Republican Music Police
Friday, April 21, 2006
almost
6. The Smiths - The Queen is Dead (1986)
In many ways this album is what I think about when I think about London. I think you can trace all that to the movie sample that opens The Queen is Dead (Take Me Back to Dear Old Blighty) Medley. Pub songs, Buckingham Palace, alienation. I don’t know what could possibly sum up the city better. And particularly, what separates The Smiths from the thousands of imitators is all on this track - the fact that they took their pop songs and dressed them in punk rock. Or at least post punk rock. Everyone knows (or everyone SHOULD know) that Morrissey was the president of the New York Dolls fan club, as strange as it seems. Burying a lilting melody under dark lyrics and layers of feedback and rock drumming is what (I always thought) makes the lyricism and vocal style of Morrissey so palatable. Obviously that’s not the case - his solo work is saccharine and lacking instrumental bite but is no less credible - but it’s what makes this album so good.
What makes Morrissey so good is his ironic understanding. What I mean by that is that he understands that everything he says is going to sound alternately ridiculous and completely legitimate at the same time. Take, for instance, I Know it’s Over, one of the most morose songs on the album. “Mother, I can feel,” he sings, “the soil falling over my head.” This is self-pitying of the highest order. As in, the breakup song(sung to his mother, of all people) is obsessed with the morbid finality of it all. But can he possibly MEAN it? I would venture yes AND no, just like we all half mean it when we exaggerate. And he knows he’s exaggerating. Consider later in the song, those immortal lines, “If you’re so very good looking, then why are you on your own tonight? And if you’re so very entertaining, why are you on your own tonight? Because tonight is just like any other night.” What I have always thought about Morrissey lyrics, why they’re so appealing to the mopey criers, the teenage forearm slicers, the dressed in black bluebirds, is that the lyrics are temporal, that they have a sincerity in the context in which they are written, but performed with a backwards wink. The kind of sincerity you can’t fake, that makes Morrissey resonate so well comes from its excessiveness. I believe he ALLOWS himself to go overboard, past where most who would be concerned about enduring sincerity would allow themselves to go, BECAUSE he knows he doesn’t really mean it. Call it the incredible Hulk syndrome, if you follow my meaning.
But lyrical ethic aside, this is such an interesting album in every facet, from the skilled instrumentation and complicated metrics to the track arrangement (consider the masterstroke of ending with Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others instead of the previous coup de grace of There Is a Light That Never Goes Out.) to the allusive Cemetry Gates (complete with trademark Morrissey misspelling) to the hilarious backup vox on Bigmouth.. There’s so many apocryphal stories about this album. For instance, Marr’s claim that Bigmouth would be their “Rolling Stones” single as reason for releasing it in lieu of the seminal Light. Also, Morrissey claimed recently that he wanted the album to be produced by Bowie producer Tony Visconti, claiming it would have been twice the album that Queen is Dead ended up being. Given that Moz and Marr, going without Visconti, self-produced one of the great albums of all time, that’s a frightening thought.
7. Saves the Day - Through Being Cool (1999)
There will be many people who won’t believe me, but this IS in fact a great album. This is, in fact, a top 10 album. I don’t mean to be defensive coming out the gates like this, but of the seven people who are actually following this list, at least 6.89 will be annoyed by this pick, especially at number seven.
I don’t care.
If I had named Wire’s Pink Flag to the number seven spot, I very much doubt anyone would have made much of a fuss. And why? Because Wire specifically deigns not to sing about girls? But I like songs about girls and I like this album, and Wire’s Pink Flag did not make my top 10 nor did it make my top 100. This album epitomizes all that is good about contemporary punk music without doing any of the things that make contemporary punk music bad. I say this with the utmost sincerity. These songs are infinitely catchy, complexly structured (especially in regards to the chorus/verse delineation), and possess the same astute lyrical texture I admire in Morrissey.
Consider, for instance, the specificity and complexity that opens the album’s second track You Vandal. Singer Chris Conley addresses absence, singing, “Last night I dreamt you called from Costa Rica/ The place you’ve been the last two weeks/ said I miss you oh sweet boy/ won’t you come back down/ I woke up to my cold sheets and the smell of New Jersey.” At one point in a creative writing class, we discussed why song lyrics aren’t poetry. This is something that ought to be self-evident, but apparently merited discussion. Nevertheless, the grad student professor told us that she could prove it: any song lyric we thought was poetry, we should write it down and read it aloud, ignoring the melody. The idea was, we would see how ridiculous the lyrics are without the music to hold them up. I don’t claim Saves the Day’s lyrics are poetry (although, I suppose in the strictest sense of the term, they are)…not high art of any sort. But even separated from the music they make for decent prose. Better than most, to say the least. Conley is perceptive of slight idiosyncrasies, the same way Morrissey is, the same way people claim Ben Gibbard is. He’s also aware of the irony of sincerity. When he sings, in the album’s highlight track, Holly Hox Forget Me Not, “Somewhere under water, maybe you can find my heart/ that’s where I threw it after you had torn it out.” Forgive me if I am mistaken, but I can’t imagine even an hour after he wrote that he meant it. I think I’m not mistaken, as he has many lines that are even more self-aware than that. On the poorly titled Rocks Tonic Juice Magic, he sings, “All I can say tonight is I hate you/it would be all right/ if we could see each other some time?” To me, that exemplifies the Morrissey school of songwriting.
Of course, as usual, I discuss the lyrics first, but lyrics alone don’t make for a good album. In fact, they don’t do much at all if the music’s not there. You won’t see any John Prine or Leonard Cohen or Elliott Smith on this list, and the Silver Jews’ best album didn’t fare ALL that well. What makes this album so excellent is the music. Short, punchy and to the point, STD takes advantage of every opportunity for a hook. Many don’t like Chris Conley’s voice (or even his style of singing) but that’s a matter of taste. Much like with Bob Dylan or Modest Mouse, no one can convince anyone else beyond the vocal connection. Yes, Conley’s voice ranges in the upper octaves, and that can be a sometimes emasculating listening experience, but I find it complements the snarling guitars well. And of course, I’ve always been a sucker for emo.
8. Jedi Mind Tricks - Violent By Design (2000)
There are no real superlatives to be deployed in reference to JMT. Stoupe, despite being one of the most dynamic producers at the moment, would never be confused with being the BEST nor the most innovative (his whole style is directly derived from a duel parentage of Rza and Preemo). Vinnie Paz, despite having one of the better deliveries in rap, would never be confused with the best MC’s around, and in fact has regressed into a bizarre, homophobic, parody of himself. Jus Allah, who would leave the group soon after this album (probably because he hates white people, and Stoupe and Vinnie are more or less white) was never a tremendous lyricist or performer. No, Jedi Mind Tricks aren’t a super group, nor do they possess the talent or innovative qualities that made the previous artists mentioned on this list so legendary. No. All they ever did was release one of the most vicious, unrelenting, and infinitely quotable albums of all time.
Violent by Design is a battle rap album of sorts, full of punch lines directed at an unknown (nonexistent) third party, addressed in the second person. As in, “Jedi Mind, with the planetary we bombin’ this/ we stay one step above you like a pharmacist,” in I against I. Or “In the trenches of bomb, the paragon spawn/ Your bodies carried and dropped like surrogate moms,” in Sacrifice. Or “Divine purpose for the Remy that’s in my thermos/ Brain is evil, stick you with needles that’s hypodermic/ you heard the verdict/ I’m with Allah cuz he chose me/ Snuck into the Vatican and strangled the pope with his rosary.”
This album is calculated to be brutal and hard hitting, but above all, calculated to be offensive. I don’t want to get into the ethos of Lenny Bruce and Sam Kinison and George Carlin and Richard Pryor, but suffice to say that offensive is nearly always funny. What’s funniest about JMT is how serious Vinnie and Jus Allah sound when they spit. Or perhaps that ought to be unsettling. But the lines are just so damn funny you can’t help but think they must be meant as humor. After all, this is the group witty enough to pen the line “My peeps who walk the street with stolen heat like Prometheus.” I think my favorite passage comes from Vinnie Paz (aka Ikon the fucking Hologram) on the oddly named “Genghis Kahn” ( a close second is Jus Allah’s quick hit from The Deer Hunter - “You just like a bitch with no top on/ at the Houston 5[00]/ You lie down and get shot on”…get it?). Anyway - Vinnie’s punches:
“Yo I’m savage/ I write rhymes in pitch blackness/ any motherfucker who front is left capless/ y’all motherfuckers just burn into ashes/ trying to step into the zone where Vinnie Paz is/ is black Sabbath. Put a slug in his grill/ cuz Jedi Mind 2-5 thugs is for real/ you ever think there might be trouble, then peel/ cuz a motherfucker like me dumpin to kill/ and y’all better pass the mic cuz Vin’s ill/ y’all learned the “Facts of Life” from “Kim Fields”/ I don’t know how many kids my flow harm/ my gun control leave y’all with no arm/ y’all ever smell the stench from dead bodies?/ left in the path of the wrath of Kadahfi?/ 5’9” standin’ up mad stocky/ animal thugs who bust slugs in the lobby”
Everything that’s good (and bad) about JMT is in that verse - the internal rhymes, the multiple syllabics, the ridiculously over the top violence, the clever wordplay, etc. etc. etc. The fact is, this album is inevitably more quotable than the Wu-Tang Clan, and that’s one of the biggest musical accomplishments I can think of right now.
9. The Promise Ring - Nothing Feels Good (1997)
The thing about the Promise Ring is that Davey VonBohlen can’t really sing that good and the instrumentals aren’t all that complicated and the song structure actually tends to be infinitely repetitive. But that doesn’t change the fact that this is one of the most jubilant, enjoyable records I’ve ever heard. VonBohlen’s lyrics, while extremely poetic, are elusive and unrelenting, based mostly on wordplay. But he just sings it so much you can’t help but become imprisoned in them. Take for instance the opening track, Is This Thing On, which lyrically is mainly based around the fact that the word Delaware contains both the word “aware” and “air”, at least as homophones. “Delaware are you aware of the Air Supply,” it begins, “And Television, Delaware, are you aware, is this thing on?” One might consider the dichotomy of the band Air Supply and Television (and some reviewers have) but the fact is it doesn’t really matter. What does matter is the punchy guitars, the winding bassline, and incessant energy throughout the song. It continues that way for the entire first half of the album, which is something very refreshing - that this album literally has two halves. A throwback to the days of cassettes and LP, the album finally takes a breath after the wonderful Make Me a Chevy to open part two with the slow, instrumental How Nothing Feels (whose melody was, oddly, ripped off by At the Drive-In for the song Non-Zero Possibility)
And that’s another example of the wordplay VonBohlen’s obsessed with. Nothing Feels Good, the album title could mean one of two things: nothing at all feels good, a very eeeeeeemo idea, or that the concept of nothing feels good, a much more realistic possibility, given how the very little gravity of this album inevitably is so upbeat on the first half of the record. But the second half is decidedly less optimistic. The album’s title track is an achingly desperate acoustic number, drenched in malaise, but never really despondent. When Davey sings, “I don’t know Billy Ocean/ I don’t know the ocean floor/ I don’t go to college anymore,” we get the feeling he’s halfway between depression and resignation and acceptance. It’s not really a sad thing at all, and he doesn’t even really sing it all that sad. Likewise, Pink Chimneys is an upbeat number but one that repeats the sad thought, “where’s New England in my life/ it’s only cold when you sleep alone.” Stated positively, but no less suggestive of the sad fact of loneliness, it leaves a bittersweet. Likewise B is for Bethlehem’s dreamy romantic verses and reassuring chorus claim that “Jesus was a fisherman,” is undercut by the thought “I know He starts and finishes men, but I don’t know why.” There’s all kinds of profound thoughts in this song, “I’d die to stop the wind,” he claims, rather half-heartedly, “to leave the leaves, left leave and leave.” Thoughts like “Cried at the funeral because you can go anywhere,” raise the same ambiguity the album title does.
Most interesting though, is the album’s closer, Forget Me, which reassess, of all things, Sylvia Plath’s poem “Daddy,” recasting the line “I thought every German was you,” to reflect the way everything seems to remind you of the person you love. “All trees are roads,” Davey sings, “All birds are blue, Ach du! I thought everyone was you.” It sounds pretentious as hell, but really it’s just a lot of fun, just like the entire album. Because you don’t have to think about it too much if you don’t want to.
10. Neil Young - After the Goldrush (1970)
Although it slows down just the slightest bit towards the end (just like Buckets of Rain, I don’t really understand closing with Cripple Creek Fairy), there’s just so many flawless songs on this album: Tell Me Why, After the Goldrush, Only Love Can Break Your Heart, Southern Man, Till the Morning Comes, Don’t Let it Bring You Down, When You Dance You Can Really Love - the list of song highlights is basically the track listing. And beyond that, the highlights are among the best songs ever written. This is truly a great album.
In many ways this album is what I think about when I think about London. I think you can trace all that to the movie sample that opens The Queen is Dead (Take Me Back to Dear Old Blighty) Medley. Pub songs, Buckingham Palace, alienation. I don’t know what could possibly sum up the city better. And particularly, what separates The Smiths from the thousands of imitators is all on this track - the fact that they took their pop songs and dressed them in punk rock. Or at least post punk rock. Everyone knows (or everyone SHOULD know) that Morrissey was the president of the New York Dolls fan club, as strange as it seems. Burying a lilting melody under dark lyrics and layers of feedback and rock drumming is what (I always thought) makes the lyricism and vocal style of Morrissey so palatable. Obviously that’s not the case - his solo work is saccharine and lacking instrumental bite but is no less credible - but it’s what makes this album so good.
What makes Morrissey so good is his ironic understanding. What I mean by that is that he understands that everything he says is going to sound alternately ridiculous and completely legitimate at the same time. Take, for instance, I Know it’s Over, one of the most morose songs on the album. “Mother, I can feel,” he sings, “the soil falling over my head.” This is self-pitying of the highest order. As in, the breakup song(sung to his mother, of all people) is obsessed with the morbid finality of it all. But can he possibly MEAN it? I would venture yes AND no, just like we all half mean it when we exaggerate. And he knows he’s exaggerating. Consider later in the song, those immortal lines, “If you’re so very good looking, then why are you on your own tonight? And if you’re so very entertaining, why are you on your own tonight? Because tonight is just like any other night.” What I have always thought about Morrissey lyrics, why they’re so appealing to the mopey criers, the teenage forearm slicers, the dressed in black bluebirds, is that the lyrics are temporal, that they have a sincerity in the context in which they are written, but performed with a backwards wink. The kind of sincerity you can’t fake, that makes Morrissey resonate so well comes from its excessiveness. I believe he ALLOWS himself to go overboard, past where most who would be concerned about enduring sincerity would allow themselves to go, BECAUSE he knows he doesn’t really mean it. Call it the incredible Hulk syndrome, if you follow my meaning.
But lyrical ethic aside, this is such an interesting album in every facet, from the skilled instrumentation and complicated metrics to the track arrangement (consider the masterstroke of ending with Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others instead of the previous coup de grace of There Is a Light That Never Goes Out.) to the allusive Cemetry Gates (complete with trademark Morrissey misspelling) to the hilarious backup vox on Bigmouth.. There’s so many apocryphal stories about this album. For instance, Marr’s claim that Bigmouth would be their “Rolling Stones” single as reason for releasing it in lieu of the seminal Light. Also, Morrissey claimed recently that he wanted the album to be produced by Bowie producer Tony Visconti, claiming it would have been twice the album that Queen is Dead ended up being. Given that Moz and Marr, going without Visconti, self-produced one of the great albums of all time, that’s a frightening thought.
7. Saves the Day - Through Being Cool (1999)
There will be many people who won’t believe me, but this IS in fact a great album. This is, in fact, a top 10 album. I don’t mean to be defensive coming out the gates like this, but of the seven people who are actually following this list, at least 6.89 will be annoyed by this pick, especially at number seven.
I don’t care.
If I had named Wire’s Pink Flag to the number seven spot, I very much doubt anyone would have made much of a fuss. And why? Because Wire specifically deigns not to sing about girls? But I like songs about girls and I like this album, and Wire’s Pink Flag did not make my top 10 nor did it make my top 100. This album epitomizes all that is good about contemporary punk music without doing any of the things that make contemporary punk music bad. I say this with the utmost sincerity. These songs are infinitely catchy, complexly structured (especially in regards to the chorus/verse delineation), and possess the same astute lyrical texture I admire in Morrissey.
Consider, for instance, the specificity and complexity that opens the album’s second track You Vandal. Singer Chris Conley addresses absence, singing, “Last night I dreamt you called from Costa Rica/ The place you’ve been the last two weeks/ said I miss you oh sweet boy/ won’t you come back down/ I woke up to my cold sheets and the smell of New Jersey.” At one point in a creative writing class, we discussed why song lyrics aren’t poetry. This is something that ought to be self-evident, but apparently merited discussion. Nevertheless, the grad student professor told us that she could prove it: any song lyric we thought was poetry, we should write it down and read it aloud, ignoring the melody. The idea was, we would see how ridiculous the lyrics are without the music to hold them up. I don’t claim Saves the Day’s lyrics are poetry (although, I suppose in the strictest sense of the term, they are)…not high art of any sort. But even separated from the music they make for decent prose. Better than most, to say the least. Conley is perceptive of slight idiosyncrasies, the same way Morrissey is, the same way people claim Ben Gibbard is. He’s also aware of the irony of sincerity. When he sings, in the album’s highlight track, Holly Hox Forget Me Not, “Somewhere under water, maybe you can find my heart/ that’s where I threw it after you had torn it out.” Forgive me if I am mistaken, but I can’t imagine even an hour after he wrote that he meant it. I think I’m not mistaken, as he has many lines that are even more self-aware than that. On the poorly titled Rocks Tonic Juice Magic, he sings, “All I can say tonight is I hate you/it would be all right/ if we could see each other some time?” To me, that exemplifies the Morrissey school of songwriting.
Of course, as usual, I discuss the lyrics first, but lyrics alone don’t make for a good album. In fact, they don’t do much at all if the music’s not there. You won’t see any John Prine or Leonard Cohen or Elliott Smith on this list, and the Silver Jews’ best album didn’t fare ALL that well. What makes this album so excellent is the music. Short, punchy and to the point, STD takes advantage of every opportunity for a hook. Many don’t like Chris Conley’s voice (or even his style of singing) but that’s a matter of taste. Much like with Bob Dylan or Modest Mouse, no one can convince anyone else beyond the vocal connection. Yes, Conley’s voice ranges in the upper octaves, and that can be a sometimes emasculating listening experience, but I find it complements the snarling guitars well. And of course, I’ve always been a sucker for emo.
8. Jedi Mind Tricks - Violent By Design (2000)
There are no real superlatives to be deployed in reference to JMT. Stoupe, despite being one of the most dynamic producers at the moment, would never be confused with being the BEST nor the most innovative (his whole style is directly derived from a duel parentage of Rza and Preemo). Vinnie Paz, despite having one of the better deliveries in rap, would never be confused with the best MC’s around, and in fact has regressed into a bizarre, homophobic, parody of himself. Jus Allah, who would leave the group soon after this album (probably because he hates white people, and Stoupe and Vinnie are more or less white) was never a tremendous lyricist or performer. No, Jedi Mind Tricks aren’t a super group, nor do they possess the talent or innovative qualities that made the previous artists mentioned on this list so legendary. No. All they ever did was release one of the most vicious, unrelenting, and infinitely quotable albums of all time.
Violent by Design is a battle rap album of sorts, full of punch lines directed at an unknown (nonexistent) third party, addressed in the second person. As in, “Jedi Mind, with the planetary we bombin’ this/ we stay one step above you like a pharmacist,” in I against I. Or “In the trenches of bomb, the paragon spawn/ Your bodies carried and dropped like surrogate moms,” in Sacrifice. Or “Divine purpose for the Remy that’s in my thermos/ Brain is evil, stick you with needles that’s hypodermic/ you heard the verdict/ I’m with Allah cuz he chose me/ Snuck into the Vatican and strangled the pope with his rosary.”
This album is calculated to be brutal and hard hitting, but above all, calculated to be offensive. I don’t want to get into the ethos of Lenny Bruce and Sam Kinison and George Carlin and Richard Pryor, but suffice to say that offensive is nearly always funny. What’s funniest about JMT is how serious Vinnie and Jus Allah sound when they spit. Or perhaps that ought to be unsettling. But the lines are just so damn funny you can’t help but think they must be meant as humor. After all, this is the group witty enough to pen the line “My peeps who walk the street with stolen heat like Prometheus.” I think my favorite passage comes from Vinnie Paz (aka Ikon the fucking Hologram) on the oddly named “Genghis Kahn” ( a close second is Jus Allah’s quick hit from The Deer Hunter - “You just like a bitch with no top on/ at the Houston 5[00]/ You lie down and get shot on”…get it?). Anyway - Vinnie’s punches:
“Yo I’m savage/ I write rhymes in pitch blackness/ any motherfucker who front is left capless/ y’all motherfuckers just burn into ashes/ trying to step into the zone where Vinnie Paz is/ is black Sabbath. Put a slug in his grill/ cuz Jedi Mind 2-5 thugs is for real/ you ever think there might be trouble, then peel/ cuz a motherfucker like me dumpin to kill/ and y’all better pass the mic cuz Vin’s ill/ y’all learned the “Facts of Life” from “Kim Fields”/ I don’t know how many kids my flow harm/ my gun control leave y’all with no arm/ y’all ever smell the stench from dead bodies?/ left in the path of the wrath of Kadahfi?/ 5’9” standin’ up mad stocky/ animal thugs who bust slugs in the lobby”
Everything that’s good (and bad) about JMT is in that verse - the internal rhymes, the multiple syllabics, the ridiculously over the top violence, the clever wordplay, etc. etc. etc. The fact is, this album is inevitably more quotable than the Wu-Tang Clan, and that’s one of the biggest musical accomplishments I can think of right now.
9. The Promise Ring - Nothing Feels Good (1997)
The thing about the Promise Ring is that Davey VonBohlen can’t really sing that good and the instrumentals aren’t all that complicated and the song structure actually tends to be infinitely repetitive. But that doesn’t change the fact that this is one of the most jubilant, enjoyable records I’ve ever heard. VonBohlen’s lyrics, while extremely poetic, are elusive and unrelenting, based mostly on wordplay. But he just sings it so much you can’t help but become imprisoned in them. Take for instance the opening track, Is This Thing On, which lyrically is mainly based around the fact that the word Delaware contains both the word “aware” and “air”, at least as homophones. “Delaware are you aware of the Air Supply,” it begins, “And Television, Delaware, are you aware, is this thing on?” One might consider the dichotomy of the band Air Supply and Television (and some reviewers have) but the fact is it doesn’t really matter. What does matter is the punchy guitars, the winding bassline, and incessant energy throughout the song. It continues that way for the entire first half of the album, which is something very refreshing - that this album literally has two halves. A throwback to the days of cassettes and LP, the album finally takes a breath after the wonderful Make Me a Chevy to open part two with the slow, instrumental How Nothing Feels (whose melody was, oddly, ripped off by At the Drive-In for the song Non-Zero Possibility)
And that’s another example of the wordplay VonBohlen’s obsessed with. Nothing Feels Good, the album title could mean one of two things: nothing at all feels good, a very eeeeeeemo idea, or that the concept of nothing feels good, a much more realistic possibility, given how the very little gravity of this album inevitably is so upbeat on the first half of the record. But the second half is decidedly less optimistic. The album’s title track is an achingly desperate acoustic number, drenched in malaise, but never really despondent. When Davey sings, “I don’t know Billy Ocean/ I don’t know the ocean floor/ I don’t go to college anymore,” we get the feeling he’s halfway between depression and resignation and acceptance. It’s not really a sad thing at all, and he doesn’t even really sing it all that sad. Likewise, Pink Chimneys is an upbeat number but one that repeats the sad thought, “where’s New England in my life/ it’s only cold when you sleep alone.” Stated positively, but no less suggestive of the sad fact of loneliness, it leaves a bittersweet. Likewise B is for Bethlehem’s dreamy romantic verses and reassuring chorus claim that “Jesus was a fisherman,” is undercut by the thought “I know He starts and finishes men, but I don’t know why.” There’s all kinds of profound thoughts in this song, “I’d die to stop the wind,” he claims, rather half-heartedly, “to leave the leaves, left leave and leave.” Thoughts like “Cried at the funeral because you can go anywhere,” raise the same ambiguity the album title does.
Most interesting though, is the album’s closer, Forget Me, which reassess, of all things, Sylvia Plath’s poem “Daddy,” recasting the line “I thought every German was you,” to reflect the way everything seems to remind you of the person you love. “All trees are roads,” Davey sings, “All birds are blue, Ach du! I thought everyone was you.” It sounds pretentious as hell, but really it’s just a lot of fun, just like the entire album. Because you don’t have to think about it too much if you don’t want to.
10. Neil Young - After the Goldrush (1970)
Although it slows down just the slightest bit towards the end (just like Buckets of Rain, I don’t really understand closing with Cripple Creek Fairy), there’s just so many flawless songs on this album: Tell Me Why, After the Goldrush, Only Love Can Break Your Heart, Southern Man, Till the Morning Comes, Don’t Let it Bring You Down, When You Dance You Can Really Love - the list of song highlights is basically the track listing. And beyond that, the highlights are among the best songs ever written. This is truly a great album.
posted by Chris W # 2:07 PM 
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