Echo & The Bunnymen – Crocodiles (1980)

In 1980, the first wave of punk was already a bit old news, but it had given rise to new kind of gothic and dark musical genre called post-punk. Joy Division and The Cure are some early examples. These bands took the simplicity of punk music, but replaced the fast tempos and raw shouts with more controlled rock songs with dark melodies and slightly off-key vocals. Melodic and treble-filled bass lines are also a distinctive feature of this genre. Echo & the Bunnymen is one of the greatest post-punk bands of the early 80's. Their debut album is quite similar to Joy Division's two albums in terms of sounds. Later in their career, the Bunnymen's sounds got richer, but this simplistic debut album is in a way the greatest example from them of what post-punk was all about. These bands started a whole new youth culture as well, which has been imitated over and over again ever since.

Mike Oldfield – Crises (1983)

Growing up, Mike Oldfield was one of the artists I probably heard the most at our home, because my father was a huge fan of him. I always remember him going on and on about how Mike Oldfield played such and such instruments on his albums and all of them by himself. And yes, I do have to give it to Mike Oldfield that he is a great multi-instrumentalist. However, I've never been that much of a fan of his music. I do really appreciate some of his early stuff and his most famous album Tubular Bells is a classic, no matter what you think of his music. Then again, I did get many other albums from my dad, when I took over his vinyl collection. Crises was one of them. In fact, at some point I owned two copies of this album, because I also got this album from my grandmother's place, where it was probably previously owned by one of my uncles. That one I gave as a birthday present to one of my friends.

Devendra Banhart – Cripple Crow (2005)

I was introduced to Devendra Banhart by a friend of mine in the university. We had these evenings with a couple of friends where we would each bring an album we liked and thought the others might not have listened to before. One of the albums in one of these evenings was Cripple Crow. I was instantly captivated by the album cover. It just looked like an album I would be interested in. I also remember liking the album right from the first time I heard it. However, for some reason, I didn't really feel very strongly about the songs when I had bought the album. After the initial excitement of the sounds, many of the songs seemed a bit bland to me for many years. Now that I'm listening to the album after many years' break, again this sounds like an excellent album. Perhaps I've grown to enjoy more different styles in the recent years and I can appreciate even the latin stylings that I wasn't that much of a fan of back in the day.

Still Corners – Creatures of an Hour (2011)

I was introduced to the London-based dream pop band Still Corners by the 'albums of the year' listings by one of the record shops here in the UK. The album on that list, however, was the band's second album. Creatures of an Hour is the band's debut album and it's a lot less electronic than their subsequent albums. This is why I probably like this one the best. There was at least one absolutely brilliant song on the second album and that's how I got interested in the band, but on the whole, I think this more organic sounding dream pop album is more to my liking. Still Corners remind me of Beach House a little bit, but where Beach House sounds amazing mainly because of the excellent vocals, Still Corners gets its power from great sounds and good, not extensive, use of electronic instruments. I bought this CD second hand at a local record shop with a very reasonable price.

Tigerbombs – Crazy Kids Never Learn (2006)

As some of you will know, I used to write another blog where I went through geographic areas, such as countries, individual cities or States in the US and wrote a list of bands and artists from that place. When I did my posts on Finland, I rarely expected to find anything new, because I thought I was quite familiar with the Finnish music scene. However, I ended up finding some excellent new bands while compiling that blog, including the amazing Tigerbombs. Tigerbombs play energetic power pop with mid-00's indie rock guitar sounds. Some of the bands like that sound really old nowadays and I rarely listen to that musical genre anymore, but Tigerbombs sounded so incredibly good that I had to buy this album almost ten years after its release. The reason for their brilliance is not in sounds or being different for that matter, but in the fact that they make delightfully catchy songs with amazing pop melodies.

Fleet Foxes – Crack-Up (2017)

When Fleet Foxes' first album came out 10 years ago, I was really excited about their sound. their magical folk sounds sounded timeless. The album could've just as well have been released in the 70's as well as in 2018. The album was filled with catchy melodies and great melancholia. I had really high hopes for the second album, but it was a bit of a disappointment. The sounds were similar, but the songs weren't as catchy and there was nothing new about the songs anymore. When this third album came out last year, I wasn't really expecting much of it. And I do think this is not quite as exciting album as it could've been. However, they do experiment with musical style a lot more, which makes the album at least quite interesting. Still, the experimentation in songwriting has led to a collection of songs that are difficult to tell apart from each other and to remember.

Allo Darlin' – Covers (2013)

Allo Darlin' was one of those bands I had heard of already before moving to London, but it was here in London where I truly started listening to them. They're a local band, so they were easy to spot in record stores, in posters etc. Allo Darlin's nerdy twee pop is very similar to the Scottish band Belle 7 Sebastian and especially their early albums. My first album by the band was Europe that they had released around the time when I moved to London. I bought it at the legendary Rough Trade East, where I also got this Cover album as a bonus CD. There are some unlikely covers from bands such as AC/DC and Ramones, but also from bands that must've been huge influences on their sound, such as The Go-Betweens. I always like the covers that are very different from the original more than the ones that basically just repeat what has been done before.

Night Beds – Country Sleep (2013)

In 2013 I visited Manchester for the first time. Right after getting out of the railway station we bumped into Piccadilly Records record store. This is a legendary independent record store in central Manchester, which I really wanted to visit. After this visit I've been back there again and I've been reading their 'best albums of the year' list, since I really like the kind of music they have on display. On that first visit, I ended up buying this album Country Sleep by Night Beds. I had only heard it once before after spotting it on Rough Trade's albums of the month list. The album is filled with amazingly airy folk music. There are a few songs in there that only have pure vocals without any instruments. The sounds are like a cool breeze in the middle of the wilderness. The closest reference is probably Fleet Foxes, but there's more air and less instruments on this album.

Megadeath – Countdown to Extinction (1992)

I just realised that this is already the third album in a row in this blog that was released in 1992. All of these albums also feature quite heavy guitars. It either says something about the musical fashions of the time, or something about me as a young music listener. Megadeath was definitely one of the bands I listened to a lot at the time. Back then, everything featuring monsters and heavy guitars was really interesting to me, being a nine year old Finn starting to get interested in playing the guitar. However, I was never into growl singing, so Megadeath and Metallica were pretty much the heaviest stuff I would listen to. My first Megadeath album was probably this album's follower Youthanasia, but Countdown to Extinction was also one of my absolute favourites back then. Nowadays, I would hardly listen to this album if it wasn't because of this blog.