Music Review Madness 3

Still no new blog posts about philosophy, politics, discourse, or the rationalist/EA community I’m afraid. If you’re holding out for those, I have some ideas in the works, but due to a combination of distraction and generally lagging motivation I’m not sure when they will come out. Could be weeks, or months. In the meantime though, I do have enough little album reviews for another review dump, which I hope some of my readers enjoy. I give some explanation of this style of post at the beginning of this post, but to give a basic recap, I collect a bunch of albums I’d like to listen to, and then when I finish my current round of albums, I pick the fifteen I’m most interested in, and send them out to a bunch of text chats to vote on the order I listen to them in. Since pretty early on I decided to also write a review of my favorite album or two of the round.

I try not to repeat artists on these lists, and for this and other reasons this is not an exhaustive list of my favorite albums I listened to over this period. “Smiley Smile” by the Beach Boys, “Wheels of Fire” by Cream, “Lonely Magic” by Rebecca Sugar, “Getting Killed” by Geese, “Ram” by Paul McCartney, “Lies for the Liars” by the Used, and “Speakerboxxx/the Love Below” by Outkast are all examples of albums that didn’t qualify for the album lists because the artist made a previous round, but which I liked considerably more than the album that did make the list. I made an exception to this rule for one of the rounds copied here, which I will explain when it comes up.

I have somewhat unusual taste, and there are some styles of music I just don’t like that much, most notably hip-hop, new wave, and thrash, and to a lesser extent classical, jazz, reggae, R&B, and electronic. All of these show up fairly often on the lists, but usually in some sort of fusion form, and I’m probably the wrong place to go for recommendations in these styles. I tend to like dramatic, dark, weird, and/or experimental rock. My favorite genres are prog, psychedelic, math rock, post-rock, industrial, grunge, emo, power pop, theater, and comedy, and all of these genres make decent showings among the round winners. If this sounds appealing to you, welcome! Hopefully you’ll find some cool music here.

Round 35:

“Expensive Shit” by Fela Kuti

“Rejoice! I’m Dead!” by Gong

“KEEP THE CHANGE!” by Kill Bill X Rav

“Pink Moon” by Nick Drake

“Born to Run” by Bruce Springsteen

“Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake” by Small Faces

“Art of Life” by X Japan

“Sundial” by Noname

“Rubberneck” by Toadies

“The Earth is not a Cold Dead Place” by Explosions in the Sky

“Electric Music for the Mind and Body” by Country Joe and the Fish

“Projector” by Geese

“Weezer’s Blue Album” by Trashdog

“Blue Album” by Weezer

“Desire” by Pharoahe Monch

The round’s winner was “Rubberneck” by Toadies. Going into this album I knew two specific things about this album: that it is grunge, and that it is only famous for one song, “Possum Kingdom”. Imagine my shock when I learned that both facts are basically irrelevant. “Possum Kingdom” isn’t that representative of the album, and it isn’t close to the best song, either. “Mister Love” or “Backslider” probably are. Grunge is an okay description, some of the particular chord choices are grungy, but it’s hard to describe this music any more specifically than hard rock because it straddles a bunch of styles. The lyrics are usually spare with percussive shouts instead of choruses, with particular focus on the angsts of religion and apostasy. It sounds a bit like the sludgier and mathier moments of hardcore punk, but the vocals are just as happy to sound like Led Zeppelin (on “Backslider” in particular). The chord progressions are often faster and more complicated than this suggests though, not that the album sounds strange or experimental, the different elements don’t clash, they just aren’t summarized well by “grunge”. Honorable mentions: “Blue Album” by Weezer, “Weezer’s Blue Album” by Trashdog, “Born to Run” by Bruce Springsteen, and “Projector” by Geese.

Round 36:

“LSD” by Cardiacs

“The Grand Illusion” by Styx

“Heavy Metal” by Cameron Winter

“Arcane Season 2” Soundtrack

“Santana” by Santana

“Memphis in Texas” by Shrubbies

“Aggressive” by Beartooth

“Surrealistic Pillow” by Jefferson Airplane

“The Strange Case of…” by Halestorm

“Choral Fantasy” by Ludwig van Beethoven

“New World Depression” by Suicideboys

“Girl Violence” by King Princess

“Take me Back to Eden” by Sleep Token

“Hand. Cannot. Erase.” By Steven Wilson

“Tired of Tomorrow” by Nothing

The winner of this round is a kind of boring pick for me, though still far too obscure in general, Cardiacs. “LSD” comes from one year of normal recording, 12 years with the band leader Tim Smith seriously limited by dystonia, and five years of recording and refinement after his death. It is legendary in advance and had no obligation to be consistent or polished under the circumstances. And for its virtues, it isn’t Cardiacs’ best album, it’s not even their second best, it isn’t even their fifth best, but for a band as consistent as Cardiacs it’s praising them with faint damnation to say that it’s only a bit better than “Heaven Born and Ever Bright”. Its simpler song structures and choral elements are a bit like Heaven Born, in fact, but it’s more post-rock than most of Cardiacs’ stuff too, advancing some of the style they were playing with on “Sing to God”. One of the album masterpieces “Busty Beez” has the decadent, ambiguous stank of “The Breakfast Line”, but the minimalist revelry of “Dirty Boy”. It isn’t a continuation of any one album. I would have liked a bit more variety and I prefer the “Ditzy Scene” EP recording of “Made All Up” to the one on the final album, but this was a labor of love, and it well deserves the Cardiacs name. Honorable mentions: “Heavy Metal” by Cameron Winter, and the “Arcane Season 2” soundtrack.

Round 37:

“The Stranger” by Billy Joel

“Let’s Face It” by the Mighty Mighty Bosstones

“Symphony No. 2” by Gustav Mahler

“Consume Red” by Ground Zero

“Return to Cookie Mountain” by TV on the Radio

“Tsunami Sea” by Spiritbox

“Sunbather” by Deafheaven

“Charm” by Clairo

“This is Happening” by LCD Soundsystem

“Boston” by Boston

“Aerial Ballet” by Harry Nilsson

“The Stone Roses” by the Stone Roses

“Zabriskie Point” Soundtrack

“Roots” by Sepultura

“Raising Hell” by Run-D.M.C.

This round was a tie between “The Stranger” by Billy Joel and “Return to Cookie Mountain” by TV on the Radio. I already heard three songs off of “The Stranger”: “Moving On”, “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant”, and “Only the Good Die Young”, which are also my favorite songs on it. There’s something personally appealing to me in the theatrical (and even sometimes proggy) approach of this album, but mostly the songwriting is just universally good, from tricky bits like the multi-part dime-turn progression in the chorus of “Moving On” to the set up/pay off of rhyming into a simple one sentence chorus on “Only the Good Die Young”, and, essentially, Joel has not only the range but the energy to keep up with the bold organ and brass parts. It’s all the more endearing to hear his plain, life-loving verses delivered with that energy. TV on the Radio’s vocals are more ethereal, the closest I can come to explaining it is a cross between This Heat and Bon Iver - most tracks are driven by vocal harmony between voices singing in not just very different pitches but very different styles, lending further ambiguity to the surreal lyrics. I have a hard time placing the genre but psychedelia, R&B, and alternative are all sometimes apt. Honorable mention: “Aerial Ballet” by Harry Nilsson.

Round 38:

“Ameriques” by Edgard Varese

“Meantime” by Helmet

“Play” by Moby

“Art Angels” by Grimes

“Purple” by Baroness

“Nothing as the Ideal” by All Them Witches

“Womblife” by John Fahey

“Shine on Brightly” by Procol Harum

“Weird!” By Yungblud

“Horror Show” by the Midnight

“Charlie Parker with Strings” by Charlie Parker

“The Sum of the Sum of the…” by Brian Pern

“Euphoria” by Leftover Salmon

“Real Estate/Fake Inverno” by Sterbus

“The Glow Pt. 2” by the Microphones

My favorite album of this round was “Real Estate/Fake Inverno” by Sterbus. I lovingly consider the first half of this album, “Real Estate”, a Cardiacs rip-off. Lovingly! And there are some exculpatory considerations in its favor. For one thing, Cardiacs isn’t a simple style to play and I’ve seen good bands like the Display Team and Lost Crowns try and fail. For another thing the Cardiacs album it sounds most like is “LSD”, which came out after this record - perhaps a sign of how intuitively Sterbus gets this counterintuitive style. The songs have typical Cardiacs cadence, but contrasts between the drum, guitar, and vocal speeds make it sound less prog punk and more prog alt. The second half, “Fake Inverno” has more variety, with overt nods to stoner rock and new wave - it is truthfully less consistent and there is less to say about it. It feels downright relaxing after the density of the first half - a pleasant half hour chaser. Honorable mentions: “Womblife” by John Fahey, and “Purple” by Baroness.

Round 39:

“CLPPNG” by clipping 

“Spanking Machine” by Babes in Toyland

“A Day at the Races” by Queen

“The Boatman’s Call” by Nick Cave

“Routine Maintenance” by Aaron West and the Roaring Twenties

“Monsters and Robots” by Buckethead

“That was the Year that was” by Tom Lehrer

“Faust” by Faust

“Amelia” by Laurie Anderson

“R Plus Seven” by Oneohtrix Point Never

“An Evil Heat” by Oxbow

“Roots” by Curtis Mayfield

“…Like Clockwork” by Queens of the Stone Age

“D.O.A. the Third and Final Report of Throbbing Gristle” by Throbbing Gristle

“Turnstiles” by Billy Joel

I mentioned at the beginning of the post that I made an exception to the “no artist repeats” rule for one round. Well, this is the round. I decided it would be fun and interesting to pit winning artists against each other, so I chose another album to listen to by fifteen previous round winners. The competition was close, but my favorite was probably “A Day at the Races” by Queen. This album followed up “A Night at the Opera”, the album with not only Queen’s best song, but one of the best songs ever written, “Bohemian Rhapsody”, and it couldn’t help but fall short. Having gotten that out of the way, “A Day at the Races” is the better album, and may well be my favorite Queen album so far. The first half is less even, but from “Somebody to Love” on the album is a consistent treasure, especially the last two songs. If it’s too scattered to be a concept album, it’s still easy to listen to it as one - from the immature teen rebellion of “Tie Your Mother Down”, to the swelling vulnerability of “Somebody to Love”, to the wistful comfort of “Drowse” and “Teo Torriatte”, it roughly follows the arc of one’s relationship to love over time, and the full range of rock emotion is put to use, often with splendid success. This is a band that no longer just sounds like the sum of their influences - if “A Night at the Opera” created “Bohemian Rhapsody”, “Bohemian Rhapsody”, to my delight, created “A Day at the Races”. Honorable mentions: “CLPPNG” by Clipping, “…Like Clockwork” by Queens of the Stone Age, and “D.O.A. the Third and Final Report of Throbbing Gristle” by Throbbing Gristle.

Round 40:

“Between the Richness” by Fiddlehead

“Queens of Noise” by the Runaways

“Cosmic Slop” by Funkadelic

“Legends” by Sabaton

“Transgender Dysphoria Blues” by Against Me!

“Exit Planet Dust” by the Chemical Brothers

“Spleen and Ideal” by Dead Can Dance

“Solar Music” by Butcher Brown

“A New Myth” by The Brother Moves on

“Grow” by Chon

“Starz” by Yung Lean

“Now You Are One of Us” by the Paper Chase

“70 Years of Hits” by Frankie Yankovic

“Pierrot Lunaire” by Arnold Schoenberg

“Plague Mass” by Diamanda Galas

This round was a tie between “Transgender Dysphoria Blues” by Against Me! And “Spleen and Ideal” by Dead can Dance. I’m a sucker for a good concept album, and even if there isn’t much guiding the order of the songs on “Transgender Dysphoria Blues”, the common theme is right on the label, the transgender dysphoria blues. This album is very personal, and could have sounded very sad (and some tracks like “Paralytic States” are just very sad), but it just has too much attitude and too much power-pop sensibility to feel that way, it sounds a bit like “Quadrophenia” and “The Black Parade”. “Spleen and Ideal” is more minimal, and indeed many tracks don’t have a single full sentence on them. Like “Transgender Dysphoria Blues”, there’s a sort of bright darkness about this album - many songs have lyrics about strife, but almost all of them are fundamentally hopeful. The music is moody with a bright edge, built mostly around grandiose, lumbering trombone progressions, accented with cello, bass, drums, and synths. It’s hard to explain the sound aside from saying it’s a bit like being in a cathedral during a famine, and playing the last holy song you can believe in. Honorable mentions: “A New Myth” by The Brother Moves on, and “Plague Mass” by Diamanda Galas.

Round 41:

“Kiss my Super Bowl Ring” by the Garden

“Bat Out of Hell” by Meat Loaf

“Strangeitude” by Ozric Tentacles

“Darkskin N****s with Lightskin Problems” by Heavensouls and Stickerbush

“Ys” by Joanna Newsom

“Graceland” by Paul Simon

“1/2 Mensch” by Einsturzende Neubauten

“The Magic City” by Sun Ra

“Lux” by Rosalia

“The War of Art” by American Head Charge

“Bleeds” by Wednesday

“Music for 18 Musicians” by Steve Reich

“Here’s Little Richard” by Little Richard

“Heaven or Las Vegas” by Cocteau Twins

“Meliora” by Ghost

My favorite album of this round was probably “Bat Out of Hell” by Meat Loaf. A comedy about men with commitment issues sounds cliche even 50 years ago but, especially over the last three tracks, the album has a very satisfying evolution. Starting from the honest tragedy of the protagonist of “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad”, to the comedy of transactional, even adversarial romance that unfolds over “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” in which the female lead manipulates the male lead into manipulating her with commitment. Finally ending with a role reversal in “For Crying Out Loud"’s grandiose and authentic appreciation for a good partner in life. This isn’t to say the first half is a flyover, the opener is head, shoulders, and knees above everything else on the album musically. A near perfect prog-glam-theater-belter that is infectious as anything once you get into it. I also want to give an honorable mention to the hair’s-width behind “Ys” by Joanna Newsom. A prog masterclass with a more pensive tone and poetic ambitions. It hardly sounds modern, but it isn’t trying to. If you don’t find this offputting, and a sound like Bjork and Roy Harper joined Renaissance sounds as exciting to you as it does to me, this album is well worth a try.

Round 42:

“Buenos Hermanos” by Ibrahim Ferrer

“Wintereisse” by Jerskin Fendrix

“Human = Garbage” (CD version) by Dystopia

“Rounds” by Four Tet

“Romantic Warrior” by Return to Forever

“Album - Generic Flipper” by Flipper

“Paper Alibis” by YonKaGor

“Dreamboat Annie” by Heart

“Slide” by George Clanton

“The Land of Rape and Honey” by Ministry

“Spartacus” by Triumvirat

“Ambrosia” by Ambrosia

“None of this is Real” by DJ Rozwell

“Oranges & Lemons” by XTC

“We Are Sent Here by History” by Shabaka and the Ancestors

The best album of this round was “Dreamboat Annie” by Heart. Another sort of boring pick, I know, but the heavy-hitters are hitting heavy lately, and this is both Heart’s first album, and the first album I’ve heard by them. The technical skill, especially of the guitarist and vocalist are impressive and the band applies them rather than just showing off. I think more than anything though, I respect how intuitive this album is. Normally if I say a band sound like Led Zeppelin, Fleetwood Mac, and Jethro Tull just as easily and just as often, it evokes a record that - work or not - you can see the stitches on. Do yourself a favor and listen to “Crazy on You”, “Sing Child”, or “How Deep it Goes”, and see if there’s one creative stutter. Honorable mentions: “Wintereisse” by Jerskin Fendrix and “NONE OF THIS IS REAL” (shuffle with five second crossfade) by DJ Rozwell.

Round 43:

“Main Course” by Bee Gees

“Heresie” by Univers Zero

“DJ Set” by Mouseatouille

“40oz. to Freedom” by Sublime

“Virtua” by trndytrndy

“The Road of Bones” by IQ

“Dazzle Ships” by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark

“World of Echo” by Arthur Russell

“Texas Flood” by Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble

“All my Friends are Enemies” by Say Anything

“Cub” by Wunderhorse

“Life Fantastic” by Man Man

“Black Focus” by Yussef Kamaal

“The Drift” by Scott Walker

“The Joshua Tree” by U2

This round was a tie between “Life Fantastic” by Man Man and “The Drift” by Scott Walker. “Life Fantastic” isn’t the only album that deserves the title of “the missing link between dark cabaret and Will Wood”, but it is one of the best. There’s theater, sleaze, and even a little prog (especially on the track “Shameless”). It’s self-deprecating and wordy, but it has no shy instruments and sometimes feels downright danceable. Scott Walker’s “The Drift” is not danceable. If there was a single melody on it, I didn’t notice. Mostly you’re left with textures - long string peels with percussion that alternates between a kind of ritual rhythm and strange knocks on whatever door the orchestra is hiding behind. The music is just suspenseful most of the time, but with the occasional jumpscare. The lyrics, delivered in Walker’s trembling half-spoken baritone, are unsettlingly abstract, but apparently cover such comforting subjects as Mussolini’s mistress and Elvis’ stillborn twin. The ambiguous immersion and some musical moments are fantastic, but the murk on murk on murk doesn’t leave me enough substance for it to Outright beat Man Man. Honorable mentions: “Heresie” by Univers Zero, “The Joshua Tree” by U2, and “Dazzle Ships” by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark.

Round 44:

“Tetsuo and Youth” by Lupe Fiasco

“Enigmatic Ocean” by Jean-Luc Ponty

“Honor Killed the Samurai” by Ka

“Cowards” by Squid

“Sweet Oblivion” by Screaming Trees

“Tres Hombres” by ZZ Top

“Never Hungover Again” by Joyce Manor

“Watermark” by Enya

“Boy” by 2hollis

“Remember that I Love You” by Kimya Dawson

“Blank Generation” by Richard Hell and the Voidoids

“Servants in Heaven, Kings in Hell” by Jedi Mind Tricks

“Symphony 4” by Johannes Brahms

“Powerslave” by Iron Maiden

“Barclay James Harvest” by Barclay James Harvest

This round had some real heavy hitters, but I think at the end of the day my favorite was “Cowards” by Squid. I have a playlist that I add promising songs from a given album to as I’m listening to it, and then I relisten the next morning. When I listened to “Cowards” I was put in the inconvenient position of putting more than half of the songs from the album on the playlist, and that took restraint. This is the simplest explanation of why this album won, it started strong and only got stronger. The patient build-ups sound familiar and invite comparisons to fellow 2025-winning post-punkers Geese, but this record, to its credit, cares much more about timbre. You definitely hear some “Spiderland” in the creeping, harpsichord-wannabe guitar sounds, but more than anything I hear Faust on this record. Prehistoric electronica, and so much ambiance built from such minimal sound layering. Sure it’s a creepy album, and every song makes sure to remind you of it in the lyrics, but I’ve heard plenty of great creepy albums, and they often make you feel like shit by the end. However much this album tries to bite, this album is just a good time. Honorable mentions: “Remember that I Love You” by Kimya Dawson, and “Barclay James Harvest” by Barclay James Harvest.

Round 45:

“The Modern Dance” by Pere Ubu

“Music from the Penguin Cafe” by Penguin Cafe Orchestra

“Trip Thru Hell” by C. A. Quintet

“Return to Wherever” by TWRP

“Stick Man” by Tony Levin

“Love Zone” by Billy Ocean

“Lemon Boy” by Cavetown

“After the Gold Rush” by Neil Young

“Fetlock Deep” by Maddy Prior and Forgotten Lands

“Theory of my Mind” by the Amygdaloids

“Third Eye Blind” by Third Eye Blind

“Stand!” By Sly and the Family Stone

“Sheet Music” by 10cc

“Adventures in Modern Recording” by the Buggles

“Symphony 3” by Per Norgard

This round was tough, several albums had strong virtues, but none had quite enough of what I was looking for. I considered making this an appalling four-way tie but with some relistening, I have decided to narrow it to a two-way tie between “After the Gold Rush” by Neil Young and “Sheet Music” by 10cc. Both mostly had little whisps of songs, with the exception of “Southern Man” from Young and “The Worst Band in the World” by 10cc, they weren’t structured very tightly, just enough to reward attention. While the Young songs stuck to pleasantly simple folk rock ballads, 10cc is clearly influenced by the sillier side of power pop, maybe the more dangerous style to attempt with minimal structure (people wonder why I can’t get into Ween, to me it is the key cautionary tale here), but I think it helps both albums that they know just what they want to be and are lyrics-oriented enough to rewarded the attention doubly. Honorable mentions: “Symphony 3” by Per Norgard and “The Modern Dance” by Pere Ubu.

Round 46:

“Suicidal Tendencies” by Suicidal Tendencies

“Ta-Dah” by Scissor Sisters

“Stream from the Heavens” by Thergothon

“69 Love Songs” by the Magnetic Fields

“Cojum Dip” by Cojum Dip

“Germfree Adolescents” by X-Ray Specs

“In Love and Death” by the Used

“Her Side” by Maddie Ashman

“3 + 3” by the Isley Brothers

“Conditions of my Parole” by Puscifer

“Magdalene” by FKA Twigs

“Blowout Comb” by Digable Planets

“Do Svidaniya” by IC3PEAK

“So Fucking Rock (Live)” by Tim Minchin

“Homesick” by a Day to Remember

Maybe I was biased because I listened to it on Valentine’s Day, but my pick for this round was  “69 Love Songs” by The Magnetic Fields. Very strange album, it’s what the title says, 69 songs about love, lust, breakups, etc.. It is by far the longest album to win its round at nearly three hours, and it’s kind of hard for me to give a good sense of what you get by the end from listening to it all the way through in one sitting. Maybe just a sense of the seeming infinite well of the most popular song topic in the world, in imitation and demonstration? Maybe even a feeling of a complete romance with the album running its course? I don’t know, these sound too easy, and it also feels like the sort of album you can easily listen to any amount of in any order to just get some good songs. As much of a playlist as an album. They cover lots of styles, but I would describe the dominant style as psychedelic folk rock. Each song follows a relatively simple lyrical and musical premise only just as far as it needs to become a song. It has a sort of half-ad-lib charm I’ve see on a few albums I think of as “sketch-book” albums, like “Smiley Smile” by the Beach Boys or “Helen Burns” by Flea. As with sketches, you could imagine turning these songs into full paintings, but there’s lots to love with the style of a sketch that just begins and ends as a sketch. Honorable mentions: “Conditions of my Parole” by Puscifer, and “So Fucking Rock (Live)” by Tim Minchin.

Round 47:

“Let me Come Over” by Buffalo Tom

“Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band” by Yoko Ono

“Ladies and Gentlemen we are Floating in Space” by Spiritualized

“The B-52s” by the B-52s

“Hatfield and the North” by Hatfield and the North

“The Land is Inhospitable and so are we” by Mitski

“Prophecy” by Solstice

“Hedwig and the Angry Inch” Original Broadway Recording

“Turangalila-Symphony” by Olivier Messiaen

“Vampire Weekend” by Vampire Weekend

“Take the Sadness Out of Saturday Night” by Bleachers

“Starsailor” by Tim Buckley

“So Tonight That I Might See” by Mazzy Star

“The United States of America” by The United States of America

“Sixteen Tons” by Weedeater

These last two rounds have been good for fans of romantic psychedelic 90s indie, this time in the form of “Ladies and Gentlemen we are Floating in Space” by Spiritualized. While love isn’t as overtly or specifically the theme of this album, it’s a definite trend among some of its best songs, especially a sort of hesitant, defensively self-deprecating love song. Musically you hear these contrasts between majestic energy and youthful nerves as well. The typical song has three main layers - a slow almost droning layer that fills pitch and timbre in the background, usually something orchestral or psychedelic, a middle layer with some medium speed main instrumentation, especially brass, and then a faster, poppier front layer where the vocals and percussion usually wind up. This resembles a conventional post-rock sound, but many of their contemporaries in the genre introduce the different layers more slowly and lay down more of them. Spiritualized risks being less satisfying, less rich in its minimalism, but despite dragging a bit in the middle the attention to the quality of each layer really pays off in some really endearing displays of shy awe. Honorable mentions: “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” Original Broadway Recording and “Vampire Weekend” by Vampire Weekend.

Round 48:

“It’s Fine to Dream” by You are an Angel

“If You’re Into it, I’m Out of it” by Christoph De Babalon

“Purple Mountains” by Purple Mountains

“Insertion” by Chikoi the Maid

“Ask Questions Later” by Cop Shoot Cop

“Goldstar” by Imperial Triumphant

“Collide With the Sky” by Pierce the Veil

“At the End of Everything” by Rain McMey

“Split” by Groundhogs

“Resurface” by Tides

“United States of Horror” by Ho99o9

“Akofa Akoussah” by Akofa Akoussah

“10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1” by Midnight Oil

“Three Cheers for Disappointment” by the Arrogant Sons of Bitches

“The Great Depression” by Defiance, Ohio

This last round was almost indistinguishably close between four albums, but once again, I absolutely insist on not writing a review for a four-way tie. So for now my biggest leaning is “It’s Fine to Dream” by You are an Angel. J’s back and trying to make another “The First Glass Beach Album” without the rest of Glass Beach. This sounds a little dismissive, but of course J was making music much like this before Glass Beach, and Glass Beach’s latest album skipped a lot of the 2010s indie/emo elements of their debut. It inevitably stands in a tall shadow, and there’s no “Bedroom Community” on this record, not for lack of noble efforts like “Kate Said”, but the elements of video game soundtrack mixed with Jeff Rosenstock, Brave Little Abacus, and Car Seat Headrest get you back to this same unique emotional space sought by hordes of trans emo kids since. One where shamelessness is nostalgic and vice versa. The songs are consistently at least close to great, and the proggy mathy moments on songs like “the Same” show off what J has learned making “Plastic Death”. One of the first great albums of the year. Honorable mentions: “Ask Questions Later” by Cop Shoot Cop, “Purple Mountains” by Purple Mountains, and “At the End of Everything” by Rain McMey.

Round 49:

“20 All-Time Greatest Hits!” by James Brown

“Purple Rain” by Prince

“Rum Sodomy & the Lash” by the Pogues

“Magic Flowers Droned” by Psychedelic Horseshit

“Pain to Power” by Maruja

“Fanny Hill” by Fanny

“Crack the Sky” by Crack the Sky

“Demanufacture” by Fear Factory

“Age to Age” by Amy Grant

“Illinois” by Sufjan Stevens

“Spice” by Spice Girls

“Sweet Baby James” by James Taylor

“The Power of Failing” by Mineral

“Zen Arcade” by Husker Du

“JoCo Looks Back” by Jonathan Coulton

Finally, this round’s winner was “Pain to Power” by Maruja. The windmill scene has been delivering in a big way the last few years, and just to make a relevant debut album in it, Maruja has in a way made the most extreme album I’ve heard out of the scene yet. Hopelessly genuine, from the lush, sentimental salve of “Saorise”, to the self-serious intensity of songs like “Look Down on Us” and “Trenches”, which have more Rage Against the Machine in them than I ever expected from the British post-punk scene. When it’s calm it sounds like Pink Floyd, when it gets loud Swans ¹. This album is try-hard in the best possible way, conscious, defiant, proggy, and drenched in sibling rivalry. I also want to give an honorable mention to “Crack the Sky” by Crack the Sky. An album full of dark comedy in the tradition of old Genesis, but with some of the surrealism and prog extremes tamped down and a spoonful of arena to go down better with a mainstream starting to tire of prog. In a way the places this thing is stripped down showed a way forward for prog in the more skeptical half of the decade. I could have stood for it to lean into its wackiness and poppiness more and be a little less arena, but overall it’s effective, unique, and easy to get along with.

And to continue the tradition, here at the end of the post I’m going to insert these albums into my general winning album rankings, and move the albums my opinion has changed on ², to get my current overall album ranking. You may also notice that it’s been long enough that some of my ties on the rounds reviewed here have drifted pretty farm apart since writing the original reviews. I have decided I considerably prefer “Transgender Dysphoria Blues” over “Spleen and Ideal”, and “The Drift” over “Life Fantastic”. The other two ties I still basically agree with. Anyway, here is the list:

Masterpiece:

1. Illusory Walls

2. The Normal Album

3. Mahashmashana

4. There Existed an Addiction to Blood

5. Fontanelle

6. LSD

7. Monarch of Monsters

Great:

8. Ants From Up There

9. Hellmode

10. MTV Unplugged in New York

11. A Day at the Races

12. Let Love in

13. Surgery

14. In Lieu of Flowers

15. Cowards

16. Pain to Power

17. Queen II

18. The New Sound

19. Bodies

20. Horse Rotorvator

21. Crime Slunk Scene

22. I Disagree

23. The Stranger

24. Return to Cookie Mountain

25. 69 Love Songs

26. Bat Out of Hell

27. The Long Dark Blue

Very Good:

28. Transgender Dysphoria Blues

29. Nail

30. Man on the Moon: The End of Day

31. An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer

32. Ladies and Gentlemen we are Floating in Space

33. Next to Normal

34. Deceit

35. The Bedlam in Goliath

36. Homeland

37. Marvin’s Marvelous Mechanical Museum

38. Dreamboat Annie

39. Plastic Death

40. Hawaii: Part II

41. Replica

42. It’s Fine to Dream

43. Rubberneck

44. The Drift

45. Faust IV

46. Counterfeit Arcade

47. Thin Black Duke

48. Spleen and Ideal

49. Real Estate/Fake Inverno

Pretty Good:

50. Life Fantastic

51. Sheet Music

52. After the Gold Rush

53. Songs for the Deaf

54. 20 Jazz Funk Greats

55. Les Cinq Saisons

56. Pretty. Odd.

57. What.

58. The Black Album

59. Superfly (Soundtrack)

60. Biophilia

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