A Badly Broken Code - The Battle of Los Angeles

A Badly Broken Code by Dessa
A recent album, and one that I haven't spent much time with. It's very good, but there's not enough diversity. I know Dessa isn't originally an MC by trade, but it feels like she sometimes lacks any power in her delivery. The beats are perfunctory, but nothing special. Vocally, I liken her to Lauryn Hill, but without the fire (and probably half the pipes). I could see Dessa making an album of a similar style to The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill - from a different perspective - but she needs to dig deeper, to really want it, I think. She doesn't always do that here, and it gets frustrating at times.

Badmotorfinger by Soundgarden
Blasphemy alert - Soundgarden is the best band from the grunge era. Nirvana may have the influence, Pearl Jam may have the longevity, but Soundgarden, they were the greatest band out of Seattle. This is their greatest album, a perfect meld of grunge's lyrical themes and the pacing and musicality of metal and hardcore punk. All the components of the band are at their peak. Cornell's voice soars, it growls, it sears. Thayil's guitar licks are blistering. Cameron and Shepherd thunder along. It's one of the best albums of the last 20 years, no doubt.



Balance by Akrobatik
And with this, we have our first artist discography finished. This is Ak's debut, from 2003. It's pretty straightforward, fun hip-hop. Makes good songs rapping about relatively mundane activities. I think it's more...well, balanced than Absolute Value. Beats are a little stronger, his lyricism is better, and he never feels as message-driven as he does there. Good album, but I have to say, Ak is best when he has accompaniment - more on that when we get further into the letter B.

The Band by The Band
Man, why didn't I get into The Band sooner? This is a fantastic album. I don't even know what to write about it. I don't think I could write anything new about this one. Robbie Robertson's songwriting is incredible here, pretty much from cover to cover. The only song I don't love is "Jemima Surrender", which was co-written by Levon Helm... Maybe there is some credence to the whole "don't let drummers write songs" trope. Not that it's a bad song, but it does feel like a bit of a snag in the middle. That said, Helm's drumming is so nifty throughout that it's hard for me to be bothered too much. Great great album.

Band on the Run by Paul McCartney & Wings
I'll admit, until recently, I didn't have this. Why? I have no idea. I have long loved the title track; it is one of my favorite McCartney songs. The whole first side, from that title track to the wonderful "Let Me Roll It", is as good a stretch of 5 songs as there is on many Beatles albums. Truly impressive. The second side is no slouch either, with a gem in "Helen Wheels" sitting squarely in the middle, before "Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five" brings us full circle. Almost indefinitely the best album any former Beatle has put out.



Bang Bang Rock & Roll by Art Brut
This is a really fun album. It's quick, it's messy, it's got top notch hooks and simple catchy riffs. There's nothing deceptive about the lyrics, no hidden meanings, really. Bang Bang Rock & Roll just hums through a dozen sweet sounding garage rock songs in under 35 minutes, and you can't help but love it.

Bang Camaro and Bang Camaro II by Bang Camaro
For the sake of convenience, I am combining these two albums into a single entry, because they are so similar and no one wants to read the same thing twice. Bang Camaro are a local band composed of two guitarists, a bassist, a drummer, and something along the lines of fifteen vocalists. Most of their songs are in the 80s glam metal tradition of soaring solos and big choruses, and they have it down to a perfect science. Combine that with a great sense of humor - see song titles like "The Ballad" or "The Hit", or the lyrics to "Night Lies" - and you have some very enjoyable music. But listening to these back-to-back? No thank you.

Baseball by Say Anything
This is the only Say Anything album that I like from cover to cover. It's also the album that has ensured that I will probably never see Say Anything live - Max Bemis (who incidentally, I think looks like he is related to LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy) has notoriously avoided playing songs from it live for almost a decade now. It's very much a Rivers Cuomo/Pinkerton situation. Both are very emotional albums (and very good albums) that presumably hurt a bit to revisit. Hopefully, like Rivers, Max will come around in the future and embrace Baseball for what it is - a great, emotional alternative album.

The Battle of Los Angeles by Rage Against The Machine
The third and most recent of RATM's "traditional" studio albums, The Battle of Los Angeles is also the worst, I think. There is a caveat though - it's still really good. It's every bit as incendiary as their self-titled album. It is, however, a bit less memorable than its predecessors, which is a shame, because Tom Morello's absurd guitarmanship is really on display here. There are no real great hooks, nothing quite as anthemic-sounding as "Bulls on Parade", except "Guerrilla Radio", which is arguably the strangest combination of pop sensibilities, anger, and politics as rock has produced in many years. Great album. Hope they make another, now that they have reunited.

The B-52's - Bad Reputation (Thin Lizzy)

The B-52's by The B-52s
As New Wave albums go, The B-52's is one of the flag-bearers. Their usage of three vocalists, two harmonizing females in Kate Pierson and Cindy Wilson, alongside the sprechgesang style of Fred Schneider, was, and remains, something that rock music hasn't really even tried since, much less succeeded with the way The B-52s did with "Planet Claire" and "Rock Lobster", the two big highlights from this record. It's not just those two that are great though - the whole album is top notch from cover to cover.



B Sides, Alternate Mixes and Demos by The New Pornographers
I'm not sure that this is the actual name of this collection, which comes with the Executive Edition of The New Pornographers' 2007 album Challengers. It is an interesting collection, but not a wholly fulfilling one. The demos are demos for a reason - the finished products on Challengers are all considerably better than the early versions exhibited here. The only alternate mix, a "Lite Mix" of "Go Places", is nice, but it feels a little too bare. Where this album shines is in the B-sides. There are six of them, and no fewer than three would have been excellent inclusions on Challengers, and the others are mostly-great songs themselves. The highlight for me is "Fortune". No idea how that got cut.

B.o.B Presents: The Adventures of Bobby Ray by B.o.B.
For a little bit, B.o.B. was tapped to be the next big thing in hip-hop. I'm not sure why - nothing on this album seems that lyrically impressive, and his beat selection is fairly pedestrian. Then, somehow, his duet with Hayley Williams of Paramore, "Airplanes" got huge, and B.o.B. got overshadowed on his own track. He may have a bright future as a pop artist, but I can't say, based on this album, that he will be one of the faces of hip-hop moving forward. He's just not at that level, at least not yet.

Babylon by Bus by Bob Marley & The Wailers
Let's make no bones about it - everyone and their mother owns Legend, the collection of Bob Marley & The Wailers' greatest hits. It's a great collection, I'm not here to disparage Legend in the least. For my money, though, this is the album you should give to anyone looking to get into reggae music. A live album recorded between 1975 and 1978, during the Wailers' greatest stretch, Babylon by Bus is a perfectly metered 13-track album, featuring a great mix of well-known hits and deeper cuts. There is, quite literally, no excuse not to have this masterpiece in your collection.



Back in Black by AC/DC
Everyone's heard this, so I will offer up a question for you to contemplate instead. How on earth did AC/DC find a new lead singer who sounded almost exactly like the late Bon Scott and how did they get more popular? Both of these things astound me.

The Back Room by Editors
Editors try a little to hard to be Interpol. That said, The Back Room is still better than all of Interpol's albums except Turn on the Bright Lights. It's quick, it's neat. The pacing is good, there is a sense of cohesion throughout the album. The riffs, particularly on "Munich" and "Fall", are interesting and pleasant on the ears, if a bit unremarkable. Pretty decent album.

Back to Basics by Billy Bragg
Billy Bragg is an all-too-often overlooked genius as far as songwriting goes. Back to Basics compiles his first two albums and an EP into a one hour long full-length. It's just Bragg and his guitar, playing some of the best folk to come from the UK in the last 30 years. Were I a bigger fan of folk, this would easily have been among this post's highlighted albums, but it's something I only listen to sparingly, when the mood strikes.

Back to the World by Street Dogs
I might be slightly biased against this album because the tags on it were among the worst I have ever seen (there is no excuse for the song titles to be incorrect, ever), but given lead singer Mike McColgan's history with the Dropkick Murphys, I expected better than what I got from this album. It's not bad, exactly, it's just not very good, nor particularly imaginative. It's typical blue collar punk.

Bad Brains by Bad Brains
Oh Bad Brains. By all accounts, I should love the hell out of you. Quick, hardcore punk with touches of reggae. There is nothing about you I dislike, and yet, I can't get into it. Is it possible this album is too fast? Maybe it is. Maybe it is...

Bad Reputation by Thin Lizzy
Most people would regard Jailbreak as Thin Lizzy's greatest album, but as far as I'm concerned, Bad Reputation is better top to bottom. The title track is an all-time classic - that riff is killer. Bad Rep is not all great basslines and edgy riffs, though. "Dancing in the Moonlight (It's Caught Me in Its Spotlight)" is just a beautiful song (and not to be confused with the other, more famous "Dancing in the Moonlight"). It has an air of Van Morrison to it, which makes sense, to a degree, as Morrison and Thin Lizzy are both countrymen and contemporaries. From the opening gong hit of "Soldier of Fortune" to the choral outro of "Dear Lord", this is a winner.

New Feature: Best and Worst - A

How It Works
Every time I finish a letter, I will do a quick recap of the top ten albums for that letter, as well as the bottom five albums for that letter. Typically, the top tens will be a compilation of the highlighted albums from the previous posts, but there will probably be instances where one set of albums was completely stacked and other sets were meager. Some of the larger letters will get a bump up to twelve or even fifteen albums (R, for example), some of the smaller letters will get as few as three (Q, for example)

No particular order, because making lists like that is crazy talk.

The Top 10
A rogue's gallery of awesome. If you listen to anything I've mentioned, listen to these.

     A Grand Don't Come For Free                                  Abbey Road                                             Ace of Spades EP
 

        The Airing of Grievances                       ...And Out Come the Wolves                              Apollo Sunshine

 

             Aquemini                                              Are You Experienced                                         Armed Forces

 

 Astral Weeks

The Bottom 5

No fancy visuals here. If you're gonna skip anything I've listened to, it should probably be these five.

Age of Adz  by Sufjan Stevens

Apocalypse 91... The Enemy Strikes Black by Public Enemy

At War with the Mystics by The Flaming Lips

Audio by Blue Man Group

Axis of Evol by Pink Mountaintops

This post brought to you by the letter A.

Now on to B.

Astro Coast - Ayrton Senna (13 albums)

Astro Coast by Surfer Blood
This is a fine album. One of "indie rock"'s better efforts from 2010. In a way they are sort of like a much more interesting, much less cat-obsessed male Best Coast. It's all big riffs and big hooks, for the most part, and they do it very well. The only real problem is that there isn't a lot of diversity. The good thing is that at 40 minutes, you hardly ever notice before it's over. Definitely check this out. How can you resist, with an album cover like that?

At War with the Mystics by The Flaming Lips
This is probably my least favorite Flaming Lips album, but I'm not entirely sure why. It's not really bad, exactly, so much as it is uninteresting, at least to me. For a band so steeped in crazy, there's not a lot on this album that feels new or different. "Vein of Stars", the one song I genuinely love, still feels kinda like Wayne Coyne and friends were trying to make another "Do You Realize??". 

Atlantis: Hymns for Disco by k-os
Let's get this out there up front: Canada does not have a great history with hip-hop music. Let's also get this out there up front: k-os is no Snow. Atlantis is a great pastiche of styles, ranging from hip-hop to indie rock to R&B and back again, and without a hint of auto-tune. It's rare that you get an MC who is both a talented rapper and a more-than-capable singer. k-os might be the best since Lauryn Hill, though he certainly lacks the cohesion and songwriting capabilities she had. At any rate, pick up Atlantis, you won't regret it. I promise.



The Audience's Listening by Cut Chemist
Cut Chemist has long been one of the most talented DJs in the hip-hop world. His long running collaborations with DJ Shadow are marvelous, he produced most of Jurassic 5's first EP and first two albums (and his leaving precipitated their demise). This is the first album he made on his own, shortly after leaving J5, and it is a damn fine album. He doesn't incorporate as many samples as his cohort Mr. Shadow, but Chemist also favors brevity more than Shadow. He blends things together in ways that are not only clever, but also show his songcrafting sensibilities. Even when the discovery part of the experience is over, most tracks are truly worthy of repeat listens not as a viewing of technique, but as songs themselves.

Audio by Blue Man Group
This is a novel album, but not one made for regular listening. It's a bit lengthy and a bit too homogeneous for too many repeat listenings. It is tremendous what the Blue Men can do with instruments composed out of hardware store materials, but most of their appeal lies in the visual aspect of their stage show. That, of course, cannot properly be expressed on an album. My suggestion to you is to see if your nearest big city has a Blue Man Group in residence, and to go see them, because it is a truly wonderful experience.

Audioslave by Audioslave
If Audioslave were baseball players, they would have been a superstar - a career .333 average is pretty great, after all. Unfortunately, as a band, one very good album and two very bad ones doesn't make for much of a career. Had Audioslave stopped after this, their self-titled disc, they'd have been far better off, as this is a very fine album, and perhaps the last album on which Chris Cornell's voice resembled it's peak self. Of course, bolstered by Tom Morello and the rest of what was and is again Rage Against the Machine, Cornell's voice was not quite the focal point it often was with Soundgarden, and that works well for this album. The album's opener, "Cochise", starts with what sounds like a train climbing the lift hill of a roller coaster, and what follows from there is about an hour of fun, bombastic rock. 

Autumn of the Seraphs by Pinback
Released in the twilight of Touch and Go Records' lifetime, Autumn of the Seraphs is an overlooked, but strong rock album. It's dark, yet smart, and catchy. Like a good book, it brings the listener along on a series of downs and ups. Ultimately, the album does not reflect the titular "Autumn", but more the titular angels. If anything, it is an album suited for late nights in late spring, when the world is unfolding as it sees fit, rather than the fall, when the world curls in upon itself in preparation for the cold. I should probably pick up their other quixotically named album Summer in Abbadon...

Awfully Deep by Roots Manuva
This is probably about as close to dub as I will get. Roots Manuva's dub-infused hip hop is quite good, even when he is rhyming about practically nothing. After a while, his voice, which is deep and resonant, becomes more an instrument than a means of delivering lyrics, much in the way that Notorious B.I.G.'s voice often did. But where Biggie always needed, and had, something to say, Roots Manuva could rap about his socks, and with the right beat, I'd wear the proverbial grooves off it. I don't think there are many rappers out there who I could say that about, and it makes me wonder why, at the time of writing, I only have this album from his discography.

Axe to Fall by Converge
I don't like harsh vocals. They just could not appeal to me any less. That said, Axe to Fall is still a very good album, and that speaks volumes to the quality of the music itself. The riffs, the drums, the lines are all unendingly chaotic, but at the same time, they are so so measured, controlled, and complex that you feel as if you are hearing the musical equivalent to Project Manhattan. And yet, despite the chaos, the complexity, and the sheer volume,  Axe to Fall is not nearly as hard to get into as their earlier work.

Axiom EP by Durrty Goodz
Hey, Dizzee! This is how you make a grime album that appeals to people outside the UK. Durrty Goodz's rapid fire delivery and distinctly grimy, yet accessible beats, make Axiom a fun 45 minute adventure into the mind of the more interesting and talented rappers in Great Britain.

Axis of Evol by Pink Mountaintops
This was interminable. It was poorly paced, had long, dull stretches, and was almost entirely uninteresting. I cannot for the life of me figure out what the appeal of this album is, or why it was relatively well-reviewed. It's so boring. Yeeesh. 

Axis: Bold as Love by The Jimi Hendrix Experience
This might be the "worst" of The Experience's three albums, it's still a classic. Once you skip "EXP", it's a mostly great-to-excellent collection of the guitar genius we all know and love. I do think this is Mitch Mitchell's best album as a drummer, too - just listen to "Spanish Castle Magic" and try to keep yourself from trying to airdrum along. I could go on at length here about how good "Castles Made of Sand", "Little Wing", and so on are, but I'll let you go listen to it and enjoy it yourself, because that is really what is best for everyone.



Ayrton Senna EP by Delorean
This just missed the cut for being a "highlighted album" for this batch. It's a fun, dancey pop EP with electronic and indie rock tinges. The Spanish group, named after the vehicle made famous by Back to the Future, make music that sounds like it is some bizarre, beautiful combination of Justice, Daft Punk and someone like The Ting Tings or CSS, but without any of the annoying faults of any of them. The one thing that seems unnecessary, however, is a seven and a half minute remix of three and a half minute long "Seasun".