The Most Memorable 1999 Albums (Part 3)

PopMatters recently turned 25, and these memorable 1999 albums celebrate the popular music that defined the year of our birth. This is part three, with more to follow.

The White Stripes – The White Stripes [Sympathy for the Record Industry] – 15 June 1999

Jack White saw the light, and it was blues. Lucky for us. Before launching the White Stripes in the summer of 1997, Jack White played drums for Detroit cowpunk outfit Goober & the Peas. Contrary to what one might assume, the transition to the White Stripes was not such a violent shift. The low-fi, blues rock, and garage rock bomb that the White Stripes served up shared a proudly stripped-down honesty with its cowpunk predecessor. You probably couldn’t get more fundamental, honest rock music if you gave a rattle to a naked, wailing baby.

“Jimmy the Exploder”, the opening track, sets the tone. Those familiar with 1990s indie blues reworkings might immediately associate it with Jon Spencer, but then it quickly shifts to a reverb-heavy, open-chord riff reminiscent of “Gloria”. All the while, Meg White’s simple but competent percussion keeps a rocked-out, tambourine-like beat. A circumspect headbang becomes brisker, especially to Jack White’s war whoops and generally lilting vocals. This spare, catchy rocker fades with falsetto yelps. Wipe the sweat from your brow.

The lyrics share that patented simplicity with country and blues, early rock ‘n’ roll, and pop, in repetition and brevity. Take “Astro”: “Maybe Jasper does the astro / Maybe Jasper does the astro / Maybe Jasper does the astro, astro / Yeah.” Next verse: “Maybe Lilly does the astro… woah… eh”, and on for two more verses before the culmination of an honorary salute to one of their significant influences: “Maybe Tesla does the astro / Maybe Edison is AC/DC”.

It’s a similar sequence for other songs on the album, such as “Little People”. “There’s a little girl who says, ‘bing, bing bomb.’ / Hello, oh, oh, little boy with a spider in his hands… 25 cents. Hello, oh, oh.” The core is a little headbangable three-chord riff. A guitar lets loose an intermittent background yawp like a seal in heat.

Compare that lyrical pattern to almost any traditional country, bluegrass, or blues, such as Son House’s “Country Farm”: “Down South, when you do anything, that’s wrong / Down South, when you do anything, that’s wrong / Down South, when you do anything, that’s wrong / They’ll sure put you down on the country farm”.” The Hawaiian-tinged blues twang associated with bluesmen like Son House is again showcased on songs like “Suzy Lee”, though only appearing in pure stripped-down form for a couple of measures before it morphs into a hard rock riff, returning a few measures down the line. This is what the White Stripes do so well.

The album also featured two carefully selected covers: one of blues giant Robert Johnson’s “Stop Breakin’ Down”, the other Bob Dylan’s “One More Cup of Coffee”. Both provide honorable twists on the originals. The first, though great in its own right, is perhaps a tad too peppy for the lyrics’ own good. But the second’s howling coyote vocals channel a desolation that surely rivals the original. There are also a couple of especially rock-heavy morsels.

“The Big Three Killed My Baby” is practically an arena rock, Led Zeppelin-esque number reduced to two musicians. Blast this song on the stereo or headphones, and AC/DC can eat crow. It gets in the bloodstream like good tequila. Like that? Take a hit of “Slicker Drips”. What you would get if Dr. Frankenstein put his helmet on Flat Duo Jets, Hasil Adkins, and Iggy Pop (on “I Wanna Be Your Dog”) and hit the power switch.

This is the way it all began. The White Stripes‘ fresh take on blues and rock ‘n’ roll would have destined them for the pantheon. What came after? A media mystique: Jack and Meg’s simple variations on a red, white, and black self-presentation; the rumors or lies they generated about being siblings; the always lingering rumor of breakup; their iconic association with the Detroit garage rock revival. However, The White Stripes still holds up as the most uncompromisingly stripped-down, honest, and arguably best album in their entire repertoire. – Jayson Harsin

The Art of Noise – The Seduction of Claude Debussy [ZTT/Universal] – 15 June 1999

On paper, The Seduction of Claude Debussy sounds like an inevitably disastrous collision of neo-classical pretension and that most troublesome of 20th-century progressive art forms, the concept album. This is, however, the Art of Noise, and as such, The Seduction of Claude Debussy is an improbable success. It’s an acquired taste, and for listeners who can’t open up to the idea of having operatic vocals, jungle rhythms, and, um, Rakim on the same release, it’s a lost avenue.

However, for the willing, the Art of Noise prove, as always, their ability to immerse, challenge, and reward listeners. That this record remains an overlooked and underrated chapter of the Art of Noise’s history is a shame. It can be mainly attributed to the fact that, unlike the Art of Noise’s 1980s output, it didn’t reinvent the wheel with its production techniques.

“Il Pleure (At the Turn of the Century)”, perhaps the finest track on the release, starts things off with a maximal bang, throwing Debussy’s lovely, sparse piano compositions against snare rushes, string samples, opera vocals, and narration from actor John Hurt. Debussy, Hurt climactically explains, was a key figure in the development of modern music.

It’s only appropriate, then, that the Art of Noise celebrate the dawning of a new century with an aural pastiche of various musical forms from the previous ones. Once again, suspension of disbelief is critical: it’s easy to roll one’s eyes at Hurt’s suggestion that the listener “imagine Debussy being born again”, but it’s a genuine plea. More importantly, Debussy is a poignant tribute to its namesake and his spirit of progress and aesthetic ear.

The odd man out in the cast is Rakim, and it’s initially strange to hear him rap about Baudelaire and being “aerodynamic in the evening air”. However, if there’s one thing the Art of Noise — super-producer Trevor Horn, astute critic Paul Morley, and musician Anne Dudley — know, it’s how to make improbably brilliant art that refracts the culture of the moment. This is also the only flaw that has revealed itself since Debussy was first issued: like most trends in electronic music, the drum’n’bass beats that sounded so much like the far-off future in the 1990s now sound like, well, the 1990s. At the same time, this clear datedness contributes to The Seduction of Claude Debussy as a reflective look back at the close of a century, merging the avant-garde of its beginning with that of its close. – David Abravanel

The Chemical Brothers – Surrender [Astralwerks] – 22 June 1999

With hindsight, I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that Surrender was the high-water mark of late 1990s popular electronic music. Sure, many albums sold better: The Prodigy’s Fat of the Land, Moby’s Play, the Chemical Brothers‘ Dig Your Own Hole. Also, Surrender also had the misfortune of being released within a few weeks of Limp Bizkit’s Significant Other and the Backstreet Boys’ Millennium, placing the album squarely at odds with the dominant schizoid strains of pre-millennial bubblegum. The “electronica” revolution had passed, leaving little impact in its wake save for a ton of great, mostly unheralded music.

Nonetheless, Surrender still sounded like the Future (already receding), neatly encapsulating all the conflicting strains of 1990s dance music, bundling up acid house, techno, synthpop, and even the egregiously named “big beat” sound that made the duo famous, wrapping it all in one big shiny bow of blissed-out psychedelic perfection. At the time, it seemed like a revelation: forward-thinking music with an eye on history, sonically dense and subversively intellectual musique concrète, filtered through the lens of New Order, Mercury Rev, and, yes, the Beatles.

It was consciously retro, but considering how marvelously forward-thinking the Chems’ first two albums had been, the historical focus hardly seemed like a sin. It was the electronic music equivalent of the world’s most awesome covers album, a respectful nod to every fondly remembered variety of 1990s electronic music — hip-hop, rock, house, and pop — all thrown into the pot to make the stanky, fertile bouillabaisse of 1990s dance.

However, unfortunately, the tide turned, and the Chemical Brothers‘ utopian future never actually came to pass. Most of the acts that defined 1990s dance and electronic music either stumbled or fell entirely soon after the calendar turned. The Prodigy went into hibernation, Underworld lost a member and, with him, a great deal of their urgency. Orbital and Leftfield both split, and Aphex Twin decided he’d rather spend his time doing anything but making music.

In the ensuing years, the Chemical Brothers have consistently released solid albums, but nothing quite so revelatory as their first three LPs. They can still be depended on for a handful of great tracks per disc, and a few sleeper deep cuts, but the perception of invincibility has long since faded.

There was a time when these two homely British dudes (with a passion for medieval history and Bob Dylan, of all things) were making the most exciting music on the planet, more potent than any angry rap-rock, more debonair than a thousand teenyboppers, and just about the smartest stuff that ever made it onto MTV, Radiohead not excepted. Those were the days, and they seemed like they would last forever. They didn’t, but I still prefer this future to the one we actually got. – Tim O’Neil

Limp Bizkit – Significant Other [Interscope/MCA] – 22 June 1999

I’ve been a music obsessive for as long as I can remember, and when I was 13, in the summer of 1999, Rolling Stone was the Bible and Limp Bizkit were the prophets. I was the perfect audience for their debut record, 1997’s Three Dollar Bill Yall$, a rap-metal tirade that spoke to teenage angst like the Who staring angrily into a mirror. I found it puzzling at the time that my beloved Rolling Stone predicted such an engaging album as Significant Other would destroy the Bizkit, but it makes complete sense now. Skyrocketing to popularity destroyed Limp Bizkit’s appeal to the disaffected teens that made them.

However, the honeymoon period was glorious, and for the summer of 1999, Limp Bizkit owned MTV. Veteran metal-loving VJ Matt Pinfield even offers his ecstatic endorsement at the close of the album, presenting Limp Bizkit as an antidote to boy bands. Much as its intro might declare the Bizkit to be “the worst”, Significant Other was the sound of rap-rock trading in its “underground” card for chart domination.

There are two ballads (“Re-Arranged” and “No Sex”), and a straight-up hip-hop collaboration with Method Man and DJ Premier (“N 2 Gether Now”) with nary a guitar in sight. All of which makes Fred Durst’s puerile angst on tracks like “Nookie” and “Break Stuff” that much harder to see as sincere.

Marketing fake rebellion is as old as rock music itself, but the Bizkit couldn’t last long after releasing something as diverse as Significant Other. Quickly branded as shallow sell-outs, it didn’t help the Bizkit’s case when their single “Break Stuff” was plastered across TV screens as the reason for the rape and rioting that closed the disastrous Woodstock 99.

Limp Bizkit had abandoned their sweaty nu-metal purism for a grab at mainstream success, only to have the mainstream ultimately decide that “return of rock” bands were the ticket to authenticity in the new millennium. That, and the follow-up album was named after hot dogs and anuses, but that’s another story. – David Abravanel

Missy Elliott – Da Real World [Elektra] – 22 June 1999

It took Missy Elliott two years to release the follow-up to her breakthrough debut, Supa Dupa Fly. Still, when hip-hop and R&B’s leading lady emerged with the futuristic masterpiece Da Real World after two months in the studio, it was clear that she hadn’t suffered from any sophomore slump. A natural extension of her singing, rhyming, songwriting, and producing prowess, the record solidified the unique artist’s stature as one of the most critical hip-hop phenomena on the planet.

Da Real World was released to wide critical and popular acclaim, but is now commonly considered the weakest of Elliott’s early outings. This is faint praise for a work that in 1999 easily bested most of what hip-hop had to offer. It’s also an unfair assessment in retrospect. Critics consider Da Real World darker and denser than either Elliott’s debut or her third and fourth albums, a mind-blowing party-starting one-two punch. By this, they mean that Da Real World lacks international hits like “Get Ur Freak On”, “One Minute Man”, and “4 My People” (Miss E…So Addictive) or “Work It” (Under Construction).

However, Misdemeanor has always been more than a singles artist, and the record welcomes listeners into a World that is defined by fascinating soundscapes and dense musical strata. The singles are all inventive and catchy: both “All N My Grill” and “Hot Boyz” showcase Elliott’s strength as a singer, while “She’s a Bitch” presages the Middle Eastern percussive rhythm of her prospective popular hits.

Even lesser-known tracks like the ominous dancehall of “Mr. DJ” and the ballad “You Don’t Know” sound stronger now than most of the chart-topping hip-hop from 1999. Da Real World, along with Supa Dupa Fly and the two albums to follow, are must-haves for one of the most vital artists of our time. – Luke Fenchel

The Flaming Lips – The Soft Bulletin [Warner Bros.] – 22 June 1999

When guitar whiz Ronald Jones abruptly left the Flaming Lips in 1996, he left the band in a creative lurch. Along with drummer Steven Drozd, Jones was responsible for the band’s second coming, the one that saw the Lips transition from classic rock punks to avant-garde pop pranksters. Jones’s eccentric style perfectly encapsulated the whimsical sound of the band captured on 1993’s Transmission from the Satellite Heart and 1995’s Clouds Taste Metallic… and now they were left without a plan.

The Lips responded by being even more experimental, conducting the Parking Lot Experiments (a symphony of cars playing prerecorded tracks as concerts) and then releasing Zaireeka, an album consisting of four CDs to be played simultaneously. And, when the time came to make an album proper, they decided to forego replacing Jones in favor of having the all-around musical virtuoso Drozd step out from behind the drums to take over the keys and guitars.

The result was The Soft Bulletin, an album so different from the Lips’ previous albums that it sounded like the work of an entirely different band. Gone were the crunchy guitars, and in their place were layers of strings and textures. The Lips had dabbled in classic rock and punk, but now they were blending retro pop and progressive rock. If Phil Spector had produced ELP, he might have ended up with The Soft Bulletin.

The music, however, wasn’t the only drastic change. Previously content with singing about the absurd — aliens, waterbugs, giraffes — frontman Wayne Coyne suddenly tackled the significant issues with a proximity and poetic eye previously unseen. “Waitin’ for a Superman” dared to ask if God were too feeble to save mankind, while “The Gash” encouraged everyone to push forward nonetheless, ultimately concluding that we have to make the change we desire.

Yes, lyrical irony and detachment had ruled the decade, but Coyne dared to put on a suit and sing without hipster sarcasm, inspiring many others to follow. True, it’s impossible to pinpoint when 1990s lyrical distance transformed into unabashed emotionality, but Coyne definitely played a role. Coldplay, after all, are Lips devotees, and Chris Martin might benefit from some lyrical detachment.

And consider this: earlier in the decade, Butch Vig had to lure Kurt Cobain into double-tracking his vocals by telling him that John Lennon had done the same on Beatles albums, such was the disdain for studio wizardy. Not even a decade later, The Soft Bulletin made the studio a respectable instrument in itself. Combined with the panoramic spectacle of the Lips’ live show, the album proved that bands with relatively modest but loyal followings could dare to think grand. Rock, thankfully, has never recovered. – Michael Franco

Nobukazu Takemura – Scope [Thrill Jockey] – 22 June 1999

In the not-too-distant future, CD skips and fast-forward skims will be quaint fodder for textural dressing, just as warbled cassette tapes and vinyl scratches are today. The natural sounds of wear and imperfection are dissipating in the digital age (though I still hear the occasional MP3 burp every now and again), and there has been a markedly reactionary movement to reclaim them in the experimental 2000s from the early decade’s glitch to the latter portion’s hauntology.

Japanese sound wizard Nobukazu Takemura wasn’t the first to play confused lasers skipping on optical discs as an instrument (see the cut-ups of Markus Popp and Todd Edwards, among others). However, with Scope, he harnessed the process into an act of jaw-dropping beauty by creating gigantic, long-form, ever-looping meditations with broken sound, which gave Terry Riley a run for his money.

His fragmented sounds (waveforms truncated abruptly and left with pops, clicks, warts and all) helped make the case for digital as a genuine competitor to the analogue throne. A track like “Icefall” — which sounds like Tomita’s more ebullient, but similarly named, “Snowflakes Are Dancing” remixed into zeroes and ones and beamed into space — exudes a warmth and emotional resonance that is undeniable.

“Taw” and its slightly tedious, squirmy, granulized rhythmic noise crunches are not entirely dissimilar to what’s coming out of Editions Mego and Raster Norton these days, though with far less distortion. “On a Balloon” is a lush 22-minute odyssey that’s discordant, like a jigsaw puzzle put together incorrectly, but actually more beautiful and more telling in its discontinuity. Scope‘s scope is vast and showcases that technology need not only plot our nightmares, but it can also digitize our dreams. – Timothy Gabriele

Slipknot – Slipknot [Roadrunner] – 29 June 1999

Slipknot’s sound. Rough detuned guitars; propulsive, skittering dual drummer action; a turntablist producing untutored, screeching noise like an anti-DJ Shadow; and, over it all, competing (and generally winning) in the mix: Corey Taylor’s voice. Guttural screaming, to the point of destroying a perfectly decent microphone with acrid spittle, is its dominant mode. Yet he sometimes whispers, sometimes moans, sometimes sounds almost tender. In other breakthrough popular music of 1999, Slipknot was closest to Eminem’s more witty articulation of this same outsider’s conflict.

The adolescent energy that pushes Taylor is also behind the band’s eclecticism and quirkiness; they even seem to channel some elements of the Prodigy in the way the programmed and live drums connect on “Eyeless”. The single “Spit It Out” has a jaunty garage-punk bounce, despite its apparent angst. The eight-minute closer “Scissors” is percussively dense and seems genuinely, if amateurishly, experimental, while musical linchpin Joey Jordison’s obsessive love of thrash metal underscores the record as a whole.

Lyrically, a lot of the album is banal “fuck the world” angst, some psychotic/serial killer-inspired lines, and a reliance on a quiet-to-pulverizing loudness formula that is first draining, ultimately boring. In the midst of this, some great non sequiturs and humour stand out: “You can’t see California without Marlon Brando’s eyes” seems to me as surreal as early 1980s Mark E. Smith, just as “Fuck me, I’m all out of enemies” reflects funnily on the necessity of conflict for Taylor’s own attitude.

Slipknot’s breakthrough debut spawned imitators like the short-lived Mudvayne, but these were few. Slipknot is undoubtedly not an intensely analyzed, canonical record, though it is well-respected in the metal community. Boilersuits, pig masks, nods to Leatherface, and misogynistic, frat-boy antics were staples of their live shows, and these moves earned them notoriety in popular culture. This filled a void for those (generally teenage) listeners who somehow wished Slayer’s thrash ethic to be removed from its historical context and fused with the pantomime metal villainy of Iron Maiden’s Eddie.

Will it be talked about in years to come? I think so, for two reasons. Slipknot stands as a culturally significant moment when a strange band broke through, helped by the predominance of nu-metal, and sold a very marketable image. It was also a popular counterpoint, both sonically and visually, to the artsy noise-making theatrics of bands like Lightning Bolt. – Kieran Curran

Macy Gray – On How Life Is [Epic] – 5 July 1999

“I get high when I smoke.
Try to walk away, but I stumble
Though I try to deny it, it’s clear.
I smoke up when you are not here.”

A petit montage: In the video, Macy Gray is alone. She wanders around the city, not aimlessly, per se, but generally aimless in life. She pays no real attention to the spaces she inhabits, nor the people with whom she interacts. She’s alone, but not abandoned. Needed, but not loved. Her needs always accompany abandonment. The video reads like addiction, and the protagonist: “The Addicted”.

Macy Gray sunk 1999’s groove back into something mellow, and made pop into something smooth, like stout. Fair enough. The haze, craze, and fake lyrics like those above the petit montage served up Macy a Grammy for the tacky love-lost single “I Try”. Yet “Do Something” was the real beat with which hip-hop heads needed to reckon. “You and I got to do for you and I”. It sounds like something Obama would say. Imagine him jamming to Macy’s song on his branded portable digital music and video player, cruising abroad on Air Force One. Swoosh! Turbulence. Don’t drop it! It’s fragile, and you won’t want to miss that beat.

Macy Gray’s On How Life Is really had pressing and relevant lyrics. Between the number of negros braggin’ ’bout dey hoes, let’s not forget to give praise to those soul stars who remained true to the game. The game? Truth-telling. Witnessing & Testifying in that ole negro tradition. Witnessing & Testifying on how life is. Now, more and more people are seeing both its global roots & resonance. “Like ole girl growled: Get up. Get out & do something”. Even and especially if that means change. It’s all about mutuality and happiness.

The truth is, Barack is the coolest person I don’t know personally. Macy Gray is the second, yet for totally different, though oddly related, reasons, in the larger picture. They both are unafraid to speak up and speak out. They both know how to run their mouths and do something. – Diepiriye Kuku

Mr. Bungle – California [Warner Bros.] – 13 July 1999

From the sounds of the seagulls and surf that open the album to the century-ending clang that closes it, Mr. Bungle’s California covers more ideas and images than most bands could cram into a career. Anyone who has fallen under Bungle’s uncanny spell can attest to the fact that when you hear one of their albums, it stays with you. This is music that takes you somewhere, including places you did not know existed. Mr. Bungle gets inside your mind and remains there.

Mr. Bungle only released three albums in the 1990s (in part because the various members kept busy with other projects, like Faith No More, Fantômas, and Secret Chiefs 3, all of whom made incredible and vital recordings during that decade), and each successive album represented a considerable leap forward. The band’s self-titled 1991 debut was an ambitious, genre-splicing experiment that combined carnivalesque whimsy with occasionally disturbing subject matter: it was about what happened after the circus left town, metaphorically speaking.

Mr. Bungle endures as a psychedelic hall of mirrors that remains delightful and disorienting, no matter how many times you hear it. Their next release, 1995’s Disco Volante, upped the ante and somehow managed to be both weirder and, at times, more accessible than its predecessor. A song like “Desert Search for Techno Allah” (and before you even listen to it, think of the awesomely odd images that title conjures) defies description; it’s a techno mash-up with eye-popping musical proficiency. The band’s brand of weird science offers no quarter: this material affronts non-believers and turns adventurous listeners into fanatics.

Incredibly, after another four-year interval, California synthesized the band’s numerous compulsions (surf music, proto-funk, eastern rhythms, jazzy noodling, and ingenious yet oddball lyrics) into a cohesive whole. The confidence and focus displayed throughout their third album are on a completely different level. On each of the ten tracks, you might hear traces of Frank Zappa (both the comic and the composer), Captain Beefheart, Ennio Morricone, and the Ventures. The band cruises from one influence to the next with arresting ease, perfecting a sort of laid-back lunacy—a controlled hurricane of intensely opposite styles that somehow make complete sense.

Aside from being the Mr. Bungle masterpiece (Disco Volante boasts some of the band’s finest moments, but taken in its entirety it’s a tad too disjointed and self-indulgent; it’s a schizophrenic near-miss), California is the culmination of their cut-and-paste surrealism, marrying the stop-on-a-dime intensity with a kitchen sink sensibility that incorporates the entire universe into its vision.

More so than any previous album, Mike Patton’s prodigious (and possibly unparalleled) vocal range is fully utilized, allowing him to explore everything from retro-crooning (“Vanity Fair”) to campy faux-lounge (“Pink Cigarette”) to relatively straightforward rock (“The Air-Conditioned Nightmare”) to the utterly unclassifiable (“Golem II: The Bionic Vapour Boy”). The band continuously weaves a West Coast vibe into the mix, winking and nodding with playful but heartfelt invocations of the Beach Boys, Hollywood, and, as always, surf music, filtered through a distinctively postmodern heavy metal mindset.

California is not even a collection of songs so much as miniature sonic movies. Take “Ars Moriendi”, for instance. The opening seconds somehow blend a thrash guitar/drum riff with an accordion waltz (imagine hardcore gypsy music). Patton enters with his operatic flourishes, singing lyrics like “All my bones are laughing / As you’re dancing on my grave”. The song navigates the incongruous edge between head-banging abandon and Turkish wedding music, making you want to slamdance while doing a polka.

Or consider “Goodbye Sober Day”, which is like “I Am the Walrus” on Peyote. Think the outro of Syd Barrett’s “Bike” thrown into a blender with multi-tracked falsetto wails cut by one of Sun Ra’s stranger big band workouts. And that’s just the first 30 seconds. The song goes on to incorporate Gregorian chants convincingly and a Balinese monkey chant seriously. All while the band slowly disintegrates into oblivion like the bad guys’ faces melting at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

There are also gems of calm and clarity, like “The Holy Filament”, which showcases Patton as a choir boy, and “Sweet Charity”, which sounds like Phil Spector working with Brian Wilson. Then there is the track that epitomizes what worked best on the previous albums, “None of Them Knew They Were Robots”. Here is the Bungle aesthetic at full effect: Hawaiian music crashing into Carl Stalling cartoon territory — keyboards and horns and Trey Spruance’s quicksilver chord changes — with a brief but convincing Elvis impersonation serving as a sick cherry on top. Oh, and it somehow manages to swing. It’s a madcap laugh, to be certain, but it’s also absolute genius.

So, it’s a shame that the boys couldn’t keep the party going after Y2K, but considering the subsequent gifts we have received from Secret Chiefs 3, Tomahawk, and Fantômas, it seems churlish to complain. Besides, if Bungle was going to go out on top, the third time was a charm — the project where all the disparate elements and obsessions came together. California is an album that sums up the 20th century while burning the bridge to the 21st, an eternal fin-de-siècle celebration. – Sean Murphy

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