Maybe I just wasn't listening to enough of this in my prime teenage angst years, but I don't really get bands that sound like this. Some solid songs for sure, but nothing that really grips me all that much. Also, British
:theWildest:
Solid stuff! I love hearing music from across the world, and Songhai/Malian music isn't one I'd touched on before now.
Didn't enjoy it as much as her later, weirder albums that I've heard, but still some solid leftfield pop/house tunes. I'm afraid I do not stand with my compatriots on this one :pensive:
Sheer slick jazz-rock perfection. Undeniably cool and breezy listen for any time of year.
Great voice, but way too little variety for over 3 hours of music.
Great album, love this kind of sound, it's just not the absolute best I've heard in this style. I like some of Thelonious' later work more.
Great relisten! Noisy shoegaze in the "my vacuum cleaner is malfunctioning" style is getting up there for me. What really brings it out is getting absorbed enough into the noisy, all-consuming atmosphere that you can start to pick out the really pretty melodies buried underneath.
Interesting album with a neat vibe and some good songs, unfortunately some of them didn't quite land for me.
Enjoyed this a lot more than I expected to! 70 minutes of grunge/hard rock seemed like it would get old fast, but the songwriting on here kept me going the whole way through - and of course, "Black Hole Sun" is an all-time great.
Delightful! I love this band but had never heard this particular album before, and I really loved its chamber-y, spring-like whimsy. There were a few songs with goofy lyrics, but overall a very pleasant listen. Easy 9/10
Pleasant vibe, but not really much keeping me anchored through the whole album.
Incredibly angry and politically charged, a fine introduction to the heyday of gangsta rap. Fuck the police indeed.
Scorching psychedelic Latin jams. Exactly the kind of music that's up my alley! The B-side just needs to sink in a bit before I rate it higher, but already it's a 9/10.
Maybe I just wasn't listening to enough of this in my prime teenage angst years, but I don't really get bands that sound like this. Some solid songs for sure, but nothing that really grips me all that much. Also, British
Easy 9/10. Incredibly lush, layered production mixed with biting songwriting and a veritable cauldron of musical influences combine to create one of the best listening experiences so far.
Sorry, Fats and New Orleans :pensive: This one just wasn't hitting for me. My real rating is closer to 5/10, for what it's worth.
I can absolutely see how this went on to influence punk rock and glam punk in the years to follow, but in the cold light of the present day, it just doesn't do much for me. Highlights were the opening track Personality Crisis, and Pills with its Beatles-esque harmonica.
Some more extremely tasty swing. That double bassist was putting in work! :theWildest:
I dunno, I wasn't feeling it at first but then the title track hit and I was locked the fuck in for the rest of it. Good good stuff here
God I fucking hate Anthony Kiedis. This album suffers from so many problems - incredibly brick-walled mastering that makes it sound like it's playing out of a cereal box toy, weirdly sexed-up lyrics, a frontman whose voice and general personality/actions are offputting and disgusting in every way, and generally just being uninteresting. The verses of the title track and the closer are the only parts I can really say I enjoyed. Flea and Frusciante deserved better - they should've dumped Kiedis into a sewage canal and shacked up with The Mars Volta full-time instead. Did I mention I hate Anthony Kiedis?
Some absolutely jammin' club tunes.
Regardless of influence, I enjoyed this one! Raucous, sloppy, and brimming with energy - exactly what a hard rock live record should be.
Enjoyable! The whiplash from Sympathy for the Devil into No Expectations was certainly something - I still don't understand why that song was chosen to open this album - but otherwise it was some solid roots rock stuff.
I wasn't especially impressed by the A-side, but starting at the 6-minute track and on, I found more to enjoy than not. Definitely a very ramshackle record.
Perfect album I literally do not care
Very solid! This album, to me, encompasses more of what The Rolling Stones' strengths are than Beggars Banquet - I'm not sure they pull off the roots-y sound on there as well (though those songs were ofc enjoyable), but the grimy blues rock jamming on this one are their bread and butter.
GROOVY as fuck album. A couple of the more soul-oriented tracks toward the middle I didn't vibe as much with, but the sheer FUNK on display toward the start and end were enough to make this an easy 9/10.
The A-side was some pretty decent if forgettable psychedelic rock songs, all serving as anticipation to the legendary sidelong title track. Thank you for this hymn, I. Ron Butterfly.
Solid effort, though definitely a bit backloaded.
Really just not that great. This was clearly before most rock songwriters actually got good at rock songwriting. The 11-minute track is the only thing dragging this above a 4/10 for me.
Solid outing, a nice blistering 29 minutes of punk rock energy. "Three chords and the truth" indeed.
Unexpectedly fun! Pure, raw headbanging energy to turn your brain off to for a half hour or so.
Absolute fucking fire heat all the way through. There's a good goddamn reason he's remembered as one of the greats.
Grooooovy. I love post-punk like this, there's just such an energy to it.
Very pleasant listen! Easy to throw on as background music but also sounded nice whenever I actively tuned in.
Solid beats, solid rhymes, overall solid experience!
Absolutely sublime, one of the finest jazz fusion albums of all time. Miles and his band lay down rock-solid grooves and absolutely tasty jazz jams all throughout. Excellent nocturnal listen, and one I'll be spinning fairly regularly any time.
Sublime! Very breezy listen, with a great mixture of jazzy and folky vibes mixed in with some great rock songwriting.
Funky fresh. Great funky, jazzy, soul-tinged vibes for a late night.
Extremely fun! Great, catchy, funky breakbeat goodness made for nothing more than getting stuck in your head and getting your booty in gear on the club floor.
Unexpected sound for Madonna, but an enjoyable one! It did start blending together about halfway through, and didn't need to be an hour and change long, but still pleasant.
Loved it! The group used their intimate recording circumstances well, and created a record replete with excellent use of space and really nice Americana-tinged soundscapes. For sure a great one for our first country album of the run!
Very confusing listen... the first couple of tracks were kind of boring me to tears, but then once the moodier, slower strains of Holocaust hit, I think the album really found its stride. From then on I enjoyed everything, aside from a couple of the bonus tracks which strayed back to the earlier sound. If only the whole album had followed that wistful sound - it presaged so much of the alt rock, shoegaze, slowcore, and other such sounds of the 90s.
What an experience! I should've listened to this album ages ago. Nothing but hitters upon hitters for 72 straight minutes - absolutely deserving of the title of one of the greatest albums ever.
Consistently fun listen, but nothing especially special to me, and not something I can see myself returning to much. The track Plateau was a highlight, though.
Wasn't really feeling this one as much as My Generation, despite having heard this one before. I think the songwriting got a bit lost in the skits, even though everything helped to serve the concept.
Excellent stuff! It keeps to its vibe extremely well, and moves effortlessly through sounds and moods - chamber pop, energetic indie rock, strings and horns and guitars galore, and even a Steve Reich-esque minimalist piece to close it out! I'm gonna have to settle in to Sufjan's discography more.
Pretty solid bit of 80s pop rock with a 60s sheen on it, though nothing especially special.
Another pretty decent East Coast boom bap album, though it didn't really do much to stand out from the others we've heard so far.
A few solid songs on here, but overall this felt like the most 6/10 album imaginable. Can't imagine getting much out of active listening on this.
A hell of a return to form for Bowie after a string of decent-to-middling albums and a 10-year break from the studio! It's juuuust shy of a 4/5 for me, owing to its 53-minute length being a touch too long, but it stands as a very strong 3.5/5 regardless (sadly rounded down to 3 for the rules of this challenge).
INCREDIBLE ALBUM. Both the song-oriented A-side, full of bangers and slappers, and the ambient-oriented B-side, with its gorgeous lush soundscapes, are utterly perfect, and together they make one hell of an album experience. A must-listen.
What a choice for this list! Heavy, raw, angry, NOISY music to pummel shit to. I already know some of my associates in this group will not care for this album, but to me, this is what post-hardcore is all about.
Pretty neat example of some of 90s alternative's more eclectic leanings.
I can hear how this might've been popular and even influential back in the early 60s, but unfortunately, this did little to dispel my notion that early 60s music was mostly just waiting out the gap between the Golden Age of Rock 'n' Roll and Beatlemania. Nothing particularly caught my ear about it, and at just 27 minutes it still sounded like it was wearing out its welcome. Sorry Everly Brothers, I think we should just be friends.
An extremely good debut solo showing from the former Genesis frontman! It retains some of the quirkiness and Britishness of Gabriel's former band, while also branching out into newer directions that would get firmly established on some of his later albums, like Melt, Security, and So. Here Comes the Flood is particularly great.
Delightful album - Brian Wilson's creative vision finally, after a fashion, realized, 37 years later. While it has some key differences from the 2011 Beach Boys version of Smile with which I was already familiar, I find that the differences help set this one apart as its own thing. Perhaps I should get into all the fan reconstructions of Smile as well.
Gloriously doomy and heavy metal from the early 70s. These guys were the absolute kings of this sound - nothing ever misses.
Like The Triffids, this is another slice of pure 6/10 music. Nothing really stood out to me at all here.
Thoroughly uninteresting album. I don't think a single song or even moment on this album hooked me aside from the pretty decent Useful Chamber, but also nothing was offensively bad enough to be memorable. Arguably, the worst kind of album.
Some very smooth neo-soul/alt R&B vibes to make love to.
Decent slice of 90s alternative. Nothing particularly stood out to me, but this general type of sound is nostalgic enough for me to keep it afloat. I definitely liked it better than The Lemonheads, a few days ago.
A delightful slice of West African folk traditions mixed with some slight Western pop sensibilities.
A blistering and yet haunting look into Neil Young's psyche at the time of recording. Filled with bitterness, loathing, and misery, this album is a cathartic release of everything Neil had pent up over the years, via tender folk-rock ballads, searing electric blues, and plenty of guitar and organ workouts. A must-listen for sure!
Love these early experiments in popular electronic music. This band's work and Yellow Magic Orchestra are the strange, strange foundation on which rests most 80s synthpop, and we have to thank them for that.
Great little slicy of raucous proto-grunge from the late 80s. Noisy, biting, everything you expect from that sound. Dunno why there's a 23-minute EP on this list of albums, but that's hardly the music's fault.
The beats on this were stellar, probably the best hip hop production I've heard yet on this list. But I have to drop a full star on this one for the violently transphobic lyrics in Oh Shit, which is a damn shame because the album is pretty fire otherwise.
Gritty 70s cock rock in its prime. Has the massive, anthemic sound of 80s arena rock but still with all the grit of 70s hard rock - the best of both worlds. Plus, obviously Eddie Van Halen was a prodigious talent on guitar. The album is definitely frontloaded, with the weirdly country-inflected "Ice Cream Man" starting off a bit of a lowlight, but this is still an incredibly solid debut record.
An unexpected treat! Most of the albums in the "random indie band" genre that we've gotten so far haven't enticed too too much, but this one is just eclectic enough to really catch my ear, with tight songwriting across its whole length sealing the deal. A delightful surprise, 9/10.
Great instrumentals, but the album overall was quite ramshackle and didn't really stick with me. This'll need several more listens to live up to the hype for me, I'm afraid.
Super fun listen! These guys were the OG 2 tone band, mixing ska with new wave, and they show their chops on here with some delightful proto-reggae romps, saxophone and trumpet workouts, and generally quirky and energetic songs.
Oh my god. I get it. I've heard this album twice before and never really enjoyed it as much as some of Mingus' other works, but something about it just... really clicked in this time. The sheer scale of the work, and its legitimate comparisons to classical works, unlocked its full depth for me. I'm excited to give this one more listens soon.
The Man-Machine from a few days ago was great, but this was delightful! Exactly what I want out of my 70s electronic music - a great precursor to all the forms of electronic to come.
Strong songwriting, especially for a debut, but the vocals were mixed a little low for my liking, and the songs did blend together a bit throughout the album, which prevents me from giving this a full 4.
Absolutely stunning. Every moment hits, and the vibes are immaculate throughout - all the more impressive for how this album is almost completely built on samples of older music! No garden variety of samples either - DJ Shadow is an expert crate-digger and it shows. "Midnight in a Perfect World" alone contains: 0:03: Organized Konfusion - "Releasing Hypnotical Gases" (boom bap, New York, 1991) 0:09: Pekka Pohjola - "Sekoilu Seestyy" (jazz-rock, Finland, 1974; also appears in "Transmission 2") 0:21: Meredith Monk - "Dolmen Music (Part 1)" (post-minimalism, New York, 1981) 0:33: Marlena Shaw - "California Soul" (soul, New York, 1969) 0:34 (and throughout): Rotary Connection - "Life Could" (psychedelic soul, Chicago, 1968) 0:48: Baraka - "Sower of Seeds" (psychedelic folk, Los Angeles, 1976; this wasn't even found until over a decade after Endtroducing came out and even now it's an incredibly obscure album, seriously how the fuck did he even find this to sample it) 1:10 (and throughout): Meredith Monk - "Biography" (post-minimalism, New York, 1981) 1:37: David Axelrod - "The Human Abstract" (baroque pop, Los Angeles, 1969; also appears in "Transmission 2") 2:30: Akinyele - "Outta State" (boom bap, New York, 1993) And all of these disparate elements - from the cellos and voices of an experimental post-minimalist composer to an e-piano riff from a Finnish jazz-rock band to drum parts cribbed from 60s soul to midnight-themed lines from East Coast hip hop collectives of the day, even to indistinct murmurings from an extremely obscure folk album that it took people 15 years to identify - cohere into an excellent song that perfectly captures a nocturnal atmosphere and all runs together like clockwork. Genuinely how does he do it? 5 stars, easily. You're doing yourself a disservice if you don't like this, because this album puts paid to the idea that sampling means you're not a real artist for good.
Music got so much better when everyone started dropping acid
Great great album - bluesy, dirty, down-in-the-bayou rock music from, unexpectedly enough, a bunch of California boys. A discount Ringo Starr somehow singing like he's been gargling swamp water for 50 years. It all comes together beautifully. I will choogle to this any day!
Not really much to this album for me. I enjoyed the twin title tracks and one or two songs after them, but otherwise nothing really caught my ear - it sounded like it was being quirky for quirky's sake.
Solid collection of tunes, but definitely not as incendiary as it would've been in 1956, when Elvis could quirk his hips and every pair of panties the nation over would fly off.
What a triumph. One of the first concept albums, and a damn fine one to start the format off with. Delightful psychedelic sounds all throughout, culminating in one of the best songs of the 60s (and indeed of any decade).
Really great stuff. Political hip hop of the most based form, underscored by jazzy & lightly industrial beats? Sign me the fuck up. The sort of speak-rap style they go for only accentuates it for me.
Enjoyed this one a lot more than I imagined I would. It being produced by Nigel Godrich, who most notably works with Radiohead, probably helped with that.
Fiery electric blues that put nearly everything from the following decade to shame. (Looking at you, Aftermath.)
I think Queen are probably a band that can just never live up to the hype. I heard this album in full seven years ago and it didn't stick with me outside the hits, and I expect the same thing here. Not to mention Bohemian Rhapsody is like, the most overplayed song in existence. Still a great record with great songs, mind you! Solid 7/10. Just not something I ever really feel the need to put on. Oh, God, my transition into a music snob is complete...
I feel like the 90s were when a lot of things clicked for weird neo-psychedelic bands like this, and this album delivers on that in spades.
Haters be hatin. This is a great example of what grunge can be, with its mixture of sludgey heavy songs and more emotional ballads.
THE album that started it all for me. I fell off on it for a while, but recently-ish I rediscovered just how great this band, and by proxy this album, are. Pure hard rock perfection. The big hits are all great of course, but even the lesser-known songs like The Battle of Evermore and Going to California are amazing.