I couldn’t ever hope to match the output or quality of buddy Chris Allen’s recent record reviews, but I will say that I have enjoyed the hell out of watching him stretch his critical muscles in a way I never would have predicted, despite having been aware for years of his deep love for music. Thus inspired, I thought I’d run down a list of five of my favourite albums. Not my “Top Five,” but five CDs that mean quite a lot to me, and in most cases, have for many years.

The Church  - Starfish

The flawless production on this album full of great and near-great songs make it one of my favourites of the 1980s and a frequent virtual spin on my MP3 player. “Under The Milky Way” has always struck a pretty profound chord with me, but the spacey, mysterious “Destination,” the propulsive “Reptile” and the charming “Hotel Womb” always get me humming along too.

Simple Minds - Once Upon a Time

Simple Minds is too gifted a band for me to really single out one album as a favourite, but this one came out during my critical college radio years and almost every track is a pop masterpiece. Five of the eight tracks are on my cherished homemade compilation CD (which really is just a file folder on my PC and MP3 player, as I have no CD player at the moment — the screwy wiring in our house seems to burn them out within days every time I invest in a new one). “Alive and Kicking” is one of those songs that I don’t think about every day, but when I hear it I realize it’s one of the great anthems of my personal life soundtrack.

David Byrne and Brian Eno - Everything That Happens Will Happen Today

I wrote about this album fairly extensively not long ago, so go read that post and gaze in wide wonder that I forgot to even mention “Strange Overtones,” one of the two or three best songs on the album, and the only single to get any airplay at all, as far as I know. What we once would have thought of as “Side One” (in other words, the first half of the CD, youngster) is a knockout, and a big “Screw you” to whichever reviewer it was that disparaged the eerie third track, “I My Stuff,” which I think is one of Byrne’s better solo tracks.

Pete Townshend - White City A Novel

A concept album that I am too lazy to look up the concept of, but you know where Wikipedia is if you really care. Now, I am not a huge fan of The Who; my compilation folder for them, I think, has six songs in it, including all the CSI theme songs, because I just happen to really like those tracks, not because I like CSI (I really, truly don’t). But this solo Townshend album gets pretty frequent play at my house, because it just seems very personal and raw and also features some amazing contributions from David Gilmour on guitar. I don’t think or care about music as much as a lot of people I like and respect (I’m talking right at you, Christopher Allen!), but I wish I did. But at least I do have a few guitar gods in my personal pantheon, including Lindsey Buckingham, Mark Knopfler, and David Gilmour, all of whom astonish and amaze me with their ability to use a piece of wood and some metal bits to craft a second voice for themselves that is uniquely their own. White City A Novel has in common with all the other albums on this list the fact that it just works from start to finish, with little-to-no unnecessary bits on it.

Tool - Lateralus

Tool is a band that, 15 years ago, not only would I have not liked, but would have actively run like hell from. The weird iconography, the frequently disturbing subject matter of their music, hell, the band’s very name would have driven me away. But for some reason, one night talking to d. emerson eddy on AIM during the heyday of Comic Book Galaxy, he mentioned the song “Schism” (a brilliant, standout track on this album packed full of ‘em) to me, and I listened to it, and my musical universe expanded just a bit. The propulsive guitar, the stupefying loudness and profound stillness, and the mercurial vocal instrument of Maynard James Keenan all drive themselves right into the core of my being, and this album, their best, does it better than any other.