The old five-point scale has been retired in favor of just rating stuff 1-10, which allows me a much more nuanced final rating. Still don't take it that seriously. Most of these come from my own collection, so the grades skew rather high. Your results may vary if you send me stuff to review.
Each album is given three Essential tracks, my personal favorites, regardless of how weird and inconsequential they are. The Quintessential pick is the one I think best represents the album as a whole, so you can try one song instead of a whole album of songs. Non-Essential picks range from merely disappointing to outright unlistenable.
DGC's roster was on fire back then, huh?
At the risk of sounding pretentious and wasting space not talking about the music, I feel it's a frequent misstep of music fans and reviewers to get hung up on the intent of an album instead of the end result. Deconstruction in art proves time and again that, even if this was the crassest, most commercial, vile, exploitative comp on the planet, how you interpret art is up to you, and I choose to believe DGC Rarities is both a beautiful tribute to the working process and goofery that comes out of making music and a surprisingly kickass selection of tunes. Perhaps it's that it's so stylistically varied that it's never found widespread appreciation--Beck fans love "Bogusflow" and Weezer fans love "Jamie", but they don't necessarily appreciate each other's tunes.
Despite the name implying a freeform collection of throwaways and experiments (for Sonic Youth, they may be right), Rarities comes out a fine sampler of the flavor of each band featured here. A pre-Grohl Nirvana turns in an early "Stay Away" coated in buzzy caustic sludge. Crunchy, dynamic summertime poptimism mask righteous depression on the Posies' "Open Every Window". Teenage Fanclub's sweet pop eases you into a world where Murray Attaway's spacey, minor-key folk sits next to a hip hop-flavored four-track cover medley from Sloan, or Counting Crows' exuberant nuclear armageddon can share space with that dog.'s silly dissonant fuzz bass. A lovely little cheese platter of freewheeling 90s alt not thrown off by the occasionally lyrically odd, underwritten Hole tune.
| Essential: | Quintessential: | Non-Essential: | Rating: |
|---|---|---|---|
| "Mad Dog 20/20", "Einstein on the Beach (For an Eggman), "Allegory" | "Jamie" | "Beautiful Son" |  |
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