first time listening
maggot brain: haunting, gorgeous, lovely, dreadful
can you get to that: spooky little intro bit perfectly transitions the vibe from the title track into the main riff which sounds like a cat napping in a sunbeam. love the beat, love those real low vocals, love a little lyrical dissonance
hit it and quit it: organ goes crazy, love how loud the vocalist gets when he goes high
you and your folks, me and my folks: yeah this album is an all-timer. there's some sort of reverb/echo(?) effect on the bass/drums(?) that i can't decide if i like or not
super stupid: goes CRAZY
back in our minds: WHAT is that instrument. all i can find is one youtube comment saying it's a flexatone and that seems to be it. love it
wars of armageddon: BOLD USE OF FART NOISES #RESPECT. chaotic angry manic fat and funky
EASY 5
really?
in a vacuum i would give this a respectable if unremarkable and sometimes irritating 3. (i can only be made to hear about jack white's problems with women for so long before i start to resent it.)
but because it has been presented to me as one of the most important albums of all time i have to give it a 2. presumably it was removed from the book once the contributor(s) recovered from mid white guy blues-rock fever
#previously listened (partial)
i've loved a lot of tracks off this album since high school but haven't given the full thing a proper listen since then. there's some preachiness and a relatively conservative streak to some of the lyrics (the both sides-ism in doo-wop [that thing] in particular) that i've never cared for but the music, her voice, her lyrical craft is good enough i can look past it. some guys really are only about that thing though.
no bad songs here but some are more memorable than others and the runtime is pushed a bit far. doo-wop, when it hurts so bad, i used to love him, everything is everything, tell him, are long-time favorites. lost ones, ex-factor, to zion, superstar, forgive them father, can't take my eyes off of you (fantastic cover of a song i've always loved) stood out on this listen.
this album is so firmly a 4.5 to me but i can't do that here. i was going to give it a 4 but i've been listening to it all day and added it back to my library and i'm sitting here vibing to can't take my eyes off of you as i write this and i think i'm going to have to go 5. love.
#previously listened
they called it U2 because "U" had to get "2" ribs removed to suck your own dick to be a member.
they do get some brownie points from me for having a vaguely homoerotic song about judas (until the end of the world). mysterious ways is a pretty good car commercial song. quite like the guitars on acrobat. love is blindness is genuinely great.
songs i didn't skip before they ended:
zoo station
until the end of the world
the fly
mysterious ways
acrobat
love is blindness
i want to be a hater but this album is undeniably pretty good. it's yet another mid-century white guy rock band appropriating the blues, but a pretty good one of those. jim morrison calling himself "mr. mojo risin'" because it's an anagram of his own name is genuinely insufferable. but the song he does it in is still pretty good.
highlights: love her madly, been down so long, cars hiss by my window, l.a. woman, hyacinth house, riders on the storm
could easily bump this up to a 4 or down to a 2 depending on my mood.
#previously listened (partial)
it's good!
highlights: aladdin sane, panic in detroit, cracked actor, time, let's spend the night together, lady grinning soul
#first time listening
-cinnamon girl sounds like a parody of a classic rock song
-title track is forgettable
-round & round is lovely
-really goofy little riff/guitar solo on down by the river. like it's giving middle schooler's first guitar solo at the school talent show. i would be proud of that middle schooler but this is an adult professional musician. song is otherwise forgettable and goes on forever
-the losing end is forgettable
-running dry starts with nice strings but now why are you singing directly into my ear neil. back up from the mic a bit. recording quality is just weirdly quite bad on this track. maybe it's a streaming issue? the violin is still lovely though.
-cowgirl in the sand sounds like a child wrote the lyrics but the music is good
some people have always been old and neil young (ha) is one of them. he sounds about 74 years old on this record. not a negative or a positive just a fact.
i guess neil young is a Culturally Important musician and i respect that but i dont know if i needed to listen to this album. i probably won't listen to it again. it's pleasant background music but there's a lot of that in the world.
#first time listening
falling into the lake drowning submerged and buried under sediment hit by a rock floating in the dark washing up onto the sand dancing in the light rain destroying and rebuilding yourself mourning and moving on
just incredibly gorgeous. ingenious production and arrangement. had my jaw on the floor on multiple occasions. bjorks vocal performance is beautiful and powerful and versatile as always. lyrics raw and intimate and complex in their simplicity. a beautiful interlocking living mechanism of an album. it's really just that good
the most truly perfect 5 so far. i want to go back and rate everything else lower
#first time listening
first listen had me a bit underwhelmed ("i guess you had to be there?") but it grew on me. walk on the wild side in particular is dated but a genuine classic.
highlights: vicious, andy's chest, perfect day, hangin' round, walk on the wild side, make up, satellite of love, i'm so free, goodnight ladies. so most of it.
#first time listening (mostly)
finally got an album i've never heard of in my life! wasn't expecting much and was very pleasantly surprised. just a little corny in a way that really works for me. when they started talking about fantastic prisms in the magic hollow and shit that's when i knew for sure it was a 4 star album. it's also like the platonic ideal of summer music.
highlights: are you happy, only dreaming now, nine pound hammer, magic hollow, the wolf of velvet fortune (SWIFTLY!), old kentucky home (fun little satirical number)
#first time listening
very late aughts-early teens adult alternative radio. music for guys who say they like "anything but rap and country" but all they listen to is bands that sound like this. white dad on the brink of divorce blasting this in his prius in 2009. generally pleasant and inoffensive but it's not for me. not in 2026.
one of those tricky cases where nothing on the album is really "bad" and i kind of feel like a dick giving it a 2. but i resented having to listen to it when i could have been listening to anything else and it felt like it just kept going on and on and on. 2 stars because it made 54 minutes feel like 2 hours.
#first time listening
already like this better than the last neil young album i got (everybody knows...). much more consistent, much better production quality. lyrics are generally less cringey (when you dance, i can really love is a notable exception but the song is still good). truly lovely harmonies throughout -- i could take or leave young's voice on its own but it really shines with others. southern man rules.
highlights: only love can break your heart, southern man, don't let it bring you down, birds, when you dance
still too many forgettable tracks to justify a 4 star rating but it's a much more solid 3. maybe 3.5. bonus points for pissing off lynyrd skynyrd.
#first time listening
a couple of great songs, a few good songs, one of the worst songs i've ever heard (she's out of my life), and the rest is filler. theres a kind of insubstantial sound to this album as a whole, even on the good tracks. never been a huge mj fan outside of the big hits but he's always been an interesting figure to say the least. reading about him always leaves me with something new to feel sick and sad about. listening to this album while doing so had me feeling weird
i had never listened to steely dan and just assumed they were one of those bands who are really lame but whom some people insist are "good, actually" just for the sake of being contrarian. turns out they are pretty good, actually!
highlights: bodhisattva, the boston rag, king of the world, maybe more if i listened to it again but my power went out
i have little patience for straight man divorce music but this is such a spectacularly melodramatic work of divorcedness i can't help but be fascinated by it. also the music itself is very good, no surprise there. the album art has me cracking up in disbelief every time i look at it. a real piece of work.
of course it's all fun and games and until you read more about how gaye treated the women and girls in his life and it all gets a little too real. can't in good conscience give this more than a 3 but it certainly is something to behold.
not even his best album!
great!
YUPPPPPPPP
the good here is very good, some genuine classics, but it's about half filler. i might have been more impressed if it weren't so prestigious but the curse of high expectations had me feeling a bit underwhelmed. definitely deserves its place on the list for cultural importance but i probably won't listen to the full thing again
highlights: spanish castle magic, little wing, if 6 was 9, castles made of sand, one rainy wish, bold as love. no surprises here
would be an easy 3.5 if we could do half stars
nothing but respect for ms. mitchell but this album isn't doing much for me. pleasant music, lovely vocals, well-written if a bit quaint and sometimes corny lyrics, in one ear and out the other
highlights: help me, car on a hill, raised on robbery, trouble child
you know what it is
i don't think he should have been within 500 feet of a high school hop. really going crazy on the piano though. i was going to give this 2 stars but all the crusty white boomers slobbering over it in the youtube comments have forced my hand
started strong with the first two tracks and then mostly lost me. scenes from an italian restaurant is boomer slop. i always thought i liked "only the good die young" but apparently i never paid attention to the lyrics, or maybe i only ever heard the chorus. i mean stick it to the catholic church for sure but maybe not just to pressure some girl into fucking you. get it right the first time is corny as fuck but fun. many skippable ballads
highlights: movin' on, the stranger, vienna, get it right the first time
listened to the extended '95 release. i liked this well enough but as with most live albums, this is probably essential listening for a big The Who fan but not for anyone else.
highlights: young man blues, a quick one while he's away, shakin' all over, my generation, magic bus
it's a grower! wasn't feeling it at first but ended up listening to it on repeat all night (while playing morrowind - pretty well suited vibes). a bit corny and twee for sure but it works for me. not sure if i love or hate greenman.
highlights: river of orchids, i'd like that, easter theatre, greenman (?), your dictionary, fruit nut, the last balloon
"i didn't HATE this album, but..." (<- bad sign)
it's fine. there were a couple tracks i liked more than the others but not enough to remember which ones. and not enough to listen again.
would be interesting if it weren't so dull. would at least be pleasant background music if it weren't so unexpectedly abrasive. a better album would make that whiplash work. here it just feels like the worst of both worlds. the titular sample in particular is just really annoying.
maybe it just hit me in the wrong mood.
simply a good time
mostly pleasant and unremarkable except sometimes the soft-spoken vocals become like nails on a chalkboard. people who care a lot about having Good Taste™ or presenting themselves as such hype the fuck out of this band and it feels like a bit of an emperor's new clothes situation to me. maybe their earlier work is better but i'm not that eager to check it out.
it's music
smells like white wine fumes
lots of talent here but most of it is going towards making some "LOL are you triggered bro?! XD" type shit and i'm not an edgy 12 year old boy so it doesn't do much for me. 2.5
type of music you hear from a local band at a free concert in the park. pleasant but unremarkable and often corny. i really liked the first track, which made me think i would really like the rest of the album, but it largely failed to grab me. fuzzy is a good name for it. no reason to be here.
highlights: the shining hour, soft wolf tread, stars n' stripes
lowlight: dixie drug store (embarrassingly cliché, racist)
always roll my eyes at the white guy orientalism but thankfully that is a very small part of the album. 4.5!!!!!!
highlights: deacon blues, peg, home at last, josie
much more sonically eclectic than i thought it would be. still a few too many rawk songs about Being Boys At School for my taste. also fuck alice cooper
highlights: luney tune, blue turk
some really nice tracks and some kind of nice tracks and some completely forgettable tracks. and a geico commercial track. 3.5
highlights: so easy, eple, poor leno, royksopp's night out
somebody to love, and others
<3
mediocre in a really frustrating way where a lot of these songs have the potential to be good but don't quite make it there. undercooked and sauceless. i have always had a soft spot for clocks though. maybe just listen to clocks.
highlights: clocks
much more understated than i expected it to be. marc bolan sings like he's a kid recording this album in secret while he's supposed to be asleep and is trying not to wake up his parents. the recording/production quality doesn't help. it all sounds a kind of amateurish and weirdly limp and off. the more i listen to it the less i like it. i'm genuinely confused as to how this is so highly acclaimed. i know people were making better music in the 70s.
UPDATE: now listening to the 2003 remaster which does WONDERS for this album. brought it up from a painful to listen to 1.5 to a perfectly decent 3
highlights: mambo sun, jeepster, monolith, bang a gong, rip off
a plain hot dog from a tacky 50's themed diner
breakdown is good but i wish it were better, luna is good and the most interesting thing here, american girl is american girl
in a worse mood i would give this a 1
no one needs to be listening to a 90's band doing 70's cosplay in the 2020's
sure
