Being the 4th best of the big four of grunge is still better than most of the alternative-rock cheese that came after Seattle was mined for oil. I just wish somebody would've given Eddie the heads up that ending your song about a little boy killing himself in front of his class by scat-singing is probably in poor taste. I think this'll be all the Pearl Jam I need until I turn 43 and deeply resonate with Black after divorce number 2.
It only took two days for me to land on not only an album that I've heard before, but an album I have physically. Neat!
Singing like this must have hurt, surely. You'll hear Janis howl, squeal, and outperform basically anyone you could throw at her. She's so powerful, she makes the luscious and vibrant songs that make up this album swell up and practically burst at the seams. She's so powerful, she takes stripped back acoustic songs and makes them captivating, emotional, and lived in. Every song sounds like 100 bad days and nights, every note sounds worn down but kicking. The backing band plays second banana, but playing second banana to Janis fucking Joplin is still no easy feat. It runs out of steam by the end, but if I did what Joplin did on Crybaby I'd probably be on the floor having an asthma attack. Almost overwhelmingly powerful.
In his linear notes for the album "Live At Birdland" by John Coltrane, author and controversy magnet Amiri Baraka says of John Coltrane that "... his music is one of the reasons suicide seems so boring." Besides being an intentionally button-pushing and heavy statement, I think it gets to something important about music- it takes the big, evil, question mark planet we crawl on and stuffs it away for awhile. There's a lot to be afraid of, and a lot to mull over, but why not stop and smell the roses? And maybe, if you're lucky, the album you stumble on will permantly help you think through things.
Brian Wilson, using an unbeatable mixture of lover-boy anxiety, symphonic genius, and divine intervention, planted a bed of roses that manages to do more in 38 minutes than most bands can in entire discographies. Everytime you stop by, something new will stand out. You could go the cheesy route and say that this album is a look inside of the head of one of music's great geniuses, but I think that would do a severe disservice to the amount of pain that Brian Wilson faced in his life. No, this album is more beautiful than that- it's a gift to anyone that's ever loved and lost, to anyone who hasn't fit in, or who's acted unlike themselves. He was there, and he doesn't want us to get there. He planted this garden for us. May we all hang onto our egos.
39 minutes in a fun house that's burning down, where the mirrors are warping and the speakers are playing parade music that's in a time signature that doesn't exist. Absolutely (and understandably) not for everyone, but it's truly in a league of it's own. Mingus never did anything like this again, because it probably would've scarred him too much to dive back into the madness. Singular and engrossing, from the first horn squawl to the last one.
I should say now that I'm entirely pro 'pop albums stuffed with love songs.' Not everything needs to be juicy or hyperspecific or deeply confessional. There are songs here that do blend together (and the 2nd track STINKS) but it is hard to deny that Adele's voice is wonderful and her songwriting is solid. If the album had more songs on the level of "Hello", it would probably get a higher rating, but the fact that there is one at all means this is worth your time. Do the moms have the music? Maybe this time, but I'm still not sold on Alanis Morrisete.
Without the Pixies, the 90s would've sucked.
Well, more than they already did. It's not just the quiet / loud / quiet song structure that every band worth their weight in alternative rock radio pinched from this album, you could also make the case that the Pixies made being weird on rock records cool. They were not the first or the last of this ilk, but pop time signatures played as noisily as possible with reverance to surf music, punk, noise rock, and garage and interspersed with personal conversations and unintelligible lyrics will make anyone who can dig it feel very, very hip. I don't know what most of these songs are about, but I think that's the fun of it. Listen to a Steve Albini tone poem, pick up a guitar, and change the world.
Do I prefer the shaky, freaked out punk sound of Unknown Pleasures? Probably, but that doesn't stop me from seeing the beauty here. I do wish that a few of these songs didn't go on and on and on and on as they do, but to pretend like Ian Curtis's half-toneless mumbling isn't poetry would be dishonest. The dense, droney thing this album is going for did melt my icey heart by the end, but the 1st half is a bit repetitive. I wish we could've watched this band grow into something more, but what was laid to tape is worth celebrating.
Yeah, I don't get this one. Not that I don't get this music (I do, anyone with a Bandcamp account or an ex boyfriend with a delay pedal would) but I don't get why this is the one that's on this list. If there are more shoegazy, noisy indie-hipster hell rock albums on this list, they'll almost definitely be better than this one. Less boring, at the very least. All I can do is pray for My Bloody Valentine (or christ, even Duster!) and wait for this whole thing to blow over.
I feel bad being so mean, but this album constantly skirts the line between being pleasant enough and pissing me off. Final song in tribute to Jay Reatard? Pleasant enough. Annoying vocal effects making the sincerity of that tribute seem dubious? Pissing me off. If my friend was in this band, I'd probably go to the VFW shows and take their picture for Instagram.
I like this, I really do, but I'd be lying if I said I got what most of these songs were about on my first listen. That never took me out, per say- the hooks never stopped hooking and the beautiful production never stopped being beautiful- but I think one of the down sides of listening to a new album like this every day is that certain things are worth gestating on. Attack of the killer genre-fusion poppy concept record from outerspace? I'll relisten to this at some point soon.
I understand the low reviews here, but I kindly ask that anyone who is angry at this album for being kind of geeky and strange to relax a bit. I think this is worth hearing, maybe just for the strange stylistic choices and the silly (stupid) lyrics. I'd take a dozen of these over a sickly sweet California folky LP from the same time. Thanks for the weirdo record, Tim.
Easy to put into your pipe and smoke. Noisy and psychedelic, but also no-frills and raucous like all the best Stones albums are. What a winner, hooks on hooks and riffs on riffs.
Any white guy with a guitar can put his mouth to a harmonica and call himself a rockstar. Any middling white guy can pose as a rockstar by writing hackneyed songs about such varied and untapped ideas like how fun it is to have casual sex, New York, girls, Hollywood Boulevard, flowers, and how sad it is to have casual sex. Any middling white guy can abuse and exploit young women who are smarter and more talented than he is by pretending to be a rockstar. Ryan Adams innovates on this Grammy nominated (!) album by checking all three of these boxes at once.
It's oppressive, in the way a shitty bar-band is. Overstuffed with instruments, no silence or intimacy, just shitty songs about girls and suffocating organs. It would be interesting (in a sick way) to close your eyes and play house listening to this album (imagine your shitty, cigarette stench boyfriend coming in and playing these songs for you...) if it weren't for the fact that not a lick of it is interesting. For over an hour, this Ephebophilic shitbag pushes you through song after song of meandering, suicidal notebook poetry. (Not suicidal in the sense that the songs are about suicide, but suicidal in the sense that it made me want to find a sharp edge and rub my neck against it.)
In a world where arguments about separating the art from the artist happen constantly, I believe it would do the world good to cut out the artists that aren't worth keeping around and then getting onto the musicians that matter. I'm not sure if Ryan Adams is in the first draft of people we should collectively remove from our minds (Marilyn Manson, Gary Glitter, that tattooed fuck from Falling in Reverse) but he's certainly among those musical talents.
As a proud Touch & Go Records stooge (the first album I ever hid from my mom was Songs About Fucking) I can admit that this is on the weaker end of their mostly flawless 1980s / 1990s output. It doesn't rock hard enough, damn it... you want the guy to scream and for the guitars to go crazy but they don't. And it's not like a Slint thing (also Touch And Go... they must've had a dousing wand for shit like this) because it never really feels like it's building up to anything. There are faster songs, and those are solid. Still imposed by a vocalist who refuses to yell.
I think this album does act as an interesting glimpse into an under discussed time in rock history, though: the post-Soundgarden, pre-Creed no man's land of VH1 and MTV nonsense that gave The Meat Puppets a popular(ish) album and Daniel Johnston a major label contract. How into that time period of music you are depends how much of this sort of noise rock brow beating you can take.
Honestly, I get a little sick of the luscious art-pop thing the album is doing by the end. But christ almighty, that's probably my fault. Can your lobster be too buttery? Can your caviar be too rich?
Alright, it's not THAT good, but it's pretty solid. Track after track of earnest love songs, dry British snark, and proto-new wave rhythms. All wonderful stuff, though I still stand by my point that you can have too much of a good thing. I wish it held back a bit more often, maybe.. maybe I'm just not high brow enough to get it.
(Insert witty comment about the album cover here... cuntry life? I dunno.)
I think the best albums sharpen the people who hear them. It doesn't have to be moralistic, it can just make you stronger by making you happy, but as we live and breathe through whatever fugging Reich we're in now, we need to bang our drums and wake up the zombies.
It's not just a political choice to rant and rave here, the album is fantastic. The band is so cohesive and lively, the lyrics are scathing, and the energy is palpable. I regret that I didn't know much about Fela Kuti before this, but I'll rectify that as I live and breathe.
I grew up on a steady diet of punk rock, my dad's thrash metal, and a few (at the time unwanted but secretly genius) dabs of modern pop and country through my mom. I don't know what music Ian Mackaye grew up on, but I don't think I need to: I (and loads of other people, who vary in terms of coolness, record collection size, and diehard adherence to preconceived and usually shallow punk rock ethos) come back to this album because it is a relatable dose of pure teenage rage. We've all been hormonal, we've all been mad at douche-bags spilling beer everywhere. When this album came out is pretty goddamn remarkable, in the sense that Minor Threat managed to be so early to the 'party', but the album is far from dated.
Even if you hate the way this record sounds (I know I don't, but maybe you will) you have to give it to 'em: telling kids that violence is lame and that women are worth respecting is more commendable than the things most people I know were doing at Ian's age, even if this being a band of kids fresh out of high school means the lyrics are occasionally awkward. But Christ, is that such a crime either? You gotta meet these records at their level every now and again...
Maybe this being one of the 1001 albums I MUST hear before I die is a geographical thing, because this is the first I've heard of this solid, hazy indie rock. Gets over the hump that most self-important indie-twee (sleaze?) debuts find themselves in by not focusing too much on how smart and significant the lead songwriter is and instead focusing on cool textures, hooks, guitar squalling, ETC. Good for looking out the window and thinking hard about something important (but not too important.)
It's a bit underdone in the middle, the songs get a bit cheesy and overly hooky. I would never call a group of people I'll never meet in my lifetime sellouts, but I do think if they stuck to the ambient stuff the album would be *all* killer. So it goes.
I think I just hate this guys voice. I'm not usually that direct in one of these reviews, but it's been a secret shame of mine for years that London Calling has never done that much for me. I, a self proclaimed 'punk' in high school and 'music nerd' now don't listen to The Clash recreationally. Fuck, man, I've tried! I don't need my punks to use saxophones or stay in key, but that sort of thing doesn't turn me off either. What am I not seeing? Why does everybody I know tell me this is the greatest album of all time?
I still don't really get it, and I've been smashing my head against the stage trying to figure it out. The 'punk' thing to do (and the thing I did in high school) would be to trash the album, give it a one and a smart-ass review, and put on some Black Flag. But then again, posing as an unaffected, chortling doesn't seem very punk (or very punk), so I have to give credit where it's due: this is a good album filled with good songs.
They're clever, they're biting, they chug along just fast enough to where you're not bored but slow enough to let the wordplay sink in. It's never really sunk into me, maybe with the exception of "Lost in The Supermarket." I hum that song everytime I'm getting tailed by a guy with a 'nam hat in Walmart. Can't say I love the reggae stuff the album does, but that's probably just me.
Alright, here's where I get bold. (Christ, nobody's reading this anyhow.) Beyond the album's honest to god strengths, I think this album gets a lot of praise because it is very hip to have a favorite punk album, and it's even hipper to have a favorite punk album that you can show a girl you want to get with. The cover makes a great poster, the record makes a great shelf piece. I don't think ALL of the album's hype is phony, but I can only throw on an album so many times to try and discover its hidden genius so many times. 10,000,000 music nerds, Rolling Stones writers, and douche-canoes with Pearl Jam tattoos can't be wrong.... right?
I am not immune to Jack White's slick, pasty blues rock charms, but I am also acutely aware that he made much better music before and after this album. It's not bad, per say, it just feels a bit stiff and constrained. He gets weird, and he tries out all sorts of styles, but there's a point in which it all blends together: not like Pet Sounds, more like Kings of Leon (!). Maybe it only reads that way because I know Jack is capable of his own Pet Sounds.
I can't give much grief here: the album has it's moments, it's never abrasively bad or anything. And besides, you'd be a bit disenfranchised if your cousin / ex-wife / drummer let you out on your own.
I listened to Alice in Chains a lot in high school, to an almost agonizing degree. I would start my day, every school day, listening to music about wasted potential and drug addiction, suicide and misery. I quickly got diagnosed and wised up that living that way was making getting out of bed each morning more difficult than it needed to be.
I do not mention this to bring this album down, or to state that it's themes are one note and only suitable for teenage sad-sackery. (Not unwarrented sad-sackery, for the record. It wasn't about girls or cars, I was struggling, but it was still no doubt draining and partially self-inflicted.) I want to highlight the opposite, actually: in getting out of high school, listening to more varied types of music, and giving myself room to breathe, I found coming back to this album emotionally cathartic and deeply rewarding.
I believe almost everybody comes back to some of the music they consumed in their younger and more vulnerable years with a bit of embarrassment. I mention that to say that there is nothing embarrasing about this album: it is a testament to fantastic songwriting, to pain, to a good drummer and a good bass tone. It's a concept album about not getting any better, it starts with death and ends with forgiveness, forgiveness it may or may not have even earned.
It is usually weak criticism to link the dead musicians to the sad songs they wrote, something that should be saved for middling Cobain biographies and high school essays about Nick Drake. But Staley (a bluesman by reason of pain and timing) and Cantrell (a de facto pick for grunge rock god, a genre that didn't accommodate well to writing sweet songs about your dad or playing metal guitar solos) May just be the 90s Lennon / McCartney. Junk-age pop geniuses, helping all the lonely people figure out where they belong. (That may not be the best example, considering Lennon and McCartney famously argued about who wrote that song for years, but the line is still good, right? Right? Bite me, I thought it was good.)
I think the reason it's so easy to link the artists to their various vices as portrayed on this record is because of how lived in these themes feel: the 90s had no shortage of albums about hating yourself (most likely ushered in by this band... god knows they ushered in the yelpy "YEAH" that all of the post-grunge slop artists borrowed) but depth is the name of the game here. It's not just music to overdose to (or a major label equivalent) it has nuance and bite. "I've eaten the sun / so my tongue has been burned of the taste" existing in the same song as "I'd like to fly / but my wings have been so denied" is pure fugging genius, especially when the song itself is mixed and mastered like Icarus just now feeling the heat on his wings.
But they aren't one trick ponies... it isn't all heroin and yelling (not that that would be a bad thing, or something to take lightly.) The band go a lot of different places, and they go through all of them naturally. Hard rockers exist alongside slower cuts, thoughtful and downright experimental song structures in between the best singles 1992 had to offer. The drumming tosses you around, and lays a nauseating and dense sort of rhythm that keeps the band in line. The bassist acts similarly, knowing when to hold 'em and when to let Layne and Jerry do their (respective and also collaborative) thing.
I am not in high school anymore, and I am thankful for that fact everyday. But I am also thankful that I once was, that it weathered me a bit and helped me come to love music as I do now. I am also deeply thankful that this album doesn't suck, and that revisiting it may have actually made it better than I originally thought. Smarter, at the very least.
It feels pretty cheap to rate the intentionally-anxiety inducing album poorly because it succeeded in making me freak out. With that said, I probably wasn't in the mood to listen to gorgeous vocals crooning over spacey art house hip hop noise. I'll be in that mood at some point, and when I am I'll throw this on (or just take a nap instead.)
Joni Mitchell could perform her poetry with the accompaniment of bagpipes filled with sand and I would still be enraptured, so I can't say the 'poppy' production here bothers me. Maybe you could argue that by six albums in, Joni was treading the same water over and over again, what with the artsy musical boyfriends (the courting) and the breaking up
n' boozing (the spark.) But Christ, let her be self-indulgent: if you had her previous five albums under your belt, you'd let yourself write about Paris a little longer.
Oh, and about that last song. I'm sure the reaction to 'joni-jazz' is going to be split on this site, but I thought it was cool enough. Is it conceited to call yourself a genius? Probably, but if you had to deal with those Rock 'n' Roll magazine fucks speculating about your virginity while you were writing the best albums of the 60s, you'd rub it in their faces too. (Hey, it's a good thing this book doesn't include the rest of the 'Joni-jazz' records... right?)
To not only reject a racist, violent Reagan-era government but to label YOURSELF a public enemy takes stones. I don't believe music leads people to violence (or video games, for fucks sake) but listening to this made my heart race and my teeth grit.
They aren't the most varied or lyrically dense rappers (though they have their moments) but their anger is so goddamn potent that it all goes down smooth. Don't believe the low reviews (anti-hype?)
(Man, Flava Flav used to be cool!)
A great guitar player, a drummer with the most infuriating snare this side of Ulrich, a pedophile, and a bassist who's great in interviews walk into a funk/rap/rock heroin bar and make a bajillion dollars off of people whose deeply rooted racism make them incapable of listening to music that their parents didn't bone to in 2003.
Yeah, I didn't care for this one.
Daunting at first, and maybe I still don't have all the subtleties and nuances of it pinned down yet, but walking around outside and listening to this was (almost) worthy of pivoting the sound of The Beatles. I'll definitely listen to this again sometime soon, probably not under the influence of anything stronger than virginial music nerd bullshit.
It is like most debut albums: scrappy, hungry, (over)ambitious... but there are no growing pains to speak of. The Sabbath you get here are in proper fighting form, harmonicas and all. Among the best A sides in all of metal. It took Metallica a few records to change (ruin?) metal music, but it only took Black Sabbath one to make it something worth carving into your notebook.
an album with top to bottom solid recordings from the early stages of rap music. A part of me thinks the lines get too belabored at points, but how mad can you be when flows like that probably weren't common in '91? It's always good, occasionally great, and historically fascinating... the shape of rap to come?
Not anti-pop, anti-80s pop, or (god forbid) anti-gay, but I can't help but agree with the mostly middling reviews here. Soulless is the wrong word, but it doesn't evoke much in me personally. There are good lines in the wash of average (to below average) modern pop instrumentals, and authentic enough writing about the queer experience to not feel up opportunistic or hollow. It's just pretty enough to wash over you while you listen, but not lush enough to make you think about it the next day.
With that said, if it made it easier for some gay french kids to get through high school, who am I to begrudge that?
You're gonna have to see the beach for the seashells a little bit here. If all you can see is the corniness of the Beach Boys trying to mine the Pet Sounds well dry (and the Americana bullshit of Mike Love's Chuck Berry flavored anti-protest song), you won't get much out of this album. But, inexplicably, I adored it.
It's one of those impossible to recreate snapshots into a band scrambling to make sense of the world, make sense of themselves. They're worried about the environment, the political climate outside, the lows of the drugs they're sampling. You can listen to all sorts of albums where those fears seep into the music, but it's more than that here: everything from the drab painting used as a cover to the album sequencing (or, lack thereof) seems indicative of a band that has no idea what to do.
That doesn't mean the music isn't good. Far from it, actually: basically every song here (except for the one we've already discussed) lands. Some land easier than others (the album opener has been a favorite of mine for years, as has the nostalgic and corny-ish Disney Girls), but it all washes over fine in the end. The last truly great album of one of the first truly great rock bands... fittingly awkward, all over the place, and cheesy.
If you don't feel something stirring deep inside of you while you listen to "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman", you're stronger (weaker?) than I'll ever be. Goddamn, it's all so good. It goes up and down, it swings and shines and croons. Aretha is perfect, captivating, mind-altering, but her band doesn't lag behind at any point either. The bass really stuck with me this time, the tone is so precise and punchy. An album anyone can enjoy and everyone should hear.
About as early 70s hard rock as early 70s hard rock rocks. Features all the widdly, widdly wah of a Zeppelin record, but none of the stuff that makes those albums worth listening to. Not to say Deep Purple ripped off Zeppelin (it seems Deep Purple came first) but the same people commenting that they miss "real music" under Zeppelin live performances will do the same here and have a good time. I am not inane and boring enough to believe that music stopped being an artform after David Crosby got sober, so I'm acutely aware that white guys goin' at it for 10 minutes is not the be all, end all.
Bonus points for a keyboardist who's usually doing something weird, bonus points lost for the amount of high notes our leading man squeals out.
Maybe it being shiny and plastic is a part of the bit: a commentary about shiny plasticism. Either way, I was put off a bit by listening to Courtney do anything but screech. But then I swung the other way.. the songwriting hadn't gotten any worse (maybe a bit less urgent) and the guitars haven't gotten any less oppressive (maybe a bit quieter.) Stevie picked up the pieces and went home, why shouldn't Ms. Love?
I've never been terribly entranced by the stereotypical 1980s synthwave bleep-bloop aesthetic that suffocated pop culture when I was in middle / high school (Stranger Things, Ready Player One, The Goldbergs, any F.Y.E. / Hot Topic store,) so imagine my surprise when I put on this album and got absolutely hypnotized. It's oversexed but not silly (except for maybe all the breathing,) gothic but not overly drab, broad in scope and sound. It goes for a lot and it reaches most of the stars it lunges for. I don't know about the last leg though, maybe they lunged a bit too hard and pulled something.
Is it worse to be harmless than outright shitty? When you're playing the blues, probably. 'Blues' is a strong word for what this is, this is about as bluesy as Aerosmith (and it sounds about white.) I guess it's mostly harmless, but when whatshisface starts going "a-heya-pretty-mama..." I start missing the subtlety and grace of Eddie Vedder.
Fuck man, where do you even start with a record like this?
72 minutes of grief, misplaced anger, realization, wonderful saxophones, and occasional non-sequitur tunes about Pluto (by 1978, you wouldn't have told Marvin Gaye no either...) It is daunting and ugly and maybe unethical, but it is never anything less than gripping and powerful. It would be one thing if this were a heavy album with heavy instrumental, or a light album with heavy instrumental, but to keep the standard Motown sound on an album this vulnerable and ugly makes it feel unlike anything I've heard. It sounds like the curdling of pop-music romance... the songs are slower, the bass is louder, and Marvin more honest than ever.
I'm not sure if I can get away with calling an album that dips so shamelessly into personal baggage (especially regarding another human being who seemingly wasn't keen on hearing about her husband's issues with her through song) a masterpiece, but goddamn is it close. Marvin Gaye was a genius, tainted by things that were often his fault but also often the result of the horrible cards he was dealt. How much of those two factors intertwining resulted in his divorce is up to anyone's guess, but I hope he's got some peace now.
Otis Redding's 3rd album for Stax is arguably his best, and arguably one of the best of the 60s soul boom. Not a revolutionary statement by any means, especially in an age when anybody can listen to these songs and be instantly blown away by the best horn section this side of Sinatra and the best vocalist this side of... well...
The only confounding thing here is "Respect," a song I am acutely aware is great, but one that I am also acutely aware I don't like very much. This version, at least. It was cut in the 60s, so I wouldn't go so far as to 'cancel' (whatever that means anymore) Mr. Redding for reflecting what he understood masculinity to be in songs, but I can say that it's a slight blemish on an album that's so goddamn smooth it needs to apply aftershave to mitigate burns.
I'm not even sure if this belongs on a list of 1001 Live Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, frankly.
Before they became the world-colonizing CW-rock heroes we know and tolerate today, Kings of Leon fancied themselves a boogie rock, down-n-dirty power pop outfit. My secret shame is this: I think "Use Somebody" is catchy and charming, and "Pyro" is top tier pop-rock hogshit. I'm sure I wouldn't be much nicer to any later albums on this list (which there are, thank GOD!) but I think Kings of Leon may need their lush production. It's too polished to rock, and not polished enough to make up for the fact the lead singer is doing this goddamn insufferable country drawl voice. He's from Nashville, and Reba's from Oklahoma... where's Kid Rock from?
What was I talking about? Oh yeah, this sucks.
The happiest I was listening to this album was realizing that I've already gotten through this list's two Red Hot Chili Pepper albums, which means I will never have another morning ruined by Anthony Kiedis (unless I end up going to a CVS for condoms and hearing "Can't Stop.")
I don't need my rock musicians to be upstanding people, but I would prefer if they made music t hat wasn't a fucking slog. Two discs of dumb-fuck scat singing and less dumb-fuck bass thwacking. Would've been a one, but the acoustic songs were cute enough.
Do all of these albums sound the same? Yeah, maybe a little. But it's never not catchy and it's never not incisive. Plus, it's punk rock for christsakes. That's the name of the game at a certain point, right? You write as many songs as possible to say as much as possible, and write great hooks while you do it. It's lean and mean, nerdy rock before that was something you could find on Reddit.
Since middle school, I'd known this album's hits, but sitting down and enjoying the whole thing was pretty damn impressive. Song after song, cymbal hit after cymbal hit, I'm in. An album good enough to anoint Jack White the bluesy hipster statesmen of rock and roll (and to think, this was before Seven Nation Army!) I hope Meg White has earned a lifetime of meals and a warm couch, at the very least. I'd also hope she's earned more respect, but in reading some of the reviews on this side I'm not so sure.
Hell yes, this rocks. Whip smart garage-y bliss, high school production values with grown adult confidence and rock solid comedic timing. An album I probably needed a few years ago, but am very happy to have now. God bless the overdrive, god bless Seattle, (lady) god bless Sleater-Kinney.
To complain about this 'artsy' power pop record being too polished and sterile seems like complaining about Barney The Dinosaur being too slow and repetitive. (Do kids still watch Barney? Should've said Ms. Rachael.)
This feels like an album a younger me would've loved, but all of the songs seem to be about marriage / divorce, so (like now) I am reserving my praise for the hookiness of it all. It all kind of comes and goes, and with how many of these songs piggy-back off of each other it's hard to break the songs up in my mind. But I was tapping my toes making dinner to this album, and that seems like the point. It may not be Genesis, but at least it's not Genesis. (Do kids still listen to Genesis? Should've said Muse.)
I suppose I have no issue with the electronic haze of Radiohead's post-OK Computer output, but I do think I need to be in the right mood for it. I felt myself realizing that this music wasn't meant for sunny days when I took a stroll outside and watched a squirrel throw an acorn at another squirrel. This was while Thom was yelling about capitalism or penetration or something.
In Radiohead's defense, who could compete with a squirrel fight?
Anybody who objects to this album (and this band, for that matter) because of their tendency to write about their sticky fingers (and buckling zippers) is well within their right to do so. This album can be sexist, it is often ugly, and it wails in a way that can seem pretty indulgent if you aren't amused by squawking saxophones and draaaaaaawn out lead singing.
The score I've given this album should tell you how I feel about at least some of those qualifiers, but I do want it to be clear that I find this album completely objectionable at points. But I do have to ask: is it objectionable on purpose? Is there not value in listening to gaudy (and occasionally offensive) music, if even just to poke around in the minds of the people who made it? Neither I nor any one online music snob (who seem to be mostly male and mostly white, from what I've gathered) should be the people to make that call, but I would much rather confront the damaging standards of masculinity as they've been beaten into me through cock rock from a million years ago than suppress those issues and unleash them on an unsuspecting audience.
I'll admit now that this argument is probably easier to ease my mind with considering that this is one of my favorite albums of all time. But I grew up in a post-Rolling Stones world, where the tongue was on shirts I saw as early as 2nd grade and the music was in Applebees commercials. The disco albums had already released, the coke was already consumed, and the millions were already made. I mention all this to say that I explored this band when they were not unwavering, edgy rock gods but instead elder-statesmen who were considered overrated and bloated on their own legacies.
Are they those things? Absolutely. Christ, they may have been by the time this album came out. But I cannot pretend that i don't adore it. Every song has stuck with me, songs I didn't like that much ("Brown Sugar", "You Gotta Move", "Moonlight Mile") only got better as I listened. It's all so varied and catchy, a true blockbuster rock album that sounds sharp and ugly and biting even today. I don't think music was doing this in 1971, the whole barbwire guitar tone and heroin songs and throbbing pecker album cover thing. (Excluding some other Andy Warhol pals, but they definitely weren't selling this number of records.) The bluesy, musical beatdown diaries of people who would be entirely insufferable to be around but who are captivating (in a car crash sort of way) to digest on record.
Oh, and it rocks too. I'm starting to sound like that Pitchfork guy who compared the Radiohead album to a stillborn baby, aren't I?
Well produced, echo-y wallpaper music that would be best suited as the soundtrack for a PG-13 kids adventure film that's worse than Beetlejuice but better than Little Monsters.
Lou Reed manages to find the apex of pop music, shoving it up up and away to the point in which it stops being pop music and starts being pure musical magma. Each song is alive and vibrant, even if they play the genre game fast and loose and seem unshapely at first. It comes together in due time, and it starts to feel as if these songs are small stories in one sick, sad world. If there's any album that makes a solid case for Lou Reed being a one in a generation songwriter, it's this one.
A part of me thinks I should give this 5/5 on principle... it's a legendary album by a legendary band. Another part of me thinks I should give this a 5/5 because of how high the highs soar... every side has a perfect song, and some have multiple. It was also a pretty ballsy record for the time, with a lot of historical significance, both in terms of learning more about The Beatles and also the world around them. You got war songs, songs about protest, songs about racism interspersed with deeply personal songs about isolation, fear, the loss of loved ones, and drug addiction. There are songs on this LP that have altered the way I listen to music forever (both in terms of the albums avant-garde dirges and poppy masterpieces, both things I have come to adore in music in large part due to this album). But i guess my hang up comes from the fact that I cannot call this a perfect 'album.'
You could make the case that it's a one of a kind album, and maybe even that it's a skip-less album, but there are a handful of songs on this album that you have to endure to get to the great ones. I understand "Revolution 9" is the punching bag (usually bemoaned in the same breathe as Paul's ska song) but I would take both of those over all of the songs about animals. If there was one novelty song about animals, i could give it a pass. There's one avant-garde noise wall thing and one attempt at Ska, but silly animals are a recurring theme. They're usually in varied genres, but they've never been terribly charming to me. I think that this album having bad songs isn't a terribly controversial opinion to hold, but to say that those songs drag the recording down seems to be. Oops.
Do not misunderstand me, I believe this album is a masterpiece in it's own ugly way. And I also believe it should be on this list, and should be heard as a full monster of post-modern claptrap. I just think that this working as an art project doesn't mean it always works as an album, and that there are songs I can do without. I suppose if any band earned a few nonsense songs in 1968, it was probably The Beatles.
My lukewarm defense is this: in the new AI apocalypse of algorithmically trained music, bland pop releases, and attention span deterioration, I believe there's value in music that it is unabashadly human. The rage is human, the howling is human, the interplay between the band members is human. It is ugly and drugged out, about as raw as hardcore punk gets, but what surprised me this listen was how catchy it was at points. There are honest to god hooks in the middle of the howling and obscenities.
I can't be too surprised at the general negativity towards punk rock on this site, but I can be dissapointed.
Can't be mad at this. More variety would've been pretty neat, but who am I to say that the Hammond Organ isn't an iconic enough sound to necessitate an entire album? As somebody who's slowly been getting into the history of Stax records, I found a lot to enjoy on this album, but maybe not enough for me to come back to it anytime soon.
Can't be mad at this. More variety would've been pretty neat, but who am I to say that the Hammond Organ isn't an iconic enough sound to necessitate an entire album? As somebody who's slowly been getting into the history of Stax records, I found a lot to enjoy on this album, but maybe not enough for me to come back to it anytime soon.
I don't have much use for ironic, hippity hip hop Beck. I just think the scattershot, Americana thing has been done better other places. Good for a single's worth of time (guess which single) but not something I'd throw on regularly.
With that said, sad-sack chamber pop Beck surprised me. The guy has never struggled in the hook department, and I think that stripping back the 90s cynicism and letting his emotions eek out was a great call. 52 minutes worth of a great call is a hard sell, but I'm probably just being a curmudgeon because this site generated two Beck albums back to back for me. (Beck burn-out? Beck-out?)
