The Official Needles and Grooves 1001 Album Generator Project (aka Preachin’ about the Preachers if today’s selection sucks)

Lee Newman said:
1/15/24
View attachment 195328
Genesis - The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway



www.allmusic.com

The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway - Genesis | Album | AllMusic

The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway by Genesis released in 1974. Find album reviews, track lists, credits, awards and more at AllMusic.
www.allmusic.com www.allmusic.com
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I actually enjoy this more than I thought I would. Some interesting lyrics here and there, and I can hear the influence it has had on some stuff that I've been a fan of (Iron Maiden and Queensrÿche in particular). But.....no. Still not a fan of prog. And this is looong too.
 
Lee Newman said:
1/15/24
View attachment 195328
Genesis - The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway



www.allmusic.com

The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway - Genesis | Album | AllMusic

The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway by Genesis released in 1974. Find album reviews, track lists, credits, awards and more at AllMusic.
www.allmusic.com www.allmusic.com
Click to expand...

My main issue with this album is that it very much sounds like 70's prog. Which means it sounds very dated. Nothing particularly wrong with the album but I'm finding it hard to get into. I liked the other Genesis album we had better.
 
The first Blur song I enjoyed was “Girls & Boys” but I didn’t purchase the Parklife CD until I had practically worn out my copy of Blur. “Song 2” was colossal. I remember buying my copy of the CD at the college record shop in Champaign, IL. It might have been the first independent record store I had ever visited. I joined a buddy on a trip down to U of I to visit his older brother and after lunch we walked over to the record store and it’s been all down hill since then. It is a fantastic record though, “Song 2” towers over everything else but the whole album is brilliant “M.O.R., “On Your Own”, “Look Inside America”, “Beetlebum” all are top notch Blur tracks.

The vinyl was a great Amazon deal too…
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Lee Newman said:
2/16/24
View attachment 195401
Blur - Blur



www.allmusic.com

Blur - Blur | Album | AllMusic

Blur by Blur released in 1997. Find album reviews, track lists, credits, awards and more at AllMusic.
www.allmusic.com www.allmusic.com
Click to expand...

I hadn't listened to this in a very long time. I came into it today thinking I'll write something about how "Song 2" is a misrepresentation of the band, how this album hasn't aged that well (based on hearing said "Song 2" on radio occasionally) and how I prefer the earlier albums. But man, I had forgotten what a totally fucking awesome album this is from start to finish! And it feels as fresh like it could have been recorded yesterday.

I remember listening to this in the listening booth at the record store (do you remember that ritual?) on the day it came out in 1997, and thinking that this didn't sound like Blur but that I still kinda liked it. I wouldn't pick it up until a while later (after "Song 2" had broke through), and it got some heavy rotation at my house, to the point were I actually got tired of it and almost vowed to never listen to it again.

Well, here we are.
Could this be one of the best albums of the 90s?

I love how eclectic it is with influences from all over the place, but still sounds like "Blur" in some aspect: The trip-hoppy "Death of a Party" must have been the starting point for Gorillaz i Albarns mind. The lo-fi americana of "Country Sad Ballad Man" sounds like the inspiration to what Wilco did on "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" a couple of years later. "You're So Great" sound like Guided By Voices filtered through Pavement. Chinese Bombs is pure hardcore punk. "I'm Just A Killer for Your Love" would have fit perfectly on "Odelay". "Beetlebum" is every "experimental" pop album ever produced, from the white album to Ok Computer, condensed into five minutes of pure songwriting craft genius. Even the songs that sounds most like "old Blur" ("M.O.R." and "Look Inside of America") have a raw sheen that feels transformative for the band. And "Song 2" is actually bearable too in this context, as it sits perfectly like a sheer burst of energy as the second song on the album, obliterating every notion of stale "britpop" from the get-go.

Plus, this is the album were Blur finally won the "brit pop wars" by TKO, right? ;)
 
TenderLovingKiller® said:
Curious where @gaporter and @Joe Mac rank this amongst Damon Albarn projects.

Personally I prefer most Blur albums to this and the first two Gorillaz albums but after that I think this would next in the listz
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A fashionably late response from me, as always...

This is definitely a worthwhile piece of the Albarn discography, though admittedly not one I find myself relistening to as much. As for where I'd rank it, that's hard to say. I feel like it exists in its own little post-Demon Days, pre-Plastic Beach world, and tracks like "Northern Whale" give you a glimpse of what a Gorillaz release trying to split the difference between those two records might have sounded like.

My hot take is that Merrie Land - the instantly forgotten reunion album they put out eleven years later - might actually edge this one out for me. Now that's one purely for the Albarn devotees.
 
Lee Newman said:
2/16/24
View attachment 195401
Blur - Blur



www.allmusic.com

Blur - Blur | Album | AllMusic

Blur by Blur released in 1997. Find album reviews, track lists, credits, awards and more at AllMusic.
www.allmusic.com www.allmusic.com
Click to expand...

I took so long to respond that now you guys have moved on to another Albarn project! And, to me, one of his masterpieces (not to diminish the contributions of the other members of Blur here, but just feels natural to continue the Albarn discussion). I think Damon has said as much himself that "On Your Own" is pretty much the unofficial first Gorillaz song, but there's a pretty strong argument to be made that this is the album where the seeds of Gorillaz were born.

I flip-flop a lot on what I'd actually consider to be my favorite Blur album, and because they have such a varied discography, I think it's one of those things where it really depends on the mood I'm in. This being such a transitional album for the band, and essentially the moment where one of the posterboys of the 90s Britpop hype announced their intent to kill the genre and never look back (the same year the other posterboys blew themselves up in a tornado of cocaine and ego), I think makes this a particularly interesting album. It's not as alienating as 13, but in a way, I feel like they intended it to be. 13 strikes me as a very genuine expression of where they were emotionally and artistically as a band at the time; they didn't really care if it appealed to a mainstream audience or not. With this one, they knew full and well what they were doing and just committed to the bit 100%, right down to having it be a self-titled album, as if to announce to the world that, yes, this is the new us, and if you don't like it, there's the door. That the record everyone around them thought would be career suicide ended up being the one that finally broke them through in America (albeit mostly only for one song) is of course a nice little bit of irony.
 
gaporter said:
I took so long to respond that now you guys have moved on to another Albarn project! And, to me, one of his masterpieces (not to diminish the contributions of the other members of Blur here, but just feels natural to continue the Albarn discussion). I think Damon has said as much himself that "On Your Own" is pretty much the unofficial first Gorillaz song, but there's a pretty strong argument to be made that this is the album where the seeds of Gorillaz were born.

I flip-flop a lot on what I'd actually consider to be my favorite Blur album, and because they have such a varied discography, I think it's one of those things where it really depends on the mood I'm in. This being such a transitional album for the band, and essentially the moment where one of the posterboys of the 90s Britpop hype announced their intent to kill the genre and never look back (the same year the other posterboys blew themselves up in a tornado of cocaine and ego), I think makes this a particularly interesting album. It's not as alienating as 13, but in a way, I feel like they intended it to be. 13 strikes me as a very genuine expression of where they were emotionally and artistically as a band at the time; they didn't really care if it appealed to a mainstream audience or not. With this one, they knew full and well what they were doing and just committed to the bit 100%, right down to having it be a self-titled album, as if to announce to the world that, yes, this is the new us, and if you don't like it, there's the door. That the record everyone around them thought would be career suicide ended up being the one that finally broke them through in America (albeit mostly only for one song) is of course a nice little bit of irony.
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I also think Graeme Coxon deserves a lot more credit for the sonic directiom of this album than he gets. The Great Escape was a bit of a mess that really imploded Britpop blur in much the same way as This Is Hardcore, Be Here Now and the genius of OK Computer moving past it did for the genre as a whole two years later. Graeme in particular hated the previous album and had been fascinated with US lofi for years. His pushing of this direction combined with Damon’s inability to write something without a hook kinda makes this what it is. You‘re So Great is also a song I just love. This is probably my second favorite blur album after Modern Life Is Rubbish.
 
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