"Perfect Albums"
What's Going On by Marvin Gaye. This almost doesn't make it, because the tracks don't really stand alone very well. But taken as a whole, it's a great record, and one of the few really great albums to come out of the Motown singles factory. As a friend of mine put it, "Marvin Gaye fought for years to gain creative control of his music, and when he got it, he made What's Going On, one of the most powerful and enduring pop records ever. The Jackson Five got creative control of their music, and what did they make? Dance Machine. A disco album."
Bee Thousand by Guided by Voices. "Demons Are Real" is almost annoying enough to knock this one off, but it's really short, like most of the song fragments on this album. I'm a sucker for Robert Pollard's elliptical lyrics ("'If it's right you can tell' echoes Myron like a siren/ With endurance like the Liberty Bell"), and the man knows how to write a catchy hook. Granted, those hooks tend to appear in 90-second songs with instrumentation just this side of Tom Waits, but when he buckles down and concentrates on making sense, you get gems like "I Am a Scientist," which is worth several whole albums full of odd buzzing and clanking noises.
Fight Songs by the Old 97's. Somewhere between alt.country, pop, and punk lie the Old 97's. This is mellower and less twangy than their older Too Far to Care, which has been the soundtrack for my puttering in the lab these last few weeks, and has a fuller sound than their more recent Satellite Rides, but it's loaded up with catchy songs, and some pretty sharp lyrics. "Crash on the Barrelhead" almost knocks it off, but how could I leave off an album containing the world's catchiest song about a lost cat? ("Murder or a Heart Attack")
Full Moon Fever by Tom Petty. This one's definitely a nostalgia thing-- it absolutely defines a time and place for me (early sophomore year in college). A squalid dorm room, piss-poor American beer, and jangly guitar-driven pop music-- what more could a college student want? Well, lots of sex would be nice. But failing that, you can't ask for better sing-along material than "Free Fallin'" and "Yer So Bad."
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