20–16/100 — Top 25 Albums of All Time — Part 2

This is a pretty challenging — but very rewarding — bunch. Jump on in!

20/100 — The Doors — The Doors (1967)

What to say about The Doors self-titled debut? It can feel a little self-important, gratuitous, and lacking in any sense of restraint. But it’s also primal, dangerously sensual, and absolutely embodies the whole attitude of “Is it really cocky if it’s true?”

“Break On Through (To The Other Side)” opens the album with some of the greatest organ tone ever as Jim Morrison begins his seductive wailing. The song just RIPS into the air with the double time ride cymbals and the fuzzy lead guitar runs in the chorus. If it were any less psychedelic it could be a Stooges track. The song really feels as if it’s trying to break some barrier as every instrument vies for control and creates a bacchanal of pressure which gushes everywhere.

The comparatively laid back “Soul Kitchen” strolls into the smoke-filled room with a confident swagger before yelling at the bartender for a drink. It’s bouncing bass line (see verse 2) just keeps grooving along no matter what. It’s like a slow-motion bar fight. This is night music. “Well the clock says it’s time to close now/ I know I have to go now/ I really want to stay here all night…”

Despite being packed full of 60s songwriting structures, this album feels heavier and aggressive in a way that you don’t normally see in post-Beatles-mania pop music. “Alabama Song (Whiskey Bar)” with its oom-pa carnival bounce and tinkling marxophone adds to the slightly manic insanity feel of the multi-layered vocals and intense performances so far.

“Light My Fire” is a swirling mass of organ music which feels both meandering and transcendent. It sounds absolutely huge and unhinged while the left hand holds a groove down. There’s a point where the drums and organ are just POUNDING out descending triplets and it builds the tension further.

Finally there is “The End,” which is probably one of the greatest rock songs of all time. At nearly 12 minutes it covers a lot of ground. Swirling ambience makes way into a lovely guitar solo that sounds somewhere between John Fahey and Neu! Then there’s the dangerous and perverse spoken word section (“The killer awoke at dawn…”) which explores the Oedipal desires of motherly love and fatherly murder which has a raga-style tempo shift in the middle before devolving into a litany “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” and “Kill! Kill! Kill!” This was actually a bold move when this album was released and there’s a 7 minute censored version which is fine, but for the real experience make sure you find the long form. Then there’s all the psychedelic dream imagery of the blue bus and riding a snake. But don’t worry about what all that actually means, just dial into the drumming underneath the droning organ and gliding guitars, and feel the insanity and power of Morrison’s voice.

I find The Doors to be endlessly compelling. The musical interplay, the rich and barely restrained singing, and the psychedelic lyrics always leave something more for me to explore whenever I return to it. And I expect I will for the rest of my life.

Favourite Tracks: “The End”, “Break on Through (To the Other Side)”, “Light My Fire”

Least Favourite Track: “The Crystal Ship”

19/100 — Faust — Faust (1971)

Faust are technically a krautrock band. But while there is plenty of synthesizer experimentation on their self-titled debut, there’s very little in the way of the hypnotic repetition that bands like Kraftwerk, Neu!, and Can eventually used to typify the genre. Instead, Faust is absolute chaos from the get go.

The album kicks off with “Why Don’t You Eat Carrots?”, a disjointed number that sounds like a toy factory come to life. It opens with a samples of “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” and “All You Need Is Love” fighting their way through some static. Then there’s a brief bouncy piano dischord which cuts into what sounds like the marching band Harold Hill put together (but with a robot on drums). As the band repeats itself over and over it begins to take a sort of shape, and begins to feel almost like a demented royal procession. This structure bounces back and forth before the main and completely catchy riff comes in around the four minute mark. The fuzzy guitar and trumpet duet with squelching and swirling tape effects in the background really sets the mood before the vocals mirror that same line and goofy handclaps join in. I love this second half motif so much as they play and experiment around it.

“Meadow Meal” begins a lot more like some of Can’s tape-experiments but then Faust add an almost liturgical call-and-response spoken word section with gently arpeggiated guitars. Following this is a funky full-band guitar solo section which would make Frank Zappa proud. The track ends with a really lovely organ solo which sounds like it’s floating in space, kind of like Klaus Shulze’s Irrlicht.

Finally there’s “Miss Fortune”, a 16 and a half minute krautrock behemoth which feels like they tried to cram two albums’ worth of material on one side of vinyl. There are squealing experimental moments, pounding groovy sections, gentle ambient parts, an operatic middle bit, a chirping gospel pre-outro, and finally a spoken word poem where two voices alternate each word and sum up the philosophy of the album:

“ Are we supposed to be or not to be?
Said the angel to the Queen….

To organize and analyze
And at the end realize
That nobody knows
If it really happened”

This record is a real challenge, but it deserves attention. At first I loved it because it was so crazy, now I’ve come to love its gentler and more thoughtful moments and the space between the insanity…as well as all the madcap fun.

Favourite Tracks: “Miss Fortune”, “Why Don’t You Eat Carrots?”

Least Favourite Track: “Meadow Meal” (I guess…)

18/100 — Bob Dylan — Blood on the Tracks (1975)

After releasing his near-perfect trilogy of studio albums in 1965/66 Bob Dylan was in a brutal motorcycle accident. In it’s wake, he spent the next nine year releasing seven decent-to-great albums. Then, in 1975, Blood On The Tracks came out and began another wave of masterful creativity that led to another trilogy of sorts with The Basement Tapes and Desire both being released by the end of 1976.

So what elevates BotT above the previous decade of work? This record combines some of Dylan’s best poetry with a new focus on more direct story telling, adds some of his strongest vocal work, and then places this all on top of the best studio production and mixing he’d ever taken advantage of. Ya. It’s a doozy.

“Tangled Up In Blue” opens the album and perfectly displays this wonderful intersection of brilliant elements. Listen to the layers of guitars twinkling in and out of each other, the way the drums and bass sit perfectly in their own spaces, and the way Dylan’s voice sounds. And the lyrics!

“She was married when we first met, soon to be divorced. I helped her out of a jam I guess, but I used a little too much force.”

That could be a full story to explore right there but it’s just the first part of the second verse! And then there’s the verse about encountering a woman in a “topless place.” When she bends down to tie the laces of his shoes I still feel slightly uncomfortable almost 12 years after that image first seared itself into my brain.

“Simple Twist of Fate” is a nice palate cleanser and I always end up singing along to the big high note right before the refrain — “hit him like a FREIIIIIGHT train/ moving with a simple twist of fate.” And that bass line is just wonderfully bouncy and restrained.

“You’re A Big Girl” has a similar high note jump which gets me in the same way even though it’s directly after “Simple Twist of Fate.” Despite the fact that the lyrics mostly feel like an exercise in couplet rhymes, its attitude of deep longing and the return to the layered interplay of the acoustic guitars (now with some piano far in the background) makes it more than a redundant filler track.

“Idiot Wind” is one of my favourite tracks on the album. With the vamping organ, biting lyrics, and long run time (nearly 8 minutes) it takes up a lot of real estate on side one, and deservedly so. Just read the lyrics to verse one. There is SO much packed in there!

Someone’s got it in for me
They’re planting stories in the press
Whoever it is I wish they’d cut it out quick
But when they will I can only guess
They say I shot a man named Gray
And took his wife to Italy
She inherited a million bucks
And when she died it came to me
I can’t help it if I’m lucky

Side two kicks off with what may the sexiest groove in Dylan’s massive catelogue — “Meet Me In The Morning.” It’s a slow country blues and the bass and drums just take. their. sweet. sexy. time. UGH! So good. Also those chords right before the end of the verse? The ones which descend chromatically and everyone in the band really digs in? Those make me tingle. I could listen to that groove all day with those little Neil Young-style guitar licks kicking in over everything in the background.

At nearly nine minutes in length “Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts” dominates the second half of the album. It’s got an uptempo shuffle which keeps it moving despite its length, and is basically Bob Dylan’s attempt at making a heist movie in song form. The story is great and complicated and full of all the strange characters that are staples of Dylan’s work. It really hammers home his story telling ability.

After that high energy marathon we need the respite that the slow ballad “If You See Her, Say Hello” provides. The song feels like a reworking of the same themes that “Girl from the North Country” explored. But there’s something in this that feels a little more personal. The emotion in Dylan’s voice is palpable and compelling. “Either I’m too sensitive or else I’m getting soft…”

“Shelter From The Storm” could fit anywhere on the acoustic side two of Bringing It All Back Home with it’s simple strumming and long form poetic meditations on a theme. But there’s a new maturity here. The vocals, the simple but powerful bass counterpoint, the restraint. It’s moving.

I was burned out from exhaustion, buried in the hail
Poisoned in the bushes an’ blown out on the trail
Hunted like a crocodile, ravaged in the corn
Come in, she said
I’ll give ya shelter from the storm

“Buckets of Rain” closes the album with another bass and acoustic only arrangement. The finger picking is gorgeous and the melody is simple and sweet. It’s a slight upturn to the sadness of the previous two songs and ends the album with a sense of hope through sadness. It’s powerful in its simplicity.

This is a lot of peoples’ favourite Dylan record. I get it. It hit’s all the high points of what makes Dylan great. He is to many (myself included) the quintessential folk troubadour, and yet he was never satisfied to repeat himself for too long. Blood on the Tracks finds him looking back at his greatest writing period lyrically and pressing forward musically into new territory in a way that really makes the record a high point in his career.

Favourite Tracks: “Tangled Up In Blue”, “Meet Me In the Morning”, “Shelter From the Storm”

Least Favourite Track: “You’re a Big Girl”

17/100 — Albert Ayler Trio — Spiritual Unity (1964)

A lot of free jazz is fairly disorienting. It is the music of extremes, and as such too often becomes either completely unhinged or so technically focused that it loses its soul. On Spiritual Unity, Albert Ayler’s trio leans towards the primal chaos side of things but stays rooted with extremely soulful and emotional playing.

“Ghosts: First Variation” opens the album with a melody that could have been a swinging jazz standard if not for the extra saxophone squelches, the bass meandering a little too much for, and the drums being off in their own tinkling world. The melody is so catchy tho, and is honestly a major reason I love this record. Then, where a traditional solo might go while the rhythm section holds down the structure, suddenly the band all start soloing at once. And yet…and yet…while it feels chaotic, they are tethered to each other and never lost track of where each other is. They even return to the melody again after a wonderful bass and drums duet.

This music feels inspired by birds. The musicians songs interweaving, the formation loose but not without purpose, and the attention spans short but focused. On “The Wizard” Ayler squawks and rocks harder than “Ghosts: First Variation” and sinks more deeply into the chaos but the rich and (by comparison) more stable bass of Gary Peacock (who would later work extensively with pianist extraordinaire Keith Jarrett) manages to keep everything feeling grounded once again.

“Spirits” doesn’t alter the approach but leaves more space between the notes makings it almost meditative by comparison to the rest of the record. This is a good choice as far as pacing the album goes because the album ends with a second variation of “Ghosts” which lasts ten minutes and returns to that delicious opening melody while the bass and drums cut loose even further than the first time.

The trio format is definitely a strength here. Everything (while occasionally overwhelming) is distinguishable; very unlike Ornette Coleman’s genre-creating Free Jazz, which features four musicians per channel for a total of 8 at once. With Spritual Unity, if you want you can focus just on the bass, or drum, or on the sax making it digestible over time in spite of it’s challenging structure. By switching my focus at various times I have been able to pull out new and wonderful little moments when revisiting this stunning record.

Favourite Tracks: “Ghosts: First Variation” and “Ghosts: Second Variation”

Least Favourite Track: “The Wizard”

16/100 — Joanna Newsom — Have One On Me (2010)

Spoilers: I think Have One On Me is the best album released so far in the 21st Century. And I’ve been having a heck of a time trying to write about — partly out of love for it and partly because it’s two hours long. This monumental amount of music is spread over three LPs each with three songs on each side. Compared to Ys which preceded it, HOOM’s arrangements are much less dense, allowing Joanna Newsom’s lyrics to come to the forefront. There are also a number of songs where piano replaces harp as her main instrument, adding new rhythmic and sonic elements for her to play with.

The album opens with “Easy” which acts as an emotional thesis of a sort. Things are easy while she and her lover lie in bed, but outside of that she is “dulling and dumbing” her heart to try and make the relationship last. There seems to be a theme of undervaluing herself, which will develop over the course of the record. The piano rolls along like Fiona Apple on ambien while strings, drums, and a flute swoop in and out of focus as needed. It takes a while to get going but it’s a lovely arrangement.

Already Newsom tries to distance herself from the pain of the impending relational doom as “Have One on Me” gets dreamlike and abstracted by comparison. It has an Arabian Nights sort of vibe with tales of an exotic dancer Lola trying to please Mr Daddy Longlegs with her “spider dance” in the presence of the King of Bavaria. She tries to escape but keeps getting caught up and rendered “helpless as a child in your arms.” At one point there are “whipsering Jesuits/poisoning you against me.” It’s bizarre and lovely and in someways the most akin to her sprawling work on Ys, with the arrangement changing almost every 8 bars or so for the whole 11 minutes.

“‘81” is a wonderful break. It is a pure folk tune (with just Joanna and her harp) which conjures images of the Garden of Eden and wars with dragons. In some ways it seems to be an argument against the doctrine of Original Sin as the final refrain repeats “I believe in innocence, yes I believe in everyone.” Musically it sparkles as her voice weaves in and out of the harp part in a way that is almost hypnotic, and definitely soothing.

“Good Intentions Paving Company,” the closest thing to a lead single the album received, is led by a driving left hand piano rocking on octaves while different percussive elements build around and over top of it. The drumming is really wonderful. So are the little instrumental flairs like when the banjo and mandolin join in for a moment before every slows down. There’s also one of my favourite lines on the album: “ And I regret, I regret/ How I said to you, “honey, just open your heart”/When I’ve got trouble even opening a honey jar/And that right there is where we are…”

Disc one closes with one of my favourite tracks of the decade, the sublime “Baby Birch.” It’s a powerful hymn to a lost child, full — so it seems — of regret over an abortion. “I wish we could take every path…you know I hated to close the door on you.” Again Newsom abstracts her deepest emotions to the realms of sleep and describes a powerful dream in which a barber is “cutting and cutting away my only joy.” But then she sees “a rabbit as slick as a knife and as pale as a candlestick” and catching it speaks to it. “Wherever you go little runaway bunny I will find you/And then she ran/As they’re liable to do/Be at peace baby, and be gone/Be at peace baby, and be gone.” Over the course of nine minutes the solemn single chords building until there are thunderous guitars, and pounding percussion and the dream reaches its emotional climax before at a moment of quiet “be at peace…”) grows slowly into swirl of instrumentation as if she’s trying to hold onto the dream while it, and the spirit of the baby rabbit, fade further and further away from her. This song is her heartbroken amends, and it crushes me every time.

Disc two begins with the very short and lovely “On A Good Day” (again solo harp and voice). Once again the theme of a lost child returns: “ And I had begun to fill in all the lines/Right down to what we’d name her.” But there’s more sad acceptance than trauma now compared to “Baby Birch.”

The rest of the disc expands on the sound and storytelling of the first. Highlights include the horn section on “You and Me, Bess,” the birdlike and shimmering crescendos of “Go Long,” and the dance of the heavy handed piano and drums of “Occident.” But most of all there is the stunning return to themes of putting oneself aside for another on “In California” which boasts some of the best lyrics and melodies of the whole album:

Well, I have sown untidy furrows
Across my soul
But I am still a coward
Content to see my garden grow
So sweet & full
Of someone else’s flowers

It also sets up the stunning conclusion of the whole album.

Disc three starts with the delightful “Soft As Chalk” with its slightly off-kilter piano playing and expressive vocal performance. This also begins the real phase of questioning the relationship. The “I’ve tried everything to please you but it never seems to be enough” phase. She’s starting to regain her independence. Also, come on, the poetry of lines like this: “I roam around the tidy grounds of my dappled sanatorium/Coatless I sit amongst the motes adrift and I dote upon my pinesap gum.” Get out of my face. It’s so good.

While the middle four tracks of disc three all have their moments, it’s the album closer that I’m so very excited to get to. On “Does Not Suffice” Joanna finally packs up each and everyone of her things (“pretty dresses”, “high heel shoes”, “gilded buttons”) that could “remind you of how easy I was not” — a wonderful return to the themes of the first track. That could almost be like she’s taking the blame for the relationship’s failure, but there’s some attitude on it. She’s had it. She’s tried SO hard, and it wasn’t enough. And now it’s her turn to have something not be enough:

It does not suffice for you to say I am a sweet girl
Or to say you hate to see me sad because of you
It does not suffice to merely lie beside each other
As those who love each other do

OH! And did I mention that the song reuses all the melodies on “In California” but inverts their order as she inverts the power dynamics of the relationship? Oh hell yes. And then she walks out of his life singing a little “la la la” tune and all the pent up pain and aggression that she has denied herself this whole two hours finally thunders in and warbles like bird calls and fades into the void. It’s…it’s SO good.

I have returned to this album very often for nearly a decade. Sometimes just for one disc, or even one side. I still catch wonderful little sonic details, or lyrical allusions to other tracks, or just brilliant turns of phrase that I had missed in my previous dozens of listens. This album is a rich tapestry of emotional and musical delights. Sometimes it is a delicate music box to be listened to in a rainy window, and other times it is a rich garden to stroll through and explore. Take your time with it. It’s hard to take all at once, but it’s worth the journey.

Favourite Tracks: “Baby Birch”, “On A Good Day”, “Does Not Suffice”

Least Favourite Track: “Jack Rabbits”

PS: Seeing Joanna Newsom perform live for the Have One On Me tour, is my second favourite concert I’ve ever attended. Second only to seeing Dave Brubeck and meeting him briefly backstage afterwards.