ITT: /mu/ in 1995
>>130158797these threads suck
>>130158797*shits diaper*
This is a disappointment. tf happened to John? They need to bring him back asap.
ha ha remember when everyone used to listen to that gay hair metal poodle rock slop? boy we were sure stupid.
SPENDIN' MOST OUR LIVESLIVIN' IN A GANGSTA'S...
IT GOES ON AND ON AND ONIT'S HEAVEN AND HELL (but mostly the latter)
>>130159079I never stopped
Hhhey guuise, remember me? I was here before Mariah.
>>130158797WAAAAAAA! WAAAAAAAAA! I WAS ONLY BORN LAST DECEMBER!!!!! WAAAAAA!!!!!!
I wanna meet an army of her, if you know what I mean
>>130159440This isn't '88. Get out.
Eric Bachmann's pissed-off, speechlike yowl-to-croak isn't as callow or pop as Stephen Malkmus's demented, speechlike croon-to-whine, but their bands share an aural gestalt: tuneful two-guitar breaks that set off unkempt explosions before recombining in brief climaxes soon interrupted by more disarray. The Archers trace the agitated melodies and off guitar to the Replacements, as if the clamor Bob Stinson unloosed by accident and spirit possession was instead planned out by former sax major Bachmann and axe-wielding bad boy Eric Johnson. With Paul Westerberg an adept of the realistic popsong and the Archers' titles so gnomic they forget them themselves, I resisted this notion until the show where I caught myself shouting out a whole utterly comprehensible stanza: "They caught and drowned the front man/Of the world's worst rock and roll band/He was out of luck/Because nobody gave a fuck/The jury gathered all around the aqueduct/Drinking and laughing and lighting up/Reminiscing just how bad he sucked/Singin' throw him in the river/Throw him in the river/Throw him in the river/Throw the bastard in the river." A
>>130159597>This isn't '88
>>130159620That's why Winger are playing at the county fair now.
Poor Kurt.
>>130159585I WANNA SEE BJORK's GUOMUNDSDOTTIR
>>130159671Back when they were still a half-niche Replacements clone instead of alternative Bon Jovi.
Billie Joe has an instinctive hold on the rock and roll virtue of sounding like you mean--his songs conceptualize his natural whine with a musicality that undercuts his defeatism only don't be so sure. "I'm a smart-ass but I'm playing dumb": eight million sold and all he admits to knowing is the futility of Telegraph Avenue losers who dis the rich occasionally and each other all the time. How he'll feel when this one doesn't sell two million we should all want to know. A-
I will be born in a couple of weeks
>>130159882fuck this band
Hip hop intellectuals hype the aesthetic of the new like Harold Rosenberg gone funky, so of course they snort at this dumb loser. It's not that he was sent up for check passing rather than some manly crime like assault (I hope), but that he favors samples everyone recognizes--especially everyone who's memorized the complete works of Tom Browne, either back in the day or by ingesting every rap record in the universe. Me, I'm glad Coolio did that job for me. Nor does it hurt that his smile is friendlier than Sly Stone's. Great black music past to the present. This must be paradise. A-
>>130159938>Hip hop intellectualsThis surely meant in irony, right?
So this guy on rec.music.metal was arguing with me about Dave Ellefson is better than Jason Newstead. He's gotta be dreaming.
>>130159996also when's Metallica coming out with a new album already? Megadave have put out two since TBA.
his gift for social realist literature exceeds his gift for political music ("The Ghost of Tom Joad," "Across the Border") *
>>130159384To everyone who assumed/hoped she would be a one album wonder back in 1990...welp.
>>130158797Cerebral Caustic is very underrated record. The Fall among with few others (eg Laika, moonshake, lon fin killie) are saving British rock music
>>130160174>The Fall among with few others (eg Laika, moonshake, lon fin killie) are saving British rock musicOasis otoh...are not.
Worth ignoring while she was merely precious, she must command our brief attention now that she's becoming overvalued as well. With the possible exception of Saint Joanie, who at least has stature, this is the bad folkie joke to end all bad folkie jokes between her breathless baby-doll sexuality, abiding love of her own voice, and useless ideas about injustice and prejudice. End of story. I hope. C-
>>130160216her and Mariah should make a lesbian porno. couldn't care less about their music though.
>>130160174never heard of them, how are they saving anything? Blur, Elastica and Pulp are the ones actually saving British rock music
I was down with the Riot Grrrl Appreciation Society on this reluctant refugee from Canadian children's television, who some say was invented by Madonna herself so she could distract the publicity machine while raising her own biological girl. That is, I approved when she played the pissed-off spikehead and recoiled from such candid self-dramatizations as "Perfect" and "Mary Jane." But with help from six or seven arrantly effective songs, she's happy to help 15 million girls of many ages stick a basic feminist truth in our faces: privileged phonies have identity problems too. Not to mention man problems. B+
>>130160333One of the worst albums of the decade, arguable of the last 35 years especially for all the cancerous rot it influenced.
How do you do fellow kids?
if stardom is your only subject matter you may as well go all-out with it ("Smile", "Tabloid Junkie") *
>>130160368was the one where he tried going industrial?
>>130159938Ahem. Coolio was a LEA plant to sell anti-crime messages to young black men.
>>130159611Why did critics love this slop so much?
Lazing around in Warren G's groove without making a pass at his tragic sense of life, these arrogant hangers-on would be yawns if they weren't the ugliest sexists to make a three week splash all year. Although the hatred is everywhere, it's most painful on an early "skit"-song-"skit" triptych: "The Train" (a backslapper about gang rape in the dark),"Fuck Ya Mouth" ("To all our hookers and hoes"), and "Slap a Hoe" (a device invented for punks too yellow to do the job themselves). Heaven forfend the rappers actually doing any of these things, except maybe buy a Slap-a-Hoe--this isn't advocacy, it's constitutionally protected representation, harrumph. What I don't understand is why anyone who doesn't hate women is outraged when C. Delores Tucker goes just as far overboard in response. If they understand when self-serving black men express themselves in these, harrumph, metaphors, why don't they understand when self-serving black women counterattack by any means necessary? C+
>>130160505>expecting rappers to have any morals or principles
>>130159938>>130159384man oh man i love the 90s when music was real shit and the charts weren't dominated with mindless pop and rap slop like today
Way too many of these dum OHW singer songwriter bitches during this era.
>>130160651This band was never good.
>>130160333what is this ear rape? i hope this album dies a quick death on the charts.
>>130160594skank only got a career because she did Garth Brooks
MOVIN' TO THE COUNTRYGONNA EAT A LOT OF PEACHES
Nuts, I forgot to tape X-Files last night.
Impeach Clinton!
>>130159921That was before they embarrassed themselves though.
Even with the greatest voices, tastes are personal--where you might prefer Aretha's Diane Warren song, I'd probably go for Al Green's. Krauss isn't quite in that class, but after this compilation-plus overcame my personal penchants, I began to think she was only a notch below. However much fans appreciated the child prodigy for her fiddle, they love the woman for her kind, precise, intent soprano. And not only is this a singer's showcase, it's a pop singer's showcase. Sure she's still country--bluegrass, even. She's nothing if not principled. But she also ropes in not just the Beatles but the Foundations and, believe it or not, Bad Company. And by reclaiming guest tracks from specialist albums by Jerry Douglas, Tony Furtado, and the Cox Family, she oversteps the sonic boundaries of her admirable but specialized band. Best in show (after the Beatles, the Foundations, and Bad Company): a sexy little sacred number. A-
This well-regarded little item rekindles my primeval suspicion of Europeans who presume to "improve" on rock and roll (or for that matter Betty Hutton, originator of the best song here). I don't miss the Sugarcubes' guitars per se so much as their commitment to the groove, which--sporadic though it would remain, Iceland not being one of your blues hotbeds--might shore up the limited but real intrinsic interest of her eccentric instrumentation, electronic timbres, etc. Then there's her, how shall I say it, self-involved vocal devices. Which brings us to, right, her lyrics, which might hit home harder if she'd grown up speaking the English she'll die singing, but probably wouldn't. Anybody out there remember Dagmar Krause? German, Henry Cow, into artsong and proud of it? Well, take my word for it. She was no great shakes either. But at least she had politics. C+
>>130161325Bjork was never good.
Is it strange that a studio wizard of Moby's evident genius makes such flawed records? Not if he's really a dancefloor wizard--not if the communal-ecstatic is his artistic ground. Where in concert he subsumes rockist guitar and classical pretensions in grand, joyous rhythmic release, on album his distant dreams remain tangents. "What Love" challenges Metallica as incidentally as "God Moving Over the Face of the Waters" does Philip Glass, and all I can say for sometime cocomposer Mimi Goese is that she sounded even prissier in Hugo Largo. Martha Wash, call your agent. I mean, he's a Christian, girl. A-
>>130161325>(or for that matter Betty Hutton, originator of the best song here)Meh it's just another lame 90s swing revival/nostalgia track.
>>130160617it's all just normie womancore slop
>baby baby baby ooooh
>>130160368His best in 15 years desu
>>130159585I hope some fat deranged Mexican guy doesn’t try to mail her an acid bomb and then shoot himself a year from now.
>>130160617yeah a lot of them like her and Jewel also I guess had a kind of Christfag message to their music
When is this rap thing gonna die already?
Four albums in three years, each sonically distinct, each adding a thematic facet to a coherent sensibility. Pretty good for an alleged up-and-comer, eh? In fact, major, and I'll reserve the G-word if you will. Bored with raunchy details, she's going for universals: salvation, rapture, fulfillment, escape. Putting aside her rough lead guitar as unequal to this quest, she's applied herself instead to opera lessons that in no way prettify vocals that were pretty amazing even before they assumed all this range, modulation, and command, and traded in Steve Albini for Flood to help her get at some postsexual imperatives. The fuller sound they arrive at is far from slick--her buzzy keybs are as ominous as her guitar, her register shifts weirder than ever, and the mix can get disconcertingly murky. So watch out for pigeonholes. To fixate on blues or sex is to sell short religious yearnings, avant-garde affinities, and pop potential that are all intensified on an album whose generalization level only magnifies its impact. And to figure she's hellbent on the big time is not to think at all. A
67th post lmaoSIX SEEEVEN SIX SEEEVEN
Holy shit this is the best super band album ive ever heard. I hope they finish the second one soon>>130159037Eh not that big of a downgrade. They were never that great>>130159488Album of the fucking year>>130159882This new cds alright its no Dookie though
>>130161778>washed 80s band tries to go 90s edgy>doesn't quite work out
Tough-guy sentimentality is an old story in American culture, but self-pity this rank is usually reserved for teen romances and tales of brave avant-gardists callously rejected by the mass media. His I-love-Mom rings true because Mom was no saint, and his respect for old G's seems genuine, probably because they told him how smart he was. But whether the metaphor be dead homies or suicide threat, the subtext of his persecution complex is his self-regard. What's doubly galling is that these are essential hip hop themes--as Ice Cube and B.I.G. have made all too vivid, it is persecution that induces young black men to kill each other and themselves. That such themes should rise to the top of the charts with this witless exponent of famous-for-being-famous is why pop fans decry the mass media. C+
Like any pop skyrocket, Gwen Stefani is video-driven, and so hebephrenic you know she unprotests too much. The production's as bizzy as the Ivy at lunchtime, too. But this act's real problem is ska. Since the dawn of two-tone there hasn't been a single band in the style--excluding the punk Rancid but including Madness and the Specials--that was as songful as its fun-besotted partisans claimed. When that hippity-hop beat is hyped up for postpunk consumption, its energy somehow precludes tune. Not that she could sing in the same shower as classic Cyndi Lauper anyway. But classic Belinda Carlisle is another story. C+
>>130161778Eddie was indeed a totally washed alcoholic by this point.
>>130161835Accurate. Overrated hack BTFO.
give them credit for wanting it all--and (yet another Beatle connection!) playing guitars ("She's Electric," "Roll With It") **
>>130160594>track 2"Adulting is sure hard why can't i be a carefree teenager forever ffs?"Only if you say so, Trisha.
>>130162003oh well, this was the last decade when country wasn't just cheap pandering. it all ended forever on 9/11.
Beyond thrilling to "Bang Bang Bang" and the inescapable "Fast Car," my only felt insight into Chapman's aura came at a Nelson Mandela tribute where her voice filled the venue, which happened to be Yankee Stadium. Maybe it's a positive that her recordings never convey that kind of size--means she's more modest than her foremothers, Joan Baez and Odetta. But what's left is a joylessly self-sufficient gravity that makes her "heaven's here on earth" sound a lot more pro forma, not to say phonier, than her "The whole world's broke/And it ain't worth fixing." B-
The reason Harris's instant comeback is an irritation, not a tragedy, is that the inspired collaborator and nonpareil backup singer has no vision of her own for Daniel Lanois to ruin. Her artistic personality has always been coextensive with her miraculously lucid voice, which now that it's fraying with age is ripe for Lanois's one seductive trick: to gauze over every aural detail and call your soft focus soul. I doubt she would have nailed the songs anyway--often she doesn't. But she would have come closer than this. B
>>130160216Don't care about her music, only care if I find her naked in my bed.
>>130162064What up? Ol' Emmylou decide she wanted to come back and compete with all her much younger disciples now flooding the charts?
After two or three plays, convinced that "P Control" and "Endorphinmachine" slam harder than any hip hop I've heard in years, I shrugged and recalled that, after all, I already knew he was the most gifted recording artist of the era. But this album documents more than professional genius rampant--all of them do that. This album is a renewal. It's as sex-obsessed as ever, only with more juice--"Shhh" and "319" especially pack the kind of porno jolt sexy music rarely gets near and hard music never does. And you'd best believe "Shhh" and 319" are hard--not for years has the auteur (as opposed to some hired gat) sounded so black, and not for years has the guitarist sounded so rock. As for the ballads, they suffer only by their failure to dominate. One of them has already stormed the radio--and another, good for him, takes too many risks to follow. A
>>130161938>Meschuggah
Grandma Rosie keeping the spirit of jazz alive.
Unmitigated consumer fraud--a mess of instrumentals, covers, and remixes designed to exploit its well-publicized tour, genderfuck cover art, titillating titles, and parental warning label. The lyrics to "S****y Chicken Gang Bang" are nonexistent, those to "Everlasting C***sucker" incomprehensible. Only "F*** Frankie," a spoken-word number in which a female feigning sexual ecstasy reveals that it isn't "Fool Frankie" or "Fire Frankie" or "Fast Frankie" or for that matter "Fist Frankie," delivers what it promises. It's easily the best thing on the record. D+
I guess this is the last Simpsons season and they're ending it next year, right?
Despite their disavowals of "progress," this proceeds as you'd figure--toward lyricism rather than commerciality or some such chimera. It's seldom hard or fast or chaotic, and if it was their sacred mission to humanize guitar noise, they've betrayed it like the reprobates they no doubt are. But if their vocation is beguiling song-music that doesn't sound like anything else or create its own rut, this reinforces one's gut feeling that they can do it forever. They can't, of course--nobody can. But the illusion of eternity has been music's sacred mission for a good long time. A
A country gal from Canada in the great white-bread tradition of Anne Murray, only how times have changed. Murray's voice is forthrightly wholesome where Twain's is mildly lubricious. She'd never wear bikini-cut jeans--or a cowboy hat, makeup, a lake up to her clavicle, and your imagination. And of course, she hasn't devoted her career to convincing men that women with character aren't a threat. For all this, Murray became a lesbian hero. Shania will have none of that. C
I CREEP AROUND BECAUSE I NEED ATTENTIONDON'T MESS AROUND WITH MY AFFECTIONSO I CREEP, YEAHJUST KEEP IT DOWN ON THE LOW
>>130160216she had nice boobs
>>130162663could have gotten her snaggle teeth worked on though. it's not like she was exactly poor after "Foolish Games."
"He's grown up a little," an intelligent young member of his target audience was gratified to report, and that's a reasonable explanation for his surprise abandonment of bump-and-mack banality. But as a sage old outsider, I wonder whether he hasn't also sold out a little--and whether pop music and the world aren't better off for his market-driven pursuit of the love-man demographic. Luther's ladies buy as many tapes and CDs as B-girls do, and in real stores, too. So as said B-girls evolve into jobholding consumers who won't get played, a fella with his eye on the main chance learns to improve the quality of his dubious promises: "Trade in my life for you," that's strong, and no harm in a little "goin' down on you by the fireplace." Add a dollop of Dre, a cup of Isleys, and more church than he sees the inside of in a year, and you have the smartest and sexiest new jack swing since Teddy Riley fell off the edge of the biz. A-
AND I'M HERE TO REMIND YOUOF THE MESS YOU LEFT WHEN YOU WENT AWAY
>>130162710As I said, this album was not only one of the worst of the decade but it inspired far more horrible cancer down the road.
>>130160174>laika, moonshake, long fin killieit's mind boggling how underrated these groups still are
>>130162746the 90s had a lot of abuse porn albums. idk i guess everyone's collective bottled up childhood trauma all blew up at once.
>>130162746even my sister found JLP comical and she said it's what fat chicks listen to to comfort themselves after their boyfriend dumps them for being fat.
>>130159037the one album where they almost sounded like adults instead of party funk slop/post-adolescent angst
Heavens to Betsy's warbly wailer Corin Tucker joins Excuse 17's solemn screamer Carrie Brownstein for ten songs in twenty-two minutes, and voice-on-voice and guitar-on-guitar they figure out love by learning to hate. Three different lyrics reject the penis soi-même with a fervor that could pass for disgust, and while their same-sex one-on-ones aren't exactly odes to joy, they convey a depth of feeling that could pass for passion. In these times of principled irony and shallowness for its own sake, that's enough to make them heroines and outsiders simultaneously. A-
Her supposed comeback in fact a breakthrough, she never approached gold back in the day, and hence was never big enough for a live album until now. This is lucky timing, because Grammy-era bland-out rarely dulls her concerts, where her roots-respectin' rockers come out raunchy, her tender ballads casually intimate. So even if you love Nick of Time, this two-CD mix of old songs and new illustrates why Raitt became an icon while Ronstadt turned into a gargoyle. She creates a world in which Bruce Hornsby and Bryan Adams project as much soul as Ruth Brown and Charles Brown. She's so free of ironic impurities she sings "Burning Down the House" as if it means one thing. And her parting words aren't "Take care of yourselves"--they're "Take care of each other." A-
>>130160446>Little Billy's not my lover
>solves Britpop
>>130161325based, Homogenic mogs
>>130161886Nobody ever said Gwen was much of a singer.
Record company drops TAD just before their new album comes out.
With nothing to prove except that they can do it forever without going gold, they do it again. Recalling their roots, they stretch the title cut past its songful limits and build the finale into a 20-minute improvisation not altogether unreminiscent of the Grateful Dead. But at the same time they stick to the theoretically radio-ready songwriting that is now an aesthetic commitment, even trying their hand at a folk tune and a Shangri-Las tribute. As it happens, the latter owes the Fleetwoods. But needless to say, both ultimately sound like Sonic Youth, an institution whose guitars are often emulated and never replicated. As does everything else on a record that will startle no one and sound fresh in 2002. A-
Admired by Britcrits, who can't tell whether they're "pop" or "rock," and their record company, which pushed (and shoved) this follow-up until it went gold Stateside, they try to prove "Creep" wasn't a one-shot by pretending that it wasn't a joke. Not that there's anything deeply phony about Thom Yorke's angst--it's just a social given, a mindset that comes as naturally to a '90s guy as the skilled guitar noises that frame it. Thus the words achieve precisely the same pitch of aesthetic necessity as the music, which is none at all. C
holy fuck born slippy played in my club last night, coooorrr blimey
