Acclaimed Music Top 30 Albums from 1996 poll

and we are back!

All these years later and it's still Sinister and Tigermilk as #1 and #2 for me.

I like more music from earlier years, but this list is probably a better representation of stuff that I like from that year. Really surprised at Tortoise so high up. Could vote for that, though that would mostly be a vote for Djed. But Beautiful Freak was the first cd I bought - four years later - so I might vote for that out of nostalgia. And also, it's a really good record.

STITI

New Adventures In Hi-Fi

Everything Must Go is one of my favorite-sounding rock records ever, might have to throw it a vote

lol sublime

I didn't even vote in the 1995 poll, but it's a tough choice between seven in this one.

This is around the time I kind of stopped keeping up with current popular music for a while. I guess maybe Dr. Octagon, followed by Sterolab.

i think this is around the time i saw Stereolab live when i was living in San Francisco and it was insanely good for a band that i didn't know.

I didn't figure I'd give much of a shit about the '96 poll but I apparently give a whole bunch of shits. Damn.

tricky over ebtg, stereolab, tortoise

gotta go Second Toughest, it's definitely held up the best to me

very happy to see balls back, you WERE missed!

This was a great year but it's Emperor Tomato Ketchup by a mile for me. One the most perfect albums ever.

Some amazing records on this list but I knew immediately I was voting for Odelay. This was one of my favorite years for music, period.

Endtroducing quite easily for me.

Is there anything on the entirety of these 90s lists as embarrassingly unworthy as Sublime?

I remember Everything Must Go being the first CD my sister played on a brand new stereo and we were like, wow, this is the album for testing new stereos with.

voted If You're Feeling Sinister

Pretty sure Call the Doctor is the only one of these I've listened to in the last couple years, so that.

Emperor Tomato Ketchup vs If You're Feeling Sinister. Played both to death. Gonna go with Sinister.

Being true to my 1996 self, it has to be Being There.

No Luna Penthouse, no credibility!!!

how much did b&s really break in 86? feels like more of a 97 thing to me but i might've just caught on late.

2Pac over Jay-Z

Sinister over Endtroducing, but I haven't heard a lot of these albums.

This is when the decade started to tail-off (right as I entered HS and got into music, what luck...), though Sinister is pleasant enough and I still play it pretty often, so there.

yeah feels like a significant downturn in 'WOAH WOW!' quality albums in this list compared to the last two. I went for Richard D James, followed by Sinister followed by Endtroducing - but I'm p sure I would discover these a bit later.
For me at the time (only 15 / 16 but nevertheless), it felt like a lot of the more exciting developments that had been happening in UK alternative music were starting to dissipate.
Britpop had become a household name, a commodity and thus a punchline as opposed to something kids were willing to get behind; and it was felt in the music. Blur and Oasis had released big underwhelming follow-ups to their breakthrough albums only the year before and suddenly we were deluged with terrible third-rate indie dreck that amped up the pomp of Britpop but lacked the songs.
There was also this emergent strain of middling British rock music that seemed to feed off grunge's enduring appeal to UK teens - (we were still very much in thrall to Pearl Jam, Alice In Chains, Nirvana etc..), so Garbage, Three Colours Red, Reef, Ash, Skunk Anansie, Placebo, Terrorvision etc all seemed to be put there to feed off that craze, but somehow came off as a plasticky, watered down version of the 90s US bands with optional eyeliner. Most of these bands just make me think of Chris Evans and TFI Friday now.
Speaking of eyeliner, a huge huge amount of people my age were into Marilyn Manson, of whom I never really understood the appeal.
A lot of good one-off hits though. Always liked 'Your Woman' and 'Novocaine for the Soul' for example.

Endtroducing, Feeling Sinister, Second Toughest, Millions Now Living, Richard D James, New Adventures, Dust, Being There - all really good records that I still really enjoy.

Where the fucks is In Sides by Orbital though?

Some days New Adventures is my favourite REM. I bought Dust when it came out and was underwhelmed by how acousticky and song-y it was (where's the rawk?!) but it grew on me loads over the years. I still think Standards is the most enjoyable Tortoise album for some reason.

And yes, In Sides is a total oversight. It would be my number one.

voting for Beautiful Freak cause it's the very first 'indie' record I ever bought. A man has got to give Mr. E some credit for that. :)

Yeah more of a mixed bag than the previous two years but still some classics here - Aenima (my vote), New Adventures in Hi-Fi, If You're Feeling Sinister, Reasonable Doubt, Second Toughest, Endtroducing, Richard D. James... Most glaring omission for me is The Afghan Whigs' Black Love

Some great stuff here - Shadow, Dr Octagon, Underworld... Might throw Sepultura a vote though.

Anything but Belle and Fucking Sebastian, really.

Outkast at #35 seems low. I went with Aenima.

1996 was a good year for music, but 1997 was when the mother lode of fantastic records came out.

first of these polls where i was sort of paying attention when the albums came out! i have to go with RDJ, just because i spent so much time listening to it on a riding lawnmower with huge headphones, dodging murderous birds.

that sounds like the perfect music/real life sync-up

yeah, there was something delightfully absurd about trying to figure out what the lyrics on "milkman" (from the american version) were supposed to mean while wearing really baggy 1996 middle school jeans and accidentally running over saplings and going through puberty and being mad at my dad

this poll also reminded that i was really into the eels in the late 90s! eels haven't aged so well, i'm afraid

Though I love a few records listed here (the DJ Shadow which I voted for, yes, but also the Wilco and the 2 B&Ss), 1996 is sort of the year where my own tastes started to fragment from both the popular and critical spheres. Three of my all time favourite albums were released that year--Too Much Joy's Finally, The Loud Family's Interbabe Concern and Aimee Mann's I'm With Stupid--but none of those were really being championed by anyone, except for the Aimee, which didn't even make the list.

Also, while I admittedly never gave a shit about Weezer either then or now, I thought the whole line on Pinkerton was that it was trashed/ignored at the time and only gained cult status in the years that followed?

A cursory glance at albums from '96 turned up a ton of voteworthy stuff not featured here (I might've opted for the first on the list if it were a poll option):

Cibo Matto - Viva! La Woman
Tori Amos - Boys For Pele
Neutral Milk Hotel - On Avery Island
Superdrag - Regretfully Yours
GBV - Under The Bushes, Under The Stars
Cocteau Twins - Milk and Kisses
Veruca Salt - Blow It Out Your Ass, It's Veruca Salt
Tricky - Nearly God
The Raincoats - Looking In The Shadow
Gastr Del Sol - Upgrade and Afterlife
Olivia Tremor Control - Dusk At Cubist Castle
The Cardigans - First Band On The Moon
Sebadoh - Harmacy
Suede - Coming Up
Lisa Germano - Excerpts From A Love Circus
Mazzy Star - Among My Swan
Luscious Jackson - Fever In, Fever Out
Orbital - In Sides

REM is probably going to get my vote, but some of these albums (Tricky, Tortoise, Aphex Twin, some of the stuff I just listed) kicked off formative shifts in my musical interests (also pretty sure '96 was when I first heard Captain Beefheart and Oval).

I would have considered voting for Dusk at Cubist Castle.

Standards is probably my most-enjoyed/listened Tortoise album, too, actually.

1996 also felt like the year my tastes begin to really form.

Tori Amos - Boys For Pele
GBV - Under The Bushes, Under The Stars
Olivia Tremor Control - Dusk At Cubist Castle

These would be high up on my own list too.

Not enough Fountains of Wayne debut s/t in this thread

this poll also reminded that i was really into the eels in the late 90s! eels haven't aged so well, i'm afraid

― 1992 ball boy (Karl Malone), 6. august 2015 15:35 (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Have been listening to them on spotify today, and I'd say it holds up. A song like Flower is so incredibly over the top in it's sentiment, both ironic but also completely straight, that it could have been written by David Foster Wallace. A bit too much post-grunge on Beautiful Freak, perhaps, and also, that title alone... But Electro-Shock Blues is a masterpiece, imo, and I hope to be voting for it in two polls time.

Just checked, ESB is #38 in 98. :(

l Eyez on Me

I would've voted In Sides no question if it was here, but there are plenty of albums I like-to-love here.

Saw Eels live last year - a friend was going, I thought it would be a fun 90s nostalgia trip. Didn't even realise they had 15 years of stuff I didn't know to play.

1996 was a good year for music, but 1997 was when the mother lode of fantastic records came out.

― kornrulez6969, Thursday, August 6, 2015 1:08 PM (9 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

...and OK Computer will still win.

I would have thought its stock had fallen some by now (I definitely haven't listened to it anytime this decade, and possibly not even the decade prior) but after seein the sweep for The Bends...

Incredibly, it's rated the best album of ALL TIME on rateyourmusic.com.

Yeah, that's right - above Dark Side Of The Moon, every Beatles album, Pet Sounds etc. etc.

This is tough cos ETK is one of my top Stereolab records (and the first one i heard) and Pinkerton is still really good for what it is. But I have so many good memories of listening to "Odelay" riding shotgun in my friend's car out in the country on the way to get pizza in summertime and "Where It's At" turned me on to sp many things including Kraftwerk and Devo gotta go w that.

Years ago I compiled a CD made of songs sampled on "Odelay" and even THAT was an amazing album.

I can't listen to Pinkerton at all these days. The older I get, the less I become its target audience.

Yeah last time it was w a friend who also grew up w it. Imagine it would be kind of embarrassing to listen to w someone who wasn't already sold on it.

I used to rate it highly and listen to it a lot in my teens, but these days I find it hard to get through it without wincing!

Outkast at #35 seems low. I went with Aenima.

― jmm, Thursday, August 6, 2015 4:57 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

mainstream crits didn't give them any attention at all until Aquemini

I'm going to vote for Coming Up here, though Bernard Butler left the band this album was/is really damn good. It maybe the B-sides that really stand out or par for the course for Suede.

here are the next 15:

31 Pearl Jam - No Code
32 Orbital - In Sides
33 Social Distortion - White Light, White Heat, White Trash
34 Ani DiFranco - Dilate
35 OutKast - ATLiens
36 Patti Smith - Gone Again
37 The Olivia Tremor Control - Music from the Unrealized Film Script, Dusk at Cubist Castle
38 The Divine Comedy - Casanova
39 Super Furry Animals - Fuzzy Logic
40 Maxwell - Maxwell's Urban Hang Suite
41 Nirvana - From the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah
42 Lambchop - How I Quit Smoking
43 Rage Against the Machine - Evil Empire
44 Modest Mouse - This Is a Long Drive for Someone with Nothing to Think About
45 Spice Girls - Spice
46 Beth Orton - Trailer Park

i would probably pick SFA out of that bunch...

From that next batch, definitely Lambchop.

Where are the competing drum n bass comps of 1996, Platinum Breakz and Logical Progression? Hmm, there's an idea for a poll.

Also I never miss an opportunity to mention Possum Dixon's Star Maps.

Possum Dixon - Star Maps

From that next batch, I'd choose Orbital over SFA easily.

atliens easy out of that bunch

olivias and sfa runnersup

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Not that ILM polls mean anything to me but I voted Tigermilk. I could of gone with their other album as well

Props to eephus!

No Code was a good important album from my time.

write-in vote for In Sides

cool that Dusk At Cubist Castle was 37!

at the time it would have been a no brainer: Coming Up.

now, I'm split between Endtroducing and Sinister, Reasonable Doubt a close 3rd... going with Endtroducing since it's more impressive though Sinister is a lot more pleasant to listen to

Endtroducing sounds kinda boring to me nowadays.

Being a Southern Californian, I had to vote for Beck.

finally decided on Tricky

I got really into Murder Ballads last year through a friend of mine and it oddly soothes the fits of murderous rage I encounter while working in the service industry.

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

B&S*

*(the ampersand is silent)

we should do a Belle and Sebastian poll, as there are a lot of fans on ILX and i could get to know them better. only know two albums and a few singles.

The first two albums are good, though I never cared much for much of what came after. I wouldn't say Tigermilk or If You're Feeling Sinister were BEST OF THE YEAR worthy, though, especially 19 years later.

I really like all of the top 10 (except Ash, to which I've never really been exposed), so I'm pretty happy with the results.

I didn't hear Sinister until about 2003, after years of assuming they were a shitty twee band, and I was pleasantly surprised to find I really enjoyed it when I finally got a copy. I would vote in a B+S poll although, like the Spoon poll, my ballot wouldn't be heavily weighted with early or obscure stuff. Dear Catastrophe Waitress and The Life Pursuit are both excellent albums.

Yeah, that's a tie I can live with.

I would also vote in a B&S poll, though my fandom does contain some weird blind spots (never got Dear Catastrophe Waitress, most glaringly). The Life Pursuit is actually my favourite of their albums, though without looking ahead, I have a feeling it didn't make its year's Top 30.

great tie

https://d2npbuaakacvlz.cloudfront.net/images/uploaded/large-present/2012/10/27/excellent-rubber-duck-tie-1351365771.JPG

Dear Catastrophe Waitress is definitely one of B&S's strongest and most underrated albums. I'd say it shares top billing with Sinister.

Catastrophe Waitress was the first B&S I heard - and still amongst my faves

I named my balls Belle & Sebastian.

Totally missed that High Llamas' Hawaii was this year. So good.

Brainwashed.com ran a Best of 1996 poll this year. Here are the results.

Their readers are all Hidden Reverse weirdos, which is cool, but there's no Sing To God anywhere, which isn't