Top Ten Favorite Albums
February 5, 2005
Recently, I got to thinking about music lists, pointless or not, and the difference between a personal list, and a critical list, and the ethics involved in deciding. Everybody has a personal list, the first albums you load into your I-Pod, or the albums you annoyingly nag on non-believers to obtain by any means necessary. These albums can be highly regarded masterpieces that any music buff would rightly feel proud to own, or more shameful choices that nobody likes, but to your ear, holds a special kind of joy. Not everybody, however, has a “Best of all time” list, simply because, of all the mediums, rock criticism may be the most difficult to master, for what makes a truly great album?
Is it a diverse experiment in writing, production, vocal and rhythm, or is it just something to nod your head to while in the car? One man’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water” and “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” is another man’s “It’s Time For Regis!” and “Menudo’s Greatest Hits”; music tastes don’t always coincide with the general consensus of the elite in music history, unlike movies or literature, where, if you know what you’re talking about, the lists are usually similar in tone and content. The debate, then, in forming any kind of definitive music list (think Rolling Stone, who love lists, maybe too much) is just how much blending should be done between the personal and the critical. I don’t have an answer, but I have a list anyway, which is a mixed bag between artful respect, and head-bopping brilliance, and on any other mood swing, could very well feature several other albums (Green Day’s “American Idiot” is a current favorite, but not enough, yet, to make this list), yet for the sake of discussion, this February, 2005, with all due respect to missing greats like Neil Young’s “After the Gold Rush”, Metallica’s “…And Justice For All”, and Bob Dylan’s “Highway Sixty-One Revisited”, here is a music Top Ten.
10. Avalanche, Matthew Good (2003): For years, Matthew Good has been Canada’s best Rock ‘n’ Roll singer, and with The Matthew Good Band he came to prominence with such albums as “Underdogs” and “Beautiful Midnight”, but his best album was his first solo effort, “Avalanche”, an epic and poetic record badly neglected in the States. Blending lyricism with art rock, “Avalanche” is still the best Canadian album of the 21st century. The 7-minute title anthem will blow your mind.
9. Fully Completely, The Tragically Hip (1992): More from Canada, and arguably the most successful long tenure Canadian rock band of all time, The Tragically Hip. “Fully Completely” wasn’t the bands first masterpiece- that was 1991’s “Road Apples”- but it’s still their best, with such radio friendly hits as “Courage”, “At the Hundredth Meridian”, the beautiful “Wheat Kings”, and the famous hockey saga “Fifty Mission Cap”. I saw The Hip for the first time a few months ago, and even though the word is out of context, when Gord Downie sings “I remember, I remember Buffalo” in ‘Hundredth Meridian’ it’s an absolute crowd pleaser.
8. Help!, The Beatles (1965): Released in August 1965, after the whirlwind, groundbreaking 1964 (4 albums, 2 movies), “Help!” was the beginning of The Beatles’ transition from catchy pop lads from Liverpool to full fledged artistic geniuses. From George’s “I Need You”, to Ringo’s playful cover “Act Naturally”, to Paul’s achingly beautiful “Yesterday”, to John’s self-reflexive title track, “Help!” broke new ground, and it was only the tip of the iceberg. Lennon’s line, “My independence seems to vanish in the haze,” says more about 1964, and the toll it took on him mentally, than anything, including “Plastic Ono Band”, he’d do post-breakup.
7. Full Circle, Pennywise (1997): From Hermosa Beach, California, Pennywise is my favorite modern punk rock band, edging out Rancid and The Living End by an iota or two, and their 4th full-length album, “Full Circle”, is their best. It’s not as political as newer efforts like “Up From the Ashes”, or as technically impressive as my high school favorite “About Time”, but any album that opens with a blistering song called “Fight Till You Die”, and ends with a tribute to a recently deceased band member (“Bro Hymn Tribute”, about bassist Jason Matthew Thirsk), is tops in my book.
6. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Beatles (1967): Released in June 1967, and often voted the greatest album of all time, this trippy masterwork is by definition a concept album, but played song for song, it could stand alone as simply astonishingly inventive Rock ‘n’ Roll. This is an album about drugs (“Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”), girls (“Lovely Rita”), aging (“When I’m 64”), carnival (“Being For the Benefit Of Mr. Kite”), and community (“With a Little Help From My Friends”), and ends with the picture of John Lennon and Paul McCartney’s growing disharmony, the double-edged masterpiece “A Day in the Life”. If you read the news in June ’67, it said ‘Sgt. Pepper’ was about to change the face of Rock ‘n’ Roll. They were right.
5. O.K. Computer, Radiohead (1997): Modernist British group Radiohead had already produced two successful, well acclaimed albums before “O.K. Computer”, but neither, or anything they’ve done since, has been as influential, or for that matter, as good. With Thom Yorke’s haunting vocals driving us through such lilting tracks as “Karma Police”, and “The Tourist”, you feel less taxed than sitting through “Kid A”, or “Amnesiac”, and more fulfilled than with “Hail to the Thief” and “The Bends”. “Hey man, slow down,” wails Yorke incessantly to close out his harmonious masterpiece, but “O.K. Computer” never does, and since it’s inception, has been a Desert Island Five for most savvy Indy rock fans.
4. London Calling, The Clash (1979): Much like “O.K. Computer”, The Clash’s third album was an artistic breakthrough, ushering in a more sophisticated blend of rock, punk, dub, and reggae to answer for countless copycats and Sex Pistols wannabe’s. “London Calling” and “Train in Vain” are the songs you hear on the radio, but there are 17 other gems on this double record, from the blistering “Brand New Cadillac”, to the jumpy ska classic “Wrong ‘Em Boyo”, and Joe Strummer’s improvisational “Revolution Rock”, that prove timeless. “Tell your mama, tell your papa,” rambles Strummer on ‘Revolution Rock’, “everything’s gonna be alright.” For The Clash, not so, but for “London Calling’s” place in music history, indeed.
3. Revolver, The Beatles (1966): Here we are in August 1966, exactly a year after “Help!”, and The Beatles are continuing to evolve by leaps and bounds. Not only does George Harrison have two songs in the albums first ten minutes (“Taxman”, “Love You To”), but Ringo is singing- perhaps influenced by some kind of narcotic- about living in a Yellow Submarine. “Got to Get You Into My Life” is about marijuana, “Doctor Robert” is about their dealer, and “Tomorrow Never Knows” is the trippiest song in their cannon. Whether you condone drug experimentation or not, if the result is going to be as brilliant as “Revolver”, whose key track, “Eleanor Rigby”, is about legacy, death, and remembrance, than there’s a bright side to everything. Just ask song eight, the happy “Good Day Sunshine” for all the answers.
2. Aenima, Tool (1996): Happy though, you won’t find on this dark metal masterpiece from the kings of gloomy prong rock, Tool, who in 1996 were mourning the premature death of their comic God, Bill Hicks, which comes through in “Eulogy”, and “Third Eye”. Expanding on the drum heavy, guitar driving heights of “Undertow”, Tool front man Maynard James Keenan, and band mates Danny Carey, Justin Chancellor, and Adam Jones fused a concept album filled with hate (“Aenema”), satire (“Die Eier Von Satan”), evolution (“Forty Six and Two”), and love (“Eulogy”), and created a lasting artistic epic unsurpassed by today’s hit-or-miss metal bands. I’ve seen Tool five times in my life, and every time is a different experience, and like listening to the great “Aenima” over and over again, to the point where you think you’ve mastered it, you check yourself and realize, not quite.
1. Rubber Soul, The Beatles (1965): Ask me three years ago to write this list, and “Aenima” would have been my no-brainer number one, but it was sometime in 2002 that I became a Beatles fan, and since then there has been no comparison. My favorite of their 12 studio albums, and gets us back to the original question of criticism vs. personal favorites, and if they can truly be the same (ultimately: Yes), is “Rubber Soul”, an album that upped the ante on “Help!”, and paved the way towards “Revolver”, and ‘Sgt. Pepper’; literally only four months after “Help!” was released. That fact alone is mind boggling, given the quality of the music, and depth of song writing, in both albums. Just look what fun this album is- from the lovely “Michelle” and “The Word”, to the playful “Drive My Car” and “If I Needed Someone”, with asides to Dylan in “Norwegian Wood” and “Nowhere Man”- “Rubber Soul” was the sound of the greatest band of all time running on all cylinders. If the albums title has something to do with the flexibility of ethics in and of stardom, or perhaps the expansion of the metaphysical being through mind altering substances, than we can suggest that The Beatles’ transformation from pop icons to transcending artists was complete with “Rubber Soul”. Following a hectic two years, John, Paul, George, and Ringo were, quite simply, supermen.
by Adam Suraf