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Originally Posted by jetengine
There are simply too many albums to narrow down to one "favourite" or "the best", and--regardless of what the most boneheaded critics might say--the albums are simply too nuanced and diverse to compare to one another. (How can anyone properly compare and contrast albums so different as Bad Moon Rising, Master=Dik, Daydream Nation, The Whitey Album, Dirty and Goodbye 20th Century without feeling like s/he's putting The Ramones through a King Crimson filter or vice versa?)
Probably Sister is their most definitive album, and would be regarded as such--rather than Daydream Nation--by most fans and critics alike, if it had been a double album, thus allowing for a percentage of longer numbers that represent the improvisational side of the band. (Also, the double albums generally seem to be the only SY records that both the fans and critics agree positively on: Walls Have Ears, Daydream Nation, Dirty, Sonic Nurse, etc. The single LPs usually go one way or the other: the fans love Goo, Experimental Jet Set, Rather Ripped, etc. while the critics are hesitant; the critics love Bad Moon Rising, NYC Ghosts & Flowers, Murray St., etc. while the fans report being "disappointed.") Right down to its chaos theory-inspired artwork and surreal/beatnik lyrics, Sister is very probably the album most representaive of the group and everything they're about. Why, why, didn't they pull out all the stops and make it a double...?
Lyrically, the best albums are Sister, Daydream Nation, A Thousand Leaves and (the absolute best) NYC Ghosts & Flowers. Some people insist on also including EVOL (probably owing to the dark surrealism and Lee's coming-into-his-own on "Kingdom #19") and Washing Machine ("Diamond Sea" and Lee's two numbers probably stand out for them), but other than that, most fans seem to be in general agreement over these four choices.
Speaking of Washing Machine, I think the fact that so many fans tend to look down on--or outright ignore--this album has a lot to do with its sounding "unfinished"--at least for those who prefer SY on vinyl. "My Arena" was left off at the last minute, and the second half of "Becuz" got transferred to Side Three; as a result, it sounds like a three-sided album stretched out over four sides with a very short Side One. Also, the number--and length--of the outtakes, alternate takes, live tracks, etc. that wound up being used as b-sides or bonus tracks on foreign versions seem to suggest that it could (should?) have been a triple or even quadruple album. (It would make a great 4-LP/2-CD package in their remastered series, don't you think?) Actually, a similar argument can be made about the double vinyl version of Sonic Nurse: Why weren't "Kim's Chords", "Beautiful Plateau" and "Fire Engine (Dream)" included as bonus tracks in order to "fill it out"?
On a more personal note, I've had a thing for A Thousand Leaves ever since it emerged almost a decade ago. Like several other people out there have been reporting, it seems to tie in with the Jodie Foster films, Laird Koenig novels, and beatnik literature of my youth. Whether some of these references were intended by the band or not is debatable. There's been plenty of fighting going on at some of the other forums; and at one of the Jodie Foster websites, the album has been discussed and treated almost shrine-like by some Foster freaks.
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