Nice, easy-listening album, I particularly enjoyed the more 'jazzy' songs, 'Bye Bye Love' and 'Just A Little Lovin''
74/100
Interesting, quite varied as well which is nice, at times it reminded me alternatively of David Bowie, Bob Dylan or Jimmy Hendrix, whilst still retaining the rock sound. None of the tracks stood out to me as outright favourites but they were overall enjoyable.
61/100
Difficult to rate, had some decent songs - I liked 'A quick one whilst he's away' and 'Magic Bus' had some cool harmonica, the start of my generation was good but it didn't need to be 15 minutes long. Other than those songs nothing stood out overly and Im not a huge fan of the way Rogery Daltrey sings.
41/100
I like jazz music but there wasn't much too this one, pleasant and added a certain vibe to my pasta cooking, but not much more than that.
48/100
I've quite a hard time rating this, if I could give 3 and a half I would but unfortunely given the rating system I couldn't warrant a 4.
There were quite a few good songs, abattoir blues and hiding all away (albeit with the odd lyrics of the latter) were good, and O Children, which I recognised from Harry Potter was the highlight of the album for me. If the album had been full of songs like this it could have easily achieved 4 stars but fable of the brown ape and babe you turn me on, amongst others, just didn't stand up to this and in these songs his voice could be a little boring if not annoying at times.
My criticisms are not to say that this is a bad album, just that it was inconsistent and so overall sits at decent, but not great.
67/100
Score edited 28/12/25
I hadn't listened to much Stevie Wonder before this and I was pleasantly surprised at how good this was. I enjoyed every song on the album, in particular I thought "village ghetto land" was quite a beautiful song and was followed by "contusion" which had some great guitar sections. "Summer soft" was a good 'bop' and was very nice to listen to. I also enjoyed the lyrics and message of "Black man". Really enjoyable overall, great listen.
86/100
Not the typical thing I'd listen to but it was pretty decent, to be honest not many of the songs stood out to me as much better than the others, I liked Spaceboy and Luna a decent amount and thought disarm was a little crap. There was some cool guitar, especially in silverfuck, but I don't really love the "cool guitar" sound, I tend to focus more on singing, which here was alright but nothing incredible for me. Having a hard time placing this between 3 and 4.
69/100.
I enjoyed this, didn't know that they sang 'good times' which is a very good song, the bassline in that reminded me of wham, although apparently its used in rappers delight which makes sense. I also thought it sounded like 'Le freak' which it turns out they also song. I also liked 'will you cry' later on. That being said the songs were somewhat 'samey' so not many stood out beyond this.
70/100
Score edited 28/12/25
I enjoyed this, especially some of the longer instrumental, quasi-psychedelic songs. I especially liked The Eleven and Turn on Your Love Light.
Was a bit existential about rating music in general today but I'll give this as much as a relative rating as possible.
68/100
Score and Rating edited 28/12/25
Score edited 01/01/26
Weird, it feels like I'm listening to some sort of musical French audiobook starring a mysterious and coldhearted detective in love with a woman melody. Also the detective is very hot.
I don't really get it to be honest, maybe if my French was better, the music is alright, but not much more than that.
He really did appear to be 'en melody'.
45/100
I feel like I preface every high rating with 'not what I usually listen to but...' which again is true here, I'll probably have to come around to good music not belonging to a single genre, how shocking.
These were good songs, I've heard some of them before but never connected to the band so this is the first I'd heard of MGMT. The songs feel like, with a few more listens, they'd be very catchy and I liked both the vocals and music, I didn't really listen out for the lyrics much though so I may have missed something there.
Overall very enjoyable, at least in comparison to other day's albums, still learning to rate things properly.
Having had the weekend to think about this I don't remember it feeling like a 5 star album, but clearly I thought that at the time.
79/100
Score and Rating edited 06/01/26
Cool guitar throughout, but I wasn't a huge fan of some of the singing, especially in songs like Beautiful Ones. Darling Nikki was very odd.
Prince is a very iconic artist and I must say that given what I've heard this was somewhat disappointing, it wasn't bad but it certainly wasn't great, Purple Rain was definitely the best song on the album, very unsurprisingly, but beyond that and perhaps when doves cry the rest weren't brilliant.
66/100
Score edited 28/12/25
This was... fine, I really don't have much to say about it, it felt very generic and I can't say I cared much about it either way. I'm really unsure why this would be in any list of albums you must, it's not bad per se, just not good.
46/100
Difficult to rate, on the day this was set I listened to about half but I didn't have a chance to finish it, I hadn't been enjoying it that much then, but listening to it today I thought it was quite good. The first half of the album was more enjoyable than the second, I was quite confident I'd rate it a four but started to change my mind as it continued.
I feel like I say every 60s group sounds like Beatles, I suppose they defined the era and did enough genre that it's easy to find some similarities, I definitely thought that was the case for Caledonia mission which was one of my favourites, sounded more late 60s Beatles.
Some songs also reminded me of the rolling stones which is probably a similar situation.
Debilitated a lot between 3 and 4, I've had to change quite a few ratings based on current feelings and to fit this where it needs to go it'll have to be a 4 despite the weaker second half.
73/100
They certainly didn't mess about with telling us the title of the album.
I really enjoyed this, Simon and Garfunkel are excellent songwriters and have very good harmonies. Through different songs in the album I was reminded of a variety of different 60s musicians, The Beatles sometimes came through in their harmonies and there were traces of Dylan in many songs, especially 'A Simple Desultory Philippic' which surely must have been made with this in mind.
I also liked the references to other songs and artists, Dylan's 'Girl from the North Country' was referenced almost straight away and in later songs so too were Mick Jagger, Dylan's 'Rainy Day Woman' and Joan Baez's 'Silver Dagger'. I also felt that the tune at the start of 'The Dangling Conversation' was a near on to one match with that at the start of 'Blowing in the wind', at least the version from 'A complete unknown'.
I enjoyed the songs across the board, but in particular 'Scarborough Fair', 'The Dangling Conversation' and '7 o'clock news' stood out as favourites.
89/100
Really pleasant and enjoyable listen, Sarah Vaughan has an incredible voice, very clear and soulful that goes excellent with the lovely piano. I like the live recording atmosphere, the laughter from the patrons and ad libs on the songs make for a very immersive album and it's not difficult to imagine being in the jazz club in Chicago when this was recorded.
September in the rain and Willow weep for me were particularly good with the latter perhaps being my favourite although they were all very good with How high the moon being perhaps the only slight dip in quality.
A part of me feels this could be five stars but for now it's a high four.
79/100
This album felt like it had no identity, is it meant to be a rock album? a country album? If so it failed at both. All the songs felt incredibly generic and had no personality as well as not being that great vocally or instrumentally.
I don't want to give this one star as I didn't find it egregious, but I certainly didn't find any enjoyment in listening to it so it's a decently low two.
I am surprised by the inclusion of this in '1001 albums you must listen to' and even more so that it got three Grammy nominations.
33/100
I enjoyed this, I must say that I didn't listen to the album as intently as I try to, so it's difficult to pick out a favourite, or indeed least favourite song. The music was nice as was the singing, beyond that it's hard to add much.
This is on the upper end of three but I'd struggle to give it a four, perhaps if I'd listened better I may have been able to.
70/100
Me: Mum can I go and see Oasis
Mum: We have Oasis at home
Oasis at home:
To be honest that probably shows my lack of knowledge on this genre of music but oh well. This was alright, I think the title track was probably the best on the album but none were incredibly better than the rest, I can't say I love Brit Pop but this was fine.
I incorrectly thought I had finished this album yesterday but hadn't listened to the last three songs, which I must say were some of the better ones on the album. I still can't give this the full four stars but it was closer than I initially thought.
69/100
Expected female singers at first with the name being violent femmes. The song was alright, Folk Punk is a decent genre. I particularly liked "Kiss Off" but I didn't like the last two songs all that much, they leaned a little more punky than the rest. Overall not an awful album but nothing too interesting either.
61/100 (This does not fit well with my other scorings)
I’ve decided to do this song by song which is unusual for me in the hopes that I’d be paying a little more attention and may have something more to say.
Around the world was enjoyable, it followed the general theme in this album of me not knowing the song but feeling as though I’ve heard it before - perhaps I have listened to this album before without realising. The singing in this song, and throughout the album, is very distinctive.
Parallel universe is decent, the singing at the start was nice, I can recognise that the instruments at the end were played well but it is a little heavier than my usual tastes.
Scar tissue was pretty good.
Otherside is another I felt I knew, it was enjoyable, but again, as with other songs on the album, I’m unsure how much the fact I knew the songs changes how good I think they are, though I suppose that is a bias that I can’t escape. On the other hand I may have heard particular songs before as they are the ‘better ones’ so it may not reflect this too strongly.
Get on top was okay, one of the weaker ones of the album. I didn’t like the ‘rap-style’ songs as much as the sung ones, the instruments weren’t too interesting either.
Californication is quite obviously the best on the album, it is goated both with and without the sauce.
I knew both easily and porcelain, the latter of which I enjoyed quite a lot.
Emit Remmus was okay, forgettable amongst the others though
‘I like dirt’ was fine but suffered from some of the same ‘issues’ as Get on top, that being said the music was nice and groovy. What’s more I also like dirt.
Little to say about this velvet glove.
Saviour was good, I liked the ‘harmony’ sections if they can be called that.
Purple Stain was decent, cool music at the end.
Right on time was short but alright.
I can’t say I was paying as much attention through Road Trippin.
Overall a very good album filled with some great songs and none that were particularly bad, though a few as mentioned were weaker than the rest. I couldn’t give this five stars as it wasn’t quite as consistently great as I’d have liked, though about half of the songs in this album could achieve five stars alone, also it just doesn’t have the same ‘powerful’ quality I get from my other five star albums. This did make me requestion MGMT’s position though.
80/100
I had written a little about the first half of the album but it has been deleted.
Overall the album was alright though certainly not what I expected from the beach boys, I thought it'd be much more upbeat and less melancholy, I don't know if this was more common for the beach boys or if this album was different. I did think that with it being called 'surf's up' it might be referring to a surf ending rather than just the beach saying.
The songs were largely not too exciting, some were relatively pleasant, disney girls perhaps being a favourite alongside student demonstration town.
The album art is really cool.
60/100
Yes it's quite generic but that doesn't make it bad. Some of the songs are a little whiney but most are pretty decent, I liked 'green eyes' and 'whisper' more than the others.
Wasn't taking the effort to differentiate the songs at the end, they were alright, mostly acted as background music - neither overly good nor bad.
58/100
