Insanely Great 90s Songs You're Not Sick of: 1996

 Oh, 1996. You saucy minx of a year. If I were to summarize you with a single music video, it would have to be a couple of muso goofballs doing cheesy Muzak remakes of then-current hits like "Black Hole Sun" on vintage synths. Sure feels like 1996 to me. How about you?

 

1996 was a transitional year, as the depressed mood (and economy) of the early 90s finally gave way to the go-go vibe of the Clinton Years. The economy was booming, babies were a'borning, and basically, no one felt like pretending they were miserable anymore. Pre-fab boy bands and slutpop divas like Britney Spears were waiting in the wings to sweep those gloomy Seattle storm clouds away. Everyone was so giddy, people actually went out and bought Spice Girls records, proving yet again you can be too giddy for your own good.

Grunge was on life support and nearly all of the bands scooped up in the wake of Nevermind were bombing with their follow-ups and/or getting dropped by their labels like a banker's mistress just before Christmas. 

Moreover, most of the big hitmakers of the early 90s were in crisis, if not outright implosion. Nirvana was obviously gone, Soundgarden was soon to follow, and Stone Temple Pilots, Smashing Pumpkins and Alice in Chains were sailing straight towards the rocky shores of crippling drug addiction for key members. And Pearl Jam had painted itself into a corner by very loudly taking on MTV and Ticketmaster, only to realize no one had their back. 

Alternative Rock as a movement had peaked in 1994, plateaued in 1995 and began to decline to 1996. Even so, there was an embarrassment of great music, particularly softer styles and more sophisticated sounds that had been shunted aside while the majors repackaged corny old 70s cock-rock for their fake-Grunge deluge. 

Yes, I hate Seven Mary Three every bit as much as you think I do.

Worse still was the wave of media consolidation that rose like a stench from Hell's outhouse in the wake of some truly nefarious telecommunications acts and laws. This malign mischief consolidated near-total power into the hands of a tiny, inept and suicidally short-sighted batch of media programmers, practically overnight. 

Commercial radio soon became a festering wasteland of suck, especially in major markets like New York, which has had the most insanely terrible commercial radio on Earth ever since. At the same time, rapacious record companies went insane with greed and power, and began ruthlessly gouging the public with CD prices. This in turn led to widespread resentment on the part of consumers, a resentment that would explode into open rebellion with the rise of file sharing. 

Soundgarden unleashed Down on the Upside in 1996, which inevitably suffered in comparison to Superunknown. There were plenty of great cuts to be found, but the moment had passed and attention was moving away from moping and frowning.

Stone Temple Pilots laid any lingering Pearl Jam comparisons to rest with their third album titled what the fuck was up with 90s acts and paragraph-long album titles. The album mixed garage-punk bompers, glitter rock stompers and soaring 70s-esque stylings, yet managed to sound like a singular work. Then Weiland lapsed back into heroin hell and the band hired some random dude off the street for the Talk Show project the next year.

Porno for Pyros served a far superior follow-up in 1996 to their dullsville 1993 debut. Having realized their first album had a grand total of one good song (“Pets”), Perry and the boys had the sense to use it as a template. One of the more successful results was this epic. Sadly, so many fans felt so ripped off by the band’s first album that no one bought their second, and Perry went about reforming Jane’s Addiction the following year.

Nebraskans turned Angelenos 311 bridged early 90s power chords with later 90s seasonings on loan from Ska and Nu Metal. When the writing was solid, this gumbo resulted in some top flight rock.

Post-grunge lightened the mood up considerably, eschewing Seattle-style miserablism. One prime example is PUSA, whose name will not be typed out. This and “Gump” hit big in ’96.

Nada Surf dolloped a healthy serving of snark over the basic Nirvana template (AKA the basic Pixies template) and brewed up this lost classic. Little-known fact: every young heterosexual male on Earth was heard to exclaim the exact same words while first watching this video: “Jesus H Christ: that cheerleader.”

Evan Dando took some time off from his day job as a stoner to serve up this lost wimp-rock classic with whatever random bunch of guys he was calling The Lemonheads that week.

The Cranberries got all grungy on their second LP, then found themselves at an impasse in 1996 when the movement faded. Still got one last good single out of them before the inevitable fade.

Trip Hop left the chilly climes of Bristol, England and took root on distant shores. One of the results of this stylistic was this classic one-hit wonder from Sneaker Pimps.

Eighties Industrial veterans Meat Beat Manifesto found new inspiration in Trip Hop, which they used to fire up a 2 CD set in 1996. The second disk is solid proof that the MeatBeaters were also spending a lot of time getting high with their pals in The Orb’s, um, orbit.

DJ Shadow’s epic 1996 debut put a distinct stateside spin on Trip Hop, resulting in one of the best electronic albums of its decade. I always got DJ Shadow and DJ Spooky mixed up, since they worked similar musical mines.

To make things even more confusing, there was an experimental techno/hip-hop fusion guy named Spooky, who released the album Found Sound in 1996. One of the sounds Spooky found was the Voice of God, in this instance a remix of she and her Sibyl Servants' blissed-out Fruitopia commercial from the previous year.

The Voice of God unveiled her final oracles in 1996, then set off for Trip Hop City with fellow Bristolians Massive Attack. Which is only appropriate given her band inadvertently invented Trip Hop on a 1990 EP track in the first place. There’s an interview that goes with this performance, and it’s revealing to see the stark contrast in how a sweet, goofy, and adorably-insecure manic pixie dreamgirl can be so clearly overtaken by forces unknown -- to the point she barely even seems aware where she is -- when she gets behind a microphone.

Cibo Matto, a surrealist pop concern led by two Japanese emigres to New York, boasted a strong Trip Hop influence on their 1996, Viva La Woman.

Cibo were part of the same mix ’n match downtown scene that produced the Beastie-affiliated Luscious Jackson and Neo-Beatnik nudniks Soul Coughing, who slipped a Super BonBon past the gatekeepers in 1996.

Fun Loving Criminals sprang from that same scene but eschewed bon-bon’s for Scooby snacks. Oddly enough, they’d be a lot more successful in the UK than their native land.

Sweden was enjoying a pop renaissance in the 90s, kicked off by mainstream acts like Roxette and Ace of Base. It would get more Alternativer with lounge-pop revivalists The Cardigans, who enjoyed taking old Sabbath songs and turning them sexy.

Komeda were cut from the same cloth, but added a glaze of Stereolab artiness to the formula. Unlike The Cardigans, they’d never make a dent in the US charts. Any charts.

Salt served up some leftover Grunge, but sometimes leftovers can get tastier when they're reheated. Great track which they never equaled, sadly.

Speaking of Stereolab, they served up what I named best album of the 1990s with Emperor Tomato Ketchup. The passage of time hasn’t been as kind in my estimation, but it’s still a great collection of accessible art damage.

Alt.metal reached a new plateau in ’96 with Tool’s third LP, Aenima. Unfortunately, radio played every single one of those tracks to death, afterlife, rebirth and far into the second death. Happily, our old friends Type O Negative unleashed their best album in 1996, a breathtaking, epic blend of Black Sabbath sludge, Sisters of Mercy moaning and Cocteau Twins shimmer. An absolute high-water mark for 90s alt.metal.

Killing Joke would vanish for seven years after 1996’s Democracy, which featured  -- gasp -- acoustic guitar on some tracks. The boys were hanging out with New Age hippie/crusty Travelers in Glastonbury, Findhorn and New Zealand, so Democracy featured Jaz’s increasingly Lemmy-like voice howling about medicine wheels and crystals and new aeons, along with the usual howling about death, depression and the New World Order.

So how’s about you? What kinds of sides were you spinning in 96? What kinds of sounds hit your soul in the sweet spot? 

Turn me on in the comments.

Don't forget The Secret Sun Institute of Advanced Synchromysticism, now holding classes in the highly strange. There's a ton of exclusive material up already and so much more on the way. 

And don't forget the all-night 90s lotus party over at SHRR...

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KINDLE