Jamwise #42 - Best Albums of 1993

Plus some thoughts on why this newsletter exists. Featuring: Liz Phair, PJ Harvey, Nirvana, Snoop Dogg, Smashing Pumpkins, A Tribe Called Quest

I realized recently that the email header I send to subscribers doesn’t show up on the permanent version of my posts. That’s significant, since I’ve been putting some thought into the quick version of why this newsletter exists - but I’ve only written it in my email header.

So I thought it would be good for posterity (translation: me in six months when I forget) to put that summary in the main post. Many people don’t get the email header if they subscribe through Substack, so here it is (apologies if you’re reading this for the second time in your inbox):

Welcome to Jamwise, my newsletter about how to be a better music listener. I explore the idea of listening critically in order to understand our tastes, reflect on our relationship with music, and most importantly, to find more music we love. Because critical listening shouldn’t be a formal skill reserved for critics and music theory students - it’s something we can all do.

Jamwise is 100% free. The best way you can support is by subscribing and sharing with someone else, or better yet, leaving a comment. Tell me what you think, what you’re listening to, or just say hi.

Thanks for being here!

So there you have it - Jamwise is about learning to listen critically. But I want to take a slightly different approach compared to the traditional way some people think of critical listening. I’m not a critic, dissecting music to see how it works and killing the joy of it in the process. I’m also not listening critically in order to meet some false standard of “coolness” by proving how savvy and smart I am about music, or to somehow prove that I have superior taste (not a thing). I’m listening critically for a very simple reason: to understand what music I like, why I like it, and to use that knowledge to find more music I like.

To be honest, “critical” listening might be too intense of a definition for what I’m trying to do. I’m engaging in something more like “reflective” listening. I often think more about why I feel the way I do than the objective quality of the music itself, although it’s difficult to separate the two sometimes. I want to learn about myself and the world as much as I learn about music - that’s my version of critical listening. It’s inward and outward at the same time. I’m working on it, but that’s why I chose a newsletter as the outlet for this project - it’s meant to evolve over time, and it will.

So that’s Jamwise in a nutshell: I’m exploring, together with all of you, my relationship with music through reflective listening. By doing so, I hope to encourage people to listen more critically and reflectively - not to “improve” their music taste, but to understand it and use it for their own joy.

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Best Albums of 1993, part 1

I heavily considered staying in 1992 for another week, which is becoming be the universal Millennial dream at this point. It was an awesome year with lots of great music, but at some point I want to actually get back to the present day, so we have to move on to 1993. I appreciate all the additional 1992 recs - I’ve been listening through them and realizing I should have spent that year jamming to all the new music instead of learning to eat solid foods. Live and learn.

1993 was also a momentous year - I’m pretty sure I said my first word, which was “ball” - and the music scene was almost as exciting.

Any favorites you see missing from the list? I’d love to hear about them!

Exile In Guyville - Liz Phair

Exile in Guyville was Liz Phair’s celebrated debut album. The story behind it is pretty fascinating - it was recorded in Chicago with pretty much only Phair and her producer playing every instrument, giving it a raw and unpolished sound. It’s also famously a loosely-structured response to The Rolling Stones album Exile on Main St., although the response isn’t apparent in the music for the most part. Instead, it’s intended as a conceptual counter to the Stones’ album’s constant celebration of male debauchery, mostly related to taking advantage of and bragging about their exploits with women. Phair’s response to that is twofold; some songs explore the way the Stones’ style of philandering affects the women involved (spoiler - it sucks - insert surprised Pikachu face). And second, if the guys down in Guyville can act that way, why can’t women debauch just as hard as men and brag about it too? Liz Phair does so memorably. I do think the comparisons to Exile On Main St. are kind of overblown and obscuring, however. That’s just one of those stories the media gets hold of and can’t contain themselves, and it blows completely out of proportion. To me, this album stands better on its own.

If you’d heard Liz Phair singing these songs in a coffee bar in the early 90’s, with her constantly almost off-key style of singing, you might not think much of it. And if you did, you either had a copy of the lyrics or you’d heard the songs before - the simple instrumentation and production aren’t attention-grabbers, and the subject matter requires some interpretation to get the full effect. Only then do you realize the way she intonates is a perfect match for what she’s saying, combining to create the “over your bullshit” vibe.

Some music requires deeper immersion to “get it” - I’ve never had much success with this in the past, but I feel like I’m improving as I hear more and more music with depth that has to be explored to understand. Exile in Guyville is a case where the immersion and deeper listening (and a copy of the lyrics) paid off for me. The context of the times, and Phair’s life at the time, is important to understanding why this album is interesting and relatable to many people - unless you’re just a master of poetic analysis and you can get all of that meaning straight from the lyrics, which I personally can’t. So I’m happy to say that I get the artistic value, I definitely get the cultural value, and Liz Phair is just plain cool. 

Rid of me - PJ Harvey

This is PJ Harvey’s version of angst 2.0, now tinged with something like professionalism, or polish, or just more self-assurance, not that any were lacking on her debut. It’s a clear development of her music that remains dark and ironic throughout.

It’s fascinating how the threads of grunge, a genre in which PJ Harvey is often lumped, seemed to almost dead end in 1993 (the year changes depending who you ask), but PJ Harvey’s thread continued so strongly and so uniquely. Grunge was one of those weird musical cul-de-sacs where the normal cycle of “rebels invent a new sound” to “toned down version of the new sound for the masses” didn’t really happen on a big scale. But not for PJ Harvey. Looking back, she really stood apart from grunge, alt rock, and riot grrrl. A motivated listener could find elements of each in her sound, but not on every album. PJ liked to change her sound, her look, even her persona on each album, the only rule being “no repeats.” If there’s ever been a philosophy I can get behind, that’s it. And it’s probably a big reason she’s had such a long career, with her latest album in 2023 receiving all kinds of critical praise and a Grammy nomination. Sure, Pearl Jam and some of their peers continued down the grunge path for years, but their later efforts (as much as I love them) seem more like nostalgia-preservers than anything groundbreaking. But somehow PJ Harvey kept her music fresh and evolving with the times, like her own little thread of where the early 90’s alt sound could have evolved.

Jams

• “Missed”

• “Run ‘Til It Bleeds”

In Utero - Nirvana

Nirvana’s last album before Kurt Cobain’s death was an attempt to get away from what was, in the band’s view, the too-polished sound used on Nevermind. I think they succeeded - the recording is fuzzier, less transparent, as if you can feel the room they’re recording in (actually the same studio where PJ Harvey’s Rid of Me was recorded), whereas on Nevermind you can’t even imagine them being in a room at all. Nevermind was digital sounding, while In Utero sounds like it’s coated with wood and vinyl and dust. The songs themselves are very much siblings to those of Nevermind, however, and the band was clearly still at the top of their game as trailblazers of the Seattle sound.

The only critique I have is a minor one - this album has less all-time singles than Nevermind, although as I wrote about Nirvana before, the amount of absolutely perfect tunes on this album would more than satisfy any other band. Talk about looking for clouds on a sunny day, Dave. I guess Nirvana’s music can do that to you.

Jams

• “Polly”

• “Heart Shaped Box”

• “Dumb”

Midnight Marauders - A Tribe Called Quest

This album feels like a total 180 from the hip-hop trends in the early 90’s. It’s still got that signature 90’s sound from the perspective of 2024, but it’s unforced and tight, without relying on any super-extreme elements like the other big names of the late 80’s and early 90’s seemed to do. It seems like the big, bad east coast / west coast rappers were stuck in an escalating upward spiral, more and more extreme sounds and boasts and violence, while A Tribe Called Quest rose above that (or stayed a little bit underground, perhaps) and just focused their energy on making an album. They were an essential part of the East coast sound, of course, with the New York jazzy influence that many others employed and developed together with ATCQ, but this album feels more focused on itself than others despite the taunting and bragging that was a genre hallmark.

Jams

• “Steve Biko (Stir It Up)”

• “Award Tour”

• “Oh My God”

• “Keep It Rollin”

Doggystyle - Snoop Dogg

This fits somewhere between the murdery vibes of Ice Cube and the playful sound of groups like the Beastie Boys. There’s not much socially aware about this album - the social aspects of the subject matter are mostly limited to vices of all kinds, only social because they’re shared with friends. On the Ice Cube to Beasties spectrum (sound-wise) this is like a 4/10 - yeah I know that’s meaningless, but I can measure stuff however I want. Maybe we should say it’s 4 parts gangsta rap and 6 parts chill-out-and-party rap. Like I get the feeling Snoop wouldn’t take any shit, but that’s secondary to his desire to pump himself and his friends full of cannabis.

This is fun stuff because the beats are a blast - but the less you dive into the lyrics, the more enjoyable it is. Play it as party background noise, but maybe not on a roadtrip with the kids.

Siamese Dream - Smashing Pumpkins

Fun fact - the first “real” concert I ever attended was a Smashing Pumpkins show. I sat in the upper deck of a pretty small coliseum between a bunch of 30-somethings who were burning interesting things while my high school girlfriend pouted because she didn’t like the music and they wouldn’t sell us alcohol at the concession stand. The concert wasn’t a life-changer, that’s for sure, but it gave me a starting point to compare with when I went to my first actual awesome concert. Don’t get me wrong, the Pumpkins were great, but it taught me how much more fun it is to share awesome music with someone else vs. just enjoying it on your own (or worse, having someone being an active downer). Nothing wrong with disliking a band, but still - few musical experiences are better than a concert with a friend who’s just as big of a fan of the band as you are.

The king of fuzzy overdriven guitar, Billy Corgan, writes a decent song despite doing his best to convince you there’s something wrong with your headphones from the overblown tone on his electric guitar. I picture Billy in his basement collecting millions of effects pedals and stringing them together to see which one will make a sound most like a car spinning its wheels on a sandy road, slinging rocks into the undercarriage while the engine overheats and rain sizzles on the hood. Hashtag imagery.

The tone makes me think fondly of the $2 Walmart headphones I used to use as a kid - those things transformed even the most crystal clear and perfect recording into a treble-heavy eardrum-scarring mess, and I loved them to death. When I finally saved up the money for an iPod and the headphones that came with it, I felt like I’d grown ears for the first time compared to my old earbuds.

Don’t let that put you off, though - this is solid alt-rock, just with a weirdo hissing guitar tone that creates a big soundscape-y effect over a group of well-written songs.

Jams

• “Cherub Rock”

• “Today”

• “Mayonaise”