Some bands just come out of nowhere with something incredible, new and fully formed – like as if you’re walking down the street and then someone suddenly steps out of a shop doorway and clubs you over the head with a frozen trout. Other great acts creep up slowly and grow on you as they grow themselves. Lots of awesome and well-known bands have obscure and mysterious origins with potentially embarrassing limited edition/low budget/simply not very good debuts. Others simply churn out so many records that it’s easy to lose track of which was released when. It struck me just now while listening to Swervedriver what an awesome debut album Raise is, and how they never really did anything to match it. And then by comparison I thought about Oval, a band I love with all my heart, and how their debut, Wohnton, is pretty lame. And then how Spiderland is so superior to Tweeze.

So here, for no good reason, is a list of 30 of the greatest debut albums of all time (in my biased, not particularly knowledgable opinion, and as far as I can remember). In the interests of discussion, who have I missed?

Swervedriver – Raise
Panasonic – Vakio
Fushitsusha – I
Jimi Hendrix – Are You Experienced?
The Smiths
Suicide
The Fall – Live at the Witch Trials
Can – Monster Movie (or Delay, whichever you want to class as their debut)
Moonshake – Eva Luna
Mogwai – Young Team
The Pop Group – Y
AMP – Sirenes
This Heat
Cocteau Twins – Garlands
AMM – AMMusic
Erase Errata – Other Animals
Napalm Death – Scum
Nirvana – Bleach
Part Chimp – Chart Pimp
Polvo – Cor-crane Secret
Laddio Bolocko – The Strange Warmings Of
Rollerskate Skinny – Shoulder Voices
Scott Walker – Scott
Lemon Kittens – We Buy A Hammer For Daddy
The Stooges
Pink Floyd – Piper At The Gates Of Dawn
Unsane
LFO – Frequencies
Einstürzende Neubauten – Kollaps
Happy Flowers – My Skin Covers My Body

Posted: 05|3|06 at 10:21 pm. Filed under: lists, questions.
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