Albums in My Collection I Find Essential from Artists with Several More That Aren't Essential
by James Albert Barr
"Only you and you alone can thrill me like you do." - Only You by The Platters
Over the years, as a music lover/collector, I've noticed that I have accumulated many "one-offs" in my ever-expanding music collection. What I mean by "one-off" is those albums by artists whom I'm fairly familiar with and have heard at least three or four or more of their albums in their respective discographies. But, for some reason, either aesthetically or more subjectively, only one specific album in said catalogs has "hit my sweetspot" and remained singular in my affection for and appreciation of. Here's a list of some of those special albums from mostly well-known musical artists that sit snuggly, though solitarily, among other artists with more than one album to show for in my beloved collection. I'll use numbers as markers, but they're really in no particular order of preference or significance:
The Waterboys have about 15 albums to their credit, but I've only heard maybe the first five, up to Room to Roam. and it was 1985's This is the Sea that completely captured my love and attention. Of course, the band's most famous song appears on it: "The Whole of the Moon", which is a bona fide classic. But I also love tracks like, "Don't Bang the Drum", "Medicine Bow", "Be My Enemy" and the sublime title track, which closes the album. This was also Karl Wallinger's last album with The Waterboys before he left to form his own band, World Party, whose 1990 album, Goodbye Jumbo, incidentally, is the only album from them that I consider essential, but is currently missing from my collection; an omission I hope to rectify in the near future.
2. Yanqui U.X.O. - Godspeed You! Black Emperor (2002)
I remember, back when I actually gave a shit what Pitchfork said in their reviews, that they "forked over" a pitiful 5.6 rating to this fantastic album, saying it was "sluggish and lacked any invention". I wholly disagree with it being sluggish. I find it, to this day, to be utterly captivating and dramatically sweeping in the best possible way. Yes, maybe it wasn't particularly "ground-breaking", but that's hardly a deal-breaker with me when the material is so memorable, such as the album's centerpiece, "Rockets Fall on Rocket Falls". I've heard their first four albums, and even used to own a copy of Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven, but it never really grabbed me hard enough to stick, though it was still pretty decent. I, admittedly, haven't been keeping up with Godspeed You! Black Emperor's more recent stuff.
Phil Collins was literally everywhere throughout the 1980s. You could not escape his ultra-sheen, piercing caterwaul, especially between 1984-1989 (with Genesis or solo), when "the 80s sound" became bigger, louder, more insistent and antiseptic, production-wise. This was the period when Patrick Bateman's favorite music was being mass-produced and shorned of any real soul and authenticity, at least in the mainstream. Before the music industry went "over the top" (to quote from a, by then, typically bad Sly Stallone movie of the same obnoxious period) post-'83, in my opinion, although I was mostly on-board with it all, being a mere teenager myself, Phil had recorded and released a couple less extroverted albums that still, however, evinced the new (and soon to be over-used) studio "gated drum sound". In fact, it was on his solo debut album, Face Value, that said gated drum sound was historically employed, most memorably on now classic song, "In the Air Tonight", a song that was initially a moderate Top 20 hit in 1981, but would be launched into the florescent-colored/padded-shouldered stratosphere after being brilliantly played at a crucial moment in the classic debut episode of Miami Vice. Anyway, Face Value is the one and only Phil Collins album I feel deserves to be included in my vast but eclectic music collection.
4. Nomads Indians Saints - Indigo Girls (1990)
I heard this stellar album at a very impressionable time in my then young life when my social consciousness and liberal self-righteousness were "ripe as young pain" and beginning to insist itself on many unsuspecting (initially, anyways) acquaintances with a modicum of opinion-asserting regarding all things musical, cinematic, literary, environmental and political. The Indigo Girls were, themselves, a very liberal, left-leaning folk-rock duo who associated themselves with many of the musical acts I was into around the early 90s, particularly R.E.M., who were, by then, my absolute favorite band. I liked the Girls' earlier stuff and some of their subsequent material as well, but Nomads Indians Saints, featuring the outstanding "Watershed", "Welcome Me", "Hammer and a Nail", "Keeper of My Heart" and "The Girl with the Weight of the World in Her Hands", was the only album that really blew me away.
There was a relatively short period of time in the early 2010's when I truly thought I was going to become an "official fan" of the American indie band, The National. I had purchased their 2010 album, High Violet, and quickly picked up their 2007 release, Boxer (which I sold later). I really liked Boxer, but I loved High Violet, and was "planning" on getting 2005's Alligator after listening to it on YouTube but never did. High Violet was my 3rd favorite album of 2010 and the tracks "Anyone's Ghost" (which reminded me of the great Mark Sandman of Morphine), "Bloodbuzz Ohio" and "England" were among my favorite songs of that year. Then their 2013 follow-up, Trouble Will Find Me, was released. I heard it, again on YouTube, but was not especially enamoured with it, although I didn't hate it either; it was just kinda, as the kids say, "meh", just not very memorable, so I chose not to buy it. Hoping they would bounce-back with their next album, I waited until Sleep Well Beast came out in 2017, and I was just as disappointed with it as their previous snoozer. That's right, a "snoozer". The National's music, post-High Violet has been a crushing bore to me, and to be perfectly honest, kind of beta and cucky. What the hell happened to them? They used to ROCK, as only capital-L liberal, indie bands are wont to do from time to time, but do less and less now over the last decade or so - Hmmm.
6. Love - The Cult (1985)
For me, and unequivocally, Love is the Cult album, bar none! Even though I do like some of the songs on their subsequent albums, no other Cult album has even come close to this one (sorry Electric and Sonic Temple fans). It has their undisputed (generally speaking) greatest song, "She Sells Sanctuary" (a set-in-stone classic that I never tire of listening to), and an overall sound that perfectly captures a melange of gothic/punk/alternative rock. "Rain", "Revolution", "Nirvana" and "Black Angel" are highlights as well.
7. Become What You Are - Juliana Hatfield Three (1993)
This was the only album released under the moniker: the Juliana Hatfield Three. Of course, she had previously been in a well-regarded band, Blake Babies, but after they broke-up Juliana usually recorded new music as a solo artist, with the exception of Become What You Are, the best thing she ever did, in my opinion. And it doesn't surprise me that the closest Juliana Hatfield ever came to "rock stardom" was with this album too. There isn't a clunker in the bunch, with particular standouts being: "My Sister", "For the Birds", "Supermodel", "Feelin' Massachusetts" and "I Got No Idols". Being not exactly the extroverted type, perhaps this brief brush with "semi-fame" scared her straight, and she decided to be a lot more unassuming a singer-songwriter from there on.
8. Aqualung - Jethro Tull (1971)
Only in the last decade or so have I finally begun to more thoroughly appreciate progressive rock. During the 80s, I was predominantly a new wave/synth-pop/college rock fan, and almost exclusively into alternative rock and some Brit pop while traversing the 90s. At the turn of the millennium, I was hooked on indie music/chill electronica/art pop and, to some degree, its hipster pretensions. By the early 2010s, I began noticing the hollowness (and questionable dispositions, particularly regarding the notion of reality) of many of the indie artists I continued discovering and attempted to "get into", seeing as I learned more and more of them came from well-to-do backgrounds with nary a credible pedigree for truly counter-cultural artistry. This sea change of sorts, taste-wise, opened up my ears to a long-neglected genre, i.e. prog-rock. Jethro Tull, however, were a band I got somewhat familiar with having lived with a couple straight-up prog fans back in the 90s, so I heard a few of Tull's albums in my day, but the only one that really, and eventually, took to my "wheel-house", was this deliciously derelict gem.
9. Sports - Huey Lewis and the News (1983)
Quite an ironic "left-turn" here, huh? Yup, the "coming-of-age" period for this Gen-Xer was indeed the glorious 1980s! What a time to be a teenager who loves music. As I said earlier, my "predominant tastes" in the 80s were new wave/synth-pop/college rock, and Huey Lewis and the News were really none of these in the strictest sense. They did however, because it was all the rage afterall, display "some" new wave qualities in their music, a la "I Want a New Drug" and "Heart and Soul", in particular. I only recently procured a used CD copy of Sports long after owning a cassette copy of it in the 80s. It's, without a doubt, the only Huey Lewis and the News album I could ever own, and mostly for nostalgic purposes. Having said that, it's still a wonderful collection of catchy-ass tunes from a long-lost time I would seriously consider giving up a body part to go back to.
10. Octopus - Gentle Giant (1972)
I belatedly discovered these immensely talented British prog rockers about five years ago while watching the YouTube channel, Sea of Tranquility, and hearing Pete Pardo gush over them and their relatively short life-span as an active band, 1970-1980. I've heard most of their 11 albums, and genuinely liked a few of them, but there was only one that wholly impressed me, nay, blew my frickin' mind, and that was Octopus! It features eight tracks of some of the most creative prog rock compositions, displaying magnificent musicianship and wonderfully odd vocal arrangements and harmonies, such as those featured on "Knots". "Dog's Life" and "Think of Me with Kindness" are beautifully heartfelt ballads of a folk-prog quality.
