1994

                The saying goes that the best year for pop music is when you were 14 years old.  This makes a lot of sense to me, at least insofar as the year you start really caring about music will be your point of reference going forward, with you hearing either how earlier stuff led to that point or how later stuff followed from it.  You could pick any year you want and do this, but you’re likely to stick with the first year you started paying attention.  So by that measure, virtually all of my readership should think that 1993, 1994, or 1995 is that peak.  On the other hand, though, there’s a case to be made that the ’93-’95 period really was one of the great periods in rock music, up there with ’68-’72 and ’78-’82, when in the aftermath of a major innovation, a whole mess of different kinds of music actually got both made and played on the radio.  Certainly ’94 is a very good year, with a lot of good stuff following from (in the US) grunge and (in the UK) Britpop breaking through.  Alt-rock is probably better than Brit-pop, though, if only because it was more open to a freewheeling eclecticism than the more formalized genre rules of Britpop.

                If there’s evidence that ’94 is actually great, and not just a product of my nostalgia, I’d point toward the UK stuff, which for the most part I wasn’t listening to at all at the time.  After getting started in a big way last year, Britpop really hits its stride here.  Parklife is probably Blur’s strongest album (and certainly their strongest Britpop album), covering an impressive range of styles that all hang together both through solid songwriting & playing and because of a through-line of “Englishness” in their genres.  So something like a concept album about British music, esp. of the Kinks-y version, but also the various strands of punk, New Wave, and British post-punk.  Unsurprising how an album like this could form the core of a movement in music, as it shows all the different ways you could take the “Britpop” approach.

                There will be a bigger flurry of bands taking these various approaches later on, but we get a couple of them this year.  Pulp continue their previous year’s EP’s path of glammy, synthy rock with Ray Davies-style lyrics on top, & Elastica drop their first single indicating their electro-New Wave style, but the biggest news in Britpop other than Parklife is the debut of Oasis, giving Blur a proper foil.  Suede were too obviously an inferior version of Pulp with more commercial appeal, but Oasis offer a real and compelling alternate vision of Britpop.  They get tagged as Beatles-wannabes, but that’s not really accurate.  First of all, they sound more like Led Zeppelin covering T. Rex if you want to make classic rock comparisons.  But secondly, and more importantly, what they really sound like is a mix of the classicist songwriting and heavy beats of the Stone Roses with (a less proggy version of) the swirly guitar sonics of My Bloody Valentine; so in a way more modern-sounding than the self-consciously retro Blur.  Although Noel Gallagher isn’t as original as any of those influences listed above, he does have a better sense of melody than any of them other than the Beatles. 

                I mentioned both the Stone Roses and Led Zeppelin as influences on Oasis, so perhaps it’s appropriate that this is the year the Roses finally get around to releasing their second album, which sounds a whole lot like Led Zeppelin with more contemporary dance beats added (on at least some tracks).  A disappointment to those who loved the first album, maybe, but they sound like worthy peers of Oasis this year.  If the Roses sound like 70s revivalists this year, so too do Primal Scream, though they’re more a straight revival act (i.e. no nods to contemporary sounds, dance or otherwise) and their muse is the Rolling Stones circa Black & Blue, when they were interested in exploring funk but not so interested in writing memorable tunes. 

                Older acts also adapt well to the rise of Britpop.  Elvis Costello times the release of one of his periodic return-to-classic-form records well to play alongside his spiritual descendents, while Mick Jones’s new version of Big Audio (now with no Dynamite) also looks backward to his pre-dance past, when he wrote pop songs, and therefore also fits in well with the new crop of UK bands, even if Jones’s tunes, “Harrow Road” excepted, are far from especially memorable.  Solidly returning to form (and classic sound), though is Shane MacGowan, who remarkably puts out his most folk-influenced LP since Rum, Sodomy, & the Lash; his voice is shot to hell, but his songs are good.  Not a great fit in the current Britpop landscape, though, which is much more mannered (Oasis excepted) and less folk-influenced than MacGowan or the Pogues.  We even get a couple of prog bands, with King Crimson (sounding like a hard-rock Talking Heads) and Pink Floyd, who release their 2^nd post-Waters LP, The Division Bell.  You’d think that a band like Floyd would sound entirely out of place in the current musical landscape, but remarkably, the beginnings of Radiohead’s shift into prog mean that Floyd actually sound like an influence for the first time in years.  Not that Radiohead’s shift should be overstated, though; they’re still mostly a second-tier grunge band (esp. on the first of their two EPs this year), but on “My Iron Lung,” their grunge-prog sound first really suggests the greatness they’ll start reaching next year.

                Back in the States, meanwhile, we’re reaching the end of the real grunge era, as the original grunge bands put out either their last albums in a real “grunge” style or (sadly) their last albums at all.  Still really good stuff this year, though.  Pearl Jam and Soundgarden both put out their best albums in ’94.  Soundgarden don’t really change their basic sound, but do tighten up their songwriting, improving on Badmotorfinger while keeping its strengths.  Pearl Jam, meanwhile, double down on the experimentation and strip out the last of the funk from last year, ending up sounding something like a Hüsker Dü-Fall hybrid.  Pretty far from the Aerosmith-recalling sound of Ten, but a remarkably daring album for the biggest band in the world to release.  Also, hands-down (to my ears) Pearl Jam’s peak as a hard-rockin’ band, since before and after this, the ballads would be their strong suite. 

                If Pearl Jam are at their most rocking, it’s somewhat contrary that the other major grunge bands to put out albums this year are shifting to a more folk-rock sound.  Alice In Chains don’t go all the way acoustic, but they definitely are expanding their sonic palette and playing a bit softer this year.  More surprising still, though, is Nirvana’s Unplugged.  By their own description, Nirvana wanted to avoid simply playing their electric hits on acoustic guitars, so instead rearrange that material of theirs they play and otherwise show off their range of influences on a remarkable set of acoustic material.  It’s hard to say whether this was a bold new (potentially Automatic for the People-influenced) direction, or, like for Alice in Chains, a one-off and the beginning of a more subtle shift in Cobain’s songwriting.  Regardless, the album shows off both the quality of Cobain’s songwriting (even stripping away the electric guitar attack) and of Cobain’s singing voice (especially on “Where Did You Sleep Last Night”),  and serves as an unintentional requiem for one of the most talented artists of his generation.

                Neil Young, meanwhile, puts out a very intentional requiem for Cobain on his Sleeps With Angels, probably his strongest album since Rust Never Sleeps, and the one that most explicitly declares his kinship with the grunge-rockers.  Even more than the punks, Young’s ragged guitar attack fits perfectly alongside the grunge acts, and the experimentation of Pearl Jan and the acoustic moves of Nirvana and Alice in Chains shows that Young’s other aspects also fit well among them.  And this year he writes a song-cycle that both plays to those similarities and contains his best songwriting and playing in a long time.

                While the original Seattle grunge acts are moving away from the grunge sound, a wave of neo-grunge bands are already starting to appear.  First (and best) of these bands are the Stone Temple Pilots, who I neglected to mention in ’92 because itunes misdated them, but are much better this year than then anyway.  In ’92 they were transparently Pearl Jam followers, with just a touch of glam metal thrown in.  This year they really start to develop their own unique variant on the grunge sound (slightly more glam and classic-rock influenced than the others, even Pearl Jam), and Scott Weiland starts trying to sound like himself, rather than Eddie Vedder.  But if STP are beginning to show their worth as more than just grunge followers, there are still plenty of bands like Candlebox out there content to simply ape the grunge sound without adding any particular innovation of their own.

                It’s because of these dour neo-grunge bands in part that Weezer’s debut was as impressive as it was.  Basically Weezer combine the sound of the early ‘90s (distorted guitars, pounding drums) with the more upbeat sentiment of New Wave, or more accurately Cheap Trick.  Basically a hard power-pop band, then, but a lot more fun-loving than anything the grunge or neo-grunge acts have to offer.

                The rest of alt-rock isn’t half as dour as grunge, though, and is really starting to expand in a whole mess of directions.  If one of the big stories in US alt-rock is the stylistic development of the grunge acts, undoubtedly the other one is the explosion of California-style pop-punk.  This owes a lot to Bad Religion, who have their biggest hit this year mostly due to timing (Stranger Than Fiction is solid, but a step down from Recipe for Hate, and lifted by virtue of the bands BR influenced getting a ton of radioplay).  The big news commercially, though, is the sudden commercial viability of a bunch of Cali punk bands seemingly out of nowhere.  I suppose it follows from all the grunge bands talking about how they think of themselves as punk bands, even if that’s far more in attitude than music, where even Nirvana didn’t particularly recall punk rock.  It was only a matter of time before people who loved the grunge bands started seeking out the punk bands, and punk of the NoFX-Green Day school was probably much more likely to break through than the dour grunge sounds, being both unabashedly catchy and far more fun-loving than most of the grungies.  These new Cali bands have far less interest in punk’s audience-bating and deliberate abrasiveness than the likes of the Sex Pistols, certainly.  Some, like Green Day, seem like genuine punks who found their sound suddenly had commercial appeal, while others, like the Offspring, in retrospect sound a bit more mercenary or opportunistic.  Of course, there are still bands making good punk music somewhat below the radar, though both the Bosstones and Rancid score minor MTV hits this year, with “Kinder Words” and “Salvation,” respectively.  They both are a bit more sonically abrasive than those acts that do break through, though.

                Elsewhere, there’s a whole mess more alt-rock that’s less easy to categorize or frame in discussion.  One thing I will say is that it becomes pretty clear that the alt-rock/indie rock distinction people make about this period is pretty post hoc in its reasoning.  Indie darlings Pavement, for instance, score a minor hit and don’t sound any further out of the mainstream than, say, Phish, who also sound as alt-rock-radio friendly as they ever will this year.  Neither, though, is as sonically out there as, say Cake or Pearl Jam in ’94, so while there is some good stuff from what will later be called indie-rock, there isn’t really any evidence to divide the “indie” bands from the “alt-rock” bands except that the indie bands were those bands that were less commercially lucky and the alt bands more commercially lucky. 

                And, of course, some of the bands from 80s alt/indie (before people even pretend there was a divide) are still very much active.  Both Sugar and Sonic Youth keep in the same vein as their earlier work, with Sugar sounding much more radio-friendly than the more abrasive Sonic Youth.  Frank Black is also close to his classic Pixies style, though considerably mellower as a solo act.  Much more interesting than any of these, though, are R.E.M., who make a big distorted-guitar-heavy glam rock album.  Mistaken for a grunge record at the time (and understandably so), it’s really a superior return to the Green sound.  Really, they fit well alongside Oasis, who are also making a big, guitar-heavy glam record, and like Definitely Maybe, some people hated Monster for being big “dumb” fun, which misses how hard it is to pull that style & swagger off convincingly.

                Of course, this means that R.E.M. have abandoned folk-rock, at least for now, but a host of bands are picking up that baton as well.  Jeff Buckley is probably the most celebrated these days, and not undeservedly, though he sounds more influenced by the 70s folk-rockers (like his dad) than by R.E.M. or the 80s/90s folk rock.  Sounding more contemporary are Toad The Wet Sprocket, who sound like a mix of late-era Replacements and Paul Westerberg.  They sound appropriate alongside the likes of the Goo Goo Dolls and Gin Blossoms, bands that I don’t have in my collection but I remember dominating the airwaves.  On the more hippie end of things, while Phish are sounding more conventionally alt-rocking this year, we get Rusted Root, who sound vaguely like the late-era Talking Heads in their world-beat rocking.  But the best folk-rock album of the year (apart from Grace) is probably Tom Petty’s.  What Petty and Buckley remember that the others generally overlook is the rock half of folk-rock, including a bit of electric crunch amid all the soft strumming (acoustic and otherwise).

                But the best part of 1994 & alt-rock isn’t the late-era evolution of grunge, the explosion of pop-punk, or the 70s revival shifting toward folk-rock, it’s what I tend to think of as the WTF bin.  It was a great era for all sorts of bands that seemingly make no sense getting anything like radioplay, but sneaking in the gaps as the majors blindly cast about for the next big sound.  Eventually they’d decide (incorrectly as it turns out) that that would be electronica, and we do get Daft Punk’s first single this year.   But before we reached that point, all sorts of weird stuff got on the radio.  Nine Inch Nails somehow manage to make Big Black-style industrial rock pop (by adding songs & hooks), and still get a mess of radio-play with a seemingly anti-radio chorus on “Closer.”  You know the one I mean.  Hell, Ween had a minor hit (with “Voodoo Lady”), which is pretty remarkable for a group with such a prominent Zappa influence.  You also get hints of the soon-to-be-faddishly popular lounge-revival, with the likes of Stereolab and Pizzicato Five offering a modern spin on what’s basically 40’s-style pop songs (and also showing a bit of a Style Council influence, though both are better at these non-rock styles than the Style Council, who were only ever really good when they were closest to sounding like a trad soul band).

                You also get bands mixing elements of hip-hop into their post-grunge alt-rock, most notably Beck and Soul Coughing.  Soul Coughing sound more jazz- and spoken-word-inflected, but still ride an impressive groove.  Beck, meanwhile, has an appealing junk-shop mash-up of grunge-rock and hip-hop on Mellow Gold, which lacked the wall-to-wall hits of some of his later ones, but is perhaps his most captivatingly original set of material.  His other album, though, the dire “anti-folk” of One Foot In The Grave is a prime example of the early 90s’ chief sonic sin: lo-fi.  Low fidelity is fine if it’s a matter of necessity, if you’re too poor to afford proper recording equipment.  And yes, the lo-fi crackle of, say, Robert Johnson is part of the charm, but only because it’s genuine.  Adding it as artifice just sounds phony.  While I get lo-fi as a reaction to the overproduction of the 80s, it’s irritating in exaxtly the same way: the production overwhelms the songs.  For Beck (as for Sebadoh) this means that it’s impossible to separate the actual quality songs from the just-screwing-around junk.  Which may be the point, but causes me to basically reject One Foot In The Grave entirely.  Similarly wasting their time on lo-fi, but without much evidence of great songs underneath the overwhelming underproduction are Sublime, who fall down hard on their second album.  Robbin’ The Hood sounds basically like what it is: a bunch of guys high on hard drugs goofing around with a 4-track. 

                While Beck, Soul Coughing, and Sublime are all messing around with elements of hip-hop, the Beastie Boys actually straddle the line between the two worlds.  Largely a continuation and expansion of the  path they started down on Check Your Head, Ill Communication basically goes further in all directions.  The Beasties remember that they used to be a punk band, and both include some hardcore cuts and the rap-rocking glory of “Sabotage,” hands-down the best rap-rock fusion of them all (not that there’s much competition apart from Rage and maybe Blakroc).  They go deeper into their Curtis Mayfield-inspired mellow funk instrumentals.  But predominantly they sound like a post-Native Tongues alternative hip-hop act, much like a new crop of hip-hop that’s starting to appear.

                It’s ironic that Common releases his first great song (“I Used To Love H.E.R.”) mourning the death of hip-hop just as my favorite phase in hip-hop gets started.  The Roots debuted last year, this year Blackalicious put out their first EP, and (not that they’re quite the same sub-genre) Outkast release their debut.  This late-90s hip-hop is my favorite kind of hip-hop perhaps just because it was what was out there when I first started getting into hip-hop (as per my introduction thesis), but also because it’s got fantastic beats and rhymes, highly indebted to Native Tongues, but better in every regard.

                Oh, and speaking of “hip-hop,” Vanilla Ice has reinvented himself as a hardcore Cyprus Hill-style weed-rapper.  Hearing him rap about how he “needs to get some spices/so I can get nices” is worth doing whatever you need to do to track down his absurd comeback single.

Song of the Year:  Soundgarden – “Black Hole Sun.”  My favorite song that summer, and still a fantastic example of how grunge started pushing its boundaries this year (just before the original grunge bands (even STP) would abandon the sound and leave it for the likes of (ugh) Creed and (sigh) Nickelback.

Album of the Year:  Pearl Jam – Vitalogy.  See above.  A moment when Pearl Jam sounded like they’d be a Beatlesesque kind of biggest band in the world, relentlessly pushing boundaries and throwing weird experimentation on platinum-selling records (also not touring).  Instead they became the 90s Grateful Dead, relentlessly touring and putting out albums that are basically variations on a theme and no longer the main event.

Artist Most Benefiting from Reevaluation:  Alice in Chains.  I’d forgotten that Alice in Chains were so willing to vary their sonic template, since those bands that they influenced seemingly only had Dirt in their Alice in Chains collection.  But they were as willing to evolve and move forward as any of the grunge bands.

Artist Most Diminished in Reevaluation:  NoFX.  The same basic sonic template as Green Day, but more irritating.  And not in Sex Pistols, deliberately-pushing-boundaries kind of way, but in a snotty teenager kind of way.  So a dog-whistle band of sorts, appealing to teenagers, obnoxious later on.  Good lord, I feel old typing that.

Album List

Aerosmith - Big Ones

Alice In Chains - Jar of Flies

Bad Religion - Stranger Than Fiction

Beck - Mellow Gold

Beck - One Foot In The Grave

Big Audio Dynamite - Higher Power

Big Audio Dynamite - Planet BAD: Greatest Hits

Blackalicious - Melodica

Blur - Parklife

Blur - Parklife B-Sides

Blur - The Best Of

Bob Dylan - Live 1961-2000: Thirty-Nine Years of Great Concert Performances

Bruce Springsteen - The Essential Bruce Springsteen

Charlatans UK - Melting Pot

Common - Thisisme Then: The Best Of Common

Cornershop - Hold On It Hurts

Cracker - Misc.

Daft Punk - Musique Vol 1

Dinosaur Jr. - Beat The Retreat: Songs By Richard Thompson

Dinosaur Jr. - Ear-Bleeding Country: Best Of Dinosaur Jr

Dio - The Very Beast Of Dio

Edwyn Collins | Orange Juice - A Casual Introduction 1981/2001

Elliott Smith - Misc.

Elvis Costello - Extreme Honey: The Very Best Of The Warner Bros. Years

Frank Black - Teenager Of The Year

Green Day - Dookie

Guided By Voices - Bee Thousand

Jeff Buckley - Grace

King Crimson - In The Studio 1995-2003

King Crimson - Live 1994-2003

Manic Street Preachers - Forever Delayed

Martin Carthy & Maddy Prior - Beat The Retreat: Songs By Richard Thompson

Matthew Sweet - Son Of Altered Beast

Meat Puppets - Too High To Die

Megadeth - Greatest Hits: Back To The Start (Digital Only)

Morphine - Yes

Morrissey - The Best Of Morrissey

Mudhoney - March To Fuzz: Rarities

Neil Young - Sleeps With Angels

Nine Inch Nails - The Downward Spiral

Nirvana - MTV Unplugged In New York

NoFX - Punk in Drublic

Oasis - B-Sides

Oasis - Definitely Maybe

Oasis - Misc.

Oasis - The Masterplan

Old 97's - Hit By A Train: The Best Of Old 97's

Outkast - Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik

Paul Weller - Modern Classics

Pavement - Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain

Pearl Jam - Vitalogy

Phish - Hoist

Pink Floyd - The Division Bell

Pizzicato Five - Made In USA

Primal Scream - Give Out But Don't Give Up

Pulp - His 'N' Hers

R.E.M. - Monster

Radiohead - BBC Radio One Session - 14 September 1994

Radiohead - Itch EP

Radiohead - My Iron Lung [EP] [UK]

Rancid - Let's Go!

Richard Thompson - Action Packed: The Best Of The Capitol Years

Rusted Root - When I Woke

Screaming Trees - Ocean Of Confusion - Songs Of Screaming Trees 1990-1996

Shane MacGowan - The Snake

Smashing Pumpkins - Rotten Apples: Greatest Hits

Sonic Youth - Experimental Jet Set, Trash And No Star

Soul Coughing - Ruby Vroom

Soundgarden - A-Sides

Soundgarden - Superunknown

Stereolab - Serene Velocity - A Stereolab Anthology

Stone Temple Pilots - Thank You

Sublime - Robbin' The Hood

Sugar - Besides

Sugar - File Under Easy Listening

The Beastie Boys - Ill Communication

The Beastie Boys - The Sounds Of Science

The Cranberries - The Best Of The Cranberries 20th Century Masters The Millennium Collection

The Fall - 50,000 Fall Fans Can't Be Wrong: 39 Golden Greats

The Flaming Lips - Due To High Expectations...The Flaming Lips Are Providing Needles For Your Balloons

The Flaming Lips - She Don't Use Jelly (Single)

The Flaming Lips - The Fearless Freaks

The Jesus & Mary Chain - 21 Singles

The Mekons - I Have Been to Heaven and Back..., Vol. 1

The Mekons - Retreat From Memphis

The Mekons - Where Were You?

The Mighty Mighty Bosstones - Question The Answers

The Notorious B.I.G. - Notorious

The Rolling Stones - Forty Licks

The Stone Roses - Second Coming

Toad The Wet Sprocket - Dulcinea

Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - Girl on LSD

Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - Wildflowers

V/A - Children Of Nuggets II

V/A - Children Of Nuggets III

V/A - DGC Rarities, Vol. 1

V/A - Trainspotting

Ween - Chocolate And Cheese

Weezer - Dusty Gems And Raw Nuggets [Bonus Disc]

Weezer - Wedding Songs

Weezer - Weezer

Wire - Misc.

X - Beyond & Back: The X Anthology

1993

                An impressive rebound from a less-than-impressive 1992, driven by very solid years in all of the four “arenas” of music in which my collection pretty cleanly breaks into: grunge, UK indie (where Britpop finally arrives in force), hip-hop, and non-grunge US alt-rock.  The last one probably has the best year overall, as this is the year that US alt-rock really consolidates.  Although this is not so much in terms of formal genre boundaries: if not as diverse as New Wave, alt-rock is at least as diffuse a “genre” as post-psych was back in the late ’60s.  Nevertheless, we’re getting into the latest of our periods of post-genre creativity, where music moves in a hundred different directions at once.  This will especially be the case next year, but it begins really here. 

                Here is also where we get the second essential compilation of the early 90s, with the No Alternative comp.  It’s not as essential as Singles, which contained among the best work of the grunge acts to that point, but it does capture the range of styles that got grouped together under the banner “alternative rock” (before it became a radio station term for “mainstream rock (mostly not metal))”.  It also highlights (perhaps inadvertently) how must of what constituted alt-rock this year were bands that either had been around in the Bush Administration, or centered around members of those groups (in contrast to last year, where newer bands were more prominent).  Some of these are acts (or descendents of acts) that I’ve talked about before.  Bob Mould’s various groups, for instance, have been prominent pretty much since Hüsker Dü’s inception way back in ’83.  It is interesting, in that light, that Sugar is the first time that Mould starts experimenting with 80’s-style synth sounds, albeit against what’s otherwise the least radio-friendly guitar squall of his career.  It fits well next to Nirvana’s similarly less-than-radio-friendly In Utero this year, though, which probably isn’t too much of a surprise, given the clear Hüsker influence on all the 90s alt-rock bands, Nirvana included.

                Another band with a clear influence on Nirvana, the Pixies, are over and done, but this year we get the first post-Pixies album, from Kim Deal’s Breeders, and while it may not be the “best” Pixies-related album, it may just be my favorite.  As clever and experimental as the Pixies (and kind of following on the spacey surf-rock of Bossanova), but Last Splash is also a lot looser and more straight-up fun, one of my essential summer records of all time.  And at least to my ears, “Cannonball” was the summer jam of 1993.  Of course, even as we get an album from the underappreciated second songwriter in the Pixies, we also get an album from the underappreciated second songwriter in the Breeders, with Tanya Donelly’s Belly (who, incidentally, was also an underappreciated secondary songwriter in the Throwing Muses).  Unsurprisingly, Belly sound a lot like the Breeders, albeit more mellow and probably stronger lyrically.

Elsewhere in heavy-guitar-dominated acts, Dinosaur Jr. continue their 1-2 radio-friendly singles among mediocre albums trend, getting a little bit of airplay but not really breaking through.  In sharp contrast, however, are the Flaming Lips, who really reach the culmination of their early period here, combining all the ragged guitar attack of their early period with the more complex and catchy song structure of their last two.   “She Don’t Use Jelly” may be the most representative alt-rock single from this year: quirky, guitar-based, and from a band that had been toiling in the indie world without any radioplay of consequence until this point. 

You can file the Meat Puppets’ “Backwater” here too, but while the Lips’ breakthrough was a culmination of their earlier sound, “Backwater” doesn’t sound much at all like the shambolic country-punk of their early stuff.  Rather, it fits much more in with a strong current of 70s-revivalism which started last year, but continues in this year.  Cracker also very much fit in here, and are miles better than on their debut.  Still as jokey as last year, but while last year the joke seemed to be at the expense of the style of music, this year they’re much more jokey but within a context of a music they show clear affection for; so much more like the last Camper Van Beethoven album.  Uncle Tupelo and Matthew Sweet also fit in this 70’s revivalism, both borrowing heavily from 70’s country-rock.  Uncle Tupelo are probably less impressive this year, as their last album adds back in the electric guitars but not the punk rock of their first two records, making Anodyne the album of theirs that most sounds just like country-rock revivalism rather than a fresh take on fusing country and rock music.  Matthew Sweet, meanwhile, is layering his same almost clinical vocal arrangements on top of country-rock tunes this year instead of classic pop tunes, which works about as well, but adds some necessary grit to his sound.  Also, he’s sporadically experimenting with big, grunge-echoing distorted guitars, which is also quite compelling; even if the overall effect recalls Neil Young more than the grunge acts. 

Liz Phair probably also fits somewhere in the 70s-echoing end of alt-rock, at least insofar as her excellent debut is a song-by-song response to Exile on Main St.  It also somewhat recalls a mix of Sebadoh (in its low-fi-ness) and Jonathan Richman (in its straightforward sentiment).  Pretty excellent, at any rate, if a bit too obscenity-laced and lo-fi to be a real radio smash.

                Moving even further away from grunge-rock, though, the 70s revival continues among the more college-rock or hippie-rock friendly scene.  Big Head Todd put out what’s basically a Stevie Ray Vaughn influenced piece of classicism.  Phish don’t actually sound all that 70s (their jokey bluegrass sound actually mostly reminds me of Camper Van Beethoven), but do put out a concept album.  And I suppose you could slot the Counting Crows in here too.  They’d go on to be just another faceless post-grunge alt-rock band, but for one fantastic album, they reached a kind of timelessness, at least insofar as August and Everything After sounds like it could have come out anytime between 1965 and the present.

                Much like alt-rock more generally, punk rock is dominated by survivors from the 80s and even the 70s, insofar as the Ramones have their not-bad-but-not-spectacular 60s covers album.  The Bosstones are also (like last year) covers-happy, but this year more interested in covering classic hardcore and reggae tunes rather than metal (and once again get a small/possibly regional hit with “Someday I Suppose”.  (Being part of the “region” of interest, I have no idea if people outside of New England were hearing the Bosstones on the radio yet, but they fit well with the general eclecticism of alt-rock.  But the best punk record this year is Bad Religion’s Recipe for Hate, which was both their last indie record (on first pressing) and major label debut (on second pressing).  It’s very much an improvement on Generator, but keeping with their more midtempo approach, and also sounding like they’ve got a more expansive recording budget, with touches like steel guitar, superior production, and big-name-rockstar guests (Eddie Vedder, who in true reluctant-rockstar-fashion is buried in the mix on his blink and you miss it guest vocal spot).

                Still, appearing on a Bad Religion disc probably needed Pearl Jam some previously lacking punk cred, even if on their own record, theyre still very much not particularly punk.  They are, however, increasingly sounding linfluenced by post-punk, esp. the more guitar-heavy side of it.  They did swipe this year’s album title from Mission of Burma, after all, plus elsewhere their churning riffs + ranting vocals recall the Fall.  It might sound like heresy, but I think I prefer Vs. to Ten.  IF nothing else, the production is stronger, giving the rockers more punch, and the acoustic-driven story-songs are a bit more fully-formed than last year.  Plus they’ve purged the last of their Mother Love Bone sonic elements, and sound like a band willing to really press their sound forward.

                Nirvana, meanwhile, are in a bit more of a consolidation mode, with In Utero combining the superior songcraft of Nevermind with the more noisy, grungy sound of Bleach (albeit with Dave Grohl’s superior drumming).  Although more than Bleach¸ the sonics of this record recall the deliberately off-putting work of producer Steve Albini’s own band, Big Black.  Probably their best album, but probably also would have been remembered as a transitional record if they’d made more. 

                Finally in US alt-rock, there’s the major-label debut and breakthrough of a band which mistakenly gets called a grunge band.  Smashing Pumpkins’ Siamese Dream does recall Nevermind, in its spit-polished metal-style production and big distorted guitars, but really misses the wildness of Seattle- or Boston-style alt-rock.  Rather, this is alt-rock produced with the overdubs and attention to detail of a Boston record, which is not a bad thing, but much different from the more ragged sounds of alt-rock elsewhere.  What it really recalls, in terms of contemporaries, is My Bloody Valentine, making the Smashing Pumpkins the only US alt-rock band with a real UK influence.  Also, while Siamese Dream is too uneven to be in contention for best record of the year, the Smashing Pumpkins’ singles this year are the best collection of singles I’ve heard from anyone this year. 

                And which segues nicely to what’s going on in the UK, where I can talk about Radiohead, the only UK band with a clear US influence.  Radiohead are at this point an imitative grunge-rock band, and if they hadn’t gotten better dramatically and quickly, would be remembered on about the same level as Bush: wholly derivative, but with a couple of listenable singles.  But solidly out of place in the rest of the UK scene, wiere the big deal is the long-awaited arrival of Brit-pop.

                Brit-pop at this point is the story of three bands.  Blur are probably the best at this point, having mostly shook off the weak baggy sound of their debut in favor of a crisp, tightly-arranged classic-Kinks sound.  It’s mostly just an update on the Kinks without too much of their own contribution, but does still have a very early-90s production sound, sounding unsurprisingly like, say XTC.  And because the British press need their big bands to have Beatles-Stones rivalries, and Oasis aren’t here yet, Suede get held up as the Pepsi to Blur’s Coke.  But they’re not half as worthy; fun on the glammy, derivative rockers, but tedious on the ballads.  Much better are Pulp, who like a lot of the US alt-rock groups have been putting out unremarkable music since the late New Wave era.  But they really come into their own this year, combining the slice-of-life lyrics of Blur with the glammy sound of Suede. 

                Especially on their spoken-word vignettes they also recall the working-class-life focus of the Mekons, who are around this year, but unremarkable, beginning a 90s run of albums that aren’t bad, per se, but don’t really have anything to say.  The early Mekons (the amateurish punk band) do, however sound like a major influence on the early Cornershop, who at this point sound just like a punk band that occasionally breaks into Punjabi with no hint of either the dance influences or greatness to follow.

                Finally in the UK, there’s still a little bit of the old dance-rock sound, ironically chiefly in bands that existed prior to the movement.  New Order put out their worst album to date by seeping themselves in contemporary dance-pop.  Last time out, on Technique, they sounded like a band keeping their old identity while adapting to new sounds, but this year the new sounds have swallowed them whole, and the results are entirely forgettable.  I suppose you could say that the same thing happens to U2, as Zooropa sounds the lieast like earlier U2 of any of their albums to date.  It’s also, however, very very good (and underrated).  “Stay” may just be their finest ballad to date, and unlike New Order, they sound like they’ reengaging with the new sound rather than just imitating it.  If Zooropa had been an EP (as originally intended_ or bonus tracks on Achtung (as it is now), old school U2 fans probably would have been less thrown off, but I for one love hearing the sound of a band really radically trying new things when the safe money is on sticking with the old.  Of course, when they return on Pop, they’ll have made the same mistakes as New Order do this year, and after that they’ll stop trying to be original altogether, but this year they’re earning their place as the world’s biggest band.

                Finally turning to the world of hip-hop, I’m a little thin on the ground this year, but there’s some good stuff to be had.  Salt-N-Pepa are basically a pop-hip-hop group, but have a prominent reggae influence (not at all recalling Massive Attack’s own hip-hop-reggae sound), and as far as pop-hip-hop goes we can (and have and will) do a lot worse.  But much more exciting are a couple of groups on the fringes of the gangsta world, neither of whom really should be called “gangsta.”  The Coup, for instance, owe a much stronger debt to Public Enemy in their political hip-hop, but better them lyrically while not surpassing their work instrumentally.  Boots, especially, seems to have a much more well-thought-out critique in his leftie agitation than Chuck D.’s more sloganeering Black Nationalism.  (and Chuck D. always struck me as more “political” than “intelligent” as a rapper).  Plus, “Presto, read the Communist Manifesto” is among the best first line, first song, first album lines I’ve heard.

                Perhaps closer to gangsta, but surpassing it in every way are the Wu-Tang Clan.  RZA is a far more interesting producer than anyone I’ve heard in the post-sampledelic era, splicing sounds together in truly novel fashion.  And lyrically, while the Clan play with violent imagery, there’s a surreal, mythical element to it that makes them far better than even the most gifted of the gangstas, who hobble their lyrics with a focus on “realness.”  Far better are the fantastic exaggerations of the Wu. 

                And a final hip-hop debut, of note more for what they’ll accomplish later than where they are today, is the Roots’ first album.  In nearly the opposite trajectory from the Wu-Tang Clan, every Roots album will be better than the previous one for an impressive streak, but on their debut, the Roots sound like what they are: a bunch of musically-gifted high-schoolers who have more excitement than experience with how to put out a record yet.  So, impressive as understood as a bunch of high-schoolers, but not all that impressive versus what else is out there or where they’ll be in just a couple of years.  Still, miles better than any of my high school bands…

Song of the Year:  After a great deal of soul-searching, I’m going with Tom Petty’s “Mary Jane’s Last Dance.”  Not only is it a phenomenal song, and my favorite song of this year, but an old New Waver playing to the grunge crowd by putting out a classic-70s sounding single pretty much encapsulates the old-new conflagration of 1993.  Runners up would be the Breeders’ “Cannonball” and the Smashing Pumpkins “Rocket,” for what it’s worth, my two big summer jams of ’93.

Album of the Year:  The Wu-Tang Clan – Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers).  More imaginative than the rather dour world of gangsta rap, but not nearly so wimpy as the Native Tongues stuff, and as fresh a take on hip-hop as I’ve heard in awhile.  A significant portion of my readership/my loving wife Liz, however, thinks I should give the nod to Liz Phair’s Exile in Guyville

Artist Most Benefiting from Reevaluation:  Pearl Jam.  I’ve thought of Vs. as a transitional record, between the classic-rockin’ Ten and the experimental greatness of Vitalogy, and it is, but it’s also an entirely worthy record in its own right, showing already a willingness of the band to press into new sonic territory.  Somewhat ironic that after the mid-90s, they’ll be remembered instead as a band that works their signature sound into the ground.

Artist Most Diminished in Reevaluation:  New Order.  The fact that U2 (a band who parallel New Order in a lot of ways) made reshaping their core identity to fit a new sonic landscape work for them probably makes New Order’s failure all the worse, especially since they had arguably less distance to go.  Still, this is a limp, limp record, and understandably the band would call it quits for almost a decade after while figuring out how/if to move forward from Republic.

Album List

Bad Religion - Recipe For Hate

Belly - Star

Big Head Todd & The Monsters - Sister Sweetly

Blur - Modern Life B-Sides

Blur - Modern Life Is Rubbish [Bonus Tracks]

Bob Dylan - Vol. 8: Tell Tale Signs

Bob Dylan - World Gone Wrong

Built To Spill - The Normal Years

Built To Spill - Ultimate Alternative Wavers

Camper Van Beethoven - Camper Vantiquities

Charles Wright & The Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band - Express Yourself: The Best Of Charles Wright

Cornershop - Elvis Sex-Change

Counting Crows - August & Everything After

Cracker - Misc.

David Bowie - Best Of Bowie

Dinosaur Jr. - Ear-Bleeding Country: Best Of Dinosaur Jr

Elvis Costello - Extreme Honey: The Very Best Of The Warner Bros. Years

Fugazi - In On The Kill Taker

Iggy Pop - Nude & Rude: The Best Of Iggy [Explicit]

Iron Maiden - Misc.

Junior Kimbrough - You Better Run: The Essential Junior Kimbrough

Liz Phair - Exile in Guyville

Manic Street Preachers - Forever Delayed

Matthew Sweet - Altered Beast

Meat Puppets - Too High To Die

Megadeth - Greatest Hits: Back To The Start (Digital Only)

Midnight Oil - 20,000 Watts R.S.L.: Greatest Hits

Mudhoney - March To Fuzz: Best Of...

Mudhoney - March To Fuzz: Rarities

New Order - Republic

Nirvana - In Utero

Ozzy Osbourne - The Ozzman Cometh

Paul Weller - Modern Classics

Pearl Jam - Christmas Singles

Pearl Jam - Lost Dogs

Pearl Jam - Misc.

Pearl Jam - Vs.

Phish - Rift

Prince - The B-Sides

Prince - The Hits

Pulp - Pulpintro: The Gift Recordings

Radiohead - Pablo Honey

Run-D.M.C. - Greatest Hits

Rush - Retrospective 3

Salt-N-Pepa - Very Necessary

Smashing Pumpkins - Rotten Apples: Greatest Hits

Smashing Pumpkins - Siamese Dream

Stereolab - Serene Velocity - A Stereolab Anthology

Suede - Suede

Sugar - Beaster

The Breeders - Last Splash

The Coup - Kill My Landlord

The Cranberries - The Best Of The Cranberries 20th Century Masters The Millennium Collection

The Fall - 50,000 Fall Fans Can't Be Wrong: 39 Golden Greats

The Flaming Lips - Transmissions From The Satellite Heart

The Grateful Dead (live incomplete) - So Many Roads [1965-1995]

The Jesus & Mary Chain - 21 Singles

The Jimi Hendrix Experience - The Ultimate Experience

The Mekons - I Love Mekons

The Mighty Mighty Bosstones - Ska-Core, The Devil, & More [EP]

The Notorious B.I.G. - Notorious

The Ramones - Acid Eaters

The Roots - Organix

Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - Playback III: Good Booty

Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - Playback IV: The Other Sides

Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - Playback VI: Nobody's Children

U2 - B-Sides 1990-2000

U2 - The Best Of 1990-2000

U2 - Zooropa

Uncle Tupelo - 89/93: An Anthology

Uncle Tupelo - Anodyne

V/A - Children Of Nuggets I

V/A - DGC Rarities, Vol. 1

V/A - No Alternative

Violent Femmes - Add It Up (1981-1993)

Wu-Tang Clan - Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)

Wu-Tang Clan - Wu: The Story Of The Wu-Tang Clan

Yo La Tengo - Prisoners Of Love