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Pirates Choice: The Spotify description for this band describes their sound as "languid", which is a very generous term. This shit is slow. Which isn't to say it's bad - of course it's not. But as far as personal preferences go, it's hard for to envision coming back much to an album with a 94 minute runtime that feels content to do nothing but meander. Writing that out felt particularly harsh, though, so again, I'm going to stress that I didn't think it was a bad album! I actually think this would be great especially for fans of jam music, and it's cool to hear the clear influences from Latin music in this band's sound. But, I'm sorry, I just can't do it.
Either/Or: The comparison seems a bit too obvious and on the nose, but man this really reminded me a lot of Nick Drake. A lot of beautiful songwriting that reveals a lot of pain. I liked the songs better than I liked most of the songs on Pink Moon. Also, a confession: I had no idea a lot of these songs were in Good Will Hunting because I've never seen it!
Paid in Full: What a joy to listen to! It's crazy to think about how these guys created this album after having only known each other for a short while; with chemistry like this you'd think they've been working together forever. Plus, there's also a great balance between showing off Rakim's skills on longer rapped tracks like "Eric B. Is President" and "My Melody" and Eric B's on beat tracks like "Extended Beat". Just great stuff all around. Also, from the annals of "connections to other songs I love": the first 15 seconds or so of "I Know You Got Soul" spawning Aaliyah's "Try Again" and M/A/R/R/S's "Pump Up the Volume". Incredible.
Joan Baez: Songs of Leonard Cohen was an introduction to another dimension of 60s folk I'd never really considered and so did this album. But while Leonard Cohen goes for concise, contemporary poetry, Joan Baez reaches back deep into traditional songs and present them with a clarity and an urgency that combined with the pristine production makes them sound brand new again. And that voice! My god.
Also, a special shout out to garageland for recommending the 1989 Dischord compilation State of the Union to me. I wish I'd listened to it before I listened to Repeater - it's a sweeping overview of what was going with DC punk in the late 80s. There's the hardcore stuff, to be sure, but there's also a lot of envelope pushing and it's got a lot of great tracks from bands who seemingly disappeared into the ether after its release.
Also, a special shout out to garageland for recommending the 1989 Dischord compilation State of the Union to me. I wish I'd listened to it before I listened to Repeater - it's a sweeping overview of what was going with DC punk in the late 80s. There's the hardcore stuff, to be sure, but there's also a lot of envelope pushing and it's got a lot of great tracks from bands who seemingly disappeared into the ether after its release.
The Christ On A Crutch -> King Face -> Rain -> 3 is one of my favorite runs on any compilation ever. It's punk in ethos vs punk in sound. It started a musical movement and everyone of those bands are that important.
Red Headed Stranger: Something funny that's happened more than once over the course of this project is that I'll listen to an album I've never heard before by an artist whose discography I'm not super familiar with and I'll hear a song that stops me in my tracks that I love and then I go back and find out it's coincidentally one of that artist's biggest songs! That was my experience with "Blue Eyes Crying the Rain" on this album. I really enjoyed this album a lot; I was pleasantly surprised that there were a lot of good instrumental tracks on it.
Painkiller: Immediately listening to this album, I listened to a couple of 80s Judas Priest tracks and the progression they had in a decade is kind of astounding. The tracks on Painkiller are faster and way more melodically/rhythmically intricate than the band's 80s output (not saying that it's bad! It's just a LOT different!). But more than anything, and perhaps shocking no one, I fucking loved how campy this album is. You know how sometimes people say that wrestling is basically the straight equivalent of being into drag queens? This is like the musical reverse of that equation. It rules.
ElectricWarrior: Having never listened to T. Rex really at all before (aside from "Get It On"), I was honestly kind of expecting this to sound like, I don't know, Berlin-era David Bowie and I have no idea why. This is basically straight-up rock and roll made by a guy who liked to dress up fancy sometimes with an album cover that looks so much more badass than the music actually is. It's a lot of fun, it's a little cheesy, not one of my favorites but I get the instinctive appeal it has.
Supreme Clientele: This is one of those rap albums that *sounds* expensive, which is kind of funny considering there's a skit where Ghostface asks if you would rather fuck Mary J. Blige or Deborah Cox. I was listening to this at work and was trying to pay attention as much as possible but I feel like there was a lot of stuff I missed and I think it might be beneficial to come back to this with a lyrics sheet one day. But upon first listen I liked it a lot.
Emergency & I: Gotta be honest, I wasn't really all that taken by the first half of this album but really came around with "You Are Invited". It reminds me a lot of The Replacements' "Within Your Reach" as a track that both reflects the indie rock sensibilities of the time while also reflecting the way electronic music production techniques were being used in rock at the same time. Speaking of indie rock sensibilities of the time, this thing has an ineffable 90s sound and I can't pinpoint where it comes from. I think it's mostly Travis Morrison's kind of whiny singing style, which I'm never particularly taken with in any genre. I can't see myself coming back to this but I get the cult appeal it has.
Painkiller: Immediately listening to this album, I listened to a couple of 80s Judas Priest tracks and the progression they had in a decade is kind of astounding. The tracks on Painkiller are faster and way more melodically/rhythmically intricate than the band's 80s output (not saying that it's bad! It's just a LOT different!). But more than anything, and perhaps shocking no one, I fucking loved how campy this album is. You know how sometimes people say that wrestling is basically the straight equivalent of being into drag queens? This is like the musical reverse of that equation. It rules.
I was not joking about Judas Priest being the gay culture equivalent of Austin 3:16. Painkiller title track is a top 5 priest song for me (with the other 4 being all timers)
not a huge replacements guy, but those other 4 are all so good.
Painkiller: Immediately listening to this album, I listened to a couple of 80s Judas Priest tracks and the progression they had in a decade is kind of astounding. The tracks on Painkiller are faster and way more melodically/rhythmically intricate than the band's 80s output (not saying that it's bad! It's just a LOT different!). But more than anything, and perhaps shocking no one, I fucking loved how campy this album is. You know how sometimes people say that wrestling is basically the straight equivalent of being into drag queens? This is like the musical reverse of that equation. It rules.
I was not joking about Judas Priest being the gay culture equivalent of Austin 3:16. Painkiller title track is a top 5 priest song for me (with the other 4 being all timers)
yes lmao I completely get it; I think my favorite track ended up being "A Touch of Evil".
Appetite for Destruction: Per Guns N' Roses' Spotify description: "There was something refreshing about a band that could provoke everything from devotion to hatred, especially since both sides were equally right". First of all, lol, but I get where this PR guy is coming from. This band's music is super sleazy, but I like sleazy. Plus, it's hard not to be impressed with how huge this album is in almost every sense of the word: its colossal success; its big, instantly memorable riffs; its long, long singles. (Crazy that "Sweet Child o' Mine" and "Paradise City" are as huge as they considering they're both six minutes long!). It's pure id, but I like that.
Music Has the Right to Children: It's been a while, but I guess I forgot that Boards of Canada were basically a trip hop band. I've always liked BoC more ambient; I honestly like Tomorrow's Harvest a lot more than this. But I'm being mostly fussy: this album is long and sprawling but it's easy to be entranced by it. Even if I did sucked out of that mood at the very end with that weird interlude about Boards of Canada facing censorship or whatever.
John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band: People must've gone apeshit in 1970 when John Lennon said "I don't believe in Beatles", huh? It's kind of interesting, I've listened to a lot of post-Beatles Paul McCartney but still almost no-post Beatles John or George. This album seems more or less like a direct extension of what the Beatles were doing or going to do by the time they broke up. I don't mean that as a bad thing, John Lennon is still clearly in his pop songwriting prime and the album seems a bit...freer to go in a few different directions while still rooted in the same psychedelia the Beatles were doing in the late 60s. I can see why when people started quarantining, everyone immediately thought they should cover "Isolation". I get it more now.
Vs.: You know how a lot of critics use the word "angular" to describe either the guitar rhythms or tones in a lot of post-punk music and it really doesn't mean anything other than "this sounds like post-punk music"? Anyway, although it obviously fits squarely in that tradition, there's nothing too "angular" about this at all, which I find interesting. Funny enough, out of all the five albums on here, this was the only one I added multiple songs from to listen to playlists I listen to a lot. "Mica" and "That's How I Escaped My Certain Fate" were maybe two of my favorite songs out of this whole batch. Plus it was nice of them to end with a straight up fun little punk song with "OK/No Way". Overall, good stuff.
The Doors: I honestly thought I was going to hate this, and I'm genuinely shocked that I really didn't. "Light My Fire" is maybe one of the dumbest songs ever written, and it's somehow less dumb than "Alabama Song". But I like dumb, too. And, maybe more importantly, I really like Ray Manzarek's organ on this album. I think when most people think of what 60s rock music sounds like, it sounds a lot like this, and that organ sound has a whole lot do with that. And "The End" is genuinely a really good song. I can admit that, too.
hey guys quick update on this over a year later: due to a combination of having listened to a couple more of these albums last year, not having any festival lineup drops happen at the start of this year, and the fact that apparently I have listened to Reasonable Doubt multiple times before 2018, I now only have 3 more albums to go! Not going to post any reviews but I am happy to finally see this project through to the bitter end and I'll be writing a wrap up post when I finish.
Well, four years and two days later (so close to being four years and one day...), I have finished listening to 98 classic albums in 2018. I'm going to start off by quoting my intentions from the first post:
"After some comments in the thread, other suggestions were made. These included me writing what I thought about each album, in the style of other threads that have attempted similar things, followed by everyone else writing their thoughts. I think this is a good idea. It was also recommended that I get a list. I think this was also a good idea. It took me a while to come up with a list, but I think I got one.
The list consists of 98 albums, each by a different artist, sourced from many different 'best of' lists. I wanted to cover a lot of different genres, decades, and countries/languages. This last part I came up a bit short on. If I'd done a bit more digging, I could've actually gotten albums from South America and Asia. I also wanted to try to get a mix of indie, popular/major label, and more experimental/avant-garde releases. Again, I came up a bit short on the last part, but if we get past 98, then I'm sure we could find more."
Well, I didn't end up writing a whole lot past the first third or so, and I'm okay with that. Basically the amount of effort I initially was putting in to writing all the reviews at the beginning wasn't worth the lack of discussion that was following. I'm okay with that - as we've seen with other threads, especially in the last year or so, that kind of thing is bound to happen eventually - but I was also getting less motivated to write over time. So instead, I decided to abandon the reviews to try and encourage me to listen more. That didn't really work either because 2018 ended up being the year I started working full time, and I prioritized listening to new music over old. However, I don't regret writing any of these reviews - someday, I'll go back and fondly reread them. Not today. But someday.
To the second point - I'm glad I covered as much sonic territory as I did. Sometimes, like when I hear people talking about how much they love Whole Lotta Red or something, I feel like I'm slowly but surely crossing the threshold where I become an Old Hipster. But on the other hand, even though this project is done it's still worth remembering that there's basically a whole universe of music out there that I've never listened to and maybe never will listen to, and again because I mostly listen to new music I'm probably never going to get around to most of it. In that way, at least having a list of a lot of different albums of different styles gave me discipline and a guide to go out and explore and challenge myself to listen to things I normally wouldn't think to. I did end up expanding my tastes, and even though I didn't end up liking every single album on this list, I feel like I'm at least *slightly* more fluent in any sort of broader cultural conversation about music now, and I think that's worthwhile too.
On the other hand: I'm glad this is over. You know those people on Goodreads who challenge themselves to read 100 books a year? I have no idea how the fuck they did that, and now I'm kind of shocked that I somehow managed to find the willpower to actually finish *this* instead of giving up, and for the most part listening to an album these days requires a lot less effort than reading a book. If I challenged myself to do something similar again, maybe I could....ah, who am I kidding, I couldn't get away with it. Maybe I'll try doing something like this again, maybe with a less restrictive time limit. But festival lineup announcement season is on us, and after that festival season will be on us, and most of my non-new music focus is going to be on that.
So, to summarize: I'm glad I did it. I'm glad it's done. Thanks to everyone who participated in this thread. It was fun.