We are officially 6 months into our quest to catalog our opinions on every major album release from the 1990s, one month at a time. This week we’re listening to some killer stuff from June 1990. Sonic Youth’s now-classic album Goo sees Kim Gordon take the reins as the band’s lead vocalist, with Thurston Moore refining his ecstatic electric guitar chaos; Uncle Tupelo’s first studio album No Depression has Jay Farrar and Jeff Tweedy developing their singular “hillbilly thrash” sound while delivering some of the era’s most compelling songwriting; former Misfits frontman Glenn Danzig channels Jim Morrison on the vampire blues rock album Danzig II: The Lucifuge; and the debut album from the Scottish band Teenage Fanclub, A Catholic Education, lays down some of the main ideas and sounds that would dominate alternative rock in the decade ahead.

Check out this episode’s playlist:

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This week we’re listening to music from May 1990, a moment when, if you had the right ears, you could hear something fracturing in the idealistic image of American life cultivated in the 1980s. Soundgarden’s EP collection Screaming Life/Fopp pushes ‘80s metalhead s**t to its limits as the band teeters on the brink of the sound that will define the decade; Ice Cube’s Amerikkka’s Most Wanted paints a disturbing portrait of the nation’s inner cities overflowing with the violence of poverty and racism; The Breeders’ debut studio album Pod takes alternative rock to a newly haunted place; Mark Lanegan’s debut solo album The Winding Sheet sees the Screaming Trees frontman honing his grunge alienation; and The Pretenders’ Packed! has Chrissie Hynde going it alone with a studio band while maintaining her pristine badasssery.

Check out this episode’s playlist:

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When John and I first looked at the list of albums released in April 1990, we both said the same thing: “heavy hitters.” These are some of the biggest musical acts of the ‘90s, all putting out important albums within weeks of each other. Public Enemy’s Fear of a Black Planet would’ve been enough to chew on for the whole month, honestly. But we also get: a very early collection from Green Day (sounding already like Green Day), the post-hardcore classic Repeater from Fugazi, a weird, moving album about Andy Warhol’s life and death from the reunited Lou Reed and John Cale, alt-rock intensity from Afghan Whigs (a band I’ve only recently discovered), and the haunting goth-toned masterpiece The Good Son from Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. This was the month that cemented, for me, the initial thought that began this podcast: the ‘90s were an incredibly important moment in the history of popular music, with a stunning amount of vital work dropped into the world month after month.

Check out our playlist for April 1990 and let us know your favorites:

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The playlist for March 1990 has some familiar favorites alongside, for me at least, a couple of big surprises. Social Distortion’s self-titled album contains some of their biggest hits (including “Ball and Chain” and “Story of My Life”), and thanks to a Social D-obsessed college roommate, this album became a forever soundtrack to my early twenties. Depeche Mode’s sinister, moody masterpiece Violator is another album filled with recognizable tunes (“Personal Jesus” and “Enjoy the Silence” among them), and returning to Violator this week reminded me how much Depeche Mode’s sound dominated the ‘80s and early ‘90s.

For whatever reason (more about that in the episode), I’ve paid less attention to the albums of Sinéad O'Connor and Cowboy Junkies. I know that O’Connor’s version of Prince’s song “Nothing Compares 2 U,” and particularly the iconic accompanying music video, were impossible to miss in the ‘90s, but the album from which that song derives, I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got, is worthy of your attention. On this week’s episode, we were both sort of blown away by the album’s sound, production, lyrics, and songwriting craft. Similarly, the Cowboy Junkies’ March 1990 release The Caution Horses contains a ton of great songs and a soft, alt-country vibe that’s just really pleasant and appealing, even when their songs take darker turns. And their cover of Neil Young’s “Powderfinger” is an all-timer.

Also discussed in this episode: Albums from Prong, Robert Plant, The Highwaymen, and more.

Listen to the March 1990 playlist:

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After listening and re-listening to the playlist for January 1990, I couldn’t stop thinking about The Sundays. Their album Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic stood out, not just as the best album of that month, but for producing an uncanny sense of nostalgia for the lost world of the pre-Internet 1990s.

This week’s guest, David Humphries, a professor of English at Queensborough Community College in New York City, knows exactly what I’m talking about. Last year he co-edited an excellent project on ‘90s music, a collection of writing called Happy Nostalgia: Making Connections with the Music of the ‘90s. His own essay, “A Couple Centuries of Sundays,” reflects on the things that make The Sundays’ music so special, and he joins me on the podcast for a conversation about analog culture, lazy days on empty college campuses, the wider world of ‘90s music and, of course, the singular appeal of Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic.

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February 1990 was a wild month in music, with new album releases from Oingo Boingo, Everything But the Girl, The Cramps, Primus, The Highwaymen, Midnight Oil, and Guided By Voices.

Listen to our February 1990 playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7cJqeGIUsNXmVkWYWlGzee?si=V8rVdTEVRBucjSyfE76aQw

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On the very first episode of 120 MONTHS, we’re kicking off a decade of amazing music by surveying the cultural landscape as the 80s ended and a new era began. Musically speaking, the 90s came screaming out of the gates, with albums released in January 1990 that offered a weird prophecy of what was to come, from the lo-fi production of Daniel Johnston’s 1990, to the bodily-obsessed humor of Ween’s GodWeenSatan: The Oneness, to the hyper-literate nerd rock of They Might Be Giants’ Flood, to the poetic acoustic tones of bands like Toad the Wet Sprocket and The Sundays. In the very first month of the 1990s, you could already hear some of the trends that would take over the mainstream in the months and years to come.

Listen to the January 1990 playlist:

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