Listening to "American Flag" this afternoon and remembering why it's so great, I got to wondering about how I make sense out of my 'favourite' albums. Thinking about the lps which I do think of as my favourites, it's striking that I wouldn't consider any of them to be flawless or perfect (even to the extent that these are meaningful concepts when applied to pop records) - the closest are probably Loveless and Treasure, and in that respect it's probably telling that they're likely the two most distinctive-sounding records on the list (see below) and so perhaps the easiest to think of as 'perfect'.
Take Moon Pix, for example. I love this album, and definitely consider it to be one of my favourites, but for me, after the opening-in-glory that is "American Flag", it doesn't really properly hit its stride again until the run home, starting with track 7, "Moonshiner". So what's with that? It's one of my favourite albums and yet I reckon that it hasn't really 'hit its stride' for the better part of half its running time? Or take Funeral (admittedly an atypical one in that it's only been part of my life for a span of months, rather than years): there are really only two songs on that album - "Neighbourhood #1 (Tunnels)" and "Rebellion (Lies)" - which I out and out love (though obviously any record on which cuts like "In The Backseat", "Neighbourhood #3 (Power Out)", "Haiti", etc, can be 'second tier' has a lot going for it), and yet right now I'm definitely counting it as a 'favourite'.
Some of it may be down to how 'high' the high points are. Plus, some of us are just wired to respond to the sound of certain albums. And it's never wise to underestimate the effect of the right record coming along at the right time...
Another important part of what's going on here is that 'perfection' and 'flawlessness' must be, to some extent, relativised to the particular album. Kate B once opined that Tigermilk was a perfect album, and I pretty much agreed (and still do), at least to the extent that it's a perfect album on its own terms...and this despite my thinking that Sinister (and maybe even Arab Strap) is probably 'better'. But how does that work? There's got to be an interplay between, on the one hand, the way in which every album - like every work of art - in some sense sets its own terms, and, on the other hand, the overall framework within which we make these kinds of value judgments, right? So where does that leave us?
Well, with another variation on the old subjective/objective thing, I suppose. In other words, it's ineffable.
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1. Bachelor No 2, or The Last Remains of the Dodo - Aimee Mann
2. OK Computer - Radiohead
3. Loveless - My Bloody Valentine
4. Treasure - Cocteau Twins
5. Blue Bell Knoll - Cocteau Twins
6. The Velvet Underground & Nico - The Velvet Underground & Nico
7. Moon Pix - Cat Power
8. On Fire - Galaxie 500
9. New Adventures In Hi-Fi - R.E.M.
10. Summerteeth - Wilco
11. Homogenic - Björk
12. Isn't Anything - My Bloody Valentine
13. The Queen Is Dead - The Smiths
14. The Bends - Radiohead
15. Psychocandy - The Jesus and Mary Chain
16. Closer - Joy Division
17. Funeral - The Arcade Fire
18. Disintegration - The Cure
19. f#a#∞ - Godspeed You Black Emperor!
20. Blacklisted - Neko Case
