cat op 25
 

or, if you prefer, the Cardboard Adolescent Top 25!

I decided to do a top 25 for several reasons:
a) urban has already done a top 100 and everybody else is doing them, so **** that
2) i don't have the attention span to write 100 album review
e) my taste changes too quickly for 100 albums to represent it correctly
5) twenty-five is 5^2!

i'll post the first review soon and try to stay steady at one every couple days. i think it would be fun if people tried to guess what albums are left, or at least if they provided some original opinion of their own regarding whichever album i might have recently been appraising andsoforth etcetera.

in conclusion, welcome to my thread!

Bring it on!

47
 

Deerhunter - Microcastle
2008

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/...500_AA240_.jpg

This album is so contemporary and current I couldn't help but list it first, and put it last on the list.

This album works because it likes all the same albums I do. It appreciates Mission of Burma, Joy Division, The Byrds, Richard Thompson, Brian Eno, Slowdive, etc. It's a synthesis the likes of which I have never seen before: it goes through all your favorite records and identifies the peaks, then cuts them out and pastes them all together into a collage of everything that is the best about all the music you already love. As such, it is one of the most depressing albums I've heard in a while.

Not only does it refer back to all your favorite music, it even refers to itself. So contemporary it's contemporary of itself! Microcastle... everything has been digitized, synthesized, reduced in size, and fit into a box. After all, a castle is just a glorified box. As is a computer, or an album, or a womb...

But I digress. This album is like a river. Like the river of life. It ebbs and flows, it brings you to a new high and to a new low. But it is not this straight-forward, it must pay its tribute to irony. Irony, which is the guiding force of our new lives. Irony in that the highest points are also the lowest, such as on “Nothing Ever Happened,” which climaxes after the line “I never saw it coming, waiting for something from nothing.” A self-defeating anti-climax, in an age where we rely on technology for most of our climaxes. So what's this? Why won't Cox deliver? What is with his apathetic, disinterested vocal delivery and his depressing lyrics? Can't he go be depressed somewhere else?

That's not it at all. This album is, first and foremost, a mirror of our times. Our new synthesis is not one of making disparaging styles click together, it is one of breaking down the ideas which supported those styles and then throwing everything together until it is easily manufactured and reproduced. Music isn't marketable unless it fits a template or reduces previous music into a template. This album does that so well it's incredible, but at the same time, it does so with an air of melancholy and irony. It has to rely on the past, because what is there to rely on now? “Saved by Old Times,” expresses that sentiment perfectly. The past still provides an aura of meaning, whereas our present provides only disillusion and unreality.

This album is an experience. It divides between the really catchy song-songs, like “Agoraphobia,” “Little Kids,” “Never Stops,” “Nothing Ever Happened,” and “Saved By Old Times,” and the other songs which are more ambient mood pieces. It's tempting at first to say, oh well there's the singles and the other crap that fills it up. But the transition between them is really impeccable, and both are completely necessary to complete the “feeling” of the album. That completely enveloping mood, what I like to refer to Baudrillard for and call “melancholy and fascination,” the dominant ethos of our times. It's always a back and forth of breaking down our musical systems and then running back to them. That is essentially the loop we are trapped in. But doesn't it sound great? Or at least... fascinating?

You've got my attention.
25 of yours > 100 of others.

Obvious players excluded.

5^2! is a huge number. :D

And that was an awesome review - I'm gonna check these guys out now. Nice thread title too.

Nice review :D
I've listened to this like only twice and i love it. First time, it just flowed through without me noticing even what happened. It's a bit poppy, but not so obvious to make it boring. The ending was just epic!
Now, some ppl would be like "It sounds like so many other Indie bands out there". I think that would be the only problem...It does have some of the modern-day derivative indie sound, but that wasn't particularly a turn-off here.
Not sure about top 25, but at least your list started out a bit different.

Agreed and the reviews will be eminently readable too.

27
 

The Raincoats - The Raincoats
1979

http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b2.../raincoats.jpg

This album is just a fairytale in the supermarket. This album must be imaginary, it's still a singularity that reality hasn't quite figured out how to deal with.

There's obviously a lot of neo-Marxist/Feminist themes running through here, which is refreshing, but it's really all about the praxis. Say what you will about how “musically skilled” these musicians are, they make some really compelling music. Really, each one of these songs is brilliant. If you dare deny that, I would say you're listening to music with all the wrong organs!

And it's so ramshackle. There's none of that bullshit equilibrium you get so much of in other music. Whereas in some songs every instrument is perfectly in time with the others, and so creates the illusion of a fixed point moving in time, the fixed point here is entirely virtual. It is a strange attractor that all the voices struggle to reach or struggle to slow down towards. As such, all the instruments are always clamoring for that supreme unity but never attaining it. No one member of the band defines it, because there is a fierce egalitarianism in operation. Now isn't that a much better metaphor for life than all the other music you've been taught to appreciate because of its simulated perfection?

Did I mention they do a cover of “Lola”? Yeah, it's great.

About the music itself, this is “post-punk.” Post-punk is just the logical progression of punk, in that it assumes the same goal of deconstructing music but takes it one step further (the step into “The Void”). This particular album sounds like a mix between The Shaggs and The Ramones, if you don't mind me referring to one artist more obscure and one more popular to provide a popular definition. You have everything you could want: brass, strings, bass, drums, guitar, and girls, girls, girls! Really, this is an album for everyone, especially people who love/hate music.

Yay for albums I've never listened to before. I'll be downloading everything you post but probably won't get around to listening to any of it for a while.

Same here. I hope Swell Maps get in the list.

I do really really like A Trip To Marineville and have been listening to it a lot recently, but not quite enough to make the top 25.

I have to wait til October 28 for Microcastle, cos I cant download music. Boooo!!!

And A Trip to Marineville is the bees knees.

Ive been looking for that Raincoats record for a while. I have 'Fairytale in the Supermarket' on a compilation, its radical.

i'm willing to send links for any of these albums, just shoot me a pm. i obviously love them, so i'm more than willing to share.

**** just noticed this thread. *has multiple orgasms*

26
 

Violent Femmes - Violent Femmes
1982

http://lineout.thestranger.com/files...selftitled.jpg

This is the ultimate loser rock album. Gordon Gano speaks with such honesty it's almost shameful, but if you've ever been to High School and felt like an outsider it will move you. Really, I wouldn't consider somebody a real person if they couldn't relate to at least a few songs on here.

That said, this is a very delicious album musically. The bass in particular, speaks volumes, alternating wonderfully between melody and rhythm, driving the album rapidly forward into new areas of self-revelation. Gano's vocal delivery is all over the place, and carries an air of self-deprecation and absurdity which suits it perfectly. Like The Raincoats, Violent Femmes are a band to play up their faults until they become their strengths. Their name, for instance, refers to the derogatory term “femmes” which was used as epithet for geeks in their hometown of Milwaukee (meaning “girls,” for you Francophobes). The attached “violent” is hilariously self-mocking, but at the same time a good metaphor for the way they've turned their detachment and alienation into something constructive and explosive. Because this music is certainly explosive, and also implosive. It threatens to do both.

Take “Add It Up,” which brazenly handles school shootings. What? That was an issue in 1982? No way! Sure it was. So when Gano sings “don't shoot shoot shoot that thing at me/ You know you got my sympathy/ but don't shoot shoot shoot that thing at me,” it carries an intoxicating honesty that we don't get from the media, which is more interested in propagating the myth of evil than exploring the real causes of teenage frustration. “Confessions,” on the other hand, laments “I'm so lonely, I feel like I'm gonna crawl away and die.” Teenage angst? Sure. But not angst turned into tragedy or opera, angst for what it is. Somebody has to address it, don't they?

As you can probably see, I'm not too interested in talking about the music itself. It's like, folk music infused with punk. It's not exactly an acquired taste.

I think I need to give the Deerhunter album a listen ;)

25
 

Talking Heads - The Name of This Band is Talking Heads
1982

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B0...1.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

When Andy Warhol said that everything artists were doing in the 80's was the same as what Warhol & co had been doing in the 60's, he really meant that what everything artists are doing today is the same as what they were doing in the 80's. Which is best demonstrated by this record, which refers not only to itself, but to the music of today, tomorrow, and all that came before it.

The name of this band is Talking Heads. The name of the first song is “New Feeling,” and that's what it's about. Why this particular live album is better than any of their studio albums is hinted at in the first song: “I hear music, and it sounds like bells.” And you can hear the guitar overtones ringing out like bells. The bass is monstrous. The drums are so angular and tight that they serve as a straightjacket for Byrne's absolute surrender. If you've ever seen Stop Making Sense you have probably seen what that man puts into a performance... how could it be the same in a studio? How could you not feel like a fool giving your all to a performance in a sound-proofed box?

This album presents a band in their full, dynamic prime. As the material progresses from 1977 to 1981, the band doesn't necessarily move away from their original sound but rather expands on it. More new styles are embraced, most notably soul and afro-beat, giving the music an ever more universal feeling. I find the culmination of this maturity in “Once in a Lifetime,” which uses the powerful symbol of water to represent life, constantly flowing yet always the same. “Same as it ever was, same as it ever was,” Byrne intones, in that somewhat aloof, somewhat melancholy voice, and he's speaking to all of us. Very Heraclitan. This is necessarily followed up by “Animals,” which is just as profound in its absurdity.

“Psycho Killer,” on the other hand, provides probably the best example of their early sound, with its menacing and building bassline, one guitar doing the Sonic Youth ringing bell thing and another providing angular Gang of Four style screeching, and of course Byrne's demented vocals and lyrics which will permanently be entwined with American Psycho for me. All the tension of modern life is captured and released in this one song. “We are vain and we are blind/ I hate people when they're not polite.”

^^^

About a million times better than the over-polished over-rated Stop Making Sense

It really is. So good.

Indeed, I feel the same way about The Modern Lovers' first album...will that be on the way?? I hope so. This really is a great album, caught me by suprise, I thought "Blister In the Sun" would be the only dece song, but the entire thing was great front to back.

Modern Lovers s/t is great, but it's not one of those albums I listen to front to back all the time. "Old World" is probably one of my favorite songs of all time, but overall the record doesn't have the consistency to make it an all-time fav.

awesome list so far. nice to see props going towards talking heads.

24
 

The Velvet Underground - White Light/White Heat
1968

http://www.rankapple.com/_templates/...ite%20Heat.jpg

I don't remember where I read this, but some clever reviewer called VU&Nico their heroin album, and this their amphetamine album. The album sure as hell kicks off with a blast. “White Light/White Heat” is explosive, with bass that sounds like it's trying to tear through your speakers, piano playing that sounds like Jerry Lee Lewis on PCP, and ominous background noise that builds until the whole song devolves into a mass of noise. The song could have been recorded yesterday and it would sound just as intense, the fact that it was recorded in 1968 is just mind-blowing. This whole album is the sound of a band tearing itself apart, of carefully concentrated nihilism.

“The Gift” is wonderful, though it's really a song that loses its appeal after a few listens. The first couple times are the only ones that really matter though. The story told is dark, absurd, and clever, and is backed up by an extremely driving and repetitive rhythm with loose guitar improvisation pasted on top. It's basically Beckett told to kraut-rock. Before there was a such thing as kraut-rock, of course.

“Lady Godiva's Operation” begins as a dream and turns into a nightmare. To begin, delicate bass and guitar melodies float on top of a flowing sea of drone. The beauty quickly becomes dark and sinister however, and Cale's dreamy vocals are continuously interrupted by Reed's amelodic outbursts, and the song ends with our protagonist, Lady Godiva, dying from a botched lobotomy.

“Here She Comes Now” is a return to the general style of VU&Nico, and despite being tender and beautiful, is probably the least interesting song on the album. A good way to end the physical and mental assault of the first side however. Flipping over the record...

CHAOS! “I Heard Her Call My Name” clicks together and then falls apart just as quickly. Demonic feedback-laced guitar playing refuses to be contained within rhythmic structures, counterpoints Lou Reed's vocals, “I felt my mind split open!” followed by a blast of feedback and an utterly self-destructive guitar solo. This is punk, no wave, noise rock, and dada, this is a band gleefully tearing apart rock and roll to reveal its true potential. So many bands have emulated this, but how many have accurately captured that pure vibe, that reckless but intelligent and systematic self-destruction, which all culminates with “Sister Ray.”

“Sister Ray” is the sound of a song going nowhere. The lyrics are repetitive and in deliberate bad taste, the rhythm section barely evolves over the entire course of seventeen minutes, but there's so much raw energy driving the song that it continues to go and go without any sort of destination in mind. It's the Grateful Dead for nihilists, instead of listening to a song slowly evolve we listen to a song slowly devolve. From this song it becomes obvious why bands like Times New Viking deliberately use poor recording equipment—the lack of audio quality allows one instrument to overpower the others, and turn the whole song into an indistinguishable pulsating mass of writhing noise. Then as this temporary burst of energy wears off and the voice fades back into the background, the song magically reappears. Each voice carries with it its own distinct hiss and each contributes to the overall aura of feedback, essentially turning the old hierarchy of tone over timbre on its head. It's like listening to a choir of lunatics, most of whom stop singing their designated music and start to scream instead.

Here is a record that over the course of six songs changed the rules of music forever.

I actually had a VU day today. Played all 4 in a row. No matter what, as much as I think that VU are one of the most important bands ever, for me Reed's vocals owe so much to Dylan and that makes me think that the world owes Dylan a debt a gratitude.

Great review (and thread just quietly. Just wish I could write in the same manner).

Yeah! People always attribute speak-singing to Reed, but Dylan was doing it years before. Never understood that.

And, excellent review. White Light/White Heat is a great track-by-track album to review, since theres only six songs. Also my favorite Velvets record;)

23
 

Slint - Spiderland
1991

http://fiak.files.wordpress.com/2007...spiderland.jpg

It's hard to explain the appeal of Spiderland to someone who “doesn't get it.” What the hell, they might say, these cynical ones, it's just some guy talking over music that goes from soft to loud, soft to loud. Big whoop. They might even have the audacity to say that the pieces aren't musically interesting, that the chords sound detached from each other and don't create compelling tunes. Of course, the problem isn't that they don't get it, but that they assume there is something to get.

In fact, the only thing to get is nothing. And once you get nothing, you no longer have it. Nothing must be something to be understood. To understand nothing, something must come out of nothing. Something like Spiderland.

Spiderland is an object of massive appeal to the “record snob” because it is prototypical outsider music; it generates a creepy voyeuristic vibe and plays on futility, offering a series of rolling climaxes which bring nothing new, deliver no catharsis. In essence, it resonates with the void inside us. Those who are not completely jaded, or detached, or empty, who still have contorted belief structures jutting out of the void at obtuse angels, will resist this resonance. For those of us obsessed with staring into our own abyss the resonance is inevitable.

The aesthetics of Slint are not defeatist. They say we can move beyond, we can still provide singularities of style, here is the evidence. We respond in turn, by turning Slint into a template, and this is the sorry state we now find ourselves in. But we cannot blame Slint for post-rock, everything singular must be simulated until it is no longer so, this is the society which we live in, we are all complicit. Spiderland, then, is the ultimate narcissism, and the ultimate dissolution of the ego, and it sounds great. Great because it can lead you to every greater, dizzying heights, but not the heights of pleasure, not mental or physical orgasm, but to the pinnacles of self-pity, self-doubt, absurdity and anti-catharsis.

This review is deliberately pretentious because this record is deliberately pretentious. But pretension is not something to be feared! Only pretensions can keep music mentally titillating, before it simply becomes the beat to hump to. Music is quickly becoming more and more functional, but if we must allow this we must also force the functionality to serve on both fronts, cerebral and visceral! How can we achieve a state of post-tension without pretension? Slint extracts tension from pretension, and moves us ever closer, ever farther away, from the post.

I still have'nt got this SOAB in my collection. Are we getting some Zappa in here?

of course :)

This is quickly becoming my favorite top album thread.

Spiderland is fucking terrifying. I picked up Slint's untitled 10" the other day, also great. No vocals but its the same intense feedbacky loudquietloud assault as Spiderland. I highly reccomend.

I love Tweez too, but for completely different reasons. It's not really on the same playing field, but still great for what it is.

Does Tweez have the same type of sound as Spiderland?

Similar, but less developed. It sounds a bit like Big Black, probably because it was produced by Albini. "Rhoda" on their s/t EP is a remake of a song on Tweez, but it's a lot more refined than the original.

just noticed, VU and slint are both #21

don't tell anybody... don't let them know

trying to make it 26 eh?

Moar!

Spot on, especially the bold.

MOAR!

^

22
 

Ornette Coleman - Shape of Jazz to Come
1959

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...JazzToCome.jpg

This album is beautiful in its simplicity. By abandoning the skeletal cage of chord structures, Ornette Coleman builds the music instead around the seductive beauty of a melodic theme, and the powerful expression of freedom in improvisation. No longer are all musical voices constrained to speak the same language, they come together willingly to express their common theme, and diverge just as consistently to express themselves, all the while maintaining a relation to the others. This is an album of principles—freedom, beauty, unity and individualism, but it does not rely on these principles to justify its greatness, in fact it does not need them at all. It speaks entirely for itself in a distinctly human language.

This was probably the first jazz album I fell in love with, and I still have yet to come across another one which surpasses it. It's right on the border between hard-bop and “real” avant-garde jazz, and because it's still based on melodies retains a common and relatable musical language; a language which is at the same time completely deconstructed and thereby humanized. What can be said about such abstract music to justify one's love for it? I could speak in abstractions, and speak of the relations between the instruments in terms of the harmonious elements of nature, how the bass flows like a river and how the sax seems to hover above it all, communicating in spurts of divinity. I could and I suppose I just have. Ultimately, however, this is an album you must sit down to, and confront directly to figure out if it's speaking to you or if the message was intended for someone else. If you're like me, the revelation will come pretty immediately.