As I alluded to in my earlier explanation of the structure of this Countdown Project, I will not just be covering my favourite 52 albums, as there are so many other classics I am passionate about and want to give their due credit.
I want to keep things interesting and diverse, and give myself wiggle room to be creative and not have to essentially settle on what would be a firm ‘Top 112’ (which is both too difficult, arbitrary and boring). So I’ve decided to feature 60 different artists in these 60 albums, no double-ups. That made the process much easier. As many great albums as there are, I found by the bottom end of this 60 that it was easier to discern the worth of albums and there is very little that has missed out that feels too unjust to me. There are many artists, invariably the same ones likely to feature multiple times in the Top 52, who as a straight ‘countdown’ of my Top 100 or 112 (which I have attempted, up to 200, as a fun experiment, I will post at the end of the whole project) would recur on a number of occasions in the 50-low 100s range. But I’ve just picked the best of those, will jump over the rest and slide slightly further down the list for some different artists.
Here are the first five great albums not quite magnificent enough in my personal taste to sneak into the Top 52 but which are undeniably fantastic, working in chronological order throughout the project:
The Beatles – Rubber Soul (1965)
The true transition album between mop-top pop boys and the revered geniuses of later works. Rubber Soul is pretty much a perfect pop album, with 14 short, sweet, simple melodic cuts. There is not yet the kind of experimentation to the point of occasional discordance and alienation that came later into the 60s. But it is still a clear step up from their earlier works. There are two main factors to this. The influence of Bob Dylan makes this the Beatles’ folksiest work and, as fits perfectly with this atmosphere, the love songs are starting to give way to more negative philosophical musings on the world. As I am not the ultimate target audience of folk works, and as there are even more delirious heights to come, this album lies right at a tipping point for me, where I don’t listen to it as much or adore it as much as the albums in my list proper (including later Beatles albums), but it is an undisputed masterpiece in something near objective terms, which would appear much higher in most lists.
Highlights: Drive My Car, Norwegian Wood, I’m Looking Through You, In My Life
Greatest Moment: George Martin’s double-speed piano solo on In My Life.
Jefferson Airplane – Surrealistic Pillow (1967)
Perhaps the defining album of the Summer of Love. Certainly for me the greatest and most complete, coherent whole statement coming out of the vibrant San Francisco movement of the time, by its equal-greatest band (alongside The Grateful Dead). It still sounds great. Some of the music might have dated but the sound hasn’t really, so slick is its production. This added layer of professionalism, plus the addition of female vocalist and consummate pop writer Grace Slick and her two compositions Somebody To Love and White Rabbit, took a good jam band and turned them into the hugest band in California, and maybe America for a while there. Those two massive singles are the album’s shining lights. The rest is up and down, switching between very sleepy stoned out folk ballads and more energetic acid rock-outs. The balance is a good one and it flows excellently.
Highlights: She Has Funny Cars, Somebody To Love, Today, 3/5 of a Mile in 10 Seconds, White Rabbit
Greatest Moment: White Rabbit. Start to finish. Perfection.
The Velvet Underground and Nico – The Velvet Underground and Nico (1967)
The seminal experimental art rock album. The mythology surrounding this great dark masterpiece is huge. As the paraphrases and general misappropriations always go, not inaccurately, hardly anyone bought this album in 1967 but everyone who did formed a rock band. Basically every artist worth their salt from the late 60s and early 70s period quotes this as an influence, a mathematical anomaly given it did absolutely nothing on release, taking five years to sell 30 000 copies and barely scraping the Billboard Top 200 album chart. It is easy to see why. Absolutely nothing ever since, or particular before, sounds like it, from its dark lyrics to droning dirges that make up most of the instrumental content. In some ways though, in modern times, it is easy to overestimate the ‘difficulty’ of the album. Great swathes of it are quite sweet tender if perverse dark pop and most of the rest is just a kind of proto-punky but foot-tapping driving rock. I listened to it recently in the company of my mum and it received no fundamental complaints, and that is a big vote of confidence in something’s listenability. The difficulty comes mainly from the occasional moments of deliberate dissonance and feedback (particularly the overlong closer European Son), and John Cale’s astonishingly jet-engine like scraping viola sounds.
Highlights: Sunday Morning, I’m Waiting For The Man, Venus In Furs, Heroin
Greatest Moment: Tough to find a moment of pure delirium in an album so devoted to making challenging noises. But the entire slow-burn build-up and huge crescendo of Heroin has to be it.
The Jimi Hendrix Experience – Are You Experienced (1967)
It’s sometimes hard to fathom how Jimi Hendrix could have made such an impact in a lifetime ended at age 27. But when you see how immediately superb his iconic three-piece, with Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell, were straight off the bat, it makes some more sense. This is the one of the great and most culturally affecting debut albums of all time, a clear marker laid down that something new and special was happening. Hendrix himself isn’t necessarily always my cup of tea compared to the very European Prog stylings I lean towards, with his very plain raw vocal and obviously incomparably virtuosic but very blues-rooted guitar style. But what really stands out and strikes me about this album is the power of the sound created by the three men together. That this album is both a debut recording, and from early 1967, are both remarkable to consider when listening to it. I can only imagine the impact such a huge wall of fury would have had at the time. But it is always rooted in blues figures and generally in disciplined melodic pop structures. One frustration that does persist, when listening only to the original UK LP as a purist, is that the prevailing British tradition of packaging singles and albums separately still persists. This denies the album a sequence of tracks (Hey Joe, Purple Haze, The Wind Cries Mary and others) which would elevate it even further and possibly into my final list of 52.
Highlights: Foxy Lady, Manic Depression, Fire, Third Stone From The Sun, Are You Experienced
Greatest Moment: I do adore that much-quoted Third Stone riff, but the answer has to be Fire, the absolute hardcore peak of the three piece rock sound.
Cream – Disraeli Gears (1967)
Another classic, simple, rocking power trio very much of its time. Cream, like so many similar bands including the Jimi Hendrix Experience, burned briefly and brightly, making three studio albums between 1966 and 1968. All are classic and the double album Wheels On Fire from 1968 is a serious opus, but it meanders into a more total bluesy jam space occasionally across its double-LP runtime. Disraeli Gears has the right balance. It brings the patented crispy psychedelic hard-blues rock sound that the much-hyped supergroup Cream made their own, but focused, in small direct pop songs. It is of course, that masterful tome of 60s rock Sunshine Of Your Love which carries the album into different heights, but the rest is so consistently solid. It is an album I often tend to overlook but listening recently, it is very consistent. Nothing else nears the heights of Sunshine but every single other track (bar the ridiculously silly closer) is simple and enjoyable, rooted in the iconic and recognisable Cream sound.
Highlights: Strange Brew, Sunshine Of Your Love, Tales Of Brave Ulysses
Greatest Moment: This is an easy one: Sunshine Of Your Love, particularly its chorus.
Hoss Album Reviews 