Really engaging and warm hip-hop! The old-timey Kanye production is just the right backing for Common here, creating a very lively and dynamic record. I've never listened to Common before but he has a light and deft touch here that definitely makes me interested in more of his work. I give it four stars here only because this is the kind of album I respect technically more than I "love" it, strictly speaking. But that could change as I listen more!
I don't tend to get uncomfortable due to the subject matter of music much...lyrics have seldom been the "main event" of any song for me. So I was surprised by how much Eminem was really able to get under my skin with these songs [particularly on 'Stan' and 'Kim'] and actually make me feel shocked. It's frightening how vividly he's able to evoke the emotions backing up the horrible things he talks about; and he does it with a sardonic sense of humor that adds a grimly realistic personality on top of it all. On the more laid-back tracks, it's much easier to admire the technical backbone of his skills as a rapper, so I'm grateful it's not a horror show the whole time! Four stars here; not exactly an album I "love", per se, but I respect the craft SO much here.
This is a tough one for me to rate. I really like the craft and the production techniques here, and fundamentally I would say the songs are all "good". Honestly though, it feels far too long for me. All these songs hang their hats on a couple of cool-sounding ideas but never develop enough new ones to hold my interest. So for as energetic and lively a record as this is, it was ultimately kind of a slog for me to get through.
Really good one! Dark and hard-rocking, with the thin production retaining the 'punk' element of post-punk as the songwriting and goth attitude pushes the rest of the record toward the 'post'. "Into The Light" almost sounded like a Brian Eno number to me, with the contrasting moods of the two main riffs. Only downside is that the songs do kind of blend together for me, lending the record remarkable cohesion but also making the songs somewhat less memorable on an individual basis. Post-punk is one of my favorite types of rock music; it was really cool to hear one of its foundational works!
I've known some of these songs since getting the "Blue" compilation album as a child, so it felt strange to hear the album as a whole knowing some of the songs so well and not having heard many others at all. So I was surprised at how well it all still works together! The songs I knew somehow seemed perfectly contextualized within the album. I try not to buy into the Beatles' "mythos" too much [though I think it's easy with music having this much care and craft in it!], but the general feeling of this record as a sort of "parting gift" from the tired, but grateful, greats is still hard to avoid, as it's deeply felt and earned.
I arrived here already knowing "Time" and "Money" only, so I was listening to the rest of the record pretty fresh. Honestly, the most intriguing thing about it to me was: how the heck did this thoughtful, slow, avantgarde thing connect with so many people to become one of the best-selling albums of all time? I think it's good, even great, but I just don't understand how it got to be such a universally adored classic! Anyway, I think the music is good enough to warrant all the critical respect at least. For all its experimental leanings, the band did a great job contextualizing all the weird stuff within a surprisingly accessible package.
It's funny to me that a concept album like this, with recurring themes and a strong narrative thread, would also have such a consciously stripped-down and rootsy approach; I'm used to 'concept albums' being necessarily grandiose, maximalist affairs. The concept in this case didn't engage me much, but I'm grateful that Nelson was able to deliver such a cohesive and influential reminder of how country music is really supposed to sound. This one's reflective, mournful, and stern, full of dust and rust.
Credit for the inventive production and consistent songwriting craft here, but I was really disappointed with this one. With hardcore experimentation being the word of the day when this record was made, it seems as though the people in charge of this project knew they had to make something experimental but had no idea why more successful records in the same mould were so good. These songs superficially inhabit psychedelic clothes but don't take that sound to heart.
I don't hear this as a proper "punk" album like I've read, but I can hear plenty of influence on the punk scene here for sure! Sounds more like glam rock to me, with the over-the-top theatrics and fat guitar tones; love that sustain at the end of each verse in their great cover of 'I Got You Babe'. The arrangements are overall much too careful and polished, perhaps oddly, for me to feel that this really prefigures punk like the big critics say, but it just makes for a really lovely glam experience instead!
Very pleasant and smooth hip-hop here! While they tend to have superficially similar-sounding beats on a lot of the songs, which leads them to blend together a little if I'm doing something else while listening, there's always some individual hook that gives an identity to each song in my head. "Smoke 'em if you got 'em"..."free John Gotti"..."running around robbing banks", it goes on. I had never heard of this one, really happy to find it!
I think my opinion on this one may have been spoiled ahead of time by the hype! Although this is a good, solid pop-punk record with its concept reliably contributing to its unity rather than getting in the way, I think the baggage of its mythic critical status is going make a lot of new listeners feel disappointed. For me, 'Wake Me Up When September Ends' will never lose its 2000s school-slow-dance shine, and 'Homecoming' is the big highlight of the album...an unpredictable mashup of the album's most exciting ideas.
Very sunny and uplifting slab of old-school hip-hop. Prince Paul is the main hero of this record for me, as lyrics will often float by me on the first few listens with rap records; still, I appreciate the craft and accessibility of the words here too. The biggest downside of the album, for me, is the skits. They really got tiresome for me the more I listened, and I never found them that funny to begin with. If I give myself permission to skip tracks, though, this is a perfectly fine record.
I believe I spoiled this one for myself a bit by listening to Fulfillingness's First Finale years earlier, so I got into Stevie Wonder's sound in a different order from the way the rest of the world discovered him. Talking Book is just as good, although it seems as though he was creating templates for himself here that he'd continue to exploit for a while. Nonetheless, this one's full of warm, heartfelt funk & soul that can't help but be pleasant! My top tracks are the immortal 'Superstition' and album closer 'I Believe'.
I was sent this one right after Talking Book, and I was surprised how much more I enjoyed it. You basically know what you're getting with 70s Stevie albums: pretty, passionate, funky soul, and I don't feel there's much departure from that here, but somehow the hooks to these songs come through so much more clearly than before. Favorites for me include 'Golden Lady' and 'He's Misstra Know It All'.
I'd listened to Rastaman Vibration on my own before this and already enjoyed it quite a bit, enough to buy it later. It's remarkable, then, how this one sounds even better to me all around, even though I can't easily pinpoint a distinct change in style here. If I had to throw out a good guess, I'd say that this one does have a wider emotional palette; the last album was mostly rather pensive or grim, while this one has a few more twists and turns. Title track is the highlight; despite having that same 'grim' attitude from the last album, this one changes up the standard reggae beat quite a bit, to an appropriately insistent march. So nice to learn how much can be done in reggae!
A remarkable debut album. Out of all these songs, only "Midnight Show" is a little short of the goal, lacking the distinctive hooks and pathos that the other songs deliver in spades. "Mr Brightside" is, of course, basically a generational anthem at this point, with "All These Things That I've Done" and "Somebody Told Me" not lagging far behind in their ability to get a crowd singing along. I love this one!
This one was enjoyable! I've heard a few of these "downbeat" albums before, and they've been pleasant without exception. Hearing a foundational work of the genre, and one with a slightly rougher edge than I'm used to, was really cool. I loved the laid-back jazzy atmosphere of "Ce matin-là" in particular, had a really evocative soundtrack feeling about it. And every number with a vocal hook, especially "Sexy Boy" and "Remember", was very catchy and smooth.
I spent years not really caring for Simon & Garfunkel, since their wispy vocals and literary ambitions put me off as a child. Coming back to them now, I was able to get over a lot of that prejudice and just appreciate the talent, even if the intellectual atmosphere is still not really my thing. Some unfamiliar songs here definitely helped: "Homeward Bound" and "Patterns" stick out to me especially as highlights. It will definitely make my life easier not to dislike these guys!
This is the first punk album I've heard that used so much sampling, and I was really impressed with the seamlessness of it all. I'm used to sample-based music relying heavily on melodies from the original work to make its point, but it really feels on this one like the samples were cut down much further to allow the sequencing of more original melodies, reusing only tones and production decisions from the original work. An impressive achievement all around! Sounds just as gruff and grumbly as any other punk record, but using an entirely different technique to make that sound happen.
A lot of really involving atmosphere on this one. Buckley isn't a particularly strong composer of melodies; I struggle to remember more than a few seconds of any of these songs, save 'Hallelujah'. But his songs are amazing mood pieces, generating another take on the gloomy melancholy that I tend to enjoy most in this kind of feeling-first music. Tons of really beautiful guitar work here as well. Up front, holding it all together, are the fascinating vocals, not typically conveying hooks but keeping things unpredictable and very, very human. What an interesting record!
This is the first Marley album I've heard with the full original Wailers still in place. The sound is tougher here, and having Tosh as an independent songwriter adds to the diversity nicely. Even with those factors stirring things up a little, the more conventional mellow Marley numbers are the ones that stuck with me the most. "Stir It Up" and "Baby We've Got A Date" are my favorites here, and overall this is just another solidly excellent Wailers album.
I've read enough about Drake over the years to have come into this with some idea about how it would sound, but my expectations were only somewhat true. This ended up feeling a lot more meditative and whimsical than I expected; I admit that the lyrics floated right by me for the most part, but the richness and fun in the melodies and arrangements here don't at all convey the icy pessimism that a lot of writing about Drake does. This one's beautiful and peaceful! I enjoyed Drake's acoustic work throughout the record, but I think "Hazey Jane 1" is my favorite.
I'd first been introduced to Oasis through their second album and greatly enjoyed it, so I had some good expectations for this one too that were generally met. The songs here are generally just as good, but the production is simply awful; every instrument and voice is muffled by the others, to the point that is sounds like Liam is shouting more than singing just to be heard. This thing might as well have been released in mono...what a hackjob! It took me a whole week of listening, but I finally was able to cut through the muck and conclude that it's a fundamentally good record despite it all. I particularly enjoyed "Supersonic' and 'Bring It On Down'.
This is my first album-length experience of Ray Charles, and I was disappointed. I suspect these songs are not really making the best use of his talents, though. I came in expecting a soul album, and it was instead a bunch of competent, but not particularly distinctive, versions of jazz standards done better numerous times by others. It honestly starts out with a good punch, on the swaggering version of "Let The Good Times Roll", but from there it just winds down to a whimper by the end. I suspect this program will give me more Ray Charles in the future, and I expect it will be better.
This is certainly an album that I "respect" much more than I "love". It represents part of jazz's 50s turn away from dance music and into "intellectual entertainment" that destroyed its general popularity, but it's also a record that doesn't veer so far into the hopelessly abstract as to become meaningless...that is, there are plenty of identifiable melodies and structures here! "Rondo" and "Take Five" certainly steal the spotlight here, but I'd also single out "Three To Get Ready", with its gently swirling classical-type piano motif, as a highlight. No track brings the record down; it's an evenly pleasant experience all around.
I can easily admit that this is a pretty great jazz record, but I think it’s taught me something about the limits of what recorded music I actually enjoy listening to. Birth Of The Cool is, of course, a pretty remarkable achievement when you consider that its recordings date back as far as 1949, and it’s fantastic that recording technology had gotten to the point where we can hear such high-fidelity reproduction of music that old. And being from 1949, this is still relatively ‘grounded’ jazz that doesn’t stray too far from its dance roots, however ambitious it was for the time…you can definitely still bob your head to it! I think my issue is that its heavily improvisational approach loses a lot when recorded, at least for me; the magic of improvisation is in coming up with all this music in the moment, which I think is vastly better appreciated in a live performance, where it’s being created right in front of you. So…as a document of some truly genius-level improvisation & soloing laid over great jazz grooves, this record is fantastic, but I don’t feel it translates to a gut-level ‘entertaining’ record.
I heard this one back in 2019 and liked it quite a bit, but for different reasons than I think most people do. I personally think that Morissette handles “epic” and “tender” moods better than the “angry” ones that seem to be the primary calling card of this record for most people. My favorite song is “Forgiven”, which exploits its church-related subject to the max with appropriately cavernous production, and the record’s best vocal performance. And the more relaxed numbers like “Hand In My Pocket” and “Head Over Feet” also do more for me than the spitfire stuff. The whole record is well-written and enjoyable, but it’s been interesting to discover that I’ve enjoyed it for different reasons than most other people seem to!
I have known about Live At Leeds for many years, through its hype as one of the greatest live rock records of all time. I’ve been nervous to listen to it because of that hype, as many similarly-hyped albums have ended up disappointing me through no fault of their own. Maybe it’s only because I came to it with this guarded mindset, but I do think this one lives up to its fearsome reputation! I love the mix; it’s clean enough that you’re free to concentrate on whatever instrument you like, and I love the drum sound in particular. It’s rather surprising to me as well that the ‘chaotic’ rock ’n roll energy has been so well-documented here, despite the technical precision of the recording; I would have expected that to undermine the rawness, but it doesn’t. The only complaint I have here is that it feels like a really odd track selection for a Who live album, even in 1970…there are so few normal Who songs on it! But they run so wild on the covers, particularly ‘Young Man Blues’, that I’m not bothered on a pure ‘entertainment’ level. This is a great one!
I’ve listened to some Nick Cave in the past, so I wasn’t particularly surprised by what I heard here…the old-time-religion vibes, creaky arrangements, and Nick’s relatively calmer (compared to his older Birthday Party stuff, at least) doom croon are all well in line with what I know of him. So without introducing anything particularly new, the record rides on the existing uniqueness of Cave’s style and on the songwriting, and succeeds. The hard part is to pick out exactly what constitutes that success! I think Cave is a master of making his unique little atmospheres memorable with rhythmic folk hooks, and that’s on full display here; he harnesses the existing beats in phrases like “papa won’t leave you Henry” and “every hand movin' on John Finn's wife” in ways that are really smooth and natural, and I think that, rather than the melodies (though the melodies are perfectly fine) is the basis for his hooks. I guess that’s normal for folk music! This is a real good one.
Another stalemate from Ray Charles this time unfortunately. The legend of this record must be derived from its social importance, or how unusual it is…or really anything other than the actual music on it, because this is completely unremarkable. I don’t have any problem with this smooth early-60s easy-listening sound that Charles has chosen; in fact, I grew up listening to a lot of this sort of music, and it’s executed by-the-book here. The more upbeat numbers are done in a hearty big-band style that’s also pleasant enough. But whatever interest and freshness there might have been in reinventing the songs this way back in 1962 is basically lost, I think, and this is no more entertaining than contemporary Mancini or Sinatra. I’m not against the idea of enjoying or revering an album for meta-musical reasons, but I can’t find those here for myself and so I hoped for more pure, reactive enjoyment, and generally didn’t find that either. I find that “You Win Again” is the one song I look forward to here, and so I’ll probably add that to a playlist somewhere. Otherwise, I have to repeat something I said about Charles earlier: I suspect this program will give me more Ray Charles in the future, and I expect it will be better.
Sure is a lot of jazz on this list! But fusion this time. I listened to a lot of English fusion in high school, and heard about Hancock but never looked into him. So this one’s been a long time coming, and it’s a pleasant one! Hard to pick a standout track, but I’d say maybe ‘Vein Melter’ because it reminds me so much of the later Soft Machine albums I used to listen to. The main problem I have with it is…this feels like a ‘groove’ album to me, where very little emotionally meaningful music has arisen out of the players’ efforts. I think this funkier approach does make this one a lot more immediately approachable and lively than the Soft Machine ones I grew up on, but it still didn’t leave me much to remember except a few killer basslines.
