Dig Me Out: 90s & 00s Rock

When they released their debut album Showbiz in the US in 1999, Muse were one of a number of bands compared to the Pablo Honey/The Bends era of Radiohead thanks to Matt Bellamy's Thom Yorke like tenor and Johnny Greenwood's guitar acrobatics. But Muse were doing it as a three-piece, and over time the band shed the unfair comparisons to forge a path that paid as much homage to the bombast of classi...

Thanks to old friend of the show Chip Midnight , when patron Dewey Cole suggested revisiting the 1993 self-titled debut album from Dig , Chip reached out to lead singer and guitarist Scott Hackwith to have him join us to revisit this record. Dewey only came to record recently, so he provides a unique perspective of discovering an album seventeen years after its release. Chip interviewed Scott when...

If you've listened to this podcast long enough, you know that we are not always in agreement about what works and doesn't work for us on various albums. One of the earliest disagreements was back in Season One when we checked out the 1993 album Four by Seaweed . Thanks to a recent listener suggested poll on our Patreon site , we're back ten years later to check out the 1995 follow-up Spanaway, the...

While we have chatted with many artists over the years, rarely have we been able to get the record label perspective on the various ups and downs of the 90s. For this episode, we're lucky to get singer/songwriter Michael McDermott , who has been making records for thirty years, and the A&R rep who helped kick off that career, Brian Koppelman . While Brian is better known for his screenwriting (Rou...

While the 90s were dominated by the touring festival as opposed to the current day destination festival, the first half and second half had decidedly different approaches. Lollapalooza took a variety of artists from across genres with the intention of exposing artists across differing fanbases, whereas the Warped Tour, Ozzfest, H.O.R.D.E. Tour, and Lilith Fair each narrowed their focus. In the cas...

Forging a sound out of American grunge and alternative along with British Invasion hooks and power pop melodies may seem like a recipe for disaster, but on their 1996 debut Less Is More, the Melbourne, Australian trio Even find the right balance. Channeling a Kurt Cobain cadence on one track and a John Lennon howl on another works best when the band keeps the songs short and tight, with plenty of...

Once the alternative gold rush hit for bands in the 90s, one song could make or break an album. But for every Sex And Candy, Cumbersome or Possum Kingdom, hundreds of other bands failed to make the Top 40 for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with the quality of the music. Take Vancouver, Canada's Odds , whose third album Good Weird Feeling is a smart combination of alternative guitar r...

Though not as lauded as grunge, Brit-pop, the rise of pop-punk or other 90s-centric genres, electronic music evolved throughout the decade as well thanks to subtler sounds coming out of the UK. While electronica and trip-hop each had their moments in the mainstream spotlight, groups like the brother-duo Boards of Canada from Scotland slid under the radar with slightly different takes, theirs being...

Though the mid-to-late nights are more regarded for the commercial rise of electronic music, specifically in the form of UK electronica from the Chemical Brothers, Prodigy and others, the mainstream interest in high octane beats and synth-over-guitar was nothing new. As the 80s transitioned to the 90s, bands like Depeche Mode and New Order were firmly established global phenomenons, while up-and-c...

As we have learned in our Sophomore Slump Revisited roundtable series, there are many factors and circumstances that can sink a band's second album, especially when coming off a hit single. In the case of Dada and their 1994 release American Highway Flower, the lack of an obvious radio single to match Dizz Knee Land off their debut is a fair consideration. Rather than repeat a formula, the skilled...

Edward James "Ed" Hamell, better know as Hamell On Trial, has been writing, recording, and touring for over thirty years, bouncing from major labels to minor labels to his own, with either a studio or live album out almost every other year. While production values have shifted, the fiery anti-folk and spoken word approach has remained constant, and his 1999 album is definitely on the lower end of...

Sunny Day Real Estate has famously been a band of influence but impermanence, with multiple break-ups and rumors of an unfinished album in the can for over a decade. On their second release, the 1995 self-titled or Pink Album or LP2, vocalist/guitarist/lyricist Jeremy Enigk left unfinished vocals as placeholders as the band splintered. What it creates is something unique, while words or phrases po...

So many bands got signed to major labels in the 1990s it could keep our podcast going well into the 22nd century. Rarely did artists get a second go-around as a new act, as was the case with vocalist Blake Smith and bassist Mike Willison after the breakup of their band Fig Dish. After recruiting a new guitarist and drummer, they formed Caviar and in 2000 released their self-titled debut on Island...

Lots of bands were successful in the 90s, but few reached the decade long highs and success that R.E.M. managed while constantly shifting their sound. Perhaps only U2 matched the same levels of critical acclaim and pushback, album sales and slumps, turmoil and triumph of R.E.M., conquering not only their home countries but stadiums around the globe. In our past "In The 90s" episodes, we've looked...

Among the many signings by the legendary Sub Pop label in the 1980s and 1990s, a few bands get tagged with "the first" label. The Afghan Whigs were the first band from outside region to be signed to the label, and in the case of this week's episode, The Walkabouts were the first country (or folk, or Americana, or alt-country) band to be signed to the label. Core members vocalist Carla Torgerson an...

You may ask yourself, why is a 90s-centric podcast revisiting an album from 2000? Well, we are nothing without our listeners, and if they suggest and then vote for an album that came out in 2000, but was from a band that got their start and had several releases in the 90s, who are we to argue. And it turns out revisiting Idlewild 's 2000 album 100 Broken Windows gave us an excellent opportunity to...

It took twenty-three years for Giants Chair to follow-up their 1996 sophomore album Purity And Control with the 2019 album Prefabylon, which we discussed briefly in our 2019 New Albums Roundtable . Though we've covered plenty of 90s bands reuniting a decade or two later to make new records, prior to Prefabylon Giants Chair weren't on our radar. Thanks to one of Patreon patrons we got the chance to...

1990 is a strange, contradictory year for music. How else do you explain alternative and underground bands like Jane's Addiction, Concrete Blonde, Faith No More and The B-52's taking up regular MTV rotation slots next to MC Hammer, Warrant, Paula Abdul and Vanilla Ice? There's a good chance you saw They Might Be Giant's "Birdhouse In Your Soul" right after Billy Idol's "Cradle of Love," or "We Die...

One and done bands are always an interesting listen, whether they were full-formed bands, one-off side-projects or solo albums, or something else entirely. In the case of Bandit Queen , they formed out of the ashes of Swirl, retaining three of the four members and an indie rock sound. Gone were the jammy rhythms and chorus'd guitars for a more straightforward approach, reminiscent of American fema...

There are plenty of anomalies in what did and didn't become popular in the rise of alternative music during the 1990s. Take for instance They Might Be Giants , who's breakthrough 1990 album Flood with almost thirty tracks of weird and quirky songs that combine humor and musical knowledge into a wholly unique recording. So what then to follow it up? The band decided to produce themselves, and rock...

By 1999, the musical landscape had seen the rise and fall of a variety of genres touted as the next big thing. The electronic sounds of The Chemical Brothers and The Prodigy offered varying takes on electronica, which bands would incorporate elements of over the years that followed. In the case of Skunk Anansie and their 1999 album Post Orgasmic Chill, it means adding layers to an already layered...

Our look back at Season Nine of the podcast really highlighted how much growth we've experienced and how much more we have ahead of us. We turned over the selection of our roundtable episodes to our Steering Committee and Board of Director level Patreon patrons, and the results did not disappoint. Our poll selected episodes were as interesting and diverse as ever, and our patrons selected reviews...

For our final roundtable of 2019, we invited several of our Patreon patrons to discuss the new albums released this year from artists connected to the 1990s. Turns out, 2019 had dozens of albums that qualified, over a hundred in reality. We talked about new releases from bands like UK shoegazers Swervedriver and Ride, the long-awaited return of Tool, a stellar new release from The Sheila Divine, p...

Bands like Animal Bag were dime a dozen in the early 1990s. Getting signed, putting out a record, the musical landscape shifts, and suddenly your sound is outdated and the record label is in flux. Their 1992 self-titled debut has reverb-filled production that pins it to the start of the decade, and taking cues from fellow Californians like Faith No More, Jane's Addiction, and Red Hot Chili Peppers...

Where is the line between rock and metal? What about stoner or desert? And what is doom besides a video game and bad movie? All questions worthy of discussion as we revisit the 1992 album Sleep's Holy Mountain by Sleep . Baked into the sound of Sleep is the ever-present influence of 70s Black Sabbath, but with an occasional pummeling dirge closer to The Melvins, while trafficking in the same sun-s...