There's a nightclub, empty, except for some reason all the missing people's drinks are on the tables, and smoke still curls through the air. There are two kids with complicated feelings and precocious pop instincts. The nightclub is about seven miles across and three miles high, the kids are recording their songs about a quarter inch from the mics. The rhythm section is tight and plays only exactly what it needs to.

Almost perfect collage of tight beats, hippie-dippy dreams, and folk-hop-edelica. As the immortal Bard wrote: "Going back to Houston / Do the hot dog dance. / Going back to Houston / To get me some pants."

Old weird America gut checks the excesses of 60s psychedelia, and though it rocks, all that mournful organ and cracked three part singing are lonesome, strange, and sad. I mean, hard to think of another album that has more tragic opening and closing songs.

No way I can rate this rationally. I was a huge REM devotee and when this came out I listened to it nonstop. Saw them seven times on the Green tour. I stand by my love of this record: pop irony, hard rock grind, delicate beautiful weirdness. It's probably not even in the top 5 REM albums, but it is for me a 5 star classic.

The Monkees or maybe the Byrds, but amped up and fuzzy, with some dance beats and long solos. Plus acid. Even more acid than the Monkees and the Byrds. I know there's a lot of love for this record, but I listened three times today: while there are some huge hooky gems, there is a fair bit of filler. Hate to lose any Anglophilic cred, but I think this album is overrated.

A masterpiece of shamanic ritual urban apocalypse chant that devastates with its chaos of noise and poetry, laying bare the existential wreckage of late capitalism. JK! This sounds like some bros set out to make a "confrontational" and "off-putting" piece of "art" and having now listened to it in full, I can say this tedious and insipid grind of a record put me off. You did it, guys! (I actually kind of love Drum's Not Dead, so this was a revelation--and not the good kind)

Super 70s tight musicianship, complex white guy blues/R&B/jazz so perfect it must have taken a whole gang of cocaine to get it all together. I don't love Steely Dan, but there are a few really good, interesting, sonically rich songs on this one, as well as a few mid throwaway wank jobs.

I came prepared to hate this. I have held a grudge against UB40 ever since my high school girlfriend taped the insipid overplayed cheesefest 'Labour of Love' over my tape of 'Rain Dogs'. Unforgivable. I gave this a legit listen and the dub elements, honey smooth voiced lead singer, and insurgent politics made some of it pretty okay. But a lot of too long reggae-lite.

Love the sweet soul samples, excellent beats, rich texture, Alvin and the CMs pitched up gospel, and then I realized it's early Kanye before he broke bad. So, now I have mixed feelings. Common sounds great, and while a few of the tracks lack, all in all a good Friday soundtrack.

The kids are looking back on when they were kids, and it is still angsty, grandiose, and chock full of the big feels. The songs are complex--at times verging on busy--and the record is a bit too long, but the whole is punchily raw and honest. I can imagine screaming along at a stadium show, at age 55 recalling myself at 27 looking back on being 16.

John fucking Prine. This record is not a greatest hits collection; it just feels that way. Almost every song on this record is a pure classic: he's funny, he's incisive, he tells stories, he is sad as hell. Seriously, this is better songwriting than 99% of anybody. And I used to feel like Prine was overproduced, but this is gorgeously done. Crushingly good. An American treasure.

Bob who? Blonde on what? Hmm. Intriguing. In all seriousness, c'mon, 10 out of 5 stars. One of the best things ever.

Not a big Beach Boys guy, even though I know that heaps of indie hipsters praise their perfect pop symphonies and this record is always in the top 10 all time lists. The album really is sugary but longing and sad, richly overlapping, soaring, baroque. Some hugely great single songs (I really like Sloop John B and Wouldn't It Be Nice), but some very skippable others. It's like a tiramisu: lots of layers, complexly sweet, with a darker underlying bitterness. And like tiramisu, I would not want it everyday, and there are some empty calories.