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50. Remedies. Soup (2017)
Symphonic rock, alternative rock, progressive rock? What to call Remedies? A little of all is my best guess. It's easier to conclude that Remedies is the album with the best cover art of the century so far. Claiming it can't be far from the truth. Norwegian band Soup explores its compositions and follows the chord progressions into every hidden nook and cranny, resulting in an album that keeps surprising, even after many listening sessions. The light, the dark, life and death, love and sadness it all comes by, showing all the different phases of each. I have no idea what came after but with Remedies Soup made a great impression on me.
As I wrote recently, you had not seen the last of the band. With Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action the band set another great step in its career. With songs like 'Love Illumination' and 'Bullet' you can't go wrong. FraFer swings no little here and was still together in its original line up. This would not last much longer. For some time now there's only two left, Alex Kapranos and bassist Bob Hardy. Like many bands from the second punkfunk era, the band is great at making songs that are not easy sound like they are. FraFer finds the melody that can be sung along to with ease while the notes and chords played do not sound like the most obvious ones. That starts with the opening song 'Right Words' and ends with the last note on the album. Although the band never got as big as it promised at the start, it is still popular to this day.
Another album that time will tell how good it really is, but I'm impressed alright. Niemandsland is an album where De Kift goes off the deep end. All the anxiousness and fears of 2024 have gone into it. The environment, war, pollution, extinction, sorrows and woe, singer and text assembler Ferry Heijne has found pieces of text from all around the world to share his message. The band obliges fully but has never sounded more subdued than here. Niemandsland tells of the world crumbling apart with nothing we can do, as it is the hot shots of this world determining what it is that happens to us. Niemandsland is, even for those unable to understand Dutch, an album to take to heart. And the artwork you see here? It is 100% unique. There's not one the same. Only the concept and shape is.
It was at least a year later before I learned of Kaizers Orchestra, but I can still see myself sitting in the record store on a Friday or Saturday afternoon, when I saw one of the fathers from school walk in. Whether he did anything with my advice I don't know, fact is, I was jumping up and down on my stool listening to the album. Kaizers Orchestra is one of my favourite bands of this century for certain. The Norwegians blend everything from rock and punk, to Balkans, gypsy music and Tom Waits and not to forget De Kift. Kaizers Orchestra is the punk version of De Kift. Everything is sung in the band's local dialect from Bergen. This album was followed by 'Evig Pint', that only just did not make to this list. Many other albums did as you will find out. The promise made in the album's title, unfortunately was not lived up to when the band broke up in 2013.
By far the most experimental album on this list, my co number 1 of 2015. Co, because it should not be there in a musical sense. This was all about experiencing pure senses as Tonnie Dieleman, who is Broeder Dieleman, mixed so much into his music. Sound scapes, atmospherics and spoken word, in which he tried and succeeded to capture his heritage of the Zeeland towns, marshes, religion and people. This is not music perse but so much more and so impressive. His other albums are not here but they are all very much worthwhile.
With 'Dookie' American Dream is the album of west coast punkers Green Day. The band's reaction to George Bush JR's presidency. One hit after the other came off the album making it without doubt the band's most successful. The album that makes Green day fill the biggest venues and being the main act on festivals to this day. It is also the band's most ambitious album and that paid off. It proves that punk can be more than either just anger or having a good time and pogo the night away.
44. I Am The River, The River Is Me. Jen Cloher (2023)
I was surprised I did not let 'Jen Cloher', her eponymous album, make this list. Choices are tough, I can tell you. Her latest album is played regularly to this day. After her breakup with indie darling Courtney Barnett, conspicuously absent here, she went back to her New Zealand roots and returned with this even better album that shows so many sides to her musicality. In that she's so much better than Ms Barnett. The Maori chants really enrich some songs but overall I Am The River, The River Is Me is a very strong album.
Cracker still exists yet seems to have faded away completely. The band's list of great albums stopped with Forever in 2002. The mix of country(rock), pop and music somewhere in between the two, that is part serious and part in jest, is of the kind that makes me want to sing along. For the whole of the time. I hadn't played the album for some time, as I always put on Cracker's first three albums. When I did, I found there was not one song I could not sing along to and enjoyed them so much. I was lucky to be able to have seen them twice live in small venues, incredibly loud, okay. Live the band is totally professional. The albums show the band's other side, the fun stuff.
Rock and roll from 2023 that could have been made anywhere in the past 50 years. Boston bands and singers move in and out of bands and collaborations and The Shang Hi Los is one such constellation. The best I've heard to date. With an opening song like 'Takes One To Know One' a slot on this list is already guaranteed. With the songs that follow the rest is a piece of cake. The voices of Jen D'Angora and Dan Kopko seem to have been made for each other, while together they make great records. Kopko's band Watts came close with its latest album, in this constellation things are simply better.
A live album and the only one in this list. Zita Swoon is (was?) a Belgian band around singer-songwriter-guitarist Stef Kamil Carlens. Zita Swoon has a drummer who seems more like a mathematician than percussionist. A band that makes square songs round. That makes difficult things sound easy and even more importantly beautiful. Supported by a host of great musicians, among whom the late Tom Pintens, and three female singers, the songs on A Band In A Box surpass the original versions. Although a live album, recorded without audience, it is the distilled version of all the albums that came before and the highlight of the band's oeuvre.
Wout de Natris - van der Borght
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