1992

                So if 1991 surprised me with how good it was, 1992 surprised me with how weak it was.  Some good stuff, to be sure, but a sharp drop-off in quality.  Last year we had the peak of a UK dance-rock scene and the breakthrough year of the US scene, plus various background sound in the churning world of non-grunge US alt-rock.  This year, both of those two big scenes are much quieter, and while the non-grunge US alt-rock world is still churning along as it has since the late 80s, this big drop-off means that ’92 is a much less compelling year than last year.

                The biggest shift is in the UK scene, which is almost shockingly weak, at least in my collection.  I only have one album from the UK this year (XTC’s, which I don’t particularly feel strongly about), and all the rest is stuff from comps and stray singles & EPs.  This, I think, reflects how a scene has dramatically dropped off with nothing yet to take its place (two scenes, if you count shoegaze, which vanishes entirely from my collection).  There are still some stray baggy/dance singles out there; the biggest being the Stereo MC’s “Get Connected,” but the Happy Mondays are also still spitting out stuff on their last album.  Not being the kind of band to grow or evolve, the Mondays finish sounding a lot like they started, albeit with a sound that’s increasingly played out.  Among the older UK acts, the Fall are still playing with their variant of dance-rock (and “Free Range” may be their best song in this vein), the Jesus & Mary Chain have come late to the rock + dance beats party, and the Cure are still kicking around with their pop-goth formula (and still to credible effect), but none of this is stuff we haven’t heard before.

                The next big wave in the UK will be Brit-pop, of course, but it’s not quite here yet.  There are a host of bands that might count as “proto-Brit-pop,” but don’t really sound like a cohesive movement yet.  Rather, the likes of Morrissey, XTC, Paul Weller, and the Manic Street Preachers all sound just like a series of acts that share an interest in tight single-length rock songs and have no interest in adding dance beats.  For what it’s worth, XTC and Morrissey probably sound the most like what will become the Blur-eque end of Brit-pop, with a focus on clever song construction & lyrics, while the Manic Street Preachers really sound like a proto-Oasis, with an emphasis on big soaring/rocking sounds.  The latter I’ve also long held up as my prime example of a band that I probably would have loved if I’d heard them at the right time (i.e. college, when straightahead rock + leftie political lyrics really excited me), but I heard them late enough that they just sound a touch generic to my ears.

                Brit-pop is coming soon, though, and arguably does start this year with Blur’s “Popscene” single, a big leap forward for a band that was otherwise a second-tier Stone Roses wannabe.  But “Popscene,” while still boasting the watery, shimmery sound of Leisure, also adds some tight, soul-style horns and a generally sharper, bouncier rhythmic sense, all of which pretty much lay out the template for the band’s (and the scene’s) next few albums.  Another soon-to-be dominant 90s UK band starts putting stuff out this year as well, but Radiohead’s early stuff still quite derivative.  Specifically, “Creep” is wannabe Nirvana, while the Itch EP displays a clear (and soon forgotten) desire to be the La’s.

                But if the UK’s next big sound is still around the corner, the US’s big sound of the early 90s arrived last year.  This year’s crop of grunge albums really can’t hope to top last years, and it’s almost unfair to compare them: the follow-ups are never as exciting as the breakthroughs.  Still, if last year the Big Three all put out phenomenal albums, it’s not entirely unfair to call Mudhoney, the Screaming Trees, and Alice In Chains (all of whom do put out albums this year) the Little Three of grunge.

                Mudhoney, it’s clear by now, are the Ramones of grunge: constantly, slightly, varying their sound but never straying too far from their essential, straightforward template, which for Mudhoney is a punk-Stooges hybrid.  So they’re not really the type of band to have a “breakthrough” record, as their formula was as perfected as it was going to be on their debut, and the rest is just more iterations of that formula.  Which isn’t to say that Piece of Cake, or any of their other albums are bad, but rather that, like the Ramones, they made a big splash on their debut, and just continued to work their (very entertaining/compelling) sound into the present day.   If you liked one Mudhoney album, you’ll probably like all of them, in other words, but they also won’t ever have a “classic” album in the vein of a Nevermind or Superunknown.

                The Screaming Trees do evolve considerably, having spent the 80s as a garage-rock band and ultimately closing their run in a few years as a folk-grunge band.  At this point, though, they’re basically in the middle of that transition, which means there are some folk elements but basically they sound like a midtempo Zeppelin-influenced rock band.  The touches of folk make them more than just generic grunge-rock, but what really elevates them is Mark Lanegan’s phenomenal voice.  Grunge really was gifted by some outstanding vocalists, and Mark Lanegan deserves to be considered in the same rank as Eddie Vedder and Chris Cornell as a vocalist, even if the others were better songwriters at this point.  Still, Lanegan will be the one whose post-90s career I’ll find the most interesting, so there’s that.

                Of the bands I’m grouping in the Little Three, Alice In Chains probably most deserve to be elevated to the first tier.  Mudhoney did develop the classic grunge sound, but never made the leap to the next level, and Mark Lanegan would make his breakthrough only at the end of the Screaming Trees’ run, but Alice In Chains had a distinctive sound all their own already.  Together with Pearl Jam, they’d be the biggest influence on the wannabe-grunge bands that’ll start cropping up like mushrooms next year and after, but I don’t hold that against Pearl Jam and I shouldn’t hold it against Alice in Chains.  Anyway, it’s in part because their sound is so compelling: essentially an alternate vision of grunge-metal.  While Soundgarden’s metal was a riff-driven, Zep-heavy kind, Alice In Chains is much more droning and hypnotic, recalling perhaps more the ballads of Ozzy-era Sabbath.  Also, it was a different time when a 6-minute dirge about a Vietnam vet’s PTSD could be a major radio hit, but “The Rooster” is probably Alice In Chains’ finest moment.

                The Big Three, while not putting out any proper albums, nevertheless are far from silent this year.  Both Pearl Jam and Soundgarden appear on the Singles soundtrack, which is probably still the one album to get if you’re looking for a grunge sampler.  No Nirvana, but all of the other grunge bands I’ve just mentioned, plus fellow-travelers Smashing Pumpkins and some Jimi Hendrix for good measure.  Soundgarden and Chris Cornell’s contributions aren’t particularly memorable, but the Screaming Trees, Smashing Pumpkins, and Pearl Jam songs are as good as anything else we’ve heard from them so far.  Nirvana is active this year as well, with the odds & sods comp Incesticide, plus some new b-sides from the later Nevermind singles, all of which show that Nirvana were a lot weirder than the highly-polished Nevermind might suggest.  They’re also off on a whirlwind world tour, which will subsequently be captured on their Live at Redding set – it turns out, unsurprisingly, that they were a phenomenal live band.

                As I said before, what’s more interesting than grunge’s post-breakthrough fumbling is what’s going on elsewhere in alt-rock, where again at least part of it seems to be reacting to grunge’s breakthrough.  Dinosaur Jr. seems like they should have broken through in this moment, but instead (perhaps because they’re now in their post-Lou Barlow incarnation with no one to challenge J. Mascis to push himself) begin a slide into a series of fairly aimless albums with maybe a good song or two per album, so got some minor airplay but failed to be the “next big thing.”  Certainly Geffen tried to push Sonic Youth’s Dirty as the next Nevermind; it is probably their most accessible album to date, but even at their most accessible, Sonic Youth are much artier than is ever likely to attract much pop attention.  But if its art-grunge you’re looking for, this is probably the best indication yet that all this sonic scrum and metallic noise has space for a progressive, experimental impulse.  Although it’s also the chief example of the detached, ironic or deliberately flat vocal style that was a hallmark of early-90s grunge.  As a result, Sonic Youth’s 2^nd single this year, “Youth Against Fascism,” comes off as against fascism ironically, which perhaps was not the intent.

                Other bands are also pursuing their own idiosyncratic courses.  The Flaming Lips take advantage of their major label debut to expand their sound dramatically, adding much more complex orchestration and showing that, while Hit to Death in the Future Head is much more rockin’ than The Soft Bulletin, that the later’s orchestral sounds were less a new innovation and more picking up on a strand that had been there all along.  Bob Mould also plays with a bigger sound on his new band Sugar’s debut, esp. on “Hoover Dam,” which end up sounding something like a symphonic Hüsker Dü (that’s a good thing).  But apart from that song, this is straightahead pop-rock in the style that Mould does so well, and probably the best record of his post-Hüskers career.  He also plays around with Pixies-style songs (and sadly the Pixies are done this year), and more Westerberg-style folk-rocking.  Westerberg, incidentally, makes his solo debut on the Singles soundtrack, which unsurprisingly sounds a lot like the last two Replacements records (the ones that were Westerberg solo albums in all but name anyway).  You’re also getting a whole host of other, less prominent bands working in a guitar-driven alt-rock style across the US, from future indie darlings like Mercury Rev (who sound very much like the Flaming Lips, with whom they share members at this point) and one-hit-wonders like Dada or Blind Melon.  Some of these bands (Blind Melon, Boston indie-rocker Chaotic Past) are still showing a strong Guns ‘N Roses influence; I’ve described them before as “grunge for people who don’t like punk rock,” but GNR kinda fit that bill too (or at least did pre-Use Your Illusion). 

                But in terms of punk rock, there’s a bunch of stuff going on.  Bad Religion continue their run, though Generator is probably the weakest of their post-hiatus albums to date, sounding more and more like a conventional midtempo alt-rock band and losing some of the punk adrenaline rush.  They are starting to sound like an influence in their own right, both with the other Epitaph bands like NOFX, and also on fellow southern Californians Sublime, who mix Bad Religion-style punk rock with more reggae/ska sounds, and together with Op Ivy, really lay out the template for the Third Wave.  Fellow Third Wavers the Mighty Mighty Bosstones continue to sound much different from the West Coasters, though, and this year both pen the first song of theirs I remember hearing on the radio (the excellent metal-meets-Madness “Where’d You Go?”) and indulge their metallic side on a series of covers.  Especially notable is their cover of “Enter Sandman,” which I didn’t realize so closely followed the release last year of Metallica’s original.  I guess, since I always thought of Metallica as an 80s band, that I’d generally conceived of “Enter Sandman” as being older than that, but one of the joys of this project is catching things like that. 

                The final major punk-rock band for me to talk about segues nicely to the folk/country-rock world.  Social Distortion are more punky than a lot of what’s happening in folk/roots rock (including Uncle Tupelo), and sound a lot more like classic ‘50s rock & roll, but still are quite good.  So they’re part of what’s generally a strong year for roots-rock of various stripes, for both older and younger acts.  On the older end of things, we get not only the surfacing of Junior Kimbrough, an old Mississippi bluesman whose raw, almost punk-blues style gets captured on record for the first time this year, and is pretty much the perfect bluesman for the grit & authenticity obsessed early 90s alt-rockers to glom onto.  Also working on older, traditional styles is Bob Dylan, who put out the first all-covers album of his career (even his debut had an original or two).  But this year it’s all covers, and all of old-as-dirt folksongs, some obvious (though I never realized that “Froggy Went A-Courtin’” went on so long or ended so bleakly) and some more obscure.  This focus on, among others, children’s folk songs casts Under A Red Sky in a new light, as if Dylan was trying on that album to write originals in the style that he covers here.  It’s in a much more stripped sound than that overproduced disaster, and really the start of “old-man” Dylan, where, after his garage-rockin’ 60s, gypsy-rockin’ 70s, and desperate trend-chasing 80s, settles into the mode that’ll dominate the next couple of decades: grizzled old man far more interested in the sounds of the past than of the future.  A good fit for him to act his age.  Similarly, while Mick Jagger dances around like he thinks he’s fooling people about his age, Keith Richards has used his solo career to settle into a more age-appropriate kind of grizzled rockin’, which really suits him.  If it’s not as exciting as the Stones in their prime, it’s solidly more listenable than their (and Mick’s) late-era desperate grasps for contemporary relevance.  Both Richards and Dylan, for what it’s worth, are just now learning a lesson the Grateful Dead could have taught them a decade ago, when they last abandoned trend-chasing in favor of pursuing their own muse in a way that both avoided the embarrassment of the Jagger and Dylan 80s records and gave them oodles of credibility by the time they entered the 90s.  (But also means that I haven’t had much to say about the Dead, as listening to them alongside contemporary music doesn’t really offer much in way of new insights).  Similarly, there’s AC/DC, who haven’t changed even a little bit since their debut (new lead singer or no).  Their live album from this year isn’t at all roots-rock, but it’s impressive how there are precisely zero concessions to contemporary sounds, and really sounds like it could be a contemporary of 70s live monsters like Song Remains The Same, right down to when the whole band stops to listen to the guitarist play.  Contrasts interestingly with Aerosmith, who sound contemporary both by accident (because the grungers & GNR types borrow so heavily from their classic sound) and on purpose (on the interchangeable & terrible triptych of power ballads from this year – “Amazing,” “Crazy,” and “Cryin’” – if you can tell them apart, then mister you’re a better man than I).

                There are some younger acts pushing a roots-rock sound too, of course.  Uncle Tupelo will never sound more like a straight folk-country band than they do this year, on their all-acoustic album, in which they almost entirely abandon their punk-rock side in favor of a wholehearted embrace of their old-bluegrass-loving side.  And it works very well, even if this isn’t a brand of Uncle Tupelo that’s going to surprise anybody.  The Jayhawks, too, are pressing their alt-country sound, and are quite good, but there’s also a move towards a more grungy form of 70s’ style roots-rock that’s more focused on sounding like the Faces.  Cracker, for instance, rise from the ashes of Camper Van Beethoven as a sort of joke-band version of the Rolling Stones, which really works sometimes, but otherwise sounds too much like a parody of 70s country-rock to be really compelling.  Blind Melon also fits in this 70s-revival vein.  They get described as Grateful Dead-aping, but that’s just a failure of imagination on the part of reviewers.  Blind Melon’s formula is really quite simple: they sound like Axl Rose fronting the Faces and/or Rod Stewart solo material.  As opposed to the Black Crowes, who pretty much just sound like they want to be the Faces.  Of course, there’s always a part of me that suspect that, when bands sound like the Faces, it’s that they’re trying to sound like the Stones and falling short, just like the Faces themselves….

                Unsurprisingly, this 70s revival bleeds easily enough into the neo-hippie sounds starting to crop up on the college-rock circuit.  Phish put out probably the most technically impressive of their early albums, as A Picture of Nectar incorporates not only their jammy-prog style, but also elements of jazz and even a touch of Zappa.  Phish’s albums at this point are still pretty focus-less, but this one covers an admirable musical range, so works as a deliberately sprawling mess where, for instance, last year’s Lawn Boy just sounded like it needed a tightening-up.  Also in the neo-hippie front, we get Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, who are more instrumentally proficient and less tight in the songwriting department than Camper Van Beethoven, but otherwise seem to be following from what Camper was up to, exploring older bluegrass or country styles with an irreverent modern edge.  Like Phish, though, a band where the real draw is probably the live show, which is reflected in the albums.

                Some of the other musical happenings might also segue into the neo-hippie stuff.  Certainly Sublime, when not aping Bad Religion, ride an early-70s reggae vibe that fits in well enough with these bands.  Also, somewhat surprising is how well the Beasties fit here (among other places).  What the Beasties accomplish this year is downright remarkable.  Back in ’89 it was remarkable how they managed to completely revamp their image, from jokey Run-D.M.C.-aping party kids to serious purveyors of cutting-edge production-happy hip-hop.  The courts put an end to that style, so the Beasties dig deep, and on Check Your Head somehow manage to completely reinvent themselves yet again (for the third time, by my count, including their early 80s transition from hardcore to hip-hop).   This time they’re a mellow, live-band hip-hop group with a penchant for laid-back funk jams that fit as a missing link between the similarly-mellow funk of the Stone Roses’ “Fool’s Gold” and where Phish will end up in a few years.  And, of course, they’re still among the best at a group-rapping style where they actually trade lines, and not just verses (which, for all their other virtues, the Wu-Tang’s group rapping will be largely limited to).  This is the style they’ll stick with through the ‘90s, and it suits them very well.  They also fit in very well with the rest of the alternative-hip-hop world, which this year expands to include Common (possibly still going by Common Sense).  I suppose this raises Common in my eyes, by virtue of him getting a head-start on the rest of the Okayplayer acts, though he’s not nearly as compelling as, say, De La Soul or A Tribe Called Quest at this point. 

                Elsewhere in hip-hop, we see the rise of gangsta rap.  This is hardly my favorite version of hip-hop, as demonstrated by the complete lack of gangsta in my blogs before now, missing such (reported) classics as the first NWA album because I simply don’t own them.  There are two reasons for this.  1) this stuff got played to death on the radio and MTV and the like, so I hardly needed to rush out to buy the albums, and 2) I’ve always been much more interested in hip-hop for the beats than the lyrics.  And from a shock-value/swagger-neutral perspective, gangsta is not a tremendous advance on the likes of MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice.  Gangsta has from the very beginning relied much more on lyrical bluster about thug life that, for the most part, substitutes “grit” or whatever for actual lyrical dexterity.  On a purely technical level, Dr. Dre is probably a worse rapper, with less nimbleness than Vanilla Ice, though he does manage to exude an aura of menace that compensate for his weak skills.  And as a produce, Dre is similarly overrated.  If Hammer’s entire production technique was rapping over 80s funk beats, Dre’s is basically to do the same for 70’s funk beats, esp. P-Funk stuff.  Now, this is probably as good as funk ever got, so that’s not a bad thing, but it’s also not exceptionally innovative.  I’m probably being more harsh than I intend to be.  Dr. Dre is, in fact, better than Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer, but I guess my point is that it’s not because he’s technically more proficient or because he’s got better production; it ultimately just comes down to charisma, and Dre (and especially Snoop Dogg) are more charismatic than the likes of MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice.  Also, they kinda have something to say.  So by the end of the decade, when you get message-free charisma vacuums like 50 Cent, the genre will be wholly worthless.  The East Coast version is somewhat better, though, and this year we get the Notorious B.I.G.’s demo tape, even if it’s considerably more primitive than his later stuff. 

                Finally, fitting in better with hip-hop than anything else we’ve talked about this year is Rage Against The Machine, whose style is basically a thrash-metal-band approximation of the Public Enemy/Bomb Squad sonic attack.  Zach De La Rocha isn’t a great rapper, but he’s pretty compelling in his angry spitting, and knows his way around a repeated angry chant, even if it’s a trick he relies a bit over-much on.  Rage, for what it’s worth, are probably the band with the most severe ratio of quality of the band itself to quality (or lack thereof) of the bands they directly inspired.  But just because the likes of Korn and Limp Bizkit makes you wish you were born deaf doesn’t mean that Rage isn’t a fiercely intelligent and worthy group (though, again like Public Enemy, their sonics are more compelling than their lyrical content, which is stridently leftie but not exceptionally clever or anything). 

Song of the Year:  Sugar – “Hoover Dam.”  A pretty magnificent track that you’d think could have been a hit, adding strings and synths to the basic Hüsker Dü formula.  Less intense, more pop, but a nice indication that Sugar will be something more than just a Hüsker Dü retread for Bob Mould.  Honorable mention to the Fall’s “Free Range.”  In true Fall fashion, a hard-driving dance song about resurgent ethnic nationalism in Europe, but probably the most compelling of their dance-rock phase. 

Album of the Year:  R.E.M. – Automatic for the People.  An absolutely outstanding record, following on Out of Time’s folkier sound, but with more echoes of their earlier sounds.  This means that rockers like “Drive” sound more like Green-era tracks, and some of the mellower stuff sounds like it could have come from Fables of the Reconstruction.  But not just a career encapsulation; as radical a reinvention (in its quieter way) as U2’s Achtung Baby.  R.E.M. reveal their first interest in a Brian Wilson-esque chamber-pop sound, with an overarching sense of melancholy that wouldn’t be out of place either on Pet Sounds or, perhaps, a  Neil Young record.  Perhaps my first “favorite album of them all,” and while it’s since lost that pride of place, it’s still an outstanding one.

Artist Most Benefiting from Reevaluation:  Sonic Youth.  Dirty, because it was promoted so heavily by Geffen, gets remembered as Sonic Youth’s “grunge” album, with implications of attendant sell-out.  But it’s not; that was just Geffen’s marketing.  What it is, though, is the next step in Sonic Youth’s move toward bundling their guitar skronk in something that looks like actual songs, as opposed to soundscapes or platforms for jamming.  And that’s something I can definitely get behind.

Artist Most Diminished in Reevaluation:  Cracker.  They’ll get better later on, but hearing their debut here makes it clear to me why a lot of fans of CVB found Cracker a disappointment, as this is a big drop-off from where Camper ended. 

Album List

AC/DC - AC/DC Live [Collector's Edition]

Aerosmith - Big Ones

Alice In Chains - Dirt

Alice in Chains - Misc.

Bad Religion - All Ages

Bad Religion - Generator

Béla Fleck - UFO Tofu

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

Blind Melon - Blind Melon

Blur - Leisure B-Sides

Blur - Modern Life Is Rubbish [Bonus Tracks]

Bob Dylan - Good As I Been To You

Bob Dylan - Vol. 8: Tell Tale Signs

Bruce Springsteen - The Essential Bruce Springsteen

Charlatans UK - Melting Pot

Common - Thisisme Then: The Best Of Common

Cracker - Cracker

Cracker - Misc.

Dead Kennedys - Misc.

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

Dinosaur Jr. - In Session

Dr. Dre - The Chronic

Fleetwood Mac - The Very Best Of Fleetwood Mac

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

Iron Maiden - Misc.

Junior Kimbrough - You Better Run: The Essential Junior Kimbrough

Keith Richards - Vintage Vinos

Manic Street Preachers - Forever Delayed

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

Mercury Rev - Yerself Is Steam

Milt Jackson And Count Basie - Milt Jackson + Count Basie + Big Band Volume 1

Morrissey - The Best Of Morrissey

Mudhoney - March To Fuzz: Best Of...

Mudhoney - March To Fuzz: Rarities

Mudhoney - Piece Of Cake

Nirvana - Come As You Are

Nirvana - Lithium

Nirvana - Live At Reading

Nirvana - The Complete Radio Sessions

Paul Weller - Modern Classics

Pavement - Slanted & Enchanted

Pearl Jam - Christmas Singles

Pearl Jam - Lost Dogs

Phish - 33810

Phish - A Picture Of Nectar

Primal Scream - Misc.

Primal Scream - Shoot Speed (More Dirty Hits)

Prince - The Hits

Queen - Classic Queen

R.E.M. - Automatic For The People

Radiohead - Drill

Rage Against The Machine - Rage Against The Machine

Ringo Starr - Photograph: The Very Best Of Ringo Starr

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

Sir Mix-A-Lot - Baby Got Back

Smashing Pumpkins - Rotten Apples: Greatest Hits

Social Distortion - Somewhere Between Heaven And Hell

Sonic Youth - Dirty

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

Sublime - 40 Oz. To Freedom

Sugar - Besides

Sugar - Copper Blue

Super Furry Animals - Ffa Coffi Pawb - Am Byth

Talking Heads - Sand In The Vaseline

The Beastie Boys - Check Your Head

The Beastie Boys - Check Your Head

The Beastie Boys - The Sounds Of Science

The Black Crowes - The Southern Harmony And Musical Companion

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

The Cure - Galore (The Singles 1987-1997)

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

The Flaming Lips - Hit To Death In The Future Head

The Grateful Dead - Dick's Picks, Vol. 27: Oakland Coliseum Arena, Oakland, CA,

The Jayhawks - Music From The North Country: The Jayhawks Anthology

The Jesus & Mary Chain - 21 Singles

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

The Mighty Mighty Bosstones - Where'd You Go?

The Notorious B.I.G. - Notorious

The Vaselines - The Way Of The Vaselines

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

Uncle Tupelo - 89/93: An Anthology

Uncle Tupelo - March 16-20, 1992

V/A - 12 Classic 45s

V/A - Singles

Violent Femmes - Add It Up (1981-1993)

Waylon Jennings - Sings Hank Williams

X - Beyond & Back: The X Anthology

XTC - Oranges & Lemons