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Ten favorite 1990 indie-rock albums
Has nostalgia for the ‘90s started yet? If it has, I’m all ready. If it hasn’t, maybe this will get the ball rolling: I’m going to go through the decade year by year over the next few months, interrupting at the end of December to look over the best releases of 2007. But for now, set the way-back machine just a few ticks to the left and relive the only full decade that every Big Takeover reader has experienced first-hand. These lists will be as indie as I can testify to from my feeble memory of who did and didn’t have major distribution deals. So while we may think of The Fall as an epitome of indie rock, 1990’s Extricate isn’t here because issuing label Phonogram was a subsidiary of Polydor.
My favorite then, and after relistening to the contenders, still at #1. Jangle-pop with an edge (with Gary Smith producing, John Strohm got great guitar sounds), and dark shadows accentuated by Juliana Hatfield’s multi-hued vocals and tensile bass lines.
The greatest industrial metal album ever. Justin Broadrick hit his peak of creativity here.
A lost classic of New York’s anti-folk movement that goes for big bucks on eBay now, this album earned Kahn an ill-fated deal with Sony. She’s done plenty of good work since, but this remains my favorite, one of the all-time great singer-songwriter albums capturing a time and a place.
I’ve stuck with this band through all its many style shifts, always finding something to enjoy, but it’s this early, weird stuff that I still find most compelling and original. Seeming fragments of music drift and merge; the spacey production, general lack of drums, and ethereal vocals of Karin Oliver contribute to the feel of dream-logic guiding the sounds.
Speaking of great guitar sounds, how about this? Not even slightly disappointing compared to Minor Threat, and anyone who says so is too much of a purist for me.
At the time, I had no idea what to make of this, aside from knowing that Wayne Coyne’s voice annoyed the crap out of me. It’s worst on the first track, an alienation effect I can now live with in the wake of having learned to like the Lips through their later stuff (especially Yoshimi…). This is now available on Ryko’s two-CD set The Day They Shot a Hole in the Jesus Egg: The Priest Driven Ambulance Album, Demos and Outtakes 1989-1991.
On their third reunion LP, the only hardcore punks whose musical onslaught was matched verbally continued their righteous battle against conformity and complacency, as summed up by Greg Graffin’s title track and Mr. Brett’s “I’m a twenty-first century digital boy/I don’t know how to read but I got a lotta toys.” Sadly, things have only gotten worse in the intervening years.
As quiet as it is, this is still an attention-grabbing debut. The starkness of the produced (by admirer Michael Stipe) remains refreshing, Chesnutt’s turns of phrase and quirky singing spotlighted all the more. As casual and rough as the songs may seem, they are little gems, “Soft Picasso” especially.
Their semi-return to what made them great in the first place. Since their great debut, they’d gotten poppier (slightly) and slicker (more), and while this wasn’t the exact same sound of a decade earlier – how could it be with Martin Atkins taking over on drums? – it was certainly heavier and denser than they’d been for awhile.
Never mind what they’ve become (which, on the current pop music spectrum, isn’t really that bad), this is a punky blast of youthful energy and exuberance that owes the Replacements and Dramarama equal debts.
