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Top Ten Tuesday: Top 20 Albums that Changed Music For Me (11-20)

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Following up on my list from two weeks ago. Here are the remaining entries.

11.  Kid A by Radiohead.  It seems like Ok Computer gets all the love these days. Sure, it’s a fantastic album, but once you’ve heard the ethereal gyrations of Thom Yorke’s voice on “Idioteque”, there’s no going back. Kid A is one of those albums that feels like it came through some wormhole and doesn’t belong here. When it was released it divided both critics and fans. The songwriting is often opaque, relying on dissonant chordal structures and asymmetrical rhythms, but under all the mathematical experimentation there is genuine heart. Granted that heart is the gloomy, eschatological organ of a serial contrarian, but it’s heart nonetheless.

12.  Rage Against the Machine by Rage Against the Machine.  I don’t need to defend this choice. Rage’s first album is their most direct and powerful statement. Blistering leads by Tom Morello which flick between metal and hip-hop, the impassioned cries and genius lyricism of Zack de la Rocha, and a gut-punch rhythm section. This is an abrasive yet beautiful work of political art. Rage went on to become a touchstone for many artists  including Matt Bellamy of Muse and Jack White. However, their raw and righteous sound is transcendent taken simply on its own.

13.  Simon and Garfunkel’s Greatest Hits by Simon and Garfunkel.  Is it cheating to include a greatest hits? Certainly. However, this is the album I wore out as a kid. The first album I adored. When we went on vacation, I sat in the back seat humming “Sounds of Silence” and “I Am a Rock”. Like the best folk acts, S&G went beyond simple roots writing and incorporated pop melodies, rock arrangements, and myriad other influences. This duo is not simply a great folk partnership, but one of the greatest songwriting teams ever forged.

14. Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness by Smashing Pumpkins.  If I could only listen to one album for the rest of my life, this might be it. It’s not the most finely crafted or most powerful entry on this list, but dammit you get a lot of mileage out of this sucker. Spanning 28 tracks and over 2 hours, Mellon Collie is a testament to the prolific songwriting chops of Billy Corgan. The styles displayed range from heavy metal, to alt rock, to country, to folk, to new age and it’s all held together by Corgan’s distinctive wail. Mirroring his own twisted mix between a banshee and a cherub, Corgan’s masterpiece blends nostalgia, discontent, and wanderlust into one of the farthest reaching albums ever produced. There is truly nothing like this album and that is perhaps why it remains one of the best-selling double albums of all time. Plus the Chicago Symphony Orchestra is on it, so what more do you want?

15. Third Eye Blind by Third Eye Blind. It’s a shame that 3EB is mostly remembered as a 90’s pop sensation. Their first album is an amazing example of catchy, tight rock songwriting. Check out the first 6 tracks! “Jumper”, “Semi-Charmed Life” (say what you will), “Graduate”! There’s not a weak moment in the first 25 mins of music. It’s not genre-breaking. It’s not innovative. It’s ant-art through and through. Yet, this is how you make a pop-rock album. Every moment is perfectly conceived from the falsetto hook on “Semi-Charmed Life” to the lilting guitar intro to “How’s It Going to Be”.

16. Bad as Me by Tom Waits.  Oh Tom Waits. You’re everyone’s creepy uncle. What people often forget about this snarling, gruff bluesman is his great sense of humor. Bad as Me has its fair share of gloom (like the war-torn “Hell Broke Luce”), but it’s also full of wit and genuine silliness. Keith Richards lends his iconic licks to this eclectic mix and helps to create a modern classic. Sometimes it’s hard to nail down exactly what makes Tom Waits so good, but what  I will say is that he’s impossible to stop listening to. Like a masterful storyteller, he commands his audience with simple (yet effective) performances.

17. Achtung Baby by U2.  Before U2 resigned themselves to “merely” filling stadiums, they produced 1991’s gem Achtung Baby. This strident (by U2’s standards) LP sees the pre-caricature Bono at his most effectively spiritual and weird. The electronic production on the album helps to ground U2’s often lofty sound in a more dirty and untempered aesthetic. The result is a stark and powerful contrast between the soaring melodies that define U2’s career and more gritty, distorted instrumental orchestrations. The opening track “Zoo Station”, with its stuttering percussion and broken-siren guitars, is emblematic of the album as a whole. Achtung Baby is spontaneous and unpolished revealing a rawer and more intimate side of a band that is more comfortable in a Spaceship than in the small pubs with us workaday’s.

18. Icky Thump by The White Stripes.  I came to the White Stripes late in their career. My first Stripes album was Icky Thump and I missed the Elephant train entirely. That’s why Icky Thump is where it all began between Jack White and I. It’s jarring, disjointed (what are the bagpipes there for?!), and often ugly. That’s part of what makes it so brilliant. The rawness that White comes by so naturally infects all areas of the album from its production to the performances and even the songwriting. Meg’s off tempo drums on “Rag and Bone” and the broken-fuzz box sizzle of Jack’s guitars make an album which (for me) both redefined and reinforced the rawness of the blues tradition. Elephant may be the stronger album, but Icky Thump led me to the glory that is Jack White.

19.  Cage the Elephant by Cage the Elephant.  Drunken, trailer-park blues. That’s how I describe Cage’s first LP to those out-of-the-know.  You wouldn’t know from his coked out, slurring delivery but Matthew Shultz is a remarkably articulate, well-read young man. Perhaps that’s the strongest endorsement I can give of Cage’s first album. Shultz’s abilities as a performer are unmatched. He is quite simply the best frontman performing right now. He’s unpredictable, unhinged, and unmatched. This first album contains so much swagger, bravado, desperation, and damn good songwriting that (while not revolutionary in the rock canon) it changed the way I perceived the act of performance.

20.  An Awesome Wave by Alt-J.   What the hell is this? That was my first thought when I heard Alt-J’s first full-length release. From strange vocal delivery to lyrics that address “Where the Wild Things Are” and weird sex acts (“Tessellate”), Britain’s Alt-J are a weird group of guys. The vocals sound like they could be performed by a character out of “Alice in Wonderland” and the band itself indulges in weird instrumentation at every turn. Yet, there is something enthralling about this album. It’s so confident in its sense of place and purpose that it can’t help but be captivating. Furthermore, the inventiveness of the acappella-meets-hip-hop harmonies point to a new form of indie rock. It’s just such a bizarre and bewildering album that I can’t help, but revel in its weirdness.