The Mags 10 More

Hey, remember “The Mags 10?” That collection of ten albums I like? Welcome to “The Mags 10 More,” a collection of ten more albums I like. Enjoy.

The Shape of Jazz to Come (1959) by Ornette Coleman

Ornette Coleman is widely considered the father of free jazz, with this album serving as the genre’s opening volley. There are many moments on The Shape of Jazz to Come that sound like two different bands playing simultaneously. Charlie Haden and Billy Higgins on the bass and drums, respectively, lay down a steady, conventional beat, allowing Coleman and Don Cherry the space to engage in skillful experiments with tempo and instrumental tone. I’m not a very sophisticated jazz enjoyer. All I know is, when the saxophone guy and the trumpet man start wailing on their instruments, I start clapping like a damn seal. That’s all there is to it.

Black Unity (1971) by Pharoah Sanders

What The Shape of Jazz to Come started, Black Unity took to exhilarating new heights. In one 37-minute track comprising the full album, Sanders and friends create a disorienting tableau of pure sound. The album is at its peak when Sanders’ aggressive overblown sax starts to clash with the driving bass line, jubilant piano, and swelling flutes (I think? I looked at the Wikipedia article to figure out what those high-pitched, droning instruments were, and flutes were the only thing listed that made sense to me). Energy builds, plateaus, and releases several times throughout the duration of the album, instilling the listener with a feeling akin to being thrashed about by a powerful wave. Black Unity appropriately concludes with a bunch of applause and shouts of “Right on!” from the studio audience. I couldn’t agree more!

“Heroes” (1977) by David Bowie

There are a few Bowie albums I could’ve included on this list in place of this one. The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1972), Station to Station (1976), Low (1977), Earthling (1997), and Blackstar (2016) are all phenomenal works, to name a few. So why did I pick “Heroes”? Good question.

The title track is of course a classic, even if its uses in popular culture (and I’m thinking here of the dreadful Jojo Rabbit) miss out on the song’s underlying irony. The protagonists of the song are not, in fact, heroes but rather young lovers whose infatuation with one another has led them to create a self-mythologizing narrative. That’s why the title’s in quotation marks. In any case, “‘Heroes’” (the song) isn’t the reason for this album’s presence on my list.

Robert Fripp’s crunchy, metallic guitar tone throughout the album is delightful to my ears, but that’s just a bonus. What sets this album apart from the rest of Bowie’s discography, in my mind, are the three instrumentals (“Sense of Doubt,” “Moss Garden,” and “Neuköln”). I’m a sucker for those eerie synths and saxophone wails. “Heroes” ends on a high note, with “The Secret Life of Arabia,” which I love mostly for the handclaps that kick in at about 1:52. So catchy. Chef’s kiss.

Ambient 1: Music for Airports (1978) by Brian Eno

Ahh… now that’s nice. Except instead of reminding me of an airport, this feels like slipping into a warm bath. I’d like being in an airport more if they played this album over the intercom.

The Ascension (1981) by Glenn Branca

A spellbinding 42 minutes of cacophonous guitars. If you don’t like dissonance, get outta my face! Just kidding. That’s completely understandable, but if that’s the case, you won’t like this album. Personally, I like it when guitars are so noisy that they drown out my thoughts, but your mileage my vary.

Loveless (1991) by My Bloody Valentine

My list of 20 favourite albums includes Miles Davis and Brian Eno. What can I say? I’m a basic bitch. So is it any surprise that this – the most “Shoegaze 101” album in existence – makes the cut? I’ll admit that I haven’t listened to many other entries in the genre, but Loveless is so good that it’s almost like I don’t even need to. MBV got it in one, as they say. (Please ignore the fact that this was their second album.) The guitars sound like a muffled vacuum cleaner being run over a thick carpet by your neighbour across the hall, in a good way. After you acclimate to the fuzzy and indistinct tone that permeates all 11 songs, the underlying melodies start to come into focus and worm their way into the recesses of my brain. I’ll whistle the notes of “Only Shallow,” “When You Sleep,” or “I Only Said,” and often find myself still whistling long after the album has ended. If thinking that Loveless is one of the crowning achievements in popular music makes me “a dullard with middle-of-the-road opinions,” I’ll happily accept the title.

Alien Lanes (1995) by Guided by Voices

If you don’t like a song on Alien Lanes, just wait a few seconds. There’s a new one right around the corner. That’s what happens when a band decides to cram 28 songs in the space of 41 minutes. You’re not left with enough time to get attached to any given melody. It makes for a very breezy listen, full of fuzzy guitar riffs and bewildering non-sequiturs. Where the lyrics do have intelligible meanings, they largely seem to be about living life on your own terms, not letting the naysayers dictate how you should feel. “I speak in monotone / ‘Leave my fucking life alone,’” as Bob Pollard sings on “As We Go Up, We Go Down.” It’s a fitting theme for a band whose modus operandi is getting drunk in a garage and tossing off whatever half-formed tune sprang into their heads. Dudes rock.

Illinois (2005) by Sufjan Stevens

Illinois and its predecessor Michigan form the only two entries in Sufjan Stevens’s aborted 50 States Project, but they’re both such incredible works that I can’t blame him for stopping there. By my count, the liner notes to Illinois credit Stevens with playing 24 instruments (including four types of recorders). That’s a lot, obviously, and it reflects the album’s versatility. The tracks are sequenced perfectly, creating a rich tapestry of varied and often conflicting emotions. The triumphant strings and horns of “Come On! Feel the Illinoise!” contrast nicely with the sombre piano of “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.”, just as the hopefulness of “Chicago” flows into the existential despair of “Casimir Pulaski Day.”

The album also includes several instrumentals that barely register as discrete songs, since they’re tonally consistent with the songs that precede them and feel like a natural continuation. Only when you look at the track list do you realize that you listened to 22 songs across 74 minutes. It’s a lengthy album, but it doesn’t feel like there’s a moment wasted.

Viet Cong (2015) by Viet Cong

I understand why people would find it strange that a group of four white dudes from Calgary would go around calling themselves “Viet Cong.” However, you have to admit that’s objectively a much better name for a punk band than “Preoccupations,” which they later selected following public backlash. This was the only album the group released under their original name, and it’s a bona fide slapper. Their labyrinthine melodies, produced by high-pitched, shrieking guitars and backed by propulsive percussion, leave me bopping my head and air-drumming whenever I hear them. The lyrics themselves aren’t especially important, but they do succeed at conveying a sense of dread, impending doom, and a general disillusionment with life. “If we’re lucky, we’ll get old and die,” Matt Flegel drones on “Pointless Experience.” And that’s right. No matter what we accomplish in this life, we’ll all inevitably pass away and everything we ever did will fade into oblivion like footsteps in sand. But who cares? That’s a banal observation anyway. I’ll just keep bopping along to the beat.

Purple Mountains (2019) by Purple Mountains

If major depressive disorder had a physical manifestation, it would be in the form of this album. Even the song titles convey what a dismal place David Berman was in mentally when he wrote them: “Darkness and Cold,” “She’s Making Friends, I’m Turning Stranger,” “All My Happiness Is Gone.” And it’s not hard to understand why. His mother had died, his wife had left him, he was drowning in debt. As a collection of mid-tempo country rock ballads, Purple Mountains makes for a surprisingly easy listen. Berman isn’t wailing about how much he hates himself; it’s just sort of implied. A few weeks after the album came out, Berman died by suicide, a fact that only makes the lyrical themes more poignant in retrospect. He was suffering and saw death as the only way out. I’ve been there before; it’s terrifying and lonely, which makes it all the more impressive to me that Berman was able to translate those emotions into art this profound, self-effacing, and funny.