It's Marvin Gaye, meaning that it is pretty much perfect. The only album of its kind that I can think of that really surpasses it is... also by Marvin Gaye (What's Going On, of course). These are the records it is hard to even really comment on because you just exist inside of it completely while it's on.
I have always been very vocal about my love of Led Zeppelin, and equally as vocal about the fact I think everything after Zeppelin IV sucks. When this came up as my next album I realized that I hadn't actually listened to it all the way through since I was in high school. I definitely think I have a better appreciation for it now, there are some songs on it I genuinely love (In My Time of Dying, Houses of Holy) and aren't overplayed like so many on these later records are (looking at you Trampled Under Foot and Kashmir. At the end of the day though, as a bass player it's difficult to dislike anything that features John Paul Jones.
The National are just one of those bands I know are not for me. They are one of my partner’s favorite bands, so I have heard a lot of them, but none of it is memorable to me. My partner’s favorite song by them, Bloodbuzz Ohio, is on this record, and I can see why. It was definitely the standout song on the album. It’s not that the rest of the album was bad, but I don’t think I could distinguish one song from the next. Like with all of the things I hear by The National, it just felt pretty blank
When I started seriously record collecting this was the first record I spent real money on, and began my collection of first-pressings. That's to say, I have heard this album many, many times lol. I did take this chance to pull out the vinyl and listen to it properly, and god it just sounds so good on the original vinyl. I don't listen to Pink Floyd often, in fact I'm pretty sure the last time I listened to this album all the way through was in 2024 when the total solar eclipse was visible in Detroit. I was working downtown at the time and I ended up leaving my building (against my manager's wishes lol) and watching the eclipse in its totality from the sidewalk with a bunch of strangers. I had been listening to this album leading up to that moment, and let Eclipse play out loud while I passed my eclipse glasses around to all the people passing by who didn't have them. The city was silent for a moment when the temperature dropped and it got dark enough for the streetlights to turn on. This re-listen definitely brought me back to that moment. The other thing I must mention of course, is Great Gig in the Sky. The song that made me want to be a vocalist, and pushed me towards the style of music I ended up being trained in. Everyone who knows this album should know Clare Torry's name. She was only 25 when she was paid 30£ to sing about death without using words, and she never really got the recognition for how iconic those vocals became.
I'm not a massive Rolling Stones fan, and this is definitely not my favorite record by them but it has been a long time since I listened to it and I think it fits my taste a lot more now. This isn't one of their records filled with their hits, and it is pretty much just a blues record. It followed two albums with massive impacts (Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers)but while there was nothing on Exile that I was blown away by, I did find it incredibly consistent. It was easy to listen to the whole way through without any moment taking me out of it. One stand out for me is the cover of Stop Breaking Down. I will love almost any version of that song I hear, from the 1937 Stop Breakin' Down Blues by Robert Johnson to the very noisy 1999 cover off of The White Stripes self-titled album.
God, bring back skits on records. I was just listening to Stankonia by Outkast (which actually only came out 5 months after this record) and had the same thought. I feel like that's one thing that has largely been lost to streaming, because everything is about individual songs and streams not many artists worry about album construction, which obviously makes things like interludes/skits irrelevant. Anyways, I grew up just outside of Detroit, went to college in Detroit, and have lived in Detroit since. That's to say, I have heard SO MUCH Eminem. He is basically the city's mascot. I've known every word to The Real Slim Shady since I was in the fifth grade, when my mom didn't realize that when she put this album on her iPod it (to her absolute horror) went onto mine too. I love this album, it is probably my favorite of his, and I do think it is very funny that to this day, every single white guy who grew up in the same area as me will list this as one of the most important albums of their adolescence. Though having been around those boys in my childhood I can confidently say this is not a record for boys to hear before they can understand that Slim Shady is a character. I knew a lot of parents who let their kids listen to Eminem because he was "local" and didn't really listen first, which resulted in a lot of elementary school boys having language about sexual violence that they didn't understand, but understood enough to know it was what you said to girls to make them uncomfortable. Some favorite tracks: Bitch Please II, Under the Influence
This is the first album since I started this project that I had never even heard of prior to listening! Funny enough, by total coincidence I heard Paul Weller's band, The Jam, for the first time ever yesterday while listening to the Butthole Surfers' influences playlist they have on their artist Spotify page. I actually really liked what I heard from The Jam! This... not as much. Now I will say some tracks (Wild Wood, All The Pictures On The Wall) have a little bit of a Cat Stevens feel and I like those a lot. They don't have the overwhelming modern elements many other tracks lean a bit too much on that to me make it feel much less intimate and much more like pretty much any other early 90's easy listening/folk-rock. I can definitely feel that Weller has some Motown/Soul influences, which I can appreciate, especially in the bass parts. MUCH more neo-soul in the back half of the record. I will always appreciate this movement in music though, mainly because it led to the much-deserved rise in popularity of Nick Drake's music. Overall the album does make me nostalgic despite having never heard it before, it reminds me of something my parents would have had in their big 5-disc CD player that always played while cleaning the house on a nice spring day with the windows open. This album would fit in well amongst their Van Morrison, Ben Harper, Cat Stevens, and Harry Connick, Jr. (A note though - there is one song on this album that falls squarely into the category of "songs that enrage me with no real justifiable reason," and that is Moon On Your Pyjamas. Oh my god. It feels like an original song in a made-for-TV feel good family movie in the absolute worst way)
A few years ago I started doing one album a day using a different list, tracking all of my ratings in a spreadsheet. There weren't many low ratings from me, but when looking at the data I noticed a pattern: I just really seem to hate 80's music. In almost any genre (some 80's punk/hardcore/alt-rock are an exception) I just pretty much hated every production choice made. All of that to say: this album was a downright painful listen for me. I came VERY close to quitting in the middle. I don't personally have much redeeming to say about this record, but I am not going to say to stay away from it, because it is far from bad in an objective sense. It is just the exact opposite of my taste in a way that made a listen straight through impossible. I had to take a few breaks. So, if you really love 80's Bowie but have always wished it was just a little bit more unsettling and that he was doing his best impersonation of a ghost the whole time, this is the album for you!
The first country album I've gotten since doing daily records again! And I've never heard this one before, at least not consciously. Pretty much all of my country music knowledge comes from what my dad would play in his truck on camping trips, and for all I know this could have been one he played. I'm generally more of a fan of country music that predates this by quite a bit, but I actually really enjoyed this album. It predates the extremely unfortunate bootlicking bro-country movement that began in the late 90's and then exploded post-9/11 until it pretty much devoured mainstream country all together. So if you're looking for something with a classic mainstream country feel but still feels like real country music (no cartoonishly fake accents here!), I can absolutely recommend this. It probably isn't something I'd out on most days, but I probably will throw it on next time I'm out on my dad's boat with him. Some highlights: What I Don't Know, I Got You.
If this this was going to give me another 80's record, thank god it was Kate Bush. I actually love pretty much all of the pop-girls from the 80's, it's the men I have a problem with. Madonna, Cyndi Lauper, and Kate Bush – all women who shaped pop music for the better. Kate Bush has had her much deserved revival these last few years following Running Up That Hill having a moment online after being featured on Stranger Things, and that has made me so happy. I was excited to listen to this album again, I have described Kate Bush as "Spooky Madonna" in the past and it holds so true. I always view this as a foundational alt-pop record, especially songs like Waking the Witch. I'm a traditional Celtic Pagan and I have absolutely put this record on when doing religious rituals. Jig of Life was one of my go-to witchcraft-working song for a long time. The layers and texture in the whole album keep it interesting the whole time, and there really isn't a miss on the whole album. Highlights: Running Up That Hill, Waking the Witch
Absolutely no idea how this record evaded me up until this point. The "fans also like" section on their spotify is comprised of like half my top artists. Television, The Slits, Sonic Youth, Stooges, Gang of Four?? Really it just goes to show how awful spotify's recommendation algorithm is if anything, there is no way this album should not have been on some mix spotify shoved at me. This album is an obvious precursor to hardcore. It has those obvious touches of brit punk from the 70's, especially in the vocals, but the song structure is something I feel like I don't see in any other band's music again until 80's hardcore with bands like Dead Kennedys, Minor Threat, and Circle Jerks. I saw there were 21 songs on this album and felt a sense of dread wash over me, but then I saw the album is 35 minutes long and knew I was going to love it. And I was right, this is a new favorite. Highlights: I mean it's only 35 minutes, just listen to the whole thing, but if I had to choose: Lowdown, Pink Flag, Strange
Also, a band where every single album is basically a totally different genre? Exactly my shit. I'm sure I'll be listening to their entire discography in the coming days. I will also absolutely be looking into what the bassist used to achieve the tone on this record, and may have to hunt down some gear.
I love this era of music, because songwriting/the music industry in general was so different from how it is now you would get the same couple songs performed in a completely different style from pretty much every artist. So on this record alone we have Respect — written by Otis Redding and made into the legendary song it is now by Aretha Franklin two years later, Change is Gonna Come written by Sam Cooke, My Girl written by Smokey Robinson, etc. It is a practice I love, every single artist had their own arrangement of the song and made it entirely unique. I love Redding's versions of all of these songs in a completely different way than I love other renditions, and I absolutely need all versions. I love Otis Redding'd voice, and every single song on this record hits as much as the song before it. Highlights: Respect, Wonderful World, (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction
I love Indian music but I have never listened to it very actively, and I'm glad I got a chance to. As a music theory nerd I loved the introduction that gave a breakdown of common techniques, scales, and use of instruments in Indian classical music. The continued introduction to the songs throughout discussing which building block of Indian music will be demonstrated in that piece is a great way to build an interest that goes beyond just this album. I will definitely be listening to more of Shankar's music along with other Indian classical music. It is also great to finally sit down and listen to his music after really only knowing him through his influence on George Harrison and The Beatles.
Highlights: Dádrá, Bhimpalasi
I didn’t think I had listened to much Bob Marley, but literally just the first few opening notes of this record unlocked some memory buried deep inside of me of my dad playing this around the house when I was little. I mean it makes sense, this is the exact type of thing my dad would play in the summer, but somehow this album got buried until now. I’ve recently been working on expanding my genre range in regards to my bass playing, and with bass being such a backbone of Reggae music I decided to take a shot at some of the genre’s techniques and learn a few songs from The Wailers… good god is it even harder than I expected. I wan’t expecting it to be easy but I wasn’t expecting it to feel so different. I love it, I love finding anything that is a challenge. The song Exodus is actually one of the songs I have been trying to learn, now listening to it in the context of its album I love it even more. Every bass part on this record fits into the rhythm in such a cool way, and does exactly what bass is supposed to do in bridging that gap between rhythm and melody. Highlights: Exodus, Three Little Birds
The Notorious B.I.G. is the exception to my preference for west coast rap. I usually feel like east coast rap from the 90's is very one-note, and as someone who likes to listen to albums straight through it can get very boring by the end (especially because it was not unusual for those albums to be 1.5+ hours). I hadn't listened to this album since I was a senior in college, my roommate loved all hip-hop from this era and played it constantly. It was in the midst of covid too, so him and I were stuck hearing each other's music OFTEN. This album is such an easy listen though, it's smooth and arranged so well that it before you even realize it you're at the end. An album that can get played straight through at a party and be the right vibe the whole time. Also, I really do thing Big Poppa has one of the best hooks ever recorded. Highlights: Everyday Struggle, Big Poppa, Suicidal Thoughts
Somehow, my first Brian Eno record! I am very familiar with him as a person, his overall impact, and music he worked on with other artists but I somehow never ended up actually listening to his work. Maybe it is just this album, but it is REALLY not what I was expecting. I think I was anticipating it being more pretentious? I pretty much only know Eno as "the ambient music guy" so I was really not expecting the album to open the way it did. The first song that actually kind of fit what I expected was Energy Fools the Magician. The track following that, King's Lead Hat, made me realize exactly why Eno and David Byrne have worked together frequently. This album actually came out the same year as Talking Heads' debut, and the following year was when Talking Heads released their first album produced by Eno. Listening to this record (and this song specifically) I can REALLY hear Eno's influence on the albums he collaborated with them on. I just realized the song title is an anagram for Talking Heads so I mean... that has to be intentional right? He hadn't produced their records yet but I'm going to assume him and Byrne were already working together or at the very least VERY aware of each others work. The only other track on the records that sounded the way I anticipated going into this was Through Hollow Lands, which was also the highlight of the record for me. Overall I think I can see myself liking his other work too, so fine Brian Eno, maybe I will watch the weird documentary about your music on Criterion that can be reshuffled into billions (oh sorry, looked it up, quintillion) of combinations.
