1001 Albums Summary

Favorite song: Jesus of Suburbia Least favorite: Are We the Waiting The quintessential pop punk album. It is successful both as cleanly mastered pop perfection and a piece of political media that still holds its weight today. American Idiot manages to avoid the trite, surface-level lyrics that often define others in this genre as extremely far removed from their “punk” roots. The album has something to say, but delivers it in a polished and catchy manner that still resonates 20 years after its release.

Favorite: … Least favorite: Racing in the Street Springsteen is a good story teller. Some of the music is interesting. I just can’t help but feel like this album could only truly be enjoyed by your redneck uncle who’s 10 Bud Lites deep at the family barbecue. It’s marred by generic, over indulgent guitar solos that could only be appreciated by those who have never heard an actual visionary guitarist at work. And the saxophone solo that follows up the less-than-thrilling guitar section of “The Promised Land?” Am I listening to pretentious band students perform at a high school variety show? On top of it all, the songs free of this overindulgence are incredibly boring. The progression of the album also feels disjointed, without any clear central themes or even sonic motifs to unite the song selection. Why am I listening to a 7 minute ballad halfway through that album? “Streets of Fire” is the only slow-burning song like this that manages to escape complete mind numbingness. Unfortunately, it breaks the monotony with terrible crooning that’s hard to sit through and, you guessed it, the sweet payoff of another ridiculous, generic guitar solo. Darkness is 45 minutes of pure, unadulterated, all-American Dad Rock tunes sandwiched between incredibly boring ballads that drone on for minutes after they should have concluded. While I understand the appeal of his sound and lyrics to the blue collar class, I’ll stick with Tom Petty when I’m craving the Heartland Rock sound in the future.

Favorite song: Was a huge fan of the transition between Standin’ in the Rain/Big Wheels Would rate 4.5 if I had half stars. Thank you to the Beatles for another great album! I don’t necessarily mean that as a criticism. ELO’s music feels like a direct continuation of the Beatles’ experimental studio approach. Their infusion of orchestral elements and synthesizers feels directly inspired, but the way they use them is successful in iterating on the groundwork they laid in an interesting way. This album also reminded me of their contemporaries Queen, with the theatrical orchestration and polished harmonies. The spacey, psychedelic atmosphere feels similar to Dark Side of the Moon at times as well. Both bands are also heavily inspired by the Beatles, so I see them as sort of cut from the same cloth in a way. My favorite part of this album was how successful it was in blending classic rock with futuristic elements. It’s like pure retrofuturism as an album, and I really enjoyed the aesthetics and soundscape. It feels like a sort of bridge between its predecessors and a lot of more modern music I enjoy today. I appreciated the heavy infusion of synthesizers and their use of talk boxes. The electronic elements definitely feel more progressive than the way they were used in rock previously. I know a lot of my review is kind of calling ELO derivative and then giving them a 5, but I think there is a case for the value of iteration, and they were certainly original enough for their work to be worthwhile. While I thought a lot about who influenced ELO while listening to this album, I also couldn’t help but notice that Daft Punk is clearly influenced by them, lol. I did actually know the most prominent sample in Face to Face is ELO, but I didn’t know they were doing all that with the vocoders back then.

I surprisingly don’t have a lot to say about this one, maybe because it’s one of the albums I’ve listened to so far that I’m most familiar with and have probably heard the most recently. It’s classic Zeppelin. Great musicianship. I do feel like they hadn’t cemented their personal identity as a band yet on this record. It feels more derivative than their subsequent work, and the context of them failing to credit Black musicians makes me knock a point off of this record for its sound that does little to innovate on the Blues it’s inspired by.

Rating: 3.5/5 Favorite song(s): perhaps Try Not to Breathe Review: I was honestly not very familiar with R.E.M. before this. I knew their hits, liked some of them, was annoyed by others, but didn’t really know what to expect from this album. In a lot of ways, it was better than I expected. The instrumentation was interesting, though the lyrics and vocalization sometimes came off a bit trite. There were some cool riffs and good musicianship throughout. I still dislike “Everybody Hurts.” It somehow manages to disrupt an otherwise pretty good rock record with a weird ballad that gives kinda vapid Peter Gabriel vibes. I’m kind of torn on the rating here. I feel like a lot of qualities of this album make it deserve a 4, but this is my personal rating system after all. I don’t see myself re-listening to any of these songs, despite whatever more objective artistic value they may hold. I just can’t give higher than a 3 to something I don’t ever think I’ll seek out again, but it is a pretty solid album. Listen again?: No

Rating: 3.75/5 Favorite song(s): September in the Rain Review: I actually quite enjoyed this. I don’t feel like I know enough about jazz to rate it competently, but I do know a bit about the history of tape recording—and this is a seriously superb audio recording for the era. I was definitely impressed by how crisp the sound was. I did feel like the vocal/instrumental mixing was slightly off. I liked that they kept the introductions to songs in the recording. Preserving Vaughan’s introductions makes the album feel intimate, like I was in the audience myself. I also enjoyed her improvisation on “How High the Moon.” Sarah Vaughan has a gorgeous voice, and I would be curious to hear some of her studio music. I could perhaps see myself revisiting this album for an ambient listen. Listen again?: Maybe

Rating: 2.5/5 Favorite song(s): Uhhh… Review: Wow, this is incredibly boring. It’s not /bad/ per say, but it’s certainly not what I was expecting. I had my dancing shoes on, and was instead confronted with B-rate America. I guess this was a good music history lesson? I didn’t realize Bee Gees released 10 stinker studio albums before turning to the disco sound. It’s almost sort of incredible to produce that many mid albums in such a short amount of time. The song “Israel” has aged particularly poorly, lol. Barry Gibb is a non-Jewish, British man from the Isle of Man, so I’m not really sure what’s up with the “Israel take me into your arms” stuff. I’d certainly be afraid to discuss geopolitics with him today. Other than that questionable concept, I’m having a hard time recalling specifics of the rest of the album. The songs all seem to blend together. There is nothing interesting enough instrumentally to make any of the songs a worthwhile listening experience. I wish I could point out specific features of the music, but it turned my mind to total mush for 45 mins. This feels kind of like a case of trying to be the Beatles (as many others did in the early 70s), but without the skill to produce anything that’s actually meaningful. I would take Stayin’ Alive over this any day. Listen again?: No

Rating: 2.75/5 Favorite song(s): not sure any stuck out to me in particular Review: I’m trying to balance objectivity and subjectivity in my reviews the best that any person can. I just cannot enjoy the sound of punk, and this album was no different. It sounded incredibly grating to my ears, especially the vocals. I also wasn’t a huge fan of the lack of political statements in the lyrics, because that’s kind of the only thing punk is good for to me. Instead, this album seemed to wallop about youth frustrations and feeling different, which comes off a bit whiny. The frontman of this band grew up in Glover Park, D.C., an affluent white suburb. So, his band suffers from the same affliction many other hardcore projects do. It’s simply not that interesting to hear a rich suburban kid groan about being hurt and feeling misunderstood. It’s also interesting that the punk movement is so against the trust fund hippies that ran off to cosplay peace and love… when they often aren’t very far behind themselves. I have respect for punk as a political movement. Especially local hardcore scenes, which feel much more authentic than this record or something like Sex Pistols. I just wish they could put their politics into something that didn’t sound so terrible, lol. One redeeming feature of this album is the musicianship. The drummer is actually really good, and there are some good bass lines. I found their sound to be a little more instrumentally evolved than other punk I’ve heard. I appreciated that, because a lack of instrumental skill makes this genre straight up unlistenable to me. In doing research about this project, I’ve gained some respect for it based on how influential it is: “its influence is notorious in future bands that would boost the youth crew movement, also in other genres such as grunge, post-hardcore, 1990's skate punk and thrash metal, as well in the development of the New York hardcore music scene and aesthetics style” (Wikipedia). The problem is, I don’t like any of these subcultures or enjoy the sound of any of these music styles. So, all in all, the album gets a few points for being instrumental to influencing a subculture that I don’t care about. It’s a worthwhile piece of music history, but I’m not a fan of how it sounds. Maybe someday I’ll hear a punk project that makes me “get” it, but that day was not today. I did rate it a 3, because I feel like it has more value than the records I’ve rated 2s. It’s a 1 on a scale of whether or not I’d enjoy listening again, though. Listen again?: No