This is part two of my 1998 Year In Review. Part one included the first fifteen albums of my Top 25. Part two completes my Top 25 list with numbers 10 to 1. Many of these Top 10 albums are very meaningful to me, so this post is more personal than usual. The music is pretty good, too.

Number 10: Mutations by Beck

Beck has been eligible for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Shame for several years and continues to be a primary snub. The brilliance of his career can be easily explained by noting that his 1998 album Mutations won a Grammy and contains two of his best songs, but it isn’t even one of his five best albums. Mutations is in some ways a transitional release for Beck, falling between his slacker/hip hop/indie-rock masterpieces (Mellow Gold and Odelay) and his two truly transitional masterpieces (Midnite Vultures and Sea Change). Everything he has produced since Sea Change combines elements of all four of those albums, but Mutations was the first of his releases to show that he had such a breadth of songwriting mastery in him. Harkening back to his first three, lesser-known, folk recordings, this album is primarily focused on songwriting. Unlike those first three albums, the songwriting takes a quantum leap forward and presents the kind of songwriting that would make Sea Change one of his best albums a few years later. Beck is an American treasure and deserves to be treated like royalty in the same way that Beastie Boys, Green Day, and Foo Fighters are recognized.

Number 9: Deserter’s Songs by Mercury Rev

Deserter’s Songs is the album where Mercury Rev pulled together all the psych-rock experimentation of their first few recordings and combined it into a cohesive collection of songs. The conceptual elements of their previous album, See You On The Other Side, worked up to a point, but it wasn’t until their 1998 release that they showed they were masters of their craft and equals to The Flaming Lips (the only other band worth a comparison). From the beautiful opening ballads (“Holes,” “Tonite It Shows, and “Endlessly”) to the album’s centerpieces (“Opus 40” and “Hudson Line”) through to the fantastic “Goddess On A Hiway” and finishing with the best closer they ever recorded (“Delta Sun Bottleneck Stomp”), this is as perfect an album as this band could ever have hoped to record. For Mercury Rev fans, it was the album we had all been waiting for years to hear, but it also brought in a new listening audience. 25 years later, I doubt many people listen to this record very often, and even more have forgotten it existed, but when I started to select albums for this show it was one of the first to make the list. There are only a few albums on this list that feel like old friends, and this is one of them. Flaming Lips went on to national stardom in the 21^st century, while Mercury Rev were unable to turn the new attention on their music into a larger national audience, but for one year they were the better of the two bands.

Number 8: The Boy With The Arab Strap by Belle and Sebastian

The third album by Scottish band Belle and Sebastian was their first to expand into the sound that they stuck with for the rest of their career. The first two albums were both great as well, but The Boy With The Arab Strap was the album that started them down the road of full-band collaboration. Stuart Murdoch still composed and sang most of the tracks, but the addition of other lead vocalists and songwriters broadened their sound and produced a more compelling record, even if the songs weren’t all as well-crafted as on their classic album If You’re Feeling Sinister, which is one of the best albums of the ‘90s. From this point forward, Belle and Sebastian albums were more complete productions than their earliest releases. It is impossible for me to say anything about this or any other of the Belle and Sebastian albums from 1996 to 2006 except that they are all amazing and have aged better than almost any other records from the last 25 years. This band was far ahead of their time. They took the music of Nick Drake, modernized it into the sophisti-pop of bands like Aztec Camera and Prefab Sprout, and mixed it with the viewpoint of bands like The Smiths to create a sound that was original at the time and has since been imitated by many. If Burt Bacharach and Hal David had written songs fifty years later than they did, they would have sounded like this. The music of Belle and Sebastian was incredibly fresh at the time, and still sounds relevant today.

Number 7: In The Aeroplane Over The Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel

In The Aeroplane Over The Sea is one of the albums on this list that is included on everyone’s 1998 list of best rock albums, often at #1. I did not listen to it until several years after it was released, but I understood its critical acclaim as soon as I heard it for the first time. The songs are all built to be adored by indie rock fans. Everything that indie rock in the late ‘90s had to offer was presented on a silver platter with this record. I will not deny its importance or the fact that it is a great album, but I have always had a love/hate relationship with Neutral Milk Hotel. My problem with the band and this album has always been that it is the band’s second and last. That is all there is. Obviously, an artist doesn’t have to release more than one album to be a legend. If one album is great, then that is success. However, the cult of Jeff Mangum has continued to make the album more important than it is. Just listening to the albums I like from 1998, not to mention all the other albums I have left off of this list, shows that this album doesn’t sound much different than most indie rock albums of the time. The songs and production on this album are not groundbreaking. If anything, they are a culmination of a decade of lo-fi experimentation by hundreds of bands. Music like this is not meant to be critiqued for aspects such as musicianship, but I can’t help but notice that it is a messy piece of music. I know these songs are meant to be emotionally evaluated rather than critiqued for skill or ability, but at some point I always start to notice when an artist decides that a take is good even if it clearly could have used one more take to clean up the mistakes. Still, I have put it at #7 on this list, so I clearly enjoy the album and I will surely listen to it many times in the future. I just wish that if this band was going to be remembered for only this one album that they would have spent a little more time making it a little bit better. The fact that Jeff Mangum and his band stopped here without attempting to show any ability to improve their sound or grow as an artist leaves me wondering if this album deserves the recognition as a masterpiece that so many critics continue to blindly accept as truth.

A Brief Pause Before Continuing

The next five albums on this list are important because they are some of the first albums that Ms. Faux and I listened to together. Sometimes it is hard to separate the fond memories that music provides from the quality of the music. However, I think these albums hold up well on both counts. They were our favorites at the time, and we still like them, but they are also some of the best albums of the year and probably get mentioned on other similar lists as well. They are also the most personal album selections I have ever made on the Faux Show. I love my wife, I love the life we have spent together, and going back to these records takes me back to when I fell in love with her. For some, those memories are created by events, trips, or other connections, but if you read only a few Faux Show posts you will learn that music is the driving force of my life. Ms. Faux has provided more musical influence on my life than anyone else I have ever known, and I owe all my musical growth over my adult years to her. Her support in my ridiculous obsession with investigating a lifetime of music is the reason this show even exists and the reason that I can write about so many different types of music. If this was a real radio show, and not a faux radio show, I would dedicate the next five albums to her.

Number 6: Dizzy Up The Girl by Goo Goo Dolls

The Goo Goo Dolls were the other band that sounded like Husker Du in the late ‘80s and then went on to become major label darlings in the ‘90s after Nirvana changed the world (the first was The Lemonheads). I ignored The Goo Goo Dolls for the first ten years of their existence, but probably would have enjoyed their music if I had given it a listen (especially their early recordings). I don’t remember why Ms. Faux and I got a hold of their 1998 CD Dizzy Up The Girl, but my guess is that I heard “Slide” on the radio and bought it. I bought a lot of CDs in the late ‘90s based on hearing one hit because I had disposable income (at least, more income than I had ever had before) and I was travelling for work and spending a lot of time perusing albums at the local Best Buy of whichever town I found myself working. Most of those CDs are now shelved away in the garage (e.g., White Town, The Offspring, Sugar Ray, Sister Hazel, Creed – what was I thinking?), but some of them are still favorites (e.g., Everclear, Third Eye Blind, and Goo Goo Dolls). Dizzy Up The Girl is best known now for the massive hit “Iris,” but it sold millions of copies, produced several hits, and still holds up as a solid piece of alt-rock songwriting. I am sure that early fans of the band were long gone by 1998, but that is their loss. Sometimes growing up requires changing your attitudes about things that you used to think were so important. If I still held on to my views about music from when The Goo Goo Dolls released their debut in 1987 and how bands should never “sell out” (a ridiculous notion that used to be a major point of contention for music geeks) then I would still listen to nothing but Killdozer, Halo of Flies, and Das Damen, and that just sounds horrifying. I can’t say that there aren’t a few tracks on Dizzy Up The Girl that I tend to skip, but the rest are firmly set in my mind as some of the best pop songs of 1998. Rock fans didn’t know it at the time, but albums like this and bands like Goo Goo Dolls (who started out from the postpunk scene of the mid-80s) were all about to become dinosaurs in the world of 21^st century music. I’m glad that I was around and paying attention to these last few years of rock in the 20^th century.

Number 5: Rufus Wainwright by Rufus Wainwright

Ms. Faux and I discovered Rufus Wainwright’s self-title debut together at a listening station at some record store somewhere. No one knew much about Wainwright at that time, but the fact that Van Dyke Parks was involved in the production of his debut album was a good sign. One listen to the album and we were both blown away. This album has now been forgotten as his later records have become more well-known, but this is one of the best debuts of the ‘90s. From the beauty of the opening track “Foolish Love” to the closing track “Imaginary Love,” this collection is about as great a “heart-on-one’s-sleeve” set of songs that has ever been recorded. These are modern day torch songs whose content was years ahead of its time while sounding like a throwback to ‘40s standards. I’m not sure I noticed at the time, but this album would have been a perfect set of compositions for Harry Nilsson or Randy Newman to record in the early ‘70s, if they had been openly gay songwriters. Ms. Faux and I were lucky enough to see Wainwright live on the tour for this album, at a tiny venue with about 100 people in the audience. That was the perfect way to see him perform these songs, and 25 years later this is still my favorite Wainwright album. It isn’t as fully formed as his later albums, but he doesn’t need the lush arrangements of his future recordings to get across the emotions of his material. This debut is about as emotional as an album gets.

Number 4: Mermaid Avenue by Wilco and Billy Bragg

I have been a fan of Wilco since they released Being There, and I think they are an obvious selection for induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Shame, but I don’t think they would have had the chance to record their string of influential albums in the late ‘90s and early 2000s if they had not been asked by Billy Bragg to support him on this crazy project in 1998. The story of Mermaid Avenue is that the daughter of iconic American folk singer Woody Guthrie asked Billy Bragg to write new music for her father’s lyrics that had been lying in a chest for decades. Bragg, amazingly, asked Wilco to join him in the endeavor. At the time, Wilco were known as the lesser quality spinoff of alt-country pioneers Uncle Tupelo (Son Volt were the more critically acclaimed spinoff at the time, although the years have now proven that to be a ridiculous mistake). Wilco were also berated as the band who had the nerve to release one not-very-good album (their debut A.M.) and then demand that their next album be a double CD sold at single CD prices (Being There). Billy Bragg, on the other hand, was an iconic British folk singer who was arguably the closest comparison to Woody Guthrie since early Bob Dylan. I don’t know what anyone who heard about the project may have thought at first, but one listen to the album proved all the haters wrong and showed that not only were Wilco worthy of the opportunity but were superior to Bragg in musicianship and songwriting ability. The Bragg tracks on the album are perfectly fine, mostly thanks to Wilco’s support, but the Wilco songs showed that Jeff Tweedy and his band were masterful craftsmen capable of writing songs equal to any other band of the era. The entire album, and the follow-up Mermaid Avenue, Volume 2, do not contain a single weak track. This is due in some part to the ability of Bragg and Tweedy to select lyrics that would probably work in any format, but it is the music that drives these songs. There are several classics on the album, but “California Stars” stands out as one of the greatest folk songs ever written. The melding of modern songwriting and production with Guthrie’s lyrics on this one song is perfect. We probably don’t listen to this album enough in the Faux household, but I can’t remember a single year in the last 25 when Ms. Faux and I have not listened to this one song on a regular basis. It is possibly the most “playlisted” song I have ever used on my personal playlists. In addition, “Hoodoo Voodoo” is possibly the greatest modern-day kindie-rock song of the last 25 years, even though it was written for adults. The original Woody Guthrie version of that song (yes – some of the lyrics they selected were recorded by Guthrie with entirely different music that he wrote – oops) was actually recorded for Guthrie’s fantastic 1947 children’s album Songs To Grow On For Mother And Child, and has been my phone’s ringtone for years. Whatever alignment of the stars happened on the day Bragg called up Wilco was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that has certainly made the lives of all members of the Faux family richer for the existence of all of Wilco’s amazing discography, and it is all due to the new lease on life that Wilco were given with this album.

Number 3: Car Wheels On A Gravel Road by Lucinda Williams

I was in my first year of Steve Earle obsession when he was brought in to fix the production on Car Wheels On A Gravel Road for Lucinda Williams. I knew Williams from my college radio days when she released her self-titled 1988 album and her classic singles “Changed The Locks” and “Passionate Kisses,” and I was aware of her 1992 album Sweet Old World, but when an artist released only one album in ten years back in the 80s/90s it felt like a lifetime. The brilliance of her 1998 album may not have surprised her fans or those critics who remembered her earlier work, but it certainly caught the rest of the world by surprise. I would argue that it is the best country album recorded since Willie Nelson’s Red-Headed Stranger. Every song on this album is perfect, and it would be #1 on this list (and should be on anyone else’s list) if not for the personal connection I have to the next two albums. Williams has taken the newfound stardom she received with her 1998 album and turned it into a second career as an icon. She transcends country music, but she was always on the outside looking in as a country artist (much like Steve Earle and his mentor Townes Van Zandt). She is simply a songwriter of the highest quality, no genre required. She is like Dylan in that her vocals fit her songs better than anyone else who sings them. She creates a perfect melding of music, lyrics, vocals, and delivery in every song she records. 25 years later and it is obvious to claim that Williams may be the best female songwriter of her generation, but for some reason I don’t feel like that is a universal belief. All I can say is that if you name any songwriter of her generation, male or female, an argument can be made that she is better than all of them because songwriting is about more than popularity, hits, or sales. Songwriting is about emotion, meaning, and soul, and Williams presents all of those qualities in every performance.

Number 2: Feeling Strangely Fine by Semisonic

If the #1 album on this list was not from 1998, then Semisonic would top this list without question. Feeling Strangely Fine is without a doubt the 1998 album that has been played the most in the Faux household over the last 25 years. For many, it is only important for the hit song it produced (“Closing Time”), but Ms. Faux and I have always enjoyed the other songs just as much, if not more. Dan Wilson’s pop songcraft was never realized with such perfection on any other albums he recorded, but he tapped into something special in 1998. Every song on this album is a catchy guitar-pop masterclass. I doubt this record makes very many Best of Year lists, much less Top 10 (or #2) selections, but if there is an album that Ms. Faux and I could call “our album” it is this one. We discovered it together, we listened to it together for years, and we still listen to it. I can’t count how many times I have walked into a room and found Ms. Faux listening to the song “Singing In My Sleep” on our Alexa devices. “Closing Time” is a regular listen on household playlists. I constantly find myself singing “Never You Mind” and “DND” for no reason other than I saw a hotel door in a movie or heard someone say “never mind” in a random conversation. The songs on this record are burned into both of our brains in the best way possible. Sometimes great rock and pop music comes from the most unexpected places, and this record is the #1 example of that for both of us. It is a shame that Wilson was never able to duplicate such great songwriting on future releases, but the fact that he did it once is all that matters.

Number 1: Mark Hollis by Mark Hollis

While making this list, the easiest choice was which album to select as #1. I had to put Mark Hollis at #1 for the simple fact that I believe it is the most impressive collection of songwriting released in 1998. I also have a very personal connection to the album. My discovery of the 1991 album Laughing Stock by Talk Talk was directly related to my search for music to help me get through a stressful period of panic attacks and insomnia twenty years ago. From that discovery, I learned that Mark Hollis, the leader of Talk Talk, had released a self-titled album in 1998. 25 years ago, it was not as easy to find music, much less out of print CDs, so when I finally found an import copy of the album, I bought it and was blown away by the minimal genius of the recordings. The seven years spent between the final Talk Talk album and his debut solo album were not a happy time for Mark Hollis. He was, unfortunately, an artist too far ahead of his time. His work is now a major influence on today’s music, but at the time he was a commercial failure. The final Talk Talk album was ignored for years, and this 1998 solo album was a complete commercial failure. However, that was never Hollis’ goal, at least not after his early success when Talk Talk was an electronic new wave band. Each of his albums was progressively more minimal and atmospheric, and by the time he recorded this solo album in 1998 he had perfected this method of songwriting. This is one of the most personal albums ever recorded. It rivals Nick Drake’s Pink Moon as one of the most soul-bearing records. Every song sounds like it is being played just for you in your living room, with no care as to whether anyone else can, or even wants to, hear it. After this album, Hollis decided to focus his life on raising his sons and giving his time to his family. His fans always wanted more, but no one can complain about an artist choosing that path. There were rumors for years that he was going to record another album, but they were all wishful thinking by his devoted fans. I doubt he ever had second thoughts about his decision to retire from the music industry. Luckily for all of us, he left the world with this final album. This is music that should live forever and be listened to by everyone, often. Music can serve many purposes, but its greatest purpose is to strike emotion in the listener. The number of albums that succeed in doing this are few, and this is one of them. I would put it on a list with John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme, any performance of Bach by Yo Yo Ma, and Nick Drake’s Pink Moon as primary examples of this type of music. Mark Hollis died four years ago, and I obviously never had a chance to meet the man, but if I could somehow meet an artist through some form of magical wizardry, I think I would select Mark Hollis simply to thank him for giving me such wonderful music that has guided me through some of the most difficult periods of my life. And then we’d probably talk about raising a child and helping guide them into adulthood because I doubt he wants to talk about himself.

That concludes my Top 25 albums of 1998. The next show will provide a mix of Best of Genre albums, such as jazz, funk, rap, dance, and more. In the meantime, as always, thanks for listening (and reading)!

As usual, there is a playlist of the songs. This is a playlist of the Top 25 of 1998 list presented in parts one and two of this 1998 In Review series.

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