1996
by Scott Miller

"Jumping Fences" - The Olivia Tremor Control
If, like me, you were never the right person for "electronica," the buzz in 1996 was the Elephant Six music collective, whose first stars were Olivia Tremor Control and Neutral Milk Hotel. The Dusk At Cubist Castle project was authentically experimental, in both its unorthodox spirit and its lack of obvious effort to trim the tedious parts. "Jumping Fences" is a sunny 1970-ish pop song with E6 elements like Wilsonesque barbershop harmonies and rag-tag appearances of percussion and instrumental flourishes—and it constitutes an amazing two-minute slice of Cubist Castle that, loose though it may be, proves these are music people with good ears, good instincts, and real chops.

"Last Man Alive" - Grifters
David Shouse's vocals on "Last Man Alive" are so distinctive and timeless that it could only be in a year like 1996 that they got lost in the shuffle: a year where thousands of sometimes very decent post-grunge guitar bands were flying at the wall, and none were sticking. Based in Memphis, they shared a gruff yet oddly lighthearted nihilism with fellow travelers like Archers of Loaf, but had a way with lyrical moments better suited to capturing mass attention. It sounds farfetched until you hear the song, but it's hard for me to imagine anyone, after just one hearing, not wanting to sing along with, "As for me, of course I'm enraptured by the lilting sounds of Colorblind James."

"Poor Fractured Atlas" - Elvis Costello
At an L.A. show, E.C. introduced this by commenting on a London daily's complaint about the similarity to Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata": "You can't put anything past them." That such an obviously deliberate music reference could be misidentified as unconscious plagiarism emphasises that in music, you can never be very sure who's listening for what—and Elvis doesn't always make it easy for people. A grand master of melody and new wave pop, he gives the frequent impression of indifference to those in favor of genre-hopping mannerism. No doubt it can be frustrating work; only so many listeners are fluent enough to appreciate how really good he can be at all of bossa nova, country, soul, light classical, what have you—yet not so immersed that a contribution of imperfect fluency is superfluous. This sonata filtered through piano-bar soul/gospel is the kind of utilitarian blend that works the best for me. The P.C. anti-macho lyrics are not his best full set, but as a long setup for the climactic repetition of "a woman wouldn't understand it," they do the job.

"The Ocean" - Sebadoh
The sing-songiest of all Sebadoh songs still supplies more psychological back story than the average ten songs. By the time we get to, "It's dumb to even think I had that power/And we haven't been that close in a while," we know these people's psychologies better than two real people after years of therapy. That solo fuzz guitar tag that ends with the three quarter notes is immortal.

"Navy Bean" - Tracy Bonham
I wasn't that much of a fan of the near-novelty smash "Mother, Mother," but I thought The Burdens of Being Upright was for the most part a typically impressive result from the Fort Apache world, "The One" was exceptional, and "Navy Bean" was exceptionally exceptional. Unabashedly tuneful for an angry, skittish punk number, I think it's about something like one individual directing another to "parade around" in revealing clothes, e.g. something as small as a navy bean. I feel like I don't quite get it, and I don't even know if the point is agitation over being the parader, but hey, count me in, I think.

"Been It" - The Cardigans
The high-gloss Betty Boop rock of "Lovefool" caught the ears of millions of the types of fans who would probably want nothing to do with the throttling rhythm section and cynicism of "Been It," or most of the rest of the material from the audacious, generally outstanding "First Band On the Moon."

"Cut-Out Witch" - Guided By Voices
The first non-low-fi GBV release is gratingly trebly, which in context I think has to be hailed as victory; they were, as Jack Black would say, still sticking it to the man. Yet another of Pollard's songs about supernatural women, this one may be the Fate in charge of album releases going into cut-out bins (there's also "Lord Of Overstock"). We owe Pollard a debt for forcing the world to continue to value guitar riffs this cool.

"6th Avenue Heartache" - The Wallflowers
I must say, Jakob Dylan and Adam Duritz's vocal harmonies on this are sensational. I never get tired of listening to them—which if you know this 5:30 song, is lucky. The words aren't a technical tour de force, but evoke a structural intensity by ostensibly treating a legacy inherited from a homeless street musician who dies one day, in a way that fades in and out of focus with respect to Jakob's formidable real family legacy. The slide guitar sounds like George Harrison's work with Dylan Pere circa 1970, e.g. "If Not For You."

"Please Return It" - The Posies
Most great artists define a new and unique region of hell. Led Zeppelin hell is 30 minutes of echoey jamming broken up by two minutes of lyrics about Hobbits. Posies hell is seven minutes of sludgy, unparseable drop-string minor chords with scenery-chewing regret over personal excesses, in harmony. "Please Return It" threatens to be that, but is in fact really good, thanks to intangibles all hitting right, like the extra lyric repetition in, "When we live the life we live/It's never ours completely/Not completely." The end chant of, "There's an upside, there has to be an upside" captures something real about how desperation feels.

"How Do I Understand My Motorman" - Julian Cope
This lost treasure sounds like it was recorded on cassette, and by what redaction the word "understand" in the title replaces the "know" of the sterling hook line that could only have ever been "How do I know my motorman?" is as much a mystery to me as how the concept of knowing one's motorman should adjust my spirituality. I think the overall lyrical point here is that Christians going to church in their drab clothes bespeak an oppressive tolerance of insufficient "improvement" on God's part, as if we might fire the current God and hire a better one. Born-again druid Julian was probably far from ruling that out. To me it sounds like Edwardian spiritualism warmed over, but hey, I adore the song, and "When blabbermouth came down from the sky" made me laugh out loud.

"New Test Leper" - R.E.M.
"I can't say that I love Jesus/That would be a hollow claim" begins this fairly naturalistic depiction of confrontation with a hostile "studio audience," to whom the narrator suggests, "Call me a leper." But now, did this audience deserve a slap like that, or is it okay enough for them not to profess love for him, because that would be a hollow claim? Martyrdom: still tricky business in 1996! "New Test Leper's" lovely Dylan-based folk is uncomplicated, but nuanced with perfect intelligence in the best Murmur tradition.

"Stay Where You Are" - Sleater-Kinney
The vocals are a whining Gordian knot of interwoven petulance, a strangely compelling satanic inverse of "We Got the Beat."

"Miracle Medicine" - Jason Falkner
Something of a wizard of surprise-chord-change pop rock, Jason Falkner's promise in Jellyfish is fulfilled on Presents Author Unknown. The lyrics are surprising, too: doctors not being able to give him the right medicine as a metaphor for... doctors not being able to give him the right medicine! Stick it to Dr. Man.

"You're One" - Imperial Teen
Roddy Bottum's Imperial Teen was an ear-opening revelation after Faith No More for, oh, people who followed music before 1985 Beastie Boys. They have a way with insistent repetition closely related to that of the Feelies. "You're One" is apparently "about Kurt Cobain" according to the New York Times; that would never have been obvious to me, but one hilarious biz detail is this observation of a poorly-attended show: "If there's no ears then there's no sound/Then there's no tree, then there's no ground." Steve McDonald from Redd Kross was an inspired choice for producer, whose technique I fantasize started and ended with pegging every track into the red.

"Radiation Vibe" - Fountains of Wayne
I enjoyed this album while under the impression that they were the same people who did the spot-on music for the film That Thing You Do; if that's not really true, well, when the subject is loving music, life is too short to check facts. "Radiation Vibe" is not quite a grabber until the chorus, but what a chorus: "It's a radiation vibe I'm grooving on" positively seizes ownership of the 1-5-4 change as if exploiting its real potential for the first time.

"The Speed of Things" - Robyn Hitchcock
I'll say it again: Robyn is a deep cat. The "grow wings"/"grow horns" verse is a just slightly embarrassing ending to what is otherwise a gleaming jewel in the Hitchcock song catalog. The repeated "at the speed of things" resolution is a magical incantation. I have young children and "I fed you in your chair this morning/You made a mess of everything/By afternoon, you drove a sports car/You were driving at the speed of things" captures the implacable mystery of time's passing in a way that can choke me up; he really gets it. The tune, part Elizabethan harpsichord, part Celtic folk, is truly a thing of beauty.

"Seeing Other People" - Belle and Sebastian
My favorite line is, "And you can't understand why all the other boys are going for the new, tall, elegant rich kids," but every line announces that Stuart Murdock is a force, as does the instrumentation that will have nothing to do with hard rock; I want to credit Vince Guaraldi with some influence. Ordinarily I would think I'm reading far too much into it were I to observe that "Seeing other people, at least that's what we say we are doing" has an overtone of really seeing other people, as in, acknowledging the reality of their feelings—that's what we say we're doing. With Belle and Sebastian, I'm tempted to give them the benefit of the doubt.

"Naomi" - Neutral Milk Hotel
This devastatingly gorgeous recording is one of the best musical translations of the feeling of being ravished by beauty. The "one billion" this and "one billion" that are in reasonable service of the sheer overwhelming breathlessness of it all: "Your prettiness is seeping through/Out from the dress I took from you." Avery Island sounds like everything was recorded deep into saturation, which is just the right thing for the exhilarating launch moment leading into "I'm watching Naomi, full bloom."

"Crosseyed" - Brendan Benson
A whole lot of people know who Brendan Benson is these days, as the co-pilot of the Raconteurs, but at the time, no one really noticed his debut One Mississippi except as a somewhat high-profile Virgin Records flop—but that was the golden age of bands going through the mill, so that kind of thing wasn't even really news. I recall it being near chance that I pulled it out of the bargain bin on the strength of some Jason Falkner ghost-writing, and was I glad I did. The album has its slack moments compared with later work, but almost right away there's one of those Benson moments that burns as brightly as anything: "Bird's Eye View." The verse almost exactly prefigures Ted Leo and the Pharmacists ("You can't escape the jails or the crucifier's nails/So just have a seat, breathe slowly and deeply/Repeat after me, I'm sorry"—could that be straight off Tyranny Of Distance, or what?), and then there's the glorious chorale of "so dress your sons and daughters in neutral colors and pray." Bonus martyrdom shout outs to Messrs. Cope and Stipe! For all of that, the prize is "Crosseyed," with its slow burn on, "Twitchy lady, so lovely with your short hair/Where do you come from, where are you going?" To some extent, I can defend my intense love for this song. "My friends think you're ugly; they don't see what I see" would skirt abusiveness if those words were actually conveyed socially, but the point here is to drive the attraction completely outside the purview of social mediation, outside the physical, to the realm of a pure—to use a sadly overused word—connection. I don't mean to be sleazy when I suggest that there's an admirable assertion that indifference to physical perfection can work as cheap thrills: "She was crooked and bent, with her eyes half shut/And her dirty mouth was open just a little." Beyond the range of what I can articulate, some musical passages strike me as so perfect I can offer no explanation other than that part of my soul must be shaped that way at some hard-wired level; and this partakes of that.

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photos of scott & anton by N.D. Koster.