The lovely song above is called Winter, but we could have just as well chosen Girl, Silent All These Years, Precious Things, China or Leather which goes to show how evenly great songs there are on Little Earthquakes. I suppose Tori Amos appeals to the same kind of sensibilities that Suzanne Vega does. This was the beginning of an interesting career that spawned several other noteworthy music releases that we will be getting back to in due time.
The new album by Public Image Ltd. came out on 10 February in the U.S. and precisely two weeks later in the UK. It was called That What is Not and would be the last PIL album to come out in 20 years. Overall, I wasn't completely convinced, but there were nonetheless two standout tracks that must be mentioned. The first one of them was the album opener Acid Drops which was not only a great rock song but also memorable because of its ingenious sampling of Anarchy in the UK. The other standout track is embedded below.
Cruel was always my favorite song that I associate with this time and the point in PIL's career. At the time, I had no access to satellite channels or MTV but there was a regular program in Finnish television that played new music videos occasionally, so I was familiarized with the song and its official video almost as soon as it was released. Great, fun song in much the same way as Disappointed. And with this, it is goodbye to PIL, unless I hear their 2012 reunion album at some point and it turns out to contain something really good.
Between the US and UK releases of That What is Not, Shakespears Sister released their second album Hormonally Yours on 18 February. Last time, we discussed their debut because it contained one of the most perfect pop songs of the late eighties in Run Silent, Run Deep (1989). This time, there were two excellent pop songs on the album, although neither one of them was quite that perfect. Of them, Stay got way more MTV play, so let's go against the flow and embed the other one below.
Hello is the beautiful closing track of the album. Although at the time I preferred Stay, over time I have come to like Hello more. Both are excellent pop songs from the early nineties. And there is an interesting connection to PIL: not only do both of these new albums contain only two really great tracks, but also they precede a long recording hiatus. Like I already wrote, PIL did not release another album in 20 years; Shakespears Sister paused for 13 years. Their third album didn't come out until 2005.
The next important date for us is in June, so let's use this empty period of nearly four months for discussing two albums with unknown release dates. First of them is a really interesting modern classical album, an EP called Music for 3 Pianos, by Harold Budd, Ruben Garcia and Daniel Lentz. Their piano instrumentals are mesmerizing. The album was recorded within a single day, 2 March, and was probably relatively easy to post produce so it might have been in the stores before summer. Here is perhaps the best track on the EP, Somos Tres.
The other new album with an unknown release date is more important when one considers the development of progressive rock. We already briefly mentioned the American group Echolyn who debuted with their self titled album in 1991. Now, they released their sophomore effort Suffocating the Bloom, sounding much like Gentle Giant and paving the way for progressive rock's glorious return a little later on. It probably isn't that hard to imagine the excitement among prog fans of the time.
Suffocating the Bloom contains an amazing 21 tracks, although the last eleven are presented under a common title A Suite for the Everyman. The creativity on display as well as the diversity of the music itself never fails to impress. Embedded below is the album's single longest track Memoirs from Between for maximum enjoyment but there would have been a number of other excellent tracks to choose from. In particular, A Little Nonsense is a well known example where the group sounds exactly like Gentle Giant.
The next important date in our 1992 calendar is 8 June which marked the release of not only Album of the year but also Album of the decade. Yes, the best album of the nineties came out this early! There is nothing more to wait for, best to concentrate on waiting for 2002, when the best album of the 00's will come out... No, just kidding. Even though the race for the very best of the nineties is now over, there will be plenty of excellent music to check out still. There will be a separate entry for this one, so we can move on for now.
You see, another album worth mentioning came out on the same date. It was the new release by the American heavy metal group W.A.S.P. - not to be confused with the best album of the decade! Yet there is one simply brilliant track on The Crimson Idol, called The Idol which displays an obvious desire by the band to evolve into something more than just an average heavy metal group with aggressive live performances and slightly ridiculous appearances.
Next, we move on to 7 July, which is when Dream Theater released their second album Images and Words. This release marks a big step ahead for the future prog giants and it is well liked among their fans as well. While I will admit that the album is a definite improvement over the first one and contains several good tracks, I find nothing important enough on it to be worth embedding here, so I suppose we will simply note the album's release and move on.
In this case, we only need to move forward one week. On 14 July, the American industrial metal group Ministry released one of their key albums, the aggressive Psalm 69 that contains many of the key metal tracks of the era. Or, to be more precise, the album is filled with them. Many of them carry a weighty message but my favorite is just a fun metal track that I will embed below and close this blog entry on a high note. Please enjoy Jesus Built My Hot Rod!
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