CP'S TOP TEN ALBUMS: #'s 8-10

Carmen intended this list to be an epic, sprawling dissection of his favorite all-time albums, giving each masterpiece its very own special post rife with insightful insights and artifice-smashing interpretations from whence a subtle, inherent showing of heartfelt appreciation would arise for these beacons of wondrous light shining through reality's all-encompassing shroud of mirk and woe.  This is his failure to do that.  These shallow blurbs will not even scratch the unyielding surface of justice that these albums deserve.  Keep that in mind.  TADA.

#8 In The Aeroplane Over The Sea- Neutral Milk Hotel

Outside of claims of constructing a boat for 100 USD, or joining the National Marching Band, or starting a blog entitled "My Tummy & The City," or persisting that he would eat out of freshly cleaned toilet bowl, or describing his Mom's body as "tight," or refusing to admit that drinking orange juice while eating pizza is unnatural, or allowing his sophomore year bathroom to develop its own ecosystem and primordial civilization of micro-humanoids, NS's greatest gift is this album.  It is perfect.  ITAOTS is totally unique in vision and mode, a smorgasbored of picaresque imagery and lyrical quadruple meanings and twangy guitar and simply complex ear-magic.  It sounds like a circus-trained troubadour playing his death march as he charges through WWII Dutch country-side outrunning V-2 shellings.  It sounds like a love affair through decades and death, bridging time and dreams and reincarnations and pianos made of flames.  It sounds like ceaseless joy and bitter ends.  LOOK AT THESE LYRICS:

And it's so sad to see, the world agree,

That they'd see their faces filled with flies,

All when I want to keep white roses in their eyes.

There is no reason to grieve.

The world that you need,

is wrapped in gold, silver sleeves,

left beneath Christmas trees in the snow.

I will take you and leave you alone.

Watching spirals of white softly flow,

over your eyelids and all you did.

We'll wait until the point,

and you let go.

And when we break, we'll wait for our miracle.

God is a place where some holy spectacle lies.

And when we break, we'll wait for our miracle.

God is a place, you will wait, for the rest of your life.

#9 Lateralus by Tool

"Lateralus" is the best metal song ever written.  On the album Tool unleashes an onslaught of audial sludge and stacked time-signatures, lyrics that are harrowing and transcendent, visceral and ethereal.  Danny Carey's percussion seizes reality by the throat and folds quintessence into itself.  Dynamism doesn't even come close to describing what goes on here.  Tool's sound is a living, breathing vessel of mortal flesh and extra-sensory self-discovery.  Every song is as long as it is thought-provoking, mind-shattering in its orchestration and all-encompassing scope.  Maynard James Keenan lyrics are illogically good.  And when the time-signatures fall into interstellar alignment, and Justin Chancellor's slap bass is moist and rattling as Swamp Thing's furious pulse, and Adam Jones' spectral Les Paul roars up, and Danny Carey lets loose drum fills like anti-air fire in a holy war, and Maynard's voice is an instrument to itself and more than words and everything words can stand for, and Tool comes together in illustrious crescendo, Carmen's whole Carmen warps into a full-body suit of gooseflesh and he leaves himself and sinks into knowing without thought or hesitation.  Look at these lyrics:

This body holding me,

Reminds me of my own mortality.

Embrace this moment.

Remember.

We are eternal.

All this pain is an illusion.

#10 Who's Next by The Who

From the clustersex sound orgy opening of "Baba O'Rielly" to Roger Daltry's lupine howls in "Won't Get Fooled Again," this is The Who bridging their early career as a singles machine to their elder statesmen role as rock opera stargazers, and it is pretty much incredible.  "Bargain" fully expresses the joys of simple gratitude, and "The Song is Over" plays like a singular ripple of hope on a black, churning sea.  Carmen typically hates jaunty, upbeat classic rock (see "Rock and Roll" by Led Zeppelin) preferring more atmospheric, slower tracks(see "No Quarter" by Led Zeppelin) but The Who somehow sidestepped that, and this makes CP appreciate the album even more, as tracks such as "My Wife" and "Going Mobile" don't come off as throwaways but as necessary parts of a pastiche that segue perfectly into the longer, more orchestrated tracks.  "Getting in Tune" is the band's most overlooked masterstroke. Keith Moon died a glorious death.