Best Album on OUR Favourite Albums of......1996 PART ONE

1996 NME Albums

1. Beck - Odelay
2. Manic Street Preachers - Everything Must Go
3. Orbital - In Sides
4. Super Furry Animals - Fuzzy Logic
5. DJ Shadow - Endtroducing
6. Screaming Trees - Dust
7. Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds - Murder Ballads
8. Tricky - Pre-Millennium Tension
9. Rocket From The Crypt - Scream, Draculs, Scream!
10. Sparklehorse - Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot
11. The Bluetones - Expecting To Fly
12. Suede - Coming Up
13. Placebo - Placebo
14. Kula Shaker - K
15. The Boo Radleys - C'mon Kids
16. R.E.M. - New Adventures In Hi Fi
17. Babybird - Ugly/Beautiful
18. Stereolab - Emperor Tomato Ketchup
19. The Divine Comedy - Casanova
20. Aphex Twin - Richard D James
21. Fun Lovin' Criminals - Come Find Yourself
22. Fugees - The Score
23. The Lemonheads - Car, Button, Cloth
24. Beth Orton - Trailer Park
25. Ash - 1977
26. New Kingdom - Paradise Don't Come Cheap
27. Nicolette - Let No One Live Rent Free In Your Head
28. Alex Reece - So Far
29. Ghostface Killah - Ironman
30. Gallon Drunk - In The Long Still Night
31. The Afghan Whigs - Black Love
32. Tiger - We Are Puppets
33. Plug - Drum 'N' Bass For Papa
34. Baby Fox - A Normal Family
35. Tortoise - Millions Now Living Will Never Die
36. The Black Crows - Three Snakes And One Charm
37. Underworld - Second Toughest In The Infants
38. Sebadoh - Harmacy
39. Animals That Swim - I Was The King, I Relay Was The King
40. Lilys - Better Can't Make Your Life Better
41. Nas - It Was Written
42. The Olivia Tremor Control - Dusk At Cubist Castle
43. The Cardigans - The First Band On The Moon
44. John Parish/Polly Harvey - Dance Hall At Louse House
45. Red Snapper - Prince Blimey
46. Radar Brothers - Radar Brothers
47. The Future Sound Of London - Dead Cities
48. Dodgy - Free Peace Sweet
49. Urusei Yatsura - We Are Urusei Yatsura
50. Spice Girls - Spice

Melody Maker End Of Year Critic Lists - 1996

Albums

1. Manic Street Preachers - Everything Must Go
2. DJ Shadow - Endtroducing
3. Super Furry Animals - Fuzzy Logic
4. Tricky - Pre-Millennium Tension
5. Underworld - Second Toughest In The Infants
6. Beck - Odalay
7. Suede - Coming Up
8. Afghan Whigs - Black Love
9. Babybird - Ugly/Beautiful
10. The Boo Radleys - C’mon Kids
11. The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion - Now I Got Worry
12. The Make-Up - Destination: Love: Live! At Cold Rice
13. Screaming Trees - Dust
14. Then Aloof - Sinking
15. New Kingdom - Paradise Don’t Come Cheap
16. Nick Cave - Murder Ballads
17. Black Star Liner - Yemen Cutta Connection
18. Silver Jaws - The Natural Bridge
19. The Bluetones - Expecting To Fly
20. Sparklehorse - Vivadixiesubmarine...
21. Placebo - Placebo
22. Catatonia - Way Beyond Blue
23. Trembling Blue Trees - Her Handwriting
24. Telstar Ponies - Voices From The New Music
25. Tortoise - Millions Now Living Will Never Die
26. His Name Is Alive - Stars On Esp
27. Lambchop - How I Quit Smoking
28. Jack - Pioneer Soundtracks
29. The Dirty Three - Horse Stories
30. The Cardigans - First Band On The Moon
31. Orbital - In Sides
32. Longpigs - The Sun Is Often Out
33. Barry Adamson - Oedipus Schmoedipus
34. Ash - 1977
35. 60ft Dolls - The Big Three
36. Lamb - Lamb
37. Sterolab - Emperor Tomato Ketchup
38. Rachel’s - Music For Egon Schiele
39. Rocket From The Crypt - Scream, Dracula, Scream!
40. The Divine Comedy - Casanova
41. The Yummy Fur - Nightclub
42. Subcircus - Carousel
43. Jeru The Damaja - Wrath Of Then Math
44. Fila Brazillia - Black Market Gardening
45. Spring Heel Jack - 68 Million Shades
46. Dodgy - Free Peace Sweet
47. Red Snapper - Prince Blimey
48. Throwing Muses - Limbo
49. Snoop Doggy Dogg - The Doggfather
50. Cul De Sac - China Gate

Kerrang! Albums Of The Year 1996

1. Screaming Trees - Dust
2. Manic Street Preachers - Everything Must Go
3. Marilyn Manson - Antichrist Superstar
4. Sepultura - Roots
5. Ash - 1977
6. Metallica - Load
7. Social Distortion - White Light, White Heat, White Trash
8. Soundgarden - Down On The Upside
9. Nirvana - From The Muddy Banks Of The Wishkah
10. The Black Crowes - Three Snakes And One Charm
11. Korn - Life Is Peachy
12. Joyrider - Be Special
13. Rocket From The Crypt - Scream, Dracula, Scream
14. Pearl Jam - No Code
15. Terrorvision - Regular Urban Survivors
16. Tool - Aenima
17. NY Loose - Year Of The Rat
18. Imperial Drag - Imperial Drag
19. Rage Against The Machine - Evil Empire
20. Girls Against Boys - House Of GVSB

some terrible typos on those lists from rocklist.net

18. Silver Jaws
23. Trembling Blue Trees

6. Beck - Odalay

14. Then Aloof - Sinking

Feed Me Weird Things is great, also love Hard Normal Daddy and Music Is Rotted One Note

Head sez Labradford, heart sez Bardo.

Elephant Six is such a great historical artifact, I still love a lot of the music that came out of it

even kind of prefer Black Love to Gentlemen these days

Harvey Milk’s “Courtesy and Good Will Toward Men” without hesitation.

even kind of prefer Black Love to Gentlemen these days

― campreverb, Friday, 9 August 2019 04:00 (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I rate them about the same.

very very highly

New Kingdom! Had that been on either list it might have been a contender...

I like that album actually. I forgot about it

not a great list for me.
better stuff on the bubbling under list.
voted for the album that i still play on a regular basis - LFO
and agree re New Kingdom.

I'll talk Lilys with you evan

A question for North Americans - While the UK 'indie/alternative' music scene was overwhelmed by Britpop by 1996 what were North American 'indie/alternative' fans listening to post 1995?

Black Star Liner - Yemen Cutta Connection

oh damn this takes me back, I loved that album, pretty much wore the tape out. whatever happened to those guys?

obviously an actual American will have a more relevant answer to your question but I joined the Pavement mailing list in the summer of '96 (99% populated by American college kids) and the year-end lists were kind of revelatory, but the stuff I remember being on nearly every list was GBV, JSBX, Afghan Whigs, and a lot of Elephant Six stuff or some nascent post-rockish thing like the Sonora Pine or A Minor Forest

(though re the latter pair I may just be remembering bands whose names I found intriguing as "most talked about", see also how in my memory John Peel played that Swirlies album a lot but that's probably just because it's a striking album title)

Not in any order:

That was the era of trip hop and turntablism - two trends that I intertwine in my mind though they are quite different. DJ Shadow's Endtroducing, Tricky. Labels like Mo Wax and Ninja Tune.

Post-rock was a big thing - Tortoise and all the Chicago acts in its orbit. Labels like Touch & Go, Thrill Jockey, Quarterstick, Drag City. Honestly Millions Now Living and Tortoise in general were a Big Deal to a lot of people I knew, sort of the way Animal Collective was regarded in the 00s. They felt like a significant break with what a lot of indie kids were into prior to that. But in retrospect it doesn't feel like it had a lasting impact, and I feel like people who didn't live through that era have a hard time believing that was the case with that band.

Hip Hop was huge - Snoop, Dre, 2pac, Fugees

I can't really speak to what was huge in the "alternative" mainstream - I sort of blocked it out in those years. Aside from the biggest britpop acts like Oasis, wasn't that the era of American bands like Matchbox 20 and Three Doors Down and all that stuff? Like you had big alternative explosion of the early 90s, followed by the Grunge pretenders like Seven Mary Three and Candlebox, then the bands that took the edge even off of those groups and just became a bland kind of alt-rock.

It was indeed the height of what Eric Weisbard termed "scrunge," but a few years before Matchbox 20 and 3 Doors Down.

the post rock/math rock stuff wasnt really covered a lot here in 96 except for Tortoise and later GYBE/Sigur Ros but it had a small amount of fans and of course then Mogwai introduced it to a lot of people and that mogwai/EITS strain took off a bit. Most coverage tended to be in The Wire as Melody Maker went all indie smash hits late 90s.

Late 90s or early 00s I started buying US music mags from Tower Records or Borders. My favourite was Skyscraper Magazine. Eventually started buying it from the US directly as I was hardly ever in Glasgow and had no idea when it would appear. But that mag was how I found out about a lot of the US bands that weren't covered by the UK indie press.

Are the Spin lists of the time representative or was that more mainstream alt?

http://www.rocklistmusic.co.uk/spinend.htm#96

the Spin lists from the 90s look to me like a good representation of indie/alternative with a little mainstream stuff thrown in

On FB I asked the question and was told Magnet was a better guide but rocklist only had this

http://www.rocklistmusic.co.uk/newsgroup99.htm

ROCK LIST FROM MAGNET - 1998
For lack of a better description, MAGNET is the American equivalent of WIRE.

ARTISTS OF THE YEAR:

1. Neutral Milk Hotel
2. Elliot Smith
3. Belle and Sebastian
4. Ani DiFranco
5. John Spencer Blues Explosion
6. Spoon
7. Massive Attack
8. Brian Jonestown Massacre
9. Air
10. Cat Power

20 ALBUMS THAT MATTERED IN 1998 (in alphabetical order, I assume)

• Archers of Loaf- White Trash Heroes
• Beck- Mutations
• Blonde Redhead - In An Expression of the Inexpressible
• Calexico - The Black Light
• Caustic Resin- The Medicine is All Gone
• Richard Davies - Telegraph
• Dirty Three - Ocean Songs
• Godspeed You Black Emperor! -f#a#
• Jack Drag - Dopebox
• Mercury Rev - Deserter’s Songs
• Roy Montgomery - And Now the Ran Sounds Like Life is Falling Down Through It
• Pernice Brothers - Overcome By Happiness
• Robert Pollard- Waved Out
• Quasi - Featuring "Birds"
• Sonic Youth - A Thousand Leaves
• Spinanes - Arches and Aisles
• Sunny Day Real Estate - How it Feels To Be Something On
• Tortoise - TNT
• Tricky - Angels With Dirty Faces
• Unkle - Psyence Fiction

Shit, how cool is that Swirlies record?

I guess it didn't get a release outside the US and also maybe the kind of thing that 'out of vogue' with much of the UK music press at the time so it went under the radar here.

Taking on MBV with an East coast indie rock sensibility works brilliantly. Not to say that's all it is, there's lots of invention going on.

For lack of a better description, MAGNET is the American equivalent of WIRE.

hmmm

voted mainliner

by that list it looked more like old melody maker

When I went to the US in 1999 I bought a copy of Magnet to read on the train and yeah it was more like Select than The Wire

I remember buying a Big Takeover in Tower Records or Borders in Glasgow only to be disappointed by the fact it was covering a lot of the British music I was trying to get away from reading about as I hated it. Bloody Idlewild especially.

I wanted American indie stuff not covered by the UK press.

CMJ New Music Monthly was the best source for reviews of indie-rock albums in 1996.

dunno that one.

did they do album of year lists? cant find anything on http://www.rocklistmusic.co.uk/

I don’t recall that they did, no.

pity, its a good way to see what artists they covered.

they did have a monthly CD though:
https://www.discogs.com/Various-CMJ-New-Music-Monthly-Volume-40-December-1996/release/1402554

but I don't know how representative that was of the mag, the CDs would occasionally end up in the £1 bin here but I never saw the magazine

I remember the monthly CD and CMJ, I was mostly reading Rolling Stone and Spin back then. But heavily into Matador records in '96.

Maybe I did see it in Tower Records but it was too expensive if it came with a CD

I rarely read magazines that covered mostly indie stuff back in the day like Magnet, and NME, but was really into the whole underground/diy scene. I get most of my music recommendations from forums and friends and sometimes The Wire nowadays.

did you read fanzines?

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

did anyone read fanzines in the 90s/

I read several zines and created one myself and had a blast doing that. Is that what you mean by fanzines? ;0

which ones did you read?
I used to read a manic street preachers fanzine but most of the fanzines I read were football ones.

btw any volunteers to do the 00s?

I think Brad would be a good choice but whoever wants to do it can do it as I dont fancy it as my tastes really dont align with ILM in that period I hate stuff like Avalanches, LCD Soundsystem, The Knife/Fever Ray and Mike doesn't want to do it either.

alright I'm relistening to the Cake album now. suddenly I'm starting to get all the criticism levied at the band

― frogbs, Wednesday, August 7, 2019 11:08 PM (six days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Haha, I still think I'm voting Cake. Their odd song structures and slacker sarcasm always reminded me of an updated Wall of Voodoo.

xp I would volunteer to work on the 00s, but I don't like those bands either, lol

I'd do a poptimist-free 00s.

i still intend to run a full ballot poll for the 00's. i'll do it when 1999 is done maybe

heh, i've been rinsing the mazzy star album after uncovering it this week (not via this thread) and it's just so dreamy. i love everything about it. nice to see a few votes... but i guess i still stand by avery island. never heard afghan whigs either so maybe they're next.

afghan whigs were brilliant

Best Album on OUR Favourite Albums of......1999 PART ONE

Proper working links

Best Album on OUR Favourite Albums of......1997 PART ONE

Best Album on OUR Favourite Albums of......1997 Part Two