Well crafted but not super layered
Paul seems to be on his Maxwell's silver hammer/sgt pepper conceptual shit here at times (derogatory)
Deeply uncool, but I think Paul McCartney wouldn't be as good as he is if he was cool or cared about that at all
Huge gulf between lyrics and music quality
It feels weirdly shallow, but beautifully made
Corny ass hopping on the reggae trend of the time with the limpest upstrokes you've ever heard on jet
Every time the album was starting to lose me Paul and co threw in an insanely cool musical choice and it sorta hooked me back in
1985 encapsulates all the cool musical ideas and some genuinely progressive stuff undercut with, at times, endearing corniness.
Lotta good 3 minute songs that are 5 minutes long
Let Me Roll it also reiterates that Paul McCartney could just lean on making real good rock n roll songs and I do think it's cool that he doesn't just do that
I think I would only come back to 1985 to listen to again, but some of that is having heard all the singles way too much in my life
A+ voice
A+ band
A+ writing
A+ arrangements
No skips, basically all highlights. Track order is very thoughtful. Really annoyed at myself for not listening to this earlier. Excellent album.
This album just didn't click despite me really wanting it to based on what I knew of the band.
First time I've ever listened to a full album of Eric Clapton's guitar playing and his slow hand blues shit is not for me, which I have decided to attribute to him being a huge racist (at the time? He says he's not anymore, but he's also British so...)
They are great musician's individual it just doesn't really come together for me and the tracks where Clapton or Ginger Baker sing just drag.
It should have been a breezy half hour listen, but it felt way longer and the dorky lyrics didn't help.
Sunshine of Your Love and SWLABR were standouts that I very much enjoyed
Not a ton to say
Seems like a weird choice for a pixies album to include, but I'm not sure what the list criteria is.
Surprisingly samey for such a unique band. I think this was their second last record and you can kinda hear the exhaustion.
Still a fun listen and some great tracks on it.
I feel like Kim deal could have gotten some songs on this thing.
New nothing about this going in and it was really excellent.
Awesome bass lines throughout.
Really great self editing. Tracks never stretch out too long or outstay their welcome.
The tracks with full on vocals are a lovely change of pace when they crop up
The strings on talisman are sick as hell.
If the ratings were more granular this is probably between a 3 and 4
I didn't like it as much as I thought I would, but it was stilly a really fun art rock/rock and/or roll record.
I preferred the straight up rock moments more than the more artsy moments, which I wouldn't have expected.
I found some of the longer songs dragged as the arrangements weren't interesting enough to justify the length.
Still a bunch of really good stuff on here.
Boooooooo
Fuck off Don Henley*
*Take The Devil and Tryin' were find
Took a couple tracks to really get into the album, but it's reap good.
At it's best when it's more energetic.
Track order is really well though out and the whole thing flows great and gets stronger as it goes on.
I wish I had been more aware of it on high school.
Insanely good. I had heard of it, but never heard it. Crazy how much of it has been sampled.
An all-timer vocal exhaustion listen.
Gonna be listening to this quite a bit for the foreseeable future.
Very fun listen, well-crafted songs performed incredibly well.
I was excited for this one as I had never actually listened to it and it just wasn't for me.
I respect the composition and the vocals are great, but the album just drags in so many places.
46 min runtime for 7 songs is wild to me and I find the songs rarely earn the run time and even the ones that are mostly good feel like they have so much filler.
I get that it's supposed to be a bit musical theatre and campy, but it just didn't land for me.
It's hard to know what to do with album's like this. It's a famously pioneering record and it inspired a lot of amazing music, but a lot of it didn't click for me. Maybe that's the nature of proto albums like this when it's a genre you're not huge into. Still had some great moments on it and it's so clearly on the cutting edge forn it's time, so in conclusion: It was okay.
I think this is going to be the peak of albums I really wanted to like more of this list. I was primed to love this and I did not. It was just kinda good to me.
I'm On Fire and Dancing in th dark are incredible though.
Born in the USA remains my second favourite song to be wildly misinterpreted as pro America by chuds while being virulently pissed off at America of the era.
Really impressive and innovative work from two guys barely into their twenties.
Really enjoyed some songs on it. Especially the back to back Joan of arc ones and the closer.
Really cool album to listen to from a historical perspective. Poorly reviewed initially only to get a reevaluation as a masterpiece.
I suspect it's somewhere between the two as a few of the songs drag and the vocals are a little much sometimes.
I wish the grades were more granular as I found this to be somewhere between a three and a four, but we'll say four for historical significance and innovation.
I thought this would be breezy, fun, inoffensive dad rock with some real hooks throughout and that it most of it would immediately leave my brain the second it was over and I was right.
Very fun though.
This was a really thought provoking exercise in seeing if you could be overlook how much you hate the sound of a singer's voice on a regular rock album and it turns out the answer is no, not all.
It's cool they found a singer who sounds almost like the previous one except shriller and it's a shame that it makes this album sound like self parody at times with even dumber and meaner innuendos than they achieved previously.
Really shitty, mean misogynistic lyrics. Maybe I'm a boring woke scold, but it gets tiring after a song to hear dick as gun metaphors, dubious consent songs etc.
I have a hard time because there are moments where the album does really rock, but lyrics, vocals and a lot of the songs blending together and sounding same-y tanks it for me.
I know I'm wrong btw. Critical and commercial success strongly disagree with me, but that wouldn't be the point of this stupid project, would it? Can't really take the reputation and public opinion on these albums.
This came out when I was in middle school and I genuinely to not get how this band was so hyped.
They sound like an also ran garage rock band of the era. The vocals verge on obnoxious most of the time.
It's a got some moments where they lean into sloppier rock and roll and that sounds pretty good, but they never even maintain for a full song.
The down tempo moments sound like shit.
The lyrics are abysmal and pretty gross at times. One explicit and some implicit lyrics about lusting after/making out with underage girls. Dropping the C word and just general shit headedness.
I understand the appeal for whoever voted this thing on here that it's a throwback to sleazy rock and roll, but that doesn't excuse the lyrics. That shit sucks. Knocking off a point for those.
Yeah, ok.
Another highly influential album by another highly influential band I hadn't actually bothered to listen to before.
This is a cool one because you can genuinely hear what all the bands who cite them as a influence took from The Fall.
Avante garde punkish with scattershot, well-read lyrics.
Also Mark E Smith is one of the all time, seemingly, insufferable witty misanthropes. I knew about that without having heard much by The Fall, who have an entire Wikipedia entry devoted to all the different band members, which is nuts.
That said being said I didn't love the album.It gets a bit same-y for the full run of the album and the vocals are a bit monotonous, but there are songs I'll definitely go back for and I'm interested in checking out more stuff from their staggeringly large discography.
I am well aware of this dorky band.
Very much not my thing. Fuck off with your folk hymns.
I acknowledge that it's well made for what it is I guess.
I would love to know how this list got put together. I don't get why this is here.
The first few tracks were in an interesting mix of big 80s production and instrumentation mixed with traditional Celtic folk sounds, but then it just drifted into traditional Celtic music player reasonably well.
The songs weren't all that interesting and some were interminably long and droning. I zoned out a few times during the listen.
Really good!
Genuinely no super familiar with Paul Simon's stuff and I really liked it.
Essentially his first widely released solo album and it's clearly consciously moving forwards from his Simon and Garfunkel stuff.
Early bits of the world music stuff he would dive deeper into later. Strong lyrics and a great variety of moods in the songs.
I was in a bad mood and put off listening to this because at various points in my life I've had Zappa's music forced on me including the life stuff where he just plays mind numbingly long guitar solos and the I usually hate the vocals and lyrics on his long ass songs.
However, this was all instrumental basically and I found it largely enjoyable background music that occasionally gripped me. The Gumbo Variations was interminably, gratingly long for no reason seemingly.
Another in the long line of albums that I thought I would like more than I did. Still, it was a blast rhythmically and at times a little grating in terms of melody.
Really liked it and I had heard more songs on this than I thought I had.
I'm prone to really enjoy this genre. Loved the production, writing and vocals.
In the immortal words of John Danielle quoting someone else: "Good luck to all bands."
