Category Archives: writing soundtracks

2024 Year in Review: September

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When we started the year, the last thing I expected was for several of my favorite bands — and ones that influenced me greatly in my teens — to suddenly resurface and release brand spankin’ new albums! These days you’d expect a surprise reunion single, but not a full-on project! Still, these reunions made for a very interesting an highly entertaining year of music.

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The The, Ensoulment, released 6 September. Matt Johnson had been doing soundtracks for the last several years, but after a few one-off singles and a two highly successful comeback tours, he dropped his first rock album since 2000’s NakedSelf to high praise. This new album interestingly reminds me of his first album Burning Blue Soul, focusing more on moods and experimentation.

Hinds, VIVA HINDS, released 6 September. We were able to catch this wonderfully fun band from Madrid at Outside Lands a few years back, and after a long wait they’ve returned with an excellent record full of indie rock gems like “Boom Boom Back” (which features Beck, who seemed to show up all over the place this year!).

Sea Lemon featuring Ben Gibbard, “Crystals” single, released 9 September. This indie band leans heavily in Death Cab for Cutie territory yet with a slight shoegazey twist, so it’s no big surprise that DCFC’s Ben Gibbard shows up on this duet that got a ton of play on KEXP.

Robyn Hitchcock, 1967: Vacations in the Past, released 13 September. This is essentially a tie-in record for his memoir of the same name, a book telling the story of his youth, having just moved to a small who-knows-where town in England and started attending a boys’ school. It’s a year of musical inspiration, personal awakening and coming of age, and this soundtrack of sorts is mostly a cover album of the songs of that era that changed his life.

bloococoon, bloococoon, released 13 September. Every now and again, one of the DJs on KEXP will drop a completely random song that someone suggested from Bandcamp or elsewhere, and more often than not it’s a mindblowing track that sense several listeners towards the site to listen and/or purchase. This noisy shoegaze band was one of my favorite finds this year.

Hugo Largo, Huge, Large and Electric: Hugo Largo 1984-1991, released 13 September. Not too many people remember this band from the college-rock era, but they were a surprisingly creative and influential quartet that may have partially inspired quietcore. REM’s Michael Stipe was a major fan, not only giving them publicity but showing up on their first album as well. This is a two-disc collection featuring both of their albums plus a selection of rarities.

Nilüfer Yanya, My Method Actor, released 13 September. One of my favorite finds of 2022, she’s an indie guitarist who seamlessly blends rock with a bit of hip-hop and trip-hop and ends up with a sound that’s both catchy and quirky. This was a great follow-up record and the single “Like I Say (I runaway)” gets stuck in my head.

Mixtape/Playlist, Re:Defined 2404, created 19 September. This one got a fair bit of play for a good month or two, and I really like how this one flows, even with its occasionally surprising track selection.

The Cure, “Alone” single, released 26 September. If you’ve been a fan of this band for any length of time, you’ll know that Robert Smith will constantly report that the band is either breaking up or finishing up a new album, and then nothing will happen for a good few years. They’ll even hint at completely new tracks during their ongoing tours, though they never quite surface…until now. No one expected a brand spanking new Cure single — their last having surfaced way back in 2008. And it wasn’t just a one-off either…

Linkin Park, “Heavy Is the Crown” single, released 26 September. This band chose to reconvene even after Chester Bennington’s passing back in 2017, with the addition of Dead Sara vocalist Emily Armstrong joining in. The end result is an excellent heavy track very similar to their Meteora-era work, a single written specifically for the 2024 League of Legends Championship. [I don’t play LoL, but I’m a huge fan of their worldbuilding and their consistently brilliant soundtracks and music tie-ins (especially the k-rock quartet K/DA).] It’s great to have them back.

The Wolfgang Press, A 2nd Shape, released 30 September. Now this was a band I did not expect to reunite! They’d broken up way back in 1995 after the great but largely ignored Funky Little Demons album. I found it fascinating that they chose to return not to the groove-oriented rock of their latter years that had given them some success, but even further back to their noisier and experimental early years. They’re not for everyone, but they’re definitely one of my favorites.

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More tunes to come!

2024 Year in Review: August

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August was the month I decided I was going to take it easy and relax a bit. I’d finally finished and released Queen Ophelia’s War in June, and it was far past time for a break. Sure, I’d still focus on my writing work and whatnot, but more to the point I felt it was a good time to just enjoy the end of summer, which would end with our first away-from-home vacation in quite some time. The daily diary looks rather empty for the month, which was on purpose. Come September I’d start fresh and see how far I would get.

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Jack White, No Name, released 2 August. He just keeps getting better with each album somehow, and this was a surprise release! He’s well entrenched in his signature punk-blues hybrid and it serves him quite well here.

X, Smoke & Fiction, released 2 August. Speaking of punk, this storied LA band has chosen to bow out and dissolve gracefully with this final record that sounds both like their grittier early records and their folk-inspired latter albums.

Orville Peck, Stampede, released 2 August. The masked singer comes back with a super fun album of duets featuring Beck, Elton John, Willie Nelson, Nathaniel Rateliff and more; it’s a mix of covers and originals done in his signature wild and Elvis-twangy style.

파란노을 (Parannoul), Sky Hundred, released 3 August. This South Korean band still wears its My Bloody Valentine influences on its sleeves, blending dreamlike melodies and walls of distortion into something otherworldly. This band is always good for writing sessions!

Quivers, Oyster Cuts, released 9 August. My favorite indie band from down under comes through with an album that expands from their janglepop sound into something a bit more rough and tumble. It’s a bit like early Black Keys but at a much slower speed.

beabadoobee, This Is How Tomorrow Moves, released 9 August. Her new album somehow finds its influences in late 90s indie rock, and that’s not a bad thing.

GIFT, Illuminator, released 23 August. I’m happy to say that this here is my top album of 2024, because it fits so completely in my wheelhouse! KEXP’s morning DJ John Richards gave this one a huge push all autumn (it’s on his own top ten of the year list), and once I got it downloaded I couldn’t get enough of it. It’s a wonderful blend of crisp shoegaze, catchy indie rock, soft vocals and tight melodies that resonate perfectly for me. Every single song on this album is a banger, and it’s already claimed its spot as one of my most played albums during writing sessions this year. I highly recommend it!

The Softies, The Bed I Made, released 23 August. This long-running duo returns from an extremely long hiatus with an absolutely wonderful album of quiet twee melodies that lean more towards The Sundays than Belle & Sebastian, all with just voices and guitar. It’s an incredibly relaxing album and well worth a listen.

Chime School, The Boy Who Ran the Paisley Hotel, released 23 August. Yet another super-local band (on Slumberland, natch), this one taking its inspiration from early janglepop, evoking bands like The Three O’Clock and The Mighty Lemon Drops. It’s a fun record that captured the attention of several adoring music critics.

Cocteau Twins & Harold Budd, The Moon and the Melodies 2024 Remaster, released 23 August. You’d think this album would have been given a remaster along with the rest of the Twins’ discography back in the early aughts, but this one was curiously left out until now. This album is one of my top favorites in their catalogue and it’s always gotten significant play during writing sessions. The new remaster gives the already spacious songs even more room to breathe and wander, making the songs sound even more dreamlike.

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Wild God, released 30 August. Cave’s new album reminds me a lot of his early 00s albums like Nocturama and Abbatoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus. There’s more life and energy to this record than his previous non-soundtrack releases (which kind of makes sense, considering his last few were linked to deeply traumatic personal events). While it’s not the drunken death-blues revelry of his early work, it’s more a celebration of life and survival.

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More to come with September and October!

New Mixtape: Songs from the Eden Cycle Vol 10

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Whew! Hard to believe I’ve hit ten volumes on this series! The first one was made waaay back in the summer of 1997 during the HMV Years when I first planned out The Phoenix Effect, with the next three following close behind later that year and the fourth (my favorite at the time) in the summer of 1998. Flash-forward twenty years and I start making them again in late 2018 when I was self-publishing the Bridgetown Trilogy. [There were a few related diversions in 2003-4 and 2015 during the writing/editing of it, though I consider them a separate series now.]

This one was started probably late 2023 as a way to revisit the Mendaihu Universe though that was soon put aside so I could prep Queen Ophelia’s War for release and finish off Theadia. Considering I’m almost done with the latter and once again returning to the MU, I felt it time to finish this one off and get it into my listening rotation.

I’m fascinated by how eclectic this one is. There’s a lot of shoegaze, sure, but we’ve also got some oddball electronics, a bit of jazz, a few tracks that I’m currently obsessing over (that GIFT album has become one of my favorites of the year) and more. Just like the previous mixes in this series, they’re supposed to evoke a bit of urban distraction in one way or another, whether it’s the feeling of displacement, the discomfort of a stressful situation, or the willingness of blissful disconnection.

Hope you enjoy!

SIDE ONE
1. Hooverphonic, “A Guiding Star at Night”
2. Phantogram, “It Wasn’t Meant to Be”
3. Jonathan Bree, “City Baby”
4. Kelly Lee Owens, “Love You Got”
5. Kamasi Washington, “Interstellar Peace (The Last Stance)”
6. Bodywash, “Perfect Blue”
7. Whitelands, “Cheer”
8. GIFT, “Later”
9. Corridor, “Jump Cut”
10. Iress, “Mercy”

SIDE TWO
1. Whitelands, “Born in Understanding”
2. Ride, “I Came to See the Wreck”
3. Coma, “Surrender”
4. M83, “Radar, Far, Gone”
5. GIFT, “Milestones”
6. The Chemical Brothers, “Feels Like I Am Dreaming”
7. Jenny O, “Pleasure in Function”
8. Jonathan Bree, “Steel and Glass”
9. Coldplay, “One World”

All this talk about Bridgetown…

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…has given me a hankering to listen to some tunes from the HMV years when I wrote The Phoenix Effect. I’ve mentioned numerous times before that a lot of the music I listened to around that time heavily influenced and/or inspired many of its scenes. But it was also when I had a lot of positive things going on in my life for the first time in ages.

So now the trick is to find some current tunage that can take its place as the writing soundtrack for MU4….I do have a few in mind that have been on frequent rotation here in Spare Oom!

Favorite songs: Isolation

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Every now and again I think about this EP, and how it’s affected me over the years. It’s Mark Pritchard of Global Communication and Kirsty Hawkshaw (formerly of Opus III, you know her from two covers: Jane’s “It’s a Fine Day” King Crimson’s “I Talk to the Wind“). I first discovered them on a quirky seasonal compilation called Invocation — the same album that introduced me to Jocelyn Pook. I listened to that album constantly during the final months of 1997 and into 1998, using it as a soundtrack to my writing at the time.

The song itself (Part 1 lasts a bit over eleven minutes, and Part 2 a bit over eight) is what I imagined as the best example of ambient electronic music: there was melody, but there was also mood and atmosphere. It was like the culmination of everything I loved about 4AD bands like Cocteau Twins and Dead Can Dance. It also felt widescreen in my mind. Cinematic in its own way, telling a story with its weavings of highs, lows, bursts and quietness. There was something about it that somehow hit me viscerally, and it felt almost like…a spiritual leaving.

I used that feeling some years later when I wrote a pivotal scene in The Balance of Light with the final moments between Denni and Saisshalé.

This track was actually what got me into Global Communication soon after, picking up both their brilliant 76:14 (highly recommended) and their album of Chapterhouse remixes, Pentamerous Metamorphosis, both of which had recently been reissued in the US. Those two albums, along with Invocation, became some of my favorite go-to albums when writing the Bridgetown Trilogy, especially when I needed something deeply atmospheric.

Twenty Years On: Spring 2004

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I often say that 2005 was the year of major change in my life (getting married and moving twice and all, among other things), but it really started in 2004. I’d met A online and by the summer we were constantly running into each other on LiveJournal. I was writing The Balance of Light at the time and having a terrible time with it, and writing a vampire novel as a way to distract myself. I’d head to my first Worldcon that autumn when it came to Boston. I’d quit buying comics cold turkey when my go-to comics store closed up shop, and I even started thinking seriously about looking to find my own apartment. Life was changing whether I was ready for it or not.

Musically I’d latched onto LAUNCHcast, a sort of proto-Spotify site where one could curate a playlist by way of a ratings system. [And given that my house was in a radio desert, I couldn’t always listen to WHMP or WFNX at the time unless I was in the car or using my stereo upstairs.] Given my music obsessions, it wasn’t long before it provided me with the kind of indie and electronic rock I enjoyed so much.

The Crystal Method, Legion of Boom, 13 January 2004. I’d completely forgotten there was an album between this one and their mega-selling Vegas (the one with “Busy Child” and “Trip Like I Do” on it), so I thought I’d try them out again. This one got a bit of play in the Belfry during my writing sessions.

Air, Talkie Walkie, 20 January 2004. This band is on the ‘I will buy anything from them’ list, and this one became a huge favorite of mine that year, getting a lot of play all around, not just during writing sessions but my occasional road trips as well. I loved that it retained the dreaminess of their Moon Safari album yet sounded futuristic.

Stereolab, Margerine Eclipse, 27 January 2004. Another band I was woefully behind on in terms of collecting at the time, I liked playing this one on the weekends when I had my hours-long writing sessions.

Yes, The Ultimate Yes: 35th Anniversary Collection, 27 January 2004. I’d always been a huge fan of this band, though everything I owned of theirs was on scratchy used vinyl, having acquired them over the years in dollar bins, heh. This was a great full discography-so-far collection that was quite a pleasure to listen to.

The Walkmen, Bows + Arrows, 3 February 2004. Long before Hamilton Leithauser showed up on indie radio with his solo and collective projects, he was the lead singer of this great indie band that got a ton of play on LAUNCHcast and college radio with the song “The Rat”. Highly recommended.

Incubus, A Crow Left of the Murder…, 4 February 2004. Sure, you hear those same two or three hit singles from this band on alternative rock radio these days. Back when this came out, the singles “Megalomaniac” and “Talk Shows on Mute” got a ton of play on alternative radio, but sadly this album tends to be forgotten for the most part. It’s one of their most tense and dense records though, and well worth checking out.

Franz Ferdinand, Franz Ferdinand, 9 February 2004. Yes, that band with that song! They’ve always been a bit of an oddball band that slid between arty post-punk and groovy glam and somehow made it not just fresh and new, but made it irresistibly catchy as well.

Junkie XL, Radio JXL: A Broadcast from the Computer Hell Cabin, 10 February 2004. One of my favorite records of the year, this is a two-cd collection of electronic rock and house mixes and a thrill to listen to. Released just a few years before Tom Holkenborg focused mostly on film scores, this one’s highly recommended.

Audio Learning Center, Cope Park, 26 February 2004. This not-quite-grunge rock band from Portland were big on the moodier pockets of the genre, leaning a bit more towards emo and post-rock in some places. They only dropped two albums (this is the second) but they’re well worth checking out. This one got a lot of play in the Belfry.

TV On the Radio, Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes, 9 March 2004. I picked this one up mainly due to the fact that every music critic out there were getting their minds blown by this record, and they weren’t wrong. I wasn’t entirely sure what to make of this band at first, considering their sound back then was a bit difficult to describe. But the track “Dreams” was just so emotionally dire that I knew then that this was a record I’d enjoy.

The Vines, Winning Days, 21 March 2004. Their second record after the critically acclaimed Highly Evolved was a bit of both ‘more of the same’ and ‘heading further into psychedelia’ and while it wasn’t as popular as their debut, it was just as enjoyable to listen to.

The Standard, Wire Post to Wire, 23 March 2004. I latched onto the track “Even Numbers” via LAUNCHcast and I picked this one up soon after I’d heard it maybe twice. They were another Portland band made out of former members of other local indie groups, and this was their third and most popular album. This one got a lot of play in the Belfry as well.

Jem, Finally Woken, 24 March 2004. This quirky British singer had a minor hit with the trippy “They” single that got a lot of play on the local indie rock stations and kind of labeling her as a one hit wonder in the process, but the rest of this album is well worth checking out. To me she was like Alison Goldfrapp only a lighter and trippier.

L’arc~en~Ciel, Smile, 31 March 2004. I’d been a fan of this band since hearing “Spirit Dreams Inside” at the tail end of the 2001 Final Fantasy movie, but alas they were always super hard to find unless I was willing to spend thirty dollars on Japanese imports. This was one of their first American releases and featured one of their best hits and their most popular, “Ready Steady Go” (which at the time was also the opening theme for the anime show Fullmetal Alchemist).

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Q2 coming soon!

Novel Mixtape: Theadia 4

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To celebrate the start of my major rewrite of Theadia, I created the fourth mixtape/playlist for it, and I think this one works exceptionally well as feels more cinematic and score-like than the previous three. I’m quite happy with this one and have already listened to it multiple times over the last couple of days! Hope you enjoy it as well!

Side A:
1. David Holmes & Raven Violet, “Stop Apologizing”
2. The Fauns, “Spacewreck”
3. Big Wreck, “White Lies”
4. Torres, “Collect”
5. Eluvium, “Vibration Consensus Reality (For Spectral Multiband Resonator)”
6. Brittany Howard, “What Now”
7. Sea Lemon, “3A”
8. Cast, “I Have Been Waiting”
9. Middle Kids, “Bend”
10. Calibro 35, “Apnea”

Side B:
1. Eluvium, “Endless Flower”
2. The Fauns, “Afterburner”
3. Trevor Horn & Seal, “Steppin’ Out”
4. Ducks Ltd., “Deleted Scenes”
5. Topographies, “Red-Black Sun”
6. Salt Cathedral, “Terminal Woes”
7. Torres, “Artificial Limits”
8. Horsegirl, “Anti-Glory”
9. Four Tet, “Daydream Repeat”
10. David Holmes & Raven Violet, “It’s Over, If We Run Out of Love”

[PS. I can’t seem to remember if I’ve posted the other three here or over at Welcome to Bridgetown, so I suppose I’ll have to follow up with those as well if I have not!]

Listening to 2000’s era Cure, Pt 4: the Deluxe Editions I

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After the promotion of The Cure and the Curiosa Festival had come and gone, the next phase was about to begin: a massive reissue of their early catalog. While this may not have been all that important in the UK where they’d stayed on the Fiction label for years, in the US they’d appeared on several: the indie PVC, A&M, Sire, and eventually an extended stay (complete with minor reissues) on Elektra. This would finally bring the majority of their discography together on one label, with its original packaging.

The new reissues of their back catalog began of course with their debut album Three Imaginary Boys in late 2004. Most Americans knew most of its tracks from the US collection Boys Don’t Cry or via the import. [I’d bought the original version at Al Bum’s in Amherst probably in early 1987 and much preferred this one. It flows much better and the band’s early gloom is much more prevalent here.

The bonus disc of this reissue would of course include the singles “Boys Don’t Cry” and “Jumping Someone Else’s Train”, both post-album stand-alone singles, though surprisingly it did not contain their debut single “Killing an Arab”, though that was most likely due to its questionable source material. Still, it did contain several demos and outtakes that are quite fascinating to hear.

The next three album reissues would appear all on the same day: Seventeen Seconds, Faith and Pornography, in late spring 2005. The first two had been released at different times in the US, including as a double-disc two-fer called Happily Ever After, which I owned on cassette.

Seventeen Seconds expanded on their post-punk sound and added a pastoral feel to their sound, thanks to the melodic bass lines of new members Simon Gallup and the keyboards of Matthieu Hartley. This album definitely feels like something you’d listen to alone, on headphones, sometime around 2am. It was a huge inspiration to my writing in the late 80s and got a ton of play late at night. The extra tracks on this reissue are more focused on live recordings, some of which would show up on the cassette version of the live album Concert.

Faith, on the other hand, was a much darker affair. It too is perfect late night listening, but it leans more towards isolation and loneliness. There are two faces here: the anger and tension of songs like “Primary” and “Doubt”, and the atmospheric fog of “All Cats Are Grey” and the title track. The original cassette had included the twenty-seven minute (!!) instrumental track “Carnage Visors”, which they’d recorded for an animated film that would play before their live shows. This epic is included on this reissue, along with several studio outtakes and live tracks, as well as the non-album single “Charlotte Sometimes”.

Pornography, on the other hand…is not an easy album to listen to. Hartley had left, leaving the band as a barebones trio that only added to the album’s sparseness. They took several steps further down into the bitterly cold abyss, well past the darkness of Faith. Depression, desolation and entropy abound on this record. Is it any wonder that this was in super heavy rotation on my Walkman in the late 80s, then? While it’s not as violently dismal as, say, The Downward Spiral, it could probably be seen as its goth equivalent. Interestingly enough, its closing title track (like “Hurt”, come to think of it) hints at a sense of strained hope. This too features a lot of studio demos and live tracks.

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Are these reissues that you must have in your collection? Well, if you’re a huge fan like I am, then yes, definitely. The remastered tracks sound great, and the extras are all sorts of fun to listen to. For completists they are missing a few things here and there, such as a few single-only b-sides (which, to be fair, were easily available on the Join the Dots box set), but it’s worth checking out.

Coming Up Next: the final three reissues of the decade

Listening to 2000’s era Cure, Pt 2: Hits, Dots, and One-Offs

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While Bloodflowers was a great album, it wasn’t my favorite of their latter years. I think part of it was that it came out at a time when my time at the record store was coming to a close, but it was also that it simply just didn’t resonate with me as deeply as some past albums had. Still, this sparked off a slow but steady stream of increased visibility. They were constantly on tour at the start of the decade, and followed it up with a number of collections and appearances.

The band released the Greatest Hits collection in late 2001 as a contractual obligation to the Fiction label. It features many of their best known tracks, chosen by Robert Smith himself, and also two new tracks: the poppy “Cut Here” (the title an anagram of the band name) and the perky “Just Say Yes” featuring Saffron from Republica. It’s by no means a must-have collection, but it’s a good place to start, and also a good mix for those not interested in a discography deep dive. The expanded version features a second album’s worth of the same songs, this time recorded acoustically.

Smith kept himself busy by appearing on a few albums, many of which are definitely worth checking out. He provided vocals on the great track “Perfect Blue Sky” on Junkie XL’s Radio JXL: A Broadcast from the Computer Hell Cabin — an expansive two-cd collection of upbeat radio-friendly electronic tracks and expanded house instrumentals. This album is one of my favorites of 2003 and also features vocals from Saffron, Dave Gahan, Gary Numan, Chuck D, Terry Hall, and more. It also features the groovy reimagining of Elvis’ “A Little Less Conversation” which had showed up in 2001’s Ocean’s Eleven. It’s a record worth picking up.

Also in 2003, he featured on…a Blink-182 album?? Sure, why not? The punk pop trio called The Cure one of their influences, and he features on the track “All of This”.

Then in spring of 2004, he featured on the second album by tweaker, drummer Chris Vrenna’s collective project. The album 2am wakeup call is about Vrenna’s wife’s insomnia so much of the record is dark and moody…but not necessarily gloomy. I listened to this album incessantly for most of that year, not just in the Belfry during my writing sessions (I was writing The Balance of Light at the time) but during my commutes to work. I highly recommend checking this record out.

Backing up a few months, The Cure also released the box set Join the Dots: B-Sides & Rarities 1978-2001. It’s a four-disc collection that proves that these oddities weren’t just throwaways or one-offs. Their b-sides, like “Just One Kiss”, “Breathe” and “The Big Hand”, could be just as amazing and memorable as their album tracks and singles, and even their soundtrack and compilation offerings like “Burn” (from The Crow soundtrack) and the cover of Depeche Mode’s “World in My Eyes” (from For the Masses) are great. It’s worth checking these out.

But wait! There’s one more thing! One that often gets overlooked!

They also did the theme song for the French animated series Dragon Hunters by taking their track “Taking Off” (which would show up soon on their next record) and repurposing it into this fun and boppy theme. This one doesn’t show up on any greatest hits, reissues or box sets (at least not yet anyway), but it’s easy to find online.

Coming up: finally, another new album!

Twenty-five years ago…

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I’ve been going through some music from 1999 the last couple of days and finding a bunch of albums and songs I used to listen to quite a bit then that I haven’t listened to in ages, and some I’ve even completely forgotten about. This was during the back half of my tenure at HMV, and by this time I’d been tasked with ordering the imports and, if I could get away with it, some of the obscure indie titles that I figured someone aside from me might like. A lot of these got considerable play down in the Belfry during my writing sessions.

Medal, Drop Your Weapon, 24 May 1999. This Oxford quintet’s music had that sort of epic moodiness that was at odds with a lot of what was big at the time, but their sound was perfect for my writing sessions, especially the slow groove of “Possibility”. Well worth checking out if you can find it.

Arab Strap, Cherubs EP, 1 September 1999. I kind of liked the lead track off this, but it was the slow and sludgy “Pulled” that drew my interest. Sure, it’s seven-plus minutes long and takes its own sweet time getting somewhere (and even then the tempo subtly shifts all over the place), but it’s the two-minute wall of noise coda that makes the entire song. Considering that I’m a huge fan of the quiet/LOUD style, this fit perfectly in my wheelhouse.

Days of the New, Days of the New II, 31 August 1999. Remember this guy, Travis Meeks? Promising musician with a growly semi-acoustic grunge sound? They had a minor hit with “Touch Peel and Stand” from the first album but the second record kind of got passed over. Thing is, this second record was absolutely amazing. Really tight musicianship and songwriting, and definitely more adventurous. Sadly his group imploded (apparently his backing band quit in frustration and started their own group, Tantric, who had a few minor hits in the early 00s. I listened to this one a hell of a lot that summer.

Tin Star, The Thrill Kisser, 9 February 1999. How the heck did I latch onto this…? I think the BMG rep handed a promo to me and thought I’d like it, and yes, like it I did! Not quite electronica, not quite indie, but a hybrid of both with a heaping dollop of British eccentricity added into the mix, it’s cool, funky, and a really great record. This got a ton of play in the Belfry for a good couple of years.

Kill Holiday, Somewhere Between the Wrong Is Right, 23 February 1999. I’d heard “In Closing (Memorial Day)” on The River one night driving home from work and immediately ordered the album on my following shift! Y’all know how much I do love an epic final track with a slow build (and again with the quiet/LOUD thing). One of my favorite indie releases of that year.

Trashmonk, Mona Lisa Overdrive, 25 March 1999. Ever wonder what Nick Laird-Clowes did after The Dream Academy? Well, he dropped this one really weird album named after a William Gibson book that sounded nothing like his former band. Sometimes experimental, sometimes groovy, sometimes hauntingly beautiful, it’s definitely worth checking out if you can find it.

Lamb, Fear of Fours, 17 May 1999. More experimental and much darker than their debut (and nearly all the songs contain quirky time signatures outside of 4/4), it’s the one that captured my attention to the point that they became one of my favorite bands of the late 90s/early 00s.

Rico, Sanctuary Medicines, 16 August 1999. This Glaswegian industrial musician could probably be compared to Nine Inch Nails but without the dire levels of nihilism. I don’t even remember how I came across this one aside from the fact that I really dug the whole industrial metal sound and that it wasn’t trying so damn hard to fit into the goth stereotypes like some other bands.

Handsome Boy Modeling School, So…How’s Your Girl?, 19 October 1999. Only Prince Paul and Dan the Automator could get away with naming their band after an episode-long joke from Chris Elliott’s bonkers TV show Get a Life…and loosely basing AN ENTIRE ALBUM on said episode. But it’s a damn fine record and one of the best of the year on many critics’ lists. It’s a super fun record worth owning.

The All Seeing I, Pickled Eggs & Sherbet, 20 September 1999. Another ‘where the heck did I hear about this’ import and the only album from this electronica collective, though this sounds more like a quirky British indie band instead if you didn’t know their background. It’s extremely eccentric and I have no idea what they were trying to prove with it, but it’s a fascinating listen.