1001 Albums Summary

already one of my tio 10 favorite albums, listen to it monthly.

big iron - classic 5/5 a hundred sixty acres 3/5 they're hanging me tonight 4/5 cool water 2/5 billy the kid 3/5 utah carol 2/5 Strawberry roan 3/5 The masters call 4/5 running gun 2/5 El paso 5/5 In the valley 2/5 The little green valley 2/5 The hanging tree 5/5 (ny instrumentation) Saddle tramp - 4/5 delicious guitar intro Many high highs

Man. What a boring album. The Black Keys journey into overproduced indulgence could use a lot of trimming down and a lot more variety. It is easier to respect a dedication to minimalism if it produced something artistically brave. In their defense this might have been a fresh take on their own sound at the time, but it is now doomed to car commercial status. If all you do is midtempo pentatonic riffs you do not need 18 songs.

Impressive experimentation but nowhere near as cohesive as Kid A or In Rainbows

So cool, but very frontloaded

Banger after banger. As much animosity as me and most everyone else has for Morrisey it is undeniable that The Smiths were master craftsmen. My one complaint is the sound never really evolves that much from earlier work.

Definitely overlong, but feels overrated as well. I enjoyed my time with it but probably won't be returning to more than a couple songs.

Nothing really stands out except for Revolution 1993. Great collection of musicians. I don't mind derivative sounds, and it feels like at least something was added with the inclusion of didgeridoo and modern production values and such, but the entire falls flat in the songwriting. I don't find the hooks remarkable, and the lyrics are quite bland, aiming at social consciousness but only scratching the surface.

I find the vocals to be mixed too low, throughout, and ironically I find Morriseys vocals to not be up to snuff on songs like I Want the One I Can't Have (waiter, my soup is terrible and the portion is much to small!). Songs like Rushhome Ruffians are really a miss for me. I think after hearing the wonderful Strangeways for the project (as well as The Queen is Dead and Hatful which I am very familiar with), Meat is Murder really comes up short.

Patton's sometimes grating vocal delivery and the dated rap rock-elements really drag this down, but you gotta appreciate the effort that goes into some of these tracks.

Hell yes!!! I am much more familiar with Rain Dogs and the albums that follow in the 80s-90s, but this is where it all started. A bit overlong and many of the ideas remain mostly sketches, but still a solid 4/5.

Nice, vibey techno. Don't know if I'll be returning to it, but it is hypnotic and well produced.

Classic

It swings alright! A collection of pleasant big band songs that is very expected from Frank Sinatra. Also the Cole Porter version om Anything Goes is obviously superior.

This was a weird one to get as a birthday album, but I respect its place in the pantheon of Floyd. Dark Globe gives me major The Wall down in that raw strange Roger Waters way.

Listen, I appreciate the spirit of the album and we're its coming from. There is even some of that late-era Mountain Goats conceptuality that I really dig and that ties the album together. But this is rough. The vocal performances are bad, and not in a indie rock imperfect vulnerability kind of way. Especially one of them, I think Hood, made me cringe real bad. And the production regularly fails to impress. There are some highlights, but only relative to the general quality of the albums. I enjoyed a lot of the lyrics, but the music just isn't there.

The start of the Stones legendary run of classic albums. Doesn't reach the heights of something like Sticky Fingers or Exile, but solid.

Good listen, but mainly for the "Hits" like Just, Planet Telex, High and Dry, Fake Plastic Trees, My Iron Lung etc. Deeper cuts like the title track, which reminds me of Paradise City by GNR of all songs, are decidedly less memorable. That said, its much better than Amnesiac and Hail to the Thief that I've listened to previously on this journey. We don't really need to have every Radiohead-album on here, and if we just stuck to the holy trinity of OK Computer, Kid A and In Rainbows we'd have a lot more room for something else. The Bends can have a space in here, I guess, but there's a fair amount of Radiohead-burnout here when we could make room for something different.

No

It is a fine enough listening experience, but there is no reason this should be here and not Day at the Races, News of the World, or Jazz. They are all competent Queen songs, but it pales so hard in comparison to both Sheer Heart Attack and later releases. That said, Ogre Battle is fun. The Loser in the End is great.

Very rude of Mr Snoop to not love the hoes! It’s like he doesn’t even try But I do hope he got to kiss Mr Dre eventually

The hits are hits, but even the big ones have flaws (maybe, baby, please?) but not enough in the rest of the tracklist to grab my attention. Flowers has quite the limited vocal range and while I enjoy some nice new wave / alt voices in his range he almost never gets close to the frantic performance of Mr Brightside. ”When you were young” from a later release is the type of energy I think he should be bringing. This is mostly just boring.

ZZ Top is one of those One Song kinda bands. The synths generally suck. I vastly prefer the 70s stuff, but who can say no to Sharp Dressed Man?

I don't like AC/DC. But this is their best collection of bangers.

he's a good man

There are some pretty cool sonic ideas here but the lyrics are so painfully juvenile. The songs are sad and angsty but indescript and general in a way that feels pandering. Compare to MCRs "remember when you broke your foot from jumping out the second floor" from I'm Not Okay - personal, dramatic and intriguing. That's how you do angst. Instead, the lyrics here boil down to some variant of "I'm full of fear / but you don't care" and other such nonsense

like if the Violent Femmes listened to Teenge Fanclub

stunning, evocative and beautiful

One of the GOATs