I'm straight up offended that this is on a list of albums you have to hear before you die. There have been bad albums on here, but I can always at least believe there's some greater context I'm missing. But this is cardboard. Porridge. An homage to a high street Apple store. I hope I never have to hear it again.
There is a level of twee I can appreciate and then there's a level of twee that I find unbearable: this skirts the line between the two. You've got to grind through some gallingly sentimental tracks - weepy junk like 'Old Friends' and the Bookends reprise - to get to the palate cleansing power of 'Mrs Robinson' and 'A Hazy Shade of Winter'. I don't think it adds up to a good album, but it's not bad either. Mid 2*.
I can't be the only one who heard Bowie was releasing an album called Black Star and assumed it was about his wife. It isn't, color me surprised. Another surprise is that I actually found myself enjoying the rest of this album much more than I did when it was first released. It can be a little indulgent but the soundscape is awesome, particularly the sax that appears throughout, the guitars on Lazarus and the synths on Cant Give Everything Away. A lot of beauty in the lyrics but its also a little weird hearing a skeletal geriatric sing about looking for ass in the big apple. However, although I know very little about David Bowie's music, this feels authentic. High 3* for me.
This is kitsch, brute-force lyricism contorted to fit over instrumentals that are just happy to be there. I'm sure Bob Dylan plugging in his guitar was a watershed moment for a generation that just got done wetting themselves over Elvis Presley, but I can't understand from this record how Bob Dylan and his songwriting are considered to be legendary, ('Time is a jetplane, it just moves too fast') It's all so gauche and obvious and it makes me scared for the inner life of Dylan fanatics everywhere.
2002 in radio charts: boring white chicks singing about getting their pussy worked over on top of an R&B beat. While that's plenty to get nostalgic about, and while I'd be lying if I said I found nothing to like or respect here (one of these stars is just for Beautiful), this is mostly a lot of oversexed pop filler (is that a fucking thong sewn into your jeans, Christina?!)
I can't be the only one who heard Bowie was releasing an album called Black Star and assumed it was about his wife. It isn't, color me surprised. Another surprise is that I actually found myself enjoying the rest of this album much more than I did when it was first released. It can be a little indulgent but the soundscape is awesome, particularly the sax that appears throughout, the guitars on Lazarus and the synths on Cant Give Everything Away. A lot of beauty in the lyrics but its also a little weird hearing a skeletal geriatric sing about looking for ass in the big apple. However, although I know very little about David Bowie's music, this feels authentic. High 3* for me.
The perfect LP for pumping yourself up to go creep on Mary Sue down at the Milk Bar while Dad works out his WW2 trauma on mum's jaw downstairs. In other words, beyond Feel It (which rocks), this is just too twee for my millenial ears to be able to fully appreciate - I guess we'll have to assume that "[chorus] bring your lovin home to me tonight (yea!) x 10" was a panty-dropper in the 60s (the crowd sounds like they're having the time of their lives). Sam Cooke's voice sounds really nice, but I just don't have enough musical context to overcome the generational barrier for this one.
Nirvana unplugged is the best version of this band to me. Lake of Fire, All Apologies and Where Did You Sleep Last Night are especially good, but I like all of the renditions of Nirvana songs at least as much as the studio versions & the covers are all great. And the fact it's from an intimate live gig really does add something to the listening experience, although Kurt Cobain's stoner drawl ('this was written by the vessaleeeenes') is a little grating when disembodied & the sound of the crowd is annoying in that tickets to this very small event almost certainly went to industry executives and their douchebag friends. I can get past these petty annoyances: this is a very worthwhile live album and is deserving of its reputation.
I think I'd need to be on drugs to get anything out of this kind of music.
Exhibit A in the case against bands whose reputation has been massively over inflated thanks to tabloid tales of drug addiction and interpersonal conflict. If smacked-out Pete Doherty didn't break into his bandmate's flat in the time between The Libertines' first album and this one, this could easily be considered just another album for the indie rock landfill. It's not bad at all, but it is just not as interesting as the stuff in the genre that came before and after. High 2*.
It is very polished and has a few tracks that I really like, but generally it didn't make much of an impact on me. Highlights include Isn't She Lovely and discovering that this was where the Gangsta's Paradise sample came from, (it's such a nice track on the album too).
Damn. I thought I'd hate this but enjoyed it quite a bit. Simple storytelling across 30 minutes which adds up to a very pleasant album.
This is everything great about post-punk: fatalistic political ideas wrapped in catchy and accessible tunes without ever straying into pretentiousness. In that sense, it's everything that The Libertines we just listened to wishes it could be. A star among stars which particularly stood out to me: the bass work. It's a character on every track and feels very familiar as someone who has listened to a lot of punk past this era, which I guess says something about its influence.
Imagine going back in time and trying to explain to the people who loved this album that people do coke off of smartphones now. This is all very groovy, very Vice City and highly enjoyable - I don't think there's any song on the whole album that falls flat. It's almost comically shallow, but who cares? It's part of the charm. High 3*, could be a 4⛷️⛷️ ⛷️
2002 in radio charts: boring white chicks singing about getting their pussy worked over on top of an R&B beat. While that's plenty to get nostalgic about, and while I'd be lying if I said I found nothing to like or respect here (one of these stars is just for Beautiful), this is mostly a lot of oversexed pop filler (is that a fucking thong sewn into your jeans, Christina?!)
I like Queen too George, but the 80s pop production on this is making my ears bleed. And what the hell is going on with the songwriting here? There's a whole five minute track dedicated to unpacking the "monkey on your back" idiom (Why can't you do it? / Why can't you set your monkey free? /Always giving into it / Do you love the monkey or do you love me?), after we're done begging for sex in the most appalling way imaginable (Sex is natural sex is good/ Not everybody does it/ But everybody should/ Sex is natural sex is fun/ Sex is best when it's one on one). I don't think the young gentleman you're singing to will appreciate the implications of that last line George, and frankly neither do I. This is commercial and mindless, and the sound has aged so poorly that I can't imagine what anyone could still get out of this record unless they're nostalgic or looking to get turned out by George Michael.
This is pretty good with some nice guitars and ideas. It wears its The Kinks influence on its sleeve, which isn't a terrible thing, but the album really started to bleed together for me by the last few tracks and I had no real desire to listen more than once. Low 3.
This is cool as hell. I feel that this has a very diverse sound such that it consistently demands your attention without becoming a chore. In the best way possible, large parts of this reminds me of the most enchanting video game background music ever, like a Sonic stage on acid or something. Best of all, there's no pretence that any of these lyrics really mean anything, so you never get the grating pretentiousness you might otherwise expect from such an eccentric album. Maybe there's one or two tracks I could do without, but that won't stop me from giving this a 5*.
This is noisy and aggressive and I don't know if I approve, but after spending some time disassociating to Kerosene I came to the realization I was enjoying myself? As far as noise rock goes, it is eminently accessible and entertaining. 3*.
How cold can coldcuts get? Pretty cold. Whats That Noise? is a sick album. It's a top shelf blend of acid house and DIY hiphop, cutting some unhinged samples (probably why it isn't on streaming) with dirty dance music and some really surprising vocals. Stop This Crazy Thing and Smoke Dis One are undoubtedly highlights, but there's fun to be had all through. It overstays its welcome just a little, and it's slightly of its time, but that doesnt matter: that time was evidently awesome and so is this.
I enjoyed this alot, very immersive and well-realized. Incredibly, this sounds like it could have come out in the last five years, both in terms of production quality (it is beautiful with good headphones) and style. It's undoubtedly plundering the best of what was going on in hip hop around this time, but equally there are significant elements of Dummy's intricate soundscape that have had major moments in recent popular music: the atmospheric, almost gothic aesthetic is all over the Lana Del Rey-Lorde-Billie Eilish pop lineage, and the vibe-heavy, emo-on-benzos production had a moment with a particularly shitty kind of rap coming out in the late 2010s, and lofi hip hop more generally. Who knows much direct influence Dummy had on those artists but at the very least it speaks to how ahead of its time this blend of sound was. There may be contemporary Portishead analogs that I find more interesting (that are hopefully on this list) and the vocalist wears thin by the end, but this is a high 4 for me.
As my first real listen to ABBA I was expecting to be horrified by whatever it was that's given them their eternal mass appeal. But actually I was sort of encouraged at how creative and earnest all of this is. There are some strange moments. Tiger is the band's apparantly urgent PSA about the dangers of big city life, told through the eyes of a serial rapist. But if these quirks are the cost of having creativity in pop music, I'm here for it. I'm interested in how Abba was able to churn out so many enduring hits without becoming formulaic: I guess the Swedes really are just that good at pop. Fernando is probably my fave. High 3.
Howd we go from the evidently mainstream sound of big band Sam Cooke to this in just a few years? And then on the other side, its crazy that punk hadn't really gotten going at this point yet VU&Nico sounds like something that stuff would have refined into as opposed to taken inspiration from. This fucks. It fucks big time.
I'm straight up offended that this is on a list of albums you have to hear before you die. There have been bad albums on here, but I can always at least believe there's some greater context I'm missing. But this is cardboard. Porridge. An homage to a high street Apple store. I hope I never have to hear it again.
This sort of music has been referenced so many times in popular culture that it has calcified into something that's very difficult to take seriously as a millenial coming to it in 2024. It's the music that needs to be playing when the newly arrived Terminator walks into a bar filled with tough guys, its the motif for the muscle-car driving douchebag that's nailing the protagonist's crush, it's what the washed up deadbeat dad on One Tree Hill (or something, whatever) has on the record player while he's bottoming out with a bottle of Jack Daniels.
I'm committed to listening to every album on here at least twice, but this one is a test from the lord himself. Melodramatic, humorless, uncreative. I cannot fathom how this album can be on any best-albums list that isn't merely the personal fascinations of the most boring creative arts graduate you know. It's a slap in the face to every great dreary album that has taken seriously its obligation to not be boring in its pursuit of capturing crushing sadness, and I take this 1001 Albums list less seriously having listened to this.
A classic. It's heavy, angsty, energetic, screamy and noisy; somehow thanks to Kurt's undeniable vocal presence and razor sharp production these things make for an intensely palatable album. And between all these things, there's a poetry that I really can't put into words, but I get it.
It's as if someone took a Beatles record and made it interesting. I like this a lot. The strings are used to terrific effect and there's a great range of sounds and production quirks thay makes it an engaging listen. It peaks with the opening 'Turn to Stone', and it's afflicted with the banal romance vernacular of the era (how many times does the word 'baby' occur on this album?), but I'd be happy to come back to this. A high 3*.
This is kitsch, brute-force lyricism contorted to fit over instrumentals that are just happy to be there. I'm sure Bob Dylan plugging in his guitar was a watershed moment for a generation that just got done wetting themselves over Elvis Presley, but I can't understand from this record how Bob Dylan and his songwriting are considered to be legendary, ('Time is a jetplane, it just moves too fast') It's all so gauche and obvious and it makes me scared for the inner life of Dylan fanatics everywhere.
I know what a heathen is, but I'm not sure what it means for him to be back deh pon di wall. It's good natured, entertaining music. It's not something I'd seek out but I found myself getting lost in its atmosphere and groove. Warm 3*
This was obviously breaking new ground when it was released, but as a pure listening experience in 2025 all you're left with is safe, rudimentary, admittedly high energy rock music and absurd lyrics about motor transport and threatening to kill your girlfriend if she ever leaves you. No doubt Beatles fans will tell you that John Lennon imitating the sound of a car horn is groundbreaking stuff, but it doesn't make this album any less ridiculous as a mostly first time listener - especially if you already know what a phony shithead Lennon was. 2*, barely.
The Smiths at peak creativity. They'd more or less just put out the platonic ideal of a Smiths album in The Queen Is Dead, which makes their willingness to depart from that and experiment with new sounds all the more satisfying on this one. It's still undeniably a The Smiths record at its core - morose, ironic lyrics atop irresistibly catchy compositions - but this is a tantalising glimpse into where thos band might have gone if they hadn't broken up. Stop Me If You Think You've Heard This One Before is an all time song for me.
Beautiful and hypnotic - how it is this sounds so good would be way beyond my musical knowledge to articulate. The story behind the concert is interesting and if by chance it's all true it's a great example of the artistic power of working under constraint, but really I just think this is tremendously passionate improvisational piano playing by a savant. The vocalisations are where he loses me - major douchechills. But it's no big deal. I'm glad I found this.
This is great. I had wrongly written these guys off as shopping mall rock, turns out they're actually unbelievable musicians. Money For Nothing is an outrageous track - most memorable opening and riff I can remember hearing in a long time. And there are similarly sick moments all over the album. Maybe some of it is overlong. But I enjoyed the whole thing. High 4*
The critics had it right the first time. Indulgent, garish and manufactured, it's the kind of shit that could only come from people who think they can do no wrong, and that as long as they can be recorded the world absolutely must hear them. Look no further than the cover of Little Wing, which takes so many liberties in smothering a classic tune in pomp that it loses all character. It gets a star for Layla, but even that seems worse when put in the context of this album.
It's alright but didn't really make any type of contact with me. Mr Soul and Broken Arrow are the peaks - other than that I couldnt tell you a single thing about this.
There are magnificent peaks on this album, and it's not just the radio superhits: tracks like The Prophet's Song (a pleasant surprise which somehow rivals even Bohemian Rhapsody in its scope and execution) and the furious, seething Death on Two Legs prove that this album is much more than its singles. It's a progressive record bursting with creativity, even if some of the material in between the peaks are somewhat grating. I could do without the Taylor/May solo tracks. They’re good singers, good enough that you wouldn't be surprised to find them fronting their own bands in this era, but that's precisely the problem: it’s the moments that Freddie takes a back seat that the album starts resembling the more run-of-the-mill rock of the 70s. Hearing Taylor croon about his Alfa Romeo dispels some of the magic cast by Freddie's bombastic vocals. However: if handing the reins over to the rest of the band for a few tracks is the cost of being able to deliver insane vocal harmonies like in Bohemian Rhapsody and the May-created Prophets Song, I really can't complain too much. Easy 4.
I don't know. It's simple and twisted and hard to listen to. But it took a while for me realize that there's no real point to the discomfort, no thesis it's striving to realize in any serious way. When the album culminates in Frankie's Teardrop, it feels shocking for the sake of being shocking (and even that falls flat in a world where cartel execution videos and extreme sexual violence are a couple of mouseclicks away). If there was any doubt, the fleeting political and social references there've been up until that point are exposed as flimsy excuses. It's as empty as it is confronting, and yet there's a certain charm here that has pulled me back for multiple listens. God knows why.
There are three tracks worth hearing on this album, and they happen to be the top 3 most streamed GnR songs on Spotify. I don't even need to name them - it'd be literally impossible for anyone reading this to guess wrong. And it's true, they're all-time great songs. But the rest of this sounds like Visiting Day from The Sopranos got a record deal. Putrid stuff.
I liked it. Though I'd love to hear a fan of this record explain the artistry behind having your entire opening track be 1m 43s of a man say 'when time becomes a loop'. Not a great foot to get off on. The rest is good bar a few more irritating moments. 'MONDAY' being a highlight.
There's a great moment on the final track when Marianne angrily sings things like 'whyd ya let her suck your cock' and 'why'd ya spit on my snatch?" Such is the energy of Marianne Faithfull. This was a lot of fun, with an attitude and sound that feels very modern.
Coldplay cannot possibly deserve half the hate they get considering how good this album is. It's 10.5 tracks of perfectly distilled radio-ready pop rock. Catchy & surprising production with effective lyrics; pretty without making you want to retch. If it's guilty of anything, it's success - this sound ended up being replicated and refined beyond all charm through the 00s and early 10s both by Coldplay themselves and many shit bands imitating them. But the earnest tastefulness of this album survives all that. 4*
Strong homosexual undertones.
I should really like this album. Sting is an interesting singer and a good writer. The instruments - particularly the drums - are stellar. It's able to be poignantly simplistic (Every Breath You Take) and it's also able to be intricate and complex (Synchronicity II). But this is all too polished, which wouldn't be a problem on another record but is a rather big one on an album that is so consoicuously in search of some kind of a sharp edge.
There is a level of twee I can appreciate and then there's a level of twee that I find unbearable: this skirts the line between the two. You've got to grind through some gallingly sentimental tracks - weepy junk like 'Old Friends' and the Bookends reprise - to get to the palate cleansing power of 'Mrs Robinson' and 'A Hazy Shade of Winter'. I don't think it adds up to a good album, but it's not bad either. Mid 2*.
‘Pocahontas’ captures what I find so risible about Neil Young. It starts by describing the Native American genocide in boilerplate terms: 'they killed the buffalo', 'they came with their firesticks', 'modern life is all shingled roofs and taxicabs'. It's trite, but harmless. Next though, he describes how he wants to fuck Pocahontas so she can tell him how she ‘felt’ about it, while Neil (we can imagine) noodles on the guitar and tells her how she's 'totally right on, man'. The track's final image, and I suspect Young's real fantasy, is of he and Pocahontas sitting around a fire discussing indigenous rights with Marlon Brando. Shortly after this track there's a corker about how Welfare Mothers make better lovers. Here Neil is even more out to sea than he was with the Native Americans, with the only touchstones he can conjure being the city laundromat and loitering on the street with her multitude of children. I guess you could say that anything Neil Young is about the guitar playing: make a fucking guitar album then Neil, and keep your trap shut. 1*
Clinical, sterile blues music. It leaves me totally cold.
As entertaining as this album can be, there's only so much I can get out of this kind of music - at its core it is empty which is okay. That said, this album is about as much as I can ever see myself enjoying this genre.
Every aesthetic impulse I have is telling me to hate this music. And I think I do actually hate it. Just look at them sitting there in their bathtub, like someone photoshopped The Shaggs onto a Papa Roach album cover. California Dreamin is a classic, Monday Monday is good too, and props to them for letting the fat one into the band long before such things were done. If only that were enough.
This sort of music is so image-conscious that I cannot take it seriously as genuine artistic expression. Like, you know exactly what the preoccupations of this album will be before you ever hit play. Being a lonely cowboy is hard. Being a lonely cowboy while also getting lots of pussy is especially hard. Being ‘free’ (which I guess just means being away from lawmen and cities and soap) is cool. Drinking gin from a jug is also cool. You see a track called 'Low Down Freedom' and you can practically write it yourself: lamenting about having to leave the girl who's just spent the evening 'fitting' the singer's body (gross) because all that freedom is irresistible to a wild cowboy like he. Every creative decision is made to satiate people who would burn down the hootenanny if this music didn’t fit within these very narrow prescriptions. We should not indulge them.
I am utterly indifferent to this. It peaks with the title track and then never gets back there.
To adapt a quote: everyone has an album in them, but in most cases that's where it should stay. I can't help but think of this listening to Stephen Stills and the other virtuoso (apparantly) guitarists this list seems to love so much. They're boring and overly manufactured and despite the attempt to pretend otherwise with ever more absurd band names (I'm surprised this band wasn't called Johnny and the Seabass), it's just a thinly disguised vehicle for Stills' celebrity.
I get it, it was groundbreaking and massively influential and the generation that made 'Surfin Bird' a hit were lucky to be there. But that counts for very little towards the listening experience when you're hearing it first in 2025, by which time we've had 50+ years of development and experimentation by bands much less heavily commercialized and most importantly not fronted by John Lennon, who may be the most insincere and grating frontman ever. As an aside some of the reviews on these Beatles albums are deranged: so moist and overwritten that it almost feels like you're interrupting an intimate moment by reading them. Move on, people!
It's quintessential The Smiths: upbeat, quirky pop instrumentals behind poetic ornery storytelling. It's an unbeatable combo. The bass on this really shines, especially in deeper cuts like Rusholme Ruffians but really all across the record. And it's got one of my favorites - This Joke Isn't Funny Anymore, which is the band firing on all cylinders and the archetypical Smiths track for me.
This is a really unique blend of rock, jazz, reggae and psychadelia that massively works for me. It's content to wander & take its time but isn't afraid to ramp up when necessary. And I'm not much for Jazz but its contribution here is essential. Great album, high 4.
What a great album. Pretty much every song here is good except Exit. I don't get the hate.
This is unbelievably corny and pretty insubstantial. There are some nice melodies and cool moments with the guitars and a sense that the band aren't taking themselves very seriously anyway that I find kind of endearing: these elements make me think that maybe in another universe, one where I had ADHD or was angry at my Christian parents, I could have talked myself into liking what Megadeth is doing here. But this is not that universe, and I got very little out of this album other than an idea that maybe I'd have been on the side of the satanic panic after all.
This is technically very tight: the production is progressive and immaculate, while LL Cool J's delivery and rhyme schemes are extraordinary. Subject-matter wise, a lot of this falls into the category of 'why do we need to know this?'', but as a vehicle for the technical prowess of LL Cool J and his producers this is a good album. Title track is unreal but it's all very listenable.
This deserves its reputation. Hard to come up with anything that hasn't been said a million times before. I love this album - to me it's pure rap at its best. RZA's production is godlike (especially love the sample loop on Can It All Be So Simple and the way the Kung Fu theme is worked in throughout) and, it's intricate and layered yet still sounds raw and stripped back, providing the perfect platform for the group to come in with some of my favorite delivery and flow ever. It might also be the only hip hop album with these skits that I don't find totally grating after a few listens. They slot right into the raw atmosphere of the album and don't feel as obligatory as they would on many hip hop albums in the next 10 years. 5*
I like it as very servicable alt rock record which still kanages to carve out its own character. The singer's voice is so distinctive and used to great effect, with the oscillation between quiet intensity and unhinged screeching making for a very diverse listen and allows the album to hit some emotional notes that might otherwise have been out of reach. Some of it is forgettable, such that the album bleeds together although it never quite gets boring.
The shitty blues projects this list has given us so far may have put me off this kind of music for life, but this just about draws from enough sources & avoids the tropes of the genre enough for me to enjoy. Tracks like Who'll Stop the Rain show that its possible for this kind of music to be overtly political without feeling debased and unpoetic, and Long as I Can See The Light show how broad a range of influences the band is working with. It's not perfect. I Heard It Through The Grapevine didn't need to be that long and I think CCR knew it. Ooby Dooby is what I brace for when I'm about to hear a blues record, & that same 'doo-doo-do-doooo' scat rears its head throughout this. And of course, it's blues, so there's gotta be a track called 'My Baby Left Me'. But this all sounds good to me. Solid 3.
Genuinely trippy and surreal. The creative highs come in tracks like I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night, with this distinctive vespine buzz oscillating between channels creating a distinctive psychadelic sound. Small decisions like reverbing the band on Get Me To The World On time are similarly effective on what could otherwise be generic rock and roll. I dislike the nightmarishly dour The King is in the Counting House, which is how I imagine it sounds to be dosed with LSD and wheeled through the royals exhibit at Madame Toussads with your eyes stapled open. So this isn't perfect, but it's a rare psychadelic rock album that lives up to the name.
This is good stuff. Minimalist in its own way, it still covers a surprising range of sounds- not something you'd expect after their debut with Nico. I enjoy all the experimentation here, with perhaps the lone exception being The Murder Mystery. Playing a different set of lyrics in each ear simultaneously is sadistic.
Musically this is really enjoyable. Vocally and lyrically, Buckley disappeared up his own ass, where the rest of the world would inevitably follow - and still remain- after his death. He's obviously a great singer with real range, but here he uses it to go in circles over the same subject matter - fear in love - and only occassionally does this lead to anything insightful or revelatory. Those occasions are beautiful, but it's telling that the album's unmissable peak is a rendition of a song Buckley didn't write in Hallelujah - though to his credit it is the definitive version of the song.
Ye at his creative peak. A wildly engrossing take on punk & industrial music, the energy on this is crazy: the breathless antagonism of New Slaves, the horns on Blood on the Leaves, and for my money an all time closer in Bound 2 - all beautiful. And Kanye's distinct sense of humour is out in force here, perhaps the last true glimpse of it we ever got before Kanye stopped being in on the joke (to borrow a phrase from Boyd). But there's an attitude that runs all the way through, even on lesser tracks like Send It, that really brings this together into a cohesive musical statement, something Lou Reed described as 'supreme beauty' in his review of the record, one of my favourites. Then there's the meta: after putting out one of the most commercially and critically successful hip hop albums ever in MBDTF, itself an olive branch to the mainstream after his Taylor Swift fiasco, it took a lot of balls to follow it up with something as abrasive and uncommercial as this - something the album is self-aware about and plays on for great effect ("first you make them like you then make them unlike you" and the terrific "he'll give us what we need, it may not be what we want" choir lift - a textbook Kanye sample amid Daft Punk's production). Yet it has stood the test of time as one of the most raw, unfiltered and well realized hip hop projects of the 21st century. It's remarkable how clear of a peak this is for Kanye: unless you count the transcendent Kids See Ghosts, it's the last time we got a cohesive, fully formed project from him - which isn't to disparage all of his later stuff, but none of it - not even Pablo - received the same care and attention that Yeezus did.
Being a funny person I know a thing or two about laughter, so when I saw the concept behind this album I knew I had to listen closely. And it's a very good album. Its inevitably a maximalist endeavour, but the sheer range of sounds and cadences you get thrown at you is dizzying but exciting. Heroes and Villains & Good Vibrations (which I gather didn't debut here) are such meticulous musical journeys that they almost sound strained, but they're great songs. Parts of this get so quaint and off the wall that it brings the good vibes to a screeching halt. ("I threw away the candy bar and I ate the wrapper/when they told me what I did I burst into laughter"). But even some of those tracks - like Barnyard - retain such musical vision that it's hard to write them off in any real way. I wouldn't say any of this left much of an emotional mark on me, but I'd happily give another shot in future. High 3.
The horns on the opener are so distinct they become songs unto themselves, yet the rest is forgettable. That's how a lot of this album is for me: there are some ideas, moments and quirks that are pique my interest; everything in between is a drag.
My only experience with this band and album is the excellent use of DLZ in Breaking Bad as Walter tells the methheads to stay out of his territory. The rest of Dear Science is pretty good too. It's got a thick but pleasant atmosphere that's sort of hard to pin down: is it optimistic? Pessimistic? Cynical? Sardonic? Somehow the band manages to tread the line between all of these. There's a mildly embarrassing 'sah random XD' vibe that rears its head on this occassionally but nothing we havent seen before out of an alt rock band of this time - I'm thinking of Dancing Choose. But the music is so tight, some lyrical missteps are easy to ignore: eg Love Dog sounds like it might only a few rungs above Phoebe's smelly cat song from Friends, but it still works when couched in the moody palette the band is working with here. I'd give it a high 3 but this is one I wish I had the time to spin more than twice.
I've got the same issue with Talking Book as I do with most of this kind of music: it pretty much only has one gear, which is 'sugary crooning'. In fact you can scan down the tracklist and get a nearly complete idea of where the album is going to go - you could probably even guess at a couple of the verses on each track and only end up being off by one or two words. That's whatever: it's a Stevie Wonder album after all, noone is looking for Keats. But it leaves me with a feeling that a lot of the smiling romance of this album and others like it is insincere and commercial & I resent having to spend any energy digesting it. Superstition rocks, though.
I can dig this. On some level it's the standard fare of any post Beatles vanity project. But then there are glimpses of something deeper and troubling just out of view that I find oddly engrossing here. You can see it in the urgent sax on Mrs Vanderbilt and the not-very-assuring twist it puts on the 'Whats the use of worrying?' chorus, or the generally concerning Nineteen Hundred and Eighty Five (this plays a darkly amusing role in the novel Glamorama by Brett Easton Ellis). It's the sound of a screwball stoner comedy set in Liverpool but directed by David Lynch - like at any moment McCartney could stop dead in the middle of a song and start addressing the listener personally. Just when I start to think I'm imagining it, another musical flourish comes along to convince me that this is all meant to be a little bit weird. Just me?
"And the winner of this year's Paper Merchant of the year award: Wernham, Hogg & Partners!" Applause. The lights go down on the sparsely packed conference room in Hull's Premier Inn as a bloated troupe of polyester and cholesterol make their way up to the stage to accept their prize, to reap the year's sow. The XX's Crystalline plays as they do, practically an anachronism in this cursed purgatory but Phil the middle aged conference manager insisted. He heard it on an iPod commercial and knew this was the dynamism the Paper Merchant awards needed. But the effect is more like having a Beatles cover band play a dementia home: it's a cruel simulacra of artistry, barely real enough to find some tortured resonance in the few braincells left in the room but nothing that'll knock them off the course the Lexapro has set for them. It sucks, basically. History will not be kind to this era of popular music.
Interesting music. It sounds like a Beatles album only with some edge. The guitar probably makes the whole record: so crisp and groovy and a character all the way through. I'm not a huge fan of the lyrics (by the time I'm done singing / the bells from the schools of wars will be ringin). Id take that over some of the sockeningly banal subject matter of their near contemporaries, though.