The story of Portishead can be told as a tale of three albums. On Dummy (1994), Portishead created a masterful blast of recombinant culture. They started with Gibbons’ torch song...
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I tend to be the type of music fan who likes to hear a little edge or irregularity or pushing of musical boundaries when I listen. Straight-up singer-songwriter stuff doesn’t...
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Tindersticks’ self-titled debut is a minor masterpiece of brooding, muted anguish, a whiskey-soaked, carnival-meets-barroom blues gem. In a drearily slurred and mumbled delivery, vocalist Stuart Staples paints a picture of...
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To me, Pearl Jam always played a more conventional second fiddle to Nirvana’s artistic brilliance throughout the alt-rock period of the early ‘90s. When I first heard Nirvana, they seemed...
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For one brief moment, the Boo Radleys were great. Whereas their previous album had been a fairly routine (if still decent) shoegaze affair, the aptly named Giant Steps (1993) incorporated...
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In the ‘60s, the Beatles introduced the sitar to the Western world; in the ‘80s we listened to Paul Simon’s Afro-Funk lite and Peter Gabriel’s use of Middle Eastern and...
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Sometimes it’s best to keep things simple and direct, prune the excess and get down to basics. Many an out-there band has found success by taking a step back toward...
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Björk’s Debut (1993) album came as a bit of a surprise to me. I had known her previously through the Icelandic band the Sugarcubes, whose debut album was a late-‘80s...
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When I first checked out the Afghan Whigs back in the day, I couldn’t get into them. Returning to them now, I confirm that on first (re)listen I don’t find...
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Being in Boston for grad school in the early- to mid-‘90s meant that Morphine was the local act to see. I saw them several times, and at their best, they...
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