Fantastic choice! I'm so glad to see somebody else choose this album because it only narrowly mised my Top 10. The track "Madame Butterfly" is worth the price of admission alone, it's just a stunning piece of work. But there are plenty of other enjoyable opera/dance pop fusions to enjoy too ("Boys Chorus" and "Death of Butterfly" are other stand out tracks for me). I know what you mean about "Carmen"; I'm not sure I'd go as far as you and call it an out-and-out "dud", but it was certainly a disappointing follow-up single to the sublime "Madame Butterfly".

Do you know McLaren's previous album Duck Rock? That's much more hip-hop flavoured, though combined with lots of World Music elements, such as South African Township Jive and Colombian dance bands. It's a really interesting listen; "Buffalo Gals" and "Double Dutch" were the two big hits from it over here in the UK, but I don't know if they did much in the U.S.?




I'm not massively knowledgeable about the Cocteau Twins, but there's the odd song of theirs that I know, such as "Heaven or Las Vegas" and "Bluebeard". Really, for me I know them more as a band that influenced a lot of the shoegaze and jangly indie bands that I love, such as My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, and the Sundays.




Like you, I got into the Waterboys via the Fisherman's Blues album in 1988 and I only went back and started investigating their earlier stuff in the 2000s. To be honest, my investigation of their earlier stuff is limited to the compilation album The Best of The Waterboys '81–'90, so I don't the A Pagan Place album in its entirety. The songs from that album that I do know are "The Big Music" and "All The Things She Gave Me". I really like the song you posted, "A Pagan Place", on first listen.





Reckoning is a cracking good album. I love "(Don't Go Back to) Rockville" too.





I know this! This is the music from the end of the film Napolean Dynamite, though it's not the same version. Can't say I've heard of the Penguin Café Orchestra, is this similar to their other stuff?

I suppose the thing this, any live album chosen should probably be a contemporary release though, in terms of it having been recorded at a recent gig, rather than an archival release of an old gig. Like, David Bowie's Santa Monica '72 came out in 1994, but it captures a gig from 22 years earlier, so that shouldn't be eligable as a 1994 album for the purposes of our lists. But Bob Marley's Live! is fine (if you choose it for 1975) because it was recorded at a gig 4 months before it was released.

Yeah, "Carmen" was a single (at least here in the UK), but you're verdict of that being "an error in judgement" is probably a good one since it missed the charts completely (Wikipedia tells me that it actually got to #79).

The My Bloody Valentine comeback album from 2013 is pretty good, though not as good as Loveless, predictably, or even Isn't Anything for that matter. But if you're already "on the bus" with the band, which you are, you'll find plenty to enjoy there.

As for The Sundays, I'm sure you'll have heard "Here's Where the Story Ends", which is a fantastic song and was a bit of an "indie disco hit" in 1991 (Wikipedia tells me it was a number 1 on the U.S. Alternative Chart). I'd be surprised if you'd not heard this.

Oh yeah, if you like that song you will definitely enjoy the rest of The Sundays stuff. It's very representative of their music generally.

OK, Top 10 albums of 1994 then. This was a really strong year for albums in my view; several records that I really like didn't make the top 10 because there was just so much competition. Anyway, here we go...



#10 - Give Out but Don't Give Up by Primal Scream




One of the things I love about Primal Scream is that no two albums of theirs sound the same. That's certainly true about this album, which followed the band's 1991 ecstasy-drenched, dance music masterpiece Screamadelica. For Give Out but Don't Give Up, the band travelled to Ardent Studios in Memphis to record with legendary producer Tom Dowd (and later George Drakoulias) and came back with something that recalled the classic rock swagger of early '70s Rolling Stones or the Faces. Though there had been signposts to this change in musical direction on 1992's Dixie-Narco EP, for most fans it came as a total shock. And the critics hated the album! Still, it reached #2 in the UK charts and hits like "Rocks" and "Jailbird" became '90s classics (at least here in the UK).

Myself, I like the album every bit as much as Screamadelica. "Jailbird" is a great, hip-shakin' opener, while the album's other big hit, "Rocks", is an energetic, Stonesy stomper. Other stand out tracks include "Big Jet Plane", which brings to mind prime Allman Brothers Band, and "(I'm Gonna) Cry Myself Blind", a gentle ballad that wouldn't have sounded out of place on the Faces' early '70s albums. Special mention as well to "Sad and Blue", for being a simply gorgeous slide guitar, harmonica and gospel choir adorned gem, with the Primals at their most down-home, stoned and fatigued.

The band hadn't completely abandoned their dance club leanings though: the descriptively named "Funky Jam" invokes the spirit of the Parliament-Funkadelic collective (George Clinton guests on vocals) and was always an "indie disco floor filler" back in the day. The languid, groove-based title track also features Clinton.

I'm gonna pick the single "Jailbird" to showcase the album. This is just a kick-ass song – a slinky-sounding, whisky-swiggin' rocker, with a killer guitar riff and a great sing-along chorus featuring totally inappropriate lyrics ("Gimme more of that Jailbird pie").