Welcome back to the Q Albums of the 90s thread. If you weren’t here for 1990-95, this is a thread where we get the chance to review Q’s choices for the top albums from each year between 1990 and 1998 as published in the December 1999 edition of Q.
Today, we’re taking a trip back to the distant past when the media were blaming Gareth Southgate for England not winning a football tournament. Let’s have a look at which 10 albums Q thought were the pick of 1996 (“The Year of “Britpop””):
Ash – 1977
Beck – Odelay
Sheryl Crow – Sheryl Crow
DJ Shadow – Endtroducing
Fugees (Refugee Camp) – The Score
George Michael – Older
Ocean Colour Scene – Moseley Shoals
Orbital – In Sides
2Pac – All Eyez On Me
Manic Street Preachers – Everything Must Go (Album of the Year)
What do you think of the list? Does it represent 1996 for you? What’s missing? And of course, how many have you got?
Links to the other threads in the series
1990: The Year of Hope
1991: The Year of Turbulence
1992: The Year was Pissed Off
1993: The Year was Still Grungey
1994: The Year of Transition
1995: The Year of Britpop
And the scan:
This is when the list gets a bit strange for me as although I am sure I was immersed in music that year, (often dancing), and enjoyed some of those artists, I don’t actually own anything from that list at all. (Much as I respect them, The Manics have passed me by.) Instead:
Stereolab–Emperor Tomato Ketchup (the last album of theirs that I really liked sadly, as I didn’t get on with the Dots and Loops period)
Tortoise–Millions Now Living Will Never Die (really just for “DJed” on side 1; post-rock was a thing then)
LTJ Bukem–Logical Progression vol. 1 (not really an original album, but this was definitely popular)
Photek–Hidden Camera
Squarepusher–Feed Me Weird Things (both post-Drum n bass stuff that I have lost touch with)
V/A–Monsters, Robots, and Bug Men (Virgin’s “post rock” compilation: i still rate this as a sort of time capsule )
David Toop/VA–Ocean of Sound (This compilation was not new music but it set me off in some rewarding directions)
The one I didn’t get it until later: Otomo Yoshihide and Ground Zero–Revolutionary Pekinese Opera (Ver.1.28) (Japanese noise classic)
0/10 for me too. I’m sure there must have been some great stuff that year but I was looking elsewhere. I’ll have a more thorough think when I’ve had my coffee.
Emperor Tomato Ketchup was the last ‘Lab I enjoyed, too.
I have an alternative ten:
Three magnificent Nu-Soul: Lewis Taylor, Maxwell – Urban Hang Suite and the very wonderful Me’Shell Ndegeocello – Peace Beyond Passion
Kick-Ass and Dirty Blues: RL Burnside – A Ass Pocket Of Whiskey & The John Spencer Explosion – Now I Got Worry
What a voice: Eva Cassidy – Live At Blues Alley
WTF: Tricky – Nearly God
Still got it: Prince – Chaos And Disorder
Stunning: Stina Nordenstam – Dynamite
Their best album: Suede – Coming Up
Very best of all: Soul Coughing – Irresistible Bliss
Ash, Beck and Manics for me.
I bought the Manics fairly late in 1995, having heard it via my Best Man. Great as it is, the grimness of The Holy Bible, and seeing them initially struggle live as a trio, had put me off a bit.
They struggled live as a trio? Maybe because of the loss they were going through, but effectively they were always a live trio as Richey couldn’t really play a note
Festival performances. I don’t think they wanted to be there, but couldn’t afford to pull out. So they got ratarsed before they went on and it was like watching a slow-motion trainwreck.
Thankfully things have moved on and nowadays they’d be able to cancel.
I thought they were bloody great at Glastonbury.
OK. Well at least two of them were pretty big drinkers at the time and the Richey Edwards disappearance can’t have helped that.
I saw them at their biggest ever headlining show (at the time) in 97 in Manchester and it was superb, later released as a VHS tape/DVD.
Beck and The Fugees for me. Odelay is my favourite Beck record – delivering on the beautifully chaotic promise of ‘Loser’ – a major soundtrack to my sojourn in the States. I particularly remember walking the sunny sidewalks of Palo Alto with this on my headphones. I felt eternal. The Fugees was OK.
Here are 10 more that I remember with fondness from that year:
Eels – Beautiful Freak
Their debut album – a start of a great career
St Etienne – Casino Classics
Wonderful mixes of really cool songs
Higher Octave Music: Evolution, 1986-1996
An obscure compilation I picked up when in the USA. I doubt anyone else has heard (of) it. A bunch of musos making generic instrumental music, somehow it a very pleasant listen
Luscious Jackson – Fever In Fever Out
Picked up at random, I really liked their fresh quirky sound
Dodgy – Free Peace Sweet
It looked like such a stereotypical Britpop record. One of Those Rivers is one of the best songs I have ever heard
Sleeper – The It Girl
Their best album for me. Such fun songs
Lamb – Lamb
Beautiful scratchy music – I try to get everything they release
Cowboy Junkies – Lay It Down
Everyone of their albums has at least one song I really get into – with this one it’s ‘A Common Disaster’
Strangelove – Love & Other Demons
Not one I listen to much, but I remember enjoying it when I got it, partly because it had a low profile. It felt like a discovery
Afro-Celt Soundsystem – Vol 1
Mouth Music wasn’t releasing anything at the time and the Afro-Celts really seemed to be making great fusion music with the same style
I have 2: Odelay and the Manics. Both just fine and still played, but much more likely to play :
The Mutton Birds – Envy of Angels
PJ Harvey & John Parrish – Dance Hall at Louse Point
Eelgrinders – Aquamarine A popular choice, I know, among the congnoscenti, but I really do love it. This little band of Devon-based instrumentalists float my boat higher in the water than a Dead Sea tsunami.
Finally, thanks to the advice of Mr F Stoke of this parish, I now recognise the magnificence of Sing to God by The Cardiacs.
Ocean Colour Scene? Seriously? How quickly we moved on.
Oh yes, Envy of Angels by The Mutton Birds. What a wonderful, polished little gem that is. Slightly oversharey moment alert…Straight To Your Head was the first song we happened to play on the morning after my now wife first stayed over. It’s a fabulous album, a bit of REM, a dash of Neil Finn, alongside a poetic backdrop, I still play it regularly. Great stuff.
Beck and that truly great Sheryl Crow album on that list for me.
Plus: Tidal by Fiona Apple, New Adventures… by REM, Author Unknown by Jason Falkner, vivadixe… by Sparklehorse.
I thought vivadixie… was released in 1995?
I think this was the point at which I went off on my own little frolic a bit.
A Design for Life is one of the best things anyone released in the whole decade (any decade, really), but the rest of the album left me a little cold. Something about Odelay has always massively turned me off, and even Endtroducing I found a tiny bit disappointing when compared to the stuff he’d released beforehand (I think I’d managed to lay hands on a bootleg of Camel Bobsled Race by this stage). It was just all a bit chin strokey and middle aged, or so it felt at the time.
Instead, this was the year of compilations for me. Logical Progression, Metalheadz Platinum Breakz, Flexistentialism and Cold Krush Cuts. Listened to about a billion times, particularly Logical Progression. Something about that record just grabbed me and has never truly let go; it has such a unique mood and texture.
It was the year I went to my first proper gig with mates. The Fugees, supported by Shola Ama and – playing his first UK shows, bottom of the bill – Jay Z. The Fugees were massive across the year, although I think the previous album was better. Lauryn Hill was such a ridiculous talent, and acted as a gateway into Hip Hop for a lot of the refuseniks.
It was another great year for Hip Hop. De La Soul came back with Stakes Is High, Tupac beefed with the entire world, died and released one of his better albums, the Wu domination continued with Iron Man, Tribe released a classic, Nas neatly followed up Illmatic, Busta Rhymes went to number one with the brilliant Woo Ha, and the Roots and Mobb Deep put out their best records. Off in the margins, Dr Octagon released Dr. Octagonecologyst.
Probably the single greatest musical moment of the year was being in a friend’s bedroom as he unwrapped and stuck on the Sepultura album. Roots Bloody Roots was just so so so hard. Dave Grohl later described it as “a metal track with a carnival passing through it”. We’d never heard anything like it before, instant classic.
Tricky came back with the disappointing PMT, which at least contained two great tracks in Tricky Kid and Makes Me Wanna Die. Ash put out their first proper album and released a string of brilliant singles (including the often overlooked Angel Interceptor, Oh Yeah and – most of all – the genius that is Kung Fu; “I haven’t been the same since my teenage lobotomy”, so good).
On the singles front, Unbreak My Heart ate the year, Blackstreet release No Diggity, the Spice Girls emerged (didn’t care for Wannabe, but was impressed by Say You’ll Be There – sounds like it has a Dr Dre song playing in it somewhere), Ginuwine released the immortal Pony, Sublime’s What I Got ruled the Summer, and EBTG’s Missing was everywhere. Most of all though, Tupac got out of prison and came back with California Love. Utterly ridiculous single – so good. That really was his moment.
Euro 96 was the defining event of the summer, and brought with it a slew of football novelty singles. Three Lions, obviously, but also England’s Irie and the little remembered Eat My Goal by Collapsed Lung. It was a great Summer – long and hot and dramatic.
Overall, it was a bit of a hammock year. My recollection is that both 95 and 97 were stronger, but 96 gave breathing space to go explore. Oh, and I really loved that REM album. E Bow The Letter – what a lead off single.
Here are the albums I liked and like.
Logical Progression Volume 1
Ninja Cuts – Flexistentialism
Cold Krush Cuts
Metalheadz Platinum Breakz
Stakes Is High – De La Soul
The Score – Fugees
All Eyez On Me – Tupac
Beats, Rhymes & Life – A Tribe Called Quest
Endtroducing – DJ Shadow
New Adventures in Hi-Fi – REM
Ironman – Ghostface Killah
Evil Empire – Rage Against The Machine
The Hidden Camera – Photek
Older – George Michael
Sublime – Sublime
Aenima – Tool
Murder Ballads – Nick Cave
Second Toughest In The Infants – Underworld
Millions Now Living Will Never Die – Tortoise
Coming Up – Suede
Illadelph Halflife – The Roots
1977 – Ash
Pre-Millennium Tension – Tricky
Fuzzy Logic – Super Furry Animals
ATLiens – Outkast
Squarepusher – Feed Me Weird Things
Destroy Berlin – Christoph De Babalon
It Was Written – Nas
Trailer Park – Beth Orton
Let No One Live Rent Free In Your Head – Nicolette
Wrath of the Math – Jeru The Damaja
Roots – Sepultura
Being There – Wilco
Urban Hang Suite – Maxwell
Hell On Earth – Mobb Deep
One In A Million – Aaliyah
Ah, yes, Flexistentialism – I probably played that more than any one album all year. Led me into all sorts of great rabbit holes; particularly The Herbaliser, then sideways to Amon Tobin (to Bricolage, the following year), and all points beyond. I have all but the Tupac of the albums in that 10, but it’s that compo that really sums things up for me at the time.
I was still working in warehouses and such that year. How I learned to hate Unbreak My Heart, which must be one of the clumsiest lyrical straplines ever. A lyric containing the word ‘clumsiest’ would be less clumsy.
But yet it’s utterly memorable as a lyric line, so though I agree awful and clumsy has the smell of hit all over it.
Two more I forgot.
Korn – Life Is Peachy
Second album was the one where they really caught fire. Obviously laid the groundwork for many Nu Metal horrors in the year ahead, but their way with a riff just cannot be denied and they were utterly pulverising live.
96 was the first year I caught site of their fans, an entirely new style tribe – they looked like feral Goths and were some of the scariest teenagers I ever encountered; you were never sure who they wanted to harm first, you or themselves. They’d presumably go on to become Slipknot fans, and that first album of theirs was another great 90s moment.
Stakes Is High – De La Soul
It was on my list above, but I should have written something about the title track.
Stakes Is High was the first J Dilla beat I ever heard. For me, Dilla has a strong argument for being the greatest Hip Hop producer of all time, and in 96 he was most certainly pointing the way to the future.
I had never heard anything like that beat. I listened to it hundreds of times trying to figure out what gave it that peculiar magic, unaware that it was minting its own little time signature that would prove so influential.
I’m sat here this morning listening to the Kaytranada & Amine album that’s just come out. It’s absolutely brilliant, but as I listen I can tell you with some confidence that without Dilla this record quite simply would not sound the way it does. He opened up production and expanded its palette and he still sets the tone nearly two decades after his death.
For me, it’s possible to look at 1995-96 as a real hinge point for Hip Hop. 1995 is the absolute apex of the old style of production, with RZA at the top of that insane run when he was just utterly untouchable. 1996 is when we got our first signs that the future was going to sound different, and that the potential for how this music could be made was limitless. Think we also got some of our first Neptunes beats that year too.
Ash, Beck, Sheryl Crow, Ocean Colour Scene and the Manics for me.
Ocean Colur Scene is the best of that bunch
I agree – it’s a fine album. I recall buying their first from a bargain bin and wondering why they were in cutoutsland while the world and his dog were out in tribal hordes barking drunkenly about an average bunch of yob chancers like Oarsis.
I have one from Q’s 1996 list.
I’m gonna take a look at the albums I bought in that year.
I used to buy Q but stopped when Mojo hit the newsstands.
Another one for Sepultura with their great Roots album. Not listened to it for some time but will have it on today.
Other albums that I loved at the time (although not necessarily now) are
Shed Seven – A Maximum High
Metallica – Load
Placebo – Placebo
I remember one of the TV stations having a Shed Seven live at the Scala gig on TV that we had recorded & I was obsessed with it. On Standby is a great tune
This really is the year at which this list becomes (sorry to all who love Sheryl Crow) a bit middle-aged in spirit. It’s not a year’s list that has aged well.
In addition to the LTJ Bukem Logical Progression mix the year brought two other of the greatest mix albums ever made:
Jeff Mills – Live at the Liquid Rooms. Unbelievably fast and furious techno.
Northern Exposure Vol 1 – Sasha and Digweed. The high water mark of ‘prog house’ – spacious, melodic and one of the best ‘listen at home’ mixes. Jeff Mills is really a record of a club night, the NE series was as much designed for the headphones as the bass bins.
Endtroducing… was an album that was everywhere this year, and we got our first taste of two sounds that would go on to set the tone for club music’s next phases: the Super Discount album introduced French ‘filter house’ before next year’s Daft Punk earthquake, and Seven Ways by Paul Van Dyck showed how trance was taking over the continent. Add in an early release by Boards of Canada… Everything But the Girl had a remarkable second life, bolstering the burgeoning coffee table dance album scene with Walking Wounded.
So
Beck
Orbital
Underworld
Plus the above would make a much more vital top ten..
Nowadays I quite like Sheryl Crow, but in 1995 I can remember singing “Every song sounds the f***ing same” along with one of her radio hits. She really did sound very retro at a time, when the horizon of soinc possibilities (TMFTL) was broadening.
That Sasha and Digweed was fab.
The only issue I have with Sheryl Crow is that, having grown up in the Scottish Highlands, I’ve met quite a few people who like a good beer buzz early in the morning, and they don’t look like Sheryl Crow.
Not particularly a fan of Sheryl Crow but have seen her live 5 times!
Pretty feeble list – I think I’d more or less parted company with Q by this time. 1996 was the year of the Afghan Whigs’ Black Love, Screaming Trees’ Dust and Labradford’s self-titled third to name three that beat any of these entries hands-down. Someone’s already mentioned Tortoise’s masterful Millions Now Living Will Never Die on this thread.
This is a weird one. I’d have said that this was the peak of my music obsessiveness. But I see I only bought 2 from the list (Beck, Manics) but I couldn’t say even whether I still own them and have no desire to listen now. Overall I’m amazed at how little the 90s have stayed with me – I was 17-27 ffs!
So this was probably when I started delving in the past rather than listening to the present – basically when I started reading Mojo… Think this was the year they did the first of their (many) best albums of all time issues with a Sgt Pepper pastiche cover and that started me down an obsessive but very rewarding rabbit hole for a good few years.
The few that have stayed with me:
Julian Cope – Interpreter. The last time the Drude had any slight connection with the mainstream. Inevitably bonkers but still very enjoyable.
Beautiful South – Blue is the Colour. Though I bought it at the time I didn’t listen much. Recently dug it out and it’s very good.
Wilco – Being There. I was obsessed by this album. I long ago lost touch with Wilco so still think it’s their best album.
Fountains of Wayne – bought much later, but ace.
I only have 4 from this years list – Beck, George Michael, OCS and Manics
Other albums of note (to me anyway) from 1996…
Blue Nile / Peace At Last
– whilst not quite as good as their first two albums, it does contain “Daily Life” which has to be one of the saddest songs ever.
Maria McKee / Life Is Sweet
– still probably my favourite album of hers
Suede / Coming Up
– not as good as Dog Man Star, but much better than I expected (plus I saw them live on this tour which cemented my affinity to the album)
Eels / Beautiful Freak
– as mentioned above, the start of many great albums
I concur. TBN and MM are still big in our house.
That should have been “Family Life” for the Blue Nile entry. – not sure if autocorrect took a weird turn or it was my stupidity……
3 only for me. Beck, Manics and George (bought later), that’s a distinct fall off of my average of 7 per year.
1996 I moved back to the UK (for a while), bought my first car which amazingly had a CD player (a changer in the boot!), remember driving around listening over and over to Everything Must Go, superb album. My other album of the year would be Wilco’s double of Being There but I didn’t hear it until after Summerteeth came out
Correction, 4, I also had Ocean Colour Scene. Not played since I think
If @deramdaze was on this he’d correctly identify many of these as charity shop faves – Manics, OCS, Michael, Sheryl Crow, Fugees appearing in an Oxfam near you five years later…
I’ve no idea how many records were released in the 1990s – aside from ‘too many’ – but £100 could effortlessly buy you 200 original CDs where I live, and I live in the middle of nowhere. In London I suspect that number would be 300.
Which makes the pursuit of, say, a non-original Oasis LP for £25-30, the third format of choice at the time of release behind CD and cassette, a really dumb and unnecessarily expensive option to take.
In the year itself the only one of those I had was the Sheryl Crow which was played regularly in Chez BB and is still full of bangers. I remember Odelay as being the critics’ darling of the year, but only bought it some years later, and to be honest, was underwhelmed.
Richard Thompson, Jackson Browne and Elvis Costello released below par records. Eels and Belle and Sebastian had their debuts, but I was blissfully unaware of them at the time and only came to them much later. The only other two on Wikipedia’s obviously very incomplete list of releases that year that I had and enjoyed at the time are Peace at Last by Blue Nile and I Feel Alright by Steve Earle. Oh, and Spice by the Spice Girls which my young daughters insisted on playing at every opportunity.
1996 seemed to be the year of “disappointing follow-ups” for many artists. However:
My top 5 in reverse order:
5. the curtain hits the cast -low
4. new adventures – REM
3. If youre feeling sinister – belle and sebastien
2. emperor tomato ketchup – stereolab
1. sing to god – cardiacs
NME Top 20
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
Good year for the Welsh! The SFA album is brilliant
Will no one come to bat for that Kula Shaker album?
Haven’t played it for a while, but found it pretty excellent at the time
I will – loved it then, and still reach for it when I’m looking for some unapologetically celebratory wig-out music.
Yes so will I. It was a solid bit of 60s/70s influenced fun and I still like it.
That NME list helps as 1996 is a year without a real identity for me – off the top of my head I kept coming up with stuff from 97, while the Super Furry Animals and EBTG albums I was sure were from ‘97.
From the Q list I had Orbital (my album of the year and their best), the Manics, Beck and DJ Shadow; from the NME list Aphex Twin, The Boo Radleys, Suede, Baby Bird and SFA. All pretty good.
I had thought it was an in between year, notable mainly for singles – Firestarter, Return Of The Mac, stuff Bingo’s mentioned already and great tracks from okay albums like the 16 minute opener on Second Toughest In The Infants, Walking Wounded and Good Cop, Bad Cop by EBTG, Before and Se a vida é by Pet Shop Boys and, with the benefit of hindsight, that Shadow album is totally dominated by its prime cuts..
Se A Vida E! Amazing single, right up there with my favourite Pet Shop Boys tracks. Great video too.
Naturally, I own nothing from the Q list.
Orbital? 2Pac? Manic Street Preachers? No … I’m afraid that stuff like that just isn’t my cup of tea.
My album of the year seemed to emerge out of nowhere: Lal Waterson & Oliver Knight’s “Once in a Blue Moon”. Stark, moving, brilliantly sung, and politically on point. It has aged not one second. What a terrible shame it was that Lal Waterson left us 2 years later, aged only 55.
Runner-up was Lal’s sister Norma Waterson, with her eponymous album. I seem to recall that it did well in the Mercury award that year.
I also enjoyed the following:
Cheikh Lô – Ne la Thiass (still his best record)
R.E.M. – New Adventures in Hi-fi (another good ‘un!)
Gillian Welch – Revival (Very fine. She started as she meant to go on)
Blue Nile – Peace at Last (not as good as the first two albums, but still decent)
John Zorn – Bar Kokhba (do you fancy a concept double album of strange, intense jazz about a Jewish military leader from 2000 years ago? Step this way…)
Jerry Garcia & David Grisman – Shady Grove (I love everything that Garcia & Grisman recorded as a duo)
Shawn Colvin – A Few Small Repairs
Billy Bragg – William Bloke
Kate & Anna McGarrigle – Matepedia
I also love the Fountains of Wayne debut, but I didn’t ‘discover’ that until 2022!
Oh good shout for Gillian Welch. Another one I didn’t pick up on at the time but came to love later on
I think I was skint at this time. I didn’t buy so many records. I bought:
– Odelay and I like New Pollution best but wasn’t especially taken with it otherwise.
– Emperor Tomato Ketchup was pretty good but a bit too Swingle 2 in it’s vocal stylings. I like Cybele’s Reverie a lot which was a single, A Stereolab album I really like is Refried Ectoplasm Switch On Volume 2 from 1995, which is a compilation but includes the mighty French Disko. There’s a Velvets third feel to some of it a la I’m Beginning To See The Light, repetition, drone. I never heard them better than here.
Later on came:
– the Manics album which is all about the big single for me. The rest is good but not more than so.
– Endtroducing. It’s an impressive, great sounding record. Ultimately I don’t remember it so much.
– REM New Adventures in Hifi is a continuation of form for them. E-Bow The Letter especially.
I did buy singles at that time.
– Novocaine For The Soul by Eels is brilliant. Nothing else by them grabbed me the same way.
– Milk by Garbage. They went trip hop and triumphed.
– Trash by Suede. I’ve come round to thinking it’s their best song. It’s just irresistible. A storming single.
DJ Shadow and Beck for me. A great year for me, just for those two albums alone. I’m struggling to find anything else I really loved that year though.
Only got Ash and the manics from the Q list. Looking back it was a good year…
Wilco – Being There
Ian McNabb – Merseybeast – played it to death
The Blue Nile – Peace at Last
The Trash Can Sinatras – A Happy Pocket
Suede – Coming Up
Strangelove – Love and Other Demons
Ok a few on my list not yet mentioned
To See The Lights – Gene
Mic City Sons – Heatmiser
Car Button Cloth – Lemonheads
Believe What I Say – James Hunter
The Sound of….- McAlmont & Butler
Fave 3 were Bluetones, Costello & Fiona Apple
Beck, Orbital and DJ Shadow from the list, plus at the time Boo Radleys, Arab Strap, dEUS, Lilys, Super Furries, Urusei Yatsura, Portishead and the Kula Shaker LP. Oh, and the Slipstream album ‘side effects.’ Can’t say I listen to any of these albums much now (occasionally Endtroducing or Odelay).
I had the Tricky album, listened to it twice and never again. I sold it this year for a tidy sum.
Oh, I forgot about the second Animals That Swim album ‘I was the king, I really was the king.’ That still gets a bit of airtime at home.
Only own the Beck album out of those. My list is slim for -96, didn’t have much money at the time so I spent more time reading about new music than actually buying it.
1. Wilco – Being There
2. Beck – Odelay
3. Afro Celt Sound System – Volume 1: Sound Magic
4. Prince – Emancipation
5. Brainpool – Stay Free (three years in a row from the Swedes!)
6. De La Soul – Stakes Is High
7. Marc Almond – Fantastic Star
8. Lambchop – How I Quit Smoking
9. Patti Smith – Gone Again
Oh, and THE compilation of the year was of course Nu Yorica!
What do you think of Fantastic Star, Locust? I didn’t buy it at the time as I didn’t have too much money either, but I picked it up cheap recently with Stranger Things. I’m not sure what to make of it so far. Stranger Things is pretty good.
I wouldn’t rate it very high, but definitely worth having if only for the highlights of Come In Sweet Assassin, Brilliant Creatures, Adored and Explored and The Idol (Parts 1 & 2 All Gods Fall), all favourites of mine.
But my list is a testament to what a realtively weak year 1996 was musically, IMO. I wouldn’t call any of the albums in it beyond the top three classics by any means – all of those artists have made so much better both earlier and later in their careers.
Huh. A levels and first year of uni, is it? ‘Ardest game in the world, that.
The only ones on that list which have really stood up over time for me are 1977, and about half of The Score. Everything Must Go of course is fine but for me it’s too coloured by not being The Holy Bible, and just being a bit Fred Perry polo shirt.
Endtroducing and Odelay were of course huge, but they sound incredibly of their time now, in a way that truly great records maybe shouldn’t. Same with Beautiful Freak by Eels – listened to it constantly then, barely at all since. I dunno.
For me that year was all about:
Call the Doctor – Sleater-Kinney
Among My Swan – Mazzy Star
Fever In Fever Out – Luscious Jackson
Ironman – Ghostface Killah
Better Living Through Chemistry – Fatboy Slim
New Adventures in Hi-Fi – R.E.M.
Just the two from this list – Beck and Manic Street Preachers.
Like many a second album – even if it wasn’t really his actual second album – Beck’s Odelay didn’t have that spark of something completely unique that Mellow Gold did. It’s not bad but while I’ve listened to Mellow Gold a few times in the last year, I can’t say that, with the exception of a couple of songs, I’ve listed to Odelay in the last few years.
Everything Must Go is a wonderful album. A Design For Life is, to these ears, probably one of the weakest tracks, but the rest is a glorious mix of styles that come together to make a remarkable whole. Great writing, sounds fantastic and is utterly unforgettable. I can kind of forgive for not breaking up after the release of Generation Terrorists.
Elsewhere, Ironman by Ghostface Killah continued the trend of great Wu Tang albums – spoiled, we were – New Adventures in Hi-Fi was a return to form after the disaster of Monster and First Band On The Moon was a good follow up to Life.
I bought Beautiful Freak and Placebo but I’m not sure that I’ve ever gone back to much on either beyond Novocaine For The Soul and Nancy Boy. 1996 was a year of change in my life. I left Northern Ireland for a second time and worked abroad a lot so was either listening to what I brought with me or local radio. When I left the first time, it was to Manchester in Summer 1989 so you can imagine that that move came with its very own soundtrack. To London and then abroad in 1996 wasn’t quite the same. I spent a good part of the year in Montreal so I remember CHOM FM more than any album that I bought out there. And the song that CHOM played more than anything else was Ready To Go by Republica. It seemed to be playing everywhere and all the time that year in Canada.
Tigermilk is probably the album that I’ve gone back to more than most from 1996, particularly what would have been the first side on an LP. Twee, yes, but with a lot of heart and empathy and with songs that celebrate the quiet outsider.
Suede’s Trash is one of the disappointments of the year…after Dog Man Star, I remember hearing it and thinking – and still thinking to this day – what is this garbage? They chose Ed Buller over Bernard Butler for this? The rest of the album is better – it could hardly be worse – but it’s no Dog Man Star. It began years of disappointment as a Suede fan that, only after their reunion, did they begin to fix.
But one of the biggest changes – and not mentioned here – was the Playstation really hitting a stride outside Japan and, with it, games like Wipeout 2097. Playing that via a decent stereo with Dust Up Beats, the instrumental version of Firestarter and, best of all, We Have Explosive by FSOL, Granted, it’s now all pretend bands on EA Sports games but, back in 1996, this seemed like a major change was coming.
Now you’re talking @viva-avalanche! I got a PS1 about this time – it came with a cd player and visualiser. Some of the early classics – in addition to Wipeout 2097 which was rockhard, as one slight mistake and you’d bump the edge of the track which canned all your speed – were the port of Doom/DoomII/Final Doom and Final Fantasy VII which was probably the game that caused me to fall in love with gaming at the advanced age of 31. The PS5 is sitting next door as I type, but you know what I’ll never have that gaming time back again. Last game finished: Last Of Us 2 which is a complete weepie.
I bought 8 of those – no 2Pac or Orbital.
These days only the Manics get a listen.
I was going to add this excellent compilation to Dai’s 1996 NME thread, but he seems to have stopped at 1990.
NME singles of the week 1996:
https://www.discogs.com/master/816692-Various-NME-Singles-Of-The-Week-1996
There wasn’t one for 1997.
You didn’t get the memo? Apparently lists are banned now.
No love for Rosanne Cash’s 10-Song Demo? Huh.
Also Divine Comedy – Casanova.
Handsome Family – Milk and Scissors.
Ken Mo – Just Like You
Lyle Lovett – The Road to Ensenada.
Eels – Beautiful Freak.
Wilco – Being There.
Easy listening broke out in 1996 – “Inflight Entertainment” and “This Is Easy” got plenty of playing in these parts.
Just realised a massively important and influential album from ’96 that hasn’t been mentioned yet. The Trainspotting soundtrack. It was the first time I’d heard Born Slippy, Lust For Life and Temptation, so was quite an important album for me. Danny Boyle has had a few good soundtracks over the years actually.