1993 Year in Review : Angry Albums for Anxious Times

This has been a year in pop music of convulsion and, for some, revulsion--a time when the public debate dealt as often with an artist’s character as with quality and craft.

The main question at the start of 1993 was whether Nirvana and a wave of other alternative bands, including Smashing Pumpkins and Pearl Jam, could live up to the promise of a remarkable series of 1991 and ’92 major-label debuts.

By December, however, the pop dialogue had become dominated by such matters as how we should react to the news that Axl Rose had recorded a song by a mass murderer, and how much Long Beach rapper Snoop Doggy Dogg’s arrest on murder charges contributed to the near-record first-week sales of his debut album, “Doggystyle.”

These aren’t pretty times--and much of the most compelling music, from the alienation of Nirvana in rock to the escapist bravado of Dr. Dre in rap, was a reflection of today’s social uncertainty and anxiety.

In the end, Nirvana did live up to the expectations and delivered a fiercely uncompromising album that, one hopes, drove the stake even deeper into the heart of the bankrupt macho posturing of so many best-selling groups.

The band’s main creative competition during 1993 should have come from Dr. Dre, the Los Angeles rap producer.

Dre’s work--on his own “The Chronic” album and on Snoop Doggy Dogg’s “Doggystyle”--demonstrated a mastery of form that explains why he has been compared to Phil Spector, the man whose “wall of sound” recordings in the ‘60s established him as the most acclaimed producer of the modern pop era.

The studio wizard might have ended up with the album of the year if he had been able in either collection to match the wonder of his production touches with equally imaginative raps and themes. Unfortunately, the celebrations of a gangsta lifestyle, however lighthearted, were frequently crude and misogynistic--ultimately an invitation to a party that you can’t accept.

That’s why “The Chronic,” the more revolutionary of the two albums, only barely made my ranking of the year’s 10 most important and accomplished works.

The messages in the 10 albums range from the sexual politics of England’s PJ Harvey to the social politics of Los Angeles’ Rage Against the Machine, but the common bond was captivating individuality and boldness. The Dr. Dre and Rage albums were released last December, but had their greatest impact during 1993.

1. Nirvana, “In Utero” (DGC Records). “I wish I could eat your cancer, when you turn black” is a lyric that sounds every bit as exploitative as Guns N’ Roses recording a Charles Manson song--until you learn that the line is part of a love song that Kurt Cobain, the father of an infant daughter, wrote after watching a TV documentary about a child with terminal illness.

It’s this kind of naked emotion that enabled Cobain and Nirvana to live up to the standards of “Nevermind,” the 1991 album that changed the sound of modern rock by matching punk aggression with Beatlesesque melodic touches.

Sometimes singing in a howl that comes from frighteningly deep inside the belly of the beast, Cobain expresses the search for self-identity in ways that can be either disarmingly personal (“I tried hard to have a father / But I only had a dad”) or stubbornly sarcastic.

In “Nevermind” and “In Utero,” he and the band have given us albums reminiscent of John Lennon’s first two solo albums in the way they juggle vulnerability and defiance.

The difference is that where Lennon made his ideas more accessible in 1971’s “Imagine” after the stark “Plastic Ono Band” proved a commercial disappointment, Nirvana did precisely the opposite.

After the more accessible “Nevermind” became a commercial blockbuster, the band--and producer Steve Albini--followed up with “In Utero,” a rawer and more demanding work.

2. Smashing Pumpkins, “Siamese Dream” (Virgin). Just as Cobain’s vision blends Lennon-McCartney and punk, Billy Corgan’s music combines the turbulence of Jimi Hendrix and the tenderness of a delicate, “In My Room”-style Brian Wilson.

In this album’s best moments, Corgan mixes a disciplined guitar foundation with a songwriting intimacy and innocence that makes the Chicago quartet’s music seem like the soundtrack for a deeply personal search for shelter from the psychological storm.

“Deep down we are frightened and we are scared,” he confides in “Cherub Rock,” a glorious exercise that offers the sonic exhilaration of a high-speed motorcycle ride. A work of sweet, disarming force.

3. U2, “Zooropa” (Island). This album’s haunting grace isn’t the only thing about it that reaffirms U2’s position as rock’s premier band. There is also the unfailing confidence and daring shown by the Irish quartet in going into a Dublin studio during a brief tour break to try to expand on the ideas in 1991’s “Achtung Baby,” which was one of the most daring career departures in rock since Dylan went electric. The album has the urgent, immediate feel of a series of snapshots about life in this restless age.

4. PJ Harvey, “Rid of Me” (Island). To better showcase the nuances and neuroses of her songs, Polly Jean Harvey also released stripped-down versions of most of these tunes in a collection titled “4-Track Demos,” but it’s the brute force of the English trio’s power-rock assault in this album that best captures the harrowing looks at the thrills and chills of sexual obsession and desire. Another Albini production.

5. Digable Planets, “Reachin’ (A New Refutation of Time and Space)” (Pendulum). The New York trio stands alongside Arrested Development and Basehead as leaders in a wave of imaginative and independent rappers. Equally seductive and cerebral, the Planets specialize in cultural celebrations (the hit “Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat)” and social battle cries (the pro-choice “La Femme Fetal”).

6. Paul Westerberg, “14 Songs” (Sire/Reprise). The 32-year-old former Replacements leader may not show all the ambition you’d like in his first solo effort, but he still delivers enough knockout tunes to live up to his reputation as the finest American rock songwriter of his generation. “Mannequin Shop” is a wickedly satiric look at the narcissism of cosmetic surgery (“You look bitchin’, you look taut / I’m itchin’ to know what’s bought”), while “Things” speaks about failure to communicate in a relationship with heartbreaking honesty.

7. Liz Phair, “Exile in Guyville” (Matador). If they want to really shake things up on their next tour, the Rolling Stones should bring this Chicago singer-songwriter along as the opening act, or at least play her album during intermission. Designed as a song-by-song response to the Stones’ “Exile on Main Street,” Phair delivers a body blow to male egotism (in and out of rock) that is both deliciously combative and teasingly perceptive.

8. Dinosaur Jr., “Where You Been” (Sire/Warner Bros.). If you love Neil Young’s driving guitar fury with Crazy Horse, here’s the contemporary equivalent. J Mascis backs that liberating power with tales of fractured or unreachable relationships--all the more effective for the occasional tender interludes.

9. Dr. Dre, “The Chronic” (Interscope). The problem in this otherwise landmark work is not the offensive language. Richard Pryor was just as vulgar at one time, but there was a thoughtful and liberating edge to his work. By contrast, the attitudes and language here are frequently vacuous. A wish for ‘94: that the rumored reuniting of Ice Cube, the most articulate voice in West Coast rap, and Dre will bring out the best in both men.

10. Rage Against the Machine, “Rage Against the Machine” (Epic Associated). This explosive Los Angeles rap ‘n’ metal quartet explores social repression with the fire of ‘60s radicalism.

* THE CONSENSUS TOP 10. The Times’ pop music writers pick their best of ’93. Page 68.