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Best albums of 1990: Albums #10 through #6

A couple of posts ago, I initiated a new mini-series focusing on my favourite albums of 1990. I shared some words on the concept, the fact that 1990 was the year with which I started out this blog, focusing then, on its best tunes, and finally, providing a handful of album honourable mentions. So I’ll not blather on too much today for preamble. If you’re interested where I was musically and in life in general that year, have a looky-loo here. Otherwise, I’ll dig right into albums 10 through 6 of my list of top albums for 1990*.

Enjoy!

#10 The Northern Pikes “Snow in June”

The Pikes’ third and best-selling record feels inextricably tied to my DNA sometimes. It’s not one I listen to often anymore but whenever I do, it instantly transports me back to my teenaged bedroom, where listened to this cassette tape on repeat, constantly flipping sides, while playing hours upon hours of ‘Pool of radiance’ on my C64. It’s way more than just the ubiquitous CanCon classic, “She ain’t pretty“. There’s thirteen solid rock tracks that are tempered by folk leanings and varied in sound according to which of the three vocalists wrote and led the singing on each. Perhaps the nostalgia is strong here but I stand by my love for this album. It’s unfortunate that the Saskatchewan-based quartet couldn’t keep the momentum up for their next album.

#9 Jane’s Addiction “Ritual de lo habitual”

Jane’s Addiction’s second proper studio album was handed to me on cassette tape by a friend and fellow new initiate to the alternative music scene, calling it industrial and comparing the group to Nine Inch Nails and Ministry, both bands I was just getting into. Of course, Jane’s weren’t really industrial but they had that similar rage and wild sound and perhaps even more so in a sense. There’s so many great tracks on ‘Ritual’ and I’ve always thought that what set them so apart was that the songs are all slightly unhinged, as if the whole ship could all fall apart at any moment. This orchestrated chaos was what made the American quartet led by Perry Farrell so great but it was also their undoing**. They broke up at the end of the tour for the album, the finale of which also saw the group headlining the very first Lollapalooza festival.

#8 Sinéad O’Connor “I do not want what I haven’t got”

I remember buying this album on cassette tape as part of Columbia House’s 9 albums for a penny, way back in the day, and for the longest time, only listening to “Nothing compares 2 u” because that was the song I knew from my weekly viewing of the Chum FM 30. Once I moved past that one tune, though, I grew to appreciate Sinéad’s other material. I later migrated away from listening to her, not because of her infamous photo burning appearance on SNL or her outspokenness on many topics, but because my tastes took me in a different direction. However, I’ve since returned to this album many times over the last couple of decades. Sinéad was a great songwriter. Not just a lyricist but also in the way she created a sound, sometimes infusing Celtic folk sounds with funky drum beats and sometimes leaving it all bare, singing a capella and including her inhalations of breathe as another tool in her tool belt. Such a legendary voice and polarizing persona.

#7 The La’s “The La’s”

You’ve heard about one hit wonders, right? Well, how about one album wonders? The La’s were a five-piece Liverpool-based rock act led by Lee Mavers that were active from 1983 to 1992. They released a handful of singles throughout that time, including one of my favourite one hit wonders, “There she goes”, but only ever managed the one studio album before disbanding***. But what a great album it was. The self-titled debut is filled with short and jangly rock gems that dig their way into your head and root themselves in there for good measure, much like another act from that same England town. It’s another one of those great rock ‘what if’ stories. Who knows what a second record would have meant to the band and perhaps rock music as a whole.

#6 Concrete Blonde “Bloodletting”

Concrete Blonde’s third album was oh-so-close to breaking into my top five for 1990. Previously, the sound of the Hollywood-based, indie rock trio led by Johnette Napolitano was mostly pedestrian rock and yet, their following was meagre, being picked up mostly by the college radio kids. With “Bloodletting”, they ventured into gothic rock territory and surprisingly, found commercial success for the first time. I remember listening to this album around my wife at one point early on in our relationship and she was surprised that I was listening to a band that she knew. But this album is so much more than “Joey“. Every track is dark and haunting and full of soul and drenched with meaning for me. I could listen to this album all night long.

*With each album in this post, I’ve tried to choose a representative track that was not featured on my Best tunes list for 1990, partly to show the breadth of each and partly to avoid being repetitive.

**I’ve often thought that it could have been Jane’s and not Nirvana that broke alternative to the mainstream, had they managed to survive the touring cycle for this album.

***There were a number of attempts at reforming over the years but none have really stuck up to now.

Stay tuned for album #5 on this list. In the meantime, you can check out my Best Albums page here if you’re interested in my other favourite albums lists.

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Tunes

Best tunes of 2013: #23 My Bloody Valentine “new you”

<< #24    |    #22 >>

For many years, there was nothing but rumours, conjectures, and blind hope, and eventually, all that gave way to eye-rolling and running jokes.

Nevertheless, in 2013, Kevin Shields finally made good on his long-standing promise to follow up 1991’s “Loveless” and he did so in astonishing fashion. I fully admit to getting caught up in all the hoopla on February 2nd, 2013, when Shields had the Internet a-buzz with his announcement that a new My Bloody Valentine album would be made available for purchase from his website that very night. I think I remember reading somewhere that for most of that year’s Super Bowl weekend, “MBV” (or sorry “m b v”) was trending higher on Twitter than that hallowed sporting event.

But how was the album? Did it stand up to “Loveless”?

To be honest, I was in a slightly different situation than other music fanatics my age because I didn’t feel like I had waited the whole 22 years for “m b v”. Though I was aware of My Bloody Valentine at “Loveless”‘s release and liked a few songs at the time, I didn’t become a fan until much later and so my expectations weren’t as insurmountable. Personally, I liked “m b v” from the start. Yes, much of it sounded like it was recorded 22 years before, along with the sessions of its predecessor (except with better production), but for me, there were subtle differences and hints throughout at the direction Shields and company could have been looking to take should they have continued to make music.

Indeed, “m b v” was exceptional because it did something no other album had been able to do: stand up to the brilliance of “Loveless” and not flinch. I don’t think it could have been released at any other time than 2013. I don’t think we were collectively ready to be able to appreciate it as an album for its own beauty until then.

All that being said, “new you” was and still is my favourite track on the album and the one I point to whenever the album comes up in conversation. A double barrelled shotgun of plodding bass and funky drumming, looping guitars that soar and dive, and Blinda Butcher’s ghostly vocals. It is a song in constant climax – no ups, no downs – just pure joy as noise consummated. It is My Bloody Valentine and it is good.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2013 list, click here.

Categories
Tunes

Eighties’ best 100 redux: #90 U2 “With or without you” (1987)

<< #91    |    #89 >>

The band responsible for track #90 on my “Eighties best 100” redux needs no introduction nor historical context. Ever since their near legendary performance at Live Aid in 1985, they’ve been a global act, fitting the bill of “biggest band in the world” for many of the intervening years.

Personally, I’ve never been able to call myself a big U2 fan but I am well aware of their contribution to music, especially that of their seminal 1987 album “The Joshua tree”. Even still, I gave away this very same compact disc to an acquaintance in university because I never listened to it. Despite all this, when Bono was convinced in 2005 by “friend” and then Prime Minister of Canada, Paul Martin, to add Ottawa as a stop on their monolithic world tour of the day, I purchased tickets to see them at the Corel Centre (now the Canadian Tire Centre) for me and my wife. The fact that a hot new band called Arcade Fire opened the concert for U2 certainly sweetened the deal for me but I can freely admit that Bono, The Edge, and the rest of their company put on an excellent live show. By that point, however, they’d been at the game for close to thirty years so I would have been more surprised had the show been a snoozer.

Back in 1986, they were still young bucks, riding a high off their aforementioned Live Aid performance and the success of their previous album, 1984’s “The unforgettable fire.” U2 once again enlisted the production team of wunderkind, Brian Eno, and Canadian guitarist, Daniel Lanois, to work on what would become “The Joshua tree”, arguably the band’s best work. The trilogy of songs that lead off the album (“Where the streets have no name”, “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for”, and “Without or without you”) delivers a three punch knockout of beautifully textured music, with Edge’s trademark guitar sound at the forefront. The problem for me was that I rarely got past those first three tracks.

“With or without you”, the song that just builds and builds and builds, is easily one of my favourite tracks that U2 has produced but much of it is due to nostalgia. It just screams the eighties to me… That and high school dances.

Original Eighties best 100 position: #90

Favourite lyric: My hands are tied / My body bruised, she’s got me with / Nothing to win and / Nothing left to lose.” But nobody can really sing it like Bono.

Where are they now?: Still at it, of course. In fact, they’d been at the top of the world so long that when I was telling my wife about their current residency opening the Sphere in Las Vegas and she asked how relevant they were, I was dumbfounded. But it did have me pondering the same question.

For the rest of the Eighties’ best 100 redux list, click here.