#1097 Heart - Little Queen

Heart's second album is harder to love than it should have been. There's a problem of expectation here: their debut was a thriller, and leading off with the propulsive Barracuda cements the idea that you're in for a rip-roaring rock and roll ride. But this is actually a record of pretty, mildly experimental songs, from the analog throb of Sylvan Song to the start-stop rhythms of Say Hello. Kick it Out and Little Queen are the only two other uptempo songs, and they're nothing special, underpaced and undercommitted, distractions from the fact that this is an album with far more in common with Tusk than Houses of the Holy.

Taken on those terms, its an enjoyable, adventurous listen with a bit of an identity crisis 3.5/5

#1096 Bruce Springsteen - Darkness on the Edge of Town

Sweeping and majestic, Springsteen's fourth album was his first to fully descend into hopelessness. Compare the blank look on the cover Darkness on the Edge of Town to the giddy tension on Born to Run (and compare those titles, besides). Springsteen's albums had always been about escape, about ecstatic figures on a desolate ground. Those moments where the sun cracks the clouds are still around, but these are songs about the storm, about the darkness, not the town.

The album embraces it, with workmanlike post-mad dog drums dragging us onward to something worse, extolling the beauty of a fire that will consume the world. And along the way Bruce's voice soars, the music swelling huge, building a monument to a world too great and endless to notice us at all 4/5

#1095 Janis Joplin - Pearl

A staggering, rollicking, full-throated album, with Joplin's fixed-gear, full-speed voice rampaging front and center.  This is a towering funeral pyre to the 60's, recorded just months after the decade ended, and just months before Joplin herself died of a heroin overdose, drenched in organs, fat riffs, and oozing psychadelia.

The best and worst thing about this album is Joplin's voice itself. It's ferocious and peerless, and always on, always tearing itself apart at the seams, the life of the party that won't quit rocking till the sun's burning high, a force of nature that will exhilarate and exhaust you 4/5

#1094 Elvis Costello - My Aim is True

For most of his career after this debut, Costello kept a wry distance, sounding arch and self-aware, making music about the kind of music he was making. But here he's just making music! There's legitimate bile and frustration set to bouncy pub rock, an angry young man in the tradition of Nick Lowe and Graham Parker.

Don't be fooled - early on, Elvis C. the man was arguably a punk rocker, but there's only the barest whiff of punk on the album. Instead, this is tuneful, minimally threatening, mildly abrasive rock and roll played by a tight, rough little band, occasionally boring (Blame it on Cain), occasionally thrilling (Mystery Dance), and mostly somewhere in between 3.5/5

#1093 Prince - Dirty Mind

An album of razor-edge funk and electro R&B, full of clipped beats, synth stabs, and popping bass, Dirty Mind is a glistening machine built for sex. The sex is vocal of course, as Prince smashes into every taboo touchstone in sight. You get the distinct impression that Prince just does not give a fuck and that he also gives a fuck very, very much; a slinky hedonist with an insatiable desire and a fragile heart. The sex is in the music too though. It bounces with offset carnality, fleshy taffy pullers set to song.

It's all actually a lot of fun, most of the raunch reading camp by 2014, but with teeth that catch, like when Prince complains that his cheating lover "didn't have the decency to change the sheets". It'd be a good soundtrack for the right kind of party.

The fly in the ointment is Prince's reedy, taut falsetto, which buzzes and cracks unabated for the full half hour. If that's the kind of thing that gives you a headache, this might be a non-starter. But maybe you're into it. Or maybe you're not, but you're into flies in ointments. Whatever you're into, you know that Prince is into it too; maybe that's what makes this album such a fun date 4/5

#1092 Nine Inch Nails - The Downward Spiral

I'd always found things to like in Reznor's texture experiments but didn't realize that he'd been this inventive this early. This is a surprisingly complex, detail-packed album, every song full of twitches  that defy earthly explanation, coalescing into notes that, against all odds, flow into honest to god songs. From static, guitars, synths, echoes, glitches, foley errors, misplaced bits, filters and the occasional bare moment of melody comes something bracing and beautiful.

The whole thing isn't nearly as terrifying as it wants to be, the years have taken its teeth. But it's still an intricate artifact to watch spin, never more so on the inexplicable, brilliant Closer. That song's still a minimalist-maximalist art-pop masterpiece.

It's not an approach that can sustain an album though. Outside of Closer, the instrumental A Warm Place, and the closer Hurt, the album's relentlessly overbusy, and by the halfway point the hyperdense pinpricks are numbing. What was an intricate puzzle to unwind on track 2 is has become exhausting and countlessly titchy by track 13. Restraint was never Reznor's strong suit, and his career ever after would retrace these steps, blowing past the perfectly-curated album into an unlistenable failed masterwork 3.5/5

#1091 The Rolling Stones - Tattoo You

A small pleasure of a Stones album, an unassuming little set of rockers, without much snigger or sneer or swagger once Start Me up is out of the way. Here's a band that doesn't seem all that desperate to prove anything, inspired-by but not overly shackled-to its R&B revival roots, just a band making some tunes, from the thrillingly skitterey doo-wop of Hang Fire to the proto-Radiohead shimmer of Heaven. Even Little T&A sounds ahead of its time, like an aughts band reviving a Stonesy stomp with a shiny modern click.

Separate this album from the band The Rolling Stones and what you've got is a perfectly good, light, fun little romp of rough-polished melody and tone 4/5