Acclaimed Music Top 30 Albums from 1997 poll

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.

the Top 2 is right and big surprise at number 3. i'm a bit disappointing that In It for the Money and Vanishing Point got no votes.

Wow, totally didn't see that coming!

Having said that, not a lot of votes between Homogenic and OK Computer!

Most of the albums that received zero votes are quite good. I expect Erykah to do muuuuch better in the 2000 poll (and I might even preemptively declare that as my vote).

Polls make you look really ugly.

to the 5 others who went YLT: i love you.

Thanks 23 voters for proving imago right.

nope

1997 was also the peak of the '90s alt-country boom: Whiskeytown, Old 97s, Robbie Fulks, Steve Earle, The Derailers, The Bottle Rockets, Richard Buckner, Slobberbone, Blue Mountain, 6 String Drag, Neko Case ... all put out terrific albums.

Voted Spice world

voted OK C because it's what the thread deserves

Zaireeka didn't get a single goddamn vote?!?!

i thought it was great, the one time i heard it as intended. i listened to a mix-down version once as well, but it's just wrong to do that and leaves guilty feelings afterward. nowadays i don't think i could find 4 CD players.

Thanks 23 voters for proving imago right.

has OK Computer become the international symbol of bad taste or something? what makes it different than say Dark Side of the Moon? why is it so offensive to like this record?

it's not. people just expect people's opinions and tastes to change dramatically over time and they don't.

Was gonna say something until I remembered Pavement won the '94 poll, too.

OK C holds up pretty good imho. a lot of stuff that seemed like a good idea at the time can sound questionable 15 years down the road (as much as I still love Let's Get Killed i'm not digging a lot of the tracks nearly as much as I did at the time), but OK C isn't one of them. nor is In It for the Money.

Vanishing Point is my favourite Primal Scream album that I've heard. They managed to hit on that particular vibe so well.

I feel OKC is an extremely mixed bag in a lot of ways. There's some great stuff on there for sure: Uptight, Lucky, Electioneering into Climbing. But there's a lot of stuff I don't really have time for: obv Fitter is the famously doff track, but tbh Karma Police & No Surprises wore out their welcome quick, and Tourist and Let Down are kind of listless slogs. Yes, Let Down has pretty colors, but so does Uptight and that track has an elated, jazzy buoyancy where Let Down has only leadenness. And I like Android okay, and its impressive how it manages to seem compressed and yet expansive enough to imply that that one track will be enough as a follow-up to the entire Bends album, but I feel like the logic of the track (tension->explosion->spent, wearied reverence) is kind of pat, bordering on cliche (though tbrr it does feel like it could actually belong on "the greatest album ever" which is more than I can say for Exit Music or Tourist or Karma Police)

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"

Thank you :-) re HJT: Under Glass a lot but I have a hard time getting into Well Oiled for some reason. I will def check out that Azusa Plane album though. Also imago's list seems really good, too...

That should read "I like Under Glass a lot..."

xxp good post; largely agree

would go further and say 'no surprises' is trite & shit. sorry that is just my opinion

the 'let down' false ending is kinda great but yeah it's weighted down by that portentous & overbearing tone; it doesn't feel like it's quite earned its own grandeur

first three tracks are cooking with gas but for some reason nobody else twigged how frontloaded the album is (mostly coz 'climbing up the walls' is so good probs lol)

i was never the most fervent radiohead fan, but at this point in time the album just seems to be so of its time and neither old enough to be interesting, or new enough to be fresh so that i literally couldn't sit through it.

HATE the production.

i voted for mogwai young team from pure campanilismo

xp i'd be interested to hear why you hate the OKC (assuming that's what you mean) production. at the time it felt like the most space-age thing, like the opening minutes of planet telex turned into a full album.

i'd argue a lot of accusations of triteness/cliche when it comes to OKC are only really applicable in hindsight, if only because it's become that way through setting a benchmark that others have followed, or through being overplayed.

even 'fitter happier' sounded cool at the time, although it's easy to laugh at it now. the text-to-speech voice, 'a pig in a cage on antibiotics', the fact it's obviously a filler but also an 'eye-of-the-duck' thing that epitomises the album, 'shot of baby smiling in back-seat', the overall dystopian tone of the thing - all these are kind of laughable now in today's context, but they felt pretty new and arresting at the time.

Missy Elliot was more futuristic and arresting though.

apples and oranges

Not in this poll.

My only exposure to Missy at this point was via her singles and she didn't SOUND futuristic until "Beep Me 911", which wasn't released until 1998

this is apples and oranges, c'mon man.

I'm just saying that I owned both albums, liked OKC, but was blown away by "The Rain" in contact (Homogenic too).