about contributors submissions book series advertising contests tour dates Mixed Media PopMatters Picks
|
|
Music > Features > The Edge of Change: The Most Memorable Albums of 1999 The Edge of Change: The Most Memorable Albums of 1999January - March 1999: Britney Spears to Blur[22 June 2009] By PopMatters Staff
8 March 1999
Following the passionate and invigorating pub-rock of Word Gets Around, Performance and Cocktails couldn’t help but sound jaded and disappointed in comparison. Though the Welsh band’s 1997 debut hardly viewed the vagaries of small-town life through rose-colored glasses, it presumed a deep deposit of proletarian sincerity beneath the stratum of alcoholism, sex, and social dysfunction. Performance and Cocktails, however, follows frontman/lyricist Kelly Jones as he tours the world and finds it wanting. The album is a balanced, bewildered take on hypocrisy and inauthenticity, from the country-club culture evoked by the title on down to the glazed stare of the woman being kissed on the cover (the model later revealed that an absinthe-and-opium hangover contributed to her iconic mask of detachment). Jones’ blunt truisms may not have the sophistication of Thom Yorke’s alienated Orwellian enigmas, but they display a sturdy poetry all their own. He sniffs at plastic Californias, incredulous wireless radios, head-standing lotharios with bad tans, and those who “rely on a lie that’s true”. The album’s best moments claw fitfully at the deeper anxieties beneath the Formica patina of postmodern culture: capitalist wish-fulfillment (“Just Looking”), bureaucratic diffidence (“Hurry Up and Wait”), free-wheeling exploitation (“The Bartender and the Thief”), and, of course, aging and death (“She Takes Her Clothes Off”). Jones saves his neatest trick for last, suggesting in the wily and smoky closer “I Stopped to Fill My Car Up” that storytelling is itself the greatest lie one can tell. The world-weary doubt that serves Stereophonics so well here would congeal into bored cynicism on their weaker later releases, but on Performance and Cocktails it remains a blunt instrument of considerable might.
9 March 1999
Has anyone in indie rock sported a bigger heart on his sleeve in the past ten years than Beulah frontman Miles Kurosky? The San Francisco-based pop collective called it a day back in ‘04, citing intraband strife and the dreaded growing up and growing older, but it’s small wonder that Kurosky didn’t die of a broken heart on 1999’s masterpiece, When Your Heartstrings Break—an album fixated on love and all its twists and turns, drenched in horns, strings and keyboards until it’s overflowing with (sigh) everything. Don’t let the refrigerator magnet poetry song titles (“Emma Blowgun’s Last Stand”, “Comrade’s Twenty Sixth”) and full-to-bursting production fool you; with eleven songs in 34 minutes, opening with the joyous horns and “ahhhh"s of “Score from Augusta” and capped by the says-it-all closer “If We Can Land a Man on the Moon, Surely I Can Win Your Heart”, Heartstrings perfectly captures the pulse-quickening highs and head-in-hands lows that accompany being a 20-something in love. Ten years out, though, what’s the lesson? First, to thine own self be true: Beulah felt in, if not necessarily of, the Elephant 6 collective, opting for cynical directness where their peers went obtuse. Second, growing up—and pinpointing that moment, uh, when your heartstrings break—can be a bitch, but your spirits can always be lifted by a trumpet section.
9 March 1999
Even if I pretend to know nothing about the circumstances behind the recording of Wilco’s Summerteeth (because I think records should stand on their own), it still comes across as one of the loneliest and most despairing records of its time. And the fact that Summerteeth is an alt-country album rather than a raging slab of dysfunctional deathcore makes the despair that much more palpable. Look at the band members, posing individually in desolate settings in the CD booklet: under unforgiving fluorescent lights in an institutional hallway; by a self-service gas pump late at night; in a bleak wood-paneled room furnished by two plain chairs and an unused megaphone. (The band member in the room with the megaphone, hands in his pockets and eyes focused on nothing, is the talented multi-instrumentalist Jay Bennett, who passed away on May 24 of this year.) And consider the lyrics: “The shadow grows / His heart’s in a bowl behind the bank / And every evening when he gets home / To make his supper and eat it alone / His black shirt cries / While his shoes grow cold”. Or “The ashtray says / You were up all night / When you went to bed / With your darkest mind / Your pillow wept / And covered your eyes / You finally slept / While the sun caught fire”. Or, simply, in a Dylanesque song called “She’s a Jar”: “she begged me not to hit her”. The pop side of Wilco prevents the loneliness from becoming lugubrious, and songs such as “Can’t Stand It” (a should-have-been-hit-single) and the moodily beautiful string arrangement in “She’s a Jar” speak to Wilco’s—and Jeff Tweedy’s—ability to get outside of their own heads and connect with discerning listeners. A relative disappointment in terms of sales, Summerteeth deserves another listen ten years down the road. 
 The Edge of Change: The Most Memorable Albums of 1999 |
Now on PopMatters
Columns
Moving Pixels: Parent-Child Bonding: Video Games that Bridge the Generation Gap The Rockist: Metal, Back from Purgatory
Blogs
Short Ends and Leader: Mamma Mia! - The Gimme, Gimme, Gimme, More Gift Set (2008): Blu-ray Marginal Utility: A Quick Theory of the Self
Music
:. Say Anything: Say Anything :. Wolfmother: Cosmic Egg :. The Swell Season: Strict Joy :. Neon Indian: Psychic Chasms :. Karen O and the Kids: Where The Wild Things Are :. Slaraffenland: We’re on Your Side :. Gloria Jones: Share My Love
Film
:. The Men Who Stare at Goats :. Endgame :. The Fourth Kind :. Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire :. Disney’s A Christmas Carol :. Gentlemen Broncos
DVDs
:. Adult Swim in a Box :. The 39 Steps :. Planes, Trains and Automobiles (Those Aren’t Pillows Edition)
News
:. Craig Ferguson’s autobiography is a testimony to America’s eternal appeal to immigrants :. INTERVIEW:Jeff Bridges abides, and works like crazy :. Roland Emmerich’s latest big-budget doomsday extravaganza is his ‘darkest film’ to date :. INTERVIEW:Hit repeat with Steely Dan and ‘Aja’ :. INTERVIEW:Lily Tomlin has had an extraordinary career being ordinary :. Film changes student’s course: ‘Precious’ star pursuing acting
|
Comments
No offense but, it’s really an amazing stretch to say that Silverchair was more versatile than Pearl Jam or especially Soundgarden. I politely dissent. Go back and listen to the discographies of those two bands. I still think that Silverchair, even though Diorama, are a fairly generic and boring band.
Comment by Bob — June 22, 2009 @ 12:55 am
There are so many things wrong with your critique of Britney’s deput album and her influence of youth I hardly know where to start, but here’s one. If you are going to somehow blame the Backstreet Boys for poor Britney’s success, at least explain why. A sample of Britney’s debut album was included on some, not all copies of Backstreet’s brilliant MILLLINEUM album-which sold over a million copies in one week, millions upon millions upon MILLIONS total sales around the world. I assure you-those sales did NOT occur BECAUSE of Britney’s song. Most copies did NOT have that song.
Comment by Marlena — June 22, 2009 @ 5:30 am
about the Britney article:
first of all Britney was just a girl following her dream, when you get the opportunity to make you dream come true you don’t really say no cause you’re 2 years younger than you should be to get into the music business and wait for the second opportunity that might never come…
second of all, her problems and her meltdown don’t come just from the fact that she’s famous, Britney has bipolar disorder so the fame only added to it but didn’t cause it…
plus her songs are nothing like Michael Jackson’s, she’s got her own style of music and her songs are great, otherwise they wouldn’t have gotten into the top 10 of the billboard charts
she’s a very talented girl so even if it got her through some serious problems, she is where she should be: a successful artist to remember.
even though she messed up a lot, she’s proven to be a survivor, a girl doing what she loves to do and fighting for it !
Comment by Sandy — June 22, 2009 @ 6:21 am
That’s one take on <i>13</i> - the “jilted Blur fan” take, I suppose. Marianne Faithfull’s rebuttal (paraphrased): “It’s this generation’s <i>Pet Sounds</i>.”
Comment by Joseph M — June 22, 2009 @ 6:47 am
BSB wasn’t bringin’ it so that’s when Jive unleashed Britney? Um, no. Britney got famous during the height of BSBs’ career. They could hold their own. Also, I have never heard of copies of Millennium that had a sampler of Britney’s album on them. I’m not doubting that they exist, but between the 40 million copies that have moved of their “Millennium” album, I’m sure those rarer copies with Britney samplers are few and far between. I’m a BSB fan of 12 years, and I have never seen a such said copy of the album myself. Most of what I’ve seen are either the 12-track US version, or some other international versions that had extras such as postcards, mousepads, etc but mostly bonus tracks that were also found on the singles, like “I’ll be there for you,” “My Heart stays with you,” “If you knew what I knew,” “You wrote the book on love” and such.
Where I DO know that Britney WAS sampled on when it came to BSB stuff, however, was an additional extra bonus Jive sampler CD that came with BSBs’ All Access VHS (the tape that has some music videos like “Everybody” (and the making of it), “ALAYLM” (plus on-set footage), “Quit Playing Games”, some live performances, and such). The CD has maybe a couple of Britney’s old songs on it (don’t remember one of the songs, the other one was “Soda Pop”), and songs by other artists that were signed to Jive at the time as well. Most BSB fans I know (myself excluded though) pitched the CD because they already had the only BSB content from it, a performance of “Darlin” that they obtained through another concert special of theirs on VHS—the “Live in Concert” special from 1996.
Comment by Anna from Kansas City, Missouri — June 23, 2009 @ 11:05 am
Those are some pretty grandiose statements for a fairly decent - not great, but decent - rap record, regarding The Roots’ Things Fall Apart.
“Act Too: Love of My Life”, the only love song I’ve heard written for hip-hop as a whole.”
—-Uhm… Common’s “I Used To Love Her” doesn’t apply, huh? I guess because it was five years earlier.
“But if we educated our youth on the true meaning of hip-hop and its roots—socially-relevant lyrics, jazz, blues, and rock and roll—then we, as a people, would be in a much better position to vocalize our thoughts and our emotions through positive music.”
—- What is the “True meaning” of hip hop? I guess rappers, or MCs (emcees) from the late 70’s and early 80’s weren’t full of braggadocio and weren’t interested in superficial materialsim, ie: heavy jewelry, money and “shakin that ass”. That’s what Shyam means, yeah?
Yeah because modern day hip-hop has nothing to offer when the ‘Golden Age’ was all about uplifting humanity because - ahem - it wasn’t.
There’s nothing wrong with identifying with history, having socially-relevant lyrics, referencing or sampling jazz and rock, but I feel too many of us in the “hip-hop community” romanticize the late 80’s - early 90’s hip hop Golden Age, when that era was full of many of the contradictions we see unfolded today.
This is not to argue that hip hop isn’t a “mockery of itself” becoming the new Hair Metal, but if we are truly to “educate our youth”, we have to soberly look at hiphop’s past and understand that the seemingly selfish and seemingly socially uplifting elements of rap have always been apart of the hip hip community and as we see so often (Kanye, JayZ, The Wu, et al)these traits can be occupied by a sole artist all at once.
One can cite a hip hop album that has also stood the test of time from 1999 to get a grasp of hip hop’s contradictory nature: MF Doom’s “Operation Doomsday”. I guess it wasn’t cited because upon release unlike now, it wasn’t very “pop"ular.
This is just the tip of the iceberg.
Even though I love popmatters.com, there’s no need to over-credit an album just for a 10-year look-back retrospective to have relevance.
Sorry, I got work to do.
Paz.
Comment by Hip Hop Attacks? — June 25, 2009 @ 2:54 pm