#31 - Buddy Holly's "The 'Chirping' Crickets" (1957)

The first time I saw Casablanca, I was a 21-year-old college student living abroad in England.  My "flatmates" and I decided it was a good idea to take advantage of some of the £1 theaters around town that trafficked in classic films.  I remember watching much of the movie with my mouth agape as line after line of that canonic dialogue hit me as if I'd never heard anything like it before.  Of course, as a self-taught aficionado of pop culture, I had heard it before.  Everywhere.  A similar feeling developed as I listened to the opening tracks of "The 'Chirping' Crickets," Buddy Holly's first and last long player under the band moniker, The Crickets.  And while "long player" may be a misnomer, with its twelve tracks coming in at just about 26 minutes, the comparison to Casablanca is perfectly appropriate.  The riffs, the beats, the rough-edged vocals trading off with that lover's croon and those country yelps all add up to something very special and deservedly influential.  In addition to the well-known highlights - the emphatic drum on the last "when... you... make... me... cry-y" of "That'll Be the Day" - there are plenty of other lesser-known treasures.  For example, listen to the roiling introduction to "Rock Me My Baby" and you can hear a prophecy of rock to come.  Of course, a considerable part of what makes Buddy Holly so compelling is the degree to which his career is shrouded in the mystique and mystery of what might have been.  Hearing all of that talent and potential in one sitting, it is hard not to feel the empty hole his untimely death left behind.  Here's looking at you, kid.  Grade: A-       

#30 - Camper Van Beethoven's "Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart" (1988)

As far as its descriptive utility is concerned, the term "college rock" answers the question "when" much better than it answers the question "what." In the 1980s, before the rise of "alternative" radio stations, "college rock" basically referred to any band that neither fit neatly into a corner of the previously charted musical universe nor could stop being "weird" long enough to get serious mainstream radio airplay.  With the exception of isolated acts like The Long Ryders or single-serving morsels like REM's "(Don't Go Back To) Rockville," it was almost as if every youthful band of the decade was allergic to Americana.  I blame Reagan.  At any rate, Camper Van Beethoven was tackling roots rock well in advance of the No Depression/alt-country movement founded by Uncle Tupelo, The Jayhawks, and other 90s indie heavyweights.  On the one hand, you have to give them credit.  On album opener, "Eye of Fatima, Pt. 1," David Lowery announces "we're driving like hell / to get some cowboys some acid," which is as good a description as any of what this music is all about.  It looks back to traditional styles, but it does so with a view to making them new.  Maybe it would be more appropriate to say that CVB is engaged in irreverent worship.  The approach is not 100% successful.  Early on they take a stab at folk standard "O Death" and ramp up the tempo just slightly, but the results are a mixed bag.  On some songs their warped sense of humor serves them well.  On others - most notably the appropriately named "The Fool" - they end up shooting themselves in the foot, coming off more parodic than melodic.  Lyrically it's a positive feature, but when the snark bleeds into the performances themselves, count me out.  They commit their worst offense, in my opinion, during "She Divines Water," easily the prettiest song in the bunch.  Just as the harmonies are about to soar one last time, the whole thing gets mired in a needless fit of noise and disjuncture, as if they feel compelled to sabotage something empirically good to prove their avant-garde bona fides.  Or maybe it's just an anti-corporate/anti-commercial "fuck you."  Either way, it's infuriating.  Again, I blame Reagan.  There is an unfortunate pattern in music criticism for quality bands to be held responsible for the mediocre copycats they beget; the father is blamed for the sins of the children.  In the case of Camper Van Beethoven, I think they get overshadowed by the acts that came after who did what they were doing, only better.  Grade: C+

#29 - Bruce Springsteen's "Nebraska" (1982)

The Ring is my favorite horror movie.  I think what makes it so effective is its off-putting tonality.  The whole film - and I mean every scene - is bathed in an eerie, unnatural light.  If you've ever seen the sky before a tornado or been alone in a room lit only by a dim fluorescent bulb, you know what I mean.  Consequently, without having to resort to using crutches like the seemingly ubiquitous mirror scare, The Ring subverts the all-too familiar rhythm of other films in the genre:  introduction of characters, upsetting event, calm, upsetting event #2, comic relief, uneasy calm, and then the climax.  And because The Ring looks somehow off, every moment is pregnant with the potential for terror.  It establishes an atmosphere of dread that never lets up until the credits roll.  Combine that with what, for me, is an inherently terrifying concept - a child born evil, who lives only to sow suffering and malevolence - and you end up with a powerful and disturbing film.  Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska begins with the title cut written from the perspective of Charles Starkweather as he awaits execution by electric chair.  It is a chilling song mostly because it provides no consolatory wisdom, no satisfying explanation of the killer's motivations for his spree.  The final line, delivered in the matter-of-fact manner of the classic American murder ballad, simply says, "there's just a meanness in this world."  It's an idea that pervades the rest of the album.  Over the course of nine originals and a cover of Tim Hardin's "Reason to Believe," through songs about innocence and guilt, good and evil, on both sides of the law, Springsteen maintains taut dramatic tension.  Tragedy could - and often does - strike around every corner.  There is no refuge, not in the "Mansion on the Hill," not in "My Father's House."  Competing notions of the good arrive and collide to confound and confuse.  Expect no justice from the "Highway Patrolman" or the "State Trooper."  They are merely men, with the same conflicting loyalties that would tug and pull at anyone's conscience.  There is nonetheless beauty to be heard here:  plaintive harmonica runs, intimate vocals, and even the odd mistake that lends the whole endeavor - which is, after all, a set of unpolished demos - an unrehearsed aura that complements the lyrics just so.  Indeed, the poverty of the production values belies the richness of the material and that's a good thing.  Perfectly imperfect little couplets like, "Now the neighbors come from near and far / as we pull up in our brand new used car" could get lost in or overpowered by more ornate arrangements.  Accordingly, Nebraska should serve as a warning to those producers who would prefer to get paid per knob turned.  Studio tinkering is nearly irrelevant when songs like these are played in the right emotional key.  Grade: A+

#28 - Yo La Tengo's "I Can Hear the Heart Beating As One" (1997)

Allow me to get metaphysical for a moment. On a memorable episode of Futurama, the on-again, off-again cartoon from Simpsons creator Matt Groening, a robot named Bender is careening aimlessly through space when an entire civilization of miniature, human-like creatures evolves on his metal frame.  They worship him as a god.  But, despite his well-meaning attempts to do right by his tiny, pious payload, all of his intercessions on their behalf end in disaster.  Eventually he drifts near some kind of stellar cloud formation blinking in binary which we come to learn is not just a god, but perhaps the God.  His advice to the beleaguered Bender is to use a "light touch," explaining that "when you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all."  Listening to the consistent, quiet daring of I Can Hear the Heart Beating As One it's easy to see how someone might overlook just how good Yo La Tengo are at what they do.  The album isn't gimmicky or trendy in the way that so many others with shorter shelf lives are.  In fact, I would have been hard-pressed to locate this album chronologically on a time-line detailing the last 25 years of indie music.  The shoegaze numbers alone could sound at home in the neighborhood of either My Bloody Valentine's Loveless (1991) or The Pains of Being Pure at Heart (2009).  Over the course of its nearly 70-minute span, this album offers up a cohesive and gorgeous pastiche of reverb-heavy rock, noise pop, gently experimental instrumentals, and pulsing space-age jam sessions.  What's more, YLT does all of this with some seriously versatile musical chops without the result coming off like a high-minded exercise in genre tourism.  For more than twenty years, Yo La Tengo have never insisted.  They've cajoled.  And because they've never aimed a moonshot at the spotlight, despite being critical darlings, mainstream recognition eludes them.  It's true:  they may never sell out Madison Square Garden or play the Superbowl halftime show.  Some people might mistake such modest success for a lack of vision or a failure to catch their big break, as if they just can't seem to stop themselves from flying "below the radar."  As for me, I think that when you maintain a low profile, keep your head down, and "do things right," you are actually flying above it.  Grade: A-

#27 - Willie Nelson's "Phases & Stages" (1974)

A theme album is an inherently venturesome exercise.  Those who attempt them are kindred spirits with those authors who wonder, "why stop at a short story when I could write a whole novel"?  Yes, the payoff might be greater, but likewise the heartache should the enterprise come up short of its mark.  Given the ambitious temperaments from which these albums arise, it should come as no shock that - as artistic endeavors - their concepts or executions (or both) often get muddled somewhere along the way.  On paper, a country music theme album about a broken relationship begs the question, "Isn't that what all country music albums are about?"  In practice, however, Willie Nelson's Phases & Stages is so much more than the sum of its parts.  For one, he provides a rich context for his songs.  Think of all those great LPs with their honky-tonk hymns to horseplay and lover's laments sitting side by side.  The same man crying into his whiskey breakfast this morning was bird-dogging through his beer goggles last night, without the dimmest understanding of how the two situations are related.  Phases starts out with a tableau of sad domesticity:  the woman scorned is washing the dishes and doing the laundry.  But all of it, all those little chores that go into making a house a home feel hollow in the calm before that home is broken.  Nelson's voice is tender on these tracks - the soft and sensitive croon he would use to great effect years later when interpreting American pop standards on his 1978 album Stardust.  As he recounts the story of the woman finally fed up enough to leave, something subtle happens as the track sequencing unfolds.  Each song is just a little bit faster than the one that preceded it.  The color is returning to her cheeks as she heads on home to her mother and little sister, who wryly notes, "Mama's gonna let her sleep the whole day long / The mirror's gonna tell her how long she's been gone."  This rejuvenation picks up more speed still as she heads on down to the "corner beer joint" to dance, even though "her jeans fit a little bit tighter than they did before."  Then, presumably after meeting a fella out on the town, things slow back down as she contemplates falling in love again.  It's not that she's jaded and afraid to trust another man so much as she's upside-down, distrustful of her own feelings, like the workings of her own heart have become a mystery to her.  Then, "Bloody Mary Morning" comes crashing through the gates of dawn and the album switches gears.  It leads with a rollicking banjo that - like the French horns announcing the arrival of the lupine threat in Sergey Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf" - can only mean we're about to hear from the man she left behind.  This is followed by the rapid-fire 1-2 combo of a pedal steel guitar and rowdy roadhouse piano.  Not only is it the best song on the album, but it serves as a much-needed PR boost for the cheating husband, the tune's roguish, outlaw charm helping the listener to understand what she saw in him in the first place.  Just as her suite is characterized by a steady increase in tempo, his progressively slows to a crawl, as the reality of his situation sobers him up.  Again, context is everything.  His denials of the situation ("I Still Can't Believe You're Gone," "It's Not Supposed To Be That Way") are all the more affective when the listener knows the back story.  In this way, ordinary songs are anchored by an emotional heft that might have otherwise gotten lost in translation.  If you haven't heard it yet, I won't spoil the ending except to say that the pedal steel and piano show up again on "Heaven and Hell," perhaps signifying that our male protagonist's attempt at reform has met with something rather less than success.  In the end, I'm not sure if he ever gets it.  But, thanks to Willie's masterful storytelling, I do.  Grade: A

#26 - Death Cab for Cutie's "Transatlanticism" (2003)

To date, Death Cab for Cutie's biggest hit, by a wide margin, is "I Will Follow You Into the Dark" from their 2005 album Plans.  It is, like many of Ben Gibbard's songs, a little bit cloying, a little bit precious, but also catchy as all get out.  Though not exactly Shakespeare, some of the lines are arresting.  Consider the following: "If heaven and hell decide that they both are satisfied, / illuminate the 'No's' on their vacancy signs, / if there's no one beside you as your soul embarks / then I will follow you into the dark."  It's a nice image and it makes for a palatable chorus.  Based on nothing else other than this song particle and Gibbard's collaboration on The Postal Service, I expected Transatlanticism to yield some decent lyrics and some good, melodic ear candy (my ear has a serious sweet tooth).  Well, speaking of Shakespeare, are you familiar with the "infinite monkey theorem" as it relates to statistics?  If not, here's the gist: if an infinite number of monkeys were able to type on an infinite number of typewriters given a long enough timeline, probability suggests that one of the monkeys at some point will eventually produce Hamlet.  To put it in layman's terms, the sun don't shine on the same dog's ass everyday, but sometimes things line up just right.  This is what popped in my head after wasting my time on this wildly overrated album.  Just because Gibbard & Co. have gotten lucky once or twice doesn't make them good musicians.  Turns out that what we have here is a whole lotta monkey typing.  In addition to the music, which consists of one hookless, mid-tempo ode to boredom after another, the lyrics are the worst kind of hackneyed and overwrought nonsense.  There's a lot of first person/present tense narration ("I roll the window down and begin to breathe in"), stupid metaphors ("your brain is the dam and I am the fish who can't reach the core"), trite imagery ("all I see are dark gray clouds"), repetition of lines that don't warrant a first mention ("I need you so much closer"...x12!), and - worst of all - meta-commentary on how the concept for the song came about ("and that's how this idea was drilled into my head").  As the album wore on, I thought things were looking up, but I was mistaken again.  The nearly 8-minute title track starts off with a promising chord progression and begins to build, but ultimately goes nowhere slowly.  "Passenger Seat" likewise sparks an interest before thoroughly disappointing.  Gibbard sings (in the first person present tense - surprise, surprise), "Then looking upwards, I strain my eyes and try / to tell the difference between shooting stars and satellites."  It's not even the best song I can think of wherein the protagonist mistakes satellites for shooting stars.  That would be "A New England" by Billy Bragg.  Nor is it the best song about being in the passenger seat.  That might be a tie between Wilco's "Passenger Side" and Iggy Pop's "The Passenger."  If I end up reviewing many more albums like this over the course of the year, I may be hiring some monkeys to do some typing for me.  Grade: D+

#25 - Wanda Jackson's "Rockin' with Wanda!" (1960)

I'll admit it.  Before last week I had never heard of Wanda Jackson.  I'm no stranger to the rockabilly artists she toured with (Elvis Presley) or the country singers she inspired (Dolly Parton) or the girl group sound she influenced (The Chiffons).  Still, for whatever reason, she had never made a blip on my radar.  It would not be hyperbole to suggest that the concept of a female rock-and-roller is as nearly novel to me as it was to the audiences of the mid- to late-50's.  That is not to say I'm surprised there was a woman bold enough to hang with the boys so much as I can't believe I'm only hearing about her now.  But last week a former student of mine, knowing my penchant for Jack White in general and Van Lear Rose in particular, sent me a link to the video below.  Needless to say, I was intrigued and wasted no time going right to the source.  What I found in Rockin' With Wanda! was the long lost missing link between Kitty Wells, Memphis Minnie, Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Loretta Lynn.  Released less as an album and more as an LP collection of her hit singles to date, the songs on Rockin' run the gamut from country to rockabilly and - on "I Gotta Know" - you hear both, tempo changes and all.  If there is a theme to be had here, it's that Wanda's more than a match for all the no-good hound dogs and tomcats scratchin' at her door.  She's a firecracker all the way, whether she's singing about her "Mean Mean Man" or chastising another for lacking passion on "Cool Love."  You do get the sense that one of the reasons she ended up firmly on the side of country was that many of her contemporaries had more potential crossover appeal.  The twang she "brangs" on several of the tracks sounds more "hillbilly" than "rock."  Occasionally she does display some versatility:  she is, after all, capable of both sweetness and grit.  And then, out of left field, there's "Don'a Wan'a" and "Fujiyama Mama" and I'm not sure what to make of either.  The former is sung in a cringe-inducing Italian accent reminiscent of the Andrews Sisters' island patois on "Rum & Coca-Cola" and the latter begins, "I've been to Nagasaki / Hiroshima, too / the same thing I did to them, baby, I can do to you."  Wow.  They were simpler times, weren't they?  Grade: B

#24 - Patti Smith's "Horses" (1975)

Horses is a balancing act.  Patti Smith, in the sympathetic hands of producer John Cale, crafts an album that is at once cerebral and mindless, simple and complex, progressive and classicist.  And while you might expect the attempt at corralling and curating these disparate elements into a single, workable composite to sound forced, it ends up resulting in a loose and compelling whole, rolling along to its own hybridized rhythms.  Smith pushes pop music's tolerance of poetic forms to the limit, but she also evokes the ghost of pop songs past, singing bits of Van Morrison's "Gloria" and Fats Domino's "Land of 1000 Dances" when the mood strikes her.  Fittingly, the cover art is a Robert Mapplethorpe photo of Smith looking androgynous.  On songs like "Birdland," her voice ranges everywhere, from a sexy, steady, neo-Beat spoken word, to a low, operatic, manly moan to a pinched, nasal, Yoko Ono yelp.  Cale's experience in co-creating the diverse styles of The Velvet Underground serves Smith well.  The vocals - moving to the meter of her poetry - turn on a dime and require song structures to be fluid and accommodating.  However, it would be glib to think of the instrumentals as merely unobtrusive background noise.  This is not simply poetry with a backbeat and the studio band is no less inventive and dynamic than the lyricist they back.  On "Free Money," which comes in about halfway through, it is difficult to discern whether she is singing to the music or the musicians are playing to her voice.  That kind of delightful ambiguity is a good representation of what this album is all about.  It might be cliché to say that these songs work on several levels, but it wouldn't make it any less true.  If you like your music to be sophisticated, you can listen intently to Smith's lyrics and decode them to whatever extent you are able.  If, however, you prefer to turn on, tune in, and rock out, well, you can do that, too.  Grade: B+

#23 - AC/DC's "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap" (1976)

One of several quality albums recorded under Bon Scott's reign as lead singer of this Australian hard rock juggernaut.  I had several preconceived notions about what to expect going in.  It'll be trashy.  And it was, but it was also funny and impeccably performed.  Like the dramatization of a Jerry Springer episode by the Royal Shakespeare Company.  It'll be offensive.  Well, kind of.  Our cultural threshold for shocking lyrics has been moved so many times that it's difficult to know where - if anywhere - the line now exists.  There's a streak of juvenile glee running through the songs here, an adolescent fascination with delinquency and hormonal release of all types.  In that context, the monster guitar crunch of Malcolm & Angus Young doesn't sound so much like a back-to-basics aesthetic solution to the art rock pretensions of the 70's as it does self-medication by way of primal scream therapy.  The formula is a simple one:  loud = good, therefore louder = better.  What I didn't expect was the downright conservatism of songs like "Rocker" and "There's Gonna Be Some Rockin'" which, if they had turned down their amps a bit, are essentially straightforward rockabilly blues.  Or how perilously close they get to Spinal Tap-level self-parody on tracks like "Ain't No Fun (Waiting Round To Be a Millionaire)."  As Chris Rock said about Biggie Smalls' "Mo' Money, Mo' Problems," this has to be one of the most popular songs almost no one can relate to.  I could've done without "Big Balls" - the silly, double-entendre-dependent goof that is equal parts Mad Magazine, Dr. Demento, and Tenacious D - but I understand what it's doing here.  It's not as if it's a black sheep track in an otherwise straight-laced family of songs.  At any rate, all albums have their highs and lows, and I'll gladly forgive "Big Balls" after hearing the surprisingly sweet "Ride On." Scott portrays himself  as a lonely, drunken, womanizing drifter, an "empty head."  It's a sad self-inventory, an honest accounting of the emotional bankruptcy that lies beneath the gleaming, gilded surface of the rock and roll lifestyle, which is just one "red light nightmare" after another.  He knows he should change his "evil ways," but he also knows enough to know that's unlikely.  It is a rare island of super-ego in a vast sea of id.  Grade: B

#22 - Lauryn Hill's "The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill" (1998)

Alright, class, here's a word problem.  Q:  If a train could travel from South Orange, NJ to the banks of the Nile River, the court of Menelik II, and Kingston, Jamaica using 16 tracks, while managing to complete the trip in a little over 77 minutes with a 23-year-old conductor, how many Grammys would it win and how many albums would it sell?  A:  5 and - eventually - more than 10 million.  The conceit that provides the thematic structure to The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill is a discussion taking place in a middle school classroom.  After the introduction, during which the teacher, taking attendance, finds "Lauryn Hill" absent, each iteration of the class is tacked on to the end of one of the album's remaining fifteen songs.  There is nothing terribly profound about the discussion, except for the degree to which the students and teacher are animated while talking about the subject of the day:  love.  The implication, of course, is that Hill, not present, is missing out on a fundamental lesson about life.  A lesson she will eventually learn the hard way.  Given this set up, the songs themselves become a platform from which the precocious singer and rapper may disseminate her hard-won wisdom.  If this sounds like it might get preachy, your instincts are probably right.  Occasionally, as during the chorus of "Forgive Them Father," Hill falls victim to believing her own hype as a messianic pop star.  Elsewhere on the album, less overt attempts at creating hip-hop with a conscience fare much better.  Especially during the all-too-rare rap verses, which are consistently weapons-grade.  I am hard-pressed to remember any other female MC in the last 10+ years who conveyed such substantive content so eloquently or so engagingly.  Given the run-time of Miseducation - which is actually a double album, longer even than Blonde on Blonde - it is impressive how little filler there is.  Some of the R&B tracks drag a bit, but Hill finishes strong with two wonderfully understated performances.  The first is a cover of Frankie Valli's "Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You," which sounds both modern and timeless and the second is the gospel lullaby closer, "Tell Him," with its lilting, lulling strings.  Across the board the production values have held up very well, thanks in large part to the organic, rootsy contributions by New Ark, Hill's mostly live, in-studio band.  Too often hip-hop is doomed by a kind of planned obsolescence stemming from a short-sighted preference for trendy studio gimmickry (Auto-Tune, anyone?).  The rapid stylistic turnover encouraged by a chew-'em-up-spit-'em-out singles-driven recording industry perpetually questing for the "next big thing" may make for good business, but it also results in disposable music.  Luckily, Ms. Hill & Co went in another direction.  It made the difference between ephemeral art designed to move units and something that will stand the test of time.  Somehow Miseducation pulled off the feat of being a classic that sold really well.  Hopefully new artists are taking notes.  Grade: A- 

#21 - Mississippi John Hurt's "The Immortal Mississippi John Hurt" (1967)

Released posthumously, The Immortal Mississippi John Hurt and the equally revelatory Last Sessions represent a final testament to a once-in-a-lifetime talent the twentieth century very nearly missed altogether.  John Hurt worked as a farm laborer for most of his life.  He'd play for parties and gatherings of friends and family, but he never thought seriously about a career as a bluesman.  Even after impressing a talent scout for Okeh Records and releasing a set of songs for that label in 1928, he was dismissed as "not commercially viable" or whatever the equivalent jackassery was at the time.  Then along came the Depression and Hurt forgot about professional music almost as quickly as it forgot about him.  Fast forward to the folk revival of the 1950's and 60's.  Those who relished the songs immortalized on Harry Smith's legendary Anthology of American Folk Music heard the two cuts attributed to some unknown named "Mississippi John Hurt" and one of them - Tom Hoskins - tracked him down by using geographical clues embedded in the song, "Avalon Blues."  What followed was a groundswell of youth-driven popularity, buoyed by college performances, new recordings, and a stint at the Newport Folk Festival.  Thank God for small miracles.  The music Hurt left behind is unique and wonderful.  His self-taught finger-picking style - often imitated, never duplicated - is deceptively simple.  If you're not concentrating you might walk away believing there are two guitars in the room.  But there aren't.  Just a man, two agile hands, and a seemingly effortless technique honed over decades of playing the guitar not as a vocation, but as an avocation.  As a musician, he just loves it.  And as a listener, you can tell.  If there is any criticism to be levied against this album, it might be that the material itself is not worthy of his attention.  Yes, there's "Stagolee" and "Since I've Laid My Burden Down," but most of the others here could be considered "minor" blues and folk tunes, by comparison.  The album is bookended by two gospel-themed compositions with a third, "Wise & Foolish Virgins," coming in nearly halfway through.  The rest of the songs talk about livestock, dance parties, murderous gamblers, and cheating housewives ("the red rooster says, 'cock-a-doodle-doodle-doo' / the rich women say, 'any dude will do'") - typical fare of the rural blues.  Such is the degree of his skill, however, that the results are anything but typical.  Hurt takes average songs and transforms them into something transcendent, with the sacred and profane sitting side by side in perfect harmony.  You'll notice, when you listen, that many times he'll leave out words and even whole lines here and there, letting his lively, lyrical guitar finish the phrase for him.  This may come across as lazy or forgetful until you realize it's neither.  It is common for people to talk about a guitar player achieving proficiency when he can make the instrument "talk."  Hurt makes his guitar sing.  Grade: A+  

#20 - New York Dolls' "New York Dolls" (1973)

Even without (consciously) thinking about the transvestism featured on the cover art, my knee-jerk reaction to the vocals on album opener "Personality Crisis" was, "Wow, David Johansen sounds just like Dee Snider of Twisted Sister."  Strike that.  Reverse it.  Thinking Snider begat Johansen is eerily similar to Lloyd Christmas from Dumb & Dumber observing, "Hey, look, The Monkees.  They were a huge influence on The Beatles."  For my second sortie into glam rock territory, I looked to the self-titled debut, New York Dolls.  If the balls-out, winner-take-all abandon with which they approach these arrangements and performances is at all genuine - and since they come from a band that imploded after two albums, I'm inclined to think it is - then these recordings constitute powerful evidentiary support for letting the chips fall where they may.  I'm not sure where you come down on That 70's Show, but let's pretend for a moment that you love it.  New York Dolls are the Michael Kelso of 70's rock:  big, dumb, pretty & proud.  They hammer on their keyboards and wail away on their guitar strings.  On "Lonely Planet Boy," a sloppy saxophone floats in and out of the mix like its player stumbled into the studio spaced out on amyl nitrite.  "Trash" is a catchy, three-minute number of fully-formed punk rock before there was a thing called "punk rock."  It's song as sonic assault; rock as a blunt instrument.  As far as favorite moments, it's a tie between the anarchic singalong to "I've Been Working on the Railroad" at the end of "Subway Train" and the great line in "Bad Girl" when Johansen sings, "I'm beggin' please, little lover, stop this carryin' on / gotta get some lovin' before the planet is gone." Because everybody knows what an aphrodisiac eschatology is.  The hyperbolic urgency is so funny and the phrasing, right down to the use of "little lover," reminds me of a similar moment from Bob Dylan's "Talkin' World War III Blues," when he sings, "I was down in the sewer with some little lover / when I peeked out from the manhole cover."  Some things never change.  And I'm glad rock stars evoking Armageddon to cop a feel is one of them.  Grade: B+

#19 - The Byrds' "The Notorious Byrd Brothers" (1968)

Clocking in at a mere 28:32 over the course of 11 tracks, you'd be right to wonder how many different ideas The Byrds could get away with including on this album.  Turns out they could get away with a lot.  The first eight songs comprise an uninterrupted suite of unadulterated, uncompromising beauty.  Seamlessly weaving east and west, old and new, they are quite literally inventing folk rock in real-time.  British invasion power pomp is tempered by proto-chamber pop.  Indian ragas meet country rags.  Steel guitar-driven Okie tunes migrate into laid-back California harmonies and back again.  And, amazingly, it all works.  So much so that knowing this album was released on January 3, 1968 is comforting, in the sense that I'm happy those who lived through the tumult and chaos of that terrible year had this as their background music.  There are a few missteps, to be sure.  Awkward lyrics like "Take my time this morning, no hurry / to learn to kill and take the will / from unknown faces."  Wait, huh?  Is that what Vietnam was all about?  Taking the will from people's faces?  Or the fussed-over orchestral intermission during "Old John Robertson."  It's an inspired move, guys.  No need to make it sound like it's being played in a wind tunnel.  And a note to all bands:  if you ever come up with a gorgeous, gently galloping bassline like the one that undergirds "Draft Morning," don't you dare distract from it to make room for cheesy sound effects.  Unfortunately, the remaining three songs reinforce several hippie/psychedelic stereotypes and make an otherwise timeless album obnoxiously dated.  With references to sandalwood, "talking" drums, rainbows, and children's dreams, "Tribal Gathering," "Dolphin's Smile," and "Space Odyssey" - each goofier than the last - are probably only cool if you have access to the same drugs they were taking when they wrote them.  "Space Odyssey" actually begins, "In nineteen and ninety-six we ventured to the moon."  Oh, brother.  Grade: A-

#18 - The Decemberists' "The King Is Dead" (2011)

On the one hand, since this album came out yesterday, it's probably a little premature to lump it in with the "classics" this blog is supposed to be about.  On the other hand, it's a strong batch of tunes.  With help from Gillian Welch and Peter Buck, The Decemberists explore Americana.  Maybe this seems like a bit of a left turn after the over-the-top (and underrated) prog rock stomp of The Hazards of Love or maybe it makes perfect sense given Colin Meloy's perennial forays into British folk and the side project string band Black Prairie.  What of the results?  Well, one of the challenges of this blog is to process an album after a single listen and to put what I hear into some kind of context.  During the initial run-through, I heard Uncle Tupelo strings, REM jangle, Tom Petty beats, Bruce Springsteen harmonica and a well-integrated fiddle bit (here played, I believe, on accordion) from "Raggle Taggle Gypsy."  I also didn't hear a bad song in the bunch.  The Decemberists are one of my favorite bands, but even I can admit that they've always managed to throw a clunker or two onto every album.  And while the highs may not be as high as elsewhere, the melodies are strong throughout.  There is a lot to be said for being able to put on an album while driving or sitting on a porch - as I expect to do with this one - and never getting the slightest itch to hit "skip."  Yeah.  A lot to be said.  Grade: B+

#17 - U2's "The Unforgettable Fire" (1984)

I wonder what The Unforgettable Fire must have sounded like in 1984.  Knowing U2's subsequent trajectory, it's hard to look back at this album without thinking of it as a bridge between the earnest European anthems of War and the earnest American anthems of The Joshua Tree.  You get pulsing hard rock like "Wire" that both recalls "New Year's Day" and hints at "Bullet the Blue Sky."  You get "Pride (In the Name of Love)," one of two songs on the album celebrating Martin Luther King, Jr., which matches the stadium-thumping power of "Sunday Bloody Sunday" beat for beat, while previewing the Gospel imagery soon to be featured in songs like "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For."  You get "Bad," one of their all-time great songs, simultaneously elegiac and exultant, a story of both addiction and redemption.  Unfortunately, you also get a lot of aimless, repetitive, naturalistic "poetry."  Songs filled with "running" and "raining" - the kind of images one might expect to hear from a ninth-grade English class upon receiving its first creative writing assignment.  Co-produced by Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno, this an experimental album.  And it would be a disservice to the spirit of experimentation to insist that all such experiments must result in success.  Even so, it's still difficult not to hear U2 on this album as a band in flux.  The obsession with the U.S. - "4th of July," "Indian Summer Sky," "Elvis Presley and America" - is evident throughout, though it has not yet resulted in an attempt to assimilate its musical roots.  In many ways, U2 has always stood like an awkward colossus between the two hemispheres.  This album is the sound of them trying to steady their footing.  Grade: B-

#16 - Mott the Hoople's "All the Young Dudes" (1972)

My knowledge of 70's music has grown in recent years, but it has only begun to process the impact of David Bowie and his cohorts.  If this blog helps me bring that era into greater focus, making artists like Lou Reed, Iggy Pop and Marc Bolan more than just mile markers on the trek up Mount Glam Rock, then the experiment will be a runaway success.  First stop: Mott the Hoople.  Frustrated by their lack of success and thinking seriously about bowing out of the game, this British band took one more stab at it at Bowie's behest.  In fact, a small, symbolic relic of this encouragement is immortalized on tape as they can be heard scrapping the intro to the second track, "Momma's Little Jewels."  The bandmates sound ready to call it a day when Bowie's voice comes through from the production booth, saying, "Don't stop, carry on."  With Reed's "Sweet Jane" kicking off the album and Bowie contributing the title track, MTH seem content to plant their standard firmly in the glammers' camp.  All the elements are here: seedy lyrics, sleazy guitar riffs, Jagger swagger.  On "One of the Boys," lead songwriter Ian Hunter seems to give away the whole style-over-substance tenet of the glam rock ethos when he sings, "I don't say much, but I make a big noise."  Grade: B

#15 - The Felice Brothers' "The Felice Brothers" (2008)

On my way to see the Felice Brothers in North Adams tonight.  Considering how much I listened to this album in the past twelve months, I very nearly included it in my "Top 10 of '10" (see the first ten posts).  Time being linear and all, though, doing so didn't seem quite fair since it came out in 2008.  Listening to this scrappy, ramshackle, countrypolitan rock - a style of Americana that owes so much, maybe everything, to Bob Dylan and The Band - it's hard not to think about authenticity.  Must a contemporary performer update old-fashioned music?  Must a white musician eschew traditionally black forms?  I have much to say on this topic, but not here and not now.  Let it suffice to say that this is late-night, car-drivin', foot-tappin', beer-drinkin', full-throated-sing-along-inspirin' music for those with a taste for country.  And I'm not talking about that overly-polished pop with a twang that passes for country these days.  I'm talking about the genuine article.  I'm talking about that same deep and deeply American wellspring from which all our folk tunes flow.  This is midnight ramble music populated by whores, horses, cowards, drunkards, clowns, louts, grifters, drifters, and Methodists!  Is it real?  Maybe, maybe not.  I'm not really sure what that means.  Or whether it matters.  If you are in the mood to imagine, though, you could do worse than to cast your lot with these dreamers.  Grade: A-

#14 - Solomon Burke's "Don't Give Up On Me" (2002)

1940-2010

 
Speaking of soul, there's so much beauty on this spare, simple album, which has been rightly compared to Johnny Cash's American Recordings.  With songs contributed by Bob Dylan, Elvis Costello, Tom Waits, Brian Wilson, Van Morrison and Nick Lowe, this album is chock full of wise lyrics and beautiful performances.  Highlights - including a guest spot by the Blind Boys of Alabama, whose voices complement Burke's perfectly - abound.  So, after the shooting in Arizona and the President's plea for greater love and civility, I think I'll just transcribe the lyrics to album closer, "Sit This One Out."  Grade: A-

The night’s getting old
and your eyes are weary.
You can’t see clearly
and your nerves are thin.
A half-eaten meal
and a tear on the table.
We don’t seen able
to hold our anger in.

Chorus:
Love sometimes
takes the form of frustration.
It’s a sad combination
of emptiness and doubt.
But, our only human connection
is expressed with a shout.
Well, I think I'm gonna have to just sit this one out.

There was a time
when we could sit and talk about things together.
No, we didn’t shout about things, at all.
We laughed, we loved, we played
and said what we had to say.
But there’s nothing to do now
and I don’t have a clue how to rise above it all.

Chorus

Can I rise above it all?
I don’t even have a clue.
Sometimes I feel like I’m going to fall.
So, I just hold on, don’t let go -
don’t give up everything that you work for so long.
Don’t destroy yourself in a second, with anger.
Hold on, a change will come.
I just wanna say:
I think I'm gonna have to sit and work this one out.

#13 - Otis Redding's "Complete & Unbelievable: The Otis Redding Dictionary of Soul" (1966)

I don't know what it means that as years go by I find myself increasingly enamored by classic soul music.  Just as the malnourished crave the very food their bodies need, maybe my burgeoning interest in soul is my spirit's not-so-subtle way of telling me what it's been missing.  At any rate, I've been thrilled in recent years by James Brown, Percy Sledge, Etta James, Ray Charles, Jackie Wilson, Solomon Burke, Candi Staton, and their very worthy white counterpart, Van Morrison.  But when I really need a fix, no stars sit as high in my sky as Sam Cooke and Otis Redding.  Rightly or wrongly I see in them the fundamental elements that make soul what it is.  From the former, we get that injection of gospel he honed with the Soul Stirrers.  From the latter, we get that gruff sound, that deep southern sensibility marinated in the blues.  Listen to their live work and you'll know that both could tear the roof off a club.  Both could pen lyrics fit to break your heart.  With this album, Redding shows off not only his songwriting and vocal virtuosity, but his comfort with diverse styles.  At turns he is plaintive, gritty, thrilling and always, always charismatic.  Unsurprisingly, "Try a Little Tenderness" is the standout track.  His patient restraint as the song builds and builds towards its crescendo suggests an artist in full control of his craft, someone whom Yeats might say has "come into his force."  But there are other equally amazing moments: his back and forth with the horn section on "Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa (Sad Song)"; the way he summons such believable emotion on "My Lover's Prayer"; the effortless cover of "Day Tripper," which, along with his amazing take on "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" elsewhere, shows he could have just as easily done some moonlighting as a rock singer if his day job hadn't panned out.  Lastly, I have to mention how much I love "She Put the Hurt on Me."  Rarely has such pain sounded like such fun.  Also, Peter Gabriel fans will laugh when they hear the opening of "I'm Sick, Y'all" and find out where that iconic "Sledgehammer" horn intro likely came from.  There is one more connection between Cooke & Redding, too.  One died on Decembert 10th and one on December 11th, though four years apart.  Both went far too early.  Who knows what they might have had in store?  Grade: A

#12 - P J Harvey's "Rid of Me" (1993)

Background information:  I saw P J Harvey open for U2 in Albany on their Elevation tour in 2001.  Seeing Bono & the boys in concert was the realization of a decade-long wish for me and they really did put on a great rock show.  Bono was under the weather but still worked the crowd like a pro, name-checking J. B. Scott's, the Albany rock club U2 visited on one of their first runs through the states.  So, I was in good spirits and required nothing extra to make the evening complete.  But Harvey kicked off the show in a slinky, silvery, glittering cocktail dress, alternately roaring and cooing into the microphone for more than half an hour.  She was, in a word, sexy.  And I made a note to check out some of her recordings.  Finally making good on that promise today, nearly ten years later, I listened to Rid of Me, which many critics consider to be her crowning artistic statement.  Helmed by Steve Albini, the erstwhile Pixies producer who months later would help craft Nirvana's sound on In Utero, the recording bears his mark throughout.  But whereas with those artists the quiet/loud dynamic inherent in the songwriting requires a heavy hand to help drop the hammer, here the technique is applied much more indiscriminately and to a much less interesting effect.  The songs are awash in messy, sludgy excess.  On stage, standing alone, Harvey had shone, her signature, throaty moan filling the arena to the rafters with sex and catharsis.  On tape, her vocals are either drowning in a tedious, monochromatic angst or futilely competing for space with Albini's "Wall of Grunge."  Maybe the lyrics are good, I don't know.  The heavy-handed production values were too dated and distracting to notice.  It certainly doesn't help that she attempts an ill-advised and directionless cover of Dylan's "Highway 61 Revisited."  I mean, shit, if she wanted to time travel, why couldn't she have worked with Bob Johnston & Tom Wilson?  Sigh.  At least I can enjoy her whipping her hair back and forth on the cover art.  Grade:  C- 

#11 - Funkadelic's "Maggot Brain" (1971)

 This was the album that got me thinking about this project in the first place.  Thinking about New Year's resolutions and realizing that I've been reading about and collecting music for awhile now, I figured it was high time I started enjoying the fruits of my labor.  So I scrolled through my iPod looking for an as-yet-unheard album with a solid reputation.  Funkadelic's Maggot Brain caught my eye.  Seeing that the first track was more than ten minutes long and knowing my own preferences for music other than "jam" and "funk," I was dubious.  I was relieved to find the music not only accessible, but downright enjoyable.  Over the course of this year, I'm sure I will come across "difficult" albums that reveal themselves slowly, gradually opening up layers of complexity and nuance.  But this isn't one of them. It's just plain good from the get go.  The first song is the title track and apparently its special quality comes from George Clinton telling guitarist Eddie Hazel to "play as if your momma just died."  Next you get "Can You Get To That" with an acoustic melody so infectious you'd think George Harrison sat in on the studio session (and the melody is sampled by Sleigh Bells for "Rill Rill," too.)  For an album with only seven songs, there are plenty of memorable highlights: the iconic bassline of "Hit It and Quit It," the call-and-answer vocals in "You and Your Folks, Me and My Folks," and what sounds like someone bending the notes of a motherfuckin' triangle on "Back In Our Minds."  Grade:  B+

#10 - Cee-Lo Green's "The Lady Killer" (2010)

Retro music can be a crapshoot, especially when it’s in the wrong hands.  How do you walk the fine line between reverence and rehash, between classic and kitsch?  For every She & Him, a group that turned out an excellent 60’s-style pop album this year, there’s an Amy Winehouse who would prefer to forsake quality music for the Keith Richards’ Fitness Regimen.  Cee-Lo, who will likely and unfortunately be remembered more for “Fuck You” than for the majority of his work in Goodie Mob, Gnarls Barkley, or as a solo artist, had a great 2010.  His stellar contribution to The Twilight Saga: Eclipse soundtrack, “What Part of Forever,” featured some of the best whistling this side of an Andrew Bird album and – more impressively – made me listen to The Twilight Saga: Eclipse soundtrack.  The Lady Killer covers some serious musical territory over its 45-minute run-time.  You get 50’s crooning on “Old Fashioned,” 60’s cool on the Bond-inspired “Love Gun,” a funky 80’s bass line on “Bright Lights, Bigger City” – not to mention a fantastic take on Band of Horses’ “No One’s Gonna Love You.”  All that and a voice more than worthy of the material he has the good taste to resurrect.  Grade:  B+

 

#9 - Charlotte Gainsbourg's "IRM" (2010)

If you don’t like Beck, stop reading.  To call him a producer on this album would be like going to Five Guys and referring to the bacon on your cheeseburger as a “garnish.”  This is a full-on Beck project and his fingerprints are everywhere, even if Gainsbourg is the principal collaborator.  If you’ve never gone to Beck’s website and listened to some of the offerings from his “Record Club,” in which he and a group of guest musicians cover a classic album in a single day recording session, do yourself a favor and check it out.  There are some gems.  You can hear that type of experimentation in the percussion on IRM tracks like “Greenwich Mean Time” and “Voyage.”  Most of the vocals are delivered in that wispy, girlish voice that has been a mainstay among indie songstresses for the past decade.  Don’t let that deter you.  A virtue of Beck’s compelling production is to feature Gainsbourg’s singing at exactly the right level throughout.  The result is a voice that sounds in practice far more versatile than you would think it could be in theory.  It is jaunty on the White Stripes-style duet “Heaven Can Wait,” seductive on “Time of the Assassins,” sweet on the Beatles-y ballad “In the End,” hopeful on “Master’s Hands,” and – amazingly – both fragile and defiant on the menacing “Le Chat Du Café des Artistes.”  If you’re wondering about the title, it is the French abbreviation for what English-speakers call an “MRI” – a reference to the series of brain scans that Gainsbourg underwent after a water-skiing accident a few years back.  Pardon my French, but this album is KO-A.  Grade:  B+

#8 - Roky Erickson with Okkervil River's "True Love Cast Out All Evil" (2010)

Of all the high profile comeback albums in 2010 from stars of yesteryear – Jerry Lee Lewis, Mavis Staples – this gem by the former 13th Floor Elevators’ frontman was by far the best.  Bookended by two lo-fi song fragments, the album consists of Erickson & Co. tackling all types of heavy shit.  Ruminations on love and loss and law from a man who in 1969 opted to be committed and undergo electroconvulsive therapy rather than serve a ten-year sentence for possessing a single joint.  A background like that makes it all the more poignant when he sings – sounding like a psychedelic Steve Earle – “electricity hammered me through my head” on “Ain’t Blues Too Sad.”  This album is as deep, dark, and beautiful as it is unexpected.   Grade:  A-

#7 - Titus Andronicus' "The Monitor" (2010)

In a year when Snooki & the Real Housewives have reduced New Jersey to a national inside joke, one could be forgiven for thinking that their chief export in 2010 was STDs.  It would be worth remembering, however, that this is the state where George Washington crossed the Delaware River and where Walt Whitman wrote his deathbed edition of Leaves of Grass.  Punk-rockers Titus Andronicus clearly draw a great deal of inspiration from their home state on this Civil War-themed album.  In the seven-minute (!) opener (!!), a “A More Perfect Union,” Patrick Stickles sings, “Oh, I never wanted to change the world, but I’m looking for a new New Jersey / ‘cuz tramps like us, baby, we were born to die,” channeling both Billy Bragg and the patron saint of the Garden State, Bruce Springsteen.  This is a nerdy, brash, passionate mess of an album and you may find yourself singing along during the first listen.  Grade:  A-

#6 - Nas & Damian Marley's "Distant Relatives" (2010)

It was hard to know a year ago what rap in 2010 would be like with Lil Wayne in jail.  Aside from maybe Rihanna, there really has been no single figure in hip hop quite so ubiquitous in the last five years as the Poet Laureate of Hollygrove.  I am happy to announce that the state of our union is strong.  Perennial heavyweights like Big Boi, Eminem, The Roots and Raekwon all punched out strong albums this year, while newcomers like Nicki Minaj and KiD CuDi delivered full lengths that were highly catchy, if a bit more superficial in content.  And though there were a few tracks still peddling in Auto-Tune, it appears as if most of hip-hop took Jay-Z’s “D.O.A.” for the coup de grace it was meant to be.  Of course, all of the regular tropes are still there:  the sex, the money, the braggadocio.  But there seems to be more room in rap these days for realistic introspection.  Or, in the case of “distant relatives” Nas and Damian Marley, a thoughtful reflection on a tumultuous past and a hopeful future.  The story of Africa is the focus here – its anthropology, its diaspora, its colonization – told through a riveting and tasteful sampling of its contributions to world music.  And though the album does not shy away from the well-plumbed depths of slavery and racism, neither does it wallow in anger or despair.  Distant Relatives is ultimately about shared experience, a “big picture” album that insists on considering history from an inclusively human and humane perspective.   Grade:  A-

     

#5 - Sleigh Bells' "Treats" (2010)

Many of the critics reviewing this album compared band member Alexis Krauss’ singing to something like religious chanting and the comparison is appropriate.  There is a hypnotic, meditative quality to the vocals, especially on stand-out tracks like “Rill Rill.”  But for my money, the real star here is Derek Miller’s production, which, in a year of catchy and crunchy guitar riff pyrotechnics (see: Fang Island), is the undisputed King of the Mountain.  Listen for the thrilling moment on “Infinity Guitars” around the 1:51 mark when the already loud song gets inexplicably louder.  It is obvious throughout that their amps go to “11.”  Grade:  A- 

#4 - Kanye West's "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy" (2010)

My introduction to this album’s material was watching Kanye West perform “Runaway” on the MTV Music Awards.  After a year of embarrassing outbursts, interviews, tweets and an involuntary cameo on South Park, calling himself a “douchebag” felt like too little and too late.  It also felt appropriately tasteless.  Hearing the word “douchebags” sung, no matter how deserving its target, no matter how pretty the accompanying melody, for any reason other than comedy just felt…silly.  Watching that on TV, I really thought I was witnessing Kanye nuke the fridge.  But then:  a pair of revelations.  The first was this album, which, for all its bombast, is nearly a masterpiece.  The second was my realization that his personal life – even his frighteningly narcissistic insistence on living the majority of it in public – is kind of irrelevant to the art he’s creating.  I don’t want to make a virtue out of vice, but he seems capable of an alchemy that turns shit into gold.  After all, reasonable people can agree on all the available facts and still disagree on the conclusions one could reach from them.  Is Kanye obnoxious?  Garish?  Self-involved? Arrogant?  Yes.  Is he also charismatic?  Ambitious?  Self-critical?  Talented?  Yes.  As he rightly dares us on “Gorgeous,” “act like [he] ain’t had a belt in two classes.”  In 1994, major league baseball went on strike.  I was 15.  Turned off by what seemed to me then to be the greed of players and owners alike, I stopped watching.  I even stopped playing, so great was my disgust.  But, after reaching adulthood, I came back to the sport, acknowledging that the game itself was better than the men who played it.  So it is with Kanye.   Grade:  A-