Average Rating: 3.54 Rating Variance: 0.53 Objectivity Score: 74% (Fairly Balanced)
Sort by: Rating | Release Date | Rating Date | Name5.0 classicGodspeed You! Black Emperor Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to HeavenMiles Davis Kind of BlueI'm sorry to say that no angel, deity, or Buddha has ever seen fit to enter my home and ravish me. However, I have listened to Kind of Blue, and that's about as close as anyone can get.Streetlight Manifesto Everything Goes NumbThe Clash London CallingThe National Boxer4.5 superbBandits of the Acoustic Revolution A Call To ArmsBon Iver For Emma, Forever AgoCatch 22 Keasbey NightsThis is so, so close to being a 5. It sounds like pure energy being unleashed over various musical instruments and it's as catchy as anything, but as a songwriter Kalnoky just wasn't quite there yet; the lyrics are intelligent, needless to say, but occasionally trite, sometimes overwrought, and only rarely as vivid and emotive as Kalnoky's later work; meanwhile, the horns lack the majesty so characteristic of Streetlight. There's no denying the album's excellence, especially when you stop comparing it to Streetlight, but it just doesn't hold together quite well enough to be a 5.GZA Liquid SwordsJohn Coltrane A Love SupremeMiles Davis Sketches of SpainModest Mouse The Lonesome Crowded WestNeutral Milk Hotel In the Aeroplane Over the SeaNick Drake Five Leaves LeftIt's astonishing that Nick Drake was able to make an album like Five Leaves Left when he was barely twenty years old. There's nothing youthful about this album at all. Rather, it sounds like a very old man thinking back on his youth with terrible regret. The album is often compared to Van Morrison's Astral Weeks, but it lacks that album's intensity and yearning; Drake's music has gone beyond both moods into quiet, wistful resignation. Five Leaves Left aches with loss, and when I listen to it I get the sense that Drake's death at 26 was of a kind of psychic old age-a fatal antidepressant overdose that signified the simple exhaustion of his old, defeated soul.Okkervil River Don't Fall In Love With Everyone You SeePaul Simon GracelandRadiohead Kid ASure, there are some good songs on Kid A-Idioteque pulses with fear and anguished valour, and there are a few other songs (Optimistic, How to Disappear Completely) that work up a convincing sense of desolation. Unfortunately, this is offset by the amount of lifeless pseudo-music that fills the album, and too much of Kid A is an inexpressive yawn. 2/5rEDIT 9/24/11: HOW COULD I HAVE BEEN SO STUPID????Radiohead OK ComputerStreetlight Manifesto Somewhere in the BetweenI could never say that Streetlight's sophomore effort is anything less than great. On the contrary, it's about as good a follow-up to Everything Goes Numb as anyone could reasonably have hoped for. The horn lines are more intricate and majestic than ever, and energy levels remain near-solar. It's just that the whole album seems so...unnecessary. Everything Goes Numb thoroughly overshadows it and makes it redundant. It's not that SITB sounds just the same as Everything Goes Numb, but on some vague subliminal level it doesn't have anything new to offer that EGN didn't already give us with more force and pathos.Sufjan Stevens The Age of AdzSun Kil Moon Ghosts of the Great HighwayThe Gaslight Anthem The '59 SoundThe Mountain Goats The Sunset TreeThe Mountain Goats All Hail West TexasThe Mountain Goats The Coroner's GambitThe National AlligatorThe Tallest Man on Earth The Wild HuntThe Weakerthans Reconstruction SiteThe Weakerthans Left and LeavingTitus Andronicus The MonitorI would say that this is the closest thing to perfect that I've heard in a while, except that "perfection" is completely the wrong concept to apply to The Monitor. It's not about perfection at all, but imperfection perfectly deployed. A focused, perfect album will always be amazing, of course, but sometimes you want something that sprawls, something with the courage to go unabashedly for broke, something that will risk everything-risk being ridiculous, bloated, pretentious-in search of that crazy epic, the album that climbs Everest and pisses on the world from the summit, the album that can only be spoken of in frenzied hyperbole. Flawless? No. Focused? No. Daring, massive, and amazing? Yes, yes, and hell yes.U2 The Joshua TreeVan Morrison Astral Weeks4.0 excellentA Tribe Called Quest The Low End TheoryAgainst Me! Reinventing Axl RoseBad Brains Bad BrainsBob Dylan Blood on the TracksBob Marley and The Wailers UprisingBob Marley and The Wailers Burnin'Bomb the Music Industry! To Leave or Die in Long IslandBomb the Music Industry! Goodbye Cool World!Bomb the Music Industry! Album Minus BandBrand New Deja EntenduBrand New The Devil and God Are Raging Inside MeBright Eyes I'm Wide Awake, It's MorningBroken Social Scene You Forgot It in PeopleBruce Springsteen Born to RunCap'n Jazz Shmap'n ShmazzCarissa's Wierd Songs About LeavingElliott Smith XOElvis Costello My Aim Is TrueElvis Costello This Year's ModelFleetwood Mac RumoursFrank Turner Love, Ire & SongFrank Turner England Keep My BonesFuture of Forestry TravelFuture of Forestry Travel IIGodspeed You! Black Emperor Slow Riot For New Zero KanadaI like to imagine GY!BE in the studio at the end of every recording session. "Christ, this song is still only 16 minutes long!" "Seriously? We can't put out a song like that, it'll ruin our post-cred." "Yeah, but listen. This section isn't too repetitive yet. We can keep that going for at least three more minutes. Come on, we still have time." "But I haven't writ-" "Just play the damn guitar." They're an amazing band, of course, but often that just makes it all the more regrettable that they insist on bloating their albums with purposeless meandering. So I all but jumped for joy when I found out that this release was a mere 28 minutes long, and that one song was actually under 11 minutes. This, I thought, could finally be the perfect post-rock album. Certainly it would be the band's most concise statement, eschewing all of the filler that besmirches their other albums. I was wrong. There's just as much filler here as on all the other albums, it just takes up less time. "But," you say, ever the optimist, "is this not mathematically impossible? How could this be?" Well, basically they keep all of the filler and get rid of the meat that had made their other albums so worth listening to despite their flaws. There's a lot of atmosphere, but seemingly little substance. Besides, way too much of this EP is devoted to that damn crackpot poet. I can't figure out what I'm supposed to get out of his ridiculous ramblings and mediocre poetry, but I'm not sure if I want to. (EDIT, 1 year later: on the other hand, I might have been stupid.)Japandroids Post-NothingJets to Brazil Orange Rhyming DictionaryJohn K. Samson ProvincialJoni Mitchell BlueJoyce Manor Joyce ManorKate Rusby SleeplessLeonard Cohen Songs of Leonard CohenListener Wooden HeartLos Campesinos! Hold On Now, Youngster...Miles Davis Birth of the CoolMiles Davis Cookin' With the Miles Davis QuintetMiles Davis Steamin' With the Miles Davis QuintetMinor Threat In My EyesMinor Threat Minor ThreatModern Life Is War WitnessModest Mouse The Moon & AntarcticaModest Mouse This Is a Long Drive for Someone with Nothing to Think AboutMy Bloody Valentine LovelessNas IllmaticNick Drake Pink MoonPedro the Lion ControlPedro the Lion It's Hard To Find A FriendPedro the Lion Winners Never QuitPedro the Lion ProgressRadiohead The BendsRegina Spektor Soviet KitschSigur Ros Heima (DVD)Steve Earle Copperhead RoadSufjan Stevens IllinoisTelevision Marquee MoonThe Beat I Just Can't Stop ItThe Beatles RevolverThe Beatles Rubber SoulThe Beatles Abbey RoadThe Beatles The BeatlesThe Beatles Help!The Clash The Clash (US version)The Flaming Lips Yoshimi Battles the Pink RobotsThe Get Up Kids Something to Write Home AboutThe Greencards Weather and WaterThe Greencards FascinationThe National The Virginia EPSo it turns out that the National are such a great band that they can now just crap out a fantastic album with seemingly no effort at all. Still, it's a shame that no one-right up to the band itself-apparently had any faith in this material. As it is, the whole thing plays like Boxer's bonus disc, a slapped-together collection of demos, live cuts, rejected tracks, and apparently everything else that had never been released. This doesn't prevent nearly every song from being a revelation, but it doesn't add up to an album. Flaws and all, the Virginia EP is a treasure, but it's hard not to wonder how much more it could have been if anyone had tried to make it more than a quickie release of whatever the National still had lying around.The National High VioletThe Olivia Tremor Control Music From The Unrealized Film Script The Roots Things Fall ApartThe Tallest Man on Earth Shallow GraveThe Tallest Man on Earth There's No Leaving NowThe White Stripes ElephantElephant is an excellent album, one whose visceral impact and rare intensity will surely resound for decades in the hard rock world. Jack White uses distortion with mastery, but never employs it as a substitute for musical invention; on the contrary, it is White's unmistakeable style-strange and piercingly ferocious, over a simple but strong backbeat-that gives Elephant the edge over other garage rock artists. Even so, of course, that would count for little if White's songwriting were less assured or his lyrics weaker, but he delivers in spades. Elephant is a tad uneven, but when it pays off, it hits the jackpot.The Who Who's NextThe Wrens The MeadowlandsThelonious Monk Brilliant CornersTom Waits Rain Dogs"Singing might not be an accurate description of what Waits does here," observes Rolling Stone with glorious understatement. Elsewhere, I've seen his voice described as "parched", "croaking", and "a cancerous growl". None of these quite convey the unique agony of listening to Waits's death-rattle vocals. Nor, I imagine, can any language. Backed by a band of psychopathic clowns wielding xylophones and horns, his partially decayed vocal cords evoke a sweaty, surrealist hell on the underside of town somewhere. At its frequent best, it's riveting. U2 Achtung BabyWU LYF Go Tell Fire to the Mountain"These are not words!" my friend wails helplessly at the speaker, and I can't tell if he's wrong or not. Sure, we could go online and look up the lyrics, but what's the point really? It sounds great the way it is, as undefined syllables that can take on whatever meaning we wish. With its guitar echoes, mighty drums, and unintelligible lyrics, this is an album intoxicated by the exhilaration of pure sound. Muscular and meandering, every moment sounds like it was recorded on an epic journey up Mt. Doom while WU LYF waited for the blizzard to pass, but the beauty of this album is that I could talk to ten people and come away with at least ten different images that the album had suggested to each of them. Rarely is music left this free to evoke whatever moods and associations the listener brings to it, or to reward each interpretation so richly. Wu-Tang Clan Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)3.5 greatAdrienne Young The Art of VirtueAlanis Morissette Jagged Little PillAnberlin CitiesArcade Fire FuneralAs Cities Burn Come Now SleepBeck Midnite VulturesBob Dylan Blonde on BlondeBon Iver Bon Iver, Bon IverBuilt to Spill Keep It Like a SecretCharles Mingus Mingus Ah UmColdplay Viva la Vida or Death and All His FriendsConverge Jane DoeJane Doe is an all-out assault on every part of the anatomy. So far I've only needed two major surgeries as a result of Converge, but I've talked to people who've had more. Jane Doe delivers such a relentless pummeling that it's hard to be aware of what's actually happening at any point on the album, but it's so compellingly intense that you kind of go with it. Ordinarily I would say that an album like this confused volume and distortion with musical intensity, but, while I've heard more intensity from more reserved bands like Against Me!, Converge actually does seem to raise volume and distortion to such a level that it does create intensity. Or perhaps there is actually some musical invention buried diligently under the surface. Whatever the reason, Jane Doe is-well, an experience. It's not to be missed.Creedence Clearwater Revival Green RiverDavid Bowie The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From MarsDropkick Murphys The Warrior's CodeGodspeed You! Black Emperor F♯ A♯ ∞Jeff Buckley GraceJethro Tull AqualungJoy Division CloserJoy Division Unknown PleasuresLaura Stevenson Sit ResistLed Zeppelin Led Zeppelin IIILed Zeppelin Led Zeppelin IVLos Planetas Una Semana en el Motor de un AutobúsMiles Davis Workin' With Miles Davis and the QuintetModest Mouse Good News for People Who Love Bad NewsModest Mouse We Were Dead Before the Ship Even SankNirvana NevermindPavement Slanted and EnchantedPink Floyd Wish You Were HerePixies DoolittleR.E.M. MurmurRadiohead In RainbowsRadiohead The King of LimbsSigur Ros ( )As the title suggests, ( ) has an almost blank quality, allowing the listener total freedom to interpret the music according to their mood. It's an album that almost completely abandons the specific emotional cues of conventional music and replaces them with expansive, drifting mood pieces that maintain a sort of emotional neutrality while somehow managing to express so much. For me, this is an entirely new kind of musical experience, and it's singularly difficult to evaluate with a rating. I guess that's a good thing, but I'm not sure if it justifies the aimless and none-too-compelling meandering of much of the second half. Most of the later songs seem stale and formulaic in comparison with the pristine winter loveliness of the first half; sometimes during this last half it seems as if the band's recording process consisted of writing something unusually loud but very short, then fleshing it out by adding eight minutes of repetitive piano chords and throwing the loud part at various random points in the middle to serve as a climax. As interesting as a couple of these climaxes are, the songs don't hold together and they're frankly boring, and not even the vivid ecstasy of Untitled 1 can quite make up for that.Sigur Ros Takk...Simon and Garfunkel Bridge Over Troubled WaterSimon and Garfunkel Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and ThymeSlint SpiderlandSpoon Ga Ga Ga Ga GaSun Kil Moon Tiny CitiesThe Beatles Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club BandThe Gaslight Anthem Sink or SwimThe Gaslight Anthem American SlangThe Greencards ViridianThe Menzingers Chamberlain WaitsThe Mountain Goats All Eternals DeckThe National Cherry TreeThe State Lottery When the Night ComesThe Strokes Is This ItThe Velvet Underground The Velvet Underground & NicoThe White Stripes White Blood CellsThe Who QuadropheniaThe Wombats A Guide to Love, Loss and DesperationWhy are the Wombats so underrated? Perhaps singer Matthew Murphy's untrained screech puts off some listeners despite being so direct and convincing. Or maybe it's just too hard to judge the band based on what they really are as opposed to what they should be. The Wombats should be just another silly teen band, but their music is far too compelling for that dismissive label. Their lyrics should be generic slogs through the familiar themes of love and lost and angst, but they're written with such style and flair, such a distinctive morbid wit, that they're elevated above the pettiness of their subjects and ascend into a kind of hormone-crazed pop poetry not unlike Nirvana or Violent Femmes. I can't claim that the Wombats are geniuses, but after a month of confronting the daunting pretensions of Sigur Ros and Godspeed You! Black Emperor and the demanding genius of Bob Dylan and Converge, it's a relief to turn to such an unabashedly fun album, so full of life and spirit.Third Eye Blind Third Eye BlindU2 Rattle and HumVan Morrison MoondanceWe Were Promised Jetpacks These Four Walls3.0 goodBeck Sea ChangeColdplay A Rush of Blood to the HeadColdplay X&YFine Before You Came OrmaiFleet Foxes Helplessness BluesFlorence and the Machine LungsFuture of Forestry Travel IIIJohn McCutcheon Storied GroundJohn McCutcheon Greatest Story Never ToldJohn McCutcheon Mightier Than the SwordJohn McCutcheon Live at Wolf TrapJustin Townes Earle Harlem River BluesMarvin Gaye What's Going OnPeter Tosh Equal RightsPink Floyd The Dark Side of the MoonPrince Purple RainPublic Enemy It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us BackR.E.M. Lifes Rich PageantRadiohead Hail to the ThiefSimon and Garfunkel Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M.Simon and Garfunkel Sounds of SilenceSwitchfoot The Beautiful LetdownSwitchfoot Eastern Hymns For Western ShoresThe Beach Boys Pet SoundsThe Beatles Let It BeThe Beatles Please Please MeThe Doors The DoorsThe Greencards Movin' OnThe Low Anthem Oh My God, Charlie DarwinThe Mighty Mighty Bosstones Let's Face ItThe Shins Oh, Inverted WorldThe Strokes Room on FireThe Who Live at LeedsU2 All That You Can't Leave BehindU2 How to Dismantle an Atomic BombU2 The Unforgettable FireViolent Femmes Violent FemmesViolent Femmes' debut album has some great songs, and some even better individual moments ("oh my my my my my mo my mum..."), and I really have a lot of affection for the album. The tunes are catchy as hell, with the exception of the rather dreary "Confessions", and the band achieves some remarkable power slamming on acoustic instruments. After a few songs, though, it starts to get repetitive, and it's just too uneven to be a really great album. 2.5 averageAdrienne Young Room to GrowBeck Modern GuiltDavid Bowie Station to Stationdredg El CieloMy chief complaint with El Cielo is with the vocals, which closely resemble the sound that I imagine would be produced if an exceptionally pretentious mosquito learned to sing. But neither is there much else on the album to redeem it. In fact, it's really rather generic when it's not trying to remind itself of its own brilliance (something that Sputnik seems to fall for every time). Maybe I really am missing out on something great, but I really just don't see the hype.Explosions in the Sky The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead PlaceSee, this is exactly why I don't like this whole post-rock concept. Most of it assumes that the quality of a song rests purely on how loud and drum-hyper its climax is-and how slowly the song can build up to that climax. This isn't to say that post-rock can never be good, or that there have been no great albums in the history of the genre. It's just that there are too many artists who take advantage of the post-rock aesthetic to pretend that it doesn't matter how boring or simplistic their music is, as long as the amps are turned up to 11 by the time the song ends. Explosions in the Sky is one of those groups that seems to take the genre's emphasis on repetition and simplicity, and use it as a free pass to avoid the expectation that their music will have any sense of inspiration or purpose. As rudimentary as their compositional skills are, it's a miracle that the album turned out this well.Frank Zappa Hot Rats"A movie for your ears", Zappa proclaims in the liner notes. Undoubtedly it's something low-budget and X-rated. Maybe it's just because of "Willie the Pimp", but everything Zappa does here sounds unspeakably filthy to my ears-filthy, and manipulative. Hot Rats has plenty of visceral (albeit cheap and gimmicky) thrills to offer, provided you don't mind the feeling that you've just spent forty-five minutes masturbating to rodent pornography.Gogol Bordello Trans-Continental HustleJohn McCutcheon This FireLed Zeppelin Physical GraffitiLed Zeppelin Houses of the HolyLoreena McKennitt The Book of SecretsMisty River StoriesMogwai Young TeamMogwai's Young Team is not an album to be enjoyed, it's an album to be admired. This is the kind of album that you buy not to listen to but to display on a shelf and intimidate visitors, like you do with Moby Dick and gourmet cheeses. Friends will walk in, put their hands over their hearts, and say in awestruck tones, "Oh! You listen to Mogwai!", with optional bowing and scraping. Apparently you can take any moody guitar riff and repeat it for ten minutes straight and people will hail the result as a visionary epic. If you can do the same thing with nine more indistinguishable riffs and make an album of it, it's a revelation.Ornette Coleman The Shape of Jazz to ComeWith the exception of one song (the unappetizingly dreary "Peace"), The Shape of Jazz to Come has one mood: squealing frenzy. I can't count how many times Coleman pulls some form of bizarre, high-pitched shriek out of his plastic saxophone. The frenetic tone is effective and interesting for a while, but after 25 minutes of what is essentially shredding on saxophones and trumpets, I have to get up and start imitating a rooster in order to stay entertained.Pink Floyd The WallSorne House of StoneSORNE is like a little kid whose parents give him everything he wants and never pay attention to him, so he spends his childhood climbing onto roofs and leaping off jungle gyms screaming "LOOK AT ME!!!" And he probably ends up with a little horde of little followers who think he's daring, and then he probably goes to college and finds that no one much cares about his stunts anymore and no one really cares for him because he's never had to develop a real personality. And then maybe he grows up. Or maybe he doesn't. SORNE hopefully will, because he's got a lot of musical talent waiting for him to just stop trying so hard to be interesting.The Bravery The Sun and the MoonThe Bravery The Sun and the Moon CompleteThe Cranberries No Need to ArgueThe Flaming Lips The Soft BulletinThe Kinks The Village Green Preservation SocietyThe Wonder Years Get Stoked on It!Tom Chapin The Turning of the TideTrain Train2.0 poorBob Dylan John Wesley HardingAnd Bob Dylan did shit, and his shit did come in the form of platitudes and banal parables whose emptiness was concealed behind a veneer of incomprehensibility. And the assembled crowd did applaud and shout his praises, saying "Lo, what a great man is Bob Dylan, and what a prophet, to shit thus! If only he might grace us with a song or two!" And then, opening his windows with a look of disdain, Bob Dylan called down to them, "Folks, I don't feel like picking up my guitar tonight, but I think you'll all agree that that shit was the most profound thing you've ever heard in your life. You can leave your money with any of the four servants currently out on the lawn..."Coldplay ParachutesJames Blunt Back To BedlamJethro Tull Thick as a BrickNickelback All the Right ReasonsStill on the Hill OzarkThe Black Keys BrothersThe Black Keys can mimic emotion, but not feel it. They've mastered the art of catchy hooks, but I've never once gotten the sense that they really mean what they're saying. Every song plays like an exercise in blues-rock style, not an outpouring of genuine emotion. The lyrics are a compilation of blues and blues-rock standbys that have been around since the 1970s or before. The one (1) good line on the album, "That's me-the boy with the broken halo," is promptly ruined by the next line: "The devil won't let me be." Really, Auerbach? Who was the first person to use a variant of that idea? Robert Johnson? Skip James? No, probably someone long before that. There is nothing interesting-or real-about this music.Tom Chapin Common GroundTom Chapin Join the JubileeYes Close to the Edge1.5 very poorCher Take Me HomeMy granddad was listening to this while I was in the car with him, and it was excruciating. Melodramatic, annyoing, schlocky, simply bad.1.0 awfulHannah Montana Hannah MontanaKidz Bop Kidz Kidz Bop, Volume 9
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