Halibutt's 10 Favorite Albums of the 90s

[SBManiac]

I need to get on the Swans bandwagon already, although the length of Soundtracks and their more recent album To Be Kind do kind of intimidate me a bit. Your review was great, as always.

[Sweat]

2. Sigur Rós - "Ágætis Byrjun" [1999]
Post-Rock, Dream Pop

I think I've made my opinion of post-rock more than clear enough. As a recap though, I think it's a wonderful genre, one that can get very creative and has a bunch of different unique sounds. Godspeed You! Black Emperor has empty and hopeless ambience topped with powerful crescendos that makes an apocalyptic mood. Swans has a very dense and stressed mood that is occamanied with grotesque lyrics and sound collages. Slint has more rock-based instrumentation and spoken-word vocals that give off a feeling of isolation and crippling anxiety.

...

If you can't figure out the theme I'm trying to get it, let me be more straightforward: most great post-rock is fucking heartbreaking. Whether it's isolation, hopelessness, sadness, or any negative feeling, post-rock loves just feeling horrible. Take note that I said most "great" post-rock, though. Let me be clear, once Godspeed turned the genre on its head, the genre turned to shit really quickly. Listen to any modern post-rock that isn't Godspeed, Sigur Ros, or Swans and the main thing you will notice is that most of it is mindnumbingly shallow and tries WAY too hard to be solely "pretty." The most famous offender is a Texas band called Explosions in the Sky. While they are considered one of the most commercially successful band of the genre, most post-rock fans absolutely despise them as they were the ultimate sell-out that traded raw emotion for "pretty."

I'm not trying to ramble though, there is a reason I'm bringing all of this up. Sigur Ros is one of the very few post-rock bands, along with the big pioneers Talk Talk, that managed to make their music comfortable and beautiful while not being shallow. This may be the most pleasant album on this entire list. While most post-rock, whether it's in mood or structure, has absolutely no pop sensibilities, Sigur Ros made their music practically pop, and it made them quite possibly the most famous band of the genre ever. They've had a cameo in both Game of Thrones and The Simpsons and these guys actually had a hit in the United Kingdom, which was due to some of their songs being used in BBC's famous nature documentaries. When you compare this album with other post-rock behemoths, it's really easy to tell why. They are the black sheep of the genre by a large margin. They have actual hooks in their songs, they have clearly mixed vocals (even if they're in Icelandic or a language they actually created themselves called Hopelandish), and their music is, like I said many times, actually mellow and pretty.

Actually, neither of those adjectives even remotely describe how wonderful this album is. It's really tough for me to articulate what about this album fills me with utter joy and happiness. Well... first of all, the lead singer Jonsi's vocals are some of the best you will ever hear. Maybe some may not be able to like his falsetto, but it's so fucking packed with emotion that it works wonderfully. Along with that, the instrumentation. Everything about the instruments and how they are layed out are just about PERFECT. They're incredibly dreamlike (which is the main reason why these guys are also put in the dream pop category), and they also have hints of shoegaze. Neither of those two things are what makes this album break me from the inside, though. It's the CLIMAXES and CRESCENDOS and MASSIVE FUCKING MOMENTS that make me unable to help but smile very widely. Some people may be a bit impatient with the soft bits, but when songs like Hjartað Hamast and Viðrar Vel Til Loftárása get at their loudest and most gigantic, it creates moments of sheer, raw euphoria that I've never heard in any other album.

Even if you're not the kind to listen to songs that are 6 to 10 minutes long, I very highly recommend this to anyone. The previous album was a post-rock album that is best to be avoided if not prepared, but for this album, it's very easy to access and I can almost guarantee you'll feel a sensation of great reward.

[Sweat]

Well, I forgot about this, but here's the end.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. Ween - "The Mollusk" [1997]
Art Rock, Alternative Rock

There are three main qualities that can make my love for an album. Firstly, it could fill me with child-like joy because of how fun and catchy it is [i.e. California]. Second, it could fill me with really deep emotions of some kind of melancholy [i.e. Ágætis Byrjun]. Finally, it could just blow me away with how big of a punch of "awesome" it can serve. [i.e. Houdini]. Some albums on here have been able to two, nearly all of them at least one, but only ONE album has managed to do all three in a span of 40-ish minutes, and that is ultimately what makes me refuse to lower it. This is my absolute favorite album of the entire 1990s, and it is quite possibly the most perfect in a sense that it covers plenty of ground.

Admittedly though, if you have listened to other albums by these guys like Chocolate and Cheese or White Pepper, I honestly can't really blame you if you expect this one to just be a disjointed hodgepodge of different musical styles, but while you are somewhat right, this album has certain qualities that make it very different from their usual work. The first obvious point of this is the fact that it's a sort-of concept album. If you can't tell, the record has a widespread theme of the ocean/sea/et cetera. It's only clear when a song from it is famously played at the end of the SpongeBob movie. Along with this, there is one major staple throughout the album that keeps it consistent: a lot of the album is a MAJOR homage to old-school progressive rock. Not only do a lot of the songs like the title track and "Buckingham Green" take cues from the hay-day of Yes and Genesis, but the album cover of the freaky hybrid creature was actually designed by Storm Thorgerson, most well-known for making Pink Floyd's most legendary covers like Dark Side of the Moon.

While prog rock is what holds the album together, the album still does what Ween has always been famous to do, and that's by embedding a crapton of bizarre semi-novelty songs with genres that should never match at all. "I'm Dancing in the Show Tonight" is a simple nursery rhyme backed by a toy synth or "The Blarney Stone" is a pirate shanty with a bunch of obscenities. Luckily though, if you don't like the idea of that, there are the songs that fit those 3 categories I brought up earlier with this. If you like colorful and fun songs, you'll love "I'll Be Your Johnny on the Spot" or "Polka-Dot Tail." If you love emotional and feels-filled songs, you'll love "It's Gonna Be (Alright)" and "She Wanted to Leave." While I do love those songs, they don't matter in the long run, because the peaks of this album is when Ween chooses to ROCK YOUR FUCKING SOCKS OFF. For a silly alternative band, they can do some kick-ass hard rock. "Buckingham Green", especially, is my favorite track on the album, one where the second half totally explodes with a triumphant guitar solo and all.

When you get right down to it, this is one of the most perfectly recorded, perfectly arranged, and perfectly listenable albums that I have ever heard. It may not be my favorite album of all time, but it is EASILY in the top 5, if not the top 3. Of course, like everyone else, my first experience of this album was hearing "Ocean Man" during the credits for the SpongeBob Movie, but I knew even then I was hooked. Even if you aren't as much of a music geek as me, you HAVE to hear this album beginning-to-end at least once, because once you hear the opening line from the album being used as a closer but much more melancholy and dark, your life will be much more fulfilled.