Mondo Bungle

41. Acid Bath - When the Kite String Pops (1994)

For me, this is top 5 best albums ever made material. I know it like the back of my hand, every lyric, every riff, and I can say, all of it is beyond fantastic. One of the doomiest, dark, violently deranged albums out there. This is a sludge/doom metal record, but it's all over the map, with somber acoustic balladry, thrashing hardcore punk, droning grunge, and evil blues. So if you like metal, then it should be automatic that you love this album with all your heart.

__________________

Josef K

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.

Norg

I really don't think I need to hear greenday before I die jus saying

Josef K

I will heartily second this. I'm with YorkeDaddy on Lana Del Rey also, but I guess that's sort of the point of this project.

Mondo Bungle

I'm still more hardcore than all y'all posers

__________________

Cuthbert

Can a mod start adding the albums to the op but I have a suggestion that every 50 albums are spoilered e.g. 1-50, 51-100 and so on.

Zombeels

If the metal albums keep coming I'm gonna put up some Donny & Marie

__________________
What It Is

Dylstew

42. Big Boys - Lullabies Help the Brain Grow. [1983]

or 42. Big Boys - Fat Elvis (Compilation)

Lullabies help The Brain Grow is a punk rock album from 1983. A very underrated one.
Although their first album had a more post-punk/ post-hardcore type sound, this one has a more punk rock one. It has Hardcore Punk songs, regular punk songs, some kind of husker du type songs and..Funk Rock songs? Yeah, there's that. The energy is perfect, and the songs are just great.

Why is Fat Elvis there? Fat elvis is a compilation album from 1993 that compiles all their stuff they made later with the sound they had later. This album is on it, the third album, and the second EP. For the sake of completion you might aswell get that one. The Skinny Elvis is a compilation of their earlier stuff, so if you're into a more post-punk ish type sound overall, get that one.

Goofle

Too lazy for that.

__________________

Janszoon

Also a 1001 lines of text would exceed the limit for a post so it would actually be impossible to do.

__________________
A Night in the Life of the Invisible Man

Time & Place

25 Albums You Should Hear Before the Moon Crashes into the Earth and We All Die

last.fm