949 - Neil Young & Crazy Horse 'Weld' (1991)

My Rating: 2.25 out of 5

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: X

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: X

The Mojo Collection: √

Chart Peak (UK/US): 20/--

Favourite Tracks: Hey Hey My My, Cinnamon Girl, Cortez The Killer
Least-Favourite Tracks: Blowin' In The Wind, Like A Hurricane, Tonight's The Night

Any live album that leaves your ears ringing can’t be all bad. Well, Neil Young might disagree since he apparently developed tinnitus as a direct consequence of mixing this record, but for me the ear-ringing effect was rather less permanent. I certainly felt like I’d just come out of a gig though & for a live recording that’s some achievement.

I’m not a big fan of live albums; they rarely do justice to the experience of being there in person but I have to admit this one comes a little closer than most. I didn’t know much about this record but in an effort to recreate the original ambience of a live show, I donned my best headphones & cranked the volume right up… and almost blew my head off. What’s that chainsaw guitar doing on a Neil Young album? I was expecting something all soft & acoustic (which perhaps reveals my limited knowledge of Neil Young) so the ultra-heavy opening bars of track one Hey, Hey, My, My (Into The Black) made me think I’d put on the wrong album.

So it’s loud & it’s heavy but does that make it any good? Clearly a lot of Americans didn’t think so, since this was the first Neil Young album that didn’t enter the US top 100 since his 1969 debut. I’m not really sure why because while it certainly has its flaws, I found there was an awful lot to praise here. First & foremost, it’s that lead guitar. Great rock bands need great guitarists & the guitar work here is mightily impressive; it’s brutal, edgy & bristling with raw energy & emotion. I’d normally find a line like “Rock & Roll can never die” to be the corniest of clichés, but when you hear it surrounded by the strangulated solos & vicious power chords of Hey, Hey, My, My it somehow becomes validated – almost as if it was the very distillation of what rock music was about.

Of course, any old band can turn their amps up to 11 & thrash the hell out of their guitars but what makes this album interesting is the way that it never quite descends into some pointless wall of noise; as violent as the guitars may sound, they are always tempered by the melodic nature of Young’s songwriting. That contrast between his tuneful vocal harmonies & chord progressions & those angry snarling guitars works superbly well here, especially on tracks like Cinnamon Girl, F*!#in’ Up & Powderfinger.

As good as the musical performances are though this record still trips over the same old stumbling block that every live album encounters; namely what works for a live show doesn’t necessarily work on a record. Some of the songs are drawn out too long & are then stretched out even further with interminable “concert” endings & even a bit of the dreaded crowd singalong. The 14 minute version of Like A Hurricane might have breezed by if you were there in person but sitting here listening to the album the song just drags & drags. I’m not against long tracks – both Love To Burn & Cortez The Killer run to 10 minutes & held my interest throughout, but tracks like Rockin’ In The Free World, Tonight’s The Night & Like A Hurricane just seem too one-dimensional to merit their extended running times. Similarly the overblown cover of Blowin’ In The Wind, complete with machine gun fire & explosions may have seemed a timely statement during the (first) Gulf War but I just found it as dull-as-dishwater. It might have worked OK as a final encore but as the third song in the line-up it just stops the show dead & destroys all the energy & momentum of those opening numbers (which I presume was his intention).

An enjoyable album – frustrating towards the end, but in this age of endless X-Factor & soul-less prissy pop, it’s a powerful reminder of what live rock music is all about.

950 - Liz Phair 'Whitechocolatespaceegg' (1998)

My Rating: 1.50 out of 5

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: X

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: X

The Mojo Collection: X

Chart Peak (UK/US): --/35

Favourite Tracks: Johnny Feelgood
Least-Favourite Tracks: Headache, Girls' Room, Uncle Alvarez

So 1998 was a truly vintage year for music… well at least according to the All-Time Top 1000 Albums book it was. It might have seemed a pretty ordinary year to the rest of us, but for the people who voted on this list in 1998 it must have seemed the zenith of a glorious era that saw the release of some of the greatest albums ever recorded. Yes, let’s forget ’57, ’67 or ’77 and just try to imagine the heady excitement of 1998 & what a mind-blowing experience it must have been when people first heard those masterworks by Shawn Mullins, Embrace, The Goo Goo Dolls & now, Liz Phair.

Putting the sarcasm aside, I think we’ve established by now that these types of lists are of course fundamentally flawed and results are always skewed towards the year the list was compiled. Besides, you only have to look at the winner of this year’s [2009] Nobel Peace Prize to see the bizarre results that can occur when you start letting people vote for their greatest-ever’s.

Anyway on to the album & this was the first time I’d ever heard any Liz Phair. It opens with title-track White Chocolate Space Egg which starts promisingly enough with its thudding drums, plodding bass & echoey sliding guitar. But mix in some rather aimless lyrics along with a bit of a limp chorus and the whole song starts falling flat. Unfortunately weak choruses abound on this album; Only Son, Go On Ahead, Shitloads Of Money & Fantasize all have particularly lame chorus melodies too.

As the album progresses it becomes clear that musically there’s really nothing special going on here – it’s pretty standard alt-rock guitar fare with plenty of well-worn riffs & hooks and no real surprises. The performances all feel a bit passionless too; not sure if her backing band are all session musicians but they certainly don’t have any of that intuitive feel you often find in groups who have played together for years. The one-dimensional & rather lifeless production doesn’t help matters either.

While Liz Phair was lavishly praised for the lyrics on her Exile In Guyville album (#243 in this list), I really couldn’t find anything special about the words here. First of all, it’s difficult to relate to lyrics when you have no idea what they’re on about. Take the opening lines of Big Tall Man: “I’m a big tall man / I cut the grass / My left eye hurts / I am waiting & reading parts / I can be a complicated communicator / Yes I’m winning, spinning / I feel energy being pulled off from all sides / And it feels good / Like relieving a headache”. Eh? I’m sure it’s all very personal & meaningful to Liz Phair but to me it’s little more than random wordplay.

Even the songs without such cryptic content rarely moved me & there often seemed to be a lack of emotional potency to the lyrics. Not always though; Only Son struck a much more visceral tone with lines such as “All these babies are born / Like a field full of poppies / Who’s gonna know which are torn?” Similarly, the breakup song Go On Ahead sounds a good deal more heartfelt & includes the Matt Johnson’esque “You say you’re a ghost in our house / And I realise I do think I see through you”. It’s just a shame that both songs are so feeble musically.

The album would have also benefited from some quality control. There are 16 tracks included but at least a quarter of these have ‘B-side’ written all over them & really should have been dropped. The aptly-titled Headache sounds like something that John Shuttleworth might have knocked up on his home organ during the tea break. Even worse, both Ride & Girls’ Room sound like something Phoebe is performing in the coffee shop in Friends. Seriously – have a listen if you don’t believe me:



Not quite what you expect from the 950th greatest album of all-time is it? It might have seemed like something very original in 1998, but now all the hype has died down we are left with a very ordinary collection of songs. Oh well, let’s hope this year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner lives up to the voters’ expectations a little better.

952 - Third Eye Blind 'Third Eye Blind' (1997)

My Rating: 2.00 out of 5

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: X

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: X

The Mojo Collection: X

Chart Peak (UK/US): --/25

Favourite Tracks: Graduate, Good For You
Least-Favourite Tracks: Semi-Charmed Life, God Of Wine

If you asked people today to vote for their greatest albums of all-time I wonder what delights we’d find. Some Lady Gaga or Nickelback perhaps? What about Rihanna, Mika & Miley Cyrus? Almost certainly the soundtrack to Mamma Mia The Movie. I shudder at the thought. Fad voting really screws up these lists. If any publisher is thinking of cranking out one of these top 1000 books, my suggestion would be to make all recently-released albums ineligible. Ban all records less than 5 years old & you might get an all-time top 1000 that owes more to genuinely great music & rather less to hype, fashion & the occasional smash-hit single.

So yes, here we go again… much like Sean Mullins, Third Eye Blind owe their appearance in this list to the fact that they scored a mega-hit in the US around the time that the book was being compiled. Is it one of the top 1000 albums ever made? No it’s not. Like Mullins, you won’t find this record in any other of the numerous greatest-ever lists that exist. Of course, that fact doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a bad album. There’s a stack of albums I love that never make it onto any of these lists either but this record is just too ordinary & unoriginal to stake any real claims for greatness.

The album kicks off with Losing A Whole Year. It’s a decent song with strong production, powerful drumming, interesting lyrics but that vocal melody & guitar owe rather too much to Oasis. And the musical magpie is busy elsewhere too; the chorus on Jumper conjures up The Smiths, the middle-eight reminds me of The Police, Motorcycle Drive By cruises firmly into U2 territory. The weak link here seems to be the lead guitarist who seems rather too keen on borrowing ideas from everyone else rather than developing his own individual style. He’s a competent guitarist but I’d argue that the best rock bands need more than that; the riffs here aren’t all that memorable, the solos often bland & wayward, the chord progressions simplistic & predictable.

Which leads us neatly onto Semi-Charmed Life, a Frankenstein’s monster of a song that seems to have been assembled entirely out of other people’s parts. Need a song for the closing credits of American Pie #17? Well here it is. It’s one of those numbers designed to appeal to the most basic of musical responses with a chirpy wordless “doo-dee-doo” chorus and three Major chords that repeat through verse, chorus & middle-8. And it worked… American radio played it to death (i.e., more than 3 times) & it was a huge single hit. [edit: I’ve just found out it was actually featured in the first American Pie movie… so much for sarcasm, eh?]

It’s not all bad though & a track like Graduate shows what Third Eye Blind can do when they’re not chasing universal chart approval. The guitarist finally sorts himself out & knocks out a monster riff with a gurgling, unhinged solo like something off a 70’s album by The Tubes (that’s a good thing by the way). In fact, the band seems to work better when they lose a bit of their polish & tracks like London & Good For You likewise benefit from being a little rougher around the edges. The problem is just that nagging feeling that you’ve heard all this somewhere before. And the bigger problem of course is that you probably have…

956 - 2Pac 'Me Against The World' (1995)

My Rating: 2.20 out of 5

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: √

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: X

The Mojo Collection: X

Chart Peak (UK/US): --/1

Favourite Tracks: So Many Tears, If I Die 2Nite
Least-Favourite Tracks: Heavy In The Game, Old School

Like it or not, gangsta rap has been one of America’s most successful musical exports. 2Pac alone has sold over 75 million albums which represents one hell of a soapbox for his particular musings on life. Such popularity also inspires a form of cultural imperialism, with people around the world tossing away huge chunks of their own identity & replacing it wholesale with that of their favourite US rappers. Here in the UK, there’s nothing more cringe-worthy than hearing a middle-aged, middle-class, white Englishman trying to speak like a young, working-class, black American. How much more removed from your own origins do you need to be? I recently worked in a trendy music biz office where one plummy Oxbridge graduate regularly used “ghetto-talk” without a hint of irony; the worst thing was that it’s become so normal that nobody else there even noticed.

Although Tupac spent several years at drama school, the way he spoke & behaved didn’t seem to be an affectation. He grew up in a harsh environment & while aspersions have been cast about the “street” credentials of some rappers, the very nature of Tupac’s life (& death) means nobody could really accuse him of faking it. Authenticity is a highly-prized commodity in the world of gangsta rap, so when you issue an album just after you’ve survived being shot 5 times & whilst serving a prison sentence for sexual assault, it is bound to add a certain gravitas to your words. Released against that backdrop an album titled Me Against The World was always going to be taken seriously.

I should confess at the outset that I know very little about rap. Everyone has holes in their musical knowledge & gangsta rap represents a point-blank .45-calibre exit-wound in mine. If you’d mentioned “Tupac & Biggie” to me several years ago, I might have assumed you were talking about some kiddies’ cartoon show. And I laughed the other day when a guy on a radio phone-in mistakenly referred to 50 Cent as “50 Pence” but secretly knew I wasn’t all that far away from making the same blunder. Rap certainly polarises opinion amongst people I know in the music world too; some pretend to know a lot about it in order to boost their credibility, others loftily dismiss the whole genre without ever having listened to a single note.

Back to the album & if anyone was not aware that Tupac had been shot, the opening intro-track soon remedies that; what starts out as a soulful instrumental soon turns into something of a brag-fest as dozens of sensationalised news reports about his shooting & discharging himself from hospital are interwoven through the music. It’s as subtle as a sledgehammer – you’re a tough guy, we get it for heaven’s sake. But as the album progresses we get glimpses of some vulnerability & for the critics that is one of the things that sets this release apart from its peers. Most of the lyrics (predictably) glorify his violent lifestyle, yet there’s a contemplative streak running through all the songs that simultaneously express his doubts & fears. It’s like Tupac had one of those cartoon devils whispering in one ear & an angel in the other. A track like If I Die 2Night talks of “plottin’ on murderin’ motherfuckers” & “duckin’ the cop.. as I’m clutchin’ my Glock” yet conversely complains “I’m sick of psychotic society, somebody save me” & “I hope I’m forgiven for Thug livin’ when I die”. It’s a contradictory stance yet in a sense it works because it comes across as an honest internal struggle. Having said that, I think many critics overplay the vulnerability-line; they hold up a track like Dear Mama & point out how few hardcore rappers would record a gentle ballad tribute to their mum. That may be so but Tupac still can’t bring himself to state directly that he loves her – his big repeated chorus line is “you are appreciated” which as a sentiment is not exactly overflowing with warmth & tenderness.

The spectre of his untimely death looms large over the whole album & it’s something I found intriguing. It’s partly the dying-young effect; I get the same thing hearing Ian Curtis or Nick Drake, though in Tupac’s case the album feels more like a self-fulfilling prophecy than a eulogy. The paranoid mistrust of Death Around The Corner is eerily-accurate & on track after track, Tupac predicts his own violent demise. Lines like “I’m having visions of leaving here in a hearse” or “my every move is a calculated step to bring me closer to embrace an early death” (from So Many Tears) take on extraordinary significance. I couldn’t help wondering what we’d make of such lyrics had he not been shot dead. If he’d gone on to great success as an actor & got fat by the pool in his Bel-Air mansion such lyrics might have come across as just empty posturing, but following his murder they stand as a kind of validation & that certainly adds a powerful edge to the record.

Musically the songs are well-produced & surprisingly melodic but I do find it hard to get all that excited about songs constructed entirely from samples of other peoples’ songs. Also there’s a (jealous) side of me that resents anybody who doesn’t write the music, doesn’t play any instruments, doesn’t sing & yet can still make over $80 million of record sales in one year. Considering the Poet Laureate earns £5750 a year that’s pretty good wages for a bit of rhyming. And I do have misgivings about a lot of the lyrical content, not because I find it offensive but mainly because its obsessive uber-machismo focus on murder, sex, drink & drugs just seems so childish – to me it’s the sort of thing that 14 year old boys boast about, not grown men.

Rap fans have long revered this album; as an outsider to the genre I found it something of a mixed bag. It was certainly more accessible than I expected & the murky world it portrays, whether fact or fiction (or a blurring of the two) offers a vicarious thrill to those of us peering in from our comfy suburban lives. The cycle is neatly completed with the final track Outlaw & its chilly closing lines - “Muh’fuckers wanna see me in my casket… I never die, thug niggaz multiply, cause after me is thug life baby”. As my plummy Oxbridge friend might put it; “Believe”.

957 - Shawn Mullins 'Soul's Core' (1998)

My Rating: 1.92 out of 5

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: X

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: X

The Mojo Collection: X

Chart Peak (UK/US): 60/54

Favourite Tracks: Tannin Bed Song, Twin Rocks Oregon, Ballad Of Billy Joe McKay
Least-Favourite Tracks: Shimmer, Soul Child, And On A Rainy Night, Lullaby

Shawn Mullins is not exactly a household name. Even in the Mullins household I’ll bet some people have never heard of him. So to find one of his records in the Top 1000 means that either; (a) he released a fantastic album that never got the exposure it deserved or (b) he released a rather ordinary album that just happened to be popular when the Top 1000 was compiled. Sadly, I have to report that the answer is (b).

That’s one of the problems with getting people to vote on these lists; they often confuse the greatest with the latest. And back in 1998, when the All-Time Top 1000 book was being compiled, Shawn was the latest, Grammy-nominated, singer-songwriter riding high in the US charts, so when they asked the public to vote for the greatest album ever, Soul’s Core inevitably bagged plenty of votes. A decade later & I’d bet my house on the fact that this record wouldn’t get a sniff of the Top 1000.

For a start there seem to be two very different Shawn Mullins on this album. On one hand we have Shawn the stoner-surf-dude, a travelling troubadour knocking out an earnest set of songs on his acoustic guitar. But on tracks like Lullaby & Shimmer, we get Mullins the media product, his songs forced through a marketing mincer to create an easily-digestible slop for MTV’s toothless target audience. Why’d you let them do it Shawn? I’ll bet Lullaby sounded just fine when you busked it out the back of your VW Combi, but once the Suits got their greasy fingers on it, it became an over-produced, anthemic mess. They turned you into a chart-topping star & then they turned their backs on you once the cash registers stopped ringing & left you languishing in one-hit wonderland.

So Lullaby proved something of a double-edged sword; it was the reason why most people rushed out to buy this album, but also the reason why many of them found the other country-tinged songs such a letdown. Even at Amazon.com, the home of the ubiquitous 5-star review, you find a surprising number of disgruntled voices who “bought this CD for Lullaby” but complain that it’s the “only decent song” & the others are “boring” or “dull”. For me it’s the other way round; I think the album works best when Mullins drops the pop-hit-by-numbers formula & sticks to something a little more heartfelt & personal. He’s got a good voice with a pleasing gravelly tone & the simpler acoustic numbers like The Ballad of Billy Joe McKay or Twin Rocks, Oregon work well (in a singing-round-the-campfire kind of way).

Lyrically it wanders through familiar Tom Waits territory with semi-spoken tales of drifters, dropouts, dope & drinking. I liked the simple, wistful sentiments of tracks like Tannin Bed Song ("this Kansas life is a hard one / for a girl from Miami / just staring out at the oil fields / and that's all that I can see") but elsewhere it just gets mired in hackneyed phrases & clichés (e.g., Soul Child’s trite chorus of "Be strong / Hold on / Stay wild / Soul child"). And doesn’t it seem a little contrived to mention being stoned in at least 3 songs?

So I suppose if we were compiling a list of inconsistent, over-produced & unremarkable albums then this might be in with a shout. But since we’re talking about the 1000 greatest albums ever made, I think it’s probably high time that we moved on.

960 - Beth Orton 'Trailer Park' (1996)

My Rating: 1.55 out of 5

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: X

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: X

The Mojo Collection: X

Chart Peak (UK/US): 68/--

Favourite Tracks: She Cries Your Name, Touch Me With Your Love
Least-Favourite Tracks: Whenever, I Wish I Never Saw The Sunshine

I listen to music for a living which is usually a wonderful way to pay the mortgage, though today I spent 8 hours listening to nothing but Christmas songs. Ropey old Christmas songs; some with ruddy pan pipes. After that kind of ear-battering I thought I'd relax by listening to the next record in the all-time top 1000 list, but uh-oh, B.O... wouldn't you know it, but it's another Beth Orton album. My heart sank & my ears almost started ringing in anticipation; you see her 'Central Reservation' album featured just a short time ago (here at no. 982) & it proved a painful listen, largely on account of her excruciating vocals. Compared to that racket, I'd take another 8 hours of pan pipes anyday. But this is a different album, her debut, perhaps this one will be better?

Err, no. And here's a little audio montage to demonstrate what I mean:



Here's the problem. Beth Orton can't sing. I know, I know, there's plenty of great singers who can't hold a tune (and I like loads of them) but some voices just annoy you so much that you can no longer hear the music. For some people it's Bob Dylan or Tom Waits, Cher or Neil Young, Leonard Cohen, Morrissey, Edith Piaf, and so on. For me it appears to be Beth Orton. If you took a pancake & ironed it, then drove over it with a Sherman tank, it would still not be as flat as Beth Orton's vocals.

What makes it worse is she does her own backing vocals as well. So that means we get three Ortons simultaneously failing to hit three different, yet very flat, notes. (Why didn't the producer suggest some decent backing singers? 'Quirky' voices can sound fine with decent backing harmonies). Then there's the tone; she has this thin, reedy quality that makes her sound like a singing kazoo. And as far as emotion goes Orton doesn't really have enough control of her voice to vary the delivery, so we get the same expressionless drone whether it's an uplifting feelgood number or a sad emotional ballad. Oh & perhaps the greatest sin of all is she sounds a lot like Dido.

Having said all that, every review I've seen has nothing but praise for Orton's vocals so I realise I'm out on my own on this one. And I'll concede there are also times when her voice can work pretty well. She Cries Your Name has a really organic feel, with scratchy strings, double bass & low-key yet funky drums; it's an unusual arrangement & Orton's vocals sit comfortably in that context. The blend of acoustic elements, such as dulcimers or bouzoukis with electronic music is definitely another successful element of the album. But faced with the lush orchestral backing of a ballad like Don't Need A Reason & Orton just does not have the voice to carry it off.

As good as the music is, it all becomes rather irrelevant if the singer just sounds like a walking set of bagpipes.

961 - Aimee Mann 'Whatever' (1993)

My Rating: 3.23 out of 5

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: √

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: X

The Mojo Collection: √

Chart Peak (UK/US): 39/--

Favourite Tracks: Say Anything, 4th Of July, Could've Been Anyone
Least-Favourite Tracks: Jacob Marley's Chain [but only because the melody reminds me of Nik Kershaw's 'The Riddle'..]

I never judge a book by its cover. Well that's what I sanctimoniously think about myself but the truth is I must do precisely the opposite because otherwise I'd have heard this record a long time ago. I blame the album title; you see I didn't read it as Whatever - I took one look at the cover, saw a young blonde American woman & it became (cue Californian accent) 'Whateverrrrrrrrrrr'. Like most opinions forged from flimsy prejudices that one stuck so I really wasn't looking forward to hearing this album. But before the opening track was over I could feel my face stretching into something of a donkey head as I realised I'd got it all wrong; this was not the frivolous, piece of froth that I'd presumed - it's an accomplished rock record. Four minutes in & it already had more hooks & harmonies than you find in 40 minutes of most albums.

First surprise is that it's such a full-on production. I was expecting an oh-so earnest singer-songwriter backed solely with an acoustic guitar, but that's partly thanks to Allmusic who describe this album (here) as 'folk-tinged'. (Long afternoon down the pub was it lads? 'Folk-tinged', my arse) No, from the start this has a bold & confident feel; the production is excellent & is tailored to fit the mood of each song. That means we get an incredible variety of arrangements & instruments, from electronic samples & drum machines to strings & full orchestration; you get the impression that they just raided the studio stockroom & grabbed every single musical instrument they could lay their hands on.

What about Aimee Mann herself? As a singer she sounded a little like a cross between Chrissie Hynde & Alison Statton of the Young Marble Giants (remember them?). I wouldn't describe her voice as commanding & yet she has a remarkable ability to scythe through a wall of guitar noise. And even better, she sounds like she means every word she sings which is quite a rare commodity these days.

As a songwriter she also does an admirable job; everytime I thought a track was getting a little predictable, it'd suddenly spear off into an unexpected bridge, middle-8 or instrumental break. And it's a tuneful album; the vocal melodies & backing harmonies are always pleasing & the lyrics are intelligent & thought-provoking (especially when you read between the lines of songs such as I Could Hurt You Now).

And that's the best thing about doing this daft project; every so often you discover some good music that you never knew existed.

962 - Fleetwood Mac 'The Dance' (1997)

My Rating: 2.65 out of 5

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: X

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: X

The Mojo Collection: X

Chart Peak (UK/US): 15/1

Favourite Tracks: The Chain, Temporary One, Don't Stop
Least-Favourite Track: My Little Demon, I'm So Afraid, Bleed To Love Her

So what do you do if you're Fleetwood Mac and every single person in the known-universe has already bought one of your greatest hits albums? Record a live album featuring all your hits so that everyone buys them again is what you do. More than 5 million people did exactly that making this one of the best-selling live recordings ever.

I must admit I'm not a big fan of live albums. I can see the point when it chronicles a performance of truly epic proportions (like Jerry Lee Lewis At The Star Club or The Who Live At Leeds), but all too often we get some insipid, badly-recorded show from the 137th night of the Estonian tour that bands punt out instead of a studio album because they can't think of any new songs.

And that's pretty much what you get here; superannuated supergroup crank out the old faves for MTV Unplugged, bung in a few hastily-assembled new numbers to make sure all the fans buy it & go home with enough cash to build yet another guest wing on the mansion. Ah, but of course the big difference here is that this band are a little bit special. They can actually play, they can sing & they can really write tunes. You'd have to be a cynical, black-hearted fellow not to be beguiled by songs like The Chain, Dreams, Go Your Own Way, Silver Springs, Rhiannon (etc, etc, etc).

And that means this album scores pretty well but that's not quite the whole story. I enjoyed it as a showcase of great old songs & slick musicianship (particularly Lindsey Buckingham's guitar) & the recording quality is crisp, but as a live performance it feels more like a run-through than an electrifying once-in-a-lifetime event. The new songs don't stand up well alongside the classics, the classics never deviate all that far from the studio versions (a point that is underlined when they finally go out on a limb for show-closer Don't Stop complete with brass band accompaniment) & even the banter between tracks is a bit 'ho-hum'. Calling it 'The Dance' is hardly inspired either. You just get the feeling that they could have done it so much better if they really wanted.

963 - Deana Carter 'Did I Shave My Legs For This?' (1996)

My Rating: 2.27 out of 5

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: X

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: X

The Mojo Collection: X

Chart Peak (UK/US): --/10

Favourite Tracks: If This Is Love, Strawberry Wine, Did I Shave My Legs For This?
Least-Favourite Track: How Do I Get There

When I was a young kid my dad would sometimes take me out of school for day trips. He had a big American Chevrolet with an 8-track tape player (remember them?) though only a handful of tapes. That didn't matter because the only one that ever really got played was Glen Campbell. To this day whenever I hear Wichita Lineman it makes me think of those stolen moments; long sunny days bunking off school & cruising through the countryside with my dad.

So while most people I know detest country music, I've always had a bit of a soft spot for it & was quite looking forward to hearing this record. I didn't know anything about Deana Carter but I thought the album title was intriguing & suggested I was in for some sophisticated bittersweet songs. But I must admit to being a little disappointed.

For starters, the lyrical content is a good deal more lightweight than the title suggests; it's not full of empty pop sentiments by any means, but neither is it achingly poignant. More Shania than Dolly in that respect. Musically it's similarly inoffensive. That sounds so trite but to my ears it's a bog-standard, contemporary country-pop record; not one of the songs was bad, but neither were any of them particularly special. No guitar solos jumped out, no fiddles tore at your heart, no chords dared to tinker with the formula (apart from the middle 8 on Strawberry Wine - why couldn't we have a few more surprises like that?).

So is this one of the top 1000 albums of all-time? No. It may well be one of the top-selling albums of all-time, but that's an entirely different thing. Pleasant as it is, I can't imagine we'll still be talking about it in 20 year's time.

966 - Teenage Fanclub 'Songs From Northern Britain' (1997)

My Rating: 2.75 out of 5

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: X

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: X

The Mojo Collection: X

Chart Peak (UK/US): 3/--

Favourite Tracks: Can't Feel My Soul, I Don't Want Control Of You, Your Love Is The
Place Where I Come From
Least-Favourite Track: Mount Everest, Take The Long Way Around

Call me a fuddy-duddy old traditionalist but I was under the impression that the best time for painting the outside of your house is the summer. A balmy, sweaty month like August you would think? Wrong. Here in Britain it has been raining throughout August. And raining. Oh, and today it's raining again. And in my haste to pack away all my brushes, paints & ladders, I somehow failed to notice the mammoth slimy dog turd on my front path, so now I've got sh*t-stinking footprints splodged all over my carpet too. And it's still bloody raining. So I wasn't exactly enthusiastic to find that the next album in the Top 1000 is called Songs From Northern Britain. The title immediately conjured up stereotypical images of grim, grey industrial towns - with lots of songs about rain - which is just about the last thing I want to hear right now.

Happily, Songs From Northern Britain turns out to be a bit of a misnomer because this is a warm & tuneful album that sounds more like it should be called 'Songs From Southern California'. Admittedly only a pompous London ponce like me would automatically equate the words 'Northern Britain' with a certain damp dreariness, but such narrow-mindedness just made the shimmering jangly guitars & uplifting vocal harmonies all the more enjoyable.

OK, so we know it confounded my expectations, but how good an album is it? Well, if most US music critics are to be believed, this record stinks worse than my carpet (I have GOT to go & clean that up soon). Rolling Stone dismisses this album as nothing more than a rather dull imitation of The Byrds, which makes me wonder whether they listened past the first two tracks. Yes the album kicks off with a distinctly retro-60's-feel, but it's hardly the carbon-copy of The Byrds that some reviewers suggest. (And how come it's OK for artists like Tom Petty to have a Byrds-influence going on?) Anyway, by the time we get to the third track Can't Feel My Soul, that's all been supplanted by a much more contemporary rock sound with crashing guitar riffs & driving drums.

Although the record starts strongly it doesn't maintain that songwriting standard & we hit the dreaded mid-album slump. Actually it's more of a lull than a slump as even the worst songs aren't terrible - they're just a bit predictable, with open 'cowboy' chords & rather uninspired guitar solos that do little more than repeat the vocal melody. Worst offender is Mount Everest which limps along behind the rest of the album like some mangy stray dog (like the one that crapped on my path - I'm not letting this go am I?) Anyway I reckon that climbing the real Mount Everest would require less strength & endurance than listening to that track.

Another minor gripe would be the lyrics - they're nothing special & pretty much all the songs are of the love-affirming kind with choruses like 'I can't feel my soul/Without you' (Can't Feel My Soul), 'I don't care about where I'm going/Because I'll be there and so will you' (I Don't Care), 'Only you & me add up' (Speed Of Light), 'When I'm on my own I'm lost in space/My freedom's a delusion/Your love is the place where I come from' (Your Love Is The...) etc, etc. It's not that I'm against positivity but a whole album of that feels a bit like when your flatmate has his girlfriend over for the weekend. When I think about it perhaps it IS just me being a miserable sod but I do maintain that sad songs have more emotive power than happy ones.

See, now all my negativity is making this sound like a bad album - which it's not. There's a clutch of catchy, feelgood songs here & I found myself humming them after only a couple of listens. It might not change your life, but it's the perfect soundtrack for one of those long, rainy days. Like today.

970 - Goo Goo Dolls 'Dizzy Up The Girl' (1998)

My Rating: 2.08 out of 5

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: X

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: X

The Mojo Collection: X

Chart Peak (UK/US): 47/15

Favourite Tracks: Bullet Proof, Dizzy
Least-Favourite Track: Amigone

Back in the days when my connection with music actually involved performing it, rather than lounging around pompously pontificating about it, I'd occasionally attend musical instrument shows. There'd always be some demo band assembled by the instrument manufacturers & they'd run through a set of songs designed to show off the shiny new guitars, keyboards & effects. The music would always be slick, polished & textbook; not a note or beat out of place, everything perfectly as it should be according to the 'rules' of the genre. And that just made it all rather hollow & characterless.

So I've listened to this album several times now & it reminds me of one of those music show demo groups every time. Everything feels a bit formulaic; a sort of 'alt-rock-by-numbers' that's been designed precisely for maximum mainstream appeal. Just the right amount of guitar distortion, just a touch of gravel in the voice, a few power ballads peppered around, here comes the big chorus, there goes the hook. Don't get me wrong, it's a perfectly acceptable rock record - the songs are fine, the playing is fine, the production is fine - it's just missing a certain something.

For a start, it's treading very familiar ground - there's a sense of 'where have I heard that before' on every track. You won't find any surprises lurking anywhere either. I got all excited when one of the tracks started with a bizarre time signature, but amusingly it turned out that it was just a glitch on the MP3. The album tended to wash over me & I even had trouble doing my song ratings because every time a track ended I couldn't really remember much about it. Lyrically it's poor - anthemic choruses with the words 'Hold on / Dream away / You're my sweet charade' (Hate This Place) or cheesy lines like 'Cry / Don't cry out loud / You've gotta bear your cross but never dream too loud' (January Friend) may have the sales reps singing along thumping the steering wheels of their Mondeos, but just leave me totally cold. It's okay but it's no classic - just another album that was a big hit when the Top 1000 list was compiled.

980 - Hole 'Live Through This' (1994)

My Rating: 2.17 out of 5

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: √

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: √

The Mojo Collection: √

Chart Peak (UK/US): 32/52

Favourite Tracks: Doll Parts, She Walks On Me
Least-Favourite Tracks: Softer Softest, Rock Star (Olympia)

In the unlikely event that I was invited to a dinner party for drugged-out, self-destructive pop stars, I must confess that I'd make a bee-line for a seat next to Courtney Love. Unlike say Pete Docherty, Amy Winehouse, Britney Spears et al, she always seems to me to have a sense of self-deprecating humour, something interesting to say & a streak of sincerity. Listening to this album for the first time has done little to alter my opinion either, because without Courtney Love it'd be a pretty ordinary record. Musically it's not all that original - quasi-punk, mainstream grunge - however you define it, it's still pretty straightforward guitar rock but Love's voice & lyrics elevate it into something a little more special. Her voice may not be note-perfect but it bristles with character - on Doll Parts she switches from sarcastically purring 'I want to be the girl with the most cake' to an anguished guttural cry of 'Someday you will ache like I ache'. I guess what I'm trying to say is that it sounds genuine - I was expecting to find some kind of 'grunge-lite' created by marketing men but this actually has a lot of emotive power running through it.

Reviews always tend to draw musical comparisons to Nirvana though for me there is a distinctive retro quality to the music that harks back to the 1980s UK New Wave acts. I read on Wikipedia that Courtney Love used to live in Julian Cope's house in Liverpool during The Teardrop Explodes era & it sounds like she has absorbed some of that musical pedigree - Jennifer's Body has a jangly guitar & bass line straight out of The Monochrome Set & there's even a (not very good) cover of The Young Marble Giants' Credit In The Straight World. I do wonder how well Hole would have fared without the Cobain connection though - if you strip away all the hype & hyperbole you're left with a reasonable album, but not one I'd regard as a classic.

981 - Chemical Brothers 'Surrender' (1999)

My Rating: 2.09 out of 5

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: X

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: X

The Mojo Collection: X

Chart Peak (UK/US): 1/32

Favourite Tracks: Music:Response, Out Of Control
Least-Favourite Tracks: Hey Boy Hey Girl, Under The Influence

This album kicks off with a bang - the opening track Music:Response has a thundering bassline with enough sudden stops, dramatic changes & 70s computer game bleeps to keep me interested. After such a promising start though the quality tends to slide & as this record progressed I was surprised to find myself getting increasingly bored. Part of the problem of course is that this album was not designed for people to sit down & listen to - it was designed specifically for dancing. The segued tracks, repetitive synth sequences & single-line vocal chants may work fine when you're jiggling around in a club, but it's all a bit incongruous for me sitting here on a sofa in suburbia. The next problem is that dance music as a genre moves along pretty quickly so although this was only released in 1999 it already sounds incredibly dated. There's a disparate mix of styles - from big beat & house to tracks with a distinctly indie/alt-rock flavour. The fact that a number of the songs use big name guest vocalists (like Noel Gallagher, New Order's Bernard Sumner, Primal Scream's Bobby Gillespie, etc) just adds to the diversity & makes it sound even more like some kind of compilation album.

I've been racking my brains trying to figure out why I don't like this more - I normally enjoy stuff with analogue synths & this has plenty of vintage squidgy sounds but it simply doesn't work for me. It has a bit of a 'going-through-the-motions' feel, as if they couldn't really be bothered to try too hard anymore. Just select preset #12, stick on the sequencer & go and make a cuppa while it's recording another hit.

982 - Beth Orton 'Central Reservation' (1999)

My Rating: 1.92 out of 5

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: √

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums: X

The Mojo Collection: X

Chart Peak (UK/US): 17/--

Favourite Tracks: Sweetest Decline, Central Reservation (Ben Watt Mix)
Least-Favourite Tracks: Pass In Time, Feel To Believe

According to CDNOW's review of this album Beth Orton's voice 'aches and yearns, caressing the ears like a worn, wool mitten on a winter day.' Hmmmm. I'd say her voice was more like scraping the ears with a brillo pad soaked in paint stripper. On a very cold winter day.

I was so dumbfounded when I read that review, that I wondered whether I'd actually listened to the right album. I seriously went back & played the whole thing again through a different music system. After that I concluded that it must have been just the lone ravings of a crazed mitten-fetishist, but hang on, over at Allmusic we discover that 'the focal point is Orton's evocatively soulful voice' & down at Amazon that 'she's blessed with the rich, warm voice of a true pop singer'. I mean, is it just me or do we have a serious case of the 'Emperor's New Clothes' here? Because all I could think of was what a great album this would be if it was performed by someone who could actually sing.

When Orton keeps it laidback she sounds ok, but as soon as she starts pushing her voice it really starts to grate. She has a tendency to go very flat & then hits this thin, reedy tone like one of those toy plastic saxophones that occasionally swells to a full nails-down-the-blackboard screech. Dont believe me? Listen to Couldn't Cause Me Harm or Feel To Believe & tell me that I've got it all wrong. It's a shame because both the music and lyrics are really very good. It's a mellow, organic sounding record that often reminded me of Everything But The Girl (if only Tracey Thorn was singing it). Perhaps one of the problems is that Orton's piercing vocals just sound so incongruous over such gentle music. There's some excellent arrangements too, with melancholic strings & shimmering vibraphones, but for me everything was just overshadowed by those vocals.