Jeremy's 300 All-Time Favorite Albums: Nos. 58 to 43
- petsch6787
- May 19, 2017
- 21 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. 106-91 Nos. 90-75 Nos. 74-59 Nos. 42-27 Nos. 26-11 Nos. 10-01
Another week has come and gone, another set of ridiculous controversies from our nation's capital. I feel like our country is currently being run by the villains from Rocky and Bullwinkle, except checks and balances and Trump's mouth are playing the part of "moose and squirrel." But what else can you expect when you elect a reality television host to run one of the most powerful nations in the world? Mad Dumb. To the music!
58. Pet Shop Boys - Relentless
Year of Release: 1993
When Very was released in 1993, you could get a deluxe edition that included a second disk called Relentless composed of six dance tracks. Relentless is formatted exactly the same as Pet Shop Boys last full dance album, Introspective: six tracks, each at least six minutes long. The difference between the two lies in the two different time periods that they were released, Introspective came out in the late 80's and was an attempt by the duo to create dance music with full instrumentation: strings, horns, the whole shebang. Relentless, though, came out in the early nineties, and as such is more a product of the computerization of dance music that was taking over (house music, acid house, etc.). The songs on this mini-album (technically bonus disk but since these songs were all created in the same session and were never released anywhere else, I consider Relentless its own album) are much more experimental than their previous work; KDX 125 is a Jock Jam before such a thing existed, all upbeat siren synths and forward momentum. The Man Who Has Everything is as house of a dance track as possible, with the signature hollow beats that sound like they are being echoed off the insides of a glass bottle, this song is such a product of its time that when I listen to it, it takes until Neil Tennant starts singing in the last minute for me to realize I'm not listening to Moby. Each of the six tracks on this album sound unique and still hold up to dance music released twenty four years later.
Song: KDX 125
57. Beck - Sea Change
Year of Release: 2002
I didn't get into this album when it first was released, in 2002 I was still only concerned with the Beck of Odelay, so when Sea Change came out and was immediately hailed as a sad, mourning masterpiece, I wasn't interested. Luckily, I revived my Beck fandom when I gained a deeper appreciation of Mutations in college and that led me to this album. And it is sure a beauty. The album was created as Beck was mourning the end of a long term relationship, and he makes no attempt to hide the subject matter, it's revealed with just a glance at the song titles (Lonesome Tears, Lost Cause, Already Dead). But a million emo bands have been sad for much longer periods of time, and they still mostly suck, so what sets apart this album from them? Two things: 1) Beck is a really good songwriter and his lyrics hit you right in the gut, for instance the first lines from Guess I'm Doing Fine, "There's a blue bird at my window, I can't hear the songs he sings, All the jewels in heaven, They don't look the same to me" or the chorus of the same song, "It's only lies that I'm living, It's only tears that I'm crying, It's only you that I'm losing, Guess I'm doing fine." He portrays his pain, but in such a beautiful moving way, and it's all enhanced by number two: 2) Nigel Godrich's production. Godrich took every anguished lyric and every pained strum of the acoustic guitar that this album is filled with, and he makes them sparkle. There are orchestral accompaniments in the background of all the songs (or in the song most stuck in the mud of sadness, Round the Bend, the orchestral sludge is front and center), and as any Radiohead fan can tell you, Godrich knows how to make the symphony shine. Sea Change is a beautiful album about a difficult time in its creator's life, but sometimes pain makes the best art. This album was so good that Beck basically just replicated it entirely with Morning Phase and won Best Album at the Grammys for it.
Song: Already Dead
56. Silversun Pickups - Neck of the Woods
Year of Release: 2012
I was delivering pizza for Leona's in Roger's Park when this album came out, and I am thankful for that setting because Silversun Pickups albums (especially Swoon and Neck of the Woods) can only be fully appreciated when listened to blasting through your car speakers. This is 100% the biggest thing I miss about having a car, it's just not the same to silently listen along on my headphones on the train or to try to replicate the pure power of Neck of the Woods through my computer speakers (which are top notch speakers, it's just that nothing compares to the cocoon of raging sound that good car speakers can give you). This is Silversun Pickups' most aggressive record, louder even than Swoon. Every song on this album (except the second single The Pit, worst single releasing band ever) is a masterpiece. Opener Skin Graph is six minutes of power, with Brian Aubert screaming the chorus, "You're skin is alive and it's moving!" I feel like anyone that has been reading these posts is probably tired of my opinions about Silversun Pickups since this is the third week in a row that they have had an album on the list, so let's move on from sound to body of work. This is my favorite of their albums, it is their hardest and has the best collection of songs, but all of their first three albums are amazing, and all three of them only span across thirty spots (Carnavas was No. 85). These three albums are very important to me and have been the soundtrack to a lot of big moments during my adult life, and I will forever be grateful for the band that is not afraid to rock hard over a seven minute song length.
Song: Gun-Shy Sunshine
55. Pet Shop Boys - Electric
Year of Release: 2013
It is not a coincidence that the two Pet Shop Boys entries on this list are bunched so closely together. Electric is kind of the natural dance progression from Relentless, despite being released twenty years (and a ton of albums) later. Where Relentless was their first full step into mostly instrumental club music, Electric is Pet Shop Boys taking that bonus disc and fleshing it out to a full length album with the help of producer Stuart Price (who I spoke about earlier as the main contributing force of Madonna's Confessions on a Dance Floor). The result is an album full of bangers. Everything you need to know about this album can be derived from the opening track, Axis. It begins with a minute long intro, chunky synth beats dropping over an escalating fuzzy synth line in the background for the first minute until it reaches it's apex and then a crack of thunder, and the song's main keyboard line comes in, some drums beat, and then you're ready to go out to the floor. The only lyrics in the whole song are Neil Tennant repeating "Electric energy," the rest is a high energy house track, and it is so, so good. Stuart Price knows how to make killer beats and the song is never over, it slows down, but then it comes back with a new beat for the second half of the song. I feel like I am probably not doing this song justice, so I'll put it as the one below so you can listen and judge for yourself. With Electric, Pet Shop Boys showed that it doesn't matter their age or what year it is, they can hang with any dance act ever. It's as if they saw the mess that the EDM phase was, and thought to themselves "Oh this is what you guys think is good, well we can definitely do it better," and they did! Plus, I didn't even mention the other songs on this album, specifically Inside a Dream. Never has a title described the sound of a song better, it really sounds like you are walking through a dance dream. I really love this album, it's topped (for me) in their oeuvre only by two perfect pop albums, but we'll get back to those later.
Song: Axis
54. Flying Lotus - Until the Quiet Comes
Year of Release: 2012
Anyone who has played Grand Theft Auto V knows a bunch of songs from this album because Flying Lotus had his own radio station in that game, and on that station there were a couple of songs featured from this album and also all of the bumpers on that station were snippets from this album. This is actually very fortunate for the video gaming community because Until the Quiet Comes is Flying Lotus's best work. Flying Lotus has always been known for creating electronic jazz out of tools both usual and foreign, anything from a keyboard to a ping pong paddle, but on every release other than this one, his music has always been excessive in sound, like a sound blast in your face, always pushing the listener to understand that the sounds he was creating were meant to be beats, and this strategy leads to a very rewarding long term enjoyment. Until the Quiet Comes is different in that it is not exploding out of the speakers, pushing into your boundaries, rather it slinks out of your speakers. This album is not a punch in the face, but rather an invitation to come along for a ride on a soft plush floating machine that will take you through Mr. Roger's Neighborhood. Brash sounds are not used to make the beats, instead we get muted horns or soft keyboard beats. There are still a handful of more abrasive beats (if only for the first couple of listens), Putty Boy Strut comes to mind, but mostly this album exists in that space we inhabit right before falling asleep, everything is soft and there is warmth waiting for you.
Song: Tiny Tortures
53. Björk - Debut
Year of Release: 1993
I started listening to Björk my sophomore year at Illinois, so that was after her fifth solo album Medúlla had come out, but previous to Volta. I bring this up to explain the strange listening path that I took through her discography, starting at Homogenic and then moving onto Vespertine and Post. I could never get into Medúlla (it's literally a vocals only album, it's tough to get into). But for some reason, during this time period, I just completely ignored Björk's first solo album, Debut. It wasn't until my super-senior semester that I started listening to this album, and then I started listening to it heavily. I was running every other day back then (and hopefully again soon, my new running shoes arrived from Amazon today!), and this was my main running album. It's Björk's most straight forward work. As is always the case with Björk's albums, there are some songs on here where the instrumentation just blows me away; Crying's blunt early nineties beat is killer, Venus As a Boy tells a story of love over a bouncing bottle beat, a music box-esque background, and a string arrangement (involving a sitar), and last but certainly not least, Come to Me which I always thought sounded like someone singing to someone else through a red haze, so in love that all they can do is beckon the other towards them, seeing nothing but the other person, hearing only the music and Björk's voice. This album is almost a quarter century old, and it still stands out as one of the most fun outings she has ever produced.
Song: Venus as a Boy
52. Interpol - Turn on the Bright Lights
Year of Release: 2002
Interpol's debut album is generally considered to be heads and shoulders above the rest of their output, and, while I do agree it is their finest album, I only put it a little bit ahead of Antics. I don't know why everyone hates on Antics so much, most likely because of their expectations from this album, but I got into Antics first, so I never had that problem. Turn on the Bright Lights is when the band really sounded like Joy Division on tranquilizers, which is not an insult, and also when they released some of the more interesting deviations from their norm. Hands Away is gentle and hushed in a way that no Interpol track ever was again and Say Hello to the Angels is definitely their danciest track, super upbeat with spiky guitars propelling us through. This album also contains Stella Was a Diver and She Was Always Down, my favorite Interpol song title. I don't have a huge amount of revelatory info to put down here because I put all of my sentimental Interpol tidbits into the Antics entry last week, so I'll just leave it at, this album is a little bit better than Antics, but just by a little.
Song: Say Hello to the Angels
51. Eminem - The Slim Shady LP
Year of Release: 1999
Growing up, I lived on the street behind a music store called Crow's Nest. It was not a chain music store, but it was pretty sizeable, and in my youth, I spent most of my money buying candy from the back area, but another feature of that store was that they had headphones attached to the wall, where you could listen to any of the five albums that were featured there at the moment (typically the new releases of the week). Now, I had heard My Name Is on TRL, like all of the good kids, so when I saw The Slim Shady LP as one of the albums to listen to at Crow's Nest, I gave it a spin. My little twelve year old mind was blown. These lyrics were different than the ones on TV and the radio (although the edited version was still heavily censored), and for the first time in my life, I realized that A) Such a thing as an edited version of a song could exist and B) That songs could have swear words like this. I just didn't know. I suppose that was the end of my music innocence. But nostalgia does not get an album all the way up to No. 51. I think that there are a couple of things that really make this album amazing. First, this is the funniest album that Eminem ever released. I laugh out loud every time I listen to it, despite the fact that I have been laughing at the same jokes for the last eighteen years. And it's not only funny because of the words that he raps, but also because of the endless sound effects and random voice acting throughout. As the World Turns is one of the funniest songs that I have ever heard. Second, Eminem's raps aren't only funny, but incredibly inventive; for instance, this series of vowel rhymes from Role Model (which I am currently writing down from memory because I don't need the internet to tell me the lyrics from this album), "I get a clean shave, bathe, go to a rave, die from an overdose and dig myself up out of my grave, my middle finger won't go down, how do I wave? And this is how I'm supposed to teach kids how to behave?" The rhyme is consistent and goes over numerous lines, the dude knows how to compose his raps. And that stuff is all important, but I think the thing that makes this album much more interesting than anything he has released since is my third point: C) This is the album where Eminem is still broke. It seems like a simple thing but it means so much. His being broke is a place where the listener can identify, and his being broke also results in how low his self esteem is on this album, he talks shit about himself constantly. After this album, there's always that space between Eminem and his listeners because The Slim Shady LP blew up so big that he became a superstar and started pushing back on the fame, which is inherently contradictory because he needs the fans for the fame. But on this album, he's still one of the people who enjoy his albums, he has two different songs completely dedicated to being poor: Rock Bottom starts with the lines "This song is dedicated to all the happy people, All the happy people who have real nice lives, And have no idea what it's like to be broke as fuck" and as someone who has been broke as fuck, I can understand that. Or on If I Had, he has a verse about being tired, full of lines like these, "Tired of not having a deal, Tired of having to deal with the bullshit without grabbing the steal, Tired of drowning in my sorrow, Tired of having to borrow a dollar for gas to start my Monte Carlo." This was a man of the people, someone to commiserate with who never blames anyone but himself for his issues but also a joker to make you laugh and forget your troubles. I love this album, and I will never, ever get tired of it.
Song: Just Don't Give A Fuck
Welcome to the Top 50, where everything is a little brighter, and everyone is a little happier. That's right! The Top 50! Where every 4 is a 10 and every 10 is a genius. Please enjoy.
50. Blink-182 - Enema of the State
Year of Release: 1999
I first heard Blink-182 when What's My Age Again got super popular on TRL, and I liked that song but I didn't (and continue not to) care for All the Small Things, so I didn't give them a second thought until Adam's Song (which is about suicide) came out. When that song got popular, I realized that there is something below the goofball naked running and spoof antics in the first two videos from the album, there were dudes with real feelings in this band. I then purchased this album on CD and from the first listen on, I learned that the first two singles were by far the two goofiest tracks on the album, and all of the other songs focused on the confusion of being a teenager, the scorn of unrequited love, and even about aliens. A perfect example of the underlying angst that fuels all of Blink-182's most successful moments is the song Going Away to College, which is able to portray both the sweet joyous high of being in love for the first time and the pain felt by leaving it behind to move on to the next stage of your life. When I first got into this album, I was a teenage boy, and all of the songs were about being a teenage boy, so it isn't very surprising that it resonated so strongly. This isn't my favorite Blink album, but it is a close second, and it's definitely my entry point. Also, I am pretty certain that I can keep up with and sing along with both verses from The Party Song, which I think is pretty damn impressive.
Song: Adam's Song
49. Pinback - Summer in Abaddon
Year of Release: 2004
My first exposure to Pinback was from listening to WPGU down in Champaign, they would play Fortress on pretty regular rotation, and I was listening to WPGU for somewhere around six hours a day during the summer between junior and senior year at school, so it stuck in my brain and I downloaded the album it was from. This turned out to be the right move because Summer in Abaddon is one of the best indie rock albums I've ever heard (although I guess they are technically also considered math rock). Pinback's sound is simple, Rob Crow singing and playing guitar, Zach Smith playing bass, and then someone random playing drums, the music never goes too fast or too slow, it's just consistent throughout, kind of like a much more clever Interpol formula. Crow's breezy vocal approach fits perfectly with the simple instrumentation, with his distinct guitar never straying from the song's line, only occasionally layering in with a one or two note flourish. This might sound boring in print, but Pinback's execution makes each song catchy and interesting. During that summer when I was getting super into this album, I was living above my friend Michelle, and we would hang out pretty often, when we were at her place we would play Guitar Hero, and when we were at my place we would listen to this album. The memories.
Song: This Red Book
48. R.E.M. - Automatic for the People
Year of Release: 1992
My interest in R.E.M. has always been firmly planted in their work from the eighties, not really out of some sort of anti Warner Bros stance, but more because I remember when Monster came out and people reacted with mixed feelings, and that feeling just always stuck in my head. So while I spent my entire childhood listening to Green, and I spent most of college listening to the greatest hits of the IRS era and then started to explore the albums those songs came from, I have never gotten much into any of the albums from Out of Time forward. Automatic for the People is the exception to that rule, and I imagine this is probably because it's my dad's favorite R.E.M. album, so it must have stuck in my brain as being an acceptable listen. Drive is one of my favorite album openers, dark and somber, setting the mood for the southern gothic atmosphere that permeates the album. Also, there is a fair amount of orchestral work throughout. Automatic for the People focuses pretty heavily on the concept of mortality and what it means to be alive, which is why, I suppose, the album is generally pretty dark, with The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight really being the only sunny track, but it's this pondering of our mortal status that I think makes this album exceptional. My favorite version of Michael Stipe's voice is when the music is real quiet and he gets to sing in his low register, so that when he stretches upward for an inflection during the chorus, you can really feel it, and when you sing about mortality, you get to stay down in that low register a lot. Find the River is a sensational closing track, as well. Want to make a great album? Having a great opening song and a great closing song is a good place to start.
Song: Find the River
47. Sparta - Porcelain
Year of Release: 2004
I used to have a Monte Carlo. Unfortunately I crashed it in Chicago at the beginning of my senior year of high school. Super unfortunately, I only had gotten my driver's license three months prior, so I barely had time to love that thing, but those three month were extremely interesting months in my life, and I remember almost every part of them. I was dating someone who was moving at the end of the summer, I was finally free to roam wherever I wanted (the freedoms of a car), and I had money because high school students get to keep most of their paychecks. And the soundtrack for this entire summer was (among a few other albums) this Sparta album. Porcelain is their second album, and is definitely a more melancholy endeavor than Wiretap Scars, but it's still hard rocking. Jim Ward was always my favorite part of At the Drive In, and the things I love about him are on display here: his singing style ranges from straight out yelling to a more melodic version of yelling, and his guitar on this album is amazing and its driving force. I really would like to think of something clever to describe this album, but the second it comes on my headphones, all I can think about is the black steering wheel and gray upholstery of my Monte Carlo, driving down Lemont Rd. from Downer's Grove where I was dogsitting for my grandparents to Homer Glen to see my girlfriend. That's it. That's how i feel about this album. Also, I really love the soft, sad bridge at the end of Tensioning, a song about breaking up, where Ward sings, "I can't be right this time, It's all in my head, It's all in my head, You can't be wrong this time, It's all in your head." Real stuff.
Song: Death in the Family
46. Vince Guaraldi - A Charlie Brown Christmas
Year of Release: 1965
As quickly as Porcelain brings me back to that summer of my teens, A Charlie Brown Christmas brings me to Christmas. When I was growing up, when it was Christmas time, we only listened to Christmas albums around the house, of which we had a pretty steady rotation (Bing Crosby, A Very Special Christmas Vol. 2, later on Brian Setzer's Christmas album, a couple others) but when I moved out and down to college, only two of our family Christmas albums stuck with me as part of my personal holiday tradition. One of them is still to pop up on this list, so I'll leave that one a secret for now, but the second is Vince Guaraldi's A Charlie Brown Christmas. For the four Christmases that I was in Champaign-Urbana, my tradition was to beat all three Donkey Kong Country games during December while listening to Christmas music, and then when I graduated, it simply was reduced down to the music (but if I get a free week in December, I usually find my way to at least beating the first DK Country). The gentle piano of O Tannenbaum starts the album off before the jazzy instrumental version of What Child Is This. The title instrument of My Little Drum is mostly recreated in the song by the voices of children, with them singing the pa-rumpa-pum-pums in the background while Guaraldi's piano takes the forefront, as it does in all of the songs. This album puts me into a calm, the kind of calm you can only feel as a child, sitting in his red tinted living room (from the glow of the collective Christmas lights), reading a book at nighttime, while snow is falling gently outside. This album is Christmas in Crest Hill for me.
Song: Christmas Time is Here (Instrumental)
45. Perfume - Level3
Year of Release: 2013
Now, to change gears completely, let me tell you about my favorite Perfume album. All of Perfume's albums have an outer space, sci-fi tinge towards them (heck the album after this one is literally called Cosmic Explorer), and Level3 is no different. The first track on the album is called Enter the Sphere, doesn't get much more science fiction than that. But what makes this my favorite of the four Perfume albums that made this list? It's pretty simple, the dance beats on this album are my favorite of the four, and the pop songs on this album are also my favorite. The electronic beats are super heavy through Level3, and that's just the way I like them. The album opens with Enter the Sphere and transitions straight into Spring of Life, the album version of which involves a minute long electronic intro, the beats on this song kill me. Then things settle down for a moment with the sap covered keyboard line on Magic of Love, and then my favorite two song punch of the album, Clockwork and 1mm, two great dance-pop tracks. I have listened to this album so much that I can sing along phonetically with both of these songs despite neither having any English in them (a rarity for one Perfume song, let alone two in a row). The only wasted space on this album is Museum of the Future, but that song was created for a kids' movie, so I forgive it its treacley sound. Immediately following that dud is Party Maker, Level3's long mostly instrumental dance centerpiece (which has become something of a latter day Perfume album tradition), as if to wash the taste of Museum of the Future out of your mouth. I could go on listing off every song on this album, but let me just leave you with this, if you like to dance, you should give this album a listen.
Song: Clockwork
44. Deftones - White Pony
Year of Release: 2000
Disclaimer: the version of this album that I own is the re-release version that sticks Back to School (Mini Maggit) at the beginning of the play order. I realize that this is not the original track order, but the re-release is the version I grew up with, so I will be talking about that version, and as such am using that version's cover as the artwork to the left. This is the first Deftones album that I ever had, and I learned of them the same way I have learned of so many other things: TRL. When White Pony was released, it was riding a wave of positive attention (they sort of broke through with Around the Fur), and as such the lead single, Change (In the House of the Flies) had its video premiered on MTV's flagship teenage orgasm. I liked that song, downloaded it on Napster (old school style) and got the album for Christmas (despite my father also asking for it. There's an alternate music timeline to go down: Would I still love them if my dad had gotten the album instead of me? We'll never know). This is the album when Deftones realized they could slow things down but still remain loud. They won a Grammy for Elite, which is the heaviest song on the album but also the least indicative of the album's overall tone. This is a metal album filtered through an eighties new wave lens and then again through a nineties shoegaze lens. There are brain grinding guitar licks (Elite, Feiticeira) and they are great, but the album really shines when the band takes a breath and slows things down like on Digital Bath and Rx Queen, the slow moments help to set up the louder moments that show up during the choruses of those songs. One of the standouts of this album is Knife Prty which vacillates from loud to quiet to loud before finally stopping and letting guest vocalist Rodleen Getsic stretch her voice, a voice that starts as an all powerful drone and reaches its crescendo as a straight up Bloody Mary scream. This album changed the kind of music I listened to, introducing me to the lure of the loud and also instituted one of my most important rules: in junior high Jim Benton borrowed this album from me and didn't return it for seven months. Since that date, I have only loaned out a CD one other time, and it was to Lisa while we were dating. No one borrows my CD's. No one.
Song: Knife Prty
43. New Order - Power, Corruption and Lies
Year of Release: 1983
Disclaimer: the version of this album that I first downloaded (and the version I now own on CD) was the American one that includes Blue Monday and The Beach, and as such this is the version that I will be referring to here. The song that drew me to this album first was Blue Monday, a song that I have to admit I knew more due to the Orgy cover, but as soon as I heard the guitar open up Age of Consent, I knew this was something I might like. Age of Consent is kind of new wave personified into song form (persongified). It's followed up by We All Stand, which is much slower, creeping along at a plodding pace, but still remaining interesting. This threw me for a loop. These songs sound so different, one is full of sound, the other is full of space, one is propelling me forward, the other is dragging me along. Why was I responding to both forms? This question could apply to the entire album, as it plays with this dynamic throughout its duration, The Village, Ultraviolence, and Ecstasy (which I would like to give a special shout out to the robot vocals on) are all upbeat while 586, Your Silent Face, and even, to a certain extent, Blue Monday all remain slow, yet they all draw me in the same way. The answer to why I responded to both groups of songs on this album is just that they are all really great. Pretty simple. This is far and away my favorite album created by the New Order/Joy Division crew, and I think it's also the most fun.
Song: We All Stand
Oh my! We made it to the top fifty! What could possibly be left to talk about? By this time next week, will our country even exist? Even more important question, by this time next week will the NBA FInals already be set to start because the Cavs and Dubs are going to sweep their way through their respective conferences? Only time will tell. See ya next week!
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