Radio X's 25 Best Indie Albums of 1990

These days, most listicles are pseudo-spam, featuring dry, flaccid writing increasingly composed by AI-generated content farms.

But this particular list is really good!  The choices are rather narrow, covering mainly British indie rock from a single year (1990), but that happens to be the year that I spent more time listening to the radio than in any other year before or since (by far).  These bands were all over alternative radio in 1990, I was glued to Toronto's CFNY and not a day went by when I didn't hear a song by 5-10 of those bands.

I can group the albums on this list into categories:

1.  I listened to the albums religiously

Inspiral Carpets, Happy Mondays, Charlatans UK, The Cure.  Madchester was alive and well on my boombox throughout 1990.  Plus, you had the Cure discovering remix culture and becoming club staples for a year!  The Inspirals' "Life" is easily the best album in this group, and one of the most underrated albums from the late '80's-early '90's class of British indie rock pre-Britpop. The version I listened to was, naturally, the North American release that featured four tracks not on the UK/Europe edition.  Those extra tracks included the singles "Move" and "Commercial Rain" and boosted my impression of "Life" as a veritable "greatest hits" album masquerading as a debut album.    

2.  I didn't buy the album that year but these bands lived rent-free in my head because the singles were on the radio all the time.

The Beloved, Depeche Mode.  "Your Love Takes Me Higher" was a staple of Chris Sheppard's RPM nights, and I probably can't praise him enough.  More than anyone else, he was the DJ who turned me on to dance/club music.  That said, this is as good a place as any to note that Shep has been living off the grid for years, and even his close friends and family are unsure of his whereabouts.   

3.  I liked a select few singles and radio staples, but only bought the albums years later.

The La's, Ride, Cocteau Twins, Jane's Addiction, Sonic Youth, James.  

The Cocteau Twins are a major regret of mine, they were far too weird for me in 1990 but I have since elevated them to a godlike tier, at their best there was nobody better and it's a shame that I passed on seeing them live in the 90's.  By 1990, Jane's Addiction had become alternative rock royalty. You didn't have to like them, but you knew exactly who they were. Their music was impossible to escape, and whether or not you were a fan, you had to respect both their talent and at least a handful of their songs.  For me, Jane's Addiction always tried a little too hard to be provocative, their music was overly reliant on classic rock tropes, and I have never -- in almost any genre and any era -- taken much to LA bands.  And yet, I attended the first Lollapalooza and they pretty much blew me away and turned me into a fan (just in time for their breakup/extended hiatus). 

4.  I liked a select few singles and radio staples, but never did buy/hear the full album.

Breeders, Soup Dragons, Lightning Seeds, Sundays, Teenage Fanclub, PWEI.  Here I want to give a apecial mention to "Pure" by the Lightning Seeds, which was one of my favourite singles of the year, and is one of the best wistful/sad but ultimately uplifting pop songs you'll ever hear. The Soup Dragons' "I'm Free" was destined to be a one hit wonder but that one hit was wondrous during the few months that it was all over the radio. 

5.  Miscellaneous, was aware of their placement within the greater indie rock sphere but wouldn't have called myself a fan.  Going through them one by one: 

They Might Be Giants.  They annoyed me then, and they annoy me now.  

Carter USM.  Another annoying band but ultimately you had to kind of adore them because they were so committed to their style, a sort of hyper-British shouty electro punk.  By 1992 they were one of the biggest bands in Britain, but their peak was short lived and they were shunted aside once Britpop made its ascendance.  

The Mission.  Never cared much for them, or the Sisters of Mercy vs Mission feud.  The Sisters were immeasurably better, and I don't think there's any serious dispute about that these days.

The Fall.  My first memory of then-contemporary Elton John was "I Guess That's Why They Call It the Blues", because that was the song that was in the charts when I first started actively following the charts at age 9.  Thus, by sheer coincidence of timing, that's a signature Elton John song for me.  Similarly with The Fall, "Telephone Thing" was my first association with their music, leading to me to mistakenly believe that they were a quirky TMBG-like oddball band.  I'd learn what they were really about later on, and even see them play live twice.  To use another example, with the aforementioned Cocteau Twins, that first association was "Iceblink Luck". Every time I've heard it over the past thirty years, it has carried a special twinge of nostalgia, as though it has always been—and always will be—their signature song, even though it really isn't.  But at least that's still part of the Cocteau Twins' peak run.   

House of Love.  Great band that sounds better now than they did then.  

Nick Cave.  I didn't care much for Cave back in 1990, but as I've grown older I've come to appreciate his gruff intensity and deeply personal reflections on aging and mortality.

Pixies.  I recently wrote about my non-fandom of the Pixies.  I think I used to switch off the radio or change the channel when their music came on.  I didn't like Black Francis' voice and didn't connect to their music.  In my defense, "Velouria" was the radio hit in 1990, and I don't think it's aged well at all compared to most of their classic material. 

Eurovision 2026

The Eurovision final delivered the goods last night: strong performances, an unusually balanced jury vote that left the competition wide open heading into the televote, and a somewhat surprising but certainly deserving winner.   When all the numbers are tallied, I think the fears of disastrous viewership numbers due to this year's "controversies" will be  mostly unfounded.  Historically, Eurovision viewership peaked in 2016, when 42 countries took part. From 2023 to 2025, 37 countries competed and audience figures remained remarkably steady. This year, five countries that participated in 2025 chose to boycott, but several others returned, resulting in a net decline of just two countries, from 37 to 35.

Early reports indicate that viewership is down, but countries representing 80 million people sat out, so some drop is expected.  Among participating countries, Germany's numbers dipped slightly but remained strong.  Numbers in France and the UK took a significant hit, but both performed poorly in the final: the UK got zero points from the televote, and France were near the bottom.  I actually felt a 

bit bad for both. I have followed LOOK MUM NO COMPUTER's YT channel for years and he's an incredible talent, but is completely the wrong guy for this kind of competition.  He tried hard but the UK organizers knew they were throwing him to the wolves, and the UK public hated the song, so why should anyone else get invested in it?  I liked the French song but the public obviously didn't, and Eurovision is all about forging an instant connection with a finicky public.  To sum up, viewership appears to have declined most sharply in countries who competed with sub-standard songs.  People are less likely to watch if they don't like the song and they perceive that their broadcaster is simply phoning it in with a poor song and/or performer.  Among the countries that fielded competitive entries, I'm sure the viewership numbers will turn out just fine.  

As for the boycotting countries, in last year's Eurovision, Ireland and Slovenia failed to qualify for the final, while Spain and Iceland finished 24th and 25th. Iceland were crushed by the jury vote and earned zero points, possibly due to the plagiarism scandal regarding their blatant rip-off of an Israeli song.  The Netherlands had a respectable 12th place finish.  What can we learn from these results? It's much easier to stage a "boycott" when your songs and artists have badly underperformed, necessitating a one-year reset.  Pointing fingers at others and engaging in a largely performative "boycott" as a cover for those failures is a convenient face-saving excuse, nothing more.  

As for Israel supposedly manipulating the televoting, they finished third, so I guess they didn't manipulate hard enough.  More surprising was their 8th place finish in the jury votes (what, were those voted manipulated too??)  I have yet to see any evidence that Israel engages in campaigning that is any different than what many other countries are doing virtually every year.   And all of it pales in comparison to the palm greasing that goes on every year in the lead up to awards shows like the Oscars.  

Instead of asinine conspiracy theories, let's just focus on the more obvious and sensible explanation: a lot of people really liked "Michelle".  Heck, even the protesters in the audience were dancing during the semi-final! And the mathematics of what it takes to win hasn't changed since my post from last year.  We should be able to agree on one thing however: no amount of campaigning could possibly undermine the integrity of the competition than opening the voting for the final before the first song is performed.

Linking Philadelphia soul and the Philadelphia Orchestra

I am completely unqualified to write about this topic, let's get that out of the way now.  However, a potential connection between the Philly soul sound of the 70's and the sound of the Philadelphia Orchestra from the same era feels significant, and it's not something that I can recall reading about in any standard music history accounts.   

The Philadelphia International Records label was founded by Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff in 1971.  It was an alternative of sorts (not sure whether it was termed as such at the time) to the Muscle Shoals brand of gritty, blues-heavy soul.  The Philly sound was lush, smooth, with complex orchestration and rich string accompaniments.  Songs by Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, Lou Rawls, and Patti LaBelle became massive hits.  The O'Jays built an incredible discography, and for my money, stand out as one of the most underrated bands of all time.  One can draw a direct line between the Philly groups and the disco music that came to define the 70's.  

Somehow, all this great music went underappreciated by the industry at large.  Gamble and Huff won their first Grammy in the late 80's -- for Simply Red's cover of "If You Don't Know Me By Now".  Today, the Philly sound is rightly revered for the high quality of the music as well as the many innovations made by its creators.  

At the same time, the Philadelphia Orchestra had reached its peak under Eugene Ormandy, who served as its musical director from 1936-1980.  They made hundreds of recordings together during that time.  The orchestra's sound was wholly distinctive, due to its heavy, dramatic string sonority.  Ormandy was disliked by classical music critics, for reasons that look embarrassing through modern eyes.  He was a tremendous conductor in virtually all sub-fields of orchestral music.  Was the Philadelphia Orchestra's sound considered too kitschy, unworthy to be considered amongst the high art of other leading orchestras?  The likes of Karajan and Szell were steely traditionalists, proudly carrying the mantle of careful precision and skillful musicianship in the classical music world.  The industry marketed their recordings far more aggressively than they did for Ormandy's.  The whole "controversy" just feels silly now.  Many major orchestras of that era could reach a godlike tier on most nights, and Philadelphia was just as great as any of them.      

Philly soul and Philly classical were peaking in the same city at the same time, and their string heavy characteristics sounds were mirror images of each other.  This simply can't be a coincidence.  And yet I can't find any references to a specific connection between the two, or rock/soul criticism that makes the comparison.  

Thom Bell was the main orchestrator and arranger for Philadelphia international.  He gave a number of interviews throughout the years.  His RnR HOF page notes that he was influenced by Beethoven and Burt Bacharach.  He was classically trained and aspired to be a concert pianist.  By his own admission, classical music was his life growing up and he knew virtually nothing about pop music through his late teens.  Musicians from the Philadelphia Orchestra played the string arrangements on the soul records he worked on.  It is inconceivable that he wasn't seeped in the sound of the Philadelphia orchestra by the time he began working with Gamble and Huff. However, I can't find any explicit statement by Huff, Gamble, or Bell about their classical influences.  They never claimed to be influenced by Ormandy and the wholly unique Philly classical sound.  

The closest thing I could find is Bell's "cheese steak" story.  According to him, it's not just that Philly has the best cheese steak sandwiches anywhere in America.  More than that, any mom and pop sandwich shop makes a better cheese steak than any restaurant in any city in American could hope to do.  Because the cheese steaks, according to Bell, are embedded in the Philadelphia culture in a way that no other city could duplicate.  And that's the origin of the Philly sound.  It's not taken from a specific time and place, passed linearly from artist A to B.  It was sewn into the fabric of the city.  One must look at the whole to appreciate the constituent parts.  And that whole obviously includes the Philadelphia Orchestra.  

Bruckner Symphony no. 6 DUEL -- Klemperer/New Philharmonia vs von Karajan/Berliner Philharmoniker

I am extremely proud of my ranking of Sibelius Fifth Symphonies, but it was an exhausting post to write.  I had planned to turn it into a semi-regular series of posts -- next up was Bruckner's Seventh Symphony -- but right now, the investment feels too daunting.   So here's a more manageable alternative: a classical DUEL between two radically different interpretations of a work. 

As artists, Klemperer and Karajan are about as far apart as you can get, beyond their status as legends of the "standard German repertoire". Klemperer: steely tempos, stoic execution, and a transparent sonority in which every line is audible. Karajan: sweeping gestures, a flowing approach, and lush string textures that tend to swamp everything else.

Klemperer’s idiosyncrasies can sometimes tread close to the edge of a precipice -- in this instance, I'm referring to his tendency to take fast movements slowly (or at least slower than usual), and slow movements relatively briskly. The first movement unfolds at something close to a funeral-march pace, threatening to collapse under its own weight, yet somehow never doing so. He sustains a gritty, unyielding tension for nearly seventeen minutes—astonishingly, about two minutes longer than his account of the Adagio. And yet, the famously unsentimental Klemperer still finds a lyrical thread running through it all.

I’ve often found Bruckner’s adagios to be overlong (sacrilege, I know), but here Klemperer threads the needle, keeping things moving at a serene, unforced pace. Then, as is his wont, apparently because he couldn't help himself, he gives in to his contrary self and he stretches the scherzo past nine minutes, stripping it of the explosive urgency most conductors bring to Bruckner’s dance movements. It feels like a misfire—though not one that derails the symphony as a whole. After all, Bruckner did mark it “nicht schnell—langsam.” Perhaps Klemperer knew something that we (amateur listeners and professional conductors both) don't.

In the finale, he draws out the symphony’s more pastoral qualities, bringing the woodwinds to the fore. By the end, you could be forgiven for forgetting that you’re listening to Bruckner—until the final coda snaps you back into full, bracing Brucknerian reality.

Karajan, by contrast, launches the symphony full of FIRE, charging headlong into the opening, raging into the blinding light. This was, I believe, his only recording of the Sixth (and one he apparently never performed live), and in 1979 he had the Berlin Philharmonic under absolute control. The playing is disciplined, the strings are locked in to producing the sweeping, cascading sonorities he favored.

The adagio is slow indeed -- nineteen minutes, four slower than Klemperer -- but is beautifully paced.  In Karajan’s hands, it becomes perhaps Bruckner’s most “romantic” slow movement in the modern definition of the word: the love theme to an 80's movie about doomed, starcrossed lovers. The scherzo is nothing short of triumphant, easily surpassing Klemperer in terms of sheer excitement and drive.

But then, in the finale, Karajan does something unexpected: he slows things down, almost channeling Klemperer. Presumably he’s aiming for heightened drama, but without Klemperer’s transparency, all we hear are broad waves of sound, simply the volume rising and falling repeatedly.  Each time the orchestra fades out all too often, some of the piece's momentum vanishes, and it never really returns.  At first, I found the final coda to be needlessly overwhelming, with the brass too dominant, though I’ve now come to appreciate its impact.

Both interpretations are well worth hearing. But for me, Klemperer remains a kind of supergenius, operating on a wavelength the rest of us can only dimly perceive. Even when he’s not at his absolute best, I’ll take a mostly “on” Klemperer over just about anyone else in this repertoire.

90's nostalgia

I had a yen to hear Sonic Youth’s "Total Trash", which quickly spiraled into a YouTube-assembled playlist of late ’80s/early ’90s indie rock—Pixies, Blur, PJ Harvey, Galaxie 500, and more. What can you say, the algorithm knows what it’s doing. It starts with my search (Sonic Youth), pulls in the obvious contemporaries (Pixies), and then folds in the British acts it knows I like. It’s a formula that’s pretty much guaranteed to keep me listening.

It’s 2026, and I still haven’t heard a Pixies album, back to front, in my life. ’80s and ’90s American indie rock is a real blind spot in my listening—I grew up hearing about it, reading about it, but never really listened to it beyond the tracks that made it onto alternative radio. There are plenty of gaps in anyone’s musical life, of course, but this one stands out given my other listening habits.

So the algorithms keep assuming this was my thing, even though it never was. As a result, I’ve probably heard more Pixies songs in their post-reunion lifespan than I did during their original run. Still, I’ve heard enough to say what everyone already knows: this band was at least five years ahead of their time. Good thing they eventually put their differences aside and cash in, finally getting the chance to make the money their imitators enjoyed."

The mythology of the ’90s is now every bit as strong as the mythology of the ’60s once was. Bands get defined by that era, and it sticks with them no matter what they do afterward. Jefferson Airplane and The Kinks, for example, are forever labeled as ’60s bands, even though both were actually more commercially successful in the ’80s.

As for Kim Deal, the Pixies will always be her ultimate legacy, even though she had more commercial success outside of the Pixies, and was a bigger individual star when she led her own band.   This remains true even though she has spent much of her adult life trying to move beyond the Pixies. After falling out with Black Francis over creative and personal differences, she formed the Breeders and released Last Splash, which sold over a million copies and far outperformed anything the Pixies did commercially. She released music only sporadically after that, eventually rejoining the Pixies for their to tour the world many times over, before stepping away again when new recordings began.  Good for her for cashing in when the opportunity was there—she earned it. But the Pixies will always define her legacy, even if the "Cannonball" single remains her true commercial (MTV, sales) and creative peak.

Similarly, Gorillaz have somehow recorded as many albums as Blur (nine) and have sold at least ten times as many copies.  But Damon Albarn will always be the frontman of Blur first and foremost.  

Sonic Youth’s trajectory is wild, and becomes more fascinating and debatable with the passing years. "Daydream Nation": every track is a revelation, each one is an anthem for a generation. It’s even in the National Recording Registry at the Library of Congress. Then "Goo": much in the spirit of "Daydream Nation", but filtered through major-label oversight. The "Kool Thing" single threw in everything but the kitchen sink in a bid for something resembling a commercial breakthrough. That track has everything -- wild noise freakouts, the Chuck D cameo, a singable chorus, an eye-catching video with Kim Gordon in leather, cats galore, and metric tons of sparkle and tinfoil. In some alternate, freakier universe, this is the album that breaks bigger than "Nevermind".

And then, just two years later, they’re putting out "100%" and "Sugar Kane", and they're sounding like an ordinary grunge-esque band—albeit one with stranger guitar tunings.

Various, "Tresor 4 -- Solid"

As I alluded to a few weeks ago, I could keep this blog going indefinitely by revisiting and reevaluating CD's from the 90's.

For instance, take the series of compilations released by Tresor.  I own numbers 2 through 8, with the exception of number 6.  It's safe to say that Tresor II and 3 are the most well-regarded, most influential, and probably were the biggest sellers of the series. They were released at the height of the Berlin-Detroit alliance (hence the name of II), where all roads in techno seemed to lead to those two cities.  The Berlin wall had come down just a few years earlier.  The club scene in Berlin was taking off, synergy between European and American techno artists was never higher.  

At the time, I listened to Tresor 3 more than any of the others.  I would have put Tresor II slightly below it, although any argument claiming it as the best of the series would be difficult to refute.  But each compilation went into heavy rotation on my stereo when they were released.  With the exception of Tresor 4.  I have no idea why.  In fact, I can't even remember where and when I bought it.  It was possibly years after the Tresor 2000 compilation, many years after it was originally released.  And I never particularly took to it.  Tresor 5, on the other hand?  At the time, I felt it symbolized muscular, slamming mid-90's techno at its best.  Tresor 2000?  Pounding, cavernous minimal techno long before it became synonymous with Berlin culture. 

But now?  Those compilations are a bit bland.  As part of a DJ set they would probably still slam, but as individual tracks on a 70-minute disc?  Too monotone, lacking in hooks (Tresor 2000 in particular).  What about Tresor 4, the one I would have designated as the runt of the litter.  Hearing it now, it's simply outstanding.  It's packed with classics ("Relish", "Der Klang der Familie", "Think Quick"), with more variations in mood and tempo than the average Tresor comp, which makes for more engaging home listening.  And the second disc!  I'd nearly forgotten that there was one.  The second disc is an excellent mix CD featuring many of the artists on the first disc.  It's sloppy in places, but the vision and momentum is there, it's safe to say that this disc never "loses the floor".  

Why did I ignore this compilation for so many years?  I really have no idea.  Maybe I felt it was unnecessary because I already had so many other records and discs by some of the artists (e.g. Maurizio, Vainqueur)?    

Bob Marley, "Legend"

I have been thinking a lot about a new format for this blog.  The correct choice seems to be taking the entire thing to a video format on YT or a social media platform.  Would this be in addition to, or instead of the written blog?  I'm not sure.  I feel that writing is more suitable for longer think-pieces and collated musings (which is what I tend to do) and shorter snippets where you can comment without necessarily having to say anything profound.  However, video is more immediate and relatable.  

Either way, I could churn out reviews and thoughts of catalog music indefinitely.  That's why I love the Pitchfork Sunday Review so much.  Long form pieces on classic albums with a modern reviewer's perspective.  Eric Harvey's piece on Bob Marley's "Legend" is outstanding -- the best of these PF reviews that I have come across.  It's an extensively researched piece, and I learned so much.  Harvey persuasively argues that "Legend" recast Marley's legacy as a photogenic, radio-friendly crossover star, rather than a militaristic rebel.  In turn, the album flipped the entire popular narrative of reggae music on its head.  In the 70's rock and punk bands would borrow (or steal) from reggae when they wanted to sound dangerous and threatening, in part as a reaction to anodyne FM soft rock.  After "Legend", reggae became the music of sunshine and good vibes for a newfound audience of middle class white listeners who bought the album in the millions.       

I don't believe there's a sensible counter-argument to this.  Marley released thirteen studio albums, and "Legend" doesn't come close to covering all the facets of his music.  David Robinson, the Island record executive who compiled the tracks on "Legend", admitted as much, namely, that they saw a mass marketing opportunity amongst an untapped white listenership.  Is it really such a problem though?  Harvey would say yes, seeing as "Legend" sanitizes Marley in a way that he certainly never would have chosen for himself if he were alive.  However, Greatest Hits compilations always target the casual fan, most of whom buy music sparingly and rarely delve deeply into an artist's catalogue.  More serious listeners can always use the GH compilation as a gateway into buying the individual albums, which was precisely Harvey's experience vis a vis "Legend".  Was Marley wronged moreso than hundreds of other artists whose music has been packaged and repackaged countless times?   Greatest hits collections come with loads of statistical anomalies.  Many of the top RIAA certified albums are compilations, and many of those were double albums (that count as two units).  I believe that "Legend" is the second biggest selling GH album of all time -- albums sold, not units sold -- behind only the Eagles juggernaut GH album.  To paraphase an old saying, 18 million Bob Marley fans can't be wrong.  "Legend" is still a steady seller, confirming its cross-generational appeal.    

My own experience in Jamaica as a foreigner is not meant to be taken as representative.  However, as a personal note, when I was in Jamaica in 1992 as part of a school program, the sellers in the market were only too happy to push any and all sorts of Marley merchandise onto us enthusiastic teenagers.  In Jamaica, a national hero like Marley is a once in a generation public figure, in a sense he belonged to everyone.  When it comes to profiting from his name, capitalism can't simply be split among racial lines.   

Beach House are still amazing

I will never catch up with contemporary music ever again, I am checked out on that front. I'm too far behind even with the music released by my all-time favourite acts, so there's zero chance of getting up to speed on recent releases in general.  Case in point, I intended to post a triple review of three new albums by three of my all-time favourite artists -- Moderat's "MORE D4TA", Spiritualized's "Everything Was Beautiful", and Beach House's "Once Twice Melody".  Each of them had produced at least one Album of the Year by my rankings.  Time passed, and I needed to add another album to the list -- "everything is alive" by Slowdive (their previous comeback record was my #2 of that year, and was in my top ten for the 2010's).  Time passed again.  That was in the summer of 2022.  I still haven't heard any of those albums in full.

Yet once in a while, I still fall down the rabbit hole like I have this week, playing Youtube videos from the "Once Twice Melody" tour on repeat.  When this album first came out, I thought I'd had it with Beach House.  They had more or less stopped evolving.  By "Teen Dream" they'd reached an inflection point, from then on, it wouldn't be enough to sound like star-crossed kids recording twee noodlings in their bedrooms, they needed to morph into a full-fledged, wall of sound-obsessed, immaculately produced band.  And with "Bloom", they did.  

Then they had a brief struggle with stylistic schizophrenia.  They stepped back into the shadows with (the still excellent) "Depression Cherry", and simultaneously recorded the more upbeat "Thank Your Lucky Stars" (a good idea on paper, but the songs weren't really there).  After struggling with the eternal question of whether to retreat further into moody dreampop or burst forth as a commercial indie pop juggernaut, the decision was made: we can do both.  This gave rise to "7", which stayed true to their trusted formulas but sonically, they sounded bolder and richer than ever before, their collaboration with Sonic Boom.  The apex had been reached, the only thing left was to officially become the dream pop AC/DC and milk the same signature style for decades to come.  To me, that seemed to be the marketing strategy behind "Once Twice Melody", so I figured this was the moment I could take a time out from this band.

In a sense, "Once Twice Melody" plays out as expected.  Beach House really only have one tempo -- one that they can slightly boost for the more radio-ready songs, or drag out for the slower ballads, but isn't every Beach House songs kind of a semi-ballad?  They have one instrumental palate -- guitar, keyboards, and drums, and the effects boxes and presets barely change.   Each song drifts along within roughly the same airy, hazy moodscape.  They have perfected the show closing epic with its breathtaking coda, every album has to have one now ("Irene", "Dive", "Over and Over").  

But despite all the signs that Beach House are content to churn out the same content from now until forever, I can still get completely lost in their music.  Victoria Legrand's voice isn't as bright and powerful as it once was, but everything they do on stage is still mesmerizing.  On any given day, their music is more life-affirming than anything else out there.  Everyone has their personal ranking, but "Once Twice Melody" more than holds its own with the best albums in their catalogue.  They have been in a godlike tier for well over a decade, and that's a rare thing.    

     

Israel Philharmonic presents "Little Tchaikovsky", cond. Lahav Shani

Every year, the Vienna Philharmonic presents a New Year's Day concert of light music based around Strauss-family waltzes and polkas.  These concerts are legendary and are broadcast worldwide, reaching a viewership around 50 million people annually.   

This was essentially an unadvertised concert that didn't appear on their published schedule, with tickets sold to under-35's at a discount price.  The presumed goal was to capture a younger audience and turn them into more regular concert goers, present a different side of classical music other than the stuffy reputation that it usually gets, and bring a special holiday-type atmosphere to the concert hall in a manner that's worked so well in Vienna and elsewhere.  The results were a slam dunk success.  

The Nutcracker ballet is already a holiday classic around the world, and Tchaikovsky ballets basically transcend classical music (even people who think they don't know about classical music will recognize many of the melodies), so the theme makes plenty of sense.  This was far and away the best performance I've seen from Lahav Shani.  He might fancy himself a late Romantic/20th century specialist, but he's incendiary with "lighter" music, not only as a conductor but as an educator/entertainer.  He spoke with the crowd between pieces, and invited audience members to watch part of the performance on stage to "fulfill a dream" (which turned into an unexpected deluge of upwards of 50 people).  He came across more cool and approachable than he could ever be while conducting Stravinsky or Bruckner.  In a cute moment during the extended pizzicato during the third movement of Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony, he simply took a break from conducting and grabbed seat in the audience.  It drew waves of laughter, but many conductors wouldn't be willing to take themselves down a peg and display such a sense of humour.

The programme was brilliantly sequenced, beginning with three selections from the Nutcracker ballet -- Waltz of the Flowers, Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies, and Dance of the Reed Flutes, each one delightful, each one recognizable to all.  This was followed by a selection from Tchaikovsky's String Quartet No. 1, arranged for string orchestra, and a performance of the first movement of the Violin Concerto featuring soloist Michael Shaham, a young violinist making his debut with the orchestra.  The start was a bit rocky, but he pulled it together by the end.  Finally, following the aforementioned rush to the stage, the full orchestra performed the third and fourth movements of the Fourth Symphony.  The third movement was a lively delight, and the final movement was sufficiently fiery to get across the overall mood of the piece.  One unannounced encore later, and the concert was over in a trim 75 minutes (no intermission) and not a single person left without a smile on their face.      

Another year without a list

I used to obsess over my year-end lists, but now, I don't miss them in the least.  Non-listmaking friends and online acquaintances used to claim that lists were simply not their preferred method of judging the music they listened to.  I thought it was a giant cop-out.  If you love music, then you should stick your neck out for the stuff you've been championing all year long.  Well, I get it now.  Lists are really nothing more than a snapshot of where your head is at, a timely and in-time review of the year/decade as you saw it at the time.  In that sense, lists are essential.  But if you don't make those lists, then you can still document your thoughts in other ways.  On a blog, or on social media, and so on.  

Resident Advisor published a their best music of the past quarter-century.  My tastes are too outdated, so I didn't recognize most of the tracks on the tracks lists, even by the artists I'm familiar with.  It looked more like an artist representation list than a tracks list, with an outsized attempt to feature lesser-known tracks by well-known artists.  The albums list was more of my thing, perhaps the last major contemporary list that I'll truly be able to relate to.   I have still never heard the DJ Sprinkles album at #2 in full but I can't argue with its impact.  Burial's "Untrue" at #1 indeed felt inevitable.  

On the contemporary side, Philip Sherburne wrote about the top 30 electronic albums of 2025 for Pitchfork.  I haven't heard anything on it, but damn, Sherburne always makes everything seem so compelling.  There is truly not enough time to listen to all the music I love.  That Los Thuthanaka album really comes across as a must-hear.  

I have been deep into techno nostalgia -- the em:t discography, the Round One to Round Five compilation, the still mind-blowing In Order to Dance 5 compilation on R&S.   I could never write about contemporary music again, and churn out steady content based on reviews and recollections of old compilations, much like I did for the Spacemen 3 tribute CD.  On some days, I convince myself I should migrate to an all-nostalgia review format, possibly through video channels instead of through writing.