I'll bite

I'll admit each of these is doing a lot of heavy lifting and all are standing in for probably a dozen other somehow-related albums. I've arranged them sort of in chronological order of when they peaked in importance for me. First row is mainly high school, discovering strands of punk, electronic, new wave, and nascent indie rock; primarily finding new things by browsing in record stores. Second row is college, when my horizons really started to broaden (and maybe solidify a bit more). A lot of indie and college rock but also more complex electronic music. I learned more from the internet and file sharing, but also my college radio station where I DJed for a couple years and the itinerant record seller who showed up in our student center every couple of weeks. Third row is post-college (so we're really condensing things at this point…), both discovering the depths of albums I only knew the singles from when I was younger, digging deeper into soul, roots, and world music, and strains of heavy music that I've only really started vibing with in the last 10 years or so.

Ask me to do this on another day and the 9 would probably be totally different. In fact, here's a credible alternate list:


Pulp - This is Hardcore
Spoon - A Series of Sneaks
Husker Dü - New Day Rising
Pere Ubu - Cloudland
Philip Jeck - Vinyl Coda
Neil Young - Everyone Knows this is Nowhere
Moondog - Moondog
David Bowie - Lodger
Electrelane - The Power Out

Mmmmm Jeck