I look at the Village VoicePazz and Jop list every year, just because I am a list junkie when it comes to music. Even though it comes from something as uber-hip as VV, the Pazz and Jop list gets the opinions of something like 500 voters. 2011’s top album, Tune-Yards’ W H O K I L L, only showed up on 19 percent of ballots; Kanye’s 2010 disc set the high-water-mark by appearing on 37 percent of ballots.
The 2012 album approached Kanye heights, and it’s a real shocker…some guy who goes by Frank Ocean topped the list with his Channel Orange. Who saw that coming?!?
(Before I go on about Pazz and Jop, can I ask once again what’s so great about Channel Orange, especially when you consider just how amazing Ocean’s 2011 “mixtape” Nostalgia, Ultra is? That album is far more interesting and alive; I find Channel Orange to be boring by comparison. Where the fuck were all you people last year? I was at the front of the line, putting Nostalgia #2 of 2011, and Todd wasn’t far behind at #6. So I really wanted to like Channel Orange. Look at my top 3 discs of 2012: sophomore efforts by the xx, Sleigh Bells, and Best Coast. I don’t automatically jump ship after the debut…but I just don’t hear the greatness of Channel Orange.
Anyway…)
Given the huge number of voters and the obvious diversity in tastes, I thought it would be fun to line up our top 20 albums of 2012 against their rankings in Pazz and Jop.
Some more background…
Somewhere between 1,500 and 1,600 albums received at least one mention. (Channel Orange had 170 mentions.)
Kendrick Lamar was #2 (126 mentions) and Fiona Apple was #3 (101 mentions). No other “Century Club” members.
The highest ranked album with single-digit mentions: #72, Dean Blunt & Inga Copeland, Black Is Beautiful (7 mentions)
Van Halen’s new album came in #146 with 4 mentions
As you’ll see in the following side-by-side comparisons, a few of our favorite 2012 albums could have used our ballot. That’s right: some of our favorite albums didn’t get a single Pazz and Jop mention. #dafuq
Chris vs. Pazz and Jop
The xx, Coexist (Pazz and Jop: 49)
Sleigh Bells, Reign of Terror (Pazz and Jop: 60)
Best Coast, The Only Place (Pazz and Jop: 98)
A Place to Bury Strangers, Worship (Pazz and Jop: n/a)
The Avett Brothers, The Carpenter (Pazz and Jop: t79)
Sigur Ros, Valtari (Pazz and Jop: t-336)
Crystal Castles, (III) (Pazz and Jop: t-116)
Beach House, Bloom (Pazz and Jop: 10)
Tame Impala, Lonerism (Pazz and Jop: 6)
Diiv, Oshin (Pazz and Jop: 108)
Burial, Kindred (Pazz and Jop: 59)
Frankie Rose, Interstellar (Pazz and Jop: 128)
El Perro Del Mar, Pale Fire (Pazz and Jop: t-1361)
Wild Nothing, Nocturne (Pazz and Jop: n/a)
Japandroids, Celebration Rock (Pazz and Jop: 4)
Colleen Green, Milo Goes to Compton (Pazz and Jop: t-710)
The Men, Open Your Heart (Pazz and Jop: 50)
School of Seven Bells, Ghostory (Pazz and Jop: t-710)
Lone, Galaxy Garden (Pazz and Jop: 237)
Black Moth Super Rainbow, Cobra Juicy (Pazz and Jop: n/a)
I know Todd was surprised by my placement of A Place to Bury Strangers at #4; apparently the nation shares his assessment. Can’t believe my #14 (ranked even higher by Todd) didn’t rank; Black Moth Super Rainbow not landing a mention at all less surprising but still odd to me.
Todd vs. Pazz and Jop
Eternal Summers, Correct Behavior (Pazz and Jop: t-185)
Wild Nothing, Nocturne (Pazz and Jop: n/a)
Japandroids, Celebration Rock (Pazz and Jop: 4)
Seapony, Falling (Pazz and Jop: t-710)
Frankie Rose, Interstellar (Pazz and Jop: 128)
Best Coast, The Only Place (Pazz and Jop: 98)
Paws, Cokefloat! (Pazz and Jop: t-1253)
The Sea and Cake, Runner (Pazz and Jop: n/a)
Tennis, Young and Old (Pazz and Jop: t-308)
Diiv, Oshin (Pazz and Jop: 108)
Frank Ocean, Channel Orange (Pazz and Jop: 1)
Beach House, Bloom (Pazz and Jop: 10)
Michael Kiwanuka, Home Again (Pazz and Jop: t-170)
Hospitality, Hospitality (Pazz and Jop: 134)
Echo Lake, Wild Peace (Pazz and Jop: n/a)
Nude Beach, II (Pazz and Jop: t-356)
La Sera, Sees the Light (Pazz and Jop: n/a)
The Men, Open Your Heart (Pazz and Jop: 50)
Sleigh Bells, Reign of Terror (Pazz and Jop: 60)
Heems, Nehru Jackets/Wild Water Kingdom (Pazz and Jop: 137)
How the hell Wild Nothing got ZERO mentions is beyond me. Todd might lose his shit when he sees this. Nude Beach, coming in tied for #356 on Pazz and Jop, shares that distinction with Lionel Richie. La Sera should have a mention, right?
As with any list, take it with a grain of salt. Pazz and Jop’s album list has Taylor Swift at #17 and Carly Rae Jepsen at #40.
Yep, we’ve made a list. Two separate lists, actually, so the above graphic is a bit misleading. Accounting for the limited overlap in Todd’s and Chris’ lists, it’s more like the top 174 or something like that.
Anyway, after months of scientific analysis, hours of listening and re-listening to albums from years gone by, we have arrived at a definitive list of the top albums ever recorded. Our research is not open to interpretation, but you’re more than welcome to complain about the fact that your favorite albums aren’t on this list; we’ll simply respond by telling you that your favorite records aren’t really all that good.
(Next week, we’ll unveil our favorite music from 2012.)
Here we go, the #1 picks…
Chris’ #1: The Cure, Disintegration
(click play button below to sample this album)
Not sure I can sum up my thoughts on Disintegration much better than the little dude toward the end of this video right here.
And I’m guessing most people saw this pick coming a mile away. (Those of you who asked me in person if it would be Disintegration, I always answered you honestly with a “yes,” and you all pretty much shrugged.)
But despite the lack of drama, I’m going to write about the album, and see if I can’t surprise myself with my reflections.
In 1989, I was wrapping up the late stages of my heavy metal phase, one that had morphed from stuff like Poison and Motley Crue to Def Leppard and Whitesnake to Slayer and Stryper (odd pair, I know) to Metallica and, um, Metallica. But I was starting to collect albums that were “college rock” or “alternative”: I had R.E.M.’s Green and a live Descendents album and an Echo and the Bunnymen album (Heaven Up Here, I believe it was) and U2’s The Joshua Tree and Depeche Mode’s Music for the Masses and the Cure’s Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me. I had grown to love the various tunes on that Cure album, but not enough to send me exploring the back catalog.
But the new stuff in 1989, that’s what sent me down the path to Cure fanaticism.
When Disintegration first came out in late spring of 1989, I wasn’t in line to buy it or anything. It wasn’t until that summer that I realized that the band had a new album, in fact. I remember my family had gone on some big camping trip in the mountains, cut off from the modern world. After a few days of rain and rugged living in the Rockies, we returned to society, and one of the first things I did was pick up the most recent issue of Rolling Stone. I flipped to the back of the magazine to look at the charts, and saw Disintegration by the Cure at a rather lofty position, adjacent to the Cult’s Sonic Temple, as it happens. (The random shit I remember is equal parts amazing and dumbfounding, and almost always useless.) But I simply made a mental note that the Cure had a new album, and perhaps I could hit up my cousin Josh for a copy of it next time I saw him.
HOWEVER, the first time I heard “Lovesong” on Rock 108 (a station not typically known for playing bands like the Cure), I was absolutely floored.
I loved the sharp keyboard sound. I loved the active bass line bouncing around underneath the keys. And Robert Smith was singing very simple lines that, in his earnest voice, carried so much weight, so much sincerity. (Appropriate, seeing as he wrote the song for his wife, Mary, as a wedding present.) It felt like the first time I heard someone saying “I love you” and speaking on my behalf, you know? It seemed like the perfect song…and it was damn catchy too, riding the U.S. singles chart up to #2! I would call the radio station during request hours and chat the DJs ear off about how awesome “Lovesong” was. And I realized that I absolutely had to go buy this album.
The funny thing is, next time I was in the music section of a retail store, I didn’t buy it.
Why not?
Because of this cool looking chick in the WalMart tape section.
She looked pretty “goth,” at least as far as Newton, Iowa, goes. She was browsing the cassettes when I rolled up. After a couple of minutes of surveying the situation, I started thumbing through the few Cure tapes on hand. The girl took this as an invitation to strike up a conversation…
Goth Girl: You like the Cure?
Chris: Yeah.
Goth Girl: Yeah, me too.
OK, common ground. Where do I go from here? We both kind of stared at our feet for a while, not saying anything. Before I could think of anything clever, Goth Girl spoke up again.
Goth Girl: What do you think of the new one? You have it, right?
Fuck. Play it cool…
Chris: Oh yeah, I got it. (LIAR!)
Goth Girl: Yeah, me too. It’s not my favorite of theirs, but “Fascination Street” is pretty cool.
Chris: Um, yeah, that’s a good one.
The conversation never got any deeper than that. But now I had painted myself in a corner. I couldn’t buy the tape now…I already owned it. And I didn’t think quickly enough to come up with some excuse like “I think I am going to buy it for my friend for his birthday” or something like that; I was too focused on not blushing and acting all cool. It was nice to talk to this cute stranger, but goddamn it, leave already so I can buy this tape!
But, of course, my parents showed up to tell me they and my grandmother were done shopping and it was time to go. So not only did I walk away empty-handed on the Disintegration front, my mom managed to say (before we were out of earshot of Goth Girl) “Who was that girl? Were you talking to her? Do you guys like the same music?” And the non-blushing effort was all for naught.
I eventually went to a retail store without my parents and got the tape, and I did not encounter any goth chicks that day, so no posturing. It was D-Day, as in Disintegration Day. A day that lives in infamy for me. (I couldn’t tell you the exact date, though.)
Once the tape had been opened (trying to remember if it had one of those awkward plastic covers on it or not) and inserted into the stereo, I was introduced to the song that to this day remains my favorite Cure song, “Plainsong.” It’s a song that sets the tone for the entire album, with icy grandeur, extended instrumental opening, and winning lyrics. “Sometimes you make me feel like I’m living at the edge of the world / like I’m living at the edge of the world / ‘it’s just the way I smile’ you said,” the final lyrics of the song, melt me every time. And the song absolutely made the coronation scene in Marie Antoinette one of the best shots in the whole movie.
(“Sometimes,” a song from my #2 album of all time, Loveless, had a similar effect in another one of Sofia Coppola’s films, Lost in Translation. Cab ride home from the karaoke night, for those of you who don’t recall.)
The album showcased varying strengths of the Cure’s lineup at its strongest. Bassist Simon Gallup owns “Fascination Street” with the driving bass line he lays down; it’s the absolute backbone of the song, and the first thing I taught myself how to play on the bass. Drummer Boris Williams is no slouch on that song, either, and he shows an interesting touch on “Closedown” and more propulsive drive on “Disintegration.” Porl Thompson guitar work isn’t as flashy as it was on Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me but he works his talents within the soundscape set forth by Smith. His work on “Lovesong” often goes overlooked, and he shines on “Pictures of You,” another top achievement in the Cure’s entire songbook. I think I might be as fond of the video as I am the song, because at the end, it reveals the band to be a bunch of regular dudes having a blast on the set.
And Roger O’Donnell’s keyboard work is second to none. The atmosphere he creates on “Plainsong,” “Homesick,” and the majestic “The Same Deep Water As You” has that same overwhelming, emotional punch that shoegazers deliver with their tremulous guitars. He took the one-fingered keyboarding repertoire of Lol Tolhurst and upped the game a hundredfold. Keyboards weren’t always part of the Cure’s sound, but Roger O’Donnell made it so the band’s sound felt bare without them (even if O’Donnell found himself expendable a time or two over the years).
The songs still resonate with me to this day, after thousands of listens. Perhaps it’s because this album came out at the right time, coinciding with my 15-year-old self’s complete emotional dysfunctionality, and was able to get its hooks in me permanently. Also consider that I grew up in a small town that didn’t have MTV, before the Internet age, and I wasn’t overexposed to music (and certainly not the Cure), so there might have been a quality to this album that seemed a bit exotic. Some of it might have had to do with starting high school, and hanging out with some of the older kids and cool foreign exchange students (Nacho! Jacqueline! Hiro! Raymond!), demographics that tended to like the Cure and other music along those lines.
Or maybe it’s as simple as this: Disintegration spends 71 minutes projecting a singular message of longing and hope over 12 songs that are tightly constructed and magically performed. Robert’s voice is at its peak: strong but not overdone, and singing words that paint beautiful pictures without sounding cliché. The band had its best-ever guitarist, bassist, keyboardist, and drummer all in place. The perfect storm.
In the liner notes, there is a line toward the end that says, “THIS MUSIC HAS BEEN MIXED TO BE PLAYED LOUD SO TURN IT UP.” Seems almost silly coming from a band like the Cure, but never has better advice been given. The best music should always be played loud.
Todd’s #1: Smashing Pumpkins, Siamese Dream
(click play button below to sample this album)
Siamese Dream, the album that started a nearly 3 year obsession with all things Smashing Pumpkins. As you will recall from previous posts, I loved The Pumpkins previous release Gish and was all pumped up for a new record. Little did I know the effect it would have on me and my musical tastes. Actually, obsession isn’t quite the correct word, there needs to be something stronger. I’ve never listened to an album more or over a longer period of time than Siamese Dream. My listening habits became a bit compulsive and at times I was like one of those freaky Beatles fans that thought their records were made specifically for them. The music on Siamese Dream effected me like no other music I’d heard before so in many ways it really did feel like it was made for me.
Within a few months of purchasing Siamese Dream everything about me was Smashing Pumpkins. My wardrobe was a rotation of five Smashing Pumpkins t-shirts. The Devils one, The Angels one, The heart one, The Siamese Dream album cover one, and some weird purple one with cartoon aliens on it. My reading material consisted of guitar magazines with SP leader Billy Corgan on the cover. I spent most of my extra income on every CD single with a B-side that I could find. The guys at Co-Op Tape and Records could probably set their clocks by my frequent visits. Todd’s here… must be Friday.
Record store Dude: “You get paid today Todd?”
Me: “Yep”
Record store Dude: “Well let me show you what we have in the import section this week. We have a nice Japanese import of the “Today” single.”
The “Today” single and the Japanese import “Today” single.
Me: “I have that already.”
Record store Dude: “I know but the Japanese version has and EXTRA unreleased song on it.”
Me: “Sold.”
Record store Dude: “Don’t you want to know title of the song?”
Me: “Don’t care, have to have it.”
Record store Dude: “Don’t you want to know the price?”
Me: “I said sold. Give it to me now. Don’t make me hurt you.”
Then I would run to my car and put the CD in the player and bliss out. The closest comparison would be a heroin junkie getting a fresh injection. Once the glory of hearing the new song was over, I needed more though. It was a serious habit.
Remember that dude Roberto from my post about The Pixies Trompe le Monde? He hosted an alternative radio show I was into for awhile. Well, he also worked at one of the local record stores. Occasionally, I would go in there and chit chat about music with him. When there were no new Pumpkins oddities to buy, he could always get me to buy something else. He was very good at not letting me out of the store without buying something. In his defense, he never steered me wrong. He turned me on to The Sugarcubes, Medicine, The Jesus and Mary Chain and many others. He totally had my number…literally. More than once I came home and there would be a message on the machine from Roberto.
“Hey Todd, we just got in some new Smashing Pumpkins bootlegs. Thought you might be interested.”
I’d be out the door and driving to the store before the message was done playing. I ended up with quite the collection…
Not as impressive as it used to be. This is what I still have left. I know I sold a bunch of my bootleg concert performances and I had a few more concert VHS tapes too. Notice that there is not an actual proper Smashing Pumpkins release in there. That’s just the rarities. One thing I could add to that collection is the concert audio from the smashing Pumpkins concert I went to in Spring ’94. They came to Palmer Auditorium in Davenport, Iowa. Chris was actually at that same concert, not surprising since he had a similar love affair with them. Anyway, a few months back I searched the internet to find the setlist from that concert and ran across a website that had archived audio from that show. You could download it for free! It actually contains the first live performance of “Bullet with Butterfly Wings”, a huge hit from their follow up album Mellon Collie. I didn’t remember that happening so it was a pretty cool discovery.
I really don’t have the words to properly describe the awesomeness of this record but I’ll try. The drum roll at the start of the opening track, “Cherub Rock”, gives you the feel of being at some boardwalk sideshow. You half expect a carnival barker to start yelling,
”Step right up folks! Get ready for the greatest thing you have or will ever hear!”
Then there’s the slow build until shit just fucking explodes. The guitars are thunderous and almost force your arms into the air guitar position “You will bow down to the awesome and air guitar or I will destroy you!”
I have no clue how Billy gets this guitar effect. Call it filthy, call it crunchy, call it fuzzed out, call it any adjective that applies. All I know is you can’t duplicate it in your living room with a shitty amp and distortion pedal. I’ve tried. It ends up sounding, as you might expect, like some dude that can sort of play guitar trying to sound like The Pumpkins with a shitty amp and distortion pedal. There are stories about marathon studio sessions where Billy overdubbed and layered dozens of guitar tracks over top of each other to get it to sound that way. So my pathetic attempts at playing at guitar god were laughable. Anyway, “Cherub Rock” is one satisfying lead track. It’s maybe the most similar to the songs on Gish so it is the perfect handoff from one album to the next.
The Pixies get a lot of credit for creating the loudQUIETloud music style of the early ‘90s. If they invented it, then the Pumpkins perfected it with Siamese Dream. They use the technique on many songs like “Today”, (which I can never listen to without thinking of that damn ice cream truck video), “Geek U.S.A.,” and “Silverfuck.” But I didn’t just obsess over those more in your face songs. There are a few more laid back tunes like “Spaceboy,” “Sweet Sweet,” and “Luna” that all spent time with the title “My Favorite Song From Siamese Dream.” Actually, every song on Siamese Dream at one point was my favorite song from Siamese Dream. I’m sure I annoyed my girlfriend, my friends and basically anyone that road in my car with my frequent declarations of love for a different song from the album. Unlike Chris I am not going to apologize. No I am going to say… you’re welcome.
“You’re welcome” to my former girlfriend, for every time I pulled up to your parents’ house blasting a different song from Siamese Dream as loud as my stereo would go.
“You’re welcome” to my best friend who rode to work with me, for getting to hear me sing the quiet part of “Silverfuck” every day for two weeks.
“You’re welcome” to Co-Op Tapes and Records, for the day I paid $35 for a bootleg concert VHS tape worth $2.
And most of all, “you’re welcome” to you dedicated MoSS? readers. For getting to read all of the moronic things that pop in my head and end up on your computer screen.
Yep, we’ve made a list. Two separate lists, actually, so the above graphic is a bit misleading. Accounting for the limited overlap in Todd’s and Chris’ lists, it’s more like the top 174 or something like that.
Anyway, after months of scientific analysis, hours of listening and re-listening to albums from years gone by, we have arrived at a definitive list of the top albums ever recorded. Our research is not open to interpretation, but you’re more than welcome to complain about the fact that your favorite albums aren’t on this list; we’ll simply respond by telling you that your favorite records aren’t really all that good.
We’ve reached the really good stuff: our top 10s. We’ll roll these out one per day (Monday-Friday) over the next two weeks, reaching #1 on Friday, Dec. 14. The following week, we’ll unveil our favorite music from 2012.
Let’s get on with it…
Chris’ #4: The xx, xx
(click play button below to sample this album)
I thought I’d list all the things I was doing when I was 20: playing video games in my dorm room, working a few hours a week in a Northern Iowa computer lab, killing time before I transferred to a school that offered a real journalism degree.
Let’s see, what else…I already mentioned video games…I was really good at those Sega Genesis hockey games. One of my friends, I’d play against him with my net empty and still beat him. Not as impressive as my friend Jim, who beat someone at Tecmo Super Bowl without running a single offensive play, but still…
What I wasn’t doing: getting together with three of my fellow 20-year-old friends and recording an album that sounds like the work of the most senior of souls. An album that intertwines the simplest of notes with the voices of boy-girl back-and-forth to make something ever so seductive. I wish this album had been around when I was 20; I could have used it in my attempts to “hunker down” with the ladies. Probably would have worked better than throwing on the first Violent Femmes album or whatever dumb/sensitive move I was prone to make.
Seriously, when I was 20, my lone attempts at making music involved trying to sing the songs from Alice in Chains’ Sap EP while my roommate played the acoustic guitar, or the time me and two buddies knocked out some song called “Lighter” which was about, erm, not being able to find a lighter. It had a bit of early Rolling Stones influence, perhaps a bit of Talking Heads or Television, matched up with some early R.E.M. or something…wait, no, it was none of those things. It was a Casio keyboard and some form of percussion and the aforementioned lyrics about a missing lighter.
Meanwhile, these four (at the time, before Baria was booted from the band) 20-year-olds put out the best debut album ever. Equal parts gorgeous gloom and sensuality to spare. I’m not sure which element of the xx sound is more vital: the guitar tone that fills the room without a flurry of notes and without loud effect, or the heart-melting voice of Romy Madley Croft. (These two elements are on display in the songs “Shelter” and “Night Time,” the second and third songs in my sampler above.)
There’s something about those echo/chorus/whatever-drenched guitar notes that cause them to hit me right in the pleasure region of my brain. Something about the tone, which seems a good match for the dark vibe of the overall song. Or perhaps because I love the way such a minimalist approach yields such great payoff.
And Romy’s voice…did I mention that yet? I think it’s safe to say it’s one of my favorite voices in music history: the hush, the whisper, the sorrow, the longing, the sweetness, the sighs. For someone who looks a little bit like an early-era Robert Smith (before the hair got crazy), she’s got one hell of a beautiful voice.
(And to be fair, she’s actually pretty cute. Seeing her in concert was an experience. So polite, so unassuming, so appreciative of the adoring audience at First Avenue. I wish I were still at the show.)
Although the album is a very cohesive, singular statement, there’s enough variety here that it isn’t just a 39-minute drone. A faster pace is set with songs like “Intro” (which was featured in that AT&T commercial with Apolo Anton Ohno), “Crystalised,” and my favorite xx song thus far, “Islands” (which features a brilliant video that I’ll embed below).
That beat. The guitar line that is joined by that slinky bass line. Those four-note blasts of bass, both from Oliver Sim’s stringed instrument and Jamie xx’s producer’s table. And the lyrical content…well, I have my own interpretation, and it’s kinda heartbreaking. I see no reason to share my thoughts, as I’d rather you listen to the words and watch the video and draw your own conclusion. Bottom line: so. fucking. good.
The band can get a little quirky and drop references to HBO programming (“VCR”), throw down some good ol’ hand-clapping pop tunes (“Heart Skipped a Beat,” “Basic Space”), allow the low end to take center stage (“Fantasy,” the tail end of the album closer “Stars,” which practically blew a hole in my chest at First Avenue), and get dark and intense (“Infinity,” “Shelter,” “Night Time”).
The music can work for people madly in love. It can work for people who are experiencing heartbreak. It can work for people holding out hope for happiness. It can work for people wanting to dance around the room (at times, anyway). It can work at the gym. It can work on a road trip. It can work as background music. It can work as just about anything.
For something so simple, it is incredibly versatile and mature. That’s why after just three years of existence, I put this as my #4 album of all time…and I’m not sure it’s peaked yet.
Todd’s #4: The Flaming Lips, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
(click play button below to sample this album)
Question…Can a record about a Japanese girl fighting evil pink robots be any good?
Answer…Hells yeah! If the record is The Flaming Lips’ album, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. Were you thinking of another album about a Japanese girl ridding the planet of pink robot evil-doers?
Well actually, only the first few songs follow the theme of robots that develop emotions and attempt to destroy us all.
The first song “Fight Test” is nice little song that sets the tone for the album. If you think it sounds familiar that’s because apparently they consciously or unconsciously stole the melody from the Cat Stevens’ song “Father and Son.” I can sort of hear it, but come on dude, let it go. He actually sued them and won the case. He gets royalties from it now. Didn’t he give up his wealth when he changed his name and went all Muslim on everyone? I guess ol’ Yusuf needed a cash infusion. Anyways, “Fight Test” sets the seen for a fight to come between man and machine where the first stance of man is one of pacifism.
I thought I was smart – I thought I was right I thought it better not to fight – I thought there was a Virtue in always being cool – so when it came time to Fight I thought I’ll just step aside and that time would Prove you wrong and that you would be the fool
The next song, “One More Robot/Sympathy 3000-21”, continues the weirdness as robots come to life and develop emotions…they are sad (tear).
Unit three thousand twenty one is warming Makes a humming sound, when its circuits Duplicate emotions, and a sense of coldness detaches As it tries to comfort your sadness, One more robot learns to be something more than A machine, when it tries the way it does, make it seem Like it can love
Song three, “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots 1” brings us the first appearance of our heroine Yoshimi.
Her name is Yoshimi She’s a black belt in karate Working for the city She has to discipline her body
Clearly, she can kick some ass. The townsfolk plead for help..
Oh Yoshimi, they don’t believe me but you won’t let those robots eat me Yoshimi, they don’t believe me but you won’t let those robots defeat me
This leads to the epic battle in the fourth song “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots 2”, which is an instrumental song mixed in with the screeching, squealing, fighting sounds of Yoshimi. Mostly, it sounds like she is doing something much more pleasurable than fighting robots. Until the end that is, where it sounds like she is being gutted with a citrus zester. The robot fighting theme ends there. After that, The Lips delve into a lot of other heady material mixed in with their wonderfully bizarre and beautiful music.
Quite often I associate albums with a season of the year. Al Green and Joy Division are normally autumn albums while Pixies and The Clash usually get played in the winter. Yoshimi is solidly placed in the “Summertime Albums” category.
Could it be that there is a song on it called “It’s Summertime”?…Maybe.
Could it be because I bought Yoshimi in the early summer of 2003 and didn’t stop listening to it until winter 2004?… Maybe.
Could it be that when I hear the sunny sounding songs like “Do You Realize?” and “Ego Tripping at the Gates of Hell” all I can think of is lazy Sunday drives with my wife in my new truck (I loved that damn truck. I had to sell it when we had kids a year later) and her wearing gloriously short shorts in the seat next to me?… Definitely.
I don’t have any memories prior to us having kids together that are better than those. We would hop in the truck, grab some orange soda (Mountain Dew LiveWire to be exact. We both may have had a small chemical dependency for whatever they put in LiveWire that summer. It was the devil’s nectar. It tastes so sweet and gives you that extra boost of energy to get you through the day. Unfortunately, it had like 42000 calories per can or something like that. Basically, if I wanted to keep my svelte physique, I had to put down the LiveWires), put Yoshimi in the CD player and drive around looking at houses that we couldn’t afford.
I still play Yoshimi a few times every summer. Usually while on the treadmill or on a family road trip. The wife and I don’t get too many lazy Sunday drives alone anymore, but Yoshimi and drives with the kids can be nice too. Plus, if the car breaks down we just let the kiddos drink a few LiveWires and they can pull us home.
Yep, we’ve made a list. Two separate lists, actually, so the above graphic is a bit misleading. Accounting for the limited overlap in Todd’s and Chris’ lists, it’s more like the top 174 or something like that.
Anyway, after months of scientific analysis, hours of listening and re-listening to albums from years gone by, we have arrived at a definitive list of the top albums ever recorded. Our research is not open to interpretation, but you’re more than welcome to complain about the fact that your favorite albums aren’t on this list; we’ll simply respond by telling you that your favorite records aren’t really all that good.
We’ve reached the really good stuff: our top 10s. We’ll roll these out one per day (Monday-Friday) over the next two weeks, reaching #1 on Friday, Dec. 14. The following week, we’ll unveil our favorite music from 2012.
Let’s get on with it…
Chris’ #5: The Velvet Underground, The Velvet Underground and Nico
(click play button below to sample this album)
One of my favorite parts of Oliver Stone’s The Doors is the part where Jim and the Doors go hang out at the Exploding Plastic Inevitable and meet Andy Warhol. For one, you get the wonderful performance by Crispin Glover as Warhol; that cameo ranks right up there with his tour de force as George McFly. Second, Jim tries to drink Nico under the table and ends up going up an elevator while the blonde beauty goes down (Nico boobs, too).
But third, you get the delirious high of the Velvet Underground, as “Venus in Furs” and “Heroin” are both played in the background throughout the scene. Once the movie was over, it was time to look through my dad’s vinyl collection to find that album with the banana on the cover. (Of course he had it…)
The album is a 49-minute lo-fi blast that has a little bit of everything (tinkling xylophones, a German chanteuse, soft songs, straightforward romps) and a lot of viola, feedback, monotone vocals (from Lou Reed and Nico), low-end drums (especially floor toms, and no cymbals, as Lou felt they drowned out guitars), and a feeling of the underbelly of society. Music that reflected the band’s image of black clothes, black shades, bleak outlook, beautiful noise.
If you like punk rock, you have to like the bare minimalism and nihilism reflected in these tunes. If you like the no-wave scene and NYC bands like Sonic Youth, these are your favorite bands’ godparents. If you enjoy stuff like Nirvana and other feedback-drenched tunes, these guys were doing it long before. If you worship the drug tales of Axl Rose or Layne Staley, consider that “Mr. Brownstone” and “Angry Chair” aren’t as likely if not for VU songs like “Waiting for the Man” (that song might as well be the father of “Mr. Brownstone”) or “Heroin.”
But as cool and unique as John Cale’s viola can be on this album, sometimes you just want to hear some uptempo, gritty guitar songs, and the Velvets deliver those with the aforementioned “Waiting for the Man” and tunes like “Run Run Run” and “There She Goes Again.” And even though it sounds at times as if Nico is singing her vocals while reading from phonetically transcribed lyric sheets, the songs do have a dreamy quality to them; “I’ll Be Your Mirror” might be the most traditionally beautiful thing on this album.
But in terms of true Velvet Underground beauty, it’s tough to beat “Venus in Furs.” Cale’s viola swoops in and out, accenting the guitar work of Reed and Sterling Morrison, all providing the bed for Reed’s tales of submission and bondage. Reed’s low-key delivery of lines like “Whiplash girl child in the dark” and “Taste the whip, in love not given lightly / taste the whip / now bleed for me” just bring that extra edge to the subject matter (as if it really needed it, especially when the album came out in 1967). It sounds like art rock and shoegaze and punk rock all rolled into one.
And that “Heroin” ditty is pretty sweet too.
The band wasn’t long for this world: Nico was never fully brought into the band and Warhol was not retained as “producer” beyond the first album; John Cale left before it was all said and done, too (after White Light/White Heat, the only other front-to-back-outstanding Velvet Underground album). But The Velvet Underground and Nico remains a treasure for the listener to “peel slowly and see” what lies within.
Todd’s #5: Jeff Buckley, Grace
(click play button below to sample this album)
In the spring of ’95, one of the shitty radio stations where I lived changed formats to alternative rock. You can imagine my elation. Good music on the radio! Being as it was fairly new, the owners must have run out of money or something because they only had like fifty records. They seemed to play the same twenty new songs along with about thirty oldies. I probably heard The Smiths’ “How Soon is Now” three times a day. They also played a ton of New Order, Echo and the Bunnymen and many other classic alt-rock bands. As for the newer music, it was a cavalcade of Alanis Morissette and early Foo Fighters. One of the more random new songs on heavy rotation was Jeff Buckley’s “Last Goodbye.” I liked it right from the start. It was kind of catchy and a nice change from the more typical dude rock of the day. The thing that struck me most was the lyrics. Not something I typically notice right away, I tend to listen to music more by the feel of it. He’s singing about the end of a relationship and love lost (A common theme on Grace). The first verse says it all.
This is our last goodbye
I hate to feel the love between us die
But it’s over
Just hear this and then I’ll go
You gave me more to live for
More than you’ll ever know
That’s some pretty vulnerable stuff to float out there in between Stone Temple Pilots and Green Day songs. I bought Grace and played “Last Goodbye” quite a bit but never really got around to listening to the whole album until a year or so later when I routinely played it in the background when I studied. Probably not a great idea because I often got lost in the music instead of in Ohm’s Law. V= I times what again??? The opening track “Mojo Pin” would hook me right in. It’s another song about love lost and it’s soaring vocals would leave most singers breathless.
If only you’d come back to me
If you laid at my side
I wouldn’t need no Mojo Pin to keep me satisfied
Don’t wanna weep for you, I don’t wanna know I’m blind and tortured, the white horses flow
He could definitely write about heartache and deliver it with conviction. I remember listening and thinking “Dude seriously feels that shit.” Nowhere is that more evident than in my favorite song from Grace, “Lover, You Should’ve Come Over.” In this song, he bears his soul to a woman he regrettably fucked over but wants another chance with. This song is so chock full of great lyrics that I should just post them all here but I’ll just pick a few of the choice nuggets of yearning and you can listen to sampler above for the rest.
Sometimes a man gets carried away, when he feels like he should be having his fun
And much too blind to see the damage he’s done
Sometimes a man must awake to find that really, he has no-one
Translation: I porked someone else and I’m real real real real sorry about that.
So i’ll wait for you… and i’ll burn
Will I ever see your sweet return
Oh will I ever learn
Oh lover, you should’ve come over ‘Cause it’s not too late
Translation: I really am sorry and I wish you would return my phone calls. I’m at home so call me anytime, I’ll be here. Please?
This next part always kills me. Some of the best words ever penned.
It’s never over, my kingdom for a kiss upon her shoulder
It’s never over, all my riches for her smiles when i slept so soft against her
It’s never over, all my blood for the sweetness of her laughter
It’s never over, she’s the tear that hangs inside my soul forever
A touch stalker-ish, but holy shit that’s good stuff. If the girl he was writing about didn’t forgive him for at least one more night in the sack then she is part robot.
A word of caution though:
If you are secretly pining away or in love with someone and have not told them yet, you should not listen to this song repeatedly every night for months on end. It does not help soothe any intense feelings of longing. It only serves to amplify those feelings times a billion. I know of this effect firsthand. Luckily, I married the person I was pining away for, but you may not be so lucky. Godspeed to all you lovelorn fools out there.
Yep, we’ve made a list. Two separate lists, actually, so the above graphic is a bit misleading. Accounting for the limited overlap in Todd’s and Chris’ lists, it’s more like the top 174 or something like that.
Anyway, after months of scientific analysis, hours of listening and re-listening to albums from years gone by, we have arrived at a definitive list of the top albums ever recorded. Our research is not open to interpretation, but you’re more than welcome to complain about the fact that your favorite albums aren’t on this list; we’ll simply respond by telling you that your favorite records aren’t really all that good.
We’ve reached the really good stuff: our top 10s. We’ll roll these out one per day (Monday-Friday) over the next two weeks, reaching #1 on Friday, Dec. 14. The following week, we’ll unveil our favorite music from 2012.
Let’s get on with it…
Chris’ #8: Public Enemy, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back
(click play button below to sample this album)
While most people know It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back as Public Enemy’s second album and the NYC group’s breakthrough collection, it should have been known as the soundtrack of the greatest basketball film never made, Five White Dudes Ranging in Age From 12 to 43 Ball It Up on a Slanted Driveway. Because me, my brother, my dad, and the Brothers Schneden used to play hoops in the Clair family driveway all the damn time in 1989-90, and P.E. is all we ever listened to while ballin’.
The teams were constant during the driveway wars: me and Younger Brother Schneden vs. my brother, Elder Brother Schneden, and my dad, whose nickname to this day is Ed Nealy. (When Michael Jordan came back to the NBA for his second stint with the Bulls, he wore Ed Nealy’s number. It had to be pure coincidence.) It seems unfair that the team with the elder statesman and the elder Brother Schneden also got a third member, but it speaks to the explosive offensive potential found on Team Chris/Younger Brother Schneden.
Elder Brother Schneden was never afraid to make the extra pass to help out his teammates, and could occasionally channel Derrick Coleman (considering the timeframe, that’s a compliment) and be the triple-threat power forward on the pavement. My brother was known to spot up on the left baseline corner and pop the side shot with assassin-like precision. His baseline shot was soon dubbed “The Perfect Shot.” He was only 12, but he was aided by the fact that our driveway sloped downward, and the hoop was situated about halfway down the driveway, so where he was shooting from, the hoop was probably about 9 feet off the ground; conversely, you never wanted to shoot from long distance near the road, because the rim was a good 11 feet off the ground at that point. Another element of The Perfect Shot: our garage had a light with a globe-like glass fixture right above where my brother would shoot The Perfect Shot. Nobody wanted to block my brother’s shot into the fixture and have it shatter, lest you want to answer to Mrs. Ed Nealy.
Leave Nealy open here, mark two points.
And then you had Ed Nealy, who had three money spots on the concrete and a secret mantra to make his other shots go in. First, let’s diagram the money-shot locations:
The free-throw line: Nealy shot the 15-footer with success rates rivaling the best pros in the Association. If he was at the top of the key, you better get a hand in his face before he gets near the stripe.
“The Oil Spot”: Likely created by our piece of shit family truckster (the powder blue with faux wood panel Caprice Classic station wagon), the Oil Spot was similar in distance to the free throw, only from the left elbow of the lane. Get my dad the ball at the Oil Spot, and he’ll score like, um, a well-oiled machine.
“The Bermuda Triangle”: There was a triangle-shaped crack pattern a little closer to the hoop than the Oil Spot. If Ed Nealy was able to get himself to the Bermuda Triangle, forget about it, because the Bermuda Triangle “is the place where defenders disappear.” (The shit-talk on the driveway was pretty tame in terms of profanity, at least this stuff from Ed Nealy, but you hear these cute/corny lines enough times, you are driven in-fucking-sane.)
And even if you manage to defend these money spots, Ed Nealy would pull out the secret weapon:
“Hoosiers!”
When he would shoot, he would yell out “Hoosiers!” just before releasing the ball, and 98.432924% of the time it would go in, no matter where he was at on the driveway. (Yes, this vocal trick entered his arsenal after seeing the Gene Hackman movie.) It was stupid, and he cracked himself up with that stuff, which drove me and the Younger Brother Schneden crazy.
What you must realize is that the Legend of Ed Nealy knows few limits. This is a guy who made a hook shot from his truck as he backed out of the driveway on the first try. And not some layup of a hook shot, either; he was back-tires-on-the-street distance as he hit nothing but net. This is also a guy who to this day, in his mid-sixties, still goes to the local gym and plays hoops on occasion. He told me that he played hoops with my buddy Lee one time, but Lee didn’t come back after that initial visit. When I asked Lee about it, he said (jokingly?) “Your dad never let me shoot!”
So I asked Ed Nealy about this; his response was classic Ed Nealy: “Well, I let him set some screens for me.”
So how did the Younger Brother Schneden and I hang with Team Ed Nealy? Well, part of it was that Younger Brother Schneden and I were both pretty decent ballers ourselves, with quicker first steps and good outside shots, especially me from beyond the arc. And Younger Brother Schneden was pretty good at driving the lane and drawing fouls on his elder brother or Ed Nealy; he would yell out “I got one!” whenever he took it to the hoop and felt contact, extending our possessions time and again or scoring two on the continuation play.
But I think Ed Nealy’s kryptonite was Public Enemy. He’d be frowning at the language on display in “Terminator X to the Edge of Panic” and we’d take that opportunity to bury a J from downtown or drive to the hoop and lay one in. Or “Bring the Noise” would kick off with one of many of Flav’s “YEEEEAAAAAHHHH BOYYYYYEEEEEEEEE” exclamations, and we’d find our second wind (we played to 100 every time, so we’d actually get tired). And then “Show ‘Em Whatcha Got” would come on, with the sax blaring and the woman repeating the title phrase, and I’d get in the zone and show Ed Nealy what I got.
It’s really nice that I have these memories attached to the greatest rap album ever made…not that the album needs the external positives. The innovative sounds created by the Bomb Squad gave this album the sonic boom to match the intensity of Chuck D’s delivery. (Side note: the Mission Creek Festival brought Chuck and the Bomb Squad to Iowa City in 2010 for a panel discussion about the techniques used on this album; it was a fascinating conversation.) Listen to Chuck bring it on tracks like “Louder Than a Bomb” or “Prophets of Rage” and feel the hair stand up on the arm. He flows effortlessly on “Bring the Noise” and “Rebel Without a Pause” and “Don’t Believe the Hype.” And then Flav…he does his thing well on “Cold Lampin’ with Flavor” and chimes in with some of the most memorable lines of his career on “She Watch Channel Zero?!”, the song that samples Slayer’s “Angel of Death” and matches the power of that riff with the beats and rhymes. Even the little interludes like the aforementioned “Show ‘Em Whatcha Got” and “Mind Terrorist” and “Security of the First World” (the last providing the beat for Madonna’s “Justify My Love”) are solid.
When I was home for Thanksgiving this year, I saw that the driveway basketball hoop was gone, a nearby tree grown to the point that it pushed the hoop out of its home some years ago. But I’ll always have memories of hoops and P.E. Plus, thanks to my friend Shannon visiting our place numerous times with his leaky Mustang convertible, the Oil Spot will live forever.
Todd’s #8: Dr. Dre, The Chronic
(click play button below to sample this album)
One, two, three and to the fo’ Snoop Doggy Dogg and Dr. Dre is at the do’ Ready to make an entrance, so back on up Cause you know we ’bout to rip shit up
That was maybe the best opening in rap history. It got you ready for that seamless back and forth between Dre and Snoop. Snoop was the perfect complement to Dre’s more straight forward style and a big reason why The Chronic crossed over with more mainstream listeners. He was just making a name for himself and had one of the most original deliveries I’d ever heard. His easy flow kind of reminded me of a slowed down version of Slick Rick. Here’s a video of my favorite Slick Rick song if you are unfamiliar with him. See if you hear the similarities too.
The Chronic is the only album in my top 10 that I can only play after hours. I rarely get to listen to it because most of it is just plain filthy. I actually waited until the kids went to bed to write this because I like to listen to the album I’m writing about for inspiration. I’m holed up in the basement typing and checking over my shoulder for eavesdropping kiddos. It’s like they know when I am listening to something I don’t want them to hear. My daughter can read now and that’s a whole other issue. I don’t want her looking at the screen and reading song titles like “Deeez Nuuuts”, “Fuck wit Dre”, and “Lyrical Gangbang”? Then you have to answer questions like “Daddy, what does ‘Pimpin’ ho’s and clockin’ the grip’ mean?” I also don’t want them coming in while I’m singing the lyrics from “Bitches Ain’t Shit”
I once had a bitch named Mandy May Used to be up in them guts like everyday The pussy was the bomb, had a n**** unsprung I was in love like a motherfucker lickin’ the pearl tongue
Snoop Doggy Dogg was a real muthafuckin’ wordsmith back then wasn’t he? That was two name changes ago though. Now he hangs with Rastafarians, goes by Snoop Lion and makes “The Ragoo” music. I don’t blame him for going a different direction, the current state of rap is well…crap.
If you look at the rap albums in Chris and my lists, you will notice a distinct pattern. It’s either Beastie Boys, which fits in with our more alternative listening habits, or early ‘90s rap. (I don’t count the Danger Mouse record Chris listed. He had to mix it with The Beatles White Album to make that Jay-Z shit even remotely palatable) There are a few bright spots. Some of the new crop of guys is ok. I liked the solo stuff from Heems. (Look for more solo stuff because it appears as though Das Racist has broken up) What I’ve heard from that kid Earl Sweatshirt is good but he needs to release more music. Mr. Muthafuckin’ eXquire has one of the best free style videos I’ve seen but most of today’s rap is lost on me. Check out the Mr. Muthafuckin’ eXquire clip below. It’s pretty cool. His entourage yells out topics and he freestyles on that until a new one is tossed out. He performs in a strip club and has two of the clubs employees booty shake along to his rhymes so probably NSFW.
But, uh, back to the lecture at hand
The Chronic was another one of those albums that everyone seemed to have. Even the dudes that didn’t really listen to rap had this one. In high school we all used to hang out at one of the local parks. At least until the police disbanded us or hauled a few people away for underage drinking. The required way to enter that park was to cruise in with the bass on your stereo turned up as loud as it would go. Apparently, you had to prove you had the woofers to hang out there. Either that or it was some odd experiment to try and create the mythical “Brown Note”; that frequency in which you get the human colon to spontaneously release its entire stockpile of excrement. For a period of time, nearly every car rolled in playing music from The Chronic. I’ll admit I did it too. My song was “Let me Ride”. A fine choice in my book. It has a one of the best beats to cruise to. Dre uses a sweet sample from the P-Funk song “Mothership Connection.” The only problem was I was rolling in a Ford Escort and not…
Rollin in my six-fo’
Swing down, sweet chariot stop and, let me ride hell yeah Swing down, sweet chariot stop and, let me ride
Oh crap! I hear one of the kids coming. I better end this. Don’t want to have to explain what a “skeezer” is to my five year old.
Yep, we’ve made a list. Two separate lists, actually, so the above graphic is a bit misleading. Accounting for the limited overlap in Todd’s and Chris’ lists, it’s more like the top 174 or something like that.
Anyway, after months of scientific analysis, hours of listening and re-listening to albums from years gone by, we have arrived at a definitive list of the top albums ever recorded. Our research is not open to interpretation, but you’re more than welcome to complain about the fact that your favorite albums aren’t on this list; we’ll simply respond by telling you that your favorite records aren’t really all that good.
We’ve reached the really good stuff: our top 10s. We’ll roll these out one per day (Monday-Friday) over the next two weeks, reaching #1 on Friday, Dec. 14. The following week, we’ll unveil our favorite music from 2012.
Let’s get on with it…
Chris’ #9: Duran Duran, Rio
(click play button below to sample this album)
Duran Duran. The supposed Achilles heel of my musical tastes. I understand that not everything the “Fab Five” did was golden; Seven and the Ragged Tiger, the album that included “The Reflex” and “New Moon on Monday,” is otherwise kind of a steaming pile. Some of the albums in the late ’80s and the early early ’90s (Liberty, anyone?) are completely inconsequential to the band’s discography. And that Thank You covers album really did stink up the joint.
But the first two albums…I’m sorry, they’re early-’80s pop perfection, especially the second one, Rio. I believe the following points illustrate that fact (mascara is not on the list).
The three singles from this album are fucking top-shelf
“Hungry Like the Wolf” seems to be everyone’s favorite Duran Duran song, what with its “Doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo” verses and the singalong “I’m on the hunt; I’m after you” chorus. The guitar is sharper than usual, the drums are bigger than usual, Simon’s voice is as sure as ever. “Rio” also was made for singing along with a smile, with the chorus “Her name is Rio and she dances on the saaaaaaaand.” And “Save a Prayer” is the slow burn, showing a vulnerability that contrasts with the other two singles. Plus, it has that weird trick where Nick Rhodes plays a note on the keyboard and then slides a lever back and forth to bend the note into something exotic.
The videos for the three songs couldn’t have been any cooler
Seriously, “Hungry Like the Wolf” was a better Indiana Jones sequel than Temple of Doom and that most recent one (which I wasn’t duped into seeing, I’m proud to say). I’m pretty sure Harrison Ford paid off Simon LeBon to not incorporate the bullwhip or the fear-of-snakes angle into his “Wolf” character, for fear that Ford would be replaced by LeBon in the Indy title role. (If nothing else, I’m going to update Harrison Ford’s and Simon LeBon’s Wikipedia entry to say as much.)
“Rio” incorporates tropical scenes, a really attractive brunette, and yachts without sounding like yacht rock. And in addition to the attractive scenery, it had some of the oddest non sequiturs. One: John Taylor lounging around reading a combat comic book; flash to scene of John in pseudo military gear, storming the beach, only to find a scantily clad woman lying on the beach with wine/booze being poured into a glass perched on her perfect stomach. Artistic genius!
And “Save a Prayer” completes the trifecta of Sri Lanka beauty. One of my favorite aspects of this video is that Simon LeBon is dressed as if he is about to meet with Tony Montana and Alex Sosa to discuss the yeyo biz.
Who the hell didn’t want to live like Duran Duran after seeing these three videos? They hung out in kick ass weather wearing cool clothes chasing hot babes everywhere! And there were elephants and old world architecture and more babes, too.
The album’s closer, “The Chauffeur,” is Duran Duran’s best song of all time
The song has an eerie, dreamlike sequence of keyboard running throughout, along with bending bass notes and perfect percussion accents that give shape to LeBon’s lyrical tale of “the droning engine throbbing in time with your beating heart.” (The one thing I’ll admit about Duran Duran: the lyrics are usually pretty lame, although the words in “The Chauffeur” aren’t completely wince-inducing.) I don’t know how long it took Nick Rhodes to compose this synth-ony, but it’s pure bliss. And someone made a video that included a few topless women doing interpretive dance, so there’s that.
The other five “album tracks” are, for the most part, seriously great songs, too
No, they’re not radio-made tunes, but the five songs that fill out the album’s playlist beyond the three singles and “Chauffeur” elevate your typical album from the 1980s into something seamless and worthy of repeated spins. “Hold Back the Rain” is perhaps the most straightforward rock song they’d done on the first two albums, and remains a live favorite to this day. “My Own Way” is upbeat and tense, a perfect second song to follow the leadoff title track. “Lonely in Your Nightmare” and “New Religion” are both moody pieces that play well.
“Last Chance on the Stairway” is probably the closest thing to a throwaway tune to my ears, although I like it for a couple of reasons: I love the sound of someone flicking a lighter, taking a drag, and exhaling smoke at song’s beginning, with Nick Rhodes’ keyboard slowly building around it all; and John Taylor gives the bass strings a workout throughout the tune. Which leads me to my next point…
John Taylor is a stud of a bass player, a point he proves repeatedly on Rio
The dude is flat-out funky. His lines are so tight; the notes just pop at times, probably since he famously uses a pick to strum the low end strings. His stressed notes accent the fast songs and he provides the steady framework for the slower songs. And really, John is the coolest guy in the band, going on to play in a band with Duff McKagan at one point, so I felt I had to point out his contributions, as Simon and Nick seem to get the lion’s share of the attention.
And a more general point: These guys are so much better than you’ll ever allow yourself to admit
And why won’t you admit it? Because they have keyboards in their music? Because they considered image/fashion as one aspect of their overall package? What?
These guys took aspects of dance, rock, punk, and funk and made it work. And it works not only because these guys made cool videos or looked trendy or whatever; the fact of the matter is that John Taylor and Nick Rhodes can really write great pop songs, especially in the early going. And they were smart, especially when you consider how young they were and they weren’t managed like some fucking boy band. They embraced the video medium like no other, a move that paid off exponentially with the advent of MTV.
And I’m sorry, some who scoff at Duran Duran are the same people who tell me with a straight face that Journey is fucking great, or they can’t shut up about how awesome Aerosmith is.
Journey? Yeah, that’s more synthesized than Duran Duran…the Journey guitar sound makes me want to throw up. Seriously, listen to something like “Separate Ways” again and then come back here and tell me that is authentic rock music. Because Journey fans seem to think it is. Mind-baffling! And the dude sings at a register five octaves higher than Simon. But you’re right, Journey is way more “awesome.” Just look at this video for proof:
(This should be the next installment of my video breakdown series.)
Aerosmith? Yeah, since you started listening to them sometime in the 1990s, they’ve written exactly ONE SONG. And then threw new cheeseball lyrics at it about 50 times and put out a few albums. Nothing good since “Toys in the Attic.” Nothing.
And the authorities can’t understand why I want to throat-punch people sometimes…
So anyway, yeah, I’m putting Rio here. To reference a song from my #11 album, consider this my own Revolution 9.
Todd’s #9: Ride, Nowhere
(click play button below to sample this album)
When I first set out to rank my favorite albums of all time, I found that this was one of the few albums on my list that I didn’t own a copy of anymore. I was a bit shocked when I looked in my iTunes library and, other than the song “Vapour Trail” which I’ll talk about later, it wasn’t there. I converted all of my CDs to MP3 long ago. Made a pretty penny selling all the hard copies at a garage sale a few years back. I did hold on to a select few sentimental picks so I checked in there. No copy of Ride Nowhere there either. How could that be?
I had no idea when I quit listening to it, but Nowhere has always ranked near the top of my list of favorites. When I showed my finished list to my wife (She got a VIP early premiere) she immediately objected to the Ride record’s spot in the top 10. “How is that a Top 10? You’ve never talked about that record or listened to it since I’ve known you.” Was she right? Had I truly not listened to it in close to twenty years? Why? I really had to think about it until I came up with the answer. I quit listening to it because… it made me feel bad.
When I think back at the time when I would listen to this album obsessively, I realize now that I was pretty depressed. I’m not going to bore you about why I was depressed. This blog isn’t for sob stories or a source of fodder for “After School Special” writers. I will tell you this, it wasn’t some “We Need to Talk About Todd” type scenario and I didn’t spend my spare time torturing cats or anything like that. I was just unhappy a lot of the time. After I came out of that funk, I associated Nowhere with that unhappy feeling. So I quit listening to it.
When Chris came up with the idea for our joint best of lists I thought it would be impossible. Then once I got into it, I found it to be a lot of fun. Re-listening to hundreds of records and reminiscing about them has been amazing musical therapy. Since making this list, I’ve listened to Nowhere a dozen or more times and now it has a much happier association for me. I guess I have Chris to thank for that. Although, he did give me shit for my Counting Crows pick at #75. Such a dick.
The thing that I notice most now when listening is that Ride’s rhythm section is incredible. Something like that could easily be overlooked on a shoegaze genre record where you generally get overwhelmed by the wall of guitars and distortion. The opening song “Seagull” starts off with a long intro of drums and killer bass line and never looks back. By the time the vocals come in, I’m already exhausted and I’m just listening.
Ride uses that “wall of sound” strategy, for lack of a more original term, on many songs on Nowhere. I tend to like the songs which allow the noise to ebb and flow a bit more though. The song “Dreams Burn Down” is a great example. It slowly builds around already loud guitars and drums until the chorus when they take it up a notch and the result feels like the musical equivalent of a gut punch.
Then there’s the song “Vapour Trail.” If you held a gun to my head and asked me what my favorite song of all time was it would be hard for me not to pick this song. I could listen to that main guitar riff all day and the fucking drumming on the two minute outro blows me away every time. The guy just goes crazy. Actually everyone does. Guitars, bass and drums all doing their own thing but all in the confines of the song. The structured chaos goes on until a string quartet fades in playing the main melody and pulls every thing back together. I’m always left wanting more. If you’ve never heard this song, I suggest you follow these steps immediately:
Quit reading right now (well not now, continue with the instructions and then quit reading)
Yep, we’re making a list. Two separate lists, actually, so the above graphic is a bit misleading. Accounting for the limited overlap in Todd’s and Chris’ lists, it’s more like the top 174 or something like that.
Anyway, after months of scientific analysis, hours of listening and re-listening to albums from years gone by, we have arrived at a definitive list of the top albums ever recorded. Our research is not open to interpretation, but you’re more than welcome to complain about the fact that your favorite albums aren’t on this list; we’ll simply respond by telling you that your favorite records aren’t really all that good.
Here are some spoilers: you’re not going to find the typical hipster stuff like Neutral Milk Hotel or Slint or even stuff one/both of us actually likes such as DJ Shadow or Pavement. This isn’t Rolling Stone so you’re not going to find Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band or Pet Sounds at the top. Wham’s Make It Big was snubbed.
We’re not going to roll it all out at once; no sense rushing through all this quality music! But Music or Space Shuttle? is gonna be pretty busy over the next two months.
That’s enough of an intro. Let’s get on with it…
Chris’ #15-11
(click play button below to sample these five albums)
15. Tricky, Maxinquaye
14. Interpol, Turn on the Bright Lights
13. The Cure, Pornography
12. Portishead, Dummy
11. The Beatles, The Beatles
A CLOSER LOOK AT…
#15: Tricky, Maxinquaye
Trip-hop can be divided into two columns: the amazing (Portishead, Massive Attack, Tricky) and the generic coffeehouse variety (everyone else who followed). But even if these Bristolites caused inferior imitation, they did provide an imprint that still sounds cool today. And where Massive Attack thrived on chill groove and Tracey Thorn, and Portishead incorporated more turntable scratching, brass, and Beth Gibbons, the young man known as Tricky was all over the place…in a good way. Dark, textured, truly interdisciplinary music with beats big enough to satisfy the “hop” crowd and eccentricities that worked for the “trip” audience.
The thing that struck me about this album upon first listen was how well he incorporated other people’s material into his own warped vision. Consider a three-song stretch in the album’s first half, where Tricky covers a Public Enemy song (“Black Steel,” with female vocalist Martina Topley-Bird handling the Chuck D rhymes), samples his friends from Portishead on an eerie song aptly titled “Hell Is Round the Corner*, and then works the drums and guitar bits from the Smashing Pumpkins’ song “Suffer” into his song, respectfully titled, um, “Pumpkin.” So he covers a song by my favorite rap act, samples a current band that I love, and then samples my favorite group from the Alternative Nation gang…and does all that in a way that allows him room to do his own thing with the material or accent his songs with the samples, rather than a rote cover or using the samples as the primary element of the songs a la Puff Daddy.
(* – “Hell Is Round the Corner,” found in my sampler above, was used by the show Rescue Me during a scene depicting the aftermath of a tragic death in Tommy Gavin’s family. You’d have thought the song was written specifically for that scene. Incredible.)
And on the album’s opener, “Overcome,” Tricky took some lyrics he had given to Massive Attack (which they used for the song “Karmacoma,” a somewhat upbeat tune*, and showed the old boys how it was supposed to sound. Martina’s voice and her looped gasps pierce through the atmospheric keyboards and persistent thump of the drums, creating an ominous yet sexy song. When she sings, “You sure you wanna be with me? I’ve nothing to give…but I’ll lie and say this loving’s best,” accented by those aforementioned gasps, I find myself saying, “Um, yes. Yes I do.”
(* – I would be willing to be that “Overcome” has equal/greater BPM than “Karmacoma,” but I would never describe “Overcome” as upbeat. It’s all about the mood, the tone.)
The album has extended grooves (“Aftermath”), slightly abbreviated grooves (“Abbaon Fat Tracks”), aggressive jams (“Brand New You’re Retro”), and one truly bizarre track toward the end (“Strugglin'”) that truly makes you question the guy’s sanity. A decade and a half after trip-hop arrived, I still find myself enjoying this album…maybe not as much as I did when I was 21, but enough to deem it #15.
#11: The Beatles, The Beatles
My dad had four proper Beatles albums in his LP collection: Rubber Soul, Revolver, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and Magical Mystery Tour. So I had the luxury of listening to the Beatles at a pretty early age. But he didn’t have anything after that; he explained to me that he got a lot of his records from the radio station at St. Ambrose, and he transferred to Illinois for his DVM studies in 1968, before the “White Album” came out. (Indeed, his copy of Sgt. Pepper’s has the call letters “KSAR” written in one of the upper corners of the cover.)
So I did what any self-respecting fan would do: I found one of the cool girls in my class and asked her if she had the “White Album” and if so could I please borrow it and record it to one of my various TDK blank tapes? (File sharing at its best.)
And so began my love affair with the wonderfully varied (scattershot, some might say) double album, one that was among my first 10 CD purchases when I made the move to the newer medium. I listened to it over and over, night and day, forward and backward…which, of course, led to me believing there were myriad hidden messages suggesting riots and new world orders and who knows what else (not really).
(I don’t subscribe to the Charlie Manson school of thought; I don’t buy all the subliminal messaging, or at least not his translation of them. However, there is that part at the end of the song “I’m So Tired” that sounds like gibberish. When that is played backward, it does sound just a little bit like “Paul is dead, man, miss him, we miss him, miss him!” in that typical backmasking kind of way. I assume it is either coincidence or the Beatles having a bit of fun with the urban legend. They were known to use reversed sound in their music, as early as 1966 with vocals on the song “Rain.”)
My original acquisition of the “White Album” coincided with the peak of my Beatles obsession. I would grab my Walkman and my “White Album” tape and go for walks around town almost every night that I wasn’t making pies at Pizza Hut, just so I could spend 90 minutes alone with my thoughts and the Beatles piping into my ears. (Exercise by accident!) My friend David and I had scored a book via interlibrary loan that detailed the Beatles’ studio recordings, and it painted quite a dreary picture of the band during the “White Album” era. It seemed like there were quite a few songs where the instrumentation was documented as such:
“Mother Nature’s Son” (Lennon/McCartney)
Paul McCartney: vocals, acoustic guitar, timpani, bass drum
John Lennon: not present
George Harrison: not present
Ringo Starr: not present
George Martin: brass arrangement
But so what, even if the album was ironically named after a unified group? The tunes, all 30 of them, are at the very least intriguing and often outstanding, and to my ears the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. It never bothered me that it jumped around a bit; you can grab one of the numerous bloated 80-minute rap albums that came out after the CD era exploded. (THAT is monotony.) I loved the quirky stuff like “Wild Honey Pie” and “Martha My Dear” (an ode to Paul’s dog) and “Piggies” and “Rocky Raccoon”*. We got four George songs instead of one or two, including one of the best songs in the entire Beatles catalog (“While My Guitar Gently Weeps”).
(* – Shortly after I borrowed the tapes from the cool girl in my class, a couple of her good friends, older dudes I got along with just fine but didn’t typically hang out with, came up to me during Advanced Keyboarding class and asked me how I liked the “White Album.” I told them I really dug it, while also wondering if an invite to get high in the parking lot was soon to follow. The follow-up statement from one of the dudes: “Isn’t ‘Rocky Raccoon’ a great song?” What else could I say but a statement of agreement? I never thought I’d be bonding with anyone because of the song “Rocky Raccoon”; proof that anything is possible.)
Anyway, where was I… We got the nice Paul moments like “Blackbird,” “I Will,” and the aforementioned “Mother Nature’s Son.” We got the John rock ‘n’ roll tunes like “Yer Blues” and “Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except for Me and My Monkey.” Paul rocks out with “Helter Skelter”; John gets wistful on “Julia” and “Cry Baby Cry.” You get “Dear Prudence,” “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” (Corky!), a slowed-down version of “Revolution,” “Birthday,” and arguably my favorite song on the album, “Happiness Is a Warm Gun.” And the album closes with “Good Night,” a song I used to sing to my son at bedtime when he was just a little tyke.
Even “Revolution 9” is worth exploring from time to time, just to pick out the various sounds woven into the fabric.
This is one of two consecutive double albums in my countdown. What will be at #10? Come back Monday…
Todd’s #15-11
(click play button below to sample these five albums)
15. Jane’s Addiction, Ritual De lo Habitual
14. The Beatles, Abbey Road
13. Smashing Pumpkins, Gish
12. Guns n’ Roses, Appetite for Destruction
11. Prince, Sign O’ the Times
A CLOSER LOOK AT…
#13: Smashing Pumpkins, Gish
Where to start here? Like Chris who ranked it at #17, Gish was a hugely defining album for me. It sort of blew me away the instant I heard it and destroyed every preconceived opinion I had about music and what was good.
I first heard Smashing Pumpkins on the radio show Off the Beaten Track. If you read my post about Pixies Trompe le Monde then you will remember that this was a show that played exclusively alternative and indie music. It was on late night on Sundays and I would stay up and listen until I fell asleep. Often I would record these shows and replay what I missed later. On one of these tapes I discovered Gish. Well part of Gish. During the show they played 2 songs from the album. “I Am One” and “Siva.” I fast forwarded the tape immediately to try and find out the name of the artist. The DJs briefly talked about the songs and maybe goofed on the name Smashing Pumpkins a bit but the big revelation was that they were going to play Gish after the show. After every show they played a new album in its entirety.
So I fast forwarded some more to the end of the show hoping I had enough tape to catch the whole album. I was elated as “I Am One” came over the speakers. I’d heard that one earlier but that was fine, there was new songs coming. Thinking I was going to be hearing the whole album I cranked up the volume sat back and enjoyed. I loved how lead singer Billy Corgan’s voice was franticly snarling and screaming out the lyrics. His guitar work was filthy and grimy (notice I didn’t write grungy) and I couldn’t get enough. Next up was “Siva”; great tune but I had heard that one already too. I was getting impatient for something new. Finally, the third song “Rhinoceros” came on and I was enjoying its blissed out psychedelic dreaminess when the tape cut off. Blurgh!!! I had to hear more!
The next weekend I went to the record store at the mall to grab my very own copy. Unfortunately, they didn’t sell it. I think the dopey record store guy thought I was kidding when I told him the band’s name was Smashing Pumpkins. I should have known better than to go to the mall anyways. Back in the day if you wanted hard to get or more underground artists you had to go to Co-Op Tapes and Records. The mall had the chicks but Co-Op had the selection. So I buzzed over to the nearest location and asked the hipster dude at the counter if they had Smashing Pumpkins. He seemed truly impressed. Must not have been everyday that preppy 16 year olds came in asking for that record. He grabbed me a copy and I immediately threw it in the car tape deck. The rest of the day I drove around playing Gish over and over.
Since then, I’ve met several guys with similar stories to me. They loved Smashing Pumpkins and were the first people in there town/school/state to listen to them. They talk as though they were the area ambassadors for the band and introduced them to the world. I can say I did not do this. I didn’t hoist the Smashing Pumpkins banner and wave it for everyone to see. I did tell a couple of my friends about them but mostly I kept quiet. The band was just for me. It stayed that way until their next record came out and they truly unleashed the awesomeness…
#11: Prince, Sign O’ the Times
I’ve been trying to write a blurb about the album Sign O’ the Times for a while now. Things have been slow because I’ve been busy messing with technology issues. This is ridiculous, how am I supposed to get inspiration when I can’t get to the online streaming database and listen to the record at 320 bit digital perfection? First, the internets weren’t working. Then, once I got the modem online the Wi-Fi wouldn’t connect to my laptop. So I tried my phone’s Wi-Fi hotspot. Two songs in, I realized that I was using way too much data. My cell provider will send me an enormous bill if I go over my allotted gigabytes. What was I to do?
Then I started thinking about my first copy of Sign O’ the Times. It was a dubbed cassette tape from my brother. We didn’t have a dual tape deck so I just pushed my tape deck next to his and hit play on his and record on mine. I stuck this crude contraption in the closet so it wouldn’t pick up sound from the TV in the other room. A valiant effort but during the song “Adore” you could still hear Hawkeye arguing with Hot Lips Houlihan from the M.A.S.H. rerun my Dad was watching. At one crucial point in “I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man” you could hear my mother telling me or my brother to take out the trash. Not a perfect system but it worked. What more did I need? I wanted to hear the songs and didn’t care if it was a perfect digital copy or not.
I remember having a lot of music recorded that way. If you looked in my cassette tape storage unit back then (shoe box), you would have found dozens of tapes with songs recorded off of the radio. I used to spend hours listening to the local pop stations waiting for specific songs. Who cared if the DJ was talking up the first 30 seconds of the song as long as you got enough of the song to jump around your room singing Su-Su-Sudio? It really was the earliest form of music pirating. Much more difficult, but way more satisfying. You really had to work to get that free version of “One Night in Bangkok.”
Technology makes things so easy now. If I want to listen to any song in my over 100 gig music library,* I just tap the screen on my phone or iPad and wireless speakers start playing. If I want to listen in the car, I plug my iPod or phone into the stereo and hit play. What I wouldn’t have given for that back when I rode around with $1000 worth of CDs in my car. Back then, if you told me we were going to have a device like the iPod, I would have expected there to be flying cars and robot prostitutes too. It would have seemed impossible.
*(Believe me I’m not bragging, I know people that have Napstered and BitTorrented there way to ten times that amount. All my music was paid for (wink) and obtained legally (wink). I’m no pirate. Arrrrr!)
And just like I couldn’t imagine file sharing and streaming music services back then, I can’t imagine what is coming next. Things change so fast. 12 years ago I didn’t own a cell phone or personal PC. Since then, I have had 10 cell phones, 2 smart phones, 4 PCs, and 2 tablets. What? I have to stay plugged in. I need to be notified in the middle of the night when I can save $20 dollars on Zappos.com and how else can I find out which boner pills are guaranteed to satisfy.
So, in closing, Sign O’ the Times is real real good.
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Yep, we’re making a list. Two separate lists, actually, so the above graphic is a bit misleading. Accounting for the limited overlap in Todd’s and Chris’ lists, it’s more like the top 174 or something like that.
Anyway, after months of scientific analysis, hours of listening and re-listening to albums from years gone by, we have arrived at a definitive list of the top albums ever recorded. Our research is not open to interpretation, but you’re more than welcome to complain about the fact that your favorite albums aren’t on this list; we’ll simply respond by telling you that your favorite records aren’t really all that good.
Here are some spoilers: you’re not going to find the typical hipster stuff like Neutral Milk Hotel or Slint or even stuff one/both of us actually likes such as DJ Shadow or Pavement. This isn’t Rolling Stone so you’re not going to find Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band or Pet Sounds at the top. Wham’s Make It Big was snubbed.
We’re not going to roll it all out at once; no sense rushing through all this quality music! But Music or Space Shuttle? is gonna be pretty busy over the next two months.
That’s enough of an intro. Let’s get on with it…
Chris’ #20-16
(click play button below to sample these five albums)
20. Portishead, Third
19. Depeche Mode, Violator
18. Nick Drake, Pink Moon
17. Smashing Pumpkins, Gish
16. Sigur Ros, ( )
A CLOSER LOOK AT…
#17: Smashing Pumpkins, Gish
We said we’d keep our “closer looks” to two artists per entry until the top 10; as a result, I’m basically ignoring the album (Violator) that defined a big part of my junior year of high school, right around the time that I ended a relationship that by all accounts was perfect and entered into another that was short-sighted yet valuable all the same. And if you ever wanted an album to soundtrack the mixed emotions of a confused teenager, you can’t go wrong with the extremes found on Violator.
Yet I’m opting to talk at length about one of two albums that defined my senior year of high school, when I wised up and stopped taking science courses (I took physics, but that’s math) and dropped Advanced Composition to take Parenting and started dating girls two grades below me. And yes, listened to Smashing Pumpkins’ Gish hundreds of times.
Thanks to Spin, which wrote a feature about a handful of bands to watch, I made a mental note to check out this oddly named band. It wasn’t hard to remember the name, probably because it’s a terrible name for a band. Most people laughed at the name when I told them they had to check out Smashing Pumpkins. Often times they would snicker or roll their eyes or whatever and never listen to the blank tape I carried with me at all times. Then again, a lot of people I knew back then had no interest in anything other than Zeppelin or Garth or Poison (but rarely all three).
Despite this reaction, perhaps the name is genius. I certainly remembered it in the period between reading that Spin article and buying the CD. And if you’re as good as the Pumpkins were on their debut disc, you can make a ballsy move like naming your band Smashing Pumpkins. Because once you hear them, you’re not going to give a fuck what the band name is, aside from the fact that you need the name so you can tell your friends they have to listen to this band now.
The clean snaps from Jimmy Chamberlin’s snare drum immediately call the listener to attention. The rumble of the bass comes next, and then the Billy Corgan Experience comes at you with guitars a-blazin’. You do a double-take when the thin Corgan voice fills the air, but you’re still rolling with the groove, so you shrug a little bit. Soon enough, Corgan is assailing your ears with layers of solo guitar work before the bass’s rumble is isolated again and the song hits its final chorus and it comes to a halt and you’re all like “dude! What the fuck!” And then “Siva” starts and you’re air-guitaring the shit out of your bedroom/basement/car’s driver seat/back room at Pizza Hut/wherever.
These aren’t the 1980s guitar licks, processed and played only in the higher ranges. This shit was grungy (aha!), tuned down and dirty as fuck. “Siva” plays up the LOUDquietLOUD aspect of late ’80s/early ’90s alt-rock at least twice, the second time again isolating the bass guitar, which isn’t playing anything complicated (although D’Arcy might disagree) but propels the song forward while the guitars chill the fuck out for a few seconds and Billy whisper-sings about wanting to know what you’re after because he just wants to get there faster and then the SONG JUST FUCKING EXPLODES and you’re punching the air along with every hit of Chamberlin’s drums and you are like “holy shit this is so so so so goddamn good and I hope this puts a fucking ice pick in the eye socket of ‘heavy metal’ and all that hair metal shit because holy fuck this is awesome.”
And then “Rhinoceros” takes everything down a notch, to let you know that Billy doesn’t need layers of guitar running through Big Muff pedals to do his thing.
And then “Bury Me” brings the guitar heroics back. And then “Crush” slows it all down again. Songs like “Crush” and the next song, “Suffer,” are the songs that best exemplify what Spin said about these guys (I’m paraphrasing): an album you put on as you relax and get all reflective while watching the specks floating in the beam of sunlight coming through your bedroom window. There’s something romantic to that description, and I always enjoyed approaching parts of this album through that lens.
The album throttles forward again with “Snail” and “Tristessa,” then concludes with the two most eccentric tracks on the album: the ominous, slow build of “Window Paine” (punctuated with trademark blasts of controlled feedback at song’s end) and “Daydream,” an acoustic tune that features D’Arcy on vocals and a perfect sense of weariness. (And when you think the album is over, a strange reprise of sorts kicks in, with Billy back on vocals and a simple electric guitar line that adds just a touch of sinister to the album’s conclusion).
Many people thought the Pumpkins were from Seattle, because that’s where all the good music like this was coming from, courtesy of Nirvana and Pearl Jam and Soundgarden and Alice in Chains. No, they were from Chicago; yes, they were as good as (if not better than) the folks from the Pacific Northwest.
#16: Sigur Ros, ( )
The challenge: express my love for an album that had no title, no song titles (at least upon initial release), lyrics that weren’t English or any other established language…essentially guide vocals that served more instrumental value than vocal message.
The thing is, as pretentious as the whole thing sounds, the eight songs that make up this untitled album are absolutely gorgeous. I might as well be writing in the nonsense language sung by Jonsi to adequately get across my points…but if nothing else, the bottom line is that these songs create an environment that, to my ears and to my “the afterlife is bullshit” mind, is as close to heaven as I think any of us is going to get.
Much like with Explosions in the Sky, this music sounds like the perfect ingredients for a motion picture score. And the music is varying enough (even if the “lyrics” aren’t) that it works for a number of moods and settings. And the fact that the lyrics aren’t real words is not a hindrance: much like the music behind them, the words can mean whatever you want them to mean. And be honest…a lot of you don’t get the words right when you sing along to songs in English.
(To my ears, the primary “lyric” to the first song is “You sat along the fire/you saw the light/you saw/you suffered alone/you sat alone/your soul”; again, there is no definitive lyric, but that’s what I hear, and it plays into my interpretation of the artistic vision of the music.)
Soaring, atmospheric, conjuring up scenes of natural beauty, fast, loud, slow, quiet, pianos, guitars, percussion, strings, organ, Jonsi…all of these elements add up to bliss. I should take a cue from the album’s lack of words and stop now, and let the music speak for itself. Please listen to the last two songs in my sampler found just above my #20-16 list, and interpret the space between the album title’s parentheses as you will. As someone who will finally see the band in concert in April 2013, I’m sure my interpretations will change again after the live experience. That’s one, if not the primary, beautiful aspect of ( ): there’s always room for your ever-changing view of this wonderful art.
Todd’s #20-16
(click play button below to sample these five albums)
20. Beatles, Revolver
19. The Strokes, Room On Fire
18.The Cure, Disintegration
17. Radiohead, Kid A
16. My Bloody Valentine, Loveless
A CLOSER LOOK AT…
#18: The Cure, Disintegration
I’ll keep this brief because I’m pretty certain my main MoSS? man Chris is going to be waxing poetic about this record at some point down the road. No surprise to all you Chris fans out there I’m sure.
I’d like to say that I was in on this album from the beginning but that wasn’t the case. When Disintegration came out, I was still exploring classic rock and Livin’, Lovin’ my way through the Led Zeppelin catalog. I’d probably heard a few songs from The Cure by then but they were definitely not on my radar at that point. I do remember seeing the video for “Lovesong” and thinking, “What’s that dude whining about?”
So what made me change my mind? Well, a girl of course. Around that time, my dopey friends and I went over to a classmate’s house to hang out with her and her friend from another school. Yes, a new girl from an exotic unknown land. Well, two towns away to be exact. She was cool, cute, and brunette. I was smitten. I have a weakness for brunettes, this is well documented. The TV was tuned to 120 Minutes, an MTV show that played alternative music videos. At some point the video for the song “Fascination Street” was on and new girl said she loved The Cure. What do you think I told her in response? You guessed it…“I love them too. They’re one of my favorite bands of all time.”
She must have sensed I was full of shit. Maybe it was my hair. I was still rocking the mullet. You know. Business in the front…party in the back. See photo on the left. It was an obvious sign of a hard or classic rock lover. Not too long after that I started to wear my hair in the exact opposite way, with my hair long in front and short in back which was more in line with the alternative music that I was getting into. See photo on the right of the band The Ocean Blue. They made the list back at #69 with their self titled debut album. I dressed and wore my hair just like the those guys.
Anyways, exotic-two-towns-away girl didn’t fall for my lie and I, of course, got nowhere with her. It wasn’t a total strikeout though because the experience got me interested in The Cure. Today I wouldn’t be lying if I told her that The Cure is one of my favorite bands of all time. Plus, I can always console myself in the fact that I met and married a way cooler, way hotter brunette that loves The Cure too.
I wonder what happened to two-towns-away girl? I like to think that she married some dude that got her into country music and right now she is listening to Rascal Flatts or something equally as horrid. Not that I’m holding a grudge or anything.
#17: Radiohead, Kid A
This is my highest rated Radiohead album. You won’t be seeing the over hyped OK Computer on any of my lists (unless we make a list of the 100 Most Overrated Albums Ever…mental note) No, Kid A is the Radiohead album for me. I feel the same way about this record as Chris does about Sigur Ros ( ) which he so eloquently wrote about above. The music, while eerily off-putting at times, is beautiful. Though, unlike Jonsi from Sigur Ros, Thom Yorke is singing in English and you can understand most of his lyrics.
In my crazy head, the album Kid A will always be connected to the movie Almost Famous. They really have nothing to do with each other, but I can’t think of one without eventually thinking of the other. They came out around the same time. Almost Famous in September 2000 and Kid A a few weeks later. A week or so after that, Saturday Night Live had Radiohead as the musical guest and the host was, new Hollywood “It Girl” and star of Almost Famous, Kate Hudson. She really blew up after that movie came out. They threw her in a ton of crap movies and you couldn’t go to a newsstand without seeing her on several magazine covers. Like this Rolling Stone cover from late October 2000.
Not too shabby in the looks department but not really my type. I always liked the actress that played the sister in Almost Famous better, Zooey Deschanel. She’s been involved in much better projects than Kate since then and is in the indie band, She and Him, which gets her astronomically more cool points. I guess Kate did marry the dude from the Black Crowes but that doesn’t really help her cause in my book. And again, I have a weakness for brunettes.
Anyways, I bought that Rolling Stone magazine at the O’hare International Airport before a business flight to Tampa Bay. The two main articles in it are about… you guessed it… Radiohead’s Kid A and the movie Almost Famous.
The last 45 minutes of the flight were pretty bumpy as we came through some bad weather. At times it felt like we were riding a roller coaster as we suddenly gained and lost altitude. I’m not scared of flying but like most people, I find rocketing through the air in a tin can a bit less fun when the tin can is being thrown around by turbulence. I put on my headphones and queued up the first song on Kid A to try and relax. “Everything in It’s Right Place” came over my headphones and did nothing to soothe my nerves. It has a pretty ominous sound to it and made me feel even more like we might not make it safely to the ground. We hit a very bumpy stretch a bit later and when I looked out the window I could see lightning and huge storm clouds ahead.
There is a great part in the movie Almost Famous were the central characters are in a small airplane that has engine troubles and they believe they are going to die as they plummet to the earth. Everyone on board takes the opportunity to make major announcements about there sexuality and/or air out long held grievances. The plane eventually rights itself and they realize that they aren’t going to die. Awkward!
I definitely wasn’t going to be sharing any major revelations with the chatty 300 lb. dude wedged into the seat next to me. So, I just closed my eyes and tried to appear as though I was calmly sleeping through the worst plane flight of my life. At that point, the song “How to Disappear Completely” came over the headphones. This time the music and lyrics actually made me feel better.
Strobe lights and blown speakers
Fireworks and hurricanes
I’m not here
This isn’t happening
I’m not here
I’m not here
I’m not here
I just kept on listening and by the time the album was over so was the storm. I opened my eyes and there was nothing but clear skies ahead. The rest of the flight went smoothly and we touched down in sunny Florida with our lives and our dignity intact. Although, the dude next to me did reveal that he had been a bed wetter until the age of 15.
(Before I go on about Pazz and Jop, can I ask once again what’s so great about Channel Orange, especially when you consider just how amazing Ocean’s 2011 “mixtape” Nostalgia, Ultra is? That album is far more interesting and alive; I find Channel Orange to be boring by comparison. Where the fuck were all you people last year? I was at the front of the line, putting Nostalgia #2 of 2011, and Todd wasn’t far behind at #6. So I really wanted to like Channel Orange. Look at my top 3 discs of 2012: sophomore efforts by the xx, Sleigh Bells, and Best Coast. I don’t automatically jump ship after the debut…but I just don’t hear the greatness of Channel Orange.
Music or Space Shuttle? 