My Favorite Albums Of 1991

1991! The year punk broke! Not that a lot of people noticed at the time, instead going "holy shit, did punk just break?" in early '92. Still, 1991 was quite the pop experience, what with MTV showing rappers in psychedelic muumuus pondering reality over Spandau Ballet hooks, and rockers from the state of Georgia strumming mandolins while dancing dressed like quakers, surrounded by iconography more the country of Georgia. Another rocker said he wanted a girlfriend while staring at us in front of anime footage, way ahead of his time. U2 was about technology and continental Europe now! Though the song dropped in 1991, the video where rappers explored the magic of digital menus didn't come out until early '92. But the one where white rappers beat the shit out of Henry Rollins with bats, mistaking him for Vanilla Ice? That was this year! Also, Color Me Badd.

I didn't get around to revisiting Derelicts Of Dialect, and not every acronym I cared about as an elementary schooler makes the cut today. Sorry, EMF and BAD II. I also haven't belatedly discovered glory in the deep cuts of Boyz II Men, ABC or BBD (their remix album was in '91, if you forgot). But I can still give a thumbs up to thirty full-lengths from Nineteen Ninety FUN, perhaps the climax of what Alfred Soto calls the Poppy Bush Interzone. If you can come up with a more immediately evocative, less GB Trudeau, phrase to describe that rewarding, yet goofy period between the full flower of the '80s and '90s, please do. We music nerds are desperate for one.

1. Slowdive, Just For A Day
I got into these guys during the mid-‘00s, well after the band’s initial run, but before most shoegaze fans today, who were probably still in diapers. From what I gather, British critics were contemptuous of this then-nearly adolescent quintet, perhaps grasping Slowdive cared more about making beautiful music than anything else, even originality (they were named after a Siouxsie & The Banshees song!). This first album was written off as lightweight compared to their edgy early singles and My Bloody Valentine’s blistering 1991 album Loveless. Slowdive's 1993 album, Souvlaki, showed the influence of Loveless as the cool were getting hype for Britpop. Their 1995 album, Pygmalion, was an ambient exercise climaxing with a jacked Talk Talk hook, and Creation’s honcho Alan McGee - already feeling buyer’s remorse - dropped them a week after its release. Slowdive’s two singers and their drummer started Mojave 3, a more country-influenced act, and signed to 4AD, where they probably should have been from the start, label prez Ivo Watts-Russell also caring more about following the muse of loveliness than the zeitgeist.

American anglophiles didn’t care much about this drama, and as the blurred-out effects of shoegaze gradually became an influence on everything from teen pop to thrash metal, there was no narcissism of small differences to keep Slowdive from belatedly reaching the genre’s pantheon, even reuniting to great acclaim in 2013. It was actually a metalhead pal’s online mp3 library where I first got into their music, Just For A Day in particular knocking me out. Imagine my surprise when new generations caught up and preferred Souvlaki. By a lot. Two songs on Just For A Day have over ten million spins on Spotify. The top three on Souvlaki have over 80 million, the biggest over 300! Only one song on the album less than ten. Why?!

Plenty of that gap is from self-sustaining, conventional scene wisdom by now, but Souvlaki is indeed a more guitar-heavy mind-melter. Meanwhile, Just For A Day opens with a swooning, string-laden chantey, followed by the chiming dolor of “Celia’s Dream.” Sure, the layers of guitar and synth get increasingly surreal, but the voices of Neil Halstead and Rachel Goswell never transcend the sound of cute poots pouting. Even if you can’t tell what’s got them so angelically glum, you can imagine Beavis sardonically asking if someone need a hug. 

Rob Sheffield non-derogatorily called Galaxie 500 “fabulous tub music” in the SPIN Alternative Record Guide, “mooning dolefully about through the usual emotional rigors of late adolescence…breezy and content-free even at its most stately.” Just For A Day is the fabulous tub music of the spheres, an Ivo Watts-Russell afterworld where you can sigh eternally. When I caught “Catch The Breeze” in Gregg Araki’s heartbreaking film Mysterious Skin not long after I became a fan, it was confirmation I’d found in Just For A Day an audio amniotic sac for the unabashedly anguished to hide inside. Even if wasn’t pure shoegaze.

2. Nirvana, Nevermind 
I was scared when I first saw the video for “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” A young tween already traumatized by the mix of slasher sequel trailers and growling metal bands on MTV, here was a group of blatant miscreants who looked like the kids smoking outside the high school, combining anarchic youth violence with ominous use of shadow and a vaguely contemptuous wit. Eek! Imagine my surprise when Rolling Stone and Kurt Loder let me know the band was actually made of fine young REM fans who championed sensitive wimps like myself! Eventually, I decided this was the first metal song I’d liked since Great White's "Once Bitten, Twice Shy" (which I didn't know was an Ian Hunter cover), buying the cassingle off my friend Nat after he bought the album, and experimenting with “moshing” in the family room. Darling, I know.

Eventually, I bought Nevermind myself, immersing in the alleged distinctions between grunge and metal and hard rock and classic rock and alternative rock. Today, I can see the smarts involved, intentional and accidental. Kurt Cobain wanted to have his credibility cake and cash in too, treasuring the melodicism underneath the raging racket of bands like the Pixies, Husker Du and Dinosaur Jr, surfing the sound with an acidic wail that’s more haunted and Lennonesque than those antecedents. Meanwhile, accomplices like drummer Dave Grohl, producer Butch Vig and mixer Andy Wallace subtly applied polish to the product. Subversively, the lyrics were all about the young feminists he found cooler than any of those guys, fans still digging into the poetry for evidence backing just whatever diagnosis they’d give him. But all that’s just an explanation for why they came off so authentically like complex, if untrustworthy, teens with smoking habits, despite being all over MTV.

3. Pixies, Trompe Le Monde
"If your favorite Velvet Underground album is White Light/White Heat, you know 'the album where the guitarist can’t remember why he was shredding so much' will be a career highlight."

Pixies, pt. 1: Anthony’s Album Guide

Celebrating the first half of one quirky quartet’s album discography. Seriously, first half. Look it up.

Anthony Is WritingAnthony Cougar Miccio

4. My Bloody Valentine, Loveless
While putting this below Just For A Day may be contrarian, don’t mistake it for a dismissal of the universally recognized definitive shoegaze album. Blurring male and female, synth and guitar, digital and analog noise, ugliness and beauty to a degree that society still hasn’t topped it decades later? So that the band waited over twenty years to quietly drop a follow-up? An album so otherworldly that Dinosaur Jr sounded like mere classic rock dudes in comparison? That classic rock dudes like Billy Corgan incorporated its effects into their arsenal? That Bob Mould practically turned into a public Stan, first telling Rolling Stone he had dreams about playing football fields at the same time as them, before basically daring MBV maestro Kevin Shields to sue him (not that many even noticed how overtly “Your Favorite Thing” interpolates “Blown A Wish”)? Yeah, I’m into all that. I just skip the instrumentals in the middle sometimes. You can't pout to that stuff.

5. R.E.M., Out Of Time
"baroque, romantic studio-pop became the band’s raison d’être on Out Of Time, which Michael Stipe even wanted to name Love Songs"

R.E.M., pt. 2: Anthony’s Album Guide

In which R.E.M. goes mega-platinum and college-rocks the entire world.

Anthony Is WritingAnthony Cougar Miccio

6. Richard Thompson, Rumor & Sigh
One of the reasons it‘s fun to call Generation X “artisanal boomers”: the intellectual side of Generation X spent a lot of their youth enjoying artisanal boomers! A good example is Richard Thompson, who never got anywhere near the pop charts during his time in British folk-rock pioneers Fairport Convention, his decade of dramatic duets & duels with then-wife Linda, or the gruff, roiling singer-songwriter/guitarslinger albums that followed their split. But Thompson was a mainstay on the college radio charts, Bob Mould’s first solo album (allegedly accidentally) aping him wholesale to let people know Mould wasn’t a punk no more. And whether it was due to the modern rock explosion (the indie underground kids and the NPR adults not yet plentiful enough to bother distinguishing between) or fellow cult singer-songwriter/guitarsingler Bonnie Raitt suddenly going multi-platinum, Thompson hit his pop-rock peak in 1991 with Rumor & Sigh, earning his first Grammy nomination (for Best Alternative Rock Album!) more than twenty years after he left Fairport Convention.

I’d recommend the newbie investigate his best of the ‘60s (Fairport Convention’s Unhalfbricking), ‘70s (Richard & Linda’s debut I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight) and ‘80s (Richard & Linda’s farewell Shoot Out The Lights), before trying Rumor & Sigh. You’d also be hard pressed to explain how the joyous radio hit “I Feel So Good” or the fan fave ballad “1952 Vincent Black Lightning” is any more alternative than Bruce Springsteen (though, actually, later Nick Cave sounds a lot like Thompson vocally). But, if you can forgive some CD bloat (“Psycho Street,” the hour-long album’s finale, is bad Nick Cave), Rumor And Sigh captures Thompson at a high, the half-Scot’s brogue proudly bellowed over big drums (courtesy of Jim Keltner and Bryan Adams’ man!), the authority of his guitar solos as arresting as ever. The mildly murky quirk of producer Mitchell Froom, quite popular at the time, keeps the sound from getting staid, but rarely (…”Psycho Street”) gets in Richard’s way. Great alt-rock? Debatable. Great dad-rock? No question.

7. John Prine, The Missing Years
"'The Sins Of Memphisto' - a last gasp from the end of the session - might be the best hooky, kooky novelty number Prine ever made."

John Prine, pt. 2: Anthony’s Album Guide

A look at Prine’s albums on Oh Boy Records, the self-owned label that got him in the Top 5 long after Atlantic and Asylum couldn’t.

Anthony Is WritingAnthony Cougar Miccio

8. A Tribe Called Quest, The Low End Theory

Smart and sexy has historically been a hard mix to achieve in rap. The studs get silly fast, the nerds get even sillier, and everyone’s keen to brag beyond their plausible erotic accomplishments, if they get erotic at all. I’d argue this is a major reason A Tribe Called Quest’s work shines even brighter in hindsight than it already did in the moment. They had it going on musically from the get-go, as heard on sly hits like “Bonita Applebaum.” but The Low End Theory is where they traded hippie afrocentric garb for stylish clothes casual but club-ready. Ron Carter was hired to provide supple live bass lines, drawing more overt associations to jazz cool throughout. Ironically, dreamy lead rapper Q-Tip (who met DJ Ali Shaheed Muhammed at a magnet high school) upped his game by having Phife Dawg take the mic more, Tip's pal from the old neighborhood playing the chatty, even argumentative wingman to his smooth intellectual. “The Infamous Date Rape” could acknowledge the threat of sexual assault and female reality with more grace (“I know why you act that way…I respect that crazily, when you’re done with the pads, can you come check with me?”) But, for rap in 1991? Or any year? Please.

That’s part of the trick, too: suggesting one’s sensitivity without making a federal case of it. Tribe’s intelligence and eligible bachelorhood bubbles up around beats that don’t sacrifice either joy or funk for prominence. Nothing’s overstated or obtuse, just laid out with the glow of good friends in the prime of early adulthood, eager to find some fun. And it doesn’t come more fun than the Leaders Of The New School feature “Scenario." It's rare a single closes an album, but Tribe was smart enough not to follow Busta Rhymes’ star debut without him.

9. Matthew Sweet, Girlfriend
An Athens, GA indie accomplice, turned late ‘80s NYC artpop flop, finally hits Gold thanks to divorce (a reliable source of lyrical inspiration) and the bright notion of paying art-garage guitar gods to play classicist rock. It wouldn’t work if the songs weren’t strong celebrations of new love (“I’ve Been Waiting”), no love (“Winona”) and lost love (“You Don’t Love Me”), but it's a thrill to hear Television’s Robert Lloyd and the Voidoids’ Robert Quine apply tremendous instinct and experience to simple assignments no one had ever bothered to use them for. Yes, all these guys played on Lloyd Cole’s solo debut the year before, and Cole plays lots of rhythm guitar here, but that was more late ‘80s artpop. Nothing like the “Louie Louie”-esque immediacy of the title track, Quine showing off his loud lyricism between the “you got a good thing goin’”s and the drum break. Girlfriend is the kind of coup that seems ordinary at first glance, until you realize it's damn hard to think of someone matching it before or since.

10. Dramarama, Vinyl
In hindsight, Dramarama were the Mott The Hoople of modern rock, committed to the post-Stones bohemian dream at its most romantic, but with a sardonic, loquacious wit that’s a tough sell to the earnestly smart and earnestly stupid alike. No one could have guessed that their proto-pop-punk indie debut “Anything, Anything” would endure in Peoria better than the major-backed, piano-blessed stomps on Vinyl, each saying a lot and certain about nothing regarding the environment, the pursuit of fame, the pursuit of love, and if they’re part of the “Classic Rot” nostalgia problem. You can see why America chose the Black Crowes instead, their clown of a singer now praised for being a vinyl crate digger when Dramarama named an album Vinyl and covered “Memo From Turner." But Vinyl rocking stronger than late Replacements, if not as immortally as early Replacements, is the rights holder’s problem, not mine. And “Anything, Anything” will hopefully keep the band fed.

And now, my favorite compilation of 1991!

Pet Shop Boys, Discography: The Complete Singles Collection
I explained my adolescent confusion about the Pet Shop Boys’ American pop moment in my 1986 albums post, but - thanks to my babysitter’s copy of this compilation - I had zero problem believing that Pet Shop Boys were huge in their native England, where cheeky hints of camp and irony wouldn’t keep a great pop hook from crossing over. I still have a hard time believing a song like “It’s A Sin,” the ABBA Lloyd Webber showstopper that’s clearly about the love that dare not speak its name, went Top 10 here. And the one about brawn & brains teaming up to make money went Top 5? By the time I was old enough to pay attention, their songs mourning pre-AIDS nightlife, and the still gobsmacking U2/Four Seasons medley, were off US pop radio and strictly for the heads. Which, as an aspiring head, made all the sense in the world. Seriously, though, I’m impressed my country liked the Dusty Springfield duet.

As always, here are the Xgau-esque honorable mentions! Consider spicing up your own listicles this way! There’s no reason that grades should be his biggest influence on the form. 

Teenage Fanclub, Bandwagonesque
Before there was Weezer, before there was Oasis, many thought these Scottish sweethearts would be the ones to make millions off classic rock hooks under grunge guitar. Their taste for light satire rather than obvious shtick kept them deeply unplatinum, but fellow sweethearts remember (“The Concept,” “Alcoholiday”)

Throwing Muses, The Real Ramona
Kristin Hersh's big rock move, rudely upstaged by the birth of Belly ("Not Too Soon," "Hook In Her Head")

Throwing Muses, pt. 1: Anthony’s Album Guide

A treasured reminder that major labels hawked weird rock well before Nirvana.

Anthony Is WritingAnthony Cougar Miccio

Massive Attack, Blue Lines
Never forget that the masters of pre-millennial tension already had their soul-dub-rap hybrid on lock during the Poppy Bush Interzone, Tricky not yet too deep to rap (“Daydreaming,” “Unfinished Sympathy”)

The Bats, Fear Of God
More Lovely Jangle-Pop Liftoffs About Being Happy And Being Sad, I Think, Who Cares (“Watch The Walls,” “Jetsam”)

Lemonheads, It’s A Shame About Ray
Aided by ‘60s pop pros behind the board, this catches sloppy cute poot Evan Dando at his most professionally seductive…assuming he didn’t already treat you or someone you know like shit (“Confetti,” “It’s A Shame About Ray”)

The Pooh Sticks, The Great White Wonder
Ironically earnest kitsch-pop about classic rock, peaking with a rapturous 14-minute tribute to a terrible album cover (“Young People,” “I’m In You”)

Chapterhouse, Whirlpool
Once unconscionably anonymous shoegaze, now welcome MBV-Ride synthesis authentically from the early ‘90s (“Breather,” “Guilt”)

Urge Overkill, The Supersonic Storybook
A shamelessly clumsy, bafflingly broad fantasy of cheeseball ‘70s rock from Chicago scenesters. It's mostly a gas until an inspired bad joke is followed by an interminably awful one and a merely interminable instrumental (“The Candidate,” “Today Is Blackie’s Birthday”)

How I Like Urge Overkill: The Playlist

With Urge Overkill, you can have your irony and mean it too.

Anthony Is WritingAnthony Cougar Miccio

Jesus Lizard, Goat
The pigfuck Tool: a merciless hard rock dream if you dig the aesthetic purity, some dude wailing from deep inside a steel mill if you can’t (“Then Comes Dudley,” “Nub”)

Talk Talk, Laughing Stock
In A Silent New Wave. Caveat: Mark Hollis’ voice is not the equal of Miles Davis’ trumpet (“After The Flood,” “New Grass’)

Here's more solid compilations released in 1991!

The Specials, The Singles Collection
The first album by 2-Tone’s flagship act was a focused presentation of their spiritedly musical & unapologetically political mission. Which makes the wild wooliness of the stray smashes and novelties here all the more enjoyable (“Gangsters,” “Ghost Town”)

Scratch Acid, The Greatest Gift
Texas had one hell of a Birthday Party tribute band for a minute (“Owner’s Lament,” “Eyeball”)

Operation Ivy, Operation Ivy
Ska-punk so raggedly boisterous it almost makes the Rancid that followed sound as polished as UB40. They'll produce patches forever (“Artificial Life,” “Yellin’ In My Ear”)

Chic, Dance Dance Dance: The Best Of Chic
The definitive disco band still hasn’t clicked with me as an album act. But as 12” A-side act? Oh, baby. (“Everybody Dance - 12” Mix,” “Le Freak”)

Finally, ten more “real” albums!

Sonny Sharrock, Ask The Ages
Indie’s favorite free-jazz guitarist gets as close as he would to John Coltrane, joined by Pharoah Sanders and Coltrane’s drummer (“Once Upon A Time,” “Who Does She Hope To Be?”)

Cypress Hill, Cypress Hill
The rap zeitgeist’s gateway drug: SoCal homies beating Public Enemy at their own shocking-samples-and-shouted-hooks game, for the sole purpose of celebrating anarchic violence and marijuana (“Hand On The Pump,” “Pigs”)

PM Dawn, Of The Heart, Of The Soul And Of The Cross: The Utopian Experience
Lush, romantic sadness that thankfully swings harder than you remember, suggesting a more musical LL Cool J, rather than a proto-Drake (“Set Adrift On Memory Bliss,” “A Watcher’s Point Of View (Don’t Cha Think)”

Violent Femmes, Why Do Birds Sing?
Critics recoiled from these creepy, cutesy hijinks, but I dig how Gordon Gano sounds like a less trustworthy Jonathan Richman (“American Music,” “Girl Trouble”)

The Feelies, Time For A Witness
This fine (initial) farewell is Hoboken’s drone-rock kings’ only album where the shortest songs are the best, hence the closest they ever came to hits-and-filler (“Time For A Witness,” “Doin’ It Again”)

Robyn Hitchcock & The Egyptians, Perspex Island
Big, booming, love songs, more Lennon than Barrett, in a last-ditch attempt at alt-radio stardom (“Oceanside,” “She Doesn’t Exist”)

Fugazi, Steady Diet Of Nothing
"The sheets of guitar noise hit like a bracingly cold shower, rather than a strong cup of coffee." ("Latin Roots," "Dear Justice Letter")

Fugazi: Anthony’s Album Guide

I don’t think a reunion tour would save our country. But I understand why some people do.

Anthony Is WritingAnthony Cougar Miccio

U2, Achtung Baby
Having publicly overdosed on Americana, they infuse the Lanois desertscape with Berlin, Bowie and bubblegum, for an atypically wry, yet romantic roll of the dice that wound up their best album yet (“Mysterious Ways,” “Ultraviolet (Light My Way)”)

The Fall, Shift-Work
Do I rate this techno-rock clatter because it’s the only 20th century Fall album I couldn’t find in college, or because it’s the only 20th century Fall album with prominent fiddle? (“A Lot Of Wind,” “The War Against Intelligence”)

The Verlaines, Ready To Fly
Reckless, ragged New Zealand jangle-rock, somewhere between Gun Club and the Go-Betweens, making up in exciting tempo shifts what it lacks in pitch (“Tremble,” "Hole In The Ground")

Something I forgot? Too much middling alt-turd, not enough of whatever you prefer? Impressed by some middling alt-turd you didn't know about? You're welcome to let me know at anthonyisright at gmail dot com.