Dummy
Portishead
1994
Although Massive Attack set the early bedrock, it’s Portishead’s Dummy that established just how effective trip-hop could be as a genre. Vividly emotional and sinister, Dummy still possesses a sweeping sense of majesty about it, mostly thanks to Beth Gibbons’ commanding, piercing voice. The albums plays like a great film noir soundtrack, just without the accompanying visuals, letting your imagination fill in the blanks. Using twisting guitar lines, tarnished horns and shuddering drum beats to full effect, Dummy remains, to this day, the golden standard for its genre.
#29
Weezer (The Blue Album)
Weezer
1994
As we learned this month, Weezer have completely fallen into self-parody in recent years (intentional or not). As tragic as that fact is, it just makes me appreciate the loud, rebellious joys of their debut album that much more. These ten songs hit you one after the other, reaching a level of pop consistency not seen since the Cars’ debut (mind you, since Ric Ocasek produced, that might not be a coincidence). “My Name Is Jonas”, “Buddy Holly” and “Say It Ain’t So” shine the brightest, but The Blue Album might as well just be a greatest hits collection. Despite positively wallowing in their nerdiness, every song here is a winner.
#28
Bee Thousand
Guided By Voices
1994
The 90s saw the emergence of the “lo-fi” genre, which basically was just an excuse for people to pass off horribly recorded albums as great art. Ok, maybe that’s a bit extreme, but to this day, “lo-fi” exists on a razor’s edge between artistic ingenuity and sheer sloppiness. What makes Bee Thousand so enjoyable is that it never claims to be anything other than a ramshackle mess of songs, thrown together without much rhyme or reason. Most of the tracks struggle to get past two minutes and many are simply unfinished, ending without warning or conclusion. Yet, through this haze of tape hiss, feedback and awful audio mixing, there’s a very impressive document of the band’s creative process, quite actively at work. The fact that great songs like “I Am A Scientist” managed to sneak in is just gravy.
#27
If You’re Feeling Sinister
Belle And Sebastian
1996
With their retro-leaning album covers and detailed lyricism, Scotland’s Belle And Sebastian picked up the mantle so carelessly thrown away by the Smiths in the late 80s. However, instead of Morrissey’s three-note range and warbling boredom, Belle And Sebastian were led by Stuart Murdoch’s whispery croon, imbuing their music with an almost painful amount of tenderness and fragility. If You’re Feeling Sinister was recorded before the band became slaves to that aesthetic, when things still sounded fresh and quietly enjoyable, riding along on an oh-so pleasant wave of sunny energy and lilting melodies.
#26
Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space
Spiritualized
1997
After Spiritualized bandleader Jason Pierce broke up with his girlfriend (and keyboardist to boot), he didn’t do the usual thing and write a maudlin album full of acoustic pining and self-indulgence. Instead, he created a towering monolith of noise to express his feelings and emotional chaos. Now, the fact that Pierce is known for being a psychedelic nutcase certainly helped push things in that direction, but those raw, human feelings still shine through. The crazed “Come Together” hits the hardest, but the whole album is a gargantuan slab of overblown emoting, as Pierce backs himself with crunchy guitars, blaring trumpets, gospel choirs and whoever else happened to be around. What the end result lacks in cohesiveness it more than makes up with in sheer size. There’s something very affecting about the idea of heart-broken man surrounding himself with everything in sight to keep from feeling lonely.
#25
Slanted And Enchanted
Pavement
1992
So much of the 90s were about celebrating laziness. This was the era of losers, creeps, zeros and slackers. Few albums capture this whole attitude as well as Pavement’s Slanted And Enchanted, which succeeds because it sounds too bored to be anything besides awesome. Steven Malkmus drawls sarcastically, while the band cranks out fuzz-drenched riffs and chords. In keeping with the times and the whole “lo-fi” movement, Slanted And Enchanted sounds like it was recorded on a cassette deck after being run over by an SUV, but there’s really no other way this album could sound. It’s not original (the Fall essentially recorded half these songs a decade earlier), it’s not polished and the band doesn’t seem to care. The album is effective. What more could you want?
#24
Nevermind
Nirvana
1991
I know it’s weird to see Nevermind this low on the list. Aren’t Nirvana supposed to be the be all and end all of 90s music? Well, sure, but three unbeatable singles and one generation-defining anthem don’t make an album. Nevermind is burdened by a variety of less-than-inspiring cuts and Butch Vig’s so-shiny-its-painful-to-look-at production job. Dave Grohl’s drums sound blunt and Kris Novoselic’s bass is practically in hiding. In other words, Nevermind might not be the masterpiece people remember it to be. However, its four singles are beyond criticism and the same goes for a handful of the album cuts, especially the haunting closing track, “Something In The Way”. On the back of “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, Nevermind did indeed change culture. It’s just important to remember that not every one of its songs had a hand in the process.
#23
New Wave
The Auteurs
1993
The Auteurs’ Luke Haines fits perfectly into a long lineage of curmudgeonly English songwriters, all going back to their collective spiritual forefather, Ray Davies of the Kinks. The mid-90s would see a return to this type of barbed British pride (what the media later labeled “Britpop”), but Haines and New Wave got there a couple years before the mainstream wave. As such, they’ve been completely forgotten by time, but the backhanded quips in songs like “Show Girl” and “American Guitars” still retain most of their sting. Don’t be fooled by the chiming guitars and occasional cello lurking in the background. This album will bite.
#22
Parklife
Blur
1994
While we’re on the subject of Britpop, we might as well talk about the most fully realized and representative album of the entire genre. Just a year earlier, no one suspected that Blur were even capable of releasing an album this iconic, yet Parklife arrived, waving the flag for Anglo pride higher than anything else at the time. From Damon Albarn’s affected Cockney accent all the way to the sounds of bottles breaking throughout the album’s title track, Parklife stole British pop music away from dirty Americans like Nirvana and put it back into the hands of the hooligans. Never mind the fact that all four members of Blur were art school students, who were mostly just playing the part and attending token footy matches for photo ops. Fabricated or not, Parklife captured the mood of its era perfectly.
#21
Endtroducing…..
DJ Shadow
1996
The idea of an album made entirely of samples from other records sounds like a novelty hit. It’s gimmicky and is the kind of thing that can utterly define an album. All this makes Endtroducing….. that much more jaw-dropping, though. It should have been completely contained within its own identity, becoming “that album that’s all samples.” Instead, DJ Shadow created an astonishingly complete work, with songs that live and breathe and thrive despite their Frankenstein nature. Where else can hip-hop drum beats sit next to a Metallica baseline and not sound freakishly unnatural. Shadow took sampling to the stars and beyond, revealing the full implications of this emerging art form and creating a startling (and often inexplicably haunting) album in the process.
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