The Big Pink – A Brief History of Love (2009)

My first indie awakening happened at the turn of the millennium, when I was introduced to bands such as Grandaddy, Radiohead, Elliott Smith and Super Furry Animals. The other awakening came around the year 2010 when I started using Spotify and the possibilities to listen to new bands exploded. It was around that time that I first heard about The Big Pink in my friend's music blog. He had seen them at the Flow Festival in Helsinki and his writings led me to listen to this band. Quite quickly I also bought the album on a CD. The album cover is quite amazing in its dark and classy look. The Big Pink must be a reference to The Band's album Music from Big Pink. The sound of this band is in no way connected to that album though. This album is filled with noise and hypnotising rhythms and the sounds seem to take even greater part in the music than melodies.

Aimee Mann – @#%&*! Smilers (2008)

I was first introduced to Aimee Mann a long time ago, but it took me quite a while to actually fully start appreciating her music. She's one of those musicians whose all songs sound quite similar when you start listening to her, but with further investigation and time given to her songs, you start recognising the amazing quality of her songs and all the subtle nuances in them. This is the first album I owned by Aimee Mann. She has got better ones as well, but as my partner already owns those, I haven't bought them myself. That's not to say that @#%&*! Smilers isn't a good album, because it really is. One thing that affected my decision to give Aimee Mann another try was the fact that Mark "E" Oliver Everett, the frontman of Eels wrote about touring with Mann back in the day in his autobiography. He really spoke highly of her and I'm a huge fan of E, so I decided to give her another chance and I really think it paid off.

Hector – 72-74 (1978)

This is my first blog post in this blog about a Finnish album. It feels a bit strange to write about these albums in English, but at the same time, I want to keep the language in the blog consistent and give an opportunity for non-Finns to find something interesting. Every country has their own musical legends that people from other countries have never heard of. Hector is one of the biggest music legends of Finland. His music sounds today quite old dated and it's difficult to see from today's perspective, why a man who mostly made cover songs translated into Finnish became so popular. To understand this, you need to know that Finland in the 60's and 70's was a fairly boring place when it comes to popular culture. Most of the Finnish pop musicians started their careers copying international stars and translated songs were more of a norm than an exception.

The Magnetic Fields – 69 Love Songs (1999)

Even though I consider myself quite aware of the indie scene, I wasn't aware of this band until my band's lead singer started talking about one of this band's songs about three years ago. After that discussion, I listened to this album a little bit on Spotify and later that year I bought the CD for a really affordable price from play.com. The annoying thing about ordering CDs online is that more than once I have received a broken plastic case in the mail. This happened again with this album. And because this is a thick CD case that takes all the three CDs, it's more difficult to replace the broken case. This goes to show that you should always support your local record stores instead of online sales. Not that these covers are that nice to begin with. In fact, this is one of the ugliest album covers I have ever seen.

Steelism – 615 to Fame (2014)

This is one of the most recent albums I've bought. I bought it at the end of last year. I found it in Fopp, a record store in Soho and the price tag, if I remember correctly, was just 1£. I had listened to this band a bit before. I think it came up in one of the top 100 lists that various record stores publish at the end of year. I remember liking one or two of their songs, so with the price, I felt like it's a good purchase. I still do agree that for the price, this was a good purchase, but I don't know how often I listen to this album to be honest, but now that I'm listening to this, I feel like I should really listen to more of this. The style is instrumental rock with a lack for a better word. In Finnish we call this style of music 'rautalanka' (translates into iron wire). The most famous example of this style of music is the 1960's band The Shadows. It refers to this steely electronic guitar sound.

The Rolling Stones – 30 Greatest Hits (1977)

I realise now that my choice to write albums in alphabetical order cause me to have an avalanche of compilation albums here in the beginning where I have the albums beginning with a number. But soon these will be over and I can get on with actual albums. For a long time, I didn't really care for The Rolling Stones. I mean, I did like some of their individual songs, but I was never excited enough to listen to their albums. It's only been in the last couple of years that I've understood what this band was all about. I guess this situation rises, because their most well-known songs are usually on the early albums that weren't so good as a whole. The best Stones albums were released around the 1970s, but the most well-known songs already in mid-60s. Back when I was still hung up on the early singles, it made sense to buy this vinyl with a compilation of the bands most popular songs.

Elvis Presley – 30 #1 Hits (2002)

Elvis Presley is one of the most famous singers of all times. Even if you haven't specifically tried to listen to any of his music, you are familiar with many of his songs. This was the case for me for a long time. I knew many of Elvis' classic songs before, but it was only when I was about 18 years old, I started to intentionally listen to Elvis. Elvis became quite popular again after the release of this compilation album, at least in Finland. I guess the main reason for it was the new remix of Little Less Conversation that appeared on this compilation album because it had made an old Elvis song into a number one single decades later. Also, some of my friends started listening to Elvis in a kind of "ironic" way, so I became interested in the King of rock n' roll at the same time and bought this compilation album on a CD. I think it's a fairly good overall introduction to Elvis' music even if it is just a collection of his number 1 hits.

Various Artists – 28 Days Later (2003)

This is the first soundtrack album in this blog. It was also the first, and the only, soundtrack album I've ever bought before actually seeing the film itself. I saw a review of this soundtrack in a Finnish newspaper and I was sold just by looking at the review. It said that this album is filled with ominous post-rock by John Murphy, and songs from Grandaddy and Brian Eno. That pretty much sold the album for me. The digipack CD is beautifully wrapped. After I listened to this album, I obviously also really wanted to see the film. I was not disappointed by the film either. It's one of the best horror films from the recent years. This film has become even more important to me now that I live in London. The opening scenes with empty streets of London are quite spectacular. I recommend the film to anyone who hasn't seen it, but now, let's discuss the music as this is about the soundtrack after all.

Green Day – 21st Century Breakdown (2009)

To me personally, Green Day will always be the band that I learned to know as a teenager. This band was all about Dookie and songs Basket Case and When I Come Around. I'm sure many others in addition to me were kind of surprised when Green Day became a hot topic again after their album American Idiot. They had reinvented themselves with much more political approach. The musical style is closer to mainstream rock than on the 90's skate punk albums. There were quite a few good songs on these new albums though. I wouldn't say that they are very deep songs or the kinds of songs that I would listen to all the time, but I still have to tip my hat to a band that succeeds in rising again from the ashes to become one of the most popular bands in the world after almost being forgotten. 21st Century Breakdown is the second part of this rock opera come back of Green Day.

Harry Belafonte – 20 Golden Hits

This is one of the most random records on this list. I got it from my father's aunt who has long since gotten rid of her vinyl player. She had heard that I was into records and I was buying lots of old vinyl records, so she suggested that I can take any of her old albums I want. This was among those albums. I knew Harry Belafonte mainly just by his name. Then, when I started listening to this album, i realised that actually I know many of these songs. I must have heard them in various movies and TV-series, or heard them on the radio. Turns out that Harry Belafonte has actually sold a lot of records back in the day and you definitely should know him, if you claim to know anything about music history. He was called the King of Calypso, and I guess this name is accurate as many of his songs are calypso or other Caribbean musical genres.

The Beach Boys – 20 Golden Greats (1976)

In my childhood I knew The Beach Boys mainly as a band that played old sounding sunny and very American pop rock. I had mainly heard their songs in films and at that time I wasn't really that interested in the band's music. Then later on as a teenager I got interested in the history of rock music and started systematically listening to bands that you should know. Then I found another side of The Beach Boys. They had their own psychedelic period where they made songs that were believable contenders to The Beatles songs. I basically made my research into The Beach Boys via this and other compilation albums back in the day, so I didn't know more about the individual albums. I thought this was the best compilation by the band, so I ended up buying it on vinyl from a record store in Stockholm. It was fairly cheap. When I bought this compilation that really encouraged me to listen to the band a bit more.

The Beatles – 1967-1970 (1973)

Where the previous compilation album of The Beatles' early songs was interesting mainly historically as a collection of hit songs, this second compilation of their later songs is actually an amazing compilation of pop music's history's greatest songs. Of course there are still some amazing songs missing from this compilation and there are some that I would've definitely left out, this gives a great glimpse into varied works of the greatest band of all times. In this period, The Beatles had stopped touring and they only focused on writing albums. This approach changed the world, as the recordings were so complicated for that time's studio techniques that music was changed forever. Some of these songs couldn't even have been performed live maintaining the sound. The orchestration in these songs is quite amazing and a lot of the credit goes to the so called fifth Beatle, George Martin.

The Beatles – 1962-1966 (1973)

I know it's kind of a cliche, but I do think The Beatles are the most important and the best band of all times. There's a good reason for this claim. Almost all of the bands and artists out there mention The Beatles as their idol. Almost every band out there has been influenced by The Beatles. I already understood the significance of The Beatles from my parents even though they weren't really listening to their songs that much when I was a kid. Like many other people in the early 90's, I started my exploration of many bands via their compilation CD. That's why my first Beatle-albums were this red compilation of the years 1962-2966 and the blue one of the years 1967-1970. With a band like The Beatles, this approach, may actually be a wrong turn, because most of their best songs are not on their compilations. I only learned this many years later.

Various Artists – 16 Guitar Greats (1993)

This is one of the most random albums I own. I got this compilation CD as a Christmas present from my parents in the same year as I got my very first acoustic guitar. This must have been in the year 1993 when this album came out. and thus it makes this CD one of my very first CDs. This was my parents way of introducing me to some guitar music. Of course it took me years and years of practice, before I could've realistically been able to play any of these songs. I was never really that much into this kind of old rock n' roll when growing up. This kind of music just wasn't very cool. Now, looking back at this album, it has some historically important rock and blues songs that I really should know. So, I guess the idea behind this album was good, but I just did't realise it until much later on. I don't know if this is the best kind of historical introduction to rock n' roll, but at least it's a start.

Travis – 12 Memories (2003)

I first heard about Travis from my ex-girlfriend at the early 2000's. She had The Man Who on a CD. I later discovered that I had actually heard a couple of their songs, but didn't really know what the band was. The Man Who was a good album and it represented the genre in music I was into back in the day. I wasn't much of a fan of The Invisible Band and especially the hit song Sing was a bit annoying. Therefore, I was kind of pleasantly surprised when some hit songs from 12 Memories came out, because they were actually pretty good. There was this kind of melancholic overall feel to the album and I especially liked the vocal harmonies used in many of the songs. Now, almost 15 years later, the songs sound a bit simple and boring, but there is still some sentimental value for these songs. Some of these songs remind me of specific moments in my life.

Billy Idol – 11 of the Best Songs (1988)

1970's had been a time for concept albums where the individual songs were not as important as the album. 1980's saw the birth of MTV and the immediate effect was that the focus shifted from albums back to singles. That's why there are numerous good songs from the 80's, but it's more difficult to think of excellent albums. This is certainly true for Billy Idol. I really like a few of his songs, but none of the albums have really made an impression on me. That's why it's only natural that I only own a compilation album of Billy Idol's best songs. I bought this vinyl at a flea market in Helsinki. From the simple collector point of view, I just wanted to own Rebel Yell, White Wedding and Sweet Sixteen. Those are, in my opinion, the core of Idol's music repertoire. Of course they are also the most well known songs by him, but I feel like that's for a reason.

Massive Attack – 100th Window (2003)

Most of the hardcore Massive Attack fans value the early albums a lot more than this one, but for me, 100th Window is Massive Attack's best work after Mezzanine. It may be because even though I've always liked the band and have appreciated their great sounds, something has always been missing that would've made this band larger than life. Mezzanine and 100th Window remind me of other bands around the turn of the millennium, such as Radiohead and Air. So, in a technical sense, this album is further away from the purist trip hop scene that made the city of Bristol famous. This album could be better categorised as indie electronica. The sound is very experimental combining hypnotising loops to space sounds and echoey whisper vocals. There are a few visiting artists on this album, including Sinéad O' Connor and Damon Albarn.

Air – 10,000Hz Legend (2001)

Air was one of the new bands that I felt passionate about at the turn of the millennium. This was the first time I started to enjoy electronic music. Growing up in the early 90's with grunge, hard rock and britpop taking over the world, electronic music wasn't almost allowed. It was something that had been done in the 80's and 80's was really uncool. Of course in the mid 90's, pop-techno became very popular, but that just proofed that electronic music really wasn't cool. Then, in the early 2000's everything changed when Radiohead went full electronic with Kid A and Amnesiac. Air had previously played quite typical French electro-pop, but this album changed their sound into a darker and more ambitious direction in the style of Radiohead. Many old fans of Air who liked Moon Safari above all didn't like this change, but I thought I had found something amazing. I do like Moon Safari a lot as well, but for me, this album still remains the best Air album up to date.