Good album but all Jimmy’s albums are good The Cat and Peter and the Wolf excite me more
Some days this is my favourite REM album. Not today.
Professional intriguing mainstream rock.
Middling good lp. Two towering tracks surrounded by disco slop.
Their 50’s rnb & mid 60’s Motown eras were better.
Oh dear the 80’s weren’t kind to legends from earlier decades were they?
Awful production. Splashy Phil Collins style drums, hideous rubber band bass lines, unnecessary sax solos, and synths being manipulated by people who don’t know what they’re doing.
Poor Tina gamely tries to power through but the song choice does her no favours. Anne Peebles’s understated triumph I Can’t Stand The Rain gets blasted away like it’s Nutbush City Limits. It doesn’t work. The Beatles Help - which probably could have survived a big eighties arrangement with Tina going full throttle gets the soul piano ballad treatment.
The best effort here is Al Green’s Let Stay Together. That’s because it’s producers - Heaven 17 know how to make a synth pop record.
Still it sold well and gave Tina a comfortable old age so every cloud …
Better than expected. I'm giving double the amount of stars I thought I would - two.
After the malaise of the Unforgettale Joshua Tree Fire years U2 stumbled into the 90s and into a career high by trying to sound like Jesus Jones.
The gutars are fantastic it could almost be Andy Gill and the electronic atmospherics are cool.
But Bono is far too high in the mix. He can't let an instrumental passage go by without vocalising unneccessarily. Even in the verses and choruses he's too damn loud and delivers every bloody line with ernest passion forcing you to pay attention to lyrics, which are gibberish. A clique is still a clique and nonesense is still nonesense if you sound like you mean it man.
But the guitar sound is marvelous and that's earned an extra star. Pity you can't hear them!
Superb album - wish there were half stars. It should be 4.5 stars.
I must admit I’m more likely to play KUKL, the Sugarcubes or her 2010s lps than this but hearing this back I’m struck by how her voice and lyrics feel so personal on this lp.
The production makes it feel like it was recorded on the way home from a nineties club. Its remarkable that an avant-garde artist from a remote island was album to capture the mid 90s zeitgeist but this record catapulted her into the mainstream and despite sounding of its time it probably remains the best entry point for someone new to her vision.
Good album. Competant jazz with African flourishes. The African bits are the most impassioned and interesting. The jazz is pretty ordinary though.
Last track the best.
Probably was groundbreaking for jazz listeners at the time but so kuedos for that but modern jazz listeners will have heard this territory explored more adventurously with better results
Good album. Stevie is so talented and at the top of his game at this point in the 70’s that even in second gear, as he is here, it sounds beautiful. It’s laid back and almost easy listening music but it consistently sounds warm, pleasant and interesting.
Good album lots Southern English pastoral whimsy. Far better than the pap his erstwhile colleagues pumped out.
It’s easy to see how this album influenced greats like the Television Personalities. But you’d be better buying a TVP lp than this. The songs are good but much of it is Demo-y. Basic minor chords strummed on an acoustic with minimal overdubs. His next lp showed what he was capable of better.
Cool lp I’d not heard in full. Singer and lyrics are excellent. I like how he’s playing an exaggerated character called Slim Shady complete with cartoon violence. The word play is elegant and ingenious, you feel every word has earned its place.
Backing music is a bit pedestrian and the lp is a bit too long.
Great album. Start of a run of four four star LPs by the Jam. Which is pretty good going for what was a singles band.
There’s a tradition in the British & Irish Isles of bands that make men of a particular age go misty eyed - the Faces, Dr Feelgood, The Jam, The Libertines. People who live in other countries or weren’t 13 at the right moment can love them but it’s different. For me it’s the Jam. Objectively I rarely listen to them now, they’re probably not in my top 50 bands but when I do hear them they’re still damn fine.
If you are getting interested in them I’d start with the compilation Snap! Before any of the LPs
I’m not sure why this is on the list. It’s not a bad album and it’s got John’s voice and the harmonies and some nice originals. But there’s a lot of filler and the producers have softened their sound from the debut. The remaster on streaming services and current pressings as softened it further. I like more oomph in my early Beatles.
Such a great lp! And it’s their debut.
This album does for Northern Soul what the first Specials record did for Ska. Lyrically it is intelligent with street culture and literature combining in a dazzling hotpotch. There isn’t really another lp quite like it because Dexys went into their Come on Eileen phase after this.
Enjoyable album of laid back soul. Where contempories like Whitney caterwall Anita purrs. Still 80's RnB had crummy backing music tat hampered even the best singers and songs.
One of the greatest lps of all time? 7 tracks padded out by unnecessarily soloing. Could have been an ep or 12” single.
Surely there are better albums by this band? It’s got Gillan, Lord, Glover, Paige FFS. Lyrically, half arsed. The best song Highway Star is about going to a gig. Smoke on the Water about waiting to record this album.
Highway Star is pretty good especially Gillan vocals, even Ritchie’s urgent solo contributes to the prosody for once. Smoke has that killer riff. Space Truckin is fun. Lord’s keyboards in Lazy are cool - loop part for two minutes and you’d have a good 4 track ep.
1.5 stars don’t know which way to jump. It’s not as bad as Private Dancer but it’s not as good as any of the two star LPs.
Don’t get me wrong I quite like Kate Bush. I even own this LP on vinyl. But it’s rubbish.
She’s done the late 80’s thing of getting big name musicians in - Alan Stivel, Mick Karn, the Bulgarian Voices. And some of the performances are good. But it results in an incoherent mush with Kate wailing above.
Good album. Pleasant trip hop sounds with Indian fulourishes for your late 90’s dinner party.
Need more grist in my mill.
Ahh the Gen X output of the EMI / Abbey Road posh boy band cookie cutter. At least unlike their Boomer predecessors (Pink Floyd) and Millennial successors (Coldplay) Radiohead at least approach their music with some spirit of adventure.
So here there’s a bit of dub step and electric trickery, and Thom Yorke tries to channel late period Scott Walker. However it would be far more fulfilling to listen to Burial or Tilt.
Great lyrics performed dramatically with a solid backing band. This is a pretty accurate description of being 20 something in 90’s Britain.
A great album. Superb textured guitars. This is the album where the band added focus to the noise. The moment they became important.
Does anyone like Boston? I know they’re big in America but I’ve never met a fan.
Better than I expected, but I had very low expectations based on the hit. Which is clearly their only salvageable song.
Every song overstays its welcome and has hideous unnecessary keyboard swoops and a braindead guitar sound. The singer is shrill. Two songs are especially egregious (Rock n Roll Band and Smokin) chugging ratatatat pub band blues rock with an expensive surface studio sheen. If I could give zero I would every day and twice on Sundays.
Great songs + Great Singer = Great lp.
Second of the first four Beatles I’ve had in my first month. This is the best of that opening run. No covers. Lots of Lennon lead vocals.
Hard to imagine at the time this was probably the best rock album ever and the best British lp since Lonnie Donegan’s An Englishman In America.
From the period in 1968 when psychedelic music became more rootsy. In Traffic’s hands it was pretty uninspiring as they frequently lapse into blues rock. Some nice keyboard flourishes, but the singer is a liability.
The Beatles pop years distilled into this classic.
So all the bands American and Millenial music critics associate with the Cure - I like. They played at the Indie Disco when I was a teen, and most of my friends like them. I like many of their singles. I have seen them live 6 times over 30 years apart. They seem nice people. And I've never liked one of their albums. This one sounds dense but lacks depth. Bob whitters away over the top semmingly without anything meaningful to say just evocative words.
There are good moments in most songs - the opening riff, the squall of title track until Bob starts up for a starter.
The scoreing on this site is a bit mean on records like this. 1 star covers everything between 0 stars and 2 stars. This is probably 1.5 to 1.75 star LP.
This would have been one of the best albums of 1986, sadly 1986 was a very poor year. I think it’s lost some of its impact because it has that 80’s big label production, whist still having one eye on indie and alternative listeners.
The impact of the social conscious lyrics have dimmed as we’re distanced from the events. Their specificness would have been an asset at the time but 40 years on make it harder to connect.
Still there’s lots to admire in the songwriting and performance even if ithe whole is a bit of an historical curio now.
Not bad. The Dan spent 100 hours on the drum sound and ended up not bad.
Should have spent a fraction of that time on the cover. It looks like a Pickwick lp in the Woolies bargain bin.
Title track is a banger but did it need to be 11 minutes? It doesn’t, but when the rest of the album is filler elevator music maybe it has to be.
Buy the 7” version ditch the rest.
Fantastic album.
Superb title track that’s typical of George Jones. No one sung heartbreak like him.
He’s got the best voice in country, dripping with emotion yet every word is clear and phrased to land perfectly, the way Sinatra does.
Billy Sherrill’s production and the arrangements ebb and flow with the music and compliment George. If you’re coming at this from a rock point of view this is clearrly the template for Almost Blue by Elvis Costello.
The last verse of the last track seems to be a justification of a performer turning up pissed. Complex character was George.
Good funky album. Difficult to fault any element of the performance or songwriting.
Ok lp. Singer is a low calorie Marc Almond. Would have been so much better if Marc Almond was the singer. (And Dave Ball did the beats.)
Some good songs with watered down music, singing and production. A low 3.
While the U.K. had punk and new wave America had this. And Boston and Journey. The awful last knockings of classic rock was shrill vocals, lack of harmony, keyboard flourishes and if all ideas run out fill the space with unwanted guitar frills The spandex clad glam metallers that followed must have heard cash tills amongst this ill executed cacophony.
America produced some of the greatest music of all time in the eighties but it was made a long long way from the cars.
Great record. I listened to the mojo version which is the marginally better version.
I love that at a time when music was most forward thinking the Kinks manage to sound of the time whilst being nostalgic. It reminds me of the UK of my childhood. Or maybe my parent’s childhood because I wasn’t born when this was released.
Lyrics are cool. Even the obligatory blues influenced song, which the 60’s guys found so hard to ditch takes a fresh perspective - the last steam powered train in a museum. Actually thanks to the organisations like the ones in the title many steam powered trains run on volunteer owned and operated lines.
I expected this to be unbearable and unlistenable. However there’s some structure here and the singer keeps the caterwauling to a minimum. So if you were expecting the horror of her Christmas lp or Badfinger cover then you’re out of luck. It’s still 1 star though not as bad as The Cars.
Used to really like this album. And its peaks - Androgynous, Answering Machine - remain high. But there’s too much Status Quo or Guns n Roses style mindless riffage on songs like Gary’s Got A Boner and that stops this album from being as good as, Halo of Flies or the Minutemen or every Husker Du album and a 100 other mid eighties post hardcore pre grunge LPs from the states.
Fantastic album. I love how it is lyrically a psychgoeographic exploration of where main songwriter grew up.
Excellent lp. It reminds me of slightly less funky version of Trout Mask Replica.
90’s supergroup that’s less than the sum of its parts (Nirvana, Sunny Day Real Estate, and The Germs). LP starts well but trails off. A bit like their career as founder members were replaced by lesser players leaving Nirvana’s 4th best drummer mugging in the limelight.
This is like all the great 80’s 90’s American bands - Pixies, Dinosaur Jr, Hüsker Dü, Mudhoney and many more with the rough edges shaved off, unfortunately they also took away all the interesting bits.
Good album. Solid performances. Lacks a great song.
1991 the year grunge broke big.
1992 the year grunge broke as classic rockers and metallers ditched the spandex and put on a glum expression.
What grunge lost was its independent spirit, its punk roots and sense of humour and as it imbibed more metal influence it became cheesier.
“ Did she call my name?
I think it's gonna rain
When I dIe?”
Jesus! It’s like a Fast Show sketch.
Still it’s more listenable than the sorts of music they’d have made 5, 10, 15, 20 years before.
I just wish I got the Auteurs today!
Hookworms were a great band. Great live. Their spin off project XAM is great. Their leader’s production work for others was great. Their guitarists post Hookworms work with Yard Act is great. Their first three albums are wonderful.
Then they made his album, which sounds like Hot Chip meets Tame Impala and is as bland as that implies. Got embroiled in a scandal and split.
It’s cold, wet and dark. I have a stinking cold and I’m working from home. This album captured the moment. Is that what heroin addiction feels like?
Fine album. Good songs, sympathetic backing. High 3.
Let’s face it the Who’s best album is The Singles!
Desperate to catch up with the Beatles and The Stones and The Kinks, they seem to have gathered together some songs about abuse in various forms and written a half assed story to bind them all together and called it a rock opera.
I never realised Pinball Wizzard wasn’t about Pinball until I heard it in this context. It’s dimminshed as a result.
Frankly the best track is a 10 minute instrumental Underture. Overall though grim.
Pretty pop punk tunes hampered by tendency to solo.
Springsteenesque Springsteen album. Good Springsteen songs about the usual Springsteen subjects. Production and arrangement is too Springsteeny too many pianos and saxs and crescendos. Vocals are mostly Mumblespringteen which is a plus but on Adam Raised A Cain he belts it out for a bit of contrast.
There are much better Springsteen albums and much worse Springsteen albums but ultimately this remains unapologetically a Springsteen album.
I don’t think I’ve listened to this since I was 13. It’s very silly. Is the humour intentional? Is Bruce self-aware? His phrasing doesn’t always match the music - does he know; does he care? At least he seems to be on the side of the consistently on the side of the underdog. Guitars better than expected. 2.5 maybe?
Quite good. The textures and soundscape is strong.
Doesn’t excite me sorry. 2.5
I love Dinosaur Jrs guitar sound and the way he uses fx. Unusually in this world J brings a classic rock sensibility to his guitar playing but unlike most classic rock and metal influenced guitarists he doesn’t just shread. He uses his skill to enhance the song with a melodic solo that fits the meaning.
Virtually every Dinosaur Jr or J Mascis lp is at least 4 Stars. I personally prefer the debut or Bug to this, but it may just be that those were the two LPs that made me fall in love with Dinosaur Jr.
Yesterday I had an ok lp by the Cure. Dinosaur Jr’s Cover of Just Like Heaven is the best thing the Cure have ever been associated with. It’s a bonus track here.
This album is a love letter to California. Not the California in America. Nor the California of Hollywood movies or on the OC or 90210 either. Or the one of the Beach Boys, Black Flag or the Minutemen. This album is a homage to the California that only exisits in the minds of kids that grew up in cold damp towns on the banks of the Irish Sea.
Great singing, great music. Lead singles Chain of Fools and You Make Me Feel Like A Natural Woman. Strong song choice in the supporting tunes, especially People Get Ready which is given a compelling arrangement.
Neu! 75 marks a departure from the previous 74 releases in this series. Eschewing the collection of recent pop hits for metronomik instrumentals.
Now That’s What I Call Music!
Pleasant but unremarkable.
Good psychedelic funk lp.
One of the brilliant accidents of Brit Pop is that record companies threw money at indie and alternative projects like this. Choirs, strings, Dr John would have been unthinkable in the 80’s or now. Even the cd packaging was groundbreaking.
Epic in scale and unified in concept. I’ve known this album since release but listening to it today I still find new facets.
Pretty good rock album for its period. To be fair that’s damning with faint praise since it was a bad time for American rock and Mars Volta made an album that survived all that and is still quite good.
It’s not At The Drive In, however.
Pleasant Competant singer songwriter stuff. With nice melodies and a few good lines.
There were so many great psyche albums made in 1967. This isn’t one.
This sounds like a load of nepo babies bought some beads and made an album. It’s the kind of easy listening slop an AI programme would make if you asked for a psych song and were using the free version. Occasionally Grace Slick starts screaming like Stevie Nicks or a banshee with a septic ulcer. Shudder.
You can really hear how this lot of charlatans made it big in the soundtracks of the 80’s. A terrible band that stuck around long enough to thrive in pop culture’s most terrible period.
One for the Radiohead / Coldplay crowd.
Competent songwriting. Ambitious arrangements. Bit dull.
Starts with the theme from the Exorcist ends with the theme from Blue Peter with random passages in between.
I was expecting it to be innovative but it’s not a patch on what the German’s or Italians were up to at this time.
Sold tonnes to pretentious geography students who grew up to be Reform voters.
This is a James Last version of Trout Mask Replica. Non-Stop Chug-A-Lug Blues Rock Party.
All the songs sound the same. In fact they all sound like the same Chuck Berry song played endlessly in a pub in the Isle of Man. And Manx Blues really sucks. It’s difficult to tell where one rumpty-tum bluesy boogie ends and the next begins.
The musicians and singer are limited but those limitations lead to a few interesting moments. This band probably got worse as they became more competent so vacuous are the ideas.
This albums inclusion is illustrative of the American bias in what is supposed to be a British book. Not everything the gatekeepers of the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame or the Rolling Stone love is worthwhile. A very brief flash in the pan here and quickly forgotten, I bet they still get played at Trump rallys.
I don’t think I’ve heard this before but then I feel like I have round a friends smoky flat in the nineties. It’s a delight.
I’ve had this album for years, bought from a charity shop in the nineties. Listening again there’s not a bad song on it. The arrangements are expensive and expansive, every song sounds different but the whole hangs together.
Christmas morning tradition is to listen to this. Killing two calling birds with one stone.
Understated and unfocused. Pleasant enough though.
This is their best lp. Birthday is especially special with its postpunky guitar and Bjorkisms.
Good songs, fantastic expensive backing and arrangements. In the hands of Sinatra or George Jones this would be a five star lp. Even Glenn Campbell or Neil Diamond would have made a good album. But Elvis, although he has a good voice is not at that level. He switches between loud and quiet irrespective of what the song calls for; he doesn’t enunciate clearly. Yes he’s more competent that Buble and Robbie Williams but he doesn’t pack an emotional punch. But all in all it’s a fair to middling performance.
Part of that run of albums from Sunflower to Holland in the early seventies that was the Beach Boys prime. Yes there were better albums earlier and many great singles but I don’t think there’s a four lp run in their discography as brilliant.
A good live album. Actually recorded at the Free Trade Hall Manchester. Historicly interesting.
Pleasant enough. Very pitchfork stage at Primavera. There are lots of records like this, not sure why this was singled out for this list. But it’s consistently good with moments of beauty.
Worthy idea to introduce the old time country and bluegrass stars to the country rock audience. With the passage of time (this is my parents generation paying tribute to my grandparents and I’m old enough to have children on this list) its clear the Carter Family, Doc Watson and Earl Scruggs are better known than the Nitty Grittys. In fact the Nitty Grittys wouldn’t have made 1001 albums if this album didn’t give the compilers the opportunity to recocognise some pre album greats.
It’s an enjoyable record. I think nowadays the producers would scatter a few contemporary songs into the mix because ultimately the original recordings of the songs they chose are better than these versions.
Damn not a good album to start the new year. My heart sank, however I pressed on. And it’s not as bad as I thought. Clearly the band were missing Syd’s creativity by this stage, it’s also lacking in humour or self-awareness. Much of it is world weary woe is me isn’t life hard when you’re a rock star moaning.
However there are some good ideas and pleasant keyboardy bits or sound collages at the beginnings of tracks until the excruciating vocals or clodhopping guitars kick in.
Enjoyable country album. Loretta certainly is unlucky with men. If you like this Coal Miners Daughter and Van Lear Rose arebetter
After Come On Pilgrim, Surfer Rosa and Doolittle this has always felt a bit of a let down. But…compared to all the other albums by other bands its still 5 Star. I like the surf element that appears here and continues in Frank Black’s solo career and even in Kim Deal’s fantastic recent album Nobody Loves You More.
Listened to this, this morning on the bus. It’s dark. Sludgey snows on the ground. This album fits
Probably selected because it allowed the compilers to pick a Willie Nelson lp and selections from the Great American Songbook the originals of which generally weren’t on LPs.
I like Nelson’s understated delivery and the relaxed but perfect backing from Booker T. Reminds me of Cookooland by Robert Wyatt on terms of feeling and that’s not a bad thing.
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Another 90’s album I’ve never owned but seem to know very well from parties and friends houses back then. I’m rather a sucker for that sound.
This is risk adverse funky dance music. Not sure why anyone who wasn’t nostalgic for the sound of 90’s UK would play this more than once. Pleasant though.
