Category: Rock
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Cartel ‘Chroma’ (2005)
The late 90’s through the mid aughts were a five year period that defined pop punk. You had Blink 182’s Enema of the State, Sum 41’s All Killer No Filler, and Green Day’s Dookie that by and large defined the genre, and then the variety of subsequent offshoots which took that formula and tweaked it…
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The Detroit Cobras ‘Mink, Rat or Rabbit’ (1998)
The Detroit Cobras were part of the wave of Detroit garage rock that exploded in 2001 when The White Stripes released White Blood Cells and brought that glorious back-to-basics fuzz all over the world. The Detroit Cobras were a similar throwback. Comprised entirely of cover songs from America’s golden age of rock and roll during…
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Goose ‘Dripfield’ (2022)
It’s rare that a jam band can translate what makes them special throughout the course of an entire studio album. There’s something that is indelible about witnessing a live performance from a band like Goose or Grateful Dead that transcends the experience of listening of music through headphones– the buzz of spontaneity that permeates the…
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Lou Reed ‘Transformer’ (1972)
Few artists have embodied the essence of New York cool in the way Lou Reed did. With a deadpan delivery espoused subject matter which challenged society’s conventions at every turn, Reed’s brand of sex, drugs, and rock n roll always felt like a bit of an art project put on by a neurotic socially awkward…
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John Mellencamp ‘Scarecrow’ (1985)
No artist in the 80’s represented heartland rock in the way that John Mellencamp did. 1982’s American Fool is his best-selling album due to its inclusion of smash hits “Jack & Diane” and “Hurts So Good”, but Mellencamp really began to find his feet as a songwriter during 1985’s Scarecrow which has always to me…
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Måneskin ‘RUSH!’ (2023)
Måneskin makes me feel old and out of touch. Even more than I usually feel. The best way I can describe them is an Italian glam rock version of Royal Blood whose sole goal is to make songs that sound as massive and as danceable as possible. And since all the band members are in…
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Bruce Springsteen ‘The Rising’ (2002)
Bruce Springsteen’s music has always had this beautiful sense of unease around it, a struggle of finding meaning in mundane circumstances, and explored the difficulty of keeping the flame of hope alive in trying times. It’s what makes him my favorite artist of all-time and one of the definitive musical orators of American history during…
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Smash Mouth ‘Astro Lounge’ (1999)
With the sad news that Smash Mouth lead singer Steve Harwell is in the final days of his life due to liver failure, it only felt right to listen to their highly acclaimed 1999 album Astro Lounge this week. The lead single “All Star” has been a mainstay on any mix tape or playlist created…
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Billy Joel ‘The Stranger’ (1977)
Leading up to The Stranger Billy Joel’s career was on the rocks. After the massive success of 1973’s Piano Man (whose title track is Joel’s most famous song, and for good reason considering it’s a brilliant piece of storytelling), he was on the verge of being dropped by his record label Columbia Records due to…
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Aerosmith ‘Toys in the Attic’ (1975)
Toys in the Attic features Aerosmith at their absolute best, a stellar album that takes you on a ride through the dirtiest and raunchiest of what rock and roll can offer. It’s raw as hell and features the band firing on all cylinders in a way they never really captured throughout the rest of their…
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Counting Crows ‘Recovering The Satellites’ (1996)
Counting Crows’ breakthrough debut August And Everything After is the group’s most-known album due to the chart smashing hits “Mr. Jones” and “Round Here”, which (outside of being quite good songs) came at a moment in music history when grunge was King. The hippie-influenced roots rock of the Crows was a distinct counterpoint to the…
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White Reaper ‘You Deserve Love’ (2019)
I absolutely love garage rock. The fuzziness of the guitars, the boom-boom-pop of the drums, the chuggy bass lines, the overdriven vocals, the upscale lo-fi ness of it all. Crafting a great garage rock song is a whole helluva lot harder than it actually looks— there’s a fine line to walk in both recording and…
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Alice Cooper ‘Billion Dollar Babies’ (1973)
As the original shock artist, Alice Cooper’s influence on rock and roll spans nearly five decades long. His live shows were legendary for their theatrics and featured elements like magical stage illusions, pyrotechnics, guillotines, electric chairs, fake blood, and baby dolls. He was basically the Tim Burton of 70’s rock, and one of the first…
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Bruce Springsteen ‘Born In The U.S.A.’ (1984)
It’s a well-worn trope at this point that when “Born In The U.S.A.” comes on someone will loudly exclaim “Hey buddy ya’ know this song is actually a protest song about how politicians conveniently drape themselves in the flag but then ignore the needs of our working-class military members once they return from service.” That…
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Dire Straits ‘Brothers In Arms’ (1985)
Dire Straits magnum opus’ Brothers In Arms is a landmark achievement in sound that has been one of my favorite albums of since I first heard it as a teenager. To this day I still get chills when I hear the stinging precision of Mark Knopfler’s incredible guitar riff that kicks off “Money For Nothing”…
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Thin Lizzy ‘Jailbreak’ (1976)
Thin Lizzy is one of the most underrated bands in rock history in my opinion. Whether it’s the super smooth vocal stylings of Phil Lynott, the twin guitar harmonies of Scott Gorham and Brian Robertson that remain to this day the sound of their generation, or the pulsating rhythm section of Brian Downey, there is…
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The Stooges ‘Funhouse’ (1970)
The Stooges were a band seemingly lost in time, a decade ahead of their peers in the late 60’s. Throwing elements of psychedelia, American garage rock, and British blues into a blender, Fun House is effectively the first seed of punk rock that caused legions of bands to follow in their footsteps. The Clash, Ramones,…
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Derek and the Dominos ‘Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs’ (1970)
Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs is Eric Clapton’s finest career work in my opinion, which is truly saying something for a man who stands as probably the most influential and accomplished guitar player in rock history. Formed after the breakup of his previous supergroup Blind Faith and their excellent self-titled album in 1969, Clapton…
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The Crickets ‘The Chirping Crickets’ (1957)
Despite dying at the age of 22 years old in a tragic plane crash that was called “The Day The Music Died” (an event forever immortalized in Don McLean’s cultural cornerstone “American Pie”), Buddy Holly was a pioneering force in the meteoric rise of rock and roll in the mid-1950’s. Along with helping to establish…
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Bruce Springsteen ‘Tunnel Of Love’ (1987)
On Tunnel Of Love Springsteen traded in arena-rock anthems for an intimate look inward, taking bold proclamations with big ideas drenched in massive soundscapes and turning them into tidy vignettes of the challenges of mature adult relationships. Whereas Springsteen’s career had at that point largely focused on making massive statements about both the promise and…
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Steve Miller Band ‘Greatest Hits 1974-78’ (1978)
When I made the decision at the beginning of this year to listen to one album per day I set up a handful of self-imposed guiding principles to guide the process. The primary one was (and remains) to avoid Greatest Hits compilations– the spirit of this whole experience is to focus on a greater appreciation…
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Rick Springfield ‘Working Class Dog’ (1981)
Ed. Note: Welcome to Sound City week here at Music of Matthew dot com! This week we’ll be covering some notable albums recorded at the legendary Sound City studio in Los Angeles, which was covered in great detail in Dave Grohl’s excellent 2013 documentary “Sound City”. Rick Springfield has been somewhat of a punch-line for…
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Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers ‘Damn The Torpedoes’ (1979)
For my money Tom Petty has and always will be the perfect encapsulation of American heartland rock. Throughout his career he showed an innate ability to combine the blues, traditional country, garage rock, British invasion, rock and roll, and folk songwriting sensibilities to create some of the finest works of art found in classic rock.…
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AC/DC ‘Highway to Hell’ (1979)
AC/DC’s history is split into two eras across two different absolutely legendary lead singers, Bon Scott and Brian Johnson. They both have this incredible rasp and grit to their voice that fits the sound of AC/DC perfectly in their own different ways. I’ve always felt Bon Scott was a little more unhinged and primal (both…
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The Allman Brothers Band ‘At Fillmore East’ (1971)
At Fillmore East is an iconic live album from one of the most iconic southern rock jam bands of all time. Recorded over the course of the three nights at the iconic Fillmore East in New York City, this was the album that put The Allman Brothers Band on the map in the United States…
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The Hold Steady ‘Boys and Girls in America’ (2006)
Boys and Girls in America was an incredibly formative album for me. I was maybe a month in to my freshman year of college when the album dropped, and after previously falling in love with The Hold Steady’s concept album Separation Sunday, which is quite honestly a must-listen as well for any fan of rich…
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Marcus King ‘El Dorado’ (2020)
Marcus King is only 27 years old but has already established himself as one of the finest guitar players of this generation. King reminds me a lot of some of my favorite guitarists from the 60’s and 70’s, like Duane Allman and Merle Haggard, guys who can rip with the best of them but also…
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Steppenwolf ‘Steppenwolf’ (1968)
Steppenwolf is one of those bands you rarely hear discussed as a major player in rock history, but man does it feel like they’re everywhere in modern roock. The psychedelic rock, fuzzy distorted guitars, and rollicking percussion section in their self-titled debut just screams 2000’s garage rock revival and probably played a larger role in…
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The Hives ‘Veni Vidi Vicious’ (2000)
The garage rock revival in the 2000’s was a glorious time in music history and no band better captured that unhinged energy for high school me than The Hives. I remember popping this CD into my navy blue Walkman one day and literally playing this album over and over and over again everywhere I went—…
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Bruce Hornsby and The Range ‘The Way It Is’ (1986)
Bruce Hornsby is one of my favorite piano players of all-time. Everything he plays has this undeniable quality of sentimentality. It’s in his melancholic chord choices, his delicate phrasing, and the glistening tone of his piano. It’s perfect. Hearing Hornsby play I always get a feeling of homesick longing. It’s a feeling of missing something…
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Electric Light Orchestra ‘Out of the Blue’ (1977)
When Electric Light Orchestra first formed in 1970 they stated the mission of the band was to “pick up where The Beatles left off with ‘I Am The Walrus’”. That’s an incredibly ambitious statement for more reasons than one, but it’s safe to say ELO pretty much nailed what they said they were gonna do.…
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Little Richard ‘Here’s Little Richard’ (1957)
It’s been nearly 70 years since the release of Little Richard’s 1957 debut, and it’s easy in retrospect to sort of haphazardly lump this album into the category of a “classic example of American rhythm and blues”. It’s the “sound” you hear in your head when you think of the genre, especially after so much…
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Traffic ‘Traffic’ (1968)
The 1960’s were a wild time in music history. Take Traffic for example– in three short years from 1967 to 1970 founding member Dave Mason recorded the band’s first album Mr. Fantasy, subsequently left the group, decided to re-join in the middle of the recording this album, and then abruptly left the band for good…
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The Stone Roses ‘The Stone Roses’ (1989)
Despite their short lifespan that featured only two full album releases. The Stone Roses influenced an entire generation of Britpop artists. Their self-titled debut was not only their most commercially successful, but is also regarded as one of the greatest albums of all-time for people who get paid to write about this sort of thing.…
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The Darkness ‘Permission to Land’ (2003)
All The Darkness do is write bangers. This is one of my favorite hard rock albums of all-time for the simple reason that it is fun as hell and has no interest in pretending to be anything otherwise. Modern rock music in general has the unfortunate malaise of sometimes being a little too self-important, and…
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U2 ‘The Joshua Tree’ (1987)
The Joshua Tree is one of the best-selling albums of all-time. You can read all about the cultural impact it had here. That’s not what we’re here for. What we are here for is to talk about the impact The Edge (aka David Howell Evans) has had on popular music. Specifically, we’re here to analyze…
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