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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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!
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.
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.
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.
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".
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??!!?
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
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.
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!
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.