Word: sound
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Where Nine Inch Nails are black, Skinny Puppy were brown. They had an industrial sound but Canadian accents, guilt but no sex appeal, jumpy synth and Depeche Mode drums but little popular success. Drugs and varied hardships put them in deep decline starting in '93, just as they were signing to major-label American Recordings. Now they've returned to their roots with Nettwerk Productions' double-release of their greatest hits and the corresponding B-sides, although it's mainly an excuse to eliminate the band's singles from the catalog. The two albums, with earlier tracks containing more guitar...
...Beck of 1994 would. Beck's first album, Mellow Gold, was seeped in the highly personal and visceral world of grunge: perhaps the linchpin line of "Loser" was "chokin' on the splinters." The album captured a miserable white-trash vibe within a sample- and distortion-laden sound that reeked of personal "Beercan" experience. It was a slightly grating album that was heavy on engineering but still naive--or at least straightforward. With Odelay and now Midnite Vultures, Beck has left these Mountain Dew-soaked roots for something more rarefied and cosmopolitan. Even his voice seems to have gotten higher. Grooviness...
...sixth track, "Peaches and Cream," has food and sex on the brain again, and it marshals the R&B sound that was shyly woven into the more frenetic first half of the album. Although this track has a full-bodied sound and great lyrics like "You make a garbage man scream," the next few tracks are the weakest on the album. They're too slow--one of the most important differences between Midnite Vultures and previous albums is the faster tempo that puts several layers of samples and synth between us and Beck's sometimes too languorous voice...
...When listening to Midnite Vultures for the first time, it's easy to be overwhelmed by its crackling originality. The album's main fault is that such a hectic blend of music eventually sounds a little thin and is more exciting as an artistic maneuver on Beck's part than as a long-term fixture in a CD-changer. It's the most straightforward (and final) track, in fact, that will probably become Midnite Vulture's best-remembered track. "Debra" is a funk-love send-up; its proto-cheesy sound is so robust that all irony melts away...
...Willennium, Will Smith collaborates with artists such as Eve, Tatyana Ali '02, Breeze, Lil' Kim and Kel Spencer. The sound varies from the clever satire of pop culture in "Freakin' It" to the powerful "Afro Angel," which uses the simplicity of its lyrics as a highly evocative tool. Willennium thumbs its nose at apocalyptic prophecy, evidenced by the irony of the album's first song, "I'm Comin'," where Smith tells his audience to relax about the millennium because "It's not the second coming of Christ, it's the first coming of me." Smith's collaboration with MC Lyte...