Darkness on the Edge of Town - Bruce Springsteen

It has been a while. Encouraged by our only fan and the fact I am home alone for the first time in three and a half years, I have poured a glass of red and put on the warm blanket that is Bruce Springsteen.

Three years in Amman and two kids later, B and I have left the blog dormant but not the music (or frankly, the drinking). There is a little more Elizabeth Mitchell and Play School than in the past, but plenty of new music - Chance the Rapper, Solange, Car Seat Headrest. Mostly there has been a lot of folk and bluegrass; in a moment of madness, B bought some Willie Watson bandanas at his Melbourne gig last week.

But let's get back to Bruce. I've decided that Darkness is Bruce's greatest album. I've quite possibly said the same thing about Nebraska and Born to Run. But Darkness is actually it.

The 1978 album continues the themes Bruce had so successfully portrayed on Born to Run. Young men (and sometimes, women) struggling against their circumstances, searching for belonging and wanting something more. It opens with Badlands. "Poor man wanna be rich. Rich man wanna be king. And a king ain't satisfied till he rules everything." This lyric is deliciously clever.

Adam Raised a Cain's desperate, repetitive chant always gets me. In the holy land, they too work with nothing to show but pain. Just like Springsteen's characters.

Seeing Bruce on his most recent Australian tour, today's politics was inescapable. Donald Trump is US President - the desperate characters on Darkness could very well be his constituency. The "men walk through these gates with death in their eyes, and you just better believe, boy, somebody's gonna get hurt tonight, it's just the working, just the working life". Trump sold these men from Factory a fanciful dream.

But while the lyrics are timeless, it's the music that keeps me in love. It's sweeping and majestic, but somehow restrained. Bruce and the E Street Band recorded together in flight, Darkness is perfect rock and roll.

Out of Our Heads - The Rolling Stones

Out of Our Heads, is the Stones' third album and our favourite of the early period. We're listening to an original pressing of the US version from 1965, which differs quite a lot from the track listing of the UK version. The remastered versions known today are almost unrecognisable. Our martinis were made with Smirnoff Black with a green lemon twist. Could we be any more pretentious?

The exuberance of this album is infectious. The Stones took rhythm and blues numbers from the US, sped them up and gave them an energy which is exhilarating. This is also the album when Jagger/Richards hit their songwriting straps, drawing on Richards' mastery of the blues. The derivative nature of their songs is obvious (the riff from The Last Time echoes the first track on the album, Mercy Mercy) but the songs are no less brilliant for it. Richards was learning the masters and then messing around, coming up with songs that were equal to or better than his inspirators.

I'm Alright was recorded live, with thousands of screaming girls and Mick hollering "it's alright" over and over again. It's a reminder that the Stones were not just rock and roll stars at this point, but super pop stars, their posters gracing teenage girls' walls. If they were around now, their twitter trending would have rivalled One Direction. (And if you're wondering where else you've heard the riff, it's the Beastie Boys 'Girls'. You're welcome).

While Satisfaction (check out Charlie's 'miming') is the stand out hit and still gets everyone on the dance floor (particularly at a Dowling family party); That's How Strong My Love Is is the heartbreaking winner on the album.

The whole album sounds like a bunch of lads flirting with a generation of young girls. Which it was. They were bad, they were suggestive, they were dissatisfied and bored, they were excited and they wanted to show you the time of your life. If we were teenage girls in the sixties we would have been smitten. Hell, we're in our thirties, five decades later and we're still infatuated.

Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea - PJ Harvey

We drew Bjork's Post out of the basket this evening and L was particularly looking forward to dancing around our apartment singing It's Oh So Quiet. So dear reader, does it still constitute a classic album if it doesn't make the cut in the CDs we bought from Australia to Jordan?

In the honour of truly awesome female singers, we chose PJ Harvey instead. Most of PJ Harvey's albums made the cut in the move and since its release in 2001, Songs from the City, Stories from the Sea has been a regular album for L and is now much loved by B (his misogyny towards women in rock is, piece by piece, disintegrating). We pour an Irish martini - vodka, dry vermouth and Jamieson with a twist of lemon. The power goes out for 15 minutes part way through the album and we settle in for a dinner of raw vegies before it is fortunately restored.

An album about her love of NYC, Stories... is a rock album of the best kind - strong, soaring vocals, raging guitars and quiet moments that still kick you in the guts. You can't listen to This Mess We're In with Thom Yorke, a wail of a song, without joining in with tears of your own.

The two opening tracks are among the strongest - Big Exit and Good Fortune are big, rough openers with simple but evocative lyrics. Although PJ is singing of NY, wondering among the tall buildings, hungover in Chinatown with a boy, I mostly think of Melbourne.

The simplicity of the guitar allows PJ's vocals to dominate the songs. Not only are the guitar parts mostly basic chords, playing almost entirely an accompanying role, the guitars sound like they're coming through an $80 amp. It is raw and beautifully grunge.

The Whores Hustle and The Hustlers Whore is the greatest title for song. PJ Harvey's vocals are particularly affecting. Again she soares high. The lyrics capturing the full gamut of the people that inhabit NY.

Co-produced with Rob Ellis (ever wonder why Anna Calvi sounds like PJ?) as well Mick Harvey, it has the Bad Seeds written all over it. PJ won the Mercury Music Prize for this album, strangely awarded on 11 September 2001. While PJ reflected at the time that music didn't seem so important that day, I think days like that make an album dedicated to NY even more important.

Thriller - Michael Jackson

Is there a more successful pop album than Thriller? Not only does every person in the world own this album, they all agree it is brilliant. It was recorded the year L was born and is still crisp and exciting.

Wanna Be Starting Something is electric. Pure disco pop energy. Manic guitar riffs, epileptic bass, a gospel choir and MJ at the peak of his talents. The cruel tragedy of the song is that all these elements make it impossible to dance not matter how much it incites you.

The Girl is Mine. Urgh. L hates it – it’s not just cheesy but creepy. B thinks it’s wonderful. Ownership of women is ok as long as you sing about it in high harmonies. 

What made this album ground-breaking in MJ's career is that every song is an epic. He'd already recorded perfect pop numbers with the Jackson 5 and on his 1979 album Off the Wall, but Thriller took his music it to another level. The songs were constructed layer upon layer upon layer in the studio and each has a narrative arc. The title track epitomizes this both in song and video. Much has been written about the video – it changed the music industry and pushed the then 25 year old Jackson over the edge into super-stardom which has rarely been matched. Aside from the beat and the dramatic synth riff, the most memorable thing about the song is how scary it is. I remember being petrified by the laugh that closes the song. We can't think of any other pop song that is genuinely terrifying for children (except, perhaps, for Katy Perry's exploding breasts).

While the album feels like it reaches its pinnacle on Side A with Thriller, Side B still brings it with Beat It and Billie Jean. Beat It is bad-ass. The choregraphed fighting in the video is priceless, evoking an early eighties West Side Story. You get the sense Jackson is both desperate to fit in, but at the same time, determined to go his own way. 

And then there is that unmistakable rousing beat of Billie Jean which still sends people squealing to the dance floor. I try not to think too much about the lyrics - the woman scheming after MJ kind of confounds me. 

The longevity of these songs is breathtaking. Thriller still sounds as exciting as it did when you first heard it. And Wanna Be Starting Something still makes me lose my mind. You know you've got it stuffed away in a cupboard somewhere. Find it and dust it off. 

Antics - Interpol

We know, we know - we've been lazy. Nonetheless, we've now relocated to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Tonight's Classic Album is bought to you by a cup of tea but now that Ramadan is over, we'll rectify that soon enough.

Interpol's extraordinary second album, Antics, was released in 2004. Their first, critically acclaimed album, Turn on the Bright Lights, was dark, angsty rock - brilliant but far from unique. I don't think I've heard another album like Antics. It's melodic and almost funky. It's still dark but it's not bleak, with lyrics that talk about love as being something other than a curse.

The opening song, Next Exit forms around a slow chant. After seeing their electric show at Splendour in 2005, my friend and I entertained the bus queue by singing Next Exit drunkenly and loudly. Those who knew the lyrics joined in. Others cursed us for ruining their formative memories of such an exciting show.

Evil is a stand-out on a seamless, tight album (check out the disturbing film clip). It slowly builds up momentum, carried along by a driving bass line, before pausing breathlessly and launching into the crescendo of the chorus. Banks' vocals resonate inside your head (even if we still have no idea what he's talking about...)

Slow Hands is also thrilling live. As good a gig-memory as I have in my rock-addled brain. It's got a dance-floor beat, thumping riff, and Banks' haunting vocals lifting you into the rousing chorus. It also has my all-time favourite rock lyric - "you make me want to pick up a guitar and celebrate the myriad ways that I love you". I think it may have appeared on a mix tape for L early on in our relationship.

Banks' vocals warrant mentioning. They are baritone, and at times monotone. He sounds like the monster out of a 1950s horror picked up a microphone and started singing in a plea for his lost love. With a funky emo rhythm section backing him. And before you get the wrong impression, that's a good thing.

So if you are concerned about your 15 year old nephew starting to look like Pete Wentz, give them this album for Eid and they'll be fine. The rock music will win out in the end. In the mean time, this album strangely suits a summer evening in Amman on the balcony.