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On the heels of Spring '07's much-debated "Top 25 Modern Hip-Hop Albums" list, the DT Music Staff brings you a collection of the best college rock albums of all time. Pioneered in the 1980s by groups like R.E.M. and the Pixies, college rock is an admittedly awful title assigned to an often contradictory style of music. Rock music for smart kids? Not quite. Albums by the Pixies and every band that copped their style? Getting warmer.
Five of the Daily Texan's most opinionated and disagreeable music writers convened for one common purpose: To help you buy albums that indie snobs are snickering at you for not owning. Five a day for the rest of the week, so prepare to earn some serious Best Buy Reward Zone points.
- Zach Ernst Fugazi
13 Songs
Dischord, 1989 Among the influential punk and alternative rock bands of the last 20 years, no group stands taller than Fugazi, the Washington D.C.-based hardcore outfit known for their business practices as well as their music. Among their countless releases, none equates the impact of their debut. A mash-up of two previous EPs - Fugazi and Margin Walker - it's the prototypical Fugazi release, incorporating punk, noise and dub influences, topped off by the interplay between Ian McKaye and Guy Picciotto's guitars. Tackling subjects like gender objectification in "Suggestion" and substance abuse in "Glue Man" its topical content is all too appropriate for a band that refuses to sell T-shirts or give interviews to magazines with alcohol or nicotine ads. Fugazi would eventually release more than a half-dozen recordings, but 13 lit the path the band - and a legion of imitators - would follow for years to come.
- Patrick Caldwell
At the Drive-In
In/Casino/Out
Fearless, 1998 Like most kick-ass collectives, the best band El Paso, Texas, ever put together burned out and imploded just as it reached a creative peak. The delicate balance between artists cracked, and in this case, two marginally successful but ultimately disappointing acts emerged from the wreckage of At the Drive-In. Cedric Bixler-Zavala's Mars Volta fell into ambitious, Carlos Santana guitar masturbation, while Jim Ward's Sparta does one-dimensional modern rock at an alarmingly efficient rate. Both serve as relics of a fruitful past and reminders of what should've been.
In their prime, no one could touch these five 'fro bros onstage. Their primal, instrument-punishing sets punctuated one of the most vital, innovative periods in punk rock: Emo, in the days before it became a derogatory label that bands now shun when confronted with the title.
Struggling to catch this viral live aura in the studio, Casino was conceived as a live studio album - 40 raw minutes finding Bixler-Zavala's posse splendidly in sync with his calculated assault of cryptic one-liners.
Culturally, At the Drive-In's status blanketed Texas' alternative youth. They anchored scenes across the state, helped put Emo's (Austin's premier punk dive) on the map through its inclusion in the MTV-circulated "One Armed Scissor" video and fashioned countless collegiate Mexicans with the signature "afro-horn rim glasses, skinny-jeans and skinny-tee" look.
Well, at least they ruled.
- Ramon Ramirez
Yo La Tengo
I Can Hear the Heart Beating As One
Matador, 1997 The proper way to measure the quality of a Yo La Tengo album is to figure out how many genres they master. As their best work, Heart regulates finger-picking bossanova, delicious pop, proto-punk romp and a Beach Boys cover that sounds more like the Velvet Underground. Yo La Tengo may mean "I have it" in Spanish, but this was their first album where lead singer Ira "the Jewish Jimi Hendrix" could proclaim "Yo Lo Tengo Todo."
- J. Ridewood
The Strokes
Is This It?
RCA, 2001 Probably the most hyped album of the entire list, the Strokes' debut LP exceeded expectations and made a group of 20 year-old New York kids into bona fide rock stars. Combining Marquee Moon guitar interplay with fuzzy vocals (and one great Little Richard howl), the Strokes made NYC 2001 feel like NYC 1981. Featuring all three of the band's charting singles, Is This It? set a ridiculously high standard that Julian and Co. haven't matched since. Truly groundbreaking and totally enjoyable from beginning to end.
- ZE
Guided By Voices
Bee Thousand
Scat, 1994 Few bands, after releasing seven albums in relative anonymity, could possibly expect to make much of a splash with their eighth. Fortunately for disenchanted, music-loving youths, exceptions come along every few years. Guided By Voices's lo-fi Bee Thousand was an indie rock album before the term existed, a crystallized combination of jangly pop with garage rock enthusiasm. Careening from poppy numbers like "Tractor Rape Chain" to rockers like "I Am a Scientist" with reckless abandon, Bee manages to jam a million discordant sounds into a cohesive, epic whole. Like a good piece of candy, it goes down awfully quickly, with only one track crossing the three- minute mark - and then only by four seconds. In other words, it's the definition of short and sweet. - PC
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