So, the 80s has been taking a long time! I thought I would be onto the 90s by the time I got back to Michigan (here for about a week or so this time, nothing to worry about New Yorkers... It has been a time even more overwhelming than usual lately. I am not savoring this decade, its peak has already passed and I am really looking forward to the 90s. Not like it's that much better, but I'm pretty zazzed to write about the likes of PJ Harvey and Guided by Voices. So, here we are, almost there, in another one of those years that has some real heavy-duty masterpieces but is overall... just pretty good. Special shout-outs to Superfuzz Bigmuff - one of the year's finest records, but it's an EP, and to Bug which may have made it were I able to listen to it now.
10. Beat Happening - Jamboree
Calvin Johnson, Heather Lewis, and Bret Lunsford just kept getting better and better and many consider this their finest work. I don't. Still great, though. All their sensibilities are here at their most enjoyably exaggerated. The playfully simple and tinny is there, and is even joined by their noise on the closer "The This Many Boyfriends Club." The drony ballads that would grow in prominence begin with "Indian Summer," which Johnson has called "indie rock's 'Knocking on Heaven's Door." I disagree and will save similar analogies for later in this list. The raw rock sound that would dominate their next album is also getting more finely-tuned on such definitive tracks as "Midnite A Go-Go" and "Crashing Through." It's still pretty Calvin-dominated, but that's nothing to complain about especially in the context of having little knowledge of just what Heather Lewis is capable just yet.
9. The Sugarcubes - Life's Too Good
Björk makes her first of several appearances on her old band's debut. It's a shame they are best remembered for her, as the large band is a tight and collaborative force. This energetic psychedelic pop album was so out of place in the 80s context it can seem a little too "quirky" if you're not ready for it, but perhaps that's what it took to put Iceland on the musical map (obviously, that country has many more appearances ahead). The clean production works perfectly in highlighting the band's crazy rhythms, bizarre lyrics, and fearless approach to music that exudes a rare joy. At this time, young American and (as ALWAYS) British artists were very hung up on what they could and could not do, according to their image and fanbase, so these Norsepeople really shook things up with their embrace of the avant-garde, pop, prog, and aggressive, distorted guitars. Naturally, the following exports had nothing in common with them, and that was okay.
8. Talk Talk - Spirit of Eden
The guitarist-less group often credited for creating "post-rock" and their producer/unofficial (or hidden) member Tim Friese-Greene go further into their experimental direction. Forgoing the pop structure of new wave, they hone their jazz-like approach to their complex and dynamic music. The songs are long and travel from loud and fast to quiet and forlorn in a way far less predictable than most of their followers. Rather than a big, electric drone and crescendo, their sound is more reliant on keyboards that could come from another time and the expressive voice of Mark Hollis in complex unanimes arrangements that could only be composed with the delicate precision of Erik Satie or the most freakishly unified band of all time. This was the future as many of the few who heard it envisioned.
7. The Church - Starfish
Similarly, this Australian
band was not only far removed from the American mentality, but also that
of their home country. It may be related to their being from Canberra
that they have more in common with the Chameleons than the Triffids, but
there is still a lot of drama. It may also be for the fact that this
album was recorded in Los Angeles while other Australian bands left home
for Europe. The Church may have played it unusually wise for an Aussie
band that way with "Under The Milky Way" being better-known than even
anything by Nick Cave in the States. Many of the other songs do come
close to the romantic hit in quality, especially "North, South, East,
and West" and "Reptile," which show that the band can hit a much higher
energy level and still retain their dark mystery. Like many of the
foreign records of this year it is a well-produced, psychedelic, and
smooth album from a highly-dynamic and skilled group.
6. My Bloody Valentine - Isn't Anything
A weird little album that is often thought of as MBV's first "real," LP, somewhat accurately. It stands far apart from the others in my opinion, functioning best as Kevin Shields' education in studio wizardry that really paid off on the following album. The band had tightened up their jangly psychedelic harmonies, dreamy atmosphere, and expert song craft on the preceding masterful yet raw EPs. As a result, this may be their best sounding album until recently, as the music takes a bit of a back seat. Their are still some great songs and their odd changes show just how capable the Irish quartet is at pulling off the unfathomable, plus the love between guitarists/vocalists Shields and Bilinda Butcher adds that fuzzy pink and purple feel that would just get bigger and deeper. It is a favorite amongst the fans who prefer the group's more angular and jarring sound as that aspect has never been more prominent.
5. The House of Love - The House of Love
The ultimate Creation band outdid their now more famous label mates this year and all without bankrupting Alan McGee! The quartet has a lot in common with the Church but with an more refined knack at writing short and catchy tunes. While all the songs are written by Guy Chadwick, the dynamic is still very collaborative and it is clear that all members have an unusual understanding of the finer points of noisy psychedelic postpunk and how to apply it to friendly pop music. The band has a lot more humor and less of a tendency for pretensious poetry than their shoegazey followers and influences like Echo and the Bunnymen, but naturally all of the romance - particularly in the opening track "Christine," which is equal parts pretty romance and heavy drone. If you're into this kind of thing and still haven't heard this album, change it immediately, you will be glad you did.
4. The Feelies - Only Life
The new incarnation of the Jersey band somehow gets even tighter on their second major label album as they make room for a bit of the old sound in addition to the more laid-back new one. The chase of "Too Far Gone," ups the tension even more than in the early days thanks to Brenda Sauter's ultra smooth and precise bass playing and the re-assertion that no band sings "oh" better. The band appears more patient than ever with the elements that make them great letting each other shine separately such as the subtle percussion of "Deep Fascination" and the wailing lead guitar of "Higher Ground." Tyrpes holdover "The Undertow" was a wise choice for inclusion, while bigger and less eerie than the original, it has as dynamic a build and achieves the same kind of Eno-esque transcendence while retaining more of a folk-rock accessibility. With a cover of "What Goes On" closing the album, the band embraces its roots while it creates similar roots for the likes of Yo La Tengo, Real Estate and generations of New Jersey bands following in their wake (note album cover).
3. The Pixies - Surfer Rosa
Out of the raw and angry American scene comes one of the most influential and unexpected bands of the decade, effortlessly writing the future of American rock. This band came late to the booming Boston underground and busted out far beyond their neighbors with the help of Steve Albini on this sick little record. Maybe the most unlikely frontman of all time, Black Francis demonstrates his rare ear for pop music and devastating self-deprecating sense of humor. Even better is the prominence of Kim Deal (aka Mrs. John Murphy), a woman so cool and talented Robert Pollard may have destroyed his marriage for her and still didn't get her! Her vocals and twin-like lock with drummer Dave Lovering make this album about as interesting as Francis does. ...But that is to disregard the biting guitar of Joey Santiago, the treble-y surfing sound that is the real voice of this band with a dynamic so intense it was no wonder it ended in violent hatred. A rare record that balances the perverse ("Bone Machine"), the innocent ("Tony's Theme"), the obsessive ("Cactus"), the just plain funny ("Broken Face") and just plain cool ("Brick is Red") with incredible ease.
2. The Go-Betweens - 16 Lovers Lane
Often called the indie rock Rumours, this would be the Brisbane group's final album of its original run and the final one as a real band rather than a project for songwriters Robert Forster and the late Grant McLennan. The rest of the band, particularly Lindy Morrison and Amanda Brown, do a lot more than just provide their (ex-)boyfriends with lyrical fuel. The harmonies and prominence of Brown's violin and oboe make this album a far cry from about anything else made before after. This is a smooth and pretty album with all the dark intensity to be expected from an 80s band from Australia, particularly on the story of one woman's descent into pyromania "Was There Anything I Could Do?" With its airy guitars and nostalgia it can be easy to overlook the darkness in the best-known song "Streets of Your Town," the best song since "Cattle & Cane." Alternating between the joy of new love and the torture of heartbreak, songs like "Love is a Sign" and "Clouds," live up to the album's title with it's delicate and personal approach to both sides of romance, with a voice as wise as it is childlike and innocent. As crushing as it can get this exceptional songwriting team asserts "The Love Goes On!" with both the happy and sad worth living through.
1. Sonic Youth - Daydream Nation
New York's representatives in the 80s uniquely national underground scene make their masterpiece on this expansive double album. They take the big plunge into pop without sacrificing any of their avant-garde tendencies, fitting them seamlessly into generally accessible tracks like "Silver Rocket" and "'Cross the Breeze." Even Steve Shelley and Kim Gordon's vocals/lyrics sound great on this album, with the former not afraid to keep is simple and hard and the latter's rage being fun and relatable rather than obvious, uninspired, and too smart-assed for its own good. Ranaldo is also at his best, contributing three songs to the album all sounding so different you would expect him to be able to do. In this context the experimentation of "Rain King" and the Mike Watt sample of "Providence" are as enjoyable listens as the pure pop perfection of "Teen Age Riot," one of the greatest rock songs of all time. The closing "Trilogy" makes the album end as well as it began, with its parts going from love for the city, to science fiction, to Gordon's most aggressive, leaving the album on an exhilarating and unsettling note begging for more. You will never find Sonic Youth so focused and tasteful. Some say they were "too into being Sonic Youth" at the time, but that may have been what did it - being too into being Kim Gordon, Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo, and Steve Shelley is why they never repeated this success. Regardless of what you think of the band, this is a masterpiece.
Monday, April 15, 2013
Friday, April 12, 2013
1987
Sorry I made anyone wait so long to read all about the year of my birth, but I just didn't feel like it. Well, I did, but I had technical difficulties back then. So this year I would say overall is not that great, despite some great stuff. I dunno, that might just be my mood lately. It actually is better than that. Some great bands! It may surprise people who don't know me that well, too, but to that I say this: If you wanted a predictable list you would be reading Rolling Stone, not a blog by a guy who used to self-identify as a neo old-fasionist psychedelia post-hipster.
Rats, I just realized I don't have the official list with me so the order might be real wacky... I'll do my best to prevent that.
10. The Jesus and Mary Chain - Darklands
JAMC's second album is a pleasant and mature step forward from their debut. Unfortunately apart from a few great singles like "Head On" it is where their glory days end. Every strength of their first album is fine-tuned with the noise stripped away and extended into a slower-paced groove. It is almost like a set of David Lynch-worthy ballads from another era apart from that distinctly 80s drum sound. Simplicity is still the brothers' greatest virtue, both in music and lyrics - that and repetition which with longer songs can become a bit less charming on this set of a lot less tracks. Luckily that also makes the songs bleed together... just a bit less. It is the perfect prescription for "more JAMC, it's just too bad it ends there. If you're really desperate, note how closely Butch Vig was taking notes, especially on "Happy When It Rains."
9. Hüsker Dü - Warehouse: Songs and Stories
The Dü concludes their brief yet prolific career with another double album. Is it a concept again? I can't tell and I don't really care, but with so many great songs who cares? It sounds the best of any of their records and signals the very different path that Hart and Mould would take afterwards with more new sounds in the arrangements and completely different vibes like the Medieval-with-distortion "She Floated Away." Still the best songs are speedy punk-pop with somewhat obscure lyrics like "Ice Cold Ice" and "You're a Soldier." Along with a whole bunch of albums, most of which will be on my next list this foreshadows the "alternative revolution" of the following decade and this album would have been a hit five years later for certain. After all, its length fits a CD better than vinyl. The band even appeared on Joan Rivers in a clip I highly recommend and "Could You Be The One?" really should have made it - perhaps it was too poppy...
8. Sonic Youth - Sister
Sonic Youth finally fully embraces the pop sensibilities of their peers in the American Underground on this one. They are still a bunch of pompous New York brats (and one wannabe New York bat), but they get away with it on this album that really made them the over-worshipped, but still great combo they always will be. "Schizophrenia" has been a staple of the band since and for good reason despite some kind of eye-rolling lyrics that I guess tie into the Philip K. Dick concept. The energy gets higher on "(I Got a) Catholic Block" which, along with "Tuff Gnarl" really signals where things would go on the following albums. Lee Renaldo sounds fantastic on "Pipeline/Kill Time," which sets the standard for his songs that are always a welcome change of pace on their later albums, even though Steve Shelley could ill back a little bit. Like that would ever happen. Their take on Crime's "Hot Wire My Heart" is pretty fun, too. Maybe not Sonic Youth's first great record, but the first one I would recommend without hesitation.
7. The Triffids - Calenture
More melodrama from David McCombs and company, though this time a bit more streamlined. Where Born Sandy Devotional has a wide range of songs, this one is a lot more unified, but never in a limiting way. Opener "Bury Me Deep In Love" may be this band's most intense song, an anthem for lost souls on the road and certainly to be played at my funeral. Even the up-beat sounding single "Trick of the Light," is extremely dark with the line "see, I was beating her like an anvil, beating her out of original shape," not enough to distract from the protagonist's (?) heartbreaking mirage. The self-explanatory "Hometown Farewell Kiss" and horror story "Jerdacuttup Man," keep this album full of heartbreak and torturous violence with the closest thing to relief being Jill Birt's "Open For You." Lyrically, it is even more explicit, yet musically much more accessible than BSD, this can be as good a place to begin with the Triffids. The title comes from the condition in which the open sea appears to be fields of green grass - a mirage leading to heartbreak and and likely a very unpleasant death.
6. Game Theory - Lolita Nation
This Davis, CA group loosely associated with the Paisley Underground (later adding Michael Quercio) teams up with Mitch Easter to create one of the biggest and most psychotic albums of the 80s pop underground. This group of Kubrick fanatics led by Scott Miller have plenty of dark interests, but the sounds of this double LP are very bright and the lyrics... very hard to tell. Sweet tunes like "We Love You Carol and Alison" and "Chardonnay" are interspersed with odd samples like "Kenneth - What's The Frequency?" a more accurate retelling of Dan Rather's unfortunate encounter than peers R.E.M.'s. The titles get weird, but instrumentals like "Choose Between Two Sons," make them incidental to the beautiful pop music all over this brainy mammoth of an album.
5. The Butthole Surfers- Locust Abortion Technician
Usually considered the Surfers' best, this is the height of the band's studio wizardry and unified playing with the addition of classic bass player Jeff Pinkus. Beginning about a minute and a half into the album the group states their purpose of being louder, heavier, and slower than Sabbath. They succeed and would put generations and generations of so-called "doom metal" bands to shame if any of them had the good sense to listen. "Pittsburgh to Lebanon" and the backing of the horrific fabricated sexual assault of "22 Going on 23" are the heaviest songs of the decade. Studio experimentation is at its best on "Hay" (a far cry from the R.E.M. tribute of similar name) and the classic re-cut piece of Thai pop "Kuntz." Gibby totally cuts loose vocally propelling the apocalyptic music of "The O-Men" and "U.S.S.A." into the most nightmarish territory this band of acid-fried gypsies from hell created. They don't regret anything they didn't do, so if you do see your mother this weekend, you'll be sure what to tell her.
4. Wire - The Ideal Copy
I'll be honest, I haven't listened to this album enough to say much. I can't really listen to it right now, at least not in any way to add much. Either way Wire is one of the best bands that ever existed. After eight years they came back and not only sounded as great as ever but put the younger generation to shame. A lot of people debate when U2 stopped being relevant, I would say that it was when Wire got back together. I would also say that about New Order, as pleasant as listening to them would remain. I have a lot of catching up to do on latter-day Wire, but I have not been disappointed so far and I can place this album (at least) this high with no hesitation despite it being a new addition to my life.
The Western Mass trio make the best album of their initial career on this one. The young band is not want for experience or talent and the crunch and emotion precede what would follow enough for Lou Barlow to believe they could have been Nirvana. That is debatable, but what is not debatable is that it is easy to overlook the very talented and his perfect playing Barlow as J and Murph, steal the show as always with their godly talent. Still, "Lose" is one of the greats, up there with "Kracked" and "The Lung." However, all these songs pale in comparison to opener "Little Fury Things," maybe the band's greatest song beginning with their hardcore roots and following with harmonies and tambourines that remake 60s folk rock with the knowledge of decades of punk, noise, and tasteful metal. These hippies know tunes, heavy playing, and shredding better than any other band around and this is their peak from the early days.
2. The Bats - Daddy's Highway
After being the hippest thing on the planet for the entire decade the Flying Nun camp finally puts out a true masterpiece - the finest record the label ever released. The Bats, though seldom regarded as such are a supergroup led by former Clean bassist (on guitar) Rob Scott and featuring Toy Love member Paul Keane on bass. Their approach is what differentiates them from other supergroups as much of what makes this album great comes from lead guitarist Kaye Woodward's harmonies and occasional bass playing on songs like the opener "Treason." That song also introduces the brain-penetrating violin of guest star Alastair Gilbraith. This flawless set of guitar pop sounds eerily similar to the artists working in New Jersey around the same time and would come back to influence those same ones, most evidently in Yo La Tengo. Moods very from the bright and cheery of "Round and Down" and "Take It" to the melancholy ballads of "Tragedy" and "Some Peace Tonight" to the dark psychedelia of "North by North." It concludes with the punchy bass and particularly tight harmonies of the coming of age title track.
1. Guns 'N' Roses - Appetite for Destruction
If you can believe that. Like the intelligence-breeding psychotropic mushroom growing out of a great big pile of cow shit, one of the finest rock albums of the era came out of the 80s Sunset Strip pop metal scene. Maybe it was ambition, maybe it was pure self-desctructive psychosis, or maybe it was brotherly love, but this album is a true masterpiece. Perfectly titled, it is the one thing for which tortured genius Axl Rose will always be remembered. It is in no small part due to the rest of the band featuring childhood best friend Izzy Stradlin and his Strokes-inspiring dynamics with lead guitarist Slash. Slash's own childhood best friend, the troubled Steven Adler with former Fastbacks' drummer Duff McKagen back that up with the heaviest and most interesting complicated rhythms. As volatile as their personalities were the five members collaborate equally here, explaining why it is so vastly superior to their other work, even the finest moments on the underrated Use Your Illusion. The vile Sunset Strip metalhead life is evident on "It's So Easy" and "Nightrain," but GNR's material goes much deeper with the sensitivity of "Sweet Child O' Mine" and "Think About You," and the peers into Rose's horrifying mind on "Welcome to the Jungle" and "Out Ta Get Me." Even the final songs and their sleazy sexuality transcend the stupid horniness of their scene-mates. After each song, this album leaves you thinking "there is no way the next song could rock that much!" and then proves you wrong in about five seconds. While most of the members have spent the last 25 years embarrassing themselves and appearing to have more and more in common with the members of Poison and Mötley Crüe this is an album of uncommon brilliance without any comparison.
Okay, finally that's over with. Better writing next time. Great albums, though!
Rats, I just realized I don't have the official list with me so the order might be real wacky... I'll do my best to prevent that.
10. The Jesus and Mary Chain - Darklands
JAMC's second album is a pleasant and mature step forward from their debut. Unfortunately apart from a few great singles like "Head On" it is where their glory days end. Every strength of their first album is fine-tuned with the noise stripped away and extended into a slower-paced groove. It is almost like a set of David Lynch-worthy ballads from another era apart from that distinctly 80s drum sound. Simplicity is still the brothers' greatest virtue, both in music and lyrics - that and repetition which with longer songs can become a bit less charming on this set of a lot less tracks. Luckily that also makes the songs bleed together... just a bit less. It is the perfect prescription for "more JAMC, it's just too bad it ends there. If you're really desperate, note how closely Butch Vig was taking notes, especially on "Happy When It Rains."
9. Hüsker Dü - Warehouse: Songs and Stories
The Dü concludes their brief yet prolific career with another double album. Is it a concept again? I can't tell and I don't really care, but with so many great songs who cares? It sounds the best of any of their records and signals the very different path that Hart and Mould would take afterwards with more new sounds in the arrangements and completely different vibes like the Medieval-with-distortion "She Floated Away." Still the best songs are speedy punk-pop with somewhat obscure lyrics like "Ice Cold Ice" and "You're a Soldier." Along with a whole bunch of albums, most of which will be on my next list this foreshadows the "alternative revolution" of the following decade and this album would have been a hit five years later for certain. After all, its length fits a CD better than vinyl. The band even appeared on Joan Rivers in a clip I highly recommend and "Could You Be The One?" really should have made it - perhaps it was too poppy...
8. Sonic Youth - Sister
Sonic Youth finally fully embraces the pop sensibilities of their peers in the American Underground on this one. They are still a bunch of pompous New York brats (and one wannabe New York bat), but they get away with it on this album that really made them the over-worshipped, but still great combo they always will be. "Schizophrenia" has been a staple of the band since and for good reason despite some kind of eye-rolling lyrics that I guess tie into the Philip K. Dick concept. The energy gets higher on "(I Got a) Catholic Block" which, along with "Tuff Gnarl" really signals where things would go on the following albums. Lee Renaldo sounds fantastic on "Pipeline/Kill Time," which sets the standard for his songs that are always a welcome change of pace on their later albums, even though Steve Shelley could ill back a little bit. Like that would ever happen. Their take on Crime's "Hot Wire My Heart" is pretty fun, too. Maybe not Sonic Youth's first great record, but the first one I would recommend without hesitation.
7. The Triffids - Calenture
More melodrama from David McCombs and company, though this time a bit more streamlined. Where Born Sandy Devotional has a wide range of songs, this one is a lot more unified, but never in a limiting way. Opener "Bury Me Deep In Love" may be this band's most intense song, an anthem for lost souls on the road and certainly to be played at my funeral. Even the up-beat sounding single "Trick of the Light," is extremely dark with the line "see, I was beating her like an anvil, beating her out of original shape," not enough to distract from the protagonist's (?) heartbreaking mirage. The self-explanatory "Hometown Farewell Kiss" and horror story "Jerdacuttup Man," keep this album full of heartbreak and torturous violence with the closest thing to relief being Jill Birt's "Open For You." Lyrically, it is even more explicit, yet musically much more accessible than BSD, this can be as good a place to begin with the Triffids. The title comes from the condition in which the open sea appears to be fields of green grass - a mirage leading to heartbreak and and likely a very unpleasant death.
6. Game Theory - Lolita Nation
This Davis, CA group loosely associated with the Paisley Underground (later adding Michael Quercio) teams up with Mitch Easter to create one of the biggest and most psychotic albums of the 80s pop underground. This group of Kubrick fanatics led by Scott Miller have plenty of dark interests, but the sounds of this double LP are very bright and the lyrics... very hard to tell. Sweet tunes like "We Love You Carol and Alison" and "Chardonnay" are interspersed with odd samples like "Kenneth - What's The Frequency?" a more accurate retelling of Dan Rather's unfortunate encounter than peers R.E.M.'s. The titles get weird, but instrumentals like "Choose Between Two Sons," make them incidental to the beautiful pop music all over this brainy mammoth of an album.
5. The Butthole Surfers- Locust Abortion Technician
Usually considered the Surfers' best, this is the height of the band's studio wizardry and unified playing with the addition of classic bass player Jeff Pinkus. Beginning about a minute and a half into the album the group states their purpose of being louder, heavier, and slower than Sabbath. They succeed and would put generations and generations of so-called "doom metal" bands to shame if any of them had the good sense to listen. "Pittsburgh to Lebanon" and the backing of the horrific fabricated sexual assault of "22 Going on 23" are the heaviest songs of the decade. Studio experimentation is at its best on "Hay" (a far cry from the R.E.M. tribute of similar name) and the classic re-cut piece of Thai pop "Kuntz." Gibby totally cuts loose vocally propelling the apocalyptic music of "The O-Men" and "U.S.S.A." into the most nightmarish territory this band of acid-fried gypsies from hell created. They don't regret anything they didn't do, so if you do see your mother this weekend, you'll be sure what to tell her.
4. Wire - The Ideal Copy
I'll be honest, I haven't listened to this album enough to say much. I can't really listen to it right now, at least not in any way to add much. Either way Wire is one of the best bands that ever existed. After eight years they came back and not only sounded as great as ever but put the younger generation to shame. A lot of people debate when U2 stopped being relevant, I would say that it was when Wire got back together. I would also say that about New Order, as pleasant as listening to them would remain. I have a lot of catching up to do on latter-day Wire, but I have not been disappointed so far and I can place this album (at least) this high with no hesitation despite it being a new addition to my life.
3. Dinosaur Jr. - You're Living All Over Me
The Western Mass trio make the best album of their initial career on this one. The young band is not want for experience or talent and the crunch and emotion precede what would follow enough for Lou Barlow to believe they could have been Nirvana. That is debatable, but what is not debatable is that it is easy to overlook the very talented and his perfect playing Barlow as J and Murph, steal the show as always with their godly talent. Still, "Lose" is one of the greats, up there with "Kracked" and "The Lung." However, all these songs pale in comparison to opener "Little Fury Things," maybe the band's greatest song beginning with their hardcore roots and following with harmonies and tambourines that remake 60s folk rock with the knowledge of decades of punk, noise, and tasteful metal. These hippies know tunes, heavy playing, and shredding better than any other band around and this is their peak from the early days.
2. The Bats - Daddy's Highway
After being the hippest thing on the planet for the entire decade the Flying Nun camp finally puts out a true masterpiece - the finest record the label ever released. The Bats, though seldom regarded as such are a supergroup led by former Clean bassist (on guitar) Rob Scott and featuring Toy Love member Paul Keane on bass. Their approach is what differentiates them from other supergroups as much of what makes this album great comes from lead guitarist Kaye Woodward's harmonies and occasional bass playing on songs like the opener "Treason." That song also introduces the brain-penetrating violin of guest star Alastair Gilbraith. This flawless set of guitar pop sounds eerily similar to the artists working in New Jersey around the same time and would come back to influence those same ones, most evidently in Yo La Tengo. Moods very from the bright and cheery of "Round and Down" and "Take It" to the melancholy ballads of "Tragedy" and "Some Peace Tonight" to the dark psychedelia of "North by North." It concludes with the punchy bass and particularly tight harmonies of the coming of age title track.
1. Guns 'N' Roses - Appetite for Destruction
If you can believe that. Like the intelligence-breeding psychotropic mushroom growing out of a great big pile of cow shit, one of the finest rock albums of the era came out of the 80s Sunset Strip pop metal scene. Maybe it was ambition, maybe it was pure self-desctructive psychosis, or maybe it was brotherly love, but this album is a true masterpiece. Perfectly titled, it is the one thing for which tortured genius Axl Rose will always be remembered. It is in no small part due to the rest of the band featuring childhood best friend Izzy Stradlin and his Strokes-inspiring dynamics with lead guitarist Slash. Slash's own childhood best friend, the troubled Steven Adler with former Fastbacks' drummer Duff McKagen back that up with the heaviest and most interesting complicated rhythms. As volatile as their personalities were the five members collaborate equally here, explaining why it is so vastly superior to their other work, even the finest moments on the underrated Use Your Illusion. The vile Sunset Strip metalhead life is evident on "It's So Easy" and "Nightrain," but GNR's material goes much deeper with the sensitivity of "Sweet Child O' Mine" and "Think About You," and the peers into Rose's horrifying mind on "Welcome to the Jungle" and "Out Ta Get Me." Even the final songs and their sleazy sexuality transcend the stupid horniness of their scene-mates. After each song, this album leaves you thinking "there is no way the next song could rock that much!" and then proves you wrong in about five seconds. While most of the members have spent the last 25 years embarrassing themselves and appearing to have more and more in common with the members of Poison and Mötley Crüe this is an album of uncommon brilliance without any comparison.
Okay, finally that's over with. Better writing next time. Great albums, though!
Monday, April 8, 2013
1986
Here's another killer year. Why waste time talking about it on the whole? These albums speak for themselves.
10. Guided by Voices - Devil Between My Toes
For example, my favorite band ever finally makes an appearance with their debut LP. As usual they are moving and growing from the more unified, but still surprisingly strong, EP Forever Since Breakfast with its generally folk-rock sound. Though it is still a far cry from the finely-tuned lo-fi of their 90s work, this album has a very raw sound that benefits the still young Ohio group. Their debt to R.E.M. is most evident, but manages to Pollard's idols as he imitates Stipe on the childlike brother fantasy "Hey Hey, Spaceman" and the tribute to a deformed Appalachian guitar god "Hank's Little Fingers." There is an unusual abundance of energetic little instrumentals like "Crux" and "Bread Alone," but the album has a darker tone than most of GbV's work with "Portrait Destroyed by Fire" and less directly on tracks like "Old Battery" and "Discussing Wallace Chambers." It concludes with "Captains Dead," a heavy rocker with Byrds-y harmonies that is still beloved by official iron men of all ages.
9. The Butthole Surfers - Rembrandt Pussyhorse
The Texans slow down and further refine their distinct sound with a greater emphasis on the studio as an instrument and Paul Leary's on his own musicianship. They are no longer a vulgar, psychedelic punk band, but their own sludgy vulgar psychedelic concoction on songs like "Whirling Hall of Knives" and the 7/4 shanty "Sea Ferring." Humor is still a key part of their sound on the British accented diary of life on the road "Perry" and the thudding industrial cover of "American Woman." Perhaps also on the somber organ dirge of "Strangers Die Every Day" and the book-ending paranoia of "(Creep) In The Cellar." The Surfers go beyond gross-out jokes and into artistry by real people that woulkd influence some of the most popular acts of the following era. It's pretty frightening and will only get more so. You will scream again, again, again AAAAH!!!
8. The Three O'Clock - Ever After
Because of the departure of Louis Gutierrez and the drastic change of sound the Three O'Clock's third album is too often overlooked. While the loss of the guitarist is a major blow, keyboardist Mike Mariano really picks up the slack and the prominence of synthesizers on this album makes it sound more like an 80s album than any of the previous ones. The songs, while less rocking than before are as strong as ever and Quercio's lyrics still retain all their weird charm on songs like "Suzie's on the Ball," "The Penny Girls," and the hero-worship of "Follow Him Around." As the title might imply, there is more sentimentality here as heard in "Look Into Our Eyes" and "Songs And Gentle Words," though the latter's thick layers of synths keep the psychedelia around in a more timely fashion. While it may be more pop, Quercio's bass is as heavy as ever and this underrated gem is a great place to start getting paisley for a synth pop fan.
7. Camper Van Beethoven - II & III
The Santa Cruz group is best-known for their debut which unfortunately did not make the cut for the last year, but I am of the rare opinion that the follow-up is the equal of that fun and worldly album. Being lucky enough to have heard this on vinyl first and not knowing which side (labeled II and B) was the "proper" beginning I first heard the smart-assed party-crasher anthem "(We're a) Bad Trip," one of the band's msot fun songs. The "correct" opener "Abundance" sets the standard just as well for the many other psychedelic instrumentals and near-instrumentals like "Circles," the atmospheric "Dustpan," and perfectly-titled "ZZ Top Goes to Egypt." Their humor is as strong as ever on the country miniature "Cowboys from Hollywood" and the teen-advising "Goleta," securing their spot as "Most Californian Band of All Time." Their choice of covers gets less ironic, but no less fiendish and clever on Sonic Youth's "I Love Her All The Time," but with eighteen originals it's just another one of many great songs.
6. Hüsker Dü - Candy Apple Grey
The group's first album for Warner Brothers is naturally the most accessible so far, but it is no surprising jump and the playing is as heavy and fast as you would expect had it been released on SST. Unfortunately the production is not that much better either. Seen as the writer of the potential hits, Grant Hart goes into darker, more emotional territory with "Sorry Somehow" and the band's best-known near-hit "Don't Wanna Know If You Are Lonely." Mould may outdo him on darkness on twin tragedies "Hardly Getting Over It" and "Too Far Down," but his up-beat rockers "Eiffel Tower High" and "All This I've Done For You" - some of the group's catchiest songs. This album captures that brief period when it seemed like the dudes could have really broken out before drugs, insanity, personal rivalries, and an AIDS-scare proved them, or at least some of them to be "Dead Set On Destruction."
5. XTC - Skylarking
Following their move into full-blown classic UK psychedelia as the Dukes of the Stratosphear the Swindon drummer-less trio enters the studio with Todd Rundgren to create this beautiful tribute to the Earth and its seasons. Best-known for the unfortunately corny, explicitly childish "Dear God," most songs are a brighter set of clean songs with thick arrangements like "Season Cycle" and "That's Really Super, Supergirl." Andy Partridge apparently classed with Rundgren, but it is hard to hear flaust or evidence of tension on the bright and trippy "The Meeting Place," or the lounge-y jazz of "The Man Who Sailed Around His Soul." Both of the group's songwriters are at their best and Rungdren's insistence on pulling them in every direction makes this album their most fascinating listen of all with almost any imaginable stylistic base covered. Colin Moulding shines his brghtest on the last two tracks, the funeral folk of "Dying" and rebirth of "Sacrificial Bonfire," which concludes the album with all the rebirth of spring and the mysterious pagan quality that makes this album XTC's most distinct.
4. The Feelies - The Good Earth
After six years the Feelies finally return to the studio with none other than Peter Buck at the board. In the time since Crazy Rhythms Glenn Mercer and Bill Million had been involved with the greatest band of all time The Trypes (later Speed the Plough - more on that later...) and more than just a rhythm section from from John Baumgartner (who took the cover photo). The masters of tension kick off the album with the piano-dominated "On the Roof," a song so loose it is hard to beleive it was written by a band from New Jersey. This big and simple folk-rock sound that is equal parts Tom Petty and Lou Reed dominates this and their following albums, but an almost ten-year-old song "Slipping (Into Something)" takes them back to their early days of building and building and building. This is their only album for 25 years to not include a cover, which is great as the new band had a lot to show off after all this time, it is just unfortunate for all those other songwriters who don't get to hear that unbelievable guitar sound on their work. "Slow Down" and "The High Road" say it all, I suppose.
3. The Smiths - The Queen is Dead
The Smiths surprise even their fans with this masterpiece. The band's playing is unbelievably tight, in particular Andy Rourke's bass which provides the perfect counter-melody to Morrisey's vocals and Marr's chiming chords. The best example is of course "There Is A Light That Never Goes Out," which finds Moz's humorously dramatic lyrics best fit in Marr's gorgeous arrangement, but the astute closer "Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others" comes close with the guitars creating the perfect Smiths swirling atmosphere. The vocals are at their best on "The Boy With the Thorn in His Side" and the Earth-shattering title track. Lyrically it is Morrisey's best as heard in "Cemetery Gates" in which his defensiveness is well-explained and thought-provoking rather than in the downward spiral of obnoxious and pretentious into which he is still falling. It is a shame I have talked about the lead vocalist so much as this is truly a band effort and each member deserves as much credit as the other for making this one of the finest albums of its time. Just a shame it did not continue.
2. The Triffids - Born Sandy Devotional
This Perth sextet goes even further than the Smiths in terms of intensity and drama. The album even opens up with the story of a man who, due to his failing marriage attempts suicide by inviting "The Seabirds" to feast on his live body in the ocean. The birds knew better, apparently. Life does not get much easier on "Tarrilup Bridge" with keyboardist Jill Birt's fragile lead or on the epic "Stolen Property" with its final rant that suggests Nick Cave may not have been all that one-of-a-kind. The fare never gets lighter, just a little brighter on the down-under childhood memories of the "Estuary Bed" and the dark and puzzling "Chicken Killer." Even the album's single "Wide Open Road" is a lonely tale of heartbreak that despite its certain hopeful quality never lets you forget that it comes from the most isolated Western city on the planet. The music is big and distinct with prominence of organs, strings, vibes, and plenty of "Evil" Gram Lee's steel guitar up front. Closer "Tender is the Night (The Long Fidelity)" is a quiet duet which despite its initial tragedy and concluding homesickness leaves the heavy-themed album on a relatively light note. Keep away from children.
1. The Chameleons - Strange Times
The Chameleon's final album of their original run has a lot of those same dark and nostalgic themes on this brooding piece of heavy psychedelia. The record, as surreal (though of much higher quality) as its cover begins with the fast "Mad Jack," most similar to their earlier work, but longer, slower compositions take over soon after with "Soul in Isolation" and "Swamp Thing" being the best examples of this growing and slithering sound. Guitar dynamics are still what the band does best, but they allow room for more synthesizers on songs like "In Answer" and the closing "I'll Remember." Some of these songs veer further into heady philosophical territory like "Time/The End of Time," but just as successful are their most human tracks of all the nostalgic "Childhood" and the acoustic guitar-coated farewell of "Tears." With not much time left the Chameleons make their finest work, a cohesive universe of sound that cannot be placed in any real material setting or time. Not so much soul-crushing as much a heavy, initially painful soul massage. The American and CD versions contain excellent bonus tracks such as an even better version of "Tears," "Ever After," and an extended, extra heavy cover of "Tomorrow Never Knows."
10. Guided by Voices - Devil Between My Toes
For example, my favorite band ever finally makes an appearance with their debut LP. As usual they are moving and growing from the more unified, but still surprisingly strong, EP Forever Since Breakfast with its generally folk-rock sound. Though it is still a far cry from the finely-tuned lo-fi of their 90s work, this album has a very raw sound that benefits the still young Ohio group. Their debt to R.E.M. is most evident, but manages to Pollard's idols as he imitates Stipe on the childlike brother fantasy "Hey Hey, Spaceman" and the tribute to a deformed Appalachian guitar god "Hank's Little Fingers." There is an unusual abundance of energetic little instrumentals like "Crux" and "Bread Alone," but the album has a darker tone than most of GbV's work with "Portrait Destroyed by Fire" and less directly on tracks like "Old Battery" and "Discussing Wallace Chambers." It concludes with "Captains Dead," a heavy rocker with Byrds-y harmonies that is still beloved by official iron men of all ages.
9. The Butthole Surfers - Rembrandt Pussyhorse
The Texans slow down and further refine their distinct sound with a greater emphasis on the studio as an instrument and Paul Leary's on his own musicianship. They are no longer a vulgar, psychedelic punk band, but their own sludgy vulgar psychedelic concoction on songs like "Whirling Hall of Knives" and the 7/4 shanty "Sea Ferring." Humor is still a key part of their sound on the British accented diary of life on the road "Perry" and the thudding industrial cover of "American Woman." Perhaps also on the somber organ dirge of "Strangers Die Every Day" and the book-ending paranoia of "(Creep) In The Cellar." The Surfers go beyond gross-out jokes and into artistry by real people that woulkd influence some of the most popular acts of the following era. It's pretty frightening and will only get more so. You will scream again, again, again AAAAH!!!
8. The Three O'Clock - Ever After
Because of the departure of Louis Gutierrez and the drastic change of sound the Three O'Clock's third album is too often overlooked. While the loss of the guitarist is a major blow, keyboardist Mike Mariano really picks up the slack and the prominence of synthesizers on this album makes it sound more like an 80s album than any of the previous ones. The songs, while less rocking than before are as strong as ever and Quercio's lyrics still retain all their weird charm on songs like "Suzie's on the Ball," "The Penny Girls," and the hero-worship of "Follow Him Around." As the title might imply, there is more sentimentality here as heard in "Look Into Our Eyes" and "Songs And Gentle Words," though the latter's thick layers of synths keep the psychedelia around in a more timely fashion. While it may be more pop, Quercio's bass is as heavy as ever and this underrated gem is a great place to start getting paisley for a synth pop fan.
7. Camper Van Beethoven - II & III
The Santa Cruz group is best-known for their debut which unfortunately did not make the cut for the last year, but I am of the rare opinion that the follow-up is the equal of that fun and worldly album. Being lucky enough to have heard this on vinyl first and not knowing which side (labeled II and B) was the "proper" beginning I first heard the smart-assed party-crasher anthem "(We're a) Bad Trip," one of the band's msot fun songs. The "correct" opener "Abundance" sets the standard just as well for the many other psychedelic instrumentals and near-instrumentals like "Circles," the atmospheric "Dustpan," and perfectly-titled "ZZ Top Goes to Egypt." Their humor is as strong as ever on the country miniature "Cowboys from Hollywood" and the teen-advising "Goleta," securing their spot as "Most Californian Band of All Time." Their choice of covers gets less ironic, but no less fiendish and clever on Sonic Youth's "I Love Her All The Time," but with eighteen originals it's just another one of many great songs.
6. Hüsker Dü - Candy Apple Grey
The group's first album for Warner Brothers is naturally the most accessible so far, but it is no surprising jump and the playing is as heavy and fast as you would expect had it been released on SST. Unfortunately the production is not that much better either. Seen as the writer of the potential hits, Grant Hart goes into darker, more emotional territory with "Sorry Somehow" and the band's best-known near-hit "Don't Wanna Know If You Are Lonely." Mould may outdo him on darkness on twin tragedies "Hardly Getting Over It" and "Too Far Down," but his up-beat rockers "Eiffel Tower High" and "All This I've Done For You" - some of the group's catchiest songs. This album captures that brief period when it seemed like the dudes could have really broken out before drugs, insanity, personal rivalries, and an AIDS-scare proved them, or at least some of them to be "Dead Set On Destruction."
5. XTC - Skylarking
Following their move into full-blown classic UK psychedelia as the Dukes of the Stratosphear the Swindon drummer-less trio enters the studio with Todd Rundgren to create this beautiful tribute to the Earth and its seasons. Best-known for the unfortunately corny, explicitly childish "Dear God," most songs are a brighter set of clean songs with thick arrangements like "Season Cycle" and "That's Really Super, Supergirl." Andy Partridge apparently classed with Rundgren, but it is hard to hear flaust or evidence of tension on the bright and trippy "The Meeting Place," or the lounge-y jazz of "The Man Who Sailed Around His Soul." Both of the group's songwriters are at their best and Rungdren's insistence on pulling them in every direction makes this album their most fascinating listen of all with almost any imaginable stylistic base covered. Colin Moulding shines his brghtest on the last two tracks, the funeral folk of "Dying" and rebirth of "Sacrificial Bonfire," which concludes the album with all the rebirth of spring and the mysterious pagan quality that makes this album XTC's most distinct.
4. The Feelies - The Good Earth
After six years the Feelies finally return to the studio with none other than Peter Buck at the board. In the time since Crazy Rhythms Glenn Mercer and Bill Million had been involved with the greatest band of all time The Trypes (later Speed the Plough - more on that later...) and more than just a rhythm section from from John Baumgartner (who took the cover photo). The masters of tension kick off the album with the piano-dominated "On the Roof," a song so loose it is hard to beleive it was written by a band from New Jersey. This big and simple folk-rock sound that is equal parts Tom Petty and Lou Reed dominates this and their following albums, but an almost ten-year-old song "Slipping (Into Something)" takes them back to their early days of building and building and building. This is their only album for 25 years to not include a cover, which is great as the new band had a lot to show off after all this time, it is just unfortunate for all those other songwriters who don't get to hear that unbelievable guitar sound on their work. "Slow Down" and "The High Road" say it all, I suppose.
3. The Smiths - The Queen is Dead
The Smiths surprise even their fans with this masterpiece. The band's playing is unbelievably tight, in particular Andy Rourke's bass which provides the perfect counter-melody to Morrisey's vocals and Marr's chiming chords. The best example is of course "There Is A Light That Never Goes Out," which finds Moz's humorously dramatic lyrics best fit in Marr's gorgeous arrangement, but the astute closer "Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others" comes close with the guitars creating the perfect Smiths swirling atmosphere. The vocals are at their best on "The Boy With the Thorn in His Side" and the Earth-shattering title track. Lyrically it is Morrisey's best as heard in "Cemetery Gates" in which his defensiveness is well-explained and thought-provoking rather than in the downward spiral of obnoxious and pretentious into which he is still falling. It is a shame I have talked about the lead vocalist so much as this is truly a band effort and each member deserves as much credit as the other for making this one of the finest albums of its time. Just a shame it did not continue.
2. The Triffids - Born Sandy Devotional
This Perth sextet goes even further than the Smiths in terms of intensity and drama. The album even opens up with the story of a man who, due to his failing marriage attempts suicide by inviting "The Seabirds" to feast on his live body in the ocean. The birds knew better, apparently. Life does not get much easier on "Tarrilup Bridge" with keyboardist Jill Birt's fragile lead or on the epic "Stolen Property" with its final rant that suggests Nick Cave may not have been all that one-of-a-kind. The fare never gets lighter, just a little brighter on the down-under childhood memories of the "Estuary Bed" and the dark and puzzling "Chicken Killer." Even the album's single "Wide Open Road" is a lonely tale of heartbreak that despite its certain hopeful quality never lets you forget that it comes from the most isolated Western city on the planet. The music is big and distinct with prominence of organs, strings, vibes, and plenty of "Evil" Gram Lee's steel guitar up front. Closer "Tender is the Night (The Long Fidelity)" is a quiet duet which despite its initial tragedy and concluding homesickness leaves the heavy-themed album on a relatively light note. Keep away from children.
1. The Chameleons - Strange Times
The Chameleon's final album of their original run has a lot of those same dark and nostalgic themes on this brooding piece of heavy psychedelia. The record, as surreal (though of much higher quality) as its cover begins with the fast "Mad Jack," most similar to their earlier work, but longer, slower compositions take over soon after with "Soul in Isolation" and "Swamp Thing" being the best examples of this growing and slithering sound. Guitar dynamics are still what the band does best, but they allow room for more synthesizers on songs like "In Answer" and the closing "I'll Remember." Some of these songs veer further into heady philosophical territory like "Time/The End of Time," but just as successful are their most human tracks of all the nostalgic "Childhood" and the acoustic guitar-coated farewell of "Tears." With not much time left the Chameleons make their finest work, a cohesive universe of sound that cannot be placed in any real material setting or time. Not so much soul-crushing as much a heavy, initially painful soul massage. The American and CD versions contain excellent bonus tracks such as an even better version of "Tears," "Ever After," and an extended, extra heavy cover of "Tomorrow Never Knows."
Sunday, April 7, 2013
1985
Would you believe me if I told you there is a large, high-end and even popular cafe in Manhattan surrounded by universities that does not have wireless? Well believe it because otherwise you would have been reading this earlier. I might be better off this way, I can concentrate on writing and music and not waste time making fun of NYU kids' bad haircuts on twitter.
So, 1985. This is by fat the best year of the 80s when it comes to music. Seems like every artist that made more than one classic album in that decade released on this year. It was so good that masterpieces by Camper Van Beethoven, The The, The Fall, and R.E.M. did not make the cut.
10. The Cure - The Head on the Door
And this one is only at ten! This could be my favorite Cure album. It has the fruits of all the growth with a lot of the hooks and fun of their early work. Now a quintet, they have a bigger and fuller sound than ever but are at their best with simple playing like the childlike hook of "Close to Me." This is the band's pop renaissance that broke them to millions of new fans in the US with one of their most recognizable hits "In Between Days." The darker stuff is even better and rather than drag and wallow like on earlier and later albums these songs are energetic and concise with "The Baby Screams" and the long-bulding "Push" being some of the best goth-pop tracks you will hear.
9. Bruce Springsteen - Born in the U.S.A.
After venturing into some of his darkest material the Boss makes his biggest splash in the mainstream with this massively successful record. As annoying as the title track is it is probably one of the most intense super hits until Eddie Vedder showed up. Luckily the other songs are better such as the more fun baseball nostalgia of "Glory Days" and the brooding love song "I'm On Fire" - one of many similar titles in his career. Like the more underground groups from his home state Springsteen really shows he knows how to drone using the E Street Band to full depth with the chugging rhythms upon which modern artists like The War One Drugs build their whole sound. He even managed to turned it into a major hit with a video featuring Courtney Cox on the classic "Dancing in the Dark."
8. The Jesus and Mary Chain - Psycho Candy
The Reed Brothers make their noisy debut with this set of simple pop songs. While the sound does not vary at all the droning and thudding rhythm, walls of distortion, and lyrics build mostly around bas, heys, and mmms somehow never gets tiresome through all these songs. This is because the Scots know just how much could be done with their simple formula. They show how pretty noise and distortion can be with ballads like "Just Like Honey" and "Sowing Seeds," while using it for maximum rock on "The Living End" and "Inside Me." Much of it though is just a dirtier take on bubblegum like "You Trip Me Up" and "The Hardest Walk." It's like a slowed down cross between the Ramones and Les Raillizes Dénudés and as perfect as that would sound.
7. Hüsker Dü - New Day Rising
The prolific trio cuts the album length in half, but tightens up the concept and grows even more in terms of song writing and experimentation. Apart from a few songss like the title track and my favorite (of this type) "59 Times the Pain," there is little that could be called hardcore on this album. While still speed-damaged "Powerline" is not only catchy, but the group's most composed psychedelic track so far. They get very experimental on the unsettling "How to Skin A Dead Cat" and establish the sound of their more accessible subsequent work on Mould's "I Aplogize," proving he is as much of a pop songwriter as Hart. Acoustic guitars show up again, to best effect on the breakdown of "Celebrated Summer," but the folk-rock influence goes far beyond that instrument with the rootsy piano of "Books about U.F.O.s"
6. Mekons - Fear and Whiskey
With the addition of former Pretty Thing Dick Taylor the Leeds group shocks the world by making what is still the finest example of alt-country on this dystopian concept album. The band had come to the conclusion that the three chords of country were not too different from the three chords of punk and that approach coupled with the prominent fiddle was enough to not let the thick British accents question the record's authenticity. The embrace of the style in titles like "Country" and "Trouble Down South," however is underplayed by the lyrical content that highlights the album's story of a future nation constantly torn to bits by war. The concept is mostly based around the people who inhabit this world though and works best as a fictional psychoanalysis on tracks like the heavy "Hard to Be Human Again" and "Psycho Cupid." The best examples, though, are the opening "Chivalry" and the "Last Dance," the final original before their cover of "Lost Highway" concludes this black country album.
5. The Replacements - Tim
Entering the studio with Tommy Ramone the Mats make what is probably their best album. The only thing that could have made it better was if it had included the vastly-superior version of "Can't Hardly Wait," recorded during these sessions and left out for God knows what reason. This is the last album with the always-underrated lead guitarist Bob Stinson and he sounds better than ever (apart from the aforementioned out-take) on the timeless indie rock theme song "Left of the Dial." Also here is the group's closest thing to a hit "Bastards of Young," one of Westerburg's many self-aware rock and roll anthems. His talents for the nostalgic have also matured as he re-explores familiar territory to better effect on "Kiss Me On the Bus" and "Here Comes A Regular." While it lacks that undefinable, perhaps spiritual quality of its predecessor Tim is an even finer set of songs by an even better band, and sadly the conclusion of that original group.
4. Kate Bush - Hounds of Love
Picking up where The Dreaming left off Bush's use of thudding toms and string arrangements makes this concept album her best work. Apart from the single "Cloudbusting" with its innocent melody making it her best-known song since "Wuthering Heights" this is an extremely dark album. From the opening of "Running Up That Hill" the feeling of diving into madness only grows, especially when the concept really takes over on the second side. The voices coming from every direction put the listener into the character's own deteriorating mind falling from "Mother Stands for Comfort" to the Celtic inferno of "Jig of Life." Then there is "Under Ice," in my opinion the most nightmarish song ever recorded, still giving me chills after all these years. The title track was enough to sell me on Bush for the rest of my life, but this whole album is of that caliber.
3. Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians - Fegmania!
Putting together a new band with the Soft Boys rhythm section and the addition of keyboards Hitchcock begins the greatest phase of his career with this bizarre guitar-pop album. His distinctly Cambridge weirdness kicks off the album on the transsexual nightmare tale of "Egyptian Cream," and the Twilight Zone-esque "The Man with the Light Bulb Head." His classic themes of sex, death, food and insects are also at their most prominent of his career on tracks like "My Wife and My Dead Wife," "Insect Mother," (naturally), and arguably "Strawberry Mind." Never one to simply put out a comedy album with expert playing and singing, Hitchcock and the group reach for the big and beautiful on "Glass," "Another Bubble," and the transcendent closing track "Heaven."
2. Echo & the Bunnymen - Ocean Rain
Sometimes and justifiably written off as "too pretentious" the Liverpudlian group hits their peak on this moody, atmospheric, and "big" album that really put to rest any comparisons to U2. Best known for "The Killing Moon," a song that would be in the running for greatest ever if not just a little bit too long at the end, the quality of the other tracks does not lag far behind. That song's fame has led many to believe this is a dark album, but in truth it is actually bright even on a song like "Nocturnal Me," albeit with a crisp autumn feel. The spinning post-punk arrangements are enough to forgive any lyrical pomposity especially on first track "Silver," "Seven Seas," and the obviously majestic "My Kingdom." The slow sea ballad title track concludes the album of English folk tales on a beautiful and moving note.
1. Meat Puppets - Up On the Sun
By slowing down a whole lot the Meat Puppets manage to tighten their dynamics even further on this atmospheric and funky masterpiece. Perhaps it was fatherhood (the birth of his twin daughters was announced upon completion of the last album) that slowed down Curt, and maybe some powerful drugs of Cris, but this sun-bleached album catches the trip at their most blissed-out. Gone are the dark themes of II and in their place the country-fried desert fantasy of "Swimming Ground," the prog blast of "Animal Kingdom," and the drone of their ode to the female anatomy "Hot Pink." Up-tempo numbers like "Two Rivers" and "Enchanted Porkfist" indicate that the slow-down in the prior year or so made the already tight group even closer together. As hinted with the last album's closing track the brothers show off their whistling chops on the dizzying "Maiden's Milk," and show off their more traditional harmonies on the funky "Buckethead." Oh, and that's all after the nebulous slice of heaven on the title track.
*I must remark as I wrote this I was constantly rearranging the order and have just been more and more blown away at how great this year was. It really has more in common with the late sixties and early 70s than mid 80s as far as quality is concerned.
**HOLY SHIT!!!
So, 1985. This is by fat the best year of the 80s when it comes to music. Seems like every artist that made more than one classic album in that decade released on this year. It was so good that masterpieces by Camper Van Beethoven, The The, The Fall, and R.E.M. did not make the cut.
10. The Cure - The Head on the Door
And this one is only at ten! This could be my favorite Cure album. It has the fruits of all the growth with a lot of the hooks and fun of their early work. Now a quintet, they have a bigger and fuller sound than ever but are at their best with simple playing like the childlike hook of "Close to Me." This is the band's pop renaissance that broke them to millions of new fans in the US with one of their most recognizable hits "In Between Days." The darker stuff is even better and rather than drag and wallow like on earlier and later albums these songs are energetic and concise with "The Baby Screams" and the long-bulding "Push" being some of the best goth-pop tracks you will hear.
9. Bruce Springsteen - Born in the U.S.A.
After venturing into some of his darkest material the Boss makes his biggest splash in the mainstream with this massively successful record. As annoying as the title track is it is probably one of the most intense super hits until Eddie Vedder showed up. Luckily the other songs are better such as the more fun baseball nostalgia of "Glory Days" and the brooding love song "I'm On Fire" - one of many similar titles in his career. Like the more underground groups from his home state Springsteen really shows he knows how to drone using the E Street Band to full depth with the chugging rhythms upon which modern artists like The War One Drugs build their whole sound. He even managed to turned it into a major hit with a video featuring Courtney Cox on the classic "Dancing in the Dark."
8. The Jesus and Mary Chain - Psycho Candy
The Reed Brothers make their noisy debut with this set of simple pop songs. While the sound does not vary at all the droning and thudding rhythm, walls of distortion, and lyrics build mostly around bas, heys, and mmms somehow never gets tiresome through all these songs. This is because the Scots know just how much could be done with their simple formula. They show how pretty noise and distortion can be with ballads like "Just Like Honey" and "Sowing Seeds," while using it for maximum rock on "The Living End" and "Inside Me." Much of it though is just a dirtier take on bubblegum like "You Trip Me Up" and "The Hardest Walk." It's like a slowed down cross between the Ramones and Les Raillizes Dénudés and as perfect as that would sound.
7. Hüsker Dü - New Day Rising
The prolific trio cuts the album length in half, but tightens up the concept and grows even more in terms of song writing and experimentation. Apart from a few songss like the title track and my favorite (of this type) "59 Times the Pain," there is little that could be called hardcore on this album. While still speed-damaged "Powerline" is not only catchy, but the group's most composed psychedelic track so far. They get very experimental on the unsettling "How to Skin A Dead Cat" and establish the sound of their more accessible subsequent work on Mould's "I Aplogize," proving he is as much of a pop songwriter as Hart. Acoustic guitars show up again, to best effect on the breakdown of "Celebrated Summer," but the folk-rock influence goes far beyond that instrument with the rootsy piano of "Books about U.F.O.s"
6. Mekons - Fear and Whiskey
With the addition of former Pretty Thing Dick Taylor the Leeds group shocks the world by making what is still the finest example of alt-country on this dystopian concept album. The band had come to the conclusion that the three chords of country were not too different from the three chords of punk and that approach coupled with the prominent fiddle was enough to not let the thick British accents question the record's authenticity. The embrace of the style in titles like "Country" and "Trouble Down South," however is underplayed by the lyrical content that highlights the album's story of a future nation constantly torn to bits by war. The concept is mostly based around the people who inhabit this world though and works best as a fictional psychoanalysis on tracks like the heavy "Hard to Be Human Again" and "Psycho Cupid." The best examples, though, are the opening "Chivalry" and the "Last Dance," the final original before their cover of "Lost Highway" concludes this black country album.
5. The Replacements - Tim
Entering the studio with Tommy Ramone the Mats make what is probably their best album. The only thing that could have made it better was if it had included the vastly-superior version of "Can't Hardly Wait," recorded during these sessions and left out for God knows what reason. This is the last album with the always-underrated lead guitarist Bob Stinson and he sounds better than ever (apart from the aforementioned out-take) on the timeless indie rock theme song "Left of the Dial." Also here is the group's closest thing to a hit "Bastards of Young," one of Westerburg's many self-aware rock and roll anthems. His talents for the nostalgic have also matured as he re-explores familiar territory to better effect on "Kiss Me On the Bus" and "Here Comes A Regular." While it lacks that undefinable, perhaps spiritual quality of its predecessor Tim is an even finer set of songs by an even better band, and sadly the conclusion of that original group.
4. Kate Bush - Hounds of Love
Picking up where The Dreaming left off Bush's use of thudding toms and string arrangements makes this concept album her best work. Apart from the single "Cloudbusting" with its innocent melody making it her best-known song since "Wuthering Heights" this is an extremely dark album. From the opening of "Running Up That Hill" the feeling of diving into madness only grows, especially when the concept really takes over on the second side. The voices coming from every direction put the listener into the character's own deteriorating mind falling from "Mother Stands for Comfort" to the Celtic inferno of "Jig of Life." Then there is "Under Ice," in my opinion the most nightmarish song ever recorded, still giving me chills after all these years. The title track was enough to sell me on Bush for the rest of my life, but this whole album is of that caliber.
3. Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians - Fegmania!
Putting together a new band with the Soft Boys rhythm section and the addition of keyboards Hitchcock begins the greatest phase of his career with this bizarre guitar-pop album. His distinctly Cambridge weirdness kicks off the album on the transsexual nightmare tale of "Egyptian Cream," and the Twilight Zone-esque "The Man with the Light Bulb Head." His classic themes of sex, death, food and insects are also at their most prominent of his career on tracks like "My Wife and My Dead Wife," "Insect Mother," (naturally), and arguably "Strawberry Mind." Never one to simply put out a comedy album with expert playing and singing, Hitchcock and the group reach for the big and beautiful on "Glass," "Another Bubble," and the transcendent closing track "Heaven."
2. Echo & the Bunnymen - Ocean Rain
Sometimes and justifiably written off as "too pretentious" the Liverpudlian group hits their peak on this moody, atmospheric, and "big" album that really put to rest any comparisons to U2. Best known for "The Killing Moon," a song that would be in the running for greatest ever if not just a little bit too long at the end, the quality of the other tracks does not lag far behind. That song's fame has led many to believe this is a dark album, but in truth it is actually bright even on a song like "Nocturnal Me," albeit with a crisp autumn feel. The spinning post-punk arrangements are enough to forgive any lyrical pomposity especially on first track "Silver," "Seven Seas," and the obviously majestic "My Kingdom." The slow sea ballad title track concludes the album of English folk tales on a beautiful and moving note.
1. Meat Puppets - Up On the Sun
By slowing down a whole lot the Meat Puppets manage to tighten their dynamics even further on this atmospheric and funky masterpiece. Perhaps it was fatherhood (the birth of his twin daughters was announced upon completion of the last album) that slowed down Curt, and maybe some powerful drugs of Cris, but this sun-bleached album catches the trip at their most blissed-out. Gone are the dark themes of II and in their place the country-fried desert fantasy of "Swimming Ground," the prog blast of "Animal Kingdom," and the drone of their ode to the female anatomy "Hot Pink." Up-tempo numbers like "Two Rivers" and "Enchanted Porkfist" indicate that the slow-down in the prior year or so made the already tight group even closer together. As hinted with the last album's closing track the brothers show off their whistling chops on the dizzying "Maiden's Milk," and show off their more traditional harmonies on the funky "Buckethead." Oh, and that's all after the nebulous slice of heaven on the title track.
*I must remark as I wrote this I was constantly rearranging the order and have just been more and more blown away at how great this year was. It really has more in common with the late sixties and early 70s than mid 80s as far as quality is concerned.
**HOLY SHIT!!!
Friday, April 5, 2013
1984
Well I made it to New Jersey earlier than I expected and on such a beautiful day! So what am I doing? Heading straight down to the basement to write this and keep my schedule up! It's still done with less concentration than I would hope, but you gotta move forward. Anyway, here is 1984. This is often considered a landmark year, but I have no idea why. These are some killer records, but no big deal really and there weren't a lot of extras just begging to make the list. No, just Van Halen. It is a funny year - both intentionally and unintentionally, and some times hard to tell with an unexpected city making a huge dent.
10. Cocteau Twins - Treasure
This is one of the Scottish (that country's first appearance here) group's best-known albums mostly for "Lorelei." It is one of their best songs, but the other tracks with person-names are great too. Early on the band was pretty much goth and as the album cover would indicate, they still are at this point. The hair and clothing were also pretty goth, but the atmospheric pop sound that keeps them legendary is growing here as Robin Gurthrie and still somewhat new bassist Simon Raymonde grow as producers. Their background provides the only suitable for the mythical vocals and bizarre, nonsensical lyrics (best example "Ivo") of Elizabth Fraser. While it is otherworldly enough to serve as a rare positive example of the "New Age" style the sound is still dark and abrasive enough to keep someone afraid of that label interested. The band further proves themselves a unique dream-pop voice and you have to give credit for any use of the name "Aloysius."
9. The Smiths - The Smiths
Though the other versions of these songs are usually better, the debut of one of the eighties best bands is great as more than just a historical document. I am in the rare school of thought that Morrissey is actually the weakest link in the band, but he sounds great and his lyrics and persona have not yet become what his detractors like to point out. Some versions (most, but not the original UK) include "This Charming Man," which of course speaks for itself, but "Hand In Glove," "Pretty Girls Make Graves," and "What Difference Does It Make?" stand up as some of their best songs just as much. The Smiths would only get better from here, but it is always a pleasure to hear material from when they still functioned as four Anglo-Irish men who played amazing music together and did not hate each other. Moz and Marr are great, but how about that rhythm section...
8. True West - Drifters
These often-forgotten Paisley Undergrounders may have made their best work before with their heavier, more psychedelic debut EP, but their first full-length really lives up too their name. The band and in particular lead singer Gavin Blair always had a flair for the dramatic and these jangly country rockers keep that up in a more subdued and mature fashion. While the slowed-down new version of "And Then The Rain" may not rock as hard it does evoke the song's powerful imagery a bit more vividly, making it the equal of their Wild West tales in a modern setting. Ideal for fans like myself of Back to the Future, Part III as it is a distinctly 80s take on the Western with "Ain't No Hangman" and "Shot You Down," are the most explicit examples of their love for cowboy imagery. Unlike their beachy brothers and sisters in the Paisley Undergound, this band (and the Long Ryders) never forget the early roots of their home town, though "Look Around" is as much a droney psych-rocker as the Dream Syndicate would provide.
7. R.E.M. - Reckoning
As far as I am concerned there are two kinds of R.E.M. fans - Murmur fans and Reckoning fans. I am of the former and the third type - those who don't think of R.E.M. as an 80s band, do not concern me. Still, I think this is a great album, just not their best. The opening track "Harbourcoat" has always been one of their greatest, and this album has a much cleaner and pop-oriented sound than before. In a good way. "So. Central Rain," with it's "I'm sorry" chorus (like The Groovies' "You Tore Me Down) and honky-tonk piano also remains one of their most-beloved songs of the early days around with Mike Mills' post-grad lament "(Don't Go Back To) Rockville." The band is definitely expanding here and their more accessible sound with heightened precision in their previous characteristics definitely got a few more people taking notice, making R.E.M. the up from the underground legends they have been for three decades.
6. Robyn Hitchcock - I Often Dream of Trains
Hitchock's third album since the end of the Soft Boys and last before reuniting with half that band is one of his simplest and most personal. On that note, I would like to say leaving out Black Snake Diamond Role in 1981 was a mistake, a true slip of the mind. It is mostly acoustic, but has a lot of eeriness and a sense of humor far more advanced than some clown with an acoustic guitar. His usual obsessions with sex and religion are prominent, but of course trains are the big part. The nostalgia of "Trams of Old London" and moving English landscape of the title track are some of the artists finest songs, exemplifying the kind of emotion his music can have despite his twisted whimsy. The gentle beauty was a wise choice for Hitchcock, distinguishing this album from the harsher work he had done before and preparing for his next step which would blend these elements into what would perhaps be his greatest music of all.
5. Prince and the Revolution - Purple Rain
My birthday bro's most obvious record is also his best. The soundtrack to the most unintentionally funny movie of all time is far more effective than the Revolution's acting, though maybe not as much as their costumes. The movie would lead you to believe that the title track is the best, though its promotion was a bit more accurate in suggesting the enigmatic "When Doves Cry." While those songs may be slow and heavy, the opener "Let's Go Crazy," is everything fun about the micro-Minnesotan in one 4 1/2 minute orgy of sound. "I Would Die 4 U," despite its unfortunate abbreves, is the perfect singalong with hand signs that really showed MC Hammer's declining sanity in his attempt to outdo it. This album achieves the rare feat of sounding like the female rhythm guitarist and keyboard player are groping each other while the other keyboard player is dressed like a surgeon and still being respectable music. Also, Prince is the list's first example of this city's penchant for producing metal guitarist who wisely do not play metal.
4. The Minutemen - Double Nickels on the Dime
Attempting, and arguably succeeding in outdoing label-mates Hüsker Dü in the creating of a double album San Pedro's favorite band of brothers forever changes the landscape of the American Underground. On these 43 tracks they experiment with just about every style there is, from country, to funk, to jazz to flamenco on the beautiful "Cohesion." They even perform unexpected covers of both CCR and Steely Dan all while providing Jackass with its theme song. The Minutemen were one of the most technically proficient bands on the hardcore scene and had no interest in keeping limited in the loud distortion of the style or keeping the bass in the rhythm section with the great Mike Watt slapping better than any of his followers on "Three Car Jam" and "Viet Nam." The unsung hero is always drummer George Hurley whose wild tom-heavy style has made many fans briefly consider "The Unit" an acceptable hair do. Though that is still up for debate, what is not is that the band's talents deserve all the name dropping of members (i.e. "Mike Watt") in addition to all the intelligent political rambling. Even better than the politics is the landlord letter of "Take 5, D." and the nostalgia of the tear-jerking "History Lesson, part 2."
3. Hüsker Dü - Zen Arcade
The American Underground makes its first first double album and Hüsker Dü make their first masterpiece. Singer/songwriters Bob Mould and Grant Hart put together their skills and life of torment into this expansive concept album about... someone's life. It begins with the still speedy blasts of "Something I Learned Today" and "Broken Home, Broken Heart," but quickly moves into the folk of "Never Talking to You Again," and controversially psychedelia in "Hare Krsna." Songs get longer, slower, and weirder as the album progresses, even having piano appear on the pretty little aside "Monday Will Never Be The Same" and the unusually hopeful "Newest Industry." The production may be rubbish, but the songwriting and playing is flawless ranging from the trippy hardcore of "Indecision Time" to their famous debut as a poppy "modern rock" group "Turn on the News." It ends with their boldest, though not best move, the 14 minute heavy psych jam "Reoccurring Dreams," perhaps the final signal that they were leaving predictable hardcore behind with its accompanying short hair and clean shaves.
2. The Replacements - Let It Be
If the government functioned correctly they would provide a copy of this album to every teenager in the country. The adolescent themes of "Gary's Got a Boner" and "Sixteen Blue," have a humor and sincerity on top of Paul Westerburg's songwriting that keep them timeless far beyond that age. "I Will Dare," goes far beyond that though, as does the undisputed standout "Unsatisfied." The Mats' drunken hardcore rage is still in full effect on faster numbers like "Favorite Thing" and "Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out." This album is also an example of the phenomenon of great albums having one cover and one (near-)instrumental in the mix. The former "Seen Your Video" is the first of their tasteful kiss-offs to MTV and the latter the shockingly enjoyable take on Kiss' "Black Diamond." The yearning "Answering Machine" ends the album and while you might not crave it as much as whoever Westerburg craves it is not far off from how much you want more at the end of this album hat easily outdoes the Beatles' collaboration with a certain murderous psychopath.
1. Butthole Surfers - Psychic... Powerles... Another Man's Sac
The thudding, droning acid rock of these Texas lunatics finally makes its debut on my list. Though you will see their name many more times, I have always felt that this album was the group's finest. All their deranged vulgarity is at its prime with all their best aspects in the front: vocal manipulation, dual standing drummers, Paul Leary's rabid twang, and even Gibby's bleating saxaphone that sure inspired the then-popular term "pigfuck." Oh and they're funny too, if you can handle the toilet sounds of "Lady Sniff" and can see the humor in a line like "I've always got a knife in my back!!!!!!" Titles like "Negro Observer" surely put the more politically correct, but as much as this group embraces the redneck image, their science fiction tale has not a single shred of racism, observation maybe. Their taste for a heavy drone is even more vital than their psychotic subject matter with the overdriven bass leading the goth-influenced tracks "Concubine" and "Dum Dum." By now it should be clear this band was no joke even with the tongue-in-cheek tribute to the flamboyant heavyweight front man of the Dick that closes this concise Texan nightmare.
10. Cocteau Twins - Treasure
This is one of the Scottish (that country's first appearance here) group's best-known albums mostly for "Lorelei." It is one of their best songs, but the other tracks with person-names are great too. Early on the band was pretty much goth and as the album cover would indicate, they still are at this point. The hair and clothing were also pretty goth, but the atmospheric pop sound that keeps them legendary is growing here as Robin Gurthrie and still somewhat new bassist Simon Raymonde grow as producers. Their background provides the only suitable for the mythical vocals and bizarre, nonsensical lyrics (best example "Ivo") of Elizabth Fraser. While it is otherworldly enough to serve as a rare positive example of the "New Age" style the sound is still dark and abrasive enough to keep someone afraid of that label interested. The band further proves themselves a unique dream-pop voice and you have to give credit for any use of the name "Aloysius."
9. The Smiths - The Smiths
Though the other versions of these songs are usually better, the debut of one of the eighties best bands is great as more than just a historical document. I am in the rare school of thought that Morrissey is actually the weakest link in the band, but he sounds great and his lyrics and persona have not yet become what his detractors like to point out. Some versions (most, but not the original UK) include "This Charming Man," which of course speaks for itself, but "Hand In Glove," "Pretty Girls Make Graves," and "What Difference Does It Make?" stand up as some of their best songs just as much. The Smiths would only get better from here, but it is always a pleasure to hear material from when they still functioned as four Anglo-Irish men who played amazing music together and did not hate each other. Moz and Marr are great, but how about that rhythm section...
8. True West - Drifters
These often-forgotten Paisley Undergrounders may have made their best work before with their heavier, more psychedelic debut EP, but their first full-length really lives up too their name. The band and in particular lead singer Gavin Blair always had a flair for the dramatic and these jangly country rockers keep that up in a more subdued and mature fashion. While the slowed-down new version of "And Then The Rain" may not rock as hard it does evoke the song's powerful imagery a bit more vividly, making it the equal of their Wild West tales in a modern setting. Ideal for fans like myself of Back to the Future, Part III as it is a distinctly 80s take on the Western with "Ain't No Hangman" and "Shot You Down," are the most explicit examples of their love for cowboy imagery. Unlike their beachy brothers and sisters in the Paisley Undergound, this band (and the Long Ryders) never forget the early roots of their home town, though "Look Around" is as much a droney psych-rocker as the Dream Syndicate would provide.
7. R.E.M. - Reckoning
As far as I am concerned there are two kinds of R.E.M. fans - Murmur fans and Reckoning fans. I am of the former and the third type - those who don't think of R.E.M. as an 80s band, do not concern me. Still, I think this is a great album, just not their best. The opening track "Harbourcoat" has always been one of their greatest, and this album has a much cleaner and pop-oriented sound than before. In a good way. "So. Central Rain," with it's "I'm sorry" chorus (like The Groovies' "You Tore Me Down) and honky-tonk piano also remains one of their most-beloved songs of the early days around with Mike Mills' post-grad lament "(Don't Go Back To) Rockville." The band is definitely expanding here and their more accessible sound with heightened precision in their previous characteristics definitely got a few more people taking notice, making R.E.M. the up from the underground legends they have been for three decades.
6. Robyn Hitchcock - I Often Dream of Trains
Hitchock's third album since the end of the Soft Boys and last before reuniting with half that band is one of his simplest and most personal. On that note, I would like to say leaving out Black Snake Diamond Role in 1981 was a mistake, a true slip of the mind. It is mostly acoustic, but has a lot of eeriness and a sense of humor far more advanced than some clown with an acoustic guitar. His usual obsessions with sex and religion are prominent, but of course trains are the big part. The nostalgia of "Trams of Old London" and moving English landscape of the title track are some of the artists finest songs, exemplifying the kind of emotion his music can have despite his twisted whimsy. The gentle beauty was a wise choice for Hitchcock, distinguishing this album from the harsher work he had done before and preparing for his next step which would blend these elements into what would perhaps be his greatest music of all.
5. Prince and the Revolution - Purple Rain
My birthday bro's most obvious record is also his best. The soundtrack to the most unintentionally funny movie of all time is far more effective than the Revolution's acting, though maybe not as much as their costumes. The movie would lead you to believe that the title track is the best, though its promotion was a bit more accurate in suggesting the enigmatic "When Doves Cry." While those songs may be slow and heavy, the opener "Let's Go Crazy," is everything fun about the micro-Minnesotan in one 4 1/2 minute orgy of sound. "I Would Die 4 U," despite its unfortunate abbreves, is the perfect singalong with hand signs that really showed MC Hammer's declining sanity in his attempt to outdo it. This album achieves the rare feat of sounding like the female rhythm guitarist and keyboard player are groping each other while the other keyboard player is dressed like a surgeon and still being respectable music. Also, Prince is the list's first example of this city's penchant for producing metal guitarist who wisely do not play metal.
4. The Minutemen - Double Nickels on the Dime
Attempting, and arguably succeeding in outdoing label-mates Hüsker Dü in the creating of a double album San Pedro's favorite band of brothers forever changes the landscape of the American Underground. On these 43 tracks they experiment with just about every style there is, from country, to funk, to jazz to flamenco on the beautiful "Cohesion." They even perform unexpected covers of both CCR and Steely Dan all while providing Jackass with its theme song. The Minutemen were one of the most technically proficient bands on the hardcore scene and had no interest in keeping limited in the loud distortion of the style or keeping the bass in the rhythm section with the great Mike Watt slapping better than any of his followers on "Three Car Jam" and "Viet Nam." The unsung hero is always drummer George Hurley whose wild tom-heavy style has made many fans briefly consider "The Unit" an acceptable hair do. Though that is still up for debate, what is not is that the band's talents deserve all the name dropping of members (i.e. "Mike Watt") in addition to all the intelligent political rambling. Even better than the politics is the landlord letter of "Take 5, D." and the nostalgia of the tear-jerking "History Lesson, part 2."
3. Hüsker Dü - Zen Arcade
The American Underground makes its first first double album and Hüsker Dü make their first masterpiece. Singer/songwriters Bob Mould and Grant Hart put together their skills and life of torment into this expansive concept album about... someone's life. It begins with the still speedy blasts of "Something I Learned Today" and "Broken Home, Broken Heart," but quickly moves into the folk of "Never Talking to You Again," and controversially psychedelia in "Hare Krsna." Songs get longer, slower, and weirder as the album progresses, even having piano appear on the pretty little aside "Monday Will Never Be The Same" and the unusually hopeful "Newest Industry." The production may be rubbish, but the songwriting and playing is flawless ranging from the trippy hardcore of "Indecision Time" to their famous debut as a poppy "modern rock" group "Turn on the News." It ends with their boldest, though not best move, the 14 minute heavy psych jam "Reoccurring Dreams," perhaps the final signal that they were leaving predictable hardcore behind with its accompanying short hair and clean shaves.
2. The Replacements - Let It Be
If the government functioned correctly they would provide a copy of this album to every teenager in the country. The adolescent themes of "Gary's Got a Boner" and "Sixteen Blue," have a humor and sincerity on top of Paul Westerburg's songwriting that keep them timeless far beyond that age. "I Will Dare," goes far beyond that though, as does the undisputed standout "Unsatisfied." The Mats' drunken hardcore rage is still in full effect on faster numbers like "Favorite Thing" and "Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out." This album is also an example of the phenomenon of great albums having one cover and one (near-)instrumental in the mix. The former "Seen Your Video" is the first of their tasteful kiss-offs to MTV and the latter the shockingly enjoyable take on Kiss' "Black Diamond." The yearning "Answering Machine" ends the album and while you might not crave it as much as whoever Westerburg craves it is not far off from how much you want more at the end of this album hat easily outdoes the Beatles' collaboration with a certain murderous psychopath.
1. Butthole Surfers - Psychic... Powerles... Another Man's Sac
The thudding, droning acid rock of these Texas lunatics finally makes its debut on my list. Though you will see their name many more times, I have always felt that this album was the group's finest. All their deranged vulgarity is at its prime with all their best aspects in the front: vocal manipulation, dual standing drummers, Paul Leary's rabid twang, and even Gibby's bleating saxaphone that sure inspired the then-popular term "pigfuck." Oh and they're funny too, if you can handle the toilet sounds of "Lady Sniff" and can see the humor in a line like "I've always got a knife in my back!!!!!!" Titles like "Negro Observer" surely put the more politically correct, but as much as this group embraces the redneck image, their science fiction tale has not a single shred of racism, observation maybe. Their taste for a heavy drone is even more vital than their psychotic subject matter with the overdriven bass leading the goth-influenced tracks "Concubine" and "Dum Dum." By now it should be clear this band was no joke even with the tongue-in-cheek tribute to the flamboyant heavyweight front man of the Dick that closes this concise Texan nightmare.
Thursday, April 4, 2013
Surprise!
I found some time to write today, but I need another day (and likely two) to do 1984, so instead here are some of my favorite punk/new wave sunglasses.
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| Phil Towner (New Musik) |
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| Peter Case (The Nerves, the Breakaways, and obviously, the Plimsouls) |
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| Sid |
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| Gary Wilson |
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| Captain Sensible |
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| Glenn Mercer (Feelies) Later day, same sunglasses |
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| The Flamin' Groovies |
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| Joey |
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| Gary Wilson |
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| Captain Sensible |
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| Dave Vanian |
 | ||
| Handsome Dick Manitoba and Mark "The Animal" Mendoza (The Dictators) |
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| ...and of course, Levar Burton (Roots) |
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
1983
This is exactly what I was talking about with the 80s. It was kinda hard to remember all ten of these records and some pretty un-worthy ones almost made the cut, if you can believe that. These are all top-notch, though. A whole lot of interesting things begin here. Some very important bands debut, and a certain country makes its first of many appearances in my lists. However, I am kind of forcing this one out. I just don't feel like writing today, but my life is about to finally take a turn for the better and I will be kinda wrapped up in some very pleasurable and occupying things. I expect to get to 1984 Saturday and resume with 1985 Monday, but there will be some holes...
10. The Chameleons - Script of the Bridge
The psychedelic revival finally makes its way to the bleak musical landscape of Manchester on the Cameleons' first full-lengths following the stunning debut single "In Shreds." The closest point of reference is the Teardrop Explodes, especially in fellow singer/bassist Mark Burgess' deep vocals. It is a lot more goth than that, replacing that funk with a slow drone and the playful keyboards with the dueling atmospheric guitars of Reg Smithies and Dave Fielding. Post-punk fury still dominates the band's dreamy sound with arrangements a bit simpler and less dynamic than heard on their later work. The group does demonstrate an ear for pop melody, best heard on "Up the Down Escalator," hinting at the ethereal beauty the would later achieve. Anger is the most present emotion indicated on the aggressive opener "Don't Fall," but their wide range and depth signals that this band is more than just another bunch of depressed Mancunians even more than their taste for the psychedelic.
9. The Go-Betweens - Before Hollywood
Following a second move to the other side of the globe and addition of drummer (and Forster's girlfriend) Lindy Morrison the Go-Betweens became much more than the vehicle of Brisbane songwriting duo Grant McLennan and Robert Forster. They also created one of their finest albums. Still retaining the home-made new wave of their earlier work it also begins the lusher, prettier sound that earned them the reputation of "the indie-rock Fleetwood Mac." All the songs are some of their best, but "Cattle and Cane" - considered to be one of the finest Australia songs ever written, is enough to qualify this a masterpiece. The careful arrangement and tastefully sentimental lyrics make this song a vivid and cinematic image of rural Queensland life for the rest of the world to see. This band's only growing reputation as pop masters begins here.
8. Sneaky Feelings - Send You
At last, Flying Nun records and the Dunedin sound makes its debut on the lists with this obscure gem. The better known artists of that isolated little word began with singles and EPs, so it begins with this little album (sometimes considered an EP, but not by me). It has a slower, moodier sound that the Clean or the Chills, but no less jangly post-punk. That, and all the intelligence of the Verlaines without Graeme Downes' academic pretense. "Waiting For the Touchdown" and "Throwing Stones" set the standard for the band's distinctly powerful sound, but things speed up for some of the best songs "Someone Else's Eyes." While the diversity may not be a strong point, few were looking for that in an artist in 1983 and the songwriting and playing is enough to grant this record many, many repeat listens. Big, simple rhythms and loose guitar dynamics make this Flying Nun's lost classic with "Everything I Want" at the end making me want a lot more Sneaky Feelings, to which I have had little luck.
7. Green on Red - Gravity Talks
I first discovered this album by the Tuscon via LA Paisley Underground group on a list of each member of Pavement's top 10 albums lists. While I sadly have not been able to find that list again in recent times (RIP geocities, I beleive), I do remember this one was on Bob Nastanovitch's list, and thank God it was! This is more on the country-end of that scene, but the psychedelia is still there mostly thanks to the prominent organ on songs like the title track and "Deliverance". Other highlights "That's What You're Here For" and "Five Easy Pieces" make them one one of the finest country-rock groups of the decade, without their heavy-handedness getting in the way. It still only detracts slightly on their home-state-inspired "Old Chief," but almost ruins "Brave Generation," similarly to the way that very generation has irreparably ruined this country and their children (i.e. me and probably everyone reading this). It's actually kind of offensive. With guests Matt Piucci and Steve Wynn in tow, it is one of the key albums of the paisley underground.
6. Talking Heads - Speaking in Tongues
After a much-needed break the Heads return with an album up to par with their last three. With Eno out of the picture the four official members have a more unified vision and thanks to that experience, cohesive and limitless sound. It feature Bernie Worrell on synthesizer leaving few, if any wishing for Eno and lending the perfect addition to the funky sounds of this record. "Burning Down the House" is their ghostly hit and a great song in its own right, but it is far different from the disco of "Making Flippy Floppy." Despite the influence from dance music the tempo is usually slower and atmospheric like on "Slippery People" and "Girlfriend is Better," but it hits its peak at the end with the stunning "This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody)." It is probably the band's best song with its perfectly-arranged vocals that prove the band does not need Eno to create transcendent, otherworldly beauty. Integration of African music has never sounded so good.
5. Wipers - Over the Edge
The final installment of the classic Wipers trilogy. The big, dirty fury of Youth America meets the concise songwriting of the debut on what many consider the band's pinnacle. That belief holds enough credence that I feel the need to apologize for it only being at 5, but the next five... it's mostly personal. Pop is at its best on "Messenger" and "No Generation Gap" (relatively speaking) and the fury of the last album is best repeated on the first three tracks. "Romeo" naturally captures the dark romance of some of Sage's better later work and "No One Wants and Alien," is a return to and improvement upon the themes he explored on his pre-Is This Real? work. If there is one definitive Wipers record this is definitely it, as all of Sage and company's best talents are brought forth at once on these eleven angsty slices of heavy Northwestern rock.
4. Rain Parade - Emergency Third Rail Power Trip
Another one of the most perfect album covers. The Paisley Underground quintet's debut is often unfairly attributed to future Mazzy Star founder David Roback. I am in the rare belief that the band's later material is roughly as fine as this, and surpasses the guitarist's later project. In truth the guitars are just another part of the mix more dominated by three-part harmonies and Stephen Roback's punchy bass lines. Eddie Kalwa's popping, but quiet drumming (I believe achieved by playing softly with heavy sticks) keeps this sleepy record moving while Will Glenn's subtle keys keep the daze in full effect. The whole record captures the feeling of the West Los Angeles June gloom in all its minute slow-paced beauty, a feat few would be so inspired to attempt. Opener "Talking in My Sleep," captures it best and like "This Can't Be Today" is a perfect anthem for that unreal part of your early twenties. "What's She Done To Your Mind" is a lost Byrds track and the album's most accessable, but Rain Parade's slower and more keyboard-dominated work makes them one of the more unique psychedelic bands despite their debt to their 60s forefathers.
3. R.E.M. - Murmur
To call this a spectacular debut would be to belittle the "Radio Free Europe" single and equally fantastic Chronic Town EP. R.E.M. does pull off the feat of recording a 12-track album all standing up to that. Like many of the artists on this list the Athens quartet excels in returning to the jangly roots from the 60s, the Byrds in particular, with Peter Buck and Mike Mills explicitly showing off their use of Rickenbackers. Their tight group sound highlights all of their talents enough to stand up against Stipe's lyrics. If there is one definitive R.E.M. song in existence I would say it is "Shaking Through," with its chord changes and mumbled lyrics being what most crave from this classic band. It even features the kind of piano that would make an appearance on idols the Feelies' albums a few years later. The LP's excellence is in no small part due to producer Mitch Easter who proves his worth on "Perfect Circle" with hypnotic dual pianos. This album deserves its place at the top of the "alternative" rock pantheon, so long as you see that as a good thing.
2. The Three O'Clock - Sixteen Tambourines
Likewise, their brothers in this South Bay group fooled many with singer/bassist Michael Quercio's Austin Powers-esque fashion sense into being a bunch of 60s revivalists. Their integration of modern synthesizers was enough to dismiss that notion, with this wide array of influences making "Jet Fighter" one of the best pop songs of the decade. Quercio's high voice and bizarre lyrics, Danny Benair's hard-hitting pop drums, and co-songwriter Greg Gutierrez' creative guitar playing all contribute to this band's unusual sound. In a perfect world they would have defined the eighties with their tight and clean songs like "Stupid Einstein" and "Seeing is Believing" where the quartet's dynamics are at their best. The romantic rebellion of "And So We Run" and "A Day In Erotica" which alternates between eerie textures and new wave pop make this album the perfect eighties album, containing just about everything that made this decade's music great. Check out the cover for a band photo as intelligent and perplexing as the music found within.
1. Meat Puppets - II
The greatest band out of Phoenix ever goes beyond merely being the loudest and fastest on Earth and really comes into their own. These hippies were still showing hardcore kidz all over the country what speed really meant, but did it now with a finely-tuned psychedelic country sound. The Kirkwood brothers, both gods of their instruments have a dynamic that can only come from shared blood in both their playing and off-key singing. The three songs that Nirvana covered with their help are the best known, but they hardly stand out against others like the speedball of an opener "Split Myself in Two" or the the splendor of "Aurora Borealis." The extraterrestrial "We're Here" and highway adventure Americana of "Lost" sit surprisingly well against the blaring "New Gods" and "I'm A Mindless Idiot." This is the beginning of cowpunk, but none of those other bands did as much peyote or found a balance with the rabid playing of the Kirkwoods and the steady simplicity of Derrick Bostrom. He is perhaps the Ringo of the 80s, wowing few with any tricks but achieving a rare transcendence by doing so, the only logical thing a drummer could do on Curt's request of, "alright boys, let's get way out there now." The closing "The Whistling Song," goes in yet another new direction and a softer, sweeter one that they would follow on their next masterpiece.
See you soon!
10. The Chameleons - Script of the Bridge
The psychedelic revival finally makes its way to the bleak musical landscape of Manchester on the Cameleons' first full-lengths following the stunning debut single "In Shreds." The closest point of reference is the Teardrop Explodes, especially in fellow singer/bassist Mark Burgess' deep vocals. It is a lot more goth than that, replacing that funk with a slow drone and the playful keyboards with the dueling atmospheric guitars of Reg Smithies and Dave Fielding. Post-punk fury still dominates the band's dreamy sound with arrangements a bit simpler and less dynamic than heard on their later work. The group does demonstrate an ear for pop melody, best heard on "Up the Down Escalator," hinting at the ethereal beauty the would later achieve. Anger is the most present emotion indicated on the aggressive opener "Don't Fall," but their wide range and depth signals that this band is more than just another bunch of depressed Mancunians even more than their taste for the psychedelic.
9. The Go-Betweens - Before Hollywood
Following a second move to the other side of the globe and addition of drummer (and Forster's girlfriend) Lindy Morrison the Go-Betweens became much more than the vehicle of Brisbane songwriting duo Grant McLennan and Robert Forster. They also created one of their finest albums. Still retaining the home-made new wave of their earlier work it also begins the lusher, prettier sound that earned them the reputation of "the indie-rock Fleetwood Mac." All the songs are some of their best, but "Cattle and Cane" - considered to be one of the finest Australia songs ever written, is enough to qualify this a masterpiece. The careful arrangement and tastefully sentimental lyrics make this song a vivid and cinematic image of rural Queensland life for the rest of the world to see. This band's only growing reputation as pop masters begins here.
8. Sneaky Feelings - Send You
At last, Flying Nun records and the Dunedin sound makes its debut on the lists with this obscure gem. The better known artists of that isolated little word began with singles and EPs, so it begins with this little album (sometimes considered an EP, but not by me). It has a slower, moodier sound that the Clean or the Chills, but no less jangly post-punk. That, and all the intelligence of the Verlaines without Graeme Downes' academic pretense. "Waiting For the Touchdown" and "Throwing Stones" set the standard for the band's distinctly powerful sound, but things speed up for some of the best songs "Someone Else's Eyes." While the diversity may not be a strong point, few were looking for that in an artist in 1983 and the songwriting and playing is enough to grant this record many, many repeat listens. Big, simple rhythms and loose guitar dynamics make this Flying Nun's lost classic with "Everything I Want" at the end making me want a lot more Sneaky Feelings, to which I have had little luck.
7. Green on Red - Gravity Talks
I first discovered this album by the Tuscon via LA Paisley Underground group on a list of each member of Pavement's top 10 albums lists. While I sadly have not been able to find that list again in recent times (RIP geocities, I beleive), I do remember this one was on Bob Nastanovitch's list, and thank God it was! This is more on the country-end of that scene, but the psychedelia is still there mostly thanks to the prominent organ on songs like the title track and "Deliverance". Other highlights "That's What You're Here For" and "Five Easy Pieces" make them one one of the finest country-rock groups of the decade, without their heavy-handedness getting in the way. It still only detracts slightly on their home-state-inspired "Old Chief," but almost ruins "Brave Generation," similarly to the way that very generation has irreparably ruined this country and their children (i.e. me and probably everyone reading this). It's actually kind of offensive. With guests Matt Piucci and Steve Wynn in tow, it is one of the key albums of the paisley underground.
6. Talking Heads - Speaking in Tongues
After a much-needed break the Heads return with an album up to par with their last three. With Eno out of the picture the four official members have a more unified vision and thanks to that experience, cohesive and limitless sound. It feature Bernie Worrell on synthesizer leaving few, if any wishing for Eno and lending the perfect addition to the funky sounds of this record. "Burning Down the House" is their ghostly hit and a great song in its own right, but it is far different from the disco of "Making Flippy Floppy." Despite the influence from dance music the tempo is usually slower and atmospheric like on "Slippery People" and "Girlfriend is Better," but it hits its peak at the end with the stunning "This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody)." It is probably the band's best song with its perfectly-arranged vocals that prove the band does not need Eno to create transcendent, otherworldly beauty. Integration of African music has never sounded so good.
5. Wipers - Over the Edge
The final installment of the classic Wipers trilogy. The big, dirty fury of Youth America meets the concise songwriting of the debut on what many consider the band's pinnacle. That belief holds enough credence that I feel the need to apologize for it only being at 5, but the next five... it's mostly personal. Pop is at its best on "Messenger" and "No Generation Gap" (relatively speaking) and the fury of the last album is best repeated on the first three tracks. "Romeo" naturally captures the dark romance of some of Sage's better later work and "No One Wants and Alien," is a return to and improvement upon the themes he explored on his pre-Is This Real? work. If there is one definitive Wipers record this is definitely it, as all of Sage and company's best talents are brought forth at once on these eleven angsty slices of heavy Northwestern rock.
4. Rain Parade - Emergency Third Rail Power Trip
Another one of the most perfect album covers. The Paisley Underground quintet's debut is often unfairly attributed to future Mazzy Star founder David Roback. I am in the rare belief that the band's later material is roughly as fine as this, and surpasses the guitarist's later project. In truth the guitars are just another part of the mix more dominated by three-part harmonies and Stephen Roback's punchy bass lines. Eddie Kalwa's popping, but quiet drumming (I believe achieved by playing softly with heavy sticks) keeps this sleepy record moving while Will Glenn's subtle keys keep the daze in full effect. The whole record captures the feeling of the West Los Angeles June gloom in all its minute slow-paced beauty, a feat few would be so inspired to attempt. Opener "Talking in My Sleep," captures it best and like "This Can't Be Today" is a perfect anthem for that unreal part of your early twenties. "What's She Done To Your Mind" is a lost Byrds track and the album's most accessable, but Rain Parade's slower and more keyboard-dominated work makes them one of the more unique psychedelic bands despite their debt to their 60s forefathers.
3. R.E.M. - Murmur
To call this a spectacular debut would be to belittle the "Radio Free Europe" single and equally fantastic Chronic Town EP. R.E.M. does pull off the feat of recording a 12-track album all standing up to that. Like many of the artists on this list the Athens quartet excels in returning to the jangly roots from the 60s, the Byrds in particular, with Peter Buck and Mike Mills explicitly showing off their use of Rickenbackers. Their tight group sound highlights all of their talents enough to stand up against Stipe's lyrics. If there is one definitive R.E.M. song in existence I would say it is "Shaking Through," with its chord changes and mumbled lyrics being what most crave from this classic band. It even features the kind of piano that would make an appearance on idols the Feelies' albums a few years later. The LP's excellence is in no small part due to producer Mitch Easter who proves his worth on "Perfect Circle" with hypnotic dual pianos. This album deserves its place at the top of the "alternative" rock pantheon, so long as you see that as a good thing.
2. The Three O'Clock - Sixteen Tambourines
Likewise, their brothers in this South Bay group fooled many with singer/bassist Michael Quercio's Austin Powers-esque fashion sense into being a bunch of 60s revivalists. Their integration of modern synthesizers was enough to dismiss that notion, with this wide array of influences making "Jet Fighter" one of the best pop songs of the decade. Quercio's high voice and bizarre lyrics, Danny Benair's hard-hitting pop drums, and co-songwriter Greg Gutierrez' creative guitar playing all contribute to this band's unusual sound. In a perfect world they would have defined the eighties with their tight and clean songs like "Stupid Einstein" and "Seeing is Believing" where the quartet's dynamics are at their best. The romantic rebellion of "And So We Run" and "A Day In Erotica" which alternates between eerie textures and new wave pop make this album the perfect eighties album, containing just about everything that made this decade's music great. Check out the cover for a band photo as intelligent and perplexing as the music found within.
1. Meat Puppets - II
The greatest band out of Phoenix ever goes beyond merely being the loudest and fastest on Earth and really comes into their own. These hippies were still showing hardcore kidz all over the country what speed really meant, but did it now with a finely-tuned psychedelic country sound. The Kirkwood brothers, both gods of their instruments have a dynamic that can only come from shared blood in both their playing and off-key singing. The three songs that Nirvana covered with their help are the best known, but they hardly stand out against others like the speedball of an opener "Split Myself in Two" or the the splendor of "Aurora Borealis." The extraterrestrial "We're Here" and highway adventure Americana of "Lost" sit surprisingly well against the blaring "New Gods" and "I'm A Mindless Idiot." This is the beginning of cowpunk, but none of those other bands did as much peyote or found a balance with the rabid playing of the Kirkwoods and the steady simplicity of Derrick Bostrom. He is perhaps the Ringo of the 80s, wowing few with any tricks but achieving a rare transcendence by doing so, the only logical thing a drummer could do on Curt's request of, "alright boys, let's get way out there now." The closing "The Whistling Song," goes in yet another new direction and a softer, sweeter one that they would follow on their next masterpiece.
See you soon!
Tuesday, April 2, 2013
1982
Here's a good year. That's the thing about the 80s you will find, some years are really the absolute greatest in history, others are kinda empty, others are really hard to fill with 10 classics but haf of those will be all-time masterpieces. Here is the third year of that decade and it's not really any of those. Just pretty damn good. Unfortunately I was unable to locate some of these and I apologize for being less thorough, if you can pick them out...
10. XTC - English Settlement
One of the Swindon group's best and the last before they became a studio-only combination. Still with drummer Terry Chambers there is still a strong unified cohesion not dependent on production. Still, studio perfection is a crucial part of this sprawling double album as first track "Runaways" establishes with its lush sound. Though still a new wave band the punk energy of their early work is declining to make way in the band's interest in psychedelic pop that would come to take over. With that the songs get longer and take on lyrics with bolder and more thought-provoking themes than heard on earlier material. Even the explicit "Melt the Guns" transcends corniness in its message with a lot more finesse and taste than "Dear God." With that, they still include "Senses Working Overtime" one of their catchiest singalongs of all. Most versions are on a single disc making it more concise, but it's all great and one of the most enduring "new wave" albums made.
9. Mission of Burma - Vs.
The Boston band makes its one full-length of its initial career with this complex masterpiece that stands as one of America's best post-punk albums. They have all the rage and fury of the explosion, but do it with a flagrant intellectualism befitting of their home town. The trio plus tape manipulator are at their most unified with the four creating a dense sound with plenty of rhythm and noise to further distinguish these well-composed songs. As usual the musicianship is some of the finest amongst their peers particularly in drummer Peter Prescott's wild, yet calculated driving thunder. With his tinnitis worsening Roger Miller does not hold back on what he thought would be his final statement, but bassist Clint Conley's songs are no weaker, particularly on one of the album's best tracks "Dead Pool."
8. The Birthday Party - Junkyard
The Big Daddy Roth album cover implies what Nick Cave announces on "Dead Joe": "welcome to the car smash." In other words, this is the sound of five violent psycho junkies from down under. Cave's vocals are of course in a category of their own and need no further elaboration. He is growing and so is the rest of the band, all working together for the last time here bassist Tracy Pew absent at times due, naturally, to incarceration. He, and Barry Adamson in his place, create the pummeling rhythms that make this album such a beat-down with drummer Phil Calvert, perhaps what is missing most from Cave's later work. What is also with Cave for the last time is the ear-piercing guitar of Rowland S. Howard, a voice as horrifying and essential to this nightmarish record as Cave's vocals. It is all held together by consistent Cave sideman and one of the finest multi-instrumentalists of the last 35 years, Mr. Mick Harvey. This is not "goth," it is far too brutal for that.
7. Bruce Springsteen - Nebraska
By now on top of the world and getting ready to go even higher, New Jersey's favorite son goes into seclusion with his darkest album of all. Recorded on his own on four track, the boss is stripped of all his colossal arrangements and blaring starring the likes of other over-the-top personalities as Max Weinberg, Little Steven, and Clarence Clemens. Quiet as it is this music is even more intense with all the gritty truth of America's underbelly coming to the forefront without much of the hopefulness of "Thunder Road." It's bleak cover exposes the dark side of the heartland, but his home state is not safe either with the depressing "Atlantic City," capturing the desperation of the state's resort communities almost 30 years before the rest of the country's morbid fascination with the place. I describe this album as "Suicide gone acoustic," and if you don't think so you should probably listen to this one again - particularly to "State Trooper," a frontrunner for his "most Jersey" song.
6. Kate Bush - The Dreaming
Bush really starts getting weird here, proving herself more than just a talented young girl with an unusual voice. With "Sat In Your Lap" she introduces the heavy drumming that would define the sound of her next album as well as the more explicit madness that would provide her music with endless drama. Her influences are mostly non-musical and very dark and surreal, allowing her own mind to reinterpret them into this dizzying array of sound. The fretless bass is one of her best companions here with its ability to bounce across octaves perhaps the only thing that can keep up with her voice which flows most seamlessly on "Suspended in Gaffa" and the Vietman-inspired "Pull Out the Pin." Bush also begins to freely let her Celtic influence out on "Night of the Swallow" preparing for her for the full immersion into the halucinatory druid underworld on Hounds of Love. The cover says it all - a dark and mysterious record that will free you, but from what? And why?
5. Flipper - Album - Generic Flipper
San Francisco sure did change a lot in fifteen years! This post-hardcore (by the standards of the time) quartet outdoes the Cure in bleakness and while it has no shortage of humor, it has proven to be even more tragic considering the demise of singer/bassist Will Shatter only a few years later. As soul-crushing as "Life Is Cheap" and "Shed No Tears," are Flipper still functions well as a fun party band best heard on their legendary album closer "Sex Bomb" with its dueling saxophones. Flipper was and still is sometimes considered the worst band of all time and it is a strong argument is you don't like raw energetic rock and roll. Each song is dominated by a plodding overdriven bass and the vocals of Shatter or alternate bassist/singer/songwriter Bruce Loose. The drumming is just short of tight, but unrelenting in its attack and decade-older Vietnam vet Ted Falconi's guitar seems to just feed back creating the same wall of noise on every song. A fun an cynical guide to "The Way of the World" and an exercise in post-punk minimalism.
4. Go-Go's - Beauty and the Beat
Totally ignored at the time, the highly-influential LA punk scene manifested itself in some very unpredictable ways in the 1980s. One of those ways is Mötley Crüe, another is X, but the one with the most success and the closest ties to the Germs was the Go-Go's. The group's oldest member and musical force Caroline Caffey dominates the songwriting on this perfectly-crafted set of songs too often dismissed as sunny pop. Sunny it is not, despite "We Got the Beat," with "Our Town" being one of the most biting and accurate odes to the group's home town ever made. The group's talent is off the charts, with four-part harmonies that outdo anyone else in this whole decade laregely thanks to Jane Wiedlin's airy high-end. The severely underrated rhythm section of drummer Gina Schock and bassist Cathy Valentine adds depth to the hypnosis brought on by the dense harmonies. Unfortunately it would not last, but the Go-Go's debut surpasses even the finest work of their power pop brothers, lucky Peter Case managed to catch on and get his name in the credits.
3. The Dream Syndicate - The Days of Wine and Roses
Los Angeles' "paisley underground" makes its first appearance on the list with its most respected contribution. Taking their cues from the Velvets, this consciously modern group puts together a flawless set of noisy and droning rock. Steve Wynn's vocals may be cool and understated on top of Kendra Smith and Dennis Suck's simple rhythms, but lead guitarist Karl Precoda cuts though the foundation like a chainsaw with his aggressive and heavily-distorted attack. The songs speak for themselves though with the band following a carefully-planned map that drones in a most calculated and precise way. "That's What You Always Say," one of their earliest songs and featuring Smith's finest playing is their most accessible track, but their dramas are the definitive work, such as on "Then She Remembers" and the concluding title track. "Until Lately" has such a building nervous energy that begs Feelies comparisons, the boy with the perpetual nervousness grown up, perhaps. Plus, no one else has written as song called "Halloween" quite like theirs.
2. Bobb Trimble - Harvest of Dreams
With the help of some very talented adolescents in the Cripple Dog Band, Worcester's Bobb Trimble goes further down the rabbit hole (he was seen wearing a top hat with rabbit ears at the time) on his second and final "official" release. He gets more grandiose, and accurate in his self-description with "another lonely angel headed for the borderline," taking over "killed by the hand of an unknown rock starr." The first side, like the second on his debut, is book-ended with near-identical tracks, opening with the recorder-led "Premonitions - the Fantasy" and including the silent "The World I Left Behind" to let the listener here the "reality" around them. This is broken up with the telephone and video game samples of the gorgeous "Armour of the Shroud," the album's longest song and the one signaling the tragic and beautiful sound he would explore in his subsequent Christian phase. The cover, one of the most powerful images ever recorded captures the feeling of this dense psychedelic record portraying a man as out of place in the real world as this music was in the landscape of the 80s. The reissue includes some amazing bonus tracks too, especially "Galilean Boy," the greatest song ever written about Christ period.
1. Trees - Sleep Convention
Armed with a full set of videos at the dawn of MTV, a major label deal, and the best synth-pop in history it is a true mystery why Trees did not become the biggest thing in America. Perhaps Dane Conover is too much of a nerd. If that were the case there would be no "She Blinded Me With Science." Perhaps Americans didn't want native synth pop, but I tend to believe someone had it in for Kim Fowley, who discovered and backed the San Diego genius and put him in the studio with usual cohort Earle Mankey. This is a distinctly American album and as dark as Gary Numan attempting to take comfort in the age of mass destruction. Themes include war and terrorism, "Sock of the New," and of course "Delta Sleep." There is lighter fare like "India," "Gotta Moon" and the break-up opener "Come Back," but the apocalyptic sounds are some of the best. "Midnight in America" is a chilling tale of terror from the perspective of the ones planning it and closer "Red Car" is an honest and complete reflection on the creation of the H-Bomb giving this album the whole weight of the cold war. My favorite has always been the eerie beauty of the lushly-arranged "Wildwood" with it's hypnotic (real) drums and Byrds-like harmonies, but the whole thing is amazing warranting listen after listen. This apocalyptic synth-pop done SoCal style. If you were looking for a true lost masterpiece this is the one.
10. XTC - English Settlement
One of the Swindon group's best and the last before they became a studio-only combination. Still with drummer Terry Chambers there is still a strong unified cohesion not dependent on production. Still, studio perfection is a crucial part of this sprawling double album as first track "Runaways" establishes with its lush sound. Though still a new wave band the punk energy of their early work is declining to make way in the band's interest in psychedelic pop that would come to take over. With that the songs get longer and take on lyrics with bolder and more thought-provoking themes than heard on earlier material. Even the explicit "Melt the Guns" transcends corniness in its message with a lot more finesse and taste than "Dear God." With that, they still include "Senses Working Overtime" one of their catchiest singalongs of all. Most versions are on a single disc making it more concise, but it's all great and one of the most enduring "new wave" albums made.
9. Mission of Burma - Vs.
The Boston band makes its one full-length of its initial career with this complex masterpiece that stands as one of America's best post-punk albums. They have all the rage and fury of the explosion, but do it with a flagrant intellectualism befitting of their home town. The trio plus tape manipulator are at their most unified with the four creating a dense sound with plenty of rhythm and noise to further distinguish these well-composed songs. As usual the musicianship is some of the finest amongst their peers particularly in drummer Peter Prescott's wild, yet calculated driving thunder. With his tinnitis worsening Roger Miller does not hold back on what he thought would be his final statement, but bassist Clint Conley's songs are no weaker, particularly on one of the album's best tracks "Dead Pool."
8. The Birthday Party - Junkyard
The Big Daddy Roth album cover implies what Nick Cave announces on "Dead Joe": "welcome to the car smash." In other words, this is the sound of five violent psycho junkies from down under. Cave's vocals are of course in a category of their own and need no further elaboration. He is growing and so is the rest of the band, all working together for the last time here bassist Tracy Pew absent at times due, naturally, to incarceration. He, and Barry Adamson in his place, create the pummeling rhythms that make this album such a beat-down with drummer Phil Calvert, perhaps what is missing most from Cave's later work. What is also with Cave for the last time is the ear-piercing guitar of Rowland S. Howard, a voice as horrifying and essential to this nightmarish record as Cave's vocals. It is all held together by consistent Cave sideman and one of the finest multi-instrumentalists of the last 35 years, Mr. Mick Harvey. This is not "goth," it is far too brutal for that.
7. Bruce Springsteen - Nebraska
By now on top of the world and getting ready to go even higher, New Jersey's favorite son goes into seclusion with his darkest album of all. Recorded on his own on four track, the boss is stripped of all his colossal arrangements and blaring starring the likes of other over-the-top personalities as Max Weinberg, Little Steven, and Clarence Clemens. Quiet as it is this music is even more intense with all the gritty truth of America's underbelly coming to the forefront without much of the hopefulness of "Thunder Road." It's bleak cover exposes the dark side of the heartland, but his home state is not safe either with the depressing "Atlantic City," capturing the desperation of the state's resort communities almost 30 years before the rest of the country's morbid fascination with the place. I describe this album as "Suicide gone acoustic," and if you don't think so you should probably listen to this one again - particularly to "State Trooper," a frontrunner for his "most Jersey" song.
6. Kate Bush - The Dreaming
Bush really starts getting weird here, proving herself more than just a talented young girl with an unusual voice. With "Sat In Your Lap" she introduces the heavy drumming that would define the sound of her next album as well as the more explicit madness that would provide her music with endless drama. Her influences are mostly non-musical and very dark and surreal, allowing her own mind to reinterpret them into this dizzying array of sound. The fretless bass is one of her best companions here with its ability to bounce across octaves perhaps the only thing that can keep up with her voice which flows most seamlessly on "Suspended in Gaffa" and the Vietman-inspired "Pull Out the Pin." Bush also begins to freely let her Celtic influence out on "Night of the Swallow" preparing for her for the full immersion into the halucinatory druid underworld on Hounds of Love. The cover says it all - a dark and mysterious record that will free you, but from what? And why?
5. Flipper - Album - Generic Flipper
San Francisco sure did change a lot in fifteen years! This post-hardcore (by the standards of the time) quartet outdoes the Cure in bleakness and while it has no shortage of humor, it has proven to be even more tragic considering the demise of singer/bassist Will Shatter only a few years later. As soul-crushing as "Life Is Cheap" and "Shed No Tears," are Flipper still functions well as a fun party band best heard on their legendary album closer "Sex Bomb" with its dueling saxophones. Flipper was and still is sometimes considered the worst band of all time and it is a strong argument is you don't like raw energetic rock and roll. Each song is dominated by a plodding overdriven bass and the vocals of Shatter or alternate bassist/singer/songwriter Bruce Loose. The drumming is just short of tight, but unrelenting in its attack and decade-older Vietnam vet Ted Falconi's guitar seems to just feed back creating the same wall of noise on every song. A fun an cynical guide to "The Way of the World" and an exercise in post-punk minimalism.
4. Go-Go's - Beauty and the Beat
Totally ignored at the time, the highly-influential LA punk scene manifested itself in some very unpredictable ways in the 1980s. One of those ways is Mötley Crüe, another is X, but the one with the most success and the closest ties to the Germs was the Go-Go's. The group's oldest member and musical force Caroline Caffey dominates the songwriting on this perfectly-crafted set of songs too often dismissed as sunny pop. Sunny it is not, despite "We Got the Beat," with "Our Town" being one of the most biting and accurate odes to the group's home town ever made. The group's talent is off the charts, with four-part harmonies that outdo anyone else in this whole decade laregely thanks to Jane Wiedlin's airy high-end. The severely underrated rhythm section of drummer Gina Schock and bassist Cathy Valentine adds depth to the hypnosis brought on by the dense harmonies. Unfortunately it would not last, but the Go-Go's debut surpasses even the finest work of their power pop brothers, lucky Peter Case managed to catch on and get his name in the credits.
3. The Dream Syndicate - The Days of Wine and Roses
Los Angeles' "paisley underground" makes its first appearance on the list with its most respected contribution. Taking their cues from the Velvets, this consciously modern group puts together a flawless set of noisy and droning rock. Steve Wynn's vocals may be cool and understated on top of Kendra Smith and Dennis Suck's simple rhythms, but lead guitarist Karl Precoda cuts though the foundation like a chainsaw with his aggressive and heavily-distorted attack. The songs speak for themselves though with the band following a carefully-planned map that drones in a most calculated and precise way. "That's What You Always Say," one of their earliest songs and featuring Smith's finest playing is their most accessible track, but their dramas are the definitive work, such as on "Then She Remembers" and the concluding title track. "Until Lately" has such a building nervous energy that begs Feelies comparisons, the boy with the perpetual nervousness grown up, perhaps. Plus, no one else has written as song called "Halloween" quite like theirs.
2. Bobb Trimble - Harvest of Dreams
With the help of some very talented adolescents in the Cripple Dog Band, Worcester's Bobb Trimble goes further down the rabbit hole (he was seen wearing a top hat with rabbit ears at the time) on his second and final "official" release. He gets more grandiose, and accurate in his self-description with "another lonely angel headed for the borderline," taking over "killed by the hand of an unknown rock starr." The first side, like the second on his debut, is book-ended with near-identical tracks, opening with the recorder-led "Premonitions - the Fantasy" and including the silent "The World I Left Behind" to let the listener here the "reality" around them. This is broken up with the telephone and video game samples of the gorgeous "Armour of the Shroud," the album's longest song and the one signaling the tragic and beautiful sound he would explore in his subsequent Christian phase. The cover, one of the most powerful images ever recorded captures the feeling of this dense psychedelic record portraying a man as out of place in the real world as this music was in the landscape of the 80s. The reissue includes some amazing bonus tracks too, especially "Galilean Boy," the greatest song ever written about Christ period.
1. Trees - Sleep Convention
Armed with a full set of videos at the dawn of MTV, a major label deal, and the best synth-pop in history it is a true mystery why Trees did not become the biggest thing in America. Perhaps Dane Conover is too much of a nerd. If that were the case there would be no "She Blinded Me With Science." Perhaps Americans didn't want native synth pop, but I tend to believe someone had it in for Kim Fowley, who discovered and backed the San Diego genius and put him in the studio with usual cohort Earle Mankey. This is a distinctly American album and as dark as Gary Numan attempting to take comfort in the age of mass destruction. Themes include war and terrorism, "Sock of the New," and of course "Delta Sleep." There is lighter fare like "India," "Gotta Moon" and the break-up opener "Come Back," but the apocalyptic sounds are some of the best. "Midnight in America" is a chilling tale of terror from the perspective of the ones planning it and closer "Red Car" is an honest and complete reflection on the creation of the H-Bomb giving this album the whole weight of the cold war. My favorite has always been the eerie beauty of the lushly-arranged "Wildwood" with it's hypnotic (real) drums and Byrds-like harmonies, but the whole thing is amazing warranting listen after listen. This apocalyptic synth-pop done SoCal style. If you were looking for a true lost masterpiece this is the one.
Monday, April 1, 2013
1981
Now the 80s in full-swing and it's pretty weird. Yep, it's really weird, but as always there is plenty of great music - at least 10 albums worth mentioning. This isn't a bad year, really, but compared to the four that preceded it's pretty much garbage. That may not be an exaggeration, but as always I stand by these ten, and considering a great album like Suburban Lawns not making it I guess it was actually pretty competitive.
10. The Replacement - Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash
The Minneaplois legends make their loud, fast, and crude debut. While many members, particularly future Guns 'N' Roses bassist Tommy Stinson are criminally underage it is still a perfect drunken mess. Most are snotty teenage rags like "Shiftless When Idle" and "I Hate Music," but "Something to Dü" is a great sign of the unity American Underground bands would use to legendary effect in this decade. As the future and behavior of the band would indicate the Mats were more of a classic rock band than anything else despite the hardcore heard on this album. "Johnny's Gonna Die," the sad but true story of The Dolls/Heartbreakers' slinger is the true standout would also prove true for the band's own underrated guitar god Bob Stinson. It would only get better from here, but the band heard here in full youthful energy makes this album as classic as Let It Be and Tim in many ways.
9. King Crimson - Discipline
The prog legends return, kind of. As usual it is pretty much a new band, though Bruford sticks with mainstay Fripp in this version. The two are joined by young Americans Tony Levin and for the first time, another guitarist. Adrian Belew, fresh off playing with the Talking Heads, David Bowie, and Frank Zappa provides the perfect dynamic for Fripp as well as vocals complete with the band's first self-performing lyricist. Fripp shows he is no dinosaur with the fresh sounds here more akin to the Talking Heads and fellow future-minded peers Bowie and Levin's other boss Peter Gabriel. This album is very clean and textured with all the precision the title would imply. While electronic drums and Chapman sticks may not sound like the best ideas on paper this quartet of masters makes them work to amazing effect making Discipline an albumin a category of its own and as worthy of Fripp's name as any of his other works from the 70s.
8. Siouxsie and the Banshees - Juju
The Banshees' greatest lineup coalesces here on what is probably their finest and best-known album. Siouxsie, Steve Severin, guitarist John McGeoch, and percussionist Budgie are in perfect unified form on this dark and swirling album. Opening with the goth anthem "Spellbound," the energy level is at its highest since the early days playing with the Pistols and the songwriting is at a new high. The exotic guitars are driven by the bass reliably wild drums supporting Siouxsie's dramatic vocals on "Arabian Nights" which exemplifies the unpredictable changes heard all over the record. What is consistent is the dark themes which sometimes put Siouxsie and company in the unfortunate goth category, but while this style is often full of comedic irony, the Banshees pull off the balance of seriocity and fun better than the rest, with "Halloween" being a classic rather than just another piece of goth camp.
7. The Stanglers - La Folie
With their early albums the Stranglers answer the question of what a punk band led by Rick Wakeman would sound like. Those albums may be better than this one, but La Folie is a big step forward, allowing the band's less angry, but still as cynically humorous side shine through. A lot of that is thanks to bassist J.J. Burnel's growing presence such as in the use of his family's tongue on the title track (about a Japanese cannibal). Despite containing the pretty baroque heroin-anthem-turned-hit "Golden Brown," the album is still dominated by classic Stranglers fare like "Non Stop" and "Pin Up" with their laughably misogynistic lyrics and tastefully flashy keyboard playing. Its title means "The Madness," and that's true, though in usual Stranglers' fashion not really sincerely. Great playing, great fun, great dark insanity.
6. Electric Light Orchestra - Time
E.L.O.'s lost masterpiece is a synthesizer-dominated sci-fi concept album with as much in common with Giorgio Moroder as the Move. With the band being seen as dinosaurs since their inception, they become more overlooked than ever despite remaining cutting edge. Maybe it was songs like "Yours Truly, 2095" with its sad view of love with a robot that kept it off the radar, but with synth pop dominating the mainstream at the time, that does not make much since either. The dense elctonic pop of "Twilight" is as much a standout as the cinematic "Ticket to the Moon" and the Kraftwek-esque (and perhaps Hüsker Dü-inspiring) "Here is the News." "The Way Life's Meant to Be" provides a bit of the classic sound for anyone still longing for it. While this album is a total success, the 80s proved to be a disappointment for the symphonic group, so there is a sad irony in the album's time-traveling protagonist wishing to go back to that time, but other than that...
5. The Psychedelic Furs - Talk Talk Talk
With Steve Lilywhite the unusual sextet makes their best work. The Furs create a combination of post-punk and, yes, psychedelia that despite the John Hughes-inspiring jangle pop of "Pretty In Pink" has more in common with Bauhaus than John Parr. The bleating sax-led "Dumb Waiters" is the album's best and darkest track fully worthy of its title. "Side two opener "Into You Like A Train" has a similar heavy sound and the large band excels in their dense, circular arrangements setting them apart from others in the New Wave, but inside and outside the mainstream. Coupled with Richard Butler's goth vocals the Furs' voice makes them a distinct band even as "this kind of thing" made a return to rock and their second full-length would remain their finest work.
4. The Cure - Faith
Following a year of personal tragedy following an already dramatically dark growth Robert Smith, Simon Gallup, and Lol Tolhurst make what is easily the most depressing album of all time. Here is a set of eight slow, long dirges that manage to capture all the beauty of soul-crushing sadness for anyone who can handle it. Some point out the quicker tunes "Primary" and "Doubt" as peppy material, but their tempo is certainly not enough to make anyone forget about the lyrics and the bass playing that defines goth rock for all time. Are they really serious? Titles like "All Cats Are Grey," "The Drowning Man," and "The Funeral Party" may sound over the top, but Smith manages to songs so truly depressing that they earn the titles rather than earning the titles a place in the great big book of goth jokes. While it is not their most fun listen, it is one of the Cure's finest works with each song the most delicious slice of sadness you could hope for.
3. Brian Eno and David Byne - My Life in the Bush of Ghosts
Without interference from "the other three" Byrne and Eno fully realize their shared vision on this album following hints such as Fear of Music's "Drugs. The two create a psychedelic bastard child of musique-concrète and Afrobeat witht he otherworldly incorporating of spiritual Middle Eastern music and American evangelical radio. The idea was to create a field recording from planet Earth in the late 20th century and considering the duo's awareness of their own limits it is impossible to deny their success. It is an even more post-modern approach to the same post-ethnic pop the Heads and Peter Gabriel were doing at this time and an obvious influence on future acts like the Butthole Surfers Animal Collective. Their vocals make few appearances, but with the samples on "Mea Culpa" and "America is Waiting," not much more could even be desired.
2. The Sound - From The Lion's Mouth
For anyone looking for more music like Joy Division here it is, and maybe even better. Adrian Borland's similarities to Ian Curtis are immediate, but he was also a guitar god and even more mentally disturbed, despite his ability to make it to 1999 without suicide. His tight group does as much to support his wild and nightmarish vision creating some of the best-textured and lean post-punk around. Opening with the epic "Winning," and the atmospheric chug of "Sense of Purpose," the album has a one-two punch that never relents through songs like "Contact the Fact" and "Skeletons." The Sound earns their name as one of the most solid bands playing this kind of music at the time or ever with the four members sharing an intense focus solely on the music as seen in their highly recommended live performances. This underappreciated band is a good reminded of how deep the treasure trove of lost post-punk goes. This one stands up to any of the better known records by the post-punk elite and beyond.
1. Wipers - Youth of America
As its title implies this is the American response to the apocalyptic post punk going on very far away from this Portland trio. What further distinguishes this group is leader Greg Sage's willingness to embrace space. The title track clocks in at over ten minutes with all the energy of his under-two minute pop songs on the debut, bravely diverting from the Stooges' and Germs' assertion that if punk songs are long they should be slow. He needs all that time for those solos anyway. While sticking firmly in guitar rock, keyboards are integrated, but not in the usual synthesizers of the time, but rather the pounding piano used by the post-punk legends that inspired this huge album more than anyone in London had. While "Taking Too Long" has some of the pop in the debut the record is mostly a bleak and intensely building one with "When It's Over" outdoing the title track and the aptly-titled "Pushing the Extreme" in that respect. Sage's guitar builds and builds and builds only to reach a false conclusion and build again, thanks in no small part to the relentless rhythms behind him. The proto-grunge legends hit their peak on this set of epic nightmares and could only go one place from here. More on that in a couple days.
Order was really hard on this one.
10. The Replacement - Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash
The Minneaplois legends make their loud, fast, and crude debut. While many members, particularly future Guns 'N' Roses bassist Tommy Stinson are criminally underage it is still a perfect drunken mess. Most are snotty teenage rags like "Shiftless When Idle" and "I Hate Music," but "Something to Dü" is a great sign of the unity American Underground bands would use to legendary effect in this decade. As the future and behavior of the band would indicate the Mats were more of a classic rock band than anything else despite the hardcore heard on this album. "Johnny's Gonna Die," the sad but true story of The Dolls/Heartbreakers' slinger is the true standout would also prove true for the band's own underrated guitar god Bob Stinson. It would only get better from here, but the band heard here in full youthful energy makes this album as classic as Let It Be and Tim in many ways.
9. King Crimson - Discipline
The prog legends return, kind of. As usual it is pretty much a new band, though Bruford sticks with mainstay Fripp in this version. The two are joined by young Americans Tony Levin and for the first time, another guitarist. Adrian Belew, fresh off playing with the Talking Heads, David Bowie, and Frank Zappa provides the perfect dynamic for Fripp as well as vocals complete with the band's first self-performing lyricist. Fripp shows he is no dinosaur with the fresh sounds here more akin to the Talking Heads and fellow future-minded peers Bowie and Levin's other boss Peter Gabriel. This album is very clean and textured with all the precision the title would imply. While electronic drums and Chapman sticks may not sound like the best ideas on paper this quartet of masters makes them work to amazing effect making Discipline an albumin a category of its own and as worthy of Fripp's name as any of his other works from the 70s.
8. Siouxsie and the Banshees - Juju
The Banshees' greatest lineup coalesces here on what is probably their finest and best-known album. Siouxsie, Steve Severin, guitarist John McGeoch, and percussionist Budgie are in perfect unified form on this dark and swirling album. Opening with the goth anthem "Spellbound," the energy level is at its highest since the early days playing with the Pistols and the songwriting is at a new high. The exotic guitars are driven by the bass reliably wild drums supporting Siouxsie's dramatic vocals on "Arabian Nights" which exemplifies the unpredictable changes heard all over the record. What is consistent is the dark themes which sometimes put Siouxsie and company in the unfortunate goth category, but while this style is often full of comedic irony, the Banshees pull off the balance of seriocity and fun better than the rest, with "Halloween" being a classic rather than just another piece of goth camp.
7. The Stanglers - La Folie
With their early albums the Stranglers answer the question of what a punk band led by Rick Wakeman would sound like. Those albums may be better than this one, but La Folie is a big step forward, allowing the band's less angry, but still as cynically humorous side shine through. A lot of that is thanks to bassist J.J. Burnel's growing presence such as in the use of his family's tongue on the title track (about a Japanese cannibal). Despite containing the pretty baroque heroin-anthem-turned-hit "Golden Brown," the album is still dominated by classic Stranglers fare like "Non Stop" and "Pin Up" with their laughably misogynistic lyrics and tastefully flashy keyboard playing. Its title means "The Madness," and that's true, though in usual Stranglers' fashion not really sincerely. Great playing, great fun, great dark insanity.
6. Electric Light Orchestra - Time
E.L.O.'s lost masterpiece is a synthesizer-dominated sci-fi concept album with as much in common with Giorgio Moroder as the Move. With the band being seen as dinosaurs since their inception, they become more overlooked than ever despite remaining cutting edge. Maybe it was songs like "Yours Truly, 2095" with its sad view of love with a robot that kept it off the radar, but with synth pop dominating the mainstream at the time, that does not make much since either. The dense elctonic pop of "Twilight" is as much a standout as the cinematic "Ticket to the Moon" and the Kraftwek-esque (and perhaps Hüsker Dü-inspiring) "Here is the News." "The Way Life's Meant to Be" provides a bit of the classic sound for anyone still longing for it. While this album is a total success, the 80s proved to be a disappointment for the symphonic group, so there is a sad irony in the album's time-traveling protagonist wishing to go back to that time, but other than that...
5. The Psychedelic Furs - Talk Talk Talk
With Steve Lilywhite the unusual sextet makes their best work. The Furs create a combination of post-punk and, yes, psychedelia that despite the John Hughes-inspiring jangle pop of "Pretty In Pink" has more in common with Bauhaus than John Parr. The bleating sax-led "Dumb Waiters" is the album's best and darkest track fully worthy of its title. "Side two opener "Into You Like A Train" has a similar heavy sound and the large band excels in their dense, circular arrangements setting them apart from others in the New Wave, but inside and outside the mainstream. Coupled with Richard Butler's goth vocals the Furs' voice makes them a distinct band even as "this kind of thing" made a return to rock and their second full-length would remain their finest work.
4. The Cure - Faith
Following a year of personal tragedy following an already dramatically dark growth Robert Smith, Simon Gallup, and Lol Tolhurst make what is easily the most depressing album of all time. Here is a set of eight slow, long dirges that manage to capture all the beauty of soul-crushing sadness for anyone who can handle it. Some point out the quicker tunes "Primary" and "Doubt" as peppy material, but their tempo is certainly not enough to make anyone forget about the lyrics and the bass playing that defines goth rock for all time. Are they really serious? Titles like "All Cats Are Grey," "The Drowning Man," and "The Funeral Party" may sound over the top, but Smith manages to songs so truly depressing that they earn the titles rather than earning the titles a place in the great big book of goth jokes. While it is not their most fun listen, it is one of the Cure's finest works with each song the most delicious slice of sadness you could hope for.
3. Brian Eno and David Byne - My Life in the Bush of Ghosts
Without interference from "the other three" Byrne and Eno fully realize their shared vision on this album following hints such as Fear of Music's "Drugs. The two create a psychedelic bastard child of musique-concrète and Afrobeat witht he otherworldly incorporating of spiritual Middle Eastern music and American evangelical radio. The idea was to create a field recording from planet Earth in the late 20th century and considering the duo's awareness of their own limits it is impossible to deny their success. It is an even more post-modern approach to the same post-ethnic pop the Heads and Peter Gabriel were doing at this time and an obvious influence on future acts like the Butthole Surfers Animal Collective. Their vocals make few appearances, but with the samples on "Mea Culpa" and "America is Waiting," not much more could even be desired.
2. The Sound - From The Lion's Mouth
For anyone looking for more music like Joy Division here it is, and maybe even better. Adrian Borland's similarities to Ian Curtis are immediate, but he was also a guitar god and even more mentally disturbed, despite his ability to make it to 1999 without suicide. His tight group does as much to support his wild and nightmarish vision creating some of the best-textured and lean post-punk around. Opening with the epic "Winning," and the atmospheric chug of "Sense of Purpose," the album has a one-two punch that never relents through songs like "Contact the Fact" and "Skeletons." The Sound earns their name as one of the most solid bands playing this kind of music at the time or ever with the four members sharing an intense focus solely on the music as seen in their highly recommended live performances. This underappreciated band is a good reminded of how deep the treasure trove of lost post-punk goes. This one stands up to any of the better known records by the post-punk elite and beyond.
1. Wipers - Youth of America
As its title implies this is the American response to the apocalyptic post punk going on very far away from this Portland trio. What further distinguishes this group is leader Greg Sage's willingness to embrace space. The title track clocks in at over ten minutes with all the energy of his under-two minute pop songs on the debut, bravely diverting from the Stooges' and Germs' assertion that if punk songs are long they should be slow. He needs all that time for those solos anyway. While sticking firmly in guitar rock, keyboards are integrated, but not in the usual synthesizers of the time, but rather the pounding piano used by the post-punk legends that inspired this huge album more than anyone in London had. While "Taking Too Long" has some of the pop in the debut the record is mostly a bleak and intensely building one with "When It's Over" outdoing the title track and the aptly-titled "Pushing the Extreme" in that respect. Sage's guitar builds and builds and builds only to reach a false conclusion and build again, thanks in no small part to the relentless rhythms behind him. The proto-grunge legends hit their peak on this set of epic nightmares and could only go one place from here. More on that in a couple days.
Order was really hard on this one.
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