| 4.0 excellent |
| Air Moon Safari |
| Angel Olsen Strange Cacti |
| Arcade Fire Funeral |
| Arcade Fire Neon Bible |
| Arctic Monkeys Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not |
| Bjork Vespertine |
| Bob Dylan The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan |
| Bob Dylan Highway 61 Revisited |
| Bob Dylan John Wesley Harding |
| Bob Dylan New Morning |
| Bob Dylan Time Out of Mind |
| Bonnie 'Prince' Billy I See a Darkness |
| Bright Eyes I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning |
| Built to Spill Keep It Like a Secret |
| Built to Spill There's Nothing Wrong with Love |
| Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band Safe As Milk |
| Carole King Tapestry |
| Dinosaur Jr. You're Living All Over Me |
| DJ Shadow Endtroducing..... |
| Drake Nothing Was the Same |
| Elliott Smith Roman Candle |
| Emmylou Harris Pieces of the Sky |
| Emmylou Harris Roses in the Snow |
| Emmylou Harris Wrecking Ball |
| Eva Cassidy Songbird |
| Gnarls Barkley St. Elsewhere |
| Guillemots Through the Windowpane |
| How to Dress Well Total Loss |
| Jay Reatard Blood Visions |
| John Cale Paris 1919 |
| John Cale HoboSapiens |
| Kendrick Lamar Section.80 |
| Latyrx The Album |
| Lauryn Hill The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill |
| Leonard Cohen Songs of Leonard Cohen |
| Leonard Cohen New Skin for the Old Ceremony |
| Love Forever Changes |
| Massive Attack Mezzanine |
| Muse Origin of Symmetry |
| My Morning Jacket At Dawn |
| Neil Young Tonight's the Night |
| Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds The Boatman's Call |
| 1997's The Boatman's Call finds itself a far cry from Murder Ballads of the previous year. Murder Ballads took Nick Cave's fascination of death and murder to the extreme, whereas The Boatman's Call is a tender, emotional collection of songs. The songs are all quite similar sounding, feauturing little but a piano and Nick Cave's baritone vocals, but it isn't necessarily a bad thing. The opener is Into My Arms, a definite highlight and one of the best love songs of all time in my book. The lyrics mix love and religion, in a beautiful and sincere ballad. The rest of the album does not exactly reach this sky-high level, but some of the other songs are truly remarkable as well. Are You The One That I've Been Waiting For is another truly moving love song, and comes the closest to approaching Into My Arms. While the album does drop a bit in the end, it is definitely still a beautiful album, but it is arguably more of a mood-album, to play in the background, than one you listen to intensely. |
| Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds No More Shall We Part |
| Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds The Good Son |
| Nick Drake Pink Moon |
| Nick Drake Five Leaves Left |
| Nick Drake Bryter Layter |
| Otis Redding Otis Blue: Otis Redding Sings Soul |
| Otis Redding The Dock of the Bay |
| OutKast Stankonia |
| Paul Simon Graceland |
| Pink Floyd Wish You Were Here |
| Pixies Doolittle |
| Radiohead The Bends |
| Roxy Music Siren |
| Rufus Wainwright Want One |
| Sam Cooke Night Beat |
| Solomon Burke Nashville |
| Stevie Wonder Songs in the Key of Life |
| Sun Kil Moon Ghosts of the Great Highway |
| Sun Kil Moon Benji |
| Talking Heads Remain in Light |
| Taylor Swift Fearless |
| Taylor Swift 1989 |
| The Afghan Whigs Gentlemen |
| The Decemberists Picaresque |
| The Decemberists Castaways and Cutouts |
| The Decemberists The Crane Wife |
| The Flaming Lips The Soft Bulletin |
| The Go-Betweens 16 Lovers Lane |
| The Mountain Goats Tallahassee |
| The National Alligator |
| The Olivia Tremor Control Music From The Unrealized Film Script |
| The Replacements Let It Be |
| The Smiths The Smiths |
| The Smiths Strangeways, Here We Come |
| The Who Who's Next |
| Tom Waits Closing Time |
| Tom Waits Alice |
| Townes Van Zandt For the Sake of the Song |
| Townes Van Zandt Townes Van Zandt |
| Townes Van Zandt The Late Great Townes Van Zandt |
| TV on the Radio Return to Cookie Mountain |
| Wes Montgomery The Incredible Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery |
| Often considered Wes Montgomery's creative peak, the title says it all. His technique is mind-blowing (and rather interesting; he uses his thumb rather than a pick), and all of the songs are engaging and entertaining. Roughly, the songs are divided into slow ballads and up-tempo songs, although the latter seems to be his forte. Maybe it?s just because slow jazz ballads are better suited for horn instruments than a guitar player with a technique like Wes?. The album's zenith is Four on Six, an upbeat song and a Montgomery original, that is as catchy as an instrumental track can possibly be. Driven by an easily recognizable, hummable theme, atop an equally catchy bass riff, the song expands into a diverse solo and back again. While this is the best example of Wes Montgomery's prodigious abilities, the rest of the album is far from a lacklustre. |
| 2.5 average |
| Beck Sea Change |
| Beirut Gulag Orkestar |
| Belle and Sebastian The Boy With the Arab Strap |
| Black Sabbath Paranoid |
| Bright Eyes A Christmas Album |
| Clap Your Hands Say Yeah Clap Your Hands Say Yeah |
| David Bowie Tonight |
| Guns N' Roses Use Your Illusion I |
| HIM Love Metal |
| Interpol Turn on the Bright Lights |
| Led Zeppelin Led Zeppelin |
| Leonard Cohen Dear Heather |
| Metallica Ride The Lightning |
| Metallica Reload |
| Metallica Load |
| Metallica Garage Inc. |
| Morrissey Ringleader of the Tormentors |
| Morrissey's follow-up to 2004's excellent "You Are The Quarry", is titled "Ringleader of the Tormentors". The title stands out in comparison to his other albums. Unfortunately, this is not true for the album. Reviewers seem to vary in opinion, between thinking this album is Morrissey at his best, or thinking this is just an average Morrissey record, like all of the others. The latter is probably closer to the truth. The single "You Have Killed Me", is pretty good, but it doesn't stand out in his catalogue. The entire album is a collection of songs ranging from decent to good. Nothing is terrible, but nothing is fantastic either. The album is definitely inferior to "You Are The Quarry" and "Vauxhall & I", and I don't see a single Morrissey classic in-the-making on this album. "Ringleader of the Tormentors" is a good, but easily forgettable album. Fanboys might be satisfied, but it seems unlikely that this will win over new fans. |
| Nirvana Nevermind |
| Scarlett Johansson Anywhere I Lay My Head |
| The Mountain Goats Get Lonely |
| The Rolling Stones Exile on Main St. |
| Tom Waits Real Gone |
| Tom Waits Foreign Affairs |
