| 5.0 classic |
| Bob Dylan Bringing It All Back Home |
| Casual paranoia ("phone's tapped anyway..."), drugs, wage slavery, xenophobia, mass voicelessness, instability of self, the destabilization of American heteronormativity, corruption within the family unit, Christ kitsch, the blues, the scariest false start in popular music, and the profundity of silence, for a start. Highway 61 Revisited has several of these things, but not with the same cohesiveness or sustained intensity. And I wonder what it means that "Live Minus Zero" and "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" start off with the same chords. |
| Brian Eno Here Come the Warm Jets |
| Eno's first album picks up from the rough, droning sounds of the VU and Roxy Music but adds something those bands lacked: sheer joy at creation. It's not easy to carry through this kind of carelessness with conviction, which is a shame, since that's such an important part of what pop music is about. |
| David Bowie Low |
| David Bowie Heroes |
| DJ Shadow Endtroducing..... |
| Elvis Costello This Year's Model |
| You're welcome to your copy of My Aim Is True. The Attractions make Clover sound like a Saturday night bar band (which is probably what they were going for, but that doesn't mean I have to prefer it), and I like the lyrics and songwriting better too. |
| Fugazi The Argument |
| Fugazi's latest LP (but not last, Canty Lally Mackaye Picciotto willing) is their richest and most internally conflicting release, I suspect because the members let haunting, catchy, nocturnal melodies gradually enter into and warp the grooves they've relied on since their beginning. The effect is that The Argument sounds like being lulled to sleep for all the wrong reasons. Companion EP Furniture +2 is a must, and I'm not convinced the band made the right decision when they released it separately from this. |
| Godspeed You! Black Emperor F#A# (Infinity) |
| Guided By Voices Bee Thousand |
| John Coltrane A Love Supreme |
| Miles Davis Kind of Blue |
| Modest Mouse Building Nothing Out of Something |
| Neil Young Rust Never Sleeps |
| Neil Young Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere |
| Neutral Milk Hotel In the Aeroplane Over the Sea |
| R.E.M. Murmur |
| Steve Reich Music for 18 Musicians |
| Talking Heads The Name of this Band is Talking Heads |
| Television Marquee Moon |
| The Beach Boys The SMiLE Sessions |
| The Beatles Revolver |
| The Beatles Rubber Soul |
| The Clash London Calling |
| 4.5 superb |
| Alice in Chains Jar of Flies |
| Aphex Twin Selected Ambient Works 85-92 |
| Arcade Fire Funeral |
| At the Drive-In Vaya |
| Big Star Radio City |
| Black Sabbath Paranoid |
| Bo Diddley His Greatest Sides, Vol. 1 |
| Boards of Canada Music Has The Right To Children |
| Boards of Canada Geogaddi |
| Bob Dylan Highway 61 Revisited |
| Bob Dylan Blood on the Tracks |
| Bob Dylan John Wesley Harding |
| Dylan's not kidding when he says Harding "was never known to make a foolish move"--the wisest thing the bandit did was to get out of his own song by the third stanza, before his story got too morally ambiguous. Much of the album is built on unresolved fragments and haunting half-scenes, which at their best have all the surreality of earlier albums without some of the excess. |
| Brant Bjork Jalamanta |
| Brian Eno Another Green World |
| Brian Wilson Smile |
| Bruce Springsteen Born To Run |
| Burial Untrue |
| Can Tago Mago |
| Can Ege Bamyasi |
| Cannonball Adderley Somethin' Else |
| David Bowie Aladdin Sane |
| David Bowie Station to Station |
| Derek and the Dominos Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs |
| Elvis Costello Armed Forces |
| Fats Domino Walking to New York: Greatest Hits |
| Fleet Foxes Sun Giant EP |
| Fugazi Furniture |
| Fugazi In on the Kill Taker |
| Fugazi Red Medicine |
| Guided By Voices Alien Lanes |
| Guided By Voices Under the Bushes Under the Stars |
| Iron & Wine The Shepherd's Dog |
| Isis Oceanic |
| John Cale Paris 1919 |
| John Coltrane Giant Steps |
| John Lennon John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band |
| Kate Bush Hounds of Love |
| Mark Hollis Mark Hollis |
| Mastodon Leviathan |
| Miles Davis Miles Smiles |
| Miles Davis Bitches Brew |
| Miles Davis In A Silent Way |
| Mission of Burma Signals, Calls and Marches |
| Modest Mouse The Moon & Antarctica |
| Modest Mouse The Lonesome Crowded West |
| My Bloody Valentine Loveless |
| Neil Young On the Beach |
| Neil Young Time Fades Away |
| Off Minor The Heat Death of the Universe |
| Paul McCartney Band On The Run |
| Pavement Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain |
| Pink Floyd Wish You Were Here |
| Pixies Doolittle |
| R.E.M. Reckoning |
| R.E.M. Fables of the Reconstruction |
| R.E.M. New Adventures In Hi - Fi |
| This is the crystallization of everything R.E.M. had been doing since Out of Time. The studio songs have the atmospherics of Automatic for the People without that album's occasional ponderousness. And the live rockers make up entirely for Monster. |
| Radiohead Kid A |
| Radiohead In Rainbows |
| Ringo Starr Ringo |
| Roy Harper Stormcock |
| Sonic Youth Daydream Nation |
| Spoon Gimme Fiction |
| Stars of the Lid The Tired Sounds of Stars of the Lid |
| Steely Dan Aja |
| Steve Reich Different Trains/Electric Counterpoint |
| Stevie Wonder Innervisions |
| Talk Talk Laughing Stock |
| Talking Heads Remain in Light |
| The B-52s The B52's |
| The Band Music From Big Pink |
| The Beach Boys Pet Sounds |
| The Beatles A Hard Day's Night |
| The Beatles Abbey Road |
| The Beatles The Beatles |
| The Beatles Magical Mystery Tour |
| The Beta Band The Three EPs |
| The Blood Brothers ...Burn, Piano Island, Burn |
| The Dave Brubeck Quartet Time Out |
| The Dismemberment Plan Emergency & I |
| The Jimi Hendrix Experience Axis: Bold As Love |
| The National High Violet |
| The Police Synchronicity |
| The Walkmen Bows + Arrows |
| This album's wavering organ throughout makes this a parallel world to "Everyone Who Pretended..." with its music box piano, but Bows + Arrows keeps up the drive, roughness, and power its predecessor was too often wanting. And I'm not even that big a fan of "The Rat"--I prefer all but maybe 3 songs on the album to it. |
| The Who Quadrophenia |
| The Who Who's Next |
| The Wrens Meadowlands |
| Thee Silver Mount Zion He Has Left Us Alone... |
| Thelonious Monk Monk's Dream |
| Tom Waits Rain Dogs |
| Tom Waits Swordfishtrombones |
| Tortoise Millions Now Living Will Never Die |
| TV on the Radio Return to Cookie Mountain |
| U2 Achtung Baby |
| U2 Boy |
| Unwound Leaves Turn Inside You |
| Warren Zevon The Best of Warren Zevon: A Quiet Normal Life |
| Wes Montgomery The Incredible Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery |
| Wilco Yankee Hotel Foxtrot |
| Wire Pink Flag |
| Wire Chairs Missing |
| XTC Black Sea |
| Yes Close to the Edge |
