Sly and the Family Stone, “Small Talk” 1974

Conventional wisdom is that “Small Talk” is Sly Stone’s Waterloo; the moment when he plummeted from innovative genius to washed-up has-been and drug casualty. It sure doesn’t seem that way when you actually listen to the record, though. Instead, “Small Talk” is of a piece with its predecessor, the canonical “Fresh” — fractured, soulful, stoned and funky as hell. Sid Page’s lonesome, out-of-place violin adds another level of perfect wrongness to “Time for Livin,” while “Loose Booty” slinks and struts like one of those classic early Sly tracks experiencing inner-ear disturbance. Sly’s repeated, unmotivated chant “Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego” is substantially funnier and more left-field than any of George Clinton’s more formalized wigginess. “Small Talk” is one of the highlights of Sly’s career, which is to say it’s one of the best albums recorded by anybody ever.

Journey, “Infinity” 1978

Not to take anything away from Freddie Mercury, but Steve Perry has to be just about the most amazing vocalist to shake the lighters out there in the nosebleed seats. The multi-tracked, decadent harmonies of “Anytime” are inimitable, but the towering range of “Lights” is maybe even more impressive — not to mention the gasp-inducing breath control on “La Do Da.” The music is perhaps the band’s best as well; this is the first album with Perry, and the not-quite-tamed-prog-fire competes with that giant voice in a death duel of dexterous lumbering. And, man, does “Can Do” rock! Journey is everything punk rock stood against, which is reason enough to love it.

Danielle Dax, “Pop-Eyes” 1983

Recorded on a 4-track with Dax playing all the instruments from guitar to trumpet to tape manipulation and drum programming, “Pop-Eyes” is a work of bizarre, layered, insular genius; a fey burping fairy world full of lurching harvest buns and looming meat faces. “Everyone Squeaks Gently” sounds like animatronic vampires performing in a coffee shop; “The Shamemen” is built around staggering beats and blips that would make Timbaland nod jerkily in between the girl group “shoo-be-doops.” One of Dax’s compilations is called “The Thwarted Pop Career of Danielle Dax,” but listening to this it’s hard to believe anyone ever thought she was going to be on the radio. That she hasn’t been retroactively canonized by either indie or electronica aficionados is more distressing — and when is hip hop going to start sampling the hell out of this, anyway?

Bangles, “Different Light” 1986

Even the band themselves supposedly hated this record and David Kahne’s gobs of lacquer production. Turning retro-Brit-pop into a slick ’80s radio juggernaut works for me, though; the hits (Prince’s “Manic Monday,”  ”If She Knew What She Wants,” and the round-robin vocals and whistled chorus of “Walk Like an Egyptian”) still sound great, and the other tracks aren’t noticeably worse. Micki Steele’s take on “September Gurls” gets more of a nostalgic punch from all that echo, and who could resist the syncopated vibes on the outro of “Angels Don’t Fall in Love”? The album teems with ideas and/or gimmicks, great hooks (the growling guitar on “Standing in the Hallway” especially) and those wonderful harmonies. This is another one where it’d be a beloved indie classic if it hadn’t been so embarrassingly popular in the first place.

Kathy Cowan, “The Red-Haired Man’s Wife” 1990

Irish female vocals can be breathy and ethereal to a fault. Chicago’s Kathy Cowan can certainly hit high notes, but she backs it up with a welcome solidity. Most of this independently released set is devoted to traditional tragic ballads, which Cowan infuses with a slow, brutal purity — the a cappella, remorseless “The Holland Handkerchief” is especially fine. Her voice skips heartily on uptempo numbers like “Courtin in the Kitchen” as well. But my favorite performance is the “Song of the Seals.” Her keening yodel is truly unearthly; if sea spirits sang, this is what they would sound like. Mainstream notice for Irish traditional music is probably a pipe dream, but Cowan should be better known in Irish folk music circles than she is.

fIREHOSE,  ”Flyin’ the Flannel” 1991

The Minutemen are canonical punk gods. fIREHOSE, though, formed by Ed Hurley, Mike Watt, and new guitarist Ed Crawford after the death of D. Boon, is largely seen as a footnote. It’s true that fIREHOSE lacks the Minutemen’s political charge and crazed ambition; there are no 40-song double albums in their catalog. But if it’s a more comfortable band, it’s a decidedly fractured comfort; shards of funk and drum fills and classic rock licks all grafted onto lyrics about walking the cow and instructions for using epoxy to make real life connections. “Flyin’ the Flannel,” their major-label debut, never descends into the kind of crabbed silliness of They Might Be Giants; rather the band seems to have an endless exuberance about the possibilities of punk, and of music. Despite the fact that D. Boon’s memory hovers over all their work, or because of it, fIREHOSE is a startlingly lyrical, and startlingly joyful, band.

Fejat Sejdic, “Guardian Angel and Lost Lamb” 1994

In some sense every selection on here should be World music; the earth is littered with great albums that are virtually unknown in the States. I stumbled on Fejat Sejdic’s “Guardian Angel and Lost Lamb” completely at random in a second-hand store years ago, and that sense of discovery has never really waned. Information online is scanty, but I have managed to glean that Sejdic is one of the most influential and famous performers in a Yugoslavian Roma brass brand tradition. From the traditional tunes to the ringers (like “Amazing Grace”), the album sounds like a polka outfit attempting flamenco — or I shouldn’t say “attempting,” since the results are so seamlessly graceful, down to the last oom-pah-pah.

The Goats, “No Goats, No Glory” 1994

This Philadelphia hip hop crew is largely forgotten, but anyone who remembers them seems to consider this, their second album, a catastrophic falling off. It doesn’t sound like that to me; on the contrary, “No Goats, No Glory” seems like a late but worthy entry in hip hop’s golden age; audacious, funny, arch with an idea in every booty-shake. The production by Joe “The Butcher” Nicolo makes copious use of rock riffs, but there’s also plenty of jazz samples; the remarkable “Times Runnin Up” in particular is a perfect union between “The Low End Theory” and “Licensed to Ill.” The opener, “Wake ‘N’ Bake,” is a hysterical tribute to/send-up of gangsta weed obsession, while  ”Mutiny” actually nods to Johnny Horton, of all people (“I took a lot of blunts/we took a lot of weed/We chased them Nazis to the town of New Orleans”). Skip over the misguided sound collage, “Revolution 84,” and you’ve got a perfect record.

All Natural, “No Additives, No Preservatives” 1998

Chicago hip hop duo All Natural is proudly underground and proudly intelligent; Cap D raps about going to grad school and his high SAT scores on the way to rhyming Alfred Lord Tennyson with Sam Kinison. DJ Tone B. Nimble’s beats “have more flow than Aquaman… and get deeper than Submariner” “as well as being “positive like Malcolm or the Black Falcon,” as D says in “MC Avenger.” KRS-One and, well, just about everybody else is an obvious influence; in samples and lyrics, this is a band obsessed with hip hop as a history and an inspiration, rather than as a hit-making mainstream monolith. Even for those who (like me) rather enjoy how that monolith has turned  out, “No Additives, No Preservatives” is an eloquent case for why the faith is worth keeping. As D says, “50 years down the line you can start this/’Cause then we’ll be the old school artists.”

Ashanti,  ”Ashanti” 2001

Ashanti’s self-titled debut was viewed with almost universal indifference and/or contempt; “shallow orgasms aren’t bad orgasms, but she could probably do better with her own hand,” Robert Christgau sneered. It’s true that the skits are even more unfortunate than you’d expect, and the remix of “Foolish” with the ghost of Biggie was not a great idea. But as a whole, the album is the last, great, decadent fulfillment of ’90s R&B — slow jam after slow jam, swathed in layers of shiny plastic drone by producer 7 Aurelius. Ashanti’s voice certainly isn’t overpowering, but she slides seductively over the beat, running minor variations above the unwavering backing, or harmonizing with herself in smooth multi-tracked choruses. The dreamy, high-gloss pop is kin to shoegaze, in feeling if not precisely in sound; this is music by which to zone out ecstatically.

Brooke Valentine, “Chain Letter” 2005

Brooke Valentine was a quintessential one-hit wonder. “Girl Fight,” featuring Lil’ Jon and Big Boi, reached the Top 30… and that was it for her career. “Chain Letter” isn’t the work of a passing pop footnote, though. Instead, it’s got the ambition of a rock genius throw-down. “Taste of Dis” is a retro-disco funk strut with a Timbaland-worthy arsenal of jittery blips and Valentine declaring with a wink, “the junk in my trunk’ll put a bump in your pants”; “Blah-Blah-Blah” finds her trading spirited he-said/she-said barbs with Ol’ Dirty Bastard over heavy-bottomed burping organ; “Cover Girl” is that rarity, a contemporary R&B ballad with an honest-to-God hook, the folksy guitar strumming over the organ while Valentine muses on the tortured relationship between women and their media representations. Even the extra tracks are amazing; “Thrill of the Chase,” included on some foreign CD releases, is a rock/funk monster that would make George Clinton sit back on his mothership. Valentine’s had several mix tapes, all worth hearing, but I’ve given up on a full-length follow-up at this point, and resigned myself to just listening to this over and over again.

Legion of Two, “Riffs” 2009

A mix of electronica (by Alan O’Boyle) and live percussion (by David Lacey), “Riffs” is a grimy, feedback-laden slog. The sound is more doom- or black-metal than your typical Planet Mu release. This seems to have put off the intrepid All Music reviewer, who complains that some of the tracks are monotonous. Admittedly, if you don’t enjoy having your cranium iteratively crushed by a laptop-programmed industrial process, this album probably isn’t for you. For metal-heads who love elctronica and electronica fans who love metal, though, this album is the grim wasteland of your dreams.

RP Boo, “Legacy” 2013

This is what should have topped everyone’s best-of-year for 2013. RP Boo is the granddaddy of the incredibly repetitive, incredibly repetitive, incredibly repetitive dance genre known as Chicago footwork, and this belated collection shows that he’s the reigning master as well. Bass and vocals are segmented and looped incessantly; samples are diced till soul turns into abstract noise and vice verse. The horns on “Red Hot” sound like ’70s funksters hyped up, whacked out and used for laser sound effects; “Robotbutizm” is a segmented collision between Kraftwerk, Raymond Scott, and a sci-fi soundtrack. “Sentimental” manages to be lyrical without easing up one iota on Boo’s signature sound. Philip Glass and John Adams wish they could make something half this gorgeously alienating.