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Ten favorite 1992 indie-rock albums
In 1992, there were lots of great guitar sounds, or at least that’s what impressed me the most.
It wasn’t quite Bob Mould’s return to the sound of Hüsker Dü, but we were happy anyway, especially considering that “If I Can’t Change Your Mind” was the sort of perfect pop song Grant Hart used to write for them.
Their best album of the ‘90s, or at least my favorite, boasts excellent songwriting and unrelenting energy (hat tip to drummer Bobby Schayer), with “Atomic Garden” hitting especially hard. How sad is it that “Fertile Crescent” still applies 15 years down the road?
Craig Wedren’s poetic, enigmatic lyrics and limber singing with adeptly deployed falsetto and vibrato were already enough to set the band apart from their peers. Add in a sense of musical adventurousness that yielded a distinctive artsy sound and they sounded quite different from the rest of the Dischord roster – there were elements of punk, but they were arranged in unorthodox ways. IMO this remains the band’s best album.
The debut of Thalia Zedek and Chris Brokaw’s band would’ve drawn Stones comparisons even without its cover of “I Got the Blues.” If anything, this is even darker than Sticky Fingers was (for instance, “Brand New Vein”), and far denser, like a slowly droning cross between the Stones and Sonic Youth (check out “Bell”).
The greatest and most distinctive guitar sound of all, if far from the best known. Florida eccentrics recording for THE Seattle label, even produced by “godfather of grunge” Jack Endino, they managed to achieve a uniqueness that, given the expectations attached to Sub Pop releases at that time, might actually have hurt their reception. The intro of the opening track, “Almost Lost,” is one of the most enchanting little riffs heavy music ever gave us. Sadly, this album is out of print.
It’s probably still sacrilege to some people that Justin Broadrick used hip-hop rhythms on some tracks here – but then, drum machines and sampling are probably anathema to them even before the specifics come into the picture. Whatever, they fit fine (in a slightly perverse way) amid all the evil and dense sounds. On the other hand, the riff of “Mothra” recalls Black Sabbath, while the 21-minute, beat-free instrumental “Pure II,” mostly just guitars floating through space, is sheer sound sculpture.
This sounds like two or three albums in a row on a single disc. First comes the mood-swings title track, all 17 minutes of it; then come absolutely beautiful arrangements of classical pieces by Debussy, Scriabin, Lassus, Ives, and Messiaen, with guitarist Bill Frisell and keyboardist Wayne Horvitz at their most ethereal; the remaining 33 tracks are thrashy blurts (ranging in length from 0:12 to 1:19), featuring the screaming vocals of Boredoms’ Yamatsuka Eye.
Her third album was the first where other musicians (even including a trumpeter) supplemented her sound. On the page, her lyrics often seemed to need editing, but delivered with her spartan urgency, they came off fine most of the time.
This quartet of Dutch shoegazers defined by the high, beautiful voice of Esther Sprikkelman and master of guitar tones Harry Otten made their debut with an album recorded live in the studio on New Year’s Day (plus backing vocal overdubs and tape loops added on the more ornate “Butterfly Girl” the following day). Not always memorable as far as songwriting, but absolutely entrancing in terms of arrangements and production. Their uptempo stuff was fine, but it was the quiet dream-pop tracks (a bit reminiscent of Cranes) that stood out.
My review from BT#34: This observant, proudly self-conscious band of post-moderns draws from a broad range of styles (though mostly hardcore and Sonic Youth-ish mayhem, with a primitive stab at jazz) and delights in recontextualizing rock lyric fragments, all in the service of a programmatic rebellion against society—a Sex Pistols for the ‘90s, with the band instead of its manager explaining it all. The Nation’s headlong rush of noisy, uninhibited riffs is satisfyingly exciting on purely sonic terms, with the devastating lyrics adding the soupcon of significance that takes it all over the top.
