I continue surprising myself when choosing my favourite albums on a year by year base. 1995 was such a safe bet before having relistened to anything from my top ten. Yo La Tengo who have been one of my most beloved bands for many years released Electr-o-Pura, their most hypnotic record with the melancholic drone monster Blue Line Swinger as the closer. Maybe I know them too well by now. Electr-o-Pura was too predictable to be no.1. The first surprise from 1995 was Vic Chesnutt's warm and folky songwriter gem Is the Actor Happy? which I almost forgot in the poll. There was also the first album Boire by Miossec, the troubadour from Brittany who came from nowhere and made the most urgent French album since Gainsbourg.

In the end I settled for Mark Linkous debut with the strange compounded one word name. As it combines catchy touching guitar tunes with experimental not listener-friendly songs like no other release I know of from 1995. There is a lot of variety in this record and it still holds together amazingly well. I don't know a thing about Linkous but he must be an autodidact to make music so totally apart from the rest of the world. And he must be totally nuts as well.

Here is the overview of the series 40 years, 40 albums of which part XVIII was this post.