R.E.M. – Automatic for the People (1992)

I remember the first couple of times when I heard R.E.M.'s music as a child. I liked Michael Stipe's recognisable voice, but I felt like the songs were actually quite simple and not that interesting. Later on, I discovered that R.E.M. is one of those bands that open themselves only after listening to their songs a few times. This is not very normal for a band as big as R.E.M. At least in the late 90's, they had become one of the biggest bands in the world. Personally, I've grown to like their 80's albums the most, even though all their hit albums were made in the 90's. Automatic for the People could be described as their most hit filled album. It's also their best-selling album of all times. The previous album Out of Time had already showed a new, more carefully produced R.E.M., but Automatic for the People sealed the change in the band's sound and they were on their way to the top.

Blondie – Autoamerican (1980)

I got acquainted with Blondie fairly late. I was studying in uni and suddenly I realised that many of my friends were listening to Blondie and it became quite apparent that Parallel Lines was the album to start with. Later on I realised that I actually did know a couple of songs by Blondie, but I had never paid any attention to the band. Parallel Lines became one of my favourite albums and I wanted to get familiar with other albums as well. I really liked the early albums by Blondie, but I also bought some of these later albums on vinyl when I could find good deals on them. That's how I ended up buying Autoamerican on vinyl from a Helsinki-based record store Black & White. I didn't much care for it in the beginning, but later on, I've come to appreciate this album as well. This album was quite a shift in the band's sound.

Sydän, Sydän – Auto (2005)

As some of you may have noticed, I only just released a blog post on another album by Finnish Sydän, Sydän and I mentioned that I bought that album in a pack with two CDs. This is the other one of those CDs and I think this is far superior to Au. On this album, there is a minimum amount of metal sounds and to me that's usually a really good thing. Especially when the band is so capable of making this kind of more melodic progressive and experimental rock. This was the album that got me interested in Sydän, Sydän. A friend of mine from uni had told me about this band and I was interested in finding out what she was talking about, so I borrowed this album from the library. At first I was just perplexed about the strangeness of the music, but even on that first listen, there were a couple of really good songs, which made me interested in giving this band a chance.

Various Artists – Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999)

When I started this blog I decided to go through albums, not artists, in alphabetical order so I wouldn't have to go through all the albums by the same artist in a row. Of course, this means that there are still some compilation album series that I have to post in a row. So, here is the soundtrack for the second Austin Powers film. This soundtrack is not by far as good as the first one. I probably wouldn't even have bought this one had I not found it in a sale basket of a department store for one euro. There are a few good songs on this album, but those ones I generally also have on another album. Much like the second film wasn't as good as the first one, this soundtrack is also a much blander experience as the first one. It has much more contemporary rock and pop music and less great old classics.

Various Artists – Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997)

Some films have brilliantly curated soundtracks that work as stand-alone compilation albums really well. The first Austin Powers film's soundtrack is one of these. There's some 60's pop, seductive bossa nova, some jazz and more modern rock music. Putting the genres like this makes it sound like the album would be a bit all over the place, but in fact, the songs on the album fit very well together. At the time this film came out, I was listening to lots of 60's and 70's music and I was quite into the psychedelic sounds of the hippy era. When I first saw the film I thought, now here's a good soundtrack. I then bought the CD a little bit later when I found it with affordable price somewhere. I also ended up finding a couple of bands in this way that I've listened to more of later on. When the second Austin Powers album came out, I was looking forward to the soundtrack as well as the film.

Risto – Aurinko aurinko plaa plaa plaa (2006)

Risto is a very typical Finnish man's name. This band is basically named after the lead singer Risto Ylihärsilä, whose stage person sounds like a dangerous person, who drinks and is often violent. The real life Risto is apparently quite different. I don't know exactly what he's trying to do with his lyrics. It might be just written as black comedy, or he's talking about problems in the modern Finnish society. Who knows. Anyway, the production and composing on this album are done amazingly. So, even if you don't understand Finnish, it's worth listening to this album. There's quite a range of different styles on the album. I had already gotten acquainted with Risto by his first album, which I really liked, so when this second album came out, I was fairly excited about it and I remember buying it quite quickly after its release on vinyl.

Sydän, Sydän – Au (2006)

I never really planned to buy this album. I had only heard the Finnish band Sydän, Sydän's previous album Auto, and I quite liked some of the songs on that album. I found a double box set that included both of these albums online with a cheap price and decided to buy it even though I had never heard this album before. Turns out that Au was a very different album to Auto. This album has lots of heavy guitars and outright metal music in addition to strange experimental rock that I had accustomed to with the other album. At first I didn't like this album at all. It was a time in my life when I really didn't care about metal music at all, so I forgot this album into the shelf for years. Now that I returned to it, I think there are some merits to this album as well, although it's still not among my favourite albums.

Cloud Nothings – Attack On Memory (2012)

Back in 2012 I started my blog about annual top 10 albums. For many of these lists, I used the website besteveralbums.com to figure out which albums came out in which year. That website also helped me to find more good albums, as I listened through a fair share of the most highly rated albums. That's how I found this second album by the American band Cloud Nothings. Right from the start, I felt like this was the kind of sound I hadn't heard in new bands in years. This was the sound of the 90's when hard guitar sounds of grunge gave birth to another more melancholic and melodic genre, emo, in other words emotional hardcore. This band sounded a lot like Sunny Day Real Estate, which I had really gotten into many years earlier. There was also some influences from grunge. This kind of sound had almost disappeared by 2010, but Cloud Nothings brought it back and I was quite glad about that.

Mansun – Attack of the Grey Lantern (1997)

Growing up in Finland in the 90's, the term Britpop was reserved for very few selected bands from the UK and people generally only had knowledge of Oasis, Blur, Suede, Pulp, The Verve and Manic Street Preachers. After I've moved to London, I've realised that the genre was actually huge and included many more bands that didn't really break the popularity barrier back in Finland. One of these bands was Mansun. I heard about the band from my friend, who is a bit older than me and had lived in London for a while. He was outraged that me or the other two people in the conversation had never even heard of the band even though we were really quite knowledgeable about music in general. After this discussion I obviously went to find out what Mansun was all about and I could see that their music could definitely fall into the Britpop category.

Pink Floyd – Atom Heart Mother (1970)

I would think that for most people, the first Pink Floyd album they encounter is Dark Side of the Moon or The Wall, or Maybe Wish You Were Here or Animals. To me, however, it was Atom Heart Mother. The reason for this is that my father was a huge fan of the album that he called just 'the cow album'. He was playing the vinyl quite a lot when I was a kid and later on when my father decided not to replace his broken record player with a new one, I got his vinyl albums, including this one. Atom Heart Mother can be seen as something of a transition album from 60's psychedelia to the 70's space age Pink Floyd. The grandiloquent sounds are already here, but then again, there are lots of psychedelia sounds on the album as well. This album definitely does not have any hit singles. It's therefore a perfect example of an album that is more important than the individual songs on it.

The Flaming Lips – At War With the Mystics (2006)

The Flaming Lips has a very curious career. Their first albums were really lo-fi and from today's perspective, I would never really listen to those early albums. But similarly, the latest albums by the band have been really obscure and they haven't really opened up to me at all. The Flaming Lips had a shortish period at the beginning of the 2000's when they made many great albums that were a bit more easily approachable, but still had that craziness that makes this band unique. At War With the Mystics is the last album of that period. This came out after Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, which I would say is definitely the best album The Flaming Lips has ever released. At War With the Mystics required a bit of getting used to, but after all that effort, I think it's also a great album. It's a bit more experimental than its predecessor, but still very listenable.

Lemonator – At the Presence of Great Beauty (2006)

Lemonator is one of my all time favourite Finnish bands. They were most active in the first half of 2000's when they released many great albums. Their songs have amazing melodies and there's great Finnish-style melancholia in the songs, but the music is still not depressing. The lead singer and songwriter of the band, Lasse Kurki, has also been a producer on multiple other Finnish albums and he really knows how to make albums sound great. His singing is also great and he doesn't have as clear Finnish accent in his vocals as many other Finnish singers. I don't really understand how Lemonator didn't make more of a breakthrough outside Finland. This kind of world-class indie power pop should've received praise all around. Maybe it was again the fact that Finns couldn't market themselves in the right way. Anyway, I encourage especially my non-Finnish readers to listen to this.

Wolf Parade – At Mount Zoomer (2008)

At Mount Zoomer is in my opinion Wolf Parade's greatest album. Their debut album Apologies to Queen Mary was already a good album, but At Mount Zoomer is building on that and the songs sound more professional, without losing any of their edge. Also, there are a couple of really long songs where the band gets to experiment a bit more with sounds. This was the first Wolf Parade album I owned. It took me a while to get into it properly. I know this band sounded cool, but it wasn't until I had seen them live, that I understood how amazing some of the songs on this album were. This album was released in 2008 when indie rock movement was at its hight. There were so many guitar indie albums coming out at that period that it was difficult to get noticed, but I think Wolf Parade made a good job with this album on that front.

Avi Buffalo – At Best Cuckold (2014)

Rough Trade's albums of the month have provided me with many great albums. Avi Buffalo's second album is one of the best ones I've found that way. He makes amazing indie rock with great melodies and great song structures. With a first glance, the songs sound very simple, but when you consider them a bit more, they have amazingly varied structures both when it comes to rhythms and melodies. Avi Buffalo's vocals climb effortlessly to high notes and the instruments are played very masterfully. I especially like the fact that there are amazing guitar solos in these songs. There aren't enough good guitar solos anymore and I'm always thrilled when I can find a new guitar hero to look up to. Also the bass lines are quite amazing and there are string arrangements in the songs that can be compared to the ones on The Beatles albums. And the pianos are also just fantastic.

Pariisin Kevät – Astronautti (2010)

This Finnish band appeared from nowhere in 2008 with their debut album Meteoriitti, which became an instant hit. They have super catchy melodies and the production is very carefully made. On this second album that followed two years later, the production is even more polished. I don't normally like this clean sounds, but it is still admirable how well this album has been made to catch listeners. There's a staggering number of hit songs that will cause serious ear worms. There are only a couple of songs on the album that I could not picture as number one hits. Saying all this, when you start your career this promisingly, there's only one way to go from there, and sure enough, I think everything this band has done since this second album has been worse than the first two albums. The new albums are filled with generic electronic pop that's just plain boring.

King Creosote – Astronaut Meets Appleman (2016)

I must have found out about King Creosote a couple of years ago when I was doing research to compile my top 10 albums list for 2014. I remember listening to King Creosote's album From Scotland With Love and thinking there was something there, but I wasn't overly convinced by that album. It was only when I was working on my similar top 10 list for 2016 when I came across Astronaut Meets Appleman and I was really positively surprised. Right from the start of the album it was clear that this was the kind of music I liked very much. It has lots of similar elements as much of the alternative and indie rock by singer-songwriters of the early 2000's. There are great melodies in the songs and the sounds range from acoustic to guitar driven indie rock that has been spiced up with some analog synths and rare instruments such as bagpipes. I think this is one of the finest albums in this kind of genre in the recent years.

Surfer Blood – Astro Coast (2010)

Up until 2010 I thought I was well aware of all the relevant indie bands out there through my friends. This kind of changed in 2010. I had never been to the Flow Festival in Helsinki before, because I didn't really know any of the performers and the ones that I did know, were the kind of electronic music I wasn't that much into. Then, in 2010, I actually took time to listen to the Flow Festival artists in depth in advance and a whole new world opened to me. There were a bunch of new bands that I had never heard about that had just released their first album and many of them were really good. This is how I found Surfer Blood. Unfortunately Flow Festival isn't what it used to be anymore, and I could hardly find any new artists that would interest me in their listings anymore. The festival has become too mainstream and thus it has lost its meaning as a festival that introduces new talent.