The Countdown

In this post I’m going to do the impossible; I’m going to list my five favorite albums of all time. Okay, maybe it isn’t impossible. But for some reason it’s always been difficult for me to list my favorite…well…anything. My favorite food is anything but okra, my favorite movie changes every time I see a movie I enjoy, and I don’t think I’ve ever in my life had a favorite color.

That said, this list is for reals. I’ve given this a lot of thought and I’m prepared to go on record. In this list you’ll find neither equivocation nor temporary infatuation. The following five albums contain music I wouldn’t want to live the rest of my life without. Each remains relevant despite the major changes in my life, and each seems to only get better with time.

I’ve posted a single song from each album for your listening pleasure. Click the album art to start the download.

5. Black Star, Self Titled

It was tough for me to choose between Black Star and Mos Def’s Black on Both Sides, but the collaboration involved in the creation of this album adds a level of depth and passion that is as inexplicable as it is rare. Listening to this album you can feel that it’s made of hope, love, respect and joy. The rhymes are fantastic and the tracks are flawless. You could play this album anywhere, any time and for anyone, or listen to it on repeat all by yourself. There’s something about this album that just makes me feel good. That may not sound like much of an achievement, but few albums manage to be at the same time this deep, passionate and approachable.

4. Andrew Bird, Weather Systems

I love everything Andrew Bird has ever done, but this is the album I seem to come back to the most. In time I think there’s a good chance that Armchair Apocrypha will overtake Weather Systems on my top 5 list, but I’ll need to spend at least a year with it before I can confidently make that call. Andrew Bird is an extraordinary talent with a totally unique musical and lyrical aesthetic. Few artists manage to maintain a progression as consistently salient as Andrew from album to album, and with each new release he seems to delve deeper into the margins of everything he’s done before. Weather Systems is Andrew’s largest leap from an album prior, and it has a playfully callow edge that I don’t hear nearly as much in any of his work before or since.

3. Propagandi, Potemkin City Limits

For me this album is about as good as it gets. I could listen to it for a month straight and it wouldn’t get old. Musically it’s flawless, and lyrically it’s their most mature work yet. Like any propagandi album it punches you in the face with political and ideological rants, but as these guys get older they're able to make their lyrics far more nuanced while maintaining the intensity that makes them special. There's a clear progression of intensity in each of their albums, and City Limits is by far their most intense work yet. I don’t really know what else to say… It’s about as straightforward an album as you get, and as far as I'm concerned it's just about perfect.

2. Neutral Milk Hotel, In the Airplane Over the Sea

In the Airplane Over the Sea is one of those rare flashes of brilliance and intensity that can’t be ignored or denied. Like a dream it’s scattered and at times abrasively incoherent, but it remains strikingly cohesive and rings with a mysterious and reassuring truth. It’s disconsolate yet hopeful, resounding yet unintelligible, and while tender it majorly effing rocks.

1. Refused, The Shape of Punk to Come

I could write a thesis on why I love this album. The thing that makes The Airplane Over the Sea so great is that it almost seems like it was created through divine intervention. It’s as though Jeff Magnum had no choice but bring the album into existence. The Shape of Punk to Come, on the other hand, is a purely sublunary creation. Every aspect of this album is deliberate, and the philosophy behind it as solid as the music itself. This album was created to serve a purpose, and it’s orchestrated as artfully and intelligently as anything I’ve ever seen or heard. It is philosophy as music and music as philosophy, and it accomplishes the task for which it was created. In Deridian terms I’d say it is a “hammer” with which to break through the “pacifying lure of organic indifference”. In Goldsmithian terms I’ll simply say that it is my favorite album of all time.