worst SPIN album of the year (no "your hard drive" edition)

I've never actually heard the Teenage Fanclub album that notoriously beat <i>Nevermind</i>, so I'll refrain on voting until I do. I have a month.

hmm could vote for a lot of these.

well, not System of a Down. or Against Me! wtf with those.

It's probably one of the ones I don't know (Cornershop or Against Me! seem like solid choices), but of the ones I do know, it's probably Dear Science. I like TVOTR but that album was a mess.

TFC album is great. how they ever thought it would be big in America, I dunno

oh wait this is a worst poll. um invert my previous comments plz

Worst as in worst album or worst choice for the year? i.e. Bandwagonesque over, say, Loveless or Nevermind

I don't see Animal Collective not winning this in a landslide.

can't vote for something I haven't actually listened to and I'll be fucked if I'm going to bother finding a download of SoD, Against Me!, or Moby so ... voting for Hole cuz I hate that record.

These are the worst

1995: Moby - Everything Is Wrong
2003: The White Stripes - Elephant
2008: TV On The Radio - Dear Science

who the fuck are Against Me!? sounds like a punk pop band. "Bandwagonesque" is great tbh if Big Starry chunky guitar pop is your kinda thing. "Dear Science" sounded good the first time I heard it and "Golden Age" is a good track but the album gets more and more dreadful the more I went back to it.

oh wait this is a worst poll. um invert my previous comments plz

― Ayn Rand Akbar (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, October 17, 2013 12:44 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Poll is for worst album

against me! are a pop-punk band

That Against Me! album is truly great, fuck is wrong with you guys?

1992: Pavement - Slanted And Enchanted
1996: Beck - Odelay
1997: Cornershop - When I Was Born For The 7th Time
2001: System Of A Down – Toxicity
2009: Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavillion
2011: Fucked Up - David Comes To Life

these are the most indefensible. i think even in a contest that involves pavement, animal collective remain the nadir of civilisation

i only have time for 6 of these albums though which is a pretty terrible hit rate

never heard of cornershop

have a hard time believing the lex gives a pass to TFC

that cornershop album rules so hard

have a hard time believing the lex gives a pass to TFC

― Ayn Rand Akbar (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, October 17, 2013 12:55 PM (26 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i quickly read this as "the fucking champs"

never heard a single song by them by they do look anathema to me, yes, exterminate them too please

xp

Cornershop mania, if that's what it was, was a weird thing. I like them okay, but no album of theirs should ever have been album of the year.

System of a Down possibly = best example of band I thought would be unbearable who turned out to be reasonably good actually. Seeing them on SNL kind of turned me around on them, circa Mezmerize.

well, not System of a Down. or Against Me! wtf with those.

lol those are probably my favorite records here

with that, i'm voting new wave

anybody votes Ice Cube I will poke holes in your body

wow even after the confusion about the thread earlier, i ended up voting for my favorite?!?!!

oh well

most of the recent indie rock choices here (animal collective lmao, tvotr which is an album i like and fucked up) already seem like really bad ideas and it's not even been a decade

if i could i'd vote for both white stripes records

i voted Beck cuz why not

MPP is a great record fuck all yall

the Collective ya love to hate

the answer to this poll is obviously system of a down. next poll

Cornershop mania, if that's what it was, was a weird thing.

Yes! They were really heralded as... something huge and new and long lasting. And now people posting on this thread have never heard of them. Oh well. Everybody needs a bosom for a pillow, I guess.

They were really heralded as... something huge and new and long lasting.

the music press when i was growing up was so embarrassing, even when i was 12 it made me cringe when they did shit like this

Stuck between Moby and Fucked Up (the only albums where I don't even know a "hit" that I like). Going to Spotify them both today for a run-off.

i'm guessing Moby will win though. As most as post-hardcore Springsteen worship can annoy me (esp with puke vocals), I don't know if mid-'90s techno crossover has aged BETTER.

That Fucked Up album is amazing but it's a weird choice for album of the year.

At least the Moby album in question isn't Play.

http://images5.fanpop.com/image/photos/29500000/I-love-music-music-29530960-300-300.jpg

the answer to this poll is obviously system of a down. next poll

― sleepingbag, Thursday, October 17, 2013 1:06 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

man somebody alert Stryper cuz this guy CAN'T STOP THE RONG

Actually, if Play the 1999 pick and say, To Bring You My Love or Maxinquaye was the '95 one, I'd just vote for Fucked Up. I DO like "Run On."

Albums I've enjoyed since high school, even if they wouldn't be MY pick for the best albums of that year: Bandwagonesque, Slanted, Odelay

Recent albums I've dug quite a bit, but wouldn't probably even make my top 10 of the year: elephant, new wave, dear science

Albums with a good number of unfuckwithable songs, but I've never really dug as full-lengths: amerikka, guyville, Live Through This, 7th Time, Miseducation, WBC, Dropout, Cookie

eh, the hits are fine: Fragile, Toxicity, MPP, Fantasy

Orange I've only listened to once and enjoyed enough that I woudn't vote for it.

toxicity is really wonderful

That Fucked Up album is amazing but it's a weird choice for album of the year.

― Immediate Follower (NA), Thursday, October 17, 2013 1:12 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark

2011 was a weird year. the top 5 on pazz and jop were

1. tune yards
2. pj harvey
3. watch the throne
4. wild flag
5. tom waits

lmao

drake should've been on the spin cover tho, missed opp

late registration should be in my "recent albums I've dug quite a bit" list.

I own or would own all of these except System of a Down.

Cornershop were a lovely thing when they emerged (wipes away tear)....I still listen to them.

Yeah I love that Cornershop album, it still holds up.

there are few more telling signs of the corny indie fuxxor than shitting on System of a Down

I'm sure it's a different listen for people who were into techno at the time, but this Moby album's charm for me right now is primarily the same as the jetsons

I would pretty much bang anything on this list but pavement

and bandwagonesque which i still havent heard

lots of good stuff here, nothing i outright hate. unlike SOME *coughlex* i'm not gonna vote for something i haven't heard, so probably MBDTF

*toxicity on the discman* BLAH! BLAHBITTY BLAPUTTY BLAH! BLAAAAAHHHHH!!! BLLEEEEHHHHHH!!! *nods head spastically* oh yeh this rocks fuck the sheeple *is 12*

i have in fact heard the whole of that animal collective album, all it taught me is that kneejerk hate unheard has nothing on hatred with actual basis in experience

against me probably

was referring to pavement tbh xp

Best album there is the Pavement. No idea what the worst is as there's a bunch I dont know and it would be wrong to vote for an album I've never heard.

*toxicity on the discman* BLAH! BLAHBITTY BLAPUTTY BLAH! BLAAAAAHHHHH!!! BLLEEEEHHHHHH!!! *nods head spastically* oh yeh this rocks fuck the sheeple *is 12*

― sleepingbag, Thursday, October 17, 2013 1:50 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lmao

there are few more telling signs of the corny indie fuxxor than shitting on System of a Down

System of a Down is 100% garbage btw

man if that's how S.O.A.D. sounds to you, i shudder to think how your ears would process Analdicktion

xxxposts to sleepingpelt

I've only heard the whole album a couple of times, but I don't understand how someone can not enjoy "Chop Suey." That song is so fun.

WAKE UP

that song is a mess

crut otm, every way that band approaches songwriting is not right.

amazing that two albums as terrible as AnCo and Kanye's were crowned back to back, so I will too.

Oh yeah, but it's a fun mess. It has so many parts. xp

DON: We're really impressed by the quality of American music. There are some good records out there, especially in the so-called indie division.

GLENN; I'd call it "the so-called music division"

DON: Well, yeah.

idk the soad "approach to songwriting" seems to be "metal band who've also internalized pop and theater"

:( Fucked Up and NIN are two of my favourite bands but those records are not good

SOAD is just part of the Patton Diaspora

Tush, there's a superb 40-minute album hidden in each xp

Kory broke it down to me that SOAD were a metal band where no element was macho. Like even the blastbeats in "Chop Suey" are jovial and friendly

SOAD are much better than I thought they'd be and their music largely achieves its aims & occasionally chucks in a red herring

against me and SOAD are both fucking great albums you people are animals

i refuse to listen to kanye west any more than absolutely necessary -- will pick one of the 3 at random

don't think i know Against Me but

*toxicity on the discman* BLAH! BLAHBITTY BLAPUTTY BLAH! BLAAAAAHHHHH!!! BLLEEEEHHHHHH!!! *grimaces* oh yuk this metal stuff is silly and only silly children like it i am more sophisticated than this *is 17*

i'm sure some very dour children like it as well but otherwise yeah sums it up!

my vote will probably go to one of the tv on the radio albums, that band should have bailed after doing the first ep and then i would think they were kind of great

I'm reasonably sympathetic to kneejerk SOAD hatred. Just one of those occasional cases where a band that looks like it'd be crap isn't.

voting fucked up. Though it's so up my alley musically, it's fucking interminable and i just can't give a shit about their singer (checked the videos to see if they at least have a "chop suey" on here and i haven't found it). Everything just makes me want to play Let's Stay Friends. Moby gets saved for being shorter and more varied.

@ imago, I agree w NIN yeah but I can't deal with the lazy lead vocals on the FU. Put on any of their other records and it's like "ohhhh that's why I liked this band"

voted for deer science which brought shame to cervidologists everywhere

can't imagine ilm when MPP was getting crowned album of the year left and right.

christ Green Jello had a better singer than Fucked Up does

ugh new wave is so incredible

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmUKY0JEArA

Really can't stand the AnCo record and am considering voting for it but a great deal of my antipathy stems from its near-universal ILX laudation as the future of music, art-rock statement of the year etc. If that's the zenith of avant-garde, fucking cut my ears out

I can't hate on a record that has Queen Of Hearts on it, even if there's nothing else to touch that song.

Might think hard abt a 40-minute Fragile edit now

New Wave peters out for me at the end, but Side 1 is terrific (aside from the choice to climax "Thrash Unreal" with the corniest cliche ever, which I just have to ignore when I play it).

*toxicity on the discman* BLAH! BLAHBITTY BLAPUTTY BLAH! BLAAAAAHHHHH!!! BLLEEEEHHHHHH!!! *grimaces* oh yuk this metal stuff is silly and only silly children like it i am more sophisticated than this *is 17*

― footballer of the future (Noodle Vague), Thursday, October 17, 2013 2:27 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

a world where soad is a placeholder for all metal is not a world i want to live in.

near-universal ILX laudation

definitely not near-universal. it may get my vote but i haven't any of these albums in full. except the Moby one lol.

the end of new wave is "the ocean," though! xxpost

anyone voting for Live Through This is mad.

nah my jibe at sleepingbag was tossed off and i'm not suggesting SOAD = all metal

i shd've just defaulted to "don't like SOAD = YOU HATE FUN"

again

yeah, belatedly revealed lyrical relevance aside, "the ocean" bores me

dark twisted fuck face

^^^ no point saying YOU HATE FUN as display name proudly boasts of it

haven't heard most of these and like most of the ones i have heard. might vote for channel boring despite its (small number of) good songs. if the moby album in question were play i would certainly vote for that.

Animal Collective is the worst, although Channel Orange and both TV On The Radio albums are pretty boring.

What's White Blood Cells doing as the 2002 pick by the way? Did it somehow come out a year later in the US?

I remember Everything Is Wrong being pretty fun and definitely a cut above all subsequent Moby but I don't think I've listened to it in about 15 years.

Return To Cookie Mountain isn't boring! Dear Science is. Total rock album for people who hate rock

^^^am regretting that last sentence already, but there it is

you should regret your first

i thought they was both okay

Dear Science has 2 or 3 songs I like but much of it is wet as pissed cotton wool

don't make me change DNs again man

what is worse: music that you think is boring vs. music that is in-your-face awful but not boring

the former of course

but in the end I equate the two

boring music isn't boring so i wd have to vote in-yo-face awful

on the other hand fuck arguing about edginess again, the most boring trait of all

a great deal of my antipathy stems from its near-universal ILX laudation as the future of music, art-rock statement of the year etc

Lol seriously?

did my 40-minute Fragile: The day the POLL went away: NIN's The Fragile

everyone was going nuts about MPP

i remember when it were all Merryweather Postnatal Depression praise round here

not a dissenting voice in the house, tho a few of us muttered darkly that there weren't enough time sig changes and annoying keyboard sounds

haaa

people catching 60 day bans for suggesting it wasn't as good as whatever the fuck they did before it

on the other hand fuck arguing about edginess again, the most boring trait of all

― a cock for people who hate cock (Noodle Vague), Thursday, October 17, 2013 11:57 AM (8 minutes ago

this reminds me that i might just actively dislike LCD Soundsystem as much as I do Kanye West

you're talking my language here sarah but we must be careful, spies are everywhere

Not one TVotR record, but TWO!
Not one White Stripes record, but TWO!
Not one Kanye record, but THREE!

The whole list is like if impressionable college freshmen voted for the Grammys.

The only uproar I remember about Merriweather Post Pavillion is when gr80 and roxy saved indiedom by leaking it to the internet.

Leaning towards Elephant tbh

the against me

Looks like there's another year or two to pass before they hit the "let's gamble on an outlier!" button again and fall flat on their faces. Although I'd be surprised if Spin still exists by then.

My hard drive is indeed better than most of these albums.

Of course what the question that this poll really begs is what the Spin pick for 2013 is going to be...

Your Spotify account

Haha, adverts and all

wouldn't that be a lovely sentiment at the end of a slideshow

lol at the 2000 picture. YOUR BRAND NEW 25 GB SCSI MERENGUE PIE *disc spins loudly*

the winner should be "the 40 clicks it took to reach this page"

50, actually

I had to look up Cornershop. Oh right, the song that ripped off "Sweet Jane."

So much competition. In the end I had to go with System of A Down.

I have but so many FPs to giveeeeeee

Voted Against Me! but probably more out of wtf than worst. Should have voted for Elephant, then, I guess.

Dear Science is awesome, btw. By far my favorite TVotR, and my album of the year that year. It's not anymore, as I discovered some other stuff, but I still like it an awful lot.

TV On The Radio - Return To Cookie Mountain
Against Me! - New Wave
TV On The Radio - Dear Science
Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavillion
Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
Fucked Up - David Comes To Life
Frank Ocean – Channel Orange

^^^ I've never heard any of these. Are any of them any good?

The 2000s list looks so different from the 90s one.

#SnrubLife

snubbed life

yeah I like Dear Science quite a bit: the only TVotR I can stand.

What do you expect from this shitsucking publication tbf?

booming post

Really enjoying the intimation upthread that Bandwagonesque took the rightful place of Nirvana. 1991, you dorks. The year of Loveless, of Laughing Stock, of Spiderland. And about a zillion other albums. Love how ILX turns all rockist when it suits.

Whoops, I just metanarrated ILX! Sorry. Love how CERTAIN ILX POSTERS turn all rockist when it suits.

don't forget Death Certificate and Low End Theory

xp

http://s3.mediamatters.org/static/video/2009/04/09/beck-20090409-gas.jpg

please don't hesitate

well exactly xps

Against me

spiderland, the popist's choice

It's possible to be rockist (uncritically canon-favouring) in favour of pop (like Nirvana)

SPIN choices mostly uninspiring tbh

xpost WE GET IT YOU DON'T LIKE ILX'S TASTE

the hivemind is a terrible thing to taste

Really enjoying the intimation upthread that Bandwagonesque took the rightful place of Nirvana. 1991, you dorks.

This isn't an ILX thing to be fair. It was a popular narrative in 1991.

Or early 1992, I guess.

spiderland & loveless are crit canon too is my point!

yeah, besides this isn't the NAME 3,000 INDIE/PROG ROCK ALBUMS YOU WOULD RATHER LISTEN TO THAN THE SPIN ALBUMS OF THE YEAR thread!

I clearly remember in 1991 everyone going, "Bandwagonesque? It's good and all but it didn't define the year the way Laughing Stock did. When people think 1991 they'll think Laughing Stock. The music world will never be the same again thanks to Laughing Stock."

(I love Laughing Stock btw)

they're crit canon but they're absolutely NOWHERE compared to Nevermind in the grand Rock Canon Of This Is What's Best Coz We Said So. they're examples! there are probably hundreds more 1991 albums deserving of recognition

including bandwagonesque, dare i say

i think the thing about "recognition" is everything gets the "recognition" it "deserves"

Here's a blog that rates Loveless ahead of Nevermind. Not sure if they're part of the RCOTIWBCWSS though.

http://pitchfork.com/features/staff-lists/5923-top-100-albums-of-the-1990s/10/

Odelay over Merriweather Post Pavillion by mistake

you might as well link to Ned's Nineties

would have had no problem with SPIN *selecting* Nevermind btw, it's just that people arrogantly saying 'well they SHOULD have picked x *obviously*' wind me up

But nobody said that. Whiney just said that it was a notorious decision, which it was at the time. I don't think anybody's too butthurt about it 22 years later though.

xpost it's almost as if ILXors post with conviction

also let's not turn this into Artistry thread part 3 pls

In Pitchfork's original Best of the 90s list that has disappeared off the internet they had Loveless #1!

The Fragile's a weirder choice than Bandwagonesque. It's not even Trent Reznor's favourite album of 1999.

they're crit canon but they're absolutely NOWHERE compared to Nevermind in the grand Rock Canon Of This Is What's Best Coz We Said So. they're examples! there are probably hundreds more 1991 albums deserving of recognition

― HAVE YOU SEEN ME? Please don't hesitate (imago), Thursday, October 17, 2013 6:31 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

dude i basically agree with you but the ship has sailed, returned to port, and sailed a few more times before being scrapped

^^^ I've never heard any of these. Are any of them any good?

― Mr. Snrub, Thursday, October 17, 2013 6:07 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I thought the Fucked Up record was fantastic, but it is definitely not everyone's kind of thing.

snrub in the cut that's a scary sight

I'd rather have a buffalo take a diarrhea dump in my ear than listen to any of these shtity alubms.

he's the angry ILX neeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrd

What's White Blood Cells doing as the 2002 pick by the way? Did it somehow come out a year later in the US?

― Matt DC, Thursday, October 17, 2013 2:47 PM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it came out in the US in summer of 2001 too, but then it got re-released on a major label in 2002 and "Fell In Love With A Girl" hit and it went platinum etc. still embarrassingly late pass for Spin to make it their album of the year in '02, though, it was #4 in the 2001 Pazz & Jop so its critical rep was pretty well established that year.

Best album there is the Pavement. No idea what the worst is as there's a bunch I dont know and it would be wrong to vote for an album I've never heard.

― ۩, Thursday, October 17, 2013 1:54 PM (8 hours ago) Bookmark

۩ was doing so well on ilx before this post.

new wave! is great but white crosses is even better. this poll is a toss up between MBDTF and slanted and enchanted.

idgaf about the White Stripes at all so one of those I guess.

snrub in the cut that's a scary sight
― J0rdan S., Thursday, October 17, 2013 8:47 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Lolololol

But nobody said that. Whiney just said that it was a notorious decision, which it was at the time.

And still is...

Naming Teenage Fanclub's Bandwagonesque the No. 1 album of the year in 1991 over Nirvana's Nevermind (which actually finished third behind R.E.M.'s Out of Time) was perhaps the most notorious and ironic decision in the history of SPIN

http://www.spin.com/articles/spins-20-best-albums-1991/

what about celia farber tho

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sorry if someone already did that i stopped reading thread after

didn't know that david comes to life won in 2011. i like that one.

don't get the AC hate

yr choice of login name proves you've not got the best judgement tbh

The Fragile

The 2000s list looks so different from the 90s one.

― Mr. Snrub, Thursday, October 17, 2013 6:07 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I mean, not to be cap'n save-a-SPIN, but pretty much around 2001 the idea of "critical consensus" kind of turned into "the wild democracy of internet opinion" and you can pretty take ANY album of the year between 2001-2013 from a pub with a general audience — RS, SPIN, Pitchfork, Onion A/V — and say it's either a) LOL boring uninspired hivemind pick, or b) LOL contrarian bullshit fuck you sufjan

I think 2011 might be the year with the least amount of critical consensus as to what the album of year was.

Someone who's not me should compile a list of what a lot of mags/sites picked for no. 1 in 2011

Yeah, Kaputt was robbed a bunch of places. Not here though.

How about this?
http://www.metacritic.com/feature/music-critic-top-ten-lists-best-albums-of-2011

Lists posted to this thread:

Year-End Critics' Polls 2011

1. Tim Hecker - Ravedeath, 1972
2. . Grails - Deep Politics
3. 1. Pistol Annies – Hell on Heels
4. 1. Tim Hecker - Ravedeath, 1972
5. Metronomy, The English Riviera
6. 1 Mastodon - The Hunter
7. 1 Mastodon - The Hunter
8. 1 Mastodon - The Hunter
9. 1. Tombs - Path of Totality
10. 01 The Book Of Knots - Garden Of Fainting Stars (Ipecac)
11. 01 deaf centre - owl splinters (type)
12. 1.2NE1 - I Am The Best
13. 1. wells moffat - the copper top
14. 1 When Saints Go Machine – Konkylie
15. . Cauldron – Burning Fortune (Earache)
16. 1. June Tabor & Oysterband Ragged Kingdom (Topic)
17. Laura Marling – A Creature I Don’t Know (Virgin)

mastodon just nudging out ravedeath

I mean...

General pubs in 2011

Rolling Stone: Adele - 21
SPIN: Fucked Up - David Comes to Life
Pitchfork: Bon Iver - Bon Iver
Pazz and Jop: Tune-Yards - Whokill
Billboard: Adele - 21
Mojo: PJ Harvey - Let England Shake
Q: Florence + the Machine - Ceremonials
Entertainment Weekly: Adele - 21
LA Times: PJ Harvey - Let England Shake
A/V Club: Wye Oak - Civilian
Drowned in Sound: The Antlers - Burst Apart

no one giving it to take care or watch the throne = serious misstep in retrospect

are you TRYING to kill Lex?

ha

moby "everything is wrong" is a great record. i still probably put it on a few times every summer.

surprised by the MPP hate! i mean, i know there are people here who hate AC but the MPP thread has like 15,000 posts, most of which are praise. a good chunk of the rest are talk about false leaks.

cornershop is an embarrassment. i loved that record when i was 14 but it's so fucking terrible. so hokey. i'll probably vote that.

no one giving it to take care or watch the throne = serious misstep in retrospect

― J0rdan S., Friday, October 18, 2013 2:15 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

agree about take care but not so sure about wtt

it's good but i theyve both released so much since then and i wouldn't say it stands that far above the pack

yeah watch the throne, really sarge

things got kind of grim starting in 2009, huh

I don't have strong feelings about Frank Ocean and I really like about 60% of MBDTF but all four of those albums are much, much weaker than everything else on the list

I mean, I don't even like Pavement and yet I wouldn't vote S&E worst on this list

wasn't even the best Fucked Up record of 2011

also it's sad that Bandwagonesque over Nevermind is considered controversial or notorious. always the smart choice.

I just remember Teenage Fanclub being boring

Teenage Fanclub was paid off well
now they're bored and old

xp: lol possibly an impression formed by hearing the first song on the album and going "NOPE", as is happening to me right now

listen to "Alcoholiday"

moby "everything is wrong" is a great record. i still probably put it on a few times every summer.

Yeah, I found it kinda sad that people are saying it's the worst! Everything is Wrong and the Ice Cube album are the only two on that list that I like. (Though I've never heard Animal Collection, or TV on the Radio, or the other 00s bands with weird names, but based on what I've read about them here at ILM, I doubt I'd like them.) Though I guess it's maybe what Miccio days, if you weren't young and listening to dance music when "I'm Feeling So Real" and "Everytime You Touch Me" came out, maybe you won't get them 18 years later. I'm 34 now and I still love them though!

add me to the list of ppl who like everything is wrong

I didn't like all of it even back then tho, it's a p schizo album

Basically EIW would be the perfect album if it wouldn't have those two awful rock tunes with guitars and everything... I know Moby used to be a HC punk dude, but having two angsty rock songs like that in the middle of a joyful dance/electronic album is totally jarring! What was he thinking?

Ha, x-post with Wins.

remember liking one of those tbf! All that I want is to be loved?

was one of those the cover of new dawn fades

oh man

maybe

Since when does Spin magazine do "criticism"? Bandwagonesque was a word of mouth thing - "critics" back then being kind of OLD. Spin was always the magazine that covered "alternative" music (which could mean reggae, dance, funk and rap albums). As opposed to "indie" - corny or otherwise - whatever that is.

a word of mouth thing praised by noted oral publication spin

Yes, my child. In the old days- in addition to teaching logic and social skills - magazines covered what was likely to be "hot". Which was based on things like LABELS, band history, touring, RADIO shows....in other words, fandom.

Thanks for your gracious interpretation of my post. I can see this is a crucial issue for you.

btw I'm revisiting everything is wrong and the other rock track is actually "what love", which I don't remember at all. I think it would have been an instant skip.

did you really learn logic and social skills from a magazine, father?

I think it would have been an instant skip.

Believe, me it was.

As a matter of fact I learned them from National Geographic - from which you can learn "corny indie" lessons like what a big, fragile place our planet is. And I learned humor and non-creepiness from Mad. At least I don't assume you're a male. Given past experience here I wouldn't. Damn typos.

With some people's track record of taking Spin polls too seriously, a Nobel Prize isn't in their future. But good luck in your "cause", whatever it is!

PS I never likedTeenage Fanclub, but knew it was going to be big. Sure it's part marketing, but at the time I had conversations with people who said, "love the Creation stuff....but I prefer something more commercial." Of course those people are EVIL and to be shunned.

ok sorry

fwiw I don't have any past experience here so have no idea who these not-in-the-nobel-running "some people" are

wins vs losted: you'll never guess who'll come out on top

i remember loving dear science when it came out but after re-listening there's like 4 incredible songs and the rest is kind of garbage

I think "What Love" is my favorite track on Everything Is Wrong

Halfway Home, Crying, Dancing Choose, Stork & Owl, Golden Age, Family Tree, Red Dress, Love Dog, Shout Me Out, DLZ, Lover's Day

So which seven do you think are garbage?

i don't think there should be so much repetition in spin's top slot

In Pitchfork's original Best of the 90s list that has disappeared off the internet they had Loveless #1!

― Mr. Snrub

Here it is!

http://www.listsofbests.com/list/55-top-100-albums-of-the-90s-1999-version?page=1

Merriweather Post Pavilion

lol @ Phish being on that pitchfork list

That Cornershop album is magnificent. In the last 15 years I'm sure I've listened to it more often than I've listened to Nevermind, for what it's worth. Later the guy from the Housemartins made a remix of "Brimful of Asha" and had a big hit with it but the album version is better.

Not voting because there's too much I haven't heard, some of which I'd no doubt think was worse than the ones I have heard, but I'd think it was worse for ungrounded reasons -- e.g. it seems certain I'd dislike System of a Down but that's because I don't know how to listen to the kind of music System of a Down is so what's the point of bringing this up! Then again, I had never heard Against Me! and the song linked above, while pretty poor, was not as poor as I expected. If you include the faces the singer makes in the video, it's votable, but I don't think Spin took that into account when choosing their AotY so it doesn't seem fair to vote on that basis.

"the guy from the Housemartins"

the bass player

Imagine if Paul Heaton and Norman Cook swapped careers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Whitaker

Hugh Whitaker (born 18 May 1961, Hull) is the former drummer for the British indie rock band The Housemartins. He replaced original drummer Chris Lang and drummed for the band's first album, London 0 Hull 4, and its attendant single releases.

In 1993, Whitaker was sent to prison for 6 years for assaulting James Hewitt with an axe and setting fire to his house on three occasions .

In 1997 Hugh moved to Leeds. After a short stint as drummer with Freddie and the Dreamers he joined a local band, Percy.

Wait James Hewitt as in James Hewitt?

*imagines massive jangle conspiracy where the bassist for aztec camera drove diana and dodi off the road in that tunnel*

The 90s run is weirdly devoid of consensus rock picks - no Nevermind, no Automatic For The People, no OK Computer - and most of the 00s is made up of the most obvious picks imaginable. Still seems weird they went for that Cornershop album in 1997 though, it's not something I would have expected to resonate much in the US *at all*.

i wasn't really old enough to know anything in the 90s but were those really consensus picks at the time? or did they (nevermind/OKC at least) take a few years to obtain their stature

All three were canonised pretty much immediately iirc.

Yeah, in the US Nirvana was "the Beatles of our generation" about 6 mos. after "Smells Like Teen Spirit" hit

The 90s run is weirdly devoid of consensus rock picks

has to do I think with Spin in the 90s being defined as self-consciously-alternative alternative to Rolling Stone. Being into Pavement around when Slanted and Enchanted came out was definitively a "I listen to weirdo music, not the weirdo music that's suddenly popular now, something different."

At least Tricky never won

I thought "Who?" when Pavement won in '92.

lol spin was famously into slanted and enchanted well before it came out (before promos had even been sent out iirc)

and yeah difference between 90s and this century is spin staying ahead of rolling stone vs spin playing catch up to pitchfork

^^

they've got odelay (which was consensus pick for sure at the time, which seemed odd to me though i did love it) and lauryn hill (which maybe wasn't the consensus pick but spin weren't about to pick lucinda williams) and liz phair was as much consensus in 93 as automatic and the obv pick for spin. the only real spin challops picks were 91 (which at the time of publication would've seemed as much a 'not out of time' or 'not achtung baby' pick as 'not nevermind') and 97. did neither band any favors.

love me some pave and tho slanted & enchanted is not my fav pave i just can't understand people ranking it under all the other crap on this list

god i can only imagine the s+e hype if pavement had come up post-internet, the ep's had been big hits and done very well in pazz and jop, 'summer babe' had placed in the singles on p&j tying color me badd and u2, there was still that mysterious aura around them and rumours that thomas pynchon was involved w/ them somehow. i can remember when they came to athens there was this huge anticipation, ppl very very excited to dismiss these guys. it was pretty sloppy and the local altweekly ran like a full page review trashing it. good times.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heDym8I3Ank

sounds fucking great to me!

and rumours that thomas pynchon was involved w/ them somehow.

lol crazy, never knew that

Cornershop def produced a "Who?" reaction too. I rode hard for the magazine until spring '99, so after months of reading laudatory interviews, columns, and singles reviews of Missy Elliott, Radiohead, and Homogenic I was startled by Cornershop. I didn't even hear the Fatboy Slim remix of "Brimful of Asha" until '99.

I missed a couple issues though; maybe those issues pimped Cornershop.

first show i went to when i came back to america was cornershop in jacksonville fucking florida (i was outprocessing). they did a superlong version of '6 am jullander shere', it was pretty great but jacksonville crowd curious about a buzzbin band weren't really feeling it.

Jacksonville is the worst city on earth. I drove up to watch Yo La Tengo in the early 2000's. Ira Kaplan said to the audience, "You guys got a...small downtown."

hahaha very true. otoh the first movie theater w/ stadium seating i ever went to was in jacksonville. you haven't really seen deconstructing harry and the ice storm unless you've seen it w/ stadium seating.

love me some pave and tho slanted & enchanted is not my fav pave i just can't understand people ranking it under all the other crap on this list

― flopson, Sunday, October 20, 2013 2:55 PM (20 minutes ago

i'm a stan but i think for a lot of people pavement are just the default 90s indie band to hate if you wanna hate on that era or whatever

"90s indie" is too big a descriptor, i like elephant 6 and 90s pixies and MBV and built to spill and stuff, i just find the specific guitar indie of pavement and GBV and... sebadoh?? (i haven't spent much time w/these bands) terribly boring and unappealing in every way and i can read a million reviews and still not really grasp what anyone gets out of them

Reading this thread is pretty infomative, even though I thought I paid attention to pop music in the 90s, up until now I always thought Cornershop was a one-hit wonder, I had no idea they had an album people actually held in high regard!

At least Tricky never won

INSTABAN

I love When I Was Born For the 7th Time, and Woman's Gotta Have It as well. They completely hold up. The rest is meh. A superlong version of 6am Jullander Square sounds like a bad choice for Jacksonville, though.

i enjoyed their last album, which was the first album of theirs i had heard since when i was born for the 7th time.

Cornershop and Belle and Sebastian were the first bands I remember reading a lot about on the internet despite never having heard of them in the real world yet. Still, I'm assuming this was a case of the internet responding to the hype that already existed in print media, rather than the other way around.

I like tracks off Handcream, too. Good band

every cornershop album has good stuff on it, fave's Woman's Gotta Have It - imo 7th Time was overrated for catch-up hype, zetigeist and Actual Hit but that's no reason to stink-eye them

"90s indie" is too big a descriptor, i like elephant 6 and 90s pixies and MBV and built to spill and stuff, i just find the specific guitar indie of pavement and GBV and... sebadoh?? (i haven't spent much time w/these bands) terribly boring and unappealing in every way and i can read a million reviews and still not really grasp what anyone gets out of them

― ^^ post obviously honoring and supporting Qualcomm (zachlyon), Sunday, October 20, 2013 3:35 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, the fuck it just leave it in there school of indie.

yeah, millenials not getting 90s indie is not something i'm ever going to hold against 90s indie

reckon Chavez are a pretty good gateway drug to US 90s pure guitar indie

I was friends with Anglophones in '97, so lots of Cornershop and second-tier trip-hop got bumped around the dorm.

haha my first thought when i heard 'cornershop' was how many damn parties in the late 90s they would inevitably end up in the stereo. seems like i could do a procession pizzicato five->cornershop->arling & cameron, records that weren't even that popular but somehow seemingly as unavoidable as midnite vultures or whatever. handsome boy modeling school.

reckon Chavez are a pretty good gateway drug to US 90s pure guitar indie

I bought Ride the Fader the year it came out -- I'd recently gotten into Pavement and Polvo, so it seemed like it would be up my alley -- but it was too noisy and aggressive for my taste, and I ended up selling the CD within a week. I should probably check them out again.

I was friends with Anglophones in '97

AngloPHILES, I mean!

Cornershop are really quite brilliant. The last two studio albums were great (esp "the Double O Groove" and there was a compilation of singles etc last year that was excellent. I can't think of a band with a better rhythm section that's around right now.

But most of these albums are great. Don't get the idea of voting for the worst one.

you guys are doing a superb job pimping Cornershop! I own no albums yet one Gomez album (Liquid Skin).

Isn't M@tt C1bul@ (I forget what his ILX name is these days) really into Gomez?

Haha yes:

I’ve written this review five times, trying to figure out why I’m the only critic I know who still likes Gomez. ...

all i know about gomez was pre-release hype along the lines of 'english wilco' and i like wilco ok (or liked them at the time ie i liked mermaid ave and summer teeth) but i was pretty damn sure i was not going to like 'english wilco'.

well, both names have two syllables.

the late '90s were a good time to be a bleep-friendly country-rock group with a dude that sounds old-timey/eddie veddery

and i mean "bleep" like "bloops, bleeps and creeps" not edited swear words

if anything Gomez was a little ahead of wilco on the bleep bloop blorp shit

ladies and gentlemen the english yankee hotel foxtrot is here

nah Gomez got their Mercury Prize even before Summerteeth came out!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9drameYoMek

"Good To Be On The Road Back Home Again" on that Cornershop album is a jam

COSIGN though it in my mind it melds together with the Tourists "So Good To Be Back Home Again"

i used to really like a gomez song but have always mentally categorized them with like gov't mule and moe. and shit

which i guess is where wilco ended up too

were they a jam band? wilco ending up friendly to that circuit is probably more a reflection of what's happened w/ that audience than what's happened w/ wilco (cf bonnaroo 2002 vs bonnaroo 2012).

yeah idk. i guess the classification is "dad rock dads honestly think is cool teen rock" or smth, and i'm probably thinking this cause the first place i ever heard them was the jam band dad rock sirius radio station the one year my dad had sirius radio

they basically just seem like the least cool band ever, no offense to dads

dad rock dads honestly think is cool teen rock - o, college rock!

lol

ugh new wave is so incredible
The song posted under this comment "Borne on the FM Waves" is the best song on this album and among the best of that whole decade.

The Gomez song posted earlier is probably also their best song (sadly).

"Toxicity" is an all time classic. The few on this thread considering it among the worst are unsurprisingly the same as those whose judgement I already deemed questionable.

Still seems weird they went for that Cornershop album in 1997 though, it's not something I would have expected to resonate much in the US *at all*.
It also appears in their top 100 albums 1985-2005. Charles Aaron's call iirc.

FWIW, Bandwagonesque > Nevermind IMO

I've also never heard of Against Me!, it's interesting to see so many people repping for them ...

Beck and Cornershop winning in back to back years makes sense somehow, i.e. Cornershop's win isn't so surprising considering the same group of indie-minded writers voted for Beck the previous year. (great album, and Cornershop kicked ass live)

it's hard to call any of these albums contrarian choices, except maybe SOAD. All of them were also top 10 in P&J, except Teenage Fanclub (#31), NIN (#14), Against Me! (#21), and Fucked Up (#11). Most of them were top 3, including Cornershop, and 8 of them were #1. has there been a poll for which of these people think is the best?

FWIW, Bandwagonesque > Nevermind IMO

They're both tremendous. Any 1991 list that placed both within their top 5 is correct IMO.

should be noted that part of the reason spin gave for making soad #1 was it was the #1 album in the country on 9/11 and [insert significance here]. more justifiable than the many other ballots/lists making something out of love and theft coming out on 9/11.

wow nevermind won pnj really easily. chris whitley at #9! robbie robertson above de la soul is dead and the low end theory, good grief.

lol channel orange

man i downloaded 'brimful of asha' in 1997 in between like, 'tubthumping' and 'don't speak' and even then it felt like the odd one out, to preteen me who didn't know anything about music

I was alive and aware in 99 but I absolutely could not remember a single thing about that NIN album without hitting Wikipedia.

and even now I recognize the album artwork but none of the singles are remotely familiar.

man i downloaded 'brimful of asha' in 1997 in between like, 'tubthumping' and 'don't speak' and even then it felt like the odd one out, to preteen me who didn't know anything about music

I didn't know you could even download whole songs back in 1997?

winamp was released in 1997; before napster there were IRC DCC file transfers and ICQ file transfers.

you couldn't, you could only download brimful of asha' in 1997 in between like, 'tubthumping' and 'don't speak'

http://i.imgur.com/ZJjViZ5.jpg

man, fucking miss mIRC. fucking miss #justgreatmoviez.

Bandwagonesque always struck me as a very flimsy album without a lot of meat or substance to it. Grand Prix was much superior, in my opinion.

I got about three songs into Bandwagonesque before coming to the conclusion that it was a Coldplay album with feedback

you big silly

I got 3 tracks into Amerikkka's Most Wanted before concluding that it was a Drake album with shouting

Starsign is great but I don't really care for the rest of the album all that much.

- predictable songwriting (on the first three tracks)
- horribly weak drumming (on two of the first three tracks)
- lots of plodding mid-tempo (on two of the first three tracks)

basically I really liked the messy uptempo instrumental and the other two tracks were unengaging porridge

having said that, "Star Sign" is good once it actually starts

also the Drake burn doesn't work at all because Ice Cube has a completely different cadence/flow, completely different beats and completely different subject matter; clean up the guitars a little and "The Concept" and "December" could be Coldplay singles if you made the singing worse

nah that Teenage Fanclub record has songs about sex and I don't want to think about Coldplay songs about that

it should be noted that I still wouldn't mark out Bandwagonesque as being appreciably worse than the 4 most recent albums on this poll despite the problems I have with it

Bandwagonesque has say 4 or 5 tunes that are far and away better than the rest of the album...but that ratio for me is enough

I could say the same about Grand Prix but for me the sound of the band didn't engage me like it did 3-4 years previous

I think they lost something when they got rid of the sloppy drummer and the fuzz.

sorry TFC doesn't sound like Coldplay to me.

Chris Martin singing on "Run This Town" live (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jjn_9IBCI0) is this generation's "Fallin'"" by Teenage Fanclub and De La Soul (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOmdg3epcic)(which is a rad song though I still have no idea what TFC actually do on it).

I fucked up the link to the "Fallin'" link you but can find it on Youtube yourselves.

All downhill from Everything Flows imo, classic case of first song, best song.

all British bands with guitars lead to Coldplay

Bandwagonesque is a strong bit of early '90s distortion pedal alt mush but if you aren't already into that kind of thing I so wouldn't ask you to check it out.

and TFC's relative drollness, I think the Coldplay comparison is fairly on point, in that both bands get by on romantic melodic hooks

relative drollness aside, i mean

yeah I dunno, TFC are funny, Coldplay is humorless

I don't fuckin care how you wear your hair, you're still a fuckin square

is funny

Bandwagonesque has some songs with energy in them but tracks 1 and 3 are really, really boring musically in a Coldplay-plus-feedback way

if a song can't hook me musically, I'm not going to pay any attention to the lyrics; they could be the wittiest band since The Smiths and I wouldn't have known from those first three songs because the only one I wanted to listen to again was an instrumental

apologies to Teenage Fanclub for calling them British, btw.

TFC have a really deliberately limited palette - if you don't dig Neil Young and the Byrds and the Raspberries and stuff like that there's kind of no point in bothering with them. they are stylists who are into this one thing, which they do really well (imho)

just musically speaking, that is. sonically there's no anger or blues or swing or punk or funk in anything they do (joke-y disco breaks on "Get Funky" aside), that stuff is all cut away.

There's a T-Rexy blues riff on The Concept, and one on What You Do To Me. But yeah they're pretty solidly in the lineage of the Byrds and Big Star.

Their songwriting isn't particularly like Coldplay in that they don't do either the leaden crotchety chung-chung-chung guitar that it's on most early Coldplay songs or the fake Buckley falsetto or the vaguely anthemic late Coldplay "woah-oh" choruses and without all that you've basically ruled out 95% of Coldplay songs.

the thing that's leaden isn't the guitar, it's the tempo, and that's exactly what makes Coldplay, Interpol, the TFC songs I objected to not work

Yeah I'm not a fan of the walking paced rocker either but it is kind of feature of pale British indie music of that era anyway.

objecting to a tempo seems weird and arbitrary but whatever

how weird that a component of a song could drag it down, I can't even figure out how that could work

i wouldn't put it past coldplay to cover "The Concept" - "I didn't want to hurt you/ah-ah-ah" is totally their kind of chorus

I get that you don't like the energy level that the song evokes, but I don't complain about the tempo to Mazzy Star songs any more than I complain about the tempo of Motorhead songs, there is no ideal tempo. the vein these guys mine - as with Velvet Crush or Gene Clark or whoever - never really gets far above "ambling" in the rocking dept.

xp

tfc is just coldplay in a major key

would i "get" tfc if i heard an album besides "bandwagonesque"? Did they use to be more c86-y?

And why is the concept 10 minutes long? Great guitar solos, guys!

but I dig "Yellow" and "The Scientist" so obv I'm not bothered by slow sentimental indie mooning

catholic education is more c86-y, Grand Prix and Songs From Northern Britain are more straightforward Byrdsy alt-rock, Thirteen I can never remember.

Honestly, as far as wry, derivative bands who made a rather overdriven album for DGC before going more classically guitar pop go, I give the nod to Sloan.

I would dive into this argument more but I just found out the Boards of Canada albums are available on Spotify now

they don't do stylistic variation really, the only thing that varies from album to album is the quality of hooks imho

xxxp

have you seen Young Adult yet, DJP? It's about a group of sad Minnesotans who can't stop playing "The Concept" throughout the movie

hahahahahahahaha I thought you were exaggerating

that movie was fucking obnoxious

i love "The Concept" but man if I didn't

Bandwagonesque is, imo, the third best TFC album after Songs from Northern Britain and Grand Prix. It probably noses out Thirteen, tho.

To each his own and all that, but the fact that there are human beings out there for whom Pavement and TFC are the lols in this poll boggles my mind.

Also, balls otm about this list staying ahead of RS in the '90s and keeping up with P4k in the '00s. It's striking.

I've listened to Bandwagonesque hundreds of times but I have a hard time getting super passionate about it. It's a good record but not especially noteworthy imo

It's a great record. On a par with Grand Prix. NOTHING like Coldplay.

xpost

be more 14, poly, and the passion will come.

be more 14, poly, and the passion will come.

All I cared about at 14 was They Might Be Giants and Primus.

lol so my problem is that I was too OLD for Teenage Fanclub

many kids got into punk or college rock or whatever through Nevermind. many less kids got into power pop and Big Star through Bandwagonesque.

I like the last song on "bandwagonesque", the one that sounds like incidental music for a sporting event.

Bandwagonesque rules

ending an album with that jingle and titling it "is this music?" is so beautifully early 90s that SPIN was right to put over nevermind for that alone

though it's funny that everyone flips over the insanity of bandwagonesque at 1 (as if nirvana wasn't at like no. 3) when iirc that issue features a yellow-light rating of Loveless.

http://books.google.com/books?id=5zrzfgLFgUYC&pg=RA1-PT48&dq=spin+loveless+valentine&hl=en&sa=X&ei=5HplUubwKsj0iQLSw4DoDQ&ved=0CFcQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=spin%20loveless%20valentine&f=false

which page is more of a hindsight lol, the one where bandwagonesque is no. 1 and nevermind is no. 3, or the other where MBV gets a yellow light and Too Legit To Quit gets a green light?

in a decade, the three writers listed on that page would team up to write On The Line

actually, my bad, they wrote Max Keebler's Big Move (though I swear I heard they took a pass at the On The Line script at least)

lol @ camille paglia-referencing Cult review

xp

not that shocking that a future GBV bassist wouldn't be too into Loveless

2 Legit 2 Quit was, in fact, too legit

in 1991, iirc, rolling stone gave Nevermind three stars and Bandwagonesque one and a half

speaking of discovering Teenage Fanclub at 14:

https://twitter.com/Gibbstack/status/392157715293687808

close croup - rs gave nevermind 2 1/2 stars, the same grade they gave wowee zowie and in the aeroplane over the sea

I've always felt a special kinship with that Death Cab goof, at least since they stole our opening slot for the Jazz Butcher at the 40 Watt those many years ago.

I will spare you my defense of that goof, who I admit is a goof but also has many good qualities.

Everything about Death Cab makes me cringe hardcore EXCEPT for when I'm listening to their music

no, balls, wikipedia and a bunch of other places say three (I also remember because the joke in Bloomington, IN at the time was that John Strohm's band Antenna did a half star better on the same page) - rs still has Ira Robbins text but they bumped up the grade

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews/nevermind-19911128

superchunk's tossing seeds got **h though, as far as '90s guitar rock rs let slip under their "three stars means never having to say you're sorry" edict

that review coming from xhuxk!

tossing seeds, bandwagonesque, wowee zowee and telephono are the big indie/alt albums I can remember rs letting go below three (I must have stopped reading by the time of NMH). I think the Grifters' Ain't My Lookout might have gotten two stars (RS having raved about Crappin You Negative), but I can't find any evidence of what rating it got at all.

nothing wrong with Telephono getting two stars or less.

lotta chortling among my friends over that WZ review.

telephono's great! if they hadn't opened the album with their most shameless pixies imitation they wouldn't have been such easy targets for jerked knees, though.

What is telephono?

spoon's first album, when they were more wire-meets-nirvana than wire-meets-billy joel

their second album is where some folks realized that jagged post-punk pixies derivatives aren't something to balk at on principle, then they started finger-snapping and everyone got on board

I can tolerate Telephono more today. Soft Effects is where they got good for me.

pretty sure they retroactively called WZ the "essential" Pavement record or something in the Joe Levy era.

yeah the rs wz review admonished them for not going for the gold, making their move for the big time, or something right? spin's review was a pretty smart rave iirc.

WAIT - IS GM THE DARKNESS????

they actually kept their original rating for this one

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews/wowee-zowee-19980202

1995 and rolling stone is putting 'alternative' in scare quotes

WAIT - IS GM THE DARKNESS????

hey there

haha

Pavement's my fave band and I adore WZ, but I still think that RS review is a pretty fair description of the album. Guy just didn't appreciate it.

tossing seeds, bandwagonesque, wowee zowee and telephono are the big indie/alt albums I can remember rs letting go below three

used to joke that 2 1/2 was the indie-rock 4 stars. a lot of stuff would get docked just for being lo-fi.

huh, they have Pavement "Westing" at 3 1/2. I remember that being lower. who knows.

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews/westing-by-musket-and-sextant-19930902

I remember a lot of Pavement fans I knew really disliking WZ when it came out and coming around to it months or years later, so a **1/2 review upon release isn't surprising.

my theory about woweezowee is that they ran the wrong singles and buried the two would mega-smash hits (grave architecture, at&t) in the middle. not that i don't love rattled by the rush or ftasot

*would-be

SPIN's WZ review.

on which planet does "Grave Architecture" sound like a mega-smash, even would-be?

that would be the follow-up

actually they did right with releasing "Rattled by the Rush" first -- what else sounds like it might've grazed the Modern Rock Chart top fifteen? It's possible we overstated the impact of CR CR anyway. Can anyone vouch for hearing WZ singles on college or modern rock radio? Did fan reaction mirror critical puzzlement?

never saw videos/never heard it on radio

by contrast def caught Cut Your Hair on MTV on occasion

I bought WZ in spring '98 after their critical rep "recovered" with BTC but with no commensurate reappraisal of WZ; it sounded GREAT, and getting lost in it was precisely why I loved it.

WZ got upstaged by rise of Weezer iirc

ratlled by the rush, raattled by the rush v.s. whenever whenever whenever WHENEVER WHE NE NE NE NE NE NE NEVER HOO i feel fiiiiine

btw the SPIN issue I linked to also published a 5/10 review of The Bends....by xhuxk!

hah, nice

Bought WZ the day it came out (same with CR CR) and loved it instantly.

also loved it day one but i was an unabashed fanboy, actually wrote malkmus a letter asking for some record recommendations and advising 'grave architecture' be their next single ('rattled by the rush' was the definite lead single though as the producers of friends clearly recognized), he wrote back recommending a bunch of stuff i was pretty much familiar w/ - the fall, wire, "psonik youth" - though he did turn me on to harry nillsson's pussy cats. that spin review isn't as much of a rave as i remembered though tbh at the time 'sounds like on the beach and like flies on sherbert' would've read as 'better than cats!' to me.

advising 'grave architecture' be their next single

my man

yeah that is amazing

balls = hero

did you ask him whether "Rattled by the Rush" is about Limbaugh?

word is balls

haha i probably thought it was about football

that's awesome he wrote back.

idk how you think grave arch is an obvious single, tho, but that's ok

it would be a good single in the sense that it's their best song, but not in the other sense

♫graaaave *chik, boom chik* archi-tectchya♫

man grave architecture has always been my least fave track on WZ but it does have its fans

There's competition on that part of the album.

worst are probably the ones written by other dude

it's really the length, and its placement at the beginning of side 2 on cassette (right in front of at&t, AGGRESSIVELY in the way) that give it the crown for me

oh man -- I have no idea how my impressions might have changed if I'd bought it on tape.

didn't know until i sang it at karaoke that he saying 'guess - levi - guess - levi' during that bridge or whatever in at&t. tempted to make a facebook macro w/ 'the laps you swim from lunatics don't count'.

what does that mean?

i dont understand any of the lyrics on this album but i still love them?

there's karaoke machines with Pave on'em???

worst are probably the ones written by other dude

― flopson, Monday, October 21, 2013 3:59 PM (8 minutes ago)

Kennel District is one of Scott's best songs in the whole catalog!

Extradition -> Best Friend's Arm -> Grave Architecture is def WZ's weak point.

I guess some will hate me for this but I would be totally OK with cutting those three and making 'em b-sides. Then WZ is down to 15 tracks, it's even better and almost as good as CRCR/S+E.

Replace "Extradition" with "Give It a Day" and we can talk.

Give It a Day is an amazing song

i would maybe cut something from the first third actually? idk, always starts kind of slow, would perhaps ramp it up given the opportunity

i never got into crooked rain

ha I love Best Friend's Arm

I'd like to take a moment and appreciate that a whiney SPIN thread has become a prolonged discussion about the tracklisting of Wowee Zowee

<3

hmmm, moby, yes, system of a down? you don't like system of a down?

Skipping 336 messages at this point... Click here if you want to load them all.

pavement pavement pavement pavement pavement pavement

and not even an album on the poll

gonna vote ice cube just so that when poll results roll out someone will be like "ok WHO VOTED FOR ICE CUBE"

i never got into crooked rain

― flopson, Monday, October 21, 2013 7:23 PM (14 minutes ago)

o_0

I'd like to take a moment and appreciate that a whiney SPIN thread has become a prolonged discussion about the tracklisting of Wowee Zowee

― da croupier, Monday, October 21, 2013 4:28 PM (26 minutes ago)

He has been so wrong about Pavement for so many years it is only fair.

To be clear, I love Best Friend's Arm (and Extradition and G.A.) too ... I love all Pave songs like my own children (except Saganaw, which sucks) ... I just think WZ drags a tiny bit there. Although I will say I feel that way much more about Extradition/BFA than G.A.

When you see the words "half-baked" in that SPIN review, I mean, Extradition fits the bill.

Also, is inserting Give It A Day fair since, iirc, it was recorded after the WZ sessions?

It is on the reissue, but I don't know. It is a technicality, but it's a Pavement technicality, so it's cool.

Now if you want to talk about inserting Easily Fooled from the Rattled single, we can have that discussion. It would fit nicely between Father to a Sister of Thought and AT&T.

And yes, Give It A Day is an amazing song.

what's going to be the spin album of the year 2013 edition? i mean, let's be serious now, kanye could work.

4peat 4 Ye

Or Vampire Weekend?

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

As expected and deserved.

1990: Ice Cube - AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted 2

encouraging vigilante FPing once the identities of the two are established

19 of you wtf

manhunt on now for those 2 amerikka's most voters. Call in with tips. We can take these monsters down.

I didn't vote because I never actually listened to the Teenage Fanclub album to see if its actually worse tha. 'Slanted and Enchanted'

Maybe you should have listened to it for some other reason

gonna vote ice cube just so that when poll results roll out someone will be like "ok WHO VOTED FOR ICE CUBE"

― flopson, Monday, October 21, 2013 7:36 PM (3 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

19 of you are more or less ignorant as fuck.

you mean 19 ppl who voted for mpp should have voted for toxicity instead yes... i agree with that.

on the real though i really hope y'all are trying to suffer through blasting that garbage right now while stewing over the injustice

sleepingbag = worst poster itt btw

xp No I mean the 19 people who voted for Toxicity have more than likely never bothered listening to it.

good lord would you goth kids lighten up for once

'goth'

if fools can come in here acting like Pavement and TFC are the lols on this list, then I can vote for Toxicity w/o hearing it

I wanna play Toxicity right now

embed it into this thread so people can't open w/out hearing it

Toxicity > Slanted and Enchanted

I couldn't fathom having the comfortable teenhood and/or smug adulthood to have any opinion otherwise

leave it Jake, it's indietown

hm, yes, but how does that make you feel, whiney

god help us when whiney decides he can fathom smug adulthood

http://i.imgur.com/zi7hd.gif

was kid a the 'runner up' in 2000? i remember at the time wondering if it would end up like the fragile, much anticipated ambitious/difficult electronica gateway drug by altrock act that nobody would bother to listen to in a year or so. i can remember that issue of spin, w/ the airbrushed glamour photos of the band, was when i first realized that all my indier than thou friends who gave me shit for liking u2 were somehow HUGE radiohead fans. in retrospect something like arcade fire was inevitable.

yeah it was

They actually fucked up a half-decent list with those Your Hard Drive antics.

1. Your Hard Drive
2. Radiohead - Kid A
3. Eminem - The Marshall Mathers LP
4. D'Angelo - Voodoo
5. At The Drive-In - Relationship Of Command
6. Outkast - Stankonia
7. PJ Harvey - Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea
8. Queens Of The Stone Age - Rated R
9. Armand Van Helden - Killing Puritans
10. Le Tigre – Le Tigre
11. Ghostface Killah - Supreme Clientele
12. Aimee Mann – Magnolia: Music From The Motion Picture
13. Sigur Rós - Ágætis Byrjun
14. Capleton - More Fire
15. Shelby Lynne - I Am Shelby Lynne
16. Mouse On Mars - Niun Nigging
17. Quasimoto - The Unseen
18. Madonna - Music
19. Coldplay – Parachutes
20. U2 - All That You Can't Leave Behind

'yr hard drive' was and still is a bad joke but spin does deserve some credit for recognizing (before anyone else really beyond maybe some the future is now slobs at wired or whatever) that the way ppl were going to acquire and listen to music was going to radically change. kid a fell right on that cusp, the first album i can really remember ppl downloading before its actual release and the last album i can remember ppl hanging around the record store to listen to if the promo was playing on the stereo before its release.

lol whiney

'yr hard drive' was and still is a bad joke but spin does deserve some credit for recognizing (before anyone else really beyond maybe some the future is now slobs at wired or whatever) that the way ppl were going to acquire and listen to music was going to radically change.

― balls, Sunday, November 17, 2013 12:27 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Well, that's certainly true! But I think why "Your Hard Drive" was ultimately wrong was that the majority of music listeners clearly weren't 100% ready to say that their individual tastes and curatorial skills didn't need some sort of mediator like SPIN or Pitchfork or RS or AP or w/e. Pitchfork's hilarious, slobbering, incomprehensible Kid A review was a watershed moment because it validated the opinions of alt-rock listeners at this cusp — i.e., they still felt they "needed" an arbiter like SPIN or Pitchfork to echo their approval and then push them towards more things: See also, the early roster of Vice Records, Pitchfork's Arcade Fire review, the rise of music blogs like Fluxblog and GvsB, FADER covers circa 2005-2008, etc

I think by the time P4k bought all the competition for Altered Zones and then deaded thier individual "influence" as grassroots tatsemakers by shuttering its doors, most people by 2010-2011 were like "Thanks we can do this on our own: My Hard Drive is better than you can tell me, thanks," which is why no seems to notice or cars any more when Best New Music is bestowed on some band like Mutual Benefit ot Foxygen or Dirty Beaches or Baths.

"Your Hard Drive" finally realizing it's assumed goal as a popular opinion/consensus tool/"I can make the Best Record of the year, not what you tell me" tool is really a 2009/2010/2011 phenomenon

yeah i'll agree w/ that though that's why it was prescient in 2000, by the time time magazine made 'you' man of the year it was kinda 'no shit grandpa'. think the decline of pitchfork influence is in some ways a deliberate move by them, away from hip toward authoritative/establishment ie rolling stone 1968 vs rolling stone 1988. it had more influence in 2003 but it's making more ad revenue now. i know ppl who use bnm as a filter but it's not the discussion setter or whatever it was once nor is pfork in general (and it's not a case of it having been supplanted by something else). we're a long way from something like clap yr hands or black kids and it's kinda unlikely it happens again, at least w/ an act that unestablished. think also there was a increasing awareness that pfork in general hasn't been healthy for indie, that it's been a far more hegemonic influence than college radio ever was, and maybe some ppl turned away from it or stopped taking the bait (this could be some 'i wish' on my part though). where the real diminishing of curation/mediation has occurred has been w/ the decline of record stores imo, esp on the indie level. ppl still desire this mediation, they just want it in a more personally tailored form than rock crit outlets or radio can give them. if spotify could come up w/ an algorithm as effective as netflix's instead of the confused robot fumbling thru allmusic.com they have now it could make their service much more effective and necessary for their customers.

sleepingbag = worst poster itt btw

― Lesbian has fucking riffs for days (Neanderthal), Sunday, November 17, 2013 11:49 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

Oh the ironing

whiney otm

actually was recently missing hipster mp3 blogs

I think discobelle still updates

when Best New Music is bestowed on some band like Mutual Benefit ot Foxygen or Dirty Beaches or Baths.

Surely three out of four of these band names are made up

ppl still desire this mediation, they just want it in a more personally tailored form than rock crit outlets or radio can give them. if spotify could come up w/ an algorithm as effective as netflix's instead of the confused robot fumbling thru allmusic.com they have now it could make their service much more effective and necessary for their customers.

depressing but otm

...the rise of music blogs like Fluxblog and GvsB

If by "rise" you mean a tiny handful of people started reading these, then yes, they did indeed rise.

Only a tiny handful of people read Fluxblog but every single one of them later went on to post as 'Position Position' on ILM

I mean, despite how small their audiences were, for a while they were considered "tastemakers" by the people who write profiles on people who are supposed to be tastemakers, and the latter even wrangled an A&R deal at some major label out of it i think

I mean, the amount of people who read pitchfork is incredibly small compared to like, actual websites on the internet

would like to read a piece on the various music taste algorithms and the assumptions that go into them. i can remember when sleigh bells were first breaking, when the name and some mp3's were out there but the album wasn't out yet, creating sleigh bells station on pandora and slacker radio, both apps had the act in their system but no actual music by the act (and presumably not a ton of user data related to the act yet)(hipster joke). the pandora sleigh bells station was all nu metal, stuff that matched pretty well w/ the sound of sleigh bells (on paper at least) but not really what the sleigh bells demo listens to. the slacker station was general indie, stuff like vampire weekend or whatever that didn't sound remotely like sleigh bells but was probably the kind of crap ppl creating a sleigh bells station would want to listen to. obv sleigh bells pre-release is a rare case and eventually (and pretty quickly most likely) you'd have enough user data to tell you 'ok ppl that want a sleigh bells station want this' and i'm curious what a pandora sleigh bells station is like now but but there are times where the wisdom of the crowd doesn't exist yet, algorithms are useless, and bullshit top down mediation is useful.

god remember when perp had that rant about someone writing npr was a 'tastemaker', blowing up (heh) that npr wasn't a tastemaker, HE WAS A TASTEMAKER.

i wonder if 2009-era pitchfork will be the last thing percieved as a "cool mediator" that indie ppl will ever have. It's funny now to watch all the indie sites tripping over things like Lana Del Rey and Haim and Icona Pop that clearly don't need their help at all

i had no idea haim were supposed to be indie at all until all the kvetching. i guess if you kept everything else the same and replaced the singer w/ a white guy w/ a thin voice boom obv indie. that reminds me of something from last night - how is haim pronounced? i've been pronouncing it like corey haim but on snl last night i swear they said the musical guest next week would be 'hy-em'.

That's correct

lol, so it's actually pronounced as in "if you go to tel aviv, you should meet my cousin, haim"

― i've a cozy little flat in what is known as old man hat (Hurting 2), Thursday, March 28, 2013 5:01 PM (7 months ago) Bookmark

One of those posts that floats into my mind from time to time

Think it's because I don't have a cousin in Tel Aviv named Haim

But I wish I did

speaking of decline of mediators has anyone observed a decline of college radio where they are? in town here for the longest time getting a slot on wuog was ridiculously desired and something you had to work for, now there's so little interest from the student body the station is barely ever actually on the air they have such difficulty staffing it. trend or just something else i can hang on cobb county?

I mean, despite how small their audiences were, for a while they were considered "tastemakers" by the people who write profiles on people who are supposed to be tastemakers

Yeah, absolutely. But ultimately they weren't correct about that. Nothing got big as a result of a Fluxblog post. Except maybe Perp's ego.

my alma mater's station is now robot-staffed overnight. seems kinda lifeless.

"now there's so little interest from the student body the station is barely ever actually on the air they have such difficulty staffing it. trend or just something else i can hang on cobb county?"

this was not my experience when I was at (a major state) college. the interest meeting filled an entire classroom.

2013 aoty: the cloud

Our college radio station (of which I'm the adviser and assistant director) held its first general meeting Friday afternoon: forty students, the classroom filled to capacity. We have problems getting funds from SGA because so many of our costs (tower rental) are fixed and not enough underwriting, plus Miami is a saturated market. But we live.

long term trends not good for non-satellite radio, period, but college media lag behind the times by about three to five years.

i have an overnight show at my college station. slots are pretty hard to get because it's also/mostly a community station and people hold onto their slots forever. the other english college station has overnight robo-dj and is on the AM dial. don't think it was ever wildly popular though, and it's relatively new (under 20 years)

KCOU at the U. of Mo. where I was program director in the late '90s hit a rough patch in the '00s and was Internet-only for a while, which I thought was the beginning of the end for them. but now they have a fancy new studio and I think are back on broadcast as well as web so I guess it really was just because of a dorm renovation. a few years ago some friends were in Columbia MO and complained about pre-recorded shows on the overnights so I think they did go through some of that but it doesn't seem like a permanent or fatal lack of interest.

extra relevant to a Spin thread because I still remember reading the issue that they produced in Columbia. (at the time that came out I was in high school in St. Louis)

I wish my college's student station (U of Illinois) was even half as adventurous as other student run stations, instead they always settled for being Q101's kid brother. I remember attending the (super packed) interest meeting, but we were told that unless you were a media major you weren't ever going to get any slot, let alone anything on-air (the waiting list was HUGE). Anyway, I dated a girl for a short time that did the late night slot from 2:00 am to 6:00 am and, even then, her playlist was pretty strictly controlled. Though this was back in the late 90s and a lot might have changed since then. Thankfully Champaign-Urbana had a completely separate community station that picked up the slack and actually played interesting stuff.

still have two of them! and a third is starting, although internet only

boston college has an fm and am station and i have a show every tuesday on the fm station and it's pretty awesome. boston is probably an outlier in that it has a lot of college stations on the fm dial still—emerson's is very commercial, harvard's and mit's and bc's less so.

oh ILM never change

maura i will have to listen to your show! also, i feel like BC radio plays like 80% leftield electronic music? i don't always like it but i also kind of appreciate that there is an FM station that plays that much experimental stuff.

also tufts has an fm station too but i can't pick it up anywhere south of the charles

kxlu (loyola marymount in L.A.) is really great. my college radio station was shit, basically candlebox and matchbox 20 made up 25% of the playlist.