Saturnalia by The Wedding Present
Listening to The Wedding Present makes me happy and listening to this album makes me happy. Allmusic states that they're on their return with this one and their best albums are indeed behind them but this is still a very fine one with both the distinct fast guitar playing and some slower songs of which Montreal is the highlight. It goes to 32nd rank on my 1996 top chart. And I can't repeat enough what a good and underrated band this is.
Hell yeah! Love these guys. Not a bad album in their entire discog.
Saturnalia by The Wedding Present
Listening to The Wedding Present makes me happy and listening to this album makes me happy. Allmusic states that they're on their return with this one and their best albums are indeed behind them but this is still a very fine one with both the distinct fast guitar playing and some slower songs of which Montreal is the highlight. It goes to 32nd rank on my 1996 top chart. And I can't repeat enough what a good and underrated band this is.
Hell yeah! Love these guys. Not a bad album in their entire discog.
Going into what to me is the worst decade in rock music which is exemplified by the first year of the decade but nevertheless with some shiny gems and these are my two choices for 2000:
An album I own:
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The Sophtware Slump by Grandaddy
And what a gem this is. My score for this album is dragged down by some minor songs like the Knievel interlude but generally the dreaminess of this album which tries to mimic some romantic futuristic landscape is breathtaking with highlights like The Crystal Lake and Miner At The Dial-A-View. This album rises from the 17th to the second spot on my 2000 year chart.
An album on my wishlist:
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Sunset Studies by Augie March
This is a pleasant surprise from a band I had never heard of. The middle section is a complete failure but the first 4 and last 6 songs are absolutely great sounding like no other band sounding at the same time dreamy and very potent. They deserve the 22nd rank of the year.
Ancient Melodies Of The Future by Built To Spill
One of those bands with a very unique guitar sound I very much like. I can understand that people are a bit negatively biased by the sound of the voice of Doug Martsch but I like it. This not their best but certainly a very good album with Alarmed as the highlight. After listening back to it, it rises from the 10th to the 5th rank of the year.
An album on my wishlist:
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The Tyranny Of Distance by Ted Leo and the Pharmacists
Again something completely unknown for me and at first view not really thing with fairly conventional rock but I somehow discovered some good elements in a lot of the tracks. It will never be a favorite of mine but still deserves the 30th rank in my year chart.
Sea Change by Beck
He should have named this album Mellow Gold: this album is also about love lost and in general it's a good one. The slower and self-indulgent songs like Round The Bend are maybe the least good and it's in fact the more upbeat songs that save the album and the one that really saves it is the magnificent Lost Cause (upbeat?). It moves up from the 39th to a still modest 23th rank on my year chart.
An album on my wishlist:
Have You Fed The Fish? by Badly Drawn Boy
Badly Drawn Boy has released some fine albums but this one isn't one of them. What a drag: I already know there were a lot of nights the night Sinatra, Jeff Buckley, Kurt Cobain and John Lennon died (You Were Right), and that is the best song of the album.
Only in hindsight I realize how similar these two albums are. They are both very good 2003 come-back albums (the first after their grunge period, the second after their punk period), they're both self-titled and they're both significantly harder-edged albums than those in their heydays.
And maybe even more important, they're both albums that don't have one weak song but also no absolutely great song. This doesn't mean that these albums are average, no they're both very good and it's very difficult to make a choice between the two but maybe the Buzzcocks album win with a nose length also because I didn't hear it before, so 9th of the year and The Throwing Muses 10th.
America's Sweetheart by Courtney Love
I can't believe the bad review by Allmusic. To me this album is as good as the Hole albums and these were already very good. There is a honesty and rawness in her albums o you can't say it's stolen (something which is stated a lot). This is immediately clear in the best track Sunset Strip which is just a rollercoaster of raw feelings. And there's of course also Mono. If somebody's reading this I'm very interested to hear what you think of it? On my chart this album is rising from the 13th to the 6th rank.
an album on my wishlist:
Rendezvous by Luna (US)
First I only knew Pup Tent and then I got to know other of their albums and liked them all and still have to discover some and I still like them all. They have their own style of Americana and stick to it but also this album sounds very good to my ears. The highlight is Malibu Love Nest but every other track is about as good. This album enters my 2004 chart at the 17th rank.
The Deep End by Madrugada
Apart from A-ha and some black metal bands (hihi) there are two Norwegian bands I really like (no hihi), Motorpsycho, which could be catalogued as prog but that wouldn't give them enough credit, and Madrugada which could be catalogued in the emo genre but this wouldn't give them enough credit. This is one of their best albums and what I like about it is the diversity of the songwriting and the emotional depth of the songs especially on Elektro Vakuum. They seemed to be a very good live band so I really would like to go and see them when they play in the neighborhood because they seem to have reconvened after their last tour in 2008. The Deep End is a really good album and it rises from the 26th to the 23rd rank on my 2005 year chart.
An album on my wishlist:
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A Beach Full Of Shells by Al Stewart
I skipped the 2000 album Down In The Cellar (about wine) because it didn't get too many good reviews and I don't want to overfeed you and myself with this guy but his last two albums are supposed to be fairly good again so I start with this A Beach Full Of Shells. And I had to wait until the end of the album before I finally decided to include this album in my top chart of the year (nr 54). Most songs are ok and he still has that beautiful voice, guitar play and a nose for good lyrics but it's only Gina On The Kings Road and Beacon Street near the end which stand out.
First Impressions Of Earth by The Strokes
Is This It is a masterpiece of the naughts and while their two next albums miss the immediacy of that first one, they are still very good and so is this third album. The songs and the singing are still as raw as ever and the album rises from the 22nd to the 17th rank. After this album it went downhill very fast for The Strokes.
An album on my wishlist:
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Avatar by Comets On Fire
I first wanted to listen to the first album of Howlin Rain from whom I very much loved their 2019 album The Alligator Bride; until I discovered that that other band of Ethan Miller, Comets On Fire, also released a very good album that year. And what a good jazzy, bluesy, heavy guitar jam album this is. The songs are long and are just drenched in history of the late sixties and the seventies. A good start to also find out more about their earlier albums which are supposed to be even more chaotic than this one. This album immediately enters my year chart at rank 6.
Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace by Foo Fighters
All their albums might be the same but here they try to discover their quieter side although the highlights are again the rockers like The Pretender and Long Road To Ruin. Sometimes those quieter numbers are not really fitting like Ballad Of The Beaconsfield Miners but in other cases they're as good as the rockers (Home). Being a fan of the Foo Fighters, I underrated this album a bit and it rises from the 24th to the 6th rank.
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