Punk rock, cute animals, etc.

10. Food For Thought by Gray Matter

Awesome D.C. punk with a midtempo SoCal flair. Gray Matter’s first album Food For Thought is often associated with the emocore movement due to its time and place, but they sound more like Adolescents than Rites of Spring, with some dirt thrown on the guitars and vocals that were more much more raw and passionate than filled with that bratty Orange County sarcasm. The lyrics on here deal mostly with the issues and concerns of being a young man, and have more of a sense of humor than a lot of their peers. The album ends with maybe the best Beatles cover I’ve ever heard: a messy punk rendition of “I Am The Walrus”. Gray Matter, with their plethora of influences and their fusion of D.C. emo and traditional punk tone really made themselves stand out early on with this extremely fun record.

9. Meat Is Murder by The Smiths

The self-produced Meat Is Murder is often regarded as The Smiths’ mediocre sophomore effort, wedged in between two masterpieces. While it is a far less consistent record their self-titled debut and The Queen Is Dead, there are a lot of fantastic songs to be heard here. It opens with “The Headmaster Ritual”, perhaps Johnny Marr’s greatest guitar work, as well as some of Morrissey’s best lyrics, telling of the abject horror of being a young boy in punishing England schools. From there, the record proceeds through eight more tracks showing the band in a more experimental and controversial light. Certain attempts are more successful than others. While Morrissey’s exceedingly obvious pro-vegetarian anthem “Meat Is Murder” (complete with sounds of sad animals) is a bit of a mess, and admittedly a poor way to close the album, Johnny Marr’s increasingly large playbook of sounds allows for some great escapes from their trademark jangle, especially on “Rusholme Ruffians”. Possible political missteps aside, Morrissey’s lyrics are still sharp and witty, with some familiar themes such as child abuse and loneliness being served up in addition to somewhat more playful and devious tracks like “Nowhere Fast”.  While Meat Is Murder is certainly a more self-indulgent and less coherent release than their self-titled, it’s still wonderfully charming, with enough of a strident edge to keep things interesting from start to finish.

8. Tim by The Replacements

While perhaps not quite on par with their 1984 masterpiece Let It Be, The Replacements’ fourth studio album and major label debut is the edgy and confessional nature of Paul Westerberg’s songwriting wrapped in a very cohesive power pop record, and that ain’t bad. Unfortunately it’s very difficult to review Tim without inevitably comparing it to Let It Be, which is a shame because they’re very different albums. The Replacements clearly didn’t go into this simply wanting to recreate their past creative success. Tim shows Westerberg drawing more from his diverse rock & roll influences to make a very strong and consistent pop record which manages to hold a certain popular appeal without being broad or particularly safe. Bob Stinson plays his last record as lead guitarist of The Replacements, and despite his strained relationship with Westerberg, Stinson’s guitar complements the new songs perfectly, bringing that little bit of Chuck Berry to his normal jangly-yet-rough guitar sound. Some people call this a “sell out” album, but fuck that. Tim is a very strong entry into the discography of one of the most interesting rock bands of the 80s.

7. Speak English Or Die by S.O.D.

This is what happens when Anthrax has left over studio time. Scott Ian assembled some friends (many being fellow band members) and put together Stormtroopers of Death, a hardcore band with heavy crushing guitars and lyrics as hilarious as they are offensive. S.O.D. could be said to be a loving parody of punk; Scott Ian acknowledging the influence hardcore had on the development of thrash metal. On the other hand, a lot of songs on this album are pretty clearly mocking the bullshit tough guy culture and rampant unoriginality that had been breeding in hardcore for years and was now resulting in its temporary wain. Regardless, the album is hilarious and full of mosh-tastic goodness. While this was essentially a jokey side project, it actually did have a big influence on the crossover thrash genre that Suicidal Tendencies pioneered two years earlier, a style which too few bands outside of Venice Beach were embracing. Speak English or Die is a work of hilarious and effective satire, intense and aggressive songwriting, and energetic and technical instrumentation, all put together in a furious little 30 minute hardcore record.

6. Bad Moon Rising by Sonic Youth

Sonic Youth’s third studio album shows a lot of growth from their previous work, which sounded basically like a group of fairly talented young people who wanted to sound like Glenn Branca. On Bad Moon Rising, we get to hear Sonic Youth weaving together an intricate and disturbing sound collage. Rather than individual songs, the band focuses on creating more of a song cycle with dark ambient interludes connecting all of the pieces of the tapestry together. The lyrics are morose and vivid, dealing largely with Youth’s grim outlook on American life. The whole thing is a sort of hazy nightmare of textural feedback and drone-y songwriting, with its minimal percussion and distant vocals. It all comes to an exciting close with “Death Valley 69”, the only genuine rocker on the record, previously released as a single. Some say it’s the only song on the record that stands out, but even as all of the others intentionally bleed together, there are some real standout moments in the haze, like the cold and extremely dissonant “I Love Her All The Time” and Kim’s absolutely menacing “Ghost Bitch”. Bad Moon Rising is far from Sonic Youth’s most fun album, and punishes those who try to listen to it casually, but rewards those looking for a genuinely haunting and thought-provoking experience. This is really Sonic Youth’s first and only piece that relies almost solely on atmosphere and tone, and it works really well.

5. Rum, Sodomy and the Lash by The Pogues

The Irish/English folk-punk pioneers’ sophomore album is arguably their best. Where Red Roses For Me fell flat, Rum, Sodomy and the Lash succeeds wonderfully. The Pogues’ genuine love for celtic folk comes through clear as day, but the album retains the filthy, passionate, and furious punk elements essential to who they were. Elvis Costello took over as producer on Rum, wanting to capture the fervor and messiness of the band’s live shows on a studio LP. He was wildly successful, as can be heard on nearly every track, perhaps most interestingly on “Wild Cats of Kilkenny”, an instrumental that goes back and forth between very traditional celtic folk and a terrifying mess of screams, with Cait O’Riordan’s louring bassline playing underneath. Of course, the star of any Pogues record is vocalist and songwriter Shane McGowan, and some of his best work is on this one. His lyrics have the power to be hilarious and profoundly sad at the same time, and he spits them out with such fire and intense emotion you could just die. While “A Pair of Brown Eyes” and “Old Main Drag” are great examples of his poetic style, perhaps his best performances are on his poignant and heartbreaking covers: “Dirty Old Town” and “The Band Played Waltzing Matilda”. This is all coming from a band that could easily have been written off as a novelty band based on their previous work. This was the record that proved that the Pogues were truly great.

4. New Day Rising by Hüsker Dü

How does a band follow up something with such vision and passion as Zen Arcade? A lot of bands would release something disappointing, but Hüsker Dü didn’t feel like it, I guess. New Day Rising is all of the noise and fury of Zen Arcade with a little less of a hardcore punk edge, showing Bob Mould’s gradual shift towards a more power pop influenced sound. His fuzzy feedback guitar and rabid rottweiler vocals clash brilliantly with his and Grant Hart’s increasingly melodic and mature songwriting. Songs like “The Girl Who Lives On Heaven Hill” would sound absolutely dandy if played by any other band, but Hüsker Dü injects intensity, anger, raw emotion, and pure excitement into every second. Proper credit should be given to SST’s resident producer Spot, collaborating with Hüsker Dü for the fourth time, and really showing his understanding of what the band represents, flawlessly retaining Bob Mould’s sense of mayhem in scratchy walls of tangled up sounds, present throughout the record. Simply put: an amazing achievement and worthy follow up to the greatest punk album of all time.

3. Psychocandy by The Jesus and Mary Chain

A brilliant debut from Scottish quartet The Jesus and Mary Chain. Psychocandy remains one of the dreamiest things ever made even 25 years later. The Reid brothers pioneered a new style with this record, mixing scratchy aggressive feedback with slow catchy pop songwriting and fairly typical dreary post-punk vocals. It’s as hazy and beautiful as it is fearsome and grating, and it’s balanced perfectly. The songs vary from sedate and sleepy (“Cut Dead”, “Just Like Honey”) to faster upbeat tunes, usually with really fierce snarling guitars (“The Living End”), the latter being more representative of the band’s notoriously violent live shows. The entire album is a startling clash of clamorous and beautiful that never lets up, yet never gets boring. It was immensely influential, but even more noteworthy is how it still sounds better than nearly everything it influenced. Way ahead of its time. A true classic.

2. Rites of Spring LP

Rites of Spring’s self-titled debut is up there on the list of most interesting and emotionally resonant punk albums of all time. This was the opening shot of the D.C. punk revolution that would lead to some of the most creative and passionate music ever made; the so-called emocore movement. The term was reviled even in the 80’s, with Rites frontman Guy Picciotto basically saying “emo is stupid, all hardcore punk is emotional”. And he’s right, but the fact is that Rites of Spring and their peers made music that averted the hardcore tropes that were growing stale at the time. This album is fast and sloppy and full of really abrasive guitar textures and even more abrasive vocals. But at the same time, it’s dynamic, melodic, and explores lyrical themes that can’t be rused through in less than sixty seconds. Guy Picciotto’s deal with more personal content than broad anger and angst, and are dripping with more raw emotion than nearly anything I’ve ever heard. While Picciotto and drummer Brendan Canty would later become much more well known when the teamed up with Ian MacKaye to form Fugazi, the importance and sheer brilliance of this album cannot be understated. Forget everything you think you know about the word “emo” and start over from the beginning; right here. It will change your fucking life.

1. Rain Dogs by Tom Waits

Swordfishtrombones was a fantastic album showing Tom Waits transitioning from his 70’s lounge singer shtick to something much different. Rain Dogs shows Waits digging deeper into this new sound, much more comfortable and confident, weaving together little vignettes around the theme of the urban destitute. The chaotic combination of genres, rhythms, and instruments (including marimbas, horns, banjo, and dozens of kinds of percussion) often sounds like Waits just held up a microphone standing in the middle of New York immigrant neighborhood. The album is extremely organic in its sound (especially considering the time it was made), and uniquely American, combining the sounds of the old bluesmen, the Three Penny Opera, and regional styles like New Orleans brass parades. Waits’ lyrics are some of the best of his career, painting extremely vivid and occasionally surreal pictures of a broad variety of characters. The textures and mood of his voice change wildly from song to song to achieve various atmospheres through which to tell his strange and generally sad stories. Underneath much of this is one of Waits’ best collaborators: guitarist Marc Ribot, who plays noisy scratchy textures and unreal dissonant arpeggios, adding to the album’s almost Lynchian strangeness and disturbing nature. But through all of the esoteric experimentalism, Waits is still passionate and emotional (anyone who says they’ve never teared up listening to “Time” or the closing track “Anywhere I Lay My Head” is probably lying) enough to make what would be a sprawling mess by any other artist stay wonderfully relatable. Rain Dogs is an absolute masterpiece, and to this day it is Tom Waits’s single most important and successful artistic statement.

Honorable Mentions: “Racer-X” by Big Black, “Dinosaur” by Dinosaur Jr.,”Seven Churches” by Possessed, “Come On Down” by Green River, “Killing Is My Business… And Business Is Good!” by Megadeth, “Flip Your Wig” by Hüsker Dü, “This Nation’s Saving Grace” by The Fall, “Up In The Sun” by Meat Puppets, “Hounds of Love” by Kate Bush, “No More We Cry” by The Hated, “Hell Awaits” by Slayer

http://blackcatalystrecords.tumblr.com/

10. Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention - One Size Fits All

Released when bands like Yes and Rush were kings, One Size Fits All is perhaps the closest to straight prog rock Zappa ever got during his instrumental jazz fusion period. Despite this, One Size is fairly unpretentious and retains Zappa’s wit and dementedness. Much like Zappa’s early work with the Mothers of Invention was satirizing late 60’s psychedelic rock and the hippie culture which sprung up around it, perhaps One Size is Zappa lampooning the futuristic self-indulgence of his progressive contemporaries. Regardless, much like Zappa wrote amazing psychedelic pop tracks in that period, the songs on One Size are fantastically composed. The serious progressive rock bands are shamed by a mere dabbler.

9. Parliament - The Mothership Connection

Parliament and Funkadelic were like the two sides of George Clinton’s mind. Funkadelic was the more serious and experimental side, Parliament was the fun side that liked to party. With their fourth album, the fun of the P-Funk masters really shines through. The tight and sparse brass brings to mind the electric soul of James Brown, while Bootsy Collins’ juicy bass slaps and the group vocals are all pure funk. George Clinton’s use of spacey synths is especially prominent here, as well as appropriate considering Clinton’s grand overarching theme of “black people in space”. To paraphrase the man himself, imagine a wacky pimp driving a Cadillac in space have all sorts of encounters, the Cadillac all having crazy silver knobs and levers not traditionally included in that model. That is what The Mothership Connection essentially is.

8. Queen - A Night at the Opera

For years, Queen had been mistreated and taken advantage of by shitty management. With their fourth album, the English quartet had left all of that behind, and had one last chance to achieve a level of success higher than one hit wonder. The passion and drive shows. A Night at the Opera was a shockingly ambitious album, not to mention an expensive one (the most expensive ever made at the time of its release), showing the English quarter pulling out all the stops and letting their creative wackiness free. The record is varied, ranging from straight hard rock, to old tyme honky tonk tributes, to expansive operatic tracks. It’s clear that all four members of the band had a mark they wanted to leave here, but none more than Freddie Mercury, one of the most versatile and purely talented vocalists and rock pianists ever. To announce to the world just how different this album really was, they chose “Bohemian Rhapsody”, an extravagant six minute musical story as the lead single, a move that would assure Queen’s spot in history as one of the most unique voices in 70’s hard rock.

7. The Dictators - Go Girl Crazy!

Steve Van Zandt once made a comment to the effect that The Dictators were one of the strong evolutionary bridges between the proto-punk and the 1977 punk rock explosion. It’s pretty easy to hear what he meant when listening to The Dictators’ garage-y debut Go Girl Crazy! The record has the flamboyant Rolling Stones-esque sound of the New York Dolls, the heavy and extremely noisy guitar sound of the Stooges, and a fresh sense of youthful sarcasm and wickedness that would become a touchstone of the punk movement.  While the Dictators aren’t exactly tackling the greatest social ills with their lyrics, they’re definitely having fun. This record would go on to inspire numerous young men and women, especially in New York City, and most obviously The Ramones.

6. Neil Young - Tonight’s the Night

While many of the major rock and folk acts of the late 60s and early 70s struggled a little in the mid-70s, Neil Young proved immune to the  effect of the times, releasing some of his strongest work to date. Ragged, desolate, and dark, Tonight’s the Night is some of Young’s more introspective and daring work. After the hope and passion of the late 60’s counter culture, that sort of collective optimism burnt out, and Young’s friends were dying of drug overdose. Feeling the changed, Young released Tonight’s the Night, a messy and decidedly unstately exploration of death and decay. With less pop and a little more country roots, Young spins some of the most haunting yarns of his careers, with some extremely unsettling melodies and emotionally blunt lyrics. This isn’t the beloved straight rocking “Rockin’ In The Free World”, “Cinnamon Girl” Neil Young. This is another entity; a more experimental and cynical man who values spontaneity and getting it on the first take over a more cleanly produced rock and roll track. This is an extremely exciting and scary Neil, and an altogether fascinating and rich experience.

5. Eno - Another Green World

After his departure from Roxy Music, Brian Eno took on a solo career making art rock records. With his third album Another Green World, Eno focuses more on art than rock, creating vivid yet minimalist soundscapes and sparse lyrics. The Velvet Underground’s John Cale contributes an especially abrasive viola track to “Sky Saw”, while veteran progmen Phil Collins and Robert Fripp provide some decent drums and a very imaginative guitar solo, respectively. Eno went way out there with the instrumentation, inventing fanciful styles of play such as “castanet guitar” (electric guitars played with mallets) and “digital guitar” (as Eno described it, “a guitar threaded through a digital delay but fed back on itself a lot so it makes this cardboard tube type of sound.”) But where Another Green World really shines is not its instrumentation but its vision. Wading into musical realms dominated by pompous over-produced nonsense, Eno really stripped down his sound, creating simple ambient ideas with which to play. Electronic musicians of the decade to follow would owe their entire careers to this inventive and ingenious record.

4. Willie Nelson - Red Headed Stranger

One of the last great country stars, Willie Nelson had that understanding and love for the old timer stuff, as well as a sense of adventure and intelligence shown in the rock and pop bands of the previous ten years. The result of this clash came together on The Red Headed Stranger, a sparse and evocative concept record about an man on the run from the law after killing his wife. Nelson’s lonesome vocals, poetic lyrics, vivid imagery, and stripped down compositions evoke a sense of grandeur and lonesomeness all at once. The story is dug out in short little poems, with the recurring theme “Time of the Preacher” often stuck in between, with different instrumentation each time, depending on the mood. It’s a brilliant little framing devise in a brilliant little album and out-of-nowhere hit, expected to fail due to its old-fashioned Western feel and anti-commercial content and structure. Willie really proved them wrong and fashioned probably the best country LP of all time.

3. Patti Smith - Horses

The strange and hard to define masterpiece debut by New York’s wonderful mother of punk. It is primitive, wonderfully emotive, intense, creative, poetic. Smith’s vocals on here are fiery and wild, with a ragged improvisational quality, particularly on “Birdland”. The result is something entirely unique between jazz and punk, which has never been duplicated and never can. Lenny Kaye’s guitar playing is phenomenal; dirty and garagey. The album is like some beautiful clash of intelligent feminist beat poetry with filthy and fun pop music. While that sounds great on paper, the description completely fails at describing the album’s rare and undefinable feeling. Appropriately, the album was produced by John Cale, who had a certain understanding of the dirty intellectual New York sound, having helped pioneer it several years prior. He fundamentally understood the crudeness this album needed to get across its tone, in a way future producers of Smith’s work would not. The result of the collaboration is something that can never be repeated, not even by Patti Smith herself (as evidenced by her relatively disappointing follow ups). A truly strange and beautiful album, unlike any of her peers.

2. Bruce Springsteen - Born To Run

After finding success elusive throughout the early 70s, Bruce Springsteen finally was onto something big when he went into the studio in 1974. Given a huge budget to get every single sound out of his head and onto vinyl, the Boss struggled for months to make his most honest and epic record to date. After a grueling year, he got it. Born To Run is Springsteen’s Sistine Chapel. His lyrics on this record are probably the best of his career (next to maybe Nebraska), and his vocals range from his signature tear-jerking triumphant power, to the sort of cocky swagger on tracks like “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out”, and the the sad vulnerability you hear on “Meeting Across the River” and the ending of “Jungleland”. The E Street Band plays with the kind of reliable quality they would become known for, but the real stand out is “The Big Man” Clarence Clemmons, who plays some of the best (non-jazz) saxophone parts of all time, matching Springsteen’s own intensity and complementing the moods of his songs perfectly. Often the most joyous or sad part of any song on this record is when Clemmons takes a solo. But the real key to this and any other Springsteen record is the songwriting. The Boss’s arrangements are stunning in their scope and power, and include some instruments not often heard in rock, and they’re not just thrown in for the sake of having a lot to listen to. Each note from each source plays an important tonal role in every song. I mean, what would the title track be without that glockenspiel? Bruce spins some powerful yarns, mostly character sketches, from the dark and hopeless to the joyous and fatally optimistic, taking the listener on an emotional roller coaster through Springsteen’s own bitter and occasionally nostalgic teenage dreams. Bruce rejects the traditional monotony of the “American dream” from the beginning, substituting it with a more romantic desire to escape, a theme that plays a big part on the album. Springsteen’s take on this theme changes as the record progresses, however, and by the end the youthful optimism often associated with his work is replaced by something much more poignant. Born To Run is a miracle; an ambitious and beautiful work of true epicness, totally unrivaled.

1. Bob Dylan - Blood on the Tracks

After nearly a decade of marital bliss and mediocre output, Bob Dylan’s marriage collapsed. The result was his first truly great album since 1966’s Blonde on Blonde, and probably his best ever. The record sounds like a man retreating to something warm and familiar after a traumatic experience; it was recorded mostly with acoustic guitar, with some electric bass, drums, and organ accompaniment on certain songs, in his home state of Minnesota, with a little help from his record producer brother David Zimmerman. The songwriting is perfect Dylan. Poetic and emotional without ever being too obvious or sentimental, choosing to convey his array of feelings with allegories and more obscure references than by blurting anything outright (see, “Sara” on Dylan’s follow up record Desire). The lonely and vaguely nostalgic stripped down sound, and his wonderfully poetic lyrics about loss, anger, and poignant memories pack one fucking hell of a punch. This album resonates with anyone who has experienced the helplessness in the wake of an utter failure, romantic or otherwise. Dylan manages to cut to the core truth of his situation with his gift of words, vocal performance, and production sense. Blood on the Tracks is really Dylan’s most purely honest work, and one of the most fascinating and emotionally draining pop records ever recorded.

Honorable Mentions: “Sabotage” by Black Sabbath, “Little Johnny Jewel” by Television, “Physical Grafitti” by Led Zeppelin, “Neu ‘75” by Neu!, “Rock ‘n’ Roll” by John Lennon

(Sorry this took a while. A combination of me being slightly burnt out on writing about music and 1984 being a ridiculous year, making this list really, really hard to make)

10. Surviving You Always by Saccharine Trust

Much like Minutemen, Saccharine Trust was a band with a solid noisy hardcore punk background looking to expand upon the genre. In Trust’s case, this was with some angular jazz elements and a Crass-esque art-punk attitude. Their second album, takes post-hardcore to all new levels, sounding at times more like King Crimson than Black Flag, with fast and intricate, yet ragged and raw jazzy instrumentation and psychedelic improvisation. Surviving You Always retains the relentless intensity of the hardcore punk movement much more than Paganicons did, but still manages to sound like an entirely different thing. The result is something that was entirely original and a few years ahead of its time.

9. Ride the Lightning by Metallica

Considering the fact that this is Metallica’s sophomore record, released a mere year after Kill ‘Em All, and before most of their thrash metal contemporaries could even release their first albums, Ride the Lightning is an extremely impressive achievement. It is, in some ways, a transitional album; not as refined as Master of Puppets and not as fun and unaffected as Kill ‘Em All. However, the amount of musical growth Metallica went through in such a short amount of time is astounding. The songs here are infinitely more varied and complex, showing the guys already experimenting with harmonics, speed changes, atmosphere, and new lyrical subjects that other metal bands weren’t really doing at the time. There are still some great thrash tracks like “Trapped Under Ice”, and then there are more complex and genuinely emotional songs like “Fade To Black” and “For Whom The Bell Tolls”. And though credit for this may or may not entirely be Dave Mustaine’s, “Call of Ktulu” is one of the best instrumental metal tracks ever recorded.

8. Psychic… Powerless… Another Man’s Sac by Butthole Surfers

If Swans were the horrifying and dark side of the noise rock movement of the mid-80s, Butthole Surfers were the light-hearted and fun side. The vocals range from fucking goofy nasally vocals to deep grunty Boredeoms-esque caveman vocals, to screeching. There’s also a lot of variety in the music itself. It it at times harsh and angular, at times very fuzzy and psychedelic, and at times it sounds like guitarist Paul Leary is actually just hitting his guitar with a small hatchet. Despite the harshness of the music, Butthole Surfers, as you could guess from the name, never take themselves seriously. Through all of the variety, the one refreshing constant is the childlike playfulness, from the lyrics, to the use of actual body noises in the rhythm section of “Lady Sniff” (spitting, belching, farting). Psychic is a simultaneously funny and disturbing experience that will surprise you a little every time you listen to it.

7. My War by Black Flag

Perhaps not as important or influential as Damaged or the Nervous Breakdown EP, but My War is Black Flag’s most adventurous work, and arguably their best. Side A of My War is a bit slowed down from Damaged, and shows Black Flag achieving a much more textured sound. Greg Ginn (taking over as the sole guitarist on this album) plays some really heavy rhythms as well as some of the most passionate, dissonant, and masterfully sloppy guitar solos of his careers. Henry Rollins’s vocals are as emotional as ever, if not more so. You think you’ve heard it all until side B rolls around. On the second half of the album, things slow waaaay down and get waaay heavier. It’s Black Flag playing sludge metal, but with a certain hardcore punk edge, not terribly unlike Flipper or the soon-to-be Melvins. Most hardcore Black Flag fans detest side B of My War, but considering they were a hardcore band playing outside of their style in a genre that was barely developed yet, it stands out as an extremely risky and shockingly successful little experiment.

6. Meat Puppets II by Meat Puppets

Simply put, Meat Puppets were a hardcore band who got bored and said “fuck this” and made a country-punk record. It sounds like something that would be awful, but it’s really really not. They managed to fuse the two styles together flawlessly, with noisy noisy feedback-heavy production, amazing warbling vocals, and some of the most fiercely played country and bluegrass riffs you’ll ever hear. The trope of “hardcore band dissatisfied by the parameters of the genre passionately and gleefully expanding” that was being pioneered by fellow SST labelmates Minutemen and Hüsker Dü is very present here. In 1984, there were hardcore bands that were content to just rip off Minor Threat and inject a lot of macho posturing and call it punk. Then there were bands like Meat Puppets that realized punk rock was (to paraphrase Cobain) about freedom to play what you want, how you want, as long as it has passion. Get ready to hear me repeat this point a whole lot, because the evolution of America underground music in the mid-80s is hinged on this idea.

5. Let It Be by The Replacements

Another in a long line of hardcore bands that released a couple of records and felt like a bunch of phonies. So for their third record, The Replacements decided to take their aggressive punk rock background and due something more melodic and sincere. The result was a watershed moment in the history of the growing “alternative rock” movement. Let It Be is great for a number of reasons, but one of these is that it’s a creative liberation by a band that had previously felt creatively stifled that is somehow 100% unpretentious. The album is completely brilliant, but you get the idea that Paul Westerberg & co. had no idea. What other band would have a haunting (and lyrically quite progressive) acoustic track like “Androgynous” or the jangly-yet-melancholy coming of age song “Sixteen Blue” on the same record as goofy throw-aways like “Gary’s Got A Boner” and “Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out”? Arguably, of all of the “hardcore punk band coming out as a post-hardcore band” records to be released in 1984, Let It Be is the biggest change, and yet The Replacements didn’t turn their back on their punk rock roots at all. They recognized that music can sound like and be about whatever the fuck you want, and with that in mind, made a jumbled up and oddly paced little masterpiece of pure genius. It’s a truly honest piece in a way that very few artists have ever achieved.

4. The Smiths LP

A breath a fresh air to the UK music scene, then dominated by horrible pretentious synth pop bands. The Smiths (named to contrast themselves with bands like Orchestral Manouevres In The Dark) released their first LP in 1984 and took everybody by surprise by making essentially a pop album about homosexuality, child abuse, and lead singer Morrissey’s sexy songs about how he doesn’t like sex. The band members were all veterans of punk rock bands, and like the original movement in 1977, this album was a complete aversion of the musical tropes of that time and place. Johnny Marr’s guitar playing had the jangly appeal of bands like R.E.M, but was often wild and untamable, going off on unpredictable tangents like in “Miserable Lie”. Some songs on this record have a traditional pop structure, while others complete defy any comforting sense of verse-chorus structure in favor of a more free form but still very melodic musical exploration. These songs, however, are never acts of wanking pretentiousness, nor do they overstay their welcomes. Morrissey’s vocals are wonderfully sophisticated and a perfectly unpredictable complement to Johnny Marr’s guitar, sometimes going from his signature croon to a mad yelp at the drop of a hat. His lyrics are at times soul-crushingly sincere and dark, at times light hearted and self-deprecating, and at times, as John Peel noted, extremely witty and actually laugh-out-loud funny. Living in a musical climate much more stifling and dull than what was happening in America at the time, the Smiths  managed to release something extremely surprising and ridiculously exciting, simultaneously intellectually stimulating and emotionally resonant.

3. Purple Rain by Prince & The Revolution

This shit right here. This shit right here. Prince really, really takes things up a couple of hundred notches from 1999, with some extremely dense arrangements, extremely layered and oh-so intricate. And yet there is a certain restraint to Purple Rain. The songs are all a reasonable length this time, and the whole record clocks in at just under 45 minutes.  Prince’s songs are fast and upbeat, slow and soulful. His voice can go from smooth and loving to some of the most insanely emotive screaming ever heard in mainstream music, often at the drop of a hat, as with “The Beautiful Ones”. Prince continues to expand his experimental usage of synthesizers, an all too abused instrument at this point in history. At times the synths are absolutely psychedelic and spacey; absolutely majestic and beautiful. Even songs like “When Doves Cry” have an experimental edge. It sounds like standard pop fare, until you realize the haunting and completely unusual lack of any sort of bass from start to finish. It’s a good little metaphor for the entire record. The first time you listen to Purple Rain, perhaps half paying attention, it sounds like a typical 80’s R&B record. But there is so much love, so much adventure, and so much power packed in here, that it stays fresh to listen to even 26 years later.

2. Double Nickels On The Dime by Minutemen

I could probably write an individual full length review of each of the 44 songs on this record. Double Nickels On The Dime is one of the most diverse, immense, and ambitious records ever made. Inspired by Hüsker Dü to go for a double LP after already recording an album’s worth of material, Minutemen cranked out dozens and dozens of songs, almost all between one and two minutes long. All three band members took composed, and no two songs sound alike. There’s some pretty traditional punk, spoken word, free jazz, funk, dissonant post-punk, Spanish guitar, hard rock covers, etc. etc. etc. They decided to loosely theme it around cars, but it doesn’t show through too much. What’s partially so appealing about Double Nickels is that it’s this grand double LP with no concept. It’s an energetic collection of songs that unite around their startling lack of unity. Beyond that, D. Boon’s guitar work is at its peak here: biting and wonderfully adventurous. Mike Watt’s bass complements with its robustness and free-flowing nature, and George Hurley plays beats of all styles and does so flawlessly. This right here is argument enough of Minutemen’s place in music history as one of the absolute greatest punk trios of all time.

1. Zen Arcade by Hüsker Dü

Zen Arcade is not only the best collection of songs Hüsker Dü ever put out, but it is also simultaneously the most adventurous and the most cohesive hardcore punk album ever recorded. The Minnesota power trio were always destined for a little more than living and dying as a straight hardcore punk band, and their previous release Metal Circus was further proof of this. Appropriately, the follow up is an extremely ambitious double LP, telling the simple story of a boy who, dissatisfied with him home life, runs away only to find the world outside to be even worse. Side B, encompassing the boy’s emotional torment at this realization, is some of Hüsker Dü’s most brutal, chaotic, and passionate hardcore, while much of the rest of the record follows the complex melodic post-hardcore experimentation that their previous record had foreshadowed. Zen Arcade shows Mould and Hart writing straight pop, alternative rock, folk, and psychedelia with surprising consistency and competence. Each of the four sides of the record closes with a fuzzy almost psychedelic instrumental, acting as a bridge to the next chapter. The structure on this album is immaculate, a contrast to the song writing which is still very challenging, emotional, and troubling, with Bob Mould’s rough and textured vocals adding an element of mayhem to even their softest tracks. The record’s D-side closes the story out with two tracks: “Turn on the News”, a narrator’s appeal for the sheltered to see that everything in the world sucks more than their personal lives, and “Reoccurring Dreams”, an extended arrangement of “Dreams Reoccurring”, a surreal instrumental played backwards. Zen Arcade was a huge landmark, and remains one of the most (if not the most) important punk record of all time. Numerous bands and genre offshoots were directly influenced by this, and even 15 years later you can still hear Hüsker Dü in nearly every hot-dicked new melodic hardcore band and pop-punk band and post-hardcore band. It all started here, with this daring, demanding, stirring, and extremely evocative masterpiece. For my money, the greatest album ever recorded.

Honorable Mentions: Saint Vitus S/T, “From Her To Eternity” by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Scratch Acid S/T, “Throb Throb” by Naked Raygun, Negative FX S/T, ”The Crew” by 7 Seconds, Die Kreuzen S/T, “Red Roses For Me” by The Pogues, “Give Thanks” by Articles of Faith, “Born In The U.S.A.” by Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band, “Don’t Break The Oath” by Mercyful Fate, “Cop” by Swans

10. Minutemen - Buzz or Howl Under the Influence of Heat

Minutemen had always been a pretty unorthodox punk band, but this late 1983 EP showed the San Pedro trio starting to go way out there. All three band members really start stretching the definition of what constitutes punk rock music. If it’s still fast and rebellious, but has funk guitars and unusual and dynamic composition concepts, is it still hardcore? Does feeling and attitude have more to do with the genre than actual musicianship? Whether or not the Minutemen actually consciously asked themselves these questions while recording the album I don’t know, but they’re certainly questions the listener ends up having to ask themselves the first time they’re confronted with the unique challenge of making sense of a Minutemen record, and I believe these ideas really took hold on this EP, with songs like “Little Man With A Gun In His Hand” and “I Felt Like A Gringo”. It’s forward thinking like this that saved America’s number one medium of passionate and direct self-expression, which by 1983 was already showing signs of fatigue and a lack of creative motivation.

9. Jerry’s Kids - Is This My World?

Jerry’s Kids was a short-lived group from Boston, partially responsible for their town becoming a pretty major region for hardcore punk in America. Before splitting, they released one LP called Is This My World? This record is 80’s hardcore at its fastest and most raw, at times even overshadowing some of the crazier DC bands like Void. For 25 minutes it just blasts your damn old face with awesome chaotically speedy riffs and some of the most fantastic hardcore drumming you’ll ever hear. It’s appropriate that this album was released just before the original wave of hardcore started to decline, as it is really one of the shining examples of the genre’s pinnacle.

8. Naked Raygun - Basement Screams

Though Naked Raygun had been a staple of the Chicago punk rock scene for about four years at this point, Basement Screams was their first studio record. This is really the only record (other than their brief appearances on Busted At Oz) that really shows off Naked Raygun’s experimental approach to punk, before Santiago Durango would leave to join Big Black, and Raygun would start to develop a more accessible and traditional sound. While tracks like “I Lie” foreshadow Naked Raygun’s future, the intricate jungle rhythms and overall messy and passionate presentation of “Bomb Shelter” and “Mofo” perfectly exemplify that weird Chicago sound that Raygun developed along with bands like Silver Abuse and DA in the early 80’s. Basement Screams is a rare gem of extremely creative and unconventional songwriting within a genre that too many people associate with samey power chord compositions, and it stands as an important work in the career of arguably the most important punk band to come out of Chicago.

7. Hellhammer - Satanic Rites

6. Swans - Filth

Swans’ early career could rightfully be considered one of the most vile things in the history of whatever. Their debut album Filth is probably their most “musical” from this period in their existence, but it still stands as something wholly brutal and unsavory to listen to. “Noise” is the key word to this record, with the bludgeoning down-tuned bass, the metallic double drums lineup, and the grating guitars. Michael Gira’s songs are typically slow and plodding, with some masterfully dark and austere lyrics. They usually consist of short three word sentences repeated throughout the song, lending a hypnotic chant-like quality to the experience. A lot of what’s here was very important in establishing the ideas and tropes that other bands would pick up on in the fast-growing noise rock movement. This isn’t an album to just listen to for fun on a Saturday afternoon, but it’s not like anything you’re likely to ever hear in your entire life, and it will pretty much slay you emotionally, making you feel like a naked man in a dark hole getting berated by the growls of demonic spirits above.

5. Hüsker Dü - Metal Circus

Choosing between this and Hüsker Dü’s early 1983 release Everything Falls Apart was an exercise in torture. While tracks like the thrashcore-esque “Punch Drunk” and “Bricklayer” placed EFA a good ten years ahead of its time, it’s hard to deny that Metal Circus is the better of the two. Bob Mould’s presentation is still very much rooted in hardcore punk, with vocals that sound remarkably like a very angry and perhaps rabid dog. This is far from a bad thing, as his singing is some of the most passionate and honest of his career. In contrast, Mould’s guitar playing is markedly more complex and melodic, even on some of the more aggressive tracks. Grant Hart also emerges as a significant creative force on this record, contributing the much more mid-tempo and poppy “It’s Not Funny Anymore” and “Diane”, the latter being a beautiful and anguished telling of the real-life murder of St. Paul waitress Diane Edwards. The evolution from their earlier records to Metal Circus clearly show Hüsker Dü experimenting with different melodic ideas, slowly expanding and breaking through the confines of hardcore punk (much like their west coast brethren Minutemen, though two sounded very little like one another), an idea which would become the linchpin of their 1984 masterpiece Zen Arcade.

4. Minor Threat - Out of Step

After releasing In My Eyes in 1981, Minor Threat split up so guitarist Lyle Preslar could go to college. On the insistence of Bad Brains vocalist H.R., Minor Threat reformed in late 1982, and recorded their third EP. Out of Step shows MacKaye being a little less message-heavy and a little more introspective and personal; a hint at things to come in his career. His vocals, while still consisting mostly of rage yelling, sometimes unwind into pensive conversational asides. The writing is also different from their first two seven inches, with longer songs, actual melodies, and an honest-to-goodness mid-tempo track or two. Make no mistake: Out of Step isn’t a sterile or sold out Minor Threat. It’s still fast, loud, and very passionate, but noticeably different than their earlier releases. It is a Minor Threat that is less indignant about social ills, and more anxious and frustrated with the looming realities of adulthood and the people around them.

3. The Birthday Party - The Bad Seed

Before forming the non-coincidentally named Bad Seeds, Nick Cave fronted the Australian group The Birthday Party, who spent most of the early 80’s experimenting with post-punk no wave sounds to limited success. Before splitting up, they put out two EPs to great critical acclaim. I might as well have just included both of them, as they’re both pretty great, but The Bad Seed edged out Mutiny mostly because of the album opener “Sonny’s Burning”, a track that is unusually exuberant considering the group’s generally funereal style. It’s clear that The Birthday Party were at least partially influenced by some of the more gothic bands coming out of England at the time, but to say that they were playing gothic rock would be a gross oversimplification. This record is like a bizarre marriage of goth and noise. The result is something dark, sinister, and unsettling. Cave’s vocals are nothing short of incredible, and occasionally refreshingly playful considering the lyrical content and pounding gloomy percussion. The Bad Seed is the perfect swan song to The Birthday Party’s career, as well as a sign of things to come in the long and eventful career of Nick Cave.

2. Suicidal Tendencies - Suicidal Tendencies

Suicidal Tendencies were a hardcore punk outfit from Los Angeles, who were big fans of the thrash metal scene that was developing in the early 80’s thanks to local groups like Metallica and Exodus. So when they finally released their debut self-titled LP, the influence these metal bands had on them was obvious, and the result was an unheard of mixtures of hardcore and thrash, which would go on to be called “crossover thrash”. Today, these kinds of bands are a dime a dozen, but considering Metallica had just barely released their first LP when this record was put out, it’s pretty easy to see how Suicidal Tendencies were ahead of their time. This album rips hard with some fantastically intense hardcore punk songwriting, and some truly impressive thrash guitars, especially considering that they weren’t a metal band primarily at this time. The lyrics are fairly political and often satirical, like on the ever popular track “Institutionalized”, a song told through the point of view of a confused teen whose parents think his behavior is evidence that he may be crazy. With its incisive (though occasionally dated) lyrics, face melting musicianship, and passionate punk songwriting, Suicidal Tendencies’ S/T is still better than most hardcore/thrash records being put out today.

1. Tom Waits - Swordfishtrombones

A complex masterpiece that is hard to explain with words. Prior to recording this album, Tom Waits decided to get actively involved in his fairly luckless career by firing his manager, ditching his record label and producers, and doing shit the way he wanted to. This new sense of artistic freedom resulted in a very strange, dark, and experimental record that sounds nothing like Waits had ever done before. Rather than a very piano-based sound with string arrangements, Waits used some pretty stark arrangements consisting mostly of unusual percussion, bass, low brass instruments and muted guitar, with his vocals less classically gravelly and weird and more freakishly gravelly and weird. The lyrics are a fantastic, especially on tracks like “Town With No Cheer”, about a town in the outback of Australia that civilized society seems to have forgotten about. Quite a fantastic change from his songs about lonely drunkards. Swordfishtrombones defines, practically in every way imaginable, a great creative reawakening in an artist. It’s such an artistic turnaround from the tired and unexciting to the unusual and compelling that came practically out of nowhere, and stands as one of the greatest albums ever recorded by a singer-songwriter.

Honorable mentions: “Pick Your King” by Poison Idea, “Over the Edge” by Wipers, “Death Church” by Rudimentary Peni, “Murmur” by R.E.M, “Everything Falls Apart” by Hüsker Dü, “What Makes A Man Start Fires?” by Minutemen, “Melissa” by Mercyful Fate, “Bulldozer” by Big Black

10. Elvis Costello & The Attractions - Imperial Bedroom

Elvis Costello’s first four outings were masterpieces of guitar-based pop songwriting. Into the 80’s, Costello strayed a little from his roots and experimented with more piano-based music, and other genres like country, to limited success. Imperial Bedroom, his seventh album, saw Costello experimenting with a variety of different styles, with extremely ambitious production ideas aided by Beatles recording engineer Geoff Emerick. The lyrical content is much darker than Elvis’s normal fare, with some people going so far as to call Imperial Bedroom a pessimistic concept album about the death of love. However, with no particular song arrangement, or any repeated styles or themes, Imperial Bedroom is really more of a strong collection of extremely well-written and fairly challenging pop songs. While the message is fairly gloomy, the songs themselves vary amongst all different varieties of sublime catchiness, making it a lot of fun to listen to no matter what your mood.

9. Mission of Burma - Vs.

Mission of Burma’s previous record, 1981’s “Signals, Calls, and Marches”, was a short collection of very well-written post-punk tunes that woefully misrepresented the Boston quartet’s signature sound. With “Vs.”, people who were under the false impression that Mission of Burma was a nice band with a clean sound were punched in the face several times with alarming force. “Vs.” is their first record that was produced to sound like their live shows. The songwriting and vocals are still just as great as on “Signals”, but full of walls of feedback and other textural ear-splitting noise. “Vs.” could be compared favorably to Wipers’ “Youth of America”, incorporating experimental late 70’s No Wave ideas into more melodic punk songwriting, paving the way for bands like Sonic Youth and My Bloody Valentine.

8. Prince - 1999

Prince’s 1980 release “Dirty Mind” was a small glimpse into what genius pop songwriting this man was capable of. It wasn’t until 1982’s double LP “1999” that his audience really started to see the kinds of complex and sexual ideas that were going on in Prince’s head. “1999” doesn’t sound at all like pop music for teeny boppers, and it certainly doesn’t sound like Prince was concerned with getting radio play (though he did anyway). There are very few songs on here that are under five minutes, and the Artist often goes off into wild frenzied erotic tangents where he moans lyrics such as “I want to fuck the taste out of your mouth.” You better fucking believe he will. Prince’s guitar playing is as underrated and intricate as always and the synths are very 80’s in an enjoyable kind of way. If it weren’t for its immense and barely justifiable length, it would be difficult for this to be considered any less than Prince’s greatest work.

7. The Faith/Void split

If The Faith’s side of this legendary split was more than merely good, this record would probably be in the top 5. The real reason this LP is worth listening to over and over again is the B-side, brought to us by D.C. hardcore outfit Void. John Weiffenbach’s vocals are manic, frenzied, and painful, and Bubba Dupree’s guitars sound almost like Black Flag smashed against a wall a few dozen times. The result is extremely chaotic, abrasive, brooding, and unbelievably passionate. While some of Void’s D.C. contemporaries showed immediate influence, Void seems to have stayed relatively obscure for quite a while, before slews of bands imitating their style popped up out of nowhere years later. Way ahead of its time.

6. Descendents - Milo Goes To College

Massively influential SoCal melodic hardcore written and performed by the class nerd who would go on to get a Ph.D in Biochemistry. Descendents are heard here at their brashest, most irreverent, and most catchy. The entire record is filled with punk rock classics like the anthemic “Myage”, the more noisy and hardcore-influenced “Tonyage”, and hilarious tracks like “I Wanna Be A Bear”. There’s also a fair share of adolescent angst, with songs like “Parents”, which asks the timeless question of “why won’t they shut up?” It can be obnoxious, but it is so in an endearing and understandable way, as it was all being performed by a bunch of high schoolers who truly felt what they were playing.

5. Violent Femmes - Violent Femmes

It’s still hard to believe this came out as early as 1982. The Violent Femmes brilliantly combined folk-rock with new wave-y song writing sensibilities and the wild passion and fury of punk rock to create an extremely unique experience. Brian Richie’s ornate and hectic acoustic bass playing is the perfect backing for Gordon Gano’s distinctive wavering man-child vocal persona and clever lyrics. The frustration and sense of vulnerability that comes with being a young socially awkward man is the general theme running throughout this album, and the delivery on that theme is extremely honest and impassioned. All ten songs are fantastic, and many would go on to become alternative rock standards.

4. Michael Jackson - Thriller

It’s Thriller. Nine of the most wonderful and varied pop songs ever recorded. Michael’s voice is angelic, the production is legendary, the tunes themselves universal. It’s got some of the most genuinely soulful pop ballads of all time, as well as some really aggressive dance tracks, if that’s more your thing. It’s never political, never repetitive, and can never be overplayed. Timeless. It infects you like a wonderful disease, like some beautiful malady for which there is no cure. The symptoms: good feelings and uncontrollable dancing.

3. Bruce Springsteen - Nebraska

Whenever Bruce records without the E Street Band, the result is inevitably something very minimal and very dark that can be hard to recognize as the Boss. Nebraska is his first such album, and is arguably his greatest achievement next to Born To Run. Bruce’s hauntingly somber vocals echo on about death, criminal behavior, and the futility of belief, all accompanied only by his acoustic guitar and harmonica. The lyrics are Bruce’s most poetic, with some truly evocative storytelling and strong resonant images. Nebraska marked Bruce’s departure from the triumphant, as many of his later releases would reflect this darker side of life that previously hadn’t been so prominent in the Boss’s songs. Nebraska is extremely challenging, and a huge milestone in the career of one of the greatest rock songwriters of all time.

2. Bad Brains - Bad Brains

D.C. outfit Bad Brains had been around for a couple of years, gaining an enormous reputation for their live performances, before finally releasing their first studio recording. Bad Brains were faster, more explosive and energetic, and better at their instruments than any of their contemporaries. You turn this album on and the first five tracks are a quintilogy of indescribable passion and fierceness, ending with the iconic “Banned In D.C.” Then Bad Brains completely slow it down with a reggae instrumental. As a guy who really doesn’t like reggae, it would be easy for me to talk shit about tracks on this record like “Leaving Babylon” and “I Love Jah”, but it’s at least authentic, as the members of Bad Brains were actually religious rastafarians. Who would’ve guessed that? Also, the reggae tracks are a really interesting way to segment the more prominent hardcore tracks into little chapters, with downtempo intermissions in between, creating a unique and dynamic element to the album’s structure. It’s volatile, rebellious, abrasive, and amazing. Bad Brains were true originals, and there will absolutely never be another album like this one ever again.

1. Flipper - Generic

The rawest. It’s got the uninhibited feeling and noisy production of a hardcore punk record, but it’s also slow and almost sludgey, showing a possible influence from heavy metal bands like Black Sabbath. This combination of slow heavy guitars with punk rock fervor would be extremely influential for bands like The Melvins, and the noise rock genre in general. On top of that, this is just an amazing album to listen to. Mark Arm of Mudhoney once said that Flipper’s charm came from their ability to really upset an audience while simultaneously capturing their undivided attention and interest, and that really shows through on this recording. Flipper is clamorous, even headache-inducing if listened at the right volume, but at the same time very sincere with a sexy sense of rebelliousness against any and all musical conventions.

Honorable mentions: “Pornography” by The Cure, “Hear Nothing, See Nothing, Say Nothing” by Discharge, “Flex Your Head” compilation, Sonic Youth EP, “Combat Rock” by The Clash, “Millions of Dead Cops” by MDC, “Hex Enduction Hour” by The Fall

10. Busted At Oz compilation (featuring DA, The Effigies, Naked Raygun, Silver Abuse, Strike Under, and Subverts)

There’s a lot of history to this album that it would be hard to describe in this limited space. In brief: Chicago was isolated from the rest of the punk world in the beginning. Thanks in part to corrupt city officials hating the entire culture and not wanting to see it in our city, it was difficult to flourish. Realizing this, some dudes active in our little scene recorded a night of live music at a punk (and police raid) hot spot known as Oz. This record is 16 tracks from bands that (with the possible exception of Naked Raygun, who are relatively new and undeveloped at this point in history) would never be heard outside of the second city. Busted At Oz showcases our relatively unique sound as we took our own take on the genre, largely unaware of what was happening in places like L.A., DC, and NYC at the time. It ranges from the fairly traditional (Effigies), to the more experimental (DA), to the downright fucking peculiar (Silver Abuse). This is a very important and very overlooked cultural gem for those interested in some old midwest bands that you’ll likely never hear anywhere else.

9. Penis Envy by Crass

Despite Steve Ignorant’s absence, this is by far Crass’s most successful and powerful work. The vocals on this record are performed entirely by Eve Libertine, and it sets its crosshairs on the patriarchy and institutional and societal oppression of women. The lyrics range from satirical and facetious (Bata Motel, Our Wedding) and the more direct and critical (What the Fuck?, Berkertex Bribe), but are consistently clever, honest, and on-point. Not nearly enough punk bands attempt to take on gender politics and issues like rape, but Crass does so fearlessly, and makes an important point without coming off as preachy and obnoxious. The song writing is much more complex and dissonant than their previous works too, and is extremely effective in adding a really disturbing atmosphere to the darker songs like Health Surface.

8. Paganicons by Saccharine Trust

7. The Ascension by Glenn Branca

6. Fire of Love by The Gun Club

The Gun Club was one of the first bands to combine the sounds of punk and noisy underground rock music in general, with American roots music and country. While psychobilly, the movement that would follow in the footsteps of this record, ended up largely sucking, “Fire of Love” is actually original. The combination of the two incongruous sounds is rather subtle, and ends up sounding like neither, rather than both at the same time. The result is an album that sounds a little different every time you listen to it. My first listen was more of a pure punk experience. Later listens had the southern elements being more prominent, sounding like some sort of insane and abrasive Creedence Clearwater Revival.

5. Adolescents LP

Just a fantastic mid-tempo poppy punk album. For years after this, every SoCal pop-punk band was basically ripping off this record. And it really hasn’t aged one bit. Songs like the iconic “Amoeba”, the more experimental and oft-covered “Kids of the Black Hole”, and the wonderfully flippant and hilarious opener “I Hate Children” still sound just as good in the modern context as they did in 1981. Adolescents were way better than their LA contemporaries like X and Agent Orange, and if you need any proof, it’s right here.

4. Deceit by This Heat

3. Youth of America by Wipers

I’ve given this record a hard time in the past for not being as good as its predecessor, but that’s not really saying much, and I feel my criticism was highly exaggerated. Really, its a brilliant album. Wipers abandoned the more traditional punk song writing in favor of longer, more experimental tracks. It feels like a logical next step after “Is This Real?” Greg Sage still has great vocals and plays a very textured feed back-heavy guitar. This time it’s even more extreme, occasionally turning into walls of ear splitting noise, predicting stuff bands like Sonic Youth wouldn’t be doing for another six or seven years. It’s a bit more pretentious than “Is This Real?”, and can be a little hard to get into, but the challenge is worth it. Way ahead of its time.

2. Damaged by Black Flag

DC meets LA when Henry Rollins joins Black Flag as their fourth lead vocalist. Rollins, previously the vocalist for State of Alert, really brings his Washington influence to this record. “Damaged” is ten times dirtier, more passionate and more chaotic than any previous Black Flag recording. Songs like “Depression” and the two title tracks are noisy and visceral like nothing heard from the group before. There is also the occasional light-hearted lull in the anger, like popular track “TV Party”, but these moments are fewer than one might expect. Damaged is generally not as fast as other hardcore records of the time, but it certainly indicative of the pure rage these young men were feeling and expressing in the early 80s.

1. Minor Threat EP

At just under ten minutes, this is the shortest entry on this list, but by far the most important. Right here, Minor Threat introduces the world outside of big tour stops to what hardcore should sound like. This album is fast as fucking hell, and it never relents. There is not a single second of this record that isn’t angry, loud, and electrifying. Did you think this was a little punk record you and your friends were going to dance to? Think again, asshole. You just have to sit there and grind your teeth and punch your leg for 10 minutes. No compromises. And unlike a lot of early hardcore, Minor Threat’s stuff has really stood the test of time. I’d put this record up against anything being made today in terms of pure passion, energy, fearlessness, and brutality. This shit was the most out-there thing to happen to punk at that point in time, and its influence can still be seen, even outside of hardcore punk circles. Goddammit. (Also, it established a culture called straight edge, but maybe you haven’t heard of that, probably not worth mentioning, right?)

Honorable mentions: Haunted Town by The Effigies; Sorry Ma, Forgot To Take Out the Trash by The Replacements; Controversy by Prince; In A Car by Meat Puppets; Faith by The Cure; Juju by Siouxsie and the Banshees; Moving Pictures by Rush; Slates by The Fall; Signals, Calls, and Marches by Mission of Burma; Tom Tom Club LP; In My Eyes by Minor Threat

10. Circle Jerks - Group Sex

In 1979, Keith Morris, Black Flag’s beloved vocalist, quit the band and formed Circle Jerks. In 1980, they released “Group Sex”, which I consider to be synonymous with the infant hardcore scene. While Dead Kennedys embraced a snotty sort of sarcastic wit that wouldn’t be seen a whole lot as the D.C. style became more prominent, Circle Jerks had a more angry directness. These songs are fast, pissed, and don’t fuck around. Whenever the topic of early 80’s hardcore punk comes up, the violence and anger of “Deny Everything” always plays somewhere in the back of my head.

9. The Cure - Seventeen Seconds

With their slew of mid-’80s pop records, it’s sometimes easy to forget that The Cure was once a legitimate gothy darkwave/post-punk band. Seventeen Seconds, their second album, contains some of their best work from this stage of their career, as well as some of Robert Smith’s best instincts as a songwriter. The album is very downbeat, with a stripped down minimalistic quality to both the songwriting and production. This, along with its remarkably tight structure leads to a new wave-y album concerned more with building mood and atmosphere than it is in hitting the listener with catchy guitar hooks. In fact, the driving force in this album’s more urgent moments is not Robert Smith’s subdued and dreamy guitar but Simon Gallup’s punkier bass lines, something that would be somewhat of a trademark of the Cure’s sound as they would evolve and gain popularity in the following years. Seventeen Seconds is in certain ways typical of its genre, but only in the sense that it is the paragon of such, and is so wonderfully crafted and performed that it would remain the archetypal example of gloomy punk-inspired new wave up to the present day.

8. The Fall - Grotesque (After the Gramme)

Crazily prolific Brits The Fall never quite fit in with the crowded post-punk landscape of this period. While bands like The Cure and Joy Division sort of dominated with a somewhat palatable and melodic interpretation of the genre, The Fall was a little bit more angular and dissonant, with thrilling results. This is their third album, and a big departure from their previous two. Songs written mostly by leader Mark E. Smith are more devastating and abrasive than they had been previously, with lyrics less introspective and more outwardly focused. This is also the first The Fall record to feature keyboards, provided by Marc Riley who played bass on the first album and guitar on the second. The textures of the keys range from an organ-like sound to a bizarre electro-harpsichord timbre on tracks like “New Face In Hell”. It’s clear in The Fall’s earlier records that they were inspired by fellow English band Wire’s trilogy of incredible genre-defining albums from the late ’70s, but The Fall began to distinguish themselves by incorporating a pronounced influence from their more experimental predecessors like Can and Captain Beefheart, and this is truest on Grotesque. The result is a dense art rock classic combined with a punky ferocity unrivaled by their peers.

7. The Residents - The Commercial Album

Simultaneously a deconstruction and parody of pop music. The Residents took the average pop song, cut out any repetition of verses and choruses, and concluded that said average pop song contains about one minute of music, about the same as a commercial jingle. Hence, commercial jingles are the “music of America”. So they composed forty songs, all exactly one minute long, and packed them into one LP. They are all done in the basic style of radio jingles, except twisted and horrible in that unique Residents way that can’t be imitated; casting a sickly light on what American mass culture essentially is. The Commercial Album is one of The Residents’ most successful projects, achieving that perfect blend of unconventional aural terror and a sort of outré humor.

6. Dead Kennedys - Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables

Maybe I’m wrong, but I never really considered this to be so much a prototypical hardcore record as I did a general staple of American punk rock. Maybe it’s my east coast D.C. bias making me hear these songs and not immediately think “hardcore”, but I do appear to be in the minority on this. Dead Kennedys were, however, mightily influential, and really did help to kick start the California scene along with Black Flag. Jello Biafra’s unusual quavering vocals are instantly recognizable, while his lyrics tend to be fairly direct and dripping with bitter sarcasm. This is a must-listen album if you give even the slightest shit about the history of American punk, and it’s still pretty fresh today.

5. The Feelies - Crazy Rhythms

4. Prince - Dirty Mind

Prince’s third album, and his first great one. In the ’70s, Prince was somewhat of an anomaly. He was a (very) young man of obvious and far-reaching talents who made mostly fashionable disco-infused pop music. As if realizing simultaneously the impermanence of disco and how dumb and beneath him the whole movement was, Prince changed gears in the 1980s, starting with the phenomenal Dirty Mind. Here Prince crafts a blend of sounds from funk to punk to R&B to new wave to synthpop to create a genre all his own, pioneering the so-called “Minneapolis sound” that would become a dominant influence on the direction of dance music in the years to come. While Prince’s instinct to passionately combine all sorts of styles and tones on Dirty Mind may sound to the uninitiated like a recipe for something unfocused and muddled, the opposite could not be more true.

3. Swell Maps - Jane From Occupied Europe

The last thing ever released by the elusive Swell Maps in their tragically short recording career.

2. Talking Heads - Remain In Light

Talking Heads’ last great album, and it starts right out with one of the best track David Byrne ever wrote: “Born Under Punches”. The entire A side to this record is white hot electro-funk, with producer Brian Eno’s background in ambience clashing beautifully with Byrne’s loud staccato guitar and Tina Weymouth’s very prominent bass riffs. Bands are still ripping this album off 30 years later. Don’t believe me? Go listen to literally any young hot-dicked “dance-punk” band working today and then go and listen to this album. Are you confused? Are you confused about how you just heard the exact same thing twice? This would’ve been number one had Byrne’s instincts to make more subdued tracks with traditional African rhythms not kicked in so hard on the B-Side. The songs are still great, but after such an exciting first half, the second can be a little dull in comparison.

1. Wipers - Is This Real?

At the time, Portland wasn’t exactly known as a big punk town. But then again, this isn’t much of a typical punk record. It’s difficult to classify “Is This Real?” in the context of where punk was in 1980, because Wipers didn’t really care. They did their own thing, and ten years later, the influence of this record (especially in the northwest) was undeniable. Greg Sage’s short powerful songs are absolutely infectious. Combine that with his unique and very textured feedback-y guitar sound and you get a record you simply can’t stop listening to. You could say its punk, or early noise punk, or early grunge, but I say it’s fucking amazing.

Honorable mentions: “Songs the Lord Taught Us” by The Cramps; “Get Happy!!!” by Elvis Costello & The Attractions; “Beware” by Misfits; “Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps)” by David Bowie; “Black Sea” by XTC; “Ace of Spades” by Motörhead; “In the Flat Field” by Bauhaus; “The River” by Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band; “Closer” by Joy Division; “Los Angeles” by X; Killing Joke LP; “Sound Affects” by The Jam