S/D: Mid-to-late-'90s alt-rock-electronic-ish stuff that was probably on a soundtrack somewhere and is now severely out of taste but that I love

stuff like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MT87qcw3qg

or possibly this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEVNTkwvB0E

almost every reviewer haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaates this stuff and it's absent from the mass remembering of the '90s, but it is quite possibly my favorite genre of music

Loved that Transister song at the time. About half the album was almost on par with it.

The first (and maybe only) thing that immediately comes to mind:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgffRW1fKDk

Garbage kind of defined this, no?

I heard this on the radio in '97

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqfWQK2ykHM

seems like a lot of these performers had a buzzy first single/video, failed to build momentum, and were all dropped from their labels a year or so after their debuts came out.

This might be too dance-poppy, also reminds me a lot of latter-day B-52's:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wq_FqVGDAFM&nohtml5=False

garbage defined part of it, the other part is defined by letters to cleo probably (plus their predecessors, the "legit" alt-rock acts all of whom I am fans of, but that's easy enough

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7saoB6rLxYY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qcm6QB1KwY

Lucious Jackson would be another act that defined this, right?

Heheh. I was just about to search up some Joydrop.

Does this count? Was on the Kim Possible soundtrack.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3dtao2H5XXw

Then there's those Cornelius albums where he remixed The Pastels, Buffalo Daughter etc and vice versa.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjBwe6IL10o

Would Whale fit in here?

Space monkeys!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pURJDToKA0k

I remember buying Curve's third album and the CD inside was actually The Space Monkeys, which was a trenchant piece of situationist rock crit from the record store I think.

does 2001 count (Vanilla Sky)?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4v1fkylL3s

yeah, the cutoff for this is pretty nebulous, I always think 2003 but that number is pulled out of my ass

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mecyPAqZbc0

s/number/year (this is what happens when I am too busy listening to youtube to proofread)

I love Where do I Begin, but that came out in 1997 on a hugely popular record, so it certainly counts for the thread.

This made me put on Dig Your Own Hole for the first time in, idk, more than a decade. This record fucking bangs!

this was used in a low budget brit gore movie.
cannot recall the name.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptCkKj59YG8

oh, and i love that transister album.

amazing to think its brains behind the lovely FM pop of Danny Wilson.

This is my new favorite thread.

i don't really get the in/out lines here, but i loved this song at the time:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsDmhprjOHo

^ produced by we™ (i think). problem for me is that most of the mid-to-late-'90s alt-ish electronic stuff i like has not so much rock in it. like this eve/fatboy slim "cowboy" from the blade ii soundtrack:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-pHKRyuPqE

or this one weird monkey mafia remix:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTds_YqoX_M&nohtml5=False

this fits the bill methinks :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTokduMQYfw

This is actually the definitive Bif Naked tune for this thread:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FksHZFBCetE

Thread needs some Poe:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAVgJQVo2oE&nohtml5=False

Oh no! This is the version I meant:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cujypawzVQ&nohtml5=False

okay actually these Bif Naked and Poe songs are basically the same song which I never realised until now.

Is Ruby's "Tiny Meat" too good for this thread:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VErOaxgpGD0&nohtml5=False

if we're not too prescriptive about the electronic component this could also be "bands who could have played at The Bronze" (also b/c I feel like K's Choice's "Not An Addict" fits here thematically if not sonically)

I do think Whale would fit here, though maybe moreso stuff from their second album:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytXFgvFem6Y

agree re ruby and whale.
actually, i need to try that whale album again - picked up the cd a few months ago and not really given it the attention it requires.

Mono, maybe?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxBAyupjLNw

This thread could also be called "CDs I picked up for a dollar in the bargain bin."

mono were very much part of the lounge/trip-hop/e-z groove though weren't they ?

(dont get me wrong, i really like the album .. )

They were, but at the pop-rock end of the spectrum. It all got a little blurry in the late '90s.

Tim, you are my hero

I haven't clicked every link on here yet, has anyone brought up Poe yet?

oh lol Tim did

you are BEYOND my hero (also I think we had this exact conversation 20 years ago)

thread giving me weird flashbacks to a forgotten prior version of myself

A few Bran Van 3000 songs would likely fit in this category. And this one was on the soundtrack to Practical Magic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxEV7us8Hfc

from the buffy soundtrack:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNgwj1psdk8

ahh ..
i have the furslide cd hidden deep in the archive somewhere.
good call.
had production from nelle hooper i think - hence why i was interested.

xpost I love that Bran Van 3000 song

Was coming on to post Sneaker Pimps, though 6 Underground rather than Spin Spin Sugar.

i think 'hold me thrill me kiss me kill me' probably counts here, to some extent.

These bands were sort of the post-grunge, post-rave, post-hip hop alternative to britpop. Maybe you could view them as some sort of aberrant uncool heirs to the original firstwave post-rock generation of pram, laika, moonshake etc - rock subverted with digital technology usurping the role of the guitar?

The other trend that was connected to this was pop-rock that wanted to sound like it had listened to Beck e.g. Shawn Mullins' "Rockabye" through The Eels' "Novocaine for the Soul".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCZaMUTP3MM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSLqeZzTU8I

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8S_R13jV11Q

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_06W2zTh9ds

https://youtu.be/Lkr_27YYHrA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOXlJfJ-OgA

Róisín Murphy's face in that still is cracking me up.

I think this phenomenon is best understood as major labels seeking to come to grips with "electronica" as a possible means by which to keep alive the crossover success of alternative rock, hence its survival is sharply circumscribed by the fortunes of the sounds that it supplemented and those that ultimately rendered it redundant. Its history is best traced by soundtracks.

As a starting premise we can establish that this phenomenon did not yet exist in 1994 based on the simple observation that there is not a single qualifying song on the Reality Bites soundtrack (an almost perfect example of big money attempts to emulate the hip new sound of youth, importantly including the young's penchant for retro nostalgia).

The jumping off point is Tank Girl in March 1995: slotting Bjork's "Army of Me" and Portishead's "Roads" alongside L7, Hole and Belly like it ain't no thang, girl power means we can rock with or without guitars. This was in fact my own first exposure to Portishead at the age of 12/13. That this soundtrack feels more genuinely "alt" than those which follow simple confirms that at this point the proposition ("these disparate things are in fact the same") was not yet fully absorbed by mainstream culture.

1996 through 1998 is the golden age, an obvious example being the Stealing Beauty soundtrack: so desperate for those Portishead vibes that it includes Hooverphonic's "2Wicky" alongside "Glory Box" (but also, crucially, "Rocket Boy" by Liz Phair - is this dialectics or bet hedging?).

But by 1998 something else is happening: big beat, once seen as extension of these moody alt vibes, is now redefining electronica from moody alt vibes into good times beersoaked frat party music, like an instrumental version of Smashmouth. Simultaneously rock itself is also going in this direction : younger, dumber, brasher. The first clear articulation of this is the Can't Hardly Wait soundtrack: Third Eye Blind and Blink-182 in the first three tracks sandwiching Smashmouth, some hip hop and R&B to round out the party and no electronica whatsoever. Romance is signified by the pretty, very acoustic "Kiss Me", confirming the prescience of Natalie Imbruglia's "Torn" the year before (emerging in the middle of the golden age, Imbruglia had dutifully burnished the rest of her debut album with electronic touches to appear contemporary).

That Can't Hardly Wait was clearly onto something is demonstrated by how in 1999 the (more successful) American Pie soundtrack so carefully repeated many of its key moves, right down to including Third Eye Blind and Blink-182 in the first few tracks ("Kiss Me" was upgraded to Bic Runga's smaller, more lovely "Sway"). There's a new music of the (white) youth in town, and it's never heard an Isaac Hayes album in its life.

That same year, She's All That (which couldn't resist pulling out "Kiss Me" again) placed a full stop on the phenomenon: electronica finally gets in-film recognition but it's via a jokey prom dance routine to "The Rockafeller Skank" - nothing "alt" about it. The implausible scene where two of the characters simultaneously declare their independently-derived love for Goldie's "Believe" is the movement's very last asthmatic gasp.

also important to this sort of thing is Things I Hate About You, specifically its major-label interpretation of "angry girl music of the indie rock persuasion"

I always think of the endpoint somewhere around 2004, which was Mean Girls and Regina mocking Cady for not knowing Katy Rose's "Overdove"

*Overdrive, also

The first thing that came to mind was Hooverphonic's "2Wicky" on the I Know What You Did Last Summer soundtrack.

And Mono's "Life in Mono" on Great Expectations.

i am trying to think of the best Ivy track to put here

also omg this is my new favorite thread THANK YOU KATHERINE

is this electronic enough?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQxgRt1vJgQ

wait i meant this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7Gz2WDJibk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-D61Sje2Ts4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sa6HVMwTl5U

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydjzF6mJ-9I

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOyAsgalu3I

the frontwoman of this group went on to make "i'm still hot," of covered-by-betty-white-in-a-meme fame

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQZhyVAJFNg

I think even before Garbage and/or Republica, this was probably the genesis of the trend (though the lack of guitars being mixed with the electronics might dq it)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4MPPOTarDM

^ nah, now that I've skimmed the rest of the thread, I see that's not really what you're going for.

Where does Is This Desire? fit into this thread?

Too arty.

The Great Expectations soundtrack has Tori Amos' "Siren" which is the perfect example of established artists reacting to this trend.

I'd probably circumscribe the time period quite strictly because I do feel like by the end of the 90s the coalition-qualities of the major label notion of "alternative" - music that, regardless of specific genre or sonic affectations, sounded like it was angling for a Spin cover - had totally splintered.

By the time the third Garbage album came out in late 2001 it felt very outmoded.

Other key moments:

1. The Romeo & Juliet soundtrack from the beginning of 2007, with the truly archetypal trip hop remix of Garbage's "#1 Crush";
2. The Cruel Intentions soundtrack from March 2001, with the Elizabeth Frazer / Craig Armstrong collabo.

Those dates should be early 1997 and March 1999 obv.

i was scrolling through this thread for the first time and was like whoa, serendipity when "2wicky" was mentioned, before i noticed the date and remembered that we don't control beyoncé, she controls us

(isn't trip-hop the elephant in the room here? my memories are indistinct but i recall a lot of "american rock acts trying to recreate trip-hop from a long distance" vibes)

(i'd love to know whether there were any equipment/technology changes that spurred on the electronic experimentation! i've tried to get tori amos to talk about her siren/datura/iieee phase on at least two occasions now but she can be extremely non-specific when she wants)

great expectations and romeo + juliet soundtracks both feel v key to this - the former is the only place i ever heard poe - but actually returning to the track listings doesn't seem to bear this out? actually both seem kind of grim?

been a long time since i listened, but i seem to recall suzanne vega adding some electronica/noise/beats to her thing for the "99.9F" album.
suspect some of that album would be suitable for this thread ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xD5O4gdSPro

I big this record up every five years but nobody cares, so here I go again.

Also the Furslide album is brilliant, Jennifer Turner just vanished into the ether after that, which is a huge shame. I own more than two thirds of the records whose YouTubes are in this thread, predictably.

OMG OMG OMG i remembered the song that is the absolute pinnacle of this aesthetic and also the worst song posted in this thread so far:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEHKVaASeOg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0O2-xV5XEA

Another soundtrack touchstone of this sound was the one for Spawn from '97, which had a Judgement Night-style pairing of Rock & Electronic artists.

http://www.allmusic.com/album/spawn-the-album-mw0000030260

this is also early 2000s but I made the thread and I say it fits

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G71-f08GeDk

this just sounds like grizzly bear today

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ay79zwejwf4

wtf this is what Grizzly Bear sounds like????

the "built around a peppy piano riff" part, silly

i have listened to v little GB and got rly excited for a minute a :/

that song sounds like a more frivolous Saint Etienne

three guesses what reminded me of this today

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AT8PLB-zsV0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pURJDToKA0k

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QORg0kMaqRg

Not quite sure if this fits this thread, but I've always liked this song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeDs-jZBh5s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4mcHfZOX5k

cannot believe it has taken me this long to get to ARCHIVE.

their second album (now disowned by the band) epitomizes this sub-genre.

there must be something in the air bc i decided to finally try n get into garbage a couple mo. back & was really digging the overarching vibe

weirdly i completely love this aesthetic but the actual execution of it feels extremely spotty to me. IDK if it's just that I wish there was someone to distill the general sensation into something more pop or what but yeah

except for ivy's album which is pretty perfect.

Of course i was familiar w/ Garbage from high school but i never owned their CDs or anything

Did we already talk about Curve's "Chinese Burn" and specifically that time Buffy and Faith danced to it at some awesome underground club in a factory (the kind that only exists in video clips, The Matrix and, seemingly, Buffy The Vampire Slayer) in the middle of the day?

they exist for real in Berlin! Maybe all these ppl are secretly going to Berlin real quick to dance?

this is the stuff:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oM_hkAKujXU