I used to think jazz was for white men with Art Garfunkel afros who wore burgundy turtlenecks and swirled red wine in a glass presumptuously. Either that or a heroin-addicted black musician who wore shades inside and at any time of the day or night. How wrong I was. Bad jazz is Kenny G or Harry Connick Jr. in an elevator. Good jazz is more than notes on a sheet or sound from a speaker, it’s a feeling, a vibe, a transubstantiation of something intangible into as tangible as music can be. Or whatever. I won’t pretend I ¨get¨ jazz, but I do know what I like and ¨Home is Where the Music Is¨ is a great soundtrack to another morning in the big city. Looking down, seeing the traffic, people walking, the skyline. It paints a picture. Isn’t that what good art is- either painting a picture, taking you out of the moment or making you feel what the artist is feeling? This album does all three. Best songs: ¨Part of a Whole,¨ ¨Inner Crisis,¨ ¨The Big Apple¨

Good music is like a time capsule- it takes you to the time and place the music was recorded. Hearing ¨Paul’s Boutique¨ feels like being in Giuliani’s New York, complete with graffitied trains, the crack epidemic and being mugged in Times Square. You can almost taste the Reaganomics at work. I always forget how high the Beastie Boys’ voices can get, except for MCA (RIP). Sometimes it’s fun, sometimes it’s grating, and while they’re never going to win awards for lyricism, they do know how to create an atmosphere. Listening to ¨Hey Ladies,¨ I’d put this era of the Beasties as the rap equivalent of Motely Crue (see ¨Girls, Girls, Girls¨ for a spiritual sister track). The music is just as 80s as anything else, but I do appreciate the ¨everything and the kitchen sink¨ approach to sampling. I know people call this the Sgt. Pepper or Pet Sounds of rap, but I’m not cultured enough to have made that connection. It’s 80s rap for someone who reads Pitchfork and New Yorker cartoons, and I’m not cultured enough to read those either. Standout tracks: Car Thief, Shake Your Rump, Hey Ladies

What do you do when an album is too painful to listen to? When listening to ¨You’re a Big Girl Now¨ takes you back to washing dishes and thinking about a girl in France who was out doing who knows what with who knows who? When it’s, in your humble opinion, the second greatest album of all time (after London Calling, of course)? You put on the album once every few years, talk a walk through the painful alleys of the past, and pretend it doesn’t still hurt as much as it did then. Bob Dylan crafted possibly the all-time greatest break up album, an album full of such opaque storytelling and specific emotions that they could almost apply to anyone, anywhere, at any time going through some sort of emotional turmoil. About the album: musically, nothing Dylan hasn’t done before or since. Lyrically, nothing he hasn’t done before or since. So why is it so special? Maybe because, for once, you can get a glimpse of the man behind the music and he’s telling you that he too feels the same as you. Best songs: ¨Tangled Up in Blue,¨ ¨You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go,¨ ¨Simple Twist of Fate¨

Perhaps I’m a philistine, but Neil Young is one of those classic artists that just kind of passed me by. He’s no Dylan or Cohen, but I’ve always grouped him in with those poetish folk/whatever singers of the 60s and 70s. Some people can’t handle Dylan or Cohen because of the croaky, out of tune way they often sing. For me, it’s Neil Young’s high voice that initially turns me off, like Daniel Johnston on helium. This album makes me think it might have been something my Uncle Phil listened to while getting high and beating up hippies while also sort of being a hippie himself. ¨Southern Man¨ could have been written about probably any male member of my family over the age of 40, and also a younger cousin. It’s an unpleasant surprise when you find out Neil Young is Canadian, almost a betrayal. The music itself is pleasant, but nothing musically or lyrically grabbed me by the throat apart from ¨Southern Man,¨ perhaps because I myself am a Southern man. Any song could have been on the soundtrack to a Judd Apatow movie- is this a good thing? Bad? You be the judge. Best songs: ¨Southern Man,¨ ¨Only Love Can Break Your Heart,¨¨Birds¨

People throw around the words ¨life changing¨ too often and too easily, but what else do you call it when you’re 13 and you listen to the whole (edited) album in a music store and have your eyes opened to things you never even knew (or wanted to know) existed. Then a year later you listen to the (unedited) cd a friend lent you while you’re trying to sleep in the top bunk at camp and ¨Ken Kaniff¨ comes on and you hope listening doesn’t make you gay. Then of course you make it until ¨Kim¨ and good luck sleeping after that. Growing up in a Christian home, going to a Christian school and being forced to go to a Christian church for hours every week leaves you culturally adrift, forced to listen to the Newsboys and Adventures in Odyssey. Who knew there was a whole world out there, full of pop culture, poverty, violence, vulgarity and dope Dr. Dre beats? Eminem knew. Few things seem as dated today as the pop culture milieu of the late 90s/early 2000s, and this album is certainly included in that. Unlike ¨2001,¨ which sonically still sounds great and lyrically was always back in 1992, ¨The MM LP¨ contains the lyrical equivalents of WWJD bracelets, frosted tips and pants about 5x too big. It’s embarrassing, especially with all the misogyny and homophobia, but then these things have had a resurgence in the US in the last few years. Maybe bigotry is evergreen? Regardless of how dated so much of the subject matter is, it’s still one of the best rap (and maybe any genre) albums of all time. Why? Because Eminem was the absolute behemoth of culture for at least four years, a lifetime in a world where 15 minutes of fame is the rule, not the exception. We hear Marshall Mathers grapple with fame, his relationships, his horrible upbringing, his insecurities. This guy had (and has) everything anyone would ever want but hearing him coming to grips with it is still fascinating after all these years. More than any other rap (or rock) hero, he always seemed the loneliest, the most broken, the one who couldn’t come to terms with having achieved his wildest dreams. He’ll always, in some way, be the skinny, scared, abused kid that grew up in poverty, and the way he showed the world who he really was has never been done so viscerally, so bluntly or on such a big platform. Name another artist who has ever been that big and bared themselves to such an embarrassing degree. That’s why he’s one of the best who’s ever done it, because he dared to go so deep inside himself and take us along, all six billion people alive when this album came out in the year 2000. Best songs: ¨Remember Me,¨ ¨Bitch Please II,¨ ¨The Way I Am¨

My first impression of The Cars is a slightly less weird version of Talking Heads, like if Ric Ocasek was a simple streaker compared to David Byrne’s compulsive public masturbator. A sticky analogy, but the late 70s were a weird time. Unlike the new wave and power pop albums that came out in the early 80s, this album thankfully largely avoided that canned sound that instantly dates so many otherwise stellar Reagan-era albums. ¨My Best Friend’s Girl¨ sounds like what ¨My Sharona¨ would have sounded like with a better mind behind it. The guitars, jangly and subtle, make me want to pull out a Smiths album. Unfortunately, the further into the album you go the more 80s it sounds, with synths and other tricks from that period. I guess that makes it ahead of its time, but that’s the aural equivalent of investing in Beanie Babies after 1998. Do I hate 80s music? A bit. Regardless of poor production choices, I do love big hooks and simple-seeming but clever lyrics, and The Cars do deliver. Are they weird? Yes. Does it sound dated? Sort of. Worth listening? Yes.

Some albums are timeless and some are so timestamped you can’t listen without being taken back to that time and place. Fatboy Slim belongs firmly in the 90s, the aural equivalent of Beanie Babies, WWJD bracelets and a pre-9/11 sense of innocence and enthusiasm. This was the American century, after all, and with ¨You’ve Come A Long Way, Baby,¨ Fatboy Slim was an electronic music evangelist bringing his loops and beats across the pond to give the uncultured colonists a peep into the future of popular music. Nowadays everything you hear on the radio is electronic, synthesized, looped and autotuned. Popular tastes change and it’s very easy to be an old man yelling at a cloud, but one can’t help but miss the days when there were a few musicians in the studio making music. The Europeans had been making robot music throughout the 90s, and the rave scene thankfully mostly missed in the New World but then again we did have dubstep. Perhaps it’s a matter of taste, but hearing the same words looped over and over again like Groundhog Day, a collage of samples and a drummerless beat is my idea of hell. 1998 will never go down as a great year for art, and ¨You’ve Come A Long Way…¨ is about as good a proof of that outside of a Limp Bizkit album. Best songs: ¨Funk Soul Brother,¨ ¨Praise You¨

The first notes of Bert Jansch’s self-titled album made me think of a less sad Nick Drake. There’s the aimless plucking, perfect for a lonesome stroll along a riverbank as the autumn leaves die on the branches. There’s the soft voice singing about sorrow. There’s that indefinable sense of time and place you only get from a 60s folk album. Wherever there’s a sad guy with a guitar there’s a potential folk singer, and if he’s Scottish you might as well imagine the music playing over a Celtic funeral scene in a movie about moors and heather and lochs. There’s something about the Scottish (and Irish) that makes for good, sad folk music. Unlike the gloomier English, the Celts give their sadness a sense of the inevitable and therefore something to be lived with as opposed to dying of. We in the US make that mistake as well. There’s not a lot of market today for a man with a guitar to sing about his feelings, but the 60s seemed to be the best time for it. Sometimes the absence of anything else gets stifling, lonely and monotonous, but the lack of background noise really lets the listener feel like they’re sitting next to the artist. That’s what I felt listening to this album, the sense of walking next to the singer on a cold autumn afternoon watching the leaves fall. If that’s not art, I don’t know what is. Best songs: ¨Strolling Down the Highway,¨¨Needle of Death,¨ ¨Angie¨

Joni Mitchell is a name I’ve always heard in relation to the 60s and folk music and something that older people like, but never something that found its way into my ears. I always put her in a box with Joan Baez, and since I don’t remember Joan’s music either I’m not sure if this comparison is fair or not. ¨The Hissing of Summer Lawns¨ is such a cool title that actually listening to the album itself threatens to cheapen it. I imagined a less angry, more refined Patti Smith and that’s basically what I got. Replace the grime of the 70s with the vaguely optimistic vibe of the 60s, put it in your kooky aunt Tabatha’s album collection and there you go. {Note: this album came out in 1975, the same year as ¨Horses,¨ but it sounds 10 years older} I found the music to often be a bit boring, but the opening ¨In France They Kiss on Main St.¨ was exciting, as was ¨The Jungle Line.¨ What isn’t boring is the poetry she spews, painting pictures as good as Dylan or Nas, often eschewing any sense of verse or chorus. If an album could ever be considered ¨a grower and not a shower¨ it would be this. What was boring on the first listen I found nuanced on the second. There are musical and vocal choices that superseded any kind of expectations I’d normally have of a singer-songwriter. Respect to Joni Mitchell. Best songs: ¨In France They Kiss on Main Street,¨ ¨The Jungle Line, ¨ ¨Harry’s House/Center…¨

Vaguely countryish guitar sounds with a pounding percussion pushing the song forward. That’s my first impression of Happy Monday’s ¨Bummed¨ album. Obscured words by a high pitched voice singing about rednecks. Next song, the canned 80s drums that I love so much. ¨Mad Cyril¨ sounds like nothing so much as Robert Smith fronting a more optimistic version of the Smiths, one in a world where Morrissey had hanged himself in his mum’s drawing room the day before Marr came calling. Marr then convinced Robert to quit the Cure and come play with him. Honestly, I like the idea of this band almost as much as I like the Cure and the Smiths. This Smiths/Cure/New Order melange continues throughout the album, vacillating between all the different sad bands of the 80s, establishing itself as perhaps the perfect distillation of sad Britain. I didn’t find anything another band hadn’t done better, but I enjoyed the hell out of it. Best songs: ¨Country Song,¨ ¨Mad Cyril,¨ ¨Brain Dead¨

A friend and I spoke once about Talking Heads and what a weirdo David Byrne was. Yes, they have some good songs. Yes, they’re talented. Yes, they were definitely punk in a way that Ramones and Dead Boys and the Heartbreakers weren’t because they were just that challenging to listen to. But if you’re a real Talking Heads fan, you’re probably a creep. If the Ramones were the scummy street rats of the 70s ¨Taxi Driver¨ New York, Talking Heads were the guys masturbating in a porn theater in Times Square. There’s an unwholesome weirdness that permeates the music of Remain in Light. It starts from the unnerving cover art and continues through the first song, ¨Born Under Punches.¨ Wailing ¨Take a look at these hands,¨ David Byrne sounds like a cross between a wailing spirit coming out of an Irish bog at night and a Southern preacher you just know is having an affair with a 14 year old girl (and will later go on to marry). There’s a funky baseline and beeps and boops from a telephone calling you from hell. The bass and drums on this album are incredible, setting up a concrete jungle beat for David Byrne to just get weird over. There are the occasional painful guitar solos, horns, keys, organs and an assortment of ¨everything but the kitchen sink¨ happening just when you don’t expect it to. ¨Once in a Lifetime¨ is the song I’ve heard before and it sounds like the ramblings of a suburban serial killer. ¨Remain in Light¨ reinforced my view of David Byrne, Talking Heads and Brian Eno. It’s weird, occasionally disturbing and so creative and surprising that I had a hard time hating it. That people can actually create such profoundly weird music is a testament to the human spirit or something. I’m impressed! Best songs: ¨Born Under Punches,¨ ¨The Great Curve,¨ ¨Once In a Lifetime¨

What I remember most about the Yeah Yeah Yeahs was they were the kind of urban hipster trash coming out of NYC that my best friend in high school liked, along with bands like the Strokes. I didn’t like any of those bands, I was too busy listening to NOFX and Rancid, and Yeah Yeah Yeahs had a girl singer. Big pass. I wasn’t even into Distillers then because Brody left Tim. Good times indeed. Fast forward about 20 years and the dulcet sounds of ¨Zero¨ burst through my headphones, sounding like an American, female-fronted Bloc Party. I guess cool kids mix electronic into their dancey rock and or roll, like putting ecstasy in their cocaine. This is something 18 year old me would hate and 38 old me pretends to like to feel cultured. Like Bloc Party (and a bit the Weeknd), the Yeah Yeah Yeahs give the feeling of having taken too much cocaine and trying desperately to either feel high enough to enjoy it or come back down to earth and be at least half a person. It’s soulless music for soulless people, but that doesn’t make it bad. Even Bowie had his Thin White Duke phase. It's all there: the beats, the guitars, the hooks. It’s sexy music but I do wonder how sexy it sounds the second time. Best songs: ¨Zero,¨ ¨Skeletons¨ ¨Little Shadow¨

The Who always did get the bronze medal in talks of the greatest British band from back in the day. As someone once told me, ¨Of course the Who have great songs, but who have you ever met who’s an actual hardcore Who fan?¨ I have to agree, if only because they weren’t as catchy as the Beatles or as badass as the Stones. That’s a difficult lane to have to stay in. ¨The Who Sell Out¨ is a weird album. Between the power pop there are the weird interludes, not unlike what Vince Staples did with with ¨FM!¨ 60 years later mimicking a radio. It was cool then and it’s cool now, especially as radio has become such a dying medium in the last 20 years. I understand why artists would do it today, but for The Who to do it back then shows an uncomfortable amount of creativity and foresight. Maybe that’s why they were always third- just too challenging to be consistently enjoyable. The music itself isn’t anything you haven’t heard from early Who, but the weird commercials are like traveling back in time inside the mind of a mad Englishman in the 60s. There’s the timeless banality of shilling products mixed with the anachronistic surrealism of hearing 60s English commercials now, as well as whatever studio tricks they were up to. People always talk about ¨Sgt. Pepper¨ being a gamechanger, but this album is much weirder. Of coure, then you get to ¨Silas Stingy¨ and you feel like you’re about to have high tea with Queen Victoria. One step forward, two steps back. Best songs: ¨Armenia…¨, ¨I Can See for Miles,¨ ¨I Can’t Reach You¨

Once again we plunge headfirst into the icy depths of avant-garde electronic music. I’m never so unhappy as when I undergo an assault of the senses at the hands of robot music, especially when it’s basically the Beatles’ ¨Revolution 9¨ made into eight minutes of pure hell. That was my impression upon hearing the opening track ¨Metronomic Underground.¨ Of course, first impressions are often wrong or unfounded, and ¨Cybele’s Reverie¨ is much more enjoyable. There is still electronic elements but it sounds more like a real song, and a big plus that it’s in French. Everything sounds better in French, especially when one is hungover. The third track, ¨Percolater,¨ is even better than the track before, with a killer bassline, keys and more French chanson vocals. ¨The Noise of Carpet¨ sounds like the Buzzcocks being assaulted by Devo fronted by the woman from Elastica. This album did what I guess most great art is supposed to do: it challenged me, then took me on a journey. I can’t say I enjoyed all of it, and I probably wouldn’t go again, but I’m glad I went. Best songs: ¨Cybele’s Reverie,¨ ¨Percolater,¨ ¨The Noise of Carpet¨

I didn’t grow up watching dubbed kung-fu movies, slanging rocks on the mean streets of Staten Island or listening to hip hop in the early 90s, but hearing the opening lines of ¨36 Chambers¨ thrills me and makes me wistful for a time and place I certainly didn’t live through. What is ¨Shaolin Shadowboxing¨ anyways? Wu Tang continued what NWA had started in the late 80s, being somehow menacing and funny at the same time. Both groups detailed the dark realities of life in the ghettos of LA and NY, and did it in such a way that everyone wanted to listen. Wu Tang are obviously the better MCs, and RZA’s production has aged much better than Dre’s ¨Straight Out of Compton¨ beats. More importantly, they avoided the depths of misogyny being plumbed by some of the more prominent West Coast rappers. Does heat make rappers hate women more? With ¨36 Chambers,¨ the Clan painted a picture of Giuliani’s New York as some sort of hellscape populated by kung-fu warriors and dope fiends and rife with the kind of comic violence that would make Looney Tunes characters blush. What really makes it stand the test the time is the humor- it was never serious (and more importantly, self-serious). If there ever was an Avengers of music it would be the Clan, forever the greatest rap group of all time. Best songs: ¨Bring Da Ruckus,¨ ¨Shame on a Nigga,¨ ¨Wu-Tang Clan Ain’t Nuthing ta F’Wit¨

When you see King Louie on the cover, eyes closed in ecstasy and mouth open wide, you can already guess what the music is going to sound like. There is profound music, music as a tool for change, music made for radio or nightclubs and music made as a pure expression of joy. ¨The Wildest!¨ is this last one, a simple blast of good times that only an ogre or puritan could hate. There’s a theory that people are never more attractive than we’re they’re talking about something they’re passionate about, and I think it’s also true about watching people do something they love and that they’re good at. I imagine when they were making this album everyone involved was at peak attractiveness. There are records you listen to and pity the artist, and there are records you listen to and wish you had been there. This is one. Best songs: ¨Just a Gigolo,¨ ¨The Lip,¨ ¨Buona Sera¨

I used to think jazz was for white men with Art Garfunkel afros who wore burgundy turtlenecks and swirled red wine in a glass presumptuously. Either that or a heroin-addicted black musician who wore shades inside and at any time of the day or night. How wrong I was. Bad jazz is Kenny G or Harry Connick Jr. in an elevator. Good jazz is more than notes on a sheet or sound from a speaker, it’s a feeling, a vibe, a transubstantiation of something intangible into as tangible as music can be. Or whatever. I won’t pretend I ¨get¨ jazz, but I do know what I like and ¨Home is Where the Music Is¨ is a great soundtrack to another morning in the big city. Looking down, seeing the traffic, people walking, the skyline. It paints a picture. Isn’t that what good art is- either painting a picture, taking you out of the moment or making you feel what the artist is feeling? This album does all three. Best songs: ¨Part of a Whole,¨ ¨Inner Crisis,¨ ¨The Big Apple¨

Let’s get this out in the open- rap in the 80s just wasn’t so good compared to rap in the 90s. In terms of beats, flows, style, the 90s just took what the 80s established and made it better. Nothing after the 90s was ever as good either, but what the 80s accomplished was setting up rap for the global success it would eventually become. It had to start somewhere, no? I ramble because as I listen to ¨Done by the Forces of Nature¨ by the Jungle Boys I can’t help but think of how dated this and similar albums sound in comparison to albums that came out five years later. It’s not that it’s bad musically, it’s just not ¨The Chronic¨ or ¨36 Chambers¨ or A Tribe Called Quest. Lyrically, it’s not Nas or Rakim or Biggie. I can’t say what it was like when it came out in 1989, when I was two, but what it sounds like now is nice 80s rap that, like Run DMC, brings one back to those high-top haircuts, people break dancing on cardboard and water hydrant parties in the streets of the Bronx. It’s like ¨Do the Right Thing¨ but Radio Raheem doesn’t die in this one. Best songs: ¨Sunshine,¨ ¨Belly Dancin’ Dina,¨ ¨Tribe Vibes¨

Some music is perfect for a clear, calm morning. The sun is rising, almost no one else is in the office, you get a new recommendation and the music sounds like nothing so much as the introduction song in a Disney movie about a jungle village. The protagonist walks down the street, people sing and dance and say hello around him, all is good. That’s my first impression of ¨Papa Bonheur,¨ a Disney movie intro song. There’s something nice about this overwhelming cheerfulness, but one does get a bit wary of it after about 13 minutes of it. Far be it for me to pretend I know anything about Congolese music, but in my heart of hearts I was hoping for Afrobeat and I got bachata. Of course, anything in the 80s sounds like it’s from the 80s and suffers accordingly. Best songs: ¨Papa Bohnheur,¨ ¨Qui Cherche Trouve¨

There’s dad-rock and then there’s dad-rock. I think The Band, aside from sort of evading all the ¨greatest¨ and ¨best of¨ lists of 60s bands, is sort of the platonic ideal of what the dads of my generation must have listened to. Kind of bluesy, more immediate than Pink Floyd, sort of scruffy but overall, inoffensively masculine. Knowing that they were the backing band for Dylan who sort of grew big enough to branch off into their own thing, like a tumor becoming self-aware, makes them more interesting than they would have been otherwise. The music is good, the vocals a bit high but perfect for cracking open a light beer on a fishing trip with the boys. Best songs: ¨Tears of Rage,¨ ¨Caledonia Mission,¨ ¨The Weight¨

There’s something about an old Western ballad that makes a red-blooded American boy like me wistful for the days of cowboys, Indians, trail rides and campfires. It’s a false history that we’ve been sold from John Wayne movies and our own self-delusional national mythology, but the feeling are oh so real. Marty Robbins, like most old country and western singers, has a voice that makes whatever he’s singing about sound somehow wistful, reasonable and noble. It doesn’t matter if it’s a cowboy sacrificing himself to save the boss’s daughter or a guy in a bar gunning another guy down because he’s dancing with a Mexican girl, Marty tells it like it is. It's a bit easy to see the songs as old-fashioned and naïve (they are), but I’ve rarely heard this level of storytelling in a song that isn’t from Ghostface Killah or another rapper at his level. I tried and couldn’t tear myself away, the stories are that good. The music is simple, like most country, but it’s so easy to listen to, like the prettier younger sister of traditional murder ballads. Best songs: ¨Big Iron,¨ ¨Cool Water,¨ ¨El Paso¨

I can respect any album that starts off with a lullaby-esque song like ¨Sunday Morning, ¨ sung by a deep voiced German chanteuse, and then going immediately into the rollicking ¨I’m Waiting for the Man.¨ Isn’t this song about going to the ghetto to cop heroin? If that’s not pure shit-hot rock and roll I don’t know what is… It reflects anyone who’s ever had to wait for the little package of goodies they’ve been thinking about all day. I’ve admittedly never been a huge Lou Reed fan, but this song is one of the greatest rock songs ever, to say nothing of about the best example of proto-punk this side of ¨Personality Crisis.¨ ¨Femme Fatale¨ is a classic, icy and impersonal and grey. Nico almost had a trans quality about her, which is very 60s NYC. That + heroin + crime= a Scorsese movie but aural instead of visual. ¨Venus in Furs¨ is menacing, plodding, like the soundtrack to a death march going to a fashion show. ¨There She Goes¨ is Dylan if he had a smack problem and had listened to more blues. The centerpiece of the album is ¨Heroin,¨ a long, poetic dirge to Chinese rocks that is the half love letter, have warning (see also the DOC’s ¨Beautiful But Deadly¨ for the companion piece about cocaine). The song sounds sickly and sweet at the same time, and is extremely hard to listen to. Overall the album alternates between catchy and hard to listen to, both in subject matter and sometimes in the droning improvisation they throw in. It’s a definite junkie, 60’s New York masterpiece, the album version of ¨Taxi Driver.¨ Best songs: ¨I’m Waiting for the Man,¨ ¨Venus in Furs,¨ ¨There She Goes Again¨

Is there anything from Iceland that just isn’t fucking weird? I don’t know if it’s something in the water, the isolation from the rest of the world, the small and possibly inbred population or some kind of fey fairy magic, but it’s weird stuff. Weird doesn’t mean bad, but weird it is. Bjork, Sigur Ros, the guy from Game of Thrones… Add to the fact that apparently Sigur Ros doesn’t actually sing any real lyrics- you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s Icelandic- which almost no one speaks- but it’s not. It’s their made-up fairy language. The music is lush, orchestral and electronic and the soundtrack for a noble Viking death in some 90s movie. ¨Hjartao Hamast¨ sounds like the Deftones if made the soundtrack for a futuristic gay sauna. This is meant as high praise- like the rest of the album, the song takes you somewhere. All in all, it was easy to let the music fall into the background- it was transportive enough when I actively listened but at times easy to disengage from. That’s not the band’s failing, it’s mine. Best songs: ¨Hjartao Hamast¨

We love Britpop, don’t we? Just look at the Oasis reunion- sold out, prices higher than the Tower of Babel, do they even have enough good songs to justify the pomp and circumstance? This isn’t about Oasis, it’s about Suede’s self-titled album, but the spectre of Britpop remains large enough that people will mortgage their council estate just to go see the Gallagher brothers fight onstage. As I’m not British and wasn’t listening to much music in the mid-90s I’m unable to listen retroactively; no rose-tinted lenses for me. What I hear is music a bit indebted to the Smiths, some other Rough Trade artists of the 80s and of course the Beatles and the Who. There’s a poppiness and an utter Britishness to Suede that ensured they’d never really cross over the pond, much like The Jam and The Smiths before them. ¨Animal Nitrate¨ is killer, a writhing guitar and a soaring chorus. The album in general slithers here and soars there. A bit dark without being mopey, a bit anthemic without being cinematic. The album is enjoyable but, at least for me, not very memorable. Best songs: ¨Animal Nitrate,¨ ¨So Young¨

If there’s anything better than Afro-Cuban music it’s Afro-Cuban music mixed with jazz. It brings to mind a world that hasn’t existed in over 60 years- old Havana, the playground of the rich, a paradise just south of Hell, a dictatorship that oppressed its people and kowtowed to wealth. How things change… Good jazz and good instrumental music have the ability to transport the listener, a sort of Walter Mitty effect that makes you feel like your life might actually be better and more profound than it actually is. Life isn’t easy but it might seem easier with ¨Kenya¨ by Machito playing. Best songs: ¨Wild Jungle,¨ ¨Kenya¨

One thing better left in last century is sketches on hip hop albums. I never understood it- the funny skits weren’t funny on repeat listens, the serious sketches dragged on, the sexual sketches were painful. ¨3 Feet High and Rising¨ starts with a sketch and my soul started to sag. Cue ¨ (3 is) The Magic Number¨ and its vibrancy, its soul, its sense of funky fun and all is right with the world. This album, to me, is that magic transition period between 80s and 90s New York rap. There’s still a bit of the old school but the beats are better, the rhymes less formulaic, people are figuring out they can do whatever they want. Like any good NYC classic it puts you right in the middle of a certain time and place. However, as opposed to Mobb Deep’s pissy stairways and Wu Tang’s ninja apocalypse, De La Soul paints a sunnier urban vibe- cultured and positive while still being street-smart. It’s like a cool Sesame Street (and Sesame Street was always cool anyways). I don’t find the three rappers so distinctive- they’re good, fun to listen to, but not quite as distinctive as NWA or Wu Tang. I was never huge into the conscious rap, but the older I get the more I appreciate not getting a slop bucket of misogyny, homophobia and violence poured over me. Of course, then you get to ¨De La Orgee¨ and you walk everything back. Great jazzy NYC rap for (almost) the whole family. Best songs: ¨(3 is) The Magic Number,¨ ¨Eye Know,¨ ¨Tread Water¨

Who doesn’t like a good surprise? You put on an album expecting to hate it, to have that early 80s cheese and vacuousness and what you get might have a bit of that but is such a delicious pop gem that you can’t help but love it, synths and all. That’s my impression as I make my way through ¨She’s So Unusual¨ by Cyndi Lauper. As a successful artist, Cyndi never really made it out of the 80s like Madonna. Maybe she didn’t have a strong enough following amongst the gays, maybe she didn’t send enough naked pictures, I don’t know. What I do know is that if the first three songs don’t hook you in you’re either dead or listen to Philip Glass unironically. Why did I never notice how amazing ¨Girls Just Wanna Have Fun¨ really is? The only miss here is the closer ¨Yeah Yeah,¨ which is as annoying a song as I’ve ever heard. Still, credit where credit is due. Best songs: ¨When You Were Mine,¨ ¨Money Changes Everything,¨ ¨Girls Just Wanna Have Fun¨

What is it about grunge that I’ve never been able to take to? Is it the image of dirty longhairs in the Pacific Northwest doing heroin? Is it that meat-and-potatoes vibe I get from Nirvana, Pearl Jam and the like? Is it that it’s kind of punk but not, like an uncanny valley situation? That might be it. Mudhoney is not bad- I can enjoy the fuzzy, bluesy guitars, the wall of noise, the wailing and howling. It’s a mix of garage punk and early metal and some blues and I guess that’s what grunge is and maybe if it had come out on Lookout! I might have liked it more. That’s tribalism if I’ve ever heard of it. Or, just maybe, the songs meander too much and go nowhere. Best songs: ¨Touch Me I’m Sick,¨ ¨Twenty Four¨

As the first notes of ¨Aja¨ come through my headphones all I can think of is the start to some kind of 70s mustachioed swingers party. This is before the AIDS epidemic, when coke was still sexy, when America was still young and innocent. Actively listening to ¨Black Cow¨ is a weird experience, not least because it seems meant to be passively listened to. ¨Aja¨ continues the theme of porn/swingers/sleaze, but maybe a little classier and set in an Old West theme. This is, te lo juro, music to be put on for a rendezvous or a tryst, something in the background. I feel like I’m a background character in ¨Boogie Nights¨ sitting here listening. Traveling through the guts of the album, one knows that one is completely in ¨dad rock¨ territory, if your dad has long sideburns, a moustache, aviators and wife swaps. Best songs: ¨Black Cow,¨ ¨Josie¨

I’ve been known to hate on music that dads like, but if there’s one I can get behind forever and ever it’s Creedence Clearwater Revival. Maybe they were fake Southerners but it probably did wonders for them not being conservative pieces of crap. They were hippies, right? They made so many twangy, classic songs and were in the right place at the right time and I fucking love them. ¨Green River¨ is a lazy, meandering song that makes me want to be fishing as a train goes over a bridge in the distance. As a Southerner, it takes me there. ¨Wrote a Song for Everyone¨ works because you believe every word Fogerty says. Something in his voice says ¨trust me and believe me¨ and I do. ¨Bad Moon Rising¨ is probably more relevant now than it was in the 60s, and ¨Lodi¨ is one of the best songs ever written. It makes me happy and calm, even when the story is about failure and bad luck. It’s simple but gets to the point, like every other song on the album, and I appreciate that. They’re like the Ramones of 60s roots rock, and that’s about the highest praise I can give. Best songs: ¨Lodi,¨ ¨Green River,¨ ¨Bad Moon Rising¨

From the opening chords of ¨Soubour¨ you know you’re going to be in for a treat. Without even knowing the background of the musicians, the ¨Sahel/Sahara¨ rock pulls you in and smothers you with a warm blanket. I can’t say I’ve ever wanted to go to the Sahel but damn if they don’t produce amazing musicians. Mali is a mysterious, vaguely dangerous sounding place, well off the beaten track for all but the hardiest travelers. Still, if Songhoy Blues is from there it can’t be all bad. The ¨desert blues¨ genre is a bit broad and vague but the two things that unite the musicians across the region are incredible guitar lines and rhythms that make it impossible to sit still. ¨Irganda¨ is a bit more tribal, with some call-and-response vocals and a beat that won’t let you go. What did this music sound like before they added electric guitars? I’m not sure, but it’s a natural fit and the world is better for this. ¨Sekou Oumarou¨ is slow, catchy, perfect for a smoke session in the shed behind your parent’s house. Bob Marley who? ¨Desert Melodie¨ sounds like something you’d be listening to in a tent in the desert at night- it’s one of the most relaxing things I can imagine. What I love about this record and records like it is how you can put on something good, regardless of genre or language and still relate to and vibe with it. I don’t know what me and the Songhoy Blues guys have in common, but hearing something they’ve put out into the world (with love) reminds me that we’re all human. Best songs: ¨Soubour,¨¨Sekou Oumarou,¨ ¨Desert Melodie¨

By the time I was old enough to know about Michael Jackson he was already more or less white and in trouble for potentially being a pedo. I missed his golden age when he was the ¨King of Pop¨ and the biggest and baddest thing on the planet. He wasn’t the little boy from the Jackson 5, he wasn’t the guy who ruled MTV, he was just the human equivalent to a shopping bag- white, plastic and dangerous to children. How then do we separate the man from the music? The art from the artist? Is it possible, especially since he was never convicted and we’ve never had any proof beyond a shadow of a doubt? It’s not like listening to the Lost Prophets or watching the Cosby Show… So how does ¨Bad,¨ an album from the year I was born, hold up today? I guess it’s fine- it’s catchy, expertly made, with songs that have become a part of the national lexicon like ¨The Way You Make Me Feel.¨ But then, when he says ¨You really turn me on,¨ who is he talking to? This came out pre-scandal, so it hits differently from when it came out. ¨Liberian Girl¨ was, devoid of any context, just kind of bad. The album itself is very 80s, and when something sounds 80s it sounds generally shitty and canned and dated. ¨Man in the Mirror¨ is catchy but is the kind of mindless drivel that gave us ¨We Are the World.¨ ¨Dirty Diana¨ is a bit more ambitious- there’s storytelling, drama, orchestration. Of course, ¨Smooth Criminal¨ is so catchy it defies the rules of time, space and allegations and will forever be a jam. All in all, I think this album has aged about as poorly as Michael’s reputation- even separating the art from the artist leaves me wanting it to be over. Best songs: ¨Dirty Diana,¨ ¨Smooth Criminal¨

Sometimes the Doors are so bad they’re good, and sometimes they’re so bad they’re good. Each song is like another trigger pull in a game of Russian Roulette. Either you get the country bar vibes of ¨Roadhouse Blues¨ or a slog like ¨Waiting for the Sun.¨ That being said, the less you hear of Ray Manzenarek’s keyboards, the better. He chose a piano for this one, and I’d say that’s the right choice. The music isn’t bad, but it would sound a lot more genuine coming from an old black man instead of the son of an admiral. You get the same with the mega-rich Mumford and Sons playing dress up and making old black music. Then again, isn’t that what white musicians have been doing since the beginning of popular music- making watered down versions of black music? Sometimes it’s great, sometimes it’s Pat Boone. Sometimes it’s ¨Morrison Hotel.¨ Best songs: ¨Roadhouse Blues,¨ ¨Land Ho!¨

I’ve always heard of Roxy Music but without much context. Imagine my surprise when ¨Do the Strand¨ comes on. It’s more fabulous, theatrical and camp than I could ever have imagined. Maybe the band’s name should have been a giveaway, and it does sound camp and British, but I wasn’t expecting something that sounds like a cross between a showtune and the Factory. In retrospect, the music sounds almost exactly like what you’d expect after seeing the album cover. Like Sabbath’s self-titled, the cover is a vision of what’s to come, and is it ever fabulous. I was never, Bowie aside, too into glam, but I do have to admit that the theatricality appeals to me as someone who enjoys musicals and mariachi music. ¨Camp¨ is a term that never really translated well across the pond, but play this album for someone in the US and they might just get what you mean. I’m not sure what the band was trying to get across with ¨Grey Lagoons¨ but it’s the most fabulous, over the top take on American roots music, run through a camp British sensibility. I can see the roots for the New York Dolls and therefore to punk. Sometimes larger-than-life is the look and on ¨For Your Pleasure¨ it just works oh so well. Best songs: ¨Do The Strand,¨ ¨Grey Lagoons¨

Ethereal, minimal, exotic. That’s my first impression of ¨Djam Leelii,¨ a mysterious offering from two men I assume are from some part of Muslim Africa. It has a bit of Sufi vibes, hypnotic, trance-inducing. If I was a cobra I’d be charmed by album opener ¨Lam Tooro.¨ The album doesn’t really take off from there, and the songs blend together but it’s a pleasant sort of homogeny that is relaxing in a desert tent, a bedroom with a warm light or a yurt somewhere horrible. Best songs: ¨Lam Tooro,¨ ¨Ko Wone Mayo¨

My first thought about ¨Brothers in Arms¨ is that I’m going to hate it. It sounds so 80s, and all I know of Dire Straights is ¨Sultans of Swing,¨ which is lame at the best of times. ¨So Far Away¨ sounds like a bad mix of Tom Petty and late-career Bob Dylan, with all the horrible production the 80s has to offer. After almost five minutes of the opener, the end seems ¨so far away from me.¨ See what I did there? The music isn’t unpleasant, as such, just unbelievably dull and disgustingly 80s. ¨Money for Nothing¨ is even worse, adding synths and talking about refrigerators in what I imagine was written as a screed against consumerism but sounds like something playing at a Target. Upon looking up Dire Straits I discovered they’re from England, which explains a lot. Sometimes things get lost in translation, and sounding superficially American is a strike against, not for. By the time I’ve arrived to ¨Your Latest Trick,¨ with it’s cloying jazz saxophone and it’s made-for-a-lounge or adult contemporary radio, I want to throw myself out of the 12th floor office I work at. There is no excuse to make music this bland, this bad, this soulless. The songs blend together into a cauldron of awfulness. As a coworker said, it’s the kind of music you’d hear playing at Chilli’s or Applebee’s. Best song: ¨So Far Away¨

Being honest, I’ve never liked Billy Corgan’s voice. Only in the early 90s could someone with a voice like that ever find mainstream success in the music industry. ¨Siamese Dream’s¨ opening track, ¨Cherub Rock,¨ sounds like it’s got a grunge hangover. This muddy, distorted sound was waiting for ¨Dookie¨ to come out and change everything, and bands that changed and survived like Smashing Pumpkins definitely benefitted from it. ¨Cherub Rock¨ isn’t bad, it sounds like something Nirvana might have done had Kurt listened to a bit more stadium rock and less of the Raincoats. As I make my way through the album nothing stands out, but the uniformity is pleasant. Billy’s strange wail, the droning fuzz of the music, the ennui of a gray Monday morning- all come together to make a pleasant background listening. The album is much too long but pleasant enough. People constantly rank it as one of the best albums of the 90s- I guess you had to be there. Best songs: ¨Cherub Rock,¨ ¨Hummer,¨ ¨Rocket¨

Even after five minutes into ¨Happy Trails¨ by the Quicksilver Messenger Service, I still don’t know what I’m listening to. It’s kinda bluesy, kinda rootsy, a jam session with no vocals and a quaint, Western-inspired cover. I was expecting Roy Rogers and I’ve gotten who knows what. Is it wonderful? So far, yes. I don’t know if this was a jam on the spot or if they sort of wrote the songs first, but sometimes it’s fun to just hear musicians play. They’re really going for it, and that chemistry of people in a room being good at what they do together just can’t be beat. Of course, by the time we get to the riot sounds at the end of ¨Where You Love,¨ the song has just gone on for far too long. There are long songs that keep you into it, like ¨Desolation Row¨ or ¨Marquee Moon,¨ and then ones that just seem to go nowhere. Vocals finally come in on ¨Who Do You Love Pt. 2¨ and it sounds like one of The Doors’ more meandering songs, bluesy in a white person blues sort of way. Is it bad? Not always. ¨Mona¨ continues this Doors déjà vu, thankfully without the lame keys or Jim Morrison’s sometimes overwrought lyrics. A real ride, this album. Best songs: ¨Who Do You Love Pt. 2,¨ ¨Mona¨

I’ve never listened to 10cc, it sounds like a dad band, but ¨The Worst Band in the World¨ was sampled on ¨Workin on It¨ by J Dilla so they can’t be all bad. The music is hard to pin down, a bit more eclectic and thoughtful than what I had imagined. Life is a journey. ¨Clockwork Creep¨ sounds like ¨Bohemian Rhapsody¨ made by, uh, creeps, and ¨Silly Love¨ is weird power pop put through a latter-day Beatles filter. The music in turns sounds American and British, caught between two worlds, even when singing bad things about America in ¨Hotel.¨ What I like about the album is that the band throws curveball after curveball, always in a clever way that makes sense for what they’re doing. The songs don’t sound the same but there’s a cohesion that makes it sound like more than a mixtape. Best songs: ¨The Wall Street Shuffle,¨ ¨The Worst Band in the World,¨ ¨Silly Love¨

Eric Clapton has always been synonymous to me as someone watering down black music. He loved blues but then he put it through his filter and gave us ¨blues lite.¨ He’s a hell of a guitar player but is just so unlikeable. That being said, ¨Sunshine of Your Love¨ is a song you’ve heard a million times before but it’s a real jam. ¨Disraeli Gears¨ is like a nice, cold lager- it’s not super memorable but it’s very easy to causally enjoy. Aside from ¨Sunshine,¨ not one song really stuck with me but it wasn’t the worst way to spend a half hour. Best songs: ¨Strange Brew,¨ ¨Sunshine of Your Love¨