Remy Zero Album Recommendations

The old five-point scale has been retired in favor of just rating stuff 1-10, which allows me a much more nuanced final rating. Still don't take it that seriously. Most of these come from my own collection, so the grades skew rather high. Your results may vary if you send me stuff to review.

Each album is given three Essential tracks, my personal favorites, regardless of how weird and inconsequential they are. The Quintessential pick is the one I think best represents the album as a whole, so you can try one song instead of a whole album of songs. Non-Essential picks range from merely disappointing to outright unlistenable.

Remy Zero

[#] Remy Zero (1996)

Patiently hearing out the voices in your head.

Reviewed June 10, 2024

Sometimes, the albums I love the most are the ones I loved the least on first listen. Magnified is my go-to example, an album once so associated with me to people I knew that my characters have been drawn in its cover art, and an album I once fell asleep during in third period study hall in high school. Remy Zero's self-titled debut shares much the same position in my library, and I don't think I'm alone in that feeling. Better associated with their late-era song "Save Me" being the theme to a little show called Smallville, Remy Zero did not shift units, fans could barely buy the record because Geffen dragged their feet on distribution, and retrospective reviews have been middling. Hell, I almost wrote one of those myself—until I thought better and gave it time.

This is mid-90s noisy indie as sound exploration, an album of ether tornadoes through dusty attics, tossing family photos against the exposed insulation. The mood is low throughout, occasionally hushed ("Gold Star Speaker"), occasionally disoriented ("Chloroform Days"), and just as often exploding into pounding drums and dissonant chords ("Temenos", "Shadowcasting"). Cinjun Tate's vocals on tracks like "Twister" are truly achingly beautiful, but without hooks, the songs take a bit of effort on the listener's part to sink in, and there are no singles here to help them. This is one of my favorites this year no doubt, but despite that and some high profile fans (most notably Radiohead and Counting Crows), most people sadly won't have the patience to see Remy Zero for everything it truly is.