Last night, I decided to man up and just make one Mt. Rushmore for 1996. It's supposed to be the best of the best, so I will cut it down to four albums. As I'm typing this, I still haven't picked the fourth album. Ok, its been a few more minutes and I made the call. The albums I had to cut are Beck Odelay, Wilco Being There, STP Tiny Music, Fountains of Wayne self-titled, Superdrag Regretfully Yours, The Refreshments Fizzy, Fuzzy, Big and Buzzy, Better Than Ezra Friction Baby, Tobin Sprout Carnival Boy and Squirrel Nut Zippers Hot. All great albums. Some I have already written posts about.
I thought I knew the number one album before this experiment began, but as I reviewed all the releases for 1996 I had a change of heart. Number one is Sloan's One Chord to Another. I call Sloan the Canadian Beatles. Every member of the band is a singer/songwriter. The cool thing about Sloan is they switch instruments, even during live shows. It's like a band of four Paul McCartneys. However, it's Chris Murphy, Jay Ferguson, Patrick Pentland and Andrew Scott. As advertised, One Chord to Another is exactly that; a barage of power pop chords with ample hand claps and some Canadian brand self-deprecation. This is also the sound of a confident band at the height of their powers. They come right out with a short banger, "The Good in Everyone". The song begins, "First off, here's what you do to me. You get rough, attack my self-esteem. It's not much, but it's the best I got. And I thought you saw the good in everyone". There's not a weak track on this album, but other highlights include "G Turns to D", "The Lines You Amend", "Can't Face Up" and the tremendous "Everything You've Done Wrong". This track has great handclaps and possibly the best use of horns in a rock song. My perception is that it's an homage to "Care of Cell 44" by The Zombies. It's about waiting for your love to come home from prison after doing their time.
The second album is Centro-matic's Redo the Stacks. I have posted about this lo-fi masterpiece before and Will Johnson is still my favorite songwriter. Centro-matic reformed recently for some local shows in Texas, so I am cautiously optimistic that maybe they will do something again in the future. I saw Will open for Bob Mould before the pandemic and he was great.
Number three is arguably the best of the classic era Guided by Voices albums, Under the Bushes, Under the Stars. Unlike some GbV albums, this is all killer, no filler. "Your Name is Wild", "Cut-out Witch", "The Official Ironmen Rally Song", "Underwater Explosions" and "Don't Stop Now" are just a few of the amazing Pollard tracks just from the regular album. Did I forget to mention there's a bonus set of songs including "Big Boring Wedding", "Drag Days" and "Redmen and Their Wives". Also I haven't mentioned the fantastic Tobin Sprout songs "It's Like Soul Man", "Atom Eyes"and "To Remake the Young Flyer". This album is packed with GbV goodness.
Finally, I went with the last great album by one of my top 5 bands, R.E.M.'s New Adventures in Hi-Fi. The thing I love about New Adventures is that it's a road album by a band who knew who they were and had the faith in themselves to release such a raw and power document. It's truly a fitting end to the Bill Berry era. Berry was in many ways the MVP of R.E.M. He pushed the guys in the early days by threatening to leave the band to join Love Tractor, he made the connections with IRS and he was very protective of the R.E.M. sound. This is a great set of songs that were written on the road. The only negative is it's probably a bit too long, but I wouldn't cut anything. R.E.M. will be on many Mt. Rushmores in the "80's.
Just a teaser for 1995. The four albums I picked are all probably in my top 10 of all time and are really 1A, 1B, 1C and 1D. I will probably force myself to rank them, but I love them all for different reasons. And I had to leave off many albums that are tremendous. All will be revealed tomorrow. Peace.
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