SOUND BITES

If you're looking for the perfect entry point in Pearl Jam's discography, it's hard not to gravitate toward Vitalogy since it's probably the most varied of the group's ten albums to date. If you're fond of their hard edged, punk-fed side, it doesn't get much more incendiary than Spin The Black Circle . As far as the band's anthems go, they don't hit much harder than Corduroy ; there's a reason it's been played at over five hundred of their shows over the years. If you're only after the endorphin rush that comes from their most massive of songs, it's difficult to top Better Man in that regard. Throw in some emotional turmoil ( Nothingman , Immortality ), a standoffish tantrum or three ( Not For You , Whipping , Satan's Bed ), and the absolute strangest moments they've ever put to tape ( Bugs , Stupid Mop ), and Vitalogy is an album that pushes just about every button. Vitalogy is, above all else, an album full of ...

In 2014, the thought of a live album is equal parts befuddling and laughable; the act of releasing a live album has become one of rock's most pointless endeavors, as it's no longer a relevant revenue generator with high quality video evidence of most shows readily available to stream online. However, there was a time when the live album was one of the music industry's drugs of choice when it came to generating Christmas shopping season revenue. Between those and greatest hits albums, the majority of November and December releases used to be comprised of these blatant cash grabs. Often redundant and/or not warranted, they rarely resulted in an end product that had any worth outside of immediate revenue for artists and labels. Occasionally, though, something special came around, something that was so much more than a simple cash grab. Nirvana's MTV Unplugged performance was certainly special; straying from the obvious choices, their acoustic set was ...

This one might be a tough sell. Whether or not you see the debut album from Korn as a pioneering release for hard music or the harbinger of hard music's ruination depends largely on your opinion of what came after. If you subscribe to the latter group, you likely lament that Korn begat Limp Bizkit begat Staind begat Puddle of Mudd, so on, so forth. Of course, it's a little silly to blame Korn for Puddle of Mudd, but they've made themselves easy targets with a string of albums over the past fifteen years or so that hover somewhere between "diminishing returns" and "gaudy embarrassments". But let's forget everything that came after for just a moment, and remember that there was a time twenty years ago when nothing like Korn existed. Their unique blend of bowel shaking tones, hip hop rhythms and explicit anguish officially ushered in the genre later labeled as "nu metal", for better or worse. Korn doesn't speak ...

If any album from 1994 perfectly encapsulates the major labels' "anything goes" attitude of the time, it's probably Ruby Vroom . Released during a tense time during which the industry was trying to figure out what alternative was now that Kurt Cobain was gone, Soul Coughing's debut album was a thing of weird beauty; sample-heavy jazz rock laced with beat poetry and off-kilter hip hop references, it wasn't the easiest thing to categorize. The rhythm section of Sebastien Steinberg and Yuval Gabay kept it tight and funky, while Mark Degli Antoni brought a myriad of strange sounds and samples to the mix. Throw in Mike Doughty's freak folk poetry and you had one of the oddest bands to receive the endorsement of a major label in the '90s. Yet, as weird and potentially off-putting as it all was on paper, Ruby Vroom brought the goods; strange yet strangely inviting, it boasted a bevvy of formidable tunes. The lazy jazz-funk drone of Screenwriter...

If you took a room full of people aside one by one and asked them to name the first female-fronted rock band of the '90s they could think of, I suspect the vast majority would mention Hole. That's not right or wrong; but the point is that Veruca Salt, despite achieving a good deal of success worldwide and putting out two really good records before things went sideways for them, has been doomed to obscurity in the minds of many. It's understandable, of course; they never dabbled in controversy, went public with any details about their original break-up, or clamored desperately for attention once their fifteen minutes were up. It's not great if the goal was to stay in the public eye, but there was a staggering benefit to going about their business quietly; it ensures what we're left with to reflect on is the music, like it should always be. Stripped of any extracurricular activities or external circumstances, American Thighs is simply the excellen...

In recent years, R.E.M.'s ninth album has undeservedly earned a somewhat tarnished reputation as a black sheep of their discography; in some circles Monster is regarded as a derivative grasp at "grunge", a crass deviation from their classic sound that reached into a cookie jar it had no business with. Is it derivative? Sure, a little; but, in the context of the band's career, Monster makes a lot of sense.  On their eight previous LPs, R.E.M. had already covered a lot of ground, from their beginnings as scrappy "college rock" vanguards to their mastery of the intelligent Americana from 1992's Automatic For The People (still hailed by a majority as not only their finest album but one of the all time greats). Following up such a substantial commercial and critical success was a game they couldn't possibly win; they were bound to face an undue amount of scrutiny no matter where they took their sound.  That they took it to such a comparati...

It doesn't take a great deal of creative effort to paint a picture of darkness; in fact, if you look at the musical climate The Holy Bible comes from, it was practically par for the course in 1994. However, the art squarely came into focus for Manic Street Preachers; their third album is also the last to be played on by guitarist and frequent lyricist Richey Edwards. Suffering from severe depression while battling substance abuse and anorexia, Edwards would disappear five months after The Holy Bible 's release; his body was never found. It's an incredibly tragic end for such a talented creative force, and it's one that casts a long shadow over this album; mixed in among recurring political and social commentaries are horrifying accounts of gender anxiety, suicidal depression, self-harm and mortal anorexia. It's a relentlessly bleak, terrifying and hopeless album, and Edwards' disappearance only serves to amplify its dark emotions. From a purely musical sta...

Helmet's story is really rather unfortunate; criminally undervalued during their initial run, praised time and time again as major influences after they went away and largely ignored upon their return, they never really achieved their due in regards of critical acclaim or mainstream acceptance. Betty is as close as they got, thanks mostly to the attention grabbing effort that was 1992's Meantime . That album's MTV-supported highlight, the driving and riff-happy Unsung , put them on the radar for many (including this guy); many of those who checked out Meantime were beaten down by its relentlessness and charmed by its at the time unfathomable marriage of metallic riffage and off-kilter jazz rhythms. More than anything, though, it was about the brutal, primal nature of the music. It didn't veer off tangent or operate on multiple levels; it was all tactical aggression, a blunt force rock album that left an impression whether you were looking for it or not. The negative ...

When I think about '90s bands who fell hard and far from grace, Stone Temple Pilots is one of the first bands that comes to mind. Through poor artistic decisions and great amounts of narcotics, they managed to snuff their own careers out to the point where the last album they made before originally disbanding, 2001's Shangri-La Dee Da , barely cracked the top ten. Just seven years earlier, Purple found Stone Temple Pilots achieving a sweet spot not many bands ever get to see. Silencing critics who wrote Core off as a derivative Pearl Jam record with slightly louder guitars even as it sold in excess of 8 million copies, Purple showed significant artistic growth and a knack for hooks that propelled the album to the top and almost* maintained the torrid multi-platinum pace of Core , going platinum six times over and establishing Stone Temple Pilots as one of the world's most popular bands. *"Almost" in the U.S. at least. Here in Canada, Purple actually so...

Long before they'd flamed themselves out creatively to the point of embarrassment, Weezer were a scrappy group of book smart rockers who channelled what it was like to be young and awkward in '90s America and went on to strike a chord with disaffected teens the world over. That this album was successful as it was owes an tremendous debt to Spike Jonze, who directed the Happy Days-augmenting Buddy Holly video that was revolutionary and mind blowing in late '94; its charming use of tech fit perfectly with the sweet n' chunky rock of the hit song. It portrayed Weezer as funny, charming guys, a far cry from the barrage of angry, dangerous men in heavy rotation on MTV. The "blue album" is soaked with the awkward charm that Rivers Cuomo would later sprinkle anguish into on the almost disaster then/universally hailed now Pinkerton . That album is the true creative pinnacle for Weezer, but it's often suffocatingly dark and isolated, whereas Weezer is brigh...

Of all the bands who achieved massive success in the '90s, few are quite as forgotten as Live. Sure, there are plenty who loudly voice their dislike for Creed, Limp Bizkit, Bush, etc., but where those bands have forged legacies of eye rolling and "I can't believe I bought their records", Live seems to have just faded out of public consciousness, with very few vocal supporters or detractors remaining. It's kind of a shame, but it's also kind of their own fault; in the wake of Throwing Copper 's success, their studio output took "diminishing returns" to a whole new level. Eventually, all but the diehards wrote them off; when they parted ways with singer Ed Kowalczyk and started down the ugly path of legal proceedings, it seemed they'd even written themselves off. These days, Kowalczyk is still trying to make a go of his solo career, while the rest of the band is trying to make a go of Live with a new singer. It's really rather ugly a...

When you think of Hole's sophomore album (and first on a major label), there are two common memories that come up time and time again, both tragic in their own way. Of course, the proverbial cloud that hangs over Live Through This is the proximity of its release to the death of Kurt Cobain. As his wife, Hole bandleader Courtney Love was the first person you thought of when associating the loss of Cobain with grief stricken friends and family. As such, many people turned to this album for possible clues, a lyric that could unlock understanding for scores of distraught fans looking for answers as to why Cobain would kill himself. There aren't any answers to be found on Live Through This (and why would there be?), but that didn't slow curiosity. The second tragedy surrounding this album is the adamant belief of some that Cobain actually co-wrote the songs on the album. I don't see that many similarities between Nirvana and Hole; any parallels you can find are easi...

There have been a lot of articles over the past 48-72 hours about Kurt Cobain; more specifically, articles about how, at about this time twenty years ago, he left this mortal coil. I remember hearing about the sad news of his passing via a MuchMusic special report; the footage of paramedics and crying fans stuck with me, and I can still recall that moment rather vividly. A lot of people point to that moment as "the death of grunge". It's not an easy point to argue against, since there aren't a lot of watershed quote-unquote "grunge" albums from the era that came out after Cobain's death (though, there are definitely some). The truth is, this movement had already reached its zenith; the Seattle scene had so thoroughly infiltrated the mainstream by 1994 that many people were sick of it, already looking for the next trend.

It's easy to diminish the impact that The Offspring's third album had on rock, just as it's easy to forget what a great story they used to be as a band. In the two decades since Smash dropped, they haven't exactly built a legacy of integrity; nowadays seen more as a novelty act than simply a good band that doesn't take themselves too seriously, they manage to underwhelm with every comeback attempt they make no matter how much I root for them. However, in 1994, it seemed everyone rooted for The Offspring. An inspiring tale of grassroots success, Smash was a really good album by The Little Band That Could; signed to (at the time) up-and-coming punk imprint Epitaph, it was a minor coup to see the video for Come Out And Play shown on TV. It's also easy to forget how fresh sounding this was twenty years ago. On Smash , The Offspring melded together punk, surf rock and alt rock into something much bigger. Rather than cater to just the punks, stoners or mall...

This article may require just a bit of imagination if you're of a certain age, as it calls back to a time when the musical climate for Canadian musicians was in a much different state than it is today. Of course, thanks to the Arcade Fire-led charge, Montreal is seen as a spawning pool for globally adored indie rock; combined with the worldwide success of non-rock acts like Drake and Justin Bieber, no one bats an eye anymore when a Canadian musician conquers territory outside their homeland. Regardless, imagine a time when unless your band was really lucky, chances were you'd only ever find success as a Canadian in Canada. Sure, there were a few artists flirting with American audiences by 1994; Crash Test Dummies had actually scored a couple of pretty substantial hits stateside, and a couple other bands had the good fortune of having one of their albums released in the U.S. only to never get another crack at it when sales didn't rival the success of their American peer...

Sometime just before my high school graduation in June of 1994, I scared the shit of my mom. A friend of mine had just picked up the new Pantera album and given me a dubbed cassette copy of it to tide me over until I got my own (I don't know how many times I can say it in these write-ups, but no internet access in '94). Without a lyric sheet, however, I didn't get as much out of what Philip Anselmo was trying to convey. So, I got out my typewriter (again, 1994) and got the words down on paper. Which brings us to my mom, who in the process of putting some laundry away found the lyrics to Strength Beyond Strength . I was taken to task over such mom-friendly lines as "fuck you and your college dream" and "no family life to open my arms to". "Is this how you feel about life?" I was asked. As the follow-up to the surprisingly well-received Vulgar Display of Power, Far Beyond Driven was bound to be heavily criticized and hotly anticipated; it...

The Seattle explosion of 1991/92 had a measure of damning effect on major label rock; bands with little to no talent were signed en masse, given blank cheques and reaped the benefits of their owners' marketing machines' full power. With so many bands suddenly bathed in the spotlight, it got a lot more difficult to determine who was worthy of the attention and who was only getting it because some geriatric rich white dudes were using them as pawns in a dick-measuring contest. Though there were some real gems to be unearthed this way, there seemed to be a Candlebox or Sponge for every Primus or Stone Temple Pilots. However, it also meant greater exposure for the already existing Seattle bands. Alice In Chains hit their stride just as people went looking for more of that Seattle sound; and Soundgarden, who had already been around for about seven years (and signed to A&M for three) by the time Nirvana released Nevermind , had unleashed their gloriously heavy third album Ba...