1001 Albums Summary

First of all, "La femme d'argent" is an absolute classic. Sounded very different to anything else in the mainstream at that time. I'd forgotten how many great songs are on this album. Everything sounds quite 70s, even if there's a lot of electronica and vocal effects. The first half of the album has a pretty amazing 6 song run. Unfortunately, the second half is a bit low energy after that. No surprise that I'm less familiar with the songs in the second half - back in the 90s, I probably zoned out or bailed after "Remember". Still a really great album overall that holds up very well.

Meh. Every song is very samey. I really really liked the older Black Keys stuff like Attack & Release, but I feel like this album was the turning point when they pulled a "Kings of Leon" and watered down the rawness of their sound and became too bland.

This album always reminds me of Fat Freddy's pizzeria back in the early 90s. Someone who worked there played this album on repeat. So, in my head, that's what this is: inoffensive background music. I know I'm in the minority, but I could never appreciate Van Morrison, no matter how much I tried. I can understand that these are decent songs, the musicianship is good, and his voice is what it is, but it all feels very "beige" to me. On the plus side, relistening to this now in my old age, I did very much enjoy "And it stoned me" and the higher energy parts (like the end of the song "Moondance"). But the rest of the album remains as inoffensive background music in a pizzeria to my ears.

There's no easing into this album. The sound of Neil's double drop D distorted "Old Black" Les Paul guitar slaps you in the face from the very first second of Cinnamon Girl - it's one hell of a way to get your attention. The unpolished rawness of the guitar mixed with the very polished harmonies and melodies feels like Neil was laying down the groundwork for Nirvana. I can imagine Nick Cave listening to "Down by the River" for the first time, taking notes. Speaking of, that guitar solo is one of my all-time favorite things. Sticky, rough and clumsy in all the right ways, dipping in and out, and for such a long solo, not self-indulgent in any way, simply lifting the energy of the song and augmenting it in the best possible way. What more can I say about this, except that it's an absolute classic, that paved the way for so many bands, especially in grunge and alt rock.

I don't know if hearing this back in the 80s would have made it a different experience, but I never understood the appeal of Michael Jackson. Of course there are some great songs, but to call this a great album is a serious stretch in my opinion. Bland overproduced disco pop for the most of it. Thriller (the song), Beat It and Billie Jean are standout songs, and the only part of this album I could properly stomach. Not my taste, sure, but objectively I can't see how this is considered one of the great albums beyond the 80s hype.

I have to say, I didn't know much about Solomon Burke before today. Obviously, I immediately recognised "Cry to me", but interestingly I also recognised The Rolling Stones. I know they've covered him before, and even played live with him on stage, but it's moreso that I recognized the building blocks of that early Rolling Stones sound: the bright clean guitar soloing away as the singer continues, not waiting for a break, but working together; and the seamless switching between speech and singing; I couldn't listen to "If you need me" without hearing "Time is on my side". All that is a good thing. I'm a big fan of the Stones, and I can see why they're big fans of Solomon Burke. An amazing voice, great energy and fantastic songwriting. Happy to have discovered this.

Bank in the day, I was never a Pulp fan. I thought that Jarvis Cocker was a very funny and interesting guy, but I could never gel with their music. It felt too posh and full of itself. Having given this album another chance, I feel I get it a bit more now. Some very witty lyrics and a great run of songs from the start. I did find my attention waning towards the end of the album, and some of the "breathier" Jarvis vocals were starting to get a bit on my nerves. But, I have to say overall that I was pleasantly surprised by this album.

Peter Gabriel, the mad flower cosplaying loon. I'd never sat down to listen to this album in full. It starts off in proper prog rock territory with the madcap "Moribund the Burgermeister", and I'm instantly hooked. I haven't heard anything like this before, and I love it. "Solsbury Hill" might be hard to listen to without imagining a terrible romcom movie trailer, but the guitar work is stellar, and reminiscent of peak Simon and Garfunkel. This album keeps me on my toes. I really don't know what to expect with each song. It's so surprising and unique. "Excuse me", in particular gets my attention. It sounds like Randy Newman crossed with The Beach Boys, but with a theatrical madman at the helm. There are dips in the album, and they tend to be the more sane tracks. But all in all, I'm completely sold on this album. It got my attention from the start and makes me want to dive deeper into the rest of his solo discography.

Pretty impressive that Shuggie played almost every instrument on this album. I'm not really into this type of soul, but I can appreciate the musicianship and songwriting here. Some of these songs take unexpected, sometimes psychedelic turns, which makes for an interesting and enjoyable listen throughout. Overall, very enjoyable soulful album that feels like it's verging on experimental at times.

Quiet, calm but with bursts of urgency, it's Cat Stevens' voice that makes this album work so well. Some absolute classics here, musically augmenting both Cat's voice and lyrics perfectly. The last song on the album, the title track, remains one of my all-time favourite songs. It starts so small, with the fragmented piano piece. It feels like you're in a tiny room with Cat Stevens sitting at his piano right across from you, noodling, improvising, trying to figure out a new song. And then out of nowhere it swells into this huge, emotional burst. All in the space of a single minute. It grabs you straight away and then just keeps building until it suddenly cuts off, leaving you kind of stunned. Very close to 5 stars. Let's call this 4.5 stars.

Nick Drake is sort of timeless. While his sound is quite similar to Stormbringer! era John Martyn, it feels like it could have been released this year and fit in perfectly too. There's something about these songs that feel so genuine and real. It's like the songs are just pouring out of him. The tuned down guitar gives everything a darkness and a moody feel, but nothing on this album feels depressing. Some really great melodies and exceptional acoustic guitar playing. And that's all we get. Besides a tiny bit of piano in the title track, it's stripped back to just a voice and a guitar, but often feels like so much more. A timeless classic.

I've never been much of a fan of Justin's music. In fact, I've always said that he should have concentrated on comedy, where I think he is really truly talented. But, keeping an open mind while listening to this, I have to concede that he (along with the Neptunes) does indeed have some good songwriting chops. "Senora" is a very catchy tune, "Like I Love You" sounds a bit like something early N*E*R*D might have come out with, and "Rock Your Body" has some questionable beatboxing in it. On the better side of pop music, and at least it's not completely manufactured nonsense. The standout is "Cry Me A River". Catchy and intelligent songwriting, it's genuinely a great song. Unfortunately the rest of the album is filler. Justin is trying his best to emulate early Michael Jackson in a more-RnB-than-disco setting, and it all feels quite bland. It's the songs where he's not trying to sound like something from "Off the Wall" or "Thriller" that show some of the talent he has. But, ultimately besides a few decent songs, and one great one, I'm still hoping he concentrates on his comedy career.

"It's a lot of isolated people, who know how to control and operate electricity. They sneak a listen to American radio, and they get what's going on in Europe as well, and they kind of misunderstand it in a very beautiful way." Björk's description of the Icelandic music scene to Conan O'Brien, is a perfect description of the sound that The Sugarcubes introduced to the world. This album was very much an introduction to the Icelandic music scene. But, more than anything else, it was an introduction to Björk. The album, while not originally intended to be taken seriously, blends Krautrock, post-punk, electro and pop into something that sounded very fresh at the time. But it's mostly the fevered energy levels that hold all of this together. You can't listen to these songs without imagining Björk skipping (literally) around the stage, while the other band members switch between guitars, synths, brass and megaphones. Some of the more pretentious spoken-word heavy, Krautrock-inspired, post punk pieces haven't aged as well as other songs on the album ("Delicious Demon" and "Sick for Toys" I'm glaring in your direction). But, the songs that focus more on Björk, and her incredible, alien vocals, more than make up for it. It might seem obvious to jump on "Birthday" and "Deus", but it's hard to listen to this album and not concentrate solely on the massive talents of Björk. "Birthday" still holds up as an amazing piece of music. The instrumentation works so well to augment the absolutely mind-blowing vocal gymnastics that Björk unleashes on our ears. I still don't think there's a single voice in music that could come close to Björk's, both in ability and uniqueness. A fantastic album, with some flaws, but an important moment in music history, when the world was introduced to the beautiful misunderstandings of the Icelandic music scene, and more importantly, to the artistic brilliance of the crazy little pixie with the gigantic voice that we all know and love as Björk.

I fully appreciate the musicianship of this. The piano playing is exceptional. I also really appreciated how relaxed and confident a performer she was, dealing with moments waiting on the rest of the band with a cool charisma. But, this style of soft jazz isn't really my thing. I can imagine it would work better in the context of the 50s, but to me, it sounds a lot like something you'd hear in a hotel bar on holidays (think "Lost in Translation").

Sugar sound very nineties. Early nineties grunge rock to be more precise. So specifically early nineties grunge rock, that I can imagine Beavis and Butthead interrupting "Hoover Dam" to make "is this a god dam(n)?" quips. But I did really like this album overall. You can see the influence that "Nevermind" had here, in focusing on simple, punchy melodies, with bright distorted guitars. But, it lacks the originality and rawness of Nirvana. In fact, for the sake of this album, let's stop the comparisons there. "A Good Idea" could be a Pixies song. In fact, I think it is. It's called "Debaser" though. Still, the chorus distinguishes itself enough to not feel like a complete rip-off. Anyways, something that sounds like Debaser is always going to be enjoyable. "The Slim" takes off. Definitely the best song on the album. The building guitars tap into some frequency tuning in your brain, and it's fantastic. I really can't get enough of that song. The rest, well, verge into cheesy territory a bit too much for my liking. All in all though, a very enjoyable album, that feels very much of its time. I'd call this one 3.5 stars.

I had the wrong idea about Teenage Fanclub. They were always on the peripherals of my music taste, but I somehow never actually listened to them. I always thought they were a noise-rock, post-punk, shoegaze type band, a la Sonic Youth or the likes. Instead, they're bright and poppy rock, melody-focused with polished vocal harmonies. There are moments when you feel that the band I thought they were, start to show up, with the dissonant tones of distorted guitar noise creeping in. But it's always in the background of the very straight-forward poppy song melodies. "The Concept" is a really great song, and a great opener. I can hear the influence this band have had on Carseat Headrest, and in particular Ash. In fact, I hear Ash all through this album. "Satan" gives me the noise rock that I was expecting and I think for a moment that this album is going in a different direction. But it doesn't. Instead, it settles in for simple, polished, guitar-driven pop-punk. Some great, catchy tunes here, but knowing of the acclaim this album gets, I do feel like I'm missing something at times. Most of the album sounds like the positive cousin of the Jesus and Mary Chain. It all feels very young and optimistic. I guess that's the point. I don't mean to sound too negative about this album, because I'm not. I quite enjoyed it, even if it wasn't what I was expecting. Some great songs here, extremely catchy. A solid 3.5 star album.

So, totally not my taste in music. Big disclaimer. I did listen with an open mind though. Unfortunately, it didn't convert me to speed metal, or whatever this is called. I just don't fully understand the appeal. The positives? I feel like there might have been a good deal of irreverent humour in here. My favourite songs were "Jesus Built My Hotrod" and "Scare Crow". But, I suppose the main reasons being that both of these songs were the furthest from speed metal on the album. "Scare Crow" sounded a bit like a Smashing Pumpkins song (without the atmosphere), and "... Hotrod" sounded like a piss-take of a hillbilly/rockabilly ditty. Anyways, not for me, but I gave it a go.

Adele has a great voice. But she's a victim of being overplayed. I tried to listen to this album objectively, but it's hard when these songs have been played to death on every radio station, advert, TV show and as background music while you shop for groceries. Trying to get past all of that and treat these songs as if it's the first time I've heard them, the album starts off very well with "Rolling in the deep" and "Rumour has it". They both have a great Memphis blues feel to them. But, outside of that bluesy/souly sound, good chunks of the rest of the album feel very overproduced and unmemorable, opting to showcase Adele's voice over songwriting. "Someone Like You" finishes the album off on a very, very strong note. A simple song, with a simple melody and straight-forward lyrics, but it feels very genuine and real. And her voice is absolutely incredible in this song, working with the lyrics to lift the emotion of the song.

Scott Walker perplexes and fascinates me. Of course, I discovered him through Radiohead, but at first I couldn't quite understand how a 70s crooner could be such an inspiration on so much of the modern, contemporary music that I love. And then I heard "It's Raining Today", and I was frozen to the spot. We'll save that for when Scott 3 comes up on this list. This album doesn't seem like that Scott Walker. It feels more like "part of the Scott Walker origin story". Having listened to Scott 3 and Scott 4, this album feels like a stepping stone en route towards the more experimental work he'd do there. Sounding like a score to a 70s Hollywood movie set in Italy, the thing that makes the songs on this album stick out are the lyrics. They're quite risque and out there, talking very openly about encounters with prostitutes, STDs and sometimes brash tales of sexual experiences. The strings are pretty epic at times. "The Amorous Humphrey Plugg" and "Come Next Spring" in particular. The one song that sticks out the most to me on this album is "Plastic Palace People". This is a real sneak peak of the direction of what was to come. It feels like three songs stitched together with some pretty interesting transitions, and at times using either a delay effect or possibly overdubbing two separate (and different) vocal performances at the same time to create an unnerving and unique feeling. Overall, an enjoyable piece, that acts more as a milestone on the path towards those next two albums where the really interesting side of Scott Walker came out. In his own words, talking about this album: "Now the nonsense must stop, and the serious business must begin."

Brian Eno is obviously a musical genius. But he's also a lot more - he's a proper artist, equally as interested in the process of creativity, as the output. And that's very obvious on this album. Going into the studio with nothing, and using the restrictions of his "Oblique Strategies" cards to funnel creative exploration is a proper artist focused on the act of creativity. But that's not saying that the output captured in the studio, what I'm listening to right now, isn't something great. It really is. But it equally feels like it captured a moment of artistic creativity, rather than a predefined song represented in a recording. This entire act, using the restrictions of the Oblique Strategies, brings about some pretty unique sounds. I often can't tell what instrumentation is used, and I believe that's because so much of this is created using crazy techniques like guitar digital delay feeding back into itself, or playing string instruments with hammers or other madcap ideas in experimentation. What comes through in the album is a collection of brilliant moments in artistic experimentation. Every single song is completely unique, approached from a different perspective, very experimental, but always melodic and enjoyable.

The first Stone Roses album is the first time I heard dance music finally blending with guitar music in a decent way. You can hear the Madchester scene being born in real time on this album, and at the same time the early blueprints of what would become Britpop. There’s a real arrogance to it too. I mean, they literally tell us that "Waterfall" is such a good song that it works in reverse. The arrogance is deserved too. "She Bangs the Drums", "Made of Stone" and "Shoot You Down" are absolute classics, to name but a few in the album. "I Am the Resurrection" shifts gear at the end of the album into that brilliant, endless jam. And, that's followed by "Fool's Gold". It feels like everything has been building up to this - John Squire layers on guitar riffs on top of a groove and beat that works as well in a nightclub as it does on stage in an indie venue. They might not have made a lot more after this (shout out for the criminally underrated "Second Coming"), but the impact of this album is enough for the legacy of the Stone Roses to still be felt today.

I’m not really into this kind of music. Soul, R&B has never really been my go-to. But Al Green’s Let’s Stay Together is what I call an "exception" album. It’s like Beck’s "Odelay" - even if it’s not the sort of thing you'd normally listen to, it’s one of those albums that everyone seems to have in their collection regardless. Why? There's some great songwriting here for a start. Or maybe it's because of his incredible voice, shifting from smooth to raw to almost breaking apart, and it keeps you hooked. It’s no surprise Tarantino dropped the title track into Pulp Fiction. It has a real vibe of "cool" to it. I might not be a soul guy, but this one is in my collection.

It's fitting that this was released in 1980 because it sounds like a band transitioning from punk to new wave. "Pretty Green" has an Adam Ant feel to the verse, but a more punk rock feel to the chorus. "Monday" is a great song, and feels ahead of its time. "Set the House Ablaze" feels like blueprints laid down for Bloc Party. "Music for the Last Couple" feels like it's verging into ska. Then there are what I call "the Beatles tracks". Weller openly said that he was "inspired by" Revolver when making this album. Ahem. "But I'm Different Now" sounds like a Revolver track on amphetamines. That bass line is Macca on speed. It's incredible. And then there's "Start!", or as I like to call it, "Taxman". Come on Paul, there's inspiration and there's just taking a full Beatles song and renaming it. Regardless, these songs are all very catchy and enjoyable to listen to. "That's Entertainment" is by far the best song on the album. Clever, witty lyrics painting a picture of urban living, and an excellent, original song that's in a class of its own. Getting over the shameless pickpocketing of the Beatles, I was very torn between 3 and 4 stars for this, but on a few repeat listens, it deserves the latter.

Nope. I just don't understand this genre of music at all. I don't understand the appeal. The only song I could stomach was "Orion", and that's mainly because it didn't sound like the Metallica of the rest of the album. Not for me.

Weird choice to have this album on here. If this is here and "Back to Black" isn't, there's something very strange going on. I like Amy Winehouse. I think she had some really clever songwriting and brilliantly produced (thanks to Mark Ronson) songs on her next album. But this is a totally different Amy Winehouse. Scatting her way through some mundane, schmoozey tunes, this album seemed to go on forever. And not in a good way. I still remember the first time I heard "Rehab". Day drinking in London, it came on in a bar, and a few hours later we were singing it full volume in the street. The closest to that Amy Winehouse on this album is the song "Fuck Me Pumps", but that's still a loonnng way off. If I heard any of these songs in a bar, I'd probably be drinking up, to head somewhere else. Looking forward to seeing "Back to Black" come up on this list, but there's 1001 albums I'd prefer to be listening to over this one.

If the colour beige made an album, they'd call it "The Man Who". I feel bad shitting on Travis, because they seem like nice guys, but the music on this album is all very beige in colour. There's nothing particularly awful here, but there's nothing particularly exciting either. The best part of the album, is the "hidden" track at the end. Mainly because there's at least a bit of energy to it. Bland. Boring. Beige.

Absolutely loved this album. I'd never heard of The Pharcyde before, but as soon as "Oh Shit" came on, I knew I was gonna love it. This is the exactly the style of hip hop that I love. Brilliant, upbeat, melodic samples, which are at times quite jazz-influenced, big beats and rap that doesn't take itself too seriously. I love that this is from a time when rap albums had "skits" in between songs. These little interludes of nonsense somehow make this seem more like a concept album in a way, and less like a collection of songs stitched together. Turns out that I recognised a couple of songs on this album (thanks Beardyman), the best by far being "Passin' Me By". I can't get enough of this song - what a classic. Loved everything about this from start to finish. Already looking into the rest of their discography.

You know that scene in "School of Rock", where Jack Black as Dewey Finn (as Ned Schneebly) is running through the song he wrote for the battle of the bands, to a group of bemused children? We're not supposed to think it's good. It's over-the-top, corny, stadium rock nonsense. The character arc is that Dewey learns about creative compromise, and chooses the better song, written by Zach, one of the students (and sounding like peak AC/DC), instead of choosing his ego. Well, this isn't a review of "School of Rock", but this entire album sounds to me like Dewey Finn's songwriting in that movie. In fact, I'm pretty sure Jack Black was parodying Iron Maiden in that scene. Over-the-top, warbling, screeching, with repetitive riffs and lyrics about Vikings and demons, it's all very predictable nonsense. Feels like the type of music that Dewey Finn would have kept writing if he hadn't committed identity fraud.

Really unexpected blend of Latin music, salsa, funk, jazz and hip hop. Sounds like it wouldn't work, but it's actually pretty enjoyable stuff.

"What have I, what have I, what have I done to deserve this?" That's a quote from me halfway through listening to this rubbish. I never understood the acclaim that the Pet Shop Boys get. Neil Tennant's nasally voice is bad enough, but add in some terrible synth, jangly piano and flat drums along with the lifeless melodies. It's no wonder Tennant is yawning on the cover. But it's not just that it's bad. It's also incredibly cringe. Everything about it makes me embarrassed. Sure there's some social and political commentary here, and "It's a sin" has at least some intelligence to the lyrics. But everything else is just embarrassing.

Syd Barrett is a fascinating, but tragic story. Artistically brilliant and innovative, but lost to mental health issues exacerbated by heavy LSD usage. The stories are straight out of a Hollywood film: finding him sitting in a chair, staring into space with a cigarette fully burnt out from end-to-end in his hand. Going onstage, and standing motionless with a guitar hanging from his neck. Being replaced by his old time buddy David Gilmour, and when everyone thought he was lost to madness, coming out with the saddest, most poignant farewell song in "Jugband Blues". Disappearing for years, and turning up in the studio as Pink Floyd were recording "Shine On You Crazy Diamond", a song written about him. It's a compelling, but tragic tale. Syd was clearly an artistic genius, but unfortunately we're limited to just the contents of this one album (and a couple of songs outside of it) to appreciate the creative output of this madcap legend. Luckily for us, Piper at the Gates of Dawn is a masterpiece. There are two types of songs on the album. Long, sprawling, improvised jams, very experimental in nature. Songs like Astronomy Domine and Interstellar Overdrive are the peak of these. Then, the shorter, more quirky pieces like The Gnome or The Scarecrow. The rest, generally speaking, go from quirky to experimental. The whole album feels like sneaking a glimpse into Syd's mind, where quirky, clever humour meets untamed, swirling madness. The songwriting and innovation is just one part. The musicianship is another. Richard Wright's keyboard creates an eerie atmosphere throughout these songs. Roger Waters' bass grooves and flies to unexpected places. And then there's Syd's guitar. It's so much at once. It's layered, creates texture, it's percussive, it's bluesy, and it's often so experimental that it doesn't sound like a guitar at all any more. Truly pushing the boundaries of what a guitar can do, and opening the door for future guitarists such as Joey Santiago, Graham Coxon and Jonny Greenwood, to name but a few. The production of this album deserves a mention too. Capturing the guitar tones so crisply, while balancing the layers of overdub, keyboards, bass and drums with Syd's quiet vocals for this type of expressionist music is quite a challenge, but done so well (especially for something recorded in 1967). And then there's the pioneering use of reverb and delay. Bands like Radiohead and Osees are still using versions of the same technique based on the blueprints set out here. But back to Syd's songs themselves. Astronomy Domine is an absolute classic, so far ahead of its time, yet fitting in so well as a representation of what was going on in the UK underground scene at the time. Interstellar Overdrive is still as much of a mind-melter as it was the first time I heard it. You come out of it after 9 minutes and 40 seconds, head spinning, feeling as if you'd just dropped acid. The "quirky" songs somehow don't come across as twee, but instead charming, and always tilting towards some manic dystopia of noise. The madness of "Bike" makes you smile (the little piano tinkle when he sings about knowing "a mouse but he doesn't have a house, I don't know why I call him Gerald"), verses and chorus punctuated with a drum sound that smacks you in the face, before descending into noises and laughter that still unnerves me today, even after hearing it half a million times. "Pow R. Toc H." starts off with the craziest version of beatboxing I'll ever encounter. I still don't know how Waters makes that sound with his mouth, but it's a sound that's not of this earth. The rest of the song goes into a jazzy jaunt, until it inevitably descends into madness. "The Scarecrow" is a particularly gorgeous song. Extremely minimalist, with lyrics that seem very fitting for Barrett's mental condition. "His head did no thinking, his arms didn't move..." / "The black and green scarecrow is sadder than me, but now he's resigned to his fate because life's not unkind, he doesn't mind..." The song ends with a gorgeous blend of strings and rising folk guitar. This album is a classic. A masterpiece. Innovative, experimental, inspiring. Syd didn't have the chance to continue making music, but his legacy is still felt today thanks to this album. Shine on.

Dark. That's how I'd describe this album. Even on the most upbeat songs, there's a dark undertone to everything. A brilliant blend of guitars and electronica, a brilliant blend of dark bass and synth with upbeat melodies, it feels like a representation of a musical movement. There's lots of great stuff here, but it's fitting that the standout track is a tribute to Ian Curtis. "Elegia" is a brooding instrumental that feels like the soundtrack to a Western set on the surface of Mars. It's glorious, unique and perfectly the centerpiece of the album, both in placement and musically.

Most of the album feels like something you'd hear on Jools Holland's Hootenanny. It's quite honky tonk at times, and 50s doo-woop the rest of the time. Not that that's a negative thing necessarily. "Watching the Detectives" is the outlier, feeling something more like ska at times. Definitely the most interesting song on the album. Overall quite enjoyable, with some very catchy tunes.

I found the first half of this album very hard to get through. Quite cheesy/corny melodies, and not really my thing. It gets better in the second half of the album. Songs like "Streets of Kenny", "Cornish Town" and "Since I Met You" are decent enough. But there's not much interesting happening here overall.

"Some get stoned, some get strange, but sooner or later it all gets real, walk on." Takes of disillusionment, depression, breakups, death and vampires, fueled by drugs, alcohol and honey slides, written and recorded at times in bursts of instant creativity, it's an absolute classic. Raw and sometimes polished, minimalist and sometimes full-on, bleak with snippets of hope, bluesy and sometimes folky, it's a difficult album to describe. But Neil heading for the ditch is a compelling and brilliant listening experience.

I'm not really into this type of hip hop. I prefer the 80s/early 90s hip hop that was more energetic and used really clever samples. This isn't that. I liked the Fela Kuti tribute, and I feel there are some pretty hefty subjects being tackled here, but I just just couldn't get into it at all.

I'd somehow never heard of Ramblin' Jack Elliott before. I listened to the first four songs of this album, and immediately loved it. It's exactly the style of folk music that I love. Raw, bluesy and loose. I thought to myself, "this sounds just like early Bob Dylan". Then on song number five, Elliott introduced Woody Guthrie, and it all made sense. After reading up on Elliott, it's actually crazy that I've never heard of him. Of all the books, films and documentaries I've seen and read about Dylan, I can't recall mention of him at all. And he's such a big part of that early Dylan. And apparently he's a big inspiration for characters and references made in "A Mighty Wind", one of my favourite music parodies (and the second best Christopher Guest rockumentary). It seems Ramblin' Jack Elliott has been a big part of the music and movies that I've been listening to for the last quarter of a century, but I wasn't aware of it until now.

Kathleen Hanna is a legend. I've rewatched her amazing monologue about how she got blackout drunk in Kurt Cobain's apartment, and woke up to find that she had graffitied "Kurt smells like Teen Spirit" on his wall. And how that song, and its success, seemed to follow her around during some of her less successful moments, working as a stripper, while trying to get her band "Bikini Kill" off the ground. She's a brilliantly funny and compelling storyteller. But she's more than that. She's also a proper punk legend, essentially starting the "riot grrrl" movement with Bikini Kill. Le Tigre sound a lot different to Bikini Kill. They're bright, quirky, and very melodic electropop. But that same punk attitude, ethos and sardonic humour persists throughout the more approachable Le Tigre. This is where punk meets electropop. Everything is very politically charged, with expected themes of feminism throughout, but it's all masked in high energy, positive melodies. I'm actually surprised that this album came out in 1999. It sounds like it came straight from that 2005-2010 period, where this genre of indie electronica was so prevalent. Did Le Tigre lay the groundwork for the indie electropop movement of the early 2000s? I'm reminded of bands like CSS, MGMT, Hot Chip. Even LCD Soundsystem and The Rapture (although thematically they're a bit different). All that aside, this is a fantastic album. Brilliantly melodic, infinitely listenable, with high party energy. Some really clever loop sampling and lo-fi use of electronic beats, but with a rough punk edge to everything. At times, they sound a lot like the B52s, with "shouty" choruses and percussive guitars mixing with the electronica. And then there's Hanna's fantastic voice pushing the energy to another level. There's lots of fantastic songs on here, but I have to mention the obvious: Deceptacon. This song wasn't just my introduction to Le Tigre, it was my introduction to The Punk Singer herself, Kathleen Hanna. The simple, raw, distorted guitar riff drives, while the beats and synth groove, with some handclaps thrown in for good measure. But Hanna's voice takes off. It's like she doesn't take a breath for the whole song, voice switching between singing and screaming with ease - she brings a fevered energy to this song that I think is hard to match or be bettered by anything else. Big words. But it's a big song, one of the all-time greats.

I've said it before, but I'm not really into soul. With that disclaimer out of the way, I did enjoy this album. Curtis's voice is quite unique, almost falsetto, yet breaking into quiet screaming at times. That, on top of music that verges on funk and blues at times, makes for some enjoyable listening. Especially liked the song "When Seasons Change".

As soon as I saw Paul Weller and Peter Wilson on the cover of this album in dusty trenchcoats, I thought to expect a lot of "dusty trenchcoat music". Think angry new wave 80s social-political rants set to ska basslines. What I didn't expect to find was soft jazz. After hearing the first song, "Mick's Blessings", I was thinking that this was going to be a great album. Unfortunately, it was a false flag - everything after the first song is incredibly dull. Songs like "The Whole Point of No Return", "Blue Cafe", "The Paris Match" and the likes, have nice jazzy chords, but are soft, mundane and, essentially background music in an overpriced restaurant that has squeezed in extra tables for Valentine's Day. The livelier songs like "Me Ship Came In!" or "Dropping Bombs on the Whitehouse" add a bit of life, but only a bit. I still feel like I'm stuck in that restaurant, uncomfortably touching elbows with the couple at the next table. The most recognisable songs on the album, "My Ever Changing Moods" and "You're the Best Thing" are recognisable as songs that have always gotten on my nerves. Today, they continue to get on my nerves. Then there's the weird rap songs in the middle of the album that feel as if Spotify has glitched and accidentally served up some random 80s commercial pop/rap crossover album. I mean, I'm fully expecting a cartoon cat to make an appearance in the middle of "A Gospel" or "Strength of your Nature", to tell us about how opposites attract. The whole album feels like Vincent Adultman, from Bojack Horseman: a hodgepodge of different genres of music, perched on each other's shoulders, pretending to be something else, disguised by a dusty trenchcoat.

"Strange Cargo" is a good name for this. An odd collection of electronic soundscapes, with spoken word interludes, blippity blips and synth, that sometimes verges into hippy "tribal" music territory. At times I feel like I'm listening to music that you'd expect to find playing in a nightclub in The Matrix. People unashamedly wearing leather pants, dancing in show motion, probably in cages or something. Other times, it sounds like something you'd hear played in a backpacker river bar in Laos (full transparency: I stole that comparison from my girlfriend). And the rest feels like I'm listening to the score of a movie. Probably an early 90s Avant Garde movie that didn't do well commercially, but somehow launched the career of some now-big Hollywood name. With all of these comparisons, it sounds like I'm dissing this album, but the weird thing is that, despite all of this, I actually liked it. I mean, this guy produced 13 by Blur, one of my all-time favourite albums, so he's obviously got talent. I'm probably not going to hunt this out again, but I definitely enjoyed this strange cargo of electronica.

Nobody has made an entrance as epic as Black Sabbath. The self-titled song on their self-titled album announced the arrival of Sabbath with a slow, ominous, dark riff that eventually descends into a glorious bluesy jam. That's what I always forget about Sabbath: how bluesy they were. Sure, they laid the groundwork for heavier rock (and even metal), but always with a blues and rock 'n' roll core underneath it all. It works so well. The perfect example is, in my opinion, on the absolute best song on the album, "The Wizard". The use of the harmonica in The main riff is iconic, especially when used with those drum fills. It's one of the all-time great songs, and impossible to not make you smile. For all their satanic iconography and dark personas, the music is actually very upbeat and instantly lifts your mood. As I listen to this album for the first time in many years, I hear more similarities to Zeppelin than I ever did in the past. This is proper rock 'n' roll territory, and done perfectly. For example, during "Warning", Iommi seems to forget what he was doing, and goes into an 8 minute long solo, before returning to Ozzy's verse again at the end of the song. But every second of it is enjoyable. There are so many crazy, hilarious stories about the band, that it's easy to focus on that and forget that they had serious skill in both musicianship and songwriting underneath it all. I'm guilty of that - I always loved Sabbath, but I clearly didn't give them enough credit as a serious band, because listening back to this album, it's an absolute classic that deserves the same credit that we give to Zeppelin and other rock legends.

Cinematic, literary and melancholic, Scott 4 feels like the score from an existential Western. Full of philosophical musings, it's fitting that the back cover of the LP only has nothing on it but a single quote from Albert Camus: "A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened." It seems that this is what Scott has been working towards: trekking through Scott 1, 2 and 3, to find something artistically real, bringing him back to why he wanted to create music in the first place. And this album is all Scott. No more covers, everything written by himself, and even put out in his original birth name Scott Engel. I've mentioned in my previous review of Scott 2, how I came to learn about Scott Walker, and how "It's Raining Today" was the song that stopped me in my tracks. But I think the first Scott song I ever heard was in the Radiohead documentary film "Meeting People Is Easy", where "On Your Own Again" played in full to reversed footage of Thom Yorke packing/unpacking his suitcase in a hotel, showing the mundanity of the realities of touring. I don't know if it's because of this first association with the song, but it's one of my all-time favourite pieces of music. Just over a minute and a half, it's minimalist, slow and heartbreaking. Simple and perfect songwriting. "The Old Man's Back Again" is another obvious choice, but deservedly so. That bassline groove makes it, with the drum, guitar, choir and string layers building something triumphant on top of it, while Scott's strong voice drives the narrative along. Political and philosophical lyrics aside, Scott has created a really unique means of storytelling through his music. I mean, "The Seventh Seal" is largely built around telling us the story of the Bergman movie, framed around Scott's own philosophical musings on death. This form of musical storytelling definitely made an impression on Nick Cave, who carries the mantle today. This album has been an inspiration for so many of the greats, like David Bowie, Nick Cave, Radiohead, Brian Eno. This "crooner" style of music is not my usual taste, but there's something so pure and great in Scott's songwriting and musical performance, that I love every second of it.

What can I say about one of my all-time favourite albums? I listened to the shit out this album since my late teens. My neighbours have had to put up with my clumsy attempts to play along with every single song on this album on my Gibson Les Paul, a guitar I bought because of Jimmy Page, who is in my opinion one of the top 2 guitarists of all time (I flip-flop between himself and Hendrix a lot for pole position). Zeppelin exploded (pun intended) into the world of rock music with this album, mixing blues tunes (played to perfection) with folky numbers and heavier, darker sounds that became blueprints for heavier rock and even metal down the line. I can only imagine what it was like to hear Zeppelin for the first time back in '69. They took things to a new level. This is a collective of some of the best musicians of all time. Jimmy Page is, as I've mentioned, one of the best guitarists of all time (if not THE best). John Bonham IS the undisputed best drummer of all time. Robert Plant has one of the most powerful voices in rock history. And lets not forget the genius of John Paul Jones. With these four making music together, it could only be one thing: epic. The blues standards on the album are taken to a new level. Page's guitar is ready to burst to life at any given moment. It feels like he's trying to tame his guitar from taking off at any point during "I Can't Quit You Baby", and he eventually fails, and his guitar soars all over the song. Think of the build-up to his solo in "You Shook Me": we're treated to John Paul Jones' stellar hammond organ work, then Plant's fantastic harmonica (with added grunts), before Page takes over, and even his solo is a slow build-up to the explosion of energy it becomes. Then at the end of the song, we have the intense moment when Page and Plant start their vocal/guitar duel, with reverse echo, making it feel like we're hearing them battle instruments from another dimension. The rockier "riff-driven" songs like "Good Times Bad Times" and "Communication Breakdown" are instant classics. But Zeppelin show they can do acoustic too with the absolute masterpiece of "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You" and the witchy reworking of Bert Jansch in "Black Mountain Side". And there's a sneak peak at some of the folkier songwriting that will be more visible in later albums in the criminally underrated "Your Time Is Gonna Come". I really enjoyed reminding myself just how good that song is. "Dazed and Confused" is the centerpiece here. That main riff is so dark, it feels like it came straight from the darkest depths of Mordor. And then after an avant garde break for Page to bow his guitar, the song takes off at an insane pace. Again, I can't imagine what it must have been like to hear this in 1969, it still feels ahead of its time today. "How Many More Times" is a great way to finish the album. The main riff is catchy as hell, then we're given a glimpse of the "song-ception" that Zeppelin became so good at during their live gigs: throwing more songs into the middle of performing one of their own, making long, winding medleys. The middle section of this song goes into another extended bow part, before we're transitioned into another couple of songs, "Rosie"/"The Hunter", in the middle. When Bonham's drum comes in here, this is one of my favourite musical moments - what a beat, mixed with that riff, just amazing stuff1 And then it transitions further until we're back at the main riff again to finish the album off in style. A perfect album from start to finish. What a way to arrive.

Not for me. Positives: I did enjoy the first song "Penitentiary Philosophy" and the first 2 minutes of "Green Eyes". Negatives: The remaining 67 minutes of the album.

Imagine you're away on holidays. It's evening time and you fancy a drink, but there aren't too many options in the area you're in. You hedge your bets, and pop into a grimy pub full of locals. The walls have dusty posters of Ozzy Osbourne, Alice Cooper and Iron Maiden. The beer is watery, but cheap. It'll do, I guess. Then you see a handwritten sign on a blackboard behind the bar. "Live music at 9pm". You look at your watch. It reads 9:04pm. This could go either way. A group hop up on the stage area to a handful of claps. Big hair, clad in leather and denim, they start to play. But you can't figure out what they're playing. It's like they're a Van Halen or an AC/DC tribute band, but the songs they're playing aren't Van Halen and certainly aren't AC/DC. It's like they didn't have the rights to perform the real songs, so they just made their own versions to avoid copyright infringement. You drink up as quickly as you can. That's how this album feels. Like Judas Priest were trying to perform Van Halen and AC/DC songs, but it all lacks substance, originality and ends up sounding like a bad tribute band, playing their own versions of other people's music.

Nope. Terrible music from a terrible person.

It was my first time listening to Joanna Newsom, and it won't be my last. Really fantastic and unique sounds, both in instrumentation and vocals. Ignoring the timeline of releases, I'll instead cite comparisons to music I was already familiar with. I immediately felt a connection with Newsom's musical style, feeling similarities in structure, not style, to the likes of Lisa O'Neill or Junior Brother. Yes, I'm aware that I'm picking artists known for their unique and distinct voice, but it's more about how they form fragmented, sometimes staccato and polyrhythmic melodies around their mad-sounding vocals. I also see similarities to Kate Bush and Fiona Apple. Strong lyricism and free-flowing melodies that again seem to form around the vocals, rather than driving them. The entire album structure is a huge gamble too. With only 5 songs, ranging in duration from 7 to 17 minutes, it sounds like it'll require effort to get through. But it doesn't. It's immensely easy to sit through, very enjoyable, and keeps me on my toes the entire way through. Newsom's voice juxtaposed with the beautiful harp and orchestration is a perfect blend. Deserves a 4.5 star rating.

A "movie for your ears". Nobody can describe this frenzied madness better than the man himself. Madcap jazz fusion with a frenetic level of energy, layers of spacey soundscapes, with soaring guitar solos and dirty saxophones, the instrumentation only broken up once by the gritty snarls and shrieking of Captain Beefheart in the fantastic "Willie the Pimp" - if this is a movie, it's one that you can't eat popcorn during, in case you miss something while you chew.

A work of heartbreaking genius. The juxtaposition of those absolutely beautiful orchestral strings with fragmented and booming electronic beats is such a well considered and fantastic artistic choice. The randomness of the harsh beats breaking apart the softness of the strings is startling, and paints a musical picture of the emotional turmoil that is the subject of this album. "Black Lake" does it best. Those gorgeous strings are somehow some of the saddest things your ears might experience, mixed with long drawn out moments of almost silence, before the booming electronic beats come in, fragmented and disjointed. It's an absolute masterpiece of a song, and emotionally draining. That's the only problem with the album at times. It's operating on another level, and requires a lot of mental effort to listen through properly. Sometimes a bit inaccessible and often emotionally draining. I guess the album cover does the best job of describing the feeling of this album. Björk standing with open arms, surrounded by softness in a layer of feathers, with an open wound in her chest exposing her heart to the world. 4.5 stars.

Short, poppy, folky, jazzy tunes adjacent musically to Pavement and Neutral Milk Hotel, but only in their low-fi folky nature, not in artistic merit. There's a laid-back approach to polish in their songs that reminds me of the feel of Pavement's recordings especially. Switching genres every song or two, there are some catchy songs here, with some unexpectedly indulgent guitar solos, crazy drum fills, and the most rushed pronunciation of the word "Liberty" you'll ever hear. Decent enough, but nothing overly interesting.

Feed your head. Haight-Ashbury, 1967, the Summer of Love, paisley, and LSD. "Surrealistic Pillow" is a landmark album that captures that whole scene perfectly. But it isn't trapped there - it still plays fresh in 2025, almost 60 years later. From the opening track "She Has Funny Cars", with its spiraling vocal lines, and switching melodies, you're kept on your toes. Then "Somebody to Love" kicks in with that fuzz guitar tone that's become the familiar Jefferson Airplane trademark sound, with Grace's warbling vocals adding a dimension of folky texture to the bluesy instrumentation. Then time slows down. The softer, acoustic tunes are understated masterpieces. The dual guitar riffs of "Today" blend with the tambourine-driven beat, creating something that sounds like a looping sample, before Slick's voice takes over. It's hypnotic. As is the very simple "Comin' Back to Me": the repetition of the chorus, "I saw you, I saw you", with a long gap before the next lyric "comin' back to me", is almost trance-like. The (apparently controversial) use of layered reverb in the production adds a spacey vibe to the recordings. It makes it sound as if the music is being beamed in from another dimension. Then there's the big finale. "Embryonic Journey" is one of the most gorgeous pieces of music ever created. Simple, pure brilliance. And that leads into "White Rabbit". Hands-down the best build-up in any song in the history of music. Amazingly clever lyrics too, aligning the psychedelic drug-taking experience with C.S. Lewis literature. The bass line and Grace's vocals building in intensity, march us towards an absolute crescendo of a finish. Consider my head fully fed.

Green Onions (the song) is an absolute classic. Green Onions (the rest of the album) is very enjoyable too - mostly covers, some sounding even better with the organ than in their original form. But, Green Onions, what a song. That Hammond organ riff, that bass line and that fragmented guitar solo, drifting off into a sea of reverb. It's impossible to listen and not imagine yourself as the embodiment of a red setter, sprinting alongside a Bus Eireann bus.

"There might be accidents, accidents which will be more interesting than what I had intended." Eno's first solo album shows the early signs of his creative genius in artistic process. Madcap techniques like lyrics formed by free-association, throwing a group of musicians together who he believed were "musically incompatible", and using what sounded like interpretive dance to direct the musicianship of it all. Every song here is fascinating. Every instrument is layered with effects until it sounds like something completely alien, every vocal performance is nuttier than the last, and every composition is more unexpected than the last, often breaking in structure to something completely different at random. The ending of "Dead Finks Don't Talk", with its hardcore electronic breakdown, sounds ahead of its time in 2025, nevermind 1972. Eno had confidently announced his artistic brilliance to the world with this collection of musical accidents.

Knowing what was to come, L.A. Woman felt a lot like a swansong for The Doors. They were blacklisted from radio play, Jim had been convicted after losing his very public trial, and had cleaned up his act somewhat. His tone seemed more seemed subdued, almost as if he was preparing for his departure. Not that Jim's energy isn't present here. In the title track, during the breakdown and the gradual building back up of the song piece by piece, Jim's gravelly voice, sounding like an old delta bluesman, drives things forward with his shamanic chanting of Mr Mojo Risin' becoming one of the most iconic moments of The Doors legacy. There's a lot of wry humour here too. During the brilliant "Cars Hiss by my Window", where you'd expect a guitar solo to break, Jim instead gives us a masterful "mouth solo". In "Been Down so Long", you can feel the smirks as Morrison rasps through the lines "C'mon and set me free, Warden, Warden, Warden... C'mon and let the poor boy be". The whole album is a bluesy masterpiece, and nobody can do the blues like The Doors can. What a fitting end to their legacy to end with "Riders on the Storm". Some of the last lyrics sang by the mad poet and Lizard King: "Into this house we're born, Into this world we're thrown, Like a dog without a bone, An actor out on loan, Riders on the storm."

Felt like sitting through a big production rock opera. I liked the concept of the dual themed sides, and the orchestration of everything is very impressive. But, much like sitting through a full rock opera, it gets a bit much after a while. Especially when it's lacking the payoff of the melodies of some of the songs on the later albums.

Funk, stank, drum machines mixed with live drums, politically charged (and sometimes incypherable) lyrics, roaming bass-lines and screaming vocals, laying down the blueprint for funk, hip-hop and soul for years to come. A funky mess, and I mean that in the best possible way. 4.5 stars.

Not to sound like the old curmudgeon that I am, but I don't like the musicality of modern hip-hop and R&B. The rhythmic meter and booming bass is repetitive and boring. Insert "old man yells at cloud" Simpsons gif. There's some interesting moments in here, especially in the structure of the album as a concept, but the content still feels vapid to me. Sure, there's feminist themes, but there's no powerful insights, it's all reduced to old rap tropes such as sex and money. Grandpa Simpson disapproves.

Back in my 20s, a group of us were out on a "12 pubs of Christmas" pub crawl. Things had (expectedly) gotten a little drunken, and the whole group ended up having a serious shouty argument over whether Meg White was a good drummer or not. It got so heated that we split up over our differences, moved to different tables, glaring and scowling across the bar at each other, no longer on talking terms. Of course, we forgot about it all by the next pub, but for the record, I was firmly sitting at the "Meg is a great drummer" table. "Get Behind Me Satan" might not be as iconic as the previous two albums, but it still has all the energy and brilliance of a White Stripes album, this time with more piano and xylophone. And that energy has a lot to do with Meg's punk style drumming. The whole point of The White Stripes was to pair back music to three core elements (vocals, guitar/piano and drums), and this raw approach is what made their music so interesting, and, especially at a time of heavily polished and over-produced music, very refreshing. I could talk a lot about Jack White, his brilliant songwriting, musicality and, frankly, his genius, but this album in particular is energised and leveled up by Meg's symbol-happy drumming.

Big beats and weird little skits, with a wide range of samples from the likes of Cymande, kids TV shows, Steely Dan, Funkadelic and Kraftwerk (to name but a few)... this is absolutely my type of hip-hop. De La Soul never seemed to take themselves too seriously, and, like The Beastie Boys, that irreverence and comedy comes across as a fun energy throughout the album. But the quality of this music is serious. 3 is a magic number, but this gets 4.5 stars.

I really like Happy Mondays, and I'm a big fan of the Madchester scene. It was a perfect meld of guitar music and dance beats. And most of the scene's music holds up today, sounding just as good - Stone Roses, Primal Scream and a lot of Happy Mondays stuff still works just as well on a listen in 2025, over 30 years outside of the scene. This album is enjoyable, but it feels quite trapped in The Madchester era. You can really feel that the Mondays were enjoying themselves too much here (mostly due to Bez famously smuggling a load of pills into the studio). The result is music that would be absolutely brilliant craic to experience live in The Hacienda at 2am, but listening to as a standalone album outside of that context, it lacks a little bit. A harsh 3.5 stars from me.

Ambitious effort tackling some big social issues in a concept album peppered with confrontational "interludes", but ultimately it comes across as pretentious. It's hard to take anything here seriously when it's presented with synthesised drums.

Concept album aside, this is a fantastic collection of songs. The Kinks had really matured into a very interesting band here, with clever and very melodic songwriting. The concept album itself works very well too. It's just worth noting that almost every song here works just as well as a standalone song outside of the overall theme of the album. The Kinks had developed quite a distinctive sound at this stage, sounding somewhere between 60s rock 'n' roll and lighter folk (setting a template for future indie rock bands like The Shins). But there are lots of surprises in the music too (for example, "She's Bought a Hat Like Princess Marina" catches you off-guard halfway through), and more than enough to keep your interest right to the end. A very different sounding band to the those who sang "You Really Got Me" or "All Day and All of the Night" (two of my favourite songs btw), but that's why we're still talking about The Kinks in 2025, because they evolved over the 60s and 70s to create some very interesting music, and this album is a perfect example of that.

It's never a good sign when you have to check to see how long an album is. How much of my life do I need to spend enduring this nonsense? 38 minutes for the core album, or 57 minutes if I want to listen to the reissue bonus tracks. 38 minutes is long enough thank you very much. This very much signaled the beginning of a dark age for popular music in the early to mid 80s. Top of the Pops, dry ice, synthesised drums, bad miming, New Romantic fashion, nasal crooning and warbling, and frenetic dancing to the beat. Culture Club were front and center during all of this cringe, and this album brings you viscerally back to all of that with a shudder. Nope. Not for me.

I'm not a big George Michael fan, but there's no denying that Faith (the song) is an absolute classic. Sure, it's overplayed to bajaysus, but at its core, it's a fantastic song. Faith (the album), on the other hand is a bit meh. There's nothing particularly terrible, but nothing particularly memorable either. It's an easy listen, but after Faith, everything else is a bit bland.

Sweeping instrumentals, Avant Garde, mutating melodies, bass-heavy, post-rock, tracks ranging from 20 minutes to 2 minutes in duration. Yes, I am here for this music. Never heard of Tortoise before, but after my first listen-through, I instantly categorised them on my internal music shelf as sitting somewhere between Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Mogwai. That's hallowed ground.

Garbage seemed cursed. Shirley Manson went to first meet the band founder Butch Vig, famous for producing Nirvana's Nevermind, on the day that Kurt Cobain committed suicide. Their first promotional tour, supporting Smashing Pumpkins, was cancelled halfway through when the Pumpkins' keyboardist died. Later, their tour of the US to promote their third album, was cancelled, the day they were due to set out being 11th September 2001. Talk about bad luck. Pour your misery down on them. I went down that rabbithole of "what ever happened to Garbage" recently when the question randomly popped into my head by chance, so I was excited to see this appear. Garbage very much remind me of that mid-90s period of pop-rock, and it's probably because they were so instrumental in creating that sound. Imagine the privilege of Vig, getting fed up producing for bands like Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins and Sonic Youth, and wanting to do something in a completely different style. The result is something that feels intentionally over-produced. But I don't mean that in a bad way. It's a distinct sound that somehow elevates Garbage from being an average indie rock group to something quite unique that leans more towards pop and electronica than traditional rock. "As Heaven is Wide" is the perfect example. In the wrong hands, this could be a seriously cringe-inducing song, but in the hands of Butch's production, it ends up becoming a template for a lot of late 90s, early 2000s poppy/metal bands (Skindive, I'm looking at you). Not to completely focus on Butch Vig though - the band wouldn't have worked as well without Shirley Manson, a proper lead for the band, snarling lyrics, and bringing a sort of punk energy to the sound. Some great songs on here, and while they definitely feel "of their era", they still hold up as great songs today.

How do you out-Black Sabbath Black Sabbath (the song) from Black Sabbath (the album)? With War Pigs, that's how. If the guitar riff, accompanied by its unsettling bassline isn't enough, an air raid siren wails, warning you to get ready for something ominous incoming. War Pigs is followed by Paranoid, Planet Caravan and Iron Man. That's a hell of a four song run. Ozzy's vocal melodies, Geezer's basslines and dark lyrics, and Iommi's iconic riffs are held together by some criminally underrated drum fills from Bill Ward. The first album was a lot more bluesy, but Sabbath had settled into a much darker sound here. Besides the riffs themselves, coming from the darkest dankest depths, there are some really interesting pauses and moments of almost silence in between that creates an atmosphere of anticipation. There's some interesting choices in experimentation too, with the vocal oscillation of Planet Caravan, the tape speed change at the end of War Pigs, and the intro to Iron Man, where Ozzy apparently sang into a mic through a metal (unfortunately not iron) fan. It still hits hard almost fifty years later.

Ambitious effort, creating a concept album about nuclear weapons, but it comes across a little pretentious, and the musicality is lacking any real depth or interest. The exception being the nutty "The Conference", which is the first song on the album that really grabbed my attention. Pity it took until the second last song for that to happen. Overall, an interesting idea, but not executed very well.

I'm not the biggest fan of jazz, but I respect the genre a lot. I feel a lot of the experimentation and musical theory goes way over my head, and honestly, I would very rarely sit down to listen to even some of the more accessible greats, but I still have a high level of respect for these proper musicians. The majority of this album feels quite accessible. But it does border on experimental at times, culminating in a proper nutty piece of afro-jazz experimentation, the strangest children's song you'll ever hear. But overall, it's great. Will I sit down and put it on again? Probably not too often, and that's the only reason it's losing a star from 4 - because of my own personal preferences around jazz. But, I can respect that there's some great music on this album.

Public Enemy said it best in Fight the Power: "Elvis was a hero to most / But he never meant shit to me". As an angsty teen, this was my go-to stance on Elvis, and I was always eager to go on about it at length. In a time of segregation, Elvis was a commercially viable entity to bring rock 'n' roll and and blues music to a white audience. The core sound and spirit of which originally came from Black artists, many of whom never saw the same recognition or financial success. Elvis stole the limelight from the black artists who had actually created the music. To clarify though, I don't think Elvis the person was necessarily a racist or a thief himself - from what I've heard he was a big fan of the artists and music, and rather than theft, it was more from a place of respect that he wanted to play their music. But that doesn't change how Elvis (the commodity) benefited enormously from systemic racism in the music industry. He got opportunities that many Black musicians, often far more innovative, were denied. OK, we've gotten that out of the way. But it's necessary to understand my position on Elvis, and his legacy. Of course I like Elvis' (early) music, but for all of the reasons above, I could never bring myself to become a fan. Let's talk about the music specifically. This album is far from his best. It feels flat and dull. I know it sits as a key moment in "The Elvis Story", where he was transitioning more towards pop after his military hiatus, but judging this as a standalone album of music, there's nothing spectacular here at all. A lot of bland doo-wop tunes, and besides one higher tempo number ("Dirty, Dirty Feeling"), one bluesy number ("Reconsider Baby") and a strange cover of "Fever", it sits as background music, never interesting enough to fully capture my attention.

This is what I love about this project. I wasn't familiar with the Minutemen before this. Now I'm a huge fan. Double Nickels on the Dime is vast: a double album, made up of 43 songs, but served in bite-size nuggets, ranging in duration from just 38 seconds long to just under 3 minutes (although the majority of the songs are 2 mins or less). It means that you get a serious range of music, with instrumentation that is far more technically advanced than is usual for the punk scene. Are they punk? In attitude, rawness and vibes, definitely. But in music, I hear funk, jazz, folk, country, alt rock, as well as punk. I love absolutely everything about this. I was already raving about this long before I reached song number 19, and I can't describe the joy I felt when the opening jangly guitar riff of Corona came on. I think I just shouted "JACKASS!" to nobody in pure glee. I guess there's a reason the Jackass guys picked it as their main theme song: the Minutemen's music is just as chaotic, energetic and punk DIY as the show itself. This deserves a 4.5 star rating.

Picture the scene: it's summer time, you're cruising along the streets on your pink moped, sun shining, wind in your hair, Hawaiian shirt billowing in the breeze, Vice City cops on your tail. Mark Hollis is on the radio singing "Baby, life's what you make it, celebrate it". Good times. If you were making a movie (or a GTA game) and had a scene that was set in the 80s, the best way to let your audience know the era they're watching is simply by playing "Life's What You Make It" by Talk Talk. It's pure 80s nostalgia. The rest of the album, had some interesting moments that bordered on jazz at times, but a lot of less interesting moments too. The move from synth to instruments was a good one for Talk Talk, to modernise their sound, yet this still feels so of its time, that in my mind, it'll always be part of the soundtrack to Vice City.

I still remember when I first discovered the Pixies. As a teenage Radiohead and Nirvana fan in the 90s, they had been on my radar for quite some time, but I'd never gotten around to listening to them. Then late one night, I stayed up to watch a Motorhead documentary. Right afterwards they showed "Gouge Away", the Pixies documentary. I was blown away. Especially in comparison to the Motorhead doc, I couldn't believe the calibre of musicians who were talking heads in the doc, gushing about what the band meant to them: Graham Coxon, David Bowie, PJ Harvey, Thom Yorke and even a rare appearance from Jonny Greenwood. I went straight out the next day and bought Surfer Rosa. Pixies quickly became one of my all-time favourite bands. In the pre-Spotify days, as a broke teenager, you had to pick and choose your next album carefully. I got through the Pixies discography, but somehow managed to leave Doolittle until last. On a train to Belfast to see Radiohead, a college friend couldn't believe I was a Pixies fan who hadn't listened to Doolittle, so he handed over his Discman with Doolittle inside, and told me to rectify the situation immediately. I listened to the entire album from start to finish. I just couldn't stop listening to it. Pixies became a big part of my life. Playing Debaser on the streets of Galway at 2am with guitars borrowed from buskers. Obsessively trying to deconstruct Joey's guitar sounds. I once had an in-depth conversation with a stripper about the fueds between Francis and Kim. Having arguments with friends at parties about our favourite Frank Black screams in Hey ("If you go" vs "That the mother makes"). Watching "Un Chien Andalou" just because it's referenced in Debaser. Wrecking my neighbours' heads with my attempts to play along with "Dead" (Joey's parts of course). Knowing all the lyrics to "Hey", being the next best thing since knowing all the lyrics to "I've Been Tired". The album is more than a classic, it's monumental. Tame, I Bleed and Dead are the holy trinity of the "loud quiet loud" dynamics that fed Nirvana and Radiohead (and countless others). Debaser taking off towards the end. Joey's guitar at the end of Hey making you feel like your head is bending out of shape, much like the visual effect in the "Here Comes Your Man" music video. Lyrics about mutilation, prostitutes and old bible stories. Kim and Francis' voices going in completely different directions, but somehow working perfectly together. Frank's screams. I still can't listen to "Tame" without thinking of him talking about one of his proudest moments when a 75 year old member of the Sun Ra Arkestra said to him "Boy, you sure can holler!" I've been lucky enough to have seen them live now so many times that I've lost count, and I'll always go to see them whenever they play here. In fact, I'm going to see them again next year on my birthday. Back in my 20s, I used to listen to Pixies on my headphones on my way to a night out, to get my head out of a mental funk. Listening to them today still gives me goosebumps and puts me in a giddy mood. Raw, surreal, energetic, innovative, oddball, dark, witty, fun, and intensely weird in all the right ways.

There's something about the pedal steel guitar, as it's used in country music, that immediately turns me off a song. And unfortunately, it's all over this album like a rash. I'm not a hater of country music, but I'm not a big fan either. I prefer the more raw and energetic tunes from the likes of Johnny Cash or Danny Gatton, than what's here. Everything is very predictable. It's pleasant and all that, but I don't understand the appeal, and definitely don't understand this being in a list of 1001 must-hear albums.

Back when I was about 13 or 14 years of age, I was going to guitar lessons with a teacher named Mike Arrigan. I wanted to learn some Graham Coxon distortion noises from the album Blur, and Mike was not impressed by the dissonant sounds of Graham's guitar when isolated from the rest of the music. Instead, he started telling my about the song "Hotel California" by the Eagles. He'd do that. Sometimes, he'd go off on a long tangent about classic rock, rather than what you came to learn how to play that day. You might have left just as clueless about how to play that Radiohead or Blur guitar riff, but you'd have learned about some of the classic guitar moments from someone who felt it was their duty to pass it on. I'll never forget Mike going off on one about the solo, how the two guitars take turns playing against each other, before coming together at the end to play in harmony. And how most radio stations fade it out before the best part at the end. The Eagles always conjur up images in my head of a bank manager speeding along in his Audi A6, flashing his lights agressively at a Vauxhall Corsa that is doing 5 under the speed limit, listening to "Life in the Fast Lane", and probably queuing up "Money for Nothing" by Dire Straits next in his car stereo system. Not my type of music. But, as bland as some of the music they come out with is, there are moments of absolute brilliance, and that brings me back to the song "Hotel California" itself. My guitar teacher called it the greatest guitar solo in all of music. I don't know if I'd go that far, but thanks to Mike Arrigan, whenever it comes on, I always stop to listen to that solo properly, and make sure it doesn't fade out before the best part at the end.

I hated Morrissey before it was cool. Putting aside some of his awful views on immigration and the likes, I just could never understand the fascination with The Smiths or Morrissey. A lot of people who liked the same music as I did, were big into The Smiths, and I could never understand it. Well, in the spirit of broadening horizons with this project, I tried to give The Smiths another chance. Johnny Marr is an exceptionally inventive guitarist. Aside from his work on The Smiths, when he joined Modest Mouse for "We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank", he added a new dimension to their (already great) music and eleveted their sound to something epic. And he brings some interesting sounds to this album too. But, as much as I like Johnny Marr, I don't like him enough to endure Morrissey. His crooning and warbling, in his posh nasally tone, ruins everything that could otherwise be enjoyable about the music of The Smiths. He's insufferable, and as a result, so are The Smiths.

My dog Louie is a big fan of Leonard Cohen's later work, but that's mainly because older Leonard Cohen's voice sounds like a growly old dawg. Regardless, myself and Louie very much enjoyed listening to this quiet, simple, intimate, dark, striped-back and poetic collection. "The Partisan" is a particular highlight on the album. What a genius move bringing the French choir in at the end. 4.5 stars.

That opening chord. What an iconic moment in music history. I mean, what can I say? It's the Beatles. The first Beatles album that's come up on this list for me. Is it on par with the Beatles who made Sgt Pepper, Abbey Road or The White Album? No. But it's an early incarnation of the lads, one of the first where they were working entirely with their own songwriting, and a huge part of the Beatles story. It's hard to listen to this without conjuring up black and white imagery of the Beatles hiding from hysterical fans in slapstick setups: pretending to be on the phone, lowering a newspaper to reveal a poor disguise. The film is critically acclaimed, but rewatching it recently, it's nuts. Some really strange decisions made in comedy that in the context of today make the Beatles look insane. But back then it did something different - it made the world aware of the quirky, down-to-earth humour of the four. Huge moment for the Beatles. There's a good bit of filler on this album. But it also has "A Hard Day's Night", "I Should Have Known Better", "And I Love Her" and "Can't Buy Me Love", the latter being home to one of the most iconic guitar solos of all time. George was playing a 12 string Rickenbacker guitar for a good chunk of this album, which became a staple sound of the folky rock'n'roll 60s, but he was also a key figure in popularising that type of melodic guitar solo to the mainstream. Hard to believe that they're only 2 years away from Revolver and 4 years from the White Album here, but regardless, this is the poppy version of the fab four finding their feet, during peak Beatlemania, and writing some legendary songs in the process.

I dunno. I really like Yeah Yeah Yeahs. I loved Fever to Tell, and played the absolute shit out of Show Your Bones. Maps, Gold Lion, Mysteries, Date With The Night, Cheated Hearts... stellar stuff. Raw, punky, melodic with Karen O taking on an early PJ Harvey persona as the frontperson. But this is a very different Yeah Yeah Yeahs. They got a lot of acclaim for moving in this more synthy direction, but to me it felt like they'd watered down the sound that made them so good in the first place. The rawness was replaced with polish, and it felt a lot more poppy than punk. Case and point: the acoustic version of Soft Shock on the extended version of the album is INFINITELY better than the synthy version on the main album. I can't listen to Heads Will Roll at all without cringing. I'm being a bit harsh here, because there's some great songwriting present across the album. I mean, it's still Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Shout out to Skeletons in particular being a great song. But I feel this would have been a much better album if they'd dropped the synth.

Thankfully this isn't as cringey as The Number of the Beast, but it still feels very juvenille. The raw production values is what saves it. It has an almost gritty punk feel to it - something that you feel wasn't achieved on purpose. But the core Iron Maiden tackiness is still lurking under the grounded production sound: songs that feel like a first draft, guitars racing to the end of the fretboard because no one told them they didn’t have to, a lack of substance. It's not terrible, but it's not good either.

Chaotic. In the best way. Grandmaster Flash and Run DMC cuts beside jazz riffs and flute loops. Reggae moments from the likes of Lee Scratch Perry, mix with comedy stand-up routines, sheep sounds, and a dog barking "I love you" from a Little Caesars ad. The use of live instruments makes for a proper band energy. This was the ideal coming together of musical interests for me as a teen. Adam Yauch even learned the double bass, lugging it with him on a snowboarding trip to keep his practice up. We switch between hip hop, hardcore punk, funk, jazz and even Buddhist chanting. There's so much going on here, that Liam Howlett was able to create a whole Prodigy song out of a single line: "Oh my God it's the funky shit". Adam Yauch calling out misogynistic rap tropes, and a misunderstanding of their previous frat boy satire directly in the lyrics of Sure Shot, shows the Beastie Boys growing up. Then there's Sabotage. It still rocks with an insane punk energy that makes you want to slide across the bonnet of your car while wearing Ray Bans and short sleeves. It's also home to one of my favourite guitar solos of all time. Pure chaotic energy, perfect for the song. Seriously varied, chaotic, messy, unique, unpredictable and unexpected. Shit, if this is gonna be that kind of party...

Dark and minimalist. Feels like Burial years before Burial. Setting the blueprint for trip hop. You can feel the shadow of Massive Attack looming here too. The juxtaposition between Martina Topley-Bird's bright vocals and the dark, brooding and chaotic sounds and spoken word monologues that Tricky mixes in the background creates a unique sound. The hodgepodge of noises, percussion and melodies that Tricky is seemingly throwing together at random somehow come together to something that's completely out there, but also not a challenge to listen to at all. It's the sort of thing that you don't fully take in until a second or third listen. I still don't know why it works, but it really, really does work.

Led Zeppelin II is one of my favourite albums, so when a friend told me that his dad was getting rid of some old vinyl from his attic, back when I was in college about 20 years ago, I jumped at the chance to save a 1972 pressing of the Brown Bomber. As the old record crackles and pops on my turntable, I think to myself that this is truly the perfect way to revisit this absolute classic. Led Zeppelin II wastes zero time reminding you why it’s legendary. "Whole Lotta Love" builds itself brick-by-brick, guitar, then bass, then drums, into one of the all-time great riffs, when played correctly with the ringing out of the D string. And that crazy middle section? I'd never even heard of a theremin back in the day, so discovering Page playing something that sounded so alien without even touching it, blew my mind. They might be known for rock, but Zeppelin always pushed boundaries with experimentation. "What Is and What Should Never Be" is the sound of a more grown-up Zeppelin. Everything about it is great: JPJ’s bass grooving all over the board, Plant drifting from delicate to full roar, Page's smooth slide guitar, and that glorious ending signalled in by Bonham's gong. Then there's the madness of "The Lemon Song". Open strings ringing give the riff that unmistakable character. It’s provocative, mischievous, dripping with energy. Howlin’ Wolf and Robert Johnson reimagined by deviants. JPJ is unhinged during the "chorus", Page’s guitar is all bite, and the whole slow–fast–slow structure keeps you guessing. With an iconic "let's take it down a bit" moment: when Page bends the strings at the head of the guitar as he plays the hammer-ons at the end is an eye-widening moment for any aspiring teen guitarist. Such a clever moment of tonal invention. "Thank You" circles back to that more mature Zeppelin sound. Page's 12-string adds gorgeous texture, JPJ’s Hammond organ shines, and the false ending catches you out. Mischievous divils. Then there's "Heartbreaker". Every guitar player's Rachmaninoff - the impossibly hard piece everyone attempts, iconic and intimidating (like Piano Concerto No. 3 in the film "Shine"). A great riff, a great song, building up and up... and then suddenly everything strips away. Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Jimmy Page. Iconic. Awe inspiring. Messy and raw. And the follow-up solo after the band crashes back in? Criminally overlooked, building to a huge crescendo before snapping back to the main riff. It’s almost too much to take. "Living Loving Maid" might be the weakest track here, but only because everything else is so epic. It's still a great song with a fantastic chorus section in particular, Plant’s stuttering vocal delivery, JPJ's bass shining through again. Then "Ramble On" comes on. Maybe one of my favorite songs of all time. Literal goosebumps every single time that acoustic intro hits. I play that verse riff more than anything else when I have my acoustic in my hands. Even before you hear the Lord of the Rings references in the lyrics, it's hard to not imagine rolling green hills and little huts. JPJ's bass line hoping towards you like a Hobbit. That sustained harmonious solo. It's just beautiful. What's next? "Moby Dick". Ara stop. This album is TOO good. So much emphasis is put on Bonham's long drum solo in this song, that you might forget that it's home to one of the all time best riffs, and those guitar fills in between are EPIC. And then they hand the whole thing over to John, who does what only Bonham could do. At the end of the song, the guitar fills are replaced by drum fills. Nice. Finally, "Bring It On Home". The intro and outro are my favourite blues moments on record - that harmonica tone, that production. Then the verse riff kicks the door down: pure energy. The album finishes quietly after 40 minutes of mayhem - like a gang of Hell’s Angels kicking down your door, wrecking your kitchen, drinking all your whiskey, starting a brawl, lighting a small fire… and then slipping quietly out the back door.

The first time I encountered Mark E. Smith was when he tried to suffocate Joe Cornish with a plastic bag over his head on TV. He was joking of course, but was still kinda following through on it. "Vinyl Justice" was a segment on the Adam and Joe TV show, where Adam Buxton and Joe Cornish would arrive at a musician's house dressed as police, and call them out for crimes against music (embarrassing records in their personal collection). They arrived at Mark E. Smith's house dressed in protective riot gear. Because he's an unpredictable, dangerous lunatic. In "This Nation..." that sense of unpredictability is front and center. Chaotic, aggressive and wry spoken word from Smith is layered on top (or sometimes below) stuttering guitar and bass loops, sound effects and cymbal crashes. At one point during "Paintwork", it randomly cuts to an Open University lecture on red giants, apparently because Smith accidentally taped over part of the master tape at home and just decided to leave it in. There are tributes or references to Can, A Clockwork Orange, The Doors and The Twilight Zone thrown in the mix. At times it feels like rock, but other times it feels more psychedelic and experimental. But at its core is a real art punk energy, mostly down to Smith being behind the wheel. I guess that Adam and Joe segment is a good metaphor for this album. You start off prepared, dressed in riot gear, but by the end of the album Mark E. Smith has put a plastic bag over your head, is sitting on top of you and punching you in the ribs, all the while laughing his head off.

Radiohead are my all-time favourite band, and with a Copenhagen show on the horizon this feels like perfect timing to revisit Kid A. I've threatened my wife-to-be and our two dogs for years that I'd give a TED Talk on this album. Now's my chance. Kid A sits in my top three records of all time, just behind OK Computer and The Dark Side of the Moon, but in many ways it's the one that means the most to me. It wasn't the first Radiohead album I ever owned (that was Pablo Honey, bought as a kid because it was cheaper than the “Creep” single). It wasn't even the first Radiohead release to arrive while I was actively collecting music (that honour goes out to OK Computer). But Kid A was the first Radiohead album that landed at a time when I was a complete fanatic. I can't overemphasise the hype for this album. There were bootlegs flying around the Radiohead chat forums, there were the amazing animated "blips" that Stanley Donwood created, marketed through a website (one of the first websites that felt more like an art installation), and I was even at a launch party for the album in a local club named Cuba, which was bizarrely co-owned by Huey Morgan of the Fun Lovin' Criminals. The hype was there because this was the follow-up to the greatest album of our time, of all time, OK Computer. And it became the biggest left turn in modern music. For a lot of listeners, it was a shock: abandoning their guitars and diving into electronica. But, it never felt like a challenge to me. I already liked electronic music, but more than that, it felt like a natural progression. OK Computer had pushed guitars to their absolute limits, so the only place left was to go beyond. And even then, guitars never vanished entirely. "Optimistic", "Morning Bell" and "In Limbo" are still pushing the boundaries of guitars, and even the ambient weightlessness of "Treefingers" is built entirely from guitar samples run through the Ondes Martenot. Kid A pulls influence from everywhere. Charles Mingus, Aphex Twin, CAN, Talking Heads' "Remain in Light". But Radiohead filter those influences into something that doesn't feel like rock, electronica, jazz or ambient. It's its own beast. I'm convinced Kid A is a concept album. A protagonist, let's say Yorke for shorthand, feels disconnected from the world, experiencing it at a distance, like Kid A, the first human clone: conscious, confused, overwhelmed, and unprepared. The title song is an alien lullaby with half-human vocals filtered through the Ondes, with Phil taking over the programmed drums halfway through. It's as jarring as it is beautiful, and one of Radiohead's most underrated masterpieces. "The National Anthem" feels like that Yorke's first contact with reality: the pounding bassline as a heartbeat, the brass section spiralling into overwhelming sensory overload, the world happening far too fast. The emotional climax of the entire album arrives in “How to Disappear Completely,” one of my all-time favourite songs. Yorke has spoken about the out-of-body experience that inspired it, imagining his head floating down the Liffey during a Dublin gig, and I feel a strange national pride that one of Radiohead's most transcendent moments is tied to this country. That rising Ondes Martenot part, two notes of absolute clarity, is one of the most emotionally affecting passages in any Radiohead song. The strings are gorgeous, offering a moment of acceptance before the world (and string section) collapses again around him. No song has ever captured overwhelm and anxiety better than this. "I'm not here. This isn't happening". "Treefingers" feels like a complete emotional shutdown. After the painful dissociation of "How to Disappear", this is total withdrawal. Floaty, ambient, numb and peaceful. Then "Optimistic" brings Yorke back to earth with a momentary sense of clarity and perspective, though sarcasm and exhaustion soon creep in. "In Limbo" has him literally lost at sea: dark, brooding chords, that uneasy stop-start riff, the repeated plea of "don't bother me". It's yet another one of Radiohead's most criminally underrated tracks and its descent into madness at the end is pure perfection. "Idioteque" is the album's lurch into panic: climate disaster ("ice age coming"), political cynicism ("let me hear both sides"), technology overload ("mobiles chirping"), and the bleak hopelessness of protest ("we're not scaremongering, this is really happening"). For an entire generation of guitar kids, this was the gateway to electronica. It was impossible to ignore. "Morning Bell" plays like someone going through a divorce, but completely emotionally detached, suggesting they "cut the kids in half” as part of their settlement. But it's actually more about being divorced from reality itself. "Motion Picture Soundtrack" brings the album to a crescendo of an ending. That organ is gorgeous. Yorke seems to decide to leave the overwhelm of the world behind altogether with the line "I will see you in the next life". But, perhaps it's also Yorke deciding to go back to a moment of peace, accepting the world, as we get an ending of ambiguity with the ambient, weightless synth-string coda bringing us back for a moment, post-credits, to the calmness of "Treefingers". Every member of the band reinvents themselves here. Jonny Greenwood goes from one of the most innovative guitarists of all time, to one of the most innovative musical minds, full stop, bringing KAOSS pads, modular synths, the Ondes Martenot, sampling, and more to the mix. Kid A isn't a left turn. It's the sound of a band battling with the expectations of the entire world, the ensuing writer's block, and a disconnection from reality due to the surreal nature of public attention and relentless touring. And somehow creating one of the best albums of all time in the process. A true masterpiece of anxiety, overwhelm and disconnection. 100 stars.

Henry Hill's car screeches around the corner. He's paranoid, wired on coke, chauffeuring his family around, picking up guns and drugs, cooking pasta sauce, all while convinced a helicopter is following him. Playing over this scene, Mick Jagger screams "AMMA MONKEEEEEEY MAAAAN!" I became obsessed with that sequence of Goodfellas. And the main reason is the amazing medley of music that runs through it, one of the biggest highlights being "Monkey Man" from this album. I'm a big fan of all incarnations of the Stones. Early raucous 60s rock'n'roll Stones. Even psychedelic Stones. All of it great. But I particularly like this era of the Stones, when they concentrated on their blues roots, their biggest strength. I think this is my favourite of all the Stones albums. There's so much I love about this album. Merry Clayton's vocal crack in "Gimme Shelter". The slow burn of "Love in Vain". "Country Honk" being the better of the two honks. "Let it Bleed" with Jagger's inexplicable Southern twang. Keith Richards' guitar sounding somewhere halfway between rhythm and lead. The guitar tone and distorted harmonica of "Midnight Rambler", slowing down and building back up to the most epic part of the song - it's the ultimate blues jam. "You Got the Silver" showing Keef's singing chops and some great slide guitar too. Wyman's bass intro with those twinkly piano bits, before the drums and THAT guitar riff kicks in for the absolute tune of "Monkey Man". A proper groove. There's pure energy throughout this album. "You Can't Always Get What You Want" is the standout track in an album of standout tracks. The choir intro should feel ridiculous, but it actually works. The gentle acoustic build, the tambourine, the organ swell - the whole song gradually expands until it takes off. It's an absolute hero of a song. This is peak Stones. Blending blues, country, rock'n'roll and folk with lots of swagger and groove.

Back when I was in my early 20s, and a smoker, I used to carry around a Rolling Stones "Hot Lips" zippo lighter that I named Charlie, after Charlie Watts. Charlie would often slip out of my pocket during a night out, but would always somehow make his way back to me. Those lips are so instantly recognisable as representing the Stones. As a designer, I tip my hat to one of the greats of logo design. That this iconic visual was first introduced with this album, yet was overshadowed so massively by the album artwork itself says a lot. Another of the records that I rescued/nabbed from a friend's father, who was inexplicably dumping his vinly collection when I was younger, is an original 1971 pressing of Sticky Fingers, complete with working zipper and inner sleeve of underpants stamped with Andy Warhol's name. It just goes to show what the Stones are capable of when they have full creative control: one of the most innovative and iconic album covers of all time, and one of the most recognisable logos in the world, all in one release. And we're still just talking about the artwork - we haven't even gotten to the music yet. I stand by my previous claim that Let It Bleed is my favourite Stones album, but Begger's Banquet and Sticky Fingers are very close behind. What an album run! It's acutally pretty weird that the 1001 gen algorithm served me Let It Bleed yesterday and Sticky Fingers today. I'm looking forward to Exile on Main St. tomorrow. Sticky Fingers carries on the "return to blues roots" Stones era that Banquet introduced and Bleed perfected. There are some iconic Stones classics on here, like "Brown Sugar", "Wild Horses" and "Bitch", but some of the real gems are the more stripped down blues tunes, like the absolutely brilliant "You Gotta Move". The Stones always bring a very unique and raw sound and energy to the blues. Long, extended jams often break out, like on "Sway" and "Can't You Hear Me Knocking", showcasing just how tight a band the Stones had become with Mick Taylor settling in nicely. Iconic cover art, iconic logo, and a record that matches the attitude of both.

The reverb-soaked, echoey sound of a Memory Man pedal feeding back on itself is the sound that opens The Bends, and ushers in the first proper era of Radiohead. To me, Pablo Honey was more like of a collection of songs to supplement "Creep" than a proper Radiohead album. I always think of The Bends as their first real album. I remember when Radiohead played my hometown of Galway while touring The Bends. I was too young to go, but I could hear most of it drifting over from the venue into my back garden. Since then, I’ve seen them (properly) six more times across Ireland, along with the various side-projects (Jonny’s orchestral work, Junun and The Smile). And now, in less than a week, I’m off to see them for a seventh time in Copenhagen. This is the second Radiohead album 1001 has served me in the last week, so here’s hoping the next six days line up neatly with the remaining six. I've listened to this album so many times that I know it inside out. The underdog of Planet Telex with its echoey riff and Colin's distinct bass holding it together. Jonny's inventive guitar work adding texture to Bullet Proof. High and Dry's bright acoustic riff and solo. Seeing The Bends performed on Jools Holland gave me a whole new appreciation for the song. Jonny pulling the string off his guitar entirely to make the craziest noises, before the whole band comes together in a moment of pure energy towards the end of the song, as Thom sings: "I wanna be part of the human race". Street Spirit was the song that you learned on guitar as a teen to show off to your friends. A gorgeous piece of music. It also had nuns prancing about in slo-mo in the black and white video. Then there's the centerpiece of the album. (Nice Dream) > Just > My Iron Lung. A serious contender for the best consecutive three song run in any album. (Nice Dream) eases you in with some gorgeous verses and chorus before Thom's singing turns to a snarl, signalling in the nightmarish solo. Textured soundscapes build up in the background towards the end, making it feel very ethereal (hello Space Echo!) Then Just's acoustic guitar kicks in, and Johnny's guitar takes off. What can you say about Just except that it's a perfect song from start to finish. What an amazing chorus. Then Jonny's guitar seems to just keep climbing and climbing until all we're left with is that single high pitched note, sounding a bit alien thanks to the Whammy pitch-shifter. Before it all crashes down. A moment of peace before it that epic solo takes over, Thom screaming "You do it to yourself!". Literal goosebumps every single time. Plus, I can't hear that song without getting a visceral mental picture of a load of people lying perfectly still on the footpath. My Iron Lung became another reason to buy a Whammy pedal. Ed's textures in the background create atmosphere while Jonny's alien-sounding riff is distinctive enough to not need any lyrics for the chorus. Jazzy chords that have no business in rock music, make the verse sections complex and interesting. Thom snarls his way through sarcastic and sardonic lyrics. And of course that shift left, when the song takes off. This album reinvented guitar music, something Radiohead would do several times in their career. There really was nothing like it at the time. But it wasn't all music academia - they did it in a way that was a lot of fun to listen to. Radiohead announced themselves as the most interesting and innovative band on the go with this album, and suddenly became a hugely important part of many people's lives, myself included. In My Iron Lung, Thom sings "this is our new song / just like the last one / a total waste of time". You couldn't be more wrong, Thommy boy.

What are the odds? 1001 gen randomly serves me Let It Bleed, then the next day it gives me Sticky Fingers, so I write "I'm looking forward to Exile On Main St. tomorrow". And what comes up the following day? The Bends. But then the day after THAT? Here we are with Exile On Main St. What a great album. It's a pretty epic four album run from Beggars Banquet to Let It Bleed to Sticky Fingers to Exile On Main St. The Stones had fully found their groove across these previous three albums, and they're still at their peak here. The cover of Exile is fitting. A photo collage of outsiders, misfits, and Americana. This whole album feels like a collage of blues, gospel, country, and ragged American rock & roll. We have the "classic Stones rock" tunes. Songs like "Rocks Off", "Tumbling Dice", "Happy", "All Down the Line", all bring me back to standing in a mud pit in a very rainy Slane Castle, watching Mick strut about the stage like a possessed rooster. Keef's bright treble-heavy guitar tone ringing out on every chord, starts to become an iconic Stones staple across these songs. Blues tunes like "Rip This Joint", "Shake Your Hips" (where Jagger seems to channel John Lee Hooker), "Ventilator Blues", and too many more to mention, are the Stones at their best. There's only a few bands who can put a unique stamp on the blues, and the Stones are one of them. There's plenty of folk, country-bluegrass, and gospel woven through it all too. Then there are the more "laid back" tunes like "Torn and Frayed", "Sweet Black Angel" and "Let It Loose", showing a more mature side to the Stones. "Let It Loose" is now forever entangled in my mind with visuals of Frank Costello introducing himself to Billy Costigan at the bar in "The Departed". Scorsese and Robbie Robertson always used the Stones' music so perfectly in his films. "Sweet Virginia" is the masterpiece of the album. Sounding somewhere between Dylan, Young and old-school delta blues, it's a masterful blend of folk, country and blues. Rough, authentic and just perfect. The fact that these songs were mostly recorded in a basement on a mobile recording studio while the Stones were in exile themselves, after avoiding their tax bill, is nuts, but also maybe part of what gives the album its unique sound.

"Yaa yaa, feelin' good on a Wednesday..." Hard to believe this all started with Randy Marsh singing in a bathroom. Autotune. Outside of the world of South Park, I always liked and respected Lorde from the little I’d heard, mostly "Royals". So I was happy to dive into Melodrama when it popped up. But honestly, I think I liked Lorde better when I knew less of her music. I do appreciate the concept. A whole album structured around a house party is clever, and I can definitely see why people love this. But I just couldn’t get into it. The musicality never grabbed me. I was waiting for something as innovative and catchy as "Royals", but it never came. Sure, this isn't my type of music, but Billie Eilish isn’t my type of music either, and I love her stuff. So I don’t think it’s a taste-barrier issue. It just didn’t click with me. I admire the idea more than the album. It was grand, but I wouldn’t rush back for a re-listen. Sorry Randy.

This feels more like an art installation than an album of music. Something you'd stumble across in a white room in a museum of modern art. You sit down on a cold, uncomfortable bench, and listen to the absolute utter madness of this patchwork blanket of dialogue, sound effects, skits and satire. People stroke their chins in contemplation, while sped up chipmunk vocals, coughing and telephone conversations play in the background. You really have to remind yourself that Zappa didn't do drugs. Which makes this collection of sounds even crazier. Scathing satirical takedown of hippy culture - well, more of the hypocrasy of "mainstream" hippy culture, and the phoniness of those wanting to portray the image of being a hippie. In "Who Needs the Peace Corps", he captures it perfectly in the lines: "First I'll buy some beads, and then perhaps a leather band to go around my head, some feathers and bells, and a book of Indian lore. I will ask the Chamber of Commerce how to get to Haight Street and smoke an awful lot of dope". All of this is set to genre-jumping music that sounds very familiar to anyone who listens to music from that cultural era (The Beatles, Jefferson Airplane, The Byrds, etc.) It's a very interesting album. That's one thing you can say about it. It's absolutely batshit crazy. That's another. I love the concept, and the balls to release a whole album that doesn't care about music, but instead is 100% concerned on hitting you over the head repeatedly with its message. A tough one to listen to, but crazy enough to keep your attention at all times.

I'm a fan of Guy Garvey. But mostly because of his fantastic weekly show on BBC Radio 6 Music, where every Sunday afternoon I tune in to listen to the great music that he curates. His taste is nearly identical to mine. But, oddly I was never a big Elbow fan. The one song of theirs that got my attention when I first heard it was "Grounds for Divorce". That bluesy slide guitar riff, the vocal melody and the guitar and bass doubling for that epic chorus drop are all recipes for an absolutely top notch song. The rest of the album is a lot more subdued than I expected. Very atmospheric and light, reminding me (predictably enough) of the band Doves. Northern indie bands must share a sound I guess. The opening four songs are great, but it's let down a bit by the rest of the album. 3 stars feels a bit harsh, so let's call this 3.5.

The album opens with "Shout", and it's great stuff. Very dark synth, reminding me of Gary Numan or Depeche Mode. "Head over Heels" is another great song. Although I wonder my judgement is clouded with nostalgia. I first heard this song in the movie Donnie Darko, so I have good associations with it. But the rest of the album, including the most famous song, "Everybody Wants to Rule the World", feels quite dated and a bit "too 80s" for my taste.

I remember when Hey Ya! dropped. It wasn't just a big single, it was a cultural phenomenon. It was completely unique and seemed to come out of nowhere. Everyone was shaking Polaroids, asking people to lend them some sugar, declaring themselves as neighbours. I was fully swept up in it. I absolutely loved it. I'd play it at parties, quote it constantly, and I even created a medley on guitar that started with Hotel Yorba and would segue into an acoustic version of Hey Ya! It was the ultimate crowd pleaser ("crowd" being the 2-5 people actually listening to me play). But underneath all the pure joy of the song, is something really dark. Hey Ya! is one of the most upbeat songs ever written about how love isn't permanent. André literally tells us what he's doing, and we somehow don't notice, maybe because we don't want to - I guess that was his point: "Y'all don't want to hear me, you just want to dance". It's a brutally honest confession about love falling apart, people staying together for the wrong reasons, and how we avoid confronting hard truths. Hiding the message in the lyrics of a song that was so catchy and energetic, and playing on the trope of romance and love in pop music, is genius, and living through that hype while slowly realising what the song was really saying felt like André pulled off the ultimate magic trick. That track set the tone for The Love Below, André 3000's half of the double album: a psychedelic, jazzy, funky, 70s-soaked, musical-theatre fever dream where he leans fully into eccentricity. It barely resembles hip hop at all. It's lush with Prince-like falsetto, spoken-word interludes, theatrical storytelling, jazz melodies, and basslines full of stank. And it's FILTHY! It was bold, strange, theatrical, and completely unexpected for an Outkast album. Back when the album came out, I used to skip Speakerboxxx and go straight to André's side. Big Boi's half felt like the "other one", and I was there for André. But, Speakerboxxx is a really strong album too. It's dense, funky, and full of intricate, complex and layered melodies. Big Boi pulls in Funkadelic-style textures, and interesting samples and blends them perfectly with hip-hop. It's more in line with the classic Outkast sound, sure, but it's still complex and great. It never stood a chance, when sitting next to André's horny cosmic jazz opera. It was always going to be overshadowed. It was a really strange move to release separate albums in a double, and it was another angle of something unique and interesting that they were doing creatively. For me, Speakerboxxx/The Love Below will always be tied to that moment when Hey Ya! was everywhere, blaring from radios, at parties, on TV, while quietly saying something heartbreaking that most of us didn’t notice. We just wanted to shake polaroid pictures and borrow sugar.

I don't know WHAT I just listened to. Suba has thrown bossa nova, heavy experimental sounds, acid house, new-age hippie music, and down-tempo electronica into a blender, and weirdly, it's kinda great. Definitely one of the more out-there albums I've listened to recently, but it feels like a layered and complex love-letter to São Paulo and its mashup of cultural influences. Very interesting and unique collection of sounds.

The Undertones have always had this Ramones-like contradiction about them. On the surface they look and play like scrappy, leather-jacketed punks with loud guitars, shooting out two-minute bursts of punk rock. But then you listen to the lyrics, you realise they're singing about girls, chocolate, cousins, awkward crushes, and the very innocent chaos of teenage life. They sound less like snarling anti-establishment outsiders and more like five lads your parents would happily let you hang around with. I came in through "Teenage Kicks", of course, the gateway drug for most Undertones fans. And once I had a chance to see them in my hometown, with Paul McLoone fronting, I dove into the back catalogue. "Hypnotised" has some great hooks: short, bright, unpretentious. The guitars are still doing that ragged, three-chord punk thing, but there's a lot of colour here, feeling surfy, bubblegum and a bit garage at the same time. Feargal Sharkey sings like he's somewhere between crooning and yelping. It sounds strange to describe it, but when you listen to The Undertones, it all just clicks perfectly. They just wrote short, perfect songs and played them like they meant it. As a side note during that hometown gig, a friend of mine, in a moment of pure impulsiveness, stole guitarist John O’Neill’s performer lanyard straight off the stage and used it to get backstage to hang out with The Dirty Three, The Frames and Buddy Guy. And that's a lot more punk rock than any of the Undertones' lyrics.

A group of lads in Wrangler straight-cut jeans, brown leather shoes and white checked shirts, tucked in, with too many of the top buttons opened, jumping around the dancefloor of a soulless nightclub, sloshing their pints of cider and Heineken around the place. That's the image you get when you hear Mr. Brightside or Somebody Told Me. Absolute rubbish. It's mundane, over-produced swill that is presenting itself as some sort of artistic masterpiece. "Somebody told me you had a boyfriend / Who looked like a girlfriend / That I had in February of last year / It's not confidential, I've got potential / A rushing, rushing around." Move over Bob Dylan, give Brandon Flowers that Nobel Prize for literature. The songs on paper shouldn't elicit such intense feelings of hatred in me. If anything, they should mean very little to me, because the whole album, and the whole discography of The Killers is mundane, beige and uninteresting. But, there's just something about the sound that they create that causes me to grind my teeth to the point of causing dental damage. And posing as some sort of "high art" is the part that really makes my blood boil. And I haven't even gotten to the "profound" outro of All These Things that I've Done: "I've got soul, but I'm not a soldier". As Bill Bailey pointed out, on the surface it sounds alright. But then you analyse it and realise it's meaningless rubbish. It's as profound as saying "I've got ham, but I'm not a hamster".