Album Reviews

Awesome

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Obviously it's good and ahead of its time and immigrant song is amazing, but you can't just give me every zeppelin album. They just aren't THAT incredible or different from one another.

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It’s not bad, but not one I’ll revisit.

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The well-known tracks from this album ("Strange Brew", "Sunshine of Your Love", "Takes of Brave Ulysses", and maybe "SWLABR") are familiar enough that they don't seem as weird and psychedelic as they are when not heard in the context of the rest of the album. Clapton, Baker, and Bruce are all masters of their instruments, and the performances are all strong, but the music just gets weird in places. And please, don't let Ginger Baker sing any more.

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Spacey woozy genre bending pop with cool chamber pop sounds, pretty keyboard parts, some rap verses, some RnB/neo-soul singing, some hip hop beats. Great vocal performance, very accomplished but intimate. It’s cool to see pop with this level of authorial flair to it, full of playful sounds and an overall eclectic lo-fi bedroom feel. It’s just fine, well done but not really engaging. Lots of it sounds like it’s the intro/transitional bit of a song that never really gets going. Hard to imagine how this gets anyone excited - maybe you have to get into the lyrics.

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Well that was a big one. For me, it had its moments.

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unexpectedly liked this

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Best Outkast Album

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Terrible

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Chilled out psych folk. Ironically though the follower stuff is the worst on here, suffering from that annoying medieval sound British psych loves and ultimately very boring. My favorite bits are the drones and meditative tracks that take a lot from Indian music as well as the CSN/Buffalo Springfield sounding bluesy bits with prominent basslines swirly organs and a spacey feel. I assumed this would be much more saccharine sunshine and flower power fluffy hippy stuff, but for the most part it's not really that at all despite being possibly the most 60s sounding thing imaginable. Favorites: Three King Fishers, Season of the Witch, the trip

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I am goth. I love Sisters of Mercy

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Never really listened to a Stones album before. Better than I thought it would be. It had a good mix of upbeat, fast paced songs, and some good chill songs. I leaned more towards the the chill songs today. Wild Horses, I Got The Blues, Sister Morphine, Moonlight Mile were my favorites of this album.

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Correcto

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For a band that is basically byword for the excess, stupidity, and mindless violence of turn of the millennium metal this is actually surprisingly good. The riffs are, of course, hard and heavy and downtuned to mud, but have a good groove to them and the dj/effects give a bit of higher end texture. The screaming vocals have a guttural power and the odd bit of melody to them, once you get used to it it works. The sound is insanely thick and bricked, it fills all the space available instantly - the double blast drums especially leave no breathing room, to space to think - collapsing distance and submitting you fully to the noise - you either succumb and give yourself over to it, or switch it off immediately. Good thing the lyrics are all unintelligible bc they are so stupid it hurts and the raps are awful, but at least they're relatively rare. The most stressful thing possible to just passively have on in the background.

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The Bees combine the lo-fi acoustic singer-songwriter psychedelia of Syd Barrett with a globalized hipster appetite for the sounds and styles of world music for a pleasantly warm and dreamy swishy lounge meets indie bedroom pop vibe that's tastefully arranged and expertly crafted. Very nice, but lacks excitement.

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Dark dystopian electronica with touches of dub, jazzy instrumental hip hop, and chilled out ambient trip hop and, less successfully, corny blues rock. Late night music for empty streets and rainy highways, neo-noir moods for the millennium. Lots of it sounds like prelude, anticipating a main event that never fully arrives.

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I went in crossbows blazing ready to hate on some annoying ren-faire bullshit, but it gradually won me over with the gentle power of the interlinked acoustic guitar parts, sitar drones, and surprisingly intricate percussion. It's basically acoustic prog. The vocals - where the bulk of the dragons and maidens larping folk stuff is dominant - are very annoying, but the instrumental sections are warm and relaxed and lively. You can imagine these songs being really great performed in the right environment like an grand old cathedral or an abandoned abbey. It's not fair to judge them based on the 2025 stench of real ale that it gives off, though. It's cool that there was a scene around revisiting and enliving musical traditions going back centuries and pairing them with blues based guitar playing, and this is a nice document of that that moment that pairs well with folk horror from the era like Wicker Man, Blood on Satan's Claw and Witchfinder General. Favorites: Train Song, Once I had a Sweetheart

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Yehhhh fuckin slaps

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A bit of strummy jangle, a bit of brit pop swagger, a bit of shoegazey swirling noisey atmosphere, a bit of psych modulated drone, a bit of warm shaggy fuzz, a bit of college rock goofiness, a bit of winking throwback garage rock nostalgia, a bit of power pop harmony, a very stupid band name. Hey, they're out there having fun being a pretty decent guitar band, not hurting anyone (except themselves it seems), but not a whole going on. They have great taste in music and in cool vintage guitars to go with their a classic PNW hipster aesthetic - but a good example of how taste doesn't necesarily transmute into inspiration. The mythos outstrips the music. Would anyone care about this band if it wasn't for Dig! and the drama around their friendship/feud with another band with a very stupid name? Favorites: Orange, Every Day Should Be A Holiday, Good Morning, The Creep Out

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A fun album full of choppy keyboard and drum machine RnB pop rap beats in big party mode, braggadocios horny rhymes, and all-star cameos. Mixed in with some reflective personal tracks about embracing life in a new way the wake of loss. Too many annoying and weirdly defensive spoken interludes. Not as good and not as many undeniable hits as So Addictive but still a good time.

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Hard to separate from every cliche boomer montage of hippies, the 60s, San Francisco, and all the rest, but it's iconic for a reason. The fuzzy garage blues psych style, gnarly guitars, a bit of a groovy groove and booming pair of pipes are so good. The twee folksy stuff not so much - slow, tepid and meandering. Favorites: DCBA 25, somebody to love, 3/5 of a mile, embryonic journey, plastic fantastic lover

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Machine-based "sounds of an era" age particularly poorly. There is a business built around music. Innovative sounds are quickly and widely aped by less imaginative and more cynical people. The sounds grow tiresome. (This list, with its questionable curation, demonstrates the phenomenon particularly well for 60s folk, psychedelica, English blues...) But when you turn all of the performances over to machines, your sonic product lacks expressivity; all you have to offer is "a sound." When the aping is only a matter of buying and programming the same machines, the washout comes quicker and is more thorough. Aging recordings that have no human expressivity offer only bits of nostalgia for the few people who were at an impressionable age when they were released. Kids born after 2000 can listen to Revolver and be moved by the beauty of the performances. This, no matter how cool it sounded at the time, plays like the soundtrack to an old movie that no one wants to see.

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Really wonderful interplay between the organic and synthetic. Warm lush strings work with cool synth and keyboard tones to create a vibrant, gently thrumming, peice of neo-classical music with shades of ambient experimentalism and jazzy psychedelia. Weird and whimsical, but expertly composed and crafted.

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Epic

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Love the bare bones boom boom bap beats made of scratching and samples looped on repeat but they get a bit samey after a few tracks. Their song w Anthrax kicks the shit out of Aerosmith & RunDMC, even if they accidentally invented Nu Metal.

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Amei.

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The jangly bright poppy stuff is pretty annoying in that naive 60s sunshine hippy way, but the spacier jams like the fuzzy 'darkness, darkness' and the jazzy outro to 'Francis Drake' (not the over composed fussy intro) are more exciting. The Motown via garage psych 'Sham' goes hard. You can see how this (the noodly 'Trillium' especially) might've nudged their Marin County comparisons the Dead towards the jazzy Americana they'd get start playing by 1972 when they got a pianist. A pretty mixed album and part of the massive over representation on the list of every niche iteration of the psych-folk continuum of late 60s. Favorites: darkness darkness, sham

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Groovy, mellow background music. A little one note through the album.

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*Take me out got overplayed but it is still a pretty good song *I heard lots of Beatles sounds and other nods to UK artists of the past

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The center of the venn diagram made by Beatles/Dylan/CSNY with the twangle dialed up and some psych production flourishes. A bit of a transition between their jangle pop and country rock eras. Pretty sounds, an bright optimistic feel, hyperactive bass parts, cool harmonies, and very melodic - but nothing especially remarkable from the most over-represented band on the list. Not every 60s album with sitar is worthwhile!

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Is het crazy dat ik een instant 5 verwachtte en het toch neeet niet dat vind? Iets te veel filler, verder niets behalve insane tbh

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This has all the hallmarks of mid 10s pop production, trauma-core. An electropop pallette that's all about moody pulsating synth and a patina of nostalgia for a sound its audience originally knew as always already retro. Drawing on electronic dance music for the build/drop crowd moving effect but played too slow to dance to, instead the pacing makes room for big swells and leaves lots of room between the beats. Huge choruses - shouted rather than sung for pop buy-in - that feel a bit forced like they were written to be on at the emotional peak of a mediocre teen drama. An explosion of big fill-in-the-feeling feelings, fill-in-the meaning meanings. Dynamics that flip between bombastic beats and quite piano. Hushed breathy vocals that create a whispered intimacy, then they're doubled and tripled for a polyphonic effect for maximalist choruses. Subwoofer testing low end bass hits to connect the ethereal synths to your body and ground it. A detached disillusioned affect from hyper-mediation and lyrics that mix up deepening isolation and self care. This was one of the big albums that made this sound hegemonic, but it still ends up feeling a bit predictably samey and none of the songs really pops in the way Royals did.

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Really interesting listen. Bit long but continues to build on itself so the back half felt a lot more rewarding. Overall very solid 4

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Jazzy orchestral music with alternating leads from violin, xylophone, and that accordion type instrument. Complex melodies and dynamic composition with changing parts at top speed, discordant harmonies, angular rhythms, and abrasive tones keep it edgy and tense, building to intense moments of release. You'd twist your ankle if you tried to actually Tango to this, surely. An outlier in lots of ways, Zappa and gotham project being the closest comps I've come across so far.

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Chill instrumental trip hop electronica with hip hop, dub, electronica, acid house, indie rock and WOMAD influences combined for a cinematic feel. Nice and relaxed background music - the lynchpin of many a 'music to study to' playlist.

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I aint too proud Tried to imagine myself as an alien that hasnt heard any of the BS associated with Taylor before putting it on. The thought came to me half way through this that I think I would’ve liked this a lot, but theres just been too much pain… of having heard some of these tunes at EVERY college party in 2014 😂 So here we go. I found a few newbies that were fun enough. Style and Clean were enjoyable. How You Get The Girl is the weakest link. I also think theres a universe where Jack writes Shake It Off for a different artist… the tune sounds like Macklemore couldve rapped over this

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Swishy combination of trip hop/instrumental hip hop DJ production techniques and tango rhythms and some jazzy piano. Kind of a novelty, but it works well. Good for working and zoning out or for playing in the atrium of your neo-art deco hotel lounge.

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It's fun to hear people messing around with new tools and technologies in emergent genres, using copy-paste sampling, drum machines, scratching, synths and all the rest to create some upbeat beats and dancefloor filling rave music. It's incredibly dated and specific in a nice way - the sound you'd hear in the party scene of a Gregg Araki movie where everything is day-glo goth and covered in neon graffitti.

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British folk songs re-arranged for the psych rock era. The guitars are cool, a bit of combined drone/lead/rhythm playing going on that sounds oddly like Sahel desert rock. The lilting vocal melodies are all straight out of the king arthur. Some surprisingly deep grooves and heavy riffing at times. It's got a bit of Led Zeppelin and a bit of Velvet Ungerground to it and you can hear the early roots of UK prog in the tight complex combination instrumental playing and the interest in folklore as source material/inspiration.

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One of those germinal 'this is where it all comes from' artists - swinging bluesy piano jazz with a big band and charismatic vocals that sets the template for rock and roll. It's so foundational it ends up sounding very basic and over-familiar going back to it, so hard to enjoy as something other than a kind of museum peice.

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The soundtrack to a village feast in Redwall, this should come with mice and badgers and shrews and voles dancing around in the shadow of a dry stone wall. I always though this was one of the more boring bands of the 00s indie world and dismissed them as an annoying acoustic guitar open mic band with grand pretensions who failed to rock. 15 years later, I have more patience for it than I did then and appreciate the autumnal harmonies, the diverse pallette they're working in terms of sounds, instruments, and genres, and the chill rustic vibe a lot more. It's got it's feet in 70s country-rock, but there's plent of psych prog 60s 'Canterbury' flair to a lot of it, and a lot of references to medieval music and older folk traditions, but without going in too deep or too far afield from the big acoustic indie sound of their own era. The problem there is that it seeds some of the awful 'stomp and clap' Obama era music, urgh. Great voice, pretty arrangements, and sophisticated song-writing. But still, it doesn't rock and it is a bit pretensious.

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80’s Heavy Metal is not my style but this is not as offensive as some, maybe because this just sounds so familiar from my early days of radio rock.

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Oddly enough, I had an odd feeling that today would be a Joni Mitchell album. Wild. When The Hissing of Summer Lawns came up, I did a subsequent journey through her discography, including this. I liked it then, I like it now. It’s definitely the style I think she’s more traditionally known for, and I believe this is her reference point album. One of her albums can be looked at as a book of poetry, both literally and to follow the analogy that each time you revisit, you find something new. There are some really beautiful tunes on here. California is a bop. Her music does make you feel like a world traveler. She’s got a great voice and her writing is exceptional, but sometimes the high, pitchy runs turn me off a bit. Personally, Summer Lawns strikes more of a vibe for me, but again, I like this, I think it’s good, and I’d probably pick it up on vinyl. 3.7ish.

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I only new Michael Franti from Spearhead being on the bill at jamband festivals and had no idea he had a early incarnation as a Boots Riley/the Coup style conscious political rapper. Very much an artifact of early 90s post-coldwar left cultural production, the main concerns are war (in a kind of generic sense), consumption, media/TV, corporate power structures, the war on drugs, militarism. Musically, it's pretty straight over the plate early 90s hip hop production - drum machine beats, jazz and rock samples, some turntable scratching - the tracks are busy but not lushly produced. This is self-identified brocolli hip hop you listen to because it's good for you - impactful in terms of the merging of content/form, but a document of its time, more like watching an old episode of the daily show than listenting to a timeless classic.

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Essentially what this album suffers from is being very, very boring. I first heard Sufjan Stevens when a track from Michigan was included on a CD with a music magazine - I loved it and was hooked immediately. I then pounced on Seven Swans, which remains my favourite of his even if it is all a bit Goddy. I was excited by the prospect Illinois, and intrigued by the idea that he was planning something similar for each US state - the record came out in 2005 and I must've played it about three times. To my ears, it just fell completely flat and I can only assume he felt the same as he didn't bother with the rest of the states. No bad thing, either.

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This album is a great balancing act between the political and personal and Bragg brings his fiery, leftist lyrics and punkish guitar to both arenas. It's passionate and outspoken about the dangers of fascist ideology ("Ideology") and the loss of democracy at home ("Help Save the Youth of America"). And it has three of his best songs in "Greetings to the New Brunette," "There is Power in a Union," and "Levi Stubb's Tears." This is top tier Bragg but I'd put his early 90's album Don't Try This at Home slightly ahead of this one.

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The classic D&B sound: deep bass grooves combined with rapid fire drum machine programming, synth parts for texture and mood, then diva-style vocal singing/samples strung across the top to give it a center. Was this album making or just mainstreaming this template? Despite the kind of spasmy herky jerky feel of the rhythms, it does work incredibly well as a tune everything else out and focus on some bullshit kind of functional music, though it adds a layer of ambient stress to the focus. Not sure it needed to be two hours long though, JFC! It's called Timeless, but it is incredibly of its moment. Interesting that this era of Jungle, Drum & Bass, House and electronica in general had a much more widespread presence in UK pop than in the US, where it seemed relegated to clubs rather than radio...or maybe it just passed my suburban existence by...

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Not what I was expecting at all. Surf's Up means Surf's time is up. Much looser, darker, and weirder than the classic Beach Boys stuff, this album still has the signature emphasis on thick harmonies and lush production, but it doesn't come at you with the big hooks and 2 minute concentrated blasts of pure pop. Instead, it has a washed out acid hangover feel to it, woozily easing you into a slightly formless psychedelic daze punctuated by fuzzy guitar leads, some bleeps and bloops that sound like kraut-rock before it had been invented, and all sorts of different random instruments sounds. Favorites: Disney Girls, Feel Flows

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Relaxed and warm jazz ambience from the piano, with a touch of 70s funk from the keys and electric organs. Woodwinds add a classic 40s element both tonally and to the harmonies - but god I hate flute noodling. The jazz crooning vocals get pretty grating at times. Higher tempo songs with a strong bass parts popping along and melodically connecting the changes are much stronger than the slow ones that just dwell in washy unresolved chords. They're playing with the contrast between the form/content: loungey vibes and funky fusion are the delivery mechanism for GSH's angry portraits of the persistent injuries to Black life post Civil Rights era and poetic condemnations of the failures of the imperial American state. The point of the contrast being that the backing music is drawing from and adding to the deep well of Black creative tradition that expresses that and transforms it to something sustains and inspires nonetheless. A poetry album that paves the way for the wordy native tongues school of 90s hip hop and backpack rap to follow (lets not talk about the thousands of cringe slam sessions too). Favorites: The Bottle, Peace Go With You, Rivers, H20 gate blues

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Magpie songwriting with bits of reggae, Andean pipes, jazzy folk, Django jazz, overdriven electric guitar, bluesy finger picking, to go along with the main strummy acoustic sound. The recording and mixing is crisp and balanced - every part sits just right and there's a ton of breathing room making this very relaxing and unobtrusive background music verging on boring. That said, there's a lot of subtle songwritery stuff going on in the chord changes, voice leading and all that if you tune in and pay close attention. Favorites: run that body down, peace like a river

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Hard album to make sense of out of context - made for a party and a parody of the party, it's an artifact of a multi-national european dance scene and chaotic 80s postmodernist dada, it's hard to imagine this was ever intended to be listened to off youtube sitting on a sofa. Though it works unexpectedly well for a sunny Scottish winter weekend afternoon. The first half is hedonistic trance: big beats house music full with a hip hop flair from the samples and the odd rap verse. The second half is the hang over: ambiently melancholy and reflexive with slower tracks, strings and churchy lap steel sounding synths, and a reggae dub feel. Favorites: The White Room, Build a Fire, 3am eternal

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Funky new wave from the wierdly prolific Sheffield post-punk scene. Lots of that Nile Rodgers-style strat rhythm guitar high in the mix alongside the synths and cheesy keyboard sounds. Sometimes crosses into Talking Heads territory, sometimes into Donna Summer remix land. The very heavy disco influence and a sing-songy vocal style make this feel really plastic and goofy - but the Clockwork Orange reference in their name and the gang of Patrick Batemans on the album cover hint at a level of playful post-industrial cocaine satire going on here alongside the earnest embrace of some of the most excessively silly in retrospect 80s excess that's part of a liberation from the tiresome self-seriousness of authenticity-punk/rock.

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Pretty and melodic, overall this is a hushed and chill album that either fades into quietly into the background or demands close attention to the masterful song-writing, subtle phrasing, and understated instrumental prowess. Paul Simon loves a bit of the old cultural appropriation: the soaring Andean melodies and harmonies with pipes and charangos on El Condor Pasa are great and woven nicely into the structure of the pop song. Unobjectionable, and I get there's a lot of craft to it, but its never been my thing. Music for coffee shops and used book stores.

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On the folkier pastoral end of the 60s psych spectrum - acoustic guitar songs with strings, horns, harpsichord, etc embellishment. Lots of Major 7 chords and not much a pop sensibility in terms of catchy hooks gives it a floating unresolved kind of listless quality. Some songs have fairly complex compositions with intricate, verging into prog, elements. The few guitar solos are interesting takes on the genre - classic psych fuzz tone, but they never really take off - sticking to kind of stochastic blasts in a pentatonic box, adding rhythm and texture rather than a climax. Overall it has a relaxed cabin in the woods kind of a feel that's undercut by tension/anxiety from the strings - making it an ominous vaguely dystopian album. The main vocal sounds a bit falsetto and artificial - not sure why so many of these late 60s psych/folk bands went for that la la la kids song type singing, it sucks.

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this is tricky- couple bangin tracks, wouldn't seek it out on my own.

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Just a couple steps removed from the "My name is LL Cool J and I'm here to say" era, the production on this album is lean and clean - minimalistic beats driven by boom boom tish drums, funky looped basslines, and sparse synth/sample accentuation that put the vocals front and center. There are just 1-2 beats/parts per song so the sound is fairly repetitive. There are long verses and short infrequent choruses. It's an old-school sound, though rap is pushing into new areas, speeding up a bit with a twisting clever and boastful style that would dominate the early 90s.The delivery on this album is precise and focused - putting an emphasis on the playful wordy verses' stories of love and lust, rivalries and friendships, parties and fights, crafting LL Cool J's smooth bravado persona. 

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***An ok, easy listening album

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It’s funny reading all these confused, negative reviews of an album I’ve kind of taken for granted throughout the years. So foundational to noise rock and anyone else in rock music who plays with deconstructing the form. So weird, intelligent, druggy, and uncompromising. Probably the least accessible of VU’s essential material, but obviously still essential.

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Maybe should be 5 star but I’m very hesitant to give my first 5 star rating

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Pretty irish

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There's basically no way to sustain that three song opening sequence, possibly the pinnacle of rock as pop - the rest isn't bad, it's just there. But the production is the star. The guitar sound on this album is spectactular: chiming, echoey, textural and melodic at once and the interplay with the simple but thundering post-punk bass parts creates such a huge space.

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My guitar teacher was obssesed with this when I was in high school so I listened to it a lot, it's been very strange to see it get elevated so high in the general music consciousness since that Kanye sample, but even more so in the last 5 years as a bit of mandatory vinyl. Lots of high highs: driving bass parts and jammy guitar stuff, big riffs, the cover, sax and melotron sounds, some of the exploratory spacious stuff. The drama of it all. But also, some lows: the flute, some of the more noodly bits that get kind of boring, the folkloric element.

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4/10

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I had definitely heard of Fiona Apple but had never sat down and listened to her before. Her voice is great and this album makes for decent easy listening.

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Trippy and immersive, chilled out but intense, spacey and atmospheric but very present and lively. Warm and organic in timbre even as it slides into a robotic machinic trances of hypnotic rhythm. Choatic performances, songs that clatter and fall apart and reemerge in a new form.

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Pillowy soft rock. Fittingly for the epitome coke fueled 70s mega rock, the highs are HIGH but the lows are a drag. Some all time pop bangers, huge emotions painted in bright and broad, ultra clean production, a floaty laid back mood containing a lingering darkness. Now that we're all over the basicness & uncoolness of liking this it has become a bit overrated, but still, it's a warm bath. Feels good, man.

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Similar recipe as Echo and the Bunnymen: moody gothic 80s synthy post punk with a heavy dose of dreamy 60s psych swirling around - big atmospheres, dramatic vocals, layers and layers of guitars and organs, melodic bass. But this more eclectic. Cope adds in a bit of the baggy madchester dance sound (easy rider, leperskin) and a couple of slower more stripped back acoustic tracks that start at Billy Bragg and ultimately build back up to a big orchestral psych noise. Some harder charging garage punk stuff ala Modern Lovers (hanging out). Some of it sounds like a British version of the shaggy slacker sound of 90s US alt rock. I like everything on here, but there is still too much of it - still, what a discovery!

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Power pop gems with an almost punk dressing: effortless hooks, jangly guitars, a bit of dissonance and snarl, drawling vocals, bouncy bass, shaggy loose performances, Lo-Fi DIY production values, and a the energy of chilled out chaos. Another Planet is by miles the stand out track - a pure banger - but the rest is consistently great keep it simple stupid rock and loads of fun.

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Aggressive emo ala Rites of Spring with throat stripping vocals, high energy high frequency live wire guitars thrashing around, and a very tight rhythm section that’s feeling the funk a bit. SoCal Fugazi. Big on quiet/loud dynamics, post-hardcore riffs, and descending into feedback only for a gnarly bass line to emerge from the chaos and bring it back. Some longer songs go into a textural grimey Sonic Youth direction, layering on the guitars over the bass groove until they whip it up into a closing frenzy, laying the groundwork for post-rock/screamo crossovers. Goes very hard, damn.

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On the whole, this is much more interesting than I thought it was going to be. It’s still not exactly my thing, but still greatly exceeds expectations, I think because of the band. He has a marvelous voice; the opening to “Corpus Christi Carol” is haunting. I know his covers of “Lilac Wine” and “Hallelujah” are good, but I'd rather have Nina Simone and Leonard Cohen singing them; there’s a restraint and an intensity to those two versions that somehow is missing here for me. I just put Nina Simone’s version on now, and there’s no comparison.

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As I have cheated and searched for a few albums, I can tell you that this is the list peaking for me right here, unless there is something truly surprising coming up. Kid A is one of three albums I would consider the ‘best’ of all time, but in terms of subjective and emotional importance to me, nothing can ever come close. Kid A is perfect, Kid A is the basis of my taste in almost everything, Kid A is about as formative as formative gets for me. I can confidently say there is no album I have heard more in my life. Let me now write way too much about it while I listen to it for the nth time. First, the music. Kid A is a journey away from the confines of 'rock', in a way that I would contend feels pretty timeless. Much was - and probably still is - written about the tortured production of the record, of Thom Yorke's burnout, of the band struggling to figure out where to go after OK Computer. To emerge with something that almost entirely ignores verse-chorus structure, that left the best song these sessions produced ('Pyramid Song') on the cutting room floor, that is so confident it drops a straight-up ambient track in the middle, well it’s a work of genius. 'Everything in Its Right Place' is a warm bath, that hook starting up, the close production, the skittering cut-up vocals, it's the greatest album opener because - by design - it reveals nothing about what’s going to follow, it eases you in to this strange, angular, paranoid world. But track 2, ‘Kid A’ itself, that has always been my favourite. A strange lullaby melody, a bit-crushed vocal, a jittery tribal drum, the synths washing in at the end - this music is just so exciting to me. The whole album just reflects the endless possibility of sound, the re-configuring of the familiar into something alien. This isn't some Metal Music attempt to become willfully obtuse, this is a band wanting to make music that moves and emotes but on their own terms. ‘The National Anthem’ is such an invigorating blast of HORN DEATH that I never tire of, ‘How to Disappear’ is a Normal Song but with ondes martenot and tortured strings crying throughout. ‘Treefingers’ is the only misstep, the only sign of the band reaching too far to make their point in my opinion, but it’s swiftly battered aside by the ‘single’ (sort of) ‘Optimistic’, which again has incredible percussion and sounds like being in a swamp made of lo-res polygons. ‘In Limbo’ skitters across the surface, before the monumental ‘Idioteque’ pummels its paranoid refrains into your skull. If any song has sort of lost its impact for me from this record it’s this track, but only because I just listened to it on loop for months and months and months. I’m wondering writing this how many times my Dad has heard this album of his own free will, and how many times he instead heard it being blasted out of my bedroom! ‘Morning Bell’ is another lullaby of doom and misery, and then ‘Motion Picture Soundtrack’ manages to be both incredibly moving and also aware of its own schlocky production at once, like sincerity being swallowed by irony even as each syllable leaves Thom’s mouth. Anyway, needless to say, I love it, it’s the greatest record ever made, and the list is all downhill from here. Now… if you want even more words, here’s another review, this time from a very subjective place, because that's what makes this my favourite album of all time. I had just turned 16 when Kid A released. By that point I was roughly 18 months into my absolute, all-encompassing Radiohead obsession, devouring anything I could, spending far too much on imports of EPs at Tower Records, annoyingly probably only six months before I was just getting all that stuff and more off Napster. I was primed for Kid A in a way I have never been primed for anything. In the lead-up to the album Q published a massive interview with the band, where they talked about the influences behind what they were about to release. They mentioned Autechre and Aphex Twin, Naomi Klein's No Logo, Charles Mingus. They covered Can on the accompanying tour, they hired Humphrey Littleton's jazz band for Kid A's sister Amnesiac (recorded at the same time). They talked about Messiaen, Neu!, Squarepusher, and on and on. All these new influences hit at just the right time - Napster existed (I first heard Kid A the weekend before its release after it leaked online, slowly downloading each track and listening to each one repeatedly before the next one finished) so I could follow up on all these musical leads. And that's why Kid A is of infinite importance to me. I adored music before Kid A, and thanks to Blur's endless namedropping of Pavement in previous years had already started to escape the bubble of late britpop a bit, but Kid A felt like a guidebook for exploring to the very edges of the map, and a manual for how to appreciate music that some would call 'difficult'. I have Kid A to thank for most of the music I now consider my favourite, and weirdly I think this is even more the case as time goes on - it takes a lot for an indie band to make much of an impression at all on me these days. Nearly done, but first back to the release. A friend and I had convinced his older brother to drive us to Warrington to see Radiohead touring Kid A, the day after the album had released. The little of my paper round money I hadn't already spent on Radiohead hoodies, CDs, t-shirts etc. went on the ticket price, and away we went. Inspired by the aforementioned No Logo, Radiohead toured the album in purpose-built white circus tents, free of any corporate sponsors, hence the odd location - they needed big parks to do this in. This gig exists in my brain like some sort of mythical experience that I have read about myself in a book, but also I can recall the evening like it was yesterday. I remember the sound as we approached, my incredulity at my friend’s brother’s friend arriving with no ticket and just buying one from a tout, the endless mud and people along the track to the tent, the buzz of excitement. I remember the merch stand (I still wear the top I bought here!), I remember the girl who I instantly fell in love with (I was 16 after all) who spoke to me briefly about the band, I remember being amazed by how much stuff they had on stage, I remember the excitement I had whenever they played a track that would later appear on ‘Amnesiac’, like we were privately visiting the future. It finished, we went home, I hung the overpriced poster on my wall for years and years until it literally fell apart, I wore my figure-hugging very goth black long-sleeved Kid A shirt to my GCSE results with black nail varnish and a fringe I could hide behind, and said fuck you to my miserable youth. I lived and breathed this record, it got under my skin and it became a part of me. Kid A is brilliant because it is exciting, it’s difficult but still tuneful, every track is an ocean of possibility, and because without it I absolutely would not be who I am. I genuinely still shiver with excitement throughout, 26 years and thousands of plays later. It doesn’t get better than this.

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The Good: NOTHING The Bad: Me having to listen to this shit The Ugly: That it seems MIA is good enough to get 2 fucking albums on this list… FUCK YOU DIMERY!!!! this is shit, pretty much all sounds the same… … Hated her other album just as much. Waste of my time 1*

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Almost as repugnant as his mentor Trent Reznor.

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Poor Bono. The absence of a big famine nowadays is making him irrelevant.

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Like your experience of listening to Doggystyle last week, I was embarrassed to have The Marshall Mathers LP on when Aislinn walked into the room. The ubiquity of its singles in 2000 should have dulled that embarrassment. It's not as though she hasn't heard these words before. I'd only known the censored radio edits as a teenager, but the missing blanks never concealed much; the internal rhymes usually made the omitted slurs obvious enough. She also knows about this project, so if she catches me listening to something objectionable she'll ask whether it's our album of the day. There is, in other words, an acceptable reason to find me deluged by a torrent of "sluts" and "faggots". Even so, I wanted the headphones back on. Like pornography, certain forms of art change when another person enters the room. The embarrassment is no longer private. The problem is that, unlike pornography, there was no escaping Eminem in 2000. His work was everywhere: buses, shopping centres, bedrooms, MTV. That ubiquity raises a question that has never really gone away. Challenging art often depends upon context. A line such as "You cheap, lousy faggot" in Fairytale of New York has an artistic function inside the song that disappears once it becomes something drunken strangers bellow every December. The song really is more of the order of a Eugene O'Neill play than a pop hit - the industry forces a category error. Elvis Costello recognised a similar problem with Oliver's Army, suggesting radio stations simply stop playing it rather than rewrite a lyric whose meaning depended on dramatic and historic context. Interestingly, the source of the problem is the appearance of the one offensive word that Eminem studiously avoids using. Art earns a certain licence because it asks us to enter a protected imaginative space. Pop music, however, is designed to escape that space. It leaks into supermarkets, taxis and children's bedrooms whether we invite it or not. The question, then, is whether The Marshall Mathers LP deserves that artistic licence. Its defenders generally argue two things. First, that the album is a satirical defence of free speech, saying outrageous things precisely to test tue boundaries and expose society's hypocrisies. Second, that the record stages a dialogue between Marshall Mathers, Eminem and Slim Shady, in the wake of his initial success, allowing one persona to critique another. If either argument holds, then the ugliness of the language becomes part of a larger artistic design rather than an end in itself. Neither argument holds. Genuinely transgressive artists usually risk something. Momus, for instance, was sued over songs by Wendy Carlos and the Michelin corporation. The physical albums containing the songs were destroyed and he lost substantial sums in the process. His targets were specific, identifiable and powerful enough to answer back. Eminem's provocations rarely work like that. The album attacks journalists, celebrities and campaigners often enough, but its deepest reserves of venom are directed towards women and gay men: groups broad enough to symbolise anything he wishes and too diffuse to answer collectively. If satire punches anywhere, it usually punches down. Chris Morris understood this better. His parody of Eminem, JLB8, is funnier than anything on The Marshall Mathers LP precisely because the self-appointed provocateur had himself become a worthy target. Satire gains force when directed at power, hypocrisy or certainty. It loses force when outrage becomes the point. The only person to sue Eminem was his own mother, a reminder that the work is soap opera rather than critique. The album's central contradiction arrives with Stan. It remains its masterpiece because it imagines, however briefly, the consequences of treating violent fantasy as emotional truth. Eminem responds to an obsessive fan not with mockery but with patience, urging him to seek help, cherish his pregnant girlfriend and recognise the difference between entertainment and life. His reply arrives too late. Stan has already driven off the bridge. If the whole record possessed the moral seriousness of that final verse, The Marshall Mathers LP might be a far richer work. Instead, the following song immediately retreats into incredulity. Who Knew acts as though the very suggestion that songs might influence people were absurd. No reasonable listener believes artists are directly responsible for crimes committed by their fans. That isn't the issue. The issue is that Stan itself demonstrates Eminem understands communication carries consequences. He writes an entire song about precisely that. Having recognised the problem, he immediately pretends not to. No serious person could write the concluding verse of Stan sincerely and then release the album as it is. That pattern runs throughout the record. Whenever responsibility approaches, somebody else is blamed. The record company wants him to be outrageous. Hip hop, his chosen genre, rewards violence. His childhood damaged him. Slim Shady said it. Eminem said it. Marshall Mathers merely watched. The album's defining characteristic isn't rage but evasion. It continually insists that nothing is really under its author's control. Sartre called this bad faith: the comforting fiction that we are merely the products of circumstance rather than agents capable of choosing differently. The Marshall Mathers LP is saturated with it. Eminem presents himself as both the most powerful voice in popular music and the least responsible person in the room. But he had a choice. That's what ultimately distinguishes him from performers like Jerry Sadowitz. Sadowitz understand that transgression works because it is contained. Audiences knowingly entered a room where normal rules are suspended before returning to ordinary life. Eminem wanted no such containment. His record company wanted these songs on heavy rotation. He wanted them there too. The point wasn't simply to offend but to offend millions and profit from the offense. It was not enough that he denied his own capacity to choose, he denied the public choice as well. No one could avoid his vomit and vitriol. We were all subject to the desires of a juvenile demographic and the companies that would exploit their worst impulses. That commercial ambition is crucial because the album repeatedly mistakes mass exposure for artistic courage. There is nothing inherently brave about saying offensive things when every mechanism of popular culture is amplifying them. He attacks journalists and celebrities and other rappers, never anyone with the power to shut him down, never anyone who is actually affected by his bile. Indeed, the existence of both explicit and clean editions demonstrates how comfortably outrage could coexist with market expansion. Where Momus had records destroyed, Eminem diversifies his portfolio - a version with inexorable Kim and one without. Where Momus loses out, Eminem and his company maximise profits. None of this would matter so much if the music justified it. Dr. Dre's production is fine, giving Eminem ample room for to display his technical ability. His internal rhymes still tumble over themselves with a certain precision, and his command of rhythm is impressive. Yet technical brilliance continually serves dramatically thin material. The album mistakes escalation for development. Louder, nastier and more offensive becomes a substitute for saying anything new. Even Stan, for all its power, reveals Eminem's limitations as a dramatist. He awkwardly overexplains, drawing attention to the contrivance of the dramatic device when Stan questions how he will send the tape to Slim. Eminem's final sign-off, recognising that "it was... it was... you," is pure melodrama, reminding us again that the whole Eminem performance is soap opera. The worst offence, however, is in the strawman of Stan himself, at every opportunity, Eminem paints his number one fan as a fucking idiot - no idea how he'll send a tape from a submerged car; carefully printing the address in block capitals because writing by hand is hard. The barely contained contempt for his audience makes a mockery of the whole enterprise. Actually, no, the greatest offence of Stan is the utter dreariness. One might try to pin this on Dido, whose Thank You provides the musical basis of the track, but her song has an actual chorus, there is harmonic movement and uplift, it goes somewhere. Stan is all mire with no release. By the end of the record, what lingers isn't outrage but exhaustion. Every attack is somebody else's fault. Every excess belongs to another persona. Every criticism proves his enemies don't understand satire. Everybody else is shit. The album demands complete artistic freedom while declining the corresponding burden of artistic responsibility. The Marshall Mathers LP is not a great work of transgressive art. It is a piece of commercial entertainment that appropriates the language of transgression while remaining remarkably safe within the structures that profit from it. Momus lost records. Costello withdrew his from radio. Genuine loss and genuine agency. Eminem sold millions of copies in two editions and became the biggest star on the planet. The album's legacy isn't simply that it made offensive language mainstream. It helped normalise the idea that outrage is, in itself, a form of courage, and that refusing responsibility is a defence of free speech. Twenty-five years later, that seems far more significant than any individual slur and the impact is felt. The worst people online are called Stans and the right to be offensive is everywhere online and elsewhere. The cock-headed belief that lashing out is a defense of 'free speech' is the norm. I wouldn't say that this was Eminem's fault - he'd have a tantrum if I did - but he and his fellow angry boys contaminated the discourse for shits and giggles - and money, lots of money. They polluted the air and the media with self-indulgent shit-taking and now everything is clogged up with shit. "I never knew... I never knew..." he yaps. Well, now you know. NB: I was walking the dog last night and there was a bunch of teens on the promenade, hurling stones, harassing old people, just destroying everything around them. One of them was wearing a Slim Shady t-shirt. So I'm knocking off another half star. -0.5 This album qualified as a cultural event no doubt - I remember the buzz about it among many of our peers in school. I expect there were young men who listened to almost nothing else that year. If that’s a sad thought it’s also perfectly understandable - here’s an album not only remote from the burden of substantive musical material (as most rap albums are) but which is also remote from the lyrical world of gangster rap. Eminem is excluded from offering any spin on the story of the black experience in America or the gang experience so all that’s left to him is the nihilism, the vulgarity and the self-aggrandisement. The Marshall Mathers LP proved ideal for young men with no real interest in music (two bars, round and round and round) and equally with no real interest in rap. Eminem’s facility for cartoonish provocation was gold in an era in which South Park was the coolest show on TV. South Park was very funny - exactly because it understood where public discourse (and popular art) had drawn the lines and when to cross them. Eminem had no such awareness, no such wit - just a limitless energy for the proliferation of images with which he could degrade himself and his audience. It was hard for young men to tell the difference in 2000, it is frightening to contemplate their struggle in 2026. That Will Smith line is funny though. 0.5/5

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It's an art pop wunderkammer, full of intricate, exquisite and beautiful crafted objects. I can admire it, but I wish the tunes were a bit catchier, you know? Great cover art, though. Interestingly, once this album finished playing, spotify kept playing similar female art pop artists, and many of those songs caught my attention much more than FKA Twigs. Bjork, Sophie, Weyes Blood, Sky Ferreira, Fever Ray, St Vincent, Santigold, Flume all came up in the list following. This album was OK, but there is clearly a LOT of interesting, dynamic work happening in this field in the past decade or two. Not sure why this album....

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I was so looking forward to the day the generator would throw this one at me and it's finally here I've been genuinely smiling throughout, this is so funny, tongue in cheek, clever and comes from a deep love of music - Booker Tease is just an example of how brilliant this is SEMOLINA! SEMOLINA!

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In January 1993, the Nigerian government arrested and charged Fela Kuti with murder and conspiracy following the beating death of Adesanwo Shokoya, an electrician and technician in his band, Egypt 80. The police alleged Shokoya was beaten to death by Fela's bodyguards after an argument regarding a payment of approximately $138.

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Joan Baez has a beautiful and exquisite voice and a preternatural ability to communicate the drama and narrative of folk songs. Personally, I generally prefer a grittier tone (Karen Dalton is possibly an extreme example of a folk singer with a more distinctive voice) than Joan Baez's crystal-clear soprano, but it is really hard to argue with the quality of her singing. I mean, this was recorded very quickly with, like, two microphones in live takes, with just one or two guitars providing subtle accompaniment, and she nails it. She absolutely delivers beautiful, sensitive and compelling performances all the way through, with nothing to hide behind. Hard to believe she was only 19. Would it have been more appropriate to include one of her subsequent albums that showed off her songwriting? Maybe. But this is an exquisite example of her to arrange and perform traditional folk material. I think this is possibly my favourite version of the House of the Rising Sun -- it makes more sense with a female narrator, and Joan Baez's performance just feels devastatingly real. Highlights: Silver Dagger, House of the Rising Sun, El Preso Numero Nueve. 3.5 stars, rounding up.

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I am reviewing ‘Ray of Light’ days after the release of ‘Confessions II’. Reviews are everywhere, people are talking about it as her best album in 20 years. But her albums always get reviewed -- they are always an event -- which is extraordinary for someone more than 40 years into a pop music career. Not even Paul McCartney really managed that. Pop music is a genre fickly obsessed with youth and novelty, so the idea of anyone remaining an important and relevant pop artist after 40 years is one of the most monumental achievements in popular culture. I mean, here is an artist who has had 38 US Top 10 singles and 50 US Hot Dance chart #1s. Fifty! So, amongst her long and illustrious career, there are a few albums that stand out above the others. ‘Ray of Light’ is one of those career peaks. It showed that, at the age of 39, she could produce a relevant, exciting and contemporary dance pop album. It also has some of her strongest songwriting, in the title track and Frozen especially. Ray of Light is, to my mind, a song that captures the ecstasy of the dance floor better than almost anything else ever written. She continues her history of working well with cleverly chosen collaborators; kudos to William Orbit for constructing a fascinating, warm, spacious and not over-polished backing track that complements but never overpowers Madonna’s singing. Unlike much electronic music of the period, it has aged well. Orbit was everywhere in the 90s, remixing and producing. He had a distinctive and tasteful sound, but I don’t think he ever really topped his work here (with the possible exception of the Bass-o-matic ‘Fascinating Rhythm’ single, but never for a sustained album). I have always found Madonna to be a _believable_ singer, which makes her a surprisingly good ballad singer given her technical limitations. That said, her work on Evita had left her voice stronger and more controlled than ever at this point. I would argue that Frozen is one of her greatest performances. Even the faux-spiritual content here is tolerable because of that credibility. The lyrics occasionally verge on yoga-mama religious dilettantism, but Madonna sings every word like it is important and she believes it with all her heart. This is ironic, because I never believe a word she speaks in interviews (or, worse yet, her megalomaniacal turn in the Truth or Dare documentary, where she comes across like a constantly calculating mean-girl control freak). She often comes across as performative and provocative and boorish but not credible when speaking. But when she sings, she seems like the real deal. It’s a paradox. Minor nitpicking; the mastering on the streaming version I listened to today was weirdly inconsistent. Also, this suffers from the late 90s trend of albums that fill CD capacity. There is some filler here; Shanti, The Power of Goodbye, or Little Star. Personally, I'd like to see this trimmed to a more focused 45 minutes. But these are minor quibbles and this album is a monumental highlight in Madonna's extensive and extraordinary career output. She is at her best when she leans into a slightly more experimental dance sound, as she does here. Madonna is one of the greatest pop artists of all time, never better than on this record, and you can dance to it.

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I played in a local (and staggeringly unsuccessful) industrial band during the 90s. Don't bother trying to look it up, it has been consigned to the memory hole. We played on the edge of a number of local scenes, but never really fit anywhere. The metal guys didn't like that we didn't have a real drummer. The goths thought we dressed in too many bright colours. The indie/alt scenesters thought it was just a horrible noise. In many ways the electronic/dance people were the most welcoming, although they did look askance at the long hair, guitars and Marshalls. But we played quite a few shows at warehouse dance parties and electronic nights and they were amongst the best shows we played. I hung out with a few people from the Clan Analogue collective (look them up, they are still active https://www.clananalogue.org/), and so was familiar with what was influential in the scene in the early 90s. Orbital were certainly big amongst that crowd, but frankly, it wasn't _that_ different from many of those Clan Analogue acts. This type of electronic dance music sounds awesomely great played through a big PA accompanied by flashing lights in a dark warehouse at 2am in a crowd of dancers while chemically enhanced. But out of that context, I find it all a bit dull. I just don't travel in those circles anymore. Orbital is rightfully one of the great 90s dance acts -- their stuff is clearly head and shoulders above the average, and the appearance of Alison Goldfrapp is always welcome -- but it doesn't feel relevant to me these days. I quite like 'Sad But True', 'Crash and Carry' and 'Are We Here?' and (PS - What is with that terrible cover art?)

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I would have been about 13 or 14 when a slightly older school mate mockingly suggested that Autobahn was the sort of thing that I would like. I remember him sarcastically singing "fun fun fun on the autobahn" (as he pronounced it) like it was the most ridiculous song ever. I didn't actually know anything about Kraftwerk at that stage but mentally filed it away for future reference on the assumption that, if an obnoxious prick like him hated it, there must something worth investigating. A year or so later I picked up a copy from the Ashfield Record Bar in Hercules St -- I assume it was cheap, I didn't have much money -- and it became a core part of my nascent record collection. Not owning many LPs, I listened to this a lot. The sound of this album has become such a part of the mainstream that it is hard to remember how fresh it once sounded. Minimal, repetitive synth pop is everywhere now, but it started here. While the 7" edit of the title track was a mere novelty for many, the album stretched to explore the possibilities of the synthesizer and suggested a whole new approach. I would argue that Autobahn is not as influential (or possibly even as good) as their following four albums, which set became unlikely influences on pop, electro and hip hop. It sounds a bit dated these days. But I have a nostalgic love of Autobahn because it was a special record for me in my teens. I think my school mate had this pegged as nerd music, played by nerds and only fit for nerds like me. And it is true that Kraftwerk (and I) were nerds. But it was rare in the early 80s for a nerdy kid like me to have musical heroes that I could relate to. Eventually the nerds would conquer the world, and Kraftwerk would be hailed as the innovators they were, despite the fact that they have essentially rested on their laurels for the past 40-odd years. Personally, I quite liked Electric Cafe, the last all-new album they released. I bought it on release, and I really dig the crisp, super-minimal, lock-step funkiness, especially on the first side. Most people consider it a flop, and it seems to have shattered Kraftwerk's creative operating model. Since then, it has been remixes, the odd "event" single, and increasingly elaborate live shows showcasing their classic catalogue. People say the shows are amazing, but I haven't felt the need to see them live -- the records are perfect.

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This is delightfully weird. There are things that genuinely surprised me when listening, like the lyrics "We talk about love, we talk about dishwasher tablets, illness, and we dream about heaven." It's surreal and quotidian and full of interesting juxtapositions. I really couldn't predict what would happen next, while remaining placed in a comprehensible framework. I think we can all agree that this album has absolutely no business being on the list, but I dig it. It reminds me a lot of Laurie Anderson; minimal electronics with pitch-shifted vocals and a slightly askew world view, which makes me wonder why her Big Science album isn't on this list? I mean, 'O Superman' is the bomb, right? 3.5 stars, rounding up because I enjoyed listening to it.

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The scumbag guitarist actually deserves to be killed. Boyan Chowdhury is putrid human garbage.

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(2/5) A languid, sluggish psychedelic/folk/hippie rock album. The hits, "Sunshine Superman" and "Season of the Witch" I was familiar with already and are truly the highlights, but aside from the slightly upbeat "The Trip", there's not much else on offer here. Really, really boring. Enjoy the hits and drop the rest..

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I am a record fiend from way back and I spend a lot of time trawling for bargains in dusty record stores. I have a special place in my heart for classic records that you commonly see for $1. Willie Nelson's Stardust is one of those records. It sold a bazillion copies back in the day but has fallen a bit out of favour, so it is common to find vinyl copies languishing in the bargain bins. It is an under-appreciated gem. Willie Nelson might dress like a country outlaw, but secretly he is a jazzbo -- he always liked a clever chord, a surprisingly complex solo, and 'jazz' cigarettes. Especially the 'jazz' cigarettes. Willie obviously loves American popular song, and so do I. These are some of the greatest songs of all time. Willie knows and loves these songs and he deeply understands them. I love the modest and tasteful arrangements from Booker T. Jones, thankfully avoiding over-egging the pudding with strings or backing choirs. Willie's regular band plays with sympathetic and understated restraint. I like the road-weariness in Willie's voice -- it makes everything seem heartful and honest. It is a welcome opportunity to hear these classic songs with fresh ears. Many artists have copied this concept with a late-career tribute to the American songbook, but few attempts approach the sincere beauty and warmth of this album. This is an evergreen album I can happily listen to any day.

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Oh look, it's another serving of mid-90s world music gumbo forced through the Dinner-Music-O-Matic Synthulator. Mmm, that's tasteful!

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Shit stained cringe rapist

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Oxygene Part II features prominently in the climactic scene of Gallipoli, which is a 1981 film little known in the rest of the world, but an important and ubiquitous part of Australian culture in the 1980s. Do people still watch it? It felt like a cornerstone of our national identity at the time -- fuckin' Pommy bastards drank tea on the beach while the ANZACs died! Died for nothin', mate, for nothin'! I'm sure either Gallipoli or maybe hearing Part IV on the radio was my initial exposure to Jean-Michel Jarre as a child, and it would be fair to say that I became a fan. I own most of his 70s and 80s albums, usually purchased mail order from the World Record Club catalogue and then obsessively played. But my interest started waning in my mid-teens as I discovered more rock. I don't think I have spun this album -- or any Jarre record -- in over 35 years. They just collect dust in the backwaters of my collection. History seems to have relegated him to the "naff" bin. Tangerine Dream and Eno and Neu! are all cool, but Jean-Michel Jarre is not. I suspect that is because he was popular. He sold a lot of records and he played some very big concerts. He wasn't afraid of comprehensible harmonies (there is a strong classical influence in his work) and catchy melodies or exploiting the novel sounds of the synthesizer. Listening today, I kind of wish he hadn't leaned so heavily on the tweedily-deedily-deedily noises or the whooshing sounds or fake waves or birds or the LFO sweeps. But I found the listening experience holds up. Oxygene sounds of its time but still sounds great. It is a now quaint idea of what the future would sound like -- although, in fairness, people are still producing electronic music with cheesy drum machines, big washy synth pads and LFO sweeps. And it has some cracking tunes and it aims to please. It gave me a nostalgic buzz. Maybe it was too popular to be cool, much the way that Mike Oldfield isn't cool. It's an instrumental, ambient synthesizer album that lots of people liked -- improbable, but it happened. More power to him. 4.5 stars, rounding up.

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So... ...the debut album of a band that had been thrown together literally weeks beforehand, recorded in three days on a shoestring, the product of a college course for unemployed aspiring musicians. Sound promising eh? So how can something produced in those circumstances be so utterly, heartbreakingly beautiful? Warning: I'm a fan boy. This hasn't always been my favourite album. I probably heard it first in the early years of the 2000s. I don't think it was even my favourite Belle and Sebastian album (initially that would probably have been The Life Pursuit – I never was a lover of If You're Feeling Sinister, which, I appreciate, some would see as heresy.) But Tigermilk kept coming back, kept nagging away at me. It's the album I never have not downloaded. The only one that's always there. It's the one I turn to when I'm tired or stressed or feeling full of joy or just have a need for music. It is, I'm afraid, the best album on this list or any other list. The perfect Belle and Sebastian gig begins with The State I Am In – I've been at some of those shows (the set list changes each night) – as this album does. The perfect opening track for this album (I mean, maybe Thunder Road is up there as an opening track, but I'm less certain of that these days). That gig will end with Another Sunny Day from The Life Pursuit fwiw, and it will feature Electronic Renaissance. Ah, Electronic Renaissance. I love it. It might be my favourite Belle and Sebastian tune. It's so far out of the comfort zone of the rest of the album, a total experiment that provides the edge and the break that If You're Feeling Sinister lacks for me. The fact that it was mastered off of a cassette recording off the radio makes it even more perfect. If you like it then check out 2015s Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance. And, you know, they released If You're Feeling Sinister five and half months later. And then four full EPs and another album in the following two years. How is that even possible? What on earth was Murdoch on? It will come as no surprise that this is getting as many stars as I can give it. It came up on the day I happened to be booking a trip to Rotterdam to see them play this album in December as part of the 30th anniversary tour – a totally unnecessary extra gig involving 8 hours travel each way across three national borders and requiring two overnight stays. Unnecessary given that I saw them play it in April and I'm seeing them play Sinister 40 minutes away the following week. But it's Tigermilk. So I want to be there. Because it takes my breath away still. Every time.

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Voodoo People, Poison and No Good (Start the Dance) are catchy bangers. But the album as a whole seems under-baked. As a generally 'rock' person, I approve of the crunchy, dirty sound they get from a combination of noisy samples and crappy equipment, which gives it a more industrial sound than most 90s UK dance (which tends towards a clean digital sheen). 2.5 stars, rounding up for energy and the only appearance of Pop Will Eat Itself on this list (which seems like an oversight, IMHO)

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Garbage.

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By the time of his final album, Invincible in 2001, Michael Jackson had lost his way trying to recapture past glories. But there was still life left in the model, which Justin Timberlake was happy to step into the vacuum created by Jacko’s abandonment of the field. The singles are outstanding – Timberlake is a charismatic singer with a sexy confidence with some outstanding production from some of the best RnB producers of the day (Neptunes, Timbaland). The album is overlong, as was the fashion in the late 90s and early 2000s, and I would happily trim 20 minutes of filler. Time has not been kind to Justin’s public image, especially his apparent willingness to throw Britney Spears and Janet Jackson under the bus to further his own ambitions. And this album is Exhibit A in those crimes, which leaves a bit of a bad aftertaste. Cry Me A River and Rock Your Body are bangers, but it is difficult to listen to them without thinking about the reputational aftermath for Britney and Janet, two artists I greatly admire. So, this is really a better-than-most Michael Jackson album, released at a time when Michael’s musical output was irrelevant and his public persona unpalatable. Nothing wrong with that, although hard to hold up as particularly innovative (Neptunes’ production aside). There are some great songs pop here, but they do give me a bit of the ick. 3.5 stars, rounding down for the ick.

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I had dipped my feet on the edge of but never really dove into jazz before this exercise, and after a dozen or so albums from the genre I've determined that I like big band more than I like jazz, and I REALLY enjoy the former disguised as the latter. Today's album is pretty solid, but it does color outside the lines a bit too much for me, and is slightly less enjoyable than The Dave Brubeck Quartet was a couple days ago. The incredible percussion does fill some of that gap, though, and after falling in love with Fela Kuti's live album from this list, I enjoyed the "afrobeats" inspiration in this one and wished it would have veered more in that direction than the more traditional sounding jazz it sticks to here. It did have me exploring more of his work, and I was particularly intrigued by his Herb Alpert collaboration in 1978. All in all, this one's a 3.5/5 that I'll round up, and I definitely appreciate the introduction.

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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.

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.

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".

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.

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

I really don't get rap, and I am completely aware of why. I'm a STEM guy, specifically a Ph.D. student in mathematics. Although my verbal intelligence is quite high, it's still about a standard deviation below my quantitative intelligence. Therefore, it should not be too surprising that I prefer melodies to lyricism, and that a genre based on the latter doesn't wow me. I know I'm pretty far out of step with public opinion on this one, but that can easily be attributed to the fact that hipsters with humanities degrees (i.e. extremely verbal-dominant people) are considered the ultimate arbiters of taste for some reason. (Side note: this also explains why prog rock is seen as being for losers.) Best song: Be (Intro), which had a decent instrumental part at the beginning. Everything else just sort of ran together.

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??!!?

Rap isn't my preferred genre of music. But I'm a shitty mathematician so I enjoyed this.

Rage In Favor Of The Machine.

Music for incels to wank furiously by

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.

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

The beauty of music is that it is subjective. It’s typically great for a certain group of people, though it’s never right for everyone. Some for the masses, some more niche, but it all has its place. Meanwhile, with lists like this, there’s always artists or records that anyone would have put on in place of what actually made it. Personally, I would have included Queensryche’s Operation Mindcrime, Live’s Throwing Copper, Joe Satriani’s The Extremist, Sara Bareilles’ Little Voice, or John Mellencamp’s Scarecrow album on a list of must hear records. Others would put totally different albums on and that's awesome. What someone likes vs. dislikes is truly subjective. Again, that's the beauty. With that said, this album objectively sucks. I mean truly horrible. Something had to be the lowest rated album on the list, and this was a place well earned. There is nothing redeemable about this record. To quote my wife, “they should have stopped at 1,000.”

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

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.