Review: 'Alternative Anthems' LP

The alternative scene feels like the great forgotten era in rock history. Although it was the most potent period in my own "coming of age"--the only rock movement I fully embraced as it was happening (although I lived through the new wave era, I didn't fully appreciate it until the eighties were a fart in the breeze), there are scant references to it today. There are no jukebox musicals that feature the songs of Pavement, no Belly biopic. They won't even put the goddamn Pixies into the idiotic Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, even though nineties rock would have been nowhere without their influence. 

That's why any acknowledgement that this era actually existed remains as refreshing as a blast of Throwing Muses on the Discman. So I would probably love Yellowjackets even if it wasn't a damn good camp horror/mystery show, because it includes people like Liz Phair and PJ Harvey on its soundtrack, and I'd probably love a compilation of nineties alterna-songs even if it used a title as dreadfully generic as Alternative Anthems and a cover design as dreadfully generic as the one that adorns Demon Records' recent alternative compilation Alternative Anthems.

While a package of this seemingly generic nature could have been loaded up with crapola by the most mainstream of alternative rock acts-- your Bushes and Alanis Morissettes and such-- Alternative Anthems actually bucks its own lazy title and design with some thoroughly refreshing choices. None of the 23 artists are exactly obscure if you're at all familiar with alternative rock (keep holding your breath for a comp with tracks by The Blue Up? and Smart Went Crazy, friend), but any compilation that gathers songs by Throwing Muses ("Not Too Soon"), The Amps ("Pacer"), Belly ("Feed the Tree"), Pavement ("Summer Girl"), Sleater-Kinney ("I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone"), and Dinosaur Jr. ("Feel the Pain"), as well as tunes by relative superstars like R.E.M. ("The One I Love"), The Replacements ("Swingin' Party"), Sonic Youth ("Teen Age Riot"), and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame non-inductees The Pixies ("Debaser"), is A-OK with me. Alternative Anthems even makes room for artists from the more extreme ends of the scene. The tracks by Babes in Toyland ("Bruise Violet"), The Melvins ("Honey Bucket"), Mudhoney ("Touch Me I'm Sick"), and Bikini Kill ("Rebel Girl") would have given your dad, who thought The Pearl Jams had some rockin' songs, the shits.

I'm especially stoked because Alternative Anthems is on vinyl, and these CD-age artists are relatively poorly represented on the format. The sound is pretty compressed and lacks punch, but the vinyl is quiet and perfectly flat with perfectly centered spindle holes and a total absence of groove distortion but plenty of intended distortion, because alternative rock would have been nowhere without that too.