Albums That Are Good From Start to Finish

If you enjoy lush soundscapes and dreamy guitars that combine with a voice that almost dares you not to tiptoe into another world, well this is for you. Spacepop new wave at it's finest.

I used to believe that if you started this album with the 1930's version of 'Nosferatu' at just the point where Mina is playing with her cat- it would sync up perfectly. And maybe that in and of itself is enough to tell you why this is good from beginning to end. Bauhaus, largely credited with creating the gothpunk stigma are in full effect here, edgy, brooding and dark.

Placebo is one of those groups you love or you hate. Brian Molko's voice is an echo of the blatant ambiguous sexual deviance we live in and is offset nicely with the yearning nature the band's overall sound. Every song on this album is a gem.

It's hard not to love Kelli Ali and IAMX seperately, but this album is a pop masterpiece of trippy beats and coy sexuality.

Nerdcore rap as envisioned by Del Tha Funkee Homosapien, Dan the Automator and Doctor Octagon. Not only is every song on this album fun, but Del lays down amazing lyrics in this cyberpunk-rap masterpiece.

It is impossible to listen to this album and not want to have random dirty sex with a stranger you just met in a bar. Mike Patton, Jennifer Charles and once again Dan The Automator combine on a very different type of sound than Deltron 3030. Put this on, pour a martini and slip into a smoking jacket.

Thousands of others have done a much better job of telling you why this is great. Thousands of others are right. This is a record by which many others are judged. And with good reason.

Faith No More, my favorite "Hard Rock" act to come out of the late 80's hit their stride on "The Real Thing", but for my money this Album was their best. If you aren't in love by the time you've hit "RV" well... I'd check my awesome receptors if I were you.

Germany's Wolfsheim hit the US with this album. Songs like 'Once in a Lifetime' and 'Touch' are club mainstays, but the whole album is a touching piece of art that blends love and synthop in places that don't ever step over the line into cheesy.

Kosheen, a band that burned bright, hard and fast launched this amazing first album and almost completely disappeared afterwards. One of the best attempts to mix drum n bass and pop I've ever experienced, every song on the album is better than the last.

I'll be the first to acknowledge that Front 242 is not for everyone. Fuck Up Evil is one of two albums released in the same year by 242, and this is in my opinion the better of the two. Catchy, danceable, and riding the crest of the industrial/cyberpunk wave of the mid 90's this was an album ahead of it's time and still feels relevant when I listen to it today.

Tom Waits makes me feel like a man. His lyrics touch something primal, dark and human. Like a walk down roads of past Americana with a man who gargles razorblades, chain smokes Lucky Strikes and swallows a gallon of bourbon a day.

The exact opposite of Tom Waits being Norah Jones. A voice that makes me close my eyes and pretend that I'm sitting on a porch swing in the early part of summer with a beautiful lazy songstress beside me. The songs aren't all that varied, but they flow to become one continuous daydream.

If you are in a car and want to scare everyone around you, turn up this album and scream along. This is the dark place for me. When the bile is rising I can go for an hour of loathing and introspection. This album feels dirty to me. Like a place I don't want to talk about, I tend to listen to this alone and in a very specific mood.

This is an album everyone I know owns. This is an album everyone I know loves. There's no one thing. Its an amalgam of emotion, sorrow, joy and mystery wrapped up in dark fairy tales synths and gorgeous guitars.

The range of base emotions lives on this this album. Lust, hate, loss, regret- they all take turns coming to the forefront of Trent Reznor's concept vision album. I bought this the day it came out in 1994 and there has never been a time that I didn't enjoy it from beginning to end.