Reviews by avoidperil

"Home Is Where the Music Is is a 1972 jazz and Afrobeat double LP". Oh. Great. A mashup of my least favourite genres, from my most despised decade of music, and it's a double helping?

Pure cacophony. If you're going to play instruments, at least adhere to a structure. I don't even want to think of the wankers who hear this and give it a 5.

Thank goodness this album reminds me on every track that I am, in fact, listening to Basement Jaxx. I might wake up from the stupor this album put me into and wonder who I'm actually still listening to.

This is electronic muzak. This is everything electronic music shouldn't be. There is not one moment where I felt the joy of discovery, or that I was listening to something innovative. Entirely pedestrian. And what is even happening with that 'yo yo yo yo-yo-y-yo-y-y-yo' song? How can you listen to that and believe it belongs in someone elses ears?

Ah Beck. I love Morning Phase and Seachange so much, you'd think I'd know this album back to front and inside out by now. But that's the magic is Beck - always something different every time. I've never really bothered to listen to this one.

But that's my problem, because this is joyous, chaotic, and masterful.

It's funky and well recorded, but not something in a genre that I enjoy.

It's 2003. You've just picked up a copy of New Music Express. They're looking for the 'new sound'. The buzz from the new Coldplay album is wearing off, and they've banged on about Doves for a while now. In a flurry of Badly Drawn Boys and Magic Numbers, a new band falls in their lap to save us from the US rock revival. The Thrills will slay The Strokes.

The battle lines are drawn. The initiative is anyone's to take.

Little did the authors know that just as they were collating and publishing this book that emo and indie rock were about to take over and wash away the softcockrock of the early 2000s, consigning them to obscurity (unless they happened to be called Radiohead).

This is fine, but entirely forgettable.

I thought I could tolerate the Stranglers. Turns out an entire album of their shit is just too much for me. This whole thing is weirdly horny while also being pathetic.

I hate the 70's with a passion.

This is fine. I've just heard the same thing done better by Brandi Carlile. Emmylou Harris has such a crispy voice here, it doesn't sell songs which are asking for a smoother voice. The music is nothing to write home about.

What are we left with? And album I really don't like or hate. It just exists. I couldn't wait for it to be over so I could throw on some actual good folk-country music.

FINALLY. Some decent music!

A colleague at a university job was a huge indie hipster and told me to listen to this back in 2006. It was one of the front-runners into an entire genre of music. And in my opinion, the saviours of music in general.

This feels like a turning point to me. An actual influential album that not only sounds good but means something. A rarity on this hellish experience that is this terrible list.

I hate this style of rock music. It's just so bland and boring. He's singing about nothing in particular and there is virtually nothing interesting or exciting about the music. Add to this the fact that it's a muddy, poorly mixed live album with crowd sounds included? What a waste of time.

This is not really my cup of tea. A little too 70s funk. Not really anything to latch onto or get excited about.

So typical of the Beatles crew to throw together an album which rides solely on the strength of a couple songs, while the rest are just weird experiments. I'm probably just coming too late to the party with this album, but I swear my parents bought this on CD in the late 90s and I literally recall none of it.

If ever an album needed a few more months in the development stages, it's this one. You can't just walk into the studio with one good idea and hope the rest falls into place. This could have been a beautiful statement, but instead is just a bunch of demos.

This book/list: It came out in 1967, it must be the best thing ever put to tape! I mean, no. Just no. When I think of the albums I should be listening to, it's not this.

I mean, the first song is just Doctor Roberts from Revolver. I don't even think the Beatles were that great, so why would I want to listen to a Beatles rip-off?

I mean, yeah, it's Tom Waits. Sometimes he's on point, but this one just doesn't find that point for me. It's fine though. A sign of things to come.

I've been meaning to listen to Depeche Mode for at least two centuries now and it was this list that finally got me there. Wow. This feels important. I can trace paths back to this band and this album from everywhere.

But not only is it important (which ultimately doesn't guarantee a great listening experience) it is good. This album sounds sinister, with a depth to the lyrics that might not be profound, but at least there are attempts. The rhyme of 'houses' with 'trousers' actually hit for me.

I'm definitely going to add tracks from this to playlists and listen to it more and more while looking into their catalogue. A resounding success.

Something was happening in Memphis in 1969. First Elvis, now this. And while this is probably the better of the things that happened there, it's still a toothless, limpid excuse for an album.

This was mum and dad music in '69 and it's music for folks that are long gone. I heard it. What's next?

Not much to say. Not my thing.

Did a teenager put this list together? Someone with only a passing interest in music from reading Rolling Stone or NME? Hey, have you heard of Aerosmith - they've found a whole lot of new ways to sing about sex and penises and boobs while being so thinly veiled that it'll get past puritanical parental figures!

I have to imagine there are literally millions of albums out there, but I have limited time on this planet. The fact I'm spending precious moments of my life dribbling this garbage juice into my earholes is making me actively angry.

I've listened to this a couple times before and it never really did anything for me. Somehow after almost 130 albums, most of which I've just not enjoyed at all, this is actually landing on some level.

Now, I don't really understand the cultural context of this album, or feel like the lyrics have any relevance to me. I don't think they're the best ever put down. I also don't like the jazzier elements, but I can appreciate the innovation.

It's good, but not special. Not something I'll feel the need to listen to regularly or pull any tracks for any playlists. Nowhere near the best album of all time - Not even in the top 100.

I can tell this is probably going to be a fan favourite, but it really doesn't work for me for a few reasons. I understand it's meant to be a bit of fun, and the playing is actually quite decent for 1979, with a few nice recording flourishes. I understand entirely why it is here and deserves to be on this list.

It falls down for me on everything to do with the vocals - the most important part of any music to me. The lyrics are a joke, or downright terrible. The constant scratchy falsetto is just ridiculous. It's far from the worst thing I've had to listen to on this god forsaken list.

Ooo la la la, la la la. Ridiculous. This is trite garbage, Neil. None of this makes any sense. Somewhere in there was a violin being strangled to within an inch of its life.

Maybe once this came across as clever, but wow are those solos and guitar flourishes clumsy and poorly realised to modern ears. The single note 'solo' on Down by the River is particularly painful.