High Five Le Divorce’s favorite overlooked ’90s albums

Although the cool kids tend to give music from the ’90s a chilly reception these days, Kitty Vincent isn’t ashamed of her slacker-era roots. The Le Divorce singer-guitarist has been unabashed about her love of ’90s artists, openly gushing about the alternative era’s influence on her band’s music and going so far as to mastermind a Nirvana tribute concert to celebrate Nevermind’s 20th anniversary. With Le Divorce set to unleash its latest album, The Sting And The Light, at Hi-Dive Saturday, Feb. 4, Vincent reflected on five of the decade’s albums she feels unfairly fell through the cracks.

American Thighs by Veruca Salt
Kitty Vincent: It’s one of those albums that I listened to on repeat in high school, and will still sometimes. It’s a band that people don’t even remember, but that album was so great. It just really rocks. It really has that ’90s guitar rock, and they did it so well. It was women, too, which was still kind of unusual at the time. They were just talking about weird things. They had a song about a Victrola record player and Levelor blinds, but they always gave it a double entendre.

The A.V. Club: Do you think the band’s came-from-nowhere success made people overlook Veruca Salt?

KV: They had that big radio hit, “Seether,” and they were probably written off a little bit. I never know why bands get remembered and some don’t. I don’t think any kid today knows who that band is or has ever heard that song.

You’d Prefer An Astronaut by Hum
KV: I always liked how that record really felt really like a perfect marriage of British shoegaze and American indie rock, which not many bands did well. It’s one of those records that audiophiles know; those of us who love music, most of us know that album. Again, it’s never something that pops up in a “top 100 records” list. It’s one that people seem to forget about. They have diehard fans for sure, but it’s not part of the general populace.

Their songs didn’t necessarily have really strong pop hooks, though some of them did—like “Counting Stars” kind of did. His voice was never really strong. He was always off-key a little bit. The Flaming Lips do that, but we still remember them.

Whiskey For The Holy Ghost by Mark Lanegan
KV: It’s just beautiful. I think we remember [Lanegan’s former act] the Screaming Trees pretty well, although they weren’t Nirvana status or anything. His solo stuff was pretty overlooked. If you like Tom Waits or Leonard Cohen, it’s the same. His voice is so gravelly and lonely and just beautiful. You can really picture him sitting in a room, drinking and smoking and writing that record. It’s one I like to put on when I’m by myself.

AVC: Unlike Vercua Salt and Hum, Lanegan’s still making music.

KV: Again, it’s not talked about much. I think he has a small, devout following, but it’s not one that makes lists or gets talked about on blogs. Tom Waits fans don’t even know about him, and they should. He has a really similar quality.

What’s interesting is Nirvana’s cover of Leadbelly’s “In The Pines,” it turns out that that was a cover that Mark Lanegan did before Kurt Cobain did it. Kurt Cobain did it in Mark Lanegan’s style. He copied him almost exactly. I found it on YouTube recently.

Cure For Pain by Morphine
KV: It’s just sort of haunting, the way that sax is and the way his speech is. It just sort of has this very haunting quality to it. It’s another one that I like to listen to by myself. That record is so great. It’s hard to qualify what overlooked means, as there is still a core group of people that love this record. It’s, again, not one I ever see when people talk about the ’90s. They talk about Hole and Smashing Pumpkins; nobody ever mentions Morphine.

AVC: Even at the time, Morphine was really out of step with the loud-guitar fashions of the ’90s.

KV: They were always sort of the oddballs. I’m sure their baritone sax had something to do with it. They made some really good pop music with it.

Lonesome Crowded West by Modest Mouse
KV: That’s a band that’s really well known today. Everyone knows “Float On” and all the stuff they released that was playing on the radio. Everyone forgets all the records they put out in the ’90s. They were obviously way ahead of their time. People finally caught up with them in 2004, or whatever it was. When “Float On” came out, I was like, “I don’t know. They seem way too cheerful. Where’d they get this happy?” I remember listening to that record a couple years after it came out and just thinking, “This is brilliant. Where has this been? Why is no one talking about this record?” Still, no one talks about that record.

Even people who like them, they don’t talk about the records that came out in the ’90s. There were a whole bunch of them that were great. Something about Lonesome Crowded West—it’s their saddest, their darkest, and their loneliest. It has so much raw energy underneath it. Their guitar is so weird. His voice is so strange and off-key most of the time, and then he goes into fits of yelling, but it’s not emo or anything like that.