Perfect albums

6/31 daily posts as part of WeblogPoMo2024. Expect (and forgive) more words and less editing.

On this week's Hemispheric Views the gents once again cause the community to respond. This time: what's the perfect album?

I'll submit two.

Dire Straits' Brothers in Arms (1985)

Links to listen on all the services.

This album arguably got me in to music. I heard Walk of Life on Newcastle's Metro 97.1FM¹ somewhere in the late 80s. I would have been about 14.

I didn't know what it was -- sacrilege! Dire Straits are from Newcastle, total local heroes -- so I called the station. The lady told me, and that was it. Now 14-year-old me likes music.

Yeah yeah so this is dad rock. It's an absolute classic though, nothing wrong from start to end. And it's stood the test of time. We still listen to it, often.

Fun fact: this was the first ever CD with the DDD mastering symbol on the back. The three letters were either A or D for analog & digital and they indicated how the album had been recorded, mixed, and mastered.

Most CDs were AAD, very few were ADD, and this was the first DDD.

If I only listen to one track it should be...

The title track, #9 Brothers in Arms. If it doesn't melt your heart you might not have one.

Destroyer's Kaputt (2011)

Cookie rooftop, Melbourne. 2011 or thereabouts. A sunny afternoon with friends. The DJ plays the track Kaputt, I am instantly in love, I ask them what it is, my life is changed.

And I really mean changed. This album set my musical taste on a whole new trajectory. I discovered a love for, what? Shoegazey-lofi-jazzy-soundscapey-lushness? I dunno, this isn't a Pitchfork review.

Just listen to the album. And if you like it, you should immediately then listen to The Radio Dept.'s Clinging to a Scheme, which could easily be on this page but I have actual work to do so a link's all you're getting.

But really, listen to that as well. The two are partners in my mind. One always follows the other.

If I only listen to one track it should be...

The title track, #6 Kaputt. I am in awe of talent like this.