Lists and Numbers
Wireless Bollinger’s 100 Favourite Albums of All Time: 70 - 66
Featuring: Led Zeppelin, My Morning Jacket, The Flaming Lips, The Velvet Underground, Neil Young
Written by: Wireless Bollinger
Published: Jun 30th '10
<<61-70>>
70. Led Zeppelin - IV
It really doesn’t get much more iconic than this. There is barely a moment on Zeppelin’s magnum opus that is not instantly recognizable. From the guitar-vocal call and response of the dirty, bluesy ‘Black Dog’ to the medieval mandolin of ‘The Battle of Evermore’ to, of course, that most iconic of iconic songs, ‘Stairway to Heaven’, Zeppelin’s IV, is the prototype record for bands looking to step from small-time cred to stadium deification.
And speaking of ‘Stairway’, it’s sometimes hard to move past it when talking about IV. If every repeat of that song ever played on US radio was looped, it would play for over 55 years. Indeed, some urban myths suggest that it would never end, as the song is always being played somewhere, by someone. But, awesome as that track is, it is hardly the only weapon in Zeppelin’s arsenal.
After the somewhat lukewarm critical reaction to III, Zeppelin made a conscious decision to simultaneously branch out and focus on their strengths. As such, the bouncy keyboard pseudo-pop of ‘Misty Mountain Hop’ rests comfortably alongside the bruising ‘Black Dog’. Elsewhere, ‘Four Sticks’ plays like old-fashioned Led Zep played by Captain Beefheart’s Magic Band, with Hendrix on guitar.
This is the album that turned Zeppelin into the world’s biggest band in 1971. Without it, perhaps I, II and III would fail to get the attention they deserve. Without it, there would be no template for bands to take their sound to a new level, one that could fill arenas to their 40,000 capacity. Without it, rock and roll would be an entirely different beast altogether. Zeppelin rule.
69. My Morning Jacket - Z
My Morning Jacket were one of those bands. Touring the US relentlessly, they were recognized – and slavishly followed – by a committed few, but the broader listening public remained blissfully unaware of their unique take on country music. The band’s previous release, It Still Moves, had established MMJ to the musical world as a bunch of aggressively experimental southern country rockers with a love of extended Lynyrd Skynyrd-style jams. It was with Z that they took a flying leap into the stratosphere.
With its 10 fantastic tracks woven into a tight 47 minutes, the album is so bracing that it's hard to entirely believe. It could be all surface, and repeated listens would reveal its shallow appeal. Repeated listens comprehensively disprove that theory.
The album is also a sharp stylistic shift from their earlier work. Early My Morning Jacket followed a smoothed-out boom-and-twang sound, but Z is all over the shop. The songs don't fit together too neatly, clashing as they randomly swing between reggae, country, rock and who knows what else.
The opening track, ‘Wordless Chorus’, with its angelic choirs and faint echoes of electronica, is almost the antithesis of its follow-up, ‘It Beats For You’, yet the songs flow together seamlessly. This goes just as well for the power-pop of ‘Anytime’ followed by the driving rock of ‘Lay Low’ which then bleeds seamlessly into the woozy piano of ‘Knot Comes Loose’. Z is one of those rare treats: a really great band taking that extraordinary step into the rarified realm of bands that fulfill their potential and create something truly wonderful.
68. The Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
It was pretty hard to imagine where the Flaming Lips would go after the devastating brilliance of The Soft Bulletin; the ninth studio album from the Oklahoma band and the one that elevated the Lips from guitar-toting slackers to post-Zaireeka psych-pop celestials. In dealing with the weighty subject of death, chief songwriter and singer Wayne Coyne had uncovered a whole universe of pathos to explore on The Soft Bulletin. To follow, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, whittled and refined this bittersweet ethos into a more accessible, but no less sublime, record that would firmly place the band as maestros of the new exploratory pop.
In a typical Coyne curveball, Yoshimi opens with the blatantly ‘Father and Son’ cribbing ‘Fight Test’. The usage of Cat Stevens’ classic melody so confidently first up perfectly sets the tone for the lovely simplicity of the album. And, while the production genius of Dave Fridmann spins Yoshimi into a future-psych electro-fog, these are basically campfire songs begging fans to learn them on an acoustic guitar. By the time ‘Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Pt. 1’ kicks in at track three, the listener has been gently eased into the blissful groove the record so successfully creates.
Like many albums of superb clarity and vision, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots saves its most defining moment until almost the end. ‘Do You Realize??’ could almost be Y2K’s ‘What a Wonderful World’, a song as broadly sweeping in scope and equally as fragile, intimate and heartrending. As the one song that most would know the band for, ‘Do You Realize??’ is a stunning example of the unmatched combination of classic pop and future-thinking artistry the Flaming Lips so perfectly presented on their two great millennial albums, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots and The Soft Bulletin.
67. The Velvet Underground - The Velvet Underground & Nico
Samplers, sequencers and synthesisers; delay pedals, distortion and dialled-in reverb – forty years on, The Velvet Underground & Nico still remains revelatory. There’s rock ‘n roll here, sure – ‘I’m Waiting for the Man’ and ‘Run Run Run’ are as much proto-punk blueprints as anything from the 60s – but a lot of this is just sonically ridiculous. Lou Reed tuning his guitar with every string the same note, John Cale coaxing those otherworldly tones out of an electric viola with guitar and mandolin strings, and the drumming of Mo Tucker, the primitive power of which is even now being explored by many experimental-leaning pop bands of our own noughties.
There was the sound, and there were the songs. And, bookended by the thirteen-minute middle-section confrontation of anguished bliss that is ‘All Tomorrow’s Parties’ and ‘Heroin’, we find four of the most perfect, fragile and lovely songs of the 60s; songs that would help define the bruised, art-damaged persona found in the most vital indie-pop created from here on in. Nico sang ‘Femme Fatale’ and ‘I’ll Be Your Mirror’, Reed sang ‘There She Goes Again’ and ‘Sunday Morning’. The way they feel together (and how the whole thing feels, really) probably shouldn’t work, but it does.
The Velvet Underground & Nico is one of those records that they say no one heard on its release, but that all who did started bands of their own. Like many records in the great 60s canon of received wisdom, the same could surely be said today for the music fans burgeoning into musicians who hear this record. And perhaps more than anything else what The Velvet Underground & Nico expresses is the ideal vision of do-it-yourself. Recorded quickly, excitedly (and cheaply), what this really sounds like is freedom.
66. Neil Young - After the Goldrush
After the hope and aspirations of the 1960’s faded with the menacing events at Altamont and the Manson murders, Neil Young released an immaculate collection of songs that would sum up the feeling in the air and turn it into a forward-looking optimism about the decade ahead.
From start to finish, After the Goldrush carries itself with an air of grace and balance. Young himself admitted that he wanted to capture a mixture of CSNY and Crazy Horse and without doubt he achieved that goal. From the opening trio of songs with their delicate wounded harmonies and rustic instrumentation to Young’s caustic snarl on ‘Southern Man’ and the primal stomp of ‘When You Dance I Can Really Love’ there is a depth to the album that lends it a timeless air.
The 81 seconds of ‘Til The Morning Comes’ are a moment of pure melodic sunshine before Young again flips the coin with ‘Oh, Lonesome Me’. The looseness and ramshackle feel of the album are a testament to the players that Young assembled. Jack Nitzsche and a young Nils Lofgren feature heavily - and heavenly - on piano while Danny Whitten’s guitar supports Young’s playing with a sensitive hand.
Young would of course hit payday with his follow-up Harvest but for many of his diehard fans he had already delivered a work of genius which in hindsight feels very much like the calm before the storm. A storm in which friends would be lost, hearts would be broken and for many the drugs stopped being fun. After the Goldrush is the crowning statement of an age of innocence that will never be repeated.
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