I buy most of my books secondhand these days, but a few months ago, while browsing in Powerbooks, I came across this striking black-and-orange hardbound volume: it was called Fear of Music, and it was subtitled “The 261 Greatest Albums Since Punk and Disco.” I snapped it up — total impulse buy — and have not since regretted the purchase. (It helps that while it wasn’t exactly cheap, it also cost quite a bit less than I would have expected, given its newness, not to mention the original cover price and the pound-to-peso exchange.) As amazon.co.uk reviewer Steve put it, “This is a post-punk anthology — that means no Beatles, no Dylan, no Led Zep, no Pink Floyd and no Van Morrison, and thank God for that! There’s no need to recommend albums like Dark Side of the Moon, because there isn’t a single person left on the face of the earth who isn’t aware of its canonical status. Instead, the likes of Talking Heads, Public Enemy, Echo & the Bunnymen, De La Soul, and New Order are well represented here.”

The Time Out review points out several of many, many “great critical riffs”: “Portishead’s Dummy is ‘hip hop on a life-support machine’; Sly & Robbie’s backing on Grace Jones’s Nightclubbing ‘felt like the inside of a taxi that knows a secret 30-minute route from Kingston to Studio 54 via Paris and Brixton, but only for the beautiful and damned’; Chic’s music is ‘a sneaky critique of the entire notion of black people dancing away their blues, instead of using them as triggers for political change’.”

Of course, one can always quibble with the choices, if one is so inclined, especially since it seems from some of the writeups that these albums were chosen not on the basis of sheer personal bias, but with an eye towards their influence and artistic merit as well. (Oh, and let’s not forget the use of the word “Greatest” in the title.) So why Radiohead’s Amnesiac but not OK Computer? Why XTC’s Drums and Wires and White Music, and not Oranges and Lemons or Nonsuch or for God’s sake Skylarking? I could go on and on. (At least XTC has two albums listed here: man, fans of The Stone Roses, Nirvana and/or the Cocteau Twins are going to be pissed off.) But the fact is that Mulholland justifies each choice beautifully, and usually manages to link each album to the one before and the one after on his massive list, thus effectively telling “the story of how we got from the Ramones to Outkast.” This book is a delight to dip into randomly, and (I suspect) a delight to read straight through, and even though there are countless music-oriented “greatest” lists to be found for free online, there’s something particularly enjoyable about holding this volume in your hands, flipping through the pages, and letting the album covers and the excellent writing take you away. Even if you don’t always agree with the choices.