Top 5 - Tim Mohr
1) Stereo Total, Juke-Box-Alarm (Bungalow/Bobsled US). This album is the blueprint for the next generation of music. Stereo Total completely ignore the tired distinctions between rock and dance and between guitars and computers. Instead they create a mix of vintage Euro-trash (Brigitte Bardot, Jacques Dutronc), good-natured punk (Undertones, Ramones), and buzzing electro (Mouse on Mars, Renegade Soundwave), and top the whole thing with female vocals in French, German, and English. Record of the year.
2) Poptarts, Woman Is The Fuhrer Of The World (Bungalow - Import). Their early seven-inchers made them the Beastie Boys' favorite new band and led to a support slot for the girls on the Boys' German tour. The formula: super lo-fi girlie odes to radios, driving fast, and boys. Similar to Helen Love, better than Bis.
3) Miles, The Day I Vanished (V2 - Import). Miles successfully manage to strike a difficult balance--thick, loud guitars off-set by perfect vocal harmonies. Their music evokes memories of classic pop moments (think Ride, Boo Radleys, Fountains of Wayne), and exceeds anything of the sort from England this year.
4) Snowpony, The Slow-Motion World Of Snowpony (Radioactive). Everything here is somehow off-kilter: skipped beats, slide guitars played over sample-based backgrounds, wierd noises sneaking up on plaintive female vocal lines, etc. Like Stereo Total, Snowpony intend not to cross musical genre lines but to transcend them.
5) Delakota, One Love (Go Beat Import). Back to Madchester: baggy beats and pop hooks that reunite the strands of contemporary music the way the Happy Mondays and Primal Scream did a decade ago. The bass line in "C'mon Cincinnati" is so catchy that it feels as if you've developed a nervous tick.
