1001 Albums Summary

i think for someone of my age and tastes this is, fundamentally, the kind of music you expect to encounter in a montage sequence in a B-tier kids' animated movie. by the time "smokin" rolled around i was ready to be done with the album. most of the itches this scratches for me can also be scratched elsewhere - glam bowie, thin lizzy, the cars, def leppard. come to think of it def leppard were working class blokes and i prefer their vocal harmonies.

this falls in the category of albums i've had on my computer since time immemorial but have never really gotten around to. i already knew 'somebody to love' and 'white rabbit' but otherwise these songs were new to me. fantastic album. 'my best friend' is bland and skipworthy (it was the lead single? lol) but apart from that, this is pretty killer. whatever their dalliances circa 1967, the beatles and the stones were not hippies. this is the actual factual san francisco pre-summer of love genuine article. stylistically it's what i expected: it shows the influence of the '60s folk revival and the british invasion, and adds the communal/anarchic energy of american counterculture. multiple singers/songwriters with varying backgrounds & styles keep it interesting over a tight 34 min runtime. an album widely classified as "psychedelic," but i find that that comes down mainly to a mood established by the performers (i.e., there aren't any avant garde jams or studio experimentations on surrealistic pillow). the vibes are strong enough to overpower the clunkier lyrics (including on 'somebody to love'). 'my best friend' aside (on its account i'd rate this album 4.5/5 if i could), the worst i can say is that maybe the middle of the album doesn't quite reach the iconic level of the first two and last two songs.

i'd never listened to Yes before this. oh, okay i get it, Yes are like if The Mars Volta were pre-punk and never did meth: all the same flaws but less interesting 'a venture' is a fantastically hooky-but-knotty prog-pop song that i'll return to, even though it still has irrepressible virtuousic jackoff energy (pejorative). 'starship trooper' is pretty good and even has some (partial) restraint in the three-chord chug of its final section. 'the clap' is fine, but ultimately still an overly-virtuosic contribution to a form (solo acoustic guitar instrumenal) that i prefer more emotionality from. the rest of the album sucks, especially 'i've seen all good people' which is like a bloodless prog christmas carol.

when i was a teenager and first heard of Nick Drake, the internet said that he was a songwriter with depression who died young and that his third and final album, Pink Moon, is a harrowing masterpiece. it said that this album was a harbinger of his death (even though he lived two more years after releasing it). it said that this is a bleak album of "calm, focused anguish" and that its songs are "cold breaths that exhale an acute sense of desolation" i downloaded the first several songs from Pink Moon and was like: what the heck are they talking about? this was gentle, inviting solo folk guitar music that my dad would like. the lyrics were barely there, much less harrowing. i didn't get it. i put Pink Moon away for several more years as it turns out: Pink Moon is a masterpiece and its songs exhale an acute sense of desolation. the thing is that Nick Drake does not really emote on Pink Moon. as a teenager i couldn't really grasp emotion that wasn't pretty directly performed/articulated, i guess. the guitar compositions & performances on this album are beautiful and inimitable. Drake's peaceful voice and modest words are desolate not because of their content but because they sound like they are coming from a place of peace & poise beyond all hope.

honestly this is probably a 2-3 star album for me personally but I'm bumping it up to 4 stars because I feel like it's being dogpiled by humorless dorks lol