Sweetheart of the Rodeo | The Byrds | 1968 | Colombia | #352 Swinging in the opposite direction to yesterday’s album of the same year, which left me pumped for the concept of counter-cultural ideals mercilessly demanding a shift in how music should be produced and consumed, comes this easy-listening, easily-digestible procession of country & western. This list obviously wasn’t designed to be listened to sequentially; teasing contradicting emotions out of me and not allowing me to settle on them for more than 24 hours. My scrobble list definitely has a schizophrenic characteristic to it now - thankfully my day job doesn’t require me to work with people much. ...

Mclusky Do Dallas | Mclusky | 2002 | Too Pure | #353 Mclusky Do Dallas is intentionally obnoxious, noisy, punky post-hardcore (whatever that means) which is all about cracking jokes and acting like idiots from start to end. With songs such as “Lightsabre Cocksucking Blues” and “Fuck This Band”, and lyrical treasures such as “All of your friends are cunts Your mother is a ball point pen thief” pretty much sum up the attitude and articulates their temperament better than I could. ...

Hot Buttered Soul | Isaac Hayes | 1969 | Enterprise | #354 I haven’t surveyed the list thoroughly enough to make comments about NME’s efforts to be equally representative, and I’m only twelve days in, but something tells me a departure from white man playing guitar will be scarce enough that it should be savoured when it comes. Disappointingly then, I only managed to squeeze in a handful of plays of Hot Buttered Soul today, but that was enough for me to notice some disparities between this album and the sort of soul music I’ve been exposed to until now. ...

Rock Bottom | Robert Wyatt | 1974 | Virgin | #358 The story for this album goes that during its creation Robert Wyatt was at a party and drunkenly fell from a third story window which left him paralysed from the waist down. Robert continued writing the album from his hospital bed in a trance-like state. The albums’s producer is Nick Mason of Pink Floyd, who at the time were between The Dark Side of the Moon (1973) and Wish You Were Here (1975) - his influence is definitely felt. The result is a dreamy, progressive-rock soundscape which I think rides the line between pretentious, introspective nonsense and actually something totally brilliant. ...

Copper Blue | Sugar | 1992 | Rykodisc | #357 Listening to this album and reading about the history was a bit of an unexpected education - turns out this one is rather seminal. Sugar is fronted by Bob Mould, previously of hardcore punk/alternative-rock band Hüsker Dü who were signed to the independent label SST - the label created by Black Flag guitarist Greg Ginn - and were hugely influential for the post-punk alternative-rock sound that became massively popular in the early 90s. ...

Bossanova | Pixies | 1990 | 4AD| #356 Running through in ascending order means I must first listen to the least critically-acclaimed of the three Pixies albums that appear on NME’s list. If you were trying to get your mate into a new band you certainly wouldn’t show off their worst material first and expect them to become instant fans. I like this way of going about it though; it’s unconventional, and means I have Pixies’ “better” stuff (according to NME, at least) to look forward to later in the year. ...

We’re Only in It for the Money | The Mothers of Invention | 1968 | Verve | #359 This is obviously an intentionally bizarre concept album that’s full of parodies and jibes at just about anything related to the the hippy, flower power culture of the late 60s. Frank Zappa apparently isn’t happy with the state of things and so he’s created this musique concrète, psychadelic, art-music album to make his counter-cultural points. On the personnel notes for this album Frank’s credits are listed as “guitar, piano, lead vocals, weirdness & editing”, while Jimmy Carl Black’s are “Indian of the group, drums, trumpet, vocals”. Whimsical and unconventional is the tone throughout. ...

Room on Fire | The Strokes | 2003 | RCA | #360 I think The Strokes have done really well to squeeze out a pretty successful career and couple of albums from what is probably for me one of the least inspiring genres. About half way through the album I realised that firstly, we’re half way through the album - I hardly noticed that we’ve progressed five tracks - and secondly, this is so dull yet I’m still enjoying it somehow. ...

A Nod Is As Good As a Wink… to a Blind Horse | Faces | 1971 | Warner Bros | #361 Before the band Faces formed there was Small Faces, who disbanded when the singer walked off stage during a show because he was fed up with the band’s pop image and inability to live-perform their recently recorded and critically acclaimed psychedelic rock album. So the surviving members decided to recruit Ronnie Wood and Rod Stewart from the Jeff Beck group and reform as just Faces. ...

Hello Nasty | Beastie Boys | 1998 | Capitol | #362 I knew very little about Beastie Boys before I listened to this album, and what I did know was probably gleaned from misinterpreted pop-culture references such as Mark recalling that “The Beastie Boys fought and possibly died for my right to party” in Peep Show. Hello Nasty is white-boy New York hip-hop. It’s big production with heavy use of sampling and chopping about of styles to build a huge mix of sound, with an experimental feel. I think that’s the point; to create a collage of music - which they obviously had loads of fun making - the result of which generates quite a unique aesthetic. I say huge because it’s 22 tracks and runs for over an hour which honestly made it a bit of a chore to finish. ...