26 October 2005

Overlooked Albums from the 90's - #3


This is Our Music by Galaxie 500:

Love this band. Love, love. They're dark and interesting and shoegazey and vastly undervalued in terms of their limited musical output. "This is Our Music" is their third album, perhaps not their "best" but it surely IS overlooked AND from the 90's.

What turned out to be the final Galaxie 500 album was also arguably the band's most accomplished. Not that the earlier records lacked either charm or ability, but right from the charging, chugging start of "Fourth of July," the amazing single and leadoff song from This Is Our Music (even including a cheeky Velvet Underground reference from "Candy Says"), the trio here sounds like they could take on anyone. Kramer's production and the use of reverb from past releases all once again contribute to Galaxie 500's magic, while the individual members continue to sound fantastic. Somehow, though, everyone aims higher, Wareham's singing among his finest and his guitar going for the truly epic more than once, Krukowski and Yang even more perfectly in sync than before, often being very bold without losing their intrinsic warmth.


Read the rest of that here or read about the band here.

I can't find any free downloads but you can buy it at that previous Amazon link or on iTunes here where you can sample the songs a little bit. A quick search of recent blog posts about Galaxie 500 brought me to An Aquarium Drunkard where, funnily enough, there's a post (from today) about the upcoming release of Galaxie 500's Peel Seesions. Sweet.

UPDATE - found a song! Are You Familiar? has the wonderful "Fourth of July"


see the 1st "Overlooked Album from the 90's" here
see the 2nd "Overlooked Album from the 90's" here


if you'd like...
Pitchfork's top albums of the 90's
1st version of their list

1 comment:

steven edward streight said...

I always saw those Galaxy 500 albums and wondered about them.

My dad had some old vinyl, and Galaxy 500 was, I think, a brand of audio equipment or something HiFi.

Or is this the name of a car?