81: Morrissey - Viva Hate (1988)
Yes, I already put one comp on this list. But I couldn’t bring myself to put Bona Drag on, because nearly half the songs already appeared on this album two years before. So this is standing in for Bona Drag (the much better album). That’s not to say this album isn’t great. And in fact, the songs that overlap overlap for a areason. Everyday Is Like Sunday is so exceptionally haunting (“come armageddon.” “Come nuclear war.”) Suedehead has one of the best guitar riffs in britpop history. Even Hairdresser on Fire and its “giddy London” slow intro manages to be as good as most anything the Smiths ever did. But it’s the album tracks that make or break this album. Angel, Angel, Down We Go Together is a great one. Dial-A-Cliche, not so much. So goes this album.
82: Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin I (1969)
Led Zeppelin was one of the most influential bands of the 70’s (and late 60’s). Make no mistake. However, they only put out one good ALBUM, in my opinion, and Zoso wasn’t it. This is the one, and it’s a hell of an album. This was before the misguided mysticism, the guitar masturbation (although that’s not entirely true). It’s got one of the few appropriate guitar solos in Zep history on Good Times Bad Times, and Babe I’m Gonna Leave You has the subtlety later acoustic songs like Going to California or Thank You sorely lack. Some songs miss, like the overlong Dazed and Confused (which is still interesting enough) or the bluse retread You Shook Me, or the excessively folksy Black Mountain Slide – but Zeppelin is important and this album is largely the reason why.
83: Cursive - Cursive’s Domestica (2000)
What a pretentious album title. And what a way to back up that album title with pinch harmonics and tremelo picking gone mad throughout this nine song divorce epic. Even despite this, and despite Tim Kasher’s hamfisted lyrics, this album succeeds beautifully at taking the handwringing late 90’s early 00’s emo movement and rocking the shit out of it. Arranged and performed beautifully, the divorce songs are sung the hell out of by Kasher who Pitchfork once claimed “had the best bad voice in indie rock.” That sounds about right.
84: Fugazi - 13 Songs (1990)
I don’t really like Fugazi. That’s a fact. I don’t like Ian MacKaye and his vegeterian, anti-commercialist, DIY ethic. I don’t like the sludgecore that Dischord records puts out. I don’t like shaved heads. And I certainly don’t like the straight-edge movement. Even so, I like this album. Even more so than Repeater (which works better as an album but is never really interesting) it rocks the hell out. Whether he meant to or not (I would guess not) Ian wrote a nearly perfect pop song in Waiting Room (it almost makes Guy Picciotto’s backup vox tolerable) and the rest of the album has its rock moments too.
God, I really like it when politics stay the fuck out of music. Spoiler alert: You won’t see any Rage Against the Machine on this list (although that might just be because someone stole my copy of Evil Empire in the 9th grade).
85: Sunny Day Real Estate - Diary (1994)
If this were 1999 this would be a lot higher. But this is not 1999, when I once woke up from a two hour nap, this album on repeat, to Jeremy Enigk bawling his nuts off About an Angel. (that motherfucker could really scream) This is the music I meant in 1999 when I said “emo,” and in many ways, it’s what I still mean. The Get Up Kids and New Found Glory coopted the riff rocking of songs like Seven and In Circles and popped it up, but this is where it almost all began. And even though people said these guys sounded like Smashing Pumpkins (they don’t) there was something credible about a little shrimp from Seattle crying about December’s tragic drive and waxing poetic about just about everything angsty.
There’s so much good to say about this album – the guitars, the drumming, and most importantly, Enigk’s singing. But it gets really repetitive towards the end and by “Grendel” you just don’t give a fuck anymore and skip back to the beginning to listen to Seven one ore time.
86: Lil Wayne - Tha Block is Hot (1999)
Cash Money is an army. That’s the first thing everyone ought to understand about the dirty third. Yeah, Tha Carter was more artistically significant, and yeah most of Weezy’s lyrics were probably ghostwritten at this point, but who the fuck cares? Rap music is about many things, and this album accomplishes one of those things perfectly: moving my motherfucking ass. Manny Fresh’s beats have never been better and these songs are fucking fun as hell
“Get it twisted, I’ll slam you like Shawn Kemp, girl.”
87: The White Stripes - White Blood Cells (2001)
Before the media circus (if you can call it a media circus, I guess. Although he did date Renee Zelwegger) Jack White was a largely unknown guitar player making some pretty rootsy rock and roll. And by rootsy rock and roll I mean conscious of the rootsy rock and roll that was his roots. What a conundrum! Nevertheless, this is the best of the White Stripes albums, more polished than De Stijl and the self-titled debut and less conscious of his own “genius” than Elephant. Or maybe I’m giving too much credit to Jack, not enough to Meg. Doubtful.
Anyway. There was a point at which The Stripes and The Strokes were competing for best rock band alive, heirs apparent to the Stones. Well neither made it, and neither was ever going to make it, but The Stripes came pretty close with this record. Hotel Yorba sounds like something Mick and Keif might have written circa Let it Bleed and that’s about the highest compliment anyone could realistically give this album
88: The Rapture - Echoes (2003)
I don’t have much to say about this album but when I was at the peak of my drinking career Sophomore year of college, me and my friend Joe would listen to House of Jealous Lovers every single fucking day of our lives. The only good song in the history of the world to feature cowbell (you heard me), it was far and away the pinnacle of that dance indie movement that had a cup of coffee on “the scene” a couple years back. Holy shit though, this is like the Cure meets Fugazi, which doesn’t really sound as cool as it is. Olio, Sister Saviour, and the title track, while shadows of House of Jealous Lovers hold their own.
89: The Strokes - Is this It? (2001)
I said to my friend Matt once that the Strokes songs are all great in theory but sometimes they’ll have a good riff and do nothing with the song (a la Reptilia) or have a great song and do nothing to develop it (a la Last Nite). “It gets a little boring,” I said. “Well, they’re bored dudes,” he replied. And you know what? That always was the point I guess. The disaffected postmodern ethic or whatever the fuck you wanted to call it. It’s a little frustrating because these guys were very talented songwriters to a certain degree. I say that because at some point you have to know how to execute. Sometimes they get it right. The distance works on Is This It and Barely Legal. And every now and then they do get into it a little bit. Someday and Hard to Explain are legitimately great pop songs. But all too often this album falls flat which is a goddamned shame.
90: Jets to Brazil - Orange Rhyming Dictionary (1998)
Not a wonderful album, but after a long Jawbreaker-less drought, I’ll take what I can get. Blake’s back with hyperliterate lyrics and songs that are actually pretty good. Nowhere near Bivouac or 24 Hr. but this album is heads and tails above Dear You and that’s a pretty good accomplishment. After fiddling around with some infectious glam-pop, the album gets into its really good tracks – Sea Anemone, a Plath-esque meditation about suicide and terminating relationships (“take my name off of the lease, you can even keep the name – it never suited me”) replete with achingly difficult images (“it’s so nice sitting very still/ without those old shoes I could never fill”). Chinatown is a slowjam meditation on certainty which works a lot better than it sounds like it would. And I Typed For Miles, if you can get past the Heart-Shaped Box intro, is a very nice mood piece that evokes, of all things, Barton fucking Fink. This is the same Blake who wrote 24 Hr. Revenge Therapy, and it’s evident he still understands what we understand. He sings in “I Typed For Miles,”: “Playing love songs on the radio/ I can’t relate to that right now.” Well, shit.
