358: The White Stripes, by The White Stripes

The White Stripes (USA)
The White Stripes (1999)
17 tracks, 44 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

When I first became aware of the White Stripes – probably when I was a young teenager – I didn’t really pay any attention. I knew their biggest hit ‘Seven Nation Army’, but other than that I just thought they were another guitar-based rock group – a format that has never overly excited me in and of itself. There was the slightly interesting fact that they were a duo, but meh.

Then somehow I fell into an internet research hole and ended up finding the tracklist to the band’s debut album…and found out that it contained a cover of St James Infirmary (my favourite song at the time), as well as tracks by Robert Johnson and Bob Dylan and an extended quote from ‘John the Revelator’. Were the White Stripes a blues band and no-one told me?!

I found someone in school who could burn me off an incredibly low-quality copy of the CD (no streaming in those days kids!) and…yeah! It was blues all the way. Heavy, punk blues, but still definitely blues. While a bit of me was annoyed that I hadn’t given them a chance in the first place, but I was stoked to be able to ‘get’ what everyone else got a long time before me.

The group’s first album is made in the time-honoured punk tradition of having a million songs on one album, with only a handful of tracks breaching the three-minute mark. It means that the ideas come thick and fast; it’s musically hyperactive but the intensity of it all sweeps you up like a whirlwind – it never feels as if the album’s frenetic pace is outstripping the White Stripes’ abilities to create great things. Jack White’s vocals and guitars are simply superb, crazy wild, introspective, simple and brash, it’s got everything while all being indisputably bluesy.

And that’s a quick thing: it’s become basically a standard music joke that Meg White can’t drum, but I think that’s clearly bollocks, probably misogyny-fuelled bollocks at that. Her drumming as part of the White Stripes, and especially on this debut album, is very simply played, yes, but only because it needs to be. If the album was full of flashy or deeply intricate drumwork, it would have sounded out-of-place, not to mention that it would have completely overshadowed the whole meaning of the sound the two were creating. And what she does play – simple or otherwise – is perfectly in-keeping with that sound, and she executes it exactly right. Besides, Jack White also plays as simply as each song needs, and he’s the one hailed as a genius. Weird that.

It’s one of the reasons it all works so well. The fact they’re a duo is actually incredible. Aside from one or two overdubs on the whole album, it’s obvious to the ear that only two people are creating the music, but the sheer noise of it, and the emotional force with which it hits makes it resonate as if it were a band of many more.

So yes, I ended up loving the White Stripes, especially their first couple of albums. The bluesiness of their music became less obvious after that, although it was obviously never far away from Jack White’s antique record player, as evidenced by his subsequent musical adventures proved. The moral of the story is: teenagers can be hella snooty, never trust their opinions. Or maybe, trust every teenager’s opinions except mine, because the White Stripes are great.

278: Nevermind, by Nirvana

Nirvana (USA)
Nevermind (1991)
13 tracks, 42 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

What can I say about Nirvana’s Nevermind that you don’t already know, and probably know better than me anyway? It is the apex of grunge, a undisputed classic that has influenced so many artists of so many styles, all around the world.

Yes, it is perhaps a little polished for a mainstream audience compared to other artists – and even Nirvana’s other music. But there is only so much that you can polish grit, and Nevermind contains more than enough not only to still anchor it firmly in grunge, but for it to still be markedly heavier than any other mainstream hit that year. By making their sound a little more slick, Nirvana helped to introduce the grunge scene to the whole world, and in doing so, changed the direction of rock – and, to some degree, pop – for a long time to come.

In Nirvana’s sound you can hear a direct descendancy from the punk of the 1970s – both the British styles of the Sex Pistols, the Clash, the Buzzcocks and those lot, and the American side of things with The Stooges and Dead Kennedys – as well as back to the music of the Doors and Jimi Hendrix. Unlike punk, which is very brash and sometimes shrill, there is a real meatier aspect to Nirvana’s sound, influenced by heavy metal. And at the same time, what gives this album (especially its most famous singles, ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’, ‘Lithium’ and ‘Come As You Are’) such a wide appeal is that it has all the elements of a great pop record. Memorable lyrics, devilishly catchy tunes and riffs, a charismatic (and very cute) frontman – and it’s really fun to sing along to.

So with Nevermind, Nirvana created the album that turned grunge into pop. Probably the most impressive thing about it is that they did so without losing any of their own or their music’s integrity. No matter what music you’re into, you’ve probably heard of (and heard) Nevermind, and you’ve definitely heard music that it’s influenced – that is surely the dream of any artist in any niche musical scene.

206: Fun House, by the Stooges

The Stooges (USA)
Fun House (1970)
7 tracks, 37 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

After the idyllic soundscapes of yesterday chilled us all right out, let’s get angry today.

Fun House is the second of only three albums by original incarnation of The Stooges, and the last one before Iggy Pop took a starring role in the band’s name. They remind me quite a lot of their contemporaries The Doors, actually. They were both taking the psychedelic rock of the 1960s into fresh new places, but where Jim Morisson’s crew seem to lean more into the prog rock side of things, Iggy’s were definitely what we can now call proto-punk.

This music is simply incandescent. It has so much from music that preceded it, from Hendrix’s psych-blues and The Who’s hard rock, obviously a lot from the psychedelic era and even cues from free jazz with Steve Mackay’s saxophone, but there is something in there that sets it so apart from all of these others. It’s aggressive, anarchic and chaotic; it’s angry but it also sounds like it was a whole lot of fun to make – and it is to listen to, too. Although this record pre-dates punk by a good few years, that aesthetic is clearly starting to take shape on Fun House, and it ends up being an electrifying ‘best of both worlds.’

This is one of those ‘cult’ albums that never really achieved the success it deserved in its first run, but blew up later. It’s a sign of a band truly ahead of their time – the world mustn’t have been ready for the Stooges’ sound at that point. Once people’s ears had gotten more used to the looser, unpredictable and flailing attitude that would come to embody punk, Fun House began to make sense again. It’s strange that such an amazing album – now rightly regarded as one of the most influential in rock – wasn’t rated at the time, but at least we know now.

The version I have is actually a two-disc affair with a bunch of demos, outtakes and other miscellanea on the second disc, but that’s really only for completists. Stick to the original seven tracks if you want a tightly-packed 37 minutes of intense but perfectly balanced noise that sounds as much a part of what came before it as what came after.

187: American Idiot, by Green Day

Green Day (USA)
American Idiot (2004)
13 tracks, 57 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

Much like yesterday's album, this is one that I came to as a teenager that didn't make me as cool as I thought it did. Unlike yesterday's, I can't really remember where I came across this one. Maybe I saw them on telly, Later…with Jools Holland or something, or maybe one of my friends put me on to them, I'm not sure. Whichever way, this wasn't music I usually listened to. I'd had some exposure to 70s British punk as part of standard cultural consciousness, but Green Day were the first band of the American punk lineage that I really got to grips with.

I think American Idiot is a real teenage album, and considering it came out when I was 13, it got me at exactly the right time. This music felt so raw, energetic and exciting, and even quite subversive. Maybe this was my chance to be a rebel properly for once! Or at least it was until I mentioned it to my parents and my dad said 'oh yeah, Green Day, they're good them, your brother used to play them a lot about 10 years ago.' GOD, dad you’re so lame.

Anyway, I still loved it. A lot of the songs, especially the most famous in 'American Idiot' and 'Holiday', are angry-political in an uncomplicated and non-nuanced way that is very appealing for kids who are just about becoming politically aware: they seem to have a deeper purpose than the impotent anger of classic punk ('Anarchy in the UK', 'Boredom', 'Pretty Vacant' etc) but without the need to be anything more than vaguely aware of world politics as it was happening. And then there are a bunch of tracks that are basically Teen Angst: The Soundtrack and I am completely okay with that – teen angst is a very important seam to mine.

What is really excellent is that – to my ears at least – this album hasn't aged a jot, musically. Yes, lyrically it's a bit childish, but the album is just as listenable from an entertainment standpoint as it ever was. There are tracks that are straight-up loud, fast and chaotic punk; there are slower, more weighty tunes; there are long medleys that ride a range of emotions and musical styles united by a common theme; there's even a piece based on a sample of tabla and tambura that is nowhere near as cringy as that sounds.

Much like I came into hip-hop just as my peers decided it wasn't cool any more, the same thing happened with Green Day: here's a band that has been part of the zeitgeist in their particular field for a long time, they release an album that I really connect with musically and emotionally and…well, fans of the band tend to agree that American Idiot was the turning point of Green Day, the album where they sold out for a more mainstream audience. Ho hum. That's up to them. As for me, I'll keep letting my inner teenager rock out to 'Holiday' more frequently than is perhaps dignified, but for a long time to come.

151: Standing in the Way of Control, by Gossip

Gossip (USA)
Standing in the Way of Control (2006)
10 tracks, 35 minutes
Bandcamp ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes

Gossip are a group that prove you don’t need a big set-up to make a lot of noise. There’s just three of them (voice, guitar and drums) and their sound is simple, stark even – most of the time, Brace Paine on guitar doesn’t even play chords, opting for riffs instead. But they do make a hell of a racket.

The main focal point is obviously Beth Ditto’s stunning voice. It truly is jaw-dropping at times. She packs so much soul into her lines, you have to feel that if she felt so inclined, she could put up a fair showing among those such as Aretha Franklin, Koko Taylor and Etta James. There’s even a bit of Dolly Parton in the way she crafts her runs.

To ignore the rest of the band in favour of Ditto’s singing, though, would be missing the point a bit, I feel. As impressive as her voice is, it is within the context of the band that makes it really interesting. Between Paine and Hannah Billie on drums, the two make a sort of EDM-informed punk with a slightly blues-tinged White Stripes vibe on the side. It’s simple, but it’s super effective, and its juxtaposition against Ditto’s rich vocals makes something very special. All put together, it creates something that is filled with fiery and pent-up rage, but also has the ability to sound intimate and even conspiratorial at the same time.

Standing in the Way of Control is one of those albums where every track is a winner. Those first three tracks in themselves are just insane: ‘Fire With Fire’, ‘Standing in the Way of Control’, ‘Jealous Girls’, they are so good. It carries on like that all the way through, as well, with not an ounce of filler. That does mean it’s quite short overall, but that really doesn’t matter – it’s precisely the correct portion, not artificially padded out and not leaving anything lacking, either. And plus, if you’ve been enjoying it properly – that is, by hurling yourself around the room in a furious but ecstatic rage – you’ll be knackered enough by the end of it anyway.

140: Gypsy Punks: Underdog World Strike, by Gogol Bordello

Gogol Bordello (Ukraine/Russia/USA)
Gypsy Punks: Underdog World Strike (2004)
15 tracks, 63 minutes
Bandcamp ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes

The first time I heard Gogol Bordello, their name had been floating around for a little while without me actually getting them in my ears, but their song ‘I Would Never Wanna Be Young Again’ was the first track on a Songlines covermount CD. It was so different from anything I would have expected from the magazine but it was electrifying. It starts with choppy, distorted guitars, joined by swirls of sawing fiddles and then a blood-curling, agonised scream before the song itself actually kicks off. What a way to grab the attention!

The band’s first two albums had already made them stars of the New York scene, but this album is what really blew them up around the world, and even started a bit of a vogue for Eastern European music among hip circles. The album’s title Gypsy Punks was really the perfect phrase for people to latch onto: it’s quirky and unexpected, but it also gives you a very clear idea of what they sound like. And it’s a combination that works really well – there’s something about Eastern European and Romani folk music that lends itself so well to the thrashing and screaming of punk, and Gogol Bordello pull it off flawlessly.

They actually bring in a much wider variety of sounds than you would actually expect from the album title, too. Punk is obviously the order of the day, but there are very strong elements of ska, dub and hip-hop all the way through, which blend just as well and only serve to add to the band’s globetrotting image.

An important part of listening to Gogol Bordello is not to take anything about them too seriously. Everything about them is a joke, or exaggerated or diminished for comic effect, or at least has the potential to be. I’ve seen them live a couple of times, but the best one (at the Manchester Academy, with Skindred in support), lead singer Eugene Hütz sang the most famous song from the album, ‘Start Wearing Purple’, entirely in Spanish, just to mix things up, make it different, and probably to annoy the audience a little bit too.

This album is probably the classic of the Gypsy Punk scene. It’s a distillation of all that made the style fun, new and exciting, and it is still an excellent choice to play loud and mosh around till your head hurts.

121: Balling the Jack: The Birth of The Nu-Blues, by Various Artists

Various Artists
Balling the Jack: The Birth of The Nu-Blues (2002)
21 tracks, 68 minutes
Nowhere to stream or download this by the looks of things, but you can pick up a copy of the CD for dead cheap on Discogs…but here’s a cheeky Spotify playlist with most of the tracks on it, if you want to get the gist.

This album is a compilation that makes the case for blues music as a living genre – not just reserved for old men in Mississippi or young white upstarts in 1960s London. The music included here spans a huge range, from field hollers and electric delta blues to modern reinterpretations of the genre through the lenses of punk, hip-hop and the avant garde.

Balling the Jack was compiled by the tireless champion and promoter of off-kilter blues, Joe Cushley. I met Joe first when I was a fresh-faced 15-year-old when he was the manager of Seasick Steve. As well as letting me backstage to meet the man himself, he slipped me this CD too. At that time, I was well into my old blues, but I didn’t really have much of an idea of what had been happening in the style since the 1960s. This compilation changed that. It was my first exposure to many artists, including Diamanda Galás, Reid Paley, Bob Log III and maybe even R.L. Burnside; I can’t believe these legends ever evaded my ears. Listening through this album for the first time was an absolute revelation.

As well as opening my ears to those blues boundary-pushers, this album also gave me my first time hearing music recorded on Alan Lomax’s Southern Journey. In fact, for all the genre-bending stuff on this compilation, I think ‘Murderer’s Home’ by Henry Jimpson Wallace and his group, recorded on Parchman Farm prison in 1959, probably had the most profound effect on me. It’s only 50 seconds long, but it’s absolutely devastating. There is so much emotion, despair in those men’s voices, and the way they sing it is haunting. That track gives an interesting comparison to yesterday’s album, actually: the polyphony works in quite similar ways: Jimpson sings the main line and everyone else follows with almost the same melody but in their own time, so that their voices and their notes are all overlapping like echoes over each other. Marvellous stuff. To stick this on a compilation between tracks by Tom Waits and Chris Thomas King is some genius curation.

This is a great album for those looking for a new direction of listening. It’s a perfect place to start if you want to hear blues warped in any which way. Because there’s so many different styles and time periods represented here, you probably won’t enjoy all the tracks, but I would be surprised if there isn’t something here for you. If my count is correct, Balling the Jack led directly to me buying, finding or otherwise digging out albums by eight of the artists featured – that’s 38%, a ridiculous amount for a compilation album. And from those starting points, it guided me into a whole new world of madness, from the Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir and T-Model Ford to Son of Dave and Dogbreath, and, and, and…It’s basically everything you want from a compilation album. Thanks, Joe!

066: Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols, by the Sex Pistols

Sex Pistols (United Kingdom)
Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols (1977)
12 tracks, 37 minutes
Spotify • iTunes

The Sex Pistols and Never Mind the Bollocks… have already been the inspiration for hundreds of thousands of words, and I doubt I’ll be able to add anything particularly enlightening to them, so I’ll try to keep it short today.

Although the ‘point’ of punk and its DIY attitude was that musical skill was entirely optional – anyone could be in a punk band, all you needed was the right attitude and something to make noise with – the Sex Pistols could actually play. On the recordings, at least; Sid Vicious was so bad at playing bass that they actually omitted him from all but one of the tracks. The album itself, though, has well-played music that still sounds fresh and exciting today, powered by the sarcasm-driven shouting of Johnny Rotten that takes centre stage without just sounding pathetic, which it might have done in another setting. Instead, it’s a great reflection of almost-aimless juvenile rage that explodes out of your speakers.

This must surely be one of the most important albums in history. It’s almost clichéd to state how influential it was at the time, and continues to be. The most famous songs such as ‘Anarchy in the UK,’ ‘God Save the Queen’ and ‘Pretty Vacant’ still hit with a sting after all these years, let alone the more often forgotten album tracks such as ‘Liar’ and ‘Holidays in the Sun.’ Riffs like the ones on this album can still be heard in the music of hundreds of bands across the world. You don’t even have to look that hard, there’s probably one playing in a pub near you tonight. But just because it’s a cliché to say it, doesn’t stop it from being a bloody good record.

018: Dead Bodies in the Lake, by Ho99o9

Ho99o9 (USA)
Dead Bodies in the Lake (2015)
10 tracks, 26 minutes
Soundcloud · Spotify · iTunes

This is terrifying. I admit my taste in music isn’t exactly hardcore, and so I’m sure this stuff is tame for some of you lot out there, and you’ll probably be rolling your eyes throughout reading this (leave me alone, I’m a delicate flower). But I remember the first time I listened to Ho99o9 (pronounced Horror) was on my way to a house party – I was on edge all evening.

And that’s great! I always find it interesting when music – or any art – invokes such a visceral reaction. It’s why I get so frustrated at music that is ‘nice.’ I often use the word ‘nice’ in a negative way when talking about music – not to mean that it is gently enjoyable (there’s lots of music that is nice in a nice way, of course), but to mean that there is a complete lack of anything to inspire emotion. It’s musical ‘meh.’ Sometimes a visceral reaction can tip over into revulsion and any chance for enjoyment disappears, but at least you feel something. But to be ‘nice’ – that’s a sin.

Dead Bodies in the Lake is not nice. It’s sludgy metal with electronics, it’s dark hip-hop with hardcore punk. It’s like a psychological horror film in audio form. It’s disturbing and disorientating, and it’ll get your hackles right up. The version I know is the mixtape – no gaps between tracks means there’s no let up and no way out. It forces you through the experience and it’s thoroughly uncomfortable. How amazing is it that music and art can make us feel like that? To feel such strongly negative emotions and come out the other side having had a whale of a time. Ho99o9 do that as well as any band I’ve discovered. I think this 26-minute long mixtape is enough for me for now though.

017: Diwân, by Rachid Taha

Rachid Taha (Algeria)
Diwân (1998)
11 tracks, 69 minutes
Spotify · iTunes

Rachid Taha was a revolutionary of raï. The style started as Bedouin folk music used for weddings, but when it evolved to take on the characteristics of chaabi and Latin music and European pop styles in the 1980s, it became the all-pervading sound of Algeria, and the Maghreb in general. Then Rachid Taha came along, all anger, alcohol and cigarettes, and kicked down the door. He brought a real punk aesthetic to the music, with screaming guitars, heavy beats and his own growl, as well as his overall demeanour and dress-sense. In the West, he’s particularly known for his brilliant (and Arabic-language) take on the Clash’s ‘Rock the Casbah.’

This album is a bit different, though. Diwân takes Rachid back to his roots, with a bunch of covers of classic pieces from raï’s forefathers and early stars. He hasn’t left the punk entirely behind (the production and electric guitar of Steve Hillage assures that), but it’s not the foundation of the sound this time around. Instead, oud (lute), gasbah (flute), riqq (tambourine) and bendir (frame drum) dictate the whole feel of the album, with Rachid and Steve being able to imprint their own personality on it from there.

The opening track is Dahmane El Harrachi’s ‘Ya Rayah,’ one of the most famous anthems of raï and chaabi music, and Rachid’s take on it here is as definitive a version as you can get for a song that has been covered so many times in so many different styles. His version of the Egyptian film song ‘Habina Habina’ by Farid El Atrache is similarly iconic, with a really well-utilised club beat and heavy bassline laying a great foundation beneath the massed strings and qanun (plucked zither).

Rachid Taha’s punk redefined a genre that was already the biggest musical phenomenon in the region, but for me, Diwân is his best work. The music is unmistakably his but it retains the beauty of the originals, and shows his deep respect (and huge skill) for that classic raï sound.