#1151 Com Truise - Cyanide Sisters

This takes the 80's revivalism of M83, Cut Copy, Washed Out and a thousand other modern bands and smears it out as ambient deconstruction, sounding like some lost tracks of the Drive soundtrack. In some places (especially the title track) it works, grabbing at the latent pathos and pulse of the sound and ballooning it beyond conscious contemplation as synthy waves bloom eternal. But, seemingly out of ideas, Com Truise resorts to modern BPM slurring and glitchy fuckery to keep things evolving, and the result is grating, sub-Oneohtrix wobble and blur. It's a shame this guy didn't have the nerve or the talent to to keep it clean and keep it interesting - the purest form of the sound kills, but too much of it's muddied by other ambitions 3/5

#1150 Ocean Color Scene - Moseley Shoals

A rock-solid album of deeply British rock, drawing equally from Stones shout and late-Beatlesey swoon, with a just a touch of Billy Joel piano stomp. The bass is the key though, it's an enormous backbone, laying down insistent, persistent, daylong grooves with plenty of soaring and searching over top. I got this via Robin's 90's list, and it shows: this is the essence of the 90's British rock and roll revival 4/5

#1149 Damaged Bug - Hubba Bubba

When you hear Thee Oh Sees' John Dwyer is doing a vintage synthesizer-driven album, it sounds like a natural fit. His best stuff is endlessly-repeated guitar riffs that should fit nicely into a loop-based structure, and his worst stuff is meandering tone exploration, which should be perfectly easy to create out of analog synth puddles.

And that's pretty much exactly how that shit went down. Unfortunately there's too much of the latter, simmering little synth buzzes that count on you being really, really interested in texture. I love texture. I'm all about texture, but there's still not enough here. The reason to get on board are those few cases where he goes for the throat, with bigass buzzy basses on the opener and highlight Sic Bay Surprise, which unsurprisingly, are the most rockist songs on the album. Grab those for kickass night driving mixes, but the album on the whole's just too muddy, drenched in signature falsetto and newfound variations on the same old muck 2.5/5

#1148 Black Sabbath - Master of Reality

I've been throwing the word "fun" at a lot of seemingly unfun albums lately, and maybe its because I've happened into a pocket of albums that were bands' 3rd or so, where they started to stretch and found something fresh. Or maybe I'm just getting some perspective on some of this heavier stuff.

Cause this is heavy; undeniably dark and brimming with minor key doom, but it's also exciting, high on its own thrill of discovery, with a clean mix that showcases the riffs themselves and the songs' sharp, angular momentum, with pretty little interludes that build brilliant album-spanning flow. Despite song titles like "Children of the Grave" and "Into the Void", this'll make your head bob in irresistible fast/slow ellipses and I bet it'll whip up a smile 4/5

#1147 Roxy Music - Country Life

I've never liked Roxy Music quite as much as I wanted to: they always teased me with sleek, hooky strangeness, but it always simmered and slunk while I waited for the big entrance.

That big entrance is here, from the first notes of The Thrill of it All, powering on through. This is electric, with that big popping, rolling bass, those guitars full of thundering shimmer, whipping around letting go of all that pent up energy, shedding the irony and detached wit and jumping into the whole sordid scene with abandon, finding irrepressible mania and harrowing joy 4.5/5

#1146 The Who - A Quick One

Over the course of their first three albums these guys made the transition from also-ran British R&B revivalists all the way through into offkilter artrockers, a balance they'd bounce back and forth on for their whole career. This second album's at the crest of that first wave: you get some pretty traditional stompy stuff like Don't Look Away and Run Run Run, but you also get mad stuff like Boris the Spider and the galloping, careening Cobwebs and Strange, to say nothing of the weird, meandering tale of A Quick One, While He's Away. It's a messy listen that doesn't quite hold together, lacking the thrills of My Generation or Who's Next, and the epic scope of Quadrophenia or (the wildly overrated) Tommy, but definitely worth hearing if you've got even a passing interest in the band 3.5/5

#1145 Alice Cooper - Love It To Death

Back when Alice Cooper was a whole band they made this stomping, swaggering, lightly glammy album that's a hell of a lot more fun than you might expect. There's just a dash of danger, but its a lighter version of Iggy's Stooges-era strut at worst. Just look at the joyous closing track, how doomy could this band really be? Alice Cooper isn't trying to bring you down, they want you to have a good time, and they think that being a little sinister might just be the ticket 4/5

#1144 Lou Reed - Berlin

In this post-career-highlight-Transformer phase, Lou Reed branched out into brooding, crooning, album of European streetlights. Creeping along, with a sappy wash of backing everythings, this is an interesting listen for a long longely nights, but it lacks the cool thrills of his best stuff 3/5

#1143 Suicide - Suicide

That menacing organ is pure magic, and alongside some drum and bass churn you get a super-tense, seething post-punk album that's...strangely enjoyable? This is thrilling stuff, keying off of dark Lost Highway 50's energy, an album of too-fast night drives in all the good and back.

Except for the 10 minute murder-suicide tale of Frankie Teardrop. That's terrifying. Appreciate that as art or something, and grab on tight for the rest 4/5

#1142 The Clash - Give 'Em Enough Rope

Back when The Clash was still punk, before their ambitions grew to more and more styles and discs per album, they made this (comparatively) straightforward record that's still packed with inventive, tuneful, exciting stuff. It's sacrilege, but I always thought London Calling was a bit of a mess, and I might like this better: all their brilliance in a tighter, punchier, nastier little package 4/5

#1141 Beck - Morning Phase

A beautiful album, powerfully lush and huge and booming and bold and swaying, aurora borealis rendered in sound, with Beck James Earl Jonesing from the heavens. The production's out of this world, outdoing Sea Change in nearly every way.

But it finds its gear and sticks with it, and by the end the whole thing has gotten a little indistinct, a little boring. I was waiting for a blossoming, some notion of album flow, something Beck hasn't had any knack for in a decade 3.5/5

#1140 Tacocat - NVM

Chuggy, fast-paced girl-group pop-punk that's a little obvious in places, but still a lot of fun. Some of the themes are songs-for-common-days checkboxing: a song about having your period, a song about a boy who's not worth your trouble, a song about a breakup. Ok ok. But when it branches out it shines, especially on Snow Day and Bridge to Hawaii, joyful cries for warmer days that are just what I needed right about now 3.5/5

#1139 10cc - 10cc

Wacky, fun stuff that rips around with 50's doo wop and 60's pop, weaving circus mirror scenes of bouncy, hooky rock. Frank Zappa's the obvious point of comparison, but this is less strange, less biting, a sunny surprise for fans of listenable, slightly strange rock 3.5/5

#1138 The Police - Outlandos d'Amour

A rough-edged, underproduced, underpracticed little album, the punk-oriented moments just running all over themselves, the reggae-oriented moments feeling all the looser for it. There's an icy efficiency to the sound, but the fact that they don't quite pull it off keeps it dangerous and exciting, a blazing fast sports car with a wobbly wheel and a papered-over window.

Even the reggae stuff mostly stays out of the way, providing a hitched cadence, without smoothing the beats into anonymity. The only real problem is Sting's voice, which really is rough, just a nasal little strain here. Maybe part of the charm, check this out if you like your rock simple, fast, and missing parts 3.5/5

#1137 Cheap Trick - In Color

An overproduced, unthreatening, borderline-pop little 70's rock album that still really won me over - it's just that packed with hooks, perfectly paced, bringing one toe-tapping, smile-inducing moment after another. I'm reminded of Mott the Hoople, Thin Lizzy, and plenty of other softer rock bands that I love 4/5

#1136 Prince - 1999

More so than the rest of Prince's stuff I've heard, this feels less like an album and more like a romp through Prince's actual brain, rendered digital. The structures are unpredictable but feel right; the songs go on for long enough to get hypnotic but still stay interesting throughout; the whole thing is full of delightful surprises: just like having sex with Prince, he'd have you believe.

And yeah, there's a lot of sex on this album. Man he's a weird dude, and he made an album that's appropriately slinky and synthy and funky and fun 4/5

#1135 The Smiths - Meat is Murder (UK)

Morrisey's as witty and barbed and goddamned miserable as ever on this one, but the band fights back and hard. At its best, this is probably the most fun Smiths album I've heard, with none of that stunning power of The Queen is Dead, but with a lot of swirling jangly guitars, killer jumping bass, popping drums, and overall sprightly pace. The bouncy stomp of Nowhere Fast and Rusholme Ruffians, in particular, are a thrill, making up for some of the slower no-nowheres like Well I Wonder.

But then of course there's that last track, which is a fucking misery, a blunt instrument and a debacle as a song, 6 minutes of notebook-scrawled spoken-word pronouncements against eating meat over sludgy slaughterhouse sound poems. As protest, as message, it works - I almost never eat meat and I'm still a bit haunted. So I guess Morrisey made his choice, and I guess he made his point, but he ruined his crucial last-song slot, and on some level his album, along the way. So, 'grats, I guess 3/5

#1134 Manic Street Preachers - This is My Truth Tell Me Yours

Have you seen The Manics lately? Man, they're not the same. They used to have all this rage, and now they're just defeated, no fight in them.

Here's a band barely recognizable from The Holy Bible. Not satisfied, not selling out, but not ranting about it anymore, just staring at the stars and watching the world end. It's pretty, beautiful even, brutally straightforward (see the bare sentiment and frail accompaniment of Born a Girl, My Little Empire, and If You Tolerate This), full of chiming, layered guitars and more, but no fun at all, never quite coming up for air and gone 3/5

#1133 Manic Street Preachers - The Holy Bible

A nasty little pleaser, this album, every song with its barbs, all pointed at your vital bits. The Manics do not love you. And yet, they make such good rock and roll, with that stomping energy, that offkilter tunefulness, all The Fall shouting and gloomy, angular post-punk guitars, and shoegaze washes, they draw you closer and closer.

Saying that this album has "hooks" is a more appropriate than usual - these things are sharp and not altogether pleasant, and in you come, into the heart of songs that don't tell you about the horror and despair, just gesturing at to shapes behind curtain, letting you assume the worst. A thrilling, difficult, listenable album that I respected more than I enjoyed 3.5/5

#1132 Megadeth - Rust in Peace

As work music metal goes, this is about as good as it gets: fast as fuck, full of killer hooks, smooth swerves, and impossible chops, with vocals that manage to mostly stay out of the way. The whole thing's damn listenable - more about loving rock and roll and doing it really hard (the #1 way to my heart) than really trying to outdo the next guys in terms of being scary or nasty or bad, this is actually pretty fun shit - one of my favorite recent metal finds 4/5

#1131 The Wannadies - The Wannadies

A joyous little slash of 90's pop-rock, full of grasping at the stars and hearts with with pop-punk tiny fury, with early Supergrass energy and Los Camesinos indie-pop sincerity over top. The backbone's simple enough, crunchy 2-4 chord rock, but with just enough endless vocals and start-stop burstouts to keep it exciting. This is what it's like to be a teenager 4/5

#1130 Illum Sphere - Ghosts of Then and Now

A loop-driven electronic album without a strong beat presence, this is about the actors sliding across the stage in slow motion, rolling hard ambient, Selected Works rendered in additional dimensions. Most of the solid rhythm comes from the bass instead of the drums - that bass, a real physical presence here. This is slippery stuff that operates on a mostly subconscious level, with little pockets and whirls to fall into 3.5/5

#1129 Tijuana Panthers - Semi-Sweet

A joyous, rough-edged little indie-pop-punk album, with plenty of surfy touches, Pavement crunch, and Exploding Hearts brattiness, all hammered into ridiculously tuneful little forms. This was the album Wavves was trying to make, super listenable garagey rock and roll, effortlessly delivered 4/5

#1128 TNT Subhead - Ecstacy and Release

All bass rhythm, from deep subsonic throb to glitchy ambient crumbles, with big beats that sometimes shift and sometimes ride relentless, this is a hypnotic, strange, mostly listenable album.

Look, it might have been that it was a well-lived 2am, but the first time I tried to re-listen to this to review it I fell asleep. I'm not saying that's good or bad, just that this is music that can melt away consciousness, all slow knob twiddles and piecemeal builds, this as is armchair as electronica gets, full of small experimental flourishes atop a solid 4 backbone 3.5/5

#1127 Danny Tenaglia - Futurism

A relentless house (?) mix with rocksolid flow, no particular seams in sight, just put it on and check the fuck out. The mood runs from funky to ambient, but there's not much here that'll latch onto your body or mind. Not much here for dancing, not much for armchair listening, but decent music for swaying, programming, or maybe sinking into a couch for a couple hours 3/5

#1126 Cream - Wheels of Fire

Can't get into Cream. Keep trying, can't do it.

Maybe I need to be able to appreciate all them Clapton solos on more muso terms, but all their stuff seems a bit formless and hookless, and this is no exception. Well, with the inner-exceptions of White Room and the mad Pressed Rat and Warthog, the former of which manages to have a centra riff that's just that good, and the latter of which is, well, just mad. The rest seems to paint slightly different landscapes for Claption guitar squalls to romp over, squalls which I have to confess just don't move me the way I'm told they're supposed to 2/5

#1125 Helms Alee - Sleepwalking Sailors

Heavy, complex, soaring, screamy metal, sounding halfway between Tool and The Dismemberment Plan, if I can put it in metal-lay terms.

The vocals, especially the boy-girl vocals, but especially the screeeeiiiiiming is a lowlight, and damn but I feel like I'm describing a lot of music as exhausting lately, and maybe it's because I'm exhausted, but this wears me the fuck out. The switches from pretty to punishing happen unpredictably and without obvious purpose, this thing seems to just be screwing with you. Music to feel old as fuck to 2.5/5

#1124 The Fania All-Stars - Live at the Red Garter Vol. 1

Blazing, brassy early Latin jazz, the highlights are the Guatacando and Me Gusta El Son. These take up the majority of the album, and are the reason to get on board, full of frantic, messy, inventive stuff, exciting and hypnotic and right the fuck up in your face, embracing all of that contradiction. These dudes could play, and there's real live energy here, even if its a bit exhausting. Unfortunately, the intro is sloppy, Sabor Sabor drags despite some killer piano work, County Girl City Man derails when it should dovetail, and the Exit Theme never achieves much direction.

With the right filler in between the jams this could have been an incredible album, as it is, its a tough, messy, amazing listen, too much in places, too little in others, extremely impressive, sporadically enjoyable, full of potential and realization and missed opportunities; that's live music on the cutting edge for ya 3.5/5

#1123 The Bar-Kays - Soul Finger

Before most of the member of the band met with tragedy, they cut this album, which unsurprisingly sounds like their Stax-backing ancestors, Booker T. and the M.G.'s, but with the sound exploded out, with far more rockist energy, some of that Go Team punch, all horns and organs and guitars and crowd noise, so many ideas lashing out in every direction while the whole thing moves effortlessly as one, a rager on a riverboat. This is one of the more joyous albums I've heard in a while, with some of that Fabulous Wailers post-R&B bop, some deep funk, some smooth soul, as fine and brilliant a final bandwide blaze of glory you'll find this side of The Exploding Hearts 4.5/5

#1121 Bruce Springsteen - Nebraska

This is maybe brilliant on some level, as poetry or statement or something, but around these parts I review albums and there's nothing here for me. Dead-space, dead-simple, guitar and harmonica and voice and nothing else: these are demos and it shows. Here's an album built solely of stories and atmosphere, uncut Bruce, pure liquid Bruce-lensed America. If you're looking for a Bruce fix, this'll do ya, but if you're looking for anything else, any actual music or melody, the pickings are pretty thin 2.5/5

#1120 Laurent Garnier - 30

A trancy (?), housey (?) electronica mix, dead simple in some aspects, swirly and infinite in others, 4/4s blocking out the space in hard lines for a while, and then the beats splintering and wandering and giving way to layered waves. The flow's great, head-bobbing in some places, head-melting in others, a journey you'll barely remember afterwards 3.5/5

#1119 Sloan - Navy Blues

That's about as killer an opening riff-and-beat as I've heard in a long time, promising some serious Thin Lizzy-style 70's romp-and-stomp*. The rest of the album doesn't really find a way to reach that highwater mark again, but its a lot of fun watching the band scramble against the wall anyway, whipping out the best Beatles, Oasis, Smiths, and Stones moves they've got, speeding up, slowing down, digging in, flying high. It all sounds like a band that loves making rock and roll, making it as good and hard as they can, finding some impossible, endearing combination of effortlessness and desperation that'll keep you grinning 4/5

* And boy to they deliver (check that Boys are Back in Town solo on Iggy and Angus, even)

#1118 Echobelly - So

Stick around, even if you hate overinflected singing like I do, even if you're worn out on chorused, reverbed vocals that smear all over themselves like I am. Singer Sonya Madan puts a lot of that on display here, and it hits you right up front, but underneath is a strangely infectious, detailed, pretty little 90's alt rock album worth hearing, full of swirly guitars and details.

And it actually gets better on the second half (rare for 90's alt rock!), with the piercing lines of Something Hot in a Cold Country, the Smithsy stomp of Four Letter Word, the slide-guitar shoegaze of Dark Therapy. Those vocals aren't my thing, but they're romping across an awfully pretty backdrop 3.5/5

#1117 Cheveu - Cheveu

Yeeeeeessssss.

This is how you do arty punk, jumping between batshit styles and sticking every landing, finding 11 ways to sound noisy and unignorable and dumping them all on a disc. Everything's overblasted, Mint Chicks huge, full of buzzsaw guitars, tape experiments, casiotone clicks, disgusting imagery worthy of Sockeye, electronic glitches, all built into weirdly catchy little ditties with hard beat backbones and flapping, iridescent skin 4.5/5

#1116 A-Ha - Searching High and Low

Aka the album with Take On Me. Which is an ok song, but nothing special.

The rest of this is made up of limp versions of the same: plinky synths that are never quite as catchy, moaning vocals that never quite reach the same soaring heights. There's some creepy slickness in the doubletime beats, and The Sun Always Shines on TV has a thunderous presence, but there's too much emphasis on Morten Harket's mouthy sub-Morrisey yowling, crushing any appealing details, keeping me from remotely getting into this 2.5/5

#1115 Niagara - Encore Un Dernier Baiser

French synthy pop straight out of the 80's. Is it cooler than our 80's music because its French, or because its in French, or because it's just that cool? Probably a little bit of each, that sheen of foreignness gets my 80's-hating heart past the sound, the hitchy little structures and disco flourishes keep it unpredictable, and that fact I can't understand the lyrics probably keeps me from rolling my eyes. I dig this more than I probably should 4/5

#1114 Less Than Jake - Hello Rockview

Pop-punk riffs, big bleaty ska horn licks, shouty shouts, and not much else - here's a rocket of pure youth energy. Hello Rockview's severely bratty, nearly impossible to take seriously, with only the barest sneer clouding its sunny skies as it all bounces along, blithely going 90 end to end. I'm too old and jaded to get there easily, but I'll bet if you can really get in the right state of mind this is a blast 3.5/5