Gimme Indie Rock: 500 Essential American Underground Rock Albums 1981–1996

By Andrew Earles

The ultimate guide to one of the most revered periods and movements in American rock history.The 1980s are one of the most ridiculed and parodied epochs in popular music€ ” what with all the skinny lapels, synthesizers, spandex, and Aqua Net. However, music fans in the know recognize that beneath the glossy veneer broiled a revolutionary movement of self-directed, anti-corporate, punk-influenced bands that created a nationwide network from the ground up, thanks to independently recorded releases, photocopied fanzines, and self-financed tours.In Gimme Indie Rock, music journalist Andrew Earles describes 500 essential indie-rock albums released by 308 bands and artists from coast to coast in markets large and small. From giants of the movement (Black Flag, the Minutemen, Mission of Burma, Fugazi, Superchunk, Melvins, Dead Kennedys, Minor Threat, Hüsker Dü, the Replacements, Sonic Youth, Mudhoney, Dinosaur Jr., Big Black, the Pixies), to more obscure bands which nonetheless made their own impacts (Jesus Lizard, Cows, Low, Mercury Rev, Polvo, Squirrel Bait, Karp, Bongwater, Naked Raygun, Sun City Girls, and many others) and scores of artists who still await their proper due (Fly Ashtray, Dumptruck, Truly, Man-Sized Action, Steel Pole Bathtub, godheadSilo, Sorry, Team Dresch, Further, Grifters, World of Pooh, Trumans Water, Malignus Youth, Eggs, and many more), Earles provides an exhaustive album guide to the era. Earles also features those bands that cut their teeth on the indie circuit but graduated to a greater degree of mainstream recognition in the late 1980s and early 1990s (acts like R.E.M., Soul Asylum, Urge Overkill, Hole, Smashing Pumpkins, and Nirvana), making Gimme Indie Rock is the definitive manual for the best of American indie music made between 1981 and 1996.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Sep 15, 2014
• ISBN: 9781627883795

Book preview

GIMME INDIE ROCK

500 ESSENTIAL AMERICAN UNDERGROUND ROCK ALBUMS 1981–1996

ANDREW EARLES

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

100 FLOWERS – AUTOCLAVE

BABES IN TOYLAND – BITCH MAGNET

BLACK FLAG – BUTTHOLE SURFERS

CAMPER VAN BEETHOVEN – CRAYON

DAG NASTY – DWARVES

EARTH – FURTHER

GALAXIE 500 – THE GUN CLUB

HALF JAPANESE – HÜSKER DÜ

JANDEK – LYRES

MALIGNUS YOUTH – MINOR THREAT

MINUTEMEN – MY DAD IS DEAD

NAKED RAYGUN – OPAL

PAIN TEENS – PUSSY GALORE

RAPEMAN – RUN WESTY RUN

SACCHARINE TRUST – SILVER JEWS

SLEATER-KINNEY – SQUIRREL BAI

ST. JOHNNY – SWIRLIES

TAD – TSOL

ULTRA VIVID SCENE – YOUNG FRESH FELLOWS

APPENDICES

INDEX

INTRODUCTION

THE INTENTIONS BEHIND THIS BOOK, HOW TO GET THE MOST OUT OF IT, AND OTHER [HOPEFULLY] HELPFUL POINTS

As I was writing these 500 entries, I regularly found myself removing fully formed statements and dumping them into another file that was saved as Bookintroductionandnotes.doc. Before long, keeping this book’s introduction under control loomed as an unwelcome challenge. Only so much context can be fleshed out across an entry-based survey of 500 albums, there’s only so much space with which to provide that context, and there are better sources online and in book form (see below and in the appropriate section of the appendix) that will currently build, if combined, somewhat of a contextual narrative of America’s DIY/individualism/outsider/underground rock-based/experimental and so on … community (late ’70s to present day)

The term indie has been used since at least the mid-’80s (mostly in the U.K. music press, at first) as a truncation of independent to describe the small labels that catered to the growing underground rock of the day. Eventually, that term begat indie rock, the more specific designator that rose up partly in reaction to the vagary of the term alternative rock. As if to confuse things, indie rock would eventually be attached to a set of bands with overlapping stylistic values, including Dinosaur Jr, Superchunk, Pavement, and Sebadoh. In other words, it came to be used to describe a subgenre as well as the larger genre that contained it, and during its heyday (see below), there were actual musical requirements that had to be met for a band to be considered indie rock. In the most simplistic terms, successful indie rock was often based on the application of grade-A pop hooks and melody to noisy, distorted guitar, aggressive, heavy or hardcore-tempo rhythms, and other sonic elements that might conflict with sonic beauty. But something else happened, too. Under the larger indie rock genre signifier, one could find a number of other subgenres—post hardcore, college rock, noise rock, lo-fi, emo, love rock, riot grrrl, proto-grunge/grunge, noise pop, shoegaze, left-field, outsider rock … the list goes on.

It was in this loose framework that indie rock (the genre) and all its various subgenres (including, as somewhat confusingly revealed above, indie rock) experienced its heyday from roughly 1986 to 1996, give or take a year on either end. The pre-1986 albums discussed in the following pages would in some way or another influence the ’86–’96 titles. Also, as with the pre-1986 albums, there are quite a few ’86–’96 titles featured that no one in their right mind would call indie rock from a musical or aesthetic subgenre standpoint. These would be the albums by bands that operated on the periphery of the American indie rock genre (think opposite end of the spectrum from, say, Buffalo Tom) but appealed to its fans that nurtured more adventurous, demanding or wide-ranging tastes. Then there’s the handful of entries covering more mainstream alternative albums that have aged nicely and are worth reexamining.

The lyrics to the song from which this book takes its title, the 1991 7-inch single by the aforementioned Sebadoh, provides a more economical telling of how this all went down in a sort of half-novelty, half-genuine, but one hundred percent rocking fashion. Reading about that 7-inch single prior to purchasing it marked my first real exposure to the term indie rock, and it was a godsend at the time, as I didn’t have a name for this music that had been blowing my mind and changing my life over the previous year or so. What do you have that sounds like Dinosaur Jr? was getting snickers during my twice-monthly, paycheck-eating forays to the only record store in town that had a clue at the time.

Of course, this was the same year that Nirvana’s Nevermind struck chords at all points from the underground to the mainstream. At a distance of over two decades, that album is now appropriately regarded among the great lines of historical demarcation in music and culture. (Though it should be mentioned that, pre-Nevermind, a number of acts from the indie rock world had already made forays into the realm of major labels, including but not limited to, the Replacements, Hüsker Dü, Soul Asylum, Sonic Youth, Pixies, Dinosaur Jr, and Eleventh Dream Day.) Indie rock and some of its satellite subgenres (including, yes, indie rock) ascended—some voluntarily, others not so much—to greater levels of exposure, acceptance, and sales.

Subsequently, a substantial number of the bands in this book, those that built grassroots DIY followings or maybe just had one or two albums on an independent label, entered into relationships with major labels and released at least one brilliant album through said channels. Underground rock’s written history as it stands today paints the major-label feeding frenzy of the early to mid-’90s as a black-and-white, good-versus-evil full-scale corruption and co-opting of the once-pure independent, DIY landscape (or an injurious attempt at doing so). While there is some validity in that line of thinking, the thorough and accurate narrative is much more complicated. And it is a narrative for another book. This one is concerned only with the strength of an album as a singular creative and cultural document, regardless of the label or imprint logo on its sleeve. Throughout this book, the reader will be beaten over the head with the term indie rock, but it’s impractical and impossible to use it to mean underground rock that is exclusively the domain of independent labels.

While writing this book, I had very little contact with other humans aside from my fiancée. But of the few people to whom I did mention the project, some had an immediate head-scratching reaction to the years that frame it. Though 1979 and 1980 did see the releases of some rather seminal albums that influenced what was to become indie rock, it wasn’t until 1981 that the gates opened. Albums by Agent Orange, the Replacements, X, Black Flag, Gun Club, Wipers, the dB’s, Big Boys, Glenn Branca, Flesh Eaters, Mission of Burma, Half Japanese, Adolescents, TSOL, Sleepers, and the Minutemen, among others, just helped to make 1981 a more sensible starting point (though it pained me to exclude the Feelies’ Crazy Rhythms). Capping everything off with 1996 was a more difficult call. That was a year of transformation in the underground, as indie rock was by then three or four years into a growing backlash. 1996 also marked the first full year of serious encroachment of underground hip-hop, electronica, post rock, widescreen avant-pop, and other styles that would soon drive guitars deeper into the metal- and hardcore-based undergrounds. These changes and the previously mentioned backlash enjoyed a relationship of cultural reciprocity.

By default, an alphabetized list of 500 albums spanning fifteen years comprises something of a historical outlay of what happened in the American underground during that period, though it is a limited view with inherent chronological challenges and limitations when it comes to addressing all of the characteristics that compose the accurate big-picture history, including ’zines, regional scenes, live shows, 7-inch releases, and label histories. It is with this in mind that I strongly suggest the books listed in the back of this one, namely Steven Blush’s American Hardcore: A Tribal History, Second Edition; Michael Azzerad’s Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground 1981–1991; and especially Joe Carducci’s three music-related books to date: Rock and the Pop Narcotic, Enter Naomi, and Life against Dementia. The book you are holding is intended to complement those titles, not be a comprehensive history of the period and its music. (Oral histories of regional scenes are increasing in number and are also recommended.)

Readers of a certain vintage remember when record guides were common in the music section of a bookstore. Today, underground heavy music/metal is the only subgenre that still seems to be serviced by books of a similar nature, a fact that can be attributed to that community’s stronger sense of fan loyalty. As for the music covered in this book, straight-up record guides were made obsolete once the sounds of yesterday and today could be readily sampled on the Internet. This transition made perfect sense for at least a decade, until myriad variables caused a saturation of information and made separating the signal from the noise more challenging than it was even in the pre-Internet days. Unlike some of my similarly aged colleagues in music writing, I find no reason to romanticize a time when one had to scribble lists based on reviews read in ’zines and magazines, videos seen on MTV’s 120 Minutes, overheard comments (if you were lucky enough to have friends who were into this stuff), and flimsy clues like album covers, label reputation, and band member crossover. Dropping $50 on seven to ten albums (new vinyl cost an average of $6 to $9 in the late ’80s and for much of the ’90s) and getting one or two sterling keepers out of the stack was considered a successful venture. However, I’d be a liar if I said I don’t have a tinge of nostalgia for the record guides that were so crucial to the development of my personal frame of reference and tastes as a lifer, namely Robert Christgau’s Record Guides for the ’80s and ’90s and Ira Robbins’ Trouser Press Record Guides (all editions).

So, with all of this in mind, the 500 profiles that follow are meant to assist in online and brick-and-mortar explorations and hopefully be of some value as a historical survey of the period. Please note that the subtitle reads 500 Essential… rather than "The 500 Essential… This book in no way claims to be the definitive canon of the movement and period covered within. However, I do feel it is a pretty solid indoctrination, and it’s my hope that it can be of use to readers of all ages, from novices to grizzled and cantankerous know-it-alls. The use of Essential rather than Influential or Important is of even greater, uh, importance. Not all of these albums are influential; in fact, many remain buried in an abyss of obscurity. But the least-heard albums are just as essential" as the general-consensus classics. As for the latter, naturally their status played into their inclusion. At the end of the day, though, the reader should just think of each as a great album within its respective style. First and foremost, these titles were chosen based on their individual strength, which took priority over criteria like band legacy or band discography. For instance, there are bands here of which I am not a fan (to say the least), yet I recognize their significance. As of this writing, some of these albums have been reissued several times and are easy to find. Many have never gone out of print. Others are simply amazing records that were released to a deafening silence. Then there are the albums that are out of print, highly sought-after, and generally exalted, thus commanding anywhere from $50 to the price of a decent used car for an original vinyl copy. And although stating the current status of each album’s availability would threaten to date the profiles, one admittedly idealistic hope for this book is that it will remove some of the above-mentioned titles from the margins of historical neglect or dismissal, and put them in the crosshairs of those with reissue powers. If this book somehow directly or indirectly leads to the reissue of more than one out-of-print title, it will be a personal triumph.

—Andrew Earles, June 2014

100 Flowers – Autoclave

100 FLOWERS

S/T (1983, Happy Squid)

The Urinals were a late-’70s/early-’80s trio of wiseasses who could play their instruments just fine but performed as ineptly as possible to aggravate audiences and offer a satirical (decidedly art-school) statement regarding the band’s feelings about punk rock. The Urinals never released a full-length LP. (Some demo material and two 7-inches made it onto the Amphetamine Reptile–released retrospective collection Negative Capability … Check It Out! in 1997.) When the band morphed into a more serious venture, the name changed to 100 Flowers and the trio released this first-rate Americanization of U.K. pop-oriented post punk. The sound was similar to the shambling Wire heard on the transitional 154 album, early Mekons, Alternative TV, and any number of the rocking but more approachable Rough Trade bands. This album, along with the EP that followed it and other tracks, was reissued in 1990 by Rhino as 100 Years of Pulchritude.

A MINOR FOREST

Flemish Altruism (Constituent Parts 1993–1996) (1996, Thrill Jockey)

Active from 1992 until 1998, this enigmatic trio released two full-lengths: Flemish Altruism and a follow-up, Inindependence (also on Thrill Jockey, in 1998, and highly recommended), and enough material on 7-inches and compilations to justify the excellent two-CD odds-and-such So, Were They in Some Sort of Fight? (My Pal God Records, 1999). Flemish Altruism worked the margins of noise-rock, math-rock, and ’90s heavier post-hardcore subgenres—exactly the categories A Minor Forest was lumped into (when noticed at all)—by employing smarts, authentic heartfelt hooks, and a serious jones for complicated prog-rock time signatures, stretched-out quietness, and city-leveling noise. Fans of Slint and Co. take note.

ADICKDID

S/T (1993, Imp/1994, G Records)

This all-female punk/noise-rock/heavy-indie trio was founded by Kaia Wilson, who went on to co-found the better-known Team Dresch and the Butchies. As of this writing, the amazing Adickdid remains barely a footnote in the history of the Pacific Northwest all-girl/riot grrrl/queercore movements (Kaia was active in the latter). Within the bigger picture of early ’90s underground indie/punk/post hardcore, the band is totally unknown. Adickdid released one full-length and a 7-inch during its existence, plus it appeared on the second Kill Rock Stars compilation, Stars Kill Rock. Wilson has a true gift for marrying the pretty (her singing and vocal hooks) with the heavy and noisy, and it’s clear by listening to this record that she was an integral part of what made Team Dresch the baddest and best in the land (regardless of gender). Adickdid is much different, however, going into and out of sludgy, slower Melvins-ish territory throughout this album, but Wilson’s songwriting gift is on full display from front to back. It’s a lost gem.

ADOLESCENTS

S/T (1981, Frontier)

The first incarnation of this band—they have regrouped many times over the years—was a sort of early-’80s L.A. hardcore/punk super group with Rikk and Frank Agnew (late of Social Distortion, but soon to be in countless bands) on guitars, drummer Casey Royer (who was also in Social Distortion), and former Agent Orange bassist Steve Soto. Singer Tony Cadena was only sixteen when Adolescents formed in 1979; he would go on to be in White Flag and other bands.

Like Agent Orange’s Living in Darkness, Bad Religion’s How Could Hell Be Any Worse?, and Descendents’ Milo Goes to College (all released in ’81–’82 by these other L.A.-area bands), the Adolescents’ self-titled debut presents a type of melodic first-wave hardcore that puts the hooks up front and is more or less the blueprint for what would become the SoCal poppunk sound as the years went on. Adolescents is also one of the first hardcore albums to feature two guitarists, and both traded off on leads. When it came to their musicianship, the Adolescents did not subscribe to the learn-in-public approach that was not uncommon within that scene. The Agnew brothers were accomplished and could whip out continuous leads that were almost song-length. And when it comes to these thirteen songs, there isn’t a dud in the bunch, Behind the Dead Kennedys’ Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables, this is the best-selling California first-wave hardcore album.

AFGHAN WHIGS

Congregation (1992, Sub Pop)

The Afghan Whigs’ first two albums, 1989’s Big Top Halloween and 1990’s Up in It, delivered competent indie-grunge of the somewhat aggressive nature, while the latter even dabbled in what was to come (some emphasis must be placed on the D-word here). Released the same year that began with Nirvana escorting Michael Jackson to the exit door, Congregation was one of the special antidotes to the already-in-progress multilevel homogenization of the indie/alt-rock landscape. All of the revisionist talk of an R&B/soul-plus-indie rock hybrid when it comes to the Afghan Whigs’ post–Up in It material is a bit misleading, especially when it comes to this album. Not to say that Congregation wasn’t a severe left turn into new territory, but it was more of a maturation and naked, metaphor-free response to the buried vocals and ironic posturing that marked much of the indie rock landscape in 1992. Nowhere was this more evident than in the clear and intense lyrics and vocals for major-chord rockers I’m Her Slave and Turn on the Water (both of which received decent rotation on MTV’s 120 Minutes), not to mention the duo of disturbingly honest ballads toward the end of the album, Let Me Lie to You and Tonight. Congregation was a different and refreshing take on the alt/indie influx of the early ’90s—albeit a decidedly anti-grunge communication of real relationship/romantic sentiment and conflict in a manner that was an adult alternative to the coming flurry of ’90s emo. It was also the warning shot for the band’s attempted world takeover that would be the 1993 major-label debut, Gentlemen.

AFGHAN WHIGS

Gentlemen (1993, Sub Pop/Elektra)

As the Afghan Whigs toured to support the critically acclaimed Congregation, the band grew a nice following and found itself at the center of a notoriously excessive major-label bidding war. Dulli’s personality as a conflicted, uncomfortably honest alpha-male antihero with an insatiable appetite for romantic misunderstandings came to the forefront on the band’s major-label debut, Gentlemen. The album brings to fruition what Congregation hinted at: fusing R&B and soul with thinking man’s guitar rock (in an indie/alternative context) and setting the band apart from the grunge-saturated pack.

Gentlemen was recorded in Memphis at Ardent Studios, which spun off from Stax Records decades earlier. Stylish, fist-in-the-air modern rockers like the title track and Debonair got some MTV 120 Minutes rotation, and the album did go on to move more than 160,000 units.

AGENT ORANGE

Living in Darkness (1981, Posh Boy)

The conservative suburban nightmare just south of urban L.A. known the world over as Orange County is widely considered the birthplace of American hardcore, thanks to the short-lived outfit Middle Class, who released a four-song 7-inch EP titled Out of Vogue in 1978. The O.C. would export its first wave of hardcore bands a couple of years later, starting with the Adolescents, Social Distortion, D.I. (Drug Ideology), and TSOL, along with Agent Orange, the band behind this charming and peerless little LP. On Living in Darkness, guitarist, vocalist, and founder Mike Palm realized a vision that, on paper, comes off as a recipe for failure. It shouldn’t have worked when Palm pushed surf-rock guitar, melodically moody punk rock, condensed pre-thrash metal riffs, and arena rock hooks through the filter of contemporary hardcore, but what came out was a disarmingly catchy, mature, approachable, and charming document. Living in Darkness mostly avoids the shortcomings associated with the first full-lengths by most hardcore bands of the day. Highlights are certainly No Such Thing, Everything Turns Grey, and the iconic Bloodstains (an earlier recording of which served as the A-side to the band’s debut three-song 7-inch in 1980 and as the opening track on the Rodney on the ROQ compilation LP).

Though the albums and their makers have little in common musically and thematically, Living in Darkness and Descendents’ Milo Goes to College (New Alliance, 1981) just might share the historically significant distinction of being the first two albums to deliver nearly flawless melodic hardcore.

ALICE DONUT

Revenge Fantasies of the Impotent (1991, Alternative Tentacles) After half a decade and three albums, this depraved combo of New York City weirdoes added a third guitarist and left behind some of their smirking Zappa-meets-Butthole Surfers irreverence for this release—the first of two Alice Donut albums (the other being 1992’s The Untidy Suicides of Your Degenerate Children) that reached heavier, abstract-metal heights, overshadowing the band’s former reliance on bad acid-trip nonsense and themes akin to a PG-13 version of iconic punk-rock transgressor G. G. Allin. The intelligent, abstract metal thrust and downplaying of vocalist Tomas Antona’s polarizing screech makes tracks like My Best Friend’s Wife, What, and Telebloodprintmeadiadeathwhore stand above anything the band previously accomplished. An instrumental version of Black Sabbath’s War Pigs (with the vocal line provided by a trombone) actually rocks while wearing a smirk.

Critics tended to despise Alice Donut, even as the alternative nation blew up and became a household cultural happening in the wake of Nirvana’s success. Alice Donut broke up in 1996 but regrouped in 2001 and has been sporadically active since.

AMERICAN MUSIC CLUB

Everclear (1991, Alias)

San Francisco’s American Music Club’s third album was good. (California, from 1988, was the band’s first step on the ladder to a cult following.) The next one was better. (United Kingdom in 1990 was only available in its namesake.) But the band’s fifth release, Everclear, made founder/leader/vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Mark Eitzel a songwriter for the ages. Often incorrectly called slowcore due to down-tempo material and a loose association with fellow Bay Area band Red House Painters, American Music Club’s arrangements are much more varied, and the nakedly catastrophic lyrical themes commonly benefit from an impassioned, two-minutes-this-side-of-a-breakdown vocal style that is unbelievably strong stuff—and perhaps best reserved for a good day if the listener is susceptible to fragility. The album features the two best examples of the band’s many heart-shattering songs about AIDS: Sick of Food and Rise, with the latter gaining some attention on MTV’s 120 Minutes. Everclear was ranked the year’s No. 5 album by Rolling Stone, and the same issue named Eitzel 1991’s Songwriter of the Year. But the accolades reportedly left the AMC leader more freaked out than appreciative.

AMERICAN MUSIC CLUB

Mercury (1993, Reprise)

If Everclear perfected AMC’s brand of cathartic release, then Mercury took it up a notch. Critical speculation abounded as to why the band would, for its major-label debut, release such a dark, starkly honest, and potentially alienating album. To many, it seemed like a reaction to the placement of AMC and Mark Eitzel on a pedestal after Everclear. But while this indeed may have been the most depressing album released by a major label since the big boys first steered any attention toward the American underground in the mid-’80s, Mercury is also the band’s best and most varied work. It covers a full spectrum, from minimal arrangements all the way to bone-rattling noise, all in support of Eitzel’s tales of human desperation.

ANASTASIA SCREAMED

Laughing Down the Limehouse (1990, Roughneck/Fire)

With a band name like Anastasia Screamed, a tendency to turn up in dollar bins, and cover art suggesting an allergy to guitars (of the goth alternative variety favored by mid-to-late-’80s clove cigarette enthusiasts), this album makes it easy for potential buyers to write it off. The minimal buzz this band generated during its brief (1987–92) existence has been all but erased by history, rather than flowering into a posthumous legacy of respect and influence, like those bestowed upon fellow Bostonites Pixies and Mission of Burma. Anastasia Screamed had moved from Beantown to Nashville by 1990, signing to the Rough Trade–distributed and funded Fire Records subsidiary Roughneck. But Rough Trade’s cataclysmic 1991 bankruptcy landed an untold number of albums by unknown-to-legendary bands in cutout bins. This album was one of the many casualties.

Among the contemporaneous influences that work their way into this amazing collection are Squirrel Bait (especially in the rural-feeling, multifaceted style of vocalist Chick Graning), Dinosaur Jr, Volcano Suns, Thin White Rope, Big Dipper, Giant Sand, and Uncle Tupelo. (No Depression was released the same year as Laughing Down the Limehouse.) But this stuff doesn’t have a ruling reliance on any other band’s sound; the LP pulls off being wildly varied in a natural manner. Graning’s singing can reach a reedy high register, a sound that would emerge as rule-of-thumb about five years later with a great many bands in the decade’s emo movement. More explosive tracks like Lime and The Skinner are where the band really pulls out the goods. Each pulls off a weird trick: the song shifts into a fake collapse of structure that follows a dramatic and beautiful vocal hook down the hole to freeform noise or silence; then everything stops and the band locks back into the previous tempo. It’s quite effective. Curious readers are truly encouraged to put aside a buck or two for this one—and listen immediately. You’ll get your investment back in spades.

ARCHERS OF LOAF

Icky Mettle (1993, Alias)

Archers of Loaf emerged from the same Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill scene as Superchunk and Polvo, and like the former, became one of many bands that the music press, covering both the aesthetic and sonic aspects of the band, made sure was immediately synonymous with the term indie rock. Archers’ stunning debut, Icky Mettle, embraces a hint of melodic hardcore (or the post hardcore of the era) and has one of the best uses of quiet-to-loud dynamics up to that time. Sincerely impassioned vocals occasionally give way to screamed discontent, yet the album never strays from some application of warm melody. Another secret weapon used throughout the album (and unleashed in a brilliant fashion live) was the band’s fully formed dual-guitar interplay, alternately recalling or updating the approaches of bands like Television, Dream Syndicate, Fugazi, and Sonic Youth. The album’s final five songs (or most of the vinyl’s second side), beginning with Learo, You’re a Hole and concluding with the beautiful Slow Worm, cannot be topped as an amalgam of the components that could elevate good indie rock into the realm of great indie rock.

Response to Icky Mettle was quite positive. The album spent twenty-two weeks on the CMJ charts, was voted Best Indie Rock Album of the Year by Interview magazine, and was given an A in Robert Christgau’s Consumer Guide column. As the decade closed, Pitchfork’s original Top 100 Albums of the 1990s ranked the Archers’ debut at No. 32.

ARCHERS OF LOAF

Vee Vee (1995, Alias)

The band hailed from North Carolina’s triangle—Chapel Hill, Raleigh, and Durham—one of the country’s healthiest and least corruptible regional scenes (home to Polvo, Superchunk, Small (23), Pipe, Flat Duo Jets, and the area’s indie rock stamp of quality, Merge Records). But Archers of Loaf showed a strong and confident identity all its own on the band’s excellent first album, Icky Mettle. Though things don’t always work out this way for similarly talented and inspired bands, Archers’ debut netted the returns a great entrance should bring its makers: positive accolades and new fans across the country. It didn’t hurt that anyone unfamiliar with the band’s recorded output could catch the band passing through town during the intense touring schedule that followed Icky Mettle. An adventurous or curious concert attendee was bound to come away from these incendiary, passionate performances a dedicated convert.

What all this means is that Vee Vee’s release in March 1995 was preceded by high anticipation. And while unrealistic expectations directly impacted the album-to-album sound and creative flow of their contemporaries in various ways (Pavement is a perfect example), Archers of Loaf channeled their early reception like pros and used night after night of gigging in front of tiny-to-moderate crowds as a tool of refinement. Vee Vee is an album of greater strengths and maturation (but rest assured, the M-word here is not a kind way of saying the band unwisely watered down its sound).

ARCHERS OF LOAF

All the Nations Airports (1996, Alias/Elektra)

Archers of Loaf remained on Alias while a distribution deal was struck with Elektra specifically for their third full-length, All the Nations Airports. The album is essentially an extension of Vee Vee—and more of what made that album so great is a good thing. Of note are the instrumental songs and the long instrumental sections of other songs, which together occupy a conspicuous amount of sonic real estate on the album, wielding the power to earworm into one’s head for days. Elsewhere, the title track, Bones of Her Hands, and the swelling intensity of Distance Comes In Droves would sound at home on Icky Mettle. The piano ballad Chumming the Ocean is melancholy gold, and the similarly played instrumental Bombs Away closes the album in fine form.

ARCWELDER

Pull (1993, Tough and Go)

This Minneapolis trio was originally known as Tilt-A-Whirl until the manufacturer of the same-named carnival ride sued the band over copyright infringement. So, instead of undertaking a court battle that surely would not come out in the musicians’ favor, the band quietly changed its moniker to Arcwelder, after an instrumental that appeared on its 1989 debut full-length, This. Arcwelder straddled a fine line between finely crafted indie rock and its less-friendly cousin (and offshoot), noise rock. Pull was the band’s third full-length and the first to see the band packing an entire album with what it was good at. Comparisons to Hüsker Dü and Sugar were common due to drummer and vocalist Scott MacDonald’s dead-on Bob Mould–style singing, but Pull has enough aggro-rock Big Black/Naked Raygun-isms to distance it from the more accessible approaches used by what was nonetheless a very, very big influence (regionally and otherwise).

ARCWELDER

Entropy (1996, Touch and Go)

Skipping over Arcwelder’s fine and endorsed fourth album, Xerxes (1994, Tough and Go), to land on the band’s next-to-last full-length, Entropy, we see the Minneapolis workhorse offering up one of the mid-’90s best indie rock albums at a time when such a thing was promptly going out of favor in the underground. Side two’s opener, I Promise Not To Be An Asshole, is as great a song as any that Arcwelder’s better-known contemporaries would release in the 1990s, and it is the encouraged go-to for readers curious as to what exactly it is that makes this band a cut above the din of the day.

AUTOCLAVE

S/T (1991, Mira)

One of many early-’90s surprises from a label that uninitiated listeners and critics often misunderstood as an incubator for Fugazi clones, Autoclave was an all-girl quartet with a prodigy-like knack for crafting catchy and complex post-hardcore material. The band’s output achieved extremely high quality during its mere eleven months of existence, and only consisted of this EP; a three-song, 7-inch EP; and a compilation track. Helium, Wild Flag, and Slant 6 fans take note: while it sounds nothing like any of those bands, this is the recorded debut of both Mary Timony (of the former two) and Christina Billote (of the latter). But don’t skip the record due to early-career misstep phobias. Rest assured; from the get-go, these ladies knew exactly what they were doing.

Babes in Toyland – Bitch Magnet

BABES IN TOYLAND

Spanking Machine (1990, Twin/Tone)

Singer/guitarist Kat Bjelland—formerly of San Francisco and once a roommate and bandmate of Courtney Love—formed Babes in Toyland in 1987 with Lori Barbero after the two met at a Minneapolis backyard barbeque. Originally, Love joined Barbero and Bjelland in Minneapolis to fill the new group’s open bass position, but the future Hole front woman was pink-slipped after just one practice. Michelle Leon then joined as bassist, and Barbero, who had never played drums, learned her instrument in public as the band honed its aggressive fusion of garage rock and noise rock, one often distinguished by Bjelland’s intimidating howl.

Babes in Toyland debuted on vinyl in 1989 with the Sub Pop Singles Club 7-inch Dust Cake Boy, then released its first full-length, Spanking Machine, the following year on hometown label Twin/Tone Records (with Dust Cake Boy as its next-to-last track). The album’s primal stomp was garage-rock-simple in nature but executed with such ferocity that any and all retro-leaning aspects of garage (i.e., any nods to Nuggets- or Pebbles-style ’60s garage or subsequent revivals thereof) were unapparent. Thus, Spanking Machine held up to the heaviest and most nihilistic of noise rock that was then coming out of another hometown outlet, Amphetamine Reptile Records. Sonic Youth’s members were such fans of the album that they invited Babes in Toyland to occupy opening slots of the European tour promoting the Goo album. This led to the Minneapolis trio being featured in the S.Y. Reading Festival concert movie 1991: The Year Punk Broke. Kat Bjelland’s tendency to wear white baby-doll dresses—in stark contrast to the vicious sound of the band—resulted in the press bestowing the unfortunate musical tag of Kinderwhore upon the band, which in turn prompted Courtney Love to make the (fraudulent) claim that the fashion was stolen from her.

BABES IN TOYLAND

Fontanelle (1992, Reprise)

Touring behind its debut full-length (and a follow-up EP) tightened and crystallized Babes in Toyland’s femme-driven (but not actively feminist) blitzkrieg and built the band a following that unsurprisingly (in the days immediately following Nevermind’s success) attracted major-label suitors. The band went with the mostly artist-friendly Reprise imprint of Warner Bros. for its 1992 major label debut, Fontanelle. Expertly produced by Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo, the record not only marks Babes in Toyland’s career peak, but also easily stands as one of the more potent, accomplished (relative to its subgenre’s purposes), plus all-around sonically intense and challenging releases to not only appear on a major label (even then), but to result from the era’s notable increase in all-girl bands that was the source of media-generated blanket categorizing (riot grrrl, foxcore, etc.) Today, despite Babes In Toyland’s brief time as one of the better-known bands to emerge from the noisier corners of the underground, and the fact that Fontanelle sold over 250,000 copies, the album remains an overlooked gem.

BAD BRAINS

Rock for Light (1983, PVC)

Brothers Earl and Paul H. R. Hudson, Gary Dr. Know Miller, and Darryl Jenifer are four African American musicians who grew up together in the Capitol Heights neighborhood of Washington, D.C., and formed a jazz-fusion band while still in high school. When punk rock blew their minds in 1977, the bandmates cribbed a new moniker from the Ramones song Bad Brain and parlayed their instrumental virtuosity into something so tight and fast that Bad Brains’ 1979 vinyl debut on the 30 Seconds Over D.C. compilation and the band’s first 7-inch, 1980’s Pay to Cum, are together widely considered the birth of East Coast hardcore.

The quartet’s early live shows were frenetic, explosive, and life-changing for many crucial movers in the D.C. scene, including Minor Threat/Fugazi/Discord Records founder Ian MacKaye. Already into the reggae-leaning Clash records of the era, the members of Bad Brains became practicing Rastafarians after viewing the film Rockers and attending a 1980 concert by Bob Marley.

Relocating to New York City in 1981, Bad Brains released a self-titled debut on the cassette-only ROIR label that resonated throughout the hardcore community. A few professionally played reggae songs made the album—a precursor to the reggae-rock movement of the late ’80s—but the recordings suffered greatly from a brittle lack of dynamics resulting from a restrictive budget.

Those problems were remedied on 1983’s Rock for Light, Bad Brains’ first true full-length, which was recorded by the Cars’ Ric Ocasek. More than half the