What are your favorite sounding albums (note: I’m not talking about sound quality)

What are some of your favorite sounding albums? No, female vocal pedophiles- I’m not talking about sound quality!!!!!! I’m talking about the unique way the album sounds. Every album sounds different. And some have a magical/special/beautiful/haunting etc sound to them that affects the way you feel the music. This comes from a combination of the musicians’ artistry- what instruments they play, how they play them and what they play as well as how the album is recorded, produced, mixed, etc. I guess most will be good recordings but not necessarily. If anyone mentions f'ing Eric Clapton live acoustic or Dianna Krall or whatever her name is or albums with airbrushed pictures of 12 year old Asian girls I will emerge from your screen and neuter you.

These are not albums I generally use to test gear with but albums I use to enjoy music with (maybe in concert with how my gear hopefully lets it shine) Sometimes at meets when no one is looking.

Post album cover pictures!!

I actually don’t have a complete list myself, this is just a thread I thought would be good for everyone to think about. Here’s a few.

I think my favorite sounding album I own is Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk. That Americana “crunchy” sound.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-bkXQhNbE3qe-l3q7RUaMDjEjQ4tQphg&feature=share



Steve Albini’s recording of Mono - You Are There the richness in the Lower mids of the distorted guitars. Though I prefer Hymm to the Immortal Wind and maybe their more recent albums on the whole.





Bob Dylan - Time Out of Mind and Emmylou Harris - Wrecking Ball both produced by Daniel Lanois and have a beautiful unique spacey sound (and are both excellent albums by the artists).

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNFQdvbnEQTGMeN3Ja-t6TmQba_urt_dK&feature=share



(Whole album not available here’s a couple songs)

https://youtu.be/7JBHyE18L3o



And I actually like the sound of The Flaming Lips - The Soft Bulletin. I think the compressed mess works well with the music and maybe only works because certain instruments are not a compressed mess namely the vocals. I did not think it worked on Embryonic. I thought that should have been at least typically well recorded though I don’t know what sound would have worked best.





Tame Impala - Innerspeaker and Lonerism
Love the way they sound and don’t know WTF makes those albums sound that way or how to describe it even.









I got lots more but that’s enough for now.


UPDATE: Please include with your post the following for each album:

1) Name of artist and album
2) Description of the sound you are attracted to. Can be one word or a paragraph or essay but something
3) Link to YouTube playlist of the album(s) mentioned or at least some songs if the album is not available.
4) Album cover artwork (But if this too much work and will prevent you from posting then it’s ok not to include it but it will make RD happppy if you do. Such a pretty thread it will be)

If you already posted please go back and edit your post with these 3 or 4.

I’m not being a Nazi. I’m trying to create a quality thread full of easily clickable links to interesting sounding albums as well as discussion. This is more about sharing than posting. If you want to shit post feel free to post in the “what are you listening to now” thread.

Discussion is welcome too!

 

Below 3 are must play albums for me whenever I get new gear
1. Blood Sugar Sex Magik by RHCP

2. Pretzel Logic - Steely Dan

3. The World Is a Ghetto - War

 

So many. But a few comes to mind.

Ghost - Prequelle (2018)

The first track is basically an ominous nursery rhyme which leads in to the second track "Rats". In my opinion, Ghost has a sound that is unique and a "persona" that was interesting to me. It took a long time (and a law suit) to reveal Tobias, previously only known as Papa Emeritus, as the head of the band. The other musicians are simply referred to as Ghouls and never named. Listening to this album just puts me in a good mood. The clean vocals, surprising use of instruments like saxophones (a saxophonist joined the band for this album) and great guitar riffs keep me coming back.

• "Dance Macabre", track 6, on YouTube

• Album playlist (YouTube)

• Ghost on Wikipedia

Paul Simon - Graceland (1986)

Graceland is a fairly new album (to me) and I discovered it reading about it here on SBAF. Quite surprising, considering how incredibly popular the album is. I learned about it via a YouTube link describing a part of the mastering process. The album is made up of a fair few different genres and I think it's a feel-good album.

• YouTube Playlist

• Graceland on Wikipedia

• The story of Graceland (YouTube)

Metallica - Metallica (1991)
a.k.a. The Black Album

I grew up listening to Metallica, so it's always kind of stuck with me. Enter Sandman is one of the songs I heard on the radio when the single was released and I still like it 29 years later.

Enter Sandman on YouTube

Album playlist

 

Good call on Tusk ! One of my favorite albums is then play on. The 2013 version with the tacked on singles...


https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_kBQKTXtfFJ9O53m9W8njYkoXrFMCVh94Q



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Then_Play_On

edited for updated rules, this is cool because I am an album person. I love a good album.

I think this has the useful info if people wanna get into fleetwood mac history, as much as I like the Buckingham/Nicks era, I feel this is their masterpiece. Really loved Peter Green and Danny Kirwan. There's an old world vaudeville feel to this album, especially the more vocal trippy numbers. Almost like it's from pre depression era or something. Oh and then there's the blues !! This album doesn't have the best sound quality but its all about the mood and the feel baby !

 

UPDATE: Please include with your post the following for each album:

1) Name of artist and album
2) Description of the sound you are attracted to. Can be one word or a paragraph or essay but something
3) Link to YouTube playlist of the album(s) mentioned or at least some songs if the album is not available.
4) Album cover artwork (But if this too much work and will prevent you from posting then it’s ok not to include it but it will make RD happppy if you do. Such a pretty thread it will be). Do not attach images, imbed them from a google image search.

If you already posted please go back and edit your post with these 3 or 4.

I’m not being a Nazi. I’m trying to create a quality thread full of easily clickable links to interesting sounding albums as well as discussion. This is more about sharing than posting. If you want to shit post feel free to post in the “what are you listening to now” thread.

Discussion is welcome too!

 

Vashti Bunyan - Just Another Diamond Day
This album has technically bad sound quality but it sounds sooo good. Goes perfect with the timeless music.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOJWuc3CN303zg1tLJ6gJNhIRxCnv6dwI&feature=share

 

The Unicorns - Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone?

One of my favorite albums. Half the songs are about ghosts. Not sure how to describe the sound. It's not dark but not light either. One of my favorite parts is in the song Ghost Mountain where there's a toy piano or harpsichord that compliments the general mood of the song perfectly. There's a good mix of synth and guitars. Appeals to my side that likes Weird Al and Devo.

https://soundcloud.com/theunicorns/sets/who-will-cut-our-hair-when

 

DJ Shadow - Endtroducing
Description: Gothic ambience



Ride - Nowhere
Description: Cyclopes wrestling inside a cave
Key track:


Lou Reed - Metal Machine Music
Description: Droning Sheet Metal



My Bloody Valentine - Loveless
Description: Distorted Pet Sounds



Massive Attack - Mezzanine
Description: Despairing darkness



Prodigy - The Fat of the Land
Description: Headbangin' stupidity
Key Track: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXso4Sj5TEM


Public Enemy - It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back
Description: Each track sounds like a bomb is about to go off
Key track: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7pJWb6cirM


Ice Cube - Death Certificate
Description: Eerie P-Funkiness
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hPEHrRWCYo&list=PLJaQqb1_vqOR61QOgVgb9femXfFW6BDZz

 

Thank you @Hinterlander and @Cspirou that was awesome!

 

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_k0fV-EV1yX38TOUMmgIYXz8PqhB4sUMd0

Ceremonials, Florence + the Machine
I love most of the songs on this album and until High as Hope came out it was my de facto favourite work of theirs. Ignoring lyrics, there's just a pervasive swing between lightness and gloom that envelops you from beginning to end. I could geek out about every single song on here but I'm too lazy just now. Everything from the gentle opening of the first track to the almost supernatural-feeling Leave My Body just sits perfectly with me. I love the f**k out of this album.


https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMZx8SCEmX-ZK7qEK_s-W843cpQmvaz5n

Endless Forms Most Beautiful, Nightwish

Here's another one I love from start to end. There's just a feeling of wonder and awe that runs through the entire work, and its using themes of scientific reason, how we're all creatures born of cosmic whim, the "endless forms" life takes to express itself through, and the infinite possibilities we risk by being caught up in our own petty conflicts when we're nothing more than fragile motes of matter on a small pebble in the incomprehensible vastness of space just engages me. It's symphonic metal— I know the genre is kinda WTF for a lot of people but I love how grace is mixed with grit, and how that range of expression allows for a mix of nuance and power when it needs to convey the same.

Oh, and it tosses a Kingkiller Chronicle reference in there with Edema Ruh; that gives it bonus points as far as I'm concerned. Elan is maybe a strong contender for fave song because I identify strongly with how it talks of keeping a heart of wonder and fantasy amidst mundanity. I'm quite serious when I say I sometimes cry like a little bitch when really listening to this song:



I can also rave about their recent album HVMAN. :||: NATVRE. whose rawer, more tribal presentation I can totally jive with, but it's early days yet; I stream it often but still consider myself in the honeymoon period. Not sure which between this and Endless Forms I prefer, but luckily it's not a decision I have to make:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLihZ3gi5Yvzc0pfH2cbNKUUX8o3pb8eVg

I'm taking a careful step away from Nightwish now, haha.


https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpLKa19DKUofKG-uk6DdGn38k4SUL27Y4

A Moon Shaped Pool, Radiohead

Radiohead is one of the weirdest groups ever, but I like that their experimentation allows them to craft things that shouldn't work but just do. AMSP is one of the more nuanced albums off them, and with the exception of Burn the Witch there's nothing outright "get up and dance", but it's all contemplative and carefully dark. The close of Daydreaming has a sound supposedly representative of someone gently sleeping, but to my ears it's more akin to some vast monster on the precipice of dreaming.

Decks Dark is lyrically and musically grim. With bass-heavy gear (cough) it swallows you up and leaves you shell-shocked. Though still thematically reticent and pensive, a lot of the other tracks on here are more delicate and beautiful.


https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFglrP4IEffHfAHw0WITGCnhAa9MVYI24

Rage Against the Machine, eponymous album. Because f**k yes.


https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXqdmjQes3y4BhxiYgF5GMMo3zpQV5lGv

Enchant, Emilie Autumn

I'm deliberately picking something I figure few on here listen to. Disclaimer, I don't entirely agree with how this artist has portrayed psychiatric care as a thing of evil and blind incompetence, but I do agree with her stance that societal understandings and attitudes towards those with mental health problems can often be problematic.

I do rather like a lot of her music, and her debut album is probably my favourite of the lot right now; it's more fantastically inspired than her later works which lean more heavily into a Nine Inch Nails-industrial GRAARGH approach. Her more recent albums are fun, just a more niche listen than they used to be for me. Enchant is like if faeries went clubbing, basically. Funnily enough my favourite song of hers from this era wasn't released until a later album, one that has a very different feel from her debut. It keeps the tone, though:




https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsoD4eYuzH2U4NOhyNrLc8LoB4iiPLdrE

In the Wee Small Hours, Frank Sinatra

I mean... no duh.

Besides the music being well within my range to sing I can just identify a lot with... shit about unrequited loves and difficult relationships. People often talk about how Sinatra managed to make an album about something as personal as heartbreak and make it sound universal, and I can only agree.

 

Daniel Lanois - Acadie
Decent recording but at times a little humid and swampy like the Bayou. I think that adds to it. Some help from Adam and Larry from U2. Then follow that up with:



U2 - The Unforgettable Fire
This came a few years before Lanois' Acadie, but was co produced by Lanois and you can hear some similarities. Brian Eno soundscapey flavor overpowers Lanois contributions but still enchanting. Probably my favorite U2 album. You gotta play it all the way through a few times if you haven't heard it before. U2 has sucked for the last 25 years but this is the good stuff.

 

just because I would like to experience RD emerging from my screen , I give you female vocals that move me

This is a very moving musical experience both because of the power of the voices as well as the chemistry of the cathedral in which it was recorded

I could not find the album online but youtube has my personal spine-tingling favourite track - just click on the images



Another hauntingly beautiful album that I frequently listen to is from Secret Garden



mahybe it is the pict in me that is taken to a yonder place by the celts (despite that they are from Norway) but this album has struck a chord since the first time I heard it

..dB

 

No airbrushed 12 year old asian girls sorry dB

 

Junior Wells' Chicago Blues Band, Hoodoo Man Blues (full album on youtube)
It’s a crying shame that albums rarely capture the excitement of live performances. With this one, though, it’s the other way around: the band plays with such energy that it feels exactly like a concert in a small club, even though it was recorded in a studio. I know nothing about these things but it sounds as though the album was recorded in a fairly straightforward way - without much post-production polishing, as if just a few mics were well-placed around the studio - and what you get is an immediate, unvarnished quality to the sound, complete with a guitar amp humming away in the background. The recording is all the better for not being overly produced. Its directness means we just get a tight group of incredibly talented musicians, with a great propulsive rhythm section, giving it their best. Buddy Guy is a marvel. But I’ve never heard a harmonica like Junior Wells’ (especially on In the Wee Hours). He steals the show. In its sheer excitement the album reminds me of James Brown's Live at the Apollo. And the album has one of the greatest versions ever of Hound Dog.



Tom Waits, Swordfishtrombones (full album)
There’s a lot to love about this album: memorable tunes, imaginative lyrics, Tom Waits’ excellent storytelling skills, and all the great arrangements that put guitars, double bass, and piano together with, variously, the Hammond organ, harmonium, different kinds of marimba, baritone horn, trombone, banjo, harmonica, and calliope (wtf?!), to name just a few. You can almost forgive him the use of the bagpipes. The best thing, though, are all the percussion instruments which are so well integrated into the music that they don’t really stand out at first. Only after repeat listens do you really begin to notice them. If a fan site is to be trusted, we can thank Victor Feldman and others for playing such instruments as African squeeze and talking drums, boobams, bell plates, brake drums, and dabuki drums, among others. (Um, what’s an “aunglong”? Or a “metal long long”?) I mention all of these instruments not simply to indulge in Tom Waits’s eccentricities but because, now that I have some decent headphones, I’ve come to have a keener appreciation for the subtleties in his songs (and subtleties aren’t what always stand out in Tom Waits’s music). I’m too much of a novice to understand properly the distinctions between microdetail and microdynamics. But with Swordfishtrombones I get that small gradations in volume can matter so much, and it’s these percussion instruments that make me appreciate how uncompressed and dynamic this album is. I don’t often use my HD 800 for music other than classical, fatiguing as they are, but these headphones work wonders with this album. And it’s such an imaginative album—at times zany, sometimes sad, always engaging, inventive, and a lot of fun.



PJ Harvey, To Bring You My Love (full album)
This has long been a favorite album, one that might not have the highest audio quality (don’t listen too closely to the drums), but that still sounds magnificent in its own dark and bluesy way. I’ve been fond of PJ Harvey’s music since before I was old enough to understand what it all meant. (For that matter, I still don’t). Back in the day, I remember getting a freebie cassette attached to the front of one of those old music rags in the UK (was it Melody Maker or NME?) that had the four-track demo version of Rid of Me on it. I’d never heard anything like it - an apparently bonkers singer, with just a guitar, making such a great big, bloody terrifying sound. On To Bring You My Love, PJ Harvey kept this manic energy but added some Captain Beefheart (much as Tom Waits did), plenty of disturbing imagery, a bunch of biblical references, and ever more complex arrangements, with the snarly guitars (and a whistle) offset by a soothing organ, strings, and a vibraphone. For all these additions to her sound, the album appeals most for its rich and dark textures, especially the crackle and growl of the guitars (especially on Meet Ze Monsta). Thanks to this album’s sound I’ve come to love my LCD-2C. I’d picked up a b-stock pair in the Black Friday sale last year. I’d been ambivalent about them, they hadn’t gelled after several weeks, but everything suddenly clicked into place when I played PJ Harvey. Is it too much to keep a pair of headphones for just one album?

You might like some of the records Kevin Parker, the singer and guitarist for Tame Impala, has produced. Melody's Echo Chamber, for instance, has a nice, distinctive bright sound.

 

Will limit myself to 4 from my formative years (which will show my age).

Pere Ubu - The Modern Dance (1977)
Magnificent dissonance/dissonant magnificence. Nobody else was doing stuff like this in the mid 70s. Check also 'Dub Housing' (1978).





Swell Maps - Swell Maps in "Jane from Occupied Europe" (1980)
Juvenile delinquents making a racket in their bedrooms. A bit more varied and experimental than their previous and more popular album 'A Trip to Marineville'. Reinforces that the best thing about punk was post-punk.





Laughing Clowns - Golden Days When Giants Walked the Earth (comp. 1995)
Punk drawl, snarl & speed with virtuoso horn and piano playing and elements of free-form jazz. Nobody else was doing stuff like this in the early 80s. Almost any Clowns record will paint the picture, but this compilation hangs together well and is better produced than others.



Couldn't find the full album on Youtube, so here's the '85 compilation 'History of Rock n' Roll Volume 1' (which shares some tracks) instead:



The Wedding Present - Seamonsters (1991)
Quiet-loud-quiet-loud-LOUD. A voice with almost zero tonal range yet which manages to convey maximum emotion, punctuated by walls of guitar courtesy of Steve Albini. Every 'hardcore' band should listen to this to learn how it's really done.





Edit: Ok, just spotted that the Youtube links don't actually take you to the full album, just to the first track. Search Youtube with the album names listed and you'll get the full track listing on the right-hand side.

 

Great Thread Idea! I did not read it yet so forgive any repeats.

Judas Priest - Screaming for Vengeance
Just clean crunchy metal masterfully performed by originators of the genre. I dare you to hold still.





Matilda Mann - If That Makes Sense
This disc reminds me of how I used to feel about the Cars. Every little sound you want to hear is there. Hard to describe what I mean but some music makes you crave a sound texture or frequency or both and you don't really know what you want until they give it to you and you recognize the phenomena in retrospect. A side effect of leaning towards Avant Garde's freedom of sound choices.





Laura Jean - Eden Land
Unreal harmonies expressed with acoustic instruments but so thick and full across the frequency response. A bit magical.









https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8SYG4Mk0Is&list=RDGHsTKlmplXE&index=5

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnhWxh26pBo&list=RDSxQ_NWIW5mo&index=3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVV2vcV4euQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFNSElMO97U

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxQ_NWIW5mo&list=RDGHsTKlmplXE&index=15

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7_WAyQFNoI&list=RDSxQ_NWIW5mo&index=16

 

Awesomeness.

 

I never understood the constant talk about John Grados being great for electric guitar and upper midrange peaks in general.

The real beauty of electric guitar is in the lower midrange which is almost always unnaturally thin in headphones. Generally only orthos manage a flat lower midrange but AFAIK none of the current production orthos have gotten everything right yet.