My discoveries per year

dihansse · 2016-04-10T12:28:28-04:00

Well! Here I would like to start with my own long term project taking advantage of the best BEA has to offer: overall charts from people who are as interested in music as I am. I already have year charts which are based on the albums I already own or know, but there are a lot of them which I haven't listened to yet and which might be worth discovering. I'd like to do this by going through the overall BEA top lists per year starting in 1963 which is both my year of birth and the year in which I personally think rock music started to become interesting. To keep it a bit varied I will skip through the years in five year periods, ie starting in 1963 then 1968 then 1973 all the way to 2013 and then back to 1964 and so on. Every year I will start with some stats of my personal chart in comparison to the overall year charts, both top 20 an top 50 and will start to listen to at least the top 20 albums I don't know and I'll hope to give some comments sometimes very short, sometimes a bit longer. I will also update my personal year charts accordingly. In principle I will use Apple Music to listen to the albums, which I suppose will cover most of the field. If a certain album isn't present in Apple Music, I'll have to skip it. I will try to listen to all the albums at least once and sometimes twice if I doubt, but I'll skip the really stupid ones (ex a Xmas compilation in 1963) and also other compilations, classical music, jazz and easy listening. This will be a long term project which means there might be times in which I will stop a bit of course because I don't want be stuck listining to albums of the same year all the time. However I suppose this will take at least a month per year. I will try to keep it up but please don't be mad if I give up (maybe already after the first year :lol: )

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These are the two albums of 2002 I listened to:

First an album I already own (originally on CD):

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Murray Street by Sonic Youth
Of course they released their masterpieces before this album (the last perfect album for me was Dirty in 1992), but that doesn't take away the fact that also this one is an excellent one. There are only 7 tracks here because of the long length of at least two of them but that is not a drawback because that allows the band to turn in some sort of jam mode which doesn"t do the tracks any harm. The best example of that is Karen Revisited which in the beginning is just vintage SY and then turns into some kind of laidback jam which sounds excellent. But the best tracks remain The Empty Page and Rain On Tin. After a while one starts to wonder if Kim Gordon is still part of the band because she only sings on the last two tracks, but also these songs are excellent. And it even enters in my top 5 of favorite SY albums, before Evol and it climbs from the 12th to the 3rd rank of the year.

Then an album on my wishlist:

Heavy Traffic by Status Quo
I didn't grow up with Sonic Youth, Pavement or Dinosaur Jr. Not even with the Jam or The Sex Pistols. No my formative years in rock music evolved around Mud, The Sweet and especially this band: Status Quo, which I loved very much.
But of course they had their heyday in the seventies and they released some very shitty albums in the decades after their golden period. But this is a fine example of a good one where they returned to what they did best: play excellent boogie rock. Of course they don't present anything new and some of the tracks really resemble their old hits but there's nothing wrong with that. There are even two excellent songs here: Creepin' Up To You and the title track.
The only criticism to give is that the album is maybe a bit too long: after 13 tracks (and in some versions even 14, I still don't know how many there should be), some of the tracks start to sound a bit of a repetition to previous ones.
But that doesn't stand in the way of an excellent album which enters my year chart at the 24th rank.
And the remastered version of this album also contains some excellent live versions of their old hits like Caroline, Rain, Whatever You Want, Down Down and Roll Over Lay Down.

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Two albums of 2003 I listened to:

First an album I already own:

Son by Jeff Hanson
Jeff Hanson's sound is fairly similar to that of Elliot Smith but his voice is a bit higher pitched and his song are less dark. But the quality of the songwriting matches that of Elliot Smith on this album both on his more sensitive songs as on the more dynamic ones.The End Of Everything Known is the highlight here and the album rises from the 8th to the 3rd rank of the year.

Then an album on my wishlist:

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Ball by Widespread Panic
I don't really know what to make about this band and this album which is supposed to be a really good southern rock band/album. I thought the first half of the album was pretty boring and uninspired but that changed a bit in the second half which was much better so as a whole good enough to enter my 2003 chart at the 46th rank.

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These are the albums of 2004 I listened to:

First an album I already own (on CD):

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Abattoir Blues/The Lyre Of Orpheus by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
In fact this double album should have been two albums but since it has been released as one album...
The first is supposed to be the harder and the second the most mellow but this is not entirely true. First to get something out of the way: I don't like at all the gospel songs of Nick Cave and there are fairly a bit of that on the album not on the least much loved track O Children: I just can't get into it. But there are so many good tracks left: not only the obvious harder ones like Get Ready For Love and There She Goes, My Beautiful World but also some of the softer like The Lyre of Orpheus.
All in all one of his better albums which goes from the 57th to the 27th rank.

There are not really many albums left on my wishlist so I prefer to refer to one of the 2 Belgian bands I have said to cover of which one is Ghinzu. The thing is: I already covered the album of this year in round 2 so I'll just quote what I wrote there:

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Blow by Ghinzu
This is one of those Belgian albums I would consider a classic and advise everybody to listen to: it's experimental but has good songwriting at its base. The core of the music is not really the guitars, which are also sounding very good, but mainly the piano (and synthesizers) which don't sound out of place at all in the really potent sound of this album. One of those examples is Cockpit Inferno which is based on a throbbing synth baseline and just goes forward in an all-encompassing drive and also High Voltage Queen, 21st Century Rockers and Mine are top notch. But the core of the album is The Dragster-Wave which starts off fairly dull, that evolves in a really beautiful piano melody which gradually grows darker and is the accompanied by soaring guitars and shout outs: a real beauty. At the end there are a few lesser songs and that's why the album only situates itself (now) at the 17th rank of the year.

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These are two albums of 2005 I listened to:

First an album I already own (bought on Itunes):

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A New Order Rising by Washington
It's a long time I listened to this album and I'm beginning to understand why. I have bought it on Itunes and put it in my year chart but in hindsight it's just not very good (apart from the first track which is decent). So conclusion is: I have dropped it from my year chart.

The an album on my wishlist:

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Dagen Van Gras, Dagen Van Stro by Spinvis
And this is just the opposite: I own the album but for one reason or another I didn't think it was good enough to be in my year chart. These last times I have listened to a lot of Spinvis (and his new album will be released in a few weeks) and started to really love this very quirky but very original artist (in fact Spinvis which is dutch for spiderfish is a moniker of Erik De Jong, a late bloomer because he only start to be successful when he was forty). He is singing in Dutch which is certainly a hurdle for non-Dutch speakers but he is really worth checking out although this is at first sight an artist which I wouldn't even touch because his music is based on fairly cheap electronics and he is not really a good singer. But at some points, his music hits you like a (soft) hammer. This is maybe not the album to start with (it contains for example an 11 minute spoken word song) and his first album which is him at his most DIY is maybe more of a real start, but it is really good and enters at the 30th rank of the year.

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These are the albums of 2006 I listened to:

An album I already own (bought on Itunes):

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Blowoff by Blowoff
He has released other electronic albums under his own name but here Bob Moulds collaborates
Although: some tracks and especially the first one are really just plainly the Bob Mould as he always was so very good. I don't like so much the dance stuff although overall the general quality is not bad. So just remains an album I want to keep in my year chart at the 34th rank (from the 48th)

An album on my wishlist:

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The Obliterati by Mission Of Burma
The more I hear of this band, the better it becomes and this is certainly one of their finest with a good mixture of good punk and more experimental postpunk. Especially the opener 2Wice deserves you attention. Overall an album which deserves to enter at the 14th rank.

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These are the two albums of 2007 I listened to:

An album I already own:

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Voxtrot by Voxtrot
A bit of an emo album and some of the songs are a bit too much steeped in that and not very good. But it already contains some very catchy tracks like Introduction (a real song, not so much an introduction) and Firecracker. And so the album moves up from the 49th to the 27th rank of the year.

An album on my wishlist:

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Strangelet by Grant Lee Phillips
I read somewhere that this is a boring album. Well, it is not, although I like him most when he adds some guitar weavings around his otherwise good songs. This is the case in about half the tracks and in this way my general view is a bit mixed but somehow and album that enters at the 29th rank.

btw, my original idea to cover the Belgian bands Madensuyu and Ghinzu quickly disappeared because I already covered most of their albums in round 2.

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Two albums of 2008 I listened to:

An album I already own (bought on Itunes):

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The Chemistry Of Common Life by Fucked Up
One of my favorite bands of the naughts. You love or hate the voice of the singer and I love it and the only thing is: don't let it come in the way of hearing the quality of the songs below that wall of growling sound because below that punk spirit there still remain some good songs. This is not their best album (that label goes to David Come To Life but it's certainly a good contender. The obvious highlight is the closing long and epic track (it's building up to a magnificent finale in the greatest way possible), but there are manu other goodies here like Son Of The Father and Days Of Last. So all in all a semi-classic, semi because there are some lesser tracks but still.. It moves up from the 18th to the 5th rank of the year.

An album on my wishlist:

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22 Dreams by Paul Weller
A very eclectic album with maybe also a bit too many tracks going from good (some fine more experimental rock songs) to just ok (just old plain soul) to outright experimental not to say boring. And all in all not enough tea in my cup of tea to give it a place in my year chart.

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These are two albums of 2009 I listened to:

Mirror Mirror by Ghinzu
In hindsight and after relistening to a few of their albums, this Belgian band didn't really break any new grounds. They're good in what they do (sometimes they sound like Strokes light on the first two albums, sometimes they sound like the Strokes more recent albums) but not much more. This last album of theirs climbs from the 39th to the 31st rank.

An album on my wishlist:

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In Prism by Polvo
On this album they seem to sound a bit more mainstream and less mathrock and also more focused on good guitar rock as especially the last last very good track proves. I like this album and it immediately enters at the 11th rank of the year.

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These are the two albums of the year 2010 I listened to:

An album I already own (bought on Itunes):

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We All Got Out Of The Army by Robert Pollard
Is there a big difference between Robert Pollard solo and GBV. I think not very much with the most important difference the contribution of Tobin Sprout on most GBV records. So let's say this is another fine GBV album which goes from the 22nd to the 18th rank in my year chart.

An album on my wishlist:

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Darker Circles by The Sadies
I have discovered this band by their later fairly rock-orientated albums which I liked. So it was time to go back to the classics of which this one which is much more country. The first three tracks are more in the territory of alt-country and were good fun to listen to. But the rest of the album is more real country based (a bit like the more country based albums of the Byrds without their genius) and not really my cup of tea. But all in all not bad so I did include it in my year chart at the 68th rank.

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Here comes 2011:

With an album I already own/know (bought on Itunes):

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I'm With You by Red Hot Chili Peppers
This is to me the bridge from their really great albums (with By The Way and Californication as my favorites) to their straight up downhill phase (like also their latest album and ok maybe The Getaway is not so bad either). But I do like much of this particular album which has some great tracks like Monarchy Of Roses, Brendan's Death Song, The Adventures of Rain Dance Maggie, Goodbye Hooray, Police Station and Dance, Dance, Dance; but also some near misses. Overall a good but not brillant album which goes from the 72nd to the 55th rank.

And an album on my wishlist:

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Gentle Stream by The Amazing
I discovered this Swedish band mainly via one of their most recent albums, In Transit, which I liked. This one is deemed to be one of their highlights and I quite like although at some points it's maybe a bit too well behaved and keen to please. But all in all not bad and it ends up at the 52nd rank.

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