#523 - To Our Children's Children's Children, The Moody Blues

"The material dwells mostly on time and what its passage means, and there is a peculiar feeling of loneliness and isolation to many of the songs. This was also the last of the group's big "studio" sound productions, built up in layer upon layer of overdubbed instruments -- the sound is very lush and rich, but proved impossible to re-create properly on-stage, and after this they would restrict themselves to recording songs that the five of them could play in concert." (allmusic guide)

#522 - Give Up, The Postal Service

"Ben Gibbard's famously bittersweet vocals and sharp, sensitive lyrics imbue Give Up with more emotional heft than you might expect from a synth pop album, especially one by a side project from musicians as busy as Tamborello and Gibbard are. The album exploits the contrast between the cool, clean synths and Gibbard's all-too-human voice to poignant and playful effect, particularly on Give Up's first two tracks." (allmusic guide)

#521 - Blues For Allah, The Grateful Dead

"Blues for Allah -- more than any past or future studio album -- captures the Dead at their most natural and inspired. The opening combo of "Help on the Way," "Slipknot!," and "Franklin's Tower" is a multi-faceted suite, owing as much to Miles Davis circa the E.S.P. album as to anything the Grateful Dead had been associated with. "Slipknot!" contains chord changes, progressions, and time signatures which become musical riddles for the band to solve -- which they do in the form of "Franklin's Tower."" (allmusic guide)

#520 - The Smiths, The Smiths

"Few debuts can inspire legions of wayward teens to ingest copious amounts of Oscar Wilde and self-pity, but that's what this LP did. Better-known songs would come from the Smiths, but the mix of ringing guitars and lyrical aptitude in tracks like "Reel Around The Fountain" and "This Charming Man" is most definitely pop genius." (real music guide)

#519 - Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire), The Kinks

"Written as the score for a never-aired BBC television drama, Arthur is the story of late-'60s English working-class exhaustion. Perhaps not the most attention-grabbing subject for a rock album, but in Ray Davies's hands it's rich in texture and stylistic possibility. From the rousing ode to Britain's glorious past ("Victoria") to its less-than-glamorous present (that being the late '60s), Davies portrays a life of cautiously reduced expectations. The Kinks at their mighty and surprisingly tender best." (amazon editorial review)