Circus Lupus ‘Super Genius’ (1992)

A rippling urge takes hold when this writer meets a Dischord initiate who hasn’t heard at least some of Circus Lupus’s Super Genius. Written into law in 1991 and on shelves the following year, it’s one of the label’s best moves, blowing like an industrial fan or car blowing through red lights. The ideas set in the first two songs flow for the album’s duration, in no way tiresome. The bass (man, that bass) and guitar are as much percussion instruments here as the drums while Chris Thomson is in need of a hot cup of medicated tea after slinging around an album’s worth of yelling, which you get the feeling comes from an educated brain. Again, one of Dischord’s top doings, easily.

Small ‘Chin Music’ (1994)

One of North Carolina’s catchiest spun cool, summer-chord excellence with Chin Music, which, despite its position as the band’s second full-length, followed a good run of seven inch records, comp appearances and EPs. Other words, Small (known on some other releases as Small 23) was fairly established in hard-copy and had a level of expectation to meet by the time this 1994 release hit shelves, at least in the home-court Chapel Hill-Raleigh-Durham area. Although sturdy debut full-length True Zero Hook (released shortly prior) remains classic, Chin Music was a more confidently written and better produced record. Its entwined guitar layers, although they maintain the thrown-around quality almost token for the period’s indie, came together with more atmosphere and room to kick versus the slightly compressed, pretty basic capture of the debut (the seven-inch records, however, were gritty great). Another Small full-length followed in 1995, but its bid to go bigger or more taut in sound perhaps makes Chin Music sing even prettier, as moody and Replacements-hoarse as it can be at times. It can live with Superchunk’s On the Mouth, Archers of Loaf’s Icky Mettle (by the way, that band’s leader, Eric Bachmann, was an early-period Small member), Ashley Stove’s 4-Finger Moon and Polvo’s Cor Crane Secret as one of the N.C.-’90s’ best records, top-ten even.

The Van Pelt ‘Stealing From Our Favorite Thieves’ (1996)

Whump-thud drumming, slightly distorted fat guitar sounds and a singing voice more confident in patternless rambles are the up-front qualities of the Van Pelt’s first of two full-length records. Deeper, there are poetic elements and untrained instincts that create noisy but bright impressions, the lyrics coming off a little free at times but having earned the benefit of doubt that they come from a smart, credible source. Or, it’s just plain catchy–forget all that critic-pleasing stuff–with rhythms that keep seats vacant, even when the melodies seem a little downtrodden. “It’s a Suffering” seems it should be in the forlorn file, but the arrangement is so darn hooky it’s a thoroughly good time. “His Saxophone Is My Guitar” may indeed be the dark crease of the album, but even it has its winks. Same for closer “Turning Twenty Into Two,” with a compelling drum beat that, in the afterthought, really was the song’s lead. The band never got off topic with strange instruments or hokey personalities. Rather, the album kept its rock base end to end and was, in the end, one of the Gern Blandsten label’s best releases–though their follow-up album may have beat it.

Drive Like Jehu ‘Yank Crime’ (1994)

To this listener, a perfect album, thrust by one of the decade’s greatest one-two punches and excelled by dynamics and lyricism that could only improve with age, because a legion of imitators could not recreate the potency. Not close at all, and they’re still trying. Track two, “Do You Compute,” is the feather on the stomach, peaking with careening, strident melody and a line of lyrics that may take the crown among ’90s advice: “It’s as if you were put here to straighten us out and everything you said was being written down. Well you weren’t and it isn’t. Nobody’s listening. Nobody gives a fuck what you go do with your life.” The reissue includes the legendary “Bullet Train to Vegas / Hand Over Fist” 7″ on Merge Records, all in all offering 11 songs none to miss.

The Buck Pets ‘The Buck Pets’ (1989)

Editor’s liberty, here. This album surfaced in 1989, not necessarily ahead of its time. But it stares into the ’90s. Can I convince you of that? It’s also one of my first true favorite albums, which means I ought to recuse myself from a review of it. So let’s just talk. I first heard the Buck Pets’ debut in 1991, when I was in sixth grade and didn’t know what palette was. The coolest stuff I’d heard at the time was, I ‘unno, Samiam’s Soar and Bad Brains’ Quickness (meaning I hadn’t yet heard the ROIR tape), and my standard if it existed was pretty much in distortion and dissidence, whatever that was. When my schoolmate’s babysitter gave me a Maxell dub of The Buck Pets–boom. It was format perfect. The vocals bossed me around, the guitars were large, the drums rang out like gunshots. And the subjects came off dramatically, paricularly in closer “The Bad Sleep Good, or Not at All” (which did not appear on the vinyl version), good god. Maybe it’s my history with this album, but that song threw me over its back when I first heard it. The intro chimes like a Motown song gone bent before opening to a chorus that comes too soon to not hint at something building. The end is a tap in the gut. Not to be melodramatic (though I will be), it gets going like the entire world is with it; a big strong dive and after a big splash of cymbals it’s a creepy group of kids singing like ghosts. I don’t know what I’d think if I first heard this album today, but while I was aching for alternative rock unknown to my friends, this seated itself as one I’d own on cassette, CD and LP. And I still have that old Maxell. One of the best ’90s albums that wasn’t.

Blind Mr. Jones ‘Stereo Musicale’ (1992)

There’s sort of an unfair perspective out there that bands initiated a year or two after a genre’s big bang are just on the late bus, riding off with ideas they would not have formed independently. And when they come out with their version of last year’s new sound, it’s a few watts lacking in sincerity. For whatever reason, bands dubbed shoegaze (the huge egg of a genre it was) seem to get critically pushed around more than others in this respect. And sure, who knows what Blind Mr. Jones’ first album would have sounded like–had it come at all–without bands like Ride and songs like “Drive Blind”? Further: Who cares? Stereo Musicale has all the potency and confidence of a winning album. Big, stormy melody I’d almost sooner compare to the Sound’s second album–and there we go again with comparisons but at least that one long predates what they usually get. And all of rock and roll owes something to Les Paul for availing electric guitars to the world. Back on topic, worlds later, Blind Mr. Jones ultimately owes ancestry but as much to the band’s own gifts. Pretty great stuff. Even if some songs might as well be Ride. With a flute.

Drop Nineteens ‘Delaware’ (1992)

What a one-two punch it would have been had track three been track two. Oh well. It needn’t keep Drop Nineteens’ debut full-length from your high marks, granted you are a fan of early Swervedriver, Ride and Slowdive. The early ’90s UK colour is for certain but there’s no warrant for calling this band a crutched American imitation. Regarding their first EP, Your Aquarium, and first full-length, Delaware, Drop Nineteens was majorly overlooked, even if the band didn’t quite meet the measure of its counterparts across the sea. While a few lackadaisical songs (ones that sort of come off like side-projects or not representative of the entire band) affect Delaware‘s flow, the bright moments blow as cool as the period’s best.

A 2009 Cherry Red Records reissue of Delaware includes the Your Aquarium EP.

Popdefect ‘Punch Drunk’ (1992)

Here is the sound of the pure thrill of playing music in a garage or a basement while the TASCAM’s tape is wheeling its 30 minutes of life away. The song ends, a member hits rewind, throws on the headphones and, at the zero click, hits play soon to hear the kind of punchy, balled up noise only a focused but carelessly loose three-piece band could’ve created. Popdefect’s Punch Drunk was recorded with more sophistication and clarity than a four-track would generally allow (the band had also been around more than a decade at this point and were quite a touring presence), but that practice-room spirit is corner to corner, here. The splayed drumming and guitar absorb one another for a great wash of noise atop melodies the bass steers ’round like a spinning Disney tea-cup ride. “Puro Desmadre” (actually released in 1990 as a Flipside Records single) is the whirlpool’s vortex, a song that relieves your awareness for three minutes after which you wake and find all your instruments in splinters, your clothes in tatters and your hair filled with glass. Somehow, this album does not top the band’s other works, namely 1988′s Live With This (a rare find nowadays). But Punch Drunk, whether taken on its merits or held against the discography, is shrilly perfect.

Elevator Through ‘Vague Premonition’ (1999)

After numerous wonderful releases as Elevator to Hell in the mid ’90s, the subtle but fuzzy indie psych drift-out trio changed its name to Elevator Through and in 1999 released perhaps its most expansive of albums. Vague Premonition steps beyond the practice-room four-track texture and into more free-floating space developed by Syd Barrett-era Floyd and Flower Travellin’ Band. The production is warm, full and organic but comes off more studio-like than previous releases. The varnish shouldn’t, however, be hard to swallow for even no-surrender fans of the band’s earlier, hand-crafted sound as heard on the excellent Parts 1-3 collection. And it takes the dark exploration of 1997′s Eerieconsiliation a little deeper. But Elevator’s achievement on Vague is its smooth ability to change direction with each song, to never let the experience glaze over. That is also to say the band wasn’t enslaved by the blotter rock convention of lengthy freakouts: the songs remain within reason and thus are more potent. The catchy persuasion of the band’s early material is on board, here, but the new ideas pay off nicely.

Th Faith Healers ‘Lido’ (1992)

Every listening of Th Faith Healers’ Lido either warms the stomach or chills the shoulders–effects vary among listeners, whose preferences may include Pavement or Butterglory on one end, and maybe Ride or Pixies on another. But Th Faith Healers’ ominous sound, you guessed it, juts them away from immediate confinement, sort of prompting a double-take in the process of figuring out just where to place them on the shelf. Next to the early Yo La Tengo discs or a few spots down from the first three Wire albums? Lido is intelligently dark but not all subdued. The drums get downright stompy and the super dry guitar distortion, when it kicks in, sounds positively three-dimensional. But don’t think heavy. Partly through production, partly through Roxanne Stephen’s sunken vocals, the album has an overall ghostly, almost soundtrack-y quality hammered home by final track “Spin 1/2,” a closed-eyes dreamer that insists on another listen.