quite as strong as they would be on subsequent albums like Uncle Meat. still, though, bands have to start somewhere, and this is far from the worst place to start! "Hungry Freaks, Daddy", "Who Are the Brain Police?" and "Trouble Every Day" remain some of Zappa's most iconic songs for good reason! I think I'm good on "The Return of the Song of Monster Magnet (Unfinished Ballet in Two Tableaux)", though. my favorite Zappa material is the stuff where he rocks harder, and thankfully he gets there pretty quickly after this. light 7/10.

I don't know if hip hop gets much more prophetic than this. in 1992, on the song "Satanic Reverses", Michael Franti successfully predicted Hong Kong being returned to China in 1997, as well as Panama achieving fully independent control over its Canal in 1999! it's indicative of how ahead of the curve Franti's perspective was, in ways that are often kind of depressing considering how little progress it seems we've made on some of his key issues in the 30+ years since the release of this album. his views on U.S. mass media indoctrination, and the way it creates support (you might say "manufactures consent") for imperialism are still as relevant as ever, and that's not even mentioning his pro-liberation stance regarding Palestine, which I can imagine was even more unpopular in 1992 than it would be today. plus, there's "Language of Violence", one of the earliest anti-homophobia songs in hip hip that I'm aware of! the most immediate comparison I made with this record was to Public Enemy. especially on songs like the title track, Franti and the rest of the Disposable Heroes clearly owe a massive debt to Chuck D's rapping style and The Bomb Squad's maximalist production techniques. despite the obvious connection between the two groups, the Disposable Heroes manage to put their own experimental spin on things, with a much looser, jammier approach in which Franti often doesn't say much at all, and just lets his samples do the talking. some of these songs maybe go a little too long, but the sharpness of the commentary offered in one song after another makes the experience pretty worthwhile in the end. decent 7/10.

it's kind of amazing how well this late-sixties satire of English nostalgia maps so strongly onto the wave of conservative nostalgia we're experiencing here in the States at the moment. the cultural references are obviously not the same (I'll confess I don't recognize a good majority of them), but for as much as this album evokes a peaceful, sunshine-y English countryside, it's clear that the nostalgia being evoked here is for an England which never existed. in an effort to write "English" rock music, at a time where U.S. and European musical influences were beginning to shape the sound of contemporary British music, Ray Davies made a concerted effort to isolate himself from the sounds of burgeoning movements like psychedelic and progressive rock, which were highly in vogue at the time. instead, he and the rest of the Kinks doubled down on ornately constructed pop tunes with bright melodies and neoclassical quirks. compositionally, it's sometimes almost a little too on-the-nose in its portrayal of this imagined English pastoral countryside! the unfortunately uncredited orchestral musicians add a lot of flair and humor to the B-side of the LP. what's with this recurring trend of not crediting orchestral musicians on rock records? strong 8/10.

two English pop albums from 1968 in a row? I should play the lottery again! if the Kinks were operating largely apart from pop trends of their time while they were recording Green Village Preservation Society, the Zombies were much more in line with those trends. it may have even been to their detriment; despite the excellence on display here in the songwriting department (and the pristine production!), Odessey and Oracle didn't make much of an impression upon release. it was only after the album flopped on the charts and the Zombies broke up that "Time of the Season" suddenly took off as a hit in America, and people finally began to take notice of the band's craftsmanship! they've got a bit of a reputation for being a one-hit wonder as a result, but there's a reason this entire album has a legion of superfans willing to sing its praises to high heaven. the songs are impeccably constructed, with the psychedelic quality of the instrumentation and production serving to elevate the compositions, rather than paper over a lack of them. if you have the stereo mix, this is definitely not a headphone listen. I was incredibly disoriented by the hard-right panning of the lead vocals on the opener, "Care of Cell 44", but once I switched to speakers, I felt like I was better able to appreciate it, and the rest of these songs too. you can tell they were mixing for speakers back in the day. decent 8/10.

I have pretty much nothing to add, no unique angle to take. Enter the Wu-Tang is one of the most discussed albums of all time, and it's not hard to see why. this Clan really did signal a new era of New York hip hop! the RZA's use of not just jazz samples, but soul samples, was a landmark innovation which created a seismic shift in the sound of the genre which we can still feel to this day. I'm honestly surprised this album became such a major success given its incredibly lo-fi production quality, but it was the starting point in a long line of grimy hip hop acts from the East Coast and, eventually, all over the country. that's not to even mention the larger-than-life personas created by the half-dozen rappers that handle the bulk of this record's material; Method Man, GZA (A.K.A. The Genius), Inspectah Deck, Raekwon, Ghostface Killah, and especially Ol' Dirty Bastard. (I don't want to take anything away from U-God and Masta Killa; they're just hardly featured here!) what would otherwise be your average violent, sexual rap braggadocio gets elevated to an almost cartoonish extent by the veneer of martial arts references applied to the whole thing. you get a really full spectrum of rapping styles that combine to create a powerful sense of momentum. I do wish the skits were their own separate tracks, though, so they could be skipped easier. decent 9/10.

the amount of high-quality music George Clinton released in the 1970s across several bands, side projects and solo acts as a singer, songwriter and producer is staggering, and it's no surprise that he's one of the most revered artists in the history of The Funk. whereas Funkadelic leans more heavily on the rock side of things, Parliament were a little bit more on the soul and synth end. having recently gotten very into Dr. Dre's The Chronic, it's clear how much of a lasting impact Mothership Connection had on Black American musical culture. the drum pockets, the squelchy basslines (courtesy of the one-and-only Bootsy Collins), the murderer's row of horn players, and especially Bernie Worrell's work on keys and synths all give this music so much color and, more importantly, a ton of groove, while also pointing towards the future, both sonically and philosophically. the science fiction streak running through the lyrics here imagines a future where Black astronauts interact with aliens throughout the galaxy and bring The Funk with them. sitting inside of tracks like "P. Funk" or "Give Up the Funk" is a sheer delight. how Parliament manages to sound so tight and loose all at the same time is one of music's great mysteries. light 9/10.

in many ways, Thelonious Monk was far ahead of his time. although there's no denying that he was a major figure in the creation of bebop, his compositions (which have been recorded more times than those by any other jazz composer) evoke not just the then-modern bop sound, but also hark back to the fundamentals of swing and the blues. through all the idiosyncratic rhythmic schemes, odd phrase lengths, moments of dissonance and unexpected modulations, some of the most iconic melodies ever conceived shine through everything as clear as bells, or perhaps the celeste Monk plays on this album's version of "Pannonica". although this album is most well-known for its incredibly thorny title track, which alternates between choruses at full speed and half-time (and which Monk's quintet had to record in sections due to the difficulty of such a challenge for musicians in 1957), Brilliant Corners is full of more subtle surprises. "Ba-Lue Bolivar Ba-Lues-Are" is a lengthy, extended jam on a modified B flat blues where saxophonists Sonny Rollins and Ernie Henry get a lot of space to stretch out; the aforementioned "Pannonica", one of Monk's quirkiest ballads, is enhanced by the presence of the also-aforementioned celeste; the solo rendition of Harry Barris' "I Surrender, Dear" features Monk's iconic stride stylings complete with some incredible dissonances thrown in for style; and "Bemsha Swing", one of my favorite Monk compositions, gets a brilliant reading to close everything out with an especially bombastic drumming performance by Max Roach incorporating some huge timpani hits. as far as fifties bop goes, this is textbook and should be required listening for any jazz musician or aficionado. light 9/10.

Aretha Franklin's singing voice is something powerful. I definitely shivered at more than a few points while listening to this. she's often imitated but never duplicated, as they say. "Chain of Fools" and "A Natural Woman" have been butchered by many a cover artist, but the genuine article reminds you just how brilliant they truly are. most of my favorite soul music leans heavily on influences from classic jazz and, eventually, fusion; this earlier, Southern example of the style leans more heavily on the blues, with a little bit of rock n' roll in there for good measure. there's even an Eric Clapton jumpscare on side B! spooOOOOky! lots of these sixties albums have been just under half an hour in length, which is a really interesting amount of time. it's a duration that, nowadays, a lot of pop artists think of as being too short to make fully cohesive as an LP-length project or, if they're cynical, game the streaming algorithms in their favor. but, for whatever reason, I really think it works for albums like Lady Soul. things really started to increase in size and scope as the seventies rolled on, which had its positives, but it's nice to be able to squeeze a whole album into a standard lunch break. decent 7/10.

on their debut album, the Doors claimed their little plot of land in the domain of psych. heavily distorted, a little sloppy, always cryptic, occasionally vulgar (especially for 1967!). when they really get going, like on the side-closing tracks "Light My Fire" and "The End", they remind me of future bands like The Tony Williams Lifetime; lots of chaos, but also a ton of great interplay. Ray Manzarek's organ often takes a more prominent role in said chaos than Robby Krieger's guitar! John Densmore just lays it the hell down, and Jim Morrison does his Jim Morrison thing. what's not to like? light 9/10.

this is one that my parents had in the house on CD. I think her MTV Unplugged album is also in the collection, but this is the first time I really sat down and went through Jagged Little Pill from top to bottom. I like the production, which feels like that same mix of electronica and rock that Garbage were doing, but Alanis Morissette and Glen Ballard are leaning way more on the rock end of things. these are often pretty loud songs, and they sound pretty great all-around. I just don't love how Morissette enunciates, and I occasionally find her lyricism pretty eye-roll-worthy. I already play "You Oughta Know" at least once a month in one of the cover bands I work with, and that's all the connection I really feel the need to have with this record. "You Learn" is pretty good, too. strong 5/10.

if I had to rank the original 9 members of Wu-Tang, I feel like Method Man would come in around the middle. I don't think he's quite as unique of a voice compared to other members of that group, but he consistently holds his own on 36 Chambers, and this debut solo album goes down pretty well, too. I think this could've done with a few more features to bring a bit more variety to things; the RZA's production is solid as ever but, coming off of an album as vibrant as the debut Wu-Tang record, you definitely miss hearing Method Man in a group dynamic. decent 7/10.

not only are these songs wildly energetic and irresistibly groovy; they're also incredibly smart. some great moments of counterpoint from the bass to the guitars, the guitars to the voices, everything with the drums. suddenly stopping, starting again. sometimes glacially slow, other times blindingly quick. whether an individual song is 30 seconds or 4 minutes, it still feels like an important piece of the overall puzzle of Pink Flag. 21 of them in 35 minutes. economy of time, yet an abundance of intrigue. theoretically infinite replay value. "Ex Lion Tamer" is the best Car Seat Headrest song Will Toledo never wrote. strong 9/10.

Unknown Pleasures, Joy Division's more well-known debut LP, is legendary for the coldness of its production and the bleakness of its songs. Closer doubles down on all of that, and introduces synthesizers into the band's palette of sounds. the gothic undertones of Unknown Pleasures become overtones this time around. frigid guitar layers, thumping, nervous basslines, haunting, distant drums. Ian Curtis' lyrics are absolutely not for the faint of heart; if you've listened to the Danny Brown album which he named after record's opening track, you'll notice the parallels very quickly. in a lot of ways, Curtis is crying, begging for help. these songs also stretch out for much longer than they did on Unknown Pleasures, which really makes them feel like the best kind of trudge. I like Closer more than Unknown Pleasures, but I can't listen to it very often. it has the potential to really screw up my whole day, given how downright depressing it is. there's not many other albums that haunt me the way this does. decent 9/10.

being a cursory fan of a couple of Scott Walker's later albums, Scott 2 offered me more of a look at his origins, in a very different sort of musical lane. compared to the terrifying experimental music he would make in the latter stage of his career, this is a total cakewalk. that being said, it's not without its quirks. the lyrics, especially on the Jacques Brel covers, are often overtly sexual and a bit maudlin. they come across as something akin to show tunes, especially because of the grandiose orchestrations that are an omnipresent feature of the music. this is tagged as Baroque pop, but the inspiration seems to be less Baroque and more Classical, or even Romantic at times. my highlight, apart from the minor hit "Jackie", is the sensational arrangement of Henry Mancini's "Wait Until Dark". strong 7/10.

most of my reviews for this series are my first impressions upon completing a full listen of the album in question, but this one beckoned me to listen to it twice. I'm extremely glad I did. across just 7 songs and 32 minutes, Neil Hannon and The Divine Comedy manage to capture romance from every conceivable angle and emotion. lovesick euphoria, desperate loneliness, deeply toxic codependency, melancholy self-reflection on one's wrongdoings in a relationship. if you've ever been in love with somebody, especially if it didn't end well due to your own shortcomings as a partner, some of this stuff will wreck you. the one-two punch of "If..." and "If I Were You (I'd Be Through With Me)" almost brought me to tears. Joby Talbot's orchestral arrangements are stupendous, oozing with just the right amount of melodrama and cheese, and a few genuinely shocking moments, particularly the screeching cluster chords at the end of "If...". I love the live feel this recording captures. a lot of orchestral pop can feel like the orchestra and the pop are in two separate rooms, and that's very much not the case here. I was reminded a lot of the Scott Walker album I listened to just a day before this, Scott 2, though I think I'd much sooner return to the songs offered up here. there's some fantastic compositional and orchestrational moments strewn across all these tracks, and they range from bombastic symphonic rock to tender chamber music. again, it's a lot of stylistic and emotional range squeezed into a pretty small package. I love moments in this challenge where an album I'd never heard of before just completely captures me. decent 9/10.

from a purely instrumental standpoint, the things this band pulls off are pretty intriguing and, without question, highly varied. we're firmly in the leftmost part of the post-punk field, with some of these songs coming off less as rock songs and more as avant-garde sound collages. but when Pere Ubu gets groovy, I start to understand how they were a major influence on indie bands in the 2000s, particularly the dance-punk movement. I'm just glad those bands had better frontmen, though, because I don't think David Thomas' signature yelp fits these songs whatsoever. it kind of kills the whole thing for me, to be honest. decent 5/10.

in all of singer-songwriterdom, there's no shortage of tragic figures who died both far too young and far too unappreciated, but whose work managed to eventually find a large, adoring audience all the same. Nick Drake's spellbinding debut album Five Leaves Left was met with a muted response upon its release in 1969, owing to a lack of marketing support from his label and a mixed reception in critical circles. as is often the case, musicians first led the charge in reappraising Drake's work; many popular artists in the eighties cited him as an influence, eventually leading the music press to change their tune on the three studio albums he managed to complete before his untimely death at the age of 26, which are now thought of as three of the greatest folk records ever made. and for good reason! this is some truly spellbinding acoustic music. Drake's introverted, contemplative, and often sad lyrics are delivered in a hushed bass register, sitting right inside the range of his guitar to the point where the two instruments start to seamlessly blend together. there's also some tasteful use of session musicians to add some subtle colors to these songs. most of them have a bass accompanying Drake, and there's a couple songs with a piano or some percussion, but most intriguing for me is the haunting string arrangements on "River Man", "Day Is Done" and "Fruit Tree", my three favorite songs on this LP. strings also figure pretty heavily into my fourth favorite track, "'Cello Song". there's not quite as many orchestrational bells and whistles here as there are on Bryter Layter, but it's also not nearly as stripped back as Pink Moon. it strikes a pretty good balance. decent 9/10.

much like the album I got yesterday, Fives Leaves Left, this is a tremendous debut album that wasn't appreciated in its own time. although, to be fair to the Velvet Underground, they were much further ahead of the curve than Nick Drake! Lou Reed's songwriting is in a direct lineage with some truly archetypal rock and folk artists (Buddy Holly, Bob Dylan, Lennon/McCartney), but his focus on the seedy underbelly of New York City's arts culture steers the material into a much darker, often shocking direction. in between seemingly innocent songs like "Sunday Morning" and "I'll Be Your Mirror" and all the rest, there are odes to drug use, drug dealers, sadomasochism and sex workers. 1967! and, of course, the presence of multi-instrumentalist John Cale on these first two VU albums throws things even further into left field. a lot of these songs incorporate some chilling drone elements, others devolve into puddles of cacophony; I am consistently shocked by how low the recording fidelity is! The Velvet Underground & Nico* shaped so many future movements in rock and experimental music, it would probably be easier to count the ones they didn't have an impact on. at their best, they had such a wide variety of ways to create new paths forward for rock songs, compositionally and sonically, across a huge spectrum of dynamics, tempos, moods and subjects. I find myself returning to White Light / White Heat a little more often than this—they go all-in on their experimental side there— but there's no denying that this is one of rock music's finest debut albums, and certainly one of its most influential. *I do find it a bit weird that this is credited as a collaborative album given that Nico only shows up on lead vocals for three songs. but I guess it's as good a title as any other; it's pretty unassuming, and it lets you just sort of take in each song on its own merits. light 9/10.

I'm not sure if I don't like dub/reggae or if I just haven't found the right stuff yet. I like Fishmans as much as any other RYMer worth their salt, but I think their dub stuff is just alright. I can only take so much of the same mid-tempo upbeat guitar strokes with the same drum grooves and, in UB40's case, this deeply goofy saxophone playing. and that's not even touching the fact that this is an LP plus an EP, running well over an hour! Signing Off has the same issue that I've had with a lot of other reggae I've tried out, namely that there's just not enough excitement in this music for me to feel all that engaged for that long. it feels a little bit like new wave, with the synths and some subtle sonic manipulations strewn throughout the band, but does every song need to be a chill-out session? can't we crank up the tempo a little every now and again? light 5/10.

3 Feet High and Rising has a sound that speaks straight to my childhood. De La Soul is from Amityville, New York, about an hour from where I grew up on Long Island. the group's suburban surroundings had a tremendous impact on their subject matter, sense of humor and overall musical dynamic. Prince Paul's groundbreaking production focuses heavily on samples from psych rock and funk, and the general theme of being true to yourself comes through in the trio's carefree flows (dated though they may sound today). that being said, this album invented (or at least pioneered) the skit and the sex skit, a sin for which it can never be forgiven. light 8/10.

this is the Beck I'm more used to hearing on the radio, although I didn't know any of these songs prior to pressing play. that's probably due to the presence of the Dust Brothers on production, who had previously worked with Beck on Odelay, his most commercially successful album. Beck's eclecticism is back on full display here, especially in comparison with his previous album, Sea Change, which was a lot more singular from a musical and conceptual perspective. there's positives and negatives associated with either approach. I like hearing such a diverse array of instruments from song to song, especially how they get chopped up and reorganized. I just don't think the songwriting is quite as impactful or consistent as I've heard from Beck before. if (or when) I get some more Beck albums out of this list, I'd like to come back to Guero and see if I feel any differently about it. decent 6/10.

badass. the name of the game with British Steel is mid-tempo, meaty riffs with some tremendous hooks delivered by Rob Halford, one of metal's greatest melodic vocalists. in general, I like my metal a little speedier than what Judas Priest offers here, but the performances are just so great I didn't really mind. you can tell they were aiming for radio play with this one, but the things that make them a great band are still very much intact. this is the only Priest album on the 1001, so I'll have to revisit their other classics (and late-career masterstrokes) on my own time. decent 7/10.

Stevie Wonder's run from 1972-76 is the stuff of legends. five classic soul albums in as many years! thank you to Motown for giving him the artistic freedom to create some of the greatest music of time! Songs in the Key of Life has achieved the highest status of these five, but since I don't always have an hour and a half to listen to an album, I find myself more drawn to some of the single-LP releases, especially Talking Book (and Innervisions, but that's a story for a different review). Wonder writes songs that just leave you in awe of the sheer power of songs as an art form. he might just be my favorite writer of love songs of all time. lovesick cuts like "You Are the Sunshine of My Life", "You and I" or "I Believe (When I Fall in Love It Will Be Forever)" capture the absolute rush of what it's like to be so deeply in love with someone through some hair-raising chord progressions and modulations, as well as (of course) Wonder's tremendous voice. others, such as "Maybe Your Baby", "Superstition" and "Big Brother" are more about the groove. Wonder's skills as a multi-instrumentalist are well-known, but his drumming in particular is something that needs to be talked about more often! no matter what kind of music you like, I think the appeal of Wonder's work, especially from this era is undeniable. decent 9/10.

it's easy to dunk on RHCP, but the truth is I think there's a lot of elements to how they function as a band could result in some great songs. when John Frusciante, Flea and Chad Smith hit a successful pocket, I damn near start head-bobbing. but, in a band, you're only as good as your weakest member; RHCP's is, unfortunately, frontman Anthony Kiedis. Kiedis is the butt of the wide majority of jokes made at the expense of this band. a lot of it comes down to his lyricism, which flip-flops between free-associative rambling, gibberish, and sexual innuendo. again, this isn't a problem in a vacuum; a band like the Melvins, (existent for about as long as the Chili Peppers) gets a lot of mileage out of lyrics that are pretty meaningless. that might sound like a strange comparison, but I think they've got at least one thing in common: their lyrics communicate a focus on the music being played, rather than the message being communicated by the words being said over that music. that would be all well and good, and this would be a pretty great funk rock album... but Kiedis kills the vibe whenever he touches the mic! his rapping just sounds silly, and his singing is pretty out-of-tune even at the best of times. songs like "Suck My Kiss" and "The Power of Equality" aren't too rough, but even then, they're heavily carried by the work of the three instrumentalists backing Kiedis up. I'm also not sure the inclusion of the ballad tracks like "Breaking the Girl" or "Under the Bridge" is doing the flow of this 17-track, 75-minute album any justice. I mean, those are two of this band's most successful songs, so what do I know? the more they lean into funk rock jamming, the more tolerable the material gets, with the exception of the excruciating 8-minute closer, "Sir Psycho Sexy". light 4/10.

this was the Roots' most experimental release up to this point, and it's not usually a fan favorite, but it's right in my wheelhouse. especially towards the back end, the songs veer away from hip hop and into electronic jazz fusion territory. the ending of "Break You Off" is incredible, with all the new chord changes and the new drum groove. Black Thought verses are literally never bad. there's an amazing version of Cody ChesnuTT's "The Seed" which is a straight-out funk jam. I totally get why people prefer other Roots albums over this one, but there's some days where I'd call this my favorite of theirs. decent 9/10.

Iggy Pop's debut solo album, The Idiot, is one of the most haunting albums in the history of rock music. it's chilly, mechanical and paranoid, reflecting a long period of stagnation in Iggy Pop's career after the Stooges broke up. I can't think of many other rock albums that sound like it, so it's a bit of a shame that Lust for Life retreats back towards a more typical rock sound. thankfully, David Bowie is in charge of most of the songwriting duties here, so this is still a pretty fun listen. Bowie had a tremendous instinct for setting Pop's voice in musical contexts that suited him; "The Passenger" is one of the best songs of the 1970s, bar none. "Sixteen" is one of those creepy, creepy songs I could never hear again and I'd never miss it. decent 7/10.

like with the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the music is serviceable, but then the frontman opens his mouth and wrecks the vibe. unlike with RHCP, I'm much more actively annoyed by GnR's frontman. boomers will complain about not being able to understand a rapper on TV, then crack open a Budweiser with Axl Rose screaming in their ear on their home stereo, and not see the contradiction. a couple of these songs have a somewhat interesting structure, particularly opening track "Welcome to the Jungle," but beyond the singles, there's really not much to write home about here. it's the same group of stock hard rock riffs I've been hearing dozens of bands use over and over again, across decades of music history. the band portray themselves as being far more controversial than their music would actually suggest. light 3/10.

while this is one of the most iconic albums in 80s hip hop, I don't know if it's aged all that well. with their debut, the Beastie Boys introduced themselves as a trio of rowdy, party-loving miscreants. it's an energy that works for them, and it certainly helped propel them and the Def Jam label to mainstream success. but as hip hop, it feels pretty dated. I'm tempted to grade my feelings on a curve just because the genre had a long way to go in general, and because the big hit singles are undeniably a lot of fun. but then you get songs like "Girls," which demonstrate an attitude towards women which they would apologize for several albums later. the growth that the Beasties demonstrated over the course of their career, both as musicians and as thinkers, is pretty tremendous. their discography truly gets interesting for me with Paul's Boutique. light 6/10.

one of my main gripes with 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die is that classical recordings were excised from the list of inclusions. excluding an album like Music for 18 Musicians from a list of the most essential albums of all time feels like the book is jigsaw puzzle missing a piece. 18 Musicians has had an influence which can be felt through so much modern rock and pop music, from Low all the way to Illinois and into the future. calling Sufjan Stevens a singer-songwriter feels like selling him short. he's truly a master of composition and orchestration (he plays so many instruments here!), and he can write a set of stanzas that will bring you to your knees. he manages to capture so many different moods and make them all cohere together: uplifting rhythmic propulsion, downtrodden acoustic numbers to soothe the soul, and multiple mesmerizing passages of chamber music which, again, feel very Steve Reich-esque. I got to see the musical version of this album on Broadway last year. don't worry, they didn't turn everything into crappy show tunes; it was really more of a ballet with a live band playing the album behind it. transcendent experience. in some ways, it feels like this album was made for the stage. 10/10.

when you compare Linkin Park and their debut album to many of their nu metal contemporaries, it's clear that they had a unique approach to combining metal and hip hop. founding member Mike Shinoda's study of the rap game as an MC, producer and scratcher is on full display across all 12 tracks of the aptly-titled Hybrid Theory; the more electronic flourishes and glitches strewn across the tracklist add a lot to the presentation. Rob Bourdon's drumming is suitably funky, but with an unmistakably metallic attack. and, of course, Chester Bennington is the full package as far as a metal frontman goes; he can sing like an angel, but his screams communicate a ton of intensity. (all the old reviews from metal uncs about how this album is supposedly "fake" or "immature" are very confusing to me.) Shinoda's presence as a vocalist is somewhat underwhelming; his rapping is easily the weakest link of the band, but I don't think it ever flat-out ruins any of these songs. it's probably not fair to compare him with Bennington, but it's hard not to when they share so much space. occasionally, I find that the songs themselves are structured in ways that kneecap their potential. I think the chorus of "Crawling" would hit a lot harder if the song didn't start with it; "By Myself" opens with one of Brad Delson's heaviest riffs, then immediately goes into a quiet Shinoda bit; "A Place for My Head" appends a Shinoda rap to the final breakdown where Bennington's screams by themselves were more than enough to carry the song to the finish line. my friend (and LP superfan) Cas pointed out that, while the band were undeniably their own creative force (and an intriguing one at that!), they were also businessmen working for Warner, one of the most major of all major labels. so, from time to time, a decision gets made that I get the feeling was not the band's own. I'd love to hear a more uninhibited version of this sound. light 7/10.

I've listened to this so many times I could probably review it in my sleep. like many young music fans, Radiohead was my entry point into a whole host of different musical movements, styles and scenes; and In Rainbows was their newest album at the time I first became a fan. over the years, it's more than earned a reputation for being one of the band's finest albums, if not their best. OK Computer is still Rate Your Music's favorite, but In Rainbows has it beat in terms of the raw ratings (it's 0.03 points higher than OK Computer as of the day I'm writing this)! I'll ride or die for Kid A supremacy, but on some days, my favorite is In Rainbows too. not only does this have my favorite production and mixing of any Radiohead album (such a luscious, warm sound, even in the electronics), but this may be the band's most consistently entertaining and well-crafted batch of songs to date. it's definitely an easier casual listen than any of their previous four albums were. even the interlude-ish track "Faust Arp" does a lot in just two minutes, with the strings coming in on the back end serving to elevate the track to a transcendent conclusion. the five tracks with strings are all tremendous, especially "All I Need," which may be my favorite ballad Radiohead has ever made. whether the band is plowing straight ahead in a rock idiom or taking a detour for something more introspective, they absolutely nail it every time. 10/10.

I can't even lie, this was pretty underwhelming for the first major milestone of the challenge: rolling over into triple digits. we'll hit quadruple digits in no time! this is a Scottish glam rock album in the vein of David Bowie's material from around the same time, with a bit of Stooges in there, too. if you're a die-hard UK glam aficionado, I can't recommend this highly enough. but, alas, I find that I'd much rather just listen to Bowie. The Sensational Alex Harvey Band is a pretty tight unit (as demonstrated by the artsy 3-part closer), but these lyrics are just too silly. the sex songs (most of these songs, in some way) sound like they were written by a guy who's never had sex, but who's still trying to brag as if he has. maybe it's supposed to be more tongue-in-cheek than it comes off? or maybe pillow talk is way different in Scotland. strong 5/10.

as far as I can tell, this band is sort of like a Britpop sidequest, founded by Justine Frischmann and Justin Welch a couple years after they left Suede, a band I've heard of, but I can't say if I ever heard any of their work. (out of Britpop's unofficial "big 4," the States latched onto Blur and Oasis; Pulp and Suede didn't capture nearly as much attention here.) imagine if Hole wrote songs with Wire-esque riffs and song structures, and you sort of have an idea of what Elastica's debut album sounds like (to me, at least). some of the best songs here, much like on Wire's Pink Flag, are only around 90-150 seconds long! as far as 90s indie rock goes, I have a much higher proclivity for the American bands than the British ones, but Elastica has a sound that brings the best from both sides of the pond to the forefront. it's a mixture of grungy, American alt and indie rock textures with the wit and songwriting tropes of British post-punk. I guess I'm saying they're the Strokes before the Strokes. decent 7/10.

this is much more in line with what I expect from Beck, in comparison with Sea Change and even Guero. to me, his signature sound is an even blend of hip hop production with psychedelically tinged alt-rock sonics. with the Dust Brothers on co-production duty for nearly all of this material, the resulting album has an unmistakable aural fingerprint. my major criticism is that Beck's not my kind of rapper; I think he's far more compelling as a singer-songwriter, as Sea Change so eloquently demonstrated. strong 7/10.

this is the legendary follow-up to What's Going On, an album that's just as relevant today as it was in 1971. it's a magical combination of timeless music with a political angle that only grows stronger and more prescient over the decades. Let's Get It On is, obviously, not nearly as concerned with the issues of the day, but in a way, it's just as timeless and relevant as What's Going On. few topics, especially in American culture, are more universal than sex! Marvin Gaye's liner notes give me the impression that this was an album he made to heal from his sexual trauma and repression; you can hear the weight falling off his shoulders as he careens over these tracks. What's Going On might be notable for its songwriting prowess, but Let's Get It On captures Gaye in the raw. the songs are much simpler, but that simplicity serves the sexual theme, giving him plenty of room to feel out each lyric and phrase. everything is super groovy, and deeply intimate. this is definitely a step in a new direction from what Motown had become known for, and I'm glad they gave Gaye the creative liberty to make it happen! we have a whole host of funky, loose, jam-session-like soul and R&B albums to thank him for. strong 8/10.

even though this is (as of now) the only Belle and Sebastian album I'm even remotely familiar with, I'm comfortable saying that Stuart Murdoch is one of the best songwriters of his time and place. this band strikes such a great balance between familiarity and ingenuity. you'll be humming along to a bouncy melody, and then they'll open a door to a totally different room, leaving you to bask in some sort of lush harmonic bed, and then they go right back to bouncy again. effortlessly catchy, intimately engineered and mixed, and the strings! music that makes you feel good, but also a little wistful. decent 9/10.

in some ways, this is THE rock album, as far as the genre's evolution from 1990 to the present day. the DNA for the modern alternative rock sound, in all the many shapes and sizes we can find it in today, is present in every song on Doolittle. the Pixies can go fast or slow, catchy or chaotic, loud or soft, and often do all of that in just two or three minutes, like on "Mr. Grieves." songs like "I Bleed" or "Debaser" are purpose-built for singing along. "Monkey Gone to Heaven" and "Hey" are tender moments perfectly placed. Kim Deal's basslines and backing vocals are everything. it's all so much fun! if this album has no fans, it means I'm dead, along with millions of others. 10/10.

can you believe they made this shit in GarageBand? compared to the only other French house duo I know anything about, Justice leans far more aggressive. as it was explained to me, the French label Ed Banger was home to some of the country's most noisy, in-your-face electro acts in the mid-2000s. Justice's version of this sound is hyperactive, owing to the use of what the group calls "microsampling." it's a little bit like traditional sample chopping, except the fragments you use are much smaller. this leads to a kaleidoscopic, chaotic mix where the timbres being used are constantly in flux, but they're always relentless. mixes that are this crowded usually give me ear fatigue, but you can tell there was a lot of work done to make these songs feel coherent at the same time. I definitely felt weird listening to this while sitting in a chair! strong 8/10.

you can't go wrong with any of the first six Sabbath albums. their 1970 debut is arguably the first metal album in history so, once again, we're seeing history play out in the listening process! the late '60s were a bit of a mad dash to see how loud and heavy blues rock bands could play before the music they made took on a new identity. while Black Sabbath is, for the most part, a blues album, Tony Iommi's particular use of distortion sends the whole band into a different echelon. (his guitar tone is incredible, by the way.) while Cream had pushed the boundaries of this heavy blues sound just a couple years prior, Sabbath played much harder and even louder. the most obviously metallic song in the bunch is the title track, with its famous tritone riff and slow, ominous tempo. beyond that and the brilliant "N.I.B." (which also has some of the best metal riffs of all time), I think you're better off approaching this as a blues album. that's not to say this isn't metal; since the tropes of the genre were still being established, it just doesn't sound like metal as we think of it today. Paranoid, released just 7 months after Black Sabbath, is a brilliant evolution in approach that I think more truly signals the beginning of heavy metal proper. that being said, one never would've happened without the other, and this debut (their live set at the time, recorded in a single 12-hour session with minimal overdubbing) is an excellent showcase of Black Sabbath's raw talent. decent 9/10.

it's always in one ear and out the other with me and U2. "Sunday Bloody Sunday" and "New Year's Day" are fine enough, but nothing else on War comes anywhere close to those two songs in terms of memorability or intrigue. it feels like a heavily sanitized version of post-punk, always hinting at the things which make that style so interesting, but never embracing them. it's far from being as insufferable as a lot of their (even more sanitized) later work is, but there's still nothing for me to write home about. light 5/10.

soothing, anthemic, and otherworldly. this is rock music performed by truly orchestral forces of instruments; you're not going to find timbres and textures like these on many other rock records. clearly, the sound Spiritualized are aiming for here is heavily informed by the more experimental bands in 60s and 70s British prog and psych. it's nice to see that sound combined with the directness of 90s alt-rock, a combination which leads to songs that are just as engaging to sing along to as they are to stand in awe of. the closer is one of the finest 10+ minute songs in the history of rock music. not a second wasted. and Dr. John's on it? strong 8/10.

I was born early enough for this album to be in my parents' music collection, but not early enough to have heard it overplayed to death. I was much more familiar with James Taylor's recording of "You've Got a Friend" than Carole King's original. that tends to be the case with King; her legacy as a songwriter has arguably outlasted her work as a solo artist, given just how many other artists have recorded iconic versions of her songs. for some reason, it feels like Tapestry is usually discussed as something that came and went. comedians use Carole King as shorthand to evoke the past. but let's not forget that people bought Tapestry like it was going out of style! it's one of the ten best-selling albums by a female solo artist in the US, where it's gone went 14x Platinum. it charted on the Billboard 200 for 300 weeks straight. it won four Grammys, with Taylor's cover of "You've Got a Friend" winning a fifth. these are impressive accomplishments for any artist, woman or not, and they come with a host of really compelling songs to boot. if you're not into soft rock, Tapestry probably won't convert you, but there's not better examples to be found. King and her session band play these songs with a quiet fire, a refreshing sense of clarity, that makes the music very approachable. unlike other soft-on-the-ears albums I've listened to for this challenge, I get a lot out of the compositions themselves. there's just a hint of jazz or something show tune-y in there, something that keeps each song feeling just a little unpredictable. wish I could pet that cat. light 8/10.

we're definitely getting some proto-Reddit-atheism energy here. but it's alright, because Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails is behind the boards! oh, wait. I kid. I love NIN and I think Antichrist Superstar is pretty decent. as far as a more mainstream take on an abrasive industrial metal sound, it could've been a lot worse. the first two tracks are by far the most standout: the rough-and-rowdy "Irresponsible Hate Anthem" into the tight, calculated, mechanical stomp of "The Beautiful People." as far as the rest is concerned, I kind of tune in and out. given Reznor's presence, I often find that the material veers too far into sounding like a dollar-store version of NIN or Fear Factory or what have you. that being said, I could easily see Antichrist being a gateway into more underground, radical heavy music. decent 6/10.

so now I know who MJ Lenderman copped his vibe from. interesting! Gene Clark was a member of The Byrds, a band I'll probably get around to hearing for this challenge soon, and one which was responsible for boosting the careers of, among others, David Crosby and members of The Flying Burrito Bros. Clark's bag on White Light is a country-tinged folk rock sound that reminds me of Bob Dylan; Clark's voice often dips into Dylanisms, and there's even a Dylan cover on side B. I don't know if much stands out to me, but it's consistently a pleasant listening experience. I just wish it rocked a little harder or felt a bit more unpredictable. light 7/10.

the last reggae album I listened to for this challenge was Signing Off by UB40. I remember remarking that I wasn't sure if I disliked the genre, or if I just hadn't spent enough time with the right reggae artists and albums. egg on my face: it's the latter. whereas Sounding Off felt interminable—it's an LP plus an EP running over an hour, and every song is roughly the same tempo—Exodus is a well-balanced package that never wears out its welcome. for the most part, it's an easy, breezy experience, especially the B-side which is mostly about making love and having fun. are you so heartless that you're not moved by the chorus of "Three Little Birds"? the A-side turns towards religion and politics, and the music feels much more serious as a result; knowing this album was conceptualized in the wake of Bob Marley fleeing Jamaica after an attempt on his life definitely raises the stakes of the title track, with its repeated shouts of "move!" but, no matter the tone, everything always feels funky and relaxed. great instrumental and vocal backing from the Wailers + free-wheeling performances from Marley = a great time. decent 8/10.

I've tried to get into the Cure on a couple different occasions, but my aversion to the plasticity of 80s rock production always held me back a bit. this time, I think I'm much closer to a full appreciation. the atmosphere of Disintegration runs deep. like, cavernously so. the layers of guitars (especially the prominent Bass VI), synths and melodramatic vocals all add up to something really ornate and extravagant. the best songs take their sweet time, with most being around five minutes and others stretching out for as long as eight or nine. the band conjures a grandiosity that sometimes reminds me of later developments in post-rock. if I have any major complaint, it would be in regards to the 72-minute runtime of the CD issue. I'm into this album, but not the Seventy Two Minutes kind of into it. light 8/10.

there's an interesting trend of early 2010s albums from smaller artists which appear in 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: critically acclaimed, yet lukewarmly received on sites like this. do we blame Pitchfork, who had a far more outsized influence on music discussions at the time? are people just being contrarian for the sake of it? well, I wouldn't say this blew me away or anything, but I still found it really intriguing. Django Django's take on this blog era indie sound embraces electronics in a really cool way. sometimes this album feels like a synth piece, other times like a rocker, and sometimes both. this leads to a few pretty infectious cuts. the grab-bag mixture of influences from psych, disco, EDM, surf rock, folk, and plenty more means that the music rarely stays in one place for too long. some tracks are more memorable than others, but choice cuts like "Default," "Hand of Man" and "WOR" make it worthwhile. strong 7/10.

Eno and Byrne mostly made this one in between the sessions for Talking Heads' Fear of Music and Remain in Light. it's a three-album run the likes of which are seldom seen. the Talking Heads albums, two of the best in rock music history, are obviously noteworthy for their iconic songs and forward-thinking production. My Life in the Bush of Ghosts isn't quite as straightforwardly appealing but, as with most things Eno, you'd be hard-pressed to imagine the world of contemporary music without it. if I had to guess, side A was driven mainly by Byrne, and side B by Eno. all 5 songs on the A-side feel downstream from funk and disco, and they're the most immediately gratifying material as a result. the B-side gives way to a similar rhythmic propensity, but one which is much more open-ended and surreal. grooves, when they appear, feel less grounded. the thing tying it all together is the extremely innovative use of sampling, where found voice objects in recordings from around the world become, essentially, a lead vocalist for the instrumentals Eno and Byrne create. this innovation alone would create a ripple effect that can still be felt in electronic music (and even hip hop) to this day. like with Remain in Light, I'm amazed at how ahead of the curve this music is. 1981! strong 8/10.

singles "Breakdown" and "American Girl" still hold up, but the rest is pretty unremarkable. I don't understand how 1001 Albums keeps getting it wrong whenever they choose to only include one album from certain artists. why this, a scant 30-minute LP with tremendous growing pains, over later works like Damn the Torpedoes or Full Moon Fever or Wildflowers? the Heartbreakers are a skilled unit that play very well together, but it's clear that Petty had a lot of evolution still left to undergo as a writer and a frontman. I've never been the biggest fan of his singing, but I have to admit it got much better over the years. the aforementioned singles prove that he had a lot of great things in his future. I just wish this book showcased his abilities a little better! strong 5/10.

only two albums deep into my experience with Neil Young (the other being Rust Never Sleeps), the thing I've come to appreciate the most about his work is that it doesn't waste your time. it's raw, no-frills rock 'n' roll played HARD. the one-note guitar solo has rarely been pulled off with this much aplomb. Young's voice has been a bit of an acquired taste, but I've come to really appreciate the way his vocals seem to haunt his songs. there's a despondence in his singing that gives his lyrical narratives a more three-dimensional character and emotion. but man, this band. especially Danny Whitten. decent 8/10.

I mean, it's good and all, but it hardly feels necessary. LCD Soundsystem's reunion has always rubbed me the wrong way. James Murphy made such a definitive final statement for the band with This Is Happening and a live film/album ironically titled The Long Goodbye. that Long Goodbye lasted all of four years. while there's definitely a few pretty great songs here, a lot of the material just feels like the band spinning their wheels. the synth work is still pretty fresh, and I enjoy that they feel more like an actual live band, but it can't make up for the fact that a bunch of these songs just feel like rehashes of the best moments from their first three LPs. "emotional haircut" feels like a lesser "Drunk Girls," "call the police" feels like a lesser "All My Friends," and on and on. that's not even mentioning the lyricism, which can get downright mean-spirited at times. Murphy used to have a little more self-awareness, but "tonite" is basically just a boomer ramble about how pop music sucks now. never heard that one before. overall, it could've been worse, but it also could've been much better. or, preferably, it could never have existed, and LCD Soundsystem's discography wouldn't have this odd blemish on it. light 7/10.

my first DNF. Britpop with strings. bored me to tears.

it's pretty hard to deny the impact that Gil Scott-Heron had on Black American music of all stripes. his spoken-word poetry is widely viewed as an early ancestor of what we now call rapping, and it's rife with social commentary that's possibly even more relevant now than it was at the time. his influence on hip hop can also be felt deeply through the albums he made with Brian Jackson, including Winter in America. admittedly, it's not my favorite of Scott-Heron's works. I find it a little bit samey; his preference for singing over spoken word for most of the material (save for the electrifying H2Ogate Blues) leaves me a little underwhelmed. that being said, I can't deny that the music is extremely forward-thinking. Winter in America's legacy is well-preserved through its frequent use as a source for samples in hip hop production, a testament to its evergreen sound, typified by spacey electric pianos and flutes. decent 7/10.

I'm a bit more interested in Joni's jazz years, but I mean, come on. it's Blue! talk about an album that will cradle you like a baby when you're feeling low. Mitchell's unique guitar tunings create so much dissonance and heartache, and the way her soprano voice floats over them is so tender and perfect. this is one of the greatest heartbreak albums ever created. it's soul-bearing, deeply confessional and incredibly honest. I can't listen to "A Case of You" without shedding at least one tear. strong 9/10.

a foundational pillar of modern folk music, the 1960 self-titled album by Joan Baez made its mark among aficionados in Greenwich Village and, eventually, the wider folk world. it's a collection of 13 traditional folk songs arranged by Baez for acoustic guitar and voice that sounds strikingly contemporary, despite being over 60 years old by now. to this day, folk guitarists are cribbing her style! it's an impressive thing for Baez to have achieved at the age of 19! my major complaint is just that 13 songs feels like too many. this album runs 45 minutes, but I felt like I had my fill after around 30. decent 6/10.

why is this the only album by Hüsker Dü in this book? I'm baffled that the team behind 1001 Albums would go for this overly long, samey power pop/college rock experience rather than Zen Arcade or New Day Rising, two albums which were indisputably more groundbreaking. I can appreciate that the band wanted to do another double LP, but they didn't have nearly as many fresh ideas here as they did on previous records, so it just feels like a slog to get from tip to tail. I'm not sure why I would listen to this over any R.E.M. album from the same time period. strong 5/10.

sensational. much ink has been spilled over Prince's virtuosity as a singer, songwriter, engineer, producer, multi-instrumentalist and conceptualist. 1999 displays this myriad set of abilities better than any other Prince album that had come before. the singles are well-known for good reason, but the deep cuts are just as stimulating. you're not likely to find many records funkier than this that also have such a strange, off-kilter feeling. it reminds me a little bit of There's a Riot Goin' On by Sly, which captures a similar feeling of unease which was also very much influenced by global politics! the second of the two LPs that make up 1999 gets especially weird, but if that's your thing (and it's definitely mine) then you'll get more than your fill. strong 8/10.

is this the beginning of punk rock? it's hard to know for sure if the Sonics were even fully aware of what they created here. this crudely recorded set of covers (and a few original songs), fronted by the unrestrained hollers of Gerry Roslie, feels like a true evolution in the art of raucous rock 'n' roll. as RYM user Nurah's review puts it, the Sonics are the missing link between Little Richard and The Stooges. Kurt Cobain was also a massive fan of this album in particular, especially its drum sound (an entire kit, recorded with a single microphone, played super hard). the exclamation points all over the top of the album artwork are a clear indicator of just how vivacious and over-the-top this music is, especially for 1965. all that being said, once again, I find myself in a situation with a 1001 album where I think the wider impact that this music had is just a bit more interesting than the music itself. thankfully, these 12 tracks fly by in under half an hour, so it's hard to feel like I wasted any time. decent 7/10.

my review for Low (the 7th album I was assigned for this challenge) outlines a lot of the reasons why that album is my favorite of Bowie's 20th-century output, and many of those same positives also apply to "Heroes", the follow-up. it's no shock that the two have so many similarities. both were released in the same year; both feature many of the same performers and songwriters, particularly the synth treatments of Brian Eno; and both were produced by Tony Visconti, continuing Bowie and Visconti's long streak of collaborations (although it wouldn't get much longer after this). I don't want my adoration of Low to bias my adoration of "Heroes" but, of course, comparisons between the two are inevitable. they form the first two-thirds of what's now called the "Berlin" trilogy of albums along with Lodger, an era which many people would argue represents Bowie's artistic peak. much like Low, "Heroes" is divided into a more rockin' A-side and a more bleepy-bloopy B-side, although the divide isn't as strong here as it was on Low. if you were frustrated by how short the rock songs on Low were, you'll feel much more at home with this one, where there's not a single track under three minutes long. plus, in comparison with how emotionally detached Low can sometimes feel given the brevity of its material, "Heroes" brings back a lot of the funk and soul grooviness of the previous year's Station to Station, but with a newfound precision, thanks to Bowie's recent sobriety. opener "Beauty and the Beast" sets things off with a ton of energy that doesn't relent for the entire A-side, which also includes album highlights "Sons of the Silent Age" and "Blackout." I would argue that the title track is one of the best things ever created by humans, let along just songs. it's one of the most satisfying slow builds you'll ever hear, with a vocal performance from Bowie that may be the best he ever recorded. it never fails to make me stop dead in my tracks and well up with emotion. the electronic tracks are, just as with Low, drop-dead gorgeous. whereas Low used ambient music to create an often oppressive atmosphere, the vibe on "Heroes" is much lighter and more ethereal. just existing inside of tracks like "Moss Garden" and "Neuköln" is one of the simple joys in life. plus, the first four tracks of the B-side all crossfade into each other for a seamless 16-minute ride. Bowie's saxophone trailing off at the end of "Neuköln" feels like a really satisfying conclusion, with "The Secret Life of Arabia" acting as a nice bonus. presumably it's at the end so as not to hang the rock 'n' roll people completely out to dry, but I always thought it would fit better somewhere else in the tracklist. it's the one major gripe I have with "Heroes" despite the fact that, at the end of the day, it's still one of my top five Bowie albums. strong 9/10.

out with the Cale, in with the Yule. the effect this simple lineup change had on TVU is pretty hard to overstate. save for the 9-minute psych-tinged surrealism of "The Murder Mystery" (by far the most interesting song here), any trace of the avant-garde elements which colored their debut and defined their sophomore effort are essentially gone here on LP3, which is either their first or second self-titled album, depending on how you want to count it. on the one hand, the band's pivot to a straightforward rock sound automatically makes this album just a little less interesting to me compared to the first two. on the other, that's just me wanting this to be something other than what it is. with Reed as the sole songwriter, it's no surprise that both the compositions and their orchestrations are heavily stripped back; after all, this is the guy who famously said that "Two chords is pushing it." a lot of the time, you're left rocking between the 1 chord and the 4. you're sort of forced into this hypnosis in a similar way to the minimal music being written in New York City at the same time as TVU was active. the lyrics are, similarly, a lot less taboo than the band had become known for. if anything, I feel like there might have even been a little too much edge sanded off in comparison with their previous work. despite that, I really appreciate how this album shows off the band's ability to thrive in many different musical contexts. there's still some interesting instrumentation quirks to be found; it's hard to think of this as being a "sell-out" record, since the band's identity is still pretty well intact. that definitely didn't stay true for much longer after this album, though! decent 8/10.

were people really clamoring for this sound in 1990? 1990 was a bit of a liminal space in comparison to the decade that followed; the sound of "the nineties" was yet to be solidified, so a beguiling array of genres were competing for dominance, many of them holdovers from the eighties. the Black Crowes, meanwhile, are a holdover from... the seventies? yes, they formed in 1984 in Atlanta, and they play a pretty authentic southern blues rock sound. by the time the band finally released this, their debut studio album, they were six years in, and their musical path had been pretty well-trodden by bands as far back as the sixties. it makes it hard for me to get all that excited about the material on offer since, while the Black Crowes are a capable performing unit, they hardly bring anything new to the southern hard rock formula other than, perhaps, a slight bit of alternative flair on their ballads. they sound like a very talented bar band. Chris Robinson's vocals are as ugly as sin. strong 3/10.

without question, this is an iconic debut from one of the most iconic groups in the history of hip hop. one thing that ever-so-slightly holds People's Instinctive Travels back in comparison to a later album like The Low End Theory or Midnight Marauders is how wet ATCQ feels behind the ears. Q-Tip and Ali Shaheed Muhammad demonstrate a hell of a lot of prowess as producers on nearly every track here (the one-two punch of "Bonita Applebum" into "Can I Kick It?" remains one of the highest points of any Tribe album tracklist), but knowing just how colorful and unique their production would become on future records spoils things here just a little bit. thankfully, the group's MCs nailed their sounds from the jump! Q-Tip's rasp and Phife Dawg's smoothness each make for some of hip hop's most iconic voices. plus, for a long time, this was the only album to feature vocals from Jarobi, who makes perhaps his most notable contributions to People's Instinctive Travels as a chatting DJ in the skits that introduce each song. again, this is a pretty great album all around, but it's hard to observe in a vacuum. their first three records form this tremendous trilogy which it's hard to isolate any one piece from. they'd probably rather I focus on the whole anyway, since ATCQ notably credited all the production and writing to all of their members, somewhat obscuring the lines between who was doing what and making it all about the collective. it's a pretty great formula for free-wheeling group chemistry that they would capitalize on even further in the future. decent 8/10.

UK psych's stranglehold over 1001 Albums' sixties selections reigns supreme. at least this time we've got a Scottish take on the sound, and one that's actually pretty singular. Donovan's particular brand of surrealist poetry, paired with some exceedingly strange songs (with even stranger arrangements and orchestration), makes for an album that's pretty hard to mistake for any of his many psych contemporaries at the time. the bluesy title track was apparently a #1 hit here in the US, but I can't recall if I had ever heard it before. it's one of the more obvious highlights, with its sticky, chromatically descending melodic phrases and its variation on the three-chord blues form. it's hard not to think of the psych era of the Beatles in the face of some of this material, but remember that Sunshine Superman hit store shelves a full 9 months before Sgt. Pepper's! it's easy to forget that this was a collective of artists all trying to achieve a similar aesthetic. there's also "Season of the Witch" which feels like a more polite version of what bands like Led Zeppelin would go on to do just a few years later. (incidentally, a pre-LZ John Paul Jones plays bass on the title track.) beyond that, the rest of the material can be a little bit hit-or-miss, but I really enjoy a lot of the sounds this album presents despite that. decent 7/10.

Booker T. & The M.G.'s definitely sound better with a frontman and horns. Otis Redding possessed one of the most emotive, multifaceted singing voices recorded music has ever seen. on Otis Blue, he digs in hard on just about every cut, squeezing every ounce of meaning from each lyric with a kind of controlled chaos. most of the material is cover songs, with a particular focus on the music of the then-recently-deceased Sam Cooke; Redding's versions of "A Change Is Gonna Come" and "Wonderful World" are particularly strong, every bit as worthwhile as Cooke's. there's also "Respect," a Redding composition which Aretha Franklin would later modify and record herself, with her version becoming her signature song, and a major feminist anthem to boot. I enjoy the novelty of hearing such a different arrangement in Redding's master version, but there's no question that Franklin's version, with the addition of the "R-E-S-P-E-C-T" break and a whole lot more, is much more definitive. that being said, I might like Redding's version of "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" more than The Rolling Stones's original. a bit hard to say this soon. the overall highlight of the album is another Redding original, the magnificent slow burner "I've Been Loving You Too Long." strong 8/10.

for as much noise as Dinosaur Jr. can create, they have a really keen sense of structure, dynamics and timbre manipulation. plus, they write really catchy stuff! frontman J Mascis is apparently compared to Neil Young no less than all the time, so I hate to relitigate this finished business, but there's an uncanny resemblance between the two and a clear path that leads from one to the other through musical time. Young's raw, unbridled rock 'n' roll spirit is very much alive on songs like "Freak Scene" and "They Always Come," as well as songs like the confrontational "Don't" which offer a lens into this trio's interpersonal struggles. the transition from one decade into another can often be rocky, as the old one bows out while the new one is still trying to find itself. a band like The Black Crowes, whose 1990 debut LP I listened to and reviewed just a few days ago, was looking pretty solidly to recreate the past in their work. Dinosaur Jr. did the same, but also had a keen sense of how they might push things forward. in some ways, their work is as important to the development of alternative rock (perhaps the last major advancement in rock's mainstream) as that of the Pixies from around the same time. in fact, Dinosaur Jr. was even there slightly earlier! their eighties presence on the SST label (alongside similarly forward-thinking punk and proto-alt stalwarts like Black Flag, the Minutemen, Hüsker Dü and Sonic Youth) hardly seems like a coincidence. decent 8/10.

there's a vast emptiness at the center of this music that I can't seem to shake. given that Daniel Lanois, Brian Eno and Steve Lillywhite (among others) are handling production duties, this should be an easy shoe-in for me. and yet, it's U2 themselves that hold me back from a fuller enjoyment and, in fact, actively grind my gears. granted, there weren't many rock albums that sounded like this in 1991. it's a grandiose experimental sound involving a lot of electronics, strings, and other "recording studio as an instrument" layers. at times, I almost found myself captured by Achtung Baby just off of the pure textural thrill that sometimes comes through on songs like "Until the End of the World" or "Zoo Station," but then I started paying attention to the actual songwriting again. that's where it all came crumbling down. these songs are dreadfully boring. the rock instrumentation at play (y'know, the actual band) is utterly sterile. the producers and extra bells/whistles get all the best moments. Bono's voice (specifically his grating falsetto, a defining feature for him on this LP) is among the most punchable I've ever heard. The Edge's guitar tones are among some of the least edgy (and most pillowy) in all of rock music. the only interesting layer of stuff coming from the members of U2 themselves is Larry Mullen Jr.'s drums. this was very nearly my second DNF for this series. U2's music, especially this album and The Joshua Tree, reek of a kind of pomposity that simply doesn't feel earned. there's this feeling I get like the band thought they were making the hottest shit any rock band had yet thought of, and yet the final results are so tepid, predictable and uninteresting. not to mention how cloying the absolute worst moments are. fun fact: "One," which has become an anthem for social justice causes in the last few decades, is actually just a song where Bono negs a woman he made up. stop it! get some help! decent 3/10.

Big Black were yet another underground rock band working in the eighties to hazard a guess as to what the guitar music of the future would sound like. their answer was an uncompromisingly abrasive sound with a ton of overdrive and stiff, mechanical drums provided by an E-mu Drumulator. every song here has a slightly different drum pocket and more than a few incredible riffs, which helps to create a good sense of variety from one track to the next. I'm glad this was under 40 minutes; any more and I'd have gotten a splitting headache. Atomizer lasts just long enough to make it possible to enjoy every second, but not too long! light 9/10.

this is among the easiest of easy listening fare you can find, the polar opposite of my album from yesterday (Atomizer by Big Black). James Taylor is a songwriter in the folk and soft rock vein, and his music is an uncontroversial blend of those sounds with those of Black American styles like R&B and jazz, not to mention a country undertone that never really lets up. it's definitely not "cool" to like this type of stuff (nor does Taylor attempt to make it sound very cool), but I can't help but enjoy it. it's no accident that a generation of jazz musicians in the 70s and 80s were taken by his work! the closer ("Suite for 20 G") is an especially keen demonstration of Taylor's flexible harmonic frameworks and keen sense of melody. strong 6/10.

even by Prince's eclectic standards, Sign "☮︎" the Times is an absolute smorgasbord. there's plenty of the fun, funky heaters that he's now synonymous with, but also way more sonic detours than on any prior Prince album. he really takes full advantage of the flexibility that the double-LP format allows for. it's hard for me to get into as much detail as I typically do, since the act of listening to so many great songs in so many different styles tends to scramble my brain a bit. while this is becoming one of my favorite Prince albums, I think I need a little more time with it compared to Dirty Mind or Purple Rain. just rest assured that whether Prince is in sex funk mode, romantic balladeer mode, gender-bending mode (with the Camille songs), or what have you, it's gonna be great. it never ceases to amaze me how many different talents this guy had. truly a musician's musician's musician. the fact that some of these larger-than-life tracks were made totally in isolation is insanely cool. the biggest highlight is easily "I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man," an absolute show-stopper that foreshadows the sound of contemporary creatives like Mk.gee. light 9/10.

a bit of a hard sell for me, even if I really enjoy the idea of this band and this music. it's an industrial rock album where all the guitars are played off of a sampling machine. but, more than that, it's also a surreal ambient record. with the throat-sung Swiss-French vocals layered on top of everything, the final result is a truly alien experience; it's not shocking to me that a band named after a Swans song would produce something so difficult to categorize. (seems like David Bowie was listening to this when he made 1.Outside, which totally scans.) ultimately, I find myself more enthralled by the sound of The Young Gods more than the songs they write. but, hey, these guys definitely have a sound, which is more than you can say for most bands! light 7/10.

the more Elvis Costello albums this book throws at me, the more I understand why it adores him. he was in the right place at the right time making just the right kind of music to appeal to the critics: a sharp blend of post-punk and new wave with nods to artists of yesteryear (the omnipresent Beatles being most prominent to my ears as an influence) and production work which, by Armed Forces, was beginning to resemble the maximalist sound pioneered by Phil Spector (listen to the layers upon layers of guitar coating "Chemistry Class," for instance). some of the best pop/rock songs I've ever heard are to be found here. the opener ("Accidents Will Happen") is surely the biggest standout; you just don't hear harmonic ingenuity like that on the charts these days. "Senior Service" is a great jam, too. "Oliver's Army" would've been my #1 pick easily, but Costello says the N-word on it (prefaced by the word "white"). I just don't understand the point he's trying to make there; even taking Costello's ironic character in mind, it just feels like pointless edginess. I have to dock the song a little bit as a result. the songs that point away from Costello's power pop origins and towards his interest in more traditional rock sounds are often the ones that go over the best. otherwise, I think I'd rather just put on This Year's Model again. decent 7/10.

I was somewhat familiar with X's hooky, witty approach to punk rock (by way of rockabilly and the blues) from their debut album, Los Angeles; Wild Gift, their sophomore effort, is largely in the same vein. both albums were produced by Ray Manzarek, which is an oddly good fit considering how often X will veer just a little bit towards sounding like The Doors. John Doe and Exene Cervenka have such great vocal chemistry, and that's the main thing that keeps me engaged. it also helps that X has a much more keen ear for unique instrumental arrangements and sharp melodies compared to a lot of their competition at this time! light 8/10.

few albums have taken their sweet-ass time to grow on me quite like this one. if you asked me a few years ago, I would've told you I thought the Cocteau Twins, and this album in particular, were some of the most overhyped music in the history of the RYM charts. despite that, there's always something that keeps me coming back to Heaven... in the hopes that "maybe this will be the listen where I well and truly 'get it!'" I think this listen was the closest I've come so far. when all the elements fall perfectly into place—the programmed drums, the icy synthesizers, Robin Guthrie's cavernous guitar layering, Simon Raymonde's slinky basslines, and especially Elizabeth Fraser's shimmering voice—the results are tantalizing. my favorite is still the opener ("Cherry-Coloured Funk"), with it's incredible use of Fraser's falsetto in the chorus. this was also the first time I appreciated just how crafty the bridge of the title track is, or the post-chorus of "Fotzepolitic," or any number of other moments. whether or not the lyrics of these songs mean anything is anyone's guess, but they just have such a great sound about them. the main thing that held me back from a fuller enjoyment of this album on previous listens (and believe me, I've been trying for a few years now) was the production and mixing. however, what once sounded like a muddy, overly reverberated blend of gloop to my ears now has a lot more precision and care in it than I previously recognized. it definitely suffers a little bit from that 80s gloopiness, but if anything, the Twins use it to their advantage. I'm not sure what changed with my ears or my brain chemistry, but this listen was easily the most I've ever enjoyed this band! light 9/10.

another case where the legacy of an album is more interesting than the music itself. with Jeff Beck on lead guitar, I think I came into this expecting more fireworks, but for the most part this is a pretty by-the-numbers British 60s blues rock session. Beck does get a few decently entertaining solo turns on tracks such as "Rack My Mind" or the instrumental "Jeff's Boogie," but you also have to sit through some truly tacky cuts too, such as the piano ditty "Farewell" or the overly silly "Hot House of Omargararshid" (complete with "yah-yah-yah" group vocals). I can appreciate that this album had a tremendous impact on the shape of rock music to follow, but its value beyond that is somewhat limited, in my view. strong 5/10.

Liz Phair is one of those artists who can never seem to top their debut, let alone match it, in terms of either sales or critical acclaim. it's a statement so confrontational that it seemed to have the unintentional effect of pigeonholing Phair to a place she never had any business being pigeonholed to, culminating in her dismal self-titled album where she was being marketed as an alternative to Avril Lavigne, a far cry from the musical and emotional maturity displayed here on her debut. most of the ink spilled over Guyville concerns its famously crass and sexual lyricism, which is obviously a big selling point, but the music itself points heavily towards the future of alternative and indie rock, especially of the female-fronted variety. this definitely puts the music of your Mitskis and Lucy Dacuses into a clearer context! I'll definitely be returning to this to really get a fuller picture of just what Phair is talking about on each of these 18(!) songs; it's a lot to sift through, especially on a first listen, but I'd happily listen to this quite a few more times. light 8/10.

my cat Béla hates traveling, but he can tolerate the car ride in the cat carrier a little bit better if I throw on some Simon & Garfunkel, so I've become fairly familiar with their five studio albums over the past couple years. Bridge isn't necessarily my favorite, but it's hard to deny that it's one of their finest efforts, especially considering the circumstances surrounding its production (most notably, Art Garfunkel missing sessions to go act in a movie). how can I really deny an album with songs as great as the title track, or "The Boxer," or especially "The Only Living Boy In New York" (which might stand as my favorite S&G song of all time)? you're looking at some of the most immaculate pop songs ever conceived right there! the vocal layering is fantastic as always, but what really sells this album is all the studio instrumentation. on some previous S&G albums, I always felt like the bells & whistles distracted from the core of what made them so compelling, but on Bridge they all serve to elevate the songs in question, especially the brass and saxophones that show up from time to time. a great note for this iconic duo to go out on. decent 8/10.

Jaco Pastorius's performance on opening track "Coyote" should be enough to convince you that Hejira is a different kind of album. these are songs that wander and meander, much like the pilgrimage invoked by the album's title, and yet there's also such a focus and precision on display at the same time. surprising nobody, Joni Mitchell's explorations with jazz in the mid-seventies resulted in my favorite music of her entire career. her ever-lowering voice was now a smoky alto which transmitted some truly stunning poetry. the pristine layers of electric guitars from Mitchell and Larry Carlton, plus Victor Feldman's vibraphone, results in a transcendent listening experience on "Amelia". "Furry Sings the Blues" freely moves from one key to the next, but it always comes back to that beautiful A minor chord one way or another (Neil Young on harmonica!). it keeps going in much this same way; every song has at least one or two surprise chords, and Mitchell's melodies remain ever-searching. many of these tracks feature little or no percussion, which really adds to the soul-searching nature of it all. by the end, you really feel like you've wound up somewhere else. one of the most immersive albums ever created. it's great to pay close attention to, or you can just check out and let it wash over you. 10/10.

y'all mind if a Yank speaks a little British? I reflexively assumed I wouldn't enjoy this very much, since I tend to prefer (or at least I'm more familiar with) American folk music over that of the British Isles, but Fairport Convention really sold me with their electric approach to this repertoire of traditional songs, and the original compositions inspired by it! there's hints of psychedelia, prog and the blues lurking underneath most of this material (especially the extended jam that makes up the second half of "Matty Groves"), but the band can also do a lot with a more contemplative, pastoral approach. the biggest highlights for me are Dave Swarbrick's dynamic fiddling and Sandy Denny's delicate, almost mournful vocal performances. Swarbrick in particular really shines on the instrumental medley on side B, which also incorporates a few Irish tunes alongside the British ones; and Denny, who died tragically young less than a decade after recording Liege and Lief, casts a haunting shadow over many of its finest moments as an album. decent 8/10.

I discovered this one in high school over a decade ago. it was the first of Nick Drake's three albums I chose to dive into, likely because it's his most popular (owing to it being his only album to release in the US during his short lifetime). Five Leaves Left (which I reviewed for album #85 of this challenge) and especially Bryter Layter are adorned with wonderful chamber arrangements with strings and winds, and what feels more or less like a *band* behind Drake. by contrast, apart from a single piano overdub on the opening title track, Pink Moon is just a man and his guitar. that minimal approach lets you focus way more on just how great of a guitarist he was, and it pulls even further attention to his delicate voice, and the harrowing words he delivers with it. "Place to Be" is a great example of this, with its low, open guitar tuning and Drake's yearning for a time when he was younger, greener and stronger. Drake's death at the age of just 26 casts a long shadow over a lot of his work, but perhaps none more than this, his final statement on record. one of the most compelling aspects of Pink Moon is how it shifts between despondence and levity, sometimes within the same song. depression can often feel like laughing to keep from crying! my favorite Drake song, "Things Behind the Sun", features some incredible modal interchange that takes us from minor (dark, introverted) to major (bright, sunny) and back again in the most spellbinding way. (that A lydian chord is the stuff of dreams!) there's also "Know", entirely based around a simple, swinging riff; it's another moment of relative calm, but its single stanza of lyrics throws a lot of ambiguity into the picture. "Parasite" is full of vivid images of sailboats, station bars, churches and the like, but Drake feels himself unable to participate in any of it, instead viewing himself as the titular parasite of the town he describes. I even interpret "Free Ride", on the surface the album's most upbeat song, as a desperate plea from a lower-class person that a richer man might take pity on him, should he ever come calling for it. it reads as a plea for success which, unfortunately, he never truly saw in his short lifetime. that lack of success (due to a combination of poor promotion from his label and the lukewarm critical appraisal he received at the time) inevitably contributed to the mental health issues he wrote about so frequently in his music, and prevented him from completing more than three albums. on the one hand, he deserved so much better from the industry and the music-listening public; on the other, these songs might not have ever existed in this form had his career been more fruitful and profitable (and profitable for whom, exactly?). all we can do now is sit with what Drake was able to give us while he was here, and that's a set of three utterly magical folk records. 10/10.

yet another case of this website throwing a mega-popular record at me and expecting me to have something new to say. you definitely know all of the singles from Nevermind; they entered radio rotation almost immediately, and have never really left since. the album's first five tracks are a masterclass in no-frills rock songwriting, featuring some of the most iconic riffs and melodies ever penned. you can really hear Kurt Cobain's dueling interests in pop songwriting formulas and raw, noisy imperfection reach a tremendous compromise. elsewhere, "Polly" and "Something in the Way" showcase the band's soft, sensitive side, whereas "Territorial Pissings" and "Stay Away" point to the even noisier, more confrontational direction In Utero would go in. people endlessly debate whether or not Cobain wanted all the press and popularity he received off the back of Nevermind, let alone the credit for single-handedly transforming rock music in the 90s, and ending the glam era in the process. part of me thinks he must've known what he was doing; you don't write a song as catchy as "Smells Like Teen Spirit" unless you want to turn a lot of heads. this is my favorite Nirvana album. I have no hot takes here. decent 9/10.

I can't bring myself to find this more than just okay, borderline superfluous even. it's a perfectly serviceable blend of jazz, R&B, pop and folk music from blue-eyed soul singer and future conspiracy theorist Van Morrison. to me, there's nothing new really being brought to the table here. this move towards extreme accessibility seems, to me, like a cowardly retreat from the far more ambitious sound of Astral Weeks. I get that this was the album that launched his career as a mainstream star, but I was pretty bored by it nevertheless. also, what was with white musicians in the seventies constantly alluding to Romani people as some sort of clumsy, racist metaphor for free-spiritedness and spiritual mumbo-jumbo? the constant cringe of Morrison alluding to "g*psies" in one way or another pulls my rating here down a full point. strong 4/10.

the psych- and blues-tinged Latin rock stylings of Carlos Santana are as good a way as any to ring in a new year! I have a fairly good connection with his eponymous band's debut record, which I had a second-hand vinyl copy of as a kid. (I accidentally played it at 45 speed once. "Waiting" sounded sick.) Abraxas is, generally speaking, much newer territory for me; despite that, there's two tracks on the A-side I'm more than familiar with. the first is the now-classic medley of Fleetwood Mac's "Black Magic Woman" and Gábor Szabó's instrumental "G*psy Queen" which, of course, was in Guitar Hero III, and its iconic status is obvious even in GH3's cover recording. having become more familiar with the original version presented here, I can obviously say it's much better, and certainly the best song on the album. the elusive opening, Santana's iconic guitar solos, the adrenaline at the switch-up midway through, the dense percussion layering throughout—you know how this one goes. second is "Oye como va", a Tito Puente classic that I played more than a couple times in undergrad with my university's Latin big band! the electrified version of it here has become another one of Santana's signature songs, and for good reason; if that cha-cha-chá groove doesn't move you, you may want to get your pulse checked. lots of records from around this era of the 1001 Albums... selections tend to emphasize the hits and/or singles at the expense of everything else, but the deeper cuts on Abraxas hold up really well against its two most iconic ones. the A-side also contains opener "Singing Winds, Crying Beasts", a nice bit of atmospheric, modal jamming that feels almost like an extended prelude for "Black Magic Woman", as well as "Incident at Neshabur", which opens as a fiery D minor jam in 6/8 (with great solo turns from Santana and organist Gregg Rolie) before giving way to a transcendent, borderline ambient back half in C major. the B-side contains "Se a cabo" and "El nicoya", two more great features for the percussion section; two tightly constructed originals from Rolie ("Mother's Daughter" and "Hope You're Feeling Better") that show the band leading with their blues influences; and "Samba pa ti", the slowest and sultriest of all nine tracks here. if you like your rock music groovy with a lot of raw power and a live feel, look no further! the singing might not always be the greatest thing you've ever heard, but how can you listen to these guys play instruments together and not instantly get a lift? strong 8/10.

I'm sounding like a broken record the further into this challenge we go, but I'll still say it anyway: how do you review an album like The Wall? in this case, it's not just because we're talking about one of the best-selling albums of all time, but also because it's one of the most culturally significant albums of the past several decades; it was a big enough deal to get adapted into a film which, in the eyes of some, is even better than the album it's based on! my mom used to go to midnight screenings of it in college all the time, and she first showed it to me as a kid (although she stood in front of the TV and fast-forwarded through the more salacious bits). I'm not really going to get too far into the narrative or themes of either the album or film, since you can find plenty of coverage of both, and this is supposed to be a series of (relatively) short and snappy reviews anyway. so, how do I feel? personally, I do think that a lot of the material here, especially on the second disc, is elevated quite a bit through the addition of visuals, and doesn't stand up as well without that component. it's usually the more interstitial tracks: "The Thin Ice", "Empty Spaces", "One Of My Turns", "Another Brick in the Wall Part 3", "Nobody Home", "Bring the Boys Back Home". "Stop", et cetera. even if they do serve the function of keeping things moving along to the more consequential tracks (they often sound really cool), I often find myself wishing they were more fleshed-out from a compositional perspective. you can also hear Roger Waters really start to assert himself as the leader of Pink Floyd, which can often make the contributions from its other members feel more subservient than I would like (especially from keyboardist Richard Wright, who was actually fired during the album's sessions and retained as a mere session/touring musician). but, hey, at least Waters' egomania isn't nearly as bad here as it is on The Final Cut! thankfully, the more consequential tracks still stand as some of Pink Floyd's best, and they're the thing that really keeps me locked in from one end to the other. both takes of "In the Flesh(?)", "Another Brick... Part 2", "Mother", "Hey You", "Comfortably Numb" and "Run Like Hell" really make it worth listening to The Wall in full at least a few times; I love a good David Gilmour solo as much as the next guy. but after that, I think you're better off watching the film. the animated parts in particular are so cool. just stay far away from Nostalgia Critic's The Wall and you're good to go. light 7/10.

you're probably thinking the same thing I did: "who the hell are The Icarus Line?" well, despite their current status—inactive since 2017 following the death of a key member, and currently sitting at fewer than 1,500 monthly Spotify listeners—I was surprised to find that a lot of critics were very positive about this album when it first released. you can check Wikipedia if you don't believe me; 4.5/5 from Allmusic, 4/5 from Alternative Press 7.8/10 from Pitchfork (huge numbers to get from them in 2004), and a perfect 10/10 from Drowned in Sound. so, to what do we attribute The Icarus Line's niche status in rock music: a band significant enough to be included in 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die (right next to Arcade Fire's Funeral in my copy, by the way) but one which has otherwise been forgotten by the vast majority of rock fans? well, while I do think this band makes a great noise when they really get going—seriously, this album is really loud—I feel a bit like I've been hung out to dry by the songs themselves. they're serviceable, but most of them aren't terribly memorable. you've got the opener, which is memorable by virtue of being the first song you hear; there's the very punchy "Spike Island" and the 9-minute mammoth "Getting Bright at Night", which goes through a ton of interesting dynamic phases; but beyond that, a lot of the material here feels a bit redundant. there's some additional sonic experiments towards the back half of the record (the saxophone on "White Devil", all the electronics on "Meatmaker") but by that point it's too little, too late. there were a lot of bands making this sort of bluesy, noisy garage rock at the time and delivering better songs alongside it; The White Stripes had released Elephant the previous year, and Death From Above 1979 would release their tremendous debut a few months after Penance Soirée. it's a little unfortunate; with stickier melodies and riffs alongside the (admittedly really interesting) barrages of noise The Icarus Line cook up, this could've been more than just a footnote. decent 6/10.

the cover doesn't lie: this album is not for the young'ins. Soft Cell's famous cover of Gloria Jones' "Tainted Love" went down smoothly enough to hit #1 in 17 countries, but how many of those people do you think heard "Sex Dwarf" or saw its music video, both of which caused a major outcry in the British tabloids? "Seedy Films" also doesn't leave much to the imagination. it makes me wonder if anyone actually found these songs titillating at the time, or if it was just the usual conservative moral panic cycle; maybe it's the cultural barrier (with Marc Almond's accent and all), but I find this album mostly goofy rather than erotic. the synth sounds (both the keyboards and the drums) are really tacky and dated, which doesn't help. like, what the hell is happening on "Secret Life"? I'll keep "Frustration" (complete with its gloriously cheesy tenor sax from Dave Tofani), "Tainted Love" and the iconic new wave ballad "Say Hello, Wave Goodbye", but the rest is simply not my cuppa. decent 5/10.

I've landed back on yet another album which the world of music would look quite different without. Master of Puppets (along with Slayer's Reign in Blood, which came out later in 1986) finally took the sound of thrash metal to the mainstream. with cleaner production than Metallica's previous efforts, an ambitious, quasi-progressive compositional approach (did you know the band wanted Geddy Lee to produce at first?) and more refined lead vocals from James Hetfield, it's no wonder that this album became such a sensation. of course, this is also their last album with Cliff Burton, after which things were never really the same. ...And Justice for All might have even better songs, but it's famously weighed down by its production issues. the "black album" launched them even further into stardom, but at the cost of most of their cred; the rest of it left with Load, Reload and especially St. Anger. for as hard as they tried afterwards to recapture their glory days, you and I both know it never panned out all the way; I think we can safely make the call that Metallica *needed* Cliff Burton. decent 9/10.

I talked about this back when I reviewed that Ray Price album, but I have a natural predisposition towards country music that I've been trying to work through over the past few years. I've realized that I actually quite like a lot of the older stuff the genre has to offer, as well as some more contemporary acts from its underground or midstream. the formulaic (and increasingly right-wing) country mainstream over the past 25 years had been my main exposure to country music as a whole, so I developed a pretty dim view of it which I have been glad to steadily correct over the years with albums like this. there's a certain mixture here which is pretty standard for country music (at least I think so), but there's something about it that's just so moving! George Jones' incredible voice; these deeply sad songs about a lonely man at the top; the simple acoustic guitar strumming, the string arrangements, the plaintive picked basslines, the Jordanaires on backing vocals; and especially that damn pedal steel. the titular "Grand Tour" is a tour of the house where Jones and his beloved used to live, but she left him, and you really feel for him as he goes through the place and describes all the things she left behind, or even just the places she would sit or lay down. it's a real heartbreaker, and they just keep coming as you go further down this tracklist. the worst is when you think it's gonna be a happy song, but then it becomes a sad song instead. a few examples: "Darlin'" starts like a "put your arms around me" type of love song, but it quickly turns out to be a "please don't go" type of love song; "Borrowed Angel" is about a beautiful woman, but Jones is only having a one-night stand with her, so his romantic needs are left unattended; and "She Told Me So" is about getting cucked! (that last one might not be too sad depending on who you are, actually.) Jones breaks character a little bit for "Our Private Life", probably as some levity to cap off the previous ten sad-sack cuts, with a comedic number about musicians that act out and get negative things written about them in the papers, an archetype which he fit uncannily well at the time. I'd also be remiss not to mention my favorite song here, "Pass Me By (If You're Only Passing Through", which is a total earworm and contains my favorite Jones performance on the album! all told, this is a great slice of Nashville that you can easily fit into a lunch break. strong 8/10.

if I've said it once on this 1001 Albums journey, I've said it more than a few times: while I can see how this was game-changing for the time, it leaves me a bit cold. (naming your forward-thinking house project Leftfield also strikes me as just a bit on the nose, but I'm not gonna dock points for that.) this is the album that the term "progressive house" was coined to describe, and "progressive" doesn't quite mean the same thing in house as it does in rock or soul or what have you. Leftfield's left-field qualities don't manifest as a proclivity for odd time signatures or non-functional harmony; instead, they come from the group's lengthy, minimalist approach to songwriting, informed largely by dub and reggae music. alongside the use of plenty of guest singers from the reggae world (a common trait for British electronic albums of this era), we've also got Toni Halliday and John Lydon, inclusions which undoubtedly drew the rock audience into the fold. I can appreciate all of this, but at the end of the day, I just find most of these songs overly long, with some particularly dated percussion and synthesizer sounds at times. plus, at 70 minutes, you can tell they really wanted to fill that CD out. maybe I'd warm up to this a bit if I could hear it in a club or a concert hall, where they probably meant for me to hear this.

the German take on prog rock became known in the English-language music press, somewhat derisively, as krautrock. Faust said, "you want krautrock? we'll give it to ya," and released a song literally called "Krautrock". it's kind of a power move! I'm a pretty big fan of the albums Can was releasing around the same time as this, but this was my first proper full-album Faust experience. as compared to their colleagues in the British Isles or on the American continent, German bands like Faust placed a lot more emphasis on timbre and avant-garde sound experiments; it certainly sets them apart, but their albums can often feel a bit piecemeal as a result. apart from the stunning 12-minute drone piece "Krautrock" I mentioned before, you've got shorter, pop-adjacent pieces like "The Sad Skinhead" or "It's a Bit of a Pain" and longer, improvisational works like "Jennifer" and "Giggy Smile". I enjoy quite a few of these songs, but they don't often feel like they have very much to do with one another. I can definitely appreciate the fact that the band runs through such a wide gamut of sounds, though! I could easily see this smorgasbord approach to structuring an album panning out better, so I'll have to go digging through the rest of Faust's albums to see if they can nail it! this was the final album they released in their original incarnation before literally disappearing for several years, so I guess it'd be best to go backwards. decent 8/10.

an album that exemplifies a lot of what made 90s alt-rock so captivating. volume and distortion pushed to the brink, but always with an ear for a solid tune underneath it all. "Cherub Rock" and "Today" and "Hummer" and "Soma" and "Geek U.S.A." and so many other tracks on Siamese Dream follow that simple combination to such a brilliant extreme. the record's famously strained sessions resulted in a thing of real beauty! "Disarm" and "Luna" feature some incredible string arrangements that really heighten the drama of both songs. there's also the extremely slow-burning "Silverfuck", and do I really need to say much about "Mayonaise"? a dynamic, touching, lush slice of dreamy, crunchy rock n roll heaven. light 9/10.

with a name fit for one of those "Worst Band Names of All Time!" listicles and a roster of extremely kooky songs (mostly written by Annette Tucker and Nancy Mantz), the Electric Prunes and their self-titled album are certainly an interesting glimpse into a certain time and place! psychedelia was all the rage in the sixties, and the Prunes were definitely attempting to strike that iron while it was hot. the band's most successful single, "I Had Too Much to Dream (Last Night)", is a dramatic, multi-phase song in which the narrator laments the beautiful woman in his dreams whom he will never meet. the soft-loud dynamic contrast from the verse to the chorus is accompanied by a sudden increase in tempo, and there's a few fun harmonic moments (check out the two parallel minor chords half a step apart when the band first kicks into that faster tempo). it's a fun, spooky garage rock jam that's become one of the better-remembered curiosities of the psych boom. I thought this might be a bit of a lopsided album experience on the basis that my copy of the album is actually named after this song; and, yes, I can confirm that "I Had Too Much to Dream" is easily the best song here. there's some other serviceable songs—the three tracks following the opener are an enjoyable enough run—but when the deeper cuts aren't uninteresting, they're dated in a way that's totally bizarre. (there's a kind of ironic, shitpost-esque vibe to some of this psych stuff 1001 Albums... has thrown at me.) "The King Is in the Counting House" features lead singer James Lowe (RIP) putting on an English accent over a Baroque arrangement, complete with a harpsichord; "Sold to the Highest Bidder" is some sort of weird auction house narrative; and "The Toonerville Trolley" is a song called "The Toonerville Trolley". so, while I ultimately didn't enjoy this album the whole way through very much, I think it's still worth a glance just for how much of a historical relic it is. the band chose their name as a joke and stuck with it because people would remember it, and they were very right about that. light 4/10.

did these guys cheat, lie and steal their way to the top? maybe a little bit. it's well-known by now that a lot of songs in the Led Zeppelin discography were, um, heavily inspired by pre-existing material. most notably for this debut album of theirs, "Dazed and Confused" is pretty much directly stolen from Jake Holmes, and Holmes has never, ever been properly credited on any issue of this album as the song's author. (the closest LZ has come has been saying the song was "inspired by" Holmes. what a joke.) plus, the guitar arrangement of "Black Mountain Side" (adapted from the folk song "Blackwaterside") was stolen from Bert Jansch, who has also never been credited. ion_eye's popular review goes into the specifics if you're interested. long story short: there's definitely examples of plagiarism throughout LZ's discography that are worth criticizing, but the extent of, and intent behind, many of the misattributions in the songwriter credits on their records are often blown out of proportion by people seeking to discredit them. plus, there's no denying that these were four guys who could play the absolute shit out of their respective instruments. on that basis, this is a tremendous debut album which, despite being released just a few months after the band was formed, often feels like the work of a group fully realized. Jimmy Page not only directs a lot of the action here as the band's guitarist, but also as its producer. this is one of the first rock albums where the engineering and mix really starts to feel like something that a rock band making a record nowadays would still seek to emulate. rock albums throughout the 60s often have a much lighter, boxed-in sound; by comparison, this album sounds raw, all-encompassing, and it often borders on the metallic. for as much as we've heard some of these songs a bajillion times, the degree to which LZ were pushing the envelope with the sonics here definitely needs to be appreciated. even the acoustic guitars sound kinda heavy! and for all the plagiarism allegations plaguing the material, the true originals really shine here, especially the shorter rockers. I start to tune out just a little bit on some of the slower, longer jams like "You Shook Me" (co-written by J.B. Lenoir, another artist Led Zeppelin forgot to credit until much later). light 8/10.

much has been made about Springsteen's pessimistic outlook on the world across these songs—it was around the time of Nebraska's release in the 80s that Springsteen first started seeing a professional about his depression after years of denial—as well as the boldness of his decision to make this sparse, solo acoustic album his followup to The River, a lavish E Street Band-assisted double-LP that was also his first #1 in the US. it's also notable as one of the first major DIY recordings; these songs were all recorded on a four-track and were intended to be demos for a full-band album that wasn't released until last year's Nebraska '82 reissue. it's interesting, actually, to listen to this in such close proximity to the release of Electric Nebraska and the Deliver Me From Nowhere biopic, which is focused primarily on the making of this album. I dunno, it just seems interesting to focus on the Nebraska era compared to, say, a more polished and explosive record like Born to Run. I think it just goes to show how quietly influential Nebraska has been on rock music, especially in the underground, over the past few decades; and when the songs are this high-caliber, it's no wonder why the haunting mood of this album has persisted in the minds of Springsteen fans to this day! sometimes all you need is a guitar, a harmonica and the truth. Springsteen's typical working-class narratives are in abundance here, but the stories themselves are decidedly darker than usual. it starts pretty much right away; the opening title track is about Charles Starkweather, an Actual Serial Killer who murdered 10 people in Nebraska and Wyoming while on the run from the law with his underage girlfriend; it's immediately followed by "Atlantic City", a song about a man who turns to working for the mob in the titular city, in a last-ditch effort to make ends meet after years of honest work fail to relieve his debts. there's plenty of grizzly narratives to follow,—some less fictional than others—but some of the most interesting tracks are the ones where Springsteen gets autobiographical ("Mansion on the Hill", "Used Cars" and "My Father's House"), opening up about his own lower-class economic background and the envy he felt at those who were more well-off than his family growing up. it's also interesting to listen to this album against the current backdrop of ICE raids and foreign occupations and extrajudicial killings and other heinous actions that have marked being American in 2026, and in just a couple weeks too. many of these songs are about blue-collar workers who try their whole lives to amount to something, but never do. it's one of the most recurring themes in the Springsteen discography, and it's one which gets more and more relevant with time. while Nebraska will certainly make you reflect on the dark side of American life, Springsteen is courteous enough to offer a bit of levity, however morbid, on the closing track. "at the end of every hard-earned day," even at the lowest points in their lives, "people find some reason to believe." I hope I can continue to believe in something. decent 9/10.

rapper-singer Lauryn Hill comes in strong on her debut album as a solo artist, conceived of in the wake of her trio, the Fugees, going on hiatus. "Lost Ones", is a hard-knocking, barred-up introduction which boldly declares Hill's desire to prove she can go it on her own, and has some particularly strong words for, let's face it, fellow Fugee Wyclef Jean. I mention "Lost Ones" out the gates not just because it's the first proper song on Miseducation, but it's also my favorite by a pretty comfortable distance. yeah, unfortunately I'm just a little bit cool on this one compared to most, and there's a few reasons for that. now, this album famously swept the Grammys, and I think it did so for pretty good reason. Hill is at the top of her game here as a vocalist, waging a war on both melodic and rapped fronts that's really impressive. the music is extremely well-produced, a more radio-friendly approach to the neo-soul sound that was shifting the ground beneath the feet of Black American music in the 90s. and that's sort of my main personal gripe; from a production standpoint, this feels a little too inside-the-lines to me compared to something like Brown Sugar or Baduizm. I think it's good that we have a take on this sound like the one Miseducation presents—balance in all things and whatnot—but as a musician, when I listen to neo-soul records like this I really like to hear other musicians digging in. songs like "Superstar", "When It Hurts So Bad" or "Every Ghetto, Every City" feel like they're just a little too polite for me on the instrumental front. there's also Robert Glasper's allegations that Hill failed to properly credit the musicians who performed on this album as writers for many of its songs; Hill is credited as sole songwriter on many of these tracks, and that just doesn't feel right to me. this isn't me doubting her abilities as a musician, mind you; she more than proves with this album that she could sing and rap with the best of them, male or female. I'm just saying that we all saw her play guitar on her horrific MTV Unplugged show. and finally, there's the fact that, to this day, this is Lauryn Hill's only solo album. while the strength of her performances here and on The Score speak for themselves, I feel like this surely has to be disqualifying as far as including her in any kind of "GOAT conversation," right? even Jay Electronica, who was famous for years for failing to release any albums at all, has four of them out now! and if half of his albums can be trash (which they are), surely Hill could lower her standards just a little and follow this up with something, anything more substantial than that MTV Unplugged show, which is still her most recent solo material to this day. I feel like in order to be in the running for Greatest of All Time, you have to be fucking up the game for more than two albums, right? I know she's done quite a bit as a featured artist since then, but it's clear that her erratic behavior, in both her personal and professional life, has really kneecapped her ability to truly capture the public like she did in '98. she doesn't seem to respect her fans very much! so, yes, while Miseducation has lots of great moments (the D'Angelo duet "Nothing Even Matters" and the cover of Frankie Valli's "Can't Take My Eyes Off of You" are my other big highlights), I feel like it's lost a bit of its luster with me over the years. if anything, I find myself going back to The Score more! I have to respect what Hill accomplished here, and just how important this album is in the history of Black American music (especially how many fellow women it inspired!), but it doesn't leave quite the same impact on me as it used to. strong 7/10.

this was Jack White's first statement on record as a solo artist following the dissolution of The White Stripes. it reviewed quite well when it came out, and I think it's partially because people were clamoring for new music from White at the time. it had been five years, give or take, since both the release of the final White Stripes album, Icky Thump, and the announcement of their hiatus that followed. the year before White released Blunderbuss, they officially broke up. so, what does Jack White's music sound like when he strikes out on his own? well, it still sounds quite a lot like the Stripes—no surprises there. White's proclivity for catchy, raw blues rock is very much intact, and he's writing songs in a vein that will be eminently familiar to anyone with a even passing knowledge of White Stripes hits. the major differences come down to the arrangements and the production, both of which are much more intricate and lavish. there's more musicians in the mix playing a wider variety of instruments. Meg White's drumming is often a punchline, but her absence here was actually quite noticeable for me. like, sure, you might say that the drums on Blunderbuss (mostly played by Carla Azar of Autolux) are "better" or more "technically proficient" compared to Meg White's, but they're certainly not nearly as memorable or iconic. if you've already listened to the multiple White Stripes records to be found in 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, I don't see how Blunderbuss necessarily lives up to the book's title. it's well-written, well-played, well-recorded, the works! I'm just not enough of a Jack White fan to get more than that out of the listening experience. decent 6/10.

90s electronic acts like Boards of Canada, who created a type of electronic dance music ("EDM") that's more for the mind than the body, were tagged by the music press as "intelligent" dance musicians ("IDM"), a label which all of them seem to hate a lot. the reason is obvious and has been discussed at length: the implication that all other dance music is stupid. listening to Boards of Canada's debut album, though, there is definitely some sort of intelligence on display that sets it apart from many other electronic records of its kind. however, it's much more of an emotional intelligence, rather than the kind of intelligence which values knowledge purely for its own sake. that title, Music Has the Right to Children, gestures at the feelings this music communicates without stating them outright. this music is well-known to evoke feelings of childhood nostalgia in many listeners, owing to its hazy combination of spoken word samples from 70s American television programs, shape-shifting analog synths, hard-knocking drum loops and recordings of the natural world. when all of these elements come together on cuts like "Turquoise Hexagon Sun" or "Rue the Whirl", the results are captivating in all of their subtleties. decent 9/10.

my second Wailers album for this challenge following Exodus, and arguably the one that put the international spotlight on reggae music as a whole. this came out on the Jamaican-then-British label Island, which also sported a tremendous roster of rock and folk acts at this time in the early 70s, resulting in some pretty major crossover appeal. this album is dripping with pocket: Aston "Family Man" Barrett's tremendous basslines, Peter Tosh's syncopated guitar strokes, Carlton Barrett and Bunny Wailer cutting it up on their various drums and percussion instruments. there's part of me that finds reggae almost too chill, too laid-back; but I have to admit, it's fun listening to the rhythm section here dance on the razor's edge! these are some really delicate grooves played with so much care. plus, you have Bob Marley tying the whole thing together as a singer and truth-teller, and he's kind of undeniable. not to mention the vocal harmonies! light 8/10.

despite standouts like the opening "Dirge" (essentially one long crescendo) and the Iggy Pop-led "Aisha" (apparently a top 10 hit in the UK), the blend of psychedelic rock, trip hop and big beat presented by Death in Vegas here largely runs together into an incoherent blob. at least it's a nice-sounding blob, with a combination of acoustic, electric and electronic instrumentation that's very 1999. strong 4/10.

everybody has to mention Nirvana covering three of these songs for MTV Unplugged in New York, sometimes with the implication that nobody would care about this album, or the Meat Puppets, were it not for Nirvana cementing them as parts of rock history. however, even just one listen to Meat Puppets II makes you realize that, well, this had to have been good enough to make it to the ears of Kurt Cobain to begin with! when I reviewed Dinosaur Jr.'s Bug, I remarked briefly on how SST was one of the premier labels for forward-thinking rock bands in the 80s. the Meat Puppets were certainly one of those, so their presence on SST's roster at the time is no shock to me! this album showcases their fierce combination of uptempo punk and vigorous country rock ("Split Myself in Two", "Lost", "Climbing") interspersed with slower cuts that border on psychedelic ("Plateau", "Oh, Me", "I'm a Mindless Idiot"). it's all tied together from some extremely anxious vocals from Curt Kirkwood, who often feels like he's singing just outside of his comfortable range. one of my favorite tracks here, "Magic Toy Missing", is a brilliant 80-second instrumental showcase of Kirkwood's instrumental synergy on guitar, with his brother—bassist Cris Kirkwood—and drummer Derrick Bostrom. interesting couplet to read in 2026, from "Plateau": "well the many hands began to scan around for the next plateau / some said it was Greenland and some said Mexico." light 9/10.

finally, 154 albums after Birth of the Cool, I'm back in the world of medium-to-large ensemble jazz. this is the first big band album I've been assigned for this challenge, and it's also a truly pivotal one! in 1958, the roster of musicians in the Count Basie Orchestra was a "who's who" of past, present and future names in big band jazz. alongside longtime Basie sidemen including (but not limited to) lead alto saxophonist Marshall Royal, guitarist Freddie Green, trumpeter Snooky Young and drummer Sonny Payne, you also have future big band heavyweights like Thad Jones and burgeoning small-group leaders like Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis. long story short, and pardon the pun: this band is explosive, even if it doesn't quite match up to Basie's 30s lineups in terms of star power. the solos from Davis are especially memorable! this "Atomic" band is captured here performing a set of original compositions by Neal Hefti, who would go on to become most well-known as the composer of the famous "na-na-na-na" theme tune for the 1966 Batman TV series. despite his greatest successes being in the world of Hollywood, Hefti's legacy in the big band world as one of its finest composers and arrangers is well-known among aficionados, and the 11 charts he penned for Basie here did a lot to establish his reputation at this earlier stage of his career. the bulk of them are based on a 12-bar blues form, and it's really intriguing to see just how many different ways he was able to approach that simple formula. the melodies of the tunes themselves are memorable, but Hefti also goes above and beyond to make sure that the shout choruses, the backgrounds behind soloists, the drum setups, and every other little detail is perfectly placed and accounted for. big band jazz is so often about the little moments that make up the bigger compositions, and there's more than enough of those on The Atomic Mr. Basie to go around. the extreme staccato horn phrasing on "The Kid from Red Bank"; the return of the melody on "After Supper" when Hefti doubles the melody up an octave in the alto saxophones; the call-and-response between all three horn subsections (trumpets, trombones and saxes) on "Teddy the Toad" and "Whirly-Bird"; the sloooooow bends in the melody of "Midnite Blue"; the incredible shout chorus of "Splanky" where the whole horn section leans way, *way* back. the sheer level of depth in these compositions, and in the performances Basie's band gives them, is truly staggering. 10/10.

Jah Wobble (which is the stage name of a white guy, if you can believe that) is best known as the original bassist of Public Image Ltd., performing on their first two albums and heavily informing their stylistic trajectory. PIL combined John Lydon's punk proclivities with a heavy dose of Wobble's own interest in dub reggae and other international musical styles. Wobble's solo venture Invaders of the Heart started putting out LPs about a decade after he left PIL. while the Invaders share his propensity for a truly global kind of music, the center of their work is less in punk rock, and more in the realm of electronic music, which had really taken off in that intervening decade. the ten tracks here present a wide array of stylistic influences, but the sounds of downtempo and dub are always at the center. it's a pretty consistently chill vibe for 51 minutes, which I think might be to its detriment somewhat. no one track really stands out over any other, and the overall result is kind of bland as a result. Sinéad O'Connor shows up for the first track though, which is cool! and I enjoy Wobble's basslines. decent 5/10.

Justin Timberlake released The 20/20 Experience when I was in my junior year of high school, a time in my life when I thought very highly of my ill-informed opinions about music. one of those opinions was that pop music was below me, and not worth consideration compared to the progressive metal and jazz albums I held in such high esteem. see, when you're a teenage straight cis boy raised on Internet forums like I was, you're predisposed to hate on shit, mainly as a poorly-defined defense mechanism. once I started realizing I wasn't straight, cis, or male, the house of cards started to collapse. it was around this time that The 20/20 Experience was there to tell me how much of a stick I had up my ass regarding my beliefs on pop music. even if I'm not huge on every chart-topping artist that's come and gone in my lifetime, I like to think that I have enough room in my cold, dead heart to enjoy it here and there. I say all this because I've been hearing some of the singles on Justified, Timberlake's debut as a solo artist following *NSYNC going on hiatus, for nearly my entire life. this album came out when I was 5 years old, and I'm pretty sure "Cry Me a River" was one of the first then-new pop songs I remember hearing on the radio. I think, somewhere deep down, I knew I liked this stuff all along. maybe my teenage self just didn't want to be perceived a certain way for liking it. but, at a certain point, you have to stop caring what other people think so much! plus, there are some undeniably amazing songs on Justified, pop or no. the bulk of the material on here was produced by legendary hit-making duo The Neptunes, including several songs that were originally offered to Michael Jackson. if MJ was offered "Like I Love You" (featuring Clipse!) or "Rock Your Body", he's insane for having turned them down. along with the aforementioned "Cry Me a River", one of four songs on the album produced by Timbaland, you're looking at three of the finest pop singles of their era! catchy melodies, great lead and backing vocals from Timberlake, and some fantastic session musician performances all abound. those drum pockets! can I also just say I appreciate the use of distinct bridge sections on a lot of the tracks here? Neptunes-produced records like "Take It From Here" or "Let's Take a Ride" must be why Tyler, The Creator's always going on about bridges, those special moments in songs that only happen once. unfortunately, not every song is a major hitter, and the B-side definitely shows that. after "Rock Your Body", the bag becomes much more mixed. however, I'd like to give special mention to the closing ballad "Never Again", a Brian McKnight production with some electrifying, dramatic chord changes that deserves a reevaluation. strong 6/10.

Holger Czukay is primarily known for his work as the bassist of Can, one of the pillars of the German prog-rock offshoot which would become known as krautrock. Czukay's relationship to the avant-garde music world, especially the burgeoning world of electronic music, came through having been a student of Karlheinz Stockhausen in the sixties; Stockhausen's interest in electronics as a new frontier for sonic expression is very evident in Can's work, and it may be even more evident on Movies, his debut album as a solo artist. many of this album's sounds were collected through pure happenstance, via scanning frequencies on a shortwave radio. it leads to some really interesting moments, particularly on "Persian Love", which is an even earlier example of samples being used for lead vocals than My Life in the Bush of Ghosts! the second tracks on each side of the vinyl here both give way to some lengthy sonic odysseys, held together by fellow ex-Can member Jaki Liebezeit playing his trademark motorik drum grooves. apart from the aforementioned "Persian Love", I'm once again not sure that this is really "Must Hear" material, especially considering there's actual Can albums in this book which I haven't even made it to yet! it's definitely more interesting than a lot of other albums I've been given so far, though, so I gotta give it that. light 7/10.

this is my favorite album of all time so, as far as the rest of this challenge goes, I guess that means it's all downhill from here! I've been playing the tenor saxophone since I was in sixth grade and, for me, A Love Supreme has represented different things at different points in my journey with the instrument on which both I and John Coltrane found our artistic voices. I started getting interested in jazz in junior high school, and so I thought I would do my due diligence and find some popular jazz albums, just to get a feel for what it could sound like. I figured, where better to go than (what's usually considered) the best album by, arguably, the greatest player of my instrument in all of human history? some of the reviews here are listeners lamenting that their expectations vs. the final product of the album didn't exactly match up. if you're just dipping your toes into the world of jazz like I was, I think that's an understandable reaction; I mean, after all, it's more or less the one I had at first! "was that it? I'm not sure I got it, or even what 'it' is." at the risk of sounding pretentious or elitist, I think A Love Supreme is one of those albums that gets better and better the more context you have for it. there's the context of jazz as a genre generally, which is pretty easy to get through just listening to (and reading about) a lot of it. but there's also the context of Coltrane's artistic trajectory, and the world he lived in as a musician and a human being. from my perspective as a (less skilled) musician, what you have here is four masters of their craft operating at the peak of their abilities. Coltrane's facility as a saxophonist is self-evident, from the intense, rambling face-offs with his rhythm section on "Resolution" and "Pursuance" to the plaintive intensity of his vocal-like performance on "Psalm". but, of course, there's also McCoy Tyner conducting a seance at the piano with his powerful left-hand power chords and ethereal, ambiguous right-hand chord voicings; Elvin Jones playing for his life at nearly every moment, with some particularly intense crashing and bashing at the best moments; and Jimmy Garrison's level-headed bass work acting as the keystone holding the entire thing together. these four musicians are known today as Coltrane's "classic" quartet; they're frequently cited as one of the greatest small groups in the history of jazz, and their performances on A Love Supreme are ample evidence in favor of that distinction. if you've ever tried to play jazz, on any instrument, you know how tricky it can be, and especially how vulnerable it can feel. the four compositions that make up this LP are all very simple at their roots, but to play them (or anything) as fiercely as this band does requires a deep level of awareness, both of one's own performance as well as that of your fellow players. Tyner, Garrison and Jones all played in various incarnations of Coltrane's groups throughout the early sixties, but it was once the four of them truly found each other, on a musical level, that they began to make the albums that would etch them into history as one of The Bands. A Love Supreme is also well-known as Coltrane's ode to his higher power. in the liner notes here, he calls it "God" due to his Christian background, but he was famously interested in a variety of religious traditions. personally, I'm a lapsed Catholic, but the ecstatic feeling I get from playing or listening to jazz at a high intensity level like this is probably the closest thing I have in my life to a religious experience. there's a profound power in this music that words can't really describe. when you listen through Coltrane's albums up to this point, you hear him starting to figure out more about the inner workings of music, then of his instrument, then of himself. listening to that journey play out in music is profoundly moving. if I think about it too long, I might cry! the best. 11/10.

Randy Newman is most famous for people from my generation (either the youngest millennials or the oldest zoomers) for his work in film scores, particularly for Pixar; I'll readily admit this is the first time I've taken a serious dive into any of his early work that actually put him on the map; this is definitely no lightweight, "You've Got a Friend in Me" type of romp! Newman's early work is famous for its use of dark, sarcastic humor to prove points that are often the opposite of what the songs appear to be about on the surface. for instance, the cuts that seem to be odes to a higher power ("He Gives Us All His Love" and "God's Song") are actually bitter condemnations of the idea of religious faith itself; and the political numbers ("Sail Away", "Political Science" etc.) appear to promote American patriotism, but quickly reveal themselves to be takedowns of jingoism, xenophobia and imperialist violence. many of these tracks are only around two minutes (or even less!), but they feel so complete as statements on the world at large. the orchestral arrangements on these 12 tracks are also to die for! there's a real Tin Pan Alley/early Broadway quality to this record that I find very alluring, from Newman's piano playing all the way to the strings and brass. i especially like the dissonant notes thrown into the texture on "Old Man", an especially dark number that sees an atheist son saying a final goodbye to his dying atheist father, whom nobody else came to see in his final days alive. light 8/10.

along with Suede, the Auteurs were one of the earliest nineties groups to hit on what would become known as the Britpop sound. this was a return made by many British alt-rock bands at that time to the catchy, hook-driven songwriting style of their ancestors in the sixties whom they had come to idolize, combined with dark, honest lyrics about the state of British life and culture. the Auteurs' leader and songwriter, Luke Haines, embodies all of these aspects quite well, although I would be lying if I said these songs don't all kind of run into one another. plus, and I believe I've spoken to this before, the extremely downtrodden, angry mood of certain Britpop bands really puts me off for some reason. I guess you had to be there, "there" being Britain in the nineties. I am but a lowly American, all I know is blind optimism in spite of all evidence! whereas Suede would go on to become one of the "big four" of bands associated with Britpop (along with Blur, Pulp and my archenemies Oasis), it seems like the Auteurs had a more niche spot in the scene. the American press wrote them off as Suede soundalikes; although New Wave released a month before Suede's debut album, Suede had been together and playing shows for a few years longer. I guess that's just the way the cracker crumbles.

T. Rex are another one of those British rock bands who seismically shifted the sound and style of music in their home nation, but whose impact overseas (particularly in my own home country of the US) was more limited. that being said, the influence of their frontman Marc Bolan and the songs he wrote for Electric Warrior can be felt in a ton of future rock music from both sides of the pond. this is credited as the first glam rock album ever recorded, and it catapulted Bolan to an astounding, albeit briefly lived, level of fame in the British Isles. plenty of subsequent bands in both Britain and America were formed by people who heard records like this and iterated on their successes, resulting in the creation of rock musics like punk, indie, alternative and many more. personally, I've heard "Jeepster" and "Bang a Gong" quite a few times over the years, but the rest of this album was brand-new to me. that being said, a lot of the people involved in its production were not! as I quickly came to realize, before Tony Visconti was known as the guy who produced nearly all of David Bowie's classic albums, he was known as the producer for T. Rex. his touch as a producer and musical curator here is unmistakable in much the same way it would be on next year's Ziggy Stardust and many of the subsequent Bowie collaborations which I'm much more familiar with. plus, there's some recognizable session players in the mix here: King Crimson's Ian McDonald on saxophone, prolific session trumpeter Burt Collins on flugelhorn, and the one and only Rick Wakeman playing keys on "Bang a Gong", recorded shortly before he joined Yes (and two months before the release of Bowie's Hunky Dory, another album where he plays the snot out of some piano)! oh, also Flo & Eddie. despite all the star power, I think my expectations for this album were a little different. I was not prepared for quite this level of camp! a fella like me sees this album title (ELECTRIC WARRIOR!!!) paired with this incredible cover of Bolan wielding a guitar in front of a massive stack of amps, and I expect the riffs to come out and stay out, like a bulge through a pair of spandex pants you can't look away from. some of the tracks here definitely do that, but many of them are quite silly. the lyrics in particular are almost always silly, actually. I'd like to return to this with the knowledge that this album sounds Like This, and see if I can meet it more where it's at the next time. as it stands, I liked it quite a bit, but there I go again with my preconceived notions. decent 7/10.

on the debut Jesus and Mary Chain album, The Velvet Underground once again prove themselves to be one of the most pivotal bands in recorded music history. the Reid brothers were very clearly inspired by the simplicity and memorability of many a classic TVU track when they wrote the songs for Psychocandy; you could make a drinking game out of listening for when they start rocking between the I chord and the IV chord, a very Lou Reed-esque move. that being said, you'd never mistake their band for a Velvets ripoff, on account of the near-constant barrage of distortion and (especially) amplifier feedback coating just about every track. the combination of catchy melodies and noise walls the J&MC cooked up here would go on to be a pivotal influence on the shoegaze movement later in the decade, with the heavy distortion taking on more of a dreamlike quality. it's interesting to compare that later stuff to an album like Psychocandy, which remains so resolutely dark in spite of the relatively upbeat songwriting on the surface. decent 8/10.

Barry Adamson's career has taken him to a ton of different places, from punk rock bassist to film composer and remixer. Moss Side Story, his debut solo album, sort of encapsulates all of those interests into a single project; it's a soundtrack for a nonexistent film noir, complete with smoky saxophones, eerie strings, MIDI sequences, sampling, live instruments, what have you. you could call it acousmatic, given how difficult it can be to place just what's making all of these freaky sounds. for as interesting as this record can get timbrally, it's definitely a little bit kneecapped by the concept. it almost fits the nonexistent film it's trying to score too well, to such an extent that it actually feels incomplete without a visual component! I guess I should watch that David Lynch movie he worked on. decent 7/10.

the band Manassas was, for two albums, Stephen Stills' primary songwriting vehicle. he made a couple records as a more proper solo artist following the demise of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, but it seems like the formation of Manassas (and the recording of their debut album) really inspired Stills, if the stories of its multi-day, sleep-deprived recording sessions are to be believed. it also seems like Stills believed strongly in a lot of the material they cut, too, since they debuted with a double-LP. given that this was certified Gold by the RIAA within a month of its release, I guess his instincts were pretty good! Manassas is organized into four sides by general genre category; sides A and D are mostly for the rockers, side B is folk and country tunes, and side C is kind of a smorgasbord. it's easy to see why there's such a huge range of music on here, even if it doesn't result in the most coherent front-to-back listening experience. there were around a dozen musicians involved in the creation of these tracks, mainly the septet featured on the album cover. even 7 musicians is going to result in quite a lot of different influences floating around the room, let alone 12! while I do think that Manassas pulls off these stylistic shifts with a lot of tact, and the overall production of this album is pretty darn pristine, I just think it's much too long. double-LPs are a tricky, tricky thing to pull off; this is one I probably would've cut down to a single. let your musicians sleep once in a while, Stephen! strong 6/10.

an unexpected surprise for me: I really enjoyed an album by one of Britpop's more esoteric acts! these are some fast-paced, hyperactive power pop songs that are utterly dazzling in their wit and the intensity of the performances involved. I can't believe the members of Supergrass were teenagers when they recorded this! their abilities as songwriters are far beyond their years. there's a lot of fun harmonic surprises that made me think of RYM beloveds 12 Rods; I'm pretty sure they were listening to this when they were writing Split Personalities, another pop rock record with a ton of flashy compositional chops under the hood. across these 13 tracks, Supergrass pretty much never let up on the catchy melodies, and they're almost always paired with some frenetic drumming, deep vocal layering and funky guitar strutting. never a dull moment in these 40 minutes! strong 9/10.

this is the second album by both PJ Harvey and her band PJ Harvey (with bassist Stephen Vaughan and drummer/backing vocalist Rob Ellis). while it was the last album by the band, it would prove to be a breakout success for the woman the band was named for! with 12 original songs (one of which—"Man-Size"—appears in two wildly contrasting versions) and a Bob Dylan cover, Harvey and her trio deliver a set of passionate performances, balancing the raw, dark, often sexual energy of her lyricism with a keen sense of structure and dynamics. the title track, for instance, obviously draws you in with that incredibly quiet introduction; you're left waiting for the moment where things are going to explode, as they so often do with rock records, and when Harvey and co. finally pop off, the results are beyond gratifying. this is also one of the best Steve Albini engineering jobs I've heard so far; he really manages to capture the feeling of what it's like to be in a room listening to a band just *play*. light 9/10.

definitely the best live rock album I've heard for this challenge so far. I came into this a little hesitant about whether or not a live record was the best way to introduce myself to the Allman Brothers Band, another one of those bands I remember hearing on classic rock radio as a kid, but had never experienced in a full album context. well, it turns out that pretty much all the ABB material I knew up until now was released after the tragic death of co-founder and co-lead guitarist Duane Allman, whose performances on Derek and The Dominos' Layla were the biggest highlight of my listening experience with that (otherwise incredibly dull) album when it was one of the first five albums I got assigned for this challenge. I'm glad to have finally listened to a record that captures his guitar playing with his own band, where he clearly feels most at home. the way this classic lineup of the Allman Brothers Band (with its unusual twinning lead guitarists and drummers) played blues rock is shot through with heavy doses of jazz; it's well-known that jazz musicians were becoming more interested in rock music around the late 60s and early 70s, so it's interesting to hear how bands like this responded to that cultural exchange from the other side. you'd never mistake this for a fusion record or even a jazz-rock record, but there's a spontaneity and a looseness here that's hard to ignore. the shorter tracks are all based around some variation of the standard 12-bar blues form; "Stormy Monday" is the pretty obvious standout, with its jazz-like reharmonization of the classic blues progression and a butter-churning tempo. that being said, you and I both know the best moments happen when the track lengths go over 10 minutes. "You Don't Love Me" is an unusual 13.5-bar blues that incorporates a blood-pumping guitar-drum cadenza in the back half; "In Memory of Elizabeth Reed" sounds, at multiple points, adjacent to the progressive rock movement that was also burgeoning at the time (although I think Gregg Allman's keys come across way more raw and real than, like, ELP's or something); and the less said about the 23-minute "Whipping Post", the better. that's not because it sucks, but rather because you should go out and experience it for yourself. if more jam bands jammed like this, I would listen to way more jam bands. decent 9/10.

believe it or not, the Doors have nine studio albums. L.A. Woman, their sixth, is usually treated as the end of the band proper, what with Jim Morrison's untimely demise at the age of 27 (and shut the hell up about that Club, won't you? dying young is tragic, not some statistical phenomenon). it's funny that the most recent Doors album I got thrown for this was the debut, and now here I am talking about their last one with contributions from one of rock music's most iconic frontmen (unless we count the posthumous patch job An American Prayer). the previous Doors album, Morrison Hotel, shifted their focus back towards the blues after several albums marked by a heavy psychedelic influence; L.A. Woman doubles the hell down on that front. the band itself is playing at a really high level, but of course Morrison always pulls the most focus. his vocal performances are huskier and more declamatory than ever, and the range of dynamics he carries this album through are pretty darn wide! numbers like the title track, "The Changeling" or "Been Down So Long" feature him at pretty high points of energy that are contrasted beautifully by slow, quiet tracks like "Cars Hiss By My Window", "Hyacinth House" or "Riders on the Storm", a brilliant closing track that sends the Doors off on an eerie, ambiguous note. strong 8/10.

you know how Neil Young can almost sing, but not quite, but you don't really mind since his songs are so strong and his band is so great? that's the impression I get of Mercury Rev's lead singer, except the songs underneath are obnoxiously twee and extremely undercooked. bassist and producer Dave Fridmann was helping his friends in The Flaming Lips craft The Soft Bulletin at the same time as he was making Deserter's Songs with Mercury Rev, and unfortunately I think the Lips made the better LP by a long shot. with this MR album, it's another case of a kooky, unusual sounds papering over a bunch of snoozeworthy songs. they got Levon Helm on here to play a variation of Pachelbel's Canon, a song mostly played by literal children! the orchestral arrangements sound incredibly stiff, tacky and above all, fake; the nod to Brahms' Lullaby on "Endlessly" made me think that the band was actively trying to put me to sleep. never a good sign. strong 3/10.

the second and final Elton John album for this challenge, and yet I have like a billion Elvis Costello albums left to go. about 120 albums ago, I looked at the other John album in the book, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, and liked it quite a bit despite some of the typical issues with 70s double-LPs starting to set in (namely the presence of at least one song I skip every time I return to it). Madman Across the Water being a single LP definitely mitigates that issue; all nine tracks here are very good! it's just a matter of which album I prefer musically, and that's actually a bit of a tough call. Madman is your prototypical Elton John experience; beautiful Bernie Taupin stanzas paired with some tremendous, quasi-progressive piano tunes and gorgeous string arrangements. Yellow Brick Road follows a similar path, but it's more stylistically diverse; in particular, John really leans into influences from glam, and many of its tracks are far more blood-pumping compared to Madman's more introspective balladry. Madman's title track in particular gives way to one of John's most spellbinding tunes and captivating vocal performances. of course, there's also "Tiny Dancer" and "Levon", two of his most iconic tracks, but there's even a lot of gold to be found in the deep cuts on the B-side, particularly the prison escapee narrative of "Rotten Peaches". I like John a lot in both of the modes his two albums in this book display, and I think their strengths and weaknesses kind of cancel each other out, to the point where it's hard for me to pick a favorite! these are two extremely strong 70s pop rock albums, and you really can't go wrong with either. strong 8/10.

the music of South African flugelhornist Hugh Masekela, arguably his country's biggest name in the world of jazz, exists within a deeply political context. at the time he recorded Home Is Where the Music Is, his most enduring body of work, he was in exile. he and many of his fellow South African musicians, a couple of whom are featured on this album, had fled the country in the early 60s to escape the apartheid regime's increasing segregation and violence against its Black population. Masekela spent some time in the US making albums after fleeing his homeland, but Home Is Where the Music Is was made after he moved to London; a few months after it was recorded, he would flee to Guinea. some of Masekela's music functions as explicit anti-apartheid activism, but even at its most (apparently) apolitical, it still serves a political function. even the title, Home Is Where the Music Is, reads to me as an expression of deep homesickness; the track title "Inner Crisis" also jumped out at me in this regard. Masekela viewed his work as giving a voice to not just his own struggles as an oppressed artist in exile, but also the struggles of the native South Africans he represented on the global stage. jazz started in the US under similar (though obviously not identical) conditions of oppression and repression of its Black population; American jazz was (and still is) often a form of protest against the long-standing systems of racism that eventually led to its creation. by contrast, Masekela's music was a protest against what was, at the time, a much newer system. even just the act of playing and recording was a form of resistance for him and many other South Africans in exile; on this album, the result is a sprawling double-LP featuring passionate performances of some great compositions by (with one exception) South African jazz writers, primarily album producer Caiphus Semenya. the quintet here is three South Africans—Masekela, drummer Makaya Ntshoko and alto saxophonist Dudu Pukwana—joined by American keyboardist Larry Willis and Puerto Rican bassist Eddie Gómez. all ten tracks here feature the band stretching out and taking a lot of bold risks. Ntshoko's drumming in particular gets extremely adventurous, especially on his rubato solo on "Blues for Huey". Pukwana goes for blood on pretty much every solo spot he gets, which I have to appreciate as a fellow sax-ist. the whole band plays as a tremendous unit, and I like that the horn overdubbing is only used in a couple spots to fill out the sound of heads in or out of tunes. there's cuts that lean funky, some that feel like a warm blanket, others that swing for the fences; but they all have a deep rhythmic propulsion! that's present on a lot of American jazz records, sure, but it gets dialed up to 11 here. Home Is Where the Music Is is a great showcase of one of the most captivating aspects of jazz as a genre: it's a mutt! pretty much any style of music you can think of works well as an addition to it, since it's already such a hodge-podge of different musical styles to begin with! the types of jazz certain people play will tell you a lot about them not just as musicians, but as people and, in Masekela's case, as champions of a brighter future. he did eventually get to come home to South Africa, but that was a long 15 years after making this album. decent 9/10.

Ellingtonian elegance and orchestrational ingenuity intersects with the worlds of classical music and the avant-garde to create the music of Charles Mingus, one of the most respected (and feared) bassists, composers and arrangers in jazz history. The Black Saint... is his finest work in all of these areas, a ballet composed in six movements and arranged for an 11-piece big band by Bob Hammer. along with A Love Supreme, this was one of the first jazz albums I listened to as a kid, and it's another that I was kind of blindsided by at first, but which has made more and more sense to me over the years. my first major connection to this album came from the absolutely show-stopping performance from its lead alto saxophonist, Charlie Mariano. his tone is devastatingly gorgeous, and Mingus wrote him a bunch of brilliant melodies to show it off with. he's the ballet's closest link to its sultry, tender side; the brass section, especially trombonist Quentin Jackson, tend to take things to a pretty raucous extreme, especially on the multiple slow accelerandi that occur in several of the movements presented. Mingus does a lot of traffic direction from behind the bass, and he also makes multiple appearances as a pianist through the (then-pretty-new) magic of studio overdubbing, a technology which several players utilize across the runtime here, particularly flamenco guitarist Jay Berliner. the music frequently leans into chaotic group improvisations, lengthy solo cadenzas and other unexpected twists and turns, but that gorgeous sense of melodicism is always underpinning the proceedings. as far as large-ensemble jazz recorded in-studio, very few albums are this meticulous or ecstatic. 10/10.

this is a pretty okay garage rock record, all things considered. Roky Erickson is a compelling frontman, and the band behind him is decent enough. "You're Gonna Miss Me" was a minor hit, and it's endured as a classic of the psych underground. in fact, the 13th Floor Elevators were probably the band that coined the term "psychedelic rock". there's a lot of history here, but also one glaring issue. an empty jug can be played as an instrument by buzzing your lips near its mouth. the resulting tone is low and hoarse, and typically in a bass register. I mention this because the 13th Floor Elevators' jug player, Tommy Hall, seems to have missed this memo. instead, he holds it up to his mouth and goes "dugudugudu" in a goofy falsetto. he does this on nearly every song. it gets annoying almost instantly. shout-out to Hall for having the gusto to form an entire band and personal lifestyle around the use of psychedelic drugs, but I think the clarity of sobriety might have spared us from a terrible fate as listeners. apparently he became a Scientologist later in life, which I'm not sure is much better. strong 4/10.

a pleasant 40 minutes of finger-pluckin' goodness form the self-titled debut album of Scottish guitarist and singer-songwriter Bert Jansch. this was recorded by Jansch at the young age of 21, along with engineer Bill Leader, to a tape reel which he sold to the Transatlantic label for a meager £100. that's over £2,600 in today's money, which is better, but still pretty meager. I'm always kind of blown away listening to skilled fingerstyle guitarists, and the way they create sophisticated polyphonic textures on six independent strings. the counterpoint is pretty staggering at times! as a singer, Jansch is sometimes a bit dodgy (his pitch can be ever-so-slightly flat), but his skills with a guitar make up for it pretty well. there's even some short instrumentals which actually account for some of the best moments on the album. there's hints of jazz and the blues to be found in Jansch's style, an addition that further endears me to his work here; check out the interpolation of Nat Adderley's "Work Song" on his cover of Davy Graham's "Angie". strong 7/10.

after a decade of struggling along under different names with varying degrees of success, Creedence Clearwater Revival first hit the big leagues with a rendition of "Suzie Q" from their 1968 self-titled debut LP. the chart success of that single laid the groundwork for their follow-up album, Bayou Country, which peaked in the top 10 of the Billboard 200 and gave the band its first top-ten hit, the iconic feel-good tune "Proud Mary". CCR's critical and commercial success, particularly their three-album run in the year of 1969, is largely credited to John Fogerty's decision to step it the hell up as the band's de facto leader. he wore a number of hats I'd personally feel way out of my depth wearing: lead guitarist, lead singer, producer, arranger and main songwriter. this is also the album where CCR really hit on the sound they would become most well-known for, fully dropping any hints of sixties psych to pound out a series of no-frills Southern blues tunes (despite being from the Bay Area of California!). Fogerty's tendency as a songwriter is often to stick for a long time on just a single chord or riff, almost turning it into a drone of sorts; it makes it so that, when the chords finally do start moving more quickly, they feel really impactful (check out the chain of harmonic cadences that interrupts the static D major chord of "Bootleg", for example). subsequent CCR albums would fine-tune the formula they created here, often to even better results, but this has to be acknowledged as the solid foundation from which they built. decent 8/10.

much like their American contemporaries Creedence Clearwater Revival (I reviewed Bayou Country yesterday, so they're on the brain), the Band took quite a while to build a head of steam. they formed in the Toronto area in 1958 as the backing band for local artist Ronnie Hawkins (who initially named them The Hawks), but their journey towards becoming one of the most legendary acts in rock music began in earnest when Bob Dylan hired them to be his first electric backing band in 1965, pissing off a huge segment of folk purists in his audience wherever they toured. eventually, audiences and critics came around on Dylan's new thing, and the Band (now finally called "the Band") saw the opportunity to strike out on their own and fully come out of Dylan's shadow; he contributed album artwork and three songwriting credits to their debut LP, Music from Big Pink, named in reference to the house outside of Woodstock, NY where much of its music was conceptualized. other than that, Dylan allowed the quintet to go it on their own; and, wow, what spellbinding results they often conjured! of the Band's three lead singers, the one you hear the most on Big Pink is pianist Richard Manuel; he drew me in instantaneously with his pleading performance on the opening ballad "Tears of Rage", a song to which Dylan contributed one hell of a set of lyrics. speaking of keys, I was fairly shocked at how much they dominate the overall musical texture! Manuel's piano and Garth Hudson's Lowrey organ often come across much more strongly than Robbie Robertson's guitars, which feel more like a color than the main driver of the action. it's also a pretty clear indication that the Band was drawing from far more than just the biggest traditions of guitar music (rock and folk) for their own style. there's lots of hints of country, the blues, R&B, soul, a twinge of jazz, even! there's not always a whole lot that musically unifies these 11 cuts, but the spirit and passion behind them is utterly tangible. of course we have "The Weight", perhaps the Band's most enduring classic, but if you don't like that one, you're bound to like at least one of the other 10. albums this stylistically varied often lose points with me, but the Band clearly made that variation a huge part of their identity as a unit, along with their trademark sense of camaraderie. decent 8/10.

the debut Run-D.M.C. album is a landmark of hip hop history. nowadays, hip hop is the biggest genre of music in the entire world, but its omnipresence should never blind us to its foundations! Run, D.M.C. and Jam Master Jay (R.I.P.) were working from a blueprint established by artists like Kurtis Blow and the Sugarhill Gang, acts that weren't too far removed from the disco music that formed the foundation of rap music. turn on this album, though, and you'll immediately hear a substantial paradigm shift. yes, the opening track is a Kurtis Blow cover, but the two versions are worlds apart. Run-D.M.C.'s version also serves as an introduction to their sound as a group: stripped down, aggressive, and heavily featuring the interplay between its two MCs, who weave in and out of each other's verses with reckless abandon. it's a far cry from anything that had come before in hip hop. a lot of the music here is purely just Run and D.M.C. rapping over programmed drum loops, with maybe the occasional chord stab here and there, and some scratching from Jam Master Jay too. other than the aforementioned opener "Hard Times", the two main highlights are "Rock Box", a guitar-laden track which was hip hop's first major crossover with rock music, and "Sucker M.C.'s", perhaps the genre's first major diss record. the overall listening experience can feel pretty rudimentary by today's standards of rapping, beat-making and songwriting, but that's because this album represents hip hop's literal rudiments! very informative listening experience. decent 7/10.

one of the more perplexing inclusions in the list, not for its quality, but for its obscurity. Vento de maio / May Wind is a 1997 reissue of Brazilian singer Elis Regina's 1980 album Elis (unhelpfully, her *sixth* album with that name), with its nine tracks presented in a vastly different order, and four bonus tracks peppered throughout. (the 1001 Albums book lists the release year as 1978, which is inaccurate.) it was a CD remaster and reissue on EMI's Hemisphere imprint, which specializes in "world" music, whatever the hell that is. I've dipped into MPB a couple times for this list and elsewhere, and enjoyed my time with it quite a lot. MPB is a pretty nebulous term; I've always understood it to refer to a combination of Brazilian traditional musics with those of international genres, often from America and the UK. most of what I know from the MPB style came from the late 60s and early-mid 70s, so the focus was more on psychedelic rock. in the case of Vento de maio, given that it was recorded as the late 70s were becoming the 80s, the focus is on funk, with elements of disco and sophisti-pop creeping in a little bit too. there's even a gloriously cheesy saxophone solo on "O trem azul", a Clube da esquina cover! Regina's voice is an unassuming, bouncy alto that sounds comfortable surrounded by all sorts of different instrumental palettes, from the symphonic to the folky to the soulful. the inclusion of tracks with Milton Nascimento and Lô Borges was a nice tether to familiarity for me, a reminder of the spirit of the music of Clube da esquina which you can still hear echoes of all over this album. "Outro cais" and "Nova estação" both have the hair-raising, unpredictable chord changes that I adore so much about this period of Brazilian music! some of the arrangements might be a little bit tacky, but the craft on display, from the songwriting to the performances and production, is quite high! I get the sense that this album's inclusion in the book, which technically contradicts the list's rule against compilations being included, was more a result of the authors striving for a sense of international balance in the inclusions. I imagine they wanted to include something by Regina, but weren't sure what to go off of, and so just went with one of the more recent issues of her work. overall, I think it's a good pick, but it's definitely one you can tell didn't have a whole lot of thought behind it from Robert Dimery & Company's perspective, which is a bit of a shame. I mean, they didn't even get its release year right! light 8/10.

the first Aretha Franklin album I listened to for this was Lady Soul, an LP containing several of her most iconic songs. I Never Loved a Man... might not have as many standouts in that regard, but it's notable for two pretty big reasons. first of all, it was Franklin's commercial breakthrough, her arrival on Atlantic after many, many unsuccessful albums with Columbia, who tried to market her more as a jazz performer with soul and R&B in the background. they must've been kicking themselves when they saw her reach #2 on the Billboard 200 albums chart with a soul-centric approach! secondly, this album begins with her rendition of Otis Redding's "Respect". I mentioned this somewhat when I reviewed Otis Blue, but you and I both know that this is Aretha's song now, in much the same way that "Hurt" belongs to Johnny Cash or "All Along the Watchtower" belongs to Hendrix. the additions in Franklin's cover, especially the backing vocals and that "R-E-S-P-E-C-T" breakdown, have become so iconic that Redding's version now feels a little incomplete in comparison! (Franklin also covers Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come", a version that's not quite as transformative, but which is still very strong.) given that this is soul music, Franklin's voice is the star of the show across the entire runtime. her performance on "Drown in My Own Tears" genuinely brought some tears to my eyes! but I also have to give props to the session players and backing singers across this tracklist, as well as Franklin herself for her touch as a pianist, which defines so much of this album's sound. she's also credited as a songwriter on four songs here, my favorite being the B-side opener "Dr. Feelgood" (thankfully, no relation to any hair metal shenanigans). you can tell there was a real effort here to showcase many different aspects of her musicianship, and they all come through clear as day. strong 8/10.

before (and for a time, while) they were Fever Ray, Karin Dreijer was one half of the Knife, an elusive Swedish electropop duo with their brother Olof whose third album Silent Shout had made a huge splash in the international indie music pool in 2006. Fever Ray's music, much like that of the Knife, can come across extremely icy, cryptic, dark and, above all, weird. both projects have a penchant for lush analog synth sounds, androgynous, often pitch-shifted vocals from Dreijer, and deeply personal (yet also fairly evasive) lyricism. both Dreijer siblings are well-known for their general lack of interest in divulging much personal information about themselves, as well as their general refusal to engage with the music industry beyond recording and (eventually) performing. however, on this debut Fever Ray album, you get a bit more of a peak behind the curtain at Karin's world in particular. for one thing, they had recently given birth to their first son while writing a lot of this material. a lot of these lyrics, while they're obviously quite abstract, read as though they could be directed from mother to child (Dreijer is non-binary and uses they/them pronouns, but identified as a cis woman at the time this album was made). many of these lyrics take a pretty somber tone, evoking the hardships of adjusting to this new life and all that it entails. of course, there's also room for deep tenderness, like on "Dry and Dusty", a plea to their partner and child to "Never leave me / Walk close beside me." if Silent Shout was a poorly lit blur of a rave, Fever Ray is the hangover that comes the morning after, with all the sobering clarity that entails. opening track "If I Had a Heart" opens things up on an eerie note which never really lets up for the next nine songs, with the harmony made purely of a looping drone on E, with an organ going up and down a pentatonic scale in fifths. the whole thing adds up to five notes in aggregate, but the sounds employed are utterly stunning in their darkness. Dreijer's multi-tracked vocals are singing in unison, but some of them sound like they were recorded higher and then pitched down, creating a really spooky chorus effect. it's followed by "When I Grow Up", which lightens the mood just a bit and puts the electronics more properly into center stage. the word-painting with the boomerang lyric is incredible; I love the way you hear it get thrown, pan around the stereo field and then hit back at the top of the next verse. the percussion on this album is so great. in addition to the expected drum machine tones that recur throughout, there's all sorts of moments like the "boomerang", strange whooshing white noise, digital bongos and mallets. "Concrete Walls" is a spellbinding use of many different percussion sounds in a fairly minimal musical context. in addition to the swelling synth pads, Dreijer's pitched-down voices coming out of both stereo channels, and a couple other filler sounds, it's one of a couple songs where I think I hear little bits of electric guitar coming through, adding a bit of warmth to the proceedings. the variety of timbres from song to song is balanced beautifully by the consistency of creativity in the sound design, and the high, high quality of the songwriting. even at moments where Fever Ray begins to approach the catchier, hookier sensibilities of the Knife's work, the decidedly understated approach sets it well and truly apart. it's an album that speaks simply and softly to anxieties and insecurities which, even if you're not a new parent (I'm not a parent at all, lol), I'm sure you've gone through at one time or another. despite its cold, alien exterior, there's a lot of pathos and emotional depth underneath the surface. light 9/10.

Orchestral Manœuvres in the Dark (OMD) were yet another British band that, as far as I can tell, took their home country by storm but didn't nearly match that appeal here in the US. it's probably because of the way they spelled the word "maneuvers". I can imagine American boomers in 1981 perusing record shops looking at this cover art and going "what the hell is that O-E Eurotrash business?" before promptly passing on a pretty great record! (OMD would eventually score a big hit here with "If You Leave", recorded for the Pretty in Pink soundtrack, but not for another five years.) if Architecture & Morality is anything to go off of, I suppose it's not that shocking that OMD didn't appeal widely to Americans; even if David Bowie was priming my country's ears to the sounds of synthesizers at the time through albums like the "Berlin trilogy", this was probably asking quite a lot of us. I'd wager that many of the Americans who bought Low enjoyed it well enough, but eventually went back to Ziggy or Diamond Dogs. plus, OMD's usage of electronics in a pop context bordered on the avant-garde even at the best of times. a song like "She's Leaving" or the first "Joan of Arc" is, underneath it all, just your average three-chord pop song in the vein of the early Beatles (another band from Liverpool that left a pretty big mark on music), but the aural presentation couldn't be further away! the moment that really made my jaw drop was "Souvenir". holy cow, what a track. it feels like a Dijon song sent back 45 years into the past and a continent away! the synth hook is just stunning. there's lots of interesting quirks in this tracklist—the back-to-back songs about different Joans of Arc, the 8-minute ambient closer on the A-side—but "Souvenir" is the one moment where any weirdness this album throws at you (the opening track and the title track are particularly weird) melts away, and you just get a total stunner of a track. so, if you're willing to put up with a lot of bizarre experimentalism, there's some pretty ingenious material to be found here. light 8/10.

few albums in music history can claim to be this iconic. Unknown Pleasures might have the greatest cover art in the history of punk rock; it might also be the inception point of the gothic rock genre as a whole. producer Martin Hannett takes a set of ten songs which should sound like a ball of fury and makes them gloomy, sparse, and incredibly dark. there's all kinds of weird, ambient sounds creeping into the mix of these songs to give them a sense of depth, what with Bernard Sumner's guitars being so scaled back (compared to what the band were used to them sounding like when they played live, anyway). broken glass, tape echoes, whooshing wind sounds. there's tiny little hints of synthesizers (and some electronic drums from Stephen Morris) that poke through every now and then to remind you that, oh yeah, this will be a totally different band within just a couple years. Peter Hook's basslines might be my favorite element of the whole mixture; he truly is the keystone of this entire twisted project. Ian Curtis is clearly carrying the torch for Jim Morrison here, but his stanzas are less surreal and drug-addled, more resigned and bleak. his struggles with epilepsy and his mental health resulted in Unknown Pleasures being the only Joy Division album to release while he was alive. the posthumous follow-up, Closer, gives an even more depressing insight into Curtis' state of mind during the final year of his life. I'm pretty flabbergasted at how Sumner, Hook and Morris managed to be so hugely influential in both the realms of goth rock and synthpop; I'm probably going to listen to Power, Corruption & Lies after I write this, on account of it not being in this list for some reason! decent 9/10.

riddle me this, 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You DIe (if that's even your real name): first, you tell me that compilation albums aren't included in your list of offerings, but then you turn around and give me this, a compilation CD. that's curious! as it turns out, this is yet another symptom of the book's (unfortunate) British-ness. you see, the first two albums by these Swedish garage rock revivalists (Barely Legal and Veni Vidi Vicious) were issued in their home country, the US, and a couple other markets here and there, but not the UK. so, for most people in the British Isles (as well as Canada, Australia, and parts of the EU), this 2001 compilation was the first Hives album they ever saw in record shops. it showcases tracks from those first two albums, plus their a.k.a. I-D-I-O-T EP, in a compact 28-minute package. we begin with "Hate to Say I Told You So" from VVV, arguably the Hives' signature song, and continue from there with guns ablaze. in comparison to the sleek precision of their American garage revival compatriots, the Strokes, the Hives are far more unruly and messy, but no less catchy! Howlin' Pelle Almqvist is one of my favorite lead singers in this era of rock music; he shout, shrieks and wails his way through every track here in a way that's reminiscent of Iggy Pop with the Stooges. I also appreciated the chemistry between guitarists Nicholaus Arson and Vigilante Carlstroem: the stop-start riffs, the alternating use of sticky leads and just straight-up noise barrages! bassist Dr. Matt Destruction and drummer Chris Dangerous make for a formidable rhythm section, although half the reason I'm even bringing them up is because this band has some of the funniest stage names I've ever heard. you can definitely tell this was cobbled together from multiple preexisting albums; from song to song, you can detect little changes in engineering techniques, microphone placement, mixing, all that. even still, it's pretty hard for me to dislike the sound the Hives crafted across this era of their career. their combination of high-octane, messy punk energy with insanely memorable riffing and song structures is certainly something to behold. light 8/10.

when I was a kid there was a series of albums called "Punk Goes Pop". I prefer this! the self-titled debut album by the Go-Go's presents an intermingling of musical styles that would prove to be very popular across the decade in which it was released. the band's combination of punk rock spirit with catchy, absurdly witty pop songwriting made them one of a few late 70s/early 80s acts that ushered in a new wave (get it?) of bands riding that exact line. the singles, "Our Lips Are Sealed" and "We Got the Beat", are enduring classics from the early era of what we now call power pop; much like the deep cuts, they're held up by Belinda Carlisle's bouncy, carefree vocal performances, underneath which the interlocking riffs of Charlotte Caffey and Jane Wiedlin, Kathy Valentine's driving bass work and Gina Schock's journeys around the drum kit create one hell of a dance party. decent 8/10.

apart from the tender top-20 hit "Where the Wild Roses Grow" (a duet with Kylie Minogue) and the tongue-in-cheek closing cover of Bob Dylan's "Death Is Not the End", Nick Cave's ninth album with the Bad Seeds is a series of depraved, twisted and (pardon the pun) seedy stories of, you guessed it, murder and death. Cave is an artist whose large body of work has always felt rather imposing to me in the past, and my previous experiences trying to enter his musical world have often left me feeling a bit cold. I think what I needed to do was a bit of homework; I've recently become enamored with the various musical projects of his fellow Australians Gareth Liddiard and Fiona Kitschin (namely The Drones and Tropical Fuck Storm), whose Caveian influences are now far more apparent to me. like those bands, the Bad Seeds make rock music with macabre conceptual underpinnings and an experimental approach to production and instrumentation. the approach to storytelling Cave takes on Murder Ballads, a mixture of traditional and new songs, also does a lot to draw me into the sound his band conjures, and reminds me quite a lot of Liddiard's approach to similarly harrowing stories like "The Radicalisation of D". "Song of Joy" opens with sparse, pummeling drums, a honky-tonk piano hammering away, and Cave's sinister baritone recalling the story of a man who murders his entire family; the sick twist comes with the reveal that it was the narrator himself who did the deed. "Stagger Lee" is a decidedly darker take on the traditional song of the same name, with a ton of profanity and sexually charged lyrics which certainly caught me the hell off guard! there's a slight influence from hip hop here, with the slow, tight drum break, the lumbering, independent bassline and Cave's spoken-word vocal delivery approaching rapping or toasting. (he's also credited with firing the gunshots you hear towards the end!) the similarly titled "Henry Lee" follows, the first moment of some reprieve. it's a gorgeous piano ballad featuring PJ Harvey (Cave's then-girlfriend) that recounts the story of a woman scorned by her husband after the birth of their child; she kills him after he tells her of his plan to leave her for another woman, abandoning both her and the kid. honestly, who could blame her? the rest of the album follows in a similar fashion; sometimes serene, sometimes evil, always a little bit theatrical. as dark as these murder stories get, there's always a little bit of humor in the proceedings, which helps this 60-minute album (the penultimate track accounts for nearly a quarter of that time) not feel like a slog. even as the characters in these stories commit heinous acts of violence, sometimes leveling entire towns just for the thrill of it, there's always something kind of affable about them underneath it all. Cave's ability to turn characters like Loretta ("The Curse of Millhaven") or the unnamed narrator of "O'Malley's Bar" from villains into likeable antiheroes is something to behold! light 9/10.

Illmatic is yet another entry in 1001 Albums... where I find myself racking my brain, determining if I've noticed something new about it, if I have any unique angle to approach analyzing it from. ultimately, I don't; what's left to say about what might be the most pored-over album in the history of hip hop? instead, I guess I'll point out that this is the 200th album I've reviewed for this list, which is certainly a milestone of sorts. numbers are arbitrary and all, but I'm now more or less a fifth of the way through this thing. I hope not to take anymore half-year breaks away! (also, Illmatic is certainly far more interesting than the album I got for #100, Next by the Sensational Alex Harvey Band, a 70s glam rock LP that I mostly shrugged my shoulders at.) this is the album that, back when I was first getting into hip hop as a teenager, bloggers and forum users and music journalists all pointed to as one of its most essential documents, and a potential entry point for newcomers into the trappings of the style as a whole. I didn't fully get it at the time, but having listened to a bit more 80s and early 90s hip hop since I first heard Illmatic as a kid, I can definitely sense that it's an album which changed the sound of the genre more or less overnight, at least in Nas's own city. these beats are some of the first in rap history that feel truly timeless; the iconic opener "N.Y. State of Mind" has a beat from DJ Premier that still feels like it could've been made yesterday. the menacing piano and bass sample at the center of everything, and especially that hard-knocking, slow drum break, both give Nas a tremendous bed upon which to lay his slickly constructed, yet darkly sinister, verses. his pioneering use of multilayered rhythms and rhymes, as well as his impeccable sense of wordplay, set the bar incredibly high for the rest of New York City and the growing East Coast hip hop movement; some of its most prominent adherents, Pete Rock and Q-Tip, also make appearances on the production end here. along with Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), released less than half a year earlier, Illmatic was at the center of a sea change for how hip hop songs and albums were made. the old guard's influences from disco and R&B were being slowly snuffed out in favor of dusty jazz samples and leaden, lumbering drum loops. it's a formula which rap acts, both on the East Coast and outside of it, are still working from to this day (including Nas himself, who's been on a pretty major run with Hit-Boy over the last few years, in case you haven't noticed). decent 9/10.

despite my proclivity for noisy, experimental guitar music, I'm still more or less a newcomer when it comes to Sonic Youth, one of the most significant bands in the entire lineage of that kind of rock 'n' roll. I've given Daydream Nation and a couple of their early-80s LPs a cursory listen or two; but I'm considering this listen of Sister, their fifth album, my first proper, full-attention experience with this New York quartet's work. what I remember from the band's first couple albums was a sound pretty akin to New York's "no wave" scene of the late 70s and early 80s, as well as the work of totalist composer Glenn Branca (check out the insane barrages of noise they serve up on this album's closer, "White Cross"). as it turns out, Branca was a huge influence on Sonic Youth, as well as other bands that formed in reaction to no wave like Swans. members of both bands were actually involved in some of Branca's electric guitar symphonies, so that makes total sense! Sister takes that foundation of noisy, off-kilter guitar work and imbues it with a keen sense of tonality and melody. the opening one-two punch of "Schizophrenia" and "(I Got A) Catholic Block" demonstrates the band's ability to embrace both ends of the spectrum, the abrasive and the pretty, and synthesize them into something novel. "Catholic Block" in particular has that sense of forward drive you always want out of a punk song, but that riff matching the title lyric is just such an earworm. the final 30 seconds are a beautiful comedown after three minutes of such ferocity. the harmonic language of these songs is mostly based on an ambiguous mixture of open and closed intervals; crunchy major and minor seconds, but also wide fourths and fifths. the likelihood of hearing a standard major or minor triad (thirds) at any point is pretty low, which makes the melodies the band writes sound almost like they're floating. when you do hear those more typical chord sounds, like when they dial it back and rock between the V and the IV in the middle of "Pacific Coast Highway", they feel so earned! also approaching (but not reaching) typicality is the cover of "Hot Wire My Heart" by Crime, a pretty straightforward garage punk song which turns into a ball of hot fire in Sonic Youth's hands. the vocals of Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon have made this band into one of the most famous in the category of "rock bands with multiple lead singers" over the years. given that this is punk rock, the vocals aren't the most important thing, but I certainly can't imagine anything other than their voices (together and apart) being here. unlike with Black Francis and Kim Deal of the Pixies, whose voices oddly pair well together because of how different they are, Moore and Gordon's vocals feel more like they're combining to make one instrument at many points, like on the slow-burning "Cotton Crown", where they sing a simple melody in octaves together following the main guitar riff. I'm very excited to return to Daydream Nation and experience the rest of this band's seemingly legendary five-album run from '86 to '92, which 1001 Albums... should serve up for me within the next, I dunno, couple years. light 9/10.

the Psychedelic Furs were caught in one of the weirder transitional phases of rock music history; Talk Talk Talk, the band's second album, was released as post-punk was turning the corner into new wave and synthpop. it was produced by Steve Lillywhite, who would go on to make a lot of top-selling yawn with U2 in later years; he brings that same pillowy approach to the production here, where the guitars sound like they're in a different room from the rest of the band (I promise he's worked on records I love!). like U2, the Furs have a jangly pop-rock sound that's not strictly post-punk, but which evokes it by association. their singer is grumbly and nondescript; their saxophonist loves those obnoxious rock 'n' roll scoops, pitch bends from below that are way too over-exaggerated. the opening salvo of "Dumb Waiters" and "Pretty in Pink" is pretty good, but I straight-up don't remember the rest, and I just listened to it. to top it all off (and this is just a personal problem), the album's title evokes Talk Talk, one of my favorite bands in the world, who formed the same year it came out. decent 5/10.

I just don't care. instrumentally, this is serviceable indie pop rock with a post-punk flair, including some extra bells and whistles not featured as much on previous Smiths albums like strings and synths and auxiliary percussion. but, like with all Smiths albums, I'm so damn bored while listening. even with the minor switch-ups in instrumentation and production, the band insists on writing the exact same songs, over and over and over again; you could count the various kinds of Smiths songs on one hand and probably not even use all your fingers. Morrissey sounds like he has a frog in his throat, and I'm very much dreading having to listen to his voice for two more Smiths albums and four of his solo albums. I will never understand what makes this band one of the greatest in history to so many people. snoozefest from front to back. strong 4/10.

now *here* we go. this was the album that really blew my lid open in 7th grade. it must have been when I was reading through the myriad of different music that influenced Radiohead when they made Kid A. I guess I expected something along the lines of "The National Anthem", but there's no deep drum pockets or big brass band freakouts to be had with Bitches Brew. this was certainly an interesting place for me to have begun the process of getting acquainted with the music of trumpeter, composer and conceptualist Miles Davis, one of the most important musicians of the past century. when Davis (alongside producer Teo Macero, whose contributions during this period of Davis's career cannot go overlooked) recorded this album, he was in the process of both (1) alienating nearly all of his fans with a radical shift in his musical thinking and (2) changing music forever. his embrace of straight (as in, not swung) eighth notes and electric instruments on In a Silent Way was derided by purists; it's hard not to see this, the double-LP set that was his next album, as him doubling the hell down. Davis's touring band at this time was a quintet (Chick Corea on keys, Wayne Shorter on saxophone, Dave Holland on bass and Jack DeJohnette on drums); Bitches Brew retains this lineup, but builds ensembles around it that are often more than twice as large! In a Silent Way was notable for its use of multiple keyboardists playing simultaneously; Bitches Brew retains this aesthetic, with Corea, Joe Zawinul (who started Weather Report the year this came out) and Larry Young (most famous for his work as an organist) all playing electric pianos that weave in and out of each other with aplomb on "Pharoah's Dance" and "Spanish Key". the other tracks only feature them in combinations of two at a time, but Davis makes up for that by adding even more chaos in the form of Shorter (soprano sax) and Bennie Maupin (bass clarinet) completing the horn section; Holland and Harvey Brooks on double bass and bass guitar, respectively; and a massive percussion section with DeJohnette and Lenny White on drum kits, alongside Don Alias and Jumma Santos on congas and the like. at any given time, there's at least 10 (usually more than a dozen) bodies in the room making this music, and you can really feel the communal vibe. notably, there's only one six-string guitarist here: John McLaughlin. if you know his playing (especially with the Mahavishnu Orchestra), you know that he can make more than enough noise for two or three, although he spends quite a lot of time here playing more of a support role. Davis, known mostly for his even-tempered, delicate trumpet phrasing, spends much of this album going for the jugular in a way that would define the electric era he was firmly entering. also, the aforementioned Macero might be considered another player here, but in a more abstract sense. his presence is felt mainly through editing; there's multiple moments where you can hear him loop portions of tape, apply effects like echo and reverb, and splice parts of totally different sessions together for unexpected results. for pop and rock records, these sorts of "studio as an instrument" techniques are par for the course, but for a jazz album, you bet your ass it caused a huge stir! these edits are most prominent on the first LP, especially "Pharoah's Dance", which basically starts over once it reaches about the 1:45 mark. you can also hear multiple, shorter loops of materials at around 8:35. the "time, no [chord] changes" aesthetic of Davis's Second Great Quintet is very much at play here; although many of these tracks are based around a single chord vamp, Davis and co. are coloring far outside the lines. if it's too much to deal with, just try and listen to how everyone is coming together on the rhythmic front; the pockets the various bands here fall into are jaw-dropping, and their excursions into playing more "free", when a steady pulse falls away, are mesmerizing. it's interesting to think that jazz critics saw this music as Davis selling out; drop the needle anywhere in the middle of any of these tracks for just 30 seconds, and tell me with a straight face that he was trying to land on the pop charts with this. (he did reach #35 on the Billboard 200!) rock and pop artists were allowed to push the boundaries of recorded sound all they liked, but it's verboten for a jazz musician to do it, for some reason. jazz fusion, as it came to be known, started out as some of the most contentious new music around, but by the end of this decade it would represent a sizeable portion of the genre's mainstream, as artists found ways to make the combination of jazz with rock, funk and R&B more palatable to a mainstream audience. if I had to guess, Davis's work here was appealing mainly to the psych and prog sets; but I think it's multifaceted enough as a sonic and artistic expression that, here in 2026, it'll likely appeal to anyone that's looking for something out of left-field (if they somehow haven't heard it yet!). 10/10.

if you're looking for the softest hard rock in existence, the lightest heavy metal possible, look no further than KISS. this was the band's first studio material to release after their successful Alive! double-LP launched them firmly into rock music's mainstream. for some reason, they decided to follow (what's by all accounts) a pretty high-energy collection of live rock 'n' roll performances (and some overdubs to taste) with Destroyer, an album which, despite its title, is even more watered down than KISS already was, with multiple bells and whistles (courtesy of producer Bob Ezrin) which absolutely do not flatter this band at all. I'm talking orchestras, women's choirs, glammy keyboards and sensitive acoustic guitars. who gives a shit about any of that? I want riffs, dammit! I thought this band was supposed to be "hotter than hell" or whatever. "Detroit Rock City" might be the band's best song, and I only *kinda* like it; after that, the quality control leaps right out the window. I'll admit that these four guys play very well together, but I'm just not all that into the sound they create; in fact, I'm frequently actively annoyed by it. (Gene Simmons' singing voice is nails on a chalkboard.) strong 3/10.

the xx is famous for a sound that, at first glance, seems pretty innocuous. the songs on xx are pop songs, but they're incredibly sparse, a far cry from the pop that was topping the charts in 2009! the compositions are fairly straightforward; the guitar work in particular often forgoes chords for single notes, played against the basslines like a first-species counterpoint exercise. the thing that set the xx the most apart, though, is the percussion, forgoing a traditional drum kit in favor of beat machines powered by Jamie xx. his solo albums (which all came later) show that he can really fill a track up with space if he wants to, but with the xx he does more or less the opposite, allowing Romy and Oliver Sim to dictate the pace of each song. I mean, it was their band first, after all! for such an understated, simplistic set of tracks, it's pretty staggering just how much of an enduring influence xx has had in the 15+ years since it came out. by the mid-2010s (and especially in the early 2020s), the pop mainstream quieted down a lot, taking plenty of cues from the xx's introspective, introverted sensibilities as a band. decent 7/10.

the sophomore Pixies album, Doolittle, is one of my favorite rock albums ever made; about 100 records ago, when I reviewed it, I mentioned that it contained "the DNA for the modern alternative rock sound," a statement which also applies in some measure to the band's debut, Surfer Rosa. their two-vocalist dynamic, as well as their ability to traverse all sorts of musical and thematic territory, are arguably just as strong here, which makes sense given their first two LPs were released just about a year apart. earworms like the iconic "Where Is My Mind?" point ahead to the even poppier direction the Pixies would head in shortly afterwards. I'm more consistently wowed by the songwriting on Doolittle, but Surfer Rosa's engineering and production (courtesy of the legendary Steve Albini) might arguably be more interesting. as usual, he captures his subjects in the most natural, unadorned manner possible. apparently, he took two weeks working on the guitars, but only spent one day on vocals, meaning that Black Francis and Kim Deal had to give it their all. decent 8/10.

Suzanne Vega's debut album, released when she was just 25, showcases a deadpan wit and wisdom far beyond her years. her stripped-back, acoustic singer-songwriter style is fairly by-the-numbers, but there's mysterious forces at work beneath the surface that I find pretty alluring at this record's best moments. my favorite song here is the hit, "Marlene on the Wall", a story of a relationship in decay set against some clever modal interchange: F-sharp major for the verses, F-sharp minor for the chorus. it's a subtle reflection of the conflicting forces at play in the narrator's mind: "And I tried so hard to resist / And when you held me in your handsome fist / And reminded me of the night we kissed / And of why I should be leaving". chills! strong 7/10.

oh, jump for joy, it's another British blues rock album! this incarnation of the Jeff Beck Group, and its debut album Truth, was Rod Stewart's big break; Truth is also notable for its cameos from Keith Moon of the Who, John Paul Jones and (Beck's fellow former Yardbird) Jimmy Page. Jones and Page would go on to form Led Zeppelin the same month this record came out, and that band's debut album famously got tagged in the rock press as a poor imitation of Truth! it's funny to think about now, considering that LZ won out pretty substantially over the JBG in the long run, critically and commercially. Beck's a better guitarist than others I've had to listen to from this era of British blues rock (as in, he doesn't play the same handful of blues-scale licks over and over), but I can only take so many 12-bar songs that sound nearly identical. the songs that veer from that structure, like the opener "Shapes of Things", are a little easier to handle, but Stewart's trademark raspy vocal quickly becomes stale; his range isn't very wide, in terms of style or pitch. closing side A, there's a stripped-back cover of Jerome Kern's "Old Man River" with Moon bashing away on timpani, a real "I guess bro" moment. I'd take the Led Zep album over this any day of the week, plagiarism issues and all. strong 5/10.

begrudgingly, I have to give an iota of props to Luke Combs up top here for bringing Tracy Chapman's "Fast Car" back into our collective consciousness. I had to endure a lot of bullshit from my local country station during the year I spent working as a bank teller, but his 2023 cover version served as four-and-a-half minutes of relative reprieve from the MAGA-coded hits that were circulating country radio's airwaves at the same time. Combs accidentally changed the lyric "We gotta make a decision" to "Still gotta make a decision," a choice which inadvertently robs that lyric of much of its meaning (although he performs it correctly these days); it's a testament to the stark power of Chapman's original, the song which she has become more closely associated with than any other. plus, it just sounds so much more real coming out of her mouth than Combs's. I mean, it's her song, so, duh. but, y'know, it's a song that has become embraced by queer culture for a reason! in general, a lot of the songs on her debut album avoid much gendered language when referring to love interests, and at a time like the late 80s, when homophobia was much more prevalent, listeners latched onto whatever they could get. (in recent years, author Alice Walker has alleged that she and Chapman were in a romantic relationship for a time; Chapman herself has not commented on the matter.) Chapman has chosen to mostly reveal herself to us through her songs; she's a notoriously private person, so we're left to dissect her words to figure out who she is and what she thinks. thankfully, she makes that pretty easy to do, even as her songs aren't necessarily autobiographical. tracks like "Talkin' Bout a Revolution" and "Why?" are pleas for change in the face of social injustice. the former is another well-remembered track of hers from this time, but I find it a little non-specific; the latter succeeds more in this regard by addressing the indignities of hunger (even as we have enough food to feed the whole world) and war (propagated by governments who claim to be acting in the name of peace). "Behind the Wall" is an a capella track about domestic abuse, and "She's Got Her Ticket" shares the same yearning to get away from a bad situation as "Fast Car", but in a way that feels more particularly coded along gender lines. as a songwriter, Chapman is bare-bones, confrontational, and often deeply sad about the state of the world. even over just 11 short tracks totaling 36 minutes, there's moments where I feel her repeating herself just a little bit, whether it's thematically or musically. if you've heard other acoustic female singer-songwriters from the 80s and 90s, you're not going to be blown away by the sound of this album, but the strong stuff here is very strong! shout-out to the bass work on this album by Larry Klein; he was married to Joni Mitchell at the time, a strange coincidence considering how much his playing here reminded me of Jaco on Hejira. strong 7/10.

being the zillennial I am, I only knew two things about Bobby Womack before listening to this. first, I knew that he was one of the featured artists on "Stylo", one of my favorite Gorillaz songs. (Damon Albarn, the musical mind behind the Gorillaz, also produced Womack's final album, The Bravest Man in the Universe, released two years before his death.) second, I knew (or, was reminded) that he's also the guy behind "Across 110th Street", the title song for the blaxploitation film of the same name, but even more popular for its use in the iconic opening credits of Tarantino's Jackie Brown. Womack's career in music spanned over six decades and produced quite a few hit songs, but for whatever reason, I feel like I don't hear his name come up too often in conversations about soul or R&B music these days. The Poet, Womack's 13th studio album, was a major critical and commercial bounce-back for him after several LPs of ill-fitting diversions into country music and disco. the A-side takes it back to the fundamentals of soul Womack made himself known for in the first place, with some additional flourishes of smooth, synth-laden production now that it was the 80s (check out the funky A-side closer "Stand Up"). most of the material here consists of a set of smoky love songs that tenderly showcase Womack's dynamic, robust tenor. there's a small choir of backing vocalists in the mix as well, which sometimes comes off a little corny; in my mind, Womack's pleading riffs on tracks like "Lay Your Lovin' on Me" or the slow-burning "Games" are more than sufficient to carry a track on their own, but I guess Womack's producer brain convinced him he needed some "shooby-doo-wah" business. on the positive end (and as a fellow saxophonist), I feel obligated to shout out Fernando Harkless, who gets a few nice opportunities to add some extra smoothness to the proceedings. I tend to prefer the more raw presentation of 70s soul to this lighter "quiet storm" approach that really took hold of the airwaves in the 80s, but Womack's voice (not to mention the bluesy guitar work he laces throughout this album) deserves to be witnessed. decent 7/10.

Fullfillingness' First Finale is one of the lesser-known chapters in Stevie Wonder's legendary 70s run at Tamla, sandwiched between the super-conscious Innervisions and the embarrassment of sonic riches we call Songs in the Key of Life. it's interesting that it's fallen to the wayside (relatively speaking), considering it hit #1 on the Billboard 200 and produced two top-10 singles! if anything, I view this as proof of Wonder's mastery of the art of pop songwriting; even his lesser successes from this period are extremely successful! there's one big reason I'm assuming that FFF (pronounced "triple F") hasn't attracted as much attention over the decades: foreshadowing the more tender emotional core of Key of Life, this is the most mellow set of tracks I've heard from Wonder so far. lots of these songs lean heavily introspective and romantic, and there's no one stand-out that makes me think, "okay, this is the big single" (even though there were two)! there's some moments of higher energy, particularly the #1 hit "You Haven't Done Nothin'", a sequel of sorts to Wonder's other famous anti-Nixon song, "He's Misstra Know-It-All" (except this one features the Jackson 5 going "Doo-da-wop!"). there's still no shortage of harmonic progressions to send shivers down one's spine, or hair-raising melodies to match, but there's a subtlety and sparseness at play. be sure not to mistake it for a lack of something! decent 8/10.

I was just talking about the Jackie Brown soundtrack the other day! that's kinda funny. anyway, the Crusaders (also known at various times as the Jazz Crusaders) were a band from Houston, Texas that existed in various incarnations from 1960 to 2010; pretty much all of them centered around the core trio of saxophonist/bassist Wilton Felder, keyboardist/arranger Joe Sample, and drummer Stix Hooper. if there's a subgenre of jazz that exists, the Crusaders probably dipped their toes into it at some point. on Street Life, given it was the late 70s, they were meeting the moment with some smooth funk, soul and R&B crossovers, resulting in what remains the band's most enduring body of work. this is a collection of six loose jams where the Crusaders (along with a bevy of session players) apply a jazz musician's sensibility to the popular sounds of their time. this is par for the course for jazz, but in 1979 this sort of thing was reaching a breaking point; the 80s would come to be defined by a rejection of this "electric" music, and a return to the acoustic sensibilities of 50s-60s bop. is Street Life the most groundbreaking thing ever? certainly not. what it is, though, is a testament to just how far the boundaries of jazz are capable of being stretched. the title track, despite its single edit being a fairly successful crossover hit, still demonstrates a keen harmonic and melodic sensibility that's undeniably bebop in its origins. it's clear that everyone involved here has a strong foundation in the roots of jazz, despite your Wyntons Marsalis who have come along to downplay the musicianship and contributions of those who dared to embrace amplification and electricity! listen to anything these guys made when they still had the word "Jazz" in their name, and you'd be hard-pressed to call them fakers. as the Crusaders, their propensity towards syrupy string overdubs and horn stacks (arranged by Sample, I would assume) might be a bit tacky, but there's no denying the craft at work here. strong 6/10.

Dire Straits were a band that began by bucking trends and, in doing so, eventually started setting them instead. in the UK in 1978, punk rock was ascendant, but the band's self-titled debut album set them far apart from that ruckus. like punk, this music sounds like an attempt to simplify, make things a little more direct; but you would never mistake Dire Straits for, say, the Clash, who formed around the same time. instead, lead guitarist, singer and songwriter Mark Knopfler spearheaded a sound which, in the late 70s, was indebted to the blues, jazz and country crossovers pioneered by acts of about a decade prior, including Creedence Clearwater Revival and The Band. so, imagine that 60s bluesy roots rock sound, but with that 70s precision and slickness in the production, playing and overall presentation. the way Knopfler tosses vocal phrases off his back is effortlessly cool, as is his guitar work, especially on the smash single, "Sultans of Swing". if I have to dock points, it's because a lot of the deeper cuts sound pretty damn similar to its biggest hit. I do really like "Down to the Waterline" and many other tracks here, but I'm interested to hear what Dire Straits did later on, once they started becoming more of a pop rock act and getting more sonically elaborate. strong 7/10.

Chicagoan rock band Wilco (my first run-in with them for this challenge, although I wish I'd received a non-collab from them before this) and Essexian singer-songwriter Billy Bragg were given a rare gift here by one of the most important figures in the last century of American popular music. see, the director of the Woody Guthrie Foundation (his daughter Nora) gave them a trove of unused lyrics from his archives, as well as full permission to create original music to go along with them. Wilco's fondness for country-tinged indie Americana and Bragg's long history as a left-wing activist put them well in line with Guthrie's traditions as an artist, so I think Nora chose quite well. rather than trying to replicate the Woody Guthrie style directly, Wilco and Bragg bring a lot of their own personalities through his words. the highlight is "California Stars", yet another demonstration from the 1001 Albums... roster that, if you're making guitar music, Three Chords And The Truth are really all you need; whatever else you do from that point is a matter of taste. decent 7/10.

that's a fantastic album cover; it's simultaneously self-effacing and attention-grabbing, a little like the music of the Black Keys itself. the title, Brothers, reads like an affirmation of the friendship between its two members, guitarist/singer Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney. it's a sweet gesture, especially if you know anything about the history of the band, and the recording of this album in particular! the main criticism this Ohioan duo gets from the likes of us terminally online music geeks is that their sound is highly derivative of a whole swath of other garage rock bands, both from the genre's mid-60s heyday and its revival in the 21st century by bands like the White Stripes, whose similar name and place of origin certainly didn't do them any favors. my natural instinct in these scenarios is to play defense but, yeah, we kinda have a point there, don't we? their particular brand of bluesy guitar music is well-executed, but also pretty well-trodden. it's not like the music of the Black Keys is without any merits at all though; often, they're quite likeable! the sound of this record is particularly magnificent, a bass-heavy retro feel that the band and producer/engineer Mark Neill credited to the acoustics of Muscle Shoals Sound Studio, where the bulk of this music was recorded. (for what it's worth, I listened to the 10th anniversary remix/remaster.) by this point in their career, the Keys were less averse to overdubbing more and more instrumental layers, but their mixing gear limited them to 10 tracks maximum in most cases. hopefully Neill doesn't feel too bad about the fact that the biggest hit on Brothers was the one song he didn't work on; I remember hearing the Danger Mouse-assisted "Tighten Up" on college radio a lot about a decade or so ago, and it's still a pretty good track all these years later. unfortunately, the band's aforementioned derivative nature tends to do them in, especially as they begin to repeat themselves; I'm not sure this music really justifies 15 songs and 55 minutes of runtime. decent 6/10.

I'm not sure how smooth jazz has become such a running gag in music culture, yet Sade's snoozy-ass smooth soul music gets a pass. I'm sorry! I just find Diamond Life overwhelmingly polite, an adjective I never want to use to describe a soul album. all the elements of quality pop music are present here, but they're presented in a package I find kind of sterile. in undergrad, one of my music professors told me I had "the heartbeat of a hamster," which I felt a bit slighted by at the time, but I'm starting to understand what he meant. this challenge has made me realize how apathetic I am about albums where every song rolls along at more or less the same slow-to-medium tempos. the understated nature of Sade's voice, and her eponymous band's blends of soul and funk with a subtle undercurrent of jazz, are sort of the whole appeal. unfortunately, that's my main gripe with the album overall: it feels like elevator music. if I'm listening to soul music, I need you to hit me with everything you've got more than once per LP! actually, no. my main gripe is with the saxophone playing, which is uniformly garbage. I hate those scoops, the total lack of articulation, the tone that sounds like it has a sock in it, the vibrato that sounds like teeth chattering in the cold. any song without sax here is so much better for it. strong 3/10.

"Let's Stay Together" has become Al Green's signature song, and a staple of wedding band setlists everywhere, for good reason. not only is it romantic and tender and all that, but the construction of the song itself is immaculate, especially the move to the ♭VI chord paired with Green's sudden leap into his falsetto on the lyric "is all I neeeeed." in general, all nine tracks from Green's album of the same name hit on a tenderness that's irresistible. his singing voice is, of course, unpredictable in all the best ways, but so is his songwriting; he's credited as writer or co-writer on seven cuts here, all of which are full of those tiny vocal and compositional surprises! the engineering and mix has a pretty ramshackle quality about it, like the album was cut and produced on the cheap, but it creates a certain aura around these songs that's unmistakable. even the string arrangements, which often sound squeaky-clean on other soul records, feel akin to a gnarly, slightly de-tuned horn section. light 8/10.

Led Zeppelin's third full-length (coincidentally, the third album of theirs I'm looking at for this challenge) pushes their folk influences further to the forefront than their first two. those other LPs certainly had their acoustic moments, but LZIII calls pretty stark attention to them by virtue of how its two sides are sequenced. it's side A for the electric tunes, side B for the acoustic. we've got the radio staple "Immigrant Song" kicking the whole thing off, a bit of a deceiving start considering all the different diversions the band makes. some songs point eerily to the near future. for instance, the introduction of "Tangerine" instantly brings "Stairway to Heaven" to mind, which would appear on their next record; similarly, "Out on the Tiles" sounds to me like a beta version of "The Ocean" from Houses of the Holy. overall, while there's plenty of choice cuts to pick from here, I think some of this band's other albums give their eclecticism a better showcase. although, definitely make sure to check out the epic seven-and-a-half-minute 6/8 blues rager "Since I've Been Loving You". decent 7/10.

chronologically, this is the second of five albums from the 2020s to appear in 1001 Albums, with its most recent update having been in 2021. (I'm wondering what the over/under is on 3D Country making the next round of selections.) the memory of the previous year's national protests against the murder of George Floyd was still quite strong at the time, and the inclusion of this SAULT album—a pro-Black, anti-police brutality statement released on Juneteenth 2020—seems to be Dimery & Co.'s way of acknowledging that moment in time. it was a brief era of uncanny optimism in the face of strife that now feels like a huge missed opportunity in retrospect, considering how quickly everyone went home after a Democrat got elected. the police were never even de-funded! but, hey, let's view this for what it is, not what it was. SAULT is a somewhat anonymous collective of musicians spearheaded by English producer, multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Inflo and lead singer Cleo Sol, names I first came across from their excellent work on multiple Little Simz projects that came out around the same time as SAULT's first four albums. whereas your average Simz song is packed tight with musical and lyrical info, Untitled (Black Is) often utilizes a minimal approach in both of those respects. most of these songs are led by a tight drum pocket, a bassline, and maybe some keys or a guitar. beyond that, it's all vocal layering. there's a smoothness to the group's approach that helps make the harrowing themes of racial injustice go down easy. if anything, it might be a little too easy, especially across 20 tracks and 56 minutes. decent 6/10.

my first time sitting down and listening to a Rolling Stones album front to back. I can hardly believe it, either! this is a band with so many radio staples which have been omnipresent for my whole life, but I'm far from an expert as far as telling you which songs belong to which albums, or even eras. even as I sit here thinking of the words to describe Beggars Banquet, credited as a return to form for the band after Their Satanic Majesties Request was largely written off as a poor imitation of Sgt. Pepper, I struggle to place myself within the entirety of the historical context which surrounds it, in order to understand why it sounds like this, and what it meant for the Stones going forward. I'm sure things will start making a bit more sense once I have a few more of their albums under my belt. I should probably also read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas; this record came out at about the same point Hunter S. Thompson points to as being the definitive end of the 60s as an era of optimism, where anything felt possible. the two most enduring tracks on Beggars Banquet are its most political, and they point to cracks that were beginning to form in the flower-power worldview as governments across the world began consolidating power and cracking down on innocents. "Sympathy for the Devil" remains a damning indictment of the culpability of Westerners in the tragedies which their governments commit, both abroad and at home; that's to say nothing of "Street Fighting Man", which some elements of the political left perceived as a call for violent resistance, or even revolution. as far as the music itself, it was strong enough to make Beggars Banquet a huge critical and commercial success for the Rolling Stones, and it provided a strong template of acoustic-driven blues rock which they would build upon with Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers, and the hugely ambitious Exile on Main St.. lots of British bands owe a debt to American blues artists, and the Stones pay homage to their influences on this front by embracing the more rugged, raw, slightly sleazy end of the genre's trappings. Mick Jagger roars, shrieks and croons through these tracks like a wake-up call to the nervous system; Keith Richards delivers leads and solos with a tone that sounds like it's about to explode; Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts dutifully tie everything together with just the right level of panache. depending on how you quantify it, this is the Stones' final album with meaningful contributions from Brian Jones. despite his infrequent and difficult appearances in the studio, he nevertheless contributed some meaningful moments to multiple songs. in particular, there's his slide guitar performance on "No Expectations", plus the sitar and tanbur overdubs that define the sound of "Street Fighting Man". there's a bit of a "Syd Barrett on Piper" effect whenever I hear him. there's the presence of a uniquely creative mind beset by a host of personal problems; but I'm mostly unsettled by the knowledge that these bands lost (what were once) pivotal members, yet soldiered on all the same. except, in the case of the Stones discography, apparently you get to listen to the process of Jones slowly dropping out, which is eerie! this challenge will include two earlier Stones albums which feature him far more heavily, so I'm interested to get to know a fuller extent of what he contributed to this band. decent 8/10.

it's not exactly revelatory at this point to say that the term "grunge" is something of a post-hoc rationalization. sure, many of its major movers and shakers had geography in common, particularly the bands we now call its Big Four, who all came from Seattle or elsewhere in the state of Washington. you could also say these bands were bucking the prevailing trends of the time, and bringing guitar music back to some sort of basics as the 90s began. but even still, those four bands don't sound a whole lot like each other, to my ears anyway. Nirvana was equally fascinated by 60s pop and sheer walls of noise; Pearl Jam are a fairly straightforward alt-rock outfit; Soundgarden's best moments place them in a lineage encompassing lumbering stoner and sludge acts; and Alice in Chains started as a glam metal band! you'd think any band associated with the "grunge" label would want nothing to do with the excesses of glam, right? well, not entirely. of course, Nirvana famously covered Bowie on MTV; and on Dirt, the second Alice in Chains album, you can hear a combination of heavy metal riffing with pop song structures which, from a certain vantage point, feels akin to something Dokken might've put together in the 80s. what sets Alice in Chains apart, of course, is the inescapable darkness surrounding their work. I'm not just referring to Layne Staley and his famous struggles with addiction and depression, which of course he mined for vocal and lyrical gold on almost every track here. I'm also referring to the compositions, which demonstrate Jerry Cantrell's knack for balancing consonance and dissonance, melodicism and fierce aggression. the ♭VI and the minor iv really get a workout, two chords that can take any mood and darken it substantially. the lack of any bright spot in Staley's outlook on Dirt is pretty well-known, what with its replete references to death, suicide, heroin and et cetera; but of course, it would mean nothing if it wasn't set with the right soundtrack. strong 8/10.

my review of Illmatic touched on how, when I was first getting into hip hop as a sheltered, suburban white young'in, that was one of, if not the album which was most frequently cited as a "potential entry point for newcomers into the trappings of the style as a whole" in online music discussions, where I was getting most of my information about music at the time. what I didn't mention in that review was the fact that, in the same year I was first dipping my toes into the rap music pool, a young upstart from Compton, California (one of the most important cities in hip hop, as I would come to discover) would release his major-label debut album. that record, good kid, m.A.A.d city, became an Illmatic of sorts for millions of listeners of a new generation, myself included; and the rapper behind it, Kendrick Lamar, had all the makings of a superstar. as it would turn out, he might be the last of the superstar rappers. even as a novice to the art of Rhythm and Poetry, Lamar's handle of the craft was obvious to me. more than any hip hop album I had listened to beforehand, good kid is a showcase of rapping as a form of storytelling. it's a concept album, a format I was fairly familiar with given all the Pink Floyd records I gobbled up in middle school, which certainly helped. however, in rock music, concept albums tend not to have terribly straightforward narratives, even at the best of times. by contrast, every song here tells its own story with such clarity you can't help but pick up on the greater tale being told. plenty of people have gone and dissected Lamar's use of all manner of rhyme schemes across these songs; and that's all impressive, obviously, but what really pulled me into this album was his skill as a narrator. on good kid, m.A.A.d city, he mines an adolescence full of adversity for a stunningly honest (albeit somewhat fictionalized) portrayal of what actually led him—an urban Black kid who grew up in Section 8 housing living off government cheese—to turn, however briefly, to a life of crime and antisocial behavior. "Sherane a.k.a Master Splinter's Daughter" tells the story of a budding young romance, but it also reveals a lot about the quasi-autobiographical narrator Lamar portrays and the environment that surrounds him. the real-life Lamar is the son of a gangster, and grew up in an environment—a m.A.A.d city, if you will—colored by gang activity into which his good kid character frequently gets swept up, whether he wants to or not. his exploits with Sherane are a recurring theme; their relationship results in him getting tangled up in even more dangerous situations, and his friends tease him for having sex on the brain so often. of course, there are bright spots; "Backseat Freestyle" is just a good-ass time with Lamar flexing about nothing in particular, just to show off to his fellow guys in the back of their car; but it's immediately followed by "The Art of Peer Pressure", where we find out they're en route to stage a robbery which eventually goes sideways, with the group just barely evading capture by the police. the good kid's mother acts as a recurring moral compass attempting to steer him away from the negative influences taking over his life; we hear her (and his Domino's-craving father) through voicemails throughout these tracks. unfortunately, he doesn't fully see reason until his exploits wind up resulting in a rival gang killing one of his friends, resulting in the deeply moving two-parter "Sing About Me, I'm Dying of Thirst". after contemplating a violent retaliation, he instead turns his focus to family, friends and God. the whole album is a cinematic, stirring tribute to Lamar's early life in Compton, a city which has become known in hip hop for its perseverance in the face of adversity. it's no coincidence Compton's own Dr. Dre jointly released this on his Aftermath label, along with being featured as executive producer and delivering a verse on the closer, also named for the city he and Lamar call their hometown. I wonder if the people who reflexively rated this 1/5 because they heard a Black man talking about your typical gang-banging subject matter with no other context were able to pick up on any of this, or if they even *wanted* to pick up on it to begin with. I thought the point of exploring this 1001 Albums thing was to expand your musical horizons and understanding, not to balk at anything unfamiliar the moment you don't immediately get it. more than any other album I can think of, good kid, m.A.A.d city adapts the aesthetic front of a typical "gangsta rap" record and flips it on its head to deliver a powerful message *against* crime, drugs, objectification of women, etc. I really don't know how it's possible to miss that! you're reading along with the lyrics for all these albums, too, right? to list all the producers and guests who contributed to each song here would take too much time; suffice it to say, the production is wonderfully varied, covering a range of moods from smoky introspection ("Sherane", "The Art of Peer Pressure", "Real") to pop catchiness ("Bitch, Don't Kill My Vibe", "Money Trees", "Poetic Justice") to classic hardcore hip hop aggression ("m.A.A.d city", "Backseat Freestyle"). the guest vocalists all slot in nicely, even Drake, whose appearance on "Poetic Justice" gets even stranger with time. (unfortunately, it's a great match for the type of artist he was in 2012.) my favorite comes from fellow Compton native MC Eiht, who lights up the second half of "m.A.A.d city" and creates one of the album's most blood-curdling moments. forget Illmatic, I say. well, don't forget it. but, if you're looking for a way into hip hop, this album's the whole package. strong 9/10.

there was this BBC documentary called 1959: The Year That Changed Jazz that I watched for a music class in high school; it made the case that '59 was the year bebop exploded into various fragmented jazz subcultures, which director Paul Bernays and his many talking heads endeavored to summarize by covering four classic jazz LPs from that year. these were Miles's Kind of Blue (although the film never uses the word "modal"), Mingus's Ah Um (a return to group improvisations, the blues, and the Church tradition), Ornette's The Shape of Jazz to Come (heralding the nascent "free" movement), and the Dave Brubeck Quartet's Time Out. at the time, that final inclusion struck me as slightly out of place compared to the others. for a newcomer, it seems to me like this would be the easiest listen of the four by far; I know more than a few fellow musicians who regard this album as even being somewhat kitschy. apart from its famous use of various time signatures (hence the name), there's not a lot about this album (at first glance, anyway) that you could call "challenging" like with the other three LPs in that documentary. well, let me attempt something of an explanation. American pianist-composer Dave Brubeck had spent a pretty significant amount of time touring Eastern Europe and Western Asia with his quartet on behalf of the State Department (for better or worse) in places like Turkey, Poland, India and Pakistan, where local folk musics are often organized into anything but four evenly spaced pulses to a bar. this got his gears turning, and it eventually resulted in a seven-track suite of music where only one song is strictly in 4/4, a time signature so ubiquitous in the West that we literally call it "common time". of course, the waltz (3/4 or 6/4) is pretty well-understood here too, and Brubeck includes a few of those. "Kathy's Waltz" is a bit misleading as a title, though, on account of the fact it starts in 4, develops into a waltz in 6 later, then places the 4 over the 6 at the same time. "Everybody's Jumpin'" and "Pick Up Sticks" also play around with threes and sixes. but I know what you really want, you sicko. you wanna hear about "Blue Rondo a la Turk" with its alternating quarters and dotted quarters in 9/8 (a song ELP famously butchered by just playing it in 4/4 as if that makes it the same composition). you wanna know about "Take Five", which Paul Desmond wrote as a drum solo for Joe Morello and inadvertently created a smash hit. well, I don't see much point in hashing that out more than the critics and analysts already have. I'm more interested in explaining why I think this album is worthy of consideration alongside those of Davis, Mingus, Coleman and other, more obviously "adventurous" jazz artists of the time. the biggest thing that endears me to Time Out is that it was more or less the first attempt by a major jazz artist to compose music "in the tradition" using irregular time signatures—meters that don't divide evenly into groups of 2's or 3's, and typically use some combination of both. there was a thought among many that these sorts of meters (5/4, 7/8, etc.) were jazz-proof; then again, they said the same thing about electric instruments, straight eighth notes, and God only knows what else! the most obvious use of an odd time signature on the whole album comes as soon as you press "play". the main pulse of the 9/8 head in/out on "Blue Rondo a la Turk" is 2+2+2+3, although some parts use a 3+3+3 division, and the solo sections alternate this 9/8 with a 12/8—3+3+3+3, which the band feels as a slow swing tempo in 4. these complexities might not be immediately apparent just because Brubeck and his band play in such a relaxed, "West Coast" fashion, but once you notice them, they're utterly beguiling. if you filled a dartboard with jazz albums from the past 25 years, you'd probably have a better-than-even shot at hitting an album with at least one odd time signature on it somewhere or another. in their increasing ubiquity, they often lose their power; if everything is irregular, nothing is. that's just the thing which gives so much extra power to Brubeck's gorgeous solo cadenza on "Strange Meadow Lark", the only song on the LP that's entirely in common time (once the tempo is set, anyway). even when the meters get to be their oddest, Brubeck frequently anchors the music with bits of 4/4 to keep the listener grounded, like on "Three to Get Ready". adding even more "cool" factor to the proceedings is the unique sonic identities of Brubeck's sidemen. of course, there's the brilliant alto saxophone sound on Desmond, which was a major selling point for the Brubeck Quartet at the time. it's one of the most bewildering tones I've heard; dry, sparkly, complex, yet so delicate it feels like it might all just fall apart at any moment. bassist Eugene Wright makes his most meaningful contributions when Brubeck sits out, like during Desmond's solo on "Blue Rondo". Desmond makes a simmering jazz noise together with Wright and Morello's patient, utterly locked-in quarter note on a 12-bar blues in F, that most time-honored of bop traditions. even if you have a heavy East Coast/New York bias in your jazz listening habits like I do, you have to hand it to Brubeck. despite the understatedness in its execution, the fairly easy-going nature of it all, it's easy to forget that Time Out was treated by many at the time as being somewhat experimental. "Take Five" was structured around a drum solo! and yet it's become the best-selling single in the history of jazz. the truth is strange like that. decent 8/10.

despite the fact that Haunted Dancehall dropped on Warp, one of my favorite labels for this sort of off-kilter, experimental 90s electronic music, I felt fairly underwhelmed by it. I'm kind of stunned that this is, as far as I can tell, the lone representative of that more avant-garde side of Warp's roster in 1001 Albums; the Aphex Twin and Boards of Canada selections that made the cut are very tonal and melodic, much more the kind of thing I would expect from a book of "Must Hear" albums put together mainly by rock critics. what I mean to say is, how did this make the cut, but not a single Autechre LP? the main word that comes to mind with the Sabres of Paradise is "squelchy"? possibly "wet". the bass tones all have that kind of wobbly, liquid sound that smacks of the 90s, and not in the most flattering way. the dub influences are especially prominent, especially in how murky and minimal it sounds; there's also an unobjectionable sense of ambience around the whole thing. I just struggle to remember much of it after it's over, or even while it's on. every song loops into oblivion, and the effect of listening to this sort of thing for nearly the length of a feature film is taxing on the mind. light 5/10.

of all the rock 'n' roll duos that existed in the 2000s, Lightning Bolt outclassed nearly every one of them in terms of the sheer mass and volume of their work. bassist Brian Gibson and drummer/vocalist Brian Chippendale (The Brians!) formed the band in Providence, Rhode Island in the 90s, and it became a central pillar of the city's underground music scene, specifically the noisy acts that congregated around Chippendale's Fort Thunder venue. I wasn't there, but everyone who was talks about that place and that scene like it was the Second Coming. if Wonderful Rainbow is at all indicative of what it was like, I can see why! Gibson's bass is fed through what I can only imagine is a rats' nest of effects pedals and amps and speaker cabinets. in particular, the sound of his whammy pedal tends to color things the most. typically, he's using it to swing up or down in octaves, but he also sometimes kicks it into power-chord gear, and plays enough parallel fifths to make a Renaissance-era music theorist do several Star Fox 64-style barrel rolls in his grave. his highest string is not a bass string, but a banjo string, allowing him to incorporate even higher registers into his riffs. (check out the alternating tapped leads and bass bombs at the beginning of "Crown of Storms".) the intensity of Chippendale's drumming is far too great for mere words to encapsulate. his snare drum pings like machine gun fire; and his cymbals sound like they're beaten to shit, but he's still making them sing anyway. his vocals might be unintelligible, on account of the fact that he tends to wear his microphone rather than hold it, and it's likewise fed through a ton of distortion; but, c'mon, you're telling me more enunciation wouldn't wreck the vibe? the human voice is just as often an instrument as it is a delivery device for language. the sound of this band throws people off, especially on 1001 Albums Generator, where (as of March 19, 2026) 18,915 listeners have aggregated its score at a measly 2.29/5. I'm not sure what there is to object to here, other than maybe the abrasive exterior. listen to the proper opening song, "Assassins", carefully, and you'll realize it's a four-minute masterclass on how to take two contrasting ideas (octaves, followed by a chromatically ascending scale) and turn them into four minutes of ear candy. sure, it might appear as mayhem on the surface, but every song on Wonderful Rainbow is exceedingly well-organized. once you realize that, you can't get enough. a little feedback never hurt anybody! decent 9/10.

I have a lot of different games I play with these 1001 Albums reviews, depending on what the Generator chooses fit to send my way. early on I talked about Cool, But I've Heard That Already! (which has accounted for a decent chunk of the offerings so far), but the game here is more like Who? Ohhh. today, it went like this: Teenage Fanclub? Who? okay, they're a Scottish band, big in the 90s and, Ohhh, Bandwagonesque is Ben Gibbard's favorite album of all time. Of All Time! (there's also the Spin Album of the Year fiasco, which you can also go read about on Wikipedia.) despite Gibbard's endorsement, Teenage Fanclub's sound is not too similar to Death Cab's; it's slightly more in line with, like, that Jesus and Mary Chain album I checked out in January. Bandwagonesque evokes a sense of 60s/70s nostalgia, but in a way that's unmistakably heralding the 90s. perhaps it was the sound of bands like Teenage Fanclub that would eventually evolve into the Britpop thing: catchy power pop tunes, sun-kissed electric distortion, a firm rejection of synths in favor of strings and brass. this album also incorporates ample three-part vocal harmonies (possibly more?), something you don't hear too often in 90s rock music. for me, it has the potential to get a bit hokey, but it never quite does. if this music does have much in common with the Death Cab sound, it's that omnipresent mellowness. to me, the Death Cab thing is pretty grand and expansive, whereas Teenage Fanclub's thing is less adorned. Bandwagonesque came out on Creation in the same year as My Bloody Valentine released Loveless on the same label and... well, I'll get there when I get there. decent 7/10.

Innervisions is the third chapter of Stevie Wonder's incredible run at Tamla/Motown in the early and mid-70s, and easily my favorite of the five. it's a succinct encapsulation of Wonder's view on American life in 1973, with grim depictions of drug abuse ("Too High"), systemic racism ("Living for the City"), Nixon ("He's Misstra Know-It-All") and other stark subject matter. the almost-title-track "Visions" contrasts Wonder's vision of a bright, harmonious future with his acceptance of the harsh realities of life as it actually was at the time (and may still be, in some ways). helping us to digest these very heavy messages is Wonder's trademark songwriting panache. there's so many incredible details: the dizzying triads moving on top of that bass pedal in the "doo-doo-doo" section of "Too High", the descending seventh cliche to end them all on "Don't You Worry 'Bout a Thing", the rollicking thump from the rhythm section on "Higher Ground". once again, Wonder multitracked nearly every instrumental part on a lot of these songs, and it never ceases to amaze me just how high his abilities were on all of them, not just his trademark keys. if you don't like Innervisions, I can't trust you! 10/10.

I'm gonna tell my kids this was boygenius. these three women are all superstars in country music, and they collaborated in various configurations for songs across the 70s and 80s, but finally managed to put together a full-length as a trio (ha-ha) in 1987. of course, the best tracks here are the ones that feature the three of them harmonizing together. Phil Spector's "To Know Him Is to Love Him" (originally a hit for his band the Teddy Bears in '58) gets an especially great treatment. as I've already mentioned quite a few times, I'm basically a novice when it comes to classic country, so I have a pretty tough time distinguishing which voice belongs to which person sometimes; but all three voices at play here are tremendous, so I suppose it's a good problem to have. the production and instrumentation is especially pristine. I continue to be a sucker for the sound of pedal steels and bowed strings and mandolins. as I get more acclimated to the conventions of country music, I'm especially moved by how these Nashville session players adorn such simple songs with beautiful details, perfectly setting lyrics about life's joys and hardships with a sense of heartfelt wonder. I can imagine that, in '87, there were pockets of the country industry (not to mention the music industry at large) that were needlessly mucking things up with synths, drum programming or what have you. I have nothing against electricity when it's used for the right purpose but, damn, acoustic country music can be so beautiful. light 8/10. (a nerdy cliff-note: some of these songs include something I'm not sure I've heard before on a country album: a viola being used as the fiddle! it's a gorgeous, mellower counterpart to the violin fiddling you hear most of the time, and Mark O'Connor takes particular advantage of the lower notes it's capable of.)

I've already run through one or two albums made by (or featuring) members of Talking Heads, and quite a few more by future artists who were heavily inspired by their work; here, for the first time, we get the genuine artifact, and it's probably their best work! I would've liked to lead up to this a little bit more but hey, that's the luck of the draw for you. Remain in Light has always felt like kind of a miracle to me, even from the first time I heard it as a teenager. even for 1980, it feels wildly ahead of the curve. of course, we owe at least some of this to producer Brian Eno, who's also shown up a few times in my 1001 Albums journey on the grounds that he's one of the most important, forward-thinking musicians in all of recorded music. however, even more important than Eno's contributions is the heavy influence of Fela Kuti and Tony Allen. yes, underneath all the funk and punk and disco influences, the propulsive, driving weight of Afrobeat really drives the proceedings, especially on side A. these songs are borderline modal, with pretty static harmonic treatments. you could boil most of 'em down to a single chord. but, like with Afrobeat, the intrigue comes from all the layers. damn, there's so many layers to these songs. a shit-ton of percussion, guitar and synth riffs popping in and out, vocal melodies and countermelodies, David Byrne's nervous shout, Adrian Belew howling away, the basslines! even on the second side, when things get slower and more ambient, the attention to detail never lets up. if you've yet to experience Remain in Light, do it now! you'll likely fill in some pretty major historical gaps. 10/10.

I've been ingesting lots of media recently from the tail end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 70s, much of it from the UK or the American West. in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Raoul Duke writes about how mid-60s life in San Francisco (a good way up the coast from where Neil Young recorded After the Gold Rush about half a decade afterwards) was full of a "sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil," comparing the optimism of the time to "the crest of a high and beautiful wave" which, "less than five years later, ...broke and rolled back." After the Gold Rush was inspired by the now-lost script of a film by the same title, in which a commune of hippies in Topanga Canyon (where Young was living at the time) gets washed away in a great flood. perhaps it was the same wave Hunter S. Thompson was talking about. sure, the script might be a bit on-the-nose as a metaphor for the social upheaval taking place, but it makes for a pretty fertile starting point for a set of songs! the gorgeous, instantly memorable title track plays into those themes the most obviously. it's relayed through dream visions of humanity's journey from peace and harmony to drug addiction and environmental collapse. like many Young songs, it's dead simple from a musical perspective, a three-chord piano ballad with a horn overdub; but the imagery evoked is some of the richest in all of singer-songwriterdom! the rest of the material follows suit; this is probably the least hard-rockin' album I've listened to from Young so far. "Only Love Can Break Your Heart" is a real punch to the gut in 6/8, for instance. it's mostly very acoustic and tender, with the vocal harmonies being an especially nice touch. there's a somber mood about these songs, which gives me the impression that Young and Crazy Horse were deeply aware of the significance of the moment they were capturing. I'm aware of Young's ability to let it hang loud and loose, but it's nice to hear a different side of him here. that being said, my favorite song on Gold Rush is easily the heaviest, both topically and musically. "Southern Man", a damning indictment of the racism which was (and is) a fact of life in the American South, is also one of the only tracks where the electric guitars come out in full force; it also happens to be one of my top Neil Young songs, a deeply moving and intelligent reflection on the culture which Lynyrd Skynyrd famously tried (and failed, if you ask me) to mount a response to. interesting that they were so offended by this anti-racist anthem... strong 8/10.

the Gotan Project formed in Paris as the result of a collaboration between three artists; one was French, one was Swiss, and the last hailed from, most importantly, Argentina. La revancha del tango ("The Revenge of Tango") marks one of the most significant developments in tango music, one of Argentina's most significant cultural exports, since the era when Astor Piazzolla reigned supreme as its most influential artist. it sees the Gotan Project combining live tango instrumentation—your acoustic guitars, your pianos, and especially your bandoneons—with trippy downtempo drum breaks and ample use of electronic effects. there's lots of electronic records within 1001 Albums... that aim for this spaced-out, somewhat minimal approach; my initial instinct is to beg and plead for more activity and volume, but "electrotango" seems to actually benefit from this approach! my favorite track is "Santa María (Del Buen Ayre)", which features a subtly evolving drum loop, bandoneon flourishes galore, and the catchiest bassline on the entire LP. decent 6/10.

look at his face, with that pose and this album title. Muddy Waters knew what he was doing. Hard Again opens with "Mannish Boy", one of the best opening tracks I've listened to across these 233 albums. it strips the blues to its barest essentials, hitting the same riff over and over and over again for over five minutes. you've heard of a three-chord blues: now try just one. I could see Swans recording a take on it! the first four tracks are a raw, rugged assault on the senses, with so many instruments playing at once, from the multiple guitars to the keys to the distorted harmonica. somehow, they simultaneously compete for dominance and work as a perfect unit. I can't explain it. Johnny Winter, the album's producer, also plays some mean slide guitar and is, according to Wikipedia, credited with "miscellaneous screams". he's basically Waters' hypeman, and it's such a great dynamic. propulsive drumming as well. this is yet another reminder to myself to listen to more blues. strong 8/10.

Sonic Youth's second album on a major label saw them streamlining their compositions and ever-so-slightly containing their noisy proclivities. by some coincidence, Dirty was produced by Butch Vig and mixed by Andy Wallace, who each performed those same duties on Nirvana's Nevermind the year before. songs like "100%" and "Youth Against Fascism" feel very much like conscious nods to grunge, some of the most accessible SY songs I've yet heard. but, not to worry! there's tons of the band's usual timbral tinkering to be found elsewhere, like on the spellbinding "Theresa's Sound-World" (my favorite SY track I've heard so far), the total noise freakout in the middle of "On the Strip", and the experimental closer "Créme brûlèe". something about the way these four write and perform really draws attention to the ways in which they use their instruments; the variety of sounds, styles and contexts they place the standard rock band instrumentation in can be utterly bewildering. strong 8/10.

Detroit's own Marshall Mathers, a.k.a. Eminem, a.k.a. Slim Shady, is an artist whose merits and significance change drastically depending on who you ask. he means many different things to many different types of people, and this is one of the major themes which runs through his work, especially as he climbs the fame ladder all the way to the top of his genre across his first three LPs. his first, The Slim Shady LP, put him on the map with his portrayal of its titular alter ego character, a violent, sadistic, bigoted drug addict who could put together a mean 16 and always had his tongue buried somewhere in his cheek. the obvious command Eminem had over his craft as a rapper made him into a protege of Dr. Dre; his albums would release on Dre's Aftermath label for the next 20 years, and Dre would be credited as an executive producer on every single one of them. those first three in particular would go on to become, in many people's eyes, modern classics of hip hop. for better or worse, Eminem managed to become one of the most influential rappers of all time; of course, he's influenced a fair bit of Cringe Rap over the years, but his fingerprints are all over the work of even highly celebrated artists in his field like Kendrick Lamar (another brilliant storyteller) and Tyler, The Creator (whose early work was heavily indebted to the brand of shock rap Eminem pioneered). even if you know next to nothing about Mathers as a person, if you're old enough, you probably remember seeing him make headlines for all manner of different reasons, most of them negative (although, as we'll see, any publicity is good publicity for Eminem). the SSLP turned him into a target of protest by groups from all over the political spectrum, from PMRC-style conservatives who objected to his violent, profane lyrics, to left-wing feminist groups who objected to his depiction of women. I've also buried a pretty major lede here: Eminem is a white man in a historically Black art form. this meant that, for some audiences who were mainly interested in the music that typically gets made by white Americans (at the time, mainly pop and alternative rock), he was someone with major crossover appeal. this is further evidenced by the fact that he would go on to sell more records than any other rapper in history. (his whiteness has been at the center of a lot of the discourse surrounding his work, but he wouldn't give that aspect of his fame a proper reckoning until he made The Eminem Show.) The Marshall Mathers LP captures Eminem at one of the most pivotal moments of his career; it's largely a response to the success and heated controversy that surrounded The Slim Shady LP. he doubles down on many of his edgiest proclivities, with the overall sentiment being that Shady is here to stay, and you don't want to fuck with him, cuz Shady will fucking kill you! he also takes the time to fire back at many of his critics and send shots at a few of his fellow rappers, especially the Insane Clown Posse, who he mostly brings up to call gay. I mean, this was the 90s becoming the 2000s, after all. (the "Ken Kaniff" skit, maybe the worst skit on a major rap album, features the two Clowns giving head to Kaniff before accidentally calling him "Eminem", leading to him zipping up his pants and kicking them out.) this leads into my main gripe with the MMLP, and Eminem's music generally: if you're not totally invested in the story, character and image that is Eminem, or Shady, or Mathers, there's not much here for you. of course, I would be a fool to deny that there's some great material on this album! in particular, "Stan" is my favorite Eminem song of all time. it sees him penning some of his most self-aware, grounded and timeless stanzas, with the character of Stan himself becoming immortalized in contemporary fandom culture, with his name now used mainly as a verb by overzealous K-pop fans (or people talking about overzealous K-pop fans). there's also "The Real Slim Shady", a danceable Dre-produced banger with a freaky harpsichord riff, and some of Eminem's funniest bars (I especially get a kick out of the Will Smith line). "The Way I Am" features one of his most innovative flows, pairing his rhymes with a syncopated piano arpeggio to create a devastating sense of forward momentum. and, of course, there's the legendary West Coast posse cut "Bitch Please II". that being said, across 18 tracks and 72 minutes, I feel like Eminem and his collaborators tend to repeat themselves a bit. "I'm Back", one of his many songs about being "back" or "back again", comes in at track 10, by which point I had already figured he was back, on account of me being half an hour into the album already. plus, you have the tracks with members of his D12 crew, pretty much none of whom are as good at rapping as he is. then there's "Kim", which... Jesus. I can see the idea he had, and I can't deny that he probably executed it perfectly. it's just no fun to listen to. it's mean-spirited in a way that feels way too real compared to the somewhat satirical, lighthearted angle which he typically approaches a violent track with. it sticks out like the sorest of thumbs. so, again, while I can't deny Eminem's influence, impact, commercial success, et cetera, I just can't buy into his persona for a full LP of this length, with this much self-mythologizing. his penchant for political incorrectness doesn't offend me or anything; I'm just not particularly moved by it in any direction, positive or negative, most of the time. light 5/10.

Goldfrapp's Will Gregory appeared on this list near the very beginning, as a session saxophonist on the Tears for Fears song "The Working Hour", which appeared on that band's album Songs From the Big Chair. well, 15 years later, here he is doing something completely different! well, not completely; Goldfrapp's music is certainly no less smooth and sophisticated. this duo, named for its other half Alison Goldfrapp, were late additions to the UK trip hop wave which was most ascendant in the 90s. there's a noir atmosphere in their work most apparent in the orchestral arrangements, and it's paired with some great electronics, drum programming, and a haunting lead vocal from Goldfrapp throughout. any of these songs could be a Bond theme and it wouldn't feel out of place. decent 7/10.

an album that does what it says on the tin; The Wildest! is an uproarious, high-energy romp through a series of highly entertaining swing and jump blues numbers, most of them fronted by the infectious vocal antics of Louis Prima. Prima, a singer and trumpeter most well-known as a Vegas nightclub performer, was originally from New Orleans, as was his backing band on this album, Sam Butera and the Witnesses. (you may recognize Prima & the Witnesses' recording of "Pennies from Heaven" off the Elf soundtrack.) the Orleanian spirit of communal music-making and collective improvisation runs deep in this work, even if it can occasionally get a bit kitsch (see "The Lip", a show piece based around niche trumpet humor). Prima's trumpet playing is very much in the mold of Louis Armstrong, but as a singer he's beyond category, approaching his lyrics with a nervous, stuttering energy that feels simultaneously in and out of control. if you can listen to this opening medley of "Just a Gigolo" and "I Ain't Got Nobody" without smiling, stay the hell away from me. Prima's then-wife Keely Smith shows up for multiple neat spots as a co-lead and backup singer, but for my money, the real stars of the show are the horn section—tenor saxophonist Butera and trombonist James Blount—who never give less than 110%. to any aspiring, struggling wind instrumentalists, let this recording be a lesson that the problem with your sound is almost certainly your lack of air and breath support, which these guys have for days! electrifying tones spitting some serious blues flames. I gave this record multiple standing ovations. strong 8/10.

R.E.M. was one of the first bands I remember going out of my way to listen to as a kid; we had CD copies of Reckoning, Out of Time and the mighty Automatic for the People in the house, which wound up being some of the first experiences I had with The Album as a format. Document is a batch of songs I'm less familiar with, save for its A-side closer ("It's the End of the World as We Know It...") and B-side opener ("The One I Love"), some of the band's first radio staples. as Michael Stipe's lyrics became more and more coherent, R.E.M.'s sound started to polish up in response. the band's trademark jangly guitar work takes a much leaner, heavier tone on Document which is apparent from beat one. "Finest Worksong" is a total firecracker with a two-word chorus that's perfect in its simplicity. "Welcome to the Occupation" uses bold, twisted political calls to action as a means to critique Reagan-era conservatism ("hang your collar up inside/hang your freedom higher," "freedom reigns supreme/fire on the hemisphere below/listen to me"); the following "Exhuming McCarthy" rips even further on that front. Stipe's voice cracks like thunder on pretty much every song; just five albums into R.E.M.'s career, he's pleading a case as one rock music's finest lead singers, whether he's mumbling or proclaiming. decent 8/10.

recorded in 1973 but held back from release until two years later, Tonight's the Night finds Neil Young once again eulogizing; last time I looked at his work, he was eulogizing the counterculture of the 60s on After the Gold Rush. on this album, the subjects of his eulogies are actual people, friends who died from drug overdoses—Crazy Horse guitarist Danny Whitten and roadie Bruce Berry. the resulting music is some of the darkest I've heard from Young so far, a bummer in the realest of senses. musically, any one of my reviews of his other albums that I've written up until now (three of them, all mostly on the electric side) could probably sub in just fine, but the tone of the whole thing stands far apart from those. I'm not sure there's a single standout track here, but the mood captured is stark and moving, especially as Young's voice breaks and strains in some moments. plenty of his albums capture pain and sorrow, but none quite like this. light 9/10.

I consider 2010 the year I "got into music" (so to speak), and 2011 the year I started keeping up with new music. these years were formative not just for my taste in wiggly air, but also my life as a denizen of the Internet. since forums, wikis and digital databases were my main source of knowledge on music of the past and present, my first memories of Animal Collective are of me scrolling /mu/, seeing memes about the songs and cover art of Merriweather Post Pavilion (their newest album at the time) with no other context. after a little digging, I realized I was slightly too late to the party. the 9.6/10 score MPP got in Pitchfork upon release in '09 was a shot heard 'round the digital music world. some listeners and critics received this thing with a level of rapturous fervor rivaling that of The Beach Boys' most loyal adherents. I would also come to discover that Animal Collective was one of those bands that most people either loved or hated, without much middle ground. to this day, even relatively accessible albums in their discography like this one tend to raise the hackles on some people (are they "Also Frightened"?). personally, I've become a big fan of their 2000s work over the years, and I view MPP as the culmination of a pretty great run of music that encompasses a huge range of stylistic and emotional ground. in particular, it feels like a streamlining of the electronic pop insanity their previous album (2007's Strawberry Jam) achieved with flying neon colors. I mentioned The Beach Boys earlier; there's no doubt that MPP is in conversation with Brian Wilson, one of pop music's foremost innovators of an earlier era. the sonic and structural avenues Animal Collective travels down here are spectacular, especially on the A-side. "My Girls" features a subtle metric modulation, with its prominent synth motif turning from triplets into sixteenth notes without changing their speed. once it switches over and that 4/4 groove settles in, the mixture of vocal harmonies, sparse, syncopated drums and reverb-soaked synths that follows is irresistible. the same applies to the propulsive dance of closing track "Brother Sport". but my favorite track, "Daily Routine", moves speedily through some simple, deadly catchy melodies which then get suspended in time dilation for its last two-thirds, creating a spectacular auditory blur. decent 9/10.

1984 saw Van Halen cross over to the American pop charts in a pretty major way, with all four of its singles reaching the Billboard Hot 100 and three of those cracking the top 20. it released at the very beginning of its titular year, and its success made the band into one of the biggest in the country and, increasingly, the world over. the only thing keeping it from hitting #1 on the Billboard 200 was Thriller! despite the slight move away from raw hard rock and towards glammier pastures (especially the prominent use of synths), the DNA of Van Halen—Eddie's razor-sharp riffing and shredding, Alex's tight, frenetic drumming, David Lee Roth's bad-boy attitude, and Michael Anthony holding down the fort—remains intact. my top three tracks here are, unfortunately, all singles. I like the deep cuts (especially "Drop Dead Legs", which I remember hearing on the radio here and there), but I think Van Halen and Warner Bros. chose the singles very well. and, hey, I'd still take even the weakest moments here over just about anything this band made in the Hagar years. "Panama" was the song that played under the opening cutscene of Gran Turismo 4, and is thus probably the Van Halen song I've lived with for the longest. it's a song about a car as a thinly-veiled metaphor for sex; a fairly common topic for bands at the time, but one which the band turns into a borderline cinematic three-minute pop odyssey. the quiet bridge after the guitar solo, where the music moves from major to parallel minor, is especially effective. the keys on "Jump" sound a little silly, especially when there's no guitars underpinning them, but it's another wonderfully structured tune; the pre-chorus with its new drum pattern is especially hair-raising. "Hot for Teacher" is a strange one, with a blistering drum opening, verses containing Foley art of a rowdy classroom, and an unrelenting shuffle. I tend to think of the rock music mainstream in the 80s as being pretty inert stylistically, on account of all the dime-a-dozen glam rock and hair metal acts that are all, at the end of the day, fairly indistinguishable. a big reason for that is that many of them were trying to bite Van Halen's thing, and none of 'em came close. strong 7/10.

sure, Radiohead's first album was fine. good enough to get them in the door. but, let's face it, that was the sound of a band finding its footing. they'd been playing in various combinations and under different names since their schooling years, and The Bends is the moment where they finally dialed it in and started to become the band we think of them as today. as songwriters, as individual musicians and as a five-piece unit, Radiohead delivered in a major way, outclassing Pablo Honey in pretty much every category imaginable. just check out some of these guitar tones! Jonny Greenwood manages to fit these insane, Sonic Youth-esque fuzz and noise patches into some incredibly catchy boxes, like the solo riff at the end of "Just" or the introduction of "Black Star". Thom Yorke was definitely checking out Jeff Buckley when he recorded this, although he's conscious not to emulate Buckley too directly. instead, he's using Buckley as a model for introducing a more flexible, dynamic vocal delivery. it gets some really great showcases on "Sulk" (pure power), "Fake Plastic Trees" (tenderness) and "Bones" (aggression). although this isn't nearly as progressive or experimental as Radiohead's later work, you can hear inklings of the band's desire to push at the edges of rock's constraints all the same. the string arrangements, the synths and keys, and even the increased use of acoustic guitars point in all the different directions they'd go from here. decent 9/10.

a cloud hangs over Björk on Vulnicura. this comes four albums and 13-ish years after Vespertine, a lovesick affair which is arguably her masterpiece. that album saw her falling head-over-heels for the same person Vulnicura documents her separation from. "Black Lake" deals with the demise of this relationship with particularly stark, heartbreaking imagery: "My heart is enormous lake, black with potion / I am blind, drowning in this ocean / My soul torn apart, my spirit is broken / Into the fabric of all he has woven." the music underpinning Björk's dissection of her feelings leading up to (and after) the breakup mainly consists of plaintive, downtrodden choirs and strings, alongside glittering electronics. the latter facet often comes courtesy of The Haxan Cloak and (especially) Arca; rounding out the list of collaborators is ANOHNI, whose guest appearance on "Atom Dance" is an unbelievable showcase of her utterly unique voice. as much as I adore this music, it's definitely pretty harrowing! even "Notget", the closest thing Vulnicura gets to a "banger", is a song about how the love in her life was the only thing keeping her "safe from death." but, even if I don't return to it as much as her more upbeat or abrasive albums, I still think that one could make the case that this is her finest hour. the music on this album oozes heartbreak, and Björk's unmistakable lyricism helps her navigate said heartbreak in a way that only she could. strong 9/10.

Deep Purple recorded Machine Head in pretty extraordinary circumstances. in an attempt to create more of a "live" feel in their studio work (and as a possible bid for a double album with one studio LP and one live LP), they took a mobile recording studio owned by The Rolling Stones to the Montreux Casino in Switzerland. the double-album thing didn't pan out, for reasons that were immortalized in "Smoke on the Water"; when I was first learning how to play guitar about 15 years ago, that was still the song pretty much everyone learned as their first riff. I have no idea if the kids even know what this song is nowadays. the simplicity of that riff is indicative of Deep Purple's reverence for the fundamentals of rock 'n' roll, which they nail pretty expertly across these seven songs. far from being a boilerplate hard rock album, however, the band sees fit to incorporate blues jams ("Maybe I'm a Leo"), proto-metal power chord chugging, lengthy instrumental diversions ("Highway Star") and some seriously involved drumming from Ian Paice. Ian Gillan's lead vocals were starting to feel a lot more developed as well! the one complaint I have comes down to the production; I feel like the mix is begging for that Led Zeppelin kind of heaviness and loudness, but instead it feels unusually boxed in. that being said, Ritchie Blackmore's riffs and (especially) solos are some of the best I've come across from the British hard rock boom, which more than covers the difference. light 8/10.

the short, tumultuous career of Amy Winehouse, one of the most significant artists the UK has produced in the pop field this century, began in a place that was inspired mainly by vintage jazz, soul and R&B. the follow-up, Back to Black, was steeped in the polished musical traditions of the Brill Building era, but Frank is much looser, a bit more casual and way lighter on the lyrical front. Winehouse's wit as a singer and lyricist, even at the age of (holy shit) 20, was evident right from the jump; her deep, genuine retro influences set her far apart from other pop stars, both at the time and ever since. most of the album's songs were produced by Salaam Remi, and they feature a 21st-century blend of electronic/digital production techniques from hip hop alongside a bevy of live instrumentation. the US edition of Frank, which I'm basing this review on, runs well over 50 minutes and encompasses a pretty huge range of material; Back to Black would prove to be much more streamlined (and probably more successful overall as far as the music itself); regardless, most of the musical diversions on Frank are well worth the listen, perhaps several. although Winehouse is legendary for her confessional, honest and frank (get it?) lyricism on her own songs (which I'll dissect more whenever I get to her other album), my favorite songs here are the covers, particularly that stunning interpretation of Eddie Jefferson's gorgeous tune "Moody's Mood for Love" right in the middle. strong 7/10.

most of the time, I just wish these new wave bands would ditch the synths. and all the damn reverb. (apologies to Herbie Hancock, who apparently appears on "Hunter and the Hunted"). on New Gold Dream, Simple Minds' lack of production clarity or identity as songwriters tends to do them in, even with the occasional standout like "Promised You a Miracle" or the title track. music that sounds like goop. strong 5/10.

I dunno, I feel like the other ABBA album in here was a bit more interesting. I mean, yeah, I'll give it to Arrival a bit, in that we've got "Dancing Queen" and "Knowing Me, Knowing You" on here. even the opener, "When I Kissed the Teacher", despite its very strange lyric, is a pretty great showcase of ABBA's strengths (oodles of countermelodies, all the syncopation and fast-moving harmony). that being said, The Visitors felt to me like a much more purposeful musical statement; this one comes off more like just a collection of odds and ends, and some are much more successful than others. I guess I'm mostly just wondering why this band, who have thrived most strongly in the realm of singles, gets two entries in 1001 Albums... while so many stronger, more cohesive statements in that format have been made by bands or artists who only get one, or even zero. if this were 1001 Singles You Have to Hear Before Your F------ Heart Stops, sure! you could include damn near all 19 tracks on ABBA Gold: Greatest Hits on a list like that! light 6/10.

after the duo which founded the Human League quit that band and ceded its name to the remaining members, they went and formed the British Electric Foundation and one of its intended side projects, Heaven 17. although the Human League, indisputably, became the bigger band, Heaven 17's debut album Penthouse and Pavement did quite well for itself commercially, especially considering that it is exceptionally strange! as evidence, look no further than the opening few seconds. "(We Don't Need This) Fascist Groove Thang" starts with a whirlwind of noise that eventually settles into a Kraftwerk-esque cold, synthy jam with some frenetic bass guitar work and a detached lead vocal decrying the rise of Reaganism in America, even directly calling Ronald Reagan himself a fascist. (perhaps a controversial statement at the time, but one which, if you ask me, carries at least some truth.) a lot of the lyrics on this album can be read as dealing with life under late-stage capitalism, actually. the title track is about dead-end, unfulfilling work that leaves you feeling exhausted and empty; lead vocalist Glenn Gregory worked as a photographer in London before joining Heaven 17, which I can imagine is a pretty serious hustle to pursue as a full-time effort. "Let's All Make a Bomb" captures the Cold War anxiety of imminent nuclear annihilation with a grim sing-along chorus. for as incisive as Heaven 17 can be in terms of subject matter, you gotta be prepared for some synths that, let's be honest, sound very tacky by today's standards. not to mention the fact that a lot of these songs follow very similar structures, undercutting the surprise of "Fascist Groove Thang" somewhat by failing to fully match up to its weirdness ever again for the rest of the tracklist. what really saves is for me is the strength of the A-side, particularly the insane bass playing from session musician John Wilson. light 7/10.

I don't think I can review this in good conscience, at least not without the knowledge of what Kanye West has become hanging over the proceedings. it would bias my judgement. voting a 3 here, but if I could give no score I would.

(in the spirit of brevity, I'm gonna give myself just one paragraph.) after abruptly quitting Black Flag (with which he recorded the highly influential Nervous Breakdown EP) in 1979, vocalist Keith Morris formed the Circle Jerks. the Jerks may not be household names in punk rock the way Black Flag have become, but they're certainly a band worth checking out if you love this early LA hardcore sound. their debut album runs precisely 15 minutes long and pulls absolutely no punches. extremely short songs with a ton of BPM, quick, dirty power chords, and a great combination of crass humor and cultural commentary from Morris. strong 7/10.

Os Mutantes (The Mutants) were participants in the politically-charged musical movement tropicália, which I've interacted with a little bit for this challenge already. the band was featured on Caetano Veloso's first self-titled album in 1968, and Veloso returned the favor by contributing four songs to this, their debut album, which came out a few months later. also making a couple appearances is Gilberto Gil, another prominent tropicália figure; Gil and Veloso co-wrote this album's opener, "Panis et circenses". it's a scathing indictment of the upper classes of Brazilian society living comfortably while the country's military dictatorship made the lives of its less fortunate citizens a living hell. Veloso's album stood out to me for the innocuous way in which it delivered its very pointed political message; the music of Os Mutantes feels like a mirror image of that! this is easily one of the most experimental albums I've yet heard in a genre already known for its experimentalism, certainly far moreso than most of the American and British music they were clearly using as a template. the wide array of instrumentation and the bizarre arrangements, with their detours into dissonance and noise (check out the plucked piano strings at the end of their cover of Françoise Hardy's "Le premier bonheur du jour), come courtesy of avant-garde composer Rogério Duprat. come for the sunny psych melodies, stay for The Weirdness. light 8/10.

Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band held a long, tight grip on the charts (both at home and abroad) with Born in the U.S.A., the album which launched Springsteen to a totally new level of stardom. his previous full-length, Nebraska, gave his typical working-class subject matter a decidedly downtrodden mood, in stark contrast to the optimism his songs' characters had displayed, even in the face of stark adversity, on previous records. Born in the U.S.A. brings the E Street Band back to give these themes an even deeper dissection, but you'd almost never know it by the way it sounds. my mom, a Springsteen lifer since The River, remembers this era of his fondly, but I've always had some slight misgivings about this album in particular. this was Springsteen's entry into the pop fold, a musical direction which some long-time fans of his (and even The Boss himself) have expressed pretty serious reservations about in the years since. for me, it's not hard to see why; the huge, gated reverb on the snare drum, the omnipresent slapback delay on Springsteen's vocals, the dated synth tones (take a shot every time I mention those in a review), and the tinny mix are all hallmarks of 80s production that I think are better left in the past. the E Street Band are as tight a unit as ever, of course, but I think they've made albums together—both before and after Born in the U.S.A.—which present them in a more timeless state. there's also the fact that, despite the anti-Reagan, anti-war, pro-working-man angle being arguably even stronger than ever (most notably embodied on the once-widely-misunderstood title track), Springsteen's image was turning into that of a muscular, all-American patriot. there's a dissonance between his visual/musical presentation and the songs themselves, particularly in terms of subject matter; it's embodied most prominently with "Working on the Highway", a song about a man who skips town with a child bride that sounds like a dance party. to his credit, Springsteen scaled back pretty much immediately after the Born in the U.S.A. promo cycle finally got finished, disbanding the E Street Band for a while and repositioning himself outside of the mainstream pop field, continuing to explore increasingly mature themes while bucking trends almost entirely. those albums might have sold far less well, but they certainly come off as more honest. I definitely don't dislike Born in the U.S.A. by any stretch of the imagination; after all, any album that gets seven singles to chart in the U.S. top 10 has to be hitting on something! and, yeah, there's no shortage of Springsteen's usual earworms on display, even if the songs themselves are far less complex than on previous albums. God only knows how many times I've gotten "Glory Days" or "Dancing in the Dark" or "I'm on Fire" stuck in my head since I first heard them as a kid. I just find myself butting up further and further against the production and arrangements as time goes on. decent 6/10.

without a doubt, this is the most British album I've come across for this challenge so far. you've really got it all here as far as English psych rock! straightforward pop rock tunes with a high degree of instrumental eclecticism; ample nods to dancehall music; that quintessential pastoral vibe; an extended suite on the B-side narrated by Stanley Unwin speaking in his own made-up language about a guy who goes on a journey to find the dark side of the moon, but learns the true meaning of life instead. y'know, all the classic hallmarks of this scene. lead singer Steve Marriott's voice is a compelling one, and I like his guitar tones quite a bit too. I also respect the conceptual angle of the second side but, let's face it, it's ungodly tacky, and Unwin's one bit gets tiring extremely quickly. there's a few choice cuts to be found on side A, but as far as full-lengths go, there's plenty of British psych I find more interesting. decent 5/10.

I think the stigma that's surrounded Green Day for decades is finally starting to fade away. for years within punk and underground music culture, this band was the poster child for the word "sellout", a once-beloved Bay Area punk trio that signed to a major label, became a ubiquitous, best-selling rock act, and lost all their cred in the process. now that Green Day are firmly in their legacy years, it's allowed for a more measured appraisal of their work by many, myself included. I've never really had that kind of smoke for these guys, to be honest; and in revisiting their first seven albums, I grew to appreciate their evolution and trajectory. sometime around the late 90s, Billie Joe Armstrong's strengths as a songwriter started to really come into focus; the batch of tracks on nimrod. show this off particularly well. with American Idiot, Green Day also did something fairly punk (as much as a major-label rock band could): they were one of the first artists of their stature to position themselves firmly against then-President George W. Bush and the war in Iraq. this is a concept album which, nominally, tells the story of a group of young people disillusioned by the "television dreams of tomorrow," a false hope of a bright future being propagated at the time by every sector of the U.S. media, with the supposedly righteous and just War on Terror being positioned as an unquestionable good. as they come of age, they realize that the world they were promised is gone, and they turn to drugs, sex and other vices to cope. the anti-Bush position has become much more popular over the years, but Green Day deserves the props for being early to the party. I said this album "nominally" tells a story because, if you've listened to this thing, you know that the plot kind of falls apart about two-thirds of the way through. the individual songs that make up American Idiot are often some of Green Day's finest; the title track and "Holiday" are the best political moments, and there's plenty of uptempo punk ragers counterbalanced with sentimental ballads, all of which the band pulls off really well. there's also the two 9-minute suites, easily some of the most ambitious material they ever recorded. where this album suffers most is in its weak narrative payoff. the songs on this album would later be combined with a few from 21st Century Breakdown (another concept LP with a half-baked narrative) to form a musical which gives the American Idiot story a more concrete narrative, but even then, it's still pretty loose. strong 7/10.

like yesterday's American Idiot, Black Holes and Revelations is the sound of a band branching out. Muse had gotten pretty huge off the alt-rock sound they forged on their previous two records, and thus they saw fit to extend it in multiple directions. you've got pop-forward cuts that were chart-ready in 2006 ("Supermassive Black Hole") alongside some of the group's most cutting-edge material, complete with orchestral overdubs and a ton of nice-sounding synth layers, all topped with Matt Bellamy's strong lead vocals (even if he comes much too close to aping Thom Yorke for my liking a lot of the time). I can absolutely see the appeal with Black Holes; the production is fantastic, the band sounds great (the guitar tones are superb), and there's a few truly brilliant cuts on here. (the opening four tracks are arguably the strongest, but "Knights of Cydonia" is a tremendous closer.) the middle suffers in comparison; even as these tracks all have distinct sonic identities, I feel a bit underwhelmed by the compositions themselves. strong 6/10.

another humble 30-minute slice of Nashville here, one of those 60s albums that exists mostly as a post-hoc justification for its lead single and title track. with this lead single, though, we're looking at a fairly progressive song! not stylistically, but politically; "Don't Come Home a Drinkin'" is a song against date rape! Loretta Lynn was one of the first women in country music who was famous for writing her own songs, penning three for this album. her covers are good—she's got a wonderful singing voice, which is kind of half the battle with this repertoire—but her originals here are the most notable, all of them acting as staunch counterblasts against the ways women are depicted in male-written country songs. the closer, "I Got Caught", sees her admitting to cheating on her man, but pointing out that he's no better: "Yeah, I got caught, but, honey you're a pro / There's not a thing about cheatin' you don't know." decent 6/10.

The Flamin' Groovies were yet another element of the American garage rock scene of the late 60s and early 70s. a later incarnation of the band would see them turning towards the future with more of a power pop angle, but what we have here is a look at the past; roots, the blues, that freewheeling spirit of rockabilly at its most untamed. if you're into that sort of thing, you'll have a good time; however, outside of the closing track "Whiskey Woman", I feel like the songs themselves are kind of plain. light 6/10.

Janelle Monáe's debut album is one that, at first brush, defies description. I'll certainly give it a shot, though. it's a 70-minute sci-fi concept album forming the second and third suites of (what's expected to eventually be) a seven-suite body of work titled Metropolis, and it traverses way too many genres of music to name in an orderly fashion. somehow, all of this musical and conceptual underpinning kind of melts away when you actually sit and listen to The ArchAndroid from top to bottom; after that, you're just left with a batch of incredible songs. from R&B, soul, funk and hip hop to orchestral whimsy, neo-psychedelia (one of these songs is just an of Montreal track in disguise) and electronica, Monáe always feels at home. the first seven tracks of Suite II run into each other seamlessly, and could from a killer EP by themselves; the rapped features from Saul Williams and Big Boi are fantastic, and I particularly enjoy the "B.O.B."-esque breakbeat on "Cold War". Monáe and co. nearly match up to it on the more experimental Suite III, an equally impressive run through a much wider emotional gamut. there's easily enough compelling material for me to write several more paragraphs, but I'd have to sit with this album for way longer to do that. I just might! strong 8/10.

the Band followed up Music From Big Pink pretty quickly with a self-titled album much in the same vein. (fans call it The Brown Album.) if you liked that one, expect to like this one just as much, if not even a little more. these are both excellent slabs of folky roots rock with earworm after earworm, this time coming primarily from songwriter Robbie Robertson. one thing setting this sophomore effort apart is its more stylistically consistent tracklist. Bob Dylan isn't a songwriting presence here like he was last time, but his style hangs heavy over the proceedings, especially on the lyrical front. the vocal harmonies sound especially on point this time around ("Across the Great Divide", "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down", "Up on Cripple Creek", etc.); the guitars also get a much more prominent role, particularly on the more electrified B-side. I continue to enjoy the ways the Band injects jazz into their chord progressions, as well as their rotating cast of lead singers (this time around, it's mainly drummer Levon Helm and pianist Richard Manuel). decent 8/10.

Eli and the Thirteenth Confession brought a lot of different music to mind for me. the harmonic schemes feel like a cross-pollination of Romanticism, Tin Pan Alley and Broadway; the symphonic arrangements paired with a pop rhythm section call Carole King to mind; and the progressive song structures immediately made me think of Elton John. what blew my mind was realizing that Laura Nyro was already on LP #2 here, while King, John et al. had yet to even release their first! this album is worth a listen just to witness the ripple effect it clearly had on the Weirdo Pop of the future. Laura Nyro's voice will no doubt be an acquired taste—especially her high-range belting and the way she'll sometimes land on dissonant blue notes and even quarter-tones—but there's too many strange idiosyncrasies in her music to properly ignore it. strong 7/10.

this middle chapter of Leonard Cohen's "Songs" albums isn't quite as beloved as the other two, mainly owing to the persistent presence of the Jew's harp on so many of its songs. in all honesty, I didn't really find it all that obtrusive. and, hey, that A-side is truly something special. the cover of "The Partisan", an anti-fascist French tune, is easily the highlight; but "Bird on the Wire" does a tremendous job of setting the very somber mood that the rest of the songs follow. the stripped-down sound (compared to Songs of Leonard Cohen, anyway) does wonders in terms of capturing the gravitas of Cohen's material. it's been quite some time since I revisited his work, but if this already-very-strong offering is considered the weakest of his first three albums, I can only imagine the other two are that much better. strong 7/10.

the Waterboys were known, at first, for an anthemic large-scale post-punk sound that would become known (via one of their own song titles) as "big music"; Fisherman's Blues marks a pretty significant change from that sound, toning down the stadium-ready tunes for a slightly more intimate (but still "big") sound heavily inspired by Celtic folk music. the use of fiddling and mandolins is especially on-point, and the stripped-back percussion gives these songs some great breathing room, especially on the B-side. I also appreciate that this album manages to mostly avoid that reverb-heavy 80s production which preserves so many albums from this decade like time capsules. decent 7/10.

I always try to refrain from using thought-terminating clichés in my writing, but I struggle to come up with words to describe this other than, as they now say, "mid". the middest of mid to ever mid. if you've heard a West Coast folk rock album from the late 60s or early 70s, you'll find nary a surprise within the music of the Youngbloods. well, okay, that's not totally fair; there's a few diversions into jazz, country and psych that serve to mix things up a bit. but, on the whole, I think there's plenty of other music from this scene that probably deserves a closer look in a book of (again) "Must Hear" albums. hey, at least there's the opener and closer, which are pretty good. light 5/10.

didn't think I'd be diving back into the Celtic well again so soon after that Waterboys album I looked at just two days ago, but here we are! the sound of the Pogues is a lot more raucous than that of the Waterboys, mainly owing to the worn, weathered voice of Shane MacGowan. to my ear, Rum, Sodomy & the Lash draws most strongly from the musical tradition of Irish drinking songs, with MacGowan utilizing this format to tell harrowing stories of romance, working people, and his own complicated identity as an Irish emigrant in Britain. the traditional Celtic instrumentation is gorgeous, especially the tin whistle and uilleann pipes. their earlier albums deal more in punk, but I really think the Pogues were destined to reach this sound. the bittersweetness of it is just magnificent. decent 8/10.

Queen had been hinting at the direction they would eventually take with A Night at the Opera for their last three LPs, but this was when they truly went full-tilt into being the grandiose, quasi-symphonic rock quartet we now think of them as. "Death on Two Legs" wastes no time in pulling out all of the band's stops; it's immediately apparent just why this was the most expensive album ever made at the time. don't be fooled by the numbers, though; just bask in the glory of their compositions. even the simpler ones, like "You're My Best Friend" or "'39", are full of so many exquisite details: the choirs (both of voices and of Brian May's guitars), the unpredictable metric structures, the occasional hints of orchestral instruments. I even like Queen's diversions into the dancehall stuff that I usually hate whenever it comes up on a British rock record! but, of course, there's no topping the borderline-progressive showmanship of songs like the epic 8-minute "Prophet's Song" or, obviously, "Bohemian Rhapsody", a song I will never tire of no matter how much it gets played on the radio. light 9/10.

"Darkness" is right! Will Oldham's first album as Bonnie "Prince" Billy sees him exploring the sort of dark, morbid thoughts on life and death, friends and lovers, that many of us have, but tend not to share with others. the title track is a haunting, stirring ballad about a dear friend whose connection to Oldham helps him reign in his own inner demon (the final lyric, "and did you know how much I love you / is a hope that somehow you / can save me from this darkness," is a genuine tear-jerker in context). further observations follow, such as the macabre juxtaposition of death and hosing on "Death to Everyone", or the way Oldham makes peace with his inner "Black" in a harrowing enemies-to-lovers metaphor. the music, breaking the 90s alt-country mold wide open, is consistently sparse, mostly featuring Oldham's soft-strummed guitars, drums played with brushes instead of sticks, and (god) that piano! his voice is light, but consistently weighed down by depression, self-loathing and isolation; it wavers like a candle in the wind. I See a Darkness makes the case that there's hope and happiness to be found in even the most morose and twisted aspects of our own psyches. this message is reflected in every note and every word; gorgeous, featherweight instrumentals and vocals underpinning some of the most serious musings you'll ever hear in the realm of singer-songwriterdom. decent 9/10.

Autobahn is one of those vinyl-era albums that either begins or ends with an LP-side-spanning piece that takes up the vast majority of discussion around the record as a whole. most of these tend to be guitar-based compositions, and they're usually either jams (whether kicked- or psyched-out) or tightly-constructed, progressive suites; think 2112, Meddle or In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida. by stark contrast, the title track of Autobahn is a somewhat abstract tone poem about the act of driving on the titular German highway system. (the song's main lyrical phrase repeats the word "fahren", or driving, three times, which English-speaking audience misheard as an allusion to the Beach Boys.) there's a few repeating sections based around simple synth-pad chord progressions and a static electronic drum beat; but the section around 10 minutes in, where the synths become the sounds of cars flying up and down the road in both directions, is easily the standout. the slow-developing nature of the whole composition, and its predictable ebbs and flows, make for an odd, nonetheless relaxing experience. despite four band members appearing on the cover's rear-view mirror, this track, and much of the B-side that follows, was made by Kraftwerk's two original main brains (Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider) largely in isolation. Wolfgang Flür shows up to play electronic drums on the second of the breezy "Kometenmelodie" tracks, which feature more clear-cut instrumental pop structures. Klaus Röder also throws some electric fiddle on "Mitternacht"; you can hear it echoing off the Moogs around the midsection particularly well. as cool as the sounds Kraftwerk makes on this album are, I'm excited to revisit their later work, where they managed to fit those sounds into more urgent, succinct and catchy(!) pop frameworks. wonder if I should listen to them in German or English. or both. decent 7/10.

a lot of effort was expended by the War on Drugs here on their third album, and yet it's all just in service of reheating Bruce Springsteen's nachos. Lost in the Dream doesn't so much recreate the magic of Springsteen and the E Street Band at their peak in the late 70s and early 80s as it evokes that sound by association, without seeming to understand what made their music so successful. Springsteen is a master of the narrative song; his compositions and lyrics work in seamless tandem to tell incredibly specific stories about life under the gun, replete with imagery that always feels like it's in purpose of moving both the song and story forward. the War on Drugs replicate the sound and style of this music with a pretty astonishing level of clarity and production panache. the sheer amount of layers present from song to song is impressive; the guitars, the percussion, the synths, those slinky basslines popping through. the issue is that the band spends so much of this album just meandering. the same 2-, 4- or 8-bar sections drone on endlessly, with none of that sense of forward momentum. (why are so many of these songs nearly—or even more than—six minutes?) lead singer Adam Granduciel waxes semi-poetically on top of these nothing-songs about... well, I can't quite tell. "An Ocean in Between the Waves" contains one of the most impressive lyrical clunkers I've come across for this list yet, a series of images that sounds nice until you unpack it for more than five seconds: "Feel the way that the wild wind blows through the room / Like a nail down through the heart / That just don't beat the same anymore / That might as well be gone." can you explain what that means? because I sure as hell can't; and nearly every lyric falls apart like this upon even a little bit of analysis. none of these songs manage to achieve the basic act of telling a story, or even giving you a view of how Granduciel might see the world; meanwhile, the strong sense of Springsteen's point of view, his perspective on life and people and places, is at the center of all the finest moments in his discography. all the fanciest, nostalgia-baitingest instrumentals in the world can't make up for that glaring lack of insight. light 4/10.

in my mind, the Flaming Lips really broke through with Yoshimi; maybe that's just because it's the one album of theirs we had in the house. (I think that CD now lives in my brother's car.) it's a pretty successful streamlining of their psyched-out antics into some sort of existential, grandiose pop rock space opera, full of musings on love, robots, mortality, pacifism, egoism, et cetera. seriously, this shit gets deep, despite its pleasant, dreamy surface. I love the synths and orchestral swells coming in on tracks like "In the Morning of the Magicians" or "Do You Realize??", and I'm equally into the moments where the Lips just let it rock and/or roll like "Fight Test" or the second half of the title track (featuring the titular Yoshimi P-We of Boredoms letting out some piercing battle cries). the levity provided by the goofy sci-fi theme makes Wayne Coyne's musings on life hit that much harder. decent 8/10.

k.d. lang's second solo album diverged pretty strongly from the country sound she had forged with her previous output (her first solo LP Shadowland and her work with the Reclines), reaching towards a more general pop sound with the Nashville playing more of a background role. I've yet to really dive into her earlier work, but what I will say for Ingénue is that there are quite a few numbers here where a major whiff of jazz peeks through (including multiple songs with legendary mallet percussionist Gary Burton!), which I certainly appreciated. I guess I can see why her fans might have felt betrayed by this, but surely this album has enough merit on its own to merit against being seen as a sellout record, right? "The Mind of Love" might be one of the only examples I can think of where country music crosses over with bossa nova, and it goes over way better than you'd expect from that description. the singles, "Miss Chatelaine" and "Constant Craving", are tremendous as well. lang's vocal phrasing across these ten tracks is really something to behold, and the arrangements by producer Ben Mink put her in such pristine musical surroundings. decent 7/10.

Dusty Springfield's debut album is a compendium of soul covers which is totally fine. its inclusion in 1001 Albums... strikes me as an incredibly British decision; I don't see why I would seek her versions of these songs out over their Black American originals. "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" and "You Don't Own Me" go over well enough. decent 5/10.

anyone who says they don't like Thriller is lying, either to you or to themselves. I usually don't like to speak in such resolutely objective terms, given the impossibility of quantifying music in such a way. not to mention, I'm definitely being hypocritical, given how often I've come out of these 1001 Albums... reviews with a negative opinion that cuts against the grain. but I mean, come on. Michael Jackson, producer Quincy Jones and the dozens of musicians, engineers and arrangers who crafted these songs deserve our eternal gratitude as listeners for allowing us to witness pop perfection, whether it be on the opening dance party of "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'", the disco-tinged tribute to horror cinema on the title track, some of the greatest uses of electric guitars (from soloist Eddie Van Halen and lead player Steve Lukather) in pop music history on "Beat It", or the... well, everything of "Billie Jean". I don't really have to do much explaining, because you definitely know these songs, and you like them, dammit! (let me stress that you don't have to hand it to Michael Jackson for literally anything other than his skills as a musician. yeesh.) that's not to say Thriller is an album without its blemishes; "The Girl Is Mine" is a stupid song and no argument in its favor has managed to convince me. Jackson's famous aversion to profanity really hurts the chorus, which should clearly go "goddamn" instead of the incredibly silly replacement "doggone". the album also ends with "The Lady in My Life", a ballad which is pretty great, but compared to the powerhouse B-side run that comes beforehand, it feels a bit misplaced as a final statement. still, though, the highs are insanely high, probably the peak of Jackson's entire output as a recording artist. light 9/10.

already? I looked at Ingénue literally three days ago. go home, 1001 Albums Generator, you're drunk. this album features k.d. lang in the element that her fans originally knew her for, presenting a series of twangy, jazzed-up country standards with a light pop exterior. like with Ingénue (and a lot of country music, to be honest), lang's voice is the star of the show; but I'd also like to give it up for Buddy Emmons and Hal Rugg, two of the foremost names in the history of steel guitar, who bring that instrument's finest qualities straight to the center of this album's sound. you could weep just listening to it by itself. that's not even mentioning the strings, the backing singers, even little bits of saxophone and accordion for good measure. it's certainly interesting that people were shocked when lang came out as a lesbian. I mean, just look at this cover art; she gave you all of the clues! light 7/10.

Gillian Welch and David Rawlings made the sort of album that reviews itself! Time (The Revelator) is easy to love, ten pieces of spellbinding American folk music that go down smooth as butter, but which quickly become haunting once you peel them back. Welch and Rawlings have voices and playing styles that fit each other eerily well. the nearly 15-minute closer "I Dream a Highway" is perhaps the best showcase of this, a gorgeous tune that plods through a bittersweet romantic narrative with some of the most evocative lyricism on the entire LP ("Now, give me some of what you're having / I'll take you as a viper into my head / A knife into my bed, arsenic when I'm fed." and that irresistible recurring phrase at the end of each stanza: "I dream a highway back to you." not every track is nearly as harrowing as this, but they're pretty uniformly slow and contemplative. plus, there's Welch's magnetic singing, which guides you through 51 minutes of sparse acoustic music with such grace and precision that the whole thing feels like it's over in the blink of an eye. more of this, please! strong 9/10.

whereas Village Green Preservation Society was a pastiche of British music, society and culture, Arthur is a surreal, damning commentary on British politics, particularly the ways in which the UK's imperialist history has impacted its citizenry. the album tells the story of Arthur Morgan, a man whose life is radically altered by war (losing both a brother and son to it) and economic strife (with Arthur's other son seeking to emigrate with his family to Australia in search of a better life than could be found at home). "Victoria" sets the stage with a satirical portrayal of The Way Things Used To Be in the British Empire, akin to many moments on Village Green; the difference with this song, and much of Arthur as an album, is the ever-expanding scope of the Kinks' ambitions as songwriters and arrangers. their music remains upbeat, wistful and nostalgic, but the twists and turns they take their songs through are something to behold. given this is a rock opera, the entire thing comes off as a through-composed suite. the songs might not be as immediately memorable to me as they were on Village Green, but I kind of like the feeling of novelty that Arthur gives me with every listen; as in, every time I spin it, trying to put the words together to describe it, I always find something new. maybe when I've given it that fiftieth spin, I'll have the whole picture put together. strong 8/10.

without a doubt, Tommy was the most ambitious statement the Who had made as a band up to this point: a double-LP, one of the earliest executions of the Rock Opera, and many attempts to break free of the three-minute pop song structure. Pete Townshend was more or less the architect of this thing, from the music to the concept; although, he also had help from producer Kit Lambert in ironing out the details of the story, and from the rest of the Who in arranging the staggering 75 minutes of material. if I'm being honest, though, I think this easily could've been cut down by 15-20. for all the effort spent realizing this operatic concept, there's moments where it feels like the band are dragging their knuckles just a bit. a lot of it comes down to the tracks that go longer or shorter than usual. the "Overture" and "Sparks" are tremendous instrumental showcases of the band working as a unit, but the "Underture", even with its very cool harmonic structure, doesn't really feel like it earns its 10-minute duration; on the flip-side, the C-side in particular has a bunch of little ideas that are all cool in isolation, but make for an awkward sequence (even if the ubiquitous radio staple "Pinball Wizard" might be the best song on the whole record). despite its shortcomings as a full body of work, the complete experience of Tommy has a lot to enjoy about it. there's still a ton of moments where the Who prove that they were one of the tightest, hardest-rockin' bands of their era, but for the first time in their catalog, they leave a lot of room to get more tuneful and sentimental. their future records would refine and streamline the most successful moments on this album (the sensitivity of "1921" or "Christmas", the triumph of "Go to the Mirror!" and "I'm Free") into some serious masterpieces. light 8/10.

it's hard not to see why Forever Changes is viewed as such a consummate musical statement by its most loyal adherents. it's a kind of crossroads, where everything you love about the best rock music of the 60s gets rolled together into an incredibly slick package. witty, unpredictable compositions; equally witty lyricism depicting the end of the flower-power years as a loss of one's own sanity, often delivered in gorgeous harmony; a satisfying mix of acoustic and electric guitars; and most importantly, the strings and brass, which always serve Love's songs and performances, never getting in their way. a lot of critical talk around this LP talks about how it's a grower, not a shower; my first impressions of it are already very strong, so hopefully it doesn't take long! decent 8/10.

the first and last tracks? impeccable. maybe some of my favorite "Bowie in America" songs. the title track, with its irresistible soul pocket and that Beatles interpolation, is an especially high point in this transitional phase of Bowie's career between the glam years and the Berlin era. as far as the rest, it's unfortunately kind of a flatline. most of these songs just make me want to run "Young Americans" back again. Bowie and his "plastic soul" band make their way through the whole middle of the LP with just enough energy to not sound completely dead. that is, except for David Sanborn going absolutely apeshit on alto saxophone in the right stereo channel. it's a juxtaposition that's hilarious in a way I don't think was intentional. proving my personal maxim that Bowie's covers are either impeccable or disastrous is the rocky rendition of the Beatles' "Across the Universe". it's somewhat made up for by the John Lennon collaboration "Fame", a modal funk jam stacked with vocal and instrumental earworms. decent 5/10.

country rock at its most sensual. Lucinda Williams sings of love and longing over some serene instrumental backing (including organ and accordion from the E Street Band's own Roy Bittan!). her words and her weathered singing voice carry a lifetime of experience within them. the guitar work is delicate, tasteful and immaculately well-produced (thank you Steve Earle). does it need to be 50+ minutes? I dunno. but the highs are super high. strong 7/10.

vignette after vignette of abrasive power pop goodness. the 28 individual tracks that form Alien Lanes don't usually last long enough to stick in your mind, but the cumulative effect they have is memorable nonetheless. it's as if every song has been stripped down to its barest essentials. the production quality, which frequently brings the music into noise and psych realms, evokes 60s rock n' roll by way of 90s underground DIYism. there's something truly old-school about the whole thing, but it's far from an exercise in retro-fetishism. light 8/10.

this review marks my first foray into the Bob Dylan conversation. (I'd guess there's no less than billions of words which have been written about his work before.) I struggle to think of another artist in the world of popular music who elicits such divisive reactions as Dylan. for some, he's one of the great modern folk singers, and there's no doubt that he provided a major bridge from the world of folk to that of rock, a crossroads which Blonde on Blonde finds itself right in the middle of as the end of a sort of rock trilogy in his discography. famously, the move to performing his songs with a band, especially an electric band, was a cause for consternation among the folk set. but, by the time this album came out, enough people began to recognize that this wasn't Dylan selling out; this was truly how he wanted to make his music! for me, these are the exact right musical backdrops for Dylan's lyricism. a whole range of human emotions is depicted through his words, and his band (whether it's *the* Band or the Nashville session players) matches him so perfectly. the drunken romp of "Rainy Day Women", the spellbinding mystery of "Visions of Johanna", the detached despondence of "One of Us Must Know", the bitter sarcasm of "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat". the guitars (both acoustic and electric) shimmer gloriously, the piano even moreso! the way they build into the choruses of these songs is expertly done, every single time. yeah, Dylan's singing isn't great, nor is his dim view of women, but if you can stomach both, the high points are more than worth the trip. decent 8/10.

I wasn't expecting more than one foray into Songhai music or desert blues, but I'll take it! that Songhoy Blues album I listened to some time ago was a real gem, so I was excited to get a glimpse into the musical world of Ali Farka Touré, one of the progenitors of this fusion of traditional Malian music with elements of American blues. Talking Timbuktu was produced by guitarist Ry Cooder for the World Circuit label, with which he was also involved in the creation of some other fantastic international crossovers, especially Afro-Cuban records like the legendary Buena Vista Social Club. like on Buena Vista, Cooder also adds a wide range of instrumental contributions to the proceedings, though I appreciate that he plays a lot more of a background or accompaniment role here most of the time. his turns on electric guitar are great, but Touré's time and feel on that instrument are mesmerizing, so I'm glad Cooder saw fit to let him lead the charge there. these are the types of grooves that really suck me in; there's a strong sense of swing here, but not in a jazz sense. it's the way these various uneven pulses stack against each other in polyrhythm, locking in and out while the harmony stays still to let you focus on it all. John Patitucci shows up for a few tracks, which definitely earns this album some bonus points. decent 8/10.

eh. kinda sounds like a bar band. a good bar band, don't get me wrong. I like the use of pedal steel throughout, and Mark Eitzel wears his heart on his sleeve in an endearing way. but as far as late 80s/early 90s indie rock, I think there's far more essential stuff to find. decent 5/10.

here we can see the Rolling Stones becoming a rock band in the contemporary sense of the word: a band that writes and performs all-original material. previous LPs were partially (or even mostly) comprised of cover versions that showed their love and respect for American folk and blues; but on Aftermath, the Stones start to really put their foot in the ring as contributors to that lineage. as a songwriting duo, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards clearly had a lot of room to grow from here, but standouts like "Mother's Little Helper", "Under My Thumb" and "Out of Time" stand up just as strongly as do the songs from their more legendary albums to follow. Brian Jones is a much bigger factor in this era of the band, with his sitar parts in particular giving a lot of flavor to the musical formula they were working with. this is most notable on "Paint It Black", one of their earliest hits, which landed on the American edition of Aftermath, but not the UK one, so it's not factoring into my review here. that being said, there's still plenty of sitar from Jones, along with marimba, koto and dulcimer. the 52-minute duration of the UK pressing strikes me as ambitious, but not exactly desirable. "Goin' Home" is an 11-minute jam that's one of the earliest examples of such a track on a studio rock album, but not necessarily one of the most notable. the deeper cuts also start to feel pretty repetitive after a while. keep the tracks you like and throw 'em in a playlist or something. light 7/10.

I don't know what it says about me that I liked this a bit more than Disintegration. Robert Smith has spoken about how Pornography was made at a time in his life when he was extremely depressed and difficult to work with. from the opening line, "It doesn't matter if we all die," the darkness immediately sets in. it certainly helps that the Cure create such a stirring, reverberant chasm behind Smith's words, chock-full of icy synths and electric guitars covered in layers of effects pedals. you better believe that snare reverb is gated! we're leaving the world of snappy, hooky post-punk further and further behind. other dark, depressing albums often lace the sadness with a dash of levity, whether it be humor or a silver lining; the Cure dispense with any notion of that across all 8 songs here. I think part of my preference for this over Disintegration is the relatively concise way in which it delivers this morose message. Disintegration reaches more for stadium-sized grandiosity and over an hour of runtime, whereas Pornography suffocates you for less than 45 minutes. you get a little extra time to pick yourself up afterwards. decent 8/10.

the sound of a band that's clearly studied the classics (along with a few of its contemporaries), but can't quite figure out how to distinguish themselves from their influences. if you're looking for a band that's somehow even more anachronistic than The Black Crowes were in their heyday, look no further than Kings of Leon. the songs are perfunctory at best, moving through tried-and-true chord progressions (mostly involving the I, IV and V) with the same crunchy guitar tones you've already heard on a million other garage rock songs. the soft-loud dynamic shifts, the arpeggiating basslines, even the drumming patterns all feel humdrum and predictable; and that's all before you can even think about Caleb Followill's lead singing, some of the most obnoxious in the entire canon of rock music. I don't mind that he can't enunciate worth a damn, but could he at least find a more pleasing timbre to do it with than this overdone snarl? further points deducted for the many points where Kings of Leon really want to be The Strokes. were critics so desperate for an alternative to nu metal that they needed to tout Aha Shake Heartbreak as being anywhere near the level of Is This It, or even Room on Fire? strong 3/10.