FREEFORM 1990's ALTERNATIVE ALBUM POLL - THE RECKONING (TOP TEN COUNTING DOWN NOW)

Believe me, Fetchboy, LOL-2006-me was BURSTING for greater representation than it got

looool SMC

Not when when yr waiting in line at the grocery store and you just know in your heart of hearts that "sex bomb" by Tom Jones is coming on next.

xp obv.

Just wanna say I gave this album 13 points coz I'm cool like that

(and that's pretty much where it worked out in my order of preference anyway)

next one is by an absolute mile the most obscure thing so far, *maybe* the most obscure thing in the entire poll

This sounds like a set up...

THIS IS THE SOUND OF RADIOHEAD BEING BEATEN AT A GAME THEY WEREN'T EVEN BOLD ENOUGH TO PLAY

What were you even trying to say here?

"This album is better than what Radiohead would do if they tried to do something similar. Which they didn't."

lol Dan, I reposted that as it's probably the most lulzily quotable part of my idiotspew - it's here for emotive value rather than any pretence at good musical analysis. But yeah that pretty much IS what I'm saying there, with the emphasis on Radiohead's not-trying. THE TERRIBLE COWARDS

Miles more obscure than that Pekinese Opera thing? Is it an album you made in your bedroom?

You're not far off, Klata

45 Nachtstrom - 17 Songs After Midnight (1999)
55 points
1 vote
1 first-place vote
Contributor: Lamp

http://static.rateyourmusic.com/album_images/b2e05b05d056a969111b953cc2eaeaf5/603532.jpg

oh & my most played album in itunes is nachtstrom's 17 songs after midnight. so yeah

― (Head) (Lamp), Thursday, 4 March 2010 22:11 (1 month ago)

There are six (6) posts on ILX that mention Nachtstrom, 3 of which are list posts, one of which is the above and two of which are requests for more information.

i looked that up after lamp posted that post

yeah i think that was one of the artists i skipped when going thru the mego catalogue years ago

will make amends anyway.....

Tender is the song... that goes on much too long

A+

44 Arvo Pärt - Te Deum (1993)
55 points
2 votes
0 first-place votes
Greatest contributor: Moka

http://www3.sympatico.ca/alan.teder/ECM1505.jpg

Te Deum by Arvo Pärt is one of my favorite records ever. I highly recommend it.

― DougD (DougD), Wednesday, 14 December 2005 19:08 (4 years ago)

noticing the cloud come (contenderizer) wrote this on thread Best "Goth" album of all time? on board I Love Music on 11-Feb-2009

Arvo Part - Te Deum

Lots of ILX talk about Alina and Tabula Rasa, less so this.

Really nice surprise to see Blur's 13 on the list, I think it's aged rather well and these days I prefer it to Blur. Plenty of great songs on there but Caramel blows everything else away in my opinion.

1992 > Bugman > Caramel > Battle > Trimm Trabb > Coffee And TV > Mellow Song > Swamp Song > Trailerpark > BLUREMI > Tender > Optigan 1 > No Distance Left To Run

the first 5 of those are still utterly phenomenal pieces of music, although the guitar-explosion IN Caramel might be the best moment

I've not heard Alina, but Tabula Rasa and Te Deum are both exquisite. xxp

Listening to the "Te Deum" now, haven't heard it before. I've got and adore the Naxos disc of the Berlin Mass tho, so more choral Pärt is definitely welcome. Good choice.

xpost

If you moved Caramel to the to the front of that top 5 it would be spot on.

I never really liked No Distance Left to Run that much. I remember reading about it before the record came out with them saying it was the big heartbreak moment of the record then just hearing it and being really disappointed, It's kind of bland. Trailerpark is another one I'm not that keen on but overall a great record. Probably my fourth favourite of theirs.

Trailerpark has gone up a little in my estimation but ^^this is pretty much my ingrained opinion. Except it being my flat-out favourite.

Would like to hear Arvo Part...may get on that in a bit...

Good call on Arvo Pärt

awesome, te deum made it! going three for five now, which is i guess what happens when you only vote for a few things. can't really say why i prefer te deum to other partss, maybe it's just that i heard it first and spent so much time buried there when i did. though i don't often listen to arvo part these days (why not?), te deum is still riveting, still feels like something pulled from the earth more than written. plus very nice for slow, rainy mornings.

is Arvo Part in any way like late Talk Talk?

ok next up: the first album in the top 100 with a first-place voter who wasn't greatest contributor

43 Outkast - ATLiens (1996)
57 points
4 votes
1 first-place vote (The Reverend)
Greatest contributor: Daniel L4B34u

http://www.dustygroove.com/images/products/o/outkast~~~~_atliens~~_101b.jpg

this is maybe my favorite album of the 90s btw

― im on the moon btw (The Reverend)

Completely reasonable imo. I've consistently loved this album since I was like 11 years old

― smothered in country gravy (Whitey on the Moon), Wednesday, 3 March 2010 18:33 (2 months ago)

I could probably rap 90% of this album back at you verbatim (and could have done the rest at one point)

― fart and crazy swag (The Reverend), Monday, 8 March 2010 01:17 (1 month ago)

i'm not much of a rap dude but i think this has my favorite production of any rap album, so much subtle detail in the beats

― ciderpress, Monday, 8 March 2010 05:18 (1 month ago)

No album brings me back to high school like this one.

― musicfanatic, Monday, 8 March 2010 05:09 (1 month ago)

See in my experience ATLiens is best driving on a metro loop at night. I once drove the entirety of Loop 410 around San Antonio TX listening to ATLiens three times in a row.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Sunday, 29 July 2007 16:35 (2 years ago)

I still think Stankonia is their best genrefuck album.

ATLiens, though, is their best rap album.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Sunday, 29 July 2007 11:28 (2 years ago)

can i just say i play ATLiens over and over and it never ever bores me? can i?

― rizzx (rizzx), Thursday, 26 October 2006 19:40 (3 years ago)

How did this ^ not make the first poll?

Aquemini barely made the cut on the first one

:DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

I messed up thinking aquemini didn't make the first one so voted for that instead, and when lj corrected me i voted for bl_ck b_st_rds instead of doing the smart thing and going for a different 'kast. a perfect record in so many ways.

yay!

42 Pavement - Wowee Zowee (1995)
57 points
7 votes
0 first-place votes
Greatest contributors: sofatruck, eephus!

http://www.cdquest.com/images/album_art/sorted/0744/8610/0744861013020.jpg

I think that before Wowee Zowee, different Pavement fans had two different reasons for liking them: you could like them because they (alt) "rocked," or you could like them because they were "sloppy," and that was cool. But the "sloppy" thing hides something a little deeper. There was definitely a level on which they got basic wise-ass rock'n'roll mileage from their sloppiness -- there's that Fall influence in action -- but there was also something about that "sloppiness" that allowed them to be very graceful, elegant, and feminine; where most rock bands aimed to be heavy and energetic, Pavement had a lazy light touch, one that could let them stumble really beautifully through something like "Gold Soundz."

And I think Wowee Zowee was the album that had Pavement at their most Pavementy, with regard to that quality. Yes, it was full of wise-ass slack moves and all that, but it also contains a pretty high proportion of the band's prettiest songs -- stuff like "We Dance" and "Grave Architecture," or the verses of ... is it "AT+T?" Everyone's completely OTM upthread about how all this stuff "blurs together," and I think that's really important to the pretty stuff. None of those songs seem to be popping up and announcing it: "Hi, this is the pretty song, please note the pretty guitar tone, etc." No, they just get to stumble into it naturally, like they're finding that beauty right in front of you. (Part of why everything "blurs," after all, is that the songs are all recorded the same way, with the same guitar tones, and not too many track-to-track production shifts; it feels like they're just playing and coming across each thing individually.)

So that quality, that "casually stumbling across pretty things" quality, felt important then, especially when held up against alt-rock. Thing is, I feel like this reissue might still retain that feeling, even in a whole other context, because ... well, compare to all the run-of-mill indie bands right now who have that same quality of wanting to tell you that their stuff is beautiful, or hard, or whatever; compare to the amount of stuff these days that feels like its effect is very carefully calculated. On Wowee Zowee, Pavement actually sound like they're as open-minded about their record as the listener is expected to be -- they play what they play like it's no big deal, and they show a really surprising amount of range and skill in being able to stumble over and steer their way into a lot of really complex, wonderful things. I would love to hear more albums these days that caught that spirit, even if it did mean rocky, uneven records -- sorting through this kind of rocky unevenness is fairly pleasurable, and I'm probably fonder of "Best Friend's Arm" than any number of really solid well-written tracks.

― nabisco (nabisco), Thursday, 6 July 2006 16:15 (3 years ago)

More good discussion here: "I'm drowning for your thirst/Drowning for your thirst": The official WOWEE ZOWEE REISSUE anticipation thread

I wish I could still like Pavement. :(

They just annoy me now. I used to be the biggest fan, but Pavement more than any other band I've ever loved has become a mere nuisance.

Does anyone agree?

No, still love them.

I'm completely with you I'm afraid, Captain. I think the only thing I could bear to play nowadays is Watery Domestic. I know in my brain that S+E is still good, but I tried listening to it the other day and had to take it off. The other albums don't stand a chance.

i'm with Ahab, Wowee Zowee is the album I still have the most lingering affection for but I couldn't bring myself to vote for that fuckin band.

Ist rad!

Pavement becomes a lot more tolerable when you realize they actually got *better* through their progression of albums, peaking at Terror Twilight -- not the other way around.

S&E is like the tattered blueprint for Terror Twilight, which is the picture-perfect mansion resort on the lake.

i hate S&E and really like Brighten but ugh son

In the 90s I was massive Pavement stan and sorta talked myself into thinking S+E was the masterpiece (cz "everyone else" said so) even though I really preferred WZ and CRCR. Now S+E is the one I can't really bring myself to play ever, but WZ has never got old for me - it has enough weird twists and turns that there always seems to be something new I haven't noticed in it, little hooks and cryptic lyrics that you find yourself thinking about months after listening which drag you back in.

WZ + CRCR together just fit on a 100-minute tape and make (what I was sure at one point was) the perfect summer road trip tape.

Still don't care that much for post-WZ stuff. It always sounds better than I remember, but not quite enough.

WZ is head and shoulders my fave Pavement but I didn't care enough to vote for it.

Can't imagine ever getting tired of Pavement or Wowee Zowee.

It's easy if you try.

I haven't heard anything after Crooked Rain. Not going to rectify that either.

WZ is head and shoulders my fave Pavement but I didn't care enough to vote for it.

that

they had some good songs

felt kinda bad given alla those pts 2 nachtstrom cuz i didnt even hear that record until a couple yrs after it came out & the new millennium was in full effect but its such an amusingly disconcerting record & really shyly pretty. mb has in common with all the other things i really love a puzzle like quality, a capacity for organized randomness, a joy in the personal & the trivial.

wish i had sum interesting personal anecdote 2 share but its not a record thats really abt "big moments" all i really associate with this record is traveling. i was a snr in high school when i 1st heard its sort of an "in transit" record for me. the cut-up dissociative nature of its songs makes it gr8 for listening to on planes and trains - the enforced idleness & the strangeness. that heavy sense of waiting in motion. its the sdtrk to running along the lake when its windy & watching the sailboats & the harbor and dreaming of college. or the long subway rides to the club where i practiced tennis after school. of seeing again the same ppl and the same places and expecting them to be different even if they never really changed.

Yay 13!!!!

I just recently fell in love with Wowee Zowee after merely liking it for a number of years. It was just one of those Saturday afternoons where it sounded like the absolutely accurate summation of the state of my world at that moment. Which has always been the way I've fallen for the band's album. I remember listening to CRCR and liking it well enough, but not getting anyone going nuts over it, until I listened to it on headphones while ambling through town on a hot summer afternoon - and it just sounded so perfect. Didn't vote in the poll, but glad to see that album make it.

ATLiens is a fucking standout amazing album.