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

Listened to the first half of this with the brightest afternoon sunlight in my face and now I'm finishing it outside on the porch with headphones in the night. Neither approach is wrong with this album, imo

Maybe I'll have more to say about it later

Oh great, top of page with a post that says nothing?

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The internet was a bad idea.

What artist/album was this supposed to be? I can’t see it due to our world being stupid.

Little Neddy goes to war wrote:

To continue, please type the characters below:

The internet was a bad idea.

What artist/album was this supposed to be? I can’t see it due to our world being stupid.

if you are asking about my post, it is this album

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_For_Carnation_(album)

Thanks. Yeah, I was. For whatever reason, all I see on this page is this post sans music info:



It’s quite likely I’m just bad at the internet (a thing; verified).

Regardless, I’ll check it out.

Until tonight, I'd never actually sat down and listened to Shame Based Man by Bruce McCulloch.

It's fucking incredible.

Sample:

Somehow better, and worse, than anything I was anticipating.

Long before any of their Top 500 or Top 300 Albums of All Time, Rolling Stone released a "normal" issue back in 1997 (I think, Jewel was on the cover) that also included a very substantial Top 200 Albums of All Time... which could've/should've been a cover story in itself but I think they wanted to have a Face on the cover so it wasn't. This album was included in that list. I think they were holding it up as a pinnacle of British blues... while also including like 3 other Eric Clapton albums or something iirc.

Never heard it until today and it's...

Man, I don't know. I start to tune this out after three songs or so. I want to reconnect with "classic rock" that will make me feel like the rawest Boomer or give me visions of what's not necessarily possible, but at least aspirational if I keep playing guitar deep into the dankest depths of my 50s or whatever. I want to believe this sound hasn't been eternally poisoned for me and that I can still get the blues and feel it in my soul. Obviously, there is a lot of ground still to cover and it's ground that ought to have been covered long before listening to this album, but this was on my to-listen to list for a really long time and I just had to knock it out already.

I gave it a go, I guess! I listened to the "normal" version of the album, not the 2-hour Deluxxxe version posted above. Now back to our regularly scheduled and never-ending ambient dub excursions into the void

I saw Janelle Monae in concert a few nights ago and it was incredible. I've been obsessed with her pretty much since Vamos Scorcho posted an "I like Janelle Monae" thread in SOMB (or at least that's how I remember it), but I'd never actually heard the Metropolis Suite I EP. Hitting play on that shit now.

She's a 90% likelihood future EGOT winner right?

IMO without a doubt the best thing to happen at Pitchforkmedia headquarters in the years since the big biz takeover is the Sunday reviews segment.

I'm listening to Playing with a Different Sex by by Au Pairs and it absolutely fucking destroys. Thanks for that review a while back, Conde Nast. NP, Unfinished Business:


Feels like Talking Heads or Pylon filtered through The Slits I dunno. It's just a really fucking cool album. All these songs crush.

C-poots wrote:Good thread. I will be writing up a review of Wowee Zowee

Where you at bro? (Miss you)

It’s interesting how this thread was originally, Undo posts review, conversation ensues. Now we operate like, poster posts. I know you lurk, just post!

undo wrote:

Probably one of the last albums you'd think I'd post itt but what can I say.

I was going to listen to all of their albums for in order but that never really happened so why not just listen to this already?

Boy, this really hits that spot. You know the one!

More 2 come!

Commuting in D.C. is an absolute nightmare. Had one of those bad traffic days today, beltway backed up and slow moving. Usually days that start this way have me in rage mode, but this morning I cranked the volume on Heaven or Las Vegas by Cocteau Twins, which I’d never heard before, and gotta tell ya, I feel fucking wonderful. Life is a god damn delight.

BGwaves wrote:It’s interesting how this thread was originally, Undo posts review, conversation ensues. Now we operate like, poster posts. I know you lurk, just post!

I’m with ya man.
But I get it. Life gets busy and board becomes an outlet for individual thought dump moments rather than actual engagement. Musical taste wise I’ve been hyper fixating on a thing for about a month then moving to the next thing. And when that fixation doesn’t overlap with board discourse I have a tendency to see a post about a band and just shrug, “That’s probably awesome and maybe I’ll check that out someday, but I ain’t interested atm.” Then I go back to listening to every Paul Westerberg song ever 10 times in a row.

After that post Undo made in the 2024 albums thread I’m listening to Squarepusher and Autechre for the first time in my life. Starting with their first releases and going from there.

Have fun! Cichli Suite is a very good release from Autechre that doesn’t get a lot of attention because it’s an EP, highly recommended.

They aren’t really that similar as artists although they might’ve been considered a part of the same genre in 90s. Squarepusher is a bit more rooted in jazz and I think autechre is more rooted in 80s electro or other similar early electronic pop music. Autechre music just sounds completely futuristic whereas squarepushers stuff has an earthy, organic quality. Not sure how else to describe what I’m trying to say so I’ll just stick with that description.

I haven't heard all their albums but Tri repetae is probably the definitive Autechre album, my favorite is the self titled.

Only starting to get into Squarepusher now, unlike Autechre I don't know if he has a definitive work.

Oh fuck I might listen to “My Sound” by Squarepusher more than anything else this year.

I’ve never heard Microstoria, until today! I’m a huge Oval fan so it’s actually hilarious that I haven’t heard one of his more famous releases. It’s a collab with one of the guys from mouse on mars and it sounds like both of their styles mashed together. A very enjoyable experience if you’re into this sorta music

During middle and high school I owned three R.E.M. albums: Automatic For the People, Monster and New Adventures in Hi-Fi. These just happened to be the three albums the band released during that period of time, and while I was aware that there were many more than preceded them, I never checked any of them out. I don't know why, I only have theories.

1) None of the album covers looked appealing. Have you actually looked at them?
2) I couldn't take chances buying random old albums that, adjusted for inflation, were at their most expensive prices ever.
3) I didn't buy albums from the 80s and there needed to be a marketing push of something being "new" for me to want to buy it (this had nothing to dow ith MTV as we didn't have it at home). I'm trying to remember the number of albums from the 1980s that I ever bought before my twenties and I'm struggling to think of even five, at most.

If there was an album that had "Losing My Religion" AND "Driver 8" AND "The One I Love" AND "It's the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)" on it, maybe I would have bought it, but the random "old" REM songs that I was familiar with were all spread out across different albums and I had no idea where to start. So I just never really dug any further back aside from just knowing the big hits and eventually whatever other deep cuts that XRT would play. Later I'd get my hands on Murmur but by then the band had sullied its legacy with some 21st century stinkers and my enthusiasm for them was waning fast, so I never "got" that album and it still hasn't clicked, but it's been forever since I've even thought of listening to it. Oh yeah, they also kind of became a running joke on the music message board I was on. This wasn't their fault but whatever.

I found myself in the mood to just, um... "listen to some REM" the other day and I randomly picked Green, which I'd never heard before. But of course I'd heard "Stand" and "Pop Song 89" and "Orange Crush." The last of these three might be great? Like you need or want anyone to tell you that! Like you ever even want to hear about this band ever again, right?



This is one of the most beautiful songs I've ever heard from them. It's also hitting me this week like the saddest song I've ever heard. It's ridiculous that this band was selling millions and making pop hits, maybe being as big as Imagine Dragons or something. There's a better way to make the point I'm reaching for but it's not gonna happen tonight.



I love the Joy Division-like sparseness of this and these lyrics are just  On rateyourmusic, the most recent review is someone complaining that this album is way too happy. WTF? It's also rated like a big miss, the first time they fell off. I don't understand anything anymore.



How did this sell 4 million copies?

Odds are you all probably hate this and think they stopped being a good band by 1985 or something. It's lol-worthy that I'd praise this as being a "solid" album, but damn, it's solid. And that's what we love most around here. Good, honest, solid albums. Perfect for when you want to listen to music, recorded in a studio by a band.

Fuck yeah.

That was the album that made me fall in love with this band forever.

I was probably like 10. My childhood best friend had lots of big brothers and big sisters who were into music and so we had a tape with this on one side of it and Flood by TMBG on the other side and we would rock the fuck out of those two albums daily while playing a whiffle ball game where the playing field was their garage, yard, house, and driveway. It was called garage game and it had record books and shit. It was legit.

World Leader Pretend is a fucking rad ass song. This whole album crushes. I guess it came out at the same time as Don’t Tell a Soul by the Replacements and when Westerberg heard it his first thought was, “phew, thank god our record is better than this one.” I disagree and the fans totally disagreed, but having heard the Dead Man’s Pop compilation with the better version of that album, I can sorta see it… still don’t agree with him tho cause this is a Ned Braden childhood heart songs album and that can’t be ficked with. I’m gonna listen to this manana.

I've never heard this before and I don't think I've heard anything related to it. I really don't touch this genre of music. But lots of people seem really passionate about it, especially lately, and I'm curious why but maybe I should stop asking at all because this curiosity is always tinged with uncalled for suspicion. Seems like lots of actual children who were born like ten years after it came out are really into it now? Or are obsessed with making memes about it. I don't know. This seems like the consensus "best" album in its genre so I guess I'll listen to this for the first time at 44.5 years old.

This is surprisingly very listenable and not annoying. This is much more mature and melodic and tasteful than anything I've ever heard described as "emo," the less said about that the better, I guess. Good drumming and I like the trumpet on one (or more?) of the songs. This is a strange middle ground that I never knew existed between introspective and thoughtfully composed 4-piece indie rock and a whole strain of really insidious, self-absorbed garbage (best represented by the "station" that Amazon Music went into playing the moment this album ended).

I do like how they just coast into a long jam at the end of this, not that they're wildly improvising and taking us to outer space or anything but I'm not really asking for much here.



I don't think I'm going to listen to this again. I wish I had more thoughts about this but I honestly just don't, so this is one of those posts that's not really worth making.

I wanted to listen to something that was "Midwest emo" so this is what I picked and I thought I would follow it up with... oh, what would be a good album to follow it up with? Jets To Brazil? I've never heard them before. I like the album cover with the bird on it, let's try that one.

So I spent the next half hour thinking, wow Jets To Brazil really suck. But in fact, Amazon Music was not playing Jets To Brazil at all but a "station" of songs that it thought I would like because I just listened to the American Football album:  



Yeah, maybe if I can't tell that these are all different songs by different bands, my opinion on this stuff is worthless. Or maybe it all does sound the same?

All the while, I was cleaning up garbage in the woods by my home. I found a Gamecube disc buried under some leaves. I don't think it's going to play anymore.

Undo’s posts in this thread are great.

My year of exploring a genre of music I know nothing about continues with maybe my favorite new listening experience yet:

The Field - From Here We Go Sublime

I'm not actually done listening to this yet but I might as well get started on a post about it... because I feel like I'm going to forget about this one completely by the time it's finished!

I'm interrupting the post that was as in progress here because it was getting very negative and there's a strong chance that at least one person here really likes this. I'll just say that my first impression of this is not particularly great. The vocals aren't doing it for me. The lyrics are just kind of there but don't really suggest anything nearly as profound as the reputation of this album seems to suggest (although there's a lot of additional attention that I could be focusing on them with that I'm just not giving right now). About halfway through this album and I'm not really hearing any traces of the psychedelic masterpiece this is supposed to be. I'd rather be listening to Deserter's Songs or, yeah, anything by The Flaming Lips.

This sounds like a band that was indeed dialed into the direction that indie rock and/or modern music was soon heading but this isn't really grabbing me as an album that feels urgently relevant now or at any point in the last 20 years.

Nick wrote:My year of exploring a genre of music I know nothing about continues with maybe my favorite new listening experience yet:

The Field - From Here We Go Sublime

an absolute masterpiece

undo wrote:

I'm not actually done listening to this yet but I might as well get started on a post about it... because I feel like I'm going to forget about this one completely by the time it's finished!

I'm interrupting the post that was as in progress here because it was getting very negative and there's a strong chance that at least one person here really likes this. I'll just say that my first impression of this is not particularly great. The vocals aren't doing it for me. The lyrics are just kind of there but don't really suggest anything nearly as profound as the reputation of this album seems to suggest (although there's a lot of additional attention that I could be focusing on them with that I'm just not giving right now). About halfway through this album and I'm not really hearing any traces of the psychedelic masterpiece this is supposed to be. I'd rather be listening to Deserter's Songs or, yeah, anything by The Flaming Lips.

This sounds like a band that was indeed dialed into the direction that indie rock and/or modern music was soon heading but this isn't really grabbing me as an album that feels urgently relevant now or at any point in the last 20 years.

This is more or less how I felt about it when it came out, down to the "rather be listening to... The Flaming Lips" part. I remember kinda liking "El Caminos in the West" but not much else is really going on.