There’s a quote from English writer Walter Pater that says the following:
“All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music. For while in all other kinds of art it is possible to distinguish the matter from the form, and the understanding can always make this distinction, yet it is the constant effort of art to obliterate it.”
And I am inclined to agree.
Music quite literally transcends the physical, visual limitations of other forms of art - and of language - to say something purely unique. There’s overlaps with other art forms for sure, and I see lyrics as being completely analogous to poetry, but its power to evoke mood and to be inescapable and unwieldy to the listener’s demands on how it should be experienced make it wholly unique.
Of all the lists I’ve done so far - books, films and poems included - this was by far the hardest to narrow down. Growing up in a very well-musically-versed household and being keenly interested in music growing up (which is part of where my poetry love comes from!), there are so many albums from different artists who have all influenced me, and it would be impossible to cover everyone in this list. Thus, to try and narrow it down, I’m sticking with one album per artist (sorry Arctic Monkeys and Beatles!), though I might be cheeky and squeeze some honourable mentions here and there.
Table of Contents
Arctic Monkeys - Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not
Bastille - All This Bad Blood
The Beatles - Revolver
Bill Withers - Live at Carnegie Hall
Daft Punk - Alive 2007
Glass Animals - How To Be A Human Being
Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin
Sleep Token - This Place Will Be Your Tomb
To Kill A King - Cannibals With Cutlery
Two Door Cinema Club - Keep On Smiling
Arctic Monkeys - Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not
Having grown up in Sheffield, Arctic Monkeys was never going to escape this list. It was impossible to go anywhere without hearing some Arctic Monkeys playing in a shop or at evening gigs being covered to a questionable quality by the “weekend rockstars” who thought they could be the next Alex Turner. I could have picked any one of their albums for this list, and I very nearly gave this spot to Favourite Worst Nightmare (despite my personal favourite being Suck It And See). But I went with their first album simply because it was the first one I was ever exposed to.
Being immersed in such a large amount of Arctic Monkeys gave me great exposure to Turner’s lyrics, widely regarded as some of the best in contemporary indie-rock songwriting. Being a big poetry and literature fan, Turner’s lyrics on this album exploring the nightlife of Sheffield pair well with the energetic, upbeat compositions to give it a depth and sense of narrative that wouldn’t have been there otherwise. My personal favourite demonstration of this is on the penultimate track, “From The Ritz To The Rubble”, following a group of lads being denied entry to a club by bouncers.
Bastille - All This Bad Blood
I specifically went for the extended version of Bastille’s first album, “All This Bad Blood”, as it’s the first CD I ever went out and bought. I seem to remember seeing “Pompeii” on some music TV channel shortly after it was released, and instantly being hooked by it and feeling it to be a bit refreshing from the conventional pop music coming out at the time. Coinciding with my first easy access to the internet, I soon went down the Bastille rabbit hole and became fixated on their back-catalogue. The extended version of their first album, containing additional songs and some select highlights from their previous covers-based mixtapes was something I just knew I had to have.
This first album in particular has some songs with, frankly, really well-thought-out instrumentation, lovely lyrics and a great style. I’m linking “Oblivion” from the album below, which to this date is still one of the only songs to ever bring me to tears because of its beauty and sadness. That alone makes this album worthy of a mention.
The Beatles - Revolver
There was a lot of Beatles played in the house growing up, but Revolver in particular was always the album that I seemed to enjoy the most, and now I would argue is probably one of their best, perhaps with Abbey Road as a close second.
I know there’s been a lot of discussion lately on the role of The Beatles in being used by the CIA in trying to influence the counterculture through their music, right up to the inclusion of known satanist Aleister Crowley on the Sgt Pepper album.
has a good interview on the subject on his Substack. In this has also been a revival of the closely-related “Paul Is Dead” conspiracy, which subscribers to that idea will know that Revolver was the last album that the “real” Paul McCartney supposedly worked on before his death.With all this in mind, is it therefore wrong to continue listening to The Beatles work? I think Steve Falconer makes a great point in his interview with Jerm Warfare on MK-Ultra, highlighting that, while The Beatles certainly were involved in many of these shenanigans, it doesn’t change the fact that they were incredible musicians with an ability to write some amazing songs. I feel Revolver is a testament to that, and I’ve linked my favourite song from the album, Eleanor Rigby.
Bill Withers - Live at Carnegie Hall
Bill Withers very proudly holds a spot in my top 3 artists of all time for the pure talent he brought to the world as a singer-songwriter. I was already a big fan of many of Bill Wither’s other albums before I first listened to Live at Carnegie Hall, but this album moved me in ways I cannot describe. Hearing Bill sound exactly like he does on the studio records, knowing that this man is a genuinely good talent through-and-through warmed my heart. Then, I got to “World Keeps Going Around”. What a track. What an album. Nothing more to say here.
Daft Punk - Alive 2007
From one live album to another - albeit a very different one. Daft Punk are another of my top favourite artists of all-time, and I think there’s good reason why Random Access Memories seemed to be everywhere for years. But Alive 2007 is one of those albums that can just instantly get me dancing, and showcases the full range of Daft Punk’s live production talents that brought them to fame in the 90s. The way they can cram so many of their hits through remixing their own songs together is a real spectacle, and I can only imagine it must have been a treat for anyone who went to see this tour live. There’s some legendary mash-ups in this set, including “Around The World / Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” linked for your listening pleasure below.
Glass Animals - How To Be A Human Being
For me, “How To Be A Human Being” strikes that incredible balance between having enough pop sensibility to get stuck in my head super easy, while still having some really unique sound design and compositional choices that don’t really make it sound like much else. I had this album on repeat for ages when it came out, with this album becoming the benchmark as to what top-tier composition and production could be for my own music projects that I was exploring at the time. While those projects never quite manifested, this album is still a joy to go back and listen to and always seems to fill me with a sense of endless possibilities and inspiration in the universe. The album’s opener, “Life Itself” captures this perfectly for me.
Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin IV
Here’s another Aleister Crowley-worshipping band: Led Zeppelin. Despite their suspect influences, they still were a showcase of what could be done when rock music was pushed to its absolute limit without the need for flashy effects or production. In fact, all of the first album was recorded off of cheap practise amps cranked up to the max, which should say something about the quality of the musicianship.
That said, Led Zeppelin IV seems like the finest showcase of their songwriting and performing capabilities to me, and it’s definitely the album that left the greatest impression on me. Again, I take a similar approach with them as I do The Beatles, and there’s no changing that the guitar work of Jimmy Page was certainly a big influence on me learning guitar growing up. This includes my first "proper” guitar being a Danelectro 59 DC just as Page did for Kashmir, and even to the point that Black Dog may permanently be in my muscle memory.
Their Lord of The Rings references, however, are very welcome.
Sleep Token - This Place Will Become Your Tomb
Arguably, the most recent Sleep Token album - Take Me Back To Eden - is their finest work, and it’s definitely my favourite album of theirs. But I specifically wanted to go with This Place Will Be Your Tomb for this list just because it was the album that really blew me away with how creative their sound is. Like Glass Animal’s work, listening to Sleep Token always fills me with inspiration, to the point that they’re a likely Top 3 artist-of-all-time contender, certainly a Top 5.
Picking one song from this album for this article was a *really* hard job, because the entire album does a great job at just being a joy to listen to. So, I’ll link the album opener, “Atlantic”, and leave you to listen to the rest of the album from there:
To Kill A King - Cannibals With Cutlery
I’ve mentioned To Kill A King before on this Substack as part of the “Tribe Blog” series I originally did for paid subscribers when I began my Substack. In that piece, I ticked off one of my childhood dreams of seeing the band for my birthday, where they played this very album - Cannibals With Cutlery - in full.
When I discovered this band through my love of Bastille, it was at a time of deep loneliness and a feeling of being lost in the world. To Kill A King’s music was the salve to that wound, and I have shed multiple tears at multiple songs on this record. One that has grown on me much more with time, though, is “Children Who Start Fires”, and now I would probably say it’s my favourite from the record. This album is a go-to if I ever need to access my grief, and that song is no exception.
Two Door Cinema Club - Keep On Smiling
Two Door Cinema Club would always find their way into the house parties of my youth, being popular with both me and my friendship circle. “Gameshow” instantly sunk its tendrils into me, and I listened to that albums countless times since its release (and still do!). It’s certainly an album that impacted me.
But it’s only been through returning to their music recently that something new and more profound has arisen. Their latest album, “Keep On Smiling”, has quite literally been keeping me smiling through some of the hardships of the past couple of years as the fallout of Covid has continued to alert me to things I wasn’t previously aware of. It’s a fantastic combination of the frantic indie rock riffs of their early work and the more pop and electronic experiments of “Gameshow” and “False Alarm”. I’ll link “Lucky” below, simply for being the one that to this day refuses to leave my head.
