Underrated Albums That You Want the World to Know About: What’s on Your List?

This is not an easy post to write. I am going to talk about some­thing per­son­al. Yes, it’s time to dis­cuss under­rat­ed albums, a term that can mean so many things to so many peo­ple that we might as well talk about under­rat­ed dreams. But dreams can be shared, at least in pop cul­ture and the sub­cul­tur­al cav­erns beneath it. And peo­ple can share opin­ions about an under­rat­ed album, espe­cial­ly in the dis­parate com­mu­ni­ties of the inter­net, where devo­tees can find each oth­er eas­i­ly.

When I was younger this was not so easy. One might dis­cov­er an album at a local indie record shop and buy it just for the cov­er, hav­ing no idea what lay with­in. There were no songs on YouTube, Spo­ti­fy, or iTunes. (My generation’s walk­ing to school in the snow, uphill both ways.) One made chance dis­cov­er­ies at live shows and in the pages of print mag­a­zines. In such prim­i­tive con­di­tions, it was easy to find records that you and only you loved, from start to fin­ish, some­times believ­ing you must be the only per­son who had ever heard them.

As Richard Met­zger puts it at Dan­ger­ous Minds, in writ­ing about an under­rat­ed EP from a high­ly under­rat­ed band, “In the pre-Inter­net days, record col­lec­tion was more than mere­ly a hob­by. It was almost like… a way of life.”

I take this lit­tle nos­tal­gic trip to say that for me, under­rat­ed albums tend to fold into the cat­e­go­ry of under­rat­ed artists. Dis­cov­er­ing them wasn’t a mat­ter of cred—not at first. It was a secre­tive and pri­vate act, a tiny ado­les­cent rebel­lion against the bad taste of friends and fam­i­ly. Giv­en such musi­cal solip­sism, I find it hard to gauge what makes an album under­rat­ed. You’ll find lists aplen­ty, and they are odysseys of dis­cov­ery for the adven­tur­ous. Lists filled with less­er-known records from very well-known artists. Lists made of pic­ture gal­leries. Lists quot­ing such high-cred stars as Kurt Cobain, Björk, and Arcade Fire.

As for myself, I could go on for days, but humbly offer here a few eclec­tic albums that—start to finish—have cap­ti­vat­ed me over the years for var­i­ous rea­sons. At the top, hear “Which Witch,” from TK Webb’s crim­i­nal­ly under­rat­ed 2006 Phan­tom Parade, an album of plain­tive laments that sounds like a truck stop ashtray—hypnotic road­house coun­try blues played by the Vel­vet Under­ground with vocals parked some­where between Tom Waits and Cap­tain Beef­heart.

Below it, hear a short excerpt from what is very like­ly the strangest live album ever record­ed: Wire’s 1981 Doc­u­ment & Eye­wit­ness. It’s hard to imag­ine lis­ten­ing to it with­out the lin­er notes in hand, but the over­dubbed con­ver­sa­tion on “Everything’s Going to Be Nice” will give you a taste of what the con­cert was like. The band, writes Pitch­fork, “had pushed their art-stu­dent ten­den­cies to the break­ing point, turn­ing what was expect­ed to be a pogo-fueled punk show into a Dadaist, per­for­mance-art spec­ta­cle com­plete with Mor­ris-danc­ing bells and a live goose.”

This track rep­re­sents a brief inter­lude in the midst of record­ings that cap­ture the sound of a band tak­ing itself apart onstage before a bewil­dered audi­ence clam­or­ing for the hits (or, rather, the hit, “I2XU” from their clas­sic debut Pink Flag.)

In the Spo­ti­fy playlist above, in addi­tion to these two albums, hear for­mer Scream­ing Trees singer Mark Lanegan’s Bub­ble Gum, Eng­lish rock­a­bil­ly revival­ist Hol­ly Golight­ly & Dan Melchoir’s Des­per­ate Lit­tle Town, Afro-Turk­ish singer Esmeray’s 2013 col­lec­tion of hits En lyi­leriyle Esmer­ay (hits in her native land, maybe, but sad­ly not well known in the Eng­lish-speak­ing world), post-rock pio­neers Bark Psy­chosis’s 1994 Hex; the alter­na­tive­ly hyp­not­ic and hys­ter­i­cal Cana­di­an indie rock­ers Frog Eyes’ 2002 debut The Bloody Hand; Pissed Jeans’ most­ly ter­ri­fy­ing Hope for Men; Gillian Welch’s trad folk/country Soul Jour­ney (don’t miss clos­er “Wreck­ing Ball”); and the Sta­ple Singers under­rat­ed ear­ly albums Uncloudy Day & Will the Cir­cle Be Unbro­ken.

Depend­ing on my mood, these are albums I lis­ten to straight through—and think, while doing so, every­one should hear this. But of course the list is biased. Like telling peo­ple about your dreams, telling peo­ple about your favorite, under­rat­ed albums can nev­er approach the expe­ri­ence of lis­ten­ing to them your­self. Nonethe­less, read­er, a per­son­al ques­tion: what would you put on your list? What albums do you want fel­low OC read­ers to put on their radar? Tell us in the com­ments below. And if we get enough good replies, who knows, maybe we’ll pull togeth­er a big meta playlist we all could share.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the 50 Best Post-Punk Albums of All Time: A Nos­tal­gia-Induc­ing Playlist Curat­ed by Paste Mag­a­zine

The His­to­ry of Punk Rock in 200 Tracks: An 11-Hour Playlist Takes You From 1965 to 2016

Lis­ten to Rolling Stone’s “500 Great­est Songs of All Time” in One Stream­able Playlist

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness