For some reason Hatfield’s voice reminds me of a flatter, punkier Lisa Loeb. Anyway…
Tag: 1993
Chrome (1993) by Catherine Wheel
When a band is named after a song or an album, and you know that song or album, there’s definitely a bit of expectation even if you don’t know much else about it. Maybe this band is named for the torture device, not the David Byrne album, but yet I still assumed there would be …
Altered Beast (1993) by Matthew Sweet
When I was a teen, I didn’t get Matthew Sweet. He had the odd video on Much Music and those videos made no impression on me. But some people in the media (and probably even some people I knew) spoke about him as if he was…someone, as if he had done something in the time …
Julius Caesar (1993) by Smog
When we were discussing Will Oldham’s debut (as Palace Brothers) on the podcast a few weeks ago, someone said it reminded them of Smog. So I approached this record with a very different idea than what I had when I first marked it down to listen to (I knew nothing about it).
In on the Kill Taker (1993)
This record makes the fifth Fugazi record I’ve heard and I’ve finally figured out that I like this period the best. I find their earliest records to be a little less musically interesting than this and Red Medicine. And though it’s been a very long time since I heard The Argument, I didn’t enjoy that …
Exile in Guyville (1993) by Liz Phair
Many years ago, after hearing way too many times that Exile in Guyville is a song-by-song response to Exile on Main St. I listened to this right around the time I was obsessed with that Stones album. I listened to this once, didn’t hear a song-by-song response, and decided it was one of the most …
There Is No-One What Will Take Care of You (1993) by Palace Brothers
The impact of this record is dimmed a lot by time and by familiarity with Will Oldham’s career. Apparently this was initially released without credits and the sense of mystery that and the music contained herein created probably has a lot to do with this record’s reputation and the launching of Oldham’s career (as Palace …
Recipe for Hate (1993) by Bad Religion
I was dreading listening to this, as I can’t say I have a love for California punk.
Boces (1993) by Mercury Rev
There is a time in my life where I would have just eaten this up.
janet. (1993) by Janet Jackson
As I say all the damn time, coming at an artist backwards is a bad idea. And yet here I am doing it again. This is only the second Janet Jackson album I’ve ever heard, but the first one I heard was the sequel to this one. The problem for me is that the sequel …
Souvlaki (1993) by Slowdive
What do I do with this? It’s a dream pop record on the shoegaze side of dreampop (as opposed to the psychedelic side) released after the peak of shoegaze. Attacked in the press at the time for being too shoegazey when everyone had moved on to britpop, it seems to be now held up as …
Symphony or Damn (1993) by Terence Trent D’Arby
Somehow I managed to grown up when D’Arby was releasing music and completely avoid him. We listened to an Oldies station primarily, so we didn’t hear him there. And I swear I never saw any of his videos. (If I did, I didn’t see them enough to remember them.) So all I knew was the …
Suede (1993)
This is a more theatrical version of Brit Pop than I’m normally used to – that’s not to say it’s super theatrical but it is definitely glammier (for lack of a better word) than their contemporaries.
Are You Gonna Go My Way (1993) by Lenny Kravitz
I do not love nostalgia. Even when that nostalgia is for music I like, I have a hard time liking or sometimes even appreciating music that was made in awe of and devotion to another time. Sure, it might sound better than the original because it was recorded better or mixed better or mastered better …
Songs of Faith and Devotion (1993) by Depeche Mode
At this point I have heard enough synthpop (and enough Depeche Mode) to understand how this record breaks from that tradition (much like the previous record, Violator, also does), and so I feel like I might actually have something decent to say about it, unlike when I first listened to Violator.
Frank Black (1993)
At first, it might be tempting to write-off Frank Black’s debut album as ” softer Pixies plus keyboards” and I can sort of see that. But I think that such a view obscures what’s really going on, and that is the rather huge growth of Black’s songwriting.
www.pitchshifter.com (1998)
I do not know anywhere near enough about ’90s industrial or the British electronica scene to have any real idea of the context this record was made in but I can tell you it sounds insanely ’90s. Imagine a more political, perhaps slightly less articulate Nine Inch Nails, mixed with The Prodigy and maybe you …
Porno for Pyros (1993)
I don’t love Jane’s Addiction. One reason for that is that I had just heard way too much about how great they were before I ever heard more than a couple of songs. The other reason is Farrell’s voice, I don’t love it.
The Full-Custom Gospel Sounds of The Reverend Horton Heat (1993)
I understand the appeal of this music: it’s loud, raucous, fun, manic, and it’s well-played. The Full-Custom Gospel Sounds (no gospel included…) manages to bridge the past and future together, like other psychobilly, combining punk with more traditional rock and roll. There’s definitely more of an alternative rock vibe here than the punk vibe with ’80s …
Today’s Active Lifestyles (1993) by Polvo
Imagine if Sonic Youth played Pavement-style indie rock (albeit longer songs), but more of a post-hardcore version of Pavement without their idiosyncrasies, you may get some vague idea of what Polvo sounds like. RYM lists them as a Math Rock band and frankly that mystifies me, even in the context of the early 1990s, but …
Fuzzy (1993) by Grant Lee Buffalo
I decided to talk about this record, rather than any number of other records from 1988 and 1993, in part because Michael Stipe once claimed it was the best album of 1993. Now, I don’t necessarily share musical states with the lead singer of REM, but I do feel like he had an important role, …
On the Mouth (1993) by Superchunk
By reputation, I always thought No Pocky for Kitty was the Superchunk album to listen to. Then I listened to it and, though I appreciated why people like it, I didn’t love. I see the RYM rating is higher for this one. I think I know why. I mean, maybe I know why.
Where You Been (1993) by Dinosaur Jr
There’s a part of me that listens to this and thinks “it’s another Dinosaur Jr. record, you shouldn’t rate it this high!” I have this obsession with artists who evolve. When artists don’t evolve (enough) I used to dock them points (as if they cared). The older I get, the less I care about this, …
Earth 2: Special Low Frequency Version (1993)
What do you do with a record that invented an entire genre of music but which you don’t really want to sit through over and over? I don’t know.
Motherscratcher (1993) by Ed Hall
This is the kind of music I really like: sloppy, noisy music played by a band that could be more professional if they wanted to, but they don’t want to. There is one song in particular that hints at their chops in a really exciting way and I wish there was more of that particular …
Knussen: Horn Concerto, Whitman Settings, The Way to Castle Yonder, Flourish with Fireworks (1996) by Various Artists
This is a collection of Knussen’s orchestral music.
Body and Soul (1993)
I keep a list of movies to watch. There are thousands of movies on the list and I will never watch all of them. I add titles to it all the time. Occasionally, due to laziness, I omit the year a movie was released when I add a movie. I did that with the film …
Kagel: String Quartet No. 4; Keuris: String Quartet No. 1 (2009) by Lagos Ensemble
This disc collects Kagel’s final quartet and the first quartet by Tristan Keuris, a Dutch composer I have never hear of before. The works were composed 30 years apart.
Holst: A Winter Idyll (1993) by David Atherton et al.
This is a collection of short orchestral pieces and excerpts of longer ones, by Holst. It is not performed by the same group throughout (as it’s a compilation) though, as far as I can tell (listening to a digital copy), the conductor is the same throughout (David Atherton).
Symphonies Nos. 7-8 (2009) by H.W. Henze, performed by Rundfunk Sinfonieorchester Berlin, conducted by Marek Janowski
This set pairs two of Henze’s later symphonies from a time which he had embarked on a more conservative path. Though the performances are excellent (as far as I know), I find these symphonies to be less interesting than his earlier work.