Listed below are the best albums of the 1990s as calculated from their overall rankings in over 58,000 greatest album charts. (Chart last updated: 5 hours ago).
"'91:6 The Marionettes aka Speedballing Down The Interstate I’m just telling you what I remember. It’s not much. Mostly a blur. A memory of a memory. Faded and bleached. By the years. By the drugs too, I guess. But mostly by the years. It was 1991. I was young. Headed off to Manhattan to conquer t...""'91:6 The Marionettes
aka Speedballing Down The Interstate
I’m just telling you what I remember. It’s not much. Mostly a blur. A memory of a memory. Faded and bleached. By the years. By the drugs too, I guess. But mostly by the years.
It was 1991. I was young. Headed off to Manhattan to conquer the world. I was already a music junkie by them. Hell. I had been for years. I headed to CBGBs as I did pretty much every night. Picked up a 40 oz of Olde English (my favorite back then) at one of those no-named Asian convenience stores that dotted the Lower East Side of Manhattan. I’m sure they’re probably all gone now. You’d always pop in there before going out to pick up a forty. They’d put it a paper bag for you so you could drink while taking the subway or even just walking the streets. Great way to get a buzz for like two dollars in one of the most expensive cities in the world.
Anyways, this particular night stood out…
Remember moshing? Well I was a professional. I could just give my body over to the pit. That was the secret. Become this rag doll. It’s not like I was afraid to push back or anything. I was pretty built back then. But that wasn’t the point. The point was to relax and just let go. Become this happy bouncing electron careening about. Driven by forces outside of you and in you. That’s where the high came from. You see people forget. Moshing brought you closer to the music. It was the ultimate surrender. The music would come off the stage and just take over you. And the crowd. The best thing was just to let go. And smile.
And Swervedriver concocted some of the best music I’ve ever moshed to. The guitars would seemingly ping-pong back & forth and ricochet every which way. Pushing the crowd this way and that. Adam Franklin and Jimmy Hartridge, the guitarists, were like the greatest marionettes ever.
As I said, the memory’s mostly gone. But, what was clear was that Swervedriver ROCKED that night. But, let’s be fair. Almost all the shoegaze bands back then rocked pretty hard. Ride. Lush. MBV. They all kicked serious ass in concert. (Well except for Slowdive. They decidedly did NOT rock. But, they were great in their own way) No. What made Swervedriver different, what made them stand out, was their ginormous debt to the American indie scene. They were easily the most American of all they peers. Sure. My Bloody Valentine’s Isn’t Anyting may have been the most important album in their record collection. But sitting right next to it - in plain sight - was Dinosaur Jr.’s Your Living All Over Me.
Ok. Here it goes. Laugh if you must. But due to Adam Franklin’s laid back vocals and dreads, I always thought of Swervedriver as “that shoegaze band fronted by that reggae dude”. He was like some kind of California surf rat. It always sounds like he had just took a long drag on some spliff. Eternally stoned. And THAT was their secret ingredient. Swervedriver were like the ultimate speedball. Heroin + cocaine. Franklin’s lysergic vocals buried underneath all those swirling, driving guitars. It was like every single receptor of my cortex was being fed with something. Gaba. Beta. Alpha. Lol. Clearly it was like the best Greek party ever going on in my brain. Every single receptor being landed on & triggered at once resulting in the quintessential high.
To be honest, I loved this album so much, I had the hardest time getting into Mescal Head when it came out. It just seemed like Raise Lite. I still prefer Raise today.
From what I remember.
Grade: A+. Essential. LittleM nailed it. It’s the perfect mix of shoe gaze and grunge. I never thought of it that way. To me it was just shoegaze. Shoegaze fronted by that reggae dude. lol. It’s only now in retrospect that I realize how much of the American Underground those cats were taking in. And sure. My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless is the best shoe gaze album of 1991. I’ll give you that. But this is number two.
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"Billy Joel's last pop/rock album, and after the dip in quality of his last two records, Joel ends his songwriting career with his best album for well over a decade. River of dreams, has a harder rock edge than all of Joel's albums since his new wave contribution, glass houses. No man's land, kick...""Billy Joel's last pop/rock album, and after the dip in quality of his last two records, Joel ends his songwriting career with his best album for well over a decade. River of dreams, has a harder rock edge than all of Joel's albums since his new wave contribution, glass houses. No man's land, kicks off the album in fine style. As most tracks here, Joel's piano is certainly not the main instrumentation here, the only exception is the beautiful, lullabye (goodnight my angel). There's no weak tracks here, from the excellent, great wall of China, the brilliant, all about soul, and off course, the wonderful title track. The album ends well too with the millennium anthem, two thousand years, and his final goodbye to songwriting, famous last words. It's a perfect record to end on. Very good. "[+]Reply
"Some years ago I probably would have had Hips and Makers in my overall top ten for the nineties, as I found former Throwing Muses frontwoman Kristin Hersh's voice to be stirring and spellbinding. I still do, but this album has lost a bit of its luster over the years, as it feels to me like an alb...""Some years ago I probably would have had Hips and Makers in my overall top ten for the nineties, as I found former Throwing Muses frontwoman Kristin Hersh's voice to be stirring and spellbinding. I still do, but this album has lost a bit of its luster over the years, as it feels to me like an album of its time--a celebration of a kind of nineties femininity that no longer fully resonates--rather than a timeless masterpiece. Nevertheless, "Your Ghost," with an interesting and surprising guest vocal performance from Michael Stipe, is appropriately haunting: "It's the blaze across my nightgown / It's the phone's ring.""[+]Reply
"Enjoyed the entire album! I am not a great reviewer but I know what I like. Shakira is an accomplished artist...if you aren't sure of this album, listen to a few samplings with an open mind. Close your eyes and relax your mind, listen to the music and her voice..take time to enjoy."Reply