1974

Here is another great year.  Considering I took an extra day here I am really confident in saying that.  If there is one flaw, and there really is just one, it's that there's a lot of artist repetition here.

10.  Faust - The Faust Tapes
 Richard Branson's somewhat successful marketing experiment to make this album chart is unfortunately more famous than the music.  Here Faust actually show off their personality as an artists' collective much more than a recorded singing group with all their live snippets of tracks.  Most are originally untitled and consist of a few members jamming on different instruments.  Most of them are really interesting, ranging from funk to punk, to classical beauty.  The same can be said for the "real" songs here.  Jean-Hevrvé Peron brings his native French into the language mix typically revolving around English on the angular punk of "J'ai Mal Aux Dents" and the gorgeous closer "Chere Chambre."  Faust classics like "Flashback Caruso" and "Stretch Out Time" inhabit the ends of the album, but the whole middle functions as one of the best pieces of avant-garde rock, paving the way for the likes of "Green Typewriters."

9.  Sparks - Kimono My House
The creepy former child models from Pacific Palisades known as the Mael Brothers cross the pond to great success with this album.  Beginning with the words, "Zoo time is she and you time.  The mammals are your favorite type and you want her tonight," the comedic rockers create a hard rocking set that crosses Zappa with Queen.  Punk as T. Rex on the likes of "Amateur Hour," and as pretentiously 70s on the Romeo and Juliet-gone-wrong saga of "Here in Heaven" Sparks set themselves apart from anyone else in  the game - usually the case for Americans in the UK like Jimi before and Chrissie Hynde and Holly Beth Vincent later.  Sparks' blend of Ron Mael's wit and musical brilliance combined with Russell's flamboyance and SoCal pretty boy charm and both brothers' finely-tuned theatrics hits its stride on this landmark release.

8.  Roxy Music - Country Life
With it's similar, yet humorless album cover Ferry, Manzanera, Mackay, Thompson, and recent addition string/keys man Eddie Jobson (plus another excellent yet almsot anonymous bassist) prove that Roxy and Eno are better going their separate ways.  Beginning with their finest moment, "The Thrill Of It All" the  band shows off its talent for exciting yet sophisticated and complex glam rock.  Ferry's honey-dripping romance is at its best on songs like "All I Want Is You," "A Really Good Time," and tribute  to then-girlfriend Jerry Hall "Prairie Rose," perhaps the most loving croon to Texas ever made by a non-native.  The Mackay-led "Three and Nine," and 50s-style croon of "If It Takes All Night" are some of the band's best work as well making this album their definitive work.  No need for any extra electronic tweaking.

7.  Brian Eno - Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy)
...And if you need any more proof, here it is.  Eno's second album remains unlike anything else he has done.  More melodic than the rest and carrying its predecessor's dadaist humor this one is less of artistic statement than any other Eno works, and more of a true pop record.  The lyrics may not have any more meaning than on other albums, but they can trick you into thinking otherwise, with the mind being sucked into a false plot on the military farce of "Back in Judy's Jungle" and the unsettling, maybe even disturbing "The Fat Lady of Limbourg."  "Burning Airlines Give You So Much More," is more a romantic comedy of espionage than airline jingle and "The True Wheel" is the theme song for the oncoming post-punk generation.  Similarly, "Third Uncle" proved to be such an influence on goth that Bauhaus opened their definitive album with their interpretation.  The whole thing ends nicely with the gentle title track, making it Eno's most underrated work to date.

6.  The Residents - Meet the Residents
This eyeball-headed quartet(?) from Shreveport, Louisiana by way of San Francisco make their debut with this distinctly American equivalent of The Fuast  Tapes.  Snippets of songs like "Guylum Bardot" and "Breath and Width," prove this as well as hint at what would come with the  likes of The Commercial Album.  Like Faust they take  the time for pure beauty as heard on the classical piano of "Rest Aria."  The opening "cover" "Boots," and "Smelly Tongues" foreshadow the many Bay Area followers in their shadow such as Chrome, Primus, and Tuxedomoon who would even be signed to the Cryptic Corporation's Ralph Records.  The carefully-staged mystery around the band only slightly adds to the record's eeriness which is the first album of many post-punk followers to have  the feeling of a walk through a pitch-black haunted house.  A Victorian one, most likely.

5.  Big Star - Radio City
Without the massive success the members were expecting or co-leader Chris Bell the Memphis now-trio makes a darker, bitter album that stands as their best work.  Well known for the song "September Gurls," which should have extended their notoriety beyond Bomp! and Creem devotees, it is, even more than the debut the birth of the subsequent underground power-pop movement.  Gone is the youthful romance of "Thirteen" and "The India Song."  Taking it's place is the anger of "You Get What You Deserve" and "Life Is White," much darker than the still fun energy of "Don't Lie To Me."  Even "I'm in Love With a Girl," is inexplicably coated in tragedy.  At least this darkness brought out the best in the young musicians before it destroyed them.

4.  Yes - Relayer
After the blunder of the four-sided, four-tracked Tales from Topographic Oceans, yes returns to literary adaptation.  This time they take on War and Peace.  Alan White is no longer the new guy and while he may not be Bill Bruford, he certainly is a perfect cog in the Yes machine, as is tasteful Swiss keyboard god Patrick Moraz.  If not for "Sound Chaster," the misstep that led the future of prog into permanent disrepair this would be the group's finest album.  The 22-minute "The Gates of Delirium" kicks off immediately, with no need for as dramatic a buildup as "Close to the Edge."  With Jon Anderson's kit of sheet metal and other scraps the band invents industrial music before they were written out of history by the artists who are considered its originators.  The song's complexity allows it for both the mind-bending torture  of war and the transcendence of the peace that will hopefully come "Soon."  Where their last masterpiece closes with a cool-down "To Be Over" achieves the band's height of heavenly beauty with Steve Howe's steel guitar achieving  the kind of beauty normally only reserved for nature.  Don't underestimate the power of switching guitars.

3.  Can - Soon Over Babaluma
Can joins Yes, Big Star, and Roxy in the loss of a key member in vocalist Damo Suzuki, leading many to skip over this classic follow-up.  While the remaining members may not excel at vocals the way the Japanese drifter-turned-Jehovah's Witness did, they remind you that they never really needed them.  As "Splash" would imply, this album is as much, if not more effervescent as the last.  The violin-dominated "Dizzy Dizzy" is one of their smoothest songs, with the psychedelia being matched with a sexuality heard  on several tracks.  Most notably, that is heard on the space funk of "Chain Reaction" with its drastic alternation between loungy groove and wild shake.  The scientific element plays  out until the  end with "Quantum Physics," which  if not for his playing of a lyre-like  instrument is the kind of music one would imagine Spock creating.  Can proves once and for all that they are a single-minded musical machine, one that Suzuki was lucky to be a part of.

2.  Brian Eno - Here Come the Warm Jets
Eno's debut solidified his place in rock's history long before his work with the Talking Heads and faux-influential chumps like U2 and Coldplay.  He embraces electric noise with a sense of humor and adventure that makes it stick more than the gritty darkness of the Velvets could have and takes glam from the teenage TV party to the modern art museum.  I guess that's what "Cindy Tells Me" is all about.  Both Robert Fripp and Phil Manzanera play on this  album, with their loyalty growing to the unusual man who gets the best work of their careers out of both.  Also featured is the rest of his past Roxy mates (barring Ferry), Chris Spedding, and John Wetton.  The album has a wide range of  sounds from the silliness of "The Paw Paw Negro Blowtorch" and "Dead Finks Don't  Talk" to the nauseating weirdness of "Driving Me Backwards" and "Baby's On  Fire."  Then there's the heart-breaking moments of staggering beauty "On Some Faraway Beach," and the title track which in addition to inventing shoegaze is easily the greatest recording of all time.  Period.

1.  Faust - Faust  IV
Actually the greatest krautrock album of them all.  Actually, don't quote me on that, but it is that exceptional.  Perhaps in response to Zeppelin's boldly-deserving title they open with the almost 12-minute "Krautrock," ending their initial run as the definitive  band of the style.  They quickly change the  pace with the ode  to thuggish violence "The Sad Skinhead," which may have been responsible for the  next generation's evolution from punk to post-punk so drastic.  The band focuses on its drone, making its large group of minds meld together as well as Can's, yet with each individual's talents still distinguishable.  The high aspirations of this album are even more evident on their wise choice to remake "Picnic on a Frozen River" with this "Deuxieme Tableau" being one of their  best recordings.  In addition to the brutality and drone, the band allows for more sensitive material on such beauties as "Jennifer," their most identifiable love song(?) and "Giggy Smile," which may be the finest marriage of nylon-string guitar and punchy drums ever caught on tape.  With the quiet blues of "It's a Bit of Pain" concluding  the album, Faust makes their final statement the final word on the great music the Germans gave us in the 1970s.

Normally, I don't do this and will continue not to (though 1985 is tempting) but I have to give an honorable mention to John Cale's Fear which would have given an additional appearance for many already  on this list, and to King Crimson's Red - one of the heaviest albums ever recorded.