harley lol

175. Fountains Of Wayne - Utopia Parkway (1999)




'Denise' is a perfect power-pop song. Completely and utterly flawless. 'Troubled Times' is one of my favorite songs by the group. 'Hat And Feet' is odd, but entrancing. And all the other numbers are good pop music.

Sure, the back half of the album is a tad weak and, overall, it's not as strong as their debut. But the guys still write and record some of the best pop music of the last ten years. This is a necessity for any power pop collection.

Neverending Math Equation belongs on the best of the 90s, if not on best of independent music imo. Great, great song. Wore that damn track down.

176. Ben Folds Five - The Unauthorized Biography Of Reinhold Messner (1999)

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I first discovered Ben Folds through hearing the song 'Brick' on the radio. I always assumed they were a Counting Crows-ish type group. It wasn't until I heard this album that I realised they were really more in the alternative camp than rock.

I thought it was really cool that they had no guitars, piano instead, and yet were still a solid rock band, not really drifting into adult-contemporary or jazz or anything like that at all.

I don't like this disc as much as Whatever And Ever Amen but there are still a bunch of solid tracks off this. Just looking at the album gets the opening of 'Army' stuck in my head. 'Mess' is great. And so on.

177. The Flashing Lights - Where The Change Is (1999)




The Flashing Lights were a pop/rock band from Toronto who played music in the vein of their fellow Canadians in Eric's Trip, The Super Friendz, and early Sloan.

Tracks like 'Where The Change Is' and 'Highschool' are great, upbeat, choppy songs. 'Half The Time' is Beatlesque and 'Where Do The Days Go?' is a decent song made great thanks to the presence of the back-up vocals.

I got this for free through the label when they were closing down and it was worth every penny. Check it out if you like any of the aforementioned alterna-darlings.

i first discovered them via the song "underground". that's how i initially identify with them.

Finally, a Harley selection I can fully endorse!

178. The Flaming Lips - The Soft Bulletin (1999)

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I wish I could remember any initial impression from this album, but I can't. I can't even remember what the first Lips song I heard was. It very would could've been off this album.

All I know is that I love this album a lot. It's not my favorite by them and it's not my favorite of '99 (I don't think), and it doesn't even include my favorite Lips song (though I'm not sure what that would be). But it's clearly brilliant, clearly great, and hard to dislike.


Last summer I was walking with my friend through Toronto and a particular crane caught my attention. I had 'Waitin' For A Superman' stuck in my head for the rest of the day.

mine was the jelly song.

Not just in the vein of. Matt Murphy is the singer/guitarist/chief songwriter in both bands.

Really? I don't know about that much about the Lights. But makes sense.

179. Leslies - Of Today - For Today (1999)




I discovered Leslies through Endearing Record's International Pop Exchange. They were teamed up with Paper Moon for an EP and I was a big Paper Moon fan. Then I found this album used and cheap at the record store I worked at and picked it up.

It's straightforward Swedish male-vocal indie pop. Nothing groundbreaking and no coloring outside of the lines but good if you're into Ivy, Paper Moon or Bedroom Eyes.

'So Sincere' and 'Blue Suede Shirt' are the highlights. 'So Sincere' in particular is a step above most of this kind of fare with Tony Ivarsson's vocals on the chorus especially catchy.

180. The White Stripes (1999)




I forgot how different their first album is from their later material. It's so much more unstructured and noisy and awesome. I personally couldn't stand tracks like 'Seven Nation Army' or 'The Hardest Button To Button' after more than two or three listens. It got old real fast. But the tracks on this album are never given that chance.

'Jimmy The Exploder' almost sounds like something the Yeah Yeah Yeahs would have written. 'The Big Three Killed My Baby' is astounding.

I used to be of the opinion that, if you had to own one Stripes disc, De Stijl was the way to go but now I'm questioning my decision. I guess my new answer would be, if you had to own one White Stripes album, get the first two.

181. Sigur Rós - Ágætis Byrjun (1999)




Try as I might, I can't get myself to like Sigur Rós as much as I should. It just comes down to that it's not really my thing. I don't dislike it and I know it's good, it just doesn't do it for me.

A big part of all the music I love is lyrics so obviously another language is going to be a factor there. And I'm just not that into the Mogwaiish type songs. I don't know how to describe this type of music. Is it post-rock? I don't know what post-rock is.

This next one's going to take a while.

Temporary hiatus.

182. The Magnetic Fields - 69 Love Songs (1999)




If this box set could be considered as one album, it would be my favorite album of all time.

I searched forever for this set before finally giving in and ordering it online and paying the large sum of shipping costs. It's a decision I have never once regretted.

I play these discs incessantly. I play them over and over until I get sick of them, then wait a week and start over again from the top. I love every song on ever album and the lyrics are so intelligent and witty and funny and enchanting and heartbreaking. Stephin Merritt writes about love like he invented the notion and does so in such a way that gender and sexuality don't even factor into the equation.

If I were doing a list of my 169 favorite songs of all time, this entire box set would make the list. The only reason all of these 69 songs wouldn't make a regular 100 favorite songs list is due to my lack of guts.

183. Guster - Lost And Gone Forever (1999)




My favorite Guster album is most people's favorites. But understandably so. In the world of Guster, nearly every song off this album was a hit. Even the most casual Guster fans knows 'Fa Fa', 'What You Wish For', 'Center Of Attention', 'Barrel Of A Gun', 'I Spy' and so on.

This is also the album that helped them start to get mainstream exposure, most notably in the film Life As A House, which features both 'What You Wish For' and 'Rainy Day' as well as other Guster references involving the dog and car's license plate.

This is the first full album I heard by the band and the one that got me hooked on them, leading to them now being in my top three favorite acts making music today, perpetually tied with Belle And Sebastian behind Eels.

My work here is done.

184. Gin Blossoms - Outside Looking In: The Best Of (1999)




This was the first Gin Blossoms album I purchased for myself, though I played my parents' copy of New Miserable Experience incessantly growing up, in particular the track 'Hey Jealousy'.

I hadn't really heard anything off Congratulations I'm Sorry or the other EP's before getting this so it seemed like a good place to start as it had the NME tracks I loved, as well as the song from the Empire Records soundtrack that I really dug.

So this got a lot of play when I was 15 and 16, as I transitioned from my junior high discovered-on-my-own alternative rock phase to my high school turned-onto-by-others emo/punk phase.

I can still listen to and enjoy this but it doesn't really have the same resonance as it did for me almost a decade ago. Now I have to be in the mood. Sitting in my basement on a February day isn't the proper atmosphere for the Gin Blossoms anyway, though. It has to be June or July and you have to be out in the sun. When I play it then, it might still have the same strength.

185. The Dismemberment Plan - Emergency & I (1999)




This is probably the best D-Plan album and my favorite. Nearly every song on this is brilliant. 'You Are Invited', 'Gyroscope', 'The City', 'What Do You Want Me To Say?', 'Spider In The Snow', and 'A Life Of Possibilities' are my noted favorites.

This is also the first album I heard by the group and was certainly a welcome addition.

186. Le Tigre (1999)




As a Bikini Kill fan, this album fascinates me. But as a general music fan, this record rocks me.

I'm a suburban white boy; I don't dance. But putting this on makes even me want to dance. This is just solid from beginning to end and probably a better overall disc than anything Bikini Kill or the Yeah Yeah Yeahs ever did. (Maybe not better than Fever To Tell but the rest of that statement is definitely true.)

I haven't been very impressed by the later material I've heard by LT but that doesn't hurt this record at all. It just makes it an anomaly.

is it time for this one yet.


I'm actually pretty interested in hearing what you've got to say. Get the Y2K on, waltz.

Only twenty more albums first.

187. The Weakerthans - Fallow (1999)




The debut album from the Weakerthans is folk-punk more in the camp of Billy Bragg than leader John K. Samson's previous band Propagandhi. But whether making folk music or punk music or whatever in between, Samson is still one of the most literate singer-songwriters on the scene today.

After the quaint opener of 'Illustrated Bible Stories For Children', we get 'Diagnosis': a pop-punk number about ailments and illness that musically foreshadows later tunes like 'Aside' and 'This Is A Fire Door Never Leave Open' while not falling that far from the Propagandhi tree.

'None Of The Above' reads like a Kate Sterns novel. 'Anchorless' references novelist P.G. Wodehouse. 'Wellington's Wednesdays' steals the "Oh you've got blues / oh you've got green eyes / oh you've got gray eyes" chorus from New Order's song 'Temptation'.

While the overall product isn't as stunning as their later two discs, it's certainly a great disc and the highlight of course is the lyrics. Samson is one of the great young Canadian writers. The fact that he plays guitar is just a bonus.