KGB's "Yet Another Favorite Albums" list

[KGB]

I already tried to hijack MJ's thread, but with the explosion of clone threads, I'm going to extract my posts from that one and make my own thread. However, not matter how pleasing to the eye they are, I won't be finding pictures of album covers, dumping them into Photobucket, and then uploading them to my thread. Sorry. I's too lazy.

#1, The Beatles Revolver

You often hear that Sgt. Pepper was the reply to Pet Sounds, which was the reply to Rubber Soul. Where the hell does that leave this one then? Unbelievable album; every music fan owes to themselves to get this one. It can be argued that this was the strongest album for John, Paul, and George, certainly John and George. It's hard to believe that an album that starts so strongly (Taxman and Elinor Rigby) and finishes so strongly (Got To Get You Into My Life and Tomorrow Never Knows) doesn't have a weak stretch.

#2, Miles Davis Kind of Blue

Kind of Blue works on almost every level you can think of. It's both intricate, experimental jazz that hardened fanatics can appreciate, and still works perfectly as unobtrusive background music for jazz novices. These isn't another jazz album that works any better as an introduction to the art form. I don't think it's possible to get tired of listening to this.

#3, Donald F_agen Kamakiriad

Love Steely Dan and I love F_agen's solo work even better. This one's purely personal. The year this came out we had a long, cold winter and I spent many a day grooving to "Snowbound" while looking out the window at the white landscape. The rest of the songs are also marvelously crafted that stand up well to repeated listening.

#4, Rheostatics The Blue Hysteria

This is the first of several Canadian bands to make my list. The Rheostatics are almost undefinable in genre. "Bad Time to Be Poor" invokes Neil Young, while "Four Little Songs" owes something to Abbey Road. There are power ballads and power pop, and in true Rheos fashion, the album ends with an extended suite of songs, only to rise from the dead with a hidden track that pays homage to all the concerts singer Dave Bidini attended as a youth.

#5, The Smiths The Queen Is Dead

If you went to high school in the 80s and you shunned hair metal, then you fell back on bands like The Smiths and The Cure. I was never a goth or a pre-emo moper, but I loved the Smiths with a passion and this is their strongest work. You should never open with a show stopper, but the title track is undoubtedly the highlight of the album. Fortunately, the rest of the album is evenly strong, especially the stretch from "Cemetry Gates" to "Vicar In A Tutu".

#6, The Police Ghost In The Machine

The Police are gods to me and this is the album that stands out the most to me. This is Andy Summers's best work for the Police and the stark lyrics and arrangements were a nice change up from the glistening guitar pop of Zenyatta Mondatta. Besides, I'm just a sucker for horns and they're sprinkled liberally throughout.

#7, The Tragically Hip Fully Completely

Another Canadian entrant. Fans of the Toronto Maple Leafs will forever associate this album with the team's playoff run in 1993, driven by the song "Fifty Mission Cap," which ruminated on Bill Barilko's Cup winning goal in 1951. Pure Canadiana, with strong songwriting across the board, peaking with songs like "Courage" (look for Sarah Polley's cover version in the Atom Egoyen flick The Sweet Hereafter) and "Wheat Kings".

#8, Sloan Twice Removed

The Kings of Canadian power pop prove that sometimes there is no sophomore jinx as this, their second album is astoundingly good. The clever "Pen Pals" kicks things off a first side with yummy goodness that will last several. Much like the Beatles, all four guys sing and write songs which keeps things fresh throughout. To great effect they employ the trick of including a lighthearted throwaway song at the end of the album to keep the listener on his toes, as the jangle-dirge of "Before I Do" gives way to "I Can Feel It." Canadian music magazine Chart Attack named this album the greatest Canadian album of all time, two years ago.

#9, U2 The Unforgettable Fire

I remember a similar list many years ago that named this album as one of the 50 worst albums of all time! Ridiculous. Fortunately, this seems to have been given a reappraisal and is now getting the respect it deserves. Brian Eno takes over for Steve Lillywhite in the producer's chair and gives us a moody and atmospheric piece de resistance. It would be followed by the seminal The Joshua Tree but this is the U2 album that keeps me coming back for more.

#10, REM Lifes Rich Pageant

Michael Stipe's lyrics come out of the background here and the gain knob on the amps gets turned up as REM rocks this one hard. "Fall on Me" and "Superman" are well-worn, but hardly the only strong tracks on the album.

[KGB]

#11, The Beatles With The Beatles

Gotta disagree with you on this one, Mighty Jack. The American albums just don't cut it. With The Beatles is superior to Meet The Beatles, despite the absence of "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" and the incredible "She Loves You". Why? Because this is the way the Fabs envisioned it, and that' s good enough for me.

#12, Talking Heads Remain In Light

A total trip of an album. The lone hit "Once In A Lifetime" is probably the best of Talking Heads' radio friendly tunes. On top of that comes "Crosseyed and Painless" and "The Great Curve" making side 1 a real tour de force. Layers and layers of sounds build up each song to a crescendo or sustain infectious grooves. I'm always surprised that more of the licks from this album haven't been sampled for flavor-of-the-month hip hop songs.

#13 Stewart Copeland Rumble Fish Soundtrack

Except for the opening song, "Don't Box Me In," in which Wall Of Voodoo's Stan Ridgeway provides vox, these are all instrumentals. Stewart seems to have invented a unique musical genre with this album. Of course its foundation lies in percussion, but the melodies are beautiful, complemented by tape loops of every day sounds, many corresponding to the movie's theme of time passing.

#14 Odds Good Weird Feeling

Yet another Canadian band. Some of you might remember their mild hit "Heterosexual Man". Damn, the early 90s was a great time for Canadian music. Odds are yet another band that are nearly impossible to pigeon hole. At first glance you might think them a guitar driven party band, but they're just too intelligent for that. Although I love everything in their small catalogue, this is their most eclectic, challenging, and enjoyable. In the summer of '96 I spent 3 months backpacking through Southeast Asia. In those unimaginable days before mp3 players, I had a casette walkman and about 8 tapes with me, this being one of them. For three months I had little choice but to listen to this almost every day, the famed desert island scenario. It stood up so well.

#15 Miles Davis Sketches of Spain

I'm sure that music and jazz scholars can explain much better than I why this album gets to you. I can only say that if you're feeling down and out, the plaintive Spanish tones here will suck you in completely.

#16 The Cars Candy O

When I showed a very musically inclined friend my list, this was the one album he took issue with, calling The Cars "Everything that was wrong with New Wave." I respectfully disagree. If you're burned out on the debut album, move on to this and refresh yourself. The hits, "Let's Go", "It's All I Can Do", and "Dangerous Type" validate the greatness of this album, but there's lots more, including the one-two punch of the punk derived title track and "Night Spots", a synthesizer/guitar freak out.

#17 The Cure Disintigration

I made this list 6 months ago and if any album has moved up since then, it's this one. Wow, just wow! It's almost impossible to overhype this album. Much like Remain In Light, every song on this album stacks layer after layer of sounds on top of each other until your floating away in Robert Smith's dreamscapes. Despite the many songs lasting 5 or more minutes, you'll wish they went on even longer. At over 9 minutes, "The Same Deep Water As You" ends all too soon and you'll be queing it up over and over again.

#18 Rheostatics Melville

The Rheos are the third act to appear twice, after The Beatles and Miles Davis. Yes, they're that strong an act. I don't know if you can get into a Rheostatics album upon first listen, but a little patience is its own reward. 1991's Melvillle was the Rheos second effort, 4 years after the debut album, entitled Greatest Hits. These music nuts put those 4 years to good service as this is a huge step forward and would mark the beginning of a storied career as musical story tellers extrordinaire.

#19 The Beach Boys Pet Sounds

You just knew it had to be there, right? How come I haven't seen this on your list, MJ? Brian Wilson's genius finally unleashed. Some may knock it for being so overly contrived, and if you've ever listened to the outtakes for this album and the aborted Smile album, you might be tempted to agree that it was overly micro-managed. But how can you argue with the results? Anything that could knock the socks of of the 1966 Paul McCartney has got to be damn good and this is.

#20 John Coltrane Crescent

I'm a modest jazz fan. That jazz albums are 15% of my top 20 is just about right. I can't stand rock guitarists that truck in what I call "wanker solos" and sometimes Coltrane's sax ventures dangerously into that territory, but on Crescent he's got it under control. The keys to this album for me, though, are the vamps that McCoy Tyner lays down on the ivories to sustain Coltrane's wanderings. Listen to the first 30 seconds of "Wise One" and tell me you're not listening to something special.

[KGB]

#21 Siouxsie and the Banshees Nocturne

The first live album on my list. One night in high school, I came home drunk and flipped on CBC television (I'm not even Canadian but look how much influence that country's had on my list) to find them broadcasting the Siouxsie concert from which this material was culled and it blew my mind. From the opening, pulsating bass line to "Israel" to the final frantic conclusion of "Voodoo Dolly", it was mesmerizing. To this day it's my favorite live album of all time.

#22 Cocteau Twins Four-Calendar Cafe

Quite simply, "Know Who You Are At Every Age" is one of the best opening songs to any album. Unfortunately the rest of the album doesn't quite live up to the expectations it creates, but this is still a very solid effort. I adore the Cocteau Twins and this was the best candidate for inclusion on a list like this.

#23 Donald F_agen The Nightfly

This is almost certainly a better conceptual album than Kamakiriad. Donald writes this album from the viewpoint of a suburban D.J. in the late 50s, anxiously awaiting the wonderfully modern world that will greet him in his dotage. Listening to the album in our present circumstances we should be disappointed in what's transpired, instead we're inspired to dream the same dreams for ourselves and our own future. Musically, this is a perfect balance of depth and catchiness.

#24 Dr. Dre The Chronic

Oh hell yeah! Okay, I know much of the album was sampled from Parliament/Funkadelic, but you can't tell me that Dre and Co. didn't take it to another level. Coming out of the L.A. riots of 1992, this album is a perfect snapshot of a troubled era. It also introduced the honey voiced Snoop Doggy Dogg to the world, and has it ever really been the same?

#25 Lush Gala

Lolapalooza '92 had a stacked lineup, Soundgarden, Ministry, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, and the hottest band in the country at that moment: Peal Jam. But it was the opening act, Lush, that blew me away that day with their vocal harmonies and swirling, well lush, guitars. I got this album the next day and still listen to it regularly.

#26 Rolling Stones Sticky Fingers

Hard to believe I got this far without a Stones album. It took me years to settle on a favorite from the "Big 4", but this is the one. It's more concise than Exile and just a tad bit better than [/i]Begger's Banquet[/i]. I don't care if I ever hear "Brown Sugar" again, but somewhere deep inside me I know it's a great tune. In all of rock does there exist a more thrilling moment than the first few bars of "Can't You Hear Me Knockin'?" And "Moonlight Mile" is one of the rare rock ballads that doesn't lapse into schmaltz, but instead does its duty as a worth counterbalance to the hard stuff that precedes it.

#27 Smashing Pumpkins Gish

One of the biggest disappointments of the 90s was slowly discovering that Gish was a fluke. Don't get me wrong, I played the crap out of Siamese Dream, and dug some of the songs on Mellon Collie, but nothing the Pumpkins ever did matched up to the truly melancholy Gish. I must be one of those rare people who don't find Billy Corgan's voice annoying.

#28 The Beatles The Beatles

Ah yes, the White Album. The basic reason for this is that it's 4 sides of Beatles, not 2, therefore it's just better. Double albums are hard to pull off, but this one's a winner all the way through. As great as the album itself turned out, I recommend the Kinfauns bootleg recordings, which are demos of this album that the Beatles recorded at George's home. It's basically an unplugged version of the White Album. The best thing about this album was seeing John and George re-assert themselves before Paul could completely take over the band.

#29 Steely Dan Aja

Steely Dan seems to draw the ire of music fans who are more punk oriented, I've heard them called "jazz for Deadheads", but I think that opinion is rooted in ignorance. The music may have at times had jazz elements to it, but the lyrics described a world of desperate men and women, mired in drugs, failed relationships, and taboos. If anything, it was often more depressing than anything punk had to offer.

#30 Led Zeppelin III

Nestled between the mega hits of II and IV is this rock solid album. The album kicks off with the a**-kicking "Immigrant Song" and continues to rock hard on the first side, including the obligitory blues haunt, "Since I've Been Loving You", before slowing things down on the second side with "Tangerine" and the lovely "That's The Way". The latter was featured in the movie Almost Famous.

[vanhagar3000]

No WCW Slam Jam?

[Shep]

kgb said:

#5, The Smiths The Queen Is Dead

If you went to high school in the 80s and you shunned hair metal, then you fell back on bands like The Smiths and The Cure. I was never a goth or a pre-emo moper, but I loved the Smiths with a passion and this is their strongest work. You should never open with a show stopper, but the title track is undoubtedly the highlight of the album. Fortunately, the rest of the album is evenly strong, especially the stretch from "Cemetry Gates" to "Vicar In A Tutu".

Incredible album. "The Boy With A Thorn In His Side" is one of my favorite songs of all time.

[KGB]

vanhagar3000 said:

No WCW Slam Jam?

Watch these pages, VH!

[KGB]

#31 Orb Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld

I actually had the Live 93 album first, which includes several songs culled from this, the debut album by Orb. Given the electronic nature of their songs, it's not surprising that the differences are minimal in the presentation of each song. I was a fan of "Little Fluffy Clouds" when it came out, but I never bothered buying any albums. It wasn't until the end of the decade that one of my friends let me borrow and copy some of their work.

#32 Sloan One Chord to Another

The follow up to Twice Removed showed that Sloan were not just a flash in the pan. The pop quotient was raised with this one, as the Sloan formula of having a Patrick Pentaland penned tune as the first single was established. "Everything You've Done Wrong" shows exactly what Sloan can do right, tight harmonies over a melody born in pop heaven. When a band spreads around the songwriting duties as equally as Sloan, it's remarkable that they're able to produce albums so evenly consistent.

#33 Morcheeba Big Calm

I'd heard a few singles on the local college station and liked them, but never knew who the artist was. Then, I was sitting in a cafe in China with a couple guys from Italy when this album began playing. It was they who were able to answer that question. I thought that was appropriate because I find the lack of testosterone in their music distinctly European. Right from the opening track, "The Sea," you realize that Big Calm take you on a cool, comfortable trip to mellow land.

#34 The Police Zenyatta Mondatta

The Police's third effort marked a distinct change of direction from the Stewart Copeland influenced Reggatta De Blanc. Where that album retained the punk/reggae influences of the debut Outlandos D'Amour, Zenyatta Mondatta features clean, crisp guitars, Stewart Copeland's trademark high hat sound, and strong song writing from Sting. The hits, "Don't Stand So Close To Me," "De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da," are radio friendly and the rest of the album shows off Sting's emerging preeminance within the band.

#35 The Smiths Louder Than Bombs

Comprised of singles, b-sides, Peel sessions and other detritus, this is the Smiths at their poppy best. Even when the subject matter of Morrissey's lyrics descend into morbid paeans to death and depression, Johnny Marr's melodies and arrangements keep things bouncing along nicely. "Panic" and "Ask" are two of the best songs this group did, and are prime examples of the sunny nature of the songs overshadowing the joyless lyrics, thus creating the veneer of irony that would mark the rest of Morrissey's career.

#36 The Beatles Rubber Soul

As Beatlemania begins to run its course, and the mild disappointments of Beatles For Sale and Help! sink in, The Fab Four come out swinging with a quantum leap forward in songwriting and musicianship. This one will forever cement the primacy of the album over the single, as over the course of 14 songs, the Beatles create a distinct sound coupled with rhythmic variations that were quite experimental for their time. On a personal note, I'm always shocked at how often "What Goes On?" (the first song that will list Starkey as a songwriter) is mentioned as the worst song on the album. I love the quirky country rhythm and choogling guitar.

#37 Neil Young Weld

So many cool albums by Neil and maybe Everybody Knows This is Nowhere or After the Gold Rush are better, but this, a 1991 live album by Neil is still my favorite. There are a few moments of guitar wankery that have me looking at my watch, but overall Neil brings his 'A' game to this. Furthermore, the song selection is outstanding, including "Cortez The Killer," "Like A Hurricane," "Cinnamon Girl," and "Powderfinger." I'm not a Dylan fan at all, but a haunting "Blowin' In The Wind" is also among the highlights.

#38 Frankie Goes To Hollywood Welcome To The Pleasuredome

Okay, make all the jokes you want, but there weren't many better albums made during the mini-British invasion of the early MTV days. The first disc features the mega hit "Relax" and its follow up "Two Tribes", along with the epic title track, while the second disc is peppered with an interesting array of covers ("San Jose" and "Born To Run") and originals. Here's some advice for you lovelorn high schoolers out there, put "The Power of Love" onto the next mixed tape you make for the girl of your affections. She'll be putty in your hands. I speak from experience.

#39 The Clash London Calling

What's left to say about London Calling? I was never a punk nut and for years my only exposure to this album was "London Calling" and "Train In Vain". Because I didn't care much for the title track, and assumed the rest of the album was of a piece, I never felt the urge to further explore. It wasn't until I was in Vietnam a few years ago and was able to buy up tons of bootlegged albums at minimal cost did I decide to give London Calling a chance. Wow, well worth it. Grand in scale, the snarling aggression is suffused with a brassy accessibility. Even chicks can dig this album

#40 Alice in Chains Dirt

At the height of grunge, Alice In Chains set new standards in "grunginess" with this filthy dirty homage to drug use and despair. Although I love and appreciate Nirvana, Alice In Chains was for me the best of the Seattle bands. 1993 was the height of grunge, so songs like "Them Bones," "Rooster," and "Would" got airplay that today would be denied them. I'm listening to this album as I type this, my god is it stark. All the drug talk, whether overtly ("Junkman") or implied ("Down In A Hole," one of the greatest songs in rock history) probably sounded so cool to me back then, but would become less funny when Layne Staley died of an overdose a decade later. Still, as morbid as it sounds, his death only increases the punch that this album packs.

[mightyjack]

You know I never could get into the Clash much. I was the complete opposit from you, I bought the album because I loved those two tracks you mentioned, and was very disappointed that the rest of the lp didn't really didn't move on that same line. I'll pop it on every one in a while when I'm told how great it is. But it never completely clicks, and I so want to love this album. (I do LOVE the cover, riffing on the first #1 charting album in rock history)

I'm also trying to decide if I like Television's "Marquee Moon" enough to include it on my list. I dunno, I guess I preferred American punk and new wave over their British brethren who got all the attention.