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).
― Profound Perspectives (Old Lunch), Tuesday, 18 August 2015 00:31 (nine years ago) link
Polls make you look really ugly.
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 18 August 2015 00:35 (nine years ago) link
to the 5 others who went YLT: i love you.
― Van Horn Street, Tuesday, 18 August 2015 01:09 (nine years ago) link
Thanks 23 voters for proving imago right.
― Norse Jung (Eric H.), Tuesday, 18 August 2015 01:34 (nine years ago) link
nope
― Bee OK, Tuesday, 18 August 2015 01:37 (nine years ago) link
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.
― alpine static, Tuesday, 18 August 2015 02:41 (nine years ago) link
Voted Spice world
― Leonard Pine, Tuesday, 18 August 2015 09:37 (nine years ago) link
voted OK C because it's what the thread deserves
― nashwan, Tuesday, 18 August 2015 10:38 (nine years ago) link
Zaireeka didn't get a single goddamn vote?!?!
― Mr. Snrub, Tuesday, 18 August 2015 13:07 (nine years ago) link
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.
― 1993 ball boy (Karl Malone), Tuesday, 18 August 2015 13:09 (nine years ago) link
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?
― frogbs, Tuesday, 18 August 2015 13:24 (nine years ago) link
it's not. people just expect people's opinions and tastes to change dramatically over time and they don't.
― 9 days from now a.k.a next weekend. (dog latin), Tuesday, 18 August 2015 13:28 (nine years ago) link
Was gonna say something until I remembered Pavement won the '94 poll, too.
― Norse Jung (Eric H.), Tuesday, 18 August 2015 13:33 (nine years ago) link
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.
― AKA Thermo Thinwall (The Cursed Return of the Dastardly Thermo Thinwall), Tuesday, 18 August 2015 13:35 (nine years ago) link
Vanishing Point is my favourite Primal Scream album that I've heard. They managed to hit on that particular vibe so well.
― 9 days from now a.k.a next weekend. (dog latin), Tuesday, 18 August 2015 13:41 (nine years ago) link
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)
― darkwing dynasty (Drugs A. Money), Tuesday, 18 August 2015 18:23 (nine years ago) link
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...
― darkwing dynasty (Drugs A. Money), Tuesday, 18 August 2015 18:28 (nine years ago) link
That should read "I like Under Glass a lot..."
― darkwing dynasty (Drugs A. Money), Tuesday, 18 August 2015 18:29 (nine years ago) link
xxp good post; largely agree
would go further and say 'no surprises' is trite & shit. sorry that is just my opinion
― Yul Brynner playing table tennis with a deviled kidney (imago), Tuesday, 18 August 2015 18:30 (nine years ago) link
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)
― Yul Brynner playing table tennis with a deviled kidney (imago), Tuesday, 18 August 2015 18:34 (nine years ago) link
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.
― corbyn's gallus (jim in glasgow), Tuesday, 18 August 2015 18:37 (nine years ago) link
HATE the production.
i voted for mogwai young team from pure campanilismo
― corbyn's gallus (jim in glasgow), Tuesday, 18 August 2015 18:39 (nine years ago) link
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.
― 9 days from now a.k.a next weekend. (dog latin), Wednesday, 19 August 2015 10:21 (nine years ago) link
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.
― 9 days from now a.k.a next weekend. (dog latin), Wednesday, 19 August 2015 10:33 (nine years ago) link
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.
― 9 days from now a.k.a next weekend. (dog latin), Wednesday, 19 August 2015 10:36 (nine years ago) link
Missy Elliot was more futuristic and arresting though.
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 19 August 2015 12:22 (nine years ago) link
apples and oranges
― nashwan, Wednesday, 19 August 2015 12:37 (nine years ago) link
Not in this poll.
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 19 August 2015 12:38 (nine years ago) link
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
― I Am Curious (Dolezal) (DJP), Wednesday, 19 August 2015 13:09 (nine years ago) link
this is apples and oranges, c'mon man.
― Stop counting smart one. (dog latin), Wednesday, 19 August 2015 13:18 (nine years ago) link
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, 19 August 2015 13:20 (nine years ago) link
*on contact
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 19 August 2015 13:21 (nine years ago) link
I could not get past "Beep beep/Who got the keys to my jeep?/VROOOOOOOOM"
I did think the video was hilarious, though
― I Am Curious (Dolezal) (DJP), Wednesday, 19 August 2015 13:27 (nine years ago) link
Seeing/hearing the 'The Rain' video for the first time was mesmerising.
― I Slipped In Your Flan (Old Lunch), Wednesday, 19 August 2015 13:37 (nine years ago) link
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
― 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.
― Stop counting smart one. (dog latin), Wednesday, 19 August 2015 14:17 (nine years ago) link
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
― darkwing dynasty (Drugs A. Money), Friday, 21 August 2015 22:03 (nine years ago) link
Also imago I heartily recommend Laddio Bolocko and that Gravitar album to you
― darkwing dynasty (Drugs A. Money), Friday, 21 August 2015 22:08 (nine years ago) link