Best Of

Another amazing band that does albums better than songs is Coheed & Cambria.

I am album driven and only listen to vinyl at home. In the car it's mp3 albums. On the topic of Pink Floyd I have been listening to them for 45 years now and like all of it. From Meddle, Obscured by Clouds and on is certainly the best . I also feel the same way about The Moody Blues and The Who.
The following is not in any order and I had a difficult time narrowing it down this far and the above fall in here too.

+Phenomenon by UFO
+Children of the Sun by Billy Thorpe
+Spartacus by Triumvirate
+Killer by Alice Cooper
+The Yes Album
+The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway by Genesis
+The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars by David Bowie
+Whipped Cream and Other Delights by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass
+The Turn of a Friendly Card by The Alan Parsons Project
+Willy and the Poor Boys by Credance Clearwater Revival
+Watertown by Frank Sinatra

OMG, Bitches Brew!!!

In no particular order:

Pink Floyd "WYWH", "DSotM", "Animals", "Meddle" (all equal in my eyes)
Frank Zappa "Fillmore 1971"
Traffic "The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys"
The Beatles "The Beatles" (white album)
Jethro Tull "Thick as a Brick" (honorable mention: 180g MFSL quad pressing of "Aqualung")
Yes "Fragile" (honorable mention: "Yessongs")
Mars Volta "De-Loused in the Comatorium"
Led Zeppelin "Physical Graffiti"
Led Zeppelin "The Song Remains the Same"
Miles Davis "Kind of Blue"

That's enough for now.

Touché, Ivan.

I would have to say my all time favorite album is definitely BloodSugarSexMagick by Red Hot Chili Peppers. It's a seamless experience and the whole thing is just a masterpiece.

I would LOVE if Spotify would have an 'album shuffle' mode to randomly play whole albums at a time from my collection because I also prefer to listen that way, but I'm too indecisive/easily distracted to be trusted to actually pick which albums to play throughout my day all day, so I usually just revert to regular shuffle for convenience. In the pre-computermusic era, I would often just pick one album to listen to over and over for a few weeks before picking a new one, much to the annoyance of family and other nearbys.

My current favorite album experience is Regina Spektor's "Far"

Other favorites include (in no particular order)

• Alanis Morissette's "Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie",
• They Might be Giants' "John Henry",
• Barenaked Ladies' "Maroon",
• Beat's Antique's "Elektrafone"
• Fiona Apple's "Extraordinary Machine",
• R.E.M.'s "New Adventures in Hi-Fi",
• Mocean Worker's "Mixed Emotional Features"
• Jewel's "0304"

http://icrontic.com/article/digital_killing_albums

I am 100% with you. That front to back experience is important. It is an art that is less appreciated today, and thus, less effort is going into crafting great albums from front to back.

And since this thread suggested a top eleven, as hard as it is to narrow...

For me.

1. R.E.M. "Automatic for the People"
2. B.B. King "Live at the Regal"
3. RUSH "Moving Pictures"
4. Pink Floyd "The Wall"
5. Stevie Ray Vaughan "Couldn't Stand the Weather"
6. Dave Matthews Band "Before these Crowded Streets"
7. Live "Throwing Copper"
8. Alice in Chains "Jar of Flies" (Okay, it's a short EP, but I love it)
9. Tedeschi Trucks Band "Revelator"
10. Miles Davis "Bitches Brew"
11. Led Zeppelin "IV"

As you may know, I'm a bit of an album junkie.

I don't buy singles. I abhor shuffle mode. Spotify and its ilk are foreign to me.

When I hit play, I want a 30-90 minute experience, not your 10 latest tracks slapped together. Highs and lows, openings and closings, amazing transitions, and contrasts between sections. Give me a movement, goddamn it. Evoke emotions. Hold a thought for more than 3 minutes 15 seconds, and don't you dare fall back on that chorus one time too many. Throw me off balance; don't just give me what I expected.

I can guess how good an album is going to be from the first half-dozen spins, but it's around 10-20 spins that I figure out how good it really is. That's the exciting discovery phase, where it starts to burn into your brain a bit. From there I'll easily spin it 80-120 times (or more) if it's one of the great ones. That's the pure bliss phase: You think you know it, but you're still finding tiny details, and it hasn't become old hat.

Then there are the albums that just never wear out.

Here's my current top eleven (deal with it). They're unranked, but man the first three get serious bonus points for containing my favorite track transitions ever. I give Pink Floyd & The Who a second honorable mention each because they really are the paragons of the format.

• Pretty. Odd. - Panic! At the Disco
• Some Nights - Fun.
• Let Live and Let Ghosts - Jukebox the Ghost
• Black Holes and Revelations - Muse
• Give Up - The Postal Service
• Animals - Pink Floyd (honorable mention: Wish You Were Here)
• Folie a Deux - Fall Out Boy
• Blackstar - David Bowie
• Broken Bride - Ludo
• Quadrophenia - The Who (honorable mention: Tommy)
• Nordo - Air Traffic Controller (my latest addition to this list of greatness)

Genre footnote: I'm sticking to the refuge of my rock/alt standard fare here. I've been getting increasingly into jazz, and while Time Out (Brubeck) and Kind of Blue (Davis) surely are among the greatest albums, I'm abstaining from venturing into that genre with Opinions™ yet. I also have a few strong soundtrack opinions as well, but I've likewise omitted those as I only dabble with them and am not a huge proponent of taking that music out of its context.