1)Talking Heads, Fear Of Music: It’s slightly less consistent than Buildings And Food but hits more highs (“Cities,” “Life During Wartime,” “Heaven,” “Drugs.”) Of those four, I confess to having forgotten only the wonderfully creepy “Drugs,” and I prefer the Stop Making Sense version of “Heaven.” Aside from “Drugs,” the rediscoveries were “Air” which is airy indeed, “Electric Guitar,” “Mind” with its twirly little riff thing, and....I’m not sure how much I like “Animals.” “Paper” doesn’t stick in my head much and “Memories Can’t Wait” isn’t as eerie as it should be, and that leaves “I Zimbra,” the first thing I ever heard from this album when someone sent it to me through ICQ in high school, a song that probably blew minds in 1979 (a rock band doing African music? What deviltry be this?) and which…I have little to no use for since I’d rather just listen to Fripp doing the same thing on Discipline. This is a really strong album that had me thinking I’d rediscovered a masterpiece here for a few seconds, geez why hadn’t I picked up the CD ages ago…but when I think about the parts I don’t care for, that opinion cools down a ways. It would seem as the full-blown Eno production extravaganza that was Remain In Light was the final piece in the puzzle for these guys so that they could finally deliver their full blown classic…which isn’t really a terribly original thing to say, and there was plenty of Eno to be found on the 1978-79 albums anyway. Still, I admire this album more than I used to.

2)Jefferson Airplane, Volunteers: Well they did a beautiful psych-folk album, a godawful acid trip album, a mostly-unpleasant apocalyptic album, and now here’s the “political sloganeering” album, of which opinions seem to be all over the place, but which I least admire for returning to pleasantness, on “We Can Be Together,” “Good Shepherd,” “Turn Your Life Down” and (I guess) “Wooden Ships,” which was really their song, but which CSN certainly did better. The big highlight isn’t any of those, though, but rather the short title track, which admittedly does do a good job of stirring up the false memories one has of the 1960s when they were never actually there, you can already see the footage of kids throwing Molotovs. The real problem isn’t the purpose of the album or its sound though, but rather that a little over half of it is forgettable crap, and often long-winded, like “Hey Fredrick” and “Eskimo Blue Day.” So as with Crown Of Creation I’d have to rate this a point or two less than I used to, and I’m really not sure what I was thinking the first time–that these albums were smarter than me, or what?

3)Electric Light Orchestra, The Electric Light Orchestra aka No Answer: The band’s 1971 debut album with Roy Wood as the co-founder; it’s hilarious to think that he was supposedly the one more interested in doing a “classical-rock” hybrid while Jeff Lynne was the “Beatles wannabe”–it’s not that Lynne isn’t that, because he obviously and deliberately was, but more that Wood’s “classical” stuff all ends up sounding like it’s evoking the coda of “Strawberry Fields Forever.” Or at least that’s what I got out of it. I like this album a little less than I used to, and the Wood/Lynne divergence seems to be the reason why; actually, the two big highlights are terrific Beatles knockoffs indeed–“10538 Overture” (which is genuinely haunting and which I never forgot) and “Mr. Radio” (such an obvious song title for them, but a terrific attempt on Lynne’s part to do his own “Honey Pie”). Not that Wood didn’t come up with anything good–“Look At Me Now” manages a decent baroque hook, if not as good as I remembered, and “Whisper In The Night” is a solidly shrill, humorously grating lullaby for a closer. In between that is a lot of quasi-prog junk like “The Battle Of Marston Moor” and “First Movement (Jumping Biz)”–gee, why HADN’T I remembered that Wood did a knockoff of “Classical Gas”? Lynne emerged the clear winner here, so it’s no longer surprising that ELO would end up being his band. Of course, that next album had its own failed prog-rock…

4)The Flaming Lips, Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots: In spite of the fact that I basically love the Flaming Lips and make it a point to hear every new serious album they put out (side-project junk only merits cursory listens), I’ll confess that I hadn’t actually listened to a single song from this album since I heard it in, I think, 2005–only hearing “Do You Realize??” in commercials. I thought it was a good album, but maybe I filed it away in the back of my mind as being The Soft Bulletin’s easier-listening, more electronic-friendly kid brother. Relistening proves that it pretty much is that, but thankfully it’s still a hugely consistent album, with only the ugly Part 2 of the title track and the boring instrumental album closer as weak tunes. To balance that, the band admittedly does get away with some clever recycling; my pick for the big highlight is “Ego Tripping At The Gates Of Hell,” which just crosses the anthem nature of “Waiting For A Superman” with the sombre-ness of “Feeling Yourself Disintegrate, and we all know that Cat Stevens gets five cents every time you hear “Fight Test,” don’t we? “Do You Realize??” itself is decent enough, but I’ve never been in love with it. The first half of the title track is far better than the second half, leaving the two other big rediscoveries as being “Are You A Hypnotist??” and the overlooked falsetto-fest “All We Have Is Now.” The band’s use of synths was playful and well-integrated enough into their sound and Wayne’s lyrics hadn’t gotten so stupid yet, so yes, this is still overall one of their better albums, though I don’t think I’m going to purchase it.

5)Of Montreal, The Sunlandic Twins: This is a notch down from Satanic Panic In The Attic, and all I really have to say about it (assuming anyone in the world still feels like talking about these cutesy Pitchfork early-aughts indie albums like we all used to 20 years ago) is that Kevin Barnes (who else even plays on these fucking albums? Wikipedia entries don’t list anyone! Should I know or care?) seems to have a knack for doing something I can’t easily think of coming from anyone else: his songs seem to have all sorts of shit going on in the arrangements, all sorts of little flourishes and instruments and sub-styles, giving the impression of a crazy happy carnival of cute sound…and yet these twee albums never ever seem like they were very hard for him to make, which is further backed up by how quickly all the songs evaporate from my memory, barring two or three big highlights. Those would be “So Begins Our Alabee” (which opens with these wonderful overdubbed choral notes) and “The Party Crashes Us”…and the rest? The first three and the last two songs (look the titles up yourself, I can’t remember them to save my life!) are good, as is “I Was A Landscsape In Your Dream” and “Death Of A Shade Of Hue”…but I’ll forget them in a week, just like I already forgot all the little songs on Satanic Panic that I liked that aren’t “Disconnect The Dots” and “Rapture Rapes The Muses.” Still a good album…but am I right? Is this why this stuff isn’t discussed anymore, or did we all just get too old and embarrassed to listen to cutesy Pitchfork stuff from 2005?