Acclaimed Music Top 30 Albums from 1997 poll

the mother load, WOW.

i could easily vote for 10 of these, with even more runner ups.

I hate to be boring and vote OK Computer, but I'm gonna be boring and vote OK Computer.

http://i.imgur.com/aGUF6gp.jpg

grated nagaimo can be amazing, prepared correctly

went with perfect from now on

Couldn't fully get behind any of these, except maybe Either/Or and Roni Size. Voted the latter, as Elliott will have some fans here and I worry that everyone has forgotten drum n bass.

Here it is, the best year for records that I have ever had the pleasure of living through.

At the time Perfect FromNow On was my favorite but now I Can Hear The Heart is my choice.

that might be true for me as well, will have to think about that as i think maybe one of the 1980's years for me might beat it. might.

Jesus christ, what a year for music this was! Just looking at that list, I can see about 12 records or thereabouts that I played the absolute shit out of that year, and a couple more that I caught up with later.

It's a difficult choice, but I still fully expect OK Computer to take this.

Couldn't fully get behind any of these, except maybe Either/Or and Roni Size. Voted the latter, as Elliott will have some fans here and I worry that everyone has forgotten drum n bass.

― Tom Violence, Wednesday, August 12, 2015 8:30 PM (57 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I remember drum 'n' bass, and I also remember that that Roni Size album is/was waaaaaaaaay overrated.

We're back to lots of stuff I like a lot but not much that I'm particularly crazy about. Yo La Tengo's is probably my favorite album of the bunch.

Radiator, easy.

yeah, that SFA album is spectacular but i can't seem to quite hit the submit button as there are so many excellent choices. it is my favorite Super Furry Animals album.

Missy over Daft Punk

Maybe Contra la Corriente or A Pesar de Todo.

Ladies and Gentlemen.

I was boring and voted Ok Computer (the first album I literally rushed home after school every day to play start to finish).

But also excellent are Homework, Homogenic, Dig your own hole, Blur, and Urban Hymns. This was a really good year.

Homogenic is a totem

I was only 9 years old at the time, so can't say I really experienced this absolutely spectacular year as a music fan, but I still have fond memories of how they somehow trickled down into my world: seeing the "Around the World" video again and again on MTV with my little brother, mornings with my dad's new weird Cuban music cd, airguitaring "Song 2" and jumping around to "Breathe" with friends in after school club, my older brother playing "Bittersweet Symphony" for me on his new stereo, the baffling "Joga" video which only showed on rare late night occasions, the funny "Learn to Fly" video that introduced me to Dave Grohl.

It would take a long time before I got into what are now some of my favorite albums: Time out of Mind, Ladies and Gentlemen..., Perfect from Now On.

Still, it's gotta be OK Computer, which was the most mindblowing thing I had ever heard when I finally got it on cd around 2000

homogenic easy

Bah, OKC is genuinely my favourite album on this list I think.

Here it is, the best year for records that I have ever had the pleasure of living through.

I agree w this except that p much none of my favorite records are anywhere on this list. I'll probably go with Modest Mouse w the caveatvthat Bjork, Mogwai, SFA are all prob all albums I dont know I love

Homogenic or OK Computer? Voted Homogenic in the end. Such a lush record. Sublime.

I turned 18 in 1997 so this is a seriously formative time. There are 14 records in this list that still really like, and maybe 3 of them that I love. For most of the past 18 years I'd have voted for Spiritualized, I think, but over the last few years... I might err towards Yo La Tengo, actually.

Can anyone explain the appeal of Spiritualized to me? I've given them a go a number of times over the years and always found them crushingly dull.

^

My favorites among stuff that didn't make the cut (the first would be my vote if it were an option):

Guided By Voices - Mag Earwhig!
Orb - Orblivion
Faith No More - Album Of The Year
Wu-Tang Clan - Wu-Tang Forever
Pizzicato Five - Happy End Of The World
Company Flow - Funcrusher Plus
Oasis - Be Here Now (yes, seriously)
Stereolab - Dots & Loops
Apples In Stereo - Tone Soul Evolution
Aphex Twin - Come To Daddy
Fantastic Plastic Machine - S/T
Takako Minekawa - Cloudy Cloud Calculator

Also, I was largely living off of CMJ comps back then. My 'best of' mixtape of that stuff is easily the best unofficial album of that year for me.

Orblivion is a seriously underrated record IMO.

Yes, every time I hear it I realize how much I myself underrate it in comparison to earlier Orb albums.

There are a couple of favourites in here - Brighten The Corners, Blur, Vanishing Point. Lots of 'difficult' follow-up albums here too though - Fat of the Land, Dig Your Own Hole, In It For The Money, Colour & the Shape - all of which were celebrated and held up at the time but I felt weren't anywhere near as good as their preceding records.

OK Computer is the exception though. An outstanding follow-up to the already excellent The Bends, and a really important record for me at the time, which I bought on release the day I finished my GCSEs.

OKC is one of a handful of records that completely fulfilled my unrealistic expectations. Still holds up/doesn't sound dated.

I guess I'll need to listen to it again, but I remember some of the single b-sides being better than most of the stuff on OKC proper.

I like all of the Radiohead that I've heard just fine, but Kid A is the only album of theirs that really knocked my socks off.

I definitely prefer "Polyethylene (Parts 1 & 2)" and a couple other b-sides to "Electioneering."

Jesus, this year

1 12 Radiohead - OK Computer
2 241 Daft Punk - Homework
4 252 Björk - Homogenic
5 265 The Chemical Brothers - Dig Your Own Hole
6 266 Spiritualized - Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space
9 482 Missy Misdemeanor Elliott - Supa Dupa Fly
10 484 The Prodigy - The Fat of the Land
15 594 Erykah Badu - Baduizm
16 610 Roni Size / Reprazent - New Forms
18 684 Portishead - Portishead

One of these... I think I can cut Missy, The Prodigy and Roni Size on first pass but how the hell do I pick from what's left over?

also this is OTM: Orblivion is a seriously underrated record IMO.

Might be my favorite Orb album; "Toxygene" is definitely my favorite of their singles.

Bah, OKC is genuinely my favourite album on this list I think.

― the joke should be over once the kid is eaten. (chap),

Actually fuck it I just voted for Bjork.

xp i love the track on Orblivion with the Scouser going on about Beelzebub

I definitely prefer "Polyethylene (Parts 1 & 2)" and a couple other b-sides to "Electioneering."
[
― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Thursday, August 13, 2015 2:56 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

In retrospect it's not a perfect album. Even at the time I hated Electioneering and found Let Down a bit of a drag. But I know what Tarfumes means about fulfilling expectations. As a 16 year old who'd been weaned on Britpop and grunge, it just sounded so ambitious and three-dimensional compared to much other rock I'd heard in the preceding years. Never mind the fact it followed on the back of The Bends, itself a huge leap on from Pablo Honey - the changing-up of styles that constitutes Radiohead's first four albums is remarkable.

I love OK Computer so much and think its rock canon classic status really is deserved BUT Homogenic is one of my half-dozen favourite albums ever so I'm voting for that. In It for the Money and Life After Death are up there too.

Also I'm heartened by Old Lunch's love for Mag Eawhig!, a lot of GBV fans seem to dislike that album but I think it's one of their best.

no Velvet Rope eh?

Nick Cave seems to get into a lot of these.

I listened to Spring Heeled Jack more than New Forms tbh

I occasionally think Mag Earwhig! might be my favorite GBV album. It hits the perfect balance of capturing Pollard's randomness while also sounding like a coherent album rather than just a collection of songs.

*Spring Heel rather

New Forms has some good stuff on it but overall it's an overlong slog. I've tried any number of times think I've only listened to it all the way through once or twice.

Jungle/dnb never did really work as an album genre.

Old Lunch - no love for Fantasma? If you're mentioning albums by P5, FPM, Minekawa, Apples in Stereo...

That was probably my 3rd favorite album this year, only b/c '97 was so stacked. If I were to rank 'em:

1. Ween - The Mollusk
2. P-Model - Electronic Tragedy
3. Cornelius - Fantasma
4. Orb - Orblivion
5. Radiohead - OK Computer
6. The Chemical Bros - Dig Your Own Hole
7. Modest Mouse - Lonesome Crowded West
8. Bjork - Homogenic
9. Denki Groove - A
10. Aqua - Aquarium

I tried listening to OK Computer and it sucked

yeah, that's my experience (new forms). i like a few songs but it's very long and kind of polite-sounding to me. i've been beat-down on ILM before for saying this, but the whole 'drum'n'bass with real instruments' felt to me at the time like a way to put an acceptable face on jungle. Railing is still a jam though.

Dylan

There are a couple of favourites in here - Brighten The Corners, Blur, Vanishing Point. Lots of 'difficult' follow-up albums here too though - Fat of the Land, Dig Your Own Hole, In It For The Money, Colour & the Shape - all of which were celebrated and held up at the time but I felt weren't anywhere near as good as their preceding records.

― 9 days from now a.k.a next weekend. (dog latin), Thursday, August 13, 2015 1:44 PM (35 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

There's nothing "difficult" about any of these albums, and there never was! All of those albums still hold up, IMO.

Yeah I wasn't expecting the Chems to still sound good but it really does. They did such a good job on that one.

'Difficult' not the right word, but these were all New Jerseys, in that they were the big acclaimed records that somehow tipped the act into 'game is up' territory for me. Fat Of the Land, especially, was a massive let down. Dig Your Own Hole had plenty of great tracks but somehow lacked some of the rough edges that made their first album so exciting. Colour & the Shape consolidated the Foos as a stadium rock band, whereas the first album was still a grimey, noisy Nirvana spinoff. And I just prefer the singles from I Should Coco to IIFTM.

That Cornershop album still sounds great. It really captured that eclectic late 90s zeitgeist imo. I hated OK Computer at the time but I've grown to like it now although I've never considered it a masterpiece or even their best album. Homework and Dig Your Own Hole were big albums for me as I was getting into dance music more and more. I was tired of guitar music at this point and I was listening to more dance and older stuff like jazz and 60s stuff like Beach Boys and Scott Walker. I was big into Todd Rundgren's A Wizard A True Star. I loved BTC at the time but its easily the dullest Pavement album to my ears now.

Music For A Jilted Generation was so effortlessly sinister-sounding. The darkside of rave culture after the Prodigy's earlier dabbling in kiddy rave. As a kid, I was actually afraid to play it - the whole thing just sounded so illicit. But FOTL suffered from timing issues (coming out about a year after Firestarter), not enough variety, too many bad choices for guest-spots, too much Keith Flint, too much explicit 'aren't we crazy danger people' stuff.

When you're writing Dig Your Own Hole, are you actually thinking of Surrender?

Thing with a lot of these albums is that many of them I'd get into up to a couple of years after they came out. Without the internet you were limited to buying what you could afford or what you could get on tape off your friend. So BTC is more of a '98 album for me. Either/Or is '99 etc..

xp I didn't bother with Surrender - I hated the singles off of it.

xp FOTL got mixed reviews at the time iirc. I remember being disappointed by it. They were slipping into self-parody.

don't get me wrong, I love things like electrobank and block rocking beats and stuff, but I just think the first album sounds better and seems to have held up better in retrospect whereas Dig is very much of a time.

Whereas, aside from the utterly perfect "Chemical Beats", I feel the exact opposite way.

Even though Music For The Jilted Generation is absolutely classic, Keith Flint was a big reason why The Fat Of The Land ended up taking off and selling so much, particularly the way he looked in the 'Firestarter' video.

'Narayan' is so good that I can even overlook the fact that fuckin' Crispian Mills (of all people) is on it!

I'm with DJP here. But I'd add in The Tim Burgess one off Dust, which I love.

Prodigy album I'm with DL 100% though.

Old Lunch - no love for Fantasma? If you're mentioning albums by P5, FPM, Minekawa, Apples in Stereo...

I've never really listened to much Cornelius. There really isn't any excuse or explanation (particularly given my interests in that direction and the fact that I have listened to Flipper's Guitar). I'll rectify that someday.

Best Radiohead album vs. best Mogwai album vs. best Prodigy album vs. second-best Flaming Lips album. But all of these have songs I never cared for. "A Machine in India." "Katrien." "Fitter Happier" (aged very badly). Ehhh since OKC is gonna get enough votes, I'll go with Young Team. I love the piano-y bits.

'Smack My Bitch Up', 'Breathe', 'Funky Shit', 'Narayan', 'Firestarter', 'Climbatize'... nah, I couldn't say it was a dud record, really.

I missed (and am slightly surprised to see) Vanishing Point on the list. That might be my favorite Primal Scream album but I never got the impression people rated it terribly highly.

I always forget about it, to be quite honest with you.

Re: the appeal of Spiritualized, LAGWAFIS was my first exposure to them, and I remember it being on the NME playlist pre-release week after week after week, and just wondering 'wtf is this they're listening to and occasionally dropping hints about?' Pre-regular internet access I had pretty much no way of looking up anything about them until interviews started rolling in.

Then there was the whole release put back because of the Elvis thing, and the packaging conceit, and all the drug/drama/Verve/love-triangle soap opera bullshit, which was just fascinating to a 17/18 year old.

My brother was working for Vital Distribution at the time, who handled Dedicated, and he had a chance to win the 12x3" CDs promo version with the original Elvis version on it (just missed out) but he gave me a copy the weekend before it was due out and I can still remember listening to all 70 minutes, rapt, in one sitting, and thinking "I've never heard ANYTHING like this before", because I hadn't; I'd never encountered Spacemen 3, let alone free jazz, drone, avant-noise, Dr John. I remember playing football with mates immediately afterwards and not saying anything for the whole game and my mate Steve asking why I was so quiet for once, and I just said "Spiritualized".

Our friendship group was dispersing post A Levels, and I spent a chunk of the summer visiting mates' houses for the last times to drink and play music and get stoned, and playing this record at them, when all they'd heard before was grunge and britpop, and it seemed to genuinely blow some minds. If you're 18 and stoned and know you're never going to see your friends again and all you like is Pearl Jam and someone plays Cop Shoot Cop at you... it felt amazing.

It felt like Radiohead got the popular critical vote, and The Verve got the sales, but this felt like it did all the things those records were trying to do, but much better. It felt futuristic and classic at the same time, innovative and crafted, intensely personal but also madly expansive. I absolutely fell in love with it in a way few other things had hit me before. I still prefer it to OK Computer, and by a long way, I think; I think of them as being quite similar records aesthetically (modernist British rock, I guess), but OKC felt like it was for moany adolescents pissed at 'the system' (when we'd just thrown the Tories out of government!) and LAG felt like it was a more adult endeavour, emotionally.

But this is obviously not going to chime for everyone!

I'm not feeling super passionate about anything on the list just at the moment. Too bad Carl Craig missed the cut.

Dig Me Out here.

I'm trying to remember: was Zaireeka much to write home about as an album? I mean, it was a fun parlor trick the few times I heard it as intended but I don't really remember the music at all.

It's 'OK' just as 'an album', inasmuch as you can ever consider it as an album. But it's SUCH an outrageous experience and so unlike any other record that to consider it as such is folly, I think. Which is why I won't vote for it here; it feels like voting for a film or a play or a party you were at.

http://devonrecordclub.com/2014/09/19/the-flaming-lips-zaireeka-round-71-nicks-choice/

At the start of '97, the Prodigy and the Chemical Brothers were two of my favourite acts - Fat of the Land was my first experience of being really let down by an album whereas Dig Your Own Hole was as great as I'd hoped. The electronica album I loved the most that year though was In Sides - a friend lent me it in January and for a while afterwards everything else I listened to sounded rubbish in comparison.

'Narayan' is so good that I can even overlook the fact that fuckin' Crispian Mills (of all people) is on it!

I have no Crispian Mills baggage (lol American) so my cosigning of the awesomeness of "Narayan" is without caveat.

I didn't realize anyone rated "Funky Shit", though.

I think Gus Gus - Polydistortion might be my favorite 'electronica' (always hated and always will hate that word) album from '97. There are clearly still lots of '97 albums I've forgotten were '97 albums.

It's another album from that scene/time that, like In Sides, somehow avoids sounding at all dated.

I was going to mention Lamb as well but their debut was 1996; the Gus Gus/Lamb tour I saw in 1997 was SUPER SUPER fun.

OKC is prob my least favorite Radiohead besides In Rainbows

Alfred otm also; Velvet Rope is great. Though I think it was seen as a disappointing follow up to janet. at the time (also, critics not being v enlightened re: big budget pop albums)

the lonesome crowded west if i'm being honest but i love a bunch of these

xxpost Yeah, Lamb has also nicely avoided sounding dated.

Not that datedness is necessarily a criticism. I still love a lot of 'electronica' that sounds like the soundtrack to a movie about hackers.

I didn't realize anyone rated "Funky Shit", though.

― I Am Curious (Dolezal) (DJP), Thursday, August 13, 2015 3:51 PM (57 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I've always liked it!

Darn it, i missed 1996!

ICHTHBAO easily.

If OKC wins I will be sad, and I am a card carrying Radiohead fan.

OKC will win. Resign yourself to fate.

I'm remembering just how quickly it took for OK Computer to become a "canonical" album. Here in the UK, the NME gave it 10/10, and then it came #1 in a Q Magazine readers "All Time Top 100 Albums" poll only nine months after it was released. At the time, and as much as I liked the album, I was kinda "wait, what? seriously?" ... I couldn't help but think all of these reactions were a little too quick. Having said that, though, here we are 18 years down the line, OK Computer is widely considered to be the best album of 1997, and on rateyourmusic.com it's considered to be the best album of all time. Ever. In terms of Acclaimed Music's own All-Time list, it's #12, but even that is above Abbey Road and Dark Side Of The Moon etc.

You may like the album, or you may not, but it does seem to have a stature to it that none of the other records on this list have.

I think OKC's wild praise somehow went completely under my radar. It really doesn't make sense to me...which kinda makes sense as it's in good company with any number of other wildly-praised canonical albums that don't seem particularly special to me.

^^^

I will never "get" Radiohead

congratulations

thx I gave myself a medal and everything

As I said upthread, I think it's fine, but its canonical status seems on par with Sgt. Pepper's (an album that I would sincerely say was maybe on the low end of the best 30-40 albums released in '67).

I think it's largely to do with the right time and place. Like Sick Mouthy says about the Spiritualized record, kids of our generation just hadn't been exposed to that kind of expansive rock music before. The only other thing I can think of is Mellon Collie, which is still very much a hard rock album with a flabbier concept than OKC or LAGWAFIS.

I can't understand any Radiohead fan saying they like OKC and In Rainbows the least btw.

I can understand In Rainbows because it's a collection of songs that work against each other rather than build upon each other; I always have a much more positive experience listening to the material when it comes up in a random shuffle or a computer-generated playlist than I do when I try to listen to the album.

That's true. I guess another reason OKC is considered such a classic is because it's sequenced so well. It has a beginning, middle and end and an overriding loose theme.

I think it's largely to do with the right time and place. Like Sick Mouthy says about the Spiritualized record, kids of our generation just hadn't been exposed to that kind of expansive rock music before.

― 9 days from now a.k.a next weekend. (dog latin), Thursday, August 13, 2015 6:12 PM (32 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

What, their parents didn't have one of those multi million-selling Pink Floyd albums in their record collections?

Ah, I can't fault In Rainbows, really - a much better start-to-finish experience for me than Hail To The Thief, without a doubt!

Whereas for me Hail To The Thief is their best overall album.

What, their parents didn't have one of those multi million-selling Pink Floyd albums in their record collections?

haha yes this was exactly my reaction, I was baffled

I can't understand any Radiohead fan saying they like OKC and In Rainbows the least btw.

I dont have time right now, but maybe later if youre interested, dog latin I can bash together a brief rundown explicating the hows and whys of my personal Radiohead albums ranking

Pavement over Cornershop for me. Have to concede I rarely play BTC now, but I think it was underrated then and now, especially "We Are Underused," probably their best "fuck it let's go big" song -- so big, so sad, so final. "Transport is Arranged" almost as good, almost as ignored by history. This Cornershop record wasn't actually a part of my 1997, I bought a used CD of it much later, not really knowing what it was, and fell in love with it.

But the truth is, I think Pavement, Cornershop, and the Verve are the only three of these I've heard all the way through, and I remember nothing about the Verve record except the single. I feel like I was listening to a lot of music in 1997 but I guess somehow not this music?

Where is Wu-Tang Forever? I remember this coming out and being AN EVENT, thought of as an instant classic. I listened to it a lot. Is it now forgotten? OK, I see it's at #37 on the Acclaimed list. So not forgotten, exactly, but -- not remembered to the extent people anticipated remembering it?

Where's Voyage To The Bottom Of The Road? This list is INCREDIBLE! It has no CREDIBILITY!

Side note re: Zaireeka, my brother got a version of the album off eBay that was mixed down onto one CD, and it was definitely not as interesting as getting our youth group to play it off four cheap boomboxes in a church basement.

I remember this coming out and being AN EVENT, thought of as an instant classic.

it was and it is

No Pink Floyd in my house growing up! Not that I've heard any Floyd like Cop Shoot Cop.

A Saucerful Of Secrets does the long-form order -> chaos -> order thing quite well. Fuck I'm writing a serious post in this thread

Interstellar Overban

If this list represents 1997's music to you in anything like a satisfactory manner then frankly I pity you and your shit taste. This sort of consensus canon-forming is the enemy of all good historical music appreciation and it makes me extremely uneasy to see so many of you buying into it

in spite of experiencing a youth where the boombox experiment was like the ne plus ultra of social events i will never willingly listen to the flaming lips again. ok computer was a huge album for me for a long time but this is so easily homogenic now.

If this list represents 1997's music to you in anything like a satisfactory manner then frankly I pity you and your shit taste. This sort of consensus canon-forming is the enemy of all good historical music appreciation and it makes me extremely uneasy to see so many of you buying into it

not everyone can achieve the artistic purity of singing "Bohemian Rhapsody" while diddling a vacuum cleaner

OK, maybe 'shit taste' is making things a little personal and mean, but cmon, this is the sort of thing which gets good artists forgotten beneath a horrid swathe of canonical classics! And I say this as someone who has at some stage of their life liked or loved probably half the albums here!

Generally, I agree with you that consensus canon-forming can lead to a number of great releases getting forgotten about or glossed over, but the thread is called "Acclaimed Music Top 30 Albums from 1997 poll" not "30 Sadly Neglected Albums from 1997 poll"

think a good deal of my antipathy towards this does stem from the fact that of the albums i've liked from here, i'm over just about all of them - and subsequent 1997 discoveries just give me so much more

if i were to validate the poll by voting in it i'd probably go with portishead, although the mogwai and the sfa are still quite good maybe. but argh NO

Chemicals for me. Not sure how well it's aged, though.

gotta go with LCW

think a good deal of my antipathy towards this does stem from the fact that of the albums i've liked from here, i'm over just about all of them - and subsequent 1997 discoveries just give me so much more

― imago, Thursday, August 13, 2015 9:01 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Well yeah, I fully understand what you mean... there's loads of albums on this list that I played the absolute shit out of back in the '90s that I know full well are good records, but because I've played 'em that many times I seldom feel like listening to 'em. There's a few albums on this list that I'd love to be able to listen to with completely "fresh" ears again, but because I know every single nook and cranny of some of 'em, they just don't hit my "pleasure centre" in the way that they once did.

LJ, I think you're the only person here who thinks anyone else here would mistake this list for a canonical survey of 1997's best and brightest. We're polling a list of albums. That's all.

Gravitar - Now the Road of Knives
ST37 - Spaceage
The Fall - Levitate
OOIOO - s/t
Strange Warmings of Laddio Bolocko
Acid Mothers Temple - s/t
Dissolve - Third Album from the Sun
Bardo Pond - Lapsed
Helium - The Magic City
Davis Redford Triad - The Mystical Path of the Number Eighty Six
The Sea and Cake - The Fawn
Janet Jackson - The Velvet Rope

I'm on #teamimago for this one, just sayin

By this year I was well out of touch with most new music, and not much on this list made any impression on, me except for Pavement, which was a pleasant surprise after the disappointing Wowee Zowee. Brighten the Corners is still my favorite Pavement album to listen to, though to be honest, I don't play it that often.

Did F♯A♯∞ come out in 1997, or am I going bananas? If it did, that would be no.1. As it is, either Young Team or Ladies and Gentlemen... for me.

Edit: or Bad Timing by Jim O'Rourke.

That Davis Redford Triad album is amazing

^yes

Shout out for that David Holmes record, which is actually called "Lets Get Killed". Voted Daft Punk.

F#A#& (sic) was very early 1998 I thought?

Says on Wiki that F♯A♯∞ was released in August 1997 (on Constellation) and then again in June 1998 (on Kranky).

I've played OK Computer back to front more times than I can count, but I haven't done so in years and think I would probably get physically ill if I did so today. It's too cold and bitter for me to stomach these days (I was going to call it "dour and smug," but that probably better describes Thom Yorke than the music...). Voted Built to Spill, whatever.

I was still recovering from Grunge/Alt Rock/Bush/Live in 1997, didn't grow to appreciate all these albums till like 2002.

Yo La Tengo.

great post on first exposure to spiritualized scik mouthy!

I thought I had heard a bit of everything when I got around to LAGWAFIS but was still blown away

lol at the thought that your parent's pink floyd records would have made you immune to grandiose psychrock

I somehow missed Dig Me Out. That album was huge for me, arriving as it did about a year after my college riot grrrl friend opened my eyes to an entire wing of music that I was previously unaware of. Still don't know if it trumps Yo La in terms of staying power for me, though.

my actual favorite 1997 record is probably stars of the lid - the ballasted orchestra

LJ, I think you're the only person here who thinks anyone else here would mistake this list for a canonical survey of 1997's best and brightest. We're polling a list of albums. That's all.

― Gristly Bear (Old Lunch), Thursday, 13 August 2015 21:32 (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah but it's the SAME fucking albums that get polled every time, this is just such a boring exercise

i think it's funny when people get mad a canonized list. they can never satisfy everyone but you can usually pick one that you love or loved.

at

in this case i can pick about 10 and it is fun to talk about a year of music in a thread...

where's your list imago?

Thing is, imago, if there's no consensus, there's no conversation. Not all conversations about music are geared around the discovery of new music, nor should they be; sometimes people want a bit of nostalgia, and that's fine, or to understand the past they experienced better, and that's fine too. You seem to be interested in always finding an alternative past and exploring that, at all costs - and that's totally valid, too, but it's not what this thread is about. If this thread was polling albums no one had ever heard of, or if everyone was only talking about obscure gems that they liked, there'd be no shared experience, and no point. If you want another discussion, start a "lost gems from the mid 90s" thread, or something.

Also there have been dozens of other threads in this series that arguably set the precedent for how the 1997 poll would proceed

I already ran a 'lost gems from the 90s' poll a few years ago! Nearly ended up with the Space Jam OST winning due to a weird voting system, haha

lol

this is so easily homogenic now.

― e-bouquet (mattresslessness), Thursday, August 13, 2015 4:30 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm. i'd honestly be happy never hearing OKC again. listening to homogenic right now and this is such a great album, "all neon like" is still just making me feel very happy right now

1997 was prob the first year i really started reading about music and buying new and current albums, i was 14, the "electronica" craze was in full effect w/ lol prodigy and dig your own hole etc. i liked most of this list back then but i don't have much desire to hear almost any of it again

also imago i kind of get what you're saying too, i mean how many more times do we have to talk about radiohead albums really

Oh shit, the Sundays' Static and Silence came out in '97, too! Easily my least favorite of the three but I still like it a lot.

do we really talk about Radiohead anymore? kinda feels like the conversation's been "ugh Radiohead so overrated" for like, a dozen years now. I've overplayed OK Computer myself but it is such an obviously great album that I can't just shun it, would be real dishonest for me to claim it's NOT one of my ten favorites this year, even if it's definitely not #1

xps i feel that tired about all of the indie on this list. i truly have no desire to hear ok computer or like modest mouse again. yo la tengo too. the past few years i've been into a lot of dance music so i have a low-level interest in hearing say that david holmes album. i never listened to roni size at the time, or i think i did once? at a used cd store. definitely did not get it. not sure i would choose that one now if i wanted to get myself into d n b though. seem to recall it was like the token "this happened" pick of nme 2-3 years too late.

in many ways these lists are incredibly tiresome. the canonization aspect is stupid. i basically agree with imago but feel that pointing it out to list dongs is not going to be productive you're just going to have defensive paragraphs. conversation doesn't require external consensus it requires two people with the imagination to create consensus between themselves in any huge number of ways and it's disingenuous to suggest that like a canonized list of albums is required for people to have conversations. maybe with someone like scik mouthy but really who would want to do that? other list choads with overlapping taste. how exciting.

Yeah, I wish there was room on ILM for the discussion of obscure music. But there just isn't. There just isn't.

Homogenic you monsters.

Have I just been ad hominem'd? Fuck you, mattresslessness; I can do (and have done) dick-waving obscurantism with the best of them. This thread is ABOUT A CONSENSUAL LIST you fucking moron, and there is AN ENTIRE DATABASE of discussion built over 15 years for you to talk about whatever the fuck you like. List choad? I participate in about ten threads a year these days and they're seldom list ones - I came in this thread because it's about a formative year for me, and, surprise surprise, for other people too. Fuck you.

actually really hate this list. there's something about late 90s popular music, which i experienced as a relatively happy adolescent, that when it's formed into this variegated aggregation just instills a deep feeling of ennui and horror in me.

supergrass, bjork, cornershop, portishead, the verve - cobbles on a path towards suicide ideation.

I think my main way of discovering new music in 1997 was to go to Downtown Music Gallery in the East Village and buy something unheard based on the cover. Obviously the results ended up being a bit hit or miss. I did see a lot of good shows in '97 though. Most of my listening that year would probably be categorized under avant-garde jazz or experimental rock.

1997 wasn't even a great year for me. Looooads more good stuff in '96 and '98. Nevertheless, here's a small list of stuff I personally prefer to this list:

The Fall - Levitate <<<this album is above and beyond, but also below and within - it is unmusic, it is unlearnt art, it is terrifying and bad and better than anything else from this year
Half Man Half Biscuit - Voyage To The Bottom Of The Road
Cornelius - Fantasma <<<still sounds futuristic
Toenut - Two In The Pinata <<<the best American indie-rock album of this year, obv
Cheer-Accident - Enduring The American Dream <<<a fucking avant-rock classic, just so goddamn adventurous and great
Ocean Machine - Biomech
Catherine Wheel - Adam And Eve <<<the best American indie-rock album of this year by a British band, obv
Robert Wyatt - Shleep
The Wildhearts - Endless, Nameless <<<an insane and beautiful little album that's largely forgotten
Mansun - Attack Of The Grey Lantern <<<the third-best Britpop album of the year
The Dandy Warhols - Come Down <<<the second-best Britpop album of the year
Suede - Sci-Fi Lullabies <<<the best Britpop album of the year. oh it's a compilation, SORRY.
Sidi Bou Said - Obsessive
Komar & Melamid & Dave Soldier - The Most (Un)Wanted Music
Long Fin Killie - Amelia
Hum - Downward is Heavenward
Space Needle - The Moray Eels Eat The Space Needle
Dubstar - Goodbye
Ulver - Nattens Madrigal

Hell, I even prefer listening to Be Here Now than a load of this stuff. It's just so huge and shit and clueless that it becomes kind of mesmerically great. But of course if it were in this list it'd be very much part of the problem.

imago how do you think this list was constructed and what do you think the intent was behind the methodology?

Dig Your Own Hole as aged incredibly well. Same with Homogenic. While I love OKC, even at the time I listened to those two records more, so I'll probably vote for one of them.

I kinda feel like Be Here Now is the apotheosis of the Oasis 'dumb-as-dirt bombast' mission statement. I enjoy it as a rock album by a band who could sincerely be mistaken as speakers of English as a second language ('Magic Pie', indeed).

beep beep who got the keys to the jeep

I enjoy it as a rock album by a band who could sincerely be mistaken as speakers of English as a second language ('Magic Pie', indeed).

― Grilled Floam In A Gak Reduction (Old Lunch), Friday, August 14, 2015 7:23 PM (36 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Worst/most cringeworthy lyric on Oasis' 'Be Here Now'

Can anyone explain the appeal of Spiritualized to me? I've given them a go a number of times over the years and always found them crushingly dull.

― the joke should be over once the kid is eaten. (chap), Thursday, August 13, 2015 3:56 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

have you heard the first album, Lazer Guided Melodies? the sound is much more dreamy and zonked out than their other records. the production is really slick and shimmerry. and the songs are catchier.

plus j spaceman's voice tends to be either bathed in fx or low in the mix (if his voice bothers you)

yeah, i'd agree with that. if you're not a fan of spiritualized from "ladies and gentlemen..." on, you should give lazer guided melodies (and some of pure phase) a chance because it's quite different.

me and my girl missy gettin pissy up in bennigan's
makin all you other rappers begin again
like finnegan
christians repent and then sin again

imago how do you think this list was constructed and what do you think the intent was behind the methodology?

― balls, Friday, August 14, 2015 7:19 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's some RYM-type deal isn't it, the intent being to allow people to rank their favourite albums on a big website, which is fine for many purposes tbh

Pure Phase is sooooo the best Spz album

another nudge for david holmes.

listened to the album last week, and heard it afresh all over again.

but could have easily voted for 8 of the other albums ..

t's some RYM-type deal isn't it, the intent being to allow people to rank their favourite albums on a big website, which is fine for many purposes tbh

no

Diminishing returns from Spiritualized, imo. Best thing about 'Ladies & Gents...' was the medicine-style packaging.

Franzon has statistically aggregated hundreds of published lists that rank songs and albums into aggregated rankings by year, decade and all-time.

ahahaha christ, ok, this is almost perfectly inimical to how i approach music listening. i'm out

the only conceivable positive purpose this list has, and i'm sure the intent, is to see which music has been acclaimed and to chart the critical consensus - to construct an image of the canon if not the canon itself. but i'm being very charitable there

o it's definitely some nerd shit. it's kinda useful as a warehouse of various crit lists, etc over the years. the overall consensus arrived at is kinda dull (rateyrmusic is probably more interesting in a way)(in the same way that imdb's top movies list is more interesting than afi's) but still it's more 'o right these are the big crit list faves of that year'. it's been kinda interesting to me w/ the 90s is the relative dearth of hip hop beyond the token obv choices. not quite as outrageous to me but there's also been a noticeable dearth of metal on these lists. hip-hop does better at getting token spots on trad rock pub lists than metal but metal i think has more publications and a longer history of publications adding inputs. something like country which very rarely gets acknowledged on trad rock pub lists and doesn't have a ton of publications devoted to it doing this kind of canonizing gets shafted even more.

This may be deeply uncool to admit, but I think 1997 was kind of a high watermark year for modern rock radio. As overplayed as they are, I'd rather listen to a well curated mix-tape of Wallflowers, Smash Mouth, Third Eye Blind, Sublime, OMC, Green Day, etc.. hits from this year that most of the albums listed above. I guess Blur, Verge and Supergrass from the list above were kind of in that style - for some reason Britpop got a bit more critical respect than the US post-grunge stuff.

Catherine Wheel - Adam And Eve <<<the best American indie-rock album of this year by a British band, obv

'97 is also the year of Teenage Fanclub's best album

no

(grand prix or bandwagonesque imo)

jim otm

This is an easy one for me as Homogenic is my favourite album of the 90s. In It For The Money would be a close second.

So many people mentioning Homogenic... I love the record, and it's my favourite Bjork album by far, but if it tops this poll I'll be very surprised, even though I'd be pleased to see anything beat OK Computer for a change.

My top ten, roughly in order:

Yo La Tengo - I Can Hear the Heart Beating As One
Björk - Homogenic
Sleater-Kinney - Dig Me Out
Erykah Badu - Baduizm
Primal Scream - Vanishing Point
Supergrass - In It for the Money
Spiritualized - Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space
Elliott Smith - Either/Or
The Prodigy - The Fat of the Land
Cornershop - When I Was Born for the 7th Time

great list imago, discovered a few things i already like.

i think the most surprising thing about this thread is that no one has said they are voting for Homework. this is ILM right?

Voted Missy.
Probably listened to "Welcome to our World" more than anything else though.
Imperfect album, but the production and Static's vocal arrangements were amazing.

1997's critical consensus was... underwhelming. maybe it's just where we're at in time, maybe in ten years all these records will sound really brilliant to me again, but i find there are very few records less interesting to me than the critically acclaimed records of twenty years ago.

never heard "sizzla", though. any good?

Try the most critically acclaimed films of 20 years ago.

I just think Discovery is Daft Punk's crowning glory. I love some of the singles off Homework but to me it feels more like a collection of 12"s than an album I'd want to listen to all the way through.
Then again, I heard Discovery first so that may have biased me.

I'd have voted for Prolapse's "Italian Flag" if it were here. Same for Memphis synthers the Clears' self-titled (would be an interesting alternate universe). But "Lonesome Crowded West" was my life for a while, and in the absence of those others I can't not vote for it.

For some other off-listers, thank you ILXors for reminding me of Fantasma and Polydistortion. Drugs A. Money's list looks nice too; my droney DAM-esque picks for '97 wd be Hash Jar Tempo "Well Oiled" and the Azusa Plane's "Tycho Magnetic Anomaly". And, oh shit, ciderpress OTM, The Ballasted Orchestra.

Homogenic and (bits of) the YLT and BTS are p gr8 too but nobody needed reminding of that. Screw New Forms; d&b was never really an album genre but if I had to pick a couple from '97 they'd be Modus Operandi and The Prototype Years.

xp i love the track on Orblivion with the Scouser going on about Beelzebub

SALT. Sample of David Thewlis in "Naked" iirc. I sold the album at one point cz I was all "bah, it only has two good tracks on it" (SALT and Toxygene), but it turned out that I missed those two tracks so much I bought it back again.

yeah not super into "kundun" or "the ice storm" either

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

imago otm itt

'97 is also the year of Teenage Fanclub's best album

― Ys Man a.k.a. Have One on G (geoffreyess), Friday, August 14, 2015 2:40 PM (2 days ago)

agree with this, and I voted for Grand Prix in the '95 poll...

that said, even if it were here I couldn't vote for Songs from Northern Britain over Lonesome Crowded West or Perfect From Now On.

Just bought Polydistortion on CD for a massive £1.57.

Money very well spent.

every Gus Gus album (except for Forever) is great to to outstanding

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

the Top 2 is right and big surprise at number 3. i'm a bit disappointing that In It for the Money and Vanishing Point got no votes.

Wow, totally didn't see that coming!

Having said that, not a lot of votes between Homogenic and OK Computer!

Most of the albums that received zero votes are quite good. I expect Erykah to do muuuuch better in the 2000 poll (and I might even preemptively declare that as my vote).

Polls make you look really ugly.

to the 5 others who went YLT: i love you.

Thanks 23 voters for proving imago right.

nope

1997 was also the peak of the '90s alt-country boom: Whiskeytown, Old 97s, Robbie Fulks, Steve Earle, The Derailers, The Bottle Rockets, Richard Buckner, Slobberbone, Blue Mountain, 6 String Drag, Neko Case ... all put out terrific albums.

Voted Spice world

voted OK C because it's what the thread deserves

Zaireeka didn't get a single goddamn vote?!?!

i thought it was great, the one time i heard it as intended. i listened to a mix-down version once as well, but it's just wrong to do that and leaves guilty feelings afterward. nowadays i don't think i could find 4 CD players.

Thanks 23 voters for proving imago right.

has OK Computer become the international symbol of bad taste or something? what makes it different than say Dark Side of the Moon? why is it so offensive to like this record?

it's not. people just expect people's opinions and tastes to change dramatically over time and they don't.

Was gonna say something until I remembered Pavement won the '94 poll, too.

OK C holds up pretty good imho. a lot of stuff that seemed like a good idea at the time can sound questionable 15 years down the road (as much as I still love Let's Get Killed i'm not digging a lot of the tracks nearly as much as I did at the time), but OK C isn't one of them. nor is In It for the Money.

Vanishing Point is my favourite Primal Scream album that I've heard. They managed to hit on that particular vibe so well.

I feel OKC is an extremely mixed bag in a lot of ways. There's some great stuff on there for sure: Uptight, Lucky, Electioneering into Climbing. But there's a lot of stuff I don't really have time for: obv Fitter is the famously doff track, but tbh Karma Police & No Surprises wore out their welcome quick, and Tourist and Let Down are kind of listless slogs. Yes, Let Down has pretty colors, but so does Uptight and that track has an elated, jazzy buoyancy where Let Down has only leadenness. And I like Android okay, and its impressive how it manages to seem compressed and yet expansive enough to imply that that one track will be enough as a follow-up to the entire Bends album, but I feel like the logic of the track (tension->explosion->spent, wearied reverence) is kind of pat, bordering on cliche (though tbrr it does feel like it could actually belong on "the greatest album ever" which is more than I can say for Exit Music or Tourist or Karma Police)

Drugs A. Money's list looks nice too; my droney DAM-esque picks for '97 wd be Hash Jar Tempo "Well Oiled" and the Azusa Plane's "Tycho Magnetic Anomaly"

Thank you :-) re HJT: Under Glass a lot but I have a hard time getting into Well Oiled for some reason. I will def check out that Azusa Plane album though. Also imago's list seems really good, too...

That should read "I like Under Glass a lot..."

xxp good post; largely agree

would go further and say 'no surprises' is trite & shit. sorry that is just my opinion

the 'let down' false ending is kinda great but yeah it's weighted down by that portentous & overbearing tone; it doesn't feel like it's quite earned its own grandeur

first three tracks are cooking with gas but for some reason nobody else twigged how frontloaded the album is (mostly coz 'climbing up the walls' is so good probs lol)

i was never the most fervent radiohead fan, but at this point in time the album just seems to be so of its time and neither old enough to be interesting, or new enough to be fresh so that i literally couldn't sit through it.

HATE the production.

i voted for mogwai young team from pure campanilismo

xp i'd be interested to hear why you hate the OKC (assuming that's what you mean) production. at the time it felt like the most space-age thing, like the opening minutes of planet telex turned into a full album.

i'd argue a lot of accusations of triteness/cliche when it comes to OKC are only really applicable in hindsight, if only because it's become that way through setting a benchmark that others have followed, or through being overplayed.

even 'fitter happier' sounded cool at the time, although it's easy to laugh at it now. the text-to-speech voice, 'a pig in a cage on antibiotics', the fact it's obviously a filler but also an 'eye-of-the-duck' thing that epitomises the album, 'shot of baby smiling in back-seat', the overall dystopian tone of the thing - all these are kind of laughable now in today's context, but they felt pretty new and arresting at the time.

Missy Elliot was more futuristic and arresting though.

apples and oranges

Not in this poll.

My only exposure to Missy at this point was via her singles and she didn't SOUND futuristic until "Beep Me 911", which wasn't released until 1998

this is apples and oranges, c'mon man.

I'm just saying that I owned both albums, liked OKC, but was blown away by "The Rain" in contact (Homogenic too).

*on contact

I could not get past "Beep beep/Who got the keys to my jeep?/VROOOOOOOOM"

I did think the video was hilarious, though

Seeing/hearing the 'The Rain' video for the first time was mesmerising.

I'm just saying that I owned both albums, liked OKC, but was blown away by "The Rain" in contact (Homogenic too).

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, August 19, 2015 2:20 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

There's a commonly-held wisdom (especially in the UK musicsphere) that says 1997 was the year pop started going space-age. So yeah, you had all these albums, OKC, Ladies & Gentlemen, Homogenic, maybe even Urban Hymns (but I never cared to listen to the Verve), going for a grander, artier, more 'futuristic' vision maybe as a counter-attack to Oasis' 'real rock for real people'.
There's an inkling of truth in this, especially if you viewed music through a UK rock/pop lens (like I did at the time, admittedly), and you could easily lump in things from other plains - in the US, Mellon Collie from a few years before, the Sophtware Slump a few years later; and of course stuff in other genres like rap and r'n'b, although I find it hard to make connections between the timelines and scenes as they seemed quite separated.
Late 90s feels like a transitional period for me, music-wise, and '97 was the start of that transition from listening primarily to Britpop and grunge and starting to embrace other styles - hip hop, electronic music, 60s and 70s music etc. Looking back I think Radiohead represented a big part of this - moving away from the acoustic and hard rock of The Bends and into a more 3-dimensional sound. The difference might feel extremely subtle now, but as a UK teen it was a big deal to me; OKC seemed to be looking forward in a way that Blur and Oasis hadn't managed to in any way up until then, sharing more in common with Portishead than those bands or even old Radiohead.

I can agree with you on the crucialness of OKC while still thinking that it still is p moldy. Kid A does,a much better job of portentously/symbolically granting pop a vision of its future while at the same tkme being a compelling listen

Also imago I heartily recommend Laddio Bolocko and that Gravitar album to you