Pitchfork: The Top 200 Tracks of the 1990s: 20-01

now that's just mean

Sorry!

I remember when Neutral Milk Hotel came out - I think I read an article about Tribe 8 in like Relix or something - but I could never find any of their albums and Olivia Treble Control was a better band name anyway. Every now and again, someone extols the genius of "The Aeroplane Flies High (Turns Left, Looks Right)" to me and I'll go check out some song samples on iTunes, but it's always really unremarkable.

Olivia Treble Control was a better band name anyway.

it is kinda better than their actual name

my horribly-formed attempt at one of those faux-naive skot seward posts.

I'd pick any number of the >20 tracks before these, but from this list I'll go MBV. Stunning piece of music, one of my favourite album openings ever.

Enjoy the Silence.

'da funk' -- then aaliyah

at least the mood im in right now. i think i voted 'g thang' highest on my ballot

Went with Hyperballad, btw, but I'm really having a good time listening to this Enjoy the Silence youtube. I haven't heard this song in years, but it's pretty dope.

just to say a few words in defense of NMH...

I don't know how that album went down in the US when it was released, I've always presumed it was a modest, cult success. I remember seeing them support Olivia Tremor Control at the Garage in 1998, and being entirely blown away by them. In the context of those times, you didn't often see 8-piece groups with musical saws and hobbit-looking dudes playing tubas onstage, so that was remarkable. But there was something so joyous and unhinged about the performance, swinging hard between chaos and melody: I remember the drummer playing these crazily overloaded drum rolls that were so OTT he had trouble getting back into the rhythm of the song, but somehow it all held together. The songs were great, much better than those of OTC, and they had none of that group's antiseptic slavery to a single style and moment - NMH seemed gloriously alive by comparison.

I got the album, and loved it. I remember pushing hard to write about them while I was at Melody Maker, but was turned down, and told that others in the office thought they sounded like the panpipe group from The Fast Show. An editor at The Times was more understanding at let me write some end of year blurbs about them. I was pretty obsessed with the record, but in the UK, it just seemed to pass by under the radar. I was a pretty dedicated partisan for their cause, putting their songs on mix-tapes I made for friends. If I was interviewing a musician I thought would appreciate their music, I'd make 'em cassettes, most of which probably ended up discarded and unlistened on the floors of tourvans. But if that artist turned round and said they already loved the album, it was a pretty big thrill, and would often result in long discussions about the unheralded magic of NMH, this brilliant secret were were lucky enough to be in on.

I'm really not surprised that the album has enjoyed such acclaim in the years since it was released. The 'concept' behind the songs - that Jeff Mangum was so inspired by reading the Diary Of Anne Frank that he penned this album-length treatise of love'n'death/fantasy that he travelled back in time to try and save her - is both opaque and alluring, and, of course, makes for both good copy and at-length decoding by obsessive fans. Jeff Mangum's own subsequent non-career and silence, full of mystery and hints of tragedy, also makes for a great story - the doomed artist and his final folly, etc etc. It's an archetypal 'lost album', if you like. And you'd be crazy to deny its influence on indie groups (many of whom I detest) that have followed.

I still think its a marvellous record, though I don't play it often now, as I perhaps played it too much a decade or so ago. I can't deny that it still moves me today, when I do hear songs from it, and even a track as outwardly-ebullient as 'Holland 1945' remains affecting, not least for the poetry of Jeff's lyrics, and the sentiments and stories its telling.

I mean all the above is corny as hell, but its also the truth

Say what you want about this list but the inevitable torrent compilation is going to kick ass.

Sometimes > Only Shallow, voted for Loser for old time's sake. Bought the CD single because I would usually rather get 2 singles than one album with my $12 for music.

I still think its a marvellous record, though I don't play it often now, as I perhaps played it too much a decade or so ago. I can't deny that it still moves me today, when I do hear songs from it, and even a track as outwardly-ebullient as 'Holland 1945' remains affecting, not least for the poetry of Jeff's lyrics, and the sentiments and stories its telling.

QFT

xp: The Loser CD single was dope too! The alternate version of Soul Suckin' Jerk is soooo much better than the album version.

re: NMH, i got the holland 7" before the album and was v excited, the album was subsequently a ridiculous disappointment to me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_5nNQmszDw

between gold soundz and juicy for me

I bought the first Neutral Milk Hotel album after reading a rave review in Spin or Magnet, liked a couple tunes but didn't really see the big fuss and then proceeded to ignore them for the next couple of years, only later realizing that In the Aeroplane had become an indie touchstone.

At the same time, the Elephant 6 collective as a whole was definitely a *thing* if you paid attention to US indie in the late 90s. I mean, I skipped In the Aeroplane in 1998 but I did buy Olivia Tremor Control's Black Foliage.

"Loser"

Sorry, autogoons

In ILMverse I would assume "Enjoy" will take this handily.

'da funk' or 'midnight iapw' for me

lot of those choices, mbv, outkast, b.i.g., don't seem right to me, and very few of the rap choices blew up in the uk, at least from the perspective i had -- some of them i heard later -- whereas 'da funk' and 'midnight were everywhere when i was 16/17.

aaliyah, even though it isn't even the aaliyah single that made my own top ten for this thing.

the NMH song is one of my all-time favorites; has been for years. Try Again wd be the Aaliyah song that would have made me think about changing my mind...

i want to read more on why k8 hates "common people" because whenever people talk about pulp these days there's a really really strong assumption that *everyone* loves them, that you *should* love them and jarvis cunting cocker is a national treasure and wise man of letters, which is BULLLLSHIT, so yeah, k8, if you have time?

i was 11 when "loser" was released - surprising, thought i was older, but at any rate i had no conception of the music press or indie or whatever it meant, i just thought it was HILARIOUSLY PATHETIC. and i was right, c'mon, to like that song you really have to hate yourself.

xp "Try Again" came out in 2000.

yes good job maintaining the same mindset/attitude you had at 11, lex.

atlex shrugged

dyslexia more like

i still love janet & luther's "the best things in life are free" with all my heart, which iirc i did at 11 too

to like that song you really have to hate yourself.

Ha what? Most of what I liked about Beck in the '90s (indeed, starting with "Loser") was his collage-like aesthetic in both words and sound. "Loser" is a triumph of great nonsense.

lex, you know you're making the same assumptions about the audience for this shit as the Ashlee and Taylor haters, right?

They like "Loser" because they hate our freedoms themselves (and want to die).

So very 90's.

i still love pizza, which iirc i did at 11 too, but i'm not gonna go around shitting on people who liked tacos* back then (or now) because 21 years later i've managed to grasp concepts like subjectivity.

*of course, i like tacos, too. much as i like both "common people" and aaliyah. but it's a wacky world.

I'd hate myself if I loved Janet Jackson, that's for sure.

collage-like aesthetic

totally read this as "college-like aesthetic" at 1st

beck is so dreary and staid. i remember him being lauded as a great experimenter and innovator lolololol please tell me no one actually believes that any more?

Say It Ain't So. Kind of defined that era for me.

lol @ the way everyone in this thread is often totally ready to shit on a band's fans but as soon as someone does it to one of their own lame teenage nostalgia trips it's all about getting on your high horse about subjectivity

i'm not quite sure when the last time i shat on a band's fans was, but feel free to point out to so i can 40 lashings myself for penance purposes.

lex, you're a madman. you know that right?

lol @ the way everyone in this thread is often totally ready to shit on a band's fans but as soon as someone does it to one of their own lame teenage nostalgia trips it's all about getting on your high horse about subjectivity

including you

people probably wouldn't care that you hate some of these songs if you didn't act like an annoying teenager about it

Nothing on the list comes close to "Enjoy The Silence" for me, after that, I guess it's "Common People". I never liked much 90's indie rock, I like Weezer but "Say It Ain't So" is maybe the 6th or 7th best song on that album, "Windowlicker" is just another one of the 8484 Aphex Twin tracks from the 90's, etc. I like almost all of these songs but not in a "best of the entire decade" sort of way.

"Windowlicker" is just another one of the 8484 Aphex Twin tracks from the 90's, etc.

lol whut

Surprising omission from this list: Baby One More Time. Unless I missed it in one of the see also areas.

Windowlicker's pretty stand-out, but there were so many awesome Aphex Twin tracks in the 90s that it's easy for me to see how someone could rate it pretty far down their personal list.

xpost to me, Just seems essential to 'telling the story' of 90s pop.

I get why everyone goes crazy for "Windowlicker" but I've always been a "Ventolin"/"On"/"Come To Daddy"/"Girl/Boy Song" guy; I would rather have seen any of those on the list.

xp "Try Again" came out in 2000.

dammit I knew this; I'm a disgrace to NMH fans everywhere :(

Don't let the current status of Jarvis Cocker (annoying knob) get in the way of the facts here, "Common People" is the best tune here.