Important Albums
As a lifelong obsessive list maker and quantifier, I have always found it strange when folk baulk at the idea of naming their top five or 10 of any given media format. Consciously or otherwise, I feel compelled to organise my favourites into a neat order. Books, TV shows, movies, and even songs - I’m ready to dispense my choices upon request. (That people so seldom actually request this information is neither here nor there.)
The same, however, cannot be said for albums. The humble LP is probably my favourite individual unit of culture. It’s an ideal (if increasingly malleable) length, allowing easy replayability while giving the artist plenty of time to get their point across. Despite - or perhaps because of - excessive consumption, I would find it exceedingly difficult to nail down my five favourite albums ever made. There’s plenty I could confidently say would make my top 30, and I’ll come onto the record I would designate my #1 at a push. Between those two bookends, though, I’m all at sea.
So, instead, these are what I would consider the five most important albums of my life as a music fan. In personal chronological order, these are the albums that shaped my taste and forged a lifelong obsession with the LP and everything great musicians can do with it. Not all of them are records I return to on a regular basis in 2023; some of them have embarrassing moments aplenty, others are bonafide classics.
Whether or not they’re albums I’d like to stake my reputation on, I owe them a debt of gratitude for shaping and steering my interest in music.
Caveat - being the listening material of a little white lad aged 10-15, this list is unfortunately heavily weighted on the caucasian bloke side of the ledger. Caveat to the caveat - I listen to plenty of other stuff now, promise!
1. Blink-182 - The Mark, Tom, and Travis Show
After an introduction to music through the means of chart radio and whatever my parents were playing in the house, the time came to forge my own path and discover my own tastes. As with so many youths at the turn of the millennium, I was fascinated by Eminem (mainly because of his iconic bleached hair/hockey mask combo of the time), but his problematic lyrics and brash persona made him persona non grata with my folks.
With horrorcore proving a bit extreme, I gravitated towards music that could provide similarly sophomoric thrills with a softer edge - pop-punk. I wangled my way into a chat about Blink-182 at school; I claimed a familiarity with their latest album Enema Of The State, and was quickly caught out in the lie, but from what I gleaned about the band, they sounded like they might scratch an itch. They were as cool as they’d ever be but not yet taking themselves strangely seriously, and had just released their most accessible album to date.
When I finally got my hands on it, Enema didn’t grab me right away, with the more serious tracks about suicide (“Adam’s Song”) and adult relationships (“Mutt”) going over my 10 year old head, but there was plenty that did strike a chord, like “Anthem”’s pine for freedom or the pure pop craft of “All The Small Things”. Of all the pop-punk of this era, for me Enema has aged as well as anything; the radio friendly sheen once denounced as “selling out” is far less glossy than a lot of modern gear, and the songs are undeniable.
It was 2000’s The Mark, Tom, and Travis Show that proved to be the real game changer for me. A live album recorded on the Enema arena tour, it serves as the perfect greatest hits compilation for the band in their (for me) golden period. It’s recorded beautifully, simultaneously bringing grit to the sloshier moments of Enema (“Going Away To College”, energised massively here) and fidelity to some of the older stuff (the definitive version of “Carousel”, for my money).
At least as important for me as an idiotic pre-teen was the onstage banter. Almost every track on the album comes with around 30 seconds of patter from Mark Hoppus and Tom DeLongue, covering all the pair’s favourite topics: masturbation, faeces, penises (their own, each other’s), mothers (their own, each other’s). They shriek into the crowd as, apparently, fans expose their breasts (unprompted, but then celebrated, by the band). They gain access to a voice changer and go on an extended riff in the guise of a randy Satan.
For a 10 year old, this was mind boggling stuff. I’d yet to see South Park or hear much in the way of potty mouthed hip hop. I’d barely taken up swearing myself; this kind of antic felt right on the edge of legality. It’s cringe worthy stuff in retrospect (the Blink boys were 25-28 at the time so old enough to know better but just about young enough to get away with it), but the goofiness and camaraderie was the sweet treat that made me sit and listen to the music.
When they’re not just fucking around, they can really tug at the heartstrings, like the melancholic “Wendy Clear” (my fave Blink song), or put together some of the finest riffs the subgenre’s ever heard (the timeless “Dammit”). For this reason I find their later attempts at more “mature” music so strange. The grasping at profundity on the self titled album feels to me so much more childish than the stark, well worded regret of “Man Overboard”, the sole new song on this album.
From here I branched out into the realm of slightly less kid-oriented punk: Green Day, The Offspring (who’d become my favourite band for a spell, though I revisit them less than any other band from this era), NOFX, and Rancid. There was certainly a time in my early teenage years during which I’d self identify as a punk, even though that was demonstrably untrue. I wouldn’t have lasted a second in the punk scene for a multitude of reasons, not least a dislike of being jostled around. But most importantly, Blink-182 instilled in me a desire to discover more music, and that sent me back to my dad’s record collection.
2. The Clash - London Calling
In the days of physical media, kids chose albums like teenagers chose wine: whatever had the best looking label. In the interest of expanding my horizons, I rummaged around in my dad’s CD collection and pulled out a few choice cuts. Nothing appealed to me like the reckless cool of London Calling, with Paul Simonon in brilliantly lit monochrome smashing his bass and the pink and green lettering (ripped from an Elvis album, unbeknownst to me) L-shaped across the sleeve.
One can debate whether or not The Clash were punk by this point; if they ever were punk; if they’d sold out; whatever you want. There was a time in my life I’d try to subscribe to the theory that shrugging off the dogma of punk for this stylistically sprawling record was actually the most punk thing you could possibly do. Ultimately, obviously, who cares? London Calling was a mind blowing listen on first spin and it has retained all its power for me whatever subgenre you want to stick it into.
My inaugural play through came, appropriately enough, on a trip to London, having acquired musical portability by way of a Minidisc playerI don’t think I’d ever heard a record with such scope and freewheeling ambition. In the first handful of tracks you go from the heavy rock of the title track to rockabilly pastiche “Brand New Cadillac” to woozy comedy cut “Jimmy Jazz” through to ska, punk, roots, and the operatic excess of “The Card Cheat”. In the early ‘00s, as a secondary school kid it felt important that you pledge your allegiance to a cultural identity. As was the style of the time, I liked nu metal (or tried to anyway) - angry music, inward facing music that had all of the criticisms but none of the solutions.
London Calling was something completely different. It refused to be pigeonholed, doing exactly what it wanted from song to song (but all somehow hanging together). It was angry music at times, but it wasn’t just empty calories, swearing about how rubbish life was and breaking stuff. It offered wry commentary about the political cooling off that comes with ageing (“Clampdown”), one of the all time best breakup songs (“Train In Vain”), and for some reason a (great) tune about the actor Montgomery Clift (“The Right Profile”).
It also gave me a genuine musical hero in Joe Strummer. I didn’t delve into individual band members’ roles at the time - I still haven’t, really, but I’m of the understanding that the more musically gifted Mick Jones would likely have been most responsible for sculpting the sound of the record. Strummer, though, was and still is unbelievably cool to me. He’s more adult than the Blink boys (though he was actually younger than Tom DeLongue) but still comes across an aspirational figure, a firebrand, pounding the stage with that relentless leg of his, whacking away at his Telecaster, spewing invective. He was also a restless musical explorer. The Mescaleros, his final band, were essentially a world music project, and Strummer was so invested, respectful, and knowledgeable that it never felt like appropriation on his part. He died terribly young, not even two years into my relationship with The Clash, so he’d probably have been the first hero I ever lost, too.
Most importantly for me, though, The Clash taught me the importance of looking beyond the here and now for the good stuff. While they’re obviously an enormous band not everyone at my school in my subset was listening to this stuff, and if there were groups as good as this out there, I knew I had to seek them out.
3. Pixies - Surfer Rosa & Come On Pilgrim
I got into Pixies the same way as a large chunk of people post-1991: I heard Kurt Cobain talk about them. Nirvana’s second two albums soon followed London Calling out of my dad’s collection, and they got their hooks into me sharpish. Nirvana t-shirts seem to be having a moment, and while it’s probably a fashion statement for some, it’s no surprise generation after generation of kids forge a connection with the band. They remain the perfect act for teenage music fans, to say nothing of teenage music fans with chips on their shoulders. The combination of great tunes, well worded moodiness to dwell in, and the immense star power of Cobain made Nirvana my world for a year or so at the very stage of adolescence.
Kurt was nearly a decade gone by this point, an unsulliable figure and a man who was undeniably troubled but upstanding, moral. I bought in wholesale, to the point of purchasing his diary when they released that (a questionable decision in retrospect, not just because it’s grubby business but because it was boring). By this point I was playing guitar and joining bands; The Clash’s wide, complex sound never felt achievable, but Nirvana’s punky racket very much did.
I didn’t take on all of Cobain’s much-publicised list of influences straight away. It was a while before I’d come to appreciate Wipers, Meat Puppets, or The Vaselines, and I still don’t really like Daniel Johnson. Pixies, though, I quickly filed away. I liked the name; I had heard “Where Is My Mind” at the end of Fight Club. When I saw the CD of Surfer Rosa (plus the bonus earlier EP Come On Pilgrim, not that I realised they were two separate entities) in my local record shop, I had to have it. I don’t think I even clocked that there was a topless woman on the front at that point, though I’d have been listening to the record at my parents’ house, and accordingly most likely had to hide it.
From the off, you can hear how this stuff inspired Cobain. Most notably there’s the quiet verse/explosive chorus structure that formed the bedrock of grunge, and both bands have an amazing knack for finding gorgeous, bubbly pop melodies and wrangling them into something nasty. While Kurt’s howl spoke for the primal beast in all of us, though, Black Francis’ manic screaming sounds truly alien, malevolent but funny, too. “River Euphrates” is a favourite of mine, with its chirping vocals and clean riffs that give way to a yelped, nonsense chorus. “The Holiday Song” has some of the best guitar lines in ‘80s indie and builds to a clattering, uncontrollable crescendo.
They’re capable of remarkably pretty (if creepy) stuff, too. The oblique, swinging “Caribou” connected with me straight away. I’d heard nothing like it; I hadn’t a clue what they were on about (“Give dirt to me / I’ve got lament”) but the mixture of cooing and snarling got me in the gut. It’s a totally different effect to Nirvana’s material: you don’t feel like Pixies understand you, nor do you really aspire to be like the grunting, unsettling Black Francis. But whereas Nirvana felt like music for the masses, Pixies felt like music for me - this blend of sacred and profane, tuneful and tortured, playful but weighty but always, always fun - that was what I wanted to hear.
It helps that Kim Deal, at least, is also unbelievably cool. Her thudding bass playing, backing vocals, and occasional lead line are imbued with totally unforced charisma. While Francis snarls and spits, Deal keeps it on ice. They’re one of the best front twos in rock; the fact that they often didn’t get on may well have contributed to their effectiveness, their desire to one up each other pushing each of them on (or it may have just led to the end of the band after four records; they’ve been back sans-Deal for a while now, but I’ll be damned if I recognise that as Pixies).
While I didn’t exactly search out Pixies through combing the airwaves or catching them in a small club, they feel to me like the first band I actually discovered, without riding a wave or inheriting them. They pushed the boundaries yet further for me in terms of radio friendliness and quote-unquote alternative music, and made me aware there was plenty more to find.
4. Beastie Boys - Licensed To Ill
When I was 10 years old, I desperately wanted an Eminem album, but my mum was having none of it. Circa 2000, Marshall Mathers was at his peak as cultural icon and bogeyman both, shifting millions of records but before 8 Mile and the Elton John duet softened his image a little. Never mind the fact I was only really interested because I thought the bleached hair and hockey mask looked really rad - I wasn’t going to be polluting my mind with that kind of filth. (I somehow acquired Dr Dre’s 2001 around this time; that, too, was confiscated sharpish.)
Having firmly established myself as a fan of heavy music (a mosher, in my school’s parlance) early doors, I wasn’t about to trifle with the hip hop that dominated the airwaves in the early ‘00s. To this day I find a lot of the era’s music unpleasant to listen to. It’s extremely dated, not so much minimalist in its production as just crap sounding, ringtone-ready, thin songs. That it probably reminds me of the scarier kids who listened to that stuff certainly doesn’t help.
It wasn’t until I hit 15 that I was introduced by a friend to the first rap that really connected. Shockingly for a middle class white kid, the band that did it was Beastie Boys. Licensed To Ill was the first record outside of actual comedy music that I listened to with the express knowledge it was going to be funny. Ad-Rock, Mike D, and the late MCA are at their don’t-give-a-shit daftest here. It ranges from charmingly ridiculous (“I got rhymes galime, I got rhymes galilla / I got more rhymes than Phyllis Diller”) to the loutish bravado of “The New Style” to the unacceptable-in-retrospect “Girls” and to some extent “She’s Crafty”.
The Boys, notably, did everything they could to atone for their sins, their youthful sexism and homophobia, dotting the rest of their records with progressive lyrics and championing causes like the Tibetan freedom movement. Does that make it OK to enjoy the coda of “Girls”? I’m not entirely sure, but luckily that’s the worst track on the album anyway, so it’s a bit of a moot point.
I was immediately drawn to opener “Rhymin & Stealin”. It’s producer Rick Rubin in a nutshell, taking a Led Zep drum pattern, a Black Sabbath riff, and reducing it to something primal but forward thinking. Then the Beasties come in and spend four minutes rapping about being pirates. If anyone else - anyone at all - did that, their credibility would be so far down the toilet that you’d never hear from them again. The Beasties pull it off, though, through commitment, bravado, and the fact no one was taking them seriously anyway, so you might as well holler some bars about frigging in the rigging &c.
Some of the rap rock stuff hasn’t aged so well (“Fight For Your Right”, while great, makes the lads sound like much less capable rappers than they really are), but the trickier, denser cuts remain classics. “Hold It Now, Hit It” is a sample-heavy sign of things to come, and “The New Style” is one of the most quotable tracks in hip hop history. It’s the Beasties at their swaggering finest, the bassy, braggadocious breakdown instantly regaining all the cred they chucked away pretending to be buccaneers.
Had the Beasties not progressed from here, grown up and made productive citizens of themselves, there’s a case to be made that Licensed To Ill wouldn’t have half its charm. Luckily, though, they did, coming out three years later with Paul’s Boutique, which I consider my favourite album. It’s as perfect a maturation as I can think of in music, taking everything that’s great from the debut - the humour, the character, the endless memorable lines - but improving on every front, thanks in no small part to the immense, sample-heavy production of the Dust Brothers.
Beastie Boys blew open the door for me as far as hip hop was concerned. It went from a genre I’d have happily dismissed to one I wanted to explore, and while I’m by no means an aficionado, during those years I became familiar with acts who remain favourites (MF DOOM, Outkast, The Pharcyde). I also learned that, just because you don’t like something one year, doesn’t mean you never will.
5. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Abattoir Blues/The Lyre Of Orpheus
The first time I heard a Bad Seeds record, I didn’t have a clue what was going on. By the time I was 15 or so, I was less interested in delving into music my dad liked. I’d forged my own path, learned the joy of baffling one’s parents with the abrasive nonsense I’d taken on. I knew best, basically, and the stuff he was playing just wasn’t it.
This was particularly true for Nick Cave & The Bad seeds, who were then a few years away from their first wave of particular cultural relevance - singing songs with Kylie Minogue and becoming more accessible with wedding reception-ready piano ballads. My dad would play Murder Ballads and, particularly, The Boatman’s Call quite a bit in the car. The latter struck me as, in turn, boring, fey, and creepy, a guy with a less than classically beautiful voice blabbing on at length over stark piano. The former was just weird, a wild hodgepodge of styles which was about violence (cool!) but delivered in a self consciously spooky fashion (less cool). I’d filed the man and his band firmly under not for me.
Then Abattoir Blues/The Lyre Of Orpheus hit. For those daunted by the sizable Cave discography, a sprawling, near-90 minute double album might not feel like the most obvious point of entry, but it’d be the one I’d recommend. First of all, it’s incredibly fun, both to listen to and (audibly) to play. Bad Seeds albums can be moody, brooding affairs, and there are songs on here that go to dark places, but it’s always apparent everyone’s having a great time. This is true especially on the first disc, which gathers the most straightforwardly rocking material the band would ever record in “Get Ready For Love”, “Nature Boy”, and “There She Goes, My Beautiful World”. It’s the sound of a bunch of middle aged blokes in suits with money to spend on big amps and a gospel choir, and if you can’t get on board with that, I feel sorry for you.
Abattoir Blues/The Lyre Of Orpheus was also the first time I gained an understanding key to appreciating Cave: that, more often than not, if he sounds like he’s being serious, he’s probably taking the piss. Especially in his latter-day reinvention as a cod philosopher, Nick can seem immensely po-faced, a man overly enamoured with his own poetic bent. He has his moments in this form for good and ill, but he’s also a bloke who likes a laugh. The mythological “The Lyre Of Orpheus” is one of the Bad Seeds’ most purely daft tracks, and his blast of literary criticism on “There She Goes, My Beautiful World” is charming stuff.
The record served as my entry point to a band that has become my favourite of all time. It covers the majority of the bases the Bad Seeds had touched to this point, from operatic (“O Children”) to sparse and spooky (“Easy Money”) to snarling and ragged (“Supernaturally”). It also features one of the strangest cuts of their career in “Fable Of The Brown Ape”, a mysterious parable about a milk-drinking serpent with guitars that sound like knives sharpening and vocals that flit from detached murmurs to monstrous roars.
The Bad Seeds were the first act I got truly, deeply into that interested none of my friends at all, at the time anyway. Soon this group of Australian weirdos became my go-to music, and have remained as such right up to this point. I’ve always felt that you don’t just quite like the Bad Seeds; you’re either all in, or you’re not interested. Aside from the sheer quality, I think they inspire such devotion because they’ve got a record for every mood. Angry stuff, rocking stuff, chilled out stuff, sad, buoyant, hopeful, mysterious, silly - they’ve got you covered.
Most importantly, though, my appreciation for the Bad Seeds reinforced my desire to see what my old man had to offer in terms of music. While I’d enjoyed a bit of Bowie and Dylan to this point, it wasn’t until Abattoir Blues/The Lyre Of Orpheus that I thought I really ought to investigate his tastes further. From here I was introduced to Leonard Cohen and Tom Waits, and later more outre stuff like Bjork and The Knife. The exchange of music is a cherished part of our relationship, and that was solidified by Cave and co.
