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.
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