The Good Album Thread

[Lamb of BOD]

Album(s) of the year folks?

Xerath III
Triptykon Melana Chasmata
Behemoth The Satanist
Pink Floyd The Endless River
Insomnium Shadows of the Dying Sun

[ichabodscrane]

Xerath & Behemoth's offerings were very good. I'll have to have a think about my metal album(s) of the year.

[Morf]

Xerath & Behemoth's offerings were very good. I'll have to have a think about my metal album(s) of the year.

Autopsy and Godflesh.

[Dave Cahill]

The Guardian's top 40 albums of the year

1. St Vincent - St Vincent
2. War On Drugs - Lost in the Dream
3. FKA twigs - LP1
4. Aphex Twin - Syro
5. Caribou - Our Love
6. La Roux - Trouble in Paradise
7. Run the Jewels - Run the Jewels 2
8. Beck - Morning Phase
9. Flying Lotus - You’re Dead
10. Sleaford Mods - Divide and Exit
11. Mac DeMarco - Salad Days
12. Taylor Swift - 1989
13. Kate Tempest - Everybody Down
14. Future Islands - Singles
15. Angel Olsen - Burn Your Fire For No Witness
16. Wild Beasts - Present Tense
17. Young Fathers - Dead
18. Jenny Lewis - The Voyager
19. Jhene Aiko - Souled Out
20. Owen Pallett - In Conflict
21. Ratking - So It Goes
22. Merchandise - After the End
23. Hurray for the Riff Raff - Small Town Heroes
24. Banks - Goddess
25. Actress - Ghettoville
26. Tinashe - Aquarius
27. Kindness - Otherness
28. Damon Albarn - Everyday Robots
29. Ariel Pink - Pom Pom
30. East India Youth - Total Strife Forever
31. Leonard Cohen - Popular Problems
32. Shabazz Palaces - Lese Majesty
33. Scott Walker and Sunn 0))) - Soused
34. Jamie T - Carry on the Grudge
35. Peggy Seeger - Everything Changes
36. Ex Hex - Rips
37. Freddie Gibbs & Madlib - Piñata
38. Toumani Diabaté and Sidiki Diabaté - Toumani & Sidiki
39. Sharon Van Etten - Are We There
40. Tricky - Adrian Thaws

[Lamb of BOD]

The Guardian's top 40 albums of the year

....

I've only even heard of 6 of them. Way to make a fellow feel old!

[johng]

The Guardian's top 40 albums of the year

....

I've only even heard of 6 of them. Way to make a fellow feel old!

Jaysus I had to really scan hard to make it to 7. And that includes Taylor Swift who I probably wouldn't have heard of had I no kids.

Do I care? Fock no. Being old is the new being young.

[limecat]

The Guardian's top 40 albums of the year

....

I've only even heard of 6 of them. Way to make a fellow feel old!

Jaysus I had to really scan hard to make it to 7. And that includes Taylor Swift who I probably wouldn't have heard of had I no kids.

Do I care? Fock no. Being old is the new being young.

Must be an age thing...15 for me

[Dave Cahill]

12 for me, 13 if one takes into account that Scott Walker and Sunn 0))) are separate acts.

[limecat]

12 for me, 13 if one takes into account that Scott Walker and Sunn 0))) are separate acts.

I know Scott Walker, so counted that one. Maybe I should have said 14 1/2.

[johng]

I'm presuming there are 2 Scott Walkers and that this one was not in the Walker Brothers back in the 60s

[Dave Cahill]

I'm presuming there are 2 Scott Walkers and that this one was not in the Walker Brothers back in the 60s

Only one Scott 'Noel Scott Engel' Walker, its the same- to quote Julian Cope - 'godlike genius'. Since 'Climate of Hunter' hes been right at the forefront of the Avant-garde movement in european music.

[fourthirtythree]

I'm presuming there are 2 Scott Walkers and that this one was not in the Walker Brothers back in the 60s

Only one Scott 'Noel Scott Engel' Walker, its the same- to quote Julian Cope - 'godlike genius'. Since 'Climate of Hunter' hes been right at the forefront of the Avant-garde movement in european music.

Wellllll.... that's kind of ignoring the personal journey that led from Mark Knoppfler on guitar in Climate (seriously) to Sunn O))) on soused. That's quite some distance. And the way that the last Walker Brothers album has, say, "the electrician" on it. Or indeed the actual arrangements (particularly the Wally Stott vertical blocks of sound) on some of the crooner material.

I have listened to 8 of the top 10. Does that make me a young pop picker then?

Think 9 and 10 are my favourite of those.

[Lamb of BOD]

I'll have to have a think about my metal album(s) of the year.

Give Primordial's new one a spin - just got round to picking it up yesterday - it's incredible

[domhnallj]

Soundgarden's Echo of Miles is excellent. Three CDs of rarities and odd stuff from their career over twenty years.

[Dave Cahill]

Wellllll.... that's kind of ignoring the personal journey that led from Mark Knoppfler on guitar in Climate (seriously) to Sunn O))) on soused. That's quite some distance. And the way that the last Walker Brothers album has, say, "the electrician" on it. Or indeed the actual arrangements (particularly the Wally Stott vertical blocks of sound) on some of the crooner material.

I wouldn't consider there to be a massive journey between Climate and Soused in terms of what Engel is doing - if you consider the gaps between his solo albums 11 years to Tilt, 11 years to The Drift, 6 years to Bish Bosch and another couple to Soused the progression is reasonable. The big journey was the one that led from Scott 4 to Night Flights. He had found himself and his voice by the time Climate came out - it was the struggles after Scott 4 that led to the lost years.

Younger folks forget that there was a time before Brothers in Arms, when Knopfler was really respected as a musician who was constantly stretching himself and trying new things. Then Brothers In Arms came out and he came to be perceived to be some kind of cut price yuppie clapton

[johng]

Younger folks forget that there was a time before Brothers in Arms, when Knopfler was really respected as a musician who was constantly stretching himself and trying new things. Then Brothers In Arms came out and he came to be perceived to be some kind of cut price yuppie clapton

When Sultans of swing came out in 1977 all us teenage guitarists thought he was god. Then we heard the rest of the album and thought Hmmmmm. Then we heard the 2nd album and thought.... Ah. So sultans of swing was a fluke. And stopped listening. By the time he got to the stab yourself in the ears bad "walk of life" in the 80s he had become a total joke.

Now perhaps he did some good stuff between the second album and the walk of lifelessness and we missed it, but I am happy to live the rest of my life without finding out.

Guy is defo a great plank spanker with a unique style, but it's hard to like the music. IMHO.

Young folks know a thing or two.

[fourthirtythree]

Not sure about that Dave. Engel had found his voice even as far back as some Walker Brothers tracks over which his authorial thumbprint is audible in the production- huge reverb, instrumentation muted and faded in with no concern for ambience. I was geeking out with a producer the other week after Soused came out and he was wide eyed about a mix session he did (for a movie) in which he got to mix Scott's voice over the track. I digress...

The big blocks of vertical sound that Angela Morley (composer for the goons and London style easy listening leader) arranged, static as a bedrock for a song rooted in the avant garde and cinema in his late 60s albums didn't die then. When Tilt came out I had Climate on vinyl, but, had been given rips of Till the Band Comes in where he continued the vein of form of Scott 1-4. I listened to it again recently and can't believe I never really noticed that it also contained his most explicitly gay songs. And also the few at the end for the housewives from his TV show. Eno has said that Nite Flights itself should have made a decade of pop songs hang their heads in shame. It is avant futurism as Roxy did on their first three albums continued on. His voice and way of being contemporary was found there.

I must confess that Tilt was a bit extreme for me when it came out. Though by the time the Drift was out it was easy listening. And by Bish Bosch, Drift had reformed me enough to make it a thrilling listen, though never easy. BB wasn't such a leap and I listened to soused when it came out but I really need to give it the proper time, space, and ambience. And volume. Lots of f%~king volume. Terrified the childer last time I blasted it.

But Climate... Well in climate I don't think he had given himself the freedom he needed. It is more reactive than Nite Flights. It is firmly rooted in the 80s and Knopfler is a celebrity producer guest on it to give mass appeal. His embarrassing public appearances as the reclusive yank rock star with fading teen looks and uncool hair (on the Tube?) around this time cement my opinion that this was not a guy in control in the way he is now. He still seemed to want to be a rock star.

The lost years are the booze years for him really. Tilt is a massive change from Climate and in the ensuing years he carved a milieu out for himself, Climate is reactive rather than proactive, and is the only one of his albums that sounds definitively dated. The avant garde is a thread that runs throughout his career, initially as a populariser of it (the Bergman and Pasolini references, I think the album after till the band comes in was The Moviegoer) and later as a conscious practitioner of alienating artistic praxis - fully fledged on Nite Flights but really reaching fruition on Tilt and Drift.

Edit
Edited a few commas and capital letters in there in an attempt to aid comprehensibility. I should point out that I haven't listened to Climate in years and never feel the urge. I listened to most of his records again when the last one came out, but not Climate. I really, really, really,f%~king hate 80s production.

[Morf]

I've heard of 11 counting Scott Walker and Sunn0))) as 2.

That, La Roux, Sleaford Mods, Run The Jewels and Taylor Swift would be the only ones I'd be interested in hearing/buying.

[TerenureJim]

If I haven't mentioned it before the soundtrack to the 2014 film "The Guest", think a mix of the Drive soundtrack mixed with early Carpenter synth. Fan-bloody-tastic.

[jezzer]

Younger folks forget that there was a time before Brothers in Arms, when Knopfler was really respected as a musician who was constantly stretching himself and trying new things. Then Brothers In Arms came out and he came to be perceived to be some kind of cut price yuppie clapton

The War on Drugs album Lost in the Dream might have been written by Knopfler in those pre-Brothers years. It's very hard to listen to it and believe that it wasn't made in the early 80s. For all that, I like it a lot, but you can't have an album that retrospective being the best album of the year, imo.