Reviews by mitch058

Amazing that, 430 albums in, this is the first of five Leonard Cohen albums in this collection. Although I'm not at all a Leonard Cohen connoisseur, I usually like most of what I've heard by him, and to some degree this early album of his continues that tradition, despite that it's probably the first full album of his I've listened to (I own "The Essential Leonard Cohen", but I know that doesn't count). It starts off a bit uncertain, but gets into full gear with "Story of Isaac", and I also really enjoyed "The partisan" (pretty wild that he and the producer flew to France to get the chorus recorded by French singers) and "You know who I am". I'm also really impressed that he moved into his trademark spare sound so early in his career; he definitely sounds better when he's not drowning in strings and other orchestral accompaniment (which it sounds like is in store for us with his debut album).

I had no idea until I read the Wikipedia entry that "Bird on a wire" is probably the epitome of essential Leonard Cohen, as he opened most of his performances with it and considered it one of his great songs. I'm not a big fan of his version of it on this album, but Joe Cocker did an amazing cover of it not long after the song was released (so sad, and a bit shocking, that we don't get *any* Joe Cocker in this collection), and Johnny Cash's much later version is also really well done. But all that aside, it's very very cool that Kris Kristofferson chose to have the first three lines from "Bird on a wire" on his tombstone.

I'm really glad (and a bit surprised) that this album made it into the collection. I saw them live back in 1993 (part of the impressively eclectic HFStival lineup), and really enjoyed their live act, enough to buy this album not long afterwards. I'll admit it doesn't hold up as well as I imagined it would--listening to it now everything sounds like it's in slow-motion--but I still enjoyed revisiting this beat-and-rhyme-heavy collection of tracks. I think my favorites are the title track (although the video is a bit embarrassingly dated), "Fade away", "Step it up", "Pressure" and "Creation". It would be easier to give them a full-throated four stars if the album wasn't quite so long and meandering (and perhaps a few fewer flutes), but I still feel like it's considerably more than a three-star album, and there's the nostalgia factor....

This is the first of three Marvin Gaye albums in this collection, and what a classic. I've never listened much to his music aside from the radio (and movie) classics, so it's nice to hear nearly an entire album's worth of less-familiar tracks. And since this was apparently his sex album (as opposed to his politics album "What's Going On?", which I'm looking forward to listening to), it's got a heaping serving of smooth Gaye to make the medicine go down. Aside from the familiar title track, I also enjoyed its sequel, "Keep gettin' it on", as well as the aptly titled "You sure love to ball". I can see why this helped make him into a sex icon, but I'm not sure why the Wikipedia entry claims this was his first foray into funk, as it's not very apparent across the album (to me at least). And while the album undoubtedly was quite suggestive for its time, it's kind of funny to read that a reviewer felt that this was "one of the most erotic recordings known to mankind." But big kudos to Marvin Gaye for the T.S. Eliot reference to "birth and death and copulation" on the gatefold sleeve!

Odd to get two live albums in a row (the previous was MC5's "Kick Out the Jams"). This one is definitely a lot more tame--and less inflammatory too, somewhat disappointingly--and I was kind of disappointed overall. I think part of the disappointment is that this album essentially bypasses the whole no-compilation/best-of stipulation in the project (especially since they cherry-picked from multiple performances), yet I kept thinking "this is their best stuff?" nonetheless. Part of the problem is simply that live recordings are often pretty poor quality (especially from this era, and despite however much overdubbing they may or may not have done), but I guess I also expected Thin Lizzy to rock more than they do; I kept wishing we could the rawness of the MC5 album as I listened to it. There are times I was reminded of Iron Maiden's dueling guitars (in "Emerald" and "Massacre" and their classic "The boys are back in town" especially), and there are several strong performances--especially the Bob Seger mashup "Rosalie/Cowgirl's song", "Suicide" and the ending "The rocker"--but too much of the too-long double album has so-so renditions of their biggest hits, albeit with some pretty fun guitar solos thrown in. I don't begrudge Think Lizzy's appearance in this collection, but I kept thinking it would have been so much more fun to listen to Ozzy Osbourne's much better live Randy Rhoads tribute album in its place. Ultimately, though, I realized as I listened to this album that I would have enjoyed this album a *lot* more if I'd been a big Thin Lizzy fan, which apparently I'm not.

This album is a fascinating time capsule, and strangely a blend of Rage Against the Machine and Spinal Tap, but obviously from much earlier than either. I'll admit I didn't know anything about the controversy surrounding the album, which seems to be mainly from the opening scream of the title track; I suspect that part of my ignorance is that the few times I've heard that song it's likely always been the radio version, sans mofo. I enjoyed the title track (who wouldn't?) as well as "Rocket reducer no. 62 (Rama Lama Fa Fa Fa)" (strange title), and honorable mention to the too-noodly-but-still-fun "Starship".

I imagine it would have been almost more fun to have been part of the audience for the show that produced this album, than to listen to this record at home. But I'm still impressed at how hard-rocking they are, especially for 1969, and the various nods to leftist/revolutionary stuff is also why I thought of RAGM (who have a pretty decent cover of this album's title track, btw). (3)

A fun and remarkably brief album for the day--well done! I suspect if I'd had this album growing up I'd have known every song and loved every one of the 30 minutes or so. They seem to have managed to create a largely punk (pop-punk?) sound without delving at all into drugs, politics or perhaps even sex, which is both a bit weird and also impressive; it probably helped that they were all in their late teens when they created this album, I suppose, or maybe living in Northern Ireland? I imagine it might have felt a bit sanitized to some, but their enthusiasm is pretty apparent; I particularly enjoyed "Jump boys".

Listening to this album, I was immediately (and consistently) reminded of the movie "Sing Street", in all the right ways (and the video for "Teenage kicks" only reinforced this connection).

Although I know we get a lot of the Madchester albums in this collection, I'm still a bit surprised to see that we get two Happy Mondays albums, since they weren't all that mind-blowing even back in the day (Madchester pioneers notwithstanding), and I would definitely have preferred to have gotten a James album in place of one of the Happy Mondays albums. But here we are.

I don't think I've heard most of the tracks on this album before aside from the radio hits "Kinky afro" and "Step on", whose videos (new to me) don't really add much to the experience, sadly, except to reinforce that the 90s baggy look wasn't very attractive on the band members. (But to their credit I feel like their impressive John Kongos cover "Step On" is possibly one of the better covers in this collection.) I think my favorites on the album are probably "God's cop", "Grandbag's funeral", and "Bob's yer uncle", as they seemed a bit more distinctive from the usual Happy Mondays sound (and pretty wild that "Bob's" was originally a reworked cover of "Everybody's Talkin'" by Fred Neil...).

A solid album overall, and more entertaining than I expected. In some ways the album reminded me of something that Pulp could have made, but without the intensity and scalding lyrics and music; sort of a Pulp-light/free album.

It's remarkable to me that a band that wasn't quite ready for studio recording and that filled their debut album with lots of covers (mostly by Dylan) that would become their most requested songs, were able to (a) even get this album produced, (b) able to convince the producer that they were ready to be recorded (but not before their title track was played and recorded with studio musicians), and (c) become a huge influence and inspiration to US musicians for years afterwards.

I think this is the first time I've heard anything from this album aside from their two famous singles "Mr. Tambourine Man" and "I'll feel a whole lot better". Their apparently-pioneering "folk rock" sound isn't really my kind of style, and they're remarkably consistent across the album with their jangly harmonies, so it's hard to pick out any favorites. I enjoyed their cover of Pete Seeger's "The bells of rhymney", the interesting Vera Lynn throwback "We'll meet again" (mainly because it made me think of Pink Floyd's "The Wall" more than "Dr. Strangelove"), and their cover of "Mr. Tambourine Man" is so familiar it's hard to ignore. However, the title track is definitely *not* one of the better Dylan covers, much like all of the Byrds' Dylan covers, sadly; they seem so intent on capturing the tone and style of Dylan's originals that they don't add anything interesting to the songs.

This makes for #2 of 5 Byrds albums for me, so only 40% of the way through....

This is one of those few albums where I regret reading about it as I listened to it, mainly because all the tedious drama surrounding Destiny's Child changing lineup (and the purported source of the album's title) and all the call-out and tear-downs in the tracks (which I wouldn't have caught if I'd just listened) really tinges my appreciation of the album. On the other hand, it's not a particularly interesting album (to me), so I *do* appreciate reading that Beyonce was far more involved in the writing and producing of most of the album than I'd have guessed otherwise.

I just wish that our exposure to Beyonce in this collection was her more recent--and far more interesting and creative--albums (thankfully we *do* get her 2013 "Beyonce" album, but not her more recent releases). This Destiny's Child offering doesn't really fall into that category, and the videos for the singles on this album only reinforce this, sadly. ("Survivor" and "Nasty girls" in particular, although "Independent women, Pt. 1" had the unfortunate result of reminding me of how awkward the movie "Charlie's Angels" was.)

Hm. Yet another Stan Getz album in this collection, and yet another take on "Desafinado"--not quite rivalling how many versions of "The girl from Ipanema" are in this collection, but it's close, I think. It seems like a fine album, and thankfully brief, but I'm not sure why we have yet another bossa-nova-inspired jazz album, when there are undoubtedly far better jazz albums that could have taken the place of this one.

I'm glad we got this album, pretty much exclusively because I've always enjoyed hearing "White rabbit", but it's weird to hear the remainder of an album that has nothing to really compare with that song. I'm reminded a bit of a much later album in this collection, "The La's" and their hit "There she goes", although that's not really fair to Jefferson Airplane or this album, since their other (decent) single, "Somebody to love", isn't that far from "White rabbit", although not nearly as interesting. The remainder of the album is disappointingly very late 60s-sounding and pretty forgettable, and some of the tracks are downright saccharine and annoying ("My best friend" and "Today" are an unfortunate one-two punch in this regard, and I'm shocked to read that they got substantial air-time back in the day). I *did* enjoy the Leo-Kottke-sounding instrumental "Embryonic journey", though, and there's something a bit compelling about "Plastic fantastic lover", perhaps simply because it was inspired by a visit to a plastics factory in Chicago while they were on tour.

I have no idea how to rank this album, as "White rabbit" elevates it for me well above three stars, but so much of this album is so middling it feels like it cancels out the one great song. But it's a great song, and it wasn't until I read the Wikipedia entry that I discovered that part of why "White rabbit" seems so different is because Grace Slick brought it over from her previous band, The Great Society. Maybe we can post-humously share the stars among the two bands? And as much as I didn't find the album as a whole very interesting or entertaining, it's hard to ignore the impact it had at the time.

Kind of sad to read that it was this album that doomed the Simon & Garfunkel revival, and also sad that ostensibly it was over a woman (Carrie Fisher no less), although I'm sure that the (re-)breakup was far more due to old wounds that apparently will never heal. Still, it's hard not to think that this album would have been much better as a Simon & Garfunkel album, with all of Garfunkel's recorded vocals restored to the tracks. This seems particularly true of the opening track "Allergies" and "Think too much (a)" (which ironically was the working album title before Garfunkel gave up). And since I didn't really find any of the tracks all that compelling, I think my *least* favorite track was "Cars are cars" ("susceptible to theft in the middle of the night").

On the other hand, likely because of Garfunkel's participation on the album, this is occasionally a more interesting and introspective Paul Simon solo album than the others in this collection (I've only listened to "Paul Simon" so far, but I know "Graceland" well enough to know that I'm not looking forward to the experience). Even so, I feel like Paul Simon's solo albums in this collection are about as compelling as other singer/songwriter's like Joni Mitchell, k.d. lang, Suzanne Vega, etc. Fine, but usually pretty flat-sounding because there isn't a full band participating as contributing artists, and so the music itself seems less foregrounded. I'm also not sure why this album got included in this project, given how lackluster it was with both critics and fans, and even the "1001 albums" entry author (Will Furford-Jones) seems confused about why he was asked to review the album.

It feels a bit odd to get this album *after* their later "Speakerboxxx/The Love Below" double-album, but that's life I suppose. I liked it that we got both Big Boi and André 3000 together on most songs, and I also really appreciated the more eclectic style on this album than most 90s/2000s hip-hop albums that we've gotten in this collection. That said, it's also a very different sound than on either half of "Speakerboxxx/The Love Below," but nice to hear Andre 3000 moving towards his more melodic/singing style, and I also enjoyed the p-funk vibes on some tracks (especially "I'll call before I come").

A solid (but overly long) album overall, and a few highlights throughout, mainly their singles like "So fresh, so clean" (with a fun video to go along with the song), "Ms. Jackson" (with the horror-style video with head-bobbing animals) and the wild "B.O.B" (with an amazing and hypnotic technicolor video to accompany it, not to mention the creative remix by RAGM's Zach de la Rocha), also the frenetic "Humble Mumble". Although it's not my preferred music style, I can definitely see why this album was so highly ranked.

Yet another artist I've never heard of heard of, and while the album isn't really to my taste, I do appreciate the exposure. At times it felt like a Bette Midler revue performance (or what I imagine one of those would sound like, since I haven't really actively listened to Midler aside from secondhand musical smoke from a rabid fan many years ago), other times like a musical soundtrack. Either way, not too much that drew me in ("Poverty" was a bit more interesting than other tracks), but I really appreciate it that she wrote the entire album. And I can see why some later critics felt she was a late-60s pop queen, although given that she was booed off stage at the Monterey Pop Festival and the lackluster sales figures, and that later bands had much more success with covering her songs, it seems like she was more of a singer's singer than a massively popular--or even appreciated--artist in her time.

And thus this concludes the Beastie Boys trilogy (although not chronologically, I know). I like it that this is sort of a bridge between the other two albums in this collection, with some of the frat-style hip-hop of "Licensed to Ill", but also occasionally more interesting collections of sounds and instruments as on "Ill Communication", but clearly *much* more sample-based than the latter album. They hadn't quite graduated beyond occasionally sophomoric lyrics, but there's a nice groove flowing through the album, accompanied by some of the most dense and satirical lyrics you could ever ask for. I felt like their strongest tracks were probably "Shake your rump", the second half of "Sounds of science", "Looking down the barrel of a gun" (another RATM-sounding track), and "Shadrach", with honorable mention to the concept of "B-Boy Bouillabaisse", even if it doesn't consistently deliver on the concept. I was also really impressed by how this sounded much later than 1989, and doesn't really feel dated in many ways, amazingly (but also glad to read that they were able to clear most of the samples and at affordable rates due to the early date of this album).

I had never heard of the Dust Brothers before reading about them in this album's Wikipedia entry, but I'm glad I read about them given how many songs, albums and artists I've enjoyed that they collaborated with. (And I loved finding out that they got their start at Pomona College's radio station!) The Beastie Boys chose well in getting them to work on this album--an amazing collaboration.

Another total unknown (to me) for today's selection, and thankfully a much more interesting and engaging mystery than yesterday's Kelela album. In many ways this album plays more like a soundtrack than an album per se (or maybe the soundscape for a museum exhibition on identity and spirituality and politics), but it's still very enjoyable, even when I don't understand the lyrics at all (e.g. "Homelands"). I particularly enjoyed the opening track "Broken skin", "Tides", "Nostalgia" and the title track. I do wish there were fewer (or no) drum-n-bass tracks (like "Nadia"), but given when this came out it's probably not too surprising.

Although the Wikipedia entry for this album is unhelpfully brief, the "1001 Albums" entry and the Wikipedia entry for Nitin Sawhney are defintiely worth reading, and fill out a portrait of an intriguing and multi-talented person whose life experiences are all over the map. Funny how this album kind of mirrors his life. I'm really torn between three and four stars for this album, but it feels just a bit too long and a bit too eclectic for four stars.

As always with this project, I'm intrigued with an artist/band I've never heard of. Sometimes it's a fun experience; most of the time it's not so fun, and this album definitely falls into the latter category, but in every case I feel like I've been exposed to music I probably wouldn't have ever listened to. I've never heard of Kelela, and I'm pretty sure I've never heard anything by her, certainly not from this album. I also found I was double-checking that this really did come out in 2017, rather than the 90s or 2000s, as there's nothing particularly recent-sounding on this album. And I have to question the wisdom of her choices with the opening track's video for "Frontline", a *very* antiquated-looking VR-like animation of a woman apparently having enough of her man; the video totally distracts from the song, and I kept thinking how strange it was to have a fairly-recent video looking like it might have been made with technology from the 90s. (Thankfully, the other two are live videos, and while "LMK" isn't particularly interesting, "Blue light" has a somewhat interesting erotic horror element, likely inspired by Bjork but having a certain Lovecraftian spin.) Unfortunately, the non-video tracks didn't really have much going for them either, at least for me, and I'm hard-pressed to distinguish most of the songs from each other ("Better" is a bit more distinctive than most). This could easily have been a *much* shorter album and not lost a thing, sadly.

Given that the primary appeal of this album seems to be the melodic singing over electronic music, a la Bjork, I'm *very* frustrated that we got this album yet literally nothing from Faithless, which did many aspects of this approach and mood *so* much better (or, for that matter, anything from Dido). That's not Kelela's fault, of course, but it's hard not to ding her for not measuring up to past artists.

Although I still prefer "Reggatta de Blanc" to this album, I'm glad that there are two Police albums in this collection. It's kind of a sad album to have in this collection, of course, since Sting was so clearly already out the door (despite the massive success the band was having at that point), but perhaps a fitting endcap. My favorites then and now from this album are "Walking in your footsteps" (despite how obvious and simple the lyrics are in many ways), "Miss Gradenko" and "King of pain", with a shout out for Andy Summers' hilarious "Mother" (which sounds so much like early Police yet totally *un*-Police by this point).

I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I just got done dinging Kate Bush for her superficial-sounding world/ethnic music on "The Sensual World", yet you could probably accuse Police of the same in some aspects on this album (especially "Tea in the Sahara"), and then Sting went full-bore on the world music sound in his solo career. But probably because I'd heard this album from a relatively early age, it doesn't bother me nearly as much on this album, and it feels so much more creatively incorporated too.

I'll say this: nobody does the baby voice like Kate Bush. And sadly this is the first of three of her albums in this collection, so I have plenty more baby voice to listen to. And all I can really hope is that this isn't her best album of the three in the collection, as it felt so saccharine and painfully melodramatic (earnest?) throughout. I think part of my negative reaction is how much world music plays in the background of most of the tracks, in a very Paul Simon sort of way. I kept expecting to hear a refrain along the lines of "Do they even know it's Christmas in Africa" with each song. And the videos don't help much either, although I give full credit to the fact that she produced them all. The title track goes full on Maid Marion in a kind of painfully awkward way (I then read about how that was supposed to be a long James Joyce exposition of Molly Bloom, complete with all the yes exclamations, so maybe not *so* bad), while "Love and anger" was particularly cringe-worthy, at least viewed in 2025, with her clutching sceptre and crown and then whirling dervishes circling her in some sort of colonial abjuration (or maybe worship?). I kind of expected to recognize at least one song from this album, but apparently I wasn't listening to the right radio stations back when this album came out?

Ah, the definitive Def Leppard album at long last. (Still a mystery why this collection also has "Hysteria".) It sounds *exactly* like I (vaguely) remember from the rockin' 80s, no better and no worse. I was kind of hoping that the videos (which I never saw back in the day, thanks to a cable/MTV-less upbringing) would add to the effect/quality of the songs, but sadly they too are exactly what I kind of expected, although the video for "Photograph" is actually quite disappointingly boring and uncreative, and while it's fun to see their drummer with both arms, I do wish he wasn't such a big fan of the Union Jack short-shorts. I'll admit that the only highlights on this album are their impressively numerous singles; the rest is *very* forgettable, making for a fairly uneven album.

If I had enjoyed Def Leppard more as a teenager, this would easily be 4 or 5 stars for nostalgia alone. But there was always something kind of...generic...about them that made me trend towards the somewhat harder-edged bands like Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, even the Scorpions (none of whom were all that much more interesting musically, admittedly). I was also struck by how much Joe Elliott occasionally sounds a *lot* like AC/DC's Brian Johnson, albeit Elliott's growls aren't nearly as impressive as Johnson's.