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“Reptilian Brain” Alpha Male Tea Party
If you want to stir some serious shit online, enter a progressive rock forum and mention the vocalist. For those uninitiated in these types of conversations, vocalists regularly serve as a serious trigger point, and the discourse surrounding them often oscillates between complete adoration to pure loathing, to the point where one’s perception of a…
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“Downers Grove” Kevin Atwater
As anyone who’s grown up in (and subsequently left) the midwest might tell you, memories, even happy ones, are often muddled with a thin layer of gloom, a sort of melancholy that seems to permeate from the nearby lakefront or the damp chill of autumn frost. It’s there in the quiet of the summer nights,…
Rate Your Music’s Top 20 Albums of All Time
“To Pimp a Butterfly” Kendrick Lamar
I’ve already confessed it earlier along this musical adventure, but hip-hop wasn’t a genre I encountered often in my youth. Sure I heard songs at high school dances or college parties, but it wasn’t until after college that I really ventured it into a genre. My education really began when I started frequenting music forums…
“OK Computer” Radiohead
It’s unfortunate that I’m approaching this album in the manner that I am. When something is touted to me as “the Greatest of All Time” it skews my perception. I over analyze things. I dig into the details to try to hear or see what others have seen. I think too much about why it’s…
“Kid A” Radiohead
It’s been quite an experience to inadvertently work through what many consider to be the best parts of Radiohead’s discography in this journey through the “Best Albums of All Time“, particularlly because it’s been fascinating to hear just how strikingly different all their music is. “In Rainbows” is, to my best interpretation, a rock album.…
“In the Court of the Crimson King” King Crimson
There were a handful of records that, approaching this list, I already knew where I stood on them. They were ones that I had already established through my music listening career as ones that I loved, and even found to be perfect albums. Yet, as I listened to two of my favorite albums today (this…
“Wish You Were Here” Pink Floyd
Loss is a strange shadow. It finds you at the most unexpected time, engulfing you in its shadow and gloom, consuming your thoughts with memories or desires or wonderings of what could have been. Loss lingers with you, contorting into many shapes: loss of faith, loss of a loved one, loss of innocence. It haunts…
“The Dark Side of the Moon” Pink Floyd
I’m sure that this isn’t the case for everyone, as neither listening to albums nor even music is important to every person as they grow up, but for me there was a definitive moment in my listening career that changed what I enjoyed and how I even enjoyed music. It occurred in high school. For…
“Madvillainy” Madvillain
I think one of my biggest gripes with modern hip-hop (and specifically a lot of these young Soundcloud artists) is that it feels like a lot of them are just trying to be the hottest thing. There’s no style, no substance, just repeated lyrics that are almost more about matching a flow than saying anything…
“Loveless” My Bloody Valentine
Being born in the early 90s, I wouldn’t say that I was truly able to appreciate the music of it until I was older. The music I was listening to at the time was whatever my parents put on, glimpses of the Smashing Pumpkins and Red Hot Chili Peppers on the radio, and the boy…
“The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars” David Bowie
I think it took me a while to get to this review not because I didn’t know how I felt about this album, but rather I didn’t know what was left to say about the late, great David Bowie and, subsequently, one of the greatest rock albums of all time. It’s easy to see why…
“In Rainbows” Radiohead
If you ask anyone who has listened to radio over the past two decades to name you a Radiohead song, a strong chunk of people (including myself up until the beginning of this year) would have named the group’s famous 1992 release “Creep”. And there’s a good reason. It’s a captivating song about social ostracism…
“Abbey Road” The Beatles
I think the only way to start this review is to make my readers mad. I absolutely detest the song “Come Together”. Don’t get me wrong… it’s a cool song. The instrumentation is absolutely unique and psychedelic, but the lyrics feel forced, or clumsy, or both (and stolen from Chuck Berry). So coming into this…
“The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady” Mingus
Sitting at #14 on our list is the last jazz album (although there are a handful that are heavily influenced by jazz), and I can confidently say that, in addition to this being the “best” jazz album of all time (according to RYM) this is also my favorite on this list. By a long shot.…
“The Velvet Underground and Nico” The Velvet Underground
I think it’s important to start this review off by saying “I get it.” I get what this album is trying to do. I get that it serves as a precursor to a lot of genres and sonic adventures that would follow, and that it serves as one of rock ‘n roll’s most influential albums.…
“good kid m.A.A.d. city” Kendrick Lamar
I think this album might be a harder listen for some of my older followers. After all, it’s not just a newer piece of art, but it’s hip-hop! How could an album that came out in 2012 possibly be ranked (consistently, I might add) among the outputs of some of the greatest artists of all…
“A Love Supreme” John Coltrane
It’s been fun to listen to this and “Kind of Blue” back to back. Both do a fantastic job of immersing the listener in mood, albeit two very different ones. While Mile’s David opus was the perfect album for a dreary rainy day, Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme” is pumping with nighttime energy, capturing both the…
“Revolver” The Beatles
They were bound to be on this list, the only questions being what rank and what album. And while I have spent the past ten years attempting to broaden my musical horizons, pushing out into every direction and genre, it’s time for a confession. I have never sat down and listened to a Beatles album…
“Remain in Light” Talking Heads
I wasn’t really sure what to expect with this album. Sure, I’d heard their live album Stop Making Sense a handful of times while growing up, so I knew from tracks like “Psycho Killer” that they could be weird. But I wasn’t ready for this album to groove so hard. The first three tracks alone…
“Paranoid” Black Sabbath
It’s hard to begin talking about this album without acknowledging the historical context. Simply put, metal as a genre owes its existence to Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid”. On top of having three of the most iconic metal songs on it (“War Pigs”, “Paranoid”, and “Iron Man”) this album is almost a blueprint from which so many…
“Illmatic” Nas
I consider myself fairly new to the genre of hip-hop. It wasn’t until my mid twenties that I began digging into it as an art form, interestingly enough after listening to an album on this list. That being said, I consider it a Cardinal sin that I’m just now digging into Nas’ Illmatic. There’s something…
“Kind of Blue” Miles Davis
Of all the albums on this list, I think this is the one I’m most intimidated by. That isn’t because I dislike jazz, but rather because I’ve felt like when it comes to this genre it’s the one most other music aficionados are to claim that I “don’t get”. I wouldn’t disagree with them. Prior…
The Word and The Song 
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