Reviews by mitch058

I'm not really sure exactly why, but this album just didn't do it for me. I never really found a way to enjoy her voice (or at least accept it as part of the experience), and the lyrics generally seemed to alternate between bland and not-all-that-insightful (and the first few tracks likely would have gotten claims of misogyny if they were delivered by a man, especially in 2017). The music was distractingly muddy, scratchy and somewhat distorted, all of which was likely intentional (especially given the focus on analog production), but that doesn't really make it any more interesting or palatable. That said, it was pretty impressive to see how many videos she'd made for the album. Overall, though, this album doesn't really feel like it's a must-hear selection.

Another tough-to-rate album, but thankfully in a much better way than, say, Roni Size/Reprazent's epic-sized "New Forms". I have a bit of a soft spot for interesting ambient music, and this definitely fits that description to a tee, and I liked it that there was a sense that this was an album of loosely-adjacent songs/tracks/whatever-you-can-call-them. But while this isn't exactly the weird conundrum of Brian Eno's "Music for Airports" (as in, is this really music meant for listening to?), many of the tracks kind of veer into that territory. And it suffers from the same limitations of most ambient music, which is just that it's hard to actively listen to this album as it seems designed to be in the background. Either way, though, I really enjoyed the entire experience from these Scottish brothers, and some of the tracks' very creepy samples of distorted voices (apparently mainly from North American PBS shows) kind of invoked a sad Northern European horror movie; my favorites are probably super creepy "The color of the fire", "Telephasic workshop", "Sixtyten", the too-short "Roygbiv", "Aquarius" and the strangely upbeat bonus track "Happy cycling". So maybe it's not that hard to rate after all, given how much I enjoyed it.

A fun album, with high energy and plenty of FU attitude to deliver in spades, and from a band I've never heard of nor heard anything from them before. They made a great choice to keep the runtime to right about 30 minutes, and the Nova Twins keep up the ball-busting intensity throughout. I liked it also that they've adopted a strange mashup of overdriven guitars/bass, industrial style background, rap and pop style lyrics and who knows what else, although at times it felt like each track was kind of intended to feature as explosive end credits to a season of a TV series more than anything else (although the impressive videos to their singles kind of evoke a movie soundtrack instead). Regardless, though, this is a fun sonic explosion; I'd definitely be up for hearing other albums by them.

Hm. I liked it that the very AI-looking album cover didn't give a hint to the singer-songwriter style of this album. But I didn't really find Jasmine Cruikchank's voice very appealing, or really the accompanying music, so this didn't really do it for me, and felt like a really random selection to include as an album to hear before you die. The only tracks that kind of grabbed me were "Breaking in reverse: and the great-named "Guy Fawkes Tesco disassociation", and even those ultimately felt like a bit of a buzzkill despite their energy. But I give props to the project editors for finding an album in 2025 to include in the collection, even if it's not really to my taste.

I guess I must not be much of a fan of (nor really the audience for) "quiet storm" music, as this album didn't do much at all for me. She seems to have a good voice, and a nice alternative to Whitney Houston's over-the-top style, but the lyrics are largely forgettable, and the 80s R&B/easy-listening soundtrack is equally blase and bland. The music actually made me think of a friend from college who played in his high school jazz band with a friend of his, and his friend went on to become a cruise line band member for several years. Eventually his friend left this apparently lucrative gig, tired of playing soulless background music. I'm guessing he probably didn't enjoy "Rapture" all that much either.

I feel badly for the Chemical Bros, at least with respect to this project and collection: while this album is substantially better and more interesting than debut "Exit Planet Dust", their best was yet to come, and it's hard to imagine that this album would necessarily do any better to lure anyone into exploring their later catalog. Regardless, "Dig Your Own Hole" has lots of great energy and creative beats, and it was fun revisiting the album. My favorites continue to be the impressive trio of "Elektrobank"/"Piku"/"Setting sun" as well as the ending trio "Lost in the K-hole"/"Where do I begin"/"The private psychedelic reel". Some of the harder-edged tracks like the opening "Block rockin' beats" and the title track made me (idly) wonder if they ever shared a show with Prodigy--what a trip *that* would have been. (P.S. The four-star rating is more of a lifetime achievement award than for this particular album...)

How is it that at album #1006, this is the first of two Captain Beefheart albums I've gotten in my queue? Perhaps more importantly, *why* are there two of the erstwhile captain's albums here? From all accounts, this album didn't really chart all that well, even in the UK (and even with John Peel promoting it), and both the Wikipedia and "1001 Albums" entries suggest that the other album in the collection, "Trout Mask Replica", is the real winner here, at least for those who enjoy Captain Beefheart and his ever-changing Magic Band's stylings. So sight unseen, I'm banking on their other album redeeming their place in this project, because this was a quite underwhelming Frank Zappa impersonation experience (except for the classic "Electricity", which single-handedly rescued this from one-star territory).

Having now heard this offering from Sepultura, all I can really ask is WTF is "Arise" even doing in this collection? This is so much more interesting than their debut album (albeit much longer), and makes me far more interested in them than the other album ever did. I'll admit I might not have caught all of the Brazilian/indigenous-culture exploration if I hadn't read about the album, but I'm glad I did, especially about their experience traveling to and working with the Xavante tribespeople. At times I was reminded of a Brazilian version of Rage Against the Machine (in a good way), although there's a bit too much filler/metal-noodling to make the comparison fully stick. And as much as I enjoyed the sonic overload, I'm not sure all that many tracks really stuck; that said, "Ratamahatta" (and its accompanying stop-motion video) is truly inspired, and I also really enjoyed the full-throated spirit of the title track (and its video) as well as "Lookaway". It's not quite four-star material, and some of the tracks like "Itsari" and "Canyon jam" seem more blandly world-music-esque than not, but it's also light-years beyond their other album in this collection. (I just worry for Max Cavalera's vocal chords--there's *no* way that style of singing can be good for his throat over the years...)

I'm not sure I ever really knew their name, but I'm pretty sure I heard plenty of this album on the radio in the 2000s. And now I know who they are. What a fun, great debut from a bunch of guys inspired by 70s-era garage rock (and especially The Velvet Underground, apparently). I can also see why this album did even better in the UK than in the US, as there's a lot to The Strokes sound and style that sounds much more British than American; funny too how much they in turn inspired the likes of Arctic Monkeys and Franz Ferdinand to achieve a similar sound. I'm not sure I would have swooned over them as much as music critics did back in the day, but I'd happily listen to this album again.

While their sound and style isn't really my usual preference, there's something about this album that I enjoyed a lot more than I thought I would. Guy Garvey's voice isn't great, I'll admit, and at times I was reminded of XTC's sound (and at other times of Queens of the Stone Age), but the group as a whole seems both tight and well-rounded. Highlights for me were probably their big singles "The bones of you", "Grounds for divorce" and "One day like this" (although a bit jarring to have the latter video show a sign-twirler in LA advertising condos for sale on the cusp of the Great Recession...), as well as "An audience with the pope" and "The fix", but I also liked it that there weren't really any weak spots throughout. I can see/hear why they got great press for this album, and I'm glad they won the Mercury Prize for "The Seldom Seen Kid" (although I know so little about the Prize that this honor means very little to me). And I love the idea of a cocktail named "Grounds for divorce"....

What an odd album. The whole time I listened to it it felt like I was listening to a Doors-like band playing other people's blues numbers--really just paying homage to Bo Diddly--but at the same time I was sort of mesmerized with how well they avoided the seemingly-inevitable noodling aspect of epic jam sessions. This was particularly true for the "Who do you love suite", which managed to take up the whole first side and yet seemed well-paced even without much in the way of vocals. I'm not sure if they were just particularly disciplined when they played at the Filmores East and West, or if they were always on the same page when they played together, but I really appreciated how this largely-live album rarely descended into Grateful Dead/Colonel Bruce Hampton/Phish-like endless wandering (the odd spaghetti-western-soundtrack-like "Cavalry" had its moments, I'll admit, possibly because they ended up using a studio version). I'm not sure I'd intentionally revisit this album, but I'm glad to have heard a late 60s San Francisco band that knew how to keep it together. I also wonder if Van Halen was inspired by these guys to end "Diver Down" with a fun a cappella rendition of "Happy Trails"?

I'm not really sure how to rate this album. It's waaaay too long, and for anyone who's not a diehard drum-n-bass fan, it's a horrible slog through at least a quarter of its 2+ hour runtime (and then just a slog after that). I remember in the early 2000s I wanted to understand why music critics seemed to be talking up the wonders of drum-and-bass and went and purchased a couple of seemingly well-reviewed albums, including Roni Size/Reprazent's "In the Mode". I kind of wish the project's editors had included that album rather than Ron Size's debut album, because even though "In the Mode" has a lot of the same weaknesses and failings of this album, it's nearly half as long as "New Forms", which is still a good 40 minutes longer than it needs to be.

Much like Goldie's album in this collection, there's not a lot of personality to most of the tracks, even those that feature Onallee's vocals; the only track that really seemed to find a (good) groove was "Watching windows". I guess that sort of clinical/programmed sound is part of the appeal of drum-and-bass, at least to some, but for me it's not very fun or good for much beyond background listening (or the soundtrack to a video game). And while I know this won the Mercury Prize, I feel like this collection only needs one dedicated drum-n-bass album, and Goldie's is (a) shorter and (b) has more variety than this album.

What a great debut! There's so much variety on this album that I kind of wonder if they were able to sustain the range and energy on subsequent albums, but I look forward to figuring that out (when this project is over, though). I enjoyed nearly every track (except maybe "Railroad"?), so it's hard to pick any real favorites; if I had to pick a few to call out, though, I particularly enjoyed "You will you won't" and "Nightmare part II", but I was also really impressed throughout how tight their sound is across a lot of genres. The only part that was a little bit of a bummer was in the Wikipedia and "1001 Albums" entries, where there are *lots* of references to how much they got compared to labelmates The Coral (and with whom they also shared a producer) . My group hasn't gotten The Coral's album in this collection yet, and we're nearly to the end, which likely means that an inevitable comparison between the two is coming soon. Sort of like a Black Keys/White Stripes sort of thing, Liverpool-style?

Such. Endless. Turgid. Tripe! It's amazing to think that Lemmy Kilmister could have emerged from this and into Motorhead. Equally amazing to read that this album somehow made it to #9 on the UK Albums Chart. I'm sure that the live shows they put on--especially accompanied by the self-stylings of the ultimate groupie Stacia--were far better than this live recording, but I'm guessing a lot of that had to do with all the drugs everyone was consuming to get their minds off the fact that they played endless variations of the same sounds for hours on end; the only tracks that even had a semblance of a structured song were "Orgone accumulator" and "Time we left this world today", and even then they too often moved from lyrics and structured rhythm into random and often sax-infused noodling. They're nowhere near as bad or intolerable as "The Incredible String Band", and I somewhat enjoyed it that the poet/speaker Bob Calvert sounded a lot like Alan Rickman, but not even that, or the fact that Michael Moorcock (one of my favorite British authors) was involved with some of the music and lyrics ("Sonic attack") and poetry ("The black corridor"), can really redeem this chore of an album.

I'm not really sure we needed two Ice Cube albums in this collection, but if I had to choose just one, I think this debut album outdoes his slightly later "The Predator", probably just on the strength of The Bomb Squad's involvement as producer. The lyrics are just as hit or miss on this album, and they miss more often than not, aside from some perceptive and insightful commentaries on the more political tracks like "Once upon a time in the projects" or "Endangered species". And PE's Bomb Squad does a nice job of injecting a more musical bent to a lot of the tracks (something I really missed on "The Predator"); "Who's the mack?" is probably the distinctive of the lot in that regard. It's hard to ignore all the gratuitous swearing and sexism/misogyny, though, and that helps drag it down more than it needs, but I guess that's part of Ice Cube's value proposition?

I feel like this album is the missing link between so many 80s new-wave bands that either embraced pop/dance or pouted in its general direction--The Cure, Human League, Soft Cell, Duran Duran, Pet Shop Boys, Culture Club, etc. ABC seems to have fond a way to blend all sorts of synth-pop styles into a fairly lush arrangement, with Trevor Horn's over-the-top vocals making Martin Fry's despairing love lyrics seem somehow more fun and less bleak. I'm not sure I could say I enjoyed the album and their music, but that's not for their lack of effort, and it's definitely a lot more entertaining than most of their contemporaries' efforts (that goes double for the videos to their singles "Poison arrow", "The look of love", and "All of my heart"). They took a hand of Sparks and raised the bet to Meatloaf levels.

I was wondering if we'd get any Meat Puppets in this collection, so it's nice to get a small dose here (aside from their semi-guest appearance on Nirvana's "Unplugged" album). I own several of their albums (four, to be precise), but all from a later period than this one, so most of this album was new to me. It's interesting to hear them still figuring out what sound they wanted to focus on, and you can hear echoes of some tracks like the trio "Magic toy missing"/"Lost"/"Plateau", as well as "Climbing" and "Lake of fire" on albums a decade or more later. My favorites were probably "Plateau" and the ultimate Curt Kirkwood screech on "Lake of fire", but overall I was kind of disappointed that this was our Meat Puppets sampler--you can hear what they were capable of, but they weren't quite there yet, and a lot of the tracks seem like variants of each other than the juicy Meat Puppetry to come. I still think fondly of listening to to "Forbidden Places" on a crappy knockoff Walkman as I skied the equally crappy Southern California snow on Mt. Baldy.

Ugh. Although I appreciate the opportunity to hear the title track in all its epic glory (and I guess poor Jeff Beck got treated to a jam version twice as long as the album version in some random Iron Butterfly concert in 1967), I'm not really sure I absolutely needed to hear the rest of this album before I die. But so it goes, and to be fair the first half of the album is pretty innocuous and curiously bleak for psychedelic rock. I also enjoyed learning that the title track is actually titled "In the garden of Eden", but when lead man Doug Ingle played and sang the core of the song to a bandmate, he was so drunk on Red Mountain wine (whatever that is--sounds lethal) that all his transcriber could make out was the phonetic words of the title track. Far out, dude....

This collection does *not* need more than one Yes album, yet here we are at #3 (of three, thankfully). Sadly, this album is closer to the slogfest of "Close to the Edge" than "Fragile", so it's not really a great experience for anyone but true prog-rock afficionados, although I always enjoy the opening minutes of the "Your move" part of "I've seen all good people" (funny how you could probably say that of most Yes songs...). Each time I saw that we had a Yes album, I kind of hopefully thought it might sound like my brother's copy of "90125"--which wasn't great, I know, but at least it had some semblance of structured, radio-friendly songs--but no luck. Three strikes and you're out, Yes!

Well, *this* is a blast from the past, that's for sure. I've always been impressed at Cyndi Lauper's longevity in the entertainment industry, but even back when she was all over the radio, I never really found her voice and style all that compelling. Listening to this album now, 43 years later, I'm not sure much has changed in that regard, although at least now I can hear her musical references better. I've also never really heard any of her songs beyond her radio classics "Girls just want to have fun", "Time after time" and "She bop", and never saw any of those songs' videos either, so that was nice to get a little more Lauper grounding, and the second half had a little more variety (if you can get past her Betty Boop stylings); "Witness" and :Yeah yeah" had some nice reggae-esque/punk-esque inflections. Regardless of my own tepid reaction to her music, I'm really impressed that this was her debut album, and also impressed she managed to get Annie Leibowitz to do the album cover. Honestly, I can't imagine 80s new wave without Lauper, a testament to her success.