My Top 35 Albums: 5-1

See: 35-31, 30-26, 25-21, 20-16, 15-11, 10-6

5

Sarah McLachlan - Surfacing

Here it is, the most perfect, most angelic album (so far) from Sarah. What makes this one so much more than her others, so much more than nearly any other album, is its unearthly quality: without any association with religion, this album is holy. Sarah takes the listener away from this planet to some mystical other-world of pure spirit. This is an album of pure surrender.

The instruments don't so much as play as haunt the melodies.  The vocals don't so much as sing but breathe. Lyrics and voice float through the air like ghosts; three random examples:

"'I need some distraction Oh beautiful release Memories seep from my veins Let me be empty Oh and weightless and maybe I'll find some peace tonight"

"And I have the sense to recognize That I don't know how to let you go Every moment marked with apparitions of your soul I'm ever swiftly moving, trying to escape this desire The yearning to be near you"

"Am I already that gone? I only hope that I won't disappoint you When I'm down here on my knees And sweet surrender Is all that I have to give"

5 star songs: Building a Mystery, I Love You, Sweet Surrender, Adia, Do What I Have to Do, Witness, Angel, Full of Grace

4

Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here

Pink Floyd was the most ambitious - and talented - rock group ever. Other groups created notable 8 or 9 minute songs; sometimes they sounded like they strained to stretch the songs out for that long. This album is dominated by a single song - in two halves and nine parts - that runs 26 minutes. And, like their previous 23 minute opus Echoes (on Meddle), it's pure bliss. Of the remaining three songs, one of them (Wish You Were Here) is also pure bliss; the others sound fantastic within the context of the whole work (and are premonitions of their albums to come).

I wish I knew how they had so much sense: it's possible to make an 8 or 9 minute song, or a thematic album of connected songs, but to make a single 20+ minute calm yet intense, relaxed yet never boring song - nearly all instrumental - takes more than just ambition and talented musicians. It takes a genius for melody and dynamics: when to crescendo and when to diminuendo, when to strum and when to roar. This is Pink Floyd at the height of their control, patience, and dedication to the perfect sound (before Waters took the band through Animals, The Wall, and The Final Cut, growing more political, angry, and desperate with each album).

5 star songs: Shine On You Crazy Diamond 1-9, Wish You Were Here

3

Joni Mitchell - Blue

Ah, Joni. I have several other Canadian female singer songwriters on this list, and each aspires to imitate or succeed Joni, the godmother of Canadian female musicians. Interestingly, this album is infused with the sunlit mornings and starry nights of California.

No one else ever conveyed so much naked honesty, longing, tumult and tranquility, song after beautiful song. The guitar is subtle and strong, the lyrics pure poetry, and her voice ... her famous voice dips, stretches, leaps, cries, and laughs, and still sounds fresh after hundreds of listens and more than 40 years. Only Joan Baez could compete (but Joan kept rigid control over her voice and generally sang other people's or traditional songs). Over the years, Joni has remained a true artist, both musically and otherwise (she famously worked with other art genres, such as providing the painted covers for many of her own albums). She's never written a song that betrayed her artistic conscience, even when the fans of her old material didn't follow her new directions.

This album is perfect ... nearly perfect. I just barely docked the last song (The Last Time I Saw Richard) a star because it's a little weaker than the rest of the songs; I'm still not sure. It probably deserves its fifth star.

Other amazing albums of hers include Clouds, Ladies of the Canyon and Court and Spark, and, as she moved into her jazz period, large portions of Don Juan's Reckless Daughter and Hejira.

5 star songs: All I Want, My Old Man, Little Green, Carey, Blue, California, This Flight Tonight, River, A Case of You

2

Pink Floyd - The Dark Side of the Moon

This album and the next are my only albums that contain nothing but 5 star songs from beginning to end; they are absolutely perfect.

This album, which was the best-selling album of all time for a while (before Thriller) and which spent more time on Billboard's chart (835 weeks) than any other before or since (second place is 490 weeks, so far), was a bridge between the early and middle periods of Pink Floyd. The album perfects the integrity for which the early albums were famously striving,. The songs are shorter, but they bleed in and out of each other with sound and music effects so that you can't tell where one ends and the next begins. Like most Floyd albums, it leads in and fades out with the same piece of music.

The vocals are integrated equally with the instruments (they were more washed out on earlier albums, and were overemphasized during the Waters dominated albums). The instrumentation is supplemented with the creative (and at the time groundbreaking) use of various noise-making objects, like clocks, metronomes, and (what sounds like) helicopters, spoken voice, odd primal screams, and wordless voices.

The album tackles the subjects of corporate greed, time, death, and insanity. The result is genius, captivating, monumental, timeless. It is the premier modern listening experience, and it has never been equaled.

5 star songs: Speak to Me, Breathe, On the Run, Time, Great Gig in the Sky, Money, Us and Them, Any Colour You Like, Brain Damage, Eclipse

1

Richard and Linda Thompson - Pour Down Like Silver

The best album I know and the only other album I know with only 5 star songs. This album doesn't have an overarching theme like a Pink Floyd album does; it's just eight perfect musical compositions.

Richard Thompson is a fantastic guitarist and lyricist, with a gift for matching the right music to the right lyrics. His lyrics are as painful and cutting as Dylan's, but his guitar is not simply there to support the message of the song; the music continues to speak after the lyrics are done, and it keeps going, one haunting refrain after another.

Though the album has gifted lyrics, melody, and music, what makes the album is the beautiful voice of Linda Thompson. She is as sensitive with her singing as Richard is with his guitar; soft, plaintive, aching, wistful. Richard isn't as powerful a vocalist as Plant or Gilmour - in fact, he sounds like he's from the Fleetwood Mac school of singing: 3 am, slightly drunk, in the depths of misery - and Linda is not as powerful as Joni or Joan, but when she sings, or when they sing together in harmony, they sing beautifully. The albums that they made together (including I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight, Hokey Pokey, and the critics' favorite and nearly as good Shoot Out the Lights) were an order of magnitude better than their solo efforts (which makes their rather public falling out all the more tragic).

Sweet singing, lovely music, and 8 perfectly written and performed dark songs about pain and heartache. What more could you ask for?

5 star songs: Streets of Paradise, For Shame of Doing Wrong, The Poor Boy Is Taken Away, Night Comes In, Jet Plane in a Rocking Chair, Beat the Retreat, Hard Luck Stories, Dimming of the Day/Dargai

Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed the list, and please leave in the comments any albums that you think I would enjoy based on this list.

My Top 35 Albums: 10-6

See: 35-31, 30-26, 25-21, 20-16, 15-11

10

Pink Floyd - Animals

This is the first of four Pink Floyd albums on this list, and all four are in my top ten. This album's inclusion is also somewhat of a surprise to me; I usually think of this as a lesser Pink Floyd album, forgotten between some of their more popular ones.

But this is still Pink Floyd at the height of their lyrical and musical power: Waters has begun adding his scathingly personal politics and lyrics, but they harmonize with some of the finest engineering and playing from Gilmour, Mason, and Wright. There are only 4 songs on the album (one is divided into parts). The melody writing is superb; songs are balanced just so, the instruments entering and exiting, building up and disappearing at just the right moments. The songs creep into your head. Pigs (Three Different Ones) is the only song I don't favor quite as much; it's a bit of a retread of Have a Cigar from Wish You Were Here, and I don't really like to listen to oinking in my music. Sheep has a bit of One of These Days from  Meddle in it, but finds new ground to cover (and I liked One of These Days more than Have a Cigar, anyway; Meddle nearly made this list).

Five star songs: Pigs on the Wing, Dogs, Sheep

9

Sarah McLachlan - Afterglow

Sarah's album right before this, Surfacing, was a pinnacle (for Sarah and for music, in general). I thought that she had nowhere to go but down. How can anyone keep making music that sublime, that holy, that wonderful, at that level?

Somehow, amazingly, she created a whole new collection of songs that are as sublime and wonderful (if not quite as holy). While she can hardly do better than Surfacing, this album is darn close. Ethereal, beautiful, poignant, sad ... well, maybe not quite as sad as Surfacing, and the songs bring her back among us mortals. Some actually have a bit of a bounce to them. On this album she's trying to capture something, find something that she can connect to, rather than just drift around, content in the perfect beauty of her loss.

5 star songs: Fallen, World on Fire, Drifting, Train Wreck, Answer, Time

8

Sarah McLachlan - Laws of Illusion

Afterglow has 6 essential songs and 4 very good songs; this album has 9 essential songs (1 is a reprise) and 4 very good songs. She is now far from the holiness of Surfacing (perhaps because she got it out of her system with Wintersong, which was released before this) and entirely entrenched in love and relationship ... or rather its loss: these songs are mostly about losing love.

Sarah's voice and music is as sublime and wonderful as ever, and her melodies, harmonies, and compositions are just as lovely. These songs are even bouncier than the ones on Afterglow. The lyrics are a tad trite and ordinary in some places, but they are sweet and sad, which is fine. I think - and this is no coincidence - this this would be what Pink Floyd would sound like if they were fronted by a woman.

5 star songs: Awakenings, Illusions of Bliss, Forgiveness, Rivers of Love, Love Come, Out of Tune, Heartbreak, U Want Me 2, Love Come (reprise)

7

Van Morrison - Moondance

Die-hard fans and critics will tell you that Van's debut album Astral Weeks was better (because it was more groundbreaking and less accessible). In my opinion this is the great one. It has all the weird jazzy folk pop intensity that he pioneered in Astral Weeks and adds a rich collection of catchy wonderful melodies (I feel the melodies were weaker on the first album).

Like other albums on this list, Van Morrisson carries you away into something liminal, distant, hazy, mystical, and soulful. Yet, on his Motown-influenced ballads, he can be very real and present, an alpha-male personal love-struck suitor.

Into the Mystic and Moondance are two of the finest songs by anyone, ever.

5 star songs: And It Stoned Me, Moondance, Crazy Love, Caravan, Into the Mystic, Brand New Day, Glad Tidings

6

Pink Floyd - A Momentary Lapse of Reason

This is the first of the last two Pink Floyd albums, which means that it doesn't include Roger Waters. Waters had a searing political agenda that drove the band in a certain direction. The awesome musical abilities of the rest of Pink Floyd carried this agenda, but I'm actually rather happy to see him gone here. This album has a freer, less negative and more playful spirit, with a looser, less-rigid theme, without sacrificing any of the amazing musicianship.

There is a nod to Waters'-style political lyrics in Dogs of War (which is a good song, but one the two that I don't rate 5 stars), but the rest of the album is about dreams, flying, adventure, and compassion (kind of a boy's fantasy). The first side contains some fantastic independent songs; the second side is an epic, wondrous fantasy of forests and winter as enchanting as anything written by any rock group; it has four songs (one is split into two parts), but it may as well be one song.

5 star songs: Signs of Life, Learning to Fly, One Slip, On The Turning Away, Yet Another Movie - Round and Round, A New Machine (parts 1 and 2), Terminal Frost

My Top 35 Albums: 15-11

See: 35-31, 30-26, 25-21, 20-16

15

Kelly Clarkson - Breakaway

I already admitted that I was surprised at some of the entries on this list; here's one of them. Some people thought that Kelly's creative efforts had hit their high point on her debut album after her American Idol win - obviously not. This followup is a strong collection of collaboratively written hit songs from one end to the other.

What makes them work, aside from the catchy melodies, is Kelly's powerful, steady, soulful voice, which alternates between raw ferocious and raw bleeding, and some honestly painful lyrics. Kelly really is a great singer, and not just a pretty performer. Maybe there is a little too much early Avril here and a little too much production. She manages to rise above the mainstream morass of cookie-cutter / schmaltzy popular music; this is a great rock album.

5 star songs: Breakaway, Since U Been Gone, Behind These Hazel Eyes, Because of You, Addicted, You Found Me, Hear Me, Beautiful Disaster (live)

14

Alanis Morissette - Jagged Little Pill

Unlike Kelly, I feel no compulsion to make excuses here. Alanis is truly an independent incredible talent. The anger on this album sounds so familiar because she pioneered this attitude that others imitated.

Alanis is special because of her poetry and her performance. She doesn't write a few words of pain and sing them over and over, hoping to hook you with the chorus. Each song is a complete story and some of her songs don't even have choruses. She is not afraid to expose everything real. She curses when she has to. She admits that she can be just as wrongheaded and difficult as the people she's singing about, when she has to. She can't help but be brutally honest.

As for her performance, Alanis, like Sinatra and Dylan, sings slightly off the beat and rhythm, sometimes fast, and sometimes slow, so that her songs don't become pretty, polished, perfect pop songs. She wants you to know it's her and you, alone. She's not here to sing; she's here to talk. And you have to listen. If only someone would have taught her what the word "ironic" means.

You also can't miss her followup Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie.

5 star songs: All I Really Want, You Oughta Know, Hand in My Pocket, You Learn, Head Over Feet, Mary Jane, Ironic, Not the Doctor, You Oughta Know (alternate)/Forgive Me Love

13

Renaissance - A Song For All Seasons

Renaissance returned in 1978, after several years of lovely but electric-guitar-less albums, with this tour de force prog rock album about love and life. It's a more personal album; their previous albums were dramatic but distant, about other cultures, myths, and epic stories. This one is all about the heart, but it's still vast, majestic, and epic music.

It's also their last great album; after this they incorporated synthesizers into their music. The result was a mess and the band quickly fell apart.

5 star songs: Opening Out, The Day of the Dreamer, Kindness (At The End), Back Home Once Again, Northern Lights, A Song For All Seasons

12

Led Zeppelin - IV

Each instrument on each song contributes in perfect balance: Bonham's drums are heavy and resonant, Page's guitar is sublime, Jone's bass (and other contributions) is both delicate and thunderous, and Plant's plaintive, screeching-yet-controlled vocals soar around and through the music with ethereal grace.

Led Zeppelin may have laid the groundwork for heavy metal music, and this music is as heavy as it gets, but it's not a heavy metal album: it's blues infused with strong elements of folk music and hard rock. I think of heavy metal as instrument-centered, overwhelming you with drums and guitar, with vocals that serve the instruments in a wall of sound and fantastical but irrelevant lyrics. Led Zeppelin keep everything in balance. The instruments, vocals, evocative lyrics, and melodies serve the song; the blues and folk tempos keep it all grounded. The melodies are defined just enough to contain it all, and the result is a classic album. And, of course, there's Stairway to Heaven.

Led Zeppelin I, II. and III were also great; all their albums were pretty great.

5 star songs: Black Dog, Rock and Roll, Stairway to Heaven, Misty Mountain Hop, Going to California, When the Levee Breaks

[Until now, all of the albums had at least one filler song (unless noted). Albums 11-3 have no fillers; all songs are very good (4 stars) or essential (5 stars)]

11

Simon and Garfunkle - Wednesday Morning 3 AM

This is the only completely bare folk album from S and G. Their other albums sound less like the Everly Brothers and more like the sounds you may be more familiar with from The Boxer and America.

Actually, only some of the songs on this album sound like the Everly Brothers; slower songs are more like gospel infused with the quiet, subtle, startling harmonies for which these two are so famous. The songwriting is a mixture of evocative gospel and poetry. You would swear that the gospel is centuries old (ok, some of it is, admittedly, from traditional sources). The poetry is as good as it got in 20th century New York. The guitar serves mainly to accentuate the voices and lyrics.

They made four other albums - Bridge Over Troubled Waters, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Thyme, Bookends, and Sounds of Silence - all of which have classic songs on them, though they all have (what I consider to be too many) filler songs.

5 star songs: You Can Tell The World, Bleeker Street, Benedictus, The Sounds of Silence, Peggy-O, The Times They Are A-Changin', Wednesday Morning 3 AM

My Top 35 Albums: 20-16

See: 35-31, 30-26, 25-21

20

R.E.M. - Out of Time

It's hard to take this album seriously. It sounds like they sat around throwing together melodies, lyrics, and vocals, and had a ball. Earlier R.E.M. albums have an earnest, youthful intensity; later ones have a melancholy seriousness. This one is just goofy. What can you say about a song with lyrics like "Throw your love around, love me love me / Take it into town, happy happy / Put it in the ground where the flowers grow / Gold and silver shine"? Say what?

Somehow, maybe by accident, they hit on some really catchy alternative pop tunes. Combined with their signature upbeat guitar sounds and Mills' and Stipe's snide business-like vocals - with the unexpected, uncharacteristic, yet fantastic female vocals of Kate Pierson (The B-52s) - you get something that's so fun and so aware of its own joke that you just have to go along with it. And I'm not even a huge fan of the album's hit song.

For other good R.E.M. albums, don't miss Reckoning (early college sound) and their followup to this album Automatic For The People.

5 star songs: Near Wild Heaven, Shiny Happy People, Belong, Half a World Away, Texarkana, Me In Honey

19

Dar Williams - The Honesty Room

College music was never more collegiate than Dar Williams on this album.

Dar Williams' debut album (after two self-published cassettes with limited distribution and generally weak songs) rocked the independent folk music scene (and impressed the likes of Joan Baez, who covered Dar's tunes and then went on tour with her). Dar is brutally honest here in a way that she (unfortunately) never was again: about gender roles and discrimination, about youth and maturity, about suburbia and relationships. Her poetry is so good that you could read it in a book and not know it for song lyrics.

She plays some fine finger-style guitar and sings with a gorgeously aching vulnerability, while still conveying strength and determination, while still being totally fetching. She sings like a little child (literally, on When I Was a Boy and The Babysitter's Here), like an intimate lover (In Love But Not at Peace), and like a concerned activist (The Great Unknown). And she still finds time to be funny (Alleluia and The Babysitter's Here), nostalgic, and deeply feminist.

5 star songs: When I Was a Boy, Alleluia, The Great Unknown, The Babysitter's Here, You're Aging Well, In Love But Not at Peace, This is Not the House That Pain Built, i love i love ( traveling II )

18

Sarah McLachlan - Fumbling Towards Ecstasy

The first of four Sarah albums on this list, this was her first great album. (I can't help but notice that this list contains a number of Canadian women).

Sarah has a stunning, ethereal, haunting voice ... ok, so do Enya and Loreena McKennit; they are fine musicians, too, with some great albums. Unlike Enya and Loreena, whose songs are like theatrical performances, Sarah's songs are contemporary, raw, and penetrating.  Despite the repeated lush synthesizer overlays, she sounds naked, vulnerable, always one step away from complete mental or emotional collapse:

"Hold on, hold on to yourself, for this is gonna hurt like hell." "The ice is thin, come on dive in, underneath my lucid skin, the cold is lost, forgotten" "My body aches to breathe your breath, your words keep me alive" You just want to hold her - or yourself - after experiencing her music.

And then there's Ice Cream; who doesn't want to hear that his or her love is better than ice cream, chocolate, and anything else that is known?

5 star songs: Possession, Plenty, Good Enough, Mary, Elsewhere, Ice, Hold On, Ice Cream, Fumbling Towards Ecstasy

[Until now, all of the albums had two or three filler songs (unless noted). Albums 17-12 have only one filler song each; all other songs are very good (4 stars) or essential (5 stars)]

17

Cindy Kallet - Working on Wings to Fly

Here is Cindy's debut album, a synthesis of masterful finger-style guitar, clever catchy riffs and melodies, assured singing, a rich deep steady voice, and lyrics about the sea, harbor, and environment. Many of her songs - which she wrote - sound like they are centuries old.

From the opening chords of Nantucket Sound to the final notes of Shores of Africa with its unexpectedly lovely harmonies, there is little to complain about. The introductory chords of Blackberry Downs are so beautiful it makes the heart ache. This is the standard in contemporary folk-music excellence.

5 star songs: Nantucket Sound, Wings to Fly (Crow), Three-Masted Schooner, Blackberry Downs, Roll to the River, We Rigged Our Ship, Far Off of the Mountains, Out on the Farthest Range, One for the Island, Shores of Africa.

16

Lynn Miles - Slightly Haunted

This was Lynn's "debut" (her third album, actually). This album has a bit of engineering and other instrumentation - Chalk had almost none. Just enough to add the slight haunting at the appropriate places.

This may sound familiar by now, but here is another collection of haunting, aching, beautiful songs. Some are raw, sad, and naked (Loneliness); others are carefully constructed masterpieces (I Loved a Cowboy, The Ghost of Deadlock). The melodies, together with overlays of strumming guitars, are full of melancholy. Maybe it's the Canadian in her, but each song feels like winter is coming soon: time to go home and cuddle up under a blanket until spring. In Last Night she even pays homage to, and channels, Joni ... just a little.

5 star songs: You Don't Love Me Anymore, I Loved a Cowboy, Loneliness, The Ghost of Deadlock, Last Night, Big Brown City

My Top 35 Albums: 25-21

See: 35-31, 30-26

25

Cindy Kallet - 2

Cindy's debut album is higher up on this list; this is her sophomore release. This woman, a soccer mom originally from Martha's Vineyard  and the coast of Maine, is a damn fine guitarist with a captivating baritone voice. The album contains nothing else, nothing but a singer and her instrument. What makes this album so special is the relentlessly good guitar, voice, tunes, and writing: fisherman's music on the rocky coast of Maine so evocative that you can smell the tangy spray and hear the seagulls.

Cindy's lyrics are heartfelt, playful, strong, and full of a yearning for the simple joys of walking on a seashore or watching clouds drift by. She throws in a few complaints about war, sexism, and the absence of a lover; just the kind of talk you'd expect from a good friend on a quiet, contemplative day.

The album has only a single filler song; the rest are either very good (4 stars) or essential (5 stars).

5 star songs: Listen I Think the Rain's Come, Trying Times, Steamboat to the Mainland, Marblehead Neck, If I Sing, Mountains Range, I Don't Have To

24

The Cranberries - Everyone Else is Doing It So Why Can't We?

The Cranberries were a kick in the pants to alternative music with their breathy vocal murmurings and airy and evocative guitar and keyboards. Their debut album captures a magical misty mood that lingers long after the music ends.

It's not exactly hard, or soft, or casual, or serious, or angry, or wistful, or even alternative. It's a world out of focus, like somewhere in the middle of a David Lynch film. Whatever. This album packs a great bunch of tunes.

Other good albums are No Need to Argue and To the Faithful Departed (although the latter gets a bit heavy-handed with politics).

5 star songs: Dreams, Sunday, Pretty, Linger, Wanted, Put Me Down

23

Lynn Miles - Chalk This One Up to the Moon

Lynn's second album was, like her self-titled cassette, not released in widespread circulation, and is now extremely rare (the above copy on Amazon will run you $200).

It's filled with beautiful, evocative songs sung with naked simplicity. It's nearly as good as her wide-release "debut" album (her third, which is higher on this list). She plays well and she sings with an angst like heartbreak. This is folk music with a gorgeous voice, mesmerizing guitar, elegant tunes, and poignant lyrics. Listening to this album is like listening to a really good coffee house singer with a warm cup of coffee in your hands. The album has a few filler songs, but the best songs are worth repeated listens.

5 star songs: All I Ever Wanted, It's Gone, I Can't Tell You Why, Nobody's Angel, A Little Rain, Never Again

22

Carole King - Tapestry

Carole has the familiar, languorous voice of your sister lounging around, drinking iced tea on a hot summer Sunday afternoon in a Brooklyn brownstone (just like on the album cover). Maybe the vocal familiarity is specific to me, since I grew around that kind of voice in that kind of environment (actually I lived in the suburbs, but I visited Brooklyn often enough, and my relatives sounded like her).

Carole was already famous for her songwriting, and this album proved that she was just as good doing her own interpretations. Her post-liberated, early-seventies soul-infused lyrics and jazzy voice blend with the understated rhythmic piano to create songs that are cool, intimate, casual, and earthy. She sounds as good today as she did back then. The fabulous Rickie Lee Jones and Beth Orton are her direct descendants.

5 star songs: I Feel the Earth Move, It's Too Late, You've Got a Friend, Where You Lead, Will You Love Me Tomorrow?, (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman

21

Donovan - Fairy Tale

Donovan's second album is his strongest, and an astounding work from a 19 year old runaway doped-up beach bum. No one inhabited the hippie dippie flower child image like Donovan. By the late seventies, everyone was making fun of him, but he was the real deal.

He writes and sings like he means it, and he really does mean it. Bob Dylan was jealous of him; they both had some catchy melodies, but Donovan could actually sing. Dylan's grittiness and anger is more powerful, and his poetry more cutting; Donovan's is more genteel, uses more allusions. Dylan sings about physical pain and politics, while Donovan sings about spiritual ache and love as allegories for physical pain and politics (except for some songs in which he is more direct, like Universal Soldier). It's the difference between America and Britain in a nutshell. Both are awesome. Do you want to feel enraged and bitter or wistful and moved?

After this album, Donovan's next albums pretty much led everyone else in the transition to psychedelia and electronic instruments. I've never been stoned, but I suspect that listening to Barabajagal is about the same experience.

5 star songs: Colours, To Try For The Sun, Sunny Goodge Street, Oh Deed I Do, Circus Of Sour, Candy Man, The Ballad Of A Crystal Man, The Balland of Geraldine, Universal Soldier [on some versions]

My Top 35 Albums: 30-26

See: 35-31

30

Fleetwood Mac - Rumors

Nearly 40 years on, this album of pop standards is still fresh because a) the songs are so tight, and b) each song showcases a different combination of talents. It's like they passed around the guitar to each member and said "Here. Give us your best."

Actually, many of the songs sound like they were sung at 3 am on the floor of a recording studio, exhausted after six hours of fighting, while intoxicated ... which is actually how the album came to be. Other bands with similar sounds in the seventies are dated (Seals and Crofts, anyone?). Where they were all style, Fleetwood Mac added weariness, pain, and soul.

While some of my favorite Fleetwood Mac songs (Landslide, Sarah, Gypsy) are on other albums, this album contains nothing but good songs the whole way through. Their eponymous album has a similar sound (this is like part 2 of that album).

This album also has no filler songs; it's not more highly ranked because the very good songs slightly outweigh the 5 star songs. I admit that some of the songs that didn't make my 5 star song rating might have been 5 stars on some other band's album.

5 star songs: Dreams, Don't Stop, Go Your Own Way, Songbird, Gold Dust Woman

29

Dar Williams - Mortal City

This is Dar's second major album (her debut is higher up on the list). This album contains simple guitar playing, carefully constructed melodies and harmonies, and some poetry of immense power. It's not higher on the list only because the songs that are not 5 stars are only ok (as opposed to really good; at least they are not bad). This is the second of her two great albums (so far); she has a good material on subsequent albums, but it's mixed with a lot of artifice.

At this point, Dar was still singing folk music with just a little bit of electric instrumentation thrown in. February is one of the best songs of the last 50 years, and The Christians and the Pagans is both meaningful and hysterical.

5 star songs: As Cool As I Am, February, The Christians and the Pagans, This Was Pompeii, The Ocean, Family

28

Lynn Miles - Unravel

Lynn has two other albums higher on this list. This is her fifth album, counting her self-released self-titled cassette. Some people like her fourth album (Night in a Strange Town) more, but, oddly, that album is the only one of hers that I'm not crazy about.

Unravel sees her transition from the poignant but sweet and simple sounds of her early albums to a raw anguish that comes from a late night of brooding over cigarettes and whisky. I'm Over You is perfectly stunning and haunting. Black Flowers sounds like it should be a far older song. The album has a few missteps, such as the somewhat dull When Did the World, and a few lovely phrases, like "sad songs matter most". Lynn mostly sings beautifully, daringly, and wistfully. Listen at night, while on the road.

5 star songs: I'm the Moon, Undertow, Over You, Unravel, Black Flowers, Surrender Dorothy

27

Coldplay - Mylo Xylo

Unlike some of my friends, I think Coldplay gets better with each album. Yes, the original albums had unique and wonderful songs that were more groundbreaking, but many of the other songs on those albums were fillers. The number of fillers gets smaller on each album (I also really like Viva La Vida and X & Y). Mylo Xylo is their first true concept album, and while not completely free of fillers, the good songs now seem to flow effortlessly. I even love their new visual style.

The wall of sound, catchy tunes, thumping lively music, and vocal harmonies are just so ... Coldplay. Mylo Xylo is a story about dystopia, but it never feels anything less than happy.

5 star songs: Hurts Like Heaven, Paradise, Charlie Brown, Every Teardrop Is a Waterfall, Princess of China, Don't Let It Break Your Heart

26

Renaissance - In the Beginning

I'm surprised that I have Renaissance albums - two!- in my list; I would have thought that my enjoyment of inhumanly high-registered vocals over relentlessly over-produced pretentious music would have faded since I left my teens. Why hasn't it?

Maybe I'm still excessively immature. Maybe it's that this pretentious, inhuman, and even hokey, but exceedingly dramatic and talented prog rock band (think Rush, Yes, ELP, etc) stretched the boundary of operatic rock music to the absolute limit. This album, which is a re-release of their first two albums Prologue and Ashes Are Burning, is a kind of culmination of rock: masterpieces of nine minute epic prog rock piece performances, delicate, inventive, powerful, sonorous. Tiring. They reached the edge of the world; rock music had to go somewhere else after this.

5 star songs: Spare Some Love, Rahan Khan, Can You Understand, Let It Grow, Carpet of the Sun, Ashes Are Burning

My Top 35 Albums: 35-31

Of course, this won't be your list of top albums. It's probably not even my list of top albums: I probably forgot about a dozen albums that should be on it.

I rate songs between 1 (awful) and 5 stars (essential). I typically delete songs rated 1 or 2 from my collection. Given a choice, I would always listen to a 5 star song instead of a 4 star song, unless I've just heard the 5 star song several times in a row. I have rated some very, very good songs as 4s, and some perfectly fine songs as 3s.

The criteria for inclusion on this list are 1) at least 5 (or nearly half of the album, in some exceptional cases) of the songs on the album are 5 stars, 2) there are no 1 or 2 star songs on the album, 3) there are no more than 3 filler songs, and 4) not a compilation album. This criteria is not perfect; there are albums that are more than the sum of their parts, like Born to Run and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. There are albums that are unarguably more important than the ones I have included. But that's my criteria.

The criteria leave out many lovely albums - and even entire artists. Great albums from Adele, The Grateful Dead, Aztec Two-Step, Heart, The Beatles, Norah Jones, Greg Brown, Enya, Suzanne Vega, The Swell Season, and many others, did not make the list. The album may contains a few essential songs, and many very good songs, but the wrong balance of each. Or the album may have a few too many filler songs (fine songs, but not toe-tapping good).

The ranking is generally based on the average rating of the album. A higher ranking usually means less filler songs. The highest ranked albums have no fillers, only essential (5 star) and very good (4 star) songs. The top two (really three) albums are simply perfect.

The results surprised me is several ways, with the inclusion of certain albums, and with the glut of albums by the same two artists in the top ten.

35

Terry Reid - Terry Reid

For those who don't know, Terry Reid is the guy who turned down the job of lead singer in the about-to-be-formed Led Zeppelin (Page wanted him, but Reid had a prior commitment, so he recommended Plant to Page). The reason you don't know about him is a) the above story, and b) a series of contract and producer mishaps he encountered in his early years.

Terry has a gorgeous voice, his guitar playing and musical arrangements are top rate, and his songs and lyrics are as good as anything created in the sixties. There is a purity to this music that is hard to find elsewhere. He  (or at least this album) deserves a lot more recognition. This music is like where The Yardbirds would have been after they matured a few more years.

5 star songs: Stay with Me Baby, Friends, May Fly, Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace, Rich Kid Blues

34

Meatloaf - Bat Our of Hell

The album that made Meatloaf and Jim Steinman into superstars, this album opens like a bomb and lets up only for the three ballads. The album is kind of "over-produced". But it's played with such equal parts tongue-in-cheek and earnestness that it works. The pounding piano, the smashing drums, the frenetic beat, the yelling frustrated edge-of-desperation male vocals, the over-the-top lyrics. It's like heavy metal music without the heavy metal instrumentation.

Three of the songs go for over 8 minutes. Lots of kids in the seventies lost their virginity while listening to this album. Nowadays, I have to be in a certain mood for this to hit the playlist.

5 star songs: Bat Out of Hell, Two Out of Three Ain't Bad, Paradise by the Dashboard Lights

33

The Sundays - Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic

This was my first album obsession as an adult. For two years I drove from New Haven to Fairfield every weekday. On the way to work I listened to side A, and on the way back to side B.

The Sundays only released three albums; they took their time and only released an album when they felt it was completely done. Unfortunately for us, marriage and children came first for them, so they stopped making music when it interfered too much with their lives.

They are squarely in the alternative music genre, and specifically the "wall of guitars" sound sub-genre; think The Smiths with a pretty female British voice and lighter, happier music. This album doesn't quite hit criterion 1 (at least half 5 star songs), but it contains no fillers at all; every song is good. They sing about the small quirks, confusions, and questions of daily life in London.

Actually, some of my favorite Sundays songs are on their followup, Blind, which is also a great album.

5 star songs: Here's Where The Story Ends, Can't Be Sure, My Finest Hour, Joy

32

Bruce Springsteen - Born in the USA

I don't listen to Bruce very much. While I think this is a fantastic collection of songs, I'm just not often in a Bruce mood. But I can't help tapping my foot to just about anything on this album. The man knows how to write a melody. Bruce, like Tom Petty, is often overlooked for his writing because his songs are wrapped in catchy loud beats. But he is a true American artist.

In my head I think of Born to Run as the better album, because the 5 star songs on Born to Run - Thunder Road, Born to Run, and Jungleland - are better than any songs on Born in the USA. But Born in the USA is solid the whole way through, while the supporting songs on Born to Run range from good to filler.

5 star songs: Born in the USA, No Surrender, I'm Goin' Down, Glory Days, Dancing in the Dark.

31

Colbie Caillat - Coco

I bought this album blind, based on an Amazon automatic recommendation. The moment I put it into my CD player and heard the opening strands of Oxygen, I knew instantly: my teenage daughter will love this. I love it, too.

Colbie's music is just so sweet and unaffecting, optimistic and honest. It's home-brew, low key folk pop, without the overproduction that artists (or engineers) put on to try to impress you. This is not an album of power hits, but it's also not just folk music. Colbie has a strong, assured, and reassuring voice. You can listen to these songs all day and hear breezes from the sea, taste a daiquiri, and feel better about the world.

Her followup Breakthrough is also particularly good.

5 star songs: Oxygen, The Little Things, One Fine Wire, Bubbly, Realize.

Alanis in Israel 2012

Alanis Morissette wrapped up her global Guardian Angel tour at the sold-out Nokia Stadium (Yad Eliyahu) in Tel Aviv last night, and she was awesome, even if her performance wasn't ... exactly.

The hall was supposed to open at 7:00 for the 9:00 concert, with two opening acts: the local Israeli artist Natan Goshen at 7:30 for 1/2 hour and Alanis' husband Mario ("MC Souleye") Treadway at 8:00 for an hour.

Natan didn't come on until after 8:00, but he was AMAZING. I've heard some Israeli music here and there in the twenty odd years I've lived here, and I've been to a few concerts. Natan was among the best I've heard, both in terms of songs and live performance. There should have been more than a half empty stadium during his performance, and it should have been longer.

There was a short break and then Mario came out with a DJ backer. Unfortunately for him, since no one announced him, pretty much no one in the audience knew who he was. It must be a tough job to be on stage performing to people who don't know who you are, are waiting for the main act, and are unimpressed with your act. The audience wasn't rude - they applauded after each song - but they were confused and didn't respond to the music. Part of the problem was that his genre (white rap) was not Alanis' genre, and so really intended for a different audience.

Another problem was the voluminous sound, which made it impossible to understand more than a word or two here or there, which is death for an hour long rap song set list where all the songs otherwise sound the same. "What did he say? Something something tragic, something something automatic, something something plastic, something something uh glass bit?" Another problem was that he's white and a rapper, which is not entirely impossible but difficult for someone who looks handsome, clean, married, and comfortably well off. I'm guessing that he would make a not bad pop singer, but as a rapper, while he tried valiantly to connect to the audience, moving back and forth on the stage, and signing with his hands in sync with his words, he lacked real emotion or street cred, as the kids are saying nowadays.

Alanis came on during his set for one song (Jekyll and Hyde, I'm guessing) to thunderous applause, sang a little, kissed him, and then promised the audience to come back a little later. It took a long time between sets until she finally reappeared at 10:10, over an hour late.

Set list (JLP=Jagged Little Pill, SFIJ=Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie, URS=Under Rug Swept, HaBL=Havoc and Bright Lights):

• I Remain (Prince of Persia soundtrack)
• Woman Down (HaBL)
• All I Really Want (JLP)
• You Learn (JLP)
• Guardian (HaBL)
• Mary Jane (JLP)
• Receive (HaBL)
• Right Through You (JLP)
• So Pure (SFIJ)
• Ironic (JLP)
• Havoc (HaBL)
• Head Over Feet (JLP)
• Lens (HaBL)
• Henei Mah Tov (instrumental)
• 21 Things (URS)
• Uninvited (City of Angels soundtrack)
• You Oughta Know (JLP)

• Numb (HaBL)
• Hand in My Pocket (acoustic) (JLP)
• Your Room (JLP)

• Thank U (SFIJ)

Notice anything unusual here? Six songs from the album being promoted, nine songs from her breakthrough album 15 years ago, and almost nothing else. Ok, JLP was incredible, but so was a whole lot of material from her other albums. A few songs from the other albums made it to her set lists at other stops in the tour, and I would dearly have loved to have heard Citizen of the Planet, Eight Easy Steps, Excuses, Everything, Front Row, UR, Unsent, Hands Clean, So Unsexy, Precious Illusions, etc etc in place of a few of the songs from JLP.

Anyhoo ...

Alanis is one of the finest songwriters and music arrangers, and her raw singing passion is surpassed by no one, so being present at her concert was a privilege. Alanis and the band played with smiles and positive energy and the fan was appreciative. She still packs an emotional punch. She's no longer a frustrated jagged pill, so she doesn't sing the old songs with quite the pain they deserve, but so much of the angst is already packed into the lyrics and the music that it doesn't matter so much.

When Alanis picks up a guitar she rocks, and when she dances uninhibitedly like she did on Uninvited you can tell she's enjoying herself. It's fair to say that the night was awesome and the crowd loved it. Despite. Despite that the bass and voice mic being so loud that you couldn't really make out the words on some songs and they caused earache (I guess she had to sing above the screaming of the crowd) and the notes tended to dissolve at that high a volume, and despite that Alanis had some trouble singing all of the words in some of the more frenetic songs here and there. She looked a little out of breath at the beginning.

One lovely thing about Alanis is that she is a musician, not a celebrity pop star: there was no dance routine, no cleavage or thigh on display, no flash--in-the-pan style trying oh so hard to be a hit; just a conservatively dressed, kind of awkward powerhouse of a woman singing words she needs to sing. I say awkward, and really, during the first two songs she just marched from left to right on the stage and back again, over and over, as if she just learned how to take big steps. When she held the guitar she didn't look so awkward, and when she was jumping up and down and rocking (like on Uninvited) she looked like a typical clubber. The pacing was kind of funny.

My daughter also says that she does odd things with the mic, moving and contorting her head to control the sound volume rather than just moving the mic back and forth. However, she was holding a guitar, so I think that this was unavoidable.

On Mary Jane she proved she could still sing while belting it out. On So Pure, she changed the location from New York to Tel Aviv, but she changes the location at every concert to the local city. For Ironic, the audience sang so loudly that Alanis just held the mic out to us for most of the song. She also changed the verse from "and meeting his beautiful wife" to "and meeting my beautiful husband", which kind of robs the song of its point, but the song always was, ironically, never about irony anyway. Lens, with its lyrics about competing religions (used metaphorically) was particularly appropriate for the venue.

After Lens the pianist played a short riff through the classic Hebrew round about brotherly love Henei Ma Tov U'ma Na'im, which I'm pretty sure was not done anywhere else on the tour. It was something to hear 10,000 people scream her most gritty and powerful song You Oughta Know, including the infamous "and are you thinking of me when you f*** her" all together. I was at the concert with my daughter, as I may have mentioned.

She finished around midnight, and 12 hours later my ears are still ringing. We've had some other world class musicians here in Israel recently: Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Leonard Cohen, Red Hot Chile Peppers, etc. This was my first large concert in Israel, actually my first large concert since my first ever large concert Pink Floyd in 1987 at Nassau Coliseum. That one was a blast, and so was this one.

Call Me a Hippie Lesbian Collegiate

I can't recall the series of events that led me to rediscover Cris Williamson's seminal [1] The Changer and the Changed yesterday. I rediscovered my great love for it: strong, feminine, inspiring, sentimental. Like I like my women.

College music, hippie music, middle-aged lesbian music. I discovered her and artists like her (I had an awesome Woody Simmons album) in my early twenties in the early 90s, and even then I was a generation removed from when they were made in the 70s. I haven't listened to them for fifteen years. Now I'm a generation removed from who I was in my early twenties. Something in me thinks there's something wrong with liking it; shut up, something. I'm blissfully ignoring you.

[1] I'm aware that this word has ironic overtones here.

Segways and Sakharof

Yesterday I rode up and down the beautiful Tel Aviv coast on a Segway. Now that I've been on one, it has given me new sensitivity to the plight of the less fortunate non-Segway riding population in our midst. I feel for you poor unfortunate souls, and I encourage you to remember that there are still valuable roles in society that your kind of people can fill. Fixing Segways, for example, or leveling roads and clearing away the debris from in front of my Segway.

Me (trenchcoat) and coworkers at Shlomo Lahat Promenade in Tel Aviv

If you want to know what it's like to ride a Segway, just imagine it: it's pretty much just like that, except less bikini-babes (what's wrong with you?) and you can't do jumping tricks with it like you can on a bicycle. You get to high-five random strangers as you float above them, however. After a minute with my robotic extension, I knew that returning to my previous human powered ambulatory legged-life was going to be a letdown, a momentum remundanity. Sheesh, I have to walk? This sucks.

We didn't do much other than ride up and down Tel Aviv's main coast, but the sun was shining, the waves were high, and the rocky promenade was gorgeous. It got chilly.

Sunday evening I had food and drink at Jem's beer factory, one of a number of new Israeli micro-breweries. This one was co-founded by a guy in my synagogue, but he wasn't around for me to greet. The evening's entertainment was an intimate performance by Berry Sakharof, whose name I was not familiar with but whose songs I knew from the radio. There's nothing like a professional performer closeup. Unfortunately, it's not my usual musical style; I would have enjoyed it more with either my daughter or step-daughter, who are familiar with him and Israeli music in general, to enjoy it with me.

Berry Sakharof at Jem's microbrewery in Petach Tikveh

That's two work-related outings in a week, which is two more than typical.

Ten Weird and Wonderful Song Transformations

Here are ten weird and wonderful cover songs on Youtube in no particular order, covering but utterly transforming an original smash pop hit. Most of the original songs are Hip Hop. Most of the transformations are soul or folk.

1. Tori Amos covers Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit

Tori Amos does a lot of soulsy covers of odd source material, including heavy metal and death metal originals (e.g. Raining Blood by Slayer).

2. Einat & Hakim cover The Black Eyed Peas' I Got a Feeling

These guys are pretty funky Israelis.

3. Alanis Morissette covers The Black Eyed Peas' My Humps

A joke, but shows that Alanis can't help sounding good even when she's not trying.

4. Jonathan Coulton covers Sir Mix-a-Lot's Baby Got Back

Also a joke, I suppose, but it's hard to listen to this and think that he's not singing something profound.

5. Pomplamoose covers Beyonce's Single Ladies

Pomplamoose has a number of odd, weird, funky covers, including an awesome cover of Lady Gaga's Telephone (which itself has an entire bevy of weird covers, from country rock to classical).

6. Sarah Bareilles covers Beyonce's Single Ladies

Another cover of Single Ladies, this demonstrates Sarah's talents, which go far beyond simple pop and ballad numbers.

7. Karmin covers Chris Brown's Look at Me Now

The most viewed cover on Youtube (56 million views and counting), the cover is funny, sweet, and silly; the original song is none of these. It's dumb, racist, sexist, stupid, and talentless. Karmin does a number of other interesting covers.

8. Mat Weddle covers Outkast's Hey Ya

Mat is aka Obadiah Parker.

9. Butch Walker covers Taylor Swift's You Belong With Me

Taylor twitted about how much she liked this cover and invited Butch to integrate his sound into one of her performances. Skip to about 2:40 if you don't want to see Butch peeing.

10. Greyson Chance covers Lady Gaga's Paparazzi

There are lots of kids and amateur wannabees covering pop songs on Youtube, but few can transform a recognizable smash pop hit and - astoundingly - make it better. And he's only 13, for crying out loud.

Bonus

Birdy covers Bon Iver's Skinny Love

Bon Ivers is relatively unknown, and the original song is folk music. But it's still amazing. And she's only 15 years old.