Since the beginning of the year, we have been revisiting some of our favorite albums and songs released in previous years ending in 7. So far we’ve listened to the punk sounds of 1977, the UK indie scene of 1987, as represented by the recent Cherry Red compilation C87, and the wonderful guitar noise emanating from the US underground of the same year.
In the 4th part of this series, we are going twenty years back to 1997, a year that gave us plenty of great albums by the likes of Pavement, Spiritualized, Blur, The Verve, The Dandy Warhols, Cornershop, Wu-Tang Clan, Prodigy, Portishead, Foo Fighters to name just a few of the year’s high profile and critically acclaimed releases.
The seven albums that we have chosen to represent 1997 in this feature, include a few releases that have gained cult status over the years as the prestige of their creators has risen with each subsequent release, along with some more obscure choices which are just as dear to us and we think more people need to discover. In the first category there is Sleater-Kinney, Modest Mouse and Built To Spill, three of the greatest US rock bands to come from the Pacific Northwest really hitting their stride with their 1997 releases, and in the second there is the last ever albums in the brief but excellent discography of '90s cult heroes Helium and The Geraldine Fibbers, plus a couple of outstanding records by Swell and Prolapse, who were also at their very best around that time. Have a listen to the indie sound of 1997:
Last week we presented our favorite Debuts of the Year. However, taking a look at the long list of albums under consideration for our Top 50of the Year (almost ready, wait for it!), I find that a significant percentage comes from bands with a long history. Some of them have never stopped recording, others reappeared after a long absence, some have all or most of their original members and others have a rotating lineup that serves the vision of the band leader. All of them, though, have a history that goes back at least twenty years and in 2015 have produced great records that even if they don’t surpass their best work, they are certainly important additions in their remarkable discography.
Here are 2015’s Top 15 Albums from the Old School of Rock:
1. Untethered Moon - BUILT TO SPILL 2. No Cities To Love - SLEATER-KINNEY 3. The Magic Whip - BLUR 4. Ones and Sixes - LOW 5. "Freedom Tower" - No Wave Dance Party 2015 - THE JON SPENCER BLUES EXPLOSION 6. Sub-lingual Tablet - THE FALL 7. Silver Bullets - THE CHILLS 8. Ghost Notes - VERUCA SALT 9. Works for Tomorrow - ELEVENTH DREAM DAY 10. Heartbreak Pass - GIANT SAND 11. Wire - WIRE 12. Music Complete - NEW ORDER 13. Pylon - KILLING JOKE 14. Stuff like that there - YO LA TENGO 15. Whatever, My Love - THE JULIANA HATFIELD THREE
Built To Spill - Living Zoo
Coming up next week in our 2015 review: The Tracks of the Year.
July is well underway, the temperature's rising and amid capital controls, financial and various other types of crisis and closely averted (?) catastrophes, we remain dedicated to the cause of new music discovery.
In this spirit, as we always do at the halfway point in the year, we have prepared a list of 40 albums, that may or may not be the "best" of the year so far, but they are certainly those that we have listened to the most in the past six months.
As usual, this list is without an "official" ranking, however the order of presentation is definitely not random and there is no doubt in my mind that the four albums at the top by newcomer Courtney Barnett, '90s-school rockers Sleater-Kinney and Built To Spill, and (surprise - surprise) Holly Herndon with her left-field electronica, will be among the contenders for "Album of the Year" in less than six months from now.
Top 40 Albums of January - June 2015
Sometimes I sit and think, and sometimes I just sit - COURTNEY BARNETT
No cities to love - SLEATER-KINNEY
Untethered moon - BUILT TO SPILL
Platform - HOLLY HERNDON
Ivy tripp - WAXAHATCHEE
Escape from evil - LOWER DENS
Viet Cong - VIET CONG
"Freedom tower" - No Wave dance party 2015 - THE JON SPENCER BLUES EXPLOSION
The magic whip - BLUR
Foil deer - SPEEDY ORTIZ
Hinterland - LONELADY
Sub-lingual tablet - THE FALL
Strangers to ourselves - MODEST MOUSE
Short movie - LAURA MARLING
Another eternity - PURITY RING
The race for space - PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTING
What a terrible world, what a beautiful world - THE DECEMBERISTS
Heartbreak pass - GIANT SAND
Fast food - NADINE SHAH
I want to grow up - COLLEEN GREEN
California nights - BEST COAST
MCIII - MIKAL CRONIN
Kintsugi - DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE
Born under Saturn - DJANGO DJANGO
To pimp a butterfly - KENDRICK LAMAR
Shadow of the sun - MOON DUO
Universal themes - SUN KIL MOON
My love is cool - WOLF ALICE
Wire - WIRE
II - METZ
Deeper - THE SOFT MOON
Transfixiation - A PLACE TO BURY STRANGERS
Panda Bear meets the Grim Reaper - PANDA BEAR
Carrie & Lowell - SUFJAN STEVENS
Edge of the sun - CALEXICO
Distractions - SAUNA YOUTH
Peanut butter - JOANNA GRUESOME
Mutilator Defeated At Last - THEE OH SEES
Whatever, My Love - THE JULIANA HATFIELD THREE
Blade of the Ronin - CANNIBAL OX
Listen below to a playlist with some of our favorite tracks from our Top Albums of 2015 so far:
And since "Sub-lingual Tablet" is not on Spotify yet, here's "Auto Chip 2014-2016" from the still mighty Fall:
Part 2 of our highlight reel from Barcelona's Primavera Sound 2015 festival - check out photos and videos from the performances we've enjoyed the most on the second full day of the festival which took place at Parc del Fòrum on May 29th, plus a couple of new bands from Australia we saw at MACBA, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona.
Sleater-Kinney
It's been nearly 16 years since the last time I saw Sleater-Kinney live, firstly on the main stage of Reading Festival in 1999, playing a great set early in the afternoon, and then again a few days later at London ULU as part of the celebrations for Matador Records 10th birthday.
In the time that passed since these two unforgettable performances, the band released three more excellent records after that year's "The Hot Rock" (my Album of the Year for 1999), went on a ten-year hiatus during which we've had many exciting projects, musical or otherwise, from all three of them, and reemerged triumphantly this year with "No Cities To Love", an album that proves the magic is still here and their special chemistry still works wonders.
Without a doubt, Sleater-Kinney's hour-long set at Primavera's Heineken stage was amongst the festival's top performances, combining highlights from their new album with some of the finest tracks they've given us over the past two decades. Their set went as far back as 1997 for "Dig Me Out"'s dynamite title track and "Words and Guitar", while all their '00s work was well represented with 2006's "The Woods" taking the lion's share. The only minus point for me of an otherwise faultless set was the complete omission of the numerous gems to be found on "The Hot Rock" (I think "Get Up" would have been perfect for the finale). I guess you can't have it all in just one hour, but we did have all of the following:
Sleater-Kinney's complete set list: Price Tag, Jumpers, Bury Our Friends, Oh!, Surface Envy, Ironclad, What's Mine Is Yours, No Cities to Love, Fangless, Rollercoaster, A New Wave, One Beat, All Hands on the Bad One, The Fox, Words and Guitar, Sympathy, Dig Me Out, Entertain, Modern Girl.
Sleater‐Kinney - No Cities to Love (live @ Primavera Sound, May 29th, 2015)
Sleater‐Kinney - Dig Me Out / Entertain (live @ Primavera Sound, May 29th, 2015)
The Julie Ruin
You can say that the second day of Primavera Sound was dominated by ex-riot grrrls who are now riot women and prove in action that 40 is the new 20. Kathleen Hanna was in excellent form throughout the 45-minute set of her new band The Julie Ruin, hopefully an indication that her health problems are now behind her, and along with her band mates, including former Bikini Kill partner in crime Kathi Wilcox, delivered a scorcher of a set, full of positive energy.
Check out below "Oh Come On", one of the best songs in a set list that included the following: V.G.I., Lookout, Party City, South Coast Plaza, Kids in NY, Radical or Pro-parental, Ha Ha Ha, Goodnight Goodbye, Oh Come On, Run Fast.
The Julie Ruin - Oh Come On (live @ Primavera Sound, May 29th, 2015)
Disappears
It's certainly one of the marks of a good festival: you walk in with certain expectations, but sometimes the great moments come when you least expect them. Like at five o'clock in the afternoon, in the sparsely attended Ray-Ban stage, when Chicago's Disappears deliver an intense set under the hot sun. I imagine if they were on later at night, this could easily have been one of the festival's most talked about performances. Even so, they rightfully earn a place in our highlight reel of the day and convince me that I need to do some digging in their discography which so far includes five albums, with their latest release being this year's "Irreal" LP.
Disappears, live @ Primavera Sound, May 29th, 2015
Ride
The recently reunited shoegaze heroes have been steadily upping their game since their return to the live stage and it's easy to see they are now firing on all cylinders. The start of their set with "Leave Them All Behind" and early single "Like a Daydream" was truly impressive and they continued well with "Nowhere" tracks "Polar Bear" and "Seagull", but given the difficulty in approaching the overcrowded main stage to get a closer look and the fact that almost simultaneously both Run The Jewels and Death From Above 1979 were also playing, after a while I had to make my excuses and move on to other pursuits. Here's "Like a Daydream", undoubtedly one of the highlights of the day:
Ride - Like a Daydream (live @ Primavera Sound, May 29th, 2015)
The New Pornographers
If you're at a festival and The New Pornographers are playing, you should definitely find some time for them. Even with some of their key players missing (both Neko Case and Dan Bejar were not present), Carl Newman's team is a sure bet for some memorable, upbeat rock with strong melodies that's good for any time of the day or night. One of the best performances we caught at the ATP stage where also Run The Jewels, Belle and Sebastian and The KVB played.
The New Pornographers - Mass Romantic (live @ Primavera Sound, May 29th, 2015)
Death From Above 1979
The second day of the festival finished for us around 2 in the morning, after a blistering performance by Canadian noise makers Death From Above 1979 at the crowded Ray-Ban stage. We walked back to the hotel under the sounds of Jon Hopkins whose set was just beginning at the ATP stage, but after 9 hours of running up and down Parc del Fòrum there just wasn't any more fuel left in the tank for us.
Check out below some more photos from Primavera's second day featuring Belle & Sebastian, Julian Casablancas + The Voidz and The KVB.
Belle & Sebastian
Julian Casablancas + The Voidz
The KVB
Earlier in the day, as part of the events of PrimaveraPro (the meeting for professionals from the music sector), we enjoyed a showcase of new bands from Australia outside of MACBA. Here's a couple of them, Klo, an electronic pop duo from Melbourne, following in the footsteps of acts like Purity Ring, and Holy Holy who play electric folk-rock that brought to my mind Band Of Horses.
Klo, live @ MACBA
Holy Holy, live @ MACBA
Check out here our impressions from the first day of the festival. Part 3 is coming soon...
The summer festival season is finally upon us and here in Cool Music Central we're getting ready for an epic 10-day music marathon! The start will be in Barcelona on May 28th with Primavera Sound 2015 and the finish in Athens on June 5th and 6th with the most ambitious edition of Plisskën Festival to date.
We'll have more on Plisskën in a couple of weeks time, but now it's time to focus on Primavera Sound and make plans and tough decisions about what to see and do in Barcelona's Parc del Fòrum between May 28th and 30th:
Day 1
The Black Keys
The Black Keys are the headliners on the Primavera stage around midnight, but our day will start much earlier with the afternoon performances of Hiss Golden Messenger (Ray Ban stage), Twerps (Pitchfork) and Cheatahs (Adidas Originals). Later on Giant Sand are playing against Viet Cong, which brings us to the first tough decision of this festival. Thankfully the latter are expected in Athens for their own show early in September, so Howe Gelb's band will be the most obvious choice for me.
The next tough call of the first day will come around 9 o'clock with The Thurston Moore Band versus The Replacements face-off, but having seen the former in Athens very recently is going to give me an easy way out for this dilemma.
Mikal Cronin (who is also playing Plisskën), Spiritualized (long time no see) and Tyler, The Creator are some of the available choices until it's time for The Black Keys, while for the small hours of the morning there is James Blake and JUNGLE on hand to make things funky.
Day 2
Ride
For the start of the second day of the festival we have Disappears on the Ray Ban stage while The Pastels will be playing on the small Heineken Hidden Stage, a performance that requires acquisition of reservation tickets.
The ATP stage is having a very solid line-up on Friday, starting with the early afternoon performance of The KVB which is followed by The New Pornographers, Belle & Sebastian and Run The Jewels, while on the Primavera stage we have Julian Casablancas+The Voidz, Damien Rice and Ride as the headliners.
We'll make sure, of course, not to miss the sets by The Julie Ruin and Sleater-Kinney on Ray Ban and Heineken stages respectively, who I'm willing to bet will be amongst the highlights of Primavera Sound 2015, while amongst all this madness Patti Smith & Band will be performing the classic "Horses" in its entirety. A lot of tough choices here and I'm not quite sure who will prevail.
Sleater-Kinney
For the after hours part of Day 2 we have to choose among Death From Above 1979, alt-J, The Juan MacLean, Earth and Jon Hopkins.
Day 3
The Strokes
The last day of Primavera Sound 2015 starts with Kevin Morby on Pitchfork stage with opposition from the promising Younghusband (ATP). DIIV, American Football, Torres, MOURN, tUnE-yArDs and HEALTH form a strong line-up on Pitchfork stage which will certainly lead us to pay it several visits throughout the day. Elsewhere, we have performances by The Vaselines, FuckedUp and Mac DeMarco, while the Sleaford Mods versus Foxygen derby will be decided for me by the fact that the punk-hop Mods will also be part of Plisskën'sline-up.
Just before The Strokes headlining performance at Primavera stage, there is fellow New York scene comrades Interpol playing at Heineken stage, while psychedelic Kiwis Unknown Mortal Orchestra will be appearing at the same time on Adidas Originals stage. However the most unfortunate clash for me comes from the fact that Babes In Toyland will be starting their set on ATP stage at exactly the same time as The Strokes, so I think I'll have to make do with my memories from the Babes live set at London's Forum twenty-something years ago.
For the finale of the festival, one can either dance the night away with Underworld and Caribou or catch the guitar blasts of Shellac, Thee Oh Sees and Hookworms. I think you know where we'll be.
The Strokes - Reading 2011 (Full Set)
See you on the other side with, hopefully, plenty of photos, videos and live reviews from all the action in Barcelona!
It’s still early days of course, but based on what we’ve listened to so far in the first couple of months of 2015, Sleater-Kinney are without opponent not only in the category of "Best Comeback" of the year, but also "Best Album" and "Best" everything else I can think of.
It’s no surprise, really; Carrie Brownstein and Janet Weiss had already joined forces recently in Wild Flag giving us one of the best records of 2011, while Corin Tucker’s return to action with The Corin Tucker Band in 2010 resulted in two fine records and the easy conclusion that putting these three women in a room together again could not fail to recreate the punk rock magic of their past (see here the conclusion of our November 2010 post about the punk rock genius of Sleater-Kinney).
"No Cities To Love" picks up exactly where "The Woods" left off in 2005, adding another great chapter to Sleater-Kinney's fascinating story. Ten fierce tracks (12 if you find the limited edition), no filler, no gaps to the intensity of the delivery, 30-something minutes of punk rock greatness that very few bands can deliver. Make no mistake; Sleater-Kinney’s eighth record is not only one of their best efforts so far, it is the next link in an unbreakable chain that if you follow it back, it will lead you to the finest works of rock’s greats, from PJ Harvey and Nirvana, to The Jam, the Ramones, Patti Smith and even further back to the windmills of Pete Townshend.
Check out below our favorite albums and tracks of the first couple of months of 2015, which also include several 2014 releases plus a few must-listen re-releases and compilations, and click here to see what we were listening to exactly seven years ago in the very first post of this blog (yes, CMC just turned 7!):
Top 20 Albums
1. No Cities To Love - SLEATER-KINNEY 2. What A Terrible World, What A Beautiful World - THE DECEMBERISTS 3. Viet Cong - VIET CONG 4. Phantom Radio - MARK LANEGAN BAND 5. Seeds - TV ON THE RADIO 6. Run The Jewels 2 - RUN THE JEWELS 7. Pom Pom - ARIEL PINK 8. We Come From The Same Place - ALLO DARLIN' 9. The Other I - 2:54 10. Alvvays - ALVVAYS 11. Lateness Of Dancers - HISS GOLDEN MESSENGER 12. V For Vaselines - THE VASELINES 13. Underneath The Rainbow - BLACK LIPS 14. Shriek - WYE OAK 15. Our Love - CARIBOU 16. Royal Blood - ROYAL BLOOD 17. Setting Sons (Deluxe Edition) - THE JAM 18. Extra Painful - YO LA TENGO 19. Rough Trade Shops Counter Culture 14 - VARIOUS ARTISTS 20. Punk 45: Extermination Nights in the Sixth City - Cleveland, Ohio: Punk and The Decline of the Mid-West 1975-82 - VARIOUS ARTISTS
Top 20 Tracks
1. Pedestrian At Best - COURTNEY BARNETT 2. A New Wave - SLEATER-KINNEY 3. Begin Again - PURITY RING 4. Continental Shelf - VIET CONG 5. Cavalry Captain - THE DECEMBERISTS 6. Harvest Home - MARK LANEGAN BAND 7. Southern Grammar - HISS GOLDEN MESSENGER 8. Pay Attention - COLLEEN GREEN (mp3) 9. Romance And Adventure - ALLO DARLIN' 10. Next of Kin - ALVVAYS 11. High Tide Low Tide - THE VASELINES 12. Blindfold - 2:54 13. Glory - WYE OAK 14. Close Your Eyes (And Count To Fuck) - RUN THE JEWELS 15. Happy Idiot - TV ON THE RADIO 16. Mars - CARIBOU 17. Spectral Source - MILLIE & ANDREA 18. Plastic Raincoats In The Pig Parade - ARIEL PINK 19. Do The Vibrate - BLACK LIPS 20. Out Of The Black - ROYAL BLOOD
Sleater-Kinney - A New Wave
You can listen to our Top 20 Tracks on the Spotify playlist below (it's missing one but it includes a few bonus "blasts from the past") or you can check out our latest mixtape on tapely here.
This wait is finally over! This week Sleater-Kinney make their comeback with the release of their eighth album "No Cities To Love" ending their 10 year hiatus. The first great album of 2015 is already here! In case you've missed the previous seven, you need to hear this as well:
And here is the track that was my introduction to the band back in 1997 - "Turn It On" from their third album "Dig Me Out", their first masterwork:
Time for the final installment of our '90s Singles project - I hope you had as much fun listening to our playlists as we did compiling them!
Once a month since February we've been revisiting a year from the '90s and choosing our 50 favorite singles of that year, the majority of which you can stream through our Grooveshark playlists . The complete Top 50 lists can be found in Cool Music Database, the central hub for all our year-end lists, while you can easily find all our '90s related Top 10 posts by clicking here.
Our 1999 Top 50 Singles list is actually an updated version of the first ever year-end singles list that we published in the first incarnation of Cool Music Central which was launched in the summer of 1999 as a DIY webpage hosted by Netscape. A lot of water has gone under the bridge since then, but I still consider Sleater-Kinney's "Get Up" to be not only one of the band's finest moments but also one of the most moving songs I've ever had the pleasure of listening. The fact that the same year The Flaming Lips also released the greatest single of their amazing (and, of course, ongoing) career, while Primal Scream reinvented dance-punk with the venomous "Swastika Eyes" only helps to make 1999 one of the strongest years for music in the second half of the '90s, preparing the ground for an even better 2000.
Here's our Top 10 Singles of 1999 with accompanying videos (official or unofficial) - go here for the complete Top 50:
We were recently celebrating Corin Tucker's return to the music scene with the release of "1000 Years", essentially her solo debut, which was recorded with The Corin Tucker Band that also includes Unwound's Sara Lund and Golden Bears' SethLorinczi. As much as I enjoyed the new material, I couldn't help but feel nostalgic about the amazing Sleater-Kinney, the band I have repeatedly praised as perhaps the most exciting rock act that the late '90s had to offer. Instead of trying to convince you of the validity of my claim with my clumsy writing, I'm going to let the music do the talking instead, and in this seventh edition of our Vintage Tracks posts, we'll have not one but three of my all-time favorite Sleater-Kinney tracks.
First off, it's "Dig Me Out", the title track from Sleater-Kinney's third LP, their 1997 breakthrough release for Kill Rock Stars which made Corin, Carrie and Janet known to a wider audience and convinced us that this band had much more to offer than riot-grrrl fire and fury. The video comes from a live a performance in New York's Central Park in the summer of 1998, a year before I had the opportunity to enjoy the band live myself, when I first saw them playing at the Reading Festival of '99 (from where the photo you see above) and then at Matador's Nice Weekend in London at U.L.U. (the label was celebrating its 10 years back then).
Dig Me Out (live in Central Park, July 12, 1998
The next choice is "Get Up" from 1999's "The Hot Rock" - a perfect single from my favorite album of that year and my top choice for the second half of the '90s. The video is directed by Miranda July:
Get Up
And, finally, another heartbreaker: "Jumpers", the final single from Sleater-Kinney's last album, the 2005 Sub Pop release "The Woods".
Jumpers
If the band is not reforming anytime soon, is it too much to ask for a joint Corin Tucker Band - Wild Flag tour in 2011? Just an idea....
