commercially disappointing major label rock/alternative albums of 1996

but i had to vote 'Dust'

yeah obv a lot of '95 albums reigned over '96 (Mellon Collie, Garbage, The Bends)

lol I reviewed the Soundgarden record for my college paper.

i like it, but then diminishing returns of the Superunknown era is my idea of a good time

I still think there's some good stuff on Down On The Upside, although I've always felt the record should have been a lot shorter, with a few of the lesser tracks bumped off. Never been a fan of 'Applebite', for example.

Weezer's Green album and Make Believe did more than pretty well after Pinkerton, did they not.

should probably be pinkerton but i voted for stone temple pilots, there were some good songs on that album

i think the CD-era largesse peaked around '96-'98 where seemingly every album being released was a few songs too long, but Soundgarden did 70-minute indulgence better than many

yeah Weezer def had the best sales rebound of any of these bands, but obv they did the whole depressed hiatus thing first

Amazing Disgrace has grown over the years into perhaps my favorite Posies album. I saw them on that tour and they were terrific, too. That album might be the closest one to bridging their live sound with their recorded sound.

lol oh man do i remember this year

yeah Amazing Disgrace was the album that got me into the Posies and i have a huge sentimental attachment to it, even though it is definitely flawed and i probably consider Frosting a better album overall.

That's a pretty sad list. I still like the Soundgarden, Tori Amos, and Weezer albums, but New Adventures In Hi-Fi is one of my favorite REM albums so it's an easy choice.

Also, "Volcano" is awesome and probably my favorite PUSA single, but I'm pretty sure I've never heard the whole second album.

for some reason either my brother or i bought the PUSA album. it's probably as good as the first, but, y'know, what does that even mean.

Boy, Veruca Salt just missed this list by two months.

a lot of 95/97 albums are in the same boat but i wanted to emphasize what a bloodbath '96 was in particular

my firs thoughts about this period were "Belly and Juliana Hatfield."

Before I opened this thread I knew I was voting for black love

album sales in general didn't drop in '96 so i kinda wonder if there was some mass exodus to, like, rap and country among teenagers in that period or if the rock crowd just became really fractured post-Cobain and a thousand different indie bands siphoned off the fans of these 20 platinum acts

Was just listening last night to Three Snakes and One Charm and it's still my favorite Crowes album.

my firs thoughts about this period were "Belly and Juliana Hatfield."

Fond of both of those albums.

if ship had included '95, yes, King would have been my pick.

good lord this list is mostly horrible. i have hopes for ilx managing not to vote for pinkerton, not that its bad, just that its what the rest of the internet would vote for and i am elitist scum

I voted No Code, my favorite PJ album & one I have a lot of time for still.

Broken Arrow really seemed like one album too far. saw Neil live on that tour & was both rocked & shocked at how pointless it seemed.

jesus christ, WHIGS

I recently burned a CD-R with "Universal Heartbeat" on it.

i am voting for boys for pele? how did that happen

my firs thoughts about this period were "Belly and Juliana Hatfield."

― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, May 3, 2012 2:42 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Heard songs from both of them today!

oh wow "Universal Heartbeat," now that's a song i haven't heard or even thought of in 10+ years

Why wasn't this a huge hit?

Before I opened this thread I knew I was voting for black love

Afghan Whigs were a band i always assumed i'd really dig but never got around to their albums until Spotify made it super convenient and uh...nah, don't really like them nearly as much as i thought i would.

^this

yeah Amazing Disgrace was the album that got me into the Posies and i have a huge sentimental attachment to it, even though it is definitely flawed and i probably consider Frosting a better album overall.

i'm gonna vote whigs, but cosign - ken stringfellow wrote an incredibly detailed recording diary of amazing disgrace that's somehow still floating around the internet and makes it very clear how much thought went into that record (and/or how much money DGC was willing to blow on it)

oh sweet, thanks for the link!

it is kind of fun to hear about how much money was flushed away in the after glow of those 91-94 boom years.

some dude, would you have considered Bob Mould's eponymous record? A big disappointment after the Sugar records.

afgan wigs in a heartbeat

i really like the posies, and even ken stringfellow solo, but please

Before I opened this thread I knew I was voting for black love

― mookieproof, Thursday, May 3, 2012 1:55 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark

i think you have to be in just the right mood to hear black love, and also listen to it all the way through to get the full effect. it's a real start-to-finish corker imo.

the Mould wasn't major label, was it?

Rykodisc, I think

yeah ryko was still indie back then

album sales in general didn't drop in '96 so i kinda wonder if there was some mass exodus to, like, rap and country among teenagers in that period or if the rock crowd just became really fractured post-Cobain and a thousand different indie bands siphoned off the fans of these 20 platinum acts

― Neil Young’s social media channels (some dude), Thursday, May 3, 2012 11:44 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

alanis

pinkerton is the only album on this list that i've ever even come close to liking, so that.

Another couple of flops (at least in the UK):

Tricky - Pre Millennium Tension
The Auteurs - After Murder Park

Both decent records imo

i listened to Pinkerton again today trying to figure out if i'm being stubborn and contrarian about it but no, it's just terrible.

Afghan Whigs were a band i always assumed i'd really dig but never got around to their albums until Spotify made it super convenient and uh...nah, don't really like them nearly as much as i thought i would.

― Neil Young’s social media channels (some dude), Thursday, May 3, 2012 11:57 AM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^this

― O_o-O_0-o_O (jjjusten), Thursday, May 3, 2012 11:57 AM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

afghan whigs are just horrible. so bellowy and gross. like being beaten with a sweaty brick.

Weezer were never good for more than four singles.

i listened to Pinkerton again today trying to figure out if i'm being stubborn and contrarian about it but no, it's just terrible.

it's not a great album, overall, but it does have some great songs on it. suppose a lot of these are half-defensible by that standard...

Weezer were never good for more than four singles.

i like the debut pretty much all the way through.

No Sammy, Tales Of Great Neck Glory, no credibility.

Also "Salvation" is my favourite Cranberries song. Crap lyrics but good/funny idea to fuse Cali punk/horns/speed with Joy Division-ish sullenness. The video makes it even better - all this money, how to spend it?

Actually how many of these albums have music videos do that really mid-90s alt-rock thing of v. saturated/exposed colours and white flashes? I'd be sad if it isn't most of them.

This is the thread I come back to the most after New Jersey

it's so good!

between _Spike_ and the Bacharach collab EC inhabited a strange interzone. I'm not sure who was buying his records besides me.

C'Mon Kids is still the best example of this, in theory anyway, but it was in the UK not the US and in the UK 1996 was alt rock (read: britpop)'s 1994 moment

this is almost exactly the year I noped out of radio-based alternative music and started digging more into 'indie' music. I'm surprised All this Useless Beauty may have sold poorly though, they certainly poured a lot of promotion into it

EC was scoring Alternative Radio hits in America up through Brutal Youth, and then immediately dropped off the radar except for his core audience like so many other still-active '80s College Rock faves (Moz, Westerberg, Siouxsie, Peter Murphy etc.).

...and then he embraced Elder Statesman status with the Bacharach album, awards show appearances, famous new wife, more reissue campaigns etc.

brutal youth is his best album

Brutal Youth was almost a UK No. 1 album. Got him on the same TOTP episode as Moz and Mark E Smith. Can only imagine what it was like backstage.

funny thing about EC is that he's successful all the way from the 70s through to the 90s, but I'd be surprised if many people would know any of his songs post 1983.

yes I've noticed his UK chart positions

EC was scoring Alternative Radio hits in America up through Brutal Youth, and then immediately dropped off the radar except for his core audience like so many other still-active '80s College Rock faves (Moz, Westerberg, Siouxsie, Peter Murphy etc.).

― an icon of a worried-looking, long-haired, bespectacled man (C. Grisso/McCain),

"13 Steps Lead Down" and "Kinder Murder" got play oh my college station in spring '94, after which...zero. He was on Letterman that season a couple times after Dave said he dug his guitar playing.

13 steps lead down was considered a "return to form"

by then I was way into Aphex Twin and Warp records stuff so it did not revive ym interest in contemporary EC

R.E.M. was my favourite at the time and still is, but the Pixies record is solid throughout and maybe their best, they are less in thrall to their guitar sounds than they were on Frosting on the Beater.

Don't know whether the Soundgarden or the STP records better illustrate a band falling apart in 90s style. I like five songs on each. At least Tiny Music is 24 minutes shorter; the last half of Down on the Upside is a wasteland.

I like five songs on each.

...including all the singles on each except for "Ty Cobb". I am obviously the sort of fairweather fan who stifled these bands' creativity by disdaining such bold strokes as "Overfloater" and "Art School Girl".

Listening to Tiny Music right now. The '90s were so full of these minute-long instrumental album openers.

I loved Ty Cobb at the time for the banjo.

OK, the singles are seriously really good! And I do like the mellow jams a bit ("Daisy" is beautiful!), but the rockers are a bit shit. And "I got a girlfriend, she goes to art school. I got an art school girlfriend" strong contender for worst lyric of all-time. Aha! "Referencing the Tiny Music... album in his memoir, Not Dead and Not For Sale, Stone Temple Pilots lead singer Scott Weiland wrote: "We wanted to make a statement. We wanted to deconstruct, go low-tech, get to the dark heart of the matter. I was happy to write Bowie-esque stream-of-consciousness lyrics that didn't need to make sense. Example: 'Big Bang Baby.'" You call it stream-of-consciousness, I call it lazy.

I listened to Tiny Music earlier too. And it's pretty Britpop?? In a way not unlike Monster, although the production is decidedly different. I guess this is just what happens when you're a 90s alt rock band going glam.

I though tit was a pretty good album but I was maybe expecting a bit more eclecticism, given its reputation as a quasi-art-pop curveball. Isn't No Code meant to be one too? I haven't heard it in about 12 years and remember nothing of it.

No Code is more of a shaggy contemplative and atypically acoustic curveball. a few missteps but a good album, and probably did the most of any of these to help the band move forward or find their long-term footing.

(well, Load too, but not in a good way)

I enjoy Who You Are (the only song off it I know) because great drums and fun as a deliberately fanbase-slimming choice of lead single a la The 13th and E-Bow the Letter.

the Pixies record is solid throughout and maybe their best

Posies record, obviously. I was distracted thinking about K. S.