My Top 25 Albums Part 2

So part 2 of my top albums chart, counting down from 12 to number 1. You can read part 1 here.

12) Public Image Limited - "Metal Box" - 1979
When Johnny Rotten left the Sex Pistols, he joined up with musical virtuoso Jah Wobble and multi-instrumentalist Keith Levene who was a post-punk experimentalist before anyone else even knew what that meant. After a first commercial album, they produced this glorious dubby-punky album which ideally suited Rotten (now John Lydon's) snarling delivery. The original release came in a silver movie-reel canister, but the packaging warped the vinyl inside and made it unplayable. The album was re-released in a normal sleeve and called "Second Edition", either way it was a record they never bettered as their sound became more commercial and Levene left in protest.

11) The Birthday Party - "Junkyard" 1982
A thunderous rhythm section with two drummers, Roland S Howard's guitar noodlings suddenly lurching into squalling feedback and Nick Cave's literary pretensions and on-stage showmanship meant that The Birthday Party were the kings of alternative once the post-punk movement had largely fizzled out by 1980. One of the drummers left shortly after this album and the band were never quite the same again.

10) Minutemen - "Double Nickels On The Dime" 1984

A double album of 45 songs, virtually all at under 2 minutes duration, as this tight three-piece knitted together punk, jazz and West Coast Head music into a wonderful mosaic of an album. I don't really like the word "vibe", but it absolutely fits this album, as their sound manages to feel both sparse and lush at the same time. 

9) Butthole Surfers - "Rembrandt Pussyhorse" 1986

Acid punkers with a serious Black Sabbath addiction, this album is just crazy wonderful. There's not much more to say about it, other than they were wonderful live.


8) 23 Skidoo - "Seven Songs" 1982

Industrial funk, now there's a music style to grapple with. This is one of those albums that has two stand-out tracks which soar above the rest, although the track that samples Oswald Moseley's widow is quite disturbing. The album actually has 8 songs in that post-modern ironic way.




7) Nas - "Hip Hop Is Dead" 2006
I tend to like my hip-hop intelligent, if not necessarily political, but this album was inflammatory with its call to arms to save the genre from just being commercial product. The title track is so strong, but I also love the track below, part encomium for the history of hip hop, part excoriation for what it's become, a tension that runs throughout the album.

6) The Cure - "Three Imaginary Boys" - 1979

This album was lo-fi indie rock before anyone invented the term and before The Cure went all bloated Stadium Goth. Robert Smith's voice has a plaint in it throughout which lends itself perfectly to pop songs, while the raw production of the instruments admirably cuts across the winsome vocals. Plus the album cover is my favourite of all time. 

5) Beastie Boys - "Check Your Head" 1992
The Beastie Boys had changed their image and reputation as dumb party animal rappers with the release of "Paul's Boutique" three years earlier, but this was the album that set the tone and format of their career, of playing live instruments and its glorious melange of thrash punk, reggae, old school hip hop, and jazz.

4) Liars - "Drums Not Dead" 2006
The 1990s was a bleak time musically for me. Many of the bands in this chart had split up, or had members die and I'd pretty much stopped buying music and given up going to gigs. But this band more than ever reignited my passion for music in the Noughties with their art-noise albums, where they less construct songs and more compose sound scapes, with voice as just another instrument. Any of their albums could have made it into this chart, but I'm limiting myself to one per band and this just scraped in ahead of the others, ostensibly because of its coherent concept in sound throughout, though don't ask me what the concept of this album actually is!


3) Einsturzende Neubauten - "Halber Mensch" 1985
And talking of art noise, there's no one who quite sound like Neubauten. Industrial, but without the rhythmic discipline of some notional dignity of labour straitjacketing them. German, or more precisely Berliners, when that city was divided against itself, and yet they weren't averse to digging back into their own country's folklore and even somehow defined a German 'Blues'. Bargeld's lyrics bounced from the cosmological scale to the microscopic viral one, positioning mankind very firmly in its insignificant place. This album is the sumptuous sound of decay and decline.

2) Misty In Roots - "Live At The Counter Eurovision" 1979
Quite simply the best reggae album ever made. And despite being live, the sound quality is fantastic.
My only chagrin is that the CD is hard to come by at a reasonable price and someone nicked my original vinyl.

1) Joy Division - "Closer" - 1980
Just the perfect- if depressing- album without a single duff track on it (which is why I chose it over their "Unknown Pleasures" album which is more insistent musically, but has one weak track on it). There's not much more to say about this album that I haven't said on other posts and scores of devotees have also committed to words. Like I say, a perfect 10 and that second side of the album just sends shivers down my spine even after 32 years of listening to it.

My Top 25 Albums - Part 1, 25-13

Who has the patience to listen all the way through an album these days? Hell, most bands failed to sustain the standard across a whole album anyway, beyond a couple of stand out tracks, which were probably released as singles anyway.

But I have to admit, I'm still a sucker for an album. Following its flow all the way through, between great, good and filler tracks. I don't buy that many albums now, but my I-Tunes tells me I have 10.4 days worth of tracks, of which only the 0.4 are individual tracks flying free of albums.

Here is a chart in two parts of my 25 all-time top albums, with a representative track from each. I hope some of them you share a liking for and maybe others you've never heard of you may come to try out.

25) Husker Du - "Zen Arcade" 1984

All 3 band members were really accomplished musicians, all three contributed songwriting and despite the internal pressures that ultimately ripped the band apart, they came together seamlessly to produce this double album of power guitar pop with a despairing edge.

24) Dizzee Rascal - "Maths And English" 2007

What I like about this album is that it's a quintissentially English retort to US Hip-Hop. Sure Dizzee presents a similar tale of gangs, violence and laddish lairiness, but it's done in London argot, with British rhythms and lashings of cheek. Check out his duet with Lily Allen if you don't believe me.

23) South Central - "The Owl Of Minerva" 2008

I was never a raver. Never into summers of love and being spaced out dancing in a field. And yet I do really like this Nu-Rave album, and yes it does make me want to get up and dance. But not in a field, holding a glo-stick.

22) Funkadelic - "America Eats Its Young" 1972

Beam me up to the Mothership and take me to your leader George Clinton. This a music that puts you in a mood like no other style. Fabulously mad, but oh how funky! With tracks on the album like "Loose Booty" and "I Call My Baby Pussycat" rubbing up against the more politically astute "If You Don't Like The Effect, Don't Produce The Cause" this double album is just a joy to sail along to (I'd say 'drive' but I don't have a car. Nor an 8-Track to play it on).

21) Clipse - "Lord Willin" 2002

This was Clipse's debut album and though I had other of their LPs, I only came by this recently and it just blew me away. I think what I really like about it is the tight musical theme, a recurring set of beats and distorted electronic squalls. Yes the lyrical content is the usual hip hop fare of street dealing, girls and male prowess, but there is just something here musically that carries it to a higher level.

20) Gun Club - "Miami" 1982

If their debut album was a wonderful mess of swamp blues, this follow up was a lot tighter and polished. Confusingly stand out track "Fire Of Love" was actually the name of their debut album, although it's actually a cover version of a Jody Reynolds song, but the Club's version is just about the most primal rock and roll you could ever wish to hear.

19) Gang Of Four - "Entertainment" 1979

A few years ago and this would have been in my top 10. I do still love it, but years of playing it endlessly have slightly jaded my palate for it. I still think the track "Anthrax" is one of the most radical (anti-?) rock and roll songs musically and lyrically as it deconstructs the pop love song.

Andy Gill's choppy guitar style is still jaw droppingly amazing to listen to.

18) The Specials - "The Specials" 1979

Like I suggested above, every new musical movement produces one great album that knocks all the others into a cocked hat. You can keep your Madness and The Beat, for me Ska was The Specials and this wonderful debut. The range of world wearyness to pleading in a band so young was like a punch to the solar plexus. A wake-up call to us all back in the dark days of the early 1980s. But then there were also the really cheery, dancey upbeat numbers too, just so we didn't get too downhearted.

17) Spacemen 3 - "The Perfect Prescription" 1987

It was really hard to decide which of the first 2 Spacemen 3 albums I prefer, so almost perfect are they. Consummate stoner rock, paeans to other worldly states of mind and the gentle (sometimes distorted in feedback) ambient guitar rock to soundtrack such journeys. Blissful is the only word and I've never even smoked weed in my life. Listen to this record and it's succumb to the effects of secondary inhalation!

16) The Fall - "Grotesque After The Gramme" 1980

And by way of complete contrast, the snarling, state of the nation address by one Mark E Smith. In truth there are many fine Fall albums, but for me this one marks them for greatness, not least for the two singles that preceded it (both of which made John Peel's all time favourite songs) but never made it on to the original album in that perverse way of Smith's. Fear not pop pickers, I'm pretty sure both tracks are included on any current version of the album.

15) The Bug - "Pressure" 2003

Dub-Step. Atmospheric, minimalist slices of the urban cityscape rendered in sound. What I really like about The Bug, is that he fills in some of those tripped out spaces with some really heavy sounds and some of the vocals doff their backwards baseball caps in the direction of Rastafarianism's relationship to the Old Testament. The visions on this album are truly more apocalyptic than the usual dub step incoherent vocal fare.

14) Big Black - "Atomizer" 1986

Intense, relentless, blue collar post-punk Mid-West of America. Live they played their strings so hard, their fingers bled. Lyrically they only dealt with taboos. I love it.

13) Mos Def - "The Ecstatic" 2009

Don't let the heavily lisping delivery mislead you, this is rap of the highest intelligence. There isn't a duff track on this album, it's that good.