Frank's APA has just celebrated its 200th issue. To mark this momentous occasion one of the APA's members ran a poll to identify once and for all the greatest albums of all time. Former and current contributors were invited to submit a list of their 30 favourite albums, ranked or unranked, and then an arcane process was used to compile an aggregated list. Compilations (both single- and multi-artist) were explicitly in scope, as were e.p.s. and even home-made compilations that had previously been put together for the delight of Frank's APA members.
And here are the 30 records I submitted in my ballot. I picked the albums first, applying a self-imposed rule limiting myself to one record per artist, and then I ranked them. Feel free to scoff at my pedestrian tastes while sneering at me for presenting a list that excludes or under-represents certain important categories of music or creator.
While reading through the list, you can also listen to a YouTube playlist of key tunes from the albums I picked:
30. Pink Floyd Wish You Were Here (1975)
What is it? It's the album Pink Floyd released after the colossal and terrifying success of Dark Side of the Moon.
What is it like? Most of it is taken up with the long track that starts and ends the album. Lyrics have a general air of looking back at a past before things went wrong. The short title track is meant to evoke Syd Barrett, the band's lost founder. Other lyrics complain about the music biz. The music is austere.
What do I like about it? It's melancholic, atmospheric, and beautiful. I still remember listening to it for the first time, when I still lived with my parents, its brooding opening in my ears as I ate the macaroni cheese my mother had left for me.
Key track: "Wish You Were Here"
Frank's APA poll placing: Joint 17th (with one other)
29. The Who Who's Next (1971)
What is it? It's the fifth album by The Who, which was originally meant to be a concept album about something or other but ended up being a more traditional album of songs (mostly by Pete Townshend) that they had ready for release.
What is it like? Rock! Or power pop! Or whatever they call this kind of thing. Lots of up tempo songs with storming guitar solos but then buried in among all that nuggets of sensitivity.
What do I like about it? There's an unapolegetic "woaahhh!" rockness to it that is very appealing, with it being very hard not to stop writing this and air guitar along to it, but there's also a sense of artistic ambition to it that ticks the brainy music box for me. But you can't knock the rock and the awesome power of Roger Daltrey's scream on "Won't Get Fooled Again", which closes the album.
Key track: "Behind Blue Eyes"
Frank's APA poll placing: 182nd
28. Cate Le Bon Me Oh My (2009)
What is it? It's the debut album from Welsh sensation Cate Le Bon.
What is it like? Melancholic tunes, lyrics about pet death and depression, Le Bon's mannered and sometimes soaring vocals.
What do I like about it? Look at this stage you should know that I love sad music. The real question is why do I am so fond of this when I find much of Cate Le Bon's other music disappointing. One thing with this is that the record is largely devoid of the mid-tempo chuggers and pointless guitar soloing that bedevils her subsequent albums. Le Bon is not playing on her own here but it feels like a very intimate experience. And her voice is so beautiful on this record. She never plays these songs live and she never really sings like this either; she must really like the mid-tempo chuggers. Or maybe My Oh My comes from a dark place she does not want to revisit.
Key track: "Eyes So Bright"
Frank's APA poll placing: Unplaced
27. The Velvet Undergound White Light / White Heat (1968)
What is it? It's the Velvet Underground's second album.
What is it like? There's no Nico on vocals and the Lou Reed Brill Building stylings that occasionally sneaked onto the first album have been completely excised. Instead it's a collection of mostly abrasive tunes with lyrics about drug use, gender reassignment surgery, people sending themselves through the post, and the kind of party you wouldn't actually want to find yourself at.
What do I like about it? It's uncompromising and relentless, the kind of record the cool kids love and the squares hate. Key track: "Sister Ray"
Frank's APA poll placing: Unplaced
26. Ween Thom's Ween TOAD (2011)
What is it? It's a compilation of tunes by Ween put together by "Thom", a member of Frank's APA.
What is it like? It is like everything. Ween encompass all music and all music is here.
What do I like about it? It's a window into a strange world. The opening track rocks out but then you have a thrash rock tune that's over before it starts, and then you have a track that sounds like it could be from Spinal Tap's hippy phase, and then you have a song with a child singing about how he is dying of meningitis, then what seems to be a recording of stoned people ordering food from a taqueria server except it's the same guy doing all the voices, and so on. Some of it is funny, some of it is pastiche, but it's not always funny and there is more to it than just pastiche. But what? But what? This is the mystery of Ween.
Key track: "Your Party"
Frank's APA poll placing: Unplaced
25. Belle & Sebastian Tigermilk (1996)
What is it? It's the debut album from Glaswegian sensations Belle & Sebastian, but it originally received a release so limited that most people didn't hear it until B&S had released three subsequent albums.
What is it like? Lots of Stuart Murdoch written songs with poetic lyrics about sensitive subjects set to lush arrangements.
What do I like about it? It's the one all-killer-no-filler B&S album, with every track not just being great in and of itself but a key exemplar of the B&S aesthetic.
Key track: "My Wandering Days Are Over"
Frank's APA poll placing: 49th
24. David Bowie The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars (1972)
What is it? It's David Bowie's fifth album, in some sense a concept album about the eponymous oddly named character.
What is it like? You know what it is like. A collection of songs, some up tempo, some less so, all hanging on Bowie's strange otherwordly persona.
What do I like about it? It is the most Bowie of Bowie albums. I could have played it cool and picked Low or Station to Station but we would all have known I was lying. Plus the other albums do not have Mick Ronson (well some of them do, but they are not contenders).
Key track: "Ziggy Stardust"
Frank's APA poll placing: 45th
23. Kraftwerk The Man Machine (1978)
What is it? It's Kraftwerk's seventh album, the one where they wear the red shirts on the cover, and the one with "The Model" on it.
What is it like? It continues the mechanistic sound of previous Kraftwerk albums (despite probably being played on analogue instruments) and further moves the band towards the dancefloor.
What do I like about it? It's a retro-futurist classic that unapologetically celebrates technological progress.
Key track: "The Robots"
Frank's APA poll placing: Joint 147th (with two others)
22. Syd Barrett The Madcap Laughs (1970)
What is it? It's the debut solo album from the former Pink Floyd frontman, recorded when his mental deterioration was becoming more extreme while still being within limits that allowed him to record music.
What is it like? Barrett sings and plays acoustic guitar while the other musicians struggle to keep up. There's an oddness to the sound that might derive from Barrett's mental state.
What do I like about it? I think it's the voice, the sound of someone's sanity draining away. Why would I want to listen to that? And yet at time it is so beautiful, with songs like the opener "Terrapin" a fauvist love song like no other. The record is let down a bit by a couple of out-takes that sound like they have only been included to burnish Barrett's "Mr Mad" credentials but the best tracks sound like someone struggling and failing to stop themselves from spiralling over the edge.
Key track: "Late Night"
Frank's APA poll placing: Unplaced
21. Nico The End… (1974)
What is it? It's Nico's fourth solo album, produced by John Cale.
What is it like? Nico sings in her subterranean voice of doom, accompanying herself on harmonium and with a fairly minimal accompaniment from other musicians (mostly Cale but also at times Brian Eno and Phil Manzanera).
What do I like about it? It is music from an underworld of despair and hopelessness.
Key track: "The Valley of the Kings"
Frank's APA poll placing: Unplaced
20. Kate Bush The Dreaming (1982)
What is it? Kate Bush's fourth album, her first without another producer, which underperformed commercially when originally released.
What is it like? It's odd.
What do I like about it? There is no compromise to this record. The track most akin to a conventional single is the opener, "Sat in Your Lap", but even that is a relentless percussion led tune that you can't imagine overly troubling the singles charts (though it still made no. 11). Bush has no qualms about using her entire vocal range here (sometimes on single lines of songs) and goes for it with the Fairlight sampler. Also Rolf Harris appears on the title track.
Key track: "Suspended in Gaffa"
Frank's APA poll placing: Unplaced
19. New Order Substance (1987)
What is it? It's a compilation of singles by New Order, although one or two of them were re-recorded for this collection.
What is it like? The first songs evoke the more electronic end of Joy Division's music but as the listener moves through the songs the dancefloor influence becomes stronger. Tracks also feature the most distinctive element of the New Order sound: the Peter Hook bassline.
What do I like about it? Cool tunes that often manage to sound angsty while still being tracks that call you to the dancefloor. It is a DJ truism that "Blue Monday" will fill any flagging dancefloor despite its mopey lyrics.
Key track: "Temptation"
Frank's APA poll placing: Unplaced
What is it? It is a compilation of music from the German Democratic Republic, a country that no longer exists. Volume 1 and 2 in this series dealt with rock and pop music and were a bit dull, while this third volume collects music that is a bit more leftfield.
What is it like? Stylistically it is all over the place: children's choirs, dissident rock, pro-regime folk music, novelty hits about how people from Saxony have funny accents, TV themes, DDR space rock, schlager, and much much more.
What do I like about it? I think its place at the overlap of my interest in music and German history is what draws me in here. Some of this music is genuinely great, some of it is "interesting", but I love it all as a picture of a country that no longer exists and whose span was so short there are people still living who were born before its formation.
Key track: Sandow "Born in the G. D. R."
Frank's APA poll placing: Unplaced
17. Godspeed You! Black Emperor Slow Riot For New Zero Kanada (1999)
What is it? It's an e.p. the length of a short album from popular Canadian funsters Godspeed You! Black Emperor.
What is it like? GYBE's sound sees them combining more traditional rock instruments with cello and violin, creating textured music that embraces quiet-loud dynamic shifts. The first half is entirely instrumental while the second features field recordings of a street poet who helpfully shares his freeman philosophy and recycled Iron Maiden lyrics masquerading as original poetry.
What do I like about it? The music is beautiful and enveloping, a balm in our troubled times. The field recordings are fascinating and superbly combined with the music, which seems to shift sinuously around the poet's words. That the poet is a self-important nutjob who seems to think having to pay a speeding ticket is some mark of America's descent into totalitarianism is not an issue here: his endlessly parodyable speech patterns remain oddly memorisable.
Key track: "Blaise Bailey Finnegan III"
Frank's APA poll placing: Unplaced
16. Baader Meinhof Baader Meinhof (1996)
What is it? Luke Haines, frontman of The Auteurs, takes a break from his band to record a collection of songs about popular West German terrorist group the Red Army Faction.
What is it like? Sonically it moves away from the kind of indie music Haines had been associated with. His guitar playing is all over the record but it also features slow handclaps and string flourishes that evoke Arab classical music. The title track in particular owes a debt to "Space Blues" by Felt, one of the few acts that Haines speaks favourably of in his Britpop memoir Bad Vibes. But at times it heads off in a direction that I might describe as mutant funk. Lyrically it's a tour through the crazy world of West Germany's violent underground of the 1970s, with various stars of the era making an appearance.
What do I like about it? I think that like me Haines must have read the "Televisionaries" issue of Vague so with this it's like he is making a concept album designed to appeal to me personally. And the tunes are great, with Haines' rasping vocals perfectly suited to the strung out sounds he is conjuring up.
Key track: "There's Gonna Be an Accident"
Frank's APA poll placing: Unplaced
15. Magnetic Fields 69 Love Songs (1999)
What is it? It's a triple album of love songs from Magnetic Fields, the vehicle of songwriting powerhouse Stephin Merritt. He sings most of the songs but vocals are also provided by bandmate and manager Claudia Gonson as well as various other collaborators.
What is it like? It is song-based music, highlighting melody and lyrics. Merritt plays lots of instruments while his bandmates and guest musicians play others, with rehabilitated banjo surprisingly prominent.
What do I like about it? The songs! They're great songs. OK they are not all great songs - with a collection of this many tunes there will be peaks and troughs, but even the filler tunes have their charms, particularly in context. Lyrically the tunes run through every kind of love: happy, sad, doomed, failed, gay, straight, disturbed, carnie, etc. Some tunes are funny, others touching, others still deeply moving.
Key track: "Yeah! Oh Yeah!"
Frank's APA poll placing: 5th
14. Orbital [The Brown Album] (1993)
What is it? It is the second album from Orbital. It has no obvious name but the cover is brown so while some people call it Orbital II, others refer to it as The Brown Album.
What is it like? It starts off with a looped vocal sample of Worf from Star Trek talking about time becoming a loop, but that gives way an album of electronic dance music.
What do I like about it? Time and place, happy memories, but also these are great tunes with a definite euphoric energy.
Key track: "Halcyon + On + On"
Frank's APA poll placing: Unplaced
13. Ride Nowhere (1990)
What is it? It is the debut album from Ride, the Oxford shoegaze band.
What is it like? Ride have listened to My Bloody Valentine but they take that sonic template or shimmery guitars and effects pedal rock and marry it to a more muscular sound with vocals whose words can actually be made out.
Why do I like about it? So there was a period in the early 1990s when it seemed like indie music and dance music were in dialogue with each other, with indie musicians feeling like they had to up their game in competition with the strange new sounds luring the kids out to orbital raves. This is in no way an indie-dance crossover record but it gestures towards the same euphoric quality that dance music suggests. Also for a record by a bunch of well spoken soft lads from the Thames Valley it rocks like motherfucker, with a lot of this down to the savage drumming of Loz Colbert.
Key track: "Seagull"
Frank's APA poll placing: Joint 150th (with one other)
12. The Shangri-Las Myrmidons of Melodrama (1995)
What is it? It is a collection of songs from the brief mid-1960s heyday of the Shangri-Las.
What is it like? The Shangri-Las were a girl group. Mary Weiss sings lead most of the time, with the others providing harmony vocals or assisting in call-response tunes. The lyrics typically involve doomed teenage love in which the singer finds herself mixed up with some disreputable youth from the bad part of town.
What do I like about it? A big part of the appeal here is Mary Weiss's big voice and ability to inhabit these songs about teenage misery. Before picking this up, the only Shangri-Las tune I knew was "Leader of the Pack", but there is a rake of songs here of similar calibre, written for them by a range of collaborators. It's easy for jaded cynics to dismiss this music, but they're missing out on recordings that manage to present both intense misery and hilarity, often in the same song.
Key track: "I Can Never Go Home Anymore"
Frank's APA poll placing: Unplaced
11. Air Moon Safari (1998)
What is it? It is the debut album from French duo Air.
What is it like? It owes a debt to Jean-Claude Vannier's arrangements for Serge Gainsbourg's Histoire de Melody Nelson, especially the basslines on "Cargo Culte". Overall it combines some electronics with delicate rock instrumentation and orchestral touches. Some tracks are instrumental, others feature vocals by guest star Beth Hirsch, while others again feature the Air boys on vocoder.
What do I like about it? Partly again it is time and place. This is not a dance music record but it was for people who like dance music. But also it is a collection of beautiful and enveloping music that encourage listeners to sit back, relax, and let the tunes take them away.
Key track: "La Femme d'Argent"
Frank's APA poll placing: Joint 64th (with four others)
10. Massive Attack Mezzanine (1998)
What is it? It's the third album from the Bristol trip hop sensations, except on this one they go all goth hop.
What is it like? With its samples and drum loops, it remains true to the band's trip hop origins but the overall sound is claustrophobic and oppressive. Various guest stars provide vocals, as do members of the band themselves.
What do I like about it? Well I love things that are claustrophobic and oppressive, as anyone who has ever visited me will note.
Key track: "Inertia Creeps"
Frank's APA poll placing: Joint 17th (with one other)
9. Tricky Maxinquaye (1995)
What is it? It's the debut album from erstwhile Massive Attack collaborator Tricky.
What is it like? More trip hop, but again of the somewhat claustrophobic variety. Tricky provides odd ball rapping on some tracks, but the main vocalist is Martina Topley-Bird whose mannered voice is a key part of the record's sound; there are also other guest vocalists. As well as original tracks there is also the well known cover of Public Enemy's 'Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos'.
What do I like about it? The claustrophobia, the oddball vocals, the weird samples.
Key track: "Ponderosa"
Frank's APA poll placing: 134th
[it was at this point in proceedings that I realised I had forgotten to vote for Portishead's Dummy.]
8. Bob Dylan Live 1966: The "Royal Albert Hall" Concert (1966)
What is it? It is a recording of a concert from Bob Dylan's first electric tour of the United Kingdom. Despite the title, it was recorded at the Manchester Free Trade Hall, but it does feature an irate audience member shouting "Judas!".
What is it like? The first disc has Dylan playing with his acoustic guitar the sole musical accompaniment; the attendees like this. Then the second half has him playing an electric set backed by The Hawks; crowd reaction is more mixed, with applause mixed in with slow handclaps and boos.
What do I like about it? It feels like the record hasn't just caught a concert but a moment, with Dylan shocking his fans by going electric and turning his back on folk purism. The first half lulls them into a false sense of security with its sensitive acoustic performance, but then in the second half the sound of the Hawks blasts out and you can just hear all the conservative folkies going "What is this shit?", like if someone booked Scooter to play at the Bowlie Weekender. The contradictory audience responses to the electric set (some digging it and applauding, some booing and clearly wishing for a power cut) makes this all feel very immediate.
Key track: "Baby, Let Me Follow You Down"
Frank's APA poll placing: Joint 168th (with ten others)
7. Philip Glass Koyaanisqatsi OST (1983)
What is it? It is Philip Glass's soundtrack for Godfrey Reggio's film.
What is it like? It sounds like music by Philip Glass: slow bits, fast bits, slow bits.
What do I like about it? It was my introduction to minimalism. And it brings to mind the film, with its mix of speeded up and slowed down footage that makes-you-think about the problems of the world. I suppose also it was like nothing else I was listening to when I heard it first, and it does still sound pretty strange (I have lead a sheltered life).
Key track: "Vessels"
Frank's APA poll placing: Joint 152nd (with eight others)
6. Spacemen 3 Playing with Fire (1989)
What is it? It's the third album from Spacemen 3, who were kind of a proto-shoegaze spacerock outfit.
What is it like? Most of the songs have a gentle, enveloping narcotic quality, but there are two notably more uptempo tracks: "Revolution" and "Suicide". I remember hearing it said that while it appears to casual listeners that some Spacemen 3 songs are about drugs while others are love songs, on closer listening it turns out that they are all about drugs. This album does not contradict that.
What do I like about it? It might also be a set and setting thing as this album first came into my orbit one summer when I was in a manky squat in London and going out to see cool bands playing gigs (cool bands in this context being Primal Scream (in their not-actually-that-cool phase), the Telescopes, Eat (now largely forgotten), and Spacemen 3 themselves (twice)). The record lends itself to sitting around and getting in a relaxed frame of mind, with "Revolution" perking up listeners and encouraging them to stick it to the man.
Key track: "How Does It Feel?"
Frank's APA poll placing: Joint 137th (with eight others)
5. Brian Eno Here Come the Warm Jets (1974)
What is it? It is the first solo album by Brian Eno, erstwhile oddball keyboard player with Roxy Music, who had been expelled from that band on the basis that it only had room for one frontman.
What is it like? Oddball pop. Eno sings in a non-standard manner while various of his musical friends and former bandmates play various other instruments.
What do I like about it? It's weird but it's goovey. Art music you can tap your toes to. Music with a good beat that makes you feel brainy for liking it.
Key track: "Baby's on Fire"
Frank's APA poll placing: Joint 120th (with ten others)
4. The Smiths Strangeways, Here We Come (1987)
What is it? It is the last album by The Smiths, recorded when they knew they were about to split and then released after the split had become public.
What is it like? It is an album by The Smiths. Surely everyone knows what The Smiths sound like? They pretty much define the mid-1980s indie sound. This arguably has a slightly more elegiac sound but that might be projection based on it being their last album.
What do I like about it? I like that it is by The Smiths, a band for whom I used to make the claim that all their albums are better than all albums by other artists and something I might still believe at least some of the time but not while putting together this list. The Smiths were all about Morrissey's lyrics and Johnny Marr's guitar playing and composition, and both are in fine form on this record. Very few people would count any of the songs here as their favourite by The Smiths, but there is something about the way the set hangs together that makes it a fitting final record for the band.
Key track: "Paint a Vulgar Picture" (which is my official favourite song by The Smiths)
Frank's APA poll placing: Joint 29th (with one other)
3. Serge Gainsbourg Histoire de Melody Nelson (1971)
What is it? It is a concept album by the popular French singer, telling the story of a dirty rotter who meets a teenage English girl, shags her, and then is sad when she dies in a plane crash on her way back to Sunderland.
What is it like? Gainsbourg largely speaks his vocals over arrangements by Jean-Claude Vannier based around virtuosic drumming, bass and guitar, with occasional orchestral flourishes. It's also very short (under 30 minutes), and with the first and last tracks being variants of each other it feels almost like one long song with a break in the middle. And the words are all in French, which means that most anglophone listeners cannot understand them.
What do I like about it? It is beautiful and atmospheric. As previously noted, I wonder if understanding the lyrics would make me like it more or less. Either way I love how it builds to the closing track, which starts off echoing the one that opens the record but then becomes increasingly epic.
Key track: "Cargo Culte"
Frank's APA poll placing: Joint 69th (with ten others; it's what Serge would have wanted)
2. The Beatles Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)
What is it? It is the eighth Beatles album and arguably their last as a functioning band who didn't all hate each other.
What is it like? By this point in their career the Beatles were musically ambitious and keen to utilise the tools of the recording studio. They were also at the peak of their songwriting game. So we have tunes that evoke musical traditions from outside the world of rock and roll but also superbly crafted songs.
What do I like about it? OK first of all I am aware that picking this as a favourite album is a massive cliche and I am also aware that it has become common to pick other Beatles albums as one's favourite by that band. But I don't think anyone listening with an objective ear can really pick any other of their records over this one. It has some great tunes (arguably "A Day in the Life" is their very greatest tune) but the background tracks are really solid too. But it's also a sad record, capturing the band when they were still buds and when Lennon and McCartney were still writing songs together at least some of the time, something that would change.
Key track: "A Day in the Life"
Frank's APA poll placing: Joint 15th (with one other)
1. My Bloody Valentine Isn't Anything (1988)
What is it? It is the debut album by the popular Irish-English band, released on Creation after a couple of e.p.s had suggested a radical change of direction from the jangly indiepop of their earlier singles.
What is it like? Strange shimmering and distorted sounds that might once have been guitars, buried male and female vocals, drums that may or may not be programmed, tunes that approximate to songs but might be something else entirely, etc.
What do I like about it? Bought on a whim with a record token having previously heard one track by them, the album felt revolutionary, even compared to what I was listening to back then. And a lot of other people felt the same way on hearing this, with the album inspiring a whole wave of music, some of which was not terrible. But going back to the album itself, it full of really beautiful music, which is hard to imagine when given the basic description of it being based on distorted guitar sounds.
Key track: "Several Girls Galore"
Frank's APA poll placing: Joint 33rd (with nine others)
They also served: Portishead, Hawkwind, Cornershop, Laibach, the Rolling Stones (Beggar's Banquet), many jazz musicians, The KLF (for Chill Out), The Pixies, The Breeders (Pod only), Underworld, Elastica, Leftfield, Fever Ray, U2, Teenage Fanclub, P. J. Harvey, Sonic Youth, Morrissey, Talking Heads, The Sugarcubes (Life's Too Good only), The Sisters of Mercy, Broadcast, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, Transient Ambient Noise Bursts (With Announcements), Songs for Swinging Celibates, etc. etc. etc.
images:
Wish You Were Here (Wikipedia)
Who's Next (Wikipedia)
Me Oh My (Wikipedia)
White Light/White Heat (Wikipedia)
Ween (Wikipedia)
Tigermilk (Wikipedia)
The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (Wikipedia)
The Man Machine (Wikipedia)
The Madcap Laughs (Wikipedia)
The End… (Wikipedia)
The Dreaming (Wikipedia)
Substance (Wikipedia)
Das Beste aus der DDR - Teil 3: Kult (Musikzirkus)
Slow Riot for New Zero Kanada (Wikipedia)
Baader Meinhof (Wikipedia)
69 Love Songs (Wikipedia)
The Brown Album (Wikipedia)
Nowhere (Wikipedia)
Myrmidons of Melodrama (Discogs)
Moon Safari (Wikipedia)
Mezzanine (Wikipedia)
Maxinquaye (Wikipedia)
Live 1966: The "Royal Albert Hall" Concert (Wikipedia)
Koyaanisqatsi (Soundtrack Collector)
Playing with Fire (Wikipedia)
Here Come the Warm Jets (Wikipedia)
Strangeways, Here We Come (Wikipedia)
Histoire de Melody Nelson (Wikipedia)
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Wikipedia)
Isn't Anything (Wikipedia)
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