1001 Albums Summary

I didn't enjoy this one.

Lives up to the hype - perfect.

Almost comically 1990s

One of the albums on this project where my struggle between rating objective quality or enjoyment of the listening experience was sharpest but the brutal, relentlessly unpleasant slog of this listening experience won out. Hated every second of it.

You really told those hippies, Frank.

I'm too firmly millennial not to give this five stars.

Not at all as bad as some of the other reviews make it seem. Kind of a spikier, more chaotic Fleet Foxes vibe.

Amazed at how much I didn't hate this, given the experience of listening to a Mothers of Invention album previously.

Immediate five stars for the opening song and that banger ending line: 'they suffer least who suffer what they choose'. One of the albums that make this whole project worthwhile: something I might never have listened to or even heard of otherwise, but whose influence you instantly hear in better-known artists.

It's amazing how this 1001 albums project has improved my feelings on almost every genre of music except for prog rock. I am on my knees, begging the generator to generate me no more prog rock. I cannot take another meandering guitar album of abstruse lyrics yowled into a mic.

A sweet, easy-to-listen-to sort of album.

I don't know how to describe this album other than immersive - the auditory equivalent of a John Ford film. Lovely voice and great storytelling, but I did get bored by halfway through.

I wanted to like it much more than I did.

Does this sound very turn-of-the-millennium? Well, yeah, but it's not a crime for an album to sound like the year it came out and there are enough Extremely Seventies albums on this list with very high ratings to prove that. Maybe it's my incurable millennial cringe but I still think there are some lovely songs here.

An album I admired more than enjoyed.

Not spectacular, but I'd throw it on again as background music to work to. Open Up is the standout track.

Love the Boss but this is not his finest work.

Are there an awful lot of prog rock albums on this list or is the algorithm frontloading them because it hates me, specifically? Either way, you can keep making me listen to them but apparently you can't make me like them.

Really struggled with this one. Like most people who grew up in the 00s I have a certain amount of nostalgic affection for the radio singles, but much of the rest of the album is a brutal slog of misogyny and violence and even knowing that those elements are part of the performance doesn't make them any easier to listen to.

Lovely!

Just looking at the runtime brought me closer to skipping than any other album so far in this challenge, and getting to the end of the first disc made me wish I had. I dragged myself kicking and screaming to the end but Jesus, what a slog.

Somehow better and worse than I'd expected at the same time.

Beautiful album overall and I do feel bad for docking a point for him having kind of an annoying singing voice, but I must speak my truth.

I'm of an age where watching the Crawling music video on Kerrang and playing the In the End piano riff on school keyboards are core memories for me, so this is a five star album all day long regardless of its objective quality.

Something almost pastiche-sounding about it. Just didn't click for me.

Pure distillation of 80s.

Hole have been my favourite discovery of this project. It's insane that Courtney Love isn't more highly regarded as a musician, whatever her subsequent public image has been.

My heart sinks whenever I see the word psychedelic in the genre tags, but this was unexpectedly wonderful.

For the first couple of songs I was fairly certain this would be an unexpected five star album for me, but the relentlessness of the sound really started to grate. Then Jailbait happened and, look, yeah, the 80s were a different time, but the song is disgusting and it couldn't help but colour my feelings towards the rest of the album. There are real bangers on here but I'd listen to them in isolation rather than going through the whole album again.

Perfectly fine album but I admit to struggling to see the importance.

I'm surprised I hadn't listened to this before, given that I grew up bang in the middle of the 2000s indie boom. Definitely of that era, which made me predisposed to enjoy it.

I first heard of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan through a Jeff Buckley cover of Yeh Jo Halka Saroor Hae, and listening to this album through really makes the influence on the rest of his work clear. One of the fun, unexpected threads you can sometimes trace through artists from very different traditions, and a testament to the benefits of wide listening.

Truly, truly horrible; I hated every individual second of the listening experience. I assume this was the artistic intention, in which case a good job well done. Wikipedia describes this as their most accessible album, to which I have no response.

Getting this album the day after Wonderful Rainbow by Lightning Bolt was like arriving at an oasis after crawling through the desert.

Just generally really lovely to listen to, but a couple of standout songs pushed this up from a four to a five for me.