My 1001 Albums Journey

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3.38

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1960

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Albums

You Love More Than Most

Album	You	Global	Diff
Ellington at Newport Duke Ellington	5	3.43	+1.57
The Gershwin Songbook Ella Fitzgerald	5	3.52	+1.48
Axis: Bold As Love Jimi Hendrix	5	3.78	+1.22
Oedipus Schmoedipus Barry Adamson	4	2.78	+1.22
Fly Or Die N.E.R.D	4	2.86	+1.14
Otis Blue/Otis Redding Sings Soul Otis Redding	5	3.92	+1.08

You Love Less Than Most

Album	You	Global	Diff
OK Computer Radiohead	2	4.11	-2.11
Greetings From L.A. Tim Buckley	1	2.85	-1.85
A Rush Of Blood To The Head Coldplay	2	3.44	-1.44
Amnesiac Radiohead	2	3.42	-1.42
Le Tigre Le Tigre	2	3.14	-1.14
The La's The La's	2	3.14	-1.14
The Bends Radiohead	3	4.01	-1.01
The Libertines The Libertines	2	3.01	-1.01

5-Star Albums (5)

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1-Star Albums (1)

All Ratings

Songs In The Key Of Life

Stevie Wonder

5/5

starting off with a classic, i see. very widely discussed but not an lp i've ever actually sat down and listened to. composition and arrangement and performances and production are fantastic. lyrics pinball between great, vapid, and incomprehensible, which is above average for the genre imo. putting this in the pop album category is a weight mismatch, but i dunno as you can call it anything else. banger.

Amnesiac

Radiohead

2/5

it is said that, to this day, in an isolated valley in central england, if you listen very carefully, you can hear the only consonant thom yorke ever fully pronounced echoing gently from the hills. mushy, indistinct, sonically complex but compositionally uninnovative song construction produces an album that skitters off of my brain like a drop of water on a hot griddle. to be fair, if you don't have a strong aversion to the deliberately out of tune vocal style, it's probably a lot more palatable.

Transformer

Lou Reed

3/5

it's decent, i think? the vocal styling is not particularly to my taste, at least in this sort of quantity, but there's good individual tracks for sure.

Pornography

The Cure

4/5

i've got a lot of room in my heart for depression music. great bass tone, surprisingly good enunciation on the lyrics, fun percussion work. good stuff.

The Bends

Radiohead

3/5

the opener is actually pretty good! My Iron Lung and Sulk are also fun. elsewise it's not nearly as interminable as Amnesiac since the vocals aren't distressingly flat to nearly the same degree. this album sounds like i imagine living in a long-faded former industrial city in 1990s england feels.

A Rush Of Blood To The Head

Coldplay

2/5

yep that's a coldplay album. it's a good canvas for drum n bass remixes and that's about it. lead vocalist is not inspiring confidence with the falsetto here if i'm being completely honest.

Le Tigre

2/5

i'm not sure what genre this is, but i don't think it's one i'm familiar with. one of the vocalists is trying to sing on a teaspoon of air, the arrangement is pretty minimal but the individual sounds aren't complex to fill it out, and i don't know what's going on in the lyrics i can make out.

Strangeways, Here We Come

The Smiths

4/5

sure, that's fun. a bit staid for my tastes, but it's well arranged, varied in composition, and with some compelling vocal work.

Ellington at Newport

Duke Ellington

5/5

one of the greatest big band recordings of all time. one of the greatest medium-size ensemble recordings of all time, in any genre. there's an interstitial track called "Riot Prevention" that contains exactly what it says on the tin. what more do you want.

Violator

Depeche Mode

3/5

it's a classic, it's very influential, and it's still pretty good in CURRENT_YEAR, but more than thirty years on a lot of people have made a lot of pretty similar music and it doesn't quite stand out.

Axis: Bold As Love

Jimi Hendrix

5/5

these boys were *cooking*. an incredibly energetic studio album. there's so much going on and it's done so well that it doesn't even matter that the lyrics are pretty nothing. a couple of these tracks i'd love to hear more development on, but there's nothing wrong with what's on the record.

Fly Or Die

N.E.R.D

4/5

fun, well arranged, lyrics tend a little eeeh but i can only grab about half of em so we'll call it a draw. vocals are good tho, and the hook writing is in full force.

OK Computer

Radiohead

2/5

a masterclass in how to turn a bunch of interesting individual sounds into pulp slurry for egg carton manufacture

The Libertines

2/5

the same people trying to make a different type of music might well work for me; this does not

Face to Face

The Kinks

4/5

sure, that's interesting enough. doing several different things, none of them are super compelling individually but it's a fine package. i do love the vocal harmony writing in this style and era.

Bad

Michael Jackson

4/5

vocal performance is undeniable. songwriting...somewhat deniable. lyrics in particular frequently leave something to be desired, and the rhythm section tends to recede fully into the realm of a backing track. to be fair, i have the same opinions about a whole lot of pop music.

The Gershwin Songbook

Ella Fitzgerald

5/5

Ella Fitzgerald is perhaps the best singer of the recorded music era. this album comes once recording technology itself had reached more or less its full capacity, and puts her - and the band - on excellent display. the Gershwins are hit or miss for me, but it doesn't *matter* when you deliver them like this.

Duck Rock

Malcolm McLaren

3/5

fascinatingly eclectic but generally danceable. the interstitial material isn't great. real shame they put the white dude's name on it, it feels like almost more of a collaboration / compilation album

Otis Blue/Otis Redding Sings Soul

Otis Redding

5/5

whewwwwwww this is cookin. what a voice. loses some consistency in the slow songs in particular, but that's to be expected from someone who was only 23 at the time of recording. the band is fully in the pocket. gas top to bottom, as long as you don't listen to some of the lyrics very hard

The Next Day

David Bowie

4/5

well performed and beautifully produced. varied and interesting composition. i think the songwriting writes checks that bowie's vocal health can't cash.

Fifth Dimension

The Byrds

3/5

the sort of album where nothing i hear sticks in my brain for more than about ten seconds. it sure is hippie music (value-neutral)

Berlin

Lou Reed

3/5

it's definitely interesting from an academic perspective, but i don't know that i'd call it enjoyable per se. i think the vocal style would be less tedious if i wasn't hearing it for an entire album in one go.

Twelve Dreams Of Dr. Sardonicus

Spirit

3/5

well, it's certainly *interesting*, but i don't think that's a good thing, at least for me. there's bits and pieces that are compelling, but it really kinda feels like someone tried to make a mosaic out of elements from other contemporary bands and it just doesn't look like a picture when you step back.

Blue Lines

Massive Attack

4/5

very chill. very confident, deservedly so. probably a bit too minimalist for me to want to listen to a whole album of in a row personally. not a surprise that this has been influential

The La's

2/5

there's some good individual riffs, but they're just repeated over and over until they're run into the ground instead of being developed, and the whole thing is suffocated by incredibly flat vocals. every song somehow manages to overstay its welcome despite only rarely making it over two and a half minutes

Oedipus Schmoedipus

Barry Adamson

4/5

fun and eclectic concept album, good instrumentally, but the vocals and spoken word segments are not holding up their end. great instrumentation choices, love to hear vibes and sax in this sort of way

The Clash

3/5

very yell-y. some of it is catchy, at least. given the date, probably one of the key precursors to the thousands and thousands of equally unremarkable punk eps and short lps recorded at great haste that would follow.

Greetings From L.A.

Tim Buckley

1/5

if this man would shut up and let the band play it would be at least passably fun and funky. as is, it's a disaster, with neither lyrics nor their performance being tolerable.

The Stooges

4/5

wow that comes out ripping! lyrics are nothing to write home about, but the delivery is good enough, and they don't detract from the star, which is some lovely guitar work. good range too, from wall of distortion to background noodling.