not my favorite R.E.M. album but it's good. Scott Litt some rough choices (from the 80s). 'Welcome to the Occupation' is my favorite. IT"S OK
I had this CD when I was a kid and I think even then I only ever listened to the first two songs and 'Add It Up' which I can no longer stomach. This gets same-y even at 35 minutes but it's fine .
They are stuck in midtempo boring land here. They also sound very tired. I don't understand why this is the Big One for this band and I don't really like them in the first place. There will occasionally be a cool riff but then there'll be a really boring one.
"BLUE BLUE ELECTRIC BLUE 🔥🔥🔥🔥" This was the original review of this album that I did not write nor did I rate it (the original rater gave it a 3). How did you get into my account .......... Whatt ....... Anyway I love this album, it's beautiful, great textural exploration, thank you for your time.
Few songs I love on here and there are a few that I don't think are that good. I'm sorry Pixies... Some of these could have used some more cooking...........
This one is interesting, I like some of the material a good deal but some of it reflects the tidbit about it on the Wiki page where the producer just kind of let the tape run the whole time they were in the studio and picked up whatever.
Beautiful, sounds like cyberpunk racing games for the N64 / PS1, it stays varied enough that it's easy to take even as an album but almost all the tracks are great individually I think.
First three tracks: Great. Next four tracks: I don't care . Last track: Randomly fantastic.
UGH, I want to LOVE this album but as it is I only LIKE it but I think one day I'll be really into this band. Really interesting songwriting and arrangement choices abound but I just can't help but find it all a little sleepy at this time. It must grow on me. Everyone watch The Last Waltz RIGHT MEOW!!!
Mostly pretty solid, it's kind of crazy this came out in 1980, but the second side feels like every song could have used a few more passes, they all have some issues . But it's a fine album.
OK, I understand, this shit is pretty off-putting and I am close to a 2 on it, but I think enough of the guitar work and the weird arrangement shit on here is interesting that I will give it a light 3.
"Starship Trooper" is so unbelievably ahead of its time and beautiful the entire way through, it weds like Byrds-esque jangly arpeggiated guitar lines with like proto-"Space Rock" atmosphere(??). "Yours Is No Disgrace" is also one of their best songs. In fact all these songs are good.
The lyrics are so depressing . This is all good. They sound like a Shibuya-kei band. THANK YOU.
What a great record, the production from Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis is legitimately unbelievable especially for 1989. They're making sounds I was not even aware you could make especially on tracks like 'Escapade' and 'Lonely' and the title track, which is a perfect layered piece of art. The album ends with three 5-6 minute ballads which is an odd choice but they're all so good that it doesn't matter.
Great survey of ways that Funk music could go at this time .
As has been said 4 billion times the production on this is unbelievable and makes this such a fun album to listen to. My favorite moment is when you hear 'Mississippi Queen' for .5 seconds in 'Looking Down the Barrel of a Gun.'
I am confused by why this is on here. Even Mr. Tom himself is like "yeah this didn't all work but I needed to do it to get to where I was going." It starting with the title track which is really weird and fades out like in the middle of a chorus into a 4 minute instrumental that is very loose and shaggy is so funny. It's fine but surely we could have put something else here, there's already like 5 other Tom Waits albums in here, WHY!!! AND I LOVE HIM!!!
Pretty cool, great guitar work , the blues has always been an area where I am very not educated and it was nice to hear an album from Mr. Muddy Waters (65 years old here!).
I like this album but I've always felt like their next two albums are huge improvements. The next one takes this sound and perfects it then the one after that creates a whole new thing. (Then the one after that is good too!) I'm waffling between 3 and 4 but I'm going to go with a 3 because I want you all to know my 3 star ratings still mean I like it .
I was hoping I'd love this but for the most part I just liked it. OH WELL!! I don't know if this is sacrilegious but I kinda wish the arrangements had more variation. I liked the songs where there was more going on. Maybe this'll grow on me.
I didn't like this the first time I heard it. I am a fool. I will take all of that you've got Neil. He is shredding .
You can tell how much reverence these guys have for all the genres they're cribbing and the performances are all great. This one is the most country / blues / folk forward of the ones from their GOLDEN PERIOD and I like it a lot but it still places #3 of 4. This is great stuff though from one of the best bands at the peak of their powers.
This didn't do much for me at all. Production was occasionally OK and occasionally slightly janky sounding. Not bad but I'm being slightly more harsh on here because most of the stuff is good for some reason. My 2 is like an "Ehhhhh."
Love this one. Would have been fascinating to see where they went from here. It is just an incredible album . Beautiful atmosphere.
This started strong and was more varied / interesting than I was expecting, but the second half becomes a bit more sedate and boring, but it's not all bad.
It is crazy that this is my fourth favorite album from a band because it's so good. This is the only one in this book which is criminal but check out Love Deluxe and Promise.... If you guys haven't.......... And you want to...... Jess and I played Wii Sports Resort to this and it was weirdly fitting.
This was one of the first more "ambient" albums I ever got into, and I will always have a soft spot for it for that alone, but luckily the music is beautiful and sounds like an ice cavern so it is incredible regardless. My favorites are 'Svefn-g-englar' and the title track. If you guys like this I would highly recommend the follow-up which is called ( ) and is also great. Rest of their output is a bit spotty . IMO .
Vague atmosphere in this I guess ? That's about as much kind as I can say about it and it's an atmosphere I don't find pleasant so.
I'm not going to give this lower than a 3 because I am sick so they might have just been pissing me off but I still do think this is probably the weakest of their last four albums, just too much dicking around .
It was OK ! Honestly I have heard better from this time period...... Some of the renditions were not super great . The 10 minute song is sort of baffling. But most of it is solid.
This starts out okay in that I like the first song but this album is proof that you can have good Van Dyke Parks arrangements but it doesn't matter if all of your songs are like 1 bpm and your voice is 3,000 times louder than everything else. By the end it gets frustrating .
I should have listened to this so long ago. It's like they married their wonderful ear for melody to the sounds of all the British dance music that was blossoming at this time. I read that they were specifically inspired by video game soundtracks here too which comes across well. The production is so dense and layered and beautiful that it makes me very sad to see it reduced to just being "dated" in the eyes of many reviewers ..... It's good when things sound like something you can put your finger on honestly (sometimes).
Houses of the Holy and this one are their peak for me, and I wish we had gotten a bit more of them in this mode (or these modes I guess, they are all over the place) before they get not as consistently good. But I should re-listen to Presence... So many great songs on this, the production is immaculate and so heavy, and it's lots of fun to hear them break out and try so many different styles. They are also all at the peak of their instrumental powers here. Great record.
Decent atmosphere but I wish I connected more with the songwriting which didn't really stand out to me but I also wonder if this is a grower. Either way it's solid but not my favorite at all.
This is an album where I sincerely think if you're seriously interested in music as "art" and you think it's terrible and irredeemable and not important then you should just give the whole thing up and try something else. SORRY!!!!! Simon Reynolds's writing on this is really fascinating and has informed how I think of this album, as an even further splintering (or maybe even shattering ?) of rock music, like from Sex Pistols who already have reduced it quite a bit to this which strips it of choruses or really even instrumental ability or like, legible production. The result is this very erratic and occasionally frightening thing. Jah Wobble is the only guy who can play his instrument. It's so good and eerie and feels like textural exploration in a way rock music does not always feel.
This has never been my favorite band, but I'm glad they stopped trying to do things like 'Electric Feel' and 'Kids,' because I don't think those songs are very good. This whole album is patchy but Fridmann's production is really good, I adore 'Time to Pretend.' 'Of Moons, Birds & Monsters' was the one that stood out to me this time around. WEIRD ONE!!!!
Lemmy on bass........ This album is good but this is an entirely too large dose of this stuff at least for me in my current life .
I had never listened to this band before. It's funny how the other big Manchester band from this scene is The Stone Roses, who are amazing and their first album has like 10 perfect songs on it at least. Meanwhile this has like 0.75 songs on it in general. At the same time I kind of get why this needed to happen and there is something about it that has an allure. Martin Hannett great dense production even though it is rather uhhhh late 80s sounding.
This one feels like it has some bloat compared to the last two (excellent) albums by this band, but I could see it growing on me with more listens. A strong 3 but this website doesn't have HALF STARS!!! So I must go with that. It's like a perfect 3.5 to me.
At first I was like why is this the one that's on here of their first three records ? And while I still think Songs for the Deaf should absolutely be here this album is still great and does a good job at encapsulating the appeal of their early stuff. It has the riff-y faster songs, it has the slower sludgier jams, it has some weird shit. It's All Here.
Fantastic!!!! How can you write these songs when you are a teenager.....
I remember liking this one a little more than I did this time around. SAD. It's solid though.
This is their peak to me, all the styles they do well are at their apex here. 'Sway,' 'Can You Hear Me Knocking,' 'Dead Flowers,' and 'Moonlight Mile' are all among the greatest songs ever made by human beings in my estimation.
Interesting to read about this band both coming from the Aussie pub rock thing which sort of explains their incorporation of like Northern soul / British R&B / the blues into their sound, and also interesting to read about their disillusionment with the "conformity" of the London punk scene that they emigrated to. I like this album on first listen, definitely see room for this band to grow in my esteem though.
I had only heard this one once before so I'm glad I went back because I liked it a lot more. All these songs are good .
2.99 on this website..... Lol..... I'm (pleasantly) surprised this one is in the book instead of Red to represent this period of King Crimson as I always thought that was the big one. And maybe it still is. The title tracks on this are mind-blowing and honestly would be fairly mind-blowing if they came out today but in 1973 I don't know how it's even possible. black midi must love this one. And you know what, so do I. Every track on this is perfect, both the improvisation-heavy ones and the more melodic / "pretty" stuff. I'm also surprised Discipline isn't in here. That one is heavily reminiscent of Remain in Light-era Talking Heads so if you guys are curious to hear that..... Check it.... It's real good.
'Inner City Blues' is CRAZY. Whole album is great. We love it.
I had a big Elvis Costello phase / "Clicking" last spring but I had never heard this one. It may reignite my phase.... I thought it was excellent, perfectly acidic in the way most of my favorite stuff of his is, great raw production.
I love this album, and I love the next two albums of theirs even more. But those aren't in here... This album does have a pretty fantastic and hard-to-replicate vibe though. The cover does a lot of work on that front.
I always think of this as the weakest of the 3 Experience albums but I think that's just because I've heard half of these songs a bazillion times. When you actually listen to them all with distance though it's like , yes, these are all fantastic. 'Third Stone From the Sun' in particular is just a crazy thing to exist.
Well I get why they took this one out. For one it is a transitional album, they get properly weird on Icky Thump for the whole thing (still a very patchy and goofy album that I don't like). This one lays their influences barer and I like that idea in theory but the songs are just not there. This isn't even a band I like but I want there to be electric guitar if I'm going to listen to them and a weird amount of songs here don't even have THAT .
When this one came out I was at peak Tapped-In-ness with SiriusXMU and Pitchfork. So I remember a number of these songs. I LOVE the first two then they get really inconsistent. The sound design of the synths is really great all the way through but it's not enough to make it something I love a lot .
I like the arrangements and the production. I do not like when the man gets overly silly though. And it gets a bit sleepy at this length. The first song sounds kind of like it is channeling Sufjan and Van Morrison, who I both like! Mixed bag.
I like this album! It is good . Bob Marley has never been a huge favorite of mine but he is good .
This one is crazy to have been recorded in 1965 but not my favorite thing but it's still good.
I'd never heard this one before but it is really cool and unique and works great. The mix is weird (produced by the guy who would go on to do all the late weird Scott Walker stuff... and Heyday by The Church) but I think it basically works since the vocals have less emphasis on melody than some of this stuff tends to and more emphasis on ethereal dreamy stuff. So it's great. Some synth sounds I have never heard before too.
Sorry but this is very not interesting, I'm sorry to this very important band and recording but I feel like this is not really an Album in the way that many albums were in 1962.
The common ding against this album is that it is over-produced but no it's actually not. The only choice I don't like is the gospel choir on 'Poor Boy.' Everything else is basically perfect. I love how the melody in 'Hazey Jane II' sounds like a melodic line that would start a horn solo in a jazz song. This was produced by the guy who did a bunch of Fairport Convention and Richard & Linda Thompson albums (and Five Leaves Left) and it sounds pretty immaculate. (He also produced Fables of the Reconstruction!) 'Fly' makes me die.
1977...... How in the world.... I love how insistent the drum machine is on this album, it's like the same sound the whole time (except for 'Girl' which is kind of bossa nova-y). I love how it comes in on 'Rocket USA,' like the hi-hat is a split second ahead of the bass the first time. Massively influential on so many things and the mood struck here is unlike basically anything that came after.
Lush and nice production. Songs are of wildly varying quality. Honestly this is a step away from other sophisti-pop stuff that I love so I'm trying to stay humble.
Not my favorite thing in the world but I was honestly expecting to find it more annoying than I did. The band has a good sound maybe entirely attributable to the guitar tone.
I like 'Kinky Afro' and 'Loose Fit' a lot!!!!!! Tends to be more up my alley when it is house-ier .
Pretty impressive document of music here. For a live album from 1970 it is recorded in a way that is incredible. The 'My Generation' medley is wild.
I find this vERY difficult to care about even though it's only 33 minutes long. It gets old after like 7 minutes. I respect that that guy's voice is weird as hell though. I just am like, what am I doing here.
Billy Corgan is forgiven for all of his crimes because in the 90s he made like 200 songs and probably 100 of them are fully great and 60 more of them are good. I don't understand how nearly every single song on this is fantastic. He just had THE TOUCH. I also think this album is paced really well despite being very whiplash-y ('1979' into 'Tales of a Scorched Earth,' lol). My favorite album by one of my favorite bands (up through Machina, at least).
Really nice A side! I'm glad I listened to this but it does suffer from a similar thing to other 50s albums like this where it is heavily inconsistent. But good fun and good .
This is pretty good! There are other drifty arty rock albums like this from around this time I prefer but I've also only heard this once. Thank you Holger! Everyone listen to his album Plight + Premonition with David Sylvian for beautiful ambient music .
I'm so sorry , but I find this album a little too inconsistent to consider it "GREAT." Maybe more listens are required. I'M SORRY.
I prefer Ragin', Full-On (which I was listening to when I had a stomach bug like three years ago so I associate it with that despite liking it), this one feels a little more ramshackle, but I still like their sound and they're great instrumentalists.
This one is great!!! What do you want me to say!!! They get fully dreamy here.
Hard to say if this is still my favorite VU album but it's the one I have the most sentimental attachment to. I've been listening to it forever. John Cale's departure (WE LOVE YOU JOHN CALE) opened them up to chill out a little bit like Lou Reed wanted and this is the platonic ideal of that before Doug Yule gets a bit more input on Loaded. I like Loaded but it's by far the worst. ANYWAY, great album to listen to sitting in your room at night, this one. Great production. Twinkling guitar .
In the past I would have said this is my least favorite of their classic 68-72 run but now I don't know! This is the most I've ever enjoyed it to the point where I'm confused as to what my hangups were.
Without a doubt their worst of the five albums, but I understand why it needs to be here. Honestly I would put every single one of their albums here but I'm biased. I think I prefer Speakerboxxx just because I don't think all the experiments on The Love Below succeed, but I really admire that Andre tried them all.
I think I only knew of his collaboration with Charli XCX before this, but I like this pretty well! Sounds nice. Nothing too standout in the realm of late 2010s synthpop BUT that's fine .
Far from my favorite Beck album, but there's some good stuff on it and the production is often fun. I do think it sort of sounds like car commercials now, which isn't its fault.
I really wasn't expecting to like this as much as I did but it's really creative, well-performed, excellently produced, hits a few different styles of 70s rock in ways that are good and feel slightly ahead of their time (I never realized how good 'No More Mr. Nice Guy' is, I think I took it for granted because I'd hear it on the radio all the time but melodically it feels like something power pop bands of the late 70s and early 80s are aiming for all the time). 'Generation Landslide' was my sneaky favorite pick.
I'm So Sorry, but this is my least favorite Steely Dan album. They are a band that I love a whole lot but I find this one to feel a lot like a debut and also it's fairly inconsistent to me. But this is all kinda stupid because it's all good and totally pleasant anyway. There are three other albums by them and the book and I handily prefer each of them and can't wait to get em.
A lot rawer than other things like this from the 60s. And noisier. I like The Who. LOL!!!
Really solid stuff and reading about her career was interesting. It sounds like a very good 70s singer songwriter album .
Wow, the beginning of the last track feels really ahead of its time and beautiful. I like all of the last three songs quite a bit.
This is one of my favorite albums of all time. It feels like every song is its own environment which is particularly wild to me because a lot of these are song-y, like they're not purely ambient pieces at all. But Eno is the best at this in so much of his solo work and we love him for it.
One of my favorite albums of all time. It is basically a work of architecture. Another Green World is like 14 different pastoral / rural environments and this album is like 1 giant slab of urban architecture.
I like a lot of this a good deal but it is simply too inconsistent (on first listen at least IN MY EYES) to be truly great. But Timbaland and Missy both have some excellent material on this.
Always liked this album but never loved it outside of the first two tracks .
I wish I liked this a little more! In comparison with the other neo-soul pioneers I feel like his influences are just a little too worn on his sleeve and the songwriting is just a little too sleepy. But it's still really nice and I could see myself raising the rating on this with time and more listens.
As good as the arrangements and production and performances are, it feels like half of these songs are just not that good on first listen at their core, but many of the others are great, so I'm hoping the rest eventually grows on me .
This band is an interesting fulcrum in how they get us from hair metal to the alt / nu metal that is going to take over the latter half of the 90s and I can also hear plenty of the DNA of other great southern metal bands like Acid Bath et cetera. But there's basically a lot of stuff that is influenced by this (or that influenced this) that I vastly prefer because it rises above the meathead mid-tempo chugging that this album so frequently settles for.
I find this album a lot more consistently good than Deja Vu and a lot less, uhh, edgeless. Or maybe that's just the lack of any songs as corny as 'Our House' and 'Teach Your Children.' 'Guinnevere' is fascinating and I love David Crosby .
I like this album and think a lot of the songs are great but there is something that is still embryonic on this one to me and I'm not sure if it's because I read that one of the main collaborators on this album is one of the main collaborators on Eminem's Recovery. Confirmation bias ? No, because I think this album is quite good but doesn't quite hit the heights she will reach on the next one.
Curious choice for the book considering that, for instance, The Jesus Lizard does not make an appearance in here. No complaints on the quality of the music here although it does sort of all blur together after a point. But produced nicely!
I have had every conceivable opinion on this album at one point or another in my life but I hopefully am now settling on firmly thinking that it is indeed great and I should stop trying to resist albums like this because I'm not a teenager or college Freak anymore, I don't have to be EDGY!!!
One of my favorite albums of all time. Feels truly like I am traveling through time and space when I listen to it. I adore King Crimson and I think they get to more interesting places that predict entire styles of music but this is still a very unusual example of late 60s British prog, like it's kind of insane that they go to the places they do and get as heavy as they do. God I love it. I LOVE IT!!!!
Pieces of a Man isn't in here..... That one is a little less mellow than this but it's just as great so I would recommend it. This album was great. I only knew 'The Bottle' and that song is great. iT'S ALL GREAT.
I cannot handle hippies or the Grateful Dead I'm sorry .
Little long. I could see this increasing to a 4 in time though.
I really love this album , it is produced so beautifully. The comparisons to Bjork strike me as fairly reductive but also I understand the impulse.
This album is when the car drives off the road and then Dangerous I'm assuming is when it goes off the cliff and whichever one after is when the car hits the ground and explodes .
I thought this was good and nice! I should listen to it more attentively.
I find the fact that this album got as big as it did very fascinating because it's a very difficult and depressing album. The second half especially is strange and purposefully off-putting. I think some of it works and some of it doesn't.
I think this might be her strongest front-to-back album..... she is far from one of my favorite artists but I think the songwriting and production and performance is here and it's more varied than I remembered it being. Maybe in like 20 years when we're (hopefully) not still over-saturated with her it'll be easier to listen .
This has never been my favorite album but I know it had to happen and the attitude is strong .
I have been meaning to listen to The Divine Comedy forever (two albums in this book....) because I think I'd like them. This doesn't feel like a super representative survey of their talents -- BECAUSE IT'S NOT THEIR ALBUM!!! I pulled out the Tom Waits songs immediately, he has a distinct style. The Scott Walker track is my favorite thing here and very wild. Overall it's OK.
Impossible for me to rate this one objectively because it was such a massively defining part of my adolescence. It's very difficult to listen to now that Kanye has become what he has become, but I love it dearly.
The big Cat Stevens stuff I knew going into this I was hit-or-miss on, and the album as a whole felt the same way, and his annoying British hippie mysticism shit was beginning to annoy me, but the arrangements and production are solid.
Two good songs (the two big ones), like eight songs that are meh to bad by Korn's standards (I am no great Korn fan to be fair), and then three or so of the worst novelty songs you have ever heard in your life . Should've been their first album on here, I think this is my least favorite of their first four and again I am no big Korn fan.
This is difficult because I find Eminem so off-putting and a lot of his shock value stuff is just tiring but then sometimes there is a song like 'Kim' that is so reprehensible and insane and yet this guy was like one of the biggest artists in the world for a minute. It's just very fascinating to me. He certainly has skill and the production is OK sometimes. And his vision of the world is so depressing. I have no idea how to square all this with a number rating.
Masterpiece, first three songs are all as perfect as music gets. The whole album is just one long begging the question of "How the hell did they get the guitar to sound that way."
I like the A-side more than the B-side. I didn't know he was lime in the coconut guy.
Legendary first half of this album. I like the rest too but those songs, WOWIE !!!!
'Birthday' is one of my favorite songs of all time but I'd never heard this before because I thought it was going to be ... exactly like it was.
Perfect arrangements and performances all around .
Better than I was expecting!
I adore this album but there should be like 7 XTC albums in this book. 2.83 on the website, you people, WHAT ARE YOU DOING !!!!!
I was hoping I'd like this a bit more and there is certainly a distinct time and place where this hits but I do find everything about it just kind of ....... fine. But that's OK! IT"S GOOD!!!
Feels like one of the only hippie Summer of Love albums that feels ahead of its time instead of woefully of its time. The dreamier stuff is all really fantastic and interesting here... then the band breaks up never to make anything else. The bassist, who is great, has 0 other credits I think. Or at least I read that. Really good one!
I mean, the sampling is cool sometimes I guess but other times it's really stupid sounding ('Longue route') and also the guy needs to stop singing.
