My Desert Island Top 10, Round 2

So not too long ago, I posted "My Desert Island Top 10".  The idea was taken from Tower Records's now-defunct magazine, "Pulse".  They invited readers to imagine that they were stranded on a desert island, and you could only take ten albums with you.  Which ones would you take?

I posted my ten, but, being me, I could not take just ten.  So I decided to include a second round of another ten albums.  The rule I made for myself is that I could not include any album from any band that I have already reviewed on this blog.

I invite you to include your top 10 on the comments section, or on my Facebook page.

Well, here it goes, in no particular order:

Catherine Wheel

1.  Catherine Wheel "Chrome" - Back in the early '90s, I didn't know what "shoegaze" was.  I only knew that, even though this band rocked hard, there was something about them that reminded me of Cocteau Twins.  This band alternated between soft verses and explosive choruses.  Their guitars had a swirly quality, something ethereal about them.  It has been said that bands like Death Cab For Cutie and Interpol would not exist without the influence that Catherine Wheel had on them.  The main single off this album is "Crank", a delicious ode to meth consumption and the lack of sleep that accomapies usage.  The whole album is good, but my favorites are "Broken Head", "Pain", and "The Nude".  I tried out other albums, but they never had the same feel as this one.  I have heard that their debut album is good, but I have never heard it.  I will have to check it out.  But for now, this album is their opus.  It is one that I never get sick of no  matter how many times I listen to it.

Sons & Daughters

2.  Sons & Daughters "This Gift" -  I have this standing private joke that my musical tastes are identical to actor Elijah Wood.  I usually wind up liking bands that he has promoted, except that I wind up liking them three years later.  Such was the case  with bands like Sigur Rós, Modest Mouse, Gogol Bordello.  Sons & Daughters, a quartet from Scotland was no different.  I was saddened to hear last November that they had broken up.  We were just barely getting to know them, with only a few albums and a couple of EPs.  I discovered this band while I was working in South Carolina in 2009.  This album stayed on constant rotation on my phone.  It is raw and stripped down - a hint of rockabilly and a heavy dash of '60s psychedelia.  This is The Smiths with a hangover and a pissed-off lady singer.  My favorite songs are "Gilt Complex", "Split Lips", the title track, and "House In My Head", which sounds like it could be from Throwing Muses' early album "House Tornado".  A great listen.

Tori Amos

3.  Tori Amos "Scarlet's Walk" -  Tori Amos is an artist that I listened to from the beginning.  I was introduced to her work when I was in college in Utah when her first album, "Little Earthquakes", came out.  After that, I didn't follow her work that closely.  Mainly because at age 25, I isolated myself by moving onto my ranch with no power.  I had no computer, no internet, no TV, no way of learning about new music except by occasional magazine or trip to a record store in Phoenix.  I did listen to a bit of 1996's "Boys For Pele".  In 2001, my brother-in-law ordered "Scarlet's Walk" from a CD mail-order thing, and he didn't like it.  He asked me if I wanted it, and I said yes.  Who am I to turn down free music?  I took the CD to my office and drove my coworkers nuts by playing this CD over and over and over.  Like most of Tori's albums, it is dominated by her sweet voice and her piano playing.  She has described herself as "the Little Mermaid on acid", and this description seems to fit.  This is a concept album that tracks her roadtrip across the United States.  There are the sparkling pop songs like "A Sorta Fairytale" and "Taxi Ride"  But it is the other songs that speak to me.  I love the otherworldly softness of the title track as well as "Carbon", "Virginia", and especially "Gold Dust".  This is my favorite Tori album.  I have a few friends who are rabid Tori fans, and they are appalled that "Scarlet's Walk" is my favorite when there are other apparently better albums.  But as I have described, it is totally circumstantial that this is the album I have been exposed to.  But I don't think anything would change what this album means to me.

Sonic Youth's 1986 album "EVOL"

4.  Sonic Youth "EVOL" - I almost picked their 1990 album "Goo", because, musically, I think it is better, and I listened to it much more than I did their third album, "EVOL", which was released in 1986.  I picked "EVOL", because this album changed so much of how I view music and art.  In the '90s, everyone knew who Sonic Youth was.  They even had a shout-out in the movie "Juno" as the go-to band for aging hipsters.  But I can honestly say that I was into this band before most people even knew who they were, back when they were playing small clubs.  I had heard of them, because they came to Arizona a lot.  The 1995 greatest hits collection, "Screaming Fields of Sonic Love" even has an old flyer in the liner notes of one of their shows at Phoenix's Mason Jar.  This was a venue where I have seen many, many live acts and had some good times.  So I was sixteen years old and had seen the flyers.  I knew they were on the SST Record Label, which included bands like Meat Puppets and Black Flag.  I assumed that they were a hardcore band, so I bought it.  I didn't know what they were - a white wash of noise, a wall of distortion that didn't seem to make any sense.  They were avant-garde, but they weren't punk.  I didn't know what they were.  This was a bit before the term "alternative" was on everyone's lips, so these guys were way ahead of their time.  Soon, these guys exploded onto the scene.  My favorite is still "Shadow of a Doubt" which is a subtle song featuring lyrics whispered by Kim Gordon.  Other favorites are "Expressway to Yr Skull" and "Star Power".  This is a very nostalgic record.

Tool

5.  Tool "Lateralus" - Tool is the perfect example of my opinion that rock music can be just as complex, emotive and artistically relevant as classical music.  I hope that 100 years from now that works like this will be lauded as much as we revere classical masterpieces today.  This is a progressive magnum opus that ranges from tentative and tender to hard, raw and ugly, all of it tied together with crafted filigrees of artful noise.  Whether it is the strange, off-kilter rhythms of "Schism" to spacey themes of "The Grudge", "Eon Blue Apocalypse", and the staccato interplay between guitar and Maynard J. Keenan's mournful voice in "The Patient", it is evident that this is not your ordinary, run-of-the-proverbial-mill heavy metal.  This is art rock.  Back in the day, heavy metal bands donned pentagrams and flashed their "devil horns" in your face, claiming a sort of theatrical satanism.  Tool is truly a band that delves into the occult, the hidden geometry and sacred psychology found in the universe that is our human experience.  This is a serious album.  If you have not see the YouTube video that illustrates Tool's use of mathematics and the Fibonacci sequence in the song "Lateralus", it is a must see.  This is much more than rock music.  This is a celebration of the mysteries.

Hugo Largo

6.  Hugo Largo "Drum" - This EP was very important to me in my high school years.  This was definitely art rock.  The arrangement was very minimalist - two bass guitars, one violin, and the swooping vocals of Mimi Goese, with her vivid poetry and bizarre enunciation.  The music is languid and slow, drawing influence from Southern Blues.  Their debut EP was produced by Michael Stipe from R.E.M.  In fact, he sings background on a couple of songs on here - including a rapidly shouted poem on "Eureka".  In fact, I saw R.E.M. twice in huge venues in Arizona.  During both intermissions, Michael Stipe would emerge onto the stage, tired and sweaty, singing powerful a capella songs.  I was one of the few who recognized those songs as Hugo Largo songs.  It was like being included in a well-kept secret.  The best songs on here are "Grow Wild", "Scream Tall", and "Country".  Following this EP, which was released in 1988, they came up with one album, "Mettle", which was really good, but then they sadly broke up.  I have always wondered and wished that they would return.  The most that happened was that Mimi Goese sang vocals on a couple of songs by Moby in the '90s.  This album is what true alternative was really about - unlike anything that was playing on the radio back then.

Arcade Fire

7.  Arcade Fire "Funeral" -  There is a reason that this band has been declared a favorite by such artists as Coldplay's Chris Martin as well as David Bowie.  They are the coolest music to come out of French Canada.  (Sorry, Celine.)  The reason is their unique sound.  This band is known to unfold layer after layer of sounds in their music, using complex arrangements of unique instruments like pianos, violins. cellos, xylophones, French horns, harps, accordions, and and hurdy-gurdies.  The result is a richly textured sound accented by Win Butler's wavery Talking Heads-like vocals balanced by Regine Chassagne's lush voice, singing often in French.  I have all of their albums, and think that they are all really good.  But I keep coming back to their 2004.  Every song has me grooving, including the four-part "Neighborhood" arrangements.  The best songs are the wistful "Haiti", featuring Chassagne singing about the troubled nation, and "Rebellion (Lies)" where Arcade Fire does what they do best - introducing a simple melody and then building upon it and building upon it until it turns into a rousing anthem.  The new album is supposed to come out next month.  I am excited and will definitely be writing a review.  I have already downloaded the first single, "Reflektor".  If the rest of the album is as good as this song, then it promises to be excellent.

R.E.M.

8.  R.E.M. "Life's Rich Pageant" - My introduction to alternative music took place around 1984 at the tender age of 14.  My older brother came back from college, and, without his knowledge, I raided his box of cassettes that included some mixes of what was called - not "alternative music" - but "college radio music", because college radio stations were the only ones playing this kind of music back then - The Cure, New Order, Depeche Mode, and a little jangle pop song called "Radio Free Europe" by a band from Athens, Georgia called R.E.M.  I was hooked.  All this culminated in 1987, my senior year in high school, when Rolling Stone featured the boys on the cover with the caption:  "The Best Band in the World".  I had arrived.  My music was finally relevant.  Soon after, they left their IRS label and went big time.  I followed them for a couple of albums, but mostly lost interest after that.  For me, their heyday was the '80s when the took '60s psychedelia and made it their own.  1986's "Life's Rich Pageant" is still their best album to me.  Every song gets my fingers tapping from the rocking start "Begin the Begin" to the end, a cover called "Superman".  (I always liked Mike Mill's voice better than Michael Stipes's.)  There are tons of good gems on this one - the nonsensical "Fall On Me" and the nostalgic "These Days" and "Cuyahoga".  "The Flowers of Guatemala" is a nod to Simon & Garfunkel, and the acoustic "Swan Swan H" is a throwback to my wannabe hippie days.  The thing that I love about this album is how timeless it is; it is still relevant.

TV On The Radio

9.  TV On The Radio "Dear Science" - This band from Brooklyn is one of those groups that defies description, being insanely original.  There are certainly elements of jazz, funk, and R&B - especially on songs like "Crying", "Dancing" and "Red Dress", and they are known to erect walls of noise like Sonic Youth.  But by and large the music on their third album is hard to pin down.  They belong to the prestigious 4AD label, which is known to discover unique talent.  I am going to go out on a limb here - there is quite a bit of the music here that reminds me of This Mortal Coil, the collaborative showcase band created by 4AD founder, Ivo Watts-Russell.  It makes me wonder how much of it is his influence.  I hear it in "Halfway Home" - which is by far my favorite song.  It starts out with a funky beat, but ends up in an angelic wash of noise.  I also hear it in the ghostly "Family Tree".  One of my favorites is "DLZ" which was featured in the 2nd Season of Breaking Bad as the music when Walter White first makes the transition from concerned dad to bad guy.  It was fitting music.

Nickel Creek

10.  Nickel Creek "Nickel Creek" - Here is a strange thing - I am not a fan of country music in general, although there are some country artists that I like.  But I love, love bluegrass.  In the year 2000, I was at my sister's house flipping through the channels and came across a video on CMT for Nickel Creek's "When You Come Back Down".  I wan entranced.  It reminded me of music that I loved, like Cowboy Junkies.  I went and bought the album.  This CD made the rounds around my family, and, when I say family, I mean the whole extended family, even my dad.  In the year before his passing, he listened to this album often.  For me, they were not only a bluegrass band, but a cool bluegrass band that did covers by Collective Soul and Pavement.  It is amazing what you can do with a mandolin, a fiddle, an acoustic guitar, and some exquisite harmonies.  My favorite songs are "Out of the Woods", "Reasons Why", and "The Hand Song".  It was sad when this band broke up, but the members are still busy.  Chris Thile still does some intricate plucking on his mandolin, even doing classical pieces for live audiences.  Sara and Sean Watkins often perform with Glen Phillips from Toad the Wet Sprocket, another one of my favorite bands.