1001 Albums Summary

ok it turns out I’m just gonna do this as a track by track. If I missed a track *shrugs* this method came about half way through the album. Laura is an absolute banger to open with - I’m of the exact age for the Scissor Sisters being in my periphery, so I’m interested in how much I’ll recognise. Shit - Take Your Mama is great. Why can’t modern pop music be as good as it was when I was 12? Get the boffins on it. Ok - I think I’ve figured Scissor Sisters out by track 3. imagine if the BeeGees were good & gay? I’d forgotten the guys surname was Shears. Funny. Oh they’re actually named after Scissoring? bit blue. That could’ve put me off them if they weren’t good. ok Mary I thought was gonna be a dud. it reminds me of Angie by the Rolling Stones. Decent chorus. Not sure on the verse. yeah, fuck it. skipped. Lovers in the Backseat sounds like Flight of the Concords. take that as you will. Tits on the Radio - a swell bassline. what you love to see. Yeah, I’ll look to see if there’s a tab. didn’t realise Filthy /Gorgeous was them - banger tbf. Wire me up to a 2am festival silent disco & give me 8 pints please! Music is a Victim. I can see what they’re doing here and I don’t mind it. It’s got all the ingredients for me to like, but it is noticeably weaker than the previous few songs. That guitar solo won’t fool me! (The last 45 seconds! Gimme me of that though) Better Luck is a plodder. It Can’t Come Quickly Enough is very Live Aid. I will not be explaining this further. Return to Oz is fun. Was initially skeptical but it drew me on. Gets a bit Queen towards the end. You had to spoil it Scissor Sisters. I think overall, like a lot of albums of this era, the singles absolutely slam but it trails off a bit towards the end. I’ll listen to Filthy / Gorgeous regularly. 3 1/2. I listened to filthy / gorgeous again. That fucking guitar!!! cool me down.

First things first. I hate the title and cover. 30 seconds in it’s just guitar twaddle. sigh. here we go. you know the concept of ‘darkest timeline’, listening to this album has made me think we’re in the darkest timeline where bands took the technological and societal changes of the 60s & the pop music it brought about, but they said no - we’re gonna focus on making the blues scale louder & make separate ‘rock’ from ‘pop’. Leading to ‘rock culture’ as what it is now, if you look hard enough. the Doors & Clapton have a Lot of answer for this kinda stuff. boring. regressive. Imagine inventing ‘Hard Rock’. I have heard this a thousand times in regional pubs that put on cover bands & it’s fosters the worst dress sense and culture this century. awful, for what this album will bring onto us. if you’re new to this sort of stuff, black sabbath offer much better at around the same time. or try 21st Century Schizoid Man by King Crimson (say what you want about Kanye, he could stop a good sample) still some good riffs. gets a 1 1/2

I’ve had a long journey with PJ Harvey stemming from her appearance on Nick Cave’s ‘Murder Ballads’ & since then I’ve enjoyed increasingly every year. She’s great. I already loved ‘Good Fortune’ & ‘You Said Something’. Unfortunately, I was the wrong side of tipsy for most of yesterday so I was distracted, musically & so my critical thought was switched OFF. her dynamism & anger is never off though. A great album. (I also revisited Let England Shake. A superb album that pays off eventually.) But this album just wanted to make me go back in the Harvey Archive. No bigger praise than that.

I don’t dislike the music of U2 as much as you’d think. This kind of sound & the singles from this are very familiar to me. I’d prefer them much more if Bono was a different person. But there’s some enjoyable stuff here. With Or Without You was the first song I learnt on the bass guitar (it’s really easy. 4 notes repeated in the same order!) The Joshua Tree is the ‘Friends’ of albums. There’s a thousand better albums, it’s dated a bit but it’s strangely familiar and comforting at the same time.

this album washed over my and I took literally nothing in and not in a good way. this has confirmed that rush are for boring guitar YouTubers and guitar teachers [see also: Xtreme weirdly]. really didn’t enjoy this.

There were a few good songs in this, ‘You Make It Easy’ I found quite moving. The album itself was quite forgettable, I understand a little why apart from ‘Sexy Boy’ has not lingered as well as other electronic from the 90s. Not quite intense enough for Spaced.

I can be quite binary with my choices, I’m Sopranos over the Wire. Simpsons over Futurama. Beatles over Beach Boys. So out of the two verbose (Jewish) folk men of the 60s, I’m pure Dylan and so have just had no interest really in Cohen. That’s quite a surface comparison really, they’re very very different, but I’m quite surface subconsciously so here we are. I thought this was a Great album. The male companion piece to Joni Mitchell’s Blue (I’d say Mitchell is a better surface companion to Cohen. Canadian. Steeped in literary tradition. Stripped back.) This is a definite re-listen. It’s simple, it’s pure, it’s full of Longing oh my god. Maybe a better comparison is the musical Phillip Roth? This is deeply up my street. Will it stick due to my unconscious bias? Hard to tell. I don’t want to give it a 5. Maybe because it’s the hottest day of the year. One of Us Must Be Wrong is beautiful though.

WHAT a way to start an album ‘Immigrant Song’ is. I always preferred Led Zeppelin II as a teen and they’ve fallen by the wayside quite a bit as I’ve grown up. Why do I think this album is acceptable but Deep Purple is not? I appreciate how stripped back it is, it allows its self to breathe a lot more. It really reminds me of later, less garagey White Stripes. They’re both in ‘It Might Get Loud’ so that may be less of a coincidence. This album does drift a bit as it goes on, but I like how’s it not Blues Rock All The Time. it’s not Clapton thank God. There’s one song on here that’s total crap. I like the cover too. 3.

this is going to be a short one. obviously I know touch me I’m sick. I’m a big ‘This Band Could Be Your Life’ fan as an authoritative tome. I only like about half the bands in it and Mudhoney sit on the border, I understand their importance to the Canon but they do not charm me like Dinosaur Jr or the Pixies do. This is fine, but lack a certain spark for me.

Is this pre-grunge grunge? It’s the kind of music I like, anyway. That bass and melodramatic lyrics performed as though under duress. Yes please. Here comes your man - a bit like REM in places, a bit like Stone Roses in others. I can hear the smiths, I can hear the fall, I can hear the velvet underground, I can hear Pulp, I can hear my beloved Hole. Is this happy sad??? La La Love You is amazing. Also great (insane) cover. I will be revisiting this.

I found 8:05 very sweet, come in the morning is fun. These white Motown boys are having a nice time and I don’t mind that at all. Stylistically/genre wise this is absolutely baffling. Like not a cohesive album at all. By the final track I was feeling actively hostile towards them. They destroyed all good feeling they had managed to cultivate. C’est la vie.

I’m so sorry, this is really not for me. I’ve played far too much of the game series Tropico to critically engage with this music genre. it’s not you, it’s me Willie Colon* & Ruben Blades I also don’t like slap bass. (*there’s a really childish lowbrow joke there, I’m not making that. awful. Barely a joke. just rude. pathetic.