1001 Albums Summary

Couple of songs on here - Mother and Child Reunion and Me & Julio Down by the Schoolyard are great. The rest just don't break through like those two do. It's his first album after breaking up with Garfunkel, so he's finding his new solo sound maybe? It's a Sunday morning kind of album. Slow, easy going.

Interesting covers and a more mature sound than a lot of what I think of when I think of early Beatles music. Given about half of this album are covers, that may be why I feel this is "grown up" versus their other early stuff. Overall - 3.5 to 4 stars? It's early in my listening, so it's hard to put this on a scale!

You can tell Yellow is going to be a hit, and several other songs stand out as well. Very impressive for their first real album and after only a couple of years together. Not a lot of range on this album in their sound, but it's still one you can put on an listen all the way through.

Quirky (complimentary) album, and a nice concept to put together songs about events, places, and people from Illinois. One song, Casimir Pulaski Day, moved me to actual tears about a woman dying from bone cancer. These are real songs about actual "things" versus the usual rhymed, shallow lines about love, romance, and heartache that it's unlikely the singer actually felt. This actually feels like a work from the songwriter's heart - his real thoughts, struggles, and feelings put into lyrics.

I have not listened to many of these songs in years, and it's surprising how silly/goofy many of the lyrics are - ones I have been able to recite since the late 80s, but never reflected on how just inane they are. But it still works years later. This is a great album.

Listened to it while sitting on the porch. Nothing really broke through. Good songs, but not a record I'd go back to.

This album gets a 5 for the first three songs alone - and the last song is just a bow on the gift of this record.

Not my kind of music.