Reviews by 1001mjanzai

Back to back Bowie!
Young Americans yesterday and this one today, two completely different sounding albums two years apart.
This one is early ‘70s rock mode and surprisingly heavy at times along with the regular tropes of the day of groove and grandeur.
Great to finally hear this album and would definitely play this again.

Here’s an artist with a deep discography that I’ve barely touched but I have heard this one many times and it’s a good one!
Surprisingly very funky but in a psychedelic way.
His vocals are sometimes a bit unhinged which gives it a sort of avant-garde edge but you can tell he’s really trying to channel some sort of soul here.
There’s a lot of great moments here.
It was great to listen to this again and I know that there will be some more spins in the future.

What a great singer and songwriter!
These songs have a unique sound that bridges folk and jazz styles merging her vivid stories with very interesting harmonic progressions.
Very cool to have the distinct and very imaginative bass playing of Jaco on a few tracks which fits perfectly with her style.
She’s got a few albums that deserve to be on this list so I hope they show up!

Wow, what a great voice!
I can’t even tell that she’s British!
Great to hear these classic songs made with real musicians and sometimes quite a large ensemble of players.
Also really love the warm analogue sound of these old recordings.
It’s really too bad how cold and artificial most modern pop music sounds these days.
I’m looking forward to more albums from this era on this list as this listen was great for my soul!

This is great classic rock!
It has all the elements that make it sound like a classic.
Great songs and arrangements, all performed and recorded well.
What a fun listen this was and it has a feel of lifting one’s “spirit” up!

Wow, what an incredible voice and talent!
Very interesting production and arrangements here all helping to serve and support that incredible voice.
What a unique blend of sounds!
I would say pretty much all her albums are essential listening.
This is a good place to start though and if you dig it then make sure to keep going through her discography because there are a lot of amazing treasures to be found there!
Her art will enrich your life and make you a better listener of music!

This is not Beck’s best album however he is a very interesting musical artist and does deserve an album or two on this list.
It’s too bad though that this album is his most popular because there are far better albums in his catalogue and it seems to be included here more due to popularity rather than quality of material.
There’s really not much going on at the heart of these songs but there are a lot of great production elements surrounding these vamps.
It’s good for at least one listen though and some of these tunes will likely make the most sense on the dance floor where you won’t have to intellectualize about the music and just groove to it!

Musically this isn’t that interesting but the atmospheric textures surrounding these tunes are interesting and help with the overall sound.
I think this is kind of derivative of all the great experimental pop/instrumentals from the 50s/60s but it does update the sound in a way.
I did enjoy listening to this once but I’m not sure I have any desire to listen to this again therefore I would not consider this essential listening.
But I was not offended by this so once again I’m stuck giving this 3 stars since there’s no way to convey a 2.5 star rating.

A classic for sure!
What a wild mix of songs here.
Some of the songs are much stronger than others though and I wonder if this would have made a more solid single album.
But there’s no denying they were all fired up with ideas at this time and wanting to express themselves by recording and releasing all these songs at once.
Unfortunately this burnt them out as we now know with how difficult it was around the writing and recording of the Let It Be album but they did manage to regroup and put out their best album, Abbey Road, in the end.
I haven’t heard this in a while and it’s turning out to be a nice middle of the week listen during a hard work week and as listening to good music often does, I’m feeling better now about getting through the rest of the work week.

I did enjoy listening to this but there’s no way that this is essential listening.
I have been finding the list skewing towards music from the UK because of the British author and it’s been somewhat tolerable so far but this is the first time I feel like it has over-stepped its boundaries.
Once again I will say that I enjoyed listening to this but I would put this album somewhere far beyond a list of 1001.
And in order to keep something that looks like this nice album cover let’s replace it with Disco Volante by Mr. Bungle!

Well this was a nice and harmless listen.
Maybe a little too clever for its own good in the arrangements but very well recorded nonetheless.
There’s a mellow, progressive folk thing going on here which doesn’t change too much for the course of its 74 minute run time which makes it seem a bit bland by the end but every song does have some interesting things happening in them.
This does fit very much in its time as I’ve heard many bands from this era try this kind of music.
They are all very interesting but there’s an overly intellectual vibe that makes me turn towards something a bit more emotionally intense.
Some may say its a bit pretentious but I do understand the intellectual approach to this kind of songwriting so I’m not offended.
I probably won’t ever listen to this again but if I heard it playing somewhere I would probably enjoy it.

Although this list is skewed sometimes too British because of the author I am thankful to be able to discover albums like this.
I think it has an interesting sound, a blend of some sort of pop and rock with shades of new wave and garage.
This description really doesn’t do it justice though owing to the unique style of this band.
It’s their fifth album so I’ll definitely have to put some work into listening to where they came from and where they went.
Another one of those bands I’ve heard of but never got to hear and this one did not disappoint!

This was a fun listen!
Great to learn more about these bands playing this style of music at a time that was just before I got into listening to music.
I suppose I would not have been able to hear this back then anyways as they probably weren’t on mainstream am/fm radio but hearing it now it still sounds good!

This is groovy as hell!
However the sound is a bit conservative.
There’s plenty of space here for everyone to stretch out and then there’s the bizarre synth overdubs!
There’s some cool heads here and some clever arrangements but some of the grooves could probably have been tightened up a bit within the arrangements.
But it is nice to hear the space when the band just groove for a while!
This was a cool enough listen that I wanna check out his other albums from this era.

Wow what a classic!
I’ve only heard this album once before but this listen definitely cements this as a must listen.
This music really has its own style.
I can’t believe this is only their first album as it sounds so fully formed.
Now I’m very curious to hear where they went afterwards.

Not bad!
There’s interesting things happening in these songs with some decent chord changes.
It’s a good pop rock album and it makes me want to listen to their other albums!

I enjoyed listening to this.
Totally not offended.
But I don’t think that this is essential listening yet.
I’m finding the backing tracks to be kinda boring and one dimensional.
The scratching is cool though!
Likely will need to listen to this many times to understand fully because of all the words.

Well here’s another classic for sure!
I grew up with this as well and although I was starting to shift towards heavier music as I entered my teenage years, I still bought this and listened to it back then.
I remember also buying all the singles where each single had a photo of a different band member and there were sometimes more than one unreleased song on the b-side which was great value!
Although I did enjoy this back then I don’t think that I fully appreciated it until later in my adult years.
The songs are great and the production is pretty amazing.
It is strange that this is the only album I ever listened to from this band because their next album Achtung Baby was a pretty big deal back then.
I’m assuming that album will come up at some point and I’ll listen to it then but I’ll definitely have to try to find some time to check out the rest of their catalogue.

I really don’t know much about Bob Dylan.
But I can tell right away from the opening notes of this album that I’m listening to a must-listen classic.
What a great discovery!

I saw him live for the first time a few years ago and I was blown away by the show!
His music still stands the test of time and amongst all the synth sounds there’s a bit of a dark and ominous feeling to his songs.
Definitely need to hear his other albums.