1995 Melody Maker/NME/Q Best Albums Poll

tricky! polly jean! tlc! scott! all four please

theres quite a few good records on that list, very good records actually. though 95 was the height of britpop, i think it was actually a very good year (and not just with stuff that would never make these lists - that makes pretty much every year good)

lol drugstore.

Gotta go with "The Infamous".

Them was giants in them days.

I'd vote for nearly all of them (though The Deepest Cut Vol 1 by Omni Trio is one of only many unjust omissions).

But it has to be Maxinquaye.

ok it was PJH at the time for me but now i pick TLC.

Never really liked that particular PJH album, though I loved the one before it and the one after it.

id say theres probably maybe 10 there that id gladly vote for, and another 10 which i like just fine

ive gone with the tindersticks second album, though i havent listened to it in a while

I could happily pick any one of a dozen or probably more.

me too.

Picked Maxinquaye without even thinking, though I do love the PJH, too.

Never really liked that particular PJH album, though I loved the one before it and the one after it.

it was my introduction to her - unsurprisingly i like PJ best in theatrical cabaret mode. by "the one after it" do you mean dance hall at louse point or is this desire? the latter is my favourite of her albums but that 95-98 period really was her creative pinnacle.

everyone seems in agreement that 95 had a lot to offer (which is sorta semi-surprising given ilxs current ambivalence re:90s)

I've never heard 'The Blue Moods of Spain', is it worth investigating?

Gotta go with eith Blur, though it is deeply flawed in parts, or TFC, Bomb the Bass or Scott Walker.

Quite a few career bests in there.

I meant Is This Desire? (Lex post)

But generally I prefer my PJH raw and rockist.

I don't have any ambivalence about '94 or '95 - they were great times to live through and for me it was '81-2 all over again; a million new and exciting things happening in music virtually on a daily basis.

The Blue Moods Of Spain is a fantastically gorgeous slow burn of a record. I highly recommend it.

I listened to The Great Escape again the other day - most of the uptempo stuff is rather forced (and I thought so at the time) but things like "Best Days," "He Thought Of Cars" and "Yuko And Hiro" are some of the most moving songs Albarn has ever written. If I really were a younger Ian MacDonald I'd say that if you weren't of a certain age and living in West London at the time you wouldn't quite have got it, but I still think it deserves a better retrospective press than it's had so far.

I always think of '96 as the height of BritPop, because of Euro96 and a long summer with hundreds of shit albums by three lads with guitars. There's lots of top stuff on this list.

stet i'm sure there will be a boring unimaginative '96 poll along in a minute or two, fret not.

1996 is bound to be a favourite year for Geir. So I'd bet he does the 1996 poll by tonight. (unless he leaves out MM/NME and all there is is shite Q music).

"spritzer... on ice, in new york city... isn't it a pity..."

Blue Moods of Spain gets my vote, their best album by far. Mixes the jazz feel with a plodding Codeine-like execution and sharp lyrics. Too bad they went for the AAA crowd in subsequent efforts.

Tough choice. I guess I'd have to relisten to the following nine albums to decide:

Maxinquaye - Tricky
To bring you my love - PJ Harvey
Garbage - Garbage
Elastica - Elastica
The blue moods of Spain - Spain
Wowee Zowee - Pavement
Grand Prix - Teenage Fanclub
L'Etat Et Moi - Blumfeld
Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness - The Smashing Pumpkins

Good album, that Blumfeld record. Whatever became of, etc.

Switch the top two albums and you have my picks.

it's the only blumfeld album i have, the first one might be even better, i listened to it once. it sounded like an early 80s post-punk record to me.

fortunately blumfeld disbanded recently. everything i heard of them after l'état et moi was meh. i never understood how the german press made them their indie gods or something.

Good album, that Blumfeld record. Whatever became of, etc.

The one after it turned up I think in 1999 and sounded kind of like George Michael

sort of xpost

I plumped for Maxinquaye, though Grand Prix is also a strong contender.

I suppose it's between Tindersticks, Pulp, Telstar Ponies and Cardigans for me (lol indie etc).
Boo Radleys, TLC, Tricky, PJ Harvey and Palace Music in reserves.

The Spain isn't bad, I've gone off the Young Gods and My Life Story. Timeless was terrible, and that Delicatessen album wasn't too good either.

The Young Gods is still one of my favourites.

I pretty much like Timeless! It outstrips its own naffness. I'm gonna have to go for Pavement I think

That's a very hard choice - I'd give about 10 or 15 votes if I could.

This is so much better than '94, it's not funny.

And is there a Hamburg Schule thread already?

i don't think so. why don't you start one?

Tricky's first was just so amazing. Another one.

Tricky for sure. (Marcello, when you say the one after TBYML, do you mean Dance Hall at Louse Point or Is This Desire?)

Shame the UK press focus on britpop as clearly there was a lot of other good music around at the time which was superior.

Gold: The Flaming Lips - Clouds Taste Metallic

Silver: Palace Music - Viva Last Blues

Bronze: Pavement - Wowee Zowee

I never liked Wowee Zowee, as much as I tried to. So it's a tossup between "Stable Reference" and "Yes"...Morphine dates badly, though, redolent as they are of goateed asswipes. So I guess it's Labradford!

Not that Morphine were goateed asswipes. That's just their 1995-era fanbase

Whale: We care - one of my top ten fave albums of the 1990s. Pop to Maxinquaye's rock.

When the 90s revival hits, it's going to be MASSIVE.

Shame the UK press focus on britpop as clearly there was a lot of other good music around at the time which was superior.

This reads exactly like BizarroGeir (also it's shite as you can pretty much tell from the list made up of, ooh that's right, LISTS FROM THE UK PRESS that it isn't all BritPop by any means).

Shame the UK press focus on britpop as clearly there was a lot of other good music around at the time which was superior.

There was no synthpop, prog rock or pomp rock around at the time. Which means you are wrong.

There was some good jungle and techno. Which means you, little geir, are wrong

Geir is always wrong.

So many good albums but I went with The Young Gods since no one else will.

As with 1994 there's just way too much quality stuff here to choose one album (though maybe not quite as much as the previous year).

I went for Maxinquaye.

I wonder how the britpop albums will actually do in this. They could get lots of votes without anyone admitting to it.

and if pavement win the lex will be severely pissed off!

went for wowee zowee in the end. exactly the right mixture of sweet melody and abrasive, experimentalish guitars. i have always loved their laidbackness. i can hear all that californian sun they must have absorbed in their music. and it still sounds good today. lots of those albums didn't age too well.

Votes for pavement in all these polls makes The Lex cry.

Fucking great year for music, if you know where to look. I've been known to go back to my pile of old NMEs, MMs and Selects and say, bloody 'ell! While the UK press was undoubtedly jonesing for Britpop, it did manage to slip other stuff in, particularly through the NME's dance/hip-hop section and certain MM writers' love of US indie.

Maxinquaye was a deserved winner of the NME writers' poll. The Bends is dated for me and sound very obvious and arena rock next to OKC and Kid A, but the likes of My Iron Lung are great. Grand Prix is an album I adored at the time and perhaps adore even more now - definitely my favourite TFC, even over Bandwagonesque. I'd started listening to Mark and Lard's old 10pm show in early 95 and my life was changed. So many of these albums, even the shit ones, remind me of that time. PJ Harvey, Stereolab, TFC...
Many other albums I got into later - Wu, Mobb Deep, Pavement, SY, Palace, Scott, Emmylou. I keep going back and finding great stuff from 95.
The official lazy histories already talk about this as a period of Britpop and little else. Will received wisdom portray the mid 90s as a dull time much like the mid 70s? When of course, there is so much going on under the surface of both eras?

no, history will go on abuot how amazing britpop was for evermore and 2.5 days after that

Hope not.

Tricky.

The most important thing about the Britpop boom was that it enabled all this other leftfield stuff (including, er, Leftfield) to come in under its wing. So what mattered was not so much that Oasis were having hits, but so were Tricky and RFTC and Aphex - that door opened briefly, then slammed shut somewhere in the first quarter of '96 when Chris Evans decided that Texas were the future.

this country needs another knebworth

There's a big article about it in today's Daily Mail.

About how Oasis ruined the youth?

I believe their case comes up on Monday.

1996 is bound to be a favourite year for Geir. So I'd bet he does the 1996 poll by tonight.

I have already done a 1996 poll. Using NME and Select.

Q and Select I mean

So it was lacking lots of good albums then.

1996 NME was Amelodic Rhythm Dominate heaven.

I bet Geir prefers the dadrock years of 97 and 98

i bet Geir prefers the quisling years of 42-45

A pretty shitty year compared to the one before it.

It's not that bad a year. Plenty of good stuff still.

Poll finishes tonight.

then slammed shut somewhere in the first quarter of '96 when Chris Evans decided that Texas were the future.

I never understood the Texas thing either. I mean, an AOR/MOR band that had been around since the late 80s suddenly being hip and fashionable?

OK, so "White On Blonde" was a good album, obviously their best, and contained several songs that would be natural hits. But they never fit in with those Britpop, or even "dadrock" acts. They were just another AOR band really.

Spiteri's partner was/is Editor (or Deputy Editor? or Fashion Editor?) of The Face and they decided to re-market Texas to make them look hip. Chris Evans having a constant hard-on for Ms Spiteri also helped.

White On Blonde is a passable album if you've never heard Life Is Sweet by Maria McKee.

Blimey, Geir in 'almost right' shokka.

Texas are an embarrassment to my country.

So could almost any American say too.

er, i was born in Corpus Christi and im not totally happy with some quisling talking shit about my home town

What's with this quisling stuff?

last hour of voting!

What's with this quisling stuff?

Agreed, that's not kind. But now you know how it feels to be a Texan these days.

my prediction: tricky will win with a large margin. pavement should be in the top three.

i think pulp would have walked this at one stage on ilm, but will probably be middling this time around

Tricky should win because it's the best album of that year, the most innovative album of several years, and finally because Oasis shouldn't win anything for simply copying the Beatles and Stones. There. I said it. X

Oasis would have been a lot better if they had been copying Beatles like people claim they are. (And if they hadn't tried to copy Sex Pistols in the same breath)

You can't hear the Beatles influence? I claim to.

I can hear a slight Beatles influence. And the more of it (like in "Wonderwall" and "Roll With It", the better.

Oasis were far better on the 1st album before they got into the beatles.

No they weren't. The Beatles is what good pop should sound like.

Definitely Maybe was a great album and pisses over every other album they ever made from a great height.

Oasis didn't do very well in the 1994 poll either.

oh that was kind of strange, so pulp did do well after all.

as did tindersticks!

Awesome to see The Young Gods do so well. I'm amazed it beat Pavement.

Oh man Leftism got no votes? I voted Young Gods thinking noone would and Leftism would get votes.

Tilt with only 3!

Tricky was always going to win this I think

pointless exercise then?

disappointed at lack of support for TLC

one vote in it, mind!

You saved us from Nazi domination and now you've turned your back on Oasis. Good show, Brits! ;p

The public haven't.

I'm not interested in the public. Only the elite, who make all the decisions.

Did Tony Blair like Oasis?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6364089.stm

Noel Gallagher: Tory leader David Cameron, meanwhile, was "no different" from Mr Blair and was "like a songwriter who's eternally ripping off someone else's song".

Takes one to know one I guess.

As for the question, is Tony Blair an elite?