365
Albums Rated
3.69
Average Rating
34%
Complete
724 albums remaining
Rating Distribution
Rating Timeline
Taste Profile
1960
Favorite Decade
Jazz
Favorite Genre
UK
Top Origin
Cheerleader
Rater Style ?
50
5-Star Albums
5
1-Star Albums
Breakdown
By Genre
Top Styles
By Decade
By Origin
Albums
You Love More Than Most
| Album | You | Global | Diff |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Freak Out!
The Mothers Of Invention
|
5 | 2.82 | +2.18 |
|
White Light / White Heat
The Velvet Underground
|
5 | 2.88 | +2.12 |
|
Larks' Tongues In Aspic
King Crimson
|
5 | 2.98 | +2.02 |
|
Dog Man Star
Suede
|
5 | 3.01 | +1.99 |
|
Smile
Brian Wilson
|
5 | 3.04 | +1.96 |
|
Skylarking
XTC
|
5 | 3.04 | +1.96 |
|
Ambient 1/Music For Airports
Brian Eno
|
5 | 3.08 | +1.92 |
|
Tubular Bells
Mike Oldfield
|
5 | 3.1 | +1.9 |
|
The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter
The Incredible String Band
|
4 | 2.15 | +1.85 |
|
Deloused in the Comatorium
The Mars Volta
|
5 | 3.19 | +1.81 |
You Love Less Than Most
| Album | You | Global | Diff |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Californication
Red Hot Chili Peppers
|
1 | 3.69 | -2.69 |
|
Teenage Head
Flamin' Groovies
|
1 | 3.02 | -2.02 |
|
Appetite For Destruction
Guns N' Roses
|
2 | 3.71 | -1.71 |
|
Slipknot
Slipknot
|
1 | 2.67 | -1.67 |
|
A Grand Don't Come For Free
The Streets
|
1 | 2.64 | -1.64 |
|
Chocolate Starfish And The Hot Dog Flavored Water
Limp Bizkit
|
1 | 2.51 | -1.51 |
|
Layla And Other Assorted Love Songs
Derek & The Dominos
|
2 | 3.39 | -1.39 |
|
Aftermath
The Rolling Stones
|
2 | 3.36 | -1.36 |
|
A Girl Called Dusty
Dusty Springfield
|
2 | 3.33 | -1.33 |
|
Hysteria
Def Leppard
|
2 | 3.2 | -1.2 |
Artists
Favorites
| Artist | Albums | Average |
|---|---|---|
| David Bowie | 6 | 4.67 |
| Beatles | 5 | 4.6 |
| Yes | 3 | 5 |
| Radiohead | 3 | 4.67 |
| Miles Davis | 2 | 5 |
| Led Zeppelin | 2 | 5 |
| Rush | 2 | 5 |
| Steely Dan | 3 | 4.33 |
| Black Sabbath | 3 | 4.33 |
| Joni Mitchell | 3 | 4.33 |
| Talking Heads | 3 | 4.33 |
5-Star Albums (50)
View Album Wall
Popular Reviews
XTC · 2 likes
5/5
XTC's best album in my humble opinion, and from an illustrious discography too. Shedding the new wave of their earlier days, this album dives fully into psychedelic pop delights, in a send-up to the various styles of The Beatles and The Beach Boys. The songwriting, the production, and the album flow are all on point - a delight all around.
The Mamas & The Papas · 2 likes
4/5
Very solid mid-60s sunshine pop album! Every song was enjoyable, and there were plenty I distantly recognized.
I hope John Phillips is rotting in Hell, though.
Elis Regina · 1 likes
3/5
Solid collection of tunes, and great to have some MPB on the list! However, the confusion on which version I was actually meant to listen to (and also this being a compilation?? it's 1001 ALBUMS come on it can't be that hard to pick 1001 ALBUMS) led me to the 1998 version, which at 48 minutes for sure outstayed its welcome a bit too long.
Cee Lo Green · 1 likes
4/5
To be completely honest, I didn't expect to like this much, but I ended up really loving it! Despite being a bit overlong, at an hour and 5 minutes that felt closer to an hour and 35, I found myself vibing the whole way through. The soul-tinged beats & vocals, the killer production, CeeLo's quite honestly incredible flow, and reminders of artists as varied as (the minuscule good parts of) The Streets and Saul Williams all made this a worthy first Southern hip hop entry for this list. Easy 8/10.
Arctic Monkeys · 1 likes
3/5
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
1-Star Albums (5)
All Ratings
Louis Prima
4/5
:theWildest:
Songhoy Blues
3/5
Solid stuff! I love hearing music from across the world, and Songhai/Malian music isn't one I'd touched on before now.
Björk
4/5
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:
Steely Dan
5/5
Sheer slick jazz-rock perfection. Undeniably cool and breezy listen for any time of year.
Ella Fitzgerald
3/5
Great voice, but way too little variety for over 3 hours of music.
Thelonious Monk
4/5
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.
EDITGreat 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.
EDIT: Its health is... improving.
My Bloody Valentine
4/5
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.
Cornershop
3/5
Interesting album with a neat vibe and some good songs, unfortunately some of them didn't quite land for me.
Soundgarden
4/5
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.
4/5
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
Fever Ray
3/5
Pleasant vibe, but not really much keeping me anchored through the whole album.
N.W.A.
4/5
Incredibly angry and politically charged, a fine introduction to the heyday of gangsta rap. Fuck the police indeed.
Santana
5/5
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.
EDIT: Yup it got there. 10/10
Arctic Monkeys
3/5
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
Suede
5/5
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.
EDIT: I haven't been able to stop listening to this, 10/10 it is
Fats Domino
3/5
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.
EDIT: Revisiting several months later after some Little Richard, and this is hitting more. Up to 3 stars it goes!
New York Dolls
2/5
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.
Count Basie & His Orchestra
4/5
Some more extremely tasty swing. That double bassist was putting in work! :theWildest:
The Who
4/5
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
Red Hot Chili Peppers
1/5
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?
Soul II Soul
4/5
Some absolutely jammin' club tunes.
4/5
Regardless of influence, I enjoyed this one! Raucous, sloppy, and brimming with energy - exactly what a hard rock live record should be.
The Rolling Stones
3/5
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.
Alexander 'Skip' Spence
3/5
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.
Pink Floyd
5/5
Perfect album I literally do not care
The Rolling Stones
4/5
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.
Sly & The Family Stone
4/5
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.
Iron Butterfly
3/5
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.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
3/5
Solid effort, though definitely a bit backloaded.
The Rolling Stones
2/5
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.
Ramones
3/5
Solid outing, a nice blistering 29 minutes of punk rock energy. "Three chords and the truth" indeed.
The Hives
4/5
Unexpectedly fun! Pure, raw headbanging energy to turn your brain off to for a half hour or so.
Jimi Hendrix
4/5
Absolute fucking fire heat all the way through. There's a good goddamn reason he's remembered as one of the greats.
Echo And The Bunnymen
4/5
Grooooovy. I love post-punk like this, there's just such an energy to it.
Ali Farka Touré
4/5
Very pleasant listen! Easy to throw on as background music but also sounded nice whenever I actively tuned in.
Jeru The Damaja
3/5
Solid beats, solid rhymes, overall solid experience!
Miles Davis
5/5
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.
John Martyn
4/5
Sublime! Very breezy listen, with a great mixture of jazzy and folky vibes mixed in with some great rock songwriting.
4/5
Funky fresh. Great funky, jazzy, soul-tinged vibes for a late night.
Fatboy Slim
4/5
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.
Madonna
3/5
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.
Cowboy Junkies
4/5
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!
Big Star
3/5
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.
The Cure
5/5
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.
Meat Puppets
3/5
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.
The Who
3/5
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.
Sufjan Stevens
4/5
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.
Elvis Costello & The Attractions
3/5
Pretty solid bit of 80s pop rock with a 60s sheen on it, though nothing especially special.
Method Man
3/5
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.
The Triffids
3/5
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.
David Bowie
3/5
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).
David Bowie
5/5
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.
Drive Like Jehu
4/5
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.
Garbage
4/5
Pretty neat example of some of 90s alternative's more eclectic leanings.
The Everly Brothers
2/5
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.
Peter Gabriel
4/5
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.
Brian Wilson
5/5
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.
RIP Brian Wilson.
Black Sabbath
4/5
Gloriously doomy and heavy metal from the early 70s. These guys were the absolute kings of this sound - nothing ever misses.
The Lemonheads
3/5
Like The Triffids, this is another slice of pure 6/10 music. Nothing really stood out to me at all here.
Dirty Projectors
2/5
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.
Frank Ocean
3/5
Some very smooth neo-soul/alt R&B vibes to make love to.
Sugar
3/5
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.
Baaba Maal
4/5
A delightful slice of West African folk traditions mixed with some slight Western pop sensibilities.
Neil Young
4/5
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!
Kraftwerk
4/5
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.
Mudhoney
4/5
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 Pharcyde
3/5
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.
Van Halen
4/5
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.
The Zutons
4/5
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.
The Fall
3/5
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.
The Specials
4/5
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.
Charles Mingus
4/5
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.
Kraftwerk
4/5
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.
Iron Maiden
3/5
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.
DJ Shadow
5/5
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.
The Byrds
4/5
Music got so much better when everyone started dropping acid
Creedence Clearwater Revival
4/5
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!
Wild Beasts
2/5
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.
Elvis Presley
3/5
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.
5/5
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).
The Disposable Heroes Of Hiphoprisy
4/5
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.
Beck
4/5
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.
Muddy Waters
4/5
Fiery electric blues that put nearly everything from the following decade to shame. (Looking at you, Aftermath.)
Queen
3/5
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...
The Flaming Lips
4/5
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.
Alice In Chains
4/5
Haters be hatin. This is a great example of what grunge can be, with its mixture of sludgey heavy songs and more emotional ballads.
Led Zeppelin
5/5
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.
The Modern Lovers
4/5
Really great stuff! Tight songwriting, killer instrumentation, and a surprisingly punk-ish sound for something recorded in the early 70s (albeit not released until '76).
Miles Davis
5/5
The essence of COOL. Miles Davis made the switch from chord-based jazz to modal jazz seemingly effortlessly, maintaining an effective cool atmosphere the whole way, resulting in one of the finest jazz albums out there. Another win from Miles!
The Cure
4/5
Another great offering from The Cure! Not quite AS immaculate as Disintegration to my ear, but definitely a different tack, with its raw, angry energy. This band has been circling my periphery for years before this challenge - I should've given them a shot ages ago.
Elis Regina
3/5
Solid collection of tunes, and great to have some MPB on the list! However, the confusion on which version I was actually meant to listen to (and also this being a compilation?? it's 1001 ALBUMS come on it can't be that hard to pick 1001 ALBUMS) led me to the 1998 version, which at 48 minutes for sure outstayed its welcome a bit too long.
Joy Division
4/5
The album is undeniably a classic, though it took its time getting going for me. The B-side, however, was some absolutely rock-solid post-punk, perfectly exemplifying the cold and anxious sound that made Joy Division stand the test of time. RIP Ian Curtis
Pretenders
4/5
Great stuff! It's nothing earth-shattering, but what it does do is everything I'd want out of a good, solid new wave record. Easy 9/10.
Gene Clark
3/5
Solid country rock/folk stuff from a member of The Byrds. Nothing particularly memorable, but pleasant to the ear while it was on!
The Beta Band
3/5
I vibed with it while it was on, but don't actually remember anything from it anymore.
Johnny Cash
4/5
A goddamn stone-cold country classic. We need more country with this energy today - Morgan Wallen would just say a racial slur if you asked his stupid ass to play in a prison.
Slade
2/5
I'm sorry, but this just didn't do it for me. The hard rock bits sounded like worse versions of any 70s hard rock I like, and the glam rock bits sounded like worse Ziggy Stardust-era David Bowie.
Black Sabbath
4/5
Great stuff! These guys were heavier than just about anyone at that time - if the entire album were as heavy as the title track, this easily could've been a 5.
Depeche Mode
4/5
Sleek, sexy dark synthpop goodness. Music both to appreciate listening to at home, and to bump what your momma gave you to in the club!!
The Police
4/5
Great stuff! Punchy new wave with an abundance of great basslines. Exactly what I expect from early 80s stuff.
Björk
4/5
I already know the haters are crowding in, so let it be said: Fuck the haters. This is masterful stuff - cold, glitchy, sensual art pop from one of the most unique voices in music. My personal favourite of her albums that I've heard thus far is Homogenic, but this one is nearly there.
Slipknot
1/5
Really not for me. There's plenty of relentless, scream-y, and even outright edgy music I love, but something about this just really set my teeth on edge. I enjoyed some of the riffs and other moments, but the album at just 50-ish minutes of music felt like it was about 3 hours long, so I had to deduct a star for that alone.
U2
3/5
Very solid collection of tunes! Nothing especially groundbreaking to my ear, just good good songwriting the whole way through.
Fiona Apple
4/5
Really great stuff. Mechanical, anxious, and raw as a frayed nerve, but still wrapped up in exquisite jazzy arrangements and production, it perfectly gets across Fiona's painful experiences. Well deserving of the accolades it got when it first came out.
Nightmares On Wax
3/5
Excellent vibes - I love this sort of dub-inflected downtempo music. However, an hour and fifteen minutes of it was a bit much for me. Probably would've fared better as background music with a fat doob - as is, my sober mind was satisfied much earlier.
Goldie
3/5
Extremely nice atmospheric drum and bass; really captures the urban spirit of the scene. I wouldn't listen to all 105 minutes of it at once most of the time, but at least a disc or even a few tracks would be solid.
Wu-Tang Clan
3/5
Another 90s hip hop classic with memorable beats and great flow.
Pavement
4/5
Fun stuff, a nice slab of gritty slacker rock in a fairly compact package (a rarity for the 90s!)
Hole
4/5
Carrying on from yesterday, this time instead of slacker rock we have a great package of 90s alt/grunge, fronted by Courtney Love. Great stuff and killer vocals!
Black Sabbath
5/5
No notes! Just pure riff-filled heavy goodness the whole way through. Fantastic atmosphere, fantastic songwriting, pure banger energy.
Skepta
4/5
I see the vision. Listening to it for the beats first and lyrics second, per this album's grime lineage, definitely helped me appreciate it more - and the lyrics, despite the occasional clunker and the overall British, were solid! Now if only the skits were separated out on the tracklist...
Common
3/5
Another rap album with great production and sublime jazzy beats, but dragged down by period-typical homophobia and other nonsense in the lyrics. Especially glaring this time since this is a "conscious" hip hop album.
Bruce Springsteen
4/5
The Boss, the king of the heartland, pares down to just himself, an acoustic guitar and a harmonica - and it works wonders! A thoroughly depressing and beaten-down album with a sound to match. Yet more proof, as if it was needed, that Springsteen is one of the greats. Easy 9/10.
Franz Ferdinand
3/5
A solid collection of 2000s alternative tunes - nothing especially special to my ear, but a good collection of bangers nonetheless.
Patti Smith
4/5
Wild stuff. At turns gorgeous with that piano and rowdy with its intense guitar, and anchored throughout by Patti's stunningly abrasive voice. A true classic of proto-punk - sorry, New York Dolls, this is the real deal.
The Band
3/5
Another solid roots-y album from the late 60s/early 70s.
Keith Jarrett
5/5
Absolutely stunning! Keith Jarrett is one of the pioneers of the "ECM style" of jazz, and on this performance he demonstrates it perfectly. 66 minutes of improvised goodness, reportedly on the wrong piano while Keith was suffering back problems, expertly toeing that murky space between jazz and classical music. Nothing but bliss the whole way through.
Brian Eno
5/5
One of the first ambient albums, and certainly the one to codify the sound - and still one of the finest. Brian Eno manages to create captivating pieces that are interesting enough to latch on to for active listening while also fading perfectly into the background. It's not often that someone invents a genre and almost immediately gets it right, but Eno is built different.
The Jesus And Mary Chain
4/5
One of the first albums in the noise pop genre, fusing catchy guitar pop gems with layers of feedback and noise. Personally, as a lover of noisy bullshit and also a lover of catchy bullshit, this worked wonders for me.
Joni Mitchell
4/5
Great great stuff from an all-time great songwriter. Joni manages to pack a variety of sounds in here and pull them all off excellently, with a voice that never wavers.
Van Morrison
3/5
A jazzy folk-rock album that started off quite promising, and had quite a few really nice songs (particularly that title track!), but by the end it was starting to blend.
The 13th Floor Elevators
4/5
Nah fuck it, it works for me. The drumming was interesting, the songwriting tight enough, and the guitar effects fuzzy enough to keep me interested the whole way through.
Jane Weaver
3/5
Pleasant-sounding album - I especially enjoyed some of the spacier, krautier textures in there - but at just 43 minutes it was blending a bit too much for my tastes.
Talking Heads
4/5
Nothing but bangers. David Byrne had the sauce, what else can I say
Nanci Griffith
3/5
Overall solid, but didn't really do anything to grip me. Solid 6/10.
Willie Colón & Rubén Blades
4/5
Some absolutely CLASSIC salsa vibes, spiced up with jazz, disco, and funk influences throughout. Great stuff!
Kendrick Lamar
5/5
Easy 9/10, could climb to 10/10 with repeated listens - RateYourMusic has the right idea rating this #1 of all time. Everyone on this godforsaken website who keeps shitting on it just because it's rap is doing the music and themselves the grandest disservice. This thing is 80 solid minutes of pure storytelling genius. Everything, and I mean everything, is crafted to enhance and deliver the stories.
Kendrick's wild flows and varied deliveries, the tasty jazz samples & instrumentation, all the guest features, and that poem that keeps recurring throughout in snippets, culminating in a spoken-word segment pantomiming Kendrick talking to his late idol Tupac Shakur - masterful. The album is incisive, biting, and even outright depressing, but also contains kernels of hope and the possibility of change. Truly a generational album.
EDIT: 10/10 achieved. All it took was one more listen to let the scope of the album sink in!
Eminem
3/5
Sorry Slim, this ain't quite it, not after coming out of Kendrick Lamar. The songs were absolutely catchy, great production, and the bars and flow were absolutely on point in parts. I gotta admit though, regardless of what the intent may have been, Eminem's almost comically over-the-top approach to violence rubbed me wrong enough to dock a couple points here.
Lloyd Cole And The Commotions
3/5
Perfectly cromulent music. Nothing much more to say past that.
American Music Club
3/5
Another album of perfectly cromulent music - a lot of it faded into the background or undershot my expectations based on the genre tags, though there were some standouts like Highway 5.
Michael Jackson
4/5
Really get-on-the-floor great stuff! There's a reason Michael Jackson is one of the all-time greats of pop.
David Bowie
5/5
Bowie's cocaine anthems album, stacked wall to wall with bangers and slappers. He does it again!!
Marvin Gaye
4/5
SOUL. Another all-time soul classic from one of the goats, this time bringing us essential babymaking jams.
The Mothers Of Invention
5/5
I knew going into this I liked it, but I wasn't expecting to give it a 5! The debut album of Zappa and the Mothers is full of really great psychedelic blues-garage rock and some really nice experimental tape stuff as well, and it's all tied together by the super dry and sarcastic lyrics about American society and the San Francisco freak scene. This is the kind of stuff that really shows how generational of an artist Frank Zappa was.
Blondie
4/5
Really, really great new wave, sitting right at the crossover point between the manic energy of punk and the catchy pop hooks of later new wave/synthpop. A classic for a reason!
Stan Getz
4/5
Smooth, soulful bossa nova music to unwind to. How can you hate it?
Isaac Hayes
4/5
Some solid FUNK from the goat Isaac Hayes. It is dragged down slightly, in my opinion, by very obviously being a movie score, with some of the tunes not hitting as hard outside of their initial context. HOWEVER, that's all made up for by the mammoth 19-and-a-half-minute funk jam Do Your Thing. Tour de force doesn't even begin to cover that tune.
Radiohead
5/5
Only one of the greatest 90s alternative albums ever. Unlike Radiohead's later fare, this one isn't especially experimental or eclectic - it's just really, really solidly written and played the whole way through.
Aretha Franklin
4/5
Pure SOUL. On a bed of tasty horns, lush strings, and other such well-arranged goodies, Aretha absolutely belts out these songs. She's the Queen of Soul for a reason, people!
Joni Mitchell
4/5
Another really great outing from Joni! This one's more jazz-inflected than Court and Spark, especially Centerpiece. Goes wonderfully with her voice.
Moby
3/5
And the streak of 4s and 5s ends...
This was a cool sound for a bit, but it went on for WAAYYYY too long to really hold my attention, unfortunately. Solid 6/10.
ZZ Top
3/5
Another album where the overall sound is nice, but it's too one-note to effectively stretch across an entire album.
The Isley Brothers
4/5
Good good psychedelic soul with just a touch of funk. I'm loving the preponderance of soul and funk that the generator is giving us lately
U2
3/5
Another solid album from U2, though less expansive than War and more focused on just poppy songwriting.
Prince
4/5
FUCK YEAH. We get some of the smoothest, sexiest soul & funk to ever hit the market, courtesy of Prince. Every song is just thrumming with energy and verve - a compelling listen for all 80 minutes.
Bee Gees
2/5
Not especially interesting or stand-out - I could easily walk into a thrift store and come out with ten albums sounding exactly like this. Sorry Bee Gees, you got more interesting after your midlife crisis.
Beatles
5/5
Another classic from the Beatles - the first of their psychedelic/studio-based era, and one hell of an intro to it. Featuring straightforward guitar pop bangers, orchestral accompaniments, music using Indian instruments and modes, and the most ambitious studio experiment in popular music to that point, the album really has it all, and once again demonstrates how the Fab Four were just in a league of their own.
The Streets
1/5
I'm sorry, but this one is not at all for me. Both the main rapper's flow and the amateurish-sounding beats, especially combined, are like nails being driven into my brain, to the point I genuinely couldn't focus on any narrative beats. I had to keep my volume low just to not get a headache, which is REALLY rare for me.
Jefferson Airplane
4/5
Another really nice example of 60s psychedelia. On this one the guitar was a particular highlight, as were Grace Slick's vocals, when she got to show them off at least - it's a shame she didn't get more lead vocal spots on here.
Eels
3/5
A solid alt-rock outing from the 90s, with some nice use of guitar fuzz, generally moody and downcast lyrics, and a couple of well-placed trip hop elements, but ultimately nothing really all that special.
Air
5/5
Now THIS is what downtempo is all about. A little jazzy, a little folky, a little electronic, but ALL breezy, calm, and easy to enjoy no matter the setting. Perfect chillout music.
Steely Dan
4/5
Another great album from Steely Dan! We got Aja early on in this challenge, and while I don't like this as much as that one, it has been steadily rising my Dan rankings for a while now, so it entered this challenge at the perfect time. Much more grounded in earlier forms of rock than Aja, and much less influenced by jazz fusion, it still captures that breezy, self-loathing spirit of the Dan's best.
The La's
2/5
There was something here at least, I can see why someone who likes this kind of music would be all over this. However, it really just didn't do anything special for my ears, even There She Goes.
Adele
3/5
Mostly blended together outside of the hits, and the lesser hit "Rumour Has It" actively annoys me in the chorus. The three big hits, though, are huge for a damn good reason.
Wire
4/5
A pleasant surprise! At some point on this album the tracks started really digging into my ear, and that enjoyment kept itself up throughout. This is what punk rock is all about!
Cyndi Lauper
4/5
Another pleasant surprise! The three most popular songs on here I already knew of course, but the album was full of really nice, really catchy songs, anchored of course by Cyndi's unique vocal delivery.
King Crimson
5/5
FUCK YES. Robert Fripp got tired of sounding jazzy, so he rebuilt King Crimson entirely, listened to a ton of free improvisation, and came out with the absolute heaviest album of 1973. Tangly, experimental, and full of delicious textures and build-up, all while going HARD AS FUCK. Easy 10/10.
The The
4/5
Peak new wave. It maintains everything that's cool about the genre while also accentuating it with rich, layered instrumentation. The accordion & violin harmonies on This Is the Day and piano solo in Uncertain Smile were particularly choice.
Rush
5/5
An all-time classic - the album that really saw Rush coming into their own, and defining their sound for years to come. Opening with a 20-minute sci-fi epic about the oppressive Priests of the Temples of Syrinx, this is pure hard rock goodness.
Heaven 17
3/5
White boys gettin funky. The A-side is pretty solid, but unfortunately this album is extremely frontloaded. The schtick was already worn off by the time the B-side started and it didn't get any better across the rest of the album.
Taylor Swift
3/5
I'm never quite sure what to make of Taylor Swift's music. I think ultimately, I'm just outside of her target demographic. None of her lyrics resonate with me, so they just come off as pedestrian at best and outright hokey at worst. The music on this album was pleasant, a nice folk-pop backing with occasional country and Americana touches, but also nothing particularly special to my ear.
The Pogues
5/5
As a Newfie who enjoys Newfie music, the allure of Irish music is obvious. In that sense, The Pogues were already an ideal band for me. However, combining in all the different influences they do on this album - rock, punk, snippets of music from other cultures, and even the most iconic Christmas song of the last century - make for a truly spellbinding experience. This is one of music's peak forms to me.
The Stooges
4/5
Nahh this cooks. This is exactly as disgusting and sloppy as any proto-punk rager of an album ought to be - raw, barely-produced, and nothing but shouts of rage and instrumentals seething with malice. I'm excited to check out the Iggy mix as well.
Buddy Holly & The Crickets
3/5
A really good example of 50s rock and roll, with some standouts including the exceptional "Not Fade Away" which has been covered by bands from Rush to Grateful Dead. It's early on enough in the history of the album as a music format, though, that I don't think they quite grasped how to structure one yet. Even at less than 30 minutes, the album was fairly front-loaded and didn't really have enough variety to keep me hooked the whole time.
Siouxsie And The Banshees
4/5
I was juju'ing on that beat for sure. Great example of super dark-sounding gothic rock straight from its heyday - not quite to the level of The Cure, but approaching it.
Beatles
4/5
Yet another showcase of the Fab Four's songwriting genius! This one's from before they really started experimenting, just transitioning out of their earlier Merseybeat works into their weirder sound, and the result is a collection of some great great songs, even without any hits.
The Cars
4/5
Another solid new wave offering from the list. This one I probably would've rated 3.5 (rounding down to 3) on songwriting alone, but the fucking about with synths that they did was cool enough to bump it to a 4 for me.
Jungle Brothers
3/5
Really cool stuff! Good beats, good flow, just all-around a good example of East Coast hip hop.
Ozomatli
4/5
What a fun album! Pure party music, but it goes hard throughout, with funk, jazz, and hip hop all inflected through a Latin flair to great effect.
Dusty Springfield
4/5
A wonderful example of the "blue-eyed soul" style often sung by white singers in the late 60s and early 70s. More restrained in sound, but no less so in emotional delivery, Dusty Springfield delivers a great album in 33 tight minutes.
Dennis Wilson
4/5
A delightful collection of soulful and melancholic tunes from one of the finest songwriters in The Beach Boys.
Jane's Addiction
3/5
This is realllly close to a 4 - it's delightfully eclectic and tightly songwritten, I just tuned out a bit too much during it to really bump it all the way up there.
David Bowie
5/5
Ziggy does America, and boy does he ever do it! On this album, Bowie extends the sounds of his preceding glam rock opus into a whirlwind tour of America, through the lens of hard rock, blues, and just a wee touch of jazz, courtesy of Mike Garson's beautiful and yet atonal piano playing. Another delightful collection of songs from one of the greats!
Stephen Stills
3/5
A solid collection of folk-rock and country-rock tunes, loosely arranged into chapters by vinyl side, but I'm not sure this really merited being a double album.
Doves
4/5
Really, really, incredibly solid dream pop/neo-psych stuff from the early oughts. The piano, the vocals, the spacey guitar, and the overall songwriting - everything works!
Pet Shop Boys
4/5
A fantastic example of what synthpop could be all about! Lush, ethereal, with deeply personal and melancholy lyrics contrasting with innately danceable and boppable music. This is everything you could hope to happen and more when gay men get their hands on a synthesizer.
Dire Straits
3/5
Solid playing, solid songwriting, but this album didn't do all that much to really stand out to me from other blues-inspired 70s rock.
The Jam
3/5
Solid mod revival/new wave stuff, though I was tiring of it a bit by the end it remained pleasant throughout. Just not as much a knock out of the park as some other new wave we've gotten in this challenge.
The Incredible String Band
4/5
It saddens me that this album is bottom 10 on this website, because to me this is delightful! One of the earliest examples of a style that was retroactively labeled "wyrd folk" by music journos and aficionados of the style, it nicely combines pastoral folk with strange psychedelic ramblings and just a touch of that witchy sort of feeling for October. So many of the folk artists I love were inspired by this strain of weird, or "wyrd" I suppose, folk music - just gorgeous.
The Stone Roses
4/5
Really, really great stuff - I'm genuinely surprised by how much I enjoyed this! The baggy, or "Madchester", scene isn't something that had been on my radar before today but that might have to change. So much of the neo-psychedelic and, yes, "chill indie" music of the last three decades owes so much to this kind of sound. Great songwriting, killer instrumentation, and plenty of curveballs throughout - this album's got it all. Easy 9/10 on first listen, could rise to 10 soon!
Lightning Bolt
3/5
Ahhhh I love a good ear shredding every now and again
Cee Lo Green
4/5
To be completely honest, I didn't expect to like this much, but I ended up really loving it! Despite being a bit overlong, at an hour and 5 minutes that felt closer to an hour and 35, I found myself vibing the whole way through. The soul-tinged beats & vocals, the killer production, CeeLo's quite honestly incredible flow, and reminders of artists as varied as (the minuscule good parts of) The Streets and Saul Williams all made this a worthy first Southern hip hop entry for this list. Easy 8/10.
Buffalo Springfield
3/5
Another solid 60s folk rock effort - this, however, is a bit before Neil Young and his fellows really came into their own, I think. There are definitely some highlights on here though, like Mr. Soul and Expecting to Fly.
Duran Duran
4/5
Another example of really great 80s new wave! Love this kind of sound - it does poppy stuff (Rio, Hungry Like the Wolf) and weirder stuff (The Chauffeur) both real well.
Arcade Fire
3/5
I'm really not sure what it is about certain 2000s indie (e.g. Sufjan Stevens) that really hits for me and what it is about others that doesn't, but something about this one just refused to fully click in for me. It is solid though!
Neil Young
4/5
Neil Young does it again! Another album proving his songwriting prowess through incredibly depressing and burnt-out songs, this time lamenting his drug abuse but also the then-recent death of one of his bandmates. Achingly raw and full of emotion, this album can't help but entice me.
Talking Heads
5/5
FUCK YES. This shit is what it's all about - boppable, funky, and weird all in equal measure, to glorious effect. David Byrne my autistic king.
Talking Heads
4/5
Another banger from Talking Heads! Not one I've revisited as much as Remain in Light, but I'm gonna have to change that - this one's just as chock-full of bangers.
R.E.M.
3/5
A solid album from the late 80s "college rock" circuit, by one of its foundational bands. These guys are classics for a reason - unfortunately, I found this album fairly frontloaded, with the quality dropping off fairly steeply after Orange Crush.
Sepultura
3/5
Certainly not my favourite metal ever, but a damn sight better than Slipknot. Helps that this is more on the thrash side than the nu-metal side; the latter genre just has this stench about it for me that makes me not like it, whereas thrash metal I can headbang along to. Very solidly played stuff here!
Crosby, Stills & Nash
4/5
Another very solid folk rock album from the CSNY guys (though minus the Y this time)!
Jeff Beck
4/5
Hard rock perfection! The vocals aren't really anything special (though they do fit the music well), but Jeff Beck's guitar playing is absolutely where it's at. This basically set the bar for all bluesy hard rock going forward.
The Band
3/5
Another solid roots rock outing from The Band, although it did start blending a bit by the end of the album. They're giving us a whole lot of folk rock lately.
Simon & Garfunkel
5/5
An incredible surprise. This brisk 29-minute folk rock album is packed to the brim with both catchy melodies and heartfelt lyrics, and the whole package is down-to-earth and humble. The track "Voices of Old People" even captures arguably the spirit of folk in its purest form; just snippets of real conversations from the elderly. All in all, this is the real deal. Tender, heartfelt, and just the right length to get lost in - a complete experience.
System Of A Down
4/5
FUUUUCKK YEAHHHH now THIS is what alt-metal is all about. This shit got me headbanging AND contemplating the overarching societal effects of the Armenian genocide and the veil of complicity that allows atrocities to be perpetuated on the marginalized - heavy as FUCK and also still all too relevant today. Good shit all around.
Haircut 100
4/5
A surprisingly good time for an album I knew nothing about going in! Funky fresh sophisti-pop jams to vibe out to.
Radiohead
5/5
Really really good - one of Radiohead's best, in fact. Lush textures and sounds fill this album from front to back, which when combined with the ever-excellent songwriting, makes for an immersive listening experience unlike any other.
The Specials
3/5
Not as much a fan of this as More Specials, which we got a while ago - this one's a lot more rooted in more straightforward rocksteady/reggae stuff, and doesn't do much interesting with it. It's still an enjoyable listen though!
Fun Lovin' Criminals
3/5
A solid slice of 90s rap rock. Nothing special for the most part, following along with the general funky & chilled-out sound of that genre. A highlight, though, is the guitar solo on I Can't Get With That - what a gnarly tour de force!
Primal Scream
4/5
A really fun album that mixes alternative sounds with neo-psych and some influences from dub and trip hop. Overall, a really neat package, and one that makes me all the more excited to finally get to Screamadelica!
Nine Inch Nails
5/5
A masterpiece in every right. Lyrically, this is bleak and uncompromising, painting a portrait of a soul wracked with addiction and despair ultimately giving in to suicide. Some may call it edgy, but there is more than enough genuine experience, emotion, and thought put into these lyrics to make it not hit that mark for me. The music also complements the story perfectly, with its use of harsh industrial beats to symbolize rage and despair, ambient passages marking emotional turning points (see "A Warm Place" for the best example of this), and overall layered and intricate sound design that I'm constantly hearing new details in. A generational master work in musical storytelling and in industrial sound design alike, this easily earns its 5 stars. God bless you, Trent Reznor.
Elbow
3/5
A really nice indie rock album from the late 2000s, exemplifying a lot of good traits from that era of music. Comparisons can be made to Lost Souls by Doves, which we got earlier in this challenge - unfortunately, I do think this one's a bit underserved by its length, and doesn't quite stack up to the unexpected highs of that album.
Bruce Springsteen
4/5
After taking a turn into dour, dusty singer-songwriter stuff on Nebraska, Bruce returns to his heartland rock sound in full force with this album. However, it's no less competently songwritten or politically incisive for it! Bangers and biting commentary abound once more from The Boss.
John Coltrane
5/5
A goddamn masterpiece. Spiritual, incredibly composed, immaculately played by all involved (shoutout especially to Elvin Jones' drum solo in Part 3: Pursuance), and all in a tight 33-minute package, A Love Supreme absolutely deserves its accolades as one of the finest jazz experiences ever.
Nas
4/5
One of the finest examples of East Coast boom bap that we've yet gotten, and quite possibly one of the finest of this challenge! Every beat and every lyric hits.
The Magnetic Fields
2/5
Waaaayyyyyy too long, way too unvaried, and what variances there were were annoying or just unprofessional-sounding. If an album is going to present itself as a three-hour opus, it had better damn well earn it.
The Undertones
3/5
A solid effort in punk rock like many we've gotten before, with a burst of poppy energy across 16 brief tracks. However, I am actually dropping half a point from this for the (admittedly petty) reason that this album, which has Casbah Rock on it, made it onto the 1001 Albums list, while Combat Rock by The Clash, which has Rock the Casbah on it, isn't! Who made THAT decision??
Still a 6/10 even with the point reduction, though, which means 3 stars either way on this site's scale.
Elliott Smith
4/5
An excellent example of singer-songwriter music, with Elliott conveying his pain and desperation effectively through various different sounds and styles. Really great stuff. RIP Elliott.
TV On The Radio
4/5
Very cool album with a surprisingly unique sound. The jazz elements and the incredibly growly bass tone were highlights of the sound! The a cappella doo-wop type stuff was cool for one song, but its reoccurrence midway through the next song was superfluous, and unfortunately that was enough to throw the rating off from 9/10 to just 8 for me. Still 4 stars, though!
The Psychedelic Furs
4/5
Really solid post-punk effort, with a few psychedelic leanings thrown in. The saxophone on a couple of tracks was an extra nice touch!
Bruce Springsteen
4/5
Another win from The Boss! This one, being from the mid-seventies, relies more on horns and strings to craft its expansive heartland rock sound than the synths and booming drums of Born in the U.S.A., but it sounds just as full of (and larger than) life. Bruce is once again a master storyteller, weaving narratives of desperation and escape. There truly, truly is a reason he's one of the greats.
Also, he looked really hot in the photo shoots for this album
R.E.M.
3/5
Another solid offering from R.E.M. - I don't think the highs on this one quite reached the highs of Green for me, but this album was much more consistent throughout.
Donald Fagen
4/5
Just like Steely Dan, of which Donald Fagen was a part before this album, this album effortlessly radiates COOL. It's missing many of the sardonic lyrical touches that Walter Becker brought to the mix, but it's still got that smoky, late-night jazz pop sound that makes the best of the best Steely Dan work. Another 9/10 from the Steely Dan sphere!
TLC
3/5
Fun album, demonstrating one of the best examples of the "hip hop soul" style that took over R&B in the 90s. As is typical for hip hop of this era, the skits were the weakest, with Sexy in particular coming across as unnecessary. Creep and Waterfalls were easy highlights, though, and some of the finest that 90s R&B has to offer.
Rage Against The Machine
5/5
RAW. Nothing but a fury-tinged political manifesto against the capitalist nightmare, those who profit from it, and the police and other institutions who prop it up through force and hatred. While there's much to be said about Rage feeding into the machine through merch sales, tours, and general affiliation with major labels, the fact remains that this is an abrasive and sharp-tongued record that's as relevant today as it was over 30 years ago, potentially even more so.
Def Leppard
2/5
This sound is just really dull to me. I considered giving it a 3 because I was enjoying some of the riffs and everything, but it all just went on too monotonously for too long for me to award it more than a 2.
Iggy Pop
4/5
Another showing of Raw Power from Iggy Pop, this album is a tour de force of sloppy garage- and glam-inflected punk riffs amped up to maximum. Of particular note are the title track and The Passenger!
Yes
5/5
Awesome album - one of the finest examples of early prog rock, just as it was finding its legs, and well before it ascended to "dinosaur" status. Everything is tight and laser-focused, while still allowing space to really jam out on songs like Yours Is No Disgrace and Starship Trooper.
Elliott Smith
4/5
Another really great effort from Elliott Smith - though unlike the previous album we got, which was more "upbeat" rock-tinged stuff, this one was very dour folky singer-songwriter material. Regardless, his songwriting talents are on full display.
XTC
5/5
XTC's best album in my humble opinion, and from an illustrious discography too. Shedding the new wave of their earlier days, this album dives fully into psychedelic pop delights, in a send-up to the various styles of The Beatles and The Beach Boys. The songwriting, the production, and the album flow are all on point - a delight all around.
A Tribe Called Quest
4/5
What a tour de force! Q-Tip, Phife, and the other members of ATCQ lay down some intense bars over one of the finest collections of jazzy beats I've yet heard - well deserving of the album name.
Judas Priest
4/5
Real solid chunk of heavy metal from one of the greatest bands to ever do it. These guys were rocking this sound way before most of their peers, and doing a better job of it too.
Leonard Cohen
4/5
Another album of really nice, ethereal folk songs with some mild chamber music touches. Leonard Cohen delivers each story with gravitas while still sounding nearly ghostly in his delivery. Very nice stuff!
Dexys Midnight Runners
4/5
Quite the surprise for me - I only knew this group by Come On Eileen, but what I got here was a really neat prog-pop album filled with vague hints of Celtic influence and some great instrumentation! The vocalist sounded kinda stuffed up, but I got used to that as the album went on too.
Doves
4/5
Doves' second album didn't grip me as much as their first, from earlier in this challenge, did, but it was still some solid dream pop stuff. A myriad of touches such as the occasional shoegaze element or comparisons to the sound of Coldplay definitely helped it along to a solid 8/10.
Portishead
5/5
Just a stunning album. I like my trip hop moody, and this delivers in spades. Beth Gibbons' haunting voice sings of loneliness and heartbreak over ethereal keyboards and lonely-sounding beats, and the overall package is of wandering some urban city late at night, with nobody else around, just taking in the loneliness. Fantastic stuff.
Neneh Cherry
3/5
Buffalo Stance started this album off strong, but unfortunately outside of a few more standout moments like the piano in Inna City Mamma, there really wasn't much to this one, I'm afraid. A solid 6/10, mostly on the merit of Buffalo Stance alone.
Carpenters
3/5
A pretty good collection of easy-listening baroque pop songs. Nothing especially groundbreaking, but it's really carried by Karen Carpenter's gorgeous vocals.
Carole King
4/5
Lovely album. Carole King's voice effortlessly serves these well-written songs, resulting in some all-time classics like the title track, I Feel the Earth Move, and You've Got a Friend.
Arcade Fire
3/5
As an album I appreciated this more than The Suburbs, which we got not too long ago in this challenge - the instrumentation was rich and varied and the songs kept me engaged throughout. However, as far as truly getting into Arcade Fire goes, I think I missed the last train.
Rod Stewart
3/5
Rod Stewart's vocals are... interesting, to say the least. Very throaty and scratchy, which worked fine for his guest appearance on Jeff Beck's Truth, but doesn't really serve this rootsier music as well. The instrumentation is pretty good though, so I'm giving this one a 7/10.
Metallica
4/5
What an album. This is where Metallica's days of pure thrash ended, and what a swan song for that era of the band. The album famously lacks bass, with Lars Ulrich demanding that new bassist Jason Newsted's parts be mixed very low, but honestly the album works perfectly well for me in spite of the resultant dryness of its sound (and in some places, because of).
The Beach Boys
5/5
I have a hard time quantifying this release. It doesn't seem like an immediate, slam-dunk 5-star, and in fact the first few times I heard it, I didn't think of it as much special. However, it's the kind of album that, without you even realizing it, on repeat listens, just sinks its way into your heart, bit by bit. Eventually, it'll feel like it was always meant to be there. How can I give an album like that any less than a 5?
Steely Dan
4/5
Another slam dunk from the Dan. This one's a bit more rooted purely in 70s guitar pop than the more 30s-jazz-inspired sound of Pretzel Logic or the exquisite fusion arrangements of Aja, but no less awesome for it. Bodhisattva, The Boston Rag, Your Gold Teeth, and more are all-time bops!
Sonic Youth
4/5
Dirty is the right word. This thing is filthy, with songs lumbered down with groaning, bassy noise throughout - however, the noise never detracts from the melodies or catchiness of the songs, only adds to them. This is what noise rock is all about!
George Harrison
4/5
This album absolutely proves that George Harrison was the Beatles' secret weapon. At over 100 minutes long you'd expect it to drag, but it keeps pace the whole way through in my humble opinion. Even the "Apple Jam" which takes up the entire third LP is some fun instrumental rock jamming to end the album on. Combine that with absolute gems of songs from the first two LPs like My Sweet Lord, Let It Down, All Things Must Pass, and Hear Me Lord, and you've got a triple album for the ages.
Sisters Of Mercy
3/5
Another very cool gothic rock album, unfortunately at 50 minutes this one was overstaying its welcome a bit. Sorry, Sisters, you can't quite carry a long album quite like Robert Smith can.
Khaled
3/5
This is my first time hearing any Algerian raï music, and it was a fun listen! I was expecting it to drag on me across its nearly hour and 20 minutes of runtime, but I found myself bopping along to it throughout. Definitely a worthwhile stop on this list!
Richard Thompson
4/5
A delightfully melancholic British folk rock album, pairing delicate acoustic guitars with gorgeous vocal harmonies and the generally dour tone of most good folk music. Easy 9/10.
T. Rex
3/5
David Bowie must've set an impossible expectation for me with regards to glam rock. While this album by T. Rex is solid, and has its moments of brilliance, I find it, and many other glam acts from the 70s, live in the shadow of albums such as Hunky Dory or The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars, whose bombast and larger-than-life sounds tend to drown out anything else that dabbled in this genre.
Curtis Mayfield
4/5
OH YEAH BABEY. WE FUNKIN IT UP
David Bowie
5/5
Absolutely no notes. Glam perfection. Nobody ever did it quite like Bowie did.
Coldplay
4/5
There's a very good reason that Coldplay basically took over the world in the early to mid 2000s. Even though this album is derided by some as just diet Radiohead, I find that Coldplay bring their own touch to these songs, infusing them with a warmth that even the best Radiohead tunes lack (and I say this as a massive Radiohead fan, mind you). The songwriting was there, the atmosphere was there - what's not to love?
Big Star
3/5
I'm afraid I simply don't really get the Big Star hype. It's a decent lil slice of 70s guitar pop, a solid 6/10 for me, but I don't quite understand how they're one of the most acclaimed power pop bands ever. Oh well
John Lennon
5/5
Just a monumental piece of work. All the Beatles expressed how the breakup of the band affected them differently in their initial solo works, but John's is just an absolute scream of pain and rage. Childhood trauma, social issues, and his feelings on the breakup of the band are all mixed up into this great soup of angry singer-songwriter stuff, and easily one of the best post-Beatles works by any of them.
Röyksopp
4/5
Some real nice, solid downtempo to chill out to. Eple and Poor Leno were particular highlights for me.
The Smiths
3/5
There's no criticism of music that I hate more than "overrated", because it's such an easy word to throw at any release that's even mildly popular among any demographic, and it's so often completely devoid of meaning or substance.
That said... sometimes a shoe fits.
Unfortunately, I really, truly do not get the hype for this one. Instrumentally, it's fine - Johnny Marr's guitar playing is a highlight throughout the album. I found Morrissey's voice annoying at first, though I did get used to it by the end of the album. But something about it just doesn't really come together for me, certainly not enough for me to see why it's so universally acclaimed, or rated #40 of all time on RateYourMusic, or the like. I also despise Morrissey and have nothing but bad to say about him, but that doesn't even factor in here. Just a really puzzling conundrum for me.
Jerry Lee Lewis
3/5
Solid bit of energetic rock & roll from a guy who, by all his deeds, seems to have been Satan himself given mortal form.
Rocket From The Crypt
3/5
Wasn't especially enchanted by this one - it's easily outdone by other albums in any genre it could reasonably claim to be, which is kind of wild considering the vocalist & guitarist is John Reis from Drive Like Jehu, a band I absolutely love. We'll call this one a low 6/10, brought out of the 5/10 range by the admittedly still quite cool guitar work in parts.
Marvin Gaye
4/5
SOUL. There's no genre quite like it, and Marvin Gaye delivers on its promise in spades.
The Louvin Brothers
3/5
As far as 1950s country goes, I liked this more than the Everly Brothers album we got a while back. Something about the songs just hits more for me. The brothers' excellent high-low close harmonies don't hurt either!
The Mars Volta
5/5
A lot of modern prog rock falls into the unfortunate pattern of just being mindless Genesis worship or the like, with no understanding of the craft that went into those older prog rock songs, often just using wacky time signatures or playing 20-minute suites because that's what you do in prog.
The Mars Volta do not have that problem.
Defiantly original, The Mars Volta formed from the ashes of post-hardcore darlings At the Drive-In. Vocalist Cedric Bixler-Zavala and guitarist Omar Rodríguez-López wanted to explore their Latin roots, as well as incorporate influence from their years in punk bands, and the searing prog rock and fiery jazz fusion they enjoyed. The result was a stunning tour de force of a band. Hypnotic Latin grooves, cryptic yet still emotional storytelling and lyricism focusing around the grief they felt for friends lost, and sheer unadulterated musical chaos are their calling cards on this album, and they deliver on all these promises and more. An astounding debut album that they still somehow managed to top with their sophomore effort, Frances the Mute, just two years later.
Various Artists
4/5
If we ignore the Phil Spector appearance at the very end, this is a delightful collection of Christmas tunes by some of the greatest girl groups to ever do it. And, unfortunately, Spector's trademark Wall of Sound production does shine through excellently on here.
Bob Dylan
4/5
Our first Bob Dylan album of the challenge (nearly 1/4 of the way through!) and it's a great one. I hadn't heard this one before besides the opener, Subterranean Homesick Blues, but as Dylan's first electric album it absolutely shows off his songwriting chops even with this evolved sound. Songs like Outlaw Blues, Mr. Tambourine Man, It's All Over Now Baby Blue, and especially the 7-minute It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding) are yet more entries into the pantheon of my favourite Bob Dylan tunes.
Beatles
5/5
My favourite Beatles album, in an illustrious discography of great works. Discounting Let It Be, which was recorded before this but came out after, this is one hell of a last hurrah for a band that was coming unglued at the time of recording. You've got all-time classics like Come Together and Something, heavy songs like Oh! Darling or the psychedelic rager I Want You (She's So Heavy), lighter fare like Octopus's Garden and Here Comes the Sun, and even an over 15-minute medley of songs taking up most of the second side of the record, culminating in the absolute tour de force that is The End, where in just two minutes the Fab Four trade off solos and deliver one hell of, well, an end to the whole shebang. Not just the album, but their recorded output as a group. (Oh, and Her Majesty is there too.)
No notes. This deserves its spot near the very top of the rankings on this website.
Mike Oldfield
5/5
The first album from Mike Oldfield, and what a beginning! While it isn't as well-defined as his future album-length suites, mostly lacking many if any recurring motifs and sort of just moving from musical idea to musical idea throughout its length, it's still an all-time classic of progressive rock. The piano section at the start that got used in The Exorcist, the instrument callouts by Viv Stanshall at the end of Pt. 1 ending with the titular bells ringing out proud, and the delightful Sailor's Hornpipe rendition to end Pt. 2 are highlights for me.
Fleetwood Mac
4/5
Fleetwood Mac's obligatory double album. This one doesn't quite hit as hard as Rumours or the (second) self-titled for me, being more of a White Album-esque grab bag of sounds than a unified whole. That said, it has enough highlights (Sara, Sisters of the Moon, Beautiful Child, and Tusk chiefest among them) for me to still rate it an easy 8/10.
Slayer
4/5
Another great album from one of the Big Four of thrash metal. While the songs do threaten to blend if the album goes any longer, its extra-lean length of just 28 minutes ensures you won't get bored.
Public Image Ltd.
4/5
After quitting the Sex Pistols, one of the pioneering punk bands, John Lydon created this, a pioneering post-punk band. Brilliant progression, that. Amid knotty, gnarled basslines are sung pretty typically punk lyrics about religion and the government and the like. And y'know what? It works for me! I'm a fan of post-punk in general, and this band definitely delivers on the elements I enjoy about the genre.
James Brown
4/5
I associate James Brown more with funk than with rhythm & blues, and this release is the latter. That said, this is some pretty damn solid rhythm & blues!
Rush
5/5
An incredibly important album to me. Rush were one of the first bands I got really deep into before really getting obsessed with music, and their music has stuck with me through all that time. This is a perfect example of the blending of their earlier proggy sounds with a melodic, poppy hard rock sheen that would follow them through the 80s. Just fantastic stuff all around.
Also, the top review of this album is insane. What level of hatred would possess one to write a fanfiction about Geddy Lee attempting to defile and murder a personification of prog rock??
Neil Young & Crazy Horse
4/5
Another great album from Neil, this time accompanied by the band Crazy Horse. This album perfectly shows off the two sides of Neil's music - the A-side is an acoustic set, with Neil singing his songs alone with just acoustic guitar and harmonica, and the B-side is an insanely heavy electric set, with guitar tones so raw and crunchy you'd figure they were from 90s grunge instead of 70s folk-rock. As ever, Neil's songwriting chops are on full display. The acoustic numbers deliver on sadness and pain, while the electric ones display that rawness and fury. Especially poignant are the bookends to the album, "My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)" and "Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)", which are nearly the same song but with a few lyrics swapped and the instrumentation switched out. That this song works so well in both styles is a testament to Neil's songwriting ability.
MC Solaar
4/5
Very solid jazz rap - the flow was wild, and the beats catchy and jazzy as hell! It was starting to feel a bit long, then Ragga Jam broke up the last couple tracks excellently. The length does still hurt it a little bit, but a solid 8/10 nonetheless.
Radiohead
4/5
This is one that it took me longer to warm up to than many of Radiohead's more acclaimed albums, and it still juuust misses the 10/10 mark for me. However, it's still got some of Radiohead's best songs on it, with bangers like 2+2=5, There There, and A Wolf at the Door peppered throughout. It's also their most politically incisive album, coming as it does right on the heels of the invasion of Iraq by the Bush administration.
Shame they didn't maintain that political acuity into the present day...
The Pretty Things
4/5
This was a thoroughly pleasant listen! Even with the hard stereo panning typical of late 60s music, the songwriting and sound design had me hooked. There's lots here to love.
I will need to relisten next week though, cause I could barely hear any of the vocals since my right ear is currently blocked </3
Ryan Adams
2/5
Meh.
The big shiny classic-rock-esque pop rock sound has already worn off me a bit, and hearing 70 minutes of it from this guy did nothing to warm me up to it. I liked enough of the songs decently enough that I was considering a 6/10, but as a full album experience I couldn't countenance anything more than a 5/10, and I'm demoting it to 4/10 purely because of the ick some of these lyrics give me in light of recent allegations against the guy. Eugh, next.
The Cardigans
3/5
Surprisingly solid! The cover of Iron Man was quite funny rendered in this style, and all of their originals were very pleasant to the ear. Right in the 7/10 range for me.
The White Stripes
3/5
Pleasant enough, but unfortunately it went straight in one ear and out the other. Definition of 6/10 music for me.
5/5
What poetry, that we got this album ten years to the day after David Bowie's passing.
This is one of those albums that just defies explanation. It perfects glam rock. It perfects David Bowie's penchant for adopting otherworldly personas, this time as the alien saviour-turned-washed up rock star Ziggy Stardust. It perfects its chosen narrative of societal collapse, drugs, sex, and burnout. And it also helps that all the songs individually are bangers, with iconic hits like Moonage Daydream, Starman, and Suffragette City peppered throughout the runtime.
Rest in peace, David. You came and visited, and you certainly blew our minds.
TV On The Radio
4/5
Another solid album from TVOTR. It's not as experimental as their debut album which we got earlier in this challenge, settling more into an arty funky indie sound than the jazzy touches, ripping basslines, and strange doo-wop experiments from their debut, but that's not a bad thing - they settle well into this sound and inhabit it to its fullest. The obvious highlight is DLZ, and not just for its appearance in Breaking Bad; it's also just a damn fine song.
Metallica
4/5
Another solid thrash metal entry from Metallica, and with actual bass this time! Cliff Burton was the GOAT, as can clearly be heard on Orion.
Mekons
3/5
This was a fun one! The "cowpunk" style is very much for me, I think - the song "Abernant 1984/5" sounded like a song I'd want to sing in a crowded bar while sloshed drunk. I did deduct a star, however, because there were definitely points where the album blended a bit for me, and also it just kind of stopped, instead of wrapping up properly.
Frank Zappa
5/5
One of Frank Zappa's first solo releases beyond the confines of the Mothers of Invention, his first foray into jammy jazz-rock, and the first ever album to be recorded on a 16-track, this is a real tasty slab of mostly-instrumental jams. From the ripping guitar solo (and Captain Beefheart vocal feature) of Willie the Pimp to the delightful jazziness of Little Umbrellas and It Must Be a Camel, this album's got delights all throughout, and its 16 tracks of audio make it sound far, far ahead of its time. Easily recommended for any fan of jammed-out rock music!
4/5
I don't listen to nearly as much Muse as the bands they're perennially compared to, Radiohead and Coldplay, but I always enjoy them when they're on, and this album is no exception! The last 3-track run especially, from City of Delusion to Knights of Cydonia, is absolute fire heat.
Fleet Foxes
4/5
This is a delightful album - a springtime paradise of breezy indie folk, alternating between more melancholy songs and absolute bangers. Very much appeals to many of my musical sensibilities.
Bruce Springsteen
4/5
This is our fourth album so far from The Boss, and unfortunately I don't think this one quite hits the highs of the previous three we've gotten (Nebraska, Born in the USA, and Born to Run). I'd have to spend some more time with it to really sink my teeth into these songs, but they are still delights throughout.
Death In Vegas
4/5
Really fun stuff - I don't know how I've never considered the idea of psychedelic trip hop before, but this really slam dunks that sound, even if the sound does get a bit samey at album scale.
B.B. King
4/5
Absolute fire heat the whole way through, as B.B. King weaves stories and plays a mean electric guitar over some soulful blues numbers. My only wish is that it went on even longer than just 33 minutes.
John Lee Hooker
3/5
A solid electric blues showing from one of the great bluesmen, with plenty of features supplementing the tracklist. However, it's a bit past the prime of the genre to truly capture what the greatest blues recordings do.
LCD Soundsystem
3/5
Something's missing.
Despite how acclaimed this band is (and I do love what songs I've heard off of their self-titled and Sound of Silver), there really wasn't much to sink my teeth into on this album. How Do You Sleep? and to a lesser extent Tonite were pretty good, but otherwise this just washed over me. It felt derivative of, rather than inspired by, a host of earlier new wave artists such as Talking Heads and Devo. 6/10.
Dire Straits
3/5
Honestly, this one felt like nothing special to me. Their self-titled which we got a while ago was cool and bluesy if a bit samey, but this one went headlong into 80s pop rock, a sound I'm overall less interested in.
Stevie Wonder
4/5
Now this is some true SOUL. Stevie Wonder effortlessly makes 105 minutes of music pass like it's 40 or so, and doesn't lose the verve or funkiness at any point. This is truly life-affirming stuff. Strong 9/10, bumped even higher by how consistently good it stays for its entire runtime, with 10/10 potential.
Teenage Fanclub
3/5
Surprisingly solid indie rock/power pop type stuff from the early 90s. It's really funny that people got mad about this beating out Nevermind to the #1 spot
Paul Weller
2/5
This one bored me. Production-wise it sounded great, but none of the songwriting hooked me at all, and at 54 minutes it felt a little more like 80. I'll pass on this one.
The Smiths
3/5
I liked this one more than The Queen Is Dead, which is generally more critically acclaimed - the guitar and piano hit a little more for me, and even Morrissey's voice was less annoying. I still don't think these guys are gonna enter my rotation any time soon, though.
Queens Of The Stone Age
4/5
As puzzled as I am by this book's continual refusal to include acclaimed albums by 90s/00s rock bands in favour of their less acclaimed debut albums, this album is still a very solid heaping of fuzzed-out Palm Desert stoner rock! The riffage and Josh Homme's vocals are on point here, honed by his time in Kyuss and ready to keep turning out classic albums.
Bruce Springsteen
3/5
I thought it strange that we got a random 2002 album among the four other classic-period albums from Springsteen, but it made sense when I figured out that this was his post-9/11 mourning album.
I'll admit that I went into the album with a sense of trepidation, even knowing how good Springsteen is, just because of how hokey and often disingenuous a lot of post-9/11 music was. Thankfully, Springsteen put those fears to bed - the instrumental palette consists of his E Street Band plus some added strings, which help layer on the melancholy when it's needed but also keep things light on other songs. I appreciate that Springsteen approaches the subject with respect but not the overwrought, almost fake-seeming melancholy that a lot of artists in this time period imbued their songs with. Further, exemplifying the process of societal recovery, Springsteen also includes some lighter fare, such as Mary's Place which is about celebrating those who are still with us - it's not all doom and gloom on here.
Overall, Springsteen paints an authentic portrait of an American everyman coming to grips with the societal trauma dealt by the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The album's 72 minutes did wear on me a bit, and his songwriting isn't quite as strong as in his *ahem* glory days, but The Boss never truly misses.
Joni Mitchell
5/5
Joni Mitchell delivers one of the most compelling contemporary folk albums of all time with Blue, a series of tender emotional ballads delivered using a small instrumental palette and Joni's enchanting voice. Every song is just so special.
Blur
3/5
It's so funny how the only thing I can think of when Damon Albarn sings is Gorillaz
Manic Street Preachers
3/5
I only knew this band from The Holy Bible, their last album with lyricist Richey Edwards before he disappeared, and from my friend Ava's hyperfixation on them a few years ago. This album came after Richey's disappearance, and it's some solid alternative rock, though I don't think it's as good as The Holy Bible.
The Mamas & The Papas
4/5
Very solid mid-60s sunshine pop album! Every song was enjoyable, and there were plenty I distantly recognized.
I hope John Phillips is rotting in Hell, though.
4/5
My favourite of the three U2 albums we've gotten so far! This is perhaps the ultimate culmination of their stadium-ready "big music" sound that they'd been honing for years to this point, and every facet of the production shines through in bangers like Where the Streets Have No Name. Great stuff!
Sebadoh
4/5
I like my slacker/indie rock weird, and this album delivers on that promise. This music sounds like it's about to fall apart, and that's a good thing.
The Vines
4/5
I fuck heavy with this. It's funny seeing the discourse around this album - they may not be "the future of rock" as NME described them, but these guys know their way around some tunes! Not everything that's "overrated" is necessarily bad or generic, guys.
Spacemen 3
4/5
Spaceeeyyyyyyy. This is an early hallmark of the "space rock revival" style, which combined the space rock of the 70s with newer sounds for the late 80s and the 90s. I hear everything from The Flaming Lips to Spiritualized to even Boredoms in this album, and it seems like this is the origin point for it all. Noisy, frenetic, and full of excellent buildup and atmosphere, this is a must-listen for anyone interested in spacey, wacked-out rock music!
Eagles
3/5
Beyond the few hits, this was nothing especially special, but it passed by blessedly quickly, so it balances out to a nice 7/10.
Alice Cooper
2/5
Didn't really enjoy this one. It had none of the energy or verve that I like from good hard rock, and the second-last song was genuinely ass.
Cocteau Twins
4/5
Glorious, glorious ethereal nonsense. What is Elizabeth Fraser singing? Nobody has ever figured that out!!!!
Bob Dylan
4/5
This is our second Bob Dylan album of the challenge, and the first one I was familiar with in advance. And oh, what an album! Every line is a poem of its own, and Bob just keeps delivering them time and time and time again. It's rare for lyrics, storytelling, and songwriting to combine so prodigiously, but Bob manages it, and that's why he's one of the all-time greats.
Isaac Hayes
5/5
God, what a perfect album. Isaac Hayes combines incredibly soulful delivery with super lush instrumentation, to astonishing effect. One of the GOAT albums.
Fun fact: Henry Rollins, frontman of hardcore punk band Black Flag, cites this as his favourite album ever!
David Gray
4/5
Didn't know anything about this one going in, but I was pleasantly surprised! It's a collection of fairly standard pop-rock songs, but the songwriting is pleasant, and there's a delightful combination of 90s influences in the mix such as downtempo.
Devendra Banhart
4/5
A whimsical and earnestly human work from freak folk pioneer Devendra Banhart. Capturing bluesy inflections and simple tunes, replete with organic details like background noise and re-takes, this album feels like a pleasant spring walk (which I could definitely use after this winter is over).
Beatles
4/5
An early example of the Beatles' songwriting prowess. Nothing groundbreaking by today's standards for sure, but in 1964 this was still revolutionary! It doesn't age quite as well as some of their later fare, but this is still an excellent collection of songs.
1/5
Just as stinky as its title implies.
Nu metal in general usually combines lots of elements into a whole that I don't care for - a muddy, congealed, solo-less mush of guitar, annoyingly bouncy and often slapped bass riffs, and usually nasally and reedy rapped vocals. Combine that with the infantile lyrical talent of Fred Durst, and you have something that is just utterly anathema to me. Fred Durst writes lyrics like a 13-year-old who just learned the word "fuck", and has no greater insight into the world than "fuck the haterz!!!1!1!1!!" Particularly egregious, and easily the feature that cemented my 1-star rating, is a song in which Fred and a guest rapper boast about beating up gay people, using an anti-gay slur common of the time period, and then on the very next song, Fred tries to complain about all the hate in the world (and, pertinently, the hate directed at him). You couldn't write a stereotype of an early 2000s edgelord that's that on the nose. Then the nearly 10-minute "Outro" ends off this hour and a quarter of sewer ooze, with a spoken word diatribe about how great Limp Bizkit is followed by three minutes of an incredibly annoying laugh on loop. Fuck you.
The only song that had both musically interesting elements and non-god-awful lyrics was Hold On, but this was far too deep into the album to change my opinion, and if anything pissed me off even more, because they could've just been writing songs like that across the entire rest of the album. That song is the only thing saving this from a 1/10, and it's still a fairly low 2/10. Fuck this album and fuck Fred Durst.
The Shamen
3/5
This was fun! Ordinarily I might rate this album lower, because it does carry on its fairly similar and dated sound throughout its hour-long runtime, and there are definitely highlights and lowlights. However, the overall sound of acid house is a nostalgia shot to the veins for me (I blame Super Monkey Ball for that, that game has a killer soundtrack), so I ended up rating it a 7/10 even so.
Cream
3/5
It's fine.
There are four songs on here I do really enjoy - Strange Brew, Sunshine of Your Love, Tales of Brave Ulysses, and SWLABR. Other than those, this really is just an average blues rock album, eclipsed by many of its peers. I truly, truly do not understand why Eric Clapton was ever regarded so highly, as one of the best blues guitarists (or even guitarists, period) of all time. From all that I've heard, his playing is pedestrian even for its time. Really, really overhyped.
Aerosmith
2/5
man, I really do not like 80s hard rock. Aerosmith are very much a greatest hits band - I don't think they can truly fill out an album, as evidenced by most of these songs being forgettable to outright laughable (shoutout to the "Steven Tyler eats ass" anthem). Only the hits were really of any worth to me, and even then, Love in an Elevator could've easily cut off where the radio version does, instead of looping its final chorus for the entire back half of the song. One final cherry that really tanked my rating solidly into 4/10 territory was when I thought it was over and then they did a minute and a half long bluegrass ditty at the end of the final track. Just not enjoyable at all to me.
The Last Shadow Puppets
3/5
I actually liked this more than the Arctic Monkeys album we got! The tasteful application of strings, which are present but never overwhelming, and the tinges of spaghetti western influence elevate this for me, to a high 7/10.
Elvis Presley
3/5
Very smooth! This is more in a rhythm & blues style than Elvis' usual fare of rock & roll or rockabilly, but he pulls it off! (Not that it's all that far off sound-wise, lol.) The production is exceedingly crisp for 1960, which really helps show off the songs and Elvis' singing, which by this point has matured a bit from his earlier belting.
Linkin Park
3/5
It was tough to put a number on this one, but ultimately I'm settling on a 3. Despite my tirade against nu metal in my review of Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water a few days ago, this one didn't really grate on me musically like that one did, with the riffs remaining interesting throughout instead of devolving into a muddy ooze. Lyrically, it's pretty bog-standard nu metal stuff, but it at least avoids the infantile shit Fred Durst was penning, and even with the memeworthy status of some songs like Crawling and In the End, I do genuinely believe there's real pain behind Chester Bennington's lyrics and delivery. It also has the incalculable advantage of being only half as long as Chocolate Starfish!!! The album was over by the time I was starting to get a bit weary of the sound.
Overall, this album shows off what nu metal is capable of a lot better than Slipknot or Chocolate Starfish did, and I will maintain that In the End is a genuinely great song. Not entirely for me, but enough for a solid 6/10.
Flamin' Groovies
1/5
This is fucking dull. Blues rock in this style is a bit of a toss-off genre for me nowadays anyway, and when it's as dull as all this, even more so. On top of that, the overt references to having sex with teenagers, the fact that it somehow made THIRTY MINUTES feel too long, the only good song being whacked right at the end, and that god-awful Elvis impression on Evil Hearted Ada... it all adds up to a very low score.
What a dismal week it's been.
The United States Of America
4/5
This album rules! As far as experimental rock from the 60s goes, it's so far back at this point that it's genuinely difficult to find something that still sounds truly out of this world. But this album manages it, with its strange passages and use of tape manipulation conveying some far-off world.
Little Richard
4/5
Now this is rock & roll!!!! Little Richard's voice carries an unmistakable energy, and supplemented by the fiery horn section and awesome piano playing, the result is one of the most energetic albums of the 50s.
Rufus Wainwright
3/5
Solid singer-songwriter stuff from an absolute gayboss - supplemented by the generous strings, Rufus' voice really carries these tunes.
The Fall
4/5
Despite the critical acclaim of The Nation's Saving Grace, I actually liked this one more! Mark E. Smith's speak-singing style on this album combined with the fairly minimalistic yet still super sick musical backing really works for me. The surprise dance song near the end doesn't hurt!
Gillian Welch
4/5
Absolutely gorgeous stuff. Gillian's voice and lyrics are a treat, and combined with the country-tinged folk arrangements and really nice acoustic playing, this makes for one hell of an album. Easy 9/10.
Fela Kuti
4/5
Fuuuuuuuck yes, this is the stuff. Fela Kuti and his backing band Africa 70 absolutely tear up a set of his signature Afrobeat style, bringing funky fresh grooves and killer horn sections to life with Fela's vocals and Nigerian-inspired compositions. The bonus track with Ginger Baker and Tony Allen doing a dual drum solo from 1978 doesn't hurt either!
Muddy Waters
3/5
A solid showing of electric Chicago blues from Muddy, though a bit longer in the tooth and not quite as incendiary as his Newport 1960 live album that we got a while ago in the challenge.
N.E.R.D
2/5
Well that was stupid
Supertramp
4/5
Some very nice poppy 70s prog rock, with killer keyboard work all throughout! The piano solo in School was a particular highlight.
Goldfrapp
4/5
I went in with no expectations, not knowing anything about this band, and was pleasantly surprised! Some really nice art pop stuff with lush acoustic guitar and strings.
Michael Jackson
4/5
MJ does it again! A solid 45 minutes of pure dance-pop, synth-funk goodness. Opening your album with the two absolute bangers Bad and The Way You Make Me Feel is so unfair, especially when you go on to close it with mf Smooth Criminal!!!
Sam Cooke
4/5
Pure SOUL. Great energy, great vocals, and a killer lineup of songs make for a pretty great live album!!
Janelle Monáe
4/5
Really fun album! In concept, sound, and production, Janelle delivers a really unique pop album that still remains catchy and fun throughout. Solid recommendation!
The Monks
4/5
I do already rather enjoy that 60s garage rock sound, but the experimental flair on some of these songs, plus the singer sounding like you plucked him straight out of a high-tier mid-70s hard rock band, really give the edge to this album!
Massive Attack
4/5
Massive Attack were simply one of the best groups to ever do it, when it comes to trip hop. This is an album of theirs I'd not heard before, being familiar only with Blue Lines and Mezzanine, and it sits at a great halfway point between the two. There's just no matching the cool, moody, urban sound these guys cook up!
That said, one thousand plagues on Robert Dimery's house for leaving Mezzanine out of the book. What the actual fuck???
Yes
5/5
Although this has easily Yes's most popular song on it, I actually find it more disjointed than its surrounding albums, owing to the structure of mostly short solo compositions sandwiched by the group-led prog epics. It's still a 5 though
5/5
Just a day after Fragile, we get Close to the Edge. This is Yes's masterpiece and I'll brook no argument on that. Every moment of every long-ass song hits.
Megadeth
4/5
Dave Mustaine's voice is so fucking goofy. In the words of a friend, he "sounds like he somehow developed vocal hemorrhoids". But that doesn't actually detract from the enjoyment of the music for me - this is some pure thrash metal at its most thrashy!
Bill Callahan
3/5
I really enjoyed this in the first half, and while I may have been just tired, it did unfortunately fall off a bit with the last few songs. That said, this is still a very solid album! Bill's voice is very rich and soothing, and complements the Americana style on the album well. Particular highlights were the opening track Jim Cain, and two back to back tracks in the middle, Too Many Birds and My Friend.
Earth, Wind & Fire
4/5
We are FUNKIN. EW&F, famous for making everyone remember the 21st night of September, give us a soundtrack to what's apparently a fairly throwaway film, and absolutely kill it. Energetic funk, smooth soul, and even a heady jazz-funk track in Africano fill this album, and it's great stuff throughout!
Rod Stewart
3/5
I really don't think we needed multiple Rod Stewart albums on this list. I can't remember what it was about Gasoline Alley that made me give it a 7/10 - maybe just the whims of whatever mood I happened to be in that day. Those same whims mean I can't really give this one any more than a 6.
X-Ray Spex
3/5
A weird example of an album that peaked in the middle for me. At the start I wasn't really feeling it and by the end it had worn off me for a bit, but in the middle I was really jamming with it! Energetic punk rock with a prominent saxophone and Polly Styrene's enthusiastically yelped vocals is a very good combo.
Jethro Tull
5/5
A folky progressive hard rock album that's elevated by Ian Anderson's flute, and elevated even further by being one of the first albums I really got into after my first three music obsessions of Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, and Rush began to run their course. It's a shame Thick as a Brick by this band isn't on this list, cause that one goes even harder.
Ananda Shankar
4/5
Glad we got some raga on this list! Ananda, the nephew of Ravi Shankar, blends the sitar drones of raga with psychedelic rock to great effect on here. A unique and captivating listen!
James Taylor
3/5
Pretty decent folky soft rock album. My favourite songs were the ones where James went all in on the blues.
Throbbing Gristle
3/5
Early industrial music was deeply, deeply strange, and this album is no exception. Alien samples, cold mechanical soundscapes, and some genuinely horrific sound design abound on this album - a particular highlight for me is the unsettling "Hamburger Lady", based on a story about a burn ward medic treating a woman whose entire body was severely burned from the waist up. Much of the experimental music I love owes a strong debt to pioneers like this.
That said, I will drop a star for the photo of a little girl lifting her dress and showing her underwear that was put in the lower-right corner of the cover art. Being provocateurs was normal for people in this scene, but doing so with actual exploitative material is indefensible.
The Clash
3/5
Another pretty solid early punk album. It's hard to really grasp the effect this had on the music-listening public at the time, so far removed from what was actually popular at the time and what this would've sounded like when it was a fresh new sound, but it's still some very nice stuff.
Dexys Midnight Runners
3/5
We got the third Dexys album a while ago and it was some really solid 80s art pop stuff. This one goes for more of a blue-eyed soul sound, and while I did enjoy the stuff they were doing with horns and saxophones in some songs, the singer's voice did significantly less for me on this one than on their third. I'm sorry, I don't think a whiny British man has any business trying to sing soul.
Turbonegro
3/5
This was a weird one to rate. Musically this would probably be a 3 or even a 4, cause it's got some extremely solid hard rock jamming. On the other hand, the lyrics are goofy and even childish at times (though never as infantile as, say, Limp Bizkit), and apparently a lot of the riffs are outright ripped off from earlier hard rock acts. So I'm gonna have to settle it out at a 6/10, or just barely a 3-star.
Led Zeppelin
5/5
Sheer hard rock goodness. Nobody was making shit as head-bangable as this back then, and even nowadays it's no wonder these guys so completely changed the face of rock music.
Funkadelic
4/5
I mean... how can you say no to that title track? Ten minutes of Eddie Hazel shredding the guitar like his momma just died, producing one of the most glorious pieces of guitar work to ever grace wax.
The rest of the album isn't too shabby either, full of soulful, psychedelic funk rock bops, though it does admittedly fall off a little on some songs. I also really love the closer, "Wars of Armageddon", for how utterly and stupidly out there it gets. Who knew that the Armageddon included the immaculately produced sound of someone ripping absolute ass?? However, I can't in good conscience give the album as a whole a 5 when everything else on it is so completely overshadowed by the opener.
Gang Of Four
4/5
I really enjoyed this album! Post-punk is at its best when it has a weird, experimental bite to it, and this one's got that. Noisy, angular guitar work and insane bass grooves really propel this one above for me.
Leonard Cohen
4/5
If I had a nickel for every transformative final work about mortality with motifs of darkness released by an artist before their deaths in 2016, I'd have two nickels
Hole
3/5
Solid power pop stuff, although I didn't enjoy it as much as I did the earlier, grungier Hole album that we got a while ago in this challenge.
Manu Chao
4/5
Pure Latin goodness - from a French guy no less! Music to shake your ass to.
Beck
4/5
Extremely solid listen! The trip hop and electronic elements definitely helped elevate this for me compared to other 2000s alternative rock.
Peter Gabriel
4/5
This album does admittedly let its foot off the gas a bit after the one-two opening punch of Red Rain and Sledgehammer, two of Peter's best, but the whole album is some solid 80s art-pop from the former Genesis frontman.
Prince
4/5
The second double album by Prince we've gotten in this challenge, and just as smooth, soulful, and sexed-up as the first. This ain't just music for making love. This is music for FUCKING.
Guns N' Roses
2/5
I have so thoroughly outgrown this band it's insane.
I used to love these guys when I was 18 or so. Couldn't get enough of Axl's voice, or their Sympathy for the Devil cover, or just their general vibe. Fast-forward about six years, and I finally heard Appetite for Destruction for the first time in full - I didn't get it at all. How was this something I so thoroughly enjoyed? It was overblown, stuffed with gross lyrics (when they named this blues-tinged offshoot of hair metal "sleaze rock" they weren't kidding), and Axl's voice shot between too nasally and just plain annoying. Five years still later on, revisiting the album for this challenge, I'm left with just as many questions. This band does absolutely nothing for me anymore, and while the three biggest songs on here definitely still have some kind of aura to them, everything else is totally disposable and uncomfortably sleazy for me. I'm gonna be the hater in my group this day - 4/10, because some of the songs are still kind of cool, and no more.
Thundercat
4/5
Neo-soul is cool and all, but I really love when it gets weird like this. Outside of some big artists in the genre like Tyler the Creator, the style hasn't really gripped me yet, but this album intrigued me simply by dint of how strange it all was. 8/10 would get drunk to this
Iron Maiden
3/5
I like this more than the self-titled album we got a while ago, but only just. I'm not really far enough into "pure" heavy metal at this point to really be able to distinguish between the songs.
Adam & The Ants
4/5
Could very much do without the redface on the album cover (and in the lyrics of the title track), but for the most part this was a solid new wave listen! I like my new wave, for the most part, with some weird or unique element, and the angularity of the songs combined with the Burundian drumming styles incorporated on some songs definitely scratched that itch for me.
The Velvet Underground
5/5
At first I had this as a 9/10, but after listening to it several more times throughout the day, yeah, it's a 10. This is a band I've been meaning to get around to for YEARS, and now that I've finally heard this album I can hear why. This is practically the rock on which every experimental band since built their church - noisy, sloppy, raucous, and unafraid to push the envelope. I saw a comment on RateYourMusic saying that the lo-fi production adds to the experience because it sounds like the technology & engineering of the time simply couldn't contain what the band was putting out, and I fully agree. A timeless record that quite frankly is wild to hear from the 60s.
Bill Evans Trio
4/5
Whoever named the genre "cool jazz" got it right. That stuff is COOL jazz
Queen
3/5
It was interesting to hear a Queen album without any hits, but maybe that's for a reason - nothing on this album particularly stood out to me, except for Seven Seas of Rhye and mayyybe The March of the Black Queen. Still solid of course, because they're still great songwriters, just maybe not something I'd come back to much.
Shivkumar Sharma
4/5
Really nice stuff. I'm glad the list does include SOME music from outside the Western canon - this is pure Hindustani classical, all tabla and sitar in the traditional ways, and it's great! I love getting lost in the droney rhythms.
Side note, the release history of this album is extremely strange, especially factoring in the "fake" version released by Shivkumar's son in 2012, which is apparently just a really bad new age release.
Donovan
4/5
I surprisingly enjoyed this a fair deal more than The Hurdy Gurdy Man, the other Donovan album I've heard (which may or may not be on this list), despite that album having the absolute heaters that are the title track and Get Thy Bearings. This one sells its folky atmosphere a lot better to me, plus it has two heaters of its own opening the B-side, Season of the Witch and The Trip! Great slice of 60s psych-folk.
Derek & The Dominos
2/5
I'm sorry, but "the most cookie-cutter dad-bait blues rock you've ever heard over and over" is not enough to carry a full double album. It's very clear why Layla was the flagship song from this, because it's the only one I really found memorable. Bell Bottom Blues was pretty good I suppose, and Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out was done way better by Nina Simone. If it were a single album it might get a 6 or even a 7 out of 10, but as is it's too little variety and too little excitement for too long.
Fuck Eric Clapton, man.
Gram Parsons
3/5
This is definitely an album that exists
Snoop Dogg
4/5
West Coast stays winning. How can you fault the coast that produced Snoop Dogg and G-funk?
Gorillaz
4/5
I mean it's just a fucking classic. There's a reason this band is so revered! The unique aesthetic and lore of its animated characters is very charming, and the songs themselves run the gamut from moody trip hop to energetic alt-rock to sample-heavy funky rap seamlessly, capturing all kinds of moods and styles. It's that kind of spirit that makes the first few Gorillaz albums all-time classics.
No Demon Days on this list is a crime, though.
Robert Wyatt
4/5
This album being ranked so abysmally low on this website is both confusing and deeply saddening to me - it's just slightly weirder & more ambient prog rock, what's not to like? For me, this album really speaks to the condition Robert Wyatt found himself in at this point. Previously the drummer for prog bands Soft Machine and Matching Mole, Wyatt fell off a balcony and became a paraplegic, and this, his first album since that accident, really captures the pain, confusion, and listlessness of that. Plus, the soundscapes are gorgeous throughout, and any time the energy ramps up it gets really really great!
The Beach Boys
4/5
One of The Beach Boys' best efforts, providing a glimpse into a more mature, time-worn version of the band that started out so gleefully singing about surfing and cars and bikini girls. Everything from the gorgeously orchestrated love ballad "Disney Girls (1957)" and solemn elegy "A Day in the Life of a Tree", to the delightful prog-pop of "Feel Flows", to the dark multi-part dirge of the title track, this album delivers in spades with all of the Beach Boys' strengths.
Except "Student Demonstration Time". Fuck that song.
Dusty Springfield
2/5
Dusty in Memphis, which we got a few months ago in this challenge, was a great example of blue-eyed soul. This one, not so much, unfortunately. Dusty's debut album, this consists of a series of pop soul covers of older songs, and they overall harken back much more to that era between the end of the Golden Age of rock 'n' roll and Beatlemania, where popular music was just recycled and churned out by songwriting teams. Not nearly as instant a classic as her later work, unfortunately.