Reviews by mondo-kun

I hadn't known anything about the band XTC before this, but a quick search revealed that their debut album came out back in 1978. That means the band was at least twenty years old by the time this record was released — these were seasoned, veteran musicians.

So, what earned it a spot on this list? I still don't get it. XTC is usually associated with genres like art rock, post-punk, and power pop, but there isn't even a hint of that here. Instead, what you get is layered orchestral pop — soft and majestic, yet, for me, far too pompous. I prefer it when an orchestra accompanies a band without dominating the mix; here, it’s the other way around — the vocals feel like they’ve simply been laid over the orchestration. At times, it starts to sound like songs from Sesame Street.

In short, imagine the band Yes, but without their signature progressive rhythm section. It’s an acquired taste.

Judging by the cover art and logo, one might assume The Cramps were simply a second version of the Misfits (never mind that the Misfits actually released their debut album later). However, it’s not quite that simple.

The band’s lyrics consist almost entirely of dark humor and tales about werewolves, zombies, and other B-movie horror staples — themes that immediately led the public to label them a punk band. In reality, though, there is very little punk rock here; the album sounds like a blend of rock 'n' roll and country — essentially pure rockabilly, albeit with a somewhat funereal vibe. In fact, The Cramps actually pioneered the psychobilly genre. So, the sound is far closer to Elvis than to the Ramones.

You might feel the urge to turn the record off after the first few tracks, as they sound rather flat. But if you stick with it, you’ll soon be treated to a dose of wild — albeit somewhat dark — dance music that feels straight out of the 1950s.

Cocteau Twins is a band with one of the most misleading names, as it's a trio with no connection to France, and it doesn't even feature twins.

This album is considered their best and also their easiest to understand: previously, the band played gothic post-punk, like The Sisters of Mercy, but here they switched to proto-shoegaze — dense yet vibrant music, perfect for lying on the grass and gazing at the sunset. The lyrics are incredibly difficult to decipher, and even then, it's almost impossible to understand their meaning, while Elizabeth Fraser's vocals sound like a cross between ABBA and The Cranberries, if their members were into psychedelia.

If you like My Bloody Valentine or Slowdive, this is the foundation. Otherwise, it's nothing special, just a warm, dreamy, and somewhat optimistic album that's pleasant to listen to. It deserves a solid three stars.

John Mayall is like the director of a blues fair. Just look at the album cover: he's on the left, bassist John McVie, who would soon leave to form Fleetwood Mac, is on the right, and the comic book is being read by Eric Clapton, who needs no introduction. And plenty of musicians like him, who would go on to have incredible careers, played with Mayall.

Musically, the album is dull and can be described as "white Englishmen playing black blues." "So it's literally The Rolling Stones," you might say, but the Stones added their own twist to the classic blues sound, and here guys went the "copy and paste" route. Half the songs are covers of blues standards, but if you don't know which ones, you'll never guess.

And a very strange feeling remains: undoubtedly talented, famous musicians play well, but in the end it seems like you're listening to some cover band who was booked for a corporate event in honor of the company's anniversary.

A Tribe Called Quest's second album is considered a benchmark blend of rap and jazz, two genres with which I have a very complex relationship. So, I was initially wary of this record.

However, it turned out well — the album is interesting because it's not just jazz rap, it's, let's say, acoustic jazz rap. It stands on three pillars: vocals, drums, and double bass; practically every song uses only these instruments. Sometimes it's just the beats, sometimes the band invited real musicians, but the fact is, they've created a well-rounded release that's enjoyable to listen to in the background and to delve into.

And the lyrics aren't bad either. It's not about money, chicks, and guns; here, the bros tackle social issues, both humorously and seriously (which was actually quite fashionable in hip-hop at one point). De La Soul, but less fun, overall.

The Stones' only double album, considered by many to be their finest work.

And for a long time, I couldn't understand why! There are no interesting experiments here, the psychedelia is gone, Keith Richards has rolled back the sound almost to the classic blues of twenty years ago. Besides, there are no hit songs on the record at all, the mix is ​​strange, and the length is quite long. It would seem mystical.

But today I played it and realized it simply needs to hit the right mood. And it's extremely relaxed here, I'd even say sloppy. And you need to listen to this album while relaxed; if you listen to it thoughtfully or while working, it won't click. Imagine being one of the many guests who came to the band's parties and listened to these songs in the stuffy basement of a French mansion.

Especially since the songs are actually pretty good!

This album was written simultaneously with Talking Heads' Remain in Light, which Eno and Byrne also worked on together but released a little later. Well, more accurately, it was less "written" more "glued together," as it's entirely composed of looped musical fragments, and the vocals feature religious and Eastern cuts: Lebanese singers, evangelical sermons, and even exorcisms.

And here it's clear how important humanity is in music. The sound style here is just as East African as Remain in Light; they're literally brother albums, only this brother feels somehow frail and premature. I find it hard to even call this a full-fledged album; the artists simply wanted to experiment with sound and then release the results. Does anyone actually listen to this for pleasure, not just historical reference? Oh well...

First, let's take a look at the album cover. It's a slightly altered real photo (https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltc83b1151c768df66/698846423c163978fa456cd4/01_1239_bw_917.jpg) from 1937, showing a line of poor black people suffering from a devastating flood standing for food contrasted with a billboard featuring a happy white family. No further comment is needed; you'd expect to hear angry protest music here.

However, it's not angry or protest; on the contrary, it's a rather good-natured soul, where Curtis Mayfield, with his soft falsetto, raises pressing social issues in the US in the 1970s (and more), but does so in a good-natured and even somewhat weary manner, not demanding bloodshed or revolution, but merely presenting reality.

And all would be well, the music is pleasantly played and mixed, but it sounds so monotonous that listening to it feels like floating in some kind of viscous gel: the songs have similar slow tempos, the mood is melancholic, even gloomy at times. So, not my thing.

Avant-garde musicians are distinguished by the fact that they can play instruments quite well, but pretend they can't.

The debut album of a band I've already seen on the list, Pere Ubu, is a case in point, and once again it's incredibly interesting to listen to and appreciate how ahead of its time it was. Compared to their second album, this one is more traditionally rock, but it's still post-punk, refined in its crookedness, mixed with electronics and strange vocals, and completely unsellable.

Just like the cover — a worker performing ballet in front of his factory. A strange sight? Of course. Would anyone stop him from doing that? Of course not.

I was ready to give it four stars because I like the broken guitar riffs mixed with synthesizers. I didn't do it because I don't like songs that start with a transition to ultrasound or consist of six minutes of the sound of bottles breaking.

It's no secret that, in addition to the "1001 Albums," there are other lists of top albums from various resources. Two years ago, Apple Music released its own version (https://100best.music.apple.com/us) of the top 100 albums — according to them, without reference to streaming.

And in this list, above Fleetwood Mac, Nirvana, Amy Winehouse, Stevie Wonder, Prince, The Beatles, and Michael Jackson, Lauryn Hill's only solo album takes the top spot.

I listened to this album for the first time today, and yes, it's quite good. On the one hand, there's female rap, but old-school, with lyrics about life, relationships, pregnancy, and her former band — all elegant, no smut. On the other, there's pleasant R&B, the kind that's still five years away from a mass renaissance. Almost every song is at least five minutes long, which is quite long for the genre, and yet they never get boring.

But number one among the best albums of all time? Of course not.

While the first Missy Elliott album I came across on the list, Under Construction, was at least passable, at most decent, I barely made it to the end of her debut.

There are several reasons for this. First, the album is very slow and monotonous, all the songs are mid-tempo. Timbaland, Missy's traditional sidekick, is just getting his groove on here, and despite the sound still being spacious and pulsating, the record feels like reggae wrapped in some kind of rubbery shell.

Second, the vocals are so buried in the mix that for half the album you can't even hear what they're saying, and for the other half, you can't understand them, so you're mostly stuck listening to the beats. Third, you have to listen to them for an hour! I almost fell asleep. The intro and outro by Busta Rhymes are also somewhat unintelligible.

In general, it’s a strange way for the authors of the list to close the topic of Missy Elliott, considering that they did not add her third album with the main hit to the list.

The Beatles' best album, according to music critics. Even the snobs at Pitchfork gave it a ten — an event as frequent as a double solar eclipse.

Everyone agrees that the album is incredibly innovative. They've thrown in all sorts of tricks: double and triple vocal overdubs, the first use of looped sections (which essentially gave rise to all the electronica), and reverse playback. Genre-wise, there's a wide range of genres — rock, pop, hard rock, baroque pop, psychedelia, Indian music, children's songs, and probably a lot more I didn't notice.

The problem is that behind all this, the album itself is obscured; there's no sense of cohesion. It feels like the band simply decided to experiment with new technical possibilities and released what they came up with, and it was a hit.

The end result is a collection of good songs that can hardly be called a coherent work. And yes, the cover is terrible.

I believe that if you love music in general, you'll definitely enjoy something by Stevie Wonder.

This blind soul maestro, known among the masses mostly for the disco hit "I Just Called to Say I Love You," is a truly brilliant melodist, perhaps one of the greatest. It probably helped that his other senses were heightened by his loss of sight.

"Innervisions" is considered one of his best works, a powerful blend of ballads and funk rhythms. There are serious songs here that address social issues, and there are lighter ones, but they all share one thing in common: they're simply pleasant to listen to. You realize this music was written by a professional — it's complex, with interesting, rich arrangements, yet it's presented so elegantly that your brain immediately absorbs it and your head automatically starts bobbing to the rhythm.

A very good album and a great entry point into the artist's discography.

John Lennon is a perfect example of how mastery manifests itself in collaboration.

While he was balanced by the other members of The Beatles, he wrote quite pleasant lyrics. As soon as he went solo, the lyrics became strange to write when you're already in your thirties.

At the same time, the album is generally good, relaxed, and melodic. Phil Spector, with his "Wall of Sound," for once didn't interfere too much with the production, and George Harrison contributed guitar parts to half the songs.

But the lyrics literally fall into three categories: "I want world peace, five-minute lessons, and half-hour breaks," "Yoko, you're great, thanks for breaking up my band," and "Paul McCartney is a talentless creature." There are especially many of the former, so at seventeen, you could truly believe this is a brilliant album. With age, you realize that this is not true, and it’s okay - some works don't need to be brilliant, just good is enough.

Dolly Parton passed away yesterday. In the US, she's more than just a singer; she's a giant. I don't even know who to compare her to. It seems Dolly was loved by everyone in the country, regardless of musical or political leanings. And how many artists do you remember whose death prompted the president to order national flags to be flown at half-staff for a week?

This album is considered Dolly's best and one of the best country albums ever. But how does it play if you're not American? Yes, it plays well! Beautiful, sometimes sad, stories about women's lives, sometimes accompanied by simple acoustic guitar, sometimes with complex, even slightly psychedelic arrangements reminiscent of the late Beatles.

Her productivity is also striking: this was her third album in a year, and she wrote at least half the songs herself. Yes, each one is less than half an hour long, but that's a plus — they definitely won't get boring.

God rest her soul!

Listening to this album, I was reminded of Joanna Newsom's Ys. Like her, Rufus Wainwright seems to make music for people who may not particularly like music, but who love to show off their knowledge to their friends. "I recently listened to Rufus Wainwright, a wonderful artist, well, you probably haven't heard of him, a unique musician, not for the average person..."

You begin to sense the pretentiousness from the very first song, some kind of Gypsy-Latin mass, but the saddest thing is that the second song is good, pleasant alternative folk-rock. There's a glimmer of hope that the album will be good, but within forty minutes, it dashes that hope: you'll spend the rest of the record listening to piano ballads of varying degrees of melancholy.

Imagine someone putting a piano in front of Thom Yorke and saying, "Here, play and sing, but sing in the most mournful voice you can." That's what this album sounds like.

This Bowie album is considered by many to be a transitional period between his fascination with funk-soul and his move toward krautrock experiments.

In my opinion, there's barely any krautrock here, if you can justify the first song's mechanical intro and the occasional clockwork-like sounds. But funk Bowie and glam Bowie mesh perfectly here! Dance riffs intersect with upbeat, at times downright barroom piano. There are only six songs, some of them quite lengthy, but never tiresome, even though the first one is a full ten minutes long. In fact, it's clear from this track where, for example, Arctic Monkeys' latest works originated.

Bowie was using a lot of drugs at the time and claimed he didn't remember how the album was recorded. But considering how kabbalistic the texts are sometimes and the fact that he was not shy at that time about waving his hand from his heart to the sun, he could have been lying!

The main thing Kanye is both loved and hated for is his outsized ego. It's not that egocentrism is unusual in rap, but here the guy outdid all his peers.

And this ego is evident from the very title; you can reference the psalm "Ye are gods, all of you children of the Most High," but I think it's clear to everyone that Kanye literally named the album after himself. The music here also tramples on all the pillars of rap, with everything from acid house to children's gospel choir, Nina Simone's voice, soul, industrial...

And it all sounds quite upbeat and dynamic, but after listening to it, you realize that this album's disparate mix of ingredients is nothing but these ingredients.

Kanye dresses his woman according to the canons of Masonic initiation: neither naked nor closed, barefoot nor shod. It's the same with this album: it's not passé, but it's not the Bible either.

Sophisti-pop is a genre for a very limited audience, music that wouldn't hurt a fly. It's described as a mix of jazz, soul, and bossa nova, but in reality, it's like music for sitting in a restaurant.

Simply Red and Sade did something similar, and a band with the silly name Prefab Sprout is in the same league. At first, the album sounds like The Smiths without Morrissey, so your brain is primed for that sound. However, it quickly devolves into that same sophisti-pop — music that's as sophisticated as it is boring.

This pop-soul, based on quiet keyboards, is very well crafted, but here I am, writing about this record an hour after listening to it, and I can't remember a thing about it. Apparently, you have to re-listen to the album and take it head-on, as the band themselves did — they re-released the lead single three times before it finally made it into the charts. But, to be honest, I have absolutely no desire to do this.

U2's first and last grand album.

I mean, the band has released some pretty good records before and after, but here it all comes together: exuberance, sublimity, grace, heaviness, romance — every humanly possible feeling. Irish intensity meets the boundless expanses of the American prairie.

From the very beginning, the album bombards with hits, but in the middle, it drops off a bit, so you start to wonder if the band won't be able to maintain the pace. However, the dip doesn't last long, and after just a couple of songs, the upbeat guitar rock is back in full swing. Yes, Bono is once again preaching for all that's good against all that's bad, but that's what he is.

An incredibly epic work; you listen and realize that here, the band has moved from decent but rather ordinary post-punk to a completely different league.