Essential Studio Albums

[wease]

KISS - Rock and Roll Over

Between this and Destroyer, there’s a pretty significant drop off. There’s a thin line with KISS between easy cathartic party rock and clownish caricature, I think. If they didn’t cross the line over here, well there’s really really close. Calling Dr. Love is probably the most old school KISS song here falling into the former category while most of the rest falls into the latter category. Hard Luck Woman is really unfortunate, sounding more like a band trying to be serious but in a Rod Stewart ballad kind of way (I have largely railed against that enough on this thread). This one falls near the bottom for me.

The Essential Track: Calling Dr. Love

Up Next: Thin Lizzy - Jailbreak

Dr Love is the right call. Honorable mention goes to Take Me.

[liebzz]

Seals and Crofts - Get Closer

This is a bit of a tip of the toe in the water on the soft rock/yacht rock world, maybe a bit deeper than I ever really needed to go. The reality is the bookends of this album, Sweet Green Fields and Passing Thing, are both phenomenal works, both more influenced by jazz and moods (the former has a building sort of thing happening that never happens again on the album and the latter an almost Spanish style jazz guitar). Everything in between was sort of ballad-y soft rock that I think never really sticks the way some yacht rock can, and I wouldn’t really listen again but for those two tracks.

The Essential Track: Sweet Green Fields

Up Next: Boz Scaggs - Silk Degrees

[liebzz]

Boz Scaggs - Silk Degrees

This is the second of a trio of important albums in the formation and popularity of the “yacht rock” soft rock sub-genre we hit in a row. Apparently, the formation of Toto is tied to this album, though it gives just as much Steve Miller vibes as jazzy slow jams. Jump Street and Lido Shuffle are bona fide highlights here, with Georgia and What Can I Say following right behind. The song that dominates this though is the soul/jazz/soft rock classic Lowdown. It’s actually a decent listen though almost too smooth.

The Essential Track: Lowdown

Up Next: Steely Dan - Aja

[liebzz]

Steely Dan - Aja

So this album is sort of miles ahead of the other two. It has much more foundation in jazz music, and for that, the pop flourishes feel much more satisfying. This album sort of gives you everything you want out of this genre: it’s inescapably catchy, but keeps that right brain working in its ability to be just a bit off kilter. Peg is the most well known song here, and everything on here is pretty fantastic, but man, that title track is something else, just mind blowing.

The Essential Track: Aja

Up Next: Grateful Dead - Terrapin Station

[VinylGuy]

i love Aja. Its a wonderful and very chill listen.

[LoathedVermin72]

My soul ascended when the sax solo hit when I heard "Aja" live

[liebzz]

Grateful Dead - Terrapin Station

This album is full of ups and downs in its 6 songs, and the ups are about as high as they’d get (sans American Beauty and Workingman’s Dead), while the lows are pretty low. Dancing in the Street is sort of awkward and danceable, but not in the way the Dead do that well. Sunrise feels like it doesn’t really fit. Passenger is a good uptempo rocker but there are countless better examples in their catalogue…which leaves the real good stuff. Estimated Prophet’s wonky guitar tone and riff is so catchy but still weird, and the other bookend, Terrapin Station Suite, is one of the best things they’d ever do in the studio, a song that builds to the massive instrumental climax, only to change direction and come back - but rather than feel improvised in the way the Dead were masters, everything is intricately planned and placed. The movements ultimately interweave in a way that’s genius. Frankly, the whole album seems to be built around it, and it lifts what would have been an okay album to another level entirely.

The Essential Track: Terrapin Station Suite

Up Next: Pink Floyd - Animals

[wease]

Steely Dan - Aja

So this album is sort of miles ahead of the other two. It has much more foundation in jazz music, and for that, the pop flourishes feel much more satisfying. This album sort of gives you everything you want out of this genre: it’s inescapably catchy, but keeps that right brain working in its ability to be just a bit off kilter. Peg is the most well known song here, and everything on here is pretty fantastic, but man, that title track is something else, just mind blowing.

The Essential Track: Aja

Up Next: Grateful Dead - Terrapin Station

I’m the odd Dan fan that isn’t very fond of the title track. It’s just never grabbed me like it does everyone else. (Same for Babylon Sisters later).

[wease]

My soul ascended when the sax solo hit when I heard "Aja" live

That’s badass.

[liebzz]

Pink Floyd - Animals

This is one of those albums that it’s almost hard to know where to begin when talking about it. I’ll start with the structure, coming in with the quick introduction of Pigs on the Wing, which reprises at the end. This is a touch I have always loved about this album - it sort of brings you in, but only partially, an entry point into a different mental space that doesn’t envelop you fully until Dogs fully kicks in. It’s the kind of structure that I wish most albums would follow - a preparation for the next psychic level. Then Dogs takes you on a sweeping journey that really doesn’t let up until Pigs on the Wing reprises almost 40 minutes later. Meanwhile, the middle part of this album - Dogs, Pigs (Three Different Ones), and Sheep - all maneuver around similar sonic spaces with extended track lengths that are so expertly crafted they never seem as long as they are, and the quality so good that it’s hard to pick between them but for your mood that day. On this day, Pigs (Three Different Ones) did the trick for me, especially the climactic final few minutes, which I have long known but maybe not noticed in the same way as this time. This is a great one.

The Essential Track: Pigs (Three Different Ones)

Up Next: Midnight Oil

[VinylGuy]

Animals is one of those i need to listen again.

[liebzz]

Animals is one of those i need to listen again.

Yeah, it is such a beast. I’ve always sort had the strong preference for the 3 album run from Dark Side —> Wish You Were Here —> Animals. I like many of their albums for sure, but nothing touches these three for me from them, as good as Meddle or Atom Heart Mother or The Wall are.

[Kevin Davis]

“Dogs” is probably my favorite Pink Floyd tune.

[liebzz]

“Dogs” is probably my favorite Pink Floyd tune.

I don’t know that I have a favorite Pink Floyd tune because there are just so many great ones. Dogs is more than deserving, as is Pigs and Sheep. The level of quality this plays at is crazy.

[liebzz]

Midnight Oil

This debut album from Peter Garrett and co is really an exercise in potential more than anything else. The fingerprints are there in the first 2/3 of the album. It’s the sound they’ll hit in their prime but maybe they are not quite there yet. Powderworks is the best of that bunch. The album seems to take a different turn on the finale, Nothing Lost - Nothing Gained, an 8 minute opus that is more in a classic rock vein and really the highlight of the album. These guys are going to do great things, and you can in hindsight see it coming.

The Essential Track: Nothing Lost - Nothing Gained

Up Next: Iggy Pop - The Idiot

[liebzz]

Iggy Pop - The Idiot

Outside the Stooges and under the influence of David Bowie, Iggy’s first solo album reads almost like a cross between Bowie, Lou Reed, with only minor hints at his former glory. That said, the smoother (I mean anything is smoother than the Stooges) approach seems to work for him - hell, he’s even wearing a shirt on the cover! The stuff that sticks still seems a bit off kilter, like Nightclubbing, China Girl, and Dum Dum Boys. The album closing Mass Production is pretty mind bending stuff as well. I think I would still take a Stooges album first, but this is a very good start for a solo career.

The Essential Track: China Girl

Up Next: The Sex Pistols - Nevermind the Bullocks, Here Comes the Sex Pistols

[liebzz]

Sex Pistols - Nevermind the Bollocks Here’s the Sex Pistols

This album is one of the more hyped “changed the game” albums, maybe along with Nevermind or Sgt. Pepper’s. Surely it is highly influential in that it seems like nearly every punk band after this wanted to sound like it - at least in terms of pure attitude and power chord and all else be damned. But really like the other albums I noted, it’s not the first and feels almost like taking the New York Dolls, The Stooges, The Ramones, and The Clash and just turning it up one more notch in terms of loudness and snarl. Iconic to this album, of course, is Anarchy in the UK, which is I think the strongest track in any event. In other words, this sound isn’t profoundly new, just profoundly more.

The Essential Track: Anarchy in the UK

Up Next: The Ramones - Leave Home

[E.H. Ruddock]

One of the best album names of all time!

[liebzz]

The Ramones - Leave Home

While there are many similarities between the debut and Leave Home, a revelation hit some time around Swallow My Pride on this album, and that is (blame the hiccup vocal delivery on that song) the striking resemblance, sped up and louder, to Buddy Holly. There’s a pop quality to this band that I thought harkened straight back to that period, which makes the revolutionary nature of their punk rock all that more fascinating. I don’t think you can hear that connection in The Clash or the Sex Pistols, but 100% in this band, which further illuminates the effectiveness of their take on California Sun. I think pulling away from the drop dead classics really teased that comparison out.

The Essential Track: Gimmie Gimmie Shock Treatment

Up Next: The Ramones - Rocket to Russia

[liebzz]

The Ramones - Rocket to Russia

The first two Ramones albums are both really good albums, which have inspired at least a few insights during this journey, and yet they feel dwarfed or maybe almost just the start in the shadow of the sort of magic cocktail on this album. It’s not so much has changed in just a few months more time, but that these songs are so imbued with rock music as youthful and fun and an indescribable magic that charms this collection of songs. The classics here, Rockaway Beach, Sheena is a Punk Rocker, and Teenage Lobotomy are all very different despite coming from the same cloth - they have an ability to bang the same power chords and manage to find infinite songs that never seem to drag together too much.

The Essential Track: Teenage Lobotomy

Up Next: Wire - Pink Flag