5 Favourite ALBUMS

[Bryan Lee O'Malley]

Bands come and go. Albums are what they leave behind!!

Here are 5 albums that I love off the top of my head...

Daft Punk - DISCOVERY (2002)
Space disco science fiction crap by two French guys! Everyone on this board has probably heard this album and/or seen the anime movie they made based on it.

Wilco - YANKEE HOTEL FOXTROT (2002)
Umm... rock songs... by... some dudes... one of the dudes got kicked out of the band during the recording of it, and now he's dead. And the band kinda sucks now. But they made this album, and it's still great.

Bruce Springsteen - BORN IN THE USA (1984)
I am totally fixated on this record! I like to imagine it being made in a time when 1984 was brand-new and even futuristic. Every song on it is great, even if some of them are a bit annoying because you may have heard them 4000 times in K-Mart (cough Glory Days). It sounds insane, and it is full of depressing triumphant shit.

Prince - SIGN 'O' THE TIMES (1987)
A totally loony double album by that old genius, Prince. See, even if he makes another crummy album every year and turns to Jesus and stops singing about fucking girls, he still made a bunch of great stuff in the 80s and it still rules. Prince is not my favourite recording artist but some of his albums are some of my favourite albums. This one has plenty of duds, but it has tons of genius on it too. And it was clearly a big influence on Daft Punk (see above).

and one I'm listening to obsessively right now:

JJ - No 2 (2009)
It sounds like Enya singing a L'il Wayne song at first (and kind of is), and also a bunch of tropical-sounding rhythms and pure silliness, and then you realize that the lyrics are all about death and sadness, and then you realize that they are like giggling in the background of these songs. It's like some weird mysterious Swedish people making fun of music entirely. BRILLIANT! Not for everyone, but I love it!

[Marcus Lauzon]

good picks bryan.

here's my top 5 albums.


5. The Pixies - Doolittle
4. Sufjan Stevens - Come On! Feel the Illinoise!
3. Coconut Records - Nighttiming
2. Cursive - The Ugly Organ
1. The Unicorns - Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone?

[Tom Tom Benomnom]

You really think Nighttiming is that good?

It was an okay album, but ultimately forgettable. A couple of good singles though.

[Marcus Lauzon]

I love jason schwartzman. nighttiming is such a nice album I can listen to and relax.

[Tom Tom Benomnom]

I personally thought Davy was better. Microphone was a really catchy single, a little more than West Coast.

[Lovers Turn to Monsters]

I was about to write about my favourite five albums but I just thought I'd dive in and say Coconut Records is an ace project but Davy is by far the best he's done. That albums filled with singles!

It's actually got the same structure as a greatest hits album.

[Andrew R]

i dunno, for some reason, i got wayyyyyy into that record. it surprised me. the song west coast became the de facto theme song for my many 2008 NBA Lakers Playoff Road-Trips.

[Lobsterdeth]

Mine are, in no particular order

My Bloody Valentine - Isn't Anyrhing
While the fan and critic favorite is Loveless, I still preffer this album for it's great and awesome melodies drenched in fuzz and distortion.

Don Caballero - Don Caballero 2
Math rock at it's finest, every track is amazingly well thought and full of energy. Ian Williams and Damon Che are insane guitar and drum players, respectively, insane.

Jawbreaker - 24 Hour Revenge Therapy
It was hard to decide between Dear You or this, but this album has some really hard hitting songs, it's really emotionally driven.

The Jesus Lizard - Goat
Jesus Lizard really blew a fuse with this album, great vocals, great lyrics and really strange noisy lyrics, in every sense of the word, this album is a classic.

Bad Religion - Suffer
I know what you're thinking, I heard this album when I was 13 too, but I never outgrew it. Being only around 35 minutes long means I hear this album almost everyday, and it's still great. Power-chord driven melodies never sounded so good (and never will again) this album is energy in mp3 form.

If you haven't heard any of these albums me and your mother are very dissapointed in you.

[Christ Sanchez]

here are my favorites

Regina Spektor- Soviet Kitsch
Its about bitches, cancer, and love. Her voice is so sweet yet some of her songs are playful.

Mastodon-Leviathan
just some really good music to bring out the metal head in all of us.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs- Fever to tell
from banshee screams to gloomy love songs. Karen O is awesome.

Beck-Guero
Like taking a walk in east la while tripping on acid.

Calle 13- Residente o Visitante
this is good stuff, their lyrics are funny and have a certain gringo latin funk to them.

[triplea]

Too lazy to write up long descriptions so I'll just list

1. Boston - Boston
2. Queens of the Stone Age - Lullabies to Paralyze
3. Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon
4. Apples in Stereo - New Magnetic Wonder
5. The Cars - The Cars

Honorable mentions:
RUSH - Moving Pictures
Eagles of Death Metal - Death by Sexy
Sean Lennon - Friendly Fire
Harvey Danger - Little by Little

[Scotticus Maximus]

That first Boston album has to be one of the best debut albums ever. The Cars would also be high on that list. I think about stupid things like this ALL THE TIME

Cheers for Sean Lennon! I love the video for Dead Meat. Have you heard Dhani Harrison's band, thenewno2? He's pretty good, kind of Radiohead-sounding.

I bet you didn't think anyone was going to comment on this since it was like 3 months ago BUT YOU WERE WRONG!!

[triplea]

Yeah I wasn't, I feel so relieved now.

Any yeah, Sean Lennon's stuff is great.

[Ben Berntsen]

Sigur Ros - Takk
This is seriously like the perfect album in my eyes. It's just track after track of soaring soundscapes. I'm fairly convinced that if you listened to this album in an open field on a sunny day you would reverse-plummet into the sky in some kind of musical rapture.

Radiohead - The Bends
Everyone loves OK Computer but I've always preferred the Bends as the definitive Radiohead album. It was before they went all synth-happy so the sound is a little more organic to my ear, and it just has more of my favorite Radiohead songs on it than any other album. It's also the first Radiohead album I ever heard which probably has some influence on my opinion of it.

Death Cab for Cutie - Transatlanticism
I'm going to say that this is Death Cab's definitive album. Their older indie stuff had a nice edge to it but they get a lot more intimate on this one... and then after this album they started to get a little too radio-friendly. But this one in the middle of the transition is perfect, every single track. This is my roll-down-the-windows-and-sing-along album and it has never failed me.

Brand New - The Devil and God are Raging Inside Me
I'm not really a fan of these guys, in fact this is the only album of theirs I ever bought. It's as emo as it gets (or got, back when emo was cool) and on a metaphysical level it kinda sounds like someone puking their guts out into a microphone. But somehow when I'm in a bad mood this one is always what I end up listening to.

Copeland - You Are My Sunshine
Every time this band releases a new album it becomes my new favorite album that they've ever done. Somehow the content of their music seems to age and progress at the same speed as my life. Musically this album is a real treat too, it's got this real sort of haunted lullaby feel to it, it's soothing and sorrowful and spooky all at once, and the lyrics are more or less the same. Definitely a keeper.