275
Albums Rated
3.72
Average Rating
25%
Complete
814 albums remaining
Rating Distribution
Rating Timeline
Taste Profile
1950
Favorite Decade
Punk
Favorite Genre
other
Top Origin
Cheerleader
Rater Style ?
58
5-Star Albums
5
1-Star Albums
Breakdown
By Genre
Top Styles
By Decade
By Origin
Albums
You Love More Than Most
| Album | You | Global | Diff |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Yank Crime
Drive Like Jehu
|
5 | 2.71 | +2.29 |
|
Rip It Up
Orange Juice
|
5 | 2.9 | +2.1 |
|
Merriweather Post Pavilion
Animal Collective
|
5 | 2.9 | +2.1 |
|
Kick Out The Jams (Live)
MC5
|
5 | 2.91 | +2.09 |
|
Wild Gift
X
|
5 | 3 | +2 |
|
Car Wheels On A Gravel Road
Lucinda Williams
|
5 | 3 | +2 |
|
Eternally Yours
The Saints
|
5 | 3.06 | +1.94 |
|
Third
Portishead
|
5 | 3.13 | +1.87 |
|
The Pleasure Principle
Gary Numan
|
5 | 3.15 | +1.85 |
|
Machine Gun Etiquette
The Damned
|
5 | 3.15 | +1.85 |
You Love Less Than Most
| Album | You | Global | Diff |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Rage Against The Machine
Rage Against The Machine
|
1 | 3.99 | -2.99 |
|
Hotel California
Eagles
|
1 | 3.6 | -2.6 |
|
Hybrid Theory
Linkin Park
|
1 | 3.39 | -2.39 |
|
Wish You Were Here
Pink Floyd
|
2 | 4.3 | -2.3 |
|
Back In Black
AC/DC
|
2 | 3.85 | -1.85 |
|
Bad
Michael Jackson
|
2 | 3.8 | -1.8 |
|
Hot Fuss
The Killers
|
2 | 3.74 | -1.74 |
|
Can't Buy A Thrill
Steely Dan
|
2 | 3.72 | -1.72 |
|
Californication
Red Hot Chili Peppers
|
2 | 3.7 | -1.7 |
|
Slipknot
Slipknot
|
1 | 2.68 | -1.68 |
Artists
Favorites
| Artist | Albums | Average |
|---|---|---|
| David Bowie | 4 | 4.5 |
| Neil Young | 2 | 5 |
| Portishead | 2 | 5 |
| Neil Young & Crazy Horse | 2 | 5 |
| The White Stripes | 2 | 5 |
| Black Sabbath | 3 | 4.33 |
| The Rolling Stones | 3 | 4.33 |
| Pixies | 3 | 4.33 |
| Bob Marley & The Wailers | 3 | 4.33 |
Least Favorites
| Artist | Albums | Average |
|---|---|---|
| Slipknot | 2 | 1.5 |
Controversial
| Artist | Ratings |
|---|---|
| Pink Floyd | 2, 5 |
| Radiohead | 2, 3, 5 |
5-Star Albums (58)
View Album Wall
Popular Reviews
Rage Against The Machine · 2 likes
1/5
I appreciate their anti-establishment positioning but I do not like the music of Rage Against the Machine. I just find it obnoxious and seek to turn it off whenever I hear it.
Bob Marley & The Wailers · 2 likes
5/5
My favorite BMW album: soulful, brilliantly arranged and played, masterful use of negative space, a mix of political and intimate love songs, all killer, no filler. Also noteworthy for the contributions of Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer. This would be a great record to play for someone who says they don’t like reggae.
X · 1 likes
5/5
X was one of the first punk rock bands I discovered, thanks to a friend I made in fifth grade who had just moved from SoCal and introduced me to his older brothers' record collection, and I love them to this day. They combine raw aggression with highly adept musicality, an appreciation of American roots music, dark poetic lyrics and tight songwriting chops, and they might be the only punk band that does vocal harmonies. This album is a visceral tour of the seedy underbelly of early-80s Los Angeles. Highlights include "Adult Books," "White Girl," "Universal Corner" (that riff is so good) and "Beyond and Back."
Linkin Park · 1 likes
1/5
As if the deliberately misspelled name wasn’t enough warning. This has all the tropes of the era and milieu: screamy-anthemic choruses, James Hetfield tough-guy vocals, unfocused white male rage, hip-hop/funk breakbeats and a ridiculous sense of drama that veers into parody. It sounds like emo for incel internet chat-room trolls. Awful.
The Youngbloods · 1 likes
2/5
TIL The Youngbloods wrote "Darkness, Darkness," which is an excellent song (though truth be told, there are cover versions of it that I prefer to the original). But after that leadoff track, I quickly grew bored, and I am picking up a serious "OK Boomer" stench to this entire exercise.
1-Star Albums (5)
All Ratings
Nirvana
4/5
I just noticed that the guitar intro to “Rape Me” sounds a lot like the riff to “Teen Spirit.” Much of this album sounds like a reaction to the life-altering success of Nevermind and the weight of expectations (“I miss the comfort in being sad,” Kurt sings). There’s a stark contrast on this album between bitter and brutal tracks that seem almost purposely designed to alienate large segments of Nirvana bandwagon fans and tender, melodic songs that betray a growing maturity and songwriting sensibility.
Blondie
4/5
This album exists somewhere in the nexus of pop, new wave and punk. It launches with uptempo energy and mostly keeps it going. It’s got its share of hits — and a great disco crossover in “Heart of Glass” — but also some lesser-known quality songs like “Picture This”, “Fade Away and Radiate” and “Sunday Girl” that showcase a band capable of writing compelling, evocative songs.
Isaac Hayes
5/5
"Walk On By" is just a stone jam and easily one of the greatest leadoff tracks on an album, period. The Bar-Kays provide excellent playing throughout. Great album.
Bruce Springsteen
4/5
Like a lot of good music of the time (Talking Heads, anyone?), I ignored The Boss in his ‘80s heyday because his music was everywhere on the radio and MTV, and my interests were elsewhere. So this is the first time I’ve listened to Born in the U.S.A. in full, and it’s quite good. His songs are soulful, with interesting lyrics that focus on the struggles of everyday people and a cracking backing band — though the keyboards sound a little dated. Highlights include “I’m Goin’ Down,” “Bobby Jean,” “I’m on Fire” and “Downbound Train.”
Sigur Rós
3/5
This album gets off to a strong start with the powerfully slow and dense "Svefn-g-englar" but lets up a bit, dissolving into fragments that sometimes sound more like a film score than a collection of songs. No accident these guys opened for Radiohead. I'm listening to it on a warm spring day and it's making me want to take a nap. But I could see putting this on in a certain nocturnal, creative, dark-night-of-the-soul mood.
The Coral
4/5
A musician friend of mine introduced me to The Coral years ago, and while I was immediately attracted to their blend of psychedelia, garage and Merseybeat, and listened to more than one album, I did not listen especially closely. This, their debut, has a varied feel. Singer James Skelly isn’t one for nuance, often evoking the over-the-top bluster of Tom Jones, and the album has a kind of lysergic carnival feel — especially on the hit “Dreaming of You” and the woozy “Skeleton Key.” The songwriting is great. “Shadows Fall” comes off like a reggae sea shanty, “Goodbye” rides a potent riff and Merseybeat rhythm, and “Waiting for the Heartaches” unfolds gradually from its spooky vibes-and-organ intro to become a fierce garage rocker. It’s a reminder I need to spend more time with this band.
Black Sabbath
5/5
Dire Straits
3/5
There’s a sophistication and calmness about this album that are appealing. The rhythm section is relaxed and, along with Mark Knopfler’s skilled and colorful finger picking, brings textural flourishes. It sounds Grateful Dead adjacent in its rootsiness and Jerry Garcia-esque guitar playing. The last two songs kind of go soft for me, however. I’d give it 3.5/5 stars if I could.
Nightmares On Wax
3/5
Supergrass
3/5
The band delivers a tight set of poppy rock and roll songs that are strong on melodies, harmonies and hooks. The Beatles are an obvious reference point, but the singer often sounds like Billy Corgan, which is not a positive association. The song “Cheapskate” kind of encapsulates how I feel about this record: Built on a terrific Stevie Wonder-esque funk groove, it erupts into an overly dramatic chorus that makes me think these guys may be responsible for a generation of anthemic alt-rock shouters. It’s well played and produced, and it has some very good individual songs, but it ultimately feels like a phase of life one outgrows.
Elvis Costello & The Attractions
3/5
Sufjan Stevens
5/5
Per Stereogum, this album recently turned 20 — which makes me feel old, and also reminded me that I missed this one when we started this exercise. Anyway, it’s fantastic, a triumph of composition, arrangement and songwriting. And it makes me remember why I felt a sense of disappointment when I learned that Sufjan would not, in fact, be completing his overly ambitious 50-state album project. (How far along do you think he’d be now, if he had kept at it? What states would he have covered so far?)
Illinoise is eccentric and indulgent and obsessive and overly ambitious in the best possible ways, a mix of folklore, history and the deeply personal. “Prairie Fire” is lovely, as is the deeply spiritual “Seer’s Tower.” And I still get the chills when he sings, in “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.,” “They were boys / with their cars, summer jobs / Oh my God.”
Black Sabbath
4/5
Simple Minds
4/5
It’s got all the prerequisites of classic ‘80s new wave/post-punk that I love: prominent bass, washes of synthesizer, danceability balanced with moody cinematic atmosphere, vocal dramatics, and guitar used primarily for accent. The title track rides a great motorik rhythm (with cowbell!) and totally slaps, and wow — Herbie Hancock plays the synth solo on “Hunter and the Hunted.” How have I overlooked this album? Unimportantly, I have questions about the album cover’s religious iconography, which may have subconsciously put me off of it in the past.
Hugh Masekela
4/5
A wonderful and seamless blend of funk, swing and African styles. I really need to check out more HM.
Taylor Swift
4/5
Not much of a pop fan, but I admire TS as a successful musician and strong woman who has charted her own path and serves as a great role model for her fans. This is well-done pop that mostly avoids the genre's predilection for bombast and overproduction (with the possible exception of 'I Wish You Would"). "Shake It Off" and "Bad Blood" are genuine bangers, while the anthemic "I Know Places" is infused with doomed romance. Listening to the "Taylor's Version" of this release now as my Gen X curiosity has been piqued.
Lou Reed
3/5
I love how the chorus of “Perfect Day” takes a gentle ode to spending the day together, feeding animals at the zoo and catching a movie, and drags it over the fence into something more desperate and dark by stealing the chorus from the Supremes (by way of Vanilla Fudge). It’s brilliant. Other highlights are Reed’s lyrics about groupies, transvestites, glamming up in women’s makeup and watching satellites on TV. The production and arrangements from David Bowie and Mick Ronson do a lot of heavy lifting on this album, which offers an interesting snapshot of early ‘70s sleaze and Reed’s contrarian, awkward persona.
Joy Division
5/5
This album was and continues to be massively influential in defining the sound of post-punk.
Run-D.M.C.
4/5
Queen
2/5
Prog is just not my thing, and I could only make it a few tracks in before losing interest. This album sounds like a not-fully-formed version of the band. Weird choice.
Bob Dylan
3/5
Dolly Parton
4/5
I've been an admirer of Dolly Parton since my boys were very young and unsolicited children's books started arriving each month in the mail, courtesy of her and the United Way. She is a saint, yet I've never really delved into her music.
Also, and I'm not an expert on country music by any stretch, but I always felt like Dolly Parton was considered more of a novelty and overlooked in favor of a mostly male cohort (Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, George Jones, etc.) but also Loretta Lynn and Patsy Cline.
Coat of Many Colors is a wonderful listen front to back, fully of life and heartache. Early Morning Breeze lilts on a pretty melody, the harmonizing on My Blue Tears is lovely and the storytelling on songs like Traveling Man and She Never Met a Man (She Didn't Like) embody what makes this era of country music so great. Also, the musicianship and production on this album are first rate.
The Youngbloods
2/5
TIL The Youngbloods wrote "Darkness, Darkness," which is an excellent song (though truth be told, there are cover versions of it that I prefer to the original). But after that leadoff track, I quickly grew bored, and I am picking up a serious "OK Boomer" stench to this entire exercise.
Primal Scream
3/5
The Rolling Stones
5/5
A classic. The Stones at the height of their powers.
Snoop Dogg
3/5
Hip hop was definitely in a golden era in the early '90s, yet I've always preferred the East Coast style, from the claustrophobic paranoia of Wu Tang to the fearless creativity of De La, the jazzy cool of A Tribe Called Quest and the clear-eyed storytelling of Nas.
On one hand, this is a fun listen, bouncy, funky as hell and full of colorful samples, if sometimes cartoonish. Yet like a lot of the Death Row stuff from this era, it's hard to get past the caustic misogyny and violence. I remain, at age 54, uninterested in how many bitches Snoop will be bangin' in 94.
Rage Against The Machine
1/5
I appreciate their anti-establishment positioning but I do not like the music of Rage Against the Machine. I just find it obnoxious and seek to turn it off whenever I hear it.
The 13th Floor Elevators
4/5
Gotta love Texas psychedelia.
Suede
3/5
It's albums like this that make me so confused about what Britpop means.
To me, it's post-punk, with echoes of bands that came before (Adam and the Ants, T-Rex, The Smiths, Bowie) and after (The Horrors). Nice diverse set of songs.
Kendrick Lamar
4/5
This album is slammin.
Beastie Boys
3/5
A milestone of my adolescence, this album overlaps my skateboarding years and my first-ever job at a Domino's Pizza store, making for some colorful interaction with the latter's corporate sensibilities. Anyway, while it was fun to hear a few of these songs again, I sold my vinyl copy of this album long ago and hadn't listened to this album in decades until now. I found that Raising Hell by Run-DMC, which mines similar sonic territory, feels more relevant to me today than Licensed to Ill. I also found the Beastie Boys inescapably annoying through the '90s FWIW.
Doves
4/5
I probably prefer their debut LP Lost Souls, but this is good and I'm glad Doves are represented on this list.
Elastica
4/5
Tears For Fears
3/5
I will acknowledge that "Shout" is a great song, but outside of that, the album lacks bite. While the songwriting is generally good, this album sounds very much like an artifact of its era. Just not my cup of tea.
Sade
5/5
Grateful for the prompt to listen to Sade, which is never a bad idea. She's a class act, so effortlessly sexy and sophisticated, capturing an 80s version of glamour that manages to sound timeless.
Songhoy Blues
5/5
Absolutely love this, and had never heard it before — though I am familiar with MDou Moctar, whose style is similar. They call it desert blues, and I definitely hear the influence of Delta blues in their guitar stylings. Hell of a backstory, too. Really happy to discover this.
Orange Juice
5/5
Holy fuck, I can't believe I am just now discovering this slinky loveliness. Reminds me a little of the English Beat. Going into my regular rotation.
Fairport Convention
4/5
Sarah Vaughan
4/5
Carole King
4/5
Her talent as a songwriter — remember, she began working in the Brill Building writing famous songs like "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow" as a teenager — is undeniable. This is obviously a major touchstone of the 70s singer-songwriter genre, and it helped define the sound of that decade. Also, I'll take her version of "You've Got a Friend" any day over James Taylor, who makes me cringe.
The Byrds
4/5
This is a fantastic album, pretty unrecognizable from the stuff the band had done before this and often credited as the first country-rock album. "The Christian Life" is a great song, and I can't help but think about how it was received by their fans in 1968. Other highlights are "One Hundred Years From Now," one of just three songs written by new band member Gram Parsons, and Woody Guthrie's "Pretty Boy Floyd." For a bunch of country novices, the playing on this is first-rate.
Janet Jackson
3/5
Rhythm Nation starts off with a bang with the title track and keeps it up through the first few songs, especially "State of the World." I mostly ignored this release when it came out, mostly because I (unfairly) associated Janet Jackson with her older and more-famous brother, who by that point was thoroughly creeping me out and putting me off with super high-gloss pop music and his increasingly questionable antics. By the time RN gets to the bubbly "Love Will Never Do (Without You)" and the ballad "Livin' In a World (They Didn't Make)" I'm losing interest, fast. But then it hits its stride again with "Alright" and closes out strong with "Someday is Tonight."
Overall, this is a strong example of late-80s sequenced pop-funk with some genuine bangers but some songs weighed down by dated production.
Rufus Wainwright
3/5
To peruse his back catalog, with its interpretations of Shakespearean sonnets and even opera (Prima Donna, 2009), Rufus Wainwright seems like a man born in the wrong era. I had that sense while listening to Want Two, that he should really focus his energies on writing musicals (which is what sent me looking through his discography).
Listening to him makes me wish that my mom, a classically trained soprano who was never short of opinions about contemporary vocalists, were still alive, because I find his voice to be my primary sticking point. While he's clearly not shy about belting it out, to me it's not quite up to the primary billing he gives it in his music. That said, Wainwright is clearly capable of creating lush stirring music — check out "April Fool's" from an earlier release, one of my favorite songs from the early aughts, or Prima Donna (he merely composed the music but doesn't sing). These are strong compositions with good arrangements. "Gay Messiah" is a great song.
Booker T. & The MG's
3/5
Huge amount of respect to this band, but this album feels stuffed with filler and non-essentials aside some very good instrumental pieces.
David Bowie
5/5
Bowie albums are always a group effort, as he was a highly selective and demanding band leader and composer who surrounded himself with top talent (Mick Ronson, Carlos Alomar, Robert Fripp, Donny McCaslin, etc.). Here, he enlists Brian Eno to explore krautrock and ambient, with other sonic and aesthetic contributions from longtime producer Tony Visconti, to brilliant effect. Bowie by this point in the '70s was on another level artistically, coming off the effortless-sounding (and cocaine-fueled) art pop of Station to Station to produce what always sounds to me like the future. Low reminds me of a science fiction movie soundtrack, only with fully realized songs and compositions. Brilliant and still ahead of its time.
Marilyn Manson
3/5
Ick. What's next, R. Kelly? Puff Daddy?
Sly & The Family Stone
5/5
This album is a banger that never fails to put a smile on my face. In a turbulent era, Sly managed to make protest music that made you feel good: Affirmative, funky as hell, and a band comprised of Black, white and female musicians. It's a joyous revolution.
Pixies
5/5
I remember my initial impressions of the Pixies when I first heard them in 1989, how their songs carried this incredible catchiness balanced by so much weirdness. There’s Kim Deal’s bouncy bass and sexy breathy vocals, Joey Santiago’s ferocious guitar lines and then this lead singer named Black Francis who sounds crazy as fuck, with childlike yelps and growls and lyrics that mask something terrifying. Songs like “I Bleed” legitimately frightened me, while “Here Comes Your Man,” “Mr. Grieves” and “Dead” evoked in me skewed cinematic western vibes. While “Doolittle” had nowhere near the (immediate) cultural impact of Nirvana’s “Nevermind,” it felt like a satisfying way to slam the lid shut on hair metal and all the other tired ‘80s music trends of the day and usher in an exciting new musical decade.
T. Rex
4/5
It's fun to imagine how this album must've landed in its time — 1971, my birth year. It was kind of a stylistic shift from Tyrannosaurus Rex's early hippy stuff, yet the mystical flourishes to Marc Bolan's songs may have appealed to the more adventurous-minded members of that waning scene. Plus, rock and roll was evolving into new forms. And it's *just* tough enough to appeal to fans of Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and other hard rock and heavy metal acts of that era (though his wearing of makeup and high heels probably made a lot of those burnouts reluctant to admit it). Fun fact: Longtime Bowie collaborator Tony Visconti produced this album, which I did not previously know but definitely tracks.
Bob Marley & The Wailers
4/5
Since we're all critics here, I would have nominated Catch a Fire as the best Bob Marley and the Wailers album, and listening to this, it's clear why. This was the first BMW album without Peter Tosh or Bunny Livingston, and they are missed (especially the former, who lent the band a toughness and a second skilled songwriter and singer). But this is still a fine release. "Rebel Music" is one of Marley's best anthems, "Revolution" locks into a stirring vibe and the addition of the I-Threes as backing vocals is wonderful. Sadly, I think the song "No Woman, No Cry" is in danger of joining my list of songs I never need to hear again, thanks to the cassette version of Legend that played every day in drawing class during my senior year in high school.
Slade
2/5
This strained my patience right off the bat and granted, it's hard to commit to a Big Dumb Rock record like this in the middle of a work day. I warmed to it slightly as it went on. Wonderin Y is a legit good song and Look at Last Nite and I Won't Let it 'Appen Agen both managed to pique some interest, despite the tiresome, deliberately misspelled song titles. I don't love the singer at all. Mostly I hear in this the roots of many lamentable things: AC/DC, Twisted Sister, Motley Crue, etc. I could have easily died without listening to this, turns out.
Beastie Boys
2/5
Once upon a time I was a fan of the Beasties. I went hard for Licensed to Ill when it came out, and I stuck with them through Check Your Head. And then suddenly ... I was done. Chalk it up to the nasal delivery and overuse of vocal effects, the lingering echoes of their past juvenilia, and especially their commercial and cultural ubiquity as the '90s wore on. It felt like you couldn't get away from these guys for a while there.
As for Ill Communication, I like the instrumentals, their sampling and mixing reflect skill, and it's always cool to hear Q-Tip and Biz Markee guest rap. I think I just really don't like them as rappers. IIRC we've so far had just three (?) hip hop releases on this list, and the Beastie Boys are worthy of two slots?
Keith Jarrett
4/5
This is nice. I read that this performance was 100% improvised, which is impressive. I'm also guessing from the crowd noise that the Part II c/the fourth movement/whatever you want to call it was an encore.
The Cars
3/5
I listened to this album on a channel called Classic Rock. The top comment is from a guy who talks about the custom hi-fi setup in his 1965 Pontiac GTO. “Cars were blaring along with meatloaf, Styx, Edgar Winter Group, Warren Zevon, Kansas…” and so forth. So that pretty well grounds this recording in time, place and cultural zeitgeist.
Like a lot of music of its ilk, I feel no need to revisit some of these megahits, which are probably playing right now on your local Boomer FM album-oriented rock stations. But past the first few tracks, I hear a tension within the band between the vaguely retro bubblegum pop hits of “Good Times Roll” and “My Best Friend’s Girlfriend” that made this band famous and more adventurous fare like “Moving in Stereo” and “Don’t Cha Stop.” Suspecting there may have been multiple songwriters, I checked, and they’re all credited to Ric Ocasek. Which I supposed figures: In addition to marrying Paulina Porizkova, he went on to become a sought-after producer, with credits on albums from the likes of Bad Brains, Weezer and Guided by Voices.
Foo Fighters
3/5
Enjoyed this one more than I expected to, and it turns out I already knew most of the songs. Dave Grohl clearly picked up a lot of songwriting cues from Kurt Cobain — "Alone + Easy Target" sounds like a Nirvana B-side. His talent at marrying loud, distorted guitars with catchy melodies recalls his former band, Husker Du and Weezer's Green Album. And the riffing on "Weenie Beanie" (what is it with these song titles tho) foreshadows his later collaboration with Queens of the Stone Age. But as the song titles suggest, it's probably best not to focus on the lyrical content.
Pixies
3/5
The history of popular music is vast enough that there are few acts deserving of multiple entries in a list of 1,001 albums to listen to before you die. So it goes for the Beastie Boys, and so it goes with this album by the Pixies.
Hadn't listened to this one in many years. It's a fine album, but it lacks some of the spontaneity and playfulness of previous albums like Doolittle or Surfer Rosa. And perhaps most importantly, it lacks Kim Deal, who was a key ingredient in this band.
The Stone Roses
5/5
This is one of those hyper-evocative albums for me: It brings me right back to my college dorm, where I first heard it and listened to this album most often. To me, this album would be worth it for the reprise of the lovely “Waterfall” into “Don’t Stop” alone. It’s sonic magic, with its trippy tape loops and hypnotic rhythm. “Elizabeth My Dear” clearly cops its melody from Simon & Garfunkel. “Shoot You Down” is effortless cool and "Fool's Gold" feels like being on drugs at a rave. Too bad they fizzled out after a mediocre sophomore release, but at least they gifted us with this brilliance.
Parliament
4/5
Alongside other artifacts of humanity, this is one of the albums I'd pick to place inside a probe that gets launched deep into space in the hopes it's one day discovered by an alien civilization — and not just because of the cover or extraterrestrial theme (though maybe that helps). It's just strange and funky, it might make the aliens shake it, and it makes humanity sound queer and fun. More terrestrially, it's the sound of peak '70s Me Decade drug-induced hedonism freak flaggery, an album that would echo through so much hip hop decades later.
Steely Dan
2/5
TIL the song "Dirty Work" was performed by Steely Dan, and I think it says something that I was never curious to learn more about it despite being fed a steady diet from FM rock radio while growing up. "Do It Again" evokes some nostalgia for whittling away hours in video game arcades. The rest of this album is just an occasionally depressing document of the soft middle of the '70s: The hippie idealism of the '60s has been dead and buried, everyone's numbed on quaaludes and TV dinners, and punk rock can't arrive soon enough.
Beatles
4/5
The song "Come Together" is like pop cultural canon at this point, with its iconic and inscrutable lyrics ("He got monkey finger / he shoot Coca-Cola"), and then there's the killer medley on side 2 (this is the first album in this project that I listened to as an LP, not streaming). There's even a murder ballad ("Maxwell's Silver Hammer"). I think I'd give it 5 stars except that I feel like "Something" is out of place on this album and sounds more of a piece with the material they'd release later on Let It Be, an album they actually recorded before Abbey Road.
Prefab Sprout
4/5
I'd heard of this band but never listened to them, and I'm sure I appreciate this much more today than I would have in 1985, when my tastes generally didn't lean in this direction. Shades of Sade and Orange Juice, whom we've already covered on this list, and even The Smiths. It has a certain elegance. Produced by Thomas Dolby, I read.
Lauryn Hill
4/5
Lauryn Hill is an incredible talent and this is a diverse and heartfelt album full of top-notch bangers. You can definitely hear how its influence reverberates decades later. But the interstitial chatter gets tiresome.
Ella Fitzgerald
5/5
As many of you have noted, this is a difficult assignment not least because of its length, spread out across the equivalent of four discs worth of music. It's also a weird fit stylistically with the typical fare of this project. Nearly 3/4 of the way through it, I can confidently say that this is no better or worse than any of Ella Fitzgerald's recordings tackling the Great American Songbook composers. I own copies of Ella singing the Cole Porter songbook and the Rodgers and Hart LP, and honestly, pick any of 'em, they're all great (and yet, this is the only album cover of the three that eschews an image of the singer for one of a white woman's face, WTF). Ella Fitzgerald has a voice like a bell on a clear, cold winter night. What a treasure.
Radiohead
2/5
Selections like this one make me wonder whether my review should be about the album itself or the choice to include it in the list of 1,001 albums. Back when this album was released, it felt like Radiohead was starting to get high on its own supply, like the band was convinced of its own importance, and hearing it today bears that out. While there are some nice moments, this is a dreary listen. A slog. Nowhere near Radiohead's best work, before or since.
Patti Smith
5/5
Like longtime critical and cult favorites including Big Star, the MC5 and the Mekons, who I failed to appreciate or fully understand when I was younger, I'm just now getting around to Patti Smith. This is a terrific album from an artist who must've sounded like a breath of fresh air in 1975. A highlight is "Birdland," which works like an audio poem, buffeted by evocative guitar feedback and piano refrains. I hear her influence in the later work of Nick Cave, another highly literate and multitalented singer-songwriter who brings a strong storytelling element to his work. I need to own this album.
The Beta Band
4/5
I don’t remember thinking this about them back in the day, but The Beta Band has some really pretty songs, like "Gone" and "Quiet." Maybe it has to do with frontman Steve Mason’s soothing and calming vocal style, like a quietly confident man in no hurry to convince you of anything and content to let his songs speak for him. But there's actually a lot to the music: slammin’ trip-hop beats, motorik rhythms, tasty basslines, cool electronic flourishes, nice harmonies and earworm refrains, all contained within engaging songs. It all adds up to a highly pleasant and enjoyable listening experience.
FYI Allmusic calls this band “post-Britpop.”
James Brown
4/5
I have to include this amazing quote from the late Wayne Kramer, via Wikipedia, on how James Brown influenced the MC5's live debut LP, Kick Out the Jams: "Our whole thing was based on James Brown. We listened to Live at the Apollo endlessly on acid. We would listen to that in the van in the early days of 8-tracks on the way to the gigs to get us up for the gig."
Musically, this album captures pre-funk era JB. But it's still the call-and-response emcee-bandleader format for which he is known, and the screams from the audience reinforce its place in time and cultural importance. "I Don't Mind" and "Try Me" sound like 1950s torch songs, a side of him I hadn't heard before. The backing band is top notch, as you'd expect.
Also have to give props to the excellent design incorporating a watercolor (I think?) on the cover.
Goldfrapp
4/5
This is nice, like a mix of trip-hop and cabaret. Alison Goldfrapp has a lovely voice that occasionally recalls Portishead's Beth Gibbons (especially on tracks like "Pilots") and has great range. It's spooky and enchanting and makes me want to check out more of their albums.
Willie Nelson
4/5
I'm a little torn by the inclusion of this, an album of well-known standards, from the artist who wrote songs as good as "Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground," "Whiskey River" and "My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys." It was even controversial in its day, coming from the figurehead of Outlaw Country. And yet, I cannot deny this is very good — especially "September Song."
N.W.A.
4/5
It's hard to separate this album from all the controversy and mythology that surrounded its release, yet the amazing thing is how vital and current the most incendiary tracks sound in 2025. "Straight Outta Compton" makes me want to march and burn shit down. Ice Cube, who wrote most of the lines (even for the others), is a skilled rap lyricist. The album definitely wanes in energy and relevance as it wears on ("I Ain't Tha 1" is a low point), but there's no denying its cultural impact or its influence on hip hop.
Also, I love the last track, "Something 2 Dance 2," an old-school electro tack-on that seems to almost undermine the group's gangsta credentials. It's like a hip-hop Nuggets entry, great for a mix tape full of obscurities.
2/5
XTC has always seemed to me an acquired taste, and I've simply never acquired the taste (due partly to Andy Partridge's voice). This album of lushly arranged chamber pop is clearly well done, yet like everything else I've heard from the band, I simply fail to connect with their very off-kilter British vibe. This album draws comparisons to Sgt. Pepper's and the Beach Boys' "Pet Sounds," and I can see why. But I don't see how this one really advances on their sonic or cultural accomplishments.
Louis Prima
5/5
Even though he totally ripped off David Lee Roth, this album is a real hoot.
The Sugarcubes
3/5
This is a quirky album of rank-and-file post-punk that dropped out of left field — a place called Iceland — at a time when this brand of angular guitars and charging rhythms were no longer in vogue. That's entirely my jam. It features a charismatic and big-piped chanteuse named Bjork, whose lack of vocal restraint sometimes chafes. "Birthday" remains a great song, wholly distinctive in its sound, while other highlights include "Mama," "Blue Eyed Pop" and "Coldsweat." Unfortunately, "Motorcrash," one of the early singles from the album, and "Delicious Demon" are serious duds that suffer from ridiculous lyrics. What is this about taking a bath and being squeaky clean? I'd probably give this an extra half star if I could.
Funkadelic
4/5
A strong distillation of Funkadelic's melding of funk and rock. Mike Hampton picks up where Eddie Hazel left off in delivering Hendrix-like guitar virtuosity. But if this album makes the list, are we also in store for Maggot Brain or the band's excellent self-titled debut?
The Cure
3/5
The Cure are originators of a trove of great post-punk, goth, dirge, dance and even pop songs that are foundational to an entire generation. Yet outside of the classic “A Forest” and maybe “M,” you’d be hard-pressed to find any on this early, brooding Cure album. It gets off to a slow start, a thought I had while listening to the third song “Secrets” and then a few songs later on the funereal “The Final Sound,” before getting a lift for, well, most of the second side until the depressing title track. It’s not a bad album, per se, but it’s an odd choice for an intro to The Cure, all sparse, minimalist beats, abstractions and repetitive melodies. I’m sure there will be more Cure on this list.
1/5
Woof, that's over.
Going to put on some soothing vibraphone lullabies or ambient music now.
Ali Farka Touré
4/5
What makes this posthumous release especially interesting to listen to is how it bridges continents and musical styles. There are fiddles and other traditional West African instruments throughout, but also saxophones ("N'jarou," "Beto") and harmonica ("Ledi Coumbe"), and he sings "Savane" in French. Ali Farka Toure was often compared to John Lee Hooker, and while he has his own distinctive sound, he often veers into a similarly droning Delta blues vein. It all makes for a highly captivating, meditative listen.
Cocteau Twins
3/5
Cocteau Twins are one of those bands who were practically made for listening to with headphones. The music is dreamy and ethereal and lush, and well produced. Elizabeth Fraser has a lovely voice, yet I sometimes wonder what these songs would be like if she sang real lyrics.
Elliott Smith
4/5
I'd have liked to listen to my CD copy of Either/Or, but the drawer won't open on my player. Which has led me to wonder whether I should either part with my sizable collection of CDs, which I rarely listen to anymore, fix my CD player or buy a replacement on eBay.
Anyway, this is a wonderful album of quietude, incense, candlelight and dark nights. Its mood and outlook — and indeed, Smith's tragic life story — feel decidedly Gen X. Smith was a real talent, gone too soon.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
4/5
The Yeah Yeah Yeahs' third album announces itself with a powerful trio of songs, starting with the infectious disco of "Zero," continuing with the driving rock of 'Heads Will Roll" and concluding with four-on-the-floor synths ("Soft Shock"). “Dull Life” displays the dynamics this band were by now becoming known for, building from a slow, moody intro to a galloping rock rhythm. "Hysteric" is a gorgeous meditation on love. Four and a 1/2 stars.
Overall, It's Blitz trades some of the band's guitar-forward rough edges for nuance, more sophisticated production (in part from Dave Sitek of TV On the Radio, who I really hope are on this list), softer and more electronic textures, and space in the songs, which are often about love. It’s the sound of a band growing.
Siouxsie And The Banshees
4/5
Siouxsie gets pigeonholed as being goth, and this is indeed probably her darkest album. Juju offers a pervasive sense of danger and menace, such as on the slow-burn screech of "Night Shift" or the spine-tingling guitar cascades of "Voodoo Dolly." I never really think of her as goth — and certainly not in a dismissive or limiting way — simply because she's such a skilled songwriter, with a great ear for distinctive, unusual sounds.
Juju is filled with bangers, like the single "Arabian Knights," which could (and certainly did) hold its own on the dancefloor, the motorik chug of "Monitor" and the caustic and urgent pace set by "Halloween." It's a potent witch's brew of tribal drums and percussion (I hear tambourines!), jagged guitars, claustrophobic melodies and Siouxsie's commanding presence.
Abdullah Ibrahim
3/5
While he spent much of his life in exile from the brutal apartheid government, Abdullah Ibrahim was born and raised in South Africa, where he absorbed much of the local traditional and gospel sounds. I don't hear much of that in this release, which sounds like a much more contemporary take on swing jazz. "Tuang Guru" and "Song for Sathima" are highlights. The rest is pleasant if unremarkable.
Ali Farka Touré
4/5
I know Ry Cooder mainly from his work producing the blockbuster project Buena Vista Social Club, which was essentially a supergroup of mostly retired legendary Cuban musicians. This album predates that by a couple years and sees him lending his guitar playing in addition to producing. That's one of the main differences I hear between this and Savane, the Ali Farka Touré album we reviewed last week. As was the case with Buena Vista, the production is crisp and clean and showcases the musicianship and unique textures of Touré's desert blues. I also notice the influence of Delta blues, especially on "Amandrai" and "Ai Du," which adds some nice fiddle accents.
Pink Floyd
2/5
This was the first time in several decades I have listened to Wish You Were Here, an album that was foundational to high-school me. Yet while the odes to erstwhile bandleader Syd Barrett are poignant — the song "Wish You Were Here" is a classic — this has never been one of my favorite Floyd releases. To me, it marks the point where Roger Waters’ various obsessions and unresolved manias began eclipsing the band and he exerted an increasingly heavy hand over Pink Floyd’s musical and lyrical direction. Things from here would get increasingly heavy, and less fun, conceptually. Musically, I also feel like WYWH personifies the mid-70s rock bloat, with lethargic tempos, fat synths and a reliance on studio wizardry over songcraft. It's kind of a depressing listen.
B.B. King
4/5
This is a great showcase for B.B. King as vocalist, bandleader, entertainer and especially guitarist. The drummer is tight and the band is funky. Live recordings to me are always hit or miss, but this one captures what sounds like a hell of a night, with a top-notch band and an enthusiastic audience. I for one would be happy to see more blues on this list.
Gary Numan
5/5
In 1979 or '80, before I had turned 10 years old, the hit song "Cars" was responsible for my first-ever live rock concert. My friend's mom drove us to an outdoor concert amphitheater, yet once the headlining act started playing, we knew something was not right. The band was playing a mostly conventional guitar-bass-drums setup, with only one synthesizer used in a background role, and neither the singer nor the songs sounded anything like that weird, left-field staple of commercial radio. Turns out we had assumed the song "Cars" was performed by The Cars. Oh, well.
Anyway, this album slaps, fusing emotional depth and resonance with alien electronic textures and icy sci-fi lyrical themes. It helped usher in the futurism and technological advances of the '80s with some excitement, and it was foundational in shaping my own musical appetite for life. I think I still own the cassette copy that was a fixture of my Walkman.
Aimee Mann
3/5
Ideally I could devote enough time to give each of these 1,001 selections (well, maybe not *all* of them) more than one listen, as things often reveal themselves on subsequent listens that you missed the first time, fondness grows, etc. Alas.
I respect Aimee Mann and like her work on the Magnolia soundtrack and with Til Tuesday. And I recognize her skill as a lyricist and songwriter. But this album comes off as a little too “adult contemporary” sounding to me, lacking a sonic edge. It certainly didn’t sound like what you might expect from the very Gen X album cover and title or the era (1993) in which it was released.
Donald Fagen
2/5
From the opening keyboard riff of leadoff track “I.G.Y.” I immediately thought of marshmallows — soft, white, squishy, uniformly without blemish and ultraprocessed as hell. Totally not my thing but I recognize its qualities. Not surprisingly it has been sampled extensively.
Fats Domino
4/5
It’s pretty wild to consider this was the vanguard of popular rock and roll, considering that the Beatles, Stones and the rest of the British Invasion were less than a decade away and within two decades of its release, the genre had blossomed into a kaleidoscope of musical styles, subgenres and sounds. It’s proof that rock and roll had an incredibly fertile early growth spurt. Anyway, Fats Domino deserves a ton of respect as a trailblazer, both musically and culturally, for popularizing a new form of music in an era of suffocating conformity and racial segregation. Musically, this album feels a little like a tale of two sides, and most interesting to me are the more overtly blues-influenced numbers that dominate the second side, such as the instrumental “The Fat Man’s Hop,” which features a guitar solo, and the hard-driving “You Done Me Wrong,” where Fats opens up a bit more vocally. Also feel obligated to call out the lovely sax solo on “So Long.”
The Killers
2/5
I used to own this album, shortly after it came out. I liked how the leadoff track thrusts a bass riff and synth to the fore and I enjoyed the song "Smile Like You Mean It," which has a cool '80s new wave vibe. The rest never really grew on me, and I traded in my CD. The end.
The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion
4/5
I count myself as a fan of The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion's brand of grimy garage punk and gutter blues music. My copy of Orange was on heavy rotation in the mid-90s, yet I never got around to the rest of the band's catalog. Now I Got Worry plays differently than its predecessor, which presented like a variety hour of musical sketches and sleazy, funky charm emceed by Spencer. It's more varied in style, raunchier but equally combustible. I love the 1-minute hardcore throwback "Identify," while "Love All of Me" sounds like Elvis on a bender in the pre-gentrification Lower East Side. Is this the best JSBE album? I cannot say, but I'm fine with it being on this list as an example of how the blues established a foundation for so many diverse rock subgenres.
Jane's Addiction
3/5
It’s hard for me to objectively assess this band and album. There was a time when I listened to Jane’s Addiction obsessively: I saw them live on this tour, and listening to this certainly brings back good memories (fun fact: I stole this CD, the final act of my short-lived klepto phase). On the other hand, Jane’s hasn’t aged all that well for me. Part of it is that I have mostly moved on from the whole funk/cock rock sound of the era, of which I consider them an exemplar (Red Hot Chili Peppers being another; God I hope we don’t get any of their albums). But also, Perry Farrell has shown himself to be an insufferable douchebag in the 30-plus years since this release — which makes it hard not to listen for evidence of him as a self-centered, drug-addled empty vessel in older work like this.
TL;DR version: I don’t love Jane’s Addiction anymore. The second side was always the real strength of this release, but if I had to pick one Jane’s album it’d probably be Nothing’s Shocking.
The Lemonheads
4/5
I never took The Lemonheads seriously back in the day, owing I think to the band's name, which I thought was a joke, and their devastatingly handsome, goofy lead singer. Which is too bad, because holy crap Evan Dando can write songs! I hear lots of good echoes here, including The Replacements, The Smithereens, R.E.M., Elvis Costello and Big Star. The update of "Mrs. Robinson" is great but so are "My Drug Buddy," "Rudderless" and "Hannah & Gabi."
Al Green
5/5
A stone classic and the best baby-making music on the other side of D'Angelo's "Voodoo."
Santana
4/5
Sanata's neat trick was marrying traditional Latin songs, structures and percussion to a contemporary, early-70s rock idiom and somehow making it sound timeless. It's an enjoyable listen.
The Doors
4/5
I long ago moved past my Doors obsession but acknowledge this as an important milestone in American psychedelia. Time hasn't exactly endeared me to Jim Morrison's flat, affectless voice, nor to the bombast of "The End" (I think "When the Music's Over" and "Riders on the Storm" are superior long-jam album closers). But there are some solid jams here and Manzarek's keyboards lend a kind of dark carnival vibe to the proceedings.
LTJ Bukem
4/5
This was a nice, meditative listen, perfect for working. Loved the tracks with the House music vocals and the loon-call samples. Wonder what other electronic music we'll get on this list.
Peter Gabriel
4/5
If you wanted to distill what the ‘80s were like musically to someone who never experienced them, you could do worse than nominate Peter Gabriel’s “So.”
The album was obviously huge, for starters, with several songs that received heavy rotation on radio and MTV. But it also encompasses a good span of the sounds and styles that defined the decade. There’s the anthemic, strident “Red Rain,” the tender ballads (“In Your Eyes” and “Don’t Give Up”), the blue-eyed soul of “Sledgehammer” and its pioneering video, and the Talking Heads-esque funk of “Big Time.” The synths, backing singers and glossy production are hallmarks of the era and keep everything on this side of accessible to wide audiences, even as Gabriel, like his peers Paul Simon and Sting, is indulging plenty of African and other global music styles and developing an interest in political and social activism.
Regarding the non-hits, “We Do What We’re Told” brings some great aural textures but seems out of place on this album with its authoritarian subject matter, while “That Voice Again” is a dud and “This Is The Picture” sounds like a throwback to his prog-phase Genesis days.
The Stooges
5/5
Like the underappreciated "High Time" by the MC5, The Stooges' hometown cohorts, "Raw Power" is essentially the dying gasp of a band that would cease to be a going concern within a year of the album's release. (Technically, The Stooges had already broken up and been reformed to cut and tour this album.)
It's fascinating to think that neither American nor British audiences in 1973 took to this album despite punk rock being just a few more years away and the cultural cachet the band enjoys today. I could quibble over whether this or "Fun House" belongs on this list (maybe both?), and there's been loads written about the poor audio quality of Bowie's mix (it's frustrating to hear a band with such a formidable rhythm section subjected to such a tinny mix). But this remains a masterclass in economical songwriting, sleaze and aggression that single-handedly made Iggy Pop's reputation.
If you're into this, check out the "Kill City" release Iggy cut with Stooges guitarist James Williamson and a bunch of studio musicians a couple of years after this. The album has a fascinating backstory and features tight, soulful songs and plenty of saxophone.
Jimi Hendrix
4/5
People tend to pigeonhole Jimi Hendrix as acid rock, but this album, along with his later releases, demonstrates he was capable of so much more than that. There's the electric blues of "Hey Joe," the tender reflection of "May This Be Love" the lovely poetry of "The Wind Cries Mary" and the psychedelic churn of the title cut. Of all the rock stars who left us too early, he may be the one I most regret losing because I can't help but wonder where his muse may have led him if he'd had more time.
Bob Dylan
4/5
I'm not the biggest Dylan fan, but this is really good. Good songs, great lyrics, stirring emotional vibes.
5/5
X was one of the first punk rock bands I discovered, thanks to a friend I made in fifth grade who had just moved from SoCal and introduced me to his older brothers' record collection, and I love them to this day. They combine raw aggression with highly adept musicality, an appreciation of American roots music, dark poetic lyrics and tight songwriting chops, and they might be the only punk band that does vocal harmonies. This album is a visceral tour of the seedy underbelly of early-80s Los Angeles. Highlights include "Adult Books," "White Girl," "Universal Corner" (that riff is so good) and "Beyond and Back."
Kate Bush
3/5
Turns out I like Kate Bush more today than when I first heard her around the time this album came out. I'm drawn to the taut urgency of songs like "Running Up That Hill" and "Cloudbusting," and "Waking the Witch" has some nice spooky atmospherics but sounds like the recording went haywire after the 1-minute mark. But there's a theatrical, show tune-y quality to a lot of these songs — Ren-fest prog? — that is just not my jam. As for "Jig For Life," Irish fiddle music just drives me batshit.
Michael Jackson
2/5
Watching the official video again for “Man in the Mirror,” it dawns on me that this is one of the clumsiest protest anthems/self-affirmation songs extant. And it illustrates my main complaint about this album — that it lacks strong songs. “Bad” is defined by airtight production and, in its first half, some interesting electronic percussion flourishes. But those technological innovations sometimes make an odd fit for the actual songs, such as “Liberian Girl,” which might work better with more organic instrumentation. The hits, like the title track and “The Way You Make Me Feel,” just don’t land with the same force as “Billie Jean” or “Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough,” which feel timeless. Much of “Bad” just feels like non-essential, dated and over-produced mid-80s pop and sappy love songs. It marks a kind of demarcation from his legacy as a brilliant hitmaker to a rather creepy and tragic cautionary tale.
Frank Sinatra
2/5
This is a decent album with solid performances, but I find Sinatra hard to take in large doses like this. It's all uniformly uptempo and chirpy, and it lacks variety and emotional nuance (to illustrate, the algorithm is now serving me "It Was a Very Good Year" from another album, and it's a reminder that Sinatra did, in fact, have some range). I'd much rather listen to the versions of these songs offered by the likes of Ella Fitzgerald or Sarah Vaughn, both of whom add much more feel to the American songbook than Ol' Blue Eyes.
3/5
My first thought, since it was the first sounds in the first song: The bass player deserves a raise. His playing throughout is stellar.
This is a solid New Romantic release, with echoes of Duran Duran and Roxy Music. I liked a lot of the bonus tracks, but I'm not sure this belongs on this list.
The Dandy Warhols
4/5
This is a solid collection of melodic psychedelia that varies from the trippy "Orange" to the dirge-like "Whipping Tree" and the four-on-the-floor disco thrum of "Every Day Should Be a Holiday." These lads and lady do a good job synthesizing inspiration from power pop, British Invasion and indie rock.
The Go-Go's
4/5
Everybody knows the twin hits, but the strength of this album lay in its deep cuts — the icy new wave of "Automatic," the surf rock of 'Skidmarks On My Heart," the uptempo post-punk of "Tonite," the wistful "Lust to Love," etc. I find most of them more interesting than the hits, but there's really not a bad tune to be found. The band is peppy, energetic and fully in command. I'm left trying to remember why I ever parted with my copy of this LP back in the day.
Rush
4/5
I’m not the biggest Rush fan, but this seems like the album where they put their collective talents together and curbed their excesses in service (mostly) of tight and condensed and very good songs that would shape their status as FM rock radio titans. This album also appears in a dorky Venn diagram of two related personal interests: the incursion of the synthesizer into classic rock (see also: Baba O’Riley) and the soundtrack of the heyday of video game arcades. Last observation: “Vital Signs” sounds like Rush’s take on The Police.
Public Enemy
5/5
An ambitious, provocative and groundbreaking release, A Nation of Millions hasn’t lost an ounce of its sonic or cultural import. Tracks like the trippy “Show ‘Em Whatcha Got” demonstrate that PE was early to the jazz-sampling trend, while they capitalized on the nascent rap-rock trend by sampling Slayer on “She Watch Channel Zero?!” (one of 20 samples on the track). Terminator X is in top form with his scratching and trademark tea kettle/horse-whinny refrain, Flavor Flav plays the role of hype man/street jester (except when he raps, such as on “Cold Lampin’”) with aplomb and Chuck D is like a whole weather system on the mic. There’s so much going on in this seminal release, and I haven’t even gotten to the pointed social and political commentary. Le plus ca change…
The Icarus Line
3/5
Here is a band I had never heard of, and lo the album kicks off with a song called “Up Against the Wall Motherfuckers.” I am primed to be a fan despite an element of surprise: Based on a quick glance at their name, album title and cover art, I was expecting, I dunno…icy North Sea ambient? Chamber folk electronica? (When this album came out, I was fully immersed in the early-aughts rock revival, which leads me to wonder how I missed it, given the critical accolades it earned.)
Anyway, I like but am not blown away by this. There is a ramshackle quality that appeals, but the band occasionally veers into the studied iPod-ad rock territory of The Jets or Wolfmother, two forgettable acts from this era who had their moments in the spotlight. I also don’t discern a strong individual identity from this band, rather a carefully coiffed collective sneer.
Drive Like Jehu
5/5
I’m already a fan of Rocket From the Crypt and Hot Snakes, two bands in the same family tree as Drive Like Jehu, and was way overdue to listen to this band. Between the complex, multi-part compositions and song lengths, this feels like operatic post-hardcore. I’d call it progcore, but it never feels especially fussy, indulgent or done simply to demonstrate musical virtuosity. Instead, the songs, from the pummeling noise freakout of “Luau” to the meditative “Sinews,” feel entirely unfettered and free, in service of conveying complex emotions. This album is rooted in the sonic fury of hardcore but expands by orders of magnitude on the genre’s restrictive musical palette.
The Beach Boys
3/5
I imagine the disorientation I felt when approaching this album — it’s called “Surf’s Up,” in typical Beach Boys fashion, yet it bears pretty dark cover art, and it’s filled with songs addressing social and environmental issues — was shared by many when this came out in 1971. This album is thick with AM radio vibes, and there are some really good songs, like “Disney Girls” and the title track, but also some bizarre and heavy-handed ones (“Student Demonstration Time” is the weirdest protest song I’ve ever heard). It seems like a reflection of how the group was fracturing into distinct and warring personalities.
Pink Floyd
5/5
Peak Floyd. I have nothing novel to add, but will note that this was one of the first CDs (along with Piper At the Gates of Dawn) my parents bought me to go along with the CD player they bought me for Christmas one year back in the 80s. My dad would probably detest this album, but he was enough of an audiophile to recognize its quality.
Electric Light Orchestra
2/5
It’s orchestral, alright. And it’s heavily informed by soft rock, synths, the vocoder, and prog, and even by The Beatles’ whimsical senses of harmony and melody and The Bee Gees’ take on disco. A quintessentially 70s mix to be sure. Then there’s the cinematic sci-fi of “Believe Me Now,” which sounds like a precursor to the band Air.
But the whole thing sounds a little overstuffed, like a soundtrack of bloated show tunes, and the vibes just don’t hit for me. Neither do the lyrics, which seem to celebrate good weather (“Mr Blue Sky”) or other mushy subject matter.
Also, were ELO and Boston in direct competition over the right to commandeer flying saucers that resemble jukeboxes for their bands’ respective brands or something? Just asking.
Small Faces
4/5
This is a brilliant artifact of LSD-soaked counterculture, a mess in the best possible way. Songs like “Afterglow of Your Love” and “Rollin’ Over” ride on heavy rhythmic churns, “Song of a Baker” presages 70s hard rock and “Mad John” is a brilliant folk tune. Drummer Kenney Jones’ playing is phenomenal. It all sounds like a hell of a good time. Glad I had the opportunity to listen to it.
Calexico
4/5
Joey Burns and John Convertino are incredibly talented musicians who soaked up inspiration from their many years living in Tucson, aka the Old Pueblo, forming the rhythm section for Giant Sand and later playing lounge music in the Hotel Congress lobby with the excellent Friends of Dean Martin (later Martinez). This is a good illustration of the dynamic range of their band, Calexico. Songs like “Black Heart” and “Close Behind” lend a dramatic, cinematic feel to the album — the latter is like the soundtrack to a Western call-to-arms sequence with its string-and-horn chorus refrain. There’s the jazz-inflected “Crumble” and the Mexican swing of “Guero Canelo.” My only real critique is that the album loses focus in its second half and could’ve benefited from editing.
Little Simz
4/5
It’s empowering, relevant to the times, boasts rich sonic arrangements and production, and features appearances from both Cleo Sol and Michael Kiwanuka. Little Simz comes off like the cool smart girl who couldn’t give a fuck about the tune of your exhaust or your hard-earned lifting gains. What’s not to like?
R.E.M.
4/5
A great example of literate mid-80s jangle-pop filled with killer hooks and melodies. You can hear the influence of the band’s Athens peers like The B-52s and Pylon, but also the Talking Heads. Occasionally Michael Stipe’s nasal vocal delivery grates, such as on “Lightnin’ Hopkins.” But “Oddfellows Local 151” and “Finest Worksong” are great tracks, and “It’s the End of the World (And I Feel Fine)” and “The One I Love” are generational touchstones.
AC/DC
2/5
I love to rock but I hate AC/DC, a one-note band that just bores me. They remind me of the feeling of being stuck at a party you want desperately to escape, but you can’t leave because your ride is off shotgunning beers or hooking up with someone behind closed doors (this covers much of my high school experience).
This is slightly better than I expected — I think I prefer Bon Scott as vocalist to his successor, who just evokes chain-smoking — but I still couldn’t wait for it to end. Songs like “Get It Hot” and “Touch Too Much” are just ridiculous — heavy petting anthems that would turn me off faster than “Pour Some Sugar On Me.” The production is clean, the guitar tone is quality, the drumbeat never varies, and yet rather than being exhilarating, it all feels like a slog.
ABBA
3/5
It sounds like an album by a Eurovision band that’s been listening to DEVO, Kate Bush, Kraftwerk, Madonna, show tunes and dinner cabaret, which might well have been the case. I hear the seeds of K-Pop in a song like “The Day Before You Came.” Not my cup of tea but it has its moments.
Also: Did the album cover inspire the Cardigans’ own art on “Long Gone Before Daylight” two decades later?
Solomon Burke
5/5
Silky, soulful and rockin. Timeless.
Daft Punk
4/5
It's a fun amalgamation of Chicago House and Detroit Techno with a generous helping of electronic noise. Daft Punk helped deliver electronic dance music to the masses, which makes me wonder whether or how many other highly deserving albums of this ilk are on this list.
Van Halen
4/5
Is there a better album intro than “Running’ With the Devil” in all of rock and roll? I doubt it.
This album evokes comparisons with fellow hard rockers AC/DC, whom I recently trashed in a review. I think the difference lay in Van Halen’s dynamism: David Lee Roth is a fantastic, expressive rock vocalist with crazy range, Eddie Van Halen was at the top of his game here (the riff on “Ain’t Talkin’ ‘bout Love” alone is enough to seal any deal), the rhythm section is powerful (Alex Van Halen can drum circles around AC/DC), and Ted Templeman knows the right way to treat this juggernaut is by making them sound huge and spacious. The whole thing feels like a party you’d actually like to attend, a runaway train you can’t not watch to see if it can stay on the tracks. VH never sounded quite this good again.
OutKast
4/5
Listening to Stankonia offers a window into the evolution of hip-hop as it entered its third full decade. By this point sampling was too expensive or legally risky to rely on, so in its place is rich and diverse instrumentation and metallic-sounding programmed beats. Andre 3000 alternates dexterous rapping with more melodic singing snippets that hint at his later evolution as a well-rounded musician. The musical styles are kaleidoscopic, ranging from the expected (P-funk, soul) to the entirely unexpected (psychedelia, especially). OutKast deep-fried a musical form and came up with something that sounded entirely fresh and fun.
Neil Young
5/5
The backstory to this album was that Young was grieving the OD deaths of his former roadie, Bruce Berry (the “workin’ man, he used to load that Econoline van”), and Crazy Horse guitarist Danny Whitten, who is heard singing and playing on “Come On Baby Let’s Go Downtown.” But to me, Tonight’s the Night plays like a long hangover—from stardom, drugs, the rigors of touring and the death of 60s idealism. It sounds like it was recorded in a juke joint where the band was being paid in ice buckets of longnecks. The playing is loose and sometimes ramshackle, and the songs are genuine and stirring.
Jungle Brothers
4/5
This is a bold choice in that I feel like the J-Beez are overlooked yet were really the first out of the gate of the Native Tongues collective and were pretty innovative. They brought an Afrocentric perspective that was simultaneously affirming, humorous and intellectual, they expanded the palette of sampling to jazz and even Latin music (as on "Good Newz Comin'") and it is funky. This album absolutely holds up.
Radiohead
3/5
What strikes me about this album is how much of it sounds so little like Radiohead as we know them today. Case in point: the guitar riff that opens the title track, which transports me back to the mid-90s and sounds like any number of guitar-driven alt-rock bands from the era. “Black Star” is an excellent song that foreshadows what they would do next on the vastly superior OK Computer, but to me this is not among Radiohead’s best albums and doesn’t need to be on this list.
Duke Ellington
4/5
Many years ago my dad and I were talking about his coming of age in the ’60s, and while he was no hippie, he explained that part of what made that decade so exciting was that the ’50 were so boring.
I kept thinking about that as I listened to this album, recorded in 1956, and how it seems to encapsulate what I like to imagine was a lovely day by the seaside and how this terrific performance must have been so thrilling. Never mind that the final recording was supposedly augmented with studio performances and piped-in crowd noise, this feels like a bridge between jazz’s big-band past and its more freeform future. “Jeep’s Blues” is sultry and sexy. It’s not hard to imagine how this performance must have scandalized conservative 1950s America and help set the stage for the cultural revolution to follow as much as any rock and roll artist.
Deep Purple
4/5
I listened to the wrong Deep Purple album (Machine Head)—out of order, as it turns out. I vastly prefer this one. It’s more raw and dangerous-sounding, where Machine Head is basic to the point of being dull. There’s more sonic variety and exploration here, and the songs are more consistently good. The screams and theatricality of “Child in Time” evokes Arthur Brown (“Fire”), while I also hear echoes of Alice Cooper, Black Sabbath and Blue Cheer. Ritchie Blackmore’s guitar playing and tone are fire. I would definitely play this album when the mood strikes.
Tom Tom Club
4/5
Tom Tom Club sounds like the ultimate early 80s Lower East Side art-punk side project, heavily influenced by the nascent hip hop coming out of the Bronx. Which it essentially is. It’s weird, spindly and funky. Some tracks (“Genius of Love” and the dubby “L’Elephant”) sound more finished than others (“Booming and Zooming”). But in the end it’s a fun listen and is aligned with my personal musical interests.
Grateful Dead
5/5
The Grateful Dead are a polarizing band (mostly I think because people either hate Deadheads, the band’s long, noodly jams, or both), and the knock on them has always been that their huge catalog of studio releases is highly uneven. This album is maybe the strongest exception. It’s a strong, focused set of great songs and performances that span the Haight Ashbury sound from which they sprouted, adding bluegrass, folk and country. It also comes the closest of any of their albums to being a greatest hits collection, with several tracks that would become staples of their live sets. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, the Dead were a quintessentially American phenomenon
Blood, Sweat & Tears
3/5
The Erik Satie opener/closer is nice, “Smiling Phases” sounds like a musical number and “Sometimes in Winter” just sounds dated, like the guy serenading the coeds on the staircase in Animal House before John Belushi snatches his guitar and smashes it to bits. “Spinning Wheel” is a good song that brings the group’s jazz chops to the fore. There is some good stuff here but overall it sounds a little show tune-y, thanks in part to the singer, who sounds a little like Tom Jones.
Creedence Clearwater Revival
3/5
CCR’s mix of southern-tinged rock, blues and country, married to John Fogerty’s crack songwriting, lends them a quintessentially American sound, rooted in the counterculture of their era but accessible enough for the masses. I realize I’ve never listened to any of their albums in full, but this one seems relatively straightforward and less freewheeling than many of the classic CCR songs I know and love. “Sinister Purpose” brings a welcome element of psychedelia, and I enjoy their swampy take on “The Night Time is the Right Time.” Elsewhere, there are a smattering of hits but also a few songs that don’t do much for me.
Meat Loaf
4/5
On paper I shouldn’t like this: It’s theatrical, proggy, overly fussy at times, odd and completely over the top. But it’s actually pretty great. Jim Steinman’s songs and compositions are strong, and Meat Loaf seals the deal, singing like a man trying to break free of possession by his own impulses. A couple slow clunkers, but “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” is maybe the best song ever written about teenage lust. It sounds like something that could have only come out of 1970s America.
Eminem
4/5
Slim Shady is the sound of a talented, incredibly juvenile and self-loathing teenage-adjacent young man struggling with mental health problems borne of bleak circumstances — as a Detroiter, I recognize its very Eastside underclass grounding and aesthetic. It alternates between sounding like a much darker and bitter version of the first Beastie Boys album (minus the free-for-all sampling ethos) and being relatable, occasionally poignant. In addressing his toddler son, “’97 Bonnie & Clyde” is an astonishing mix of tender and horrifying. Scathing and ugly, it nevertheless holds plenty of relevance in 2025.
The Dictators
3/5
Big, loud and (intentionally) dumb, The Dictators are an interesting document of the proto-punk sound, slotting alongside the New York Dolls and Detroit’s obscure Death in bridging the gap between the Stooges/MC5 and The Ramones. “Master Race Rock” is a classic, and other highlights are the cover of “California Sun” and “Two Tub Man.” I don’t need to revisit their cover of Sony Bono, however. The guitar player is occasionally exciting, but I often wish they’d speed up the tempo, and I’m not sure I’d choose to highlight this band above any of the others I mentioned.
The Damned
5/5
Killer album. “Love Song” is a perfect punk tune, and there are several other examples of high-octane bangers that flirt with hardcore while being married to killer melodies and tight playing. The band’s bag of tricks is expansive, ranging from the gothic swirl of “I Just Can’t Be Happy Today” to garage and psychedelia. Piano lines and backing keyboards are masterfully deployed. There are so many astonishing moments on this record, including the ripping MC5 cover, the loveliness of the intro (Part 1) to “Smash It Up” and “Plan 9 Channel 7,” which sounds like a lost classic from the early Misfits. What a band.
Linkin Park
1/5
As if the deliberately misspelled name wasn’t enough warning. This has all the tropes of the era and milieu: screamy-anthemic choruses, James Hetfield tough-guy vocals, unfocused white male rage, hip-hop/funk breakbeats and a ridiculous sense of drama that veers into parody. It sounds like emo for incel internet chat-room trolls. Awful.
Massive Attack
4/5
Massive Attack dragged the late-80s dance music of Soul II Soul, Janet Jackson and the like into a new era, adding elements of dub, hip hop and spooky effects to make something that sounded dark, sinister and cinematic. “Unfinished Symphony” gives me all the feels about life in the 90s that I cannot put into words. There are plenty of bangers but the momentum lags at a couple points. Still, Blue Lines did essentially invent the trip-hop genre.
The B-52's
4/5
Led by that campy, eye-catching album cover, the B-52’s emerged onto the scene blending older sounds (surf rock and sci-fi flourishes, especially) with newer (synths and jagged post-punk guitars) and made something that manages to still sound fresh and futuristic. That they came out of the same Athens, Georgia scene that also gave us R.E.M. and Pylon definitely didn’t hurt (“Hero Worship” comes closest to sounding like the latter). Nor did lyrics that name-drop volcanos, made up names of sea creatures or delivered lines like “There’s a moon in the sky / It’s called the Moon.”
One of my favorite stories about the band from this era is that the track “Mesopotamia,” which came out a couple years later, became a big hit in the Black dance clubs in Detroit, thanks to heavy rotation by an influential local DJ.
Black Sabbath
4/5
Talk about timing!
The intro on “Wheels of Confusion” is one of my favorite album opener anywhere. It feels like a soundtrack to an epic, chamber-clearing bong hit, going straight to the brain and transporting you to a different plane where time and perception shift. Vol. 4 is book-ended by the absolutely filthy riff-fest of “Under the Sun/Every Day Comes and Goes.” In between is plenty of dark and doomy playing, adventurous songs and excellent vocal performances by Ozzy. “Laguna Sunrise” is a gorgeous palette cleanser of classical guitar, but the sentimental “Changes” misses the mark, portending sappy 80s hair metal ballads (Charles Bradley completely reinvigorated the song with his wrenching, soulful cover; look it up if you’re not familiar). There are some stone-cold classic Toni Iommi riffs here.
50 Cent
2/5
The production is fine and there are some interesting guest rappers, but Fitty’s flow and lyrics about gangbangin’ (sample: “I’m into having sex, I ain’t into making love / So come give me a hug if you into gettin’ rubbed”) leave me pretty flat. Neither the pedestrian beats nor the backing electronic loops create enough interest to compensate. Other than his associations with big names like Dr. Dre and Eminem, and his backstory about surviving being shot, I’m not sure what makes this noteworthy.
Alice In Chains
4/5
“What’s my drug of choice? / Well, what have you got?” Dirt is a powerful album that is tough to listen to. It’s easily the bleakest breakout from a fairly bleak genre, but it’s a great showcase for Layne Staley’s vocal talents before he snuffed himself out. I also think “Would” is the best song on the “Singles” soundtrack, which has no shortage of bangers.
CHIC
4/5
As you’d expect from Nile Rodgers, who’d go on to a decorated career as songwriter and producer, C'est Chic sounds exquisite, with incredible bass playing from fellow producer Bernard Edwards in particular and lush strings. Rodgers also flexes his guitar chops on the instrumental “Savoir Faire.” I like AllMusic’s description of this album as containing “at-the-disco dancefloor mania and after-the-disco bedroom balladry.” “I Want Your Love” is a total banger, one of the classic disco cuts, and now I’m probably gonna go down a disco rabbit hole the rest of the day.
Portishead
5/5
Dummy sounds as beautiful and innovative today as it did when it was released (and I still remember the first time I heard it: waiting tables at a late-night candlelit bar in SoHo where the bartender played it on cassette). Beth Gibbons’ voice conveys hauntingly rich emotion, while the production reinforces the inner gloom with chilling cinematic flair, sparse instrumentation, some turntable wizardry, and perfectly curated and executed hip-hop beats. I can’t not be utterly captivated listening to it; the saddest, slowest-tempo dance party imaginable.
Traffic
4/5
TIL that this album originated as a contractual obligation to the record label after Traffic had temporarily broken up. It was intended to be Steve Winwood’s first solo album until he started calling in his former bandmates to help flesh out the studio session and come up with more tracks.
Seen through that lens, it sounds remarkably successful, even if I might quibble that this isn’t the *best* Traffic LP. “Empty Pages” hints at Winwood’s 80s pop trajectory but wins with the heavy organ on the chorus. The title track is a fine entry in the British folk canon, with Winwood and drummer Jim Capaldi harmonizing in the spirit of Fairport Convention. “Every Mother’s Son” brings a heady 70s vibe. Proof that rock and roll needs more flute. 3.5 stars if I could.
The Afghan Whigs
4/5
An fantastic document of the grunge-adjacent ‘90s indie-rock underground, with excellent guitar playing from Rick McCollum and lyrics from Greg Dulli: The line “Think I’m scared of girls, well maybe, but I’m not afraid of you / You wanna scare me then you’ll cling to me no matter what I do” hits every time. Special shout-out to the guest vocals on “My Curse” from the singer of Scrawl, a fellow Ohio outfit and hidden gem. The album lulls a little on side one, but from “Fountain and Fairfax” on, it finds a deeper, rarer groove, and it’s a 5.
Miles Davis
5/5
If I walk into a record store and see this album, I’m buying it even if I’ve never heard the adulation surrounding it based solely on the heavy-hitter, all-star lineup: Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley on the horns, Everybody Digs Bill Evans on the keys, Paul Chambers on bass. Despite that collection of virtuoso talent (and egos, probably), the group displays incredible restraint and discipline. It’s as smooth as a placid summer lake, uncluttered and full of space. “All Blues” rides a mischievous, simple shuffle to a remarkably quiet, contemplative end. What a composition. The whole album feels like a long tone poem. Fantastic.
Beatles
4/5
With The Beatles starts off with the urgent “It Won’t Be Long” and rarely lets up. It showcases uptempo rockers, great harmonies, Lennon’s chiming Rickenbacker and clean production, which lets you hear each instrument and the vocal harmonies. The covers are all well chosen and performed, though a few of the originals, while good, stick to a formula and pale against the kaleidoscopic development of songwriting chops to come. It’s not hard to imagine how exciting this must’ve sounded to a postwar generation starting to come of age, fueling their the fizzy optimism and overactive sex drives.
Billy Bragg
4/5
Love the backstory, concept and execution. Billy Bragg is an heir apparent to Woody Guthrie’s socially conscious folk, while in Wilco the project finds a rootsy, musically adventurous band and arranger. A few songs are less successful than others, but I’m glad these boxes of unsung lyrics finally saw the light of day. Put the carpenter in!
Coldplay
2/5
Not as bad as I anticipated, but not great, either. Some of the songs start fairly strong but just fade inoffensively into the background, like in-store music during a late-night run to CVS for cold medicine. They’re in the vein of Doves but lack that band’s dramatic tension, resonance and sonic dexteriity. They’re also sentimental AF, with club-you-over-the-head lyrics aiming like a guided missile straight for the hearts and groins of a very specific demographic target: white female recent college graduates living in places like Bed-Stuy and working entry-level jobs in fields such as digital marketing, PR and e-commerce.
The Fall
4/5
On their debut release, The Fall evoke some of their post-punk peers like Public Image Limited, Wire, The Slits and The Stranglers (that electric piano, mostly) while sounding like nothing else. “Rebellious Jukebox” sounds like Gang of Four, with its runaway percussion and agile bass line combining for the album’s most tuneful track. The rest is fairly boilerplate Mark E. Smith: acerbic and inscrutable, speak-singing his weird scotch-in-the-afternoon misanthropic musings and non sequitors over music that constantly threatens to veer off the tracks.
The Rolling Stones
4/5
There’s no shortage of signature Stones hits on Sticky Fingers, but it’s the lesser-known songs that to me are most interesting. With its woozy Keith Richards riffing, “Sway” hits hard in its minor-key lament of vice. “Sister Morphine” is chilling in its hallucinatory detail of junkiedom, while “Dead Flowers” disguises the same thing in pleasant country trappings. It's the drugs, stupid. Sticky Fingers also wins points for its boundary-pushing Warhol-designed packaging incorporating a real zipper in its original LP version, which always tripped me out when I was young.
Prince
4/5
This album is worth it just for the horny cabin call on “International Lover”: “We are now making our final approach to satisfaction / Please bring your lips, your arms, your hips into the upped and locked position / for landing / Can you feel it?” Then there are all-time bangers like “Little Red Corvette” and the title track, plus weird new wave flourishes and plenty of electro-funk workouts.
Sure, I wonder about how many Prince albums will make this list and which ones I’d nominate, but the man comes off like a hypersexual mad scientist on 1999 and it’s hard to argue against it.
Goldfrapp
4/5
It’s got a honey-dipped quality, with one foot planted in the past, evoking traditional English folk and ‘60s pop and film soundtracks, and another in the future, with trip-hop, electronica and dance elements. Alison Goldfrapp’s voice is majestic. This is the second Goldfrapp release we’ve reviewed, and I’m wondering how the hell I’m only now hearing them.
Tracy Chapman
3/5
This brings me back to high school in the late ‘80s and makes me realize, given its popularity, how much this album cut against the grain of the popular culture at the time. It was of a piece with the likes of REM and Edie Brickell but was more explicitly concerned with social and political issues than either of them. Some really good songs, along with a couple I don’t love, weighed down by overly slick production.
Neil Young & Crazy Horse
5/5
Most importantly, I need to establish that “Cinnamon Girl” is a perfect rock song. It’s built around a killer riff and a stomping rhythm, and it benefits from economy, employing hand claps, some strategic “yeah yeahs” and a perfect one-note guitar solo, ending just shy of the 30-minute mark and leaving you wanting more. Magnificent.
The rest of the album rarely lets up, with “Down by the River” and “Cowgirl in the Sand” setting the template for Young’s deep library of devastating extended-length jams. It’s guitar rock of the highest order paired with Young’s uncanny songwriting. I could make a case for this being his finest album, even though it was just the first in a string of remarkable records.
A Tribe Called Quest
5/5
The album leadoff “Excursions” is an all-timer, with lyrics seared indelibly into my brain along with much of this smooth-like-butter LP. It certainly wasn’t the first hip-hop release to use jazz, but none did it more seamlessly, employing the legendary Ron Carter to play his double bass specifically for the project. Phife Dawg spits incredible lines like, “I never half step cause I’m not a half stepper / drink a lot of soda so they call me Dr. Pepper” (which took on a tragic tone in the wake of his death from diabetes complications). The beats are slammin’, the raps are tight, and the vibes and stuff are exquisite. Also, I forgot how great the video to “Scenario” is.
One of my favorite releases from that decade and a high water mark of the golden age of hip hop.
Eagles
1/5
It managed to fall short of my incredibly low expectations. Wretched.
Stevie Wonder
4/5
As a double LP recorded after he opted against retiring from making music and signed a fat new deal with Motown Records, this feels like a pure flex by Stevie Wonder. It’s a kaleidoscopic, sprawling, nearly overwhelming melange of soul, R&B, funk, tropicalia, proto-electro and Afrofuturism. “Contusion” even brings some jazz fusion to the mix.
Ryan Adams
3/5
Most definitely there are some very good songs here — especially "Oh My Sweet Carolina" with Emmylou Harris singing backup. But it's hard to hear these sensitive-guy lyrics without knowing what a creep he is, and that prevents me from going back for a closer listen.
My Bloody Valentine
5/5
A hypnotic swirl of squealing loops, sugar-kissed melodies, indecipherable lyrics, layered feedback and crushing, delirious riffs, nothing sounded like Loveless before or since. Also, an outlier among albums that resulted from exorbitant studio outlays and mixing board wizardry. Along with Isn’t Anything, this album played a leading role in my tinnitus, which developed during my years running with an iPod and those damned earbuds.
Red Hot Chili Peppers
2/5
At some point in their meteoric ascent from the L.A. punk underground, the Red Hot Chili Peppers figured Anthony Kiedis was best deployed in a Sensitive Man role and should actually try to sing. And yet, he’s a dolt, so we get lyrics like “With the birds I’ll share this lonely view” and “A-slittin’ my throat it’s all I ever” to go with his Forever 21 haircuts and his bandmates’ predilection for spastic funk and virtuosic bass lines.
I notice that a lot of contemporary alt-rock (or whatever the kids call it these days) has a kind of easy listening quality, and it strikes me that this album may be a figurehead for that trend.
The Police
3/5
Synchronicity is a bit of a grab-bag of a Police album. “Synchronicity II” is a great example of the band at the height of its powers, taut and propulsive and adventurous. “Mother” is a throwaway. The trio of Side 2 hits are world beating, while “Tea in the Sahara” sounds like it belongs on Sting’s first solo record and just kills the momentum. So while it definitely has its merits, I don’t think this is the strongest Police album.
5/5
You’d be hard pressed to find many bands willing to issue a live recording as their debut album, but such was the lore and magic of the Motor City 5 and their de facto residency at Detroit’s Grande Ballroom. They were a band with a lights-out rhythm section, a potent guitar attack in Wayne Kramer and Fred “Sonic” Smith, and a rock and roll emcee frontman in Rob Tyner who had clearly studied the greats like James Brown and Cab Calloway.
What’s amazing about them is how they were creating a powerful noise racket that was way ahead of its time and building the template for punk, yet they were also dutiful and reverent historians of rock, blues and even jazz. In a perfect world, they would have gone on to rule the ‘70s. Alas, the world wasn’t ready for their revolutionary political rhetoric, their sonic bombast or probably even the callous use of the word “motherfucker."
Beach House
4/5
Narcotic, woozy, dream-like, it feels like hovering in a hospital bed, existing between states of consciousness, untethered to pain, when the next dose of morphine hits.
Neil Young
5/5
Along with David Bowie and Stevie Wonder, Neil Young was virtually untouchable in the ’70s, with a string of stunning albums that made it seem like he could do no wrong. Going strictly by decade, this is the first of them (Everybody Knows This is Nowhere came out in 1969, though I consider it the first in the run). This one showcases the full spectrum of Young’s genius: stomping rockers, stirring folk numbers, dark-night-of-the-soul meditations and inscrutable oddities that somehow work in his deft hands.
John Coltrane
5/5
John Coltrane was clearly on another level when he composed this deeply intimate spiritual odyssey. The playing all around is superb and the compositions, while not as melodic as some of Coltrane’s other work, convey a sense of journey, with a beginning, middle and end, as well as a kind of conflict and, in the Part IV Psalm, a coming to peace with it. There are some iconic moments that make you sit up and take notice and function like signposts in the wilderness.
Television
5/5
What stands out to me about Marquee Moon is the riveting guitar interplay between Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd and the songs, which are adventurous and evoke an unmistakable time and place: a grimy, late-70s lower Manhattan crackling with danger but also creative juices. It’s art rock of the highest order. Coupled with contemporaries like the Talking Heads and Patti Smith, this is also a good illustration of the rather expansive definition of punk as it unfolded in New York, as opposed to the U.K.
Blur
3/5
Despite being a fan of Damon Albarn, this was the first time I’d listened to Blur.
This is a surprisingly eclectic and very British mix of sounds and styles. “M.O.R.” brings Beatlesque power pop while “Chinese Bombs” sounds like first-wave English punk. “On Your Own” sounds like a group sing-along at the pub. ‘Theme From the Retro” recalls early Pink Floyd, while “You’re So Great” wouldn’t be out of place on a Guided By Voices LP from the same era. Things start to take on a demo/outtake quality the deeper into the album you get, and while this may be worth revisiting, Gorillaz to my ears sounds eminently more fresh and vital.
Machito
3/5
It’s well-arranged and performed, with a cast of stellar musicians, and yet I cannot shake the feeling this was packaged as a way to make 1950s white-bread America feel alright about Latin music. Nothing here really moves me.
Sonic Youth
4/5
New York City is a common muse on the 1,001 list; I’ve referenced it in recent reviews of Television and Lou Reed, and I’m sure there will be plenty more examples to come. I’ve always felt the cityscape, with its hard edges, chaos and moods, was a main character in Sonic Youth’s early work from the 1980s.
On Sister, the band evokes a Lower Manhattan that is dark, visceral and dangerous — a far cry from what it is today. The music on this release is exciting, thoughtfully paced and adventurous, with all four band members pulling equal weight and proving indispensable. Hints of melody and conventional song structure are starting to creep into the noise workouts, a pattern that would reach fuller blossom in their masterpiece follow-up, Daydream Nation.
Gorillaz
3/5
There are some genuine bangers on this debut release, and songs like “Clint Eastwood” and “19-2000” introduce the band as a kind of shape-shifting, forward-thinking collaboration platform that seamlessly melds disparate musical styles — essentially paving the way for much of 21st century popular music. But there are a few clunkers among its 18 tracks, and some tracks feel like unfinished sketches. It’s at its best when it’s loose, funky and playful. To my ears Demon Days is the Gorillaz album for this list.
Green Day
4/5
Bursting with power chords, simmering with rage and filled with hooks, American Idiot is an impressive leap forward in ambition from a band that made its name from an album titled Dookie. I can easily hear how they turned this into a Broadway production. It’s a solid document of the political discontent of its era and a sobering reminder of what a shit show the first quarter of the 21st century has turned out to be.
David Bowie
5/5
One of the things I most admire about Blackstar is how unexpected it was — not just in the sense that no one knew it was coming (or that Bowie was in fact dying), but that it sounds like nothing else from his vast catalog. It’s not a rock record whatsoever. Instead, backed by a New York City jazz quartet, it incorporates elements of drum and bass, jazz, ambient, electronica, funk, new wave and other styles, becoming something weird, dense, and amorphous. As I suspect is the case with many others, I’m still trying to figure it out nearly a decade after its release, and along with some very good songs, that’s what I love about it.
Epilogue: The posthumous British documentary about Bowie from this period, "The Last Five Years," is highly worth your time if you're a fan.
Basement Jaxx
3/5
House and techno music is obviously a different kind of animal. It was born as an underground, DIY, communal impulse, a phenomenon meant to be experienced live. Artists tended to put out a lot of remixes and 12-inch singles and EPs, not conventional full-length albums, and they didn't benefit from traditional music industry promotion, despite the massive crowds their live sets commanded.
So I think that’s why acts like Daft Punk and Basement Jaxx end up on these lists: They were among the first acts to pair their legendary rave/live sets with proper albums that gained traction. They helped put a face (or helmets, in the former case) on a faceless genre and moved units, in other words.
That’s not a criticism — someone had to drag these dance sounds into the limelight — and it’s not to say I don’t like Basement Jaxx. Remedy is a fun listen, incorporating Latin sounds, jazz, soul, ska, funk and R&B with House beats. I’m just thinking of how much deeper these genres and sounds go. 3.5 stars.
The Libertines
3/5
It sounds like the Kinks crossed with Pavement, with a very British aesthetic performed in an entirely ramshackle, tossed-off style. (Except they’re drunk and taking the piss in the basement practice space — which, judging from the lore surrounding this band, may have been the case.) On paper, I should be drawn to this. But while it has its moments, I mostly do not grok.
Bob Dylan
4/5
I’m not terribly knowledgeable about Bob Dylan, his catalog or his impact on popular music, but I can understand how influential this album was. It's filled with great songs. His lyrics command as much if not more attention than his music, and while he has gained a reputation of being a prickly crank, songs like “Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream” demonstrate that he had a sense of humor. This was also from the era when he was famously moving away from folk music and plugging in his guitar, which was seen as a kind of scandal in that era, yet he certainly blazed a trail for the American singer-songwriter genre to come.
Amy Winehouse
4/5
It’s kind of sad revisiting Amy Winehouse after so long. Just an incredible talent, snuffed out, and you can’t help but wonder what she’d sound like if she were still going today.
Winehouse, who was just 20 when this album came out, shows a remarkable candor in writing about relationships, sexual dynamics and even clubbing, all paired with her incredible voice. “No Greater Love” sounds like Ella Fitzgerald for the 21st century, while I love the bluntly honest storytelling of “Fuck Me Pumps.”
There is much to recommend this album, but a few songs don’t quite rise to the level, and overall I think Back To Black is her strongest work, with better and more consistent songwriting and arrangements.
Van Morrison
2/5
Everybody knows the syrupy Van Morrison hits, but this comes off like young (uncut?) Van at the local Open Mic night where he's hoping to get laid and is ad-libbing his way through the set. So we get lots of repeated lines (“BeSIIIIIDE you!”) and the thing he does with his voice where he, uh, sings harder and more forcefully for emphasis. I have never before explored the VM catalog, and this confirms that I do not particularly care for his voice, which takes on a sharper, grating quality in those moments, which abound. Besides that, I’m struck by how these are less songs with melodies and rhythms that might stay with you, like even some of his more insidious hits, than sketches or fragments that lack structure. Sure, there is plenty to recommend the musical adornments to these tracks, and there’s some nice poetry in the lyrics, but I can’t get past the main attraction. I might like this better if it were sung by someone with more vocal subtlety and nuance — Cat Power comes to mind, or even Bonnie Raitt.
Metallica
3/5
While I respect and even like some of their older material (especially Ride the Lightning), my friends nearly ruined Metallica for me forever during high school in the late ‘80s by playing them constantly, at high volume, while staging mock fights. So by the time this album came out and took over the FM airwaves and MTV, I was well and truly over them.
Listening to the full album for the first time ever today, I can recognize its qualities and why it won them so many new fans (and why many longtime followers were put off by it). My main problem with it is that by slowing down the tempos but otherwise keeping the snarling Hetfield vocal delivery, dystopian lyrical content and heavy riffage, the band lets cheese slip through the door — something highlighted by the brilliant Metallica-Huey Lewis mashup “Hip to Be Sandman” several years back. The other side effect of corralling the thrash was creating more room for Lars Ulrich’s absolutely ham-fisted drumming to come to the fore. There are also signs that the band was starting to run out of ideas.
Animal Collective
5/5
Animal Collective was always one of the weirdest members of the whole “freak folk” scene of the aughts, and here they go almost fully electronic — which raises interesting questions about how and why this album became as popular as it did. Opener “In the Flowers” uses faint keyboard refrains and what sound like hand claps to build to a gorgeous climax with a stomping techno beat, “My Girls” sounds like The Beach Boys playing with sequencers on ecstasy, and “Bluish” is a tender love song buried in waves of reverb and cascading bells.
Kaleidoscopic, lush, multilayered and lacking conventional song structure, this is one of those albums that helped push all of popular music forward.
Johnny Cash
3/5
Covers are best when they completely reimagine a song and bring something new and unexpected to it, rather than simply deliver a faithful rendition. Johnny Cash certainly does that here on songs like the stunning “Hurt” and his deeply personal spin on Depeche Mode’s “Personal Jesus.” Both also win bonus points for being surprising picks by the grizzled country legend, a hallmark of this collaboration series with Rick Rubin. Other songs, like “Bridge Over Troubled Water” and the Beatles cover, work less well because they hew closer to expectation. Also, the guest vocal cameos here — Fiona Apple, Don Henley and Nick Cave — mostly don’t work and highlight the challenge of pairing with Cash’s plaintive, speak-sing baritone. The album finishes relatively strong with country standards and an original, but on the whole this is an uneven effort.
Depeche Mode
4/5
It’s dark, danceable and filled with bangers. “Enjoy the Silence” might be the best song DM ever recorded.
Chicago
4/5
Man, I was not expecting the acid rock!
This album came out in 1969 but is absolutely drenched in ‘70s vibes, and as such I can’t help but feel it played a leading role in ushering in some of the decade’s musical mores — the use of horns, obviously, but also the extended jams, the Hammond B3, and the barest hints of prog and multi-part tracks. Maybe it’s the title of the song “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?” that makes it feel like a coda on the tumultuous ‘60s — as does the haunting audio from the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Anyway.
“Beginnings” is a terrific song that culminates in a stone jam with horns. “Listen” is a hard-driving guitar-horn rock song, while “Poem 58” brings the funk. Things get a little leggy late with all the lengthy guitar workouts, but if that’s your thing, this would be a fine album to throw on the platter on a sunny afternoon accompanied by some bong hits.
Todd Rundgren
2/5
It’s not that I have no appetite for out-there freak rock, but this leans way too far into prog, a genre for which I have a very limited patience. Much of this veers into goofy circus territory to my ears. Even some of his more concise songs sound kind of dated and don’t really speak to me.
Fugees
5/5
I adore this album, which came out when I was living in New York City and was inescapable, booming from open windows and passing Jeeps. Unmistakably East Coast in its agrounding, it nevertheless arrived like a breath of fresh air, a mix of Caribbean traditions, clever rhymes, crisp beats and the force of nature that was Lauryn Hill. Though the group would prove short-lived, the strength of this album is how it melds three distinctive and outsize musical personas — Hill’s sass and melodic vocal talents, Wyclef’s strong Haitian sensibilities and Pras’ tough and underrated gravitas on the mic. I love the trippiness of the sample loops on songs like “Zealots” and “The Beast.”
It’s a shame The Fugees disintegrated and its three members spun off into interpersonal and legal messes the way they did, but they managed to catch lightning in a bottle once, and that’s something.
Bob Marley & The Wailers
4/5
Side one of Exodus is incredibly strong. “Natural Mystic” is just lovely, “Guiltiness” is a terrific song with a rich chord progression on the chorus, and “The Heathen” arrives like marching orders, with a killer keyboard accompaniment. The title track is made more poignant by knowing Marley himself was in exodus in London, following a failed attempt on his life. The second side is still good but lacks the fire and conviction of the first, offering more of a lighthearted feeling, with poppier songs that lack comparable heft.
LCD Soundsystem
4/5
“North American Scum” sure hits different today dunnit. “New York I Love You,” too. It’s like dance music for the dystopia.
Goldie
4/5
I really like this. It blends drum & bass breakbeats with generous helpings of soulful vocals, ambient atmospheres and jazz guitar, lending it a kind of sci-fi feel. You can dance to it, but it also has an after-hours vibe, and it’s chill enough to put you in a frame of mind to bear down and focus on work. Full of drama, tension and release, it’s proof that music made with electronic machines can absolutely be expressive and human.
Miles Davis
3/5
It’s hard to know what to make of this album. I appreciate its attempt to meld jazz with rock, and Davis was clearly not short of ideas here. He’s creating entirely new soundscapes. But it also feels a little formless and meandering much of the time; I found myself grateful for the keyboard refrains in “Spanish Key,” for example, just for providing a point of reference. It’s also asking a lot of the listener, with six tracks that stretch past 10 minutes, including two that go longer than 20. Not my favorite Miles Davis, but it’s unquestionably distinctive, and John McLaughlin and Chick Corea especially are in fine form.
Steve Winwood
2/5
The list of late ‘60s and 1970s rock stars who struggled to find their footing at the dawn of the ‘80s is a long one. Punk and even disco had set fire to what came before, and the political power axis of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan underlined the stark shift in prevailing cultural winds. So here comes Steve Winwood to launch his solo career with an album of synth-buffeted soft rock in which he played all the instruments himself and recorded at his Netherturkdonic Studios. You can see where this is going on that information alone.
I can’t not hear this as music for yuppies who were settling into lucrative careers and child-rearing, their wild hippie days long behind them and having quietly cast their ballots for Ronnie. With its pillow-soft bass drumbeats and indiscriminate and dated synth squawks, this album delivers a whoosh of moussed hair, pastel-colored blazers, shoulder pads — the whole, sordid early-80s shebang. There are a few echoes of his far-better work with Traffic (“Slowdown Sundown” being one example), but I don’t ever want to hear this again.
De La Soul
5/5
I heard a hilarious story about De La Soul in a New York Times podcast a few years ago as part of the whole Hip Hop at 50 celebration. After this album blew up, the group joined a tour with Public Enemy and a couple other acts, and people were giving the them a lot of shit about supposedly being hippies. They did not take kindly to this and became notorious on that tour for getting into fistfights with detractors (Maseo had a boxing background, IIRC).
Anyway, it’s hard to know what to say about albums like 3 Feet High that hasn’t already been said a million times. Yes, they blew open the doors on what was possible with sampling, introducing a previously untapped level of creativity. Yes, the lawsuits that indiscriminate sampling spawned helped bring about the eventual downfall of the form. Yes, Prince Paul emerged as a brilliant producer.
On top of all of that, it’s just funky and incredibly fun. And I’ve always felt that De La doesn’t get enough credit for their clever wordplay and flow — there's a really smart poetry in their rhymes. These were essentially three teenagers living with their parents in Long Island who figured out how to loop snippets from random LPs they found at rummage sales and their parents’ record collections and fuse it into something that sounded like no hip-hop or anything else before it. They were Transmitting Live From Mars, and they changed the course of popular music. RIP Dave.
Creedence Clearwater Revival
4/5
Cosmo's Factory gets off to a rollicking start with the excellent "Ramble Tamble," an extended blues jam. CCR is one of those bands that excel at stringing songs out through instrumental exploration, as seen on "Run Through the Jungle" and "I Heard it Through the Grapevine," one of the finest versions of the oft-covered Motown classic. Their cover of Bo Diddley's "Before You Accuse Me" is also great and reinforces CCR as serious students of the American music canon.
Jimi Hendrix
5/5
Jimi Hendrix really stretched out and expanded himself creatively on Electric Ladyland, which is probably one of the finest double LPs of all time. It’s got everything you could want from Hendrix: psychedelic guitar-rock wizardry, of course, but also a generous helping of blues, soul and funk, an excellent Bob Dylan cover that surpasses the original, concise and well-crafted rock songs, and extended jams. He also made excellent use of the studio as a kind of fourth instrument augmenting the formidable Experience. It’s this album in particular that leaves me wondering where else he would have gone musically had he not died so young.
The Police
4/5
Andy Summers takes center stage on this record. His chiming guitar tone is unlike anyone else’s I can think of, and the riff on “Message in a Bottle” might be the strongest and most recognizable one the band ever recorded. Not that the rest of the band are slouches: Witness Sting’s bass playing on the same song or the dubby “Bed’s Too Big,” or Stewart Copeland’s nimble drumming on the intro to the title track. In addition to containing some fantastic songs, Regatta de Blanc really highlights the incredible musicianship of The Police.
It's also a little more polished than the punky Outlandos d’Amour, its predecessor. It’s interesting to learn that the band arrived in the studio to record this album short on actual songs, so both Sting and Copeland borrowed snippets from material each had written prior to forming the band. I dock a point for the clumsy “On Any Other Day” and Copeland’s lyrics about his wife burning scrambled eggs and his son turning out gay.
Richard Thompson
4/5
It’s dark and brooding, a mixture of folk, country and minstrel songs. Linda Thompson has a wonderful voice. It sounds strikingly similar to Sandy Dennis from Fairport Convention, Richard’s former band (especially on “The Little Beggar Girl” and “Withered and Died”), but rootsier. I’m guessing this album was a big inspiration for Jason Molina of Songs: Ohia fame. All good reference points. I'll probably be revisiting this one.
The Smiths
4/5
Outside of the heavy-handed and dreary title track, this is fantastic, a showcase for what a great band The Smiths were. Johnny Marr and bassist Andy Rourke shine on the tight funk of “Barbarism Begins at Home” and the breakaway punk of “What She Said.” The version I listened to (from the band’s official YouTube channel) did not include the world-beating single “How Soon is Now?” that was included in U.S. versions of this release.
The Rolling Stones
4/5
I always forget how countrified this album is. A couple tracks don't do a lot for me, but overall this is peak-era Stones and it's hard not to rate an album with standouts like "Gimme Shelter," "Monkey Man" and the Keef-sung "You Got the Silver' highly.
The Mamas & The Papas
2/5
It splits the difference between sunny 60s psychedelic pop and 70s AM radio staples, with echoes of popular music from the ’50s. The harmonies are nice, but outside of the big hits “Monday, Monday” and “California Dreaming,” it feels pretty light on substance — delicate and pretty, but not especially memorable. I confess that this album betrays an innocence and optimism that I find hard to square with our present-day Bad Place reality. Which is a depressing thing to realize, and it’s not their fault. But I am also just now learning about the dark back story of this group, which is.
Led Zeppelin
4/5
On Led Zeppelin III, the band shifted away from the bombastic blues-based hard rock of their first two albums and explored folk and quieter sounds, forever diversifying their sound from that point forward and laying the path for its most interesting work. It’s my favorite Zeppelin album along with Houses of the Holy and Physical Graffiti. “Out on the Tiles” is the only slight weak link, an uptempo rocker that doesn’t fit with the rest and sounds especially jarring coming after the heavy pathos of “Since I’ve Been Loving You,” a blues rocker I will forever associate with a painful episode in high school.
Joni Mitchell
4/5
I’ve spent less time with Joni Mitchell’s mid-70s work and beyond than with her early hippie-folky albums, which I love to this day. Part of that, I now realize, is because by 1976, the year Hejira came out, she had lost some of her celebrated vocal range that added so much emotional punctuation to albums like Blue and Ladies of the Canyon and sent chills up my spine listening to her incredible self-titled debut.
I hear some of her former upper-register abilities on the lovely “Blue Motel Room,” and at any rate, if Joni’s ability to hit some high notes diminished over time, her talent for writing lyrics never did. This is a very good album filled with songs about traveling and discovery, reinforced by Jaco Pastorius’ fluid bass playing, the spare brush drumming and Joni’s uncomplicated ringing acoustic guitar. Like a lot of her catalog, it’s music for a contemplative mood.
Neil Young & Crazy Horse
5/5
This is such a classic Neil Young and Crazy Horse album. It features two trademark NY ballads in “Pocahontas” and “Powderfinger” that benefit from strong lyrics that leave themselves open to interpretation about their meaning. It has an inscrutably weird song in “Welfare Mothers.” It features excellent guitar crunch and ramshackle Crazy Horse stomp throughout. Then there are the leadoff and closing versions of “Hey Hey, My My,” one accoustic and wistful, sounding like something off of Harvest, the other noisy and fierce, with a beat like a stamping press. Young was simultaneously taking stock of a decade he loomed large over but felt confined by, and pointing toward the future, with tossed-off lyrical references to Johnny Rotten, ominous white boats coming up the river, and the famous line “It’s better to burn out than to fade away.” Reflective, restless, tender and angry, it’s an incredible capstone to a decade of personal and political upheaval, even if it marked the end of a run in which he could scarcely put a foot wrong.
David Bowie
4/5
A little torn here. While I am firmly in favor of having multiple Bowie albums on this list, and I very much like this album, I’m skeptical that both of his final two studio albums merit inclusion (we’ve already reviewed Blackstar and Low, and I’m hopeful that Ziggy Stardust, Heroes and maybe Station to Station and even Aladdin Sane are coming up). You can praise it as a brilliant comeback after a decade out of the spotlight, but then you discount the more sonically adventurous and conceptually cohesive Blackstar. So I’ll give the album itself 4 stars — it sounds dark and urgent, like the dam broke on a lot of material and things he’d been wanting to say — but 3 stars to the decision to put this on the list. So it’s 3.5 stars, but hell, I’ll round up.
Giant Sand
4/5
An endearing and intimate collection of seemingly tossed-off Americana, desert rock, campfire songs and just plain weird notebook folk sketches. Bandleader Howe Gelb, who comes off as a charismatic sun-fried eccentric, gives these songs plenty of room to breathe and settle. Standout tracks include “Bottom Line Man,” which sounds like a Tom Waits song, and the noisy “Satellite.”
David Holmes
3/5
The audio snippets on this album, which I read that Holmes gathered during a trip to New York City a decade before this album came out, play like a right-wing fever dream about urban decay, and work as an interesting snapshot of a much different era (four bucks for a beer!). Musically, this reminds me of DJ Shadow — it’s instrumental hip-hop that makes judicious use of samples and those man-on-the-street snippets to keep things funky. While it leans toward drum and bass, it has a more of a chill-out vibe than dancefloor fare. Parts of it have a film-score feel, which tracks with Holmes’ back story. I dig the Patti Smith sample in “Caddell Returns.”
Justin Timberlake
2/5
Blue-eyed pop R&B with strong whiffs of Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder. It’s well produced and arranged, as you’d expect from a guy with Timberlake’s star power, and there are a couple interesting songs. But overall, it feels colored by that vapid tabloid-party nip-slip ethos of its era and feels dated. I was already too old for that scene when this came out and if I’m going for turn-of-the-millennium soul, I’m putting on D’Angelo or Erykah Badu.
The Dave Brubeck Quartet
5/5
It’s the sound of dodging puddles on the sidewalk, a little pep in your step, in your impeccable seersucker suit after a warm spring rain on the way to a much-anticipated date at a new supper club uptown. Those are old-fashioned references, I know, but this is timeless, elegant and delightful.
Willie Nelson
4/5
Open, spare and reflective, these are songs for crying into your beer at the bar. Willie’s voice is clear and strong, and the storytelling is first-rate. The brevity of many of these songs — eight clock in at under 2 minutes, and three of them last less than a minute — bring an over-before-you-know-it quality that reminds me of 80s hardcore or maybe early Guided By Voices. I’d very much like to find a copy of this on vinyl.
3/5
There are some good songs here but overall it feels a little too all over the place to really captivate. It's interesting as a document of the time when psychedelia was morphing into prog rock. "Nature's Way" has an eerily prescient, perennial message.
Arrested Development
3/5
It’s fun and upbeat to go with its afrocentric grounding. I hear a lot of influence of Sly and the Family Stone, who is recalled in choruses and samples, but also Fishbone, the Native Tongues and I dunno, Rockwell? Songs like “Mr. Wendel” come off sounding a little too chipper for their subject matter, and others feature slap bass and other dated production techniques.
David Bowie
4/5
Aural proof of Bowie’s genius as an arranger and for surrounding himself with stellar musical talent, Aladdin Sane features yet more incredible playing from guitarist Mick Ronson and the rest of the Spiders From Mars, but it's the addition of jazz pianist Mike Garson that is especially notable. His playing on the gorgeous title track alone is sublime and foreshadows Bowie’s late-career ventures into jazz and more abstract forms. The album carries forward the dramatic and multilayered songcraft of Ziggy Stardust but drags it into a more explicitly glam-rock vein, paired with Bowie’s visceral on-the-road lyrics about a squalid early-70s America. I deduct half a star for the puzzling and wholly unnecessary Stones cover; otherwise, it’s a 5.
AC/DC
2/5
I’ve already made my feelings about AC/DC known: It’s tedious hard rock for people who chain-smoke, love Harleys and need something to listen to while they down Jack and Cokes at the bar. This was among the records I traded in after discovering Black Flag and the Sex Pistols in fifth grade. I’m surprised to discover that “Let Me Put My Love Into You” is a good song, in the vein of early Aerosmith (“Lord of the Thighs” comes to mind as similarly juvenile) or even Thin Lizzy. Yet I don’t need to hear the title track again, ever, and the rest is just a predictable, painful slog.
Stan Getz
4/5
This would sound equally good playing on the turntable on a Saturday afternoon with the windows open as serving as background soundtrack while working on a weekday afternoon. Its tropicalia vibes will be a nice salve on a gloomy winter's day.
Slipknot
1/5
The sound of White Male Rage: “Fuck it all, fuck this world / Fuck everything that you stand for.”
I enjoyed the drumming. Otherwise I couldn’t make it even halfway through this.
Hot Chip
4/5
I had Hot Chip’s preceding album on my iPod (RIP) back in the day and had it in regular rotation, yet for whatever reason I had never explored them further. They’re an endearingly dorky synth band with a heart that churns out spindly dancefloor bangers, and who couldn’t use more of that in these dark times? “A church is not for praying / It’s for celebrating the light that bleeds through the pain” is a brilliant lyric.
Beatles
4/5
Rubber Soul is an interesting document of a band transitioning from its roots in propulsive, hooky pop songs anchored in the blues to the more complex and sophisticated fare that would define their latter years. “If I Needed Someone” is a great song, a template for hundreds of Rickenbacker-wielding power pop bands to follow. I dock a star because of the creeper lyrics to “Run For Your Life.”
The White Stripes
5/5
There’s little doubt that The White Stripes — all two of them — were at the height of their powers on this release. “Seven Nation Army” is now a universal stadium sportsball anthem, which is crazy except that I distinctly remember it had unusually widespread crossover appeal when it came out. They unleash their inner Zeppelin on tracks like “Black Math,” “There’s No Home For You Here” and “Girl, You Have No Faith in Medicine,” my favorite on the album. The White Stripes stripped rock and roll down to the basics to create something primal, powerful and exciting, and they played a big part in reclaiming the genre from the Limp Bizkits of the era.
Michael Kiwanuka
5/5
Very glad to have an opportunity to really sit with this album, which I had heard before but not listened to closely, because it’s incredible, a swirl of classic soul, psychedelia and contemporary R&B. There’s plenty of retro flare within: “Piano Joint” is ethereal and stirring, and conjures 70s singer-songwriter fare, with lovely orchestration, while “Living in Denial” evokes Isaac Hayes. But it also sounds thoroughly contemporary, with modern production and cinematic flair courtesy of Danger Mouse and Inflo, both of whom merit further inclusion on this list. The end result is something that is soulful, affirmatively personal and timeless.
Leonard Cohen
5/5
I had never heard of Leonard Cohen until I met my wife, and then I think I mostly associated him with his later material, when his voice had turned gruff and tuneless, lending a certain oddness to songs like “First We Take Manhattan.” To the extent I regarded him, it was as a curiosity, filed somewhere along an errant twig of the same branch of the musical tree as Tom Waits, Nick Drake, Ken Nordine and a few others.
Now I get it. This is magical, tender stuff. “Master Song” is powerful and evocative, with first-rate storytelling. “So Long, Marianne” is an incredible song, with Irish fiddle accoutrements and lush backing vocal production. I’ll definitely be revisiting this and I also want to read some of his fiction.
Elliott Smith
4/5
This album has a slightly poppier sound than “Either/Or,” the spare and haunting Elliott Smith album with which I am most familiar. It’s also much more lavish in its arrangements and production. It’s still really good, though. He’s a great songwriter, “Can’t Make a Sound” is a stunner and the album on the whole plays a little like The Beatles for the Prozac era. (I swear I wrote that last line before I read this album was recorded at Abbey Road or that many have evoked that comparison, please clap)
Steve Earle
4/5
Random observation: “My Old Friend the Blues” sounds similar to the song “Greenville” by Lucinda Williams, which came out several years later. Perhaps she borrowed from it? Check it out.
It reinforces a thought I had about this 1986 album — that it was a touchstone for the whole “alt-country” movement (Wilco, Son Volt, The Jayhawks, etc.). I didn’t immediately warm to this, owing to the glossy production sheen, and I wish his backing band had more bite, but on subsequent listening there are a lot of really good songs here. I also read that he toured this album opening alternately for Dwight Yoakam and the Replacements, which is pretty fucking cool.
Cream
3/5
As is often the case with classic rock albums like this with well-known hits, it’s the more obscure tracks that are most interesting and instructive. “Tales of Brave Ulysses” is a jam, and I also like the psychedelic swirl of “Dance the Night Away” and the meditative “We’re Going Wrong.” But the Ginger Baker-sung “Blue Condition” was better left on the cutting-room floor, “Outside Woman Blues” is predictably unsoulful Clapton fare, and the lyrics to “SWLABR” are just ridiculous. THE RAINBOW HAS A BEARD, Y'ALL.
Pixies
5/5
We already reviewed Doolittle, which stole my thunder somewhat on discussing the Pixies, yet what stands out to me about Surfer Rosa when listening to it today is how incredibly loose, playful and fun it is. The band sounds completely out of left field, like a demented cartoon prone to sudden outbursts of violence, apt to ignite in a fiery crash at any moment. It’s noisy, funny, scary and thrilling all at once.
Madness
3/5
This sounds like a ska band trying to expand beyond the confines of the form, which is cool, but it all has a kind of British sitcom soundtrack quality and doesn't really grab me. I hear occasional flourishes of Lee Jay Thompson's saxophone — I am semi-obsessed lately with the use of sax in rock music, which is another story — that leave me wanting more (I'm thinking of its central melodic role in the earlier Madness track "One Step Beyond"). "Our House" is a great song, but I struggled to find reference points elsewhere.
Mott The Hoople
3/5
I like this album. Ian Hunter is a good, emotive songwriter backed by a strong band, but I can’t quite shake how much his vocal stylings mimic his inspirations: “Whizz Kid” sounds exactly like Ziggy-era Bowie, while his delivery sounds like Dylan on “I Wish I Was Your Mother.” (Interestingly, his singing on the verses of the terrific “Hymn for the Dudes” sounds like it inspired Damon Albarn of Gorillaz many years later.)
Anyway, “Violence” rides a tough riff to a chorus in which Ian Hunter sings like a madman to a backing of a screeching fiddle. It’s demented and creepy and I love it. Vocally, guitarist Mick Ralphs doesn’t bring much to his contributed song “I’m a Cadillac,” though the track definitely finds its footing on the instrumental second half. A few dated ‘70s rock tropes also hold this one back.
The Saints
5/5
The filthy riffs, fast tempos and snarling piss-and-vinegar vocals are all there, but The Saints can also write songs and add horns and harmonica and even slow things down once in a while and it sounds fantastic. “No, Your Product” is stunningly great, a visceral blast of white-hot anger. I had only ever heard their earlier single “Stranded” and am so grateful to discover this; it’s first-generation punk rock of the highest caliber.
Buena Vista Social Club
4/5
It has the intimate, casual quality of an epic jam session among elder master craftsmen, and Ry Cooder was smart enough to mostly get out of the way and not try to overproduce anything. The musicianship is stellar and the album, filled with propulsive rhythms, is a wonderful listen.
Nirvana
5/5
Even today, the poppier undercurrents of Nevermind come as something of a surprise after the brutal metallic assault found on Bleach (and then the band dove back into abrasive noise on their next release, which we’ve already reviewed). In the decades since it dropped, it’s been fascinating to take in the extraordinary range of excellent cover versions of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” — everyone from Tori Amos to Robert Glasper and even Paul Anka — further cementing its status as an all-timer. The only other semi-novel things I can add to this comprehensively scrutinized album are that a) “Territorial Pissings” absolutely shreds, and that b) it makes me really curious about where Kurt Cobain would have gone musically had he not snuffed himself out so young.
Depeche Mode
4/5
Depeche Mode had certainly come a long way from the upbeat synthpop of “Just Can’t Get Enough,” released six years earlier. This music is much darker, which I appreciate, and more sophisticated. I also detect a generous measure of theatricality — literally. “Pimpf” sounds made for the stage, with its timpani and multi-part composition, while “Little 15” also brings the drama. These guys played an important role in showing how to create evocative and atmospheric music using the synthesizer.
Def Leppard
3/5
I was already prepared to not like this, such was my hatred of ‘80s pop and hair metal. Then the singer chimes in sounding just like the guy from AC/DC on the very AC/DCesque first track, “Rock! Rock! (Till You Drop)” and the dread deepens.
Luckily that was the nadir. I will acknowledge that “Photograph” is a good song (it’s the cowbell), ditto “Foolin’” (again, cowbell), and the riff supporting “Too Late For Love” is pretty tasty. Elsewhere there are songs with good elements weighed down by terrible period production (the drums, especially) and cheesy, cliched lyrics.
I recall hearing these songs at the roller rink, blaring out of bitchin’ Camaros, or airing on MTV (the number of videos this album spawned is impressive), but I am likewise old enough to know that their musical quality took a pretty steep dive from here. These days I might select one of these songs on the barroom jukebox when I’m feeling nostalgic, but that’s it.
Ray Charles
3/5
I pressed play on this feeling excited to hear a Black artist recontextualize the almost uniformly white genres of country and western music. ”The album's integration of soul and country challenged racial barriers in popular music at the height of the Civil Rights Movement,” as its Wikipedia entry reads — and Amen to that. The problem I have with it is how unsoulful it sounds, thanks mostly to the overwhelming and cloying production flourishes with the string section and the lily-white backing choir. It’s good when it’s actually soulful, such as on “Bye Bye Love” and “Half As Much.” Too bad so much of it sounds like 1940s radio drama theme songs or Vegas showtunes.
R.E.M.
4/5
A strong debut album, even if the band clearly grew more confident and self-assured over the next few albums. Really like Mike Mills’ bass playing on this release — it’s a key element of their propulsive sound, though I don’t always love his voice on backing vocals. R.E.M. sound especially quirky here, especially on left-field tracks like “Pilgrimage,” “Catapult” and “We Walk,” an odd slice of jangle psych that presages a song like “Shiny Happy People” several years down the road.
Stevie Wonder
4/5
What it lacks in certifiable hits it makes up for in excellent playing, good songs and a sense of confidence. Stevie was firing on all cylinders in a similar vein to David Bowie around this same era. Funky and soulful.
R.E.M.
3/5
There’s a lot of mandolin on this album, and it definitely feels like a jumping off point for the band, where they start to sound a little more alt-rock. I don’t like it as much as Document or Murmur, which we’ve already reviewed, though it has its moments. “World Leader Pretend” is gorgeous slice of introspection. 3.5.
The xx
3/5
Things get off to a good start with the leadoff track, with its trip-hop breakbeat and clarion call (synth?) brass refrain, but I kind of lost interest after that. The electronic production techniques are interesting, but the breathy-dreamy vocals lend the album a poppy, easy listening feel that just doesn’t speak to me.
King Crimson
4/5
Does rock and roll need more fiddle? I’m already firmly in the pro-saxophone camp, and I’m leaning toward yes after hearing this album, where David Cross’ violin plays a starring role, adding texture, tension and melody.
This is definitely above-average prog rock. Robert Fripp is a very good guitarist, but rather than simply devote an album to wanking around and proving it, he traffics in actual ideas — backwards guitar solos, noise, repetition, ambient sounds, diabolical laughter, and so on — that I have heard echoed later in other genres. It reminds me a little of Hot Rats-era Frank Zappa (though without the humor) and also sounds at times like a film soundtrack. It does meander at times, and it’s not the type of thing I’ll listen to often, but I acknowledge it as innovative.
Iron Maiden
4/5
I’m generally leery of ’80s heavy metal because I find much of it bloated, empty, virtuosic and cheesy (kind of like the decade itself, now that I think about it), and Iron Maiden’s album covers don’t exactly suggest things will be different here. But I have to say that Iron Maiden's first album is pretty good. It’s more representative of the new wave of British heavy metal, lean and stripped of any cheese or excess, and it owes some debt to punk or at least Motorhead with its uptempo, galloping rhythms. I know some Maiden fans don’t fancy founding lead singer Paul Di’Anno, but I think he’s an underrated frontman who is well-suited to this material, even if he lacks the pipes of his eventual replacement, Bruce Dickinson.
Arctic Monkeys
3/5
It’s very British, beyond just the singer’s heavy Yorkshire accent, with echoes of Britpop's lad culture and even punk before it. The singer is a clever lyricist with a good flow, and the band is high energy and tight, but the music itself is not terribly varied. I like this, but I have a sense it captures a time, feeling and scene that passed me by.
PJ Harvey
4/5
PJ Harvey is such a fucking badass. It took some real stones to debut in 1992 with an album titled "Dry" that's full of songs candidly exploring female sexuality, patriarchy and the complications of heterosexual relations. It's also an apt description of the sounds within, an austere mix of blues, punk and rock. The taut drumming of Rob Ellis demonstrates why he's been a fixture of her backing band all these years. I'm not gonna look, but I'd be disappointed if this is the only album of hers that made the list.
Pavement
4/5
I am fully aware of the irony of arguing that this is the wrong Pavement album to spotlight. Slanted and Enchanted absolutely defined an era and style and was an enormous breath of fresh air when it came out.
OK fine, this album is also very good, and it reminds me that I probably need to go back and listen to Pavement more in these horriffying, dispiriting times. “Range Life” is a great indie diss track, one of several tunes (“Heaven is a Truck,” “Stop Breathing’”) that benefit from a breezy, loose groove. Another random observation: On a day when I’ve been deluged with AI (podcast ads, slop art from clients, controversies over planned data centers), it’s refreshing AF to examine Pavement’s crude and literal cut-and-paste album cover art. How I miss such things.
Adele
3/5
I like songs like “Rolling in the Deep” and “Rumor Has It,” which marry Adele’s vocal talents to contemporary sounds and veer a little closer to an Amy Winehouse sense of darkness and mischief, and “Take It All,” which is soulful and strips away everything but a piano and some background choir accents. But then the middle goes soft and bombastic, in part because the material weakens. “Don’t You Remember” is overwrought and overproduced, and in general I start to feel a sense of being trapped in a Lifetime movie about a young woman unlucky in love.
Nick Drake
3/5
Not as good as Pink Moon, mostly because the producers on that album were smart enough to get out of the way and let Nick Drake be himself, unadorned. Here, the Herb Alpert-style horns, strings and saxophone feel out of place and distracting. Better is “One Of These Things First,” an easy romp with a Vince Guaraldi-esque piano playing over delicate finger picking, soft bass lines and Drake’s plaintive, lonely voice. In fact I enjoy the piano most of all the accompaniments, especially on “Poor Boy,” where it is supplied by South African pianist Chris McGregor. But this is overall just not on the same level as PM, and also WTF is up with the album title.
Talking Heads
5/5
Sinewy, funky and weird in the best possible way. All the early Talking Heads albums are great, yet this one stands out for lacking any hits outside of the Al Green cover. I hear some of Television’s harmonic sensibilities in the riffs on “The Good Thing,” as if the two CBGB regulars were bouncing ideas off each other. “The Big Country” is a great song about the McMansionization of America, from a guy who today is an outspoken advocate of bicycling.
The Replacements
5/5
“One more chance to get it all wrong.” “Look me in the eye and tell me that I’m satisfied.” “Try and teach a whore about romance.” There’s a real sad-sack country outlaw streak running through Paul Westerberg’s lyrics that belied his youth. Let It Be is an incredible document that captures the uncertainties of life between adolescence and adulthood, stuck between fucking off with your friends and having to get a job. “Sixteen Blue” and “Androgynous” are stunningly honest and vulnerable assessments of the confusion of youth and sexual discovery.
The amazing thing is that even their most juvenile impulses — “Gary’s Got a Boner,” say, or turning a KISS song into a punk-rock scorcher — do nothing to detract from the heft of the rest of the material. It signaled a major force on the American indie scene, even if the band would self-destruct soon enough. One of my favorite albums from one of my favorite years for music.
Death In Vegas
4/5
I discovered this album when a friend sent me a batch of new electronic released burned to CD-Rs. I used to play it on busy nights at the bar where I was working at the time; it was highly effective at priming the pump. I love its blend of dark and soulful electronic sounds, guitar noise and propulsive rhythms. The aptly named “Dirge” layers soulful vocals and electronic effects over a bass line that sounds like early Jan Wobble-era P.I.L. “Aisha” is brilliant, with a creepy guest vocal performance from Iggy Pop, and “Broken Little Sister” is an ambient noise seance with Jim Reid from Jesus and Mary Chain. It would’ve benefitted from some editing, but it has the feel of a dystopian sci-fi soundtrack and absolutely holds up.
Slipknot
2/5
I marvel at the kickdrum speed, the playing is airtight, and this one is a little better than the last album of theirs we reviewed. But I do not think nu metal is a genre worthy of being feted. Nor that Slipknot has any business being on this list once, much less twice. Seriously, WTF?
Led Zeppelin
4/5
On the one hand, this album is obviously a key touchstone for rock and roll and heavy metal. On the other hand, it’s full of rock idioms that start to sound less and less cool and more eye-rollingly cliched the older and more listened you get. So the Blues affectations of “Bring It On Home” sound a little cringey today, and there’s the “squeeze my lemon” lyric. Plus, this album’s ubiquity and familiarity have kind of dulled my senses to its charms. Still, Jimmy Page’s rifling and studio-enriched guitar wizardry are awesome, John Bonham hits the motherfucking drums hard, and Adult Me even finds new delights in John Paul Jones’ bass playing.
Radiohead
5/5
Lushly produced, sublimely paced and packed with emotionally stirring songs and compositions, Radiohead took a giant step forward and signaled their ambition on this release, a concept album that feels like the Gen X version of The Wall. It’s the last Radiohead guitar-rock album, yet it’s much more than just that, and if you listen hard enough you can hear traces of what’s to come. One of the best releases of the ‘90s.
The White Stripes
5/5
It's raw, intense and full of killer riffs and great songs. The White Stripes injected rock and roll full of something primal and made it sound exciting and dangerous again, even when they were singing songs about love or friendship. "Fell In Love With a Girl" is basically a perfect punk song, while "I Can Learn" and "The Union Forever" are other standouts. This album was also kind of a break for the group away from its bluesy-garage roots toward more experimentalism. I think it's their peak.
Blue Cheer
4/5
This album is often cited as being foundational to the heavy metal sound, but with its overdriven guitars and clattering drums, I hear the roots of fuzz rock and doom. Either way, I am amenable to these charms.
Various Artists
2/5
Mainstream Christmas classics like these tend to fill me with dread when I hear them during the holiday season. I hear them as saccharine, almost pharmacological reminders that I should, despite the shortening daylight hours, many year-end work deadlines, pressures to buy gifts, and hectic entertainment obligations, feel So! Much! Joy!
Maybe my real issue is with Christmas itself, but I’d be OK not ever hearing some of these shopworn songs ever again no matter who performs them, even though The Ronettes, Darlene Love et al. do a fine enough job with them.
OutKast
4/5
As albums that presage a legendary group’s dissolution go, it’s a banger — but it’s also a lot to digest. I own this, yet I’m not sure I’ve ever played both CDs back to back. Speakerboxx is thumping, funky hip hop (I had forgotten about Killer Mike’s cameos) that carries OutKast into the new millennium, but it’s The Love Below that is most impressive in its kaleidoscopic and horny mix of psychedelic funk, soul, folk and jazz-tinged jungle (“My Favorite Things”). Given the sheer amount of material here, this double album would have benefited from some editing (some of the skits/interludes, for starters), and I don’t love the misogyny that concludes the track “Roses.” But man, these guys were talented, and I’d sure like to hear more from them than that weird new-age flute music Andre 3000 recorded a few years back. 4.5.
John Lennon
3/5
Reminds me a little of the “party’s over” vibe of There’s a Riot Going On, released just two months after this: The door has been shut on the mad rush of The Beatles and the 60s are over, and there are recriminations and regrets; Lennon is older, wiser and more cynical, heroin has entered (and exited?) the picture, geopolitics are on his mind, and he’s got a marriage and a mortgage to pay, and it’s all so damn tiring. Lennon clearly has no interest in cashing in on his fame or aiming for the charts, so then what, exactly?
I'm not sure this album really answers that. For all its surface idealism, the song “Imagine” conveys a kind of world-weary exasperation that feels especially pertinent today. “How Do You Sleep?” is a fascinating diss track, followed by a song in which he asks “How can I go forward when I don’t know which way I’m facing?” The album is interesting and has its moments, but it has a decidedly downcast feel that telegraphs Lennon’s mid-70s malaise pretty perfectly.
Butthole Surfers
4/5
The relentless raunch and sludge of this album obscures the fact that the Butthole Surfers packed considerable musical talent, and tons of creativity, into their engineered-to-offend onslaught — something that I think is a little easier to pick up on in less aggressive songs like "Negro Observer" or "To Parter" from other releases. Nevertheless, this is a powerful album that brings the heaviness and mixes in ample Gibbytronix and found sounds, and I am happy these weirdos have a place on this list. I saw the Buttholes perform a few years after this release and it remains one of the most incredible and disturbing live music events I have ever witnessed.
Lucinda Williams
5/5
Lucinda Williams is a national treasure, a songwriter storyteller with a poet’s eye for detail and that uniquely woozy, world-wary vocal delivery. Her music evokes barrooms with jukeboxes, neon beer signs and unvarnished, dusty wood floors worn down from people dancing in cowboy boots. She is one of the leading lights saving country music from its own worst Nashville impulses, and although I wish the production was a little less polished, it doesn’t detract from the quality of songs like “Drunken Angel” or “Metal Firecracker.”
Lloyd Cole And The Commotions
3/5
I hadn’t heard of this band before and went into it expecting a rootsy, Americana sound, owing to the group’s name and album title. I hear some of that as an inspiration, but this is more squarely melodic British jangle pop featuring some very good songs. As the bandleader, Cole’s clearly a highly literate lyricist, and he occasionally reminds me of Morrissey in his sense of poetry and flow, though he’s nowhere near as prone to the latter’s dramatic excesses. He’s also much more limited as a vocalist, which isn’t disqualifying in an of itself — I like plenty of artists (Neil Young, Leonard Cohen to name two) who don’t possess great singing voices — but his underpowered, speak-sing delivery doesn’t quite rise to the level of the excellent playing on this album.
U2
4/5
While I long ago lost interest in their new material, War is one of a handful of early U2 releases I go back to, a reminder of what I liked so much about them in the first place. They were essentially a post-punk band with a global political conscience playing spirited songs that were alternately atmospheric, taut and anthemic and helped define the 80s. Case in point are the immortal “New Year’s Day,” which sounds today like a Cold War anthem, and the fascinating “Red Light,” an abstract mix of dub, soul and trumpet over a marching rhythm. This album isn’t entirely on the same level as that, but it’s filled with urgent passion and interesting sonic textures.
Steely Dan
2/5
Me Decade bloat and indulgence, Exhibit A.
Big Star
5/5
These are lovely songs — especially the astonishing "Thirteen" and "The India Song" — that remind me of so many beloved bands that would come later. That this came out in 1972 amid the waning hippie scene, acid rock, prog, funk and so forth, only underscores its importance in the history of rock and roll. This deserved to be huge.
Bob Marley & The Wailers
5/5
My favorite BMW album: soulful, brilliantly arranged and played, masterful use of negative space, a mix of political and intimate love songs, all killer, no filler. Also noteworthy for the contributions of Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer. This would be a great record to play for someone who says they don’t like reggae.
CHVRCHES
2/5
I had no idea this group was so poppy, and I think that’s my main problem with this album: Despite song titles like “Gun,” “Lies,” and "Broken Bones," it’s saccharine and artificial-feeling, a mix of bombastic, icy synth effects backing a vocalist who sounds like she should be fronting a Top 40 act. I like my synth pop with more darkness, danceability, or at least melody. Not my thing.
Elton John
4/5
It has a cool, early ‘70s singer-songwriter road trip quality to it, with cinematic, evocative songs that could easily slot into a movie soundtrack. Elton John is a great songwriter, entertainer and arranger, while Bernie Taupin’s lyrics are vivid and invite closer inspection. “Holiday Inn” joins Seger’s “Turn the Page” on my mixtape of great songs about the tedium of life on the road as a traveling rock star. Makes me wanna put on some denim bellbottoms, hop in a convertible with all my friends, cruise the PCH, smoke some shitty shake and go roller skating.
Beck
5/5
Because I discovered Mellow Gold before this, I might’ve nominated that one just because it broke the mold and introduced the world to Beck and his rummage-sale sonic sensibilities. And yet, I cannot deny the gravitational pull of songs like “The New Pollution,” with its irresistible groove and saxophone refrain, the off-kilter “Derelict” or the sweet lullaby-like “Jack-Ass.” While this album has more polish than MG, it’s still got the requisite helping of ’90s junk, with weird electro breaks, noise, boom-bap beats, Blacksploitation samples and snippets of White People dialog that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on 3 Feet High and Rising and make it such a fun listen. Plus, the lyric “Everybody knows my name at the recreation center” rivals “I quit my job blowing leaves” from its predecessor. A pillar of Gen X Slacker culture.
Arcade Fire
4/5
Exploring suburbia is fertile ground for a concept album, and the band do a good job of mining it while somehow avoiding making things feel trite or one-note. “Suburban War” rides a guitar line that sounds like The Byrds, and it’s nice to hear Regine Chassagne take the lead on the new wavey “Sprawl II.” Also, Win Butler apparently described the sound of this album as “a mix of Depeche Mode and Neil Young,” which I totally don’t hear, but whatever.
This is the first time I’ve listened to this album in full, and while it’s strong, I’m trying to decide whether it’s superior to their debut album, which I know much better, and at any rate I’ve got a lawn to mow and tires to rotate.
Brian Eno
3/5
I’m most familiar with Brian Eno as a producer, a member of Roxy Music early on, and a running gag on the podcast Sound Opinions. So the year is 1975, and right off the bat this sounds familiar, like a track recorded for David Bowie’s Low (which Eno co-produced and performed on) that was left on the cutting room floor, with Robert Fripp’s unmistakable slashing guitar leading the way. In general I like the ambient instrumentals better than the tracks with vocals (especially the one about running to tie your shoe, which grates).
At its best, Eno’s voice reminds me a little of Syd Barrett, but based on this evidence and his production work, he’s better as a soundscape artist than a songwriter or rock persona. That Phil Collins played drums on this release is definitely my new favorite bit of rock trivia.
Devendra Banhart
3/5
Odd and eccentric, often captivating, and there’s some lovely poetry in lyrics such as, “Each strain of her hair / Is really insect eyes / And each hole in her tongue / Is always occupied / By the milk of the sun.” Glad the freak folk genre is represented, hope there’s more.
5/5
PJ Harvey got herself glammed up and recorded her most polished set of songs, including some stunners like “Big Exit,” “Good Fortune” and “This is Love,” whose lyrics I adore: “I can’t believe that the axis turns / on suffering when you taste so good.” This is the album where she mostly set aside her more topical and pointed subject matter and aimed for the heart. In retrospect it was kind of a transitional album for her but man, it works.
MGMT
4/5
When my iPod died (RIP), I lost touch with a sizable library of music that I still “own,” split between what is now called Apple Music and a hard drive, including this album, which I hadn’t heard in ages. Oracular Spectacular is a good embodiment of the iPod era, I suppose. It’s unmistakably 21st century in its grounding in electronics, synths and studio wizardry, indebted to the Flaming Lips in its love of huge-sounding, bacchanalian psych-pop anthems, 90s indie/slacker culture and even the Stones, on “Pieces of What.” MGMT made its name on the hit “Kids,” which remains an era-defining banger and helped many people deal with certain other things that happened in the world when this album came out in 2007.
Portishead
5/5
There are moments anchored in the familiar — a Hammond B3 organ here, guitar squalls there, some programmed industrial percussive sounds — but what stands out about this album is just how unlike anything else it sounds, like Portishead had no interest whatsoever in returning to trip-hop as its template. Its genius is how is mashes up old-sounding 60s-influenced studio productions with simple guitar and keyboard runs, then interrupting it with unexpected and sometimes ugly-sounding textures that add depth while taking the songs to new, unexpected and exciting places. Even the more conventional elements, like those mentioned above, aren’t deployed in usual ways; industrial stomp isn’t in service of a dance track, but rather to reinforce the starkness. Beth Gibbons’ melancholy voice connects it all, somehow. On another level.
The Velvet Underground
4/5
VU’s third album feels like the calm clarity after a hard night of indulgence. Melody has taken primacy, John Cale and his violin are gone, and songs like “Beginning to See the Light” and “What Goes On” suddenly don’t sound all that far apart from the then-current sounds emerging from Haight Ashbury or even the British Invasion. But it’s still the Velvet Underground, and a dark undercurrent still pervades. Their most approachable LP after Loaded, which had the hits.
G. Love & Special Sauce
2/5
It never dawned on me to take G. Love and Special Sauce seriously, but here goes:
I like the lackadaisical, breezy music much better than Mr. Love’s rap flows, which evoke goateed guys who wear baseball caps sideways and giant baggy jeans, don’t seem to have anything in particular to actually say, and really wore thin the deeper into the album I got. I’ll be grateful if I never hear the track “Shooting Hoops” again.
Green Day
3/5
When Green Day exploded with this album, I wasn’t particularly interested and harbored some snobbery. How the fuck you call yourself punk when you’re getting played all over the radio, and whatnot.
Time — and the fact that their hits are no longer ubiquitous — has given me some new perspective. The band is tight and good with vocal harmonies and power chords, and their songs have a sneering, poppy likability, colored with a generous helping of disaffected slacker culture. But I like the gravitas of American Idiot better, and if I’m in the mood for punk with melody I’m still reaching for Buzzcocks, Dag Nasty or the Huskers before this.
Elvis Costello & The Attractions
4/5
It’s urgent, tightly arranged and performed with an amphetamine energy apropos of the times, a mix of power pop, new wave and punk featuring some great songs.