Great mix of jazz along with the blues.
"Sharp Dressed Man" and "Legs" are bangers, for sure, but the rest of the album really starts to feel the same.
I should like this album. I love the wall of sound concept, and this definitely has it. But in execution here, it's just annoying. And in now way did this album need to be 22 tracks. He ran out of ideas after about 10 and then just kept going.
Funky and groovy for a lot of it, but disappointingly languid for too much of the album.
I think I really need to have heard this album when it came out to fully appreciate it. It's good enough music, but isn't blowing me away at all.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3j2Pb0YwVH8
You can definitely hear how this impacted quite a lot of electronic music: building a little these/snippet and repeating it with some variation over time. But other than there I couldn't find a whole lot to like about the album. Not bad, just kind of boring.
Like with other albums (and I suspect more and more that we'll listen to), it's hard to fully appreciate this when you started with the music that this inspired, which has also been refined, enhanced and expanded. It's kind of like watching dead-ball baseball when you started watching in the modern era.
Phenomenal sound quality. The experience is ruined a little bit by all the breaks for introductions, crowd control, etc. I would have preferred more music and less of what was happening at the actual performance.
Really good album. Roundabout is an all-timer. Lots of really interesting ideas. I really liked Cans & Brahms. About a 3.5 rounded up.
Good album. I really liked the first track and wish the rest of the album could have been that good. Would have been an easy 4+. Also, what a dumb album title & cover.
Fine, just not my cup of tea.
I hate Leonard Cohen as a vocalist. Let me repeat that, I hate Leonard Cohen as a vocalist. Only Bob Dylan might be worse. Every song sounds exactly the same. He takes his voice, which is pretty good in and of itself, and does absolutely nothing with it. Like any sort of inventiveness, dynamism or variety is morally wrong to him. The music itself occasionally has a bit of life, but mostly that is pretty monotonous (except, Diamonds in the Mine, that was a nice change of pace).
I now know I'll never need to listen to one of his songs again. The album title is two words too long.
Being generous and rounding up 1.5 stars entirely because of Diamonds in the Mine (though the more songs I listen to the harder this becomes).
There's a couple of really high highs. "Sweetness Follows" is one of my favorite songs (not just on the album), and "Man On the Moon" is excellent. However, they aren't enough to raise the entire album to anything more than average for me.
Very innovative music with lots going on. But I'd have to be in the right mood to want to listen to this album too much.
Kudos to Bjork for naming her debut solo album "Debut".
Song length really hurt this album. Easily 4+ stars if each song was just shorter. Fantastic music with an incredible rhythm section. This is exactly the kind of album I was hoping to hear from this site. Giving it 4 stars because of that.
I say this with all sincerity, I'm not sophisticated enough to fully appreciate this album. I liked it, but I believe I need to be more of a musician or jazz aficionado to get the most out of it.
Fine, and I've already completely forgotten it. I would like to hear the justification of why I needed to hear this album.
Brilliant album top to bottom. Incredible and inventive beats perfectly matching Q-Tip and Phife Dawg.
The singer's voice really grated on me. The music wasn't any better.
If you're going to copy someone, may as well be The Boss.
I really should have liked this more, but it just didn't click. Still good, though.
Not quite Talking Book or Songs..., but prime Stevie Wonder is a treasure. Every song is just a pleasure to listen to.
Better than the other ZZ Top album we had.
A very 90s interpretation of reggae. The problem is that I don't like reggae. This album didn't change that.
Not at all what I expected. Lots of different sounds and instruments. I didn't like it, but I'm glad I listened to it. I suppose that's the point of this whole thing.
I'm rating this 3 stars. But that is because 3 is the average of all possible ratings. This album is the one of the most mood and song-to-song dependent albums I've ever heard. If I'm in the right mood and listening to the right songs, this is an easy 5. Wrong mood and wrong songs? 1 star is being generous.
How is it I'm only listening to this now?!? It's phenomenal. So much ear candy in every track. And the covers? Blew my mind. I had no idea you could do that to "Summer Breeze".
I am completely indifferent to this album.
Good album. Chrissie is a great front-woman. At this point, I've heard "Brass In Pocket" too many times, which is sad.
I really wish I could have seen them live when this came out. I bet those shows were killer.
I've been dreading this day. I hate Bob Dylan. Leonard Cohen gave strong competition, but Dylan remains the worst vocalist of all time. His voice grates on me like no one else's. The music is alright but can't overcome his obnoxious vocals. And while I normally don't care about lyrics, Dylan's are so dumb that I can't ignore them. DNF'd the album.
Is there some rule that says protest music must be sung by people with the worst voices possible? Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young and now Billy Bragg. All have bad voices. Does it somehow make the music more important if the singer sounds like crap? If they played the guitar like they sang, they'd be laughed off the stage. So why is a bad voice acceptable?
Anyway, the music is kind of interesting, but Bragg himself was painful to listen to.
I would like to simultaneously give this a 2, 3 and 4. Some songs are a perfect combination of Antony's vocals and the music. And for some songs all I could think of was Tiny Tim without the falsetto. When they're on, this band has some pretty high highs, however that's sadly too rare.
But, another album I'm glad I listened to and wouldn't have otherwise - even if I didn't totally like it.
This is one of those "I'm not mad, just disappointed" situations. This album isn't bad, it's just dumb. There isn't any reason for it to exist, nor is there any reason for it to be on this list. It serves no purpose and therefore I can't really hate it. The exception being "AB/7A", that was actually alright. It's like Throbbing Gristle screwed up and put an actual musical song on the album.
A little too muzak to be really enjoyable.
One of the more overrated bands of all time. Not bad, just not as great as most people think.
Every bit as dumb as Throbbing Gristle, but lacking the accidental single good song Throbbing Gristle managed. Complete waste of time.
The music is fine. Not overly memorable outside of the Exorcist bits and a few other things. I was expecting a lot more bells in the album, given the name.
What happens when you try to be The Beatles but forget you aren't The Beatles.
The album gets better in the second half when the Boys get closer to what they excel at.
Endlessly irritating. There is nothing redeeming to repeating the same stupid little snippet a million times in an 8 minute song. The vocals usually make things worse. I don't have the patience to listen to this album today. Other days I might suffer through it.
Update: I gave this another attempt a day later. It still sucks.
I quite liked it. Mamunia and 1985 were really enjoyable.
Too abstract for me. I didn't truly dislike any of the songs, nor did I really enjoy any of them either. 2.5 rounded up to 3.
I don't hate this album, and I'm surprised by that. Dylan's rasp really suits the music well (when it's overpowering his usual nasally sound) and is kind of enjoyable. The straight ahead blues is pretty enjoyable. But oh my God is this album too long. Most songs are 5 minutes or longer, and for some reason they feel about twice as long as that.
GET IN THE PIT, MOTHERFUCKERS!
I had a really hard time deciding if this album rated a 3 or 4. There are some songs on here I really like, specifically the first two tracks. And the others are all good. The musicianship is 2nd to none. But at times the album is just too easy listening. I listened to the album about 5-6 times trying to decide. Then I remembered that I was generous to the god-awful Leonard Cohen album. So why shouldn't I be generous for an actual good album?
Good album. I'd happily listen to it again, but not too often.
You can hear why this is such an influential album and why it holds up 35 years later. The album still sounds fresh and vibrant today. But the downside to Max has always been that his songs get real same-y real fast.
Not blown away as much as I think I was supposed to be. Good album, and the variety is pretty cool. I wasn't expecting Greensleeves or whatever that take on Bolero was.
This is straddling the line between 2 and 3. It's mostly based on Neil's voice. When it gets slurred and/or nasally I really don't like it. Otherwise, he's got quite a nice voice that really works well with the music. The music itself is just fine.
TIL "Everybody's Talkin" was not written by Nilsson.
