Best of Grunge Tournament: 1991-1996- Hail Hail wins

[EJ]

Anders - I meant musically Tiny Music is where they mostly (and, finally) shed themselves of the "grunge wannabe/inauthentic" stigma they carried during that era. It was their No Code.

[stip]

thats why no code, tiny music, and to a lesser extent dotu should not have been here!

[EJ]

thats why no code, tiny music, and to a lesser extent dotu should not have been here!

And any album after 1993.

[stip]

Mellon Collie and tripod are total grunge

[Anders]

Anders - I meant musically Tiny Music is where they mostly (and, finally) shed themselves of the "grunge wannabe/inauthentic" stigma they carried during that era. It was their No Code.

Yes, I can see that. Where Core sounded influenced by Pearl Jam and AiC, Purple was pure STP. But Tiny Music, while not better, went even further into STP's own sound.

[Norah]

This thing really shows how STP just aren't in the same league as these other bands for me.

To my mind, they're better than AIC and more consistent than SP.

Yeah, I've got them above Soundgarden, too.

This is appalling.

It's absurd.

[Anders]

thats why no code, tiny music, and to a lesser extent dotu should not have been here!

I've argued for 1996 before, and I'll do it again. All those albums belong to that period, even if No Code and Tiny Music both took the bands a step away from their original sound. However, Tripod, Mellon Collie and Dotu all sound like standard next album evolution, so don't see the distinction for Dotu there. 96 even saw the last major release from Nirvana, and their last 90s release. None of the six bands really did anything major in 97, and then most moved on or had quit. 96 really was the perfect year to end this.

[chewm]

I always regarded STP as the first grunge rip off band. I guess I never really gave them a shot because of that perception.

Are they actually good?

I did the same but this tournament made me realize that they were pretty great past the first album.

[epilogue]

STP have five front to back great albums. They are absolutely not a "grunge ripoff band" and they absolutely deserve your time and attention.

[PHATJ]

STP have five front to back great albums. They are absolutely not a "grunge ripoff band" and they absolutely deserve your time and attention.

Fuck yes, durds.

[PHATJ]

Pearl Jam
STP
SP/Soundgarden
Nirvana
AIC

[PHATJ]

STP was a GREAT band. GREAT.

[epilogue]

STP have five front to back great albums. They are absolutely not a "grunge ripoff band" and they absolutely deserve your time and attention.

Fuck yes, durds.

[koopee27]

Pearl Jam
AIC
STP
Nirvana
Soundgarden
.
.
.
SP








kp

[PHATJ]

STP have five front to back great albums. They are absolutely not a "grunge ripoff band" and they absolutely deserve your time and attention.

Fuck yes, durds.

[BurtReynolds]

I can definitely see how someone could hear Interstate Love Song and think Grunge Lite, but it's a good song anyway.

[PHATJ]

Interstate Love Song is a wonderfully marvelous pop rock song. It's pretty much perfect.

[stip]

a lot of great songs this round

[Kevin Davis]

This thing really shows how STP just aren't in the same league as these other bands for me.

yup

I've only been watching from afar but I've had this same feeling about Alice in Chains. As I see these matches come up I'm struck by how even the AIC songs I've always considered their greatest struggle to hold ther own against much lower-tier material by these other bands. I think time may have broken down some of the aesthetic distance between AIC and a lot of their less gifted inheritors in my mind -- while the other five bands have weathered the test of time such that each of their more singular qualities seem to rise to the surface while their more generic "alt-rock" elements just kind of linger as inevitable timestamps (no different than the Beatles, the Who, Zeppelin, Springsteen, etc.), AIC feels evermore like squarely a '90's band, and when I engage with their music (which is far rarer than it is with any of the others), I feel like I just don't hear in it now what I heard in it then.

I can never help but feel like people who listen to STP and conclude that they're "grunge lite" simply aren't listening. As someone whose tastes steer more centrally towards eclectic pop, jazz, etc, with more formal compositional qualities, STP were operating at a level of musical sophistication -- at least such that it refers to employing richer musical ideas to arrive at finished products that are no less empirically satisfying for their complexity -- that utterly trounces the other bands on this list.

Soundgarden are a weird one for me in that they're the only band on this list where I put off discovering a good portion of their catalog until semi-recently (I didn't really dig into anything pre-"Badmotorfinger" until after the reunion), so a lot of their music is fresher in my mind and present sans the nostalgia that accompanies the rest of this stuff. I love their music but I don't process it the same way as these other bands -- their stock trade is compositions more than "songs" in a lot of regards, meaning that the bare essences of their words-and-music are a lot less gripping absent the complex building blocks and structural framework of their arrangements, and the raw physicality of Cornell's performances. I don't mean to suggest that stuff's not all of a piece, just that the more engaging components of their music don't always register with me on sight of a song title. I'd probably be voting against a lot of their songs if gut reaction was the driving motivator.

This era of Smashing Pumpkins has aged extremely well for me -- I can listen to pretty much anything from the 1991-1996 period and just get absolutely swallowed up by the sound of it, even when the songwriting isn't anything special. Of all of these bands, they were the most creatively restless by some distance, and I love how that reflects in their body of work -- every marginal evolution is mapped out in real time, presumably owing to the fact that Corgan was such an egocentrist that the only one he trusted enough to bounce his ideas off of was a recording that he could play back to himself.

Nirvana's small but perfect body of work remains one of the most satisfying collections of music I own. Every year it sounds deeper, richer, smarter, funnier, louder, catchier, and more visionary. Truly life-defining music for me.

And Pearl Jam are Pearl Jam. They can seem like dancing bears at times, but I haven't written 10,000,000 words on a message board for any of these other bands.

1. Pearl Jam
2. Nirvana
3. STP (tie)
3. Smashing Pumpkins (tie)
5. Soundgarden
6. AIC

[Anders]

This thing really shows how STP just aren't in the same league as these other bands for me.

yup

I've only been watching from afar but I've had this same feeling about Alice in Chains. As I see these matches come up I'm struck by how even the AIC songs I've always considered their greatest struggle to hold ther own against much lower-tier material by these other bands. I think time may have broken down some of the aesthetic distance between AIC and a lot of their less gifted inheritors in my mind -- while the other five bands have weathered the test of time such that each of their more singular qualities seem to rise to the surface while their more generic "alt-rock" elements just kind of linger as inevitable timestamps (no different than the Beatles, the Who, Zeppelin, Springsteen, etc.), AIC feels evermore like squarely a '90's band, and when I engage with their music (which is far rarer than it is with any of the others), I feel like I just don't hear in it now what I heard in it then.

I can never help but feel like people who listen to STP and conclude that they're "grunge lite" simply aren't listening. As someone whose tastes steer more centrally towards eclectic pop, jazz, etc, with more formal compositional qualities, STP were operating at a level of musical sophistication -- at least such that it refers to employing richer musical ideas to arrive at finished products that are no less empirically satisfying for their complexity -- that utterly trounces the other bands on this list.

Soundgarden are a weird one for me in that they're the only band on this list where I put off discovering a good portion of their catalog until semi-recently (I didn't really dig into anything pre-"Badmotorfinger" until after the reunion), so a lot of their music is fresher in my mind and present sans the nostalgia that accompanies the rest of this stuff. I love their music but I don't process it the same way as these other bands -- their stock trade is compositions more than "songs" in a lot of regards, meaning that the bare essences of their words-and-music are a lot less gripping absent the complex building blocks and structural framework of their arrangements. I don't mean to suggest that stuff's not all of a piece, just that the more engaging components of their music don't always register with me on sight of a song title. I'd probably be voting against a lot of their songs if gut reaction was the driving motivator.

This era of Smashing Pumpkins has aged extremely well for me -- I can listen to pretty much anything from the 1991-1996 period and just get absolutely swallowed up by the sound of it, even when the songwriting isn't anything special. Of all of these bands, they were the most creatively restless by some distance, and I love how that reflects in their body of work -- every marginal evolution is mapped out in real time, presumably owing to the fact that Corgan was such an egocentrist that the only one he trusted enough to bounce his ideas off of was a recording that he could play back to himself.

Nirvana's small but perfect body of work remains one of the most satisfying collections of music I own. Every year it sounds deeper, richer, smarter, funnier, louder, catchier, and more visionary. Truly life-defining music for me.

And Pearl Jam are Pearl Jam. They can seem like dancing bears at times, but I haven't written 10,000,000 words on a message board for any of these other bands.

1. Pearl Jam
2. Nirvana
3. STP (tie)
3. Smashing Pumpkins (tie)
5. Soundgarden
6. AIC

You always write such great posts, that I want to read them twice. Still don't really agree with your opinion here about AiC, and the ranking of Soundgarden. Have you listened a lot to Jar Of Flies?