Monday 25 September 2006
Perfect albums
Muffy recently posted a list of “perfect album” picks, and it got me pondering what my own list would look like. I’ll stick to various sorts of pop music - it’s much easier that way. And it’s in chronological order, according to when I discovered the album, earliest first.
Camper Van Beethoven: Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart (1988) - My first exposure to Camper, back in high school. Every song’s great, and when guitarist Greg and violinist Jonathan get to playing off one another, it’s just brilliant.
Thomas Dolby: The Golden Age Of Wireless (1982) - I must agree with Muffy on this one. And make sure it’s the vinyl version, with the “rock” version of “Radio Silence”. Always made me think of those British “boys’ own” annuals full of adventure stories, and from what I’ve read of the songs’ origins, there’s a grain of truth to that.
The Pixies: Doolittle (1989) - Spiky and sweet and grinning like a dog that might be about to rip your arm off but you can’t quite tell but she probably is so you’d better start backing away slowly. And I credit Frank Black for making me realize the wonder of uneven rhythmic cycles - like the 4+2 bars on “Dead” or the mesmerizing coda to “No. 13 Baby”... Actually, come to think of it, Surfer Rosa belongs here too.
Talking Heads: Remain In Light (1980) - Best album ever. It just is. I’m careful not to listen to this one too often for fear of overdoing it. Lyrically, I think David Byrne reached greater heights later on, but it’s the music on this one that gets me right there. Drop the needle on track one, side one and it’s like you’ve tripped in the dark and fallen into a pit that turns out to be the inside of some crazy clockwork machine that’s full of funk-crazed jungle creatures who do frightening and unnatural things to guitars. I have to stop gushing now, because it’s all been said before, and I might never stop.
Orbital: In Sides (1996) - lush interplay of melodies, and their trademark wonderful, oddball chord changes. (I got into this at the same time as Remain In Light, while I was deejaying at CKMS at the University of Waterloo.)
The La’s: The La’s (1990) - Their one and only album, thanks to frontman Lee Mavers’ legendary perfectionism. Good thing it’s brilliant. CD bonus tracks are hit and miss, but they don’t count.
XTC: Drums and Wires (1979) - Why didn’t I find out about this one sooner? It took me until a year or two ago. Strikes just the right balance between their even spazzier early stuff and the gentler pop tunes they ended up doing later. The bonus tracks are all swell. My favorite line is from “Helicopter”: “She’s landing on the town - look out, town!”
A.C. Newman: The Slow Wonder (2004) - There are a lot of bands that I adore but I can’t put on this list because there’s always that one song, on every album. Even my beloved New Pornos aren’t here - mostly because, while I want to love Dan Bejar and everything he stands for, his songs just don’t do it for me. Except “Jackie Dressed In Cobras”. But I digress. A.C.‘s solo album is a whole pile of little pop gems.
I’m sure there are other albums that I’m forgetting. I’ll add them as I think of them.
Of course, I’m usually the type to get lost in the details rather than the big picture, so perhaps I’ll post a “Favorite Music Moments” list next.
King Crimson, Discipline. This was my introduction to the acerbic construction of KC. Oh, I’d heard the big sprawling art-rock of In The Court of the Crimson King (including the Return of the Fire Witch and the Dance of the Puppets) on the local ‘classic rock’ stations, but this was my first exposure to them after they became, well, Fripp’s pet band.
Seven songs, just seven songs. Each of them clearly from the same set of people, each sounding completely different - and yet somehow they held together as a unified whole, for me. The lyrics that’re so clever they stop making sense to anyone but Adrian Belew half the time, the dispassionate, casual guitar heroism, the complicated, overlapping time signatures… I’d mostly given up on rock at this point, starting to move into electronic noise. “Discipline” was the first album I heard by that rare beast, an act made of seasoned musicians who’ve been pursuing the Mastery of their Craft since they first began. Everyone else from that era was either dead or cranking out a distillation of their initial sound into formula and nostalgia.
Seven songs, digging deep into the possibilities of rock-n-roll when the rawness is abandoned and the passion is channeled into cold mastery rather than sex and noise.