My 1001 Albums Journey

Albums Rated

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1990s

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Indie

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Albums

You Love More Than Most

Album	You	Global	Diff
Teenager Of The Year Frank Black	4	3	+1

You Love Less Than Most

Album	You	Global	Diff
The Gershwin Songbook Ella Fitzgerald	1	3.53	-2.53
Nilsson Schmilsson Harry Nilsson	1	3.43	-2.43
A Grand Don't Come For Free The Streets	1	2.67	-1.67
Bringing It All Back Home Bob Dylan	2	3.65	-1.65
Illinois Sufjan Stevens	2	3.49	-1.49
Dusty In Memphis Dusty Springfield	2	3.47	-1.47
Music for the Masses Depeche Mode	2	3.38	-1.38
Peter Gabriel 3 Peter Gabriel	2	3.29	-1.29
MTV Unplugged In New York Nirvana	3	4.21	-1.21
Roger the Engineer The Yardbirds	2	3.11	-1.11

Popular Reviews

Nilsson Schmilsson

Harry Nilsson

1/5

Front half is extremely schizophrenic feeling. Instrument choices are all over the place throughout the album. Lots of songs feel more like musical ideas rather than fleshed out songs. As someone who's appreciation of The Beatles mostly comes from post-Beatles acts such as ELO, this album really doesn't hit the spot for me. I struggle to find any appreciation for most of the tracks on the album. The drum break and subsequent build up on the back half of "Jump Into the Fire" is the most interesting musical moment on the album. I feel like without intimate knowledge of the historical context of this album it is impossible to appreciate some of the choices made here. So many times during this listen I found myself thinking "why that choice!?". "Lamaze" and "Coconut" feel offensive to my time as a listener. I honestly had flashbacks to being 4 years old and watching Raffi VHS tapes during parts of this. *----

1 likes

1-Star Albums (4)

All Ratings

Nilsson Schmilsson

Harry Nilsson

1/5

American IV: The Man Comes Around

Johnny Cash

4/5

Deeply beautiful music. I can hear this man's influence in so many of the artists I enjoyed in my post-hardcore indie college years. Both overtly theatrical and intensely personal. I feel like I'm with distant relatives listening to their stories and taking in that wisdom. "Hurt" is obviously transcendent, and was previously the only track I knew of from this album. "The Man Comes Around" is a great opener, "First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" an "Sam Hall" were stand-outs. The greatest compliment I can give to this is it makes me curious about the rest of Johnny Cash's discography. Can't wait to hear more.

Songs In The Key Of Life

Stevie Wonder

4/5

Dusty In Memphis

Dusty Springfield

2/5

This is fine, blues-based white lady pop music. Couple of nice songs, but mostly just background music to be honest.

The Gershwin Songbook

Ella Fitzgerald

1/5

I'm incapable of appreciating this kind of music. Ella has a decent enough voice but the combination of her voice and how much Gershwin's compositions remind me of classic Disney movies takes me out of the listening experience 100% of the time. The whiplash of the track order also was difficult to get through. One song she's the luckiest girl in the world because she's in love, the very next song she's singing about her woe's. I got through 9 tracks before I had to stop it. I couldn't even have it on as background music while house cleaning it was so distracting in an unpleasant way.

MTV Unplugged In New York

Nirvana

3/5

A good performance, short and to the point, but I always come away feeling like "i don't get it" with Nirvana. The fact that the songs that I enjoyed the most are covers also kind of sells the point to myself. These are perfectly acceptable pop songs, performed decently well in an intimate setting, but they lack that special spark that excites me about some pop songs over others.

Music for the Masses

Depeche Mode

2/5

Difficult to review a lot of these albums without knowledge of the greater historical context. I assume this is early Depeche Mode, before "Hungry Like the Wolf" and greater pop success. This is darker, more moody, and very, VERY gay. The songs are mostly just "fine" again. Kind of boring to me, but inoffensive as background music. I appreciated the two remixes at the end of the album but I suspect those didn't exist on the original release.

Being There

Wilco

4/5

Wilco walked so Conner Oberst could run. This was really good and thoroughly enjoyed every bit of it. Since I came to this style of music far after Wilco was "a thing" I do sort of feel the genre had progressed by the time I reached it, but I still could hear the obvious influence it provided to those artists I enjoyed.

Ingenue

k.d. lang

3/5

Again, just fine. Nice voice, "Constant Craving" is the best song. I was reminded of Lyle Lovett while listening to this.

Sheer Heart Attack

Queen

3/5

Some good songs on here, was kind of surprised how "punk" a couple of them sounded. I can't really take Mercury's operatic vocals for an entire album length though.

Figure 8

Elliott Smith

3/5

This is fine, but really "one-note". Was tired of the song structures by the end of the album.

Devil Without A Cause

Kid Rock

1/5

Awful, just absolutely awful. Not even the production is good on this. I have heard “bawitaba” more times than I can remember but holy crap I didn’t remember it sounding this bad. I hate everything about this. I wish I could give it 0 stars.

Cypress Hill

3/5

First half is sick. Lots of songs about smoking weed and shooting cops in the face. Second half has way too many filler songs.

Bringing It All Back Home

Bob Dylan

2/5

Meh, I think if I cared about lyrical content I might connect with this more? Just kind of all runs together as background sound.

AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted

Ice Cube

2/5

Cubes voice and delivery are good, but the rhyme structure and lyrical content got boring fast.

Music For The Jilted Generation

The Prodigy

3/5

Good enough background music.

Nowhere

Ride

2/5

This was intensely boring. Really difficult to enjoy any of this, but then I realized it came out in 1990. At the time this was probably mind-blowing. Coming to it now Shoegaze as a genre has progressed so far I am incapable of enjoying this.

Highway 61 Revisited

Bob Dylan

3/5

Better than "Bringing it all Back Home". I can definitely hear how Electrified Dylan influenced entire generations of folk rock musicians. Harmonica got tiresome however.

KE*A*H** (Psalm 69)

Ministry

2/5

Was kind of looking forward to diving into a Ministry album as I have never really given them a shot. This sucks and is very boring. This is the kind of metal a 12-year old thinks is cool.

Pink Moon

Nick Drake

3/5

I was disappointed because I thought this was Nice Cave and have never given him a chance. I've definitely heard some of this music in the soundtracks of manic-pixie dream girl movies before. That is about all I can say about it.

Here's Little Richard

Little Richard

3/5

Little Richard fucking LOVES playing the same song over and over lol. That love is infectious though. "Tutti Frutti" and "Rip it Up" are still great.

Peter Gabriel 3

Peter Gabriel

2/5

This is another one that is probably better in the historical context of the artist's discography. But as a single experience it is just alright. I'm not mad at it.

The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill

Lauryn Hill

4/5

Really nice. Bopping to this in the grocery store running errands was pleasant. The overdubs are a bit much at times, but what are you gonna do?

Illinois

Sufjan Stevens

2/5

fuckin whatEVER dude. I never listened to this artist when I first heard about them, mostly because I felt I already had good enough Folk-Rock artists and didn't any more. Also the people that really liked this also really liked Jack Johnson and crap like that so I just assumed it sucked. It is better than I thought, mostly just due to interesting instrumentation. That being said, after 7 songs I looked down and realized there are TWENTY TWO tracks on this album. C'mon son.

A Grand Don't Come For Free

The Streets

1/5

This is trash. Albums like this make me not want to deal with this list.

Sister

Sonic Youth

2/5

Meh

Lost In The Dream

The War On Drugs

3/5

Half a decent pop album, the other half kind of boring folk rock.