Jamwise #38 - Best Albums of 1991, Pt. 2

Featuring: My Bloody Valentine, R.E.M., De La Soul, Pixies, Dinosaur Jr., Teenage Fanclub

Aug 22, 2024

So I’ll preface this by saying I mostly knew what I was getting into when writing a series about listening to a list of the 500 greatest albums of all time, as voted by Rolling Stone. That list was bound to be flawed - every list of “bests” must be. Not to mention the fact that RS itself is questionable when it comes to rating anything except mega pop stars these days, and those seem to get nothing but glowing reviews from what I can tell. I went into it thinking “screw it, might as well start somewhere”, and also figuring I’d learn about how different media outlets like RS rank music.

In any list like this, great albums get left off, and others get included for reasons we disagree with. My personal issue with RS’s list, for example, is the presence of 9 Dylan albums. I totally appreciate the impact he had on music, don’t get me wrong, and maybe each of these albums had a distinct legacy that doesn’t overlap whatsoever with the others - but on the other hand, after the first 5 albums on the list, don’t you think the point is made? Let’s include someone else, like maybe a genre other than singer-songwriter, alt-rock, or Britpop (the list is literally stuffed with these. My unofficial count is approximately 600 out of the 500 come from these genres. I won’t be verifying my numbers at this time).

On the other hand, the point of a list like this isn’t to create a new definition of the popular music canon - or at least it shouldn’t be. The point should be to share things we take joy in, and to create discussion that leads to even more learning and knowledge of great music. It’s the list after the list that holds the real value - all the ones that should have been included, and all of the discussion around them. So in that spirit, I’m going to do a followup post after my weekly greatest albums list post where I go through the great recommendations from the comments on my standard posts. (That’s a political way of saying I’m going to ~~shamelessly steal~~…. Uh, I mean, borrow album ideas from those wiser than myself).

So here are my favorite albums that were left off of my 1991 post from last week. I could probably do like 5 issues about 1991, but there are more years to explore. Thanks to Michael K. Fell, Kevin Alexander, JC, Dan Pal, and Gabbie for the recommendations!

Project BAE - Best Albums Ever - 1991 Pt. 2

Loveless - My Bloody Valentine

OK, this one actually was on the RS list, I just happened to miss it thanks to an oversight in my Excel sheet, and as many have pointed out it’s too major not to explore. So let’s just pretend this one was in last week’s issue, K?

This album has cemented the idea that I’ve been listening to the all-time greatest albums all wrong. I was going through best-album lists on shuffle, with no regard to time or genre. I actually first played this album months ago and had pretty ambivalent feelings towards it - but I’d listened to it alongside the randomly-selected mishmash of Lorde, Roxy Music, New Order, The Breeders, and Janis Joplin. No wonder I had nothing to latch onto - I was rudderless in a random sea of albums. The context of 1991 was entirely missing. Looking back, that seems funny when the entire reason I’m hooked on albums now is to avoid the senseless Spotify shuffle doom loop I’ve grown to hate so much.

I’ve found that listening to albums against the backdrop of the times and their peers to be far more enjoyable. I’ll admit there’s still a side of me that thinks music should be good even if you have no clue about the context. I made that case once when reviewing Kid A, an album I still struggle with - it’s considered great to a large extent because it was such a radical reinvention of Radiohead. But what if, I wondered, a no name band had released the exact same album? Would it be considered great? I had, and still have, my doubts. But I’m also realizing that line of thought is a bit flawed, and very shallow. Context is everything in the ephemeral world of the arts. How can you be subversive, for example, without knowing the context of what you’re subverting? How can, say, a war protest song mean anything if you were born decades after the war and never learned about it? How can Bob Dylan’s songwriting be appreciated without knowing how different and advanced it was compared to his contemporaries, especially when you’re young and you’ve heard a million better-sounding modern Dylan knockoffs over the years? Context matters.

This album didn’t hit me right the first time I heard it. It was lumped together in an issue covering the Kinks, the Beatles, Kanye West, and Green Day. Green Day also released their second album in 1991, to be fair, but there was still a fair bit of whiplash in that group. It was like drinking orange juice after brushing your teeth - the taste is just different based on what came before.

So while I still don’t love this album, I’ve learned two things. First, I can see the point a bit more clearly now since I’ve been so zoomed in on the early 90’s. The legacy left by this band, and this album, is massive. MBV’s Spotify bio claims they were the inspiration for the term Shoegaze because of how still they were during live shows - true to the genre’s name, this is introverted music, leaning on (and almost hiding behind) feeling-scapes of noise and atmosphere to express themselves instead of trying to find the right words. It’s telling that Spotify didn’t bother to activate the lyrics function for most of the songs - the lyrics feel like they’re not the point, like mumbled attempts at conversation of the stereotypical introvert, subverting swaggering in-your-face pop music. It feels like the early 90’s emergence of genres like shoegaze were the beginning of pop society’s celebration of the shy and introverted and all the ways we can express ourselves without being loud and obvious - something that’s almost universal today.

And second, I’ve learned that I seem to deal with my introversion differently. I don’t want to listen to music that reinforces and amplifies that “too-much-in-my-head'“ feeling, as MBV does for me. I want escapism, something that makes me feel the opposite of introverted and introspective. That’s just my preference - it’s the same if I’m unhappy; I don’t want to listen to sad songs. I want the opposite. So I can appreciate the strides made in this album, even though I’ll be leaving it out of my vinyl collection.

De La Soul Is Dead - De La Soul

This album has a smooth and silly and almost bored sound, as if De La Soul is trying to change up the sound from 3 Feet High And Rising but not trying to sound like they’re trying too hard. You almost get whiplash from all the different sounds, from a lazy punky vibe to roller-rink disco funk to raps bordering on comedy skits, over beats even the most rhythmically challenged among us (read: me) can groove to.

I’ll give credit where it’s due - Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater (a classic video game for my generation) hit the nail on the head when they chose “Oodles of O’s” for their soundtrack. Pro Skater games always have iconic soundtracks that play while you tear up virtual skate parks and do kickflips over city streets and stuff. That kind of punk / skateboarder feeling isn’t exactly what this album contains, but the two worlds definitely have some overlap. There’s a kind of “just go with it” feeling hidden in the sometimes silly, sometimes discontent lyrics of this album.

I loved this album even more than 3 Feet High and Rising, but even more importantly, I’ve discovered my next Jamwise project - dissecting the soundtracks of every Tony Hawk Pro Skater game. It’s gonna be a blast.

Jams

“A Roller Skating Jam Named “Saturday””
“Bitties In The BK Lounge”

Trompe le Monde - Pixies

It’s hard looking back at an album from before I actually gained consciousness and trying to evaluate its place in history. Many who appreciated it at the time consider this album underrated and ahead of its time - from my backward-looking perspective, I can say it does sound more modern than a 33-year-old album, which supports the ahead of its time narrative. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say that it doesn’t sound as dated as other alt rock from the period.

My conclusion is that this is the epitome of alt rock before it was cool - it’s both influential and underrated. This album must have been a bit overshadowed in the mainstream by Nirvana and REM’s releases at the time - how many alt rock albums would even fit on the charts in 1991? With Nirvana, REM, Pearl Jam, Chili peppers, guns n roses, Metallica occupying so much pop culture space, not to mention the pop behemoths?

It’s interesting to compare this to the other great rock/indie/grunge/metal and adjacent albums that dominated pop culture at the time. Trompe le Monde is a bit less focused than Nevermind, which to me is great partly because of its consistency and single-minded sound. Pixies’ scream-tracks like “Planet of Sound” and “The Sad Punk” are less hard-hitting than Nirvana’s, their alt-rock tracks like “Alec Eiffel” and “Palace of the Brine” are like REM-lite, and the mixture of the two styles, while super entertaining, could explain why this album’s sales didn’t match its value. BUT I also think my opinions above are influenced by the fact I’ve heard so much of the music this album inspired, and it doesn’t fit into a nice timeline in my mind. There’s a chance I’m under-rating the influence Pixies had, which would be a shame.

And the variety of the album is a feature, not a bug - I love it, but I don’t think pop charts audiences enjoy anything that’s not 100% to-the-point all the time. I think to make a huge splash in terms of sales, consumers want something a bit more linear. They want one-flavor albums, straightforward and consistent concepts - it’s probably a little harder to present a slightly more scatter-brained album like Trompe le Monde and find millions of people who can relate to its every aspect. I think the 1991 charts support that - Metallica and Nirvana and REM were each certainly capable of variety, but their 1991 smash hit albums were linear and consistent examples of their work, while I feel like Pixies mashed a lot of concepts into a single album here. Simple tasting wine sells more bottles than something more complex and varied - that’s just the bell curve effect of pop society. But to the discerning drinker, it’s a different story. I’m not the most discerning person in the world, but I love the variety of this album.

Jams

“Head On”
“U-Mass”

Green Mind - Dinosaur Jr.

Once, when I was like 8, I participated in an impromptu talent show on the playground. For my act I went in front of everybody (it felt like hundreds, but in reality it was probably like four third graders) and told them I could make the best weird faces in the world. I held my breath and stuck my tongue out and crossed my eyes and went “hngggghhh” until my face turned almost purple while my classmates laughed (or so I assume). Then I accidentally passed out and fell over on the grass and got made fun of for weeks. If I’d been able to speak while doing my “talent”, straining to turn my face purple, I think my voice would have sounded like J Mascis’ on this album.

OK, I’m just making that comparison for fun, don’t worry. Yes, Mascis’ vocals have a straining sound like he’s forcing them out through vocal chords the diameter of a cocktail straw. But the difference is he seems to be straining to express something deep inside, not fooling around on the playground like a moron. It gives the album a vulnerable and relatable sound, and it’s part of the unique character of what I think of as the punk-adjacent side of indie rock.

I also love that this album was largely performed by J Mascis himself. There’s no instrument that sounds like it’s not played by a specialist - many people praise his guitar work, but to be honest it’s the drums that really won me over on this album. The energy they create is massive and never lets up.

I missed out on lots of the formative music of the 90’s for the silly reason of not being a human being yet, but I feel like in this album I’ve discovered a common ancestor for many of the bands I did know once my brain was more fully developed. It feels like, as I trace through the music of the 90’s in more detail, many of the roots I follow will lead back to Dinosaur Jr.

Jams

“The Wagon”
“Muck”

Bandwagonesque - Teenage Fanclub

It’s funny looking at the contemporary ratings for this album - they’re pretty much 5/5 or 10/10 across the board, except for Rolling Stone who gave it 2/5 stars. No wonder it got left off their greatest albums list. Spin Magazine even voted it album of the year in 1991 ahead of Nevermind, which most Millennials would consider heresy looking back.

I’ll be honest, I can’t tell the difference between power pop and alt pop and pop rock and whatever else people have used to describe this album. I thin it depends on who’s writing about it, or maybe on how many copies the album has sold. RateYourMusic calls it both Power pop and indie rock, which are total contradictions to me. Whatever, y’all. I don’t think I even care at this point.

There’s something wistfully 70’s buried in the sound just beneath the surface. My favorite songs were on the power pop end of things - they were infectuous. I kept thinking “this song is OK”, then by the end of the song mashing the like button and then repeating the process for the next. I can hear a lot of yet-to-come bands in this album - it almost plays like a greatest hits of the 90’s album from a dream where you don’t know any of the words but you know the songs are all super well known. There’s a sound here, a tone there, that reminds you of something else but is gone before you can place it.

Jams

“The Concept”
“What You Do To Me”
“Star Sign”
“Is This Music”

Out of Time - REM

This album brings out R.E.M.’s country leanings, which I admit I didn’t fully appreciate before now. And to be clear, this can’t be considered country music by any stretch - I’m a full-blooded redneck from the deep south of the USA, not far from the city where R.E.M. formed, so I’m fully qualified to comment on that - but the tinge of the folky southern sound fits R.E.M.’s music extremely well. Pop fans and Rolling Stone writers probably think songs like “Texarkana” are country music; while it’s most certainly not, it’s still fantastic. There’s no shame in calling it southern-tinged alt rock, especially since it’s really good southern-tinged alt rock.

This is my favorite R.E.M. album. It’s a bit less frivolous than the R.E.M. I know the best, exploring several topics and tones and focusing largely on introspection. It’s also a perfect example of a band exploring new sounds while remaining themselves - even the extremely awkward funk-exploration “Radio Song” that opens the album couldn’t taint their distinct sound. In my experience it’s hard to overcome the tone set by the first song on an album, yet Out Of Time does just that. Drop the first song and this is a near-perfect album.

Jams