Best Album on OUR Favourite Albums of......1991

Mike has the bubbling under list.

LFO for me

Laughing Stock. A boring no brainer.

Ask the Ages but, damn, what a year.

gonna vote for leatherface just bc who else is going to

Can't not vote for Loveless.

1991 was an incredible year for death metal, all of which was left out… yet Metallica's s/t somehow made the cut.

Asphyx - The Rack
Atheist - Unquestionable Presence
Autopsy - Mental Funeral
Carcass - Necroticism – Descanting the Insalubrious
Death - Human
Dismember - Like an Ever Flowing Stream
Immolation - Dawn of Possession
Morbid Angel - Blessed Are the Sick
Paradise Lost - Gothic
Suffocation - Effigy of the Forgotten

Death - Human

would've voted for this

This is clearly The Low End Theory

I didn't get into My Bloody Valentine until later in the decade, in 1991 it was The Wedding Present all the way.

Carcass, Morbid Angel or Death off the death metal list.

Probably COC off the main list. Or Blue Lines. Or Laughing Stock. Or Ask the Ages. Or Spiderland!

Shit, great year.

MBV is going to walk this

I'd be letting down teenage me if I didnt vote Nevermind though

This would have been Badmotorfinger vs Out of Time for 12yo me in 1991.

An utter embarrassment of riches but Screamadelica narrowly beating The White Room for me

An utter embarrassment of riches but Screamadelica narrowly beating The White Room for me

An utter embarrassment of riches but Screamadelica narrowly beating The White Room for me

Oops triple post

but only one vote

Tempted to vote for Weld as it was a mindblowing intro to Neil Young & CH for me.

1991 was a better music year than I remember. Have to respect my 1991 self and vote Gish.

I'm being a rockist dork and voting for Girlfriend. The composition and playing on that album is amazingly tight, it features some of Lloyd and Quine's best-ever guitar work, and there's not a bad song on it.

Loveless is my brave and controversial pick.

Yerself Is Steam :)

I feel the same way about Weld, although I haven't owned a copy for ages. xxxxps

Not sure there will be much blue sky between Loveless and Laughing Stock.

AMC's Everclear for me, which isn't on the list. Otherwise pretty easily Loveless.

oh it is on the list, dumb me

Unreservedly love Nevermind, KLF, Blue Lines, Loveless, Bandwagonesque, ATCQ, Wedding Present and REM. But this will come down to the impossible choice between Foxbase Alpha and Trompe Le Monde. The latter was my favourite album at the time and instantly transports me back to scenes of jumping around to it in my room and neighbours complaining; I didn't discover the former until a few years later, so I associate it more with the mid-90s if anything, though it mostly has a 'timeless' quality for me (also in the sense that I'm almost never not in the mood to play it).

hard choice between Ghost and Foxbase Alpha..

Achtung Baby, and I’m not even a big U2 guy.

Ask The Ages, without a moment's hesitation. One of the great albums of the decade.

Honourable mentions:

Babes In Toyland - To Mother
Consolidated - Friendly Fascism
Entombed - Clandestine
Prong - Prove You Wrong
Solitude Aeturnus - Into the Depths of Sorrow
Urge Overkil - Supersonic Storybook
Throwing Muses – The Real Ramona
The Fall - Shift Work
Spacemen 3 - Recurring
Son of Bazerk – Bazerk Bazerk Bazerk
Slowdive – Just for a day
PM Dawn – Of the heart, of the soul and of the cross: the utopian experience
Main Source – Breaking Atoms
NWA – Efli4zaggin
Guns n’Roses – Use You Illusions I & II
De La Soul - De La Soul Is Dead
Electronic - s/t
Billy Bragg – Don’t try This at home

and all the death metal, of course

Ultramarine is the one I go back to most often, though Foxbase Alpha is right behind it.

Everclear

This year means so much to me and so many of these records are massive personal favourites. It's really all so rich. But for personal reasons (and because it's the best album) I have to punt on Trompe Le Monde. It's the Pixies best album and one that I play endlessly even now. It's my go to drunk dancing by myself record. It's gorgeous front to back and it rocks hard as hell. When it wants to.

Separately from that, I really have a fetish for -rock bands last albums when it's clear its over- this is a great example.

Didn't it get mixed reviews at the time? Its probably my fave Pixies album these days tbh

the one vote for bandwagonesque

1991 me would be Nevermind so in the end I decided I'd vote for the 18yo me whose life was changed by it.

I do hope LFO gets a vote though as 19yo me loved it when he finally heard it.

btw mike and I had to leave out a lot of other personal favourites.

We thought about doing a poll each but instead we compromised.

1992 is going to be even harder by the looks of things

yep

A Tribe Called Quest is not getting the respect they deserve in this thread

you dont know they aren't getting lurker votes though

relistened to Ultraworld last week and I'm surprised by how well it's held up

I assumed Tribe will will tbh (and uh entered an essentially contrarian/joek vote myself)

will WIN

I love The Low-End Theory

there are at least a few great Sonny Sharrock albums I think but Ask the Ages may be his best

both of the first two Cypress Hill albums are great imo

its tough cutting albums

midnight marauders >>>>>> the low end theory

Incredible year. Nobody's gonna vote for it on this list, including me, but Peggy Suicide is absolute genius.

Blimey : U2, Orb, KLF, Julian Cope, Public Enemy, Swans, LFO, Massive Attack, Orbital.
Each and every one of those is a classic album in my world (and still get listened to on a regular basis).

I like Loveless but it has settled into being one of those Important albums that I rarely feel the need to listen to anymore (Nevermind is another).

i bet nevermind is the one everyone thinks others will vote for and nobody does

I voted for it so I'll be the guy you all point at.

For me Talk Talk is no question, Tribe up there, Nirvana, Massive Attack, REM, Slint, Pumpkins, MBV, Sharrock, St. Etienne are all very good. Big improvement from the 1990 list.

midnight marauders >>>>>> the low end theory

This says absolutely nothing about whether The Low End Theory is better than the other albums on this list

Peggy Suicide is good but like The Low End Theory I much prefer the one after too

the best year in rock music i'd say. very hard to chose between adventures beyond the ultraworld, bandwagonesque, gish, goat,laughing stock, loveless, nevermind and sreamadelica. in 1991 out of time was my fave i think but god did that album got destroyed by over exposure.

trompe le monde

Remember when Black Francis said Trompe Le Monde was going to be their heavy metal album? I wonder if that put critics off at the time?

I remember thinking at the time that the only songs on Trompe Le Monde I actually cared about where "Planet of Sound" and "Alec Eiffel"; there is no way I'd ever say it was better than Doolittle or Surfer Rosa

(Actually I think the problem is that I hate "The Sad Punk" so much that I never make it to the rest of the album)

"When I get down, I give what go around
And when I cough, I do my best to cut off
Don't claim to be a teacher, not known to be a preacher
But I'm grown
I try to be a man on my own
Never could follow a man with a bottle
He's a baby with a beard; not a feared role model
They ask me where I get it, I got it from my pops
Put a man in the house and all the bullshit stops
And I sing a song about what the hell is going wrong
You never know if you only trust the TV and the radio
These days, you never know who's in cahoots
`Cuz now the KKK wears three piece suits"

The fact that I can type that from memory without actually having heard the record in well over a decade is proof enough for me who the clear winner is.

I went with Blue Lines over The Low End Theory. The remixes were a crucial part of the equation.

Some other big albums I remember from this year: Luther Vandross’s Power Of Love, Jodeci’s Forever My Lady, and Sezen Aksu’s Gülümse.

I just cannot even comprehend how someone could hate The Sad Punk. It's fucking awesome. I might listen to it now.

xxxxp I really haven't experienced Loveless as inconsistent, I have listened to it straight through with more satisfaction than with almost any other album

"The Sad Punk" always sounded like meandering self-indulgent nonsense to me.

Can't not vote for Loveless.

― Uptown VONC (Le Bateau Ivre), Wednesday, July 3, 2019 8:42 AM (two days ago)

^^ yeah I mean, come on. this is a strong list but only one of the choices is the best album of the 90s

apologies to spiderland, the low end theory, death certificate, laughing stock, no pocky for kitty

I'm sure the nirvana and pearl jam albums are great but I guess this is the time where I admit I have never really even listened to grunge

The tinny, mangled sound of 'Loveless' has kep me at some distance for 20-odd years. Which always confused me as it's held as a paragon of incredible production. Ultimately I've ended up preferring MBV from before and after 'Loveless'.

doesn't sound tinny to me at all, mangled yes but that is one of its amazing features

Talk Talk but no Rain Tree Crow makes me sad.

Gonna toss this one to Cope so he doesn't get shut out though.

low end theory by a very small margin over ask the ages

everything else is just not even close

I love Loveless but I'm one of those weirdos who prefers Isn't Anything.
Truth be told, I listen to mbv more than Loveless and might even prefer it.

The tinny, mangled sound of 'Loveless' has kep me at some distance for 20-odd years. Which always confused me as it's held as a paragon of incredible production.

What sometimes gets lost in critical discussion is that the production is incredible in that it makes an artistic statement out of exploring the possibilities of what is usually thought of as shitty sound:

"The sound that we were going for was more like the sound that we were hearing all the time, which was either hearing music through ghetto blasters or cheap record players or small gigs coming through Bose PA systems. All very boxy-sounding and meshed in.”

they made it sound way better than "music through ghetto blasters or cheap record players or small gigs coming through Bose PA systems" in my opinion

Definitely. But you get a loss of spatial clarity, frequency, and dynamic range from those sources, with a lot of crowded midrange, which your average engineer would try to avoid: Shields went all-out in embracing this and exploring the psychedelic extremes to which you can take boxy, murky sound. The tinny, mangled sound is the whole point, in a way, which might throw someone off if they're coming to it expecting "incredible production".

"and frequency and dynamic range"

that's a great description

My biggest gripe is with the songwriting rather than the production, which does exactly what it needs to do (well, except for the drums – that'll never quite cut it): I'm invariably tempted to skip 'When You Sleep', 'Come in Alone', 'Blown a Wish' and especially 'What You Want'. Everything else is fine, although I prefer m b v.

I'm invariably tempted to skip 'When You Sleep'

They do write pop songs despite the textural guitar coating so I think it's fair to also judge them on that basis. As it so happens, some melodies click with me more than others (the less saccharine ones, usually, but my tolerance for twee is exceptionally low).

I can't believe I'm the first to rep for Goat.

Goat is incredible but this is 1991.

talk talk

I can't believe I'm the first to rep for Goat.

Sorry, must have scrolled past without noticing.

goat is my runner-up

Electronic's debut is all time.

tons of great stuff, voted for The Orb, would have voted for Shift-Work as it's possibly my favorite Fall album

Left to my own devices, I would have definitely submitted Shift-Work. It was the first Fall album I ever heard. Its their poppiest, "edinburgh man" is such a lovely song and coming from The Fall that makes it even more sweeter.

I've still never heard Slint! Which given the amount of words I read about them in the 90s...

then it's time you did

you should listen to "spiderland", its well creepy

deciding what to leave out for 92 poll is hard

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

The Jesus Lizard - Goat, 1
Pearl Jam - Ten 1
Soundgarden - Badmotorfinger , 1
KLF - The White Room 1
Fudge Tunnel - Hate Songs In E-Minor 1

I thought they would get more than 1 vote each tbh

Best Album on OUR Favourite Albums of......1992