Ten mid-90's songs

I had the idea of coming up with a list of songs somewhere around the 4:45 to 5:00 mark from 2005-2007. I covered some of my faves here that I felt worked, plus some others for more variety of styles, and to add some 90s songs from classic bands. Don't feel like you must listen through all to vote -- it's not a contest. Two of these, Portishead and Stereolab, are not in PA, but I like them in the list.

Cardiacs - Manhoo



Dream Theater - You Not Me



Genesis - Not About Us



Marillion - 80 Days



Portishead - Only You (not in PA)



Radiohead - Climbing Up The Walls



Rush - The Colour of Right



Stereolab - Cybele's Reverie (not in PA)



Swans - Mind / Body / Light / Sound (4:40)



Yes - Somehow.....Someday



EDIT: I changed the Portishead track to Only You from Cowboys, which is the one it whould have been as I had been trying to go for ones of 5 or under 5 minutes and go for the one that comes to that time.

Edited by Logan - August 07 2022 at 11:41

My tastes perhaps are not so refined. I like the Stereolab, Swans, Portishead, Radiohead and Cardiacs, but I went with Stereolab's "Cybele's Reverie".

A nice bunch of songs, where the most established bands deliver actually the least interesting ones. Maybe nothing really spectacular, but the Radiohead song stands out for me.

Thanks, Kees and Nick for your comments. :)

Edited by Logan - August 07 2022 at 05:12

nick_h_nz wrote: Speaking of the Radiohead song, I quite like this cover of it - though I will certainly understand if others don’t. I find Postvorta to be a very interesting band. My favourite two albums of theirs are the very different (almost polar opposites, in fact) Porrima and Siderael. https://postvorta.bandcamp.com/track/climbing-up-the-walls

Oh, that's my kind of heavy. I really love this! Awesome cover, thanks.

Of this list, Radiohead, even though is not my favorite song from them.

Cardiacs > Radiohead

Yeah, these seemed to work with certain time frames I had in mind before looking up the albums for songs rather than an attempt to highlight the best (thus removing some personal bias).
.

Grumpyprogfan wrote: Dream Theater. Sonically, the Portishead sounds awful to my ears... tinny, harsh, over-processed. Is this how all their mixes sound?

They did that very much on purpose. Especially on this Portishead album they tried to make it sound grainer and harsher than the previous Dummy. They would damage the recordings to get a grainy, popping and scratchy sound on Dummy I have read. They wanted an old school sound of crackling vinyl for one thing rather than a clean sound, and it was in part to evoke old soundtrack music. I think it comes across rather more on the track I posted than others off that album. I can imagine for someone with your tastes it would bother you a lot more than me as I would expect you to generally prefer cleaner and smoother music than I often do (and I also appreciate "Noise"). To not hear such sound qualities, live versions of that music would be better. And with Third it has a smoother sound.

EDIT: I changed it to the track "Only You", which I should have gone with by my methodology, but opted not to in this case as I thought I did it in another pol and had wanted something I knew I had not covered as a song.

Here is a live version of the song:





Edited by Logan - August 07 2022 at 11:44

^ I'm sure you are not alone, but there is a sound they were going for, which they seemingly achieved, and of course Portishead became a very well-known band so I would think they were doing something right (which doesn't mean they could not have done better). It would be nice if there were various versions of the studio albums (if there are, I don't know), but as said, there are lives to listen to which don't have those qualities and the third album takes the band in a rather different direction. To be honest, I find the production, performance and music on that Dream Theater song to be uninteresting. Maybe had they experimented like Portishead I would have preferred it -- probably not, however. To each his or her own, of course.

^^ The funny thing is that DT did experiment with that song and album - which tends to be why so few DT fans like the album. I’m one of the few who appreciate their experiments on this album, if you look at any of the many DT polls/posts over the years on PA (including Paul’s present one).

Edited by nick_h_nz - August 07 2022 at 13:54