commercially disappointing major label rock/alternative albums of 1996

I probably discovered three times as much awesome stuff from their reviews as I did from their samplers, honestly. And then there were Douglas Wolk's non-music reviews, which were hugely influential.

xpost

Yes. Yes, you should.

they really are, like, 90% chaff/shit.

read this as "like, 90% catshit."

holy fuck the BOGMEN

horrendous trumpet solo

hahah i like "Adhesive" but yeah the trumpet solo is a bumout

lol i never minded the trumpet solo but i'm not going to defend it.

12 Bar Blues vs Talk Show would be a great way to test just how deeply runs the median-age ILX altrock giving-a-shit index. Would rather hear ''Hello Hello'' than ''Barbarella'' any day of the week, myself.

I remember "Hello Hello" being an alright single, and that the singer's old band was called 'Ten-Inch Men'.

barbarella is cool, hello hello is ok. the rest of the wieland album is a disaster, and i refuse to believe anyone has heard the rest of the talk show album

the Talk Show album should've been called No Head Just Talking

omg i just realized The Heads' album was released in 1996 too, what a year for failure

omg hahahaha

lol

I liked this single, but didn't know who it was till way later:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62Mye3v3_KQ

xp I didn't mind the other STP side-project that lasted for 2 songs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtOjON_n4Vw

oh shit yeah that was good!

i don't rc ever hearing that before. and it's pretty bad.

it was a #12 Modern Rock hit off of the Tank Girl soundtrack, i shit you not.

listening to it now, not as good as i remember.

that was one of those grunge side projects that confused me because i thought it was a whole new band with a soundalike singer rather than the actual Weiland (see also: Layne Staley's Mad Season, and tbh i even thought maybe that wasn't Vedder on "Hunger Strike" at first)

btw it occurred to me that a good number of these albums (No Code, Hi-Fi, Black Love, Tiny Music, Recovering the Sattelites) follow the 'mellow/offbeat opening track, big anthemic uptempo 2nd track' formula that's kind of a hallmark of bands at their commercial peak trying to throw a curveball at their fanbase.

holy shit I've totally forgotten about "Mockingbird Girl." I liked it a lot at the time.

relistening to Tiny Music...i think i like pretty much every song on this besides "Lady Picture Show," which is just pure garbage

see I just can't get my head around that at all. I pretty much stopped liking them after the first album.

i was a tween Seattle stan when Core dropped and wanted STP on the "death to false grunge" chopping block. imo Purple was a totally unanticipated turnaround to become a worthwhile distraction and Tiny Music was a lesser but respectable follow-up that was still miles ahead of Core or anything they've done since.

I never really listened to Tiny Music, but I thought Purple was streets ahead of Core (which was okay but never really did a whole lot for me).

hey remember when dave plugged speakers into his walkman and the whole back half of the band bus sang along to the acoustic version of plush on the way home after the game?

if that happened to you, i am sorry.

I remember singing the Fire Water Burn chorus (with hee-haws in place of expletives) on the bus on a band trip to Toronto

that story chilled me to the bone

1996 really does feel like the year the magic was gone from everything.

you could really smell the death of alt-rock in how hard critics tried to pretend to like Entroducing

i need to read this whole thread obviously, but the 1996 Pazz & results has stone classics in Fugees and Johnny Cash and maybe Maxwell then a whole bunch of "not-as-good-as" and LOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLL from the alt-rock class of 1989-1995

1. Beck: Odelay (DGC) 1134 (110)
2. Fugees: The Score (Ruffhouse/Columbia) 602 (58)
3. Sleater-Kinney: Call the Doctor (Chainsaw) 456 (35)
4. DJ Shadow: Endtroducing . . . DJ Shadow (Mo' Wax/FFRR) 404 (40)
5. Los Lobos: Colossal Head (Warner Bros.) 403 (37)
6. Steve Earle: I Feel Alright (Warner Bros.) 387 (37)
7. Stereolab: Emperor Tomato Ketchup (Elektra) 379 (35)
8. Amy Rigby: Diary of a Mod Housewife (Koch) 371 (34)
9. Tricky: Pre-Millennium Tension (Island) 355 (38)
10. Pulp: Different Class (Island) 351 (31)
11. R.E.M.: New Adventures in Hi-Fi (Warner Bros.) 348 (38)
12. Everything but the Girl: Walking Wounded (Atlantic) 340 (30)
13. Patti Smith: Gone Again (Arista) 330 (31)
14. Wilco: Being There (Reprise) 264 (26)
15. Cassandra Wilson: New Moon Daughter (Blue Note) 225 (19)
16. [File Under Prince]: Emancipation (NRG) 213 (21)
17. Iris DeMent: The Way I Should (Warner Bros.) 211 (18)
18. Me'Shell NdegéOcello: Peace Beyond Passion (Maverick/Reprise) 209 (21)
19. Nearly God: Nearly God (Island) 183 (17)
20. Maxwell: Maxwell's Urban Hang Suite (Columbia) 179 (17)
21. Johnny Cash: Unchained (American) 178 (18)
22. Ani DiFranco: Dilate (Righteous Babe) 167 (16)
23. Gillian Welch: Revival (Almo Sounds) 156 (16)
24. Imperial Teen: Seasick (Slash/London) 153 (13)
25. Soundgarden: Down on the Upside (A&M) 148 (15)
26. Sheryl Crow: Sheryl Crow (A&M) 146 (15)
27. Cibo Matto: Viva! La Woman (Warner Bros.) 143 (16)
28. Nirvana: From the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah (DGC) 124 (16)
29. Rage Against the Machine: Evil Empire (Epic) 122 (13)
30. Toni Tony Toné: House of Music (Mercury) 117 (12)
31. Curtis Mayfield: New World Order (Warner Bros.) 113 (10)
32. Joe Henry: Trampoline (Mammoth) 112 (12)
33. The Roots: Illadelph Halflife (DGC) 112 (10)
34. Sublime: Sublime (Gasoline Alley/MCA) 111 (11)
35. Neutral Milk Hotel: On Avery Island (Merge) 111 (10)
36. Sebadoh: Harmacy (Sub Pop) 110 (11)
37. The Olivia Tremor Control: Dusk at Cubist Castle (Flydaddy) 108 (12)
38. Screaming Trees: Dust (Epic) 107 (09)
39. Jon Spencer Blues Explosion: Now I Got Worry (Matador) 105 (11)
40. Richard Thompson: You? Me? Us? (Capitol) 103 (9)

As was noted earlier, when it was '96, Tricky had a very good year. He had a very good year when he issued two brand new LPs (both of which sounded great to me). Some would argue he reached his peak. He had a very good year.

Also, I didn't get into those Elephant 6 albums until the next year, and '97 feels like the strict demarcation of the point when I'd stopped listening to much radio/MTV "alternative" and was much more firmly on the indie train, so it breaks my brain a little to see that stuff show up in the '96 P&J poll. But those are both good albums (I might, controversially enough, slightly prefer On Avery Island to In The Aeroplane Over The Sea, partially because I felt it was a more successful distillation of their amazing live show).

Johnny Cash doing Real Music Karaoke versions of Beck and Soundgarden songs is as sad an alt-rock hangover as anything on this thread imo

I didn't hear those Elephant 6 acts – I didn't hear the moniker, period – on my college station. It took years.

I think I initially discovered them via Raygun, but seeing NMH open for Superchunk and then regularly shopping at Luna Music in Indianapolis (who put out E6 side projects and comps on their in-house label and sold pretty much every E6 thing ever made) was the one-two punch that sucked me in.

according to xgau's essay, the 41-50 of that years p'n'j went Lovett-Dr. Octagon-Reed-Chesnutt-Germano-Girls Against Boys-Tortoise-Metallica-Cardigans-Fluffy

I thought I remembered House of GVSB being much more highly-regarded that year.

The Tortoise album, too, for that matter.

lot of breakthrough albums that come to be regarded highly over time lose out to diminishing returns from established artists on P&J, just how it goes

As far as 1996 commercial alt-rock goes, the Fountains of Wayne s/t debut LP holds up better than almost anything on the Pazz and Jop list.

theres already a thread about what this thread is slowly turning into

defend 1996

xp When I was on the bus everyone sang "Don't Look Back In Anger." You decide which is worse.

P.S. I'm a USA resident.

my main memory of music on the school bus in 1996 is the vague background BLEH BLEH BLEH of what i later recognized as Ginuwine's "Pony"

and then in early '97 the ticketyticketyticketyTACK of "One In A Million."

96 is maybe my favorite year for music, but i was never part of the alternanation. that shit was just the stuff i'd politely sit through on mtv so i could hear "no diggity". i did actively like beck tho.

i remember the first time i heard Jay-Z was when MTV2 did a block of videos chosen by Moby and "Ain't No" was his token rap pick :/