Revisited: Benjamin Schmidt's 15 Favorite Albums of All Time
Revisiting a list originally published in September 2014, life has a way of changing and staying the same. After eight years, does the editor-in-chief of The Interior Review stand by his picks for the 15 Favorite Albums of All Time? Original anecdotes are presented here as quotes.
Honorable mention: Gillian Hills (never put out an album, only singles and an EP)
A British girl who only sang in french, very yè-yè, very 60's. VERY specific aesthetic, loungy and reasonably campy. Be sure to drive a convertible or shower with your significant other with the song ‘Près de la Cascade’ playing. Additionally, this work is great for a transatlantic crossing and obviously, fucking around near the French Riviera.
Holds its position as an honorable mention. The 60s gave us so much mood music… It was dripping in sex, space, discretion, charm, hope; boredom. Folk sound also came from this time and early electronic music as well. The 60s spoiled the world.
Benjamin Schmidt's 15 Favorite Albums of All Time
15. Electric Light Orchestra (ELO) — Out Of The Blue
I kind of grew up on this album, asking my parents to put in the ‘yellow tape’ on long drives to a vineyard that the late king of Saudi Arabia gifted them in the early 2000's. Great for the aforementioned and impressing your Fairfax County uncle who thought ELO and the Bee-Gee’s were the same band.
This one stays. This one doesn’t offer comfort or nostalgia. I’ve grown into this music. It’s leisure music, but it’s easy music. I feel adult, in control, and willing to bear responsibility while letting childlike motives lead.
14. David Gray — White Ladder
Another from my early years, I didn’t like this album too much as an 8 year old child, actually very much hated it because it was so sad and dark and I lived in the countryside in a big dark semi-unfurnished house… the whole period of my life was dim and unfortunate (Think Ms. Havisham from ‘Great Expectations’), but upon a recent listen, i have a renewed love for it. I’m almost nostalgic for that misery… good if you have an 8 year old who is not convinced love and romance is meaningless and likely to leave you depressed.
14. Joan Baez — Farewell, Angelina (NEW)
I’m evicting David Gray’s White Ladder from the list in exchange for Joan Baez’s Farewell, Angelina (1965). Joan came into my life as I was graduating college. Effectively, Joan would have been just a bit older than me at the time of this album’s release and the end of college is a vital time. No one takes you seriously but you think it’s all serious from here on out. The only thing that matters is fighting for relevancy. I was coming off some of my highest-paid jobs in my life and blowing through cash while swearing to myself I’d never leave New York City. I needed the amused misery of Dylan’s lyrics (decadent observer status) paired with Joan’s global view and watery voice that sometimes struck rocks to get through.
13. Ponytail — Do Whatever You Want All The Time
Both tremendously disruptive and totally minimal, DWYWATT is an album I can both dwell on and rock out to. Truly, freak out your roommates by bursting in the door with ‘Beg Waves’ blasting through your Apple earphones. Good for dancing by yourself. Try playing the first 30 seconds of any Ponytail song for your father to ‘give him an idea of where you are in life’.
13. Young Thug - Beautiful Thugger Girls (new)
Bold, rich, happy. Young Thug made sense to me from the start, and everything YSL has made, I’ve identified with. At the very least, sonically, and the most, with the very concept being explored. Floating 30,000 feet above the ground, Beautiful Thugger Girls got pigeonholed as a “country album” but in reality, it’s a lavish and sleekly-assembled collection of postcards and anecdotes of life at or near the top of accomplishment. It’s not to say anyone has solved everything. But the higher you go, the less achievement (in the classical sense) makes sense. You’re setting the rules, you’re defining the benchmark. You’re now the standard. Your relatability diminishes exponentially. Expectations are warped beyond belief. On Beautiful Thugger Girls, Young Thug accepts it and describes daily life amid this complex territory.
12. Dixie Chicks — Fly
I’m usually intolerant to country music, but it’s impossible to skip any song on this album. many memories with this one. ‘Sin Wagon’ and ‘Hole In My Head’ both are incredibly intense and could be regarded as feminist anthems.
I’ll only elaborate on my writing in 2014. I was shortsighted in choosing to limit my exposure to country music as I mentioned in my note. I’m glad I got over it. Since then, I’ve travelled both literally and mentally. I worked in Italy for two years. I dated a German for two more. I moved to Los Angeles and drove back. Things shifted. The delight of the unfamiliar could occasionally tip into homesickness. Country music became the refuge and the return. The warm hug and a reminder of where, in part, I came from. Now I appreciate in all forms, from the minute-long yodels to the rags to even rap country. Interestingly, my favorite songs have shifted from the burners of ‘Sin Wagon’ and ‘Hole In my Head’ to the more gentle, earnest calls of ‘Let Him Fly’.
11. Cults — Cults
introspective and triump[h]ant, ‘Cults’ feels sunny and bright, but deals with problems I only wish I had. Good for impressing your friends that are indie only in name, not in practice.
At the time, this was right. Cults as an album was youth. I was still in Cincinnati, Ohio at the time- high school- diving deep into the depths of hipsterdom, where Pitchfork stayed open and Hipster Runoff was updated regularly. I wasn’t old enough to be involved in it, but I was in the front row of the spectacle. Cults also represents the reality that I lived my entire 2009-2012 on Tumblr, for better or for worse. Tumblr was a living room, or a house, or something. Discourse wasn’t happening. Nothing was really happening. But Cults gave that idle existence a soundtrack that made it feel like something was happening.
10. Friends — Manifest!
Samantha Urbani is one of the smartest chicks in indie music and made this one-off gem of an album. Both bass and percussion heavy, it’s an easy listen. A danceable listen. Irritating to a lot of my friends only because they don’t understand tasteful reverb. Good for listening at the beach or aboard a kayak. Not recommended for sitting in traffic.
Though it holds up, I’m not looking for this album for inspiration and reminders. If the stray Friends song comes on shuffle, I’ll play it out. Some albums do that: they live in your corner and take up a lot of space because they answered a demand that life at the time wanted satisfied. I was a junior in high school. I was alone a lot, but not in an alarming way. I also wasn’t doing extracurriculars, but I was driving around in my dad’s Jaguar, exploring every corner of Cincinnati. I knew I had to roll out sooner than later.
10. Luomo — Vocalcity (NEW)
It was an ex-boyfriend who taught me I could determine how cheap windows were by how wavy the glass looked. Luomo taught me that music could sound cheap, too. Separately, I started playing with time. How fast could I make it feel? How slow could I make it go? Luomo’s Vocalcity was critical in letting time loosen its hold on me, then guiding me toward some semblance of security and control, and ultimately, a sense of quality. Vocalcity sounds unbelievably well-made. Not valuable because of the brand, but because of the raw engineering prowess. I was forced to step my own work up.
9. Braids — Native Speaker
If this album was a room, it’d be tall and big and white and pure. If this album was a conversation, it’d be one with surprise and anger and eventual satisfaction. Good for when it’s 3 am and you’re online, reading about how to get through the boarder crossing at the Gaza Strip, looking at Google Streetviews of Enya’s house or, perhaps simultaneously, mentally addressing the reality that you will die some day.
8. Real Estate — Real Estate
The album that soundtracked the summers on the New England coast and on the water. Lazy guitar, meandering percussion and lyrics discussing petty issues (one song is about losing a Rolex in the sand), its music that you can snooze to, but with the occasional triumphant swell, will wake you up. Good for real sailing, no Maltese-Falcon shit. Good for drives in the following automobiles: 1990 BMW 325i, 1990 Mercedes-Benz 190E, 2001 VW Cabrio.
7. Tennis — Cape Dory
Two musicians buy a boat and sail around the atlantic coast of America. This album is the result. Play on a sunny day only.
Music has seasons. I stand by this. You have Christmas music. I have summer music. I wouldn’t dare touch this one outside of the sunlight.
6. Wavves — Wavves
Lo-fi and beachy and rude, this album is my favorite of all the wavves albums (runner-ups being ‘king of the beach’ and ‘wavvves’, respectively). this album basically guided me, for better or for worse, during my sophomore year of high school. In 2010 Wavves went all mainstreamy with the ‘king of the beach’ album. Technically it was some of the best new music of 2010 it was totally different than the original wavves albums because it took advantage of an actual recording studio, instead of a basement. it was a giant bitch slap to all the original wavves lovers, but the album was equally addicting as the others, for original wavves’ fans and ‘pseudofans’ alike, pseudofans being people that only listened to “wavves fake shit” [via original wavves fan].
What the fuck was I talking about? Whatever it was, I stand by it.
5. tUnE-yArDs — w h o k i l l
Listened to this relentlessly while spending a month on the Chesapeake bay, riding my bike to and from Annapolis.
This album retains its place because it represents the experimental edge that lives between my folk-oriented self and sleek click + cuts lounge self. It’s triumphant, unabashedly political, and Merrill Garbus’ voice is the one of a best friend’s loving mother who scolds you and praises you as if you’ve always been part of the household.
4. Vampire Weekend — Contra
in these top few, I really had to choose my very favorite album, despite liking the artist or band’s entire body of work. I most closely associate with this particular Vampire Weekend album for its lyrics, literally living out the story of ‘Diplomat’s Son’ on at least four different occasions. it was my first introduction to VW (Taxi Cab was the very first — heard on Last.fm in 2010), and has left a lasting impression on my very personality.
The way the lyrics of ‘Diplomat’s Son’ have never stopped being a reoccurring series of plots in my life is remarkable. The lyrics of a Vampire Weekend song have not been any less relevant to me as time has passed, but the meaning and my orientation in reference to them has changed. The aesthetics live on. The sociology of it all!
3. M.I.A. — Kala
M.I.A. can really do no wrong, and her music is thoroughly modern, but ‘Kala’ has stood the test of time the best. With lyrics still relevant and relatively controversial and beats that go just hard enough, Kala is M.I.A.’s magnum opus. (but vikki leekx is VERY close behind). Nice one to bump up a party. And, dammit, who on earth doesn’t like ‘Paper Planes’?
I’d realize M.I.A. can do things wrong. But, her impact on my creative process remains present to this day. At job interviews, I lead with my ability to navigate the world conceptually (a remarkably differentiating factor; who knew). I credit M.I.A. for this.
2. Henry Mancini — ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ soundtrack
See below.
1. Fantasea — Azealia Banks
Both Fantasea and ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ soundtracked wild parties, groggy morning drives to school, late night drives from work, fancy evenings in the city and criminal evenings i had piles of homework (or that one time I did my entire Cooper Union application in one night). Fantasea with the only thing i listened to when I worked at google ventures. literally. Breakfast at tiffany’s was my go-to movie and album (though invictus is creeping up there, olé). Both enriched bike rides and 5k runs, beachside relaxing or a jacuzzi soak. These albums are totally different yet they are playable in almost every situation, and every song have some story associated with them. these albums made me feel powerful, handsome, sophisticated, restrained (Mancini), uninhibited (Banks). Truly context-centric works that have the ability to bend with the environment, they fall back and simply complete the scene, adding the final detail that makes a moment a memory.