Album 496: The Lexicon of Love

And I thought the 80s reached their trough of naffness in the works of WHAM.

2/10

ABC – The Lexicon Of Love

Album 593: Music for the Masses

The first new album from this 1001 album list that Ive really wanted to go back and listen to again. And again. And again.

Ive heard most of depeche mode's singles and played violator to death as a student. But this is the first time Ive heard this masterpiece of menacing beauty.

Depeche Mode - Music for the Masses
9/10

Album 833: Antichrist Superstar

A foolish choice. If the authors wanted a token album by the 90s Alice Cooper, then the later album Mechanical Animals does a much better range of this band's style of shock industrial goth than this shoutfest that has little to commend it than the breakthrough single, the beautiful people.

Marilyn Manson - Antichrist Superstar
3/10

Album 956: Stripped

An album that belongs on no greatest list. This is the sound of X factor relating stories off Jerry Springer.  Dire well before you get to drrrty (spelling indeterminate). She has a voice, but what she does with it isnt worth the bandwidth.

Stripped: Christina Aguilera

1/10 - this album brought us the song beautiful, the magnificence of which has nothing to do with Christina.

Album 830: Second toughest in the infants

Excellent mix of 90s fastpaced electro and dance club music. Not as good as Orbital, but still fabulous

8/10

Underworld – Second Toughest In The Infants

Album 71: Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme

This album brings to mind the building in Bradford which, I am reliably informed, is so absolutely awful that it has been granted listed status so that it remains forever as a reminder of what monstrosities you can create with concrete and how the mistakes of the 60s should never be forgotten.

0/10

Simon & Garfunkel – Parsley, Sage, Rosemary And Thyme

Album 814 : Odelay

Are these songs? Or is this noise? Beautiful, eclectic, surprising noise.

Not so keen on the drawling vocals but otherwise a decent album

7/10

Beck – Odelay

Album 824: Roots

Sepultura growl a lot, don't they?

3/10

Sepultura – Roots [Special Edition]

Album 96: Surrealistic Pillow

While a long fan of White Rabbit, and a grudging convert to Somebody to Love after the constant play of a dance track which sampled it, I'm not keen on the rest of the tracks on this album. Interesting snapshot of where US folk rolk tipped into psychaedelic but "not to my taste"

4/10

Jefferson Airplane – Surrealistic Pillow

Album 508: Thriller

The singles from this album are Michael Jackson at his greatest. The other tracks are... not to my taste. A classic album definitely.

Certainly this is a more genuine, innocent and likable Michael Jackson than the one that's bad or saving the world.

Michael Jackson – Thriller

9/10

Album 822:Oedipus Schmoedipus

An album which could be the soundtrack to dreams you've forgotten. Unfortunately, only the first track ("Set the controls for the heart of the pelvis" featuring Jarvis Cocker) stands out making this feel like an extended EP. Disappointing.

5/10

Barry Adamson – Oedipus Schmoedipus

Album 10: Brilliant Corners

Proper basement-jazz-club stuff. Animal could have almost have been derived from the drummer. Two very decent tracks, the others don't quite engage me. Not enough to turn me into a jazz fan, but a lot better than others I've heard

5/10

Thelonious Monk – Brilliant Corners

Album 823: Come find yourself

It used to be a cliché that albums were a few singles with a few boring songs to pad it out to 12 inches of vinyl. Fun Lovin' Criminals reverse that.  The single that was played to death for ten years or so - Scooby Snacks-  is easily the weakest track on this, their debut album. Their eponymous opening track, also a single at the time is more indicative of their mix of hip hop and alt rock.

7/10

Album 14: This is Little Richard

Two decent songs, but the rest sound like remixes. I know this was the era where the 12 bar blues was law, but there's not enough variation or development to sustain interest.

3/10

Album 828: Murder Ballads

Whilst I remember with affection the Nick Cave/Kylie Minogue duet Where the Wild Roses Grow, I'd forgotten just how gorgeous Henry Lee was. The rest of this album is similarly wonderful.

Scoring low only because this sort of ballad is a bit slow-paced for me; but it's perfect material for the Bad Seeds.

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Murder Ballads

8/10

1001 albums experiment: Update

Ok, this game is going better than I thought; for those joining late here's the rules, somewhat updated.

I'm trying to listen to every album in the '1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die' book, as listed here. I'm listening to each on Spotify, and will then write a paragraph or two about the album on this blog. For albums not on Spotify, I'll decide whether to buy it from 7music or substitute another album.

I'm not doing albums in order, but rather running two orders simultaneously one currently in the 50s and the one in the 90s - based on my prejudices about whether I'll fully appreciate an album in my current mood, or whether I'm sick of a particular sound that that sequence of albums seem stuck in.

By accident I'm using the 2005 edition of the book, rather than the 2008 or 2011 editions; but the extra albums from the '00s will give me a few substitutes.

Now everything I write about each album is my personal impression, which might be hugely disrespectful to a person or band who massively influenced the music I love. But that's tough. This book says I should listen to this album before I die, so I shall (if I can). But that doesn't mean I have to like the experience now.

I'm more than happy to accept options for substitute albums, and of course the 2-3 year challenge to listen to the entire list will probably end in failure when I get bored in a few months time.

Album:9: The Atomic Mr Basie

It would appear that Count Basie composed 1950s black and white TV show themes and incidental music.

Next.

Count Basie – The Atomic Mr Basie

1/10

Album 8: The chirpin crickets

Gorgeous.

Im not sure if this counts as throwaway bubblegum pop. If it does, then its the sort of throwaway thing that is rightfully collected in museums as examples of the beauty of previous ages.

7/10

Album 826: Everything must go

The album that everyone who went to University in my year had. Corridors in halls used to run sound experiments playing the album with people starting it off at at sub-second intervals.

And it's weathered quite well. A design for life remains one of the best songs the Manics ever did. Even the obscure songs - Interiors and Removables are better than I remember.

It's a shame that since then they've grown old.

Manic Street Preachers - Everything Must Go 9/10

Album 7: Songs for Swinging Lovers

An improvement on In The Wee Small Hours but I'm still not enjoying Frank. The songs are better but I just don't like Sinatra's style, and whilst "I've got you under my skin" is good enough, the rest of the album bores me.

I'm going to make no comment at all about the propriety of the title or the song "Making Whoopie".

Frank Sinatra – Songs For Swinging Lovers

2/10

Album 6: Duke Ellington at Newport

I don't like jazz but, fair enough, this is quality stuff. Its not the clichéd music I've suffered before, this is an authentic live sound from the fifties.

Not entirely sure why he's in Wales, but a jazz fan would love this.

4/10

Album 746: Modern life is rubbish

A disappointing album, particularly when you hold it up against Suede's and Radiohead's debut albums, both released the same year. For a band that would go on to change their sound with every single in years to come. Everything here is still in development, not quite there. Even against other shoegazing bands of the time, it's still not great.

There's nothing particularly bad about, just repetitive. You can only use the gag of a silly tune that speeds up to breaking point once per album (Intermission and Commercial Break)

For Tomorrow and Resigned are fab songs standing out of an album which is a little bit rubbish.

Blur – Modern Life Is Rubbish

5/10

Album 824: Maxwell's Urban Hangsuite

Bloody Awful.

Album 825 Tellin' Stories

Fourth album from a Madchester band that wasnt from Manchester and here are sounding very like another great almost-Manchester band of the nineties - The Stone Roses - only nowhere near as good.

Gone is the quirky nature of The Only One I know and Wierdo, instead an attempt at a sub-Paul Weller credible rock. One to another remains a decent song, but otherwise its an album a half dozen bands could have done better.

6/10

Album 827: Walking Wounded

I'm clearly not enjoying the 50s, but then would you expect a 50s Rock n Roller to enjoy HMS Pinafore?

So I'm moving forward to my own era, where there's lots of albums I know well. But not this one, by Everything but the Girl. Obviously I've heard the remix of Missing You to death, and like many bands that one hit repeated over and over again

This 1996 album by the band is a really nice crystaline chill-out indie-dance effort. Occasionally even an element of drum n bass in the electronic rhythm section. An all round good description of decent dance music just before the MEGA MEGA WHITE THING MEGA MEGA... of Underworld heralded the not-unwelcome mainsteam shift into mega-dance clubs and their anthems.

8/10

Everything But The Girl – Walking Wounded

Album 5: This is Fats Domino

Dismal.

1/10

Fats Domino – This Is Fats Domino

(Of course, this is one of the fathers of rock and rock and I'm by no means disrespecting the importance of what he's done in terms of evolving modern music. I just really really don't like this album. But it's preferable to Sinatra.)

Album 4: the WILDEST!

Nearly everyone's heard Louis Prima sing. Yes, you have. No? He's the "King of Swingers" and the voice of King Louie (cunning character name there, Walt) who sings I wanna be like you in Disney's The Jungle Book.

This album is genuine big band swing stuff and it's really quite good. My 21st century ears know this sort of music from the likes of Robbie Williams's vanity project or Mambo number 5.

So whilst its not my sort of thing really, this is an album that stands out as an example of how great Swing can be.

Louis Prima – The Wildest! 6.5/10

Album 3: Tragic Songs of Life

Country and Western is the music of hell and The Louvin Brothers – Tragic Songs of Life is on Satan's iPod.

"What is a home without a baby? To love and to tease and adore?"

0/10

Album 2: Elvis Presley

Elvis Presley's debut album is pleasant enough to 21st century ears. I doubt Id ever listen to it again, as its not my sort of thing. The generalised warbling is off-putting but otherwise its an ok piece of 50s rock and roll. Blue suede shoes is the best thing on, and is much better than you remember it being after many many plays and imitations. Theres nothing to challenge his later classics, Suspicious Minds being my favourites

Debut album are always interesting, being a flavour of what theyre like before being part of the music industry conditions you.

5/10

1001 Albums: Album 1

Album 1: Frank Sinatra – In The Wee Small Hours

I listened to this last night, and already I've forgotten it. I just vague memory of it being very very dull. I've never liked Frank Sinatra, and I probably never will and this album just reinforces my impression of him.

0/10.

1001 Albums experiment

Here's a new experiment for you: Listen to the "1001 albums you must hear before you die" on spotify, ideally an album a day but no promising, and then post a short review after.