Reviews by callimar

The great thing about this project is that you keep coming across good music that you would otherwise have missed. This is one such case, because I only knew 10cc by name. They are described as a wild mix of different styles, but for me it's just well-made and cleanly produced 70s rock. Sheet Music features ten varied songs, and I was immediately taken with the first one, “Wall Street Shuffle.”
I find this album somewhat lacking in real music-historical kicks. At least it's convincing proof of what was possible in the studio in 1974 if you had the necessary skills—actually, apart from Queen, I can't think of much else from that era that can compete in this respect. It's also obviously always helpful not to take yourself too seriously—in this respect, 10cc are reminiscent of Van Halen in the days of David Lee Roth.
That's one way to do it!

Having grown up in the 90s, I'm not particularly impressed by the noisyness of Dinosaur Jr. However, it certainly took some balls to play this kind of music in the 80s, when everything was neon-colored and polished smooth.
The songs on “You're Living All Over Me” aren't particularly catchy, but they're bursting with energy and middle fingers raised against the mainstream. Of course, the production isn't perfect, but that was the goal—and of course, that means there are a few imperfect notes here and there.
Dinosaur Jr. are thus important pioneers of the alternative rock wave that became known as grunge in the 90s. “You're Living All Over Me” isn't the album I need to listen to every day from now on. Instead, it's an important testimony to the beginnings of one of the most significant breaks in music history and therefore deserves its place on this list.

How boring do you want your music to be? Moby: yes!
Although the 18 tracks on “Play” all sound the same, he manages to make each one sound even more boring than the others. From a music history perspective, I understand that this minimalism was somehow necessary in the late 90s. In the right club, a looped beat with a few chords and sparse melodies might work after midnight. But why press it onto vinyl? Admittedly, “Natural Blues” and “Porcelain” do contain a few catchy ideas. Overall, however, there is simply too little substance for a music album.
I didn't like it when it came out, and I still don't like it now.

Oh, another early New Wave album that no one remembers anymore! At least on “Quiet Life,” Japan sounds like (almost) every other New Wave band. That's why I won't go into further detail and will give it two stars this time as well.
The emergence of New Wave must have been very important to the authors. Have I mentioned that there are too many of these albums on the list?

I knew D'Angelo as a neo-soul pioneer and collaborator with Lauryn Hill, but I can't remember ever consciously listening to any of his songs. On his debut album “Brown Sugar,” he is still searching for his style, and accordingly, it is a mélange of still quite distinct soul, jazz, and hip-hop influences. Personally, I like the jazzier tones on “Me And Those Dreamin' Eyes Of Mine” and “When We Get By” best.

What I always find impressive about Muse is how dense the sound of this three-piece band is. However, this also carries the risk of becoming overwhelming, so that the music eventually starts to get on your nerves. Muse's “Black Holes and Revelations” has exactly these characteristics: “Take a Bow” initially encourages you to turn down the volume, ‘Starlight’ and “Supermassive Black Hole” are strong songs, but there are already signs of the saturation effect that is probably inevitable when you combine harder rock with electronic elements by layering track upon track instead of reducing elsewhere. We already had this effect in a slightly different form on “Siamese Dreams” by the Smashing Pumpkins.
On “Invincible,” everything calms down a bit, but my overall impression of a pretty good, but ultimately overloaded album remains the same. It could have been outstanding, but as it is, I can only give it four stars today.

Another Neil Young album... this time a late work from 1990. Seriously: what I feared in my last Neil Young review has now come to pass – “Ragged Glory” doesn't measure up to his older albums, but sounds like a parody of itself. Of course, the sound is better and more powerful than on his recordings from the 70s, but hearing that his bendings and string changes are still just as sloppy as they were 15 years ago is more annoying than stylish. In addition, the extremely simple songwriting and the country-heavy sound make everything sound a bit like a children's song.
I'm sorry, but I had just started to think Neil Young was cool, and then the generator brings up something like this? “Ragged Glory” is clearly the album of an artist who had already passed his prime. It's by no means bad, and you can still listen to it, but it certainly doesn't belong on any list of the best albums, no matter how many there are.

I actually remembered Hole as the band that was only famous because Courtney Love was married to Kurt Cobain. Around 1993, I had heard a few Hole songs that confirmed my opinion, and I didn't pay any more attention to the band after that.
It turns out that was a bit hasty, because “Celebrity Skin” is not only much better than what I remembered of Hole, but also a truly mature alternative rock album with a distinct Hollywood flavor. I can't quite put my finger on what makes it so, but the great guitar sounds and the slightly punkish, sleazy vocal style are definitely part of it. (btw: for me, the ultimate incarnation of this sound is found in Vigil of War.)
In any case, “Celebrity Skin” is now on par with such great recordings as “Californication,” and contrary to my original opinion, quite rightly so. It's a shame I missed it back then! This album might have corrected my opinion of female-fronted bands earlier.

If any genre of music deserves to be rejected on principle, it's gangsta rap. If you try to be a little more impartial, you end up with this: a petty criminal becomes famous because Eminem likes his mixtape and gets him Dr. Dre's beats. Admittedly, the beats on “Get Rich Or Die Tryin'” aren't actually that bad. But what about the rest? I remember well that the marketing for this album always revolved around the story of the nine bullets. Even back then, I found that a frighteningly simplistic argument for the quality of a music album.

Neil Young is undoubtedly one of the outstanding artists of the 20th century, and many of his albums are certainly worth listening to. However, in my opinion, it is by no means a given that seven of them belong on this list, and “On The Beach” does not provide any compelling arguments for this. Yes, it is a pretty good blues rock album, but no, it does not feature any groundbreaking innovations compared to his other recordings.
With its erratic selection, this project has already disenchanted me with David Bowie, and there is a significant chance that this effect will affect others as well—in addition to the Beatles, I now see Neil Young as being at risk as well.
Edit: turns out for me, "On The Beach" is the perfect chill-out album. Still not too special but I really like it.

Elbow's sound can be described as alternative pop rock with occasional orchestral instrumentation. The most remarkable thing, however, is Guy Garvey's gentle yet powerful voice.
Their 2008 album “The Seldom Seen Kid” fluctuates between nice ideas (e.g., “Grounds for Divorce”) and inconsequential easy listening. Unfortunately, the production and especially the drum mix don't always seem quite mature to me. Nevertheless, this album is enjoyable to listen to, and I find it quite astonishing that I had never heard of Elbow before.
The best thing I can say about this record is that some passages (e.g., “An Audience with the Pope”) remind me of Sleep Token (without their brute force, of course), so Elbow clearly provide a very interesting insight into the developments in the British music scene at the time.

Siouxsie And The Banshees took a unique approach, with the bass and especially the drums interpreting their traditional roles in a somewhat more expansive way. In contrast, the guitar work is extremely simplified compared to other rock bands. According to Wikipedia, the result can be classified as post-punk, but to me it sounds more like new wave, especially because of Siouxsie's vocals. For 1978, the sound is extremely clear, and I also like the band's somewhat alternative approach. However, the latter led to extremely repetitive arrangements, as the guitar, as the only instrument that was really suited to it, largely refused to contribute to the creative design. This might still work if Siouxsie didn't have an extremely annoying voice, but one that could really carry the songs. For this reason, however, I say: nice, but no.

Fiona Apple's “Tidal” is a singer-songwriter album characterized by alternative vibes that are typical of the 90s. This makes it sound familiar to me without being particularly striking—for people my age, it's probably easy listening. There's not much more to say about it; for me, “Tidal” is okay, in the sense that it's average.

In the 1960s, The Band was Bob Dylan's backing band, and the five gentlemen present themselves here as a well-rehearsed group. “Music From Big Pink” refers to the house where The Band and Bob Dylan recorded songs in the basement.
So much for the charming background to today's album. The music presented is good, but not particularly exciting. In terms of craftsmanship and production, it is the best that the era had to offer. What is missing are truly distinctive individualists and outstanding song ideas. The folk rock mix with blues and jazz elements is tastefully arranged, but also works well in the background.
I am tempted to say that The Band probably had their best moments under the name Bob Dylan. Nevertheless, this album is a piece of rock history and I think it's worth listening to.

A few guys are making a rock opera about Lynyrd Skynyrd—that sounds like something between cool and kitschy... And that's exactly how it is; the album holds no surprises. How you rate the result depends heavily on your taste: if you like Southern blues rock, you'll enjoy Drive By Truckers, because they're a really tight band with a distinctive singer. If you're not into blues rock/alternative country, "Southern Rock Opera" will be a waste of your time.
I like the blues rock sound but I'll only go with 3/5 for the total lack of originality.

Back in the 90s, Incubus was one of those bands that many of my friends loved, while for me... well, it all sounded very half-baked. “Make Yourself” still has grunge vibes (which was definitely no longer cool in 1999), but it's technically on a much higher level than Nirvana and their ilk could ever achieve. I really like the sound of Incubus, but it would be even better with a more versatile singer who doesn't belt out the same notes non-stop. In addition, “Make Yourself” contains at most a handful of really good songs, so that large parts of it sound pretty arbitrary.
Perhaps this record only unfolds its full effect with the right drugs. Sober in the morning, it's still a good album, but one that forgot to decide at some point what it wants to be.

This is the fourth David Bowie album I've received for review and the first one I like. On “Low,” he also mixes a wide variety of styles, but here he does so with an ease and naturalness that should characterize a global star.
Unfortunately, “Low” only contains five real songs, followed again—as seems to be the case with all of Bowie's “Berlin Trilogy”—by sound collages. I have nothing against instrumental music, but that's just not the area in which David Bowie excels.

The Beta Band is difficult to categorize, and “Hot Shots II” is a mixture of electronic beats, rock guitars, and harmony vocals, embedded in a random pop mix. That doesn't hurt anyone, but I was waiting the whole time for something catchy or remarkable. As a result, Hot Shots II is largely boring, though not in an easy listening kind of way, but rather with an alternative vibe. It has been written that there is nothing comparable to it—which makes sense: the audience for this kind of music is likely to be rather small. At least the record was well produced.

“Beyoncé” is, well, a typical Beyoncé album: a great voice singing mediocre songs, accompanied by some random ringtones. I'm not too familiar with her recent work, but maybe “Beyoncé” is special because it was conceived as a “visual album”—whatever that means. If the idea behind it was to create music that doesn't make much sense without watching the videos at the same time, then it's kind of succeeded: The songs on "Beyoncé" are not exactly bad, but largely pointless to me.

The journey through the 1001 albums naturally reveals certain breaks in music history. What I find particularly exciting at the moment is the diversification of rock music in the 1970s, which led to the parallel existence of stylistic devices from what were actually successive eras.
“Lust For Life” is an excellent example of this: the music actually wants to move forward and break out of familiar patterns, but it cannot deny its roots in the 1960s and repeatedly incorporates elements that, from today's perspective, one might expect to find in folk rather than punk rock. At the same time, the band refrains from using a denser mix that would be more suited to punk rock, even though this was already available in terms of production technology. As a result, the sound is always on the verge of disintegration, especially in the wilder moments. The crowning glory of this “I'll show you tomorrow, but with yesterday's means” is the totally naive yet iconic cover, which I would rather associate with a folk pop singer-songwriter.
Nevertheless—or perhaps precisely because of this—the nine songs around the title track and “The Passenger” were stylistically influential for the punk movement, and here and there you can already hear London calling.