Wilco Being There (1996):
Second try at these guys after being mean to Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, this time I'll write while listening.

...Plonky plonk style indie rock. Good for a cloudy day, but I can't focus to this and it was a double album. "Monday" was good.

Digital Underground Sex Packets (1990):
Ah lol so that's where the humpty dance comes from. It's silly

Super Furry Animals Fuzzy Logic (1996):
Some of these entries I think basically sneak onto the list for doing stuff out of the ordinary for the era. But the problem is I'm listening to like a 70-year archive in random order, so this doesn't feel like the breath of fresh air it might've felt like at the time, and instead just reminds me of 70s groups that I like more

Alice Cooper School's Out (1972):
Alice Cooper’s persona’s such a fun middle ground between guitar hero music and gothy theater kid, hard to not be charmed by that

Ministry ΚΕΦΑΛΗΞΘ (Psalm 69) (1992):
alright I guess "industrial metal" works as a genre descriptor, but that undersells how loopy the sample loops get. like listening to a youtube poop

The Black Crowes Shake Your Money Maker (1990):
Pretty sure I've heard some of these playing at various Kohls stores

The Who Tommy (1969):
Struggling to describe my feelings on this that don't just sound like backhanded compliments, but I think this is the album that's made The Who kind of click properly for me, and the thing that did that was hitting the books on the making of this one and realizing that

  • a.) Pete Townshend's kinda... his reach exceeds his grasp, and he has a very very long reach, is how I'd maybe put it; but
  • b.) that’s the band's secret weapon. Leads to them taking big swings and having interesting results fall out of the effort. Their good songs don't happen without that

Public Image Ltd Metal Box (1979):
Pretty good, but I liked their other one better, and they didn't need two albums on the list

Japan Quiet Life (1979):
surprising! Moody proto-new wave. uneven, but had some really good moments

Neil Young & Crazy Horse Ragged Glory (1990):
Wow I didn't know Neil Young was capable of jamming like that! Th--oh wait crazy horse is a the whole band, and not just a guy? got it alright so the jamming was Crazy Horse, still really good!

Adele 25 (2015):
Man, I always forget I actually like Adele quite a bit. Like out of the major radio-friendly acts of the ‘10s, she's held up incredibly well, and this wasn’t even her breakout album

Bobby Womack The Poet (1981):
phew damn it had been a minute since this served up soul music. Extremely good, breath of fresh air

Sonic Youth Sister (1987):
There's some, but not many Sonic Youths left in the list, and I might need someone to explain what's the big deal they bring to the table, because I do really like what I've heard from them so far, but I know people who are enthusiastic about them in a way I can't access

The Undertones Hypnotised (1980):
…What are we even doing here, man.
I'm on an educational journey here when it comes to punk and punk-adjacent, but you can't show me groups up to actually interesting stuff (X-ray Spex, for example) and then expect me to be interested in something that's this tepid.

Beatles A Hard Day's Night (1964) & With The Beatles (1963):
Double feature of earlier Beatles albums, which I believe also closes out all the Beatles albums on this list. These were interesting, With The Beatles was about the kind of thing I expected, maybe a little bit better than most Beach Boys I've heard, but Hard Day's Night really won me over. Compared to a lot of their contemporaries and imitators, they'd done a really good job keeping the tempo up and the arrangements engaging

Kanye West My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (2010):
This is one of the ones I was most excited to get to. Modern-day Kanye is unquestionably A Mess, but 13 years ago the conversation around him was more "well he's an egomaniac, but he delivers", which I assumed could be true, but I didn't listen to his music back then, so couldn't opine too much

But yeah this album fucking delivers. Via generator project, I'd listened to and liked College Dropout, but that didn't fill in a whole lot of context for me. But this one's Post-MTV awards incident, pre-maga, and extremely fascinating to listen back to, knowing that his introspection and seeming self-awareness about megalomania and self-destruction in this weren't enough to save him.

Also, King Crimson samples!

The Strokes Is This It (2001):
My only real exposure to the strokes was through Pandora, where they filled in soundspace just fine, but didn't excite me all that much. Looking at that release date, though...
Did some quick wikipedia'ing, and yeah it's looking like this one might have been at the same level as MGMT Oracular Spectacular in terms of "hey all this other shit you were listening to came from specifically this". "Post-punk revival", as they call it, apparently. Like I like some Killers, I like Franz Ferdinand, those bands probably don't come out sounding like that without this having come first. So definitely respect where it's due

Björk Debut (1993):
I didn't care for Medúlla when it came up on here (and am still not really on board with it, on relisten), which had me worried about taste blasphemy for a while. But I really, really liked this, and the two albums are doing such wildly different things that this actually gets me very, very interested in checking out more of her stuff compared to if I'd just listened to one or the other.

Really gotta go listen to that one with the album cover that everybody posts, in other words.

Everything But The Girl Walking Wounded (1996):
Mediocre trip hop

Portishead Dummy (1994):
Extremely good trip hop! nothing like a genre double feature to immediately clarify what the good stuff’s supposed to sound like

David Bowie The Next Day (2013):
Has what's been the typical Bowie hit rate for me, where there's a handful of great songs on there, but the overall Album ExperienceTM is just alright

Rahul Dev Burman Shalimar (1978):
Mother Fucker, if Hindi movie soundtracks are on the table, I am going to fucking Demand you have more than a single album representing that on the god damn list. The Indian music industry and the way it's tied up with their film industry is a whole fascinating world, that I'm very of the mind that if you're going to showcase it at all, you should be giving it way more shrift than a single 70s album. I like David Bowie fine, I will have listened to nine of his albums by the time I'm done with this thing, The Next Day was enjoyable but let's be serious, it was also expendable. Get your fucking priorities straight

Liars They Were Wrong, So We Drowned (2004):
kind of a curveball. I'm pretty sure I've heard this one indirectly before, as one of many weirdo things my brother was pirating off music forums at the time. Haven't heard it at all since those days, surprised to see it coming up on the list


You must log in to comment.
Pinned Tags