5 Albums Everyone Should Own

Radiohead - The Bends
Terrific album, probably one of the best of all time, not a bad song on it. When the Mid 90s was swimming in britpop, The Bends rose above the dronings of Liam Gallagher and Damon Albarn with much deeper musical work (the guitars on Just being a great example with Greenwood and O'Brien duelling throughout). Lyrically it's superb aswell, moving forward from the focusless angst of Pablo Honey into much deeper themes.


Porcupine Tree - In Absentia
Such a pleasant and complete album to listen to, it seems to have everything you'd want from a rock album, great progression, great heavy moments, great laid back moments and some awesome acoustic on Trains in particular. When most of the tracks hit at least 5 minutes long you know you'll get something that you can listen to and enjoy at great depth, unless its Dream Theater that is.


R.E.M. - Automatic For The People
If you know a little about my musical taste, at this point you must be thinking "Wow Graham, you're not predictable at all, are you?". At any rate this is a definitive album in the history of (Alternative) Rock. The combination of the lyrics being a combination of change, mortality and then again just general R.E.M. randomness thrown in aswell strike a great balance. Furthermore the strings, mandolin, guitars and piano along with Michael and Mike singing together are beautiful


Massive Attack - Blue Lines
This is a record which music just wouldn't be the same without, the fantastic versatility of it is its great strength, combining haunting sounds with some great reggae and soul singing from Horace Andy and Shara Nelson (standing out in Unfinished Sympathy and Safe From Harm), along with majestic strings, dub and rapping. With all this put together over the chilled beats, there's not much out there which is so agreeable. I think it's completely true that as Massive Attack have said, this is dance music for the head and not for the feet.


Foals - Total Life Forever
And now to something recent, didn't see that coming did you? The lyrics of Total Life Forever are sang smoothly and compliment the echoing feel it has much of the way through. The feel of the song Miami is very funky but at the same time tows the line which the rest of the record does, it's kind of complex but maintains a simple base to the song. The main thing I love about the album is the instrumental work, everything has it's moment; there's the huge drum solo in After Glow, the guitar solo in Spanish Sahara and the bass in Black Gold and Blue Blood which are outstanding parts of already technically brilliant songs.


That's all for now, although there will very likely be a part 2 to this one at some point