1001 Albums Summary

Starts strong, I liked the first three a lot but everything after that didn't do it for me. Africano wasn't bad once it got going, but I'm not a huge fan of instrumentals like that. Shining Star and Happy Feeling were good, I went back to hear them again.

A lot of these tracks have good backing music but I don't really get on with the vocals most of the time. There's something about the extended or repeated high-pitched notes that I find more grating than anything, and a lot of them sound monotonous as a result. The riffs of National Anthem and Optimistic are nice and had me nodding along, I loved the hard beat of Idioteque though I don't think the alternating lines extending really worked. Motion Picture Soundtrack had an irregular beat I think, which I appreciated even though again the vocals let it down for me. Kid A and Treefingers both sound like they could have come out of Minecraft, in a good way. Very easy listening that fit the background well. The former I like especially. How to Disappear Completely is a real standout though, I was fascinated by it. The sustained violin at the beginning gives a strange, uneasy feeling that undercuts the melancholic guitar, making you feel like there's some sort of unspoken, lingering threat. It contrasts really nicely, and the lack of it later feels like a relief - which I think is a really interesting thing to pair with the lyrics. This was the only song I really enjoyed the vocals to. There's a moment towards the end where the song almost falls apart, before it collects itself again, which also caught my interest. Honestly this track alone elevates the album from a 2 or 3 to a 4 for me.

Idk, really just nothing to say. There's some ok riffs but they never feel like they go anywhere. A Strange Day kind of does and is probably the best thing here, but even then it was just ok. I think there maybe was some similarities between Hanging Garden and Pornography? At one point I could hear the former in the latter. The title of the album made me think of this which I got more out of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7xhYyQr_NI