Acclaimed Music Top 30 Albums from 1997 poll

xps i feel that tired about all of the indie on this list. i truly have no desire to hear ok computer or like modest mouse again. yo la tengo too. the past few years i've been into a lot of dance music so i have a low-level interest in hearing say that david holmes album. i never listened to roni size at the time, or i think i did once? at a used cd store. definitely did not get it. not sure i would choose that one now if i wanted to get myself into d n b though. seem to recall it was like the token "this happened" pick of nme 2-3 years too late.

in many ways these lists are incredibly tiresome. the canonization aspect is stupid. i basically agree with imago but feel that pointing it out to list dongs is not going to be productive you're just going to have defensive paragraphs. conversation doesn't require external consensus it requires two people with the imagination to create consensus between themselves in any huge number of ways and it's disingenuous to suggest that like a canonized list of albums is required for people to have conversations. maybe with someone like scik mouthy but really who would want to do that? other list choads with overlapping taste. how exciting.

Yeah, I wish there was room on ILM for the discussion of obscure music. But there just isn't. There just isn't.

Homogenic you monsters.

Have I just been ad hominem'd? Fuck you, mattresslessness; I can do (and have done) dick-waving obscurantism with the best of them. This thread is ABOUT A CONSENSUAL LIST you fucking moron, and there is AN ENTIRE DATABASE of discussion built over 15 years for you to talk about whatever the fuck you like. List choad? I participate in about ten threads a year these days and they're seldom list ones - I came in this thread because it's about a formative year for me, and, surprise surprise, for other people too. Fuck you.

actually really hate this list. there's something about late 90s popular music, which i experienced as a relatively happy adolescent, that when it's formed into this variegated aggregation just instills a deep feeling of ennui and horror in me.

supergrass, bjork, cornershop, portishead, the verve - cobbles on a path towards suicide ideation.

I think my main way of discovering new music in 1997 was to go to Downtown Music Gallery in the East Village and buy something unheard based on the cover. Obviously the results ended up being a bit hit or miss. I did see a lot of good shows in '97 though. Most of my listening that year would probably be categorized under avant-garde jazz or experimental rock.

1997 wasn't even a great year for me. Looooads more good stuff in '96 and '98. Nevertheless, here's a small list of stuff I personally prefer to this list:

The Fall - Levitate <<<this album is above and beyond, but also below and within - it is unmusic, it is unlearnt art, it is terrifying and bad and better than anything else from this year
Half Man Half Biscuit - Voyage To The Bottom Of The Road
Cornelius - Fantasma <<<still sounds futuristic
Toenut - Two In The Pinata <<<the best American indie-rock album of this year, obv
Cheer-Accident - Enduring The American Dream <<<a fucking avant-rock classic, just so goddamn adventurous and great
Ocean Machine - Biomech
Catherine Wheel - Adam And Eve <<<the best American indie-rock album of this year by a British band, obv
Robert Wyatt - Shleep
The Wildhearts - Endless, Nameless <<<an insane and beautiful little album that's largely forgotten
Mansun - Attack Of The Grey Lantern <<<the third-best Britpop album of the year
The Dandy Warhols - Come Down <<<the second-best Britpop album of the year
Suede - Sci-Fi Lullabies <<<the best Britpop album of the year. oh it's a compilation, SORRY.
Sidi Bou Said - Obsessive
Komar & Melamid & Dave Soldier - The Most (Un)Wanted Music
Long Fin Killie - Amelia
Hum - Downward is Heavenward
Space Needle - The Moray Eels Eat The Space Needle
Dubstar - Goodbye
Ulver - Nattens Madrigal

Hell, I even prefer listening to Be Here Now than a load of this stuff. It's just so huge and shit and clueless that it becomes kind of mesmerically great. But of course if it were in this list it'd be very much part of the problem.

imago how do you think this list was constructed and what do you think the intent was behind the methodology?

Dig Your Own Hole as aged incredibly well. Same with Homogenic. While I love OKC, even at the time I listened to those two records more, so I'll probably vote for one of them.

I kinda feel like Be Here Now is the apotheosis of the Oasis 'dumb-as-dirt bombast' mission statement. I enjoy it as a rock album by a band who could sincerely be mistaken as speakers of English as a second language ('Magic Pie', indeed).

beep beep who got the keys to the jeep

I enjoy it as a rock album by a band who could sincerely be mistaken as speakers of English as a second language ('Magic Pie', indeed).

― Grilled Floam In A Gak Reduction (Old Lunch), Friday, August 14, 2015 7:23 PM (36 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Worst/most cringeworthy lyric on Oasis' 'Be Here Now'

Can anyone explain the appeal of Spiritualized to me? I've given them a go a number of times over the years and always found them crushingly dull.

― the joke should be over once the kid is eaten. (chap), Thursday, August 13, 2015 3:56 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

have you heard the first album, Lazer Guided Melodies? the sound is much more dreamy and zonked out than their other records. the production is really slick and shimmerry. and the songs are catchier.

plus j spaceman's voice tends to be either bathed in fx or low in the mix (if his voice bothers you)

yeah, i'd agree with that. if you're not a fan of spiritualized from "ladies and gentlemen..." on, you should give lazer guided melodies (and some of pure phase) a chance because it's quite different.

me and my girl missy gettin pissy up in bennigan's
makin all you other rappers begin again
like finnegan
christians repent and then sin again

imago how do you think this list was constructed and what do you think the intent was behind the methodology?

― balls, Friday, August 14, 2015 7:19 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's some RYM-type deal isn't it, the intent being to allow people to rank their favourite albums on a big website, which is fine for many purposes tbh

Pure Phase is sooooo the best Spz album

another nudge for david holmes.

listened to the album last week, and heard it afresh all over again.

but could have easily voted for 8 of the other albums ..

t's some RYM-type deal isn't it, the intent being to allow people to rank their favourite albums on a big website, which is fine for many purposes tbh

no

Diminishing returns from Spiritualized, imo. Best thing about 'Ladies & Gents...' was the medicine-style packaging.

Franzon has statistically aggregated hundreds of published lists that rank songs and albums into aggregated rankings by year, decade and all-time.

ahahaha christ, ok, this is almost perfectly inimical to how i approach music listening. i'm out

the only conceivable positive purpose this list has, and i'm sure the intent, is to see which music has been acclaimed and to chart the critical consensus - to construct an image of the canon if not the canon itself. but i'm being very charitable there

o it's definitely some nerd shit. it's kinda useful as a warehouse of various crit lists, etc over the years. the overall consensus arrived at is kinda dull (rateyrmusic is probably more interesting in a way)(in the same way that imdb's top movies list is more interesting than afi's) but still it's more 'o right these are the big crit list faves of that year'. it's been kinda interesting to me w/ the 90s is the relative dearth of hip hop beyond the token obv choices. not quite as outrageous to me but there's also been a noticeable dearth of metal on these lists. hip-hop does better at getting token spots on trad rock pub lists than metal but metal i think has more publications and a longer history of publications adding inputs. something like country which very rarely gets acknowledged on trad rock pub lists and doesn't have a ton of publications devoted to it doing this kind of canonizing gets shafted even more.

This may be deeply uncool to admit, but I think 1997 was kind of a high watermark year for modern rock radio. As overplayed as they are, I'd rather listen to a well curated mix-tape of Wallflowers, Smash Mouth, Third Eye Blind, Sublime, OMC, Green Day, etc.. hits from this year that most of the albums listed above. I guess Blur, Verge and Supergrass from the list above were kind of in that style - for some reason Britpop got a bit more critical respect than the US post-grunge stuff.

Catherine Wheel - Adam And Eve <<<the best American indie-rock album of this year by a British band, obv

'97 is also the year of Teenage Fanclub's best album

no

(grand prix or bandwagonesque imo)

jim otm

This is an easy one for me as Homogenic is my favourite album of the 90s. In It For The Money would be a close second.

So many people mentioning Homogenic... I love the record, and it's my favourite Bjork album by far, but if it tops this poll I'll be very surprised, even though I'd be pleased to see anything beat OK Computer for a change.

My top ten, roughly in order:

Yo La Tengo - I Can Hear the Heart Beating As One
Björk - Homogenic
Sleater-Kinney - Dig Me Out
Erykah Badu - Baduizm
Primal Scream - Vanishing Point
Supergrass - In It for the Money
Spiritualized - Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space
Elliott Smith - Either/Or
The Prodigy - The Fat of the Land
Cornershop - When I Was Born for the 7th Time

great list imago, discovered a few things i already like.

i think the most surprising thing about this thread is that no one has said they are voting for Homework. this is ILM right?

Voted Missy.
Probably listened to "Welcome to our World" more than anything else though.
Imperfect album, but the production and Static's vocal arrangements were amazing.

1997's critical consensus was... underwhelming. maybe it's just where we're at in time, maybe in ten years all these records will sound really brilliant to me again, but i find there are very few records less interesting to me than the critically acclaimed records of twenty years ago.

never heard "sizzla", though. any good?

Try the most critically acclaimed films of 20 years ago.

I just think Discovery is Daft Punk's crowning glory. I love some of the singles off Homework but to me it feels more like a collection of 12"s than an album I'd want to listen to all the way through.
Then again, I heard Discovery first so that may have biased me.

I'd have voted for Prolapse's "Italian Flag" if it were here. Same for Memphis synthers the Clears' self-titled (would be an interesting alternate universe). But "Lonesome Crowded West" was my life for a while, and in the absence of those others I can't not vote for it.

For some other off-listers, thank you ILXors for reminding me of Fantasma and Polydistortion. Drugs A. Money's list looks nice too; my droney DAM-esque picks for '97 wd be Hash Jar Tempo "Well Oiled" and the Azusa Plane's "Tycho Magnetic Anomaly". And, oh shit, ciderpress OTM, The Ballasted Orchestra.

Homogenic and (bits of) the YLT and BTS are p gr8 too but nobody needed reminding of that. Screw New Forms; d&b was never really an album genre but if I had to pick a couple from '97 they'd be Modus Operandi and The Prototype Years.

xp i love the track on Orblivion with the Scouser going on about Beelzebub

SALT. Sample of David Thewlis in "Naked" iirc. I sold the album at one point cz I was all "bah, it only has two good tracks on it" (SALT and Toxygene), but it turned out that I missed those two tracks so much I bought it back again.

yeah not super into "kundun" or "the ice storm" either

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

imago otm itt

'97 is also the year of Teenage Fanclub's best album

― Ys Man a.k.a. Have One on G (geoffreyess), Friday, August 14, 2015 2:40 PM (2 days ago)

agree with this, and I voted for Grand Prix in the '95 poll...

that said, even if it were here I couldn't vote for Songs from Northern Britain over Lonesome Crowded West or Perfect From Now On.

Just bought Polydistortion on CD for a massive £1.57.

Money very well spent.

every Gus Gus album (except for Forever) is great to to outstanding

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.