The albums that are marked with [*] indicate the top 50, [**] indicate the top 20, and [***] indicate the top 10.
***Astral Weeks (Van Morrison)***
Mark's Take: One of my all-time personal favorites. This is an especially rare type of album, that not only fits in perfectly with the autumn season (it virtually embodies it) but it also has all of the timeless autumnal themes: recollection, regret, remembrance.
This album might possibly hold my #1 spot both for its ability to conjure a timeless nostalgia within me (inspiring my own vague childhood memories) and for its remarkable musical complexity (an achingly beautiful melding of folk, jazz, classical, and Van the Man's bluesy vocals which were at a supernatural height here and never reached this level again). His trip down memory lane is filled with deeply emotional lyrics, Irish folklore, Celtic mysticism, and pure soul. The most personal album ever made.
*Moondance (Van Morrison)*
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*Pink Moon (Nick Drake)*
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*Plastic Ono Band (John Lennon)*
Mark's Take: This album will own you.
Listen to it and suddenly everything else in your music collection will seem like nothing more than background music. Why? Because this is the most harrowingly honest album ever made.
It's an emotionally moving and brutally realistic piece of art that was the best work to come out of any of the Beatles (in fact, it makes much of their work appear trite, in retrospect) and it's obviously the standout album of John Lennon's solo career. You could call this Lennon's "Astral Weeks". It is unlike anything he or anyone else ever recorded and it has no parallels in the rest of his career.
This album isn't a musical feat or accomplishment. It's a lyrical masterpiece. Is it my favorite album?
Far from it. I can think of many other albums that are much more accessible and that I enjoy more (especially since I tend to be more interested in either ambient atmosphere or guitar soundscapes). But the timeless unique quality of this album shows through as Lennon explores God, Death, Parents, Love, Society.
If your house was burning down and you could only save one album, this would probably be the one to keep.
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*Bringing It All Back Home (Bob Dylan)*
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*Highway 61 Revisited (Bob Dylan)*
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**Blonde On Blonde (Bob Dylan)**
Mark's Take: Dylan's masterpiece. The first double album in rock history and still one of the best. Visionary, sprawling, mercurial energy flows through this wunderkind's lyrics and the jams of the Hawks (later renamed "The Band").
He would never be this surreal, this poetic, this Dylanesque ever again. The one Dylan album to definitely get. (Although Bringing It All Back Home is probably his definitive album with the revolutionary anthem "Subterranean Homesick Blues", the classic "Tambourine Man", and the dark folk ballads of renown such as "Gates of Eden" and "It's Alright Ma, I'm Only Bleeding").
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*Music From Big Pink (The Band)*
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Roger The Engineer (The Yardbirds)
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**Revolver (The Beatles)**
Mark's Take: The Beatles turn on their minds and create not only their definitive album but the definitive album of the 1960s (not Sgt. Pepper's) and what many consider to be the definitive album in the history of popular music. The Beatles are obviously enormously influential pioneers but I don't tend to rank this album as high as most critics do. What do I think is great about this album? The backwards guitar and perfect lyrics of Lennon's "I'm Only Sleeping", Harrison's greatest foray into the Eastern sound with his Indian sitar drones on "Love You To", and of course, above and beyond all the rest, the monumental "Tomorrow Never Knows" which is unlike anything else the group ever recorded and is one of the landmark psychedelic songs of all time. It is truly a head trip!
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Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (The Beatles)
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Magical Mystery Tour (The Beatles)
Mark's Take: Unlike Sgt.
Pepper's (which I feel is the most overrated album in popular music history), I really enjoy listening to Magical Mystery Tour. Maybe it's because it doesn't have the same conceptual conceit as the aforementioned album. Sgt.
Pepper's is far from being a bad album (it contains Lennon's infamous "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", Harrison's "Within You Without You", and the symphonic closer "A Day in the Life")but I consider it the least interesting Beatles album. It came out at the right time (Summer of Love 1967) and was one of the first albums to make extensive use of the recording studio. But, like later progressive rock albums by those bands such as Emerson Lake Palmer, Yes, etc.
, it contains an overindulgent amount of instrumentation simply for the sake of it without truly adding atmosphere. Magical Mystery Tour, on the other hand, for all of its silliness is one of the best psychedelic albums ever made (with the Beatles giving a nod towards the original acidheads, Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters and their bus Furthur). For some unknown reason or another this album always reminds me of the holiday season (Christmas time).
Perhaps it's because of its whimsical and Technicolor ambiance. It is, indeed, great to play around that time of the year.
Seeing as this album is very underrated in comparison with Sgt.
Pepper's there's next to no comprehensive reviews of it.
**The Beatles (The Beatles)**
Mark's Take: The Beatles' unqualified masterpiece.
Why?
Because consistency does not always mean creativity. This double album is the best of its kind and, although it is not as unified as previous albums, it delivers on a much higher level with more diversity and experimentation.
This contains the Beatles' best material they ever recorded: Harrison's mournful classic "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" and the meditative vibes of "Long Long Long"; the uplifting, floating sounds of "Dear Prudence", Lennon's far-out rocker "Happiness is a Warm Gun", his grooving celebration "Everybody's Got Something to Hide (Except Me and My Monkey)", bittersweet beautiful ballad "Julia", and the strung-out grit of "Yer Blues". Plus, McCartney turns in his best and most radical performance in "Helter Skelter"
and the Beatles craft their greatest achievement in the musique concrete inspired "Revolution 9".
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*Abbey Road (The Beatles)*
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*The Stone Roses (The Stone Roses)*
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***A Storm in Heaven (The Verve)***
Mark's Take: Quite simply, this is probably my favorite album in my collection. Few albums have delivered the wall of sound guitar approach as well as this (the shoegazers tried but failed in comparison with this).
This album is like getting lost in a deep blue cave filled with the most beautiful cascading fog of misty, intoxicating guitar effects you will ever hear. Vocals, who cares? Lyrics?
Words mean nothing in comparison with the vastness of the cosmic music. This album is quite unique with its Taoist sense of beauty and its incredible melting pot of psychedelia, shoegaze, and space rock. If you're a fan of psychedelia, ambience, or the atmospheric, this is highly recommended.
The sleeper album of the '90s.
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*A Northern Soul (The Verve)*
Mark's Take: Incredible sophomore effort from the greatest British modern rock band. The quintessential rainy-day album with equal parts dark/stormy and drifting/blissful guitar from Nick McCabe, deep groove rhythm section, and Ashcroft's anguished vocals. An organic experience of inner angst and spiritual catharsis.
A very underrated album of the '90s.
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Urban Hymns (The Verve)
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**Are You Experienced (Jimi Hendrix)**
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Axis: Bold As Love (Jimi Hendrix)
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***Electric Ladyland (Jimi Hendrix)***
Mark's Take: The definitive masterpiece of the greatest guitarist (and one of the greatest musicians) of all time. This is my pick for the #1 greatest classic rock album (it is underrated) and it vies with A Storm in Heaven and Astral Weeks for the position of my favorite album.
Simply put, Jimi Hendrix disregarded such static genre monikers as "blues", "jazz", "rock", and created an equal parts fiery/surreal and dreamy/mystical work of art. The only album that Hendrix himself ever produced shows his marks of genius in the studio, from the smoky, epic "Voodoo Chile" to the magnificently psychedelic wonder of "Burning of the Midnight Lamp" to the Neptunian voyage of the cosmos "1983 (A Merman I Should Turn to Be)" in which flutes and Jimi's divine guitar prowess conjure up otherworldly sounds of flying seagulls and the underwater depths. Essential for the collection of any serious music lover.
Band of Gypsys (Jimi Hendrix)
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*Piper at the Gates of Dawn (Pink Floyd)*
Mark's Take: Possibly the greatest psychedelic album ever made, this dazzling, kaleidoscopic debut by the premier space rock band (back before they traveled into space) is still even spacier than their later efforts.
Why? Two words, one name: Syd Barrett. Barrett named the album after a chapter in his favorite children's book The Wind in the Willows and the album itself captures his childlike whimsy while also veering into schizophrenic terrains of drug-addled lunacy.
The LSD-indulged Barrett eventually collapsed and lost his mind, then retired into seclusion to become the most infamous and idolized rock star head case of all time. While under his giddy helm, however, the Floyd created the most radical sounds of their entire career. Whether it's the soaring, spiraling guitar and hallucinogenic lyrics of the opener "Astronomy Domine", childlike, fairy-tale fancy of "Matilda Mother", avant-garde stoner hypnosis and hilarity in "Pow R Toc H", or the centerpiece of the album, the mindbending, strange, and dissonant jam "Interstellar Overdrive".
There's also equal parts lilting and madcap songs about the "The Gnome", "Scarecrow" and "Bike", as well as the hermetic I Ching meditations of "Chapter 24". This album is trippy in every sense of the word.
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A Saucerful of Secrets (Pink Floyd)
Mark's Take: The space-rock album of the Floyd which is their most underrated outing and served as a transition between Syd Barrett's departure and the arrival of new lead guitarist hero David Gilmour. The album is criticized as being half-baked and uneven (the criticisms are usually leveled at keyboardist Richard Wright's childhood nostalgia songs "Remember a Day" and "See-Saw" and the WWII satire "Corporal Clegg").
It's true that these are the weakest tracks on the album and mar the otherwise atmospheric sound, but they act as visionary breaks between the other more instrumental driven tracks. Also there is a leftover from Barrett which serves perfectly as the album closer entitled "Jugband Blues" (with bizarre lyrics and a random jugband outburst!) which ends the album with a plaintive question emerging from the druggy haze: "And what exactly is a dream?
And what exactly is a joke?". Apart from these more scattershot tracks, however, the album does maintain throughout a distillation of a psychoactive drug experience.
The trance inducing discordant chords and lyrics describing an astral journey in "Let There Be More Light" opens the album in a suitably trippy fashion. "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun" is a late-night ritual of mind expansion complete with echoing vibes, hypnotic organ, insistent bass, and mantra-like vocals. What truly made Pink Floyd influential and really coined the term "space rock", however, was the epic title track.
The instrumental begins with the sound of murmuring bells and a chromatic organ which is soon layered with an hallucinatory guitar freak out and primitive, tribal drum beats. A rushing, swirling noise permeates the vacuum-like space and suddenly the organ emits a cathedral-like melody which is soon accompanied by a muffled celestial choir. The song is at turns ethereal and eerie and was a heavy influence on the German band Tangerine Dream who later completely dispensed with rock altogether to craft pure "kosmische musik" (cosmic music).
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Since Saucerful of Secrets is the Floyd's most underrated album there are not many comprehensive reviews of it available online.
*Freak Out! (Frank Zappa The Mothers of Invention)*
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***The Velvet Underground Nico***
(The Velvet Underground)
Mark's Take: Produced and publicized by arty weirdo Andy Warhol (complete with an iconic, phallic banana cover) and helmed by experimental musician John Cale on viola, vocalist Lou Reed who was the songwriter of seedy urban memos, the skillful guitarist Sterling Morrison and understated, subtle drummer Moe Tucker as rhythm section, and the chanteuse-model Nico as additional vocalist and band ornament, the Velvets were vampiric, avant-garde prophets of a new age, one which would eventually give birth to punk and that many-headed monster we call "alternative". Here's my summary of this one-of-a-kind masterpiece: melancholy, wistful celeste, with a wink ("Sunday Morning"), a rollicking holiday visit to the local drug dealer ("Waiting for the Man"), a wry downbeat glance at that girl who always catches your eye ("Femme Fatale"), a Bacchanalian ritual of sadomasochism with exotic soundscapes ("Venus in Furs"), a retreat from the family dinners, the authorities, and other burdens ("Run Run Run"), a Christmas party in which the only gifts that are unwrapped are slit wrists, accompanied by ominous piano and death-mask lyrics ("All Tomorrow's Parties"), an acerbic, detached tribute to the spirit of the season embodied in a needle ("Heroin"), a playful blown kiss to the neighborhood prostitute ("There She Goes Again"), one last soul-baring and suicidal love moment ("I'll Be Your Mirror"), and then this nihilistic holiday tale ends with the atmospheric, icy ballad about the angel of death that comes to all of us at that special time of the year, replete with screeching viola ("The Black Angel's Death Song").
Of course, they all live happily ever after with a car-crashing, bottle-breaking drive through New Years' Eve and beyond in the reckless and volatile closer "European Son".
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*White Light/White Heat*
(The Velvet Underground)
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The Velvet Underground
(The Velvet Underground)
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Vols. 1 2 (The Soft Machine)
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***In the Court of the Crimson King***
(King Crimson)
Mark's Take: This can be considered the first official progressive rock album.
In that respect, it is a definite milestone. Plus, unlike most prog that followed in its wake, this debut album, by what is considered by many to be the greatest band in the genre, does not succumb to the usual excesses of this style (i.e.
overindulgent instrumentation, bloated conceptual conceit and length, and what has been amusingly dubbed "wankery", which refers to pointless displays of instrumental virtuosity). There is some "wanking" in the extended, "transcendental" jam which ensues after the vocals end on the song "Moonchild" but otherwise it is free of the pomposity which plagued later progressive rock acts. In fact, I think it could be stated with all assuredness that this is the greatest progressive rock album ever made.
Why would I make this claim? This album contains the greatest strength of the genre: atmosphere and not the greatest weakness of the genre: studio overindulgence. Rather than packing as many wanking solos, suites, and synths as possible into their work (making it an often absurd and ridiculous production as later prog albums would fall prey to), this album relies on the equal parts somber/subtle, dramatic/climactic, and eerie sounds of the Mellotron which recreates the symphonic sound (the original goal of prog) without being too flashy or noisy that it drowns out the instrumental interplay.
Also, there's that: skillful and restrained instrumentation that relies mainly on the tried and true rock instruments (guitar, drums, bass) while also adorning the musical backdrop with organ, vibes, and beautiful touches of woodwinds.
It's true that the most famous song on the album, the opener "21st Century Schizoid Man" contains a free jazz freak out on saxophone but it does so while projecting a darker, edgier brand of psychedelia (with some highly memorable paranoid lyrics about politics, war, etc.) that stays within the realm of improvisation and does not venture as much into the bombastic the way the song would have if encountered on a later prog album.
In fact, it is ahead of its time with its grungy sound. "I Talk to the Wind" is the hidden gem on the album, an opiate, wintry ballad of disillusion with descending organ, moody flutes, and muted guitar definitely ensconcing the listener in an atmosphere of nocturnal solitude. "Epitaph" is a brooding, gloomy meditation on death, the prophets, and history itself and it invokes images comparable to Caspar David Friedrich's barren, gray landscapes of abbeys.
It has a mysterious, archaic feeling of the long-ago past. "Moonchild" is a dreamlike, magical, and meandering piece that contains the most eerie and lingering imagery and lyrics of the album and transports the listener to a faraway world of sights and sounds unseen. Then, finally, there is the landmark title track which is the perfect closer, highlighted by medieval, poetic lyrics and a Mellotron which inspires a sensation of foreboding doom and chaos, and perfectly conveys the ghastly face on the album cover.
*OK Computer (Radiohead)*
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***Kid A (Radiohead)***
Mark's Take: While OK Computer remains a candidate for the greatest album of the '90s with its complex, intelligent lyrics about technology, the modern age, and dehumanization (as well as being the rebirth of experimental rock with its bold electronic textures, etc.
), Kid A is the band's masterpiece. Why? Like all of the greatest albums, it's meant to be listened to as a single entity.
It's true that it contains little to no "rock" and presents a self-consciously difficult, bleak, and insular exterior. Its interior, however, contains a sophisticated sonic structure of ambient atmosphere that is unlike anything recorded in modern popular music, as well as showcasing Radiohead at their best as they forge fearlessly on into the unknown, dispensing with any traditional rock ethic and incorporating the greatest aspects of electronic music (comparable to Tangerine Dream's Phaedra or Brian Eno's Another Green World).
Similar to the album cover, Radiohead's Kid A is a voyage over the twilight mountains and far away, and yet in the same token it is THE album of the 21st century.
It contains all of the fears, uncertainties, and fragmentation of this postmodern existence and it translates these into an enrapturing atmosphere which maintains a pristine delicacy and continuity from beginning to end. Enclosed within the winter world of Kid A are cold paintings in sound ranging from the hypnotic organs of the mysterious opener "Everything In Its Right Place" to the ethereal, crystalline harps of the cinematic closer aptly titled "Motion Picture Soundtrack". The title track is the strangest anomaly here as Yorke's embryonic childhood dream state lyrics are submerged deeply into the icy landscape only to be purposefully interrupted by the tense and taut theatrics of "The National Anthem" which is bolstered by humming theremins and wild trumpets.
Then there's the detached and desolate melancholy of "How To Disappear Completely" which also has a brooding, surreal beauty. "Treefingers" is a completely ambient instrumental which is incredibly mesmerizing. The "big fish eat the little ones" in the technocratic socio-political nightmare of "Optimistic".
"In Limbo" (the hidden gem of this album) is a dark and narcotic voyage through the depths of the Unconscious. "Idioteque" is electronic dance music inverted and turned inside out as Thom Yorke unsettlingly moans about the apocalypse ("ice age coming"). Finally "Morning Bell" is an austere and brilliantly subtle, moody piece which then leads perfectly into the aforementioned closer "Motion Picture Soundtrack".
Amnesiac (Radiohead)
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*Agaetis Byrjun (Sigur Ros)*
Mark's Take: I can distinctly remember the day when I first listened to this album.
The setting was perfect, it was one of those characteristically cold and dark evenings in January during winter break. I escaped to the refuge of my small room and placed my headphones on. Blasting off into the outer terrains of the universe, the only experience I can compare this to was when I first heard The Verve's A Storm in Heaven or getting lost in the labyrinthine beauty of "Echoes" from Pink Floyd's Meddle merely an hour earlier that day when on a drive home through the winding hills.
This isn't music you simply listen to, you become immersed in its transformative swaths of sound.
Definitely the greatest album of what can be termed the new contemporary "post-rock" or "ambient rock" movement. Sublime and dramatic sounds from the far corners of Iceland, an ethereal epic for the ages.
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***Daydream Nation (Sonic Youth)***
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**A Love Supreme (John Coltrane)**
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**Kind of Blue (Miles Davis)**
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***In A Silent Way (Miles Davis)***
Mark's Take: This still remains my favorite jazz album of all time, as well as being what is in my opinion the masterpiece of Miles Davis.
It is also the most aptly titled recording (and the one with the best track timing) that I have ever listened to. Everyone has heard the cliche about a particular album being a "must hear". In this case, all of the hype is true.
While Kind of Blue remains the watermark for jazz improvisation in popular music history, In A Silent Way transcends all strictures and boundaries. Two nearly 20 minute tracks which drift in and out of consciousness and truly embody the atmosphere of the night more beautifully and mystically than any other album, jazz or otherwise. In A Silent Way remains one of the major landmark recordings of the 20th century because it was a crossroads where jazz and rock, the two swift and chaotic rivers fed by the source of the blues, finally met and coursed into a slipstream of ambient electronic sound becoming a whirlpool of calm and tranquillity.
It is such a remarkable listen because it is so organic and free flowing. The guitar, drums, and especially warm vintage organ paint a picture in improvisational interweavings which Miles solos within in equal parts gentle and soaring brush strokes. "Shhh/Peaceful" is the invitation to the voyage and "In A Silent Way/It's About That Time" is the return home.
It's spiritual and cosmic, yet it's also the city and the streets. And both movements begin and end in cyclical purity and perfection, at just the right time. Davis would radicalize the jazz fusion sound even further in Bitches Brew and later albums, but this was the style in its embryonic form before it later became cluttered and then eventually vapid.
Unlike Davis' later recordings (or even earlier ones) this was a rare experience of total improvisational purity and, as the title suggests, in a way that set it apart from what came before or after it in its wake.
**Bitches Brew (Miles Davis)**
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*Nothing's Shocking (Jane's Addiction)*
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*Ritual de lo Habitual (Jane's Addiction)*
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Lateralus (Tool)
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*Black Sabbath (Black Sabbath)*
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Paranoid (Black Sabbath)
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**Led Zeppelin (Led Zeppelin)**
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Led Zeppelin II (Led Zeppelin)
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Led Zeppelin III (Led Zeppelin)
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**Led Zeppelin IV (Led Zeppelin)**
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*Houses of the Holy (Led Zeppelin)*
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