McQ's Best Of 1998 Vol 6 - Mainstream Rocking Shite

The rocking side of 1998's mainstream singles explosion gets its due here, on possibly the most endearing of our 1998 mixes.

Here's the Spotify link.  Enjoy!

About The Artists/Albums/Songs Represented On This Mix:

1. Money City Maniacs - Sloan: We'll be profiling two cuts here from Cheap Trick-ish Canadian power-pop quartet Sloan's stellar fourth studio album Navy Blues, starting with the band's most popular track ever, Money City Maniacs, which was voted the 12th greatest Canadian song of all time in a turn-of-the-century national Canuck poll. 

2. What Makes You Happy - Liz Phair: To my ears, no album from 1998 has aged better than Liz Phair's third album Whitechocolatespacegg. A fully intentional shift towards a more mainstream sound, Whitechocolatespacegg received mixed reviews at the time of its release, perceived as the work of a highly skilled craftswoman and once cutting-edge artist who no longer seemed too concerned with shaking up the status quo. While to a degree those critical insights were correct (as Phair herself restates at spaceegg's end "It's nice to be liked / but it's better by far to get paid"), that starving-artist bias blinded critics looking for another Exile In Guyville gender-politics manifesto from seeing what a hook-filled triumph Whitechocolatespaceegg was. Well no more. By far my favorite album represented on this mix, we're featuring four tracks from Whitechocolatespaceegg, starting with this nifty "permission-granted-to-self-empower" number here. 

3. Flagpole Sitta - Harvey Danger: If there's a better late 90s guilty pleasure than Harvey Danger's Seattle-grunge-scene-skewering Flagpole Sitta, I haven't heard it. Taken from the University Of Washington journalism student collective's debut album Where Have All The Merrymakers Gone?.

4. Pretty Fly (For A White Guy) - The Offspring: Powered by three huge singles, The Offspring's fifth album Americana captured the band at the absolute height of their mainstream punk-pop powers, and leading the way was this silly, monster smash that topped the polls in nine countries outside the states, helping make Americana one of the best selling punk albums in history.

5. The Trick Is To Keep Breathing - Garbage: Though not quite as popular or successful as Push It, I Think I'm Paranoid, or Special - the three other singles released from Garbage's alt-hit sophomore LP Version 2.0 - I've always had a soft spot for the record's moody perseverance anthem The Trick Is To Keep Breathing, which would go on to inspire an episode title for the WB teen drama One Tree Hill.

6. Jesus Says - Ash: After recruiting vocalist/guitarist Charlotte Hatherly to join the act, Irish rockers Ash's second release Nu-Clear Sounds changed up their sound so much from their beloved previous release 1977 it threw fans for a loop and is now widely considered the low point in the band's discography. That said, I've always loved this Song 2-styled hard-charger from the record, and consider it one of my favorite numbers on this mix. 

7. Never There - Cake: While not the band's most popular song today, Never There from the Sacramento funk-rock outfit's third album Prolonging The Magic is the best charting song of their career, propelled in part by an amusing music video that was a big  MTV hit. 

8. My Favourite Game - The Cardigans: Tasty power-pop courtesy of Swedish alt-rockers The Cardigans fourth full-length Gran Turismo.

9. All My Best Friends Are Metalheads - Less Than Jake: Another playful ditty that feels like it could have only come from 1998, taken from Gainesville, Florida-based ska-punkers Less Than Jake's third album Hello Rockview.

10. Hideaway - The Olivia Tremor Control: Okay, this one here is a bit of a cheat, as a band doesn't get more indie (as opposed to mainstream) than The Olivia Tremor Control, who along with The Apples In Stereo and Neutral Milk Hotel, were one of the original trio of Elephant 6 label signees, but I just felt that the Pet Sounds-inflected Hideway here, the lead single from the band's 1998 album Black Foliage: Animation Music Volume 1, flowed best with the other material on this mix. 

11. Johnny Feelgood - Liz Phair: Interpretations of this Whitechocolatespacegg song vary wildly. Is this really an old-skool Phair number about a kinky, possibly violent lover? Or could "Johnny Feelgood" actually be a nickname for Phair's infant son James, who was also the inspiration for the album's metaphoric title?

12. Juicy, Juicy, Juice - Royal Trux: Another true-blue indie act that just felt like they fit better here, I rationalize my inclusion of this track from the Neil Haggerty/Jennifer Herrema indie-noise-duo's seventh studio album Accelerator on the one super-flimsy excuse that the shambolic Accelerator is the most highly regard album of the underground act's near two decade career. 

13. Circles - Soul Coughing: The biggest hit of oddball New York alt-rock/alt-hip hop quartet Soul Coughing's career, Circles gained additional fame when the El Oso song was employed as the backing track to a Cartoon Network promo that playfully mocked animation's incessant use of repeating backgrounds.

14. Road Rage - Catatonia: The first of two European hits we're featuring on this mix from Welsh rock outfit Catatonia's triple-platinum breakout second full-length International Velvet, Road Rage was the album's most critically celebrated track (winning several song of the year awards in the UK), but also its most controversial. Based on the 1996 tabloid murder of Lee Harvey by his girlfriend, Tracie Andrews (who stabbed Harvey over thirty times with a pen knife while he was driving his car, and then tried to convince police the murder was committed by another driver who flipped-out in a state of "road rage") the song was ravaged in the press by Harvey's parents, who felt the band was exploiting their son's death for commercial gain.

15. The Kids Aren't Alright - The Offspring: Though it didn't chart quite as well initially as Americana's other two singles Pretty Fly (For A White Guy) and Why Don't You Get A Job?, The Kids Aren't Alright stands today as the enduring Garden Grove punk outfit's most listened to song. 

16. Bad Old Man - Babybird: Really enjoyed discovering this dark, Arctic Monkeys-anticipating minor UK hit from Babybird (aka English songwriter/multi-instrumentalist/novelist Stephen Jones). It originally appeared on Jone's 1998 sophomore release There's Something Going On, which was the first Babybird album to employ the services of Jone's live band in the studio.

17. Ride - Liz Phair: Here's another hooky gem from the album Whitechocolatespacegg, which featured a number of prominent guest artists in significant supporting rolls, including REM's Peter Buck, Mike Mills, and Bill Berry, REM producer Scott Lit, and Wilco multi-instrumental LeRoy Bach in addition to Phair's frequent Chicago collaborators like Brad Wood and future Brian Wilson guitarist Scott Bennett.

18. What It's Like - Everlast: The biggest hit of LA rock-rapper and former House Of Pain MC Eric Francis Schrody's career, this lead single from the future Eminem feuder's second solo outing Whitey Ford Sings The Blues probably should have gone on our Hip Hop v. Rap Rock mix, but Everlast's vocal delivery and the acoustic approach just seemed to feel better here. 

19. The Bartender And The Thief - Stereophonics: The lead 1998 single from still active Welsh Brit-rock institution Stereophonic's breakout 1999 sophomore full-length Performance And Cocktails, this song initiated a long run of major successes across the pond, which produced six #1 UK albums and a litany of European Festival headlining gigs including the granddaddy of them all, Glastonbury, in 2002, and Suffolk's Latitude festival just last July. 

20. Get Myself Arrested - Gomez: Nancy's Favorites mix will feature a couple more songs from Gomez's 1998 Mercury Prize-winning debut Bring It On, which stunningly beat out Massive Attack's Mezzanine and The Verve's Urban Hymns to take the award, but for now, we'll just enjoy this casual number that perfectly showcases the record's relaxed, bluesy approach. 

21. She Says What She Means - Sloan: As popular as Money City Maniacs is in Sloan's native Canada, I must admit my personal favorite from the Nova Scotia vets' 1998 release Navy Blues is the album's Beatlesque second single presented here. 

22. Shimmer - Fuel: The lead single from Tennessee-bred, Philadelphia-groomed alt-rockers Fuel's smart debut LP Sunburn, Shimmer would prove to be just the first of many hit singles for the band over the half-decade to follow. 

23. Big Tall Man - Liz Phair: One last sassy rocker here from Whitechocolatespacegg.

24. One Week - Barenaked Ladies: It's as mainstream as songs come, but I've always loved this intentionally nonsensical, upbeat, pop-culture-slinging nugget from Canada's Barenaked Ladies and their four full-length Stunt, and I am not alone.  The song was the band's biggest hit in the States (though not their biggest in native Canada), and has been featured as a soundtrack element in many movies, video games, and television shows in the years since, including American Pie, 10 Things I Hate About You, and The West Wing. It even earned the ultimate badge of honor in inspiring a Weird Al parody, Jerry Springer.

25. Mulder And Scully - Catatonia: The first, best-selling single from the album International Velvet, it is my favorite track on the album as well, no matter how much critical heat was thrown Road Rage's way. I mean, how can an inveterate Sci-Fi geek such as myself not dig a song as catchy as this that cleverly employs the famed X-File agents as investigators of the eternally strange, inexplicable mysteries of love? 

McQ's Best Of 1998 Vol 5 - Mainstream Clubby Shite

Primarily a mainstream disco/R&B mix, plus a few tasty outliers that just seem to fit, Volume 5 here begins our two-mix look at the vast number of mainstream hits that made 1998 such an appealing singles year.

We'll take a listen to the rock side of this equation on Vol 6 - Mainstream Rocking Shite, but for now, lace up your dancing shoes and enjoy!

Here's the Spotify Link!

About The Artists/Albums/Songs Represented On This Mix:

1. Feel It - The Tamperer & Maya: Many songs featured on this mix were born out of the Euro-club scene, but maybe none more so than Italian dance group The Tamperer & Maya's Feel It, from their only album Fabulous. As the story goes, producer/band member Mario Fargetta went vacationing in Ibiza the year prior and realized the club kids went craziest every time The Jackson's Can You Feel It was played, so he and writing partner Alex Farlofi set to work on a loose remix, and recruited American singer Maya Days to deliver it. The resulting single was one of the biggest songs of 1998 across Europe. 

2. Everything Is Everything - Ms. Lauryn Hill: So many strong tunes to choose from on The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill. Going into this mix, I assumed that the two songs I would profile here would come from a pool that included the album's three most popular songs after Doo Wop (That Thing) - Ex-Factor, Nothing Even Matters, To Zion - and/or the great hidden track that closes the record Tell Him.  But in the end, two slightly less heralded tracks  - the more militant Everything Is Everything and the album's most intense cut When It Hurts So Bad - just seemed to gel best with the rest of the material here.

3. Le Mobilier - Rinocersoe: This lead 1998 single from Rinocersoe's 1999 second album Installation Sonore might be my favorite track on this entire mix, and comes to us courtesy of a pair of French dance-rock moonlighters, Jean-Phillippe Free and Patrice Carrie, who have maintained their daytime professions as practicing psychologists throughout their still ongoing musical career.

4. Natacha - Czerkinsky: A quirky little tune in the Serge Gainsbourg tradition from the eponymously titled 1998 solo debut of Algerian-born Frenchman Gregory Czerkinsky.

5. The Boy Is Mine - Brandy & Monica: Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the top selling US single of 1998, which may be the only song in history to be the featured lead single from two separate albums by two separate acts, as it was for both Brandy's 1998 album Never Say Never and Monica's 1998 album The Boy Is Mine. Written as a conceptual gender reversal of Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney's 1982 duet The Girl Is Mine, The Boy Is Mine also went on to win the 1999 Grammy for Best R&B Performance By A Duo Or Group.

6. Frank Sinatra - Miss Kittin & The Hacker: Almost didn't included this song as its aggressively crude lyrics felt so jarring when set against the lyrically safe mainstream numbers that surround it, but to many this is the definitive anthem of the late 90s electroclash scene, which aimed to break-up the vanilla monotony of much of the era's synth pop and techno music by infusing it with a heavy dose of songwriting structure, performance art, and dead pan humor. It originally appeared on the French duo's 1998 EP Champagne, and then later on their 2001 debut full length First Album.

7. Music Sounds Better With You - Stardust: So all year long, I've been asking myself, how the hell is Music Sounds Better With You, the only song ever recorded by the French trio Stardust, presently considered the very best song released in 1998, at least as laid out by critical aggregator www.acclaimedmusic.net? I'm mean, it's a sweet dance floor jam, but there's so many 1998 songs that are so much better (just on this mix alone, I would take Le Mobilier, This Boy Is Mine, Matrimony, Machistador, No Regrets, When It Hurts So Bad, A Trip Into Space, and Ceigo, Sordomuda over Music Sounds Better in a heartbeat). But then, with a little research, came my aha moment! One third of Stardust was Thomas Bangalter of the perennially overrated Daft Punk, so blame the residual robot effect for the critical-overvaluing of this otherwise enjoyable '98 disco hit.

8. Matrimony: MaybeYou - Maxwell: From a famous song I like but have issues with to a slightly lesser known number I flat-out love, this track from former Brooklyn pizza delivery boy and neo-soul pioneer Maxwell's third full-length Embrya might be the smoothest booty-call track of 1998. 

9. ...Baby One More Time - Britney Spears: One of the best selling singles in history (over ten million individual copies), Britney Spears' debut single, which would later appear on her 1999 debut album of the same name, was released when she was just sixteen years old.

10. Machistador - -M-: I know next to nothing about this still active French artist other than I really enjoy this funky 1998 single that originally appeared on his 1997 debut album La Bapteme.

11. The First Night - Monica: Released as The Boy Is Mine the album's second single in the summer of 1998 after the earlier smash success of the Brandy-collaboration title track, Monica's "do-I-or-don't-I-pondering" The First Night did almost as well, also hitting number one in the weeklies, and ending the year as the #18 best selling song on the Billboard Hot 100. 

12. Sexy Boy - Air: We've already said a bunch about Air's fantastic 1998 electro-pop album Moon Safari in the write-ups for our 1998 Best Of The Best and Trip-Hoppin' To Those Big Beats mixes, but I also wanted to highlight the album's more playful disco side, so the slightly heavier-hitting Sexy Boy just barley wins out over the equally appealing Kelly Watch The Stars as representative of that facet of the album here .

13. Outside - George Michael: Outside, the lead original single for his greatest hits collection Ladies And Gentleman: The Best Of George Michael, was George Michael's first new song following his arrest in Will Rodgers Memorial Park for engaging in a lewd act in public, and the forced coming out that followed. As the song's title suggests, it's a direct response to those events, but more importantly, the song also signaled a return by Michael to his signature livelier, funkier sound following a couple years pursuing a heavier, downbeat musical direction that had been turning off his fans in droves.

14. It's Not Right But It's Okay - Whitney Houston: Despite being a huge club hit in 1998, most of the critical attention for this lead single from Whitney's fourth full-length My Love Is Your Love focused on how specifically it should be interpreted as dialogue between Whitney and her own rumored-to-be-philandering husband Bobby Brown.

15. Beat Goes On - The All Seeing I: The 1967 Sonny & Cher standard got a surprise reworking in 1998 with this hit UK cover single by British electronic act The All Seeing I.

16. I Am The Sub-Librarian - Piano Magic: Doubt this 1998 lead ambient-pop single from London's long-running Glenn Johnson-led art-rock collective Piano Magic's 1999 album Low Birth Weight was much of a fixture in clubs back in the day, but it just seemed to fit with the other tunes in this mix.  

17. King Of My Castle - Wamdue Project: Originally recorded in 1997 by New York producer Chris Brann under his Wamdue project alias, the song took off in clubs in 1998 when Roy Malone crafted a remixed version for his album Program Yourself. 

18. Love Like This - Faith Evans: Produced by Sean "Puffy" Combs and built around a Chic sample, this lead single from Faith Evens' sophomore effort Keep The Faith was one of the biggest hits of her career and a nominee for Best Female R&B Performance at the 1999 Grammies. 

19. Daydream In Blue - I Monster: Strange evolution for this well-known reworking of The Wallace Collection's Daydream, Daydream In Blue first appeared on the band's 1998 debut These Are Our Children, but due to complications that sprung from I Monster member Dean Honer also being a part of The All Seeing I (see #15 on this mix), wasn't released as a single proper until 2001. 

20. No Regrets - Robbie Williams: I've always loved this Robbie Williams breakup song of another nature, in which he tries to make peace with his decision to leave his previous band Take That. The second single off of his 1998 album I've Been Expecting You, it features allstar backing vocals from the Pet Shop Boys' Neil Tennant and The Divine Comedy's Neil Hannon, and went on to reach number 5 on the UK charts. 

21. A Rose Is Still A Rose - Aretha Franklin: Written and produced by Lauryn Hill for Franklin for Aretha's 1998 album of the same name, and profiled in a popular music video that was production designed by our own Nancy's amazing lifelong friend Ron Norsworthy, A Rose Is Still A Rose became a surprise hit for the Aretha forty-plus years into her career. 

22. Music Makes You Lose Control - Les Rythmes Digitales: A minor club hit, Music Makes You Lose Control was the second lead single for Les Rythmes Digitales' (one of the many aliases for renowned, multiple grammy winning DJ/Producer Stuart Price) 1999 album Darkdancer.

23. When It Hurts So Bad - Ms. Lauryn Hill: Our final inclusion from The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill has always been, for me,  the album's most emotionally potent song. 

24. a trip into space - Spearmint: Just love this ebullient early number from London indie poppers Spearmint. The title track to their 1998 7" EP, it was later included on their 1999 album A Week Away as well. 

25. Believe - Cher: One of the most successful singles of all time, selling in excess of 11 million copies, the title track from Cher's 22nd album Believe was also the first hit song to ever feature the use of autotune to dramatically pitch-alter vocals. So the next time you hear some second-rate contemporary-pop, indie, hip hop or R&B track that obnoxiously overuses the effect, blame Cher.

26. Ciega, Sordomuda - Shakira: How did I miss this one when it first came out? It's such a great freakin' pop song!!! In many ways the song that broke Shakira in the US, this lead single from her fourth album Donde Estan Las Ladrones was her first to hit number one on Billboard's US Hot Latin Charts, and was a monster hit across all of Latin and South America as well, reaching #1 in every non-island Western Hemisphere country south of the Rio Grande. Translating into English as "blind, deaf, dumb" the song conveys the disoriented physical excitement Shakira feels whenever her boyfriend draws near, but I gotta admit, that same description applies to me this year whenever I hear this song, making it my natural closer for this 1998 Mainstream Clubby Shite mix. 

McQ's Best Of 1998 Vol 4 - Early Indie / Aging Alts

Just as with hard rock, college-oriented rock was undergoing a seismic stylistic shift in 1998, with alt-rock's hard-edged emphasis on deconstructed, messy, atonal dynamics and Brit-Pop's love of large-scale anthems giving way to a weirder, gentler, more introspective sensibility anchored around the recombination of previously unconnected styles and everything-but-the-kitchen-sink instrumental arrangements.  

In short, overeducated white boy rock was shifting from an forward-looking obsession with assaultive noise to a backward-looking obsession with nostalgic beauty, and this mix highlights some of the 1998's best efforts to be found on both sides of that transition.

Here's the Spotify Link. Enjoy!

About The Artists/Albums/Songs Represented On This Mix:

1. Opus 40 - Mercury Rev: Devastated by the poor sales of their 1995 release See You On The Other Side (a record the act felt was their best to date), Mercury Rev was in utter disarray by 1996 - battling debt, addiction issues, and band member and label departures. But then, while in self-imposed exile, frontman Jonathan Donahue turned to some old children's records to help ease his depression, a lightbulb went off, and a new musical direction for the band was born. After tentatively reconnecting with guitarist Sean "Grasshopper" Mackowiak, the two relocated to the Catskills, enlisted the help of neighbors/local legends Garth Hudson and Levon Helm of The Band, and set about laying down the basic tracks for one final album that would be "just for them." The end result, six months later, was Deserter Songs, the biggest success, both commercially and critically, of their careers, and an undisputed indie classic.  Opus 40 here, one of the first two songs they recorded for the album, celebrates the Catskills region that helped kindle their creative rebirth.

2. Party Hard - Pulp: The fourth and final single from Pulp's This Is Hardcore has always ranked amongst my favorite cuts from the album, a nifty rocker that nonetheless perfectly encapsulates the album's dark as night, pleasure-seeking-leads-to-emotional-bankruptcy vibe.

3. Holland, 1945 - Neutral Milk Hotel: Despite its upbeat, almost racuous nature, the only single from NMH's In An Airplane Over The Sea is a deep, poetic song of loss and remembrance - seemingly written from the perspective of Anne Frank's father (the only surviving member of the family) trying to pick up the pieces just after World War II has ended - that has touched many, many lives in a profound way.  Pitchfork recently ranked it as the #7 song of the 90s. It is also the song that Stephen Colbert, who lost his father and two brothers in a plane crash when he was ten, famously chose to close out the final episode of The Colbert Report.

4. Quincy Punk Episode - Spoon: Though it was a commercial flop at the time of its release, Spoon's sophomore outing A Series Of Sneaks has, over time, become one of the enduring Texas-indie act's most revered albums. Punkier and more Pixie-ish than most of what would follow, it is nonetheless a seriously catchy effort, and those tight hooks would ultimately land the album on several retrospective Best Albums Of The 90s lists in the years since. 

5. The Tale Of Dusty And Pistol Pete - The Smashing Pumpkins: Coming on the heels of the death of his mother and the smash success of previous release Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness's top ballads 1979 and Tonight, Tonight, Billy Corgan was in little mood to rock, and the result was the mellowest, most delicate album of the band's career, 1998's Adore. Many fans rejected the album at the time of its release, but in retrospect, it's actually one of the band's finest efforts, filled with winning numbers like Perfect, Ava Adore, Apples and Oranges and Dusty and Pistol Pete here that successfully recapture the feel of those Mellon Collie ballads, and rating just behind Mellon Collie and Siamese Dream for me in the band's overall discography.

6. Cancer For The Cure - Eels: One of Electro-Shock Blues most jagged, acidic songs, the American Beauty soundtrack inclusion finds Eel's frontman Mark Everett metaphorically spewing bile at the Cure For Cancer research industry, which, after losing his own mother to the disease, he felt was misguidedly allocating far too much of its capital on curative research rather than discovering preventative measures, or as he put, "Like healing a wound instead of changing things, so the wound wouldn't happen in the first place."

7. It Could Have Been A Brilliant Career - Belle & Sebastian: Another melancholy gem from Belle & Sebastian's third full-length The Boy With The Arab Strap, the album's opener is a number easily misinterpreted lyrically, as the strokes referenced in the song, at least until the final verse, are not actual medical strokes, but "strokes of genius" that the song's many characters then fail to follow-up with further achievements.

8. Tropicalia - Beck: Though widely regarded as one of Beck's finest albums, I've never been as huge a fan of his 1998 Nigel Goodrich-produced, Grammy-winning Mutations (much preferring 2001's Sea Change and 2014's Morning Phase amongst Beck's mellower, sparer efforts), but the Odelay follow up does a have a few tracks I've always enjoyed, starting with record's lead single Tropicalia here, a tip of the hat to the Brazilian psychedelic band Os Mutantes, whom may have inspired the album's title.

9. Cruel Sun - Sparklehorse: As stylistically varied as just about any 1998 release, we're going to be profiling two more songs from Sparklehorse's magnificent Good Morning Spider on this mix, starting with my favorite of the album's several edgier alt-rockers Cruel Sun.

10. Cumpleanos Total - Los Planetas: Comparisons to R.E.M. are inevitable when listening to Spain's biggest indie act of the late 90s, Los Planetas. This is the first of three songs scattered over our '98 mixes that we'll be featuring from what is arguably the band's finest album, 1998's Una Semana En El Motor De Un Autobus (A Week In The Engine Of A Bus). 

11. Hope - R.E.M.: The band's first release following the departure of drummer Bill Berry and their first to ever include lyrics in the liner notes, UP saw R.E.M. shifting into Eno-esque electronic territory. I thought it was a tepid disaster when I first gave it a go in 1998, but while I'd never call it a top tier R.E.M. effort, I have warmed to it a touch over the years, and now find myself regularly drawn into the album's moody melancholy and lyrical obsession with the religion/spirituality vs. science/proven fact conflict, a theme which dominates my favorite song from the album Hope.

12. This Is Hardcore - Pulp: If This Is Hardcore's album cover offends you, you aren't alone. Nancy often reminds me it's her least favorite album cover ever, and female-championing graffiti artists had a heyday with it when posters of it appeared throughout the UK in 1998. And such negative reactions were exactly the aim when the band elicited the help of Peter Saville, digital artist Howard Wakefield and painter John Currin (who specialized in exaggerated images of the uncomfortably posed female forms) to capture the empty spiritual essence of the album's centerpiece title track, which depicts, in shocking fashion, a sexual relationship robbed of all genuine intimacy thanks to the male's increasing infatuation with imitating the cliches of porn.

13. My Descent Into Madness - Eels: Beautiful, airy pop song with a terrifying underbelly here, as E takes the drugged-into-contentment, drifting lyrical POV of his sister Elizabeth, who was institutionalized for a time to counter her suicidal tendencies, a near-last-resort measure that proved sadly futile.

14. Sunday - Sonic Youth: Following their profitable stint on 1995's Lollapalooza tour, Sonic Youth were able to construct their own recording studio, and for the first time found themselves in possession of something they had never had before when recording - time. And an abundance of time is the defining trait of the album that followed, 1998's A Thousand Leaves, which found the band stretching out their songs like never before, emphasizing the elongated interplay of Thurston Moore and Lee Rinaldo's guitars over the tighter, stabbing songs structures that defined the band's records immediately prior. Personally, though uneven, A Thousand Leaves has always rated among my favorite Sonic Youth albums.  I've just always jived with their tenth full-length's more relaxed pace and lighter (slightly lighter, this is Sonic Youth after all) feel. Sunday, the album's one single, at just five under minutes, is the record's second shortest song. 

15. Smokin' - Super Furry Animals: While the crowd-pleasing, mullet-fetishizing title track to Super Furry Animals '98 EP Ice Hockey Hair is a hell of a track on its own, I've always felt the EP's standout track was the smokin' Smokin' included here.

16. Ghost Of His Smile - Sparklehorse: Sparklehorse displays their playful, indie-pop side here with Ghost Of His Smile, for many Good Morning Spider's best song. 

17. Help The Aged - Pulp: This Is Hardcore's lead single and biggest hit is another bleak seedy wonder in which lead singer Jarvis Cocker, having reached his mid-thirties, envisioned his advancing age as a new pickup angle. Greatest pity-f*** song ever? You be the judge.

18. Holes - Mercury Rev: Here's one more from Mercury Rev's Deserter's Songs, this time the album's poetic, childlike opener Holes, which though quite specifically informed by what the band itself had experienced in the difficult years leading up to Deserter's Songs, is a lament of youthful ambitions never quite achieved to which most can relate.

19. Ghost - Neutral Milk Hotel: While Ghost, like much of Neutral Milk Hotel's In The Aeroplane Over The Sea, has lyrics that can be interpreted through the prism of Anne Frank, band leader Jeff Mangum has stated he first conceived this song while singing to an actual ghost he was dead certain he had locked in his bathroom.  Crazy how some songs come into existence.