1b. The Big 500: The albums that satisfy (51-100)
Elvis Costello: My Aim Is True (Rykodisc 1977)
Pretenders: The Pretenders (Sire 1979)
Led Zeppelin: IV (Swan Song 1971)
Joni Mitchell: Court And Spark (Reprise 1974)
Lucinda Williams: Sweet Old World (Reprise, 1992)
Television: Marquee Moon (Elektra 1977)
Paul Simon: Paul Simon (Warner Bros. 1972)
Beatles: Rubber Soul (Capitol 1965)
Rubber Soul, the fifth Beatles album I heard, was different from the rest of their catalogue. Centered between the Mersey Beat they were leaving behind and the later experimentation that would consume their work, this album was exactly the right combination of both. The album plays like a greatest hits collection, every song a marvel of song-writing and simple, effective instrumentation. Drive My Car is an exciting, jangling pop song. Norwegian Wood is McCartney's humourous song about adultery and an extremely weird lady. Probably the best song on the album. Michelle is pure, wonderful schmaltz.
Neil Young: After The Goldrush (Reprise 1970)
Pulp: Different Class (Island 1996)
Stooges: Fun House (Elektra 1970)
Lou Reed: Berlin (RCA 1973)
Nine Inch Nails: The Downward Spiral (Interscope/TVT 1994)
Sleater-Kinney: Dig Me Out (Kill Rock Stars 1997)
Love: Forever Changes (Elektra 1967)
Leonard Cohen: The Songs Of (Columbia 1968)
Sonic Youth: Daydream Nation (SST 1988)
The Clash: London Calling (Epic 1979)
John Coltrane: Giant Steps (Atlantic 1959)
The Beatles: Abbey Road (Capitol/Apple 1969)
The Strokes: This Is It (RCA/Rough Trade 2001)
Prince: Dirty Mind (Warner Bros. 1980)
Bob Dylan: Blonde On Blonde (Columbia 1966)
Ray Charles: Modern Sounds In Country & Western Music (Rhino 1962)
Wire: Pink Flag (Restless 1977)
Pink Flag, released in the heyday of punk, is comprised of 21 songs in 36 minutes. The songs are short, blunt fragments with no time to spare on instrumental acrobatics. Most of the album is flat grinding mass of noise devoid of conventional beauty. The hooks are vicious, any melody being sublimated to violent stabs of guitar, hammering drums and taunting vocals. The rhythms are marching two-chord progressions, stuck in a perpetual grind. The fact that the songs are so short is the album's saving grace. After each song is over a new set of rhythms and song structures is introduced producing a constantly shifting album that never stagnates. Three Girl Rumba rides a simple backbeat and chugging, reverberating guitar along Colin’s enthused delivery. The song po-go’s like doo-wop as the lyrics impart a chance meeting with numbers (I think we all know what he means). That brilliant song leads into Ex Lion Tamer, an up tempo number stuffed with propulsion. The drums create a tumbling rhythm underneath fuzzy stabs of guitar suddenly fusing into a streamlined chorus that thrusts the vocals forward. Next week will solve your problems, but now, fish fingers all in a line and the milk bottles stand empty, stay glued to your T.V. set sneers the vocalist, mercilessly cool as the rhythms propel faster and faster. Just give in to these undulating rhythms and vicious guitar/vocal combination and the album takes on a heavenly bent. This is music made for moving your hips; the loud sound is just a perk for punk enthusiasts. Move your body to the rhythms, follow the drumbeats with desire and listen to the vocal intonations. It’s an earth quaking, ass-shaking album under all that noise. Pink Flag is an exceptionally invigorating masterpiece that can slip by if you don’t let yourself listen and be moved.
Lucinda Williams: World Without Tears (Mercury, 2003)
Les Mystere Voix des Bulgares: Vol. 1 (Nonesuch/4AD 1986)
John Lennon: Plastic Ono Band (Capitol/Apple 1970)
Rolling Stones: Exile On Main Street (Virgin 1972)
Beatles: Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band (Capitol 1967)
Sex Pistols: Never Mind The Bullocks (Warner Bros. 1977)
Bob Dylan: Highway 61 Revisited (Columbia 1965)
Gram Parsons: Grievous Angel (Warner Bros. 1973)
Joy Division: Unknown Pleasures (Factory 1978)
Tom Waits: Rain Dogs (Island 1985)
Elliot Smith: Either/Or (Kill Rock Stars 1997)
Cat Power: You Are Free (Matador 2003)
The Band: Music From The Big Pink (Capitol 1968)
Rod Stewart: Every Picture Tells A Story (Mercury 1971)
Neil Young: Rust Never Sleeps (Reprise 1979)
Belle & Sebastien: Dear Catastrophe Waitress (Enclave 2003)
Albert King: Born Under A Bad Sign (Stax 1967)
Nirvana: In Utero (DGC 1993)
Thursday: War All The Time (Island 2003)
Emo (aka Emotional Punk) generally gets a bad rap for being whiney (a statement that’s a tad stereotypical) yet this handicap detracts little from War All The Time. An album whose roaring sound combines the crunch of Refused with the entertaining antics of The Hives creating a molten punk beast. The fact that the lyrics are slightly dumb and embarrassing in their overtly emotional content detracts little from the entertainment. Thursday mix this combination of ingredients together creating a glorious sound that could be called “prissy hardcore or Pris-core for us enlightened folk”. For The Workforce, Drowning (the first of many pretentious titles) is a paean to how much work sucks, a groundbreaking subject in a genre known for “significant other” boo-hooing. Guitar crunches mark the beginning of the album, thrashing about with intensity underpinned by an uber propulsive rhythm section. Geoff Rickley with his shrill tenor, sounding like it’s being stifled, blurts lyrics in sequential order, at times contrapuntal to the music. His unadorned delivery merely sinks into the layers of extremely loud, well played music marked by unusual time shifts. The genre hasn’t been privet to such beautiful misguided complexity since Sunny Day Real Estate ruled supreme. Between Rupture And Rapture is the masterpiece of the album, a thrashing mass of noise and propulsion that sprints through at least five different time signatures, marked with incongruous stop-starts and reiterations of a key spiralling guitar line. The noise and mirth of the song framed by the silly, affecting lyrics. “Division St.” contains the most daring of arrangements, plateaus of music undulating at different speeds somewhat like a classical movement. Two excellent hooks played staccato in Signals Over The Air, a sterling song with an ethereal chorus. Marches & Manoeuvres contains understated keyboards that emerge at exactly the right time lacing the pounding chorus with a beautiful undertow. Excellent lyrics account the trials of city life from an interesting viewpoint as the song comes to a head in the closing section with scream-core passages. Asleep In The Chapel is the pre-ballad, which careens along at a pretty good pace and contains delicate sections of beautiful acoustic guitar. The agitated rhythm adding a sense of tension to the song. Followed by the piano ballad This Song Is Brought To You By A Falling Bomb whose lilting sad melody is quite affecting. Soon broken up by Steps Ascending an astonishing bit of song-writing detailing the exact second a woman is shot by a man during a domestic argument. The song rides a singular guitar riff and fragments of melody as thundering music suddenly become softened with a beautiful melody. Rickley reiterates the words “red roses” just as the music chimes together in a magnificent, deeply emotional moment. War All The Time has a chiming guitar line reminiscent of early Cure echoing behind the music as lyrics Recreate events from the singer’s youth, the music at times menacing then melodic. M. Shepard & Tomorrow I’ll Be You finish the album with strong and complex arrangements that lack the great hooks present earlier. Yet the latter finishes with a great crescendo that gives the last minute punch. War All The Time is a glorious slab of molten emo that everyone should get the chance to enjoy.
