After kinda sorta intentionally avoiding listening to a full Smiths album for years this is my first pull. But situations like this are why I decided to take this challenge, listening to stuff I would’ve never gotten to otherwise. Morrissey is a shite man but I tried going at this with the “Morrissey Fan Brings Earplugs to Concert in Case He Talks” mindset every Smiths fan I’ve met has. I Listened to The Queen is Dead as prep beforehand and was surprised at how much I actually liked it. Like I can understand why so many bands spent their whole careers chasing these guys. I can understand the case for that being an album “you must hear before you die”, but with this album: not so much. Feels less like the band’s grand last statement than it does one of b-sides and outtakes compilation albums like Coda from LZ or something(ah shit that’s probably in this list too). Unsurprisingly they were imploding while making this. Still a good listen with tracks like Death of a Disco Dancer and Last Night, but there’s a real lack of a personality to this and most tracks were just like pleasant lullabies, in one ear and out the other.
“She belongs to your very best friend”-Have You Ever Loved a Woman… and like every other song on here. The chorus of Layla made me think “oh that’s why it’s called Layla &. This is the real reason this album exists”, too bad the verses kinda suck with real awkward transitions from the chorus and they’re so short I wonder why they’re here other than convention. The coda sounds like a jam where everyone is too nervous to deviate from a good groove so they just stay on it for way too long and eventually it just gets boring. There’s gotta be so many white women named Layla because of this song lol. Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad? is the best track, it has a sound that seems to anticipate disco years before it would break out. Rest of the songs break into fun enough jams but they almost seem like they’re there to try and make up for how most of these actual songs are just pretty standard 60s British blues stuff. Eric Clapton is one of my musical arch-nemeses but I gotta admit he did alright here.
The first album pull that I’ve already listened to. I first listened to this in my baby punk phase and I’m happy to report it hasn’t lost any of its power in the years since. If anything I appreciate it even more for holding up so well. It’s pretty impressive that this became a legit smash success and the bestselling album released on an indie label even though the band’s core sound really hasn’t changed from their debut, they’ve become better and more dynamic songwriters but they still have that Blackball energy and speed for most of this(and even though the singles slow things down a bit they’ve still got a ton of punch to them. I also like their excursion into Ska Punk for one track.) It’ll Be a Long Time is still my favorite on here. Superpowers flex their wings indeed.
Far and away the best album I’ve got so far that I almost wanna give it a perfect score, but it did take a bit for me to really click with this so I think it needs another listen. I’m lucky that I already listened to the Cure albums before this earlier in the year because that allows me to see how was basically them taking the experimentation and eclecticism of Kiss Me and infusing it with the consistently dark whirlpool mood of Pornography(which is still my favorite) and Seventeen Seconds. Amazing album.
Good but around the halfway mark I was wondering how many more sparse trip hop tracks with Damon Albarn’s croon I could take, but then Double Bass hits and after that this is a really great time. You can feel the bass in Starshine in your soul.
Not Metal, barely even Nu-Metal, what it actually is is every genre that had a brief moment in the spotlight in the 90s all mashed up into some of the most ruthlessly crafted Pop of the decade. Weirdly enough I think the singles are the weakest stuff on here(Papercut exempt, such a fantastic opener) but songs like With You, Points of Authority, Forgotten, By Myself, and A Place For My Head crush. It does start to grate a bit after hearing so many songs with identical structures all clocking in within a minute of the same length(even including the slight variation of Mr. Hahn’s DJ Shadow worship on Cure For The Itch) but Pushing Me Away is the best song on the album so that feeling never stays with me.
Welp that definitely was Nevermind, hasn’t changed from my last listen, when Something in the Way wasn’t quite yet the Batman song. The teen me who thought In Utero was the greatest album ever made could never have predicted I would eventually be more creatively inspired by the producer’s band than Nirvana lol. Teen me also would have been gobstruck learning that I would eventually think Drain You was the best song on here(I would have said On a Plain then). Like that song’s riff has such an enveloping yet bouncy atmosphere to me and that bridge is an awesome left-turn from the rest of song. Also gotta highlight the dour trudge of Endless, Nameless, one of the best hidden tracks ever. Smells Like Teen Spirit is an overplayed song that I still get hyped for whenever I hear it. Yeah it’s classic.
One of the most 90s things ever, from the semi-grungy guitars given a pop sheen to the subtly trip-hop drums to the yarling. The most positive post-grunge ever made, startled to learn Alanis Morissette is just like the only woman yarler, and that’s underselling how idiosyncratic her voice is unlike so many of the carbon copy dollar store Vedder and Weiland clones that would spring up in the coming years. Kinda Live Laugh Love energy on this sometimes but it’s whatever. Pretty Good.
Awkward middle child of the Experience’s trilogy of rock classics. Still very very awesome.
Yeah this is my first perfect score. I’ve always really liked this album but with this listen I realized there’s really not a single moment where I’m ever bored or not in slight awe of what they’re doing with these tracks. Girls & Boys is one of the greatest rock singles of the decade honestly. Entire band on point, but I’m most in love with Graham Coxon’s playing on this album, so off kilter and choppy but it works perfectly, almost post-punk at points. I still haven’t even heard any other Blur album lol, maybe I should get on that.
A Woman Under The Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.
Pretty cool turn from the high-production wall of sound studio stuff his band were last doing towards this bedroom rock sound. I’m not exactly a Beatlehead so I’m pleasantly surprised by this.
Probably sacrilege to many that this is my first Mac album. Title track is one of the weaker cuts off here honestly, which is surprising given how iconic it is, but to me it kinda feels a bit like a novelty, kinda aimless. Pretty great introduction to this band altogether though. Sisters of the Moon!
Soooo many alt bands from the 80s were just copying Martin Bramah’s homework.
Although I only just listened to this two months after I rolled it, I still think it’s amazing I got it a day after Zappa. Love that this has skits basically. The atonality is the hook.
I hate to be the cliche punk who’s all like “Green Day was at their best before they sold out when they were most easily comparable to Buzzcocks and Hüsker Dü” but I’m sorry I gotta be. This is a good album, let’s be clear, but it has nothing on 39/Smooth or even Kerplunk! And those are two albums I only listened to in the past week as opposed to this one which I’ve been listening to since I first got into punk music. Actually I think that’s why this worked less for me this go around, I can really see how this is a much less cohesive album compared to the previous two. Obviously being a pop-punk band it’s expected that this is based largely around the singles, which are still great! Well, mostly great, Longview doesn’t really do it for me anymore, and I think the Kerplunk! version of Welcome to Paradise slightly edges out the Dookie one, but Basket Case and When I Come Around(best track) are classic for a reason. I’ll also still champion Burnout and Having a Blast as on par with the singles. F.O.D was for a brief moment my favorite song here but I think it needed an extension on the heavy distorted second half, it’s a little too even. Here’s the thing though, the rest of the album just meshes together, they feel rushed out. Those last two records all had a pretty consistent level of quality throughout, but here it feels like we got a strong opening, strong singles, and then just some mindless jamming on a few chords inbetween. I know there’s definitely people who have some strong connection to She or Sassafras Roots but I couldn’t pick them out in a lineup. This album just feels like the simplified version of the band, they saw their shot at glory and took it with both hands. But in that case you would think every song would have multiple killer hooks in it but nope, I guess they just poured everything into those singles, the most pop move they could have done. Compare this with Smash from the same year and it’s night and day, that album also has huge pop choruses and cleaner mixing than what came before, but The Offspring still kept their edge and deployed those singles as a deceptive lure into an album that largely still stayed true to their skate punk and melodic hardcore roots. You can go pop without dumbing down. Anyways I wouldn’t be surprised if I become one of those people who likes Insomniac more.
A musician with real shit to say. I expect that I’m gonna be hearing a ton of album by musicians who are just postering being politically dissident or, even worse, actually thinking they’re making a difference by just writing songs without any real action outside of music to back it up. Kuti is the real deal, targeted by the authoritarian regime in Nigeria because of his lyrics and his action. The fact that he also largely created a new genre at same time is even more impressive. Gotta listen to more afrobeat now.
What the fuck. Yeah I know Kate Bush is supposed to be amazing and an innovator and yadda yadda, but this really hit me in a way I didn’t expect. This is an album of dreaming, dreaming of a world where your lost relationships are found, where you didn’t fuck things up, where you feel like a whole person, where you don’t feel the urge to disappear. But just when you think everything’s going great, you finally have to wake up, and you’re back in that house of mistakes. No amount of dreaming can change that, can change you. At this point you can either let fatalism in and say, “well, I can’t change things, I can only live with it. At least I can keep dreaming.” Never letting anyone in, stubborn as a mule. Or, you can take that key you forgot you still had, that you wish was one of the many things you’d lost, and you can decide to unlock that door… and walk out.
I get a laugh out of wondering if Issac Hayes eventually disavowed the term “soul music” and instead insisted that he played Thetan Music.
The first three tracks are a perfect album, at times it makes you feel like you’re fucking ascending. Last song is kinda boring I’m sorry.
Goddamn I was obsessed with this album when I was in junior high and discovering that music could be transcendent art, there was a couple months where I listened to this and a few other PF albums ad nauseam. But I haven’t revisited this album in over 6 years, I finally moved on to other music because I listened to it so often I was never really hankering for another taste. I was expecting to sour on this a lot with this rewatch due to my distaste of 70s classic rock in many cases, but I’m glad to report that this still is an astonishing musical achievement. Maybe not masterpiece material for me anymore, the story is a bit of a mess and rushes to the end. I think the turn from the album exploring Pink’s retreat into himself and his self-destruction to him becoming a neonazi are disparate to say the least. If this was a clean two hours I think there could have been more time spent with the idea of him finding comfort in fascism because he associates it with his childhood, or exploring how his complete isolation and rejection of the world easily manifests into vile individualist hatred. The Trial also strangely does not count Pink leading a British nationalist fascist rally as among his crimes, just his personal shit, odd. I guess he didn’t feel all that bad about it. Anyways, I think the two halves can work and should work together, In The Flesh is legitimately a disturbing song, especially in our current age of right-wing grifters. The first three sides though are well paced and honestly create a complete story, if it ended with Outside the Wall after Comfortably Numb it would work just as well even without the story detour. Although I get it, side four has Run Like Hell and The Trial, I wouldn’t want to get rid of those either I guess. I really thought I would’ve outgrown this prog rock opera shit by now but something about Floyd still grabs me, the Gilmour solos still take me away. Oh also I thought I hated Another Brick in the Wall Part 2 but I realize now that I actually just hate it when it is played outside of this album. Hey You should get played out in the wild more, that works much better as a standalone song.
Wow he wasn’t lying, he does dominate those break loops. So I actually listened to this twice today, which I think are my 6th and 7th listens overall. This is definitely the closest I’ve gotten to seeing this as top album material. The run of Genesis and the first three tracks is actually flawless, I was prepared to slap five stars on this based just on that run, but the further it goes on some cracks do start to show. Halftime is the weakest link on the album, with a forgettable beat and lyrics that seem amateur compared to what precedes and follows it. Like Nas is just fucking saying anything in that song to try and be clever but it doesn’t mean anything. It sounds like he’s trying to fit the meter of a school poetry assignment while not caring about how the lines all relate to each other. Gotta mention this gem, “But not like a f***ot. Not bisexual, I’m an intellectual.” Like what are we doing here c’mon. One Time 4 Your Mind hasn’t left much of an impression on me after all these years, this time the beat AND lyrics are forgettable. But every other track? That is a fucking masterpiece of an album. Nas is on fire with all these bars mixing between different forms of meter and switching up the rhyme scheme often but in a way that feels totally natural and awesome to listen to. There is clearly a lot of thought put into how all these rhymes and the words inbetween them interact and bounce off each other. Production is phenomenal, the Premier tracks get spotlighted for good reason but the downbeat jazzy mood of Q-Tip’s One Love is one of the first things that pops into my head when I think about this album. Shoutout the instrumentals of Life’s a Bitch and Represent for sounding lime proto-survival horror safe room themes.
