Solid listen but I prefer the second half to the first. Maps is the standout.
Just lovely. Dreamy without being soporific. Psychedelic without pissing me off. Grace Slick is a bit under-utilised despite being the coolest thing about the band.
Your enjoyment of this album may be contingent on whether you liked Take Me Out in 2004 and still like it today. Luckily, I did and do. FF's jaunty, spiky hooks are hard to resist and I find Alex Kapranos' twinkly-eyed innuendos and debonair affectations to be charming and fun. The album tracks are better and more interesting than I remembered.
Pleasant but largely indistinguishable and overly loungey. I found myself craving a bit more grit and vinegar in the music or lyrics to offset the very sweet, dainty vocals. The glimmers of heavier influence are tantalising but not quite enough to cut through the sugar.
A perfect crystalline voice and nice songs, though they're not as emotive and essential as some of her older work that I prefer. The last track is a horrible direct hit to the heart of my jazz aversion and almost retroactively taints the whole thing.
Just wonderful, not a bad thing about it. It has a bittersweet melancholy warmth that's so lovely to spend time in. Sidewinder and Ignoreland are insanely underrated to me, but they're up against some all-time heavy hitters. My first five stars, yay!
The Stones aren't my favourite of the big bands of their era, but I like them well enough and I quite like this album. The songs are solid throughout but there aren't really any towering standouts for me. The miscellaneous sprawling approach has its appeals, but ultimately eighteen tracks of Stones sleaze is far more than I ever need in one go. (I could've at least done without Sweet Black Angel, regardless of how people bend over backwards to explain that it's so cleverly political and well-intentioned and Angela Davis would've totally appreciated the condescension, actually.)
Super cute. Most of the songs are too brief and sedate to really be anything, but as a whole it's a feel-good listen with charmingly melodious vocals. Nice to have this as a short, sweet sorbet after Exile on Main St.
Most of the songs didn't do a whole lot for me, though overall I liked the warmly atmospheric instrumentation and touches of fretless bass. Coyote and A Strange Boy are lovely. I can't help preferring her earlier work – I think I just prefer those higher, brighter vocals.
The title track is dynamite and the rest offer diminishing returns, but I still enjoyed this. Good vibes and great vocals all round.
Not my flavour of rock at all. Pour Some Sugar On Me is irresistible dumb fun, but I couldn't find much good will for the rest. Love Bites and Hysteria are boring dirges for such big hits, and the album could've comfortably been two or ten tracks shorter. It's so sex-obsessed that it's unintentionally hilarious, though I prefer that priapic stupidity to their attempts at heartfelt balladeering or, God forbid, political commentary.
Initially sounds like a migraine, then gradually becomes sort of hypnotic and toe-tapping. Not often pleasant but perversely intriguing, and easier to follow on a second listen. Tracks 2, 3, and 4 are hard work and physically horrible on my eardrums, but the rest are more enjoyable and less antagonistic. We Fenced Other Gardens, They Don't Want Your Corn and Flow My Tears are good. I was thinking it's music I need to be in a slightly masochistic Kollaps-y mood for – then I saw their artwork for There's Always Room on the Broom and it gave me a big chuckle.
An album that had totally passed me by. It's novel and not unpleasant, but once I'd heard a couple of tracks I'd got the idea more than enough. The shine really comes off as the album goes on, and it's not something I think I'll revisit. Maybe you had to be there!
I absolutely love Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard. One of the most joyous little songs ever and I could listen (and have listened) to it on repeat for hours. The rest is nice and fine, but it ain't no Me and Julio.
A lovely album that's engaging and accomplished throughout. Great bass, great guests. No dud tracks, just not the highest rate of notable faves for me personally, though I had a smile on my face from the first weird accordion honk of The Boy in the Bubble.
I don't really know enough about this kind of music to judge beyond "it's nice"/"it grates" or "trumpet fun"/"trumpet bad", but I enjoyed this. Playful songs and energetic vocals with that great King Louie rasp. Worth listening just for the line, "When you're dead and in your grave, no more ravioli will you crave." Trumpet fun :)
I don't hate Coldplay but even at their best they're pretty dopey. Chris Martin's voice alternates between perfectly pleasant and a falsetto that should be classified as a bladed weapon (and he's not afraid to use it). The music is sometimes lovely.
The starry personnel and proto-whatever status don't add up to a particularly memorable or impressive result. At worst it's horribly grating and at best it's just fine. Rod Stewart's voice overwhelms whatever else might be going on; he sounds much better on the tracks where he reins it in. Greensleeves, You Shook Me and Ol' Man River are good songs but they can't take much credit for those.
It took me a while to warm to Martin Fry's prim gold-suited shtick, but I've since grown to really appreciate this album. For a debut effort, it glides out of the gate totally complete and self-assured in its campy lamé vision. The sparkly synths and fat disco bass are a dated but irresistible combo for me, and the flourishes of sax and brass add another layer of fun. Show Me, Poison Arrow, Tears Are Not Enough, and The Look of Love (Part 1) are pure shiny joy, but there's not one song on here that's slacking off. You can hardly move for earworms and every track goes an extra mile over the top. Perhaps it's too suave and doing too much, but it's a too-much that delights me.
To me, there are two camps of prog rock: guys with keyboards (geeky, no fun, sexless) and guys with flutes (cheeky, fun, horny). I'm all for the latter. ELP are exhaustingly the former. Nut Rocker did put a smile on my face, which was much needed after the rest of this album.
Nicely encapsulates the duality of Neil Young sort of being raw, gritty and nasal but also melodious, gentle and lovely almost by turns. Sometimes overly loose and rambling, but it has a pleasingly ragged immediacy and there are no bad songs on it.
Finally, some women who aren't Joni Mitchell! R&B isn't a genre I gravitate towards but I enjoyed this. The three members sound great together and individually. There's a lot of filler but also a lot of personality. Catchy, naughty, vivacious fun.
Once your ears accustom to the gleeful noise and nonsense of it, it's full of joyously catchy songs. There's never a dull moment amid all the weird hooks and curveballs. I love the off-kilter instrumentation, impenetrable lyrics and Eno singing like a posh old witch. It's whimsical and artsy while still having strong, enjoyable songs that reward multiple listens. The Paw Paw Negro Blowtorch, Baby's On Fire, Blank Frank and the title track are my favourites. Glam-era Eno might also be the most beautiful anyone has ever looked, despite or even because of his completely fucked haircut, and I think that's wonderful :) x
This hasn't been one of my go-to New Order albums (maybe because the cover photos are so lame and put me off) but perhaps that can change? I enjoyed this a lot. The A-side, at least, I thought was golden. Love Vigilantes, The Perfect Kiss and This Time of Night are wonderful, and Sunrise is thunderingly good. I was less enamoured with the B-side, though it's still a solid listen.
It's such a testament to the strength of New Order's songs that they're largely unimpeded by Bernard Sumner's almost total lack of vocal ability. He starts the album sounding bad and ends it sounding actually in need of medical help. The guy might be worse than Anthony Kiedis in the "couldn't sing his way out of a paper bag but it didn't stop him" rankings, but at least Sumner's got other musical talents and isn't a complete dog. A good album!
I hadn't heard a full Kendrick album before but I enjoyed this even with that limited context. It's overlong and kind of lost me in the middle, but it's eclectic, clever, and dense with detail. My favourites were King Kunta, The Blacker the Berry, and i. Not really my scene but I'm glad I heard it!
The album starts out with the sex-pesty Wake Up and Make Love with Me, which I quite liked the music for, despite everything else. I thought if the rest of the album was catchy pub-rock fun, I'd be able to look past some icky lyrics and Ian Dury's one-trick-pony vocals.
But by the time I got to the monotonously annoying Billericay Dickie, I was no longer having fun. When I got to If I Was with a Woman, I was less certain that Dury was "playing a character" and that he wasn't just a fucking abject worm (see also his relationship with Jane Horrocks, so generously described as "tumultuous"). By the closer, which just sounded like a drunkard shouting racial slurs in the street, I found myself feeling wistful for the charm of that first track of Dury rubbing his boner on you and muttering that you'd better wake up.
Two stars because I often really enjoyed the music itself, and I liked Sweet Gene Vincent and My Old Man. But too much of this album was irritating, one-note, and slimy.
What do you mean Trafalgar and Odessa are on the list but not Main Course? Not an actually fun, memorable Bee Gees album with bangers on it? I have a lot of love for the Bee Gees but what do you MEAN? The vocals are mostly fine – apart from some bizarre noises that are just unintentionally funny – but it's all so fusty and low-energy. If we're going for lame Bee Gees albums that haven't stood the test of time, I'd rate One and Still Waters over this, but maybe I'm just a sicko for loving their really late-career stuff.
I've never warmed to The Doors as much as some of their peers. I think if you're not really allured by the myth of Jim Morrison as a sex-god-rockstar-shaman-poet, they don't have much appeal left. He had a good voice, a lantern jaw, and died young. And...? It's rare that a baritone in leather trousers leaves me completely cold. Plus I'm rarely in the mood for much Manzarek – the guy just goes on and on, and I don't know why they let him.
I think I prefer The Doors when they keep it brief. I ended up enjoying a simple cover like Back Door Man, which at least knows how dumb it is, more than the meandering indulgence of Light My Fire and The End. As a huge Depeche Mode fan, I have no high ground from which to mock Morrison for rhyming "west" with "best" and "snake" with "lake", but I will because the guy's held up as a messianic poetic talent.
Sonic Youth are a big weird gap in my music knowledge. I hadn't heard an album of theirs before. All I know is that Kim Gordon is in the band and Thurston Moore is really tall. This album is way too long and not hugely up my street in terms of song structure, but it's got mood in spades and a cool fuzzy rock sound that feels way ahead of its time. Teen Age Riot is lovely and strikes the best balance of sprawl and catchiness for me.
Too much one-dimensional machismo for me – too long and repetitive, too many skits, too much homophobia. But I really liked the Black Ivory sample used in Criminology, and Wisdom Body was a welcome change of pace.
I'd only really heard Imagine and Jealous Guy before, which never had me rushing to hear the full album, though I like the Beatles a lot. I enjoyed this most when it leaned away from piano ballads. How Do You Sleep? is a good time if you ignore the lyrics, which make Lennon sound like a seething mad weenie. I Don't Wanna Be a Soldier is a groovily hypnotic standout for me, though it doesn't do much lyrically. Oh Yoko! is wonderful – sweet, catchy, and probably my favourite.
I love almost every permutation of Nick Cave: the manic demon, the preacher man, the piano crooner, the moustachioed lecher, the avuncular sage, the reflective father. I think, if you like his voice as a baseline, he's probably done something you'll like at some age or another of his career. He's not for everyone, especially early on, but I love his sonorous, imperfect voice and his Gothic vignettes of outcasts, killers, and ne'er-do-wells. Not many people could deliver the phrase "warm arterial spray" with enough theatrical vigour to get away with it.
Henry's Dream is a blast on the grotesque end of the Cave spectrum, with thunderous ravings and murderous intent aplenty. Straight to You and When I First Came to Town are two gorgeous slower songs that stand out for their difference. The Good Son would've been my pick for an early-90s Cave album that's more well-rounded, but this one's still a treat.
I love Led Zeppelin, and some of my favourite songs of theirs are on this album, but it's just too damn long. It's an absolute scorcher of an eight- or nine-track album, spun out to fifteen. In My Time of Dying, Houses of the Holy, Trampled Under Foot and Kashmir probably form the best run of tracks on any Led Zeppelin album. In My Time of Dying (that slide guitar!) and Trampled Under Foot (that clavinet!) are among my most played Led Zeppelin songs. I have a lot of time for Robert Plant's ecstatic wailing, though it's sometimes like being serenaded by a randy tomcat. Bron-Yr-Aur is a lovely singular gem in their catalogue. The rest is pretty disposable for me, which makes this album one I rarely listen through in full.
I hadn't heard this album and only knew a couple of LCD Soundsystem songs beforehand, but my overall impression is positive. It's an album of nice but overlong tunes that sometimes sound reminiscent of the late 70s and early 80s. A bit David Bowie, a bit Talking Heads at times. I found the first half stronger than the second.
My main complaint is that almost every song feels a minute or two longer than needed. They often have a sameness that doesn't benefit from being drawn out.
It's an enjoyable listen but doesn't feel hugely consequential – likely one of those picks that's coloured by a rosy comeback-album glow. Despite those reservations I'd happily check out more of their work.
I think I'm too much of a Radiohead casual to be really into this album, but I can appreciate it as a bold creative move that sets a beautiful if depressive soundscape. It's not an album I reach for but the songs are good and I enjoy being immersed in it like a big fuzzy bath.
I preferred this to To Pimp A Butterfly in terms of lyrics and storytelling, and being a leaner album overall. There are some long tracks but they earn their length and kept me engaged. The sequence of Good Kid to Sing About Me, I'm Dying of Thirst is particularly good.
I've never heard a QOTSA album, only the big singles. They've never appealed much, as I'm just not interested in Josh Homme's voice – it sort of slides over my ears without making much of an impression. Here he sounds a bit like a worse Chris Cornell, whose voice (sacrilegiously, I know) I'm not crazy about either. This album didn't do much to change my mind on the band, though it passed time pleasantly enough. There are some good sludgy riffs, and fair play to Homme for doing two or three guys' worth of work on the instruments, but I'm not sure why this was chosen over an album with some hits on it.
Perhaps their best album, but on a revisit I had a few more reservations than I thought. Half of it's perfect, but I can take or leave the middle four tracks. The Battle of Evermore is Robert Plant at his silliest, caterwauling about ringwraiths – though Sandy Denny is much appreciated – and I find myself actually not crazy about Stairway. Still, the album's great. Black Dog would be any other act's best opening track, but for a band who also have Immigrant Song and Whole Lotta Love, it's just a Tuesday. When the Levee Breaks might be the coolest they ever sounded. Perhaps it's just too soon since rolling Physical Graffiti!
I feel like I manifested this after wishing Robert Plant would pipe down a bit in The Battle of Evermore yesterday! A lovely album with two great highlights in Who Knows Where the Time Goes? and A Sailor's Life. What a voice Sandy Denny had – clear as a bell. A good listen with no particular low points, but I do prefer Liege & Lief for leaning fully into the traditional ballads and folklore.
A type of music I don't gravitate towards and know diddly about (for now!), but the smooth beauty of Sinatra's voice is pretty much a scientific fact. Change Partners and The Girl from Ipanema are my highlights and the rest blends pleasantly together.
Thunder Road, Born to Run, and Jungleland are colossal, and I love the sweeping escapist fantasy and urgent neck-exploding passion of them. The other tracks are evocative pictures but can't hold a candle to those big three, and mostly don't try. Eight tracks seems just right, otherwise it'd get a little much. Love the piano, love the sax. Love that I only understand about 25% of what he's singing. I don't need to hear the details, Bruce, you've convinced me! We WERE born to run!
I didn't love the faster tracks (made me feel like a stressed-out cartoon mouse being chased) but the slower ones were alright (made me feel like a cartoon mouse going on a big dinner date). It's a type of music that I can hear that is good and skilled, but it's not my thing; I don't have much stamina for it and it makes me feel insane very quickly. I think I need vocals as a mitigator between me and brass.
ZZ Top only really have about three songs and about three themes – women (or parts of), cars (or parts of), and good times (general) – but they do them well, with such growly, groovy panache that I can't get too annoyed. I thought this was a fun, slight album with a strong opening, a weak middle, and one sizzling hot classic in La Grange.
Please no more brass. Trumpets and trombones are murdering me. Please, 1001, give me some synthesizers or something to keep me alive? A little shot of post-punk before I wither on the vine? I'm absolutely dying here. God, it's over 70 minutes? Of trumpets? Please, no! Let's take a sound that's only tolerable in small doses and make a double album of 6-minute tracks! A debut double album? Who do you think you are? Wikipedia says this is "jazz rock". What is that? Why would anyone do that? Oh, it looks like Chicago are one of only a dozen defunct and washed-up bands who ever tried to chalk that cheese. I wonder why? Oh God just let it end! It won't end! Every honk kills me a little more. Even the song titles piss me off. There's a nearly 7-minute track ominously titled Free Form Guitar and it's somehow even worse than what it threatens on the tin. South California Purples is the only track where the infernal chimera of "rock and roll band with horns" really works. A real day-ruining 1001 roll. To whoever picked this: rotten work, you monster.
This was a such a healing balm after the swagless monstrosity of Chicago Transit Authority yesterday. It's a bit slow and lovey-dovey, though – the album's at its best when it funks it up, Superstition being head and shoulders above the rest. I Believe (When I Fall In Love...) strikes a better balance between being sappy and funky than the other slow tracks, and feels about twenty years newer than in it is.
I consistently enjoyed this. It's catchy and cohesive, and I liked hearing a British rapper on the list. Skits are always lame, but even with those the album doesn't overstay its welcome. No Rolex timepiece, no Hublot kettle!
I only knew Captain Beefheart et al for Trout Mask Replica, which wasn't my cup of tea, so I was pleasantly surprised by their humble beginnings on this quite normal blues-rock album. It's actually at its best and most interesting when it leans into being a little odder - I really like the vocals, which start out nicely gnarly and just get more goblinoid as the album goes on.
Seeing This Much I Know to Be True in the cinema was an experience. It opens with the triple whammy of Spinning Song, Bright Horses and Ghosteen, which had me weeping so much I was worried I might be physically unable to watch the rest of the film. Bright Horses is one of Cave's most beautiful songs but I can't listen to it too often. Ghosteen Speaks is a tearjerker and I can't even articulate why. This whole album is a gorgeous sad dream.
The main criticism I could level at Ghosteen is that it's so relatively sparse it feels like it should barely count as a Bad Seeds "band" record, but what it does do and gain in terms of pathos and atmosphere is so wonderful. The soft, synthy instrumentation feels spacious and ethereal and otherworldly but also terribly intimate. The album makes you feel like an eavesdropper on a parental grief so immense you almost want to apologise for intruding on it.
I generally prefer Nick Cave when he rocks a little harder, but Ghosteen is such an emotionally powerful milestone in his catalogue that I can't begrudge anyone who holds it up as his best work. It may well be. I rarely listen to it because it's not a casual undertaking, but when I do, I'm in it – I'm in that radiant Edenic garden on the cover and I'm crying. Music very rarely makes me react that way, which is what nudges Ghosteen towards full marks over Cave albums that I might like more according to catchiness or play count. Now I've got a bit of a cry-headache.
In a list full of old creeps and stupid bastards, I guess I've got to draw a line somewhere. There's a fair degree of art-from-artist separation I can do if someone sucked in the 1970s, but Heil Hitler was last year. The album's good but it's not getting further kudos or even Spotify's pathetic revenue from me. On to the next!
Always kind of assumed I'd heard this but slowly realised I hadn't. It's really good. Just a big mood-lifting dose of pure Paul fun, worth it for the first two tracks alone. The returns diminish a little but it's a good time throughout and ends well.
I'm not generally the biggest fan of this kind of Ramones-y punk rock; I'd rather be shouted at by an English punk than an American one. Still, this album is good cheeky fun and rocks for the whole of its short but sweet runtime. All the tracks are catchy and amusing (though the tongue-in-cheek racial ones are a bit distracting, if well-intentioned). The dictionary definition of "rollicking".
I've been a serious slacker on the Blur front; I really like some of their songs but whenever I've had a go at their discography I've just not found myself in the mood to pick up what they're putting down. I think this project will finally redress that, though, because I enjoyed so much of this beyond the hits I knew. It's catchy, witty, eclectic, fun, and sometimes beautiful. The little fluff tracks are really annoying – and even without them the album would be a bit long for me – but it's largely good to great. Plus the black dog's face on the cover makes me smile :)
I love that Dexter Holland has a PhD in molecular biology and a successful hot sauce, but his voice is so bad. It's a one-trick pony voice best enjoyed in single form, not on a full 45-minute album. It flattens every Offspring song into essentially the same thing. I have a nostalgic soft spot for a few of their hits, and liked a handful of tracks on this, but it was otherwise a tough listen. It's bad news when an album is so samey that two minutes of ska-punk are a welcome break.
I last had a go at this album in 2012, when I went through a months-long unhingement and listened to everything by ELP, Yes, King Crimson, Van der Graaf Generator, et al, to see if I liked prog rock. Conclusion: not much, apart from Jethro Tull, because I was charmed by the leggings. I just prefer prog that's a little more warm-blooded – long noodly keyboard bits don't do anything for me. I really wish I liked the music, though, because a kaiju-adjacent armadillo-tank fighting a manticore is so hilariously fantastical and fun. Manticores don't get the appreciation they should. I'll give it kudos for that lore and for being a more listenable album than Pictures at an Exhibition.
It's just OK. I've heard all their studio albums (don't ask) and they're just... fine, two-dimensional, sometimes a bit shit. Not unlistenable, just not a sound I have much interest in or emotional resonance with. NWOBHM in general just has little appeal for me. The most fun thing about Iron Maiden's discography is the ever-changing, ever-ugly Eddie artwork – just aesthetically repulsive in a strangely compelling way. They're better with Bruce Dickinson but it's not a bad beginning.
