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, but generally.
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
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 or low 4
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.
Good lp. Psychedelic Afrofuturist. Wondaland is a great song.
This is a top ten all time play for me and hip hop’s greatest achievement.
Pleasant Album. Understated global hobo sound. Reminds me of Joe Strummer’s last albums, but more professional
It’s bamboozling that this lp is on the list of 1001 albums you should hear. I say this not because Jon Spencer Blues Explosion aren’t my thing, they are, but because this isn’t their best work by a long way.
The album suffers from excessive compression. This makes it loud but without the dynamic range a trio like the Blues Explosion need where there no space. Performances are sound but fewer stand out tracks. Besk is the guest appearance from Rufus Thomas singing Chicken Dog (are all his songs about dogs).
I haven’t listened to this album in years and on revisiting I realise why - there are many better Jon Spencer LPs. I recomend Acme (or its remix album) and Extra Width. Also worth checking out is the lp backing up bluesman RL Burnside an Ass Pocket of Whiskey.
It’s particularly sad that this album is on the list because it’s their only entry and the only entry from the fantastic 90’s garage punk scene that lead up to the White Stripes commercialised breakthrough. There’s no Gorries, Dirtbombs, Mummies, any of Ian Sveneous’s bands like the Make-Up, Detroit Cobras etc.
One hit wonders in my country and this LP doesn’t even have the hit.
Ponderous pop rock with an awful singer. Often everything stops while the guitarist “shreds” it sounds like he’s concentrating really hard with his tongue stuck out.
There’s a version of the Kinks’s You Really Got Me that has none of the energy of the original.
All in all it as if the Saffron Walden Townswomen’s Guild’s UFO tribute band decided to become an original act but the normal singer phoned in sick that day and they got the lass who makes the cucumber sandwiches to fill in.
If you like your rock n roll devoid of anything that rocks or rolls this is for you.
Bit surprised this is on the list. It’s a great album, but without any great songs, it’s a great album for people far down the Dexys rabbit hole. And that’s me. I can’t see it winning any new converts.
Difficult LP to score.
It's almost as if Todd invented the cd deluxe reissue in 1972, Side one and two are a pretty cool classic lp. I Saw The Light is wonderful; Wolfman Jack a tired 50 style boogie and the rest in between. It would be a four or five star lp.
Side Three is like a radio session or stand alone ep. It's over guitar soloy and a bit boring. Black Maria is especially bad. 2.5 Stars.
Side Four sounds like the studio outtakes from an aborted session where the band was sacked immediately afterward. Contains Springsteenesque saxomophone slop. Grim. 1 Star.
I was pleased this made the list given that Brit Pop is underrepresented on this list (maybe 10 lps by the big 4, this, Supergrass, Ash, plus Urban Hymns and Everything Must Go and that’s about it.)
It’s a fun album that made a big splash at the time. I think Elastica like a lot of that era, work better on an ep or a radio session - brief immediate and insistent. It was the last great hurrah! of the single after all. Sleeper are in the same territory but have aged better. And Salad gave an Anglo- Eurotrash take that remans thrilling.
Yes they owe a debt to Wire. Even at the time that was obvious. But do do Minor Threat and Big Black and they’re lionised.
However I’d like to make the case that this is a more groundbreaking record than we give it credit for. This is the first Strokesified album. 6 years before Is This It? Established the formula of taking an old sound, crank up the loudness, use modern technology and a cool modern Gen X front person Elastica did that to post punk.
It does for Wire what Silent Alarm did for the Gang of Four. Yet Bloc Party, Strokes, Franz Ferdinand, Kings of Leon, Libertines, Arctic Monkeys etc never received the same backlash for following the formula. I guess the 9Os found repackaging old music less palatable than the 00s.
Daisy age hip hop. I wasn’t feeling it today but will in the summer.
Get the 2 disc vinyl version rather than the 1 for best sound
Paranoic, dense, and cool. This is my favourite of the 90's Bristol Trip Hop, apart from Tricky's Pre-Millenial Tension.
This was the UK's 65th best selling album of 1995 at the height of Britpop. After surviving the 80's, we so lucky during that time to have so much good music in the mainstream at once.
Prior to beginning this challenge I listened to Kevin Rowlands’s autobiography and did a lot of listening to Dexys and his solo stuff. So I probably didn’t need the first three LPs to pop up in the first 100 LPs. If you're critical of Dexy's lps rest assured so's Kev! Restlessly searching for perfect never quite finding and not settling when he got pretty close.
I'll be honest, Young Soul Rebels, and post-reformation lps One Day I'm going to Soar and the cover lp Dexys Do Irish and Country Soul would be the three of their lps I'd say you shuld hear before you die.
Once I was at a festival and Elton John (an elderly pop pianist who's Americans will probably be surprised to learn has had more hits than just Goodbye Yellow Brick Road) was banging away doing his poorly enunciated Chas & Dave thing on he main stage. Went to see Dexys in the tent. Beforehand the lad next to me complained about the people only interested in hearing songs they heard before, then spent the whole set calling for Eileen. Which they didn't play because they wanted to play their current album, which was theatrical and had a narrative arc that Eileen didn't fit. That illustrates the contrary nature of Kev.
And testament to the endure power of Eileen. Even here they leave it until the last. Eileen is perhaps a millstone in the public perception. Kevin, normally very dapper, is forever in dungarees in the public imagination. BUT Eilleen still saves misfiring wedding discos 45 years. And consider when it came out, 1982, the fun years of Punk, New Wave, 2 Tone, Post Punk experimentalism were being replaced by regiments of pretentious but vacous - Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet. Yet here was a song by a band that were unassamedly intellectual that you could dance to. A band that were fun and clever. A band that looked to the future whilst acknowledging the music of the past.
Strangeways by the Smiths
Surprised that there are 7 Smiths or Morrissey LPs in the list but the first year represented by the Smiths lp and Hatful of Hollow isn’t there.
Smiths timeline one of slow decline from an extreme peak. Beginning with the 4 Radio Sessions and first two singles in 1983, to the debut album in 1984, onwards to Meat is Murder before the Queen Is Dead, which is their low point. Then, I think sensing the end they rallied with non- lp singles Panic, Ask, Shoplifters of the World Unite and Sheila before ending with this rather jaunty lp. Morrissey’s solo career has been a slow steady decline and his latest single (Make Up is Vile or whatever) sounds like someone asked an AI machine to make a Marc Almond song.
I kind of lived this timeline passionately and then disinterestedly. I was 14 in 1983 and revising for an exam. Listening to Kid Jenson he played a session by the band and then John Peel followed on with a session recorded for his show. Went into school the next day and told everyone I’d heard a great new band. No one believed me.
Anyway all the Smiths have said that Strangeways is their favourite album by the band. There is a case for that it’s certainly the best produced. I especially liked Paint A Vulgar Picture - is Moz the idol or the fan clawing at the star? Or both?
I’d found new bands that were as thrilling as the Smiths or more so by the time this lp came out. But I was glad that the rockist tendencies of the Queen is Dead had been vanquished and Morrisseys songwriting was sharper on Strangeways.
It felt like a last hurrah! Like they knew it was ending soon and that freed them up. And even now it feels like a glorious Ta-Ra
5 ish.
First two songs are upbeat and fun. Then they play Comfortably Numb - a dull song by Pink Floyd - they fail to make it interesting and everything afterwards is pretty ordinary.
I listen to this at the time when an older lady at work (who was probably younger than I am now) leant me the cd. Just like now I grew bored. It’s all kind of low energy Deee-Lite.
Not entirely meritless especially considering the early 00s was a low point in general. 1.5.
I like this album. It’s basically a 00s electronic ambient lp played on strings instruments in the 70’s.
Pretty ordinary album. Begins well and trails off. Some songs go on too long.
I haven't thought of this album in twenty years, then it appeared on the generator today, the I watched Harry Hill's podcast on YouTube and the comedian Stewart Lee was challenged S.A.R.A.H. an AI robot that lists his favourite music,, as The Fall, Giant Sand, Calexico and Ms Dynmite, Challenged on the latter Lee points out that it was an interview from 25 years ago and he needed to add somethong he loked that was in the charts but now "sounds like a really strange thing to admit to." Harry then sings Put Him Out accompaning himself on swanny whistle, clapper, duck calls etc, Its better than the version on album.
People ask why this is in the book. It was a big album in Britain at the time and this is a British book written for the British market. It rather unexpectedly won the Mercury Award and sold well on the back of that.
The book was published a year or so later. They chose a current big lp. They didn’t have the hindsight to see it would not become a classic 20 years later. A few years on that was clear and the record was removed from later editions.
For me the problem with this lp it isn’t especially English. I like music that feels like it comes from a particular place. The Mercury Award that year should have gone to Original Pirate Material which is undisputably about being young and English and urban. Ms Dynamite could be American and there are Americans who do this sort of thing better.
Good album, possibly their last great one. There are certainly some memorable lyrics.
This is a great album. The Pixies's greatest.
There’s great fun to be had at the punk-psyche crossroads.
Cool album. Relaxed, not challenging. Makes me want to use the word vibe and I never use that word.
Obviously the Girl from Impanema is the stand out track, but you’ll be strangely familiar with may others.
Bit difficult to locate this lp on streaming services. It’s not one of the American Music Club albums I own a physical copy of. I found it to stream on bandcamp.
This is a perfectly fine AMC / Mark Eitzel lp. I’d have preferred San Francisco, East or Love Songs For Patriots. But the difference in quality between any of their albums is small.
I think AMC’s standing might have declined since the book was
published. Part of the problem is Mark Kozeliek seems to fill the space that Mark Eitzel used to dominate. Perhaps his the more obviously personal songs fit this cathartic century better. Wiki tells me that MK’s first band Red House Painters were signed by 4AD upon recommendation from Eitzel.
Good work!
Pretty bog standard American Pop of the Eighties. Elevated by a good and distinctive singer and great single.
Let down by rancid production and backing music. It’s as if corporate America looked across the Atlantic and thought how can we do what they’re doing more profitably and don’t worry if it sounds shit. I’ll kiss you is especially rotten.
This list is stuffed to the gills with grim American pop’s half-arsed attempts attempts to keep up with the rest of the world - The Cars, Boston, Van Halen, this is marginally better but only because Cyndi personality lifts it out of the mire.
But on reflection Girls … & Time After Time are worth a point extra
All Cash’s late life American Recordings are fantastic, not sure this is the best but it’s the most universal one.
One of the reviews on here describes this as “Americana Easy Listening”. I’m not really sure that this counts as country, the close production and song choice feels more rock, but it’s certainly not an easy listening. Mortality pondered by a man at the end of his life, murder, self-harm, questioning faith does makes for very uneasy listening.
Johnny Cash (and ABBA) was one of the few concessions made by the Goths I grew up with to wider music world of the people around us. And Rick Rubin must have tapped into the same thing when he put Nick Cave and Nine I nch Nails song in front of him.
What emerges is evidence that Johnny Cash is a Sinatra level interpreter of songs. He adds the weight of years lived to Hurt and Personal Jesus. Adding the perspective of age to what were previously adolescent songs.
On In My Life Johnny makes me think of the time I was living in “mainland” Britain but returned to my island and was pondering a return. And riding the bus listening to a tape of mid period Beatles. Then it reminded me of feeling detached from home, Johnny makes me think of people I’ve lost touch with due to my decision to return home. And those I’ve lost to death since. Cos death is never far away on this lp.
The album ends with We’ll Meet Again. This is a poignant song in the British Isles. It was a big hit during the war and became a symbol of the separation from loved ones in the services. My Nan who died in the 80’s and Mum who’s 90 love it. So for Johnny to make me listen to this song with fresh ears is an achievement and here the perspective is of someone about to be separated from loved ones through death and gaining comfort in their belief in the afterlife. And that was the last song on his last album.
The curse of the American self-titled debut album strikes again! Tom can’t think of title - didn’t matter to nomarks like Boston Van Halen and The Cars so why should Tom try any harder. That attitude permeates the whole album. Feels cheap and quickly put together - who signed off that cover?
Pretty ordinary backing band, can’t be the same guys that played with Johnny Thunders. (Subsequent research tells me they’re the guys who played on Johnny Cash’s American Recordings - must have impressed with experience). I’d rather listen to Nick Lowe than this and that explores similar territory but this is lacking focus. American Girl is good though.
I’m sure I’ve heard better Petty LPs, but this is dull.
I suppose because many of the tropes of hip hop were invented on this album that is why this album sounds a bit ordinary.
Ahh man Sparks are so good. Intelligent, funny, and extravagant.
Maybe if the list had been published later their reappraisal by the zeitgeist may have seen more than one album on the list.
I like many of their albums more than this one but it’s still 5 stars. Suggest Lil Beethoven, Exotic Creatures From the Deep and the Girl is Crying in her Latte. There can’t be many bands from the seventies who’ve peaked in the 2010’s and 2020’s
There's much to marvel att the way her words put pictures of places, charachters and situations in your mind. Unfortunately, they're not people, places or situations that interest me. But if you are an wealthy American with nothing to do I'm sure it resonates. Music and vocals OK.
Begins and I thought it’s got a nice smooth sound. By the end the absence of sharp edges meant I barely noticed it was on. I guess it has succeeded on its own terms.
My recollection of LL Cool J is that he was better than this. Pretty ordinary beats, flow and subject matter. Spotify went on to an earlier track that was much better.
I had this when I was a kid and alt rock types thought Jim Morrison was cool. Turns out he was s bit of a knob with an over-self-aware singing voice.
Fantastic organ sound throughout, strong rhythm section. Some good tunes, including Rider on the Storm, let down by too many white mam pretends to sing the blues.
Pleasant dream pop. Beginning to sound dated
Defined a new way that records could sound.
Probably the album with the most fretwankery that I’ll give five stars to!
This is quite a good album. There are some great moments when they break away from their core sound.
Why anyone would want to hear this album ahead of Toxicity defeats me. That’s a 4 or 5 star album - and I hate my metal. Admittedly SOAD have more about them than their genre peers. Broader subject matter, a sense of humour, light and shade.
This is the worst Tom Waits album I’ve ever heard by a long way and I own 15.
Tom plays backed by an half-arsed lounge band. He intersperses some of his weaker songs with humourous monologues that occasionally include a sharply turned phrase, but mostly revolve around the shops in the Hollywood neighbourhood the record was taped, industry insiders find hilarious.
It’s like when you go to a local punk in a strange town and all the bands know each other and the crowd is all someone’s mate. You find yourself listening to a series of local in-jokes and feel excluded. Except here you aren’t excluded by youthful obliviousness or because they didn’t consider there might be outsiders. But because you’re not part of this 70’s Hollywood elite who laugh uproariously whenever that restaurant they went to with Joni Mitchell is mentioned.
At this point in his career Tom can’t rise above the cesspit around him or inject life into the moribund band.
00’s Indie began with bands old genres and Strokesifying them in a modern studio. That was followed by a hipster period of earnest Americans playing with harmony. Then towards the middle teens the Anglo-Celtic islands wrestled control of the indie zeitgeist back with prog post punk and indie went through its best period since the 90s.
Grizzly Bear belongs to the hipster beardo era. This lp is one of the best from that time but in 2026 it suffers from being the old fashioned without being retro. Give it a few years and a critical reappraisal it may well belong on this list, but at the moment it’s a bit ordinary. Nice. Carefully constructed. Pleasant background music.
There’s nowt wrong with this lp. I’m sure it soundtracked many a West Sussex dinner party where 90’s ex-ravers congratulated each other on being multi-cultural and ate fajitas for the first time.
The performances and musicianship are fine but I feel this has been toned down for the International market. I bet if you were a connoisseur of Cuban music you could reel of twenty or more better lore exciting records and I rather wish this list picked them instead.
Happy Valentines Day! You know how Phil Spector's Xmas lp is everyone's generated lp on their first 25th December. I thought we'd get 69 Love Songs today. Or maybe Barry White. Instead I got Anthrax, which is frankly a wreckless soundtrack choice for lovemaking for a man of my age. Still everyone in A&E has been smiling at me in sympathy and it least it got me out of the house.
Despite not containing any romantic ballads, there is a breadth of subject matter in the lyrics that was surprising. I especially liked the pop culture references. At the moment the top review for the lp complains that I Am The Law, a song about 2000AD lawman Judge Dread lacks Joni Mitchell's subtlety, but I always thought Joni was always more into Stronteum Dog. The reviewer is kind of right there isn't a lot of room to tackle the moral ambiguity resulting from dispatching of summary justice, especially when you have to fit in a guitar solo. On the other hand the the album does tackle the environment and colonialism and find room to be quite funny.
Overall this is better than I expected. It's a good album. There's rhytmic light and shade and overall sense of urgency. Shame the metal vocal style and guitar solos get in the way.
Kind Reagards, Evan
I really love this album. It’s not really one to listen to in one sitting. Dip into over the course of a day and by the end you’ll of the day it feels like you’ve arrived at a destination.
It’s always felt like an album about music. One where the narrator feels a crisis of confidence but emerges with his love of music reinforced. It does seem pivotal in the history of Wilco like Jeff’s setting aside the alt-country of Uncle Tupelo and early Wilco and moving to the stadium indie of the later years.
Apart from the Woody Guthrie albums I don’t really like anything after this, many do but not for me.
The album was quite important for me. I bought it at the same time as If You’re Feeling Sinister and the first Fountains of Wayne LP. Which kind of brought me back to early indie, power pop, and paisley underground I’d been listening to 10 years before. A focus more on the songs than the attitude. So Wilco lead to The Handsome Family and Golden Smog.
Pretty cool. Muddy from time to time calls out to someone called Johnny in the bridge and Johnny arrives with a shit-tonne of shredding. However apart from Jonny’s boring contributions there’s a real swagger about this recording. But I can’t help feeling a Chess years comp would be the place to start.
I love this album. It was probably the lp that showed me what hip hop could be (well that and Public Enemy headlining the 1992 Reading Festival). Readng the other reviews I think this probably had a bigger impact on the Indie/Alt community in Britain than on the Hip Hop world.
Listening again I can see why some would call the flow old fashioned, but this I don't listen to enough rap for it to sound dated to me. The subject matter, however, is unfortunately modern.
Pretty boring. Speed of drumming is impressive but nothing really happens. Bland.
The WHO have some good songs but I think they were more of a singles band.
Proud Mary is a good song. Everything else filler. Unimaginitive, hack songs. So fake - young man trying to soundly worldly.
A cliched version of one of the fifties rock's worst songs - Good Golly Miss Molly, shows that this band had little taste and no quality control. Between July 1968 and December 1970 they released 6 albums but only had an albums worth of good, original songs. On some of these tracks you can hear the bottom of the barrel being scraped.
Oh God, this is bad. Tragic, even. Syd is long gone and with him all humanity, leaving Roger arrogantly ranting about how bad his lot in life is and dreaming of being a totalitarian ruler.
Even the pleasant keyboard intros that provided some relief before the guitars and vocals kicked in on Dark Side of the Moon have been banished.
I think this is a concept LP about how hard it is to be Roger Waters. Gilmour seems to have resented that and took to torturing guitars in the pursuit of the most excruciating guitar solo imaginable. The vocals are even more painful — some posh boy screaming about how hard done by he is by the fans who've made him a millionaire. It's immensely repetitive; I think the same songs are played several times. Certainly, musical motifs are repeated.
The one moment of light relief is when a gang of kids break into the studio and sing a punkish "We don't need no education." A very popular tune in my playground at the time. Of course, the whole song is like an insidious district schools talent competition. The kids (who were Gen X, by the way) from the local comp are allowed a little rebellion before David, a sixth former or young teacher (and therefore a boomer) from the boys' grammar school, demonstrates what art and a privileged education can do for you. But those kids are the only ones to provide a moment of sincerity in this whole wretched mess.
Faux-French Disco. The individual songs are ok. Some I remember from the time. But together as an album it lacks depth.
I doubt this would be under consideration for a fresh list now.
One of the few perfect pop albums.
Kind of the first Jazz lp anyone gets into, more like. Then everyone moves on to discover their favourites and forget the entry point. However listening again it’s still great. Especially the second side.
I haven't listened to this in years. Was expexting it to sound dated but sstabds up surprisibgly well
Pleasant acoustic album. Some nice Brazilian flourishes. Unfortunately I don’t speak Portuguese, sadly, I feel these songs need that skill set. Without following the lyrics this doesn’t cross over in the way Jorge Ben or Gal Costa does.
It’s ok but they go on a bit don’t they?
Listened to a Wonderstuff 12” after this, back in the early 90’s there was cross over in their fanbases, they’d play the same SU Buildings. Wonderstuff has aged better and I don’t particularly like the Wonderstuff.
Great album. Good song choice. Well song. Ok arrangements.
The Attractions hit the ground running on this one.
Really good album. Some tracks the structure of the rap is dazzling. Bit overlong and the homophobia feels less “in character” and more lazy abuse than when Slim or Marshall raps about violence. Less self aware and critical.
There are nine Neil Young albums on this list (if you include Buffalo Springfield Again and CSNY’s de ja vu). If I had to listen to only 9 Neil Young albums before I died Harvest wouldn’t be one.
I think that’s because the best songs - Old Man, Needle and Damage Done have better versions on live albums like Live Rust.
Listening again I enjoyed the orchestral arrangements and some of the guitar playing was excellent.
In 1979 my Auntie Irene asked for my Chrimbo list. It was this and Eat to the Beat by Blondie. She bought Eat To The Beat.
Phew.
Lucky escape.
Thanks Auntie Irene.
Boring. Nothing Ever Happens.
The singles are great on the radio, or in a mix tape. But the rest is filler.
After listening to this album in the morning, this evening I saw Martha Carthy and friends play the songs of Martin Carthy. One of the songs they played was Iohn Barleycorn Must Die. The generator knows you know.
One of the blind spots in this book is the abscence of English and Celtic folk song. There’s a host of acoustic singer songwriters a few folk rock LPs that draw on these traditions and Bert Jansch’s instrumental lp but no MacColl, Copper Family, Carthy, Shirley Collins.
So despite the disappointment of their self-titled blues rock yomp the title and cover made me hope for more. Also Paper Sun and Hole in my Shoe were good songs - there must be a good Traffic album right?
Well it’s not this one. It’s a series of jazz fusion jams similar to Soft Machine only without the focus or a singer of the quality of Wyatt or Ayers..
Gig was good though.
One of the more obscure records on the list. To me anyway - turns out it’s Grammy Winning and 169th best selling album in America. Clearly I’ve been in the wrong coffee shops.
Or maybe I’ve been in the right coffee shops? Or maybe I’ve been in the wrong coffee shops and not noticed this. Or I’m too busy listening to other foreground music on my ear phones to pay attention to the background rumble of Ms Jones.
It’s competent unchallenging background music.
The beats are good. Ice Cube does well to challenge the life of young black men in the projects. The machismo and sexism is a major negative. The rapping lacks variety and the words aren’t that inventive.
