Albums

My Albums:

My 10 Favorite Albums . . . ish (Yes depending on my mood it could change but this is pretty solid) 

 …. But wait Crimson, Harvest, Thriller, Houses of the Holy, The White Album, The Black Album, The Blue Album, Punk in Drublic, The Cronic, Revolver, The Marshall Mathers LP, The Con, Blood on the Tracks, Blond on Blond, Sticky Fingers…where are these albums…well screw you. This is my damn list!! And all of the below albums have one thing in common…I LOVE them. 

No I don't like them and I can't just gleam one or two songs off them. I pretty much enjoy ever single track on them and enjoy them not as a list of singles but as a whole. These albums for me the whole makes up much, much more than the sum of their parts. 

"What's that . . . Goggly Gogo, Johnny Zhivago, Heaven Seventeen? What have you got at home to play your fuzzy warbles on, come with Uncle and hear all proper" ~ A Clockwork Orange 

Patterns, cadence, mood, theme, timing, structure, free-form, experimental, jazzy, pulsing, alive, and for me the most important thing an album should have ~ atmosphere. A sense that this music belongs in a unique world of its own design….humming inside your head  

: 4 Runners Up :

* The 59 Sound - The Gaslight Anthem

* Pretend You're Alive - Lovedrug

* Plans - Death Cab for Cutie 

* Keep Your Heart - The Loved Ones

The List:

10 The Downward Spiral - Nine Inch Nails 

The Downward Spiral embodies my aggressive youth, thinking about sex and pain and life, but not in normal structures but in a bizarre cascade of unusual sounds and poetry. It's a perfect album for angst with such weight it pulses like petting a dangerous animal, you're not sure if the humming noise is a growl or a purr. This album bites back. It's raw, emotionally and visceral. 

9  Sing the Sorrow - AFI  

Sing the Sorrow has a unique place in my heart which I won't go into. It took me a little while to get this one; the structure of the album and the way Davy sings are like the musings of a manic-depressive writing passionate goth poetry with a  voice as sharp as a razor. But it's the underpinnings of the album, the echos, guitar themes, sound effects, and humming under currents, that glue this album down to perfection. Had it not had those it would just be an album of the week as appose to resonate those lyrical puzzles to last. 

8  Rumors - Fleetwood Mac 

Rumors. I've always known Fleetwood Mac's music, almost every song on this album is famous, perfect, and unique to their sound. There is no real way to describe Rumors. Second Hand News is paced and structured differently than Dreams, and Dreams is different than Gold Dust Woman but the passion that both Lindsay and Stevie put into the songs solidify this like the musings of a couple writing songs about their life but keeping them vague enough for the world. 

7  Dookie - Green Day 

Dookie. It's the first album I bought and it's never got old. It always reminds me of my youth and somehow my spirit and my rebellious presence in this world. 

6  Ok Computer - Radiohead 

Ok Computer. This album has rthymic pop like ballads and experimental "out their" songs, it's like the combination of my love of industrial and experimental rock with my guilty pleasure love for certain pop music songs. Ok Computer is a gem and simply put (if you dig this style) one of the best albums ever crafted. There is enough variety of sound in just one song the album as a whole feels like a feast for the ears. 

5  Throwing Copper - Live

Throwing Copper. For some reason this album reminds me of my Southern roots. Maybe it's because this album has such a subtle twang of the gospel sound and has such vague poetic power ballads like Lightning Crashes and I Alone that seem to punch you in the face when you hear them I can't help but always find pleasure in revisiting it like an old friend.  

4  Disintegration - The Cure 

Disentegration. Simply put is one of the best albums ever made! No hesitation. If you like The Cure and there knack for mixing songs with so many different styles and instruments in one it's like a sensory trip resending to the next beautifully atmospheric mountain climb of sound…yeah with songs like Last Dance and Fascination Street  this album is a unique experience…like a first kiss, but in your ears. 

3  Mixed Bag - Richie Havens 

Mixed Bag. This album is strait up lounge, blues, with a slight twang of jazz. Richie's style of singing, mixed with his unique spin on old songs is just what's in his name 'rich'. He adds a weight and richness to music with his broken down old black man's voice that is simply one of a kind. 

2  Melancholy and the Infinite Sadness - The Smashing Pumpkins 

Melancholy and the Infinite Sadness. This album is like a Vincent Van Gogh painting. It's a familiar setting, songs about the meaning of life, love songs, songs about aggression…but blurred, vague, and powerfully pin-holed in such a way  that it hits you . . . this song is yours. It was written just for you. It's your gift. There is so much diversity in just this one double-disc album with heavy songs like Zero and Scorched Earth and lighter songs like Stumbeline and Cupid De Locke that bands with careers spanning decades don't hit in their entire body of work, yet "The Smashing Pumpkins" nailed in one glorious album. 

1  Unknown Pleasures - Joy Division

Unknown Pleasures. This is my favorite album of all time. Why? I can't explain. I grew up on punk, first pop punk (Green Day) then actual punk (Buzzcocks and Sex Pistols) my adolescence needed some form of aggression (Escapism from my god-fearing church-going lifestyle I guess). Then I grew to love the wilder more experimental sounds of the new industrial and alternative sounds of bands like Nine Inch Nails and The Smashing Pumpkins that had a way of twisting songs either in the mix or with their particular way of using instruments and song structures that I fell in love with. Nine Inch Nails more like Industrial-Metal and Smashing Pumpkins, Alternative-Rock, not the normal sound in either of those two genres but a sound that fits somewhere in between and is far more experimental than the norm. Joy Division splits the difference between very simple punk music and very experimental sounds…basically the best of both worlds of the type of music in my youth. It's like a nostalgic gem to an era I was born 7 years after the release of this album yet still when I first heard the opening track 'Disorder' I exclaimed…baby where have you been all my life! And that was nearly 7 years ago that I pulled this album out of a bargain bin in a hippie coffee shop named Satori in Mobile, Alabama and have been in love with ever since. 

*Bonus* I recently discovered and album called "Wincing the Night Away" by The Shins which I really dig *