Flawless perfection: 52 of the best albums you’ll ever hear
All artists strive to release perfect albums, but the vast majority never achieve this feat. We select 52 to listen to from start to finish – one album for each weekend of 2024.
The flawless album is a rare thing. Few artists make them. Most never do. Some music genres produce more than others.
Few would contest that Herbert von Karajan’s mighty recordings of Beethoven’s fifth and ninth symphonies with the Berlin Philharmonic and released by Deutsche Grammophon in 1963 are other than flawless.
Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue from 1959 is considered the greatest jazz recording of all time and, hardly surprisingly, is the most influential and best-selling – of course it is flawless (even for those of us who believe its follow-up, Sketches of Spain, was a superior work of grace and imagination).
Ella Fitzgerald’s Ella in Berlin, a 1960 live recording with The Paul Smith Quartet during which she forgot the lyrics to Mack the Knife but seamlessly improvised them – to win the Grammy for best female vocal performance (single) – is an example of flawlessness. The greatest and most influential band of the rock era was unquestionably The Beatles, but arguably they produced just one flawless album – 1963’s A Hard Day’s Night. Let’s be honest, the nasally reverberations emanating from Ringo Starr can hardly be considered singing, so any album on which he has the microphone is therefore ruled out, so it’s bye-bye Rubber Soul, Revolver and Sgt Pepper. Ringo did not sing on Let it Be either, but that suffers from other setbacks and Phil Spector’s overproduction, original sins McCartney washed away on his Let it Be… Naked reworking in 2003.
Other outstanding albums are scarred by a single, lazy track. Boz Scaggs’ Silk Degrees was studded with songs that were instant classics and which outshone the disco lights of the day: What Can I Say?, Lido Shuffle, Lowdown, We’re All Alone and the eternal, gentle masterpiece at the end of side one (we all bought the vinyl in 1976) Harbour Lights. But, two tracks earlier, Scaggs ruined it all – along with claims to flawlessness – with Jump Street. It starts with the line “Dawn came sneaking like a skinny snake” and he sings it with the lack of sincerity it deserves. It sounds like a throwaway Rolling Stones B side, and they did a few.
Speaking of the Stones, one of their biggest-selling albums was Goats Head Soup. Its predecessor was the acclaimed Exile on Main Street, but Goats Head Soup is a masterpiece with the chart-topping ballad Angie, supported by a beautiful piano line played by Nicky Hopkins, but written by Keith Richards, and genuine Stones’ rock landmarks Dancing With Mr D and Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker). Sitting in the middle of side two is the enduring Winter, its guitar solo by Mick Taylor, which is that band’s finest musical moment. But they spoil it all with the crude, simplistic and pointless Star Star at the very end. What a shame.
So, here The Australian’s national music writer, Andrew McMillen, and I round up 52 albums of the rock era we believe to be flawless – one for you to explore perhaps each weekend during 2024.
I am starting in 1956 with the birth of rock and roll. Andrew picks it up from 1989 (the year after his birth). Of course, there will be flawless moments we miss, but here are 52 albums we believe are unblemished masterpieces.
Alan Howe 1-26
1 ELVIS PRESLEY – Elvis Presley (1956)
A few months earlier, Heartbreak Hotel knocked Les Baxter’s The Poor People of Paris from the top of the Billboard. That single and this album were music’s Before Christ (BC) and Anno Domini (AD) moment.
2 THE BEATLES – A Hard Day’s Night (1964)
They did better albums, but this film soundtrack recorded between frenzied tours at the height of Beatlemania is faultless. The title track, written by John Lennon the night before, crashes to life with the mightiest chord of the rock era, and the magic lasts 30 minutes and nine seconds.
3 THE BEACH BOYS – Pet Sounds (1966)
The Beatles delivered a jab with the punchy Rubber Soul. Brian Wilson answered with a perfect uppercut, each song (and two instrumentals) standing singly and sensuous but locking together as a world heavyweight champion.
4 THE BAND – Music from Big Pink (1968)
The folkie, rough-edged live recordings – welcome Americana – of songs born in a Woodstock basement had a deceptively homely feel. Dylan’s tracks were exceptional, and the disoriented traveller carrying The Weight changed the lives of men named Clapton, Allman and Garcia.
5 RODRIGUEZ – Cold Fact (1970)
It took the Academy Award-winning documentary Searching for Sugar Man for Americans to wake up to the Dylan-like genius of Detroit’s Sixto Rodriguez, by which time his debut album had gone six times platinum in Australia.
6 RUSSELL MORRIS – Bloodstone (1971)
Sweet, Sweet Love dragged Bloodstone into the charts towards the end of 1971, but its tales of humanity’s lost (O Helley, The Gambler’s Lament) and found (The Cell, Heaven Shines) show how fully formed Morris’s song craft was at just age 23.
7 ELTON JOHN – Friends (1971)
Elton John and Bernie Taupin charted with five albums in 1971. Everyone, Elton included, has always ignored the best. The one-star rated film for which this is the soundtrack flopped, but these gentle lyrics are among Taupin’s best.
8 NEIL YOUNG – Harvest (1971)
An album of odds and sods including the London Symphony. It had his only No.1 single (Heart of Gold) and has been his only No.1 album. He told legendary drummer Kenny Buttrey to literally sit on his right hand for the title track. No cymbals! When it ended Buttrey raised the index finger – he knew where this was headed.
9 JETHRO TULL – Aqualung (1971)
Deist Ian Anderson wrestles with the notion of god as he observes the unfair fates of the doomed and down-and-out on Locomotive Breath and Aqualung. He wrestles too with the notions of prog, folk and hard rock.
10 THE DOORS – L.A. Woman (1971)
Jim Morrison was weeks from death when the band reconvened in April 1971 to record this blues rock masterpiece over four days. Producer Paul A Rothchild thought the songs weak, and walked. Love Her Madly? L.A. Woman? Riders on the Storm? Blinding flashes of brilliance.
11 JOHN LENNON – John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band (1970)
Lennon faded fast. These raw, blunt and scornful songs expelled the bad spirits of Beatlemania while admonishing his loved mother and banishing his absent dad. It would take years for this sincere triumph to be fully understood.
12 PAUL MCCARTNEY – RAM (1971)
McCartney’s lazy, arrogant, critically assailed solo debut was a disaster. Embarrassed, he turned it around on this effortless gem: Too Many People, Ram On, Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey, Heart of The Country, Eat at Home and the always underrated The Back Seat of My Car.
13 SANTANA – Caravanserai (1972)
Shunning the Afro-Latin sound he patented, Carlos Santana forsook that chart-friendly formula and dived deeper than Miles Davis into the possibilities of jazz rock fusion. Seven of the 10 tracks are instrumentals, opening with Eternal Caravan of Reincarnation. Many lives were never the same again.
14 PINK FLOYD – The Dark Side of the Moon (1973)
It has been remade, remixed and remastered, but you cannot improve on the perfection that follows from the odd overture of Speak To Me. And that’s what they did.
15 ROXY MUSIC – Stranded (1973)
Eight tracks. Eight victories of unclassifiable invention. Street Life jumps up like a roadside IED. There is vanity in the elevated art rock mastery that follows – Serenade, Mother of Pearl, A Song for Europe – and why not?
16 GENESIS – Selling England by the Pound (1973)
UK prog’s finest moment so brimmed with ideas and top tier musicianship that the band could fuse together leftovers to create Firth of Fifth – their glorious nine-minute side one miscellany.
17 PAUL SIMON – Live Rhymin’ (1974)
Few live albums are any good. Perhaps only one is flawless. Did Paul Simon need Art Garfunkel? Seems not. Even on the Simon and Garfunkel hits the audience knew so well, and that Simon had never sung solo, he pulls this off in a relaxed setting as if at a family barbecue.
18 ELECTRIC LIGHT ORCHESTRA – Eldorado (1974)
Grandiose? Pompous? Pretentious? This symphonic concept is all that, and studded with great rock ‘n’ roll songs, even if, on Mister Kingdom, Jeff Lynne veers a little too close to John Lennon in Beatles mode. Is that a crime?
19 SEBASTIAN HARDIE – Four Moments (1975)
Australians were resistant to prog rock and never really took to Mario Millo’s brilliant bands – Sebastian Hardie and, later, Windchase. The outstanding Four Moments (produced by Jon English) and its symphonic instrumental highlight, Rosanna, scraped the charts and disappeared.
20 BOB DYLAN – Blood on the Tracks (1975)
The bleak potency of some of these songs first recorded in New York hardly jar with the feisty settings introduced when hurriedly re-recorded over Christmas in Minneapolis. They argue over which sessions are best; either way, it’s Bob’s best record.
21 THE FERRETS – Dreams of a Love (1977)
A grand debut, overseen by Ian Meldrum (but at such a snail’s pace he is credited as Willie Everfinish). Just Like the Stars is akin to the Beatles at their best. Billy Miller’s mum sat knitting in the studio: “Mmm, yes that sounds very good.”
22 JIMMY BUFFETT – Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes (1977)
He’d soon be too big for Key West, but the song that did it – Margaritaville – captures that life in brilliant couplets, including “there’s booze in the blender and soon it will render that frozen concoction that helps me hang on”.
23 ANTHONY PHILLIPS – The Geese and the Ghost (1977)
The original lead guitarist in Genesis stepped away with stage fright and spent the next six years trying to complete these gentle melodies of pastoral beauty. He wrote God If I Saw Her Now within days, but the euphoric wonder, Sleepfall: The Geese Fly West, took years.
24 THE GRATEFUL DEAD – Terrapin Station (1977)
The words came to Robert Hunter in a lightning storm; the melody came to Jerry Garcia crossing a San Francisco bridge. They came together for the 16-minute, seven-part title track, perhaps the most dizzily complex and majestic song of the rock era – and all put to bed by The English Chorale.
25 WARREN ZEVON – Excitable Boy (1978)
Across three cleverly offbeat songs (the title track, Werewolves of London and Roland the Headless Thomson Gunner) Zevon created a genre – comic noir – only he inhabited. Amusing lyrical stabs, such as “draw blood”, keep it well north of novelty.
26 SALLY OLDFIELD – Strange Day in Berlin (1983)
Mike Oldfield’s sister wrote dark, enchanting songs of departed love and hope for it anew. None would fit any radio playlist. These are long songs whose musical objectives are fully realised – captivating and compelling. How on Earth was this lost?
Andrew McMillen 27-52
When Alan phoned me to lay out the idea for this feature, I was immediately on board, and I listened as my mind’s ear started sketching out a list of titles for potential inclusion.
Once I started reviewing those releases to confirm their flawless status, though, I was struck by the surprisingly and fiendishly challenging nature of the task.
This isn’t just a list of great albums, it’s those that compel from the first note to the last. Such releases are rarer than you might think. Loads of my favourite collections – and, likely, yours – are spoiled by one or two tracks that you usually skip because they don’t quite measure up to the rest, thus disqualifying them from this list.
Some examples: one of the bands I’ve loved most of my life, the American progressive metal group Tool, has never released a perfect album because of its tendency to include sound collages between songs, ranging from ambient atmospherics to flat-out annoying repetitions, and which detract from the strength of its work heard elsewhere.
Plenty of great hip-hop albums are ruined by interstitial skits that may have been funny on first listen, but become tedious thereafter; consequently, just one hip-hop album made my list.
And one of the most urgent and invigorating rock albums of this century – 2002’s Songs For the Deaf by Queens of the Stone Age – is spoiled by fake announcers on phony radio stations hawking false goods at the end of most tracks.
It’s a drag on an otherwise musically flawless creation. Today, there is probably more music being played around the world than ever before thanks to the prevalence of streaming technology, but the act of composing and arranging truly great work remains as beguilingly hard as ever.
Compiling this list first for Alan, then for you, has underlined to me the mighty endeavour that musicians undertake when they attempt to create art that will thrill and inspire the rest of us.
It is a rare gift when you find a set of songs that moves you. To me, there are few things on Earth as meaningful or important as that intangible sensation of fully connecting with recorded music.
What follows is a list of albums that are perfect to me.
Some titles will be familiar; some you’ll never have heard of (until now). As we turn the page into a new year, we hope you’ll approach this list with an open mind and open ears. You may review this list and think some of our selections are dead wrong.
You’ll be right, but you’ll also be wrong, for when it comes to music, there are no correct answers, only opinions – and everyone is allowed to have those.
27 NIRVANA – Bleach (1989)
The debut album from this Seattle trio set a high bar for lo-fi rock ‘n’ roll production. Its 13 tracks put Kurt Cobain’s pop songwriting smarts and raw vocal style on the map, and foreshadowed the generation-shaping storm that this sadly short-lived band would create.
28 MY BLOODY VALENTINE – Loveless (1991)
With its second album, this Irish-British rock group laid the definitive blueprint for the “shoegaze” subgenre. Kevin Shields’ fearsome battery of much-studied guitar sounds are high in the mix, but Bilinda Butcher’s dreamlike, indistinct vocals are central to its enduring, intoxicating appeal.
29 RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE – Rage Against the Machine (1992)
When a rap-rock album still sounds as fresh, pure, explosive and perfectly balanced today as when it was captured more than 30 years ago, the parties involved in writing, performing and recording these 10 tracks must have done something right.
30 MIDNIGHT OIL – Earth and Sun and Moon (1993)
At a time when Nirvana et al turned toward angst and distortion, the Oils opted for a bounty of rich vocal harmonies and highly melodic rock songs, including two bass-led career highlights that bookend its eighth album.
31 PEARL JAM – Vs. (1993)
This Seattle act shrugged off the weight of expectation that followed its mega-selling debut, proffering 12 tracks that contained a wide dynamic range, from outright rockers to quieter, ponderous moments.
32 NAS – Illmatic (1994)
A landmark hip-hop release that introduced the talents of MC Nasir Jones, aka Nas, whose taut 10-track debut succeeded in painting a vivid, gritty portrait of growing up in Queens, New York City.
33 THE MARK OF CAIN – Ill At Ease (1995)
At times, the third album by this Adelaide hard rock trio feels like the heaviest set of songs ever recorded, both musically and lyrically. An unrelenting work of precise arrangement and machinelike performance, it grips you from the very first note and doesn’t let up for 55 minutes.
34 DIRTY THREE – Horse Stories (1996)
This Melbourne instrumental trio was never more ferocious than on its third album, which captures the violin/drums/guitar combo alternately smouldering and at full conflagration, sometimes within the space of a single wordless song.
35 SPIRITUALIZED – Ladies and Gentlemen We Are
Floating in Space (1997)
The original artwork for this achingly beautiful, 70-minute album by the British “space rock” act was designed to resemble pharmaceutical packaging, as if the music itself were the medicine. More than 25 years later, it remains a reliable soul healer.
36 MASSIVE ATTACK – Mezzanine (1998)
This moody masterpiece from the British electronic act is best known for its stunning single Teardrop, written and sung by Elizabeth Fraser, but Mezzanine’s spectral intrigue runs deep across 11 gripping tracks.
37 SHIHAD – The General Electric (1999)
This Kiwi-born band bottled lightning with its fourth album, which found the sweet spot between massive guitar riffs, pop sensibilities and singer Jon Toogood’s penchant for writing anthemic choruses best sung en masse.
38 POWDERFINGER – Odyssey Number Five (2000)
With its fourth album, this Brisbane quintet solidified its position at the centre of Australian rock ‘n’ roll, capable of combining big-tent singles (My Happiness, These Days) with proggy epics (Thrilloilogy) and an acoustic gem to close the set.
39 THE AVALANCHES – Since I Left You (2000)
This landmark Australian dance/electronic album is famous for being created from a monstrous patchwork of samples, and it has always been best experienced as a single work heard from start to finish.
40 SILVERCHAIR – Diorama (2002)
The cover artwork for the Newcastle trio’s fourth album featured a door opening onto a rainbow, a perfect advertisement for what was inside: ornate, kaleidoscopic rock ‘n’ roll rooted in some of singer/guitarist Daniel Johns’ best vocal and lyrical performances.
41 MINUS THE BEAR – Menos El Oso (2005)
With a superb command over looped guitar pedal trickery, sublime melodic sensibility and ear-catching, finicky percussion, this Seattle indie rock act outdid itself on album No.2 – a tough task given the strength of its debut.
42 THE KNIFE – Silent Shout (2006)
Together, Swedish sibling duo Karin and Olof Dreijer built an icy palace to house their third album, which stands strong as a masterpiece at the intersection of techno, synth-pop and indie electronica.
43 FIREKITES – The Bowery (2008)
Rarely are debuts as fully formed and beguiling as that issued by Newcastle band Firekites, which centred shared male-female vocals, pretty acoustic guitar tones, innovative percussion and stunning violin interjections. Best played in the small hours.
44 FEVER RAY – Fever Ray (2009)
In between releases with The Knife, Karin Dreijer went solo, and came up with this mind-bending, pitch-shifted wonder. Its central lyrical thread was Dreijer’s struggles with motherhood and a shift in identity, which was resolved beautifully in closing track Coconut.
45 DEFTONES – Koi No Yokan (2012)
No other release from this US alternative metal band fully captures its blend of noise, melody and dynamism, wherein Chino Moreno’s ethereal vocals sit alongside jagged guitars and sledgehammer drums: a singularly satisfying sound.
46 QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE – Like Clockwork (2013)
Near death experiences can focus a songwriter’s mind, as QOTSA frontman Josh Homme found in the lead-up to the US rock band’s sixth album. He invited his bandmates into the depressive fog, and together they emerged with a dark, gruelling, yet life-affirming set of songs.
47 THE WAR ON DRUGS – Lost in the Dream (2014)
With its third album, this Philadelphia-based outfit graduated from being merely a good rock ‘n’ roll band to an all-time great. Painstakingly written and produced by singer/guitarist Adam Granduciel, this emotive collection elevated TWOD from playing in clubs to headlining arenas and festivals worldwide.
48 WE LOST THE SEA – Departure Songs (2015)
After losing its singer to suicide, this Sydney band opted to press on, and struck gold with a set of wordless songs – alternately delicate and crushingly heavy, showcasing light and shade – that was inspired by stories of lives lived and lost for the betterment of the human race.
49 TAME IMPALA – Currents (2015)
For his third album under the Tame Impala moniker, Fremantle singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Kevin Parker let his freak flag fly: he let go of his classic rock roots to explore alternative dance and electronica, and the results were spectacular.
50 HEALTH – Death Magic (2015)
A futuristic and immersive marriage of electronic beats, industrial noise and pop sensibilities, this Los Angeles act sharpened its focus to a fine point with album No.3, whose crushing production thrills the senses.
51 DUA LIPA – Future Nostalgia (2020)
Released just as the world’s nightclubs closed during the pandemic, this British-Albanian pop singer-songwriter inadvertently soundtracked millions of home-isolation dance parties with her stunning second album that feels both retro and prophetic – hence the title. At 28, she’s the youngest artist to appear here.
52 ANGUS AND JULIA STONE – Life is Strange (2021)
The most recent release on this list is also among the quietest and most reflective, with its songs rooted firmly in nostalgic optimism. Commissioned as a video game soundtrack, this folk/pop sibling duo from Sydney took the assignment and produced a beautifully crafted triumph of sustained mood.
