December 14, 2002 | 1:50 PM

This is the start of a new feature where I talk about records that matter to me. Here's the first ten. I'll do this periodically when I feel like it.

*Stories From the city, Stories from the Sea by PJ Harvey

I was out of work when this album came out and it was a shitty time in my life. I�d always loved PJ Harvey, but something about this album grabbed me in ways that none of her other records did. Maybe it�s that I�m shallow and dig pop hooks. But I think what made me so passionate about it was how completely it explored the many conflicting aspects of being in love�the desperation, the joy, the lust, the sadness, the tenderness. All of it. I can�t remember a record that gave me chills up and down my spine on every single song.

I can�t believe life is so complex/When I just wanna sit here and watch you undress

or

On a rooftop in Brooklyn/ Five in the morning/ Waching the lights flash in Manhattan

or

How could that happen?/ How could that happen again/ Where the fuck was I looking?/ When all his horses road in

And her voice has never sounded so accessible and vulnerable as it does on this record. For once instead of all the theatrics (which I love by the way) she relaxes and just expresses herself.

Fucking amazing.

I remember standing in the snow waiting for the bus at seven in the morning to go on my umpteenth job interview. I was in low spirits. And then this song started playing:

And I feel like some bird in paradise
My bad fortune slipping away
And I feel the innocence of a child
Everybody�s got something good to say,

I couldn�t stop smiling for the rest of the morning.

*I Can Hear the Heart Beating As One by Yo La Tengo

I think I have had sex to this album more than any other record. And thus I have many fond memories of it. This is another record which has always seemed to me about being in love. Autumn Sweater will forever remind me of my ex-boyfriend. And the song that goes:

Oh I know it�s wrong
But I swear it won�t take long

always struck me as being about anal sex.

I even like the Hey Little Honda cover.

A very special and sentimental record.

*Live Through This by Hole

OK. I don�t give a fuck what any of you say about Courtney Love or this album. Live Through This is one of the best records of the 90�s. I bought it the day it came out and listened to it silently and reverently all the way through three times in a row. It stayed in my casette player for eight months straight. I would come home after school and scream along to every song. (Go on take everything I want you to!) much to the annoyance of the rest of my family. I have never heard anyone express female rage more potently (or with better hooks I might add) than on Hole�s second album. Still makes the hair on my arms stand straight up and to this day is THE record on my stereo when I�m pissed off.

* Here My Dear by Marvin Gaye

There are many great divorce albums. Beck�s latest one. Suzanne Vega�s Songs in Red and Grey. But Here My Dear takes the fucking cake for being modern music�s most personal and vulnerable musical statement about lost love. Marvin was sued by his ex wife and the resulting settlement gave hger the proceeds to his next album. So he made an album all about their relationship and it was so honest that she sued him again for libel!

Lines like, If you ever loved me with all of your heart/ You wouldn�t take a million dollars to part/ I really tried, baby are gut wrenching.

I listened to this record again and again when my relationship was breaking up. I�d sit at my kitchen table draining bottles and bottles of Chardonnay and sobbing over it. It�s so painful for me to listen to even still that I only rarely bring myself to do it. But it�s worth it. Marvin�s a fucking God.

*Fegmania! by Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians

This album was the soundtrack to an entire year�I believe it was John�s junior year in college, so that would have been 1998? This record was part of the backdrop for several apartments, including the one that burned down, and John�s revolving dorm rooms. The song list was also a favorite of my and John�s to play as covers on acoustic guitar. This is still my favorite Robyn Hitchcock record for the combination of it�s sheer nervy eccentricity (�The Man With the Lightbulb Head) and its wry yet vulnerable odes to love lost and found (�My Wife and My Dead Wife� and �Insect Mother�)

Also, reminds me greatly of the ex.

*World of Sand by the Cake Kitchen

I bought this record when it came out in �91 on the now (sadly) defunct Homestead label that also put out a bunch of Sebadoh�s shit.

Graeme and Peter Jefferies come from New Zealand where it�s very damp and there are a lot of sheep. There�s not much to do there I guess, besides brood. This album is one of the most melancholy I�ve ever heard. Not melancholy in that dramatic gothic Bauhause/The Cure way, but quietly melancholy�like a guy sitting on the floor of his apartment nursing a three hour old cup of coffee and listening to the rain hit his window. World of Sand is an incredibly uncomfortable album to listen to. The vocals are scarcely audible and a sparse piano line both deconstructs and undercuts the fuzzy guitars that populate every song.

And the lyrics,

She�s been living in a silent film
Candles burning on a window sill
Softly falling through a pillowed dream
Slowly forming like two warm machines
Please tell me everything will be alright and tell me everything will work out fine

Jesus dude. To my 14 year old brain, that was fucking Yeats, and I still don�t think I�ve heard much better in pop music since.

I remember listening to this on my walkmin as I sat by my locker after school, not really wanting to go home and not knowing where the hell else to go.

God save the Jefferies brothers. They certainly saved me.

*The Self Titled Velvet Underground album

Jesus. Help me find my proper place.

That certainly echoed my sentiments as I lay face down on my dormroom bed, wired out of my mind on coke, drunk on a bottle of Jack, grinding my teeth and rocking from side to side, staring up at the hideous Kiss poster purchased as a joke, and wishing I were dead.

Lou Reed and company showed endless amounts of compassion for the monumentally fucked up. And that�s what I was then, and still am.

*Mighty Joe Moon by Grant Lee Buffalo

To me this album represents everything good about America. In every song there are rolling hills and great plains. It�s super corny and sincere in the best possible way. It�s apple pie and outlaws in black. There�s just so much space on this record.

Have you been to the Cumberland Gap?

No Grant, but please fucking take me there on horseback.

Grant has no fucking pretensions and after all the snot nose college educated indie brats with their cats eye glasses and snarky eye rolling thrift store tee shirts and fuzzy guitars and inscrutability. The man is a breath of fresh air. The guy was a fucking carpenter and a magician (or juggler or something like that.) He has one of the most beautiful voices I have ever heard.

I just got into Grant and this album last year. I listened to it again and again in my bedroom in Allston, singing along to every song and thoroughly annoying the shit out of the two people I lived with.

Whatever. Grant is my hero.

*Plastic Ono Band by John Lennon

My father died when I was 12. He had bought me this record the week before he passed. It was pretty much the perfect thing to listen to in the wake of his death. I had my own form of Janov�s therapy by screaming along to �Mother�, and was soothed by �Love.� My father loved John Lennon and his work was a big part of our relationship. Listening to this I felt like my father was comforting me from beyond the grave.

Plus it�s just one of the guttsiest fucking records ever made. Lennon never equaled this.

*The Flashdance Soundtrack

Remember. We�re not necessarily talking about artistic merit here, OK?

When I was six, this album was the sun, moon and stars.

I used to get dressed up in white tights, a Ms. Pac-Man bathing suit, and bright blue legwarmers, turn this on and fucking disco my little heart out.

My dad had rigged the entire house with speakers in every single room so no matter where I went I was able to hear this. The downstairs was my personal Studio 54. At any hour of the day or night I could be found doing gymnastics and ballet moves all over the house to �Maniac� and �What A Feeling!�. My parents were saints to put up with it.

More to come...