The first of a series of articles tracing my musical journey. Why 1994? I was 17, an impressionable age and fully grown out of my Michael Bolton phase….
https://www.spin.com/2014/08/100-best-alternative-rock-songs-1994-alt/
Oasis – Fade Away 1994… when summers were hot and lasted forever! When Oasis’ Definitely Maybe was released, my friends and I put it on and something happened – Rock n’ Roll Star starts to play, we smiled at each other. We all knew this was going to be special.
What did it mean in 1994? It meant SO much. Finally we had an album that we didn’t need to hide behind. It went straight to number one in the UK album charts and was the fastest selling debut album of all time in the UK, 7 times platinum. This album validated our scene, our music, our clothes, our clubs, and our choices. The cassette didn’t leave my stereo (or my older friends’ cars) for that whole summer.]
It pairs rousing guitars with light hearted optimism which is exactly what we needed after the onslaught of grunge and its theme of isolation and depression. A theme that had us shaving our heads, making very questionable wardrobe choices and worrying our parents!
Liam was bold and confident; he reminded us that a frontman can be funny and cheeky and boy – did we need that (see above re grunge…) Cigarettes and Alcohol was my first experience of an anthem (I had just turned 15) which makes you sing your heart out with all your mates smiling from ear to ear, loving every minute – “You’ve got to make it happen, you’ve got to make it haaaaaapeeen”!
The Gallagher brothers also showed a softer, more serious side with tracks like ‘Slide Away’ and ‘Married With Children’. They highlight the trials and tribulations of relationships which we’ve all grown up to understand at a deeper level. “And it will be nice to be alone for a week or two, but I know I’ll be right back here with you.” Lisa Kenlock
R.E.M. – What’s the Frequency, Kenneth? Consider the music video… Just like the record, it’s very ridiculous and kind of pointless and all about its own ridiculousness and pointlessness, something “cool” that also deliberately indicates the quotation marks hovering around “cool.” pitchfork
Underworld – Mmm… Skyscraper I Love You Dubnobass’s nine tracks were square pegs that obliterated the holes. It took in so many influences, smashed them up and glued them back together with a 4/4 beat. If you take a look at some of the other albums celebrating their second decade, very few sound as contemporary, or have as much of an influence on current music. thelineofbestfit
Pavement – Gold Soundz It’s got that slightly slacker-esque, sun-splashed ’60s guitar-pop vibe to it, but it’s also one of the band’s more straightforward cuts. For me , it was my in-road to the band, so maybe that’s why it still warms me up like well-aged scotch by a slow-burning fire. consequenceofsound
Sugar – Your Favourite Thing an exemplar of the alternative rock style that briefly gained commercial traction in the early ’90s. With a decidedly pop melody, the song weds melody and gale-force guitar sonics to create a memorable piece of music. rockandrollglobe
Blur – Badhead
The Charlatans – Can’t Get Out Of Bed
Accrington Stanley – Here Comes Trudy Now
https://thequietus.com/articles/11559-accrington-stanley-interview
Mazzy Star – Fade Into You It’s a play on repeat deal, swaying like a sad, drunk hug, Sandoval’s voice more lullaby than dirge as she promises “A stranger’s heart without a home/You put your hands into your head/And then its smiles cover your heart” nme
Velocity Girl – Sorry Again has everything from R.E.M., in its lightly distorted, chiming guitars, to the giddy rush of Britpop and an altered version of the shoegaze fuzz – just enough to help people who picked this up because it was released on Sub Pop Records feel like they weren’t buying an out-and-out pop album. aquariumdrunkard
Elastica – Connection Elastica were rip-off artists, of course, and they had to pay piles of cash in out-of-court settlements as a result. Wire pointed out, quite rightly, that the central riff in “Connection” was a bald and direct bite from their own 1977 song “Three Girl Rumba,” while “Line Up” has a suspiciously similar chorus to Wire’s 1978 single “I Am The Fly.” The Stranglers got in on it, too, noting that “Waking Up” was distinctly similar to their 1977 single “No More Heroes.” This wasn’t a “Blurred Lines”/Marvin Gaye situation; these songs were direct and provable bites. But in every one of those situations, Elastica improved on their source material. They stole melodic elements, but they made those melodic elements harder and meaner and more direct. They aimed those melodic elements straight at the pop-music jugular. “Three Girl Rhumba” and “I Am The Fly” are great songs, but even peak-era Wire couldn’t take those riffs and hooks the places that Elastica could. For example, word got around in my high school that you could play the “Connection” riff on a touchtone phone: 3-233-3-233-3-233-6-322. (Try it! It sort of works!) stereogum
Nirvana – Jesus Doesn’t Want Me For A Sunbeam “I’ll Be a Sunbeam” is the title of a children’s hymn from the early twentieth century, but the Vaselines’ “Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam,” from their 1988 Dying For It EP, owes no more than its first line to it. When Nirvana covered the Vaselines song (with its title slightly altered) on MTV Unplugged, Kurt called it “a rendition of an old Christian song,” and it was generally mistaken for a gospel number, which it couldn’t be less like. In fact, it had been a staple of Nirvana’s live repertoire for years already: They first played it on stage the day Nevermind came out in America. rollingstone
Green Day – Basket Case trying to spot all the compositional tics as you listen to this song is akin to passing a signpost at top speed on the highway. That is, you’re not experiencing this to enjoy the scenery. The song is built perfectly so as to elicit a visceral, emotional reaction from the listener. Considering that, it shouldn’t require much pressure to surrender yourself to the tune in the first place. “Basket Case” is intended to grip you from the start, and will lead you through the next three minutes without ever lettering you go until the last chord fades away. Suitably, by song’s end your pulse is racing and you’re ready to hear it all again from the top. popmatters
Air Miami – Airplane Rider
Saint Etienne – Pale Movie flamenco-Eurodance weirdness pitchfork
Aberdeen – Byron
Urge Overkill – Girl, You’ll Be A Woman Soon The original version was recorded in 1967 by Neil Diamond, but Urge Overkill’s rendition brought the song back to the charts in 1994 when Quentin Tarantino used the Dutch cover on the soundtrack of Pulp Fiction. The song plays out as a drunk and high-on-life Mia (Uma Thurman) celebrates herself and the trouble she’s about to get into while her husband’s henchman, Vincent Vega (John Travolta), tries to talk himself down from doing the same. spin
Primal Scream – Rocks
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Red Right Hand
Luna – Tiger Lily the greatest rock and roll band that no one’s heard of rollingstone
Pulp – Do You Remember The First Time
The Auteurs – New French Girlfriend The biting glam riffola of The Auteurs second album was an early highpoint that no one seems to talk about now nme
The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion – Bellbottoms For all their reputation as an out of control, speeding rock & roll dynamo whose brake fluid ran out several hundred miles ago, it bears remembering just how funky a unit Jon Spencer Blues Explosion really are. Indeed, revisiting Orange, the band’s fourth album and now celebrating its 25th anniversary, is to be reacquainted with a noise and sense of dynamic so rooted in bump and grind as to foul up your living room with the unmistakable aromas and odours of urban living. This is the sound of city life, specifically that of New York in the mid-90s, as it captures the rhythms of the streets, the noise of the traffic and confusion, and release that only living in a huge metropolitan sprawl made up of different cultures, colours and smells can offer. thequietus
Dinosaur Jr – Feel The Pain
https://www.spin.com/2013/08/best-new-york-city-music-videos-mtv-vmas/1an8hlpik86jk26ammig26oaoogo/
Built To Spill – Car Martsch sings like he’s fronting the band you would go see in your friend’s garage. It’s cool and casual and sooo relatable. But, as the years begin to pass, it still feels that way, even though you have long since moved out from your parents’ house and stopped idolizing teenage woe-is-me-dom. It’s the knowing song of a protagonist looking towards the future with gathered hope, even if things don’t look bright. Lines like “I wanna see it when you get stoned on a cloudy, breezy desert afternoon” and “You’ll get the chance to take the world apart” were made to be inked, on the flesh or a spiral notebook. consequenceofsound
The Magnetic Fields – Born On A Train The album is reminiscent of driving all night, stopping by 7-11 for a large Mountain Dew, and later taking a piss behind a barn beneath a sparkling canopy of stars in the middle of nowhere. This is a brilliant album to hear while on the road, and indulges those of us who love to drive in an ethereal experience of lush sounds tailored to invoke nostalgia popmatters
Madder Rose – Car Song They emerged in 1993 with a sound quite different from the grungy stuff that had dominated indie music for the proceeding 2 years, and a million miles away from Britpop that was shortly to take over. In other words, they were doomed to be no more than a cult footnote in history thanks to being in the wrong place at exactly the wrong time thenewvinylvillain
Echobelly – Insomniac
Sleeper – Delicious With nods to “Get Carter”, the portrayal of sex as something to be enjoyed, not endured, by women and the ferocity of the music with its melding of melody and mania “Delicious” by Sleeper is one of the greatest singles of the nineties themildmanneredarmy
Inspiral Carpets – I Want You (feat. Mark E Smith)
Jack: Inspiral Carpets were f***ing s***.
Me: Inspiral Carpets were great – but very of their time. Couldn’t listen to them now.
Lucy: @Jack. Sorry, you’re wrong about that. Actually, I’m not sorry. You’re just plain wrong.
Me: I stand corrected: I can listen to them now reinspired.wordpress
The Fall – Hey! Student the band’s best album in at least five years, an engaging collection that looks back to their past (the vicious “Hey! Student” could slip into the track list of Perverted By Language unnoticed) and comfortable embrace of their particular present. Like the best of the Fall’s post-1990 work, the songs work best when they play with the tension between the sheer catchiness of the music and MES’s most acidic lyrics. His crankiness, as ever, toes the border of being endearing and annoying stereogum
Silver Jews – Advice For The Graduate Berman’s gruff delivery and the plainspoken poetry of his lyrics introduced listeners to what was clearly a distinct talent. “On the last day of your life, don’t forget to die,” Berman sings. They’re the sort of words that become a part of you pitchfork
Lambchop – Soaky in the Pooper A song about offing yourself! In the toilet! By drowning! Yes sir, we’ve all considered doing JUST THAT every now and then, but perhaps it’s better to experience death vicariously through Lambchop’s lovely “Soaky in the Pooper,” which tells a black tale of suicide and its aftermath over lowing horns and pluck-a-pluck strings ithinkihatemy45s
The Stone Roses -Ten Storey Love Song The beautiful yet weary-sounding ‘Ten Storey Love Song’ was one of the rare moments where they reprised their melodic, Byrds-inspired sound of old rwffmusic
Ash – Jack Names The Planets a volley of intent with recorded whilst still at school withguitars
The Pastels – Yoga It breezes along with an effortless, indie-pop jangle dominomusic
Heavenly – Three Star Compartment the group’s interlocking melodies and girl-group bounce have honed themselves to perfection pitchfork
https://pitchfork.com/features/article/6176-twee-as-fuck/
The Flaming Lips – Put The Waterbug In The Policeman’s Ear a scratchy, no-fidelity song that sounds like it was recorded on a malfunctioning boom box with only a condenser microphone. It begins with a spoken-word piece from Wayne Coyne, who explains that the song is about his brother, “a firm believer of hard narcotics,” who had been hassled by The Man, but used his secret powers to call a bunch of cockroaches to help him. (Part of this is probably untrue.) But the weirdness and scratchiness only made the song more beautiful: It’s mostly just Coyne’s voice backed by a stirring violin and piano. Presumably the song was actually recorded on shitty equipment, and it wasn’t just some “make this sound like an old 78” filter on somebody’s fancy console. Either way, it’s gorgeous and truly weird, not just weird-leaning music.avclub
Portishead – Biscuit There isn’t a sound or a syllable out of place on Dummy. For 50 minutes, the album sustains a single, all-enveloping mood; its tracklist is a 10-sided die where every roll comes up some variation of despair. pitchfork
Orbital – Kein Trink Wasser a gorgeous piece of arpeggiated piano-based electronica that descends into a classic Orbital breakbeat at around the 2.20 mark 909originals
The Wannadies – Might Be Stars without a doubt, one of the best songs ever written about being a rock star allmusic
Beck – Loser His lurching warble, warped by slowed-down effects and distortion, evinces the sort of catatonic cool borne of too many bong tokes and nitrous hits. rollingstone
Supergrass – Caught By The Fuzz My acoustic guitar invariably had strings missing – Caught By the Fuzz was written just on the first three. I was going over the first line, “Caught by the fuzz …”, trying to come up with another one when our tour manager, Daryl, came out the shower with a towel round his waist and said: “I was still on a buzz!” Danny Goffey
Suede – The Wild Ones
https://thequietus.com/articles/16540-suede-dog-man-star-reissue-anniversary-review
Wild Carnation – The Rising Tide perfect pop confectionery, too honeyed and delightful to miss capturing your bending heart and too consistently insistent and edgy to be wimpy allmusic
The Orchids – A Kind Of Eden
Stereolab – Ping Pong surely there could be no finer mix of melody and anti-capitalist economic analysis than that contained in the grooves of ‘Ping pong’ pantry.wordpress
Disco Inferno – Second Language What if you invented the future and nobody heard? factmag
Aphex Twin – Untitled (Track 3, Disc 1) Code-named Rhubarb by fans, this wistful melody from Selected Ambient Works Vol II repeats and slowly builds, moving gently outwards like ripples of water in a lake. The deceptively simple ambient track somehow conjures powerful images; many listeners report feeling deep waves of nostalgia theguardian
Palace Songs – Agnes, Queen of Sorrow this song is a reference to the short story Jane Sinclair or the Fawn of Springvale by 19th century author William Carleton a1000mistakes
The Greenberry Woods – Trampoline a quartet from Baltimore whose catchy hooks and jangly guitars couldn’t cut the grungy gloom that ruled rock radio in its waning days as a tastemaker. The band lasted for only two albums but gained a cult following that outlived them delawareliberal
Guided By Voices – Tractor Rape Chain Bee Thousand is the band’s definitive moment, the point when the ringing Who-isms of Pollard’s youth– filtered through four-tracks and his own post-punk, X-Men, stream-of-consciousness quirks– finally matured beyond the atonal growing pains pitchfork
The Manic Street Preachers – Faster
https://thequietus.com/articles/16863-manic-street-preachers-holy-bible-20
Gene – Sleep Well Tonight right from its distinctive opening chords ‘Sleep Well Tonight’ takes an equally positive outlook as it first suffers and then stands up to the small town knuckleheads who lash out at anyone or anything a bit different nme
Lush – Hypocrite amazing from its bass line introduction onwards. Berenyi spells out that she’s not messing around, “You hypocrite, don’t talk to me, ‘Cause you’re not fit to know me”. godisinthetvzine
Bomb Pops – Girl Daredevil the A-side of this single is one of the best indiepop songs of the ’90s! jigsaw-records
Smudge – Ingrown that is where I will occasionally revisit. It is a place, a feel, an emotive room that escaped so many of us, back in the mid-nineties. In Britain at least, our heads were in a different corner. What a pity. Smudge are the sound of a lost Australian underground. But on Manilow in particular, we find the briefest glimpse, and only that, of something else entirely thequietus
Harvey Williams – She Sleeps Around After half a dozen singles as the guitar-powered one-man band Another Sunny Day, Harvey Williams dropped the pseudonym and released this 15-minute album of largely keyboard-based songs that owed far more to Pet Sounds than it did to post-C86 indie. Harvey’s deliciously confessional lyrics dwell on unrequited love, unnecessary death, Noel Edmonds, Riot Grrrl, someone who’s no better than she should harveywilliams.bandcamp
Daniel Johnston – Life In Vain a swooning ballad so beatific that it’s weird to think that a) it came from someone widely considered an ‘outsider artist’ and b) it wasn’t a hit. The sweeping strings (surely – surely! – an inspiration for Green Day’s ‘Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)’, which came three years later), the loose guitar playing, the yearning question “Where am I going to?”: this is one of Johnston’s most accessible songs nme
The Jesus and Mary Chain – Sometimes Always the sumptuous Hope Sandoval duet sounds like long-lost treasure from the canon of Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra. At the time, William Reid had started an affair with Sandoval that would eventually end his marriage. “I was in love with Hope, but it was the unhappiest time in my life,” he would say later. “It was like horrible, horrible, horrible.” theguardian
Smog – Your Face Remember when Drag City was like REALLY cool? Remember when all their bands sounded like they were recorded in your friend’s shitty basement (P.S. “grunge” and “lo-fi” are still really cool), and Will had a bro, Bill was drunk at your wedding, Neil was taping up his arms, and best of all DC released actual compilations featuring actual New Zealand loners and Strangulated Beat-offs’ side projects? plasticcrimewave
Small Factory – Lose Your Way The group was well regarded as an exemplar of 1990s indie rock although they never achieved great success or influence wikipedia
Keep Pollution Tidy 