1997 Albums ----------- I have mentioned this several times, but it is important to know that I worked on this project starting in 2020 and moving backwards in time. As a result, milestones were observed in reverse. When I look at the records below, I can see the influence of three very big factors for the very first time. First, this was the year that I would have my first jobs that would bring in money that I could use to purchase albums of my own choosing. Second, I got my drivers license which allowed me to transport myself to the mall or Best Buy/Circuit City where I could personally select the music I was interested in. This means for the first time there are quite a few records on the list that were something that I purchased with my own money in the year of release. The third big event was something the whole world was going through at the same time, the Internet. We didn't yet have MP3s for music discovery, but static webpages of dial-up and Web 1.0 were a wealth of information about the latest activity and releases from my favorite artists. We had recently subscribed to AOL at home, and it opened my eyes to a range of information about pop music and a variety of other topics. .. image:: images/1997.jpg :width: 900 :alt: My favorite albums from 1997 .. raw:: html - *Primeirs Symptomes* by **Air** - An EP that serves as a great summary of what makes these guys great. Light and pleasant French electronica, with an indie rawness that made it sound more warm than slick. [*Memory*: I was aware of this disk for years before I got a copy. The physical release was always an expensive import, but through the magic of eMusic, I would get a digital copy years later, and finally had the complete catalog of this band.] - *Earthling* by **David Bowie** - I'm proud to say that I have always been a fan of 90s Bowie, even when others (even if they wont admit it now) were saying he was over the hill. Some of the electronic sounds are dated now, but it only adds to the charm. That Bowie magic is still here in a big way. "Battle for Britain" is one of my absolute favorites of his without qualification. [*Memory*: This brings together two of my biggest interests in 1997: Bowie and The Internet. Bowie was famously and early advocate for the web, and one of the first artists to fully harness its power. I vividly remember viewing a RealVideo encoded file at extremely low bitrate of the video for the lead single "Little Wonder". The sounds and the technology blew my teenage mind.] - *Karma* by **Delerium** - [**1997 FAVORITE**] - My absolute favorite by these guys also happens to be their most widely known. I do enjoy the **Sarah McLachlan** fronted mega-hit "Silence" (and the late 90s is the only time something like this would be a hit) but my favorite is the stunning "Euphoria (Firefly)". The combination of light industrial beats and world music exoticism reached a peak on this record. [*Memory*: I remember playing this for one of my friends on a drive, and their reaction was: "So this is the kind of music you are into now, huh?"] - *A Short Album About Love* by **The Divine Comedy** - The artist claims to have written this album before ever actually being in love, and I think it shows. There is something charmingly detached about this collection of love songs. A lot of the usual humour ("If") and warmth ("Everybody Knows") that would typify the second act for this guy. Probably the beginning of the fully mature work for Neil Hannon, and one of his absolute finest moments. [*Memory*: When the vinyl reissues came out in 2020, it really made me see the whole discography in a new light. I don't know if any album climbed my personal ranking more than this one. It really is the kind of thing that needs to be listened to in whole, and hits hard in its short running length.] - *So Much for the Afterglow* by **Everclear** - Music from this era hasn't aged very gracefully. Mostly a collection of post-grunge, nu-metal, and pop-punk, late 90s rock was a collection of fads that haven't generally stood the test of time. The combination of power pop and mature singer songwriter themes on display here have held up way better than most of the rock radio favorites of the day. Also a pretty killer record from start to finish, which is also a rarity for the era. [*Memory*: This is one of the few records from this year's list that I was actually into at the time of release. I really enjoyed the radio hits, but it was the deep cut "Why I Don't Believe in God" that made this a classic album of my teen years. It really connected with where I was at this point in my life, and also made me love the banjo as a rock instrument...until a bunch of hacks ruined that in the 2010s.] - *F# A# ∞* by **Godspeed You! Black Emperor** - The start of the journey for these guys, and for the genre of chamber, apocalyptic post-rock as well. Everything that they continue to do is already fully formed here. I don't come back to this one as much, because I feel like the formula was refined in the later albums, but I always enjoy it when I do. Perhaps a bit more ambient with meandering soundscapes that have been reduced in later efforts, and with a generally lighter touch than the crescendo heavy later works. [*Memory*: The **Godspeed** records seem to have always been perpetually in print on vinyl, and I was able to buy this and complete my catalog of LPs back in the dark ages of circa 2009.] - *Mi Media Naranja* by **Labradford** - In the 90s and early 2000s, **Ennio Morricone** inspired post-rock was a fairly productive sub-genre. A lot of the music sounds very much the same, and for me, this is the best product of that scene. Moody, vaguely western soundscapes, that sound hopeless and spacious. I'm not in the mood for this very often these days, but wow was I about 15-20 years ago. [*Memory*: This is the kind of record I would have never found without the AllMusicGuide. Fairly obscure when I found it, and even more obscure today, the AMG article on post-rock considered it a landmark of the genre. I'm glad that it pointed me this way.] - *Flaming Pie* by **Paul McCartney** - In retrospect, this feels like one of the most important albums in a very important career. For the first time you can hear him coming to terms with his **Beatles** past, and fully engaging with a musical future that both considers with what came before, and what lies ahead. This was also the last record with the input and presence of his collaborator in music and life, Linda. This is where things really started to come together, and the brilliant final act of a brilliant musical career had it's start. [*Memory*: This was definitely the record I was most excited for at the time. I was in the peak of my **Beatles** & **McCartney** fandom, and this was the first new release since I had discovered these artists (other than the archival "Anthology" and "Live at the BBC" releases). I remember logging into the MPL Records website to view the latest posts to the "Flamming Pie Gazette" that provided updates on the production of the record. I was so excited to hear a short clip of "The World Tonight" in RealVideo format. This record invokes nostalgia not just for the music, but also the early web.] - *Surfacing* by **Sarah McLachlan** - This is one of those records that I really enjoy, but wonder if its lasting effect has been negative. Up to this point, women's music had been arguably the highlight of 90s pop/rock. The likes of **PJ Harvey**, **Tori Amos**, **Alanis** and countless other women were making stunning, edgy work that was finding its way to the mainstream against all odds. Once the record execs got a look at this lush, pretty record, it felt like there was a massive shift in what they were willing to promote. I certainly don't want to blame **McLachlan** who is a master at this kind of music, but why couldn't it live side by side with all that other really awesome stuff that wasn't as easy to fit into the background of TV commercials? [*Memory*: I heard "Building a Mystery" for the first time while exercising at my physical therapist during a recovery session after breaking my left ankle.] - *Cherry Peel* by **Of Montreal** - Where it all began for Kevin Barnes, it sounds stunningly small compared to where he would take his music. A collection of good natured, lowfi pop songs with imaginative lyrics and melodies, this project was solid from day one. "I can't Stop Your Memory" is a tiny masterpiece of retro-pop. It almost sounds like the 1967 **Beatles** going back and making music the way they did in 1961. [*Memory*: Thanks to eMusic, I probably heard this album years before I otherwise would have. The cheap mp3 downloads allowed me to explore obscure back catalog records like this one years before streaming made this trivial.] - *Brighten the Corners* by **Pavement** - A bit more put together than we are used to from these guys, but still had enough of that shambolic magic. That said, this is clearly the work of a band and a front man who were starting to outgrow their fundamental concept. [*Memory*: About 20 years after the release of this record, Spotify radio kept playing the song "Harness Your Hopes" and I couldn't figure out why I didn't know the track. Apparently left of this album, how in the world did one of the most representatively perfect **Pavement** songs not make the track list?] - *OK Computer* by **Radiohead** - For a significant number of folks, this is the best album of the 90s, but it isn't even my top **Radiohead** album of the decade. That said, it still is a classic transition record, spanning their Britpop roots and the dreary, mixed-genre weirdness to come. I feel like the best moments here are the quiet tracks like "Exit Music (For a Film)" and "Lucky". A few albums later they would learn to rock out more effectively again. [*Memory*: Ironically (given the role they would later play in legal downloads) this album reminds me more of the Napster era than any other. I wasn't totally ready to buy into these guys as the next big thing, but I was happy to download a bunch of their stuff for no money. I now have this, and many of their albums, on both CD and vinyl.] - *Either/Or* by **Elliot Smith** - This is a stunning little collection of gentle indie rock tunes. The most beautiful anyone had made sadness sound since **Nick Drake**. [*Memory*: Like many folks, I didn't properly get into his music until his passing in 2004. It would take me to acquire this masterpiece, but it was one of the first bunch of Emusic downloads I made in early 2006.] - *Hard Normal Daddy* by **Squarepusher** - If there was ever a genre I wanted more of, it would be whatever this is. This distinctively funky brand of break beat laden, jazz-tronica is very unique. This guy is somewhat a genre unto himself. That said, the early albums all sound fairly similar, and this is far and above the best of the bunch. [*Memory*: I discovered this guy on the jazz-tronica show on XM Beyond Jazz, and was able to get his most recent work. I knew from the AMG and other sources, this was considered his finest work. I would have had to import an expensive CD copy from England on Amazon, so this was an early Amazon download for me.] - *Radiator* by **Super Furry Animals** - Warm and comfy indie rock, with some clear links to late 60s **Beatles**-like psych. This gets lumped in with the Britpop crowd, but that link is more temporal than musical. A really fun record that is quite a breath of fresh air next to the dreary American rock music of the day. [*Memory*: Another classic record that I found out about on the various music retrospective sites of the early 2000s. Back then you had to import CD copies of this kind of thing, and I did.] - *Urban Hymns* by **The Verve** - Sometimes a song can be too good that it overshadows a fantastic album. So it is with "Bitter Sweet Symphony" and this record. That song was so ubiquitous in 1997, that all the other gems on this album tend to go unremembered. That soaring symphonic sample on "Symphony" tends to obscure more subtle mini-masterpieces like "Luck Man", "Sonnet", and especially "The Drugs Don't Work". [*Memory*: I was sitting in a high school class (Tech Lab 2000) when one of my fellow students put on this CD, and I heard "Bitter Sweet Symphony" for the first time. Everyone in the classroom loved it. Weeks later I was totally sick of a song that had become massive and unavoidable. I never considered buying a copy for myself. I wouldn't pick up the disk until a year or two had passed, and I was floored by what I heard.]