Best Albums Of The 1960s, Pt. 3

#15
Trout Mask Replica
Captain Beefheart
1969

For those who think rough country blues and surrealism are mutually exclusive, Trout Mask Replica is the album that proves you wrong. With the good Captain himself leading the charge with his ever-changing voice, it’s an album that takes the blues and twists it like a pretzel until everything breaks down. Warped, atonal and messy (and rehearsed intensely to get it to sound that way), Trout Mask Replica is one of the few times in music history that avant-garde experiments and any level of chart success have gone hand in hand.

#14
Rubber Soul
The Beatles
1965

Rubber Soul was the moment the Beatles decided to start being serious. After becoming the pop culture phenomenon of the decade, Lennon and McCartney decided to sit down and truly take their song writing to the next level. The results are stunning. Mature and carefully textured, Rubber Soul is the Beatles’ first completely listenable album, where even the filler tracks sound great. Each track, from McCartney’s Euro-flavored “Michelle” to Lennon’s terrifying “Run For Your Life”, is a glistening pop gem.

#13
Pet Sounds
The Beach Boys
1966

Who says pop can’t be complicated? This is the question Brian Wilson answered when he masterminded Pet Sounds, which very well could be the most ambitious and well-executed pop album in history. The evolution the Beach Boys went through to get from their early surf hits to this album is mind-boggling. Those harmonies and good-time vibes are still there, but this time, they're played out against Wilson’s insanely complicated musical backgrounds, which incorporate everything from harpsichords to theremins. Pet Sounds is a album so good, Wilson ended up driving himself literally crazy trying to top it.

#12
Blonde On Blonde
Bob Dylan
1966

This towering double album is Dylan at his most crazed. Although Highway 61 before this sounds wilder, nothing Dylan has done in his entire career can compete with the careening madness of Blonde On Blonde. This is Dylan at his most prolific, his most vividly surreal and, with the exception of Blood On The Tracks, his most pointed and vindictive. Its an album so jam-packed full of his ideas that it’s barely contained within two records. In many ways, it’s a good thing that Dylan wrecked himself on a motorcycle shortly after this album. I’m not sure he could have survived at this pace much longer.

#11
The Stooges
The Stooges
1969

The first fifteen seconds of “I Wanna Be Your Dog” is my single favorite moment in any song from the 1960s. Within that brief span, Ron Asheton does everything short of lighting his guitar on fire, Hendrix-style, creating a god-awful crunch of noise that represents everything I hold dear about music. It’s a testament to this album’s power that, even with over half of its eight songs being thrown together in the studio to take up space, it’s still at #11 on this list. There simply wasn’t anything else like this in the 60s. Nothing was this dangerous, this simple or this primal. The future was listening.