Your Favorite Albums.

[Denmo]

Notice I said Albums. Don't list an album just because you like a particular song but everything else is crap. I'm talking about ones that flow well together and/or are just fun to listen to from start to finish. The artist put lots of thought into the album as a listening experience, not just a collection of hits.

Don't just list, either. Say why you picked it.

I'll get an obvious one out of the way:

Dark Side of the Moon - Pink Floyd.

Obvious album is obvious. If you haven't listened to it in its entirety yet, do yourself a favor. Grab this, grab your largest pair of headphones, find a comfortable place, turn down the lights, and press play. See you on the dark side.


Demon Days - Gorillaz

It's a funky narrative about modern day war, industrialization, death, and the afterlife. It's also one of those few albums where 70% of the songs on it are hits by themselves.

[Caciss]

Re: Your Favorite Albums.

Gorillaz is the superior album, boy.

Black Sheep Boy (+Black Sheep Boy Appendix) by Okkervil River

The album kicks off with Black Sheep Boy, a cover of a song by Tim Hardin. Then over an hour of original music inspired by that one minute and nineteen second long song follows. I love the strong emotional presence, the fairy tale like imagery, and endless quotable lines. I feel like every line on this album really has a place. Also the climactic end to "So Come Back, I Am Waiting" is to die for. No album comes close to this album has my personal favorite.

"And I think I believe that,
if stones could dream,
they'd dream of being laid
side-by-side,
piece-by-piece,
and turned into a castle
for some towering queen
they're unable to know.

And when that queen's daughter
came of age,
I think she'd be lovely
and stubborn and brave,
and suitors would journey
from kingdoms away
just to make themselves known.

And I think that I know the bitter dismay of a lover who brought
fresh brouquets every day
when she turned him away
to remember some knave
who once gave
just one rose, one day, years ago. "

[Cutter De Blanc]

Re: Your Favorite Albums.

Sublime - 40 Oz. to Freedom



An excellent example of the whole being greater than any of it's parts individually. Words cannot accurately describe. Best to be listened to while stoned, but easily appriciated without.

Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin IV



And on the other end of the spectrum, an album where any of the songs (particularly Stairway to Heaven) on it are just as good on their own. The way the album is composed is marvelous. Hits you in the face the first two tracks, sets it down for a second, then the epic Stairway. Can't trump that song, so they don't try, they put the refreshingly goofy stoner tune Misty Mountain Hop after. Four Sticks kicks it back into high gear, followed by the mellow Going to California, an excellent setup for the hardcore blues When The Levee Breaks, ending the album soundly.


I'll post more later.

[Perversion]

Re: Your Favorite Albums.

Guided by Voices-Bee Thousand

There are later albums that might have better individual songs, and possibly a better ratio of great songs vs too-short song snippets (having written over a thousand songs, there is bound to be a decent amount of "filler" along the way), but as a cohesive whole, none of GbV's other albums can touch this one. It's generally hailed as their best album (and they've had probably 17 albums and way too many EPS and singles and side projects to count over a 20 year period), and a reference point for indie rock in general.

This of course does not explain why I personally love it. It came at a time in my life (got it the year it came out on Matador) when I needed something new, something different. I was getting burned out on industrial stuff, had not fully discovered electronic music, and had not come across another songwriter who so eloquently described a lot of who I was and how I felt at the time...disillusioned and confused about romance ("Why is it every time I think about you/Something that you have said or implied makes me doubt you...Parallel lines on a slow decline/Tractor rape chain," and "I am a scientist/I seek to understand me/All of my impurities and evils yet unknown....I am a journalist/I write to you to show you/I am an incurable and nothing else behaves like me.") and about my directionless life in general. But the music is SO catchy and upbeat, and the songs are SO short that the album ALMOST does not leave you quite satisfied, and almost demands an immediate relisten when the album is over.

[Manji]

Re: Your Favorite Albums.

in order of personal taste, Tool's albums Aenima, Lateralus and 10,000 days. Undertow, Opiate and Salival to a lesser extent but only because they dont flow from one song as nicely as the top 3. Aenima, Lateralus and 10,000 days seem more deliberately orchestrated.

[Cosmic Jeff]

Re: Your Favorite Albums.

Rate Your Music is convenient when listing your favorites becomes redundant. To a lesser extent, Last.FM gives a general idea of what I like, but gives no indication of what I think about.

[Tintenfisch]

Re: Your Favorite Albums.

Duke by genesis

Human after all by Daft punk.

Down on the upside by Soundgarden.

[Alex]

Re: Your Favorite Albums.

Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
A masterpiece. Beautiful, strange, and exciting.
It's Getting Better with every listen.

[Riotsword]

Re: Your Favorite Albums.

De-Loused in the Comatorium by The Mars Volta. From the opening track one gets an impression of sinking into this strange and sometimes unnerving world that lies in the head of a comatose man. The songs all flow into one another and make an interesting if somewhat incoherent narrative, and while each song is palatable on their own, they really shine when listened to in sequence.

I got more, but I figured I'd just leave it at one for now.

[Perversion]

Re: Your Favorite Albums.

Stereolab-Transient Random Noise-Bursts with Announcements

Discovered this the same year as the above listed GbV album, my first for both bands. With this one, there IS that whole, "I'll always have a soft spot for the first album I heard by this artist" thing, no question, and taken as a whole, I probably enjoy subsequent albums slightly more (especially the next two, Mars Audiac Quintet and Emperor Tomato Ketchup) and ALMOST enjoy the previous album (Peng!) a bit more. That being said, again, I really connected to this album almost immediately. It was like nothing I'd ever heard before...drone-y repetitive guitar work, breathy, hushed female vocals sung partly in English and partly in French (especially the vocal harmony work), a layer of obliqueness to the lyrics (even if they were sung in English), the brilliant drumming, especially in the band's magnum opus, the 17 minute Jenny Ondioline. I've always been a sucker for long songs, but until I discovered Godspeed You! Black Emperor years later, this song took the cake.

That and, discovering this album led to so many more musical discoveries afterwards (German Krautrock, the Perry/Kingsley-style lounge music, modern German electronic music (well, sort of found a lot of that on my own, and with bands like Mouse on Mars and Oval having tangential relationships with the band, I'll count it here), and the whole Chicago post-rock scene (found it when I saw Labradford open for Stereolab the first of 17 times I've seen them, touring for Mars Audiac Quintet...Chicago is Stereolab's home away from home), including Tortoise, whose unofficial "leader" John McIntire produced 2 and a half of their albums). And finally, even though I've not listened to a lot of it, the minimalist/musique concrete style of classical entered my consciousness due to Stereolab as well.


If you've not heard Stereolab, imagine soft French pop, early Velvet Underground, motorik German music like Can and Faust, Brazilian lounge and jazz from the 60s, the bubbly, chirpy Moog-based Switched On albums from Walter (Wendy) Carlos Williams, and, later, cut-and-paste sample-based electronic music....all thrown into a blender and set to puree.


That, and because of them, I purchased a vintage Moog for $150, which I still own, and is probably worth over a grand.


The album as a whole flows really well, and the contrast between the rigid, rhythmically repetitive stuff like Jenny O, and the short, achingly gorgeous Pack yr Romantic Mind is amazing. Mostly, though, I put this album on my list due to it being without question the most influential album on my subsequent tastes since I first discovered non-mainstream music with the Pretty in Pink soundtrack almost a decade prior.

[Caciss]

Re: Your Favorite Albums.

Bee Thousands recording quality is so lo-fi I find it almost unlistenable. Also I feel like Buzzard and Dreadful Crows is the only GREAT song on their.

[josh]

Re: Your Favorite Albums.


gawd, it's so good. I know a lot of people go on and on about If You're Feeling Sinister (which is definitely a great album), but between that and this, I always pick Tigermilk.


in my opinion, one of the most underrated albums of the last decade. this band really doesn't get enough credit for the music they write.


it's one of those albums that comes along out of nowhere right when you need it most and totally changes your life. hearing this at age sixteen helped make me into the person I am today


the definitive Cure album, in my opinion. it's got all the jamz


another underrated album I never hear anyone talk about. I'm not a huge fan of Sparklehorse except for this album, it's near perfect and it'll make you want to kill yourself


I don't even know what to say, this album is gorgeous and epic and big and awesome


this album's not even out yet and I already love it to death. I've waited a long time to hear it, so when I finally got to it totally blew me away. it's totally unlike Final Fantasy/Owen Pallett albums before, it's poppy and accesible yet beautifully orchestrated and complicated and GOD IT'S SO GOOD

[Perversion]

Re: Your Favorite Albums.

It's a good thing you listed the name of those bands beneath their album covers, because the minimalist design on those album covers that look like red boxes with an X in them is really intriguing to me, and makes me want to explore their music further.



But, yeah...Disintegration is the penultimate Cure album. Stuff before was good, stuff after slowly fell into the toilet, but that album pretty much perfectly encapsulated the Cure.

[Red Dragon]

Re: Your Favorite Albums.

[John Mora]

Re: Your Favorite Albums.

hearing this at age sixteen helped make me into the person I am today

Now I know who to blame!