Albums in My Life: 1999

The last year of the nineties, and the year I turned nine years old. A year of a lot of promises and fears of what the new millennium would bring us; nothing changed, and yet everything did.


American Football- American Football
Probably my favorite emo record of all time, and probably the favorite of many others. It has a very relaxing tone, but such raw emotion. It has such a quality of indescribable sadness to it, almost like a nostalgia for something that never existed. It was such a pillar to itself for such a long time, and even with the second album and even a third coming out soon, there's still nothing quite like this album. It always makes me long for a simpler time. I'm starting to feel weird even talking about it.




The Flaming Lips- The Soft Bulletin
This was the Flaming Lips' breakthrough record in a sense. It's still got a lot of their psychedelic sound, but it's a lot more polished than their previous records. There's a lot of cool loops and sampling done on this album, which really wasn't used in a psychedelic music sense until Animal Collective a few years later. A lot of other bands like this used a lot more guitar, but since their principal guitarist left after Clouds Taste Metallic,they made the conscious decision to have things a lot more keyboard and sound effect led, though you can still hear a little guitar here and there. I think this was a really big transition for the Flaming Lips, from noisey psych rock to more acid soaked pop.



My Morning Jacket- The Tennessee Fire
I had been exposed to My Morning Jacket through records like Evil Urges and Z, and only discovered this album through backtracking, though it quickly became one of my favorites. It's a lot less jammy or electronic than those albums, and more resembles an alt-country record drenched in reverb. I love its stripped back and sparse instrumentation, and Jim James' songwriting is still as strong as it would be later. I went to one of their concerts a few years ago, and I was probably the only excited person in the venue when I heard them play a song from this album, along with part of 'Cobra'. I feel like nobody had even heard those songs before, but I dug it.



Nine Inch Nails- The Fragile
Following up The Downward Spiral must have felt like an impossible task, but I feel like Trent Reznor delivered an album just as powerful, though not quite as immediate. The first times I heard this album, I thought it was a little long winded or directionless, but that's kind of the point. It's a beautiful mess, and the meandering qualities of the record really replicate feelings of confusion and helplessness. Reznor described it best when he said this album is darker than its predecessor, because instead of the protagonist falling apart as it progresses, they start broken, try to fix themself, but at the end remains just as damaged as when they started.



Santana- Supernatural
Twenty years ago, 'Smooth' was released onto the world, and for those who weren't there, let me tell you, it was inescapable. Much like the theme to Titanic a few years previous (except, you know, good) this song was everywhere, and really shot Santana into a popularity that he hadn't probably had since the early '70s, if ever. This record also started a bit of a trend for Santana, in which he'd have an album where every song had a different singer from a popular group at the time. This was also near the height of the latin explosion, so it benefited off that too. Santana struck gold with this record, and managed to bring his music to a whole new generation, including myself.


So, that's my list. Next time on the albums in my life series, I'll start the new millennium off, but before you see what ten year old me listened to, I'll be doing a brief review of the new Xiu Xiu record, Girl With Basket of Fruit.




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