Jeremy's 300 All-Time Favorite Albums: Nos. 74 to 59
- petsch6787
- May 12, 2017
- 18 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. 58-43 Nos. 42-27 Nos. 26-11 Nos. 10-01
What an interesting month May has been so far! Lots of new music being released (and I mean lots, I am already digging the new Gorillaz and Spoon albums, but what else is new?), the White House seems to be in some sort of Land of the Lost kind of time portal, and I think last week I read that we can now grow sheep in labs. We're gonna live forever! On to the tunes.
74. No Doubt - Return of Saturn
Year of Release: 2000
Return of Saturn is by far No Doubt's slowest album overall. It tosses aside a lot of the spunky, ska-rock of Tragic Kingdom, and moves into a more glam rock on a sad day kind of mood. A bunch of the songs are about Gwen Stefani's desire to start a family (Marry Me, Simple Kind of Life) but even within those songs, there are contradictions in Stefani's desires, she wants to be married but feels afraid that she would lose her identity to that pairing, she wants to have a family but tells herself it isn't going to work out, as a defense mechanism. The fear of finding what you have spent all this time looking for, only to realize that once you have it, you no longer want it. My favorite sad song on this album is Home Now, "If you lived here, you'd be home now" and my favorite not sad song (or perhaps they are all sad, but this one is at least upbeat) is New, which was created for the Go! soundtrack, but still made its way onto this album. This is the most middle of the road of the five ranked No Doubt albums on this list, and as such it is ranked right in the middle of them. When I was 12, my mom took me to go see No Doubt at The Riviera Theater, their first concert in three or four years, it was the opener for this album's tour. It was amazing, I still remember exactly where I was standing. I wonder if a feeling like that can ever be topped.
Song: New
73. Björk - Vespertine
Year of Release: 2001
It is extremely appropriate that the cover for this album is very white-based, because this entire album sounds like it was recorded in the snow; all of the synth beats are soft and muffled, like footsteps in newly fallen powder. This is not to say that this album does not have warmth because it very much does, it's just like a fire inside of an igloo, sure it's warm in the one spot, but there's also snow everywhere else at the same time. Björk created this album while she was first getting together with Matthew Barney (the span of their relationship is bookended by Björk's most recent album, Vulnicura, which is about its dissolution), so a lot of the songs are about finding a new person, falling in love, and also a bunch of songs that are either metaphorically or literally about sex. Instrumental Frosti sounds like it is made entirely of icicles, that track melds into the intro for Aurora, which is literally the sound of people walking in snow. The thing that I really love about this album (and all of her more artistically successful albums) is that even when the instrumentation is reduced to just a repeated clip of a music box, Björk's voice stretches to compensate and retain a full sonic range for the song. Also, there is a fair amount of orchestral string and harp arrangements that help provide a gravity to these songs. Shout out also to the fact that Björk creates all those arrangements, her musical versatility is pretty amazing.
Song: Hidden Place
72. The Beatles - Rubber Soul
Year of Release: 1965
For the life of me, I don't understand why it has been so difficult for the early Beatles albums to be remastered in a way where they don't sound absolutely ridiculous on headphones. As much fun as it is to listen to Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown) with all Lennon's vocals coming from the right headphone and all of the instrumentation on the left, I'd love to listen to one of my favorite bands in places that aren't my apartment or a video game. The Mono versions sound like garbage, so that option is out the window as well. Anyway, Rubber Soul is my least favorite from The Beatles's stellar run of albums from this one through Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band, but it is still really good. I suppose it's the folksy nature of this album that puts it just a tick below (also Run for Your Life is one of my least favorite Beatles songs), but Rubber Soul still has my third favorite song, Michelle. My favorite tracks on this album are all of the ones where Paul McCartney sings solo lead (Michelle, You Won't See Me, I'm Looking Through You) and also one half of George Harrison's contributions (I love If I Needed Someone). Not my favorite Great Beatles Album, but a Great Beatles Album regardless.
Song: Michelle
71. Linkin Park - Hybrid Theory
Year of Release: 2000
Way back in the list at Number 167, I said that Prince's Purple Rain was one of two albums that I knew was on every one of the six members of my immediate family's iPods (again Callie doesn't count, she isn't expected to have caught up with stuff from before she was born, yet). The second of those two albums is this one: Linkin Park's Hybrid Theory. And yes, I realize that I have this album ranked one spot higher than Rubber Soul, but you know what, when Rubber Soul came out, I wasn't alive yet, my love of that album was developed in college as part of my greater exploration of The Beatles. When Hybrid Theory came out, I was all up in that shit. I was thirteen, I was the walking, talking manifestation of the Linkin Park target demographic. Not to mention that this album is still awesome. The heavy guitar riffs and Mike Shinoda's singing/rapping are balanced by the turntable skills of Joe Hahn and the higher pitched singing/occasional screaming by Chester Bennington. I really cannot understate how important Joe Hahn is to the success of this album. His spinning gives every song its character and is so versatile that sometimes it's used as a third vocalist and sometimes as simply a background flourish. This is the thing about nu-metal, it got ripped on because everyone just viewed it as dumb bros, playing loud with a DJ, and when it was only that, yeah it totally sucked. But when it was done correctly, you got albums like this one, the better Incubus albums, the first Lostprophets album, and the early Deftones stuff when they still fell under the nu-metal umbrella. Also, if I could somehow use a magical tool to tally up every time I have ever listened to an album, I have to imagine that this one would be in the top ten.
Song: A Place for My Head
70. Beck - Odelay
Year of Release: 1996
This album has been the soundtrack for many different moments of my life. First, it was one of the first albums I ever owned, I was only nine when it came out. Second, I remember listening to this album on my Mom's stereo when she was living in Jen's basement. Third, during my freshman year of high school, I used Novacane as the soundtrack to a short thirty minute anti-smoking video that we had to shoot and edit for my Computer Sciences class. Nellie Pieper, if you read this (or anyone still in contact with her), you were totally in that video. But what about the music? Well, this album is the one that sealed Beck as the greatest hipster, cowboy, DJ, bellbottoms, doing the splits, mega force that he is. This is where his DJ sampling roots meet and mingle with his multi-instrument skills and produces his strongest upbeat album. He was in the process of maturing as an artist, but he still maintained some of his angst, and it manifests in the fuzz guitar, distorted vocals, and the ending scream of Novacane, or in the garage rock of Minus (not to mention the warbled yell of "Frogs!" that ends that song). Also, I've had this CD for almost nineteen years, and I still frequently whistle the intro to Sissyneck on a regular basis. Beck's funky pinnacle (but not his artistic high point, but we'll get to that with some Kleenex in a later week). To quote the man himself "Something's wrong cuz my mind is fading, and everywhere I look there's a dead end waiting."
Song: Novacane
69. Silversun Pickups - Swoon
Year of Release: 2009
While Silversun Pickups's first album, Carnavas, reminds me of a very specific period of time, Swoon, their second album, doesn't remind me of any time in particular because I really never stopped listening to it. It's everything that the first album is just a little bit better; the production is cleaner, everything is louder, and the songs are better written. Not to take anything away from Carnavas, it's just the natural progression to the second album, without any second album swoon (get it?!?!?). I often lament Silversun Pickups as being the band that always releases the worst songs from their albums as singles (this is because they just let the record company pick whatever singles they want in exchange for the band getting complete creative freedom on the albums, also this rule doesn't apply to the first album), but Swoon's first single is Panic Switch, which is far and away the best single they ever released. Of course, they followed that up with Substitution, which is tame but I suppose radio friendly. And every song on this album gets loud, and that's where I like it. Even Growing Old is Getting Old gets loud, granted it's not until three minutes in, but it gets there. It gets there.
Song: Panic Switch
68. Interpol - Antics
Year of Release: 2004
The first day that I was down at college, my roommate Jim had already gotten there and set his stuff up, so when I set my computer down and opened it up, we marveled at the fact that we both had Interpol wallpapers on our laptops. Jim was a good guy. Antics was my first exposure to Interpol, I had read about this album in Blender, and I pretty much fell in love with it and its predecessor, Turn On the Bright Lights. Over an eight month period, I saw them three different times, first in Chicago at a regular concert with my then girlfriend Sam and Amanda Nguyen and her boyfriend Paul, second time at the Q101 Block Party the day before Graduation with Sam and Rick, and then a third time down in Champaign in October with John Jast. Glorious times. This album is kind of what a Joy Division album would sound like if they focused on indie rock instead of gloom dance. All the instrumentation is simple and calculated. Paul Banks sings in a near monotone, his lyrics are cryptic but still set a tone, I always loved the line "All your history's like fire from a busted gun" from Narc, I wrote it on our lyric wall at my dad's house, but it was ridiculed. I stand by it. All of these simple elements added together create a sound that the band was able to sustain for two albums before running out of ideas. But that's ok, because those two albums are really good. Oh, another good lyric, one that I just randomly will sing out at my apartment to Easton, is the opening line from Public Pervert, "If time is my vessel, then learning to love might be my way out to sea."
Song: C'Mere
67. Violens - True
Year of Release: 2012
This album doesn't sound like anything I had heard before I downloaded it or anything that I have heard since. Violens exists in a kind of middle space between simple, shoegaze guitar lines, and some form of gothic folk. This whole album feels as if it is being played as a prelude to something terrible about to happen, despite the fact that it also feels light and breezy, maybe it's being played on a beach where the sky over the water is turning a darker and darker shade of purple, apocalypse on the horizon. The vocals would seem sunny on their own, but with the semi-psychadelic quality of the guitar and bass, they sound foreboding, a voice lost in a storm. Every Melting Degree starts soft and ends in an avalanche of sound, guitars crunching, drums tumbling, and melds into the instrumental Lavender Forces, which legitimately sounds like what Mario would hear if he just kept running underneath the floating airship in Mario 3 and never jumped on, just overhead hovering sound, voices of spirits drifting in and out. That track leads into the sped up pace of Unfolding Black Wings and then into the intense hard rock of All Night Low (awesome song title), with the opening lyric "I remember feeling empty." This album is one of a kind, and I will listen to it for the rest of my days.
Song: Unfolding Black Wings
66. Mastodon - Leviathan
Year of Release: 2004
I have found during this ranking process, that I have been a bit harsh on my hard rock albums (or rather hard rock and heavy metal, I wouldn't want to anger any metal heads), and I tried to put this album on a list a couple of weeks ago, and then I did my research listen on the way to and from Jewel, and after I unpacked all the groceries, I promptly moved this album back into the still-to-be-ranked pool because it is freaking awesome. First, a heavy metal album based around Moby Dick. This is already great. Second, Mastodon reaching their early career peak with an album as powerful, pummeling, and punishing as the waves and storms of the source material. Opener Blood and Thunder opens with the verse, "I think that someone is trying to kill me, Infecting my blood and destroying my mind, No man of the flesh could ever stop me, The fight for this fish is a fight to the death," which portrays the paranoia and madness dripping off of every line of each song. There are songs with names like I Am Ahab, Seabeast, Iron Tusk, and Aqua Dementia. These things are all awesome, but this doesn't even get to how amazing the guitar is on this album, it shrieks during the solos, and dives headfirst into a dark fuzzy sea during the verses. Leviathan is a roller coaster ride through a hail storm, but it is consistently interesting, even after I've been listening to it for ten years.
Song: I Am Ahab
65. Blue Hawaii - Untogether
Year of Release: 2013
Blue Hawaii has two members and also has two instruments: singer Raphaelle Standell-Preston's beautiful voice and Alex Cowan's keyboard/sampler (so maybe three instruments), there aren't any guitars or drums (although there are occasionally electronic beats that serve the same purpose as drums would for a typical band). I suppose a singer and a DJ are not really a new kind of set up, but the way that Standall-Preston's voice is used is what makes it interesting. This album is called Untogether because it was made when the two members were on opposite sides of the country, so Standell-Preston would send her vocals to Cowan, and then he would add them to his music, but he also cuts up and distorts her voice and uses those samples as integral parts of the songs, as well. Try to Be starts with a gentle electronic beat and short one-syllable samples of Standell-Preston's voice creating a vowel-sound only beat. In Two opens with a high-pitched but quiet extended note, like a song by The Knife, before Standell-Preston's natural voice appears. But then In Two II is a slightly more upbeat dance track, with the beat being created by a playful keyboard line. An album that is so sonically chilly, but at the same time contains a warm pulsating heart. My description is certainly not doing the album justice, there's just something perfect about this album, a certain je ne sais quoi, you'll just have to give it a listen to find out. Side Note: This was my number one album on my best of list for 2013, and four years later, this album has only been surpassed by two dance albums by bands I didn't know about in 2013. Inadvertent consistency!
Song: Sierra Lift
64. Static-X - Wisconsin Death Trip
Year of Release: 1999
I heard of Static-X like all people did, through Nickelodeon. Alright, probably most people did not hear of them this way, but I actually did. Every once in a while, Nick would have a commercial that was probably not supposed to be on that channel but had somehow slipped through the Viacom cracks, and so when this album came out, there used to be a commercial during cartoons for it that played a little bit of I'm With Stupid. This is how the seed was planted. In 2002, at the end of my freshman year, I dated this girl named Tracy, and for some reason we were getting each other CDs and I asked her to get me this one, simply on a whim. She did, and here we are, number 64. This album is actually a really great mix of heavy metal and weird electronic experimentation. There are random vocals clips from the indie lesbian vampire movie, Nadja that make appearances on this album, specifically at the beginning of Love Dump, "I can't believe I'm letting you do this to me." Try to fact-check this, you can't, because as far as I can tell, the internet is not aware that this is where these samples are from, the only reason that I know is because we watched that movie in my Horror Films class at Illinois, and when that line showed up, I internally went bonkers. But this distracts from my main point, which is that the samples and the electronics balance out the power of the heavy metal guitars, and create an album that is kind of unique in my collection. I suppose lots of metal bands eventually made their way towards using some electronics, nu-metal especially, but none that I listened to ever did it in the semi-psychedelic way that Static-X does on this first album. RIP Wayne Static, thank you for this gem.
Song: Otsegolation
63. Minutemen - Double Nickels on the Dime
Year of Release: 1984
I believe that this album is the one I have been listening to the least amount of time on this list, but it's so good that in the last year that I have been into it, it has moved all the way up into my personal echelon of amazing albums. Double Nickels on the Dime is a double album, composed of forty five songs, mostly under two minutes each, released by Minutemen a year before their singer and lead guitarist, D. Boon, died in a car accident. And it is a fucking shame, because this album is truly amazing. Boon's voice seems more suitable for a dusty old folk song, or maybe a drinking country tune, but Minutemen are a punk band primarily, so his voice creates a strange counterpoint to the instrumentation on this album. Boon's guitar is almost all treble, and cuts through the quick tracks like a buzzsaw. The theme song for the show Jackass is on this album, it's called Corona, but anyone that knows that guitar sting right at the end of the opening credits knows exactly the sound that Boon's guitar makes. The album is split into four sides, with each of the three band members picking which songs they want on their side, and then the last side with all the leftovers (Side Chaff). Now, while I say that Minutemen are a punk band, this is true, but Double Nickels on the Dime was their attempt at expanding their songwriting, so there are lots of bluesy songs, songs about politics, and just straight up Americana rockers, with Boon's guitar leading the way even on the songs written by bassist Mike Watt. I really cannot stress how amazing this album is, I am so glad that I downloaded a bunch of albums from a Best Albums of the 80's list and came upon this one.
Song: It's Expected I'm Gone
62. Sufjan Stevens - Illinois
Year of Release: 2005
When I was first living with Jim in that dorm room at Illinois, I would typically fall asleep before him, and I hated listening to music when I was trying to sleep and he wanted to listen to music because he was still up doing stuff, so we reached a middle ground which was that he would play this album, because it was gentle and peaceful. This compromise was what introduced me to Sufjan Stevens (although he was so popular at Illinois during my freshman year that it would have happened somehow). After twelve years, and much love for the man's discography, Illinois still remains my favorite of his work. It also helps that I have lived in Illinois my entire life, so I understand most of the references in the lyrics and song titles, but the Illinois theme would come off as a gimmick if it weren't for the fact that the music that accompanies it is so dang beautiful. There's the gentle, ghostly piano on the opener Concerning the UFO Sighting Near Highland, Illinois, or the upbeat springiness of Come On! Feel The Illinoise!, or the slow churning, somberness of The Seer's Tower, all of Stevens's tricks at work. The most infamous track from this album is most likely John Wayne Gacy Jr., a soft representation of the serial killer, exploring the idea that any person is capable of horrors, the last line of that song going "And in my best behavior, I am really just like him, Look beneath the floor boards, For the secrets I have hid," and that song is certainly haunting and beautiful, but my favorite song on this album, and one of my favorite songs ever made, is the heart-aching Casimir Pulaski Day. The narrator of the song tells the story of his high school sweetheart dying of cancer, when she finally passes it's on the title holiday. It's so sad and gentle and touching, I'm listening to it right now and I'm tearing up. I've always been very struck by the way Stevens is able to portray intense grief with the line "Sunday night, when I cleaned the house, I find the card where you wrote it out, With the pictures of you mother, On the floor, at the great divide, with my shirt tucked in and my shoes untied, I am crying in the bathroom."
Song: Casimir Pulaski Day
61. Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
Year of Release: 2010
This is my favorite Kanye West album. It is the pinnacle of the early part of his career, a period of time that had to end because this album is so good, there was just nowhere left to expand to. This album was such a perfect culmination of all of the things that made his first four albums successful that when he had to follow this album up, Kanye blew up his entire sound and made Yeezus. This album has everything on it. What kind of Kanye do you want? One with soul samples? Well, Devil in a New Dress has that covered while also being an excellent tale of a relationship silently falling apart, getting to the point of loathing each other. Want some chanting rhythmic Kanye? Well, you know Power has that for ya (although the excellent fast-paced Hood Internet mashup with I've Got the Power may have forever ruined the original version for me). Want some squealing guitar as a sample? Well, you can hit up Gorgeous, which features Kid Cudi in the choruses. This is before even getting to All of the Lights, which every human on Earth likes, and Monster, which has the distinct honor of featuring a Nicki Minaj verse that she has never topped, and perhaps no one has ever topped (First things first, I'll eat ya brains). That verse is so notorious that the line I just quoted was once used as a non-sequitur punchline on a now cancelled (unjustly!) MTV show called I Just Want My Pants Back. Literally the only reason this album isn't in the top 50 is because Blame Game is terrible and could totally be excised from the album, but other than that, this album is a masterpiece, both in the perfect verses that Kanye captured from his guest artists and Kanye's production skills, which have always been the key to his success. Long Live Kanye West!
Song: Monster
60. The Avalanches - Since I Left You
Year of Release: 2000
I had heard of The Avalanches all the way back when this album came out, but I didn't hear them for the first time until Brian showed me the video for Frontier Psychiatrist, a song that focuses primarily on a multitude of vocal samples to create lyrics, while the video found actors to act out each of these vocal samples. Since most of the samples repeat, the video gets pretty weird, also there's a turtle with an old man's head (I'll put that crazy video below, but just know, the version of the song in the video is identical to the one on the album). I got this album (which is mixed like a DJ set, with no distinction between where one song ends and the next begins, other than the track number ticking up one) for the next Christmas and discovered a world wide dance party hidden in the 18 tracks. The first half of this album is very breezy, focusing on tropical sounds, both in an instrumental way (lots of tropical themes) and in the sound effects they sample. This mode carries for the first ten tracks, and then we reach the gentle elegance of Tonight, "Tonight might have to last me all of my life" playing on a scratchy vinyl sample, with quietness softly drifting behind an old piano line. Tonight, Pablo's Cruise, and Frontier Psychiatrist create a three track interlude, setting the table for the more traditional house tinged electronic sound of the last five songs. All three sections of this album are interesting and captivating for different reasons, and all three sections are equally rewarding to me. But seriously, watch that video.
Song: Frontier Psychiatrist
59. Bloc Party - Four
Year of Release: 2012
I had to go to an impound lot in Morton Grove to get my copy of this CD out of the player in my mom's Cougar because I was listening to this album when I crashed into an SUV that was trying to turn left through two lanes of traffic. But you better believe that I was going to get this album back, I waited seven years for Bloc Party to release another guitar-centric masterpiece, I wasn't about to go buy for it a second time. This was Bloc Party's last awesome hurrah before drummer Matt Tong got fired and bassist Gordon Moakes left the band, and the remaining shell created the most boring version of a Bloc Party album ever imaginable. But anyway, Four is a big time rocker, an entire album of variety from Russell Lissack's guitar, it's heavy on opener So He Begins to Lie, it's pitched up and sampled like a toy gun going off on Octopus, scorching the Earth on Kettling, steel guitar effect on the first half of Coliseum. Tong's drumming has always moved faster than the rest of the band, it's what allows the songs to have propulsion, even when singer Kele Okereke is singing a ballad, or the instrumentation is focusing on a particularly soft piece of electronics, and he is just as amazing as usual on this album. I love the power of this album, the hard songs are Bloc Party's hardest ever, but the quieter songs on this album also shine, Real Talk gives Okereke a chance to showcase his range, hitting his falsetto for the second half of each line of "My mind is open, and my body is yours," and Day Four's closing breakdown features Lissack's guitar pitched up so that it sounds like Radiohead on In Rainbows. I love this album, Bloc Party has been one of my favorite bands since I was eighteen, and I am so thankful that we got this masterpiece before the original line-up took a final bow. Here's hoping for some reconciliation!
Song: Real Talk
I am so pumped that I finished this post before the weekend! Didn't think I was going to be able to do it, but I did and I think we all know it's because I rock! See y'all next week when we crack the top fifty!!!!
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