albums of note that I'm hearing for the first time

This is really good, I don't know if I'll listen to it more than once or twice a year but that's fine.

I mean, that's what I was thinking when I was about halfway through this album, but then with every passing song it gets darker and weirder and bigger-sounding on a level with few records I can think of. I have nothing new to say about "Running Up That Hill" but who does?

Over the years, I really should have recognized her voice enough to figure it out without hearing "Cloudbursting" but like every time it happens, hearing the original source of a sample in a track I've spent a lot of time with is always a magical experience.

You really need to turn this one up to hear everything that's going on, which I haven't been able to do the few times I've put it on before, so no this isn't the first time I've heard this but it's the first time I've been able to pay it any real attention.

When The Knife released Silent Shout, did it get a lot of comparisons to this? I really love that album and always appreciated it as this singular work of art that just sort of appeared without any precedent but here we are and I don't know what to think.

Stay tuned as I discover lots of albums from the past that everyone else has heard except for me, and then just kind of acknowledge their existence and try to pass that off as analysis worth reading.

Good thread. I will be writing up a review of Wowee Zowee

Wowee Zowee is the most interesting Pavement album overall imo

Great thread idea, this is a thread I've been kicking around in my head for awhile



This is the old, classic album that I've finally gotten into this year and BOY has it been worth it

Guess I'll toss out there that I picked the wrong week to get into The Queen is Dead.

I hadn't read any of this recent news but for some reason I still found myself thinking about this today.

at least Morrissey is against nuns

The fact that Duff has never listened to TQID is completely blowing my mind.

It's pretty off brand, yeah.

"There Is a Light" of course has long been a favorite.

I've never listened to a Smiths record and probably never will. I have been wanting to get into Kate Bush for a while though and just didn't know where to start.

Don’t like Morrissey much but I’m pumped for a new Marr record in 2018.

Man, the Smiths really are the absolute best. Couldn't truthfully call them my favourite band any more, but discounting like 3 bum tracks I'm  not aware of any other bands where almost every song is as good as the worst of theirs (good wording, good boarding). Incredible highs, incredible averages, non-existent lows. Nothing Morrissey says or does can ever take that away from them.

Meat is Murder, TQID, Louder than Bombs, these are great records

A lot of this was really unpleasant to listen to, which is probably saying something given how totally numb I feel towards most gangsta rap, let alone an album that's 30 years old. I also laughed at a lot of it but these guys are really gross and the misogyny on this album is basically proto-incel rage and probably deserves no deeper consideration or analysis.

Has Ice Cube ever killed anyone?  If he hasn't then he's really full of it!

I love "Express Yourself" but some of the best-known songs were the hardest for me to sit through.

MC Ren is a good rapper.  I don't feel the same about Eazy-E. The production on this has aged a lot better than I was expecting. I bought this along with the first album by A Tribe Called Quest and it's possible that I enjoy the sound of this album just as much as that one.

These were my favorite tracks.





Yesterday I saw a big tanker truck that looked like it was full of flammable toxic sludge stuck at an intersection with a downed wire across the road and there was one police car at the scene with an officer trying to, I don't know, deal with it? It did give me cause to reflect that cops have to wake up every day and deal with a lot of unforeseeable bullshit everyone takes for granted or doesn't know about and that everything that we think about when it comes to being a cop is probably like half of the job at the very most. I mention this because I don't want to be completely negative, I hate police culture with a passion and the civilian apologists who stand up for the status quo of their unquestionable impunity and feed their persecution complexes. This should be the album for me and it should be "more relevant than ever" right now or whatever but...what does it matter what yet another privileged white boarder thinks of this?

I don't know, someone had to make this, I guess. It could have been a lot worse!

The first time I heard Eazy was on Bone Thugs "For the Love of Money" and I was in disbelief on how lazy his verse sounded. Of course, he was a pretty terrible vocal match for the likes of Dizzy Bone et al, but yeah, not a great technical rapper.

undo wrote:It did give me cause to reflect that cops have to wake up every day and deal with a lot of unforeseeable bullshit everyone takes for granted or doesn't know about and that everything that we think about when it comes to being a cop is probably like half of the job at the very most. I mention this because I don't want to be completely negative, I hate police culture with a passion and the civilian apologists who stand up for the status quo of their unquestionable impunity and feed their persecution complexes.

From leftists like us, I think cops don't get sympathy for this reality because of their "protect our own" and "us vs. them" culture. Everyone knows how weird and scary it would probably be to be a cop, but cops never seem to apologize for anything or hold any of their own accountable. The way police organizations are so antagonistic towards the people they are meant to serve poisons the well.

First time I ever heard Eazy-E was on "Real Muthaphukkin G's" and that song is dope as hell!!

chrondog wrote:First time I ever heard Eazy-E was on "Real Muthaphukkin G's" and that song is dope as hell!!

Same experience, same assessment.

A kid dubbed me a cassette copy of nwa when I was in grade school. Perfect time to hear and be inspired by it. Full of rage and misplaced hormones and filthy mouth like I was, just afraid to express it as a twelve year old. I looked up to them lol, and was in awe of how bold they were compared to the rest of society in comparison, and in almost all other music I heard at the time.

I can’t write a full review because I dont have the will but I just recently discovered Big Star/Alex Chilton and power pop in general. RadioCity and Bach’s Bottom have been everyday listens for the last week or so.

Also, one of my all time favorite Lopp moments was when Soma said The Smiths were his favorite band and then Somegirl was like ‘what kind of man are you?’

Apparently I placed this at #81 among 2003 albums, at a time when such a ranking was basically a backhanded complement, an acknowledgement to a reader that I spun it 2 or 3 times before consigning it to the depths of my hard drive. I remember this record showing up quite a lot on SOMB lists, and I quickly forgot everything about the music and subconsciously grouped it with a lot of boring indie that I had no use for. I doubt I ever actively fought against it, but I had a vague, lingering negative association with the name until I forgot about them.


Recently, I heard "Lunar Days" randomly and was floored by this sound. Remembering the name, I dug up Violet Hour and listened for the "first" time and it's interesting how differently this hushed nostalgic tone led by guitars sounds to me than it must have back then. In a way, I think I came full circle through a whole lot of other music to get to the point where I appreciated this in a completely different way than I could have around the time it came out.

BGwaves wrote:

Also, one of my all time favorite Lopp moments was when Soma said The Smiths were his favorite band and then Somegirl was like ‘what kind of man are you?’

This is a funny interpretation but I don't think it actually happened

I saw The Clientele last November and they were chill! Alasdair had some technically issues that were pretty funny and they were occasionally sloppy, but I enjoyed myself. They did one song where they really jammed it up for 5+ minutes and that was a highlight.

Definitely one of those bands that feels weightless and unimportant, but also has one of the strongest commitment to a "sound" I've ever heard.

Strange Geometry is the album of theirs that hooked me, so I'll always have a special place for it in my heart, but there's great jams across all their records. Or just put their whole catalog on shuffle and you'll have a nice evening. Great band. I haven't got into their latest record too much but "Lunar Days" is really really great Raj.

raj gibson wrote:
Apparently I placed this at #81 among 2003 albums, at a time when such a ranking was basically a backhanded complement

Does that somehow no longer mean that to you?

chrondog wrote:Strange Geometry is the album of theirs that hooked me, so I'll always have a special place for it in my heart, but there's great jams across all their records. Or just put their whole catalog on shuffle and you'll have a nice evening. Great band. I haven't got into their latest record too much but "Lunar Days" is really really great Raj.

Thanks, I'll check this out, and I'm sure you're right about the shuffle play, I can't imagine anything they've made coming as a jarring transition from anything else. Like you said, the commitment to one sound makes it all work.

Duff... wrote:

raj gibson wrote:
Apparently I placed this at #81 among 2003 albums, at a time when such a ranking was basically a backhanded complement

Does that somehow no longer mean that to you?

Yeah, I worded that in a weird way. Looking back at those old lists, it's pretty hard to remember much in the upper reaches of the lists. So even if I were to listen to 150-200 new albums in a year today (which of course I don't), I probably wouldn't make a top X list of more than 30-40 albums because anything beyond that obviously didn't make enough of an impression that it would matter in any way that my 64th favorite album was 15 places "better" than my 79th favorite album.

That may have come out more pointed than intended. Meant it more in a "Leave it to Raj to reach a point where he could love 81 records in a single year in his mid-30s" sorta way.