Reviews by mitch058

I don't think I've heard anything by, or even heard of, Common before this album, which is always an intriguing proposition with this collection. And thankfully, this was one of those positive surprises. Although it's nearly twice as long as it probably should have been, nearly every track is both solid and musically more interesting/varied than most of the rap/hip-hop albums in this collection. My favorites were mostly the ones that had guest artists on them, like the opener "Time travelin'", "Cold blooded", and "A song for Assata", plus "The 6th sense" and his dad's "Pops rap III". And while the "conscious rap" aspect isn't all that subtle, Common has a good sense of rhythm (and rhyme) and a sense of humor, and enlisted a great production crew in the Soulquarians to blend in a nice variety of music and samples over and under the beats. I'm not sure it's quite in four-star territory, but it's definitely worth at least 3.5.

This album definitely redeems MIA from the disappointment of having to listen to her debut album "Arular". And while I'm not sure I could go as far as Robert Christgau in stating (and later reaffirming) that this is the best album by far of the 21st century, I was really impressed at how much better and more interesting the entire album is, beyond just her breakout hit "Paper planes" (which is a great song). I'm not sure exactly how she manages to succeed in her world music tourism where more mainstream artists like Paul Simon or Peter Gabriel or others largely failed, but aside from a few kind of awkward tracks (including the well-meaning but dissonant remix of The Wilcannia Mob's "Down river", as well as the more "Arular"-like "World town"), it's a weird but catchy collection of sounds and songs from around the world, with a fairly strident non-Western attitude. My favorites are probably "Boyz" and "Jimmy" (both with interesting videos), as well as "Hussel" and "20 dollar" (especially the great Pixies reference at the beginning and end), and of course "Paper planes" (with a fun video and an impressive screed against how the US denied her a work visa to record this album because of her "sketchy" political stances) . A strangely successful album, even if her album cover art is ridiculously ugly.

So much better than I expected, and so much better than "Dookie"--what a difference a decade makes, apparently. I'm really impressed that (a) they decided they wanted to pursue a concept album, especially a punk/rock opera concept focusing on alienation and disillusionment, and (b) this trio of misfits largely succeeded in this audacious project (although I'm not sure I would have wanted to see the 2010 musical on Broadway). It's still a very Green-Day-sounding album (not my favorite band, I'll admit), but there are only a few tracks on this overly long album that seemed weak/Dookie-era songs; mainly just the pair "St. Jimmy" and "Give me novacaine", although I can see how each at least serves as a vehicle for their storyline. I'm also really impressed at how well their videos (all directed by Samuel Bayer, apparently) for a number of the tracks extended the opera theme quite well, especially the first three tracks and the remarkably long "Jesus of suburbia". (Such a shame that Green Day chose to change up some of the lyrics to "American idiot" for their recent Super Bowl performance, although I'm sure that wasn't their choice.) Add in the justifiably hit singles "Holiday", "Boulevard of broken dreams", and "Wake me up when September ends" (the latter with an impressively bleak video) and this is a winner of an album, much to my surprise.

I largely enjoyed the album, but was also surprised by the disconnect between the 1993 release date (and the Wikipedia entry noting that this was his second album) and the very 70s rock sound throughout the album. I suppose I could have figured it all out if I knew anything about Paul Weller, but it was kind of fun to put together the puzzle that this is one of those music genealogy paths that seem to be a big (and somewhat problematic) part of this project. Between the two The Jam albums in this collection, and the one Style Council album and this one, we actually get four Paul Weller albums, plus the two decade path he created through his bands and solo career; plus all the Britpop albums if he really was as influential as the Wikipedia and "1001 Albums" entries are to be believed.

I enjoyed the traditional-rock-oriented sound of this album, but also found it easily forgettable, sadly, and seems like a lot of those solo albums by people like Steve Winwood, Rod Stewart, etc., except weirdly placed in the 90s (much like Robert Wyat''s "Shleep"). My favorites were probably his singles--"Sunflower", Wild wood" (with an interesting-ish video), "The weaver" and "Hung up"--plus a couple of others, mainly the duo "Has my fire really gone out?" and "Country", and maybe "5th season". I'm glad to have listened to this, but I'm hard pressed to say I needed to before I died, nor do I imagine listening to this again.

Although a bit disappointing that the project editors chose an instrumental-only album to represent Machito and his band, it's still a fun listen, and impressively well-produced for a 1950s album (although I did listen to the 2000 remastered version, so the original might not be as clean). It's impressive how little information there is on this album, or on Frank Grillo/Machito and his band; the "1001 Albums" entry is helpful, but only to a degree, and I'm still not entirely sure how this album seems more "African"-influenced than other albums or music by Machito and his large band (perhaps the extra drumwork on some tracks?). But I still enjoyed feeling like I was in a Bond movie in Havana/Miami at some club with this great house band tearing it up as the slick spies and agents worked some complicated grift scheme.

Growing up in Seattle (and at about the right time), I knew a variety of people who swore by Mudhoney, and a friend in college (from Portland) who absolutely loved them, but I never really found the right hook to get into them, either then or later. They definitely formed part of the burgeoning grunge scene, at least in Seattle (although thankfully were spared from the heroin curse that plagues so many post-Green-River Seattle bands), and I can see why people seem to consider this their best album, but it feels like something is missing from nearly every song, although I can't say what exactly; maybe it's just their intentionally very lo-fi recording style, or maybe it's their slightly-too-snarky humor. My favorites of the lot are probably the one-two punch of "Let it slide" and "Good enough" (the latter having a weird hipster/Madchester video), "Broken hands", and the final track "Check-out time". Not at all a bad album, but also strangely forgettable; it'll be interesting to see if their debut album (also in this collection) is much different.

An interesting album choice for this project. While it has the same structure as some of the prog rock albums in this collection (including the recent ELP dud "Tarkus")--a super long first track/side with somewhat distinct movements, then shorter (and presumably unrelated) tracks to round out the album--I was really reminded more of Kraftwerk's "Autobahn", no doubt due to the instrumental/electronic focus (especially so with "Djed"). I'm not sure exactly why the Wikipedia entry repeatedly mentioned how they were big in the "post-rock" scene (although my confusion is maybe more about that term, I suppose), but I guess I wouldn't have called their music "rock" in any real sense (except maybe "Along the banks of rivers"), and much of this album seems more indebted to Philip Glass or perhaps the avant-garde aspects of industrial/experimental music. Either way, I enjoyed it, but more as background music than something that kept my attention. I'm also mildly intrigued by the album title, given its connection to a seemingly incorrect prediction by the Jehovah Witnesses that the world would end in 1925 (with salvation for many).

Today's album was an unexpected--and very welcome--surprise. I feel like I own a number of albums with a similar vibe, from G. Love's "Philadelphonic" to Action Figure Party's eponymous album to various early Beck productions, but the Isle of Wight's Bees have definitely carved out their own fun little corner (and apparently managed to get a lot of fellow Island musicians to play on stage with them). I enjoyed all of the tracks on this impressively solid album (probably a bit more the first half than the slower second half), and it was fun reading that their cover of Jorge Bem's "A minha menina" helped get them attention when it appeared in a Citroen ad (a bit weird that the "1001 Albums" entry seems to think that they were covering Os Mutante's cover of "A minha menina"). Also very cool to read that they made such a strong impression that they become the backing band for Gorillaz. Also quite a call out to the Isle of Wight: first The Bees, then Wet Leg, and I'm sure many others in between, all quite impressive.

Ugh. I was hoping this would be better/more entertaining than their debut album, but no luck there. And much like "Isn't Anything", I had no luck at all understanding *anything* they're singing; I guess they decided they liked their ethereal-Cocteau-Twins-meets-Dinosaur-Jr sound so much that they just kept on keeping on, except this time spending enormous amounts of someone else's money doing it. It's almost as if they were trying to make you wonder if your ears are plugged up or too full of wax or something, or maybe that your headphones or speakers are failing, but presumably their fans like this. And ironic to read that at some point during the agonizing years that they took to record the album (and in the process effectively bankrupted the label), Bilinda Butcher and Kevin Shields ended up with tinnitus, which Shields apparently refused to believe might have been caused by the extreme volume of their live shows. In fact, Shields sounds like a total ass and nearly impossible to deal with; no surprise that they went through 19 studios and many many engineers during the recording process.

I found this album surprisingly hard to sit through, and I'm hard-pressed to say that any of the tracks really sounded all that different from each other, or from their debut album ("Soon" is the only track that seems somewhat song-oriented, but even that's stretching things a bit). I shudder to imagine how painful "m b v" will be, although maybe the fact that their third album was more than two decades later might redeem it some. I doubt that amount of time mellowed somebody like Kevin Shields, though, so I'm not holding my breath.

Wow. I can't quite figure out if I would have enjoyed this album more if I understood the lyrics, or if it would have been even more painful making out recognizable words amongst the musical zoo cacophony. Either way, I applaud their dedication and commitment to the avant-garde aspect of Tropicalia, and simultaneously give a full-throated hiss at the atrocious-but-not-really-atonal sounds they produced for over a half-hour (this is definitely an album that's best appreciated *without* headphones, I suspect). I can definitely see why this album made it onto Mojo magazine's Top 50 Most Out-There Albums, and on Rolling Stone magazine's Top 40 Stoner Albums; sadly, I wasn't really in the mood for either of those experiences. Too bad, as they have a great band name, and that album cover fits perfectly with something out of "What We Do in the Shadows". And I feel badly giving them only two stars given how much they put themselves out there in the midst of a truly horrific period of Brazilian history, but good god this is nearly unlistenable at times.

It's nice to see Ice T represented in this collection, and while this isn't a great album (and definitely *way* too long), it seems like a good selection from his fairly lengthy discography (especially if you include Body Count). Like so many late 80s/early 90s rap albums, music definitely takes a distant back seat to the lyrics, but at least Ice T is a good storyteller, and the tracks rarely stick exclusively to the stereotypical gangster themes of sex and violence (thankfully, as they're not very good when they do). The best of the lot for me are "New Jack hustler", the title track, the PE-influenced "Fly by", "Midnight" (mainly because it samples Black Sabbath's "Black Sabbath", a nice crossover), and the depressing "The tower"; I really wanted to enjoy "Body count", his introduction to his rock/rap/metal/funk band, but I was surprised how weak that track was. Reading up on this album was also a nice reminder of his fairly extensive film and television career (for example, I had no idea that he's played the role of Odafin Tutuola since 2000 on "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit", which qualifies him as the longest-running male series actor in American TV history), and unlike his fellow SoCal rapper/actor Ice Cube, Ice T hasn't descended into weird and sad conspiracy theories and questionable politics.

Well, given that this album seems to top many people's lists of the best prog rock album ever, I can say with a high degree of confidence that prog rock is not for me. (Although I must say that I've enjoyed Rush's earlier work for a long time, and I'm struck by how similarly structured Rush's "2112" is to ELP's "Tarkus" (epic saga on side one, unrelated songs on side two), and I've *never* had the kind of visceral reaction to "2112" as I did to this album, so maybe there's hope for me yet.) I can kind of get why the title track has a cult following, even down to the album artwork, but aside from the somewhat interesting time signature changes, it seemed far more turgid than insightful to me. And the second side's collection of ditties are nothing special.

I'd kind of hoped this album would redeem them after listening to "Pictures at an Exhibition", but I'm beginning to think that I don't like ELP much at all (at least their earliest stuff). I can see why this album was included, but I don't have to like it.

Aside from the opening track making you feel like you're listening to Spinal Tap having their triumphant return in Japan, I have no idea why this album made it into this collection. It's basically a greatest hits album (itself a no-no with this project) by a band that, it turns out, doesn't really have all that many great hits, despite the insanely long runtime for just seven songs. But it's always nice to hear "Smoke on the water", and their live version of "Space truckin'" is pretty entertaining in a Grateful-Dead-style of infinite noodling; it's hard, though, listening to Ian Paice's extended drum solo in "The mule" and not think of how much better Neil Peart's solos were on Rush's live albums from the same era. And while it turns out I'm not a big Deep Purple fan, I would agree with all the accolades that this is a surprisingly good live recording (especially so with no overdubs), and it's fun to hear how much the Japanese audience were clearly *really* into the set.

Listening to this album made me realize that, aside from the fantastic and very familiar title track, and maybe a few other songs from this and other albums, I haven't heard much Clash until now. I was pleasantly surprised that this album wasn't chock full of angry punk tunes--a particularly daunting expectation given that it's a double album--and while I suspect this polarized some of their fans, it's nice to get a decent amount of variety across the two discs. Some of the tunes reminded me of early The Specials (especially the more politically oriented songs) or Elvis Costello (for the new-wave/rock-n-roll tunes), but not in a derivative way. It seemed a bit uneven at times--tunes like "Jimmy jazz" or "Lover's rock" don't work all that well, and a number of songs sound like variations of each other (e.g. "Rudie can't fail")--but it's still a strong album overall despite its length. Among the unfamiliar tunes, I particularly enjoyed "The guns of Brixton" (especially since it showcased bassist Paul Simonon's writing and vocals), the jaded but truthful "Death or glory" and the perhaps-too-reggae "Revolution rock". I'm not sure it ranks up there as one of the greatest albums of all time, but it's a *lot* more interesting than I expected and clearly influenced a lot of bands who followed.

Argh--the curse of this project is its obsession with showcasing debut albums above all else for promising bands. I've been a big Chemical Brothers fan for a long time, and while I'm really glad they got included in the collection (and even more glad that they get two albums), this is *not* one of their best albums. Even worse, this album's relentless focus on making instrumental dance beats does a disservice to The Chemical Brothers (formerly Dust Brothers until the US Dust Brothers promised to sue them if they didn't change their name). Later albums have both more variety and more of a song structure to most of their tracks (sort of captured with "Alive alone"), which is a large part of their appeal to me. There's nothing wrong with this album--it definitely gets stronger in the second half--and even a few good-to-great tracks on it: mainly their original hit "Song to the siren" (especially fun to find out that one of the samples in this is from Dead Can Dance, a band that should have made it's way into this collection btw), the more forward-looking "Chemical beats" and "Life is sweet" (mainly for the odd video, but also nice to have The Charlatans' Tim Burgess providing vocals). But despite these positives, it's definitely not what I would have chosen for this collection, given how much more they've done with their career.

It would have been weird not to get *any* ABBA albums in this collection, but I'm not really sure that the patron saint of Eurovision deserves two albums, nor this particular album that ended the band's run. I guess it's nice to get a somewhat more introspective and brooding sound from them, and there are a few interesting songs along the way--the opening track "The visitors", their breakup anthem "When all is said and done", and the somewhat creepy musical number "Two for the price of one"--but overall this doesn't feel like an essential ABBA selection (although the very dated videos for their singles are pretty fun to watch 45 years later). I'm also not much of an ABBA fan, so there's that too.

This album is a nice surprise, by a band I'd never heard of, music I'm pretty sure I've never heard before, and a style that improves (subtly, perhaps) on the likes of Fugazi or Mudhoney or Dinosaur Jr and their ilk. I think what I like more than anything is that they actually carry a tune and beat, yet also still rock pretty hard, although they could have probably worked on making the vocals a little clearer and less muddy-/thrash-sounding. I particularly enjoyed the first half of the album, especially "In like Flynn", "Rockets are red" and "Satin down", while the second half tended to get a bit too far into the indie weeds for my tastes (although "Bullet proof Cupid" and "Bughouse" picked things up a bit). I'm not sure I'll likely revisit this album much, or perhaps ever, but I'm glad it was included in the collection, and I'm glad I got a chance to hear them.

Although it would have been nice to have gotten this album a bit further spaced apart from "The Idiot", I'm still really impressed at how much better this album is than the earlier collaboration with David Bowie, certainly in terms of sounding like and reflecting Iggy Pop's persona and style. This gets four stars alone for the two hits "Lust for Life" (with a great, manic, and *very* post-dated, video that was clearly part of the "Trainspotting" mania, but showcases how well Iggy Pop fared twenty or more years later) and "The Passenger" (easily his best song ever), but most of the tracks are very solid (maybe not "Sixteen", and "Turn blue" reminds me a bit of the too-rambling nature of Lou Reed's "Heroin"), and I also enjoyed "Some weird sin", "Success" and "Fall in love with me". A shame that RCA buried this album due to Elvis' death right before its release, not even bothering to press more copies when the album sold out; I can see why Iggy Pop fled RCA as quickly as he could after that experience. And funny too that it took "Trainspotting" to (re)rocket him to fame and glory (I'll admit that's how I first became familiar with his music...).

I would have been surprised if we *didn't* get a Joan Baez album, but I have to admit that this particular album is a puzzler for the collection, except perhaps because it's her debut album. There's none of her social activism or even contemporary music on this collection of well-sung but largely empty traditional folk songs, and given that those aspects fueled her popularity and image it feels like this album doesn't really represent Joan Baez all that well (it seems telling that this particular album didn't go gold until after her later albums made her famous). I enjoyed her rendition of "House of the rising sun" and also "Donna Donna", but for the most part this didn't do much for me.

On a side note, my parents (probably mainly my mother) were *big* Joan Baez fans, so I heard some of her music growing up, but never really enjoyed her voice and wasn't all that conscious of her politics. I *did* feel badly for Joan Baez, though, when my parents many decades later glowed about how they'd recently gone to see her perform in the rain at Seattle's Woodland Park Zoo amphitheater, with the whole (mostly elderly) audience sitting in camp chairs with parkas and umbrellas and toe-tapping along. It took a lot of willpower not to ask if she'd played before or after the puppet show....

I'm not sure if it was the album cover or just them getting lost in the (literally) five hundred albums between their debut album and this one, but it wasn't until I saw the cover for their earlier "I Should Coco" that I realized I'd heard of them, and was actually impressed with them. Unfortunately, this album isn't as fun or catchy or infectious as "I Should Coco", which is a bit of a disappointment. I liked "Richard III" (not so much the blah video), wanted to like "Late in the day" (in part because the video captured their earlier album's vibe, but the song just kind of dragged on; the same with "Going out"), enjoyed "G-song", and "You can see me" (I also liked it that they did weird recording stuff with a guitar and a cymbal and the band members grunting in "Sometimes I make you sad" to get the sounds). They didn't exactly dial this one in--I don't think they're really just in it for the money, and it's a solid album overall--but I guess the novelty or spirit or something just didn't work for me the same way their first album did. Thankfully, there isn't a third Supergrass album in this collection, so I don't expect to go through this confusion yet again....