Dig Me Out: 90s & 00s Rock

On their 1996 major label debut Tin Cans With Strings To You, the Sacramento, CA band  Far  find themselves at an interesting crossroads. By this point in the decade, grunge is well past its expiration date, so how do you describe a rock band that can synthesize New York City post-hardcore and Washington D.C. emo, with hints of the burgeoning San Diego screamo scene? Thanks to our Patreon patrons...

For the tens of thousands of bands who signed to a major label, put out a record, scored a minor hit and disappeared, there just as many divergent stories of what happened after the temporary spotlight dimmed. In the case of Jonny Polonsky, his tale started in the suburbs of Chicago, home recording cassette albums as a teen in his bedroom and dialing up famous guitarists for feedback, which lead h...

When an established name like Trent Reznor shows up in the credits of a 90s industrial album, the natural starting point is to compare it Nine Inch Nails. But what about when the artist is not a contemporary or disciple, but a predecessor? That's the case with  Kevin McMahon , veteran of new wave group Lucky Pierre going back to the 70s, and where the Reznor connection occurs in the late 80s. Than...

In the first of a new roundtable series, we're taking a look back at the 90s origins of Spoon, and how they went from devotees of Frank Black and Robert Pollard, to one of the most consistently interesting and successful bands of the 2000s. Britt Daniel and Jim Eno, the core singer/songwriter/guitarist and drummer/producer of Spoon, have been at it for almost thirty years. In the 2000s, starting w...

Let's get this out of the way - thanks to the ridiculous nature of regional rights and legal mumbo-jumbo surrounding album releases, we are occasionally stuck reviewing the edited and inferior US release of an album rather than the original UK or Australian version that the artist intended. That's what happened when one of our  Patreon  patrons selected the sophomore album Six by  Mansun  for us t...

Mark E. Smith of  The Fall  was a divisive character, turning people on or off with his kinetic one-note, occasionally slurred, stream of consciousness vocal delivery. After a decade and a half of abrasive post punk, line-up changes and restlessness led to a stylistic change, accounting for several electronic and IDM influenced albums. 1993's The Infotainment Scan falls into this era, while still...

The story of  The Nixons  is not unlike a number of 1990s bands. Record some demos and release them on your own, find a small regional label to release your first album recorded on a shoe-string budget, get some buzz, the major labels swoop in, offer to re-release the album with a few new tracks, new cover art and a fresh mastering job, then throw out a single or two in hopes of a "next big thing"...

Fini Scad  only managed to release one album during their short existence, but thanks to one of our listeners we're giving it a new lease on life. 1998's Wider Screen, and their EP from two years early, got the band onto Australian radio and television, but they burned out quickly and were gone the same year the album came out. We don't know what exactly happened, but we do know they left behind a...

Every decade of rock music and its various sub genre offshoots has produced oft-debated lists of notable drummers, and the 1990s is no exception. From the jazz-influenced speed of The Smashing Pumpkins Jimmy Chamberlain, to the technical progressive prowess of Dream Theater's Mike Portnoy, there is drummer for every style and flavor. Rather than discuss "the best," we're talking favorites, both we...

By the time William and Jim Reid of the  Jesus And Mary Chain  put out the 1998 album Munki, the band had been through several iterations. From the noise drenched simplicity of Psychocandy to the pulsing beats of Automatic and the lazy strums of Stoned and Dethroned, the brothers had covered plenty of musical territory while still maintaining the attitude and sound unique to the band. In what woul...

Hailing from Canberra, Australia, the 1992 sophomore album Psychohum by the  Falling Joys  is what alternative or college or indie rock, however you want to classify it, looked to be heading pre-Nirvana and Pearl Jam. Eclectic and unpredictable, with guitar tones and vocals that easily slip between shoegaze, jangle pop, new wave and mainstream rock riffing, the Falling Joys sound like a band hitti...

Our Patreon patron Brandon wanted to check out the 1999 (or 2000, if you bought the Sony rerelease) album This Will Be Laughing Week by Ultimate Fakebook . Through the magic of our Facebook page, we ended up connecting with lead singer and guitarist Bill McShane and drummer Eric Melin, and they ended up joining us as well. In addition, we gave away a pair of Sudio Regent headphones to one of our l...

By 1998  Tori Amos  was already established an artist who balanced both commercial success and critical praise. With her fourth album, From The Choirgirl Hotel, Amos dialed down the piano and dialed up the band, exploring a fuller sound that moved between electronic(a) beats, Beatle stomps and a slew of new sounds. In surrendering her confessional piano ballad comfort zone, a broader approach does...

Through the 1980s, U2  had gone from upstart punks to political firebrands to stadium superstars, reaching the critical crossroad of either delivering what people expected and remaining creatively stagnant or reinventing their sound and risk alienation. By all accounts, 1991's Achtung Baby managed to position the band as a force at the beginning of the decade creatively, commercially and criticall...

Nada Surf scored a quirky one-hit wonder with "Popular," and as with most one-hit wonders, pressure from the record label to follow it up caused a divide. In this case, Nada Surf were dropped, record in hand, which they were able to release on their own label. While The Proximity Effect received some positive press upon release in 1998 (in the UK, 2000 in the US), it went mostly unnoticed. It wasn...

While we have traveled, musically speaking, to Europe and Australia quite often, Japan has been a much rarer trip, and we've never revisited an album that wasn't primarily recorded in English. Until now. Thanks to a patron selection, we're checking out the 2000 album Shōso Strip by  Ringo Sheena . It's hard to nail down the sound or style of Ringo Sheena on her second album, which bounces from ele...

Do you remember 1995? If you do, you probably remember "In The Meantime" by  Spacehog  off their debut album Resident Alien. The single went to number one on the US mainstream chart, number two on the US modern rock chart, and top fifty in about every country that had a radio station. The album went Gold in the US and Platinum in Canada, and the video was in constant rotation on MTV. So what happe...

By 1993,  James  were already established with a string of successful UK singles on their four previous album. But with the release of  Laid , they managed to crack wide open United States college and mainstream radio playlists with the quirky and catchy title track. However, like so many albums released in the 90s, a hit single does not always represent the sound of the band overall. While James...

Our  Patreon patrons  often surprise us. Our poll for April of 1998 included revered and critically acclaimed albums, but instead the votes went a surprising way.  Stabbing Westward 's third album Darkest Days, could (and was) written off in some circles as a Nine Inch Nails wannabe. In revisiting this, and other records there were not critical darlings in the 1990s, it is easy to see why. Followi...

Upon release in 1996, Skinny Puppy 's eight album The Process divided and confused longtime fans, some accusing the band of selling out and writing rock and metal singles for a major label. While a band like Ministry was able to slip the heavier/noiser end of industrial into periphery of mainstream of MTV and commercial radio with Psalm 69, neither reached the heights of a band like Nine Inch Nail...

New York City has been a global epicenter for music and culture in general for decades, so it is no surprise that the the 1990s are no different. From the legendary Velvet Underground, KISS and Blondie, to indie rock progenitors Sonic Youth, Talking Heads and Television, to the punk of the New York Dolls, Ramones and The Dictators, as well as the hip-hop, disco, electronic and dance scenes, the 19...

During our revisit of the one and only  Talk Show  album featuring the three guys not named  Scott Weiland  from  Stone Temple Pilots  during their infamous 1997 hiatus, we remarked how the music remained steady but the vocals and melodies were less interesting. Now we get to examine the other side of that temporary split with Weiland's 1998 solo debut 12 Bar Blues. Would the lack of the DeLeo bro...

Like any decade of rock music and commercial radio, the 1990s had plenty of one hit wonders, many of which we talked about in our  One Hit Wonders Roundtable .  Marcy Playground  managed their own, with  Sex and Candy  in 1997 spending fifteen weeks at number on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart, and top ten on four other US charts, as well as top ten in Canada and Australia, and top thirty i...

Going into this episode, we thought desert rock and stoner rock were the same thing. We were wrong. We thought the "desert rock sound" started with the Sabbath influence lowend fuzzed riffs of Kyuss. We were wrong on that as well. There is an important lesson here - makes sure you are open to preconceived notions being challenged because the truth maybe more interesting than the vision in your hea...

You may know him from the "avant-punk" of 1990s  Shudder To Think , but you'd probably been listening to  Craig Wedren  in some way in the last twenty years. From his frequent collaborations with writer/director  David Wain  on the various Wet Hot American Summer television seasons and movie, Role Models, Stella and Wainy Days, to his recent work on shows like Fresh Off The Boat, GLOW, Powerless,...