Originally published in Uncut's June 2018 issue Order the latest issue of Uncut online and have it sent to your home! _________________ The Beatles Abbey Road 1969 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpndGZ71yww This is the first album I remember recognising as a connected body of songs. When I was...
Iggy Pop
Lust For Life
1977
This is a perfect album, I think. The music and lyrics are just matches made in heaven. Every song pulls me in on both levels, body and mind, sound and words. This album is like a repeater book for me, something I come back to regularly and revisit as a reminder of what is good. “The Passenger” in particular is perfection. On the first Throwing Muses/Pixies European tour, we all drove around Berlin in our tour van after the show listening to “The Passenger” on a loop. A beautiful night.
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Echo & The Bunnymen
Ocean Rain
1984
Well, it’s just gorgeous, isn’t it? It’s wine and roses, this album. It’s similar to Kate Bush in appealing to the part of me that wants to run into the woods at night wearing a cloak. When I was a teen, I danced around in the dark in my room alone to this album a lot, and I’m one of many members of that particular club. Echo & The Bunnymen were a shot of beauty back then, and a legion of us needed that in 1984. And now.
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Ennio Morricone
The Mission OST
1986
This is a beautiful collection of melodies and sounds, and I have tried to include some piece of it in every major ceremonial watermark event of my life – marriage, childbirth, and probably, deathbed. As someone who is almost detrimentally focused on lyrics, it means so much to be consistently moved by a wordless composer. Ennio does that for me. I am sure I must have seen the movie at some point, but I don’t connect this music to any visual, because it stands on its own for me.
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Mary Margaret O’Hara
Miss America
1988
This album is deeply set in my heart. There’s never a list of mine that doesn’t include it. At the time it came out, the conversational poetry of her lyrics was a running narrative for what was happening with me, and the message I heard was: “I am going to tell you the truth, but I will hold your hand through it.” Mary Margaret’s voice is so free and wild and beautiful, and the songs have those great spidery structures and instrumentation. These things combined had a very strong influence on my writing, consciously and unconsciously.