Van Morrison sist at #3 on my list of the best albums of 1970 with his third release, Moondance. This record could easily claim the #1 position but I have a soft spot for the two albums still to come.
The folk, soul and R&B sounds on this album, paired with Morrison’s unique vocals, put it in a class all its own. I can’t say that I reach for Moondance on a regular basis, but every time I hear it I wonder why I ever bother listening to anything else.
My fourth favorite album from 1970 is the final record by Simon & garfunkel, Bridge Over Troubled Water. I’ve already featured five of this album’s 11 songs on the blog so clearly it hits a nerve.
This record was a smash hit for the duo. In fact, for the decade before the release of Michael Jackson’s Thriller in 1982, this was the best-selling album of all time. But Simon and Garfunkel has already decided to part ways. The front cover, with Simon partially obscuring Garfunkel’s face, was perhaps unintentionally symbolic of the dynamic between them.
Last year I started a new ‘Decades’ series by focusing on my birth year, 1972, then 1982, 1992 and 2002, counting down my own favorite albums from each of those years and then 10-15 unfamiliar (to me) albums that received acclaim at the time.
I’m doing the same thing again, backing up a couple of years and focusing on 1970, ’80, ’90 and ’00. The next several weeks will be dedicated to 1970.
Wrapping up my look back at 2002 is a song from Low’s sixth studio album, Trust. Low is a Minnesota-based trio that performs a genre sometimes called slowcore or sadcore.
Think crawling tempos, lots of reverb, depressing lyrics. You know, for kids.
Allow me to pause to acknowledge my parents’ 50th anniversary, which they’re celebrating today. I hoped to find an appropriate song with which to acknowledge the milestone, but I wound up with a 8-minute dirge about heroin addiction. Sorry, mom and dad!
Australian band The Vines released their debut album, Highly Evolved, in 2002 to critical acclaim. They were hailed as one of the best new rock bands to emerge during the period where The Strokes and The White Stripes were also earning raves.
I never really got on board with that slate of garage band revivals. I dabbled in The White Stripes several years later when Jack White took their music in more interesting directions.
Meet Me In Montauk 