Tom Lawrence: My top 10 favorite albums of all time...ever

Weezer - Pinkerton (1996)
The album was seen as a departure from the band’s original power pop sound for a much darker and more abrasive sound. Pinkerton has risen in stature to become one of the most highly-regarded albums of the 1990s, receiving much critical acclaim and is considered one of the most important albums of the nineties, having introduced the emo genre to a wider and more mainstream audience.

Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2002)
The album was named after a series of letters in the phonetic alphabet that Jeff Tweedy had heard on the Irdial box set The Conet Project: Recordings of Shortwave Numbers Stations. On the fourth track of the album, a woman repeats the words “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” numerous times; a clip from this song was placed in the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot song “Poor Places”.

Ben Folds Five - Whatever and Ever Amen (1997)
The entire album was recorded in a house Ben Folds rented in Chapel Hill. Due to this fact, the album has several lo-fi occurrences. A phone ring can be heard at approximately 2:54 in “Steven’s Last Night in Town”; Ben Folds has said the ring was a friend calling from Minnesota, but it came at such a perfect timing, the band decided to leave it in the song. Robert Sledge can be heard laughing slightly after it rings as well.

Death Cab for Cutie - The Photo Album (2001)
A review from Splendid Magazine said, “(Ben) Gibbard’s lyrics still pack the same emotional wallop, and Chris Walla’s production is still pristine, but the band has revealed a seething, visceral, rocking side of their music. They trade their cardigans for leather pants on the staccato guitar-driven “Blacking Out the Friction”, then kick things up a notch with the chugging, dissonance-laced “I was a Kaleidoscope”.”

Modest Mouse - Good News for People Who Love Bad News (2004)
The album scored two hits with “Float On” and “Ocean Breathes Salty” (both of which they performed on Saturday Night Live on November 13, 2004). The album was nominated for a Grammy for Best Alternative Rock Album that year.

Weezer - The Blue Album (1994)
During the recording sessions, founding guitarist Jason Cropper left the band and was replaced by current guitarist Brian Bell, leading to some speculation about how much Bell contributes to the album. While Bell’s vocals are clearly audible, frontman Rivers Cuomo re-recorded all of Cropper’s guitar parts in one day, each in one take.

The White Stripes - White Blood Cells (2002)
Considered the band’s commercial breakthrough, White Blood Cells peaked at number 61 on the Billboard 200, going Gold and selling over 500,000 units. The album also reached number 55 in the United Kingdom, being bolstered in both territories by the “Fell in Love with a Girl” single and its Lego-animation music video. Stylus magazine rated it the fifteenth greatest album of 2000-2005 while Pitchfork Media ranked it ninth on their list of the top 100 albums from 2000-2004.

Neutral Milk Hotel - In the Aeroplane Over the Sea (1998)
Jeff Mangum has described some of the songs off this album as based on urgent, recurring dreams he had of a Jewish family during World War II. It is a spiritually motivated work conceptually based on the beauty to be found in the horrific fate of Anne Frank. The band has been on hiatus since 1998. When asked in an interview if he intends to write another album, Mangum said, “I don’t know. It would be nice, but sometimes I kind of doubt it.”

Ben Kweller - Sha Sha (2002)
At age 19, Kweller moved to New York with his girlfriend Liz Smith, where he began his solo career. He played acoustic shows and self-released four EPs, comprising of songs he recorded in his apartment on a laptop computer. It was one of these EPs, Freak Out, It’s Ben Kweller, that caught the attention of Evan Dando, Jeff Tweedy, Juliana Hatfield and Guster, all who took him on tour with them.

The Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (2002)
The lyrics of Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots concern a diverse array of subject matter, mostly deeply melancholy ponderings about love, mortality, artificial emotion, pacifism, and deception, while telling the story of Yoshimi’s battle. A secret message from the band is included on the original album on the inside of the right spine. It reads “You Have Found The Secret Message, Do You Have too Much Time on Your Hands? …Let it Go”. It also features Japanese script. This script reads “Happiness can make you cry” (a line taken from the song “Do You Realize??”).

I have a lot of others too, which I’ll probably add to another list. Anyway, let me know what y’all think!