I have long since stopped blogging my progress through the 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. I’m doing this through a web site which serves up an album each morning, and an associated plugin for the music server that I use (Lyrion Music Server, or LMS). The plugin links to the album via Qobuz, which I subscribe to. In fact, I can only recall a single album that the plugin couldn’t find, and I ended up playing it on YouTube.

I recently found I’d played half of the albums on the list, so I thought maybe an update was worthwhile.

The star album from this selection has to be The Fall's Live At The Witch Trials. This is one of the formative post-punk albums that set the direction of my musical taste.

I've gone on to amass a ridiculous number of The Fall albums over the years and they are (possibly as a consequence) my most-played band on last.fm with over 63,000 scrobbles since 2012. The Fall's debut, it kicked of a splendid series of albums, probably peaking with Grotesque and Hex Enduction Hour. But as John Peel (I think) said - always the same but always different. The Fall may have made some albums that weren't so good as others in their discography but I don't think they made any truly awful ones.

I'm running behind on this - I've listened to 412 albums of this list.

In this set of 20 albums, there are four albums I rated 5, by Pavement, Leonard Cohen, David Bowie and The Rolling Stones. Three of these were already in my collection, and I added the other.

It has occurred to me that I haven't blogged about my journey through the 1001 Albums since Christmas Eve. I've still been playing each album on a daily basis, and I'll catch up over the next few days.

This set of albums started in fine form with two albums I scored at 5, then sagged a bit later on. The first on of the 5s was Penthouse and Pavement by Heaven 17. This album followed the split from Human League and went head to head against the League's Dare. I even think they were recorded in the same studio. In contrat to Dare, Penthouse and Pavement has a distinct polical edge to its synth-pop, and it's all the better for it. Album opener (We Don't Need This) Fascist Groove Thing is an absolute stormer that was banned by the BBC. It's possibly more topical than ever.

On the whole, this set of 20 albums was pretty disappointing, with the top spot in my ranking going to the first Ian Dury album, New Boots and Panties!! This album didn't seem to connect with many other reviewers, maybe because it's so deeply rooted in the London vernacular. But for those of us who came to music in the punk years, it was an important album bridging pub rock with the new punk rock and quite typical of the (often peculiar) Stiff Records roster. Every track is a banger.

Biggest disappointment was Prince's Purple Rain. I've tried over the years to like his albums, but I've never been able to muster the enthusiasm of his many admirers. Other disappointments included My Bloody Valentine's comeback bore-fest mbv and I really didn't like Adele's 25 much either.

This is a career-spanning box set of vinyl albums, comprising the four studio albums released 1978-1981 (Real Life, Secondhand Daylight, The Correct Use Of Soap and Magic, Murder and the Weather), the 2011 album No Thyself and a compilation album Rays & Hail, now beefed up to double album status with tracks from No Thyself. I'm not familiar with Rays & Hail, but I do have a couple of other compilations featuring rarities and alternative versions of songs, including the John Peel radio sessions.

I'm going to review this set in two sections. First my recollection from the time of original release and then second a review of the set as I play through it.

 This tranche of albums that I should apparently play before I die had some strong contenders. Love's Forever Changes, heralding the end of the 60s dream; The Beatles' White Album, which I rated 4 as I think they should have made a single album; Wild Gift by X, which was new to me; Motorhead's Ace of Spade all merited a score of 4 from me.

Two albums scored 5 - Nirvana's Nevermind (I rated it because of it's impact on grunge, otherwise I'd probably have rated it 4) and Soft Cell's Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret.

Some real stinkers in this set of albums, but some real classics too.

Kraftwerk can usually be relied upon and here's another great album, with two distinctly different sleeve designs out there. The same is true of my favourite Kraftwerk album, Autobahn. 

And in this set of 20 albums, loads more folk and country. Plus two albums by The Pogues within 3 days. Of the two Pogues albums, I preferred If I Should Fall From Grace With God over Rum, Sodomy and the Lash.

I don't have much in the way of Pogues albums in my library, both these were added to my Qobuz favourites.

Another tranche of albums from the 1001 Albums You Must Hear list - I'm now more than a quarter of the way through. Several supposedly classic albums in here, some of which I felt were rather over rated.

I was disappointed by Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This) by Eurythmics. The singles, especially the title track, are penomenally good, but the album as a whole dragged a bit. I think I felt the same about Touch.

The 1001 albums listing continues its anglophone trajectory. But for me, some outstanding albums here. The main highlight for me was the definitely non-anglophone debut album by Einstuerzende Neubauten.

 Kollaps by Einstuerzende Neubauten exemplifies the changes in accessibility to music over the last few decades. Back when this album was released (1981) I'd read about records in the New Musical Express, and maybe hear these records on John Peel's radio show. But in Edinburgh, where I lived at the time, you'd be hard-pressed to see these in the racks in a record shop - and there were loads of record shops in those days.

A good mix of albums in this tranche.

The top pick from the albums new to me was Leonard Cohen's last album, which his terrific world-weary voice. This one got added to my Qobuz playlist, and may get more permanently added to my library.

A bit of a mixed bag of albums here. Of those I hadn't heard before, there were a few I ranked 5/5, which is good.

The first of these was Johnny Cash At San Quentin. This I loved despite my dislike of country music. It had everything a live album should have from great interactions with the audience to great interactions with the band members.

Another tranche of 20 albums from the 1001 Albums generator. It seems that the critics that assembled this list continue to be a bit anglo-centric. Also, I'm really not clear what gets an album onto this list - popularity, sales, 'musical quality', influential? 

Of this set of albums, the one that was most influential on my taste is Unknown Pleasures by Joy Division. I bought my first copy of this album on release, prompted by a room-mate will impeccable post-punk taste. I had to buy a second copy after my flat was burgled as I couldn't live without it or the second Joy Division album Closer for that matter. I later recovered most of the stolen LPs albeit minus most of the mainstream LPs in the collection.

Another tranche of albums recommended by the 1001 abums generator. Some really excellent albums here, bust also a few that I can't really understand why they made it onto the list.

On the whole, my album ratings have quite a strong concordance with the global reviews, the main exceptions being hip-hop albums.

Some great albums here, plus some real dogs (in my opinion, obviously). The highlight in this set of albums is London Calling by The Clash, but then that's been a favourite of mine for many years.

I hadn't listened to Orange Juice's Rip it Up much at all over the years, and I kind of appreciated this. So that's the album I'm flagging up here. Devendra Banhart's Rejoicing in the Hands was also interesting. Both these are in my Qobuz favourites for further listening.

The albums in this list of 1001 continue to be predominantly anglocentric, which is a bit of a disappointment. Anyway, here is another tranche of 20 records. I was pleased to see Suicide's first album show up. I have a vinyl copy of the UK release (which has a slightly different track listing than the original US release), but also a CD copy of the US release. I bought it because I was intrigued by a review in a HiF magazine which rather rudely announced that only a poseur could possibly claim to like the record ("poseur" was something of a standard insult in those days!). I loved the album from the off, and went on to buy many more Suicide albums, and albums by Alan Vega and Martin Rev.

I was pleasantly surprised by Green River by Creedence Clearwater Revival, but many of the selections seemed to me to be rather inconsequential records. 

So here I am, having passed 10% of the albums. It continues to be a rather anglocentric exercise, with most albums from the US, UK and Canada.

No discoveries of albums in this tranche that I subsequently added to my collection. But the exercise is exposing me to records I've not played before, which has to be a good thing even if it confirms my existing taste! 

Here are my thoughts on albums 61 to 80 from the 1001 Albums website.

It's still very English language on the whole. On the other hand, it keeps exposing me to new music which is always a good thing.

I've changed the format of these blog posts, and I'm just pasting my commentary from the 1001 Albums website. I've left the weblinks in - the album title links to Spotify (I haven't tested those since I don't use Spotify), and the artist name links to the Wikipedia page for the album. The Global reviews link is to the reviews logged on the 1001 albums website.

Frankly, the whole exercise seems to me to be a bit lacking in diversity - hopefully we'll see more non-English speaking albums later on. (Click title to read more)