The 10 Best LPs to Listen to During a Road Trip or Journey Through the Desert, Per L.A. Indie Band Crumpler

After you, dear Bad Penny readers, gobbled up our recent post in which we exclusively premiered a new song (“Last Time Last Night”) by desert-rock pioneers Crumpler, we hit up the main man behind the project – Jacob Floyd Ross – for another contribution. One of the more generous, kind and brilliant artists with whom we’ve become acquainted in recent memory, Ross eagerly accepted our request and drew up a list of the best albums to listen to in the desert.

Because “desert rock” has developed connotations linking it to the Palm Desert scene that birthed Kyuss, Queens of the Stone Age, Yawning Man and the like, we’re characterizing this list as an array of albums that Ross considers best-suited for long spells in the desert and/or road trips. He picked an array of irrefutably classic records – all of which are arguably some of the best rock releases of all time.

As a reminder, Crumpler’s many records are available on the project’s Bandcamp page. His most recent release is Evolution Is for Lovers, which came out digitally in June 2025 and saw a vinyl release on October 23. Ross, who currently resides in L.A. with his family, has also played with Low Skies, Ribbon Effect, The Warmbloods, Man Is Man and Judson Claiborne.

Something of an everyman, Ross is a self-taught recorder and mixer of music. After moving from Dallas to Chicago, he became an engineer, then a studio manager, and later entered the world of studio design.

Three months ago, Crumpler re-emerged with a backing band in tow and the first single for Evolution Is for Lovers, “The Cowboy Taliban Took My Daddy Away.” Ross rolled it out on the website for his Beltway mixing studio, which is located in L.A. His band includes musicians who have collaborated with Mavis Staples, Bobby Conn and Lumpy & the Dumpers.

Without further ado, here’s Ross’ list of records best-suited for spending long periods of time in the desert.

1. Thin White Rope’s Sack Full of Silver

This is the prototype desert-rock band for me. This album is my favorite starting place, but all of Thin White Rope’s albums fall solidly within this subgenre of forlorn longing, sun-baked striving and unrelenting space. If Gila monsters could sing, I’m pretty sure they’d sound like Guy Kyser.

2. Mazzy Star’s She Hangs Brightly

The definition of sultry. This album makes all the yearning, struggling and sweltering desolation feel downright tantalizing. Mazzy Star capture both the vastness and the unyielding intimacy of the desert, like an enchanting song of the siren echoing across the mesas, canyons and arroyos.

3. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds’ Henry’s Dream

More than one of Nick Cave’s albums fall into this category for me, but the albums with Mick Harvey and the Bad Seeds feel more desert rock-y than the rest of Cave’s catalog. Crime & the City Solution’s 1990 album, Paradise Discotheque, almost made this list! Nevertheless, I get compared to Nick Cave quite often, so it felt extra important to include him. We both love to bring the fire and brimstone to the desert scene, but never without a heartfelt reminder of why we bother.

4. Canyon’s Empty Rooms

This band chose a desert-rock name, and fortunately they live up to it. As my wife pointed out when I began compiling this list, it has to be a good road-trip album, or it ain’t desert rock. And this particular album is dripping with wanderlust. Song after song evokes the longing for what’s just around the next bend or just over that next ridge or … just one more night searching the stars.

5. Pixies‘ Surfer Rosa

This album opens with a rush of emotions not unlike slamming the accelerator across the high desert with demons and ghosts hot on your heels into the wide-open, unforgiving wildness of hoping for a new frontier. Again and again, Surfer Rosa crushes the road trip category. The whole album is prickly and hot. Plus there’s a song called “Cactus.” Furthermore, the album art rules.

6. Phosphorescent’s Muchacho

Lots of spacious reflective southwest vibes on this album that consistently conjure wide-open introspection with equally persistent reminders that there’s always the sky when you’re down in the desert. Muchacho opens with the hope of a sunrise after a long lonely night and then immediately turns like a gentle rain into a flash flood testimonial that even the good and necessary things in life can crush us. But like the desert plants themselves, this album twists and bends optimism into the melancholy, slowly and surely.

7. Neil Young’s Dead Man

Unbelievably powerful soundtrack using the stark depth of minimal instrumentation and effects to evoke the stark depth of desert minimalism. Neil Young manages to make one guitar feel as life-threateningly large as the desert, and it thrusts you into the wide-open vulnerable spaces of a relentless landscape.

8. Calexico’s Feast of Wire

This band’s music bursts forth with the joy of blooming cacti after a monsoon, or a warm sunrise after a long, cold night. They blossomed in the Sonoran Desert, and just like the iconic saguaro, they are both similar to other desert plants yet totally singular. They built a desert-rock sound that could only be born in a place as uniquely majestic and punishing as the Sonoran’s supernatural landscape.

9. The Gun Club’s Miami

Don’t let the title fool you; the vibe on this album is quintessential desert rock. The Gun Club sound like the punk-rock house band at The Gem Saloon in Deadwood. Everyone should own this album for the Creedence Clearwater Revival cover [of “Run the Jungle”] alone.

10. Ennio Morricone’s The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Yes, I know this is technically not rock’n’roll, but spaghetti westerns had a profound influence on a lot of punk and reggae music that then heavily influenced me. Morricone’s theme song for this movie is as unforgettable as it is iconic. Turn it up and space out.

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