Essential Studio Albums

[Higgs]

I'm not a Van fan. Perhaps I should try again?

[Happy Trees]

[liebzz]

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - Deja Vu

So I had never been too crazy about the big hits on this, and it always kept me from digging into this album. I mean, Teach Your Children and Our House are fine, but they are the weakest part of this album. Carry On, Almost Cut My Hair, Helpless, their take on Woodstock, 4 + 20, Everybody I Love You all fantastic. Country Girl takes quite a few cool twists. That’s really the stuff worth the entry. It still pales in comparison to Neil’s solo work though…

The Essential Track: Carry On

Up Next: Neil Young - After the Goldrush

[oasisfan35]

I'm not a Van fan. Perhaps I should try again?

He only has forty-five albums, why not?

[Farmer John]

Van Morrison - Moondance

Moondance seems like the more easily digestible sequel to Astral Weeks, similarly pastoral in nature, laid back, but constantly catchy in its rendering of rock and roll music through the use of jazz influences. It’s kind of loungey in moments, like the very famous title track, and yet there’s an understated catharsis happening in Caravan, my favorite on this album. Into the Mystic runs a close second as a stunning piece. Crazy Love and Come Running are also big highlights for me here. I would say my preference is for Astral Weeks between the two, but this is a show stopper as well.

The Essential Track: Caravan

Up Next: Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - Deja Vu

I never paid attention to VM until now, with my girlfriend being a huge fan of his music. I got Astral Weeks on vinyl and damn thats a very cool vibey album. Impressed with it.

Moondance and Astral Weeks are pretty much his only two albums I'm familiar with, but both are all-time favourites.

[Higgs]

I'm not a Van fan. Perhaps I should try again?

He only has forty-five albums, why not?

That's too many for me. I'll remain oblivious I think.

[liebzz]

Neil Young - After the Gold Rush

This album really presents the many sides of Neil Young without ever feeling a moment of disjointedness. This is always in the running for my favorite Neil Young album or at least somewhere near the top of the list. It’s an album I love from top to bottom - from the piano “ballads” to the guitar howls in Southern Man. This is that moment where so much of Neil’s genius is on display, from playing on pure feel to understanding negative space in song. One of those artists and albums that’s still hard to put into words.

The Essential Track: Southern Man (feel sheepish on picking any one song, but his guitar moves mountains on this still)

Up Next: Small Faces (Faces) - First Step

[liebzz]

Faces - First Step

Even on the debut, the Faces are well almost the face of 70s rock - organic, playing on feel, getting it on tape and worrying about the details later. It provides for moments of sheer rock joy, like the slide jams in Around the Plynth, or the sloppy but glorious take on Wicked Messenger. Shake, Shudder, Shimmer and Three Button Hand Me Down are also highlights of this fun album.

The Essential Track: Around the Plynth

Up Nexr: Traffic - John Barleycorn Must Die

[liebzz]

Traffic - John Barleycorn Must Die

I really enjoyed this album, even far more than I expected. Traffic’s first two albums certainly had their moments, but this one feels a lot more cohesive and the playing on this is just fantastic. Yes, there’s excess sitting on here - not a lean album by any stretch - but if The Faces jam on feel, this one jam’s with precision. Glad opens as a long instrumental, followed by the epic Freedom Rider. Stranger to Himself and Every Mother’s Son are also big highlights here. Love them 70s jams.

The Essential Track: Freedom Rider

Up Next: Ten Years After - Cricklewood Green (more 70s jams)

[liebzz]

Ten Years After - Cricklewood Green

The first two albums we covered here were good, this one’s really fantastic. If I used the extended jam and creative cover in Good Morning Little Schoolgirl as a template of what they were capable of on Ssssh, this one is full of those moments. Displaying a ton of range, from country, rock, jazz, and blues, this band is on fire here, with Alvin Lee proving his bona fides as a great unheralded guitarist. Sugar the Road, and Working on the Road start this thing off in 70s jams style, and then 50,000 Miles Beneath My Brain takes it a step further building from a slightly psychedelic song into a massive workout. The darts around different sounds after that, with Warm Sun being the winner after that massive 3 song start.

The Essential Track: 50,000 Miles Beneath My Brain

Up Next: Jeff Beck - Truth

[liebzz]

Jeff Beck - Truth

Another album from the late 60s I just missed. Also, a guitarist and band I just really never listened to for whatever reason. With that comes interesting perspective. I didn’t cover The Yardbirds, and I am regretting that a little because it’s fascinating to see just how it all shakes out. Beck’s debut is really not so different in a lot of ways from Led Zeppelin’s, from the giant riffs and Rod Stewart’s (I was today years old to find out that pairing somehow) vocals with covers of classic blues but in a heavier hard rock mindset. It doesn’t get to the heights of Zeppelin’s mastery, but you can tell they come from the same musical family. Shapes of Things, Beck’s Bolero (apparently composed by Page), Rock My Plimsoul, the very cool rendition of I Ain’t Superstitious, and weirdly Greensleeves are all highlights of a pretty killer group here.

The Essential Track: I Ain’t Superstitious

Up Next: Led Zeppelin III

[liebzz]

Led Zeppelin III

Despite possibly having the loudest and most hard driving rock song in Immigrant Song, Led Zeppelin III is quite laid back for Led Zeppelin. The heart of the record offers a totally different side of the band than their first two albums. Tangerine and That’s the Way are both pretty chill tracks, and while Gallows Pole and Braun-Yr-Aur Stomp are heart pounders, they’re acoustic heart pounders. Even Celebration Day, maybe the second most electric track, is sort of happy-go-lucky in its delivery. And yet this is no less a classic album, and in many ways the best of the three.

The Essential Track: Immigrant Song

Up Next: John Coltrane - Sun Ship

[liebzz]

John Coltrane - Sun Ship

Sun Ship gives off the sense that there’s a compromise between pure formless free jazz and composition. Sun Ship the song veers into freer territory while the rest slowly work back to forms until Ascent, which is the most structured? At least in my mind. Coltrane was really a master of all forms, and each of these tracks has great moments, though likely my favorite of the band would be Attaining here with Amen as close second. They are all solid tracks here that reveal themselves with the slightest bit of patience.

The Essential Track: Attaining

Up Next: Miles Davis - Bitches Brew

[liebzz]

Miles Davis - Bitches Brew

In the years I have been listening to Miles Davis, one of the few jazz artists I tried to explore before this journey years ago, I tried to listen to this album many times and got distracted or my attention turned elsewhere. Finally I worked my way through this album, and really only disc two (sides C & D?) is new to me, but with the context of all of this music I have been listening to, it gives the album for me fresh perspective being more focused on it. For the the revolutionary hyperbole that’s well deserved, this is a masterpiece of an album, mixing elements of rock, jazz, funk and soul without ever uttering a single lyric. Rather than on prior albums where Davis’s trumpet is the star but intermixed into the composition, here his trumpet blasts out of the speaker, piercing the air like it’s coming down from the heavens. It can be a more simple and effective delivery because the band is bringing nuance and an incredible amount of range. Picking one song off this seems foolish, but forms are forms I guess.

The Essential Track: Miles Runs the Voodoo Down

Up Next: B.B. King - Indianola Mississippi Seeds

[liebzz]

B.B. King - Indianola Mississippi Seeds

If the last album (Bitches Brew) is a tremendously rewarding challenge of the heart and mind, this is more like a popcorn flick distillation of the blues that goes down easy and has almost a joyous feel to it. The pop focus of this album is a nice change of pace to be sure, and it continually improves as the album advances, particularly in those last three tracks, where Chains and Things seems the least guitar focused but is a real strong addition, Go Underground feels purely classic King, and Hummingbird jumps on the Leon Russell song and layers the blues on its pop.

The Essential Track: Go Underground

Up Next: The Velvet Underground - Loaded

[Ello Sailor]

Some really good shit on this page alone. Keep it up, lad. Love reading these.

[Kevin Davis]

I'm not a Van fan. Perhaps I should try again?

He only has forty-five albums, why not?

That's too many for me. I'll remain oblivious I think.

I hope you'll reconsider! I would recommend pretending that the majority of those 45 albums, many of which are inessential, do not exist, and do this run:

Astral Weeks (1968)
Moondance (1970)
His Band and the Street Choir (1970)
Tupelo Honey (1971)
Saint Dominic's Preview (1972)
Hard Nose The Highway (1973)
It's Too Late To Stop Now (1973)
Veedon Fleece (1974)

There are good records (I'm personally a huge fan of Common One from 1980) and many good songs after this, but IMO this is one of those "not to be missed" runs of albums that any music fan should at least check out once. If you get through the first three, which give a pretty good sampling of his different modes, and don't find yourself enjoying any of it, then Van probably isn't your thing. That said, if you're only going to do one, I'd recommend Veedon Fleece -- one of my favorite albums of all time.

[liebzz]

I'm not a Van fan. Perhaps I should try again?

He only has forty-five albums, why not?

That's too many for me. I'll remain oblivious I think.

I hope you'll reconsider! I would recommend pretending that the majority of those 45 albums, many of which are inessential, do not exist, and do this run:

Astral Weeks (1968)
Moondance (1970)
His Band and the Street Choir (1970)
Tupelo Honey (1971)
Saint Dominic's Preview (1972)
Hard Nose The Highway (1973)
It's Too Late To Stop Now (1973)
Veedon Fleece (1974)

There are good records (I'm personally a huge fan of Common One from 1980) and many good songs after this, but IMO this is one of those "not to be missed" runs of albums that any music fan should at least check out once. If you get through the first three, which give a pretty good sampling of his different modes, and don't find yourself enjoying any of it, then Van probably isn't your thing. That said, if you're only going to do one, I'd recommend Veedon Fleece -- one of my favorite albums of all time.

Added whatever of these I was missing on the list before. I had some not all in there.

[oasisfan35]

I'm not a Van fan. Perhaps I should try again?

He only has forty-five albums, why not?

That's too many for me. I'll remain oblivious I think.

I hope you'll reconsider! I would recommend pretending that the majority of those 45 albums, many of which are inessential, do not exist, and do this run:

Astral Weeks (1968)
Moondance (1970)
His Band and the Street Choir (1970)
Tupelo Honey (1971)
Saint Dominic's Preview (1972)
Hard Nose The Highway (1973)
It's Too Late To Stop Now (1973)
Veedon Fleece (1974)

There are good records (I'm personally a huge fan of Common One from 1980) and many good songs after this, but IMO this is one of those "not to be missed" runs of albums that any music fan should at least check out once. If you get through the first three, which give a pretty good sampling of his different modes, and don't find yourself enjoying any of it, then Van probably isn't your thing. That said, if you're only going to do one, I'd recommend Veedon Fleece -- one of my favorite albums of all time.

Added whatever of these I was missing on the list before. I had some not all in there.

[liebzz]

The Velvet Underground - Loaded

This is easily the most accessible sounding album of theirs. Nothing really to pull you down a rabbit hole, and yet this is also my favorite Velvet Underground album as well. The songs are just really strong on this, be it the more classic fare in Who Loves the Sun, Sweet Jane, or Rock & Roll, or the playful Lonesome Cowboy Bill, the raucous Head Held High, or the epic finale in Oh Sweet Nuthin’. It’s not quite as consistent as the self-titled, but it benefits from the sonic variety, and from its innate catchiness.

The Essential Track: Oh! Sweet Nuthin’

Up Next: The Doors - Morrison Hotel