Jars of Clay were formed when keyboardist Charlie Lowell met vocalist Dan Haseltine at Greenville College, Illinois; Lowell initially noticed Haseltine’s Toad The Wet Sprocket t-shirt. The four-piece band was completed with guitarists Stephen Mason and Matt Odmark – unusually,…
Neutral Milk Hotel’s In The Aeroplane Over The Sea is one of the great cult records. Issued in 1998, it’s full of enigmatic lines, like “Now she’s a little boy in Spain/Playing pianos filled with flames”, and Jeff Mangum’s raw…
Last week’s quiz generated a bunch of scores in a narrow range – congratulations to Rich, Max, and Bruce all made it to 20 This week’s quiz requires you to click the 1990 album covers – it’s the era of…
The Seattle rock band Pearl Jam were formed from the remnants of Mother Love Bone. Bassist Jeff Ament and guitarist Stone Gossard recruited lead guitarist Mike McCready and vocalist Eddie Vedder, and Pearl Jam played their first show in October…
The two main creative forces in Slint, vocalist/guitarist Brian McMahan and drummer/guitarist/vocalist Britt Walford, both played in the Louisville punk band Squirrel Bait in the mid-1980s. Along with guitarist David Pajo and bassist Ethan Buckler, they formed Slint in 1986.…
The 1970s quiz last week threw out some divergent scores, and the leader board now looks like this: Average J 59% Paul 63% Badfinger 67% 2loud2oldmusic 71% Bruce 74% Rich K 80% Jim S 80% Angie 82% Tony 93% As…
Britt Walford and Brian McMahan met in their pre-teens, and joined the punk band Squirrel Bait while still in their teens. Walford, a drummer, left Squirrel Bait after the band’s first recording sessions, but McMahan stayed on as second guitarist…
Because I was a teenager through the 1990s, my relationship with the decade’s music differs from other decades. I’d probably appreciate bands like Oasis and Nirvana more if I wasn’t saturated with them. I also think that mainstream rock largely ran…
Until the emergence of Lorde, song-smith Neil Finn was New Zealand’s most recognisable pop export. Born in Te Awamutu, Finn was enamoured by the tuneful pop of The Beatles and Elton John. Still a teenager, he joined his brother Tim…
I spent many happy hours in my late teens and twenties trawling used bins for CD bargains. I gained a lot of great music this way, and it became even easier as people converted their music collections to mp3. It…
The late Tom Petty was a brilliant singles artist – he wrote hit after hit of likeable, jangly rock. Contemporaries like Bob Seger and John Mellencamp were popular in America, but didn’t translate to New Zealand radio as easily; Petty’s…
This page was largely written by a guest reviewer – I wrote the introduction and the review of The Holy Bible. Manic Street Preachers formed as a high school band in Blackwood, a town in South Wales. Singer/guitarist James Dean…
New Zealand worship band Form were significant for my generation; making church worship music that sounded less like Michael W. Smith and more like Pearl Jam was an exciting innovation. But twenty years later, they’re largely disappeared from the inter-webs…
Remember the 1990s, when physical albums sold by the truckload? Manchester band Oasis had their second album, (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?, sell more than 22 million copies, and this volume of sales allowed them to lavish even their b-sides with…
Last week’s great b-side was a 1980s college rock band with folk-rock inclinations covering a folkie from the previous generation – 10,000 Maniacs covering John Prine’s ‘Hello in There’. This week’s pick is very similar – R.E.M. and 10,000 Maniacs…
During sessions for their debut album Ten, bassist Jeff Ament, guitarist Mike McCready, and vocalist Eddie Vedder improvised a song in the studio. McCready’s opening guitar licks are inspired by Jimi Hendrix, while Vedder made up lyrics on the spot…
Fleetwood Mac‘s 1977 album Rumours was a sales behemoth, jam packed with hits written by the group’s three songwriters, Stevie Nicks, Christine McVie, and Lindsey Buckingham. But there was at least one great song that didn’t make the cut –…
Spring is my favourite time of the year in New Zealand – the days get longer and sunnier. I don’t have a song that I associate with any other season, but my spring song is 10,000 Maniacs’ ‘These Are Days’.…
The prodigiously talented Jeff Buckley only made one studio album, 1994’s Grace, before his accidental drowning in the Mississippi River in 1997. \His estate has continued to release a wealth of posthumous material. These range from top notch material like…
After a string of successful albums with Crowded House, Neil Finn teamed up with his older brother Tim and recorded a relaxed and low-key album in 1995. The brothers’ previous attempts to write together had been incorporated into the 1991…
Richard X. Heyman started his career as a backing musician, drumming for Brian Wilson, Link Wray, and Jonathan Richman, and playing keyboards for Ben E King. A one-man band, his work is tougher than early solo Paul McCartney and not…
The members of Radiohead formed the band at high school – they were originally named On A Friday, reflecting their practice regime at Abingdon School in Oxfordshire. It took them an album to find their feet – debut Pablo Honey contained…
With all the success The Flaming Lips enjoyed with their layered, emotional Pet Sounds-inspired albums like The Soft Bulletin and Yoshimi, it’s easy to forget that they started back in the 1990s, as a raw, psychedelic guitar band. This song,…
The Replacements are one of my favourite bands of all time, with their rough and ready bar band sound contrasting with Westerberg’s sensitive insightful lyrics, and creating some terrific college rock. After making one of my favourite trios of albums…
There’s recently been a study released, based on streaming data from Spotify, that indicates that most people gravitate towards music that was released in their early teens. Females favour music that they first heard at the age of 13, and…
One of my favourite musical discoveries of 2017 has been the solo catalogue of Jimmy Webb. While his 1970s albums are a little scattershot, there are plenty of examples of his harmonically complex but accessible songs. Along with his contemporaries…
Tommy Keene passed away unexpectedly in his sleep this week at the age of 59. The critically acclaimed power pop musician had recorded an album with Robert Pollard, and collaborated with The Goo Goo Dolls, Paul Westerberg, and recently with…
Melbourne’s Hunters & Collectors started as an arty new-wave band, but ‘Holy Grail’, released in 1992, is slice of Australian pub rock. There’s plenty to critique; it’s based around the straightforward I – IV – VI – V chord progression,…
Paul Kelly’s a respected songwriter in Australia, with a solo career that began in 1981. He’s the type of figure who receives songwriting awards and inclusions on great song lists, without necessarily breaking through to public consciousness. He’s little known…
Whether he’s recording as the guitarist and co-leader of Hüsker Dü, as a solo artist, or as the leader of Sugar, you generally know what you’re going to get from Bob Mould. I understand that he’s diversified somewhat on some…
Don McGlashan is up with Dave Dobbyn and the Finn brothers as New Zealand’s best mainstream guitar-rock writers. He’s best-known for his work in 1990s rock band The Mutton Birds, but they were the third group he recorded with. His…
Faith No More’s origins go right back to 1979 when the rhythm section of Mike Bordin and Billy Gould formed a band. By 1982 keyboard player Roddy Bottum joined and they had become Faith No More – a young Courtney…
The small city of Dunedin, in the south of New Zealand, produced a lot of great music in the 1980s – The Flying Nun record label distributed acclaimed albums by acts like The Chills, The Clean, The Bats, and Chris…
1994, 8.5/10. The reference point for Martinis & Bikinis is late period Beatles, acknowledged by the cover of 'Gimme Some Truth'.
For some reason I never found Aretha Franklin’s original studio albums in second-hand bins, and for years the only album I owned from her was a double disc retrospective. The second disc dabbles in her 1980s work, with star power…
Vigilantes of Love took their name from the New Order song ‘Love Vigilantes’. The band hailed from Athens, Georgia, a city with rich pop music heritage; in all honesty they’d probably struggle to break onto a list of greatest musical…
I’ve been covering Pavement’s albums over the last week or so – revisiting their five albums has helped me to appreciate them more, and how full of ideas their albums are. They’re definitely a strong contender for the best guitar…
Each May is New Zealand Music Month. It’s a promotion that has outstayed its welcome, especially as New Zealand has outgrown the cultural cringe for homegrown music that was evident in the 1960s and 1970s. But, perhaps not coincidentally, I’ve…
A game I like to play on my cycle commute from work is figuring out the best band of each ten year era. For instance, The Beatles and Bob Dylan are contenders for 1960-1970, while 1985-1995 has a few contestants,…
This page collects miscellaneous reviews for 1990s artists who I’ve just covered a handful of albums by: Eric Clapton Unplugged 1992, 5.5/10Jumping on the bandwagon of MTV Unplugged Specials, this live album thankfully steers clear of Clapton’s 1970s AOR hits, and…
His work in the 1980s with the beloved Replacements left leader Paul Westerberg with colossal expectations to meet with his solo career. Despite some valiant attempts, Westerberg’s never met the artistic levels of The Replacements trio of Let It Be,…
Freedy Johnston seems destined to be remembered as a one-hit wonder for 1994’s ‘Bad Reputation’, a critically acclaimed but commercially marginal figure. This semi-obscurity isn’t necessarily surprising – popular music is littered with talented performers who only enjoyed a brief period…
San Francisco quartet the Red House Painters (named after the Tennesseean painting crew, The International League Of Revolutionary House Painters) made their debut with 1992’s Down Colorful Hill on the 4AD label. The band fitted into the recently coined slowcore genre,…
