Spiritualized "Ladies and Gentlemen... We are Floating in Space" (1997)

This is an absolute stone cold classic.  It's probably the best of the various mid to late 90s psych albums.  And yet somehow it seems to be rarely referenced.

Los Campesinos! "Hold On Now Youngster" (2008)

This is a record that already sounds incredibly dated.  And part of that is that it could have come from no other decade.  There's that frantic sense of kids just trying to have fun... but trying too hard.  That seemed to come about after 9/11.  The post punk urgency reduced to pure signifiers.  They were a bit of thing when this was released, but seem to have already faded into the footnotes of the time.

Small Faces "Singles As & Bs" (1994)

Basically this is just what it says on the tin.  How you like it will depend on how much you like British Invasion pop. 

Songs: Ohia "Axxess & Ace" (1999)

It's impossible for me to listen to this album and not think about the Magnolia Electric Company records that come later.  At its best it sounds like embryonic versions of that material. 

Samamidon "But This Chicken Proved False Hearted" (2007)

Interestingly enough, at this point the one word name indicates that this is a band, not a solo artist.  Even so, everything is more or less what he does.  Once again, the problem is that there's just not enough variety.  It's interesting for a song, but doesn't really sustain a whole record.

Bruce Springsteen "Greetings From Asbury Park, NJ" (1973)

Springsteen has to rank just below Dylan in terms of words spent on him.  The first thing that strikes me about this album is just how wordy it is.  It's amazingly dense in terms of lyrics.  Secondly, it makes me think of exactly how diverse and experimental radio actually was in the mid 1970s.  Now it's too easy to think of it as all butt rock.  But there were all kinds of records getting airplay.

Guy Davis "Sweetheart Like You" (2009)

Guy Davis is a fantastic modern blues performer.  For some reason he's just not mentioned when people discuss contemporary players.  On Sweetheart Like You, he expands his palatte somewhat including the titular Dylan song, which gives a more contemporary songwriter vibe to the album.