Okay, first things first here are the albums I either somewhat liked or didn't like in this long project of listening to 1970 singer/songwriter albums:
I honestly pretty much like these and maybe am underrating:
All Things Must Pass by George Harrison 7.9/10
Someday Man - Paul Williams 7.9/10
New Morning by Bob Dylan 7.8/10
Pass The Distance - Simon Finn 7.7/10
Barrett - Syd Barrett 7.7/10
Fully Qualified Survivor - Michael Chapman 7.6/10
Stephen Stills by Stephen Stills 7.7/10
John Phillips (The Wolfking of LA) by John Phillips 7.5/10
I Witness Life - Tom T. Hall 7.4/10
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These r ok:
The Man Who Sold The World by David Bowie7.4/10
Primordial Lovers - Essra Mohawk 7.2/10
Christmas and the Beads of Sweat 7.1/10
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me not likey:
Woodsmoke and Oranges - Paul Siebel 6.7/10
Lie: The Love and Terror Cult - Charles Manson 6.6/10
Songs For an Uncertain Lady by Randy Burns 6.4/10
Sweet Baby James - James Taylor 6.1/10
Here in the Land of Victory - Rex Holman 5.9/10
You are an easy grader. 6.7 is a pretty good rating for an album that you don't like. Albums that I don't like I would not hesitate to give a 0.7. If you were a teacher the students would love you because you're such an Easy Grader. Lmao
MercuryTurn your back on the pay-you-back last callProfile St. Louis
yes I am easy on my grades. For these albums they started to blur somewhat together and I was just like is this a folk based singer songwriter album? okay yes it is. Somewhat samey and i'm sure its fine. so i gave them really easy scores. I don't generally give really low scores on most anything. the range of listenable and having any redeeming qualities is about 5.5-10. _________________ -Ryan
for fans of Just Another Diamond Day this is a good next step. DSweet, beautiful folk music. I am not even sure if she wrote these songs and that this album qualifies for this list. It's really pretty and sweet and meloncholy at times nonetheless.
This is delightful. Previn is unfiarly overlooked as one of the cooler satirical songwriters. I'm thinkin' randy newman fans would find much to love in these brilliant little vignettes and unpretentious and really gorgeous arrangements. The lyrics throughout are excellent.
Just a cool straight-forward country/folk-rock album, with nice lyrics and a good dose of The Band vibes throughout. Then the final track reminds you that this is indeed John Cale and its weird and beautiful and maybe the best song.
This dude was a really solid songwriter and had a good ear for that earthy sorta americana vibe. The songs are solid throughout and its all solid. He woulda been bigger probably if not for the fact that he was a draft dodger and couldn't come back to the US and tour. Kinda messed up his momentum. As I am sure being drafted would as well. Anywhooo...
This is really pretty and really solid. I do think its a bit overhyped and all, but what does that even mean? Its a really unique record which is a bit too sleepy and consistent in its shimmery dream state for me to latch onto it of now after 3 listens. Nonetheless, the lyrics are good, the singing and the way her voice is recorded is at times just incredible and it is a good one.
This album by the Martyns was a last second addition to my listening queue and it was a good, absolutely beautiful british folk album. The interplay of the Martyns vocals is so great and well done and the songs are awesome. Its yet another album from 1970 perfect for a quiet sunday afternoon, put this, Perhcs, Vashti, Mary-Anne, etc all on in a row while you read and do dioshes. Or Something.
The songs here are all over the place. The first song has a circus vibe, or a carnival vibe (whatever the diff would be) and there are baroque pop songs and bluesy rock songs here and there. And there are romantic ballads, etc. This album is varied and keeps you on your toes. I like it. There are some duds, but the general experience was pretty impressive.
Kinda strange to include this. It is one guy writing songs and all, so why not. Its strange and intense and highly recommended. I don't know how to describe it. check it out. Its really weird if you are expecting a traditional singer/songwriter album
This is the last album by Bolan and his 2nd in command before becoming T Rex. The songs here are brittle, strange, strangely catchy, folk songs with cool arrangements and Bolan's usual cool vocals. Don't expect much here similar to later T Rex songs or albums. But it was a nice listen.
8.2/10
Good Morning Rain by Bonnie Dobson (1970)
this album has not been added to the database. Anyway, this is excellent pop stuff by Bonnie. Not sure if this qualifies either as singer/songwriter as I don't know if she wrote any songs. There are a lot of late 60s Ralph McTell covers here and the songs are generally quite gorgeous, and her voice is cool and yeah its solid.
what an absolutely impressive debut! It does sound so sharp and brilliant in the song craft category, very Paul McCartney esque, the hooks and the vocals and the sounds are all so brilliantly rendered. Very impressive as this dude made this album (and several others) in his home studio by himself. Dude's like the DIY, Indie answer to McCartney! Check this out.
I don't know why I loved this so much... its proto noise rock, like early krautrock sounding stuff. Its proto punk in mnay ways. and her vocals are insane, they remind me of the lead singer of Can. The band of John Lennon, Ringo and someone else, all surporise me but laying donw these intense and excellent noisy rock jams for Yoko to just go the fuck off on! Its an interesting listen.
this may be THE quintessential singer/songwriter album of 1970. Its personal, its political, it rocks at times but never too muc, the singer is sincere, the songs are well written and poetic but not toooo poetic (don't wanna turn people off who just wanna hear some good tunes). Yet despite how damn familiar this all is, i actually quite loved this album and wanna return soon. Its just pop/folk/rock gold for large portions. The opener and Father and Son are obvious stand outs, biut there are others i can't remember (maybe they aren't stand outs then...?)
I'm thrilled that you liked Dory Previn. I've never been able to turn anyone on to her successfully. Not sure why. Some people say that they are turned off by the unpleasant subject matter of a lot of her stuff. They think she's tasteless to write humorous songs about serious topics. But so do a lot of people.
MercuryTurn your back on the pay-you-back last callProfile St. Louis
something about this is just great. Its sim ple unadorned and all that but there's a great flow between tracks and Phillips' vocals are excellent and understated and I love the production here, its warm and vivid and just nice.
This is an interesting, intense and just really good album. I am glad i finally got around to checking it out after years of hearing about this artist and his movie about him. Its solid. IDK. Nothing much to say today on anything including this good album
These are both really beautiful albums which I really like oif not love. Nothing on these 2 albums reaches remotely the heights of Astral Weeks, but the albums are both consistently moody, beautifully written, soulful r&b rock pop mix up beauties. Perhaps they should be rated and ranked higher, but I just like them not quite enough and they don't strike me as memorable enough to hype up too much.
This is awesome as well. Wizz was a great guitarist and the way this album is recoreded makes the most of these unadorned acoustic recordings. There's just a lot of soul and a lot of strange almost ominous feelings I get from this album. Fans of Bert Jansch will love this methinks. Just superb folk music and really stunning guitar playing in particular.
I am not alone in thinking this is an overlooked little mish mash of a good album. There is just a looseness and freddom here from the greatest songwriter ever. He is clearly unconcerned with being deep or brilliant. He's just playing a lot of joke songs, covers of himself and his younger peers, and songs which just don't make since at all, etc. It all comes together to this fascinating, unself-serious, jumble of ideas which I love listening to.
Maybe I'm underrating this as an extreme response to my feeling that it is overrated. But what do those terms even mean. Well, i don't know. Obviously I love this album by and large. The utter pain and emotion of the songs are brilliant. songs like God, Working Class Hero and Mother all are amazing. And some of the less famous cuts are just as great and revealing. Some of the songs are just cartoonishly somber. The closer about his dead mom is just too much. I sympathize but I can't get behind it. I don't know. Again, this is really good. blah blah blah
Bill fay was a beast of a musician. The songs here are full and almost over the top oin their orchestral elements. But it never does less than work. And mostly its really great. His voice is nice and middling, but the songwriting here is great. Not quite on the same level as "Time of the last Persecution" but its close and this album is cool as hell.
Not actually a greatest hits album. Its the last studio album Ochs recorded before he went off the deep end. And the ache and pain is so tangible here. It breaks one's heart to hear this album. But nonetheless Ochs' is nearly at his best here with his words and his distinct voice. Where "Rehearsals for Retirement" leaned heavily on his political angst, this album avoids that subject on all but one song. Its just a sad and plain set of pop foilk tunes of very high quality. I have become a big fan of Phil Ochs.
Here's another classic I am possibly not giving enough credit to. The final S&G studio album this is, and yoda, I have become. Anyway, this is great. Some of the arrangements and the songs are a bit cloying and over the top. But the hits here are so freaking amaaaazing that I can't do anything but love this album. That does include the absolute stunning genius of the title track. Its so great and I will never lose sight of that. Also "The only living boy in new york is astonishing and very unique. Just fab.
9.0/10
(some of these ratings make no sense now that I'm looking at them. Just wait till I do the top 20 later, you'll see why I say the ratings are dumb and make no sense.
I love the vocals, the intense guitar acoustics, the great pun of a title, even the weird cover. The songs are great outside of the long lecture to a live audience followed by the overlong weakest song here "I Hate The White Man". The rest of the album is just brilliant acoustic guitar, excellent folk rock, amazing vocals and lyrics from Harper, and its just all so well done. And while "Stormcock" is greater and rightfully gets a lot more attention around here, this is also truly stunning.
9.1/10
aaaaand that is all for this not really orderly list. I will next count down the last 20 albums. I may break them into tiers of coolness... or I may just rank them.
Full disclosure, I have been mondo ill the last 6 days and have just felt very very meh to terrible. Today is the same so I may wait until I'm a bit more motivated or more engaged to do the next set of 1970 singer/songwriter albums (all of these final ones are great to UN-BE-LIEV-ABLE! so get ready. I will still keep the reviews short. They got out of hand for 1969. so there, random babbling ends in 3...2...1... BYE! _________________ -Ryan
Also "The only living boy in new york is astonishing and very unique. Just fab.
9.0/10
Yeah, that's always been my fav off of that album. Just a beautiful song.
Glad you dug the Bill Fay record, I gave it a first listen two days ago and thought it was incredible. Wish he released more 🙁 _________________ Doubles & Conch
MercuryTurn your back on the pay-you-back last callProfile St. Louis
Also "The only living boy in new york is astonishing and very unique. Just fab.
9.0/10
Yeah, that's always been my fav off of that album. Just a beautiful song.
Glad you dug the Bill Fay record, I gave it a first listen two days ago and thought it was incredible. Wish he released more :(
Yeah I saw your comment about Fay being your UK choice, never responded, apologies. I am glad you lived it. I will come back to it. Bill Fay was amazing and it’s a bummer his discography was so small. _________________ -Ryan
Based on your wording (and the previous post) I just want to clear up that you know he's alive and active. He had a cover of Jesus, Etc. a few years back that I think is even better than the original.
And yeah, that'll be my pick for England (doing the UK individually...) _________________ Doubles & Conch
MercuryTurn your back on the pay-you-back last callProfile St. Louis
Based on your wording (and the previous post) I just want to clear up that you know he's alive and active. He had a cover of Jesus, Etc. a few years back that I think is even better than the original.
And yeah, that'll be my pick for England (doing the UK individually...)
Jiminy cricket! I didn’t know that. I mean I assumed he was dead or at least inactive. Can’t understand why only 2 prime albums when they’re both classics. #confused must research his story. _________________ -Ryan
Now for the next set...ranked, yes, but also presented in tiers.
The next few will have little notes/reviews... but the #20 thru #15 (6 albums) ranks to come next are all great and I really love them by and large, but they aren't quite mindblowingly amazing. The amazing and borderline mindblowing are the next tier, and is a set of 7. Then the final 7, the top 7, are all just absolutely fabulous and are either in my all time top 100 or within spitting distance. so that is the situation. Also some of the ratings won't make sense. I will give a rating too high in theory to put tghese albums above the last ones mentioned. Mostly this is due to inconsistencies of my criteria, being a fanboy of that particular artist, or just not putting much thought into it.
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NOTE: I wrote all of these quick reviews oin about 45 minutes. So there are typos and things which seem thrown off with not much thought. Apologies.
This album is really something. This dangerous at times, flighty, free form madness mixed with beauty back to madness, with all its echoey elements drifting in and out of your eart, its so absolutely singularly strange. Its so intoxcicating when in the right mindset. Buckley just kept pushing the boundaries of his music until it became something so unique that many would call it something other than music. But the people who say that I think are silly. The beauty of this album is absoilutely observably amazing. The keyboard sounds, the organ cries and atmospherics and the insanely unique and virtuosic swings of Buckley's vocals. Man, Its just so great!
I slightly prefer Starsailor and you will see that higher on my liost here. But they both are 2 halves of some weird magic that Buckley created in the calendar year of 1970. It has to be experienced and really contemplated to be believed or understood. Its high here and my rating is good for it. But it may be a somewhat glib take on the album as it requires lots of listens and thought. As of now I have heard it three times and each times its affected me in 3 different ways and my appreciation has risen each time. as of now...
This album has a space and a sound and a feel unlike anything else I've heard. Its all airy and ethereal and shimmeringly beautiful and its truly a unique expression of some long lost state of existence tranquil, pastoral, contemplative something. Its excellent. I don't have much to say about it. Plus someone totally just interrupted my zone of yapping. So darn.
Any way this is really a uniquely beautiful album and one of the prettiest folk album or any kind of album ever made.
This is a great album yes. But also the inclusion of this album is more of like a lifetime acheivement award. Willie Dixon may have been one of the most influential songwriters in american music and pop music history. He wrote many of the defining classic electric blues and rock and roll songs of the 50s. He was always there churning out some of the greatest and most legendary songs of that era. But he was there in relative obscurity. Then in 1970 he released this album with some of the greatest modern blues and rock musicians as well as other luminaries from the earlier generation. He got into the studio and with renewed energy and verve he came out swinging for the fences with this collection of his most classic and brilliantly written songs rendered in intense and pure form with him at the front singing these words of his for the first time as the man on the billing. And its a delight!
So here you hear passionate lively versions of classics Willie Dixon wrote for Muddy EWaters and Howlin' Wold, such "I Ain't Superstitious", "Little Red Rooster","Back Door Man", "I Can't Quit You Baby", "I'm Your Hoochie Coochie Man", "You Shook Me" and a few others. With Dixon in the spotlight for once you can hear the joy and passion in every line. This album is cool as hell.
This is an album which seems to be broken down in brilliance between 2 halves. I mean the first 6 songs are good, and by nearly anyone else's standards the songs are sharp, witty, brilliant, poetic and awesome. But Maybe its due to being spoiled by the previous album in TVZ's discog, but it just feels like these first tracks and this albums first side is less perfect, mesmerizing and the performances seem a bit off.
But damn! The last 4 tracks are all just the highest of highs for any songwriter ever who lived! Right from the sultry brilliant blues of "Brand New Companion, through the intense and utterly crushing depression of the last 2 songs "Rake" and "Nothin", there is not a false note at all. The way this album closes out puts even his self titled album to shame. Also the rockin' and kind of threatening vibe of "Where I lead Me" in the second half is stunning. First half gets a 8.3ish rating, Second half is a 10. overall rating....
9.0/10
seriously though "Rake" and "Nothin'" are 2 of the greatest songs i've ever heard. Just stunning.
Due to a bit of cheating off of my own limitations on this project this will not be the only album of Randy Newman on this list. And although this is rated and ranked far lower in my mind than the other album which will be discussed later, this is still a fantastic album. Perhaps it doesn't have the same fiery , laughing as the world burns brilliance of "Sail Away" or "Good Old Boys", but it is musically and in terms of form maybe even greater than those albums. The album is still sardonic and brutal at times with songs like "Yellow Man" and "Suzanne" and "Underneath The Harlem Moon". Also each songs have a logical structure, they all have a sound and a design and a pristine little nugget form which makes each of these 12 songs just nice little pop songs. Randy Newman's voice is not an equal to Nilsson's, but its got a certain strange allure and I just love hearing it. Maybe I was deeply influenced with the songs he did for pixar as a youth and that's why I always just feel happy when I hear his voice, no matter what he is saying. Anyway, this is great!
Loretta Lynn was a trailblazer. A woman in the country scene writing her own songs (great ones at that) about extra marital affairs, and women's issues and rights and all these intense tales of deep south dark romances. This would be interesting in itself even if the songs and the lyrics and the vocal dfelivery and the music was just alright. But This album is full of sad soulful somewhat detached and heartbreaking Loretta vocals which is just awesome. There's just something about her voice which always expresses sadness so well. Idk. Also the band is top notch. And damn! the songs are great!
Right from the jump with the title track, it is clear you're dealing with a total pro. this is followed by an equally great and heartbreaking "Hello Darlin'". and the tracklist is hit after hit after hit. I just love this album. Loretta and Parton were both so brilliant as writers and they both deserve equal credit for overcoming so many obstacles to becoming 2 of the greatest country songwriters of all time.
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bobbyb5
Mercury
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