Select as many as you like
I always waver between Get Happy!! and This Year’s Model, with Armed Forces and Blood & Chocolate up there as well.
The three album run of This Year’s Model, Armed Forces and *Get Happy!*is one of the greatest three album runs in rock history.
[nitpick mode] What about ‘Taking Liberties’/‘Ten Bloody Marys, Ten How’s Your Fathers’? [/nitpick mode]
Get Happy!! is my all-time favorite, but I love all of his “real” albums (i.e., the ones consisting of rock songs written by EC) so much that there’s little to choose between them. Since it was multiple choice, I gave nods to Trust, Imperial Bedroom, Brutal Youth, All This Useless Beauty, and * When I Was Cruel*.
Hard to pick - so much wonderful stuff. Pump it Up is my touchstone song with him, but Watching the Detectives is the song that set him apart in my mind as a cut above as a songwriter (and that organ note at the end of the chorus hypnotizes me…)…
Holy crap, I dunno how I missed that/them.
One my faves.
mmm
I would add ‘My Aim is True’ and make it a four-album run, and still agree with you.
mmm
Agreed all around.
Well, if you own the Rhino versions of the albums, they make these (and Out of Our Idiot) redundant.
Well, I’m glad it was an oversight and not a deliberate slight. Coulda got ugly. 
woodstockbirdybird - I didn’t realize that; I have the original vinyl.
Gotta go with My Aim Is True. I wish he had done a live album of the “Giant Songwheel” tour, it was really a blast. He’s playing the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival this weekend and The Bridge Concert in a couple of weeks…what a treat for Bay Area fans!
I know it’s early, but a couple selections I though would have fared better: The Delivery Man and Kojak Variety.
Imperial Bedroom as well; what a masterpiece.
mmm
I also thought Imperial Bedroom and TYM would have fared better. My Aim is True and Armed Forces are good, they’re just a little lightweight (especially Armed Forces.) Compared to my two picks which really bring the awesome.
Get Happy and This Years Model are perpetual favorites to make my Top 10 Albums of All Time at any given moment I attempt to compile that. The punch provided by the drums and bass of the Attractions is just unreal.
Love Delivery Man and Imperial Bedroom also, but can’t quite put 'em in the same league as GH and TYM myself…
ETA: Agree with Ludovic on the relative merits of My Aim and Armed Forces. Great albums–and the Attractions definitely nail the performances in AF–but the songwriting isn’t quite as powerful to me.
*Get Happy!! *and *Taking Liberties *all the way. They both have that same kind of feel.