Album 784: Music for the Jilted Generation

Who needs hallucinogenics when you have Liam Howlett?

9/10
Music For The Jilted Generation - Prodigy

Album 791: Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness

If it were just Tonight Tonight, Bullet with Butterfly Wings and 1979, I'd rate this album highly. However, most of the other tracks on this double album don't appeal.

The Smashing Pumpkins – Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness

6/10

Album 658: Repeater

Solid heavy rock.

7/10

Fugazi – Repeater

Album 376: Rattus Norvegicus

They're really enjoying wallowing in early 80s grime. They did better.

4/10

The Stranglers – Rattus Norvegicus

Album 511: Nebraska

Droning harmonica and unintelligible vocals providing an apt soundtrack for Limbo.

Bruce Springsteen – Nebraska

2/10

What's this #1001albumchallenge thingy?

Just an update for those who are curious and confused about these "Album XX" posts: I'm currently doing a 1001 album challenge - that is I'm listening to each album on a "1001 albums you must listen to before you die" list, posting a tiny review and a score out of 10.

It seemed a good idea at a time.

Album 87: Forever changes

Whilst this is musically foreign territory, I can imagine the initial song Alone again or being rediscovered in a cult firm just as Caught in the Middle with You and Miserlou were by Tarrantino.  The rest of the songs are lacking by comparison, but are passable.

Love: Forever changes
4/10

Album 800: A Northern Soul

For all it's epic grandeur, this is a tedious album.  What should be majestic ends up cacophonous.  The Verve went on to do some better songs with their next album, but here it just comes across at an attempt to swagger an imitation of being The Doors.

3/10
The Verve - A northern soul

Album 13: Kenya

More bedrock for modern music. It underpins so much, but that doesn't take away from it being rather dull - no matter how fast they bang those congas.

2/10

Machito – Kenya

Album 656: Doolittle

Nearly all the tracks from the Greatest Hits compilation Death to the Pixies are here, highlighting a great Amercian alternative rock band. Their big hit, Monkey gone to Heaven, and the end-title track to Fight Club, Where is my mind? are the stand-out tracks from a band whose most song-titles could be the titles of ultra-low-budget horror films.

8/10

Pixies - Doolittle

Album 941: Melody AM

At this stage, these masters of synth hadn't quite matured the sound to make an album as great as Junior (2009) or Senior (2010), but great listening all the same.

7/10

Royksopp - Melody AM

Album 871: Celebrity Skin

Great on performance, not so great on the songwriting in my opinion. Pleasant but, with the exception of the title track, forgettable.

Hole - Celebrity Skin

6/10

Album 665: En-tact

So this is what magic mushrooms do to you.

Better than you might imagine, not a hint of "Eeeze are Good", but a hardly spectactular set of early 90s dance tunes. The Orb's Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld is a much better example of this style of music, and is sadly missing from this list.

3/10

The Shamen: En-Tact

Album 886: The man who

Music to overdose to. Whilst drowning. Maybe let's throw in some fatal injury that you're slowly bleeding to death from. Certainly there's no energy to do anything to avoid an eternity in spirit-crushing limbo or speed an exit from a world that is so tired of people complaining about the rain.

I like melancholy. This is something beyond, something damp.

Thank the maker this is their only album on this list, now cheering myself up by listening to Joy Division.

Travis - The Man Who
1/10

Album 251: Transformer

Another album that would be lost in the loft because of the tedious mucking about with CDs in the digital age. An album I mostly love, particularly as Walk on the wild side is so much better here than in clips and covers since. Not every song hits the mark, but most are precious stars.

Lou Reed – Transformer
8/10

Album 928: Our Aim is to Satisfy

While they sound nothing like them, this act reminds me of the KLF. Beautifuly strange, frequently instrumental, noticeably influenced by the previous 5 years of underground music (rave in KLF's case, urban in Red Snapper's). Not as far out electronica as say, Lemon Jelly, but still marvelous.

Red Snapper – Our Aim is to Satisfy
7/10

Album 528: War

A U2 where they were still learning how to be an American Sell-out act, before the excess of Zooropa or the financial hypocrisy that has soured Bono's third world ambitions. The songs are good, New Year's Day is excellent and well performed. Makes a nice change from tedious songs like Elevation.

U2 - War
5/10

Album 328: Go Girl Crazy!

An unbearable imitation of Gary Glitter.

The Dictators - Go Girl Crazy
0/10

Album 489: Dare!

From an era where instruments would suddenly change sound because cheap capacitors would burn out, a great album where you can feel the band playing with the rules. Sometimes the experiments fail, but the overall sound is much better. Definitely not the one hit wonder that Don't you want me? might suggest.

Dare! - The Human League
7/10

Album 258: The Slider

Pleasant but with all the depth of tin foil. Occasionally (Metal Guru) it works, often it just repeats a nice hook to tedium. Are you my main man, are you? The last song asks. Not really.

5/10th
T-Rex: The Slider

Goodbye 33

The best of times, the worst of times.

As someone said "it continues".