Most underated albums......

Here's one I have never heard about on the 'gon and it's a killer album: Dreamland by Madeleine Peyroux. Not too many white girls, who can sing like Billy Holiday. Beautifully recorded, as well. Try her.

Any early Lindisfarne or Alan Hull record. Brilliant song-writing, brilliant playing.
How about Odyssey and Oracle by the Zombies?

Ben Campbell is right.
I could list hundreds of great releases and rarities by largely ignored Soul, Reggae, and Country & Western musicians that, though totally ignored by radio programmers, MTV & Rolling Stone magazine, are nevertheless acknowledged masterpieces among the geeky subcultures that collect these sorts of things.

I have a proposal for saving this thread. Let's stick our necks out and say a word on behalf of albums by well-known performers that were unfairly labeled as duds, or as being inferior to the band's best work. So here goes:

"London Calling" by The Clash gets all the hype, but I find it to be a mere mediocrity in comparison to "Sandinista!"

Les Zeppelin's "Presence" is almost never cited as their best work, but I love it. Here is Led Zep album mercifully free of airy-fairy songs and dopey lyrics about The Lord of the Rings and other such hippie nonsense.

Elsewhere on Audiogon, I have argued that Iggy's "New Values" is the equal of some of the best Stooges material.

I have often pitched a bitch about the US market's fixation on the overproduced recordings of Bob Marley. This fixation includes/entails ignorance of the great volume of far better music that has come out of Jamaica. That being said, there is one relatively overlooked disc by Bob Marley and the Wailers that I could not do without. "African Herbsman" benefits from Lee Perry's signature lo-fi production. "African Herbsman" allows you to hear The Wailers at a critical point in their evolution, in transition from the Rock Steady to the Roots idiom, and before they were sanitized and packaged for the US/UK market.

yeah phasecorrect those albums are well know in indie/alt. not only that but everything you list about 20 years old. ok 'bend sinsiter'ok was released in 1986 yes??

are this recording deseving as being taken as seriously as 'audiophile recordings' *i'd agree*..:)

i'm not a fan of anything you list besides the fall..:)

ok how about this for underarted, the band of susans. unlike evrything you list no one lists them as an influence ever....and i'd much rather listen to there stuff than sonic youth. which was the only band of that sort to count. to be known at all.

the most over rated had to be nirvana....(the band)

I think Tweakgeek has the right idea (and I agree with him about "Presence").

I'll nominate the Stones "Goat's Head Soup". Yeah, it may have been a let down after the run of brilliance that preceded it, but it's not the waste of tape most critics would lead you to believe. The album has a great drugged out and dreary atmosphere about it and all the songs are good except the stupid "Dancing With Mr.D", which is still partially salvaged by the awesomely nasty guitar riff it's built upon. I'd say it's the last fully satisfying Stones album.

Another overlooked goody is Aerosmith's "Done With Mirrors". This is a pretty solid piece of work and the last good record they made before sliding into overproduced MTV powerballad sorryness. It lacked hit singles which sunk it critically and commercially, but that is probably one of the reasons it's so good compared to the dreck that followed.

Finally, I'll nominate all of the Kinks' mid 70's rock opera albums. "Preservation Act I", "Preservation Act II", "A Soap Opera", and "Schoolboys In Disgrace" were all pretty well savaged by critics, but all of them are perfectly good. I'd easily rank the Preservation set among Ray Davies' best work.