Absolutely killer. If you were disappointed by Ummagumma or even a bit underwhelmed by the two Mothers of Invention offerings from 1970, this German band with an indecipherable name (they're named after the West German art commune they met at, if you were wondering) is here to show you exactly how 2 LPs of experimental psych split between practiced studio material and straight improvisation should be done.

On the non-improvised half of the album you'll hear influences from the usual ... read more

Ron Carter is a killer bassist as always and Pharaoh is just literally the man, so even though this isn't my absolute favorite spiritual jazz record (even Alice's own follow-up Journey in Satchidanada is better) this is a super cool one too. You can really hear Alice running wild with the spiritual jazz influences she helped introduce and eventually herself contributed to John's later work, and along with the absolute king of that style on sax there's really no way you can ... read more

I know my boys had one more ill-advised go at things after this with Mardi Gras, but in the way that Let It Be feels like a relatively quaint but very enjoyable epilogue for the Beatles after Abbey Road's climactic finale, this feels so for CCR after Cosmo's Factory. Have You Ever Seen the Rain is so obviously the standout it's not even remotely funny, and while the rest of it hardly ever feels like required listening it's a band I really love on a bunch of songs that are ... read more

ELP are one of the only major classic prog groups I had pretty much never listened to before this, and also maybe the most criticized one in their own day. You can just look at the titles and cover art of later works like "Tarkus" and "Brain Salad Surgery" and tell exactly what kind of pointless excess and meaningless sci-fi inspired nonsense people accused them of being into (and not just people who think having complex, technical, and/or extended song structures ... read more

This is one I was super excited to get to as I thoroughly enjoyed these guys's debut as well as the Tropicalia collab album they took part in shortly after, but even then, my god. I wasn't going in fully expecting something even better than what I heard from them previously, but I think it's fair to say I did get it, to the point where I honestly think any classic rock band worth their salt should be able to heavily appreciate this no matter how much of a barrier non-English ... read more

David Gilmour, Nick Mason, Roger Waters, and Richard Wright all eventually recorded solo music in the late seventies and eighties, so it's interesting that the most high-profile solo albums by a Pink Floyd member by far are the two Syd Barrett released in 1970 before peacing out from music entirely, and I'm glad to finally be exploring the first of them. This reminds me a bit of David Bowie's self-titled records, though a good bit more put together and cohesive than even the ... read more

Very glad to have heard Motown-era records from both Marvin and Stevie now. Even though both artists would obviously break out of that structure to make stuff that's more complex and compelling in pretty much every way, it's hard to deny that they were both great performers who rightfully feel extremely comfortable on more straightforward pop songs and have one of the best hitmaking machines in the history of popular music backing them to do it. I think the Marvin/Tammi Terrell album ... read more

So after the Mothers first split up following Uncle Meat, Zappa had enough recoded material to make another two LPs. and released them in 1970 as Burnt Weeny Sandwich and this record, the former consisting of the studio-recorded, written and practiced stuff, and the latter consisting of the live or otherwise loose and improvised stuff. With that in mind, you can see why people prefer this a bit less out of those two, and while I honestly think just combining them into another double LP ... read more

Turns out, if you don't count the the album that's basically Doug Yule solo (which you shouldn't), the Velvet Underground never made a bad one. Even the best stuff here is far from the heights of their original trilogy of records to be sure, and given this is coming from one of the few bands that genuinely has a claim to being the most influential in the history of rock it's hard to be *that* overly excited by much of the material, but as is the case with a lot of similarly ... read more

Finally, a singer-songwriter who actually managed to put out several albums across a consistent recording career that spanned multiple decades (the last few were very much not like that). This one's really good as well though, Laura Nyro taking singer-songwriter music and fusing it with not only pop soul but jazz and classic sixties pop influences as well. It's like if you took Joni Mitchell and gave her some really strong Phil Spector-ish aesthetics, so if that sounds cool to you ... read more

I guess I'll just lay my cards down on the table with this one and say I absolutely adored it--best first listen of a jazz record I've had in quite some time. Where the other free jazz albums I've thus far heard were super cool and admirable for their boundary-pushing nature, this one was straight up mesmerizing and beautiful the entire time. It seems some people don't really get this one, but with vocals like if The Great Gig in the Sky was got even more manic and was ... read more

Yet another very nice album from someone whose recording career was cut off far too short, though in this case it's because Minnie Riperton tragically passed away in her early thirties instead of simply not being appreciated enough to keep going. She has a good bit more solo work as well as some work with her soul group under Chess records, and in fact her most famous song isn't even on this album, but this being probably her most well-regarded in terms of full releases makes a lot of ... read more

There are going to be fewer and fewer traditional-ish sounding jazz albums as I get further into the seventies, but I'm super glad there's still stuff like this left for me to discover. This is just a wonderful and uplifting collection of piano-led compositions by an artist I was not very familiar with previously. It remind me in a lot of ways of Vince Guaraldi's Charlie Brown soundtracks in how consistently nice and cozy it is to listen to, though even as someone who isn't ... read more

Well, damn. I see we're now three for three with singer-songwriter albums whose underwhelming initial reception caused the artist to give up on recording but which are now more well-loved and which I personally thought were fantastic. The story behind this one is even crazier than with Vashti Bunyan and Linda Perhacs though, as after Rodriguez had recorded this album and the follow-up and left a third one unfinished, he actually did get famous internationally when his recordings were sold ... read more

Pink Floyd and King Crimson both probably have better and more genre-defining work, but if you ask me what the best original era prog band is and I'm not just defaulting to one of the obvious answers everyone already agrees with, it's Genesis all the way. Their sophomore record Trespass is the second last Peter Gabriel-era one for me to get to (I'm sure I'll get to the debut eventually), and their first that most people these days seem to think is any good, and I'm ... read more

Not sure why this has more ratings on here than their certified hood classic The Power and the Glory, but hey, this is a good album as well and I'm glad I'm hearing it as I do very much enjoy Gentle Giant's stuff overall as well. This feels a bit more definitively prog than other early prog debuts I've thus far heard (and I assume, some I've yet to hear), but they're still definitely a bit off from making stuff as instrumentally technical and sometimes beautiful or ... read more

It's kind of wild how much of an obvious and significant step up from the previous album everything Bowie did up to Ziggy Stardust feels once you've finally heard them all. Like obviously Hunky Dory is fully great with a couple masterpiece songs and then the aforementioned is one of the greatest albums ever recorded, but even before that you go from a genuinely annoying and musically inept debut to a sophomore that's decent the whole way through while still not being insanely ... read more

Man, I wish I had thought to pair this with Just Another Diamond Day yesterday. Two one-off folk albums from the same year that didn't get follow-ups until decades later when 2000s CD re-releases garnered them the appreciation they never received in their own time, and they're both this wonderful? This one doesn't feel quite as out of its own time to the point where I'd be hardly surprised people didn't *really* start loving it until an entirely new generation of ... read more

Man, I was really hoping to come away loving this one and being ready to insist it's way underrated, but I think the reception both from back then and retrospectively more or less have it unfortunately. Even if you don't count John's trilogy of nonsense "experimental" records, this isn't quite the first solo Beatles release given Ringo's first dropped the previous month, but it being Paul's first while also releasing literally one week after the Beatles ... read more

Another easy listening-style bossa nova album to follow-up his previous Wave from a few years prior which is just as cool as the man himself looks on the cover. It's a little more outright jazz-influenced than that record, but still with a super breezy lounge atmosphere that's a great time to kick back and listen to. There's a lot of fully instrumental stuff here to enjoy, including two sung tracks in the form of Sabia (written by Chico Buarque) and a seven minute opus covering ... read more