1001 Albums Summary

Absolutely understand the value of the record. It's clever, it's a sophisticated, it opened a gateway to whole other realm of music,. Sadly, that is not a realm in which I ever want to live. I could last the rest of my life and most of the next one never hearing a prog record again, and, yet, I suspect, given this enterprise, I will have no such fate. No fault of the album's, but it is is just Not. For. Me. To be perfectly honest, I made it about halfway before turning it off. Sorry King. Mr Crimson. Sire. It is what it is. I've got 1000 more albums to get through.

As one of the previous reviewers intimidated, Disintegration pulls together all the sometimes incongruous strands of the Cure's previous work to pull off something majestic, sweeping and still needling, something unashamedly emotional that somehow gets better with age, no embarrassingly juvenile, but still capturing the wonderful awfulness of being human and sad in a big impassioned rush of Big Feelings. On an album full of gold, I'd forgotten about the title track, so impossibly good and buried deep in the album.

Utterly superb. The pure swag of Muddy Waters. The sound quality is unreal - could have been recorded yesterday. And the band's whoops and yells on Mannish Boy just capture so well the sweeping irreverence and pleasure of playing live when a bunch of musicians come together. Joy in the blues.

How do you give a star review to something you don't understand? Maybe one day, when I grow up, I'll understand this. Until then, it's impenetrable. I once read a book by Questlove that had a paragraph about the Davis song Nefertiti and since then I've loved it. So I can get there. But, I think, like reading Ulysses, I need an explainer manual for this kind of jazz. Until then I'll keep trying, but not today Miles. Not today...

One of my favourite albums. Yet I still forget it's got Blowin' the Wind, Don't Think Twice, Hard Rain and Girl from the North Country all on it. Such a young voice and such swag. Listen to Bob Dylan's Dream to remind yourself how naturally funny Dylan is.

Gorgeous. Even Gervais can't ruin the title track.