Albums in Need of Listening

I've come across a lot of albums in my years at Davis. This post is devoted to albums that have received less listenership and/or acclaim than I think they deserve. This premise makes the post inherently KDVS. Also, in the course of making this I proved to myself that the 70's are my favorite decade of music.

There are three ways albums made it onto this list:
-albums that I wished I could have put on my Top 15 Albums
-albums that admirably characterize a favorite underground genre of mine
-albums that are total diamonds in the rough

This explains why many albums are well-established underground masterpieces and others are near completely unknown, even by KDVS standards. The common thread that unites all of them is that their potential listenership is much greater than their actual listenership. The ones with asterisks have a particularly large deficit.

Some of these are very difficult albums and others should be able to be appreciated by practically all of you. I try to make it clear which are which in the blurbs I provide. I own all of these and actively want to give them to you, so ask for them or about them.

Many of these albums fall into subgenres that the uninitiated will be unfamiliar with. So you know...

Shoegaze is a British branch of indie pop from around the turn of the 90's for which artists buried their melodies in a swath of swooning, distorted guitar. The guitar, vocals and bass frequently blend together such that it's often difficult to pick out individual instruments. Shoegaze songs are frequently about the ocean, flying, dreaming and depressant drugs.
Stoner Rock fuses slow heavy metal riffs with a psychedelic postgrunge production. Lyrics are often about things like bongs, deodorizers and sandals. Queens of the Stone Age started out as a stoner rock band.
Jangle Pop is a post-punk/alternative style from the 80's. It uses chimy, undistorted guitars to produce a pretty shimmery sound like Big Star or the Byrds. REM and the title song for "Friends" are pretty good examples of the genre.
Paisley Underground was a subset of jangle pop that was more psychedelic and more obviously influenced by 60's bands. It was centered in Los Angeles, but many of the bands originated in Davis.
Power Pop started in the early 70's and blew up as part of the new wave movement in the late 70's and early 80's. Songs like "My Sharona", "867-5309" and "I Want You to Want Me" define the genre. The sound is characterized by sweet popcraft counterbalanced by crunch and attitude.
Protopunk is retroactively defined as all the bands that influenced early punk rock. The music is usually some combination of primal stupidity, creative experimentation, attitude and high energy.


00's
*Rogue Wave - Out of the Shadow 2004
This is a gem of an indie pop album that slipped through the cracks. It's melodic, catchy and quirky.

Times New Viking - Dig Yourself 2005
This is some of the best songwriting to come out of the Columbus, OH "shitgaze" scene. It's catchy, rebellious pop in such terrible fidelity as to become mostly noise... in a good way?

Death From Above 1979 - You're A Woman, I'm a Machine 2004
With just a bass, synth and drums, these minimalists sound like a fucked up, overdriven party version of Queens of the Stone Age. They never made it past their first album, so this is all they have to offer.

90's
Aphex Twin - Selected Ambient Works 85-92 (released 1993)
Most people interested in brilliant electronica have heard of Aphex Twin, but this album is his masterpiece.

Liz Phair - Exile in Guyville 1993
Before she was a plastic pop diva, Liz Phair made her name with this muted lofi album with intensely clever, biting lyrics.

*Rollerskate Skinny - Horsedrawn Wishes 1996
Rollerskate Skinny crosses shoegaze with a bizarreness akin to the Flaming Lips. It has been repeatedly placed in the top 100 Irish albums of all time, though who keeps tabs on something like that?

The Ecstasy of St. Theresa - Susurrate 1992
This Czech band was a little late to the game for Shoegaze, not to mention in the wrong country. The fact that they captured the sound of classic shoegaze better than even the classic shoegaze bands doomed the album to poor reviews (including my beloved Allmusic), but being derivative doesn't keep this from being one of the most perfectly-executed albums ever made in the style.

Ash - 1977 (released 1996)
This is a messy punk/pop album with bittersweet melodic hooks and some Cheap Trick crunch.

Kyuss - Blues for the Red Sun 1992
This is a landmark stoner rock album. The musicianship is superb and the production is somehow both meaty and effervescent.

Monster Magnet - Spine of God 1991
Also a landmark for stoner rock and also with a brilliant production, the difference is that this one's odes to metal heads are a tongue-in-cheek indictment.

*Rites of Spring - End on End 1991
You can't claim to know emo until you've heard the original emotional hardcore band. This is totally hardcore punk, albeit with an intensely personal and emotional approach. It's a textbook catharsis album that will blow your mind with its speed and fervor.


80's
Dinosaur Jr - You're Living All Over Me 1987
This album squalls with some of the best alternative lead guitar work ever recorded. The songs are awesome in that indie this-chord-sounds-so-wrong-but-so-right way.

Stone Roses - Stone Roses 1989
This is danceable and psychedelic rock.

The Replacements - Let it Be 1984
This is an angsty, rocking record by my uncle's favorite band.

Feelies - Crazy Rhythms 1980
This album is exactly what it says, all done with beautifully chimy guitars and a new wave lilt.

*Gun Club - Fire of Love 1981
As far as I can tell this is the greatest psychobilly album ever recorded. It's rootsy and paranoid and you can tell the Pixies took a ton of their sound from it.

Let's Active - Cypress/Afoot 1984/83
Jangly and punchy, this record has a superb production and bittersweet melodies.

*The Dream Syndicate - The Days of Wine and Roses 1982
Channeling the Velvet Underground, the Doors and Neil Young into a kind of throwback postpunk, this album rocks and shimmers. Add to that that the band's front man Steve Wynn is a former KDVS DJ and UC Davis graduate and how awesome and under-appreciated do you expect this to be?

The Long Ryders - Native Sons 1984
Again, to be described by artists like the Byrds and Neil Young and with terms like "jangly", this time on the country end of the spectrum.

The Soft Boys - Underwater Moonlight 1980
A five-star jangle album in the style of the previous four albums.

70's
*Eggs Over Easy - Good 'n' Cheap 1972
This band's heartfelt, laid back blend of country-rock, folk-rock and Motown spawned a genre called pub rock. Their only recorded album was more or less lost to time until this 2004 rerelease and I think it shows they deserve to sit atop their highly regarded followers as kings.

Faces - A Nod Is as Good as a Wink...to a Blind Horse 1971
This is Rod Stewart's band that never made it on its own for whatever reason. The rootsy rock here has a lot more meat to it than Stewart's solo stuff.

Cockney Rebel - The Human Menagerie 1973
This is slinky, preening glam rock filled out with beautiful orchestral support. Don't try to make sense of the lyrics because they're just rhyming nonsense.

T. Rex - Electric Warrior 1971
This definitive document of British glam rock never really made it across the pond. It's a shame, because it's actually great party music.

New York Dolls - New York Dolls 1972
The production takes a little getting used to, but this is a great hard rock album that should sit between the Stones and Aerosmith on your shelf. Also, check out their getups, because I've seen few things so badass.

Big Star - Third/Sister Lovers 1978
This is a horribly broken album that took me many plays to acquire any sort of taste for, but gradually I realized that many of these songs are some of the most delicate, beautiful, heart-wrenching recordings I've ever heard.

Nick Drake - Pink Moon 1972
This quiet, brooding acoustic singer/songwriter album is immediately pretty.

Joni Mitchell - Blue 1971
This is a melancholy album whose vocals overflow with feeling and finesse like sparkling water. It's melodies are difficult, but rewarding.

XTC - Drums and Wires 1979
This is angular, arty fun new wave.

Television - Marquee Moon 1977
This is one of the most arty '77 punk albums made and it's played with excellent musicianship, so it doesn't sound like your first impression of punk.

Wire - Chairs Missing 1978
Another incredibly arty punk album. It's intensely clever and energetic, even when it waxes complex and ambient. Their first album gets more credit for its concept, but this is the more ingenious record.

*Richard Hell and the Voidoids - Blank Generation 1977
This is superfast, superangular, creative punk done with remarkable panache. Way too many people into punk haven't heard this gem.

Simply Saucer - Cyborgs Revisited 1994
This is the most obscure "classic" protopunk album I've ever come across and that, between you and me, is saying something.

Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band - Trout Mask Replica 1972
I decided the phrase "clever noise" describes this album perfectly. This is a well-known masterpiece, but it's not for the faint of heart. It spills over with abstract lyrics, rhythms that aren't quite right and keep changing, lots of frenetic atonal noodling, the occasional instantly captivating guitar run and glimmers of abject brilliance everywhere.

*Faust - Faust So Far 1972
As a representative of the style called Krautrock, So Far is frequently spacy, repetitive, grating and beautiful, sometimes all at once, but not usually. Like Trout Mask Replica, it is always fascinating if you listen closely.

Dwight Twilley - Sincerely 1976
This is just a great power pop album that leans towards the Elvis side of things.

The Nerves - Nerves EP 1976
These four songs of Beatlesque power pop are essentially this band's entire recorded output, but it's quite the legacy.

The Scruffs - Wanna Meet the Scruffs? 1977
This lost gem of power pop "bursts with off harmonies, left hooks, and jolts of random energy."

60's
*Paul Butterfield Blues Band - East/West 1966
Anyone interested in long rock jams, blues-rock or eastern influences in rock needs to hear this record, because this band was the first to do all of those things and they did them very, very well.

Gram Parsons - GP/Greivous Angel 1972
While his work with the Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers is better known, nowhere does "the father of country-rock" sound more beautiful than on his duets with Emmylou Harris here. These might be my favorite vocal duets, period.

John Fahey - The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death 1965
This is an incredible instrumental record of meditative, folksy and ultimately haunting melodies. It's more restrained and bizarrely creative than fellow guitar-picker Leo Kottke's work.

Moby Grape - Moby Grape 1967
One of the classic "lost albums" of the best year rock and roll ever had.

*The Zombies - Odessey and Oracle 1968
This is a record of great 60's pop that way more people need to listen to.

Pink Floyd - Piper at the Gates of Dawn 1967
The only album by Pink Floyd that I really listen to, this was made before Syd Barrett left the band and before Pink Floyd became what it is remembered as. This is a great psychedelic album and the only thing Barrett produced before breaking under the copious amounts of acid he was dropping.

*Alexander "Skip" Spence - Oar 1969
This sounds as acid-damaged and brilliant as Syd Barrett's subsequent solo work, but with more variety of sound. "War and Peace" sounds like Radiohead.

MC5 - Kick Out the Jams - 1969
This some seriously powerful, angry, soulful rock and roll.

Blue Cheer - Vincebus Eruptum 1968
Among the loudest-sounding albums I've ever heard and certainly the loudest from the 60's, it stomps like an elephant and roars like a lion.

Silver Apples - Contact 1969
The Silver Apples are an obscure bridge from 60's rock to the electronica that Krautrock bands like Kraftwerk would develop. Fellow DJ The Colonel (aka Kern) loves that this album can segue between hip hop, electronica, rock and experimental music without missing a beat.

What's Wrong With IPA's?

As a fledgling beer snob with a vendetta against the most popular style of microbrew, I get the question a lot: What's wrong with IPA's? The short answer is that they're pretentious and undrinkable. Now, if you're an IPA fan, you've heard that before. A non-beer drinker could say that.

IPA's are the product of a "logical extreme" paradigm that is uniquely American. You've heard Texans boast that "everything's big in Texas". Well, Texans are just Americans with less class than the rest of the country. The conceit is shared by us all. We want everything to be more intense, more "real".

Have you ever compared British candy to American candy? British candy is weak. It hardly even fries your taste buds. Eating British candy could put me to sleep. Who ever heard of milk chocolate that actually tastes like milk? The British, that's who. Try skipping soda and candy for a month and then having a Coke. It's like you've never tasted anything properly your whole life. It's like a nuclear explosion in your mouth. Without conditioning your taste buds will burn from the intensity of Coca-Cola. And that's just Coke. That's the saleable aspect of American culture.

The story of American food is a story of one-upmanship. You think fried chicken is unhealthy? Try fried cornbread (aka hushpuppies). And if you think soaking something porous in grease and then cooking it in batter just isn't enough, try fried twinkies.

We've applied this "bigger, better, more extreme" philosophy to everything. Not the least of these is our alcoholic beverages. Because when we're pretentious, we like to be really pretentious. And the fact that we only half know how to be pretentious won't stop us (though I'd propose it's secretly one of our strengths).

When Sierra Nevada came out with its pale ale, it was one of the bitterest beers on the market. It has an IBU of 37. It was revelatory that a brewery could successfully market an overtly bitter beer. It was a slap in the face to mass scale breweries that kept hopping low to make their beers as innocuous and "drinkable" as possible. Bitterness, gravity and high alcohol became the standards borne by the American microbrew movement. Samuel Adams keeps breaking its own record for the world's most alcoholic beer (their Utopia has 27 ABV).

But any boorish lout can appreciate a beverage that will fuck him up. Ultimately, it was bitterness that became the ideological rallying cry of craft brewing. Just read any diatribe on the back of a Stone Brewery bottle. Bow down and worship at the feet of almighty Bitterness! It's true that hops have complex flavors that sparkle in interesting ways at high concentrations. Bitterness is both daunting and artistically redeeming. The drinker must be willing to suspend expectations of instant likeability and instead struggle with a flavor that confronts and baffles, ultimately to reward.

Of course, the equation Pain=Artistic Merit is so tired and postmodern as to make me sick, but it's not like there aren't legitimate precedents. John Lennon's Plastic Ono Band is a rubbed-raw bender of an album. I myself prefer Nirvana's dark and twisted In Utero to their more pleasant Nevermind and the Velvet Underground's raucous anti-beauty White Light/White Heat to the radio-ready Loaded. Burn-out albums are a wonderful thing. However, they have a very defined and limited place in art. They aren't the sort of albums you'd listen to every day.

But the sense of self-righteous warfare against complacency, aspiring pretension and the mindless pursuit of logical extremes has elevated a beer as boneheaded and specialized as India Pale Ale to the top of craft brewing. Typical American IPA's (India Pale Ales) frequently have IBU's of 60 to 100 (100 is roughly the human taste threshold) and an ABV between 7 and 10. They are crushingly bitter and dangerously alcoholic. Make no mistake, this is a critics' beer. But this is about the most boneheaded critics' beer imaginable. Lots of flavor, lots of alcohol (but not enough to mess up the foam) and lots of malt. IPA's are absolutely interesting, but they ruin the palate and are almost impossible to drink.

This brings us to a cardinal rule of cuisine. Good food and drink ought to be appetizing and complementary. Expensive wine is imminently drinkable, because it tastes delicious and delicate. It is flexible enough to go well with many foods and while it doesn't shy from asserting its beauty, it can also play a beautiful supporting role. This is not the case with IPA's.

Anyone knowledgeable about beer pairings will tell you that IPA's go well with Indian food. That's because Indian cuisine is one of the few foods strong enough to not be overwhelmed by an IPA. However, the best beer to drink with Indian food is not an India Pale Ale (the word India actually has nothing to do with IPA being made for Indian food, btw), because IPA's march to their own tune and don't bother to try and complement anything. That Indian food had damn well better play along.

The best beers to drink with Indian food, I've discovered, are Indian lagers like Taj Mahal. This was my first and most powerful practical lesson to drink a country's beer with its cuisine. Indian lagers are dark, sweet, and vaguely floral. Rather than competing with curry to be the strongest taste, they play a support role, adding another, interacting layer of nuances and subtleties to an already complex curry.

So IPA's aren't food beers (because they're willful) and they aren't session beers (because they're difficult to drink). They are tasting beers, and nothing more. They fill a minor niche well and with panache, but their eminence in the world of American beer-snobbery is as unjustified as it is predictable.


As a sidenote, the two occasions I drank primarily IPA turned out very badly. Some people might think it's a good idea to order a keg of Racer 5 or consecutive pitchers of Arrogant Bastard. It's not. It's really, really not.