42.
Spiritualized - Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space (1997)
Okay, so I should begin by establishing that I can't write. So it's very possible that you'll be turned off this album by my terrible description of it - but please don't be! It's a really incredible album that I think everyone should listen to, and there's no doubt in my mind that it belongs on this list.
This is undoubtedly my favorite album of all time (though it should be noted that I'm fourteen so this is subject to change). It is in places gut-wrenchingly heartbroken, celebratory and exuberant, and tripping balls. After seventeen years and three more incredible albums, it's still the album on which J Spaceman has most successfully preached the secular gospel. And though his lyrics are heartfelt and affecting, I maintain that his greatest talent is maintaining cohesion between all the various musical genres that are incorporated in this masterpiece - well, that and the impeccable songwriting.
It's impossible to describe this album. When I try, I usually come up with something to the effect of "spacey psychedelic symphonic rock" and then when that doesn't conjure up the proper image in my (and presumably their) head, I switch to describing the magnitude of the sound. "There are, like, a hundred musicians on every song, between the horn section and the orchestra and the gospel choir," I tell them. It's massive. It's a Spector-style wall of sound. But that doesn't convey it either. Because the incredible thing about Spaceman (real name Jason Pierce) is that he makes these massive arrangements sound alternately utterly fragile ("Broken Heart"), lean and muscular ("Electricity", in which lies the roots of about thirty of his other songs), chaotic ("The Individual"), and meticulously smooth ("Cool Waves"). It's not always a world-beating, powerful thing. Stylistically,
Ladies and Gentlemen veers between dream pop (title track), blues-rock ("Come Together"), symphonic pop (uh, "Cool Waves" again), and free jazz ("No God Only Religion"). Not to mention the free-noise-blues jam that is the closing epic "Cop Shoot Cop", featuring the legendary Dr. John.
But, for all this explaining of the different styles Pierce's music bridges, for all this description of how great his songwriting and lyrics are (I guess I haven't actually spent enough time on lyrics, but I am even more **** at writing about those, so suffice to say he writes some of the best lyrics I've ever heard about drug addiction and about breakups, along with genuine happiness), this is not an obscure album. Most of you are much more knowledgeable about music than I am, and I know I've seen several of you talk about this album in particular. I'm not a scholar of music, much less of this 1997 "spacey-psychedelic-symphonic-rock" album. I know next to no music theory, no more background information than everyone does, and I wrote all this in half an hour. I'm not telling you anything new.
But here's what I can tell you: when I hear Kate Radley's voice on the phone at the beginning of the title track, announcing the beginning of the album, there's a feeling that goes through me that's impossible to describe. After a ****ty day, I have no better way to decompress than to listen to
Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space. Should this make it valuable to you? Maybe not. But if just one person feels the same way I do, maybe this awful, self-serious, overlong POS I've just written has done its job.