Reviews by mitch058

Although I wouldn't have ever guessed it from the album's songs themselves (except maybe "Big black car" and "Holocaust", which sound so much like something from the 90s ironically), it's pretty clear from the Wikipedia entry that this was a truly tortured album in the making, and an increasing mental instability by Alex Chilton made the production experience equally tortured. Unfortunately, that intrigue doesn't really make this album any more interesting, at least to my tastes, although I do appreciate the sort of indie/alt-rock sound from long before that was a genre or term. (I do wish they hadn't tried to do that "Femme Fatale" cover, though.)

However, I'm honestly not sure why I needed to hear this before I die (especially since we have another Big Star album in this collection), but I have, so that's a relief. (And I remain baffled by the "1001 albums" book's conclusion that "It is not to be missed.")

Whenever I've seen this album's title, I've always imagined that it was not only a Talking Heads classic, but also that it has the vast majority of their best-known songs. I can see why it's a classic, but I'm very surprised that there are almost *no* radio classics on the album. (I can see that "I Zimbra", "Cities" and "Life during wartime" were all singles from the album, but the latter track is the only one that endured on radio playlists, although it definitely makes up for the remainder's obscurity.) Listening to this album nearly 50 years after it was released, it's interesting to hear how quintessentially Talking Heads this is, yet each track is also surprisingly *un*-distinctive (except "Memories can't wait", which feels a lot more like David Byrne's solo work years later)--it's like they created a mold for what a Talking Heads album would sound like, and then left it to past and future albums to create the hits they'd be known for long after they disbanded. Distinctiveness or lack thereof aside, my favorites on the album are probably "Life during wartime", "Heaven", and "Animals".

It's interesting to read that Brian Eno (who is everywhere) helped produce this album, as I suspect this album was the reason he was so reluctant to help produce their next album, yet there's no real discussion of whatever scarred either him or the band to working with him (or maybe he was just tired of producing their albums?).

I remember what a big impact this album had when it came out, and while it wasn't really to my taste, it's hard to deny that it's a well-produced and entertaining album with a surprising number of singles, especially for a debut album. I remember thinking at the time that there wasn't a lot of range to the tracks on this album, and nothing has really changed re-listening to this album as part of the collection. (I was also amused to watch the *very* 80s video for "Wishing well", complete with him doing some weird combination of Michael Jackson and James Brown moves, a surprisingly small guy playing a surprisingly large sax, and a taller backup singer who looks suspiciously like Will Ferrell (playing a backup singer). It's also impressive that the live video of "Dance little sister" from The Roxy in 1987 has all of these elements too--he has good live energy, but also a weirdly limited range of styles and moves.)

I never really wondered what happened to him after this album, but the Wikipedia entry on him seems to reinforce that this album was probably his career's highlight, despite producing plenty of music afterwards, as both Terence Trent D'Arby and then post-1995 as Sananda Maitreya. However, it also sounds like his confidence and self-esteem never flagged in the years afterwards.

Ugh. This was really painful to listen to (and watch, in the case of "Buffalo gals", and pretty much the definition of appropriated and mangled music under the horrible genre of world music. (And in the case of "Double Dutch", truly appropriated and stolen from South African musicians.) Unlike something like Jah Wobble's Invaders Of The Heart album, which at least has original music compositions, this plays almost like the DJs who make up World's Famous are playing a radio station broadcast of "songs from around the world", with almost no coherence or thematic unity.

I kind of get why this album is included in this collection, especially since it seems to have had a role in generating interest in early hip-hop and non-Western musical styles. But given how incredibly incompetent and laughable Malcolm McLaren was in the development of this album (at least based on what the Wikipedia and the "1001 Albums" entries had to say, adn those entries certainly seem in keeping with someone who was the Sex Pistols' manager), I'm not sure *any* of us should be giving the man or this album our time of day, frankly.

It seems somehow appropriate that we'd get a Kendrick Lamar album after his Super Bowl halftime show (not sure how I feel about having two Kendrick Lamar albums in this collection, though). Interesting that Drake coexists quite happily in this album (but not so interesting that I have any desire to understand the beef/diss between both of them). Also interesting that this album doesn't really hew to old-school West Coast style (aside from the unfortunately ubiquitous expletives and misogyny), and I liked it that there's plenty of ambiguity in the too-long and somewhat tedious coming-of-age story on this album. His singles seem like the highlights of the album, and the accompanying videos are compelling even while they're also uncomfortable and offensive at times (but why does the video for "B**ch, don't kill my vibe" end with a brief "Death to Molly" message?).

Most of all, though, I enjoyed this album more than I expected to, largely because of the strong storytelling and how he sidesteps the seemingly required sledgehammer of bragging and glamorizing that characterizes so much of 21st century hip-hop (or at least my impression of it). I was really tempted to give it four stars, but the too-long runtime and the super-annoying chorus voice that was on too many of the tracks downgraded it by a star. Sorry, Kendrick!

I was *really* hoping that this would be at long last the final infliction of Morrissey from this collection, but sadly it appears there's still one more Morrissey album and one more Smiths album in store. So incredibly tedious. But at least this album has a bit more edge to it in some tracks than in many of the other albums, and a number of recognizable hits. The videos don't do much to add to the listening effect--why do all the band members look like robots in "Glamorous glue", for example?--but I'm not really surprised by that.

At some point (hopefully soon) I'll get the last of these interminable Morrissey-based albums. As the man says, I know it's gonna happen someday.

Well, *that* was not what I expected from either the title or the album cover. Definitely distinctive, and even if it's not necessarily rock--or for that matter pop--music, it's a worthwhile listening experience. Each album side plays like a classical score or possibly a musical soundtrack with all the lyrics removed, and of course there's that "Exorcist" theme opening that apparently captured a nation's attention and helped Richard Branson's fame and fortune. It's a bit hard listening to this for the first time in 2025 to understand how this album could have stayed in the UK top ten for much of 1974, but clearly it resonated. (The album is also at times sort of a precursor to New Age music, which might help explain its pull too.)

It's impressive to read how nearly every instrument is played by Mike Oldfield, as well as all of his self-taught playing and producing attempts, not to mention how many overdubs went into each piece on the album. At times it felt like the aural equivalent to that incredible 96-minute single-take movie "Russian Ark" (touring the Hermitage Museum), both of which are simultaneously interesting concepts and remarkably tedious experiences at times. And funny to read that the "Piltdown Man" section of Part Two was created when Oldfield downed a half-bottle of whiskey and screamed into the microphone for 10 minutes straight, all out of pique at Branson telling Oldfield he needed vocals to sell the album; it feels like this anecdote kind of sums up Oldfield's approach to people and feedback and perhaps even music.

Slightly more than halfway through the Bruce Springsteen corner of this collection, and this one is definitely not as compelling as either the classic "Born to Run" or the much more interesting "Nebraska". I appreciate how he developed this album as an inspirational and positive response to the 9/11 attack, and in many ways it accomplishes that goal without seeming stuck in a particular moment (and even "Worlds apart" largely avoids a sort of world music othering, sort of).

But overall it's just not that interesting to me either musically or lyrically; it just sounds like another bunch of Springsteen/E Street Band songs. There are a few highlights, though--"Nothing Man" (sadly not as great as Pearl Jam's "Nothingman"), "The fuse", the Mark Knopfler-style "Paradise" and "My City of Ruins"--and these definitely elevate the album.

I was really hoping to get something fun and harder-edged today, a genuinely *good* (if not great) album after a series of disappointing an/or not-really-my-thing albums the past many days. Sad to say, this wasn't that album, and may in fact have been the *opposite* of what I was hoping for.

It's hard not to hear this whole album as simply easy-listening fare, and not in a particularly positive sense, but I suppose you could classify a number of Stevie Wonder's albums in this collection the same way, or George Michael's solo album for that matter, and I don't think anyone would argue they should have been left off the list (although personally I could have done with fewer of Stevie Wonder's albums). And it's hard to argue with the proposition that Sade kind of nailed the easy-listening pop formula, from the ubiquitous "Smooth operator" to the other singles on this album (that I don't know I've ever heard before, or seen the (very 80s cheesy) videos for). I can't really say any of the tracks really did much for me (and "Sally" was a particularly painful track), but at least they didn't overly annoy me or seem particularly pretentious.

I completely missed it in "Shaun of the Dead" that Shaun noted that this album was ex-girlfriend Liz's favorite album, nor that it was *this* album (the actual physical vinyl disc) that Ed first threw at the zombie in the backyard. Perhaps not the kind of prop a band aspires to, but they could have done worse!

Try as I might, I just don't really enjoy Radiohead's music, sadly. This seems like a decent Radiohead album, and more varied than most, but very little resonated with me. For some strange reason, nearly every track on this album on YouTube Music had an associated video, which made the listening experience a bit more interesting, although I couldn't initially tell whether all of the videos were actually commissioned or produced by Radiohead (the Wikipedia entry clarified that many of the videos were contest winners from a Radiohead competition). "15 step" had a bizarre Japanese animation (not as bizarre or compelling as OK Computer's "Paranoid Android", though); "Nude" had slightly mesmerizing slow-mo-in-reverse footage of the band members playing; "Weird fishes" had a high-quality stop-motion animation story about...something involving forect creatures, flying fish, witches, etc.; "All I need" seemed to be some sort of anti-sweatshop video (apparently part of MTV's Exit Campaign, whatever that is); "Reckoner" had a really interesting but extremely ambiguous animation about the perils and cycles of population growth and overgrowth; "House of cards" had a far less interesting effects-filter lens on Thom Yorke singing the song (apparently LIDAR); and "Jigsaw falling into place" had a kind of boring head-mounted camera sequence of the band members playing in a room. It kept me paying attention, though!

Hm. I'm not sure why exactly so many of these semi-experimental-yet-ultimately-background-electronic-music albums keep getting into this collection, but I wish they would stick to a much shorter run-length. Like all of the albums in this project, I feel compelled to listen to the entire album, but 1+ hour listening sessions to music I'm not particularly enamored of tends to downgrade the rating simply out of frustration, and this is no exception.

Overall, this seems like an album that would have done really well as the soundtrack to an adventure/platforming video game, and if it *had* been that I would be giving it rave reviews, as most video game music isn't nearly as layered or atmospheric. But it isn't, so I guess I would have enjoyed many of the tracks more if there had been (a) less repetitive layering of the sounds, and (b) some (any!) lyrics. (The only thing that kind of substitutes for lyrics, I suppose, are the kind-of-interesting-but-also-pretentious "excerpts" for each track that are allegedly from a non-existent book named "Haunted Dancehall" by James Woodburne; the tone of the extracts is kind of compelling (a mix of Michael Moorcock and Jeff Noon), but cumulatively they're too short to really give any sense of a plot, sadly.) The album kind of picked up with "Wilmot" and then to some degree "Theme", but that wasn't really enough to warrant even three stars, I'm afraid.

So. Much. 80s. Here! I'm not really a Prince fan, and this may in fact be the first time I've heard this album beyond the four now-classic singles. That said, it's almost exactly what I expected it to sound like, and I enjoyed seeing the video for "Let's go crazy" and its concert shots; it highlight what an impressive performer he was as well as an accomplished musician. I'm also struck by how different and much more interesting Sinead O'Conner's cover is of "I would die 4 u". (Also hilarious to read that the song "Purple rain" was originally conceived as a country song collaboration with Stevie Nicks, but she freaked out when she got the music to write lyrics to.)

I've never really understood why Michael Jackson had so much of a bigger fan base than Prince, given Prince's added depth of musical abilities, but I'm not sure Prince ever tried to cultivate his celebrity status the way Michael Jackson did. I do wonder if Prince tried to compete with Jackson, though, given that he produced and scored a feature-length film for "Purple Rain", which certainly beats out "Thriller" lengthwise if nothing else. And full credit to Prince that this album rarely sounds like a soundtrack, with a few exceptions like the oddball "Computer blue" track.

Even though I'm not a big fan of his music or style, it's hard not to respect the magnitude of this album in his career.

I first became aware of Cee-Lo Green many (many) years ago when somebody shared with me an example of "kinetic typography", which turned out to be a lyrics video of Cee-Lo's "Fuck You" (the explicit version), and I enjoyed both the creative lyrics animation and the song. I'm not sure I've heard a lot else by him, though, and I'm disappointed that we didn't get his album with that on it (2010 "The Lady Killer"), as this was clearly his biggest hit, but I'm guessing that the editors had already added this 2004 album and didn't want to exchange it? I also didn't realize that he started out with Goodie Mob, so I've probably heard more with him than I realize.

Either way, it seems fine as an album, and I appreciate it that it's *not* a particularly gangster-oriented hip-hop album ("Glockapella" excepted), as well as appreciating his Dirty South roots. His voice is both distinctive (and impressively fast at times) and a bit hard to take over an hour of listening to, but I enjoyed all of the other artists that appear on the album too (especially Pharrell Williams). The highlights for me were "I'll be around", "Scrap Metal", and "Die trying". Overall, though, it could probably have been about a half-hour shorter and not lost much (maybe just pull out the tracks from "The one" through "All day love affair"?).

I was surprised to see that there was only one Eric Clapton album in this collection (and a seemingly early and obscure one at that), but I guess this makes up for that with a double-album Derek & The Dominoes album (not sure whether the Cream album really counts as a full-on Eric Clapton album). I'm not a huge Eric Clapton fan (music or otherwise), and I'm getting a bit tired of how many 70s albums are in this collection (far and away the most of any decade), so I'm kind of grumpy to get well over an hour of somewhat monotonously consistent Eric Clapton stylings. Just picking at random, how different is "Bell Bottom Blues" from parts of the songs before and after on this album? And isn't "I am yours" just "Layla" with water drums? It kind of feels like he has two song styles that he just does endless variations on--the sad ballad and the blues. But at least there are fewer covers on this than on "461 Ocean Boulevard", so at least we get more of his compositions, although I feel like the "Key to the highway" cover is probably the highlight of this album with Duane Allman and Clapton shredding it up together (but his "Little Wing" cover is quite disappointing). I *was* a bit surprised that "Layla" was the only (original) song that I recognized from this album, though.

I've heard of Goldfrapp, but I don't think I'd really heard anything by them before, and certainly not from this album. I imagined something much older and more lively than what this album had to offer--I think one of the reviews cited in the Wikipedia entry who mentioned Kate Bush and the Cocteau Twins was pretty spot on, albeit with slightly more of a pop-orientation than either of them. (Sadly, try as I might I couldn't find an online version of the 2010 edition of the "1001 Albums" book that was the only edition to feature this album; probably not a good sign that it was pulled not long after it was added (and the Internet Archive's 1010 edition was revised in 2011 and 2013 and thus didn't even have that entry...).)

I'm afraid to admit that the only track that even mildly caught my interest was "Cologne Cerrone Houdini". I had high hopes that I might enjoy the five videos of their singles from the album, but if anything the videos largely made the songs even less engaging; these are my notes: "Clowns" (creepy, too ethereal), "Happiness" (quirky and fun, poor guy must have been exhausted hopping throughout), "Road to somewhere" (boring, too ethereal), "A&E" (quirky, kind of fun, but not a great song), and "Caravan girl" (OK but nothing all that interesting; I suspect the title would be received a lot worse if it was American-phrased "trailer girl"...).

Switching from Dead Kennedys to CCR makes for quite a contrast on every level; sort of a smooth bourbon after several jolts of Jaegermeister. Sadly, I've never been much of a Creedence Clearwater Revival aficionado, and this is the first album for me of their three in this collection, so I'm not sure how it compares to their other albums. But it definitely sounds like them and has a shocking number of their classic radio hits, so it certainly *seems* like a good-if-not-great selection. I also enjoyed a surprising number of their non-singles tracks (possibly in part because many of their songs have a pretty consistent sound), especially the opening track "Ramble tamble".

It's amazing to see how many albums, and extremely popular hits, they cranked out in the space of about 3 years. Too bad that John Fogerty's imperiousness eventually burned out the CCR candle long before their time had come.

Despite knowing their name since I was a long-haired teenager, I'm pretty sure this is the first time I've actively listened to the Dead Kennedys (and was disappointed to discover that they didn't appear on the "Repo Man" soundtrack). I'm quite relieved that I didn't miss anything by this long-standing omission, and a bit surprised that the album sounds *exactly* like I thought it would. I suspect when it was released it wouldn't have sounded like a parody of what punk rock should sound like, but I fear that's what it sounds like to me. And I'm inclined to agree with the reviewer cited in the Wikipedia entry for this album, who theorized that the album's relative popularity was due solely to "Holiday in Cambodia" and its distinctive sound. The rest of the album is largely undifferentiated hardcore with largely unintelligible but clearly excoriating, incisive and sardonic lyrics. (There are a couple of tracks with some interesting parts that might have inspired that Faith no More spinoff/nightmare Mr. Bungle, though: "Chemical warfare" and "Ill in the head".)

I didn't know much about Jello Biafra before getting this album, and now that I've read up on him, I'm glad I didn't know what a jerk he'd been to his bandmates and others before I listened to much of the album. What a strange (and largely distasteful but passionately antiestablishmentarian) man, and a strange artistic and political career; I can't imagine that the Dead Kennedys could really shine without him.

It's so rare to get a 21st-century album, and even more uncommon to get something from the 2010s decade (in fact, this may be the first for me, at least according to my history page's decade-rankings, but I think it might be combining 2000s and 2010s albums into 2000s). It's funny, though, as this 2017 album sounds like it could have easily been made and released at least a decade earlier. Given their label as "indie pop", I was hoping for something a bit edgier and less commercial sounding; I think my favorites were "Lips" and "Brave for you" (and somewhat "Replica" too), but nothing grabbed me as much as I'd hoped; I was also disappointed that somehow their videos made the songs seem even more bland and uninteresting. They *do* have a nice layered sound, though it would have been nice if they'd scaled back on the echo/repeater effect and avoided the retro house/club/dance vibe. It'll be interesting to hear their 2009 debut album as well, and find out just how different this album is from their earlier work.

I particularly liked this largely-positive review on rateyourmusic.com, as it captures my sense too: "[I]'d like to believe that The xx have a Rumours tucked somewhere in their collective mind, a work of screaming passion and anger and beauty, pushing boundaries, blowing minds, changing lives. [I]'d also like to believe in the Tooth Fairy and reversible climate damage. it doesn't mean these things are coming true any time soon. "

I don't think I've heard much (or perhaps any) of Solomon Burke before, so it's very nice to get what's effectively a best-of album of his hits (and best to simply ignore whether this album violates the project's rule on greatest-hits/compilation albums). Despite a few oddball tracks ("Just out of reach" in particular), this is a great collection of soul/R&B/rock songs sung by a clearly talented artist.

I was initially intrigued to get an album and band I hadn't really heard of before, but then became pretty disappointed when the opening track ("Go to sleep") sounded like an infinite number of New Wave-era bands. And then I became confused, as I tried to figure out exactly which version of this album I was listening to (and *should* be listening to), and finally landed on the non-Director's Cut version, and was mollified that this version's opening track ("What time is love?") was both better-sounding and less 80s sounding than my first listen. This didn't entirely rescue the album, as it's not all that interesting musically, but certainly nice to get a bit of a change of pace from recent selections from this collection. The highlights seem to be their three singles--"What Time Is Love?", "3 a.m. Eternal" and "Last Train to Trancentral"--and not much else.

I feel like The KLF at their best sounds a lot like a more house/pop-oriented version of Faithless, and perhaps due to that not as interesting or as engaging ("Build a fire" was probably the most interesting track on the album in that regard). But nice to get a slightly obscure band that *isn't* either Scandinavian rockers or American psychedelic rock.