Category: Alternative
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The Voidz ‘Virtue’ (2018)
When Julian Casablancas returned with The Voidz’s 2014 debut album Tyranny, it was a a surprising shift considering his earlier solo work and his garage rock career with The Strokes. The band focused surprised many critics with its focus on dystopian themes and sonic complexity that could be described as a polished sci-fi pop sound.…
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Sonic Youth ‘Daydream Nation’ (1988)
There are few bands who truly redefined a specific genre of music. Sonic Youth is certainly one of them. Emerging from the American underground in the mid-80’s, the band’s inventive use of alternate tunings, dissonance, and feedback was combined with the intensity of hardcore punk and further imbued with the performance art aesthetic of New…
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311 ‘311’ (1995)
When I was in elementary school I had a friend whose house I would spend a ton at. He was a little rough around the edges despite growing up in a really affluent family, and had an older brother who always had a collection of CD’s that were super interesting and (most importantly) had the…
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Jane’s Addiction ‘Nothing’s Shocking’ (1988)
Jane’s Addiction played a pivotal role in defining the grunge sound of the early ’90s, melding elements of punk rock, heavy metal, and alternative music in a way that influenced countless bands. Their debut album Nothing’s Shocking showcased an eclectic mix of styles, characterized by Perry Farrell’s ethereal vocals and a fusion of gritty guitar…
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The Matches ‘Decomposer’ (2006)
My love for The Matches was first sparked by their debut album E. Von Dahl Killed The Locals. It was one of the first pop punk albums that truly felt personal to me in a significant way– as I wrote earlier this year when reviewing the album: There was a point in high school where…
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Hot Snakes ‘Jericho Sirens’ (2018)
Hot Snakes’ Jericho Sirens marked a triumphant return for the garage punk band, delivering a raw, electrifying blend of punk rock and post-hardcore that captured the ferocious energy and unrefined edge that defined Hot Snakes’ sound during the mid-aughts. The record is notable for its urgent, driving rhythms and jagged guitar riffs, hallmarks of their…
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Nine Inch Nails ‘Pretty Hate Machine’ (1989)
In the early 1990s, a seismic shift rippled through the music world when the enigmatic Trent Reznor emerged from the industrial underground with a sound that would forever alter the landscape of industrial music. Their debut album Pretty Hate Machine was a visceral exploration of pain, alienation, and existential dread. It blended the mechanical rhythms…
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Drug Church ‘Hygiene’ (2022)
I’ve been on a bit of an intense running kick this year, logging about 15 miles a week, and am constantly on the lookout for a perfect album to serve as the soundtrack for my 5K’s which I’m clocking in at around a 25 minute average. I popped on Drug Church’s Hygiene Friday morning at…
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Kyuss ‘Welcome to Sky Valley’ (1994)
Kyuss distinctive blend of heavy, fuzz-laden riffs and stoner rock aesthetics helped define the subgenre during the mid-1990’s. Hailing from the California desert, their sound, often described as “desert rock,” became a launching point that inspired countless bands in their wake. On Welcome to Sky Valley, Kyuss crafted a sonic landscape characterized by slow, sludgy…
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The Jesus Lizard ‘Goat’ (1991)
With their second album Goat the noise-rock band The Jesus Lizard—fronted by the enigmatic David Yow and featuring guitarist Duane Denison, bassist David Wm Sims, and drummer Mac McNeilly—began crafting a unique sound that combined elements of punk, noise, and avant-garde. Their aggressive, visceral approach was further refined with the release of Goat, showcasing their…
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The Smashing Pumpkins ‘Siamese Dream’ (1993)
Released in 1993, The Smashing Pumpkins’ Siamese Dream stands as a defining artifact of 90s alternative rock, capturing a pivotal moment in the genre’s evolution. At a time when grunge was peaking with albums like Nirvana’s 1991 magnum opus Nevermind and Pearl Jam’s debut album Ten, Siamese Dream emerged as a bold statement, blending the…
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TV on the Radio ‘Return to Cookie Mountain’ (2006)
Return to Cookie Mountain was released during my freshman year of high school. One of my new friends in that class burned me a copy to listen to and I distinctly remember the feeling I had when I first heard “I Was a Lover”. It was a feeling of wonderment, strangeness, and utter disbelief. Being…
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The Cranberries ‘No Need to Argue’ (1994)
Dolores O’Riordan’s vocal style was iconic in a way that was often compared to Sinead O’Connor, both for their illustrious high notes, Irish accents, and ability to make every single song they sang on feel intimate and powerful. There is a bleak poetic note to the fact that both O’Connor and O’Riordan both dealt with…
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My Bloody Valentine ‘Loveless’ (1991)
Every once in awhile an album comes along that completely changes the trajectory of music history. The Velvet Underground inspired a legion of miscreants to start their own bands in 1967 with their lo-fi avant garde production quality, Eric B. & Rakim’s 1987 magnum opus Paid In Full introduced complex rhyme structures that changed the…
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Forever The Sickest Kids ‘Forever The Sickest Kids’ (2010)
There was a brief moment in the late aughts where neon pop punk reigned supreme. That genre adopted all the elements from the early 2000’s pop punk wave of bands like Blink-182, The Starting Line, and Fall Out Boy and took it a step further, introducing even more formal power pop song structural elements and…
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Primus ‘Sailing The Seas Of Cheese’ (1990)
In the ether of avant-garde funk metal there exists one band whose gravitational pull is undeniable. That band is Primus. The plucky guitar of Larry LaLonde, obscure time signatures of Tim Alexander, and virtuosic bass playing of the one and only Les Claypool have combined to create a uniquely “Did someone put a psychedelic in…
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No Doubt ‘Tragic Kingdom’ (1995)
The backdrop of No Doubt’s third album Tragic Kingdom reads somewhat like a soap opera– keyboardist and principal songwriter Eric Stefani left the band in the middle of the sessions after struggling with the fact he was being asked to include other band members in the songwriting process, and shortly after that bassist Tony Kanal…
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Blind Melon ‘Blind Melon’ (1992)
“No Rain” is synonymous with 90’s alternative rock in a way few songs are. The playful and bubbly guitar riff that kicks things off, the lackadaisical rhythm section sort of the sardonic lyrical choices that sound as if they’re being sung on a sunny day in a field of green grass while frontman Shannon Hoon…
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The Jesus and Mary Chain ‘Psychocandy’ (1985)
When brothers Jim and William Reid formed The Jesus and Mary Chain they clearly had one idea in mind– take traditional pop song arrangements and absolutely drench them in feedback, distortion, and reverb to render them almost entirely unnoticeable. With their debut album Psychocandy you could consider it mission accomplished. The entire album sounds as…
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Red Hot Chili Peppers ‘Californication’ (1999)
Is there a song that’s skippable on Californication? That’s the question I posed to a friend of mine in the midst of injecting the Red Hot Chili Peppers magnum opus into my veins over this past Memorial Day weekend. Out of all the top-end albums in the Peppers discography, from Stadium Arcadium to Unlimited Love…
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Chumbawamba ‘Tubthumper’ (1997)
Chumbawamba is an unlikely commercial success story– for nearly a decade they toiled in obscurity as an anarcho-communist punk rock band in their home country of Britain, focusing on elements of class struggle, pacifism, and animal rights as common motifs in their music. And then, like a strike of lightning, the band released “Tubthumping” which…
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Bilk ‘Bilk’ (2023)
I happened upon Bilk via X two weeks ago when I saw that their founding drummer was arrested in Jamaica for taking part in a robbery that saw him and his accomplices steal $2 million worth of corned beef. That’s an almost inconceivable amount of corned beef, and the absurdity of the story basically made…
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Temple Of The Dog ‘Temple Of The Dog’ (1990)
If you’ve been searching for the album that has the worst cover art quality relative to its audio quality (i.e. it looks like shit but sounds fucking phenomenal), you’ve found it. Temple Of The Dog is was a heartfelt one-off project formed to honor the life of lead singer Andrew Wood of Mother Love Bone…
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Third Eye Blind ‘Blue’ (1999)
Blue isn’t a better album than Third Eye Blind’s self-titled debut (it was an impossible task as soon as the former was released), but it certainly is a better album relative to the commercial and critical success it received in comparison to its artistic accomplishments. Put another way, whenever anyone thinks of 3EB they think…
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Circa Survive ‘On Letting Go’ (2007)
When former Saosin lead singer Anthony Green left Saosin to form a new project in the mid-2000’s it was soul-crushing to 15 year old me. I was an avid fan of their 2003 EP Translating The Name and couldn’t imagine a world in which they wouldn’t be making music together. It all worked out in…
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Mother Love Bone ‘Apple’ (1990)
Mother Love Bone was the first of a litany of sad stories to emerge out of Seattle in the 1990’s as the grunge movement rose to prominence. A glam rock band with roots in rock and roll, Mother Love Bone’s highly anticipated debut album Apple was marred when tragedy when lead singer Andrew Wood was…
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Foo Fighters ‘The Colour And The Shape’ (1997)
Following their self-titled debut studio album in 1995 that was really the musings of a one-man band (Dave Grohl recorded every single part on that album), Grohl entered the studio in 1997 with a new stable of musicians to aid in the recording for The Colour And The Shape. The album was somewhat of a…
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Blur ‘Blur’ (1997)
As you can probably imagine I try to expose my two kids to as much different music as possible. Every album I’ve written about over the last 15 months they’ve heard at least one song off of (I start each trip to and from daycare with one song off my album of the day and…
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Deftones ‘White Pony’ (2000)
I’ve always loved the production sound of Deftones’ White Pony in a way that borders on obsessive — whether it be the crack of the snares, the massively lush electric guitars, lead vocalist Chino Moreno’s haunting vocal performance, and the deep thump of the bass, this is one of the best sounding albums I’ve ever…
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Garbage ‘Garbage’ (1995)
Garbage’s eponymous debut album is basically the aggregation of everything I love about 90’s alternative rock. It’s weird, it’s dark, it’s heavy, and it’s wildly eclectic. When thematic subject matter pokes around the edges of society and combines with musical arrangements that are created to suit the song vs. a specific style it’s a special…
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Third Eye Blind ‘Third Eye Blind’ (1997)
Third Eye Blind is one of the albums I’ve put off writing about for over a year since I started this project of listening and writing about an album a day for the one distinct reason that it’s an absolutely perfect album. Hard stop. There isn’t a song on here that I skip. I make…
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Crowded House ‘Crowded House’ (1986)
Australian pop rock band Crowded House’s self-titled debut features one of the best New Wave songs of all-time “Don’t Dream It’s Over”, which has been featured in a wide variety of 80’s media. The song is a wonderful little treatise on nostalgic longing that can be applied to a variety of life events– for me…
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Pearl Jam ‘Ten’ (1991)
Born from the ashes of Seattle grunge outfit Mother Love Bone following the death of lead singer Andrew Wood to a drug overdose, Pearl Jam’s debut album Ten is a rare debut album from a band that didn’t really know each other all too well upon entering the studio. Guitarist Stone Gossard and bassist Jeff…
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Lit ‘A Place In The Sun’ (1999)
A Place In The Sun holds a special place in my heart in that it features “My Own Worst Enemy” which is the first song that I ever played live in front of a group of people. During eighth grade my middle school held a Talent Show where students were invited to participate. It was…
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Matthew. ‘Yesterday & Forever Ago’ (2023)
Today we’ll be covering my debut LP Yesterday & Forever Ago, which was officially released this morning. I previously covered the pretty wild turn of events that came about during the recording of this album in my writeup of the EP I released earlier this year entitled CAMBRIA: The Lost Sessions, so I won’t belabor…
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Brand New ‘The Devil & God Are Raging Inside Me’ (2006)
It’s hard to put into words what Brand New meant to me during my late teens and early 20’s. They were undoubtedly one of my favorite bands for a long period of time, held the top spot for a good chunk of that, and spanned multiple groups of friends. Deja Entendu was the soundtrack to…
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