Music

It's the 50th of that album this year.

See if your local planetarium is doing the show. It is something else. 10/10 would recommend.

I need to give We Will Always Love You another listen or two. I became fixated on Running Red Lights and it eclipsed the entire rest of the album for me.

Since I Left You is finally starting to feel its age, but it might belong on a list like this too simply for the way it flows together.

I would call "Celestial" and "Wavering Radiant" perfect Isis' albums as well.

The Wall is the best Pink Floyd album in terms of amount of hours you can put into dissecting every single line of lyrics and using the themes to understand why people are being radicalized into right wing authoritarian movements even in 2023... It has deep narrative staying power about the cycles of trauma, abuse, self-hatred, grief, violence, losing yourself and then the power to decide for yourself to stop hurting people and try and find your own redemption, if you can... There's almost nothing like it in existence! It also has what has been argued to be the best guitar solo of all time (in Comfortably Numb).

David is the most emotional guitar player of all time because he grew up listening to jazz saxophone and you can only play one note at a time on the sax - he took that philosophy to his guitar so instead of shredding he knows how to use musical phrasing to build up to just single notes that rip your heart out...

Animals is of course excellent but I find myself wanting to only listen to Sheep and Dogs more than anything else. It's like a sandwich - best stuff in the middle.

Wish You Were Here is a more perfect album than Animals imo, and probably more accessible to new listeners. Welcome to the Machine is a bit intense but if people could handle the random sounds section of Dark Side of the Moon then I'm sure they can handle it 😂 Dark Side of the Moon is overrated to me tbh. Time is one of the best songs of all... Time... For sure though. Us and Them and Great Gig in the Sky are also amazing but the rest of the album is just me waiting to hear those songs tbh. The guitar solo from Time is also one of my most favourite guitar solos - David is just finding his signature sound on that album and Time is just the perfect encapsulation of Pink Floyd's overall genre which is nostalgic grief/longing for times you can't return to. Comfortably Numb is also very heavy on those themes but the raw emotion in that one is much stronger as it is about personal grief and loss and the anguish of finally accepting/succumbing/letting go of what you can't get back. That solo is basically the musical representation of the 5 stages of grief... That's my personal interpretation at least (have a listen and let me know what you think). Childhood's End is a precursor song to that theme before they find their signature sound, and nearly the entire album of Wish You Were Here is about that same theme but from the perspective of an outsider. Later on in The Division Bell and Sorrow carry on that theme, even though the post-breakup stuff is less thematically coherent.

Sitting on my record player as we speak! 😂

The vinyl sleeve is absolutely gorgeous.

It is incredibly coherent and each song very much fits into the theme they were building. I love the theme of the Island of Dr Moreau (sp?) and the Jabberwocky nonsense word stuff. It's very sensual. It's not mind-blowing or anything but it is a perfect album for what they were trying to accomplish (sensual, kind of dangerous but whimsical, alluring, smooth, playful, sexual). It makes a good album to buy on vinyl because with vinyl you don't really skip songs and it favours albums that are more thematically coherent like Zaba is.

Second Alan Parsons Project album I've seen in this list! I Robot was one of my favorite records growing up, but I really thought they were a forgotten band.

Jon Hopkins' Immunity is one of my favorite albums for work and study as well as active listening. It can slide into the background without being drowsy or melancholy.