Dandy Warhols
“Sleep”
Four chords, one progression, one plodding rhythm.and six minutes. The only changes in the sound come at a glacier’s pace, making “Sleep” the ideal song to play when you’re paying attention to something else. Do that, and your ears will perk up at certain points along the way, like the five-minute mark when you realize that they’ve been singing the same harmonic riff over and over again for quite a while, and it’s starting to sound quite wonderful. In that way, “Sleep” is representative of the brilliant thirteen tales from urban bohemia, an album that thrives on the slow, seamless segue.
-Taylor Upchurch
moe.
“She Sends Me”
Moe.’s studio work, which almost diametrically opposes its live efforts, is everything that “Sleep” is not: loud, rife with stop-on-a-dime tempo changes, and derivative in lots of vague ways. “She Sends Me” can serve as an effective moe. primer in that it sounds like a lot of music you’ve heard before, yet it comes out sounding original in a way that you can’t put a finger on. You get lyrics that could easily be either idiotic or brilliant, a faux-surfer guitar break, and in-your-face hooks that have a way of leaping to center stage, resulting in thoroughly extroverted music that can’t be the background in any setting. -T.U.
Cornershop
“Good Shit”
Spin acclaimed Cornershop’s quirky, groovy When I Was Born for the 7th Time as one of the top albums of 1997. It was a perfect blend of English pop and Indian style, with good ol’ marijuana acting as the connecting bridge. The two keystone songs, “Good Shit” and “Brimful of Asha,” go heavy on the weed references.
Here’s a tip for aspiring songwriters out there who want to gain a following and don’t care what kind of people comprise that following: write songs that are ostensibly about pot but also contain subtle indicators that the lyrics just might be about some larger, more pressing issue. Stoners everywhere will worship the statues they construct in your likeness.
-T.U.
Sonic Youth
“Teenage Riot”
On the alphabetized shelf of indie rock anthems comes “Teenage Riot,” right after R.E.M.’s “Radio Free Europe” and Pavement’s “Summer Babe.” As the lead track on the band’s stunning breakthrough, Daydream Nation, it’s seven minutes of repetitive, hypnotic riffing, avant-noise textures, and guitar wrangling fury that set the tone for the double album masterpiece. In fact, the song is so darn anthemic that we forget its subtle anti-anthem sentiments: “It takes a teenage riot to get me out of bed right now.” It was a most thrilling and brilliant way for the band to close its fertile indie period and enter the modern-rock ’90s. -V.R.