Essential Studio Albums

[liebzz]

Marshall Tucker Band - Still Smokin’

For much of this album, this seemed to me a band that lost its spark. The songs seemed kind of tired, the playing largely perfunctory - at least through the first 8 songs or so. The album actually ends on a pretty good high though: Southern Spirit is a solid southern rock track followed by the country blues ballad Let Me Come Home - final moments that breathed some life into this.

The Essential Track: Southern Spirit

Up Next: The Black Crowes - The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion

[wease]

Marshall Tucker Band - Still Smokin’

For much of this album, this seemed to me a band that lost its spark. The songs seemed kind of tired, the playing largely perfunctory - at least through the first 8 songs or so. The album actually ends on a pretty good high though: Southern Spirit is a solid southern rock track followed by the country blues ballad Let Me Come Home - final moments that breathed some life into this.

The Essential Track: Southern Spirit

Makes sense. Chief songwriter/guitarist Toy Caldwell was gone at this point. Hell, all but two of the original members were gone. Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever heard a track from this album. When you have a MTB album with no Toy Caldwell (and at this point, he’s still alive) I’m not interested.

[liebzz]

The Black Crowes - The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion

For their second album, they manage to one-up one of the great debut albums. Southern Harmony doesn’t play off their Faces influence as hard, but creates a space where they are so effortlessly comfortable in their own sound that it’s less about who they are influenced by, and more about who they are as a band - a moment in time when all the players really meshed as one and delivered basically a perfect album - or at least as perfect and they could get. They front of the album plays like a greatest hits, with Sting Me, Remedy, and Thorn in My Pride killing it right out the gates. The middle of the record finds the band digging deeper into their sound, but no less impressive, with Bad Luck Blue Eyes, Sometimes Salvation, and Hotel Illness. Black Moon Creeping really stuck for me here too, as I think I have probably heard that song the least of the many greats on this album, but it rocks pretty hard but still fits here. The album then finishes on a glorious streak of No Speak No Slave, the epic My Morning Song, and then says goodnight with an acoustic cover of Bob Marley’s Time Will Tell - a perfect coda to such an exceptional album.

The Essential Track: My Morning Song

Up Next: Blind Melon

[liebzz]

Blind Melon

Lesson learned: never judge a book or album by its cover or even its hit song. Granted, No Rain is a perfectly nice and catchy song, and took the world by storm with the bee girl for a good chunk of time in the 90s. But with that being my exposure to Blind Melon, I thought they seemed fine but nothing to fuss about. Now this comes up on the list, and I was properly floored by this album. Shannon Hoon is a beast of a frontman, and the band is even better, throwing down with the reckless abandon that reminded me of that whole Faces/Stones comparison often laid on the Black Crowes. Soak the Sin, Tones of Home, I Wonder, Paper Scratcher, Deserted, and Drive are badass. And yet the songs with the deepest impact fall in between: Change and Time are wonderful. Absolutely phenomenal album here.

The Essential Track: Change

Up Next: Stone Temple Pilots - Core

[liebzz]

Stone Temple Pilots - Core

By the end of 1992 or early 1993, the unfortunate debates over the purist grunge bands versus the pretenders started gaining steam. The collective of bands from Soundgarden, Alice In Chains, Mother Love Bone, Mudhoney, eventually Pearl Jam, The Melvins, etc. didn’t fray so much as folks started wanting to discriminate between those Seattle punk purists and those who would be pretenders looking to cash in on the movement. I say all this because Stone Temple Pilots quickly got accused of it - a heavy band from outside Seattle that vaguely sounded like Pearl Jam and Alice In Chains. It was unfair, and under the self-importance of it all, brought a division to hard rock that was frankly silly. STP were a great band regardless of their timing. The only gripe I can possibly muster about this album is that they hadn’t quite began using their natural groove, which would be mastered on their next two albums, here. They basically rock really hard and deliver an incredible debut album. We all know of course Creep and Plush and Sex Type Thing, and probably Wicked Garden, Dead & Bloated, and Crackerman - the songs that formed the initial red meat on this album, but let’s also give it up for Sin, Naked Sunday, Piece of Pie, and Where the River Goes, each a beast in their own right that would be the best songs on most other albums. The fact that they would just get better is pretty damn remarkable for a poseur band.

The Essential Track: Wicked Garden

Up Next: The Tragically Hip - Fully Completely

[wease]

I remember reading an interview with Thayil around 92/93 maybe 94 and he’s talking about all the Seattle rip-off bands being so derivative and unoriginal, but then he said at least STP’s music is good. So Thayil seemed to like them, at least.

[tragabigzanda]

They’d been active since 1989 I think

[VinylGuy]

I remember reading an interview with Thayil around 92/93 maybe 94 and he’s talking about all the Seattle rip-off bands being so derivative and unoriginal, but then he said at least STP’s music is good. So Thayil seemed to like them, at least.

SG always had a beef with STP, even recently when they re grouped. But yeah,Ed too. I think Jeff is on good terms with the DeLeo bros.

You could hear why those guys thought STP was hoping in the seattle bus with the first album but they took off really with Purple and specially with Tiny Music, they changed into a complete own thing.

One of my favs band from all times.

[liebzz]

I think, particularly in the 90s, and perhaps because that brand of hard rock spread like wildfire, there was almost a shame in picking up a band cashing in, or at least accused of, be it Candlebox or Bush or Stone Temple Pilots or Sponge (I mean, they were trying to be STP who was trying to be whatever band). But in reality it should have never been that. Good music is good music. Part of my excitement for tackling the 90s may lie here in much of the way I explored (and sadly largely did not like) hair metal. I don’t think you’ll get me to really engage with Creed, but there’ll be bands I wrote off, but shouldn’t have (*ahem* Blind Melon).

[VinylGuy]

the doc Hype! does a good work of understanding how the industry marketed Seattle as a commodity and how it worked for the music and bands.

I think it was wrong to point out STP, and i guess with time they really showed why.

[liebzz]

the doc Hype! does a good work of understanding how the industry marketed Seattle as a commodity and how it worked for the music and bands.

I think it was wrong to point out STP, and i guess with time they really showed why.

I wonder what that self-important little shit with the nose plugs is up to nowadays.

[VinylGuy]

that scene was hilarious. I wonder if he actually got the irony of it all.

[liebzz]

The Tragically Hip - Fully Completely

From my cursory review, seemed like this was billed as one of the seminal releases from this band. It certainly seems like a good album and I enjoyed it, but didn’t get quite the sense of being enthralled as much as I had with their other music. The Wherewithal is an exception to that, it was awesome. Looking For a Place to Happen, At the Hundredth Meridian, Lionized, Locked in the Trunk of a Car, and Fifty-Mission Cap were also good highlights. Solid solid album, but I think I liked the other stuff better.

The Essential Track: The Wherewithal

Up Next: Bruce Springsteen - Human Touch

[liebzz]

Bruce Springsteen - Human Touch

I’ve spent years trying to unlock this album. The fatal flaw was listening to it with a string of other Springsteen albums. It straight can’t hold up against his prior work. So it gets a bit of an isolated listen (Lucky Town is next so not totally isolated). There’s a marked improvement existing on its own and not in comparison, but it’s still uneven. Human Touch, Gloria’s Eyes, All or Nothin’ at All, and The Long Goodbye get some new life here. Really the songs aren’t as terrible as I remember but often make certain choices that lay it on a little too thick - like the weird wind pipe instrument thing at the beginning of Soul Driver, or the synths in Real Man. I’m still not feeling 57 Channels (and Nothin’ On) or Pony Boy, so I am still not sold - but this is better than I previously gave credit.

The Essential Track: Human Touch

Up Next: Bruce Springsteen - Lucky Town

[liebzz]

Bruce Springsteen - Lucky Town

Apparently this album came to life in the process of trying to finish off Human Touch. Makes some sense that Human Touch was more labored upon because Lucky Town has an immediacy to it that Human Touch lacks. The first three songs out the gate - Better Days, Lucky Town, and Local Hero - have more energy than anything on Human Touch. Add to it highlights If I Should Fall Behind, The Big Muddy, and Souls of the Departed and you have a good album. Put the best of this and the best of Human Touch together and you might have a great album. What’s most shocking is when Tracks comes along and everything left behind in the 90s towers over what actually got released. A curious time for Springsteen indeed.

The Essential Track: Lucky Town

Up Next: Neil Young - Harvest Moon

[oasisfan35]

Bruce Springsteen - Lucky Town

Apparently this album came to life in the process of trying to finish off Human Touch. Makes some sense that Human Touch was more labored upon because Lucky Town has an immediacy to it that Human Touch lacks. The first three songs out the gate - Better Days, Lucky Town, and Local Hero - have more energy than anything on Human Touch. Add to it highlights If I Should Fall Behind, The Big Muddy, and Souls of the Departed and you have a good album. Put the best of this and the best of Human Touch together and you might have a great album. What’s most shocking is when Tracks comes along and everything left behind in the 90s towers over what actually got released. A curious time for Springsteen indeed.

The Essential Track: Lucky Town

Up Next: Neil Young - Harvest Moon

I tend to revisit Lucky Town more.

Funny that the thirteen songs from these sessions on Tracks / 18 Tracks are basically another album themselves.

[liebzz]

The guy is nothing if not extremely productive.

[oasisfan35]

The guy is nothing if not extremely productive.

pfft... understatement

I have been listening to random Tracks II 'albums' at least weekly since release.

[bada]

Blind Melon

Lesson learned: never judge a book or album by its cover or even its hit song. Granted, No Rain is a perfectly nice and catchy song, and took the world by storm with the bee girl for a good chunk of time in the 90s. But with that being my exposure to Blind Melon, I thought they seemed fine but nothing to fuss about. Now this comes up on the list, and I was properly floored by this album. Shannon Hoon is a beast of a frontman, and the band is even better, throwing down with the reckless abandon that reminded me of that whole Faces/Stones comparison often laid on the Black Crowes. Soak the Sin, Tones of Home, I Wonder, Paper Scratcher, Deserted, and Drive are badass. And yet the songs with the deepest impact fall in between: Change and Time are wonderful. Absolutely phenomenal album here.

The Essential Track: Change

Up Next: Stone Temple Pilots - Core

To me this is one of the great guitar albums. You get the full impact with headphones. Neither guy plays the same thing its just tons of riffs and parts and solos and weird bits all woven together into perfection.

[bada]

The Black Crowes - The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion

For their second album, they manage to one-up one of the great debut albums. Southern Harmony doesn’t play off their Faces influence as hard, but creates a space where they are so effortlessly comfortable in their own sound that it’s less about who they are influenced by, and more about who they are as a band - a moment in time when all the players really meshed as one and delivered basically a perfect album - or at least as perfect and they could get. They front of the album plays like a greatest hits, with Sting Me, Remedy, and Thorn in My Pride killing it right out the gates. The middle of the record finds the band digging deeper into their sound, but no less impressive, with Bad Luck Blue Eyes, Sometimes Salvation, and Hotel Illness. Black Moon Creeping really stuck for me here too, as I think I have probably heard that song the least of the many greats on this album, but it rocks pretty hard but still fits here. The album then finishes on a glorious streak of No Speak No Slave, the epic My Morning Song, and then says goodnight with an acoustic cover of Bob Marley’s Time Will Tell - a perfect coda to such an exceptional album.

The Essential Track: My Morning Song

Up Next: Blind Melon

desert island album for sure....