The eMusic Dozen: My Dozen

I found out about it when Merge Records sent me a copy. The first few times I heard it I thought, This is really good, but I didn't quite become obsessed with it until I listened to it three or four times. Then I thought, "This is just amazing." That's the way so many great records are — they sneak up on you. The songs and the performances on this are so powerful. The first one I latched onto was "Crown of Love." It has this immediate emotion that made me listen. And once I knew they could do that, I started listening more closely. I told Win that — I really think people are going to buy reissues of this record 20, 30 years from now. It's a quality record the whole way through. It's just totally grand. "Neighborhood #3" is another place to start, or "Power Out."

I don't know much about Neal Caine — I found out about his music on NPR. I heard it and thought it was great and I jotted down a note to go find it. I looked in four or five record stores and didn't find it — and there it was on eMusic! Jazz is not my forte but I have some appreciation for it. This just sounded to me like a classic jazz record, it had great melodies and a great feel to it. It just has a classic vibe. I love really produced records and that may be the kind of record I've bought the most of, but I love a good band that can play together and those guys can certainly play together.

I remember it came out in early fall of 1998— I'd just come back from touring and it was right when I was breaking up with my girlfriend. And I'd recently moved back to Austin and I didn't have anywhere to live and it was raining all the time. I immediately go back to that time when I hear this record. It just has that feeling the whole way through. You know how a record’s association with a time in your life can do a number on you — this one does that for me. And it’s an emotional record to begin with.

They're very British. I got into them in the summer of 2001 when I went to Connecticut for two months to write in this town where I didn't know anyone — a lot of alone time. I was listening to Suburban Light, a gorgeous, hazy record. With Strange Geometry, there's really nobody like them. I'd call it mildly psychedelic music. It's colorful. We took them out on tour in the summer of 2005 and it was so great to get to watch them every night before we went on. They're a different band from Spoon. There have been times when I tried to learn their songs and wanted to write a song in that kind of mood but it's not my strong suit. Alasdair tunes weird and he doesn't play the chords in a way that are traditional. I guess they are trippy, but I never thought you had to trip to psychedelic music — it was more of a tag for selling it. I've never done acid and I can certainly appreciate the13th Floor Elevators.

Lots of times the words have nothing to do with the feeling you're putting out. The Cocteau Twins are great like that. This one gives me a strong feeling the whole way through, a calming and sort of mysterious feeling. It's like a lot of my favorite records — it gets you into a mood and keeps you there. It feels kind of romantic to me. I guess it's probably the quietest record they made. There's nobody that sounds like the Cocteau Twins.

My dad would play Creedence a lot, usually Willy and the Poor Boys. I'm not all about rootsy music but they're undeniably great, and this album has all the hits. It feels like working class music to me — it's soulful, it's a backwoods sort of rock & roll. But all of those things wouldn't mean anything if the songs and singing weren't as great as they are. Fogerty's voice is one of the greatest in rock & roll. I especially like "Travelin' Band" and "Have You Ever Seen the Rain." "Hey Tonight" is a great pop song.

One of the good things about being in a band in a van, driving around, is you hear what everybody else is listening to. And someone in the band was playing Keith's album Black Elvis/Lost in Space in about 2002. At first I wasn't really paying attention and then I heard him say, "In my monkey-green ragtop DeVille." I was like, "What is 'monkey green?'”

This one I found out about when I was subletting someone's house and she had a good CD collection. He's one of the best lyricists going. I'd start with "Lonely Highway," "Crowd of Drifters" and "Fear of Trains."

This was Rollins' first Black Flag album and the band really came together with his addition. It was a great record for having tons of energy and little to do with it, as is often the case when you're young. Start with "Gimmie Gimmie Gimmie" and "Rise Above."

It's one of my favorite rock records ever — the songs are consistently great and they go to a lot of places. It has the big ups, some sad songs, some weird songs; it goes all over the place. Malkmus has this way of going to falsetto where you weren't expecting and it feels like your stomach is turning 'cause there's so much emotion. "Stop Breathing" is one of the saddest things I've ever heard and I’m not sure what it's about. I remember driving to work playing "Unfair" over and over again.