In Hindsight...Worst Top 3 Pazz and Jop Album: 90s

Moby easy

Two to choose from!

Those Pavement records are pretty much everything I hate about indie "rock", but I once walked out of a record store without buying anything because I couldn't take one more second of whatever Sleater-Kinney album they were playing. Tough choice.

None are terrible, though if I bothered to play them Midnite Vultures and the maligned Arrested Development albums would most irk me.

I pulled out Play recently and it has aged like a carton of milk accidentally left behind in the trunk of a car over the summer.

A few days later I happened to listen to the Heavyweight podcast about the guy that let Moby borrow his cds
of field recordings and whatnot that he went on to sample for Play. Moby never returned the cds and he was a dick about it when he was finally tracked down and asked about it. “Oh, I don’t know, they’re probably in a storage unit and I can’t get them for you.” You fuck, get your assistant to order a copy from discogs and sign it “THANK YOU FOR MAKING ME MORE MONEY THAN GOD, I APPRECIATE IT SORRY I WAS AN ASSHOLE.”

What a jerk.

Out of Time. Really, I don’t get it. The other two R.E.M. albums here are much better—yes, even Monster.

I'm the opposite: Out of Time has deepened over the years, the second side in particular.

OK Computer. Should have been an EP with Airbag/Paranoid Android/Subterranean Homesick Alien/Electioneering - everything else is boring.

xp

I can’t stand ‘Shiny Happy People,” and I never really liked “Losing My Religion.” Most of the album tracks feel like throwaways to me. I realize I’m deeply in the minority, though.

xp interesting take -- "No Surprises," "Karma Police," and "Exit Music" are three of their biggest songs. And "Let Down" is one of their best.

Wow! I have no idea what to pick here. I love or like a lot of these and don’t know a bunch.

Ultimately maybe Moby, but I don’t know if I really loathe those records.

Probably Midnite Vultures or Arrested Development. The Moby albums…Play seems pretty minor and gimmicky, I should relisten to Everything Is Wrong, though.

I like all those R.E.M. albums, I think OOT sounds a bit minor because there are def a couple wacky tracks on there and some that feel a bit more mood and vibe than full songs but I think mood and vibe is one of their strengths, every one of their albums has some of those.

I've never felt the need to listen to a Moby album.

i like all of these tbh

the worst stuff on midnite vultures is so bad, i always forget that there's actually some cool stuff on it.

I do wanna revisit that Moby album someday, I was really into it as a teenager

amusingly the song that got me into it was "Bodyrock", I remember seeing the video on MTV and thinking the whole album was going to be like that. the song I really liked though was "Porcelain", I wonder how that's held up

the worst stuff on midnite vultures is so bad, i always forget that there's actually some cool stuff on it.

― brimstead

another album with a better flipside

I still kinda like “Porcelain.”

I only heard this recently - idk something like “Honey” might be formulaic but there's at least some effort there, but with “Run On” he's barely doing anything!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvG8JPl4Hlc

I ended up not voting. Even the ones that people have turned on still have strong merits that were always there - the flaws may be apparent and they may fall short of their best work, but I personally can’t dismiss any of them.

yeah I can't even remember what he does with "Run On", I think at the end there's like some strings layered over it or something

seems quite a bit lazier than anything Daft Punk did, even "Robot Rock" at least sounds like a proper remix

A few days later I happened to listen to the Heavyweight podcast about the guy that let Moby borrow his cds
of field recordings and whatnot that he went on to sample for Play. Moby never returned the cds and he was a dick about it when he was finally tracked down and asked about it. “Oh, I don’t know, they’re probably in a storage unit and I can’t get them for you.” You fuck, get your assistant to order a copy from discogs and sign it “THANK YOU FOR MAKING ME MORE MONEY THAN GOD, I APPRECIATE IT SORRY I WAS AN ASSHOLE.”

Moby comes off like a giant prick in every story I've ever heard about him, if I were a vegan I'd be pissed, there are so few famous vegans out there and one of them happens to be this fuckin guy

Sleater-Kinney (grating) or Magnetic Fields (too long, far too patchy - and i am a "points for ambition" guy)

after Midnite Vultures, of course. its presence here is like watching LeBron James play against high schoolers.

Sleater-Kinney were one of the first bands who had to teach me how to listen to them cuz I too found Dig Me Out abrasive on third listen.

Pavement and Sleater-Kinney are the only bands I don't actually like very much. Not bothered about several others - the Dylan, Neil Young or Lucinda records esp.

Play ofc a major critical hit before it actually started selling - arguably quite a long time before - but Moby likes to pretend both of these albums (but especially Play) were slated or ignored and that nothing happened for the latter until The Beach came out. (Tbh the story of Play is a total mess and I've never seen it told coherently) (though I do buy the idea of him making an album as though no one would be listening, certainly as by the time you get to the half-asleep doodles in the second half it hardly resembles a mega-acclaimed 12-mil selling blockbuster in any sense at all. It might as well be Echoboy or someone).

i still like "porcelain" (also "bodyrock" to a degree) but even at the time there was very little else i actually enjoyed on play. "south side" had that gwen stefani version as a moderate radio hit but i have never been compelled to return to any version of it since

Odelay

No real obvious clunkers here. But I feel bad for Moby. All the haters seemed to drive him over the edge. Face tattoos over age 50 are a cry for help, people.

69 love songs is basically three novelty records

still voting for 'play' tho

Dont truly hate anything here, but among the records I dont like I guess 69 Love Songs wins by default just because it contains the largest amount of music that i dont like

God bless ILM, the only place where people shit on 69 Love Songs.

Odelay has not endured for me. I don’t know if I played it to death because it was one of my favorites once upon a time, but there’s not much there for me anymore.

I voted Play, but would argue that Everything Is Wrong is vv good

I listened to Ragged Glory for the first time yesterday, and while about half of it moved me, the best album of 1990? (I'm admittedly ambivalent to Young's work, but no doubt this is one where critical consensus has since been revised.)

It appeared on the most submitted ballots, therefore it's the best album of 1990. Nothing more than that. Also, critics were so damn happy to have Young back after Freedom. I listen to Sleeps With Angels more.

Really interesting to contrast this thread with the other one. Ilxors were earnest followers of the critical canon in the 90's, heroic foes of critical orthodoxy ever since.

oh just wait til you see what i voted for.

Ilxors were earnest followers of the critical canon in the 90's, heroic foes of critical orthodoxy ever since.

You might be shocked how many old-school ilxors shaped the critical canon of the '90s.

critics were so damn happy to have Young back after Freedom

while ragged glory is a better album, wasn't freedom the one that brought neil back for most critics? (an A from christgau! "a classic neil young album," he wrote! and he was definitely not alone.)

That's precisely what I meant, though re-reading it I guess it looks like I exempted it.

(btw the comeback for me began with Life, no better or worse than Freedom, and accelerated with Eldorado)

voting for the dylan royal albert hall show, not bc it’s bad but bc it’s a bad choice

and in 1998!

ah, yeah, i read it the other way :)

i liked about half of life and maybe a third of this note's for you. eldorado knocked me out cold, and then the tour that preceded freedom was really special. freedom arrived basically as a given. i liked it a lot when it came out. but ragged glory was the one that really delivered on the promises of eldorado.

I am a proud Landing In Water stan

ON

(xpost to soto/neil, obviously)

Dylan's Royal Albert Hall show is his greatest record, IMHO, but I also think there should have been a rule that prohibits a recording of a decades-old concert (22 years in this case) from being eligible for the main poll. The reissues poll could've been rechristened as an "archival release" poll and that would've been fine.

Terrible math - 32 years.

I am a proud Landing In Water stan

― brimstead

otm

I guess that's why the 'this'll be my final unheard album' line really does feel real. Even the 'club' songs don't sound made for any actual dancefloor*. Almost everything sits in the middle frequencies, bottom end rounded off, everything's 3-4 mins long. He's made a bunch of fairly simple etudes to cheer himself up, not really worrying about overusing the same sources (the Lomax tapes) or using fairly underpowered sounds (I have heard MIDI covers of Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad? with a much more red-blooded piano tone). And yet it's maybe why selling every song to advert agencies makes as much sense as it does.

*though I don't know if that was really much of an aim after '93 or so, except when being asked for remixes. This might tally with my comment about Spin going mad for those EIW singles despite nothing about the European club music modes they're based on being on their radar at all.

the first thing nicolas jaar reminded me of was play

I loved Moby's debut and the Move EP is the best thing he ever recorded.

Wow the mix on that Neil Young record is hilarious. The snare is so close and tight, yet pushed sooo far up in the mix. It's the dumbest possible way to make the drums sound 'loud', so dumb that it's weird & cool, respect.

According to Young in a 2009 interview, "one record company president in Europe told me it was the most claustrophobic record he had ever heard, and I thought that was pretty cool. He put it on in his Porsche and would turn it up real loud. He just felt like it was all over him."

There was that amazing article a few years ago by a roadie who was on a pre-Play tour with Moby and Aphex, Moby certainly sounded like a dick before he was mega-famous. I voted for Play instinctually but may regret it after listening to those b-sides a few posts up.

I had my first edible (in my 40s!) late at night alone and listened to this, so it has some sentimental value for me. Some of those Play b-sides are on my "elliptical jams" playlist, so that's sentimental for me in a different way.

As far as "it's too simple to be good," my brother is a session musician of the Zappa/prog variety, and my own music is mostly a couple of chords per song, so maybe that builds my tolerance for the Moby template of a simple chord progression with layers and layers added over 5+ minutes (worked well with that edible).

The apex of Moby having a loop and doing almost nothing to it was either his Minimal House Mix of Beetlebum or, alternatively, this B-side from a few years before Play

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1PuF4MFLlE

(Tbf this is a pretty neat techstep drone, hinting at a more dynamic sideways shuffle I don't think he ever really pursued, and in someone else's hands it would have made for a great piece of cod-No U-Turn dnb, and yet it still has Moby's DNA all over it - is it the moody sustained chord or?)

Whoosh I was poking around Moby's wiki and I found this excellent post-Play takedown, I am impressed

https://web.archive.org/web/20001018090414/http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/record-reviews/m/moby/mobysongs.shtml

I thought "God Moving Over The Face Of The Waters" in 'Heat' was regarded as one of the all-time best sync choices, no?

i might actually go w/Mann's use of Moby's cover of "New Dawn Fades" (the instrumental version iirc) over a most excellent brief Mann moment -- Pacino catching up to De Niro on the 10 freeway and pulling him over.

As this compilation proves, he's musically unadventurous (case in point: "First Cool Hive" is propped up by the same beat as Milli Vanilli's "Girl, You Know It's True").

Not to dunk on on a 25 year old Pitchfork review, fgti, but this is a pretty reductive thing to say about the "Ashley's Roachclip" break

utterly baffled by the Moby stanning itt

the dude sucks, I haven't wanted to listen to Play in over 20 years, gtfo it is clearly the worst/most mercenary of these choices

Appropriate for a 90s poll that anything that isn't slamming is stanning.

I tried Everything is Wrong. What a slog! "All That I Need is to Be Loved" is awfully ugly. "Bring Back My Happiness" is so frenetic as to be unpleasantly disorienting. "What Love" is high school band proto-punk; I've not heard Moby's other forays into punk rock, nor will I be exploring them. "First Cool Hive" sounds like a mere warm up to Play, which seems quite strong by comparison.

There was that amazing article a few years ago by a roadie who was on a pre-Play tour with Moby and Aphex, Moby certainly sounded like a dick before he was mega-famous. I voted for Play instinctually but may regret it after listening to those b-sides a few posts up.

― Jordan s/t (Jordan), Wednesday, February 19, 2025 4:59 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

was this the guy who was hired basically to mime behind an unplugged keyboard? that was a fun article, I agree Moby came off like a dick (as he does in basically every story I read about him), RDJ on the other hand seemed pretty cool

my tolerance for Moby really extends exclusively to a couple of brief snippets used in HEAT, i don't want to inadvertently find myself in an accidental stanning. i did try revisiting Everything Is Wrong but got bored. it does kind of makes sense that he emerged as the critically approved human face of techno music prior to the breakout of some of the much better acts because it was something to grasp onto a little bit more and they certainly marketed him as a very specific guy and he wasn't just a name somewhere in the credits. but i think his primary use for me was as a brief gateway drug, and once i picked up Underworld, FSOL, Orbital, etc there was no looking back.

Yeash, I would theorize that a listener's reaction to Moby c. 1999 was largely dependent on how much electronic music they'd previously been exposed to. By the time Play was released, the Future Sound of London's "Papua New Guinea" was already eight years old. It remains one of the foremost examples of how something really magical can be alchemized from a handful of samples and a synth or two. I was fairly incredulous at the time that anyone was impressed by Moby's basic-as-fuck approach to the concept. I didn't think the singles were terrible, just kind of half-assed.

I'll always have my reservations about Moby, but I still enjoy Everything Is Wrong, Play, and likely quite a few singles outside of those two albums. When I was growing up at the end of the '90s, I was NOT a fan of the pop music that was dominating the media landscape, but Moby was a big exception, and for a kid who had limited exposure to electronic music and rarely heard folk records outside of Smithsonian anthologies, Play was a great novelty. There were better and more innovative artists to discover, but as a reverse gateway from strictly mainstream listening to more adventurous corners of the music world, I thought his work fit that role perfectly.

(That should probably be just gateway, not reverse gateway.)

Cornershop 100%

You just say that because the chorus name checks Trump

Album on the list that's aged best in how I think about it now vs then might be Car Wheels on a Gravel Road.

there's a good thought ― i have so much vitriol in my heart for over half of these choices that i didn't consider which ones i still ride for...

...enh, pj and public enemy, i guess. same as it ever was lol. some other decent stuff here, but wow what a lot of albums i really wanted to vote for in this category.

Crooked Rain is the one I didn't like back then that has really grown on me

Albums from this list that I liked at the time:

Bob Dylan - The Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Live 1966: The "Royal Albert Hall" Concert
Bob Dylan - Time Out of Mind
PJ Harvey - To Bring You My Love
Moby - Play
Public Enemy - Fear of a Black Planet
Public Enemy - Apocalypse '91: The Enemy Strikes Black
Sinéad O'Connor - I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got
Tricky - Maxinquaye
Radiohead - OK Computer
Neil Young - Ragged Glory

Albums I still listen to: Harvey, PE Fear, Tricky, Radiohead, Neil

I bought Play for a couple of its blues sample tracks when I was DJing a lounge/downtempo night. I think the day I bought it was the only time I ever listened to it front to back, so tonight is spin number two in 25 years.

And that indicates my interest in it. It’s… okay.

"Ragged Glory" is so good I could make a case for it being my favorite Neil Young record, and the guy has made a lot of good records.

gotta say i'd be fine never hearing a fugees song for the rest of my life

Ragged Glory is great, yeah. tons of great stuff here! even the Moby records aren't actively objectionable to me, just overrated

the ones I have never actually heard to this day: Cornershop, Fugees (aside from the hit), Lauryn Hill (ditto), Radiohead, Magnetic Fields

#old #onethread

I love The Score except for that one hit.

Album on the list that's aged best in how I think about it now vs then might be Car Wheels on a Gravel Road.

I love The Score except for that one hit.

and the song that has police sirens baked into the intro or outro, used to give me a heart attack every time

Never hearing The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill or OK Computer in 25+ years is a choice.

no, it's just how it happened

Moby is obviously a dick but I think those albums are fine (Everything Is Wrong is better than fine).

The only one on the list I've never listened to is Cornershop — is there much to it besides the hit? I like the hit but I don't feel like I've ever heard much about the album.

xp I don't understand. There's nothing stopping you from listening to them both right now. They are two of the most celebrated albums of the last three decades. Aren't you a little curious what they sound like?

tipsy, if you like the hit, you'll like the album.

Aren't you a little curious what they sound like?

nope!

I feel like the Arrested Development album is retrospectively a victim of its own P&J success. I love "Tennessee" and I liked the album fine at the time; it also opened my cloistered mind to the idea that there could be Southern hip-hop, about Southern life. If it had placed #32 on the poll I don't think it would be remembered with as much critical vitriol.

That said, it's probably still the right answer here. A lot of the albums on the list are overrated imo in the sense that they shouldn't have been top 3 albums, but I don't think any are terrible.

i'm listening to early moby and it's really good oops

The Arrested Development album is still great

Remove it from critics saying it’s going to “save hip-hop from itself” or whatever and it’s still a unique statement lyrically, musically and aesthetically and a quantifiable pop smash to boot

yeah I would still enjoy listening to that if it came on somewhere

I can’t stand ‘Shiny Happy People,"

i was with you on this for a long time! there is probably already a thread for "songs you appreciated once you tried to play the song", and for me i absolutely fell in love with the song once i had to play it and really think about how it's put together (i am now the drummer for r.e.m. btw). just an absolutely brilliant song. (note, i had the same experience with steely dan, "do it again", and guitar hero)

i revisited Play recently and it was fucking terrible, voting for that

wild to not see Stereolab on here anywhere

way too European for that crew

The ones that hold up, for me:

Lucinda Williams - Car Wheels on a Gravel Road (#1, 1998)
Neil Young - Ragged Glory (#1, 1990)
Nirvana - Nevermind (#1, 1991)
Pavement - Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain (#2, 1994)
Pavement - Slanted and Enchanted (#2, 1992)
PJ Harvey - Rid of Me (#3, 1993)
PJ Harvey - To Bring You My Love (#1, 1995)
Public Enemy - Fear of a Black Planet (#3, 1990)
R.E.M. - Automatic for the People (#3, 1992)
The Magnetic Fields - 69 Love Songs (#2, 1999)