March 14, 2022 by A.S. Van Dorston

I was reluctant when I started this countdown, because there isn’t a ton of music I’ve been compelled to return to in the past 30 years. I don’t recall feeling disappointed overall at the time, partly because I was just starting to be able to afford to buy more CDs, and I was going down my own rabbit holes of filling blanks in my musical knowledge through reissues of punk, post-punk, kosmische, prog, jazz, soul, rockabilly, etc. There were a couple albums I’d had in my top 30 over the years that I really hadn’t felt like listening to in decades, so I had to re-evaluate and figure out what I do still find enjoyable in 2022. That lead me down some other rabbit holes, both old and new, of which there is evidence of in Week 2.

I had dismissed The Church at the time after I was disappointed by Starfish (1988), but their later albums gradually grew on me over the years. Big Chief was a live favorite back in the day, and I had such a blast listening to their debut again I had to move it up. I rarely was in the mood for The Young Gods in my post-industrial hangover, but this album holds up to scrutiny and deserves it’s place of honor above their colleagues who made the genre such a drag. I’d heard a couple songs from the 3Ds — SPIN actually put them at the top of their pretty good list, “10 Best Albums You Didn’t Hear in ’92,” but I didn’t hear the full albums until about five years ago when I read In Love With These Times: My Life With Flying Nun Records by Roger Shephard.

24. The Church – Priest = Aura (Arista)

Heyday (1986) was always my Church jam, for good reason, as it’s by far their best album. I was immediately turned off by the watered down production of Starfish (1988), and dismissed the band for several years. I blinked and then realized that the band never really made a bad album, and by the end of the 90s, they had a dozen of them, and nearly doubled that number since then. Their seventh album corrected the production shortcomings, and their most consistently solid songwriting since Heyday. Their influence has started to manifest in some of the more psychedelic of the shoegaze aligned bands like Ride, and future developments in dream pop. They even produce a sprawling, edgy, gothy post-punk epic in the 9+ minute “Chaos.”

23. Stereolab – Peng! (Too Pure)

There’s some similarities between 1992 and 1985 in that a lot of music sounded immediately dated. Meaning, they sounded contemporary, of the time, but that sound was shit. All the arena rock bands trying to pass off as grunge like Alice in Chains, Stone Temple Pilots, even Pearl Jam — I hated them all. To my ears, the sound of the future, or one particularly enticing branch of it, was the Too Pure roster, including Moonshake, Pram, Th’ Faith Healers, PJ Harvey and Stereolab. Many of them picked up where Eno and Bowie left off in the 70s in tapping into the inexhaustible potential of German Kosmische musik. Humming, quivering and burping analog synthesizers and incessant rhythms take bits of Can, Neu!, Cluster and Velvet Underground’s “Sister Ray,” and come up with fresh sounds. The songwriting isn’t quite where it will be for their extraordinary run of the next six albums or so, but sonic blueprint is laid out, the post-structuralist theories drafted, and it’s still a pleasure to revisit. The companion compilation of their early singles, Switched On, has some more immediate tracks, along with more experiments.

22. Big Chief – Face (Sub Pop)

Singer Barry Hennsler was a member of the similarly underrated Ohio hardcore punk band Necros. When he joined Ann Arbor’s Big Chief in 1989, they developed a sound on their singles, compiled on Drive It Off (1991), that perhaps owed something to Mudhoney and Tad, but also share Afghan Whig’s appreciation for soul, plus funk and hip hop. They can also be considered early pioneers of stoner rock. They toured hard, made an entertaining tribute to Blaxploitation soundtracks with Mack Avenue Skull Game (1993), then got signed to a major label (Capitol) for their last album in 1994, destined to be neglected and forgotten. It’s too bad they couldn’t persist like peers Melvins and Fu Manchu, they could have been touring and celebrating the 30 year anniversary of this great debut.

21. The Young Gods – T.V. Sky (Play It Again Sam)

I mostly found industrial rock irritating. I liked Skinny Puppy conceptually but not to really listen to. Nine Inch Nails felt fake, and Ministry were exciting for a minute, then quickly became a cartoonish self-parody. Meat Beat Manifesto were a chore on record, but at least had great dancers in dinosaur costumes. But I always had a soft spot for Swiss band The Young Gods, at least on their first four albums. Their weirdness felt unforced, as was their mix of Wagnerian classical with electronics and doomy noise rock influenced by Swans. That heaviosity meshed well with Godflesh and Therapy’s Caucasian Psychosis. Their Kurt Weill tribute album was inventive, eclectic and adventurous. T.V. Sky ends with the 20 minute proggy epic “Summer Eyes.” It’s their last great album before they succumbed to the mediocrity of the 90s like all their peers.

20. 3Ds – Hellzapoppin (Flying Nun)

The hype over Pavement, at least initially, was misplaced. They weren’t the only band delving in chaotic, noisy pop with occasional sweet melodies. Unrest had fine-tuned that formula on their seventh album, and the best band of that ilk in 1992 was the 3Ds, a supergroup of sorts of New Zealand Dunadin bands Look Blue Go Purple and Bird Nest Roys. While Pavement’s EPs are only half listenable, spilling over with amaturish bullshit hipster parodies of Swell Maps and The Fall, 3Ds were fully formed on the EP compilation, Fish Tales / Swarthy Songs for Swabs (Flying Nun, 1991). Their debut full-length matches the melodic highlights of “Sing-Song” and consistently hooky guitar fuzz with the opener “Outer Space” and the high energy never flags. Given its conspicuous absence on all the canonical charts, it’s officially a lost classic.

19. Seam – Headsparks (Homestead)

Between the monolithic walls of distortion in shoegaze and the grown-up noise pop of Bob Mould’s Sugar, I was on board with most noisy guitar rock at the time. One of my favorites was an offshoot of Bitch Magnet, who in my mind were nearly as influential and innovative in the end as Slint. After they broke up, Sooyoung Park relocated to Chapel Hill to form Seam, possibly as a one-off, with Superchunks’ Mac McCaughan on drums and Lexi Mitchell on bass. While I was slogging away at a 60 hour a week job in a windowless office, Headsparks got heavy spins in my off-brand discman. I couldn’t dream of picking it apart, as to my ears, the guitar hooks, bare bones production, and Park’s slow-paced (they cover Codeine’s “New Year’s”), whispered narrations were perfect. The only thing I’d change is swap out the album version of “Shame,” which seems out of place with Sarah Shannon of Velocity Girl on vocals, with the slower version Park sang himself backed by John McEntire and Bundy Brown on the Kernal EP. Seam had moved to Chicago and were going to get even better the next year.

18. Screaming Trees – Sweet Oblivion (Epic)

Screaming Trees were getting better with each album, and they had one of the best songs on the Singles soundtrack (“Nearly Lost You”). Yet despite major label promotion, they still remained underdogs next to both equal (Nirvana and Soundgarden) and lesser (Pearl Jam and all the rest) talents. Grunge’s golden alpha lion voice Mark Lanegan did get more exposure after the band broke up and he started collaborating with many different artists, including Queens of the Stone Age. A slight solace, with his difficult life ending far too early this year.

Afghan Whigs – Congregation (Sub Pop) | USA | Bandcamp
Spiritualized – Lazer Guided Melodies (Dedicated) | UK | Bandcamp
Trouble – Manic Frustration (American) | USA | Bandcamp
Into Paradise – Down All the Days (Setanta) | Ireland
Sheila Chandra – Weaving My Ancestors’ Voices (Real World ) | India/UK | Bandcamp
The Young Gods – TV Sky (Play It Again Sam) | Switzerland
Black Sabbath – Dehumanizer (EMI) | UK
R.E.M. – Automatic For the People (WB) | USA
The Wedding Present – The Hit Parade (RCA) | UK
Heavenly – Le jardin de Heavenly (Sarah) | UK | Bandcamp
Ed Kuepper – Black Ticket Day (Hot) | Australia | Bandcamp
Luna – Lunapark (Elektra) | USA
Ride – Going Blank Again (Sire/Reprise) | UK | Bandcamp
Danzig – Danzig III: How The Gods Kill (American) | USA