If you take a look at a list of the greatest albums of all time, you'll find albums by the Beatles, the Beach Boys, Radiohead, huge bands that recorded with expensive equipment and talented producers. Any true indie fan will tell you, though, that you don't need top-notch production to create a top-notch album. Here are eight albums that are classics despite their less-than-stellar production.
1. Dirty Beaches - Badlands (2011)
If Badlands had been recorded on hi-fi equipment, it probably wouldn't have worked. If each instrument were crystal clear and each word were decipherable, the album would go from being an eerie lo-fi classic to being an awkward collection of rockabilly songs. Because it's recorded so roughly, though, each track sounds like a mental patient singing over rockabilly records at the bottom of a cave, and I mean that as a compliment.
2. Guided By Voices - Alien Lanes (1995)
Guided By Voices had always recorded their albums on a four track in their basement, but when they were signed to Matador Records, the label gave them a budget to go and record their album Alien Lanes in an actual studio. Legend has it that they recorded at home anyway, and spent the budget on beer instead. Alien Lanes definitely sounds like a home-cooked album, but the songs are among the best they ever wrote.
3. The Stooges - Raw Power (1973)
The Stooges' second album Fun House has such a punchy, crisp production to it that it's shocking how bad Raw Power sounds by comparison. Here's an album that actually was recorded in a real studio (by none other than David Bowie) but due to the microscopic budget, was mixed in a single day, and it definitely sounds like it. Despite the bizarre mixing, any album with "Search & Destroy" as the opening track must be a classic.
4. Cleaners from Venus - Midnight Cleaners (1982)
Unlike Badlands, Midnight Cleaners would likely have still worked as a hi-fi production, but it just wouldn't feel the same. This album sounds like it would be playing in the background as a teenage boy looks out his window on a rainy day in the UK, and that's exactly how it should be.
5. Bruce Springsteen - Nebraska (1982)
When Bruce Springsteen recorded the songs that became Nebraska, they were demoing songs that were later going to be rearranged with the E Street Band. When Springsteen was unsatisfied with these new versions, however, he decided to release the demo tape instead. The resulting album is undoubtedly Springsteen's darkest, a collection of acoustic ballads about murderers and families living in poverty.
6. Palace Brothers - Days in the Wake (1994)
Although the name of the band was "Palace Brothers," most of this album is just one man, Will Oldham, singing folk songs by himself in what is probably a cabin in the woods (I have no proof, but it just feels like it was). Though Oldham would go on to reinvent himself with greater success as Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, Days in the Wake represents the truest essence of Oldham's music; raw, unsettling, and emotionally distant.
7. Car Seat Headrest - My Back is Killing Me (2011)
Between May 2010 and March 2011, Car Seat Headrest, the lo-fi project of Virginia's Will Toledo, released six albums, somehow. The best of these is the last one released, My Back is Killing Me, which combines Guided By Voices' stream-of-consciousness power-pop with Ty Segall's psych-garage. Much like those two artists, the recordings are muddled and fuzzy, but that only adds to the charm.
8. Elliott Smith - Roman Candle (1993)
Before he performed at the Oscars and became big enough to record in a real studio, Elliott Smith recorded oppressively dark folk songs into a four-track at his girlfriend's house. Each song sounds like it was recorded in the middle of the night as Smith tried to not wake anyone up. Even the electric guitars seem too scared to rise above a hum.
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