Overrated Albums of the 90s.

BrutulTM said:

Not to change the subject, but what do you guitar guys think of Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit? He's more of a singer-songwriter type but he's got some great rock songs and I think both he and Sadler Vanden are great guitar players.

This is an older song that they often do as an encore because of the fun guitar duel. Not the most representative of the band but it shows off their guitar playing. Skip to 2:40 if you don't want to listen to the story about Mike Cooley lighting a fart on fire. Skip to 6:00 if you just want to hear the guitar playing.

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I haven't listened to a ton of his stuff, but what I have is at worst solid.

Overrated:
REM Automatic for the People- Outside of Drive, it was all overplayed samey shit that annoyed the hell out of me to listen to. I _MIGHT_ have liked Man on the Moon if it had not been overplayed by 1000% at the time. And you could not fucking watch 20 minutes of MTV without Everybody Hurts being played. REM in general was a few resonant songs with wall to wall forgettable shit, but this LP was the epitome of that.

Red Hot Chilly Peppers: Blood Sugar Sex Magic- Outside of Under the Bridge (which was grossly overplayed), I cannot stand listening to any part of the LP anymore and I actually like the group. It really marks the moment they strayed from their funk roots and started their mainstream cash in.

Alanis Morrissette: Jagged little Pill- You could not go anywhere without some recovering catholic bitch blasting this shit in the early 90s. I liked some of the songs to a degree, but the entire album was just catholic girl guilt edge lording from cover to cover. Her record after this I still listen to today, but this one I can't fucking stand at all and I barely put up with at its peak to get into some angry catholic girl pants.

Pick any thug: All 90s Rap- It was all thug fuckery, but wakandans and wiggers could not lap it up fast enough. None of it resonated with me then and none of it (outside of some Cypris Hill, House of Pain, and Beasty Boys) catches my ear now. Transient bullshit built mostly on thugs publicly bragging.

Underated:
Eleven: Self Titled- Basically the roots of what would form a lot of QotSA best work were with this trio. Great sound and solid song writing. Its a shame that they never took off big while overproduced garbage grunge did.

Huey Lewis- Hard at Play/Four Chords and Seven Years Ago- Really underappreciated records, the first being a modern sound version of Sports, but never really took off the way Sports did, which I attribute to Fore! being so overhyped after Sports.

Alex said:

And Justice For All is my favorite Metallica album. I actually like the Black Album. It's not really metal - more of a hard rock album. But it's solid.

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And Justice For all, speaking as someone who is not really into metal per se but a musician, was just not anything I really enjoyed. Black, for all its sell out nature and other flaws, was something you could listen to and not want to skip over for the most part. I personally prefer Ride the Lightning and Master of Puppets, but thats the obvious choice.

I had a friend who was into them early, like Cocks and Socks tour era who clued me in to them. I generally agree that when Rick Rubin and Smith joined was the shift, I just think it took them an album to iron out a new sound without it being all samey mainstreamish. Case in point, I think Californication was the point where they had things completely on point which is one reason I feel this album to be overrated. My general bar for how good an album is would be being able to listen to it cover to cover without skipping any track, which BSSM was not, but Californication was. I also think the latter holds up better years later than BSSM. I am totally on the fence about Stadium Arcadium, though....

Underrated. You're welcome.