50 Albums That May Change Your Life

Paedantic Basterd · 08-27-2011, 11:44 AM

Very few of my finds these days come with interesting stories, can't fault you there.

Blarobbarg · 08-27-2011, 05:55 PM

Hahaha. That's a great album. I wasn't exactly in awe when I listened to it the first time (since I knew very well who The Who were) but it's definitely a great album.

YorkeDaddy · 08-28-2011, 02:29 PM

47. Pere Ubu - The Modern Dance
Genre: Experimental Rock
Side one
"Non-Alignment Pact" – 3:18
"The Modern Dance" – 3:28
"Laughing" – 4:35
"Street Waves" – 3:04
"Chinese Radiation" – 3:27
Side two
"Life Stinks" (Peter Laughner) – 1:52
"Real World" – 3:59
"Over My Head" – 3:48
"Sentimental Journey" – 6:05
"Humor Me" – 2:44

You know you have an interesting band when one of the band members' is labelled specifically as a synthesist. According to Google Chrome, that's not even a word.

I often recommend this album to my friends, but rarely is it me simply asking or telling them to listen to it, it's usually more like a challenge. I dare you to give this record a spin. Tell me what you think of it, and tell others what you think of it. Tell your friends, your family, your boss, and give them the same challenge as well. I don't give this challenge because this record is particularly difficult to listen to like things like Can or Captain Beefheart are. I consider this album a challenge on a different level...a surreal, grotesque level. Give this track a listen and try to tell me otherwise:

I don't know what genre to classify this record as. How the hell do you classify Sentimental Journey? Glass breaking? A slew of bizarre sounds? Is this progressive? I don't think so, because I at least see prog as a genre that's at least sensical to a certain degree, and the instruments are distinguishable to an extent. I especially don't know what this album is about. I've tried to take a few guesses in my lifetime, but lyrically this record is nonsensical. The tracks invoke a strange sense of humor and a strange sense of madness at the same time, to the point where it can even drive you mad as well. This is incredible musical maturity for 1978, to say the least. I'm not sure if anyone put out something that invokes pure insanity as perfectly before this underrated record was released. That, my friends, is my conclusion towards the meaning of this record. Insanity, but at the same time, heartbreak. This is a rare record that invokes numerous emotions within me that I can't put into meaningful words. When I try to talk about this album, my words and descriptions become jumbled nonsense. The album is upbeat, pure rock, but also decrepit madness.

The modern dance.
Down to the bus
into the town
our poor boy can't get around
Eight fifty-five
down at the show
she leaves early
He'll never know
Cuz our poor boy
believes in chance
he'll never get the modern dance
Under the door there's an eye on the place
He watches for the shadows race
Watch real close
Look real fast
He's in touch
It'll never last
Cuz our poor boy
believes in chance
he'll never get the modern dance

TheCunningStunt · 08-28-2011, 02:34 PM

Brilliant inclusion. Pleasantly surprised to see it as well.

YorkeDaddy · 08-28-2011, 04:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheCunningStunt

Brilliant inclusion. Pleasantly surprised to see it as well.

Thank you, thank you. I just hope that I've helped some other members discover something incredible ^_^

YorkeDaddy · 08-29-2011, 09:23 AM

46. Jethro Tull - A Passion Play
Genre: Progressive Rock
"A Passion Play (Part 1)" - 23:04
"A Passion Play (Part 2)" - 22:00

A Passion Play. Jethro Tull. How do you even begin to talk about these guys? I've written about them a lot in my day, and have even submitted my reviews of some of their albums to some websites, so I consider myself fairly knowledgeable with how they operate. They are funny, yet devilishly brilliant. This record reminds me a little of Gentle Giant in a way, but this still holds the unmistakable Jethro Tull sound. Like most other Tull albums, this one is a concept album. In particular, it is a concept album that is basically just one song (the track listing says two songs, but they pretty much blend together). However, the subject matter in here in this song is quite dark, dealing with things such as life, death, and the afterlife. And quite frankly, I find it brilliant.

While so many of the rock bands of the seventies were "just a little touch of make up, just a little touch of bull, just a three chord trick embedded in your platform soul" (as Ian Anderson put it on "Crazed Institution") Tull were doing things that were in another space and time. And while not everything worked, they were never dull. A Passion Play has stood the test of time. Like a great piece of art, you can return to it endless times and discover something new. It is all at once pathetically shallow and profoundly deep, toe tappingly musical and irritatingly dischordant, it threatens to soar into brilliance, only to dwindle into nothingness, it is beautiful and clumsy, elegant and gawkish. It is music with a sense of humour. Like the comedy masters of the time who would never advertise a punch line, Tull keep you guessing. You never get what you expect. After all, familiarity breeds contempt.

I'll just leave you with this picture:

YorkeDaddy · 08-30-2011, 09:23 AM

45. The Antlers - Hospice
Genre: Indie
"Prologue" - 2:35
"Kettering" - 5:10
"Sylvia" - 5:27
"Atrophy" - 7:40
"Bear" - 3:54
"Thirteen" - 3:11
"Two" - 5:56
"Shiva" - 3:45
"Wake" - 8:44
"Epilogue" - 5:25

I had a girlfriend who died once. She was killed by a drunk driver. While this album does not talk about a girl being killed by a drunk driver, it does explain a death. In vivid detail.

It's very difficult for me to talk about this album, so instead of doing a write-up, I'm just going to copy and paste a collage of lyrics. All I can say is that this album is utter perfection.

When she was younger, she had nightmares. She had scissor-pain and phantom limbs, and things that kept her nervous through that twelve-year interim. When she fell crossing that street (south of Houston, old Manhattan-land), those nightmares fell from building tops and took her by the hand.

She was brought into those rooms with sliding curtains and shining children’s heads. One of them, that boy, was not as lucky as she then. (Years later, he would return to her at night, just when she thought she might have fallen asleep. As she would later describe to me, his face would be up against hers, and she’d be too terrified to speak.)

Now, I won’t pretend I understand, because I can’t, and know I never will. But something makes her sting, and something makes her want to kill. It made her crawl under that house, and stick her head under the stove… well, my point in all of this is that it’s all connected in these complicated nightmares that we wove.

---

There’s a bear inside your stomach, a cub’s been kicking from within. He’s loud, though without vocal cords, we’ll put an end to him. We’ll make all the right appointments, no one ever has to know, and then tomorrow I’ll turn twenty-one, we’ll script another show. We’ll play charades up in the Chelsea, drink champagne (although you shouldn’t be), We’ll be blind and dumb until we fall asleep. None of our friends will come, they dodge our calls, and they have for quite awhile now. It’s not a shock, you don’t seem to mind, and I just can’t see how.

“We’re too old.”
“We’re not old at all.”
“Just too old.”
“We’re not old at all.”

There’s a bear inside your stomach, a cub’s been kicking you for weeks, and if this isn’t all a dream, well then we’ll cut him from beneath. Well we’re not scared of making caves, or finding food for him to eat. We’re terrified of one another, terrified of what that means. But we’ll make only quick decisions, and you’ll just keep me in the waiting room, and all the while I’ll know we’re ****ed, and not getting un-****ed soon. When we get home we’re bigger strangers than we’ve ever been before. You sit in front of snowy television, suitcase on the floor.

---

You had a new dream, it was more like a nightmare. You were just a little kid, and they cut your hair, then they stuck you in machines, you came so close to dying. They should have listened, they thought that you were lying. Daddy was an *******, he ****ed you up, built the gears in your head, now he greases them up. And no one paid attention when you just stopped eating. “Eighty-seven pounds!” and this all bears repeating.

There’s two people living in one small room, from your two half-families tearing at you, two ways to tell the story (no one worries), two silver rings on our fingers in a hurry, two people talking inside your brain, two people believing that I’m the one to blame, two different voices coming out of your mouth, while I’m too cold to care and too sick to shout.

---

Suddenly every machine stopped at once, and the monitors beeped the last time. Hundreds of thousands of hospital beds, and all of them empty but mine. Well, I was lying down with my feet in the air, completely unable to move. The bed was misshaped, and awkward and tall, and clearly intended for you.

---

In a nightmare, I am falling from the ceiling into bed beside you. You’re asleep, I’m screaming, shoving you to try to wake you up. And like before, you’ve got no interest in the life you live when you’re awake. Your dreams still follow story-lines, like fictions you would make.

So I lie down against your back, until we’re both back in the hospital. But now it’s not a cancer ward, we’re sleeping in the morgue. Men and women in blue and white, they are singing all around you, with heavy shovels holding earth. You’re being buried to your neck. In that hospital bed, being buried quite alive now. I’m trying to dig you out but all you want is to be buried there together.

You’re screaming, and cursing, and angry, and hurting me, and then smiling, and crying, apologizing.

I’ve woken up, I’m in our bed, but there’s no breathing body there beside me. Someone must have taken you while I was stuck asleep. But I know better as my eyes adjust. You’ve been gone for quite awhile now, and I don’t work there in the hospital (they had to let me go.)

When I try to move my arms sometimes, they weigh too much to lift. I think you buried me awake (my one and only parting gift.) But you return to me at night, just when I think I may have fallen asleep. Your face is up against mine, and I’m too terrified to speak.

You’re screaming, and cursing, and angry, and hurting me, and then smiling, and crying, apologizing.

---

And thus ends Hospice.

Paedantic Basterd · 08-30-2011, 10:31 AM

Hospice is one of my most important albums as well, and also a difficult subject to breach, though for much less tragic reasons.

Howard the Duck · 08-30-2011, 11:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by YorkeDaddy

49. Mew - And the Glass Handed Kites
Genre: Dream Pop
"Circuitry of the Wolf" - 2:45
"Chinaberry Tree" - 3:33
"Why Are You Looking Grave?" - 3:50
"Fox Cub" - 1:15
"Apocalypso" - 4:46
"Special" - 3:12
"The Zookeeper's Boy" - 4:43
"A Dark Design" - 3:29
"Saviours of Jazz Ballet (Fear Me, December)" - 3:18
"An Envoy to the Open Fields" - 3:40
"Small Ambulance" - 1:05
"The Seething Rain Weeps for You (Uda Pruda)" - 4:18
"White Lips Kissed" - 6:45
"Louise Louisa" - 7:20

I guess it's a tad strange that an album that seriously contends for one of my favorites of all time is getting dropped this high on the list. Once again, however, this list isn't exactly just a list of favorites...it's mostly a list of potentially life-changing albums.

I remember the first time I discovered Mew, and thus, this record that has become one of my all-time favorites. Believe it or not, I have a friend that lived in Denmark until 2007. He moved to the states and I befriended him pretty quickly upon his entrance into my quaint little school. It took him a while to adjust, but eventually I began becoming closer to him, until one day I took a trip to his house. We sat in his room and listened to some of his music collection, which included some respectable yet generic acts such as Nirvana or U2. Sure, they're both excellent artists in their own right, but nothing I'd ever heard before.

"Here, let me pop in a CD by a group from Denmark," he told me. I expected some silly pop singer to spout some Danish lyrics in my face that only my friend would understand and that I would have no appreciation for. Not that I don't have appreciation for artists that sing in different languages, in fact, Sigur Ros is one of my favorites, but I still didn't expect much to come out of his Danish CD collection.

He pulls out a CD case containing one of the most...interesting album covers I've ever seen. The writing is almost incomprehensible. He sets the CD down in his player and sends me on a ride down Mew Lane.

Ever since that moment, Mew has been one of my favorite bands. And here I am, four years later, attempting to write an essay about why this album is one of the most important works in my life.

As I gaze into the utterly bizarre picture that functions as this record's album cover, I try to come up with a few words that best describe this album. The energetic guitar riff of Circuitry of the Wolf pounds through my speakers. Jonas Bjerre's gorgeous voice serenades me through the strangely uplifting yet foreboding Chinaberry Tree. His voice is almost ethereal and archaic through the mind-blowing choruses of The Zookeeper's Boy, which is my favorite chorus in any song I've ever heard in my entire life.

Through all of these images and sounds, the only words I can muster to sum up this album are: simply incredible.

Every single song is a beautiful work of dream pop at the genre's very best. It's impossible for me to listen to this record without just laying back and staring up into the ceiling in wonder. This is the album that introduced me to obscure foreign bands. Not everything has to come from America, Canada, or Britain. In fact, some of the best works can come from unexpected places; looking at you, Iceland and Denmark.

glad to see somebody here who likes this album as much as me, if not more

seriously underrated

Sneer · 08-31-2011, 05:44 AM

The Antlers are one of those bands that have just never clicked with me. I've given Hospice several listens, and also dedicated some time to Burst Apart, but I'm always left with a distinct feeling of 'meh'. Perhaps it's because I haven't experienced the feelings that really allow you to connect with the prevalent themes. Very sorry to hear about your girlfriend, must have been awful.

Props for Pere Ubu, great album, though Dub Housing pips it for me.

08-28-2011, 02:34 PM	#14 (permalink)
TheCunningStunt love will tear you apart Join Date: Jun 2009 Location: Manchester, UK. Posts: 5,107	Brilliant inclusion. Pleasantly surprised to see it as well. __________________ I don't feel and I feel great. Last FM

08-31-2011, 05:44 AM	#20 (permalink)
Sneer Let it drip Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 5,430	The Antlers are one of those bands that have just never clicked with me. I've given Hospice several listens, and also dedicated some time to Burst Apart, but I'm always left with a distinct feeling of 'meh'. Perhaps it's because I haven't experienced the feelings that really allow you to connect with the prevalent themes. Very sorry to hear about your girlfriend, must have been awful. Props for Pere Ubu, great album, though Dub Housing pips it for me. __________________ LastFM Sneer's Emporium of Sound Fright Team radio show Last edited by Sneer; 08-31-2011 at 05:58 AM.

08-27-2011, 11:44 AM	#11 (permalink)
Paedantic Basterd Music Addict Join Date: Sep 2010 Posts: 5,184	Very few of my finds these days come with interesting stories, can't fault you there.

08-27-2011, 05:55 PM	#12 (permalink)
Blarobbarg Do good. Join Date: Feb 2011 Location: Minneapolis, Minnesota Posts: 2,065	Hahaha. That's a great album. I wasn't exactly in awe when I listened to it the first time (since I knew very well who The Who were) but it's definitely a great album.

08-28-2011, 02:29 PM	#13 (permalink)
YorkeDaddy silky smooth Join Date: Aug 2011 Location: Pangaea Posts: 4,079	47. Pere Ubu - The Modern Dance Genre: Experimental Rock Side one "Non-Alignment Pact" – 3:18 "The Modern Dance" – 3:28 "Laughing" – 4:35 "Street Waves" – 3:04 "Chinese Radiation" – 3:27 Side two "Life Stinks" (Peter Laughner) – 1:52 "Real World" – 3:59 "Over My Head" – 3:48 "Sentimental Journey" – 6:05 "Humor Me" – 2:44 You know you have an interesting band when one of the band members' is labelled specifically as a synthesist. According to Google Chrome, that's not even a word. I often recommend this album to my friends, but rarely is it me simply asking or telling them to listen to it, it's usually more like a challenge. I dare you to give this record a spin. Tell me what you think of it, and tell others what you think of it. Tell your friends, your family, your boss, and give them the same challenge as well. I don't give this challenge because this record is particularly difficult to listen to like things like Can or Captain Beefheart are. I consider this album a challenge on a different level...a surreal, grotesque level. Give this track a listen and try to tell me otherwise: I don't know what genre to classify this record as. How the hell do you classify Sentimental Journey? Glass breaking? A slew of bizarre sounds? Is this progressive? I don't think so, because I at least see prog as a genre that's at least sensical to a certain degree, and the instruments are distinguishable to an extent. I especially don't know what this album is about. I've tried to take a few guesses in my lifetime, but lyrically this record is nonsensical. The tracks invoke a strange sense of humor and a strange sense of madness at the same time, to the point where it can even drive you mad as well. This is incredible musical maturity for 1978, to say the least. I'm not sure if anyone put out something that invokes pure insanity as perfectly before this underrated record was released. That, my friends, is my conclusion towards the meaning of this record. Insanity, but at the same time, heartbreak. This is a rare record that invokes numerous emotions within me that I can't put into meaningful words. When I try to talk about this album, my words and descriptions become jumbled nonsense. The album is upbeat, pure rock, but also decrepit madness. The modern dance. Down to the bus into the town our poor boy can't get around Eight fifty-five down at the show she leaves early He'll never know Cuz our poor boy believes in chance he'll never get the modern dance Under the door there's an eye on the place He watches for the shadows race Watch real close Look real fast He's in touch It'll never last Cuz our poor boy believes in chance he'll never get the modern dance

08-29-2011, 09:23 AM	#16 (permalink)
YorkeDaddy silky smooth Join Date: Aug 2011 Location: Pangaea Posts: 4,079	46. Jethro Tull - A Passion Play Genre: Progressive Rock "A Passion Play (Part 1)" - 23:04 "A Passion Play (Part 2)" - 22:00 A Passion Play. Jethro Tull. How do you even begin to talk about these guys? I've written about them a lot in my day, and have even submitted my reviews of some of their albums to some websites, so I consider myself fairly knowledgeable with how they operate. They are funny, yet devilishly brilliant. This record reminds me a little of Gentle Giant in a way, but this still holds the unmistakable Jethro Tull sound. Like most other Tull albums, this one is a concept album. In particular, it is a concept album that is basically just one song (the track listing says two songs, but they pretty much blend together). However, the subject matter in here in this song is quite dark, dealing with things such as life, death, and the afterlife. And quite frankly, I find it brilliant. While so many of the rock bands of the seventies were "just a little touch of make up, just a little touch of bull, just a three chord trick embedded in your platform soul" (as Ian Anderson put it on "Crazed Institution") Tull were doing things that were in another space and time. And while not everything worked, they were never dull. A Passion Play has stood the test of time. Like a great piece of art, you can return to it endless times and discover something new. It is all at once pathetically shallow and profoundly deep, toe tappingly musical and irritatingly dischordant, it threatens to soar into brilliance, only to dwindle into nothingness, it is beautiful and clumsy, elegant and gawkish. It is music with a sense of humour. Like the comedy masters of the time who would never advertise a punch line, Tull keep you guessing. You never get what you expect. After all, familiarity breeds contempt. I'll just leave you with this picture:

08-30-2011, 09:23 AM	#17 (permalink)
YorkeDaddy silky smooth Join Date: Aug 2011 Location: Pangaea Posts: 4,079	45. The Antlers - Hospice Genre: Indie "Prologue" - 2:35 "Kettering" - 5:10 "Sylvia" - 5:27 "Atrophy" - 7:40 "Bear" - 3:54 "Thirteen" - 3:11 "Two" - 5:56 "Shiva" - 3:45 "Wake" - 8:44 "Epilogue" - 5:25 I had a girlfriend who died once. She was killed by a drunk driver. While this album does not talk about a girl being killed by a drunk driver, it does explain a death. In vivid detail. It's very difficult for me to talk about this album, so instead of doing a write-up, I'm just going to copy and paste a collage of lyrics. All I can say is that this album is utter perfection. When she was younger, she had nightmares. She had scissor-pain and phantom limbs, and things that kept her nervous through that twelve-year interim. When she fell crossing that street (south of Houston, old Manhattan-land), those nightmares fell from building tops and took her by the hand. She was brought into those rooms with sliding curtains and shining children’s heads. One of them, that boy, was not as lucky as she then. (Years later, he would return to her at night, just when she thought she might have fallen asleep. As she would later describe to me, his face would be up against hers, and she’d be too terrified to speak.) Now, I won’t pretend I understand, because I can’t, and know I never will. But something makes her sting, and something makes her want to kill. It made her crawl under that house, and stick her head under the stove… well, my point in all of this is that it’s all connected in these complicated nightmares that we wove. --- There’s a bear inside your stomach, a cub’s been kicking from within. He’s loud, though without vocal cords, we’ll put an end to him. We’ll make all the right appointments, no one ever has to know, and then tomorrow I’ll turn twenty-one, we’ll script another show. We’ll play charades up in the Chelsea, drink champagne (although you shouldn’t be), We’ll be blind and dumb until we fall asleep. None of our friends will come, they dodge our calls, and they have for quite awhile now. It’s not a shock, you don’t seem to mind, and I just can’t see how. “We’re too old.” “We’re not old at all.” “Just too old.” “We’re not old at all.” There’s a bear inside your stomach, a cub’s been kicking you for weeks, and if this isn’t all a dream, well then we’ll cut him from beneath. Well we’re not scared of making caves, or finding food for him to eat. We’re terrified of one another, terrified of what that means. But we’ll make only quick decisions, and you’ll just keep me in the waiting room, and all the while I’ll know we’re **ed, and not getting un-ed soon. When we get home we’re bigger strangers than we’ve ever been before. You sit in front of snowy television, suitcase on the floor. --- You had a new dream, it was more like a nightmare. You were just a little kid, and they cut your hair, then they stuck you in machines, you came so close to dying. They should have listened, they thought that you were lying. Daddy was an ***, he **ed you up, built the gears in your head, now he greases them up. And no one paid attention when you just stopped eating. “Eighty-seven pounds!” and this all bears repeating. There’s two people living in one small room, from your two half-families tearing at you, two ways to tell the story (no one worries), two silver rings on our fingers in a hurry, two people talking inside your brain, two people believing that I’m the one to blame, two different voices coming out of your mouth, while I’m too cold to care and too sick to shout. --- Suddenly every machine stopped at once, and the monitors beeped the last time. Hundreds of thousands of hospital beds, and all of them empty but mine. Well, I was lying down with my feet in the air, completely unable to move. The bed was misshaped, and awkward and tall, and clearly intended for you. --- In a nightmare, I am falling from the ceiling into bed beside you. You’re asleep, I’m screaming, shoving you to try to wake you up. And like before, you’ve got no interest in the life you live when you’re awake. Your dreams still follow story-lines, like fictions you would make. So I lie down against your back, until we’re both back in the hospital. But now it’s not a cancer ward, we’re sleeping in the morgue. Men and women in blue and white, they are singing all around you, with heavy shovels holding earth. You’re being buried to your neck. In that hospital bed, being buried quite alive now. I’m trying to dig you out but all you want is to be buried there together. You’re screaming, and cursing, and angry, and hurting me, and then smiling, and crying, apologizing. I’ve woken up, I’m in our bed, but there’s no breathing body there beside me. Someone must have taken you while I was stuck asleep. But I know better as my eyes adjust. You’ve been gone for quite awhile now, and I don’t work there in the hospital (they had to let me go.) When I try to move my arms sometimes, they weigh too much to lift. I think you buried me awake (my one and only parting gift.) But you return to me at night, just when I think I may have fallen asleep. Your face is up against mine, and I’m too terrified to speak. You’re screaming, and cursing, and angry, and hurting me, and then smiling, and crying, apologizing. --- And thus ends Hospice.

08-30-2011, 10:31 AM	#18 (permalink)
Paedantic Basterd Music Addict Join Date: Sep 2010 Posts: 5,184	Hospice is one of my most important albums as well, and also a difficult subject to breach, though for much less tragic reasons.