Shut Up And Listen 219

Top 25 Albums (10-1)

A couple of months back, I was kind of bored, so I sat down, looked through my CD collection and picked out my twenty-six favourite albums and put them in one of my CD wallets. I picked twenty-six because that's how many CDs the wallet can hold. I've since taken the twenty-sixth album out to be a floater space for whatever newer CD I'm currently digging on. I figured I could eat a couple of weeks by doing a write-up on my choices. You will undoubtedly disagree with my list, but fuck you, this is my personal soundtrack. In this column, I will count down and discuss numbers ten through one.

10. Fully Completely by The Tragically Hip
I don't know if this was the Hip's biggest selling album, but it's certainly the one with the most songs that I know. See, I didn't really get into the Hip until after their album Phantom Power in, oh, 1997 or 1998. Gradually, after that point, I picked up their past albums, and it always surprised me how many songs I knew all of the words to. It doesn't matter how many times it happens with how many bands, I'm always surprised out of my mind when a song comes on a CD I just bought and I find myself singing along. This album is full of songs I know and love. There's what? "Fully Completely," "Courage," "Fifty Mission Cap," "Locked Inside The Trunk Of A Car," and, of course, "The 100th Meridian." I love that song. If I had a list of all time favourite songs, it would probably be in the top ten, too.

9. Marcy Playground by Marcy Playground
Fuck you. I am sick and tired of people saying how much they hate "Sex And Candy" because it's a lie. Fuck you if you say you hate that song, because you don't. That's just the cool thing to say. Not only do you not hate the song, you love it. I was there when you did, so don't deny it. It was, and still is, a kick ass song and there's nothing wrong with that. Don't punish the song because it got played a lot, and especially don't punish the band. I bought this album because of that song and I'm glad I did. Marcy Playground were an essential part of my high school years. It's total geek rock of the highest calibre. You've got "Cloaking Robe Of Elvin Kind," which is about, well, a cloaking robe of Elvin kind. And the great love song "Sherry Frasier" along with a shitload of other solid tracks. I was actually worried when I put it on the list because I hadn't listened to it in a while, but I put it on and it was still just as good as I remember, which is rare.

8. Dookie by Green Day
This was the first album I bought myself that I can remember. It was also my first step from liking shit like MC Hammer to liking, you know, good music. I was in, shit, what, grade six? I'd be the first to admit that if it were almost any other album, it would probably be on this list for nostalgic reasons, but this one is just that damn good. I didn't get a lot of songs back then, so when I finally got it on CD a few years back and was able to give it a listen again, some stuff was surprising. Back then, I just heard the funny lyrics and swear words, but now, I hear a lot of shit that I can relate to; you know, shit about getting older and having to face the world. It's one of those perfect teenager/young adult albums.

7. The Bends by Radiohead
While a lot of people think OK Computer is Radiohead's best album, I'm going to have to disagree. See, while OK Computer is great, The Bends was Radiohead at their most rock and roll, to me. I love their experimental side, but I think I love the rock side a little bit more. You could hear that other side coming up with this album, but it also had some great rock songs like "The Bends," "Iron Lung," and "Just." It's the kind of stuff that you listen to at twenty after seven on a December morning on the way to school to try and stay awake.

6. Gordon by The Barenaked Ladies
I'll always associate this song with Lauren Williams. If you've been reading my column since way back when I started it, in that first year, I talked about "The Girl." Well, that was Lauren. She was my high school crush from grade ten until OAC (grade thirteen) basically. I never even made a move because I was chicken. I run into her now and then at school as she goes to Western too. Hell, talked with her before one of my exams a couple months back. Believe me, I really don't know what I saw in her. Oh, how I wish I could clue my younger self in on that one. But, anyways, I got into the Barenaked Ladies around the time I started digging on her. For a long time, my favourite song has been "What A Good Boy," which comes off this album and it's a song that I almost directly associate with her. It feels weird calling it my favourite song at this point because of that tie. It's still a song I love, but it's kind of like reading a book you loved in high school but now can't get into as much. The entire album isn't like that. It's an album where I'm always finding new stuff in it. What I'm almost always impressed by is how smart and funny it is. "Brian Wilson" is a brilliant fucking song, while "Box Set" just rips the music industry to shreds. "New Kid On The Block" could still be applied today to those teen sensations that are supposedly family friendly but then become all sex-fiendish. A lot of the reference are 1992 specific, but they still work, in a way. This album almost shows just how cyclical popculture is: while the references may not be accurate, what they're saying and what their meaning is can still be applied.

5. lover/fighter by Hawksley Workman
I can't even remember what I wrote about this in the year-end column that mentioned it. This was an album that I bought just because I felt like I should. I don't know why. It seems most of the albums that I really love I just bought on an instinct. Maybe I heard a song that I dug, I don't know. I hear lots of songs that I dig, but then don't buy the album. Do I have a sixth sense for buying music? How cool would that be? That's the superpower I want: the ability to never buy a shitty album. Fuck heat vision and flying. If I could go the rest of my life without paying money for bad music, that would be enough. I'm glad I got this album. It's my fall album now. That could have something to do with the song "Autumn's Here" or it could have to do with me listening to it a lot during the fall of my second year of uni. It's an album that strangely enough doesn't have many stand-out songs. lover/fighter works best as a whole. It's rare to find albums like that. Usually you skip ahead and then back and shit, but not so much here. Oh, of course, I have skipped around a bit, but not nearly as much with most albums. It's an album that shows Hawksley Workman at his most focussed and it works amazingly well. It also has one of my favourite lines ever in the song "Anger As Beauty": "Fighter soul alive in a whiskey-fuelled rage." Seriously, how did he come up with a line that good?

4. Weezer (The Blue Album) by Weezer
Alright, let's all be honest and admit that "No One Else" is a song that captures what we all want deep down inside. We all want a girl (or boy) who "laughs for no one else." It doesn't matter how okay you are with your relationship and all of that, on some level, deep down, you want that. It's okay. You can admit it. That doesn't mean you'd ever try to force it to happen or act all jealous and shit, it's natural to have those feelings. But you've got to love how Rivers Cuomo put them into a song like that. To this day, I consider that to be both my favourite Weezer song and also one of the most honest songs ever. In a way, it's kind of easy to do all of that other honest shit that emo bands tend to do nowadays. Hell, the fact that so many bands do them show how easy they are. I've heard others call Weezer the first emo band and I wouldn't disagree. This is the album that started it all and I don't think any other band has managed to capture that same honesty. And listening to it right now, I just fucking love it. There's not a song that doesn't touch a chord somehow. You want to know the best part about this album? I paid, like, six bucks for it new. It's one of those albums that you can pick up for insanely cheap, which is the way all the best albums would be in a perfect way, you know?

3. Led Zeppelin II by Led Zeppelin
To me, Led Zeppelin II holds within it every little piece of a relationship. Every stage, from beginning to end. From a committed, loving one to a one-night stand one. See, I know this mostly because of this book I was writing. Back in October, this little writing exercise where you write a fifty-thousand word novel in a month (November 1-30) was brought to my attention and I decided to give it a go. My idea was a semi-autobiographical novel called "Osborn Ednyfed" and it would be based around Led Zeppelin's first album. Each chapter would be based on a song somehow, either thematically or stylistically or just by picking up on a line, whatever I felt was necessary. I got around fifteen-thousand words into it before realising there was no way I would have it finished by the end of the month and sort of abandoned it, meaning to come back to it (the fact that in November, I basically had four papers due was also a factor). When I had the idea for basing it around Led Zeppelin, I also had the idea in the back of my head to continue on after the first book and keep telling Osborn's story with Led Zeppelin albums as the guide. So, one day in a class, I wrote out all of the song titles for Led Zeppelin II and tried to see what story was told. Basically, the first five songs tell the story of a relationship. You begin with "Whole Lotta Love" where the two meet and he likes her and all of that. Then there's "What Is And What Should Never Be" where you throw in her friends not liking him or his friends not liking him, or even them just being in that doubtful stage where maybe they just want to be friends. "The Lemon Song" is probably the most complex as it combines fighting and sex and fighting and sex. It's almost the make-up-break-up-make-up-break-up stage. "Thank You" is obviously the all-out love song where everything is fantastic, and then "Heartbreaker" is the break-up/"fuck you" bit. "Living Loving Maid (She's Just A Woman)" seemed to inspire a bar story where Osborn meets a fun girl who he has a one-night stand with, which is followed by "Ramble On" aka the morning after. "Moby Dick" is a flatter, almost Bret Easton Ellis-like narrative about being in between stuff. And then it all ends with "Bring It Back Home" and some sort of satisfaction with life.

Of course, that isn't why I love this album, I just thought that would make a somewhat interesting bit on the album. What makes this album great is . . . well, fuck, I don't know. I just dig the songs. There isn't a song on the album that isn't great. "Whole Lotta Love" everyone knows is great. "Thank You" is just about the greatest love song I've ever heard, which is then followed up with "Heartbreaker," which is a great "fuck off" song (plus the "some people cry and some people die by the wicked ways of love, but I just keep on rolling along with the grace of the lord above" is a great line). It's got that great British humour sensibility that you could later see used by The Darkness where they had "I Believe In A Thing Called Love" followed by "Love Is Only A Feeling". "Ramble On" is probably my favourite song on the album. It just has such a great energy to it (although the guitar riff on "Heartbreaker" is probably my second favourite one of all time after the one on "Layla"). Then there's "Moby Dick" . . . a fucking drum solo! A song that is framed by a catchy as hell guitar riff and then is a drum solo! Who the fuck does that? That blew me away (especially when I listened to some of their live stuff and the solo went on for twelve minutes). Maybe what I get from the album is that it's the first real Led Zeppelin album. The first album was more "Jimmy Page's Led Zeppelin" while this album was them as a band together. They'd been together for a while and collaborated on the album together more fully. That's the sense I get.

2. lloR N kcoR by Ryan Adams
Although I loathe the idea of calling people the next whatever or the new whomever, I must say that Ryan Adams is this generation's Neil Young. I don't think that their music is similar or anything, I'm talking strictly about their approach to what they do. Both men make music that represents them right then and there. It can be shitty or it can be brilliant, but, dammit, that was the music they had to make right then and there and fuck you if you don't like it. They're two people willing to put themselves out there in unsafe ways and explore new stuff. Fuck doing a record just like the last one. They already made that record once, why do it again? Look at the shit Adams is getting now because he decided to release three albums this year. How dare he? People express concerns about low quality or something, but they fail to remember that the best fucking rock music came out of a time where what you did was make an album, tour for six months and then do another album. It wasn't this "lucky if you get a new one every two years" bullshit. It was you make fucking music because you make fucking music.

lloR N kcoR is the album that got me into Adams. I ordered it from Columbia House as one of my initial 13 free CDs because something about the cover called to me. I can't explain it, but every time I saw that album cover, I felt like I should get that album because it's fucking good. So I did and it is. I remember reading a review of it in Spin or Rolling Stone that called his lyrics lazy (the same was said for his recent Cold Roses with the band The Cardinals--his "Crazy Horse" perhaps?) but that's bullshit. The lyrics are simple, yeah, but that's all that's needed. Why dress it up when you don't have to? Like in "Wish You Were Here" he has a line that goes "It's totally fucked up / I'm totally fucked up." What's wrong with that?

This is the album that I put on when I want loud, fun rock. It's about chicks, drugs, booze and all of that good shit. It's got strong guitars, loud drums, and half-decent singing. My favourite track is "Note To Self: Don't Die" almost just for the name, but also for the chorus where Adams sings "Note to self: don't die for anyone / Note to self: don't die / Note to self: don't change for anyone / Don't change, just lie." I fucking love that.

1. We Were Born In A Flame by Sam Roberts
And finally, we come to We Were Born In A Flame by Sam Roberts . . . This is the one album that I always carry in a CD wallet. It hasn't seen its case in a year-and-a-half at this point. I don't even know what to say about it. I don't think words can sum it up right. I remember when it was re-released in the US and I made the offer to all of my friends that if they bought it and didn't like it, I would give them their money back. I've never done that for anything else, but I did it for that. Only one person bought the album and he loved it too. A mutual friend loved it as well and stole it from him. We were all guys in our late teens/early twenties, and I think that's who this album really appeals to. It is the perfect album for a guy in his late teens/early twenties, has problems with girls, and generally feels a little lost. I mean, the second track, "Where Have All The Good People Gone?" sums that up with the line "The modern world is a cold, cold world and all I meet are cold, cold girls." Or the entire song "Dead End." That song is me a lot of the time, even two years later.

I hope this album isn't always my favourite album, but right now it suits me. Here's hoping it doesn't this time next year.