Remy Zero Album Recommendations: "Villa Elaine"

Album Recommendations: Villa Elaine

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

[#] Villa Elaine (1998)

Near permanent bliss.

Reviewed January 23, 2025

There's this specific kind of very dramatic, emotive Y2K pop rock I've alternatively called "UPNcore" or "WBcore", named for these bands frequently featuring in teen dramas like Buffy, Charmed, Roswell, and of course Smallville. (None of that is pejorative, so you know.) Remy Zero is one of the premiere WBcore bands, and Villa Elaine was where they started gaining some notice for it. As much as I've grown attached to the ethereal, overly patient Remy Zero, Elaine just has a much finer point on it—stronger, catchier songs, and grander in all the right ways with still plenty of atmosphere to spare. I've heard it called "glammy" before, and that's not a bad way to put it either.

Between "Hermes Bird"'s fittingly soaring strings and bass vamps, the T-Rex riffs that power "Prophecy", "Hollow"'s haunting harmonies, and the dramatic urgency and layered lyrics about chains, flames, teeth, and chalklines that play out "Gramarye" like a seance, Elaine covers a lot of ground. It really never flags either—the penultimate chilly, jaded acoustic ballad "Fair" ("So what if you catch me?/Where would we land?") is as moving as anything they've ever come up with. There just ain't much to complain about here! I could do without some of the sillier vocals, maybe, like on "Goodbye Little World", but that's it. Nearly flawless, Villa Elaine is the sound of Remy Zero capitalizing on so much of their debut's potential, and you absolutely need to listen to it.