Released a year after Nevermind blew the roof off this sucka, Pavement's Slanted and Enchanted hit the alternative market place not so much with a bang but rather a soft chime. A definitive, low-fi pop outing, Pavement owed more to the Velvet Underground than anyone. "Summer Babe (Winter Version)" sounds like every Lou Reed song ever written and "Conduit for Sale!" is a "The Murder Mystery" re-write. Minimal musicianship, demo-worthy production, simple arrangements, noise, and hardly a powerful rock voice to be heard in main writer Stephen Malkmus who more often talks through his verses than wails them, everything works here because all fourteen songs are utterly fantastic.
Finding a bigger audience in the US than he ever had before, (particularly in California), Morrissey's third solo effort and the only one to be produced by Bowie's ole axe-mate Mick Ronson, Your Arsenal boasted not only a solid batch of songs yet again, but also the first really consistent sound throughout. Showcasing a more rockabilly edge from guitarist Alain Whyte mostly on "You're Gonna Need Someone on Your Side" and the amazing "Certain People I Know", there's also the two acoustics "We'll Let You Know" and "Seasick, Yet Still Docked", and great singles "You're the One for Me, Fatty", "Tomorrow", and "We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful".
Massachusetts hardcore-turned-alt-prog-metal band Cave In made the transformation on their second and brilliant outing Jupiter. For better or worse, they remained restless and adopted more alternative rock stylings on their next few releases before going on hiatus for the last half of the early 2000s, only to reemerge and stay active, back to their metalcore-ish roots. But for one brief time and album, they were certainly onto something otherworldly here. Praised by numerous publications then and still now, Jupiter is a perfect mesh of heavy, very effect-laden guitars, clean vocals, occasional synths, and slamming, primitive drumming. There's a post-metal vibe that's unmistakable, but the tunes are far more melodic and immediate.
Much is made of the fact that 2 Pac was serving a prison sentence at the time his third record Me Against the World was released and debuted at number one on the charts. But Me Against's legacy hardly ends there. In actuality, Pac's real life legal troubles and self-admitted thug lifestyle did anything but cripple him artistically. It fueled every aspect of his most personal and confessional album at that point, something he'd only continue to explore for the few years remaining in his life. Tracks like "Lord Knows", "It Ain't Easy", "Dear Mama", and the cryptic "If I Die 2Nite" are all self-explanatory and only touch the surface of what's here.
Radiohead was one of the bands I forced myself to be selective with as really all of their albums since The Bends could have and probably should have made an appearance here. Considered by many to be more Radiohead-by-numbers at this point, The King of Limbs is rewarding with only eight tracks at a brisk thirty-seven minutes. It's a far more condensed effort, sounding like all the great stuff they had, with no room for meandering. Not that Radiohead is prone to do that mind you. "Codex" is easily one of the finest of many, many ballads in their catalog and "Bloom" pulls off that amazing trick yet again of having a song that musically shouldn't make any sense, yet never being able to let loose of your brain once you hear it.
The Stooges second volume-fest Fun House could be THE album that above any others pointed the direction clear and steady for the punk rock movement. Listening to their self-titled debut, nothing there or anywhere really could've prepared the record buying, concert going public for what transpired with Fun House. Starting off somewhat resembling music, this album gradually morphs into an ear-splitting, noise for the sake of noise-fest. And good goddamn is it awesome. "T.V. Eye" is easily one of the greatest songs with distortion ever conceived of and "Dirt" one of the sleaziest and creepiest. But once they hit the title track and especially "L.A. Blues", the bets are off.
Featuring as much humor as ever with a joke intro, two brief, self-depreciating skits, and a worthy stab at a hit/novelty single with "My Girlfriend's Girlfriend", Type O Negative's October Rust contrasts with the most depressing "Red Water (Christmas Morning)". The gloom all done tongue-in-cheek as was their style, what ultimately makes this a very worthy Bloody Kisses follow-up are the once again outstanding batch of songs. "Green Man", "Be My Druidess", and "Wolf Moon"cover the spectrum of Pete Steel's superb songwriting, from his vampiric pop melodies to his low and slow doom riffage, but it's "Love You to Death" which remains the all time finest song he ever wrote and as incredible as a love song as anyone has.
From the success of Leviathan, Mastodon digs deeper into their prog/classic rock influences while conducting a proper sequel with their next elemental-based offering Blood Mountain. Just as Leviathan revolved around Moby Dick, Mountain is structured around the concept of climbing a mountain and tripping balls on the way up. Or something. "Crystal Skull" and "The Wolf Is Loose" prove they were heavier than ever, while "Sleeping Giant" is on an entirely other level; a full-on prog fest with a gorgeous, building, linear intro, spaced-out guitar lines, and clean/harsh vocals mixed with a mid-temp groove that Brann Dailor still can't stop doing constant drum fills over.
When it comes to anticipation, you need to invent another word to describe what everyone felt with Nirvana's Nevermind follow-up. Before it all proved too much for Kurt Cobain and his life was no more, they delivered In Utero which is as satisfying as what could've been possible. Cobain felt Nevermind was too polished for his liking so he passed on working with Butch Vig again and instead brought in another Midwestener to produce, Steve Albini. Going for, (and achieving), the Pixies' Surfer Rosa drum sound, Utero boasts a more challenging batch of material for the listener to digest. Still, "Heart-Shaped Box", "Serve the Servants", "Rape Me", and "All Apologies" proved that Cobain still wasn't capable of penning a shit song.
Lenny Kravitz' love letter to Cosby kid Lisa Bonet Mama Said endures as one of the finest break-up albums there is. Dismissing Kravitz as a retro-rocker first and a great pop songsmith second is rather unfair. Though his influences often show-up on his sleeves and his lyrics are universally simple, neither thing is a detriment. Mama boasts a string of sincere pleas to his soon-to-be ex-wife and everything from the soul ballads "Stand By My Woman" and "More Than Anything in This World", bossa nova "What Goes Around Comes Around", ode to his newborn daughter "Flowers for Zoë", and the Slash collaboration and his best song ever "Always On the Run" work gloriously.
Due in part to Mike Patton's abrasively bonkers Mr. Bungle project recording their debut album in between his first two Faith No More joints, the idea with Angel Dust was to push outside of the box . Sans Jim Martin who was displeased with the new direction and soon bowed out, FNM starting writing from scratch and in this respect, Angel Dust somewhat re-invents them as a more diverse, art-rock flavored beast on top their funk-metal ingredients already in place. The Commodores cover "Easy", country-western comedy track "RV", cheerleader choir and pro-semen-swallowing lyrics to "Be Aggressive", as well as an instrumental cover of the Midnight Cowboy theme are examples of shit they previously wouldn't have attempted.
One incredibly good, one pretty good, and one "I forget it every time I hear it" album under their belts, Opeth got everything brilliant while at once completely defining their then style with Still Life. The debut of Martin Mendez on bass and the second album to feature other Martin, Martin Lopez on drums solidify the best rhythm section the band ever had and Fredrik Nordström back as engineer likewise contributes in giving Opeth the best sound they'd yet had. The mostly mellow "Face of Melinda" and closer "White Cluster" come damn close to "Godhead's Lament", but more than any other Opeth album, Still Life arguably has the most solid concept, thematically and musically.
For the MTV generation, there may not be a more perfectly constructed album in existence than this. Counting the add-on single "Leave Me Alone", ten out of eleven Bad jams had videos made for them, nine of them were singles, and five of them peaked at number one. So yeah, there's a reason it's sold in the ballpark of 40 million plus copies. Just as they had been with Thriller, Jackson and producer Quincy Jones were still trying to one-up themselves and though selling more records than Thriller is literally impossible, Bad easily fulfilled expectations. "Smooth Criminal", "Dirty Diana", "Speed Demon", "The Way You Make Me Feel", and "Man In the Mirror" are still favorite songs of mine, as they were when I was six years old.
Coming in to replace co-founder Tony Kaye, Rick Wakeman brought in a whole lot more gear, pretentiousness, and of course capes to help Yes kick it into the next level on their fourth Fragile. With the nifty idea of each band member composing a solo track, (Steve Howe's "Mood for a Day" clearly the victor), Fragile is fleshed out by four other proper songs that have found the opening "Roundabout" going down as probably Yes' signature tune. But "Long Distance Runaround", "South Side of the Sky", and "Heart of the Sunrise" each rank as prog-rock classics and defining staples of the genre.
While Method Man, Ol' Dirty Bastard, and Raekwon all worked with RZA to get their post-Enter the 36 Chambers solo debuts out, GZA waited patiently. This was fitting since he was one of two members to already have a major label record pre-Wu-Tang. Once finally unleashed though, Liquid Swords went down as unarguably the finest solo album by any member of the Clan. GZA's vocabulary and philosophical style which borrowed as heavily as ever from kung-fu films, (particularly Legend of the Liquid Sword and Shotgun Assassin), was as sharp as ever and his collaborations with fellow Tang members "Duel of the Iron Mic", "4th Chamber", and "Shadowboxin'" all deliver nearly as good as the Killah Priest solo "B.I.B.L.E.".
After Blue Lines practically invented trip-hop in 1991, Mezzanine proved that Massive Attack had another masterpiece up their sleeve, becoming their biggest seller still to this day. Still featuring samples and Horace Andy's Rastafarian, volume knob guest vocals, Mezzanine is a more ambient, at times heavier, and far darker beast than Blue Lines or the proceeding Protection. "Angel" and "Teardrop" could be the only two songs on here and this would probably still rank this high. "Dissolved Girl" and "Black Milk" are the two other best and both feature female vocals, (the later and "Teardrop" from Cocteau Twins singer Elizabeth Fraser), which fit the band's music like double bass drumming fits death metal.
Emerging after a seven-year hiatus, Robert Fripp and Bill Bruford returned, but John Wetton decided to keep his King Crimson break permanent, thus Peter Gabriel cohort and session legend Tony Levin stepped in along with Adrian Belew, who's highly unorthodox guitar playing was the perfect mirror-image to Fripp's. Belew also handled vocals and sounds like he's doing a David Byrne impression, hardly a bad thing. This and the year it was made has led many to consider Discipline to be King Crimson's answer to new wave, but that's a tad misleading. The instrumentals "The Sheltering Sky" and the title track, "Thela Hun Ginjeet", and "Matte Kudasai" are still the musicians communicating with their instruments taking center stage.
The New York, bass-less trio the Yeah Yeah Yeahs threw some stuff from their previous EP Machine into the mix here on their full-length debut Fever to Tell and it's all uniquely unified by Karen O's punk-heroine squawk and Nick Zinner's colorful guitar and keyboard playing. Many of the songs are wrapped up quickly and the entire band plays and sounds hard and live, making everything as exciting as it is interesting on paper. "Black Tongue", "Tick", the odd ballads "Maps" and "Modern Romance", "Cold Light", and one of the greatest things since sliced bread "Man" all make this album essential, more than less.
It's crazy now to think that Fleetwood Mac had nine albums out before Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks joined them. The Mac had been going in the polished, soft-rock direction they embrace fully here for a few albums and Christie McVie had been around since 1971's Future Games, but with Nicks and Buckingham on board, the hits were ready to fly. Nicks' scored with "Rhiannon" and "Landslide" and McVie with "Say That You Love Me", leaving Buckingham to open things up with "Monday Morning" and show off his virtuoso level guitar playing with his McVie co-write "World Turning". Before everybody started fucking and breaking-up with everybody else and making even BETTER music, they were already winning.
Working for the first time with Rush producer Terry Brown, Fates Warning delivered their strongest outing with Parallels. James LaBrie does some noticeable guest vocals on "Life in Still Water" a year before Dream Theater's Images and Words dropped, briefly helping out Fates frontman Ray Alder who scarcely needs it. Pretty much everything that Fates does incredibly well they do here, with every riff not being in 4/4, Mark Zonder's mega-complex, yet never distracting drumming, and technical guitar playing that exists more in the song compositions themselves than in dazzling leads. Take "The Eleventh Hour" as but one fantastic example.
Tod Rowlands and Ed Simons dropped their debut Exit Planet Dust after switching the "Dust" in their name to "Chemical", assumingly not to be confused with the blokes who did the Beastie Boys Paul's Boutique. It's splitting hairs when debating whether this is superior or not to the next and bigger selling Dig Your Own Hole, but I give this the nod if only because my favorite of the duo's song's "One Too Many Mornings" is here. In fact all the mellower moments on Planet Dust are the best, with "Chico's Groove" and the Beth Orton sung "Alive Alone" just standing-out more than the other excellent big beat jams.
A well-enough respected placement in the Tampa, Florida death metal scene since their formation by Lee Harrison in 1990, the drummer has been dusting Monstrosity off every couple of years for another album and always a new line-up. The constant instability in the band, occasional tough break, (both Corpsegrinder as a founder and Pat O'Brien as a near member were stolen away by the genre's poster boys Cannibal Corpse), and straight-up year In Dark Purity was released all join forces to make it one terribly underrated offering. I bought it on the strength of hearing "Perpetual War" and "Hymns of Tragedy", but everywhere else, the heaviness likewise abides.
Agalloch were lumped into the usually half-as-interesting American black metal scene due to their debut Pale Folklore having a very early Ulver-friendly sound with the addition of Varg-styled screaming. But with the follow up full-length The Mantle, no one genre could or should hold them. Most of what transpires here are very long acoustic guitar passages and instrumental sections that owe more to the post-metal atmosphere of Godspeed! You Black Emperor, while "I Am the Wooden Doors" is clearly a NORWEGIAN Emperor reference and the Ulver comparison remains unmistakable. No one in any of these bands had concocted anything quite as consistently remarkable though.
"The Rockin' Chair Album" was Howlin' Wolf's third over all, another semi-compilation that took six earlier singles and lumped them with six more. Done for the Chess label and written mostly by Willie Dixon, (sans three songs), Howlin' Wolf almost scares the panties off you with his uncanny roar. Probably the most viciously throated bluesmen of all time, it's the voice here that most kills it. Undisputed classics like "Spoonful", "Back Door Man", "Tell Me", "Wang Dang Doodle", "The Red Rooster", and maybe Wolf's best performance ever on "Shake for Me" just scratch at the door of what this man was capable of and remain incredibly essential renditions.
Few metal albums was I more excited for on release day than Lamb of God's Sacrament. The band had two utterly crushing full-lengths proceeding this one, being As the Palaces Burn and Ashes of the Wake and producer Machine, (who's consistently able to produce the greatest drum sounds currently heard in music), was back once again in a more collaborative role than before. And it seems rather daft that they haven't worked with him again as everything peaked here more or less for LOG as the songwriting was at it's zenith in "Walk with Me in Hell", "Requiem", "Blacken the Cursed Sun", and the motherfucker of all groove riffs "Redneck".
Two minor complaints can be made with Yngwie J. Malmsteen's debut album and the atrocious drum sound, (particularly the snare), is the biggest offender. The other is that Rising Force is almost entirely an instrumental outing and the two songs with "meh" vocals from Jeff Scott Soto are easily the weakest. So with six of them vocal-less, this begs the question "why bother having singing at all?". All that nitpicking aside, Force remains the finest neo-classical shred album there ever was. "Icarus' Dream Suite Op. 4" and "Evil Eye" would've sealed the deal alone, but the opening of "Black Star" and "Far Beyond the Sun" are simply unparalleled.
Al Green drops the panties like no other on his sixth album Call Me. Green tackles a song each from Hank Williams and Willie Nelson and the wacky part is they're both the highlights. Always at his best when delivering his majestic falsetto, he turns the Williams "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" and Willie's "Funny How Time Slips Away" into two of the best soul ballads ever recorded. The title-track here is also impossible not to shower with praise and has gone down as Green's most defining song and his own "Have You Been Making Out O.K." joins his country interpretations as another soft bit of heartache that ever so much hits the spot.
Taking their Slayer-worship as far as it could go, Sepultura jumped headlong into groove metal territory with Chaos A.D. The emphasis now turned to primal, chunky riffs while Max Cavalera's lyrics remained as politically conscience as ever. And even when the speed is kicked up in "Biotech Is Godzilla", it's all over in less than two-minutes and sounds more of hardcore than Bay Area thrash. "Refuse/Resist", "Territory", "Slave New World", "Nomad", and "Manifest" represent the best material the band had yet produced. Things would go too far into tribal land with Roots and subsequent albums, but Chaos was the perfect starting point.
Us Kiss nerds can argue on end as to what's the best album, song, member, era, or piece of merchandise our favorite band has. For the later, it's the original pinball machine btw. But everyone loves Rock and Roll Over. Eddie Kramer behind the dials, this is straight hard-rock done by a band still playing together sans-session musicians and still in their prime. "Baby Driver" is the only dud here, (as lame a Peter Criss-penned song as there ever was), but Gene's "Calling Dr. Love" remains a classic. Over is really Paul's mother fucker though. "Take Me", "Mr. Speed", "I Want You", "Makin' Love", and "Hard Luck Woman" prove beyond doubts that the Starchild is one of the best rock songwriters there is.
Much has been said about Eddie Van Halen's emergence on the scene. In just one-minute and forty-two seconds, he completely re-invents rock guitar playing in "Eruption". Dancing around a pentatonic scale for as long as it suited you was no longer solely allowed, so for better or worse, guitar shredding was birthed here. I'd say better since I like me some freak guitar playing. Past that, VH's most famous cover "You Really Got Me", "Runnin' with the Devil", "Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love", and "Feel Your Love Tonight" are all present and it's rather amazing that comparatively hidden gems like "I'm the One" and "Little Dreamer" may even be superior. "Jaime's Cryin" still sucks though.
This was one of the first East Coast hip-hop albums of any kind that I grew to appreciate since I was proudly shouting "West Si-eeede!" since high school, but the Jigga makes it easy. Having penned the lyrics in two days and then cutting the album in two weeks, it really does seem like Z is hardly trying here. Which makes his flow and rhymes all the more impressive. Of course The Blueprint ended up putting Just Blaze and more so Kanye West on the map as producers and the soul-heavy, hook-borrowing beats are the best on any album in the last decade and a half. "Takeover" remains my favorite Jay-Z or Kanye moment, turning the Doors "Five to One" into the best diss-fest since 2 Pac's "Hit 'Em Up".
The horror film has no finer soundtrack than that for Dario Argento's legendary Suspiria. The second collaboration between the Italian Hitchcock and Italian prog outfit Goblin not only complimented it's appropriate film better than was even thought possible, but also works fantastically as a stand alone album. I've played this several Halloween's in a row on repeat when trick or treaters are stopping by my house and it likewise hits the spot whenever you find yourself driving through a desolate, heavily wooded area at night. The title track is as frightening a piece of music as there is and "Witch" and "Sighs" equally could make you wet the bed if you heard them in the middle of the night, mid snooze.
Delving full-on into piano ballad territory, Nick Cave and the Bad Seed's The Boatman's Call is very much my cup of tea. The most personal set of lyrics that Cave had yet penned, Boatman strips it all down into a very different outing than what came before. Un-melodic, percussive, character study gloom made up the Bad Seeds early brand of avant-rock. But recently separated from former fling PJ Harvey, Cave saw it was high time to get introspective here with the incredibly depressing "Where Do We Go Now but Nowhere?" and one hell of a love song "Into My Arms" and the somber, slow, gorgeous music on all of Boatman's accompanies his words and near-speaking baritone wonderfully.
A part of rock legend now, the fuckin' Eagles man's Hotel California was the most expensive record to make at the time and catapulted the band into possibly the biggest in America. Joe Walsh, (already a successful solo artist and alcohol enthusiast), entered the picture, replacing founding member Bernie Leadon. Much of Hotel Cal rock radio has been trying ever so hard to make us hate including the title track, "Life In the Fast Lane", "New Kid In Town", and "Victim of Love", but these still hit the spot for me. The album tracks "Wasted Time" and Walsh's "Pretty Maids All in a Row" reign supreme and the entire production and vocal performances throughout are as pristine as rock music gets.
No garage rock revivalists were more hyped or critically lauded than the Strokes. Taking all three songs from the band's debut EP The Modern Age, Is This It was their proper full-length and it easily delivers on the promise by many as to how good it is. Julian Casablanca's distorted, sleepy-time vocals match his New York centered lyrics about drugs, sex, and being awkward and each and every song, (performed intentionally primitive-like by the band), are as hook-laden as all get out. The title track has one mighty fine bass line, the offensive-at-the-time "New York City Cops" is the funniest, and album tracks "Take It or Leave It" and "Barely Legal" may trump even the hits "Last Night", "Someday", and "Hard to Explain".
Roger Waters was now settled in the leader chair when Pink Floyd made Wish You Were Here. Spending half the year working on it had him calling virtually all the shots and being present every step of the way in studio. Times were tense with the band being exhausted from endlessly touring, being expected to follow up such a momentous recording as Dark Side of the Moon, Nick Mason's marriage falling apart, and virtually all four members at once or always pulling in different directions creatively. Victory was had regardless with the two-part Sid Barret ode "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" and title track most exceptionally.
Always restless, Mile Davis had been growing disillusioned with having the most successful and stable hard bop band of his or anyone's career and after successfully experimenting with modal jazz on Milestones, he decided to dedicate all of the Kind of Blue sessions to it. Featuring the sextet of himself, John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Paul Chambers, Jimmy Cobb, and Wynton Kelly, the results ended up becoming the biggest selling jazz record of all time. It really is hard to think of any jazz music ever recorded that is as inviting as Kind of Blue. This remains the first logical pick to recommend anyone who's interested in discovering what the jazz is all about, (wonder how many times I'm gonna use that Simpsons joke on this list).
Slayers landmark thrash recording Reign in Blood severely upped the Satan loving/God hating Bay Area band's impact on the metal world. Rick Rubin's production was a game changer for every band playing heavy music on the planet. Simply never before did a thrash record sound this good, even when compared to Slayer's immediately following works South of Heaven and Seasons in the Abyss. But ultimately, none can deny the beyond-classics "Angel of Death" and "Raining Blood" that open and shut the album. Some of the most blazing and brilliant metal then laid down, all over and leaving you wrecked in twenty-eight minutes and fifty-eight seconds.
Bristol, England's premier trip-hop trio Portishead released one of the finest debut albums in all of electronic music with 1994's Dummy. There's a hybrid of much beauty to be found here, with scratchy blues, jazz, hip-hop, and ambient music all swimming together with Beth Gibbons' ethereal vocals. Along with Björk, Gibbons is easily the best singer any electronic band has ever had; her vibrato alone nearly unparalleled. This immediately struck me upon hearing Dummy for the first time, but musically it's mysterious and haunting, at once sounding like you're having a bizarre dream about James Bond movies, ghosts, and dance clubs all at a vinyl listening party.
Following the trailblazing, half-electric Bringing It All Back Home, (amazingly done the same year), Highway 61 Revisited saw Bob Dylan continuing to not look back. Very much self-aware of his reputation and praise, Dylan welcomed the idea of toying with his listeners with a series of songs that took the direct lyricism of what he had already been turning heads with into more abstract and hazy territory. Not that this was an entirely new concept, just that it was more precedent than ever. "Like A Rolling Stone" remains his very most lauded composition and the title track, "Ballad of a Thin Man", and "Desolation Row" likewise have had entire essays written about them.
Queen's second soundtrack album was infinitely superior to their first Flash, but that's due in part to A Kind of Magic only being a partial-kinda-soundtrack and not obliged to include brief instrumentals that hardly make any sense outside the film they're in. Six of the songs here are in Highlander, (be it different versions), and the title of the album itself is lifted straight out of the dialog. The ballads "One Year of Love" and "Who Wants to Live Forever" and softer rock of "Pain Is So Close to Pleasure", the title track, and "Don't Lose Your Head", balance with "One Vision", "Friends Will Be Friends", "Gimme the Prize (Kurgan's Theme)", and "Princes of the Universe" which all have moments heavier than the band had been arguably ever.
Recorded, mixed, re-mixed, and then re-mixed again decades later all from a band that had broken-up, re-grouped by default in a different country with a different guitar player, the original guitar player switching to bass, and all with David Bowie kicking everyone in the ass to make it happen, (and get Iggy Pop off heroin), by all conceivable accounts Raw Power is an album that shouldn't at all exist. The fact that it does and is also incredible could be a testament to some higher being at work. "Search and Destroy", "Gimme Danger", the title track, and "Penetration" are what all rock should probably sound like. Noisy, sweaty, violent, offensively sleazy, and brilliant from front to back.
A mesh of classic rock solos and riffs, Norwegian folk melodies, mellotrons, flutes, screamed, growled, and clean chanted vocals, and blastbeats here or there, Below the Lights continued the foundation laid on Monunension that took the band farther still away from their primitive, second wave of black metal roots. Still boasting a more retro-styled sound and production, (particularly with the drums), Lights bettered it's still astonishing predecessor by a tighter batch of just seven songs. Openers "As Fire Swept Clean the Earth" and "The Dead Stare" are simply masterpieces while "Queen of the Night" starts off sounding like something on Hot Rats and "Havenless" is literally a Viking chant set to distorted guitars.
Continuing from Pretzel Logic with their further use of studio musicians predominantly, Walter Becker and Donald Fagen grabbed a then twenty-year old Jeff Porcaro to handle drum duties on all but one song, Michael McDonald on background vocals, and Rick Derringer for the the axe solo on "Chain Lightning". "Black Friday" became Katy Lied's biggest hit and "Everyone's Gone to the Movies" shows off the duo's slightly disturbed sense of humor, while the blues is Danned-up in "Daddy Don't Live in That New York City No More" and jazz-fusion likewise in 'Throw Back the Little Ones".
Ending Mastodon's element structured albums, (which had been going on since their debut Remission), Crack the Skye proved to be their absolute peak. Originally the band had a crop of very metal riffage they were planning to utilize for their forth full-length when fantastic guitar player/walking douche-nozzle Brent Hinds came in with a bag of classic rock riffs that all parties involved immediately considered far better. Mastodon really takes the kid gloves off here and dives headfirst into de-tuned prog. "Oblivion" opens things up with three/forths of the band sharing vocal duties and "The Last Baron" is without argument one of the finest progressive anything songs ever made and features probably the best guitar solo of the decade.
Released the same year as Oasis' debut, Blur's Parklife destroyed in England but never still has attained the kind of success their rivals have had in the States. Damon Albarn here began writing a whole slew of songs after the band's second album Modern Life Is Rubbish was wrapped-up that basically act as an encyclopedia of British music in fifty-two minutes. Everything from waltzes, synthpop, punk, new wave, psychedelic folk, and baroque pop are here and hardly any songs sound like the same influences are in them. Most impressive though is that Parlkife plays best from front to back, with Albarn's super-British vocals and the sharp, punchy production keeping everything glued together.
For whatever reason I can never, ever spell Sarah McLachlan's last name even remotely right without looking it up first. I blame the schools. But yes, released the same year as the first Lilith Fair tour went underway, Surfacing proved to be Mcla...Sarah's major breakthrough and her gorgeous voice is as exquisite as the songs themselves. This was long before "Angel" made us all think of that fucking puppy commercial and it's one of the numerous, fantastic ballads to be found here. "Adia", "Do What You Have to Do", "I Love You", "Witness", and "Full of Grace" being the others. "Building a Mystery", "Black and White", and "Sweet Surrender" further help make Surfacing an album with no filler.
The first Opeth release to feature a full-time keyboard player in Per Wiberg and the last that Martin Lopez or co-founder Peter Lindgren appeared on, Ghost Reveries was a sort-of era-ending album for the band. Coming off the success but physical and mental exhaustion experienced by the proceeding Deliverance and Damnation sessions, Mikael Åkerfeldt insisted on having his next batch of material well rehearsed by the time the studio was booked. Perhaps this along with the more prominent keyboard work as well as the strikingly different drum sound help give Ghosts an edge over their previous work, but the first five songs alone make this arguably Opeth's greatest.
The Dixie Chick's brand of pop country hit it's biggest selling peak with Fly, an album that took everything great about Wide Open Spaces and made it more so. It was impossible for several years afterwards even to avoid almost all eight of this album's singles, particularly "Goodbye Earl", "Without You", "Ready to Run", and "Cowboy Take Me Away", the later of which became somewhat of an instant classic and rightfully so. Others such as the bluegrass inspired "Sin Wagon" and one of the other textbook ballads "Cold Day In July" round out the steady batch of highlights, but I'd name Patty Griffin's first but not last Dixie Chicks album closer "Let Him Fly" as the finest moment here.
It's ludicrous to think of how much material Elton John and Bernie Taupin were required to pump out in the 70s. Then to marvel at how good if not great it all was is a whole other thing. Goodbye Yellow Brick Road was their seventh full length album in four years and a double one to boot. It's also endured as their finest work, boasting five classic rock staples, "Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding" the best and "Bennie and the Jets" by far the worst. Non-hits "I've Seen That Movie Too", "Jamaica Jerk-Off", "Roy Rodgers", "Harmony", "All the Girls Love Alice", "Sweet Painted Lady", also certainly help. This isn't quite Elton's best, but it's legacy as such I most certainly understand.
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