The Olivia Tremor Control – Black Foliage: Animation Music Volume One [Flydaddy] – 23 March 1999
“Things come rushing in / Things come rushing out / When you’re in a dream / If you’re in a dream.” — “A Sleepy Company”
Sometimes I think the Olivia Tremor Control‘s Black Foliage is just that: a sprawling trip into the hazy, aural subconscious. Its seamless flow calls to mind a surreal dream state that brims feverishly with more melody and harmony and psychedelia – sheer, unbridled sound, really – than most bands achieve in a career. Tape loops are rushing in. Acid-laced indie-pop rushing out.
Other times, it’s a sort of lo-fi symphony, an absolute tapestry of four-track static and multilayered loops, vibraphones and singing saws – hell, even a thematic refrain – that coalesce, somehow, into bright, triumphant pop. First, you hear the melodic sensibilities and home-recording ethics of Guided by Voices or early Pavement. Then you notice the rampant Beach Boys fetish; think Smiley Smile, not Pet Sounds. Then, finally, the Zappa-style sound collages culminate with “The Bark and Below It”.
As PopMatters editor Sarah Zupko put it in a 1999 review, the point is that “you could listen to this record 50 times and never hear it exactly the same way twice”. If there is an underlying thesis that Black Foliage embedded deep into my musical consciousness, it is simply the notion that sugar-coated pop and avant-garde sound exploration need not be mutually exclusive. In fact, nothing on this record is more exciting than their paradoxical marriage. Just listen to “A Place We Have Been To”, a breezy power-pop number that could surely be the Apples in Stereo if not for the carnival kaleidoscope of glitchy tape manipulation floating on top.
That pairing is what makes Black Foliage the purest and most satisfying evocation of the Elephant 6 aesthetic to date. Of Montreal have always been too shiny and glammy at heart; Neutral Milk Hotel are too long-winded and obtuse for the job. Given its enthusiastic critical reception, I wonder why this record has floated in underappreciated obscurity while In the Aeroplane Over the Sea grows in cult stature each year.
Truly, after a decade of Pro-Tools and digi-compression, Black Foliage‘s delirious sonic jungle only sounds fresher, more intoxicating than ever. Lurking in its depth, from the fuzzy harmonic bliss of “California Demise (3)” to the bittersweet “Hilltop Procession (Momentum Gaining)”, there remains one final, defiant truth: namely, that pop music is most exciting when teetering frantically on the verge of collapse. – Zach Schonfeld
Travis – The Man Who [Independiente/Epic] – 24 March 1999
Growing by leaps and bounds over their debut, Good Feeling, Travis‘ The Man Who would go on to be one of 1999’s best-selling albums in the UK. Filled with beautiful melodies and more restraint than its more rock-based predecessor, the album has a quiet, melancholic sound that would go on to influence many of their fellow British bands, such as Keane, Starsailor, and Snow Patrol. Coldplay’s Chris Martin has even said, “Coldplay would not exist without Travis.”
Undoubtedly, The Man Who is the album that started the trend that catapulted the above-mentioned bands into superstardom. Yet the kind of popularity achieved by these groups has in many ways eluded Travis. While The Man Who sold very well in Britain, their popularity throughout the rest of the world, most notably in the US, never reached the same heights as the bands that would follow in their footsteps.
The Man Who begins with “Writing to Reach You”, a gorgeous, lilting melody that perfectly introduces the record’s tone. Lyrically, the album tends toward songs of love, disaffection, and paranoia, mixed with references to other hit songs of the time, such as Oasis’ “Wonderwall” or Beck’s “Devil’s Haircut”. Travis’ gift for melody is fully displayed in tracks such as “Driftwood” and “Turn”, with sometimes vague and nonsensical lyrics that are evocative. Perhaps no song makes this point better than the haunting “Why Does It Always Rain on Me”, whose chorus (“Why does it always rain on me / Is it because I lied when I was seventeen”) speaks to the album’s repeated themes of distance and isolation.
Mostly comprised of quiet, tender, some would say lightweight songs, The Man Who created a template for launching quite a few other bands, good and bad. While Travis have certainly had their share of imitators, The Man Who still sits head and shoulders above many of these imitations and offers a glimpse into the beginnings of a movement that would dominate album charts for years to come. – JM Suarez
Mogwai – Come on Die Young [Chemikal Underground/Matador] – 29 March 1999
Mogwai‘s second album wasn’t just competing with Young Team, it was competing with “Like Herod” and “Mogwai Fear Satan”, two justly beloved classics that still retain the power to thrill today. Both possess more than enough dynamics and riffs to appeal to all sorts of guitar rock fans. So, when the Scottish band followed them up with an album lacking anything quite as obviously ingratiating, the worm turned immediately. The result was the kind of classic sophomore slump backlash you don’t see in its purest form anymore, and to this day, people talk about Come on Die Young as if it were a letdown: too slow, too chilly, not fierce enough.
Fortunately, they’re wrong. It’s true that Come on Die Young is the most starkly abstracted of Mogwai’s records, but it might also be their best: as a start-to-finish album rather than a series of explosive moments. While “Like Herod” was track two on its album, providing an immediate climax, Come on Die Young saves its fireworks for one three-song, 30-minute burst at the end. The regimented “Christmas Steps” is the one Mogwai still play, but “Ex-Cowboy” in particular is a sadly neglected firestorm that ranks with their best work (possibly because it spends much of its nine minutes in a tsunami of pure, riffless noise).
The first half of the album isn’t exactly a slouch either, but at the time, the likes of “Kappa” and “Helps Both Ways” were dismissed as unexciting. With hindsight, Come on Die Young looks better, though. As great an asset as Barry Burns has been, he (and his piano) have changed Mogwai’s sound significantly, and these songs are the last written and performed in Mogwai’s original mode. It was overlooked then, but the flipside of the contention that these songs don’t rage hard enough is that they feature Mogwai’s prettiest, most distinctive guitar.
Then there’s the sort-of title track “Cody”, still the best Mogwai song to feature conventional vocals. Above all else, it’s a gorgeous song and leads perfectly into what wound up being Mogwai’s most formally beautiful album. Later LPs like Rock Action and Mr. Beast would feature Mogwai’s strength at distilling their ideas down into more compact packages, balancing the furious and composed sides of their sound more evenly, but the sprawling, cunningly sequenced Come on Die Young is still their grandest statement. – Ian Mathers
Low – Secret Name [Kranky] – 30 March 1999
Early in their career, Low‘s music was involuntarily branded with the predictable catchphrase “slowcore”, which hung around like a serviceable but ultimately regrettable Spring Break ’99 butterfly back tattoo for years until a string of later releases finally lasered the phrase off. However, focusing on the tempo of Low’s earlier records, including Secret Name, totally misses the multi-dimensionality of the band and its music. Contrary to the cop-out “slowcore” slogan, Low is and always was more than just the sum of its BPM.
The millennium’s last year bore a strange selection of musical fruits. Amid the blockbuster Britneys of the day, independent music still thrived, with 1999 seeing the release of excellent records by Pavement and Sleater-Kinney, and labels like Merge and Kranky putting out seminal records like East River Pipe’s Gasoline Age and Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s Slow Riot for New Zerø Kanada.
Low’s 1999 effort stands with the best of its year and remains an outstanding step in the band’s development. Songs like “Missouri” and “Starfire” epitomize the kind of careful, spare melodies and deliberate instrumentation that would continue to be among Low’s musical hallmarks throughout their career. Listening to Secret Name in 2009, knowing what Low would go on to do with the more rambunctious and fully executed Great Destroyer, as well as the lush, angry, and experimental Drums and Guns, it’s clear that this earlier album still serves as a reflection of Low’s best elements.
Those include their oft-overlooked sense of humor, strong songwriting that draws from a deep and diverse well of musical influences (from Bauhaus to OutKast), and above all, a work-horse aesthetic that has always driven them toward intentionally disciplined, structured, and restrained songs. Secret Name marks a notch along the ascendancy of a band that I doubt has even reached its apex yet, and a decade after its release, the album remains as lovely, focused, and worthwhile as ever. – Gabrielle Goldstein
Trans Am – Futureworld [Thrill Jockey] – 1 April 1999
The world after 1999 was a fantasia for science fiction writers and readers in the century that preceded it. These visions of yesterday’s tomorrows, and the correlations and contrasts with our present, are especially fascinating now because they represent worlds that might have been, had we not been led down the paths, good or bad, that we were eventually taken.
Futureworld, post-rock minimalist group Trans Am‘s shining moment, is not necessarily the retro-futurist tract its Tron-like album cover, vocoded vocals, and dystopian motorik beats make it out to be. Instead, like that old sci-fi: it’s an alternate reality, an alternative history. Futureworld is a sparser, less densely populated world.
Around half of the tracks are chase anthems (“Television Eyes”, “Futureworld”), paranoid and taut like a race against the clock, and the other half can reach moments of great power and joy (particularly the epic “Sad and Young”). “Cocaine Computer” is probably the album’s lone connection to the present, as its funky disco groove, jangly guitars, and Romeo Void dank NYC sax recalls the dancefloor reign of the DFA and their many kindred spirits.
The record’s vocoder vocals are not used for kitschy effects but to obscure the view. None of the lyrics are particularly comprehensible, save for the OMD-ish sheen of “Runners Standing Still” and the creepy ‘bot on “Am Rhein”, which insists “Come back to my house, baby” in between jagged dirges reminiscent of Helmet or Godflesh. Instead, the robo-voices feed back like a foreign language, a distant approximation of English or German, sent from another world, another 1999, one that makes our 2009 look like the Stone Age. – Timothy Gabriele
Fountains of Wayne – Utopia Parkway [Atlantic] – 6 April 1999
Fountains of Wayne’s self-titled debut LP was critically adored and created a small radio hit in “Radiation Vibe”. It was also a near-perfect collection of cheeky, slightly sarcastic power-pop. Their second album, Utopia Parkway, was just as critically acclaimed then, but a decade later, it doesn’t hold up quite as well.
Adam Schlesinger and Chris Collingwood’s knack for writing a perfect pop song is on display here, to be sure. Still, Utopia Parkway also tends to get bogged down in 1970s nostalgia and jokey lyrics that aren’t actually funny. “Valley of Malls” and “Go Hippie” are examples of the latter. They’re both mildly catchy songs that sound smug and a little mean today, attacking suburban shoppers and hippies for no apparent reason. The former includes “Laser Show”, a fun song that nevertheless feels more dated than nostalgic. Meanwhile, “Prom Theme” and “Senator’s Daughter” are thin, wispy ballads that appear dull instead of sentimental.
However, Utopia Parkway is by no means a total miss. It contains a lot of strong material, too. The title track is 1970s nostalgia that actually works. “Red Dragon Tattoo” is catchy and a great sing-along, and the line about the titular tattoo making the narrator “look a little more like that guy from KoRn” still makes me laugh today. “Hat and Feet” is silly, but it’s a really good song, and the chorus of “Amity Gardens” resonates because of its reversed timeframe: “If you knew now / What you knew then / You wouldn’t wanna go to Amity Gardens again.”
What really saves Utopia Parkway is that it contains the two best songs that Fountains of Wayne have ever written, “Denise” and “Troubled Times”. “Denise” is the band’s hardest-rocking song, with a crunchy guitar tone they’ve never tried again, and impeccable “Sha la la la la la la’s” backing the chorus.
“Troubled Times”, in contrast, is maybe the perfect ballad. Acoustic guitars back up beautiful harmonies as Collingwood plaintively sings about a couple that persevered through a really rough patch in their relationship. It also highlights how good Fountains of Wayne can be lyrically when they’re on point: “Pining away every hour in your room / Rolling with emotion / Waiting ’til it’s opportune / Sitting there watching time fly past you / Why do tomorrow, what you can never do?” So even though it’s uneven, Utopia Parkway remains a solid effort. – Chris Conaton
Nas – I Am… [Columbia] – 6 April 1999
Nas has been one of hip-hop’s most interesting characters. Bursting onto the scene with such gusto, straight into the heart of the genre, he has been able to practically float by ever since. Never has another rapper been constantly rooted for, album after album, without following through on the promise of that first collection of verses.
I Am…The Autobiography came directly after It Was Written, a popular affair that was still criticized for not being on the same level as what came before. Here, as is common throughout the genre, there was talk of a return to the real, leaving behind the popularity he had achieved, a notion he directly confronts in “Hate Me Now”, a song that was unfortunately overshadowed by its controversial video and violent aftermath. The DJ Premier head-nodder “Nas Is Like” attempts to ape yesterday’s formula, but never reaches the heights of those earlier tracks, despite first-class production.
The rest of the album dribbles off from here, particularly the embarrassing sexual bravado of “Dr. Knockboot” and the unintentionally hilarious “Money Is My Bitch”, which rank among the lowest points of his career. It would be a couple of years before he would achieve some of his former glory with Stillmatic, returning to a deep focus on the lyrics instead of the macho posing he felt he needed to succeed in the industry. – Craig Hubert
The Lilys – The 3-Way [Sire] – 20 April 1999
The knock on the Lilys‘ frontman Kurt Heasley has always been that he’s a chameleon at best, a dilettante at worst, aping styles without, ya know, feeling them. Let the Trilateral Commission on Indie Rock Reputations stroke their (ironic) beards over that one, because all you need to know is this: 1999’s The 3-Way remains one of the smartest, shiniest, most exuberant slices of studio pop put to tape in the past 10 years, an unacknowledged template that peers in the Elephant 6 collective and Kevin Barnes’ Of Montreal got all the glory for exploring.
The Cliffs Notes version of The 3-Way might read, “Beach Boys contribute tracks to Nuggets,” shining a light on a world where multi-part string sections collide with Farfisas and fuzzed-out three-chord guitar stomps. But that description barely addresses the two dizzying, seven-plus minute psych-pop masterpieces “Socs Hip” and “Leo Ryan (Our Pharoah’s Slave)” that gleefully, slyly zig every 30 seconds or so, impossible to pin down and impossible not to be mesmerized by. Simpler pleasures, like the Kinks-y, Blur-y “The Spirits Merchant”, and the faux-rumba “The Generator”, posit a universe where intelligent pop songs are the rule, not the exception.
Heasley’s sonic shapeshifting/wanderlust has gotten the better of him in recent years (see 2003’s sparer and darker Precollection), and he never returned to the ebullience and “gee whiz!” vibe of The 3-Way. Still, it’s there for the eager listener to discover and enjoy. Who says you can’t show up to a party ten years late? – Stephen Haag
Tom Waits – Mule Variations [Anti-] – 16 April 1999
A somewhat fragmented collection of Tom Waits‘ unique assets, 1999’s Mule Variations picked up a Grammy and plenty of new interest in the by-now legendary performer, but sits oddly in his back catalogue, seeming something like a ‘best of’ compilation made up entirely of new songs. The ‘Variations’ in the title clearly suggests a Waits in self-pastiche mode, perhaps recognising that mainstream listeners were due to be reminded of his masterful presence and serving up individual, bite-sized portions of his oddities and tragedies, rather than wrapping them up in his usually varied but somehow unified whole.
Even if it’s not that coherent as an overall album, the songs themselves easily serve their purpose of presenting Waits’s style in an accessible but basically uncompromised manner. “Lowside of the Road” sees Waits deliver some devilish snarling like a sinister come-on, while “Cold Water” belts out some wonderfully blistering blues with unapologetic coarseness.
“Black Market Baby” and “Eyeball Kid” seem to come from the same place as Waits’s often-disturbing stage work with Robert Wilson, and “Chocolate Jesus” has a wry charm and style that lifts it well above being a mere gimmick song (such as the album’s opener, “Big in Japan”, surely the least-interesting song he’s ever written).
However, what finally elevates Mule Variations into something unique is hearing one of Waits’s greatest, and frequently overlooked, attributes burst forth more confidently than ever before. Whether it’s for hustlers and whores, carnies and addicts, dead-beats and palookas, lost souls and beaten-down dreamers, Waits’ enduring compassion is fully on display here, indelible, sincere, and blisteringly powerful.
As Mule Variations comes to a close, the last few ballads finally form some kind of unified flow. “Picture in a Frame” and its simple lyrics are too honest to be trite, verbalising the plain joy that comes with a seemingly-tangible moment of love and warmth. “Take It with me”, similarly, has no time for pretence (“Always for you / And forever yours”), embracing the immediate simplicity that inspires the most spiritual of thoughts.
These delicate and tender moments are finally capped by the majestic and stomping “Come on Up to the House”, where Waits seems to become an elder sage, mere steps away from the all-compassionate, all-forgiving God he wrote of in “Down There by the Train” for Johnny Cash, and offering refuge and comfort for all those who would seek it.
With the perspective of age (“Come down off the cross / We can use the wood”) and the experience of a life well-lived (“Does life seem nasty, brutish and short?”) Waits’ call to “Come on up to the house” never seems judgemental or demanding, but suggests a call to a higher plane of personal wisdom, resilience, and, of course, compassion.- Kit MacFarlane
Ben Folds Five – The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner [550 Music] – 27 April 1999
When Ben Folds Five exploded, they were a college band. Despite breakout hit “Brick”‘s somber tale of abortion and the shockingly detached nature of its narrator, Folds had a reputation as the best kind of pseudoadolescent: the kind who refused to grow up, and the kind who was, at least on the outside, wildly successful and unflinchingly happy despite, or, because of his state of arrested development. He could sing about adorable, quirky, perfect pixies, bitch about his uncles and ex-girlfriends, and write back-page-of-the-journal love songs that didn’t sound like love songs. What he was doing wasn’t deep; it just felt like the place you wanted to be in ten years.
The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner came along and ruined all that. The first hint that Folds had changed direction was the album’s sound: it wasn’t quite Ben Folds Floyd, but it may as well have been for its departure from the simple, direct piano-bass-vocals sound of previous albums. John Mark Painter on the flugelhorn alone would have been difficult enough, but the electronics of album opener “Narcolepsy”, the violins of “Magic”, the treated, barroom-style piano of “Mess”… well, once those first four tracks were out of the way, we were so exhausted from the departure that we just didn’t have patience for the rest of it.
When we finally forced ourselves to listen, hearing what we did made things even more difficult. This was not happy-go-lucky Ben, the Ben who might be sad but at least he’s still energetic about it, the Ben who’d just as soon toss out an f-bomb as extend a metaphor for the length of a song. This was sad-sack Ben, a side we hadn’t met yet. This was a record about divorce. “Hospital Song” is five lines of sadness that end in death. Even the upbeat songs are laced with an almost off-putting, cutting, humorless sarcasm. Everything would be utterly bleak and hopeless without the hopeful final pair of tracks. Our hero, it seemed, was giving up.
What we didn’t realize at that point was that Reinhold Messner was a transitional album, the one where Folds started to allow us to see all the sides of his personality and not just the fun, concert-ready ones. Perhaps the context of his solo work will enable us now to see Reinhold Messner for what it really is: emotionally naked, beautifully melodic, and wonderfully varied. Or, perhaps, those of us who were in college during the beginnings of Ben Folds Five have grown up a bit ourselves, and are only now ready to fully appreciate it. – Mike Schiller