The Most Memorable Albums of 1999 (Part 2)

PopMatters is 20 and to celebrate we are looking back at the popular music that defined the year of our birth. Part two covers the most memorable albums from March through June, highlighted by monster hits from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Moby, and Travis.

                                      
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PopMatters is 20 and to celebrate we are looking back at the popular music that defined the year of our birth. Part two covers the most memorable albums from March through June, highlighted by monster hits from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Moby, and Travis.

These essays explore the connection between Kerouac and the music he loved -- Charlie Parker, Lee Konitz, Chet Baker, Miles Davis and others -- and the musicians who loved him, in turn.

A guide to nine songs for the faithful, the faithless, and the searchers.

If the idea is that earth, water, fire, air and space constitute the core elements of life, then these five songs might seem as their equivalents to surviving the complications that come from embracing the good and enduring the ugly of the Christmas season.

However many smokes he’s inhaled since childhood, Waits' trademark growl is a choice -- his first step to direct listeners' attention to the work of musical performance.

Songs of anxiety, paranoia, freak-outs, chilling verses, feverish desire, harrowing lyrics -- they all make for damn good music.

Cartoonish in nature, like an exploding cigar joke. No matter how smart one thinks he or she is, one always laughs to the groove at the moment of detonation.

On this challenging and intimate album, Robert Ellis walks up to the brink of despair and calls it out to play.

Constructed from looping bass lines, whirring guitars and keyboards, and her enigmatic, murmuring voice, this latest collection of songs from Argentina's premiere electro-folk songstress is a glorious mess of sound.

Tom Waits joins the Rolling Stones on a recent tour stop and the world rejoices (as it should).

Critically, commercially and historically, gospel is the great overlooked American music, maybe because few genres of music force you to confront your beliefs so immediately.

Music as a tool for social change: An important cause highlighted in a simple, yet powerful way.

While people were killing and dying, what did it matter whether there were decent songs being sung, insightful films being produced, appropriate art being inspired? When did poetry ever stop a war?

Inside a broken clock, splashing the wine with the 114th Most Acclaimed Album of All Time. A 1985 cult classic is this week's Counterbalance. You'll never be going back home.

What better way is there to end a concept album about death than with a song that spits in Death’s face?

Who is more suited for conveying honesty than a child, uncorrupted and unconcerned with politesse and decorum? It’s that notion Tom Waits runs with here, playing a child who for the first time is wrestling with the concept of aging, and the mortality that inevitably ends it.

For an album that is effectively a study on the different aspects of death, “Whistle Down the Wind” is probably the most honest and intimate depiction of an individual confronting his own mortality, of examining the life he led and not liking what he’s done.

One can imagine "Black Wings" playing in the background as the ghostly image of the poncho-laden Man With No Name of Sergio Leone’s “Dollars Trilogy” rides across the sun-baked orange and red desert.

With "Murder in the Red Barn", Tom Waits offers a tale of small town murder in the American Deep South that would do William Faulkner proud.

"Goin' Out West", simply put, flat-out rawks harder than anything else on Bone Machine. From the moment the drums kick in at the 15-second mark, the tune throbs and pulsates without relent.

“In the Colosseum” details the dog-eat-dog entropy that results when Earth dies screaming, how those left on the planet’s shell fight and clamor over the heaps of stacked bodies to survive just a while longer. It is the sound of anarchy rising.

"A Little Rain" serves as an oasis among Bone Machine's desert of dread and despair.

"Jesus Gonna Be Here" is at once Bone Machine's purest distillation of the blues, a veritable tribute to its traditions and motifs, and a conscious caricature of the form.

In its depiction of a botched suicide, "The Ocean Doesn't Want Me" conjures goosebumps, accelerates heartbeats, and leaves a seasick queasiness in the listener.

With “Who Are You”, Tom Waits scales back the world-reckoning themes of Bone Machine’s previous tracks, internalizing the despair to make one of the album’s most emotionally devastating songs.

In "All Stripped Down", the visual comes to mind of a skin and bones Tom Waits in some tent show revival, his garment frayed and white collar stained yellow, conveying his message of salvation to a crowd of the undead at Armageddon’s zero hour.

Counterbalance rounds out the top 100 of Acclaimed Music's ranking of the most-acclaimed albums of all time by settling down in the Valley and hanging its wild years on a nail that it drove through its wife’s forehead. Tom Waits’ 1983 landmark is next. Never could stand that dog...

Feral and clangy, "Such a Scream" is one of the finest examples of Tom Waits’ ability to hone his workspace and use it as an instrument for imbuing his tunes with atmosphere.

“Dirt in the Ground” is the whimpering microcosm of the individual’s irrelevance. It is the maudlin acceptance of inevitable decay, a funeral dirge for the sadly dead.

We kick off our latest Between the Grooves series today. Among the records of Tom Waits, Bone Machine is the one fans keep hidden amongst themselves, a secret treasure only the devout are privy to and the seasoned are worthy of. Simply put, it is not for the faint of heart.

Down by Law is only Jarmusch's third feature but already shows his confidence in crafting a unique style.

"Matt Mahurin has created an apocalyptic war dream to accompany the song 'Hell Broke Luce'."

Unconvincing stab at something like Beck hanging out with Tom Waits. But it's not.

Wobble Walkin' proves Duke Robillard's skill at his craft while maintaining an understated feel.

A compilation that shows that Bob Seger was at times a good artist, but also shows why he was never really a great one.

Some of 2011's best songwriting came from artists whose work could be broadly defined as "alternative". Few of these artists fit the mold of the traditional singer-songwriter, creating music the blurs the lines defining genres.

Bad As Me is a bracing, defiant attack against things as usual. Its clash and clatter are combative, but in the end -- and here's what throws the suits off -- utterly beautiful.