It’s pointless to pretend that I listened to 10 albums that were released in 2011, so I’m going to write about 10 classic albums that got a lot of airtime in my waxy ears this past year.
10. Peter Murphy – DEEP (1989)
The reunion cash-grab tour seems to be here to stay and let’s face it… it’s hard for me to fight my curiosity. Last month, I saw Peter Murphy for the first time in 13 years–it wasn’t a reunion or comeback tour by any sense of it, but was one of many 2011 examples of acts that had not toured extensively for 8-10 years. The show was a good reminder of how important rebellion against siloes is for an artist’s growth. Deep was Peter Murphy’s biggest breakout album in terms of massive recognition. Written and released in 1989, the album has a slower overall feel and spawned two of Murphy’s highest performing songs to date: Cuts You Up and its B-Side, A Strange Kind of Love. It’s a great album though, with or without the chart-topping single.
9. R.E.M. – Document (1987)
When R.E.M. hit it big with Out of Time, I was sort of confused. Those of you who watched the original Beverly Hills 90210 series will recall that that was the first season they were being aired in the summer as opposed to the fall. It was the “beach club” season where Brandon was making ends meet as a cabana boy. You may also recall that “Losing My Religion” had suddenly become the anthem of the series, with brooding Dylan choosing to listen to little else while throwing back the whiskey shots, and my generation was suddenly crazy about R.E.M. For me, Document is the best R.E.M. album, both in terms of listenability and composition. There aren’t a lot of sissy love songs on here, and the pessimism of “It’s the End of the World as We Know It” seals it as the harbinger of things to come in terms of the band’s activism (and increasing preachiness).
8. The Modern Lovers – The Modern Lovers (1976)
There are many reasons to love Jonathan Richman. As a solo artist, he has written brilliant tongue-in-cheek ballads about lesbian bars, not wanting to get a cell phone (“You Can Have a Cellphone and That’s OK But Not Me”), and living on Venice Beach. With the Modern Lovers, his debut album is pretty much as good as it gets. All of you will have heard Roadrunner, but She Cracked, Astral Plane, and everything else is as good, if not better. There’s a reason he’s still hailed in Boston as a legend. He is one.
7. Erasure – The Innocents (1988)
It’s hard to believe that Erasure has been around for 26 years. Their first North American breakthrough album set flaming (and not-so-flaming) hearts afire with tracks like A Little Respect and Chains of Love. But this album isn’t built on singles alone–Ship of Fools, Weight of the World, and Hallowed Ground, all chisel this release into a maturer Erasure that goes beyond the realm of just 80’s synthpop.
6. The Pretenders – Learning to Crawl (1984)
The Pretenders are one of those bands that I never felt got the widespread recognition they deserved. Had they looked and been packaged a different way, I think they could’ve been to the 80’s what Fleetwood Mac was to the 70’s, only without all of the cocaine and sleeping around. Unlike a lot of other woman-fronted bands, Chrissie Hynde wasn’t the token “girl”, she has penned some of the most memorable pop tunes in the world to date, many of them on this album. Middle of the Road, Back on the Chain Gang, Show Me, and My City Was Gone are some of them and Learning to Crawl marks Hynde’s final escalation into frontwoman and lead songstress, in the ashes of two of her founding band mates’ drug overdose deaths, no less.
5. Galaxie 500 – Today (1988)
Today is Dean Wareham’s favorite album for good reason. Though the depth of On Fire is wrought with waist-deep emotions, Today is purer, simpler, and incredibly easy to listen to. After reading Wareham’s biography Black Postcards, it’s easy to understand why the album is more lighthearted any any of subsequent releases. Written and recorded almost instantaneously by a colorful sound engineer named Mark Kramer (whom everyone just referred to as “Kramer”) , there were rarely any second or third takes on anything. The spontaneity of that certainly comes through on the record. Some of my favorite Galaxie 500 songs are here–Flowers, Pictures, Oblivious (written for Wareham’s ex-wife Claudia), and their most famous song, Tugboat. Incidentally, the album includes a cover of Wareham’s Bostonian hero Jonathan Richman “Don’t Let Our Youth Go to Waste”.
4. Japan – Quiet Life (1980)
David Bowie was to Peter Murphy what Japan was to Duran Duran. Japan’s relative obscurity as an influencer and leader in the 80’s synth-pop scene outside of the U.K. remains one of life’s great mysteries. Headed by David Sylvian, I always thought these guys were too cool to be the grandfathers of the New Romantic movement–if you listen to Adolescent Sex, they were more punk than anything else, and at the end of their careers with Tin Drum they are more avant garde than anything else. Although Quiet Life didn’t technically contain their biggest hit Life in Tokyo, it did contain some of their other best-known songs and fully cemented them as a legitimate electronic act…Quiet Life, Fall in Love with Me, All Tomorrow’s Parties, and The Other Side of Life.
3. Red House Painters – Rollercoaster (1993)
During the golden age of 4AD came the first of many sepia-toned Red House Painters records, a band that Ivo Watts-Russell signed after Mark Kozelek gave a demo to American Music Club frontman Mark Eitzel. Much has already been written about my love of Mark Kozelek, so I’ll keep this short. Rollercoaster is one of the most emotionally draining listens from a prolifically human lead singer and songwriter, unafraid of bearing it all. This album is terrifically exhausting from all contact points. From Grace Cathedral Park to the legendary Katy Song (written for an ex-girlfriend of Kozelek’s), Strawberry Hill, to the beautifully haunting Mistress — Rollercoaster is an assault of the psycho-physiological senses.
2. Slowdive – Souvlaki (1993)
Souvlaki is forever etched in my memory as the album I paid more than $50 to own. It may be hard for anyone to comprehend in the digital age, but once upon a time there were these things called import albums that you had to call record stores in advance to order, and then pay an arm and a leg for once they had. It was a multi-step process and quite frankly, a gamble. Thankfully, Slowdive’s Souvlaki is an excellent album by all accounts, with lush arrangements fettered all over the place. Lyrically, the dismissal of them may be accurate enough; musically, everything holds up well. That may sound like a feigned, weak hand toss, but I’m getting tired now.
1. The Cars – The Cars (1978)
The Cars’ debut album is one of the most iconic albums of all time, and for good reason. Seven of the nine songs on this record appear in every possible packaging option for a greatest hits version because they are timeless rock ‘n roll songs–Don’t Cha Stop, Good Times Roll, My Best Friend’s Girl, Just What I Needed, and Moving in Stereo (permanently etched into every teenage boy’s mind from Phoebe Cates’ pool ascent and eventual bikini top removal) make this one of the rarest listen 100,000 times and repeat favorites so rare in music of any genre. And while my favorite song “All Mixed Up” is seldom included in a sweeping retrospective look at the band, it is one of the best love songs ever written. It’s also included in the score to “Over the Edge“, one of the most overlooked movies of the 1980’s. This release also achieves the feat of sounding distinctly of an era while remaining timeless.