comments on 30-21
30. like jim croce, stephin merritt only knows one way to say i love you: with a song. quite unlike mr. croce, merritt isn't a sensitive singer-songwriter; his forebears dwelled in the brill building, writing songs that were made to order. in this case, the order is every shade of love and every genre within reason.
29. eno's green world is a soundtrack without a film, and the audio account alone proves to be most satisfactory. the listener is taken on safari -- dark trees, big ships, sombre reptiles, little fishes: one by one, each passes by with a few strokes of a synthesizer, chords from a guitar, and masterful usage of air & space. the ending, however, seems strangely unresolved.
28. with their fourth lp, the pixies were set to ride the grunge wave to superstardom...and then they released a heavy metal album. that's how the myth goes, anyway. while it sounds little like the prevailing seattle fare of the day, trompe le monde is not a heavy metal album. okay, well, "planet of sound." but besides that, tlm had the band returning to the rock sound of doolittle and showing off the tricks they learned on bossanova. most bands would've been quite pleased to end their careers with the epic "motorway to roswell," all tinkling pianos and resounding backing vocals. maybe "the navajo know" is symptomatic of why they never found success, and why tlm is their greatest record.
27. ghosts & the machines. the mononymic titles and his declarations in "heaven" give off the impression that david byrne is bored. fine by me since it means less distraction from the music, which funks and disorients and startles. repeated listening leads one to believe that there's something at work both behind the grooves and byrne's lyrics. a certain ineffable that cements this as my favorite of the byrne/eno era.
26. the title says it all. otis never was very convincing as a singer of happy songs, and so an invitation to the blues has never been more enticing.
25. like ohio players' albums, you can tell a lot about a roxy album by looking at its cover. the model seems utterly drained, unable to lift a finger. she also seems to be lost -- standed, even -- in some unknown locale. on stranded, darkness falls, phones ring and no one's there, and all that lives dies. bryan ferry looks in the mirror and, improbably, he doesn't like what he sees.
24. the beatles make their solo audition tapes, and only ringo's career would best his material on abbey road. divided, it stands.
23. he may not have penned his own material, but it's arguable that no other popular performer put more of himself -- his mannerisms, his attitude, his state-of-mind -- into his records than frank sinatra. when the time came to record wee small hours, he had very little left at all to put into it. the result: one of the most emotional and expressive albums ever produced.
22. there are two kinds of people on born to run: jersey boys, longing for something better, who are miserable; and city dwellers, living in the shadows of the skyscrapers, who are also miserable. one group is leaving at night, heading towards a meeting, driving down the two-lane highway with no destination known; the others hide on the backstreets, seek shelter from the falling tear drops, and feel like the whole city is crying. springsteen inflates his characters so we can them above the towers and buildings, and he turns up the volume so the music can be heard above the din of the city and the roar of the engines. where they're going, no one knows, but they just can't stay home any longer.
21. the sound you hear at the beginning of station to station is the express train sweeping la bowie away yet again, in search of a new sound like he does every year. it takes him through funk and disco, into proto-industrial, with a final destination in a johnny mathis ballad. produced by bowie so he could recreate every footstep and every unexplained noise he heard in his coke-addled head. kids, take note: like many albums on this list, this album was created with the benefit of MIND-ADDLING drugs. lots of them.