1001 Albums Summary

forgot how strong this record's opener is, but also how tonally different it is from some of the later tracks. really great instrumentation, as sparse as it is compared to SZA's contemporaries. good shit all around; I really don't think there are any skips here. not a huge fan of Travis Scott but whatever, SZA is obviously the star of the show. I guess he's allowed to say a few words. I will never get tired of broken clocks no matter how often it's played. if you hate that song you're an idiot. it's so good. I feel like that meme of spongebob floating in the air with wired headphones when I listen to the beginning of pretty little bird. that reverb is great and with a pair of great headphones, that song is extra good. probably not a perfect album, but for pretty damn close.

i'm admittedly not the biggest Elvis fan, but i'll say that all of my favorites come from this album. I think on this record you get a really clear picture of his blues/gospel influences before they become dolled up in performance and provocation, and tracks like "Blue Suede Shoes" do a great job of paying homage to theoretical influences instead of simply regurgitating old ideas, which I feel happen in Elvis's later work. as a fan of his slower stuff, I would always listen to tracks like "I Love You Because", "I'll Never Let You Go (Little Darlin')", and of course, "Blue Moon". Getting this album was kind of fun because I don't know when I would have ever chosen to revisit Elvis, but it's a nice reminder of why he's so beloved and where he started (especially compared to where he'd end up, which I don't love as much as other Elvis fans).

I’m sorry to every twenty or thirty-something out there, this album is not better than In Rainbows. It’s still pretty good, though. And it gave us Exit Music (For a Film) and Karma Police, so I won’t be too mad at the Website Gods for giving us this album today

fuck you steven morrissey. not even "The Headmaster Ritual" can save this one. most of this bullshit sounds the same and you sound like a whiny fucking prick, which incidentally, you are. okay fine, "Well I Wonder" has great instrumentation, but that's not your doing. also, what the fuck why would anyone want to listen to you bark at them in "Barbarism Begins at Home" and then 2-3 minutes at the end of "OOOOOOHAAAAAHHHOOHOAOHOAOHAAAOOOHOHOHOO" fuck you morrissey racist incel loser lmfao

Honestly, it’s a great title track. The rest is fine; better than fine if you like operatic rock ballads (I do not). I still can’t imagine being a teenager in 1977 and seeing or hearing the three layers of crazy juxtaposition: the cover that says “this is metal you fuckers”, the artist name that says “wait what the fuck”, and the music that says “wait what is actually going on here?” It isn’t a bad album, it just isn’t for me. And as someone who is open about how little ballad rock he listens to, I can’t compare this to much. I mean it’s better than 90% of Bon Jovi’s catalogue, but that bar is low. I feel bad giving this a 2, but there are albums I’d rank at 3 that I like so much more. I also will never get beyond Meat Loaf’s appearance in Fight Club. “Bob’s new sweating tits that hang enormous, the way you think of God’s as big.”

People that say jazz is just “playing wrong notes but it sounds good” obviously don’t understand jazz but they also obviously haven’t listened to this album. THIS album is just a bunch of wrong notes that bills itself as “art rock” and I’m not sure where I stand on that principally, but I do know that it’s not for me

hadn’t heard of this guy at all, and finally got excited about the premise of this activity: I’d been hoping for something I didn’t know! And here it is! Smooth and a little funky, this is a great record for people (read: me) who are new-ish to soul. “Hero” is definitely the standout track for me, although I didn’t find myself wanting to skip any of them. Thematically, it’s great. It’s unapologetically self-indulgent and praises humanity in all the right ways. It’s complex and simple all at once. There’s something special on show here for anyone looking for a musical pick-me-up; give “Solid Ground” or “Light” a shot. A lot to love here. Admittedly, I’m looking at this maybe a little more scientifically than I ought to. There are a handful of tracks I’d seek out again on my own, but I don’t know how often I’d put the full record on. Hard to say on a first listen. If I were to revisit this in a week, it may score higher. If I could give it a 3.5, I’m sure I would.

I can’t imagine being 14 or 15 in 1986 and hearing “Battery” into “Master of Puppets” for the first time (which is only relevant because I was around that age when I discovered metal). This isn’t a genre I listen to a lot anymore, but that certainly doesn’t affect the rating. This album is pretty nearly perfect, and I would do anything to live out the cultural zeitgeist surrounding this release in the 80s. I can’t think of a modern equivalent, honestly. At least not one of comparable quality.

I mean it’s fine! Some tracks are pretty good, even. Real Billy Hargrove shit. Put me in a fast car and play these tunes. But I don’t know how much staying power it has for me. Musically there’s some cool stuff happening; I love the guitar work. But the rest kinda falls flat, I guess. Thematically, our last metal album was much stronger and, context taken into account, much more relevant.

this shit’s boring

Man, I hate having to do this review. Joy Division is just one of the bands you’re *supposed* to like. But I don’t. Like the album from KOL the other day, the vocalist (too lazy to google him) is uhhh not great! The the guitarist (too lazy to google him too) sounds like he learned to play a week before they recorded the album. What is that riff on Shadowplay? Really? Anyway. It’s not offensive, but it doesn’t have much staying power for me. So sorry everyone, and a special apology to all the 90s kids who wore Joy Division t-shirts in high school who I thought had some real street cred for doing so.

This is the album that makes me wish I’d been a skater

might be a little blinded by nostalgia here, but I honestly don’t think I am. Phenomenal breakout album, and it has proved hard to top. No skips.

Patti Smith is legendary, and not without reason, but I think this album is a classic example of “appreciate the impact but don’t love the music” that sometimes happens with these mainstay records. Heretically, I feel the same way about Sgt. Pepper’s from The Beatles (I’m a white album kinda boy). There are some songs here that I like, but nothing here that I love. To be fair, there’s nothing I actively dislike either, but still, I find myself somewhat unmoved by what some call music’s first punk statement. Also, she said some weird shit about Mick Jagger and wrote a crazy song using the n word a lot, which feels bizarre as fuck. Her book, Just Kids, is pretty good though

I wish I had more to say. It's fine, but it's not as good as Mezzanine, and even Mezzanine is like... okay. I think I just have to recognize that this isn't my genre.

Missy Elliott's influence is completely undeniable and demands attention. This is a good album. But I am beginning to wonder about the selection process here: are they just picking culturally significant artists' first records because without them, we don't get the others? So far we've had Elvis, Coldplay, Missy Elliott, maybe one or two others I'm blanking on. This definitely isn't Missy Elliott's best; it's great, no doubt about it, but if we're meant to interpret this list as the "greatest" (or at least the most culturally transformative) albums ever, I don't know why this was picked over something that was to come down the road from her. Oh well. Still a good listen, and when it was over, I was sad to see it go. Guess that counts for something. We better get some fucking MF DOOM from this thing if it's gonna give us this one.

My biggest problem with this album is that to get the full experience, you need to listen in order and be totally tuned in. I think that's a fair ask; it's a great album with a lot of sonic character and what few tracks could stand alone (Money, in particular) are phenomenal. I'm not a boomer music meatrider and I don't think this album is as perfect as all the snobs think it is, but I can recognize how and why it's great while maintaining some very clear distance from "perfect" or even from "one of the greatest albums of all time." It's good, but it's not *that* good.

I mean it’s fine. Some tracks are good. The back end feels like Walmart brand shoegaze; I dunno, I’m hyper critical of anything that isn’t MBV or Slowdive if we’re in this genre. Part of that is because I’m admittedly underexposed.

By 2004 the enlarged and overly-scoped umbrella category of “alt rock” or hell even just alternative was so saturated with better, more interesting talent that I am struggling to understand why this album made the cut. Granted, I hadn’t even heard of this band before, so maybe it makes the list as a way of showcasing who was doing what in various decades that time or more notable names may have overshadowed; that being the case, that’s fine. But I literally almost fell asleep listening to this album. I just can’t find anything to really like that other groups in this same window did better, sorry to say.

Oh FUCK yes I got so excited when this one got picked. Barring some of my favorite jazz and string trios-- and I don't think I'm being hyperbolic when I say this-- this might be the most significant musician trio to have ever existed. this album is emblematic of everything happening in the late 60s and into the early 70s: there is some fascinating genre interplay, some unique sounds that don't really get replicated by later artists, and obviously significant homage paid to country, blues, and folk roots in an album that also employs elements of rock and jazz. this album is fucking *stacked* with five-star songs. What gets me about this album is that CS&N could have been wed to a single sound; the Paul Simon-esque "Lady of the Island", the smooth ballad work of "Guinevere", but damn if they don't pull out all the stops and remind me about the danger of musical expectations. just when you think you know the album, they hit you with something interesting. i find that it's almost impossible to be bored listening to this record. it's probably my favorite of 1969 (and that's a stacked year, with Abbey Road, ITCOTCK, Zeppelin's II, etc.) If I had to rank my ten favorite albums of all time, I don't *think* this would place, but that's only because there's so much good music out there. On a good day where I'm feeling my roots, I'd maybe stick this one in the #10 spot. It's just so good.

Not a whole lot to say here— I’m in the minority (I think?) of people who believe Neil Young is the weakest of Thursday’s supergroup. Not bad, just not nearly as interesting. Sure, Down By the River is great, but I don’t like the other tracks as much as The PeopleTM seem to (especially Cinnamon Girl; for some reason that song just irritates me lmao I am so sorry)

okay look, i'm not a bush apologist, all i'm saying is that this is a lot of edginess and anger towards a conservative president who did not wreak nearly as much havoc on the country or the globe as our current, and this band's most recent album, a product of similarly vitriolic times, sucks in comparison. well maybe it just sucks in general. but this album is not that album. this one is mostly good, but sometimes hard to listen to bc i'm like you people need to chill. coming to LA for your first american recording does not make you equal on the playing field of american civic engagement as the people who've been fighting the good fight for decades. but at least you gave us "sail to the moon" which is a beautiful track. between this and the number of good mario games that released during the bush presidency, i think the universe is trying to tell us something about this retired president-turned-grandpa artist who is just dootin' along in texas right now. sure, sure, the Liberal Artists hated him, but think about it. we got good mario. we got good pokemon. we got this album. actually we also got In Rainbows during the bush era, so radiohead might just need another bush to start making good music again. #ImWithBush

You know I was gonna rate this a little lower and give some dumbass justification about how even though some of my most listened to albums from middle and high school owe their lives to Pantera, that y’know it just isn’t for me anymore But fuck that noise. This shit fuckin rips. It’s loud, aggressive, and hard. It’s not a perfect album but I don’t think pantera gives a shit about perfect albums. You can’t listen to this and NOT headbang and find something to be angry about

when john prine said "hotdog bun, my sister's a nun" i really felt that. a few years ago, i got really big into sierra ferrell, which meant i wasn't far from discovering prine. in truth, i had no idea who he was until i began my foray into a genre i thought i hated; pretty quickly, i understood what all the fuss was about. when it comes to folk, i of course knew bob dylan and joan baez, and maybe a few more if someone had mentioned a name aloud. i can't believe i had been missing out on john prine! it's folk, blues, country-- everything all together. so nice. what i love about john prine's approach is that it's extremely accessible poetry. nothing about the instrumentation is technically impressive or difficult, and it doesn't need to be. it sounds as reasonable as anything else from its era. it's just easy. but his lyrics are punchy and raw, telling important and politically charged stories that were indeed braver than many of his contemporaries. tonally, it's obvious he wasn't concerned with any blowback, and i love that about him. his complete affability in his songs makes me laugh. can you imagine all the red-faced conservatives angry about antiwar lyrics from their singer-songwriters during america's conquest against the atheistic communism? come on now. learn your roots, fellas. while there's certainly a quality of similitude between most of these songs, it didn't make the album less of a joy to listen to. also, i hate to let my rating be influenced *too* much by legacy, but seriously, prine is the reason artists like sierra ferrell (and others) get to be as well-beloved as they are in 2025. plus, people are still covering "Paradise" and probably will be forever. love that.

really hoping that this means jazz albums will show up on the list. fusion is fine (it's maybe not my preferred way to listen to tracks like birdland, although as brandon said it is essential to give credit where it is due), but it's not my favorite. gotta say though, tracks like Palladium make me think that maybe it could be. that shit's fuckin groovy.

Hard to deny Biggie’s influence on the game, but fuck this is a hard listen. Especially given its proximity to biggie’s assassination, which I maintain was a gov’t job. Hell, maybe Tupac was too, I don’t fuckin know. Sorry biggie. Your songs are sad as fuck but they’re extremely good. Sorry you wanted to kill yourself. You would’ve loved MF DOOM bro

Okay I know it's a three, but it's a very high 3! Really wish they'd let us do half stars on this, but I get it. Too many divisions makes the rating system somewhat pointless, blah blah blah. There are some great tracks on here (Damn, "Caught by the Fuzz" is a banger, "She's so Loose" is real Pinegrove-y before Pinegrove could be Pinegrove-y) and just a few complete misses (what's happening with the album closer?), so I guess overall I really like but do not love this one. Points for surprising me with "Alright"; I figure we all know this song, but I could never have told you who wrote it *or* that it was a product of 1995. I know the phrase "ahead of their time" is such a meaningless cliche, but I do think it applies here for the most part.

So my introduction to this album is super bizarre because I actually heard a cover of "Disarm" by The Civil Wars (may they RIP; unless you're going to lie to the world and tell it that your band partner is your sister and not actually your wife, don't be in a band with your S/O) and I thought that *they* (The Civil Wars) had written it; obviously you can understand my surprise when I realized the song was much older. I was certainly old enough to have known better, but somehow it just missed me. all the kids trying to impress me with their musical knowledge in 2012 would have laughed openly at me. this album is fuuuuull of great tracks. Man, I'm envious of that early 90s fuzzy guitar sound. Erik and I actually started a cover of "Today" a few years ago and need to revisit it! That song is great, "Cherub Rock" is great, "Disarm" is great, and "Silverfuck" is in the running for one of the best track names of the 90s and maybe ever? Unsure. this album works on so many levels. what i love most about it, though, is its refusal to adhere to a single sound: it mimics some other groups we've had in this rotation in that way. "Disarm" doesn't sound like "Soma" which doesn't sound like "Geek U.S.A" which doesn't sound like "Hummer", and that's *the* way to keep the listener engaged: be good at all the sounds you try, and your album will always earn a spot in someone's rotation. this bit is only related because of my review from the last album we did by Supergrass: this is how you close an album. Slow it down, sure, but at least keep it interesting. this bit is completely unrelated: the apple music summary of this album claims that the smashing pumpkins are a "gen-x icon", and I'd like to state for the record I've seen *far* more teenagers in "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness" t-shirts than I've ever seen gen-xers. for this reason I posit that even if these teenagers i've seen have never even listened to the album, TSP have more cultural staying power because of teens chasing clout than because of gen-xers who may have listened to this group in their mid-twenties and saw them one (1) time in Seattle or Chicago before moving onto the next thing

this band or this album-- haven't decided which-- is illustrative of what i perceive to be one of the biggest problems facing music today: there is a fucking label for literally every *sample* of sound. look, i had to google these guys. i won't pretend i've heard of them. here's their "genre" according to wikipedia's compiled list (I am too lazy to actually cite each individual source for each genre assignment, but i promise they exist and they're all more or less bullshit): hard rock, psychedelic rock, blues rock, acid rock, heavy metal, proto-punk, stoner rock, experimental rock. are you fuckin serious? one time the band Blue October wrote a song that reflects my feelings about this: "Or call it rock, or pop, or Bach, or fuck / Goddamn! Where did we go wrong? / Now there's a category for every song" (this is from Inner Glow, for those curious). yeah yeah, i get that Blue Cheer is trying a bunch of different things here, but honestly what this tells me more is that they couldn't find solid enough ground to establish a unique sonic character. instead, these songs feel, at least to me, like a half-baked attempt at being a little bit of everything popular on the cusp of some really monumental movements (for example, some people apparently call "Summertime Blues" the first metal song ever [what the fuck], and Black Sabbath's debut was around the corner in 1970). i wonder if the comparison to Jack White is unavoidable (several reviews housed on this website make such a comparison). i don't buy it. not all garage rock is created equally, and this lacks the soul, punch, and guitarwork of the early white stripes stuff. anyway, this shit's boring. 2/5 on a good day, which i guess today is.

when i was ten i got my first digital keyboard in my bedroom and played with a lot of the presaved sounds. i'm fairly certain i recorded "How Does It Feel" on my tape recorder in 2005. like several of the albums we've gotten, this one is not horrible but suffers from a lack of impression. it's almost completely forgettable. aside from a wacky album cover (purity/ love/ suicide/ accuracy/ revolution, wtf) that is at least fun to look at, there's nothing meaningful here. i'm a big big fan of the hymn "Will the Circle be Unbroken?" from 1907, so it's a shame that their "May the Circle be Unbroken" sucks so goddamn much. maybe if i was on acid i'd appreciate this more, but i kind of doubt it.

fuck yeah. so glad to have pulled this one. it's one of the best rap albums of the 90s for sure, and has to make one pine for the return of old school east coast hip hop. the production on this record is so cool. just basement grooves all around. obviously there's a lot to love lyrically, and part of that is just because this record is a product of its time. ms. lauryn hill is a goddess and has been since 1990. there's a reason she won a grammy for this one. i actually don't care much for "ready or not", which has been sampled to hell and back. not sure why that one. we're still allowed to like this one because d*ddy's gross fuckin hands aren't on it! i learned against my will that the brits love this one. to them i say only this: get your own. we're gonna gatekeep this shit.

sorry brandon. even blur can't make me tolerate british people. also the title track fucking sucks. (that said, this album is fun and energetic, and yeah, fine, i love damon albarn, especially because he talked shit about t swift a few years ago and that made me kinetically sexually attracted to him)

i was so warm to this on first listen, but the second time, it just didn't click as well. i don't have much to say. as far as the growing blend of folk inspired/pop/indie/general alternative sounds are concerned, this isn't necessarily breaking new ground, but ireland needed a musical win (i guess? idk), and this is totally it for me. it's just easy to listen to, you know? it's a fun album. more albums need to be fun. don't give me sophisticated bullshit that i have to """understand""" to enjoy. give me more of this sweetness and simplicity. but maybe make it more interesting? i dunno. this album falls prey to the unfortunate "it all kinda sounds the same" trend. One review from this website maligns this one as "Ben Folds meets Death Cab with a juvenile SoCal twist", and it was meant as an insult. i honestly can't think of a better compliment for what this is and what it's trying to do. not *everything* has to be cutting edge, you know? so it has that going for it. i like death cab; i like ben folds. i like this, too; i just don't love it. so nothing profound to say. this album didn't rock my world. but it's good, and i'll definitely listen to some tracks again.

unremarkable vocal performances and lyricism. gorgeous instrumentation with a variety of influences (although those american southern folk influences should render this album cultural appropriation... bastards). too fucking bri'ish. 6.5/10

criminally boring. should actually be a crime to chart this high with songs that are so incredibly dull. this is an unironic review posted here: "We dumb humans couldn't look beyond her bald head.... RIP" i read a bunch of 5 star reviews from this website. are you kidding me? call it "spare" and "haunting" if you want to, but what's really happening here is nothing. if this album were produced today it would sell four copies.

what the fuck

i mean i get why hanns eisler songs are worth listening to before you die (starkly anti-fascist, had to flee germany, a real blue-collar composer, etc.) but i don't know why *this* album is worth listening to before you die. this is a cool history lesson, not a great album. i reject the notion that there's some metanarrative to understand regarding this album or even music like it; i'm further unconvinced that dagmar krause's attempts at anglicizing this music are worth the effort. like, it's fine, but if you're at all familiar with 20th century german composition (i promise you're more familiar than that phrasing makes it sound; everyone is), you know what you're gonna hear. it isn't terrible at all, it just isn't as interesting as the history of the composer himself. *why* is this one here?

pretty good

i can play "the one i love" on expert on guitar hero world tour but i'm not very good at "it's the end of the world and we know it (and i feel fine)" on rock band 2 because i didn't have rock band 2 as a kid and the controller felt weird and different so... three stars

Fuckin great album but it’s not DAMN. and no amount of 1500 word entries about this album “establishing Kendrick’s sound” is gonna convince me otherwise

man this is gonna be a bold fuckin take (or maybe not? idk whatever), but this is my favorite american album of the 70s full fucking stop. better than dylan, zeppelin, neil young, fleetwood mac; i know there's stiff competition here, but steely dan absolutely cannot be beat. every song here is unique and there are no skips. this album is one of the many reasons this band has the reputation it does for instrumentation: this shit is sophisticated, complex, groovy, and accessible all at the same time, and this is a feat few other groups *literally ever* can claim to have pulled off. five years later when they released aja, they'd really cement themselves as the melodic workhorses of the 70s, but it's *this* album that registered them, for me, as an all-time certified hood classic. this shit fuckin rules. like brandon from our kendrick album recently, i remember where i was when i found and listened to this album for the first time (as an adult). my dad played a few popular tracks in the car as a kid, and i'm sure 92.1 THE BULL!!! played their stuff when i was paying attention, but i found this CD in a library in a "discard" pile like a decade ago and asked if i could have it. they said yes. i sat in my car and listened to it all the way through before even leaving the parking lot. they were going to fucking discard this shit? why? cd worked perfectly. whatever. as an aside, i almost named my one-man musical project "gentleman loser" because of "Midnite Cruiser". you find me another album that offers precise and articulated homage to jazz, rock, blues, folk, all while being actual fucking poetry, and i'll give you one quarter and concede that there must be some other college band from the early 70s that wrote some of the best music to ever come from an american band ever. you fucking can't. fuck you. steely dan rules. six stars our of five

this shit is not “Bussing” but it does sound… sort of interesting I guess

inoffensive but unmemorable. shame that such a good band name was wasted on a completely unremarkable group

this is one of those albums for which i would have loved to have been alive when it released. can you imagine finding these jams with your pals in your dad's odoriferous den in your split-level house? damn. this is a fuckin' bop. king giz gets a lot of love for "doing every genre" across their discography, but Zappa *could* have done that-- and probably better-- if he'd ever wanted to. the musicality here is wildly good and so so interesting. great listen. also, killer album name.

i'm so sorry, but the story behind this album and the musicianship involved is much more interesting to me than the album itself. this feels kind of bizarre to say-- and i didn't think i'd find myself saying it for our first paul simon record-- i think he really did need art garfunkel. i know he's an asshole, but those two together wrote music that so much better (to me; i am but one person) than paul simon's original stuff. this album got soooo much recognition, but minus a couple of songs, i just don't see the staying power in my own personal library. i like paul simon as a moody, mystical songwriter with an occasional upbeat track, but this whole album sounds like it could be played at the beginning of a late 80s romcom where the quirky girl and the stuffy guy haven't found each other yet but it's obvious that their lives are less fulfilling than they will be when they connect. it just isn't for me, cool history besides.

certified hood classic but the f slurs and r slurs have aged like milk. still, worth listening to if for no other reason than to better understand eminem's impact. it's a good album

this is part of the actual writeup for this album from apple music. no words have been added or removed to appeal to my sense of humor or otherwise impact the rhetorical goals of the author: "Thanks to its unhurried hush, the album is a make-out must, but it's the pervading sense of danger that makes it so sensually sinister." what the fuck?

another day, another dull british record

still British but at least it’s not boring anymore. Probably my favorite Stones album, due in no small part to really figuring out some new shit with Mick Jagger at the helm now. No skips. Maybe this is just me, but this album probably gives me the purest Beatles influence, which raises its score for me by an artificial and negligible amount. It’s great on its own merits. I particularly love the investment in blues and the back-and-forth between muddy, fuzzy guitars and bright, sizzling ones. Good shit.

a cage match but it's Jefferson Airplane against The Mamas and the Papas and they fight about who was more countercultural in the late 60s

without this record, we have 1) no afrobeat, and 2) significantly less jazz fusion overall. My incredibly lukewarm take is that you can just listen to the title track and be done, but as far as jazz fusion is concerned, this is really quite good. There’s *so* much miles Davis influence here it’s nuts. If we’re not gonna pull an actual miles Davis record (I think or at least hope Bitches Brew is on here?), this is I guess a reasonable substitute jazz is my favorite genre so part of this rating is influenced by my desperation to get a real jazz album soon. still, even though i really do like it, i don't know how often i'd put this one on by choice. i feel it requires a specific mood.

take rod stewart off this record and it's a full two stars higher unrelated, but i also want to note this for laughs: according to a 1977 issue of The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Rock, this album is "a seminal work of heavy metal." Read that again. Then read it again if you're still unsure what the fuck that's about. I don't have an answer for you. I think music journalists just wrote whatever the fuck they wanted.

alas, it's a classic case of "yeah I get why it's beloved but I don't love it." i can appreciate depeche mode and wowee the production value on this record is incredible! but it's not for me, unfortunately* *this may be somewhat colored by my initial exposure to this album, which came from a coworker when I lived in chicago who introduced depeche mode (and this album) to me. i later discovered she was really into overwatch futa porn, and i could not "separate the art from the artist", as it were

groovy and sexy. what else need an album be?

yea I was excited to get this one and then it sucked

it’s pretty cool. the energy is great, but I’m not picking these over studio versions probably ever. Live albums are tricky, but at the end of the day, it’s still Sam Cooke and I still love him

sure, the lyrics are edgy and whiny as fuck. would that he had simply *not* written about women that didn’t want him. that aside, however, this is really good. The instrumentation is interesting and well-varied, and most critically, I don’t hate his voice like I hate Morrissey’s. I don’t compare the two because they have similar sonic profiles, but because they’re both insufferable little fuckboys I think I could handle in a brawl. And I am not a fighter.

Pleasantly surprised by this. I won’t pretend I knew who Richard Hawley was until this roll, but I’m glad I do now. I get why “The Ocean” is his top track on most (all?) streaming platforms. It’s interesting and it develops beautifully over the course of its runtime. The decision to include strings as a sort of downtempo attempt at alt rock trends of the 90s and 2000s really worked for me. Listening to the album all the way through and then letting the first track come back on is an extremely rewarding experience. Will probably throw this one on again from time to time.

an example of the power of a good rhythm section more punk to me than “post” punk, but yeah, I get it. solid album. guitars that bite. fun energy.

do you think that because "every day [she had] to cry", she is now "all cried out"? this was an album that sounded really cool and it is also an album i would have liked a lot more if she weren't so goddamn whiny.

the people yearn for the return of hiphop that fucks (this is hiphop that fucks)

Yesterday morning I wrote a long ass bullshit post about how I hate T Swift as a person (I do; I make no apologies nor concessions about this) but how this album is genuinely good and probably also represents her peak as an artist. I deleted it because it was annoying and pretentious and not worth reading lmao T Swift’s music is not for me, and neither is she. I wish I could separate my dislike for her from her music, but I really struggle to do that. But I recognize that this is a *good* album and hopefully this score sort of reconciles my personal distaste with my recognition of her artistry as being better in 1989 than it ever will be again

this is kinda boring fr

seeing zappa twice within a month or two is really cool, even if this album is just a really long SNL skit. as always, cool guitar work from zappa-- this is expected-- but the rest is just a little too goofy for this to make it onto my "i will play this album again" list. it was fun to listen to once, and i feel that once is enough

STAAAAAND IN THE PLACE WHERE YOU WEEEEEHHHHHHRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

i have no idea how many times i listened to this album my senior year of high school (I discovered it maybe a year after she died), but it was as lot, and my love for this record then will positively influence my rating of it now; there is no helping this. i love what amy winehouse was doing. this album has such a reverence for 50s/60s jazz and pop singers while being uniquely her own, and so few artists are able to do this. adele, probably. off the top, i'm thinking of few other as-powerful female vocalists who are shaking things up and leaving indelible impressions on the amorphous, always-growing genre. i mean, go listen to "Take The Box" and tell me who else sounds this fucking cool in 2026. not just *good*, but fucking *cool*, dude. so many styles covered here, and there's so so so much to love. big fan of the sax inclusion in "In My Bed", and the intro could have been a collab between Winehouse and Fitzgerald had they been alive at the same time. probably, she should have gone to rehab. i have to think we'd still be listening to new music from amy winehouse if she'd survived beyond 2011.

it was hard to not give this a 5 based on pure reactionary tendencies. i saw we rolled Fleet Foxes, i got so excited, i fucking *love* this band, so i wanted to click 5!!! it is a great album!!! but then i remembered that for me, Helplessness Blues is a 5, and I like this one less, so it can't be a 5. sad. but it's ok. a 4 is still great. not to be annoying about it, but this was one of my Formative AlbumsTM. i had a close friend in high school whose older brother introduced me to Ragged Wood (and by extension the rest of FF's catalogue). he also introduced me to St. Vincent, so that's cool. i must have listened to this album backwards and forwards a hundred times in the coming months. he drove me home one night and was like "u gotta hear blue ridge mountains dude it'll change your life" and like yeah that's dramatic but it also isn't incorrect Ragged Wood became one of the first songs i learned how to play (with my friend's brother no less) that really filled me with some zest while playing. other songs i was like yeah cool okay here's how to play this, but Ragged Wood was just so much fucking fun to jam out to, especially with another guitarist in the room! the energy is this album is, to me, fairly unique. each song taken individually isn't doing a whole lot to raise the roof, but taken together, i think this album is full of momentum, dynamism, and compelling instrumentation that ranges from church hymnals to folk to alt rock. this band is so talented.

tell you what, these horns fuck. this is a groovy album! some funky bass shit happening in "María Lionza" to break things up juuuust when the album starts to feel a little samey. i struggled between giving it a 3 and saying "it's a high three tho" or just giving it a 4, and the longer i listen to the second half of the album specifically, the more i think it's a 4. while i may not revisit this one nearly as often as other 4s i've given out, i feel like this album does meet my completely arbitrary and largely artificial criteria for scoring a 4

almost completely forgettable and annoying walls of sound. if you had shown me the cover and asked me to guess what it sounded like, i probably could've gotten close to what sonic youth did here. it's rare i've skipped a track on the albums we roll that i haven't heard, but I had to skip "Death to Our Friends". and whhhyyyy is "Madonna, Sean, and Me" seven minutes long?? actually don't answer that. i don't fucking care. this album sucks.

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I'm tempted to rate this higher to spite the other, stupider reviews of this album on the website. One person complained about the length of the album (it's like an hour), another complained that it's a "shite House album" (ok everything with groovy synths and samples is house ig), and another said that it "was just noise". are we listening to the same album? i mean, i'm not gonna pretend it's one of my favorites, and i dunno that i'll listen to this one again anytime soon, but i think it's pretty cool. you've got some disco elements, lots of funk, some soul, some fun mixing and sampling happening... it might not be incredible (feeling pretty bad about "Theme from 'Reportage'"), but it's far from the bad album the lower star reviews make it out to be. maybe it's just internet sensationalism, idk. i found it to be mostly interesting (minus a track or two) and rewarding to listen to. i wasn't familiar with Coldcut prior to this, and not that *everything* has to be reduced to ingenuity, but i do think it's neat to hear something like this from 1989! if you'd told me this was late 90s or early 2000s, i would've totally believed you. "Stop This Crazy Thing" is pretty cool.

I *love* Cheap Trick. They are part of the trifecta (The Beatles, Led Zeppelin) I was raised on. I don't love this album more than Heaven Tonight or even In Color, but there are some sizzling performances here; I suspect this is the reason Budokan was picked and not a studio album. I was negative sixteen years old when this concert happened, so who knows how good it actually was, but "I Want You to Want Me" was apparently a real face-melter. "Surrender" is an obvious classic. Not that anybody gives a shit, but I do wonder why, stacked against Heaven Tonight, for example, this album was ultimately selected. I don't have the book, so I can't check. My rating of this album is colored a lot by my love for the band and by my appreciation for their live sound, even though I would probably rate a few studio albums higher. I think divorced from my affection for Cheap Trick and my love for their studio sound, I'd probably drop this a star. I have some really great memories of being like seven and my dad and I belting "Surrender" and some others in his '94 camry. Good shit. Glad to see Cheap Trick on the list, even if it's just this album.

YEEEEAAAA FUCKING FINALLY We've rolled some incredible "Alex was insufferable about this band" albums recently, and this is almost near the top. Anyone hated to see me coming in 2009 when I discovered Jack White, because in my brain I was the first person to listen to The White Stripes extensively (as a note, the band formed in Detroit in 1997, so... I was not). This album is not my favorite, to be fair: I think both White Blood Cells and De Stijl are better, but this is probably ranked third (text me for a definitive listing of The White Stripes albums; you'll hate where I put Icky Thump). "Black Math" is one of the first garage rock songs with a solo that really moved me! The same is true of "Ball and Biscuit", though. I came to Elephant from TWS self-titled album, which was incredible ("Broken Bricks" stands out to me as a favorite from that one). To me, Jack White is a master of what I guess I'd call "blue collar guitar playing", which is to say he played simple, somewhat rote riffs and solos on a piece of shit Airline fiberglass-bodied guitar from the 60s (and also a shitty acoustic literally from Sears, which I believe he still owns) but managed to really capture the passion and unshakeable zeal of rock from the motor city. For musicians who fall quickly and dangerously into gear-acquisition syndrome (this is sometimes me) instead of spending time actually playing their instruments, Jack White stands as an emblem of what happens if you stop caring about the gear you own, get the fuck in your garage, and play some fucking music (as he commands in "Little Room" from White Blood Cells)* This is an album that, for me, exists as a part of a genre-defining run of garage rock excellence, but what's so good about Elephant is that it marks a turn for TWS in their sonic identity. Get Behind Me Satan, which would release two years later, leans more into Jack's piano playing and unique blues-infused rock ballads while maintaining the same affection and reverence for The White Stripes's earlier work. This isn't a perfect album, but it comes fucking close. This is like a 4.8. *Jack White in 2026 does suffer a bit from the grandiosity of his name: he has a Fender signature that's $3,700, and early 2000s Jack would have laughed if you had told him that's where he'd end up 20ish years later. On the bright side, 2024's No Name is a return to The White Stripes's sound, so maybe he's looking for his roots, idk.

I’ve been lazy so far this week because of the snow days. Brain gets hazy. Good album. I like Neil Young here. Wish we’d kept a cleaner separation so I didn’t sour to him with CSN&Y.

Cool instrumentation hampered by a samey, uninteresting vocal performance that is very much a product of its time. This particular subcategory of the über broad “alternative” genre feels very much not for me. And of course they’re fucking British. I dunno. It’s like trying to be Daft Punk, Passion Pit, Two Door Cinema Club, and The xx all at once. I don’t feel convinced. It doesn’t weave any of those threads particularly well, but I could see the appeal for people who want alt music that sounds sort of like soft house music.

I didn't know who she was prior to this, so i'm thankful to the Roulette Gods for giving me something new! it's pretty solid, nothing world-shaking, but it gives me a sort of Carole-King-if-more-folk vibe, which is not a bad thing (I fuggin love Carol King). Actually, her sound reminds me of lots of those 70s/early 80s singer-songwriters, which i'm sure is not a coincidence. didn't really dislike any of the tracks, but I wasn't moved by many of them, either. I did like "Banks of the Pontchartrain" a lot.

"The Humpty Dance" is an incredible piece of work but what a fucking 180 degree turn into "The Way We Swing" I mean jesus christ i'm not gonna pretend I know what to say about this album. I don't. I'll give them this: no one will ever be able to say this album isn't interesting to listen to. Whatever it is, it's not boring!

It’s blondie.

super good stuff. I don't have mixed feelings about this particular live album; this version of "all apologies" and "about a girl" are my favorite versions of those songs. i'm not a huge nirvana fan to begin with, but this album is really good and I hadn't revisited it since I was in maybe late middle school or early high school. this was a fun thing to revisit, and now that I remember it exists, i'll probably revisit it again.

quintessentially 80s, which unfortunately hurts it a little bit. for me, anyway, this isn't memorable as a good album; it just includes all the staples of 80s synth/goth rock. that said, I don't dislike it, I just can't imagine seeking this out myself for a repeated listen. after all, I can only handle so many reverb-heavy drum machines, and other bands do it better. cool album art and band name, though. it has that going for it.

This is pretty cool! Sad about Emmylou Harris. I wasn’t ever a huge fan of Gram Parsons, but I just let myself vibe to this one while I cooked breakfast for my wife, and it was really nice. Would probably listen to this again in the future when the mood strikes.

I took absolutely no time for me to get sick of the glass breaking sound effect. Maybe it took even less time for me to get tired it the percussion. Maybe there’s a “jilted generation” to whom this appeals. But my guess is the guy was (is?) just an incel.

silky fucking smooth. a contender for one of my top three favorites albums of the 80s. shockingly good for a variety of reasons, but especially impressive that this was sade's first album (which i did not know at first!) man when that sax gets going in "Frankie's First Affair", she's got me in a vice grip. there's just some electric about these songs, and i love that they're not even that technically impressive. sade just has a great fucking voice, and the band chose (very wisely) to not cover the lead performance with unnecessary musical elements. everyone plays together really nicely here; there's a strong sense of group cohesion.

a very nearly perfect album. defined both a genre and a movement. absolutely transformative music with the kind of staying power rivaled only perhaps by the beatles (though influences obviously go in different directions). marvin gaye is in the holy trinity of Motown for me (Jackson 5, Gaye, Stevie Wonder), and without this work, we don't have like half of the R&B/soul/etc. catalogue that we have today. the first time i heard "Let's Get it On", I *think* it was in the context of a shitty meme, but once I actually listened to the album, I was like what the *fuck*, this is glorious! this album absolutely fucks. in the most joyous and least bizarre way i can articulate this, i feel like so much love has been made to this album (tied perhaps by teenaged millennials in the late 2000s listening to the Panic! debut album from 2005) and i have to think that's what marvin gaye would have wanted. i don't think you can listen to this album and hate anyone at all. it's all love, man. the sax in "If I Should Die Tonight" heals something in my soul every time i listen to it. fuck.

i love an introspective album, especially when the lyricism is as good as this one. while i don't like it as much as kendrick's later work (i think i prefer every subsequent album to this one), i can appreciate the gravitas of this album and i respect both the musicality and the storytelling, even if there are some songs ("Bitch, Don't Kill My Vibe", I am so so so sorry) that I don't really like. i think "The Art of Peer Pressure" is fucking poetry, and "Poetic Justice" is such an earworm for me. it's a low four, but i guess it's still a four. i'm inclined to give it a 3, but when i like about other albums i've given a 3, i don't think i like them as much as this one. whatever. numbers are beginning to feel somewhat arbitrary.

this used to be one of my least favorite Beatles albums, but that's because i used to be a stupid fucking idiot

when my students ask me what kind of music i listen to, i usually say everything except EDM and early 2000s country. when they ask if i know any "good country", this is the artist (and occasionally the album, although others come first) i think of. i don't give a shit about the "akshually there is good new country too!!!" argument because of course there is-- there is "good new" everything-- and because for me, it's just too difficult to top willie nelson. sorry. but not really. also the album art is great. i love the simplicity and the color choices. had to google susanna clark (of course the author is the first result), and i'm glad i did. learned a lil bit.

i luv paul simon and his cool coat in the album art. i also like that this album still retains some S&G sound even though he'd split from art by this point. i'm an art apologist and i don't like any of paul simon's solo work more than S&G, but because this album sounds pretty similar, i'm quite fond of it

won't ever complain about more Motown stuff. "Love Woke Me Up This Morning" is an incredible track. So rich and evocative! these dudes can harmonize with the best of them. really solid album.

what the fuck is that annoying ass fucking instrument in fucking "roller coaster" it is *way* too pronounced and fucks with everything else in the song i hate hate hate hate it however, the rest surprised me. pretty solid! i expected it to be pretentious and annoying because of the band and album names (and to some degree the album art; although i like it, i was sure i knew what i was gonna hear from the art alone), but i was happy to be wrong. there are a couple of genres dear to my heart in this one (garage rock chief among them), and there are some really interesting almost Stones-y or even Doors-y sounds coming from whatever this vocalist's name is (too lazy to Google). i think there were some risks taken here, which is always cool. it's the 60s, so people are doing whatever they want, and i think that's rad. some risks paid off more than others, but that's okay. overall i think this album offers some good variety and unique sounds, but i don't know how often i'd revisit it by choice.

i was sort of excited for this because of the minimalistic album art and a band name i was totally unfamiliar with, and it ended up being kiiiiinda cool by virtue of being really different from what we've had recently, but it's a real shame that this is so damn boring.

this would be a really fun album to listen to if i hadn't ever heard any other music before

idk pretty solid live album. i haven't listened to thin lizzy outside of the hits, so it was neat to hear some songs i didn't know "live" for the first time. would maybe put this one on again. i quite liked "still in love with you"

Fucking *finally*. I have been dying for some jazz. And big band jazz is a great way to start (i say start because I don't think we've rolled jazz yet? idk i can't remember) By 1958, obviously big bands were sort of on their way out in favor of the would-be traditional solos, trios, and quartets of jazz musicians that would rule the 60s; still, though, this album (or more generally, count basie and his orchestra) left indelible marks on the jazz scene at its absolute peak. coming on the heels of work from people like duke ellington, it was virtually impossible for this album not to be a critical success. and thank god it was: while *this* particular album wasn't necessarily fundamental in my early jazz appreciation years, it definitely ranks in the top ten (it would take me a week or more to decide my top three, but i don't think count basie, or duke ellington for that matter, rank that high). when i first heard count basie in i think 2012, i was walking around chicago at night in 2012 and there are few, i would argue, better places to listen to jazz if you want the love of it to become a personality trait. in the next decade alone i would end up at jazz clubs all over the world trying to find local groups that could do what these guys were doing. i found some! people will tell you that it's hard to beat nyc if you want to find good jazz in the 21st century (as many cities, especially those abroad, began to fizzle out as Blue Note clubs and their similarly-styled contemporaries closed), but don't listen to the purists: there's still all kinds of cool shit going on in chicago, in denver, and hell, even in prague. prague might have one of the best jazz clubs i've ever been to; better than most in paris, to my mind. this album is so fucking great for so many reasons. hefti's arrangements are among the best big band arrangements to have ever been played by anyone ever, and i don't think that's a bold claim-- i think that's actually a pretty lukewarm take. the standards that are included here ("Li'l Darlin'", "Corner Pocket", etc.) are some of my favorite records OF those standards, making this album infinitely re-listenable. swing jazz is so so so important for the emergence of hard bop, which is my favorite. i think we'll eventually roll some of my favorite hard bop records, and i'm excited for that. count basie is one of the first to really hone the walking bass, call-and-response lines from different instrument sections, and my absolute favorite, the blues influence. these two genres play together like starsky and fucking hutch, and you can hear it all over this record. "Whirly-Bird" might be one of the greatest big band standards of all time. you cannot listen to this song and feel anything but electricity and joy. this album fucking slaps. count basie is a fucking legend. thank god and the USA for big band jazz.

i will never outright disrespect queen latifah, but i have a lot of questions about why "Mama Gave Birth to the Soul Children" came out the way that it did

when my best friend started dating my ex-girlfriend three days after we broke up in september of 2012, he also showed me this album! i think it is very good, but probably not great. "Jane Says" is still a bop and I listen to it regularly. i had forgotten most of the other songs on this album, and it was good to revisit them and think about that time my best friend wanted to play COD Zombies one night after school a week after the breakup and was like "can shawna also get on with us? we'll probably have to revive her a lot but it'll be fine" and i was like "sure man i mean if you don't think it's weird" and he was like "nahhh it'll be fine man!" and then we were all on mic together and it was definitely weird like he said it wouldn't be

we've been rolling pretty good recently. man, i love the early black keys! shoutout to former members of The Davis Bricks reading this who played 10 AM Automatic with me in 2016-2017. this album is also pretty singularly responsible for the formation of one of the high school bands I was in, which we called Cavemen Are People Too. It was, like early The Black Keys, a blues rock duo. we didn't have a drummer and we never played a show, so it was one of THOSE high school bands. but we had stickers on our guitar cases, so that has to count for something. we just jammed in the garage three times a week. funnily enough, "Ten Cent Pistol" came on Pandora once while I was cleaning my room in probably the 11th grade-- might have been my Led Zeppelin station, actually. I remember stopping and thinking woah, I need to write this one down to revisit later. At that point, this album was probably a year or less old; I jotted the name down, listened to the rest, and was like "what the fuck this is incredible." the rest is history. i'm tempted to rate this higher out of nostalgia, but then i remember albums like Thickfreakness and Rubber Factory exist, and if those are 5s for me, this one can't be. but this is an extremely high 4. these tracks have aged well, and it's a good record to fall back on when you get disillusioned by the fact that in 2026, The Black Keys can no longer decide whether they want to be this weird pop rock bullshit or classic blues rock. for me, this was the last album that kept that old school early 2000s sound.