Jesse Richards
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Top 60 Favorite Albums
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| 1) Automatic for the People - R.E.M. | |||
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This album still evokes the soft translucent orangegold of the tape I first listened to during a middle school trip to Baltimore. The REM albums I owned at the time seemed like collections of great songs, but this was one fluid river of music, a solid mood of peace and anguish. The album starts with a punch called Drive, stops by the grand hits Everybody Hurts and Man in the Moon, and ends by immersing you in the violin depths of Nightswimming and Find the River. The songs have classic videos, too, which can be found on the band's DVD Parallel.
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| 2) Abbey Road - The Beatles | |||
 Reporter, U.S. Press Conference, 1964: How does it feel to be putting on the whole world? Ringo: We enjoy it. Paul: We aren't really putting you on. George: Just a bit of it. John: How does it feel to be put on? |
Abbey Road is the Beatles album to top all Beatles albums - and that's saying a lot. On the best-selling album from the best-selling band of all time, you get everything that made them great. You get a dose of their classics with Come Together and Here Comes the Sun, and one of the most beautiful love songs ever written with George Harrison's Something. Their fun side comes through in Octopus's Garden, one of the only Beatles tracks that Ringo sings, and Maxwell's Silver Hammer. While The Beatles (the White Album) has more of their best experimental, edgy tracks, this delves that way with the engrossing I Want You (She's So Heavy), which stops on a dime and paves the way for my favorite Beatles epic - the stream of songs from Mean Mr. Mustard to The End. The End itself, Paul, John and George's legendary guitar jam and the last track on the last Beatles album recorded (save for the coda Her Majesty), is the perfect cap to the most distinguished career of any musical act in history. The funeral procession on the cover represents the end of The Beatles - and they went out with a bang.
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| 3) OK Computer - Radiohead | |||
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I have a good book that examines this album and revels in the moment in Karma Police in which Thom Yorke's voice rises up to a sublime height - the middle of the song in the middle of the album. For that and for Paranoid Android alone, this would earn its place in any Best Of list. I also have a Radiohead tribute album where somebody does a really rocking cover of Fitter Happier, of all things. |
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| 4) Apollo 18 - They Might Be Giants | |||
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My second They Might Be Giants album, this replaces Flood on this list. I think I listened to Flood so many times I had to give it a break. It's a tough call, but I knew some Giants album had to rank high. This one has a lot of great songs -included one of my all-time favorites, The Guitar - that range from rock (See the Constellation) to quirk (Mammal). And it's got Fingertips, which is a medley of song clips all over the music spectrum. Though I first bought this as a cassette, Fingertips was brilliantly demarcated on the cd as 17 different tracks, so when you shuffle, your songlist becomes crazy go nuts! From I Palindrome I: "Son, I am able," she said, "though you scare me." "Watch," said I. "Beloved," I said, "watch me scare you though." Said she, "Able am I, son."
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| 5) Whatever and Ever Amen - Ben Folds Five | |||
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My introduction to Ben Folds and still the most consistent album. Well, I guess the first one was consistent, too, but less professional and well-made. This one perfectly mixes hard piano rock, such as Kate and Battle of Who Could Care Less, with slow lullybystic ballads, like Smoke and Evaporated. Brick, their big hit, is not one of my favorites here. from Selfless, Cold and Composed:
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| 6) Ten - Pearl Jam | |||
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Like Automatic for the People, Ten evokes a consistent, soothing mood fo quality songs. But unlike REM, Pearl Jam's first album clearly surpasses their many subsequent works (though the next two were also pretty good.) Along with Nirvana's Nevermind, this is the masterpiece of a generation and the epitome of the entire world of Grunge and Garage Band Rock. It's incredible to think that all these great songs are on a single album - Once, Even Flow, Alive, Black, Oceans, Jeremy, Deep, and the double Release that closes the heavy-hitting album with a sigh.
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| 7) The Beatles - The Beatles | |||
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The "White Album" is #200 in sales on Amazon today - not bad for 35 years later. This is possibly the most experimental and varied pop album ever, at least of ones that are still really good. Four of my absolute favorite Beatles songs are here - Happiness is a Warm Gun, Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except for Me and My Monkey, I'm So Tired, and George's impressive tour de force, While My Guitar Gently Weeps. Any one would make an album legendary. The two-cd album let the Beatles find their artistic, acoustic roots, and several fantasticly sparse and haunting ballads stand out - Mother Nature's Son, Martha My Dear, Blackbird, Julia, I Will, and Dear Prudence. There are the hard-rocking tunes, with McCartney belting out Helter Skelter against type, plus Back in the USSR, and Birthday. Then there is the weird, fun stuff - the satirical Piggies, the bouncy Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, the strange Why Don't We Do It In the Road? and the country westerns The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill and Rocky Racoon. I like Cry Baby Cry and Yer Blues a lot too, and Revolution 1 more than its faster-paced, popular version. And the bizarre Revolution 9 must have been completely mind-bending at the time, with its cacaphony of surreal sound effects and lack of discernible melody, but luckily it leads into a soft Ringo-sung album closer, Good Night. More history courtesy of Spud:
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| 10) Motorcade of Generosity - Cake | |||
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Good song after good song. And some of their most creative are on this album. Mr. Mastodon Farm is ingenious - so syncopated it's almost spoken word. Jolene and Ruby Sees All are two of my favorite Cake songs. And Rock 'N' Roll Lifestyle and I Bombed Korea sneak in nuanced political messages.
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| 14) Concert in the Park - Paul Simon | |||
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This is the first CD I ever owned - and it's still a favorite in my collection. Of Paul Simon's studio albums, both Graceland and Rhythm of the Saints are excellent, but here we get all of those hits, like Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes and You Can Call Me Al, along with many Simon and Garfunkle staples like Bridge Over Troubled Water, The Boxer, Sound of Silence and Cecilia. The energy is amazing and the versions of the songs take creative turns that make them distinct from the studio versions.
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| 24) The Bends - Radiohead | |||
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Both this and OK Computer are classic Radiohead albums - not as mainstream as Pablo Honey, but not as out there as their subsequent albums. Bones is one of my favorite Radiohead songs. It builds to this great quivering energy beat and climbs higher and higher, even though the words are completely indecipherable. The opening track, Planet Telex, has a great ending, and High and Dry and Fake Plastic Trees are both excellent songs. The Bends can be listened to all the way through, with no hint of dragging songs or low points.
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A new Zagat guide to the best albums was just released. Their top ten matches some of my own: ZAGAT'S TOP TEN | |||
