1001 Albums Summary

Listening to this directly after 'Bitches Brew', both filed under 'jazz'. The eternal tragedy of language and its many subtle treacheries. That said, this is exactly what you think it's going to be, no more or less, so don't expect your preconceptions to be shattered on listening. For me, it's fine: the pinnacle of cheese, inoffensive and samey, reassuringly smooth, with no ambitions to leap beyond its cosy enclosure.

More to love here than I remembered, for sure, but boy does this thing ... ahem ... sprawl. Those strings on Empty Room, yes please; the rhythmic tension at the opening of We Used to Wait, absolutely; all of Sprawl II, of course. But the endless midtempo yawnfests on the My First Anticapitalist theme - not so much. A three for the moments Win shuts up about the kids and lets everyone else take over.

Hovered between a two and a three, waiting out all that misogyny and all those self-evidently pre-classic Stones workouts to see if Paint It Black (about as good as '60s rock-and-roll got, surely) might tilt me towards the three once it finally showed up. Reader, show up it did not (damned UK edition). Two it is.

So refreshing to get this after a few days of fairly dull genre exercises. It's not as fully realised as what they'd achieve later, obviously, and some of it veers a little too close to New Age for my palate, but the level of invention and ambition here far outweigh those niggles. (So tempted to go 5 to counterbalance all these blokey 1-star reviews, but let's save that for HOLV).

This is my 100th album and, well, I think it’s the first where I have no idea why it’s here. Incredibly competent stuff with a few outstanding moments (second half of the last track, for instance), but it’s hard to imagine anything less essential than a Jack White solo album. For all its qualities, there’s little here you won’t find in more vital form either in a White Stripes record or one of the many influences he lovingly, faithfully cribs from.

Still a whole bunch of silly fun, more varied than I remembered, and with a dose of that nostalgia factor that's pretty irresistible.

Just a bit too much musical theatre in Dickinson’s vocals, too much Spinal Tap in the lyrics. No sillier than say Ride the Lightning, guess, but at least Hatfield has the good taste to not be able to sing.

Came in fully expecting a hate-listen (Thatcher, Patrick Bateman, plastic cheese, etc) but found myself surprisingly diverted; maybe the bass is too high in the mix, but it’s pretty undeniable when it works, and I’m a sucker for some of those synth arps. All told, while pretty much every song has a middle eight that introduces some naff 80s choice that better records avoided at the time (wailing sax, wanky guitar, flute solo, some kind of chimes), I’ll revisit some of the album tracks, which is exactly the kind of surprise this project should be throwing up.

Not to rag on today's youth - honestly, I do mean that - but just imagine a 20-year-old coming up with this today. Do they get the time and space to indulge in weirdly concrete abstractions? To mess with time signatures and tunings? To chat with River Men about the plan for lilac time? Well, I hope so. There's a strong chance this is the record I've listened to most since I first heard it, a good quarter-century ago, and it's as much a five today as ever.

I really wanted this time to confound my preconceptions, but alas: I’ve left this still feeling that Marley has been mythologised beyond all rational engagement. Simple instrumentation, simple lyrics, minimal variety, wrapped in an undoubtedly compelling narrative. Fine, I guess, and still open to being confounded by the other Marley albums on here, but for now it’s a two.

I was going to ask if there’s another album with such a big gap between its best track (you know which one) and everything else, but ‘Jennifer’ (Johnny Jewel does Joy Division’s ‘Atmosphere’?) saves this from that crown. The rest of it? Stewart clearly knew how to pick a synth tone; if only he took the time to figure out what the hell to do with them.

Oddly, because I've probably not listened to this in the past with quite the same degree of scrutiny this project encourages, the mark I'm about to give, having now done so, is lower than I'd have thought. So much of it is a clear five, but now that I've actually read the lyrics ... well, without wanting to be too harsh on a record I really like, there are too many patches of sixth-form poetry to go that high. To the extent that this influenced so much of the properly cringe-worthy prog that was to follow, it's therefore a four for me.

The best stuff on here (B.O.B., Humble Mumble, Ms. Jackson, etc) is unbeatable, but suffers a bit from the length.

“We wanted the album to be very extreme,” said the Edge, regarding Achtung Baby. “We didn’t want it to sound in any way safe.” OK, I guess it's all too easy to poke fun at U2's delusions and self-satisfaction (enjoyable, too!), but seriously: if this counts as 'very extreme' to Mr. Edge, then I fear that little hat might have been restricting bloodflow to his brain. In fairness, though, while this might not be the most experimental record of 1991, and while Bono's presence was perhaps at its most irksome on some of these songs, I didn't find myself wanting to turn it off too often. Faint praise, perhaps, but more than I expected.

I’ve always thought I should be into Big Star, assured as I’ve been that they belong to one of my favourite lineages (Byrds, REM, Teenage Fanclub, Belle and Seb), but it’s never quite clicked. The mad choice to open this record with its worst song, Kizza Me, didn’t inspire much hope that this was about to change (minus one point for that alone). But, whaddya know, I mostly love it. I’m so down for scrappy eclecticism on the edge of collapse.

Sure, I get the 'disco sucks' stuff - this is when the music industry as commercial, cynically product-focused behemoth really started kicking in - but you know Nile's getting you on the floor (even if it meanders a bit once the hits are through).

So many one-star reviews here, half from the meat-and-potatoes crowd, half from the too-cool-for-BBC-nature-doc-soundtracks crowd. If you're at either extreme of that spectrum, it's time to get over yourselves and drown in this bombastic, melancholy wonder - like, deep down, you know you want to.

Way better than I expected, making me wonder why I'd never got round to this before. As well as the obvious proto-punk origins here, I'm happily hearing the (bad) seeds of Nick Cave throughout, and even some inspiration for the Go-Betweens.

Look, like a lot of people here, I guess my thoughts on this spring from two essentially incompatible wells: first, I can't deny that it's probably impossible for us in the global north to engage with Baaba Maal's music from beyond the frame in which he was presented us - a token of 'global' artistic exoticism, cringey culture section features, fawning spots on Jools Holland, all curated and packaged to satisfy our lusts for both adventure and self-denial; second, though, the guy's clearly an absolute boss, a global star not because of postcolonial guilt but due to his extreme talent, his own sense of intercultural enterprise, qualities that persist in total indifference to what I might think. This particular record, for what my thoughts are worth? A total blast, minus a point for some of the already-dated-by-'92 synths.

The worst of the worst.

For something that seems so varied, how does it all ultimately sound the same? File under: good at what it does, but that thing ain't really for me.

It’s obviously no Loveless and it probably shouldn’t be here, but I’m a sucker for that MBV formula.

Aside from a couple of classics, this sounds painfully dated now. Fair to include it in the book for its place in the development of a rich genre, but I won't be putting it on again soon.

Denial Twist sounds as fresh and vital as ever, My Doorbell's still a whole mess of dumb fun, and there's plenty more to enjoy besides. A low four for the filler, maybe, but a four all the same.

Damn, I came in wanting to like this, for all the positive impact of Boy George as sociocultural icon, but I’m finding it borderline unlistenable. Hollow, cliched lyrics and painfully cheesy synths - George’s voice deserved better.

Maybe it's the messy overdriven guitar tone, maybe the straining, earnest vocal, or maybe the articulation of an unmistakeable juncture in feminism, but, oh!, the absolute 1992 of all this. (And yet, Dress could absolutely be a hit for Sharon Van Etten, Julien Baker or even Olivia Rodrigo if it came out today, no?) More of this, please, arbitrary gods of the 1001 Albums Generator!

One of the five-iest fives I'll give throughout this whole project. I get that it's not for everyone, but from reading some of the proud repudiations of vulnerability in the reviews here, I hope at least a couple of tough-guy hearts have been silently softened, just a little, by hearing the crescendo to Predatory Wasp for the first time.

If you’re ever feeling sad about the versions of the USA that we tend to see most of these days, just try to seek solace in the fact that there’s a hidden cadre of Malkmuses (Malkmi?) just beneath the surface, ready for when the pendulum swings back. Anyone who’s into Berryman, the Delgados and (I guess) Hull City is alright by me. And, man, CR,CR’s a real tonic in times like these: endlessly quotable, a few solid gold hitz, and just enough hard-won truth to cut through the layers of irony. (Confession time, though: I’d have been on Stone Temple Pilots’ side in 1994…).

If I were to be totally truthful with myself, if I'd somehow only heard this album for the first time today, I'd find it pretty preposterous - often in a good way, but preposterous nonetheless. As it is, this was 11-year-old me's favourite album, and thus just about the most foundational record I'll encounter in this project. It's going to be a five, folks, an absolute time machine back into the self experiencing an introduction to empathy through the most empassioned, earnest (OK, if a little on-the-nose) bangers 1991 had to offer. (And FYI: Vs. and Vitalogy hold up as fives without the caveats, a hill I'll happily die on.)

Imagine how joyless you’d need to be to write a dozen paragraphs here about how superficial you find 1989? Well done, guys, you’ve won, no joy shall ever puncture your forcefield of real music. Seriously, though, Style and Blank Space are unalloyed Great American Songbook entries at this point, and there’s plenty more to love besides. (A point off only really because, next to her writing elsewhere, some of the lyrics are a little boilerplate. Is Folklore on here…?)