Reviews by suspiciousnumber

I've gotten a couple of Frank Sinatra albums up to this point on the list. I'd been pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed them, since I don't really enjoy this style of crooning jazz relative to a lot of other genres. This album is a lot more like what I thought a Sinatra album would be like, which is to say a bit boring. He has a beautiful voice that suits the music very well, but it all leaves me feeling a bit flat. It's not bad, it's just not for me

3/5

I thought this album was surprisingly cool. A lot of the early to mid 90s electronica stuff doesn't age super well, especially the techno. This album is a lot more varied, and consequently has a much more modern feel than a lot of its contemporaries. Despite the complexity baked into the album, it still works great as a dance album too. This is definitely an album that I'm going to come back to

4/5

I first heard about Cornershop when I was in high school, and I've tried to listen to them a couple of times over the years. I always like Brimful of Asha, but couldn't really get into their other stuff. One of the things that I really enjoy about participating in this list is that I get historical context that helps me understand how a particular album fits into what was happening around it.

The fusion of alternative rock, electronica, and Indian music present on this album are truly unique in my experience. There are parts of this album that didn't age particularly well, which is true of a lot of 90s electronic music, but it's still a fascinating work that reaches some great heights. At every corner there is something new and unexpected

4/5

Here we come to yet another album with a complicated history. In terms of legacy, this album is titanic in hip-hop history, collecting a set of singles that were massively influential in developing the sound profile of early hip-hop and the electro subgenre. Afrika Bambaataa was huge in early hip-hop. Unfortunately, he was also a huge child molester, which is a sentiment that I wish I didn't have to express about so many artists on this list (seriously, what the fuck was wrong with rock stars in the 70s?).

The music on the album is actually really cool given the technology that they were working with. For as much as 808s are discussed lovingly today, they often sound a bit thin on the track, but they fit in really well here, especially on Looking For the Perfect Beat. The synthesizers are similarly really cool, and the mix is really powerful. The rapping is...well it's early rap. Luckily, groups like Run DMC were about to come along and teach folks how to rap with style. Luckily, they tend to employ a lot of repetition and call and response, so the rapping generally doesn't weigh down the songs too much

4/5

"Shaolin shadowboxing...and the Wu-Tang sword style. If what you say is true, the Shaolin and the Wu-Tang could be dangerous. Do you think your Wu-Tang sword can defeat me?"

There are few albums on this list that I have a history with like this one. I bought it when I was 15 or so, and I couldn't even guess how many times I've listened to it since then. It's so rich in every way. When I was younger I was focused on the incredible rhymes, with so many different voices taking turns on the mic to spit out brutal lyrics with an incredible lexicon. As I've gotten older, I've come to appreciate just how insane the music is, with Rza's samples that never seem to quite fit the beat, but always work perfectly as he brings them in and out and overlays them.

It's exquisite. A true revolution in hip-hop and in music in general. It feels almost unfair to debate whether or not this is the greatest hip-hop album of all time. It's like if the 90s Bulls also had Hakeem, Barkley, and Malone playing for them. There are other hip-hop albums that achieve the level of craftsmanship of this album, but none of those albums had to be made in a world where this album didn't exist

5/5

I think this is the third Blur album that I've gotten on this list, which didn't have me super excited when I got it this morning, but I think this is the best one that I've heard so far. This one feels a little grittier than the others, and has the obvious benefit of having their most well-known song. Overall I thought it was a really good listen

4/5

Back when I'd heard about goth music, but not actually listened to it, I always pictured it as being really mopey and morose. While it is definitely morose, goth music is so much more danceable than I would ever have imagined. This is an excellent example of that. It's a really fun listen, with catchy melodies combined with more experimental/spacey sounds.

4/5 Really cool early goth album. It shows a lot of the potential that the genre has. I understand a lot better why goth kids liked this music so much. I just don't understand why they were so sad

I never get excited to see that my task is to review a double album, since it just takes a lot longer to get a good slice of the album. That, however, is really my only criticism of this album. If this album was cut down to just the 10-15 best songs and released as a single, it would be an absolute force. As it is, it's still an incredible album. The hit songs on here are all incredible, some of his best work. The other songs are really consistently good as well. There's a big variety of different moods in this album as well, but the beauty of John's piano and voice carry all the way through. One of the things that I've learned through this list is that I'm far more of an Elton John fan than I would have thought. When he was at the top of his game in the 70s (i.e. when he was on top of a mountain of cocaine in the 70s.

4/5 I think we can all be grateful that Elton wasn't murdered at that Stooges show where he dressed up like a gorilla

George Harrison released this as a triple album, and still had another double album worth of material left over that he just didn't release. I didn't know that Phil Spector produced this album (alongside Harrison), but it makes sense because it sounds amazing and incredibly full. The tone on his slide guitar, in particular, stands out as one of the most iconic sounds on this album. The songs are great, the lyrics are personal an accessible. The only real criticism I could make of this album is that it probably could have been a couple of albums, rather than just one huge one, but at the same time, he gave all that he had when he made this one. That goes a long way to explaining why this is the best solo album made by any Beatles member

5/5

One of the things that has struck me with the albums that I've been getting lately is that I like music, but it has to be my kind of weird. Trout Mask Replica and The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter are great examples of weird albums that I really detested. This, on the other hand, is my kind of weird. It helps that the music is really good, and the album is very self aware about what it is and what it's trying to accomplish.

Musically, the mix of rock instruments and synthesizers is great, and not something I've seen much elsewhere on this list. It seems like lots of bands become synthesizer bands when they start integrating the instruments, but Devo feels distinctly like a rock band, even on their synthesizer-heavy songs. The more I listen to it, the more this album feels distinct from nearly everything else that I've been listening to on here, despite the fact that I've been through nearly 650 albums at this point

The whole album is silly, yet very well executed. It's like it refused to take itself seriously, but is performed at such a high level that we must take it seriously. The fact that it came out in 1978 seems impossible to me. I would have pegged it in the mid-80s for sure

4/5

Well, one of the things that I've learned through participating in this list is that I'm a fan of Siouxsie and the Banshees. The only thing that this album has working against it for me is that I heard it after I heard Juju, which is one of my favorite albums that I've encountered in the last year. This album isn't nearly as interesting nor as polished as Juju, but it's still groundbreaking on its own merit. I find it astonishing that by 1978, only one year after punk broke out and most of the classic early albums were released, there were already acts like Siouxsie and the Banshees that had already moved beyond the tropes of the punk genre to develop their own style in its wake.

There's so much in this album. The bass-driven songs, the Siouxsie's soaring, dark vocals, the guitar effects, the soaring drums focusing mostly on the toms. It's clear that a lot of other people were listening to this album shortly after it came out, because a few years later it's influence was everywhere and is still felt today

4/5

You know, I'm not sure that I like U2.

I like this album better than Joshua Tree, which was one of the first albums that I got on this list, but I still found my self pretty bored outside of the songs that I already knew. Even those don't do all that much for me, but they're still good songs. I like the political message of the album and the fact that it focuses on the human costs of war outside of the battlefield. However, I find a lot of the music pretty repetitive. I could see why people really like this album, and it's possible that some of my feelings about what U2 has become have colored my perception of their earlier work, but this left me feeling pretty flat

3/5

This is kind of a weird one for me, since this album sounds super generic and dated, but I also know that this would have been pretty innovative when it came out, especially for the mainstream. It does seem a little weird to me that this list features British acid house, rather than American acid house, since the genre was developed in America. However, I don't know the genre well enough to know how many albums of this quality were produced by the Chicago acid house school.

Regardless, this is one of those albums where I'm able to recognize its importance, despite the fact that I don't find it all that interesting to listen to

3/5

I don't have a huge frame of reference for afrobeat, but I like the genre in general, and this is a great fusion of 70s jazz with afrobeat. It's a long album (I'm somehow only on song 4, and it feels like I've been listening to it all day). It's not boring, however. There's lots of different moods and variation in the styles, with some songs swinging more toward jazz and others more on the afrobeat side of the fence. A great album to have playing in the background

4/5

I was a bit worried when I saw that this was a British band that I've never heard of, since my history with similar bands on this list is not spectacular. However, I really enjoyed this album. I like ambient music, so space rock is pretty firmly up my alley, but this album is also very well executed. The songs flow nicely from one to the next, but each one is distinct. The vocals are a bit muffled on some of the songs, but that could also be intentional. Really cool album for relaxing whilst chemically altering your brain

4/5

One of the great boons of this list is that it seems like the author was really into early synthpop, and I've gotten very interested in that genre. As a result, I've gotten a lot of context for how the genre developed. This album feels very mature compared to a lot of the other early synth pop albums. It feels like sort of a halfway point between Dare by Human League and Violator by Depesche Mode. It has all of Tears for Fears' biggest hits, as well as a bunch of other solid tracks. It seems like this was the last album to feature the original lineup (after this one, the two guys that aren't in this picture left the picture entirely), which is a shame because there's so much magic here

4/5

I think the most surprising thing about this album is how many of the songs I recognized. A lot of them, I've heard this specific version before, but I've also heard covers of several of these songs. All of the music is very fun and lively, which matches Louis Prima's delivery very well. It's a fucking kick ass early rock record that forms a clearer bridge between the big band/swing era and the rock era than I've heard elsewhere

4/5

This album is a strange one to actually sit down and listen to, since, like most people, I became familiar with the Meat Puppets through Nirvana's Unplugged album, which featured three of the songs on this album. It feels weird to hear those songs in their original context.

This album is really cool, though. It's funny how many hardcore punk bands were able to really find their niche after abandoning that fairly limited subgenre (see also: Boys, Beastie). This is a really cool early alternative album with a lot of country elements fused into it, with some psychedelic rock mixed in for good measure. The music is really great and feels innovative for 1984. The vocals are...not great, but that also doesn't feel like their goal. Overall, it's a really cool album

4/5

Nothing quite like the audacity of beginning your debut album with the drums from When The Levee Breaks, but if you've got the chops to pull it off, you might as well go big.

This album is pretty strange to listen to now. It has the same thin 80s drum machines that a lot of rappers were using at the time, but combined with these massive guitar riffs and other famous samples. It's one of those albums that it's easy to understand why it hit so big (in a country that may have been afraid to bring Run DMC into their living rooms). There's a lot of attention to the production that makes for a really hard hitting sound.

Their rapping is...well it's good sometimes. It's an early rap album, so it's going to sound dated no matter what. They try a lot of things here, and some of them work really well. The lyrics are pretty shallow, but it's not like they get really deep later in their career.

This album is a touchstone, but it doesn't hold up nearly as well as their other albums, though there are precious few hip-hop albums from this era that do hold up

4/5 Legacy is pulling a lot of weight here, but there are also some hard-hitting songs on here that really work as well

This is my favorite of the Rolling Stones albums, it's bluesy, yet they're doing a lot with it and exploring some interesting things. All the songs are solid on the album, with some all time greats on there as well. I think Can't You Hear Me Knockin would have been a huge hit if it wasn't so long. There's a lot of wistful emotion here as well. The fact that they packaged it with a genius bit of marketing is just the icing on the cake

5/5