Picked By TURN UP THE VOLUME – 10 Big Albums Turning 30 In 2023

Back in time

11 December 2022

Artist: PJ HARVEY
Album: RID OF ME
Her second LP

Released: 4 May 1993

Pitchfork said: “The brilliance of Rid of Me is in the vividness and detail with which it captures that Boschian panorama using only blues rhythms, loud-quiet-loud dynamics, Harvey’s voice.”

TUTV Pick: Rid Of Me

Stream the album HERE
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Band: THE AFGHAN WHIGS
Album: GENTLEMEN
4th longplayer

Released: 5 October 1993

Pitchfork wrote: “This major-label debu is a harrowing song cycle chronicling the death
throes of a relationship. That cycle implies a romantic fatalism, as though every relationship is doomed to end painfully. Gentlemen is both personal and unknowable, cocksure yet deeply troubled.”

TUTV Pick: Debonair

Stream the album HERE
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Band: SUEDE
Album: SUEDE
Debut LP

Released: 29 March 1993

BBC Music: “Suede’s main sources were Bowie (in Anderson’s wonderfully fey delivery) and
the Smiths. Ironically, Mike Joyce of the Smiths was a member for a short spell, but their bleak chronicles of urban dysfunction, modern love and sexual confusion were never a million miles away from Morrissey’s home ground.”

TUTV Pick: Animal Nitrate

Stream the album HERE
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Band: THE BREEDERS
Album:
LAST SPLASH
Second longplayer

Released: 30 August 1993

AllMusic: “Its best moments — and the Deal sisters’ megawatt charm — end up
outweighing its inconsistencies to make it one of the alternative rock era’s defining
albums.”

TUTV Pick: Cannonball

Stream the album HERE
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Band: BLUR
Album: MODERN LIFE IS RUBBISH
Second LP

Released: 10 May 1993

Rolling Stone wrote: “Blur‘s second LP is their secret classic. Coming between the pop-psych shimmer of 1991’s Leisure and the cool Britannia of 1994’s Parklife, the brittle jangle and bitter observations on Modern Life Is Rubbish were near-career-killers.”

TUTV Rick: For Tomorrow

Stream the album HERE

Band: RADIOHEAD
Album: PABLO HONEY
Debut LP

Released: 22 February 1993

NME: “One of rock’s brightest hopes.
British teenagerhood has never been grumpier.”

TUTV Pick: Creep

Stream the album HERE
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Band: MORPHINE
Album: CURE FOR PAIN

Second LP

Release: 14 September 1993

AllMusic said: “With their cult following growing, Morphine expanded their audience even further with their exceptional 1994 sophomore effort, Cure for Pain. Whereas their debut, Good, was intriguing yet not entirely consistent, Cure for Pain more than delivered. The songwriting was stronger and more succinct. Cure for Pain was unquestionably one of the best and most cutting-edge rock releases of the ’90s.”

TUTV Pick: Buena

Stream the album HERE
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Band: NIRVANA
Album: IN UTERO
Third LP

Release: 21 September 1993

Rolling Stone wrote: “The album is a lot of things – brilliant, corrosive, enraged and thoughtful, most of them all at once. But more than anything, it’s a triumph of the will.”

TUTV Pick: All Apologies

Stream the album HERE
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Band: THE VERVE
Album: A STORM IN HEAVEN
Debut full length

Released: 21 June 1193

GuitarCom said: “A Northern Soul may have more choruses, Urban Hymns may have shifted 10 million copies and made them Wigan’s only global superstars, but Verve‘s (the ‘The’ came later) celestial debut A Storm In Heaven is the guitarist’s choice. Nick McCabe’s enveloping waves of reverb and tape delay, in turn soothing and savage, moved producer John Leckie to conclude “To some extent, A Storm In Heaven is his record”.

TUTV Pick: Slide Away

Stream the album HERE
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Band: MANIC STREET PREACHERS
Album: GOLD AGAINST THE SOUL
Second LP

Released: 21 June 1993

AllMusic said: “The rage is more articulate and the sound is stronger,
making Gold Against the Soul a flawed but worthy step forward.”

TUTV Pick: La Tristtese Durera

Stream the album HERE

BLUR – One Of Their Best Albums Ever ‘MODERN LIFE IS RUBBISH’ Came Out 25 Years Ago…

Going back in sonic history looking for memorable albums…

8 May 2018

Band: BLUR

Album: MODERN LIFE IS RUBBISH

Released: 10 May 1993 – 25 years ago

Drowned In Sound wrote: “There’s something wonderfully pure about Blur’s second album. Not only is Modern Life Is Rubbish a virtually perfect record, musically, but it comes without the baggage of the albums that surround it: no hit singles, no feuds with Oasis, no silly videos and no Britpop (though it would be retrospectively appropriated as such), its lyrics full of yearning for a vanished West London rather than the brassy Camden-isms of the next couple of albums. Reputedly the band – after their pissiness over ‘Popscene’ – were unfazed that neither their second album nor its singles sold particular well: they knew how good it was, they knew it
was only a matter of time before they hit the big time… and they were right.”

Score: 9/10 – Full review here

Turn Up The Volume says: Blur’s first great album and still one of their very best…

Three Top Tracks: For Tomorrow / Sunday Sunday / Advert

* FOR TOMORROW

* SUNDAY SUNDAY

* ADVERT

BLUR: Website – Facebook – Discography