TOP TEN: Favorite albums

I haven't done a top ten in a little while, so here's a new one. Again, if you don't agree with this list, maybe you should go listen to your brand new Kid Rock CD, FAG!!

1. OK Computer by Radiohead. Basically the best album ever made. It's hard for me to put into words exactly what it is. I look at this album as the beginning of an entirely new era in music. It changed everything. It's as close to perfect as you can get.

2. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot by Wilco. The American version of OK Computer. Or at least that's what they say. I think it's similar (especially in sound), but different in many other ways. OK Computer can at times seem distant and cold, but YHF always seems so personal and, even though the songs sound sad, there's a bit a hope in nearly every tune.

3. In the Aeroplane Over the Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel. I can't think of a single album that I connect more to my childhood. It's funny though, because I didn't hear this album until I was, like, 21. But I'm not the only person who connects with it this way. Read any (possitive) review and you'll hear the same thing. Jeff Mangum's songs are very personal, but they're a type of personal everyone, especially young men I think, can relate to.

4. Loveless by My Bloody Valentine. Out of all the albums I've ever heard, this is the one that I simply cannot figure out how it was made. It seems impossible that anyone could get those instruments to make those sounds, no matter how much they're played with in the studio. It's the most dense album I've ever heard. But none of that would matter if the songs sucked. Thankfully, they don't. Far from it.


5. You Forget It In People by Broken Social Scene. It kind of reminded me of Loveless for this decade when I first heard it. This one is the hardest to pin down. It sounds like My Bloody Valentine having rough sex with Sonic Youth. That's as close as I can get to decribing it to someone who's never heard it.

6. Kid A by Radiohead. Radiohead's big "Fuck You" to everyone. So many people wanted them, NEEDED them to be the new U2 after OK Computer. Radiohead had other ideas. Devoid of guitars for much of the album, Radiohead instead decided to make a pop version of an electronic album. Some people say Radiohead shouldn't be hailed for this album because it sounds like other artists albums, namely Aphex Twin, but those people couldn't be more wrong. Aphex Twin could never make this album. There's too much humanity in Radiohead's electronica.

7. Anodyne by Uncle Tupelo. Before Wilco, Jeff Tweedy was the jr. partner of Uncle Tupelo, along with future Son Volt frontman Jay Farar (and some other guy no one cares about anymore). Listening to this album though, you'd have no idea the big ideas these guys would eventually be throwing around in their music. That's not a complaint though. This album sounds like three guys sitting around, singing sad songs about love and death, ect. But the songs are among the best either man ever wrote, and put them together and you've got perhaps the greatest alt country album ever. I love Wilco to death and I think they're the best band in American history, but if Uncle Tupelo could have gave us another couple of these albums, I wouldn't have complaned.

8. Highway 61 Revisted by Bob Dylan. A legend's very best album. Simple as that. Why are The Beatles considered to be the best of the 60's? They never made anything that could touch this album.

9. The Bends by Radiohead. Radiohead at their most British. For once, that's not a bad thing. Although the lyrics are downbeat and depressing (one reviewer suggested that Thom Yorke would be the next rock star to kill himself after listening to this album), the music is anything but. It is the guitar album of the 90's.

10. Doolittle by The Pixies. To put it simply, music today would be very different without this album. You can hear The Pixies influence literally everywhere you go. This is their most mature, and their most fun and funny album ever.

-M