Fantômas – Fantômas [Ipecac] – 27 April 1999
Mike Patton has straddled so many genres and appeared with so many different artists (John Zorn, Dan the Automator, and Kaada, just to name three), it’s almost impossible to think back to that time, a little over a decade ago, when Faith No More fans agonized over whether that band would reunite (they would not).
At the same time, the smaller, but equally, if not more, fanatical contingent of Mr. Bungle fans wondered if, and how, that band could possibly follow up their uncategorizable shot heard round the underground, Disco Volante. Their prayers would be answered with California, sending fans into another prolonged wait-and-see as to whether Mr. Bungle would record again (they would not).
Patton has made so much music that it really is incredible, and more than a little amusing, to remember that he was a straightforward rock deity, relatively speaking, circa 1998. That is to say, he was famous (relatively speaking) for fronting Faith No More, even though that band got (and still gets) more attention for its decidedly mediocre breakthrough The Real Thing (1989) than Angel Dust (1993), which is easily one of the best and most influential albums of that decade. No matter what Patton proclaimed, most folks assumed that Mr. Bungle was a lark, a side project to scratch the creative itches his more mainstream material could not approach.
So, regardless of what anyone expected or hoped for, it was less than likely that anyone could have anticipated what the eccentric frontman was cooking up in his laboratory. As soon as it became evident that Patton was headed in a very different direction, he was inspired to recruit a supergroup of sorts to help him realize his vision. Calling on Trevor Dunn (good friend and bassist from Mr. Bungle), Buzz Osborne (guitarist and mastermind of the Melvins), and Dave Lombardi (the widely worshipped drummer from Slayer), Patton assembled what appeared, on paper, to be a metal lover’s wet dream.
Amazingly, the collective surpassed even the wildest hype, gelling to constitute a unified whole greater than the sum of its impressive parts. Of course, musicians of this magnitude can’t help but be brilliant, but the lion’s share of the credit must go to Patton, as this was his baby every step of the way. The band played and perfected the material Patton provided, and the resulting album hit the streets in April 1999, becoming the inaugural release for Ipecac, Patton’s new label.
Fantômas, named after the very popular, if controversial, early 20th-century French crime novel character, is effectively the band that ensured Patton was finished with Faith No More (soon, he would also be finished with Mr. Bungle). It’s challenging to describe what their eponymous debut sounds like, partly because it incorporates so many different styles of music. It is decidedly avant-garde work, with the hardcore flourishes one would expect from Osborne and Lombardo. It is also refreshingly out there, which one would expect from Patton. But this does not begin to address how truly original the album is, incorporating oddness of a whole other magnitude.
Patton does not sing so much as employ his seemingly limitless vocal range as a fourth instrument. There is not a single intelligible word uttered through the duration of the recording. Indeed, the work itself does not feature songs, but “pages”, the idea being a musical interpretation (or recreation) of a comic book: 30 sonic snippets that accompany the “plot” illustrated in the CD booklet.
Frankly, the pictures (though very effective) are unnecessary, as the emphasis here is on sounds and feelings, not linear narrative. This does not imply that the proceedings are unintelligible; the music unfolds with its own internal logic. Impenetrable and abrasive at first listen (Patton sounds like a trapped animal, a human chainsaw, and a motorboat engine out of water, sometimes all in a span of ten seconds), this is challenging material that obliges the audience to surrender expectations and meet Patton on his own terms.
A great deal of time and effort could be dedicated to debating what it all means, or how he did it (as ostensibly free-wheeling as the material may seem, Patton actually choreographed every second of it before the band ever got involved), and where this recording properly fits in an assessment of Patton’s evolution. In hindsight, Fantômas is very obviously a direction – wayward or ingenious, depending upon the listener – Patton wanted to head in, and he’s never backtracked, for better or for worse.
To this listener, it represents the first day of the rest of Patton’s artistic life. Fantômas let him break with what he must have felt were the straightjacket-like conventions and expectations of the traditional rock route, and it’s almost like he had to invent his own language to give free expression to what was boiling around inside his mind.
Fantômas is not an album most people would put into the regular rotation. It’s intense, involving, and requires a complete sitting to absorb. Although having heard it so many times, I actually can queue up individual “pages” and enjoy them on their own terms: Pages 1, 2, 3, 4, 10, 11, 12, 15, 17, 19, 21, 26 and 29 are endlessly fascinating and satisfying, especially if they randomly pop up in the iPod shuffle. It’s most likely not the music you want on when company is present. The ensuing years have not diminished its quirky, edgy ambition, and it remains a unique document, even in Patton’s ever-growing catalog.
It’s difficult to determine how influential this work was because nobody else in the world could ever have conceived this, much less pulled it off. It inspired the assembled players, as they would collaborate many times in the ensuing years, with predictably engaging results. Whether or not Fantômas is the best work Patton has done is totally irrelevant, but it is perhaps the most important work he has ever done. For himself. – Sean Murphy
Old 97’s – Fight Songs [Elektra] – 27 April 1999
Old 97’s remind me of a bumper sticker I once saw in Oak Park, Illinois: “I Was a Vietnam Veteran Before It Was Popular.” The same idea fits because this was a band of rock and blues kids who were into country, which wasn’t very popular in the 1980s. Yet, by 1994, four guys – drummer Philip Peeples, guitarists Ken Bethea and Rhett Miller, and bassist Murry Hammond – put their perspectives on country music down in the form of the Old 97’s, becoming one of the most recognizable and influential alt-country bands.
Throughout the early 1990s, the Old 97’s put out a few country, Texas-twangy records and toured incessantly. However, by 1999, the band had started to evolve in more of a mainstream pop direction, which is readily apparent on Fight Songs. There are two Old 97’s on display here — a college bar band and a traditional, rootsy, country rock band.
The new sound is heard immediately in the first track, “Jagged”, a pop-rock song with Americana sensibilities. The lead guitar grips you immediately, and I can’t help but wonder if the Drive-By Truckers ripped off the chord and song structure for their song, “Hell No I Ain’t Happy” off of 2003’s Decoration Day. Other pop songs that stood to alienate long-time fans include “Oppenheimer”, “What We Talk About”, and “Murder (Or a Heart Attack)”.
Although most people point to “Murder” as the best song on this record, I disagree. Those honors have to go with “Lonely Holiday”. This may be one of the saddest songs ever recorded in the last 15 years, and it’s a solid tearjerker along the lines of the Verve’s “The Drugs Don’t Work” and the Juliana Theory’s “You Always Say Goodnight, Goodnight”. When Midler whispers, “I’ve thought so much about suicide / Parts of me have already died”, you can feel his pain. What makes the whole experience so alarming for the listener is that the song is almost happy, in a country and western, upbeat kind of way — sort of like Johnny Cash’s “Cocaine Blues”.
In some ways, that’s a good description of this whole record: sad, country-inspired songs with pop and rock edges. There’s no question that Fight Songs is an alt-country record due to the prevalence of that sound and the themes in Miller’s lyrics. Tracks like “Busted Afternoon”, “Valentine”, and “Let the Idiot Speak” seem like the soundtrack to warm evenings of barbecue, lemonade, and Jim Beam.
In the end, 1999 will be known as the year that the Old 97’s partially reinvented themselves and released their first country-pop record. However, the Old 97’s, like the train for which they were named, would continue to push the boundaries of rock ‘n’ roll and country music into the next century, and continue to be one of the best American bands. – Shyam Sriram
Backstreet Boys – Millennium [Jive] – 18 May 1999
The first album to officially sell over one million units in its first week (it wound up selling well over ten million in its lifetime), Backstreet Boys‘ Millennium kicked off the era of the mega-album, now a quaint memory in a time when most albums struggle to sell a million copies ever. A typical pop record of the era, all oily ballads and goofy post-new jack dance jams, it hasn’t aged well at all, except for one song: the immortal “I Want It That Way”.
You may not know what the hell the song is about, but damn if you don’t start singing “Ain’t nothin’ but a heartache / Ain’t nothin’ but a mistake” as soon as the chorus hits. It turned out to be the finest moment for the Backstreet Boys and the Swedish writing and producing team who came up with the song.
Although Millennium had other hits (like the immortalized-by-Napoleon-Dynamite dance jam “Larger Than Life” and the ballad “Show Me the Meaning of Being Lonely”), it’s “I Want It That Way” that remains indelible long after Kevin, Howie, AJ, Nick, and Brian have faded from the public conscious and people have forgotten the remainder of the album it came from. – Mike Heyliger
Blink-182 – Enema of the State [MCA] – 1 June 1999
Listening to Enema of the State for the first time in years, it was instantly recognizable why this album became such a hit. It’s the hooks. Before this album, Blink-182 put together a handful of catchy pop-punk songs (especially “Dammit”) that put the group on the mainstream music radar. However, Enema of the State is a collection of irresistible guitar and vocal hooks that lodge in your brain and stay there for days.
Blink-182 were also known for its extremely juvenile sense of humor, which it toned down here, at least for the songs themselves. The title and cover art, as well as the videos for “What’s My Age Again?”, which featured the group running naked through Los Angeles and San Diego, and “All the Small Things”, which gently parodied the boy-band videos of the time, all retained their trademark crude jokes. This combination of hooky and jokey made Blink a success, which was quickly imitated by a slew of progressively less-likable bands (Hello Sum 41, New Found Glory, and, ugh, A Simple Plan).
Producer Jerry Finn got the group to go for a crisp, ultra-clean sound on the album, but more importantly, he seemed to get singer-songwriters Tom Delonge and Mark Hoppus to focus on their songwriting for an entire record. Considering how sloppy and unprofessional the band were in concert, the quality of the songs on this album is kind of startling.
From the opening guitar riff of “Dumpweed” to the end of the closer, “Anthem”, this album only falters during a couple of lackluster songs near the end. Even those are at least decent. The lyrics on Enema of the State aren’t great — “Dumpweed”‘s refrain is “I need a girl that I can train”, while “The Party Song” repeats “Some girls try too hard / With the way that they dress / And those things on their chests” like it was clever, and “All the Small Things” is a really, really trite love song.
However, “What’s My Age Again?” knowingly addresses the band’s juvenile humor, and the level of detail in the attempted-suicide power ballad “Adam’s Song” makes it quite affecting.
I would be remiss to finish this reminiscence without mentioning drummer Travis Barker. Easily the most skilled player in the band, his creative flourishes subtly enhance the songs here without becoming overwhelming. It may mark the point where Blink-182 made themselves easy targets for ridicule, but Enema of the State deserved to be the hit it became. – Chris Conaton
Dido – No Angel [Cheeky/Arista] – 1 June 1999
Dido‘s debut album, No Angel, first entered my radar thanks to a British friend who seemed unable to stop replaying the first two verses from the single “Thank You”. It’s the same opening that Eminem later sampled in “Stan” from The Marshall Mathers LP. No Angel was released in the US before it hit the shelves in the UK, but even before it was available in Dido’s home country, the record’s success was assured.
With her softly floating vocals and vaguely Celtic-inspired electronic backing, Dido was something completely different in the late 1990s music scene. The landscapes she sings about are slightly unearthly and dreamlike, but her choruses are catchy, and thus pop fans latched on quickly to her tunes about lovers coming and going, as well as more mundane themes like missing the bus and having a bad day at work.
Initially, it seemed pretentious for the record industry to introduce another single-named pop star. Still, I can understand why Florian Cloud de Bounevialle Armstrong, as she was born, might want to re-imagine herself for a record career. The name Dido has roots in an ancient Phoenician word meaning ‘wanderer’, – and this fits perfectly with the singer’s themes of travel, self-discovery, disappointment, and love lost.
With several radio-ready singles and the ability to appeal to multiple ages, No Angel did well in major Anglophone markets, and Dido became a household name. Dido’s music lends itself well to mixing and sampling, which has ensured some degree of longevity in this age of digital mash-ups. – Lara Killian
Moby – Play [V2] – 1 June 1999
Moby‘s hugely successful Play was famous in its time for being the first CD to have every one of its tracks licensed for television commercials, TV shows, and movies. If you’ve never heard the album, you might assume that it’s a poppy, ephemeral, lightweight piece of work, yet it’s anything but.
In fact, there’s a much better reason why Play is famous: Moby’s seamless interweaving of his own electronic music with old recordings of gospel, folk, and blues songs, many of them field recordings rescued from oblivion by the ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax. The combination is stunningly successful. There’s a monumental quality to the music that makes it sound as if the melodies have always been with us, which, in a sense, they have.
Moby supposedly licensed Play‘s tracks out of frustration with radio’s unwillingness to play his songs. Still, he could do this successfully and ubiquitously only because the album’s quality is consistently high. Not only are there hardly any weak tracks on this record (a few rap samples aside), but there are hardly any that aren’t memorable.
As such, it’s difficult to single out the best tracks, but “Natural Blues”, built around the song “Trouble So Hard” by the late folksinger Vera Hall, is a true beauty. “Porcelain” and “Run On” are also great. You may not recognize the titles, but you’ll instantly recognize the songs themselves, and if that’s because you first encountered them on television or in a movie, why exactly is that bad?
The question of whether Moby “sold out” is, like the issue of whether Play “stands up”, beside the point. Play achieves timelessness in its combination of the antique and the electronic, and in the exquisite care with which both halves of the equation were placed into a universal context. – Michael Antman
Sigur Rós – Ágætis Byrjun [Fat Cat] – 1 June 1999
Now that Iceland’s second-most-famous musical exports have been uplifting indie-rock for many years, it’s worth re-summoning the thick fog of mystery that attended the band as this astonishing album was first being discovered by listeners beyond the rocky volcanic shores of its birth. In a global culture made increasingly interconnected and credulous by the Internet, Sigur Rós‘ Ágætis Byrjun was an ephemeral whisper of myth and magic. “Have you heard of this band?” someone might ask a cherished friend. “They’re kind of like Radiohead, only they’re from Iceland. And they sound like elves or something.”
For all we knew, these stunning soundscapes of ethereal beauty could have been made by a mischievous collective of latter-day Lokis, or else by winsome gnomes and mountain sprites, pining for the fjords like ex-pats from the background of Peer Gynt. How were we to know? It was 1999, and Ricky Martin was a star; no one could deny that stranger things had happened in pop music.
Three albums of similarly magnificent compositions have caused that fog to disintegrate, but the sublime recording that introduced Sigur Rós to the broader world retains its moving transcendence. They may have later reached higher, but they haven’t since pierced us so profoundly. This music is momentous in its patience, and patient in its momentousness. “A good beginning,” indeed. – Ross Langager
Orbital – The Middle of Nowhere [Rhino] – 8 June 1999
Orbital were big from the start. The genius behind the Hartnoll brothers’ tunes was just how massive everything was, seemingly designed to rock a wide-open and well-lit space. The grandness reached its climax with 1996’s In Sides, which saw the duo’s cinematic ambitions reach a peak with the half-hour single “The Box” (and accompanying short film), not to mention soundtracking The Saint and Event Horizon around the same time.
1999, then, was an odd time to be Orbital. The advent of more advanced computer programs was ushering in the era of the laptop performer, making Orbital’s racks of live gear look curiously archaic. Rather than scale things back or make concessions to the glitch, minimal, or jungle music that had taken over popularity then, Orbital took the pure road and delivered Middle of Nowhere, another sprawling maximal journey. Opener “Way Out” immediately produces the kitchen sink, with horns, strings, and ethereal female vocalizations rotating in a binaural salad. It’s worth noting here that Nowhere is an excellent headphones record.
Nowhere proudly betrays its creators’ gearslut tendencies, down to a single “Style”, built largely from the Stylophone novelty pocket synthesizer. Frequent collaborator Alison Goldfrapp (who in 1999 was busy enough with her debut solo album) stops by to offer some unintelligible (yet no less entrancing) singing on the two-part “Nothing Left”.
For many artists on this list, 1999 was a “weird” year in which, perhaps owing to a case of the pre-millennium whatevers, things got looser than listeners could (or should) handle. That Orbital stayed their course while still managing to drop another excellent release only illustrates just how forward-thinking they were in the early 1090s. This album has aged quite well, still sounding exciting and fresh, and given Orbital’s recent regrouping, perhaps it’s time to get back to the middle of nowhere. – David Abravanel
Pavement – Terror Twilight [Matador] – 8 June 1999
A frequent, dogging criticism of Pavement involves the slack or lazy qualities some associate with the group. Yes, their live performances were frequently a bit sloppy, and singer and primary songwriter Stephen Malkmus has a delivery that supports such a criticism, though mainly as a matter of style. It would be difficult to imagine his lyrics functioning well outside of the Pavement signatures: shabby appearance, meandering guitar strums, speak-singing, stunted rhythms, and unique cadences. It’s convenient to call the band members slackers, but to spend some time with the music is to realize that the alleged laziness is really an appropriate form for the loose, circuitousness content.
The big picture was always, in fact, quite active. Pavement released five memorable studio albums in the 1990s. Even as irony couldn’t beg for death quickly enough, Malkmus found new ways to make us wonder what he meant, how he meant it, and if all of the catchy but inscrutable non-sequiturs would ever add up to something resembling a return on the sometimes obsessive investment of many listeners.
Also noteworthy was the critical elevation of Pavement as standard-bearers of specious genres (indie rock, college rock, etc.) that aren’t genres at all, but instead ways to describe the production/distribution models and markets for the music Pavement created. There were likely many reasons for the increasing dysfunction and dissolution of the band in 1999. Still, it’s reasonable to suggest that shouldering a generation’s habitually misunderstood spirit is not a desirable job. Kurt Cobain didn’t want it, either.
Although Terror Twilight isn’t a suicide note of an album, it is an exceptional farewell. Produced by Nigel Godrich, it hangs together more solidly than earlier Pavement LPs without ever sounding overly ambitious. The cohesion and purpose of Terror Twilight suggest a level of maturity that is somewhat deceiving. While the songs are more carefully crafted and the production is better than ever, the album is less of a full-band effort than any of Pavement’s previous releases.
For many, the first two Pavement records, 1992’s Slanted and Enchanted and 1994’s Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, found them at their rough-around-the-edges best. After testing the limits of experimentation with 1995’s Wowee Zowee, Mitch Easter helped the group recalibrate with Brighten the Corners in 1997. However, according to various accounts, the smoothing of the Pavement sound occurred parallel to the band’s disintegration.
Perhaps the acknowledgment of the inevitable End gives Terror Twilight its emotional weight. Single “Spit on a Stranger” concerns a kind of incongruous dependency: “Honey, I’m a prize and you’re a catch and we’re a perfect match / Like two bitter strangers.” The song is romantic, but exposes the faults of such idealism, wary of its promises, even as they are being sung (“I’ll try the things you’ll never try / I’ll be the one that leaves you high”).
The anxious, tentative guitars of “Cream of Gold” reinforce its tale of a doomed affair as Malkmus declares, “I sensed the toxic aura from the second we touched.” The minute-long guitar solo that closes the song is an extension of the conflicted leave-taking theme that defines the album.
The full poignancy arrives with the ballad “Major Leagues”, which assesses the conflicts and dismissals of the album’s first half and stares down the uncertain future. “Speak, See, Remember” foretells the classic/progressive rock direction of Malkmus and the Jicks, invoking the “terror twilight” and decrying the insatiable creep of corporate greed as openly as “The Hexx” explores the emptiness of careerism.
Closer “Carrot Rope”, also a single, leaves no doubt that the jig is up. “Debating if it’s time to drop the bomb on you, my dear”, Malkmus sings in a final stab of wit. But every song on Terror Twilight has dropped hints that this is the band’s final act. Of course, this is all much easier to discern in retrospect, and there is always the temptation to read too much into the text. However, the inescapable atmosphere of twilight that permeates the 44 minutes is not the accidental productivity of a bunch of slackers.
Although Pavement’s previous four albums are to varying degrees Rorschach tests for the listener’s perceptions, Terror Twilight movingly pulls back the curtain on the tensions and vulnerabilities of “indie rock” royalty. This brief but powerful moment of access is the best kind of swan song, because as much as fans might have wanted the band to stay together, Terror Twilight convinces the listener that a perfect sound cannot last forever. – Thomas Britt
Red Hot Chili Peppers – Californication [Warner Bros.] – 8 June 1999
Out of everything that burned brightly at the testosterone-fuelled Woodstock 1999, none burned hotter than a reunited and rejuvenated Red Hot Chili Peppers. The funk-punksters, who famously donned light-bulb costumes for their set – except for bassist Flea, who wore nothing – closed out the festival with a blistering set, complete with bonfires and looting. It culminated in a spirited cover of Jimi Hendrix’s “Fire”, with recently returned guitar prodigy John Frusciante providing pyrotechnics that could have risen Hendrix from the dead.
Thanks mainly to Frusciante, the Chili Peppers were back on top in the summer of 1999, after losing most of the previous decade to drug abuse and bad personnel decisions (Dave Navarro, anyone?). However, their resurgence was also closely tied to the success of Californication, the group’s seventh studio record, which was released in June of that year and would go on to become their biggest commercial success to date.
Not only did Californication bring Frusciante back into the fold, it also marked the first time these four Chili Peppers (singer Anthony Kiedis, drummer Chad Smith, Flea, and Frusciante) would reteam with uber-producer Rick Rubin since 1991’s Blood Sugar Sex Magik, the band’s commercial breakthrough.
After the experimental psychedelia and metal of 1994’s One Hot Note, Navarro’s only album as a Chili Pepper, Californication saw a return to the group’s trademark punk-funk sound, but with a twist, as well as an expanded sonic palate. Sure, Flea’s bass is still in your face, and, yes, there are still the requisite overt odes to raw sexuality (“Get on Top”, “Purple Stain”). Still, this album has much more room for melody, notably “Scar Tissue”, a monster number one hit and eventual Grammy winner, and much more attention is paid to songcraft.
Songs like the title track, “Californication”, with its jaded look at the dream factory that is the Golden State, and “Porcelain”, a touching ballad inspired by Kiedis’s encounter at a YMCA with a single mother trying to kick the bottle, point to a new maturity in the group’s songwriting, as well the great strides Kiedis had made as a vocalist.
Californication was a return to form for the Red Hot Chili Peppers and the beginning of a new phase in their career. It would see them become the platinum-album-selling, arena-touring machine we know them as. It also brought them back from the brink of extinction, largely thanks to the return of guitarist John Frusciante, who was able to reignite a band that was finally mature enough, and sober enough, to know what to do with that spark. – Mike Garrett