It’s been nearly two months since I wrapped up my last mini series. So it’s about time to do another, right?
Right.
It actually occurred to me while drafting those comeback posts back in February and looking back over all the best albums series I’ve done over the years, that I hadn’t done a historical piece in a while. 1990 was the year that I opened up this blog with, starting a series on my top 30 tunes for that year so that seemed a good place to pick up, given I’m on a roll with this return to blogging. I’m actually reusing the above pic from the page that sums up that entire list, both for nostalgia’s sake and for taking the path of least resistance.
I won’t rehash all the words that I already spilled on said page but suffice to say, 1990 was an important year for music for me. It was just around that time that I was getting into alternative music and because it was pre-Internet, some of the albums on this list were discovered, and appreciation gained for them, in the handful of years following their initial release.
With this post, I am sharing a smattering of albums (in alphabetical order) that are great and mean a lot to me but landed just outside of my top ten favourites. I plan to post the rest of this series every week or so, intermingling them with our regularly scheduled programming. The next one in the series will feature albums ten through six and the posts that follow will each proclaim the greatness of my top five albums for the year. The series may take a month or two when all is said and done, but bear with me. It should be fun.
Cocteau Twins “Heaven or Las Vegas”: Not only my gateway* to the band but likely also for many others, given that the 6th full-length release by the legendary dream pop outfit was their most commercially successful – more intelligible lyrics from Elizabeth Fraser than usual and a very slight deeper leaning into pop from their typical experimentation were the likely culprits.
Check out: “Cherry-coloured funk”
Happy Mondays “Pills ‘n’ thrills and bellyaches”: Eventually, I got over my prejudice against the mythical Madchester group for the part they played in bankrupting Factory Records** and moved past the couple of tracks with which I was already familiar, care of a mixed tape a friend made for me, and I fell hard for the ‘Mondays’ best selling record – yep, it’s druggy, danceable, and chaotic fun.
Check out: “Step on”
Inspiral Carpets “Life”: The debut album by the Manchester quintet was chock full of dance floor ready boppers made distinctive by the singspeak vocals of Tom Hingley and the swirling organs of Clint Boon and it might even have cracked my top 10 had the wonderful standalone single, “Commercial rain”, actually been on this one.
Check out: “This is how it feels”
James “Gold mother”: Manchester stalwarts James first came to my attention with this, their third album, albeit a few years late***, but even still, I didn’t fully come to appreciate it until much later, after years of listening to later albums where the large group’s big sound became more fully developed. Nevertheless, a great introduction.
Check out: “Top of the world”
The Lightning Seeds “Cloudcuckooland”: Ian Broudie’s debut album as The Lightning Seeds was britpop before britpop was even a thing – and we know how much I love britpop****… so many great tracks that wouldn’t have sounded out of place at any point during the british alternative boom.
Check out: “Pure”
*This, after many years of trying and failing to find some common ground with the band and at least, a couple dozen spins of this particular album.
**It took a long time, though, because Northside, one of my favourite Manchester bands at the time, got caught up in said bankruptcy and never managed to release their sophomore album.
***After it was reissued for the US audience as the eponymously named album with the instantly recognizable flower on the cover and included a new version of the classic “Sit down“. A bunch of us were given copies of this CD at a high school CFNY video dance party and many never listened to it. Much like the Inspirals album here, “Gold mother” might’ve cracked the top ten if “Sit down” were on the original release.
****And as I’ve written about before on these pages, I came to The Lightning Seeds late – they somehow escaped my adoration for many years!
I’ll be back very soon with albums #10 through #6 for my Best albums of 1990 list. In the meantime, you can check out my Best Albums page here if you’re interested in my other favourite albums lists.
Camera Obscura “Look to the east, look to the west”: The Scottish indie pop band’s sixth studio album and first since the death of keyboardist, Carey Lander in 2015, shows the group in fine form and chock full of that twee magic.
The Decemberists “As it ever was, so it will be again”: The Portland-based quintet keeps on doing things in their own particular way – esoteric subject matter dressed up in indie folk, informed by a myriad of world musical styles – on their 9th studio album and we continue to love them for it.
Desperate Journalist “No hero”: To my ears, these post punk revivalists from London, England have firmly grasped the torch let drop by Canada’s The Organ when that band split after only one great album back in the early 2000s.
Elephant Stone “Back into the dream”: The sixth album by the Montreal-based psych-rock quartet fronted by bass and sitar player Rishi Dhir, is more Beatlesque, jangle pop that is as equally relevant on a Saturday night, as it is on a Sunday morning.
James “Yummy”: One of my favourite all-time bands celebrated their 40th anniversary year in 2023 with a compilation of orchestral reworkings of many of their much-loved classics and followed it up in 2024 with their 18th (!) studio album – future classics that feature the Manchester group’s signature “big”
Linn Koch-Emmery “Borderline iconic”: Unlike her 2021 debut, “
The Vaccines “Pick-up full of pink carnations”: London, England’s The Vaccines are sadly one of those bands that I tend to forget about* – until of course, they release a new album, like this, their 6th LP offering, and I am immediately caught back up in the wave of their angular, fun, and anthemic indie-pop.
My (life in) music lists 