As opposed to politics, it’s incredibly fun to engage in alternative history thought experiments when it comes to music history. There’s the now infamous ‘Albums that Never Were’ Blogspot that made an entire library out of those lasting questions. What if Pink Floyd recorded their exclusive live performance The Massed Gadgets of Auximenes as a studio album? What if the Beach Boys finished and released SMiLE in 1967, parallel to Sgt. Pepper’s? What if Nirvana never signed with Geffen? The opportunities are endless, especially with current technology allowing for further advancements in audio restoration and manipulation. There’s no barrier anymore between imagination and action, which has also led artists to explore the possibilities of restorative efforts. The reworked version of Bowie’s “Never Let Me Down” or the final Beatles song “Now and Then” come to mind. But, mostly, those artist-led recreations and restorations are addressing past work with an eye for the present, while fans seem to approach their restorations from a fictionalised standpoint, a narrative focus on what the world would be like “if only…”
As I’ve laid out in my piece on Drop Nineteens‘ brilliant 2023 comeback record Hard Light, the Boston-based shoegaze group has had a tumultuous history, which almost begs for their fans to imagine a different one. A quick rundown: after a stylistically diverse debut album Delaware in 1992 and minor MTV hit with “Winona”, the band quickly disintegrated during a tour, leading to an almost total regrouping for their line-up for 1993’s follow up National Coma, which saw them fully turn towards heavy alternative rock sounds. The record barely sold, and Drop Nineteens dissolved fully, but Delaware continued making appearances on the rankings of All Time Top 50 Shoegaze Albums lists over the following years. And that seemed it for Drop Nineteens: a story of lost potential, “ifs and could have beens”.
Until, during the lockdown, the band suddenly regrouped, and released a modern shoegaze classic with the mighty, Deerhunter-inspired Hard Light. Since then, Drop Nineteens have seen a resurgence in attention and popularity, especially with the Zoomer crowd that re-invigorated the genre thanks to TikTok and YouTube indulgence. So far, so fantastic – but the question always remained of what would have been if Drop Nineteens could go back to the 90s, if the original line-up had been given another stab at glory…
Well, turns out the world was blissfully unaware that in 1991, the group had recorded an entire album, pretty much in their dorm rooms, of original material! Rarely referenced and stemming from impromptu dorm-room sessions that spanned multiple months, the album was sent out to record labels as two individual “demo tapes” and… that’s about it: a lost curiosity, no?
Well, considering 4AD brazenly released multiple bands’ demo tapes as their debut releases – Pixies, Red House Painters etc. – it should be no surprise that behind the messy recording history and minimalist title of 1991, Drop Nineteens’ stellar archival release marks their actual debut album!
Aided by modern technology, which boosted the tape recordings to actually sound like a proper studio outing, the album falls right between the two lead approaches explored in the opening paragraph – part cleaned up, part narrative play. What if Drop Nineteens were able to show their true form, prior to exploring more commercially viable styles? 1991 is, in this final form, equal to the early EP material of Slowdive in its nocturnal, hazy glory, with Greg Ackell and Paula Kelley exchanging lead roles. It is confident in its psychedelic, abstract explorations, aided by the immense, groovy rhythm section of Chris Roof and Steve Zimmerman.
Where Delaware already sounded unmistakably American, exploring suburban-bred nostalgia and melancholia of 90s teens, 1991 is incredibly British sounding; there’s hints of The Stone Roses (“Another Summer”) and Cocteau Twins (“Back in Our Old Bed”) here. The lo-fi nature of the recordings seems less an apparent flaw and more so intentional aesthetic choice, given how central the individual instruments become throughout, providing the songs with an autumnal glow-up and authentic charm. And while it is certainly hard to adequately describe the quality of the shoegaze genre in text (and it’s tiresome to always return to the same old comparisons), it’s an interesting assessment that this record very much sounds more than what fans expected Slowdive to deliver in place of the more suppressed Just For A Day. This shows in the incredibly dynamic sonic relationship between Ackell and Kelley; one Halstead and Goswell didn’t quite nail on their debut and only managed by Souvlaki. But it especially becomes clear in the cataclysmic guitar parts, which are – frankly – out of this world beautiful where Just For A Day leaned towards Ambient minimalism.
1991 is, most of all, a rock record – and it is rich in hits! There’s the wonderfully pastel opener “Daymom”, with its dynamic tempo and cool bass line, and the sharp Madchester vibe of “Shannon Waves”, whose danceable beat contains a hint of MBV’s “Soon”. “Songbird” is another highlight, slowly building itself up from a wintery ambient opening to its thundering, blizzard like finish. The previously mentioned “Another Summer” sounds like a forgotten hit: with its memorable guitar melodies and euphoric sentiment, it feels like a lost puzzle piece of early 90s romanticism. The somewhat more restrained, ballad-like tracks “Soapland” and “Kissing the Sea” – helmed by Kelley and one-time addition Hannah Yampolsky (Kelley had to briefly drop out of the sessions to tour) – are also incredible in their sonic density and atmospheric tension. The latter is especially incredible, with Ackell and the rhythm section joining in after the first minute to rebuild the song into blissful mid-tempo psychedelia.
There is one occasion when the album’s limitations briefly become apparent: on the heaviest track, “Mayfield”, a short rocker that clocks in just under three minutes, the audio quality resembles that of a bootleg recording, before suddenly bursting into clarity just before the ending. It’s the only moment where the contradiction of creative vigour and technological abilities collide, where the history of the song’s making becomes all too apparent. Because outside of this sole occasion, nothing here sounds particularly clumsy, or incoherent, or restricted. 1991 thoroughly retains its form of grace and ambition, fulfilling its sturm & drang effortlessly.
It would have been easy for Drop Nineteens, now a more seasoned and experienced group, to re-assess the old material in form of a full re-recording, adjusting it to modern recording sensibilities and glossy audio clarity. But while this would have allowed for the band to reassess their own past selves, it also would have ruined the story of those songs. Contained on tape in living quarters, with gear that – I suspect – wasn’t all that expensive, yet sounding like a lost classic of the era, 1991 begs to rewrite a minor chapter of American shoegaze, and brazenly shifts the power dynamics of the then still young genre.
Hindsight is impossible to achieve, and I can’t properly explore how this record would have sounded if it stood alongside its contemporaries in CD shelves back then. For what it’s worth, the numerical rating I apply could possibly shoot up in the coming years, proving that this record, if released commercially upon inception, would have been an era-defining classic. The ingredients for that – memorable hits, unique sound experiments, tenderly charismatic ballads and on point performances – are all present. But most Zoomers that obsess over shoegaze lack this point of view anyways – to them, this record is now equal in a larger library of outings, right next to “Just for a Day” and “Loveless”.
This makes it hard to debate in terms of “the canon”. Again: how to achieve hindsight of a history that simply is not? But then it’s easy to just isolate 1991 and point out how rich and emotional these songs are, how their explosive musicianship and wild passion make them a lasting cornerstone rather than just an archival curiosity.
Yes, the past can only be changed through imagination and fictional reconfiguration – but the future is unwritten. Drop Nineteens, with their four unique and diverse albums, now have one of the most interesting and versatile catalogues of any band, allowing newcomers to their story to just drop in at any point and find a wholly different mythology that opens up to them. There’s no more “what if”, but rather the thrilling question of “what’s next?”
