Ryan Adams – Ashes & Fire (2011)

Many musicians and bands quit and then do a comeback years later, but when Ryan Adams said that he was going stop making music, not many people realised that it would only take like a year for him to return and in the meantime he released a couple of books and a metal album. This probably tells you a lot about who Ryan Adams is. At best, he has made three really amazing albums within a year. Ashes & Fire was the first album I listened to after Adams' so-called break. The positive thing about this was that Ashes & Fire is actually quite a good album. Adams had released kind of so and so albums before the break and I, for one, wasn't really interested in them anymore. He himself has later said that he still writes as many songs as ever, but he only releases a fraction of them. This might actually be a really good thing, because this way we can only enjoy his best material and the albums sound quite interesting again.

Iron & Wine – Around the Well (2009)

Around the Well is Iron & Wine's compilation album of their previously unreleased and out-of-print songs. Since it's a compilation, it's not that amazing as an album, but there are some of the band's greatest songs on this compilation so it's well worth listening to. The album is quite long with its hour and a half length and 23 songs. This was one of the first albums I bought while living in London, so I was listening to it quite a lot at that time and the album does remind me of those times in our tiny student flat near Paddington. I own this album on a double CD, but before purchasing this I already had the first three albums of Iron & Wine on vinyl. Iron & Wine makes beautiful and quiet folk music where the soft vocals sing amazing melodies usually accompanied by only the acoustic guitar.

Elvis Costello & the Attractions – Armed Forces (1979)

I have no idea why it took me so long to get familiar with Elvis Costello's music. Having listened to modern indie rock and indie pop for years, I should've been aware of this artist that has undoubtedly influenced many of those artists I adored in the 00's. I remember first hearing about Elvis Costello when he played with Burt Bacharach in one of the Austin Powers films. That song was a bit cheesy as anything else that Burt Bacharach has ever made, so I just foolishly assumed that Elvis Costello was also making music like that. Then I picked up the brick that is the book 1001 Albums You Should Hear Before You Die and when I got to Elvis Costello, I knew immediately that I had definitely missed out on something important. Elvis Costello gets some of his influences from punk, but his music is very well performed and the songs are beautifully melodic.

Andrew Bird – Armchair Apocrypha (2007)

I was first introduced to Andrew Bird via the compilation album Dark Was the Night, that compiled the best indie artists out there in 2009 on the same album that shared it's proceedings to AIDS research. I bought this compilation album and Andrew Bird was one of the artists I hadn't heard before that made the biggest impression on me. He plays amazing folk music with picked violin and amazing whistling parts. Armchair Apocrypha was the first album I bought from Andrew Bird and I bought it on beautiful vinyl record with a parrot in the cover. Since then, Andrew Bird has been one of my favourite singer-songwriters out there. He sounds different from anyone else with his ingenious violin playing and whistling that's out of this world. I don't know how anyone can whistle so softly and beautifully.

Sharon Van Etten – Are We There (2014)

On my first ever trip to Manchester a few years ago I visited the legendary record shop Piccadilly Records there. They make this booklet every year for their favourite 100 albums of the year. I thought they had some terrific stuff in there, so I decided to listen through that list of albums. One of those albums was Sharon Van Etten's 2012 album Tramp. I was really impressed by this album and bought it straight away on a CD. Little did I know back then, that I had actually already seen Sharon Van Etten live. She was opening for The National at the Culture House in Helsinki a couple of years earlier. One of my friends pointed this out and I remembered being really impressed by the opening act but had completely forgotten her name. This following album I bought on vinyl from Rough Trade in Brooklyn, New York.

Eero Koivistoinen & UMO Jazz Orchestra – Arctic Blues (2016)

I normally like the jazz from the 1950's and 60's the most. That was a time when artists like Miles Davis, Dave Brubeck and Herbie Hancock and Cannonball Adderley made their best albums. However, more recently there have been many new jazz albums that I've enjoyed immensely. Many of these bands, artists and albums have come from Finland. I don't know what is behind this, but Finland has currently a great jazz scene and whenever I go to Finland nowadays, I try to buy some Finnish jazz. Arctic Blues is an amazing album that I got for my Christmas present last Christmas. This album is on three vinyl records and every time I listen to it, I like it even more. The album lasts for nearly two hours, but I wouldn't leave anything off. In some ways, I like to compare this to the amazing Kamasi Washington album that came out the year before.

Guns n' Roses – Appetite for Destruction (1987)

Guns and Roses was the first band I was ever a proper fan of. When I was about 9 years old and learning to play the guitar, there was nothing better than Guns n' Roses. The band used images of skulls and monsters on their album covers, they had swear words in their lyrics and they had the coolest music videos of the day, so of course a pre-teen like myself was sold. Also, Gn'R was probably the world's biggest band around that time. My big sister already owned Appetite for Destruction on a CD, so I only got my copy later on, but my personal first ever CD was Gn'R's Use Your Illusion I that my parents brought me from their trip to London. It's safe to say that not many other bands have had such a huge influence on me than this band. I was so proud of myself when I eventually learned to play the intro riff for Sweet Child O' Mine.

Wolf Parade – Apologies to The Queen Mary (2005)

I got acquainted with Wolf Parade already after this debut album of theirs, but I only ended up actually buying this on a CD here in London a couple of years ago when I saw it used with quite a low price. Back in 2005 I used to borrow quite a lot of CDs from my local libraries in Helsinki. The libraries in Helsinki have great selections of CDs and it was a good way to get familiarised to to new music before Spotify. At the time I was quite convinced that pretty much all the Sub Pop label albums were worth listening to and that's why I picked this album up from the library. I was right. This album sounded great and I ended up listening to a couple of songs from this album quite a lot on my mp3. I did not, however, find this album in stores at the time so I just ended up buying the following album, At Mount Zoomer, when it came out.

Antony and the Johnsons – Antony and the Johnsons (2000)

Antony and the Johnsons is one of the most unique sounding band of this millennium. Their songs are beautifully grandiloquent and melancholic and Antony Hegarty's (nowadays Anohni) vocals are like from another world. I was introduced to the band when the second album I am a Bird Now was released in 2005. I was incredibly impressed by the sound world of the band and later on I also found this debut album and found out that it was just as great as I am a Bird Now. Anohni has an amazing gift of singing so that you can feel every single note coming out of her mouth. The trembling yet extremely controlled voice has range from quiet and delicate to a strong, almost operaesque expression. The songs are filled with amazing string arrangements and piano that is played with amazing professionalism.

Interpol – Antics (2004)

I first heard about Interpol around 2003 while working in a café in central Helsinki. We would quite often play our own CDs while working and this way I was introduced to great many bands. One of my co-workers was really excited about Interpol's debut album Turn On the Bright Lights. I thought it sounded good, but at the same time, I wasn't really too fussed about it. It wasn't until Antics came out that I was really sold. Antics has a more melodic approach to its songs and almost every song on the album has hooks to make you remember them. When I started university in 2004 I worked as a DJ quite often in the student parties and I would regularly play Evil, C'mere or Slow Hands to the dancing indie crowds. The more recent albums from Interpol haven't been that exciting and I still think that Antics was the hight of their career.

Pink Floyd – Animals (1977)

Animals is well known for its cover with the Battersea Power Station and a flying pig on it, but only true Pink Floyd fans normally remember songs from this album. I would say this is probably the least commercial and least well-known of the 70's Pink Floyd albums. There are only five songs on the album of which three are more than ten minutes long. This album is more clearly progressive rock and it has less art rock and psychedelia influences than any album before it. Also, it's not quite as straightforwardly about the individual songs like the later albums. Animals is truly the jewel of the vinyl era, because it's all about the album more than individual songs, it has a great cover and it has a concept. Unfortunately I already got this album in the 90's when vinyl wasn't cool, so I own this album on a CD only.

Neverever – Angelic Swells (2010)

We have quite a lot of visitors here in London from Finland. Many of our friends, while here, want to go shopping for records. I'm very happy about this, because it introduces me to a lot of new music. One of my friends bought this album on a CD from Rough Trade East along with many other CDs. I remembered this album later on when I saw the vinyl version costing only £10. I bought it so now I own the album on vinyl. Neverever's debut album is a mixture of great many genres. It has some pop, some rock n' roll, some punk and it's all quite lo-fi when it comes to sounds. There are similarities to many bands from the early 80's that had gotten their influences from the early punk, but took their music to a more melodic direction. To mention a few, Orange Juice, The Go-Go's and Television.