There’s no such thing as an album that’s a perfect 10 – but there those that are one notch below. The 9’s is an occasional series which explores some of those records.
Released: 1989
About
Evan Dando’s oft-repeated line about The Lemonheads being the seventh best band in Boston at the turn of the eighties had more than a grain of truth in it, such was the city’s apparent near-monopoly on American alternative rock. From nearby Cambridge but based there, Galaxie 500 had little appetite to join the in crowd if their 1988 debut Today was any benchmark. What the trio of Harvard graduates Dean Wareham, Naomi Yang and Damon Krukowski laid out foundationally on that – lo-fi, tone, fragility – was fully realised on it’s follow up, released a year later.
Why a 9?
Using vintage equipment before it became a fetish, the trio’s spacey, stargazing dynamic had a willing foil in producer Kramer and their joint preference for musical understatement and atmospherics was, little did their contemporary critics realise, a nursery for much of the following decade’s alt-rock. Whereas there was a devilment to say The Pixies or The Lemonheads retro-pop chaos, On Fire‘s slow reveal meant that it’s thrills had to be coaxed from the margins, but once discovered they were no less addictive.
Why Is It Important?
Whilst an unstoppable critical mass around them was gathering behind nihilism, speed and noise, On Fire instead took solace from The Velvet Underground but also The Jesus and Mary Chain and tangentially the anorak pop of The Pastels. In the latter’s world holding a tune was less aesthetically vital, so by extension Wareham’s fragile vocals were less of deal breaker then before. No more than a cult proposition in their lifetime, the now revered trio wisely never much cared for how big they were in Boston.
You Should Listen To
Blue Thunder, Snowstorm, Tell Me, Another Day
The Voice Of Unreason 