This is the first album that I'm going to be reviewing as part of the 1001 Albums challenge! As well as doing this random generator, I'll be simultaneously doing them in chronological order from the book, that way I get to hear each album twice, something that I think is important to truly understand an album.
So here's my review:
While I didn’t enjoy this as much as my first listen, the talent presented on this album is incredible! Joplin has one of the most powerful and unique voices in the history of music and really uses it to its full capability on this album. The first two tracks are my favourites, after them the album goes on a slight decline, but never too far, it always remains enjoyable! The last 2 tracks were great and so is the iconic ‘Me And Bobby McGee’!
This was great, but a bit disappointing. I love both Wilco and Billy Bragg’s work separately, Billy Bragg was one of my favourite artists earlier this year! However, I didn’t love this, it was pretty similar throughout and quite boring. The first few tracks were great, but after that, they started to feel a bit basic, that is, with the exception of the outro track, another standout! The quality of these tracks are not reflective of their work outside of the collaboration. I’d be willing to listen to this again to see if my opinion changes, but I didn’t love it upon my first listen.
Wow! I never really listened Johnny Cash’s music, it seemed quite typical and unoriginal, but this album is brilliant! The banter between songs, especially with the prisoners, was funny and tragic at the same time, but I loved when Cash was thanking the warden and all of the prisoners booed! As for the songs, they were very enjoyable, I particularly admire Cash’s courage to play ‘San Quentin’. The entire song is simply complaining about the quality of prisons, describing them as “hell” and talking about those who die there. Knowing Cash’s stance on prison reform, this just makes the whole album 10 times better!
While I typically love Bob Marley’s music, this album wasn’t something that I particularly loved. It was enjoyable and I definitely wasn’t having a bad time whilst listening to it, but its lack of energy at times made it a harder listen than his better works such as ‘Exodus’. This album showcases some interesting instrumentation and obviously Marley’s iconic voice, though, as I previously mentioned, the lack of energy made it less appealing than some of his other music.
My opinion has VASTLY changed! After giving a real relisten, I loved this! Aside from the ‘Swamp Song’ interludes, every single track was great, I particularly love ‘Hello’, ‘Roll With It’, ‘Morning Glory’ and ‘Champagne Supernova’. I have always loved Blur, so I think I went in pretty closed-minded last time, but this time I went in unbiased and I think that it was necessary to do that. It’s not flawless, some tracks (I’m talking about you ‘Hey Now!’!) dragged on for longer than they needed while remaining pretty basic. I think the phenomenal ‘Champagne Supernova’ immediately brings the album up a few points, but as a whole it was very consistently enjoyable!
I’ve heard a few songs by Steely Dan before. I didn’t really want to explore their discography, but they seemed pretty good. When I realised this was my album to listen to today in the 1001 generator, I was disappointed, I’d been getting some really good albums. However, this took me by surprise! It’s an earlier album by them and isn’t quite as overproduced as I was expecting. It was just a pretty fun high-energy and jazzy Soft Rock album. It was very catchy and fun, and, while the quality drops in the second half, there’s the brilliant title track! The first few were also great!
I absolutely love Paul Simon! This isn’t his greatest album, but it really just shows his talent perfectly! It has its darker moments, but really makes you feel good throughout. The guitar work is brilliant as per usual, utilising acoustic guitar, as a guitarist myself, I can safely say that the guitar in Paul Simon’s work, as well as in Simon & Garfunkel, is incredibly difficult! It isn’t flashy, but really fits the Folk Rock and Singer-Songwriter style!
It’s really a shame that this album has weaker moments. At its best moments, this album has some near perfect tracks, particularly ‘Getting Bright At Night’. However, so much of this album is generic, pretty much the entire second half feels like filler with a couple decent moments. On the other hand, I did particularly enjoy the Noise Rock-focused parts with guitar feedback, I think it made the album more interesting and gave it depth. Although I was very disappointed at the lack of consistency, at least I’ve discovered a few new songs that I really enjoy, though they were few and far between!
This is a really enjoyable album! it definitely peaks very early into the album, I think 'Something For The Weekend' should have been more central, around track 6 or 7. The first 3 tracks are brilliant and pretty fun, the last 2 also were, as well as 'If You Don't Want Me To Destroy You'. Essentially, what I'm saying is that this album might fall off towards the middle, but you're never far from a great track and even the weakest tracks are still fun!
What a fun album! From a musical perspective, this isn't brilliant, typical Western guitar and some basic bass. However, the songwriting is fantastic, I mentioned this last time, but it's necessary, it's an album all about Cowboy storytelling. The highlight of the album for me was 'Big Iron', but 'El Paso' was a close second! Lots of people struggle to enjoy this album because of its 'Cowboy' style and can't look past some of the dated factors, but I think it's necessary to take into account the culture of when the album was released to get a proper understanding of the album's meaning!
This was boring. It's Punk, a genre I don't particularly love, but it's also really same-y throughout. 'White Girl' was a great track, but I really don't think there's anything else to write about it. It has some catchier tracks, however, if I was wanting Punk music of high-quality, I would look elsewhere. Ray Manzarek produced it as well, what a fall-off! From playing keyboard in one of the greatest bands of all-time to producing a weak Punk album!
This is a Trip-Hop masterpiece! Blue Lines is my first impression of Massive Attack; it's safe to say that I have very high hopes for the rest of their work! I haven't listened to much music in the Trip-Hop genre, but I definitely will after hearing this. Mezzanine is another album by Massive Attack that I'm now motivated to listen to, I already know and love 'Angel' and 'Teardrop' from that album. On this album though, I'd have to say that 'Safe From Harm' was the obvious highlight, it was a perfect introduction and really introduces you to the themes and style of the album. I wasn't quite as fond of the Reggae-style tracks, I love Reggae music, but some of the Trip-Hop elements don't work very well with it! Tricky is an absolute legend and it was great to hear him on this album, but most of the highlights were from Shara Nelson, someone who I hadn't heard of before this!
This is what people mean by Dad-Rock ! Admittedly, it's not great. Instrumentally, Frampton proves to be a great guitarist, but that isn't everything that makes music enjoyable. The lyrics aren't good at all, they lack any real meaning and aren't creative. However, the guitar solos are brilliant and there is obvious talent present on this album, these are the only things that stops this album from being weak though!
This is my second Johnny Cash album I have got from the generator in the space of 2 weeks. With most artists, I’d be disappointed having to hear multiple albums in a short space, but Johnny Cash is something special! In this album you can really hear his age, his voice is weaker and during his legendary cover of ‘Hurt’, he sounds as if he really is! ‘In My Life’ was a solid cover of The Beatles hit, though I think that The Beatles’ original was more emotional, despite Cash’s older voice making it sound more hopeless. ‘We’ll Meet Again’ was a perfect end to this album, it starts off deep, but really plateaus from an emotional standpoint when the choir enters, the Vera Lynn version was played at one of my family member’s funeral so the song has an even bigger meaning to me!
I didn't enjoy this as much as my first listen. There are highlights like 'If I Should Fall From Grace With God', 'Bottle Of Smoke' and 'Fairytale Of New York', but there's far too much filler. From 'Fiesta' there was only 1 or 2 tracks that I actually enjoyed. I'm not even going to mention 'Worms'! At least it's so short that you don't have to count it as a real factor in the album's rating, if you did, the album would be MUCH worse! As a whole, there is some notable tracks, but they are all in the first 15 minutes of the album and the worst tracks are very bland.
This fell off towards the end, but as someone who hates this style of music, this was actually solid! The first 3 tracks as well as 'The Story Of Beauty' were my favourite songs, the production was surprisingly great and despite the very generic style, there were some genuinely interesting lyrics! I don't like Destiny's Child's music and I didn't love this album, but this exceeded my expectations. I was expecting it to be awful, but instead it was tolerable with some highlights!
This is so groovy! From the first track to the last it was just constant funkiness and was insanely enjoyable! There are so many songs that have been sampled and I recognised such as ‘I’m Shady’ by Eminem sampling ‘Pusherman’ and ‘Egg Man’ by Beastie Boys sampling the title track! There isn’t too much to say aside from that, but it’s just exactly what you want in a Funk album, there’s gorgeous vocals and arrangements and an irresistible groove throughout. I hate dancing, but I felt like standing up and just feeling the music, this is surely a good sign for the music!
I love this style of music, but I unfortunately think that this was pretty weak. After getting 'Superfly' as my previous album from the generator, I was really looking forward to this, but it seems that Superfly was so strong that this just pales in comparison! They are both very funky Soul albums that serve as a soundtrack to iconic Blaxploitation movies, but I think that this album tries too hard compared to the beauty of Superfly. For example, 'Do Your Thing' is nearly 20 minutes, but I wouldn't say that anything too interesting happens after the first several minutes, it almost feels self-indulgent! I can appreciate some of the other soundtrack pieces, particularly 'Cafe Regio's', they were all pleasant with some interesting moments, but the absence of Hayes' vocals is quite disappointing. Conclusively, this album has some clear highlights, but feels unnecessarily long and has several moments throughout where uninteresting moments can drag.
Again, the score stays the same. Upon this relisten, I enjoyed 'I'm Waiting For The Day' and 'Pet Sounds' significantly more than in my previous listens! 'You Still Believe In Me' also stood out more, the harmonies are some of the best on the album. 'I Know There's An Answer' remained one of my least favourite tracks, while it's very enjoyable, I don't think that it's close to the high quality of every other song on the album.
This was great! After seeing some mixed reviews, I was skeptical about this, people especially hated the last track. I ended up really liking the albums as a whole, the first track is brilliant and despite being unconventional, the last track was actually really interesting and even funny! I can see where the appeal is lost, it’s quite experimental, but this a great, more artistic take on punk, it’s really interesting!
This has to be one of the greatest pop albums ever released! 'Shout', 'Everybody Wants To Rule The World', 'Mothers Talk' and 'Head Over Heels' are completely flawless songs, definitely some of the greatest ever released, but it's not like the other tracks are bad. In comparison, they're weaker, but it'd be very unfair to judge these tracks because they aren't perfect! My favourite would have to be 'Head Over Heels', there just aren't any other songs quite like it, the other ones that I claimed to be flawless are, but 'Head Over Heels' is in a league of its own!
This was my first impression of The White Stripes! I knew a couple of their hits, but this is the first time I've deliberately listened to one of their albums - I'm very impressed! It's primarily a high-energy Garage Rock album with hits like 'Seven Nation Army' and 'Ball And Biscuit', but there are softer moments. The 2 least liked songs are generally 'You've Got Her In Your Pocket' and 'Well It's True That We Love One Another', but I loved both of them! 'You've Got Her In Your Pocket' is actually in my top 5 from the album! I'll definitely be giving some more of their music (As well as some of Jack's solo music!) a listen in the future as this was a really enjoyable and catchy album!
This was fun, but incredibly generic. It's Britpop, so I wasn't expecting anything more than that, the songs are catchy, but they're very similar to each other as well as those of other Britpop artists. There were some real highlights of the Britpop era and it was great for people to start bands with their friends and sometimes make it big, but bands like Elastica show that there isn't always lots of progression from when writing an EP in your garage to making a major album. I really enjoyed 'Annie' and 'S.O.F.T.' as well as several others, but most were too similar to warrant separate mentions.
