Wu-Tang Clan ain't nothin to fuck with, that's for sure. One of the OG hiphop supergroups coming out of the gate with a very good grasp of their own lyricism and catchy rhythms. Uncontroversially one of the finest west coast rap albums to come out of the 90s and it's aged far better than a few of its contemporaries (if you ask me, its slightly messy/dirty production and fluctuating quality between tracks gives it a lot of charming character and authenticity). Not a fan of the skits (as usual) but obviously very common considering the era. This one gets the money. (Also I swear that Breathe by Prodigy samples the same movie sample as at the start of Chessboxin'. Wikipedia seems to claim that the popularity of the song is also what brought Chessboxing into the public conscious in the 90s which is very funny if true) Best tracks: CREAM, Tearz, 7th Chamber Pt. 2

4.5/5 - Great album, moodier/more fun than I expected and way ahead of its time.

Good music, but not much to add. Very much of its time I guess.

Fine soul, and mighty-fine work Mr. Redding. Groovy.

Fun one - feels ahead of its time in a lot of ways. Clean lyrical delivery (clean as in 'clear', definitely not clean as in 'suitable for a bar mitzvah) and great sample flips (never realized Can I Kick It is repurposing Lou Reed!).

Probably can't be too objective about this review as it's so entirely outside of my usual wheelhouse (which is the point of this whole experiment, I guess), but I won't be listening again.

Easy-to-listen-to big band staples to get your grandma dancing to. Charles has such character in his voice and orchestration.

"It can't be helped," he said, nodding at the bulldog girl. "This is Lucy." He laughed distractedly. "You know -- like Lucy in the sky with diamonds . . ."

Funny that a band named for such a terrible colour band would make such a terrific rock band. No wonder Dad doesn't listen to new music. Fav track: Hard Lovin' Man

Dusty has a great voice for what she does, but what she doesn't do is it for me.

Greatest contrast between album cover and track quality we've ever witnessed. Good work Maryland John Mayer. Fav tracks: The Wind and The Dove, All Thoughts Are Prey To Some Beast

Lacking Substance, but otherwise I always welcome the New Order. Very much 'of its time' in a good and bad way. Highlights of Lowlife: The Perfect Kiss

Wu-Tang Clan ain't nothin to fuck with, that's for sure. One of the OG hiphop supergroups coming out of the gate with a very good grasp of their own lyricism and catchy rhythms. Uncontroversially one of the finest west coast rap albums to come out of the 90s and it's aged far better than a few of its contemporaries (if you ask me, its slightly messy/dirty production and fluctuating quality between tracks gives it a lot of charming character and authenticity). Not a fan of the skits (as usual) but obviously very common considering the era. This one gets the money. (Also I swear that Breathe by Prodigy samples the same movie sample as at the start of Chessboxin'. Wikipedia seems to claim that the popularity of the song is also what brought Chessboxing into the public conscious in the 90s which is very funny if true) Best tracks: CREAM, Tearz, 7th Chamber Pt. 2

Jack White is still Jack White, but Blunderbuss is missing the crunchy, drowning, iconic alt-rock sound of the White Stripes, and that's to it's detriment. Without that frenetic, bassy energy this one's a little forgettable. Fav tracks: Love Interruption

Legendary album that deserves its many flowers. Like any Nirvana project there's no misses in the tracklist, and it's doubly-so impressive for being one of the most iconic one-take live albums ever recorded. Love Kurt's raw intensity in his voice and delivery, Grohl's iconic drumwork, and Novoselic with one of the few acoustic bass performances that actually works. Really can't sing this one enough praises. Favourite tracks: Where Did You Sleep Last Night, Come As You Are, The Man Who Sold The World

Pleasantly surprised by this one, since I'm not a big k.d. lang fan nor much one for Country in general. The cool, slow, stirring warble of the guitar is a bit of a one trick pony on the album but just avoids overstaying its welcome. fav tracks: Busy Being Blue

One of the best to ever do it. Really, really dance-able. fav tracks: Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough, Rock With You, Off The Wall

the Chronic deserves every bit of praise it's received over the decades since it's release. The skits are a little annoying, especially upon relisten (DEEZ NUTS being an obvious exception) but otherwise Dre can kick it. fav tracks: Nutin' But a G Thang, Rat A Tat Tat

ZZ Top are not pushing the genre to any strange new places, but everybody's a little crazy for a Sharp Dressed Man. True to form it's classic, unpretentious, slightly-goofy 80s rock that knows what it wants to be and delivers it, even if it's pretty forgettable. Fav tracks: Sharp Dressed Man, I Need You Tonight

Music to collect Secret Tapes to (affectionate) Fav songs: Among The Living, Stuck In A Mosh

Nice listening but to my ear it sounds like we have Oasis at home. Fav songs: Rob's Theme

A fun listen, you can hear the Dylan-esque vibes in almost every track. Hard to pin down genre-wise for better or for worse, but the interesting use of instrumentation keeps it feeling fresh. Seems like the kind of sentimental album that would hold up better after multiple re-listens on a cozy springtime car trip but unfortunately we have 1001 albums to get through. Fav tracks: The Weight, This Wheel's On Fire

Fiona Apple has an excellent voice and a wonderful production underneath it - the (flattering) Bjork comparisons have been made many times before but it's hard not to taste it even in her debut work. While it's not a life-changer for me I can see how listening to this album a couple times as a depressed teen would make it somebody's lifelong favourite (it has that 'it' quality about it). fav tracks: The First Taste, Criminal, Never Is a Promise

It's unapologetically Cat Stevens, folksy as it is. Like many albums of its acoustic-folk-rock ilk it suffers from having a few too many forgettable/unremarkable songs among its tracklist, but it's worth the listen for Father and Son alone which is a timelessly beautiful ballad to generational change so relevant at the time. Fav tracks: Father and Son, Longer Boats

Endtroducing is a plunderphonic masterpiece. It's known historically as the album that truly legitimized the sample-flip on its own terms, but beyond that its legacy as inspirational and endlessly re-listenable can hardly be overstated. Endtroducing has been favourably called the Hip/Trip-Hop equivalent of a Velvet Underground or Aphex Twin and there's hardly a greater compliment. Deep, rich, organic, and boundary-pushing, these tracks feel like deep meditations on sound and a love letter to music as a whole. We'll never get an Endtroducing again, not just because clearing all these samples would be a financial and logistical nightmare in the 21st century, but because this album was too far ahead of its time. fav track: [all of them], Short Stem/Long Stem, Building Steam..., Midnight In A Perfect World

Kind of a hard album to like, to be totally honest. Very mom-and-pop radio station, 'school disco' music. Had a couple tracks I liked but overall the glam rock whiny-voiced schtick was (rightly) worn out decades before this dropped. There's some promise in the funkier basslines (Filthy/Gorgeous comes to mind as having that The Trammps sound) that get drowned out by overperformed vocals and uninspired instrumentation/composition. fav tracks: It Can't Come Quickly Enough (actually really liked this one at least, even if it's a real tonal shift)

Pretty much a best-of Metallica album. The synthesis of an orchestra with the metal sounds (alongside the impressive length) makes the album feel suitably full and grand - they gel together pretty well. It being a live album is for once an enhancement to the sound, too, as it gives that 'crowded venue' feeling that suits the enormous scale of the thing. That said, it's two straight hours of Metallica fanservice and doesn't really have much of interest to offer for anybody else.

An album deserving of its status and importance amongst the Rock canon. Endlessly re-listenable and hard not to enjoy. only really suffers mainly from something akin to the Seinfeld Effect, where the sound has been so over-replicated it's missing its originality upon listening half a century later. fav tracks: Lazing On A Sunny Afternoon, Bohemian Rhapsody

Some of the most impressive, creative sampling/mixing to come out of the decade and very ahead of its time. A very impressive synthesis of a lot of genres, too. It's a pleasure to hear the kind of comedic, self-aware, creatively witty, cleverly crude lyricism in rap that pretty much died out. Has its peaks and valleys upon a relisten (especially in the first half of the album) but it's got some of the best peaks in hip hop. It's a little underdeveloped compared to their later stuff but this is guaranteed party music and genuinely capital-F Fun. fav songs: Fight For Your Right (To Party), No Sleep Till Brooklyn

Hard to hate, but not easy to like either. Mostly unexceptional.

Cash: entering the hallowed halls of Jeff Buckley and Alien Ant Farm as 'cover artists who unequivocally surpassed an already classic original'. Musically it's good, not exceptional, but Cash's voice has been refined to the perfect, smoky edge by this point in his career and it's practically unmatched. fav tracks: Hurt, I Hung My Head

Great hip-hop and nothing but pure hip-hop. Some really... 'interesting' lyrics (like, goofy) that bring down the overall production but otherwise a fun album. fav tracks: What You Want This Time

Trent Reznor brings us all Closer to God. Abrasive, spiteful, precocious, furious, nihilistic, political, libidinal, provocative and desperate - there's not much you can really say about one of this album that hasn't already been said in the last three decades. The industrial, noisy, experimental, and LOUD sound makes it a difficult listen on the first spin (as it did for me as a teen, years before the return) but it's a "turn-the-volume-up" classic for a reason. The sound also holds up impressively well for something of its age: for better or for worse many of its contemporaries in the industrial/electronic space have this old-school vintage feeling to it. The Downward Spiral, on the other hand, sounds like the kind of album that could have come out yesterday. That said, the album is very much in the thematic line of that post-ironic post-modern 90s thing that you could only really capture in the last decade of the 20th century. It's pretty cheesy these days to over-mythologize it, but you can taste the same furious spirits on the wind of Cultural America that Cobain was struggling with. It's no surprise them that he took his own life a month after this dropped. NIN is in many ways the American cousin to Radiohead: where Yorke and crew tackle the pre-milennial angst of the new era and the hauntological spectres of the new-old with the cold bent of the British psyche, Reznor violently rebels. Listening to it again now I can hear the nervous, darkly comedic, coming-to-self-awareness hiding behind the brash overconfident lyricism that I missed back when I was 20 and drowning in Lynx Africa and angst. Beneath the fear and loathing is Reznor as a deeply troubled, vulnerable character. You kind of have to peel back a lot of layers of edge to see that though, methinks. Listening on it again I reckon the pull-back to nothing but the piano at the end of Closer - going from this everything-against-the-wall tsunami of harsh noise immediately into a somber, deliberate, contemplation over a few echo-y orphaned notes - is probably my favourite track end in music history. A top 5 album of all time for me and on re-listen that hasn't changed. The razorblade edgy angst of that part of my life has gone now, but I keep the fondness for that devil-may-care flipping-the-bird attitude. fav tracks: [the whole thing], Closer, Piggy, Hurt

The Smiths are an acquired taste (I like them, though). Good album, but I still prefer Morrissey's lyricism over his voice. Some great bass guitar work too, especially that funky-as-hell riff on BBAH. Fav tracks: This Joke Isn't Funny Anymore, Well I Wonder, Barbarism Begins At Home

Have listened to this album a few times and I'm convinced I'll never really 'get' it. I assume that in 1967 this was blowing people's socks off. Must be a 'me' problem since I believe the people who say it's so good.

It's good! Good flow, good production, good vibes.

"Making friends on the Disney Cruise by telling them I love Belle and Sebastian" - Ryan Letourneau fav tracks: Like Dylan In The Movies

A good rock album. Chrissie Hynde has a great voice for this that might have benefitted from leaning slightly more in the punk-ish direction but it's already a great listen. fav tracks: Tattooed Love Boys, Mystery Achievement