This is the seventh in the 1990s survey mix series, which will come out monthly in chronological order through this year. You can find the previous mixes here. I think of the music of the ‘90s as a trilogy in which each act ends in tragedy – the suicide of Kurt Cobain, the murders of 2Pac and Biggie, and the disaster of Woodstock ’99. This survey brings us to the end of the 2nd act, though Biggie was not killed until early March of the following year.

1996 is an interesting transitional year! I’ll break it down into some bullet points for you.

• 1996 is the beginning of what I call “the eclectic ’90s,” in which mixing up genres and getting into random nostalgic sub-genres like swing music was a major virtue. (This is peak mix tape era, so that is a big reason for this shift in values.) Beck’s Odelay is a perfect example of this aesthetic, it was very much the center of the zeitgeist in this year, and that’s why “Where It’s At” opens this survey.

• This is the point at which the press and music industry tries to make “electronica” a thing, and though that feels a bit silly in retrospect, the prime movers here – The Chemical Brothers, Daft Punk, Prodigy, Underworld – are all excellent. This is also the cultural peak for trip-hop, and a major year for Tricky, who actually has two tracks in this set. (The Nearly God song is also a Tricky production.) 1996 is also more or less the starting point for jungle/drum and bass, which we’ll get a lot more of in the next couple surveys.

• This is the peak of the East Coast/West Coast rivalry in hip-hop culture, and the emergence of Sean “Puffy” Combs as the dominant force in rap. But there’s a lot of major things happening in rap outside of the Death Row vs. Bad Boy situation – the release of major classics by the Fugees and Outkast, the reinvention of Kool Keith as Dr. Octagon, the commercial crossover of No Limit, the continuing renaissance of RZA and the Wu-Tang Clan in advance of Wu-Tang Forever, the breakthrough of instrumental hip-hop on DJ Shadow’s Entroducing. It’s also a key year for women in rap, with Lauryn Hill, Lil Kim, Foxy Brown, and Missy Elliott all moving to the center of mainstream rap.

• 1996 is also ground zero for the neo-soul movement, with D’Angelo building on the success of his debut alongside the debuts of Maxwell and Erykah Badu. (“On & On” was released near the end of the year, her first album comes out in 1997 and will also be featured there with a different song.)

• We’re at the tail end of the Britpop boom, and this survey is packed full of what I’d consider to be Britpop also-rans.

• This year is the beginning of what I’d consider the second wave of ‘90s indie rock, with Belle & Sebastian, Sleater-Kinney, Modest Mouse, Neutral Milk Hotel, and Cat Power all emerging to push that scene into the late ’90s and early ’00s. “Post-rock” is becoming a thing too, thanks to Tortoise, Mogwai, and Gastr del Sol.

• It’s also the year in which much of what is now considered emo began to take shape in various suburbs and midwestern cities in the United States. And hey, Weezer’s Pinkerton came out in this year too.

• It’s the end of the line for grunge as a major cultural force, largely because Soundgarden, Alice In Chains, and Stone Temple Pilots all implode simultaneously, Pearl Jam officially shifts into “very large cult band” mode, and Screaming Trees just kinda fade away before ever hitting the big time. It’s also the end of R.E.M. as a major presence in pop culture, and the point at which The Smashing Pumpkins become so big that the rest of Billy Corgan’s career ends up feeling like a decline.

Thanks to Rob Sheffield, Sean T. Collins, Dan Kois, Eric Harvey, and especially Paul Cox for their valuable assistance in putting this set together. Thanks to Chappell Ellison for creating this Spotify playlist of the survey, minus about a dozen songs which are not available there.

DOWNLOAD PART 1

Beck “Where It’s At” / Stereolab “Metronomic Underground” / Tricky “Christiansands” / Fugees “Zealots” / Dr. Octagon “Blue Flowers” / Ginuwine “Pony” / Tori Amos “Professional Widow” / Rage Against the Machine “Bulls On Parade” / Chemical Brothers “Setting Sun” / Underworld “Born Slippy .NUXX” / Daft Punk “Da Funk” / Fiona Apple “Criminal” / Pulp “Disco 2000” / Belle & Sebastian “Seeing Other People” / Sleater-Kinney “Anonymous” / Guided by Voices “The Official Iron Men Rally Song” / The Loud Family “Don’t Respond, She Can Tell” / Sheryl Crow “If It Makes You Happy” / Bush “Swallowed” / Stone Temple Pilots “Big Bang Baby” / Imperial Teen “You’re One” / Imperial Drag “Boy Or A Girl” / Weezer “El Scorcho” / Ben Folds Five “Underground” / Spice Girls “Wannabe” / Mariah Carey “Always Be My Baby” / Blackstreet “No Diggity” / 2Pac “California Love” / Busta Rhymes “Woo Hah!! Got You All in Check” / Outkast “Elevators (Me & You)” / UGK “One Day” / DJ Shadow “Midnight In A Perfect World” / Dub Narcotic Sound System featuring Lois Maffeo “Ship to Shore”

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Luscious Jackson “Naked Eye” / The Cardigans “Lovefool” / Jon Spencer Blues Explosion “Can’t’ Stop” / Jay-Z “Ain’t No Nigga” / Junior MAFIA featuring Notorious BIG “Get Money” / Quad City DJs “C’mon N Ride It (The Train)” / Maxwell “Ascension (Don’t Ever Wonder)” / Erykah Badu “On & On” / Jamiroquai “Virtual Insanity” / Sneaker Pimps “6 Underground” / Björk “Possibly Maybe” / Aphex Twin “Girl/Boy Song” / Aaliyah “If Your Girl Only Knew” / Ani DiFranco “Shameless” / Alanis Morissette “All I Really Want” / Cat Power “Nude As the News” / Chavez “Unreal Is Here” / Jonathan Fire Eater “The Search for Cherry Red” / Sebadoh “Nothing Like You” / Liz Phair “Six Dick Pimp” / Grant Lee Buffalo “Bethlehem Steel” / R.E.M. featuring Patti Smith “E-Bow the Letter” / The Tragically Hip “Ahead By A Century” / Counting Crows “Have You Seen Me Lately?” / Screaming Trees “All I Know” / Soundgarden “Burden In My Hand” / Pearl Jam “In My Tree” / Disco Inferno “It’s A Kid’s World” / Wilco “Misunderstood” / Lil Kim “No Time” / Foxy Brown “Get Me Home” / Ghostface Killah featuring Mary J Blige “All That I Got Is You”

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Tool “Stinkfist” / The Smashing Pumpkins “Tonight, Tonight” / Oasis “Don’t Look Back In Anger” / Radiohead “Talk Show Host” / Helium “What Institution Are You From?” / Nearly God featuring Neneh Cherry “Together Now” / Lox featuring The Notorious B.I.G. “You’ll See” / Nas “If I Ruled the World” / Geto Boys “The World Is A Ghetto” / Bone Thugs N Harmony “Tha Crossroads” / DJ Spooky “The Terran Invasion of Alpha Centauri 2794” / Silkk the Shockers featuring Master P “The Shocker” / Slum Village “Forth & Back (Remix)” / De La Soul “Itzsoweezee (HOT)” / 311 “All Mixed Up” / Sublime “What I Got” / Pavement “Give It A Day” / Archers of Loaf “Assassination On X-Mas Eve” / Robert Pollard “Psychic Pilot Clocks Out” / The Virgin-Whore Complex “Four Alarm Fire In Lovers’ Lane” / Foo Fighters “Big Me” / Sloan “The Lines You Amend” / Brian Jonestown Massacre “Cold to the Touch” / Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds “Stagger Lee” / The Prodigy “Firestarter” / Butthole Surfers “Pepper” / Eels “Novocaine for the Soul” / Cibo Matto “Sugar Water” / Primitive Radio Gods “Standing Outside A Broken Phone Booth With Money In My Hand” / Baader Meinhof “There’s Gonna Be An Accident” / Menswear “Being Brave” / Neil Young “Music Arcade” / Jeremy Enigk “Explain” / Modest Mouse “Dramamine” / Smog “Lize” / The Olivia Tremor Control “NYC-25”

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Girls Against Boys “Super-Fire” / Veruca Salt “I’m Taking Europe with Me” / Korn “A.D.I.D.A.S.” / Marilyn Manson “The Beautiful People” / Alice In Chains “Sludge Factory (Unplugged)” / Hooverphonic “2 Wicky” / Akinyele “Put It In Your Mouth” / DJ Kool “Let Me Clear My Throat” / The Roots “What They Do” / MC Lyte featuring Missy Elliott “Cold Rock A Party (Bad Boy Remix)” / Total featuring Da Brat “No One Else (Puff Daddy Remix)” / Me’Shell Ndegeocello “Leviticus: Faggot” / D’Angelo “Lady” / Donna Lewis “I Love You Always Forever” / Jewel “You Were Meant for Me” / Alison Krauss “Baby Now That I’ve Found You” / Beth Orton “She Cries Your Name” / The Wallflowers “One Headlight” / Clint Black “Like the Rain” / Alan Jackson “Little Bitty” / George Strait “Carried Away” / Archive “Londinium” / Yum Yum “Apiary” / For Squirrels “Mighty K.C.” / Nada Surf “Zen Brain” / Fountains of Wayne “Sink to the Bottom” / Local H “Bound for the Floor” / The Promise Ring “A Picture Postcard” / Afghan Whigs “Honky’s Ladder” / Kula Shaker “Tattva” / OMC “How Bizarre” / Los Del Rio “Macarena” / Dave Matthews Band “Too Much” / R.L. Burnside “Shake ‘Em on Down” / The Make Up “R U A Believer” / Bikini Kill “Capri Pants” / Melt-Banana “It’s In the Pillcase” / Emily’s Sassy Lime “Cadillac Stinger”

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Velocity Girl “Gilded Stars” / Lush “Ladykillers” / Republica “Ready to Go” / Soul Coughing “Super Bon Bon” / Self “So Low” / Tracy Bonham “Mother Mother” / Jill Sobule “I Kissed A Girl” / No Doubt “Don’t Speak” / Manic Street Preachers “A Design for Life” / CJ Bolland “Sugar Is Sweeter” / Orbital “The Box” / Sepultura “Roots Bloody Roots” / Texas is the Reason “Back and to the Left” / Fu Manchu “Regal Begal” / Lifetime “The Boy’s No Good” / At the Drive-In “StarSlight” / New Radiant Storm King “C/Swoon” / Mogwai “Summer” / Mobb Deep “G.O.D. Part III” / A Tribe Called Quest “Phony Rappers” / Bounty Killer “War Face (Remix)” / Boards of Canada “Everything You Do Is A Balloon” / Plug “Drum N Bass for Papa” / RZA featuring Method Man and Cappadonna “Wu Wear, The Garment Renaissance” / Large Professor “Mad Scientist” / Tortoise “The Taut and Tame” / Toni Braxton “Un-Break My Heart” / Patty Griffin “Moses” / Tom Petty “Walls” / Hayden “Bad As They Seem” / The For Carnation “Lmyr, Marshmallow” / Psychic TV “The La La Song” / Bis “Teen C-Power!” / Suicide Machines “No Face” / Goldfinger “Here In Your Bedroom” / Reel Big Fish “Everything Sucks” / Superdrag “Sucked Out” / Supergrass “Going Out” / Sense Field “Outlive the Man” / Down by Law “Independence Day” / The Mountain Goats “Then the Letting Go”

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Master P featuring Silkk the Shocker “Mr. Ice Cream Man” / Xzibit “The Foundation” / Mad Skillz “The Nod Factor” / Shyheim “Shaolin Style” / 112 featuring The Notorious B.I.G. “Only You” / R. Kelly “I Believe I Can Fly” / Boyz II Men and Mariah Carey “One Sweet Day” / Garth Brooks “The Beaches of Cheyenne” / Trisha Yearwood “Believe Me Baby (I Tried)” / Lonestar “No News” / Shania Twain “I’m Outta Here” / Mindy McCready “Guys Do It All the Time” / Patti Smith “Gone Again” / Beautiful South “Rotterdam (Or Anywhere)” / Tracy Lawrence “Time Marches On” / Catatonia “You’ve Got A Lot to Answer For” / Tim McGraw “She Never Lets It Go to Her Heart” / Lambchop “The Man Who Loved Beer” / High Llamas “Checking In, Checking Out” / Silver Jews “How to Rent A Room” / Silkworm “Never Met A Man I Didn’t Like” / The Cure “Mint Car” / Combustible Edison “Short Double Latté” / Lilys “A Nanny In Manhattan” / Porno for Pyros “Porpoise Head” / Stabbing Westward “What Do I Have to Do?” / Gravity Kills “Guilty” / LTJ Bukem “Horizons (Vocal Mix)” / Photek “Titan” / Billie Ray Martin “Deadline for My Memories” / Spain “Untitled #1” / Zumpano “Behind the Beehive” / 16 Horsepower “Black Soul Choir” / Phish “Character Zero” / Nerf Herder “Van Halen” / Braid “Divers” / Bad Religion “A Walk” / Unwritten Law “Denied” / Brainiac “Nothing Ever Changes” / Henry’s Dress “Target Practice” / Neutral Milk Hotel “Song Against Sex” / Palace Music “Arise Therefore”

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Frank Black “The Marsist” / The Amps “Tipp City” / Polvo “Fast Canoe” / Metallica “Hero of the Day” / Refused “Coup D’etat” / Rasputina “Transylvanian Concubine” / Ministry “Reload” / Prong “Rude Awakening” / Future Sound of London “We Have Explosive (Oil Funk Remix)” / KMFDM “Rules” / Type O Negative “My Girlfriend’s Girlfriend” / Meat Beat Manifesto “Asbestos Lead Asbestos” / Jedi Knights “May the Funk Be With You” / SWV “You’re the One” / Keith Sweat “Twisted” / New Edition “Hit Me Off” / Redman “Smoke Buddah” / Charizma & Peanut Butter Wolf “My World Premier” / INI “Fakin’ Jax’” / Bahamadia “True Honey Buns (Dat Freak Shit)” / Joe Henry “Trampoline” / Original Cast of Rent “Seasons of Love” / Backstreet Boys “Quit Playing Games (With My Heart)” / Geggy Tah “Whoever You Are” / Los Lobos “Revolution” / Fatboy Slim “Everybody Needs A 303” / Squirrel Nut Zippers “Hell” / The Auteurs “Light Aircraft On Fire” / Remy Zero “Descent” / Luna “Season of the Witch” / Momus “Saved” / The Divine Comedy “Something for the Weekend” / Super Furry Animals “Something 4 the Weekend” / Arab Strap “The First Big Weekend” / Cast “Alright” / Jawbox “Mirrorful” / Jale “Ali” / Versus “Yeah You” / Butterglory “You’ll Never Be (As Good As That)” / Free Kitten “Kitten Bossanova” / Bardo Pond “Tantric Porno” / Gastr del Sol “Our Exquisite Replica of ‘Eternity’” / Dirty Three “Hope” / Rachel’s “Family Portrait”

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Michael Jackson “They Don’t Care About Us” / Fun Lovin’ Criminals “Scooby Snacks” / Everything But the Girl “Wrong (Todd Terry Mix)” / Pet Shop Boys “Se A Vida” / U96 “Heaven” / George Michael “Fastlove” / Madonna “You Must Love Me” / Snoop Dogg “Snoop’s Upside Ya Head” / Shaquille O’Neal featuring The Notorious B.I.G. “Still Can’t Stop the Reign” / Heltah Skeltah “Leflaur Leflah Eshkoshka” / Blahzay Blahzay “Danger” / Smoothe da Hustler “Broken Language” / Cake “The Distance” / Reverend Horton Heat “Big Red Rocket of Love” / Rocket from the Crypt “Born in 69” / The Wonders “That Thing You Do!” / moe. “She Sends Me” / Brooks & Dunn “My Maria” / Lyle Lovett “The Road to Ensenada” / Gin Blossoms “Follow You Down” / The Lemonheads “If I Could Talk I’d Tell You” / Boys Life “All of the Negatives” / Opeth “The Night and the Silent Water (Morningrise)” / His Name Is Alive “Movie” / The Frogs “I’m Evil, Jack” / Rainer Maria “I Love You Too” / The Spinanes “Lines and Lines” / Come “Secret Number” / Boss Hog “I Dig You” / Kustomized “Handcuffs” / Moby “That’s When I Reach For My Revolver” / Comet Gain “Last Night” / Unwound “Corpse Pose” / Urusei Yatsura “Pow R Ball” / Ash “Goldfinger” / Dodgy “If You’re Thinking of Me” / The Wrens “Rest Your Head” / D Generation “Frankie” / The Cranberries “Salvation” / Limblifter “Screwed It Up” / East River Pipe “Kill the Action” / Ocean Colour Scene “The Riverboat Song” / The Black Crowes “Blackberry” / Suede “Trash” / Babybird “You’re Gorgeous” / Boyzone “Words” / Guv’ner “She’s Evil” / Longpigs “On and On” / The Verve Pipe “The Freshmen”

Fleet Foxes “Mearcstapa”

At some point between Fleet Foxes’ second and third albums, the emphasis of Robin Pecknold’s music shifted from the human voice to the guitar. His voice is still there, ringing out with a lot of echo, but it’s moved from the center of his arrangements to the periphery, like he’s some spectral presence lost in the empty spaces and skeletal structures of the music.

I like the way Pecknold’s music on Crack-Up emphasizes the tactile nature of the instruments. The guitars, bass, cellos, and violins carry melodies and form structures in the music, but they also sound like – well, metal strings. This is both literal and abstract. “Mearcstapa” opens with overlapping guitar parts that sound like wires swaying on a light breeze, evoking in my mind the image of some broken piece of infrastructure in the middle of nowhere. A jazzier guitar part that comes midway through the song is considerably more graceful and conventionally beautiful, but that passage is relatively brief.

You end up back in the same desolate space before drifting out on an ambiguous melody played in rounds by a string section. The composition comes together to feel like some kind of journey, but there’s a strange absence of strong emotion. It reminds me of clinical depression, of feeling like you just can’t access your own feelings and so you just get increasingly numb. That string outro gets under my skin because as much as it announces that something significant has definitely happened, the feeling of it registers as either “now what?” or “so what?”

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Selena Gomez “Bad Liar”

If I’m being honest with you, I really didn’t expect my favorite pop song of 2017 thus far to come from Selena Gomez, a singer who up until just now I’d considered kinda boring and not particularly talented. But here we are, and I’m happy to have been wrong about her.

“Bad Liar” is mainly written by Julia Michaels and Justin Tranter, who’ve worked together on Gomez’s music in the past and have clearly learned the best way to showcase Gomez’s personality is to not crowd her voice and allow space for the nuances in her phrasing to thrive. The Gomez of “Bad Liar” is flustered by her infatuation, and the verses have a low key anxious energy – she’s beating herself up a bit, and making odd references and jokes that are considerably more clever than what you’d reasonably expect from contemporary mainstream pop. The Selena Gomez in this song is a very clearly recognizable person – I’m not sure if it’s Gomez, per se, but it’s an intriguing and relatable character. Gomez’s previous hits with Michaels and Tranter, “Good for You” and “Hands to Myself,” cover similar ground, and convincingly present the singer as the pop star for horny introverts.

Gomez’s phrasing in this song is outstanding, tilting from the dry, understated humor of the verses to a sweet, high hypnotic tone for the chorus. Her voice may seem reedy and thin in other contexts, but here it’s perfectly suited to the melody and structure and conveys just the right balance of lust and neurosis.

And yes, that is the bass line from Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killer.” It’d be easy for Gomez, Michaels, and Tranter to be lazy and just let that familiar, perfect groove do all the work in the song, but there’s so many strong hooks and interesting moments in “Bad Liar” that it kinda just settles into the background as this twitchy pulse that connects the sentiment of the song to the anxiety pop of 40 years ago.

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Radiohead “Man of War”

I suppose that when you’re in the middle of a creative hot streak as impressive as Radiohead’s in the mid to late ‘90s, you learn to follow your instincts when a good song isn’t quite working they way you’d want it to. But I listen to “Man of War” – this fully fleshed-out, gorgeously produced version recorded circa OK Computer that is featured on the new reissue, or really any other version of the song that’s leaked out over the years, and I’m just baffled as to what the problem could’ve been. It seems to have been mostly an issue of arrangement, as the structure of the song never shifts. And as much as I love this recording, I can understand that restlessness – I’m not crazy about the particular tone on the intro guitar part, for example. But it comes together as one of Radiohead’s darkest, most majestic pieces of music, and features a few of the best melodies the group has ever written. How is that big Jonny Greenwood guitar lick, followed by an orchestral iteration of the same motif, not one of his finest moments? How is Thom Yorke’s strange balance of sexuality, dread, menace, and morbidity in this song not a perfect example of his peculiar and potent charisma as a singer? It’s just incredibly hard to imagine what could have motivated them to keep this song locked up for 20 years, aside from perhaps some bad memories attached to the process of making it. Either way, as a person who rewinded that bit with this song in Meeting People Is Easy many times over, I’m very grateful to finally have this.

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Bedouine “One of These Days”

Azniv Korkejian’s voice has a warm, calm tone that suggests perspective, serenity, and wisdom. Everything in “One of These Days” feels measured, even, and tidy, and I suppose that makes a lot of sense given that the lyrics are about patiently waiting for someone to fully return her romantic interest. There’s no trace of anxiety or fear in this, she sings every word as though she knows that this love is meant to be, and will inevitably fall into place. “If it’s true that I feel more for you than you do for me, it’s funny honey how love has some delay,” she sings, seemingly unshakable in her faith. It’s a beautiful sentiment, and somehow in the moment never seems delusional or creepy, just earnest and pure.

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DJDS featuring Amber Mark and Marco McKinnis “Trees On Fire”

There is a serious glut of “minimalist” music, to the point that the seemingly endless amount of negative space between clicky beats and thin vocals in a wide range of contemporary pop, rap, and indie music has come to feel oppressive and dull. DJDS’ single “Trees On Fire” feels like a step away from this status quo – it’s essentially a euphoric R&S/quasi-house song in the vein of Basement Jaxx – but there’s enough empty air in the arrangement to feel like a half-step removed from 2017 pop rather than a full leap. The song is very much about Marco McKinnis and Amber Mark’s vocals, and they’re big and bold enough to occupy most of the space in the music and direct its momentum. The beat and keyboard parts mostly just frame the vocal and reinforce the shape of the melody. There’s a cool, refreshing feeling to this music, like a blast of air conditioning through hot, humid air. It’s like getting a taste of relief, and the grasping desperately for more.

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Lorde “The Louvre”

I envy the emotional connection people have with this new Lorde record, not necessarily because I feel a deep need to like this particular album more than I do, but because I wish the intense feelings in the music didn’t feel so removed from my life. When I see people talk about how vivid and urgent these lyrics about passionate infatuation and its bitter aftermath feel for them, there’s a part of me that quietly mutters “…must be nice.”

So at this moment in my life, I can only really approach Lorde’s new music in formalist terms. This means I get frustrated with some of the melodies being a bit slight for my taste, and feel actively annoyed that the catchiest song on the record by far – “Loveless” – is reduced to an unfinished sketch tacked to the end of another song. But it also means that I’m intrigued by her unconventional song structures and impressed by her inspired turns of phrase. I’m particularly fond of the pithy, self-effacing way she says “we’re the greatest / they’ll hang us in the Louvre / down the back, but who cares / still the Louvre” – a great punchline in a song that is otherwise no joke at all.

The structure of “The Louvre” feels inverted, with all the momentum and catchy bits happening in the verses, leading up to relatively inert elliptical moments that are technically pre-choruses and choruses on a purely structural level. The lyrics reflect that inversion too, with the chorus “broadcast the boom boom boom and make em all dance to it” completing a poetic thought about anticipation while also feeling like “hey, that’s where this feeling should go, but I need to focus on the moment right now.”

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The Orielles “I Only Bought It for the Bottle”

The first time I featured The Orielles on this site was last year, when they were a tuneful but rather scrappy garage band. They’ve evolved a bit since then – a little glossier, a bit sassier in a very British sort of way, and a lot more focused on rhythm and bass. I’m into the way Andrew Weatherall has remixed them into quasi-DFA punk-funk territory in his versions of their song “Sugar Tastes Like Salt,” but I’m even more fond of the winding melodies in their more recent single “I Only Bought It for the Bottle.” The groove feels off-kilter from the start, and the lead guitar parts spiral around the beat as if they’re trying to induce vertigo. The lyrics are sharp too, implicating themselves in a consumerist obsession with style over substance, but without getting overly righteous about it.

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Phoenix “Tuttifrutti”

The new Phoenix album is meant to be an escapist fantasy, a dreamy European wonderland of a piece with the romanticized luxury of Thomas Mars’ wife Sophia Coppola’s body of work. But just as the surface aesthetic of her films are a front for directionless melancholy, Mars’ words undermine the up tempo summer vibes of his band’s music. “Tuttifrutti” in particular builds up a fantasy of wealth and indulgence just to imagine what it’d be like to tear it apart. There’s a resentful tone in his phrases – “don’t tell the broken hearted ‘that’s what you get’” – but there’s no clear narrative. It’s just a vivid setting and a relatable feeling, and the aesthetic is overpowering enough that the sentiment is relatively subtle.

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Swet Shop Boys “Birding”

My favorite thing about Heems as a rapper is his playfulness – he makes rapping sound like a fun game without tipping so far into nerdiness that he negates the swagger essential to nearly all great hip-hop. He seems to take great joy in finding a way to make a convincing rap out of any topic, not just to prove his prowess as a lyricist, but to display the remarkable elasticity of hip-hop as a form. In this case he is literally rapping about birdwatching, and gradually shifts from braggy, horny wordplay to just straight-up working in as many shout-outs to bird species as he possibly can on a three minute track. It’s ridiculous and wonderful, and I don’t think there’s anyone else who could’ve pulled this off while still sounding very cool.

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Lindsey Buckingham & Christine McVie “In My World”

The new album attributed to Lindsey Buckingham and Christine McVie is a Fleetwood Mac record in all but name. The rhythm section is John McVie and Mick Fleetwood, the music was intended to be a Fleetwood Mac record until Stevie Nicks opted out of the project. But there are post-’75 Fleetwood Mac records that don’t include Lindsey and others that don’t include Christine. Mac logic can be strange and volatile, but the constant seems to be that people must appease Stevie at all costs. I get it. But if this was a Fleetwood Mac record and you added a few good-to-decent Stevie tunes, it’d be the best thing the band had done since Tango in the Night.

“In My World,” a Buckingham composition, has the atmosphere of a classic Fleetwood Mac tune – melancholy, quasi-mystical, vaguely Californian. The hooks are immediate even if the feeling is subdued, with the strongest emotions caught somewhere between Buckingham’s finger-picked guitar notes and Fleetwood’s distinctive pocket groove. The chorus is a major earworm, but whereas you’d expect Christine to cover the harmony part, it’s instead the echo of a multi-tracked Lindsey knocked out of phase. Thematically, this checks out – he is singing about “his world,” so of course it’s insular and self-reflective.

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Rainer Maria “Lower Worlds”

I never paid much attention to Rainer Maria in their first run. I was aware of them and definitely checked them out a few times and decided it wasn’t for me. So it came as quite a surprise that this song, from their first new record in 11 years, completely blew me away. “Lower Worlds” sounds enormous, like Jane’s Addiction in “Mountain Song” mode but with Dave Navarro replaced with the organ player of Clinic. I love the overdriven organ tone on this – the chords sound distressed and saturated, and connect with the beat to create this crushing mechanical noise. Caithlin De Marrais’s voice cuts through the treble with a mostly staccato melody that seems to punch up through the din, like she’s trying to break out from beneath it. It’s an incredibly cathartic sound, and greatly amplifies the emotion of an already dramatic piece of music.

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Showtime Goma “Chug”

Showtime Goma’s arrangements are incredibly busy, to the point that the swirls of notes, beats, and textures rapidly moving in, out, and around the track can obscure or interrupt the melodic through line of the songs. The central vocal melody of “Chug” is strong enough to withstand the self-inflicted onslaught of sounds, and is in some ways improved by this hectic, overloaded presentation. This approach to arranging can make songs feel anxious and confused, but the bright, assertive tone of the vocal mitigates that somewhat. It feels cluttered but light, and the zippy, shifting feeling conveys excitement more than apprehension. It’s like being overwhelmed with thoughts and feelings, but finding inspiration in that mental chaos.

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Roger Waters “Déjà Vu”

It really is too bad that Roger Waters can’t call Is This the Life We Really Want? a Pink Floyd album because musically and thematically, it belongs in that body of work much more so than any of his other solo works or anything that’s been labeled Pink Floyd since he left after The Final Cut in the early ‘80s. The sound of it, the feeling of it, the particular odd combination of theatrical grandeur and dialed-down English bitterness. It’s all there, except for David Gilmour’s soaring guitar parts and more pleasant vocal tone. I like the rawness of Waters’ voice on this record, though – he sounds like a broken man, and it makes his overwhelming contempt and disappointment for the world as we know it now seem less haughty or preachy. He spent all those years in Pink Floyd being the most successful Cassandra in the history of music, but he doesn’t sound remotely pleased to have his dim opinion of humanity be validated by a post-Brexit and Trump world. “Déjà Vu,” an acoustic ballad that perhaps deliberately echoes “Mother” and “Wish You Were Here,” sounds more fragile and miserable than either. It gestures towards grandeur, but Waters sounds too weary to get there, and is too disillusioned to allow an easy catharsis. It’s as sad and lovely, but also tragic and pitiful.

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The Heliocentrics “The Silverback”

The Heliocentrics’ A World of Masks is a record rich in texture and atmosphere, and though it holds together musically and thematically, the songs feel like worlds unto themselves. You get jazzy incantations, skronk horns over kraut psychedelia, funk mysticism, stoner polyrhythms, and hypothetical Isaac Hayes spaghetti western soundtracks. The most obvious influence is tipped off by their name – this is a band of Sun Ra heads, and his cosmic jazz aesthetic binds it all together. It was quite difficult to pick which song to feature here, but I chose “The Silverback” because I think it’s the most immediately accessible. It was the first one that caught my ear, anyway. That simple vibraphone hook pulls you in right away, but the rhythm is the truly seductive element. I love the way the music sounds as though it’s descending into some secret world, and at some point you can’t even hear that vibraphone part because you’re in too deep.

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Cigarettes After Sex “Apocalypse”

Cigarettes After Sex is a good name for this band, if just because it so effectively conveys the aesthetic of their music. Every song on their debut record could accurately be described as “dreamy,” “hazy,” “romantic,” and “languid,” and the guitar parts often sound like the stuff Beach House and Mazzy Star forgot to write. The familiar vibe is more a feature than a bug, particularly as their sparkly/drifty guitars and slo-mo beats are often contrasted with a vocal melodies that are closer to contemporary pop in the vein of Lana Del Rey than anything Beach House has ever been up to. Greg Gonzalez’s voice isn’t totally androgynous, but his tone and phrasing can be off-handedly feminine in a way that suggests gender fluidity more than gender-bending. I particularly like how his voice is mic’d and mixed on “Apocalypse” – it sounds like a whisper very close to your ear, and it exaggerates the intimate vibe of the music.

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Future featuring Kendrick Lamar “Mask Off (Remix)”

So yeah, here’s two rappers who are nothing alike on the same track. Future mutters through the song liked a stoned zombie, and though I don’t find him particularly charismatic, that “Percocets, molly, Percocets” mantra has an undeniable gravitational pull. Maybe it’s because he sounds like he actually needs those drugs. The original “Mask Off” stays in this lane, and while it works well enough, the song is definitely improved by switching gears with the Kendrick feature. The contrast really pops – Kendrick’s arrival jolts the song out of its hazy stupor, and he packs a lot of action in a verse that lasts a little over one minute. His lines are more densely packed at the start, but that’s Kendrick-by-numbers at this point. I’m more into the climax, where he’s so in control of the beat that it stops and starts around his rhymes as though he’s willing his surroundings to bend to his will. He sounds supremely confident here, and that’s before he even gets to the bit where he says that Prince lives on through him.

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This is the sixth in the 1990s survey mix series, which will come out monthly in chronological order through this year. You can find the previous mixes here.

I realized pretty early on in this project that 1995 was very special to me, and that I needed to present it a bit differently than the other years. I usually make an effort to mix up the genres throughout the surveys, but it was important to me to take up the entire first “disc” of this set to highlight what I’ve come to call Alt-Utopia – the creative and commercial pinnacle of alt-rock, indie, and Britpop in this year. I love the energy of this period. Everyone sounds so ambitious and energetic, and anyone playing rock music seemed to truly believe in the power of the genre. There was still a sense in the music industry that anything could be popular if marketed as “alternative rock,” and the definition of what could qualify as “rock music” was extremely broad in a way that opened up a lot of creativity. I have a lot of sentimentality for this period because I was a teenager at the time, but I truly believe this was a unique moment – the optimistic, fun times just before the alt-rock bubble burst.

1995 is also notable as a major boom time for rap and R&B, and lot of the very best of that is featured on the second disc. That stuff sounds kinda optimistic and utopian too, even the grimy prime era Wu-Tang music. This is also the year alt-country became a thing, which is kinda interesting as an American parallel to Britpop. But while those Britpop bands had mostly existed for a while before this major cultural moment in 1994 and 1995, almost all of the alt-country acts released their debuts within months of each in this year.

Thanks to Rob Sheffield, Eric Harvey, Dan Kois, Sean T. Collins, and especially Paul Cox for their valuable assistance in putting this set together.

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Pavement “Grounded” / Helium “Pat’s Trick” / Archers of Loaf “Harnessed In Slums” / Yo La Tengo “Tom Courtenay” / Guided by Voices “Game of Pricks” / Sonic Youth “Skip Tracer” / Thurston Moore “Psychic Hearts” / The Flaming Lips “Psychiatric Explorations of the Fetus with Needles” / PJ Harvey “Down by the Water” / The Smashing Pumpkins “1979” / Elastica “Car Song” / Pulp “Common People” / Blur “The Universal” / The Verve “History” / Oasis “Wonderwall” / Radiohead “Just” / Spacehog “In the Meantime” / Garbage “Only Happy When It Rains” / Alanis Morissette “You Oughta Know” / Stereolab “French Disko” / Fugazi “Target” / Pearl Jam “I Got Id” / Foo Fighters “This Is A Call” / Belly “Now They’ll Sleep” / Veruca Salt “Number One Blind” / Weezer “Say It Ain’t So” / Everclear “Santa Monica” / Green Day “Brain Stew” / Mike Watt featuring Eddie Vedder “Against the ‘70s” / Scarce “All Sideways” /Juliana Hatfield “Universal Heart-Beat” / The Caulfields “Devil’s Diary” / Monster Magnet “Negasonic Teenage Warhead” / Chavez “Break Up Your Band” / Royal Trux “You’re Gonna Lose” / Home “My Friend Maurice” / Flying Saucer Attack “Standing Stone” / St. Johnny “Scuba Diving” / Liz Phair “Animal Girl”

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Björk “Hyper-Ballad” / Tricky “Hell Is Around the Corner” / Raekwon & Ghostface Killah “Heaven and Hell” / The Notorious B.I.G. “Big Poppa” / Adina Howard “Freak Like Me” / TLC “Waterfalls” / Brandy “Sittin’ Up In My Room” / Mariah Carey featuring Ol’ Dirty Bastard “Fantasy (Remix)” / Montell Jordan “This Is How We Do It” / Junior M.A.F.I.A. featuring The Notorious B.I.G. “Players Anthem” / Method Man & Mary J. Blige “I’ll Be There for You/You’re All I Need to Get By” / R. Kelly “You Remind Me of Something” / Seal “Kiss From A Rose” / The Jayhawks “Blue” / Collective Soul “December” / Sheryl Crow “Strong Enough” / Joan Osborne “One of Us” / Natalie Merchant “Carnival” / Jewel “Who Will Save Your Soul?” / Bush “Glycerine” / Hum “Stars” / Sunny Day Real Estate “J’nuh” / Mad Season “River of Deceit” / Neil Young “Scenery” / Portishead “Glory Box” / The Bucketheads “The Bomb” / Total featuring The Notorious B.I.G. “Can’t You See” / Ol’ Dirty Bastard “Shimmy Shimmy Ya” / Beastie Boys “Root Down” / GZA “Liquid Swords” / Da Brat “Give It 2 U” / Jodeci “Freek’n You” / Three 6 Mafia “Da Summa” / LL Cool J “Doin’ It” / Mary J. Blige “Not Gon’ Cry”

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The Cardigans “Carnival” / Suddenly, Tammy! “Hard Lesson” / Ben Folds Five “Jackson Cannery” / The Rentals “Friends of P.” / Soul Asylum “Shut Down” / Black Grape “Kelly’s Heroes” / U2 “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me” / Gene “Sleep Well Tonight” / D’Angelo “Brown Sugar” / The Roots “Proceed” / The Pharcyde “Drop” / Redman & Method Man “How High” / Folk Implosion “Natural One” / R.E.M. “Tongue” / The Presidents of the United States of America “Lump” / Del Amitri “Roll to Me” / Blues Traveler “Hook” / Tim McGraw “I Like It, I Love It” / The Waco Brothers “Bad Times (Are Comin’ Round Again)” / Dwight Yoakum “Nothing” / Emmylou Harris “Wrecking Ball” / K’s Choice “Not An Addict” / Ani DiFranco “32 Flavors” / Heather Nova “Walk This World” / Mary Lou Lord “His Indie World” / Matthew Sweet “Sick of Myself” / Velvet Crush “Hold Me Up” / Echobelly “King of the Kerb” / Red Red Meat “Chain Chain Chain” / Bone Thugs N Harmony “1st of Tha Month” / Mobb Deep “Shook Ones, Pt. II” / Luniz “I Got 5 On It” / Cypress Hill “Throw Your Set in the Air” / Future Sound of London “The Far Out Son Of Lung And The Ramblings Of A Madman” / Massive Attack vs Mad Professor “Radiation Ruling the Nation” / Dirty Three “Kim’s Dirt” / Nine Inch Nails “Hurt”

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Morrissey “The Teachers Are Afraid of the Pupils” / Marilyn Manson “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” / Prick “Animal” / Rammstein “Rammstein” / Ned’s Atomic Dustbin “All I Ask of Myself Is That I Hold Together” / Rancid “Ruby Soho” / Less Than Jake “Liquor Store” /Mudhoney “Judgment, Rage, Retribution, and Thyme” / Green Apple Quick Step “Los Vargos” / Live “All Over You” / Filter “Hey Man Nice Shot” / Cornershop “6 a.m. Jullandar Shere” / Autechre “Dael” / Aphex Twin “Ventolin (Video Edit)” / Moby “Feeling So Real” / Rob Zombie “More Human Than Human” / KMFDM “Juke-Joint Jezebel” / Siouxsie and the Banshees “Stargazer” / Red Hot Chili Peppers “Warped” / Whale “Hobo Humpin’ Slobo Babe” / Cibo Matto “Know Your Chicken” / Dionne Farris “I Know” / Faith Evans “You Used to Love Me” / Dr. Dre “Keep Their Heads Ringin’” / Shania Twain “Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under?” / 16 Horsepower “Shametown” / Tarnation “Two Wrongs Don’t Make Things Right” / Tracy Chapman “Give Me One Reason” / Sleeper “Inbetweener” / Luna “Sideshow by the Seashore” / S.F. Seals “Ladies of the Sea” / Alan Jackson “Gone Country” / Brooks & Dunn “You’re Gonna Miss Me When I’m Gone” / Kenny Chesney “All I Need to Know” / Boyz II Men “Water Runs Dry” / All-4-One “I Can Love You Like That” / Deborah Cox “Sentimental”

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Annie Lennox “No More ‘I Love You’s’” / Whitney Houston “Exhale” / Michael Jackson “You Are Not Alone” / Selena “I Could Fall In Love” / Outhere Brothers “Don’t Stop (Wiggle Wiggle)” / Scatman John “Scatman” / Skee-Lo “I Wish” / Big L “Put It On” / Smif-N-Wessun “Wrekonize (Remix)” / Coolio “Gangsta’s Paradise” / Alice In Chains “Grind” / Silverchair “Tomorrow” / Wax “California” / Spiritualized “Medication” / The Passengers featuring Luciano Pavarotti “Miss Sarajevo” / Goodie Mobb featuring Andre 3000 “Thought Process” / Prince “Pussy Control” / No Doubt “Just A Girl” / Better Than Ezra “Good” / Ruby “Tiny Meat” / Supergrass “Alright” / The Boo Radleys “Wake Up Boo!” / Deep Blue Something “Breakfast At Tiffany’s” / The Rembrandts “I’ll Be There for You” / Hootie and the Blowfish “Only Wanna Be With You” / Lenny Kravitz “Can’t Get You Off My Mind” / Garth Brooks “She’s Every Woman” / Toby Keith “You Ain’t Much Fun” / Trisha Yearwood “Thinkin’ About You” / George Strait “Check Yes or No” / Gin Blossoms “Til I Hear From You” / Wilco “Box Full of Letters” / The 6ths “San Diego Zoo” / Smog “Bathysphere” / Steve Earle “Nothin’ Without You” / Elliott Smith “Needle in the Hay” / Jale “Wash My Hands” / Freakwater “South of Cincinnati” / Scud Mountain Boys “Glacier Bay” / Palace “Gulf Shores”

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The Chemical Brothers “Leave Home” / BT featuring Tori Amos “Blue Skies” / Mouse on Mars “Saturday Night Worldcup Fieber” / Buju Banton “Only Man” / Shaggy “Boombastic” / Master P “When They Gone” / Tha Dogg Pound “Let’s Play House” / 2pac “Dear Mama” / Souls of Mischief “No Man’s Land” / Guru “Watch What You Say” / Black Moon featuring Smif-N-Wessun “Headz Ain’t Ready” / Real McCoy “Come and Get Your Love” / Ace of Base “Beautiful Life” / Shampoo “Trouble” / La Bouche “Be My Lover” / Everything But the Girl “Missing (Todd Terry Club Mix)” / The Magnetic Fields “All the Umbrellas In London” / Tina Turner “Goldeneye” / Sparklehorse “Someday I Will Treat You Good” / Poe “Trigger Happy Jack” / The Geraldine Fibbers “Dragon Lady” / that dog. “He’s Kissing Christian” / Throwing Muses “Bright Yellow Gun” / Catherine Wheel “Waydown” / Letters to Cleo “Awake” / The Muffs “Sad Tomorrow” / Babes in Toyland “Sweet 69” / Free Kitten “Harvest Spoon” / Ramones “I Don’t Want to Grow Up” / Pennywise “Peaceful Day” / Superchunk “Detroit Has A Skyline” / Aimee Mann “Choice in the Matter” / Lisa Loeb & Nine Stories “Do You Sleep?” / P.M. Dawn “Downtown Venus” / Dishwalla “Charlie Brown’s Parents” / Faith Hill “It Matters to Me” / Clint Black “Summer’s Comin’” / Old 97’s “Doreen” / Whiskeytown “If He Can’t Have You” / Long Fin Killie “(a) Man Ray” / Cat Power “Rockets” / Jane Siberry “Maria”

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Pizzicato Five “Contact” / Luscious Jackson “Here (Squirmel Mix)” / Eve’s Plum “Cherry Alive” / Squirrel Nut Zippers “I’ve Found A New Baby” / Plush “Found A Little Baby” / Papas Fritas “Guys Don’t Lie” / Mercury Rev “Everlasting Arm” / Scott Walker “Tilt” / Tindersticks “No More Affairs” / The Sea and Cake “The Biz” / Zumpano “The Party Rages On” / Tripping Daisy “I Got A Girl” / G. Love and Special Sauce “Nancy” / Southern Culture on the Skids “Camel Walk” / Primus “Wynona’s Big Brown Beaver” / Rocket from the Crypt “On A Rope” / Deftones “Bored” / The Offspring “Self Esteem” / 311 “Down” / Dog’s Eye View “Everything Falls Apart” / Bruce Springsteen “The Ghost of Tom Joad” / The Goo Goo Dolls “Name” / Jars of Clay “Flood” / Seven Mary Three “Cumbersome” / Son Volt “Drown” / Money Mark “Hand in Your Head” / Ice Cube “Friday” / Tha Alkaholiks “The Next Level” / Goldie “Angel” / Blind Melon “Galaxie” / The Mighty Mighty Bosstones “Hell of a Hat” / The Pietasters “Something Better” / Butterglory “The Skills of the Star Pilot” / Holly Golightly “Wherever You Were” / Brian Jonestown Massacre “That Girl Suicide” / The Dandy Warhols “Ride” / The Upper Crust “Let Them Eat Rock” / Teenage Fanclub “Sparky’s Dream” / The Dambuilders “Drive-By Kiss” / The Charlatans “Just When You’re Thinkin’ Things Over” / Slowdive “Miranda” / Cassandra Wilson “Love Is Blindness”

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Kyuss “One Inch Man” / Dub Narcotic Sound System “Industrial Breakdown” / Jonathan Fire Eater “The Spanish Fly” / Sleater-Kinney “The Day I Went Away” / Tsunami “Flameproof Suit” / CIV “Can’t Wait One Minute More” / Citizen Fish “Can’t Be Bothered” / Dance Hall Crashers “Don’t Wanna Behave” / Blink-182 “Carousel” / Toad the Wet Sprocket “Good Intentions” / The Apples in Stereo “Glowworm” / Guv’ner “Baby’s Way Cruel” / Golden Smog “Radio King” / Gloria Estefan “Everlasting Love” / Tina Arena “Chains” / Diana King “Shy Guy” / Mack 10 featuring Ice Cube “Foe Life” / DJ Quik “Safe + Sound” / Leftfield “Original” / The Orb “Oxbow Lakes” / Scarlet “Independent Love Song” / Gov’t Mule “Mule” / Ben Harper “Burn One Down” / Cornelius “Moon Walk” / DC Talk “Jesus Freak” / Insane Clown Posse “Riddle Box” / Atari Teenage Riot “Speed” / Bowery Electric “Out of Phase” / Opeth “Under the Weeping Moon (Orchid)” / Low “Stay” / Enya “Anywhere Is” / Take That “Back for Good” / Brian McKnight “Crazy Love” / Nicki French “Total Eclipse of the Heart” / Bryan Adams “Have You Ever Really Loved A Woman” / Wet Wet Wet “Somewhere Somehow” / Blessid Union of Souls “I Believe” / Reba McEntire “Ring On Her Finger, Time On Her Hands” / The Pretenders “I’ll Stand By You” / Sarah McLachlan “I Will Remember You”

Post Malone featuring Justin Bieber “Deja Vu”

I was in a car in Los Angeles last week with my friend Daniel and he decided it was a good time for me to hear some Post Malone. For whatever reason, I just hadn’t listened to Post Malone. I had no preconceived notions or bias against the guy – all I knew was that he was a white rapper and fairly popular, and that I didn’t know of anyone who really cared about his music, so I didn’t feel compelled to seek it out. My immediate impression upon hearing a few tracks was that he sounded kinda like Future, but with more vulnerability in his voice.

Daniel hyped up “Deja Vu” before playing it for me, saying that it sounded like Stereolab, but with Justin Bieber as Laetitia Sadier. I am always wary of people saying things sound like Stereolab because publicists are always sending me things like “sounds like Stereolab!” when maybe, at most, there’s just a keyboard on it and not even a type of keyboard Tim Gane would own. (This is kinda weird thing for publicists to do since Stereolab is not actually a popular band and most writers under 35 are not familiar with their music.) But you know what? I totally get it. The central keyboard part in this song absolutely does sound like something that could’ve been on Dots and Loops, and Daniel is right that Bieber’s part would’ve sounded better he sang it in French. The rest of it is still much closer to stoned Future-esque rap, but it’s musically a lot more interesting and Post Malone’s voice is richer and more melancholy. Bieber sounds great too – unapologetically soft and feminine, and notably unguarded compared to other tracks where he’s trying hard to seem cool.

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Bobo Swae featuring Rae Sremmurd “Rowdy”

What a great example of making the most of two chords. “Rowdy” is in a state of musical stasis for nearly five minutes, but it still feels dynamic in the way these two bell tones seem to move slowly from left to right. Bobo Swae sounds drowsy on the beat, and he delivers his lines in a breathy, soft-spoken voice just shy of a full-on Ying Yang Twins “Wait” whisper. The members of Rae Sremmurd aren’t that much more energetic, but I like what they do here. Slim Jxmmi is a bit more aggressive, while Swae Lee’s voice is slow and stoned, but also playful in how he dodges some easy rhymes in favor of more flamboyant inflections. This is exactly what I like to hear in a posse track – a steady center supported verses that contrast nicely and complement each other.

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The Steoples “From the Otherside”

“From the Otherside” sounds as though it’s suspended mid-air, but not quite floating. This effect mostly comes from that old The Field trick of a stuttering ambient sample that sounds just like a skipping CD, but is somehow soothing rather than jarring. There’s no solid floor to this track – the keyboards and vocals are just as weightless, and the only thing holding it together is the relatively tight structure of the vocal melody, which incidentally sounds like “Eleanor Ribgy” reworked as an R&B slow jam. The overall effect is lovely and sexy, but also vaguely ghostly and unnerving. The singer’s lyrics are all about the present or what’s to come, but the music and the tone of his voice suggest it’s fading or already gone.

Buy it from Stones Throw.