Jeremy's 300 All-Time Favorite Albums: Nos. 140 to 124
- petsch6787
- Apr 13, 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. 123-107 Nos. 106-91 Nos. 90-75 Nos. 74-59 Nos. 58-43 Nos. 42-27 Nos 26-11 Nos. 10-01
It's been quite a week for me. Actually, it hasn't. The weather has been fluctuating wildly between the high thirties and the high sixties, so the pollen count has been all over the place, causing my sinuses to go berserker, so really, I've spent the last week taking Excedrin and praying that it will last the day. Spring!
140. Limp Bizkit - Significant Other
Year of Release: 1999
I may have let sentimentality take over a little bit here with the placement of this Limp Bizkit album. I am not saying that this album should not be on this list, but I probably should have put them somewhere in the 170 range, but mistakes are made and sometimes you just have to live with your mistakes. Just ask America. Anyway, I was born in 1987, which means that I was twelve when this album came out. I just wanted to put that as a disclaimer, since I know there are a lot of Limp Bizkit haters out there. This is the best of their albums in my opinion, gaining them mad TRL time when Nookie came out (I have to imagine I've seen this video at least 500 times), followed by Re-Arranged and the Method Man collab N'Together Now. There are parts of this album where Limp Bizkit tries to step in the direction of Jane's Addiction (especially on Re-Arranged) and those parts are still the most rewarding, also when Durst just starts mad screaming or something, but the album definitely lacks when it relies on rap-rock, the most vile of the nu-metal incarnations. It can be done well (hell, Deftones are one of my three favorite bands, so I know it can be done well), but Durst doesn't do it so well. Still though, pinnacle album in my childhood, and also Break Stuff is fun to listen to when you are hammered in college. (Things were never actually broken).......(Or were they?).
Song: Nookie
139. Death Cab for Cutie - Transatlanticism
Year of Release: 2003
The first time that I ever heard Death Cab for Cutie was on the Dennis Miller show, a show I had never seen previously or since. I just happened to stumble upon it while I was flipping channels, so I asked for it for Christmas. I got it while we were celebrating Christmas at my Grandma's in Downers Grove, when we also ran out of eggnog. So, my sister and I took the Windstar and went on a hunt, and we listened to this album for the first time, and I almost backed up into another car during that trip. On an actual musical note, this is a great Death Cab album. I really enjoy when Death Cab actually plays as a band, and not as a Ben Gibbard playing an acoustic guitar (I really do not enjoy the album after this one). My favorite thing about this album is that it's so breezy, and there is a continuous wheezy, metallic sound effect that is playing in the background throughout the entire album, which really speaks to the skills that guitarist Chris Walla has as a producer. This album was really a gateway to a kind of indie-rock that I would get into for the next two years after this. Also, saw Death Cab at Foellinger right after Plans came out, don't love that album, but that concert was awesome.
Song: Lightness
138. !!! - Myth Takes
Year of Release: 2007
That album cover is a pretty good representation of the way this album sounds. !!! (pronounced chk-chk-chk) creates a funky dance machine of an album, but not a dance machine just pumping through some sort of club, but rather a dance machine that just took a bunch of mushrooms at Bonnaroo and now is freaking out a little but is using the dance to find its happy center. Does that sound weird? Well, this album is pretty weird. With strange dance acts, I find it is often a tough balance to maintain between being interesting and being adventurous but not coming off as being irreverant. On Myth Takes, the balance is struck; it's easy to overlook a title as dumb as Bend Over Beethoven when the song has a crazy surf guitar riff that ends each chorus and also has a super echoed guitar solo breakdown that makes up the second half of the song. The effects on the guitars and drums create a crazy soundscape that is full of energy but also seems to be hiding something nefarious. Used to listen to this album driving in the pitch black and snow to Nordstrom at 5:30 in the morning during winter break from school. Part time jobs, what a life!
Song: All My Heroes Are Weirdos
137. Material Issue - International Pop Overthrow
Year of Release: 1991
Are you looking for a power pop song about falling in love or falling out of love? Well, Material Issue has two perfect albums full of those songs for you to pick from. The first of those albums to appear on this list is their debut, International Pop Overthrow. Material Issue is another one of those bands that I have always been aware of because my parents and their friends all liked them. I don't really know what to say that is interesting about this album other than that all of the songs are great, they are all perfectly crafted pop songs, about chicks mostly (the first three songs all include women's names in their titles) and one song about getting revenge murder on someone (Chance of a Lifetime). When I moved into my first apartment in college, we (mostly Kaley) painted the area over the bar, and we put a bunch of band names up there, and one of the names that I contributed was Material Issue. Also, shoutout to Michelle Belair for being the only person outside of my parents' friend group that knew who this band was when they saw it on the wall. If anyone who reads this is in contact with Michelle, tell her I say What Up and that I appreciate her taste in music. (Editor's Note July '18: We're friends on Instagram, now. Message no longer needs to be transmitted.)
Song: Valerie Loves Me
136. The Killers - Hot Fuss
Year of Release: 2004
This album was released on my birthday during the summer between junior and senior year of high school. I say this to set up the following statement: No album or band populates a single memory of that year other than The Killers. Mr. Brightside played every third song on every radio station during the time when I was listening to the most radio of my life: in the car, on various buses, while setting up dances, it is mindboggling how often high school seniors are listening to the radio. Anyone who was in my graduating class and is reading this, please try to tell me you don't agree with this assessment of that year. And we got lucky because not only was it our senior year soundtrack, but it also happens to be a damn fine album. Jenny Was a Friend of Mine sets the tone with its sinister synths and Brandon Flowers's new wave vocals. The album strays towards glossy glam rock on Mr. Brightside, just flat out indie rock on Somebody Told Me, and shows the first signs of the bands arena rock aspirations on All These Things That I Have Done. My favorite two tracks on this album, though, are Andy, You're a Star (an overserious stutter-stopping gay love ode from a straight man) and Believe Me Natalie, which I realized this week is so scratched on my CD copy that the digital copy I made of it also skips. So that kind of sucks. (Editor's Note July '18: I bought a new copy of this CD) This album is so good that the band has coasted off its momentum through three terrible albums since. I've got soul, but I'm not a soldier.
Song: Believe Me, Natalie
135. Beach House - Devotion
Year of Release: 2008
This Beach House album is another one from the summer between junior and senior year when my friends and I all stayed down in Champaign. Beach House has always had a chamber-pop element to their dream-pop repertoire but this album is by far the most chamber-y. Devotion is Beach House's second album, before they blew up in the critical scene, but the album doesn't feel slight. Rather it is full of warmth, something that I found missing from the subsequent album Teen Dream, and the songs are pretty slow while still being catchy. You get lured in by the perfect combination of Victoria Legrand's haunting voice and the organ that populates most of the album. That summer in Champaign, I was working at a laboratory and I would bring my CD player with me to drown out the sound of the helium canisters being filled, but I would only bring one album a day, so each selection would have to be something I could handle listening to over and over again. Devotion made that list.
Song: You Came to Me
134. System of a Down - Toxicity
Year of Release: 2001
I think I've mentioned before that throughout high school, I was a subscriber to Blender magazine, a music mag, and my favorite issue was always the December issue with the best albums of the year list because it would either justify that my music taste was awesome, or it would provide me with new music to go check out. In 2001, Toxicity was the number one album, and I remember reading in a comment section on their website someone saying how it was a joke that this album was number one and that in fifteen years we would look back at that phase of music with shame similar to how people view hair metal or the random ska explosion of the 90's. Well, I listened to Toxicity in entirety this week for the first time in a while, and the person who posted that comment was absolutely wrong. This album still stands up and is completely listenable, and I still found myself loving all the same things that I and the majority of the rock listening population of my high school class loved in 2001: great hooks, sometimes brutal pummelings of sound, Serj Tankian's politically poignant lyrics and his abilities as a frontman. From this I have taken a lesson: musical genres will come and go, their popularity will rise and fall, but if the music you make is actually good, it will stand the test of time.
Song: Forest
133. Warpaint - Warpaint
Year of Release: 2014
Wikipedia has this album listed as dream-pop. I couldn't disagree more. First off, this album is a rock album, second, just because the music has a bit of a smoky sheen surrounding it, does not automatically make it dream pop. No hate, I love dream pop, but dream pop this ain't. Rather, Warpaint's second album is simply a progression from the "Cigarettes and Emotions" art-rock sound of their debut; the ladies improved their ability to play their instruments, the production is a bit better, and they started to incorporate some dancier moments, an aspect they would further expand on the followup to this album (see entry no. 267). On this album, Warpaint also maintains their legacy of picking the worst song on their album to release as their lead single (we call that the Silversun Pickups phenomenon), this time going with Love is to Die, but every track after that one on this album is a gem. I love Warpaint songs because they have always had dance music in their back pocket, but since they don't strive to make strictly dance music, the dance aspect seems to ooze out from unexpected places, like a funky bass line standing alone or a keyboard beat that is the most upbeat part of a generally slow building song. My favorite track on this album is the ultimate slow-builder, Drive, which starts with a sparse keyboard beat, some bass, and a guitar line needling the same three notes, building up until singer Emily Kokal makes her realization, "I want to believe it, I want it, I need it, I guess when I looked at the truth, I was surprised to find this feeling, that I'm a lucky charm."
Song: Drive
132. Michna - Magic Monday
Year of Release: 2008
I have made more than one mention throughout this ranking process of how I have discovered some kinds of music from Grand Theft Auto games (Pet Shop Boys come to mind), but once upon a time, Grand Theft Auto didn't have actual songs by actual artists in their games, specifically in Grand Theft Auto III. So rather than listen to the talk radio station (I mean, I definitely listened to Laslow, but eventually you've heard the whole thing through), I would listen to this Michna album when I was playing this game my senior year at college. Still, nine years later, every time I listen to this album, I feel like I'm riding through the mean streets of Liberty City. This album is a funky electronic album but made only of samples that Adrian Michna recorded himself from around the world, and from live instruments that he played. When I say samples, I mainly mean vocal snippets, which range from multiple lines of conversation to just a portion of a word, but there are also occasional ambient noises pumped in like traffic sounds or Swiss Glide begins with the sound of someone doing an ollie on a skateboard. These sounds accent beats which are either based around live horns or are created electronically. Michna's sound stays mostly sunny throughout the first half of the album while the second half turns toward a darker side, but Magic Monday is thoroughly enjoyable the whole way through.
Song: Bumper Car Masters
131. Gnarls Barkley - St. Elsewhere
Year of Release: 2006
This album has freaking spunk! I first heard of this duo when my freshman year roommate, Jim, asked me if I had heard of the new group Gnarls Barkley (this is a fairly straighforward story), to which I laughed for a minute, and then we watched the video for Crazy which would then go on to take over every part of pop culture for the next year. The summer after that, I was working for a landscaping company and I would listen to the intro track from this album, Go-Go Gadget Gospel, in the Windstar every morning to get pumped. Danger Mouse is great as ever, his production is amazing and the beats that he supplies set the background for the whole album, but the real star here is CeeLo Green. He contorts and stretches his voice, sometimes by his own will, sometimes through voice modulators. On Crazy, he sings like a soul singer. On their cover of Gone Daddy Gone, he sings like someone who would front a band called the Violent Femmes. On my favorite song on the album, Online, he sings in a deeper register for the first half, and then lets it rip in his high pitched natural voice for the last couple of lines. Also, Smiley Faces is the shiz. Pretty much everyone knows how great Crazy is, but not everyone knows how great every other song on this album is (yes, even the song about necrophilia).
Song: Online
130. Brand New - Daisy
Year of Release: 2009
Whew! This album blew my freaking ears out the first time I played it in my car. The first thirty seconds of the opening track are an old recording of a gospel hymn (it also bookends as the outro at the end of the album) and the band cuts in abruptly with a guitar riff that is approximately three times louder than what preceded it (both from the opening of that song and from the album prior). The evolution from Deja Entendu to The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me was one of maturity, taking their emo sound and turning it into serious adult rock. But the transition from The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me to Daisy is really just one of getting a whole lot louder. And for my ears, that was a welcome evolution. There are a ton of things on this album that shouldn't work, from that opener to the fact that Vinnie Accardi's vocals on Be Gone are rapidly faded in and out so it sounds like someone is tapping their hand over his mouth while he is singing, to the shrill random noise that closes out Gasoline (so shrill that when I used to listen to this when I was living in the basement of my mom's house, she would come down and ask what was going on every time that this outro would play), but it all totally works. Also, the lyrics on this album are superb; Bed is about a couple trying to maintain composure at a party in front of their friends even though they know there is massive fight between them waiting for when they get home, At the Bottom is about burying a loved one. The general consensus among Brand New fans is that The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me is their best album, but I roll hardcore for Daisy.
Song: Gasoline
129. Beck - Mutations
Year of Release: 1998
I got this album for Christmas the year it came out, and I wasn't really into it. I was expecting Odelay 2.0, and that was not what I received, and eleven year old Jeremy just couldn't get on board with the new direction. But luckily, nine years later, twenty year old Jeremy tried again, and this time around, Mutations found a nice sweet spot with me. This is the first album where Beck started to branch out from his hipster cowboy with a turntable image, and showed us a little of the singer songwriter that was going to flourish on Sea Change. Nobody's Fault But My Own, especially, is a stirring ballad sung over an acoustic guitar and the long chords of a sitar, showing Beck at his most vulnerable to that point. Tropicalia sounds Brazilian, especially the horns. But that's not to say that he stepped all the way from Odelay, Bottle of Blues is all harmonicas and lonesome guitars on the range, and Cancelled Check is cut from that same cloth. Basically, this is a really good Beck album, with a bunch of really good songs that were never promoted, no singles, no videos, because Beck was in a fight with his label, so it sometimes gets pushed to the side in his discography, but it is certainly in my top three Beck albums.
Song: Nobody's Fault But My Own
128. Jimmy Eat World - Clarity
Year of Release: 1999
The best Jimmy Eat World album is the one that came out before they got famous. I am pretty sure that Clarity was the first album that I downloaded track by track on Bearshare when I first got to U of I and the bandwidth was monitored and capped, so you had to make your downloads count. This album was worth those downloads. It contains Jimmy Eat World's best version of every type of music they've tried (with the exception of hard rock, Futures takes that cake). Clarity has their best ballad, For Me This Is Heaven, their best angsty-alternative rock, Your New Aesthetic, and it contains their best sixteen-minute long song that evolves from a straight forward rock song for the first two minutes into a thirteen minute electronic breakdown, Goodbye Sky Harbor. Actually, the breakdown in Goodbye Sky Harbor, as well as a similar breakdown in Death Cab for Cutie's Stability, were most likely what set the stage in my musical brain for enjoying instrumental music and repetitive music, as most electronic music came to be. "So here I am, above Palm trees, so straight and tall. You are smaller, getting smaller, but I still see you........"
Song: Goodbye Sky Harbor
127. Deftones - Adrenaline
Year of Release: 1995
Deftones are probably my second favorite band (after No Doubt, right above Pet Shop Boys), but I didn't start listening to them until album number three, White Pony, so after I got into that album (which is amazing and we shall certainly be hearing about later), I worked my way backwards and started listening to Adrenaline, their debut album. When Adrenaline came out, and even more so when Around the Fur came out, Deftones would be labelled as nu-metal, which is kind of confusing to me since they don't really have anything in common with nu-metal apart from the fact that Chino screams on a fair amount of songs. When I first got into this album, I didn't realize that what I was responding to was a form of post-hardcore, first because junior high Jeremy didn't even know what that genre was and second because I didn't realize until more of the collegiate period of my life that most loud music that I liked fell into the post-hardcore category. Since this album, Deftones have floated even further down that river, exploring all kinds of avenues, from electronica to new wave, all kinds of good deviations, but on this album, it's all the loud stuff. And in my opinion, no one does that loud stuff better than Deftones. To this day, this album still reminds me of listening to it while riding my bike around my neighborhood in junior high.
Song: Minus Blindfold
126. Danger Doom - The Mouse and the Mask
Year of Release: 2005
This is the third album featuring Danger Mouse that I have had in the last two posts, and that is because for a period of time in the mid aughts, Danger Mouse was involved with all of the good music. This is my favorite album that involves Danger Mouse as a collaborator (though his producer work still has at least one entry left), this time working with rapper MF Doom. This album was made with Adult Swim and features many of the characters from their shows (one of the songs is just straight up called ATHF) and also a lot of the beats are taken from samples from those shows. This would all just be a gimmick if the album weren't so good, but it is, and the cartoon integrations are flawless. Basket Case weaves in court room dialogue from Harvey Birdman, and El Chupa Nibre contains a bunch of random clips from a ton of shows (the name is a reference to Futurama which Adult Swim single-handedly revived from the dead). There was a sequel EP to this album called Occult Hymn (what does that rhyme with?) that is also great, but it only has a couple of tracks on it, so its place on this list is purely in this shout out. I hope at some point Danger Mouse gets tired of producing U2 and Black Keys albums and turns his sights back to rap and hip hop because I love every rap collab he's been a part of.
Song: Basket Case
125. Moby - Last Night
Year of Release: 2008
There are three different artists lurking inside Moby. There's the punk rocker that almost derailed his early career with Animal Rights and who made a reappearance last year on These Systems Are Failing. There's the soul and blues-influenced multi-instrumental producer who has made Moby's most popular albums (Play, 18, Innocents was supposed to be like this but it is dumb boring). And finally, there is night-club face-melting Moby (all of his early albums, him dj-ing live at anytime). Last Night is successful because it is a combination of all three of those Mobys, and it still sounds like a dance record. This album is loosely a concept album about a night out, and as such there are tons of great dance tracks, it's definitely the only Moby album I would put on at a party. I Love to Move In Here is one of my top ten favorite songs of all time, and the video features a glowing octopus getting down at a night club. Parts of the second half of the album burn a little closer to Moby's ambient leanings but it makes sense in the context of that part of the tracklist being the end of the party. Back when I was actually going out to clubs and so on, It was kind of my dream to record a whole night out and then edit it together into one big music video for this album, but I don't know if my poor body can handle that anymore, and I definitely know that my current computer can't handle that kind of project. This may be a project that has to stay on the shelf. Also, this album has a remix compilation that was released with it, which is also a seriously good listen.
Song: I Love To Move In Here
124. Flying Lotus - Cosmogramma
Year of Release: 2010
I can't remember if I got turned on to Flying Lotus from Adult Swim (his music has been proudly playing through the bumps since well before this album came out) or if it was from reading about Los Angeles online, but I know for sure that Los Angeles was my first album exposure to him. And that album is cool (especially Beginners Falafel and Camel), but it certainly earns its genre name of being experimental electronic music, and it could sometimes get to be a bit much for me. When Cosmogramma was released, I though it was more of the same, but I was big time wrong. Repeated listens of Cosmogramma revealed a beauty lurking beneath the cleverly used sound effects (one of the beats is a sample of a ping pong ball bouncing). Cosmogramma is still pretty bonkers, but in a controlled chaos kind of way, and FlyLo was smart to bring in very talented collaborators: Thundercat on bass (his and FlyLo's discographies kind of weave together after this point), Rebekah Raff on harp, Miguel Atwood-Ferguson pitching in with string arrangements, plus also Thom Yorke contributes his vocals to one track. The resulting sound is of an aural explosion taking place right outside the gates of heaven (a theme he would approach more literally on his most recent release, You're Dead!). Flying Lotus's aunt is Alice Coltrane, and he makes small shoutouts to her throughout his work, but on this disc especially; the title of the album comes from FlyLo mishearing the term "cosmic drama" from one of Alice's lectures, and there is a track on this album called Auntie's Harp that samples her Galaxy in Turyia. Also, the final track on the album, Galaxy in Janaki, features recordings of the life support machines from FlyLo's mother's hospital room when she was on the verge of dying. It's a serious record but a fun one, and it kind of sounds like jazz made by a computer.
Song: Computer Face/Pure Being
Alright, we did it again! Another list in the books! And look, I actually did it in seven days this time, I am really amazing. Next week: Spacecataz
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