When released in 1990, Codeine's debut felt like the product of underground outsiders on the verge of homelessness. Years later, Frigid Stars, a slowcore classic, has lost none of its damaged intensity. But distance has revealed the disc's rightful place in rock history. Back then, the trio was seen as Sonic Youth street scum interpreting Joy Division's bleak post-punk. Nowadays, however, Codeine sounds equally in debt to Pink Floyd's mid-'70s atmospherics. What a cool realization.
Loneliest in the morning is right. From the Joni-like cover to the piano 'n' strum confessionals, this is album is chock-full of sad-eyed singer-songwriter fare for those who listen to music while curled into a fetal ball. Don't laugh! We all feel the pain every now and then, and you can do a lot worse than Julie Doiron. Few musicians can make so much from so little. After nearly 20 years on the indie scene (she got her start in Eric's Trip, y'know), Doiron is a bona fide pro at her craft.
In 1994, Mark Lanegan was best known as the Screaming Trees' frontman. This, however, is a whole other beast of foreboding fare. So deft at navigating lonesome despair, this guy's brain must resemble a desolate forest of misery. While the Trees' psych-grunge rumble may have masked some of Lanegan's songwriting finesse, his solo work puts it in clear focus. Whiskey for the Holy Ghost highlights his bluesy, brooding baritone with acoustic picking and flecks of organ, strings and sax. Don't miss "The River Rise" and "Sunrise."
Is Green River the first grunge band? Many argue no, citing the long-overlooked U-Men or even Australian bruisers The Scientists. Regardless, Green River's contributions to the movement should not be underestimated. As this 1990 compilation demonstrates, the band was extremely adept at retrofitting the tongue-in-cheek depravity of Black Flag and The Nig-Heist to vintage hard rock. Just about every track here is loud, perverse and obnoxious. Drowning in a sea of nasty riffs, Mark Arm howls like a rabid dog who wants to hump your leg and chew it off both at the same time.
Bleach was the soundtrack for delinquents. It slung a sinister, menacing tone and a dirty $600 production value, and if you actually saw Nirvana play before they hit, you were either scared of the audience beating you up or you rode your dirt bike to the gig with a pack of smokes in your back pocket. The cover of Shocking Blue's "Love Buzz" is the birth of grunge.
Canada's Eric's Trip were a pretty darn cool indie band, but singer Rick White's solo project Elevator (aka Elevator to Hell/Elevator Through) were even better. That's because he submerged E.T.'s love for Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr. in the downer psychedelia of Black Sabbath, early Pink Floyd and 13th Floor Elevators. As a result, 1997's Eerieconsiliation is grimy, lo-fi garage pop with hooks that melt into fuzz and fuzz that hardens back into hooks. It's murky, moody and, most of all, eerie.
Cincinnati's Afghan Whigs are crucial to the birth of '90s alternative rock. The first band signed to Sub Pop Records without roots in the Pacific Northwest, they rocked blustery disenchantment as intensely as any of their Seattle brethren. There's an effortless precision in vocalist Greg Dulli's libidinous groans and howls of slacker frustration; his lyrics are full of stifling dissatisfaction and boozy philosophy ("drink it, smoke it, stick it in"). It's all held together by roughed-up rock heightened by lead guitarist Rick McCollum's slick and sleazy riffage.
1998's Arches & Aisles was recorded after drummer Scott Plouf departed for duties in Built to Spill, and is mostly a one-piece act (with friends in the studio) that singer/guitarist Rebecca Gates recorded after she relocated to Chicago. The result is an appealing yet melancholy effort rife with lingering memories and additional studio effects (including sweet Rebecca-on-Rebecca harmonies). It was the final studio release for Sub Pop before Gates officially retired the name and went on to a solo career.
This release combined the band's debut EP alongside a few B-sides and covers. Worth listening to just for "Touch Me I'm Sick," this album is a mess of dirty guitars and Mark Arm's ragged, hyper vocal style. This is what happens when you let punks listen to the blues.
Sub Pop's first try, 1992's The Way of the Vaselines: A Complete History, was good. But Enter the Vaselines is slightly better. A deluxe reissue of its predecessor, this 36-track juggernaut boasts new cover art, a new title, a thoughtful remastering of the group's existing catalog and a smattering of previously unreleased demos and live tracks. Though you could argue Enter the Vaselines is for hardcore twee fans only, it does offer newbies a fuller understanding of these indie pop icons.
Forget Bricks Are Heavy; Smell the Magic captures L7 at their squalid, furious, slightly self-parodying best. (Is the title a Spinal Tap reference? You be the judge.) Lyrical quality varies -- bad girls don't give warnings before they shove -- but "Fast and Frightening" makes up for that with lines like "Got so much cl*t/She don't need no balls." And when those sludgy guitars kick in, it sounds like somebody's taking a chainsaw to the recording equipment. Yum. Johnny Thunders may have died penniless and drug-sick, but he left behind a few daughters. Check out the final three bonus tracks.
With droves of N.Y.C. hipsters going out to see Erase Errata and Black Dice, it seems that noise rock has finally come into its own. SFS were among the first art school bands to combine jarring rhythms with a No Wave aesthetic and pure, unadulterated freak-rock abrasion. This is their first mega-awesome album.
You'd swear singer and guitarist Tim Rutili, who possesses one weary groan, was some kind of backwoods alt-country troubadour -- that is, if it weren't for the dub/industrial grime that's caked all over these 11 jams like a soggy mulch. But still, this is some truly earthy rock 'n' roll -- as ragged as anything off the Stones' Exile on Main Street. And like Exile, there's something inscrutably murky about Red Red Meat's music; just about the only well-defined sound is the killer slide-work.
