Jeremy's 300 All-Time Favorite Albums: Nos. 106 to 91
- petsch6787
- Apr 29, 2017
- 17 min read
Other Pages in this list: Nos. 300-286 Nos. 285-271 Nos. 270-257 Nos. 256-241 Nos. 240-225 Nos. 224-209 Nos. 208-192 Nos. 191-175 Nos. 174-158 Nos. 157-141 Nos. 140-124 Nos. 123-107 Nos. 90-75 Nos. 74-59 Nos. 58-43 Nos. 42-27 Nos. 26-11 Nos. 10-01
Oh boy, we are crossing into double digits on this post. We've reached a threshold I am not comfortable with! Turning thirty is so close! Nah, I'm comfortable with it. But picking these albums has been really hard, starting with last week's post. All these albums are very near and dear to my heart, so I hope you will enjoy!
106. Kanye West - Graduation
Year of Release: 2007
If you would have asked me three weeks ago which Kanye West album was my favorite, I would have thought for a second and said "Hmm, probably Graduation" but this experience of ranking my favorite albums was supposed to be one of self-exploration and through this exploration, it became clear to me that Graduation is actually my third favorite Kanye album. This is less a knock on Graduation than it is a realization of my love for two other Kanye albums (more on that in later weeks). What is it that makes Graduation great? Well, it's the first album where Kanye started using synthesizers and keyboard lines for his back beats (also just straight up sampling Daft Punk on Stronger works, also). There are still plenty of soul vocal samples, like the "Did you realize that you were a champion in their eyes" on Champion, but it's balanced out with a big fat fuzzy synth beat. Same thing with I Wonder. Can't Tell Me Nothing is the cockiest song ever, and one of the two videos created for it features Zach Galifianakis on his farm. Look it up. It's worth a watch. Actually, I'll post it as the video below this. You just gotta scroll down in that little video window to hit the play button and then you can make it fullscreen in this window. Plus, Flashing Lights is probably the best song ever created. Like seriously tell me that Flashing Lights isn't one of the greatest songs ever made. What? You disagree? Well, you're wrong.
Song: Can't Tell Me Nothing
105. Material Issue - Destination Universe
Year of Release: 1992
This album is as integral to my childhood as, say, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. My dad had this album on tape and on CD, it was listened to quite often, and when I moved out of the house, I bought copies of both this album and International Pop Overthrow. Material Issue made perfect pop songs about love (and the requisite one song about killing someone). The songs on Destination Universe have lyrics that are just as interesting as on the previous album, but the thing that puts Destination Universe ahead of International Pop Overthrow is the increase of production quality. The vocals on When I Get This Way (Over You) sound like a wave crashing, and the siren guitars on What Girls Want pretty much blow your ears out. Girl From Out of This World is about a beautiful woman from outer space scooping up the narrator and bringing him back to her planet. This song misled young Jeremy into thinking that at some point the love of your life would just show up. This turned out to be wrong. Who will be responsible for the lax attitude pop music has towards the ability to find true love. Been misled! That song is also the only reason that I know what color chartreuse is. Is there a sweeter line than "Kiss me like you lost me and you found me"?
Song: Don't You Think I Know
104. Sufjan Stevens - Michigan
Year of Release: 2003
The first of two state themed albums, Michigan is also the slower paced of the two, with Illinois being a bit more upbeat and spritely. But that is not to take anything away from Michigan, the financial plight of that state alone allows for a musical tribute to it to be more pensive and sad than its successor. Also, Michigan is the state that Stevens grew up in, so the songs have a thematic bend towards the state, but the theme structure also allows him to explore more personal topics. This is also the first album that Stevens started using long song titles such as They Also Mourn Who Do Not Wear Black (For the Homeless in Muskegon) or For the Widows in Paradise, for the Fatherless in Ypsilanti. The songs on this album are beautiful and they are the first time that Stevens takes all of his skills and doles them out properly to create a wonderful soundscape. Say Yes To M!ch!gan! opens with a gentle piano and a gentle flutter of horns, while Tahquamenon Falls consists solely of an ambient organ chord with xylophone notes quietly chugging through. The emotional centerpiece of the album, though, is the hushed, devastating Holland, sung over a piano and acoustic guitar. Stevens laments the loss of the innocence and freedom of college. That song makes me cry, I cried on Monday at work when I listened to it for this post.
Song: Holland
103. Pet Shop Boys - Please
Year of Release: 1986
I checked my iTunes, and I downloaded this album almost exactly three years ago, beginning a multi-year exploration of everything that Pet Shop Boys had ever made, but the impetus to download this album in the first place came from the same place that so many other revolutionary ideas come from: Grand Theft Auto V. There is a Flight of the Conchords song that I enjoy that parodies West End Girls, but I had never heard the actual song it was parodying, so when West End Girls came on the Non-Stop Pop station in GTA V, I knew immediately what song it was, and I liked the beat, so I got myself a copy of Please. This album is a little raw, but still great for a debut, and there are great songs on here that foreshadow the leap forward they would make on their next release, Actually. The tracks on the second side of the album are what really drew me in, specifically the uber-80's synth-pop of Violence (when people tell me they don't like this song, I quickly realize we don't have similar musical tastes) and the piano ballad Later Tonight. It's hard for me to believe that in three years Pet Shop Boys went from not being a part of my life at all to being easily the artist with the most entries on my list of my 300 favorite albums. But it's true!
Song: Violence
102. Veruca Salt - Eight Arms to Hold You
Year of Release: 1997
I like chicks that rock, I think this has probably been established at this point. Veruca Salt has two chicks that rock, and as such, I am a fan. Eight Arms to Hold You is their second album, and the final with the original line-up. When I was growing up, I always fashioned myself a fan of Nina Gordon, but during my most recent stroll through Veruca Salt Lane, I took a look at the inside of the CD jacket and I realized that most of my favorite songs from the album were written and sung by Louise Post. My mind was blown. What else don't I know about myself? Is Paul not really my favorite Beatle? (He is). Is LeBron actually a good guy who is worth rooting for? (He is not). It turns out that all of the songs I found less interesting and occasionally lyrically challenged (Awesome, David Bowie, The Morning Sad) were all written by Gordon, and all the songs that Post wrote are generally hard rocking, with more complicated imagery. Post gave us the fist pumping opener Straight, the desperation sex is better than no sex motif of One Last Time, and the centerpiece of the album: the whisper turns to a shout of Shutterbug. I don't want this to seem like a big hate fest on Nina Gordon though, she wrote a bunch of good tracks too, including the ballad Benjamin, and two of the three awesome closing tracks: Stoneface and Earthcrosser. I'm glad we got this album before the band broke up, and I'm glad they recently got back together, because old 90's bands are better than no 90's bands.
Song: Shutterbug
101. Garbage - Version 2.0
Year of Release: 1998
I certainly did not start listening to this album in 1998 when it was released, I think that my first exposure to Version 2.0 was a burned copy in high school from Kaley (I had listened to their self-titled debut plenty, but hadn't explored further). This was also around the same time that the Cubs almost made it to the World Series before they got Bartmaned (or Bakered) out of the NLCS. Any time we lost a game in that series, I would take Xena out for a walk around our neighborhood and through the fields next to Richland and would blast this album on my headphones and sing out loud to let out my Cubs induced frustration. Garbage's debut album was a mix of grungey alternative rock and electronic music, but the lean was heavily towards rock; on Version 2.0 the lean pendulumed over to the electronic side (where they would stay firmly through their next album, see entry No. 265). I especially like it on this album when they get really dark and electro, such as on Hammering in my Head and Push It, the two tracks that appear halfway through the album and start pushing it further and further towards the production booth. The Trick Is to Keep Breathing is probably my favorite song on this album, it's slower than most of the album but it doesn't suffer for it like Medication (the only song on this album I don't like). Where Medication seems hollow, The Trick is to Keep Breathing is full of trip-hop energy: little tinny drum beats behind an ethereal sound glow.
Song: The Trick is to Keep Breathing
We did it y'all. We made it to the Top 100. To quote the great poet Samuel L. Jackson, "Hold on to your butts!"
100. Lostprophets - Start Something
Year of Release: 2004
Lostprophets's second album was released while I was working at the movie theater and, similar to Nine Inch Nails's Pretty Hate Machine, was a big player in my "walking home from work down Plainfield Rd." rotation. Start Something took the metal sound from their first album and mixed it with some moody emo tones and experimented with interludes based around sampling and scratching (something that would be abandoned after this album, when the band devolved into some kind of emo-glam mess). The vocals on this album fluctuate from screaming to over-earnest singing, but high school Jeremy was an over-earnest kind of guy, so it hit me with the right chord. I had a dream when I was in high school to learn how to play bass so that I could assemble a group of people (my friend Joe on drums) to play the title song from this album at the Variety Show, but similar to most of my plans, no follow through. Damn though, it would have been sweet to hear the crowd cheer after the closing gong.
Song: I Don't Know
99. Air - Love 2
Year of Release: 2009
This is easily the most French album on my list. Love 2 was released two years after Pocket Symphony, and in every way that Pocket Symphony is cold and kind of boring, Love 2 is filled with warmth and exploration. Pocket Symphony lived inside sterile computers, while Love 2 is full of fuzzy guitar riffs and 70's keyboard weirdness. This album goes all over the place, the opening track Do the Joy is a spaced out freaky jam, with the vocals modulated to sound like a crusty robot. The next track Love starts with the sound of a rattle followed by a simple beat reminiscent of Air's debut album with a soft robot voice repeating the phrase Love, and then at some point something hatches out of an egg in the background (most likely to signify the new birth of that love everyone is singing about). Everything there is to love about Air makes an appearance on this album, there's a fast paced paranoia inducer (Be a Bee), there's a seven minute epic with the first half sounding like a gentle saxophone lost in a ice covered jungle and the second half a slowed down plea for love (Tropical Disease). This album is kind of like if their first album, Premiers Symptomes, had a baby with their best album, Walkie Talkie. Love 2 is definitely their best album of the last ten years. This album goes all over the place, give it a listen, it's fun for all ages and for anyone who loves French guitar and keyboards.
Song: Eat My Beat
98. No Doubt - Rock Steady
Year of Release: 2001
Back in the Napster era, downloading songs was the Wild West, you just found something that you thought was the song you wanted, downloaded it over the span of an hour, and then prayed to Jesus that it was what you were actually looking for. One night when I was spending the night at my childhood best friend, James's house, I downloaded what I thought was an early release of this album. Turns out that they were really just two and a half minute long loops of single verses from each song, so not the actual album, but still a neat first experience with my favorite band's upcoming record. When I bought the CD and realized that the tracks had regular song structures, I was a bit relieved. Rock Steady is the album where No Doubt stopped trying to rock, and really started trying to groove. Most of the songs on this album move along at a leisurely pace, which makes sense because the band wrote and recorded a big chunk of this album in Jamaica. There are a handful of guest producers on this album, so the sound of the album can be a little scattered; the song that Ric Ocasek produced sounds like a Cars song, Start the Fire has dancehall producers Steely & Clevie, and that song is super dubby at the end. There's even a song that Prince produced and is featured on. I can still remember when the video for Hey Baby was premiered on TRL, fourteen year old Jeremy's heart was about to explode.
Song: Detective
97. Incubus - Make Yourself
Year of Release: 1999
Make Yourself is the album where Incubus lost all of their weird, but it's the album before they lost their sense of humor. Once they lost both, I couldn't stick around much longer. But luckily, they also didn't lose their propensity for getting loud (except on Drive, which of course was the most popular song on this album because people are freaking boring and unimaginative). I first started listening to Incubus when Stellar came out and became a big time radio hit, as well as a TRL hit. Brandon Boyd's lyrics for this album seem to come from an angry place, but not necessarily anger towards a person, but more towards the system. In the title song he sings, "If I hadn't made me, I'd be more inclined to bow, Powers that be would have swallowed me up, But that's more than I can allow." And on Nowhere Fast, he seems frustrated with the idea of trying to follow a path to happiness, "Will I ever get to where I'm going, If I do will I know when I'm there?" The deejaying on this album is fun, with the standout in that department being the instrumental Battlestar Scralatchtica. But I think we all know what the best song on this album is. It's The Warmth. That song is awesome, it's got the cool whale noises, the trippy modulated guitar, followed by the overlord guitar riff. This isn't my favorite Incubus album (for sentimental reasons) but it is probably the best one.
Song: The Warmth
96. Bush - The Science of Things
Year of Release: 1999
There was a time in the late nineties when a lot of rock bands were incorporating elements of electronic music. I imagine a lot of critics and snobs consider this to be a subpar part of musical history. I think they are wrong. I have noticed through this ranking process that a lot of my favorite albums are created by artists taking a step out of their genre, grabbing some interesting influences, and bringing them back to their home and integrating them in their own way. This is why Deftones are one of my favorite bands and how Garbage has three albums in my Top 300. This is also, I think, the reason that I enjoy this Bush album so much. Sure, Bush has made lots of good alternative rock, and there is plenty of it on The Science of Things, but they also take a lot of chances on this album, and I find all of them to be rewarding. The first four songs of the album are a melting pot of hard rock, starting with the straightforward Warm Machine and concluding with the churning, repeating guitar riff that plays straight through the entirety of English Fire. Then they quiet it down with the stargazing Space Travel, and the hushed masterpiece 40 Miles from the Sun. The second half is just as exploratory, with the sprawling fuzzed out guitar of Prizefighter, the space sound effects of Altered States, and the post-apocalyptic lean of Dead Meat. They don't make alternative rock like this these days. Or wait, maybe all alternative rock is like this now a days. I don't know. You decide, Reader, this one is on you.
Song: 40 Miles from the Sun
95. The Mars Volta - De-Loused in the Comatorium
Year of Release: 2003
I came to Mars Volta last out of the At the Drive-In/Sparta/Mars Volta triangle, and that's probably a good thing because this album is super weird, and definitely took a minute of patience to get into. If this wasn't the first prog rock album I had ever gotten into, it certainly was the first one to open my eyes. I didn't know there could be a two minute interlude composed only of a soundscape of dripping pipes and computer buzzes and so on. But then I got this album for Easter and I knew. This album basically consists of three main artistic factors: Cedric Bixler-Zavala's insane lyrics and high pitched singing, Omar Rodríguez-López's twisting and wailing guitar (backed up in a yeoman's effort by Flea on bass, nothing too flashy, just being the best bassist alive), and finally the soundscapes and effects of Jeremy Micheal Ward, who died of a heroin overdose a month before this album was released. But the styles of this album are all over the place, one second proggy effects, the next a gentle needling of Rodriguez-Lopez's guitar, which often has a south of the border twang to it. His guitar is really the driving force of the album. One of my shifts at the cafeteria my freshman year at Illinois was from 9PM to 1AM, cleaning the serving dishes at Saturday late night. I was the only one doing the dishes so I brought a little boombox and would just chill out back there for hours and blast hot water on half empty trays of hamburgers (and you should have seen the freaking size of the garbage disposal in this thing, you could dump an entire tray of old hot dogs in this thing no problem) and I would blast this album. People probably though (continue to think) that I was weird.
Song: Eria Tarka
94. Death Cab for Cutie - We Have the Facts and We're Voting Yes
Year of Release: 2000
From a couple of very loud albums, we now move on to an extremely quiet and slow album. This was another downloaded on the limited bandwidth internet of the Taft dormitories. This is far and away my favorite Death Cab album, it strikes me as strange that I absolutely adore every song on this album, but then on The Photo Album which they released the following year, I like literally only one song. Death Cab's discography is spotty on the Jeremy meter of enjoyment, spotty at best. So what sets this album apart from the lower level Death Cab albums? Well, it's nice and slow for a start. As was also the case with The Postal Service, I find that I enjoy Ben Gibbard's voice most when it is coming out in the form of a singing sigh, rather than when he tries to fiddle with melodies (or even worse, when a song is literally just him and a guitar, y'all know what song I mean). The songs on this album chronicle a failing relationship, so it makes sense that parts of it would be really slow, as the end of a relationship feels like an endless drag, every second either exhilaration or exasperation. Some of the lyrics on this album are incredibly poignant, like the opening to the delightfully slow paced Little Fury Bugs, "You discovered that casual friends kept notes in their pockets to remember your name." That line has always stuck with me because it would be such a devastating thing to find out. My favorite song is the penultimate track No Joy in Mudville, which begins "Last night I dreamt that I was you, I was dressed all in black with dark glasses and attitude, Such a pose I could simply not hold" which I interpret as a realization that he can no longer continue trying to adapt his personality to the person that he is dating, it's over.
Song: No Joy in Mudville
93. Portishead - Third
Year of Release: 2008
There are a lot of perils behind the idea of waiting eleven years between albums: your taste in music could drastically change, the public's demand for your music could drastically change. Luckily, Portishead waited eleven years between their self titled second album and Third, and their style of music changed a little bit, but the public reacted to it with fanfare. This is another "I didn't know music could sound like this" album, because the sound effects that the trio use as background beats can be kind of insane. The craziest effect is the background used for Plastic, which sounds like a fan whipping closer and closer to the microphone until it falls apart with eight quick drum beats. This repeats every twelve seconds for all of the verses. It took me a good twenty times listening to it before it stopped being distracting and started being the best part of the song. The beat for We Carry On is a sludgy synth beat but it is partnered with a non-stop quick repeated beeping. Machine Gun's beat is a mix of a deep house beat and a stuttering sample of an emergency siren (I think, who knows where these samples actually originate before they are warped and snipped up and so on). This all might sound grating but it's really just a commitment to understanding the music, and once you do put in the time and do understand it, it is extremely rewarding. Also shout out to The Rip, an absolutely beautiful song, the first half is achingly sung by Beth Gibbons over a simple acoustic guitar line, and half way through a swelling of music and sound comes to the forefront and turns into a repeating computer beat. I wonder what those electronic pioneers of disco from the seventies would think of how far away from that sound electronic music would go in just thirty-ish years.
Song: Nylon Smile
92. American Hi-Fi - American Hi-Fi
Year of Release: 2001
Stacey Jones stepped away from his drumming duties for Letters from Cleo, and temporarily Veruca Salt, to start his own band, and this is their debut album. It is most well know for the single Flavor of the Weak, but for it to be delegated as a vessel for just that song would be a shame because this entire album is pretty amazing. It's so good that I hadn't listened to it in a year or so, and there was still no question that this album was going to make it into the higher reaches of this list. Wikipedia labels this album as being pop-punk, but I think that other than Stacey Jones's vocal style, the band shares very little with the twee styles that populated the pop-punk genre. The guitars are heavier, and the album trends more towards a post-grunge style. Honestly, I think that this is a perfect alternative rock album. But what makes a perfect alt-rock album? I don't know. Catchy hooks, I guess. My understanding of the kind of rock that I like from when I was in junior high and high school is not as analytical as my understanding of the rest of my favorite music, probably because in those times, I was just looking for anything to rock out to, so the selection process was just you threw a bunch of different albums at the wall and figure out which ones stick with you. This one stuck in a big way.
Song: Hi Fi Killer
91. Deftones - Saturday Night Wrist
Year of Release: 2006
This is the album that almost destroyed Deftones. The recording process for this album was fraught with conflict between band members, and after it was completed, singer Chino Moreno stepped away from the band to release an album with Team Sleep (see entry No. 184). The catalyst for the band's healing process, unfortunately, was the 2008 car accident that bassist Chi Cheng was involved with that left him in a coma (of which he never recovered, eventually passing away in 2013). But prior to that, we did get this scatterbrained but rewarding tweener album. The band wasn't really recording together that much during this time, so Moreno plays more guitar on this album than any other Deftones release, since he was often in the studio writing and recording vocals. This is also the album with the least amount of screaming from Moreno (not that it would ever completely disappear, thankfully), but it is also the most musically melodic album except White Pony. We saw a lot of electronics starting to make their way into Deftones music starting with White Pony and expanding on the self-titled album, but this is the first album where the electronics are integrated in such a way that they don't stand out. They have become just another aspect of the Deftones instrumentation, Frank Delgado an integral part of the overall sound. I'm glad Deftones never ended up breaking up, but also that we got this album before they shifted back to their (superior) loud, head banging ways. Also, I think this is Brian's favorite Deftones album.
Song: Beware
Oh me, oh my! Another week in the books, and we have crossed the 100 threshold. What will we do next? Cross the 75 threshold? Actually, that's exactly what we are going to do next, so sit tight and I'll see you again next week when all the high schoolers are getting ready for Prom.
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