As the psychedelic 60s gave way to hippie backlash and high ambitions, one thing was clear: There was something damn funny about peace, love and understanding. Shaking off naturalism, daisy chains and acid tabs came easier than expected, and what resulted was a paradox of both striking diversity and remarkable coherence: From high-concept prog-nerds and high-octane guitar solo to high-heeled glam-rockers and high-ass punks, the 70s saw the rise and dominance of the album-as-unified-statement. Pitchfork now takes the opportunity to present this list of its favorite albums of that decade.

Of course, at the end of it all, the task of choosing just 100 records to represent the entire decade has meant that there was just not enough room for all of the wonderful (and arguably deserving) albums and bands we'd like to have listed.

Among the casualties this time out were: Bruce Springsteen, Bob Marley, Patti Smith, Sticky Fingers, Ornette Coleman, Pere Ubu, Van Morrison, Black Sabbath, "Heroes", Chic, Queen, Nina Simone, New York Dolls, The Jam, Frank Zappa, Transformer, Curtis Mayfield, The Police, The Damned, Aretha Franklin, Tonight's the Night, The Kinks, Tom Waits, Elton John, Yes, Janis Joplin, Station to Station, Willie Nelson, Cheap Trick, AC/DC, Grateful Dead, Alice Coltrane, Paris 1919, The Upsetters, Yellow Magic Orchestra, Cecil Taylor, Amon Düül II, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, Augustus Pablo, Human League, Chi-Lites, Captain Beefheart, No New York, Magazine, The Slits, The B-52's, Durutti Column, Burning Spear, Tangerine Dream, Gene Clark, Françoise Hardy, Magma, Kimono My House, The Adverts, Manuel Göttsching and/or Ash Ra Tempel, Lee Hazlewood, and all of Brazil, including Caetano Veloso.

To view individual lists from each writer involved in the making of this list, click here. 

100: Brian Eno
Before and After Science
[Island; 1977]

There's no more appropriate way to kick this list off than with a record from Brian Eno, an artist within only a couple of degrees of separation from upwards of one-quarter of this list. Before and After Science, however, could be seen as an odd choice: Not formally groundbreaking, it's frequently overlooked when discussing great albums from an era that's romanticized as placing premiums on progression and innovation-- and particularly in the context of Eno's career, which is so full of both. But it's a lovely, charming album from the dadaist jaunt of "Backwater" to its tranquil second side, whose mood and texture seems to tear a page from Eno's 1977-78 David Bowie Album Construction Playbook, yet rectifies the divide between his pop and ambient impulses. --Scott Plagenhoef 

099: Neil Young
After the Gold Rush
[Reprise; 1970]

After the gold rush of 1960s California rock, most of its main players spent the 70s slowly hippie-twirling towards irrelevance and rehab resorts. Not so for Mr. Young, who was just hitting his stride as the decade turned over, kicking off a run of 11 great albums in 10 years with After the Gold Rush. One of his few efforts that can't be considered either the product of Crazy Horse feedback Neil or sensitive-hayseed Neil, Gold Rush is also one of Young's most consistent records. Holed up in his Topanga Canyon home writing a soundtrack for a never-made Dean Stockwell-scripted film, Young invited his friends to join him on alien-abduction ballads, preachy Skynyrd-provoking jams and lovesick nocturnal country-blues. Unlike so many of his sun-dazed contemporaries, Young had the right kind of eyes to see the high-water mark, and After the Gold Rush is the departure point on his essential decade-long journey away from the fallout of the 1960s. --Rob Mitchum

098: Robert Wyatt
Rock Bottom
[Virgin; 1974]

Rock Bottom was in the planning stages when Robert Wyatt survived a fall from a fourth-floor window, a tumble that left him confined to a wheelchair and ended his career as British art-rock's most endearingly maverick drummer. It's impossible not to hear the stretched-out time of convalescence in its drones and long melodies as Wyatt devotes himself to keyboards, whittling at his synths as quizzically as he hones his lyrics, which gnarl with surreal wordplay but temper the brilliantly grounded wit that flashed across his earlier work.

With no need to keep up a working band, Wyatt surrounds himself with his best Canterbury colleagues-- there are cameos by Fred Frith and Mike Oldfield, as well as regular support from fellow Soft Machine bassist Hugh Hopper-- and, bound to the studio, he invented the next phase of his career. The melancholy that buoys his classic "Sea Song" doesn't block the exquisite melody, which assuages regrets before they can even creep in, and as Wyatt croaks his fascination for the strange real-life lover that he was about to marry, he settles for tapping the beat on a single, handheld drum. --Chris Dahlen

097: Various Artists
The Harder They Come
[Mango; 1972]

I never bought Jimmy Cliff's optimism in the face of adversity. If Horatio Alger was a ridiculous longshot in the United States, imagine the odds for someone coming from a Jamaican slum. Statistically speaking, that which the people from ghettoized Kingston really want, they never get-- no matter how much they try and try. This is political music before reggae artists commonly named names; as in the blues, the only relief from suffering comes when the heart stops beating. In this situation, life without belief would be unbearable. You can hear the weariness even on the party tracks, making The Harder They Come one of the saddest albums of the decade. --Mark Richardson 

096: Iggy Pop
The Idiot
[RCA; 1977]

After the release of the Stooges' final album, 1973's Raw Power, Iggy Pop bottomed out. It would take four years, several jailings, and countless beatings before he would get back on his feet to launch his solo career. After a self-imposed exile in a West Coast mental institution, Pop put in a call to David Bowie, as the two had been intending to hook up for years, and a few days later, they'd boarded a plane to Paris, and then to romantic Berlin where they would finish work on The Idiot.

The Idiot presents what is probably Iggy Pop's darkest release, and rightfully so, given the period of his life during which it was recorded. Set to music written primarily by Bowie during the Station to Station sessions, Pop's lyrics are often reflective and sentimental-- "Dum Dum Boys" pines for his Stooges bandmates, while "Tiny Girls" and "Mass Production" lament stupid love-- and when they're not, they're bitter and scathingly sarcastic ("Nightclubbing", "Funtime"). Against minimal, mechanical instrumentation, Pop's delivery is suitably passionless, as he dryly sing/speaks in a deep, unfeeling croak. Musically, it formed the foundation for Joy Division's cold, caustic creepiness, at times echoing their sound so strikingly it could be mistaken for Unknown Pleasures. In the throes of a crippling bout with depression, it's clear what was on Ian Curtis' mind in his final hours. --Ryan Schreiber 

095: Led Zeppelin
Physical Graffiti
[Swan Song; 1975]

Physical Graffiti is not the hardest or most influential Zeppelin album. It's not even their best. But it's arguably the most essential. At 80 minutes, it's as insurmountable, grimy, intimidating and flat-out awesome as the monolithic tenement building on its cover. And it's about to collapse on all your friends. The tracklist is like the Ten Commandments of hard rock, wielding "Custard Pie", "The Wanton Song", "Trampled Under Foot", "Ten Years Gone" and "Kashmir". Some of the most popular bands of the 1980s and 90s did nothing but rip off those five songs over and over again.

Graffiti is also the pinnacle of Zeppelin's mythology: It contains all the requisite gnomes, swashbuckling fools and garbled Paradise Lost-garden-car-incest-pie euphemisms. Jimmy Page's broiling and obstinate riffs flatten the songs' images of Middle Eastern mountains and pristine country landscapes. Robert Plant's lungs have been seemingly saturated in tar and moonshine. If you must know what John Bonham's thunderous drums are like, cover your head in cement and run into a tsunami. Bizarrely then, the rest of Graffiti is overwhelmed by Page's country and blues fixations. "In My Time of Dying"'s hurling slide-guitar and Plant's entirely blasphemous Christ-lust blast out of a South Carolina shack. The bagpipe-harmonica synths on "In the Light" are sheltered by serenely droning strings. Graffiti proves that not only was Zeppelin powerful enough to sustain a double-album; they were powerful enough to sustain every metal band that came after them. --Alex Linhardt

094: King Crimson
Starless and Bible Black
[Atlantic; 1974]

Experimental bands are always awarded points for making fragmented albums that actually hold together. The mid-70s Crimson line-up stood for taste and efficiency with a dry, dark wit, and Starless and Bible Black epitomized those qualities. John Wetton's tersely macho posture suits the lyrics of Richard Palmer-James, who matches the album's opening squall with the rude awakening of, "Health food faggot." Even "The Night Watch" skips the mawkishness of other Crimson ballads. The live tracks are mostly improvised, which is one reason Bill Bruford renamed the album "Braless and Slightly Slack". But the pieces are mostly chafe-free, cropped down to spiky instrumentals that highlight the Robert Fripp-David Cross frontline of sharp guitar and under-the-breath violin and mellotron, all gnashed against Bruford's clatterwork. And if you can get over how much "Fracture" now sounds like The Simpsons theme song, it's an aggressively brilliant through-composed set piece, as methodical as it is nasty. --Chris Dahlen

093: Jimi Hendrix
Band of Gypsys
[Capitol; 1970]

Although they were together for less than a year, the Band of Gypsys provided the springboard for some of Hendrix's most soulful, enduring music. The Experience's psychedelic maelstrom encouraged Hendrix's attention-grabbing antics, but Buddy Miles and Billy Cox supplied the funky, backbeat-driven rhythm section he sought at the turn of the decade. "Who Knows", "Power of Soul" and "Message to Love" blister with the deep funk rock sound Hendrix was turning towards.

And then there's "Machine Gun". Quite possibly the most wildly explosive and painfully vivid musical statement ever caught live on tape, Hendrix's 12-minute psychedelic soul mindbender surged from the tragic violence at Altamont to the chaos and devastation of Vietnam. In this one song, he pioneered the simultaneous use of four different effects pedals and cemented his reputation as one of the greatest guitarists of all time. Talk about shock and awe: If it sounds that insane on the album, imagine what the Fillmore East crowd was feeling that New Year's Eve. --Jonathan Zwickel

092: Kraftwerk
The Man-Machine
[Capitol; 1978]

Despite what their song titles suggest, Kraftwerk have never sounded like trains, planes or automobiles. They sure as hell don't sound like mannequins or bicycles. They just sound like robots. The Man-Machine remains the most obvious Kraftwerk record: robots making music about robots making music. If 1974's Autobahn embodied naïve euphoria and 1977's Trans-Europe Express was thumping desolation, Man-Machine is completely neutral. While the fast-paced world of Ralf Hütter quotes knows no limits of pretension, this is the only album that conceivably expresses his ideal music: No emotions, no philosophies, no performances, and virtually no humor. It is pure technology: the whistles and surging circuitry of unmanned factories; twinkling hydraulic tubes; flaring odometers and cogs; and pre-Pong claw-claps.

For the first half of the album, the only remotely human touch is the rolled "r" when Ralf robo-sings, "We are the robots." But the inhumanity is suddenly broken towards the end with the wry, pop-art commentary of "The Model" and the enrapturing pulsations and wavering reflections of "Neon Lights", which contain enormously melancholy lines fragile enough to collapse or evaporate under the slightest drum machine. The title track, however, is pure solidification: the sound of amassing troops, pinpointed trajectories and speaker-box opiates of the masses. --Alex Linhardt

091: Throbbing Gristle
20 Jazz Funk Greats
[Industrial; 1979]

20 Jazz Funk Greats' most impressive trait isn't the pulverizing factory machinations of Genesis P-Orridge's blasted allegories-- "Pain is the stimulus of pain"; "I've got a little biscuit tin/ To keep your panties in/ Soiled panties, white panties, school panties, Y-Front panties"-- or its winking pastoral cover art, or those crazy-ass bird calls, sleazy ambient pulsations and homemade electro-pop grooves. No, 20 Jazz Funk Greats' most impressive trait is its timelessness. As proven by the recent TG remix project, you don't need to touch these soundtracks with your grubby synthesizers-- you'll just stain the magic with the ones and zeros of digital cliché. Left to simmer in its own juices, the band's 1979 masterstroke exhibits no dust crackle or incense-soaked hokum. And outside the sexed-up dance-of-death hooks-- "Hot on the Heels of Love" should by now be a matrimonial favorite-- songsmiths without a compelling raison d’être would do themselves well to mainline as much William S. Burroughs, Marquis de Sade, Aleister Crowley, Fluxism and Vienna Actionism as this smarty-pants quartet. --Brandon Stosuy