Both Joplin and the band are raw and powerful. The cover versions are incredible. Album art by Robert Crumb. Not sure about the audience sound effects, but a great album nonetheless.
For a while, my favourite Smiths album. Certainly the most assured and powerful. It remains a classic with some of The Smiths best songs.
Didn’t know it was a musical. ML has great range and power. JS obvs a talented arranger. Campy nonsense. Title track is the best.
Like a funky companion piece to MG’s What’s Going On? Positive vibes against the worst of the world. Photo that the cover is based on (by Margaret Bourke-White) is brilliant.
Maybe stunning 30 years ago. Felt a bit overblown and indulgent. Made me want to listen to Nirvana. BC is now a wrestling promoter.
What you get when an ex schoolteacher and an ex social worker try and do Bob Dylan & The Shadows. Sound like every holiday turn I’ve ever heard. Punk wasn’t even cold at this point.
Patchy but very listenable. Some really great, heavy tracks.
Just the sort of 80s, American, MOR, soft rock sound that has never done it for me.
Like a fever dream of RnB, hip hop, jazz funk, soft rock and disco. Reminds me of Parliament/Funkadelic and mid-70s Mothers.
The singles were, I suppose, the sound of the summer nearly 20 years ago. The rest of the album is pretty forgettable.
MW sounds great at 71 and there’s no doubt these musicians are at the top of their game. Strangely the electrification (Judas!) makes it more rock and somehow less blues.
Monumental sound of the MkII line up with Gillan’s powerful vocals. Featuring tracks from the first 3 MkII albums and is none-more-metal. Even has an extended drum solo!
Interesting percussion and time signatures aside, this appears neither accessible nor interestingly avant guard.
Understated, laid back and dreamy. The combination of funk rock and orchestration is very effective. Love, illicit sex and death in less than half an hour.
Pleasing enough indie garage-rock. Part of the early noughties indie rock revival that included The Hives, Rapture, Franz Ferdinand etc. Darlings of the NME at the time, there’s very little to date it.
Pleasantly inoffensive summer vibes. Best song is the Os Mutantes cover. The sort of album that you could put on at a barbecue and not upset anyone.
A real find for me. Thrilling from start to finish. Stooges, Ramones and garage influences. Nice use of organ and harmonicas alongside the buzzsaw guitars.
Insipid MOR bollocks. Like a homeopathic Joni Mitchell.
Decent enough late 60’s country rock with an as-live feel. Guitar interplay is really good.
80s jazz-pop hell. Apparently the first album to be recorded entirely digitally. Sounds completely sterile.
Epic landscape, Ennio Morricone style motif, keyboards sounding like horns. There’s sadness, anger and loss in the lyrics before the sax solo brings the love. The last few bars then become corporate and dark sounds begin. Welcome to the Machine… Country blues guitar herald Roy Harper in a big Stetson singing in American accent, Have a Cigar. Title track is angry and spikey. Shine parts 6-9 doesn’t quite echo the majesty of the opening. Brilliant nonetheless.
Lovely, funky, jazzy, bluesy, psychedelic stuff.
Almost perfect indie-rock album. Rips through a flurry of great songs in 38 minutes. Mean girls with guitars.
The sort of stuff that yanks listen to on rawk radio stations. I’d have punched Peter Grant in the face for this shit.
Both Joplin and the band are raw and powerful. The cover versions are incredible. Album art by Robert Crumb. Not sure about the audience sound effects, but a great album nonetheless.
Less gothy and more pop-funky than I expected. PMs Bowie-esque stylings are at the fore. Especially on the Deram/Newley sounding ‘Of Lillies…’
Definitely puts the NW into NWOBHM, this has a punky prog sound that owes as much to The Stranglers as it does to Sabbath. A very assured debut.
Pleasant enough. CK has a nice voice but not much soul. It’s Too Late is a stand out. 70s easy listening versions of great songs CK wrote with her husband Gerry Goffin and writing partner Toni Stern.
I get it. She had a pretty good voice and could write a song. Unfortunately the hype takes over and she becomes a legend for a generation. A Good Jewish Girl Gone Bad, the new Frank, Dinah, Ronnie, the first millennial to drink her way into the 27 club… In another world, I’d applaud her performance in some jazz dinner club, but I wouldn’t have bought her CD at the end of the night.
Aggressive, spiky and raw. Produced by Steve Albini, this brilliant album still sounds fresh and urgent today.
Poetic, melancholy and timeless. Some beautiful songs but ultimately rather dour.
Not at all what I expected. A rich tapestry of musical styles and ideas. Snappy and bristling with creativity and detail.
Lovely voice. Fine instrumentation. But God it goes on. I fear that by the time Isaac had seduced me I’d be asleep.
Multilayered and moody instrumentals from the Magazine man. A dark ‘soundtrack’ that puts me in mind of Roy Budd’s ‘Get Carter’.
Not really for me. Skilled and talented I’m sure, but largely the music washed over me. The cover versions have some novelty value.
Ethereal American Folk, played very well with lush close harmonies and wistful lyrics. Done very well but doesn’t excite.
Nice enough jazz album with occasional African vibe.
Nothing really jumps out on this JW solo. Never quite as exciting as the WS. Has the feeling of being the soundtrack to a musical.
Samey, guitar rawk with drum machines. Dodgy, sub-metal lyrics. Piffle.
Pleasant enough. Dreamy vocals over motorik beats.
A mixed bag of jazz rock, pop, country blues, gospel and hippy dippy nonsense. Spinning Wheel is the standout track.
In which The Beach Boys take a new direction. Environmental issues and lost innocence are the main themes. Patchy and often naive sounding.
Solid, seminal Heavy Metal album.
“I think I’d have to say… The Best of The Beatles”. It’s a bit odd to have a compilation album in the 1001 Albums You Must Hear… list, but this is Alan McGee’s “gift” to us in the UK. Helping kick off the garage rock revival and The Hives worldwide success, these are a dozen perfect punk-pop tunes. Our “new” favourite band indeed.
Shite Hokum.
Pleasant enough album. SWs voice is beautiful throughout and some interesting music. Nothing jumps out as very special though.
Very skilful hip hop instrumental album, but crying out for a rap in places.
Reasonably interesting sound. Might make more sense if I spoke French.
Weird and wonderful indie pop.
For a while, my favourite Smiths album. Certainly the most assured and powerful. It remains a classic with some of The Smiths best songs.
Reasonably good rock, blues, country blues album. Cover versions are ok. The psyche-rock Ramble Tamble is a highlight.
Pretty, soulful and light. Not sure if it’s for me though.
Hmm. One of the greatest rock records of all time? There’s undoubtedly some brilliant stuff on here, but if ever a (double) album could do with some editing… Often feels more like a showcase for The Clash’s expanding musical palette than a coherent record. I can imagine this being great fun as the setlist for a gig, but not all of it deserves the iconic status it carries.
Inventive, pioneering, hip-hop, cut-up beats. Here’s Yazz. Here’s Lisa Stansfield. Here’s Mark E Smith providing vocals on one of the first indie dance crossovers.
1983 was not the best year for music, but here U2 take the sounds of post-punk, rock and pop and fashion them into the most boring pap imaginable. How long… to sing this song? How long?
Theatrical and overblown. This sounds more like a rock opera than an album and could easily be a Jim Steinman composition.
Coming off the back of filming of The Man Who Fell To Earth, Station To Station is a Bowie classic. A sublime, cocaine-fuelled experimental fusion of soul, funk, disco and krautrock.
Wonderfully self-assured debut. Produced by Timbaland and with Busta Rhymes bookending the guests, this is a perfect, full-fat hip hop.
Immense, gothic and elegiac, Disintegration a soundscape of an album. Coincidentally, the first time I saw them on this tour, this is The Cure moving at a monumental, glacial pace that absorbs the listener in a vivid, dreamlike state.
Pleasant enough “light” jazz. Nice.
Not really my thing.
Costello is angry and urgent. This feels much more like his new wave peak, but lacks some of the melodic hooks. Not bad though.
Desert blues. Exiled from Mali by the imposition of Sharia law which banned cigarettes, alcohol and music. You can keep the fags and booze but any culture without music is no culture at all. Guitar driven blues rock.
Pleasant enough psychedelic folk, but nothing really jumps out.
Fairly pedestrian folk performance, livens up considerably on the second disc 😉