Top 5 Anomaly Albums

When I get into a band, I really dive into their catalog and become familiar with everything. I guess you could say I become a fan. However, for some reason I haven't sorted out yet, there are some albums that are long time favorites of mine, yet I've never ventured to far outside of that album. I guess these would be albums you love by bands you aren't super into...I guess...

1) Smoking Popes - Destination Failure. Not a dud on this track. I did get Born to Quit, but maybe have listened to it only once or twice. I understand the band broke-up, reformed, etc. but I haven't really followed along

2) Leatherface - Mush. My favorite album to run to, yet again, I never picked up another album. I did give one of their later albums, Stormy Petrel, a few listens though. It's pretty good, but back to Mush. I think they may now be broken up.

3) New Model Army - Thunder and Consolation. A favorite of mine in middle school and I'm sure I still have all the words memorized. I fire this up at work from time to time, so yeah, I know I do. Anyway, i think I heard a few earlier albums, but not really any of the later. Didn't they get banned from playing the US or something?

4) Avail - Over the James. Another workout album of mine. I know they were a big southern post-hardcore band in the 90s and big to do from Virginia, but haven't listened to anything else. However, I'm a fan of Tim Barry's current solo folk/country work.

5) Daft Punk - Random Access Memories. I guess I rode the bandwagon with them a few years ago and I'm not ashamed. This album is great. Haven't been able to get into their earlier stuff besides a track here and there. Have since moved on to Retro Electro/whatever. This album still gets played a lot with the kids though.

Almost none of my favourite albums fall into this kind of category but there are a few I like quite a bit that are close. So...

Public Enemy - It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back; I've listened to several other records of theirs but none of them really stuck. Even Fear of a Black Planet is only mediocre next to this masterpiece. I still listen to this one regularly to this day and the album came out in 1988.

Van Morrison - Astral Weeks; obviously he's a great singer/songwriter but none of his albums ever really hit me like this one and none of them made it into my regular rotation. Astral Weeks (especially the 10 minute Madame George) is an incredible album and if he ever topped it I'm unaware.

Urban Dance Squad - Life 'n Perspectives of a Genuine Crossover; while their first album had their one big hit and the album itself was ok they totally blew me away with their second less popular effort. This album (and their first one) paved the way for shit like Rage Against the Machine, but it's less political and has themes that are much more universal. I put this one on every year or so and each time I'm amazed at the level of creativity and how ahead of their time they were.

Sons of Freedom - Gump; I love this album. Up here in Canada it was above Nevermind on the charts for awhile. They were kind of a punk grunge outfit which is normally something that doesn't appeal to me very much but the singer had such a cool style and I just fell for the whole band. I still love this album but the other two they made did absolutely nothing for me.

Nigel Kennedy - The Four Seasons; I think most people started to really love Nigel's violin playing when he played the summer concerto in the four season. He looked cool, he had attitude and was great for classical music in general. But then we all slowly started to realize that he wasn't really bringing anything interesting to classical music beyond this one showpiece. He wasn't some genius like Glenn Gould who would completely change the composition and bring new life to every piece he did. He was simply a virtuoso that brought his one trick to a single piece and then continued to bring that same quality to everything else... even tempering it a bit and making things generally more boring as a result. Such a waste in some ways but I still like what he did with Vivaldi.

Yeah, daft punks RAM is the perfect example of this for me too.

JonJacob wrote: Van Morrison - Astral Weeks; obviously he's a great singer/songwriter but none of his albums ever really hit me like this one and none of them made it into my regular rotation. Astral Weeks (especially the 10 minute Madame George) is an incredible album and if he ever topped it I'm unaware. .

Hell yeah. Hard to think of a better example than this. A man who made a career out of MotR folk-pop unleashes this one-off of utterly unique fusion of classical and psychedelia.

I think I need to go and listen to it now.

The other example that leaps to mind for me is First Aid Kit's debut album The Big Black and the Blue. A beguiling slice of acoustic indie-rock with so many fantastic folksy hooks and bitter lyrical undertones. Since then they seem to have reinvented themselves as a bizarre European homage to country and western and their subsequent albums sound pale and tiresome.

And here I was living my life under the assumption that I would never see the words "Urban Dance Squad" again.

I guess Springsteen is my entry here. "Born to Run" and "The River" are both _tremendous_ records that pretty much are the only heartland rock records you need. If you like The Killers or Arcade Fire, you pretty much have to hear these records. Because you've really been already hearing them.

But I've never been able to get into anything else, not even the highly regarded "Nebraska".

An outtake from "The River" was just released like, today, and I think it's almost as good as "Born to Run". It's called "Meet Me in the City" and it's on Spotify.

All of my picks are going to be older stuff, because I haven't ruled out enjoyment of upcoming albums by more modern performers. With these older acts, it's easy to see that they have already done their best work.

1. Depeche Mode - Violator: I never became a serious fan of Depeche Mode, despite friends trying to influence me, though I do like a few of their better songs. And then there is Violator, one of those rare albums where I enjoy every single song. I haven't listened to it in years, but recently did so thanks to Youtube, and it was still great.

2. Dire Straits - Love Over Gold: a roommate got me to appreciate this entire album many years ago. Outside of this album, there might be two or three Dire Straits songs that I like. Telegraph Road had an epic quality to it like some of the best Springsteen songs, while Private Investigations had more of a brooding and introspective texture. I might not like the side two material now if I gave it a fresh listen, though Industrial Disease had a catchy hook to it.

3. Van Morrison & the Irish Chieftains - Irish Heartbeat: I've heard a couple of Van Morrison songs that I've liked though I've never heard Astral Weeks all the way through. This collaboration with the Irish Chieftains is my own only Van Morrison album, and for years I listened to it just on Saint Patrick's Day, for that authentic Irish sound.

4. Peter Gabriel - Passion: Yeah, I jumped on the So bandwagon for a while, and then jumped off. Thanks to a roommate, I had been exposed to Gabriel's earlier and very experimental material for years without liking most of it. But his soundtrack to The Last Temptation of Christ is incredibly evocative of another time and place. I have played that CD so often that my CD player can't even read some of the tracks anymore.

5. Jane's Addiction - Ritual de lo Habitual: I liked a couple of their earlier songs, but this album somehow spoke directly to me. Every discordant note, every deranged whisper, and every bizarre lyric rang with truth.

oh MAN is Irish Heartbeat ever the best Van Morrison album ever. That rendition of Carrickfergus was my dad's favourite song of all time. Hauntingly good.

I am nodding along to some of the other picks here, Public Enemy, Jane's Addiction; but I really dug the other albums by these artists too, so they don't really hit the theme for me. One that totally stands out as an anomoly for me is XTC's SKYLARKING.Holy shit, what an album. Todd Rundgren-produced, and it shows. Just amazingly well put together and one song rolls into the next sometimes literally. Ruined by playing on "Shuffle." If you try this one out, just start at track 1 and listen the whole way through.

I've been giving this topic some thought today.

1. Glassjaw-Worship and Tribute This band played at the first concert I ever went to and I HATED them. Over time this album has really grown on me. They have an album before this and some material after, but I like this album to much to really bother getting into their other stuff. Especially sine it took me like 5 years to really fall in love with this one.

2. City and Colour-Bring Me Your Love Really good indie acoustic music. Some great love songs. Not to folksy and weird for me but still interesting and fun to listen to. Never really felt a need to get into his other stuff.

3. Mad Caddies-Keep It Going I'm a huge fan of third wave ska music, but I never felt like these guys had to much to offer me. This album is a lot less ska-punk and a lot more groovy reggae. Awesome.

4. The Gaslight Anthem-Handwritten This album has always felt really heartfelt and passionate to me. I also dig the Springsteen inspired punkish music. I do like their other material but have not listened to it nearly as much as this album.

5. The Hippos-Heads Are Gonna Roll I bought this album in high school without ever hearing a song from them and was not disappointed one bit. Great third wave ska, lots of fun and energy, and a killer rhythm section. Their first album was good but not nearly as polished and their last album got rid of the ska and was all junky power-pop.

Anomalies in my collection:

Sugar: Besides Yup, a bunch of their B sides. I'd heard Beaster and Copper Blue playing in random dorm rooms in my college days and found a copy of this at the record store and played the hell out of it. As I went back this year to listen to their early nineties albums on Spotify, I'm not enjoying them as much. Too much jangly early nineties guitar, not enough power pop, and nothing like their cover of "Armenia, City In the Sky" or "Mind Is an Island" or "And You Tell Me"

Melvins - Houdini. The rest of their stuff sounds redundant to me.

Emeralds - Allegory of Allergies. Transfer from cassette tape. Played it constantly. The band started getting progressively worse, crossing the borders into bad new age music and totally lost my interest. The only other one of theirs that I play would be their eponymous album which is on Spotify.

Secret Chiefs 3 - Book of Horizons. Trey is definitely the one who put the weird in Mr. Bungle, IMO. A study in surf rock, death metal, spaghetti western, hermeticism, and... the Exodus Song. Don't care for the earlier stuff (too much dated electronica) or the long awaited Book of Souls (kinda dry).

Opeth - Morningrise. Brief foray into swedish metal. Never really latched onto their later albums.

Metal edition:

Metallica: ...And Justice For All - At one point, I owned everything thru Black Album; for the past 20 years, they've been the ultimate "one-album" band for me.

Testament: The Legacy - Speed/Thrash slowed up in the late 80s, Metallica was an anomaly; I usually prefer the early dumb-n-fast stuff. See also:

Sodom: Obsessed with Cruelty - See also:

Slayer: Reign in Blood - Actually improved on their early stuff before slowing down.

King Diamond: Abigail - Tried Them and Conspiracy, and quickly jumped off.

Non-metal edition:

Grateful Dead - Workingman's Dead: I find the Dead piss-poor in every other genre they dabbled in, but they absolutely nailed the feel here.

...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead - Source Tags & Codes: Maybe my favorite indie-rock album, and I've never felt the urge to explore them further. I once saw a video from another album, and that cemented that decision,

The Church - Priest = Aura: I explored other albums just before and after this, and nothing else came close. Starfish at least shows that they got the hooks, but this one shows that they're capable of much more.

Mark Kozelek - Rollercoaster (Red House Painters): I find Down Colorful Hill barely bearable, and Sun Kil Moon largely loses me. Rollercoaster is one of my great finds of the past decade.

Al Stewart - Year of the Cat: You'll find a great single here and there in his discography, but so much of his strongest material is on this one album, and the sound is impeccable, perhaps Alan Parson's greatest achievement (yeah, I went there).

Just realised mid-album that I was listening to another perfect fit for this thread: Talk Talk's Spirit of Eden.

Not only does it sound nothing like other Talk Talk albums which are mostly MOR new wave rubbish, but it sounds nothing like anything else either. A sublime blend of acoustic rock, jazz and psychedelia: I Believe In You always makes me want to cry, for no reason I can think of.