Album Reviews

The latest and best reviews from listeners around the world

16
Latest Reviews
11
Hot Reviews
10
Top Reviewers

Latest Reviews (16)

From the last 10 minutes

Deloused in the Comatorium album cover
3/5

Day692 - this album has a lot of potential. the concept is cool. i would give the songs better names and i would tone down the sound effect guy

Technique album cover

Technique

New Order

4/5

I love new order but am surprised that Substance isn’t considered more influential.

White Light / White Heat album cover

White Light / White Heat

The Velvet Underground

2/5

Music for douchebags who wear hemp backpacks and berets. First song was good, but it devolved from there into literal talking about nonsense over a beat, droning vocals when stupid Lou Reed actually tries to sing, and loud noise rock with no rhythm. Fuck Lou Reed.

Like A Prayer album cover

Like A Prayer

Madonna

3/5

Just a good pop album. Like a prayer is a good tune - if I was to have a top Madonna track - it would be this one. Overall it’s fine.

A Walk Across The Rooftops album cover
3/5

It's a very atmospheric album, and the instrumentation and the lyrics are quite nice. This isn't my usual type of music, though. And while I enjoy it fine enough, I don't see myself coming back to it much. It feels like a very somber album that would be good for low moments.

Chelsea Girl album cover
4/5

Her voice is unique, and I like that. Her lyrics deadpan - they certainly don’t sell the lifestyle of Warhol and company as attractive. 4/5

Illinois album cover

Illinois

Sufjan Stevens

4/5

Not a new album to me. One of Barrett's favorite albums. Pitchfork: 9.2 Rolling Stone: Top 150 albums of the 21st Century #133 Best Songs Concerning the UFO sighting near Highland, Illinois John Wayne Gacy, Jr. Chicago Casimir Pulaski Day

Born To Run album cover

Born To Run

Bruce Springsteen

5/5

A classic, funky and sometimes jazzy album. Love it, can turn it on anytime.

New Gold Dream (81/82/83/84) album cover
1/5

With every one of these I feel worse and worse about how I rated Tears For Fears. I listened to this three times and can recall the chorus to Promised You A Miracle and that’s about it.

Triangle album cover

Triangle

The Beau Brummels

3/5

Eh, not for me. I’m a Dylan fan, but this was just kind of meh.

In It For The Money album cover

In It For The Money

Supergrass

4/5

This is great. Sounds great, great energy. Lots of fun to listen to. I really like the overall sound, it's very wide and full, really drives home the grooves of the tracks. I think my only complaint is that I think the songs are a bit lacking. They're not bad, some are brilliant, but it's not an album where I am captivated from start to finish, I am by the sound, but not by the songs themselves, so I can't give it a 5.

Oedipus Schmoedipus album cover

Oedipus Schmoedipus

Barry Adamson

3/5

Didn’t actually mind it. Got too hyped up as being bad. Plus I’ll like anything Jarvis is involved in. Simpsons: No

Hot Reviews (11)

Top reviews from the last 30 days

Layla And Other Assorted Love Songs album cover
3/5

It’s horribly bloated. But it’s also pretty good which is annoying. Eric Clapton does have a load of talent. It’s a shame he’s so fucking annoying and stupid

5 likes View Author
Harvest album cover

Harvest

Neil Young

5/5

835 albums into this project and I've found nothing gets people salty like a Neil Young album.

3 likes View Author
At Mister Kelly's album cover

At Mister Kelly's

Sarah Vaughan

4/5

Super smooth. Sarah Vaughan is up there in my favourite jazz vocalists, and I think this is the album of hers that I have most enjoyed. Stripped of her usual highly orchestrated, string-heavy arrangements to a bare trio backing, intimately recorded, you get to hear her beautiful tone and phrasing without distraction. There is a touch more breathiness and slight husk in the quieter moments that sounds close and real. Her ability to deliver a real emotional content is wonderful. Probably my favourite Sarah Vaughan record, and I will probably pick a copy up when I see one around. Love the versions of Just a Gigolo and How High the Moon that close out this album. Update: Just last month I found a copy of this in the $2 bin at The Vintage Record in Annandale. I'll take that, thank you. Cover is beaten up, but it's a bargain at twice the price!

3 likes View Author
Blood And Chocolate album cover

Blood And Chocolate

Elvis Costello & The Attractions

3/5

It's funny that the time I have given his first 8 or 10 albums can be measured in thousands of hours and yet somehow I never once listened to this one all the way through. This album is on the other side of the mountain. The side where the trail leads back down to earth. Maybe he got his personal life in order or his drinking more under control, but it sort of feels like he doesn't have as much emotionally gripping music to make. I Want You and Blue Chair are much the best here and worthy additions to the cannon. Home is Where You Hang Your Head is pretty good, too. The rest of this is kinda ponderous to me. A lot of songwriters feel compelled to put out new material on a regular schedule whether the material merits it or not. It has the effect of diluting their overall impact and damages their place in the firmament. I think about this a lot because if I get into the regular habit of writing then I will definitely write more than if I don't have a habit, but if I put myself into a situation where I have to produce on any kind of a deadline then while I will have more finished songs, few or even none of them will stand the test of time. Or worse yet, you accidentally re-write other people's material, as appears to have happened here with Tokyo Storm Warning basically being a poorly disguised Nineteenth Nervous Breakdown. Anyway, I love Elvis but this album should not be on this list and makes me question the person who put it on there. Get Happy!, Trust, This Year's Model are only the first three examples of EC albums I would have put on here before this one.

3 likes View Author
Harvest album cover

Harvest

Neil Young

5/5

This is top 10 of all time! Neil is my spiritual advisor!

3 likes View Author
evermore album cover

evermore

Taylor Swift

2/5

I dunno…it’s like the sonic ‘candification’ of a phoebe brigers record.

3 likes View Author
Crime Of The Century album cover
1/5

Supertramp is a shiny amalgam of Floyd, Steely Dan, ELO and bunch of other slightly pretentious middle-of-the-road 70s bands blended into a bland slurry and garnished with saxophone. 1.5 stars, rounding down because I am so fucking bored.

3 likes View Author
3 Feet High and Rising album cover
5/5

I remember the precise moment I first heard De La Soul. I was refinishing my parents' kitchen cabinets and looking at the clock above their oven when Eye Know came on the radio. It felt like salvation. From many things, not the least of which a decade where popular music was dominated by boomer nostalgia. It's ironic perhaps but they were sampling Steely Dan, a boomer band if there ever was one, but to say something completely new. Genius. Simply one of my very favorite records. The kind of out of nowhere creative explosion that created an entire sub genre that would have consumed all of hip hop if not for the dominance of gangsta rap. So far out on a limb they had to kill themselves off with their next record, De La Soul is Dead. Took sampling to such an insane extreme that it took the lawyers over thirty years to clear all of the samples, so it couldn't debut on streaming platforms until 2023. Sadly, Trugoy (Yogurt backwards, for some unknown reason) aka Plug Two, one of the greatest rappers the world will ever see, died a month before. Anyway, I can't tell you what it felt like to hear so many cultural touchstones from my youth brought together in one place. In the very first song you get Schoolhouse Rock and Johnny Cash. They were making funky and funny tunes out of Hall and Oates! They combined all of these nuggets to create an entire world with its own vocabulary. Like other truly great albums it takes you on a journey to a place you've never been. The Promised Land, in this case. Maybe it was the drugs, but for the roughly two years between this album and De La Soul Is Dead I literally believed that the D.A.I.S.Y. Age was going to transform the world and bring humanity together to usher in an enlightened era. That's what I was working toward. That, and getting more drugs. Anyway, incredibly creative album and powerful statement on the promise of youth and positive energy unlike anything before or since. I don't like those "best of" lists - music is not a competition and making it a sport diminishes its magic, but I wouldn't have a problem if you came with Three Feet High And Rising as the greatest album ever made and I will be sorely disappointed if it isn't one of the very highest rated by the 1001 community.

3 likes View Author

Most Popular Reviews

All-time top rated reviews

Be album cover

Be

Common

4/5

I can’t believe the top review for this record (as of Dec 2023) is from someone trying to use their PhD in Mathematics as justification for not liking hip-hop. Weak.

302 likes View Author
Kollaps album cover

Kollaps

Einstürzende Neubauten

4/5

Oh fuck yeah, now we're talking. Wait no, I swear I'm not being pretentious. This is the lowest rated album on this site because I guess mostly people aren't very fond of German people smashing metal plates together - who would have guessed. But halle-fucking-lujah, this is something this list needs more of. Albums that make you go "well, that was an experience and now I'm a changed man". Nobody is lying on their deathbed wishing they heard more crappy 80s post-punk or late 60s psychedelic rock. THIS is what we all deserve to be listening to as we embrace eternal oblivion. I'm giving this a high rating not only because I genuinely really love it, but also to help Kid Rock move to his rightful place as the actual worst album on this list. Together we can make a difference. Save the turtles.

250 likes View Author
Scum album cover

Scum

Napalm Death

3/5

Brings back vivid memories of when me and my mate Ray went on a trip to Dresden. We met this rotund goth in a bar, head to toe with tattoos and piercings, real filth and after a while took her into the disabled bogs for a spit roast. We were both pumping away in her with Napalm Death on in the background and her wailing "MEIN GOTT" at the top of her lungs. I remember spaffing all over her back just as Siege of Power kicked in. As i shoot over her, she takes Ray's cock out of her gob and says "do you want fries with that?" in a faux American accent. Anyway, we go outside and there's this gammy little geezer in a wheelchair sitting there furious, giving me daggers, because he's had to wait so long, so I lean into him and I go "I hope you have as much fun in there as we just did you little cunt".

238 likes View Author
Shalimar album cover

Shalimar

Rahul Dev Burman

4/5

Shit like this on the list is both refreshing and infuriating. Refreshing because it is good, fun, interesting, and also not something I would regularly be exposed to! It's why I started this project and keeps me coming back. It's infuriating because the fact that it is included here means that Robert Dimery, the original author of the 1001 albums list is aware that music like this exists. He's clearly aware that there is an entire world of music out there. SO WHY HAVE I LISTENED TO 200 80s BRITISH NEW WAVE ALBUMS AND 200 SCOTTISH ROCK ALBUMS FROM THE 90S??!!?

163 likes View Author
Rust Never Sleeps album cover

Rust Never Sleeps

Neil Young & Crazy Horse

2/5

Back when I was in college, there was this dude who would come into the bar I worked at on a Friday night and play fucking 10 Neil Young songs in a row. He would also hit on girls by doing magic tricks. I remember how angry I got every time he made me listen to an hour of Neil Young because I was just trying to have a good time, and he fucking made me listen to this sad, soppy fuck who writes nothing but songs that sound indistinguishable from each other and never seemed to enjoy a happy moment in his entire like. Fuck that guy, and fuck Neil Young. 2/5

155 likes View Author
Rust Never Sleeps album cover

Rust Never Sleeps

Neil Young & Crazy Horse

5/5

Back when I was in college I used to go to a bar and listen to Neil tunes and do magic tricks for women. There was a bartender there, he was the best. I loved that guy. Some of the best years of my life.

154 likes View Author
Melodrama album cover

Melodrama

Lorde

5/5

Sorry Boomers/Gen X, I was like 20 when this came out so it's one of the best things to ever happen to me. Sorry it's not King Crimson or whatever.

142 likes View Author
Scum album cover

Scum

Napalm Death

1/5

The only enjoyment I got from this was reading the review about the brothers in Dresden and their lovely and talented tattooed friend.

135 likes View Author
If You Can Believe Your Eyes & Ears album cover

If You Can Believe Your Eyes & Ears

The Mamas & The Papas

3/5

Most 60's groups had three choices: copy the beatles, copy the beach boys, or sexually abuse minors. These guys changed the game and did all three- Four stars!

127 likes View Author
69 Love Songs album cover

69 Love Songs

The Magnetic Fields

2/5

i ain’t listening to all that i’m happy for u tho or sorry that happened

126 likes View Author
Duck Stab/Buster & Glen album cover

Duck Stab/Buster & Glen

The Residents

1/5

The only reason this is here is because it’s from before streaming, when if you bought a shit album you had to convince yourself you liked it.

126 likes View Author
Be album cover

Be

Common

5/5

I am definitely not the target demographic for this album, but I still thought it was very good. There's a lot of skill and artistry put into these tracks, so much so that it is almost invisible. 4 stars for me, plus an extra star just to spite the mathematics PHD guy.

118 likes View Author

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