milo
Jack L. Jones
Right here it is. After about month of slugging it out, we've whittled it down to a final two to decide the best album of the 1990's.
What did the critics say about our final two? Let's have a look at the Rolling Stone reviews from the time.
Nirvana - Nevermind
*****
Despite the hand-wringing the fanzines do each time an indie-rock hero signs a major-label deal, righteous postpunk stars from Hüsker Dü to Soundgarden have joined the corporate world without debasing their music. More often than not, ambitious left-of-the-dial bands gallantly cling to their principles as they plunge into the depths of commercial failure. Integrity is a heavy burden for those trying to scale the charts.
Led by singer-guitarist Kurt Cobain, Nirvana is the latest underground bonus baby to test mainstream tolerance for alternative music. Given the small corner of public taste that nonmetal guitar rock now commands, the Washington State trio's version of the truth is probably as credible as anyone's. A dynamic mix of sizzling power chords, manic energy and sonic restraint, Nirvana erects sturdy melodic structures — sing-along hard rock as defined by groups like the Replacements, Pixies and Sonic Youth — but then at-tacks them with frenzied screaming and guitar havoc. When Cobain revs into high punk gear, shifting his versatile voice from quiet caress to raw-throated fury, the decisive control of bassist Chris Novoselic and drummer Dave Grohl is all that keeps the songs from chaos. If Nirvana isn't onto anything altogether new, Nevermind does possess the songs, character and confident spirit to be much more than a reformulation of college radio's high-octane hits.
Nirvana's undistinguished 1989 debut, Bleach, relied on warmed-over Seventies metal riffs, but the thrashing Nevermind boasts an adrenalized pop heart and incomparably superior material, captured with roaring clarity by coproducer Butch Vig. Cued in with occasional (and presumably intentional) tape errors, most of the songs — like "On a Plain," "Come as You Are" and "Territorial tinklings" — exemplify the band's skill at inscribing subtlety onto dense, noisy rock. At the album's stylistic extremes, "Something in the Way" floats a translucent cloud of acoustic guitar and cello, while "Breed" and "Stay Away" race flat-out, the latter ending in an awesome meltdown rumble.
Too often, underground bands squander their spunk on records they're not ready to make, then burn out their energy and inspiration with uphill touring. Nevermind finds Nirvana at the crossroads — scrappy garageland warriors setting their sights on a land of giants.
REM - Automatic for the People
*****
R.E.M. has never made music more gorgeous than "Nightswimming and "Find the River," the ballads that close Automatic for the Peopleand sum up its twilit, soulful intensity. A swirl of images natural and technological – midnight car rides and undertow, old photographs and headlong tides – the songs grapple, through a unifying metaphor of "the recklessness of water," with the interior world of memory, loss and yearning. This is the members of R.E.M. delving deeper than ever; grown sadder and wiser, the Athens subversives reveal a darker vision that shimmers with new, complex beauty.
Despite its difficult concerns, most of Automatic is musically irresistible. Still present, if at a slower tempo, is the tunefulness that without compromising the band's highly personal message, made these Georgia misfits platinum sellers. Since "The One I Love," its Top Forty hit from 1987, R.E.M. has conquered by means of artful videos, surer hooks and fatter production and by expanding thematically to embrace the doomsday politics of Document, the eco-utopianism ofGreen and the sweet rush of Out of Time. Brilliantly, the new album both questions and clinches that outreaching progress; having won the mainstream's ear, R.E.M. murmurs in voices of experience – from the heart, one on one.
In a minor key, "Drive" opens Automatic with Michael Stipe singing: "Hey kids/Where are you?/Nobody tells you what to do," a chorus that wryly echoes David Essex's glam-rock anthem "Rock On." In its imagining of youth apocalypse, "Drive" upsets the pat assumption that the members of R.E.M. might still see themselves as generational spokesmen. The group then further trashes anyone's expectation of a nice pop record with "Try Not to Breathe." Alluding presumably to "suicide doctor" Jack Kevorkian ("I will try not to breathe/This decision is mine/I have lived a full life/These are the eyes I want you to remember"), the song ushers in a series of meditations on mortality that makes Automatic as haunted at times as Lou Reed's Magic and Loss.Relief comes in the form of whimsical instrumentation (such low-tech keyboards as piano, clavinet, accordion); political satire ("Ignoreland") that suggests a revved-up Buffalo Springfield; and, on the catchy "Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight," some of Stipe's niftier faux nursery rhymes ("A can of beans/Of black-eyed peas/Some Nescafe and ice/A candy bar/A falling star/Or a reading from Dr. Seuss"). Yet, without a single "Shiny Happy People" among its twelve songs, Automatic is assuredly an album edged in black.
Famous ghosts are tenderly remembered. The calypsolike "Man on the Moon" fantasizes holy-fool comedian Andy Kaufman in hip heaven ("Andy, are you goofing on Elvis?"), and a paean to Montgomery Clift, "Monty Got a Raw Deal," exhorts Hollywood's wrecked Adonis to "just let go." Hard grief inspires "Sweetness Follows" ("Readying to bury your father and your mother"), yet compassion wins out: The sorrows that make us "lost in our little lives," the song says, end in an inscrutable sweetness.
A homespun ditty, "New Orleans Instrumental No. 1," and the woozy jazz of "Star Me Kitten" (featuring the weirdest love lyrics imaginable: "I'm your possession/So fudge me, kitten") lighten Automatic somewhat, but the darker songs boast the stronger playing. Guitarist Peter Buck dazzles, not only with the finger picking that launched a thousand college bands but with feedback embellishments and sitarlike touches. As always, the rhythm section of bassist Mike Mills and drummer Bill Berry kicks; on about half the numbers, Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones crafts string arrangements that recall, in their Moorish sweep, his orchestral work for the Rolling Stones' Their Satanic Majesties Request.
If "Nightswimming" and "Find the River" are R.E.M. at its most evocative, "Everybody Hurts," the album's third masterpiece, finds the band gaining a startling emotional directness. Spare triplets on electric piano carry a melody as sturdy as a Roy Orbison lament, and Stipe's voice rises to a keening power. "When you're sure you've had too much of this life, well, hang on," he entreats, asserting that in the face of the tough truths Automatic for the People explores, hope is, more than ever, essential.
What did the critics say about our final two? Let's have a look at the Rolling Stone reviews from the time.
Nirvana - Nevermind
*****
Despite the hand-wringing the fanzines do each time an indie-rock hero signs a major-label deal, righteous postpunk stars from Hüsker Dü to Soundgarden have joined the corporate world without debasing their music. More often than not, ambitious left-of-the-dial bands gallantly cling to their principles as they plunge into the depths of commercial failure. Integrity is a heavy burden for those trying to scale the charts.
Led by singer-guitarist Kurt Cobain, Nirvana is the latest underground bonus baby to test mainstream tolerance for alternative music. Given the small corner of public taste that nonmetal guitar rock now commands, the Washington State trio's version of the truth is probably as credible as anyone's. A dynamic mix of sizzling power chords, manic energy and sonic restraint, Nirvana erects sturdy melodic structures — sing-along hard rock as defined by groups like the Replacements, Pixies and Sonic Youth — but then at-tacks them with frenzied screaming and guitar havoc. When Cobain revs into high punk gear, shifting his versatile voice from quiet caress to raw-throated fury, the decisive control of bassist Chris Novoselic and drummer Dave Grohl is all that keeps the songs from chaos. If Nirvana isn't onto anything altogether new, Nevermind does possess the songs, character and confident spirit to be much more than a reformulation of college radio's high-octane hits.
Nirvana's undistinguished 1989 debut, Bleach, relied on warmed-over Seventies metal riffs, but the thrashing Nevermind boasts an adrenalized pop heart and incomparably superior material, captured with roaring clarity by coproducer Butch Vig. Cued in with occasional (and presumably intentional) tape errors, most of the songs — like "On a Plain," "Come as You Are" and "Territorial tinklings" — exemplify the band's skill at inscribing subtlety onto dense, noisy rock. At the album's stylistic extremes, "Something in the Way" floats a translucent cloud of acoustic guitar and cello, while "Breed" and "Stay Away" race flat-out, the latter ending in an awesome meltdown rumble.
Too often, underground bands squander their spunk on records they're not ready to make, then burn out their energy and inspiration with uphill touring. Nevermind finds Nirvana at the crossroads — scrappy garageland warriors setting their sights on a land of giants.
REM - Automatic for the People
*****
R.E.M. has never made music more gorgeous than "Nightswimming and "Find the River," the ballads that close Automatic for the Peopleand sum up its twilit, soulful intensity. A swirl of images natural and technological – midnight car rides and undertow, old photographs and headlong tides – the songs grapple, through a unifying metaphor of "the recklessness of water," with the interior world of memory, loss and yearning. This is the members of R.E.M. delving deeper than ever; grown sadder and wiser, the Athens subversives reveal a darker vision that shimmers with new, complex beauty.
Despite its difficult concerns, most of Automatic is musically irresistible. Still present, if at a slower tempo, is the tunefulness that without compromising the band's highly personal message, made these Georgia misfits platinum sellers. Since "The One I Love," its Top Forty hit from 1987, R.E.M. has conquered by means of artful videos, surer hooks and fatter production and by expanding thematically to embrace the doomsday politics of Document, the eco-utopianism ofGreen and the sweet rush of Out of Time. Brilliantly, the new album both questions and clinches that outreaching progress; having won the mainstream's ear, R.E.M. murmurs in voices of experience – from the heart, one on one.
In a minor key, "Drive" opens Automatic with Michael Stipe singing: "Hey kids/Where are you?/Nobody tells you what to do," a chorus that wryly echoes David Essex's glam-rock anthem "Rock On." In its imagining of youth apocalypse, "Drive" upsets the pat assumption that the members of R.E.M. might still see themselves as generational spokesmen. The group then further trashes anyone's expectation of a nice pop record with "Try Not to Breathe." Alluding presumably to "suicide doctor" Jack Kevorkian ("I will try not to breathe/This decision is mine/I have lived a full life/These are the eyes I want you to remember"), the song ushers in a series of meditations on mortality that makes Automatic as haunted at times as Lou Reed's Magic and Loss.Relief comes in the form of whimsical instrumentation (such low-tech keyboards as piano, clavinet, accordion); political satire ("Ignoreland") that suggests a revved-up Buffalo Springfield; and, on the catchy "Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight," some of Stipe's niftier faux nursery rhymes ("A can of beans/Of black-eyed peas/Some Nescafe and ice/A candy bar/A falling star/Or a reading from Dr. Seuss"). Yet, without a single "Shiny Happy People" among its twelve songs, Automatic is assuredly an album edged in black.
Famous ghosts are tenderly remembered. The calypsolike "Man on the Moon" fantasizes holy-fool comedian Andy Kaufman in hip heaven ("Andy, are you goofing on Elvis?"), and a paean to Montgomery Clift, "Monty Got a Raw Deal," exhorts Hollywood's wrecked Adonis to "just let go." Hard grief inspires "Sweetness Follows" ("Readying to bury your father and your mother"), yet compassion wins out: The sorrows that make us "lost in our little lives," the song says, end in an inscrutable sweetness.
A homespun ditty, "New Orleans Instrumental No. 1," and the woozy jazz of "Star Me Kitten" (featuring the weirdest love lyrics imaginable: "I'm your possession/So fudge me, kitten") lighten Automatic somewhat, but the darker songs boast the stronger playing. Guitarist Peter Buck dazzles, not only with the finger picking that launched a thousand college bands but with feedback embellishments and sitarlike touches. As always, the rhythm section of bassist Mike Mills and drummer Bill Berry kicks; on about half the numbers, Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones crafts string arrangements that recall, in their Moorish sweep, his orchestral work for the Rolling Stones' Their Satanic Majesties Request.
If "Nightswimming" and "Find the River" are R.E.M. at its most evocative, "Everybody Hurts," the album's third masterpiece, finds the band gaining a startling emotional directness. Spare triplets on electric piano carry a melody as sturdy as a Roy Orbison lament, and Stipe's voice rises to a keening power. "When you're sure you've had too much of this life, well, hang on," he entreats, asserting that in the face of the tough truths Automatic for the People explores, hope is, more than ever, essential.
