Rated 6/10
Clandestino is a sun drenched, cross cultural escape. Its reggae rhythms and raw energy are infectious, though the lo-fi, repetitive production can occasionally feel monotonous. Still, its unique charm makes it a memorable, sticky record. "Welcome To Tijuana" is the highlight for me, just pure vibes.
Rated 2/10
Bee Gees pre-disco concept album, let that marinate in your brain before listening, cherish that moment because it all comes tumbling down.
Rated 6/10
It feels like another Radiohead album I'm supposed to like... And I mostly do, but sometimes I'd rather listen to The Bends, you know?
Feels like Kid A outtakes, probably should have been saved for the retrospective deluxe edition release of that album.
One of those, what you hear isn't what you heard live albums... The extended version has the live performance but the original was fabricated and mixed and mashed from live and studio overdubs.
I usually love live albums but this one is a little overly live with crowd noise, I can see why they fudged it up with studio replacement
Rated 6/10
Ok early 90s metal, but memorable to me because Rob Van Dam used "Walk" as his entrance music in ECW and that fuckin RULED
Rated 8/10
Supposedly peak Beatles, or peak pre-Pepper Beatles, and while I do like "Eleanor Rigby" and "Got To Get You Into My Life" the rest kinda falls flat or not at all (looking directly at you "Yellow Submarine").
Rubber Soul was better, Pepper would be next, this kinda is just there almost out of contractual obligation...
Rated 10/10
Not a feel good album, not a fun, happy, upbeat bop, it's just Nick Cave with his usual haunting beauty, this may plunge you into the depths of grief you never knew you could go to.
Rated 6/10
Throwback old style crooner vibes that sounds like the soundtrack to a movie that never got made.
Rated 8/10
Timeless classics, sultry lyrics, absolutely effortless.
Honestly, not my kind of music, but it has the utterly timeless "Fairytale of New York" and that alone rises it above a lot of other things.
Rated 4/10
The album title is Alanis levels of ironic; an hour long slog is far from OK, it is very much NOT OK... While the fusion of Indian classical instrumentation with '90s ambient drum & bass sounds interesting in theory, it results in a disjointed mess that feels like two clashing records playing at once.
Rated 8/10
Utter Prog Rock wankery, 3 songs, 37 minutes long. Rick Wakeman just banging his fingers to nubs on any keyboard he could find. Acquired taste, and I fear this exercise of listening to 1001 albums has led me to acquire that taste.
Rated 8/10
Stardust is an absolute, cozy slice of heaven that completely reaffirms my love for Willie Nelson. Here he keeps it simple, letting his voice and guitar shine without overproduction. It’s a warm, magical record where he truly makes every classic his own. Whether he’s pulling off an impossibly definitive version of "Georgia On My Mind" that absolutely stands toe-to-toe with Ray Charles, or delivering breathtaking melancholy on "Moonlight In Vermont" and "Stardust", he takes these familiar standards and makes them entirely his own. It’s an audacious outlaw move that resulted in pure magic.
Rated 8/10
A cool Post Punk, Proto-Grunge, Sonic Youth sounding. Digging it. Gimmie that distortion,
Rated 6/10
How *do* you follow up one the the greatest albums of all time? Apparently ask the record company for somewhere between $1m to $1.4m, spend most of it on blow, hire a university marching band, and record enough stuff to make a double album... Though it's a bit telling that when they eventually made a Greatest Hits album, only "Tusk" and "Sara" made the cut from here.
Rated 8/10
Lucinda Williams was one of those artists I had never heard of until I moved from the UK to the US, being introduced to this was a revelation. To me Country music was either old people from the 70s or earlier like Johnny Cash or Kris Kristofferson and Tammy Wynette or Loretta Lynn, or mediocre 90s pop crossovers like Faith Hill and LeAnn Rimes, so to encounter the in-between space that Americana genre existed in with artists like Lucinda and Emmylou Harris was an eye opening experience. This album moved me, it's downright filthy in so many ways with songs like "Right In Time" and "I Still Long For Your Kiss" but it's the consecutive punches of "2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten", "Drunken Angel", "Concrete And Barbed Wire" and "Lake Charles" that keep me coming back.
You should also listen to her 2005 Live @ the Fillmore album
Rated 6/10
A ok to good album that's weighed down by history, A few really good songs like "Jealous Guy" and "Gimmie Some Truth" and the title track is good if you're a teenager looking for greater meaning to life, but for Lennon is was absurd hypocrisy since he was bigger than jesus and richer than god. And then Gal Godot had an idea....
Rated 4/10
I'm still Team Oasis 30 years later, Modern Life Is Rubbish? Well, yeah, and so is this album...
Rated 10/10
This was the sound of 2005 indie folk-y rock at its absolute zenith. It has everything you could possibly need, a cohesive narrative, both the meta "an album a state" project and indeed the Illinois stories that made up the songs. And for a brief shining moment, it seemed like Sufjan Stevens was your favourite artists favourite artist, even getting name checked songs by Snow Patrol (that felt so mid-2000s to even type), everyone loved it, NPR, Pitchfork, Stereogum, Rolling Stone, and every blogger with a pulse.
And, most importantly, it still holds up nearly 20 years later. a true timeless classic.
Rated 8/10
I can remember the moment I was introduced to the White Stripes, they appeared on Jools Holland on BBC2 and banged out "Hotel Yorba" and I was all in, 2 minutes of insanity. The acoustic version on the single I bought days later sealed the deal. Simple garage rock that somehow sounds amazing.
And this is a Meg White appreciation post
