Tag Archives: Aaron’s top albums

by Aaron Brophy | December 30, 2013 · 8:19 pm

Aaron’s Top Albums Of 1996

Tricky’s Maxinquaye

Back in 1996 I was the Arts & Entertainment Editor of the Centennial College student newspaper, The Siren. I dug into some of those back issues to find my Top Ten album list from that year.

Looking at the list now it’s a pretty clear reaction against grunge in favour of mostly dark, electronic-based music.

Here it is:

1. Tricky Maxinquaye
2. Massive Attack Protection
3. Future Sound of London ISDN
4. Pop Will Eat Itself Dos Dedos Mis Amigos
5. Neil Young Mirror Ball
6. Blue Resistance
7. Portishead Dummy
8. Teenage Fanclub Grand Prix
9. Nine Inch Nails The Downward Spiral
10. Cypress Hill Temple Of Boom

Nearly a decade-and-a-half later, Maxinquaye remains infinitely listenable. Besides the tepid cover of Public Enemy’s “Black Steel” it still sound intriguing today. It’s probably no longer the #1 on this list, but it’s still a solid Top Five.

Of the trip-hop big three Massive Attack’s Protection is probably the one I care the least about now. That’s not to say I don’t care, it’s just that it’s the album I go back to the least amongst them. Again, if you listen to this album in the now it could still fool the kids into maybe thinking it’s current. Or, at the very least, you can trick ’em into believing “these are the guys who used to produce The Weekend.”

Holy smokes did I ever listen to Future Sound of London’s ISDN a lot back in the day. It’s why I’m very been-there, done-that about Boards of Canada in the present. This was also kinda my last flashback buzz album as I transitioned from student rascal/five-day-a-week rave ‘n’ club kid into person-with-a-job.

I wouldn’t quite call this a guilty pleasure because there’s no guilt in my enjoyment of Pop Will Eat Itself’s Dos Dedos Mis Amigos, but of the albums on this list it’s probably the easiest to peg in terms of being of a certain time, scene and sound.

Neil Young’s Mirror Ball is the only good album Pearl Jam’s ever been part of.

In hindsight, the inclusion of Blue’s Resistance on this list is kinda embarrassing. An electro-dub record on Sabres of Paradise’s label, this selection was clearly an act of showing off my expensive import record collection. The album doesn’t suck, but it wouldn’t make my Top Ten now and it speaks of hanging around a bit too much in the chill out room.

Portishead are where it’s at. After some time and distance, Dummy is probably my #1 album for 1996. And Beth Gibbons was doing witchcore at least 10 years before everyone else was.

I’m not sure why I put Teenage Fanclub’s Grand Prix on my list. I don’t really like Teenage Fanclub or much power pop and I haven’t actually listened to this album since 1996. This song’s OK, though, so perhaps I need to revisit this one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4GDA9WdBXg

Ah, Nine Inch Nails. I had this at #9, which means I probably didn’t like it all that much, but as a superfan of the band I had to put The Downward Spiral
on the list. Maybe it’s because the album’s so familiar. After all, it was the album that anchored a certain big-booted, goth-rivethead scene that year and I would have heard it everywhere I went. It can probably stay on this list… but with a leery eye.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfhkXxmnYHc

Cypress Hill’s Temple Of Boom? Too much time in the chill out room, for sure.

Other album lists…

2015 Top Ten — SUUNS + Jerusalem In My Heart SUUNS + Jerusalem In My Heart is #1
2014 Top Ten — Sharon Van Etten’s Are We There is #1
2013 Top Ten — M.I.A.’s Matangi is #1
2012 Top Ten — Dirty Ghosts’ Metal Moon is #1
2011 Top Ten — Timber Timbre’s Creep On Creepin’ On is #1
2010 Top Ten — The Black Angels’ Phosphene Dream is #1
2009 Top Ten — Gallows’ Grey Britain is #1
2008 Top Ten — Portishead’s Third is #1
2007 Top Ten — Joel Plaskett Emergency’s Ashtray Rock is #1
2006 Top Ten — My Brightest Diamond’s Bring Me The Workhorse is #1
2005 Top Ten — Black Rebel Motorcycle Club’s Howl is #1
2004 Top Ten — Morrissey’s You Are The Quarry is #1
2003 Top Ten — The Dears’ No Cities Left is #1
2002 Top Ten — Archive’s You All Look The Same To Me is #1
2001 Top Ten — Gord Downie’s Coke Machine Glow is #1
2000 Top Ten — Songs: Ohia’s The Lioness is #1
1999 Top Ten — The Boo Radleys’ Kingsize is #1
1998 Top Ten — Baxter’s Baxter is #1
1996 Top Ten — Tricky’s Maxinquaye is #1

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Tagged as Aaron's top albums, Aaron's Top albums 1996, best album lists, best albums, best albums 1996, Blue Resistance, Cypress Hill, fsol isdn, future sound of london, Massive Attack, massive attack protection, Music, Neil Young, Neil Young Mirror Ball, NIN, Nine Inch Nails, Pop Will Eat Itself, Pop Will Eat Itself Dos Dedos Mis Amigos, Portishead, Portishead Dummy, PWEI, Recollections, Teenage Fanclub, Teenage Fanclub Grand Prix, The Downward Spiral, Top albums, top albums 1996, Tricky, Tricky Maxinquaye

by Aaron Brophy | November 23, 2013 · 5:33 pm

Aaron’s Top Albums Of 2006

My Brightest Diamond Bring Me The Workhorse

This is my official Top 10 album list for 2006:

1. The Decemberists The Crane Wife
2. The Dears Gang Of Losers
3. The Golden Dogs Big Eye Little Eye
4. Sam Roberts Chemical City
5. The Streets The Hardest Way To Make An Easy Living
6. Meligrove Band Planets Conspire
7. My Brightest Diamond Bring Me The Workhorse
8. Tokyo Police Club A Lesson In Crime
9. Woven Hand Mosaic
10. CSS Cansei De Ser Sexy

When I looked at this list for the first time in seven years my immediate reaction was a reflexive “Oh God, I put them at #1?” Maybe it’s because nowadays I hunt for things more primordial than their dandy cravat rock, or maybe it’s because they’re a pillar act for Mumford And Sons fans, either way I’ve pretty much moved on from The Decemberists. Or at least I thought I did. While there’s still something undefinably cloying about them, there are some sublime moments on The Crane Wife. “When The War Came” is an unlikely companion to Led Zeppelin’s “No Quarter, and “The Perfect Crime #2,” “Yankee Bayonet (I Will Be Home Then),” and to a lesser extent, many of the other songs on the album exhibit a certain charming gallow’s humour. It’s not my #1 anymore, but it’s still probably a top tenner.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CD3fCVPBgcQ

I’ve always loved The Dears as their particular brand of dark pop appeals to all my outsider sensibilities. Going back through Gang Of Losers I realized this album doesn’t contain any of my favourite Dears songs — those would be “Summer Of Protest,” “Expect The Worst/’Cos She’s A Tourist” and “Lost In The Plot” — but what the album lacks in peak resonance it makes up for with a sort of binding quality. It’s like a sonic affirmation for misfits — you’re weird, maybe a little awkward, off-putting and you know it, but you’re not alone… The Dears are with you — and these songs are the soundtrack to that feeling.

One of the great injustices in the world is that The Golden Dogs aren’t more popular. I’ve cooled a wee bit on Big Eye Little Eye — it’s probably no longer a #3 album for me — but they remain a band I’ll always be behind and one of the few bands I know have the potential to create the perfect song.

There’s a song on Sam Roberts’ Chemical City called “With A Bullet” which I consider one of the best rock ‘n’ roll love songs ever. It’s not particularly unique and the metaphors (“My love for you is as deep as a coal mine”) border on hammy, but there’s a certain genuineness about it that’s absolutely compelling. Roberts sometimes gets unfairly pigeonholed as a bit of a Tragically Hip/Kee To Bala/beer commercial rocker, and to be fair there is a bit of that to what he does, but Chemical City is more than that. There’s some pointed political commentary (“An American Draft Dodger In Thunder Bay”), some psychedelic space jams (“Mind Flood”) and some dreamy brilliant bits (“Mystified, Heavy”). I don’t know if it’s still a #4 album, but it’s definitely an underappreciated one in the Can-rock canon.

Ah, The Streets. This would be the year that I finally got Mike Skinner. It may have been the noise from the hipster set, or his awkward delivery, or my disconnect from his day-to-day world, but it wasn’t until The Hardest Way To Make An Easy Living that I realized Skinner was, and is, a master of narrative. He captures a mood, a scene, a time and place perfectly. And his sense of mischief is alright, too.

I swore Meligrove Band were going to take over the world with Planets Conspire and I listened to this album non-stop when it came out. I was wrong. It turns out people didn’t really want the sort of smart rock-pop Meligrove Band… or Golden Dogs… or to a slightly lesser degree Sam Roberts and The Dears… were making this year. I have some theories why that is, but that’s a conversation that’s more for barrooms than blogs.

If I had to redo this Top Ten list today — which I’m sort of doing — the clear #1 would be My Brightest Diamond’s Bring Me The Workhorse. Dramatic, beautiful, sad, unique, I still listen to the various songs from this album regularly. I’ve never read or researched much about its themes or the songs meanings. Instead I’ve spent all these years trying to piece them together myself. But I don’t try too hard. It’s more about imagining what the various songs are about rather than definitively figuring them out.

Nominally you could put Tokyo Police Club in that same group thematically as Meligrove Band and Golden Dogs. In hindsight it turns out I only like that robot song.

I’m not religious. Or particularly spiritual. And about the closest I get to either is the sort of admiration I have for acts like Woven Hand and its leader David Eugene Edwards as expressed through fiery intense songs like those found on Mosaic. Upon relistening to Mosaic it’s not really a Top Ten album. The idea of Edwards bellowing away his demons continues to hold a certain romance, though.

CSS? I still love “Art Bitch” and casually reference that song all the time, but it’s otherwise a forgotten album for me nowadays.

Other album lists…

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Tagged as A Lesson In Crime, Aaron's top albums, Aaron's top albums 2006, best albums, best albums 2006, Bring Me The Workhorse, Cansei De Ser Sexy, Chemical City, CSS, Gang Of Losers, Meligrove Band, Mosaic, Music, My Brightest Diamond, Planets Conspire, Recollections, Sam Roberts, The Crane Wife, The Dears, The Decemberists, The Golden Dogs Big Eye Little Eye, The Hardest Way To Make An Easy Living, The Streets, Tokyo Police Club, Top albums, Top albums 2006, Woven Hand

by Aaron Brophy | January 4, 2013 · 2:17 am

Dirty Ghosts Tops Aaron’s Top 10 Albums Of 2012

Dirty Ghosts

This is my official Top 10 album list for 2012:

1. Dirty Ghosts Metal Moon

Most conventional modern “rock” music is horrible. This is not, and Metal Moon reminds me of all the best moments of gal-fronted rock from the last 30 years (Hole, The Pretenders, Toronto, Pat Benatar, PJ Harvey, etc) and some dudely bands like Thin Lizzy, too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWofdi6fLXY

2. Lee Fields Faithful Man

There’ve been some great moments in this post-Amy Winehouse, post-Sharon Jones old soul revival, but few match the ascension of an actual old soul guy, Lee Fields. You know how when you hear a classic, like say James Brown’s “It’s A Man’s, Man’s, Man’s World” and you go, “Damn, I wish there was more music like that”? This, is that music.

3. Lana Del Rey Born To Die

People hate on Lana for her live performance and lips and gimmick-ness, but damn if this isn’t a conceptually perfect album with its broken Lolita lounge singer vibe.

4. Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats Blood Lust

There are many bands — mostly really bad metal bands — who claim they’re making really evil sounding music. Unfortunately, most of the time what they’re making isn’t evil so much as it’s extreme noise poop with unintelligible vocals. Uncle Acid, though, he’s one bad dude and you can tell straight away when you hear him.

5. D-Sisive Jonestown 3: The Dream Is Over

It took me awhile to give in and admit I really liked this album. Mostly this was because I’m friends with D-Sisive and didn’t want to appear too homer. But the truth is it’s a brilliant, moving album and the bummer singalong “When We Die We Die Together” is one of the hardest hitting songs I’ve ever heard.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4EEjWCQ4pg

6. Hooded Fang Tosta Mista

Imagine a bunch of Weezer nerds trying to pretend they’re a Cramps cover band. That’s what this is and it’s great.

7. Christopher Douglas Smith Earning Keep

Every year I seem to have one unexpected late-year creeper that slowly makes its way into my life and this year it’s Earning Keep. This is a subtle, haunting record that yields new finds with each listen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6uMatm0IJk

8. The Flaming Lips And Heady Fwends

I generally have low expectations for weird collaborative projects like this, but there’s something so perfectly off-kilter about this album that it won me over. The combination of Ke$ha, Biz Markie and Flaming Lips on the opening track can’t be underestimated in helping turn the tide.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8neLIVmCdq4

9. Neil Young Psychedelic Pill

Psychedelic Pill isn’t so much an amazing Neil Young album so much as it’s an amazing Neil Young echo. This record, anchored by three mega-guitar jams, reminds me of all the things I really like about Neil Young records and that’s why it makes this list.

10. A Tribe Called Red A Tribe Called Red

I love the idea of this album, but I’m just a touch less hot on the actual record. That’s not meant to be a backhand compliment so much as it’s the expression of some sort of cosmic desire to see ATCR’s electric powwow vibe get articulated in some perfect world-conquering way. This album isn’t quite there, but it’s close enough to make the list.

Other album lists…

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Tagged as A Tribe Called Red, Aaron's top albums, Aaron's top albums 2012, best albums, best albums 2012, Christopher Douglas Smith, D-Sisive, Dirty Ghosts, Hooded Fang, Lana Del Rey, Lee Fields, Music, Neil Young, The Flaming Lips, Top albums, Top albums of 2012, Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats

by Aaron Brophy | December 22, 2012 · 11:44 pm

Aaron’s Top Albums Of 2005

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club

This is my official Top 10 album list for 2005:

1. Black Rebel Motorcycle Club Howl
2. Kid Dakota The West Is The Future
3. Magnolia Electric Co What Comes After The Blues
4. The Raveonettes Pretty In Black
5. Mando Diao Hurricane Bar
6. The Bees Free The Bees
7. The Coral The Invisible Invasion
8. Dead Meadows Feathers
9. Buck 65 Secret House Against The World
10. Ladytron The Witching Hour

When I look back on this list I find it very satisfying because I still like almost everything on it. It’s the order that’s probably imperfect.

Looking back, putting Black Rebel Motorcycle Club‘s Howl at number one feels a bit like an act of style over substance. I mean, at the time they were super-cool, and still are to me, but Howl, the album, is one I rarely go back to despite having a number of great songs on it. In hindsight, this is probably a low top ten choice now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NI27q3xNyI

Kid Dakota‘s The West Is The Future remains a brilliant, magnetic work for me. This dark narrative album takes you on a number of journeys — all articulated with thematic album art by Will Schaff — which leave you more than just a little bit unsettled. I’m not sure why Kid Dakota has remained so relatively unknown. Maybe it’s having recorded on small labels, maybe how intense the songs are (it’s clear to me most people don’t like intense… unless it’s by Bruce Springsteen or Thom Yorke), nonetheless, this album deserves to be heard. (Also, while writing this Sarah just reminded me that we once had a theory that this was Bill Priddle having secretly recorded a “crazy” album to free himself from his past.)

My love for Jason Molina’s music is well documented on this site and Magnolia Electric Co‘s What Comes After The Blues dutifully filled that spot in my heart for something new from him at the time. I know these songs off by heart from having listened to this album and the various live bootlegs of it non-stop, but it’s not the MEC/Songs: Ohia album I reach for first despite having songs I adore like “Hard To Love A Man,” “The Night Shift Lullaby” and “Northstar Blues.” Maybe it’s so much in me I don’t need to listen to it all the time.

Man, between The Raveonettes, BRMC, & MEC there was a lot of magic records happening at this time. I’ve definitely cooled on The Raveonettes recent recordings but this remains a pretty solid set.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcqeZuDnCf0

If there’s anyone on this list that gets the Rodney Dangerfield no-respect treatment it’d be Mando Diao and their Hurricane Bar album. In fact, it wasn’t until writing this that I even realized I hadn’t imported the album into my iTunes. That’s probably a fair indicator that Hurricane Bar should be lower than it is, but something in the back of my head says no. I’m going to listen to it right now and consider it… annnd… alright, in a post-Strokes world it’s still pretty great. And because I haven’t listened to it in so long it’s like discovering a new album.

The Bees Free The Bees. The world is stupid for not knowing and loving this band and “Chicken Payback” is the best rock ‘n’ roll dance/party/Animal House song of the last 10 years. With a brilliant video that pre-dates “Gangnam Style” by years.

I still really like The Coral and feel they’ve made some amazing singles over the course of their discography, but I’m less invested in The Invisible Invasion than I used to be. I think perhaps my love of this album had something to do with grasping at the last wave of great Brit-pop and yearning for those days of Oasis, Blur, Supergrass and the like.

Dead Meadows Feathers. I don’t really feel this album any more. This one’s clearly a trend record that got lumped in-between BRMC and Raveonettes. I haven’t ripped it into my iTunes either and feel far less urgency to do so. I still like “At Her Open Door’ though.

Is Buck 65 still underground? He works at the CBC after all. And he was on a major label. That’s probably technically above-ground, but he still remains remarkably bold and avant. Secret House Against The World
is the album he made with Tortoise while in that I-hate-hip-hop period he had. The album has aged incredibly well and I still enjoy listening to it, but some of his future experiments were even more interesting to me, so this one suffers a bit not against its 2005 competition, but against Buck’s own discography.

When Ladytron first broke they were the shit with their coquette Depeche Mode thing. For The Witching Hour they dropped that act for a Sisters Of Mercy-girl goth electro thing. This hits a lot of my buttons, but upon relistening the songs aren’t quite there and if I had to redo this list this album would be at risk of being bumped.

Other album lists…

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Tagged as A Band Of Bees, Aaron's top albums, Aaron's top albums 2005, best album, best albums 2005, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club Howl, BRMC, BRMC Howl, Buck 65, Buck 65 Secret House Against The World, Dead Meadow, Dead Meadow Feathers, Kid Dakota, Ladytron, Ladytron The Witching Hour, Magnolia Electric Co., Mando Diao, Mando Diao Hurricane Bar, Music, Recollections, The Bees, The Bees Free The Bees, The Coral, The Coral The Invisible Invasion, The Raveonettes, The Raveonettes Pretty In Black, The West Is The Future, Top albums, top albums 2005, Top albums of 2005, What Comes After The Blues

by Aaron Brophy | January 2, 2012 · 3:12 am

Timber Timbre Bests Aaron’s Top 10 Albums Of 2011

Timber Timbre

This is my official Top 10 album list for 2011:

1. Timber Timbre Creep On Creepin’ On

“Black Water” was my most listened to song this year. Not sure what that says about me.

2. PJ Harvey Let England Shake

It took me awhile to “get” Let England Shake. The song that did it was “In Dark Places.”

3. Chad VanGaalen Diaper Island

If you told me at the start of the year that CVG would create my third-most favourite album of 2011 I’d have eaten my shoe. It’s a good thing I don’t hang around with fortune tellers. This is “Blonde Hash”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJqg3fKNVLI

4. Austra Feel It Break

Everybody’s all about Austra’s electro-dance-witch-goth vibe. I’m on it, too, but the song on this album that really got me was the spooky piano ballad “The Beast.”

5. Lykke Li Wounded Rhymes

“I Follow Rivers” is heavy.

6. Young Galaxy Shapeshifting

This album was a bold experiment and it completely worked. This is “Peripheral Visionairies”

7. Herpes Symptome und Beschwerden

This is the exact real world manifestation of what I believe the nihilists from The Big Lebowski would sound like. I understand absolutely none of what’s being said in “Das Karnickel im Hut.”

8. D-Sisive Run With The Creeps

The more caustic, outsider and marginalized D-Sisive gets, the more pointed his music becomes. P.S. I found that GG Allin doll, D!

9. Raphael Saadiq Stone Rollin’

There are at least three songs on this record that are genuinely magic. “Movin’ Down The Line (Don’t You Go Away)” is one of them.

10. Destroyer Kaputt

This one’s a personal shocker because I’ve always hated Dan Bejar until this album. I appreciated the audacity of a yacht rock almost-concept record, though. And “Chinatown” is pretty groovy.

Other album lists…

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Tagged as Aaron's top albums, Aaron's Top albums 2011, Austra, best albums, best albums 2011, Chad VanGaalen, Creep On Creepin' On, Culture, D-Sisive, Destroyer, Diaper Island, Feel It Break, Herpes, Kaputt, Let England Shake, Lykke Li, Music, PJ Harvey, Run With The Creeps, Shapeshifting, Symptome und Beschwerden, Timber Timbre, Top albums, top albums 2011, Top albums of 2011, Wounded Rhymes, Young Galaxy

Tag Archives: Aaron’s top albums

Aaron’s Top Albums Of 1996

Aaron’s Top Albums Of 2006

Dirty Ghosts Tops Aaron’s Top 10 Albums Of 2012

Aaron’s Top Albums Of 2005

Timber Timbre Bests Aaron’s Top 10 Albums Of 2011

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Aaron’s Top Albums Of 1996

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