Reviews by mitch058

Given this project's fascination with semi-obscure Scottish and Welsh artists, I figured it was just a matter of time before we got the Cocteau Twins, although I'm a bit surprised there are two of their albums in this collection, given how..niche...their sound is. I had a musician friend in high school who was absolutely obsessed with the band, and he played their weirdly ethereal music *all* the time (he was also obsessed with Stanley Jordan's two-handed guitar tapping, in addition to the standard death metal lineup, so it wasn't really 24/7 Cocteau Twins, even though it often seemed like it). I think this was more of their "Treasure" era music than this album, but it always felt like they were what The Cure kind of wanted to be if they didn't care about being accessible or popular. And even with "Heaven or Las Vegas", this still seems to be true, although perhaps more Cranberries-like than Cure-like, and there are definitely hints of more mainstream tunes ("Pitch the baby" a great example, also "Heaven or Las Vegas"), if you could only understand or even make out the lyrics amongst the lush wall of sounds (I'm really impressed that watching her lips in the videos doesn't seem to help *at all* in understanding what she's singing). I always enjoyed small bits of the Cocteau Twins back in the 80s, and I think that still holds true today.

It's probably not a great idea to subject anyone to Kanye West and then Courtney Love (Hole) right after each other, given how much their toxic and destructive personalities color their music. And I'm also disappointed that the collection has more than one Hole album, given how interchangeable it feels like their songs and albums are. But "Celebrity Skin" *does* have a few more radio-friendly hits than the aptly-named "Live Through This" (mainly the title track, but also "Malibu" and "Awful"), and I guess it counts for something that they seemed to progress into alt-rock more than grunge-ish on this album. Overall, it's a fine if overly long album, especially if you enjoy Hole's sound and style, which I don't particularly, although I did enjoy "Use once & destroy".

Much like my experience listening to "Live Through This", I'm really surprised how they're not all that distinctive-sounding. But kudos to Love for the T.S. Eliot/Wasteland inspiration for the album, and sad that they tried to get Brian Eno to produce the album, and then tried for Billy Corgan and then settled for a guy who effectively sabotaged their longtime drummer. What a strange swan song for a band. (3)

It's hard to really separate Kanye West's sad mental health journey (and public persona) from his music, but taking this album out of this context is probably the best one can do. It's definitely more interesting and expansive than "The College Dropout" (listened to previously), and it has a few entertaining highlights -- "Dark Fantasy", "POWER", and "Hell of a life" (in part from the "Iron man" riff). The video/singles are also well-produced and entertaining ("Runaway" especially (didn't watch the whole 30-minute film, though) and also "Lost in the world", although "All of the lights" not so much). Much like "The College Droupout", it's waaay too long, with a number of very forgettable songs (and the latter half of "Blame game" is just downright unpleasant and tedious and offensive), but still a very solid album, if you can separate the person from the music (which I personally find tough, given how toxic he's been).

The Wikipedia entry for this album feels like it might have been written by a very devoted Kanye West fan, as it rarely makes a lot of sense. Many of the sentences seem to start with one thought and end in the midst of another, with very little coherent in between. ("He elaborated that a minimum of 80 percent was genuine, with the remainder 'fulfilling a perception' for the public. West also insisted that he was not criticizing My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and instead failed to reach satisfaction, then openly revealed his idea of the truth." Or whatever.) But reading between the non-linear lines, it sounds like the production process was fairly tortured and excessive and expensive, which sounds about right. Kanye West put an entire fridge's worth into a blender, and I'm impressed with the strange, rich stew emerged.

As far as I know I've never heard of Turbonegro, nor heard anything from this album, a nice exposure to a late 90s album. They've definitely got a serious retro rock vibe going (maybe a bit metal? apparently punk roots too), which is kind of fun, and they're a pretty tight band. I'm not sure there are any really notable songs in the album (even their bonus track "Suffragette city" cover is kind of nondescript), but it's kind of a fun throwback listen, especially if you're out on the open road (which I wasn't). And based on other albums like this in the 1001 albums, I rightly guessed that they aren't American (Norwegian, it turns out), but clearly want to revive that later 80s very American rockin' sound. And they do it pretty well, I'd say. I'm not sure it necessarily deserves inclusion in the 1001-albums collection, but then again that's probably true of a lot of the albums.

I *feel* like I've not only heard of this band before, but also that I might even own this album, yet I'm not entirely sure that's the case. Regardless, I really enjoyed it, especially the Gorillaz vibe (courtesy of Damon Albarn's presence and primary role in the project, but also with at least a couple of the other Gorillaz members participating). I liked nearly all of the songs, but particularly "History song", "Northern whale", "Nature springs" and "Three changes". It doesn't quite have the variety of, say, Gorillaz' "Demon Days" or "Plastic Beach", but the semi-concept-album approach of London life is intriguing, although at times a bit monochromatic.

I also liked discovering that the collection actually has a number of Damon-Albarn-involved albums, mainly with a number of "Blur" albums; he's a really interesting artist/musican (to me, at least), and it's a nice counter-balance to the overweighted number of more classic artists and bands (although I'm not sure about having 3 different Blur albums, frankly, and bummed that there's only the one Gorillaz (debut) album).

I remember getting this album after buying a later one ("Jazz From Hell") and reading a review that said that "Hots Rats" was his best album (along with "Uncle Meat"). I can definitely see why the reviewer said this about "Hot Rats" (not so sure about "Uncle Meat", though), but after hearing this album years ago, I realized that I'm simply not much of a Frank Zappa fan, much as I want to be. So while it's interesting to listen to it again, I remain bemused and largely indifferent. "Willie the pimp" is probably the best of the mercifully short playlist, in part simply because it has lyrics (and sung by Captain Beefheart no less), but also a pretty great jam. Sorry, Frank--your genius is wasted on me.

I had no idea there was a band named "Arrested Development" (or that they would have come long before the TV series) (or that they sued Fox for the name overlap). It's a fun album, and while they sort of sound (to me) like some other groups (at times Public Enemy, other times De La Soul, sometimes Rise Robots Rise, and others), they've put together a great collection of songs and they sound like they had fun making the album. In addition to the iconic "Tennessee", I also really enjoyed "Man's final frontier", the semi-cover "People everyday", and "Give a man a fish". (I also found "Mr. Wendal" kind of disturbing, in a sort of patronizing and utopian/naive way, but apparently it was well received at the time, as well as being highlighted by the "1001 Albums" reviewer.)

A shame that their debut was also their pinnacle, and followup albums weren't as strong or well-received. But nice to have this album in this collection, and I'm really torn about whether it deserves 3 or 4 stars; there's so many filler tunes that it probably earns 3 stars, but the good songs were really enjoyable, so....

After getting the likes of Yes, ELP, ELO and other prog rockers, I'm not at all surprised to see Peter-Gabriel-era Genesis appear in the daily feed (and I now see we have two (2!) Genesis albums, unfortunately). I'm quite sure the band members enjoyed the whole stream-of-consciousness music and lyrics that seems to constitute the entirety of the genre, but it doesn't do much for me (and the opening track seemed to have this in spades, along with "Firth of fifth" and "The cinema show"). I enjoyed "I know what I like (in your wardrobe)" and "More fool me" more than the others, although that may not be saying much, I know. It *is* weird to hear Peter Gabriel in a different context than his solo career and musical evolution. And while I didn't enjoy the song (at all), I like it that "The cinema show" lyrics were inspired by T.S Eliot's "The Wasteland". And Phil Collins' drumming is quite good on this album.

Although I doubt I would have enjoyed listening to a full set by the band when they toured the album, I must admit I'd have paid good money to see Peter Gabriel in "full costume with a helmet and shield representing the Britannia character" for some songs, and with a stocking over his head for "The battle of Epping Forest". The photo in the Wikpedia entry for this album is hilarious, but probably doesn't do justice to the actual event.

I'll admit that my main (and perhaps only) familiarity with Devo is with "Whip It", which I listened to, and played tennis-racket-style air guitar to, repeatedly when I was probably 10 years old or so. (I'm not sure that song really has much in the way of guitars or guitar licks, but I sure could make that racket sing....) So this album is all new to me, and not quite as interesting as I'd hoped for. It seems impressively early for new-wave style music, and I enjoyed the song and video for their cover of "(I can't get no) Satisfaction", but most of the songs seem kind of...gimmicky...more than anything else. "Jocko Homo" gets a bit closer to the "Whip It" aesthetic I was imagining, but not quite, while "Gut feeling" is probably the most interesting song on the album (more punk than the rest).

I like it that Brian Eno (everywhere) helped produce the album, although I do wonder if he was part of the sort of flat sound to the album? It certainly sounds as if Devo didn't enjoy working with him as much as they might have wanted to, and I'm glad they were able to get David Bowie to remix the album.

I feel like I've seen several references to the Arctic Monkeys in various Wikipedia entries for other albums in this collection, so it's nice to get one of their albums. They sound familiar, so I'm guessing I've heard a few of their radio hits over the years, but this album is largely (completely?) new to me. They may not have a huge range, style-wise, but they seem and sound like a solid band, with fun songs, and elements of the White Stripes and maybe a bit of Franz Ferdinand too. I particularly enjoyed "Fake tales of San Francisco", "Dancing shoes" and "Red light indicates doors are closed". And the video for "The view from the afternoon" was very reminiscent of the movie "Whiplash" (in a good way).

This is really an impressive debut album, and a really solid album on its own; also pretty impressive how they became so popular outside the regular label/studio route. I enjoyed this from start to finish, and I also really appreciated it that this is the only Arctic Monkeys album in the collection, which bumps this up to (at least) 4 stars.

This is now the third (and it appears final) Black Sabbath album in this collection, which feels like two too many. In many ways, I wish our Black Sabbath exposure had started and ended with "Paranoid"; that album leaves you wanting more, while this album and their debut makes you (or at least me) question whether even "Paranoid" was all that great of an album. And it is/was. This is not. It's not horrible--and "Supernaut", "St. Vitus dance" and "Under the sun" are solid BS songs--but much like their debut album, it's just not all that distinctive or memorable, even with Ozzy's fantastically distinctive voice and Tony Iommi's distinctive guitar style, and the somewhat odd interludes interspersed throughout the album. And that doesn't even touch all the crazy substance abuse and demented behavior during recording. I'm just glad they survived the experience, honestly.

I don't feel like I can ding Black Sabbath for this, but I just discovered that there are *no* Ozzy Osbourne albums in this collection. This is almost inexcusable; how can we have so many truly mediocre albums (and I'm on the fence whether this album should be included in that category), and we don't get the pleasure of (at least) "Blizzard of Ozz"???? Bizarre, and so very sad. I try to accept what we get in this collection, flaws and all, but this is the closest I've come to feeling like the "1001 albums" collection has jumped the shark. I mean, millions of sports fans can't be wrong about "Crazy train", after all. :) (Not to mention the tragedy of living your whole life without hearing "Mr. Crowley" even once.)

Well, now I'm halfway through the PJ Harvey albums in this collection (previous was her debut "Dry"), so that feels a bit like an accomplishment. And this one seems a bit more lively and interesting than "Dry", thankfully. I'm not sure why, exactly, but I don't find myself getting sucked into her music as much as I'd like (it may just be that there's not a lot of variety within an album, likely due to not really working with a full band), but I did enjoy "Big Exit" and "You said something" more than the others. (Her video for "A place called home" made me think of a VR game, "The Under Presents", although without the puzzle-solving aspect of needing multiple incarnations to proceed.) And while I didn't particularly enjoy the collaborations with Thom Yorke, I liked it that they worked together for a few of her songs, with "This mess we're in" providing a bit of that elusive variety.

Wow--first it's Liz Phair, now The Smiths. What's next in the litany of not-my-favorite alt/emo rock? (I'm not sure I want to know the answer, honestly, especially since I can see we have 2 more Smiths albums in our future...) This is definitely *not* to my taste, regardless of whether Morrissey is a certified jerk, although that certainly doesn't help. But on the positive side, I don't think I've actually heard any of this album, so it's all new to me. I was surprised that the title track was so...lively...I'll admit (although not quite sure why YouTubeMusic served up a version of "The Queen is dead" as a "film" that was double the length of the actual song and seems to have just crammed in "There is a light that never goes out" and "Panic" at the end, the latter of which was only released as a single, I think, and was the only song I recognized). I'm actually hard-pressed to find many (any?) songs on this album that I found all that enjoyable, sadly, which is a shame given how many accolades the album has gotten. (I'll also say that I prefer Chumbawumba's "Big mouth strikes again" to the Smith's, even though it's not actually a cover and is about Lenny Bruce.)

I'd kind of wondered when we'd get Liz Phair--and am a bit shocked that we only got one album by her, although I am belatedly realizing that I've always conflated her name with the Lilith Fair phenomenon--but I've never really enjoyed her music, unfortunately. It's a fine album, but it doesn't really do it for me. I thought her hit "Never said", "Soap star Joe" and "Flower" were probably the highlights of the overly long album.

I almost regret having read the Wikipedia entry for this album, as it actually made me like both the album and Liz Phair *less* in the end. I have no idea who was involved in writing that entry, but it's incredibly confusing, poorly written, and doesn't really paint a very positive or thoughtful portrait of her. And I agree with the critics who challenge her claim that this album is "a song-by-song reply to the Rolling Stones' 1972 album "Exile on Main St." It just isn't that focused or interesting, I'd say. Sorry, Liz Phair!

I've never heard of them, and I don't think I've heard them either, so that's always an interesting prospect. Not the most distinctive band in the world, I'll admit, but a decent sound overall, and I particularly appreciate how brisk and short nearly all of the tracks are. I think "Mr. Blues", "Omaha" and "Changes" were the highlights on this album for me. I can see the connection (style wise) to the Grateful Dead, which might be part of why I didn't really connect to this album (in much the same way I've never particularly enjoyed the Dead). Bummer for them that all the hype and Columbia's poor marketing kind of torpedoed their fate.

What a strange choice to include in this collection. I guess since it's a soundtrack to a movie that was never produced, and maybe more importantly it's an original piece by an artist/band, it can be included despite the general avoidance of soundtracks in this collection? (Which makes me wonder if they considered including either Peter Gabriel's "Passion" soundtrack or the great John Lurie soundtrack to "Get Shorty"?) Regardless, although I found it hard to really focus on music that's largely intended to be background to a movie's foreground, I enjoyed "Under wraps" and "Sounds from the big house" more than the others. (I also kind of enjoyed "Auto destruction", mainly because it made me think of Mr. Bungle's eponymous album, which could easily have been a soundtrack too, albeit a very very disturbed one.) I also enjoyed that sort of ironic/knowing film-noir vibe throughout.

I appreciated learning a bit about Barry Adamson and his connection to Nick Cave as well as Magazine, and I also like it that he was eventually able to score actual soundtracks (like "Lost Highway"). But I'm not entirely convinced that I needed to listen to this before I die, frankly.

I was wondering when we'd get a Who album in this collection, and now I know. And quite a classic album, although given that there are 5 more awaiting us, I'm not sure whether this is the pinnacle of their discography, or just a waypoint. I've certainly heard most of the songs on this album many many times, and enjoyed them all to varying degrees ("Baba O'Riley" and "Won't get fooled again" perhaps the most, as well as "Behind blue eyes" despite its relentless narcissism, and probably "Bargain" the least of the lot). Of the ones I hadn't heard before, I enjoyed "Love ain't for keeping". It's remarkable, though, how few of the songs were new to me.

I don't know much of The Who's history, so it was helpful to me--and also bizarre--to read about how most of the songs on this album came from an abandoned "Lifehouse" interactive futuristic rock-opera concept that Townshend dreamt up involving government-controlled "experience suits" and having audience members help direct the music of the opera as it unfolded. Perhaps not surprisingly, the fans who attended a couple of test runs "simply wanted the Who to play 'My Generation' and smash a guitar", and things unraveled from there. I'm kind of glad there are only remnants of this concept in the album, mainly the use of synthesizers, as it sounded like a really painful experience for everyone involved.

Although I kind of expected a different style of music based on the album title, it's still an interesting slice of late 80s musical styling, giant shoulder pads and all (at least in the video). It's always disconcerting to realize how much slower the beats, rhythm and rhymes were in the 80s/90s (and earlier), at least compared to the more manic and accelerated 21st century beats. I guess the songs on this album might have played in clubs in the late 80s, but many of them seem pretty mellow for the club scene. "Holdin' on" and "Dance", though, seemed like the 2nd cousins to many Faithless songs, while "Feeling free" had interesting De La Soul vibes (but so painfully s-l-o-w). And of course there's the quintessential "Back to life", which seems strangely different than much of the rest of the album, but a true classic (and very entertainingly vintage video).

Although it wasn't painful to listen to by any means, I'll admit I'm a bit mystified why this album made the cut for this collection. Perhaps simply because it was a strong debut album? The book seems to suggest this album single-handedly created/revived British soul, so I guess that's a factor too...

I didn't really expect another Manic Street Preachers album (beyond "The Holy Bible"), given that their lyricist committed suicide not long after that album was released, but here you go. Definitely less hard-edged than "The Holy Bible", and I guess more commercially successful, but kind of disappointing for being a bit more generic-sounding without Richey Edwards exploring down the spiral. My favorites on this album are probably "Kevin Carter" and "Interiors" (in part for how both of them get into tragic human conditions), but nothing really grabbed me, to be honest. Too bad, too, because some of the songs have some interesting titles and accompanying perspectives (and some inspired by or written by Edwards), but I couldn't go beyond comparing this album to "The Holy Bible", mainly unfavorably; I wish they hadn't jumped so hard on the Britpop train.

Ha! This is one of those albums I've already heard in this collection (from before listening as a group), so here's my initial review/impression (accompanied by 3 stars), which got me quite a bit of grief back on my first listen:

"I got Television's 'Marquee Moon', which has me a bit...meh feeling. I'm probably exposing my general musical illiteracy, but I've never heard of them before this, and even looking at the Wikipedia intro that YouTube Music provides for the albums, I'm still not much more the wiser, except to know that 'Marquee Moon' was a big departure from their earlier punk album(s). I feel badly saying this...but there's literally nothing exceptional-sounding in 'Marquee Moon' (but maybe that's because they were so influential that everything after has been influenced by them?). I did learn that the band's vocalist/guitarist Tom Verlaine dated Patti Smith, though!"

I will likely get more grief from my group, but I'm sticking with the 3 star rating and general impression, although I *did* find the title track more engaging the second time around, as well as the dueling guitar work throughout. (And "Elevation" is such a weird song, sounding in some ways like Pink Floyd and clearly being an inspiration for the Cardigans' "Lovefool".) Interesting how Tom Verlaine and Frank Black sound remarkably similar; also interesting that they rejected Brian Eno (who is everywhere) as a producer. Kudos to them for being so influential, but just not really my thing.