Yet another music list..best albums of past 15 years, Part 1 (1989-1996)

[Spider Jerusalem]

What one might think of as the era when popular music split into dozens of genres and suibgenres and sub-sub genres...from "alternative rock" to "grunge" to "trip-hop", et cetera.

Might as well go chronologically...

1989: Pixies, "Doolittle" - probably their best album; an almost seamless masterpiece from start to finish.

1990: Massive Attack, "Blue Lines" - The album that defined the "Bristol sound" and created the newe genre of "trip-hop" by blending the sounds of Jamaican dub, R&B, hip-hop, and dance music into something new and different; still sounds amazing today, almost 15 years later.

1991: U2, "Achtung Baby" - U2's last significant album, in my opinion...since then they seem to have degenerated into lame self-parody fuelled in no small part by Bono's monstrous ego.

1992: REM - "Automatic For The People" - One of the best efforts in REM's catalogue, and maybe the best (although arguments can be made for "Green", "Document" and "Fables of the Reconstruction"), and an achievement they've not equalled, musically, since (although they came close with "New Adventures in Hi-Fi").

Tom Waits - "Bone Machine" - Waits continues the shift in sound that he started with "Swordfishtrombones". His music here is even more like some weird, alien blues played by lunatics on instruments salvaged from junkyards, and his voice even more like "Louis Armstrong and Ethel Merman meeting in hell", as he put it (best example here is "Dirt in the Ground"). His best album since "Rain Dogs", and "I Don't Wanna Grow Up" got covered by the Ramones (and how cool is that?)

1993: PJ Harvey - "Rid Of Me" - Polly Jean makes Courtney Love look like a no-talent poseur. Lyrics full of rage, angst, and twisted longing, over seriously rocking guitar riffs and a driving backbeat. Music needs more women like this.

1994: Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - "Let Love In" - Perhaps the quintessential Nick Cave album, from the dark sexuality of "Do You Love Me?" (Part 1) and "Loverman" to the eerie paranoia of "Red Right Hand". Cave has a very distinctive baritone, used excellently here, and the Bad Seeds show why they're known as one of rock's best backing bands.

Soul Coughing - "Ruby Vroom" - Imagine drug-influenced spoken word or beat poetry over mutant jazz that takes riffs from Thelonious Monk and whoever did the music for old Warner Brothers cartoons.

1995: Kool Keith & Dan the Automator - "Dr Octagon" - Quite possibly the weirdest hip-hop album ever, with totally sick beats and rhymes that sound like the result of a collaboration between William S Burroughs and Arthur Rimbaud after imbibing a LOT of absinthe (lots and lots of scatological outer-space stuff). Mind-blowing production, and it's just hilariously funny on top of that.

1996: Tool - "Aenima" - the mid-nineties were not an especially good period for rock, and this album was one of the few bright spots. (Plus, I have fond memories of getting really stoned and watching Fritz Lang's Metropolis with this as the soundtrack.)


And 1996 seems a good ending point for part 1 of this list...I may continue, depending on my mood and interest.

Thought or comments? Feel free to agree or flame below. Heh.

[Systematic Chaos]

1. It's not hard for me to agree with most of these

Although there are a few I've never heard, specifically the entries from '89, '90, '94 and '95.

For 1989 I might have gone with Nine Inch Nails' "Pretty Hate Machine".

[Spider Jerusalem]

2. You really ought to listen to "Doolittle", at least.

Nirvana totally ripped off the Pixies' sound...the same wide dynamics, almost stream-of consciousness lyrics alternately half-mumbled and screamed...that's one of the reasons it's hard for me to give Nirvana much credit: the Pixies were doing it earlier and better.

[warrens]

16. as the new box set points out

Nirvana was doing the quiet-loud thing before the Pixies' first album was released. I doubt Cobain was capable of ripping someone off. He was pretty individual. I happen to think the Pixies were more original, but I don't think Nirvana ripped anyone off any more than any other band did. If he ripped anyone off, it was the Pistols, and they ripped off the Small Faces, mainly.

I don't think in terms of individual years, but albums missing here, IMO, include Mekons Rock and Roll, Bizzaro by Wedding Present, Loveless by My Bloody Valentine, HoboSapiens by John Cale, and this year's best album, Funeral by Arcade Fire.

And Achtung Baby was a joke. Like all U2 albums after Boy.

[SweetLeftFoot]

3. Good choices

Blue Lines is not only the best album of 1990, but damn close to the best album of the 90's. It contains what is by far and away the most influiential track of the 90's - "Unfinished Sympathy"

If it wasn't for Blue Lines I would have been tempted to nominate Nick cave and the Bad seeds "The Good Son". For mine that's THE Cave album - "The Ship Song", "The Weeping Song" et al. Let Love In is good but The Good Son is the best.

Good to see a Melbourne making it onto a Yank website.

[sendero]

10. Unfinished Sympathy...

... is indeed a masterpiece. As is One Love and several other tracks on this record.

But my favorite Massive Attack has to be "Protection".

1996 was an incredible year for music. Sublime's "Sublime" is fantastic, and DJ Shadow's "Endtroducing" is beyond words. :)

I'd have to go with Endtroducing as my favorite of the 90s.

[SweetLeftFoot]

13. Endtroducing

Yeah, fantastic record but not in the same league at Massive Attack. Two showy offy and too much of its time and place.

[Spider Jerusalem]

20. Yeah, I forgot about that one.

"What Does Your Soul Look Like" 1-4 is still probably my favourite bit of hip-hop style turntablism. Although Shadow's collaboration with James Lavelle as UNKLE on "Psyence Fiction" is almost as good.

[SweetLeftFoot]

26. UNKLE

Great album - some of the stuff from Thom Yorke on that is fantastic too.

[Spider Jerusalem]

22. Cave's latest is pretty damned good, too.

Even without Blixa on guitar. I'd say it may be as good as "Let Love IN" and "The Good Son"...maybe not, but it's still his best album in years. You should check it out if you've not done so already.

[SweetLeftFoot]

27. Nick's new one

I'm hoping that subtle hints will result in me getting it for Christmas.

[SweetLeftFoot]

4. For 1997

Its going to be hard to go past Radiohead's "OK Computer" I would think.

[MrScorpio]

5. I've found the ultimate X-Mas album

Check this out, bottom right hand corner

http://www.itunes-music.biz/iTunes-Music-Holiday-Music.aspx

[NashVegas]

6. You Left Out Julian Cope

Peggy Suicide. Maybe it doesn't have the emotional pull of Achtung Baby, but its scope was tremendous. A close second if not #1.

[asthmaticeog]

7. While I agree wholeheartedly with almost all of your choices,

I'd be trying to make room for MBV's "Loveless," Slint's "Spiderland," Cows' "Cunning Stunts," Tortoise's debut, Einsturzende Neubauten's "Haus Der Luge," Fugazi's "In on the Kill Taker" and Nirvana's "In Utero." Just off the top of my head.

[sendero]

11. Loveless...

... is a landmark record no doubt. As is Spiderland. I've tried to get into Tortoise, as I generally love electronica in its many forms, but it just does nothing for me. Ain't music strange :)

[asthmaticeog]

19. I know what you mean.

Out of Tortoise's five albums, I like two (the first one and "Standards"), and utterly despise the other three. The most recent one is especially deserving of becoming bonfire fuel. They're still an incredible exerience in concert, though.

[MrScorpio]

8. My Favorite 1993 album is Reachin' (A New Refutation Of Time And Space)

By the Digable Planets. Why? Because it's cool like that.



http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000000W31/qid%3D1102169062/sr%3D11-1/ref%3Dsr%5F11%5F1/002-9115759-0860052

[SweetLeftFoot]

14. Great record

Whatever happened to those cats? I know they did another record but then they just faded. I heard one died from an OD. Hope its not true.

[MrScorpio]

23. They're still around

And they're coming back!

http://www.digable-planets.prv.pl/

[SweetLeftFoot]

25. Great news

For a Sunday morning

[Feathered Fish]

9. Here are some of mine

Jamiroquai - The Return of the Space Cowboy
REM - Automatic for the People
Beastie Boys - Check your Head
Jane's Addiction - Ritual de lo Habitual
Portishead - Dummy
Public Enemy - Fear of a Black Planet

[sendero]

12. Portishead..

.... "Dummy" is such a powerful record, I could never understand what happened to Portishead.

Nothing they have done since their debut even merits a mention, much less the exclamations of genius deservedly tossed at "Dummy".

[SweetLeftFoot]

15. Death to Jay Kay!

Such, such, such an intolerable, talentless little wanker. Rivalled only by Chris martin in the intolerable wanker field.

Re: Beastie Boys - surely Pauls Boutique?

[Feathered Fish]

17. Lol!

I knew someone was going to say that about Jay Kay! I agree now that they have sucked for almost 10 years, but I really love that album!

As for the Beastie Boys, I actually forgot that one. Consider it added to my list.

[SweetLeftFoot]

18. There is footage

of Jay Kay getting headbutted by a paparazzi. Priceless.

[Feathered Fish]

21. Do you have a link?

That would be pretty damn funny.

[SweetLeftFoot]

24. jay Kay

Nah, I don't. Saw it on one of those "celebrities Go Wild XXVVII) type programs. The snapper was taking snaps of him (Jay Kay) coming out of a club all pissed up and Jay kay took offence. So he grabbed the paps camera and the pap, obviously not wanting his livelihood smashed, grabbed Jay Kay and felled him with a headbutt that would do a Glasgow hardman proud.