POP MUSIC : Freshman Class: Here’s to the Ladies

By commercial standards, it was strictly no contest in 1995 between Alanis Morissette and Ani DiFranco.

DiFranco’s album “Not a Pretty Girl” has only sold about 50,000 copies on her own, tiny Righteous Babe label. Thanks to the hit single “You Oughta Know,” Morissette’s “Jagged Little Pill” album has sold more than 3 million copies for Madonna’s high-powered Maverick label.

Yet the singer-songwriters, whose music is filled with confession and confrontation, are part of another captivating wave of ‘90s female artists, a group that includes Elastica’s Justine Frischmann, Garbage’s Shirley Manson, the Geraldine Fibbers’ Carla Bozulich and Portishead’s Beth Gibbons.

These artists dominate Calendar’s annual salute to the year’s most noteworthy pop arrivals--a list that includes artists who stepped up to major-label status or increased attention during the past 12 months. They are listed alphabetically.

ALBITA

Latin pop is a sleeping giant on the U.S. pop landscape, armed with enough charismatic performers and colorful sounds to begin making a bigger dent in the marketplace, even with listeners who can’t speak Spanish. Albita Rodriguez is a prime example. The 33-year-old Cuban native’s first U.S. album, “No Se Parece a Nada” (Unlike Anything Else) on Crescent Moon Records, and her live shows, which are built around various forms of pre-salsa Afro-Cuban music, are both joyous and uplifting.

D’ANGELO

Like every great soul singer from Sam Cooke and Ray Charles to Marvin Gaye and Al Green, Michael D’Angelo Archer got his start singing in church, and he didn’t forget how to tap into that emotional fervor when he later turned his ear to the secular world of R&B.; Now in his early 20s, the Richmond, Va., native may have borrowed the name of his hit EMI album and single “Brown Sugar” from the Rolling Stones, but the sexy grooves are all his. At his most striking, D’Angelo reminds you of an ambitious young Prince.

ANI DiFRANCO

Record companies keep telling this 25-year-old New Yorker that she needs to sign with a major label if she wants anyone to really pay attention to her tough, imaginative mix of punk bite and folk grace. But she seems to be doing just fine, thanks to a series of albums on her own Righteous Babe label. As she shows in her current collection, “Not a Pretty Girl,” DiFranco writes about attitudes and relationships with a Dylan-like originality and range.

ELASTICA

This British rock quartet’s first single, “Stutter,” was such a wonderfully appealing exercise in early-’80s-style new wave that the group almost made last year’s freshman list, but because lots of great singles have been followed by disappointing albums, it seemed best to wait until the group’s album arrived this year. The self-titled DGC collection lived up gloriously to expectations, as did appearances by the band on the Lollapalooza tour. Leader Justine Frischmann doesn’t have the vocal purity of Chrissie Hynde, but she asserts much of the same winning independence and bite.

GARBAGE

The selling point when Garbage’s self-titled debut album went on the Almo Sounds/Geffen release schedule last summer was that the band includes Butch Vig, rear, who has produced albums for Nirvana and Smashing Pumpkins. But the secret weapon proves to be Shirley Manson, whose sinuous but reserved vocals are ideal for the dark romanticism and melodic pop distortion of tracks such as “Only Happy When It Rains.”

THE GERALDINE FIBBERS

After false starts in a couple of other bands, including the highly touted industrial-dance outfit Ethyl Meatplow, San Pedro’s Carla Bozulich, in striped shirt above, blossoms creatively in “Lost Somewhere Between the Earth and My Home,” her group’s debut album on Virgin, which explores broken dreams and twisted psyches. At one point, Bozulich snarls, “I never knew nothin’ ‘cept hunger and fear / And the love that you gave me / Was lies to keep me near.” Despite the unsettling themes, the Fibbers’ alternative rock is frequently brightened by a strangely soothing, almost mountain-air purity that speaks of--or maybe recalls--a better day.

ALANIS MORISSETTE

It’s easy to be suspicious of anyone who comes out of nowhere at 21 with an album that takes her to the top of the sales charts and onto the covers of both Spin and Rolling Stone, but Morissette delivers on “Jagged Little Pill” and onstage with tales of romantic rejection and revenge that hit hard and deep. The danger of such quick success is that Morissette could become stereotyped as the brokenhearted avenger, but she shows signs--as in the self-affirmation of “Hand in My Pocket”--of broadening her musical playing field.

PORTISHEAD

This British group’s music, largely shaped by Geoff Barrow, has been described as soundtracks without movies, suggesting quite rightly moody, mysterious textures that leave enough room in the arrangements for listeners to fill in the missing pieces of the scenario. “Sour Times,” from “Dummy,” Portishead’s debut collection on Go! Discs/London Records, combines traces of adventurous surf guitar with the tension of Ennio Morricone scores for spaghetti Westerns, all pulled together by Beth Gibbons’ brooding vocals and disconsolate lyrics.

RANCID

You might think it’s just another Clash wanna-be calling from London when you listen to this Bay Area band for the first time, but there is a strong sense of conviction and craft beneath the aggressive attack. The band’s latest Epitaph album, “ . . . and Out Come the Wolves,” hasn’t come close to the sales punch of punk rivals Green Day or Offspring, but Rancid has the feel of a band that could outdistance them both. The choruses are so infectious you need a vaccination not to be hooked.

WU-TANG CLAN

The casualty rate of rap crews is so high that it’s wise to wait for a second album to pass kudos around. The Clan has yet to follow up 1993’s “Enter the Wu-Tang Clan: 36 Chambers” on Loud/RCA Records, but the rappers claimed a place on today’s list with a remarkable series of hit solo albums--by members Method Man, Ol’ Dirty Bastard and Raekwon. It’s the most striking explosion of energy from a rap group since N.W.A. Like the three others, the latest Clan solo dividend, Genius’ “Liquid Sword” on Geffen, was produced by RZA.