Album #61: 3 (Melt) by Peter Gabriel

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Sound: Prog rock with various highlights

Mood: Mad to dancing to mourning

Important Songs: Intruder; Biko

Song You Must Hear: No Self Control

Quote: “I like you lying awake your bated breath charging the air”

      “I shoot into the light”

Notes: I love Peter Gabriel, but there is something special about this album.  The different portraits of insanity, and the results of insanity, and dance songs filling the middle.  There is so much to think about, so much to examine and so much to feel, no matter how uncomfortable it all is. 

Album #71: Outdoor Elvis by The Swirling Eddies

1.     

Sound: Garage band

Mood: Hilariously sarcastic

Important songs: Strange Days, Billy Graham

Song You Must Hear: Hide the Beer, the Pastor’s Here

Quote: “Coco, you seem awfully sad today… that’s more like calculated existential angst.”

“Be our friend, save us Outdoor Elvis; we have sinned, forgive us Outdoor Elvis… we might have to set a trap to bring him back…”

Notes: The best album of the genre of sarcastic Christian.  Usually such sarcastic Christians sound like bitter Republicans, but the Swirling Eddies (who is just a re-named Daniel Amos) make as much fun of themselves as anyone else.  And their typical target are money-grubbing televangelists (the chorus of “Attack of the Pulpit Masters” is: moneymoneymoneymoneymoneymoneymoneymoneymoneymoneymoney(deepbreath)moneymoneymoney…”) which I greatly appreciate.  It is truly funny, and the songs are (usually) quite good.

Album #73: So by Peter Gabriel

1.  

Sound: A little bit of everything pop

Mood: Inconsistent

Important songs: Big Time, Don’t Give Up, Sledgehammer

Song You Must Hear: In Your Eyes

Quotes: “Long words.  Excellent words.  I can hear them now.”

   “And I pray to a big god as I kneel in the big church.”

Notes:  Gabriel explores every kind of uniqueness here, and difference is the mood of the album.  It is as if Gabriel was given a room full of music toys and he couldn’t decide which one, so he played with them all. And, somehow, every song is fantastic and the album, unbelievably, works as a whole. 

Album #79: Construction Time Again by Depeche Mode

Sound: Electronic 80’s pop

Mood: Preachy

Important Songs: Pipeline, Everything Counts

Song You Must Hear: Love In Itself

Quote: “Everybody’s waiting for judgment day so they could go, ‘Told you so’”

Notes:  I took a week to drive from So California to Portland to go to Bible school, angry at the injustices I saw in India.  I played this album over and over because it perfectly reflected my mood.  The chaotic pop also made it plenty interesting.  And I think I am in love with Martin Gore’s voice. 

Album #80: War by u2

1.      

Sound: Early U2 (I don’t know what else to call it)

Mood: Angry and kind of sad

Important Songs: Sunday Bloody Sunday, New Years’ Day, 40

Song You Must Hear: Refugee

Quote: “How long to sing this song?”

Notes: An amazing early work by U2.  It is driving, and points out the horrors of society, but it is also reflective and heartwrenching.  A compassionate liberal’s bleeding heart, out for everyone to see. 

Album #81: An Innocent Man by Billy Joel

1.      

Sound: Singer/Songwriter with a 50’s twist

Mood: Varied

Important Songs: Tell Her About It, Uptown Girl, An Innocent Man

Song You Must Hear: This Night

Quote: “Some people find that it’s easier to hate than to wait anymore.”

Notes: This is Joel’s tribute to the 50’s songs he grew up with.  It only occasionally sounds like 50’s music, but it gives him the focus he needed to really reach with his music and make an album that feels like a whole. 

Album #92: Chase the Kangaroo by The Choir

1.     

Sound: 80’s electronic

Mood: Mildly depressed

Important songs: Sad Face, Chase the Kangaroo,

One Song You Must Hear: Clouds

Quote:  “A sad face is good for the heart; maybe right now I don’t understand…”

Notes: The Choir is still around, but this is their best album.  It was written by the drummer after his wife had had three miscarriages in a row.  It reflects both his faith and the circumstances that was crushing his heart.

Album #99: Eye In the Sky by The Alan Parsons Project

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Sound: Brilliantly produced 80s rock

Mood: Nihilistic

Important Songs: Sirius/Eye In The Sky;  Old and Wise

Quotes: “Nothing to live for, nothing to die for, we’re lost in the middle of a hopeless world.” 

“Someday, in the midst of time, they will ask me if I knew you, I’ll smile and say you were a friend of mine.”

One Song You Must Hear: The Silence and I

Notes: There are a variety of styles, and not all of them work.  But the first side of this album is a masterpiece, and the final song, Old and Wise, makes an almost optimistic coda to this most pessimistic of albums.