Lists and Numbers
Wireless Bollinger’s 100 Favourite Albums of All Time: 80 - 76
Featuring: Sigur Ros, Pearl Jam, The Mountain Goats, The Stooges, The Smashing Pumpkins
Written by: Wireless Bollinger
Published: Jun 14th '10
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80. Sigur Ros – ( )
Sigur Ros have always been enigmatic. Emerging from their isolated, arctic island home, they materialized onto the scene in 1999 seemingly fully formed, delivering an astonishing burst of unique magic in Agaetis Byrjun. Partly sung in Icelandic, partly Hopelandic, taking conventional song structures and instrumentation and twisting them into their own majestic compositions, the four unassuming gentlemen rewrote the book on large-scale emotive rock. And never have they been more enigmatic than on ( ).
By dispensing with crazy notions like naming songs and providing liner notes of any kind, Sigur Ros were undoubtedly leaving themselves open to accusations of pretentiousness. However, such self indulgences as these ought to be forgiven, because the album is a masterpiece.
If Agaetis Byrjun is challenging, ( ) is positively impenetrable. Sung entirely in Hopelandic – utter gibberish, according to its creator, singer Jonsi Birgisson – the record saw the band wholeheartedly embrace digital manipulation to enhance the ethereal nature of their sound. And that sound – which is routinely compared to glaciers and plateaus, was never more elemental than on this album. Ice, fire, earth and wind, each is as much a part of proceedings as Birgisson’s angelic wail or Kjartan Sveinsson’s tinkling piano.
( ) is the Sigur Ros album that is likely to slip under the radar. Dense, tough, confronting and incredibly dramatic, it is an experience to listen to. Against more majestic and quirky offerings, like Agaetis Byrjun, or more accessible, less grandiose records like Takk…, ( ) is the one that will get picked up by future generations and worshipped as the ghostly, powerful masterpiece that it truly is.
79. Pearl Jam - Vs
While in 2009, nearly 20 years after the grunge movement exploded from a cult movement in Seattle, Nirvana gain the bulk of the critical plaudits, the early-90s was a golden age for a new version of rock. While Soundgarden eventually folded and Tool progressed to the intricate metal of today, Nirvana’s untimely demise gave them the veneer of mythology. Not so Pearl Jam. Still operating today, they have undergone a gradual shift away from their heavier roots and pursued a gentler, more lyrical path as befitting their encroaching middle years.
Indeed, it’s easy to forget how viscerally thrilling Pearl Jam’s earlier work was, and remains. Five seconds into ‘Go’, however, when Mike McReady’s galloping snares kick in, it is impossible to forget. Vs represents a great band at the peak of their powers. Eddie Vedder’s gut-wrenching howl has never been so intense, Stone Gossard’s riffs and solo licks are unmatched even today. Gone are the angst-ridden adolescent words of tracks like ‘Jeremy’ and ‘Alive’ from Ten, and in their place are often moving tales of broken families (‘Daughter’), a modern-day Bonnie and Clyde (‘Dissident’) and gentle, meandering vignettes of small town Americana (‘Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town’).
Pearl Jam are now bona fide veterans, a reputation built on the strength of albums like Vs. While the criticism they receive today is unwarranted, when standing Pearl Jam up against Vs, it’s easy to see why. Exciting, powerful and passionate, it also affirms that when they wanted to, Pearl Jam could seriously rock the fuck out. And from 1993, when reviving rock and roll was a serious issue, that really counted.
78. The Mountain Goats - We Shall All Be Healed
Two years after releasing Tallahassee, their acclaimed first hi-fi, full-band album, John Darnielle’s Mountain Goats cemented their reputation as one of indie-folk’s most intriguing and engaging acts with the release of 2004’s We Shall All Be Healed.
Where the strength of Darnielle’s earlier releases lay in his expansive, winding narratives, WSABH is all about the songs. That’s not to say the album wants for continuity or a ‘binding force’, as such, but there is no denying that WSABH’s finest songs rank high among the band’s most brilliant moments When placed side-by-side, they create a lush and wonderful release that is truly more than the sum of its seemingly innocuous parts.
And such moments abound. Opening with the bleak and sometimes furious ‘Slow West Vultures’, and closing with the upbeat false bravado of ‘Pigs that Ran Straightaway Into the Water, Triumph Of’ WSABH runs the full gamut of emotions – this breadth belying the fact that it is, for all intents and purposes, 13 songs played by a whiny-voiced guy toting an acoustic guitar.
That is, of course, being flippant – Darnielle is doubtless one of the finest lyricists and song-smiths in modern music. From the drug-fuelled paranoia of ‘Palmcorder Yajna’, to the wordy, schizophrenic ‘Letter from Belgium’, Darnielle as a songwriter is simply impossible to pin down. But the album’s finest point comes with the poignant, poetic ‘Your Belgian Things’; put simply, it is one of the most beautiful and touching songs ever written, and a high-point on an album full of them.
77. The Stooges – Funhouse
No one has really harnessed the dark and primitive side of rock music quite like The Stooges did in 1970 when they released Funhouse. Sure, bands like The Doors had explored the darker side of music and an endless number of garage bands across the USA had tried to master the basic rock template but none expressed it so brutally as the four-piece from Michigan. In fact, no one ever even came close.
In Ron Asheton - combining a minimal number of guitar chords with saw blade distortion and menacing wah - and brother Scott playing drums like he was chopping trees, The Stooges had the backbone of the loudest and most primal psych-punk sound of the time. Slithering all over the music was Iggy Pop, the seminal frontman who growled, grunted and screamed his way across 7 songs that conjured up images of an alternate America.
He exposed the underbelly and the seedy backstreets with his tales of drugs, decadence and rebellion. The feral howl that opens ‘TV Eye’ before Asheton’s slashing guitars cuts everything to shreds remains to this day an essential rock moment. Dave Alexander (bass) and Steve MacKay (saxophone) are also critical to mix with the bass anchoring the chaos and Mackay blowing a funk jazz storm over the 12 minute title track.
No album since Funhouse has come close to capturing the open-wound rawness of music in such a defining way. They took rock n roll and twisted it into a beast that has not lost any of its power and fury nearly 40 years on. In the liner notes of the 2005 reissue of Funhouse Jack White even went so far as to call it "by proxy the definitive rock album of America." It’s hard to argue against that notion.
76. The Smashing Pumpkins - Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness
The Smashing Pumpkins’ first major release, Siamese Dream wascritically acclaimed and commercially lucrative. However, its successor, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness looms over it as more ambitious, more successful and more impressive, and is frequently considered the band’s best. Impressively, Mellon Collie managed to take numerous steps forwards in scope and vision without abandoning the emotional complexity that was the hallmark of earlier Pumpkins releases.
A double album, with discs named Dawn to Dusk and Twilight to Starlight respectively, it covers the breadth of emotion across 32 tracks. It is also a landmark in alternative rock songwriting, in a genre that was still somewhat nascent in 1995. Opening on the powerful lone piano of the title track, the album shifts to the mournful symphony holding up ‘Tonight, Tonight’ before embracing fierce rock on the catastrophically raucous ‘Bullet With Butterfly Wings’.
Smashing Pumpkins arose to prominence on the back of a resurgence of a rock scene inspired by the grunge of Pearl Jam and Nirvana. But what they put together on Mellon Collie was light years ahead of its predecessors in drama and vision. The release of the album catapulted the band into the rock stratosphere, a prelude to the ugly collapse of the band and Billy Corgans thus far disappointing solo efforts. But, the end of the band notwithstanding, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness has left an indelible imprint on music, one of the most beautiful rock albums ever made.
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