| TOP 60 ALBUMS 1993-2003 | |
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30 Queens Of The Stone Age |
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29 Spoon A Series Of Sneaks (Elektra), 1998 They used to attach “rock” on to the end of “indie,” and we had a kind of music that had little to do with sulky singer/songwriters, cuddly pop groups or retro psychedelia. Spoon’s second album is boilerplate indie rock, desperate and hungry and maybe a little bit dangerous. Britt Daniel sounds like he’s been stomping around the Austin hills all night, making mental lists of perceived offenses and chain-smoking his voice into middle age. The only man who can lock instruments with him is Jim Eno, whose Wire-like, minimal drumming bobs and weaves with Daniel’s sharp, stabbing guitars. This isn’t an album; it’s a knife fight. (Matthew Fritch) |
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28 Steve Earle Transcendental Blues (E-Squared/Artemis), 2000 While 1997’s El Corazón is generally acknowledged as Steve Earle’s post-prison pinnacle, the twin peaks represented on Transcendental Blues extended his audience well beyond alt-country’s strictures. On the one hand, barring a lone death-penalty rumination, it’s his least political—and therefore, to many, his most palatable—album, featuring some of the jangliest, ear-candyest pop and psych. No scrimping on those all-important “chick songs,” either. Earle’s patented twang-bar belly-ups are present, too, but this time they’re glittery jewels in a lovers’ nighttime sky, not dusty husks on a rowdy jukejoint’s floor. (Fred Mills) |
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27 Beck Mutations (DGC), 1998 While most people found the post-modern funkadelics of Odelay and the kitsch R&B of Midnite Vultures more to their liking, Mutations is a primarily acoustic outing with supple, sand-shifting rhythms and subtle melodies. Hastily recorded under the influence of Tropicalia, Mutations bends the ersatz psychedelia of Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Tom Zé and Os Mutantes to Beck’s unironic will. David Byrne and Paul Simon may have borrowed that Brazilian movement’s herky-jerky rhythms and sonic blasts for their own records, but Beck adapted its intimate sensitivity and feline emotionalism for a tender, breathy album with teeth and claws. (A.D. Amorosi) |
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26 Lucinda Williams Car Wheels On A Gravel Road (Mercury), 1998 Given Car Wheels’ Grammy nab and critical hosannas, where could this gifted singer/songwriter go after such a peak? Nowhere or down, fast, if believing the hype. But the yarns spun on this album, only Lucinda Williams’ fifth in 20 years, show she’d already been there/done that while barreling along backwoods Southern roads, stealing kisses from drunken angels and divining life’s meanings from three chords and a twang. You can hear it all in that prematurely aged, impossibly sensual voice: Somewhere near the corner of Down Avenue and Nowhere Boulevard, Williams found the truth. After that, where else to go but up? (Fred Mills) |
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25 DJ Shadow Endtroducing... (Mo’wax/ffrr), 1996 Nowadays, an album forged wholly from scratches and samples is standard operating procedure for baggies and backpackies. Given the evolutionary velocity of electronica/hip hop, it’s easy to forget how groundbreaking Josh Davis’ debut LP is. Representing, in his own words, “a lifetime of vinyl culture,” it arc-welds obscure jazz, soundtrack and sound-effects albums into a miasmic monolith around which dance culture hopped, howled and beat ancestral bones against the dusty ground. Endtroducing proved that DJs could be reckoned as musical artists in their own right. Thus spake Shadow, your favorite DJ savior. (Fred Mills) |
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24 White Stripes White Blood Cells (Sympathy For The Record Industry), 2001 The late ‘90s were a dismal time for music, as the mainstream bellied up to a heaping sonic-shit buffet of mook rock and manufactured pre-teen pop. When everyone finally had their fill and the vomiting commenced, the White Stripes were there waiting in their silly peppermint outfits, the vintage guitar and drum kit ready. White Blood Cells was the right record at the right time, reminding us simple rock ‘n’ roll can be a powerful thing in capable hands. The ubiquitous “Fell In Love With A Girl,” with its revved-up CBGB chords and Jack White’s fuck-all yelp, simultaneously moves your ass, celebrates rock’s past and assures its future. (Matt Ryan) |
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23 Flaming Lips The Soft Bulletin (Warner Bros.), 1999 By the end of the ‘90s, the Flaming Lips were but a blurry footnote—that band you sort of remembered hearing while kicking around the hackysack at Lollapalooza. But when no one was looking, out of their boombox came songs about bloodied heads and bravery, sadness and spider bites; they somehow convinced the world to stand up and say “Yeah!” instead of folding laundry and going to bed. The Soft Bulletin is a strange and soul-baring journey that can open your eyes as much as your heart, making sense of the human spirit like little else can. No wonder Superman is crying in the corner. (Trevor Kelley) |
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22 Magnetic Fields 69 Love Songs (Merge), 1999 It doesn’t matter that among these 69 serenades there are more than a few throwaways—it’s the concept that counts. Hopscotching musical genres from jazz to punk to techno pop, Stephin Merritt writes the book of love in more languages than the Holy Bible. Whether sweet as chocolate or bitter as vinegar, the songs draw their power from his nimble wordplay. All of Merritt’s faults—his penchant for the arcane, his misanthropy, his tendency to overreach—become virtues on this three-CD set, and by the time he rhymes “acoustic guitar” with “Charo or Gwar,” it’s clear 69 Love Songs is his apex. (J. Edward Keyes) |
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21 Moby Play (V2), 1999 Ever since Sinatra hawked Wheaties (rumor had it they made his cock hard), popular music and advertising have had a love/hate affair. Fans claimed their favorite stars were bastardized by brand association. Bands bitched but still took the money. Moby changed all that with the mega-selling Play by merging his own orchestrations with gospel hoots and field hollers. Though unintentional, Moby made smooth soul and avant-dance music that’s safe to shop by. Nearly every Play tune was licensed to various advertisers before the album even hit the shelves, but there's only one brand name whose stock went stratospheric: Moby. (A.D. Amorosi) |