Mercury Rev – Deserter's Songs (1998)

Mercury Rev is one of the 90's alternative bands that must have influenced the whole generation of indie bands coming after them. They combine beautiful and dream-like melodies with lo-fi aesthetics and a variety of interesting instruments, most notably musical saw. Deserter's Songs is the band's most critically acclaimed album and also commercially it was the most successful album at least upon its release. It's interesting that the band intended actually to make an album that would just sound a lot like they wanted it to sound without any consideration for commercial aspects. Their previous album had been something of a breakthrough, but they had to compromise on the sounds and now they were just doing what they wanted. Of course, that resulted in their best album so far and many would say it's still the best album of their career.

Jason Lytle – Dept. of Disappearance (2012)

When Grandaddy split up, I for one was a bit devastated, since it had been one of my favourite bands for years. Fairly soon after that happened, Jason Lytle returned with his solo material that was quite similar to Grandaddy. Fair enough, the first album, Yours Truly, The Commuter was a bit bland after all the Grandaddy albums with most of the band instruments missing. Dept. of Disappearance, however, has some songs on it that sound just as good as Grandaddy songs. I'm still quite glad that Grandaddy returned, because even though Lytle is pretty much the band, they still sound better under their original band title. I bought this album on CD as soon as I heard about it. After all, I'm such a fan that I would probably get anything made by Lytle as soon as it was out, no matter what it was.

Uriah Heep – Demons and Wizards (1972)

Another beautiful vinyl album from my father's record collection. As I've mentioned many times before, my father was a fan of progressive rock and heavy metal in the early 70's. When my friends became interested in Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple in school, I was happy to find some of these albums from my dad's collection. Uriah Heep was a band that wasn't as well known from that genre. It had obviously been really popular in the 70's but it had not lasted the time as well as the other bands. I really liked Uriah Heep's pop-melodies and sounds. For a while it was one of my favourite bands. Ken Hensley's keyboards and Mick Box's guitars were amazingly skilfully played and some of their solos were my favourite solos by any band when I was a teenager. Of course David Byron's high vocals are impressive as well.

Ryan Adams – Demolition (2002)

Demolition is the third album by one of the most productive songwriters ever, Ryan Adams. His first album had just been released two years earlier and his second album Gold had become a massive hit at least in the US. Compared to the first two albums, Demolition is perhaps a slightly disappointing, since it doesn't have as many amazing hit songs, but still, as a standalone effort, it's a fantastic album. Adams himself thought afterwards this album as something of a compilation of leftover songs, but I do think there are numerous fantastic songs that deserved to be published on a record. Demolition seems still has some proper country songs, but it also features some rockier songs that seem to lay the ground for Adams' following album Rock n' Roll. This was one of my first Ryan Adams albums which I bought quite soon after its release.

The Delta Rhythm Boys – The Delta Rhythm Boys

This is the first album in this blog where I'm not able to find anywhere the year when this album was released. Even Discogs doesn't know. Most likely, this is a compilation of singles from the band that was together from the 30's until the 80's, which means that this album could be from any time during that period. I got this album from my great aunt's record collection. It's not the type of music I would generally listen to, but it's interesting to broaden my horizons by testing something like this. The Delta Rhythm Boys is an American vocal group that plays a range of R&B and gospel songs with a hint of jazz. Stylistically at least, this music precedes the pop music era, which means that the songs are more dancehall types of songs. The vocals are in a much bigger role than other instruments in this style of music.

Delay Trees – Delay Trees (2010)

Delay Trees is a Finnish indie band playing impressive dream pop with, as their name suggests, lots of delay in the guitars. The expectations were quite high for this band around 2010 when their self-titled debut came out. I saw them live at least a couple of times, once opening for the Scottish indie legends Teenage Fanclub. Later on, I've seen them once here in London and once back in Finland at a small festival. Unfortunately, I think the debut album remained their best album to date. There's nothing particularly wrong with the later albums, but they just didn't raise same kind of excitement in me. This debut album of theirs is a fantastic though. There are influences from American dream pop and post rock bands and the songs are well written pieces with catchy melodies and beautifully echoey sounds.

Black Sabbath – Dehumanizer (1992)

It's quite stupid I have this album at all. As a teenager, I was into 70's heavy metal, but I didn't really know that much about it. Also, I didn't really use internet yet, so the knowledge behind my purchases was often not that great. So, when I bought the album Dehumanizer by Black Sabbath, I was expecting Ozzy Osbourne and similar sounds to Paranoid. Turns out, this album was something completely different. It features Ronnie James Dio as the lead vocalist and the sounds are closer to late 80's and early 90's metal music. To be fair, I had also been quite into those genres around the time, but anyway, this album really wasn't what I expected. At least it features Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler from the original band. This must be one of my least listened to albums that I've bought myself.

Oasis – Definitely Maybe (1994)

At the time of its release, Definitely Maybe was the fastest selling debut album by any band so far. It's not difficult to see why. The band had released three singles before hand and the Britpop was already hugely popular at that point. The songs on Definitely Maybe are spectacularly well written and there's this raw power in the sounds. Also, you can hear the ambition and youthful excitement. Overall, it just has a great attitude. The sounds are maybe not as well thought of as on (What's the Story) Morning Glory, but in attitude Definitely Maybe wins the competition. I can't really decide which of the first two albums by Oasis I like the most. They both have their own strengths. I feel like I really would liked to have seen the band live after Definitely Maybe when they were still playing decent sized venues and the attitude was everything.

Deep Purple – Deepest Purple: The Very Best of Deep Purple (1980)

In general, this system of mine where I post albums in alphabetical order, works fairly well, but sometimes when the band name appears in the album title, I end up posting about the same band's two albums in a row. It's a bit annoying since in this case for example, I've already written most of the things about Deep Purple already in the previous post, but anyway, let's focus on this album then. This is obviously a compilation album, which I must point out, Deep Purple has made loads of. In my opinion, this is the best compilation there is, at least from the ones I've seen. It covers just the right era of Deep Purple's career, the 70's. This was my first Deep Purple album on a CD and for a while it was just appropriate for my needs. Pretty much all of the songs on this album are really great songs and they don't even stylistically clash that much.

Deep Purple – Deep Purple in Rock (1970)

As many of my regular readers will already know, as a preteen I was very much into hard rock and heavy metal. When I grew up a bit, I got interested in the roots of the genre and I was happy to find out my father owned quite a few metal classics from the early 70's on vinyl. One of them was Deep Purple in Rock. It was heavier than probably any other album I had heard from that era and I really loved the album. For a brief while, Deep Purple became maybe one of my favourite bands. Deep Purple In Rock is an aggressive, wild and very masterful album that shows the amazing skills of the band members. The guitars and organs particularly are quite amazing and my favourite moments are those where these two instruments form kind of battles with each other. It was the band's breakthrough album in Europe. The earlier albums had mainly been popular in North America.

Stereophonics – Decade in the Sun: Best of Stereophonics (2008)

I definitely don't always remember where I've bought a certain CD or vinyl album I own, but there are some albums where I clearly remember when and where I bought them. Usually, those albums I've bought from abroad on one of my travels. Those albums bought as souveniers remind me of those trips years later. I bought this Stereophonics compilation CD in 2009 in Hong Kong. I was there on a trip with my friends from my university. We stumbled across a record shop and went in. The CDs in that shop were very different to the CDs I had normally seen in Finland. They were packed in thick cardboard cases that were all in all more presentable and bigger. This particular CD was in a beautiful wooden case that has cardboard covers with album pictures on it. The CDs were very cheap compared to Finland as well, but the cases alone proofed they were authentic Chinese versions of the albums rather than pirate copies.

Björk – Debut (1993)

Björk's music has played a big part in my life's soundtrack. I think her music first became familiar to me when my big sister started listening to her music. She was a big fan of Björk and had all of her 90's albums, which meant that I heard her music quite a lot at home. Around that time I didn't really understand the music myself. I was too involved with heavy metal and hard rock scene to enjoy anything with this many electronic elements. The next big Björk moment came to me in high school when I borrowed her compilation box from a local library and this time I really enjoyed it. Fairly soon afterwards, I was working in a café in central Helsinki, where we would play CDs, one of which was a Björk compilation. It became the soundtrack to many of my mornings that year. This CD I only bought a few years later when I didn't hear it on almost a daily basis elsewhere.

Metallica – Death Magnetic (2008)

Metallica was one of the first adult bands I ever got into. As a pre-teen, learning to play the guitar, Metallica's sharp guitar riffs and melodic solos appealed to me big time. When I entered my proper teenage years, my musical taste got a bit lighter and I left heavy metal music mostly aside for many years. Listening to metal as a young adult was considered very uncool as well. In the university, I was  in a relationship with someone who really liked metal music, which made me listen to more of it, not by choice. I have never liked really aggressive metal music and growl singing has always put me off. Metallica was pretty much as heavy as it got for me. My back then girlfriend realised this but wanted to encourage me to listen to heavier music. When Death Magnetic came out, I mentioned that it sounded quite good again and she bought it for me as a birthday or Christmas present.

TV On the Radio – Dear Science (2008)

TV On the Radio was one of the coolest bands towards the end of the 00's. I bought it mainly because all the indie circles were so excited by it and the album was fairly cheap and looked amazing on vinyl. However, at first, I didn't much care for the album. TV On the Radio is not just average indie rock, like the bands I listened to at that point. It has a far more rhythmic focus and there are influences from many different musical styles outside of rock. There are some influences from funk, jazz, disco and hip hop. I've only learned to appreciate the uniqueness of the sounds later on, perhaps as a result of getting to know some funk bands more recently. I'm glad I bought the album when it was new, because now this album would most likely be really expensive on vinyl. I am, however, a bit disappointed that I didn't see the band live around that time.

Loney, Dear – Dear John (2009)

Loney, Dear is a pseudonym for the Swedish singer-songwriter Emil Svanängen. He started his career by making endearing minimalistic folk records, but then moved on to using more and more electronic instruments in his albums along with a variety of other interesting instruments. Dear John was released after his probably most acclaimed album Loney, Noir that was released by Sub Pop. Dear John is already quite far away from the folk sounds of the first albums. There are huge orchestrated backing tracks in the songs, electronic drums and strange multi-instrumentalist experiments. On the other hand it gives the album quite a unique sound, on the other hand, I feel like the songwriting has suffered as a consequence of all this sound experimentation. It's not Loney, Dear's best piece of work, but it has some very strong moments.

Belle & Sebastian – Dear Catastrophe Waitress (2003)

I don't even really remember how I was first introduced to Belle & Sebastian. It must've been after the year 2000, but before 2003, since the first album I heard from them was Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like a Peasant, but Dear Catastrophe Waitress had not been released yet. So, to me personally, Dear Catastrophe Waitress was the first new album from the band I already liked. Compared to earlier albums, Dear Catastrophe Waitress finally got rid of any lo-fi elements the band had before. The studio sound on this album is much sharper than on earlier albums and even Stuart Murdoch's vocals sounds more confident. In a way, that changed what Belle & Sebastian had been all about, but even if the sound is different, I still think this is one of the best albums Belle & Sebastian ever released. The songwriting is just superb!

The Posies – Dear 23 (1990)

The Posies is melodic indie power pop that has, no doubt, influenced many of the late-90's early 00's indie pop rock bands and artists. Their sound is influenced by 60's pop music and in that sense it seems that they were a bit of an oddball in at the turn of the 80's and 90's. Their songs are very catchy and straightforward. Their first album, Failure, was meant only as a demo recording, but it turned out so good that it ended up being released as it is. Dear 23 is the band's second album and the first album to be released on a major label. It's one of their most approachable albums and filled with potential radio hits. The sounds are a bit outdated today, but in terms of songwriting, it's a great piece of work. I only discovered this album quite recently even though I've listened to The Posies for years and years. I bought it here in London as a CD.

Keaton Henson – Dear... (2010)

Keaton Henson is a very special singer-songwriter. His songs are incredibly intimate and personal. There is a specific reason for this. Henson never meant to record music for larger audiences. he was an illustrator, who just started making music for his own enjoyment. But then a friend of his heard his music and encouraged him to get the music out there. He has become fairly popular in the London indie circles afterwards and especially critics love his music. But there's a slight problem. Henson suffers from intense anxiety, which makes performing live virtually impossible. That's why it is pretty much impossible to get to see him live. Quite recently he composed a classical piece about his anxiety and I went to see this performed by a string orchestra in Barbican. Henson came out to take a bow in the end, and even just doing that seemed to take a lot of effort.