Essential Studio Albums

[Jorge]

93 is also the year of Mazzy Star's So Tonight That I Might See. Since you liked their previous entry so much you should definitely cover it, it's kind of a seminal album

[liebzz]

Pulp - Separations

This seems like a pretty big departure from the previous albums that at this point feel like a long time ago. The second half of this album in particular, focused on a more electronic house music vibe, seem almost out of left field. I enjoyed this album well enough, but would likely visit their earlier material before going back to this. The title track is probably the one I remember enjoying the most.

The Essential Track: Separations

Up Next: Spiritualized - Lazer Guided Melodies

[liebzz]

93 is also the year of Mazzy Star's So Tonight That I Might See. Since you liked their previous entry so much you should definitely cover it, it's kind of a seminal album

Ah yes, will add!

[liebzz]

Spiritualized - Lazer Guided Melodies

This is one of those albums that realize the payoff from listening to a fair amount of kraut rock and ambient music in this thread. This album really is more dream pop, but builds layer upon layer in those sounds to create atmosphere and texture and all the things that are the upsides of those sounds. It makes for a gorgeous album here, and sits on top of my list for either of those genres. Where I really connected was on I Want You, Run, and Angel Sigh. Great stuff.

The Essential Track: Run

Up Next: Stereolab - Peng!

[liebzz]

Stereolab - Peng!

Stereolab seem to alternate here between a poppier hard rock and krautrock from song to song. One moment you are tapping your foot and the next scratching your head, but this seems like deliberately the idea. I ended up enjoying that quality to this, a demonstration of range and charm. I lean towards the poppier tracks, but that should surprise no one. Orgiastic, Peng 33, Perversion, The Seeming and the Meaning, Stomach Worm and Surrealchemist were my favorites here, but that’s not to put down the other more experimental tracks that were also solid. This one grew as the album progressed.

The Essential Track: Perversion

Up Next: Stereolab - Switched On

[liebzz]

Stereolab - Switched On

This is apparently a compilation of early works of this band, and I actually enjoyed this even more than Peng! This is a bit more focused on their rock sound, with bits of experiments all over. For me, probably the most spaced out track, Contact, with its never ending looping guitar lines, is the winner, but Super-Electric, Doubt, Au Grand Jour, and Brittle were all fantastic.

The Essential Track: Contact

Up Next: The Vaselines - Enter the Vaselines

[liebzz]

The Vaselines - Enter the Vaselines

Another compilation, this one a collection of all the works of the Vaselines after Kurt Cobain brought attention to this band with the Nirvana covers - including Son of a Gun, Molly’s Lips, and Jesus Wants Me For a Sunbeam. The Vaselines’ originals are all fantastic, as is You Think You’re a Man, Bitch, No Hope, Oliver Twisted, and Let’s Get Ugly. Mostly an odd punk rock outfit that wouldn’t have hit any radars other than the aforementioned fandom, the compilation is really good, so glad Cobain made the effort to bring attention.

The Essential Track: Jesus Wants Me For a Sunbeam

Up Next: The Cure - Wish

[Birds in Hell]

Pulp - Separations

This seems like a pretty big departure from the previous albums that at this point feel like a long time ago. The second half of this album in particular, focused on a more electronic house music vibe, seem almost out of left field. I enjoyed this album well enough, but would likely visit their earlier material before going back to this. The title track is probably the one I remember enjoying the most.

The Essential Track: Separations

Up Next: Spiritualized - Lazer Guided Melodies

This is a pretty weird record in their discography, particularly as it was recorded in 1989 but held back being released by their record company until three years later, by which time the band had signed a deal with a new label and were preparing to release new material.

[Birds in Hell]

1993:

Seefeel - Quique
Blur - Modern Life Is Rubbish
PJ Harvey - Rid of Me
Frank Black - Frank Black
Stereolab - Transient Random-Noise Bursts with Announcements
Melvins - Houdini
Posies - Frosting on the Beater
Polvo - Today's Active Lifestyles
Slowdive - Souvlaki
Tool - Undertow
Björk - Debut
Unwound - Fake Train
Swirlies - Blonder Tongue Audio Baton
Earth - Earth 2: Special Low Frequency Version
You Am I - Sound As Ever
Urge Overkill - Saturation
Teenage Fanclub - Thirteen

[Birds in Hell]

One final (?) suggestion for 1992, can't believe I forgot til now:

Tom Verlaine - Warm and Cool

[Birds in Hell]

Earth - Earth 2: Special Low Frequency Version

liebzz, I'm sorry in advance, you're going to hate this one.

Even I find it a bit of a chore, but it's such a wildly influential record.

I also really want to be able to join the dots to their later work, which is very different.

[liebzz]

Earth - Earth 2: Special Low Frequency Version

liebzz, I'm sorry in advance, you're going to hate this one.

Even I find it a bit of a chore, but it's such a wildly influential record.

I also really want to be able to join the dots to their later work, which is very different.

I just did that with the Spiritualized album and felt like it was a big payoff re: ambient and krautrock, so I welcome the challenge.

[liebzz]

There’s also some in there, like Bjork, I meant to put in and forgot too!

[tragabigzanda]

1993:

Tears For Fears - Elemental

The first album after the departure of Curt Smith, and sonically sort of a weird mix of Peter Gabriel’s So/Us era, and NIN’s Broken/The Downward Spiral.

[liebzz]

The Cure - Wish

For a band I most closely associate with the 80s, they sure nailed a huge pop song here in ‘92 with Friday I’m in Love. Maybe that got the most attention, but this album feels like the most guitar driven in terms of accenting those Cure rhythms than pops into my recent memory, and it makes for one fantastic album. Open, From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea, and Wendy Time are great highlights of this, though top billing for me went to Cut, whose second half is just amazing. There’s a certain turning of the page back to normal almost in the transition from Friday I’m in Love into Trust, from that hook to the more classic Cure sound complete with long intro. The range and the brightness of this album is a feature more than anything though, and I think pretty essential to this band’s catalogue.

The Essential Track: Cut

Up Next: The Frames - Another Love Song

[Birds in Hell]

More from '93:

Pavement - Slanted and Enchanted
Radiohead - Pablo Honey
Suede - Suede

[liebzz]

The Frames - Another Love Song

After seeing Glen Hansard in his other iterations, you sort of get a sense of his aural aesthetic - and this album immediately breaks those expectations with a largely harder rock focused sound. But for a few songs in the second half of this, it’s all driving rock music, from the opening The Dancer, You Were Wrong, and Right Road (Wrong Road), to the impressive Masquerade and Pictures of Love. This a pure distillation of being wrong about trying to type-cast Hansard as a folkier musician, proving his reach really runs the gamut. He really is such an impressive artist.

The Essential Track: Masquerade

Up Next: Uncle Tupelo - March 16-20, 1992

[liebzz]

Uncle Tupelo - March 16-20, 1992

For their third album, recorded in the dates notes in the album title, Uncle Tupelo stripped down and pushed a little more twang into this one. There are a few really enjoyable tracks here - Grindstone, Warfare, and the instrumental Sandusky come immediately to mind. Mostly, this album likely suffers from being not as good as the first two, both awesome albums, and this one consistently good but not quite hitting the highs of the other two.

The Essential Track: Grindstone

Up Next: R.E.M. - Automatic For the People

[liebzz]

R.E.M. - Automatic For the People

It’s really amazing how quickly this followed Out of Time, yet this latter one is truly one of the gems of their catalogue. You have the megahits (Everybody Hurts, Man on the Moon), and yet even the non-hits feel like essential moments in their catalogue (Drive, Nightswimming, Try Not to Breathe, The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite), and yet I still find moments here on this listen that jump in ways they haven’t before, like Ignoreland and Sweetness Follows. It’s really an album I can never get enough of, with very few wasted moments coming so quickly after an album that had a few. I can put this up there with all of R.E.M.’s best, even if I have a few I prefer over this one.

The Essential Track: Drive

Up Next: Leonard Cohen - The Future

[liebzz]

Leonard Cohen - The Future

This album was unmistakably Leonard Cohen, with a nice musical backdrop to his dark sense of poetic commentary. This was hard to take in chunks while in the car over the weekend, but that backdrop indeed kept things pleasant enough. It’s where he’s going with his thoughts that is the important part it seems. What stuck for me was Waiting for the Miracle, Be For Real, Closing Time, Democracy, and Light As the Breeze - all a bit different in delivery but all feeling like they were exposing something ugly in its beauty.

The Essential Track: Closing Time

Up Next: Marshall Tucker Band - Still Smokin’