Grunge had neither broken nor halted by the time 1993 rolled around, undoubtedly greeted by Whitney Houston basking in a Bodyguard afterglow. The year hinted at new trends that did not reveal themselves immediately: the makings of post-Nirvana alternative were alive in Radiohead’s Pablo Honey and Blur’s Modern Life Is Rubbish, the East Coast-West Coast rap feud percolated with new stars (Snoop Doggy Dogg’s Doggystyle, Wu-Tang Clan’s Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)), and even Eurodance had a hot minute on the Hot 100 thanks to Haddaway’s “What Is Love?” and Ace of Base’s “All That She Wants.” Billboard

The Smashing Pumpkins – Disarm Siamese Dream found Corgan climbing to new heights, perfecting the formula of early Pumpkins in towering songs with guitars upon guitars. Then, right in the middle, was this oddity called “Disarm,” a song built on strings, acoustic guitar, and, um, bells. While out of left-field there, it foreshadowed the broadened palette Corgan would use on Mellon Collie two years later. For the moment, “Disarm” was also one of the emotional peaks on a very emotional album, somehow managing to be one of the most direct pop songs of the bunch while also being one of its saddest moments. You could break this down to acoustic guitar and voice and it’d be a straightforward, heartbreaking ballad; Corgan then gave it grandeur without overblowing it. In that sense, “Disarm” strikes a tricky balance that wouldn’t always be present in the Pumpkins’ catalog, and it remains one of the most affecting songs Corgan’s ever written. stereogum

Nirvana – All Apologies The final track on Nirvana’s final album (‘In Utero’) is comforting (“in the sun I feel as one”), insulting (“I wish I was like you, easily amused”) and doom-laden (“married, buried”) all at the same time. For Nirvana’s 1993 MTV Unplugged show Kurt changed the lyric “all in all is all we are” to “all alone is all we are”, and the sadness in his voice is excruciating nme

Mary Lou Lord – Some Jingle Jangle Morning the one thing anybody probably knows about Mary Lou Lord is that she had a relationship with Kurt Cobain just prior to Nevermind coming out, and because of that relationship, she has been locked in an on-and-off feud with Courtney Love pretty much ever since. It’s even more of a shame that the catalyst for the feud was the original version of this particular song, “Some Jingle Jangle Morning,” which originally came out on an 7″ in 1993 and was also a highlight of her debut full-length, 1998’s Got No Shadow.

Song about a sunbeam
Song about a girl
Your voice still rings and echoes in my mind
So many words unspoken
So many worlds apart
Your memory is all you left behind

… the beauty of “Some Jingle Jangle Morning:” Lord is able to take specific details of a specific incident and turn them into a universally-relatable song. Which, perhaps in a different universe, could have been a hit… only by 1998, this kind of song wasn’t even going to make any kind of dent anywhere. medialoper

Suede – To The Birds one realises just how many immaculate pieces of music Suede discarded as flipsides. ‘My Insatiable One’, ‘To The Birds’, ‘Killing Of A Flashboy’, ‘My Dark Star’… each and one every one beautifully astounding in every way, and worthy of lead track status rather than the throwaway ones attained at the time of release drownedinsound

Suede – So Young For a debut, especially considering how out-of-place it was at the time of release, Suede is a staggeringly confident and forthright statement. It embraces complicated lyrical themes with maturity and genuine pathos, masking the darkness of the concepts with dense imagery and double-meaning without sacrificing any transparent musical premise or thrill. Despite this, it remains a remarkably bleak record at times, especially on the windswept film noir piers of ‘Sleeping Pills’, bedecked in the most beautiful trailing fronds of lead guitar, and the ethereal, trembling ‘She’s Not Dead’. It also contains moments of genuine threat, tension and fear; notably in the perverse promise of ‘So Young’ and the personality crisis of ‘Pantomime Horse’.  drownedinsound

Blur – Blue Jeans nestled at the album’s heart, a shimmering gem bursting with color and light. The lyrics could be read as a critique of inertia: “Blue jeans I wear them every day/There’s no particular reason to change.” But as presented, they feel like an expression of deep contentment and calm. It helps that the song is so gentle and unhurried, with a gorgeously lazy vocal and guitar lead. Every second of “Blue Jeans” is complete perfection, but the chorus is an otherworldly rush of melody and melancholy: nitrous oxide as music. “Don’t think I’m walking out of this,” sings Damon, leading up to the blissful cascade: “She don’t mind/whatever I say, whatever I say/I don’t really want to change a thing/I want to stay this way forever.” Of course, things changed. But in “Blue Jeans,” Blur captured a recognition of pure joy, coupled with the realization it cannot last. It’s something very much like falling in love, very much like perfection. stereogum

The Auteurs – Show Girl Pop-cultural history persists in misremembering the 90s as a period of national confidence to match that of the 60s: Noel’s cocaine cornflakes, Blur sudsing up with Jo Guest, heist films with Sadie Frost, Baddiel and Skinner arsing around as Shearer and Sheringham put the Dutch to the sword at a pulsating, multicultural Wembley. The earlier portion of the decade is strangely unremembered and underthought, patronised as an undramatic overshoot of the eighties without the haircuts. But this is a screen memory. In February 1993, when New Wave was released, unemployment was grazing three million, far-right activity was troubling the streets and terraces, and anxiety was once again mounting about terrorism.

‘Showgirl’, the opener, might inhabit the Margate-out-of-season mine held dear by Damon Albarn and Brett Anderson, but there are finessing details which demonstrate that this is more than just a musicalised nod to Brighton Rock. The layabout narrator takes “a job on the side / in a health shop” but, you suspect, lives mostly off his titular wife’s earnings to sustain a dilettante intellectualism. The lack of direction feels like an allegory for the times thequietus

James – Laid Forget for a moment all the teen sex comedies that now use this song to soundtrack their raucous antics. Think, instead, about how radical it is that this fairly mainstream pop hit talks so frankly about sex and obsession. A song on the radio in 1993 told graphic stories about women dressing their boyfriends up in drag and having loud, girl-on-top, neighbor-bothering sex. The lyrics to “Laid” aren’t full of the usual pop song metaphors for coitus; they’re blunt depictions of an out-of-control relationship fueled by erotic compatibility– the sort of coupling that’s bad for both parties, but feels too good to quit. I haven’t had much time to miss this Brian Eno-produced track’s simple guitar melody and racing-pulse drums (because they never really went away), but I still feel giddy when I hear them. pitchfork

Elastica – Stutter When else has a song about impotence ever sounded so sexy? Rock history is littered with songs about sex, but a relative few are from a woman’s point of view. Fewer still are about bad or embarrassing sex– though surely, musicians, like everyone else, have had their fair share. But on debut single “Stutter”, Elastica’s Justine Frischmann not only rants about her boyfriend’s drunken bedroom failings, but also gives voice to the nagging uncertainty and niggling self-doubt that infects someone whose partner can’t perform. Her questions could sound corny (“It’s always something you ate?“) or pitiful (“Is it the way that I touch you?“), but coming from Frischmann, the tough, androgynously styled First Lady of Britpop, they never do. Instead, her dry delivery makes it clear that, though frustrated, she is very much in control. So when she sings, “Is it just that I’m much too much for you?“, you know the answer is probably “Yes.” pitchfork

The Flaming Lips – Be My Head For those of us who are used to The Flaming Lips being lush, structured and just a little bit orchestral, the raw, fizzing guitar sound of Transmissions from the Satellite Heart can come as a bit of a shock. Wayne Coyne’s vocals aren’t quite as fragile and despite the weirdness The Flaming Lips are undoubtedly a guitar band, with Ronald Jones being a vital element in the creative process…. Listening to Transmissions from the Satellite Heart now, it’s obvious that even the broad-canvas of alt-rock wasn’t going to big enough for the Flaming Lip’s ambitions and capabilities forever. Be it the crackling strummed intro to “Chewin’ the Apple of Your Eye”, or the absurdly brilliant singalong of “Be My Head”, there’s a joy and energy infused throughout this fine album that you’d struggle to find anywhere else. backseatmafia

Mercury Rev – Something for Joey Depending on who you ask, the recording of Boces was either “magical” (Baker), “trying” (Grasshopper) or “impossible” (Donahue). And yet what emerged was an album shot through with colour, light and harmony. “We were trying to capture the magic of what was happening,” Baker told me. “There was humour and energy. We loved being in the studio.” Something for Joey, the album’s improbable lead single, exemplifies that feeling of humour and energy, with rolling guitar verses erupting into a three-note brass chorus that is pure musical release and childish joy. A live appearance on Gary Crowley’s IV music show The Beat , in which Mercury Rev performed the song surrounded by pantomime horses, a lion with a beach ball, a squid and a yeti, felt oddly appropriate given the song’s crazed glee. theguardian

Yo La Tengo – Nowhere Near popmatters

The Sugargliders – Ahprahran I know that not everyone has the same fascination I do with brilliant indie pop music, but I’m glad that modern technology allows us to go back in time and expose the heart and soul of the movement. I’m always amazed at the work accomplished by bands like The Sugargliders long ago, and although it’s nearly two decades from their time, it still sounds every bit as relevant in today’s genre. A Nest With a View is an exquisite snapshot of a band that left us with a brief career, but one that, as evidenced here, surely stands the test of time. You can only say that about the greatest of tunes austintownhall

Even As We Speak – Falling Down The Stairs melodymaker

Huggy Bear – Herjazz lambasted the predatory habits of male so-called “radicals,” calling for a more egalitarian, “girl-boy revolution.”

Soon after that release, the band wreaked havoc on the late-night variety show The Word, during which their blazing performance of “HerJazz” was followed and undermined by an appearance from the Barbi Twins, a pair of Playboy models. Members of Huggy Bear began to heckle the hosts on-air, only to be manhandled and thrown off the set by security. pitchfork

Bikini Kill – Rebel Girl The steadied thrum of “Rebel Girl” is the march of patriarchy crumbling. Hanna observes her punk-rock queen and writes an ultimate girl-love anthem, tracing “the revolution” in “her hips” and “her kiss.” In every bar of “Rebel Girl,” our relationships matter; our speech matters. Pitchfork

Heavenly – Atta Girl I love it. This is, but isn’t about unrequited love. Cathy sings the first part, which is sort of about unrequited love. Amelia sings the second part, which is more about being smothered by a suitor.

I could never live up to all your dreams
I don’t have to be cute right through
And can’t you concentrate on something other than me
Coz I’m not yours and never will be now
You’ve shown me how you are if I speak to another
…
I don’t need you or your attitude
and can’t you just forget now that you ever knew me

It’s pretty brutal, and it’s pretty amazing. It’s punk rawk.

I think this is one of the best songs that this band ever made, and it’s one of the most sophisticated. Even if it is about base human emotion. While most of their songs are, in some way, about love or lack of same, this one has better musical and lyrical construction than most. thisisthatsong

Heavenly – Hearts and Crosses The song follows a young woman named Melanie as she imagines how the companionship and affection of “some cool boy” could “make things right.” Melanie’s excitement is sugar-coated by bouncy keys, zippy bursts of guitar, and Mathew’s delightfully all-over-the-place drumming. But like it so easily can in real life, the narrative turns on a dime and suddenly, Melanie’s fantasy becomes a nightmarish depiction of date rape. “It was all so different from in her dream,” Fletcher murmurs as her pep collapses into a traumatized monotone. “He never smiled, he never whispered/He bit her hard, but never kissed her.” Heavenly follows this anecdote with a chaotically joyful keyboard solo; a casual listener could be forgiven for missing the horror. Arguably, “Hearts and Crosses” is the band’s best song. Inarguably, it’s a powerful example that pop music—even at its most outwardly precious—can be a vehicle for addressing issues like sexual assault pitchfork

Tindersticks – Marbles Quick, what was Melody Maker‘s album of the year in 1993? No, it wasn’t Suede’s self-titled debut or Blur’s Modern Life Is Rubbish; it was Tindersticks’ debut, a brave and spot-on choice. That album by the Nottingham, England, sextet has perhaps the oddest mix of Continental elegance and discordant clang of anything released in the decade pitchfork

Manic Street Preachers – From Despair To Where Manic Street Preachers fans often tell me that aside from burning pictures of Richey Edwards, the surest way to prove you’re not a fan of the band is to like ‘Gold Against The Soul’….. exploding from its hushed beginnings into a glowering rock beast. The Manics weren’t really known for fist pumping anthems in 1993, but this is a head rush of scales, organs, strings and Bradfield putting his vocal chords on the line. Nme

Liz Phair – Fuck and Run At the time of its release, rock critics couldn’t look past their instant hard-ons stoked by Liz Phair’s liberal use of four-letter words and her blunt statements of sexual desire to engage her debut album on its own terms. Now, nearly 25 years out, a whole new generation of indie kids have rushed to discredit Phair because of what had been written about the supposed novelty of Exile in Guyville. While Phair’s legacy may have been cheapened by some of her latter-day recordings, to reduce her debut to the “Even when I was 12” line from “Fuck and Run” or the entirety of “Flower” is grossly shortsighted, and it’s hard to imagine another rock album whose reception has been so consistently tainted by active misogyny. slantmagazine

The Juliana Hatfield Three – My Sister one of the rare songs to become a hit without a chorus — in company with the Beatles’ “Yesterday” and Lionel Richie’s “Hello.” Spin

The Lemonheads – Into Your Arms originally recorded in 1990 by Love Positions … but you’d never guess it wasn’t a Dando original. The lyric, open-hearted and yearning (“I know a place that’s safe and warm from the crowd / Into your arms, into your arms, I can go”) is lovely in its simplicity. Dando turns the skeletal original, which is less a song than the outline of one, into something of beauty, using the two chords as the base from which to soar off into a brief, psychedelic country guitar solo. Nearly doubling the song’s original length only takes it up to just short of three minutes, but every second feels absolutely crucial. Theguardian

Smudge – I Don’t Wanna Be Grant McLennan this is very much your tuneful, noisy, left-field college rock lit by occasional flashes of real brilliance Select

Grant McLennan – The Dark Side Of The Street As the Go-Betweens did in their prime, ‘Fireboy’ proves that you can make well-trimmed rock that’s romantic and easy on the ear without sounding like Paul McCartney or Chris Rhea. Lovely Select

The Bats – Sighting The Sound Yet another Bats album — on the one hand that can sound like an insult, but when it comes to simply doing a fine job on album after album, with a set but still captivating sound, the Bats nail it here as they have always done before. It certainly doesn’t hurt that Silverbeet begins with two of the band’s best songs ever: “Courage,” a restrained surge of inspiring music that, unsurprisingly, backs a slightly doubting, questioning lyric on love and life, and “Sighting the Sound,” with a killer chorus sung by Scott and Woodward together. allmusic

The 3Ds – Beautiful Things caught them at a rare tranquil moment, with a gliding chord progression and beatific lyrics: “Don’t you see, beautiful things can be / Waiting outside your door, for all to see.”

A famous story about the band goes that during a support slot on U2’s Zoo TV tour, an associate nicked a bottle of wine from U2’s dressing room, leading the promoter to inform the band they would not be paid. Bono intervened, gave them another bottle of wine and told the promoter they would be paid double. Theguardian

The Pastels – Thank You For Being You Truckload of Trouble goes some way to stating the Pastels case. Collecting singles from 1986’s rollicking “Truck Train Tractor” through to last months “Thank You For Being You”, along with the odd curiosity, it captures the bands wonky essence. Points must be docked for the often intolerable sugar overload, but there are at least seven classic tunes on here – seven more than almost any band will ever write Select

They Go Boom!! – Someday Soon The songs of our soundtrack were extracted from “Somewhere In England,” a Sunday Records 30th-anniversary tribute to They Go Boom!! ….The collection creates a wonderful blend of jangly guitars and purring keyboards… the perfect soundtrack for whatever movie you are starring in tonight fadeawayradiate

New Order – Regret spent the 80s waiting for the rest of British independent music to catch up with them. Once it did they vanished, returning in 1993 with the slick, detached Republic album and “Regret”. A song seemingly about settling down and looking back, it felt as much farewell as comeback, and later reunions haven’t produced anything to displace it as their last truly great single. There’s barely a nod to the dancefloor– “Regret” is driven by the band’s comfy interplay (the way Gillian Gilbert’s synths complete Bernard Sumner’s opening riff, for instance) and their gift for bittersweet instrumental hooks. The mood’s one of hard-earned contentment, where tiny things– chatting on the phone, even just waking up– turn into triumphs, and Sumner is free to be as straightforward and affecting as he ever has: “I was a short fuse, burning all the time/ You were a complete stranger, now you are mine.” pitchfork

Pulp – Razzamatazz Ah, schadenfreude. Every line of Razzmatazz twitches with sly victory – and every line’s a classic, too – as Cocker, cast as a luckless loser who’s been dumped by his girlfriend for not being glitzy enough, finds himself crowing over their reversal of fortune. It’s the little flourishes that make it all so delicious: just witness how, in the second verse, he starts to scatter the details that suggest how pedestrian and predictable her life has become. “You started getting fatter three weeks after I left you,” he tells her, scornfully. “Now you’re going with some kid who looks like some bad comedian / Are you gonna go out, or are you sitting at home eating boxes of Milk Tray / Watch TV on your own.” She ditched him for excitement and glamour; she’s settling for EastEnders and coffee creams instead. “I saw you at the doctors, waiting for a test,” he sings later – and by this point, however wronged he feels, it’s hard not to feel a smidgen of sympathy for his down-on-her-luck ex, considering how rotten things have gotten. “You tried to look like some kind of heiress, but your face is such a mess / And now you’re going to a party and you’re leaving on your own.” A supreme pop single with its spinning, dark disco-charged melody, flavoured impeccably by Cocker’s witty, withering vinegar. Theguardian

The Fall – Lost In Music The original – a hit for Sister Sledge in 1979 – sounds like a hymn to clubby euphoria. However, with another new recruit – computer man Dave Bush – providing “techno shit”, Smith unearths a darker meaning to the phrase “lost in music” and pours thinly concealed scorn on those “caught in a trap” of empty-headed hedonism. It’s quintessential Fall: simultaneously capturing the energy of the times while emphasising an opposition to them. Theguardian

Stereoloab – French Disko If you think of them as an album band, it’s an anomaly: a headlong headbanger by a groop that generally preferred space-age bubble confections. Consider them as a singles act– which they also always were– and it’s a moment of triumphant rupture on the order of “I Wanna Be Sedated” or “Running Up That Hill”. In any case, it’s the most compact presentation of a lot of Stereolab’s strengths: Laetitia Sadier and Mary Hansen’s lighter-than-air vocalization of heavier-than-textbooks Francophilic philosophy; Tim Gane’s re-imaging of the rhythm guitar as perpetual motion machine; a broad set of ideas copped from vintage experimental music and spruced up into hooks pitchfork

Saint Etienne – Hobart Paving begins with a woman driving “a silvery sports car/ Around the empty streets last night”, before throwing in the quietly devastating line: “I haven’t seen the kids for some time.” Instantly, you’re trying to join the tear-stained dots, piecing the melancholic scenes and details together. Strange, beautiful similes add to the atmosphere, as rain falls “like Elvis tears” and our protagonist moves “just like a harpsichord”. Then the “don’t forget to catch me” refrain comes along, delicately finishing you off. (Hobart Paving, by the way, is a civil engineering firm in Sussex.) Theguardian

The Boo Radleys – Barney (… And Me) an album of simple, well-crafted pop songs, but they are embellished and fleshed out in such marvellous, creative ways, and twist and turn in such weird and wonderful directions that they are transformed into something rather more absorbing and special. The Boo Radleys seem to throw almost everything at Martin Carr’s songs to see what sticks, from Beach Boys hooks to Loveless scree and back again via reggae, jazz and Dinosaur Jr., each song designed to be “a room with many doors”, or full of other, little songs.

How many wonderful things are there about Giant Steps? Too many to mention. Hidden in the cover artwork are a couple of giraffes. Faye Dunaway is harmoniously mentioned in one song, and no one seems to know why. There are songs about love, about God and his tendency to not exist, about childhood dreams coming true. There are songs with handclaps. There are songs about the victims of infamous racial attacks, which are dedicated to dead comedians. There are songs about being afraid of flying. There are songs about being full of beer and songs about being full of drugs. There are songs with clarinets and songs with cellos and there are songs with guitars that sound like clouds. There are songs about listening to The Beatles. There are songs about so many things and not one of them is dull.

Few albums manage to be so expansive, so personal, so excitingly imaginative and so joyously pop all at the same time, but The Boo Radleys managed it here. This is a record about being a young man in a strange, sad and sometimes wonderful world, tired of injustice and fed-up of platitudes, a record about racing for the prize, catching dreams and smashing prejudices. This is a record about realising that what you were told was “normal” is actually abnormal and unnatural, a record about stepping outside and grabbing the world. “If you want it, take it all / there’s nothing cool about / having to go without…”

If you’re lucky, this is one of the most wonderful records you will ever hear. stylusmagazine

Teenage Fanclub – Radio “No offense,” Blake told the NME about the album’s bad press, “But I don’t worry about journalists because we know more about music than most journalists anyway.” Thirteen is the last time they played dumb; they would never sound so young or reckless again. pitchfork

Gigolo Aunts – Where I Find My Heaven an American answer to Teenage Fanclub. It didn’t hurt that the bands shared a UK label, or that the group had made “Serious Drugs,” a song by the BMX Bandits, a live staple.

Dinosaur Jr – Start Choppin 1993’s Where You Been was Dinosaur Jr.’s great commercial push, with major label backing hoping to cast them in the role of the next Nirvana. In retrospect, that was never more than a ludicrous fantasy, but for a brief period of music industry weirdness, the notion of J Mascis as minted star seemed nearly viable. He even appeared on the cover of Spin magazine with the headline “J Mascis Is God,” plainly referencing earlier claims attributed to Eric Clapton. It was an impossible position, but goddamned if Mascis did not deliver a tremendous record when the stakes were highest. Where You Been is replete with great tunes like “Out There,” the lead single “Start Choppin'” and the brilliantly wistful penultimate track “Goin’ Home.” In a sense, that last song goes a distance to describing the feeling of this record. It is tough and thoughtful, but also a seeming acknowledgment that Mascis is likely punching out of his weight class commercially. He’ll be headed back to the indies soon, and he’ll be going home.

Radiohead – Thinking About You a group in hock to U.S. indie heroes Pixes and Dinosaur Jr. (with the occasional R.E.M. homage tossed in– see: “Lurgee”). The loose “Anyone Can Play Guitar” and delicate “Thinking About You” thankfully break up the mood, but most of the rest of the album is squarely in the post-grunge wheelhouse pitchfork

The Harvest Ministers – I Hang From A Great Big Oak As the years have flown in, Merriman has added to his writing a lightness in tone that was not always obvious early on; but he has retained a vulnerability, an openness to the experience of longing, that catches your breath. When you get to my age everyday life takes over and you can get a little shut off from your emotions… They reconnect you with emotions that you ignore, or don’t have any time for, but that you have to feel to stay healthy; to stay human. If that’s all I ever got from art, it would be enough psychiatryandsongs

Cornershop – England’s Dreaming injected indie with the spirit of protest, fusing lyrics from the Smiths’ Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now and Public Enemy (“I was happy in the haze of a drunken hour/Fight the Power!”). theguardian

The Bartlebees – You Are Still Beautiful This trio can best be described as Germany’s version of British Television Personalities. perfectpop

The Candyskins – Wembley They’ll never be truly essential but will certainly stand above 90% of the Simon Bates Show Select

Paul Weller – Sunflower A shaggy, psychedelic exocet built around what would become trademark influences – deep soul, Traffic, Humble Pie. Uncut

Palace Brothers – Ohio River Boat Song When I was little, one year we went to Scotland. It was a trip kind of organized by the woman who ran the theater where I studied. I can’t remember how [old I] was, 12 or 13 maybe. I’d never been overseas.

There were things that I knew about Scottish music that were powerful to me, but I couldn’t find anything that I really loved. I had made a mixtape of bluegrass and country music for [the family we stayed with in Scotland], and then when I hitchhiked to their house [a couple years later], their middle son [Andy Shearer] was there, and he said that he had really appreciated that mixtape, and we started talking about music. I said, “Well, maybe you could help me with this Celtic music quandary. I know that there’s music that I like there and I’ve never heard it, but I think I could give you the clues for what I’m looking for and maybe you can respond.”

Maybe six months later, I got a package and it had five 90-minute tapes and maybe 14 pages of notes about every song. They were all mixtapes that he’d meticulously assembled. I just started to listen to them and it was most of what I listened to for a while. And it began to intensely inform things that I thought and felt about the world. One of the significant songs on there was “The Loch Tay Boat Song,” and it was especially significant because Loch Tay was near this house [where I’d stayed in Scotland]. It resonated with me just from the little bit of time that I’d spent there, and I knew that it resonated with [Andy] in the same way that any song that mentions Louisville or Kentucky [would with me].

So “Ohio River Boat Song” is from the “The Loch Tay Boat Song,” which on his cassettes was sung by this group called Silly Wizard. Eventually, when I started playing music, which wasn’t for a couple more years, that was a song that I wanted to do, but then I realized in order for it to work it needed to be translated geographically so that I could sing it with the authority that I wanted to sing it with, and have people understand that it was about having a connection with an actual place, as opposed to just romanticizing a place. Willoldham

Guided By Voices – Gleemer This is the album considered to be where GBV achieved its sound and was the first in a series of releases showcasing GBV/Pollard’s rough genius. VoT is the result of a band far greater than the sum of its parts Consequenceofsound

Madder Rose – Swim the quintessential Lower East Side rock band, complete with sullen 30-something post-graduates of the Manhattan club scene, fuzzed-out guitars, even the obligatory aura of decadence. Guitarist Mary Lorson’s vocals key the allure — breathy and childlike, she combines the sultry hippie appeal of Natalie Merchant with the winsome, hipper charms of Juliana Hatfield trouserpress

Mazzy Star – Into Dust depressing, mopey, lingering and introspective. I mean that in the best possible way…. There are not many singers who could hold our attention with a song that proceeds at this slow of a pace, yet we are enthralled. the greatest songs

Slowdive – Alison To say Slowdive and their second album, Souvlaki, weren’t appreciated in their time is an almost comedic understatement. Richie Edwards famously said he hated the band more than Hitler and there’s the oft-quoted Melody Maker review in which the critic said he would rather drown in porridge than listen to the album again. The band have recounted the story of a gig on that tour where they watched a woman mop the floor while they played. Drownedinsound