Red Mosquito

Hunters & Collectors - Human Frailty

Admittedly, I went into this one with a slight bit of skepticism, but it might be I do that for any album where the only reason I know a song is because Eddie Vedder covered it. Not as a dis to him, more like is that going to be the thing that colors this album with some sense of bias. It doesn’t. Actually, if I were to list my favorites here, it wouldn’t really involve Throw Your Arms Around Me. It’s good and all, but there’s much more fun in this album, a more straight ahead rock record than we’ve covered in a while. Say Goodbye, Dog, 99th Home Position, Is There Anybody In There?, and Stuck On You are all the ones I am excited about here, a sort of blend of classic rock styles and may of the Australian bands we’ve heard from in here. I’m into this one.

The Essential Track: Is There Anybody In There?

Next Up: Crowded House

World Party Private Revolution
Suzanne Vega Solitude Standing
John Hiatt Bring the Family
Whitney Houston Whitney
Tom Waits Frank's Wild Years
George Michael Faith

i think your commitment to ranking all these albums is almost as impressive as listening to them all.

for 1987
dinosaur jr - your living all over me
sisters of mercy - floodland

coptheriotact wrote:i think your commitment to ranking all these albums is almost as impressive as listening to them all.

for 1987
dinosaur jr - your living all over me
sisters of mercy - floodland

I am trying not to lose control of it, so far it has stayed together though probably if I had all second listens there’d be changes.

Crowded House

Well this was a damn near flawless album. Feeling a bit more comfortable with the classic rock vibes of Hunters & Collectors, this one ups the ante even more, just the right blend of 80s rock, classic rock of a few years earlier than that, and even a little taste of punk. Neil Finn and company have it all right here, whether it’s 80s classics (Don’t Dream It’s Over and Something So Strong), or songs with a nice little bite, like Hole in the River. Everything here is rock solid so no complaints and no real notes. A real gem of an album.

The Essential Track: Don’t Dream It’s Over

Up Next: Billy Bragg - Talking With the Taxman About Poetry

Billy Bragg - Talking With the Taxman About Poetry

This is another really wonderful album - probably my favorite thus far from Billy Bragg, an artist I would never even thought of not for this thread. Train Train might be one of the closest songs to actually sounding like a chugging train, The Marriage, Ideology, Levi Stubb’s Tears, and Hell Save the Youth of America also were fantastic listens on another where every song just seemed to work. Chalk another up to a solid RM suggestion.

The Essential Track: Train Train

Up Next: The Housemartins - London 0 Hull 4

liebzz wrote:

Crowded House

Well this was a damn near flawless album. Feeling a bit more comfortable with the classic rock vibes of Hunters & Collectors, this one ups the ante even more, just the right blend of 80s rock, classic rock of a few years earlier than that, and even a little taste of punk. Neil Finn and company have it all right here, whether it’s 80s classics (Don’t Dream It’s Over and Something So Strong), or songs with a nice little bite, like Hole in the River. Everything here is rock solid so no complaints and no real notes. A real gem of an album.

The Essential Track: Don’t Dream It’s Over

Up Next: Billy Bragg - Talking With the Taxman About Poetry

I had forgotten about Something So Strong. Always liked that one.

wease wrote:

liebzz wrote:

Crowded House

Well this was a damn near flawless album. Feeling a bit more comfortable with the classic rock vibes of Hunters & Collectors, this one ups the ante even more, just the right blend of 80s rock, classic rock of a few years earlier than that, and even a little taste of punk. Neil Finn and company have it all right here, whether it’s 80s classics (Don’t Dream It’s Over and Something So Strong), or songs with a nice little bite, like Hole in the River. Everything here is rock solid so no complaints and no real notes. A real gem of an album.

The Essential Track: Don’t Dream It’s Over

Up Next: Billy Bragg - Talking With the Taxman About Poetry

I had forgotten about Something So Strong. Always liked that one.

That indeed is also a great hit. This album has a lot of range but it hits it right on the button on just about every track.

More for '87:

The Cure - Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me
Rollins Band - Life Time
Pixies - Come On Pilgrim EP
The Dukes of Stratosphear – Psonic Psunspot
The Triffids - Calenture
Pieter Nooten and Michael Brook - Sleeps with the Fishes
Pulp - Freaks

Added! Some familiar faces there.

The Housemartins - London 0 Hull 4

This has a sort of retro feel, and harkens back to almost a Buddy Holly/Chuck Berry like time, but with a fresh and new feel to it. All the songs here were actually quite good, the kind of pop music that’s easy to digest, fun, and they get their point across without ever needing to challenge their listener. Chalk it up to there never being any one way to put music together, but this is a formula that always consistently works.

The Essential Track: Flag Day

Up Next: Robert Cray - Strong Persuader

Robert Cray Band - Strong Persuader

This seems like it quickly became the sort of slick new blues standard that folks like Eric Clapton would latch on to in the 90s. Modern, slick, not regionally defined, and certainly without the hard edges of a John Lee Hooker or Howlin’ Wolf. There’s some some strong tracks here - most assuredly Smokin’ Gun - but also Foul Play and More Than I Can Stand. Maybe Robert Cray made this blues by numbers, but that’s sort of what it is.

The Essential Track: Smokin’ Gun

Up Next: Tom Waits - Frank’s Wild Years

liebzz wrote:

The Housemartins - London 0 Hull 4

This has a sort of retro feel, and harkens back to almost a Buddy Holly/Chuck Berry like time, but with a fresh and new feel to it. All the songs here were actually quite good, the kind of pop music that’s easy to digest, fun, and they get their point across without ever needing to challenge their listener. Chalk it up to there never being any one way to put music together, but this is a formula that always consistently works.

The Essential Track: Flag Day

Up Next: Robert Cray - Strong Persuader

I have a real soft spot for this album, and The Housemartins in general. Fatboy Slim got his start right here.

I find myself humming along to one of their tunes stuck in my head for days the rare times I put them on nowadays.

Happy memories indeed.

And it's possibly this very album cover that kicked off my life long love for a good cardie.

liebzz wrote:

Hunters & Collectors - Human Frailty

Admittedly, I went into this one with a slight bit of skepticism, but it might be I do that for any album where the only reason I know a song is because Eddie Vedder covered it. Not as a dis to him, more like is that going to be the thing that colors this album with some sense of bias. It doesn’t. Actually, if I were to list my favorites here, it wouldn’t really involve Throw Your Arms Around Me. It’s good and all, but there’s much more fun in this album, a more straight ahead rock record than we’ve covered in a while. Say Goodbye, Dog, 99th Home Position, Is There Anybody In There?, and Stuck On You are all the ones I am excited about here, a sort of blend of classic rock styles and may of the Australian bands we’ve heard from in here. I’m into this one.

The Essential Track: Is There Anybody In There?

Next Up: Crowded House

These guys would be the artist I've seen most times live thanks to a run of numerous shows back in the 80s where we'd go see them everytime they came through my hometown. Fantastic live band.

I'm no fan of EV's cover of "Throw Your Arms Around Me", and the songs just overplayed generally, but these fellows have so much good material.

There's nothing like seeing a sweating, living sea of singlet wearing bogan lads screaming "You don't make me feeeeel like I'm a woman anymore!" as one.

Up the Hunnas!

dp

Can I add a late 1986 choice?

The Saints - All Fools Day

1987...

Roger Waters - Radio KAOS
The Housemartins - The People Who Grinned Themselves to Death
The Bats - Daddy's Highway
Weddings, Parties, Anything - Scorn of the Women

Higgs wrote:Can I add a late 1986 choice?

The Saints - All Fools Day

Sure I will mix it in.

Tom Waits - Frank’s Wild Years

Tom Waits’ mid-80s output is really something incredible. Creative and bold, working with the blues and jazz, but in ways that conjure up these visuals, and not atypically of a character that’s a dumpster fire, but one to focus on. Trying to listen to Tom Waits in the background would be a fool’s errand, as his music and his voice command you listen in, put aside whatever is happening in the moment, and escape into the street gutters with him to find depth and meaning. Be this the closing arc of a loose trilogy of albums, there may be fleeting moments of success, but of course things always end in the cold cold ground. It’s another of his albums where the songs and their placement require a full album listen (I can’t even fathom trying to come up with a Tom Waits playlist - these songs almost always all inextricably go together). Dude’s brilliant.

The Essential Track: Cold Cold Ground

Up Next: Grateful Dead - In the Dark

Grateful Dead - In the Dark

For the first album since 1980’s Go to Heaven, the Dead delivered one helluva record, of course featuring Touch of Grey, at once their biggest hit and a force for Deadheads to rage against despite their freedom loving nature. Point blank it’s a great hit. For the remainder of the album, it largely follows the sonic spaces that Go to Heaven was also exploring, though I think overall the songs are much stronger here, especially Hell in a Bucket (the song that basically got me into the Dead) and Throwing Stones. Add to that a beautiful closer in Black Muddy River, and maybe the most yacht rock of all Dead songs in Tons of Steel (watch out Michael McDonald, Brent’s coming for you!). Just a killer album and the first of theirs I really got into.

The Essential Track: Throwing Stones

Up Next: The Saints - All Fools Day