I don’t give the slightest shit if they sold one album, or kazillions. Plus your OP breathed nary a word about that, so it’s too late anyway to rage and cavil.
Fields of the Nephilim’s Elizium gets my vote for most unclassifiable album of the decade, at least, if not the best. If anyone knows about them at all, they will probably go, “Oh, those cowboy goth desperado guys wearing all of that flour dust on stage!” and instantly dismiss them as a gimmick (a la say Insane Cowboy Posse). Right as grunge was primed to take off, they come out with this utterly stunning magnum opus. Only to have it roundly ignored, leading shortly (in part) to the breakup of the band.
The thing is, it gets tagged with the “goth” label, but unlike most goth bands most certainly does NOT indulge in the doom and gloom slit-your-wrists posturings typical of the genre here (tho to be sure it is deeply drenched in atmospherics). I find it to be the most uplifting and transcendent album I have ever heard (the singer basically spends 50 nonstop minutes celebrating his uncanny connection with this female spirit), which for me and my musical predilections is saying something. The musicianship is top-notch too.
Can we do this experiment? This is my idea of what happened in the 90s in rough sketch and not definitive. Does the OP recognize any of these?
Liz Phair – Exile…
GBV – Bee Thousand, Alien Lanes
Magnetic Fields – you name it
Elliiot Smith – XO
Freedy Johnston – This Perfect World (Produced by Butch Vig); and Never Home
American Music Club – Mercury
Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians – Respect
Ween - Chocolate and Cheese
Pavement – Crooked Rain
Uncle Tupelo – Anodyne
Wilco – being There
Whiskeytown – Faithless Street
Yo La Tengo – Fakebook
I like the beatles, to characterize myself simply, and these are the records in the trad of the strongest original melodies and expression, that I could hear, to touch me, in that whole decade. I took a look at the top 200 for the 90s and it just seemed grim to me. Very uninspiring, to me anyway.
I wonder what hard rock fans are looking for when they pass up records that are not in the genre. What is the barrier?
What are your 90s consisting of if they don’t have these?
green day’s dookie
bad religion’s stranger than fiction
no doubt tragic kingdom
and elvis costellos mighty like a rose was more depressing than anything the grungers ever wrote
Agree - Lennon, Davies and Zappa, with occasional guitar by Townshend.
One thing about Pollard is that you have to get past the fact that he’s simultaneously spewing out gems and clinkers now. He’s not polishing anything, so you’ll get some crap, but that lack of filter or reflection also produces amazing songs.
I vote for this as “Playlist Most Likely to Occupy All My Time This Weekend.” But I think I would have to add Loveless and Doolittle* just for some balance.
*I am aware that Doolittle came out in 1989, but I didn’t really hear it until 1990, to the point that I cannot separate my memories of that year from those songs.
While I get the impression that I would like Liz Phair if I knew her personally, I do not understand her semi-legendary status, because the woman cannot sing. I’ve also heard that she’s terrible onstage.
My favorite 1990s album, off the top of my head, is one that chances are nobody else here has ever heard of. It’s “Fun?” by the British power-pop band The Candy Skins. Great album from start to finish.
Exile in Guyville and 69 Love Songs are among my favorite albums of the 90s. But I don’t really think of them as “rock” albums. I would vote My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless, but I suspect that’s not mainstream enough for the OP. My favorite mainstream rock album is probably Siamese Dream by the Smashing Pumpkins. I don’t know about “best,” but favorite is the best I can answer.
ETA: Actually, for best of reasonably mainstream acts, I’d be pretty happy with going with OK Computer.
Meh. My favourite albums of the 90s don’t appear on that list at all. RKL’s “Reactivate” is too obscure, I get it. But no PJ Harvey’s “To Bring You My Love”? Or Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds “Let Love In”? No Cave at all? No Future Sound of London? The Orb?
I’m going to cheat for my quintessential album of the 90s.
I pick “The Real Thing” by Faith No More, although it was released in 1989. It didn’t really pick up steam until MTV started showing “Epic” and “Falling to Pieces” in heavy rotation.
Stylistically, it was all over the place. Combined elements of rock, funk, pop, rap, swing, and other genres of music into a fusion that no one had ever heard before. And the songs on that album still kick ass today.
It kinda burst down a lot of walls, and showed people that music doesn’t have to be pigeonholed into a specific genre. The closest thing to that around that time (in my memory) was Aerosmith/Run DMC, or Anthrax and the other “speed metal/thrash metal” bands, but even they didn’t combine musical elements from more than a couple of styles.
I first thought of Blood Sugar Sex Magik as well. Also *OK Computer *(Radiohead), ***Mellow Gold ***(Beck – not really “rock,” but still), Re (Café Tacuba – diverse styles, but plenty of rock), and Hoist (Phish). R.E.M. had some good, influential, mostly-rock albums (e.g., Automatic for the People), but none were free of dud tracks.
I just looked at that Rolling Stone list, and it reminded me how huge ***Jagged Little Pill ***(Alanis Morisette) was. Definitely worthy of mention in this thread.
