Absolutely beautiful folk record here that I downright loved. Soft, warm, and lovely with a bunch of short tracks adding up to an album that rather than even remotely overstaying its welcome leaves you wanting to hear so much more. Vashti Bunyan would record a couple more albums decades later but for nearly thirty-five years this was it due to it underselling and her giving up on a recording career. What a damn shame that is, though I'm definitely going to want to hear those later records ... read more

I've been a big Kinks enjoyer for quite some time, so it's a shame it's taken me so long to get to this album, because it's just another great pop rock concept album from them in the same vein as their last two. This one's super cool and interesting for its meta quality as well--like, I thought the most ironic thing here was an album specifically about artistic freedom within the music industry having to re-edit its lead single due to a bullshit BBC radio rule against ... read more

This album's "final boss of music" reputation makes it very fitting for me to listen to as the final one in my quest to round out all my most glaring blind spots of the sixties, the other half of the experimental rock revolution that Zappa and the Mothers were also spearheading this same year. One thing you'll probably know about this whether or not you've heard it yourself is that it's not one you fully 'get' on first go-around, and that you'll need ... read more

Funny enough, at the time I first realized I was going to have to listen to this as part of rounding out the most popular albums of 1969, the two tracks were rated 9 and 11, which I choose to take as a reference to the fact that an artist as brilliantly talented as John Lennon spending precious hours of his life recording and releasing this is a genuine tragedy.

Seriously though, I do think it's fair to say this is absolutely worse than at least the first Unfinished Music album (I'm ... read more

I think this one maybe gets just the tiniest bit of a bad rap. I mean, for starters, half of it is straight up quite good, that half of course being the live record. You get a great version of Astronomy Domine, one of the best tracks from their debut album, two tracks from Saucerful of Secrets done very well, and an entirely new track in Careful with That Axe, Eugene which is potentially the biggest highlight. Three of these tracks are done way better on the Live at Pompeii album obviously, but ... read more

The final album recorded with the original lineup of the Mothers, and god what a finale it is. If you like the jazz-tinged avant-garde prog of Black Midi this is without a doubt the genesis of that style, but it's also so much more. Where other records from '68 and '69 were pushing the boundaries of composition and instrumentation with electronics and straight up noise and even double-length narrative concepts, this is taking it to a level where the format of the LP itself is ... read more

This has the reputation as probably the single most "[something] and a bunch of other songs" album of all time, and that distinction feels relatively warranted. I mean, case and point is that while other repeat self-titled albums in need of disambiguation are known after the color or something else about the cover art, this is known after the one song that's the only reason you're here. And actually, now having heard Bowie's debut self-titled, its insanely wild to think ... read more

Here with another album from a band I love dearly and am probably biased towards, I can't pretend I had anything other than a great time with Yes's debut. It's obviously not quite as blissful as their greatest stuff from the first half of the seventies, but even on their debut they manage to establish themselves as the most downright joyful group of the fast-developing British prog scene. And being that this did come out in mid '69 when prog was still in enough of an early ... read more

Happy Sad is another really good album from Tim to follow-up his sophomore record Goodbye and Hello, one I enjoyed quite a bit more than I initially expected to. Here, he pushes the limits of folk with some much longer compositions as well as continued psychedelic and chamber elements and now even seemingly a bit of jazz inspiration as well. The most "normal" song here, and also likely the best, is the second track Buzzin' Fly, but the rest of it is full of very sweet and lovely ... read more

I feel like I definitely need to go fully relisten to Gal Costa's other self-titled album from 1969 now that I'm a lot more familiar with the Tropicalia genre/movement, because I seriously don't remember it being this consistently wild. More than any other of the '68/'69 Tropicalia albums I've heard thus far, this feels like it's taking the American/British psychedelia influence and running the wildest with it by far. Even more so than most of the other ... read more

So who was going to tell me this album is secretly really good? I'm only being a little facetious when I say that. Sure, some of this I loved more ironically--notably the lyric "Why, even Dracula will be there" on It's Halloween had me audibly dying of laughter--but some of it like the opener/title track I genuinely enjoyed. Like, I think most genuine appreciators of weird and out there music can at least understand why Kurt Cobain loved this album, right? It's far from ... read more

This is the last of the three albums from the Beach Boys' "retreat to pop" period before they'd make a couple more albums fully worthy of carrying the name that made Pet Sounds, and like the other two it's nowhere near bad or even mediocre. I think I actually might've appreciated this one a bit more than Wild Honey on first go-around if only because I'm not expecting much outright unsung brilliance from this period anymore, but really there's nothing from ... read more

No Damo Suzuki on vocals, and we're called "The Can" now? This feels weird guys. Seriously though, while their trilogy of albums following this would all kick things up to much greater heights, this is still a really good album and it's awesome to hear them even closer to the inception of Krautrock and the German experimental scene generally.

Monster Movie has everything you know and love from these guys, including a couple "shorter" avant-garde psych rock-ish ... read more

Well, damn. It's been barely a month since Converge dropped and we already have another insane near-decade awaited metal comeback to enjoy. I don't think anyone fully expected to get another Neurosis album without Scott Kelly at this point (and in fact this is a complete surprise release from them), let alone one this downright great, but am I glad we did. Both because Scott Kelly is a dickweed and because Aaron Turner is a killer vocalist who everyone in the know should know can ... read more

I have to say I really don't get the retrospective disinterest or even outright dislike of this one. Especially from an outlet like NME, who I thought were pretty consistent about heaping praise onto historical critic-favorite groups, whether entirely warranted or not. Sure it's long, a lot of bands in '69 having just picked up the White Album and realizing rock double albums can be a thing, and there aren't many songs other than Pinball Wizard that feel like major ... read more

It feels like we're on an absolute roll today, because this is just another front to back banger. I've heard Luis Alberto Spinetta's music before with groups like Invisible and Pescado Rabioso, so it's super cool to go back and hear basically the earliest stuff from someone who put out so many great and important albums to Argentine rock, and who most English listeners likely don't even know about.

Like the Tropicalia albums coming out in Brazil around the same time, ... read more

Another beautiful album from the great Jorge Ben, who can seemingly do no wrong. He becomes more and more solidly one of my favorite non-English artists every time I hear a new album from him, and here I'm even more intrigued with this being his only album fully taking inspiration from the Tropicalia movement that began in Brazil the previous year.

Like others have said, this probably just sounds like a lovely Brazilian rock/pop record that's as colorful and pretty as the cover ... read more

I've been dying for a new Underscores album ever since I first got obsessed with Wallsocket two and a half years ago, and I'm happy to say the follow-up doesn't even begin to disappoint. I think because I didn't listen to any singles I was expecting something a little more similarly wild and manic to Wallsocket, where this is closer to her spin on a Porter Robinson-type album, and while that might've made it a tiny bit harder for me to connect to the first few songs ... read more

I had somehow basically never heard any solo Joplin before this, so I'm pleased to report that I found this to be incredibly great. It's not the same sort of straight up fun as the best songs from Big Brother and the Holding Company, but what you get instead is an album full of amazingly sung, winding, soulful blues rock songs that feel incredibly hard to deny. It's one where it would be entirely pointless to list favorites--the entire track list is just awesome.

Kozmic Blues is ... read more

The last album of 1968 for me to listen to (for now, at least) which I passively avoided diving fully into up to this point due to the length and the fact Cream aren't a band I adore quite as much as some of their rock contemporaries. That said, White Room is absolutely one of the best tracks of the era, so this starting there granted it some fantastically good will. The rest of the studio record is about as good as the album material on any Cream record I'd say--consistently good but ... read more