This is the ninth in the 1990s survey mix series, which I have been presenting monthly in chronological order through this year. You can find the previous mixes here. I’ve made a Spotify version of this survey which you can find here, though it is missing 34 tracks – including a few utterly crucial tracks – and has no sound editing for smooth listening.

The late ‘90s is such a strange and confusing time. On one hand, you have the ascendence of nu-metal and TRL pop, but on the other, a rise in artists embracing sophisticated ideas like post-rock and IDM. The eclecticism-as-virtue thing from the past couple years is still in the mix, but I think there’s also a backlash to it. In retrospect things in music feel very tribal and segregated in this moment.

• This is an excellent and very exciting period for rap, and a lot of the most interesting stuff was also commercially successful. Missy Elliott, Mos Def, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, and Method Man are dominant figures in this moment, and all appear on several tracks in this survey. New York City is still very much the center of hip-hop, though Puff Daddy’s influence is beginning to wane. DMX and Jay-Z have their major pop breakthroughs in this year, J Dilla is emerging as a producer of note, and Canibus is really hot for a minute before totally imploding.

• One of my strongest memories of music in 1998 is this period of time around late summer/early fall when it seemed like something from The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, Beastie Boys’ Hello Nasty, or Air’s Moon Safari was playing anywhere I went in Manhattan. Similarly, I have very vivid memories of hearing Hole’s “Celebrity Skin” and Marilyn Manson’s “The Dope Show” at the old Virgin Megastore.

• I see this year as a major turning point in the history of rock music, or more specifically, a point of divergence. This is around the time when this feeling that rock music was over or boring was really starting to take hold among the cooler indie people, who were moving in the direction of more electronic music, eclectic record collector stuff, or rock music that did not actually rock very much. And in that moment, that was a pretty valid response to a rock scene in which nearly all the major mainstream and indie icons of the 90s had either flamed out or were winding down, and the underground was getting crowded with dull, uninspiring pop-punk and emo bands, not to mention the onslaught of aggressive, juvenile nu-metal bands. But from this point onward, rock basically splits along a class divide – upper class, educated people started gravitating to artsy or less rocking indie acts, and lower and middle class people stuck with either the heavy rock on the radio or the emo/pop-punk acts that would become gradually more mainstream over the next few years. There’s been some changes over the past 20 years, but we’ve never really gotten over this schism and it’s a major reason why rock is perceived to be a less relevant form of popular music today.

• Some assorted great songs I’d like to call some attention to: Solex’s “Solex In A Slipshod Style,” a gorgeous and sexy song from one of the most sadly ignored debut albums of the era. Add N to X’s “The Black Regent,” which is funky yet menacing. The Make Up’s euphoric “Joy of Sound,” which opened the majority of mix tapes I made around this time. Robert Pollard’s “Subspace Biographies,” easily one of the 10 best songs in the greater Guided by Voices discography. RZA’s “NYC Everything,” his best-ever deviation from his signature production style. Wagon Christ’s “Tally Ho!,” which is built around a sample that sounds both goofy and maniacal and gets stuck in my head any time I hear it. “American Flag,” the first song from Cat Power’s finest and saddest album Moon Pix, and “Perfect World,” a simple and lovely track from Liz Phair’s very underrated Whitechocolatespaceegg.

• This survey contains the absolute worst hit of the 1990s: “One Week” by the Barenaked Ladies. A truly dreadful piece of music.

Thanks to Sean T. Collins, Dan Kois, Paul Cox, Rob Sheffield, and Eric Harvey for their help in putting this one together. The final survey in this series will be available at the beginning of October.

DOWNLOAD PART 1

Britney Spears “…Baby One More Time” / Beastie Boys “Intergalactic” / Pras feat. Ol Dirty Bastard and Mya “Ghetto Superstar” / Black Star “Definition” / Lauryn Hill “Doo Wop (That Thing)” / Jay-Z “Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem)” / Outkast “Spottieottiedopalicious” / The Make Up “Joy of Sound” / Clinic “Monkey On Your Back” / Royal Trux “The Banana Question” / Hole “Celebrity Skin” / Marilyn Manson “The Dope Show” / Garbage “I Think I’m Paranoid” / The Smashing Pumpkins “Pug” / Madonna “Ray of Light” / RZA feat. Method Man “NYC Everything” / Buffalo Daughter “Socks, Drugs, and Rock N’ Roll” / R.E.M. “Hope” / Air “La Femme D’Argent” / Pulp “This Is Hardcore” / Black Box Recorder “Child Psychology” / Cat Power “American Flag” / Liz Phair “Perfect World” / Belle & Sebastian “The Boy with the Arab Strap” / Mercury Rev “Delta Sun Bottleneck Stomp” / Silver Jews “Blue Arrangements” / Dub Narcotic Sound System feat. Miranda July “Out of Your Mind” / Fugazi “Floating Boy” / Pearl Jam “Do the Evolution” / Sonic Youth “The Ineffable Me” / Jon Spencer Blues Explosion “Talk About the Blues” / Sloan “Money City Maniacs” / Robert Pollard “Subspace Biographies” / Spoon “No, You’re Not” / Missy Elliott “Beep Me 911” / Busta Rhymes “Gimme Some More” / Tricky “Mellow” / Tori Amos “She’s Your Cocaine” / PJ Harvey “My Beautiful Leah” / UNKLE feat. Thom Yorke “Rabbit In Your Headlights” / Massive Attack “Teardrop”

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Tortoise “TNT” / Elliott Smith “Sweet Adeline” / New Radicals “You Get What You Give” / Harvey Danger “Flagpole Sitta” / Imperial Teen “The Beginning” / Shania Twain “That Don’t Impress Me Much” / Faith Hill “This Kiss” / Wilco & Billy Bragg “California Stars” / Dixie Chicks “Wide Open Spaces” / Lucinda Williams “Car Wheels On A Gravel Road” / Alanis Morissette “Thank U” / Dave Matthews Band “Don’t Drink the Water” / Quasi “The Happy Prole” / Stereolab “One Small Step” / Solex “Solex In A Slipshod Style” / Wagon Christ “Tally Ho!” / Fatboy Slim “The Rockafeller Skank” / Aaliyah “Are You That Somebody” / D’Angelo “Devil’s Pie” / Mos Def feat. Q-Tip & Tash “Body Rock” / Peanut Butter Wolf “Styles Crew Flows Beats” / Cornelius “Count Five or Six” / Big L “Ebonics” / Canibus “Second Round K.O.” / DMX “Ruff Ryders Anthem” / Brandy & Monica “The Boy Is Mine” / The Lox feat. Lil Kim & DMX “Money, Power, and Respect” / Zach De La Rocha, KRS-One, and The Last Emperor “C.I.A. (Criminals In Action)” / Cappadonna “Slang Editorial” / Aceyalone “The Guidelines” / Method Man “Torture” / Money Mark “Hand In Your Head” / Boards of Canada “Roygbiv” / Calexico “Gypsy’s Curse” / Beck “Nobody’s Fault But My Own” / Grant Lee Buffalo “The Shallow End”

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Squarepusher “Chunk-S” / DJ Spooky feat. Kool Keith “Object Unknown” / DJ Clue feat. Missy Elliott, Mocha, and Nicole “I Like Control” / Master P feat. Mystikal, Silkk the Shocker, Mia X, Kane & Abel “Hot Boys and Girls” / Run-D.M.C. Vs. Jason Nevins “It’s Like That” / Stardust “Music Sounds Better With You” / Rae & Christian feat. QBall & Curt Cazal “Anything U Want” / Shaggy feat. Janet Jackson “Luv Me Luv Me” / Deadly Venoms feat. Ol’ Dirty Bastard “Drug Free” / Portishead “All Mine (live)” / Mice Parade “Headphoneland: The Gangster Chapter” / The Afghan Whigs “66” / Shudder to Think feat. Jeff Buckley “I Want Someone Badly” / Robbie Williams “Angels” / Sheryl Crow “My Favorite Mistake” / The Cardigans “My Favourite Game” / The Divine Comedy “Generation Sex” / The Loud Family “Businessmen Are Okay” / Gillian Welch “Caleb Meyer” / Mogwai “Xmas Steps” / Modest Mouse “Never Ending Math Equation” / June of 44 “The Dexterity of Luck” / Rufus Wainwright “April Fools” / Sparklehorse “Sick of Goodbyes” / Semisonic “Closing Time” / The Tragically Hip “Bobcaygeon” / Arab Strap “Packs of Three” / Spiritualized “Come Together (live)” / Goldie feat. Noel Gallagher “Temper Temper” / Dälek “Swollen Tongue Burns” / Mack 10 feat. Ol’ Dirty Bastard and Buckshot “For the Money” / Cam’ron feat. Mase “Horse & Carriage” / MF Doom “The M.I.C.” / Dru Hill feat. Redman “How Deep Is Your Love” / Next “Too Close”

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Cher “Believe” / Janet Jackson “Together Again” / NSYNC “Tearin’ Up My Heart” / Usher “Nice & Slow” / Sarah McLachlan “Sweet Surrender” / Gomez “78 Stone Wobble” / Ozomatli “Cut Chemist Suite” / A Tribe Called Quest “Find A Way” / Maxwell “Luxury: Cocosure” / Add N to (X) “The Black Regent” / Trans Am “Prowler ’97” / The All Seeing I “The Beat Goes On” / Asian Dub Foundation “Buzzin’” / Ida “Turn Me On” / Flin Flon “Kamloops” / Joan of Arc “God Bless America” / Onyx feat. Wu-Tang Clan “The Worst” / N’Dea Davenport feat. Mos Def “Bullshittin’ (Remix)” / Saul Williams “Elohim (1972)” / Chocolate Genius “My Mom” / Gastr Del Sol “Blues Subtitled No Sense of Wonder” / Don Caballero “In the Absence of Strong Evidence to the Contrary, One May Step Out of the Way of the Charging Bull” / Shellac “Canada” / The Aislers Set “Long Division” / The Apples In Stereo “Seems So” / Of Montreal “Sing You A Love You Song” / Ben Folds Five “Emaline” / Brooks & Dunn “How Long Gone” / Martina McBride “A Broken Wing” / Mariah Carey “My All” / Natalie Merchant “Kind & Generous” / Manic Street Preachers “If You Tolerate This, Your Children Will Be Next” / Catatonia “Mulder & Scully” / Gangsta Boo feat. DJ Paul & Juicy J “Where Dem Dollas At” / Funkdoobiest “Papi Chulo” / Ghostface Killah “Cobra Clutch” / Archers of Loaf “Slick Tricks and Bright Lights” / Bedhead “Exhume”

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Sunny Day Real Estate “Pillars” / A Minor Forest “Look At That Car, It’s Full of Balloons” / Edith Frost “Walk on the Fire” / Jets to Brazil “Starry Configurations” / Rancid “Bloodclot” / Saves the Day “The Choke” / Jejune “This Afternoon’s Malady” / Collin Raye “I Can Still Feel You” / Gov’t Mule “Thelonius Beck” / Keb’ Mo’ “Muddy Water” / The Coup “Me and Jesus the Pimp in a ’79 Granada Last Night” / Timbaland & Magoo feat. Missy Elliott “Here We Come” / Jurassic 5 “Concrete Schoolyard” / Jimmy Ray “Are You Jimmy Ray?” / Mousse T “Horny” / Monifah “Touch It” / Mr. Vegas “Heads High” / Mystikal feat. Master P, Silkk the Shocker, Craig B, and Anita Thomas “Life Ain’t Cool” / Moby “Honey” / Danny Tenaglia “Music is the Answer (Dancin’ and Prancin’)” / 187 Lockdown “Kung-Fu” / Missin’ Linx “M.I.A.” / Six Organs of Admittance “Shadow of a Dune” / Blonde Redhead “Missile ++” / Korn “Got the Life” / Orgy “Stitches” / Placebo “Pure Morning” / Propellerheads “History Repeating” / Plastikman “Contain” / Björk “Hunter” / Jega “Kid Sista” / Autechre “Acroyear2” / Sunz of Man feat. Ol Dirty Bastard “Shining Star” / Juvenile “Ha” / Silkk the Shocker, Master P, Destiny’s Child, O’Dell & Mo B. Dick “Just Be Straight With me” / Snoop Dogg “Still A G Thang” / Prince “The Truth”

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Phish “Moma Dance” / Train “Meet Virginia” / Neutral Milk Hotel “The King of Carrot Flowers, Part One” / Eagle Eye Cherry “Save Tonight” / Third Eye Blind “Jumper” / Death Cab for Cutie “President of What?” / Snow Patrol “Starfighter Pilot” / Vic Chesnutt “Bernadette and Her Crowd” / Ty Herndon “It Must Be Love” / Pernice Brothers “Crestfallen” / Trisha Yearwood “Perfect Love” / Mojave 3 “Give What You Take” / µ-ziq “Brace Yourself Jason” / Wamdue Project “King of My Castle” / Roger S. feat Soulson “Wrek That Discotek” / Lo-Fidelity Allstars feat. Pigeonhead “Battle Flag” / Drag-On “We All Can Get It On” / Will Smith “Gettin’ Jiggy Wit’ It” / Scratch Perverts “Love Rap Routine” / Pete Rock feat. Inspectah Deck and Kurrupt “Tru Master” / Man or Astroman? “Cuts and Volts” / Komeda “It’s Alright, Baby” / Tuscadero “Paper Dolls” / The Donnas “Checkin’ It Out” / At the Drive-In “Chanbara” / moe. “Stranger Than Fiction” / Ui “Drive Until He Sleeps” / 2Pac “Changes” / Xzibit “What U See Is What U Get” / Los Amigos Invisibles “Ultra-Funk” / Lootpack “The Anthem” / The Beatnuts feat. Grand Puba “RU Ready II” / Grandaddy “AM 180” / Everlast “What It’s Like” / System of a Down “Sugar” / Foo Fighters “My Hero” / MxPx “I’m OK, You’re OK” / Mineral “Palisade” / Mary Lou Lord “She Had You” / Braid “A Dozen Roses” / Dirty Three “Distant Shore” / Dump “Clarity” / The Minders “Hooray for Tuesday” / Jewel “Hands” / Lambchop “The Saturday Option”

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Alan Jackson “Right On the Money” / Steve Earle “Carrie Brown” / U2 “The Sweetest Thing” / Clint Black “Nothin’ But the Taillights” / The Verve “Sonnet” / James Iha “Be Strong Now” / Tim McGraw “Just To See You Smile” / Public Enemy “He Got Game” / Funkmaster Flex feat. Charli Baltimore & Cam’ron “Incarcerated Scarfaces Freestyle” / Redman “I’ll Bee Dat!” / Noreaga “Superthug” / Nicole feat. Missy Elliott “Make It Hot” / David Holmes “No More Time Outs” / Meat Beat Manifesto “Acid Again” / Rob Zombie “Dragula” / Girls Against Boys “Park Avenue” / Queens of the Stone Age “Regular John” / Monster Magnet “Space Lord” / Pedro the Lion “Of Up and Coming Monarchs” / The Gloria Record “Grace, the Snow Is Here” / Blink-182 “Josie” / Samiam “Factory” / Patty Griffin “One Big Love” / Soul Coughing “Circles” / Eels “Cancer for the Cure” / Morcheeba “Shoulder Holster” / Chef “Chocolate Salty Balls (P.S. I Love You)” / Killah Priest feat. Ol Dirty Bastard “If You Don’t Know” / Lil’ Mo feat. Missy Elliott “Five Minutes” / Mya & Sisqo “It’s All About Me” / Scarface feat. 2Pac and Master P “Homies & Thuggs” / The Rock*A*Teens “Don’t Destroy This Night” / Cadallaca “You’re My Only One” / Tommy Keene “Long Time Missing” / Remy Zero “Prophecy” / Unwound “No Tech!” / Blur “Movin’ On (Peel Session)” / Shed Seven “She Left Me On Friday” / Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci “Let’s Get Together (In Our Minds)” / Super Furry Animals “Ice Hockey Hair” / Cake “Never There” / Robert Wyatt “Heaps of Sheeps” / Virteous Humor “Why Are You So Mean To Me?”

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Lenny Kravitz “Fly Away” / Big Punisher “Still Not A Player” / Beenie Man “Who Am I” / Five “When the Lights Go Out” / Puff Daddy feat. Jimmy Page “Come with Me” / Kid Rock “I Am the Bullgod” / Godsmack “Whatever” / Limp Bizkit “Faith” / Eve 6 “Inside Out” / Fastball “The Way” / Goo Goo Dolls “Iris” / Ani DiFranco “Glasshouse” / Backstreet Boys “I’ll Never Break Your Heart” / Jennifer Paige “Crush” / Billie “Because We Want To” / B*Witched “C’est La Vie” / Boyzone “No Matter What” / Bran Van 3000 “Drinking in L.A.” / Frank Black and the Catholics “All My Ghosts” / Local H “All the Kids Are Right” / American Football “Letters and Packages” / Nada Surf “Hyperspace” / Dropkick Murphys “Barroom Hero” / Nashville Pussy “Go Motherfucker Go” / Hot Water Music “Better Sense” / Buddha Monk feat. Ol’ Dirty Bastard “Got’s Like Come Thru” / Jo Dee Messina “I’m Alright” / Garth Brooks “Two Piña Coladas” / Total feat. Missy Elliott “Trippin’” / Gang Starr “Moment of Truth” / Flipmode Squad “Cha Cha Cha” / Bizarre “Butterfly” / Kurupt “We Can Freak It” / Dilated Peoples “Work the Angles” / Jayo Felony feat. Method Man & DMX “Whatcha Gonna Do” / Daz Dillinger feat. Snoop Dogg & Nate Dogg “O.G.” / DJ Q-Bert “Beats & Sounds” / Def Squad “Full Cooperation” / Cocoa Brovaz “Still Standin’ Strong” / Danielson Famile “Pottymouth” / Caesars Palace “Kick You Out” / Melanie B feat. Missy Elliott “I Want You Back” / Sparkle “Be Careful” / Anita Cochran & Steve Wariner “What If I Said” / K-Ci & Jojo “All My Life” / Barenaked Ladies “One Week” / Aerosmith “I Don’t Want to Miss A Thing”

Mr. Muthafuckin’ Exquire featuring Meyhem Lauren “Bebop & Rocksteady”

It’s a good thing Mr. Muthafuckin’ Exquire is a bold, forceful and charismatic rapper because I think a lot of rappers – especially a lot of current emcees who mumble and mutter their way through simplistic chant raps – would get bulldozed by this track. The piano chords seem like a pretty basic loop at first, but as the track proceeds the lead notes spiral out into the verses a long longer that you’d expect, and at intervals that sound instinctive and improvised. The melody is very pleasing on its own terms, but I love the way it punctuates Exquire and Meyhem Lauren’s voices. It’s a very dynamic track, and at some moments it feels like the rappers are nimbly dodging or skipping over the piano lines.

Buy it from Amazon.

A Giant Dog “Fake Plastic Trees”

This isn’t a Radiohead cover. This is an original song that in no way references the famous Radiohead song “Fake Plastic Trees,” or even uses any of those three words in the lyrics. It’s hilarious to me that a band would do this, but hey, it’s not as if Radiohead’s the only band with a song called “Creep,” and Stone Temple Pilots beat them to that title by a year!

A Giant Dog’s “Fake Plastic Trees” is glammy garage rock song about being a cool loser. It starts off with Sabrina Ellis and Andrew Cashen asking for a ride somewhere – “it’s on the way, it’s on the way!” – and digresses into verses about being bored and depressed, eating at Whataburger, smoking weed and eating tangerines, and their favorite scene in Terminator. I love the way the song doesn’t focus its attention on anything for long, and in doing so sketches out a detailed portrait of a troubled but fun protagonist. There’s a few musical curveballs to go with the lyrical twists too – the strings come out of nowhere on the bridge and give a fairly bratty song a few moments of grandeur and elegance.

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Hercules & Love Affair featuring Sharon Van Etten “Omnion”

Sharon Van Etten’s voice has a much colder tone on “Omnion” than anything I’ve ever heard her do on her own, but somehow that just amplifies the heart of this song. She sounds incredibly serene as she sings lyrics that are essentially a prayer to some greater power for strength and grace in the face of adversity. The arrangement for the piece sounds like a dance track that’s been hollowed out and converted into a chapel – there’s a holy hum to the keyboards that makes it all sound like a hymn. The line that crushes me comes early on – “If I am your child, why have you put so much in my life to fight?” Van Etten doesn’t sing the line with rage or frustration, though it’d be totally justified. She sounds like she already knows there’s no good answer to the question, and moves on to requests for more reasonable things: love, deliverance from fear, working to be a better person. She’s asking for help, but sings with a clarity of mind that suggests she’s on the right track without it.

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El Ten Eleven featuring Emile Mosseri “I’m Right Here”

“I’m Right Here” is a song about being stuck in an emotional limbo, with Emile Mosseri singing about a relationship that just doesn’t quite take off because these two people are never quite on the same page. He seems to be the one who wants more than what he’s getting, but he’s also the guy singing “I don’t feel it half as much as you do,” so go figure. These things get complicated, and his vocal performance and El Ten Eleven’s atmosphere of claustrophobia and melancholy suggest a lot of confused yet agonizing feelings. It crushes me when he sings the title phrase – despite everything, he’s holding on to a bit of hope and faith, and it’s incredibly beautiful and possibly tragic.

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The Mynabirds “Golden Age”

Even now, when musicians have the power to immediately release a new song to a variety of digital platforms, there’s usually a lag between a song being recorded and it being available to the public. This is part of why we haven’t had a lot of music responding to the election of Trump just yet, though –- I dunno, maybe it’s time to get that rage and grief out there into the world? I find myself having to go back to music from the ‘90s to find suitably angry and topical songs to listen to in 2017.

“Golden Age,” from the Mynabirds’ new album out this week, sounds like it had to have been written sometime around late January/early February, just after the inauguration. The line that dates it most obviously is when Laura Burhenn sings “I think even I could punch a Nazi in the face” in reference to the viral clip of Richard Spencer getting a knuckle sandwich, though that could just as well have been from last week. The song is a pensive ballad that perhaps deliberately evokes the feeling of John Lennon’s “Imagine,” and borrows some of that song’s approach to rhetoric. This is a song inspired by anger and distress at what is happening in the world, but that’s not the tone of the lyrics or music. Burhenn is being calm and reasonable, and making a case for regular activism and holding on to the best of humanity while pushing back on the worst of it. She gets sentimental in moments, but her message is practical and optimistic in its belief that we can get through this. But only if we do it together.

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Alvvays “Dreams Tonite”

Molly Rankin sings “Dreams Tonite” with a pleasant wispiness that serves the song very well, both in the way it renders the main melody and portrays a specific type of thoughtful, self-effacing introversion. She’s singing about a relationship that’s gone cold, but the real tension in the song is trying to interpret raw, visceral feelings through a practical, cerebral mindset. There’s two rhetorical questions posed at opposite ends of the song, and they seem to answer each other. First, “Who starts a fire just to let it go out?,” and then “Who builds a wall just to let it fall down?” Clearly, the walls are the problem here.

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Liyv “Weeknight”

The sound of this song – perky and feminine, minimal in its arrangement but maximalist in the way its vocal hook is chopped up and reconfigured as a sort of drop – would’ve seemed ahead of the curve five years ago, and trendy two years ago. Now it just sounds like the zeitgeist, and only slightly stranger than the pop radio version of this aesthetic. Liyv’s vocal melodies make this song particularly sticky, and there’s something very compelling about the way her voice moves around the more jagged edges of the arrangement, like water rushing to fill the void. It’s the chopped up chorus that gets you though, but I will warn you in advance that it can be a little annoying to have this melodic phrase that sounds like it should be a set of words loop in your mind, because I find my brain keeps trying to interpret it as a lyric: “I want a kitten, I want a lil kitten.”

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Kesha “Let ‘Em Talk”

There is an urgency to Kesha’s new album Rainbow that is very noticeable when you hear in the context of current mainstream pop music – it doesn’t sound like something that’s been calculated and revised several times over in the hope of finding success; it sounds like something that had to be made. Kesha sounds absolutely thrilled to making music after what can succinctly and understatedly be referred to as an ordeal with Dr. Luke, and every moment is cathartic in some way. I’m particularly attracted to “Let ‘Em Talk” because it so perfectly articulates this feeling of “I’M FREE!!!!!,” and Kesha has always been at her best when she’s singing about being joyful as a form of defiance. A lot of “fuck the haters” sentiment in pop music strikes me as petty vanity and delusion, but that’s not the case here. This really is about pushing back at the miserable, angry, hateful people in the world and finding the strength to be fully yourself and enjoy your life. Songs like this feel necessary now, and a lot more political than they used to be.

Buy it from Amazon.

The Rock*A*Teens “Across the Piedmont”

This song is nearly 20 years old, but I’ve only known it for a little while, after Carl Newman from The New Pornographers was tweeting about his deep love of The Rock*A*Teens. “Across the Piedmont” hit me right away and has been lingering in my mind for months. I wish I could have known it around the time it came out, mostly just so I could have an additional 19 years of it in my life.

The two most striking things about The Rock*A*Teens is their distinctive use of reverb on guitars, which lends the music a ragged ’60s garage rock aesthetic, and Chris Lopez’s incredibly emotive voice. Lopez sings with the maximum level of commitment, to the point that he’s often pushing his voice beyond its natural range because he clearly would not settle on underselling any feeling. The lyrics of “Across the Piedmont” are vivid in their specificity but vague in narrative, but Lopez belts out key lines with a red-hot passion that makes you wonder why he’d have such an urgent feeling about “the summer when I turned 23” in the first place. He’s implying so much more than what’s in the song, and that I can’t quite figure it out just makes it all the more compelling to me. I don’t know why he’s got this melancholy and nostalgia, but I am definitely acquainted with this emotion.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Oh Sees “Jettison”

John Dwyer won’t ever let you down. If you come to an Oh Sees record looking for grooves and riffs and “wooo!” and relentless forward momentum, you’re absolutely going to get those things in some combination. Much like The Fall and Clinic before them, they know what their aesthetic is, and the variation is in the details. In the case of Oh Sees, they’re still riding out the possibilities of their double drummer lineup, and so a song like “Jettison” which would be just fine with a single drummer gets this added kinetic motion that emphasizes a restlessness in the guitar parts. The drums don’t really signal tension – there’s a relaxing swing to the groove – but they do give you this feeling that the music is in constant motion, like it’s a musical shark that needs to keep moving forward to survive.

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Mount Kimbie featuring King Krule “Blue Train Lines”

King Krule sings “Blue Train Lines” with an urgent, frazzled tone, as though he’s trying to fill you in on as many details as he can because there’s just not enough time. His heavily accented rasp sounds like a version of Joe Strummer raised on rap as he spits out lines about witnessing a girlfriend trying to kill herself. He sounds genuinely traumatized and rattled as he cycles through shock, fascination, love, guilt, and panic. His words are vivid and brilliantly constructed – “on the seedy floor in the back of a CD store” is an impressive internal rhyme – but his vocal is even more so, investing every line with raw feeling. Mount Kimbie’s track frames it all perfectly, giving King Krule space as he sets the scene, and then a quickening pulse as the stakes get higher.

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Margo Price “Paper Cowboy”

The character in Margo Price’s “Paper Cowboy” is the epitome of the old country expression “all hat, no cattle.” He’s what the late radio crank Bob Grant would call a “fake phony fraud.” If you take Price’s word for it, he’s a blowhard who only brings misery to the people around him. But as judgmental as this song is, Price still sounds warm and empathetic in her vocal performance, as though she can’t help but feel bad for the guy and wishes he’d be genuine rather than put on an act. The music also avoids a harsh tone, shifting from a soft ballad in the first verse into a groovy up-tempo country rock tune before eventually settling into an instrumental section that sprawls out into half of the song’s six minute runtime. This music sounds far too cheerful and relaxed to be the soundtrack to a grudge, and the song is better for that.

Buy it from Amazon.

Nine Inch Nails “The Background World”

“The Background World” starts off as a fairly typical late period Nine Inch Nails song, with Trent Reznor singing a very Reznor sort of melody over contrasting keyboard parts – some burbling, some bleeping, some like the electronic equivalent of the ambient hum inside a seashell. Reznor sounds exhausted and frustrated, he sounds ambivalent about connecting with a world that seems increasingly miserable and hostile. This would be a very good song if that’s all there was to it, but after four minutes the music takes an interesting turn as one chunk of music starts looping over and over. It’s a Disintegration Loops sort of thing, with each repetition degrading the audio so it becomes more dull and abrasive. I like that the loop doesn’t connect just right – there’s a slight stutter to the beginning of each cycle, but that gradually disappears along with all other detail. By the end it’s just hideous, oppressive white noise. A little over a decade ago Reznor put out a song called “Every Day Is Exactly the Same,” and I think of this as a Trump-era correction: Every Day Is Just A Bit Worse.

Buy it from Amazon.

This is the eighth in the 1990s survey mix series, which will come out monthly in chronological order through this year. You can find the previous mixes here. I’ve made a Spotify version of this survey which you can find here, though it is missing 15 tracks and has no sound editing for smooth listening.

Here we are now in the late ‘90s, exactly 20 years ago. There’s a lot of special and interesting things going on this year.

• This is a huge moment for English rock, with Britpop giving way to a series of grand, ambitious records from Radiohead, Spiritualized, The Verve, Blur, Cornershop, and Primal Scream. Oasis are not so arty, but I think Be Here Now is just as ambitious in its own way, and the title track is one of the best songs that band ever produced. All of these bands were on their own trip, but they’re united by a desire to make bold, adventurous music that’s also quite accessible.

• Experimentation is key in 1997. Eric Harvey recently described a dominant strain of music in this era as “recombinant pop,” the work of post-hip hop artists cutting and pasting ideas from a wide range of music into new forms. Stereolab, Björk, RZA, Aphex Twin, Missy Elliott and Timbaland, Mouse on Mars, Atari Teenage Riot, Plug, Roni Size, Tricky, Portishead, Daft Punk, The Chemical Brothers, Beck, etc – all artists whose music still sounds forward-thinking and futuristic two decades later. In Eric’s review of Stereolab’s Dots and Loops he notes that the notion of “omnivorous inclusion” became a popular mode of consumption for highbrow music nerds, and over the course of the next few years this mindset – one I embraced at the time and maintain to this day – gradually overtook a sort of rock-centric fandom fixated on authenticity and genre purity. This is the beginning of a sea change that has resulted in the music landscape we exist in today, in which omnivorous taste is a default position and rock music is erroneously considered déclassé or irrelevant simply because it’s not the utterly dominant cultural force it was through much of the ‘90s.

• This is another huge year for rap, and especially for rap from New York City. At this point in time Puff Daddy and his family of Bad Boy artists have reached the pinnacle of pop culture in the wake of The Notorious B.I.G.’s murder, and the Wu-Tang Clan are enjoying their greatest mainstream success with Wu-Tang Forever. The NYC rap station Hot 97 is so powerful that two of their star DJs – Funkmaster Flex and Angie Martinez – appear in this survey as artists in their own right. A new underground is developing with the emergence of Company Flow, Mos Def, and the general Rawkus family of artists on the East Coast, and Latyrx and the Quannum family on the West Coast. Missy Elliott, Timbaland, and Busta Rhymes are bringing a touch of eccentricity to the mainstream, and Master P’s New Orleans-based No Limit label is disrupting the East Coast/West Coast narrative of hip-hop.

• The dominant mainstream trends of the next few years – nu-metal and shiny teen pop – begin to emerge in this year with early material by Backstreet Boys, NSYNC, a Max Martin-assisted teenage Robyn, Korn, Limp Bizkit, Slipknot, and Creed. I’ve mostly quarantined the shitty rock music on the final part of the survey.

Some fairly obscure songs I’d like to call attention to:

• The Funkmaster Flex freestyle cut in part one is astonishing, and pulls together a bunch of lesser-known NYC rappers from that period for a marathon posse track that draws on the joyful spirit of old school hip-hop while staying grounded in the grimier rap of the late ‘90s.

• The Geraldine Fibbers’ version of Can’s “You Doo Right” is one of the best and most radically reimagined covers I’ve ever heard, with Carla Bozulich recasting Malcolm Mooney’s poetic mutterings as a brazen, passionate declaration of love and lust while a pre-Wilco Nels Cline shreds it up on guitar. This is as good as rock music gets.

• The Depeche Mode song included here, “Home,” may be my favorite song in their catalog, and features a truly gorgeous and vibratto-heavy vocal performance by Martin Gore. I deliberately sequenced this song to be next to similarly excellent and ambitious tunes by their contemporaries The Cure and U2, in part to highlight how they each released fairly forward thinking music around the time they started to be considered legacy acts. The Smashing Pumpkins and Nine Inch Nails weren’t quite as established at this point, but they were also ahead of the curve in terms of embracing very recent trends in electronic production. They rarely get credit for this, but I think these acts were crucial in broadening the palette of rock music in the lead up to the 21st century.

• The Kylie Minogue song here, “I Don’t Need Anyone,” is her great lost classic as far as I’m concerned. Shudder to Think’s glammy “Survival” would be a well-known and widely beloved song in a better world. Ditto everything on Jonathan Fire Eater’s Wolf Songs for Lambs from this year. The songs by R.E.M. and David Byrne in this set aren’t particularly well known, but are among the most beautiful and empathetic works of either act’s career. The song by Ben Folds Five is the most elegant thing Folds has ever written and should become something of a standard. The songs by Veruca Salt, Atari Teenage Riot, The Make Up, and Papas Fritas are total bangers.

Thanks to Rob Sheffield, Sean T. Collins, Dan Kois, Paul Cox, and especially Eric Harvey for their valuable assistance in putting this set together.

DOWNLOAD PART 1

Radiohead “Airbag” / Sleater-Kinney “One More Hour” / Cornershop “Brimful of Asha” / Björk “Alarm Call” / Missy Elliott “The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)” / The Notorious B.I.G. “Hypnotize” / Wu-Tang Clan “Reunited” / Puff Daddy feat. Lil’ Kim, The LOX and The Notorious B.I.G. “It’s All About the Benjamins” / Busta Rhymes “Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Can See” / Daft Punk “Around the World” / Atari Teenage Riot “Destroy 2000 Years of Culture” / Blur “On Your Own” / Pavement “Stereo” / Shania Twain “Love Gets Me Every Time” / Hanson “MMMBop” / Robyn “Do You Know (What It Takes)” / All Saints “Never Ever” / Spiritualized “Ladies and Gentlemen, We Are Floating In Space” / The Verve “Bitter Sweet Symphony” / The Dandy Warhols “Boys Better” / Oasis “Be Here Now” / Veruca Salt “Don’t Make Me Prove It” / Shudder to Think “Survival” / Modest Mouse “Polar Opposites” / Jonathan Fire Eater “This Is My Room” / Primal Scream “Star” / Latyrx “Lady Don’t Tek No” / Mos Def “If You Can Huh…” / Funkmaster Flex feat. Boot Camp Clik, Cocoa Brovaz, Heltah Skeltah, O.G.C., Ranks, Ms. Twanie, Swan Da Boodah Junkie, and The Representativz “Freestyle #11” / Yo La Tengo “Autumn Sweater” / Belle & Sebastian “Lazy Line Painter Jane” / The Geraldine Fibbers “You Doo Right” / Ani DiFranco “Firedoor (Live)” / Ben Folds Five “Selfless, Cold, and Composed” / Wyclef Jean “Gone Till November (Pop Version)”

DOWNLOAD PART 2

Stereolab “Brakhage” / Janet Jackson feat. Q-Tip “Got Till It’s Gone” / Portishead “Only You” / Tricky “Makes Me Wanna Die” / 2Pac “Do For Love” / Mariah Carey “Honey” / Lord Tariq & Peter Gunz “Deja Vu (Uptown Baby)” / Lil Kim feat. Angie Martinez, Left Eye, Da Brat & Missy Elliott “Not Tonight (Remix)” / The Chemical Brothers “Block Rockin’ Beats” / Nine Inch Nails “The Perfect Drug” / GusGus “Why” / Aphex Twin “Flim” / Depeche Mode “Home” / The Cure “Wrong Number” / U2 “Gone” / Natalie Imbruglia “Torn” / Foo Fighters “Everlong” / Céline Dion “My Heart Will Go On” / Elliott Smith “Ballad of Big Nothing” / The Make Up “Pow! to the People” / Helium “Leon’s Space Song” / Company Flow “The Fire In Which You Burn” / Freak Nasty “Da’ Dip” / Usher “You Make Me Wanna” / Erykah Badu “Apple Tree” / Capone-N-Noreaga “T.O.N.Y.” / Scarface feat. 2Pac & Johnny P “Smile” / Camp Lo “Luchini (A.K.A. This Is It)” / Kool Keith “Sex Style” / The Prodigy “Smack My Bitch Up” / Rammstein “Du Hast” / Godspeed You! Black Emperor “The Dead Flag Blues”

DOWNLOAD PART 3

Bis “Tell It to the Kids” / Papas Fritas “Sing About Me” / Plumtree “Scott Pilgrim” / That Dog “Gagged and Tied” / Ween “Ocean Man” / David Byrne “Finite = Alright” / Backstreet Boys “Everybody (Backstreet’s Back)” / Master P feat. Silkk the Shocker, Fiend, Mia X and Mystikal “Make ‘Em Say Uhh” / Mase “Feel So Good” / LL Cool J feat. Method Man, Redman, Canibus & DMX “4, 3, 2, 1” / Street Smartz feat. OC & Pharoahe Monch “Metal Thangz” / Armand Van Helden “Hot Butter” / Dub Narcotic Sound System “Bass Hump” / Dru Hill “In My Bed” / Jay-Z “The City Is Mine” / Mary J. Blige feat. Lil Kim “I Can Love You” / Pulp “Help the Aged” / Fiona Apple “Sleep to Dream” / Massive Attack “Risingson” / DJ Shadow “High Noon” / Buena Vista Social Club “Chan Chan” / Bob Dylan “Love Sick” / Green Day “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)” / George Strait “One Night At A Time” / Leann Rimes “How Do I Live” / Garth Brooks “Longneck Bottle” / Bloodhound Gang “Fire Water Burn” / Blink-182 “Dammit” / The Get Up Kids “Don’t Hate Me” / Marcy Playground “Sex and Candy” / Sarah McLachlan “Building A Mystery” / R.E.M. “Electrolite” / Sonic Youth “Anagrama” / Mogwai “Like Herod” / Air “Le soleil est près de moi” / Broadcast “Lights Out”

DOWNLOAD PART 4

Roni Size & Reprazent “Railing” / The X-Ecutioners “Musica Negra (Black Music)” / Boot Camp Clik “Illa Noyz” / Destiny’s Child “No, No, No Pt. 2” / Timbaland and Magoo “Up Jumps Da Boogie” / The Orb “Toxygene” / Underworld “Pearl’s Girl” / Fluke “Atom Bomb” / Tha Alkaholiks feat. Ol’ Dirty Bastard “Hip Hop Drunkies” / Brian McKnight “You Should Be Mine (Don’t Waste Your Time)” / Plug “Subtle (In Your Face)” / Lords of Acid “Pussy” / David Bowie “I’m Afraid of Americans” / The Smashing Pumpkins “Eye” / Twista “Get It Wet” / Korn feat. The Dust Brothers “Kick the P.A.” / Organized Konfusion “Invetro” / Hieroglyphics “The Who (A-Plus Remix)” / The Firm “Phone Tap” / Sugar Ray “Fly” / Save Ferris “Come On Eileen” / Mighty Mighty Bosstones “The Impression That I Get” / Smash Mouth “Walkin’ on the Sun” / Live “Lakini’s Juice” / Built to Spill “I Would Hurt A Fly” / The Dismemberment Plan “The Ice of Boston” / Guided by Voices “Sad If I Lost It” / Kylie Minogue “I Don’t Need Anyone” / Beck “Deadweight” / Elastica feat. Stephen Malkmus “Unheard Muzik” / Matthew Sweet “Come to California” / Third Eye Blind “Semi-Charmed Life” / Chumbawamba “Tubthumping” / White Town “Your Woman” / SWV & Puff Daddy “Someone” / Mouse On Mars “Juju”

DOWNLOAD PART 5

The Flaming Lips “Okay, I’ll Admit That I Really Don’t Understand” / Clinic “Porno” / Smog “Ex-Con” / Texas “Black Eyed Boy” / The Pietasters “Out All Night” / Less Than Jake “Automatic” / Everclear “I Will Buy You A New Life” / Lonestar “Come Cryin’ to Me” / Tim McGraw & Faith Hill “It’s Your Love” / Steve Earle “Somewhere Out There” / Mindy McCready “Oh Romeo” / Whiskeytown “16 Days” / Ivy “The Best Thing” / NSYNC “Here We Go” / Ray J “Let It Go” / Common “Reminding Me” / Dionne Farris “Hopeless” / Zony Mash “Cold Spell” / DJ Vadim “Conquest of the I” / Coldcut “More Beats + Pieces (Daddy Rips It Up Mix)” / Crystal Method “Busy Child” / Merril Bainbridge “Mouth” / Bush “Mouth (The Stingray Mix)” / Mineral “Five, Eight, and Ten” / Luna “Tracy I Love You” / Lifetime “Turnpike Gates” / MxPx “Move to Bremerton” / NoFX “It’s My Job to Keep Punk Rock Elite” / Royal Trux “Don’t Try Too Hard” / The Beatnuts feat. Big Punisher and Cuban Linx “Off the Books” / Redman feat. Erick Sermon “Whateva Man” / Mobb Deep feat. Rakim & Big Noyd “Hoodlum” / Mia X “The Party Don’t Stop (Funky Mix)” / Jedi Mind Tricks “The Winds of War” / DJ Krush “Shin-Sekai” / µ-Ziq “Hasty Boom Alert” / Plaid “Kortisin” / Thievery Corporation “Weightless”

DOWNLOAD PART 6

Aqua “Barbie Girl” / Gina G “Ooh Aah (Just A Little Bit)” / Spice Girls “Spice Up Your Life” / INXS “Elegantly Wasted” / Blue Boy “Remember Me” / High & Mighty “It’s All for You” / Young Bleed feat. Master P & C-Loc “How Ya Do Dat” / Mystikal “Ain’t No Limit” / Mack 10 “Backyard Boogie” / Makaveli feat. The Outlawz “Hail Mary” / 112 “Cupid” / Keith Sweat “Nobody” / Mic Geronimo feat. DMX, Ja Rule, Tragey, and The LOX “Usual Suspects” / Gang Starr “You Know My Steez” / EPMD “Da Joint” / Reflection Eternal “Fortified Live” / Meat Beat Manifesto “It’s the Music” / KMFDM “Megalomaniac” / Morcheeba “Shoulder Holster” / Mouse on Mars “Juju” / Savage Garden “Truly Madly Deeply” / Duncan Sheik “Barely Breathing” / Shawn Colvin “Sunny Came Home” / Kenny Chesney “She Got It All” / Mark Chesnutt “It’s A Little Too Late” / Paul McCartney “The World Tonight” / Superchunk “Watery Hands” / Cursive “After the Movies” / Travis “All I Want To Do Is Rock” / Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci “Diamond Dew” / Old 97’s “Timebomb” / Ben Harper “Faded” / Knapsack “Courage Was Confused” / Sleeper “She’s A Good Girl” / Rainer Maria “Viva Anger, Viva Hate” / Lida Husik “Fly Stereophonic” / The Sundays “Summertime” / Deana Carter “We Danced Anyway” / Paula Cole “I Don’t Want to Wait”

DOWNLOAD PART 7

Tool “Ænema” / Marilyn Manson “Tourniquet” / Metallica “The Memory Remains” / The Lady of Rage “Some Shit” / Mr. Complex “Visualize” / DJ Muggs & Mobb Deep “It Could Happen to You” / Next “Butta Love” / Allure “All Cried Out” / Amon Tobin “Stoney Street” / Pizzicato Five “Love’s Theme” / Laika “Almost Sleeping” / David Holmes “Don’t Die Just Yet” / Mr. President “Coco Jamboo” / Yvette Michelle “I’m Not Feeling You” / Bone Thugs N Harmony “Look Into My Eyes” / En Vogue “Don’t Let Go (Love)” / Chantal Kreviazuk “God Made Me” / Abra Moore “Four Leaf Clover” / Kenickie “Punka” / Deftones “Be Quiet and Drive” / Morrissey “Maladjusted” / Filter “(Can’t You) Trip Like I Do” / AZ Yet “Hard To Say I’m Sorry” / Something for the People “My Love is the Shhhh” / Changing Faces “G.H.E.T.T.O.U.T.” / Warren G “I Shot the Sheriff” / Tela “Tired of Ballin’” / Diamond D feat. Pete Rock and Phife Dawg “Painz & Strife” / R.A. the Rugged Man “Till My Heart Stops” / Rampage feat. Busta Rhmyes “Wild for Da Nite” / Archers of Loaf “Jive Kata” / Toad the Wet Sprocket “Come Down” / Sister Hazel “All for You” / Fivel “Convict Grass” / My Drug Hell “2 A.M.” / Aerosmith “Pink” / Pulsars “Tunnel Song” / At the Drive-In “Give It A Name” / Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments “Lightin’ Rod” / Gene “Where Are They Now?”

DOWNLOAD PART 8

Cherry Poppin’ Daddies “Zoot Suit Riot” / Primus “Bob’s Party Time Lounge” / Slipknot “Slipknot” / Creed “My Own Prison” / Limp Bizkit “Counterfeit” / Insane Clown Posse “Halls of Illusions” / 311 “Beautiful Disaster” / The Offspring “Gone Away” / Incubus “New Skin” / Silverchair “Abuse Me” / Days of the New “Touch, Peel, and Stand” / Tonic “If You Could Only See” / Matchbox 20 “Push” / Edwin McCain “I’ll Be” / Guster “Airport Song” / Summercamp “Drawer” / Placebo “Nancy Boy” / Smoking Popes “I Know You Love Me” / Real McCoy “One More Time” / R. Kelly “Gotham City” / Will Smith “Men In Black” / Da Brat “Ghetto Love” / Coolio “C U When You Get There” / Joe “Don’t Wanna Be A Player” / Mark Morrison “Return of the Mack” / Gravediggaz “Dangerous Mindz” / Mansun “She Makes My Nose Bleed” / Death In Vegas “Rocco” / Photek “KJZ” / Diamond Rio “How Your Love Makes Me Feel” / Atmosphere “Sound Is Vibration” / Big Mike “Burban & Impalas” / Total feat. Timbaland “What About Us” / Boyz II Men “4 Seasons of Loneliness” / 98 Degrees “Invisible Man” / Bob Carlisle “Butterfly Kisses” / Barbra Streisand & Bryan Adams “I Finally Found Someone” / Elton John “Candle in the Wind 1997”

Octo Octa “No More Pain (Promises To A Younger Self)”

This is a great example of an artist giving an abstract work of art a title that gives you some loose instruction on how to interpret it. The first 30 seconds of “No More Pain (Promises To A Younger Self)” is ambient and vaguely melancholy – not overtly sad, but an indication of some sort of absence. Like being aware that you don’t have what you need, but not really knowing what it is just yet. When the beat kicks in it’s like suddenly finding what you’ve been missing, and when the vocal sample comes in it’s like hearing a voice that’s speaking directly to you. And holy shit, that voice is Mariah fucking Carey! I love what Octo Octa does with Carey’s voice here, chopping it up so you can immediately recognize her glorious tone but distorted enough that there’s no words, just an ecstatic feeling. It’s the raw essence of Mariah, and it’s presented here as the sound of an epiphany and self-acceptance. It’s perfect casting.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Rhye “Please”

When Rhye released their first few songs back in 2013 there was a manufactured mystery about them – where did this gentle, sexy music come from, and who is this woman with the silky, gorgeous voice? This was clearly setup for the big reveal: That’s not a woman at all, that’s some guy named Mike Milosh! I get it. It’s a good story. It’s probably the only manufactured mystery around the identity of a new indie act that actually was interesting and made sense. It’s usually just a coward move.

The funny thing is that despite this being common knowledge now, the music itself still has this mysterious quality to it. Milosh’s voice is still lovely and extremely feminine – it’s not a matter of someone affecting a falsetto, it goes a lot deeper than that. How did Milosh arrive at this vocal style, and is it deliberately meant to convey vulnerability and fragility through that femininity? Is this a rejection of masculinity, or a way of expanding and adapting it? I’m not sure if I actually want the answers, I enjoy this vague tension in music that otherwise sounds rather relaxed and smooth. I also love the way Milosh and his partner Robin Hannibal create a feeling of intense intimacy in their music – listening to “Please” can feel vaguely voyeuristic, as though you’re getting access to some unguarded moment between people who truly know one another.

Buy it from Amazon.

Monster Rally & RUMTUM “Raindrops”

I’m not sure what song is being sampled here, but I love the way Monster Rally and RUMTUM bend this honey sweet voice so it forms a coherent phrase – “heaven offers the raindrops.” It’s like those activity book games where you fold the paper so different lines connect to reveal an answer. It fits perfectly into the music too, in which the atmosphere of it and the shifting elements recall the uncertain weather just after humidity breaks and produces a sudden summer rainstorm. It’s an interesting sensation, like “oh, so this is what relief feels like.”

Buy it from Amazon.

Patience “White On An Eye”

It’s funny, this is essentially retro early 80s synth pop – the New Order and Vince Clarke fandom is right out in the open – but it makes me nostalgic for the early days of this site in the early ‘00s, when embracing this aesthetic was fresh and a bit contrary. “White Of An Eye” sounds like the work of someone who has immersed herself in early New Order and late ‘80s twee UK indie to the point of completely internalizing the best artistic instincts of that music. It’s an exceptionally charming tune, and structured for the ideal balance of cuteness, angst, and bop-ability.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Sudan Archives “Come Meh Way”

Brittney Denise Parks, who records as Sudan Archives, is an untrained violinist and plays her instrument in a way that sidesteps a lot of conventions. It’s a naive approach, but also focused and inventive – she’s using a complex and tonally rich instrument to approximate the style of West African music typically played on one string. “Come Meh Way,” with its sawing violin melody, skipping beats, and rhythmic vocal hooks, is immediately fascinating and attention-grabbing. Its roots in the past are apparent, but it feels very modern in the way it tilts toward rap without necessarily being a hip-hop track. It sounds like a combination of ideas that are ripe for exploration.

Buy it from Amazon.

Tyler, the Creator featuring Rex Orange County “Foreword”

Part of what makes Tyler, the Creator so interesting to listen to on his new record Flower Boy is that he seems like he’s settled into his adult self but is uncertain of who he’s supposed to be in the world. He’s moved away from the trolling antics of his early music, but has replaced that with a sort of “fuck you” vulnerability that serves a similar purpose of weeding out anyone who isn’t ready to accept him exactly as he is. “Foreword” opens the record with Tyler at a crossroads. He seems unsure of how he fits into his culture, and ambivalent about his level of success – rich enough to be removed from some elements of black life, but not wealthy enough to embrace all the usual clichés of a rap star. I like the way this song falls into a space between introspection and indecision, and how it’s like he’s almost figured out who he wants to be but can’t quite shake some insecurities. He’s right on the edge of fully realizing something Stephen Malkmus articulated succinctly on the first Pavement album: “Between here and there is better than either here or there.”

Buy it from Amazon.