Being a music fan ain’t easy; it’s like pimpin’ but with less money and no hos. As hard as I try I can never know all the bands I want to know, get in on all the new bands coming out or even enjoy the records I’ve always loved. I find myself letting albums slip through the cracks simply because I don’t have enough time to listen to all the new stuff, much less the older records. The only silver lining in that is when, by accident, I re-discover an album I hadn’t thought about in years. It’s an amazing feeling, like finding twenty bucks in an old coat or remembering a girl’s, or boy’s, number you thought you’d lost.
Recently I stumbled upon a slew of albums I’d forgotten about. Having recently bought a car, I have more time to just listen to music while I tool around town, so I really got to reinvest in these records. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a list of the best this or that, nor is it an album calling people out on their lack of music knowledge. This is a list of ten albums that people, including me, have forgotten about and I wanted to remind us all how great they were. If I get five people to dig into their record collection and pull out ten albums they’ve missed, then my work here is done. So without further do, here is my list, Ten Albums Worth Another Look.
10. Hey Babe (Juliana Hatfield, 1992)
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Most discovered Juliana Hatfield through the album Become What You Are, the one with all the hit singles and constant radio airplay. People tend to overlook her first album Hey Babe, and they might want to reconnect with it. Hey Babe has the same catchy, pop-dream hooks but it’s a little rawer. Hatfield’s band before she went solo, Blake Babies, had a garage rock vibe that I really enjoyed, which got lost in subsequent recordings. Hey Babe has a perfect combination of Blake Babies rock and Hatfield’s uncanny knack for writing pop songs. You can actually hear her learning how to write on this album and it completely sets the stage for Become What You Are. Hey Babe isn’t nearly as polished and there’s an argument to be made that the songs aren’t as strong. That being said it’s still an amazing record that people need to re-connect with, or discover for the first time.
09. Elastica (Elastica, 1995)
Yeah, yeah, I know, they ripped off Wire with their big hit “Connection”. Elastica also had a few tunes that sounded a little too close to The Stranglers for comfort. All that being said this is still a kick ass garage/punk record that people dismissed too quickly. Elastica is the kind of stripped down, raw, rock n roll that people were blowing The Strokes and The Vines for doing ten years after. Each song is a short, frenetic, burst of catchy power pop cruising with no brakes down the garage rock highway. Sprinkled on top of these guitar driven song is the voice of Justine Frischmann. To put it bluntly, Frischmann sounds like sex. I don’t know what it is but whenever she sings you can feel sex oozing out of the speakers. I find it interesting that The Strokes first hit sounded exactly like American Girl by Tom Petty but somehow they were revered as rock saviors, where Elastica were vilified for lifting from Wire. Now that we’re all a little less uptight, let’s rediscover Elastica shall we?
08. The Coral (The Coral, 2002)
I really don’t understand why The Coral aren’t huge, nor do I understand why ninety percent of the people I ask have never heard of this album. This is easily one of my favorite albums of all time and I have no clue why it didn’t make them a household name. This record has everything, rock, pop, psychedelic, it even manages to work in sea chanteys. From the creepy opening track “Spanish Main” through to the last song, there is absolutely nothing not to like here. I think it got lost in the shuffle of “guitar rock revival” that became so prevalent in the early days of the new century or it was just too smart for the average hipster moron. Whatever the reason it is high time to find a copy of The Coral and revel in it’s brilliance for yourself.
07. Meat Puppets (Too High To Die, 1995)
This is kind of a sad album because it was the one that was supposed to make the legendary Meat Puppets huge. It was the album that followed their appearance on Nirvana’s Unplugged and came during an era when huge bands were really pushing the smaller bands that inspired them. To us the Meat Puppets were already Gods but the world at large still didn’t know them. Too High To Die is one of their best offerings, combining the band’s quirky sense of songwriting with giant rockness. If you stripped away all the Meat Puppets fanfare, Too High To Die is simply a massively well-executed rock record. The riffs are huge, the drums are some of the best on any of the Meat Puppets albums and the production (by Butthole Surfers guitarist Paul Leary) is grimy but also clean and sparkly. Most folks these days stick with the old Meat Puppets work and sleep on Too High To Die. Time to wake up friends; this album is a monster.
06. Marvin Gaye (Here, My Dear, 1978)
Yes, it’s true, we all watched Charlize Theron strip to the song “A Funky Space Reincarnation” for some perfume commercial. Now that we’ve said that, let’s move on. This is one of my favorite Marvin Gaye albums because it’s one of the few completely dedicated to pain and suffering. Take an artist largely known for love songs and smooth numbers, inject a failed relationship, and the creativity goes bananas. Here, My Dear is almost like a rambling, train of thought, album. As if it was recorded straight from Gaye’s subconscious and then bled onto to tape. With no rhyme or reason, the music is heartbreaking at one moment, incredibly upbeat and funky the next. Gaye makes it feel like the roller coaster of emotions you go through when a relationship ends. I also really dig that it rolls as one, long, epic piece of music. This isn’t a hit maker, nor is it a singles machine. This is a long, sad, distraught record where one of the greatest heroes in soul shows another side of who he is. While the album garners a lot of attention from us pretentious music critics, most of the public at large either doesn’t know it or fails to care. I suggest to anybody who loves true soul & R&B that they invest in this record immediately.
05. Urban Dance Squad (Mental Floss For The Globe, 1989)
I still can’t believe how many people sleep on this album. This was one of the originators of the rock, funk, hip hp fusion, and still one of its best examples. Outside of maybe The Red Hot Chili Peppers, few were even attempting this kind of thing and a lot of the music genres today, good or bad, wouldn’t exist had this album not come out. Urban Dance Squad is one of those bands that cross-pollinate genres with incredible ease. There’s an organic sense to this album, an ease to which all the various genres come together in one giant melting pot. What separate Urban Dance Squad from the rest are the vocals of Rudeboy Remmington. Remmington not only has a unique flow but a real ability with mixing off the cuff vocals with his more straightforward stuff. At times he sounds like a stream of consciousness and at others a serious lyricist. His ability to walk that line dictates the pace of the band and illuminates how and when the instruments and genres can move through each other. This is a smart album that was at least ten years ahead of its time. I also love the fact that a Dutch band still holds it down with one of the best hip-hop albums ever.
04. Television (Adventure, 1978)
With so much attention focused (and rightfully so) on Television’s first album Marquee Moon, the band’s second album Adventure gets lost in the shuffle. While not as raw or quirky as Marquee Moon, Adventure shows real growth for Television as songwriters. Adventure is a more focused album but doesn’t sacrifice the instrumental passages that make Television so unique. It’s interesting that Television and the Talking Heads were peers because they have a very similar style, especially on Adventure. The same jangly guitar sound, the same obscure lyrics sung through a vocal register landing in the grey area between singing, and spoken word. Both bands have a flair for the random narrative, but Television is a little more pop oriented, while Talking Heads moved into a world beat direction. With Marquee Moon the band allowed the music to dictate everything, to lead itself wherever it felt it should go. With Adventure the music is part of the idea but the craft of each song also has dominion. People who were turned off by Marquee Moon’s more ethereal traits would do well to check out Adventure. It’s an album more people should think of when remembering Television.
03. Jungle Brothers (Done By The Forces Of Nature, 1989)
The Jungle Brothers are largely remembered for the genre altering, game changing, album Straight Out The Jungle, but few that I’ve met even realized they had a second record. Done By The Forces Of Nature was the next evolutionary step for the Jungle Brothers and hip-hop. This is an album so filled with creativity and musical inspiration; it comes close to being better than the first record. There are so many little parts to Done By The Forces Of Nature that it comes together like a massive quilt stitched with thousands of threads from other genres. This is creative sampling and break-beat mixing at its finest. Done By The Forces Of Nature was also a moodier album, a darker themed record that would allow for something like De La Soul Is Dead to happen. Sadly the record hit right as gangster rap was starting to slither itself into the hip-hop scene and creativity took a backseat to who was tougher and could say the word “bitch” more often. I look at Done By The Forces Of Nature in the same light as I do Refused’s Shape Of Punk To Come album. One showed us where hardcore/punk could’ve gone; the other showed us where hip-hop might have ended up. Sadly, with both genres, that didn’t happen.
02. Men At Work (Cargo, 1983)
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Okay, time to throw the gauntlet down. Men At Work’s follow up to Business As Usual, Cargo, is a better album. There, I said it; it’s out there, say what you must. While not having as many hits or as many easily digestible tunes as the first record, Cargo is, song for song, a major step forward for the band. Men At Work held onto the ability to write catchy songs but decided to blend it with music that was more complex and textured. While the first album kept things basic, Cargo layers the harmonies, guitars and horns into something a little deeper. Every album a band makes should mark a musical step forward and Cargo is a perfect example of that. This was also the album where singer Colin Hay opened up his abilities. Building off his signature rasp, Hey lets his pipes loose to extraordinary effect. There isn’t a bad song on this album and absolutely zero filler. It’s a shame that Men At Work is remembered as the “Who Can It Be Now” band and miss out on the their real masterpiece. It may take time but one day people will see the power of Cargo and it’ll find itself amongst the most influential albums of all time.
01. Jellyfish (Bellybutton, 1990)
It seems odd to think of an era where power pop wasn’t an everyday occurrence, but in 1990 few new bands were attacking the genre. Then there was Jellyfish, a San Francisco band that blended Queen, XTC, The Beatles and even Cheap Trick into their own unique stew of pop music. Lush harmonies, layered guitars and keyboards, trippy instrumentals and finger-snapping pop numbers, were all present and worked to make Bellybutton one of the best records of the nineties. What made the record so magical came from how both the vocals of Andy Sumner and the music itself could switch on a dime. From melancholy, to happy, to dreamy, it wasn’t just song-to-song but moment-to-moment that these styles came into play. Lesser bands would’ve sounded like a sloppy attempt to be everything to everybody but Jellyfish made it work. I’ve met a lot of fans of power pop that have never heard of this record, trust me, you’ll want to check it out.
