I could tell at the outset this really wasn't going to be my thing, and it wasn't. The singer has a distinctive voice and the instrumentation is atmospheric, but I like a little energy in my music, and that's not what's on offer here.

Despite enjoying The Bends, OK Computer and Kid A when they came out, I somehow missed Amnesiac until this project made me listen to it. I'm not sure why that happened. Maybe I heard "Pyramid Song", didn't really like it, and forgot to check out the rest of the album. 24 years on, I still don't care for "Pyramid Song," but I have chalked this up to a Me Thing as reams of text have been devoted to praising it. All I can say is when it comes on, my attention drifts elsewhere. The album properly starts for me with "You And Whose Army?" and I enjoy every song from that point to varying degrees, with the exception of the instrumental "Hunting Bears." Amnesiac (and Kid A) are experimental music, and Yorke has described the music as going "arse about face." What this album meant to him, what he was trying to convey, I can only guess, but for me the experiments work up to a point, with the trio of "You and Whose Army/I Might Be Wrong/Knives Out" being the highlights. There is a cohesion here, and I suspect I enjoy listening to these songs in contrast with each other more than I would listening to them piecemeal. Anyway, I'm happy I got around to this album. I'm sure I'll be coming back to it.

One of my all-time favorites. Pace, biting guitars, raggedy melodies, head-bopping rhythm section. The songs are short, sweet and full of energy. The songwriting would be more polished on Doolittle, but for bursts of manic, punk energy, nothing tops the more blistering tracks on here. The band also shows that they're versatile beyond three chords and a cloud of dust on "Where Is My Mind?" (the album's most well-known song due in large part to it's inclusion in the movie Fight Club) and the Kim Deal-fronted "Gigantic". Steve Albini's production here that makes you feel like you're in the studio with the band (including some snippets of conversation, unbeknownst to the band members). The loose energy almost makes these songs feel like demos, but in a good way. With everything in pop music so engineered within an inch of it's life nowadays and all imperfections removed, it's great to hear something that feels alive and in the moment.

I'm not a Steely Dan guy, but even setting the bar low, I've never gotten the praise for this album. The only songs I find engaging are "Rikki Don't Lose That Number," the Outlaw Country "With A Gun," and the angular, sinister "Charlie Freak." "Any Major Dude Will Tell You" sounds like warm milk but gets points for extremely corny '70s lyrics ("I've never seen you looking so bad my funky one/you tell me your super fine mind has come undone"). "Barrytown" might have been a good song if there was even an ounce of menace the lyrics suggest in the music. "Parker's Band" is the Dorky White Guy tribute to Charlie Parker to the point where it's almost feels like an insult to Bird. "Pretzel Logic" is the dorkiest, whitest, blues song you'll ever hear. Everything else is so forgettable that I can't even bother to make fun of it. I am certainly not one to criticize vocals too much (I just praised a Frank Black album, for chrissakes) but Donald Fagen's warbling straddles the line between "quaintly charming" and "I wonder if I would like this more if they had a better singer." Pretzel Logic is an album very much of it's time. Steely Dan's previous album, Countdown To Ecstasy, was a commercial failure and they needed to get back on the radio. 1974 top 40 wasn't really a neighborhood for challenging music, so yes, compared to Barbra Streisand, Grand Funk Railroad and John Denver, this was practically avant-garde. But a lot of their music was suggestive of better, funkier and (dare I say) Blacker music that was taking place at the time, and nobody should have needed the White Guy filter to enjoy any of it.

Let me start by saying that I have a tremendous bias for David Bowie. This was the music of my "I feel miserable and I need to not feel miserable" music. The day he died, I went in to work early and put on my Bowie playlist and when the first notes of "Life On Mars" dropped, I started sobbing uncontrollably. I've never shed tears for a celebrity before or since. But this was my guy. A more rational opinion would acknowledge that "Eight Line Poem" and "Fill Your Heart" ain't that great, "Andy Warhol" isn't much aside from a cool guitar riff, and impending fatherhood made Bowie maudlin on "Kooks" (although this a song I sing to my dogs, so I obviously don't hate it) and I don't know what he's on about in "Quicksand" (but the music's great, so I don't really care). I rarely focus on lyrics and Bowie could often be inscrutable, but "Changes" is not that. Unpretentious, pointed prose that comes together melodically and resolves in a great chorus. Life On Mars is a seminal piece of music and never fails to make my heart swell. "Queen Bitch" has one of the all-time great riffs. "The Bewlay Brothers" is a devastating song about Bowie's schizophrenic brother. "Oh! You Pretty Things" is joyous and "Song For Bob Dylan" that serves as both send-up and tribute is a lot of fun. Any album with "Changes," "Life On Mars" and "Queen Bitch" is getting an automatic five stars, but even without those three giants, I think this album might still earn it. One of the best from one of the greatest English-language artists of all-time.

It's 1956 and big band is dead, daddy-o. All the hep cats are listening to dudes like Charles Mingus and Sonny Rollins and Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker (no wait, he died the previous year). That young man Miles Davis was cookin', relaxin', workin' and steamin' his way into the public consciousness. Quartets and quintets are where it's at, Jack. Paying 16 musicians is for squares. Okay, I'm going to stop talking like this. Ellington was struggling when 1956 came around. Bebop, modal, cool jazz, latin jazz, etc. etc. had usurped the big bands of the 1930s and 40s. His band was surviving on European tours and royalties from his previous work. At the time of the Newport Jazz Festival, he didn't even have a record deal. The concert at Newport was a major success, reinvigorating interest in Duke's music for the rest of his life. He signed with Columbia and the ensuing LP (which was mostly a studio recreation of the concert because some of the live audio was missing) was a smash hit. My mom owned it. Some time between 1956 and 1999, some other live tapes were found and the concert was painstakingly put together in all it's glory on a two-CD set. Ellington himself passed before I was even formed into molecules, but I've seen the Duke Ellington Orchestra live several times, dragged people to listen to it who had no interest in jazz and nobody could tell me they didn't have a good time. It's bouncy, it's fun, it gets into your bones. Unless your soul is made from concrete, you can't help but enjoy yourself. Having said that, it's never tempted me to riot and demand the band never leave the stage, and even listening to the concert in retrospect, it's hard to say what provoked the Rhode Island crowd into such a frenzy (there are chapters of the reissue titled "Announcements, Pandemonium" and "Riot Prevention" which... wow! This is definitely a hypothetical Time Machine stop.) Everything comes to a head on Paul Gonsalves's 27-chorus solo (lasting almost six and a half minutes) which is pretty amazing for such a long solo in that it never gets repetitive and also that he didn't pass out, but what he's playing is less interesting than the chaos that you hear rising up around it. Something is clearly happening. Gonsalves's bandmates are hooting and hollering, and you can hear the crowd (who supposedly got up out of their wooden lawn chairs and started dancing in the aisles) steadily join them. The end of the solo isn't greeted by raucous applause--people are *screaming*. And that energy is maintained throughout the rest of the concert, with Duke having to try to calm the crowd down multiple times through many encores and only playing a minute-long "Mood Indigo" as the closer (with the crowd still audibly angry the concert will soon be over) with the band probably desperate to get off stage at that point. If I were to grade this album strictly on musical quality, I'd give it four stars. Duke's compositions are earworms and the band is cracking. But the recording of the concert and the audience's reaction is an experience well worth hearing at least once in your life, and that earns the extra star right there.

I don't like being dismissively negative about music since one person's trash is another person's treasure and I try to glean the positives that other people might see in any given recording. But my honest opinion is if this album wasn't made by Paul McCartney, I don't think anyone would have given it a second thought. The best song on here by a significant distance is the breezy "Jet" with it's chugging rhythm and fuzzed-out guitars. "Band On The Run" is a good song up until McCartney thought everyone would love to hear the name of the song repeated two hundred times. (It's only twenty, I counted, but it feels like two hundred.) Repetitive choruses and songs wearing out their welcome are a theme on this album. On most of them I kept checking to see how much time was left. There is also, if I may be blunt, a lot of self-indulgent nonsense here. "Bluebird" is a song you only record after you have achieved some fame. It angered me to finish "Picasso's Last Words (Drink To Me)." There's recording a fuck-around track and recording a fuck-around track that lasts almost six minutes. A pox on you, Paul McCartney! Another demerit: I don't think the album sounds good. Not the music necessarily, but the production. I know the album was recorded in Nigeria and there were issues with the studio. Whatever the case was, it doesn't sound like a polished product. This is especially noticeable on the closer "Nineteen Hundred and Eight Five" where Paul's going for a big blowout with the orchestra and the horns and guitars all at once and the production doesn't live up to it. It just sounds like a mess. (I listened to the 2010 Remaster for this exercise, and maybe there's a better version out there, but honestly I really don't consider this album worth revisiting to find out.) A few good points: As I said, I think "Jet" is fine and despite my complaints, I don't hate the title track, but it's nothing I would seek out or add to a playlist. I think "No Words" is pretty good, although I wish he had taken the title's advice because the vocals are the weakest part. It is also, not coincidentally, the shortest song on the album. I like the bouncy bassline on "Mrs. Vandebelt" and the the first half of "Nineteen Hundred and Eighty Five". Both songs stick around too long. Everything else is a slog, especially "Picasso's Last Words." I'm going to keep track of my least favorite songs from this exercise, and that one's in the pole position for now. In summary, not a great album, at least for me.

A truism I feel about 90% of songs is I'd like them more if they were played at double time. For Leonard Cohen, that may not be enough. His singing is so deliberately slow, it almost feels like that Second City sketch about Perry Como falling asleep while singing. The primary emotion I get out of Leonard Cohen's singing is somnambulance. The music is secondary to the lyrics here, and I'm not really a lyrics guy. But even paying attention to them, the ideas are not anything that speaks to me. Cohen is a glacial poet who revels in inscrutable imagery and I'm not feeling what he's putting down (although in "Famous Blue Raincoat," imagining Leonard languidly penning a letter to the man who cuckolded him is very funny too me for some reason). Anyway, this is another Me Thing since a number of smart people (including many musical artists I like) love his music. It's just not for me. (A notable exception is the angry, growling "Diamonds in the Mine" which I think is terrific. If only the rest of the album was more like it!)

Oh hell yeah! I knew of The Gun Club but had never heard any of their music before nor did I realize they were the progenitors of psychobilly/cowpunk, etc. This is great! Short, punchy, catchy songs that somehow combine punk with shuffle beats and slide guitar. I think the songs are better at the sub-three minute time with their longer songs wearing themselves out a bit, but I think that's pretty typical for punk in my estimation. A bit more variety would have escalated this into five-star territory, but even as is, it's a good time.

Yeah, of course, five stars. I imagine there will probably be too many Beatles and Beatles-adjacent albums in this exercise, but this is not the one to take off. Just the variety of impeccably crafted music here is stunning. I think "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" is too corny to be anything other than a trifle, but I can't really take issue with anything else. George might be the MVP of this album with "Something" and "Here Comes The Sun" but Lennon is close behind with the shifty, paranoid "Come Together," the trippy, psychedelic "Because" and the primal, minimalist "I Want You (She's So Heavy)." A note on that last song. I have complained in the past about overlong, repetitive songs on other albums, but I love this one. What a hypocrite! The organ stabs, the bluesy instrumental break, the swelling, chaotic three-minute outro. I understand if people don't like it. I've complained enough about songs like this, but I always ride this one to the end. "Octopus's Garden" is terrific. Best song Ringo ever did or would do. Paul may have my two least favorite songs here (outside the medley). "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" was a precursor to a lot of the silly Paul solo/Wings stuff I couldn't vibe with. "Oh! Darling" is fine, I always wind up singing along to it. But he saved his best stuff for the end. I've never really thought of the medley as a single musical work. "You Never Give Me Your Money" is a complete song in it's own right, and it's quite good. "Sun King/Mean Mr. Mustard/Polythene Pam/She Came In Through The Bathroom Window" is an impressive string of snippets that could have worked on their own as individual songs (but arguably, they were as long as they needed to be) and "Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight/The End" is the Beatles saying goodbye. I pretty much like everything here, but my favorite bits are the Polythene Pam guitar bridge leading into "We Came In Through The Bathroom Window" and the orchestral integration on "Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight" (shout out to George Martin). Anyway, this is a tremendous album. I've listened to it too many times for it to surprise me any more, but there are very few I'd keep in my collection over it. Abbey Road forever.