With St George flags currently lining the streets of England, it must be time to celebrate the country’s most stylistically diverse and cosmopolitan records.
There’s a massive trend across England right now of hoisting the national flag, the St George’s cross, up every available lamppost in the name of patriotism. Local councils aren’t keen, but it’s not a problem if this claimed patriotism means celebrating a country that’s multicultural, progressive, and emblematic of a diverse society, open to international influences, and supportive of incoming refugees and asylum seekers. Which it surely does! Right?
It’s the perfect time, in which case, to celebrate English bands and solo acts who are wholeheartedly outward-looking, blind to musical boundaries, and immersed in genres, styles, and rhythms from across the musical map over the course of one record. It’s the perfect time, in other words, to count down ten of the most eclectic albums ever to come out of Shakespeare’s country.
Make way, then, for LPs on which every song is radically different to the one before or after, where disparate sounds mesh together as a whole, and where dynamic shifts occur at every turn. Albums that are just downright all over the place, for whatever artistic or political purpose, and which quite happily invite accusations of being incohesive in their colorful display of guest musicians and indiscriminate creativity.
10. Wolf Alice – The Clearing (2025)
It’s only just come out, but it’s already apparent from The Clearing that London group Wolf Alice are modern-day stylistic adventurers of the highest order, albeit from having seemingly spent the last couple of years in and around 1976. They sound like Siouxsie and the Banshees crossed with Papo Lucca on “Bloom Baby Bloom” (a Latin-jazz goth rock blend?), and they successfully deliver Stevie Nicks-inspired dreampop on “The Sofa”.
They make a good impression of a Quincy Jones-produced soul/funk outfit on “Just Two Girls”, while evoking the disco-era ELO on “Bread Butter Tea Sugar” and the Carpenters on “Safe in the World”. More than that, they incorporate krautrock in “White Horses” in their own way, with a motorik rhythm, but why should every song on their fourth album represent a new musical direction? Is it because lead singer Ellie Rowsell needs as many ways as possible to air her “dirty laundry”? Or is it just their method of getting shortlisted – again! – for the Mercury Prize?
9. Julian Cope – Peggy Suicide (1991)
If it’s challenging to account for Wolf Alice’s compulsive genre hopping on The Clearing, it’s easier with Julian Cope on his seventh solo album, Peggy Suicide. Here, we find the “World Shut Your Mouth” and “Charlotte Anne” singer, who has been making heavily produced and pop-friendly albums like Saint Julian and My Nation Underground, focusing instead on being true to himself as a political activist, environmentalist, feminist, and socially conscious visionary.
By any damn musical means necessary. Cue, then, an urgent outpouring of 18 disparate songs (in four “phases”) scorched with his personal convictions in the fallout of Margaret Thatcher’s UK premiership. He rails against the legacy of the then recently resigned Prime Minister by means of psychedelic folk (“Promised Land”). He raves about climate change by means of frantic guitar riffage worthy of Motorhead (“Hanging Out & Hung Up on the Line”).
Plus, he criticises heavy-handed police tactics against righteous street demonstrators by means of a funky jam and a sample of Lenny Bruce (“Soldier Blue”) – still frighteningly relevant. That leaves room for an eight-minute psychedelic wigout that has something to do with condoms and the AIDS pandemic (“Safesurfer”), all making for an inspired and unfiltered double album from a true countercultural provocateur.
8. Kate Bush – The Hounds of Love (1985)
Kate Bush‘s extraordinary musical range on her masterpiece, The Hounds of Love, stemmed more from a progressive rock perspective than any burst of social consciousness. She needs to invent sounds around big literary ideas and to forge hugely imaginative songs as part of cycles or suites. It’s most striking in the second part of that masterpiece, “The Ninth Wave”, where the Kent-born auteur delivered a progression of tracks inspired by Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “The Coming of Arthur” poem, and centred on the psychological story of a woman who finds herself alone in the sea at night.
Making as much use of the then cutting-edge Fairlight CMI digital sampler as her friend Peter Gabriel, she composed musique concrète out of waves, helicopters, Gregorian chants, spoken voices, and twittering birds. Around this, she weaved the haunting piano ballad “And Dream of Sheep”, the vigorous Irish folk music of “Jig of Life”, the scary goth-rock of “Waking the Witch”, and the luminescent synthpop of “Morning Fog”. Bush basically left her listeners emotionally spent with her musical twists and turns.
7. Black Midi – Schlagenheim (2019)
There’s not much in the way of Irish folk music on Black Midi‘s debut, Schlagenheim, but it’s eclectic in different ways. Very different ways. Don’t get too settled into the math rock here – with its combination of odd time signatures and complex rhythms that stop and start – because that will morph into avant-jazz at any moment. Or post-punk. Or prog-rock. Or what sounds like Goon Show-style mayhem.
The album is anarchy of the best kind, in other words, made by a quartet of London teenagers who burned brightly between 2017 and 2020, and featured the magnificently named Geordie Greep on the talky and (at times) cartoonishly operatic vocals. That’s as well as an absolute lynchpin of a drummer in Morgan Simpson, who certainly bore comparison on this record with intrepid Can percussionist Jaki Liebezeit.
6. Badly Drawn Boy – The Hour of Bewilderbeast (2000)
There’s definitely something about debut albums when it comes to an eclectic tracklist. Damon Gough, better known as Badly Drawn Boy, claimed naivety as the basis of his incredible expanse of a first LP in 2000, which would likely also apply to Black Midi. The Manchester-based indie musician felt free at the outset to follow his instincts in writing, performing, and producing The Hour of the Bewilderbeast, which he did with just a little help from his friends.
He drew accusations of shambolic self-indulgence from some quarters, but there’s a playful DIY charm to the 18 lo-fi and generally folk-pop tracks here that saw the woolly-hatted maverick also being compared with the likes of Beck and Pavement. His pop-pastiche approach was certainly enough to bag him the Mercury Prize in 2000, evident in the jazzy percussion and scatted chorus of “Once Around the Block”, the hip hop beat of “Body Rap”, the trip-rock shuffle of “Fall in the River”, and the disco evernescance of “Disillusion”.
His way with strange instrumental interludes and sonic mood shifts was also enough to encourage Nick Hornby to invite him to record the whole soundtrack to the movie adaptation of his novel, About a Boy, in 2002.
5. Prefab Sprout – Jordan: The Comeback (1990)
How about a country song from the vantage point of a husky-voiced God? Or an epic, end-of-the-century number boasting an extended samba section? All par for the course when you’re Paddy McAloon of Prefab Sprout in 1990, whose ambition and confidence as a songwriter was through the roof after releasing three remarkable pop albums, including 1985’s Steve McQueen / Two Wheels Good.
For Jordan: The Comeback, he composed a record of four quarters, one being an assortment of possible singles, the second a suite on the mythology of Elvis Presley (as Jesse James), the third a pop medley of love songs, and the fourth an assemblage of tunes on fate and aging. That meant putting producer Thomas Dolby through his paces and bringing out the finest musicianship in Wendy Smith, Martin McAloon, and Neil Conti.
It further meant inundating listeners with a smorgasbord of 19 songs that often alluded to their individual style in the title: “Jesse James Symphony”, “Jesse James Bolero”, “The Wedding March”, “Doo Wop in Harlem”.
4. Led Zeppelin – Houses of the Holy (1973)
Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page apparently wrote “Rain Song” after being stung by a comment by George Harrison – to Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham – that the band were unable to write ballads. Here on their fifth album, then, is the first Led Zeppelin ballad, an epic one at that, with an orchestral score worthy of an airing at the Royal Albert Hall. The four-piece didn’t stop there, either, ditching the heavy blues-rock by which they made their name in favor of flexing their virtuoso muscles in response to the rise of progressive rock, ska, and funk in the UK.
In “D’Yer Mak’er”, particularly, they somehow blended Jamaican roots reggae with 1950s pop, alienating a few fans in the process. In “The Crunge”, they surprisingly pastiched Godfather of Funk James Brown to the extent that vocalist Robert Plant exited the song exclaiming, “I’m just trying to find the bridge!” Their newfound sense of adventure further extended to evoking prog-rock on “No Quarter”, by way of an episodic structure and a trippy keyboard sound, leaving “Over the Hills” and “Far Away” to remind listeners of what they used to sound like.
3. The Clash – London Calling (1979)
The Clash‘s adventurousness on their 1979 double album, London Calling, stemmed from their desire to prove themselves more than just a punk band, at a time when the spirit of punk was in rapid decline. The way forward for them was to depart from the raw, aggressive sound of their earlier albums and to reinvent themselves as one of the first post-punk bands, with a broader and more experimental approach.
They did this by writing an incredible 16 songs – and covering a further three – across a range of genres. Apocalyptic hard rock? That’ll be the title track. Riotous rockabilly? Their version of Vince Taylor’s “Brand New Cadillac”. Pure London reggae? “Guns of Brixton”. However, perhaps the biggest surprise to come from the band that formerly brought us the visceral “White Riot” was the soulful, radio-friendly groover that was “Train in Vain”.
2. Elvis Costello – Spike (1989)
Every one of the 14 songs on Spike is a concerted effort by Elvis Costello to sound completely unlike the Costello of his previous 11 albums, to broaden his palette as a singer-songwriter. Or, essentially, create a new palette. He’d signed to a new label (Warners), acquired a substantial budget (enough “for a small movie”), parted ways with his backing band (the Attractions), and declined from even putting “Elvis Costello” on the album sleeve.
Rather, he was a grotesquely greasepainted clown called “Spike” or “the beloved entertainer”, loaded with material recorded in four different studios (in Hollywood, New Orleans, Dublin, and London), by four different groups of musicians and no end of top-drawer guests. He consequently boasted a pretty pop masterpiece in “Veronica”, co-written and starring one Paul McCartney, but also a decidedly unpretty broadside on capital punishment in “Let Him Dangle”.
He further proffered a rocksteady instrumental in “Stalin Malone”, featuring the Big Easy jazz ensemble the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, as well as a gospel-inspired “Deep Dark Truthful Mirror”, with New Orleans piano legend Allen Toussaint. All were pretty much overshadowed, though, by Celtic-tinged anti-Thatcher protest song “Tramp the Dirt Down”, with Irish luminaries Davy Spillane and Christy Moore providing the bagpipe, whistles, and bodhrán accompaniment.
1. The Beatles – The White Album (1968)
The Beatles – further to having written and recorded not as clowns but as a psychedelic quartet called Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band – set the bar for eclectic sprawls on their legendary White Album of 1968. Of course, they did. It was here that they consciously broke with the LSD-inspired studio productions of the previous year to explore more rootsy territory, after having returned from a particularly fruitful trip as songwriters – all four! – to the Maharishi’s transcendental meditation retreat in Rishikesh, India.
On this record, they were also, for the first time, four prolific band members moving in very different creative directions, which spelled out 30 sporadic songs on a double album that ranged from proto-punk one minute to British blues, folk, or musique concrète the next. Paul McCartney‘s skill for pastiche, particularly, shone through on the Beach Boys-style rock ‘n’ roll of “Back in the USSR”, the Jamaican ska of “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da”, and the (love it or hate it) 1920s flapper-dance jazz of “Honey Pie”.
John Lennon, meanwhile, adopted three different musical styles, including doo wop, for “Happiness Is a Warm Gun” alone. At the same time, George Harrison emulated Stax soul on “Savoy Truffle” and Ringo Starr delved into country on “Don’t Pass Me By”. Thus, it was that the Liverpool group made it all right not to condense their tracks into a single, focused album. Hooray for that!