Good but Not Great Albums

Black Sabbath - Heaven and Hell / Mob Rules both came to mind immediately....

Queen - The Game Consistently really good songs, none of which are truly amazing

Neil Young - American Stars and Bars (Except for Saddle Up the Palamino, no other ***** songs on my itunes (though some argue Like a Hurricane) songs on the album, but all good, nonetheless)

Metallica - Kill 'Em All One of the best first albums ever, thrashy, still fun to listen to, but not even close to Master of Puppets or Ride the LIghtning

Iced Earth - The Dark Saga My favorite album by the group, I'd consider it a fantastic album, but stays under the radar.

Collective Soul - S/T Despite being alternative-pop-rockish in a rather generic sense, I think the band is extremely consistent, sticks to a formula that works greatly for them, and produces genuinely good rock music. I'd say all their albums are good and not great, but their self titled specifically sticks out in my mind as the pefect qualifier for this post.

Suede - Coming Up borders on great, but I can't quite listen to them for more than 30 mins at a time and still enjoy them as much...

There is a million of these type of albums... an album that I think is better than say 3 and half stars or 7.5 but meets all your other criteria is Beaulah's The Coast is Never Clear it's quite a good album that I never see mentioned.

Collective Soul were never good, let alone great.

Sorry Mike - this question makes very little sense to me. It starts off as a "list albums that you love but which don't tend to make the top 100 albums lists of Rolling Stone et al." (err.. see most of ILM) and then redefines itself as a "list albums that you rate highly, but not very highly". Which is it to be?

The only way the whole thing makes sense is if one makes some bizarre assumption that the list of 10/10 albums is uncontroversial, which I don't even think Rolling Stone would try to claim - they're aggregated lists of varying opinions.

OK. That objection makes sense. I think there might be some finer refinement over on the original post on the other site. However, I would say, though, that there are albums, that in your mind never get listed in those top 100 of all time lists, but in your mind they are old faithfuls. Maybe it doesn't make sense... who knows. :) First time poster, not a long time reader. I'll learn, though.

Seems like a decent question if one keeps the "Great" firmly inside those quotation marks as on the linked site.

Doesn't seem to imply that you necessarily rate it "highly, but not very highly" does it? You've still got to "LOVE" it, yeah? Hehe...

Which makes for a loooong list of possible nominations, but I can already feel myself pondering this...

LISTS

Possum Dixon s/t

Photek - Modus Operandi

Ruth Ruth - Laughing Gallery

Hard to tell where the criteria for a "canonical" album is. Thus, I am using very strict criteria here. my Top list of ten albums cited here includes exclusively albums that I have never seen in any of those lists, not even Top 1000s or 2000s such as the Virgin/Colin Larkin books or the Acclaimed Music lists:

Construction Time Again - Depeche Mode
No Sleep Till Famous - The Merrymakers
Nonsuch - 10cc
Homegrown - Dodgy
The Invisible Band - Travis
From Langley Park To Memphis - Prefab Sprout
Tales From Topographic Oceans - Yes
Wind And Wuthering - Genesis
Animal Farm - Animal Farm
Kon Tiki - Cotton Mather

Had to dig a bit here. Even Dodgy's "Free Peace Sweet" was cited in the Virgin Top 1000 list once.