State Of The Pretzel Logic: August

Well, August is finally being ushered out the door and I’d be lying if I said I was going to miss this past month. Both July and August this year were excruciatingly boring from a music/pop culture perspective, which has been reflected in my less-than-frantic posting rate here on the blog. However, with summer finally starting to give way to fall, it looks like things are about to pick up again. However, more on that later…

First of all…last month, I hinted that there would be a major upheveal in terms of re-grading past reviews. Sure enough, I’m changing more grades this month than I ever have before. Here we go…

-Bat For Lashes’ Two Suns gains an entire pretzel (!), jumping from 3 to 4. Two Suns has been the major “grower” album for me this year and the past months have made me appreciate it more and more.

-The Antlers’ Hospice gains half a pretzel, from 3.5 to 4. Another album that has gained from further listening, Hospice still has some flaws in my book, but deserves plenty of attention as one of the better traditional indie rock albums to have been released this year.

-Camera Obscura’s My Maudlin Career loses half a pretzel, falling from 4.5 to 4. This is the big one. This moves My Maudlin Career out of my 2009 Favorites. While I do like this album quite a lot, after sitting in my iTunes for months, I find myself listening to it very rarely compared to other albums with similar grades. It lacks songs that keep me coming back for more and has thus been demoted from “great” to “very good.” However, taking its place in my 2009 Favorties will be…

-The xx’s xx, which gains half a pretzel, moving from 4 to 4.5. I was on the edge between these two grades when I first reviewed this album and after a whole month of thought on the subject, I’ve decided I erred on the side of conservatism. This is a fantastic debut and deserves some praise. (Also, the album title is in lower case letters. Just in case, y’know, you cared…)

Anyway, enough talk about the past. Onto the future, I say! September is packed to the gills with interesting albums I want to review. So far, these are the artists to expect: Alice In Chains, Dizzee Rascal, Ghostface Killah, Islands, Jay-Z, Muse, Pearl Jam, Raekwon and Rain Machine (a TV On The Radio sideproject). That’s right, not one, but two Wu-Tang solo albums this upcoming month, along with a couple other exciting rap reviews. It’s about time 2009 got some quality album-oriented rap. I’m all kinds of excited.

Guess They're Not Gonna Live Forever...

I wanted to sit on this news for a couple days, just to see if anything was going to change or cooler minds would prevail or anything like that. However, none of those things happened and it appears the news is now official:

Oasis are done.

To be more exact, Noel Gallagher, the band’s lead guitarist and songwriter, has announced that he is leaving the band, citing his endless frustration with his brother Liam, Oasis’ singer. There has been no word from Liam or the other three, less-volatile members of Oasis, but I literally cannot imagine a Noel-less Oasis being a net gain for the world. Even though Liam has been taking a stab at songwriting on the past couple of albums, Noel is the force that keeps Oasis ticking. He is the classic Oasis sound and if you take him away, you’re left with a fairly generic Brit-rock band. God knows we’ve got enough of those already.

This isn’t the first time Noel has claimed to be fed up with working with Oasis and he’s already returned to the band twice after such statements. However, the terseness of his response certainly makes this feel more serious than his past departures. So, until we hear more, all we can say is this:

R.I.P. Oasis, 1991-2009(?)

Best Albums Of The 1980s, Pt. 5

#10
Scary Monsters
David Bowie
1980

David Bowie became a world-conquering superstar in the 80s. However, the irony of his success was that the albums everyone bought (Let’s Dance, Tonight) paled in comparison to the pioneering work he had just completed in the last three years of the 70s. However, sitting smack in the middle of his mainstream success and his best artistic triumphs, Scary Monsters proves that you can have your proverbial cake and eat it too. It’s an album that isn’t afraid to be artistically quirky and bizarre, but it also has room for radio-ready choruses and big, dancey beats. All these bits and pieces culminate in “Ashes To Ashes”, which could very well be Bowie’s finest single to date. Sadly, it would be over twenty years before Bowie returned to creating music this fun and rewarding, but Scary Monsters still sounds nothing short of fantastic.

#9
Master Of Puppets
Metallica
1986

You know you’re old when your band name directly references the genre of music you play. However, Metallica are, at the end of the day, the end all and be all of metal. They may not be the most technically accomplished or the best songwriters or whatever, but they capture the perfect balance of heaviness and tunefulness to be the ultimate metal band of all time. They are the baseline standard that metal should be judged by (sorry Black Sabbath) and Master Of Puppets is the standard for the quintessential great metal album. You can either bang your head to the songs or you can hum their infectiously memorable tunes. Either way, Master Of Puppets is a pinnacle for an entire genre.

#8
Heaven Up Here
Echo & The Bunnymen
1981

The two Bunnymen albums I’ve already featured on this list included the fresh urgency of Crocodiles and the confident Ocean Rain. However, I reserve my highest praise for Heaven Up Here, the darkest, most ominous record the Bunnymen ever recorded. While the band does sound absolutely stellar when everyone’s fairly happy, they sound earth-shattering when they seem lost, confused and afraid. These grinding songs give bassist Les Pattinson a chance to shine and his strong, rumbling playing gives Heaven Up Here its heartbeat. With Ian McCulloch singing the bluest of the blues, this album is Echo & The Bunnymen’s finest entry into the canon of great, bleak records that cropped up throughout the 80s.

#7
The Nightfly
Donald Fagen
1982

With Steely Dan on hiatus from 1980 onward, Donald Fagen decided to pursue a solo career. To date, this hasn’t exactly worked out perfectly, since Fagen has released a grand total of three albums since then. However, the very first of those, the impossibly elegant and classy The Nightfly, remains one of the highest points of Fagen’s entire career. Based around a nostalgic concept of Fagen’s childhood in the late 50s, the album’s eight songs hit a variety of points (including late night jazz DJs, interracial love and seducing girls in bomb shelters), all with Fagen’s trademark wit, sarcasm and snarkiness. However, it’s the honest emotions and rose-tinted retrospective reminiscing that really make this album wonderful to listen to. If you can peel back the layers of distancing coolness and smarts, you can hear Fagen recording what must be the most truthful album he’s ever released.

#6
Swordfishtrombones
Tom Waits
1983

Waits fans tend to be in two different camps: those who embrace his early career, full of gruff piano ballads and bluesy, retro-beatnik coolness, or those who subscribe to his more recent style, which takes a much more abstract approach to instrumentation, lyricism and music in general. I happen to fall into that second group and Swordfishtrombones, his first “really weird” album, is the Holy Bible of Waits as far as I’m concerned. Every song archetype Waits has used for the past twenty years has its roots in the songs on Swordfishtrombones. Whether we’re talking the warped guitar spiraling on “Shore Leave” or the pounding, anvil-as-rhythm antics of “16 Shells From A Thirty-Ought-Six”, Swordfishtrombones contains the magic seeds that helped Waits evolve from a great musician into a legendary one.

#5
Surfer Rosa
Pixies
1988

Surfer Rosa or Doolittle? Doolittle or Surfer Rosa? Picking a favorite between Pixies’ first two albums is akin to picking a favorite child. Both are so wonderful and promising and great in their own special way. However, at the end of the day, Steve Albini’s crackling production on Surfer Rosa gives it the edge on the more polished Doolittle. After all, Pixies aren’t a band that sounds better when they sound cleaner. Black Francis needs a dirty, gritty auditory background for his yelping and screaming and whatnot and Surfer Rosa delivers just that. It’s a predatory album, that growls and glowers at you before consuming you whole with the blueprint for the next decade of music.

#4
Atomizer
Big Black
1986

Speaking of Steve Albini, the reason he was allowed to produce Pixies (along with later greats like Nirvana, PJ Harvey, the Jesus Lizard…the list goes on and on and on) is because of Big Black. There are many bands created by opinioned, aggressive young men who feel like the world doesn’t understand them. However, few reach the level of Big Black when it comes to sheer ferocity, anger and bite. Singing about child molesters, self-immolation and whatever other socials evils Albini feels like skewering at the time, Atomizer is a white-knuckle thrill ride through the most dangerous, darkest corners of society, with a screaming maniac as your tour guide. Meanwhile, a couple of guitars get eviscerated in the background, while a drum machine marches inexorably onward. Add all the pieces together and you’ve got an unforgettable piece of personal expression, daring the world to cope with something this extreme.

#3
Daydream Nation
Sonic Youth
1988

Daydream Nation and I have had quite the adventure together since we first met back in high school. At first, we hit it off completely. We both liked loud guitar music, especially combined with catchy, memorable melodies. However, Daydream Nation also had this somewhat frustrating love of chaotic noise, which was something I just couldn’t accept. Half of the time, I just couldn’t relate to Daydream Nation, since it would get lost in a big haze of feedback and I just wasn’t into that kind of thing, y’know? We started drifting away from each other. However, without Daydream Nation, my life started to feel a bit boring. I made many attempts to rekindle our connection, some more successful than others. Finally, I began to understand why all the formless static was so important. The feedback and crashing atonal chords are actually the glue holding the album’s seemingly endless ocean of songs together. You can’t “listen” to Daydream Nation; you have to immerse yourself in it. I’ll always remember the day that realization finally dawned on me. We’ve been great friends ever since.

#2
Closer
Joy Division
1980

Joy Division’s debut, Unknown Pleasures, is dominated by empty, echoing space. Producer Martin Hannett was instrumental in creating a spacious, resonant sonic space where all of the band’s somber inclinations could be magnified. However, for their sophomore album, Joy Division and Hannett did something different. Instead of the widescreen emptiness from their debut, Closer finds all of Joy Division’s moodiness and tension compacted into a dark, pounding nugget of emotion and anger. Dry, crisp and somewhat claustrophobic, Closer feels like it was recorded in the mausoleum featured on the album cover. Of course, the fact that it was released a month after Ian Curtis’ tragic suicide only reinforced this aspect of the music. Add in a closing trio of songs that include the desperate “Twenty Four Hours”, the resigned “The Eternal” and the chillingly distant “Decades” and you’ve got one of the most emotionally charged, intense musical statements that you can ever experience.

#1
Remain In Light
Talking Heads
1980

Let’s imagine you’re a wandering space alien, who drops into the middle of New York City in 1977. You wander around, get some weird looks and finally amble into a dirty rock club. You see a nervy young band playing songs about psycho killers and buildings. You buy their album (the bright red cover reminded you of your home planet), get back in your space ship and leave for a few years to see the universe. The next time you visit NYC, it's 1980 and you see a marquee announcing a show by Talking Heads, that very same band you saw last time! You eagerly buy a ticket and watch the show. Except, things have changed. The charmingly quirky four-piece you saw last time has expanding into a sprawling nine-member gang. The bright songs about books have been replaced by intense existential rants delivered in the cadences of evangelical preachers. And the rhythms----ahhh, the rhythms! Your only response is as follows:

“WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO THESE GUYS?!”

Now, for those lucky enough to be on Earth between ’77 and ’80, the artistic evolution Talking Heads went through between their first and fourth albums might not be quite as shocking, but even then, I can’t imagine anyone could have anticipated the world-shaking opus this former CBGB’s band was going to unleash upon the world. After three years of hanging out with Brian Eno, however, I guess anything is possible. Remain In Light still contained plenty of the things that made Talking Heads famous (David Byrne’s strained singing and bug-eyed lyricism, not to mention the unstoppable Weymouth/Frantz rhythm section) but all those characteristics were surrounded by a surging, dynamic and undeniably ALIVE polyrhythmic bonanza. Percussion rules Remain In Light, from the clattering opening trio to the era-defining “Once In A Lifetime”. When the album finally does slow down a bit, it delivers two of the most stunning tracks in the Heads’ career, “Listening Wind” and “The Overload”. Remain In Light only has eight tracks, but it feels utterly and entirely complete. There are no moments you want to skip or ignore. It’s an album that involves you in every second of its forty-minute playing time. It rewards those you listen to it repeatedly, since you can always find some new nuance in its ever-shifting rhythms. It’s a true masterpiece from one of the finest, most individual bands to ever grace the Earth. If aliens actually were wandering around New York in 1980, you can be sure they were there to hear Talking Heads.

Best Albums Of The 1980s, Pt. 4

#20
Junkyard
The Birthday Party
1982

The farther and farther you go into Nick Cave’s musical past, the crazier and crazier the music tends to get. Long before the Bad Seeds existed, Australia’s favorite gothic cowboy fronted the volatile Birthday Party, purveyors of sharp, shattered post-punk chaos. With Cave’s gurgling and wailing up front, it’s easy to miss the instrumental genius churning behind him, from Rowland S. Howard’s piercing guitar to Tracy Pew’s swaggering bass. The Birthday Party only survived long enough to release a couple of albums and a handful of EPs, but those few recordings became a cornerstone for anyone interested in extreme, dark music. So, in other words, just about every alternative musician from the 80s.

#19
Ocean Rain
Echo & The Bunnymen
1984

Ocean Rain contains, hands down, the most tasteful string sections of the entire decade. While there were scores of bands throwing great dollops of violins all over their music whenever they wanted to sound emotional, no band can match the bright rays of violin-flavored sunshine that illuminate “Silver”, or the gentle, sighing cello hiding in the back of this album’s title track. The Bunnymen had already released three great albums prior to Ocean Rain, but this album was the first where the Liverpool lads sounded completely comfortable with themselves and their music. Without any internal doubts holding them back, they delivered a gorgeously romantic post-punk classic, strings and all.

#18
Shoot Out The Lights
Richard & Linda Thompson
1982

There's something very uncomfortable about listening to Shoot Out The Lights, since you’re hearing two people ending a decade-long marriage. Although the songs were supposedly written before Richard and Linda started to have problems, titles like “Don’t Renege On Our Love” and “Man In Need” certainly don’t make this album feel like a nice, fuzzy, “let’s-talk-our-problems-out” therapy session. However, if you’ve got no qualms about listening to other people’s pain, Shoot Out The Lights is jaw-dropping. Richard Thompson stakes his claim as the only guitar hero who doesn’t make solos insufferable boring and both he and Linda have astonishing vocal turns. Highlights include Richard’s paranoid “Shoot Out The Lights” and Linda’s broken “Walking On A Wire”, a song so sad that spontaneous weeping is probably the only acceptable way to appreciate it.

#17
Avalon
Roxy Music
1982

There was a time when Roxy Music recorded highly cerebral, avant-garde art-rock. However, by 1982, that was all in the past. Singer and band leader Bryan Ferry had fired almost everyone who had helped Roxy Music find success, instead opting to follow his own private fantasy of becoming the finest crooner of his era. Avalon was certainly a much shinier, adult-oriented work than anything Roxy Music had released previously, but the surprising part is how strange Ferry’s music still sounds. Once you get past the opening salvo of balladry (“More Than This” and “Avalon” particularly), the album is dominated by moody, tension-filled dirges, peaking at the pulsing “The Main Thing”. Avalon was a different sound for Roxy Music, but swapping some of the rough edges for layer upon layer of glistening beauty certainly wasn’t a complete disaster. In fact, it sounds pretty damn gorgeous.

#16
Rum Sodomy & The Lash
The Pogues
1985

The whole “Irish punk rock” thing has become a bit commonplace, with hooligan bands like Flogging Molly and the Dropkick Murphys running rampant and popping up on Martin Scorsese soundtracks. However, all those bands got the formula wrong. While this modern crop is very definitely identifiable as punk (no matter how many accordions happen to be onstage), the Pogues never made such delineations easy. The line they tread between rock and honest-to-Erie traditional Irish music is an incredibly blurry one. With Shane McGowan’s original songs rubbing shoulders with songs whose original writers have been lost to history, Rum Sodomy & The Lash is essentially the most drunk, raucous folk music you’ve ever encountered.

#15
Rain Dogs
Tom Waits
1985

Oh, that voice. You either love it or you cringe whenever you hear it. I happen to be in the former camp, since Tom’s mind-numbingly flexible voice is nothing short of hypnotizing to me. However, Rain Dogs, as an album, generally makes Waits’ voice more palatable. Not because Tom is singing any differently (heaven forbid!), but because the music is just as weird. Rain Dogs was Waits’ second “experimental” record, meaning that instead of drums and pianos, Waits and his musicians would hit tables with two-by-fours until Tom had found a rhythm he could work with. The end result is something that behaves like music as you know it, but sounds like some weird, urban nightmare, with everything you’ve come to associate with rock music being replaced by the rain plunking on pipes or hissing steam creeping up from the sewers underground.

#14
Let It Be
The Replacements
1984

There was no precedent for the Replacements releasing an album as good as Let It Be before 1984. This was a band of Minneapolis bums who played shows impossibly drunk and named their albums Hootenanny. And yet…Let It Be happened. Without warning. And the world was better for it. Suddenly, Paul Westerberg’s slurring, sloppy hard rock transformed itself into charmingly ramshackle anthems for the young and alienated. With solid, honest emotion backing up the album’s most personal tracks, Let It Be is one of the great masterpieces of the 80s American underground and one of the strongest arguments that bands can simply will themselves into being great.

#13
Skylarking
XTC
1986

Somehow, suffering through extreme Valium withdrawal made XTC’s Andy Partridge calmer. I’ll probably never understand just how that worked, but whatever the case, it allowed the pastoral pleasures of Skylarking to see the light of day. Virtually abandoning their punky days of yore wholesale, the band (trimmed to a three-piece over the course of their previous two albums) wove an impressive tapestry of chirping birds, acoustic strumming and songs expressing shock about “the things we used to do on grass.” To everyone’s surprise, including theirs, it ended up becoming a sizeable college radio hit and resuscitated XTC’s flailing career. Never mind that it was the painfully ham-fisted non-album single “Dear God” that won people over. Skylarking benefited from association and that many more people were enriched by listening to this pleasantly winking music.

#12
The Queen Is Dead
The Smiths
1986

It didn’t take Morrissey long to find his niche. The Queen Is Dead is the product of a band firing on all cylinders, with every member contributing exactly what they need to in order to create something legendary. However, this is also the album where Morrissey’s strangely charismatic personality becomes completely irresistible. It’s just not fair to expect sad, misanthropic teenagers the world over to resist the literate, snarky charms of “Cemetary Gates” or the dripping pathos of “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out”. Say what you want about Moz being a hopelessly maudlin drama queen who has been lifted up by the overactive emotions of millions of hormonal youngsters, but recognize that Morrissey and the Smiths did it better than anyone had before or since. There’s something undeniably magnetic in their music that multiple generations have felt drawn to.

#11
Doolittle
Pixies
1989

It takes a couple of listens to really get a handle on all the bizarre subject matter that populates Doolittle. Between the shout-outs to Salvador Dali, the honest recitations of Biblical violence and a song titled “Wave Of Mutilation”, it quickly becomes clear that Pixies aren’t exactly your standard, run-of-the-mill indie rock band singing about adolescent disillusionment. However, weirder than all the references to monkeys and sliced eyeballs is the fact that these songs are some of the catchiest, most infectious tunes in the entirety of music history (and you wish that was hypebole). Pixies have become one of the most referenced and influential bands of the past three decades because they managed to do not one, but two different things bands have spent entire careers trying to accomplish: writing unique lyrics and simply creating really, really great songs.

Best Albums Of The 1980s, Pt. 3

#30
Zenyatta Mondatta
The Police
1980

For whatever reason, Zenyatta Mondatta is the least loved Police album. This is something I simply cannot understand. It provides the perfect bridge from the band’s early, raw music to their more polished efforts later in the decade, combining the best bits of all their albums into one colorful, bright masterpiece. While it may not have any single knockout track, a “Roxanne” or a “Message In A Bottle”, it’s the only Police album that never hits a slow patch or loses your attention.

#29
Strange Times
The Chameleons UK
1986

The Chameleons often get lost amid the morass of gloomy bands that populated the 80s, which is nothing short of a travesty. After starting their career sounding like yet another Cure clone, by the time Strange Times came around, they had evolved into a majestic force of musical awesomeness. With glistening guitar work, driving bass and an astonishing grasp of atmosphere and mood, Strange Times is a beautiful monument of dark English rock, with Mark Burgess’ expressive, immediate voice lending these songs all the glory and emotive pull they need.

#28
Faith
The Cure
1981

Speaking of the Cure… they had themselves quite a decade in the 80s. Rising to fill the void left by Ian Curtis and the end of Joy Division, Robert Smith transformed his band from edgy New Wavers into the dark, spectral gloom mongers we’ve come to know and love. Faith represents the high water mark in that transformation, full of the brooding and somber tones that the emerging goth culture required. Dominated by Simon Gallup’s endlessly melodic bass, the Cure’s acclaimed career began here in earnest.

#27
Zen Arcade
Hüsker Dü
1984

Why let your musical ambitions evolve slowly over the course of several albums when you can jam every single idea, good or bad, onto one monolithic hardcore punk double album? Minnesota’s Hüsker Dü did just that with their tremendous Zen Arcade, a towering mass of punk rock energy that manages to jam ferocious, three-chord assault, confessional acoustic ballads and experimental tape loop projects into one strangely coherent whole. There’s even a narrative story about youthful escapism thrown into the mix. When punk rock started, it was all about simplicity. By 1984, things had changed beyond virtually all recognition.

#26
Double Nickels On The Dime
The Minutemen
1984

One-upping their friends in Hüsker Dü, the Minutemen weren’t content with a mere twenty-three track double album. For their 1984 double-album opus (which was apparently all the rage back then), these Californian hooligans crammed a mind-boggling forty-five (!!!) songs onto four sides of vinyl. Now, most of these tunes are less than a minute-and-a-half long, but this extreme scattershot approach allowed the Minutemen to indulge in every weird, half-baked idea they had along the way. Funk bass, skittery guitar, Steely Dan covers…nothing was off-limits. The end result is a uniquely enjoyable album, where songs whip by faster than the mind can process them.

#25
Born Sandy Devotional
The Triffids
1986

There’s a horrible truth that music lovers have to grapple with and its name is “80s production.” Apparently, at least half of the world’s music producers had complete mental breakdowns during the Reagan-era, which created hundreds of records marred by synth overuse, programmed drums and excruciating reverb. However, there are those rare albums that soar above their dated production and Born Sandy Devotional is one of those. No amount of canned synth lines can quash the epic, sweeping romanticism of David McComb’s songwriting. Finding the perfect balance between the band’s own Australian culture and more universal themes (love, loneliness, all that good stuff), Born Sandy Devotional is an album that can be enjoyed in any era.

#24
It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back
Public Enemy
1988

If this was a list of “Most Important Albums of the 1980s”, this album would stand head and shoulders above just about everything else. Nation Of Millions is certainly one of the most influential albums in the entirety of music history and it deserves every accolade that’s ever been thrown at it. However…that’s not what this list is about. This list is about the music that I have personally enjoyed over the years and Nation Of Millions is an album I’ve “appreciated” more than “loved” ever since I first heard it. As amazing as this mix of pioneering sampling and radical politics is from a cultural standpoint, there are plenty of albums I’d rather listen to for fun. Nation Of Millions isn’t really meant to be enjoyed. It’s meant to educate you.

#23
Reckoning
R.E.M.
1984

Georgia’s favorite alt-rockers won over critics and college radio stations alike with their debut Murmur in 1983, an album which long ago passed into the “beyond criticism” realm. However, personally, I’d take the polished, tuneful Reckoning over Murmur any day of the week. With classic songs like “So. Central Rain” and “(Don’t Go Back To) Rockville”, Reckoning can more than hold its own against any of R.E.M.’s other classics. They hadn’t quite realized how huge they were going to become yet, but the confidence and skill they play with on Reckoning is undeniable.

#22
Vs.
Mission Of Burma
1982

Boston’s Mission Of Burma were another 80s punk band not content to sit back and let this wonderful new music style progress no farther than a few chords and some screaming. The ways they stretched and warped punk music still manages to impress, though. Experimenting with tape loops, time signatures and song dynamics, the group’s sole pre-reunion album, Vs., manages to win you over on both cerebral and emotional levels. At times, Burma play amazing, intelligent art rock, wrapping melody lines around each other until everything gets tangled. But then they turn right around and play face-melting, fist-pumping anthems like “The Ballad Of Johnny Burma”. They’re part of a very select company of bands that can do both very, very well.

#21
Paul’s Boutique
Beastie Boys
1989

It feels bizarre to have the Beasties higher on this list than Public Enemy. I mean, while Chuck D was educating his listeners on the radical politics of Louis Farrakhan, the Beasties were…uhhh, rapping awkwardly about Bob Dylan and pop culture. Sure, Public Enemy were more “important.’ But Paul’s Boutique is just so much damn fun to listen to. Between the Beastie’s endlessly inventive lyricism and the Dust Brothers’ “I-dare-you-to-know-where-this-sample-came-from” style of production, Paul’s Boutique shows a different side to the rap/sampling culture that seems to have vanished almost completely from the musical landscape.

Best Albums Of The 1980s, Pt. 2

#40
10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1
Midnight Oil
1982

After spending their early, formative years playing vicious, political post-punk, Australian musical agitators Midnight Oil pulled out all the stops for their fourth album, the monumental 10, 9, 8… (if ever there was an album title to abbreviate, it’s this one). It may sound a bit dated to modern ears, with the pulsing keyboard fills and dry, clattering drum sound, but the songs the band pulled together are still jaw-dropping. From the fury of “Only The Strong” to the sadness of “Tin Legs And Tin Mines”, Midnight Oil hit every point along the emotional spectrum in their quest to raise awareness for Australia’s political issues. The politics weren’t just sloganeering, though. Singer Peter Garrett went on to actually serve in the Australian House of Representatives. Suck it, Bono.

#39
English Settlement
XTC
1982

XTC’s last album before Andy Partridge’s Valium-withdrawl breakdown, English Settlement sits nicely on the fence between the band’s early, spastic punk and their later, more measured art-rock. The nervy rhythms and off-the-wall lyrical style (“the insect-headed worker wife will hang her washing on the line”) are still there, but Partridge’s new discovery of the twelve-string acoustic guitar pushes the music strongly in the direction of more-traditional English folk. Songs like “Jason And The Argonauts” and “Yacht Dance” represent previously unexplored territory for XTC. It’s amazing how comfortable they sound there.

#38
Hex Enduction Hour
The Fall
1982

The Fall are…difficult. They just never do what you want them to, mostly thanks to world-class curmudgeon and band leader Mark E. Smith. If you listen to the Fall, you basically just have to accept whatever weird tangent Smith is falling down at that moment and enjoy the ride as much as you can. Hex Enduction Hour is the band’s earliest listenable album, but it still features such anti-accessible qualities as a two-drummer line up, shattered, trebly guitars and Smith’s ever-present atonal yelping and whining. The Fall are somewhat of an acquired taste, but they offer a unique musical experience for those brave enough.

#37
Bummed
Happy Mondays
1988

Almost a decade after he recorded one of the coldest, most dehumanizing bands in history (Joy Division), Martin Hannett found himself producing one of the sunniest, most upbeat albums to ever escape the industrial shithole known as Manchester, England. Life is funny like that sometimes. However, Hannett showed some incredible versatility by gracing Happy Mondays and Bummed with a bright, organic production that shone the perfect amount of light on all the weird, dark corners of their music. The result was an album that set the gears in motion for Happy Mondays, allowing them to become the ultimate soundtrack for the English rave culture that swept through as the 80s morphed into the 90s.

#36
16 Lovers Lane
The Go-Betweens
1988

I’ve already written about this wonderfully graceful album several times on this blog, but I just can’t say enough nice things about this stately, mature take on the classic “break-up album” archetype. Grant McLennan infuses these songs with enough tension and desperation that you know he’s serious, but the end result is actually very serene and just plain beautiful. Avoiding all the ugly finger-pointing that usually comes with intra-band breakups (*cough* Fleetwood Mac *cough*), 16 Lovers Lane is proof that even rock musicians can act like adults sometimes.

#35
You’re Living All Over Me
Dinosaur Jr.
1987

Punks are supposed to hate guitar solos. They’re big, indulgent and synonymous with the lethargic dinosaur bands of an older era that Johnny Rotten so famously railed against with his (in)famous “I Hate Pink Floyd” shirt. However, for at least one punk chilling over in Amherst, MA, solos were still the shit. And thus J Mascis, alt-rock’s first true guitar hero, was born. However, the appeal of Dinosaur Jr. doesn’t lie in technical virtuosity or delicate strumming. Mascis plays like his hands are on fire, ripping great holes through his songs with his distorted-beyond-all-reason guitar. You’re Living All Over Me remains the band's greatest moment, when the band managed to get the musical ghosts of hardcore punk and Neil Young to sit in the same room as each other without tearing each other to pieces. Perhaps that’s because they’re not too different after all…

#34
Pretty Hate Machine
Nine Inch Nails
1989

Picking up the pieces where Depeche Mode left them at the end of the 80s, Trent Reznor took dark synth pop and took it where most of his English contemporaries never dared go: straight into the seething, experimental wasteland known as industrial rock. The end result was Pretty Hate Machine, an album full of terrifying sounds and oppressive noises…that’s really fun to dance to. This combination would create a bona fide music superstar out of Reznor in the angst-filled 90s and would spawn zillions of knock-offs, with varying degrees of quality. Reznor’s original still remains the cream of the crop, though.

#33
Songs About Fucking
Big Black
1987

I mean, with an album title like that, how can you go wrong? Big Black’s last campaign in their war against the world honed their razor-edged assault down to something even sharper. Steve Albini’s lean, mean, sonic pummeling machine wasn’t willing to go down without a fight and Songs About Fucking features some of the band’s best material, from the grinding “Pavement Saw” to the uncontrolled shitfest of “Ergot” (“mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, bread”). Oh, and there are also Kraftwerk and Cheap Trick covers, proof that Big Black could be wonderfully funny when they weren’t singing about sleeping sickness.

#32
Crocodiles
Echo & The Bunnymen
1980

THIS is how you do debut albums! Crocodiles is so perfectly formed and complete that it’s almost impossible to believe it’s the first sample the world ever got of the Bunnymen’s music. Balanced wonderfully between darkness and light, these elegant, immediate songs should have made the Bunnymen stars the world over. Sadly, things didn’t exactly work that way, but Crocodiles is still a refreshing listen, full of stunning instrumentation and Ian McCulloch’s soaring voice.

#31
The Smiths
The Smiths
1984

By 1984, Morrissey’s whole persona was still in an embryonic state. He hadn’t quite perfected all the maudlin drama, poetic flair and effortless-yet-dour coolness that he’s spent the better part of the past twenty years surrounding himself with. However, The Smiths is still one hell of an album. Anchored by Johnny Marr’s winding guitar mastery, the band reels off song after song, laying the bedrock for all the success the Smiths would go on to enjoy (or not-enjoy, in Morrissey’s case). Special props go to the unbeatable trio at the heart of the album: “This Charming Man”, “Still Ill” and “Hand In Glove”, three songs that made every misunderstood teen’s life a bit brighter when they first heard them.

Best Albums Of The 1980s, Pt. 1

It’s August and that means it’s time for the third segment in my series showcasing some of my favorite albums throughout the past four decades. This time around, we’re tackling the much-maligned 80s, a decade synonymous with hair metal, insufferable synth pop and Ronald Reagan dreaming of shooting missiles out of the air with space lasers. While some of us might not want to give up on that last one, the 80s are mostly remembered for their supposed lack of great culture. However, of all the decades I’m covering, the 80s proved the most difficult to assemble, since there were far more than fifty albums I wanted to talk about. Sadly, fifty was my self-imposed limit and many great albums are now littering the metaphorical cutting room floor of my mind. The following represents just a thin slice of the great treasures the 80s had to offer. On that note…

The requisite disclaimer:
This list is just a matter of my own opinion. This list is less about saying one album is “better” and another and more about just presenting music that I’ve enjoyed over the years. If you disagree with anything on here, feel free to comment and say so. Polite disagreement is always appreciated, however.

Want to catch up with the rest of this series?

Best Albums Of The 1960s: Pt. 1, Pt. 2, Pt. 3, Pt. 4, Pt. 5
Best Albums Of The 1970s: Pt. 1, Pt. 2, Pt. 3, Pt. 4, Pt. 5

Also, I realize that last week I posted a manifesto decrying people who focus on the music of the past. What am I doing right now? Well, umm, I’m…focusing on the music of the past. However, I swear I’m not a hypocrite. The point of what I wrote about Woodstock was that all eras of music should be embraced, including the present AND the past. This is why I’ve broken my own tastes down into decades for this blog. There’s good music in all eras and it all deserves a fair and equal treatment. So, without further ado…

#50
Psychocandy
The Jesus & Mary Chain
1985

On paper, it doesn’t sound like anything that would change the world: Beach Boys-worthy melodies getting molested by a wave of feedback, fuzz guitar and howling noise. Yet, Psychocandy contains the seeds of a solid chunk of all the alternative rock that would pop up in the twenty years following the album’s release. Few bands had so successfully married poppy tunefulness and avant-garde art-rock. With this debut, the Jesus & Mary Chain accomplished in a heartbeat what Lou Reed spent the better part of the 70s trying to pull off.

#49
The Sky’s Gone Out
Bauhaus
1982

Bauhaus probably didn’t anticipate the sprawling extremes that goth culture would reach in later decades, but in the early 80s, this dramatic quartet of Englishmen created the template for what it meant to be “goth.” Led by singer Peter Murphy (half-Bowie, half-Karloff) and the pyroclastic strangeness of Daniel Ash’s guitar, The Sky’s Gone Out is Bauhaus’ finest blend of theater, terror and good, ol’-fashioned catchy songs. They’re also the world’s finest band named after architecture. That’s worth something, yeah?

#48
Nebraska
Bruce Springsteen
1982

Sandwiched between two pinnacles of the Boss’s career (The River in 1980 and Born In The U.S.A. in 1984), Nebraska is a weird little oddity in Springsteen’s hallowed career. Recorded on a four-track cassette as Bruce traveled across the country, this collection of skeletal, eerie songs was meant to be fleshed-out into a more traditional Springsteen album. But, somewhere along the line, Bruce decided these sparse sketches were just fine as they were and thus the world was graced with Nebraska. People accustomed to Bruce as a loud, proud, flag-waving patriot would be wise to check out the darkness pervading songs like “Atlantic City” and “State Trooper”.

#47
Your Funeral… My Trial
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
1986

The majority of Nick Cave’s early work with the Bad Seeds sounds like it was recorded by a particularly unstable Leonard Cohen, which makes sense, being that Nick was grappling with an intense heroin addiction while being holed up in Berlin, the drug capital of Europe. There’s a recipe for success if I’ve ever heard one. However, Your Funeral… My Trial channels all of that experience into a stunning work of art, full of claustrophobic atmospheres and self-loathing. From the broken title track onward, it remains Nick’s greatest early-Seeds album and a ferocious testament to human suffering and coping.

#46
My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts
Brian Eno/David Byrne
1981

A collaboration to end all collaborations, Eno and Byrne had already spent the better part of the past five years writing the book on what would become the music of the 80s. However, they did themselves one better with My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts, an album which pioneered sampling in music, looping together stray rhythm tracks, recorded vocals and found sounds into one surprisingly danceable collage of noise. This cut-and-paste style of musical creativity prefigured much of the technology that would allow the hip-hop explosion in the 80s to happen.

#45
Halber Mench
Einstürzende Neubauten
1985

Einstürzende Neubauten are like any other traditional rock band. Oh, except they don’t have drums. They hit sheet metal with hammers instead. Oh, and they don’t really play guitars much. They hit them with hammers too. But beyond that, no differences. Oh, except their singer usually sounds like a cat being strangled…in German. And their songs are impossibly aggressive, mechanical and dark. And their performances are astonishing pieces of performance art with dramatic changes in tone from one moment to the next. And they helped put the “industrial” in “industrial rock.” But beyond that…just like any other, run-of-the-mill band.

#44
EVOL
Sonic Youth
1986

There’s no point denying the fact that Sonic Youth’s records have seen a steady slide toward calmer sounds over the course of their legendary, three-decade career. Those rare few who were lucky enough to see the band in their primordial stage in the early-80s are always talking about how things just aren’t the same anymore. Yet, their third album, EVOL, is one of their quietest. What’s going on here? Well, EVOL may sound calm, but the tension is so palpable throughout the album that listening to these ten simple tracks can be an emotionally exhausting experience. More so than any other Sonic Youth album, the band’s trademark wacky tunings and elliptical songwriting sound just plain warped on EVOL.

#43
Reign In Blood
Slayer
1986

Obscenely fast thrash metal shredding? Check. Howling, gruff vocals about Nazis, devil worship and blood raining from the sky? Check. Released on the hip-hop-centric Def Jam label? Check. Wait, what? One of the most extreme metal albums in history was released on Def Jam? You betcha, thanks to forward-thinking producer Rick Rubin, who also mainstreamed Run-DMC and the Beastie Boys for the world’s enjoyment. Under Rubin’s watchful eye, Slayer actually created something oddly catchy and listenable despite the overt “we’re scary!”-ness. An accomplishment on all fronts.

#42
The Only Fun In Town
Josef K
1981

You can generally group bands together judging by their drugs/drinks of choice. Heroin music tends to sound very different from amphetamine music and, of course, music by alcoholics has a sound all its own. However, Scotland’s Josef K were fueled by two unusual stimulants: caffeinated soda and existential literature. The resulting sound was a jittery, staccato blend of guitars and rhythm, with Paul Haig’s world-weary voice pondering the meaning of existence. Imagine Joy Division without the depression, replacing pints at the pub with a nice bottle of Coke. Mortal dread never sounded this adorable.

#41
Colossal Youth
Young Marble Giants
1980

Not many bands have come along that sound like Young Marble Giants. Maybe that’s because most people who sound like them would be told they have no musical skill whatsoever. Between Phillip Moxham’s minimal bass, his brother Stuart’s scratchy, tentative guitar and Allison Statton’s clearly unpolished, naïve singing, Young Marble Giants do sound a bit like a garage band that left the garage about three months before they were ready for public consumption. However, as you listen to their music, it becomes clear that it’s not lack of ability that’s keeping the Giants’ songs this spare; they’re playing like that by choice. Their only album, Colossal Youth, is the ultimate “less-is-more” statement of the post-punk era.