for as ubiquitous as Ray Charles is in culture, i've never really spent much time with his music beyond a small handful of his biggest hits. this record is a treat, he's really flexing his vocal chops and making it sound easy. for 1959 when most pop music felt like aural bubble gum, Ray's really dripping with a raw emotion here that was rare for the time, especially in the back half once the choral and string arrangements get thick and hearty on the run of ballads he knocks out.

cool funk jams, but not just spinning its wheels. there’s a certain amount of direction and intention to the solo/instrumental sections that you don’t find all the time in these types of open-ended jam style songs. the windup storytelling going into Phoenix is maybe a little long winded, but it pays off once it finally gets to the song proper. cool mix choices with the drums and bass straight up the center, and basically every instrument panned hard left or right. the guitar in Walk On By with the opposite panned ~200ms delay is fuckin rad. really enjoyed this record, a lot of cool r&b shit going on especially for 1969.

giving this one a fair shake for the first time in years, always been resistant. i like it more than i did when i was younger, but overall it’s still not really my wheelhouse. lots of great production ideas and musical concepts, the craftsmanship is really really impressive. i feel like there are long stretches of the vibe being very languid and drawn out, and sometimes they pay off but sometimes they don’t. it’s good but it’s exhausting. a lot of the album’s runtime kinda feels like homework to me, ultimately i wasn’t really feeling very many feels.

i adore this record from top to bottom, it’s been an all-time favorite of mine going back years.

interesting. not much of a prog rock guy, and as such i appreciate some of what’s going on here but this kind of thing always starts to feel to me like it’s spinning its wheels after a while. cool ideas in and out, but sometimes i’m not really sure why it’s repeating itself for so long at a time or why anything is happening. but the production concepts at times are really cool. not the record to invite me into giving prog another shot, but i enjoyed pieces of it for what it is.

saccharine pop goodness. he’s the king of pop for a reason. not every song on this record does it for me, but it all makes sense and i get it. the bangers bang hard.

i have a certain amount of respect and appreciation for the Rolling Stones because there is a pretty huge number of bands and artists i love who in all likelihood wouldn’t exist without them. having said that, i do not care for the Rolling Stones one bit. i find them obtuse and annoying, overly worshipful of blues/blues rock without really elevating the form at all. on some level, all of their songs, style, image, feel like they just *need* you to understand how cool they are. they have nothing for me. i’ll give this one extra star for not having any of the big hits that really crawl under my skin and drive me insane, but i really tried to give Exile a fair shake and only ended up making it halfway through.

i love this record so much. what a lovely reprieve from the absolute slog of Exile on Main Street. it's light and fun while not totally giving into the lamest pop sensibilities it easily could have. it's like party music for nerds, which is 100% my zone. the guitars are thin and bouncy, keys enter and exit at just the right moments, lots of dissonance that works itself out without overstaying its welcome, and the varying vocal textures keep things moving at a steady clip. also, it's fucking funny.

when its the 90’s and you want ELO but without the precision or attention to craft. the Gallaghers themselves freely admit that their lyrics don’t actually mean anything, and i feel like the songs suffer for it sometimes. every line doesn’t need to be some profound poetry necessarily, but shit like “slowly walking down the hall, faster than a cannonball,” makes me feel like they think we’re all stupid. and given the outsized loudmouth personalities of these two donuts, they probably do. even so, a lot of the guitar texture is pretty cool, and Liam’s got a good voice. it moves along at a pretty steady clip most of the time, the ideas get too stale or overstay their welcome despite some of the songs being fairly long for a pop-rock album.

coming in with a hot take nobody's ever said before: this album rules. it's like saying The Godfather is one of the best movies, like yeah of course it is. what hasn't been said. for me it's the way no single musical idea overstays its welcome, and it moves around to so many different things without giving you whiplash or disorienting you. need a comedown? here's Mother. ready for some rowdy guitar action? Young Lust, coming right up. every component of every track is immaculately recorded, and nothing feels like an accident or something that wasn't supposed to be there. truly an incredible piece of work.

just the most classic beautiful shit in the world. one of the most amazing voices to ever walk the earth, putting her indelible mark on some of the most timeless songs ever composed. perfect work.

for as ubiquitous as Ray Charles is in culture, i've never really spent much time with his music beyond a small handful of his biggest hits. this record is a treat, he's really flexing his vocal chops and making it sound easy. for 1959 when most pop music felt like aural bubble gum, Ray's really dripping with a raw emotion here that was rare for the time, especially in the back half once the choral and string arrangements get thick and hearty on the run of ballads he knocks out.

nice to hear Bruce stripped down to the studs and just showing off a barebones example of what makes him work. out of the ordinary for him but very cool and welcome.

i'm admittedly not a huge hip-hop guy, but this feels like my zone. rad beats, vocal rhythm is really tight and in the pocket, not one of the 90's rap albums that filled itself out with a bunch of skits and annoying shit. didn't rock my world but i enjoyed it. beyond the technical aspects, i'm kind of lacking in info that helps me form a solid opinion but that's not the album's fault, just a gap in my cultural knowledge.

super fun upbeat singer-songwriter jams. you can hear him starting to gather ideas and influences for his later records here. it's almost like proto-graceland.

i love this old cowboy shit. the pride and ego of men in the old west, facing death and violent consequences for their misplaced love and jealous rage. a lot of morbidity in these stories but it serves a purpose, the lyrics wouldn't make any sense without it. honestly there's a lot here that's still relevant to so-called alpha males today.

not totally my speed, but i appreciate it for what it’s doing. i’d never really thoughtfully listened to Bittersweet Symphony before despite hearing it a million times, and there’s a real craft and care to it that hadn’t ever stuck out to me.

indie rock ASMR. i can appreciate that the intimate atmosphere is that makes Elliott Smith's music what it is, but i could never really get into the vocal production where it feels like he's whispering into both of my ears at the same time. the songs are pretty great though.

i fucking hate KISS. everything about them is infuriating to me. that's all i have to say about that.

this is so languid and dour in tone that it was hard to get through. i had trouble with the excessive vocal vibrato, and none of the music really moved me or captured my attention. this kind of over-polished vocal driven piano music always kinda feels to me like it was manufactured in a lab to make me feel things, and i always end up rejecting it. so maybe it's good, but i hate this kind of thing.

a little less accessible than Dark Side or The Wall, but just as epic and well-built.

sometimes the over-the-top musical theater kid energy is too much, but i found myself really enjoying it on a lot of this record. feels like being a teenager when all your emotions are constantly dialed up to 10 and everything is the end of the world.

one of the coolest bands to ever do the damn thing. i love this record from top to bottom.

this one really blew my hair back. unapologetic indie/power-pop is my zone, and goddamn this one delivers that. i can't believe i'd never heard of this band before, they're so in my wheelhouse that i went and listened to everything they have after this.

can't lie, i kinda tuned in and out while this was playing. but it felt cool the whole time. lots of vibes. i'll come back to this with a little more intent.

super fun rock record, except for some of the lyrics have aged awfully and are pretty tough to listen to in present time, namely Jailbait (how many rock artists had a song about this, jesus christ) and The Chase is Better Than the Catch. no real reason to revisit those ever again, i need a shower. but otherwise, straight-ahead rock and roll that goes pretty hard. i do wish mix-wise there was a lot more low end though, it feels kind of anemic at times.