Reviews by rylee

I mean it's not terrible. Most of the popular reviews on here talk at length about how atrocious the album is. And I get it. It sounds super cluttered, all the songs sound almost the same (except for Country Song which is just plain bad and unfunny.) But for what it is, I had a decent time.

I had never heard of this band in my life before listening to this. So I did a bit of reading beforehand, and found that not only was the band high out of their minds, some of them were actually drug dealers? Like...dealing ecstacy? That's crazy. The album does sound like the state of mind for someone who's outrageously high. It's redundant, hard to understand, and just super messy. But hey, I had a good time. It meant no harm.

Fun fact for myself: today, April 29th, is my 26th birthday. I currently have 1065 albums left to rate. There is a new edition of 1001 Albums coming out later this year. If that edition has exactly 35 new albums, which feels possible, then I will finish my journey on April 29th, 2029. My golden birthday.

Usually when I'm really excited about an album, I begin my review by typing out a memorable lyric. That'll be hard to do for this one. Unless I go TJUUUUUUUUUUUUU, TJUUUUUUUUUUUU

I love this Icelandic nonsense. I love how it sounds boyish and innocent, as well as massively ambitious. I love its occasionally cheesy chord progressions, as if the octet is playing on my actual heartstrings. I love the unorthodox percussion that is sometimes there and sometimes not but it is always at the perfect time. It's beautiful. It's occasionally horrific.

I love the shots of noise between songs that last just long enough to blend into the identity of the song itself. I love the loose narrative of a child being born, a new life, starting over, that can actually be applied to the band themselves making this album after a debut that kinda sucked. I love the anthemic melody of Olsen Olsen, a song which I can only assume is about Mary-Kate and Ashley. I love the title of the track afterwards, which loosely translates to "good weather for airstrikes." That's such a kickass sentence. And it fits the music! It's grand and epic like a gorgeous sunny day, but that leaves you vulnerable. It disarms you. It makes you weak.

Sigur Ros has a fantastic sound across their whole career. If this list is just about hearing albums that are good, you could put a lot of their discography on here. But realistically, Ágætis Byrjun is the only one that warrants inclusions on this list. Later on in their career, their brand of post-rock became more accessible, less experimental. That's only because this album stuck the landing. Albums like Takk... are big and beautiful, sure, but in a way they're end up being less ambitious. Because the band knew it was going to work. This album was a massive leap of faith, a hyperextension into a new realm of post-rock that is more personal, timid, quieter and yet more explosive than ever before. And it worked.

Oh yeah, and it's super Radiohead sometimes.

My first rap album that I've gotten from this list. I actually forgot that it had any at this point, I've gotten so much indie rock and soul. I might look back and not understand the 5/5 I gave this.

It's not perfect. There is filler, and I think it definitely gets stronger in the latter half. But I think I kiiinda love this. My first (partial) listen was on a drive to work, and it didn't stick with me then. But I got home, put on my nice headphones, and it hit me. The beats are immaculate, the personality in their voices is great, the surprising darkness in One Of Them is fantastic, the charm in Thin Line, oh my goodness that echoing beat in Break, the music po-po-power of A Day at the Races...and the ending, Acetate Prophets! It reminds me a lot of some DJ Shadow cuts, as well as Frontier Psychiatrist by The Avalanches.

How about a 5/5 for Jurassic 5? Talk about power in numbers.

I'm wondering The Rolling Stones get so many comparisons to The Beatles. As someone who knows the latter but not the former, I expected something at least similar in sound to an early Beatles record. No, what I got was blues rock and typical early country. I am unfortunately not a fan.

It's not just that my expectations weren't met, it's also that I am not a fan of this genre in the first place. I don't like the styling of the songs, I don't like Mick Jagger's voice...it's not necessarily anything reprehensible, and I understand its inclusion on the list, but this is just so totally not my thing. Sorry y'all.

Oh my god. It's like if background music was recognized as a legitimate genre. It's so goddamn boring. It's so sanitized. How is this 15 songs and not a single one of them does anything interesting? It's insane. And I've seen people that love this album sing its praises, but it's almost always in the context of doing something else! Oh it's good for a dinner party, it's good for painting or crocheting, or for a pleasant drive on a sunny day.

What kind of album is it if people seem to enjoy it the most when they're not listening, and it's just filling space? I'm so sorry Norah Jones, I have the utmost respect for you. But I just. Can't. Vibe.

Remember when this was the most outrageous, heretical, downright sacrilegious thing ever put on tape? It's terrifying! Burn your records, smash your tapes! In reality, this album is so cute! It's adorable! The song about 'Charlotte the Harlot' is no more egregious than the demon-possessed farm animals in Charlotte's Web.

I understand that Iron Maiden and bands like them were massively influential. It was groundbreaking at the time. But unfortunately for them, I find the metal of the future more exciting, more bizarre, more prone to causing actual offense. And that's what I find interesting. There's nothing wrong with what's going on in The Number of the Beast. But it obviously got outclassed pretty damn quick. Now it's just a quick little jolt of classic metal. It's cute.

yes never heard the sensual world but she said yes watch the music videos this was nothing special but her voice is lovely mmmmmmmyes many a time the game molly and I play came with me interruptions galore but there was that beautiful sunset we laughed at a picture of hitler we saw the game won eleven to three will I ever go back is there anything the matter with my insides or have I something growing in me coughing and sneezing til the passage dries her voice kept me coming back yes I spun the record over again and over again rockets tail is its namesake there is a movie song never seen many movies and yet it's good yes someone knows someone knows Kevin Bacon they imitate her but no Bjork no Joanna Newsom can only be Kate Bush she asked me with her eyes to rate 5/5 I said yes I put my headphones on and drew her to me and her voice was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.

My enjoyment of this album may have been hindered by the fact that I listened to it on my commute to work, and I could barely keep my eyes open. I don't know what it is about this week. I have just been extraordinarily tired on my drive to work the last few days.

I regret to inform Mr. Shuggie Otis that I heard his (admittedly cute) album under these circumstances. But I found it just a bit too soft for me. Soft like a cold pillow. A pillow I could rest my head on and close my eyes. I just wanted to drift into slumberland and drive my car into a ditch.

If I say what I think, I'll be suspended for six months.

Everyone loves respect, both the song on this album as well as the concept. That's the one song I knew before going into this record. And of course I love it, who doesn't? It's a beautiful song. This record is full of beautiful songs, favorites of mine being Respect, the titular track, as well as Dr. Feelgood. That song made me laugh out loud, when she starts talking about how she doesn't have as much time for socializing, she's got to get back to her...appointment.

Other than that, unfortunately, I wasn't too keen on this record. Some people said it's too slow, and that's an assessment I generally agree with. But more than that, I found it predictable. I was hoping that this record took more chances, either vocally or instrumentally. Maybe I've been spoiled by some of the other soul I've listened to, like that 12-minute epic Walk On By from Isaac Hayes. But I found myself hoping that more songs here surprised. It's pleasant, don't get me wrong, but I just didn't find it exciting like I wanted.

Maybe it's because I listened on the drive to work, and I could barely keep my eyes open. I was hoping something would jolt me awake.

I know practically nothing about Bowie outside of Blackstar because I'm a dumb little uncultured simpleton. I knew his output in the 70s is legendary but I had never listened to any of it before. I was surprised to find that I wasn't a fan.

I read that this album's lyrics were mostly unwritten "not being written until Bowie stood in front of the microphone." I got the sense of that immediately. Outside of the titular track, which has pretty sparse vocals, a lot of these songs sound like a crazed man yelling at me. There's not anything inherently wrong with that, but it's compounded by the fact that those songs sound so full. They sound messy and cluttered.

Side B remedies that to an extant, and that's what I enjoyed much more about Heroes. Side A was the problem child to my ears. There's so much going on, it takes away from Bowie's vocal performance. I do wish the structure was a bit better, we could've had the ambient soundscapes mixed in with the more energetic rock songs. I don't see much of a reason to have them split up like this. But I still preferred those more. Other than that the album didn't do much for me. I hadn't even heard the title track before.

Remember this whole world's a circus. Don't you be the clown."

This is my 20th album in the 1001albums journey. We're at the point now where I have a variety of different albums occupying every rating possible on this site. I was not looking forward to sitting through disco, but of course I have to give every album on this website a fair shot. Someone loves it.

I wanted to give it a 1/5 initially. Even when it's pristine and crystal-clear with pretty grooves on every song, including Le Freak which I hear at work all the time, disco is still not my thing. But a 1/5...do I really hate this as much as I hate the sanitized anthem to gentrification that is The Suburbs, or the monotony that is the 90-minute Bob Dylan live album? C'est Chic doesn't have either of those problems, obviously. It's about loving one another and celebrating life, having a good ol' time. How could I look at this and give it a 1/5?

Somewhere around the song I Want Your Love, it hit me. One of the reasons I joined this site was to broaden my musical horizons. And with every new album I get, I keep looking backwards, comparing it to everything else I've heard and rated, seeing how it stacks up. These albums aren't striving to be compared with everything else out there in the world. They are moments frozen in time, the artists or bands involved simply doing what they can to make "good music," whatever that means to them. Likewise, each of my ratings and reviews, these are all snapshots of my life. I cannot change my ratings, nor do I want to anymore. Typos and all.

I shouldn't be going into these expecting something fantastic, and being disappointed when it's simply not my thing. This is no longer a quest to find perfect albums that have been hiding from me. This is journaling, and having 1001 albums accompany me the whole way. And only at the very end do we look back and tell ourselves "This is what meant the most to me when I heard it. This is what I will take home with me as I move on my life."

But until then, fuck it. I don't like disco.

I saw that review which says this album has "goofy noises" and "weird experimental jams" and that's the kind of shit I want!

I was impressed with Fragile. Obviously, Roundabout is a beautiful song, and nothing else on the record comes close enough to achieving its iconoclast sound. And that's okay. It was 1971, and digital recording technology didn't exist yet. You could write all the big rock epics that you wanted, but you could only book so much studio time to record it all, and the big boss is breathing down your neck, expecting the album to be done by Sunday!

Fragile is about half full-length progressive rock songs, half self-indulgent offshoots. It's inherently a mixed bag, so it would be wrong to expect perfection from it. But while I didn't love anything as much as Roundabout or Heart of the Sunrise, the whole record is still a lot of fun! Five Percent of Nothing, with all its jagged and angular rhythms, happened to be a precursor for bands like Primus and Shellac that people idolize today. We Have Heaven reminds me a lot of the Beach Boys, and I love how it latches onto a groove that feels like it could go on forever.

I don't see myself returning to it a great deal outside of a couple songs, but I do feel that it's relevant to the 1001 Albums list. It's a solid piece of rock.

I wish this album did less. Nick's voice is very soft and I think it could be very suiting for the style of music he wants to play. But this is doing too much. Northern Sky is a pretty song, but by-and-large, I feel that all the orchestration here is taking away from Nick's playing and singing. A lot of my friends told me that I would like Pink Moon, since that album is 99% just Nick's voice and guitar.

Maybe I'll like Pink Moon when I get there. But as of now, this is all the Nick Drake I know. Wasn't a fan. I wish it wasn't so posh. It's weird. It simultaneously feels like it's trying to do so much, and it's just...not anything to me. I'm hoping that this isn't how I feel about folk in general.

Oh my god. WOW. I had never heard of this album before, I didn't know who Isaac Hayes was, and I was unsure what to expect. I'm really not familiar with soul, outside of a couple other albums from this list I've already heard.

This is MAGICAL. Absolutely beautiful. Hayes' singing is gorgeous, the production is immaculate, the placement of the strings and electric guitar could not have worked out better. I literally did not know that soul music could sound like this.

Having an 18-minute song as the closer to your soul record was certainly bold for the time, but imagine the period that this album came from. You didn't have a phone to scroll through, no video games to play, no one to text while you were listening to tell them how boring the song was. All you could do was lay back, close your eyes and listen to Mr. Hayes sing-talk you a story. It's an incredible listen, and that track isn't even my favorite on here. This is fucking awesome.

MORE THAN A FEEELIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIN

If this was my first time ever being exposed to the Boston album, you'd probably find me saying that I liked it but it wasn't anything special. But I loooooove this shit.

I have so many pleasant memories tied to those first two songs. I remember driving with my mom and cranking up the radio any time More Than a Feeling came on. In fact, this album is primarily composed of songs that make me go "turn that shit up!" when I see them on the radio. Peace of Mind was one of the first songs I learned on guitar.

It's absolutely representative of a specific moment in time, that being the era in which it came out. The production is great enough that it's one of the few albums from 1976 that aged somewhat gracefully. They never made anything quite as good as this, but all the time Tom Scholz put into making this album sound "perfect" really paid off. It's beautiful. I gotta love it.

I'm giving it 3 stars for the music alone. If I was rating the KLF as a project, I would be obligated to give them 5 stars. I mean, everyone at this point knows that they burned a million pounds of their own money, fired blanks into the crowd at the Brit Awards, and left a dead sheep at the afterparty. These two are men after my own heart.

It's hard to separate this album from the lore surrounding the band. I honestly can't tell if it's all one massive joke and the cheesiness is intentional, or is it just straight-up decent house music? I'm inclined to believe it's the latter, but the strangeness of the KLF in general means that I'll never be 100% sure. What strange times we live in.

"Oh my dear God, what is that horrible song?"

I gave it a fair shot. But it's too boring. Too bland. Too polished. Too repetitive. Too white. It's a statement from a lifestyle that I once envied when I was younger, but I now despise. I do not want to hear about Win Butler's uneventful, uninteresting middle-class Mormon upbringing. I know many people love this album and this band, but I can't get into it. Two weeks into my 1001albums journey, this is easily the worst experience I have had listening to anything on this list.

Anyone who knows me and my music taste knows that noise rock is one of its pillars. I love noise rock, I always seek it out, but I've never really sat down and listened to Sonic Youth. While I don't love it, I'm happy to say that I was mostly impressed with Daydream Nation.

It has surprisingly good flow for a double album; it really didn't feel like 70 minutes. But I was surprised at the things I actually ended up liking. Everyone seems to love Teen Age Riot, but to me it's...a little too indie, too lowkey, too Smashing Pumpkins for me. Does that make sense?

The album impressed me a lot more when it went all-out, like in the middle of Silver Rocket, or the total disassembling at the end of Total Trash. Not to mention the very tail end of the album, Eliminator Jr, which has that really fast, aggressive groove I wish the album utilized more. Cross The Breeze has that in spades too, but those really rocking moments are too few and far between for me.

When I hear "noise rock" I think immense feedback, screaming, songs that go absolutely crazy. Other than a few moments across the tracklist, there's basically none of that here. But there are enough positive moments here that keep me intrigued. I'm looking forward to my next Sonic Youth album, whatever it may be.

Luck of the draw.

I've never been a fan of Bob Dylan, but that's not because I have some utter disdain for his music. I assume it's because I just haven't had enough exposure to it. His Nobel Prize for Literature is well deserved, One of my reasons for taking on the 1001 Albums was to get more exposure to classic albums I have yet to hear! And by luck of the draw, my first Dylan album was this live recording. Turns out this is not at all how I want to hear Bob Dylan.

This is a horrible first impression for someone to have for him, for a few different reasons. For one, the singing. I don't know most of these songs, and I wouldn't even be able to gather the content of each song in this recording unless I was reading along with all the lyrics. Then there's the mixing. In the acoustic set, the harmonica will often drown out the guitar completely. During the electric set, there are multiple songs where Dylan's singing sounds very distant, and the whole recording seems to switch from the soundboard to the quality of an actual bootlegged tape.

I didn't enjoy listening to this at all, I can't see myself ever going back to it. But for hardcore Dylan fans, if it's any consolation, I have the utmost respect for the guy. When asked about the infamous "Judas" incident (the only thing about this recording that I would've been interested in, if it wasn't cut out) he said "All those evil motherfuckers can rot in hell." Nice guy.

Mysterious, electric, defiant, abusive, violent, talented, gifted, genius, sick, twisted, high, delusional, horrible, perverted, legendary man. The quintessential rock star. A songwriter and performer of unmatched capabilities, burning the candle at both ends for his entire adult life until his lavish debauchery finally caught up with him.

We don't have to "separate the art from the artist" to enjoy this album. The artist is the art. In fact, what other musician represented the unpredictability of their music? It's a beautiful piece of work, brimming with so much lust that Purple Rain was one of the reasons the Parental Advisory sticker exists. He scared people because his music seemed so exotic and taboo, but also because he was a violent man who should never be alone with someone's teenage daughter. What a force to be reckoned with.

"Are we gonna let the elevator bring us down?" Yes. You died in an elevator, buddy. Good job practicing what you preach.

Oh, and the music is fine. Not really my thing. But Let's Go Crazy still rocks. Who doesn't love a good guitar solo?