Jangle Me: Five Songs Chiming out of the 80s and 90s

There was a particular guitar tone born in the 1980s on the midwestern and southern independent concert circuit. It can be almost directly traced back to the twin arrivals of REM and The Replacements. It was ringing and bright yet capable of shades of melancholy.


It got picked up and homogenized into the stereotypical mid-nineties guitar sound. It became the gen-ex totem associated with pop-lazy music tastes, bottoming out with the Friends and Party of Five TV themes.

But it is still possible to cycle back and reclaim it, to remember how fresh and enigmatic it could be in the hands of REM or how brash and confrontational when handled by Paul Westerberg et al.
These five songs run from 1985 to 1996 and are like worn flannel with the whiff of incense and old sweat in the threads, energetic memories to animate you right now.