An album as old as me, and a helluva way to kick off this list. The word that comes to mind when I think of Neil Young is passion; and this is the default album for wearing that passion on its sleeve. Love in Out on the Weekend, Heart of Gold and a Man Needs a Maid. sorrow in The Needle and the Damage Done, and anger in Alabama.
It was the sgnature album for me in '97, '98 and I wore its opening line on my back as I navigated a break up, and indeed found it a perfect wallowing song in sunbsequent heatbreaks.
I've always found the thin, orchestral almost reedy plangent quality demonstrates a kind of emotionally open masculinity that is far more resonant with me than more butch demands for love, attention, and respect.
This is my first review in this list, and I absolutley hate star based reviews as I find them too shallow to really make any impact. But that's waht I've signed up for and htis being my first is literally the benchmark. Its a well loved staple in my collection that I dont listen to that much anymore, but still no so well, like and old pair of work trousers. I'll be humming Heart of Gold all weekend I dont doubt. Its not in my top 100 albums I dont figure so It gets 4/5
Man how did this sneak in
I know at least 1001 albums better than this.
I listened to it in the car, which I guess is the best place for it.
It's of a class.of Aerosmith, Cheap Trick and Kiss, and yet nowhere near as good with very little melody(go on, hum a Boston album track) and none of the driving rhythm that the above have.
You can't sing along to it, and you certainly can't dance to it.
Belongs in the brgai bins for people now in their late 60s to reminisce.to
Now we're cooking. What a great record!
All killer no filler and the home of a thousand samples. Its a soul record and a funk record and it rocks. You can feel the influences it wears throughout and how well it stands up today is testament to the blenidng of those influences. And it makes you want to dance. And dance you will
Probably the Smiths album I'm least familiar with, and yet is almost the archetype.
They passed me by 1st time out. I was 14,15, and they wern't on rotation in my school in the way , say, The Cure who were massive, were. My introduction to them was through the Queen is Dead and Strangeways.
It's got Marrs shimmering guitars and Morrissey's fey ambivalent lyrics.
I bet it really bugs him that increasingly they are remembered for the guitar playing and not his arch and now.somewhat tired phrasings. To think they were held up as the acme of mordant wit or the.second coming of Pop. Or summat
Still all the boxes are checked. Death,square pegs in round holes, angst, puns, bottoms and suburban mancunian Britain.
I'd argue That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore is as archetypal a Smith's song as you're ever going to get.
Its nowhere near my favourite album of theirs l, and I doubt I'll revisit it again soon. Or maybe ever. Maybe I've.listened to Meat Is Murder for the last ever time.
Annoyingly good. Oh it hums You want them to not deliver. That somehow they're not better than the sum of their parts. That Ray Manzarek can't hold down a melody and a driving bass line on that organ. That Robby Krieger isn't the bastard child of Bryan Maclean and Brian Jones and that Jim Morrison is actually just a drunken bar crooner.
But it swings, it grooves, and it rocks.
Do I love straight strychnine? Boy do I. I love the.gibbering rush of Psycho and the unholy clatter of Strychnine.. both of which I was first exposed to through Nuggets, of course.
My dear brother was so taken by them he passed out from giddy excitement brought on by an excess of vodka in a shop doorway.
They're.that good.
It's not that great an album though. Not that it hangs around long enough to worry about it!
I had never knowingly listened to Kendrick Lamar before today. And after listening to this I hope I never do again.he is according to spotify known for his top tier lyricism and sharpn conceptual vision. The latter I get , and this does have a framework and comes freighted with a concept.
Lyrically to.my mind he falls well short of the rap I have listened to over the last 35 years, and I just don't see from this why he's held in such regard. Seems meek and formulaic lyrically and what little musicality there is is bland and minimal to the.point ifnveing washed out.
Sounds very much like the background music to GTA or similar and perhaps you know that's all it is
What a strange, deep, and idiosyncratic album this is.
This is the first album in this exercise (I'm 10 in) I've listened to.. i came to it either no great expectations, as I've found Kate Bush to be somewhat of a foreing country to me. I respect her as an artist but as an artist making art that is not for me or that eludes me in some way.
So I tried again with the open ears I'm trying to bring to this exercise.
I found if charmed me and brought me to different parts of my brain. If I'm explaining myself badly it's because the songs defy conventional explanation. There is some pop structure in there but the lyrical content and forms and melodies just keep moving and shifting as you try to pin them down.
Dammit I'm going to listen to it again!
Awesome. Metallica at the peak of their powers. Taut, muscular and relentless. They never sounded better before or since.
The singles from this little corker were ubiquitous in my first year at university. I always thought I sort of heard them rather than listen to them. And having now revisited this album for this exercise it's clear how little I did listen. With 30 years of hindsight and probably a quarter million tunes accreting on top its noteworthy how fresh it remains and how deep the well of musical range has been drawn.
It's a charming vibrant and passionately album that doesn't actually need all the usual bjork adjectives of playfulness and diversity. It's a great pop record.
I had never heard either the artist or tge album before this Introduction and a long commute afforded me the opportunity to do so twice. Its a rare and sparse gem of a record, with a fragile charm and beauty of its own. Do I like it? No, not in any defined way. Do I want to listen to it again? , yes, I probably will. I kinda respect it more than enjoy it at the moment, and in a way I'm not sure how to describe it but definitely can see why it's made this list.. I get the echoes.of it in recent explorations into alaskan tapes, onehtrix point never and andrew tuttle.to name but a few
Really not my cup.of tea. It lacked anything vital.
I loved listening to the crowd reactions. Imagining that same delight would have been manifest in listeners at the time too, like Brian Jones, MickJagger, Keith Richard..
And you can kinda see why too.
Some people may like this record. And that's fine with me, but I am not one of them. Its not antipathy. Its apathy
Luminous. Peak Sab. I always had a problem with the way early Sabbath sounded like they were mixed. This record always seems like the one that they got their sound absolutely nailed on with. Consequently I think this is the album that most influences their followers whatever they may may claim.
If I'd been a few (25) years older I've dropped some acid, put this on my turntable and had a groovy time in my pad with other hip brighr and happening things.
Cosmic.
Reasons why I'm enjoying this app experience #43. I get exposed to cool records I could've and should've listened to ages ago that haven't grown stale in the intervening years. Dug this a couple times yesterday and enjoyed it thoroughly
Funny. On Tonite as on ma y other tracks on this little gem ,if you close your eyes and lose the vocals its motnsomvery far away from, say REMs Murmur. It's a proper jangly guitar pop album amd deserves to be considered in that se space if it ain't already
I think sometimes because its girls it gets put in a different bracket.
I love this record.
I wish it had come into my life earlier than it did so I could have had longer enjoying it than the poor few years that I have.
A cliche it may be but it remains undeniably true. They just not make records like this anymore
As funky as talking book, as righteous as innervisions and as out there as FFF. Ticks all the.boxes. if it weren't for Contusion (and I'm a jazz fan) it'd get a 5
I'm currently playing the game with my son who's just discovered it, "what great single album is in the white album" and the usual suspects have been ejected -Honey Pie, Savoy Truffle etc.
But its testimony to their magpie like nature and breadth of interests that it actually hangs together as a double album, with the filler as it were providing an interesting counterpoint to the killer. And killer it is with some.of their best stuff on here. Fully turbo charged by the changes in technology and Outlook.
I also think that in many ways this album wears its influences to The Goons much more in evidence here- piggies, ob la di, , me and my monkey.
Still a 4 though
Now ain't thos a challenge? As a cultural artefact it's essential: the Pistols backstop, thier role in the.punk movement, the manufacturing of that role, Jamie Reid's artwork, the label wrangles, Virgin'z opportunistic signing, EMi, Bill Grundy, the legacy on 70's and 80's Britain... as an artefact this is the sine qua non of British punk.
I'd argue however that the curious live performances and the singles are much more important musically than the album.
The opening rumble of Anarchy still to thos day has the adrenaline releasing hair standing spine tingling menace it must've had in 76. GSTQ is still as relevant in England's dreaming as it ever was. And pretty vacant is still s scabro7sly funny now.
It's amazing how a girl can affect a score.
Tight as a ducks. Uberfunk. Who'd bank on a bunch of old jazzers knocking it out of the park?
Hate Coldplay. The very antithesis of everything that's righteous about rock and roll.
Blue is one of those albums that always tun up on the greatest amlbum lists but i never really got it until last summer when I spent a lot of time listening to a lot of eother Joni Mitchell albums, Hejira, turbulent Indigo,court and spark, hissing of summer lawns before coming back to blue.
Now I get it. Now I see the intricately polished gem for what it is
Somebody had been listening to their Beatles as well as their Dylan records.
As sixties as you can get
Oh this is a little gem of a record. Beach Boys doing life! doing politics! ,doing social justice! Doing pedicures.
Moments of transcendence on feel flows and surf's up.
Just sublime
Artifice. Pure and simple
I'd not heard this though I do remember it coming out. I was very much focused on Kraftwerk and Tom Waits I recall. Still not a bad record.
It's OK. It's Blur. It's arch and angular and a little bit too knowing for my palate.
Not for me. If you knew me, that'd surprise you. My ex wife loves Queen and was always surprised of.my utter disregard disdain and dislike. I love 10cc. Bowie. Zep. Can't get behind Queen. Ubiquitous as a child I know them very well, but that sound (lap of the gods is a PERFECT illustration) big choral chorus, piano line and lead guitar behind it just annoys me. Leaves me cold
Massive Attack for people who find massive attck too threatening
This came out around the tiime I stopped reading the music press, and within a year nerlynevery indie band sound like this and I still don't know why.
30 odd albums in and this is the first time I've given a little woohoo of joy on seeing today's album.
What a great record.
Billy Bragg is a little less Billy Bragg than he usually is. Wilco are still the punchy, brilliant Wilco of summerteeth, Woody Guthrie is still truth personified.
And oh sweet Mary mother of god Natalie Merchant.
98 I was, somewhat, truth be told, considerably up my own arse. not as up it as I was earlier nor so far as I was later, by any means, I grant you, but this record told me some truth then I needed telling and a whole bunch more I get told a full 27 years later.
I miss those days and I wish I'd heard this record with the wisdom of 27 more years in me when I heard it back then. I.l miss the me i coulda been in 98
Meh. I did what I do whenever I hear Green Day. Go listen to the bands that did it before, did it better. As I'm pretty sure Billie Joe would.
Nothing wrong with it.
Sweet memories. Working in Glasgow and hanging around the West Emd I moved in similar circles to them. They were a class apart though and this album shows exactly why they were critical darlings.
Wandering around the English countryside in springtime with this playing,I realised how few ference points to it I had. Language, tone and structure all coming from places I just couldn't relate to.
Did that make the music less appealing less enchanting or wonderful? No.
On this album journey of great rock and roll and soul and hip hop and what not (still no Jazz mind you) this was a something of a zesty palate cleanser.
Caustic, vital, splenetic and I wish I'd heard it on rel
Cracking little soul album this.
One of my favourite Elvis Costello albu.s and o e you find yourself feeling like you know the words, you find yourself singing along unconsciously
Not my bag, baby. I cant imagine ever wanting to play this record.
not an Am fan. great pop record but not my bag, baby
Now this for me is Costello and The Attractions high water mark. yes there are better songs, yes there is My Aim is True, but Armed Forces scratches that itch unlike any other
never liked the Psychedelic Furs, though I've wanted to and I've tried to ; theirs for me is a too studied cool that I think is a London post punk thing. too artistic, too, yes, studied. But so are talking heads I suspect so are Blondie, so are Wire. But their way I don't love and find it grates.and so, no, sorry, wish it werent so. nah
Very Stevie Wonder I thought on listening to it, and sure enough there he is. fits into his canon as seamlessly as it shines in Michael Jackson's!
Once upon a time this used ot be my least favourite Replacements albums, but I'm older now, and know better.
Ahead of its time on androgynous and still as epically teenage pop brilliant as onlt Answering machine can be
I like the fact they'd been listening to the Beatles and XTC.. but the rest of this I found a struggle
my gateway to the great man was this record, which I played a fair amount during the pandemic. I'd listened to him a fair bit in my student days in the 90s but I was way too into Dylan to get sidetracked. As an older man with a n older man's deeper cuts and desires that once were shadow now inky black but better read, i got the Len I deserved and a Len I could actually enjoy.
I suspected when this came up that this would be one of those records. And sigh, yes it is. Maudlin, dirge like, sub Coldplay parping on. Some lyrical flashes that light it up, but I really wish I could get that hour back and listen to some Sly,(RIP)
Standard British Indie fate. Not sure how it gets in here
I think this struggles sat as it is between innervisions and songs Iin the key of life. But that's not to take away from its joy and its love. We'll miss all this when he's gone
About as good as it gets.
Good, solid, middle of the road Attractions album. Aren't I thw.pompouz know it all.
It's a bog standard Costello by the numbers l. I like it. Other Attractions albums are avaliable
You're doing this today? Fuck OK. Five.
Oh fan me down. The difficulties.fo being young white American man. Oh very difficult.your truth.os such a cross. Spare me. Tired. Yawn, sad I wasn't a kid when this was out. I may have become more gay, more experimental, less bothered by the.preoccupations of my fellow white kids
Now I was big glam/hair metal fan, and a load of bands I was into referenced Van Hen and whilst I got.it, I did t get it tbe same way as when they said Kiss or Aerosmith. Not bu a long way
Hey, not as bad as a post Al Kooper outing coulda been, and this is just so well known now with Spinning Wheel et al. Prefer.Little Milton's More and More. Some nice jazzy touches, but fairly MOR US stodge all up.
