Defending My Top 10s: Part 1

It's closing in on 12:30, my roommate is hard at work on a paper and I'm at a loss as to what to do on the work I have left to do when I can't get into the lab. As such, I'm back again, and this time, I'm going to shed some light on why my favorite albums, soundtracks, and movies...are.

So, going in the order in which they currently appear on the side bar. Before I start, I'll explain some restrictions I imposed on myself. Any given band can only be represented once to prevent me from being to heavily biased towards whatever group or groups I'm feeling at the moment; and "Best of" or compilation albums aren't allowed, as they aren't representative of a single release...

Albums
Nickel Creek - Why Should the Fire Die?
Nickel Creek is just an amazing group. Incredibly talented, young musicians applying their skills to a unique hybrid of bluegrass instrumentation and more standard pop sensibilities create a sound unlike pretty much anything out there. Why Should the Fire Die? makes the list over their other two albums for providing a greater diversity of sound and more poetic, poignant lyrics. "Doubting Thomas" probably ranks in my top 10 favorite songs of all time, and the sudden flood of additional meaning provided by the last stanza of "When in Rome" strikes me every time.

Guster - Lost and Gone Forever
Guster isn't a terribly hard band to describe. Just a couple of guitarists and a percussionist who insists on playing all of his instruments with his bare hands cranking out some of the catchiest alt. rock (read: pop, but we don't want to call it pop) music you'll hear. Guster is just fun to listen to, and Lost and Gone Forever is, in my opinion their most consistently excellent work.

John Coltrane - Giant Steps
If you like jazz, you've listened to Coltrane. If you've listened to Coltrane, you're probably sick to death of the song Giant Steps. Don't let that turn you away from this album, though, as the whole thing is excellent, and of the 6 Coltrane albums I own, it's the only one to contain a few of my favorite Coltrane originals (most noticeably Sayeeda's Song Flute). If you're not a big jazz person and are looking for a start, this is about the best introduction to bebop that I can think of.

Cake - Pressure Chief
Either you like Cake or you don't. If you don't, you probably need your head examined, but that's just my opinion. In any case, while I'm a huge fan of Cake's entire repertoire, Pressure Chief stands head and shoulders above the rest in terms of quality on a single album. I mean, on this one disc, you get Wheels, Dime, Carbon Monoxide, Tougher Than it Is, End of the Movie, and their incredible cover of Guitar Man. This is just straight-up too good to miss if you even kind of sort of like Cake.

Beck - Mutations
I tend to go around and tell people that I'm a big Beck fan. That's not entirely true. I absolutely adore about half of his work and can take or leave the other half. Mutations is one of the few albums where every track lands in the former category. Intensely mellow and very easy to listen to, Beck's acoustic opus stands in stark contrast to the rest of his body of work (minus Sea Change, which is also very good, but just isn't as easy to listen to).

DeVotchKa - How it Ends
Oh. My. God. I love DeVotchKa. How many bands combine Eastern European Gypsie, American Folk, and Mariachi musical traditions all into a single album, much less individual songs. Pretty much just DeVotchKa. I don't know what else I can say, as the sound is impossible to describe; any modern band where you can talk about the song and say "yeah, I just love that driving tuba part" is something that needs to be experienced and not explained. How it Ends, proper, is one of those rare songs that I can lie on my bed, half naked, in the dark and listen to and fall into absolute bliss. I'm really sorry for the visual picture there, but it's true.

Bela Fleck and the Flecktones - Left of Cool
I'm sorry that I seem to keep on running into bands that are hard to describe here. Bela Fleck is best summarized as a New Age Jazzgrass Funk Jam Band. Really, it's just an excuse to listen to some of the best instrumentalists on the planet (banjo virtuoso Bela Fleck, the astoundingly talented bassist Victor Woooten, and an excellent saxophonist who I can never remember) devise melodies that nobody else could. Left of Cool is more melodic than some of their other works, and thus makes the cut.

Sufjan Stevens - Illinois
Sufjan Stevens has been alternately labeled as "indie folk" and "baroque pop" among other things, if that gives you any idea of what he sounds like. It probably doesn't, but that's okay. Stevens and his backup band weave a rich musical tapestry with deeply personal lyrics that are more than worthy of the praise they receive (Illinois was the best reviewed album of 2005). Illinois is an incredibly cohesive album that follows a very strong natural progression, but unlike his Michigan album, it's much easier to listen to tracks out of context, granting it the spot on my list. For reference, my absolute favorite Sufjan song is "For the Widows in Paradise, For the Fatherless in Ypsilanti" from Michigan.

Weezer - Weezer (The Blue Album)
The Blue Album is pretty much exactly what a good alternative album should be. It's catchy, it's not terribly repetitive, and it's relatively short. At 41 minutes, listening to The Blue Album is easy, especially since every song from "In the Garage" to "No One Else" is a winner. While the rest of Weezer's albums show sparks of brilliance in places, none are as consistently impeccable as their first self titled work.

Kansas - Leftoverture
Most of you know Kansas primarily for the first song on this album (Carry On My Wayward Son), but I'm fully convinced that Kansas should be primarily famous for what the rest of this album entails. Songs like "Miracles out of Nowhere" and "Cheyenne Anthem" feature jaw dropping, mind numbing displays of what can only be called a mixture of 70's fusion and Bach. Spectacular passages played out mostly on the synthesizer (with violin and guitar support) as intricate as any Baroque piece will make you wonder why Kansas didn't pursue this unique sound more strongly.

Well, it's now closing in on 1:30, and I don't even want to think about starting in on another one of these right now. You can count on it in the near future though. I hope that my elaborations have encouraged you to check out some of these artists that you've passed on previously. Just for reference, honorable mentions include Ratatat - Classics, Sigur Ros - Takk, Psychograss - Now Hear This, Flogging Molly - Swagger, Mustard Plug - Evildoers Beware, and Seu Jorge - Samba Esporte Fine (released in the U.S. as Carolina).