Generally considered the band's creative peak, Rubycon consists of two side-long tracks that are entirely made up of a variety of synthesizers, Moogs and electric pianos. Striking a balance between the repetitive sequencing of Phaedra and the pastoral New Age-isms (a term the band hates) to come, Rubycon often sounds like Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here minus the guitars, vocals and, uh, obviousness. That means Rubycon, while a landmark release in electronic music, translates surprisingly well to the rock vernacular.
Originally released in 1981 and one album on from the stunning The Man-Machine (1978), Kraftwerk were already universally acknowledged as seminal electronica pioneers. Computer World only enhanced this reputation with witty comments on technology that now seem visionary. "Pocket Calculator" and "Home Computer" are particular standouts.
Avalon found Roxy Music smoothing out their arty, angular edges with lush orchestrations and graceful production backing a superior set of Bryan Ferry originals. This 1982 album would prove to be the band's last studio effort, and, as fate would have it, their most popular release thanks to the singles "More Than This," "Avalon" and "Take A Chance With Me."
The second in Rhino's 2008 reissues of New Order's '80s albums, this edition of New Order's landmark 1983 album catches the act at a transitional moment. Appended to the original eight-song set of guitar-based indie and DIY disco -- after singles "Blue Monday" and "The Beach," long included in CD reissues -- are electrofunk attempts "Confusion" and "Thieves Like Us"; "Murder," a shrieking post-punk mantra with proto-death metal vocals, suggest paths not taken (perhaps wisely).
An album that works end to end, Ocean Rain is Echo & the Bunnymen's moment in the sun. The grand, majestic strings, the band's obvious energy and Ian McCulloch's borderline nonsense lyrics mesh perfectly, creating an album with roots in 1960s Psychedelic/Baroque Pop and '80s Post-Punk while maintaining its own identity. One of the finer records in any collections, this contains the hit singles "Killing Moon," "Seven Seas" and "Silver." This remastered edition comes with numerous live cuts added on.
The Psychedelic Furs raised the bar with the release of Forever Now; on their next release, Mirror Moves, they up the ante even more. Songs such as "Heaven" and the gorgeous "The Ghost In You" prove they could be accessible and still retain most of their arty ways. Though not as angular as earlier releases, Mirror Moves shows they wear gloss well.
While Simple Minds' "Don't You Forget About Me" doesn't appear here, their 1985 album is entirely of a piece with their era-defining Breakfast Club smash. Gone is the arty post-punk of their early albums; this is new wave at its most stadium-sized, complete with ringing guitars borrowed from U2, a hint of Duran Duran's white-boy funk and a yearning, reverberant sense of space that makes Big Country's horizons look positively pint-sized. "Alive and Kicking" sounds as ridiculously (and wonderfully) grandiose as ever; it's a reminder of an era when alt-pop wasn't afraid to go big.
The Breakfast Club is the '80s teen comedy par excellence, and while its soundtrack may be thin on actual hits, it perfectly encapsulates the sound and feel of 1985's adolescent hormones, amped up on shoulder pads and MTV. Keith Forsey's instrumental tracks, with their gated drum machines, brassy synth stabs and hard-rockin' guitar leads, are museum-quality artifacts of the era's production tics, and the same goes for songs from E.G. Daily, Jesse Johnson, Wang Chung et al. Simple Minds' "Don't You (Forget About Me)," meanwhile, is an undeniable classic.
OMD steadily built an audience in the U.S. during the early 1980s with a mix of pop hooks and avant-synth inclinations. They'd already gone more mainstream with their previous LP Junk Culture, but with Crush they became a new wave pop act somewhere between Howard Jones, Duran Duran and their former selves. The gambit paid off in America, with big hit singles (and major MTV screen time) for "Secret" and "So In Love." The older OMD sound can be heard on "88 Seconds in Greensboro," "Crush" and "La Femme Accident."
In 1987 U2 joined the pantheon of World's Biggest Rock Bands with The Joshua Tree, an album that deserved its monster sales and "instant classic" status. U2 kick things off with a 1-2-3 knockout punch of great singles, while deep album cuts like "Running to Stand Still" are uniformly strong. This remastered anniversary edition features a disc's worth of bonus material. Such B-sides as "Spanish Eyes," "Walk to the Water" and (especially) "Sweetest Thing" would be considered worthy album cuts by just about any other rock band.
Loveless took years to complete and almost brought its parent label (Creation) down with it. The struggle was worth it though, because the end result is miraculous -- a blend of blistering sound and angelic melody brought to life through Kevin Shields' fervent attention to studio detail and hazy guitar pyrotechnics. "Soon" is the standout club track of the entire shoegazer scene, but Loveless is a near perfect fever dream of a guitar pop record.
With Slowdive's third and final album, the band distilled its woozy, laudanum-drip rock into an essence that far transcended their shoegaze origins. Eschewing beats, choruses and other rock 'n' roll trappings, the album wafts along on layers of strummed guitar, faraway voices and spiraling delay. Its plucked melodies and pellucid coos nod to the Durutti Column and Cocteau Twins, while its flirtations with formlessness pave the way for post-rock's molasses juggernaut, from Low and Labradford to Grouper.
It often happens that an artist will overreach in an attempt to diversify their sound. This could have been the case with Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, but Corgan and co. have hit their marks with precision. This double-CD was nominated for six Grammy Awards, proving songs such as "1979" and "Tonight, Tonight" had power enough to charm the mainstream.
Released in 1997, Mogwai's debut synthesized the hard rock bombast of Black Sabbath and the wide-eyed surrealism of shoegaze bands such as My Bloody Valentine and Spacemen 3. This 10th anniversary re-issue features a second disc of live cuts, including a 10-plus minute version of famed concert scorcher "Mogwai Fear Satan," as well as four rarities, the best being the sickly sweet "Honey."
Few titles have better expressed the sound and feel of their respective albums than Spiritualized's Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space (although Spacemen 3's Taking Drugs to Make Music to Take Drugs To is certainly up there). Marrying psychedelic pop, gospel, ambient electronics and down-and-dirty rock 'n' roll, Spiritualized's 1997 masterpiece comes across variously like a shoegaze Rolling Stones, a 22nd century Velvet Underground and Suicide jamming with Dr. John. Once you come up, you won't ever want to come down.
When this album came out in 2000, no one anywhere sounded anything like Sigur Ros. Heck, their frontman sings in his own made up language ("Hopelandish") and plays his guitar with a violin bow. Combine that with atmospheric keys and ironclad bass lines for a liquid sound that doesn't so much rock as course. "Svefn-G-Englar" was the deserved hit, but the brass band that shows up for "Olsen Olsen" is equally epic. This is music to listen to while sailing your Viking ship home from battle.
Paris' coolest pair of cybernetics perfects its robot rock on Discovery, morphing Homework's buzzy filter disco into an even suppler strain of electro-funk. Never shy of lite-FM cliches, they turn guilty pleasures into unabashed house anthems with "One More Time" and "Digital Love," and give the vocoder a passionate workout on the infectious "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger." Throughout, the synths go to 11 and the vocals beam down from cloud nine. Establishing one of the decade's most durable sounds, Discovery paved the way for everyone from Justice to Kanye.
It's funny. Old-school Genesis fans get down on the band for going pop after Peter Gabriel's departure. Yet their former leader became a Top 40 sensation as well. As the anthology Hit demonstrates, the two camps traveled different paths up that Billboard mountain. Where Phil Collins and company distanced themselves from their more progressive tendencies, Gabriel used his to enrich the pop-song template. Sure, a song like "Sledgehammer" is dance-pop fun, but it's also immaculately crafted.
"Wake Up" sounds like it was written for a revolution. Arcade Fire didn't start one -- their songs ape the best bits of Springsteen, U2 and the Talking Heads -- they merely sound like it, and in so doing have gotten several folks believing in collectives, Canadians and the power of jams to inspire joy and conviction. This album evokes familial connections, love affairs and the bonds of friendship; if it were a Rorschach drawing you'd say it looked like passion itself. What the band is so exuberant about is simply being a band. Their songs have purpose but could be about whatever you wanted.
Fans of Schnauss need read no further -- it's another tour de force. Start with "Stars." Fans of the Cocteau Twins will be delighted to see that band's spirit lives on within this German producer. They should start with "Never Be The Same." Fans of lush, groovy, washed-out downtempo saying "Ulrich who?" should hang their heads in shame and immediately play this whole album, followed by his first two releases as well. It's all beautiful stuff and a million miles from much of the utter rubbish that's been passing for ambient music ever since Eno tripped over an ARP 2600 in the '70s.
Yesterday and Today sounds a lot like the Field's debut album, but who's complaining? Running 10 or 15 minutes long, each track is as sensuous as a heat mirage on a sun-baked freeway, full of delirious repetitions and conjuring more fantastical images with every mile. "Everybody's Got to Learn Sometime" uses huge chunks of the Korgis' song, while "The More That I Do" whips Cocteau Twins' "Lorelei" into a creamy froth. If the Field are a one-trick pony, Yesterday and Today shows off a luscious coat of fur -- and the stamina of a thoroughbred.
It's hard to talk about goth-opera belter Zola Jesus without referencing half a dozen rock goddesses she expertly evokes: the glam grandiosity of Siouxsie Sioux, the arty extravagance of Björk and Kate Bush, the pop-melodrama fireworks of Stevie Nicks. But her third full-length conjures a high-gravity universe all her own, deep and heavy, with industrial-noise discord bleeding into monolithic torch songs that make Florence + the Machine sound minimalist. Tracks like "Hikikomori" lean on anguished strings, "Skin" on plaintive piano. But ZJ's authoritarian bellow is the star attraction.
