Last year I embarked on a project to fill out my collection of ’90s music, with the help of your recommendations. This was quite successful, and I will post my list of favorites eventually. But recently I have posted a lot of top music lists, and am a bit burned out, so I’m going to put it off. Instead, I will move on to this year’s project, which is to fill out my collection of ’80s music.
So: what are the essential albums of 1980-1989? Essential either as a consensus classic or a personal favorite; all genres are open. Here are a few I hear mentioned a lot, just to get things started (inclusion in this list does not constitute endorsement):
- Michael Jackson, Thriller (1982)
- Bruce Springsteen, Nebraska (1982)
- New Order, Power, Corruption, & Lies (1983)
- The Police, Syncronicity (1983)
- Prince & The Revolution, Purple Rain (1984)
- Talking Heads, Stop Making Sense (1984)
- The Smiths, The Queen Is Dead (1986)
- Guns N’ Roses, Appetite for Destruction (1987)
- R.E.M., Document (1987)
- U2, The Joshua Tree (1987)
- Sonic Youth, Daydream Nation (1988)
- The Cure, Disintegration (1989)
- Pixies, Doolittle (1989)
This was the year I fell in love with noise pop and shoegazing music, as I looked at classic albums from the ’90s, and I was delighted to find that Asobi Seksu is keeping the genre alive, and putting their own stamp on it. I picked “New Years” for the top songs list as the best example of their fuzzy, dreamlike songs, but all the songs on the album have these textures without sounding alike. The best tracks, “Goodbye” and “Miso Asobi” along with “New Years”, bring a warm and happy feeling out of the noise and distortion, but everything in between is interesting in its own way. It’s one of the most seamless albums of the year.
This is a highly acclaimed album among rock critics, but unlike Justin Timberlake’s, it’s for a good reason: it’s original, inventive, and excellent. It’s hard to come up with something to compare it to, since the sound is so unique—it doesn’t even really sound like TV on the Radio’s earlier work and represents a major step forward for the band. Perhaps a good metaphor could be drawn from one of the best songs on the album: this record is a dirty whirlwind of music. The maelstrom approaches ominously with “Hours”, reaches peak speed at “Wolf Like Me”, slows to a calm center for “Method”, and then picks up again. Not all the tracks are as good as “Wolf Like Me”, but nothing is filler.
The Hold Steady topped last year’s list with Separation Sunday, and so it is not a surprise to see them on the list again this year. Their latest album is more song and less story than its predecessor, presenting short vignettes instead of an overall arc and with lead singer Craig Finn taking a more melodic approach. This was initially a little disappointing, but I warmed up to it since the songs are very good indeed. Their Springsteen-esque hard rock rocks harder than just about anything else from this year, and with “Citrus” they showed they could do acoustic ballads too. Even though it’s not the equal of Separation Sunday, it’s still one of the best albums of the year.
This will also be an unsurprising choice, since regular readers know that I hold Belle & Sebastian in high regard. However, this is a standout album even in their catalog, the best since their 1996 release If You’re Feeling Sinister. After several albums that felt like poor copies of Sinister, they’ve tried some new directions starting with Dear Catastrophe Waitress and now, with great success, in The Life Pursuit. The new songs are bright, polished, and sunny (sometimes literally), as well as catchy and infectious. While the pervasive melancholy of their early albums has been left behind, Belle & Sebastian can still write songs that are heartbreaking (“Dress Up In You”) or wistful (“Funny Little Frog”). But the best songs here are simply fun, like “The White Collar Boy” and “The Blues Are Still Blue”.
I’m not seeing this album on very many other year-end lists, but it was definitely my favorite of the year. Maybe their quirky blend of indie-rock and tropical music has limited appeal (ok, probably), but I love it. The first couple of songs are epic: “Swans (Life After Death)” is a metaphorical account of how the band was formed after the dissolution of the Unicorns, something I only discovered after I bought the Unicorns’ last album and could decode the references. “Humans” is more straightforward, telling the story of refugees fleeing an (alien?) invasion. After this they move to shorter songs, but no less variety in topics: anorexia, the diamond trade, environmental disaster, and with “Jogging Gorgeous Summer”, a simple and beautiful love song. All these disparate themes are tied together with island and ocean metaphors, which tie in perfectly with the musical style. I never got tired of listening to this album and felt like I noticed something new and interesting in the music every time.
There wasn’t a standout film in this category, but I think Brick was my favorite of what I saw this year. (There are many reportedly excellent movies that I haven’t seen yet as well, such as The Departed.) Brick puts a classic detective noir in a high school setting, and does an excellent job of blending the two genres, much as Buffy did with horror. (The movie is definitely influenced by Buffy and works in a subtle but unmistakeable reference.) All the elements of the classic noir movies are present, from the convoluted plot to the familiar character archetypes to the eerie soundtrack. The juxtaposition with high school students is sometimes funny, sometimes striking, but never cheesy or over-the-top.
I didn’t play a large number of video games this year, but there was a clear winner, the sequel to one of my all-time favorite games. The original Valkryrie Profile was a great dungeon crawler with beautiful visuals and complex and interesting characters. It only suffered from somewhat repetitive combat, which was completely reworked in the sequel to one of the most interesting and engaging systems I’ve ever seen in an RPG. The signature side-scrolling dungeons (hence “Profile”) were preserved with a couple new twists—the ability to switch places with monsters, and sealstones that alter the mechanics—that gave the puzzles more depth. Overall I found the gameplay addictive in a way that I hadn’t seen in years, and the only flaws I found are by comparison to the original Valkyrie Profile (mainly in the aesthetics and the character development).