Pleasant enough. Close to you is a lovely song that was played at my Auntie's funeral. Interesting cover of Help! The album is beautifully arranged and she's got a lovely, calming voice. Very easy listening. Won't be top of my playlists, but I might pop it on when my mum and dad next come over for a meal.
1000 albums to listen to before you die they said. That doesn't necessarily mean they're good! A car crash is unpleasant, but you feel compelled to look at it!
There are some really good songs on this album - Long Promised Road, Feel Flows, 'Til I Die are really diverting and demand repeated listening. Surf's Up is bonkers, but intriguing. Songs about dirty water and student demonstrations are well meaning but the songs are difficult to listen to, and I lost interest on songs about feet and trees!
Not a complete waste of time, and I'm glad I listened to it, if only to realise how beautiful and how bad the Beach Boys can be on the same album.
Marvin Gaye, the original Chef from South Park, wants to give his woman good lovin', probably a few times. A soul classic, but at my age, if I started listening to this too much, I'm just going to worry my wife! I preferred What's Going On.
Think of Deep Purple, you think of Smoke on the Water, and that mighty guitar riff is right in the middle of this album. Never Before and When A Blind Man Cries might be even better songs.
Beyond these songs, Space Truckin' is a bit Spinal Tappish and the other tracks rely to much on guitar solos and they don't really float my boat.
A 5 star album that became a big part of my life and helped me get through my mid twenties. There are so many happy memories associated with some of these songs, from listening to a group of primary school leavers rewriting one of the songs to sing how they had got through school with the help of a "Mitreball" to the songs blaring out through coach speakers on a football road trip through Germany.
For album highlights, close your eyes and stick a pin in the track listing's.
A great album and an enjoyable listen. Our Lips Are Sealed is the standout track for me, but Tonite and We Got The Beat are full of confidence and attitude. Belinda Carlisle's voice suits this music better than the middle of the road pop she was singing a few years later and the whole thing sounds like they were having a lot of fun. A few filler tracks towards the end, but altogether an above average album.
A pleasant enough listen. It makes me think of my father in law, who liked his jazz and big bands. It's not my go to type of music, but you have to appreciate the drama and musicality of it all. Let The Good Times Roll had me tapping my feet and Don't Let The Sun Catch You Crying was another great production. I doubt I'll listen to the album again though.
The kindest way to describe 1984 is a bit of a shit sandwich. Jump is excellent, Panama follows it well, but then we get an assortment of strange and sleazy songs in the middle that give me the cringe. I'll Wait is a similar but poorer version of Jump, and the 2 songs at the end are passable.
After the opening tunes. I expected better.
Sure, this type of modern folk music isn't my go-to genre, but this is perfectly listenable. I enjoyed its peace and complexities and had the album on repeat during the day. There were no real highlights - Quiet Houses and Blue Ridge Mountains maybe being the most prominent in my mind - but the songs were consistent and I never felt a need to skip any.
I will check out more Fleet Foxes material when in need of a calm day.
A bit of Latin joy here, and great to listen to while you're pottering around doing the housework or preparing your evening meal, as it's impossible to listen to without swinging your hips and imagining that you're out there on the Strictly dance floor. If your only exposure to mambo, salsa and cha cha cha was stuff like Lou Bega's Mambo Number 5, this album shows you how it was done properly.
A solid 3 stars.
I knew almost half of the songs on Rubber Soul pretty well before I listened to this today, I was looking forward to listening to the entire album and fully expected to give it a 5 star review. However, maybe because The Beatles have set such a high bar, it didn't quite meet my expectations. Sure, songs like Norwegian Wood and In My Life are beautifully crafted and were a different style to previous Beatles songs. They showed their willingness to use a growing range of instruments to develop a more expensive sound, and some of the songs that were new to me, especially You Won't See Me and If I Needed Someone, are really good songs that I'm surprised I haven't heard before.
However, the country style Ringo Starr fronted What Goes On falls flat for me, and the lyrics of Run For Your Life are unnecessarily dark and end the album on a sour note.
Still, 4 stars is good. The fact I was expecting better shows how brilliant The Beatles were.
Where to begin?
Firstly, Hard Rock? Really? Seems far too Middle of the Road for that.
Next, lyrics: Now you fly, through the sky, never asking why. And you fly all around, 'til someone shoots you down. (This is from a song about a seagull that knows about the end of the world). It's hardly profound).
The most well known track, Can't Get Enough of Your Love, would be better off a couple of minutes shorter, and while I found the whole album pleasant on the first listen, I found myself getting bored when playing it through again.
It's not all bad - Bad Company and Movin' On maintained my interest for a few more listens, but in the main this is just pretty soulless 'dad rock'
R&B, hip hop and soul. Not normally my thing. But this album transcends it's genres and sends out important messages that were ahead of their time. Personal highlights include Ex-Factor, Forgive Them Father and Everything Is Everything, but there are many more.
I can hear Stevie Wonder influences in some of the songs, and you can see how this album has gone on to influence more recent artists, male and female, from a range of genres. It's a shame that her solo output was limited to pretty much this album. She had important things to say.
Before today, my only experience of Isaac Hayes was from Shaft, and his soulful, and hilariously inappropriate advice to the children of South Park, and this was a nice, relaxing listen today. A bit surprising that there were only 4 songs on the album, but the songs rarely got tedious, even when pushing quarter of an hour long. That said, my favourite song was the shortest, One Woman.
It's a solid 3 stars from me, but the highlight was when Spotify churned out Theme from Shaft after the album had finished. Absolute tune.
At last! After a few weeks of soul, folk and rock, an album that makes me truly FEEL something!
Settle down people with smutty minds - you know what I mean!
It's loud and intimidating but you want it louder. You want to be immersed in the aggression and strange, unsettling sounds and sequences and it reminds you of all the things that piss you off and how fucked up everything is at the moment. And you just bounce all over the place before emerging at the end, completely regulated. It's just genius!
Apart from the three singles, Narayan and Climbatize are brilliant and bookend Firestarter brilliantly. There's no real filler to be honest. A consistent stomper!
Thank you.
Very much a curate's egg of an album here. Some strange production choices ensure that my friends and I sang a more joyous version of He's Got The Whole World In His Hands during our primary school assemblies and some of the other songs sound like they were recorded in a swimming pool! However, there are saving graces in the New York City Song, and the incredible Your Own Back Yard which has a beauty and an honesty that brings shivers to the spine and tears to the eyes.
This transported me off to the US Deep South, swamp blues and spiritual voodoo magic, and you get a feeling of cultural significance. This is my introduction to Dr John and favourite songs are Jump Sturdy, and the incredibly strange Croker Courtbouillon, which appears to be about fish soup and for some reason stirred up memories ranging from The Addams Family to Scooby Do.
Not entirely my thing, but altogether an intriguing listen.
This was an album that I was aware of, had read articles about and noted, but never got round to listening to, so thanks for throwing this out. It's an enjoyable listen, but a bit of a surprise to be on this list.
Girls Just Want To Have Fun and Time After Time are the stand out tracks as you'd expect, but Money Changes Everything and All Through The Night (with a chorus that sounds copied by German band Freiheit on their hit Keeping The Dream Alive) are also high standard.
A whole range of genres with nods to 60s American Rock and Roll, it's pretty consistent throughout, but I'm not too fussed about I'll Kiss You or Yeah Yeah.
Still, it's a high 3 or a low 4, and today I'm feeling generous.
It's been a while since I had listened to this album. I had forgotten how good it was, from the emotional depth of Nightswimming and Everybody Hurts, to the lesser known tracks, especially Sweetness Follows and Ignoreland.
Nightswimming is one of those rare songs that I can remember where I was and what i was doing the first time I heard it.
Consistently good, timeless and deserving of 5 stars.
I really dont think my life has been enhanced by listening to this, and bearing in mind that I have been awarding 2 stars to albums that have at least held my interest for at least a few songs, this album gets the award for the first one to get a single star.
I liked Gimme All Your Lovin', it reminded me of parties in my teens. But the rest of the songs were either uninteresting or just poor, the guitar playing was bland and the lyrics were laughable (apparently, she has legs right down to her fanny!!)
A waste of my time.
Sometimes, less is a bit more, and you have to take 6 perfectly formed tracks over a mixture of decency and filler. There's so much to enjoy here, from the bonkers experimentation of TVC15 to the funk and pumping bass of Stay, from the opening 10 minute epic of Station to Station to the beauty of Wild Is the Wind. And then there's Golden Years.
Ive complained about bands that overplay on guitar solos before. Theres a subtle difference between self aggrandisement and just making a song that sounds better because of what the musician is adding to it. It makes the song, or the album, greater than the sum of it's parts. Excellent.
There's rock music, and then there's rock music! Having recently been underwhelmed by ZZ Top and The Black Notes, having another rock band on the 1001 was beginning to irritate me.
But this album's brilliant! From the thrilling opening of Cecilia Ann, through the rawness of Rock Music and the sheer 'weirdness' of Is She Weird, this album feels different and has a freshness that defies its 35 years. I have no idea what makes Stormy Weather so great, but I'm not going to overthink it, I'll just go with it. Awesome.
It took a while to get in to this album, and even after a few listens I can't get beyond describing it more than 'just alright'. Around this time I listened to comparable bands like The Strokes and The White Stripes, both of which did better albums than this. The songs don't change much throughout, although there were a few standout tracks in Next Girl, Howlin for You and I'm Not The One.
The Black Keys were new to me. They were OK but I'm not overly fussed about finding out more about them.
Dont mind this bit of spaced out soul-funk at all! Maggot Brain, the title track, is pure 70s chillout, and the fact that it's 10 minutes plus long doesn't bother me at all - i could listen to this all day. Also loved Hit It And Quit It and the sound effects thrown in to Wars Of Armageddon.
It's a total stoner album, and if i was listening to this with a big fat bifter it would be 5 stars all the way. But I wasn't, so it'll have to settle for 3.
Full disclosure at the outset - i can't stand Mick Hucknall! However, he is one fantastic singer, and this album covers bases of jazz, blues, soul and pop, all of which he sings brilliantly. Strongest tracks on the album are Holding Back The Years and Money's Too Tight To Mention, and song that is so hugely apt now - we're talking 'bout Donny, Donny! - and there's no let down on the unreleased tracks either, with Heaven being a standout. I can't hear Red Box without thinking of the 80s kids programme 'Don't You Open That Trap Door though.
No 5 stars due to Mick, but a solid 4.
So, where do you go after the RocknRoll of Faith, seductive pop of Father Figure, disco funk of I Want Your Sex and blues of One More Try? Well, it looks like mediocrity! The opening 4 tracks are really good, if you pop off for a quick loo break during I Want Your Sex part 2, but there isn't too much that stands out beyond that. Releasing Monkey and Kissing a Fool scraped the barrel that was the George Michael cash cow at the time and the rest of the songs are just filler. A middling 3 stars because of the opening songs.
I'm not a fan of gothic rock, but I had gothy mates in the 80s and went to party's where there music boomed out (I was the one in the Erasure, or Pet Shop Boys t-shirt looking a bit out of place) so listening to songs like This Corrosion, and the stonking bass of Lucretia My Reflection bring back happy memories and are decent tunes. The rest of the album doesn't really hold much for me. I'm not really sure what it all means. I recognise that it's an important album in the goth genre, but it doesn't make me want to listen to much more.
I like a lot of The Cure's songs, and spent a lot of time last year listening to Songs Of A Lost World. This early album had a far sparser feel to it. The instrumentals A Reflection and The Final Sound set an unsettling tone that carries on in songs like Secrets and At Night. Stand out track is A Forest. The Cure went on to bigger things and I prefer that more expansive sound, but this was decent work.
It took a long time to get through all 28 songs on this double album, but it was worth it and it was to the bands credit that there were shifts in genre throughout. So some of the rockier, grungier songs didn't float my boat, but there was plenty for me to enjoy in the quieter moments of Galapogos, By Starlight and Farewell and Goodnight. And it's a pretty impressive feat to put together so many different tracks, and be consistently good. A first listen to the Smashing Pumpkins for me, and I doubt it will be the last.
A quality album from a quality band. There are so many nods to influences such as The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Who, yet The Jam forged their own path and became massive influences to bands that followed, such as The Stone Roses and Arctic Monkeys.
English Rose, 'A' Bomb in Wardour Street and Down At The Tube Station At Midnight are favourites here, and album that I'm embarrassed to not have heard before. I'm looking forward to more Jam albums in the 1001.
I've grown up listening to Simon and Garfunkel. My parents loved them, my wife loves them and I was lucky enough to see Art Garfunkel live a few years ago. Bookends contains a few of the classics, in Mrs Robinson, America and Hazy Shade of Winter. Old Friends and Punky's Dilemma are also warm, comfortable songs.
Save the Life of my Child doesn't really fit with the rest of the album, and feels a bit jarring, while Overs and Fakin' It, while not unpleasant, just seem to be going through the motions. A low 4 stars.
Yesterday morning, I was all "Keith who?" and wondering whether I was going to stay awake during piano compositions of 25 plus minutes. But then you listen to the music. You marvel at the improvisation, the handspeed, the endless jaw-dropping connotations around a simple theme or motif and the thrilling segues between the sections.
And then you find out about the story, the late night concert and the 'broken' piano and you realise the genius of the musician you are listening to. Of the albums I have listened to so far, this is the most mindful and moving. It is real time emotion, where one subtle key change can instantly elevate or totally devastate you.
It is a beautifully crafted musical collection, and the easiest five stars that I'll ever give.
I first listened to this album a few months ago, just before Glastonbury 25, and it made so little an impression that the only songs I remembered when listening again this time was Maggie May, which I'd already heard to death! Mandolin Wind is a decent song, the opening title track doesn't let the album down and (I Know) I'm Losing You rocks out nicely, but it's just too unmemorable and in a few months I'll have forgotten that I listened to it again.
3 stars - average score for an average album.
Oh, this takes me back! It was 2004, my first born son was one year old, and this album and Hot Fuss by The Killers were on repeat play in our house, and over 20 years later it still sounds fantastic. Loads of fun songs here, from the stomping Laura through to the downright Filthy / Gorgeous, plus an art of taking complete ownership of a cover version by making it completely different from the original Comfortably Numb! But highlights keep coming, from the poignant It Can't Come Quickly Enough to the brilliant The Skins, so good it only scraped on as a bonus track!
An essential pop album from the noughties. 5☆
At first listen, wasn't a big fan of all the emotional self loathing and drug promotion, but after coming back to it a couple of times I had to admire the albums raw openness. It compares well to other albums of a similar genre, like Nevermind or something by Pearl Jam, and this was probably first out of the stable. Tracks that stand out for me include Rooster and Them Bones.
A low 4.
Points of interest to me here. I loved the cover of Just A Gigolo that David Lee Roth did in the middle 80s. It was one of our party standards at the time and it was good to hear the original. 1 star earned.
A second star is earned by learning that this is actually King Louis, the King of the Swingers, and due to my dad's love of The Jungle Book, it was a film that I was brought up on. If I Want To Be Like You was on here, I'd have pushed up to a low 3 stars, but a high 2 will do. It's fun and happy enough, but I lost interest after a couple of plays. Glad I listened. Next!
There's some really good songs on this album. Under The Bridge is a brilliant, desolate song and Give It Away contains endless fabulous riffs. But 17 tracks is a lot to maintain consistency, and although there are other notable high points (Breaking the Girl, Suck My Kiss) there's too much bland in there. If songs like Apache Rose Peacock and Sir Psycho Sexy weren't on it, it might have pushed up towards 4 stars, but it'll have to settle for a middling 3.
Steven Morrissey is rightly, and predictably, indignant about a lot of things here, and he communicates this beautifully in some of these songs. It's very difficult to disagree with anything that he says as well, and after listening to albums full of artists struggles against drugs and personal demons, it's not a bad thing to hear someone railing against the intolerance and the lack of action of others. In an album highlight, I'm glad that he has forgiven Jesus's. I can imagine that a lot of gay people haven't. And there's a beautiful simplicity to I'm Not Sorry that makes it instantly memorable.
A highly listenable 4 star album.
First heard this during the first COVID lockdown, and for a debut album, it's brilliant. To produce radio friendly tracks such as the brilliant Electric Feel, stylophone-esque Kids and stonking opener Time To Pretend, and then throw in complexity and intrigue on tracks like Weekend Wars and The Youth (with it's totally unexpected key change!), this is a record that gives on many levels. It drops off a little towards the end, but definitely deserves a high 4 stars. Not sure what happened to MGMT after this, but I doubt they hit this high watermark again.
This album takes emotive topics such as police racism and the Monsters 'among us', allied to the pride and beauty of being black, and mixes it all with hints of contemporary R&B, gospel and downtempo trip-hop. It's a bit Nightmare on Wax-ish and not bad at all. And telling people to put their guns down in such a calm, matter-of-fact way gives it more impact. High points for me were found in Hard Life, Eternal Life and Monsters. The music's not all to my taste, but the fact that we need songs like this is a poor reflection on society as a whole. I'd not heard of SAULT yesterday, but now I'm interested in checking out their back catalogue. Thank you 1001. A high 3☆.
There was a bit of nostalgia here listening to Fight For Your Right and No Sleep 'Til Brooklyn, and Slow And Low was OK, but beyond that I struggled to get anything from this. Taken at face value, it's shouty, tedious frat-boy hip-hop. If you take it as a satire, it remains shouty, tedious, frat-boy hip-hop but you don't have to take it so seriously. However, back in the day, I don't remember it being labelled as satirical (a group of English comedians released a song called No Sleep 'Til Bedtime to cash in a bit), and it seemed to be championed by the people that maybe it was poking fun at! Either way, apart from a few songs, not for me. A low 2.
This was a nice present of a Christmas Eve recommendation. I love this album, and can still remember seeing Tracy Chapman performing at Wembley on Nelson Mandela's 70th birthday concert. After that, she was the name on a lot of people's lips and I, like thousands of others, bought the album on the strength of what we'd seen. It wasn't disappointing then, and its aged really well. A lot of issues from then; apathy, racism and domestic abuse, are still massively relevant. Behind the Wall is such a chilling brilliant song, but then, the whole album is consistently excellent.
I remember playing the cassette for the first time, getting to the end of Side 1, rewinding the tape and listening to it again. I did that for a week, worried that Side 2 couldn't possibly be as good. Listening again now, I do think the standard drops after Baby Can I Hold You, but only slightly. A high 5.
Many thanks to who or whatever decided that this would be an ideal pre-Christmas drop for the inbox. I held it back until Boxing Day, and now I feel that my presents were a little bit more shit than I remembered yesterday.
So it's not a good time to review such a highly regarded album. How do you want your music? Songs like Day Of The Lords and New Dawn Fades are towering, emotional pieces of work and is a massive outpouring that ultimately didn't help Ian Curtis for much longer. You want your music to make you feel something, and this so does, but I'm reaching for a feel good album to listen to now.
Happy Christmas readers. A low 4 for Joy Division.
After a few listens, I'm still not quite sure what this is. Is it a concept album? Is it a soundtrack to a film or play? Is it an educational experience? Is it a bit of self indulgence on the part of the Drive-By Truckers? I haven't a problem that they were moved to write an album about Lynyrd Skynyrd, George Wallace and the duality of the Southern US states. Ronnie and Neil kicks the album off well, with a properly beefed up guitar riff, but I lost interest pretty quickly after that. I'm just not sure why I needed to know about this. I'm glad you're not all racist, but I sort of guessed that anyway, just like I don't think you all sit on your porch and play Duelling Banjos. Not bad, but I won't be listening to it again. A low 2
Thank you Darlene Love, The Crystals, The Ronettes and Bob B Soxx & the Blue Jeans for putting me in a right Christmassy mood. It's great that these versions of the songs are standards in themselves over 60 years after release. Would, and maybe should have been 5 stars, but it has to lose one for the Elephant in the Room, sitting in the corner with a gun in his hand, controlling the knobs and levers.
This was decent enough and got my feet tapping and hips swinging a bit, but I found it a bit repetitive in terms of the music and the lyrics, and I didn't get the same amount of interest with this that I had with the Funkadelic album, Maggot Brain, so this mark is relative to that. I wasn't surprised to hear hints of Kool and the Gang - this album clearly influenced some of their work - but Give Up The Funk sounds so similar to Fame by David Bowie. I wonder which came first.
A high two for me. It was alright, but I'm not a huge fan.
When this came up, my first impulse was 'another American rock band? This list is beginning to get predictable!' However, this album is nothing like predictable, and although it's guitar heavy, it's too simplistic to call it rock. Lots of elements are crammed in to make a distracting piece of work. The New Pollution reminded me of Tomorrow Never Knows by The Beatles, and Where It's At was packed with fun and cheekiness. It's just different! I'd only heard Loser by Beck before today. This has made me want to explore their other work. A solid 4☆.
Was expecting African beats, but got so much more on top. While the lyrics make him sound justifiably irritated with things going on in his world, he still comes across as a joyous, fun and optimistic singer and song writer and this album has had me swinging my hips for a few days - it's very catchy. And even though the songs are long, they dont outstay their welcome. Another reminder of why I wanted to check out the albums on this list. Solid 4☆
