And now for something completely different.
In a recent article, Sean Kates brought up Bandwogonesque, Spin magazine’s Album of the Year for 1991. That led to a discussion of music, which lead to a few folks mentioning their favorite albums, which led me to suggest to Sean that we write a bit about our five favorite albums. So here we go: Sean Kates’ five albums, followed by my five. Followed, I hope, by yours. – Dave.
Sean Kates
In no particular order:
The Bends, Radiohead
They've produced better albums since, but as a very early adopter of the band, this one still sticks with me. Coming off of Pablo Honey, I think most people expected an album with 12 attempts to remake "Creep." Instead they got Thom Yorke contemplating suicide for nearly 50 minutes. Little did I know at the time, but that was basically my musical wet dream. "Fake Plastic Trees" and "Street Spirit (Fade Out)" are still two of my favorite ten songs.
Tidal, Fiona Apple and South, Heather Nova
I put them together because they are the only two albums that made me fall in love with someone solely through a vocal. The first was Fiona's debut, and, in that context, is completely flabbergasting. She sings like a 50 year old woman who's lived 10 lifetimes, even if her piano needed some work. And South is probably the only album I can say I introduced to everyone around me. A gem found in my FTP site one morning in college, I listened almost non-stop for a day. I still have fights with friends, eight years later, whether "Talk to Me" or "If I Saw You in a Movie" is a better song, an argument that gets quite violent (and quite confusing for people who have never even heard of the artist).
Les Miserables, Original London Cast
I love musicals. I love them so much I'm not even embarrassed to love them. And Les Mis, to me, is still as good as it gets. To me, the differences in casts are largely minor (my favorite character, Eponine, for instance, is sung by Frances Ruffelle in both the London and Broadway versions), but Patti LuPone literally CREATED the part of Fantine, so I generally go London if given the choice.
Automatic for the People, R.E.M.
I've always been an R.E.M. man. Love the band, love the music, mostly love the message. I think the final steps in truly loving something are the acceptance that it's not perfect, and the ability to laugh at, as well as with. Michael Stipe does some insanely stupid stuff. Some of his lyrics are, in the kindest manner of speaking, incoherent and unintelligible. He dances like someone tied his upper arms to his chest and then set his legs on fire. I can laugh at all those things, but I have yet to find anything but perfection on this album. From "Drive" to "Find the River," it's majestic. I've even grown to love "Man on the Moon" and "Star Me Kitten." Just kidding, "Star Me Kitten" still sucks.
Sam's Town, The Killers
This album is, at best, an above average rock album that no one will care about in 15 years. But it marked a very real line for me, and so I included it on the list. Hot Fuss was one of those "un-followup-able" debuts, but Brandon Flowers didn't seem to agree. He claimed the new album would be one of the best albums of the past twenty years, which turned out to be not so much the truth. Still, the album is good, and I believe The Killers and Flowers are moving in the right direction. People are still trying to remake music from the early 90s, and failing, because there's nothing else to do but fail. The music is based on a generation of ennui, and pretty much every corner of that malaise has been beaten into the ground.
Flowers is on record saying that Cobain tore the fun out of music, and I think to some extent he's right. I talk a lot of trash about the 80s, musically, but I, like The Killers, wouldn't mind seeing a band or two just say "F You" to the rest of the world, and try to become a giant fun-loving rock band like we had then, instead of seeing who can pout the most, or hate fame the most, or hate its audience the most. It's another reason I love(d) (depending on the reunion rumours this month) Oasis. All they wanted to do was make giant freaking rock songs and party to match the songs."
Dave Fleming
I’ve listed these albums in the order that I first heard them.
Out of Time, R.E.M.
No band has been a more constant presence in my life than R.E.M. I first kissed a girl listening to Automatic for the People, and I suffered through my first breakup listening to Out of Time. The first concert I went to was R.E.M., when they were touring their Monster album. The first shirt I bought in a thrift store was a t-shirt from the Green tour.
Somehow, I haven’t shaken them. The same music that captured how I felt at fifteen remains profound at thirty. Every once and a while six months will pass where I don’t listen to any R.E.M. music at all, and then all of a sudden I’ll put on Document or Monster and discover this stuff all over again.
Wrecking Ball. Emmylou Harris
Emmylou Harris bookended my college years: she performed at my college the year I started, performing at a concert to mark the 40th anniversary of the school’s founding. When I graduated, she received an honorary degree, and performed during the ceremony. I had the chance to meet her after the ceremony, and she was as kind and gracious as any stranger I’ve met.
As for the music: I first heard this album playing in the dorm room next to mine, sometime during my second year in college. I borrowed it from the woman who owned it and never gave it back.
It’s a covers album, and Harris covers some great ones: Dylan, Young, Lucinda Williams, Gillian Welch. The cover of Jimi Hendrix’s “May This Be Love” is a highlight: the hard electric guitars provide a striking contrast to her stunning voice.
The Heart of Saturday Night, Tom Waits
The men and women who inhabit the first Tom Waits album I ever purchased have trouble staying in the moment. In the dim-lit bars and L.A. diners, the characters exist fully in the present, and yet there is a sense, overwhelming at time, that all of them are aware that the present is already passing, and that their anticipation of joy will inevitably exceed the experience.
Waits’ voice on this album lacks the gravel-and-cigarette gravitas that he shows on later albums, and the songs are more straight-forward than the odd ballads of Bone Machine, which rivals this as a favorite.
In An Aeroplane Over the Sea, Neutral Milk Hotel
I haven’t heard any album that is as deeply revealing as this one is. I can’t really talk about it coherently; the album makes any kind of rational understanding damned-near impossible. “Two-Headed Boy, Pt. II” still makes me cry every time I listen to it.
Seven Swans, Sufjan Stevens
Released between Stevens’ two ‘States’ albums (Michigan and Illinois), the great triumph of this record is the ambiguous space it occupies in relation to its central topic: this is a religious record, one that specifically addresses Stevens’ Christian faith, yet it is never preachy. Never are we urged towards belief.
Instead, the album has a searching kind of quality to it; more than anything else, it sounds like prayer: an askance for stillness; a moment of vision that allows us to see, for the briefest of moments, that this life possesses more beauty than we can quite comprehend.
(With apologies to: Lay It Down, Cowboy Junkies, The Velvet Underground And Nico, The Velvet Underground, August and Everything After, Counting Crows, Funeral, Arcade Fire, You Are Free, Cat Power, Graceland, Paul Simon, Automatic for the People, R.E.M., Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits Bob Dylan, Central Reservation, Beth Orton, Midnight Organ Fight, Frightened Rabbit. And yeah, I like Les Miserables, too. Got a problem with that?)