1001 Albums Summary

Funk from the future. Liquid, funky, aggressively digital with a human touch (even if the human touch is mostly sex-crazed)

Cute, if a bit lightweight.

Not unpleasant - but I'm a Bowie fanatic and even I would never think this is in any way essential.

this record was fun FUN! it really rocks ROCKS it's so diverse VERSE It blew off my socks SOCKS

Always surprised by how sprawling and laid-back the E Street Band sounds. Even at the height of their stadium power and sheen, they could be just as easily sweating it out in a dive bar to dancing drunken patrons, and that's infinitely compelling.

I grew up on Scrubs. I'm pavlov-trained to have Big Feels about Dreaming of You. it's like a secret government agent activation phrase for me. DO YOU HAVE AN IDEA HOW MUCH IT TAKES to make me hate a record that has this track on? THAT is the extent of this record's vileness.

Damn

Fun (at times)

Imperial Age excess and indulgence - with the tunes to back it up. It's easy to talk about the high points, as this has more belters than an average band's whole discography. The record also has obvious flaws - it's bloated, incoherent, poorly organised; another band with another producer would have concluded they had material for 2 solid albums, and a handful of b-sides to boot. But if you sit with it, it quietly turns those flaws into part of its strength: this is not one record, it's an overly ambitious, maximalist expression of a creative voice. Billy Corgan wants to show the world all he can do, and he'll leave no stone unturned in the process. Turns out, he can do a fair bit. Lush, emotional strings, fire breathing guitars, hazy layers of melancholy and urgency, beatle-esque winks and adolescent sneering rage. The sprawling incoherence of all this mashed together over two, long CDs could just be careless and boring, but it turns into an extended stay inside a pretty singular mind, in all its pretty and ugly facets; like reading through a year's of a messy, intense teenger's diary. But damn, this messy teenager can write a song.

Mature, well written, self-assured, richly produced - but lacks the edge and urgency that makes other Dylan works great.

Punk flash, rave energy, face meltingly unique.

Welcome to the Jungle is immediate 4/5 Most of the rest of the record is more on 2/5 Settling this with a very uneasy average.

For a band named after a sex toy, how is the music so flaccid?

This is the record with Highway Star and Smoke on the Water on it, and SOMEHOW it's still better than you expect it to be on that basis. Absolutely monumental.