2 Albums for Every Year I've Been Alive (Part I)

1985 to 2005

A couple years back, over the course of a few weeks or so I made a playlist where I picked 6 albums from every year I have been alive. This was a sort-of tweaked version of a similar thing that had been happening on Twitter at the time, but I couldn’t resist cranking the number of albums up from like four to six.

Anyway, I got the idea that I should revisit this idea in Substack format, and tighten up the list. As you might realize, this is the kind of activity where the output likely would change from day-to-day. Having to narrow this down to two albums for each year led to some tough decisions - how does one pick between Grandaddy, Stereolab and Built to Spill in 1997? Have you seen the list of albums that came out in 1999? It’s insanely stacked.

That said, these aren’t all picked for the same reasons - they aren’t exclusively the “best albums of the year(s)” or records with “deep personal meaning”, even if many of them do hold something special within me. Mainly, it’s records I love to listen to, or in many cases artists who unlocked something in me that expanded my musical horizons.

Anyway, here’s part one in a two part series: two albums from every year since my birth in 1985. What albums would be on your list?

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1985

Strawberry Switchblade - Strawberry Switchblade

Strawberry Switchblade was maybe the easiest album to pick for this entire list. I just love everything about the tone and vibe going on. It's synth pop, it's got gothic undertones, dream pop elements, and a whole lot of other textures at play (even some pastoral elements on closer "Being Cold.")

The Boogie Boys - City Life

The Boogie Boys' 1985 debut City Life has some insaaaaaaanely dope sampling (wiki namechecks "high end systems such as Synclavier, Fairlight, an Emulator and Synergy.") There's some super inventive sampling sounds going on here. If you can get past the songs being a bit repetitive and simplistic from a lyrical standpoint there's a lot to dig here from a groove/beat standpoint.

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1986

XTC - Skylarking

Mummer would likely be my pick for favourite XTC album to include on a list like this, but hey, I wasn’t alive in 1983. Here, XTC finished their full-on turn into pastoral psych pop while retaining their new wave roots. It doesn’t have the weird highs of Mummer, but it’s a phenomenal album.

Prince - Parade

I’ve never been a huge Prince listener, though I’ve always appreciated their work across many albums. I can’t remember how I got turned on to Parade, which is technically a soundtrack for Under the Cherry Moon, but it’s brilliant art-pop through and through.

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1987

The Mice - Scooter

This is one of those underrated and overlooked records that doesn’t seem to get brought up nearly enough, but then you listen to it and you hear all the bands that it inspired over the decades in its wake and realize how influential it really must be. If you like power pop, indie rock, pop punk, jangle pop and more, this is your ticket.

Holy Moses - Finished With the Dogs

Capital "F" ferocious vocals from Sabina Classen on this thrash metal record with a lot of hardcore attitude. The drum performance here too is fucking wild. The riffing at first glance might feel a little standard, they're wickedly tight though and there's enough change ups and lead licks tossed in at lightning speed to make things sound impressive across the board.

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1988

They Might Be Giants - Lincoln

TMBG are a band where I could have included at least 3 or 4 of their albums on this list, but I had to pick one and that one will always be Lincoln for me.

Razor - Violent Restitution

Absolutely enormous, SHIT HOT thrash!!!! Has a chainsaw solo on "Taste the Floor". Need I say more?

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1989

Beastie Boys - Paul’s Boutique

Beastie Boys are another tough one… just which album should I choose? They were instrumental in broadening my musical tastes in high school beyond exclusively listening to indie rock or punk. Sure, Check Your Head was the soundtrack to many-a-nights of aimless driving around in my home town, but the innovativeness of Boutique won out this time.

The Wedding Present - Bizarro

I feel like Seamonsters is always the album getting brought up when it comes to The Wedding Present. For whatever reason, Bizarro was the album that connected with me first and foremost, and while I like Seamonsters and love Steve Albini's production work, there's an energy to this record that I find really addictive. More post-punk throwback acts should be aping from Bizarro’s playbook.

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1990

Megadeth - Rust in Peace

Metalli-who? Forgive me for the hot take, but Megadeth will forever be the band that convinced me of the greatness of thrash. Even early Metallica records bore me these days, but Rust In Peace remains a masterpiece to me. Riffs on riffs on riffs.

Fastbacks - Very, Very Powerful Motor

Despite being a band that seemingly struggled to release records that are top-to-bottom masterpieces, across 9 records and 37 years they’ve released enough phenomenal pop tunes to bury most bands. Tough to choose between this and Zücker, but “In The Summer” seals the deal.

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1991

Dark Angel - Time Does Not Heal

When I made my playlist for this experiment previously, my 1991 picks included acts like Superchunk, Del the Funky Homosapien, The Jesus Lizard, Gang Starr, and Treepeople. That’s a heavy list of hard to beat records from some of my all-time favourite artists. So when an album I have only heard within the last year or two lands here, it’s a big deal for me. Megadeth sold me on thrash metal, and Time Does Not Heal turned me into an obsessive.

This is the thickest slab of riffs you will ever hear. It’s not a concise work, it stretches riff density to its breaking point. 7 to 9 minute songs packed to the gills with riffing. You could drown in the riffs on this album. It’s technical, with stops and starts and twists and turns, but across monumental song structures. It beats you into a pulp slowly, with precision. I love it.

Fear of God - Within the Veil

When Détente broke up, vocalist Dawn Crosby went on to form Fear of God and put all of their emotions into this mix of gothic rock and various metal subgenres (particularly standard heavy metal plus thrash and doom elements.) Their haunting vocal performance is all over this album, from spoken word to wailing, soaring vocals and to venomous, tormented spitting and screaming. It's phenomenal and one of the most unique metal albums of the 90s I've heard in a while. On the surface, the instrumentals aren't game changing but the various genres of rock and metal are toyed with in just such a way that it feels truly unique to me.

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1992

Jawbreaker - Bivouac

24 Hour Revenge Therapy may be the first album that comes to mind when I think of my favourite Jawbreaker records, but Bivouac represents a stylistic crossroads that makes it a sleeper hit. I love albums where you can hear where a band is coming from, and where they are about to go, and the mix of jet black bleakness with a nudge towards where 24 Hour Revenge Therapy was about to land just connects with me.

Gang Starr - Daily Operation

You know when people say a movie got the Academy Award because of an artist’s entire output and not because of the specific movie at hand? Well, I love this record but in some ways that is what I am doing here. In an ideal world, I’d have Step Into the Arena in the 1991 spot, but those two albums are just too important for me personally. Daily Operation is phenomenal too, and possibly one of their more underrated records? It’s too long - it’s a hip hop album from the 90s after all - but the simplicity of DJ Premier’s beat work betrays a depth that few other beatmakers in the world of hip hop can reach.

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1993

Eric’s Trip - Love Tara

Up here in the Great White North, this is a stone cold classic Canadian sad-sack break-up record. Julie Doiron would eventually go on to a great solo career, and bands like Elevator (aka Elevator to Hell) and Moon Socket splintered off of the Trip. This is basically Canada’s Rumours, as you’ll read a lot about how Julie Doiron and Rick White broke up after being signed to Sub Pop records, the tension of which can be heard woven throughout these 15 slacker lo-fi indie tracks.

Girls Against Boys - Venus Luxure No. 1 Baby

A phenomenal execution of groove and mood, fully weaponizing the two-bass attack that made them so intriguing. On later albums they could crumble beneath the weight of having poor lyrics but it doesn't really matter on this album. I really enjoy a lot of their catalogue but this is their best top to bottom, even if the slower songs threaten to derail the whole ordeal.

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1994

Digable Planets - Blowout Comb

The kind of artistically potent and challenging follow-up to a surprise smash hit that cult followings are made of. This record had very little support when it came out, did not have a smash hit single like "Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat)", and in general feels a bit more impenetrable for average listeners. Listeners with patience though, were rewarded. One of the all-time great “hang out” albums. You want to soak in the atmosphere of sampled and organic performances and the even more directly political lyricism.

Drive Like Jehu - Yank Crime

1994 was a very hard year to narrow down, particular making the choice to not include There’s Nothing Wrong with Love by Built to Spill. But while that album has multiple seminal connections to my musical listening habits, Yank Crime is overwhelming in its enormity. This is an album that I have loved ever since I heard it in College, but now takes on a heartbreaking connotation with the passing of Rick Froberg. This is an album I listen to and get overwhelmed with emotion, wondering how just a few people could create something so enormous, so impressive, so abrasively beautiful.

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1995

Green Day - Insomniac

Insomniac is a better album than Dookie in every single way. Fight me.

Elliott Smith - Elliott Smith

I don’t have much new to say about this record that hasn’t already been said. I love Either/Or but this record is just perfection.

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1996

CAKE - Fashion Nugget

One of the best, most misunderstood bands of the 90s. You ever read the Allmusic review of this record? Sheeeesh. People who claim their whole deal was “irony” or that they were “smirking” are probably telling more about themselves than the band.

Unwound - Repetition

Along with Karate, Unwound are one of the bands I’ve loved seeing get a second life the most. Both acts I first heard in College, and both bands blew me away. Seeing their work re-released, re-collected and re-discovered by a new generation of listeners has been amazing. Repetition would be my choice to introduce people to the music of Unwound, even over their universally praised Leaves Turn Inside You.

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1997

Stereolab - Dots & Loops

My introduction to Stereolab was Emperor Tomato Ketchup, and I enjoyed the album but it was one that I struggled with for years. It wasn’t until I heard Mars Audiac Quintet and Dots & Loops that their discography was unlocked in my brain. The latter in particular is a personal high water mark of their discography; in part more “indietronica” in texture than past records, but still built on a foundation of space age pop and lounge music. Shaken, not stirred.

Tie: Grandaddy - Under the Western Freeway / Built to Spill - Keep it Like a Secret

OK, I have to break my rule here. These albums are just too seminal for me personally to be able to choose between one or the other. Grandaddy opened me up to a whole world of “bedroom” style music, where everything is a beautiful patchwork of sounds that somehow create something catchy or moving. Built to Spill broke me out of my exclusively punk rock record collection after hearing “Stab” for the first time, and Keep it Like a Secret was the perfect mix of their indie-pop and wide-screen guitar heroics.

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1998

Dillinger Four - Midwestern Songs of the Americas

The album that launched a thousand bands. No other band had so deftly mixed poppy melody and punk cacophony before this record. “Orgcore” wouldn’t exist without this album, and a legion of bearded, flanneled beer soaked dudes wouldn’t have started their bands. What I love about this album is how versatile it is. There’s a sloppy, poppy thread in their music that you could link as clearly to something like Superchunk as easily as you could to Descendents or other pop punk elders.

Melt-Banana - Charlie

I’ve used the word “seminal” a lot here, but Melt-Banana are another band that held the key to my ability to appreciate a new genre. Before Charlie, I did not understand how something so noisy and experimental could also be… catchy? Melodic? Agata’s guitar work might as well have been beamed down from Mars, it sounded so foreign to me. And I was hooked.

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1999

Kool Keith - Black Elvis / Lost in Space

Keith has a volume problem. They’ve released 39 solo albums since Sex Style in 1997. But when they hit - like last year’s Serpent - they hit. Black Elvis was an early victory lap after the success of Dr. Octagonecologyst and First Come, First Served and the first record where Keith self-produced entirely (or nearly entirely.) The sci-fi themes serve as perfect background for Keith’s outrageous lyricism.

Blink-182 - Enema of the State

Talk to me when I was younger, and I would have told you the only Blink-182 album I cared about was Dude Ranch. I had a bit of a chip on my shoulder about this one and its leveled-up, slick radio-ready pop tunes. But eventually, I embraced what is pretty much nothing but pop banger after banger after banger. Deserves its spot on the Mt. Rushmore of pop punk.

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2000

The Appleseed Cast - Mare Vitalis

In one album The Appleseed Cast went from a Sunny Day Real Estate-meets-Mineral style emo act, to something a bit more intriguing. Emo flirted with post-rock dramatics a lot in the late-90s and early 2000s, but no one used both genre’s strengths together as well as on Mare Vitalis.

Fugazi - The Argument

Honestly, dark horse contender for best album by the band. It’s interesting to me because I feel like their earlier work is more loudly celebrated, but looking at Rate Your Music average-scores, this is easily their highest rated. So maybe not a dark horse pick at all? Part of me wonders how much the love for this album has grown in hind sight compared to the conventional wisdom of their best records being from the 90s?

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2001

Propagandhi - Today’s Empires, Tomorrow’s Ashes

I love Propagandhi so much that any of their albums could be included on this list, maybe aside from their debut LP (which I like, but just doesn’t hold up as much as the work they went on to produce.) The band morphed from snotty punk to punky thrash so gradually and effectively. As I got more interested in thrash and metal, my love and appreciation for this band’s wildly consistent discography grew incredibly fast.

Ted Leo and the Pharmacists - The Tyranny of Distance

For years, my answer to the “what album would you bring if you ended up on a desert island” question was The Tyranny of Distance and you know what? Most days… might still be.

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2002

Koufax - Social Life

Another record that springs to mind when I think of “underrated” bands. I wrote about this album years ago, and it remains in my listening rotation to this day. In high school, this was the bridge between my emo bands and the indie rock music listened to by my friend group and my gateway into music by Koufax’s inspirations (Elvis Costello & The Attractions, Ric Okasek and Joe Jackson.)

The Streets - Original Pirate Material

I had no idea what to do with this album when I first heard it, because I didn’t listen to garage, didn’t really listen to much hip hop, and wasn’t a British working class 20 year old. But it grabbed me slowly, and eventually became one of my most listened to albums in my own 20s.

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2003

Ween - Quebec

Ween were a band that I hated before I loved. And then I moved on to qualifiers (“oh, I like their stuff post-Pure Guava”). I’ve grown in appreciation of their early stuff, but their run from 1994 through 2003 is pretty wild. Quebec is a great representation of both how weird and amusing the band could be, as well as their ability to craft straight up brilliant songs. In particular, their flirting with prog on this record is great.

Four Tet - Rounds

“Hands” cracked my brain open the first time I heard it.

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2004

These Arms are Snakes - Oxeneers or the Lion Sleeps When Its Antelope Go Home

TAAS are another band that I feel like have a weird reputation. They’re associated with the “sass” genre and bands like The Blood Brothers but they really don’t fit snugly there. In fact I would say they are much more a post-hardcore, art punk and noise rock band than anything else. Their three albums and debut EP are all phenomenal.

Skalpel - Skalpel

The first time I heard Skalpel, I thought they were an actual jazz group. It was probably around the summer of 2005 when I first pressed play on their self-titled record. This wasn't the electronic music that I was used to, as Skalpel kept things airy, organic, and at times unruly; it was refreshingly primal, in many ways. Truly a gem!

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2005

Headphones - Headphones

This has long been one of my favourite things that David Bazan ever put out.

Bear vs. Shark - Terrorhawk

Another band that burned out bright, releasing 2 records and then peaced out. This was critically really well received at the time, but I feel like people never really knew what to do with the band. Are they post-hardcore? Are they indie-rock? Are they emo? They don’t fit into any one place, but both records are just a true delight.

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Onward to Part II:

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That’s it, that’s all. Be excellent to one other.

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