1991

                1991 is a big shift for me in a couple of key ways.  First of all, this is the first year where the music I was actually listening to at the time I still listen to.  Which is to say that, as a boy, I listened to the likes of Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer (and of course Michael Jackson, what with being alive in the ‘80s and all), but I don’t love these acts like I did when I was a kid.  But Nirvana?  Pearl Jam?  Soundgarden?  Loved them then, love them now.  That also means there’s a severe danger of this project turning into an exercise in nostalgia, but I’ll try to avoid that at all costs.  And if nothing else, I’ll be able to better contextualize what I was listening to with what else was going on.  For instance, I wasn’t listening at all to what was happening in the UK at the time, or even nearby Boston…

The second big shift for ’91 is that it’s the first year since I’ve started this project where I have no records.  I probably still have some cassettes kicking around somewhere, but they won’t get listened to, so ’91 becomes my first all-digital year.  This’ll be the norm, rather than the exception, from here on out, which should, in theory, make the years go more quickly.  Although that was not the case this week, and the reason for the long gap between posts has little to do with my busy schedule and a lot to do with how unexpectedly excellent 1991 is.  In my mind prior to this week, I’d thought of ’91 as a “precursor” year to ‘94, the ’77 to ’79 or the ’66 to ’68: very good, but chiefly important for laying the groundwork for what came after.  But check out the album list below; most of those actual LPs (as opposed to comps) are acclaimed to be stone-cold classics by at least some people, and most of the ones that aren’t are still pretty damn good.  So let’s dig in.

I suppose I’ll start at the top, with the return of several major acts that we haven’t heard from in years, but still were considered among the biggest acts in the world.  Michael Jackson is back, but I don’t have much to say about Dangerous; it’s not as good as his previous three, though there’s some decent stuff there, and MJ just doesn’t really sound like he’s at the cutting edge anymore.   Much more interesting to me are the returns of R.E.M. and U2, each the biggest alternative bands on their respective side of the Atlantic, both of which have been silent since 1988.  And both return in ’91 with considerable sonic makeovers.  R.E.M.’s is the less radical, but still a sharp turnabout from three consecutive albums that increasingly played up the rockin’ side of the band.  Out Of Time, by contrast, is a hard left into folk-rock.  It’s not quite the folk-rock of their earlier records, though, being both somewhat more straightahead, and sounding more influenced by the likes of Richard Thompson and Bob Mould than the Byrds.  Pretty radically different from the shiny pop of Green, and not really sounding like much else out there.

But still not as radical a shift as U2’s.  Abandoning both the ill-fitting roots-rock of Rattle & Hum and the stadium post-punk of The Joshua Tree, U2 (unlike R.E.M.) very much do embrace the sound of their contemporaries, going headlong into the increasingly dance-focused sounds of UK indie.  They haven’t gone baggy, but the baggy/Madchester sound is starting to fade anyway.  Instead, they’ve incorporated the sounds of house music and forced their own sonic template to fit within those parameters.  I, for one, think it works like gangbusters, and would call it U2’s best album even if it wasn’t exciting to hear a band this big and this able to just keep churning out Joshua Tree soundalikes radically change focus (of course, by the 2000s, they would just be turning out Joshua Tree soundalikes, but we’ve got a few years between now and then).

Actually, it didn’t occur to me until this write-up, but Achtung Baby actually has a lot in common with another of the big UK records of 1991, Primal Scream’s Screamadelica.  The big difference, of course, is that U2 were already pretty interesting, and Primal Scream were a forgettable roots-rock band.  Screamadelica is a more radical makeover, since less of their original sound remains, although it’s still basically “the Rolling Stones make a house record.”  If you think that sounds like a good idea, you’ll probably like this record, and if you think it’s an awful idea, you’ll probably hate it.  I think it’s a lot of fun, and very much the big record that hangs over the (very house-influenced) UK indie scene this year.  Not the UK Nevermind, though, as it’s sometimes claimed to be.  Like Nevermind, it was released in ’91, but it’s much more the culmination of a movement (in this case house-inflected dance rock), not its mainstream breakthrough.  If you want a “UK Nevermind” from this period, therefore, it would be The Stone Roses.  I assume the Brits were just jealous they didn’t get an epochal game-changer of a record this year, so picked this one as a stand-in.  Still a good record, though short of being great as the downtempo-heavy second half drags after all the uptempo danceable fun on the first half.

For a downtempo dance record more worth the effort, another big record in the UK this year is Massive Attack’s Blue Lines, an album that doesn’t sound nearly as radical in retrospect as it probably did at the time.  But it is the birth of trip-hop, and after years of UK bands incorporating hip-hop beats and sampling techniques, is the first time outside of novelty New Order World Cup singles that we hear rapping from a UK act (well, this and the incredibly limp rapping in BAD’s “The Globe,” also this year).  As befitting the UK’s colonial heritage, I suppose, the dominant influences are much more dubwise than hip-hop or funk based, and the rapping owes a lot more to Jamaican toasting than NYC freestyling.  At any rate, it, together with Screamadelica, really does feel like a culmination of a movement toward bringing beats back in the UK, after years of undanceable jangle-pop.  Not a rock record in any sense, though; more like dub-meets-house.  Still, it’s also probably the high-water-mark for the movement, and it’s kinda downhill from here.

But as with last year, dance-rock is all over the place in the UK this year.  Some of the Madchester bands are still going, including the Happy Mondays and a pair from outside Manchester that will make the transition to Brit-Pop soon enough, Blur and the Charlatans (or Charlatans UK, as I will not refer to them again).  You do get a bit of a return to more rock-heavy sounds in all this dance, though.  First of all, Gang of Four return, and that’s really too bad: what was once one of the most innovative and daring dance-punk groups now sounds like an uninspired Midnight Oil-Devo imitation.  Wholly forgettable, except for a cover of Marley’s “Soul Rebel,” which is more interesting than good, but actually not entirely terrible.

Elsewhere among the punk survivors, Mick Jones has created a new Big Audio Dynamite, replacing all the other members and calling this one Big Audio Dynamite II.  I’ve really come to think of BAD as the Gorillaz of the ‘80s – masterminded by one of the two creative forces of one of the biggest bands of the last scene (punk or Brit-pop), focused on of-the-minute sounds, and infatuated with making dance music despite their non-dance backgrounds.  So I wonder if it isn’t inevitable that Gorillaz will end up as dated as BAD.  Certainly this year’s record has aged as poorly as any of them, despite producing the band’s two biggest Stateside hits in “Rush” and “The Globe” (the one with the aforementioned terrible rapping).  They’ve moved away from the deeper dance sounds of their last couple, and are back to sounding like a rock band (if not especially Clash-like).  The band they sound most like this year is Ned’s Atomic Dustbin, another in the seemingly endless parade of “next big things” in the UK that aren’t.  Not bad; guitar-driven shuffling funk-rock.  In keeping with my tendency to hear links between British dance-rock and New England hippie-rock, though, Ned’s sounds a whole lot like the Spin Doctors.  Both are guitar-heavy pop bands who sound like they learned their funk by toning down the aggression in mid-late Led Zeppelin more than from actual funk bands.  (i.e. the funk is all in the rubbery bass, but the drums are four-on-the-floor and the guitars are rock).

It’s (thankfully) not all dance in the UK, though.  One of the biggest records of the year (and among the most beloved still of the era) is My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless.  Much like Screamadelica was the pinnacle of late-80s/early 90s UK dance-rock, this is the high water mark of shoegaze.  From here on out, you’ll here the influence of these sounds (for MBV, esp. in the US, w/ the Smashing Pumpkins), but the scenes pretty much peak then decline this year.  Also, like Screamadelica and Blue Lines, Loveless is much more a soundscape kinda record than a song-based record.

But if the big sounds of turn-of-the decade Britain are about to decline, there’s also still evidence of Brit-pop growing.  Some of this I’ve already touched on, with Blur, Big Audio, and Ned’s Atomic Dustbin all bringing in more of a classic pop-rock sound on top of their dance sounds, but you also get Paul Weller’s return (now thankfully sounding like proper soul music, and not the jazzy dated soul-pop of the Style Council).  Also the Manic Street Preachers out in Wales are more of a straightahead rock band than we’ve heard in the UK in a long time, if closer to US alt-rock than Brit-pop.  Fellow Welshmen Ffa Coffi Pwb (to become the Super Furry Animals) still sound like warmed over Stone Roses, though (but in Welsh!).  Finally, some interesting stuff happening in the more folky end of the UK scene.  Richard Thompson has the best album (and song) of his solo career, while Billy Bragg has some nice stuff mixed in with his stupidest single (and thus inevitable biggest US hit) “Sexuality.”  Sort of collecting all these various strands of UK rock, the Mekons mix the dance beats of their last ep with the straightahead rock of their prior lp and traces of the folk-rock of their earlier stuff.  Probably my favorite album from the UK in ’91, though relatively minor in influence/importance compared to the big three of Screamadelica, Blue Lines, and Loveless.

Of course, if it’s rock you’re looking for in ’91, the obvious place to turn is the US, where by far the biggest thing happening is grunge breaking into the mainstream.  Years upon years of post-grunge rock of the likes of Creed and Nickleback almost make me forget how exciting and energetic the real thing was.  But after years of listening to the grunge bands thrash around short of greatness, a clutch of them break through at once.  On the second tier, there's very good stuff from Screaming Trees, Mudhoney, and the Melvins, but the real action is from the big three: Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, and Nirvana.  Of the three, Soundgarden’s rise is probably the least surprising.  Badmotorfinger is better than what they've done before, but more of a natural evolution than a surprising leap, something they've been building to for awhile.  It's also not all that far from what Pearl Jam was up to, but that its production was more sparse and the focus more on rockers than ballads.  This similarity, of course, makes sense, as both have a big Zeppelin influence, and members of both bands would collaborate on the Temple of the Dog record this year as well.  This sounds not only like a mix of the two bands, but also like a jammy Leppelin and surprisingly like Skynyrd on the ballads.

Pearl Jam, of course, are the second big band to break this year.  They’re more of a surprise than Soundgarden, since they’re a new band, but less of a surprise than Nirvana, since they’re basically Mother Love Bone with a new vocalist and new guitarist.  Miles better than MLB, though, with a stronger, more interesting vocalist, more substantial lyrics, and a more prominent classic rock influence outside of the Zeppelin and Sabbath sounds all the grunge bands share.  This is especially clear on the "Little Wing" aping b-side "Yellow Ledbetter."  Coincidentally, Stevie Ray Vaughan releases his cover of "Little Wing" this year as well.  Pearl Jam get tagged as the least grunge, despite tracing their membership back to first Seattle grungers Green River, but actually sound the most like the late 80s grunge sound, with the more prominent slightly funky bass and Jane’ Addiction influence.

And, of course, the biggest breakthrough is Nirvana's, both in absolute terms and relative to where they were before.  On Bleach, they had some flashes of excellence, but basically sounded likethe poor man’s Mudhoney.  Here they're on a whole other level, songwise.  But also the formula that made Nevermind a hit, apart from the great songs, is pretty straightforward: punk rock songs with thrash metal production.  This is something else that separates Nirvana from the other big grunge bands: Soundgarden and Pearl Jam are basically 70s style hard rock bands with a touch more grit or angst, but Nirvana really is essentially a punk rock band with a Sabbath/Pixies fixation.  Which both explains how Nirvana laid the groundwork for the punk breakthrough a couple of years later, and why all the post-grunge bands which aped the angst but missed the punk lacked the spark of Cobain & co.

But outside of grunge, there was a lot of other fun to be had in US alt rock, which is almost uniformly based in a distorted-guitar-heavy sound of some stripe or another.  Big Nirvana influence the Pixies have a nice return to form this year, on their final record, although comparing Trompe Le Monde and Nevermind highlights why it was Nirvana and not the Pixies that broke alt rock into the mainstream.  Frank Black's songs are equally catchy, and more clever besides, but far less relatable.  Cobain was tapping into fairly universal themes of angst, anger, and despair, while Black is ranting about UFOs, Navajo mysticism, and the University of Massachusetts.  East Coast grungers Dinosaur Jr. plausibly could have broken big, although were probably always better suited to cult following, given their focus on guitar playing over singing or hooks.  Regardless, they sound pretty solid on their major label debut, if not as great as on their SST albums.

Part of that might be due to the loss of secondary songwriter and J. Mascis foil Lou Barlow, who's off messing around on the pretty half-assed experimentation of Sebadoh's III.  It's not particularly great, apart from the excellent kiss-off to his former bandmate, "The Freed Pig" (later covered by Kim Deal, since it was equally relevant to her situation as the underappreciated second songwriter in her Boston-area band).   It is, however, probably the first big example of a split before alt rock, which may or may not attract radio play, and the willfully obscurantist indie rock of the 90s.  The indie kids will retroactively lionize underground acts from now or earlier as spiritual precursors, but honestly a band like Superchunk, but for the lack of radio play, sounds a lot like the bands that did break out (though more profane in their song titles).  Certainly they're more conventional than, say, the Flaming Lips.

A couple of other bands to break big into the mainstream along with the grungers are the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Smashing Pumpkins.  The RHCP, like Soundgarden, haven’t really changed their formula, but have just tightened up their songwriting.  Also, importantly, they start writing ballads (esp. “Under The Bridge”), which will eventually be their undoing, but for now makes for a fresh change of pace.  The Pumpkins don’t break through yet, though their basic sonic template is already in place: guitars that are somewhere between Boston and My Bloody Valentine (loud and distorted, but extremely precisely orchestrated and soncially tweaked).  Songwriting-wise, they’re nothing exceptional one way or another, but are wholly distinct from either the industrial Big Black sounds of Chicago or the alt-country/Replacements shuffle that’s dominating elsewhere in the Midwest.  Uncle Tupelo have their second album this year, and it does suffer slightly next to the debut.  This isn’t just the lack of the shock of the new; the rockers lack some of the punk energy, though the more country numbers are somewhat more refined.  Also, their Minutemen influence is starting to seep through a little.  Not only is there a song titled “D. Boon,”  but  you can kind of imagine songs like “Watch Me Fall” as Minutemen-gone-country.

Finally, touching on a couple of other genres, hip-hop has a pair of groups with a strong De La Soul influence emerge, the justly-praised A Tribe Called Quest and the unjustly forgotten Pharcyde.  The first suggests a jazzy way for alternative hip-hop to evolve post-sampling, while the latter continues the lighthearted breezy style of 3 Ft. High & Rising, which De La themselves abandon for a harder-edged sound.  And in metal, Metallica find a way out of the corner they painted themselves into with thrash by simplifying their sound and becoming, basically, an angrier AC/DC with a less fluid rhythm section.  Ozzy, meanwhile, finds himself another worthy guitarist and returns to form with No More Tears.  It doesn’t sound like much else in my collection this year, though 1) it sounds more like the classic Randy Rhodes-era stuff than he has in awhile, and 2) I always hear the title track as something Oasis could have covered.

Song of the Year:  Well, it’s pretty obviously Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”  Not even “Love Me Do” or “Blitzkreig Bop” so singularly jump-started a paradigm shift in rock music (at least as pertains to the mainstream).  And it’s still just a phenomenally tight little punk-rocker that’s lost none of its impact with age.  Still, Nirvana so clearly dominates this year that I feel compelled to pick runners-up for both Song and Album of the Year.  So for Song of the Year, it’s Richard Thompson’s “1952 Vincent Black Lightning,” quite possibly the finest song he ever wrote.  In form a classic highwayman-romance-death ballad, fitting seamlessly between Appalachian & English folk tragedy story-songs and 50’s death ballads à la “Last Kiss” or the like.  And although it’s since become a bluegrass standard, Richard Thompson’s version schools all of them.

Album of the Year:  Again Nirvana, and Nevermind, clearly dominate.  In retrospect, Nevermind doesn’t sound all that radical, but at the time it was so much more intense than anything else out there, with more intensity than the metal bands and a far tighter sonic assault than any of the other alt-rockers.  And it even had hints of stylistic growth in the slower numbers that close either side.    If I’m going to pick a runner-up, though, it’s one that I didn’t talk about above, Matthew Sweet’s Girlfriend.  Sweet basically revives the old Big Star/Tom Petty power pop formula of jangly guitars that hit with the intensity of the Stones (as opposed to the more wistful jangle-pop of the 80s).  Sweet is a great songwriter in a classic sense (with some Beach Boys-recalling harmonies), but his secret weapon is to add a touch of acridity to all that sweetness via some NYC post-punk veterans, late of Television and the Voidoids that really makes the overall effect something like “Television goes power-pop,” which is as good as that implies.

Artist Most Benefiting from Reevaluation:  Really, it’s just 1991 as a whole, a year that has a whole lot of classic records, and is far less dour and monochromatic than my grunge-focused memory (largely because I wasn’t listening to the riotously colorful and trippy music coming out of the UK and the US off the West Coast).

Artist Most Diminished in Reevaluation:  Sebadoh, maybe?  They’ll become a very enjoyable lo-fi indie-pop band soon, but right now, they seem a little too self-consciously arty.  Lo-fi was all well and good for the likes of the early Mekons, where it sounded like they just couldn’t afford any higher-quality recording equipment, but on III, Sebadoh embody the worst of the self-consciously obscurantist impulses of ‘90s lo-fi, making a conscious choice to sound not just stripped but deliberately poor-quality in the pursuit of a po-faced “authenticity.”  Like those doofy hipsters in their moronic trucker hats who are really just children of privilege playing dress-up.  That’s a little harsh, but this album is a put-on, not an actual classic.

Album List

A Tribe Called Quest - The Low End Theory

Big Audio Dynamite - Ally Pally Paradiso

Big Audio Dynamite - Planet BAD: Greatest Hits

Big Audio Dynamite - The Globe

Billy Bragg - Must I Paint You A Picture?: The Essential Billy Bragg

Blur - Leisure

Blur - Leisure B-Sides

Blur - Leisure U.K. Version

Blur - The Best Of

Charlatans UK - Melting Pot

Dave Brubeck - Ken Burns Jazz: Dave Brubeck

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

Dinosaur Jr. - Fossils

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

Fugazi - Steady Diet Of Nothing

Happy Mondays - Double Easy: The U.S. Singles

Jane's Addiction - Up From The Catacombs: The Best Of Jane's Addiction

Joni Mitchell - Hits

Keith Richards - Vintage Vinos

Manic Street Preachers - Forever Delayed

Massive Attack - Blue Lines

Matthew Sweet - Altered Beast

Matthew Sweet - Girlfriend

MC Hammer - Back to Back Hits: MC Hammer/Vanilla Ice

Metallica - Black Album

Michael Jackson - The Essential Michael Jackson

Monty Python - Monty Python Sings

Morrissey - The Best Of Morrissey

Mudhoney - March To Fuzz: Best Of...

Mudhoney - March To Fuzz: Rarities

My Bloody Valentine - Loveless

Ned's Atomic Dustbin - God Fodder

Nirvana - Incesticide

Nirvana - Nevermind

Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit

Nirvana - The Complete Radio Sessions

Ozzy Osbourne - Misc.

Ozzy Osbourne - The Ozzman Cometh

Paul Weller - Modern Classics

Pearl Jam - A Pearl Jam Christmas

Pearl Jam - Christmas Singles

Pearl Jam - Lost Dogs

Pearl Jam - Misc.

Pearl Jam - Ten

Pearl Jam - Ten Redux

Pet Shop Boys - Discography: The Complete Singles Collection

Phish - 33430

Primal Scream - Screamadelica

Primal Scream - Shoot Speed (More Dirty Hits)

Prince - The Hits

Queen - Classic Queen

R.E.M. - Out Of Time

Red Hot Chili Peppers - Blood Sugar Sex Magik

Red Hot Chili Peppers - What Hits!?

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

Richard Thompson - Rumor and Sigh

Rush - Retrospective 3

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

Sebadoh - III

Smashing Pumpkins - Rotten Apples: Greatest Hits

Social Distortion - White Light White Heat White Trash

Soundgarden - A-Sides

Soundgarden - Badmotorfinger

Spin Doctors - Pocket Full of Kryptonite

Stevie Ray Vaughan - Greatest Hits

Stevie Ray Vaughan - The Real Deal: Greatest Hits Vol. 2

Super Furry Animals - Ffa Coffi Pawb - Am Byth

Super Furry Animals - Outspaced

Superchunk - No Pocky For Kitty

Superchunk - Tossing Seeds (Singles 89-91)

Temple Of The Dog - Temple Of The Dog

The Clash - Clash On Broadway [Disc 3]

The Flaming Lips - In A The Priest Driven Ambulance

The Flaming Lips - The Fearless Freaks

The Grateful Dead (live incomplete) - Dick's Picks Volume 17: Boston Garden 9/25/91

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

The Mekons - The Curse of the Mekons

The Melvins - Bullhead

The Pharcyde - Bizarre Ride II The Pharcyde

The Pixies - Death To The Pixies

The Pixies - Trompe Le Monde

The Ramones - Road to Ruin

The Ramones - Rocket To Russia

Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - Playback III: Good Booty

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

U2 - Achtung Baby

U2 - B-Sides 1990-2000

U2 - Negativland

U2 - The Best Of 1990-2000

Uncle Tupelo - 89/93: An Anthology

Uncle Tupelo - Still Feel Gone

Various Artists - Children Of Nuggets II

Various Artists - Children Of Nuggets III

Various Artists - Children Of Nuggets IV

Various Artists - DGC Rarities, Vol. 1

Various Artists - Reservoir Dogs

Various Artists - Trainspotting

Violent Femmes - Add It Up (1981-1993)

Yo La Tengo - Prisoners Of Love