pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

Please don't tell me all Muricans pronounce kosmische as kosMEESHe like in that vid. Spilled coffee over my keyboard hearing that.

― Le Bateau Ivre, Tuesday, March 28, 2017 12:22 PM (forty-six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

please enlighten us (seriously)

KOSmische. (Click the play button here

It is also the rarest of things: a McCartney record where you can sense his need to be loved.

lol

http://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/10045-the-50-best-britpop-albums/?page=4

The definitive list, folks. Space and Catatonia are here to stay.

That top four is magnificently dull and predictable

p.s. different class is more overrated than any other britpop album

pfork writing about hefner in 2017 but in the context of britpop is some monkey's paw shit. also granted i was a kid but placebo being britpop? o_O

Hmm. Somehow I don't think I'm interested in what an American web-based publication has to say about '90s guitar music from the UK, particularly if that web-based publication is Pitchfork.

Placebo were a guitar band in the '90s that people liked alongside some other guitar bands in the '90s.

Are Hefner any good? I like the frontman's album about lidos.

And the one about the villages. That's nice, too.

idk if it's for everybody but I love hefner and the fidelity wars especially. definitely a different tone to his solo stuff though.

Catatonia frontwoman Cerys Matthews made headlines for boasting that International Velvet’s lead single, “Mulder and Scully,” was better than Oasis’ single “All Around the World.”

kind of lol but mostly sad

Over the past few years, there have been a handful of albums similar to Crow, or at least with a similarly autobiographical premise: Sun Kil Moon’s Benji, Sufjan Stevens’ Carrie & Lowell, Nick Cave’s Skeleton Tree, stark, diaristic albums haunted by literal death, grief on record. Indie culture tends to prize this kind of undecorated directness as a stand-in for truth, as though nobody has ever spoken clearly and lied.

I know it feels good to have 3 examples of your proposed trend, but Skeleton Tree is a different beast than these other albums

I'm just amused by the fact that Shampoo is #17.

And disappointed in the lack of Menswe@r.

They almost made the Space album sound good. And I've heard the Space album.

No Dodgy :(

I'm amused I wasn't asked to join in this one!

Ian Cohen writing about Placebo is a hate crime

"Britpop's rigid heteronormativity" effectively erases Brett and Jarvis' gender/sexual fluidity, which was prob much more subversive than Molko, but w/e, pretty sure a dead battery could write circles around that guy

I realize my opinions on britpop are Wrong and I am a terrible person for them but I really like catatonia

Urban Hymns has sooooo much filler on it. A Northern Soul is way better. Dull list, and Everything Must Go at 32!!!

Went on a big Britpop binge last Oct/Nov and I couldn't help but noticing how lame the drumming is on so much of it.

Also if they are including things that "aren't Britpop" or by acts who "aren't a Britpop band" (but are by '90s UK guitar-rock acts) the omission of The Holy Bible is a head-scratcher.

Catatonia might be tolerable with a different singer

catatonia are good! they had a really great run of singles.

i kept thinking of this comp when i was browsing this list. i bought it at virgin megastore and found out about a lot of bands (sfa and my life story were my faves) as a result

https://www.discogs.com/Various-The-BestAlbum-In-The-WorldEver/release/6664793

'Mulder and Scully' was a better single than 'All Around The World' ... and even though I listen to A Storm In Heaven the most out of all of Verve's records, I think Urban Hymns has some incredible stuff on it and think the production on it's great.

Catatonia hit a bit of a sweet spot thanks to a lot of attention to any number of Welsh acts at the time while also serving up perfectly fine pop-rock of the time and place (yards better than the fucking Stereophonics, for instance). And it seems Matthews keeps on in a Lauren Laverne way via broadcasting, writing, etc, so why not?

Hmm. When it comes to Catatonia, I'd say their two most successful albums (International Velvet and Equally Cursed & Blessed) are riddled with filler, but you could probably make up a decent 45 minute playlist of the highlights - stuff like 'Game On', 'Bulimic Beats' etc. Their final album, Paper Scissors Stone is fucking excrement from front-to-back. However - their debut, Way Beyond Blue, is as good as it gets... Cerys' vocal mannerisms are relatively dialled in on that record, the production is mostly OTM, and I'd say it had the strongest material the band ever had - 'Sweet Catatonia', 'You've Got a Lot to Answer For' etc. The drummer from Super Furry Animals plays on a few tracks on the LP, too.

No Moloko, no credibility

'Mulder and Scully' was a better single than 'All Around The World'

tru

lol at talking about The Sound Of McAlmont & Butler as a thematically intended, wilfully conceived album, when it is literally a singles compilation consisting of: their two singles

a piss-take at the idea that taking lots of drugs could be fun in the first place.

sure, let's pretend this is a sentence in English

the band channel their youthful vim to spend the last five minutes of the album (“Sick Party”) violently throwing up

a hidden joke CD bonus track is not "the last five minutes of the album"

anyway this list is p boring, Shampoo is the only effort at canonbusting, Kenickie should have been top ten etc etc

http://gph.is/YZ8x34

https://media.giphy.com/media/11gC4odpiRKuha/giphy.gif

Fun fact about 1977 CD, if you scrubbed backwards from the start of "Lost In You" by holding down the << button on a CD player so that the time goes negative on track 1 you can hear the demo version (or different mix, not sure) of "Jack Names The Planets". My scratched CD used to randomly skip back to it. (Also the first CD I ever bought.)

Ash's album cover are fucking grotesque also.

*covers

This list is fucking stupid. No offence to anyone who contributed.

Apart from I@n C0hen.

I genuinely don't know how you can have a discussion about Britpop and not include Prodigy, Bjork, PJ Harvey, etc etc etc... It wasn't just white guys with greasy fringes and guitars at the time.

"Blur or Oasis? PULP" is a flourish straight outta 2002

Also Nick otm

p.s. different class is more overrated than any other britpop album

― an uptempo Pop/Hip Hop mentality (imago), Wednesday, 29 March 2017 13:02 (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I quite like it but would still agree with this.

like, it's the worst of their last four records

I genuinely don't know how you can have a discussion about Britpop and not include Prodigy, Bjork, PJ Harvey, etc etc etc

if they'd done that the responses to it would've been half "this def'n is so all-encompassing as to be pointless" and half "don't insult [x] by lumping them in with this shit"

probably both with some justification

I don't get Hefner being on this list but am always glad to see them mentioned. The Fidelity Wars and Boxing Hefner are brilliant. Interesting that Pitchfork make a Violent Femmes comparison -- I can kinda hear it. They always reminded me of a cross between Pulp and The Buzzcocks. Great shit.

Well, "Britpop" didn't exist, so...

Different Class is neither overrated nor the worst of Pulp's last four albums. Load of bollocks.

fair dinkum

re Ash 1977 CD hidden track 0, it's this iirc:

https://www.discogs.com/Ash-Jack-Names-The-Planets/release/1201332

I can only assume there was some arbitrary cutoff point? If not, the omission of the Libertines is inexcusable

It's always good to see New Wave get a shout on a list like this. As the years go by, it grows nearer to my heart...

The Libertines released their first album in the '00s, so I'd imagine it would be exempt from a list that focuses on UK guitar music from the '90s. I see that whole wave of UK guitar music: The Libertines, Franz Ferdinand, Arctic Monkeys, The Futureheads, Maximo Park etc. to be a different thing entirely, myself. Of course, that particular wave of UK guitar music suffered exactly the same fate as the '90s wave, with record companies so desperate to find the next Arctic Monkeys (in the '90s it was Oasis) that loads of really shit bands ended up getting signed and the phenomenon known as "landfill indie" happened.

Oh yeah, and Bloc Party.