Essential Studio Albums

[tragabigzanda]

[liebzz]

It’s on the list too!

[liebzz]

Can - Ege Bamyasi

This is another really solid album from Can. Those beat structures, again, are way ahead of their time, and again there’s a lot of interesting stuff going on, but it’s weirdly accessible, and not so foreign as to turn off the listener as some of these other albums suffer from. Actually enjoyed everything on here, even though the listen is still challenging. I’d actually place this a smidge ahead of the last Can album maybe.

The Essential Track: Spoon

Up Next: Ash Ra Tempel - Scheingungen

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Ash Ra Tempel - Schwingungen

This is another album that is a tale of two halves. The first is probably one of the better examples of this kraut rock stuff working wonderfully, with a nice interplay between the again great guitar work around a minimal structure. It again has a classic rock feel. The second half is sort of a meandering track (or series of tracks) that never seems to gain its footing, and drags down the album in comparison to the first half.

The Essential Track: Light: Look at Your Sun

Up Next: Genesis - Foxtrot

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[liebzz]

thank you for indulging my krautrock requests, liebzz! I think it'll illuminate some of what comes later too (Radiohead, Portishead, Stereolab, Tortoise... YMMV)

It does have some immediate payout too, as the intro to Foxtrot seemed to have naturally segued from that Ash Ra Tempel 20 minute outro.

[tragabigzanda]

[liebzz]

thank you for indulging my krautrock requests, liebzz! I think it'll illuminate some of what comes later too (Radiohead, Portishead, Stereolab, Tortoise... YMMV)

It does have some immediate payout too, as the intro to Foxtrot seemed to have naturally segued from that Ash Ra Tempel 20 minute outro.

oh yeah, YHF definitely takes a lot of cues from that stuff, good call

Interesting. I was making the connection between Ash Ra Tempel and the start of Genesis’s Foxtrot, but I will make a mental note when I get to Wilco (they are on the list).

[tragabigzanda]

[liebzz]

Genesis - Foxtrot

As we discussed, it’s almost as if the start of this album picks up from the end of Ash Ra Tempel’s, but there’s a different dynamic at play here with it definitely being definitively Genesis but also art rock with punch, as if The Who made a baby with Pink Floyd. That aside, this is a good album, highlighted most prominent on by the bookends: Watcher of the Skies which builds nicely and the closing Supper’s Ready, a multi movement intense epic that might take some patience to get through (22+ minutes), but the pay off in the end is quite huge. In between that is also quite solid, though I think the discussion really is forced on the closing track.

The Essential Track: Supper’s Ready

Up Next: Yes - Close to the Edge

[liebzz]

Still working on ‘72 but starting the cross-check for ‘73. So far, I got:

Toots and the Maytals - Funky Kingston
Stevie Wonder - Inner Visions
Bob Dylan - Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid
Grateful Dead - Wake of the Flood
Rolling Stones - Goats Head Soup
Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon
Roxy Music - For Your Pleasure
Brian Eno - (No Pussyfooting)
Little Feat - Dixie Chicken
Marshall Tucker Band
Faces - Ooh La La
Allman Brothers Band - Brothers and Sisters
Lynyrd Skynyrd - Pronounced Leh-Nerd Skin-Nerd
ZZ Top - Tres Hombres
Led Zeppelin - Houses of the Holy
The Who - Quadrophenia
Bob Dylan - Dylan
Van Morrison - Hard Nose on the Highway
Van Morrison - It’s Too Late to Stop Now
Tom Waits - Closing Time
Bruce Springsteen - Greetings From Asbury Park, NJ
Elton John - Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
Billy Joel - Piano Man
George Harrison - Living in the Material World
Wings - Band on the Run
Carlos Santana & Mahavishnu John McLaughlin - Love Devotion Surrender
Roxy Music - Stranded
Kraftwerk - Ralf & Florian
Can - Future Days
Faust IV
Chicago VI
Bob Marley and the Wailers - Catch a Fire
Bob Marley and the Wailers - Burnin’
Upsetters - 14 Dub Blackboard Jungle
Herbie Hancock - Head Hunters
Marvin Gaye - Let’s Get It On
Kool & the Gang - Wild and Peaceful
Al Green - Call Me
Bruce Springsteen - The Wild, The Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle
Aerosmith
The Mahavishnu Orchestra - Birds of Fire
King Crimson - Larks’ Tongues in Aspic
Genesis - Selling England By the Pound
Emerson, Lake & Palmer - Brain Salad Surgery
Lou Reed - Berlin
New York Dolls
The Stooges - Raw Power

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Yes - Close to the Edge

It’s getting really 70s in here now. Long songs with multiple movements, some crazy swings being taken - all prog and all quite creative, and some really strong instrumental sections. Abandoned here is most of a sense of pop hooks, and there’s no doubt that they’ve their heads firmly planted up their own asses, but that’s part of the fun. This is 3 tracks, all quite good in these circumstances, with I think the second half slightly more enjoyable than the first. On par with their last album.

The Essential Track: Siberian Khatru

Up Next: Jethro Tull - Thick As a Brick

[VinylGuy]

Can - Ege Bamyasi

This is another really solid album from Can. Those beat structures, again, are way ahead of their time, and again there’s a lot of interesting stuff going on, but it’s weirdly accessible, and not so foreign as to turn off the listener as some of these other albums suffer from. Actually enjoyed everything on here, even though the listen is still challenging. I’d actually place this a smidge ahead of the last Can album maybe.

The Essential Track: Spoon

Up Next: Ash Ra Tempel - Scheingungen

I listened to this one for a while until my girl showed up and she was “what is this ?”

[tragabigzanda]

Top 10 maybe?
Hello Morning
Close Captioned
The Kill
Place/Position
Do You Like Me?
Latest Disgrace
Recap Modotti
Nightshop
Break
Life & Limb

I'd maybe bump Life & Limb for Epic Problem

[liebzz]

Can - Ege Bamyasi

This is another really solid album from Can. Those beat structures, again, are way ahead of their time, and again there’s a lot of interesting stuff going on, but it’s weirdly accessible, and not so foreign as to turn off the listener as some of these other albums suffer from. Actually enjoyed everything on here, even though the listen is still challenging. I’d actually place this a smidge ahead of the last Can album maybe.

The Essential Track: Spoon

Up Next: Ash Ra Tempel - Scheingungen

I listened to this one for a while until my girl showed up and she was “what is this ?”

All trag suite albums go on headphones or when I know I am driving alone, mostly because I expect otherwise a look of concern and an “are you okay?”

[VinylGuy]

[liebzz]

Jethro Tull - Thick As a Brick

Somehow I missed Aqualung and we’ll get to that in good time, though I guess it ruins the individual progression of this band. In any event, the folks that lament the excesses of 70s rock to me never really made much sense to me - is too much ever enough? Perhaps that is the question, apparently in good jest and parody, that Jethro Tull were answering. This more is more approach would be an understatement, as everything and the kitchen sink are thrown in here: extended compositions (hell this is an intended single song over 43 mins), flute solos, drum rolls in apparently random places…chaos! And yet there’s something charming in the revelry, a sense it is just barely not taking itself serious enough to warrant rebuke - a This Is Spinal Tap! for prog rock. How else do you parody the subgenre and end up making one its most classic pieces?

The Essential Track: Thick As a Brick

Up Next: Steely Dan - Can’t Buy a Thrill

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Steely Dan - Can’t Buy a Thrill

This debut feels like a bunch of beginnings. Largely sticking to the classic rock script, it lacks some of the progressive rock and yacht rock to come, but all the elements are there. There’s a jazziness happening under Fire in the Hole, a yachtiness to Change of the Guard, a solid studio jam in Reelin’ in the Years, an off-kilter yet unmistakably catchy vibe happening in Do It Again. I am surmising their true genius was yet to be unleashed, but they still manage to make a classic album with the shackles of the moment’s convention.

The Essential Track: Reelin’ in the Years

Up Next: Rod Stewart - Never a Dull Moment

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Rod Stewart - Never a Dull Moment

This may be Rod Stewart’s attempt to bridge the gap between the ramshackle glory that is Faces with the pop superstardom that is now his solo career. So it’s rockin’ but polished, and mostly feels like an extension of Every Picture Tells a Story save for a few moments of triumph: the loose and fun Italian Girls, and the opening tracks True Blue and Lost Paraguayos. Songs like You Wear It Well would have been similarly triumphant if he hadn’t already mastered that ground on the aforementioned prior album.

The Essential Track: Italian Girls

Up Next: Elton John - Honky Chateau