Two months and 50 odd posts after I started this thing here's the coup de grâce. The final list, in full, on one page (which I could probably have done from the off and saved you all a lot of bother). My 50 favourite debut albums of all time - click the links for more information on each album.
There are some omissions; albums I don't own, albums I haven't lived with long enough to really appreciate, one or two albums I do love but didn't have anything interesting to impart. It's a good list though, I really like everything on it and would highly recommend anything that made the top 25. More than anything, I enjoyed re-listening to albums I hadn't played in some time, a few of these showed how important the moment you first heard a tune can influence how much you enjoy it later on.
50. Sparklehorse "Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot" (1995)
49. Pink Floyd "Piper at the Gates of Dawn" (1967)
48. Guns n' Roses "Appetite for Destruction" (1987)
47. Young Marble Giants "Colossal Youth" (1980)
46. Beiruit "Gulag Orkestar" (2006)
45. Big Country "The Crossing" (1983)
44. Brakes "Give Blood" (2005)
43. The Wonder Stuff "The Eight Legged Groove Machine" (1988)
42. Mogwai "Young Team" (1997)
41. Mudhoney "Superfuzz Bigmuff" (1988)
40. Masters of Reality "Masters of Reality" (1988)
39. Japandroids "Post Nothing" (2009)
38. Minutemen "The Punch Line" (1981)
37. Black Sabbath "Black Sabbath" (1970)
36. Arcade Fire "Funeral" (2004)
35. The Fall "Live At The Witch Trials" (1979)
34. Field Music "Field Music" (2005)
33. New York Dolls "New York Dolls" (1973)
32. The Smiths "The Smiths" (1984)
31. Desaparecidos "Read Music / Speak Spanish" (2002)
30. Billy Bragg "Life’s a Riot with Spy vs Spy" (1983)
29. The Breeders "Pod" (1990)
28. Iron Maiden "Iron Maiden" (1980)
27. Marillion "Script For A Jester's Tear" (1983)
26. Les Savy Fav "3/5" (1997)
25. The Gun Club "Fire Of Love" (1981)
24. Dr. Feelgood "Down By The Jetty" (1975)
23. Sex Pistols "Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols" (1977)
22. X-Ray Spex "Germ Free Adolescents" (1978)
21. AC/DC "High Voltage" (1976)
20. R.E.M. "Murmur" (1983)
19. The Damned "Damned, Damned, Damned" (1977)
18. P J Harvey "Dry" (1992)
17. The Stone Roses "The Stone Roses" (1989)
16. Wire "Pink Flag" (1977)
15. Dexys Midnight Runners "Searching for the Young Soul Rebels" (1980)
14. Patti Smith "Horses" (1975)
13. Godspeed You Black Emperor! "F♯ A♯ ∞" (1998)
12. Jeff Buckley "Grace" (1994)
11. The Undertones "The Undertones" (1979)
10. Nirvana "Bleach" (1989)
9. The Stooges "The Stooges" (1969)
8. The Specials "Specials" (1979)
7. Nick Drake "Five Leaves Left" (1969)
6. Stiff Little Fingers "Inflammable Material" (1979)
5. The Sonics "Here Are The Sonics" (1965)
4. Television "Marquee Moon" (1977)
3. Fugazi "Repeater" (1990)
2. Ramones "Ramones" (1976)
1. Pixies "Surfer Rosa" (1988)
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My number one pick is from my favourite band of all time and is probably also my favourite album of all time (though both these things are subject to change at fairly frequent intervals).
It's another full length option winning out over an earlier mini-album. That's semantics though, either record would have claimed top spot.
Produced by hardcore legend Steve Albini with his typical sparse but energetic vibe. Kicking off with a trademark Albini drum sound on Bone Machine it clatters through three more tracks before the pace lets up a little with the wonderful Kim Deal sung Gigantic and best known song Where Is My Mind?. Thirteen tracks in a little over half an hour and not a dud song amongst them.
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1, 2, 3, 4!
This album won't be a surprise if you followed my 70s list. Fourteen perfect tracks of lightning fast punk that hits you straight between the eyes again & again.
I love the first four or five Ramones albums a lot but their debut remains my absolute favourite. It was the first I heard, has killer tunes from start to finish and set the template for a career blending Johnny's psycho guitar thrashing with Joey's love of great pop tunes.
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I'm applying my slightly inconsistent full length album rule again and ignoring the earlier (though just as brilliant) 6 track E.P.
I first heard Fugazi thanks to an ITV documentary that explored their history and independent ideology as well as Ian MacKaye's straightedge lifestyle. I wasn't initially drawn in by the music but was fascinated by their anti-music business D.I.Y. approach and ethical beliefs.
I'd intended to investigate their music much earlier but only got round to giving them a go in the last 5 years. Repeater was the first album I picked up (my natural tendency is to work through a band's catalogue in chronological order) but I loved it from the off and it was rapidly followed by everything else the band has released. They've been ridiculously consistent but Repeater just about edges out the rest.
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Seminal New York Art Punk album.
It took me three goes, separated by several years, to finally get my head around this album. As is often the case this proved to be worth the effort and it's now one of my all time favourite albums.
Tom Verlaine & Richard Lloyd's twin guitar sounds are phenomenal, like something from another planet and a huge influence on so many bands that followed.
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I mentioned The Stooges as predating Punk but this next band beat them to the punch by a good 4 years ...
A blistering album that doesn't let up from start to finish. Every track is a real corker and I absolutely love it.
Gerry Rosalie's voice is wild & raw, unfettered howling of the highest order. The drumming is incredible & the guitar sound low and dirty.
I saw them live last year for the second time. Despite most of the band being in their late 70s they rocked as hard as any band I've seen and really blew the roof off.
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Time for something a little more Punk ...
Stiff Little Fingers don't always get the recognition they deserve but they've become one of my favourite bands. They were as noisey and energetic as any of their Punk contemporaries but in Jake Burns and (non-band member) Gordon Ogilvie had a pair of truly great songwriters. They mined a seam of Punk that combined a catchy sound similar to The Undertones with the harder edged noise of bands like the Pistols & The Damned.
Inflammable Material is my favourite SLF album and is simply perfect from start to finish.
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A wonderful, beautiful and sublime album.
Nick Drake was such a remarkable talent. A brilliant songwriter with a gorgeous voice, he recorded three albums that are all immaculate. Five Leaves Left is an LP I can put on anytime & enjoy. One of my go to records if I'm feeling stressed, it has the power to chill me out & cheer me up.
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The best album to come out of the Two Tone movement.
This also made my 70s list so I suspect I already told you this story but, here we go again ...
I first saw this album at my best pal's Blue Peter bring & buy sale. I guess this would have been late 1979 or early 1980. I was into Madness, and recognised the 2 Tone logo, but didn't know much about The Specials. The cover really grabbed me though, the band looked cool and I desperately wanted to buy it. The record was only £3 but I hadn't really planned to buy anything and didn't have enough money. I failed to convince the seller to accept the £1.64, blunt pencil & bit of string I had in my pocket and so made the mad dash home to get Mum or Dad to fund me. By the time I got back they'd sold it to someone else.
I was quite a bit older by the time I did buy The Specials but it's been a huge favourite of mine ever since.
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As Iggy says in his current 6music trailer, The Stooges were punk before Punk was a thing.
There's a lineage that runs from The Sonics to The Stooges and leads to the US & UK Punk scenes of the late seventies. They were hugely influential and their first two albums are both brilliant.
The debut album is pretty perfect, full of energy, distortion and fun. It features three of their best know tunes in I Wanna Be Your Dog, No Fun and opener 1969 but the quality is high throughout and the pace is unrelenting.
It's an album that makes me want to sing along ... with my top off (though frankly that's an image no-one wants in their head).
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The album that launched one of the biggest bands of the nineties and kick-started the Grunge revolution.
Bleach might be my favourite Nirvana album. A pal of mine once suggested Nirvana had only recorded one decent album and I spent the rest of the week trying to work out which one he meant. Nevermind is the obvious choice, it was my starting point with Nirvana and a thrilling discovery when it came out. In Utero may be less loved but it's really powerful and benefits from the engineering skills of Steve Albini.
However, there's a freshness about Bleach that might be down to it being the album I took longest to get into but must also be a reflection of way the band felt when recording it. Some of the band's best songs are on here; Blew, About A Girl and Negative Creep are all big favourites and debut single Love Buzz is a blast. Whatever the reason it's the Nirvana album I'm most likely to play these days and a worthy top ten entry.
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If they're good enough for John Peel, they're good enough for me.
Fourteen tracks of pure pop joy (sixteen if you've got the re-released version with Teenage Kicks) and not a duff track in sight. This is an album that will always put a smile on my face.
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Another stone cold classic ...
By now it goes without saying I didn't discover Grace in 1994, it took me a few years and bizarrely I have the editor of the Jethro Tull fanzine to thank. I lost my way musically in the mid-90s and bought a lot of really crap albums by well known bands who were past their best and solo albums by musicians who had been in those same bands. That meant I was reading publications like the Jethro Tull fanzine, A New Day, more thoroughly than the N.M.E. or Melody Maker. That said A New Day was very well written and, even though I now have more Martin Barre and John Evan albums than is strictly necessary, it did lead me to the magic of Grace.
Jeff Buckley has a sublime voice and the set of songs on Grace were remarkable. Grace is an album so good I could not imagine anyone not loving it. Foolishly this meant I thought Mrs T5 would love it too. I have gradually learned, over the last 20 odd years, that Mrs T5 and I have incompatible music tastes and Grace was a case in point. I played it in the car a lot and it took a while but eventually Mrs T5 was fairly blunt in her condemnation of it.
Rule of thumb: If I think an album is brilliant & mainstream enough for Mrs T5 it almost certainly isn't. Within the first 30 seconds of me attempting to play her said album she'll say something like "What's this weird music you're playing now?".
Key takeaway: NEVER play Mrs T5 music I like.
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The car is on fire and there's no driver at the wheel ... and the sewers are all muddied with a thousand lonely suicides ... and a dark wind blows.
That spoken word intro to Dead Flag Blues always brings a smile to my lips despite being as desolate a piece of prose as you're likely to find in contemporary rock. Godspeed have a sound to match, the soundtrack to a post-apocalyptic world (a fact not lost on film director Danny Boyle).
1997 was a year that re-ignited my passion for music after a mid-90s slump when I lost interest in new bands. Godspeed where thrillingly elusive, it took me ages to even find out the names of the band, and unlike anything I'd heard at that point. They have gone on to become one of my absolute favourite bands.
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More late seventies pre-UK Punk excellence ...
An album I love more every time I play it. Patti Smith is a wonderfully unique artist and Horses is simply brilliant.
I think I've been using brilliant quite a lot in these posts but frankly I'm running out of superlatives and, to be honest, words of any sort.
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Is that the sound of brass I hear .... ?
This one must have been on 90% of the lists so far (there's been a few of us doing these for those of you not on Twitter).
If suggested listening to Dexy's to early 80s me I'd have laughed in your face. Well metaphorically, I'm too nice to actually do that but I'd probably have coughed awkwardly and tried to change the conversation. I was, as you'll already know if you've been keeping up, into Heavy Metal back then. I liked "proper" music, with loud guitars and even louder drums. I still do to some extent but there's now room in the chaos of noise for a bit of variety too.
I was also put off Dexy's by the constant radio play that Come On Eileen (from their second album) got. The dungarees and pencil moustaches didn't help much either. However, as you are no doubt tired of hearing, there's always a chance I'll work my way back to something eventually ...
... and I do have a HUGE weakness for brass.
Searching for the Young Soul Rebels is a wonderful record; great lyrics, amazing production, brilliant song-writing & bucket loads of brass.
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Next a late 70s band that I only got into recently ... Deja vu?
I first heard about Wire after Elastica massively ripped them off on their 1995 debut album. This eventually led to me buying a Wire best of, which I liked at the time but didn't result in any further exploration.
Marc Riley has played Wire a lot on his 6music show and that eventually convinced me to buy Change Becomes Us in 2013. That album made my Top 5 of 2013 and finally spurred me into getting the band's first three albums which are all utterly superb.
Second album, Chairs Missing, made my seventies list but hindsight has proved Pink Flag should have done as well. Pink Flag was released at the height of punk but is more arty than it's contemporaries, trailblazing a path for New Wave and Post Punk bands to follow.
By the way, I still love that Elastica album too, where would pop music be if you couldn't rip someone off every now and again?!
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Next a album that defined a scene, even if the band didn't really consider themselves part of it.
1989 was the year I stopped reading Kerrang! and started reading the NME. Baggy was the first scene to hit and The Stone Roses were a huge part of that, whether they liked it or not. I wasn't completely convinced by the whole Madchester thing, but I liked a few of the bands and, once I'd got over the fact Ian Brown couldn't sing, was soon won over by the Roses too.
Their debut absolutely nailed the Baggy sound and I don't think the band ever got near those heights again. I never saw them live, which I regret a little now, but that record didn't leave my turntable for at least a year.
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Next a lady I first saw live at Wembley not long after this album came out ...
She was supporting U2 in the early afternoon at Wembley Stadium which wasn't the ideal environment for anyone to do well. I was only vaguely aware of her and my music tastes weren't as broad back then (I was at a U2 gig for a start!). However, I do remember enjoying the fact so many U2 fans didn't like her and that began to make me think she'd be worth pursuing.
There's a bit of a recurring theme in these picks that it takes me around 10 years to appreciate the best artists and bands. In keeping with that it was her fifth album, Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea, that finally won me over. I've been working my way though her back catalogue since then and love all the ones I've got.
After something of a false start, Polly Jean is also very near the top of my list of artists I REALLY need to see live.
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I gotta a feelin' inside of me, it's kinda strange like a stormy sea ...
Having grown up with, and largely ignored, Eighties Goth Damned it was only fairly recently that I really heard their first two albums. Machine Gun Etiquette is great but their debut Damned, Damned, Damned is my favourite and did well in my Seventies list too.
Having already beaten everyone to the punch by releasing New Rose (which opens side two) as the first single by a British punk group, The Damned proved their organisational skills were second to none by making Damned Damned Damned the first full-length album released by a British punk group. The album begins with the frenetic Neat, Neat, Neat and the energy levels rarely let up from that point on. Guitarist Brian James wrote all the songs on the album with the exception of Rat Scabies' succinct and spikey Stab Your Back and a great cover of The Stooges' I Feel Alright.
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