I’ve heard so much about Teenage Fanclub the power pop/jangle pop band that I really, really wasn’t ready for this. And because I really wasn’t ready for this I might have overrated it a tad. Such is life.
Tag: Alternative
Fear and Whiskey (1985) by Mekons
This record is credited by many as the birth of alt country. (Funnily enough, a record by an American band released exactly five years later is also credited as the birth of alt country…) I’m not sure that’s true for more than a few reasons, but it’s still a remarkably unique post punk record, especially …
Sparkle and Fade (1995) by Everclear
I’m familiar with Everclear from their softer, later hits but I’d always heard “they used to be louder”. Well, I can confirm, that is indeed true.
Pod (1990) by The Breeders
I can’ really decide what to do with this one. The songs are okay but I like the aesthetic. But I don’t like the production. I keep going back and forth.
Life (1990) by Inspiral Carpets
Full disclosure: I listened to this on YouTube and two songs were missing. I don’t think those two songs would have changed my mind but you never know.
The Good Son (1990) by Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds
I love Tender Prey. For me, it’s the culmination of the Seeds through their first era, a powerful combination of punk-influenced music and songwriting well beyond the quality of most punk albums.
Pills ‘n’ Thrills and Bellyaches (1990) by Happy Mondays
I’ve listened to a few madchester/baggy albums at this point and it’s safe to say that I just don’t get the genre. Now, I get very few dance-rock hybrids outside of Talking Heads’ version of that kind of thing, but this one I find particularly perplexing.
Up on the Sun (1985) by Meat Puppets
The more that I listen to the Meat Puppets the more it feels like they are one of the foundational bands of American alternative rock, setting the template for what was acceptable. When I was young and first encountering alternative, it felt like the diversity was baked in but original. The more I listen to …
Gigaton (2020) by Pearl Jam
So this is now the third Pearl Jam album in a row that fails to excite me. Is it them? Is it me? Is the truth somewhere in between?
Ball-Hog or Tugboat? (1995) by Mike Watt
What do I do with this sprawling, all-star record? It’s as if Watt wanted to make a new Minuteman record with 17 different bands. The results are, uneven, to say the least.
Meat is Murder (1985) by The Smiths
One of two things is happening: either I am slowly – slowly – getting so inured to The Smiths that I no longer hate their guts – or I have listened to enough of the British music of the 1980s to finally understand why people thought they were such a big deal. I still don’t …
Fear Inoculum (2019) by Tool
Tool goes Rush (circa late ’70s/early ’80s)!
The Great Annihilator (1995) by Swans
I am still far from a Swans expert – though I have seen them in concert! – but I feel compelled to echo the comments of others about how this record feels either like “more accessible Swans” or some kind of hybrid of their ’80s sound with a more traditional approach to songwriting (at least …
The Rapture (1995) by Siouxsie and the Banshees
This is my first ’90s Banshees album and I must say I was a little reticent to give it a listen, for two reasons. For one thing, though I feel like their ’80s records have dated rather well for ’80s music, I must say I was worried that this record would sound pretty damn ’80s. …
Flood (1990) by They Might Be Giants
I was pretty overwhelmed by Lincoln and not necessarily in a good way. I had heard so much about the band but didn’t really know anything. On Lincoln they came across to me as a sort of poor mans’ Camper Van Beethoven, which probably not fair for many reasons. But I feel very differently about …
Reading, Writing and Arithmetic (1990) by The Sundays
Why do I know The Sundays’ biggest hit? I was 8 when it came out and absolutely not listening to contemporary radio. My only guess is that the video got played a lot on Canada’s music video channel when I was older. Because I’ve definitely heard this song, and I can’t come up with any …
Midnite Vultures (1999) by Beck
I really like Beck. You might say I love Beck, or at least Beck’s mainstream records from ’90s and early ’00s. (I have slowly become less of a fan, over the years.) And I’d like to think I also really enjoy listening to musicians I enjoy having a great time, though I don’t know if …
There Is Nothing Left to Lose (1999) by Foo Fighters
I have written on many occasions that post-grunge is one of the few genres I hate as a whole genre, which is nothing I normally do. (I generally believe there are no “bad genres” but there are a few ’90s genres which make me want to reconsider that.) The Foo Fighters are more “rock” than …
Boomerang (1989) by The Creatures
Does the idea of a Siouxsie and the Banshees album with the music made up of almost entirely percussion sound appealing to you? Well, that’s probably the easiest way of explaining this Creatures record to someone who isn’t familiar with it (as I wasn’t). It’s got a similar vibe to their parent band except the …
Geek the Girl (1994) by Lisa Germano
I knew nothing about this record going in and, frankly, nothing about Germano. The name maybe rung a bell, a teeny bit, but that’s all. So I had no idea what I was in for, which is maybe why I keep can’t help but compare her to other people.
No Need to Argue (1994) by The Cranberries
There are so many ’90s alternative albums which I thought I ignored when they came out but I must have heard at some point. Like so many of those, when I put this on, I thought I just knew the singles. And then I remembered other songs. And I was confused. I don’t ever specifically …
Worst Case Scenario (1994) by dEUS
dEUS’s debut album is the kind of crazy alternative rock record I wish I had discovered when I was in my teens or 20s. It’s crazy to me that it isn’t better known, given how fun and interesting it is.
Ruby Vroom (1994) by Soul Coughing
Beginning sometime in the mid to late ’80s, there was a curious trend in the UK where a bunch of white guys began to appropriate much of the music of hip hop to make music that was, mostly, decidedly not hip hop. This music has very little rap in it (sometimes absolutely none) and had …
Definitely Maybe (1994) by Oasis
Loud electric guitars had been missing from British radio for a long, long time by the early 1990s. With the exception of U2 and the Smiths and a few other bands, there hadn’t been much popular guitar-based music for much of the previous decade. And when guitar-based music appeared, it often had synthesizers, gated drums …
Double Nickels on the Dime (1984)
The Minutemen’s magnum opus is really a magnum opus, coming in at a fairly ridiculous 45 tracks in 81 minutes. (That runtime is longer than Zen Arcade by over 10 minutes…) The band basically admits they included virtually everything they had, dubbing the final side “Chaff”. This is supposed to be a record by a …
Astro Lounge (1999) by Smash Mouth
Like, what even is Smash Mouth?
Californication (1999) by Red Hot Chili Peppers
“Scar Tissue” was everywhere in the summer of 1999. The radio was always on at my work and so the song was always on. I fell in love with a girl at my work who loved “Scar Tissue.” And so I found myself torn between my love for this girl, who would sing along to …
Street Fighting Years (1989) by Simple Minds
Simple Minds is one of those bands that put out an absolute ton of music but which I was only aware of due to their biggest hit. Until 2018 or 2019 I had never heard a single album of there’s. That one album sounded too much like U2 to me, but mostly because of Kerr. …
The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner (1999) by Ben Folds Five
For most of my adult life I’ve been only vaguely aware of Ben Folds and his band. I think he had a hit or two I heard of and many years ago I managed to listen to their reunion album but it apparently made no impression on me. Despite sort of bemoaning the death of …
Full Moon Fever (1989) by Tom Petty
For years, my only real experience of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers was their 1993 Greatest Hits record. That record contained the three big hits everyone knows from this solo album, though I wasn’t too concerned that these were ostensibly solo singles on a record collecting the band’s hits. I also wasn’t particularly concerned, at …