Tom Ewing’s Top 100 Singles Of The 90s
No good indie kid ever forgets their first insult. It was the late 80s, I was at school, and Nick Smith (local, well-bred, gangly, wanker) accused me of listening to “stupid weird noise shit”. […]

Tom Ewing’s Top 100 Singles Of The 90s
One tiny peevelet of mine about pop criticism is the gawping that results when a mainstream band dares to use an ‘unusual’ word in a song. The classic example being Oasis’ “Acquiesc[…]

Tom Ewing’s Top 100 Singles Of The 90s
At a pinch you could have imagined this shiver of wide-eyed, wide-pupilled kinder-folk being plucked out on guitars, with Kirsty Hawkshaw being contextually transformed into some wild, wildly annoying, for[…]

Tom Ewing’s Top 100 Singles Of The 90s
Kurt Wagner thoughtfully massages his cheek with his tongue and launches into another tight, cryptic slice of something. ‘Alternative country’ doesn’t seem to fit, certainly – there[…]

Tom Ewing’s Top 100 Singles Of The 90s
How to stop time: people talk a lot about the imperceptible shifts of detail in ultra-minimal techno tracks, but I don’t think any listener truly notices them until after playback. That would imply a[…]

Tom Ewing’s Top 100 Singles Of The 90s
Anyone who’s read the British tabloids in the 1990s learns to recognise the purse-lipped nudges and twitched-curtain insinuations that have become the endlessly reported cousins of inexplicable crime[…]

Tom Ewing’s Top 100 Singles Of The 90s
Sure, it doesn’t get much crasser than this; two jovial, ageing D.J.s making a record of piledriving dancefloor unsubtlety. But then one of the best things about commercial dance culture has been the[…]

Tom Ewing’s Top 100 Singles Of The 90s
“Presto! Read the Communist Manifesto…” More Benjamin than benjamins, The Coup’s tough-talking Marxist hip-hop might initially smack of Michael Franti-esque talking down or the funkful but funless […]

Tom Ewing’s Top 100 Singles Of The 90s
The thing about the early Warp records is that even though the people involved had the potential and motivations to mess about making electronic artmusic (as borne out by virtually every Warp release since[…]

Tom Ewing’s Top 100 Singles Of The 90s
So on the one hand you have the most boiling, advanced, raw-edged, up-for-grabs, funny music of my lifetime, and on the other you have Suede. Guess which I was listening to? Guess which everyone else I kne[…]