Buckley was an excellent vocalist, but his taste in shapeless, melody-free, plinky-plonk hippy jazz to sing over has not aged well. Buzzin' Fly and Gypsy Woman are worthwhile.
There's some absolute bangers on here, particularly High Plains Drifter and Looking Down the Barrel of a Gun. But however inventive and adventurous the boys' sampling might be, hip-hop of this era has a tendency to sound rather "flat" to me, lacking the richer and more melodic basslines and samples that evolved later in the genre.
Never entirely understood the worship for this as some kind of ground-breaking new sound: nihilistic guitar rock has been around since the Velvet Underground.
But that doesn't mean it's not a great album. It updates the sound and lyrics for the 90s generation, there's relatively little filler until late in the album (stay away from "stay away"), and the opening 1-2-3 salvo are all stone classics.
First album on this odyssey that is entirely new to me. It's also entirely forgettable. I mean it's fine, I have no particular objections, but no particular desire to ever hear it again. It's kind of prog-adjacent but far less interesting and saddled with that horrible tinny guitar effect that was popular with soft rock bands in the 80s.
Was only familiar with the singles from this record, and I was pleasently surprised by how good - better in some cases - the rest of the album is. It's a great balance of pop and rock sensibilities and the whole thing is worth a listen, although whether it's worth revisiting often is a different question as it's a bit lightweight.
Robbins has a glorious voice and his enthusiasm for the material is catching, but I'm sorry this just isn't for me. As enjoyable as the narratives are, I can't beyond the ballroom style melodies and hyper-American subject matter.
Blues songs can sound a bit samey, but that's of little consequence when the sound is as powerful as this. There's phenomenal energy in this performance which almost compels you to listen and get swept up alongside the crowd's evident and raucous delight.
It's a solid album which turns out to have a much better range than the initial metal ripoffs without the melodies. There's a couple of standout tracks, but it just doesn't excite me much, it's a very sludgey sound, lacking much in the way of hooks or riffs and the vocals set so far down in the mix as to be incomprehensible.
Doesn't get much more middle of the road than this: it's even a mid point between glam and metal, lacking the swagger of either. There's some solid guitar work though and, at their best, a hint of actual rock attitude: the last three tracks are the best. Passable background music, nothing more.
Even as a response to 9/11, the music and lyrics on this feel overly cheesy and sentimental. On some tracks, Springsteen has the oomph and gravitas to make them anthemic nevertheless. When he can't, the results are flat-out terrible, making this an album of extremes.
This is an example of where this delightful odyssey can fall down: I didn't like this much on the first spin. But snippets of it stayed with me, so I gave it another try and ended up really enjoying it. Although it's not quite as daring as it clearly thinks it is - it's riffing hard on The Beatles and some other hippy 60s artists - the orchestral arrangements are lush and the whole is delightfully invigorating and uplifting. There's a lot of whimsy, however, and some of the tracks do tip over into eye-rolling territory.
If I'm honest, REM are a singles band for me. There are a couple of great tracks on here but while the rest is fine, I could leave it. I recognise there's some interesting stuff going on, walking an experimental line without being weird or atonal, but it just doesn't grab me that hard.
Entirely new to me. Love the varied textures and tempos of this, so many different instruments and sounds bubbling underneath the guitars, and the way the mood swings effortlessly from misery to delight. It's a whole album listen: individual tracks just don't work as well. Not sure about the vocals.
All the considerable vocal talent on display here cannot compensate for the terrible material. Trite lyrics, shallow emoting and predictable melodies: everything that gives country music a bad name. Looking at the selection criteria for the 1001 list, I do not understand how this derivative garbage fulfils any of them to earn its place.
This feels a strange album to pick to represent British reggae. Steel Pulse are arguably a better band, and UB40, arguably, have better albums. But it's still a decent listen. The rhythm section kicks hard, although the lyrics are repetitive and the occasional bontempi keyboards are unwise: it feels more like a dub plate than a regular reggae album in some respects, especially with several instrumentals thrown in. For all the sultry pleasures, however, nothing really stands out from the crowd as particularly enjoyable.
One of the top reviews asks why U2 became such a hated band, and I think I know the answer: rarely has there been such a clear-cut example of a once-great band selling out, and this album is the moment it happened. In fact, I think you can pinpoint the very moment it happens: it's when the soulful trumpets kick in during Stuck In A Moment You Can't Get Out Of. Try to imagine soulful trumpets amongst the righteous angst of War, or the raw beauty of The Joshua Tree, and you'll get what I mean. There are flashes of the old fire in Beautiful Day and Elevation but that's about it. A sad day for rock music, and a weird inclusion on the list.
New to me. Yes, really. The fact this is the top selling album of all time says more to me about how bad people's taste was in the 80s that it does about this record. The cheap synths. The cringey lyrics. Most of the tracks can't even muster much in the way of a worthwhile groove, although the three big singles in the midde are admittedly an exception.
Very pleasant, lazy, tropical jazz sound. Laid back, varied and atmospheric. Fantastic background track to an afternoon in the sun with a cocktail, but not something I'd necessarily want to sit and listen to for an extended period. Especially the last few tracks, which take a bit of a nosedive.
The reviews writing this off as boring Britpop don't seem to have listened to the lyrics, which are full of politics, metaphor, and righteous fire. Sadly the same can't be said of the rather dull stadium-rock arrangements that accompany them. The album sounds at its best when the band forgo that style in favour of a harder sound, like Enola / Alone.
Side A of this is too chirpy and upbeat and harmonic for me to hate it completely despite the shallow, misogynistic, repetitive lyrics. Side B, however, has the same kind of material set to ballads and it's so unforgivably bad that it cancels out any kind of merit that album might otherwise muster.
This album's chief sin is filler: it's 18 tracks long and some of them feel very unnecessary. When you cut a bit of fat, however, there's plenty of absolute bangers left to enjoy, huge beats overdubbed with funky, jazzy samples and smart, emotive raps.
Was really gearing up to hate on this, but I just can't. It's too smooth and mellow and satisfying, and Green it too talented a vocalist (albeit also a piece of shit human being) to just bin it. Doesn't mean I have any desire to hear it again, however.
Great voice, singing an almost nauseatingly inoffensive album of cover versions.
Enjoyable proto-grunge that's a lot funkier, and a lot more fun, than much of the po-faced music it inspired. Some clear nods to the blues that sits at the root of its musical family tree, and a bit of Beefheart too, I think?
Sounds ahead of its time: I initially assumed this was a mid-80s album, not mid-70s, so I presume the effects and production on it were fairly pioneering and influential. The result is a very mixed bag, however: while there are a couple of standout tracks, particularly the dreamy closer Small Hours, far too much of it is inflated with that puffy self-importance that boring jazz assumes when it thinks it's being all cool and experimental.
It's amazing to think this passed as cutting edge in 1989, and there's no denying its influence on 90s metal. Not to say it's bad at all - it's a solid slab of heavy rock with a bit of a groovy edge in which no tracks really stand out as especially good or bad - just that adding a bit of slap bass to metal isn't really all that big of an imaginative leap. It's also kind of telling that the best track on the reissue is a Black Sabbath cover version.
I find punk a bit too slapdash and raw for my taste, but this is excellent: it's got the energy and attitude of punk together with some really great guitar licks and rhythms. I forget sometimes that the US garage rock that inspired punk is musically much more accomplished.
Big beats, big attitude and not much else. The pulsing rhythms initially sound really funky but the sparse, simple mixes lack variety and get repetitive by the end of each track. There's no denying the huge impact of this record but it's later followers put a sinister spin on the sampling that suits the subjects of the rap: however authentic, the violence and sexism on display here is not only unpleasant but jars badly with the cheery tone of the backing tracks.
It's pleasant enough, and the playing is obviously of virtuoso quality, but I'm afraid I found this largely rather dull. I don't know anything about modes or music theory and all I heard were a succession of instruments repeating scale themes, over a rhythm section that repeats scale themes. It's impressive this was largely improvised, but without anything that really challenges or excites, it's an empty excercise in showcasing musical skill for its own sake.
I loved this album as a teenager, so it's kind of hard to be objective, but it feels like it still holds up pretty well. The unlikely alliance of stadium rock and goth sensibilities results in a pleasing mix of absolute bangers and slower mood pieces and, despite a few cringey synth lines, there's relatively little filler here: the two "Flood" tracks are the weakest entries. A lot of it has to do with Eldritch's inscrutably intellectual lyrics and deadpan baritone delivery.
Surprised this is on the list ahead of the slightly better, more cohesive, and arguably more influential First and Last and Always, but this was undoubtedly the more popular record.
This is one of those albums where understanding the context is important: it was recorded days before Cohen's death, and the lyrics and themes reflect that. Cohen was originally an author and he's always penned amongst the most poetic lyrics in popular music. While this is no exception, the accompanying sparse arrangements and gravelly spoken vocals don't do the material justice.
There are times when it's very hard to distinguish bold, experimental music from random, jarring noise. This is one such record and I think ... I think I'm just about erring on the side of bold and experimental. There's an interesting slew of different styles and concepts underneath the sludge here, but a substantial portion of the tracks don't feel worth returning to.
A lovely collection of folk-pop melodies, with lyrics that range from the hallucinatory to profound meditations on aging, spirituality and inter-generational conflict that still resonate all these decades after the record was released.
While I'm not surprised to find this on the 1001 list, I do find it bizarre it's not alongside Teaser and the Firecat by the same artist.
Never heard this before, but I choogled it right on up into my choogler and found it delivered a very pleasing choogle.
I was anxious about rating this because of the whole separating the art from the artist thing. Turns out I needn't have worried as it's just a bad album. The Smiths worked in part because of the jarring counterpoint between Marr's cheerfully brilliant guitar riffs and Morrisey's miserable moaning: without Marr, it's just moaning. And in terms of Morrisey's later political persona it's already right here, singing how "we are the last truly British people you will ever know" directly before a song about the National Front, and asking us to believe that, really, it is condemning fascism, honest guv.
My heart goes out to the wonderfully talented Ella Fitzgerald for having to sing four entire discs of this absolute shite. I couldn't even make it through the first one. It's listenable enough as background music but the sheer scale of this collection works against it: I cannot concieve of why you'd want three plus hours of showtunes.
Punk as a genre has really grown on me since I was a teenager, but I remain suspicious of the Sex Pistols, who've always struck me as style over substance. The same three chords over and over, with childishly "shocking" lyrics over the top. But the raw energy of the record is compelling, it's clearly a political and musical landmark, and a few of the songs have some genuinely great guitar riffs.
