Air is possibly the most aptly named musical group ever. How they manage to arrange such wispy and carefree melodies that still feel vital is beyond me. Tracks like All I Need, Ce Matin-La, and New Star in the Sky are as moody and beautiful as you could hope for in this laid back electronica that feels somewhere between dreampop and Daft Punk. And yet...I can't quite love it completely. Something about it is too ephemeral to focus on entirely and I fear that dooms it to beautiful background music in my listening repertoire.
REM is widely hailed as one of the greatest alt rock acts of all time and it's hard for me to argue with that considering the sheer avalanche of classic, amazing songs they've put out from "The One I Love" to "Man on the Moon" to, of course, "Losing My Religion". But despite that, I've never really loved their albums. Even widely agreed masterpieces like Automatic for the People just don't do it for me. So, with that in mind, you'd think I'd be in a losing position here about to review a famously uneven album that bitterly divides fans of REM's scrappy college rock roots from the mainstream pop fans they would gain going forward.
But surprisingly, I found myself really gelling with this messy, experimental transitional album. There are obvious weak points here like the album's second biggest hit, "Stand," which perfectly presages later annoying, intentionally bubblegum REM songs like "Shiny Happy People." But there is an undeniable energy here that is infectious. Green strikes a delicate balance between scrappiness and pop sensibility that is catnip to me personally. The best song is obviously "Orange Crush," one of REM's hardest rocking songs that somehow makes its nonsense lyrics work but I'd be remiss if I didn't also single out "World Leader Pretend" as a strong step towards the moodier sound they would develop in future albums while maintaining an edge I like more with those soul-baring, self-flagellating lyrics.
I guess what I'm saying here is: I like this fine, I've got my Green crush.
What type of massive ego does it take to name yourself THE Band, as if you're the only musical group that matters? Turns out the answer is no ego whatsoever. They couldn't settle on a name and eventually it became a self-deprecating joke that they weren't important enough for a name. Which is especially funny considering how influential The Band has been to folk rock and how many major artists they've worked with (most notably as Bob Dylan's backing band during the recording of one of his best albums, Blonde on Blonde).
Here, in their self-titled album, they're just as loose and groovy as on their debut but with an even greater focus on Americana and even break out some interesting experimentation (is that honest to god funk I hear in "Up on Cripple Creek?"). This album doesn't quite hit the same highs as Music from Big Pink but you'd be hard pressed to call it a weaker album since its more thematically cohesive. Some critics have even argued its a concept album and I can see it. Outside of Clearance Clearwater Revival, few bands have ever thought as long and hard about Americana and then distilled those thoughts into 40 minutes of back to back classics.
MBDTF is a vapid masterpiece. What do I mean by that? Well sonically, production-wise, and musically it hits like a truck with some of Kanye's best compositional work ever. But lyrically and thematically, this album captures a man going through the motions of pretending to be introspective and going through the motions of reckoning with his soul but I frankly don't buy it. The album's centerpiece "Runaway" shows Kanye seemingly interrogate his own asshole nature but where many find it to be a raw and vulnerable song, I hear nothing but defensiveness and bitter sarcasm. The real low light of the album has to be the outro to "Blame Game" which, after a song which engages in a lengthy examination of a troubled relationship disintegrating, descends into a minute long sex joke about how Kanye West is the best lover ever which completely undercuts the the rest of the song.
And because a lot of the album plays at being emotionally deep while not meaning, my favorite songs on the album tend to be the ones that engage with Ye's personal life the least. "All of the Lights" and "Lost in the Woods" show just how good the music itself is without subjecting me to feigned vulnerability. That said, some tracks are so strong that even when they intersect with Kanye's self-aggrandizing disingenuousness, I still can't deny how good they are as songs. Such is the case with tracks like "POWER" and "Monster."
Overall, this is a frustrating album to revisit. I think it's still a 5 star album on a musical level but it's undeniable that West's descent into madness has laid bare that any seeming introspectiveness here was just a pose. I guess what I'm saying is that I can envision a world in the near future where I do find this to be a 4 star album.
Surfer Rosa: the Pixies second best album. I'm not even sure what I can meaningfully say here that hasn't been said before. The music is scrappy and energetic, the dynamics are superb, and its influence on indie and alt rock is impossible to deny. Plus, how could anyone dislike an album with tracks as great as "Where is my Mind?" or "Gigantic" on it? That said, it does have an obviously weaker back half than first half and somehow feels overly long for barely crossing the 30 minute threshold. It's not quite all killer, no filler but the killer is great enough to make up for quite a bit of the filler.
A strong contender for most middling debut album I've ever heard. Then it just casually drops one of the greatest rock songs of all time ("My Generation") midway through to prove this really is a Who album. Annnnnnnnnnd then it goes right back to mediocrity.
The musicianship is mostly good but I cannot stand the singer. Growing up with pop punk and emo, I developed a high tolerance for nasally whine-singing but not high enough for this.
This is some quality art punk. It's wild hearing ideas here that influence artists I never even would have expected. Like this time around, I realized how much influence this album had on Of Montreal.
The best and worst thing about music as an art form is that it is possibly the most closely tied to your emotions of any art form. And those emotional ties are so strong that it can overwhelm all other considerations. This is why if you had your first kiss during a slow dance to some terrible song, you're very likely to have lingering positive associations with that song forever even if you recognize on an intellectual level that it's not all that good later in life.
Or, on the flip side, if you had a terrible college roommate who blasted music at full volume at 3:30 in the morning every morning to help himself wake up, you'd likely develop a permanent hatred of whichever musician he happened to play even it happened to be a talented, inspiring, legendary artist who didn't deserve such an association.
I guess what I'm saying is thanks for ruining Bob Marley for me forever, Travis.
I've never heard a Courtney Love album before so coming to this after only knowing her reputation from feuds with other musicians (like Dave Grohl) was quite the surprise. This is some quality 90s alt rock which I am a sucker for.
It’s passable but I don’t get why this is on a list of 1001 albums one must hear. There are at least 11 other Neil Young albums that wildly outshine this.
Simply a masterpiece. If this is what it sounds like when they’re trying to break my heart, I can only imagine what it’d be like for them to try to win me over.
I was not expecting so much of this album to be about segregationist presidential candidate and Alabama Governor-for-life George Wallace specifically. It’s probably a better album than I’m giving it credit for with its intense reckoning with southern atrocities but this kind of alt country music has just never been my thing
Newsom’s voice won’t win many fans on its own but her unique style and great lyricism were enough to charm me
Pretty underwhelming for a Velvet Underground record. The whole thing felt a bit aimless and noisy for the sake of it, which I’m sure is the point and probably influenced countless bands I do like. Still, I much prefer their debut or Loaded to this.
I'm not normally a jazz guy but adding some funk to the mix definitely makes one of the more esoteric popular genres accessible to me. Still not quite my cup of tea, but undeniably groovy
Pleasantly surprised by this one. I don’t know much about jazz and less about samba so I was expecting to bounce off this. But it was quite nice to groove along to
I’d never heard of The Triffids before which is something of a rarity. I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed them. The album is extremely cohesive and thoughtful in its subject matter. Due to Spotify only having the Deluxe version, I thought I had to listen to 105 minutes of album but during the last song on the original, I found myself thinking “wait, this is clearly the end, isn’t it?” and looked up the initial track list to confirm. The highest praise I can give to this album is that at no point was I ever worried about a potential nearly 2 hour version becoming boring or bland even if I did ultimately call it at the end of the original just for the experience.
Gilberto has a nice voice but the music is very boring to me. I guess my streak of being pleasantly surprised by the jazz albums on this list had to end eventually
Bjork’s voice is so unique and attention-grabbing that it’s the sort of thing you have to purposefully craft your entire album to accommodate. Just slotting her into otherwise conventional music is disastrous, really doing her dirty. All of this is to say that I love her solo work but hated this album.
Fun and well produced though I still prefer Violator
Sadly, I just don't really get the appeal of Prince. Sign o the Times is certainly one of his better albums that I've heard but it still doesn't rise above "sure, that was fine" territory for me. The only album of his I've ever actually liked is Purple Rain and yet I've never been able to explain why his music doesn't hit for me. He's certainly astonishingly talented as a musician and a prolific composer but his songs still rarely do it for me.
