The Top 25 Albums of 1991

[This post and all the music in it is dedicated to Michael Hotta, who led me to so many of these albums and whose birthday it is as I click the "publish" button]

For a playlist of my favorite songs of 1991 check out my Spotify and follow greenpalmrad.

Of all the years in music, this may be the most important to me, and a good chunk of Generation X.  Other important years – such as 1968, 1977, 2005 – deserve gobs of respect as well, but 1991 is autobiographically special.  I discovered the music of ’68 and ’77 after the fact (although not too long after the fact for ’77; on the other hand 2005 seems like yesterday to me).  In 1991, I was on the pulse, in the middle of it, taking everything in as a university undergraduate.  Friendship, heartbreak, fear, love, loathing, and hope.  In these wonderful, chaotic, and impressionable days, rock music (and hip hop, and experimental rock, and other stuff) was rapidly mutating, giving rise to or solidifying entire genres in a single calendar year.  Yes, the causal chain to these sounds is complicated, and yes, these musical statements did not arrive out of nowhere without precursors.  But 1991 is when so many things HIT.  The year also yielded albums that that exposed me to genres and niches I knew little about, but have since become dear to my heart. 

1991 was a year of shoegaze, grunge, gangsta rap, and early britpop.  It saw debut, break out, or seminal albums by sooooo many of my all-time favorite bands including Swervedriver, My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Mercury Rev, Teenage Fanclub, Blur, and Ned’s Atomic Dustbin.  What a list.

First, some honorable mentions:  1991 saw tremendous albums from Talk Talk, Ice T, Slowdive, The Mekons, Chapterhouse, Massive Attack, The Jazz Butcher, Rheostatics, The Bevis Frond, Tom Petty, Screaming Trees, The Magnetic Fields, Velvet Crush, and Lush. 

And here we go, my Top 25 favorite albums from 1991, the cornerstones of the soundtrack of my life.  The year you could dance to rock music in every corner club.  

25.  Julian Cope – Peggy Suicide 

I should be clear up front that Julian Cope is far from a great singer.  He’s not even a good singer, although I don’t mind his singing.  I’m not even sure if he can even be considered “talented”, conventionally speaking.  But, like Syd Barret, early Flaming Lips,or Robyn Hitchcock, he is an absolutely beautiful freak, someone who can make interesting and often amazing records because he is relentlessly creative, artistic, and out of his head.  He is into Druidism, wizardry, acid, and radical eco-politics.  When he’s not laying down vocals stark naked, he might be found crawling around the studio under a giant tortoise shell.  Half the time he is inspired by The Velvet Underground, Suicide, The Stooges, and the MC5; the other half is Brian Eno, Japan, and brit-pop.  He is pretty much uncategorizable and I don’t think he knows what he’s doing much of the time.  As a result all of his records are uneven, and potentially aggravating at points.  But on Peggy Suicide, an 18 song album, he finds a way to keep me interested and sometimes rapt, with a great song blooming up regularly to make up for the weird filler and peculiar digressions. Lyrically it’s a call to arms to rescue Mother Earth and to repudiate Thatcherism, police states, and organized religion.  Apparently.  Most of the time, I don’t know what the hell he’s talking about.  I do know that his damaged mindset led to the creation of this piece of work that simply must make this list, if only to recognize the eight or so songs that affected me so weirdly and deeply back in the day.  Choice tracks:  “Beautiful Love” was the radio-friendly single, but delve into this record with “Promised Land”, “Las Vegas Basement”, or “If You Loved Me At All”.

24.  Dinosaur Jr. – Green Mind

Green Mind was a fork in the road for Dinosaur Jr.  It was their first album on a major label, first album after the less than amicable departure of Lou Barlow (who focused on his own outfit, Sebadoh), and, for all intents and purposes, a solo record.  Drummer, Murph, was barely around, contributing on only three tracks and otherwise leaving it all up to the obsessive compulsive predelictions of band founder and de facto leader, J. Mascis.  Compared to its distorted, in-the-red predecessors, Green Mind is almost bucolic at times.  Okay, well, that’s taking it too far, but we do in fact have some acoustic guitar, some general jangle, and an overall attention to dynamics that do not necessarily involve his screeching Fender Jazzmaster.  His penchant for Sonic Youth-style histrionics still appear, but it sure is nice to have some extra space to hear the band differently.  While perhaps not the best album in Dinosaur Jr.’s catalogue, this one is up there.  Listening to lead track “The Wagon” is like listening to a torch song for indie rock, signifying the emergence of 20 or so bands that would rotate through my 5-disc CD player in the 90s and beyond.  Choice track: “The Wagon”.

23.  Sarah McLachlan – Solace

Canadian folk pop royalty, Sarah McLachlan, debuted with 1988’s Touch, but it was Solace that put her on the map and minds of the pop culture coffeehouse.  This was Sarah’s sweet spot, where she was new and fresh, exuding emotional authenticity and a voice of an angel.  I was a sucker for it.  One could maybe predict the eventual drift to AOR folk (although, kudos to Sarah for covering XTC’s “Dear God” in 1995 – that was a brave move).  But Solace had something else going on, an independent spirit unfettered by the trappings of her eventual fame.  This album puts me right back into my dilapidated car, driving to Ontario cottage country in the summer sunshine, worried about a girl, and getting lost trying to find my childhood cottage that I had not seen in 20 years.  It pulls at my heart, this one.  Beautifully produced, emotionally literate, orchestral folk.  A Canadian classic.  Choice track: “Drawn To The Rhythm”.

22. King Apparatus – King Apparatus

Does anyone remember these guys?  My time in university dorms and dwellings led me to a life-changing love of ska, rocksteady, and reggae.  King Apparatus, a Toronto via London (Ontario) collective, arrived on the university campus concert circuit with a bang of high energy ska, prefiguring the ska-punk revival that was to soon to hit the alternative (soon-to-be mainstream) air waves (e.g., Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Reel Big Fish, No Doubt, Rancid, Sublime).  The album (with single “Made for TV”) was a regional, almost national hit, with heavy rotation on MuchMusic and college radio.  King Apparatus was short-lived however, disbanding in soon after in 1993 with four albums under their belt.  A shame, because this is a tremendous album, stuffed to the cracks with catchy dance-floor pogos, with a staunch anti-fascist punk as fuck attitude.  But it’s the title track (and namesake) “King Apparatus” that carries the day for me, a more rocksteady number providing some respite from the double time beats of the rest of the album, replete with rich anthemic horns and a simple message “to put away the coffee and go pick up a beer”.  It’s got to be rub-a-dub music if you’re gonna dance with me!  Choice track:  “King Apparatus”.

21.  Ned’s Atomic Dustbin – God Fodder

How this band got relatively lost in the cacophony of the early 90’s is beyond me, because they appeared to have all the ingredients of alt-music hit makers.  They fit in snugly with the sounds of early Blur, The Charlatans, Stone Roses, and The Mighty Lemon Drops.  They were also distinctive, however, influenced by punk but also freely using a fuzzily reverbed guitar sound that was sparkly and slightly psychedelic, a sort of proto-shoegaze similar to The House of Love. Unusually, they employed two bass players, one taking care of the low end and the other up high as a second lead guitar (with serious chops).  This created a wholly unique sound that somehow felt hardcore, even though you were clearly listening to super-catchy melodic alt-pop tunes. Songs like “Happy”, “Kill Your Television”, and “Green Cell Grey” are irresistible and stand up to this day as classics.  If there is any criticism, it is their penchant for recycling melodies and rhythms a bit too much across the album.  That aside, God Fodder is a pretty remarkable debut and their follow up Are You Normal?  (1992) was almost as good.  The Stone Roses perhaps come the closest, but no one sounded like Ned’s Atomic Dustbin in 1991 and no band really has sounded like them since.  Choice track:  “Happy”.

20. Ice Cube– Death Certificate

1991 was a time when old school, gangsta rap was pushing itself onto the radio waves and it was awesome.  I got into it based on various crossovers, from the embarassing (Aerosmith teaming up with Run-DMC; Barenaked Ladies’ covering Public Enemy’s “Fight The Power”, which is amazing) to the fortuitous (Ice Cube touring with Lollapalooza).  Coming out the template laid down by the mighty N.W.A., Ice Cube’s hip-hop hammered the listener.  But beyond his power-keg delivery, it’s the samples that impress me.  Like the work of hip-hop pioneer Dr. Dre, Death Certificate incorporates amazing soul and funk riffs and samples to add (much needed) musicality to the back beats.  The content is hair-raising and politically controversial; much of it is also a perfectly reasonable response to the culture of racism, violence, and poverty experienced by young black people in 1990’s AmeriKKKa (still is).  Some songs are unlistenable because they are so horrifyingly offensive (case in point is “Givin Up The Nappy Dug Out”, which turns my stomach).  Ice Cube’s moral out is that he is a street-wise storyteller that’s representing the bad shit and bad asses of urban realism.  It’s a thin tightrope to be sure, but this bombshell of an album ultimately can’t be denied. Choice track: “The Wrong Nigga To Fuck Wit”

19. Billy Bragg – Don’t Try This At Home

I have been a die-hard Billy Bragg fan since a dorm mate lent me a tape of the Back to Basics compilation, which brings together his first three releases, Life’s A Riot With Spy Vs. Spy, Brewing Up With Billy Bragg, and Between The Wars.  I distinctly remember being shocked that “A New England” was not a brilliant original from Kirsty MacColl, but a stripped down Bragg original.  This “man and his guitar” approach, a staple of 60’s folk, was so different to me because I had never heard it done with a scratchy electric guitar.  Such a simple approach, but so unique at the time.  His socialist, unionist lyrics spoke to me in these heady days of undergrad university, a setting in what I was becoming more politically aware on an almost daily basis.  And he could also write a good love song.  Bragg moved beyond the bare bones production to a fulsome sounding band set up with greater production values during Talking with the Taxman About Poetry and Workers Playtime (brilliant albums that figure on my annual top lists for their respective years).  But 1991’s Don’t Try This At Home was almost lavish in its production, and with a greater variety of song types, demonstrating Bragg’s willingness to experiment with structure and sound.  The effect is that is that Bragg moves into literate pop territory, combining energetic anthems (e.g., “Accident Waiting To Happen”), danceable northern soul (“Northern Sea Bubble”), and contemplative country-folk (“Mother of the Bride”, “You Woke Up My Neighbourhood”).  “Cindy of a Thousand Lives” shows his new range, sounding like long-lost Smiths song.  The album is also helped along by some star-power guests, including Johnny Marr (The Smiths), Peter Buck and Michael Stipe (R.E.M.), and (fittingly, for me) Kirsty MacColl.  I’ll have to give it some thought as to whether or not this is Bragg’s apex album – it very well might be.  Choice track: “Accident Waiting To Happen”.

18. Public Enemy – Apocalypse 91…The Enemy Strikes Black

In 1991, Ice Cube (see #20) was second only to the mighty Chuck D, one half of Public Enemy.  Flavor Flav, Chuck’s goofy party-time counterpart, seems at first to be superfluous, but he’s necessary, bouncing calls and repeats back over his partner’s deadly serious raps.  But Chuck D is the man, leagues ahead of everyone else in terms of style, power, and force, and by far my favorite rapper.  By 1991, Public Enemy is already 6 years old – true originators/innovators of early 90’s hip hop – and Apocalypse 91 shows them going in a bit of a new direction, apparently out of necessity.  Things are little leaner, the regular organized chaos of samples is toned down a bit, and live instruments are more central.  Turns out the band had a pile of material stolen and had to start from scratch, rushing to get this out to the public.  My take is that they didn’t seem to lose anything, as long as they have the Bomb Squad running the beats and Chuck D’s front and centre presence.  Politically raw and necessary, this album (again) eviscerates white America for perpetuating the corrupt, broken, intrinsically racist system of oppression that victimizes Black communities.  There is fiery anger here that is simply easier to get behind than Ice Cube or Ice-T because it is not weighed down by the constant posturing of gun violence/vengeance and horrible misogyny; nah, it’s a revolutionary call to action, to collectivism, to knowledge as power.  Public Enemy are nothing less than American heroes.  Choice track: “Move!”

17. Crash Test Dummies – The Ghosts That Haunt Me

While it took me an unnecessarily long time to warm up to country (I was stunted and biased by “bad” country, i.e., pop country, and the assumption of a tightly wound conservativism), I was always amenable to folk music, including all the classic singer songwriters of the 60’s and 70’s (Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Donovan, Gordon Lightfoot, etc.).  But what I have always found most rewarding is multi-instrumentalist folk, especially with an injection of Celtic rhythms and sounds; for example, The Pogues, Spirit of the West, and early Poi Dog Pondering (the latter of whom is horribly unrecognized – see album #2 of 1988).  In addition to the core elements of acoustic guitar, bass, and drums, I sure do love me some banjo, mandolin, accordion, violin, flute, and penny whistle.  And so we have it with this album, The Ghosts That Haunt Me.  Winnipeg’s Crash Test Dummies surprised everyone with the unlikely mega-hit “Superman Song”.  I almost love it, but the lyrical theme is pretty silly (a euology for Superman and an unwarranted criticism of Tarzan for his illiteracy – why would Superman need such a straw man from another fictional universe to posthumously prop him up?)   One would think that this (dumbish) whimsy would destroy what is clearly a beautifuly constructed song, but it’s more likely that that’s exactly what appealed to the masses.  Did Superman Song bring me to this album?  I don’t recall, but probably.  Regardless, the rest of this albums is superb – every song is a rich and satisfying celtic-folk gem, with gorgeous harmonies (assuming you can accept the bass tones of lead Dummy Brad Roberts) and skilled, traditional instrumentation.  It’s down-homey, heart-on-sleeve lyrics (minus the aforementioned Superman eulogy) auto-trigger the nostalgia of long-lost friends and lovers.  The band received even greater acclaim for their sophmore effort God Shuffled His Feet, with another perplexing international hit single (“Mmm Mmm Mmm”) and then sort of lost the plot with some truly embarassing releases (try to listen to Give Yourself A Hand without cringing into a ball).  Forget it.  This is their apex.  Choice track: “Winter Song”.

16. The Tragically Hip – Road Apples

Gord Downie, Canada’s homegrown son and hero, left us almost three years ago, leaving behind a legacy of amazing music, with Road Apples among the best.  It’s been said too many times: The Hip were never big in the States but a national treasure for us Canadians.  Literally millions of us all perk up to the distinctive opening picked chords of “Little Bones”, reciting in unision “$2.50 for a high ball, and a buck and half for a beer!”.  Road Apples is super solid hard rock peppered with plaintive folk throughout it’s epic 50 minutes, and is one of those records that qualifies as a national soundtrack.  Gord is ornery and energetic, leaning into the songs like a man possessed.  And he is also mournful, stirring us to raise our lighters and sway to “Long Time Running”.  “Fiddler’s Green”, a song that was usually too painful for Gord to play live – about the death of his 5-year old nephew – reappeared on their final tour, as Gord knew he would soon fall to cancer.  An entire nation succumbed to goosebumps and tears while they played it live in Kingston, Ontario, televised coast to coast on CBC.  I can barely listen to it now.  While the Hip would up their game even more on successive albums, Road Apples is the moment they turned a corner into Canada’s humble Hall of Fame. Choice track:  “Little Bones” (and “Fiddler’s Green”, if you feel like a cry).

15. Teenage Fanclub – Bandwagonesque

Before Teenage Fanclub became known for their sparkly, Bydsian indie-folk-pop, they were early signees to Creation Records and regularly made quite a racket.  The Fanclub were not swirling shoegazers like My Bloody Valentine, Ride, and Slowdive, but they loved their fuzz pedals and Fender Jazzmasters.  Vocally accomplished even in these early years, Norman Blake and Gerard Love sweetly harmonize over distorted guitar chords and squalls, sounding equal parts Crazy Horse, Big Star, and The Byrds.  That they eventually moved to a cleaned up indie-pop sound (which, I must emphasize, is amazing) makes Bandwagonesque that much more of a nostalgic treasure.  This album was on my tape deck constantly (home taping was a necessity for this broke 22 year old – thanks Mike Hotta) and will forever send me back to the early 90s.  “The Concept”, “What You Do To Me”, “Alcoholiday”, and especially “Star Sign” are part of my DNA.  Perpetually underrated (relatively speaking) Teenage Fanclub were unsung fathers of grunge, and forebears of the 90’s indie rock movement, even as they shifted sideways to buff up their folk-pop sheen.  Bandwagonesque is not quite a lost classic – it is a well-known record – but damn, it needs far more love and historical kudos than it currently gets.  Choice track: “Star Sign”

14. Enya – Shepherd Moons

I’ve voraciously defended my love of Enya in response to the New Age detractors before – see #5 of my Top 20 albums of 1988 – and shan’t do that again here.  To the point, Shepherd Moons, her third album, is yet another sublime, neo-classical, ethereal triumph that equals the heights of Watermark, her 1988 breakthrough.  In fact, were 1991 not such an incredible and explosive year for new music, the album would likely land in the Top 5 of this list.   Enya stays the course, relying on heavily reverbed midi synths and, on more stripped down pieces, simple piano.  Her vocals, as always, are layered into an elven choir, as if walking amongst the trees of Lothlorien (incidentally, the name of track 9).  You can tell she is emotionally tied to the romance of fantasy fiction and wonder, drawing liberally from Celtic classical/folk rhythms and touchstones.  This is her watermark, so to speak, a genre almost entirely created by her – a magical meeting of the synthetic and the ancient, enchanted dramas con legato con amore.  Do not dismiss Enya, lest ye be cursed and thrown to the Gorgons.  Choice track: Afer Ventus.

13. The Lowest of the Low – Shakespeare My Butt

Writing this in order, it’s a tough jump from Enya to The Lowest of the Low.  Like phasing from an expansive meadow of wild flowers to the backseat of a Toronto street car.  But I need both, you know.  It will never make much sense to me how it is that Barenaked Ladies rose to international stardom while the Lowest of the Low, ostensibly on the same trajectory, never really made it out of Canada, let alone Ontario.  Don’t get me wrong, they are a cherished band with a rabid fanbase, but it is a relatively small and wistful one.  The comparison to the Ladies is apt:  Both coming out of Toronto in the late 80’s, quickly rising to local popularity in the Ontario bar circuit, comprised of seriously talented singers/players, composing uber-catchy pop/rock songs, and having a wry, jokey lyrical approach that walks the edge between “serious band” and “comedy act”.  There are differences of course.  The Low were more electric, had a sharper edge, and were a little bit darker and ironic in the humour.  Could it be that the wide-eyed, pudgy smiles of Barenaked Ladies, and their unobjectionable, boy-next-door humour gave them a leg up in the race to the CanCon top?  Either way, Shakespeare My Butt is a stone cold Canadian classic that stands up a fair bit better than Gordon and pretty much anything else the Queen Street scene was putting out at that time.  Every damn song is a catchy brawl, with amazing guitar chops, pin point harmonies, and rollicking rhythms.  Lyrically, it is a treasure of exemplary story-telling, with quippy and coquettish biographies of the denizens of Toronto’s bars, alleys, and bedrooms.  In a year in which vinyl presses trickled to almost nothing, this debut record could be nicely housed on a CD, boasting 65 minutes of music across 17 tracks (it would finally be given the vinyl treatment, a two-disc set in 2010.  To this day, it has not be issued outside of Canada).  While every song is great, several songs are quintessential early 90’s Toronto standards – “Salesmen, Cheats, and Liars”, “Rosy and Grey”, and “Eternal Fatalist” are a trio of songs that left an indelible mark on this man’s 22 year-old brain.  Cheers, boys, you deserved fame, fortune, and the inevitable explosive alcohol-fueled break up that lesser bands enjoyed. Choice track: “Rosy and Grey”.

12. Blur – Leisure

Another astounding debut, this time from Blur, a band that would become celebrated and emblematic of Brit-pop, with the dubious exception of uber-wankers Oasis.  I have a lot of Blur albums, but find them generally spotty.  But Leisure seems a perfect storm, excellent from top to bottom, and an innovative entry into the pantheons of early 90’s rock.  To me this is ground zero for Britpop, with several toes dipped in the Madchester sounds of Happy Mondays, Stone Roses, and The Charlatans (especially, “She’s So High”, “Bang”, and first hit “There’s No Other Way”).  There are occasional shoegaze elements as well – a song like “Slow Down” could pass as a Swervedriver song, were it not for the upfront hyper-British vocals of Damon Albarn.  I should add that I am not a fan (for the most part) of the 2012 remaster.  To my ears, the track separation and clarification is subtractive; the album was attractive to me because it had so many interesting sounds deep in the mix, not buried but nuanced.  Regardless, this record stands up as a classic and represented Blur at their best, unfettered by the pressures to out-do their contemporaries with populist radio hits, like “Girls and Boys” and “Song 2”.  The later stuff, including the hits, were always greatish, but Leisure takes the British crown.  Choice track: “Slow Down”.

11. George Winston – Summer

This pick illustrates the high probability that I am missing out on a lot of great music within my less travelled musical genres – in this case modern classical/jazz, subgenre solo piano.  One day in the early 90’s I was helping my Dad connect his brand new CD deck to his stereo.  The deck was a gift and provided with it was this George Winston album, the only CD in the house.  I chucked it on to demonstrate the mysteries of the CD player to my bewildered Father and was immediately taken by what I heard – beautiful, delicate, melodious piano.  So tenderly and expertly done and so evocative of the album title and the song names (“Fragrant Fields”, “The Garden”, “Hummingbird”).  I immediately teefed a tape and recorded what I could fit on a side.  I’ve since acquired a bunch of George Winston and a number of records from his label mates on Windham Hill Records.  But nothing compares to Summer.  If you’re getting a little tired of the noise, noise, noise, if you want to get contemplative, reflective, and calm, this album may the balm you need.  Choice track: “Living in the Country”, the song I walked down the aisle to.  But it’s really worth hearing the whole album all the way through.

10.  The Wedding Present - Seamonsters

The production on the Wedding Present’s classic Seamonsters is amazing.  The production on the Wedding Present’s classic Seamonsters is extremely shitty.  I really don’t know where I sit on this continuum and I seem to bounce back and forth based on my listening needs.  David Gedge and company rolled into Steve Albini’s studio and he subsequently extracted some of the best off the floor distorted guitar dynamics that have ever been put to tape, not to mention drums that sound like they’re being played by an angry yeti.  Simultaneously he buried what could have been one of the most compelling and powerful vocal performances by a person who cannot really sing.  Gedge sounds tortured and haunted and excruciatingly miserable, even though he’s just as likely to disavow such feelings (see interwebs).  His limited range is stretched to maximum and the result is an emotional gut-punch.  It would be nice, Mr. Albini, if I could actually hear the heart-broken words he staples to his sleeve.  Even the 2001 remaster fails in this regard.  I love this album – it’s the best in the WP catalog in my opinion – but it frustrates me to no end.  I’ve read the lyrics, and they are emotionally harrowing, but the attention required to place them puts me out of the songs.  With a different approach to mixing and levelling, this record would be flirting with the Top 3 and nudging up against Nevermind (and believe me, I do not criticize Albini lightly).  An amazing achievement and a missed opportunity all at once.  Choice track: “Heather”.

9.  Pixies – Trompe le Monde

Who would you name as the quintessential bands that were “ahead of their time”?  The Beatles of course, The Velvet Underground unquestionably, The Clash (unequivocably), Miles Davis, My Bloody Valentine, and then scores of artists not many people have heard before because, well, they were ahead of their time.  But I would also make a case for Pixies, a band considered contemporary to the alternative grunge scene of the early 90s; it easier to make the case that Pixies were influenced by Husker Du and Sonic Youth, and in turn informed the ground zero of grunge, Nirvana. While Pixies’ initial run was short (1987 to 1991, an outlier on the otherwise calmer 4AD label) their legacy sprawls throughout alternative rock and punk, influencing later bands like The Strokes, Modest Mouse, PJ Harvey, and Arcade Fire.  Smashing Pumpkins probably don’t go in the direction they did without them.  Radiohead’s first two albums would be decidedly different.  Focusing in, Trompe Le Monde was the last Pixie album of their first hectic run and it hits like an aggressive, misanthropic wildfire.  Deep at the core is Buddy Holly, but endlessly perverted by the skronks and screams of Joey Santiago’s guitar and the dystopic sci-fi caterwauling of Black Francis.  That type of description is probably what keeps people away from Pixies, but it’s not all madness – it is that perfected approach of soft to loud, melodious to discordant, gentle to corrosive.  Would grunge have happened without Pixies?  That depends…do you think grunge happens without Nirvana?  Yes, it’s an infinite regress of bands, but it’s fun to consider.  Now go listen to “U-Mass”.  It’s educational. 

8.  Mercury Rev – Yerself Is Steam

Mercury Rev became a kind of thing, an almost cross-over success, with the release of 1998’s Deserter Songs, an orchestral masterpiece (some would say) of fragile, anthemic Americana.  It’s an album that can make one easily forget the band's earlier roots, because 1993’s Boces and 1991’s Yerself Is Steam are batshit crazy.  After recording In A Priest Driven Ambulance as part of the equally bonkers Flaming Lips, Jonathan Donahue joined forces with David Baker, Dave Fridmann (who would become a producer extraordinaire), Sean Mackowiak (aka Grasshopper), and Suzanne Thorpe.  The resulting debut, Yerself Is Steam (go ahead, say that slowly), would not land in my Top 20 albums all-time, but may figure into my Top 5 as the most important or influential to me.  I had never heard anything like it at the time – it was probably when I first started using the word “avant” in any sort of meaningful sense.  Whether it’s pop, rock, prog or otherwise, it is clearly avant-something.  Yerself Is Steam completely weird at every turn but fully engaging and fascinating.  It’s not solely experimental – there is plenty of melody to pull you in, but the songs are enveloped in some sort of lysergic paste.  I can’t imagine hallucinogens did not play a part in its production.  It is simultaneously expansive and claustrophobic, inspirational yet unnerving.  Let me put it this way:  overly indulgent, musical experimentation by people in the clouds usually puts me the hell off because I require a semi-studied attention to melody and some sort of sensible structure.  Mercury Rev, in these early days, puts me right on the precipice without letting me fall off, grabbing me by the collar, forcing my attention, and ultimately, putting me in a grand headspace like no other.  Cavernous vocals, thick psychedelic fuzz, wandering flutes, and a cacophony of other sounds are expertly engineered into one of the most challenging and rewarding albums of its era.  Like bottled madness.  Choice tracks: “Chasing A Bee”, “Frittering” (#232 and #264, respectively on the Top 500 1965-2009).

7.  Pearl Jam – Ten

I remember it distinctly, sitting on my couch with my bedraggled university roommates, none of us doing what we should probably be doing, lazily watching music videos, back when one could simply turn on the TV and there would be music videos playing.  My attention was caught by a song I’d never heard before, “Alive” by Pearl Jam, a band unknown to me.  My internal monologue was roughly as follows:  “Who are these dudes?  They are rocking the shit out of shit but they are…not metal?  No one is licking guitar strings, no one is gesticulating in spandex, there is no sophomoric devil imagery.  And these aren’t punks either – things are half-speed with Hendrixian guitar riffs, and the song just passed the 4:00 minute mark.  Yet they crowd surf.  Wait…is that…is that REAL emotion and vulnerability in the lyrics.  In the singer’s eyes? Wait, this is about someone’s lost relationship with their biological parents?  Any suggestion of the blues is absent. They’re sort of hippies, but have some punk in them, and some full on 70’s rock, as well…”.  It went on, these thoughts in my head, as I apprehended the beginning of grunge.  Many people identify “Smells Like Teen Spirit” as their first grunge epiphany, but for me it was “Alive”, the first single from Ten.  I was legitimately confused, because how could this even BE an niche…how come this hasn’t been done yet, how come we didn’t get here sooner, i.e., socially conscious, emotionally open rock – hard rock – stripped of the dumbass demon/sex imagery of metal, the nihilism of punk, the antipathy of pop rock, the vanity of blues, the escapism of psychedelia.  It was moving…it made me feel like young people could legitimately and productively take on and change the world.  Pearl Jam, for the first time in my memory of “rock music on the radio”, married the political and the personal (with a retroactive nod of respect to The Tragically Hip).  Things are shit now.  Not for lack of trying, Eddie, not for lack of trying.  I verge on teary-eyed writing this, listening to Jeremy, and thinking about what was and what did not come to be.  Choice tracks: “Alive”, “Jeremy”.

6.  U2 – Achtung Baby

One might have forgiven U2 if they threw in the towel after the bombastic name-dropping extravagance of Rattle and Hum – a polarizing album that many felt sounded the death knell of the band.  I disagree (then and now) quite vehemently, but it’s also fair game to question whether or not the band was running out of ideas.  I see Rattle and Hum as a necessary exercise for the band to decide if rootsy rock was the direction they should go.  After the critical shitstorm, it appears they said “alright, fuck ya then, we’ll see you in couple years”, and then squirreled themselves away to produce one of the most exciting pivots I’ve seen a band make, both musically and conceptually.  I think I heard my first note of the album via the video for “The Fly”, which introduces Bono’s reinvented, ever-falling image of a nihilistic glam punk.  This was, according to Bono, the sound of four men chopping down The Joshua Tree (leave it to Bono to be so painfully and unnecessarily self-aware).  But the intentionality is compelling, and Bono called it in late 1989 saying to a concert crowd that “…we have to go away and just dream it all up again”.  That they did, and by all accounts it was a painful and difficult time (as far as those things go for rock stars, boo hoo hoo).  The sonic change is dramatic, starting with that first scuzzy, distorted guitar line that descends to announce “Zoo Station”.  Suddenly, with the threat of fading relevance, U2 rockets back to the middle of the modern music scene, helping to invent it, in fact: distorted vocals from Bono as if emanating from a detuned radio; industrial drums, as if Larry Mullen was squatting with Einstürzende Neubauten; the Edge at the absolute top of his game, lording over towers of multi-effects units.  Adam Clayton played bass.  Achtung Baby! was an album they could never do again – knowing the futility of replicating the grandiosity of Joshua Tree they instead shifted to the dirt of the streets and the dance of the clubs.  U2 retained their place at the top of the pop heap.  Choice track: “Mysterious Ways”.

5.  Smashing Pumpkins – Gish

Given the effusive accolades I have been heaping on the bottom half of the top 10, it shocking that I have 5 albums to go that are all superior enough (by hairs, it seems) to finish in the Top 5.  Again, just a little pause to say: “1991, WTF?” ‘Twas the summer of 1991 and a friend tossed Gish onto the car stereo and I was fairly dismissive of “I Am One”, which seemed overly self-important and dumbly aggressive, like I was mistaking it for metal wankery.  Billy Corgan’s nasal/nerd vocals didn’t help the cause.  Little did I know I was listening to one of the most important, keystone records in contemporary rock.  “I Am One” remains my least favorite song on the album (it was especially hard to shake off the live experience at Lollapalooza, which featured the ridiculously out of tune, screaming megalomania of Corgan).  But then…the riches within!  Track 2, “Siva”, is almost as hard as “I Am One”, but has a stronger hook, a dreamy psychedelic bridge, and…a second dreamy psychedelic bridge!  These breaks from loud to soft to loud (hello Pixies!) is the moment I started listening intently, realizing there was something amazing afoot.  And then comes the obliquely named “Rhinoceros”, a hallucinogenic journey that, in my mind, perfectly encapsulates everything I love about old Pumpkins – supremely catchy riffs, layers upon layers of sonically precise guitars, loud/soft dynamics, all spread across multiple movements and codas (hello Rush!).  And THEN… “Bury Me” (#228 on the Top 500)…um…buries the listener with a heavily distorted, almost manic groove of chunky riffs and squealing high-on-the-neck notes.  The main riff is so physically compelling I find it hard not to want to flip tables and smash dishes.  As per the (non-formulaic) formula, things slow down a little and then bloom again into an outro bridge that features some of my most favorite guitar riffs ever put to tape, with Billy intoning over top.  “Bury Me” is as good a time as any to stop and say, “holy SHIT”, is Corgan an amazing guitar player (who claims to have memorized note for note the entire Rush Hemispheres album as a teenager)!  Meanwhile, drummer Jimmy Chamberlain is an animal (albeit a technically precise animal), hitting hard and fast and with complex fill patterns.  Equal heroism should be granted producer Butch Vig, who was all in with the OCD of Corgan, bound and determined to reach a level of sonic perfection unheard of in indie rock.  The Smashing Pumpkins, hailing from Chicago, were inappropriately tagged as “grunge” at the time, due in no small part to their presence on the soon-to-follow Singles soundtrack (with my favorite Pumpkin’s track “Drown”, #15 on the Top 500).  They would demonstrate this with -- shockingly -- an even better album, 1993’s Siamese Dream.  Choice tracks: “Rhinoceros”, “Bury Me”.

4.  R.E.M. – Out Of Time

If pushed (and you’d have to push me a lot, and maybe punch me a little), I’d say this is only my FOURTH favorite R.E.M. album, with Reckoning (1984), Lifes Rich Pageant (1986), and Automatic For The People (1992) finishing ahead.  This tells you how insanely consistent R.E.M. was during these years (and it suggests that R.E.M. is my…what, fourth favorite band ever, behind The Beatles, The Clash, and Swervedriver?).  If Green shot the band into stadium level stardom (although they were almost there with 1987’s Document), Out of Time cemented them as one of the biggest rock bands on the planet, almost on par with U2.  This was largely precipitated by the unlikely gigantic hit “Losing My Religion”.  Oddly, I would have been on the side of the label, Warner Bros., who did not see it as the lead single, and would have picked 4 or 5 other tracks ahead of it.  The band persisted, the label relented, “Out of Time” went to #1 in both the U.S. and the U.K., and “Losing My Religion” is now one of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s “Top 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll”.  Ironically, the song is probably the most “R.E.M.-ish” of all the songs on Out of Time – oh, the randomness of hit-making.  Mega-single aside, the album is bursting with tremendous wide-ranging songs:  the fun-funk of “Radio Song”, the light easy listening of instrumental track “Endgame”, the pop of “Shiny Happy People”, the cerebral spoken word of "Belong", and the twang of "Country Feedback".  Songs like “Texarkana”, “Me In Honey” (with great guest vocals from B-52’s Kate Pierson), and “Half A World Away” have that signature R.E.M. sound that no other band can touch.  It’s all perfectly done, perfectly unique, and perfectly bizarre as a populist breakout album.  There was something special about the 90’s, when you could finally hear fucking R.E.M. on the radio.  Out of Time is a treasure trove.  And here’s a great postscript – Out of Time longboxes (a common site in 90’s record stores) included a Rock the Vote petition to pass a Bill to remove barriers to young voter registration.  This initiative was in part aimed at challenging Tipper Gore’s Parents Music Resource Centre, the conservative censorship organization.  Clinton passed the bill and Out of Time has been called the the most politically important music packaging in the history of America (check out the podcast 99% Invisible for this great story). Choice track: “Half A World Away”, “Me In Honey”.

3.  Nirvana – Nevermind

Well, this here is a big album.  While 1991 is full of trailblazing musical documents, the sea change of Nevermind was unprecedented, at least since The Beatles landed on Ed Sullivan.  It’s hard now, going on 30 years later, to listen objectively.  So much has already been written.  Off the top, “Smells Like Teen Spirit” represents the quintessential rock song of a generation of kids (me, an older “kid”, included) and has to rank in the Top 10 of best opening songs of an album.  Other popular contenders:  “A Hard Days Night”, “Like A Rolling Stone”, “Baba O’Riley”, “Whole Lotta Love”, “London Calling”, “Cherub Rock”, “Airbag”, “We Will Rock You”, among many others.  (My highest ranked opening song in my Top 500 turns out to be “Suzanne” by Leonard Cohen at #10; but that’s only amongst songs from 1965 to 2009.  “Hold On” by Alabama Shakes is #2 on my 2009-2018 and is another heavyweight contender).  “Teen Spirit” was a warning shot across the bow of pop culture, saying “you may love us, but we kind of hate you”.  Nirvana was saying fuck you to the materialistic 80’s, just as the Sex Pistols and The Clash were saying the same to bloated 70’s rock.  Nirvana, forever anti-heroes, were visibly uncomfortable with fame and fortune, unwilling to play the rock star role, a position that was perfectly manipulated by rich label executives to invert hearts and minds and sell the slacker brand.  These things aside, Nevermind was a sonic bombshell.  Nirvana (or at least Kurt Cobain) had the most underground of influences – The Wipers, The Melvins, Meat Puppets, Jad Fair, The Shaggs, Daniel Johnston, Shonen Knife – and one wonders how the album could have been possibly birthed from these sources.  But perhaps that was just Cobain’s laudable attempt at bringing some marginalized talent some attention, because he also counted himself a fan of R.E.M. and Pixies.  Indeed, he admitted that he was constantly was trying to rip off the latter.  Whatever the case, the combination of his chugging guitar, the rumbling bass of Krist Novoselic, and the jackhammer drums of Dave Grohl, produced a fully formed, wholly unique set of tunes.  With Butch Vig helming the board,  the band’s sound was perfected (and I wonder if  Vig’s experience sculpting The Smashing Pumpkin’s Gish was a necessary ingredient).  We all know what happens next.  One more great album and then oblivion.  I remember when I head the news that Cobain was gone – I walked the University of Guelph’s campus in a daze, bailing on whatever academic responsibilities I had that day, and went home to sadly fall asleep to Nevermind, worried about the world.  Choice tracks: “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, “Lithium”.

2.  My Bloody Valentine – Loveless

It’s tough for me to put MBV’s unparalleled record here at number 2, ahead of the previous luminaries.  Because Loveless is a difficult album and undoubtedly off-putting for many listeners. (This is why fans of MBV are often considered insufferable hipsters.  You can’t position me this way, though, because I have Sarah MacLachlan and Enya on this list).  I came to MBV later, probably more late-90’s after reading numerous reviews extolling Loveless’ trailblazing virtues.  Its influence was a pretty slow burn, considerably overshadowed by many of the records I’ve just reviewed.  30 years later, it is roundly considered a one-of-a-kind masterpiece, unique, peerless, and inimitable.  Many a band have certainly tried – I know this well, having a rather large “shoegaze” collection.  The making of Loveless is infamous, with Kevin Shields nearly breaking the bank of Creation Records, who were footing the bill for three straight years of recording and mixing (were it not for rise of Oasis, this would have been completely untenable).  The wait was worth it, at least artistically.  “What does Loveless sound like?” This is a “really good question”, and is worthy of a dissertation.  As one reviewer opined, answering that question is like explaining acid house to a badger.  The first thing to notice is that the vocal parts are of secondary importance – no, they are less that that.  They are noticeable ephemera, but only one of many shifting, modulating forms in a wider spectrum of sound.  Aside from understated bass and clinically delivered drum beats, the rest of the sound is highly treated guitar, seemingly infinite layers of it.  Perhaps a picture of Shield’s guitar effects pedals gives a bit of a visual answer - click here. With a technique that might as well be patented – Shield’s “glide guitar” – MBV required writers to introduce adjectives like “gauzy”, “woozy”, and “wobbly” to their review arsenals.  For many songs the entire audible spectrum seems full, a wall of distorted and reverbed circularities that make Phil Spector’s “wall of sound” look like a paper mache hamster enclosure.  But the noise within this wall – undoubtedly represented by a tall, brick shaped waveform on your favorite digital audio editor – is multi-faceted, nuanced, ever-shifting, and dynamic.  It is music for “the in-between” – between notes, between thoughts, between wakefulness and sleep, light and dark, soft and loud, sharp and smooth.  Loveless is the permanently unsteady state of being, the sound of your organs trying to stay alive.  Listen to it and succumb, and then you are in a wholly different and majestic place.  Choice track:  “Come In Alone”.

1.  Swervedriver - Raise

Also on the Creation label and similarly under the shadows of other legitimately amazing bands was the mighty Swervedriver, my most favorite band not named The Clash or Beatles.  As mentioned already in this screed, 1991 was year of firsts – a whole whack of debut albums that did not sound like anything else, that were wonderfully unique and emblematic of entire genres.  This continues with Raise, Swervedriver’s incendiary juggernaut of record that was unfairly categorized as another Creation Records shoegaze band, alongside My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, and Ride.   Swervedriver can “out-gaze” all these bands if they feel like it (and frequently do), although one suspects the tenacity and temerity of MBV would cause the Swervies to shrug and move onto some other brilliant thing.  I’ve said this too many times in relation to too many albums in this list, but I have to say it:  NO ONE sounds like Swervedriver.  The double-whammy of co-lead guitarists and childhood mates, Adam Franklin and Jimmy Hartridge, is extraordinary and unmatched in my mind.  Both have an expansive set of influences and an in-depth understanding of musical history (I’ve come to realize through the years), but also incredible guitar skills to translate that knowledge; and as importantly, both are wizards with effects pedals.  Since they know each other inside out, the output is the most mesmerizing, dynamic, psychedelic, and inspiring guitar passages these ears have heard.  With their kick ass rhythm section (at the time, Adi Vines on bass and Graham Bonnar on drums) the songs on Raise are glorious.  They are also highly resistant to categorization and unapologetically long, with protracted intros and instrumental bridges. But they never outstay their welcome (this album is nowhere near jam band territory).  While super-heavy at points, with copious fuzz and wah, Swervedriver are always melodic, always detailed, controlled, and engaging.  The vocals are buried, perhaps a little too much, but that also adds to the mystique, as the listener apprehends snippets of a romanticized America, with open roads and Kerouacian travels, being lost in mind and spirit, for good or ill.  And speaking of “statement making” opening tracks, it’s pretty hard to argue with “Sci-Flyer”, which flies out of gate and repeatably body slams you.  “Sunset” is a kaleidoscopic journey that appears to drop J. Spaceman and J. Mascis into an octoganal death match, but in the end they simply embrace and sway.  “Rave Down” is the indie hit single that everyone in alterna-land should have been losing their shit over.  I should also mention two things – first, it took me 5 or 7 focused listens to “get” Raise, and then I was hooked forever.   And second, the b-sides (remember those?) for Raise’s singles (“Son of Mustang Ford”, “Rave Down”, and “Sandblasted”) could easily form a 13 song album that may just rival its parent recording.  Of the 9 tracks from 1991 that are on my Top 500 (which seems low in retrospect), four are from Swervedriver.  That’s how good they were.  And ARE, happily – they reunited with albums in 2015 and 2019, both worthy of their amazing discography.  Choice tracks: “Rave Down”, “Sandblasted”.