Today’s MAH is focused less on music from NC and more on classic albums that make my life better.

First up is the Pogues’ debut album, Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash.

Elvis Costello produced this record (and then married the bassist) and his professed goal of capturing the Pogues at their wild, natural best before some real producer came along and ruined everything, turned out to be prescient; every other Pogues album pales in comparison to the immediacy of this one.

Next up, Kinda Kinks.

I have a real soft spot for this album. I feel like many of The Kinks’ best records were marred by tin-eared production that didn’t capture the band’s real brilliance the way, say, George Martin might have done. But this one mixes Ray Davies’ amazing quiet stuff (”Nothing in This World…,” “So Long,” “Something Better Beginning”) alongside their Brit-invasion rock and roll and puts this album up there in the Rubber Soul category for me.

Beach Boys, Surf’s Up

Okay, so everybody likes the Beach Boys, but this album’s cover says it all. Whoever decided to call it (and the title track) “Surf’s Up” either is pretty far out of his mind or has a pretty dark sense of humor. Turns out, it’s both. This guided tour of Brian Wilson’s mental breakdown is pretty well encapsulated in the hallucinatory title track with its “The pit and the pendulum drawn” and “Columnated ruins dominos” along side images of surfing and good times.

Finally, Serge Gainsbourg’s Histoire de Melody Nelson.

This one has been playing in our van a lot and we all love it. In fact, it was the music that was playing at the Cat’s Cradle when we had the live action painting before the show. If you like Sea Change, then check this out and see where all those cool sounds came from. This album is like a sound stew that just gets better the longer it sits on the stove.