I got asked the other day to name my top 10 albums of all time. It was a throw away topic of conversation, but one that left my head reeling. What exactly makes an album one of my all time favourites? I made a shortlist of about 50 albums, but then I added more and more that I kept forgetting about. I dug through my records, I dug through my MP3's, hell, I even dug through my parent's 12" from the 70s.
The list covered all generations, from Creendence Clearwater Revival's Cosmo's Factory in the late 60s, Neil Young's Harvest in the early 70s, Tears for Fears' Songs from the Big Chair in the 80s, Dr Dre's Chronic in the 90s, Taking Back Sunday's Tell All Your Friends in the early emo 2000s and even as recent as Los Campesinos! and Dangers' albums of 2010. But none of those albums made the cut.
My shortist came down to about 20. And looking at it, it wasn't surprising if you know me. It covers the wide range of music I like. I stripped out multiple albums from the one band (damn you Modest Mouse) and stared at a list of 15. I then said fuck it and made the 10. So here it is. But first, some honourable mentions. Albums that just missed the cut:
Finch - Say Hello to Sunshine
Buckethead - Monsters and Robots
The Vandals - Hitler Bad. Vandals Good.
Against Me! - As the Eternal Cowboy
Alexisonfire - Crisis
Between the Buried and Me - Alaska
Poison the Well - Opposite of December
The Bouncing Souls - How I Spent My Summer Vacation
Brand New - Deja Entendu
Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
10.
Suicide Machines - Destruction by Definition
A surprising start, right? Not really if you've ever been in my car. My mate Elliot once commented how this album had never left my car in a year. And it's true. I play it almost weekly.
But what makes this album a classic to me, is the upbeat mix of punk, ska and hardcore. This album was all about kids having a good time and enjoying life. Let's just make a band and play all the styles of music we like singing songs about whatever is relevant to us. The Vans Song was all about shoes, New Girl is a guy boasting about his new girlfriend to whoever is within ear shot and Hey Ska is just a classic anthem of being confused about growing up.
Everytime I listen to this I just have flashbacks to being 14 and playing Tony Hawk's Pro Skater (#1) on the Nintendo 64 as well. Those were carefree days.
9.
The Roots - Game Theory
In a generation of throw away hip-hop albums, that generally show case 1 or 2 songs with "skits", this is a diamond in the rough. It's not got the outstanding tracks that their album Phrenology had, but this is one of those albums of yesteryears, where the sum of the whole is greater than the individual parts.
It builds up with a sample criticising wars before launching into what could almost be described as a broody post-punk kind of feel of False Media, with Black Thought touching some deep and meaningful territory. It builds up through In The Music before hitting full crescendo in Here I Come (quite possibly my song of 2006) before bringing it all the way back with Can't Stop This, a touching and hauting tribute to their friend.
While listening to this you ride the entire wave of emotions.
8.
The Fratellis - Costello Music
There is nothing about this album to make it a classic. It's far from anything original. But that's exactly why I love it. Costello Music was not recorded to change the face of music, it was recorded simply to make you dance. And it manages to do that for me every time. The up beat tempos channel Clash style punk as well as elements of ska and dance. It's just fast and full of energy.
7.
Sonic Youth - Goo
I am probably a little more than slightly obsessed with Goo. I have the CD. I have the re-issue 180 gram 12". I also have the album cover on a shirt. That last one is purely for the art appreciation of the cover. So musically, why is this the best Sonic Youth album from the 16 released in 30 years? And it's the songs. Goo is a hit factory.
Dirty Boots starts the album the way I like Sonic Youth: noisy and full of guitars. Kool Thing, featuring Chuck D of Public Enemy, is almost as mainstream pop-rock as Sonic Youth ever got. Mildred Pierce on the other hand is as far away from mainstream rock as it gets, a post-rock song ending with 30 seconds of almost pure grindcore. Goo demonstrates everything that is Sonic Youth, all in 11 tracks.
6.
Primus - Sailing the Seas of Cheese
There was no doubting that Primus would feature somewhere in my list and Sailing the Seas of Cheese is the obvious choice. Interesting, it is also the 2nd album on the list that featured a song on the soundtrack to the original Tony Hawk's Pro Skater (and Goldfinger almost made it as well, that must say a lot about the time I came into music).
Seas of Cheese holds the greatest collection of Primus songs, with most of them being outstanding tracks. The redneck drawl of Jerry Was A Racecar driver, the Tom Waits yelling-through-a-megaphone story of Tommy the Cat, the fast bass slapping of Is It Luck, the repetitive art-rock of Bastards and Those Damned Blue Collar Tweekers and the what the fuck moment of Grandad's Little Ditty... This album is everything Primus is. They've got great songs on all of their other albums, but that is generally padded by a few filler materials, of which Seas of Cheese has none.
The day I saw the album played live, front to back, was one of the greatest days of my life.
5.
Modest Mouse - Lonesome Crowded West
Musically, this album should be a disaster. It makes no sense. The mix of instruments at times is so borderline to being noise and at other times so soft that you strain to pick it up. The music itself throws out all theory and the lyrics are just pure whacked out nonsense. The only thing holding the madness together is Isaac Brock. And wow, he does.
The loud noisy freak outs of early Modest Mouse is what I love best about the band and Lonesome Crowded West has both Shit Luck and Doin' the Cockroach, both songs that build and layer noise into an explosion. Mellowing out the album are folkie tunes like Jesus Christ Was an Only Child, Long Distance Drunk and Bankrupt On selling.
The whole album teeters on the edge of lunacy with polar swings back and forth. The sound is huge for only a 5 piece band and marks the turning point of their career. They've mellowed out a bit since this album but this is what defined their sound as a band.
4.
Decemberists - Picaresque
Nautical European folk music. That is all.
But really, there is no modern story teller like Colin Melloy, the lead singer. Each track of Picaresque tells a story. And sometimes it is a very long story. That sounds like a sea shanty (The Mariner's Revenge Song). The music of the album paints the scenes almost as good as the words and you can just imagine yourself there. And when you're not imagining yourself in the story, you are imagining yourself around a campire in 19th century Europe listening to the gypsy nomads telling a musical story.
3.
Bob Dylan - Highway 61 Revisited
The most hated of Bob Dylan's albums (well at the time at least) is my favourite. This is where Bob Dylan turned his back on folk and his musical past. This is when he embraced the future and became a full electric rock band. And really, not much changed. Sure it was louder with more instruments, but there's still that Bob Dylan poetry through the whole album. And if anything, the band helped him write some really long songs, with great lyrical content. Doing that on a single acoustic guitar would've driven most listeners crazy. It was not quite the birth of rock 'n' roll, but Like a Rolling Stone, the classic opening track, launched mainstream rock to the world.
2.
Refused - The Shape of Punk to Come: A Chimerical Bombation In 12 Bursts
“They told me that the classics never go out of style, but…they do. They do. Somehow, baby, I never thought that we would too.” And with that intro to the album, Refused summed up their greatest and their last album, the band famously imploding a few months later in the middle of a US tour. This album is everything the title makes it out to be: it was the shape of punk to come. Breakdowns, electronic instruments and noise, classical interludes, songs shifting 180 degrees in the middle, singing with screaming, simple riffs coupled with complex harmonies, clean guitar leading into crunching distortion, it's all there. And these days the music world is overrun with it.
There is simply no better manifesto to everything this band stood for then this album. The album’s foreword states that “ideas can be expressed over any soundtrack” and this was the ideal soundtrack for it. The raw anger and disgust at capitalism and the politics of the modern world that was the core belief of the band is just released and jammed down our throats through Dennis' angry vocals and the bone crushing accompanying guitar work.
It's not just the music, it's the whole album. In the modern age of CD's and downloads, an album package is just something to hold the music. Not this album though, their entire philosophy and manifesto is there in the notes, for all to see.
1.
At the Drive-In - Relationship of Command
Relationship of Command mirrors so many aspects of Refused's Shape of Punk to Come, it's scary. Both albums were the band's final ones, scoring them their hard worked for success before the bands imploded. Both albums sound nothing like their previous work. Both albums took hardcore music to places no one had imagined.
Whereas Refused went the way of a crushing manifesto, At the Drive-In continued their absolutely gibberish: guitars that followed no musical path with lyrics of absolute nonsense. And it was amazing.
Personally, this album is what woke me up to music. 9th grade, my mate lent me the CD. 2 days later I had bought it (for $6.99 in Best Buy's up and coming artist display). A year later I had learnt most of the bass guitar parts and played along to it daily. 10 years later I am still listening to it over and over again, wishing for someone else to make music this fresh and new to me again.
The songs on the album have all been hand crafted with such intricacy, listen to the bass in Quarantined play with the sounds of the storm, the piano in Non-Zero Possibility, the crazy guitar in Cosmonaut... every single sound has been strategically thought out and placed. perfectly. It's a masterpiece.
