Dec 27 2024
In Utero
Nirvana
It's hard to not read this album as one long suicide note so that clouds it for me. It's their most cohesive, but least hooky record. It always makes me feel the next Nirvana album would've been the one.
3
Dec 27 2024
Parallel Lines
Blondie
This album feels it was put together by record execs and it was one of the times they got it absolutely right. They didn't know what to do with Blondie so they did everything and it worked.
5
Dec 30 2024
Hot Buttered Soul
Isaac Hayes
I always think Isaac Hayes is gonna be funkier than he is.
3
Dec 31 2024
Born In The U.S.A.
Bruce Springsteen
Perhaps the most glaring example of the Springsteen Problem - great songs undone by terrible arrangements
3
Jan 01 2025
Ágætis Byrjun
Sigur Rós
Heard this when it came out walking into a record store and started to ask what it was and the cute girl behind the counters just went shhh and sold it to me.
5
Jan 02 2025
The Coral
The Coral
This feels like a vanload of ideas trying to be a band. I wasn't sure if it was for me until I heard the reggae number and knew it was not
2
Jan 03 2025
Paranoid
Black Sabbath
This is the Black Sabbath album that belongs here.
5
Jan 06 2025
Dire Straits
Dire Straits
This album would be four stars even without Sultans of Swing, one of the best songs ever. Mark Knopfler is one of the sliest of modernists, gently coaxing us into the (then) new wave.
4
Jan 07 2025
Smokers Delight
Nightmares On Wax
I feel I am about to pay too much for these sunglasses listening to this.
2
Jan 08 2025
In It For The Money
Supergrass
I don't remember this at all but "Richard III" is a great track two jam. I would've been into this at the time.
4
Jan 09 2025
Armed Forces
Elvis Costello & The Attractions
perfect but loses a point for the line in Oliver's Army. He knew exactly what he was doing when he put it in there.
4
Jan 10 2025
Brilliant Corners
Thelonious Monk
Actually been listening to this and Straight No Chaser a lot this week. TM is so great at making a broken melody sound complete
5
Jan 13 2025
Illinois
Sufjan Stevens
I get why people think Sufjan is too much but I love this and the Michigan album and Seven Swans all the way. "John Wayne Gacy" and "Casimir Pulaski Day" both can make me cry when I'm in a human mood.
5
Jan 14 2025
Black Sabbath
Black Sabbath
Def not the Black Sabbath album I would pick. I was really hoping to discover the Smithereens' "Behind the Walls of Sleep " was a Sabbath cover but no dice.
2
Jan 15 2025
New Gold Dream (81/82/83/84)
Simple Minds
I had "Promised You a Miracle" on a high school mixtape from an exchange student and the jam sounds as fresh today. The rest is OK.
3
Jan 16 2025
Music From Big Pink
The Band
I love this album with my whole heart, though I always think about the look they must have had on their faces when Bob Dylan popped in saying "Hey I made this painting for the cover! You guys like it? You can be honest with me!"
5
Jan 17 2025
Home Is Where The Music Is
Hugh Masekela
Charlie Brown Xmas music for the discerning Quaalude user.
4
Jan 20 2025
1989
Taylor Swift
The thing I like about TS is that when she's derivative (maybe always) she puts her whole self into it. It's literally not for me, but the people it is for get all of it.
3
Jan 21 2025
Chris
Christine and the Queens
oof. Let AI do 80's retro
1
Jan 22 2025
Nilsson Schmilsson
Harry Nilsson
You could hold you own discussing pop music from 1930-1970 having only heard this album. He created trop rock (Coconut) and hair metal (Jump into the Fire) on the same record in his bathrobe.
5
Jan 23 2025
Transformer
Lou Reed
It's the greatest Lou Reed solo album and maybe the 3rd best David Bowie album
4
Jan 24 2025
Unknown Pleasures
Joy Division
Pretty perfect
5
Jan 27 2025
Raising Hell
Run-D.M.C.
4
Jan 28 2025
Marquee Moon
Television
This album is an easy win, nearly perfect and even better for the places it isn't. A friend of mine formed a Television cover band and did this whole album live once and revealed the 70s boogie that lies inside those icy guitar lines, which only made me love it more.
5
Jan 29 2025
Queen II
Queen
I'm picturing a post-Tommy The Who marching across Mordor, triumphant with banners aloft, legions in their wake when there is a wisp of white smoke over a golden hill and Queen gallop in like the four horsemen of rock opera and cut through Townsend's flank like it's warm butter. Sure, the Who will win the war, but for a moment, this one unit had them by the throat. "Is that a sitar *and* a vocoder?" Cmdr. Townsend gasped as Freddie's Daltrey impression on "The Loser in the End" stole the actual Daltrey's girl even though he didn't really want her. Brian May is in full wizard frenzy, lightning bolts and whirlwinds. No one knows the names of the other two, heroes anonymously mourned by rhythm sections for time immortal.
4
Jan 30 2025
Blonde On Blonde
Bob Dylan
I'm a Bob Dylan type, but on the fence about this classic. There are great rambly numbers like Stuck Inside of Mobile and Leopard Skin Pill Box Hat but dreary slogs like Visions of Johanna and Lowlands. Too much harmonica. If you hate his singing, wait 'til you get a load of his harmonica playing! Loses a star for Rainy Day Women 12 & 35 - the dumbest things he's done, including his boutique whiskey line. But gets it back for the hair/stare/scarf combo on the cover.
4
Jan 31 2025
The Band
The Band
The third best album by the Band after Big Pink and Stage Fright. I'm a fan, but could get by in life without ever hearing The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down again. Across the Great Divide is a weedy beauty of a song. A lot of the rest runs together much like the cars in a demolition derby. I though I hated Up on Cripple Creek for years until I listened to it on purpose. The recently departed organist Garth Hudson really shines on this record.
4
Feb 03 2025
Coat Of Many Colors
Dolly Parton
Dolly Parton albums tend to be, erm, front-loaded with whatever her single was at the time and a lot of filler, but this is one of the exceptions. I love the one-two punch of a mother’s love in the title track and the high camp of her mama stealing her secret boyfriend in “Traveling Man.” “The Mystery of the Mystery” is country gospel existentialism of the highest order. “Early Morning Breeze” is a spooky beauty that could have been a Lee Hazelwood cut or even a VU b-side.
5
Feb 04 2025
The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan
They are really putting you Dylan/Band haters through the paces. This is a classic I never come back to bc who needs to hear “Blowin’” ever again? It is laden and lugubrious with folk reverence and watching Bob develop his shtick in real time, but “A Hard Rain” and “Don’t Think Twice” are total bangers.
3
Feb 05 2025
Elephant Mountain
The Youngbloods
Produced by Charlie Daniels - that's his devil-trouncing fiddle on "Darkness, Darkness." It's an affable progressive folk-rock record, wide in its stylistic reach and expertly played and produced, but it doesn't really feel like even the band are that excited about it, which makes me wonder if they were on it or was this done by CD and session musicians. The "come on people now, smile on your brother" debut album is better and sounds like a band. I think you can safely die without hearing this one. "Ride the Wind" is lounge magic, though.
3
Feb 06 2025
Vanishing Point
Primal Scream
Weird choice for 1001 given that Primal Scream has two other legit decade-defining classic LPs in Screamadelica and XTRMNTR. Seems like it was put together to re-sell the Trainspotting single, which is mostly good for the Jean-Jacques Perry sample it is built on.
3
Feb 07 2025
Exile On Main Street
The Rolling Stones
One of my favorite albums ever. A magnificent, ragged sprawl in answer to the well-mannered smorgasbords other bands were making at the time. Death of the sixties dirty bomb. The bit from "Rocks Off" - the sunshine bores the daylights out of me - is one of the best lyrics in music. You may think this album is a mess, and you'd be right, but Three-Ball Charlie up on the cover knows what's up.
5
Feb 10 2025
Pretzel Logic
Steely Dan
"Rikki" is a pretty solid groove if you wish Wings was meaner. "Night by Night" is for people who wish Wings wasn't so funky. "Any Major Dude" is the about the eighth best Wings song ever. The rest of the album is on par with Wings' Venus and Mars. If comparing Steely Dan to Wings doesn't reduce your Dannist adversary to a stutter, substitute Styx in there.
3
Feb 11 2025
Doggystyle
Snoop Dogg
Unstoppable banger. It sounds as fresh today. Sure, it owes pretty much everything to George Clinton, but I suspect George Clinton owes more back to this album for how its made his thing eternal.
5
Feb 12 2025
Rage Against The Machine
Rage Against The Machine
There was a week there back then when I thought RatM was the second coming, but I was having a bad week. They were a little too alpha for me. Fugazi for skaters who would go into finance.
3
Feb 13 2025
The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators
The 13th Floor Elevators
Unimpeachable. Best performance on a jug. Do not operate a forklift or other heavy machinery while listening to this album.
5
Feb 14 2025
Suede
Suede
Any song I've ever thought was a great Suede single turned out to be by another band. That mixtape is 5*. Those songs actually by Suede, or perhaps just their press presence, always seem to project more cleverness than they actually have. A less-committed Smiths. Echo and the, well, just echo of better English bands from 10 years before. Probably sounded great in a bar in 93.
3
Feb 17 2025
To Pimp A Butterfly
Kendrick Lamar
I wish Kendrick Lamar would take over the contemporary pop musical mantle from the Hamilton guy. This album feels like the soundtrack of one I'd actually want to see. He raps like someone executing a flawless parkour routine, bouncing off buildings and jumping off balconies and landing in a casual strut.
4
Feb 18 2025
Licensed To Ill
Beastie Boys
Not the Beastie Boys album I would pick nor really have ever gone back to. It has more of the weedy rock haze that I'd associate with Check Yr Head or Ill Communication than I remembered, particular the opening track. The longer songs feel endless, a purgatory spent in the New Style and not getting sleep til Brooklyn. "She's Crafty" came out a few months after Run DMC's "Walk This Way" and it felt like the whole world was sing song like this and like that. The deep cuts can stay there, the hits will be omnipresent as long as white people are still on earth. "Girls" still kinda cracks me up.
3
Feb 19 2025
Woodface
Crowded House
Another weird choice for a band who has a much more classic album, or at lease one that has their signature songs. This sounds like one of those later Squeeze albums - perfectly alright, they are pros, but you barely remember while you are listening to it, much less after.
3
Feb 20 2025
The Last Broadcast
Doves
Any plural-bird-name band without a definitive article is gonna be unfairly compared to Swans in my mind. Doves are no Swans. They remind me of the Mighty Lemon Drops, a perfectly fine band I saw open for three different touring acts one year in college: affable, nice texture, but if you stuffed any calendar page from their year into a CD player, 2002 in Doves' case, this is what it would sound like. I like the percussionless "M62 song" and "Where We're Calling From" the best, so maybe the drums are the key to their blending in to the woodwork. "N.Y." betrays a grunge inclination masked in synth strings, winding into a nice arpeggiated guitar. But a lot of nice, not a lot of wow.
3
Feb 21 2025
Elastica
Elastica
"Connection" was omnipresent for a while, like it was put together by a marketing team for maximum impact in the bar 'n' grill background music sector for Q1 '95 , but maybe I never heard anything else by them. The rest of the album sounds like a much more fun band. The songs are barely formed in the best way, each consisting of a good hook, an expertly shoplifted Joy Division or Fall or Stranglers quotation, a cool noise and a sing-song swagger.
4
Feb 24 2025
Songs From The Big Chair
Tears For Fears
It is impossible to hear "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" with fresh ears, but the Teutonic march of much of the rest of the album still hits for me. Yes, "Shout" is ridiculously serious but they do it enough times to wear you down which is a triumphant twining of pop art's form and function. Yes there is a lot of sax in the non-hit recesses. Yes, they are not particularly fun but it was the twilight of the Reagan and Thatcher eras. Yes, it sounds like Yes did in 1985, with all the orchestra breaks. I don't know if I'm making excuses for them or for me, but it still sounds fresh for being so dated.
4
Feb 25 2025
Diamond Life
Sade
I don't know if you need to declare that, before you die, you must hear music that has never gone away. It's like saying "You GOTTA breathe this atmosphere while you are here!" Pretty sure every human hears "Smooth Operator" at least once a week during the process of being alive. And it is flawless. "Your Love is King" only slightly less flawless and thereby more interesting. I wonder if they have to pay Roxy Music's holding company for style royalties. I've always kinda dug the nagging persistence of "Hang on to Your Love", a ballad from a barnacle to a Nantucket whaler of a love. "Cherry Pie" is the secret subdued disco banger hidden in here. As is the audacious conga minute opening of Timmy Thomson's minimalist classic "Why Can't We Live Together." I want to hear that gliding around a roller rink on the moon.
4
Feb 26 2025
Music in Exile
Songhoy Blues
This is a jam. There's points where I wanna say this sounds like disco or Talking Heads and realize, oh yeah, other way around.
5
Feb 27 2025
Rip It Up
Orange Juice
This is one I've tried to get into over the years as it has been cited as a foundation document for a lot of the music I like, but I dunno. Like much new wave pop, the songs are one minute of a good idea dragged out to five. If "Rip It Up" was 2:30, it'd be perfect. Time and place, this honkylypso would have been an excellent antidote to very serious punk in 1982 Scotland but most of it hits me like the other songs on a Police or (English) Beat album.
3
Feb 28 2025
Liege And Lief
Fairport Convention
Love the early drunken reveler Fairport Convention records. The best thing the Byrds ever did was convince FC to plug in their guitars. The slower ballads get a bit arch, but it's so good when they swing into gear. Some of the instrumentation (partic "Matty Groves") would not be out of place on the first couple of VU records.
4
Mar 03 2025
At Mister Kelly's
Sarah Vaughan
What I want to hear walking in a bar or coffee shop mid afternoon. The kind of vocal jazz you passively listen to or actively ignore. I'm a little fixated on the R on the marquee on the cover. Was it just like that when they took the photo or did some art director have a brilliant idea right before or was there a transfer letter screw up?
5
Mar 04 2025
Tapestry
Carole King
Bangers all around. Even the tired ones you've heard 100 million times hit like a brick when you listen to them on purpose.
5
Mar 05 2025
Sweetheart Of The Rodeo
The Byrds
Love this album. This album has become something an indicator of an alt-country lifestyle choice, but it really is a beautiful record every time.
5
Mar 06 2025
Rhythm Nation 1814
Janet Jackson
Hmmm, I’d say if you need a Janet Jackson album before you die, the one with “Nasty” and “What Have You Done For Me Lately” from a couple years before is the one with cultural impact. The video for the title track was better than the song.
2
Mar 07 2025
Want Two
Rufus Wainwright
I love Rufus Wainwright for his candor and wit as much for his voice, but this album has a little too much remove for it to grab me. Poses is the RW for me, particularly "Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk", one of the best songs ever.
3
Mar 10 2025
Green Onions
Booker T. & The MG's
In my dream life, it would be southern California weather and we would all get around on roller skates and this album would be the default soundtrack being broadcast on transistor radios laying around everywhere.
5
Mar 11 2025
Low
David Bowie
Despite having seen this album cover my whole life, I'm just now noticing he's wearing a hoodie. Always something to discover in Bowie. "Sound and Vision" is one of his best songs, "Speed of Life" his best groove, "Be My Wife" a terrific song I forgot about, "Warszawa" a fully realized chamber piece, and "Weeping Wall" one of his most successful experiments. With all that, a lot of the rest feels a little unfinished, which is in its own right a brave move for a perfectionist, but I'd like to hear "Breaking Glass" as the juggernaut it wants to be.
4
Mar 12 2025
Antichrist Superstar
Marilyn Manson
I was hoping to die without listening to a whole Marilyn Manson album but life if full of little disappointments. Plus, I feel MM wants you to die listening to his music. Like the photoshop cover and word-burrito song titles, this feels like a pastiche meant to evoke a mood it doesn't quite deliver. He seems to be a horrible person, so maybe he should have dug into that. This is all strobe light and no chainsaw. I do see why guitarist John 5's picture is on the wall at my local Guitar Center, for what that's worth.
1
Mar 13 2025
Stand!
Sly & The Family Stone
A lot wiggier than I remember this being. The last four minutes of "Don't Call Me..." could go, as could all of that fill-the-album-time-with-cocaine of "Sex Machine" but the rest are all hits for a reason.
3
Mar 14 2025
Doolittle
Pixies
My third favorite Pixies album after Surfer Rosa and Trompe L' Monde, only by narrow and situational margins. It took me a while to fully come around to the Pixies bc I was a snooty college DJ at the time of their ascendancy and suspicious of anything that other people liked. This group's lara7 and I picked up a tape of Surfer Rosa at a yard sale and driving around to that won me over. Years later I took a road trip with a friend who only brought two tapes - Trompe L'Monde and Blondie's Greatest Hits which cemented that one. But Doolittle is the right entry point, their catchiest, their most aliens-recreate-rock'n'roll-in-their-language.
5
Mar 17 2025
Electric Warrior
T. Rex
Electric Warrior sits imperious in the perfect brilliant/stupid singularity toward which all rock music tends. His folkier music before this is delightfully ridiculous, his heavier music after this is as subtle as a werewolf howl on the moors but this record is a like a lit cigarette trapped in amber - perfect distilled coolness.
5
Mar 18 2025
Natty Dread
Bob Marley & The Wailers
There's Bob Marley albums I like better, and reggae artists I like better than Bob Marley, but this is an OK one. Plus, it's good to listen him like this on purpose, outside of the omnipresence of his hits in every stoner-adjacent fast casual restaurant and dorm room. As a musician, I aspire to the ironically dead-ass organ sounds on "Lively Up Yourself" and it's impossible to not feel it will be when the "Everything's gonna be alright" repeats hit. Everything won't be, but it's a great template for compassion. There is non-insignificant quantities of filler on this record but "Bend Down Low" is a great party percolator I don't think I've heard before.
3
Mar 19 2025
Slayed?
Slade
What a beautiful ridiculous band! Quiet Riot seems even more weird a phenomenon knowing that their hits were Slade covers. This album is so-so, but their singles are solid. They wrote the best rock'n'roll Christmas song ever but it's not on this album. If you are looking for glam rock you need to hear before you die, allow me to direct you to Mott the Hoople.
3
Mar 20 2025
Ill Communication
Beastie Boys
The presence of this and License to Ill implies that Check Your Heard is on the list, further indicating more Beastie Boys that you might need in one life where other hip hop exists. Side A - through "The Update" is so good, showing their range and command of a banger. The latter half kinda hits like a YouTube beat tape I'd put on to ignore get some work done.
3
Mar 21 2025
The Köln Concert
Keith Jarrett
This one-man jam session is a lot to take unless you are really invested in the nexus of jazz, minimalism, and new age as well as advances in recording piano overtones in a room. I bet 25% of the people in Köln that night had their life changed and the other 75% were looking at their watch and questioning the renewal of their season tickets. I'm into it, but I get why you aren't.
4
Mar 24 2025
The Cars
The Cars
Six out of five stars for the Cars. "Let them brush your rock'n'roll hair" alone puts this album among the constellations and it's not even from the best song, which is "Just What I Needed" - the best rock song ever. If Buddy Holly hadn't died in a plane crash but instead fell into a wormhole to the future and came back to 1978 as Ric Ocasek to show us the way.
5
Mar 25 2025
Foo Fighters
Foo Fighters
There is a Chuck Klosterman quote about the first Van Halen album being the perfect average rock record - anything worse than it is bad, anything better is good. Foo Fighters are the embodiment of the Hagar-era of that metric.
3
Mar 26 2025
Bossanova
Pixies
This is the Pixies record that never really grabbed me. All the brio and egregious reverb usage of the Cult, the lyrical inscrutability of extreme metal band and the no-eye-contact of a band that might open for Kraftwerk. There are some great hooky numbers like "Hang Wire" and "Dig for Fire" and "Is She Weird" - the best Violent Femes song they never wrote - but I find myself skipping a lot of the rest.
3
Mar 27 2025
The Stone Roses
The Stone Roses
This album is catchy as a gill net and content-free as that same net pulled out of an unstocked lake. Practice frame for Oasis, who knew where the big fish were.
4
Mar 28 2025
Mothership Connection
Parliament
This album is good, but the Live: P-Funk Earth Tour album that came out of this material is the real must-listen Parliament record. The beat on the studio version gets monotonous, but with an entire 1977 LA Forum stomping along, it reaches the cosmic.
3
Mar 31 2025
Can't Buy A Thrill
Steely Dan
"Do It Again" is why audiophile stereos were invented, but then audiophile stereos are what gave us the subsequent Steely Dan albums which gave us the 80's Wall Street greed era which begat tech bros and Elon Musk. So despite "Do It Again" being a stone jam, one must gaze at the album through the dolorous lens of history and stall the waterwheel of unlearned-from mistakes. Let us not be the fools doing the Dan's dirty work. Plus the non-single tracks are so-so.
3
Apr 01 2025
Abbey Road
Beatles
The side-two medley is the last gasp of their greatness, but a lot of side one is a tired sigh. Even in my most Beatle-adoring youth, "I Want You" gave me the ick, and "Oh! Darling" too saccharine. I've always wished they'd worked more, perhaps, collaborated with purpose, on "Come Together" which is a great song with dumb lyrics. "Here Comes the Sun" is perfect and "Octopus" and "Maxwell" are dopey and fun.
4
Apr 02 2025
Steve McQueen
Prefab Sprout
I love Prefab Sprout. A master class in mass-appeal idiosyncratic art-pop. Those synths are an anchor in the harbor of 1985, the only thing keeping this album from being timeless. I have had "Appetite" in my head since I saw the video in high school and I'm still not sure what its about. The only real digs I have against this album is how front-loaded it is and those gated drums, but it's how the world was back then.
4
Apr 03 2025
The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill
Lauryn Hill
This is still a beautiful, singular album, but damn those songs take forever. No wonder she's always late for her shows.
4
Apr 04 2025
The Gershwin Songbook
Ella Fitzgerald
Masterful performance and recording but I cannot imagine a situation where I would not feel ridiculous putting this on, save being a ATF agent tasked with driving a doomsday cult from their compound.
3
Apr 07 2025
Hail To the Thief
Radiohead
Low-key one of my favorite Radiohead albums. I love the shaky rage, the introspection harmonies, the way the digital aspects flood in through the cracks of a rock band. Phasers set to melancholy. Also, the best album cover for a band that makes definitive album cover statements. It's not the Titanic-sinking iceberg that OK Computer or In Rainbows are, but I love how it looms out beside you in the fog.
5
Apr 08 2025
Horses
Patti Smith
This album will make you understand why the entire boy's club of early punk fell completely in love with Patti Smith. I go back an forth about whether this or Radio Ethiopia is my favorite - this is more feral, the latter rocks harder - but she was an electromagnetic rock creature radicalizing knuckleheads everywhere.
5
Apr 09 2025
Hot Shots II
The Beta Band
It's a pretty, breezy record but The Three EPs, made famous by the same movie that needlessly steered a generation away from the pleasures of Belle and Sebastian, is the one you need to hear.
3
Apr 10 2025
James Brown Live At The Apollo
James Brown
I mean, c'mon. If you don't give this five stars, you are clearly not ready for star time
5
Apr 11 2025
Felt Mountain
Goldfrapp
How did they not do a James Bond theme? Like a lot of trip-hop, it feels highly derivative in the best possible way, like an expertly filled plate at the buffet that makes your tablemates go "Ooooh, I didn't see the dumplings!". Alison Goldfrapp is a true songbird, the production is smart and in just the right part of her shadow. Great Theremin usage. This was a delightful surprise.
4
Apr 14 2025
Stardust
Willie Nelson
This was one of the records my mom bought after the divorce, along with a lot of Neil Diamond, so it is woven into my upbringing. It's a beauty of a standards collection. I was going to list the Willie albums I prefer, ones that lean on his original material, but then "Blue Skies" came on, and I thought why would I want anything else? It stops just outside the city limits of treacle, elevating the tiredest of songs with a weary, elegant resignation. It's making something out new of what's left. If you can't open your heart to his version of "All of Me" you may want to have a doctor confirm you have one. This version of "Unchained Melody" is what plays should our wretched souls ascend to heaven at the end. So yeah, essential.
Produced by his neighbor Booker T (of and the MGs), recorded in another friend's house, with the harmonica recorded in a shower stall. Also I love that he insisted on keeping Susanna Clark's (wife of songwriter Guy Clark) signature on the cover painting.
4
Apr 15 2025
Straight Outta Compton
N.W.A.
It's difficult to listen to this as a thing unto itself with it being peak "rap older white people listen to and reference." But unzip that baggage, the energy and anger is still potent. It's a monotonous listen, but then that same-damn-thing-every-day-ness is what it seeks to express. I feel the singles are maybe more important to hear than the full album.
3
Apr 16 2025
Apple Venus Volume 1
XTC
A feast for the headphones, especially "River of Orchids". XTC is one of those bands I wouldn't really recommend one album - I'd rather you sign up for my semester-long lecture series so we can discuss them at exhausting length. There will be field trips to Swindon and extra points will be awarded for throwing eggs at Todd Rundgren's house. That said, this is a good one, like glimpsing one last gallop of a unicorn before it disappears into the woods.
4
Apr 17 2025
The Wildest!
Louis Prima
This kind of personality schtick jazz from the 50s strikes me as music for people who aren't really into music. It's like eschewing standup comedy to just see Gallagher smash the watermelon over and over. I'm sure Louis Prima was a hoot live, but I'd rather hear a Sam Butera and the Witnesses record. "Night Train" slaps.
2
Apr 18 2025
Life's Too Good
The Sugarcubes
I've often wondered what became of Einar, the spoken word guy the Sugarcubes - he didn't stand a chance once Björk warped the timeline. He served on the Reykjavik city council for a while, so that's good. This was a meteor killing off the dinosaurs at the time, but I hear a lot of Oingo Boingo, Go-Go's, 4AD roster, etc in it now. It has a sweet menace to it, feeling like it was inaccurately translated at some border checkpoint and made all the better for it.
4
Apr 21 2025
One Nation Under A Groove
Funkadelic
Goofus banger. It’s been a quarter-century since I last listened to this one, but I could feel the anxiety that comes with attempting to be rational in an irrational world lift as the toilet humor pledge was recited.
4
Apr 22 2025
Seventeen Seconds
The Cure
Not the Cure album I would pick, but upon relistening - Elemental Cure. If you crack on them for being gloomy and mopey, it's right here. If you love the Cure for putting together excellent pop music with startling economy, also here. If you think their songs all sound the same, yeah ok. If the Cure makes you feel the feelings other people get from pop music, and your default dance move is to sway like there's a cigarette in your left hand, it's on!
4
Apr 23 2025
Spy Vs. Spy: The Music Of Ornette Coleman
John Zorn
I talked to John Zorn on the phone once for an hour as a prelude for an interview that, after I went out and bought the albums of his he suggested we discuss, elected not to do. Cold, but it's dog-eat-dog for an independent label owner. This was one of the albums he didn't want to talk about, that it had been talked about to death. I will say if you like this explosion of saxophone and drums and joy and rage, it's more of a gateway into Zorn's peculiar sonic world than it is Coleman's. If you plead for it to stop, than neither is likely for you. If you ever thought Oingo Boingo would sound better tumbling down a mountain, get ready!
3
Apr 24 2025
Savane
Ali Farka Touré
In a more impulsive era, I cajoled a clerk at an incense shop to sell me the store’s copy of Ali Farka Toure’s The Source because I was so spellbound by it. This is more bluesy than that one but is nonetheless hypnotic.
4
Apr 25 2025
Heaven Or Las Vegas
Cocteau Twins
The most fun and accessible Cocteau Twins record, if those are metrics that should be applied to them. I didn't really appreciate them at the time when their excellent posters adorned the apartments of the goth-adjacent (also I fell asleep at one of their shows), but my daughter and friends' daughters all have had a Cocteau Twins fixation that made me come around. This album is a gem that could stand a remaster to really makes it glow.
4
Apr 28 2025
Either Or
Elliott Smith
No matter how much you turn this album up it is still a whisper from a kid just trying to feel things. I suspect he was kind of adored to death after that Oscars performance, so this sweet document from right before is all the more precious.
4
Apr 29 2025
It's Blitz!
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Perfect disposable NYC lifestyle rock, the kind that the Strokes aren't really good enough to do and LCD Soundsystem are too good to do. I feel cooler when it's on and don't even notice when it leaves.
4
Apr 30 2025
Juju
Siouxsie And The Banshees
Siouxsie and the Banshees are the Jefferson Airplane of goth, not just because of an enigmatic female singer but also because their albums have one or two clear classics (Spellbound : White Rabbit) and the rest of the record is not quite at that level.
3
May 01 2025
Water From An Ancient Well
Abdullah Ibrahim
I like the ska-jazz... skazz, maybe? feel of the opening track, and the safari-groove on "Tuang Guru" but the rest sounds like "Yep. That's jazz alright." I say if you are gonna spend your 1001 token on him, the cinematic African Space Program album under his pre-conversion name Dollar Brand is a more rewarding, if more challenging, listen.
3
May 02 2025
Talking Timbuktu
Ali Farka Touré
There is a whole lot of Africa to listen to without including a second Ali Farka Toure forced date of an album with roots magpie Ry Cooder doin da blooze. The record is ok but, dude. Pass the aux cable.
3
May 05 2025
Wish You Were Here
Pink Floyd
Being the most turgid Pink Floyd album is an achievement unto itself.
3
May 06 2025
Live At The Regal
B.B. King
I like hearing these dinosaur songs actually roam the earth as wild animals instead of the slick way blues is usually presented. It should be a strict prerequisite for blues jam participants to hear this version of "Everyday I Have the Blues" before they are allowed up there with their fedora and $2K guitar.
4
May 07 2025
The Pleasure Principle
Gary Numan
This album is mathematically and emotionally perfect. We, as a species, will likely never again reach this singularity point of longing and fear and make it this catchy.
5
May 08 2025
Whatever
Aimee Mann
It sounds like a good song playing at Walgreens.
4
May 09 2025
The Nightfly
Donald Fagen
This sounds like every other song playing at Walgreens.
3
May 12 2025
This Is Fats Domino
Fats Domino
I am saturated on Fats for this life, thanks. I do like the drums actually allowed in the mix along with that jackhammer piano.
3
May 13 2025
Hot Fuss
The Killers
The Killers are like a brightly, expertly papered wall with no hooks to hang anything on it.
3
May 14 2025
Now I Got Worry
The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion
This album gets cooking at the halfway mark, but the first six songs are a slog. I prefer Acme or Orange when they mostly shout "BLUES EXPLOSION" over slam-on-the-brakes rock. It's a limited technique but it works when they do it.
4
May 15 2025
Ritual De Lo Habitual
Jane's Addiction
Never have understood the appeal of Janes Addiction. Did someone once put on three different Van Halen albums at 45 through cheap speakers and go "that's our sound" ?
1
May 16 2025
It's A Shame About Ray
The Lemonheads
Consistently delightful album for decades. Not a thing out of place, yet never tiring.
5
May 19 2025
Let's Stay Together
Al Green
Al Green's Greatest Hits (the one with him shirtless on the cover) is the definitive Al Green record. The title track gleams from the Mt. Olympus of pop music for a reason, and "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart?" is what you hear on your soul's transmigration to Purgatory. The rest of this album is reliably groovy and expertly crafted but not that memorable.
4
May 20 2025
Abraxas
Santana
This is one of those records that is actually less than the sum of its parts, even though the parts, particularly Carlos Santana's guitar and his rhythm section, are excellent. The songs drift along like barges over-loaded with great musicians and then are gone. The surprise here is "Hope You're Feeling Better" with that red laser organ tone and hard Funkadelic groove. More of that, please...
3
May 21 2025
The Doors
The Doors
This record totally holds up, even the ridiculous "The End." Any cracking on the Doors is well-deserved but the spooky, easy decadence of this record is infectious. Bubblegum gothic. Plus, I haven't heard the garagey non-hits like "I Looked at You" and "Take It as it Comes" since college.
4
May 22 2025
Logical Progression
LTJ Bukem
I suspect LTJ Bukem would be unable to distinguish Level 1 from Level 13, much less justify why this particular trance compilation over the countless others form the 90s needs hearing before leaving the planet depicted on the cover.
1
May 23 2025
So
Peter Gabriel
The new wave anthems that sounded so good in my generic Walkman in 1986 like "Red Rain" and "That Voice Again" don't grab me anymore, but I am struck by what a grown-folks stone jam "Sledgehammer" still is. An updated remix of "Don't Give Up" would've been right on time with the recent Kate Bush renaissance. Peter Gabriel should have left "world music" for David Byrne to handle and just gone full R&B elder after this album.
4
May 26 2025
Raw Power
The Stooges
I cut my chest up in a hot Detroit ballroom with five stars for Raw Power. Even for Bowie's original clunky mix but especially for the redline one Iggy did the early 2000s.
5
May 27 2025
Are You Experienced
Jimi Hendrix
This album gives the fussy baroque of 1967 psychedelia the right kick in the bell bottoms. The non-hits were a treat, not having heard them for ages. Holds up spectacularly, which is not something I'd say for his other albums.
4
May 28 2025
Blood On The Tracks
Bob Dylan
This is where he channeled his squirrelly energy and skills at preparing word salad into making narrative sense, a gentle counterpoint to the feral joy of the Basement Tapes that came out the same year. There is a lot of baggage that comes with liking or not liking Dylan, but these are some of his best lyrics.
4
May 29 2025
Wild Gift
X
What a surprise! I thought I didn't like this record because it's no Los Angeles - an arguably perfect punk record - but its not trying to be. They discovered hard rock melody and complicated grown-up feelings left behind in the practice space and are excited to share them.
4
May 30 2025
Hounds Of Love
Kate Bush
Kate Bush is the new wave Stevie Nicks, the wise older sister/wild aunt a lot of people need in their lives.. "Running" deserves all the praise it gets, but "Cloudbursting" is the one off this record that still gets to me. Otherwise this album doesn't quite speak to me like it once did. It would probably make for a smash Broadway adaption.
4
Jun 02 2025
Bad
Michael Jackson
Must we? "Man in the Mirror" is one of his greatest tunes, a rare moment of self-critique from the most profound ego of the 80s. I'm surprised to find "The Way You Make Me Feel" here - I thought it was from an older album or maybe a Stevie Wonder song. The rest of this album sounds and had always sounded phoned-in to me, hyperactive autopilot designed to fatigue a Solid Gold dancer.
2
Jun 03 2025
Songs For Swingin' Lovers!
Frank Sinatra
This is one of those laser-guided missile Sinatra albums, equal parts wide-eyed golly gee, you're just the greatest, and eye-roll droll. It's interesting (to me, anyway) that this CD release cover was changed to have a more flattering portrait of old Blue Eyes in the background from the original album. That's focus, baby.
"Old Devil Moon" is one of my favorite Sinatra tunes, and "I've Got You Under my Skin" is perfect. "I Thought About You" is a stealth banger.
Also, this album title gets an extra point for inspiring Renaldo and the Loaf's "Songs for Swinging Larvae", a record nerd joke that makes me laugh every time I think about it.
5
Jun 04 2025
The Lexicon Of Love
ABC
All I'm sayin'... This album is a high camp delight. The ubiquitous hits "The Look of Love" and "Poison Arrow" are the peaks here and the only ones I'd heard before, but the strings and the breathless delivery throughout sell it. The final two tracks - a fussy orchestral "The Look of Love Part 4" and drunken cabaret version of "Poison Arrow" as "Theme from 'Mantrap'" is chef's kiss emoji good.
4
Jun 05 2025
...The Dandy Warhols Come Down
The Dandy Warhols
The Dandy Warhols have the thick, swirly neo-psyche sound dialed in perfectly and get that a sense of humor is what's missing in indie rock, but boy, do they need an editor. "Don't bore us, get to the chorus" posters should be put up all over their (I suspect) immaculate studio packed with pristine vintage gear.
3
Jun 06 2025
Beauty And The Beat
The Go-Go's
So good! The two singles are unstoppable and "Skidmarks on My Heart" was a mixtape staple back then. I just read that Belinda Carlisle's tenure as the drummer for the Germs was cut short because she had mono - the most adorable LA punk anecdote ever!
4
Jun 09 2025
Moving Pictures
Rush
Classic. Rush gets a bad rap for being nerd music for nerds (also a fair accusation), and Randian associations, but I suspect everyone on the planet gets at least a little fired up when they hear that intro to "Tom Sawyer." "Limelight" is built on on of the best guitar riffs ever, and a call to arms for theatre kids for decades. The merits of the pyrotechnics throughout the rest of the album depend on if you a connoisseur of such. And, looking at him, what did you think Geddy Lee's voice would sound like? Am I being defensive? Such is the lot for a Rush fan.
5
Jun 10 2025
It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back
Public Enemy
I loved Public Enemy at the time, but that time was almost 40 years ago. Like most hip hop from that era, this album just hasn't aged well. Fear of a Black Planet is a better album with more depth to it if you are adverse to listening to any rap music made after 1990.
3
Jun 11 2025
Penance Soiree
The Icarus Line
Ugh. It gets one point off the bottom because I feel these guys feel whatever these terrible feelings being expressed are, but this kind of grooveless fight club music just doesn't do it for me.
2
Jun 12 2025
Yank Crime
Drive Like Jehu
This music probably sounds great while getting the wind knocked out of you on your cousin's poorly constructed halfpipe, but outside of that, the appeal is elusive.
2
Jun 13 2025
Surf's Up
The Beach Boys
I have a perverse love for squeaky clean vocal groups making their psychedelic record (see the Beau Brummel's' Triangle) and this, is the corny old Beach Boys trying to make sense in a time (the 1970's) that has passed them by.
It half works. "Feel Flows", one of the first written by Carl Wilson, is low key one of the Best Beach Boys songs ever. "Disney Girls" also touches that place where my heart should be. The Brian tracks, the last three culled from the styled Smile sessions, stand out for his brand of lysergic pudding and the fairy-tale EP he insisted they add as a bonus single is a goofy pleasure. The rest is as cool as your parents trying to rap.
3
Jun 16 2025
The Dark Side Of The Moon
Pink Floyd
It's an impeccable slog, which sounds like one of the things money might described as being.
3
Jun 17 2025
Out Of The Blue
Electric Light Orchestra
"Turn to Stone" and "Mr. Blue Sky" and "Sweet Talkin' Woman" are lines of pure dopamine on the mirror tray of the late Seventies. The rest of the album feels good like a massage or a fancy candle, inarguably pleasurable but doesn't linger.
I used to hate ELO so much I received a merit badge for it, but I heard a Cajun band do "Hold On Tight To You Dreams" and my mind lit up like a jukebox bubble light.
4
Jun 18 2025
Ogden's Nut Gone Flake
Small Faces
I should love this. The players are great. The sound is great. The songs aren't bad. I love a B-team British rock band that never invaded the US. Great cover! But the record has never adhered to me. This is one of those rambly albums that was probably a more fun to make than listen to.
2
Jun 19 2025
Feast of Wire
Calexico
I love the hell out of this record. The production is crystalline and perfect, like the glass in a window of an abandoned house, letting the melancholy of the songs shine though like the morning sun. While it's not the strongest track on the album, their performance of "Not Even Stevie Nicks" at JazzFest one year made me a die-hard fan.
5
Jun 20 2025
GREY Area
Little Simz
I like Little Simz as background for the naked beats and the percolating murmur of the vocals, but I don't know if this is even the best Little Simz record, much less for this list.
3
Jun 23 2025
Document
R.E.M.
I listened to this album so much in high school it shows up in my fingerprints. It could use a re-master - it sounds thin by modern standards - but it is peak R.E.M. before they became beloved by regular people, unabashedly precious and jangly and teenage mysterious and despite that, kinda fun, which was a new thing for them.
5
Jun 24 2025
Highway to Hell
AC/DC
This is the album where AC/DC got their shit together, integrated the targeting systems on their love/hate missile and reinvented rock music. I prefer Malcolm Young's vocals to Bon Scott's (who died shortly after recording this album) mostly because Back in Black and For Those About to Rock dominated my adolescence, but the corralled chaos of him makes this album largely perfect except for the blues drag of "Night Prowler."
4
Jun 25 2025
The Visitors
ABBA
I don't recognize a single ergonomically precise song on this album, making it a weird 1001 choice for the world's most known band, but I'm into it. The opener had me hoping this was the ABBA Krautrock album I didn't know I needed. The stifled disco cabaret of "Head Over Heels" is delicious enough to belay the disappointment that it was not the Go-Go's tune - close your eyes and imagine that. I miss the full endorphin flood of what makes ABBA ABBA, and the soft rock leanings get a little cloying, but still.
4
Jun 27 2025
Homework
Daft Punk
I don't want to love Daft Punk but I do. They deliver the goods sitting right there in previously delivered goods.
4
Jun 30 2025
Van Halen
Van Halen
I forever lean on the Chuck Klosterman rating system: Van Halen's "And the Cradle Will Rock" (not on this album) is the perfect average rock song. Anything better is good. anything worse is bad. So in that spirit, I give this a 3, even though I think it's a little better than that but not much.
3
Jul 01 2025
Stankonia
OutKast
Break! This album is still fun as hell. When I go OutKast, I usually go to the more orchestrated Aquemini, but the sparse beats framing Andre3000's not-quite-outsized-yet persona is excellent. It feels like actual 2000 rap music, yet experimental in the right balance. A rare instance of great hip-hop interludes. Some of the guest-heavy tracks like "Snappin'" take me out of it, but otherwise, rock solid.
4
Jul 02 2025
Tonight's The Night
Neil Young
This is the Neil Youngiest of all Neil Young: ragged at points, nasal to the point of scheduling an ENT appointment, incandescent, too personal. He and the band are playing in the practice room in your dried up old heart and it's up to you whether you let it rock like a human or call the cops like a narc.
4
Jul 03 2025
Done By The Forces Of Nature
Jungle Brothers
One hopes De la Soul and A Tribe Called Quest are on this list representing the Daisy Age, so I'm not sure this smart but monotonous excursion by fellow travelers is that necessary. I had this tape, but don't remember any of this except for "U Make Me Sweat" where he goes 'Diane DIANE?" Great cover art!
3
Jul 04 2025
The Bends
Radiohead
Aw, sweet young pre-electronic, terrible graphics Radiohead. The preferred Radiohead album of the all rig, no gig, pedalboard-obsessed guitarist. This is a good record, but just nowhere the Titanic-sinker that OK Computer is. "High and Dry" is such a beauty. It could've been "Creep"-level ubiquitous were we a more sensitive species. "Fake Plastic Trees" is a epic heartbreaker. The rest is a little like a U2 without the unifying ego or a Stone Roses who doesn't dance.
4
Jul 07 2025
Ellington at Newport
Duke Ellington
This throws down the gauntlet for how complete a "Complete Live at ____" record can be with the Star Spangled Banner and the committee chair spending too much time on his intros. I'm surprised it doesn't include orders from the concession stand. Once they get to the music, it's cool but not the best recording.
2
Jul 08 2025
Deep Purple In Rock
Deep Purple
This album sounds like Guitar Center on Saturday afternoon. Everyone in there has the spirit and two good ideas but it doesn't gel. Machine Head is the only Deep Purple you need and that is a stretch of the term "need"
2
Jul 09 2025
Tom Tom Club
Tom Tom Club
In high school, I got sneered at by a cheerleader for putting on a Tom Tom Club tape at a student council Carnival Ball decorating meeting, and later in life, she became an assistant coroner and was on a short lived reality-cop show about my home town and came off seeming like a horrible person while I am a ray of sunshine, so thanks Tom Tom Club! BIT IT buh bah BIT IT forever!
4
Jul 10 2025
American Beauty
Grateful Dead
Whatever you feel toward the Dead, Grateful or otherwise, is valid and earned, and the dead can take it, but this is their one legitimately great studio record. This one is about leaning into the songs and Jerry's folk and bluegrass proclivities as opposed to seeing where they can be stretched. I am into the live Dead, but I always wish there was more strummy acoustic like there is on this record.
Their voices and harmonies are humble and sweet here as opposed to being shouted over a PA the size of the moon. Produced on purpose instead of relying on a stoned sound guy in a baseball stadium. Proves there is actually a great band up in there. I love it.
5
Jul 11 2025
Blood, Sweat & Tears
Blood, Sweat & Tears
The kind of album the best high school band director in the Midwest conference would make. My band has been working up Satie's Gymnopedies so the opening was a surprise. Not sure it's a great surprise, partic the goofy Zappa-via-Sousa 2nd part, but a surprise.
I have read that this album is one of the first big pop albums recorded on a 16-track tape machine, giving them uncharted layering territory to explore, but they could have ranged farther. David Clayton-Thomas delivers the goods as the Husky Voice of the 70s To Come on the hits, but then the other vocalist only serves to make this album sound like well-crafted and anonymous easy listening. "And When I Die" is much jauntier than I remember, making me wonder if another version polluted the oldies radio of my upbringing.
3
Jul 14 2025
Green River
Creedence Clearwater Revival
One of those that I think I never need to hear again, and yet every time I do, it sounds even better. How a band this loose sounds this tight is a mystery of record production. Also John Fogerty's raspy voice is one of the best instruments in rock 'n' roll.
5
Jul 15 2025
Bat Out Of Hell
Meat Loaf
It would get 5 stars if it weren't so subtle.
4
Jul 16 2025
The Slim Shady LP
Eminem
"My Name Is.." is 1999 incarnate. Aggressively commercial, obnoxious, funny in a Jackass way, smartest move possible. Super catchy. A clown horn honking a hope that we would do better in the next century and well... we kinda used it as a template instead, missing the joke. The album as a whole is one hit, all skit.
3
Jul 17 2025
Go Girl Crazy
The Dictators
Stradling the line between between parody and terrible. They get points for being the goobs that inspired a lot of better NYC punk bands, and honestly liked it more than I thought I would given the sing titles, but not great.
2
Jul 18 2025
Machine Gun Etiquette
The Damned
I love this album so much. "Smash It Up" is one of the catchiest hooks in all rock music. Cinerama punk with a great sense of humor and killer playing. Perfectly produced. So happy it is punk week at 1001.
5
Jul 21 2025
Hybrid Theory
Linkin Park
I don;'t hate it, but this strikes me as something made by committee. The only reason they had people do it is because AI wasn't there yet in the year 2000
2
Jul 22 2025
Blue Lines
Massive Attack
The sound of hooking up with someone in the 90s. I don't remember the big single (by Spotify numbers) "Unfinished Sympathy" at all. It's loaded to say this is by the numbers trip hop because Massive Attack punched in those numbers. I like how they create thick atmosphere about almost nothing, but I get tired of the vocals in pretty much every song. Also doing a cover of a song using samples of that song ("Be Thankful") is a real feat of postmodernism.
3
Jul 23 2025
B-52's
The B-52's
Any time I think I have an idea that is too weird or unrelatable, I remind myself that every adult in my generation knows and will do "Rock Lobster" at the slightest provocation. Timeless record, because what conceivable time could this be from?
4
Jul 24 2025
Vol. 4
Black Sabbath
I was hoping the languid blues cold open was a continuation of a final fadeout on Masters of Reality, like a drugged-out Finnegans Wake or something, but Black Sabbath does what Black Sabbath does - fill the shadows of one's heart with a gothic potential and actually offer something different. The fathers of bleak metal were really a hippie rock band of the finest order and Vol. 4 might be the peak, album-wise., of that trajectory. RIP Ozzy, god of teenagers, scourge of uptight parents, most successful myth maker since the Greeks or at least Kiss, one of the greatest male singers in rock.
4
Jul 25 2025
Get Rich Or Die Tryin'
50 Cent
Yo shorty! Gonna pass due to the outsize portion of my life that 50 Cent has taken up simply by declaring it someone's birthday. He gets a point for continuing to publicly vex fellow has-been Diddy.
1
Jul 28 2025
Dirt
Alice In Chains
Alice in Chains woke some kraken in the American males of my generation that is still wreaking its havoc on our dwindling armadas. It is the oversized Ford pickup of hard rock. Sure, powerful, immaculate, unstoppable, but not the kind of vehicle that has ever helped an actual loser in any palpable way like a beat up Toyota Tacoma has.
2
Jul 29 2025
C'est Chic
CHIC
Nile Rodgers is the master of the perfectly innocuous jam. Legit enjoyed listening to "Le Freak" for the first time on purpose instead of on a school bus speaker or in some boutique from which I would purchase nothing. "At Last I am Free" is total torture tape material - a Branch Davidian would surrender his child bride by minute 5. The rest is solid statistical median good music.
3
Jul 30 2025
Dummy
Portishead
See my Massive Attack review from the other day and add a star. How Portishead never did a Bond theme is beyond me.
5
Jul 31 2025
John Barleycorn Must Die
Traffic
Not my favorite Traffic album, but I love this band. They put a soul groove into hippie excess in just the right amounts, accentuating the positive of both. Plus, Steve Windwood is a double threat of killer vocalist and organist. And I'm into the overuse of the flute.
4
Aug 01 2025
Gentlemen
The Afghan Whigs
This album kills. All the grunge records that came out around this sound like boys cosplaying as degenerate men compared to this. The melodrama is delicious the atmosphere oppressive yet, in a glimmer, uplifting. What a band!
5
Aug 04 2025
Kind Of Blue
Miles Davis
Look! It's Miles Davis from jazz! This album is immediately appealing, well-mannered and restrained, none of which being I'm looking for out of Miles Davis or John Coltrane. It is gorgeous, but a little anodyne.
4
Aug 05 2025
With The Beatles
Beatles
It's not my early Beatles go-to (that would be A Hard Day's Night) but the three-in-a-row "All I've Got to Do" and "All My Loving" and "Don't Bother Me" is pretty killer.
4
Aug 06 2025
Mermaid Avenue
Billy Bragg
Billy Bragg's Back to Basics tape saved my life on an extended family vacation in my teens and Wilco was my new favorite band when this emerged. I don't know how much of an actual collaboration this was - the documentary portrayed this more as two factions in detente - but it is a beautiful, heartfelt album filled with great songs.
5
Aug 07 2025
A Rush Of Blood To The Head
Coldplay
Reviled as the Nickelback of not being Radiohead, Coldplay is ok, if a little non-adhesive. "Clocks" is deserving of its 1B streams, a legit beautiful song. The rest hits like an unenthusiastic massage: thanks but it's not really hitting the spot and you can stop now. No need for this to go on for an hour.
3
Aug 08 2025
Live At The Witch Trials
The Fall
Hell yes. The first full-length rinky dink foray from greatest weird band in the world. It's difficult to explain/justify the appeal of the Fall to the unsold because they are not all that "appealing", and I think there are better entry points to their endless catalog (Grotesque and Bend Sinister) but this is still quality mutant humanity asserting itself.
4
Aug 11 2025
Sticky Fingers
The Rolling Stones
The second best Rolling Stones album after Exile. Problematic, open like an untreated wound, windswept, depleted, punching bag rock.
5
Aug 12 2025
1999
Prince
Recognizing this is heretical, I like Prince's persona more than I like Prince's music, particularly a whole album's worth. The title track and "Little Red Corvette" are brilliant. but much further in, I want someone to make him stop that drum machine and the keyboard stabs, and no one will.
I do enjoy the fact that an album this big has a cover drawn with magic marker. See, that's a great Prince move!
3
Aug 13 2025
Seventh Tree
Goldfrapp
A second surprisingly great record from Goldfrapp on this list! Delicious Beatleque production and sound touches on this without sounding necessarily anachronistic for its time. Great songs, if a little samey throughout, but it's a great same!
4
Aug 14 2025
Tracy Chapman
Tracy Chapman
This album is great, and I'm glad she's being rediscovered, but I just got over having "Fast Car" stuck in my head for 30 years so gonna pass on actually listening to it again.
4
Aug 15 2025
Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
Neil Young & Crazy Horse
Killer. I have the Neil Young appreciation gene, so when people say they don't like his voice, I hear you, but I don't really know what you want from the world. I've listened to this album countless times and it still feels fresh and desperate and immediate, and full of romanticized Crazy Horse magic, which it was - the band had been together for about a week when they recorded it and Neil had a 103 degree fever when he wrote a bunch of the songs in one afternoon. That cover photo is the best pointillist painting ever.
5
Aug 18 2025
The Low End Theory
A Tribe Called Quest
It seems wrong to say this, but this album didn't really do anything for me. I recognize their importance in hip-hop's development and get what they are getting at, but it just feels like one bass note over a minimally divergent boom-bap beat for 48 minutes, with the raps so drowned in the mix they never reach the surface. Maybe if I had it on headphones in the subway or something, the context would connect and it would feel perfect.
2
Aug 19 2025
Hotel California
Eagles
Good: The guy "the Dude" from The Big Lebowski is based on was in town for a film festival and I got asked to take him out to a bar, where he did actually order White Russians and he dropped enough hints about who he was that people around us kept putting the Eagles on the jukebox to troll him into doing the "I fucking hate the Eagles" bit over and over.
Indecisive: Eagles greatest hits is the only CD my dad ever bought. Not sure if he ever played it, or if he did, what in.
Bad: Listen to the drums and rhythm guitar on "Hotel California" closely and realize in horror that they invented white reggae while inventing soft rock.
3
Aug 20 2025
Songs In The Key Of Life
Stevie Wonder
Such a great record. It doesn’t have the punch of Talking Book or Fulfillingness before it but has a wider cinematic scope and precise personal execution to it. I could get by without ever hearing “Isn’t She Lovely” again - it’s hard to express how omnipresent Stevie Wonder’s more saccharine hits were in a gen X upbringing - but it the one I tend to return to the most.
5
Aug 21 2025
Heartbreaker
Ryan Adams
All killer, no filler. This was a very transformative record for me, one that made me say, "I should get a guitar" accidentally out loud in my cubicle, and the guy in the next one sold me his for $10 and it led me to who I am today. I can still sing every word of this thing, which made it feel personal when it was revealed what a scumbag normal old predator rock star he is. But, if you can separate the art from the artist (I manage to compartmentalize enough to still love the monsters that are the Rolling Stones) this record is a must.
5
Aug 22 2025
Loveless
My Bloody Valentine
It's cool that this album exists so that many a hapless guitarist can daydream about what pedalboard configuration will allow them to recreate that one swoon on "When You Sleep" while they waste hours at unfulfilling office jobs or socializing with people who are not guitars.
4
Aug 25 2025
Californication
Red Hot Chili Peppers
If, at the AI prompt, you typed: "soundtrack for jr high school locker room-themed bar n grill", this album would appear.
1
Aug 26 2025
Synchronicity
The Police
The Police's answer to Who's Next, or maybe those 80's King Crimson albums. The big ballad hits on side two sound out of place vs the weirder frenetic songs. The Breath/Pain/Finger adult contemporary block floats like a marshmallow in a gas tank.
4
Aug 27 2025
Kick Out The Jams (Live)
MC5
The title track and cover photo collage alone should get this 5 stars. The removal of the "kick out the jams mf..." intro on "Kick out the Jams" on Spotify is a war crime and thereby loses a point. The rest of the album is so-so, losing another.
3
Aug 28 2025
Teen Dream
Beach House
I dismissed the whole dream pop thing this band embodies as Bed Bath and Reverb until I watched Twin Peaks: The Return and it clicked. This is cinematic music, detached with purpose so that you flood in the empty spot next to where the pretty girl is singing, which is not what I usually want our of music, but I can dig it.
4
Aug 29 2025
After The Gold Rush
Neil Young
I feel for you Neil haters. They could at least spread these out a little more. Love this record. I've thought about or sung to myself "I dreamed I saw the silver spaceships flying in the yellow haze of the sun" at least once a week for the last 20 years.
4
Sep 01 2025
A Love Supreme
John Coltrane
Flawless. Just weird enough to stand out from most basic jazz classics, deliriously expressive, but still wholly accessible.
5