Rated 2/10
Weird one. A very boring piano/folksy opening gives way to a playful second half of goody genre pastiche with synth pop, kraut rock, new wave, and 80s hard rock sounds. From the most humorless tedium possible to just having fun messing around. But then back to the piano for more tepid ballads and ponderous strings.
Rated 6/10
Great voice, moody atmosphere that's a cool mix of goth and new wave, dynamic interplay between synth/guitar/bass parts, lots of drama, movement, and sweep to the songs. It's the stock cube you need to put into a post punk soup to fill it out, but doesn't have any if the star ingredients.
Rated 2/10
The perfect album for when you want the vibe of having a sleazy old detective movie on in the background but your TV is broken. Music for guys who confuse a tweed cap with a personality and alcoholics who are nowhere near as charming as they think they are. The whole thing is so desperately phoney and contrived, not necessarily a problem as copy things that don't really exist can be its own form of fun playful creativity, but it's done in a thoroughly humourless way. The jazzy walking bass rips though.
Rated 6/10
Like a hip hop Nick Drake, this softly spoken slow paced sad boy stuff for a mellow introspective mood - but the pastoral nylon string guitars are replaced with loungey synths and drum machines. The music is lush and swirly, slightly out of focus, hazy neo-soul slow jams with gospel singers and funky noodling bass. His singing alternates between a nasal croon, a falsetto, and an almost mumbling rap flow - none of it is really very good, but works for the overall feel of the album.
Rated 4/10
An artifact more than an album, this is another hip hop record from this era that is hugely influential and culturally significant, but really hard to listen to 40 years later as the genre has progressed so far beyond it and this is left feeling really one-note, dated, repetitive and ultimately pretty boring. Also, is this ultimately responsible for Nu-Metal, Kid Rock, and all of the other rap-rock hybrid monstrosities?
Rated 6/10
Replacing the light floaty jangle of Johnny Marr's guitar with a mix of production styles like dark gloomy goth rock (Alsatian Cousin), string section (Angel Angel), and super 80s acoustic pop (Late Night) means that this is a pretty slow, bloated, and ponderous album that has all the maudlin crooning, but not of the bittersweet dynamism. Still, if you're going to listen to any maudlin crooning, this shithead is pretty much the best at it, and this being barely in the top 10 albums he's made is just an artifact of how prolific he'd been to this point. The two best songs are among the best Smiths approximation: Everyday is Like Sunday & Suedehead that have that bounce and jangle and a bit more of an upbeat uptempo sound to cut against the morose vocals.
Rated 4/10
Chugging electric blues with a raunchy harmonica, bouncy bass, and guitar tone that cuts through, bringing those hot pentatonic licks straight to your ear hole. The singing is the best bit: saucy, expressive, funny. But even in 1977 this was a pretty tired sound, and even if MW was one of the original masters, mere authenticity doesn't make it any more interesting.
Rated 6/10
The percussion only bits get a bit tiresome but combined with the guitar work and call and response vocals are pure joy.
Favorite: tribilin cantore
Rated 6/10
Taking the edge of her earlier work, this album moves from post-punk/alt rock into a more indie sound - cleaner guitars, more atmosphere and space, less in your face intensity. Musically it's very of it's time - nice enough but a bit predictably following the beats, but it works really well to let her voice and words come through.
Rated 4/10
Dreamy soft rock with a great ear for poppy hooks and harmonies. Mostly piano-based songwriting with an extreme Beatles influence. It has a very gentle ambling lazy Saturday morning feel to it - floaty and laid back af. It makes the Eagles look hardcore, makes the Beach Boys seem metal. The combo of Without You and Coconut is insane - the two most famous songs on the album seem to circulate independently but are right next to each other - an saccharine ballad so overwrought it hurts and then the goofiest bit of faux-tropical beach bum ephemera imaginable. There's a depressed feel that haunts and undermines the uptempo tracks - truly an album for divorced guys getting day drunk on rum and failing to trick themselves into thinking they're happier without her.
Rated 2/10
More portentous piano ballads from the world's dullest Leonard Cohen wannabe.
Rated 6/10
Splitting the difference between Illmatic and 36 Chambers, this album is pure 90s NY hip hop with classic boom bap beats, lively rhymes, and a hard hitting sound.
Rated 2/10
Why would you include the debut album of someone who is almost exclusively known for the handful of extremely catchy radio hits from her second album? All I wanna do is the only one on here that made a mark. It's perfect fine pop rock with a tinge country twang and high spec 90s production, but none of the songs rise above pleasant background padding.
Rated 10/10
Bounce, jangle and moan in perfect proportion.
Rated 2/10
Third time lucky? Nope. Still just don't like SW's voice, songs, or sound. All the talent in the world but none of the taste. The components are good - smooth funk & jazzy RnB, high spec 70s production - but it just ends up as cheesy pap. His nasal melisma is unbearable. The bass and keyboard parts redeem it a bit at least on the high tempo tracks where he's ripping off herbie hancock but the slow ones are just awful: sappy and dull.
Rated 2/10
LA's answer to Manu Chao, this is an ecclectic bit of world music drawing on global funk, hip hop, reggae, cumbia, salsa and other latin dance music, electronica, and rock. Scratching DJs compete with a horn section and a melodica to get a line in between rap verses. Party feel, but not an especially fun party.
Rated 10/10
35 minutes of magic. If you're going to steal all your ideas, steal from the best. Lou Reed's nonchalant vocal delivery and VU's lofi droning style, Television's intertwined guitars overflowing with simple melodies and tension, the Stooges' raw garage riffing, every post-punk band's agressive melodic lead bass style. The interplay between the 2guitars/bass and the vocals are so good - hooks and counter-hooks, snakey lines, bounce, texture, fuzz, energy. But reducing this to its influences misses what an incredible breath of fresh air this was in the nu-metal, butt rock, post-grunge rock landscape of 2001. One of the all time great driving around albums.
A tour de force of boom bap beats, hardcore sampling, DJ scratching, full blast raps from the machine gun mouth of Chuck D, and hey booiiiii hype. They've absorbed and remediated a political textbook in Black rage and radicalism. Sonically innovative when it came out, it now feels extremely dated, samey and overlong, albeit very exciting in small doses.
Rated 8/10
Final albums by major artists, especially released in such proximity to death (Bowie's Blackstar for example), are hard to hear as something other than auto-mourning - and this one especially leans hard into the dark - glacial pacing and sparse arrangements mean JC's has nowhere to hide, the whole thing hangs on his voice and we hear it's fragility and its force in equal measure - a final, tender, intimate, parting gift, he's bearing his soul, offering it up, waiting for a higher power to take it in its hands.
Rated 2/10
One of the most boring by the numbers sub-ac/dc level hard rock albums imaginable. Bunch of British guys saw Bad Company and thought what if do that, but really take the edge off. No swag. Tedious riffs. Dull sounding. Not even any flashy wanky guitar. The musical equivalent of the bamboo they put in sausages to make them coagulate.
