Portishead "Dummy" [1994]

Taking recording techniques to synthetic extremes that would make Tricky scream in agony, gloomy doomster Brit-mopes Portishead shower their distinct brand of depression on susceptible 90s potheads, rendering the entire remainder of the millennium a complete waste, steeped as it was in deeply morose self-pity. So anally tedious in the studio he'd make Dave Stewart cringe, Geoff Barrow spends what must have been an eternity splicing together and slowing down snippets of music not his own for "Dummy"'s pastiche of preciously meaningless sound collages. Beth Gibbons' voice contains all the comfort of a cold, steely spinal-tap needle (and I don't mean the funny 80s movie; there's nothing remotely funny about this album -- believe me, I'm searching for it). As a result, in retrospect this is the perfect CD to listen to as your soundtrack to the ensuing Y2K paranoia; you may even hope a plane will fall out of the sky on top of you after listening to this toxic grey mud-slide. I think I hear Robert Smith from The Cure telling this band to cheer the fuck up. Perhaps they were clairvoyant enough to know what havoc the Bush administration was about to wreak on the world in the next several years... or maybe it's just that they're from a part of England where it never fucking stops raining.