 Ten Albums You Might Not Own, But Should, Dammit LilysEccsame The Photon Band SpinART Records, 1994 The only other album which even comes close to duplicating Eccsame The Photon Band's majestically skewed sound is Mogwai's Come On Die Young, and even that album is missing several vital elements that make Eccsame so wonderful. Stylistically, this album defies description; it might be termed the last great gasp of shoegazer, except that it doesn't always have the grinding wall of sound associated with My Bloody Valentine and company. Drowsy vocals, perfect-chime guitars and lazy grooves shuffle their way across shimmering, buzzing sound carpets, occasionally raising a spark or two of distortion that can explode into globs of pretty noise. Never mind the art-damaged song titles and program out the irritating little interludes; this is a bizarre, beautiful masterpiece that commands your attention. Dropping acid is optional but recommended.  BrainiacBonsai Superstar Grass Records, 1994 Even though frontman Timmy Taylor died in a car accident in 1997, Brainiac's place in rock 'n' roll history had already been cemented with Bonsai Superstar and its 1996 follow-up Hissing Prigs In Static Couture. With righteous speed-freak fervor, Bonsai Superstar tears through traditional garage-rock and R&B styles with the sole intent of getting your ass twitching. Just about everything about Brainiac is cartoony: the spasmodic, dissonant blasts of guitar, damaged wheezing electronics, Taylor's best amphetamine-driven Iggy Pop impersonation, and the overall aura of sexy, hyperactive fun that the band exudes. Bonsai Superstar proves that rock 'n' roll will never die as long as there as bands like Brainiac who know that caricature can sometimes be the sincerest form of flattery. 
SpoonSoft Effects EP Matador Records, 1997 When done correctly, an EP can be a nearly perfect thing, like a solid full-length album without the filler. Pavement did it with Watery, Domestic, and Archers of Loaf did it with Vs. the Greatest of all Time, and now Spoon does it with Soft Effects. After their rough but promising debut Telephono, which showed a clear-cut Pixies influence (always a good thing), Britt Daniel and friends took a quantum leap forward by stripping down their already skeletal songs to the marrow, turning simple riffs into monstrous hooks. Thanks to the tweaky production of John Croslin, Soft Effects is Spoon's finest fifteen minutes to date: five haiku-like songs that stick in your ears like taffy. 
PolvoToday's Active Lifestyles Merge Records, 1993 Get ready for Mr. Polvo's Wild Ride, a double-guitar attack of rubbery, stringy new-math-rock riffage that eschews conventional song structure for some sort of epic-poem narrative. Except that the guitars do most of the talking. Now, Polvo has put out some great albums and some not-so-great albums; among the great ones, there's some debate over whether 1996's ambitious Exploded Drawing or the Celebrate The New Dark Age EP is Polvo's high-water mark. Kung Pao! endorses Today's Active Lifestyles for mostly sentimental reasons, although "Lazy Comet", "My Kimono" and "Gemini Cusp" are reason enough to pick it. 
UnrestPerfect Teeth 4AD Records, 1993 As you can probably tell, I have a thing for clean, crisp pop songs. If you do too, then you'd do well to check out Perfect Teeth. Mark Robinson's style of fast strumming and sparse plucking freezes R.E.M.'s guitar jangle in crystalline form, and his ecstatic vocals, obsessive lyrics and strange overdubbed harmonies are arranged with equal precision. Perfect Teeth is an odd mix of great pop tunes and out-and-out weirdness; alongside the breathless rush of "Cath Carroll" and the dreamy "West Coast Love Affair", there's a track full of nothing but the band playing wine glasses, and one where drummer Phil Krauth solos for the entire length of a song. Off-kilter yet completely appropriate at the same time. 
UnwoundNew Plastic Ideas Kill Rock Stars, 1994 In their early years, Unwound was one of the few bands to accurately capture Nirvana's nihilistic abyss-staring and combine it with Youth-like sonics for true teen-spirit effect. As they matured, they shed their sloppy punk energy for a more angular, almost math-rocky sound, while still retaining their angry-adolescent edge. New Plastic Ideas shows the band in transition, capturing the best qualities of both musical styles; the band had yet to shake the encrusted dirt from their amplifiers, but their musicianship and songwriting ability was growing exponentially. 
Drive Like JehuYank Crime Interscope Records, 1994 Few bands channel pure bullheaded aggression as well as Drive Like Jehu did. Using towering, repetitive riffs as heavy blunt objects, the band hammered your eardrums while Rick Froberg's screaming took a rusty knife to your spleen. Now on permanent hiatus, in part due to guitarist John Reis' success with his other band Rocket From The Crypt, DLJ was the epitome of San Diego's once-great hardcore scene, and Yank Crime is their calling card. 
American Music ClubEverclear Alias Records, 1991 You know how you'll usually like the first album you hear by a particular artist the best? For Kung Pao!, it happens more often than not. Even after listening to AMC's other albums, I still like Everclear the best, but I honestly think it's because it's the only album where frontman Mark Eitzel's emotions and musical ambitions click perfectly. Before Everclear, Eitzel's grief overwhelemed every other aspect of the music; after Everclear, his musical and lyrical ambitions got the better of him. Disregarding the honky-tonk rave-up "Crabwalk", a fine song in its own rights but completely inappropriate on this album, Everclear is a landmark recording in the rather hazy genre known as "sadcore". 
MK UltraThe Dream Is Over Artichoke Records, 1999 More or less unknown outside of the Bay Area, MK Ultra make power-pop for too-smart, too-sensitive people. Yes, it's pretentious, but unpretentiously so; frontman John Vanderslice is honestly trying to find his way through the maze of premillenial America. The usual post-teen angst abounds in tracks like "Coffee Girl" and "Sunday", but Vanderslice also finds the time to toast wildrerness-bound survivalists in "Red On White On Blue", join the Red Cross in, well, "Red Cross", and try to find equal footing with his father on "What I Live For". MK Ultra is one of those rare bands that strives for a unique meaningfulness rather than recycled cliches or obscurity; do yourself a favor and search them out. 
MachaMacha Jetset, 1998 Whereas Polvo merely dips a toe into the pool of non-Western musical instruments, scales and sounds, Macha dives in wholeheartedly. Their eponymous debut is a haze of scintillating drones created by (among other things) sumatran gongs, vibraphone, hammered dulcimer, and something called "the fun machine". Comparisons to post-rockers like Tortoise make some sense, given Macha's propensity for shimmery, propulsive grooves, but the influence of traditional Indonesian music lends an extra dimension to the album's cool, sensual vibe. Which is not say that the entire album is sonic soma; in fact, the best track, "The Buddha Nature", is also the loudest-- a throbbing, driving cacophony of voices, electric guitars, hornlike wails, and chattering percussion. Ideal for indie-rockers who can't leave the house but still enjoy the sensation of travel to exotic locales. 
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