My Favorite Albums

Now that songs are just something you shuffle on your iPod, the age of the album is dead.

I have always been an album guy, and have fought the implications of the mp3 age, but even I find myself often just listening to a song or two instead of an entire album before moving on to another band. There was a time when I'd put a cd on and just listen start to finish. Back when artists had to actually worry about making enough good music to fill an album.

So in a sad celebration of a bygone age, I'd like to tell you about my favorite albums.

These albums are fairly diverse, but share some common traits. Foremost, they all have strong emotion. I react to music where an artist is showing true feelings, whatever they may be.

Emotion by itself is, of course, not enough to elevate an album to greatness. These albums also express those emotions through powerful lyrics and enthralling music. Lyrics are so important to me that I'll share a sample lyrics from each album that resonate with me.

So with no further adieu, in alphabetical order, some of my favorite albums.

Boys for Pele by Tori Amos

I have to admit, Tori Amos has always frightened me a bit, After all, if I'm to believe the album title, she wants to throw me in a volcano (google it). I was also never sure if the references she made to fairies was just being cutesy, or if she really frigging believes in Fairies.

Regardless of this (and some may say irregardless, because they're idiots), this album is phenomenal. The songs feature her on piano or harpsichord (yes!) with minimal accompaniment, and are uniformly haunting and mesmerizing. It's also a break-up album, which loads the album with the emotional outcry I yearn for in music.

The one knock I have is that the lyrics can get a bit surrealistic (what's this about the Pope's rubber robe?), but when she plays it straight, they hit like a punch to the stomach:

You say you packed my things
And divided what was mine
You're off to the mountain top
I say her skinny legs could use sun,
But now I'm wishing
For my best impression
Of my best Angie Dickinson
But now I've got to worry
Cause boy you still look pretty
When you're putting the damage on

Funeral by Arcade Fire

An album written in response to a series of funerals band members had to attend, Funeral drips with feeling. I'm a sucker for the moment in the song when the singer's voice breaks with emotion. When Win Butler sings, "Then we think of our parents, well what the hell ever happened to them?!" that's exactly what happens. Considering the inspiration for the album, it's just one powerful moment in an album full of them.

Sample lyrics:
You change all the lead
Sleepin' in my head to gold
As the day grows dim
I hear you sing a golden hymn,
The song I've been trying to sing

In the Aeroplane by the Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel

Perhaps my favorite album of all time (and "Two Headed Boy" is a contender for my favorite song of all time). It has everything I look for, though the lyrics can lean a bit too surreal, much like Tori. Still, I love to put on my headphones and listen to this start to finish.

Sample lyrics:
And one day we will die
And our ashes will fly from the aeroplane over the sea
But for now we are young
Let us lay in the sun
And count every beautiful thing we can see
Love to be
In the arms of all I'm keeping here with me, me

P.S. This album also has the two most angst-filled lines in music history, imho:
Your father made fetuses with flesh licking ladies
While you and your mother were asleep in the trailer park.

P.P.S. Their only other album really sucks. Sigh.

Midnight Organ Fight by Frightened Rabbit

Depression after a hard breakup seems to be a gold mine of inspiration. That's what this album tells me. It takes some effort to get me to think, Dude, you're more fucked up than even me. You need a hug! but this album pulls it off.

But even as Scott Hutchinson wallows in misery, whether comparing himself to an emotional leper, or beseeching someone to sleep with him even if she doesn't know his name because he needs "human heat," there's the glimpse of hope that for me is the most powerful aspect of melancholy music. If the album was a series of, "Everything sucks and I'm going to kill myself," why would anyone listen to it?

Instead, we have these lyrics:
Am I ready to leap
Is there peace beneath
The roar of the Forth road bridge?
...
These manic gulls scream it's okay
Take your life give it a shake
gather up all your loose change
I think I'll save suicide for another year

O by Damien Rice

A guy with a guitar and minimal accompaniment singing his heart out. What else can I say? Bonus points because he's Irish.

Sample Lyrics:
What I am to you is not real
What I am to you, you do not need
What I am to you is not what you mean to me
You give me miles and miles of mountains
And I'll ask for the sea

Plans by Death Cab for Cutie

I could say a lot about this great album, but it's all trumped by the time in my life when I got to know it. It was as if I was meant to hear this album at that time, to share hard feelings with someone else.

So all I can say is, as my grandmother lay dying in a hospital bed, I heard these words:
'Cause there's no comfort in the waiting room
Just nervous pacers bracing for bad news
And then the nurse comes round and everyone will lift their heads
But I'm thinking of what Sarah said, that "Love is watching someone die"

Turn on the Bright Lights by Interpol

Interpol is easily my favorite of the rash of "retro" bands that came out a few years ago. They took the Joy Division mantle and ran with it. The album can feel a bit cold and distant, but that can convey as much as a voice cracking with emotion.

Sample Lyrics:
You are the only person
who's completely certain
there's nothing here to be into

Undertow by Tool

I've always been a fan of heavy music, but too often it's generic and juvenile. Variations on either "fuck you" or "I'm an elf prince" set to the same old guitar riffs you've heard for the last 30 years just doesn't cut it.

Back in the early 90s, I caught a video on a late night music show, and I was absolutely stunned. The music was heavy, but unlike anything I'd heard before. The lyrics were personal and introspective. And the video itself... holy shit. A new high-water mark in heavy music had been reached in my view.

It took a while to find the album since they hadn't hit it big yet (but they soon would.) When I finally did find it, the entire album was at the same high level. And more amazing videos would follow.

Sample lyrics:
Why can't we not be sober?
I just want to start this over
Why can't we drink forever?
I just want to start this over
I am just a worthless liar
I am just an imbecile
I will only complicate you
Trust in me and fall as well

The Wall by Pink Floyd

If I have to pick the album that has affected me most, this is it. Never is music more powerful than when it shows you that someone else has had similar experiences to you. When I first heard The Wall, I knew that I wasn't the only person that felt the way I did. You learn as you get older that everyone is struggling with demons, but when you're a teenager, everyone else seems to have it together. I knew I didn't. And apparently Roger Waters didn't have it together either.

The most important aspect to this album to me, however, is that it is a mountain you climb as you progress in your life. At least that's what happened to me. When I was an angry teenager struggling in what felt like a hostile world, the album seemed like a blueprint: If I build a wall around myself, no one can hurt me anymore. I'll be safe.

Then one day, when you're older and have gained more perspective, when you reach the peak of the mountain and see what's on the other side, you realize this is just what the album is cautioning you not to do. Roger Waters had built that wall, and it was a terrible mistake. The day I realized this, my life was changed. And that's why this is such an amazing album.

Sample lyrics:
All alone, or in two's
The ones who really love you
Walk up and down outside the wall
Some hand in hand
And some gathered together in bands
The bleeding hearts and artists
Make their stand
And when they've given you their all
Some stagger and fall, after all it's not easy
Banging your heart against some mad bugger's wall

With All Due Respect by The Young Dubliners

This is an album of classic Irish folk songs (and a couple Pogues songs) done as rock songs. Being Irish, and a lover of Irish music, this one is a slam dunk for me. Especially since Irish music has the emotion I seek in spades.

Sample lyrics:
On Raglan Road of an autumn day
I saw her first and knew
That her dark hair would weave a snare
That I might one day rue
I saw the danger and I passed
Along the enchanted way
And said let grief be a fallen leaf
At the dawning of the day
...
Oh I loved too much and by such, by such
Is happiness thrown away

(I have to say I love the repetition of "by such," which implies to me such emotion that the singer is catching his breath and has to start the line over. Of course, it's probably just filling a measure, but I prefer my interpretation.)

The consistent greatness dilemma

Several of my favorite bands are not on this list, and these bands of course have made some of my favorite albums. The problem is, I can't pick one of their albums as a favorite. So instead of listing of several albums by each band, here are a bunch of bands that have too many great albums to list (and some that suck, so be warned):

Eels
The Frames
Hayden
Iron Maiden
Jethro Tull
Okkervil River
Radiohead
Josh Ritter
Bruce Springteen