ITT: /mu/ in 1998
FUCK MANSON AND FUCK KORN
UH HUH, YEAH
orange
>>129039925THE MUSIC SOUNDS BETTER WITH YOOUUUU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQlAEiCb8m0
>>129039925Momma I am born
>>129040242Hi Chappell.
Goodnight sweet prince.
I wanna stand with you on a mountainI wanna bathe with you in the sea
So what exactly is supposed to be wrong here? His bragging, tsk-tsk? His retrograde reliance on "bitch" and such? His fealty to the Betrayer of Lauryn Hill? His voice, all gritty and ugly and clear and New York? His "flow," Lord help us? He doesn't flow, he overflows, spouting extra verbiage when any normal logorrheic would shut the eff up, and that form-fucking illusion of distended stanza is his flow. Unfettered after the manner of Kool Moe Dee, uncanny after the manner of Fox Mulder, and uproarious either way, he makes sure his gangsta tropes stay that way because he believes language supercedes reality. And all this I pinned down after being sucked in by the chamber orchestra, Hawaiian guitar, mixed-down Wagner, Claudine Longet parody, Wonder Mike parody, and Roxanne Shanté sample. You'll gasp. You'll chortle. You'll wonder what exactly is supposed to be wrong here. A
In which a girl-rock shooting star seeks recognition as nothing more but nothing less than the imaginative, eccentric singer-songwriter she always was. Her perspective remains distinctly female even when she's impersonating men. But her prim, outspoken raunch is down to a few hints, none as memorable as "Go On Ahead"'s resigned analysis of a marriage strained by the birth of a child, or "Girls' Room"'s dream of high school, or "Uncle Alvarez"'s con man hanging from the family tree. This isn't an indie babe's album, or a blowjob queen's either. It's the work of an artist testing her capacity for fictional scenarios, of an upper-middle-class woman well past worrying why she fucks and runs--in public, at least. Its spare, halting, impractical, distinct, blatantly hooked sound honors the home demo over the bar raveup because it was invented by someone who shares an indigenous habitat with record geeks--the kind of bedroom that's longer on stereo equipment than ceiling mirrors. A
Feature: "The lonely, ever uncool, always corny piano man." Bio: "Liam Hayes's new record is not just about pop, it IS pop in the classic (circa 1973) sense of the term." Wha? Has Chicago moved to another planet? (Again?) Hayes's closest relative by far is Palace Inc. CEO Will Oldham whittling mountain music down to a doleful whisper. If he's anything, and his aesthetic is so attenuated you have to wonder, he's cool, and if his aesthetic is about anything it's about being about. Hayes's snaillike, lachrymose presongs resemble no pop in history, much less 1973. (1973?) And while it's possible to imagine a piano man this anonymously self-absorbed, no cocktail lounge would permit him to sing--unless he owned it, I guess. C+
Useless year with nothing much going on. Meh.
I'm dead sure this isn't the end. https://youtu.be/ILR5-JK8gvg
Compared to the diluted simple syrup of Swirl 360 or the teen-idol rappa-billy of Jimmy Ray, Imbruglia's modern pop is Rumours. Not only is she extraordinarily pretty without being too blatant in her babitude, she's got the brains and will to make up her own songs (and did I mention how pretty she is?). Thus she's earned our respect. But under all their state-of-the-studio-art, her competent songs are no more distinctive than the competent songs of hundreds of less pretty women. This was no stiff--RCA milked platinum and a follow-up single out of the sure shot she didn't write herself. But we should be proud that iconicity proved beyond Imbruglia's means. It's three cheers for democracy every time someone goes even a little broke underestimating the taste of the American public. C+
>>129040367>>129040103>>129040058not music
It would be a pleasure to dismiss Calvin Broadus's evocatively entitled No Limit debut as another piece of lowballing funk off the N.O. Bounce assembly line. But the lead "Snoop World" is the kind of track that can make an album, playing a synth-bass hook over a real bass line and under triangles and other high elements that never hint at G-funk keyb tweedle, and over the next few songs, cameos from No Limit's two best rappers, Mystikal and Mia X, clear the way for the unoriginal gangsta bull-roar of Master P and his brothers. But despite considerable input from Mystikal--whose deep-Delta bellow tenses powerfully against Snoop's honey-tongued indifference, adding moral weight to the usual professions of "ex-drug dealer" rectitude--the music soon runs down. And though Snoop is surely just a rapper now, he'd no more risk alienating his market than help a Blood's grandma across the street. Da game he's selling is sociopathic violence, and so he commits metaphorical murder, invites thugs to wave their gats in the air, cuts a biyutch improvident enough to suck his dick, and so forth. In short, he proves himself a born liar, showing all the imagination of an ATM in the process. Anyone who counts him a major artist because he can drawl and pronounce consonants at the same time should give equal time to Mariah Carey's high notes and George Winston's magic fingers. C+
>>129040491he's overblowing the pretty part tbqh
>>129040460I agree 97-98 were awfully dull, even the early 50s housewife pop era was more interesting than this.
Pretty sensual for pop enlightenment, thank God ("Skin," "Candy Perfume Girl"). *
>>129040491proves how culture has stagnated, you'd hardly know this was a 98 release; it could come out in 2025 and still sound current
21 POSTS AND NO ONE HAS POSTED IT YET
A B-diva with actual vocal technique, and why not? ("The Boy Is Mine," "Misty Blue"). *
IMPEACH CLINTON
their best
If only the absurd aura of artistic respectability surrounding this arrant self-promoter would teach us that not every icon deserves a think piece, that it's no big deal to have a higher IQ than Ozzy Osbourne, that the Road of Excess leads to the Palace Theater. Instead, his banned-in-Wal-Mart slipcase job will fade into the haze of records people found interesting at the time. Its strategy is to camouflage the feebleness of La Manson's vocal affect by pretending it's deliberate--one more depersonalizing production device with which to flatten willing cerebella whilst confronting humankind's alienation, amorality, and failure to have a good time on Saturday night. Catchiest songs: "The Dope Show" and "I Don't Like the Drugs (But the Drugs Like Me)." Duh. C+
I WANT TO GET AWAYI WANT TO GET AWAYI WANT TO GET AWAYI WANNA FLY AWAY YEAH YEAH
Unlike James Brown, say, or Ray Charles, the Queen of Soul is at home with up-to-the-minute black pop, cherry-picking producers the way Jerry Wexler once did songwriters. Cf. the uncountable rhythm tracks of Puffy Combs's apparently simple (and apparently unsampled) "Never Leave You Again"; Dallas Austin's long-suffering yet somehow jaunty "I'll Dip," on which Aretha sings barely a scrap of the written melody, improvising the verse and embellishing a chorus hook stated by a multitracked backup diva; Daryl Simmons's "In the Morning," disintegrating over and over into a mournful "I don't wanna be the other woman"; Franklin's own "The Woman," inarticulate in its wronged pain until she moans and scats the coda into a show of the pride she brushed by in the second verse; and Lauryn Hill's equally impressive title cut, whose unaffected big-sisterhood underpins the godmother's most credible feminist outreach ever. None of these 11 songs aspires to the declarative tunes and pungent phrases of the soul era, and at 55 Aretha is losing her high end. But after a decade in artistic seclusion, she had something to prove, and she did--with an album as audacious and accomplished as such great Wexlers as Spirit in the Dark or Young, Gifted and Black. A
Hey, we all have our personal alt-rock standbys--campaigners who've stuck out a sound that rings our chimes dead center. So if I tell you mine are the Voidoids revisited, will I maybe make a sale? Two guitars, one choppy and one fleet, rip up bebop-worthy dissonances over punk forcebeats, and if the frontman seems less than charismatic, well, Richard Hell types never hold their bands together for six years. Seeker that he is, Eric Bachmann varies croak with tweetle, massages some keybs, even samples. Minor details, I insist. This is their sound, there is none higher, other indie bands should just retire. A-
I THINK METALLICA SUCKS
IT'S YOU THAT I ADOREYOU'LL ALWAYS BE MY WHORE
>>129040748>I'm ok pal-ing around with Diddy and Lauryn Hill in my 50s>but when I was in my 30s I was too good and too cool for discoLOLok Aretha. Only if you say so.
>the Cuckgau fag is even polluting the classic "/mu/ in year X" threads
>>129040790uggh, I can do without this thing
>>129040046Beck, Hanson and Courtney Love too
>>129040804>I can do without this thingbut...
His convoluted racial formalism having long since come clean as a total absence of original ideas, he grabs the brass ring from behind a tacked-on Guess Who cover better heard on the far more imaginative Austin Powers soundtrack. Lenny, your work on Earth is done. We have Derek Jeter now. C-
I fucked this girl i met at a deftones show and now it burns when i pee
>>129040818Hey now, that's not fair. "Fly Away" was a fun as fuck song for 10 year olds in the late 90s, but in the late 90s it should remain.
>>129040839great tour but the album itself is totally unlistenable
An indelibly local unit from the sun-baked I-5 nowhere of Modesto, California, they orchestrate lo-fi so cunningly that the tunes arising from the murk seem angelic in their grace and uplift. The title instrumental, a descending scale voiced by several flutes or recorders and a roomful of busted Casios, sets the standard. But that's not to say skateboard pro turned glorified garbageman Jason Lytle throws away the words, starting with a lead track that dissents from meritocracy with a quiet defeatism too subtle and eloquent for any simple slacker. No matter how wearisome Lytle finds all the Neil Young, Howe Gelb, and Pavement comparisons, they triangulate him accurately and honorably. A-
>>129040790This brings back a lot of memories, all of them pretty terrible.
Seeing Harvey in her most original live guise to date at the Hammerstein Ballroom, I didn't think Nick Cave or, heaven knows, Aretha Franklin. Instead I recalled the renowned art song singer Jan DeGaetani, whom I was dragged off to see 20-odd years ago. I didn't much enjoy DeGaetani--not my repertoire, let's say. But I admired her ease, her naturalness-within-formality, and more and more that's how it is with Harvey. In a charcoal suit and stacked heels plus red top, this was a concert artist repaying the adoration of her fans, but not so as she'd give them the early songs they wanted. Instead she concentrated on less immediate new material, which gained power in performance just as it does with repeated exposure on record. Melding modal tradition and concrète futurism, dancing to the strong beat as the moment required, she sounded so good she made what she had to say irrelevant. Which was and remains just as well, because what she has to say is limited. Is this desire? It must be, because all she's certain of is that her characters rarely get what they want. Hence, neither do listeners who want formal command to provide some release. While every song here kicks in eventually, starting with the two-minute "The Sky Lit Up," at times she could be the rock Wynton Marsalis. So thank God she'd rather be Tricky. A-
>>129040790Interesting and totally confused meld of Paul Westerberg and Billy Joel.
>>129040687accurate
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OeNKBq63iM
Korn deny they're metal; that's Judas Priest, all four-four pomp and guitar solos. But they nevertheless demonstrate that the essence of metal--an expressive mode it sometimes seems will be with us for as long as ordinary whiteboys fear girls, pity themselves, and are permitted to rage against a world they'll never beat--is self-obliterating volume and self-aggrandizing display. Now calling up death-metal's signature groan to prove only to prove he's authentic, poor not-actually-abused Jonathan Davis raps, recites, scats, and sings dull tunes landscaped with eerie licks, odd bridges, and a hyperactive rhythm section. How much his fans identify with "My Gift to You" ("I kiss your lifeless skin"), "Cameltosis" ("You trick-ass slut"), or the tragic "Seed" ("Do I need this fame?") remains unclear. But I'm parent enough to hope they can find a more fully formed designated someone than a guy whose idea of transgressive art is netcasting soft-core s&m to any teenager with a logon. C
>>129040952>for as long as ordinary whiteboys fear girls, pity themselves, and are permitted to rage against a world they'll never beatso much projection
The beats speed up without losing their deep post-Cali bump, especially on the nonstop "Make Em Say Uhh #2." The artiste camouflages his rapping by passing work to his brothers and collecting chits from Bone-Thugs and Snoop. Political analyses are essayed. So the brutally predictable solo smashes by said brothers, the cold Silkk the Shocker and the crude C-Murder, are less fun. But they're also less aggravating. In addition to givens about social services and law enforcement, we get "Niggas don't kill niggas--media kill niggas," "why the government don't protect superstars," "no Grammy nominations," and complaints that his taxes are too high. We get all the usual misogynist ugliness and black-on-black crime. We get Snoop calling Puffy out without going so far as to utter his name. "The ghetto's got me crazy" I know--that's the cliche P patented with his groan. But "too legit to quit"? Where have I heard that before? C+
At least Chan Marshall's not trying to fool anybody. From "she plays the difficult parts and I play difficult" to "the music is boring me to death," she's an honest heroine of the new indie staple--not noise-tune and certainly not irony, both as passé as the guilty pop dreams they kept at bay, but sadness. Slow sadness. Slow sadness about one's inability to relate. And not to audiences. Hell is other people. C+
>>129041036he's right, this album influenced a lot of trends none of them good
>>129040988not music
Not content to split the difference between Patsy Cline and Debbie Boone, this young teen and her in-it-to-win-it voice turn as grotesque as a mascaraed five-year-old in a beauty pageant. She begins by imagining a guy who "worships my body." Her Dad Rimes production and Carole Bayer Warren crossovers reveal Mutt Lange as the easygoing popster he is. She never cracks a smile, rarely revs a tempo. And in the only climax she understands, she colors in the "Purple Rain" so dark I'd say its purple was black if that metaphor weren't patently ridiculous. C+
Wilson's genius has never been as indelible or universal as worshipers believe. Generating illusions of eternal sunlight or crafting frames for crackpot solipsism, he was magical; stripped by Don Was or cambered by Van Dyke Parks, he was at least interesting. Submitting to adult-contempo tycoon Joe Thomas, however, he's just what you'd fear: a middle-aged pop pro who's proud he's no longer nuts and knows even less about the world than when he was. The lead cut has a happy tune, the dark finale some dysfunctional intimations. In between, he makes too much of attendant hacks and gestures at old glories from a failing high end. C
i hate ska.
>>129041145my understanding is that she had chronic depression due to a skin condition
>>129041430>Soyn Lennon
the most sensible tunes in pop today ("It Don't Hurt," "My Favorite Mistake") *
I love this album so much
I can't wait for more Cuckgau reviews
>>129041320Love her so much Pandora’s aquarium and liquid diamonds are some of her best songs
>>129039925Speaking of the 90s, this seems like a good place to ask this can anyone please help me Identify the song playing in this video from 12:22-12:33, it's guitar chords and a female vocalist saying crazy, I've gone through whole albums and can't find it. please god help me I'm desperate.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWXr4rA_xeE
>>129041543There are a whole lot of albums from this period he didn't review but just gave a bomb or scissors symbol to.
Man this year was total shit wasn't it? 99 was a lot more interesting.
>>129040780Some payback was owed for all the HH tracks made from sampling her hits.
This record is what it seems--mature, leisurely, rather beautiful, perhaps content. But it's neither complacent nor same-old, and after it's settled into their, I'm sorry, oeuvre, it will rank toward the top for everybody except permanent revolutionaries, a noncombatant category if ever there was one. Awash in connubial ardor and childhood bliss, undergirded by the strength-through-strangeness of angry tunings grown familiar, it's the music of a daydream nation old enough to treasure whatever time it finds on its hands. Where a decade ago they plunged and plodded, drunk on the forward notion of the van they were stuck in, here they wander at will, dazzled by sunshine, greenery, hoarfrost, and machines that go squish in the night. The melodies aren't the foci of the 11-tracks-in-74-minutes--more like resting places. But even when the band is punk-rocking le sexisme or pondering the trippy fate of Karen Koltrane, the anxiety the tunes alleviate is never life-threatening. Motto, and they quote: "`We'll know where when we get there.'" A+
>>129044163I was kidding. I'm mostly just saying what's the point of having these threads when all people do is spam his shitty reviews? It's not like we don't have 50 threads about those a day.
>>129041145>Not content to split the difference between Patsy Cline and Debbie Boone, this young teen and her in-it-to-win-it voice turn as grotesque as a mascaraed five-year-old in a beauty pageantis that a JonBenet Ramsey reference? i get it was that era.
>>129044468Yeah. Cuckgau has no class.
ha ha one year to go before Eminem ruins everything forever
If "pop" means anything anymore, it ain't this. As a SoundScan-certified megadeal, she's outgrown the bright appeal of pop the way she's outgrown the punky abrasions that gave the debut its traction off the blocks. The mammoth riffs, diaristic self-analysis, and pretentious Middle Eastern sonorities of this music mark it as "rock," albeit rock with tunes. And in this context I suck it up, feeling privileged to listen along with all the young women whose struggles Morissette blows up to such a scale. Here's hoping lots of young men feel the same. A-
>>129044579and so exactly as you'd expect, she did as all would-be "punks" inevitable do which was become AOR
>>129040058ILL FUCKIN BITE YOU
>>129040758Based Loafer.
>>129040839>>129040856A WORD TOTHE WISDOM TOOTHOPEN UPAND SAY AHHHMEN
>>129044810that cover art didn't age too well. only 90s kids will get this joke. XD
Modern love for the postmodern English--sad, kind, contained ("Mr Donut," "Been So Long"). **
Who better than the sports addict who wrote "Air Hoodlum" with no prompting from Spike Lee to comprehend and then control the soundtrack concept? Note, however, that for all the we're-back bluster and covertly sexist anti-r&b rhetoric, the closest it gets to the stressful speed of classic PE is on one of the seven (of 12) songs Shocklee-Shocklee-Sadler didn't produce, the Danny Saber-Jack Dangers closer "Go Cat Go." Instead you'll hear backup femmes, churchy chorales, skeleton beats, Wu strings, more guest rappers than advertised, and funk samples, although these are outnumbered by hooks appropriated subtly (in fact, brilliantly) from "James Bond Theme" and the Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again" and blatantly (also brilliantly) from Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth." On the latter, Steve Stills himself blubbers a climactic coda. Over-the-hill blowhards gotta stick together. A
Actually, Lord, there's been a misunderstanding. Remember when we said it was OK for You to sing? What we meant was . . . well, first we just wanted You to get rid of Jack Bruce. Then it was more like, Don't be shy, Sonny Boy Williamson didn't have that much range either. But never, never, never did we say, You have the right if George Benson does. Or, You could be the next Phil Collins. Or, Guitars are for sound effects anyway. Really, God. That wasn't the idea at all. C+
>>129044892>Over-the-hill blowhards gotta stick togetherso much projection
>>129044917>I dropped my son out of a window while high as balls woe is me :/Get wrecked, Eric.
Compared to Streisand, Garland, and Callas, said to augur a New Era of Popular Song, this two-time Tony winner proudly situates her big range and Juilliard technique on the far side of the chasm now separating Broadway theater from American music. Aficionados may follow the (satiric?) logic of, for instance, the sudden high note that punctuates the Adam Guettel-William Makepeace Thackeray trifle "A Tragic Story." But we who prefer our singing speechlike will figure she's just showing off again, which given the songs is perfectly appropriate. Ignorant of groove, eschewing verse-chorus-bridge, orchestrated to suggest the demon jazz only insofar as 20th-century European composition mooched off it, these are not tunes playgoers will hum as they flag cabs on West 45th Street. They are the sterile spawn of Stephen Sondheim and Ned Rorem, and although they signify little when sundered from their paltry dramatic contexts, serious they remain--what few comic moments they countenance duck their heads as McDonald prepares for her next octave leap. C+
>>129041145well this is boring as shit
>>129044892why does Stephen Stills live rent free in this guy's head?
>>129044984I can see his point. This shit blows hard.
>>129045067the "message" of the title cut would be bad enough by itself, doesn't need the singing to make it worse than than it already is
Sincerity was smug long before irony was, and while Mullins devoted a long, honorable folk-circuit career to reinventing the feeling before he stumbled on his very own "Taxi"--six indie albums in the trunk of his car and he could still muse, "I don't know what I've been lookin' for, maybe me"!--I figure he'd rather be called smug than dumb or, heaven knows, insincere. Pretty good at observing/concocting the kind of composite characters journalists get fired for, he's so wrought up about their humanity that he rarely captures their humor or grace. That would require establishing a distance from them, and while they may live with distance, poor souls, he can't countenance it in himself. He's like a one-night stand who feels constrained to tell you he loves you instead of making clear why he finds you attractive. Feels icky, right? C+
>>129045114Didn't matter. He just had to be good looking and get women swooning over him.
>>129044936You'll never be involved in such a kino situation.
>>129039925Dude...Warren and Woody left the band to do Govt Mule full time....they replaced them with some no name Nashville picker and some young black kid on bass...I hope they dont suckhttps://youtu.be/JubWJ8ikW5o?si=iBB3zWlEci0bVSaw&t=12
Seriously I need to clean out my ears after sampling that Audra McDonald album. I would give it a D plus myself, Cuckgau was honestly too kind.
Reclaiming her integrity if not--waddaya want?--her edge ("I'm Beautiful," "Lullabye in Blue"). *
>>129044860>using "humor" instead of "humour"
>>129044860They sound a good 15 years older and mom (mum?) ish than Foxbase Alpha here.
>>129045478Not music.
Holy fucking shit. This album is all killer no filler, best new band of the year.>>129040667Great album im glad something good is coming from the ashes of Kyuss. >>129040687This is the greatest album ever released. Music has peaked. A++++>>129040952More of a C+>>129041399This is a huge misstep. I loved the singles, but what a waste of money this CD was. Get Jimmy the fuck back.>>129044789Their previous album was better, but im glad theyre getting the recognition they deserve. This one is great too
EVERY NIGHT IN MY DREAMSI SEE YOU, I FEEL YOUTHIS IS HOW I KNOW YOU GO ON
>>129045518Like with "Fly Away" this was totally one of those you had to be there songs.
>>129045295Jack Pearson is the man tho....and Otiel is brilliant on the bass. Hope their in the band for a long time. Listen to that Jessica- its sooo goodHow does one band have so many incredible musicians in its legacy?
>>129045585One of the worst thing to ever happen to pop music, even if it wasn't her fault. Also hubby goes kersplat. (^:
>>129041442This isn't as remembered as S/T or C'mon, C'mon because it didn't have a big single.
>>129040058>two biggest pedos in music make a song togetherYou can't make this shit up.
Are you?
>>129039925I was born in 1998
Grandma Rosie still plugging along in one of her last albums, turning 70 this year.
ok
98 was such a fucking filler year in terms of music and everything else.
do a thread about 1987 next
what did you guys think of this?
>>129049807yeah idk why but 97-98 were the weakest years of the decade
>>129050019Solid years in my book
>>129050019Transitional years when grunge had died but nu metal/boyband slop had not yet taken over.
