The Nicsperiment's Favorite Albums of All Time (M-Z)
Now that I am done reviewing over 2000 albums, it only feels prudent to list my fifty favorites. Here they are, in alphabetical order, with a blurb from and a link to the orignal review for each. There are even a couple I didn't initially review. This entry covers M-Z. I released A-K yesterday. Sorry, L.
The Mars Volta -- Frances the Mute
"I have often wished I'd have come of age in the 70's, lying in a cool, dimly-lit attic, jamming to progressive rock albums. De-Loused in the Comatorium gave me that feeling a little, but Frances the Mute takes me there. Frances the Mute is what one of those 70's albums from my imagination would sound like in 2005...I say that, but this album, in all its unique glory, is timeless..."
mewithoutYou -- Catch for Us the Foxes
The reason 2004 Aaron Weiss is welcome to my house to drink cold sweet tea (hot tea is vomit), is that 2004 Aaron Weiss knows what it feels like to be depressed, just like 2004 The Nicsperiment and 2015 The Nicsperiment know what it feels like to be depressed. If you listen to Catch for Us the Foxes with even a small amount of sadness in your heart, you will most likely have the ability to connect to Aaron Weiss' lyrical imagery.
Moby --Play
"Play still amazes me. I can't understand how Moby took these simple old recordings, added a little piano, keyboard, some drums and bass and the rare guitar, and achieved such a magical, timeless final product. Added to that, Play's structure is serendipitous..."
Morphine -- Cure for Pain
I discovered Morphine's 1993 Stunner, Cure For Pain, well after I passed reviewing the "M"'s for this series. Still, Cure for Pain quickly climbed near the top of my favorite albums list. It's the epitome of early 90's alternative cool, played by a trio of a vocalist/two-string bassist, saxophone player, and drummer. If you were driving through the American desert at 2 am, broke down, and walked toward the nearest one light town, you'd fine Morphine playing this album to six people in the coolest dive bar in existence.
múm -- Finally We Are No One
"It's consistent and it's perfect. It's like staring out the window at a rainy landscape with your chin resting in your hand, and enjoying the experience. It's like, when something is really awesome and transcendent and all of your attempts to describe it suck..."
MxPx -- Life In General
"Look, I can go on and on about how awesome Life in General is. About how producer, Steve Kravac, pushed MxPx to their physical and artistic limits until they broke past them. About how Kravac's production allows Mike's singing and bass playing, Tom's guitar, and Yuri's drums each ample space in the mix, and how it is amazingly clear without ever sounding over-polished. I can tell you about how Mike Herrera, on the punk-rock spectrum, took a Beatles like two-year songwriting leap from Please Please Me to Rubber Soul, from Pokinatcha to Life in General. I can tell you about how I've listened to hundreds of punk rock albums, and none of them have satisfied my ears like this 1996 gem..."
Neutral Milk Hotel -- In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
"Also, I just went back and read the second Nicsperiment eulogy I gave my cat. I miss Fats so much. This is one of the great albums. Have a good night..."
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds -- Murder Ballads
Obviously, by the title, these ten songs are about murder. From most other artists, this would make for a one-dimensional, and somewhat sadistic product. However, under the guidance of Nick Cave, these songs are more than anything, human.
Nick Drake -- Five Leaves Left
"I'm much an introvert myself, raised in an area as rural as Drake was, albeit my worst vice appears to be candy salad. Like most of the introverts and scattered extroverts who have latched onto this music over time, I found instant connection with Drake's work, particularly Five Leaves Left..."
Nirvana -- MTV Unplugged in New York
"With all that said, and little else to say, this is one of my favorite albums of all time..."
Norma Jean -- Bless the Martyr and Kiss the Child
"Here is an album that defies categorization. Scogin, no longer employing digital distortion, has a scream thicker than a thousand Janet Lee's, going from deep bellowing to high-shrieks in the same second. The song-writing is brilliant, full of such a meticulously ordered diversity of tempo, texture, and emotion. The production, done without the aid of computers, sounds so full, with the drums in particular sounding deep and resonant..."
Peter Gabriel -- So
"It's tough to be objective when reviewing a voice that has been in your head for 30 years. Peter Gabriel is my favorite vocalist, and his album, So, is now 30 years old. I'm not going to even pretend that this is a fair review. In fact, I am going to review the version of this I am most familiar with, the original vinyl, because that is the one ingrained upon me, and I struggle to even think about this album any other way. So, if you're still there..."
P.O.D. -- The Fundamental Elements of Southtown
"I also love the emotional throughline (another underrated quality in a great album!) P.O.D. maintain across TFEOS, introducing themselves and who they are in the first tracks, introducing a feeling of darkness that builds in the third quarter, and slowly moving to a comforting, albeit, heavy catharsis through the last quarter to album-closer "Outkast," while never losing that sense of fun (and allowing the sounds they create a great deal of space...another important quality in an album!)..."
P.O.S. -- Never Better
"Yet, later on, particularly in its back half, P.O.S. is able to venture to some meditative, far more chill places. Never Better never gets boring for a second, moving, shifting, bleeding, breathing, changing continuously, feeling like a transformative, non-compromising journey from beginning to end..."
Portishead -- Portishead
"This is followed by a jazz piano line, conjuring a feeling that the second the last note is hit, the lights go off, and the apocalypse begins. It's a stunning moment on a stunning album--one of my favorites..."
Project 86 -- Drawing Black Lines
"An album this good, that works in concert so well, should not be treated so clinically. This is also an album that in its last track, completely deconstructs itself, anyway. If you enjoy heavy music in any capacity, you owe yourself a listen..."
Radiohead -- Kid A
" I don't mean that I only like concept albums, but albums with a cohesive emotional flow. Kid A's got a Nile's worth of that..."
*shels -- Plains of the Purple Buffalo
"Plains of the Purple Buffalo brings to mind a vast, gently rolling prairie, wind blowing through the grass, bison periodically thundering through, faraway lightning striking and gentle rolls of thunder as the sky purples in the distance, butterflies hovering over grass hunting for flowers, rolling violence and gentle, blowing grass, meditation, exultation, smoky visions, haunted, blessed wigwams, and all manner and matter of general transportive glory and beauty. The musical diversity and diversity of emotion is stunning, surprising and beautiful..."
Sigur Rós -- ( )
"When I listen to ( ) in the context of the present, with its eight untitled tracks, I am still moved by its power, the way it goes from a mournful morning call through snowy fog, to a beautiful thawing rain, to a joyous sunbath, to a bleak death march, to a final cathartic outburst of sound I still haven't heard surpassed..."
Starflyer 59 -- Easy Come Easy Go
"I've never listened to an album that perfectly tracks the feeling of both falling into a depression and coming out of a depression like the 12-song B-side-section of Easy Come Easy Go's second disc..."
Stavesacre -- Speakeasy
"So all that time those magazines who infinitely want to remind you that you missed the best times ever in the late 60's, and it will never be that good again were lamenting the death of rock, Stavesacre were making one of the greatest rock albums of the late 90's..."
Sufjan Stevens -- Illinois
"Illinois, with its Guaraldi-like arrangements, conjures this nostalgia, of early childhood, and being at a lake, and faded color Polaroids...and faded late 80's elementary school-issued textbooks. These light jazz/folk-rock symphonies are so lush and full and wonderful, I've never sat down and listened to Illinois in its entirety and not felt better afterward, like it's healed some ailing invisible part of me...'
System of a Down -- Steal This Album!
"Everything just feels right. The building momentum, the flow, it's perfect. I feel like I can nitpick the other SOAD albums I like, but Steal This Album! is perfect..."
U2 -- Achtung Baby
"Thus is the power of this great album, which may be able to stake a claim, not only as U2's best, but as one of the greatest albums ever recorded and released by anyone. It's that good..."
U2 -- The Unforgettable Fire
"U2's The Unforgettable Fire is my favorite album of all time..."
Uneven Structure -- Februus
"Februus is one of my favorite albums of the 10's (if not my favorite). It's been with me for nearly a decade (I first discovered it in early 2012, several months after it was released), and it has done nothing but grown in my estimation. It's both an enviable and unenviable statement from a band just charting their path--enviable because a band would be lucky to hit upon a work of genius like this once in several lifetimes...and unenviable because after that work's creation, that same band's following work will have to succeed it..."
Zao -- Liberate Te Ex Inferis
"All I can say is, Liberate Te Ex Inferis fires off all my dopamine centers. It sets my imagination racing, just as much as it has me drumming on my knees and trying and failing to play its most difficult guitar runs. It's incredible..."
* * *
The Mars Volta -- Frances the Mute
"I have often wished I'd have come of age in the 70's, lying in a cool, dimly-lit attic, jamming to progressive rock albums. De-Loused in the Comatorium gave me that feeling a little, but Frances the Mute takes me there. Frances the Mute is what one of those 70's albums from my imagination would sound like in 2005...I say that, but this album, in all its unique glory, is timeless..."
mewithoutYou -- Catch for Us the Foxes
The reason 2004 Aaron Weiss is welcome to my house to drink cold sweet tea (hot tea is vomit), is that 2004 Aaron Weiss knows what it feels like to be depressed, just like 2004 The Nicsperiment and 2015 The Nicsperiment know what it feels like to be depressed. If you listen to Catch for Us the Foxes with even a small amount of sadness in your heart, you will most likely have the ability to connect to Aaron Weiss' lyrical imagery.
Moby --Play
"Play still amazes me. I can't understand how Moby took these simple old recordings, added a little piano, keyboard, some drums and bass and the rare guitar, and achieved such a magical, timeless final product. Added to that, Play's structure is serendipitous..."
Morphine -- Cure for Pain
I discovered Morphine's 1993 Stunner, Cure For Pain, well after I passed reviewing the "M"'s for this series. Still, Cure for Pain quickly climbed near the top of my favorite albums list. It's the epitome of early 90's alternative cool, played by a trio of a vocalist/two-string bassist, saxophone player, and drummer. If you were driving through the American desert at 2 am, broke down, and walked toward the nearest one light town, you'd fine Morphine playing this album to six people in the coolest dive bar in existence.
múm -- Finally We Are No One
"It's consistent and it's perfect. It's like staring out the window at a rainy landscape with your chin resting in your hand, and enjoying the experience. It's like, when something is really awesome and transcendent and all of your attempts to describe it suck..."
MxPx -- Life In General
"Look, I can go on and on about how awesome Life in General is. About how producer, Steve Kravac, pushed MxPx to their physical and artistic limits until they broke past them. About how Kravac's production allows Mike's singing and bass playing, Tom's guitar, and Yuri's drums each ample space in the mix, and how it is amazingly clear without ever sounding over-polished. I can tell you about how Mike Herrera, on the punk-rock spectrum, took a Beatles like two-year songwriting leap from Please Please Me to Rubber Soul, from Pokinatcha to Life in General. I can tell you about how I've listened to hundreds of punk rock albums, and none of them have satisfied my ears like this 1996 gem..."
Neutral Milk Hotel -- In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
"Also, I just went back and read the second Nicsperiment eulogy I gave my cat. I miss Fats so much. This is one of the great albums. Have a good night..."
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds -- Murder Ballads
Obviously, by the title, these ten songs are about murder. From most other artists, this would make for a one-dimensional, and somewhat sadistic product. However, under the guidance of Nick Cave, these songs are more than anything, human.
Nick Drake -- Five Leaves Left
"I'm much an introvert myself, raised in an area as rural as Drake was, albeit my worst vice appears to be candy salad. Like most of the introverts and scattered extroverts who have latched onto this music over time, I found instant connection with Drake's work, particularly Five Leaves Left..."
Nirvana -- MTV Unplugged in New York
"With all that said, and little else to say, this is one of my favorite albums of all time..."
Norma Jean -- Bless the Martyr and Kiss the Child
"Here is an album that defies categorization. Scogin, no longer employing digital distortion, has a scream thicker than a thousand Janet Lee's, going from deep bellowing to high-shrieks in the same second. The song-writing is brilliant, full of such a meticulously ordered diversity of tempo, texture, and emotion. The production, done without the aid of computers, sounds so full, with the drums in particular sounding deep and resonant..."
Peter Gabriel -- So
"It's tough to be objective when reviewing a voice that has been in your head for 30 years. Peter Gabriel is my favorite vocalist, and his album, So, is now 30 years old. I'm not going to even pretend that this is a fair review. In fact, I am going to review the version of this I am most familiar with, the original vinyl, because that is the one ingrained upon me, and I struggle to even think about this album any other way. So, if you're still there..."
P.O.D. -- The Fundamental Elements of Southtown
"I also love the emotional throughline (another underrated quality in a great album!) P.O.D. maintain across TFEOS, introducing themselves and who they are in the first tracks, introducing a feeling of darkness that builds in the third quarter, and slowly moving to a comforting, albeit, heavy catharsis through the last quarter to album-closer "Outkast," while never losing that sense of fun (and allowing the sounds they create a great deal of space...another important quality in an album!)..."
P.O.S. -- Never Better
"Yet, later on, particularly in its back half, P.O.S. is able to venture to some meditative, far more chill places. Never Better never gets boring for a second, moving, shifting, bleeding, breathing, changing continuously, feeling like a transformative, non-compromising journey from beginning to end..."
Portishead -- Portishead
"This is followed by a jazz piano line, conjuring a feeling that the second the last note is hit, the lights go off, and the apocalypse begins. It's a stunning moment on a stunning album--one of my favorites..."
Project 86 -- Drawing Black Lines
"An album this good, that works in concert so well, should not be treated so clinically. This is also an album that in its last track, completely deconstructs itself, anyway. If you enjoy heavy music in any capacity, you owe yourself a listen..."
Radiohead -- Kid A
" I don't mean that I only like concept albums, but albums with a cohesive emotional flow. Kid A's got a Nile's worth of that..."
*shels -- Plains of the Purple Buffalo
"Plains of the Purple Buffalo brings to mind a vast, gently rolling prairie, wind blowing through the grass, bison periodically thundering through, faraway lightning striking and gentle rolls of thunder as the sky purples in the distance, butterflies hovering over grass hunting for flowers, rolling violence and gentle, blowing grass, meditation, exultation, smoky visions, haunted, blessed wigwams, and all manner and matter of general transportive glory and beauty. The musical diversity and diversity of emotion is stunning, surprising and beautiful..."
Sigur Rós -- ( )
"When I listen to ( ) in the context of the present, with its eight untitled tracks, I am still moved by its power, the way it goes from a mournful morning call through snowy fog, to a beautiful thawing rain, to a joyous sunbath, to a bleak death march, to a final cathartic outburst of sound I still haven't heard surpassed..."
Starflyer 59 -- Easy Come Easy Go
"I've never listened to an album that perfectly tracks the feeling of both falling into a depression and coming out of a depression like the 12-song B-side-section of Easy Come Easy Go's second disc..."
Stavesacre -- Speakeasy
"So all that time those magazines who infinitely want to remind you that you missed the best times ever in the late 60's, and it will never be that good again were lamenting the death of rock, Stavesacre were making one of the greatest rock albums of the late 90's..."
Sufjan Stevens -- Illinois
"Illinois, with its Guaraldi-like arrangements, conjures this nostalgia, of early childhood, and being at a lake, and faded color Polaroids...and faded late 80's elementary school-issued textbooks. These light jazz/folk-rock symphonies are so lush and full and wonderful, I've never sat down and listened to Illinois in its entirety and not felt better afterward, like it's healed some ailing invisible part of me...'
System of a Down -- Steal This Album!
"Everything just feels right. The building momentum, the flow, it's perfect. I feel like I can nitpick the other SOAD albums I like, but Steal This Album! is perfect..."
U2 -- Achtung Baby
"Thus is the power of this great album, which may be able to stake a claim, not only as U2's best, but as one of the greatest albums ever recorded and released by anyone. It's that good..."
U2 -- The Unforgettable Fire
"U2's The Unforgettable Fire is my favorite album of all time..."
Uneven Structure -- Februus
"Februus is one of my favorite albums of the 10's (if not my favorite). It's been with me for nearly a decade (I first discovered it in early 2012, several months after it was released), and it has done nothing but grown in my estimation. It's both an enviable and unenviable statement from a band just charting their path--enviable because a band would be lucky to hit upon a work of genius like this once in several lifetimes...and unenviable because after that work's creation, that same band's following work will have to succeed it..."
Zao -- Liberate Te Ex Inferis
"All I can say is, Liberate Te Ex Inferis fires off all my dopamine centers. It sets my imagination racing, just as much as it has me drumming on my knees and trying and failing to play its most difficult guitar runs. It's incredible..."
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