A cute premise - rock critics tackling canonical albums which they hate, and tearing into them. There are 34, and the only one which I really love is OK Computer, though many others which I like, or at least have liked in the past, are the subjects of essays - The Joshua Tree, Blood On The Tracks, Dark Side Of The Moon (of course), Nevermind...The quality of the pieces is very variable, though I often found it difficult to put my finger on what was wrong, or right, with any given one - Jim DeRogatis' shellacking of Sgt Pepper's, for example, seemed to have all the elements but was just turgid.
For mine, Allison Augustyn is spot on in criticising YHF on the basis that it's, uh, boring, and Fred Mills hits a lot of nails on the head with his dissection of Harvest, especially in complaining about the jarring track sequencing, but also about the fact that it's just generally not that good. Jim Testa's tearing apart of Never Mind the Bollocks was also very effective, even though I occasionally convince myself that I actually enjoy listening to the album. And the damning-by-faint-praise of the Doors' Best Of done by DeRogatis and Lorraine Ali articulated a lot of thoughts I've had about that band in the past.
Most of the pieces are relatively restrained despite their determinedly counter-cultural posings (though the Fleetwood Mac murder fantasy induced by Rumours, which I've not listened to, was a bit off), often dissing the record but expressing respect for the artist; the striking exception is Chrissie Dickinson's vicious take on the double-album cd set GP/Grievous Angel, administering a good kicking to Parsons himself along the way. David Menconi, who writes aforementioned criticism of OK Computer, obviously misses the point of the album (for chrissake, he considers "Electioneering" to be its best song)...and so on.
I've listened to most of these, though a few have got past me (and I was flummoxed to see Paul & Linda McCartney's Ram given the treatment...what on earth is "Ram", and since when was it a supposedly 'classic' album?). Each of the writers also put in a list of their top 10 favourite albums, and I was fascinated to see Lucinda Williams in no less than three of the lists (and namechecked in one or two of the other writers' actual contributions).
