Loud Family - Music: What Happened?

1998
by Scott Miller

"Teardrop" - Massive Attack
There was just enough techno/sample permeation out there in 1998 to start thinking, crap, is this stuff really going to take over? I had a little fear of the unknown. The Nirvana effect was winding down in 1998; people who like pop rock to be obsolete were getting all frisky. "Teardrop" is an obviously successful track, with Elizabeth Fraser from the Cocteau Twins doing some enchanting vocals, but I guess in the world of trip hop that approaches these matters in a way that's alien to me, one understands the really important achievements to be, first, the sample drum beat, and, second, the guest remixes that sometimes get rid of the vocal entirely. There's not a thing wrong with that drum track, with the cool vinyl crackle sound and all, but I think you have to be British to hang on the details of the beats/remix world as lovingly as a deeply alcoholic 1958 Frank Sinatra fan ever tracked his master's voice. Techno didn't exactly start going away after 1998, but it did stop taking over. Little squelchy drum machine tracks on Aimee Mann records were going to be okay for some time, but any more "jungle" backing tracks on Bowie records would now be right out of the question.

"Call Me Dave" - John Easdale
"When you call me, and you will" is a splendid hook; you feel it when you realize you've waited most of the song for it to come around again. Championed by the late great Greg Dwinnell, there's something uniquely special about John Easdale that I've never quite put my finger on, but he's extremely personable—you expect him to be more gruff than is the reality—and he has an incredible ear for picking good cover tunes—or, I should say, scooping me on my own cover ideas. Oh, that's Clem Burke from Blondie on drums.

"Celebrity Skin" - Hole
Still growling words and changing power chords very much like the Kurt of 1991, Courtney is also still bewailing the seediness and emptiness of celebrity very much like the Courtney of Miss World. I guess I'm still interested; "Might Have Been," "Never Was," and "Forgotten" introducing themselves around the room is a funny touch, and "There's only us here now" is a good restatement minus the flip tone.

"Circles" - Soul Coughing
Mitch Easter alerted me to Tchad Blake's importance as a latter day engineer, and this happens to be the recording where I feel like I'm most aware of hearing him do his thing: big low end, clever use of junky instrument sounds. It's also a very catchy tune, and Soul Coughing have their insightful moments ("Blame is the cure/cure anything").

"Tell Him" - Lauryn Hill
There's a whole lot of Jesus here for such a critics' favorite. A beautiful, somewhat unlikely Martin-sounding guitar pattern supports a bouquet of ensemble soul emoting, plenty of first Corinthians, and an effortless way with words in general ("Make me unselfish without being blind").

"Car Wheels on a Gravel Road" - Lucinda Williams
Painterly details from the title on down tell the story of non-urban inattentiveness as it feels to a child somewhere within driving distance of "Jackson": "a little bit of dirt mixed with tears." Steve Earle's hard-drinking mandolin sonics are irresistible to the ear.

"Flagpole Sitta" - Harvey Danger
As close to a crazy, juvenile, grass-roots radio smash hit as can happen in the last decade or so, this song has rightfully infiltrated film and TV wherever there's a call for an infusion of recklessness. You've probably heard it: "I'm not sick, but I'm not well," "Paranoia, paranoia, everybody's coming to get me."

"Danny Boy" - Rufus Wainwright
Rufus's debut is undeniably remarkable, though not in any bludgeoningly attention-getting way. Mostly it's his singing, which harkens back to pre-rock times: I keep thinking of Al Jolson. Am I hearing hammered dulcimer or is that a piano? I ordinarily don't like hammered dulcimer, but it works in a Jon Brion production where everything seems to have an ironic wink to it, better than where musicians are too high on the Appalachiana of it to notice the notes are running together inconveniently. The song is long and has almost no structural climaxes, but the near-drone of the vocal, holding notes so as to fill in as much silence as possible, simply won't take no for an answer to emotional engagement. The lyrics are imperfect, but there's certainly somebody home, e.g. in a thoughtful if unforthcoming line like, "My smile, a trick/Tricking me and trying not to scare you."

"Liar" - Royal Trux
Purchasing a Pussy Galore record was, I think, the worst I've ever felt ripped off as a music buyer, and the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion was pretty decent but a little too performance art for me. So it was a bit of a surprise for me to like Royal Trux's Accelerator so much. The way they tear down and reassemble the components of a trashy rock song—the completely unexpected drum pattern, gated loudness-curve fuzz guitar, volume swell accents—is inspired and ends up sounding strangely together and powerful on a car stereo next to more by-the-numbers crunchy rock productions.

"Sad Professor" - R.E.M.
With its dubiously coherent opening track and Bill Berry void, it's easy to identify Up as a trouble sign for R.E.M., but really this is how far back you currently have to go to get obviously great Stipe lyrics. How good is "float their malcontent"? Did he make that up? In a minimalist way, a very good track musically, too.

"Black Horse" - Gastr del Sol
An intricately festive and folky string instrumental call-and-response with mostly Celtic but also what I want to call Baltic overtones—not that much like Squirrel Bait—resolves after a minute or two into a crystalline modern-compositiony plucked guitar ensemble section. A lovely island of hand-wrought music amid the laptops.

"Much Against Everyone's Advice" - Soulwax
Concocted by a Belgian duo using an "electronica" approach, "Much Against Everyone's Advice" is really state-of-the-art straight, melodically adventurous power pop. The CD packaging alone is worth the admission price: all the songs are given their own distressed vintage 45 graphics within the booklet.

"King of Carrot Flowers" - Neutral Milk Hotel
My band played at the San Francisco Terrastock in 1998—a very memorable musical experience—and NMH were a highlight despite loud rock not being the best way to listen to them. I'm one of the few people who were a little more taken with 1996's On Avery Island, but "King of Carrot Flowers" is one of those songs nobody doesn't like. "Mom would stick a fork right into Daddy's shoulder... As we lay and learned what each other's bodies were for" is somewhere between comical and horribly vivid.

"Nobody's Fault But My Own" - Beck
I was a little on the fence about Beck until Mutations, which emphatically won me over. Putting out a moralistic, non-hip-hop art rock album at that point in his career showed real nerve. Nigel Godrich's "Within You, Without You" sonics are impeccable.

"Love Is" - Myracle Brah
Here is about as tight a compaction of power pop as you can get—Mersey beat, summer of love, Hurdy Gurdy Man guitar and Magical Mystery Tour harmonies all piled into a 1:53 phone booth. Visitors to Mojo magazine's "90s Power Pop Buyer's Guide" will figure out why I know about this one.

"I've Got a Feeling" - Ivy
This collaboration between the esteemed Adam Schlesinger and Parisienne Dominique Durand is almost as instantly and universally recognizable as a gorgeous song as "There She Goes" by the La's, and that's really saying something.

"Cornerstone" - Richard X. Heyman
A simple but strangely compelling one-chord groove introduces an affecting vocal harmony number about life-long reflection. There's a Christian motif where "the stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone" (as I hear it, Jesus as advocate for society's outcasts); that may be this concept and the "building" a church, or it may not be that. But one way or another I would expect Heyman and Roger McGuinn to get along.

"Johnny Feelgood" - Liz Phair
For some reason often considered a dud, the first thing that strikes me about Whitechocolatespaceegg is how great it sounds—the kind of recording that reminds you how much more can ordinarily be expected from this period than from, for instance, the mid-1980s. Liz had gotten into a desperate-appearing pattern of casting around for different producers, all of whom sound very respectable, especially good old Brad Wood on this one. The dub breakdown is sonically fun without being hokey, and Liz hasn't run out of good girl talk.

"Reaching One" - Girl Bros.
This is Wendy and Lisa from Prince and the Revolution. I don't know how busy they've been keeping themselves with music in general, but this is a dazzling composition from a very nice little album. The verse is the star, with the hanging major sevenths on "here I go again." And you know what? It's got a great beat! Just a very compelling synthetic(-sounding) rhythm section composition. I think I've become repentant since complaining about people focusing on drum beats; part of the original charter for rock and roll was that it had a great beat that the squares didn't dig, right? Anyway, I'm not square enough not to love this low, lean shuffle, and the complicated missing-you emotions of, "It's like something I don't want, but I don't want to end," and "When I think that I've got something new to say/I remember that it's the same thing I said yesterday." That lowness and leanness is, by the way, no doubt due in part to our man Tchad Blake at the controls.