1001 Albums Summary

This ain’t really my thing. I enjoyed the first few tracks but lost interest and was ready for it to be over. I can appreciate that’s it’s probably very good at what it does, but no, wasted on me.

What a great album. This is what music can be, joyous and painful at the same time. Redding’s voice dips and soars over a band that knows exactly what it’s doing.

How many times have I listened to this over the years? More than I can count. It’s brilliant, there’s something new every time.

Ugh, this is just annoying. Didn’t finish.

An album I should have listened to before but somehow never did. Punk tinged pop, bubblegum rock, whatever it is, it has held up to the passage of time.

One of my reasons for starting this was to find the albums that I had previously ignored or missed. I’ve circled around funk but never dived in, and life has been worse because of it. This is another of those albums the reminds me why I love music, joy and anger, celebration, exploration, and weirdness, all rolled into 37 minutes.

It was the beginning of the 80s and Heaven 17 set the template for synth pop. Or something. It’s ok I guess, but it didn’t made an impression on me when it came out and other than ‘Fascist Groove Thing’ the tracks are mostly forgettable.

There are some albums I won’t listen to

The Smiths can be so incredibly good and at the same time incredibly tiresome. Another album that I got bored with. The first half has some great tracks but after ‘Last night I Dreamed …’ it becomes one never ending dirge.

Previous to this I’ve only listened to various ‘Best of’ compilations, so some of this is familiar and the rest is completely new. There’s always that tension in Leonard Cohen’s songs, they seem simple on the surface, naive even, but then the lyrics are beautiful poetry. I always wonder if he was a much better singer than he let on, performing the drunken troubadour, or if talent was outweighed by ambition. An album of contradictions, just as the title says.

If it wasn’t for ‘Hard To Handle’ and ‘Thick ‘n Thin’ I would have forgotten I was listening to this, most of it is just background. It’s not bad, it just slips past without making an impression