I was quite excited when this popped up, as I remember really liking it, but good grief was it dull. Lukewarm, overly sentimental middle of the road indie pop, albeit with a place in my heart. Maybe it’s because I’ve spent so much more time with other albums of theirs since last listening to this… nearly dropped another star because Tidal rolled onto Counting Crows straight after and I nearly vomited, but that’s hardly their fault.
Wow, that ultra high sheen orchestral soul hip-hop production really places this squarely in 2006 eh? Was a fan of Kick Push from back then but hadn’t listened to the rest. I think his bars are wicked, and are done dirty by the cheese of the production, would be keen to hear other stuff of his with a different sound
This would be 3.5 but the draconian system of ranking has tied my hands. It’s real nice, and I’m sure much more interesting in 2001 before the wave of minimalist, melancholic alt country.
The most impressive thing about this is how I’ve spent my entire life thinking that that cover art was a 90s Best Of. Graphic design decades ahead of its time! I love the title track but a whole album of swaggering this earnestly is TOO MUCH! Give me Asbury Park instead please!
I find the Stones very boring and their swagger quite off putting, but this album has always been a preferred one of theirs, and it has some nostalgia for me so I will look past all that.
See, to me this should be in the 1001 Albums To Avoid At All Costs Before You Die. I like Hüsker Dü a lot, and this has really tainted Bob Mould’s legacy for me. It’s just annoying! Whiney vocals, horrible production on the guitars, silly pop punk melodies but played in a dreary middle-of-the-road indie way. Christ, Bob, you really lost your edge huh?
My most unfairly neglected Radiohead album by far (Pablo Honey is much more neglected but that’s entirely fair).
Every time I come back to it I realise it’s actually brilliant, but somehow it’s never really stuck?
In a way it’s the most Radiohead Radiohead album, it’s almost as though they knew they only had one more album in them with this sound and would be take a fairly dramatic left turn with their next so they went hell for leather making every melody and harmony absolutely textbook “RADIOHEAD”
I’ve barely listened to them for years thanks to the sour taste left by all the mealy mouthed inability to condemn the genocide in Gaza, but in the name of statistical fairness I gave this another spin and I fucking loved it.
Against the rest of their catalogue: 3.5/4 Stars
Against music in general 5 stars without a shadow of a doubt
Jam bands have a certain you-had-to-be-there element to their appeal, eh?
I do broadly like blues rock, and certain jam bands I like a lot, but I find the bluesier jam bands tend to fall back on just soloing on a very well trodden riff for far too long.
By the time this gets to Elizabeth Reed there are some super great vibes going, but the fact that it opens straight into extremely middle of the road blues stompers that feel like middle of the set filler type tracks is absolutely heinous to me. Where’s the sense of vision, atmosphere and journey? If you’re going to play long form psychedelic music I need to be taken on a full arc, not just dropped in to a lukewarm riff and have that extended into a bunch of show-off solos.
Obviously this absolutely slaps. I had always thought I liked this best of all their albums but last night I listened to this and then Toxicity and the latter was actually a fair bit better.
Still, petty squabbles, absolute banger, 4.5 stars (but I guess it’ll need to be 5)
It’s a classic for a reason, and an undeniably huge part of my musical development as a 10/11 year old, but I’m not sure I’ve ever listened to it of my own volition as an adult. There’s definitely going to be a lot of albums on this list that that is true for, and how pleased I am with being presented with it will be a good guide for my ranking… make what you will of these 3 stars
Eeehhhh, I’m very grateful to the place in history that this has, and I love the sound that The Clash went on to forge… but I just never ever want to actually listen to this era. The tone, pacing, feel of every track is just a bit too samey, there’s barely any atmosphere or dynamics, and it doesn’t feel anywhere near as raw or powerful as proto-punk did 10 years before it.
Peter Gabriel would be so good if only he’d shut the hell up.
Musically a lot of this album is absolutely incredible, but he pretty much ruins it with his insufferably earnest vocals.
The mid-00s speakeasy jazz throwback aesthetic is perhaps my least favourite vibe of anything ever, so the nerve it took to listen through this album was not inconsiderable. You can imagine my horror then, after deciding that enough was enough, that there was an entire second disc still to go?! And it’s even worse!!
I remember Ain’t No Other Man (and I think Oh Mother) from the time and I’m quite furious about now having that stuck in my head.
There are moments of decent songwriting, some of the production is kinda cool, but the best bits feel directly ripped off from much better RnB 10 years previous, and the worst bits are insufferable.
I would get on board with Stripped being iconic enough for inclusion on this list but what possible grounds was this deemed vital to listen to before I die?
Absolutely phenomenal. Loved it when it came out but it still lived in Good Kid Mad City’s shadow for me. Not listened for ages and hooooooly shit does it SLAP.
My one reservation is the repetition of the spoken word bit that runs through it, I’m not sure we need the full thing quite so many times, but it’s a very minor gripe.
Uurrgh, another R.E.M. album so soon? And another I thought I liked, but this had almost no truly redeeming features at all. Maybe 3 decent tracks (Orange Crush probably the highlight? And I’m not generally a singles guy) and those came much too long after I was thoroughly sick of the album. The first half has almost variation whatsoever, and when it does come in the form of an irrepressibly major key, oh boy does it stink!
Stand is the kind of track that makes me wonder how the band retained any credibility at all. At best it’s music for a toddler to bounce up and down on their seat to at a baseball game. Its catchiness is in the same malignant earworm category as local radio advert jingles, and it’s advertising a family pack of the world’s blandest cheese.
As a moderately large Beatles fan, this was almost totally new to me.
I can’t say my life has been made any richer for having now heard it.
Unsurprisingly it’s a fair bit more inventive than everything it’s mimicking/covering, and it’s interesting to hear their arrangements playing on more traditional mid century pop/rock n roll.
It does feel kind of remarkable in how little like “The Beatles” it sounds compared to Please Please Me, and actually sandwiched between that and A Hard Days Night it fees like quite an outlier, and weirdly bereft of their absolutely classic songwriting. Maybe that’s justification for its inclusion in this list, but overall it’s pretty dull and certainly not a worthwhile and essential part of their legacy, and it does worry me that maybe all of their albums are going to be included if this has been chosen?!
Would be 2.5 if there was any justice in this rating system
So, so lovely. Not listened for so many years/maybe ever front-to-back in one go.
I can absolutely sympathise with any boring/morose/depressing allegations towards it, and I feel bad for anyone who reacts to it that way, but I think that might be a you problem.
There’s definitely a time/place/headspace to be listening to it and I do think the vocals can drag a bit at times, but broadly speaking I think it’s extremely beautiful and the production is an absolute masterclass in how textured and interesting you can make very restrained songwriting.
Definitely worth its place on the list!
One of my less preferred Radiohead albums, but still an absolute banger and filled with amazing songs.
I hadn’t listened in years and I do think it has a significant number of quite dull/of their time tracks. High and Dry through to Nice Dream is a pretty skippable run with tracks that sound like a lot of other bands from the era could have made them, in the way that Iron Lung, Just, Telex really don’t.
Surprising myself by giving this 4 stars (probably an extra 1/2 in there), was expecting to give it 5 without even listening, but it’s not quite made it to the peerless heights that they’d reach by OK Computer.
One of the Talking Heads albums I know less well, I haven’t listened properly in yonks.
It’s very interesting how foundational to their sound it is, certain elements really wouldn’t change much at all, and yet there’s a naivety and looseness to it all that’s really endearing in how much of a debut it is.
The guitar tone is absolutely gorgeous on it, and although I love how razor sharp it got by Speaking In Tongues there’s a softness and a fullness to this that is really lush whilst also keeping that textbook TH spidery sound.
Ultimately I think it is a little too basic and wholesome to stand up to their later material and to really blow me away, but it’s a wonderful debut and I’m very glad it’s on the list.
Raspy voiced geezers singing classic rock with this sorta swagger just isn’t for me. The folk component of this is by far my favourite element, and I think with a different vocalist and bit more emphasis on harmony I could probably enjoy this. But that’s not what’s here, and no amount of wishing is going to turn it into CSN&Y, so I’ll just give it 2.5 stars and move on.
Time was I would have described myself as a big double album guy. I love the long form ambition, I like the double dip structuring…
But listening through again now after a few years aff it, I can’t help feeling like this would have been better as one 50ish minute album.
The good songs are some of the best they’ve ever written, absolutely massive sound and so much excitement. The combination of snarling goth rock songwriting and ecstatic choral arrangements is absolutely doing bits. The mellow songs are incredible too, Spell and O Children in particular are stunning.
Buuut it does edge over into cheese a few times and there’s also some absolutely horrifying lyrics on there too, the second disc title track as a gleaming example.
So yeah… with like 4 or 5 songs axed, an absolutely brilliant piece of work, a career peak for sure… as it is? 4 stars? Aye something like that.
Wow.
I was fully expecting this to be one of those where I have a particularly strong personal vendetta and have to concede that the one star is mostly out of spite and the album has more merit than I’d given it credit for.
But this really is astonishingly bad.
One riff throughout, one drum beat throughout, and they’re not even good?! The most rancid vocal delivery I’ve ever heard, moronically coarse lyrics.
Just irredeemably awful.
I don’t know enough about the late 60s music scene to know if this was considered weird at the time, but given Scott Walker’s wholesale departure into extremely peculiar music in his later career it’s hard not to hear a touch of the bizarre through this, despite being ostensibly quite schmaltzy pop.
Absurdist vaudeville crooning? Haunted baroque pop?
Anyway I love it, but it’s definitely not something I can stomach all the time!
Heck yeah. This is my kinda blues/americana rock type stuff! Compared to so many others who play this sound it’s warm, sincere, playful and without all the incredible smugness and swagger that is rife amongst this sound.
I only really knew Music From The Big Pink and a couple of other singles before this, but it’s another quality helping of altogether solid tunes.
Seminal blues for sure, but I’m just not thaaat fussed. Too much jaunty swing/boogie feel in it to appeal to me that much.
I feel like giving any less than a 4 is historically moronic, but I can’t in good conscience give any more to an album said to have so heavily influenced Eric Clapton and John Mayer.
I admire the maximalist ambition of this a great deal. But it’s just so annoying isn’t it?
I think I was expecting this to be schmaltzier, perhaps on the basis of My Girl (which I do noot like) being the only Temptations song I really knew, but this is great!
Felt like it was maybe dropping a bit in the second half, with some of the quieter tracks compared to the energy of Funky Music and Run Charlie, but it’s gorgeous melodically and harmonically, wicked atmospherics, and super interesting arrangements.
Also packed with bits I recognise from samples which is always fun.
I’m never sure with the The Kinks… the ultra twee English life thing must surely be somewhat ironic, or at least layered with some wry look at a darkness beneath the surface, but listening to through a whole album it does feel like there’s a bit too much that is just sickly twee…
There’s a lot of really nice stuff here, of course, and maybe at a time before most music had any edge it was dripping with cynical nuance, but the end result is just a bit too twee!
So much fun!
Just What I Needed is one of those tunes I put on in my headphones when I’m a bit drunk and listen to 5 times in a row and get mad kicks from.
And it’s feels like it’s probably the only track on here that’ll keep that status, but the rest sure are fun too.
3.5 stars really, and 5 for the drunken headphone sessions
Absolute banger album. Genre defining masterpiece and a pinnacle of one of the coolest sounds in the continuum of punk, dance, rhythm based music. Love love love.
