The Best of ESSENTIAL ALBUMS in 2014: 10 great artists talk influential records

Published: December 18, 2014
In Essential Albums our favourite artists dig up five records that they consider “Essential” by any definition they like. 

There's a reason "what are your influences?" has become such a cliched interview question to ask a musician. Sure, it's a question you can ask anyone without doing any real research, but there's more to it than that. Artists don't just create in a vaccuum. They're music fans too, and often they have the most passionate criticisms of anyone. Entire sites have formed based on this premise.

In our Essential Albums feature, we try to use that basic question as a way into an artist's psyche, an oblique angle into their creative process, a direct link to their brain (or at least their record collection). We spent the year taking a personal tour through the industrial genre, learning how comedy influences music and vice versa, and discovering one of the most influential indie bands of all time was influenced by one specific Beatles song. We've compiled our favourite picks below.

Pixies on The BeatlesThe Beatles (1968)

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Joey Santiago: Every time I listen to it, I just find another sonic detail. Like, what’s that? Was that a dub? Was that a tape splice? It’s interesting. The production of it is so adventurous. The little studio tricks they do are very, very, very, very subtle, very psychedelic. It’s the tastiest thing. The White Album is just a great, great radio station.

There is one song that influenced me there guitar-wise. It’s pretty obvious, it’s “Savoy Truffle.” You can listen to that and figure out what I took out of it. I think it happens on every chorus, he does the bendy stuff that I like to do. You know, the [makes scraping sound effect]. You’ll hear it, I do it on “Dead” and a bunch of other songs. I believe ["Savoy Truffle"] is a song about Eric Clapton. When you’re weaning off heroin, you crave sugar. So he’s in the dentist’s office, and the guitar is the sound of the drill. I like those little jokes that bands have.

From ESSENTIAL ALBUMS: Pixies guitarist Joey Santiago’s five albums that influenced the spirit of his band

Kevin Drew on Cyndi LauperShe's So Unusual (1983)


Kevin Drew: Huge! You put that record on today, it sounds incredible. The production on that album was essential. It works anywhere, and look at the songs on it: "She Bop" was the first song about masturbation. "Money Changes Everything," when I was a kid, that's another one where I'd go to the vacuum, and it was like, "Okay, I guess I'm a woman now." I always dressed in drag at Halloween, which my mother loved because she didn't have any daughters.

I found something powerful and trustworthy in Cyndi Lauper when I was a young guy. It's hard trying to figure out girls, but Cyndi was explaining it to you very simply. "Time after Time" and all that stuff, if you put that record on now it still fucking kills. It just does. She killed that record. Seven singles! Can you believe that? She was quirky and different and she hung out with wrestlers, which I loved too. I'm still fucking cool you pieces of shit! Come at me, I'll drop some Cyndi on you.

From ESSENTIAL ALBUMS: Kevin Drew’s five game-changing records

Sharon Van Etten on PJ HarveyDry (1992)


Sharon Van Etten: I heard the demos first and hearing the rawness of them and then hearing it interpreted as a band always intrigued me, when I was still solo and thinking about getting a band together one day. You could still pull off your own sound while having other people help you flesh it out. [It’s] really working with people that understand your music, understand how it is to be a singer and that you’re to hang back and show restraint while also encouraging me to where I’m never buried, but the band behind me is pushing me to rock out or let go, [and] letting go with me. There’s no imbalance there. You don’t want to work with people who don’t get you, and I’ve been lucky enough to be surrounded by people who do.

From ESSENTIAL ALBUMS: Sharon Van Etten discusses five instructive classics

Bonnie "Prince" Billy on Glen CampbellReunion: The Songs of Jimmy Webb (1974)

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Will Oldham: Glen Campbell's effortless emoting recalls Dirk Diggler's complete primitive competency. Listening to the record, reading its credits, listening to the record, gathering stories about how and why it was made, listening to the record, trying to sing along with the record, listening to the record, covering songs from the record, listening to the record, again and again, continues to not only reward but compel one to listen more and think more about the record. It is my firm belief that Glen Campbell could not speak to (even prior to the Alzheimer's) his insane abilities as a singer and guitar player, while Jimmy Webb can and does speak excessively about his own abilities as a songwriter and producer. It is our good fortune that they encountered each other.

From ESSENTIAL ALBUMS: Bonnie “Prince” Billy surveys his disarrayed record collection

Xiu Xiu on The Birthday PartyLive 1981-82 (1999)


Jamie Stewart: This is hands down the best live record I’ve ever heard and I think will probably ever hear. I don’t really even understand how they were able to record it — I mean, it’s clearly an insane chaos onstage, but somehow they were able to capture and record it incredibly clearly. A lot of live records from this era or music of this type is completely fuzzed out and you really miss the intensity of the playing, but this one, somehow, some genius engineer made it possible.

And The Birthday Party in that era, they were just one of the most evil and violent bands that ever were. Whenever I’m on a long tour and I’m feeling a little deflated and feel like I need to get my shit together and quit being such a lazy ass on stage, I listen to this record and helps me realize how much further I need to go.

From ESSENTIAL ALBUMS: Xiu Xiu’s Jamie Stewart on 5 albums unlike anything he’s ever heard

Odonis Odonis on MinistryLand of Rape and Honey (1988)

Dean Tzenos: The first industrial record I heard and got into. I was blown away and still am. If you had heard Twitch or anything else like that, you'd hear there was a certain sound that was going on with industrial. But as soon as this record hit, it was a complete game-changer. I don’t think anybody had heard something that unhinged and that intense. Even the flow of the record is so chaotic. He’s not afraid to go into completely crazy experimental territory.

Even the way the guitars are used... a lot of industrial doesn’t really use that much guitar until the later '80s. Then into the '90s industrial becomes more metal industrial. Up until that point it wasn’t really there. Ministry blew the door open to that. It was also the heaviest thing I had ever heard in my life. I didn’t think anything could be that heavy.

From ESSENTIAL ALBUMS: Odonis Odonis bandleader Dean Tzenos leads a crash course in industrial

Greys on Sloan, "500 Up" Music Video (1992)

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Shehzaad Jiwani: Just as much as the Smashing Pumpkins and Nirvana were constants in my adolescence, I would say Sloan were just as much part of it. I think they're the best Canadian band of the ‘90s, if not one of the best of all time. Those first five records are untouchable. And even their newer stuff is good.

It was hard to decide on this versus the “The Good In Everyone” video. They’re both great. But “500 Up” has the little duck driving the car, and they just look like kids, so precocious and innocent. It’s great. And also Audrey from The Beverleys forced me to do that one because she said it was her favourite. It’s a great tune and it’s a classic ‘90s Canadian video. It’s just them under a bridge. And you can see they got the Geffen money with that remote control car.

From ESSENTIAL ALBUMS: Greys’ Shehzaad Jiwani picks 15 Essential CanRock Music Videos of the ’90s

Sloan on The Jesus And Mary ChainPsychocandy (1985)

Patrick Pentland: Psychocandy was all the rage when I visited my family in Northern Ireland that Christmas. I became fascinated by The Jesus And Mary Chain and their sound, which seemed to combine everything I’d ever heard before, but chucked into a blender that they never bothered to switch off.

With an outer confidence that allowed them to insist they were the greatest band in history, and an obvious ear for a hook, they positioned themselves as the second coming of the Sex Pistols, a band they would go on to claim didn’t interest them at all. Equal parts sticky-syrup sweet and piercing metallic screech, the album captured everything that had been exciting about punk, and slammed it into a wall of classic pop. Having exhausted Bowie and AC/DC, and discovering punk and college rock, The Mary Chain stood out to me because they took everything that had come before, rejected it, and then secretly made it their own.

The first five seconds of “Taste the Floor” alone probably had the biggest impression on me in terms of the mayhem a guitar, a pedal, and an amp could cause. I’ve been ripping them off for 25 years.

From ESSENTIAL ALBUMS: Sloan: a pick from each member

BADBADNOTGOOD on Bill Evans Trio, Sunday at the Village Vanguard (1961)

Leland Whitty: Bill Evans was playing the pop tunes of the day. These dudes are playing the fucking pop tunes of the day.

Alex Sowinski: Early Bill Evans with Scott LaFaro and Paul Motian, the way they played standards people don’t play now. It’s such an inventive, improvisational, totally unique, totally freeform style. A lot of group soloing, where it sounds like one person’s soloing but everyone’s doing their own thing. Very, very of the moment. It’s just amazing. Dude, that was my instruction on how to play jazz.

Matt Tavares: Everything is tasteful and amazing, but the best thing about that trio is the interaction and musicality between three people. And simplicity as well. No one was trying to do something intensely intellectual. It’s just so musical all the time. Not like "I can do this," but "I’m feeling this." That’s sometimes hard to find, but hopefully that inspires other people. And it inspires us.

Alex: Yeah, find something you like and if it sounds great, take what you think is the core of why it works and why it sounds great and then keep that as a presence of what you do. Don't take it too seriously and literally, but use it as a tool to find your own ideas. And that’s probably what they did too from people who inspired them.

From ESSENTIAL ALBUMS: BADBADNOTGOOD on jazz standards and getting sampled by Drake

Andy Kindler on Chris GaffneyMi Vida Loca (1992)

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Andy Kindler: It’s country but from California. It’s in the Steve Earle/Lucinda Williams vein. He’s very influenced by soul, but it’s also straight country and still sounds like nothing I've heard. If you listen to this song “Artesia,” it’s all about the way Los Angeles was many many years ago. I’m from New York and I moved out [to L.A.] so when I hear them it’s always bittersweet. Gaffney might be my favourite singer. It really changed the way I listened to music.

I don’t know what the words are half the time. And I thank God in a way that when I listen to music I don’t listen literally to the words. But then I listen more, and I’ve probably listened to Hunky Dory like 200 times. More and more, I get a strong sense of the words, and as I listen I get into the words. Because I’m a comedian I love words, but it’s not my first way in.

One of the reasons I have a problem with angry atheists is not everything in the world is figured out with your head. I don’t need a double-blind experiment to meditate. There’s some things you have to get with your heart. Music, comedy, art, it’s an exploration to get in touch with that. Doesn’t discount the lyrics, but it means they’re all one thing, and you can’t separate it. Some people try to listen to music or comedy analytically, but if you try to analyze why your favourite comedians are your favourites, you could probably describe it, but it doesn’t substitute actually listening to it.

From ESSENTIAL ALBUMS: Andy Kindler gives us five non-hacky classics

The Best of ESSENTIAL ALBUMS in 2014: 10 great artists talk influential records by Chart Attack | Chart Attack.

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