Top 5 - Don Share
1) XTC, Homespun (TVT). Say what you want about Andy Partridge's demos being nearly identical to the final products, and the relative weakness of Colin Moulding's demos (I call it shyness). Nobody else except for Pete Townshend combines grandiosity of vision with home studio sweetness so darn lovably. Apple Venus (a masterpiece) would have been my album of the year, but I realized that I play these demos with far more pleasure.
2) Super Furry Animals, Guerrilla (Flydaddy). Lots of people like the Flaming Lips' Soft Bulletin - well, here's the way Welsh craziness sounds. Let's call it the Hard Bulletin. This band deserves more credit for pure whack than the Lips and the Rev combined.
3) Robyn Hitchcock, Jewels for Sophia (Warner). Not just another Robyn Hitchcock album, I'm relieved and pleased to say. It rocks. It makes the eyes glisten in sadness, and with goofy pleasure, at its jokes (and what could be more timely than making fun of Seattle?). Remarkably, its quirky finger is right on the pulse - odd thing for a Brit who used to copy Syd Barrett's English eccentricities -of America.
4) Gorky's Zygotic Mynci, Spanish Dance Troupe (Beggars Banquet). Even odder than Super Furry Animals, which makes them more peculiar than Lips plus Rev, as above. Be advised, however, that this is their most soothing and rustic album: if Belle and Sebastian and Lilac Time went tripping and started talking in tougues, here's what you'd get.
5) Jason Falkner, Can You Still Feel? (Elektra). Don't even bother to call this power pop: it is not Matthew Sweet. Falkner drives right off the genre map with this album, which rubbed some of his own far-from-numerous fans the wrong way and saw him dropped by the record label that figured out how to make money from The Doors and possibly even Love: that's how bent this music is, and why it deserves our support. It shrieks, it beats its breast, it has melodic moments it flees from like a cat from eyedrops, and its heart is unerringly in the right place. If Alex Chilton could be bothered, he'd be making albums like this one, which picks up where Radio City left off, without imitating it, or anybody.
