Jeremy's 300 All-Time Favorite Albums: Nos. 191 to 175
- petsch6787
- Mar 21, 2017
- 16 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. 174-158 Nos. 157-141 Nos. 140-124 Nos. 123-107 Nos. 106-91 Nos. 90-75 Nos. 74-59 Nos. 58-43 Nos. 42-27 Nos. 26-11 Nos. 10-01
Hello, my friends. Welcome back to my weekly-ish list of my all time favorite albums. Since we last met, some sort of March Madness has taken place, the Illinois Fighting Illini are to be led by Brad Underwood (thumbs up!), and just possibly, I started watching Samurai Jack (big thumbs up!). But none of that has anything to do with the albums I'm about to starting talking about so let's get down to it.
191. Kid Rock - Devil Without A Cause
Year of Release: 1998
If we were playing that Sesame Street game of one of these things is not like the others, this Kid Rock album would probably be the aforementioned outlier of this week's list. Well guess what? I don't care about your opinions! This album is on here because I spent all of junior high, portions of high school, and large drunken chunks of college, blasting this album and rapping along. When I was listening to this album last week, I was struck by how only about half the songs are rap songs, similar to the Beastie Boys album I covered last time out. While the Beasties would stray from rap to explore punk, hard rock, and psychadelia, Kid Rock uses his time away from rap to stretch into blues and country: the working man's music styles. In the days since this album has come out, Kid Rock has gotten progressively stupider as a human and has strayed completely into boring country-lite territory musically, but at least we'll always have this album. RIP Joe C.
Song: I Am The Bullgod
190. The Like - Are You Thinking What I'm Thinking?
Year of Release: 2005
The Like are a female rock group that I got real into during my transition from high school to college. Picture a movie where a group of dudes are in a frat, and they are going to a party at their sister sorority, and they walk in and a band of all chicks is playing indie rock much better than any band playing at a sorority party would ever have the capability to pull off. That band is The Like. Their songs are catchy, and singer Z Berg has a strong enough voice to help pull the emotions out of her lyrics. June Gloom was a mini-hit among my group of friends, but this whole album helped lay down the groundwork for my Freshman year, all indie-rock and girl groups phase. I don't know why, but my only actual distinct memory of listening to this album was in my old minivan, in the parking lot of Best Buy in Joliet. End of Story.
Song: What I Say And What I Mean
189. Pink Floyd - Meddle
Year of Release: 1971
Meddle is the studio album that immediately precedes Dark Side of the Moon (I'm not counting Obscured by Clouds, since that was made for a movie and was not to be taken in as a whole), and it is a useful contrast to that breakthrough album. While starting to reach the sonic area and expertise that the band was striving for, Meddle still suffers from an inability to create a thematically whole album (something that becomes a staple of the band's legacy). The album is divided into two parts; there's the second half of the album which is composed entirely of the twenty-three-minute-long epic, Echoes, and then there is the first half of the album which is composed of five songs that sound extremely different from each other. I realize that these critiques can make this album sound like a mess, but the songs are all so good that they compensate for the extreme style changes from track to track. The opener One of These Days is an upbeat instrumental with screaming keyboard explosions. This is followed up by Pillow of Winds, a slow breezy number with David Gilmour gently lullaby-singing over both an acoustic and electric guitar. Fearless picks up on the folk vibes being put down by Pillow of Winds, gives them a slightly dark twinge, and then drowns it all out in a crazy sound collage at the end, featuring soccer fans singing, all echoed and effected out. Then we get Roger Waters's San Tropez, a jazzy number, and then Seamus, a country blues song about a dog. Both of those songs are good, but nothing to phone home about. Last, the massive Echoes, which could probably be trimmed in half and still be great. Meddle gives a hint at the amazing stuff that was on its way.
Song: A Pillow of Winds
188. The Lonely Island - Incredibad
Year of Release: 2009
Properly rating this Lonely Island album proved to be challenging, not because I don't believe that these songs are worthy of being on the list or included with bands such as Pink Floyd, but rather because I am not sure I can quantify how much this album still makes me laugh, every time that I listen to it. This is the first album that the gents at Lonely Island released, back when they were known solely for Lazy Sunday (pass that Chronic(what!)cles of Narnia) and for Dick in a Box, but those two tracks are the least of what this album has to offer. Let me put this a different way, if I had to rank every funny song I have ever heard in my entire life at least three tracks off of this album (Boombox, I'm On A Boat, and Dreamgirl) would be in the top ten, and that is saying something because, like all young white boys, I had an intense Weird Al phase. The first actual song on this album is called Santana DVX and is a boast rap about Carlos Santana's (real) line of champagne. Boombox, which features Julian Casablancas, starts as a song promoting the healing power of music and ends as a cautionary tale of how music can be "way too powerful" and can lead to "a bunch of old people fucking like rabbits." The best song on this album (and maybe the funniest song ever created) is Dreamgirl, featuring Norah Jones, which is funny for so many different reasons: first, it's a song about a dream girl who is described only in the most strange and disgusting ways "Dreamgirl you amaze me, all dressed in paisley, love how not one but both eyes are lazy" or "You're a vision in sweats with a neon pouch, half eaten squirrel hangin' out of your mouth," second, it allows Norah Jones to sing the following lines "Last week, thought I saw you on the street, turns out it was a bag of trash, just a big ole bag of trash, I thought you look like a bag of trash" and third, the song starts with the disclaimer "This song is brought to you by Chex Mix" which you immediately forget about because the song is not about Chex Mix at all, until about halfway through the song, Chex Mix starts making brief appearances among the descriptions of the dream girl, until eventually the entire last verse is about Chex Mix. When I was in college, there was a time that I was at Brother's and I remember shouting out every word to I'm On a Boat with my friend Caitlin, and the entire bar was singing along, every word. What other comedy song can you say that about?
Song: Dreamgirl
187. Tears for Fears - The Hurting
Year of Release: 1983
I'm not exactly sure what it was that led me to the first Tears for Fears album over the second. Songs From the Big Chair has all of the songs that I associate as being their most famous (Shout, Everybody Wants to Rule the World, Head Over Heels) and is generally viewed by critics and such as being the superior of the two releases, but outside of Head Over Heels (which is their best song, and is the score for a great one track scene in Donnie Darko), I really prefer The Hurting overall. I love me some dark new wave music, and this album is chock-full of it. My favorite song on this album is Change, and (for anyone who has been reading all of these, you may notice a trend) I think it's probably because of the xylophone beat. Xylophones make the best beats for any eighties song! Let's get more xylophones in eighties music! We have the power, we can do it!
Song: Change
186. Grizzly Bear - Horn of Plenty
Year of Release: 2004
It was hard to pick Grizzly Bear albums for this list because I love all of them, and also they all kind of blend together into one big Grizzly Bear experience. In the end, I picked the first two albums to make the Top 300, but I am having buyer's remorse in not also including Shields but alas, I digress. Horn of Plenty is the first Grizzly Bear album in name, but in actuality it is mostly a solo album by singer Ed Droste. It features a little bit of drumming from Christopher Bear, but none of the other members were even in the band yet when Horn of Plenty was released. As you would imagine, this album sounds a lot different from the ones that would follow it. The vocals are distorted in a DIY way, literally because Droste didn't really know what he was doing with his audio equipment yet, but the effect is interesting, and the semi-distorted vocals help lend an air of intimacy, like you are the only person other than Droste who is listening in. Droste backs his vocals with lots of dusty acoustic guitars, and soft gentle plunks on the piano. When I was moving out of my Junior year apartment, my then-girlfriend Lisa and I drove down to Champaign in my mom's purple mini-van and loaded it up with all of my stuff. It was so packed that I couldn't see out of the back of the van, so when we drove home up I-57, I drove the speed limit, and we listened to this album as we plunged our way through the darkness.
Song: Disappearing Act
185. Brand New - The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me
Year of Release: 2006
My love of Brand New starts at this album, which leaves me in the marked minority of Brand New fans, as most claim that Deja Entendu is the band's masterpiece. But God help me, I have tried to get into Deja Entendu more times than any other album, and it just never does anything for me. It sounds like a completely different band, and all of the things that they changed in between the two albums are all of the things that I like about Brand New. But hey, that's ok, not everyone needs to like the same things, and my inability to properly enjoy Deja Entendu does nothing to diminish my love for both this album and Daisy, it's follow-up (more on that album later). First things first, this album cover is an all-timer. It's so creepy, with no violence or blood, just, what is that little girl doing there? This album's main theme is death (what it means, what causes it, should we fear it) and the album's sound has an appropriately dark tone to it. The songs range from gentle meditations (Jesus) to brutal explosions of guitar (Not The Sun). Perhaps the greatest thing about this album, though, is that it proved what a band from the emo realm can be when they grow up a little and expand their sound. Getting louder has always been a good move for the emos, but getting louder while becoming a more mature songwriter and a more musically advanced band, well that's a recipe for success.
Song: Degausser
184. Team Sleep - Team Sleep
Year of Release: 2005
Team Sleep is a side project band of Deftones singer Chino Moreno. Whenever Chino steps away from the Deftones, it is usually to a quieter place than his main band. Moreno is generally the quieter yin to Deftones guitarist Stephen Carpenter's heavy rocking yang. With Team Sleep, you are basically getting a Deftones record but with all of the thrash replaced with electronics. Rob Crow of Pinback is a featured singer on four of the songs (this album actually gives both Crow and Moreno two spots in this week's list), and it seems appropriate because Team Sleep seems to borrow from the simple electronic beats at the center of Pinback's most successful work. After this album came out, there were some shifts in the Deftones sound towards incorporating the electronics of this album, especially on Saturday Night Wrist, their first release after this Team Sleep record. Every song on this album is interesting, and I especially love it because it gives a glimpse into an alternate reality version of one of my favorite bands, what if the Deftones had decided to make indie rock? Sounds to me like it would have been just fine.
Song: Princeton Review
183. Earl Sweatshirt - Doris
Year of Release: 2013
Earl Sweatshirt's first official studio album, Doris, is probably my favorite rap album to be released in the last five years. The beats that Sweatshirt creates are generally slowed down so they sound murky, to match the slow drawl of his delivery. He was only nineteen when this album was recorded and released, and as such was still learning the ropes in the studio, so he only produced about half of the songs (on the followup to this album, he would produce the entire thing) but that actually works out because all of the guest producers add their own style but it still sounds like Earl Sweatshirt. The Neptunes produced Burgandy is the only song that can be called anything close to Dance, while the RZA produced Molasses sounds like a countryfied version of the Odd Future sound but they both fit perfectly. After his forced stint at a Samoan boarding school, Sweatshirt returned as a more pensive version of himself, and he meditates on his own issues in relationships, both romantic and familial, and how it often stems from his desire to not be bothered. This album has great beats, great raps, it's nice.
Song: Guild
182. Zero 7 - Simple Things
Year of Release: 2001
So a couple of weeks ago (or months? I can't keep track of time anymore), I got all up on my high horse about how cool I was since I knew who The Shins were before everyone was clued in by Garden State. And that was definitely true. However, I most definitely was not cool enough to have listened to Zero 7 before I heard their song, In the Waiting Line, in Garden State, and I most definitely participated in listening to that soundtrack in my friend Rick's apartment on Dearborn (the same night he told me that At the Drive-In was not good) because I wanted to hear that song and learn of its origins. And its origins were this album, the debut from British electronic duo, Zero 7. The duo sounds like what Air would sound like if they were British rather than extremely French. The album alternates between instrumentals (kind of like a sunnier trip hop, a lot of horns bursting through lovely keyboard melodies), and songs featuring guest vocals (mainly Sophie Barker, Terry Callier, Mozez, and a pre-fame Sia). Whenever I listen to this album, I always get a mental image of it playing over the events of the Beatles cartoon, Yellow Submarine, rather than the Beatles tunes. It just fits that world of sun and water and awakening. This is a very pleasant debut from a duo that hasn't since reached its heights.
Song: In the Waiting Line
181. Rob Crow's Gloomy Place - You're Doomed. Be Nice.
Year of Release: 2016
In 2015, Rob Crow quit music out of a feeling of futility at his ability to explore his craft and still make enough money to support his family. This broke my heart because Pinback is awesome, and I love Rob Crow's voice. But luckily for me, and for everyone who loves math rock or indie rock or just good music in general, the retirement didn't stick. He came back to the music world and released this solo venture, leaving me confused at the overall status of Pinback but also leaving me tickled at the amazing album that he had created, so much so that I ranked it as my favorite album of last year. On You're Doomed. Be Nice., Crow vacillates between the different styles that he has explored over the countless side projects and bands he has been a part of. There are traces of the stoner rock from Goblin Cock, there is the obvious guitar similarities to Pinback, there are even traces of the gentleness of the song he created for Yo Gabba Gabba (check this link for that gem). And while I rave about how refreshed and amazing this album is, I must also mention how serious the lyrics can get, as evidenced by the heaviness of the album title. Crow seems to be a man that is trying to come to grips with his own mortality and the toll that issue has had on his mind. He takes those fears and ponders them over a masterpiece of an album.
Song: Autumnal Palette
180. Cocteau Twins - Head Over Heels
Year of Release: 1983
My discovery of this album came from doing a deep dive on shoegaze music, despite the fact that Cocteau Twins are not actually shoegaze, but rather a kind of art rock that influenced the bands at the center of the shoegaze genre. Head Over Heels is the only album that the band ever created as a duo, with Robin Guthrie creating the music while singer Elizabeth Fraser's vocals would lilt and stretch in and out of the instrumentation, as if she was sometimes yelling at the microphone from a distance. The guitar on this album reminds me a lot of the sound of Kevin Shields's guitar on My Bloody Valentine's Loveless, with it constantly bending in the middle of the notes. Sometimes the guitars get so fuzzed and reverbed out that you can only barely hear the drum machine trying to poke its head out through the madness. No clever anecdotal stories for this one, just an album that I came upon and have liked ever since I found it.
Song: In Our Angelhood
179. Sufjan Stevens - Carrie and Lowell
Year of Release: 2015
This album is a real kick in the balls. Sufjan Stevens has always had the power to tug at your heartstrings, but the saddest of his sad songs (Casimir Pulaski Day on Illinois and Holland on Michigan) were always amidst an album full of upbeat banjo folk to help balance out that tone. Carrie and Lowell is an album that Stevens wrote and created as a way of coming to grips with the strained relationship he had with his mother who had just died, and that subject matter leaves very little room for upbeat songs. Stevens strips this album of all of the electronic explosions and instrumental experimentation of its predecessor, The Age of Adz. Carrie and Lowell is almost entirely recorded on banjo, acoustic guitar, and piano, with the only synths on the album being used not as flourishes but rather as creeping soundscapes that serve as a background, perhaps as a stand in for the grief that hangs behind all of Stevens's creative output on the subject. It is a really beautiful album, my favorite of 2015, but it can be heart-wrenching.
Song: All of Me Wants All of You
178. Deftones - Around the Fur
Year of Release: 1997
Around the Fur is the second album from my second favorite band, Deftones. It finds itself at a bit of a transitional stage for the band, showing the first signs that the band was more than the nu-metal title that was attributed to so many loud bands at the time. Their debut, Adrenaline, is a raw explosion of sound, but Around the Fur saw the band beginning to polish itself. Dai the Flu and Mascara are both centered around a quieter sound than anything on Adrenaline, and My Own Summer (Shove It) and Be Quiet and Drive (Far Away) found the band reaching a radio friendly enough area that both were relatively successful singles. The transformation of this album could have morphed into the followup to Around the Fur sounding like something along the lines of Hoobastank (no hate, check the first installment of this list), but luckily, Deftones kept growing and exploring the weird side of everything they were putting out, so this album serves as a joyous reminder of what was and what was to come, while also containing a bunch of legitimately listenable nineties hard rock tracks.
Song: Dai the Flu
177. Disclosure - Settle
Year of Release: 2013
Amidst the never-ending stream of interchangeable EDM-esque acts flooding the radio and music scene back in 2012 and 2013, Disclosure released an album of perfect House-influence pop tracks. The British brother duo never get too complicated with the beats they create for their rotating door of guest singers. The breakout hit from this album, Latch, is just a simple drum machine beat, a gentle synth background, and a simple synth beat, and during the chorus and breakdown, all of the song's energy comes from Sam Smith's vocal shrieking not from the extremely subdued house beat that drops in. The opening track When A Fire Starts to Burn is just an endlessly repeating sample of a motivational speaker over a simple House beat, it slowly builds, adding another beat that's super funky, and then for the last half of the song, there is a high pitched effect in the background. Basically, if you have great House beats, you've already got a good foundation, you don't need to mess with it too much, just enough to keep the listener in it. Just some simple House beats, some bare drum machine work, and a guest singer to go through the emotions that the music won't. This album makes me groove, in a way that no one should ever have to be witness to.
Song: January
176. The Field - From Here We Go Sublime
Year of Release: 2007
This is a perfect transition, we go from the simplistic dance beats of Disclosure, to the simplistic repetitions of The Field. From Here We Go Sublime is The Field's first album and ten years later, it remains his album most focused on song structure, with this album containing ten distinct songs, as opposed to most of his other releases including six much longer songs, with much longer running times. One thing that has never changed is his love of repetition, finding a simple beat and running it over and over again through an entire seven minute track, adding one instrument at a time over the course of the song. I suppose this is one of those albums that I really won't be able to do justice through words, so if you find yourself curious, go ahead and click down there and give it a listen. I bought this album when I was in California at a Virgin record store. Also, the last song on this album, the title track, is super jarring, the sample is herky-jerky. I used to put this album on to fall asleep to and I would wake up during the last song and have a mini-freak out, like "What is going on?!? Where is that crazy music coming from?!?" before realizing what was happening and then promptly falling back asleep.
Song: A Paw in my Face
175. Coldplay - Parachutes
Year of Release: 2000
Speaking of albums that I used to listen to when I fell asleep, back in a time where any music playing in my room was enough to keep me awake, Coldplay's first album was the only thing I could ever turn on when I had a headache that would both A) allow me to fall asleep and B) was enjoyable enough to keep my mind off of the pulsing pain in my skull. My love of Coldplay wavered as the band got older (although I will defend X&Y to the death) but this first album is pretty much perfect. Parachutes is beautiful and gentle in a way that I had never really encountered previous to this album. This is Coldplay before they started playing arenas and their music was designed more to be enjoyed in a small bar on a rainy day. Lots of acoustic guitar, and gentle Chris Martin serenades. Also, shout out to the video of Trouble, the second single and the reason I bought this album, it certainly wasn't because of Yellow, the only song on this album that I don't absolutely love. Simple, Pre-Gwyneth Coldplay: I Miss You.
Song: Sparks
Well that's it folks. Another week down the drain! We are getting dangerously close to the halfway point, similar to how I get dangerously close to actually getting these completed in a week, and then end up posting it on the eighth day. Go Illini!
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