So, my good friend and musical collaborator Nozdordomu recently made a list that comprises mainly of his favorite six albums that he feels are underlooked and/or underrated. In response to that, I would love to offer several of my albums (ten albums, to be precise) that I feel are underrated and overshadowed by other works. If you came here to look for some validation on why you think Pink Floyd are the British ambassadors of progressive rock, stay. I'm not going to just talk about groups nobody's heard of, but rather everybody - they have records that nobody looks at because they get ignored in favor of bigger works.
This is no particular order - just ten albums I can think of at the moment.
10. Wowee Zowee by Pavement (Warner/Matador, 1995)
When people think of Pavement, it's their first two records. Nobody really thinks of that really awkward and highly messy third album of theirs, the one that singlehandled destroyed their chances of being a major-label group. While contemporaries like Jimmy Eat World and Built to Spill were polishing their sounds for future records (i.e. Clarity, Perfect from Now On), Pavement were going balls-out with songs about telephone companies, Stephen Malkmus' reliance on marijuana ("Grounded") , and more snark-filled jokes about what they considered to be shitty indie rock ("Father to a Sister of Thought" lampoons Uncle Tupelo and the Jayhawks; "Flux = Rad" makes fun of the quirky pop punk groups rising to the forefront; "Grave Architecture" is the first time that Pavement openly mocks progressive rock's rigid structure). Pavement were still themselves - and Warner Bros. loathed that. They wanted more candid and warm-humored songs like "Cut Your Hair" and "Gold Soundz," not this "AT&T" bullshit. Nobody liked this record when it came out - and people still don't. To them, it has none of the polish of Crooked Rain...and it's too rough for those used to the lo-fi aesthetic of Slanted and Enchanted.
It's Pavement's funniest record. It's their most varied. It's the one that got me into the band. It showcases the depths of Stephen's songwriting, from its most embarrassing ("Pueblo," "Half a Canyon") to its most poignant ("Grounded," "Fight This Generation," "Black Out," "Motion Suggests Itself"). It expands the sound of Pavement from basic noise rock into the layered indie rock the band would codify with future releases. It shows the band in full force, not as slack as they were on Slanted and Crooked. It has more songs - and more Pavement = more good stuff. Even the bad stuff ain't too bad.
9. After Bathing at Baxter's and Crown of Creation by Jefferson Airplane (RCA, 1967-68)
These albums work as one. Sure, they're two unique albums that also work effectively on their own (a highly psychedelic journey into the collective mind of the band; a troubling album about world destruction and insanity), but they work off of each other. Each motif Baxter's introduces, Crown of Creation plays around with it and turns it into its own entity, showing both sides of the coin. Your life can either be a constant joyful experience full of experience and expansion...or it can be total hell. Not to say that both albums succeed at keeping to their concepts - Baxter's has "Spare Chaynge" and "rejoyce," abnormally dark cuts from an otherwise upbeat record, and Crown of Creation has the relatively light-hearted "Ice Cream Phoenix" and "Triad" - but songs like those help the albums work as one conceptual art piece. They just naturally work together.
8. El Producto by Walt Mink (Atlantic, 1996)
Walt Mink's been constantly fucked over ever since they were formed. Their initial deal with Caroline Records was overshadowed by another band from their region, the Smashing Pumpkins, constantly getting radio play and being general careerists. Their breakthrough major label deal with Columbia ended with the label refusing to pay for the band's sessions for El Producto. Their Atlantic deal ended with their representative getting fired from the label, thus dropping many artists from the label that weren't Stone Temple Pilots and Fountains of Wayne. Nowadays, they're that pop band that got a 10 from Pitchfork when it first started - given how horrible Pitchfork was at that time (writing unintentionally racist reviews of jazz albums, rating albums solely based on mainstream appeal, that flowery review of Kid A that put them on the map), one should avoid Walt Mink like the plague, right? I mean, Ryan Schreiber's from Minnesota, so he must've given their album a 10 just to keep John Kimborough from offing himself?
Wrong. El Producto deserves its 10 for more reasons than Ryan being a big Walt Mink fanboy and for modern Pitchfork focusing on Neutral Milk Hotel instead of these guys. Walt Mink know their way around a good pop hook - yeah, they'll have some kinks that John didn't iron out all too well ("Up and Out") and they'll always be known for starting the directing career of one Sofia Coppola, but that doesn't totally invalidate the band. It just makes them a little more light-hearted and less heady than the Pumpkins and their contemporaries - like an American variant on Teenage Fanclub, but without the tacky "parodies" scattered throughout Bandwagonesque. You see, comparing Walt Mink to the Smashing Pumpkins is like comparing apples to oranges - they're not the same at all. They share the same guitar tone - given that John and Billy were good friends on the touring circuit - but that's pretty much it. John's lyrics rarely reach the emotional stratosphere that Corgan is so hellbent on surpassing on every song. John's lyrics tend to focus on sunshine, flowers, and the occasional break-up ("Betty," "Overgrown," "Love in the Dakota"), while Corgan tends to...you've heard "Porcelina of the Vast Oceans"?
7. For Your Own Special Sweetheart by Jawbox (Atlantic, 1994)
Jawbox managed to make a simple crossover record sound incredible and surprisingly uncompromising with their 1994 Atlantic debut. Shame that it never sold shit. Save for some minor promotion on 120 Minutes and Beavis and Butt-head (usually "Savory"), the band could never break through on radio with groups like Candlebox, Soundgarden, and Bush clogging every position. I guess "Spoonman" was too popular for something like "Cooling Card" to get a mere position. That fake Newport ad they made to promote the album never helped much - got more people to smoke menthols though. What a shame - Jawbox had a lot of great cuts on this record. Stuff like "Savory" and "Cooling Card" goes through the listener's ear and devastates everything in glorious destruction, while "Green Glass," "U-Trau," and "Motorist" showed an amazing amount of emotional depth for a band that formed out of one of Minor Threat's contemporaries (Government Issue, if I'm not mistaken). While Fugazi eschewed major labels to have total freedom (while coming across as hypocrites later on when Dischord Records signed a distribution deal with Fontana/Universal subsidiary Southern Records), Jawbox kept to themselves and proved that a mainstream record could kick so much ass.
6. First Band on the Moon by the Cardigans (Stockholm, 1996)
At the same time Belle and Sebastian perfected the aesthetic of twee pop, the Cardigans transformed it from upbeat indie music with depressing lyrics to its own entity. Without the Cardigans, Belle and Sebastian wouldn't have done the things they did with Tigermilk and If You're Feeling Sinister. How this Swedish pop group brought life into twee: they just gave it more emotional depth. I don't know how Nina Pearsson does it, but she can convey quite a lot of emotion while being as cold as your average vocalist for Stereolab. And I'm not sure English is her first language, but here, she's a lyrical wordsmith - not letting her facade drop and showing more than basic competency with the language. The songs themselves have some incredible dynamics, ranging from the standard twee of "Your New Cuckoo" and "Heartbreaker" to the slow-dance numbers of "Been It," "Losers," and their incredible cover of "Iron Man" (which is about as good as the original Black Sabbath song). Of course, anybody with half a brain remembers this album as "the one with goddamn 'Lovefool' on it?" Remember when Baz Luhrmann was a thing? Remember that edgy Romeo and Juliet modern-day-but-with-outdated-language that we all liked in one way or another (hammy acting, over-the-top setpieces, the "cool" atmosphere of it)? Yeah, you remember "Lovefool." That and "Exit Music," but "Lovefool" is the one you'll recognize - at that moment, you wouldn't have shut off the TV in disgust. "Lovefool" is a good song, I swear to God!
5. Chocolate Synthesizer by Boredoms (Reprise, 1994)
Before they were known for expanding your mind much to Sherrod DeGrippo's disgust, Boredoms were very much a noise rock group. They somehow got a major label deal - surprising that most noise rock groups that move up to the big boys (or subsidiaries thereof) tend to become general alt-rock groups (Cave In, Sonic Youth, Japandroids) or metal outfits (The Dillinger Escape Plan, Neurosis) or Anal Cunt. However, unlike those groups, Boredoms never watered themselves down. During their four-year American stint on Reprise, they kept to their near-constant EP releases and released a couple of watershed noise rock/experimental albums: the both-criminally underrated Pop Tatari and Chocolate Synthesizer. For some reason, this is what Reprise thought was going to knock Nirvana off the charts. Instead, they got Billie Joe Armstrong singing about masturbating being boring. Boredoms, during their short-lived stint on the label, broke more boundaries than Sonic Youth did with albums about washing machines, Murray Streets, and sonic nurses...whatever in the hell all of those are. Boredoms kept to their manic mix of John Zorn-plus grindcore, plus some proto-psych spacey sections with tons of noise. And the best part - it's all catchy as hell. Sure, it's no Vision Creation Newsun, but it's certainly better than Super ae. And Super ae is probably the spiritual successor to Chocolate Synthesizer, but with more listenable songs about...what in the fuck is Eye singing about? Does he only know how to speak glossolalia?
4. Buy by James Chance and the Contortions (Ze, 1979)
No Wave is a ridiculously hard genre to get into - so many discordant slide guitar lines...like Beefheart's stuff, but more jagged (if there exists such a thing). So many discordant saxophone solos. And to top it off, the singers only know how to scream like that guy who kept on asking politely for his cigarettes in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. So, it's only natural that No Wave would spawn dance punk, punk-funk, and all of those subgenres. Either these artists were better musicians than I thought or listening to Buy immediately increased the musical knowledge of everybody within a 70-mile radius of New York City. About Buy - it's a No Wave album with soul. Oddly enough, there's a commercial variant of this recorded by James White and the Blacks - Off-White - where they trade in the noise for post-disco. I hear it's not bad, but it won't top this masterful mix of noise, funk, and disco, all done by a band with little professional experience (slide guitarist Pat Price had yet to form Bush Tetras) save for Chance. Even then, Chance isn't a remarkable vocalist - the guy only knows how to yelp...but without the charisma that contemporary and friend Lydia Lunch possessed. And yet this band feels polished and tight - and still manages to keep the disjointed melodies and rhythm of golden age Beefheart.
3. Happy Trails by Quicksilver Messenger Service (Capitol, 1969)
Nobody listens to these guys anymore. I could chalk it up to better psych bands like the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane taking more of the limelight, but with every Live/Dead that those groups could throw out, none of them can magnificently capture the live experience as well as Happy Trails. The surprising thing this that Happy Trails is primarily a studio record - the only live performance is a severely truncated "Who Do You Love" suite and even that it's been obviously sweetened at moments. However, it doesn't need to advertise itself as a live experience for people to get it. Happy Trails outright admits that it's a studio record with applause and occasional solos lifted from live performances, but unlike Kiss' Alive or Peter Frampton's mess of a live album Frampton Comes Alive, Happy Trails just naturally feels live. These songs work as live numbers, even if the band recorded them in some studio in San Francisco. These songs, despite being chopped into bits, work as cohesive wholes - something that most live records have been trying to figure out for years. The "Who Do You Love" suite, despite being much shorter than its unedited performance (for vinyl purposes), still works as a complete performance despite having most of the guitar solos cut out. "Mona" and "Maiden of the Cancer Moon" work incredibly as companion pieces despite being recorded separately and far away from each other. "Calvary" feels improvised despite being composed for over a year. And "Happy Trails" feels just like a PA recording played for the audience to get the hell out of whatever Bill Graham-owned club they were in, but with clearer fidelity. An obvious studio record is a better live album than most live albums.
2. Wow by Moby Grape (Columbia, 1968)
Grape Jam does not exist. It has never existed, nor will it ever. Anyhoo, onto Moby Grape's second record. Their first gets tons of praise in the music community, though their former manager's currently preventing it from being issued on CD. Matthew Katz is such a fucking dick. As for Wow, it tends to get a lot of reasonable flack - because co-leader Skip Spence was having some insane mental trouble during the recording of this record, this album has a very "spotty" feel to it. One minute you get songs akin to the band's debut, complete with delicious harmonies and intricate guitar work ("Murder in My Heart for the Judge," "Three-Four," "Can't Be So Bad")...and the next minute, you get funny songs that come across as downright disturbing ("Motorcycle Irene," "Motorcycle Irene," "Motorcycle Irene," and "Motorcycle Irene")...and the minute after that, you get what appear to be novelty songs ("Funky-Tunk," "Just Like Gene Autry," "Naked, If I Want To"). And then you get songs like "Miller's Blues," "Bitter Wind," and "The Place and the Time" that outright foreshadow psychedelia's transformation into progressive rock (hell, "The Place and the Time" downright transformed it). This is primarily a love-it-or-leave-it record - you can either embrace the train wreck as it is or you can look away and focus on the days back when Moby Grape made songs like "Omaha" and "Hey Grandma." For me, it's a love-it kind of a record. It's a better document of Skip's mental problems than Oar, which mostly comes across as a weird folk album, as it shows him trying to one-up a great album such as Moby Grape.
1. MMHMM by Relient K (Capitol, 2004)
If there's a band that epitomizes the ever-present idea of "underrated," Relient K is it. People still have that perception that they're the funny little MxPx-lite group that sings songs about how Marilyn Manson is bad in general (complete with bad puns with his songs) and never underestimating Matt Thiessen's view of Jesus, but Christian outlets have ignored the band since they went full secular with 2004's MMHMM. While obviously inspired by Thiessen's faith, the lyrics take a more nuanced approach as he covers general topics and tackles things like failed relationships, philosophy, and depression. The band does have one song that seems to be funny ("The Only Thing Worse Than Beating a Dead Horse Is Betting On One"), but lyrically, it's not goofy. It's not funny. It's dead serious. With this album, the band becomes the serious entity that they would somewhat compromise on their misfire Five Score and Seven Years Ago, but later masterfully perfect on Forget and Not Slow Down. Songs like "Who I Am Hates Who I've Been," "Be My Escape," and "Which to Bury, Us or the Hatchet" rank amongst the band's greatest hits, but are constantly overshadowed by the fans' desire to hear "Must've Done Something Right" and "Sadie Hawkins Dance." At least there's no khaki pants on this album. Everything's much better. Oh-oh-oh. blah blah blah baby do you like my sweater blah blah blah
This is no particular order - just ten albums I can think of at the moment.
10. Wowee Zowee by Pavement (Warner/Matador, 1995)
When people think of Pavement, it's their first two records. Nobody really thinks of that really awkward and highly messy third album of theirs, the one that singlehandled destroyed their chances of being a major-label group. While contemporaries like Jimmy Eat World and Built to Spill were polishing their sounds for future records (i.e. Clarity, Perfect from Now On), Pavement were going balls-out with songs about telephone companies, Stephen Malkmus' reliance on marijuana ("Grounded") , and more snark-filled jokes about what they considered to be shitty indie rock ("Father to a Sister of Thought" lampoons Uncle Tupelo and the Jayhawks; "Flux = Rad" makes fun of the quirky pop punk groups rising to the forefront; "Grave Architecture" is the first time that Pavement openly mocks progressive rock's rigid structure). Pavement were still themselves - and Warner Bros. loathed that. They wanted more candid and warm-humored songs like "Cut Your Hair" and "Gold Soundz," not this "AT&T" bullshit. Nobody liked this record when it came out - and people still don't. To them, it has none of the polish of Crooked Rain...and it's too rough for those used to the lo-fi aesthetic of Slanted and Enchanted.
It's Pavement's funniest record. It's their most varied. It's the one that got me into the band. It showcases the depths of Stephen's songwriting, from its most embarrassing ("Pueblo," "Half a Canyon") to its most poignant ("Grounded," "Fight This Generation," "Black Out," "Motion Suggests Itself"). It expands the sound of Pavement from basic noise rock into the layered indie rock the band would codify with future releases. It shows the band in full force, not as slack as they were on Slanted and Crooked. It has more songs - and more Pavement = more good stuff. Even the bad stuff ain't too bad.
9. After Bathing at Baxter's and Crown of Creation by Jefferson Airplane (RCA, 1967-68)
These albums work as one. Sure, they're two unique albums that also work effectively on their own (a highly psychedelic journey into the collective mind of the band; a troubling album about world destruction and insanity), but they work off of each other. Each motif Baxter's introduces, Crown of Creation plays around with it and turns it into its own entity, showing both sides of the coin. Your life can either be a constant joyful experience full of experience and expansion...or it can be total hell. Not to say that both albums succeed at keeping to their concepts - Baxter's has "Spare Chaynge" and "rejoyce," abnormally dark cuts from an otherwise upbeat record, and Crown of Creation has the relatively light-hearted "Ice Cream Phoenix" and "Triad" - but songs like those help the albums work as one conceptual art piece. They just naturally work together.
8. El Producto by Walt Mink (Atlantic, 1996)
Walt Mink's been constantly fucked over ever since they were formed. Their initial deal with Caroline Records was overshadowed by another band from their region, the Smashing Pumpkins, constantly getting radio play and being general careerists. Their breakthrough major label deal with Columbia ended with the label refusing to pay for the band's sessions for El Producto. Their Atlantic deal ended with their representative getting fired from the label, thus dropping many artists from the label that weren't Stone Temple Pilots and Fountains of Wayne. Nowadays, they're that pop band that got a 10 from Pitchfork when it first started - given how horrible Pitchfork was at that time (writing unintentionally racist reviews of jazz albums, rating albums solely based on mainstream appeal, that flowery review of Kid A that put them on the map), one should avoid Walt Mink like the plague, right? I mean, Ryan Schreiber's from Minnesota, so he must've given their album a 10 just to keep John Kimborough from offing himself?
Wrong. El Producto deserves its 10 for more reasons than Ryan being a big Walt Mink fanboy and for modern Pitchfork focusing on Neutral Milk Hotel instead of these guys. Walt Mink know their way around a good pop hook - yeah, they'll have some kinks that John didn't iron out all too well ("Up and Out") and they'll always be known for starting the directing career of one Sofia Coppola, but that doesn't totally invalidate the band. It just makes them a little more light-hearted and less heady than the Pumpkins and their contemporaries - like an American variant on Teenage Fanclub, but without the tacky "parodies" scattered throughout Bandwagonesque. You see, comparing Walt Mink to the Smashing Pumpkins is like comparing apples to oranges - they're not the same at all. They share the same guitar tone - given that John and Billy were good friends on the touring circuit - but that's pretty much it. John's lyrics rarely reach the emotional stratosphere that Corgan is so hellbent on surpassing on every song. John's lyrics tend to focus on sunshine, flowers, and the occasional break-up ("Betty," "Overgrown," "Love in the Dakota"), while Corgan tends to...you've heard "Porcelina of the Vast Oceans"?
7. For Your Own Special Sweetheart by Jawbox (Atlantic, 1994)
Jawbox managed to make a simple crossover record sound incredible and surprisingly uncompromising with their 1994 Atlantic debut. Shame that it never sold shit. Save for some minor promotion on 120 Minutes and Beavis and Butt-head (usually "Savory"), the band could never break through on radio with groups like Candlebox, Soundgarden, and Bush clogging every position. I guess "Spoonman" was too popular for something like "Cooling Card" to get a mere position. That fake Newport ad they made to promote the album never helped much - got more people to smoke menthols though. What a shame - Jawbox had a lot of great cuts on this record. Stuff like "Savory" and "Cooling Card" goes through the listener's ear and devastates everything in glorious destruction, while "Green Glass," "U-Trau," and "Motorist" showed an amazing amount of emotional depth for a band that formed out of one of Minor Threat's contemporaries (Government Issue, if I'm not mistaken). While Fugazi eschewed major labels to have total freedom (while coming across as hypocrites later on when Dischord Records signed a distribution deal with Fontana/Universal subsidiary Southern Records), Jawbox kept to themselves and proved that a mainstream record could kick so much ass.
6. First Band on the Moon by the Cardigans (Stockholm, 1996)
At the same time Belle and Sebastian perfected the aesthetic of twee pop, the Cardigans transformed it from upbeat indie music with depressing lyrics to its own entity. Without the Cardigans, Belle and Sebastian wouldn't have done the things they did with Tigermilk and If You're Feeling Sinister. How this Swedish pop group brought life into twee: they just gave it more emotional depth. I don't know how Nina Pearsson does it, but she can convey quite a lot of emotion while being as cold as your average vocalist for Stereolab. And I'm not sure English is her first language, but here, she's a lyrical wordsmith - not letting her facade drop and showing more than basic competency with the language. The songs themselves have some incredible dynamics, ranging from the standard twee of "Your New Cuckoo" and "Heartbreaker" to the slow-dance numbers of "Been It," "Losers," and their incredible cover of "Iron Man" (which is about as good as the original Black Sabbath song). Of course, anybody with half a brain remembers this album as "the one with goddamn 'Lovefool' on it?" Remember when Baz Luhrmann was a thing? Remember that edgy Romeo and Juliet modern-day-but-with-outdated-language that we all liked in one way or another (hammy acting, over-the-top setpieces, the "cool" atmosphere of it)? Yeah, you remember "Lovefool." That and "Exit Music," but "Lovefool" is the one you'll recognize - at that moment, you wouldn't have shut off the TV in disgust. "Lovefool" is a good song, I swear to God!
5. Chocolate Synthesizer by Boredoms (Reprise, 1994)
Before they were known for expanding your mind much to Sherrod DeGrippo's disgust, Boredoms were very much a noise rock group. They somehow got a major label deal - surprising that most noise rock groups that move up to the big boys (or subsidiaries thereof) tend to become general alt-rock groups (Cave In, Sonic Youth, Japandroids) or metal outfits (The Dillinger Escape Plan, Neurosis) or Anal Cunt. However, unlike those groups, Boredoms never watered themselves down. During their four-year American stint on Reprise, they kept to their near-constant EP releases and released a couple of watershed noise rock/experimental albums: the both-criminally underrated Pop Tatari and Chocolate Synthesizer. For some reason, this is what Reprise thought was going to knock Nirvana off the charts. Instead, they got Billie Joe Armstrong singing about masturbating being boring. Boredoms, during their short-lived stint on the label, broke more boundaries than Sonic Youth did with albums about washing machines, Murray Streets, and sonic nurses...whatever in the hell all of those are. Boredoms kept to their manic mix of John Zorn-plus grindcore, plus some proto-psych spacey sections with tons of noise. And the best part - it's all catchy as hell. Sure, it's no Vision Creation Newsun, but it's certainly better than Super ae. And Super ae is probably the spiritual successor to Chocolate Synthesizer, but with more listenable songs about...what in the fuck is Eye singing about? Does he only know how to speak glossolalia?
4. Buy by James Chance and the Contortions (Ze, 1979)
No Wave is a ridiculously hard genre to get into - so many discordant slide guitar lines...like Beefheart's stuff, but more jagged (if there exists such a thing). So many discordant saxophone solos. And to top it off, the singers only know how to scream like that guy who kept on asking politely for his cigarettes in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. So, it's only natural that No Wave would spawn dance punk, punk-funk, and all of those subgenres. Either these artists were better musicians than I thought or listening to Buy immediately increased the musical knowledge of everybody within a 70-mile radius of New York City. About Buy - it's a No Wave album with soul. Oddly enough, there's a commercial variant of this recorded by James White and the Blacks - Off-White - where they trade in the noise for post-disco. I hear it's not bad, but it won't top this masterful mix of noise, funk, and disco, all done by a band with little professional experience (slide guitarist Pat Price had yet to form Bush Tetras) save for Chance. Even then, Chance isn't a remarkable vocalist - the guy only knows how to yelp...but without the charisma that contemporary and friend Lydia Lunch possessed. And yet this band feels polished and tight - and still manages to keep the disjointed melodies and rhythm of golden age Beefheart.
3. Happy Trails by Quicksilver Messenger Service (Capitol, 1969)
Nobody listens to these guys anymore. I could chalk it up to better psych bands like the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane taking more of the limelight, but with every Live/Dead that those groups could throw out, none of them can magnificently capture the live experience as well as Happy Trails. The surprising thing this that Happy Trails is primarily a studio record - the only live performance is a severely truncated "Who Do You Love" suite and even that it's been obviously sweetened at moments. However, it doesn't need to advertise itself as a live experience for people to get it. Happy Trails outright admits that it's a studio record with applause and occasional solos lifted from live performances, but unlike Kiss' Alive or Peter Frampton's mess of a live album Frampton Comes Alive, Happy Trails just naturally feels live. These songs work as live numbers, even if the band recorded them in some studio in San Francisco. These songs, despite being chopped into bits, work as cohesive wholes - something that most live records have been trying to figure out for years. The "Who Do You Love" suite, despite being much shorter than its unedited performance (for vinyl purposes), still works as a complete performance despite having most of the guitar solos cut out. "Mona" and "Maiden of the Cancer Moon" work incredibly as companion pieces despite being recorded separately and far away from each other. "Calvary" feels improvised despite being composed for over a year. And "Happy Trails" feels just like a PA recording played for the audience to get the hell out of whatever Bill Graham-owned club they were in, but with clearer fidelity. An obvious studio record is a better live album than most live albums.
2. Wow by Moby Grape (Columbia, 1968)
Grape Jam does not exist. It has never existed, nor will it ever. Anyhoo, onto Moby Grape's second record. Their first gets tons of praise in the music community, though their former manager's currently preventing it from being issued on CD. Matthew Katz is such a fucking dick. As for Wow, it tends to get a lot of reasonable flack - because co-leader Skip Spence was having some insane mental trouble during the recording of this record, this album has a very "spotty" feel to it. One minute you get songs akin to the band's debut, complete with delicious harmonies and intricate guitar work ("Murder in My Heart for the Judge," "Three-Four," "Can't Be So Bad")...and the next minute, you get funny songs that come across as downright disturbing ("Motorcycle Irene," "Motorcycle Irene," "Motorcycle Irene," and "Motorcycle Irene")...and the minute after that, you get what appear to be novelty songs ("Funky-Tunk," "Just Like Gene Autry," "Naked, If I Want To"). And then you get songs like "Miller's Blues," "Bitter Wind," and "The Place and the Time" that outright foreshadow psychedelia's transformation into progressive rock (hell, "The Place and the Time" downright transformed it). This is primarily a love-it-or-leave-it record - you can either embrace the train wreck as it is or you can look away and focus on the days back when Moby Grape made songs like "Omaha" and "Hey Grandma." For me, it's a love-it kind of a record. It's a better document of Skip's mental problems than Oar, which mostly comes across as a weird folk album, as it shows him trying to one-up a great album such as Moby Grape.
1. MMHMM by Relient K (Capitol, 2004)
If there's a band that epitomizes the ever-present idea of "underrated," Relient K is it. People still have that perception that they're the funny little MxPx-lite group that sings songs about how Marilyn Manson is bad in general (complete with bad puns with his songs) and never underestimating Matt Thiessen's view of Jesus, but Christian outlets have ignored the band since they went full secular with 2004's MMHMM. While obviously inspired by Thiessen's faith, the lyrics take a more nuanced approach as he covers general topics and tackles things like failed relationships, philosophy, and depression. The band does have one song that seems to be funny ("The Only Thing Worse Than Beating a Dead Horse Is Betting On One"), but lyrically, it's not goofy. It's not funny. It's dead serious. With this album, the band becomes the serious entity that they would somewhat compromise on their misfire Five Score and Seven Years Ago, but later masterfully perfect on Forget and Not Slow Down. Songs like "Who I Am Hates Who I've Been," "Be My Escape," and "Which to Bury, Us or the Hatchet" rank amongst the band's greatest hits, but are constantly overshadowed by the fans' desire to hear "Must've Done Something Right" and "Sadie Hawkins Dance." At least there's no khaki pants on this album. Everything's much better. Oh-oh-oh. blah blah blah baby do you like my sweater blah blah blah