Review: 'Alternative for the Masses: The '90s Alt-Rock Revolution '

2025 has been a pretty good year for acknowledging that the nineties alternative rock scene was something that actually happened. In previous years (and this year) publishers couldn't pump out enough pages about sixties rock, seventies rock, and Beatles, Beatles, Beatles. Meanwhile the era of Nirvana mostly boiled down to, well, Nirvana. But what about Shudder to Think? What about Helium? What about Belly and Urge Overkill and Primus and Arrested Development and Throwing Muses and Pixies, Pixies, Pixies?

Review: 'Pretend We're Dead: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of Women in Rock in the '90s'

I'd always wanted to read a book like Pretend We're Dead: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of Women in Rock in the '90s. The nineties alternative scene is one that hardly gets as much attention as the British Invasion of the sixties, the hard rock scene of the seventies, or the new wave of the eighties, but for a lot of gen x'ers, it was just as important. But most contemporary discussions of nineties rock would lead you to think it was a scene of one, and that one was Nirvana. I loved and love Nirvana, but grunge was largely a dead end of samey sounding records by guys who couldn't write a pop melody if their favorite flannel was being held for ransom. 

Review: 'Now Is the Time to Invent! Reports from the Indie-Rock Revolution, 1986-2000'

A big part of running Psychobabble involves trawling the Internet in search of cool-looking upcoming books to review. One that interested me when I came across its pre-order page on Amazon was Now Is the Time to Invent! Reports from the Indie-Rock Revolution, 1986-2000, and I immediately put in a review-copy request with Verse Chorus Press. That was October 2012. For whatever reason, the book didn’t come out that year or the year after that or the year after that. It just kept getting put off, but my interest never waned, because I could never find much retrospective coverage of eighties/nineties indie-rock. In fact, I often feel like that whole scene was some weird dream that only I dreamt, a dream that left behind fab recordings by nocturnal phantasms such as Throwing Muses, Pavement, The Breeders, and Belle and Sebastian. While there’s never been a shortage of nostalgia for all things fifties, sixties, seventies, and eighties, the only thing from the nineties anyone seems to remember is Friends, and Friends sucked.

Review: 'Unprepared to Die: America’s Greatest Murder Ballads and the True Crime Stories That Inspired Them'

Murder ballads are a little like the true-crime reports of the folk music world, though the way their stories tend to transform and take on new shades and shadows depending on the storyteller may place them closer to campfire ghost tales. They are elastic, though they often begin with an actual tragic incident. Paul Slade pulls murder ballads further from the campfire and closer to the periodical rack with his new book Unprepared to Die: America’s Greatest Murder Ballads and the True Crime Stories That Inspired Them. The author goes back to the original newspaper stories and crime reports to detail the true stories behind such often-crooned legends as “Pretty Polly”, “Tom Dooley”, “Frankie and Johnny”, “Stack-o-Lee”, and “Poor Ellen Smith” as accurately as possible.

As each story becomes a musical source, Slade begins folding the ballads into the tale, analyzing their faithfulness as journalism and what they say about the culture of their times. This is particularly fascinating when race is an issue, as it is in “Frankie and Johnny”, “Stack-o-Lee”, and Dylan’s deeply chilling “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll”, which becomes far more horrifying the more we learn about the loathsome “man-slaughterer” William Zantzinger. Slade also tracks how the songs develop from rendition to rendition, sometimes becoming completely distinct from the originals over time, as when “Knoxville Girl” morphed into “Banks of the Ohio” or “Stack-o-Lee” became the pop hit “Stagger Lee”. Sometimes these songs inspired answer or referential songs, such as Billy Bragg’s “The Lonesome Death of Rachel Corrie” or Fred Burns’s “Pretty Polly’s Revenge”.

Slade ends each chapter with his picks for the ten best renditions/reinventions of its featured song, and seasons his narratives with testimony’s and interpretations from artists such as Bragg, Mick Harvey of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, who recorded one of the more celebrated later-day collections of murder ballads, and Kristin Hersh, whose Murder, Misery, and Then Goodnight is one of the finest and most underappreciated ones. As for our author, he editorializes sparingly, mainly maintaining a journalist’s critical distance in his telling, so his book rarely reads luridly or morbidly. Nevertheless, the horrifying nature of these crimes—so often perpetrated against women, and at the height of repugnance, an entire family—and the beauty of the songs they inspired delivers an emotional wallop that will only hit harder if you listen to some of these timeless, troubling ballads as you read.

Review: Kristin Hersh's 'Rat Girl'

Between the springs of 1985 and ’86, Kristin Hersh was hit by a car, infected with an influx of incomparably off-kilter songs, lived as a squatter, befriended a former Hollywood star turned college student, diagnosed with bi-polar disorder, cut her first album with Throwing Muses, and became pregnant with her first child. Anyone swept up in such a dizzying draft of events during such a brief period of time—especially when that person is barely out of her teens—is right to think she might have an interesting story to tell. How capable she is of telling that story well is key. That Hersh based her memoir covering this topsy-turvy year, Rat Girl, on the diary she kept at the time might raise a big red flag that we’re in for an insular, possibly self-pitying ride. That Hersh is known for writing elliptical, poetic, angular songs, and not for composing lucid prose, might raise another.



Rat Girl burns those flags. This is a beautifully written, deeply insightful rummage through a year that might have crippled someone without Hersh’s good humor. Ironically, she seems most disturbed by the songs that suddenly begin pouring into her aggressively and constantly. Unsure if the songs are a curse or gift, the fruits of a creative mind or symptoms of mental illness, she can only collect them as they intrude. Hersh’s description of the songwriting process is the most accurate I’ve read, although “process” might be the wrong word. The way songs arrive—and, I assume, continue to arrive— is more like getting clobbered by a generous, if obnoxious, phantom. Equally fascinating, she illustrates numerous passages with her lyrics, which both emphasizes the importance of these moments and brilliantly illuminates Hersh’s famously enigmatic songs. Suddenly, the meanings behind such seemingly willfully obscure lines as “I have a fish nailed to a cross on my apartment wall” and “that looks like a carnival wig and two shiners” materialize.

Rat Girl also pulses with a cast of fantastic characters: Hersh’s geeky yet refreshingly self-possessed band mates, the sweet junkies she befriends, 4-AD’s eccentric founder Ivo Watts Russell (who calls Hersh daily to ask if he can help The Muses with anything and remind her that he doesn’t sign American acts. Until he does), restless producer Gil Norton, and especially, Betty Hutton. After Hersh’s hippy dad (another memorable character!) introduces his daughter to the singer, comedian, and star of The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek and The Greatest Show on Earth at Salve Regina University, they become fast and unlikely friends. Hersh’s recollections about Hutton towing her priest along to Muses shows and imparting show-biz advice she learned from Al Jolson to the mad-eyed, flailing singer are hilarious. The Jiminy Cricket guidance Hutton carefully portions out to Hersh provides the most moving moments in a book rich in humanity, humor, and honesty.

Plus, Hersh begins Rat Girl with quotes from Dostoyevsky and Micky Dolenz. Extra points for that.

December 9, 2009: Psychobabble’s Wholly Subjective 20 Best Albums ofthe ‘00s

The Psychobabble agenda is retro at all costs. Of course, “retro” is a relative term, and as someone who gets nostalgic over things that happened last weekend, I have a fairly arbitrary definition for it: basically, anything that happened before I hit puberty. I’ve made a few exceptions here and there, but I try to stick to pre-mid-‘80s music and movies as best as possible. With the coming end of a decade, I’m making an exception to sift through some of the best (read as: “personal favorite”) items of the ‘00s. This week we’ll be running down 20 of the most worthwhile records to rock this dwindling decade.

20. Mountain Battles by The Breeders (2008)

So, The Breeders released two of the best record of the ‘90s, then ignominiously faded away as the two principal members—Kim and Kelley Deal—dealt with various addictions and personal problems. By the ‘00s they were pretty much a distant memory, vaguely recalled by most as ex-Pixie Kim Deal’s side project and the group responsible for the weird but enthralling hit single “Cannonball”. When The Breeders reformed to a small amount of hoopla and put out the fairly forgettable Title TK in 2002, they seemed more like relics of the ‘90s than ever. A six year gap followed; then Mountain Battles. Jaw drops, eyes bug out, hands begin drumming ecstatically on thighs. Sneaking out with barely a whisper of media interest, The Breeders’ fourth album in nearly two decades may be their best, covering as wide a range of influences and moods as Last Splash while dispensing of the instrumental filler and striking a more consistent overall tone. This is a mature album made by a wonderfully immature group. “Overglazed” sounds like a great lost Who single written after Townshend suffered a severe blow to the skull. “Bang On” and the sublime “Walk It Off” are jaunty, bouncy fun, as is the Tasties cover, “It’s the Love”. All of these could have been big college radio hits if such a thing still existed. “German Studies” could vie with any of the weirder tracks on Last Splash while outdoing most of them for groovy danceability. There are moments of haunting atmospherics (“Night of Joy”, “We’re Gonna Rise”) and Zeppelin-esque heavy rock (“No Way”) and country folk with harmonies like melted butter (“Here No More”), all proving that The Breeders are well worthy of rediscovery.

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19. Sunny Border Blue by Kristin Hersh (2001)

Throwing Muses were one of my favorite band born in the ‘80s. Fractured and furious, their music was demanding, but Kristin Hersh still had a way with a pop hook that held all of the mania together (as did little step-sis Tanya Donnelly, the “George” to Kristin’s “John and Paul”). Hersh’s solo records drop much of the shrieking and cacophonous electric guitars of the Muses in favor of raspy whispers and sparse acoustic backing, but that grit and fury are still very much present. Sunny Border Blue is full of spitting anger (she sounds particularly hungry for the jugular on “Spain”), but the melodies and instrumentation—unplugged guitars, keyboards, and percussion with the occasional trumpet—are beautiful. Hersh’s lyrics, reportedly inspired by marital woes, come off like pages torn from the more vitriolic passages of her diary, and her rendition of Cat Stevens’s “Trouble” (from Harold and Maude) may be the most inspired cover version of the past twenty years.

18. Beautiful Creature by Juliana Hatfield (2000)

Critics often dismiss Juliana Hatfield because of her girlish voice and penchant for sugary pop, but the former Blake Baby has just been strengthening and strengthening as a songwriter for the past 20 years. Her earlier solo albums (Hey Babe, Become What You Are) are refreshing fusions of grubby indie-rock and girl-group bubblegum that were sometimes marred by preciousness and juvenile self-analysis. Since these are the albums for which she is best known, many do not realize how much she has since matured. Her lyrics, while no less self-examining than they’d always been, are less cloying, her taste in backing musicians is keener, and her melodies are just as delectable as ever. It’s a shame that she was essentially forgotten by all but her most devoted fans at the turn of the century, because she simultaneously released two albums that revealed how worthwhile and varied her music remained. Total System Failure is a blow-out of hard Led Zeppelin-style riffs and Jesus Lizard noise that manages to be as catchy as any of Hatfield’s pure pop. Beautiful Creature is quiet, pensive, largely acoustic, and the best argument for Hatfield’s place in the canon of great singer-songwriters. “Choose Drugs” and “When You Loved Me” are heartbreaking love songs. “Hotels” is an infectiously atmospheric meditation on road-weariness. “Daniel” and “Don’t Rush Me” are more upbeat and poppy, but their lyrics continue the melancholic themes of the rest of the record. The one misstep is a pretty big one; as its awful title suggests, “Cool Rock Boy” falls back on the teen-cutesiness of Hatfield’s most unbearable early work, but the rest of the album is consistently fine, as are the ones that followed it.


17. She’s the Dutchess, He’s the Duke by The Dutchess and the Duke (2008)

There has never been a shortage of bands that draw gluttonous reserves of inspiration from The Rolling Stones, but it seems as though most of those bands either reference the early Blues-&-Berry Stones or the Sleazy-‘70s Stones. The Dutchess and the Duke are one of the few that favor the mid-‘60s Stones, when they were immersed in raw folk, baroque guitars, and jangly pop. “Reservoir Park” is a ringer for “Mother’s Little Helper”, “The Prisoner” swipes its riff from “Paint It Black”, the climbing guitar line of “Mary” is reminiscent of “Sittin’ on a Fence”, and “Strangers” gets off on the same C&W jive as “Connection”. They also possess an evocatively morbid lyrical bent that brings to mind some of the Stones most withering cuts, like “I Am Waiting”, “19th Nervous Breakdown”, and “Yesterday’s Papers”. Right now you’re probably thinking, “So, why would I bother with these kids when I could just dust off my copy of Aftermath and hear the real deal?” Well, smart ass, you should check out The Dutchess and the Duke because